Small Changes, Big Outcomes

GeekTherapy · October 26, 2021, 1:45am

Originally published at: Small Changes, Big Outcomes - GT Radio

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#302: The team chats about little changes leading to big outcomes, including; video game patch notes, dietary changes, character adaptation, and the cascading effects of new information. Ultimately we conclude that small changes are only small in perspective – all change can lead to big outcomes.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Transcript

Josué Cardona 0:11
Welcome to gt radio on the Geek Therapy network. here Geek Therapy We believe that the best way to understand each other and ourselves through the media we care about. My name is Josué Cardona. I’m joined by Link Keller.

Link Keller 0:20
Hello,

Josué Cardona 0:22
and Lara Taylor.

Lara Taylor 0:23
What’s up?

Josué Cardona 0:25
So, today? I’ve been thinking about a few things. So we’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of GT.

Josué Cardona 0:38
Whoo.

Josué Cardona 0:39
Geek Therapy is turning 10. And there is there are a lot of big changes. But there are also little changes that we’re making. And I am I am shocked by how some of these little changes have made such a such a huge difference, I’ll give you an example. So I’m a new member of the team, Elaine Chen, helping me with graphic design, helping us all improve things that need improving. Not since Lara’s wife has anyone. So just matter of factly told me, this sucks. This sucks. She’s never said this sucks. But she has.

Lara Taylor 1:20
That’s nice, constructive criticism.

Josué Cardona 1:22
Like nina, yeah, maybe

Lara Taylor 1:24
got better after that, you know, this graphic sucks. And this intro sucks.

Josué Cardona 1:32
Nina is a little nicer now.

Josué Cardona 1:33
She is.

Josué Cardona 1:34
But Elaine has been helping out. And sometimes it’s like, even in the graphic design thing. small little changes make such a big difference. Like, like, just like, the little little tweaks like even don’t even like it. You familiar with the term? kerning? do you know what kerning is?

Link Keller 1:52
Yes,

Josué Cardona 1:53
it’s the spacing between letters. Right. So even that, like that’s something that I didn’t see, like I didn’t know before. And once I learned it, you can’t unsee it?

Link Keller 2:03
Oh, yeah.

Josué Cardona 2:04
Like, those two letters are closer than all the other letters are close to each other. That doesn’t look right. Like that’s why why is it like that? And it’s just small things like that can make such a big difference to different people. Anyway, but that’s like, it’s a small thing. But I’ve been thinking about how often and like you’re watching a show, you’re watching, you know, and suddenly there’s, there’s a sure there are big changes, but sometimes it’s like, it’s like a little change. That makes a huge difference. And sometimes there’s different versions of this, right, there’s, there’s the story introduces an element that seems small, but eventually it becomes very big. Sometimes there are patches and updates the games that like it’s like, the 37th line in the patch notes, right, it’s a small little thing. But for someone it can be they can make such a huge difference. And I think we’ve touched on some of this in terms of when we talk about accessibility, how sometimes something that seems small can make such a such a huge difference. Now, whether some of these things are actually small or not, it’s not that that is debatable. I think it’s, um, it’s relative, its objective. But I think that this has always been something that’s super helpful, where you have a metaphor for for change, and you’re working with someone or you’re talking to someone, and they, they, there’s, there’s something that there’s there’s a problem that they’re trying to solve, or there’s something that they’re dealing with something that is an obstacle or a burden, or just you know, something that is causing some kind of stress, and, and sometimes very, very small, like, we feel like we have to make all these huge changes, like, I don’t know, a version that I’m sure is relatable to most people is a diet, right? Sometimes you’re like, oh, like I don’t want to diet and exercise. And it’s such a huge change. It’s all these things I have to do. But sometimes there’s like one thing that you can change, by just doing a little less of one thing or a little less of another, changing the timing of things that, again, can be kind of small, can have a huge effect on your health. And when we’re talking about mental health and relationships that are some things that are just super tiny. Right? And sometimes they’re so small that we don’t think that they would make a difference, but they actually, they actually do make a difference. But I was thinking that, that when we recognize those and when they happen in like a game or or or in a show or something it it does make like it’s it’s easier to to pinpoint because it’s not something that’s affecting you. But I feel like the metaphor really, really works. And I know you and I Lara we we brought up the topic really quick yesterday, and we came up with a whole bunch of cool examples. So I’m just curious, the topic in general like does it does it bring something to mind? Like, how often does this happen? Like, with with clients where it’s like that, that idea of a small change, that could make a huge difference?

Lara Taylor 5:14
That, that comes up all the time, my own life, and with clients, right? Um, this idea of small changes, like, recently, client was dealing with discord drama, drama on their Discord server. And I was suggested, you know, how about, we just don’t open Discord. In the first like, half hour you’re awake, and do something else improve this clients mood greatly. because there wasn’t that immediate dread of looking at the discord and what was happening in the channels and the bid then fighting and all the stuff going on. It wasn’t it wasn’t a thing that they had to deal with. So they could instead enjoy their breakfast and time with their pets, and not have to worry about that till later. And just like it made the morning so much smoother, which then made the days so much smoother.

Josué Cardona 6:18
Have you realized what what did they did they think that it would have such a large effect on like, third day overall,

Lara Taylor 6:24
it was really more of a like, here, I guess I could try that. And then I checked in the last session we’d had and it was like, Oh, that was a big deal.

