EPISODE 25
TRANSCRIPT
0:00:11.5 S1: Hey, welcome to Dear one writer were two writers today discuss. We try to deliver heavy ever after and offer Quest advice for all of your relationship, work and life problems. I'm zord
0:00:26.0 S2: And I'm Rod parish. We've got a great show for you today. Areas still recovering from her bug, but I hate the word thing out here next time. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, it has always been a week... How are you you? I'm okay, I'm
0:00:45.7 S1: Okay. I'm sort of settling into the reality that it is autumn, it's my favorite season, but I feel like I'm not quite ready for the sun doesn't come up until 8 00 AM and goes down at 40 PM time of the era with you.
0:01:04.0 S2: I also feel like the seasonal shift happened to weirdly late this season, and so I've decided that October 31st... Halloween ushered in October. So that was the over and then November is now October Part 2, until December 1st when it will be the holiday season to join me if you want, in the second year, we're having...
0:01:31.7 S1: I like it, I like October and awesome months. I'm happy to have an extended October
0:01:36.5 S2: To the remembers useless, nothing good on it, so it should clearly be subsumed by October and
0:01:44.2 S1: Although now that we are properly celebrating Native American heritage month in November, it has... It's like finally coming into its own, because before that I had my least favorite holiday in it, you know, to be in it, so I feel like we're celebrating the right things now and mother... So you have some things to prove November, approve us present. That's true, that's true.
0:02:07.3 S2: Okay, well, that's a great point.
0:02:10.6 S1: I was a little like, if that... Literally, the day after Halloween, they started showing like holiday commercials, oh my God. And it was subtle, it wasn't like Santa Claus and Christmas trees, but it was like the lights in the background and the bells jingle, and I was like, I know what you're doing. I know what you're doing.
0:02:29.7 S2: Yeah, it's a slow slide, I just think... Have some fucking respect the Vale. Everything's still flying around and you're like, Oh, I tell... I don't know.
0:02:44.2 S1: A forgetting... We're getting to board the end of the year, so it'll be interesting to see... I'm looking forward to 2022, I... I don't wanna wish time away because... Day should enjoy every moment. But 2020 tested us all 2021, it wasn't a whole lot better, even though we did go to a Flyers game, I was like, well, it was like going to an actual event where people and the energy and the cheering for the team and that kind of was... We were at the Wells Fargo Center in Philly, and so it's like everyone had to wear masks and they got a new ventilation system and it was about 40%, 45% capacity, and we were in a box, because Mr. Access company has a box that we were away from other people mostly, so we felt safe, it was like... I'd been to a couple of places, indoor places, but he hadn't, so for him, it was a big deal to go to somewhere, and it was a lot of people, but we felt safe enough, but it was weird thinking about all the concerts and stuff, you go to you've been to and then you don't do that for two years and you go back and it's like, Oh my God, there's people knew
0:03:52.8 S2: We went to... Me and my friend Christina and I went before Halloween to field of screams in RPA, and it's a huge haunted attraction, like 200 houses, hayride, and a haunted outdoor thing, and it was the first big public thing that I went to and we were wearing masks. But I would say we were part of the 10% of people that were wearing masks and none of the performers were, and so in the haunted houses, it's like people getting very close and touching you and doing all this stuff, and I was like, How are these people that are not wearing mask, letting these total strangers breathe on their faces, that's the real heart of the ones... Those of us were in masks, the people didn't come as close to as 'cause clearly they were like, Oh, these people acknowledge there's a global pandemic going on to... Right. Anyway, it was... It was stressful actually. I loved it. 100 houses were amazing, but it was definitely struts will be enormity with people and just not trusting them because I'm like, Well, you don't understand the global pandemic going on, what other bat shit this
0:05:03.6 S1: Exactly, right? Yeah, it was where we were in this box, which only seems like 20, 25 people, but it was full, but everyone was... There was from miracles company and everyone has to get back at even if you're vaccinated it, they still test every other week, so they're very diligent about us, we knew everyone around us was vaccinated and negative and stuff like that, but they were like, where your mass ones you're eating or drinking, and we just looked around, people were just holding things so that they wouldn't have to put their mask on, and so... So we were like Epic up, but yeah, it was... Some people just really don't take this whole thing seriously, and I don't get it. I don't get it, but we don't wanna go down that rabbit hole. Now, that's a whole different conversation.
0:05:43.5 S2: I also don't get it, and that's why I have to move to the middle of nowhere and with no one around me and not anything... Speaking of things that suck. No, speaking of basically stressful things, let's get on to our letter, so this is a great one, it's from love letters, and it signed my heart, which... Very son. Okay, definitely years after college, I lived with a boyfriend for three years who I thought I would marry, we loved each other very much, but had some trust issues in our relationship ultimately, and then badly... Fast forward to today, 21 years later, I've been married for 14 years. He's been married for several more, we got back in touch probably three years ago now, and had been emailing, texting almost daily, after some on and off contact since about 20, 2008 until we finally met up again in June, our emails and texts were mostly mostly Ferny and sexual in nature, and we met up to fool around, and we saw each other, it was as the... No time had passed and I felt as if I'd found my missing piece. He felt the same. It was less about sex and more about wanting to just be together, he lives far away and was here for a quick visit, so we just saw each other twice for about an hour each time, we just talked and cast being with him made me happier than I felt in a very long time, but now I'm lost.
