How and Why We Shredded Your Comments

Now that's a self-explanatory title. A few weeks ago, we did a live stream of comment printing and shredding. This is how we did it.
MATT: / mattgrayyes
TOM: / tomscottgo
We Shred Your Comments, Live!
• We Shred Your Comments...

[@vibraphonics]

I'm always surprised/impressed by the lengths Tom goes to adhere to the law/avoid litigation

[@ericgabrielmadrid8426]

Socrates would be proud

[@theoriginalshew]

Especially because no one would really care. I don't think British censorship watch or police KZbin.

[@bbug1017]

Marco Zuo Song we flew a kite in a public place

[@EoRdE6]

It always amuses me that he holds himself to essentially the BBC standards, despite no one forcing him to and absolutely no one who would care otherwise.

[@mqxogames]

@@EoRdE6 I actually like the fact that he does this

[@Knight_Astolfo]

Version 2: Print chat out with a 3D printer and then have them automatically catapulted into a large bonfire.

[@henning1910]

And if Matt ever loses his job he could spend his time building a machine that automatically melts the old chat structure into new filament which gets fed back into the printer...

[@tomaspietravallo3832]

Henning Metzger although it would lose quality over time

[@magic_cfw]

@@tomaspietravallo3832 The video will increase in quality over time.

[@SamSitar]

yes i want to see that.

[@rioghander2te]

the only problem with that would be, that 3D printer are slow af

[@mattandtom]

The printer was described as "perfect for airports". I don't think this was a typical use case. --Matt

[@JustAnotherMe]

Maybe that's because you'd need the sound of flights taking off to drown out that printer noise.

[@Laftel]

That kinda works because the joke flew over a lot of people heads.

[@Tectas14]

We want the javascript print spooler code!

[@Minefors]

agree i was there and i was watching you

[@Allocated_Brain]

Those we're some comments of great importance I made.

[@Swarm509]

I found people walking into the scene to fix the shredder was a lot like the Christmas fireplace program.... everyone always wants to see the guy add wood to the fire or stoke the fire.

[@purplegill10]

Perfect description

[@stupidburp]

They could do something for a holiday stream where they print out song lyrics and shred them. Perhaps have the playlist controlled by the public with priority given by a poll.

[@CableFlame]

And have one of them come in and put the shreds into a fire? ;)

[@StrokeMahEgo]

This^^

[@purplegill10]

Cable Flame This is such a good idea

[@CircsC]

1. This was 100% art. A wonderful performance. 2. Matt's JavaScript print spooler is officially more stable than the windows one

[@TheGrooseIsLoose]

“Static piece of art, almost” I’d call it a dynamic piece of art, almost.

[@hadinossanosam4459]

Given the JavaScript print spooler, yes, it was almost a piece of art of the dynamic type

[@theprocastinators9518]

Volume II: "We recorded your TikToks on VHS and then wiped them with a magnet."

[@thecactaceae]

I think Tom's blinking rapidly after saying bodging makes things work "reasonably well" was the souls of a thousand engineers flashing before his eyes.

[@fredhenry101]

Or it was the terror of realization of just how many bodge jobs exist in the world

[@blackoak4978]

When I saw the Live Stream I had a "WTF?" moment, then I thought, "no, this is totally the kind of thing they would do" 😆😆

[@Stephen-Fox]

Same. I then decided "And this is something I have no need to watch any of, but I'm glad they're doing it."

[@wierdalien1]

Ken Oakleaf yup that was literally my thoughts

[@DM-ig1fb]

I think the dramatic lighting was the part that confused me - I can deal with everything else

[@kristina80ification]

Could you please explain what you mean?

[@flower-fauna]

Danielle Mac i agree with you so much xD

[@BLiu1]

The lighting setup made it feel like they took the joke almost too far; using a studio space for such a nonsensical idea seems overkill.

[@crispybacon4240]

+BLiu1 Using a studio space for such a nonsensical idea is exactly what made it so funny.

[@patrickkeller2193]

Especially when you know that they asked youtube for an empty broom closet and they went, "Nah, take Studio 1, it's fine". Not just any studio, frikking Studio 1.