Josué Cardona 6:39
Cool.

Lara Taylor 6:40
Small changes, small changes.

Josué Cardona 6:43
That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. That’s a that’s an awesome example. That’s a really good example.

Lara Taylor 6:47
So moral of the story is don’t jump on Discord. Unless you’re happy with your discord servers. First thing in the morning.

Josué Cardona 6:55
Not all discord are created equal.

Lara Taylor 6:58
No, not all of them are. GT discord is pretty chill.

Josué Cardona 7:04
I can’t imagine. Yeah,

Lara Taylor 7:06
like I look forward to checking in.

Josué Cardona 7:08
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Maybe Maybe there’s too many channels. Maybe there’s been too much activity, but you know, not? Not. Not tidy city. Yeah. Well, yeah. Not one of those discords. Yeah. Yeah.

Lara Taylor 7:22
Small changes. And as far as like examples, we talked about, like web comics, right. Yeah. That

Josué Cardona 7:28
was a good example. Yeah, like,

Lara Taylor 7:30
when web comics, you can especially notice it when they put them in a in like, actual like printed book. And it’s because regular comics, if it’s a graphic novel, you will usually get someone starting from the inside out, or working outside in so that the art seems pretty fluid throughout the book. webcomic art style changes over 10 years, or something of drawing a comic, or even a couple years of drawing comics. So the art style will change and progressively get what the artists might feel like is better. Sometimes you don’t feel like it’s better as the reader but I think that you’ll notice those little changes and oh, there’s more. The colors, more contrast-y or like this is more defined in the character’s face, and it does make a huge difference.

Josué Cardona 8:21
So wait, but you said so like in comic books, it’s it’s typical for for the art to you start from the like the middle of the story. And then

Lara Taylor 8:30
a lot of times artists will do that. Because then it’s not. It will feel like you’re finishing and ending on the same art. So you’ll do different, you’ll it blends easier. It’s not a linear progression. And it tricks the brain. Not all artists will do that. But my wife, my wife went to cartooning school. So that’s what she says a lot of them will do. And I and she’s pointed it out to me in books. I can’t name one right now. But

Josué Cardona 9:02
yeah, that yeah, that’s cool. That’s a cool way of masking it. But But yeah, but like in webtoons, right. Like you said, like web comics it’s going through, you can definitely what I love about that is that as you’re going through the story you may not notice. Right, um, but if you were to

Lara Taylor 9:19
take it and like look at today’s episode, and like one from a year ago or two years ago, you’d be like, Whoa, that looks so different.

Josué Cardona 9:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Link Keller 9:29
I haven’t read questionable content in years at this point. But that was a webcomic. I follow it a lot and very drastically changed its art style over 10 plus years that it’s been going on. They have the you know, the navigation bar at the top of the page to you know, go through the pages and accidentally clicking on like instead of back one chapter or clicking on the back to the beginning and then just just having that or original art welled up in my face like, Oh, god, oh, I wasn’t ready.

Josué Cardona 10:07
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Link Keller 10:10
It is very cool to get to see that kind of artistic growth. I think that is one of the benefits of web comics as a medium when compared to other types of comics.

Lara Taylor 10:22
Comic Strips too, you can see that like, if you look at the average, peanuts, you look at the style and how it’s changed in six. What was it 50-60 years that it ran? Like, it was very different. And you can see that there is a Snoopy for the 50s and the 60s and like all that there’s different Snoopies. Um, so, and none of them are some people that’s their favorite, which whichever decade is their favorite one. But the changes overall, you don’t usually notice because they’re more subtle throughout the years. Yeah.

Link Keller 11:00
It’s definitely the kinds of changes that you notice, like, in retrospect, more so than when the change is occurring? Maybe,

Lara Taylor 11:10
which is a lot of how life works.

Josué Cardona 11:12
Yeah. Yeah. Like, like, the obvious thing that’s jumping out to me at least is that, like, any big change is made up of many small changes, right? Like you couldn’t get there. You may not see exactly what was the first change that happened or what they were altering, but they kept improving. We’re getting closer to what they wanted to achieve over time. And sometimes the changes are so small, like, there’s some like small things that make a huge difference just on their own. But also, like every, every big change is composed of lots of small, or that’s the best way to do it. Right. Like many times when we feel very overwhelmed about making a change, to a call, there’s so much to do. And I know that happens to me. I mean, that’s been happening for four months now. Like we’ve been making so many changes, and I’ve been trying to go slowly, I’ve been trying to, to, to pace out the things that we’re doing, because it does feel overwhelming. And but there are moments when like you do one thing and like, Oh, we just flipped a switch and like, Oh, right. It’s not the only change we’ve made, but like that one thing, it feels huge, right? Or you think, oh, that’s gonna make a big difference. Or you realize later, lots of times you don’t realize it until much later that that particular thing made a huge difference. Yeah,

Lara Taylor 12:29
yeah. And those incremental changes are a lot, the smaller ones are easier to, to deal with and absorb. Like, I’ve brought up before reading The Walking Dead, I love the art in the first volume. And then I got the Compendium, and went to what would be the second volume, and I was like, I can’t stand the artwork anymore. And I hate this, because it was a huge difference. So

Josué Cardona 12:56
did you ever get used to it?