0:07:12.6 S2: We're both married with kids, do wanna follow my heart and see where things could go with him, or do I stay in my marriage knowing that a huge piece of my heart is with someone else signed my heart...
0:07:26.0 S1: I feel like we've had not this issue, but this conversation before, where you have to... It's like Let the cliche of the pros and cons, like look at your life now and look at what what the potential could be and weigh those things and figure out which one you're willing to take a risk on, are you gonna risk staying where you are and being content there, sort of like the devil, you know, or are you gonna risk throwing all of that away with all the consequences that come with that 14 years is... That's a life Titan, there's kids involved and stuff like that to go after this thing that admittedly they were kids when it ended badly, but yeah, this could be just escapism for the both of them, and then they get together and find out that's all it was. That's a lot. You're talking about two families, two lifetimes to disrupt, to chase this thing that's just thrilling and you like the flash of passion or whatever is happening there, that these are some huge, huge, huge issues here.
0:08:31.6 S2: Yeah, and part of me wishes that this letter writer had added like, how is her current relationship with their current relationship... What's the status? I mean, okay, it's interesting 'cause I was just talking about this with a friend recently who has been contacted kind of out of the blue two times in a row recently by X's people that he dated 10 years before, and we were talking about it and he was like Am I giving off some kind of like, hit me up after 10 years, Vive, 'cause like with two different people, which I think is really interesting because... I mean, no, I don't think there's some hit me up after 10 years... Five per se. But I do think that people... There are some people who are... Who cycle in and out of our lives. And I don't mean that some kind of faded as kind of way, but if you have relationships with people, there are cycles to them, and I do think that social media has set us up to be able to get back in touch in these ways, or even just email us, get back in touch and see pieces of people's lives in these ways that previously weren't as common
0:09:44.4 S1: As just my onita friends or whatever, and it's like, Oh... And you're like, Man, I haven't talked to that person in 10 years, but they're right there and it's tempting to click on the photos and...
0:09:57.2 S2: Exactly, and I think that my main thought about this person's relationship when they say they only met up for two time, an hour, two times an hour or two times. Yeah, I certainly don't think that literally two hours of a good time what someone is worth throwing the way of a relationship, but I think that's not really the question even, I think that the question is, like you were saying, is always about choosing potential over status quo, and for most people who are in the situation, my sense is it's not really about the person at all, it's really about looking at yourself and saying like, Oh, I am suddenly reminded that my life is not set, that there are things that I can do that can set me on a new path and like I have opportunities that are not just continue in the life that I have, and I think that I'm assuming that this letter writer is a woman, but I don't know for sure. Yeah.
0:11:09.0 S1: I don't think they say...
0:11:10.3 S2: They don't say... But one of the things that I think is super interesting, and obviously this happens to people socialize as men too, but I think one thing that's really interesting is that overwhelmingly, the people that I know in this situation have always been women, and I think that for me, part of it seems like people socialized as women are taught by society that when you get married to someone and have kids, you've achieved your goal and you've done it, so henceforth, your life is just living through that goal until you die, and not in... That life may be wonderful, but that's the achievement of your social romantic.
0:11:55.9 S1: That's the pinnacle that you can... Yeah, exactly.
0:11:59.0 S2: And so then what happens is people who achieve that goal start to feel like, Well, I don't have any more choices left, I don't have any more... Any choice that I might have about how my life is gonna go, isn't gonna be in that role, maybe it's on a good job saying, and that could change or a friend thing. But in terms of Hiromi life, it's just that I reached the thing and now it's done, and I think that that's different for men, they're not... People socialized is that are not taught that in quite the same way, it especially 'cause they can have kids biologically later and have second families and third families or whatever, but more partly, I think people socialized as women, learn that once they've achieved the pinnacle, they know what their life is gonna look like... And I feel like these kind of scenarios happen and the person doesn't matter, the new relationship doesn't matter, but what it is, is this re-invigorating of a piece of your life that you were told by society is to... And so the intoxicating thing, I think, is it this person like you feel comfortable and familiar and a spark with them because you knew them a bunch of years ago, and so you already have a shared common ground.
0:13:11.2 S2: It's not Metcalf your life, it's just good old-fashioned, like meeting up with an old friend, you know, nostalgia missal and feel filling in the blanks and being like, I don't have to do small talk with this person 'cause we already know each other, and that feels metrical. Because its skirt social arms, so I wouldn't worry about this person, they're not your soul mate, maybe they are, but that's not the point, the print, you feel like you are getting back in touch with the possibilities of your own life in a way that feels so intoxicating they are actually contemplating throwing away or losing a marriage of 14 years and your family, and what that says to me above all is you gotta get out more... Yeah, yeah, you need to invigorate your life with your partner or with yourself in ways that give you this opportunity to feel the kind of potential and uncertainty and excitement that you felt having this meet up with this X who you haven't seen in years and years and years.
0:14:20.8 S1: Yeah, not even the meet-up still, but the three years of texting and emailing, because they basically... This was all prefaced by, okay, we got back in touch, and then off and on, and then for some reason, 'cause it was 2008 and then they met up again, and then all of a sudden it was like three years solid of having a side relationship, texts and emails and stuff, and that was finally consummated physically, so there was definitely either something missing in this person's life, some part of them that they lost touch with, there was a disconnect, so like you said, they need to figure out whether they can connect with that part of themselves in the marriage that they're in, do they need to single to put that part of themselves, do they need to be with this other person, is it the other person that brings it out in them, says that's the misconception that you need this other person to bring it out, they need to really do some self-reflection here rather than this, my spouse or this guy, you know... There's another path, right? There's not that. So yeah, you always talk about dating yourself and getting to know yourself, and I think this is a prime example of someone who really needs to figure out what they want from life before they...
