THWEI. TNNZEET. BUXKR. Just some of the reliable\h Amazon brands that make it possible to get pants\h\h
delivered to you with the urgency of a new kidney.\h But did it ever occur to you that when browsing\h\h
Amazon, you don’t actually recognize, like, 90%\h of the brands on there anymore? I mean, sure,\h\h
they’ve got the big names if you look for them,\h but why are most results these companies that\h\h
you’ve never heard of? What is BUXKR? Who runs\h BUXKR? Do they sit at a desk in a big building\h\h
with the word BUXKR on it? Are kids these days\h getting bullied for not having the latest BUXKR\h\h
merch? Are you just out of touch, or is there\h something more here? Well, if you’re watching\h\h
this channel you probably are out of touch, but\h there is also something more here. These brands\h\h
don’t really exist outside of Amazon—if you look\h them up, you’re not going to find storefronts,\h\h
or websites, or big buildings with their names on\h them. These brands—or pseudo-brands—are actually\h\h
part of a very tricky e-commerce scheme that takes\h advantage of the way Amazon functions these days,\h\h
and they’re not just gunking up your online\h shopping feed: they’ve also nearly destroyed\h\h
the US Patent and Trademark Office in the process. So, how did Amazon get so overrun with PVENDORs,\h\h
YUIOPs, and JOYOLDELFs in the first place? Well,\h that’s kind of a long story. When Amazon first\h\h
started, the way it distributed products\h was pretty simple. You’d order a book on\h\h
Amazon—which was the only type of thing you could\h order on Amazon back then—and then Amazon would\h\h
turn around and buy that book directly from a\h larger book distributor or wholesaler and send\h\h
it to you. One of the few reasons that this was\h remotely sustainable was that these wholesalers\h\h
kept prices down by requiring Amazon to buy in\h bulk, so Jeff Bezos would scam them by buying\h\h
one copy of the book he needed and then he’d\h fill out the rest of the order with a whole\h\h
bunch of copies of an unnamed obscure book about\h lichen that none of them ever had in stock, all\h\h
of which would then immediately get refunded. But\h Jeff aspired to greater things than scamming book\h\h
wholesalers—he wanted to be the buffest, baldest,\h richest man the world had ever seen, so in 1998,\h\h
Amazon started selling other stuff. And sure\h enough, they were pretty good at that too,\h\h
so a few years later, Jeff had the wise idea\h of letting other people sell stuff on Amazon\h\h
using Amazon’s infrastructure: this is where\h things get complicated. Some items on Amazon\h\h
work the old-fashioned way: they’re owned\h by Amazon, stored in Amazon warehouses,\h\h
and shipped by Amazon. Other items are almost\h completely disconnected from Amazon’s supply\h\h
chain: they’re owned by other companies, stored\h off-site, and shipped by someone else—you just\h\h
purchase them through Amazon’s website, but that’s\h about it. And then some items are in between:\h\h
they might be owned by other companies, but\h stored or shipped by Amazon. And this system\h\h
has worked pretty well, because it means that\h Amazon doesn’t actually have to buy and house all\h\h
40,000 different funny hats that come up when you\h search “funny hat” on their website. But it also\h\h
comes with certain risks, because accurately\h vetting 350 million different products is about as\h\h
hard as accurately vetting 350 million different\h products sounds. Amazon has frequently gotten in\h\h
trouble for selling hair dryers that kill you if\h exposed to water, children’s pajamas that have the\h\h
unfortunate tendency to catch on fire, and carbon\h monoxide detectors that are purely decorative.\h
So, in 2015, Amazon came up with a plan to stop\h accidentally lighting children on fire: Amazon\h\h
Brand Registry. The idea was that if you wanted\h to be a third-party seller on Amazon and have\h\h
your products actually get pushed in the search\h engine, you had to enroll in this new system,\h\h
but enrolling in this new system required having a\h registered trademark on a brand name. What Amazon\h\h
hoped would happen is that the US Patent and\h Trademark Office would be able to sift out the\h\h
