🆕 Never Post! Mailbag #12: We're Not Built For This

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Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our contributing producer is Meghal Janardan. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show's host is Mike Rugnetta. 

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure.

Friends, hello and welcome to Never Posts. Finally, it is spring twenty twenty six mailbag in which we respond to listener emails, comments, voicemails, voice messages about our segments. When you have thoughts, send them our way. They don't even really need to be about the show. Not sure what color to repaint your bedroom?

Send those swatches over. We will weigh in. Got a kid on the way and unsure what to name them. Jason has ideas.

And they're all German words.

But not the ones you think.

New exciting German words. Volkswagen. For your baby today.

Hey, gang. It's finally spring, and it's snowing outside of my window.

I was gonna say it is, for sure undeniably 35 degrees

right now. Will we ever see the end of winter?

I think this

year, no. I think they're doing it differently.

We're gonna skip straight to a 100 degrees and 99%. Yes. Yes. Yes. And it will have been because of them.

Yeah. Welcome to our Los Angeles listeners. Currently at 95 plus degrees.

Oh my god. Yes.

I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. Joining me today in order of tales Georgia first heads Jason first. Woah. Oh. Never Post producer Georgia Hampton.

Bullshit. Yes. Yes.

The unluckiest man alive.

Eat my dust.

Okay.

And Never Post executive producer Jason Oberholzer.

Well, nothing's going my way this year, is it?

Hans will not be joining us today because he has literally been sent to The Hague. A sentence I could explain, but I will not.

No questions. No.

Nothing. He knows what he's done.

But we don't need him anyway, because we have you

That's not true. We obviously We've been we've been recording for two minutes and thirty seconds, and it's obvious that we need us.

Anyone who's seen any of the livestreams we have tried to accomplish while Hans has been gone knows we desperately need him.

God.

Yeah. Me and Jason together

Oh my lord.

Trying to stream video games.

It's not our fault. We're We're children who can't do technology.

We're just two infants

Yeah.

Using a computer for the first time.

Oh, but it's so cute. Alright. Let's see what people had to say about some of the stuff we did.

So we got a very interesting message from Elise who called in to weigh in about my archive episode, which was actually my first segment I ever did, about the disappearance of tween fashion and how the algorithmic Internet is partially to blame.

In thinking about the way that tweens dress now, it definitely is interesting. I'm currently 29, so I'm definitely someone who shopped a lot at stores, like, limited to when I was younger. A thought that I've had, and I feel like friends of similar ages have talked about and it's pretty popular online that people are always discussing. It's just this concept of looking at middle schoolers or early high schoolers or just really any tweens and teens and being like, wow. They look like adults.

And I think it makes sense within the clothing aspects that you were talking about on this segment. But, also, the way that makeup trends have changed is really interesting to me. Because when I was in middle school, everyone was, you know, getting into makeup for the first time, And there were a number of people who were just smearing on crazy eyeliner or putting on way too much blush. And it felt like this rite of passage where both in clothing and maybe also in makeup, kids kind of like, we just looked like shit. And we look back at pictures, and we're like, damn.

I look like an awkward, weird little middle schooler. And it's really crazy that it's different now. And they look like many adults, and I feel like a lot of that has to do with makeup trends, which I'm sure is also related to the rise of TikTok and YouTube tutorials and different things like that.

This is a great excuse to talk about my favorite makeup memory

Oh, okay.

Which is one of the first pieces of makeup that I had was a single eye shadow from Revlon in, like, powder blue, like, baby baby blue. And I remember going to school with it just slathered

Yes.

Over my eyelids.

Yes.

Dusty eyelashes. I was not wearing mascara. I hadn't gotten there yet. And I remember being at gym class, which for some reason was the first class that year with just, like, a metric ton of baby blue eyeshadow on my eyelids, feeling very vividly the transition from, like, I am the most beautiful woman in the world to being, like

Oh, no.

Somehow, this is I've made a terrible mistake. Jim Jim first period, like,

middle school is the coolest shit in the world.

Evil evil behavior. And that is

I had to do that every, like, a a couple years and, like, whole there is no quicker way to be like, oh, I I have no idea what I'm doing just as a human.

