Tech explainer: research and ideas

Hafu Go · October 30, 2026 · for the December tech run before CES

The short answer

• Make the zoom ladder: "$1 vs $1,000,000 Microscope." You zoom into your own phone, and every rung is a more expensive microscope that shows something smaller: circuit-board parts smaller than sand, then screen dots, then the camera sensor's color grid, then chip wiring thinner than most viruses.
  • It's an explainer of the thing every viewer is holding.
  • It has Cleo's deep-sea descent built in.
  • It uses your $1 vs format, which beat your normal every time: 1.2x, 1.9x, then 3.0x for RC Plane in 2025. Only one of those is since 2025, though.
  • Your tech run already has a "$1 vs $10,000 futuristic tech gadgets" video (Oct 5 and Oct 26 calls). If that goes out first, title this one "I Zoomed Into My Phone 1,000,000x". The video doesn't change.
  • It needs a specialist chip lab for the top rung.
• Second: "Phones You're Not Allowed to Buy." It matches your Oct 5 brief and uses your China access. But the run already has "I tested every banned electric car," and Mrwhosetheboss owns this lane.
• The AI pick: "Real or AI?" AI fakes have the clearest recent AI breakouts, and AI video companies have the budgets. It isn't proven on your channel, though: your AI Shorts underperformed, and your one AI long-form landed right at your normal. That makes it the riskiest of the three.
• Needs no access at all: "I Tried Everything to Destroy My Phone Battery."
• Honest warning:
  • Since 2025, your explainer, history and "futuristic" tech videos all landed below your normal: How Smartphones Are Made, 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.
  • Your 12 "I tested / vs" long-form videos since 2025 have a median of 3.7M, slightly under your normal of about 4.0M.
  • The explanation has to sit inside something you'd watch anyway, which is why the pick is a ladder with a payoff, not a lesson.
• Titles won't save it. An everyday object in the title adds nothing, "extreme" framing gives a small lift that faded in 2026, and the word "AI" is neutral.
• Your channel numbers come from an August 25 snapshot. How Smartphones Are Made was 1.72M then and is 2.25M now, still under your normal.

What you said in the meetings

Three team calls are recorded in Drive (Sept 28, Oct 5, Oct 26); there are no recordings for Oct 12 or Oct 19. None of the three pitches an explainer by name. The explainer idea is in your Oct 15 Apple Note ("i should make a EXPLAINER VIDEO. so i can fully control the narrative and vibe"). What the calls do set is the brief the explainer has to fit:

• Sept 28:
  • "if we can make tech cooler, we are bridging the gap between the companies and the consumers."
  • Tech reviewers are "too serious... they talk about the specs... I'm not trying to review, I'm trying to play with stuff."
  • "the entire global economy is hinging on AI and tech."
• Oct 5:
  • Positive packaging, "because we're trying to work with companies."
  • "Tech lifestyle. Like I want to make tech cool."
  • You want "an older audience who's interested in the tech without losing our current audience."
  • Numbers only with context: "the camera has 200 megapixels, which is like three times more than the iPhone, but it's not that much better."
  • Try 3 to 5 things per video at about 5 minutes each.
• Oct 5, the team (most likely Marcus; speakers aren't labeled):
  • "My perception of AI is something more abstract... I'd rather use robot. Because it's tangible in real life," and "tech gadgets has more data supporting it than AI."
  • You answered: "It's AI companies that have money."
  • For the futuristic robot lab video, you agreed to launch without "AI" in the title and add it later if a partner wants it.
• The tech slate already on the table:
  • Oct 5 (24:10): "I tested every banned electric car," "$1 versus $10,000 futuristic tech gadgets," a man vs robot challenge, and the futuristic robot lab.
  • Oct 26 (39:14): "we did $1 versus $10,000 tech gadgets with the banana phone," and "$1 versus $10,000 printer" (the 3D printer).
  • Oct 5 (49:06 to 49:32): "the RC car video is not doing that hot," meaning "RC car versus world's biggest mud obstacle course" (posted after the snapshot). It's a recent "vs" video that missed, not one of the $1 vs videos.
  • Oct 5 (36:24, you): "I'm not going to fucking review iPhones."
• Oct 26:
  • November clears the backlog. December is "a stint of tech videos" so that at CES (early January, Vegas) "the tech companies look at our channel and say, oh, they like make tech videos."
  • AI can now make 3D animation you couldn't do before, including "animating how the thing works."