extra-flammable pajamas before they actually hit\h the market. What actually happened is that the US\h\h
Patent and Trademark Office was almost destroyed. So, it turns out, it’s not actually that hard to\h\h
trademark a brand name as long as that\h brand name totally sucks. If you’re\h\h
trying to trademark a name that’s coherent and\h uses real English words, like, I don’t know,\h\h
Skateboard Cream—don’t try to steal that by\h the way, it’s my idea—the process will take\h\h
a fairly long time because the USPTO has a lot of\h work to do in order to prove its distinctiveness.\h\h
But if you file to trademark a meaningless\h string of letters, like RLENOIUML or VOX,\h\h
chances are, there won’t be any competition and\h it’ll go right through. So, all of a sudden, the\h\h
most efficient way to get your product listed on\h Amazon—assuming you’re not already a recognizable\h\h
company—is to file, in the United States, for the\h worst trademark you can think of. And sure enough,\h\h
the US Patent and Trademark Office wasn’t too\h happy about this, because they were now knee-deep\h\h
in applications that were designed to be as lazy\h as possible. They had to bring it to congress,\h\h
it was a whole thing, and seemingly it’s\h still a really big problem, but, uh… whatever.\h
A much more interesting question remains: how\h do these products actually compete when their\h\h
brands are so intentionally bad? Well, the answer,\h apparently, is that you don’t care. For the most\h\h
part, these third-party sellers target product\h categories with very little brand loyalty; stuff\h\h
that you kind of just need quickly and cheaply:\h HDMI cables, measuring cups, dog wigs, things\h\h
like that. Obviously, you don’t want to buy a\h HMBGSFD pacemaker, but a HMBGSFD ice cream scoop?\h\h
Why not. And that’s not to mention the fact that\h most of these brands have pretty much nothing to\h\h
lose, so they can just buy reviews and clickfarm\h until they get banned and have to undergo the\h\h
arduous process of thinking up another string of\h meaningless letters to trademark. The lesson is:\h\h
the path to riches is laziness, at least if\h you’re trying to sell ice cream scoops on Amazon.\h
In an age where the internet is absolutely overrun\h with garbage products, let me tell you about a\h\h
product that I know for certain is not-so-garbage:\h Nebula. Now I might be a little biased here—I\h\h
helped start Nebula four years ago with some of\h my creator friends, but the concept was simple:\h\h
creators know how to make good content on a\h budget. Therefore, it tracks that if you give them\h\h
a little more budget, they can make great content.\h We did exactly that, and now have a huge catalog\h\h
of absolutely incredible Nebula Originals. For\h example: you know Real Life Lore? He has a series\h\h
called Modern Conflicts which is just as good as\h his videos on YouTube. LegalEagle? He made a class\h\h
teaching you how to sue people. PhilosophyTube?\h She filmed her off-West End play called the\h\h
Prince. Real Engineering? He made a phenomenal\h series called the Logistics of D-Day. Mustard,\h\h
Neo, CityBeautiful, Polymatter, TierZoo—I couldn’t\h possibly name all the creators that have made\h\h
Nebula Originals, but it’s a lot, and plenty\h that the average HAI viewer watches and enjoys:\h\h
we actually know that for sure based on our\h audience crossover analytics. Oh, and we’ve made\h\h
Originals too of course, but on top of Originals,\h the creators all upload their content early and\h\h
ad-free on the platform, meaning it’s all in all\h just a better viewing experience for you. Over\h\h
650,000 people are subscribed to Nebula already,\h and we know they find it worthwhile because\h\h
we have one of the lowest subscriber churn and\h highest monthly active user counts in streaming:\h\h
the analytics prove that people are signing\h up and actually using and enjoying Nebula. And\h\h
to top it all off, Nebula is creator-founded\h and creator-owned: we at Half as Interesting\h\h
actually get a cut of your subscription fee for\h as long as you stay subscribed, as long as you\h\h
sign up at Nebula.tv/HAI. Also by using that link\h you’ll get 40% off an annual plan, so it’s worth\h\h
it for both of us—head to Nebula.tv/HAI,\h and thanks in advance for your support.