Oh, yeah. Do I hate myself?

Because you lack, like, both the old man wisdom and audacity to show up to school in gym clothes with your regular clothes in your bag, and then just take a full fucking shower after gym class.

Oh, wet hair all day? Hello? Hello? Wet hair all day during my Spanish exam? Anyway Anyway.

This is such a great point because I completely agree. I mean, when I was first researching this, those conversations about, like, the tweens at Sephora buying drunk elephant and doing, like, 12 step skincare routines on, like, prepubescent skin and using retinol and, like, all of these products that are really not meant for them at all. I do agree that I think there's this odd, like, jump to a presentation of adulthood that is much more smoothed out. And I think access to makeup tutorials, the social Internet writ large, influencers, any kind of online video content, written content, any content that is showing you how to properly do, like, a cut crease or, like, baking your face or doing, like, certain kinds of eye makeup looks, it it's just so much more accessible, which doesn't necessarily have to be bad, but I do agree that I think there is a sort of beautiful rite of passage component to being a tween and looking like shit.

Looking like an awkward weird gremlin for a Yes. Couple of Mhmm. This makes me think of like, is the awkward phase of being a tween and the fashion associated with it sort of being treated in a way like boredom? Where it's like, it is something that

Mhmm.

In the on the individual level, you're like, oh, this is unpleasant to experience, but what's really important is the stuff that you get out of that unpleasant experience. Yes. And so we've sort of, like, massaged away boredom with devices, and we massage away this kind of, like, awkward period of dressing and figuring out who you are and applying makeup and getting haircuts and whatever just like through content. And, you know, you I mean, may maybe it's maybe I'm just old man yells at cloud, and what happens now is, like, the awkward period disappears because you can just figure out who you are faster because there's more options and there's you you're exposed to more and more quickly, and so you don't have to stumble through it. You can just point at something and be like, I'm Matt.

That's me. I'm gonna do that one.

Or does the awkward period just happen constantly and more publicly, you just look better while it's happening?

Okay. Fair.

I mean, that is kind of the thing. I think because also so much is documented online and there is so much incentive to document online, And you're as as a young person, I feel like significantly more susceptible to being like, oh, well, I should be posting online. Like, all my friends are online, and I should be participating in this experience together, which I think is also very normal. I think there's a version of this that happens to everybody when they go through this age group. There is such a a I mean, discomfort an important discomfort in being seen, stumbling through, and trying and failing to figure something out.

And everything is so documented and available to not just your friends, but anyone that that kind of experience becomes a performance, which then turns it into something that is more polished, at least, on the outset.

Yeah. Mhmm. Wear your gym clothes first period if you have gym class first period. Just wear them to school. Yeah.

And might I suggest Revlon's single eyeshadow palette. Baby powder blue. It's it's coming back.

It's coming back. It stings the

eyes when you sweat.

God, it really that was yeah. That was that was the big problem there. Georgia,

where is the Internet?

Well, Jason, the true Internet is in your heart.

No. Get it out. Get it out.

But to answer that question more fully, we must turn to yet another message from a beloved listener. This time from Julia, who has written in on, you guessed it, my segment about where exactly is the Internet and what kind of place is it. Julia writes, I think a strong contender for the inheritor to the throne of the computer room is the bed. With phones being untethered from the cables of the desktop, I have gravitated to my bed when crossing the threshold into the online what? Unseelie?

What is that?

I don't know.

I mean, look them. Silly? It's kind of Okay. Sorry.

That looks purposeful, doesn't it? Right?

I think so.

Yeah. Unsealy court

this word ever.

The dark, malevolent, and often aggressive faction of fairies in Scottish folklore and fantasy.

Let's go. I'll take that sentence again. Woah. With phones being untethered from the cables of the desktop, I've gravitated to my bed when crossing the threshold into the online unsealy. And I see a lot of people posting that they have too.

