
Conan O'Brien at Google: The World Has Completely Changed - bwaldorf
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2010/05/conan_at_google.php
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swah
This guy is smart. Also worth viewing to see the VP getting demoralized.

~~~
MikeCapone
The interviewer has an uncanny ability to say exactly the wrong thing at the
wrong time. Probably a symptom of nervousness..

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RuadhanMc
I prefer Conan like this -- he's funny. I never found him funny as a talk show
host.

~~~
noonespecial
I think this is why I found his stint on the Tonight Show so disturbing. It
was like seeing a thoroughbred hitched to a plow.

He didn't seem to handle the limitations of that venue well. When he couldn't
use his wit full on, he degraded quickly to mostly slapstick. Which was pretty
unfunny coming from him.

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btilly
The funniest moment is at 23:12 when a woman in the audience asks him to let
her touch his hair. :-)

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zaphar
I watched this live on VC from our Chicago office and Conan was absolutely
hilarious.

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hswolff
That was great to wake up to on this rainy Saturday.

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aw3c2
First 15 minutes are bland jokes. A bit of interesting tidbits but now at 30
minutes it is back at random humour.

Yeah, not really worth it unless you are a fan of him. The only HN related
thing I heard was a bit about twitter at ~15:00+.

Note to self: If you ever asked a question at such event, step back from the
microphone so your nervous laughter does not disturb.

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BrandonM
I liked hearing their laughter. It was never at a bad time (it did not
"disturb"), and for me, the more people I hear laughing, the more I enjoy
something.

(I did upvote you, because while I think a score of 0 is OK, I don't see why
you should be at -1 just for expressing your opinion)

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sorbits
I sometimes wish the up/down arrows would instead be a square a la:

    
    
        ↑ Insightful/Agree ------ Insightful/Disagree ↑
        |                                             |
        |                                             |
        ↓ Uninsightful/Agree -- Uninsightful/Disagree ↓
    

Seeing how the intent with the points are insightfulness (afaik) but often
they are used to express agreement.

P.S. I found the video hilarious :)

~~~
amalcon
I actually briefly user-tested such a scheme back at university; if it worked
well, I was going to put together a news aggregator based on the idea.

At least in my test, which was admittedly very small in scale, people almost
always clicked "Insightful/Agree" or "Uninsightful/Disagree". I'd love to see
a better test of this, though.

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ugh
_At least in my test, which was admittedly very small in scale, people almost
always clicked "Insightful/Agree" or "Uninsightful/Disagree". I'd love to see
a better test of this, though._

That’s very much what I would expect. You generally disagree with someone
because you think they have poor arguments – how could something that is, say,
factually wrong or not coherent also be insightful? I always cringe when
people here say you shouldn’t downvote when you disagree. Should you really
not downvote if a comment contains obvious factual errors or if the arguments
obviously make no sense? (I have to add, though, that the “obvious” is
important here. I think you shouldn’t downvote when someone made reasonable
errors in their argument.)

I think there are cases where comments you disagree with can be insightful
(when, say, a aspect of a problem is shown that you didn’t consider before)
but I would also argue that those instances are rather rare.

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rosshudgens
This was arguably the funniest I have ever seen Conan - you can see how he got
his start. He was funny as hell, people loved him, then he got reined in to
the standard talk show paradigm.

He was still funny enough in that setting to make it work - in the 12:30 slot,
anyways.

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whyenot
I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats!

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sumeeta
I was pretty impressed with how many female Googlers I saw in the audience.

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noisedom
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7TwqpWiY5s#t=36m40s>

Who else was astonished at the hair-ball question? I mean, I know it's a
casual atmosphere, but that was a seriously stupid question.

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davidmurphy
I only watched the first five minutes or so, and found his treatment of the
host distasteful and unfunny, and gave up watching it.

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fgf
I agree. The latter part was ok though.

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olaf
I found this whole performance so utterly disgusting, I can barely believe
that characters like that are allowed to perform publicly on this planet, I
feel shame. If there exists life beyond earth, I sincerely hope they don't
judge us by these exemplars.

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patrickgzill
Jay Leno is on HN?

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olaf
BS laugh machine is on HN?