0:15:29.3 S1: I mean, don't go to your partner and say, I'm leaving you for this person... You know what I mean? That's like... 'cause if that includes on that side, and then your partner is here, and then what you do is figure out what you want before you decide anything, really... Even if you say to your partner, you know what, I'm at this place where I need to figure out what I want. Give me some space. Or whatever it is, or this is where my head is. Or whatever it is, have a conversation if you need to, but jumping from one thing into another, it's just recipe Hooters be jumping into...
0:16:05.3 S2: As a fantasy, right?
0:16:07.0 S1: Yeah, most likely. Yeah.
0:16:08.7 S2: Yeah, even three years of regular email contacts and I... So curated, right? You're Curtis all carried, and I certainly believe that you can fall in love with someone through words like, Oh yeah, of course, we're living up. Of course, I believe that, but I think like if you're in a long-term marriage with kids, you have all these parts of that relationship that are the... The fun part, the clunky parts, the bickering about groceries parts, and none of that isn't gonna be present with this other person, it's just that you aren't experiencing it with them, so it feels like a fantasy, it feels like an escape, it feels like a different kind of relationship than the one you have with your husband, and it is a different kind of relationship because it's one that has no errands or obligations, it's all the good parts and none of the sort of slog parts. And so when if you were to leave your husband and go with this other person, eventually, no matter how much you love each other, your relationship would then also start to have the slow parts.
0:17:14.2 S1: And I mean, they're built in because there's two families involved in... Are you gonna walk away from your kids... So your kids and his kids are still gonna be part of your life. You're in that... Yeah, right. It's a really much... But with like, So... Yeah, yeah, you're right. I agree with you 100%. It's very...
0:17:33.0 S2: Situation is not... Well, okay, can I ask Sara secondary question to this, which is the thing that I can't stop thinking about, Is this person's partner that she's been maintaining a relationship with while having this three-year sort of like emotional affair and now a physical affair as well, like... Do you think she should tell him... Do you think he shows it to him, to tell him what's your opinion about someone having this kind of emotional affair and what their obligations are to their partner?
0:18:09.4 S1: Yeah, I'm always back and forth on that because I'm... What is the old saying? What? You don't know, it won't hurt you or whatever, that old adage or whatever, I think it's an individual choice because you... Especially if she or he or they have this stable home life, but you're just gonna drop this bomb on... With kids involved and all of that, is that what are the repercussions of that? And you have to find a way to have that conversation in a way that's safe for everyone. You know what I mean? Which I don't even know if that's possible. So I think it's an individual thing. If it's a relationship that is strained or they're just together for the kids or whatever it is, then that's a whole different situation, if it's one where they're like the partners completely devoted, and this is coming out of the blue, that could really cause some... You know what I mean? So I think it's an individual thing, but it is interesting to me that they don't mention anything about the guy's family, the high school friends family, because he's been married longer, also has kids, I think... Maybe not.
0:19:17.0 S1: I think so. Yeah, so there's nothing in here about his situation at all, there's really nothing in here about their situation at home either, it's all about the two of them, which to me screams about screams of escape-ism or like nostalgia. I remember where we were 18 and together, and how crazy and passionate and everything was, and now everything is just sort of like a drudgery, I've gotta make the kids to school and taking no soccer practice and all the other stuff. And when we were together, we didn't have any of that, and if we were together again, we wouldn't have any of that, but you would... Because you're still... The kids are gonna disappear just because you guys decided to do the other... But I think that's a long answer to your question, but yeah, I think it's... I would never say to someone, you have to or don't, because it's all about the individual situation, you know...
0:20:04.4 S2: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting 'cause I've been trying to answer that for myself, and I don't think that I could keep that a secret from my partner and just go on as if I relate, I could never keep that a secret for three years. I couldn't do that, but also if I had... I don't know, I just, I value... What do I say? I value honesty, I don't need a value, never telling a tiny little lie or anything like that, but what I value is genuine connection, and I guess I feel like if my partner, we're having what is essentially a very deep and long-term emotional affair with someone else, it's not that I think we couldn't still be having our relationship and have it be great. I believe that non-monogamy is totally valid, and you certainly can be, but if I didn't know about it, that... I think finding out about it, it would be hard, heart-breaking and really upsetting, but also maybe would answer some questions about why our relationship had felt less connected or more... More like, Okay, on Selby Esme surface. Right, right. I don't know, I definitely am of the opinion that you should be honest and genuine as much as you can out of respect for the connection that you have with your partner at...
0:21:34.0 S2: I don't have kids, I don't know. I say This is the child of parents who are still together and still deeply in laws, and I'm very grateful for that, and I had friends whose parents were, got divorced and it was very upsetting for them, and I know that they have a very different take on it, but I also don't ever think that you should stay together for your kids... No.
0:21:54.5 S1: No, I think... No, no, no.
