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Tech explainer: the details

Numbers, sources and method behind the short page. Pulled October 30, 2026.

What was said in the meetings (with timestamps)

Speakers aren't labeled in the recordings. Lines are attributed only where the conversation makes the speaker clear.

Sept 28 weekly call - You: "i want to position us actually in tech. right now we say we're tech but looking at the content it's not really." - You: "it's the tech that's the main character," not China. - You: "a lot of the tech reviewers, they're too serious... they talk about the specs... I'm not trying to review, I'm trying to play with stuff... this is how we can use it in their lives." - You: "if we can make tech cooler, we are bridging the gap between the companies and the consumers" (the Meta glasses and Kylie Jenner example). - You: "the entire global economy is hinging on AI and tech... why would we not play there." - Marcus: the AI video "did like four or five million views," which counts as decent under the rule that "these specific tech videos don't hit 30 million views."

Oct 5 weekly call - 21:26 (you): "for tech, especially because we're trying to work with companies, like positive packaging is always better." - 28:44: "MKBHD does have that aura." - 30:08 (most likely Marcus): "if you made a phone video, it'd have to be more like that MKBHD one where he does like a hundred years of phones." - 30:47 (you): "I would like to experiment with longer segments and more in depth... like five minute segments and we include like three to five products." - 32:20 (you): "the camera has 200 megapixels, which is like three times more than the iPhone, but it's not that much better... numbers are interesting to a certain extent, if it provides context." - 32:45 (most likely Marcus): "That would just be retention loss, cause your channel is way more like Mr. Beast." - 33:08 (you): "I want to be able to appeal to an older audience who's interested in the tech without losing our current audience." - 34:43 (you): "Tech lifestyle. Like I want to make tech cool. Like, I don't want to do sit-down reviews." - 47:50 (most likely Marcus): "My perception of AI is something more abstract... I'd rather use robot. Because it's tangible in real life. Versus AI is more of an abstract thing... I think just tech gadgets has more data supporting it than AI." - 48:24 (you): "It's AI companies that have money." The plan for the futuristic robot lab video: run without AI in the title, then "later just add AI to the title if we want to, to impress a potential AI partner."

Oct 26 weekly call - 04:13 to 05:06 (you): "I want to maybe do some more like tech stuff, tech videos... we are planning on going to CES... I want the tech companies to look at our channel and say, oh, they like make tech videos. So I want to at least publish like a stint of tech videos in December." - 17:05 (you): for the disaster video, "I might think about like animating how the thing works." - 37:34: "November. Clear the backlog. December. Tech videos."

Your Oct 15 Apple Note: "make video starting from VIBE or EMOTION first. start with a song. i should make a EXPLAINER VIDEO. so i can fully control the narrative and vibe. i can imagine a tech video like this" (it links a song and a music reel, which is the vibe reference, not a tech reel).

Your references, broken down

MKBHD, "5G: Explained!" (9.6M, 2019, 11 min). This is a field test, not a theory lesson. He buys a 5G phone, drives to a 5G city and finds a node on a light pole. The speed test hits 1.9 Gbps and downloads a Stranger Things episode in about 4 seconds. Then he walks 75 feet away behind a wall and the speed drops to 200-400 Mbps, which he says is still fast but nowhere near the demo. He explains the range catch with your wifi ("same reason 5 GHz wifi doesn't travel as far") and your microwave. Retention: every high is followed by a "here's the thing" reversal, and a numbered list of "the main three" downsides pays off in order.

Veritasium, "The Biggest Misconception About Electricity" (28.2M, 2021). The video opens on a puzzle: a circuit with 300,000 km wires and a bulb 1 m away, with five possible answers. He says "commit to an answer," then holds the puzzle open for about 10 minutes before closing it with a callback. The everyday hook is your light switch and toaster.

Veritasium, "The Insane Engineering of Fiber Optics" (14.1M in 18 days, 34 min). A crossbow stunt opens it, then the story of one engineer whose boss called the idea a "wild goose chase." A flash-forward montage at 1:44 returns as the payoff at 28:29. The weak spot is the everyday hook: one phone call to a friend is all there is.

Veritasium, "Something is jamming GPS over Europe" (12.3M, 2026, 34 min). A detective chain. The ground is ruled out, the sun is ruled out, so it must be a satellite. The obvious suspect turns out to be a victim, the trail goes cold, an email arrives, and the data points to one Russian satellite. The GPS lessons sit between the clues.

