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The Explain The 2008 Financial Crisis CHALLENGE! (and 7 other challenges)

2015-12-04 · challenge / punishment · Hank · 3:10 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Economics, Science & nature) · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: fundraising ask, civic or action cta

Hank takes on a mock YouTube challenge to explain the 2008 financial crisis in under 60 seconds (cheap money, mortgages resold and misrated as AAA, collapse), then performs a run of absurd mini-challenges, saying he likes challenge videos and is rethinking the genre, not mocking it.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — The "Explain the 2008 Financial Crisis in Less Than Sixty Seconds" Challenge: cheap money, mortgages, lenders, investment banks, ratings agencies, investors, collapse

  • ★★ Hank frames the video as attempting a supposedly hip new YouTube challenge: explaining the 2008 financial crisis in less than sixty seconds. (playful) — 00:00:01 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank says interest rates in 2008 were super low, so banks could borrow almost free and needed things to buy; the key new purchase was mortgages, of which there were more than $13 trillion. — 00:00:10
    • check: super low — doubtful (interest rates)
  • ★★ Hank names four institutions in the story: lenders who made the loans, investment banks who bought, packaged and resold them, ratings agencies who rated their risk, and investors who bought them. — 00:00:21
  • ★★★ Hank says that because lenders could sell loans off, they stopped caring whether loans would be repaid and, to meet demand, made manipulative loans to people who could never pay them off. — 00:00:34
  • ★★★ Hank says investment banks bought the subprime loans and duplicitously got ratings agencies to treat them as not subprime; rated AAA, they were bought by investors who thought them safe. — 00:00:42
  • ★★ Hank says that when borrowers inevitably could not pay, the whole "house of lies" collapsed and took a good portion of the global economy with it. — 00:00:51

00:00:59 — Challenge complete; the "Grow a Bunch of Hair" Challenge with hair-growth figures

  • ★★ For the "Grow a Bunch of Hair" Challenge Hank says each of his 150,000 hair follicles grows about 0.44 mm a day, about 0.29 inches a second in total, or 220 feet a day if on one hair. (playful) — 00:01:05
    • a number in question (doubtful): "0.29 inches" — check against the recording (hair growth rate)

00:01:30 — Harpsichord-noise, leftover-mouthwash, Snapchat-breakfast and how-loud-can-you-scream challenges

  • ★★ Hank performs a string of absurd mini-challenges: a harpsichord noise, drinking his leftover mouthwash (water with food colouring), breakfast on Snapchat, screaming, jump cuts, and biting up his body. (joke) — 00:01:30

00:02:10 — "Apologize for something while you're doing it" Challenge: Hank says he likes challenge videos and is rethinking the genre, not mocking it

  • ★★★ Doing the "apologize while you're doing it" challenge, Hank says he likes challenge videos, finds good ones hard to make, and is rethinking the genre to fit his aesthetic rather than mocking it. (playful, hedged) — 00:02:14

00:02:29 — Jump-cuts challenge and the how-far-up-your-body-can-you-bite challenge

00:02:48 — Sign-off; Project for Awesome starts in a week: livestream, make videos, set money aside for perks

  • ★★★ Hank announces the Project for Awesome begins next week (week of 7 December 2015), a week from this day, with a livestream and a bunch of really cool perks. — 00:02:50 · Project for Awesome
  • ★★★ Hank asks viewers to join the P4A, set aside time, make a video people can vote on so their favorite charity might get money, and maybe set money aside for perks. — 00:02:58 · Project for Awesome

In the description and comments

  • ★★ In the description Hank doubts he did a great job explaining the 2008 financial crisis, which turns out to be pretty complicated. (hedged) — video description
  • ★★ In the description Hank says he would really love viewers interested in these challenges to duplicate the video, which was a lot of fun to make. — video description

Humor (significant)

  • Hank presents explaining the 2008 financial crisis as the hip new YouTube challenge he is super interested in. — 00:00:05

    “It's called the "Explain the 2008 Financial Crisis in Less Than Sixty Seconds" Challenge,”

  • For the drink-however-much-mouthwash-you-have-left challenge Hank faces a big bottle. — 00:01:40

    “I should have bought a smaller bottle... ugh.”

  • Announced as the 'Apologize For Something While You're Doing It' Challenge, Hank apologizes for the very video he is making. — 00:02:23

    “I don't want this video to be seen as mocking challenge videos,”

  • For the how-far-up-your-body-can-you-bite challenge Hank strains and grunts at his own body. — 00:02:40

    “Oh, does this count?”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: 2007–2008 financial crisis · Project for Awesome

Also: Organizations: Snapchat · YouTube

Concepts: credit rating · Credit rating agency · Hair follicle · Interest rate · Internet challenge · Investment banking · jump cut · mortgage loan · subprime lending

Also centred on 2007–2008 financial crisis: The Financial Crisis...Simplified

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