0:21:56.2 S2: I think it models behavior that I wouldn't want to imprint on a child, even if their life would for a few years, the somewhat less disturbed physically in terms of place. And again, I didn't experience a divorced parent, so I understand that, I don't know exactly, but I do feel strongly that even if they are just staying together for the kids, but that's not a good reason to stay together.
0:22:22.5 S1: But now I think the sang together for the kids is an odd thing to me because kids feel all of that emotional strife, intention, and people think that kids can't pick up on that, which is really bizarre, and also co-parenting doesn't have to be a marriage or romantic involvement. I have friends who co-parent and they're really good friends, a couple of best friends, they take care of their kids and the kid is great, the kids totally adjusted, well adjusted and happy as both of his parents in his life, and there's no... You know what I mean? They never argue or there's no strife, but it's just so much less drama then trying to force a situation because, Oh, we have to do it for the kid, is just... My parents divorced when I was a baby or title, I'm not even sure when it was... Honestly, they should not have been to get her the... Or just not a fit. But yeah, my dad, it was his third... Was like third times a charm, it was his third wife, my step-mom, and she's fantastic, they've been married for 30 something years, but it took a while for him to find his person...
0:23:32.6 S1: Marriage is not for everyone, and marriage is not forever, you go in into it and wanting it to be forever, but if it doesn't work out, there are ways to not be married anymore, and I think that that pressure that religion and society puts on people to stay married when they're unhappy, unhappy, and I'm not talking about like, Oh, you got on my nerves today, you put the toothbrush and wrong or something like that, but that deep dissatisfaction and un-fulfillment then why are you... What's the point?
0:24:02.8 S2: I know, I wish that on my worst enemy. Frankly, that kind of like not feeling good in your own home and your own relationship with... If you're supposed to be able to trust with every part of you, I would not wish on my worst enemy the feeling of being stuck in that, and I would never want children to grow up thinking that that's the idea... Exactly it of thinking that you're very presence in your parent's life made them stay in that situation when they could have gotten divorced and each both been great parents and been happy. I just think that, yeah, it's part of the the societal worship of children and parenthood that... And marriage and marriage that I think is so toxic, and the idea that we have to do all these things for the children, it's more important than our personal ambitions or happiness, I'm like, Well, what messages then do you think your children are going to learn it? Not like you can say, we're gonna stay together and for our children because they're super important, but also would never want our children to stay together in an unhappy relationship, and I'm like, Well, they're going to...
0:25:13.8 S2: 'cause they learned it from you...
0:25:16.3 S1: No, it's like you were saying, people who are socialized as women are sometimes in certain communities, taught that marriage is... It's the end goal, it marriage and children's end game, and that even if you're miserable, you stick with it, you just do not give up on... It's like you're failing. If you somehow don't make this marriage work through thick and thin, doesn't matter if there's violence involved, that there's cheating about whatever it is, you just suck it up and you find a way to be happy on your own, you take up your knitting or you... You join the tea or whatever it is, don't worry about that. And I don't understand that at all at all.
0:26:02.8 S2: And listening, when you say it like that, just hearing it reflected back in like that is so absurd. That perilous, first of all, is the fact that we live in a... A couple, a society that places the couple above or had or whatever is just arbitrary, it's arbitrary based on patrilineal inheritance of land that we don't need it more, so we heat's fine, we can just get us in it. It's no big deal. Also the fact that our rights, but getting married has a literal gain in terms of your financial rewarded for it forwarded for it by a government of our country is absurd. The entire thing is ridiculous, and I don't mean the marriage for love, like this is not a critique of people who want to be married to the person that love, this is the critique by institutional, of placing marriage as a system that is Lord over all other potential systems of connection, and when you look at it that way, is something that's arbitrary, the idea that you would like at the age of, say, like 27, meet someone and marry them and have kids, and then can sign yourself potentially to misery for the rest of your life.
0:27:23.7 S2: If you fall out of love with them, I'm like, Okay, cool. You only get one life, if that's how you wanna live it, right, your choice, but it seems like an absolutely bloody terrible one to me.
0:27:35.5 S1: Yeah, you're right about the whole couple of them thing at being put at the top of the pyramid, because remember, I don't remember who it was, may be a holy Clinton or somebody who was... Something about it takes a village. Who wasn't that said that It takes a... Aland people were up in arms. Because how dare you say that it takes a lot to... It's like, Well, what do you think? Like Schools are... What do you think your church or whatever it is, do you think that's your community, that's your village? What are you talking about? As
0:28:03.0 S2: In the Western, the especially American tradition of moving out of your family's house and moving into just a domicile for your immediate nuclear family, so that you are purposely isolating yourself from the community of your family and friends to raise a child is just underscoring that. I don't know, my sister and her wife have a kid, and they... Up until six months ago, I lived in a collective House, and it was amazing because if they needed to run out to the grocery store, they could call it one of their hospices in the kitchen and they could be like, Hey, can you watch the kids for an hour, they're napping, just listen to the monitor, or now they move... They just love to Mount Airy and landed in this idyllic, a little community with a bunch of other young parents and some folks who lived in the neighborhood forever and just watch all the neighborhood kids, and they do it, they have their kid in daycare with... That's a roving daycare, so it's in a different person's house each week, like a different rows that you don't need a space, you can just use the houses of the people, and that means you get to play with different toys every week, you get to have different rules of the house every week.