What the data says

I pulled the uploads of 53 explainer and tech channels (Veritasium, MKBHD, Cleo Abram, Kurzgesagt, Branch Education, Johnny Harris, Mrwhosetheboss and more), plus 42 "how does X work" searches: about 14,600 videos.

1. Titles move views less than you'd think.
   • The test: 25 explainer and tech channels, 3,792 long-form videos from 2022 to 2026. Each video is compared to the same channel's median for the same year.
   • Everyday object or "you" in the title: no lift. Median 0.95x vs 1.01x.
   • Extreme or "what if" framing: median 1.15x, and 24% double their channel's normal (vs 15% for everything else). The lift faded in 2026: median 1.00x, though 20% still double vs 13%.
   • "I tested / tried / vs" titles: 81 of the 134 are Mrwhosetheboss. Without him there's no edge (0.91x).
   • AI in the title: neutral, 0.99x vs 1.00x.
   • These labels come from title keywords, so read this as a lean, not a law.
2. The famous examples are examples, not proof.
   • Veritasium's "Can You Keep Zooming In Infinitely?" has 31.7M, 2.6x his normal that year.
   • His chip video "The Closest Thing We Have to Alien Technology" has 64.8M, 5.2x.
   • "The Biggest Misconception About Electricity" (your light switch) has 28.2M.
   • The same idea can miss: MKBHD's "I shrunk down into an M5 chip" has 4.2M, 0.8x his normal that year. Veritasium's storytelling carries those videos, not the topic.

3. Where the demand is since 2024. These are median views of the top 10 on-topic long-form results per search:

   • how AI works 11.3M (mostly podcasts and warnings, like Diary of a CEO)
   • quantum computers 4.1M
   • phones 3.5M (only 8 results, led by a phone-security video)
   • how chips are made 3.4M
   • self-driving cars 3.2M
   • data centers 3.1M
   • ChatGPT 2.9M
   • batteries 2.5M
   • wifi 1.2M and 5G 1.2M (5G: only 6 results)
   • undersea cables 0.9M
   • face ID: almost nothing (2 on-topic videos)

   Your two references are now the small end: MKBHD's "5G: Explained!" (9.6M) is from 2019, and the biggest wifi videos since 2024 are hacking tutorials. 4. What's breaking out right now (2025-26): - AI slop and fakes: Kurzgesagt "AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet" 11.4M, HopeScope "I Bought Ai SCAM Products" 9.6M, yikes "I Tricked the Internet with Fake AI Videos" 6.4M. - Battery tests: HTX Studio's 40-phone, 2-year fast-charging test has 5.4M, with a video under 8 minutes long. A channel of about 170K subscribers got 7.3M ignoring battery safety warnings "for science." - AI data centers: Hank Green "Why is Everyone So Wrong About AI Water Use??" 6.1M, Business Insider 8.2M. - Phone hardware: JerryRigEverything's iPhone Duo durability test has 14.5M, 9.6x his normal that year. You said you won't review iPhones, but the curiosity about "how is this phone even possible" is at a peak. 5. Your channel: - Your long-form normal is about 5.2M since 2023 and about 4.0M since 2025. - $1 vs: Yoyo 14.4M (2023), RC Cars 14.4M (2024), RC Plane 16.1M (2025). Against each year's median, that's 1.2x, 1.9x and 3.0x. Three videos is a small sample, and the "$1 vs $10,000 tech gadgets" video isn't in the snapshot yet. - Banned School Gadgets: 11.5M. Across the 25 explainer channels, though, "banned / illegal / secret" titles score 0.99x, no lift. - Level 1 to 100 used to be your lift (13 videos, median 10.6M), but since 2025 the median is 4.9M. That leaves out a video that was only 16 days old in the data; with it, the median is 4.1M.