Lara Taylor 12:59
I tolerated it to get through the story. But then I did not get the second Compendium, because I just it was hard to keep track of who was who because everybody looked the same. And that was, I don’t know, it was I didn’t like it. And like the art and that that will make or break something for me. So like, smaller changes. Maybe a different artists who was trying to mimic the style and then make it their own over time might have been easier for me to palette.

Josué Cardona 13:32
Well, I think that’s a big change, though, that’s like a version of that I was thinking in TVs and movies. And when somebody gets recast, like, that’s a huge change. Like everybody can try to pretend you know, and you know,

Lara Taylor 13:44
most of the time they joke about that, like, you’re not the same person anymore. Whenever

Josué Cardona 13:49
Yeah, like even if you break the fourth wall and all that, but like, that’s not, that’s not a small change. That’s a huge, huge change. Even even if it’s an animated show, and the voice actor changes. That’s, that’s a pretty big, pretty big difference. Um, there’s, there’s, I was I was thinking about, sometimes when something changes mediums, like whether it’s a comic book that gets adapted into a movie, or a book that gets adapted into a movie, and that the changes that occur, right, like sometimes you they change things in the script, or they change a particular thing. And some some of those things are, are huge, and they make a big difference. A lot of them are controversial, and people hate them. But sometimes there’s like, really, really small things that you wouldn’t think would be a big deal. And they do it sometimes just to but actually, it’s like, that was written in the 80s we can’t say it like that anymore. And and then it’s like, oh, like now. Okay, and it wasn’t that big of a deal. Right? Right. that you just made a small a small change. Do you think of any, like right now of any situations like that, where something A change from one medium to another where there was a change like that.

Link Keller 15:09
Where the change was a positive thing?

Josué Cardona 15:12
Yes, because the negative one, but but there was a small even even if it was negative, but it was small, because again, some changes are huge. Right, like casting i think i think it’s a big change when you when you change the the race or the gender of a character, I think I think it’s usually good. Sometimes it can be very bad. It depends. If you’re whitewashing the character or doing something. You know, like, you’re, what’s the, what’s the word like? erasure, like, those things are bad, but those are still like big. I think those are big changes. It’s not a it’s not a small thing. To to change such a big part of a fun, original story.

Link Keller 15:56
It’s just I feel like, this is a difficult question. Because if if it is big enough in significance for us to remember it.

Lara Taylor 16:07
There’s probably something that we’re like, oh, no, or Oh, wow, that’s Yeah, but it’s bigger.

Link Keller 16:13
Like, I mean, I know that in the transformation from the Song of Ice and Fire book series into the game of thrones TV show. There were many large and small changes. I don’t remember I like I know off the top of my head that there were many characters where they would take three or four characters and just smoosh them up into one character in the show. But I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head any of them because I don’t I don’t remember. Yeah, they were small enough changes that it wasn’t a big deal.

Josué Cardona 16:49
I mean, I think those are like big changes to the source material, just like the the age of Danaerys, and things like that. Right? Like, like, for TV that you couldn’t, that some of these characters can’t be as young as they were in the books, because then it’s like, but I still think that’s a that’s a big change. I think that’s a positive change. And a necessary one for TV, but those are kind of large.

Lara Taylor 17:10
I mean, there were changes that like a lot of the characters, especially when you got to why can’t I think it’s been so long since I’ve thought of the show? I’m not Westeros the other side

Link Keller 17:25
Essos

Lara Taylor 17:26
yes, um,

Link Keller 17:28
Easter ros

Lara Taylor 17:28
people. They were supposed to have different colored hair, right? Like blues and purples and greens and like,

Link Keller 17:39
get that Danny’s boytoy was supposed to have a blue beard. They changed that actor. Three times? No, two times. They changed the mountain three times.

Lara Taylor 17:51
Mm hmm. I think there were only two of the guys. I love this. Books, and I can’t remember the names.

Link Keller 18:02
Daario

Lara Taylor 18:04
Yeah.

Link Keller 18:04
Daario. Was that right?

Lara Taylor 18:05
So I think it’s Daario.

Josué Cardona 18:07
I think we cast once though. Yeah,

Link Keller 18:09
he was just the one time Okay, the mountain was twice. Yeah. double double recasted. I mean, and he got bigger each time. How exciting.

Lara Taylor 18:17
And his face was covered for? Yeah, it

Josué Cardona 18:19
could have been seven different people in the last season. Yeah. or ten different people. Yes. Again, some of those are very, very large. Like I was, um, like, when the movie, I think you’d notice a lot of these things when you’re very familiar with the source material. And then it changes. Like I was thinking of watchmen, where they changed the end for the movie. I think I think that’s a huge change, though. Like a part of me thinks that it’s not that big of a change. But I think I think it’s a huge change. I think it’s a very, I think it’s a positive change. I think it makes the movie way easier to I think it makes it easier to I think it makes it more mainstream -able. Right. I think that if it came out today, I think it would have made it I think they would have left the giant squid in if it was made today. But I think that, you know, like 10 years ago.

Link Keller 19:23
They should have left it.

Josué Cardona 19:25
I don’t know, but I understand. I understand why they did it. I think it It’s, um,

Link Keller 19:29
it’s a compromise.