0:29:15.9 S2: So you learn that other people have roles that are the same as the rules of your house and the... Shane's really beautiful, I think because their child is growing up with a lot of adults, which means that the kids... These kids are never gonna fall into the situation of being in a setting where their parents are abusive and they don't know anyone that they can turn to, right. This whole network of adults, they are in day care with these other kids who they're learning their cultures, the rules of their homes, the traditions of their family and their holidays and everything, and it's like, Yeah, that's a great way to... It's not the only way to do it, but to me it seems so much more practical at a as valid, if not more...
0:29:59.6 S1: Yeah, yeah.
0:30:00.7 S2: Yeah, it's just so much more manageable than having... One of the parents has to go to the bathroom, and the other ones that work, so you have to just like your kids right in there, you have to take the kid into the... Or something, I don't know. Yeah, and I have other friends who are a part of a romantic triad who have a kid, and I was hanging out with my friend the other day, and I was like, Hey, how's everything going? How's the baby? And she was like, You know what makes raising... I can't way easier. Having three people around. So it's interesting to read a letter like this, and just so many of the other letters we get that are like, clearly the solution to these people's problems is destroy the white supremacist Tera patriarchy, that's just the clear answer, like all of your problems are because you respect the rules of society and culture that wants you to suffer, but we just keep it.
0:30:55.1 S1: It's amazing that in 2021, now, almost 2022, you have people who are still... And it's not a fault or anything, it's just the way they were raised, bound to that idea that if they don't make this... If they don't stick with it, they failed, right? That's a huge obstacle to overcome emotionally when you've been conditioned your entire life, and especially for people who were socialized as women, 'cause it's like You... Boys will be both boys If he's plotting with the secretary or doing whatever, and you're like, Oh well, he still comes home to me, that whole thing, I was just like... Yeah, but in terms of this letter, yeah, I think that there's a lot of conversation that needs to happen, not only between really between the two... High school, I don't... Do two people who have reconnected because they've got worlds built around them that they're going to blow up if they pursue this and they need to decide whether it's just the exhilaration of being in something clandestine, the nostalgia, revisiting their youth, whatever it is. Or if it's something really solid, and this is what should have happened, we were just too scared.
0:32:09.0 S1: His kids that we need to make this happen. Let's figure out how we're gonna do this without harm, without really doing the least amount of farmers we can, then that's a conversation that they need to have, but crowdsourcing it, it's probably not going to help much.
0:32:25.9 S2: Yeah, I feel, I really do feel for everyone in this situation, it doesn't seem like there's any... Already done the damage by having this three-year-long... Yeah, and I don't mean like, you've done it, you're bad, I just mean like you made their choice that is gonna be damaging to yourself through heartbreak of losing one of these relationships or... I mean, Hey, maybe you know, I'll talk to your husband and be like, Listen, I love you so much, but something has been missing and I am partly responsible because I've been having this reconnection with someone over the last few years, and it's escalated and maybe to your husband and your husband will be like, You know what, I also think something is missing, and there's a person at work who I'm really attracted to, and maybe we should both try to maintain this relationship and open it up and see where our hearts take us. That would be the best case scenario. Yeah, and if that happened, I fingers crossed that that's exactly what happens.
0:33:26.1 S1: I'm just gonna pretend that that's what happens and everyone ends up happy and the kids get extra presence for berths and stuff.
0:33:34.2 S2: That's why that's why that's what's going on in my head now, and I don't notice like a fan fiction or letters that we get here is... Wait.
0:33:44.1 S1: No.
0:33:44.6 S2: So the husband and the high school friend meet and there's a connection there, and I like... The couples end up buying a compound on my gosh, holding sustainable farming, solar panels and rain barrels, and they live as two couples that all are romantically linked together, and all the kids grow up and their best friends.
0:34:07.4 S1: And I moved to Vermont and they open a maple farm. Yes.
0:34:10.9 S2: I think at the and. Yes. Okay, I love it. Cautions everyone. Congratulations My Heart. We saw a party. We solved your problem.
0:34:22.3 S1: Okay, Avery's gonna be sad that she missed that one, I'm sure you have plenty to say, which is probably like in the comments... Over in the comments.
0:34:31.6 S2: The color. My gosh, well, I really enjoyed talking about that, I think that it kind of segues great into our topic, which is, I think social media is destroying or impacting our communication, and I feel like we already started talking about that the social media is... Design, built into its design is this impetus to reconnect, not just to connect you with new people, but to reconnect you with people that you may have lost touch with, what is definitely changing our communication, but... Yeah, what do you think is social media? I won't say run-changing, how is it changing our communication, it's changing
0:35:13.4 S1: The way people consume information, it's changing... Communication's changing connection. I am not an opponent of social media because I think it does way more good than it does bad in terms of spreading information connecting the world, like I've seen so many beautiful stories. Even I was reluctant to join tiktok, for instance. I knew they were funny dance videos, all this and stuff on there, but I was like, Yeah, that just sounds like another place for people to see the stuff that the few in social media, but it's... So the algorithms there, the way they work, it sort of guys you to the corner that you kinda wanna be in, and if you find yourself in a corner, you don't wanna be in, you just quickly pivot, and so I feel like that's an interesting thing there, but I do think that it can be... Well, I don't know if I was telling you about this a couple of years ago, I went to see Van called Massive Attack and concert, and I never thought I'd get to see them because they now... But I was like, Oh my God, I'm gonna go see it. So him twice, and their show was them, and then they had their guest singers come out and then behind them, they had these huge LED screens with imagery flashing, and so each set song was a story, but the overall theme of the night was technology and how it's impacted our lives since since they've been around the early 2000s or late 99s or whatever...