[@tfkfunguy9109]

Matt Gray : Competent . {End CV}

[@peter_smyth]

tfkfungu y The correct syntax is

[@michaelpapadopoulos6054]

get outta here html peasant

[@Tymon0000]

isn't an html tag! It could be xml or angular though

[@finnelhumano6096]

Matt_Gray={competent:true};

[@unicodefox]

{name: "Matt Gray", competent: true}

[@Its-Just-Zip]

"that wasn't a accident, that was Matt Grey - competent" I feel like this is not said often here...

[@luigigaminglp]

Apply cold water to burned area. xD

[@catfish552]

Not often enough, I'd say.

[@atmunn1]

*happy accident

[@rhamph]

You never notice the thousands of doors that work perfectly, you only notice the one that squeaks. Matt quietly makes these videos work.. until Tom tries to swallow the mic to demonstrate something.

[@baljeep_gay]

@@rhamph mostly cute ducklings and other baby birds.

[@BrightSpark]

So you are saying that Matt's Javascript print spooler that he wrote for a joke was more reliable than Microsoft's that was written by several people that code for a living? ;P

[@averagegeek3957]

Knowing how reliable software made by microsoft is, yes. Absolutely yes.

[@EwanMarshall]

Considering how a dot matrix printer works, quite possible. The print spooler in windows is far more complicated just to handle multiple jobs and postscript let alone all the other stuff it does now.

[@OriginalPiMan]

Simple code for one purpose is usually more reliable (for that purpose) than code designed for generic use cases and indefinite use.

[@SamPearman]

The windows print spooler is pretty much the least reliable always on thing I've ever seen, so this seems obvious to me

[@LordJameh]

One word: Microsoft. The company that bought out and then updated Skype, and made it worse on their own products. And that's just one example.

[@ganz6397]

"It has this security senso--" "It HAD, a security sensor" Tom nO

[@AlRoderick]

16 or so months on, Banksy builds a self-shredding painting. Coincidence? Probably.

[@BarginsGalore]

KZbin comments are known for being as good as banksy graffiti

[@VivienneGucwa]

Still think it was ART

[@iAmTheSquidThing]

*Almost

[@achu11th]

Vivienne Gucwa nah, it was a statement on how doomed humanity is. Seriously, there was nothing you could comment about and even without them telling now, the viewers should have realised, that commenting was the only thing keeping the printer working and therefore something to livestream. I would like to know how many pages were used or if we look at it from an arts perspective, how many books could have been written by us viewers commenting on a livestream.

[@varana]

Yep - it was a decent piece of performance art. You don't even have to dig deep (or, at all) to find meaning in it. Sure, it may have been meant as a joke - but that's what why we have "death of the author" (not literally, of course). :D It's not for the artist to decide what the public sees in the artwork.

[@minihjalte]

It was most certainly art. No doubt about that.

[@rorrt]

" "ART" "

[@Tufhhuyy]

I was hoping you'd just act like it never happened.

[@jbkjbk1999]

And then four years down the line make a "looking back on 'We shred your comments'"

[@rawovunlapin8201]

Don't touch my pineapples _casually touches your pineapples_

[@euchale]

No means No Rawov

[@redcoat4348]

Saaaame

[@aanon4019]

Like what happened?

[@RealDragonDean]

Please make a letterbox that makes the sound of a schredder every time you put mail in it. Then watch the people :D

[@Kitechi12]

I have been expecting this video for a while. The joke seems funnier knowing that it was planned and hardware was purchased. I expected the thought process to be "We have two reams of paper and a dot matrix printer." "I have an idea."

[@dragoncurveenthusiast]

Seems like it was the other way round: "I have an idea." "We need two reams of paper and a dot matrix printer."

[@donaldasayers]

At university in the late 70s we discovered that you could allocate the 1000 line a minute line printer to your keyboard, so this machine that lived in a soundproofed glass enclosure that chucked out paper at many sheets per second would suddenly stop and go chunk a chunk a chunk as you typed on your terminal. The technicians did not like that. Then there was the great big led display of cpu stuff above the main computer in the big room with the glass walls, some devious student wrote a program that cause it to display big scrolling messages like the times square news feed. Unfortunately to get it to display some letters required the mainframe to do really weird stuff so the technicians didn't like that either.