Josué Cardona 19:31
I don’t know if it was I don’t think it was a compromise. I don’t think it was a compromise. But it was definitely but it was but again, but I was like oh, that’s not a big change, like it would have it would have been a big change. I mean, I would think it would have been a small change if it was like in a book and like they rewrote the book or something right and it changed it. But it didn’t. Like this was like my million dollar like,

Link Keller 19:55
just getting hung up on. I want to know where your line is, but When these small and big changes, because I feel like everything you’re like, that’s a pretty big change, though,

Josué Cardona 20:05
that this is the struggle I’ve been having for the past week. Right? So so it’s wait. So I had a few examples in terms of stories and books and things like that this happens a lot in comic books and stories. So there are older like Superman and, and Batman comics, they get readapted into multiple times into TV, TV shows and movies. And then there’s like, very tiny things that they change. They’re like, okay, no, no, that’s good. Because now they like updating it, it’s, it’s like, it’s not that big of a deal. You know, like, oh, they’re calling him by this name, instead of that name those things they like they don’t, they don’t feel like they have a huge effect. Moving forward. So ultimately, like, what I came up, like, what, like what? So. So in the,

Link Keller 20:53
when you said that, and I think about the different like my mind, I went to Batman and I think about the different types of Batman that have existed through just my lifetime. Now, and some of the changes are small, and some of the changes are aesthetic. But I do think that they did that. Because they are different people creating these things, it doesn’t really count as as changing the same way as it is a new thing. There are gray areas here like when you have the Val Kilmer Batman into the George Clooney Batman, where the actors have changed. But then there is supposed to be some sort of continuity there. But then it’s like, you know? I don’t know. I don’t know. it feels. I don’t know what I don’t know how I’m how to describe

Lara Taylor 21:59
when Josué and I were talking about small changes yesterday, we’re talking about Steven Universe, and how the art in the first season looks very different from later seasons.

Josué Cardona 22:12
Yeah,

Lara Taylor 22:13
Is that on there?

Josué Cardona 22:14
Yeah. Yeah.

Lara Taylor 22:14
So So Link’s holding up a note,

Link Keller 22:18
Steven Universe opener was what I wrote down on my notes, because I thought that is the same opening song takes the same amount of time, it shows mostly the same things, but there are small changes in it like Connie, holding her book and being more shy. And then in the in the updated version, she’s holding the sword, and she’s like, chases after them. but then again it’s like, are those small changes? because somebody spent, you know, hours animating that and spending, you know, a lot of time thinking about how to, to really showcase how all these characters have grown and how our relationship to Beach city had grown. And, you know, showing villains, but then it’s like, oh, it’s not always what you think it’s gonna be and stuff like that. It’s like it’s small, because it’s just the opener. And it doesn’t tell you necessarily anything plot wise. But also, it’s not. It’s not small. It’s something I watched at the beginning of every episode.

Josué Cardona 23:20
So was the so it was meaning like, was it meaningful for you that you feel like it like those small changes to you?

Link Keller 23:27
Yeah, I felt I enjoyed the changes. But I also felt that it was representative of what was happening in the show as well. It wasn’t just an aesthetic change. It was also showing us, the viewers that a shift had happened within the storytelling world.

Josué Cardona 23:43
Yeah, yeah.

Link Keller 23:45
Yeah.

Josué Cardona 23:46
That’s, that’s good. That’s good.

Link Keller 23:48
Is that small? Or is that big?

Lara Taylor 23:50
it’s small and big.

Josué Cardona 23:52
is kind of the point. To

Lara Taylor 23:55
this is hard to define

Link Keller 23:56
Josué got me that that is the point is maybe there’s not as much distinction here at that matters. The point is that the changes happen,

Lara Taylor 24:04
and it was meaningful

Link Keller 24:05
they affect us. And,

Josué Cardona 24:08
obviously, obviously, I’m the arbiter of what is small and

Lara Taylor 24:11
like, literally, my example of my real life example was my client made a small change in not looking at discord and it impacted the rest of their day. Right? Yeah, that’s one small change. Not going to look at it for the first half hour the day.

Josué Cardona 24:27
Yeah. So this happens a lot with video games, right? Like sometimes, or apps, for example, like they’ll get an update and suddenly think, ah, like, finally, finally, this thing has been born.

Lara Taylor 24:41
Or sometimes it’s frustrating, because then you can’t find anything but then you get used to it. And it’s like, oh, this is nice. Yeah,

Josué Cardona 24:47
yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that also happens. Yes. I, hopefully video games get better. And apps actually get better. They do. Sometimes. get worse Evernote, I’m looking at you. I can’t, I can’t take anymore. i Can’t. what happened to Evernote?

Link Keller 25:08
so disappointing.

Josué Cardona 25:09
I’m done, I’m done with them.

