#139 Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire ~ Wrench Nation

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When you think about a polished commercial car review, you may have some reservations about actually making a connection to the vehicle being sizzled and displayed and zone out completely.

Now don’t get me wrong, commercials have their place, especially the entertaining like mini-movies during the Super Bowl.

What about searching online and doing the research, (duh Frank, a no brainer) and specifically on You Tube?

YouTube can be a powerful research weapon and when it comes to car reviews we have the authentic and raw Matt Farah, yes indeedy…well over 1000 vehicle reviews and counting people, of The Smoking Tire https://bit.ly/2CHFU72!

On this episode of Wrench Nation, he reveals his why and how it all started back during the Wild West beginnings of YouTube in 2006.

Here is a brief sample of the show transcript–Matt Farah’s position on the social media aspect of what people see and what ..actually goes on behind the scenes- as well as his view on haters and the messy business in the comments section at times …

Frank Leutz : There you go. Alright, well speaking of music..before you prepare, if I could ask this man because again, you know..hanging with the audience about what they’re doing and their particular interests and goals.. YouTube is a huge world out there..

How do you prepare when you do a car review and is there a difference between, alright I’m doing this Lamborghini review or I’m doing this jeep review ..what frame of mind do you put yourself in before you start on that?

Matt Farah : I just have to picture myself as the kind of person shopping for a vehicle in this closet and my specialty is sports cars more so than you know, truck or suv or families. So I feel like the, I have, you know, in the beginning it was more putting myself in the head of the audience. Now after 10 years of doing this I feel like the people that are still sticking around are people that are relating to my thoughts for myself. So at this point in my, when I do a car, it’s what do I like and what do I not like and feel like a big chunk of the audience knows enough about me in my life, uh, that, that they can relate to that or some of them don’t. Some of them think I’m stupid, but..

Frank Leutz : …you said something powerful right there. For a lot of our listeners, the beginnings are always messy, right ?..and we have a tendency to sort of self monitor what we do – whether we’re on mic are on film.. and we may only know that there is a drive that we can do this. We believe in what we’re doing….and then the comments come in..the beginning when you first started, you know, let’s say 10 videos and maybe you’ve got three to four thousand subs on Youtube..I don’t care what anybody says..that’s a messy place in the comments section -yes ?

How did you handle that ..did it affect you or did you just say .. you know what, screw this, I’m going to do me ?

Matt Farah : It’s not black and white.

Matt Farah : Both..both are true. I think that there have been constructive comments, there have been kind comments, there have been comments that are critical- but written in a way that are reasonable enough & respectful that they’re worthy of taking into consideration…and then there are people who were very angry for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with you, but they’ve chosen to expel that anger at whatever it is that you’re doing that they find to, you know, subconsciously be better than whatever they’re doing. You know, the problem with social media, all of it, and Youtube, Instagram, whatever it is….It’s edited life.

Matt Farah : Edited life is very dangerous because to a lot of people, my life looks incredibly glamorous because I’m driving these cool cars all the time..and for a long time..I was putting out a video every day. I’ve since styled that back, and doing that it seems like, oh my God, like, look at all of this content you know..but I’m not filming the like 40 hours a week of answering emails …

Frank Leutz : yes and ..post production…

Matt Farah : ..and you know, the unpaid transit days..and so there’s just a lot of stuff about edited life..It isn’t, isn’t real and that you know that can be the dangerous part of social media and that’s how you end up with like haters or whatever, you know..also if you have an opinion, if you know you’re strong enough to have an opinion and that opinion was your real face and your real name, there’s going to be someone who’s going to hide behind a username and scream at you, you know, that’s, that’s sort of life. So I, I turned off comments on my instagram ….(catch the full show upload https://www.wrenchnation.tv/radio-show/139-matt-farah/ )

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