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The Problem with My Brother's Hit New App

2025-08-19 · letter vlog · John · 4:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Projects (also: Personal life) · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: self promotion

John congratulates Hank on his app Focus Friend becoming the most popular app in the US, praising how it helps him write and its lack of ads and data collection, then comically complains that the John Bean in-app purchase has entirely gray hair.

What is said

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

00:00:00 — Focus Friend is the number one US app; how the knitting bean works

  • ★★★ John says that as of recording Hank's app Focus Friend is the most popular app in the United States, ahead of ChatGPT, TikTok, Gmail and all others. — 00:00:03 · Focus Friend, Hank Green, TikTok, United States
  • ★★ John explains Focus Friend: a bean likes to knit but is distracted whenever you use your phone; focus mode lets it knit while you work away from the phone, and its socks decorate your room. — 00:00:30 · Focus Friend

00:00:43 — What John likes: help with writing, the disappointed bean, design, no data collection or ads

  • ★★ John has used Focus Friend for weeks; writing a lot since getting home from tour, he says it has helped him tremendously to focus on writing instead of his phone. — 00:00:43 · Focus Friend, TikTok
  • ★★ John likes that stopping focus mode makes the bean's knitting evaporate and the bean look disappointed: he doesn't want to disappoint the bean, so he leaves his distracting apps alone. (playful) — 00:01:12 · Focus Friend
  • ★★ John recommends Focus Friend for kids going back to school and calls its design and illustration top-notch. — 00:01:25 · Focus Friend
  • ★★ John praises that the app collects and sells no personal data, needs no login and, best of all, has no ads: a clean, free, effective app is vanishingly rare in 2025. — 00:01:30 · Focus Friend, online advertising

00:01:41 — Issues: no more rooms to decorate and the in-app purchases

  • ★ John notes as a user that after a couple of weeks of constant use there are no more rooms to decorate, though Hank is working on that. — 00:01:43 · Focus Friend
  • ★★ John explains the app pays for development with optional in-app purchases, such as upgrading the bean, which he supports if it keeps the experience ad-free. — 00:01:55 · Focus Friend

00:02:11 — Hank's pitch, the 70-year-old gray-haired John Bean, and Sammy's gray-hair remark

  • ★★ John recalls Hank calling to say he had made the app with a developer named Bria; John thought the pitch brilliant and loved the idea of buyable beans like a Hank Bean. — 00:02:11 · Hank Green, Focus Friend
  • ★★ John bought the John Bean for $5.99 to support the app and jokes that it is a 70-year-old bean, though it drinks Keats & Co. coffee and its shirt is on point. (playful) — 00:02:40 · Keats & Co.
  • ★★★ John's main complaint: he still has a diminishing number of brown hairs, yet John Bean is entirely gray; he asks to be at least salt and pepper. (playful) — 00:02:55
  • ★★ With his daughter, her best friend and the friend's younger brother Sammy, who is learning his colours, John heard Sammy name everyone's hair colour and say John has gray hair; John insists his is brown with silver at the temples. (playful) — 00:03:09 · Alice Green

00:03:38 — Hank's non-stop run of making things, congratulations, sign-off and post-sign-off tag

  • ★★ John says that apart from forcing him to reckon with his own mortality, Focus Friend is pretty great. (playful) — 00:03:38 · Focus Friend
  • ★★ John says that ever since inventing 2D glasses Hank has been on a non-stop run of making things; each new idea gives John gray hairs, so he asks Hank to slow down. (playful) — 00:03:50 · Hank Green
  • ★★ John genuinely congratulates Hank on having the number one app, then goes back to writing with Focus Friend. — 00:04:15 · Hank Green, Focus Friend

  • ★★ After the sign-off John marvels that Hank keeps doing it, wonders where his energy comes from, and calls being the tail to Hank's comet a full-time job. (playful) — 00:04:30 · Hank Green

    “Being the tail to your comet is a full-time job”

Humor (significant)

  • John buys the John Bean in-app purchase to support Hank's app and looks at it — 00:02:40

    “John Bean is a 70-year-old bean, Hank.”

  • A small boy learning colours tells John he has gray hair — 00:03:09

    “No, I don't, Sammy! Respectfully, what the hell is wrong with you?”

  • John explains why he was not surprised Hank made an app — 00:02:11

    “if you give Hank Green three free hours, he will invent a new business.”

  • Each new venture of Hank's gives John more gray hairs — 00:04:07

    “So please just be cautious and consider my diminishingly brunette coiffure before the next time you start something big.”

  • John marvels at Hank's energy after the sign-off — 00:04:30

    “Being the tail to your comet is a full-time job, you ridiculous, beautiful freak.”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Focus Friend

Also: People: Alice Green

Projects: Keats & Co.

Works: 2D Glasses

Organizations: TikTok

Concepts: online advertising

Places: United States

Characters: John Bean

Products: ChatGPT · Gmail

Only in the description or credits: Bria

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