The retention mechanism

What Cleo does in "The New Hunt for the Colossal Squid" (5.7M, March 2026; most likely the deep-sea video you mean), plus the best tricks from your other references:

1. The descent. Every level is deeper and stranger: 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). Each "deeper" line restarts your attention. Her 2023 ocean video says the depth out loud as it goes ("at 828 m you're the depth of the tallest building on earth... less than 10% of the way down"). For tech: a counter that climbs every level (price, zoom, distance, temperature).
2. A promise planted early and paid late, with the sponsor in the gap. At 1:47 she says "all we need is a drop of water," pays it off at 10:19, and puts the sponsor read right before the reveal. Pay it off in the same video: Veritasium's "to be continued" ending on his credit card video drew a comment with 25K likes asking him not to do that again.
3. Make them commit to a guess (Veritasium's electricity video). He poses a question with 5 answers, says "commit to an answer," and holds it open for about 10 minutes.
4. Walk-away proof (MKBHD's 5G video). The speed test hits 1.9 Gbps next to the pole, then drops to 200-400 Mbps behind a wall 75 feet away. He shows the claim breaking instead of saying it.
5. Blame-shift reframe (a wifi reel in your saves, @adjacentnode, 2.0M; not the one you meant, which I couldn't find by caption). "The problem probably isn't your bandwidth, it's your clients." Then it names household villains: the decade-old printer, "your 2011 smart fridge."
6. No padding. A comment with 18K likes on HTX's battery test: "2 Years for an 8 minute video without padding just useful info."

The ideas

Ranked by my judgment of fit for your channel, December and CES. Every one starts with something in the viewer's hand.

1. $1 vs $1,000,000 Microscope ⭐ pick

Top comp: Can You Keep Zooming In Infinitely? (Veritasium, 31.7M)

(Or "I Zoomed Into My Phone 1,000,000x" if the $1 vs tech gadgets video goes out first.)

• Relatable to extreme: the phone in your hand, ending with wiring thinner than most viruses.
• Retention: two counters on screen, price and zoom. Every rung costs more and shows something smaller, with a "but it gets stranger" turn each time.
  • Viewers guess what they'll see before each reveal.
  • Plant the top rung in the first 30 seconds ("the million-dollar one shows something that shouldn't fit in your pocket"), and put the sponsor right before it.
• Rungs (draft, each one smaller than the last):
  • $1 (clip-on lens): open the phone (screen and back off; never cut the battery, it's a fire risk). The circuit board is covered in parts smaller than a grain of sand.
  • About $20 (pocket microscope): back on the screen, the white is really red, green and blue dots a few hundredths of a millimeter wide.
  • A few thousand dollars (lab microscope): take the camera out. Its sensor is a grid of millions of colored squares, each about a thousandth of a millimeter.
  • Top rung (an electron microscope at a specialist chip lab): the chip's wiring, thinner than most viruses.
  • Phone chips sit upside down under a memory chip, so a semiconductor failure-analysis lab has to remove the chip and strip it layer by layer first. That's a service on top of the microscope's price.
  • Title the price to match what that microscope really cost.
  • Atoms: only promise them if the lab can slice the chip and image it with a transmission electron microscope. Otherwise leave atoms out of the title, or it's bait.
• Comps:
  • Yours: $1 vs $100,000 Yoyo 14.4M, $1 vs $1,000 RC Cars 14.4M, $1 vs $10,000 RC Plane 16.1M.
  • Veritasium "Can You Keep Zooming In Infinitely?" 31.7M.
  • Swiss Watch Gang "What a $200,000 Watch Looks Like Under a Microscope" 4.2M.
  • Shorts: Mrwhosetheboss "The Smallest Microscope in the World!" 25.2M, Nas Daily "The $1 Microscope" 14.6M.
  • Against: MKBHD "I shrunk down into an M5 chip" 4.2M (0.8x).
  • A search for "$1 vs $1,000,000 microscope" turned up no long-form version; the only direct title match was a Short with under 10K views. The lane looks open. That's a sample, not proof.
• Why it fits: a real explanation of what's inside a phone, Cleo's descent, a destruction beat, and zero specs. The AI 3D animation from your Oct 26 call can bridge the jumps between rungs. Microscope makers, phone brands and chip companies all get positive packaging, which is the CES story.
• Risk:
  • The top rung needs a specialist chip lab, not just any university microscope. Line it up now for December.
  • Every price has to be real.
  • A second $1 vs tech video in the same run could feel repetitive. Use the zoom title if so.

2. Phones You're Not Allowed to Buy

Top comp: Testing North Korea's illegal smartphones (Mrwhosetheboss, 18.6M)

• Relatable to extreme: your phone, ending with phones banned or unsold in the US.

• Retention: 3 to 5 phones at about 5 minutes each (your Oct 5 format). Each one gets the same beats:

  • "Guess what this does."
  • A test.
  • Why you can't buy it here.
  • 30 seconds on how it works.