Cleo Abram, "The New Hunt for the Colossal Squid" (5.7M, March 2026, 18 min). This is most likely the deep-sea video you mean. Her other candidate, "The Ocean Is Deeper Than You Think" (5.1M, 2023), is the one that speaks a depth counter out loud. - The descent: each depth is a level: scuba, then the 700 m giant squid, then "Now, welcome to the abyss" (7:02), then "But we're still going even deeper into the hadal zone" (8:28). - A relief beat between scares: the dumbo octopus. - A planted promise: at 1:47, "all we need is a drop of water." It pays off at 10:19, with the sponsor read placed right before it. - The metaphor callback: the "housefly in an arena with the lights off" line comes back at 9:09.

A wifi reel in your saves, @adjacentnode (you said this isn't the one you meant; no other saved caption is about wifi) (posted July 2025, 115 seconds; 2.0M views in your saves database, likes and comments checked on the page). It opens: "why your Wi-Fi is trash even with a fast internet plan." The reframe follows: "The problem probably isn't your bandwidth, it's your clients." It names household villains (the decade-old printer, "your 2011 smart fridge"), gives a one-line mechanism ("Wi-Fi is half duplex and shared. Devices take turns"), and ends on a four-step fix. Another explainer reel in your recent saves: @speedy_devv "How does the touchscreen really work?" (17.7M).

Your channel, for context

• Source: a snapshot of 507 of your videos taken August 25, 2026. Videos posted after that, and growth since, are missing (How Smartphones Are Made was 1.72M then and is 2.25M on October 30).
• Long-form normal: about 5.2M since 2023 (49 videos) and about 4.0M since 2025 (29 videos). Older college vlogs are excluded.
• $1 vs against each year's median: Yoyo 14.4M (2023 median 12.5M, 1.2x), RC Cars 14.4M (2024 median 7.6M, 1.9x), RC Plane 16.1M (2025 median 5.4M, 3.0x).
• "I tested / vs" titles since 2025: 12 videos, median 3.7M.
• Tech and gadget long-form: median 3.7M (0.71x of normal). 7 of 16 beat your normal, all of them wrappers, including Level 1 to 100 DIY Inventions 21.3M, $1 vs $10,000 RC Plane 16.1M, $1 vs $1,000 RC Cars 14.4M, Level 1 to 100 Science Gadgets 14.2M, Banned School Gadgets 11.5M. Below normal: How Smartphones Are Made 1.72M, Futuristic Science Gadgets 2.25M, Impossible AI Product Claims 3.96M.
• Level 1 to 100: 13 videos, median about 10.6M, roughly 2x your normal back then. Your best long-form video, Level 1 to 100 Science Experiments, has 35.5M. Since 2025 the median is about 4.9M. That leaves out Level 1 to 100 3D Prints, which was 16 days old in the snapshot; with it, the median is 4.1M.
• Shorts: your 8 "What happens if..." Shorts (mostly the trap-smoke series) have a median of 81.8M. Your AI Shorts all landed under 1M: AI Lava Cake 929K, AI Robot Pet 640K, AI photo expand 214K.
• Explainer-style long-form since 2025, all below normal: How Smartphones Are Made 1.72M, I Tested 100 Years of Tech 3.46M, I Tested the Most Futuristic Science Gadgets 2.25M, I Spent 100 Hours In World's Most Futuristic City 2.49M.

Demand by topic, since January 2024

Median views of the top 10 on-topic long-form results (4 min+) for each search, sorted by YouTube's view count. A result only counts if its title contains the topic word.

Demand by topic, all time

Median views of the top 10 on-topic long-form results (4 min+) for each search, sorted by YouTube's view count. A result only counts if its title contains the topic word.

Which title framings beat the channel's normal

3,792 long-form videos from 2022 to 2026, 25 explainer and tech channels. Each video is compared with the median of the same channel's long-form videos from the same year, so older videos aren't inflated. Labels come from title keywords, so read this as a lean, not a model.

Biggest tech explainer over-performers since 2024

Tech-titled videos with 500K+ views from the explainer and tech channels (news and investigations channels left out), ranked by how far they beat their channel's normal for the same year (median of that channel's long-form videos from that year).

Method

• YouTube Data API, October 30, 2026: the latest 400 uploads of 53 explainer and tech channels (about 11,900 videos) plus 42 searches, each run all-time and since 2024, sorted by views (2,728 more videos). About 9,900 API units. Three handles turned out to be the wrong accounts (Hoog, Aperture, AlphaPhoenix) and are left out of every count.
• Your channel numbers come from a snapshot of 507 Hafu Go videos taken August 25, 2026, so videos after that are missing.
• Meetings: the Drive recordings of the Sept 28, Oct 5 and Oct 26 weekly calls, transcribed locally. Speakers aren't labeled; quotes are attributed only when the context makes the speaker clear.
• Reference breakdowns come from each video's transcript (yt-dlp captions; the Instagram reel was transcribed locally). Nobody watched the videos frame by frame, so on-screen graphics are unconfirmed.