0:36:38.6 S1: Late 90s, and one of the sons, and I can't remember what song it was. I don't have to find a clip on YouTube, but it was talking about how we never let people die because we have images of them and we watch them, we're like, This is the first time in history, these last 100 years or so, where we have images and recordings of dead people around us all the time, like before you had maybe had a photograph or a painting or something like that, but now we have movies, we have recordings, we have digital foot, whatever it is of people, and so they're always around and so we're surrounding ourselves with imagery of people who aren't here anymore, and one day I went to log on to Facebook, and you know how it does like you might know this person because you have mutual friends, it suggested that I friend someone who actually stopped me when I was in high school, and it was such a triggering moment for me that I literally jumped out of my chair and I'm a laptop shop was like, what the hell, because I haven't seen or heard from this person since I was in high school, so I don't know how Facebook even knew that we might know each other, except that we had like three or four people in common, and it just was like, it can cost you in that way, or when you're on Twitter or on tiktok, whatever it is, and some piece of heat gets put in front of you, because it's trying to figure out whether you're interested in it or not, and there's no one behind, they're going, Oh, well, this might hurt this person, or this might...
0:38:07.5 S1: You know what I mean? This might trigger this person and bring up something or whatever said, I think we have a lot of work to do in terms of AI and working with that because... That was not fun. That was not a fine moment. But I think that our ability to listen as we were talking about the last episode and absorb information and have discourse has been harmed, because we get everything so quickly and everyone has the same voice and everyone is shouting loudly, and so you don't know, that's why we have such a problem with misinformation, not 'cause anybody can put on a suit instead of behind the desk and put a green screen behind that it looks like a news thing and throw up on YouTube, and people think it's a news, like an actual news program, and they just take Ivermectin or whatever it is. You know that and you're like... You're like, What? This is not right. No, they're not real, but they can't discern the difference between a regular news channel and what these people are doing, so I think in that way, it's been really harmful, but I do think that in terms of getting the word out and causes when things happen in Japan if there's an earthquake or whatever, people are motivated immediately to help, and I think that that the way that social media deals with that is amazing, so I wouldn't wanna give that up, but we need to figure out how to deal with the other part on the bad part attend.
0:39:29.3 S2: It's so interesting because I agree with you. I think that social media does so much good that I would never wanna sacrifice it. I think of like when we were teenagers, or maybe people like 10 years older than us were teenagers, and you could be like a queer kid in a small town in a rural Tarleton and not know a single other queer... I completely isolated. Yeah, exactly, and now that that can't happen, as long as you go to the library, just the internet, you don't even need to have a phone, like you can find people who are like you to talk to you get your questions answered. So I think that there is... And to me, that's worth misinformation is bad, but misinformation plus lots of good information is more important than... No misinformation and only a little bit of information. And I think that with social media literacy increasing, people do become more and more able to sort that out, and it was a pro skill that just needs to be taught in school now, we don't... Absolutely. Classes anymore, but we should... We don't have... We should, when we're teaching kids like composition and close reading, we should teach media literacy now in analyzing a film, Media Literacy, but I like, how do you know if a source is trustworthy Hannan of who put up a website? These are just things that are gonna have to be integrated into culture now that there are issues, but...
0:41:10.3 S2: Yeah, I totally agree with you. I think that the benefits of having access to information and people is so incredibly valuable and really is, or they don't call the Information Age for nothing, the onto our times contribution to culture, and if we could stop literally setting the planet on fire, so there was for a second. At two or three more generations. Maybe I would do a lot. Good. I also think one of the things that is super interesting to me, and I'm gonna think of this as a... I will argue that this is a kind of conversation or communication is open source, like crowd sourcing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I think is an absolutely amazing way to share information in a way that can make development and science and stuff move so much faster. So the idea that you could merge your laboratory with a laboratory in Cairo and the two of you could together to a synergistic work that you could never have done before when you had to fax something over to someone or write a letter or be running simultaneous testing and on things.
0:42:31.0 S1: Then they just did that with the vaccine, that's what was happening labs all over the world, and we're working on it at the same time and sharing information so that they could get there faster, I imagine. If they did that with everything, everything, yes, I can... Right, people would stop stopping it for half that the gatekeeping as a Gates round funding as well as on sourcing, there are projects and things, people getting help and products coming to market and stuff like that, that you wouldn't see if they had to go through normal channels.
0:43:03.4 S2: Yep, yeah, and I think that that's why whenever I get really frustrated looking at Twitter and it's like people is just the same silly straw man argument setting these things up to knock them down, bullshit. Every time I get really, I look at that and I get irritated, I try to remind myself that. That is the by-product. Right, that's the run-off, that's the kind of stuff that is a product of any time that you have a democratization of voices, but that... Or maybe democratization is not a great word, 'cause our current state of democracy is truly troubling, but kind of like an equity of voices, people having access... More voices, having access, of course, you're gonna run into more people saying things that are not what your friend group would say or not what you would wanna hear, and some of it's super damaging, and I think that we need to do a lot better at controlling it, but I do try to remind myself that You... You can rarely have one without the other, you can have a preponderance of voices without having some that are yelling, awful. Bullshit really loud. And then I do, and I agree, and I think one of the things that I do like about tiktok is there are a lot more voices on there that will correct.