  They get weirder as the video goes: Honor's robot phone, Xiaomi's dual phone, and anything US reviewers can't get. - Comps: - Mrwhosetheboss "Testing North Korea's illegal smartphones" 18.6M (3.3x his normal that year). - Mrwhosetheboss "I Tested the Weirdest Phones on the Internet" 11.7M. - Mrwhosetheboss "I tested phones that shouldn't EXIST" 9.5M (July 2026). - WSJ "What a Smuggled North Korean Smartphone Reveals About the Regime" 6.7M. - Yours: "I Tested Every 'Banned' School Gadget" 11.5M. - Why it fits: your Banned wrapper, the brief you gave on Oct 5, and phones only your China access can get. - Risk: - Mrwhosetheboss has done this three times. It only wins with phones he hasn't shown. - Your run already has "I tested every banned electric car," and "banned" titles show no lift across the 25 explainer channels (0.99x). Your one Banned video worked; that's one data point. - "Banned" isn't positive packaging, so keep phone makers out of the sponsor pitch for this one. - It's more of a showcase than a pure explainer.

3. Real or AI?

Top comp: AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet (Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell, 11.4M)

• Relatable to extreme: the AI videos already in your feed, ending with a fake that fools the experts (or doesn't).
• Retention: a fooled / not fooled scoreboard, with audiences that get harder each round: friends, family, your team, video editors, then AI detectors. Each round reveals one tell and explains in plain words how the AI made it. Viewers commit to a guess before every reveal.
• Comps:
  • Kurzgesagt "AI Slop Is Destroying The Internet" 11.4M.
  • HopeScope "I Bought Ai SCAM Products to see what shows up" 9.6M.
  • yikes "I Tricked the Internet with Fake AI Videos" 6.4M.
  • Matt Rose "Spotting the Clues in AI Slop" 3.6M.
• Why it fits: the fakes make AI something you can see (Marcus's point). You already make AI video and 3D (Oct 26). AI video companies have the budgets you mentioned on Oct 5, and "can you still tell?" shows off their product. "AI" is neutral in titles, so it can stay in this one.
• Risk: AI isn't proven on your channel. Your AI Shorts all landed under 1M (your Shorts since 2025 have a median of 12.6M), and I Tested Impossible AI Product Claims did 3.96M, right at your normal. On Sept 28 someone on the call said it "did really well" by the tech-video standard. The lane is also crowded. Keep it a game, not a scare, and never fake anything harmful.

4. I Tried Everything to Destroy My Phone Battery

Top comp: Is Fast Charging Killing the Battery? A 2-Year Test on 40 Phones (HTX Studio, 5.4M)

• Relatable to extreme: charging overnight, ending with a battery on fire, for science.
• Retention:
  • Battery health % and temperature on screen.
  • A ladder from harmless habits (charging overnight, fast charging, 100% vs 80%) to abuse (freezer, sauna, a hot car dashboard, overcharging, puncture).
  • Viewers guess each myth before the test. Each test explains one piece of how a lithium battery works.
  • Plant the payoff early ("one habit almost everyone has is the real killer") and pay it off at the end.
• Comps:
  • HTX Studio "Is Fast Charging Killing the Battery? A 2-Year Test on 40 Phones" 5.4M.
  • Concept Crafted Creations "Ignoring All Lithium Battery Safety Warnings.. For Science!" 7.3M (a channel of about 170K subscribers).
  • Veritasium "The Perfect Battery Material Is Dangerous" 13.6M.
• Why it fits: it needs no access or partners, it's your experiment style, and the blame-shift works ("it's not your phone, it's how you charge it").
• Risk:
  • HTX already settled fast charging. Cite it and go further.
  • Do every abuse test outdoors with fire safety on set.
  • The fire half doesn't fit a battery or charger sponsor. Pitch one only if their product is the one that survives.
  • "I tested" alone hasn't carried your recent videos (median 3.7M since 2025), so the "for science" ladder has to be the hook.