Link Keller 25:12
I think I mean, I feel like video games are such a, especially in 2021. So many video games have the concept of changing and updating over time as like fundamental foundational to the game that they are building. Think about games like destiny, right is like that game is absolutely built around the idea that it will be regularly implementing changes some small, some of them larger, but their plans is very different than the production of a comic book or a TV show, or what have you

Josué Cardona 25:50
yeah

Link Keller 25:52
I’m thinking about, I don’t play Dota anymore. But when I did play Dota, when game updates would come out and getting to read through the update logs. And sometimes they’re just lots of really little things. And sometimes they’re little things that end up being way bigger than you expected them to be. But my favorite, I wish I could actually remember the example I’m thinking of I think it was something where they changed one character to get just a tiny, tiny bit of extra gold for doing a specific thing. And it wasn’t it wasn’t a big deal, except that then like two updates later, some other character got shifted. And those two, those two skills synergized in such a way that it made that first character like really, really powerful in certain circumstances. And I always thought was really cool how those kinds of like small changes because of the complexity of the game and having so many characters, and so many moves sets and so many little things that you can change like that, like percentages of gold per second, or what have you can end up having way bigger effects down the line than you expected. You can’t necessarily plan for all that stuff. So a lot of it is reacting in real time to how players are interacting within the game and revealing interactions you didn’t necessarily notice before.

Josué Cardona 27:21
Yeah, yeah, the the rate the meta of games like this, where it’s like, one thing, one small, someone literally just changed the numbers on a chart in a database somewhere. And it changed the value of a certain thing. And that effect cascades into all of these, or it opens up all of these other possibilities. Like I’ve talked a few times recently about, genshin impact. And that’s one of those things where every six weeks or so there’s a new, there’s a new character. And every you always play with a team of four, they have different elements. The elements attract differently. The reactions are different, but every six weeks, they also there’s balancing updates, and there’s tweaks. And then a team that wasn’t viable before, just like in the dota example, right? is suddenly, oh, my favorite character used to suck. But now my favorite characters the best, right? And it’s not even a change that like happened to my character necessarily, right? It might be something over here might be an item, or it might be this thing over here. And like you can’t even see the bigger picture of the effect that they can possibly have on a whole bunch of other stuff. I love that that keeps happening in Genshin. It’s like Oh, they just updated geo like the earth characters. That’s like, that’s it like now now this this character used to suck and now and then now it’s the best and now this team is completely. So much more fun to play. And but even in isolation, that one character, that one little change doesn’t seem like it’s a big a big deal.

Lara Taylor 28:56
When I was playing Wow. I would have to I would look up guides to know how to do my skill tree, inspect my characters, because if I did one, one skill point in the wrong place. My damage would be garbage.

Josué Cardona 29:14
yeah, yeah,

Lara Taylor 29:15
just one, just one, you know, can make a huge difference.

Josué Cardona 29:21
The whole idea of something that’s a small or large change, I’m gonna go back on something that I said before, I’m going to say something that it depends on what level something is large or small. Because even some of those changes about the race or the or the gender change of a character. Like first for one person that was a super small change. Like for an executive it was just a matter of saying Yeah, like it can be, it can be any gender, or like it can be you know, like, no, absolutely we can make this one change. Right? We can we can have a person of color in that role. And for that person, like didn’t have to think about it a lot. It wasn’t an effort for them, it was just a matter of like, checking a box or, or just nodding in a meeting and doing something like that. And then as that moves further down the line, sure it becomes a bigger thing. And it can have a super large effect. But that one moment is it was kind of small. If you look at it from from that perspective, it’s like the

Lara Taylor 30:26
butterfly effect.

Josué Cardona 30:27
Well, I was I was gonna bring up the Beatles, The Beatles commercial using the one where it’s like, one person smiles like, the so the, the commercial goes backwards. It’s like one person smiles to another person. And in that, like, you’re seeing it backwards, like that person is smiling because this other person smiled at them. So the person smiled because that person smile at them. But the first person smile, because they saw a beetle drive by and it made them smile. And they were like in such a like, it made them smile. So they looked over at the other person. And like, the idea was that, you know, the happiness cascaded through I was like a was a was a milk money. They said a movie. Is that a thing? I get that wrong?

Link Keller 31:09
Milk money.

Josué Cardona 31:10
Is that wrong? Is that not a movie? I’m sure

Link Keller 31:13
milk money the movie?

Josué Cardona 31:14
No. Is that gonna be this is gonna be funny when I

Lara Taylor 31:18
when you actually come up with the name.

Josué Cardona 31:21
no, no when I find when I when I learned what it actually was. Oh, no, no, no, no, this is it’s true. It’s true. What is it? It’s all about three hands on.

Lara Taylor 31:33
There’s two milk money movies, one in 2000

Josué Cardona 31:35
there’s two of them?

Lara Taylor 31:36
No, there’s a whole bunch of them, dang, there’s a TV miniseries.

Josué Cardona 31:39
Oh, is there? Now I have no idea if this movie is actually about the thing that I’m thinking about? Um,

Lara Taylor 31:45
how old is this movie we’re talking about?

Josué Cardona 31:47
I dunno, I was thinking of the Melanie Griffith one. I have no idea now. Yeah, I don’t I don’t know. I thought it seemed relevant. Nobody’s backing me up here. Anyway. But we’re definitely we’re it’s working. It’s working. We’re definitely hitting the points from from multiple angles. Other things that I thought about that have made a huge difference for me, for example, is because I can, I don’t think most people would consider me an audiophile or videophile. But I tend to notice these things more than then, than most, I have, like the craziest equipment. Like, I’ll be in a movie theater. And I’m the one who gets up and complains, I’m like, Look, the audio is out of sync, or like, the look, your brightness is off or like the colors aren’t right. And, and so I tend to notice these things. So when a movie gets updated, and it has, again, what was the movie that they did this recently? Oh, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the original one, they updated all the colors of the original movies to basically to match each other. It’s like when, like when, like when an artist goes back into like a sketchbook and like, deletes like erases a whole bunch of the small marks and things because like I don’t like I’m gonna have a better version. Later, they did this with the Lord of the Rings movies, and I don’t know how many people would would even notice at all. So and to some people it would be a very, very small thing. But the way the reason Peter Jackson wants to do that is because he wanted basically the color of all six movies to to match so that things wouldn’t you know, so that would be consistent. And

Link Keller 33:42
why would you want to match the hobbit?