[@TheMohawkNinja]

"There is nothing that can't be fixed with gaffer tape and cardboard." More truthful words have never been spoken.

[@lizzyb.8009]

i actually have a lot more respect for this as genuine art than pretty much anything else that's referred to as performance art, because zero pretensions on your part. you guys just thought it'd be fun/funny. if anyone wants to read some deeper meaning into it, that's fine. but when it comes down to it, this was basically just art for art's sake.

[@HidekiShinichi]

David L. art is form of communication. if anyone see anything deeper in that installationthats WRONG and that mean tom and matt failed because they did not pass their information properly and people do not understeand what they tried to communicate which is plain "o its funny" and I dont know whats wrong with artists puting deeper meaning and build around this meaning? art is form of comunication so technically the more you want to communicate and the more of it is going across without distortion the better art piece is.

[@tams805]

^ this is exactly why people get fed up with art and think of it as ponsey and pretentious.

[@Howtard]

What if the thing you're communicating happens to be a joke? Just because you have a sense of humour about it doesn't make what you say trivial. I still see it as art, but my definition of art might be different; I see comedy as an art. The whole thing is dripping with irony; a horde of people obsessively trying to be heard through the internet, by having a physical printout of their comment go out live; only for it all to be immediately destroyed and nothing of substance left at the end.

[@tomkenning5482]

@@tams805 to be fair, everyone is a casual art consumer. Logos, branding and all that lot is art. The more hardcore art stuff for arty people isn't designed to have mass appeal. It's like if you said you were fed up of music just because of 20th Century art music.

[@garyinthecolehouse]

@@HidekiShinichi I know I'm two years late, but your assertion that art is only what the artist makes of it is just flat out wrong. The artist of a work can have *an* interpretation on it, but art is solely what the viewer makes of it given the information they have. If you were to read, say, Harry Potter and you came away thinking it was all a metaphor for poverty or war based on the information the book has provided, then regardless of what the author intended that is a correct view to have. As soon as a piece of art is published, the artist's view holds as much weight as the audience's, and any information that was not published in or alongside the piece might as well not exist for how little influence it has.

[@Thebes]

“We thought it was funny... so we did it.” That’s some powerful words from Matt.

[@WolfOfLegend]

I'll be honest when the livestream was happening I just had it running for 2 hours while studying, it was actually fairly calming.

[@really-quite-exhausted]

WolfOfLegend Same, and then every so often I'd take a break and add a comment and then go back to working

[@svnhddbst8968]

now if you don't mind, would you mind putting a 4 minute time lapse of the 4 hour live stream?

[@JesperoTV]

"We shred your comments", but every time there's a comment, it get's faster

[@kapser2210]

good god

[@eddiemate]

I'm scared.

[@lukakresoja5297]

@@JesperoTV since it sent arround 3 comments every second , by the 4h mark it would be times 3,482,851,737,600,000,000‬

[@mazirian9261]

@@lukakresoja5297 No, because we haven't determined how much faster. Your comment means nothing.

[@TickTockTimeTraveler]

I'm a painting major at RISD and I sent the livestream to all my performance art friends; it was hilarious!

[@pretendingpro]

Next: A Autohotkey-script that control-c's coments out of the chat window and drags them into the recycling bin in Windows.

[@pretendingpro]

Well, I clearly didn't think this through. A text file maybe?

[@ProfessorSyndicateFranklai]

An Autohotkey-Script that creates .txt files from the live chat window and then drags them into the recycling bin.

[@whereareyou2]

With a file size monitor on the recycle bin.

[@15Redstones]

Appl Tom maybe screenshot each comment and animate it getting thrown in the trash

[@kellenliame2674]

I think I donated like 5$ through super chat with the comment something along the lines of “idk what you mad lads are doing, but this should help with the cost. Keep up the good work!

[@yellowcrash10]

kellen liame What was the ASCII art that got printed out?

[@MetaBloxer]

Someone find the timestamp for this

[@SNNTV3000]

What was the most commonly shredded comment and why was it "BUY BITCOIN"?

[@ToolkiT73UK]

I'm waiting for a full analysis of the logs too..