0:44:34.4 S2: Misinformation, you see a lot of doctors and nurses who take the video and they let you take a clip from it, and then they say, Okay, let me just rebut this whole thing and tell you how I fall, all of this is... And they break it down with facts and numbers and whatever that I think is fantastic, and I think the ability for things to just take off there, like we were talking earlier about bands getting their start, don't take... Talk like somebody's in their bedroom, there's a lot of pandemic artists, a lot of people broke through during the pandemic because they're a song win viral to some dance on tiktok, and that's difficult as it is to make it as an artist in any medium in this world, to have a channel that lets you break through like that and reach millions of people like that, I mean... That's phenomenal. It's just amazing, and as authors, we were saying books hit the list because people on the otoe reading them and sharing them and talking about how much you love them too.
0:45:24.8 S1: It's just amazing. But yeah, we do have to put it with some bullshit for that...
0:45:29.5 S2: Totally, and I always try to think about the fact that one of the things that I am trying very hard to remind myself of always, but especially in the pandemic, is that you can't have generally the good parts of something without having the bad parts... The feature not a bug, right? So someone being able to respond really quickly to a bunch of ignorant shit is the flip side of someone being able to get information out there really quickly to crowdsource a solution to a problem, and so someone making a rude, horrible comment is the flip side of someone being able to make a supportive... Loved comedies. Centralize it doesn't centralize it, it doesn't make those things good or appealing or not harmful, but I have tried to remind myself a lot recently while stuck inside and consuming a lot of media at... Yeah, that sometimes the things that are the most irritating are the literal flip sides of the most beneficial things, and then I don't actually want to reject the one if it would mean rejecting the other.
0:46:42.6 S1: Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
0:46:46.1 S2: I will say that I'm super screen screen sick. I didn't have the thing in the pandemic that so many people had where I got... Where I wanted to get out of my house or go places, I love being in my house and I hate people and I don't wanna go nowhere, but what you definitely have is... Reyes, thank you. That's the word, it's like everything being mediated via the screen, and so last episode, we were talking about me going to Kappa for two weeks and not having... First of all, the power was out a lot of the time elsewhere on the Island, 'cause there was a no Easter, the cell service was out and there was no internet, but also just being in a place where you can kind of... Maybe not detox 'cause I don't think so. Sarto, but disconnect. Disconnect. Yeah, I do think that people talk about that is if it's something that's new to social media when actually like if you're anything but a super extrovert, you have to go do, talk or get a break from people or... That's what people do when they leave work at the end of the day, you have to let the work day fall away so that you get ready for your night, so I don't think that that's actually a new thing...
0:48:02.9 S2: No, absolutely. That's more visible when I'm like, Oh my God, get these... It's a TV, it's a work day, it's a thing to write on, it's the thing to choose the computer... Get it away from me. Give a tablet or something.
0:48:19.0 S1: Did you see the article? There was an article, and I didn't get a chance to read, 'cause you know how you're looking at something and then it refreshes and... And you lose it. But the headline was something about these girls on tiktok who are developing tics, like physical ticks from being on ticketing, techno reason I didn't catch what that was about, but I really wanna look further into that because I don't know what's happening. Is that like a real phenomenology, it's just to click anything? No.
0:48:45.5 S2: So I take anything. I'm so sorry. Apologize, everyone. Yeah, I'm curious, I'm gonna look that up. Yeah.
0:48:52.7 S1: Be curious about that. Every people, if you have an obsessive personality, it's easy to get obsessed with tiktok or Twitter or Instagram or whatever it is. I remember what Instagram got really big, people were talking about how Darla people identify these young women into these false beauty standards because everything in the angles and the filters and all other stuff, and now that's transferred over to tiktok, there's this whole thing was a six months ago, there's a whole thing about fitness talk and how it was promoting these bodies just morph and all kinds of stuff, and it was a really toxic sort of corner that I think they kinda got rid of a lot of it, just like closing those accounts down, who are just promoting just really unhealthy practices and stuff like that, so hopefully that's not still going on, but I think people were saying that about AOL back in the day and live journal and stuff, there was a corner that was a tumbler too, is just that corner and it's like, Oh, this is some bad stuff happening over here, but you don't send the whole thing out just because there's... Like you said, a bad apples or remember...
0:49:58.5 S2: Yeah, and I just think that that that is a thing that is gonna exist in real life and then infer into internet and social media, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't there in real life, it just need... Exactly. You didn't know about it.
0:50:12.0 S1: Exactly, right.
0:50:12.9 S2: Yeah. Every single generation, every group of parents are worried about something that their kids are doing, I of grandparents is worried about something that their kids are doing... If it's not online, it's offline, if it's not all lines online, it's always existed. It's always going to exist. People have unhealthy beauty standards have been with us forever, and it's like the people didn't understand what was happening with the justice system until they saw it on social media, and I was like, Well, this is not new, or my dad doesn't mean like, oh well, it just seems like there's a lot going on in the world. I was like, No, we're just hearing about it.
0:50:54.2 S1: Is not that this stuff wasn't going on before I ate... What have access to information?