I think this in part comes from people's living situations. Since we're seeing a shift toward people renting individual rooms in flats, or as you Americans would put it, apartments, thank you, The computer room has been dissolved into storage, or even worse, a bedroom charging two times the average income. And the bedroom has become one of the few spaces we feel are actually our own. I think this has significant implications for both your discussions of third spaces and people's behavior being unusual online. I have had very few interactions with anyone in my bed other than sexual partners, or I guess my cat.

So now a significant amount of social life is occurring from a space which has had no history of socializing other than the intensely intimate. Additionally, beds are very comfortable. If we spend our time in algorithmic feeds and constant simulation while wrapped up in a literal comfort blanket, do we further the current moment's fear of boredom and discomfort? In this situation, we are at our most physically comfortable and completely alone. Is it any wonder that we are so sensitive, erratic, and unadventurous?

Julia.

I think Julia is just right.

Yeah. I think this is an amazing observation.

I think this is ugh. I think when we log on, maybe, like, a hair shirt and nail chair.

Jared Oppenheim. We are in a position now more than ever of of creature comforts, both in sensation, physical sensation of being in a bed, being in sweatpants, being in your own space that has all the things you like in it, and then using your phone to be in a space that has all the things you like in it. And, absolutely, I think there is a direct correlation between that state of being, And I I don't know if it's even a conscious feeling, but, like, a a lack of desire to do anything about it because there is the risk of boredom, of uncertainty of, like, well, now what do I do I with my time? What do I how do I interact with the space? Like, why worry about that when you can just go back on your phone?

Yeah. Everything's just a little harder. Everything's just Yeah. And and, like, I'm more unsure, you know?

And you're even less incentivized to be in a state like that.

Yeah. I think it's such a great metaphor. Like, the few open up your phone in any particular location. Right? In one place, in one way, what you said is absolutely true, Georgia, in the segment, like, you open up the phone and you automatically, instantly, kind of, like, transport to another room that is either on top of or below whatever room you're currently in.

Inside, within, and without.

Yeah. Whether it's, like, the train or the coffee shop or the office or whatever. You know, you it's a portal into this other space where you keep all the things that you like. Mhmm. And how interesting to think of that as like, you know, which one is a metaphor for which?

Like, is the bedroom the metaphor for that weird psychogeographic space? Or is that space a metaphor for the bedroom? But it makes it at least feels really right to me.

There's another email that came in that I think actually puts an interesting spin on this. This came from Ari. Ari says, this episode really made me think about my relationship with the Internet and work. From 2020 to 2022, work and home were the same place for me and the combination of those spaces eventually started to drive me mad. I wanted work to be a place I go to, spend time in, and leave.

Now, being back in the office full time, I appreciate the space between my worlds. Still, I spend a lot of time online as I work. But for some reason, my time on the Internet at work feels different. When you describe the Internet as a place, I realized my work Internet is separate from my home Internet.

Big screen, big screen, small screen,

big screen, small screen. Back here again. But so,

like, that's also true. Right? We have this superstructure of emerging to the Internet room when we're on the train or we're in our bed or we're wherever. But I think the most discreet difference is work Internet is a different Internet. And I don't think it's just because there's, like, certain sites you're not allowed to go to.

It just, like, feels different. It's work Internet.

And I do think it matters where you are going to the Internet in the sense of on your phone, on your tablet, on your computer, on a desktop. How visible is your screen to other people? How big is your screen?

That's exactly what I was gonna say. Like, how much of work Internet feeling different is, like, people can see what I'm doing. Yes.

I have always thought of that it is completely destabilizing that I would feasibly break up with my girlfriend and have an important meeting with my boss in the exact same location staring at the exact same device, mere moments from each other, and have to exist as a cohesive human.

Damn.

There's one final email that came in about Internet places that I don't get because I have not seen any of this media, and I just want Georgia for you to tell me if this makes any sense.

No. Okay. I'll read it because this makes this makes sense to me.

Thank you, Mike.

Who who knows this media?

Oh. Okay. So Denise sent an email in, and Denise said, I had to pause George's piece on what kind of place is the Internet to make this meme my first one. I'm old. Probably did it wrong.

I'm from Minnesota. You kids are great.

