Luke
Hi everyone. Uh, my name is Luke.

Bevin
Hey guys. I'm Bevin.

Givana
I'm G.

Luke
This week we're gonna be talking about remixes and sort of where we observe different types of remixes in pop culture or media. We're gonna be talking about the YouTube video that we watched just to start. Bevin, do you wanna tell us what a remix is?

Bevin
So that YouTube video you actually brought up, Luke, is by Kirby Ferguson. It's basically called Everything is a Remix. So you can find that on YouTube. And I actually learned that this is the third time he is making this, which is really interesting. He did say in the video that all creative ideas are derivative of another. Basically, yeah, you kind of get inspired from artists.

Luke
Yeah. One thing that I feel that Kirby Ferguson did pretty well in his video was the remix aspect of TikTok.

Givana
For sure. It's also interesting to think about how social media in itself is kind of a remix. If you think about it, like musically into TikTok Pipeline and then Facebook and Instagram, and now everybody has a marketplace and everybody's doing these short videos. It kind of goes along with their video.

Bevin
Everything is a Remix. No, they're pretty much taking ideas from each other. I'm pretty sure YouTube started as the main social networking platform, and then Vine came out of it, and then TikTok, and now Instagram Reels are a thing. And obviously, Instagram and Facebook are under the same umbrella company. They started adding Reels, and even YouTube started making Reels. So I feel like everybody's kind of taking bits and pieces from each other in a way that is remixing itself—just the social media platform.

Luke
Yeah. So TikTok, one of the features on TikTok is Duet, which basically allows users to react or add on to a video that's already on TikTok. So he highlights that. That is sort of a remix aspect—maybe you don't have an original idea, but you're able to sort of add on to someone else's already existing idea.

Givana
Yeah, and so many social media platforms are kind of remixing TikTok in a way. I don't know if you guys ever get stuck in Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.

Bevin
I feel like most of the ones on Instagram, though, are taken from TikTok and just spread.

Givana
It's taken from TikTok. Sometimes people will put different words over them and stuff.

Bevin
Oh really?

Givana
Yeah.

Bevin
There are so many ways that they can adapt those things.

Luke
One of the main things that I got when watching the video is that basically all things follow the words that Kirby used: copy, transform, and combine. So you'd basically take popular aspects or what works and sort of change them in a way to make them better. And you can do that across multiple platforms to sort of make the perfect thing.
If we know that the TikTok example sort of copies aspects of Musical.ly and Instagram but transforms it into this short-form video that doesn’t have to be music, doesn’t have to be just images, then it’s obviously blown up over the past few years.

Bevin
It doesn’t even have to be a social media thing. Like, I can even think about it with art—like collages. Most of the time, you take stuff you find in magazines or pieces of other artworks. Or even fabric—if you design a print using someone's art, you can take pieces of it, put it together, and I could see that as a way of remixing.

Givana
Yeah. And Kirby even talks about art in the form of music and how it's developed over the years, especially rap music. There are a lot of modern-day rappers that don’t follow the origin of rap at all but are still considered rappers.
Like Young Gravy, for example. He samples a lot of old music. He's also not from the culture that rap music originated in, yet he’s a very popular rapper right now. I think it’s interesting to think about how he's remixed the whole genre into something he wants to create and use as an outlet.

Bevin
Yeah, that's amazing—being able to do that and kind of take your own rendition of it to make something new, which I really love. It’s like you're being inspired by another artist. As an artist, you're using that to make something that has meaning to you. And I think that's kind of cool and special because you're sharing and connecting with each other—not just copying word for word.

Luke
Yeah. In terms of pop culture remixes, it kind of reminds me of Saturday Night Live. They do a lot of social commentary or take what’s already out there—copy, combine, transform all that sort of information, songs, or news media—and make their show.

Givana
Yeah. They even have a skit about the remixing of rap. It has Timothée Chalamet in it

Luke
Yee Yee, Drop That What? I've seen that. Yeah, I thought that was really funny.

Givana
It kind of highlights the negativity that some people feel around remixing and the progression of things, especially when it relates back to culture. That skit is really hilarious—him doing "white guy rap." It's a whole commentary on how rap music has developed and been remixed over the years. And then with TV, there's a lot of remixing happening right now with series and spinoffs.

Luke
I feel like that's all we see now.

Givana
Yeah.

Bevin
For sure. A lot of plotlines are pretty much the same. Sometimes it feels like they're running out of ideas.

Givana
Oh my God, how many cop shows?

Luke
How many hospital shows? How many enemies-to-lovers can we watch?

Bevin
Oh my goodness, yeah.

Luke
Or like, Dad, it's your dream, not mine.

Bevin
That’s the one I think of most.

Givana
That’s like the Disney Channel trope.

Luke
And I mean, I think that's a large part of what the YouTube video is getting at—how, really, there is no original content, especially now. The way Kirby made it seem, everything has already been done. The only thing to do is, I guess, do it differently.

Bevin
It’s like inventing something new—it’s really hard to invent something that someone didn’t already think of.

Givana
In this day and age, it’s so hard to come up with something completely from scratch that isn't based off any biases or concepts.

Luke
Maybe one day we could have an ethics podcast.

Givana
In conclusion, Everything is a Remix—the title of the YouTube video. Thank you guys for listening.