Josué Cardona 33:45
The color is gotta match gotta match all the color so that it so that it looks right. Yeah, you got to have those, like, all those

Lara Taylor 33:52
no you dont

Josué Cardona 33:53
Foot hairs.

Lara Taylor 33:55
how about match it to Lord of the Rings?

Josué Cardona 33:57
No, no, no, no.

Link Keller 34:00
I’m still bitter about hobbit. talk about not small changes.

Josué Cardona 34:04
that’s a that’s a that’s a good this is a that’s a good that’s a good example of a not small change.

Lara Taylor 34:10
There’s a whole other thing like small changes, but not small changes. Star Wars.

Josué Cardona 34:16
I couldn’t make I can’t even make any sense of the Greedo scene. Like there’s never been a ton of those things.

Lara Taylor 34:22
Yeah, I don’t the two that made the most difference to me. Were Hayden Christiansen being Anakin’s ghost at the end of Return of the Jedi. And now they’ve Oh, they redid Boba Fett voice.

Josué Cardona 34:39
Yep. Yeah.

Lara Taylor 34:42
I feel bad for the actors who got replaced.

Josué Cardona 34:47
So this and the and the Lord of the Rings, examples they’re not. They’re not really what I was thinking about at the beginning. Because they, they’re just basically going back to make everything It’s really more of a revisionist history kind of thing, right?

Link Keller 35:02
retconning

Josué Cardona 35:03
Yeah, it is like a retcon. Where, which isn’t really what I was thinking of. But

Link Keller 35:06
no, it’s different.

Josué Cardona 35:09
It’s, but it’s very related, though, because I have had this, this is something that I’ve been, I’ve been working on as well, it’s like, you have new information, and suddenly you look back and the things that from you revisiting, you know, you re, you’re thinking about events in the past and a completely different way, because you have new information now about them. And it, it I think I put this in the, in the, when we, when I said the topic, it’s like, sometimes a new piece of information can really, really, really change an entire story. And this is definitely one of those things where it’s like, oh, whoo, I didn’t know that. A version of this happens all the time. Like, maybe you’re really mad at somebody, because they haven’t done something that they said they were gonna do, or you know, an employee is slacking off or, or something is happening, or somebody, a friend is being unresponsive. And then you find out like, oh, like, they had a family member die, or Oh, they have a they have an illness, like we didn’t know this information, it completely changes your view of, of, of the situation, and it changes the way you feel about it. As well, which I think is something that it’s huge. And I think it’s actually related to this as well. When you see, anime is not good at this thing. Their anime jumps the shark at the end a lot, a lot. Right? There’s a lot of series that like, they want to explain at the end, what’s been going on all along, and it’s not helpful. It’s not it’s not, it’s not great. It doesn’t make a big difference. But like, I still love, like, I love the sixth sense, right? Like that, that feeling of like you get to the end of your like, get out of here. Like it completely changes everything from before. I think we talked about memento recently to I was like, oh, like I didn’t, you didn’t know this piece of information that changes the story completely. And this is the complete opposite of what I was thinking about the topic today. But I think I think it’s, I think it’s, it’s it’s a very, very connected. Because sometimes that is what it takes. Sometimes it isn’t. It isn’t chronological, the effect of that of that new new piece of information, but it can still still make a huge difference. And ultimately, I was thinking about things like smile at people more often like that beetle commercial. If you haven’t seen it, check it out. It’s a great commercial. I’m a very big fan of Beetles.

Lara Taylor 37:48
And you know, they’ve been discontinued, right?

Josué Cardona 37:50
I do know, I do know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah,

Lara Taylor 37:53
it’s very sad.

Josué Cardona 37:54
It’s okay. They’ll come back someday. it’ll. They don’t they always come back. It’s okay. Now, yeah, um, but there are small things. Have you don’t personally have any Have you ever made like a small change that that ended up having a very large effect that you can think of?

Lara Taylor 38:15
Yeah, when you were talking about diet. Few years back, my endocrinologist wanted me because I’m diabetic to lower my cholesterol. I was in a healthy range, but they wanted diabetics to have an even lower cholesterol level. All I did was switch from 2% to fat free milk, and my cholesterol was fine.

Josué Cardona 38:41
Okay, okay.

Lara Taylor 38:42
small change. Didn’t need to go on medication

Josué Cardona 38:47
for you it was a small change.

Lara Taylor 38:49
small change

Josué Cardona 38:50
Yeah, yeah. Okay,

Lara Taylor 38:52
there are there are a lot of people who would not like to go to fat free milk. I understand that.