5. What Happens in the 1 Second After You Hit Send

Top comp: The Insane Engineering of Fiber Optics (Veritasium, 14.1M)

• Relatable to extreme: a text to a friend overseas, ending on the ocean floor.
• Retention: one second stretched into a whole video. A clock (0.000 s) and a distance counter tick forward at each stop. Plant the promise early: "the strangest part of the trip is at the bottom of the ocean," your literal deep-sea callback.
• Stops:
  • The phone's antenna.
  • Your home router, where wifi devices take turns.
  • The cell tower (MKBHD's walk-away test).
  • The fiber in the street.
  • A data center (where your AI questions go too).
  • The undersea cable.
  • Your friend's phone.
• Comps:
  • Veritasium "The Insane Engineering of Fiber Optics" 14.1M (18 days old).
  • Veritasium "The Internet Was Weeks Away From Disaster" 16.4M.
  • VISION "How The Internet Travels Across Oceans" 11.9M.
  • MKBHD "5G: Explained!" 9.6M.
  • The only direct comp is AsapSCIENCE "Where Do Your Texts Go?" 1.6M (2016, under 4 minutes).
• Why it fits: it rolls all three of your references into one trip, with positive packaging ("the most impressive thing you do every day").
• Risk:
  • It's the most access-heavy idea (a tower crew, a data center, a cable landing station).
  • Searches on undersea cables are small (0.9M top-10 median since 2024). The Veritasium numbers come from his storytelling.
  • Every stop needs something physical, or it turns into a lecture.

6. Can You Fool Your Phone?

Top comp: Can You Fool A Self Driving Car? (Mark Rober, 35.8M)

• Relatable to extreme: face unlock, ending with a 3D-printed copy of your own head.
• Retention: an attempts ladder with a scoreboard: a photo, a video, a mask, a lookalike, then a 3D print from your existing head scan. Each failure explains one layer of how face unlock works (infrared dots, depth, attention). Bonus round: fingerprint.
• Comps: Mark Rober "Can You Fool A Self Driving Car?" 35.8M (2025). WSJ "Testing (and Tricking) FaceID" 12.1M (2017). Forbes ran the same 3D-printed head idea at 275K, with no host and no ladder.
• Why it fits: a challenge that reuses your head scan and ties into the December 3D printing video.
• Risk:
  • Almost nobody searches for how face unlock works, so the challenge has to carry it.
  • "Fooling security" is harder to package positively, and Apple won't partner.

7. I Tried to Block My Wifi With Everything

Top comp: DON'T Buy A Wi-Fi Range Extender! (Techquickie, 2.8M)

• Relatable to extreme: everyone's wifi sucks, ending inside a metal cage or underwater.
• Retention: a live speed number on screen and a ladder of harder blockers: a wall, a fish tank, a running microwave, foil, a metal pot over the router, a crowd of people, a homemade cage, water. Then a homemade can antenna wins the distance back. The twist from the @adjacentnode reel: the old fridge slowing down the whole house.
• Comps: Techquickie "DON'T Buy A Wi-Fi Range Extender!" 2.8M and ThioJoe "5 Router Settings You Should Change Now!" 1.9M (both 2022, far above those channels' usual views).
• Why it fits: one location and simple props, with plenty of Shorts to cut from it.
• Risk: wifi long-form demand is small now (1.2M top-10 median since 2024). Better as a Shorts series than the December flagship.

Your calls

1. Which one for December? Suggestion: #1, the zoom ladder. Title it "$1 vs $1,000,000 Microscope" if the $1 vs $10,000 tech gadgets video isn't going out around the same time, otherwise "I Zoomed Into My Phone 1,000,000x". If the chip lab falls through, #4 (battery) needs no partner.
2. Do you want an AI video in the December run? If yes: #3 (Real or AI), pitched to an AI video company as the sponsor, knowing AI hasn't beaten your normal yet.
3. Who do we ask at CES or in China? #1 needs a semiconductor failure-analysis lab, #2 needs the phones, #5 needs a telecom, a data center and a cable station.
4. The wifi reel: send me the creator's handle if you remember it. If not, I can pull the audio of about 730 tech-looking saves and search what they say for "wifi" (about an hour).

What to skip

• Specs and reviews. A number only appears with context, the way you said it on Oct 5.
• Factory tours and history ladders. Both were below your normal in 2025-26.
• Leaning on the word "futuristic." Yours missed twice (2.25M, 2.49M), even though Mrwhosetheboss's "I tested the most Futuristic Tech - it scared me." has 21.2M this month. The word isn't the hook.
• Counting on the title. "I tested" and an everyday object in the title haven't carried a video by themselves.
• Doom framing ("AI wastes your water," "your phone spies on you"). It works for others, but it breaks the positive packaging you need for partners.
• Making China the subject. On Sept 28 you said "it's the tech that's the main character."

Full numbers, sources and method: details page