I'm rooting for you, Denise. First of

all, huge compliment. I like I like how Denise being worried that she probably did this wrong seems somehow connected to us being great. Oh. The the movie Surrogates 2009 always comes to mind when I feel the wake up detachment of looking up from my phone, especially the scene where a disheveled Rosamund Pike staggers out of, quote, the computer room where she's been linked to her robot surrogate that has been out in the world being beautiful and amazing. So the surrogates is a movie that if I remember correctly, Roseman Pike and Bruce Willis.

Okay.

It's based on a comic book. It is a very poor adaptation of what I remember being a very, very good comic book.

Okay.

And basically, this last sentence that Denise writes is effectively the premise of the movie, that there is a murder mystery. I think it's a murder mystery. It's been a long time. But you can, as a person, have a surrogate. You can sit strapped into a piece of technology in your room completely still, kind of like WALL E style Mhmm.

And have this perfected robotic version of yourself walking around out in the world. And so the two pictures that Denise has sent is Rosamund Pike's surrogate, who's beautiful, has perfect skin, flowing blonde, like, you know, nineteen seventies pinup Yeah. Model So it says me when I'm online on the first picture, and then me when I turn off my phone and try and get something real accomplished. And it's Roseman Pike like, her skin's already blotchy. Yeah.

Her hair is, like, all dirty. She looks very unhappy. Yeah.

One assumes that this is the real person who has just left the computer room.

Yes. I like, the way that I describe this is often it's like scrolling hangover or, like, screen hangover.

Oh, yeah.

And it's like, there's a moment where I, like, you know, when it happens, I kinda come to and I'm like, I need a glass of water. Literally. I have to go to like, I both I'm, like, embarrassed, and my throat is dry, and my skin is itchy, and I need to go take a shower. And

Oh, completely. I feel for, I don't know, maybe, like, ten to fifteen seconds after I emerge out of the scroll, kind of like the mental equivalent of coming off the tilt a whirl, where at first you're like, like, getting your sea legs back and being like, where am I? And what are my values? Yeah.

Guys, I gotta update you. Since I deleted TikTok at the beginning of the year, I scroll so much less. Like, I try to scroll on Reels and it, like, barely holds the attention. It's so deeply bad. It's such a watered down drug.

Like, I'm really, like, getting off. This is, my Narcan or something. Yeah. It's my update. That's a good update.

Wow, Jason. Your hair looks beautiful.

Thank you. Anyway, congratulations, Denise. You did it. You made a meme. It made sense.

Yeah.

Was great.

Thank you. Denise, good meme. Nailed it. Next up, we have a voicemail that was sent in by Penelli on Hans' segment about Minneapolis and clicktatorship that I'm gonna respond to because I think it's something that I have a lot of thoughts about, something I think about pretty frequently.

The thing about the clicktatorship and how power is content, policy making is content now, and the the right the right wing media ecosphere. So I teach civics. I'm a high school government and economics teacher, and I am required by my job description of the fact that I teach AP gov, which, you know, by college board through to be, quote, politically neutral as a teacher. I'm also required to teach media literacy. What is media literacy in 2026?

Okay. So as of the twenty sixteen election, everybody was like, oh, we gotta teach people how to distinguish fake news, and we gotta teach people to slow down and not trust everything that comes across their social media scroll. But, like, all of the lessons that people have come up with and the ideas of, like, what media literacy means with social media age are inadequate to handle this. I mean, they just they don't. And I don't even know, like, how to begin approaching this in this era as a teacher?

Penalty, I do not envy you.

Oh, no.

God. Oh, boy. I'm just

sitting here hoping that another sentence arrives in this message and nope. That's the end of it.

Nope. That's

it. It's like and that's why we Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know.

God. I think about this all the time, and I don't I'd like I don't think I have a good answer. I don't I don't know that there is a good answer, but here's where I've arrived, and I'm curious to know what Jason and Georgia think. I agree that the whole framework of media literacy just kinda doesn't work anymore.

Mhmm.

