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I’d appreciate it if you read this prior to watching the video.
If you read The Romania Report, you know this trip to speak at TEDx was an experience in anxiety. The tl;dr is that everyone who spoke before me did it in Romanian, and I had no idea if my jokes / slang would land, and I was nervous as all shit.
But the jokes did land, mostly. The crowd was great, and I got a lot of good laughs. Fucking problem is that you can’t hear them, so I kind of look like an idiot up there in this video. Speaking of, TEDx has this video “in review” or some shit. Everyone else from the event has had theirs published, but mine isn’t available on their YouTube channel and might never be. Cuz pearl clutching over f bombs.
Anyway, when you begin watching, you’ll notice that the sound is terrible. I crack a small joke (“Dad, you’re ADHD as fuck") at the very beginning and it got some small laughs to get things going. But at least you can hear those laughs because the input they used was the entire theatre. Less than a minute in, you can hear that they switch to using my mic as the input.
I got quite a few laughs during the talk, but my mic doesn’t pic them up. At 4:45 I crack a joke that got big laughs and you can barely hear it. Instead, you hear me occasionally chuckling when I make a joke. What you can’t tell is that I’M LAUGHING WITH THE FUCKING CROWD. And so, I look like an idiot who laughs at his own jokes when no one else does.
I’m not saying I’m this amazing public speaker. In fact, this made me realize that I use the word “So” WAY too often, and I definitely have a lot of work to do to improve. Part of me doesn’t even want TEDx to post it because not being able to hear the audience really doesn’t make me look good.
Anyfuckingway, watch it if you like. I DO appreciate all the help you folks provided with feedback on the written version of the speech.
My ADHD and Creativity TEDx Presentation in Transylvania