0:50:58.7 S2: Not totally. The 24-hour news cycle is just a 24-hour coverage of news that was always going on, and I think... I don't... Like you were saying at the beginning, it does change our inter-interface, our brains are so that we are... We make connections by having... Being bombarded by so, so much information, I think there are people who... When I was in grad school, I didn't have social media, but I did get bombarded with so much information all the time because I was in classes and I was reading and I was studying, and I was... And I felt the same... Feel exactly the same kind of like, Oh my God. My brain is like, wah, wah, wah. I got down and Sara corner for a while, I'm like, That is exactly how I feel when I watch a lot of tiktok or something. And I just, I think it depends on who you are. When I watch tiktok, I'm like, Oh my gosh, this person just taught me how to communicate with Crows, so now when I buy my house in the country, I'll be the creepy Crow lady to The Crows and talking to them to make them come...
0:52:05.7 S2: Swarm around me, and I'm watching that because that is what I would wanna be looking up in a library if I had a library. So I don't think it fundamentally changes the content that we choose, it just changes the ease of our accesses to it.
0:52:22.4 S1: Yeah, I do think like what you were saying before about classes for kids, for media class, I think they should have that for seniors as well, because especially the last two election cycles have shown, is that seniors are susceptible to it way more, I think in the youth it's really difficult, even talking to my mom-in-law, it's really difficult to get her to understand the difference between a CNN clip on YouTube and some dude in his basement with a suit on a green screen, or like
0:52:53.8 S2: Understand what the confusion is, to be honest, but I know that it's a thing I eat. Don't eat that confusion would be
0:53:03.9 S1: A... This thing is an alternate use source, they're trying to be Tifton from all the corners, they think of it as an alternate is like, No, it's not real. So due with the theory or conspiracy theory, but I call myself a social media butterfly 'cause I kind of dabble on most of the channels, we have to as authors, you don't have to, but in order to reach readers, you go where they are.
0:53:28.5 S2: So I think it's interesting, 'cause I don't have any personal social media, I only have social media for my author world life, and I think that that also has helped me because I'm not using social media as an attempt to connect with my friends either, or to stay updated about people I went to high school with... For a couple of years, a friend that I met made me a Facebook page so we could stay in touch and I used it and then I cancelled it, but yeah, I've never had much social media personally, but I can see that it would feel different if you're 'cause my goal on social media is clear, it's to connect with readers and talk about my books and the things that interest me that aren't related to my books, it's to be super hilarious and have nobody notice like, This is why I'm on social media. But I guess if it were an attempt to stay connected with friends or family or whatever, maybe I would feel differently about how it's impacted my communication, but as a...
0:54:34.2 S1: I'm on my SEO social media, 95% of the time, and my personal social media, I hardly ever touch just like if I get a reminder or somebody comments or tag me in something, or for the birthday or whatever. But other than that, I don't really spend much time on that. Yeah, it's connecting with authors, with readers, with bloggers, with India book stores, whatever it is, that's where I spend most of my time. I was much for me and just like having fun, I try not to get too angry at some of the consumer stuff.
0:54:59.5 S2: Yeah, I'm figuring out tiktok. I love it as a consumer, I love looking at it, but I haven't really found my niche as a creator of content yet, and maybe I won't, I don't know, but I just feel... It's interesting, I love reading, obviously, I write books, but since that's my job, it's like I'm not interested in that corner of tiktok, I love getting book recommendations, if you do follow people who do to book stuff, but that's not where I'm active or where I want... I wanna take that 'cause I wanna learn weird shit about how to make cross be friends with me and all this stuff, and so I don't know really how to marry those two things yet to make it both a platform of social media and make it be kind of delightful to me personally, and maybe there is no marriage of it, but I would be super interested if anyone was setting... Has thoughts about when you follow authors, do you want them on tiktok specifically, do you want us to just talk about our books, is that why you're there, or are you interested in assuming beings or are you interested in our opinions about politics, our opinions about social issues or opinions about making cross for friends to by giving them put in case anyone can't tell, I really am not fixated on making to...
0:56:17.0 S1: Do you really like CrossFit? Now that's Gosnell, there's a clubhouse chat that happens every once in a... You've been to two of them, but it's about tiktok and office on tiktok and the algorithms, all that stuff. But it's interesting to hear what people do to engage their audience, especially people who are just coming into it, like I just reach a 1000 followers last week, and it was like... I'm like, Oh, you a 100 ball, I don't know how it happened, 'cause I was stuck at a few hundred for a longest time, and I'm always doing the music stuff, I do my book stuff, but yesterday, I heard this morning, I posted myself reading from someone else's book, I was like... 'cause someone was like, You should read your books, and I was like, No, I'm not gonna do that, but recommended book to me to read, and I'll read a little bit from it, so I did that today. So maybe I just do that, I pick a random... I'm gonna read from one of your books, but I wanna pick a book and just read 'cause just for fun, but I just said I like you, I just wanna have fun on there and also share who I am as an author and whatever, but social media, I don't think it's destroying anything, I think it's just...
0:57:17.4 S1: It's still new enough that we need to learn how to use it wisely as... Anyway, on that note, thank you so much for tuning in. With us for another episode of de romance writer, we really wanna hear from you, so please send you a letter, we have anonymous form that you can fill out, you can DM us on social media. So use social media to the EMS, but we do wanna hear from you. So setting your questions, we can't wait to give you some more questionable advice, we will see you next time in Avery, we'll hopefully be back from her little bug... We're sending you Chicken Little soup every so feel bettere. So.
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