I have just recorded the video I’ve been thinking about for 11 years, so the title isn’t clickbait. Apart from recordings with my friends Çağdaş and Oğuz, this is my first video of my own, and weirdly I’m really nervous, which isn’t like me.
As a kid in the 90s I wanted to be a radio host, because all the people we thought were cool came from radio, like Okan Bayülgen and Beyazıt Öztürk (back when nobody had been cancelled yet). But I was good at math, so I obviously became an engineer instead.
Even then, one reason I wanted METU was Radyo ODTÜ, its student radio. I ended up at ITU, where the radio was on the Maslak campus while I lived in a dorm next to Taksim, so I never got into it.
Around 2015 I discovered podcasts, and during my Erasmus I listened to them nonstop. It felt like the future, so I kept thinking about formats and how to record with what I had. I even bought a wired lavalier mic from AliExpress, which is still in my drawer. I never tried it once.
Then life got in the way. The podcast idea slowly turned into a YouTube idea, and I spent maybe ten years deciding between Turkish and English. Berbat Teknolojiler (Terrible Tech) with Çağdaş was actually one of the formats I’d dreamed of, and he made it happen by taking on all the editing.
The funny part is, I always tell people that the best work is the work that’s done, since an idea that never gets made means nothing. I said it to Oğuz a lot while he was getting into this. Still, I planned this recording about 50 times, at the airport, in Madrid, in every corner of the house.
I also had a newsletter around 2016, writing about media news in a fun way. At first it took an hour or two, then it started to take two full days, and the pieces went from 150–200 characters to 800–900. It grew into something I couldn’t control, so I let it go.
That’s why I set myself a rule, borrowed from the low effort, high context videos I watch on English YouTube. I won’t spend more time editing a video than recording it, so no jump cuts and no studio. I spent ages on a shadow behind me in this first one, then said whatever and hit record.
So what’s this going to be? Basically whatever is on my mind these days, like a 2000s personal blog, from a new band or a concert to the Pokémon cards I’m into lately. When I was 22, a 33-year-old felt like he had one foot in the grave. It turns out it’s not really like that.
So for me, this is going from zero to one. For 11 years I did everything except record, I even looked at camera mounts for the car. I hope I don’t burn out this time and keep doing it for myself. Maybe it turns into something else, I don’t know. Anyway, at least it has started.