Josué Cardona 38:57
Yeah. them for you. That’s a small change, but

Lara Taylor 39:00
even then going from 2% to 1%. cuts it in half. Right. And you could still get some of that yummy. Goodness.

Link Keller 39:06
That’s that’s math right there.

Lara Taylor 39:10
math doesn’t

Josué Cardona 39:11
milk math

Lara Taylor 39:12
milk. The milk. industry doesn’t tell you doesn’t even tell you that whole milk is only 4% milk fat.

Josué Cardona 39:19
Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. That big milk. Agenda.

Lara Taylor 39:26
Like if they really wanted to sell the the 2% would be 98% fat free.

Josué Cardona 39:33
mmHmm. Yeah. A behavior change that I that I made. I remember. I must have been like 21 I think I was. I was super shy. And I like I would. It was hard for me to look at people in in the eyes. So I remember. I don’t remember if it was I read it or what it was I tried this. I try walking around and like actually You know, looking people in the eye, strangers that you don’t know, and like greet people, um, you know, on the street. And now it seems it seems like a small change when I my say it, but at the time it was, it felt almost impossible to do. And I think that that, that, I know that that made such a huge difference. It was like it suddenly made the entire world feel less scary. And it made it a lot easier to, for me to interact with people socially, to be able to do something like that. But when I think about it now, my son, that’s not that big of a deal. But I remember, it was a huge deal. It was really hard to, to do that. You’re muted, Link.

Link Keller 40:57
Thank you. I switched from the old imagine the audience in their underwear as a way to reduce public speaking anxiety. And I switched to imagine, and I’ve applied this more widely since then. But imagine people as a baby, everybody has been a baby. everybody you meet has been a baby.

Josué Cardona 41:18
That’s true. Sure.

Lara Taylor 41:19
True.

Link Keller 41:20
picture it what kind of baby were they?

Josué Cardona 41:23
And this is helpful How?

Link Keller 41:25
Because it makes people significantly less threatening. When you remember at one point in their life, they were extremely small 100% reliant on others to survive, and they shit themselves. That’s funny. That’s funny, and it helps it helps soften some of the gut butterflies. before public speaking.

Josué Cardona 41:49
That’s funny. I am because things are opening up. Now. I’ve seen some of my co workers multiple times now in person or some for the first time ever. And my supervisor earlier today said, Oh, yeah, something like, a few people told me that they didn’t. They didn’t. They were surprised by how tall you are. Right? And, and, and she was like, Oh, it’s because of your camera angle on on zoom. I was like, yeah, that’s by design. And I and I and I explained to her that even when I’m in person, I’m very, I’m very aware of my height and my size relative to other people. So I try to I try to even that out as much as possible, because I don’t want to I don’t want to seem intimidating or large or anything like that. Right. I want to I want to try to keep an eye level. So with, with children, that’s something that that like, is like, super? Like, I don’t even think about it, right? Like I immediately get down to their level because there’s such a big difference. But with adults, I try to do that too. So I’ll try to like find a place to sit like sooner than later. Instead of like, talking down to somewhere or looking down at someone.

Lara Taylor 43:03
I’m just picturing Josué and me and Nina walking through Comic Con. Yeah, giant Josué with two

Link Keller 43:11
his bodyguards.

Josué Cardona 43:12
You You are tiny. Yes. Yeah, but but I think about that all the time. And in the context of the meetings that I’m having, and Who is there? And those I mean, to me, those don’t feel like big sacrifices to make, right. But but it’s more of a thinking thing. It’s like, wait a minute, like, What does what does it mean? Right? Like, even Oh, like there’s a there’s a, there’s a there’s a authority difference, or there’s a there’s a power difference, right in terms of, of our roles and things like that. I’m like, okay, but also like, I’m like twice the size of this person. Let me try to even things out too. So it’s not all, like, lopsided and, and yeah, I think my supervisor was very surprised to to hear that like Okay. Yeah, I think but those things make a huge difference. I mean, some people do the opposite, right? Like they like they’ll put the camera down. So they’re looking, so they’re always looking down at you and you’re always looking up. Yeah, yeah, because power moves

Link Keller 44:16
I want people think I’m big and tough.

Josué Cardona 44:19
Yeah, yeah,

Link Keller 44:20
that’s why I puff up my clothes and I’ve painted large eyeballs on my chest.

Josué Cardona 44:25
mmHmm.

Link Keller 44:25
I’m a Big moth.

Josué Cardona 44:29
Yeah, yeah. I like I like some of these things. I’ve in the past, I’ve been able to use different types of RPGs with clients to help them get to a certain point, right. It’s like, then and I remember one person one time at someone who was like, Yeah, like I didn’t used to, like I was I was very shy and I didn’t talk to people but then I played persona. And like, I learned from from that game that like if I didn’t talk to people, I couldn’t advance in the game there was like, there’s no way to to advance the story. So then I talked to more people because I got more information and there was always a benefit to that. And I realized I couldn’t do things alone. So I like a lot of games and give you different options. I like I like games that give you the option to like, give Thank you gifts or say, or you know, or send gifts to people and return, like Animal Crossing lets you give people presents and things like that. Right? Those are little things that you can do you can do in a game where like Animal Crossing, right, and like, are you give someone a present, like, they may give you something later that’s like, that you can have gotten otherwise, that’s very transactional, but you know, it works as a as a metaphor. For for behaviors. In real life? No.