[@FamusJamus]

Some investor with a bot, probably. Legitimately, I saw a ton that were variations of "Shredder's stuck again Matt!"

[@andrewmcdonald9674]

2nd version: "We glue back together your youtube comments"

[@sebihorst1816]

Did you know that there is a similar piece of art in the ars electronica in Linz (Austria)? You can send a text message to a specific number that then gets printed and shredded.

[@samuelthecamel]

So Matt and Tom aren't that original after all.

[@ncc74656m]

This could've easily been in MoMA. Not sure if that's a credit to your idea or a really nasty blow to MoMA.

[@Kaoskadosk]

For sure. I love how they accidentally created a great piece of performance art without even realizing it.

[@kellenliame2674]

What’s MoMA?

[@varana]

Museum of Modern Art, usually the one in New York.

[@jeremyscharlack]

Actually, it would be cool to see in a museum in person.

[@16montana24kobe]

It was the greatest stream of all time

[@fanrco766]

You should make this an art installation with the title "heat death of the universe"

[@alicebaker9643]

I kept it on for about 3hrs... Must confess for about 2hrs 30mins of that I was asleep. Turns out printer noise is quite soporific!

[@birdy_coolbeans]

Having seen more than none of your content, I had figured the "Why" would be pretty evident.

[@OrigamiMarie]

Jaquerel Yeah I figured it was just "because we can".

[@manuelsoares4343]

Jaquerel and that's the reason we like em so much

[@FoxDren]

i know, people need to remember they got 2 drums and a cymbal, then drove out to a cliff to throw them off it.

[@osmium3691]

I thought it was very funny and a surprisingly thought provoking piece of art. Anyone who asked "Why" is clearly new to this channel

[@maxximumb]

Not sure what you guys were on, but it looks like it was good stuff.

[@manuelsoares4343]

Maxx B you new to the channel?

[@RKBock]

biscuits. probably biscuits

[@lol...]

RKBock mystery...?

[@dewj8323]

So is the code going to be open source so others can have their own live comments shredding stream?

[@viklo925]

dewj Yes, please!

[@ojtheaviator1795]

Yea

[@Androyd09]

+

[@bool.]

I'm going to guess that, because it was written to be run once for about 4 hours and then get thrown away, it's probably not the highest quality code out there. Because why would you bother writing maintainable code for that.

[@sashavaleria4287]

OMG i cant believe you watch matt and tom! also, yeah, it would be cool to have the sourcce code, but, you know, its not exactly going to be the best, if "the king of bodge" wrote it. (did you see his emoji keyboard? that thing was hilariously bodged togerhter)

[@catfish552]

Well, I have just one question left to ask: Was the idea had in a pub?

[@villeeh2583]

Tom "The lord of the bodge" Scott

[@mchagnon7]

I learned today that Matt is secretly the brains behind the whole operation.

[@joshuasutherland6692]

We need more auto-destructive art. What you did was gold.

[@erilassila409]

Oh god tom please do flailing arms as your outro on the park bench from now on! It'll be so awesome and funny!

[@devastator5042]

You should have left the entire thing without saying anything left it a mystery.

[@CaptainDominic]

You shoyld have sold small baggies of the sheddings

[@LRataplan]

As a former accountant, yeah, matrix printers are still pretty much ubiquitous. Make three or four carbon copies in one go, guaranteed to be identical - conservative accountants still wholly dig that. And while they are slowly falling out of favour, the second hand market is still awash with them, all cheap because they're old enough to've been fully depreciated. As an electronics enthusiast, I'm particularly fond of the stepper motors that you can harvest by hunting these things down for cheap or for free. And as a Tom Scott subscriber: I WOULD HAVE WATCHED THAT VIDEO FOR A WEEK. Hell, I would probably have created a sort of active desktop wallpaper showing that channel and have it there until the day I die (or my pc does, anyway). Now off to Wikipedia to see if the page "Tom Scott (entertainer)" still calls it 'art'. 'Cause that pissed me off earlier.

[@Ink_25]

Apparently someone fixed it now

[@the1exnay]

Unfortunately as of November 30th 2017 it no longer mentions the shredding at all. The editor who removed it cited the lack of third party coverage as why they did.

