Q&A with Mike Trapp of UM, ACTUALLY

Mike Trapp is the creator and host for the geeky internet game show Um, Actually. I had the great pleasure of asking Trapp a few questions about the show and will now share what I have learned. In short, the writing team consists of Trapp and one other person, they like to have at least some of the contestants know each other before the show, and the entire show is made in good humor. You can watch Um, Actually on CollegeHumor’s streaming service DROPOUT now.

Where did the idea of nerds correcting others via a game show come from? How did you then take the idea and form it into an actual show?

These kinds of unwanted corrections pop up all the time in real life, especially on the Internet. I find it a fascinating pattern of behavior. On the one hand it is often toxic and exclusionary— aggressive gatekeeping meant to shame the “unworthy.” On the other hand, it is sometimes a pure expression of enthusiasm— an excuse to discuss a thing the corrector deeply loves. So there’s a natural tension where the corrector is simultaneously inviting someone to discuss a topic while actively excluding them.

A game show seemed like a fun way to mock the worst parts of this behavior while celebrating enthusiasm and extensive knowledge. It’s a way to point out how annoying those corrections can be, but also say “I’m giving you permission to do this to me.” And since this sort of correcting never seems to happen with boring-but-important everyday skills, we wanted to final punchline to be a real life skills question that ideally no one would get correct.

The first time I ran the show was as a short segment at the UCB with audience contestants, and it just kept growing from there!

If you were to be a contestant, what would your strong suits be?

Oof, I am not NEARLY as knowledgeable as a lot of the folks we have on the show. I love talking to people about their interests, so I have general awareness of a lot of different topics, but lack the deep knowledge base you need to rack up a lot of points on this show. That being said, I think I’d hold my own with folklore and mythology, many sci-fi and fantasy books, and animated Disney movies.

How do you go about selecting who will be playing against who?

There’s actually a lot of thought that goes into this. I like having at least two people who know each other on the same episode, since it makes everyone more relaxed and eager to talk.

Generally in our casting we try to have as much diversity as we can. Especially since this show mocks behavior that sometimes aims to exclude women and minorities, inclusivity is doubly important.

I like to have one person who is “there to win,” trying to get everything right, and one person who is down to just laugh and have a good time even if they’re losing.

Usually we want contestants to have only partial overlap of interests so we can cover a lot of topics while keeping the game competitive, but this season we’ve diverged a bit with “themed episodes” where we cover only one topic. They are some of my favorite episodes we’ve ever shot.

How do you think of the incorrect statements? I'm guessing there's a team involved, how long does it take to create enough questions for an episode?

We have a fun-first approach to writing our statements. We start with either an interesting piece of trivia, a funny observation, or a commonly made mistake. We then work backwards to make something wrong, and scatter a few extra red herrings to throw people off.

There is sort of a team? The smallest possible definition of team. By which I mean there is one other person. This season it was the wonderful Michael Saltzman, who you will sometimes hear in episodes as our live fact-checker. Since it’s just the two of us it can take a little while to write everything we need. We give ourselves two months to write about 160 statements, the shoot a batch of several episodes at once.

Have you considered releasing Um, Actually as a board/video game?

We have considered this! Strongly considered it! So strongly that there might be more information coming about those strong considerations in the not too distant future.

How can I get on the show?

You? By asking this question! I’ll connect you with a producer if you’d like to come on!

For the average viewer — we were able to do a round of fan contestants recently, which I’d like to do again. That’s a perk we reserve for Dropout subscribers, so any further information about that will probably come on the Dropout Discord server.

What has been one of your favorite memories from the show?

We have all-horror episode set to release around Halloween that was an absolute blast. All the contestants were so passionate that the whole episode is imbued with an infectious energy. I specifically loved how oddly supportive this episode was considering the subject matter — it’s the only time we’ve had contestants try to answer a question simultaneously so they could all share in the glory of being right.

Thanks for answering my questions and thanks for making the show. It's a lot of fun.

Thank you for watching!