Link Keller 45:49
Okay.

Josué Cardona 45:51
Okay.

Link Keller 45:52
Yeah, what I’m hearing is small changes are not,

Josué Cardona 45:59
are not small,

Link Keller 46:00
are not small. It’s about perspective, there’s, there’s no such thing as small changes it’s just a change. And based on your perspective, they can have really big personal changes, they can also ripple out from you and affect other people in hopefully positive ways. And also, I’m hearing that

Josué Cardona 46:30
I’m enjoying whatever you’re doing now

Link Keller 46:31
we should, I am working through it as it is coming out of my mouth. There’s not a lot of filtration here today. I’m sorry. That that this the small changes that you make in order to be more respectful of others or of yourself. Those are the ones that really resonate with other people.

Josué Cardona 46:56
Maybe

Link Keller 46:56
something there?

Josué Cardona 46:57
they can they can Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I think the I think you’re you’re right, that they think oh, like, are they? Are they small? Are they not? And it depends on what, what point of view you’re looking at, or what, where in time and how you feel about it. But I think overall, the point is, there’s small changes that ultimately make a huge difference later on. You brought up the art earlier. Would you have enjoyed it less? Had the art not changed? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know that. That’s true. It’s hard to it’s hard to prove that. Because we liked it when we first saw it. Right? It just got better over time to those kind of, if you if you just look at it in terms of like, Oh, yeah, like you wanted to achieve a particular goal. You want it to improve? You want to get better than that? Absolutely. That absolutely works. I think there are. There’s others that are like, Oh, this one thing eventually made a huge difference. Down Down the road, there’s that that was the point. That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Lara Taylor 48:16
Ultimately, Josué just wanted to talk about how the black on the GT logo is different.

Josué Cardona 48:22
Ultimately,

Lara Taylor 48:23
and it looks pretty good.

Josué Cardona 48:24
That’s not the only difference the fact that you can’t notice the other changes. I do know the other I haven’t changed

Link Keller 48:31
the kerning! the kerning!

Lara Taylor 48:33
kerning the fonts

Josué Cardona 48:37
it’s the same font, actually the same font,

Lara Taylor 48:39
but the kerning

Josué Cardona 48:41
the kerning as isn’t isn’t the difference. But it feels better, right? But I don’t know what effect that’s gonna have later on. Anyway, there’s tons of examples in the discord example was good thing for video games. We have a whole bunch of examples. And yeah, I really like that some of the most obvious ones are like in Telltale games where you do something, it’s like, oh, they’re gonna remember that. And later on, like, Oh, this this thing happened because this you made this one choice or earlier on,

Lara Taylor 49:12
and it wasn’t a choice like who’s gonna die? It’s just

Josué Cardona 49:17
yeah,

Lara Taylor 49:17
this little thing. Yeah, here there. Yeah,

Josué Cardona 49:21
it’s one of the one of the things

Link Keller 49:22
are you gonna give Ducky was that his name Are you gonna give Ducky your rations?

Josué Cardona 49:30
duggie I think it was the name?

Lara Taylor 49:33
I think it was ducky.

Josué Cardona 49:34
Ducky was it ducky?

Link Keller 49:36
It’s got Yeah, it’s been.

Josué Cardona 49:39
I’ve really been looking forward

Link Keller 49:40
many years since I’ve played that game.

Josué Cardona 49:42
I’ve really been looking forward to replaying that Mass Effect Three. what?

Lara Taylor 49:47
his name is duck,

Josué Cardona 49:49
duck. You were closer than I was though. You can you can have this one Link. the I’ve really been looking forward to playing Mass Effect three, the mass effect the legendary collection. Because there are things that you can move through the entire game, right that they’re like, make a decision here and then carries on. And I was never able to have that full experience. Because I never, I never had a savefile that continued. I ended up playing three, just like feeding off of. I was like, Oh, you know, I just did the like quiz at the beginning, like, what did you do? What did this person do? This person survived. And it’s not the same. You know, like, my action doesn’t really carry all the way through. one of the things I’m looking forward to most

Lara Taylor 50:32
that idea made my made more pressure for me on my choices.

Josué Cardona 50:38
Well, I’ll. this won’t make you feel better. This will make you feel better, but everything you do. Yeah, everything every every decision you make will have consequences.

Lara Taylor 50:53
Okay, I think I’m making the right decisions for me.

Josué Cardona 50:57
All of them are the right decisions. Yeah, no, no, it’s good.

Link Keller 50:59
and If not, just make a few small changes, see where it takes ya,

Josué Cardona 51:03
yeah. Yeah. you’re Making em anyway, just thinking about it. Oh,

Link Keller 51:06
just any episode there. That’s the best it’s gonna get.

Josué Cardona 51:14
Yeah, yeah. Well, you can check out the small changes on the Geek Therapy website at Geek therapy.org. There are links to all of the community spaces and places where you can comment on this episode and join other people in conversation from the community in the shownotes thank you so much for listening. Remember to geek out and do good I’ll be back next week

Link Keller 51:42
mmmmmbyeee

Josué Cardona 51:45
Geek Therapy is a 501 c three nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world a better place through geek culture. To learn more about our mission and become a supporter, visit Geek therapy.org

Transcribed by https://otter.ai