[@poudink5791]

I mean, fair enough. It definitely wasn't a notable event in the grand scheme of Tom Scott. Surprised it was mentioned at all.

[@abcvideoyoutuization]

So is using a tripod is legal now?

[@MercenaryPen]

Different location- I think the previous time they ran up against the issue of a privately owned but publicly usable park (and those can ban whatever they fancy)

[@wolframstahl1263]

And if not, it's just a sequel to "Ten Illegal Things To Do In London".

[@wolframstahl1263]

I'll never get that one out of my head. Ne. Ver!

[@FictualKyle]

abcvideoyoutuization using a tripod is banned in some parks in America too

[@achu11th]

I watched for over an hour. Most of my comments were about the fact that people should stop commenting in order for the livestream to end. I realised the irony and gave up on humanity and just watched the comments shred. I remember that matt commented once, but I never saw tom’s comment in the livestream. Did I miss Tom’s comment or why did he not participate in it?

[@BandanaDrummer95]

It doesn't actually surprise me that a dot matrix printer is decently easy to find. It's an arbitrarily long format printer, so it has that going for it.

[@alexmawdsley]

Extremely common in certain fields still. Firestones across the nation still use them in an admittedly steadily decreasing number of stores. Seen them in discount tire as well.

[@poudink5791]

I think it's just down to the fact that they were everywhere a few decades ago and now almost no one wants them anymore. High supply, low demand. No reason they'd be hard to find.

[@ninjaz5736]

@@poudink5791 That and they're commonly used in large infrastructure where individual lines (think events / operations that need to be documented) need to be printed 24/7, 365. Also airports, printing long lists of passenger names and fuel requirements works so much better when you don't have to keep putting ink into the thing, and it's much nicer to have one long piece of paper than having to cross things off spread over multiple sheets

[@ashen_dawn]

I think my favorite detail was when the shredder popped open and the whole pile of paper came out.

[@peterilisituk2830]

I think you invented slow KZbin, boys.

[@einargs]

I remember popping online, seeing this, and going--"wait, what?" It was pretty wonderful, and definitely art.

[@richardscales9560]

Worth a lottery grant I'd say. More worthwhile than some of the stuff in the tate modern

[@CableFlame]

I was on vacation when you did the livestream. I woke up, stumbled out to my laptop, saw there was a new Matt & Tom video, realized you were doing this live, and participated. What a wonderful vacation surprise activity for me! Thanks so much, you 2! This was almost as memorable as the solar eclipse & Hurricane Irma! (Which I experienced both of them as part of my vacation. The latter certainly wasn't planned.)

[@Frankfurtdabezzzt]

Ah yes, the art of the bodge. Absolutely marvelous.

[@gwenynorisu6883]

I guess this, along with Emojli, shows us what your particular (joint) shenanigans spend limit is like. Under £500, and often under £200, but still enough to stretch to a dot matrix printer, two boxes of fanfold paper, and a high end shredder...

[@charliespinoza1966]

Those are called “Kermit The Frog Arms”.

[@AlbinoFlareon]

This was a surprisingly fun stream. I remember spamming the lyrics to the opening number of Hamilton into the chat.

[@Wolfgang13451]

I've been waiting for this video for quite a while

[@Wordsnwood]

Like many people (I think) I spent my time watching and trying to figure out what the delay would be before I saw my comment being printed. I never saw it being printed, and now I'm a bit sad to hear that some comments were just tossed. I still thought it was a brilliant bit of an internet artwork though. The starkly lit stage added to the affect.

[@gertrax15]

okay but this is literally an awsome art percoformance i love it

[@gobarn1877]

I was waiting for this!

[@Jfunkey]

Quickly, either Matt or Tom print this comment out and shred it so I can be a part of this because I missed it when it happened.

[@blade09]

Was waiting for this.

[@justinbrown3197]

We skywrite your comments, live

[@K-o-R]

Nearly 4 hours of dot matrix and shredder ASMR. Superb.

[@lescharle4695]

I loved this when I saw it because it is such a piece of art, like real, genuine, modern art.

[@GG-dt5hh]

This video about shredders has now given me a string of 4 different videos about getting shredded (AKA strong/ripped). Thanks guys...

[@danielcrocker]

Guys, please never change. This is exactly what I subscribe for :)

[@therese294776]

This makes me so happy.

[@VDhorses1]

I loved the paper shredding idea! Art!

[@rodbotic]

I like how technical this conversation got.

[@Kraigon42]

I believe I was at work when it originally went up, but I watched all four hours of the VOD.

[@vapeallsorts2197]

Awesome to catch a video within a few minutes! :D

[@NinaKlos]

I loved this when happened, was fun seeing my comments fly by :D

[@win5128]

So in summary, A professionally bodged to hell ridiculous one-time idea, where Matt was somehow competent... BRILLIANT!

[@DanielLopez-up6os]

We need this for 2020!

[@manuelbonet]

I was trying to replicate it yesterday! I hope this helps me do it... Edit (11 months later): I couldn't get the printer printing.

[@k1ngjulien_]

As if there weren't enough js-frameworks already, Matt made a js-printspooler... _Yes, science has gone too far..._

[@roguedogx]

How did I miss this? And yeah it's definitely art.

[@LaynieFingers]

I loved it as a performance art piece, really! So strange, so silly!

[@HenrikoMagnifico]

For some reason, I imagine Matt as the perfect Hobby

[@Jojoscotia]

I came home from work at about 6pm, turned it on, started watching, went "what's this?" and then watched it right to the end, not really knowing why. It was great.

[@ripp_]

source code for the javascript print spooler *questionmark?*

[@userPrehistoricman]

questionmark *exclamationmark!*

[@jasoncrownover8947]

Yes please! I need this... for... reasons.

[@phygs]

Prehistoricman *interrobang*

[@unicodefox]

Not on Matt's Github and Tom doesn't have *any* repos. Yay!

[@blade09]

Omg you both are kids you're so giggly i couldn't help but smile especially at the end 😂

[@burrconnie8716]

God damn it, I couldn't stop laughing on the bus of all places, from Tom Scott mushing his words on *"That was what we did it!"* and then immediately blowing raspberry from the realization.

[@c182SkylaneRG]

I love your reason for "Why". :D It's the most perfect reason to do anything, ever. :D

[@teabagfc]

I was waiting for this video for an explanation of it all. The fact that it was nothing more than "we thought it would be funny" is perfect. I must admit, at one point I had been watching for nearly 45 minutes on the day, and after that I had it on in the background through my headphones. Now you have a dot matrix printer and a LOT of paper sitting around...what will you do with it all?

[@PeterVC]

Oh yeah, dot matrix printers are definitely still used. One of the uses is with carbon paper with 2 or more layers where you need to have an exact copy for filing purposes. Also they are actually very easy to print to (in Windows), just send the characters and it will print. I probably could have made an easier program for you guys than your setup through a dos box and network share :D Too bad escape codes didn't work, cause you can do all sorts of stuff (double strike, double height, double width) even graphics :) But it was a very fun project, it was art :)

[@Seegalgalguntijak]

I agree on the assessment of this being performance art, and not even a bad one anyways, considering how long-lived posts on social media are, and all the other things that you could interpret into this piece. I'm actually a bit disappointed that you didn't think of it like that. Anyhow, I really hope you find some great use of the printer and the almost two boxes of paper you've still got there, and preferrably really soon!!

[@commondave_]

I was expecting this video from the second I saw the stream.

[@Laurabeck329]

Easily the best use of KZbin's resources ever.

[@analkhalidi]

This is still funny, three years later!

[@ryangaetz8538]

I saw it in my subs one day, found it funny. Came back 5-6 times to see how much paper shreads accumulated, missed the beginning and end though

[@WillWatches]

Imagine if you had a way to recycle the shredded paper to make an infinite cycle

[@matthehat]

I watched about 20 minutes of it when I was at work - while using a dot matrix printer. They’re still surprisingly common

[@Yossus]

It's actually a very interesting question whether this is art. I think it definitely qualifies as a piece of art, maybe if there's a call for internet themed art you should submit it :D

[@EebstertheGreat]

Given the incredible complexity of networking and video recording technology involved here, it figures that the most time was spent writing a new print spooler.

[@xzonia1]

Mystery solved. Love the flail-y arms! :)