And because because the whole framework of media literacy is to, like, take the media that arrives in front of you and to compare it to other pieces of media, and to use your experience out in the world to confirm which of those things is the one that, like, you feel like most aligns with what you experience in the world, and to maybe take half truths from some of those things or to reach an aggregate of meaning compiled from those things. And so what do you do when all of those things is wrong? Right? Like, the information environment, like we talked about with our science communicators, is, like, so poisoned that it's, like, really hard to even know that you are getting a full portrait of what is going on in the world even if you have many, many media sources at hand.

Mhmm.

I think that there are a few things that are true. The first is there's no future in media literacy if we don't wanna completely abandon that title or that framework where you're not intimately familiar with how the media is made and by whom. Oh, yeah. There's just absolutely no no way forward without intimate knowledge about who holds the power in creating the media and what they want in the world. And what's nice, at least, about right now is that most of the people who are in positions of power, they're very clear about what they want.

They kinda go on their own owned media and say it very clearly.

Oh, yeah.

You just have to believe them, which is maybe sometimes a little bit hard. Mhmm. I have seen a couple people render this a few different ways. Cameron Kunzelman, who does the shelved by genre podcast, who's really great. He's like a communications professor and a game studies person, rendered this really succinctly recently as, I think, something like tired media literacy or retired media literacy, wired ideology.

There's kind of no analysis of this that doesn't just really fully focus on ideology. Mhmm. And I think I don't know how you do it as a civics professor or a civics teacher, especially in, like, AP classes, but there's kind of no way around this where you don't have to do Marxist analysis of things, and talk about, like, how capital in all of its forms plays a huge role in the creation of meaning in the world and how things reach the level of prevalence that they are. And, like, you're basically just replacing media literacy with sociology. Yeah.

Whoops. Yeah. But, like, I think we maybe kind of have to.

Yeah. I mean, to to your point of, like, specifically ideological approaches to looking at media, I think also it just I'm thinking of this idea of having to present civics and things like that from a, quote, unquote, politically neutral perspective. How do In a you in an environment where, like, being politically neutral is now a kind of I mean, it's a position. It's a position. Like, it is it is also sort of it its neutrality doesn't exist anymore.

No. And I think and I think now being politically neutral would, in fact, get you being accused of being a leftist by many of the

you know

what I mean? Like, have

to gonna say republican. No.

You have to act like, I think a lot of the people who are the most mad about this and who are in charge of a lot of the the media at least would say that, you know, you have to, like, vociferously affirm their positions or else you are taking a side.

Sure. Well, yeah. And also it's yeah. It's the politicization of all topics. Yeah.

It also then, yeah, makes makes for a very difficult interpretation, if it's even interpretable anymore, of media literacy if you have to consider neutrality as the goal.

I mean, I think

Which I don't think you can Yeah. Anymore. I think that's a problem.

We're so far like, there's it's really, really hard to defend the classical journalistic perspective of, like, positivistic empirical analysis of, here's what's going on in the world. Like

Oh, yeah. Because I think in the last, I don't know, at least twenty years, if not more recently, like, there has, as you said, been this far broader understanding of who is controlling these media outlets, what their perspectives are, and also the people controlling those media outlets becoming people like Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post.

Right. I think this runs into exactly where media literacy contains two incorrect words for the moment. Media literacy would tell you that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and has done a measurable series of things with obvious outcomes. And that like Sinclair News shows the same news feed across the entire world, and here are the people whose concerns are involved in the operation of that media. That that is also easy to document, and that the disagreement lies then past that point onto me bringing that up is a political position rather than a documentation of like obvious flows of information that's publicly available.

That is where the literacy is at. So it's not about the media. Also, media is like a very weird term here because it sort of assumes some presentation and receiving of information rather than a a constant interaction with information, which is really how people engage with information at this point.

I mean, it's content literacy.

Yeah. And so maybe it's like content more than media or maybe it's like we have like transcended media's screen bound utility to instead constantly be in political discourse about the things we will or will not be open to believing about our worldviews. Yeah. And that is really the consistent meta conversation that's happening regardless of the formats in the middle.

And that's before you even get to, like, does the fact that Brendan Carr approved the merger of the News Corp so that now one company controls 60% of the news in The United States, is that is knowing that media literacy, or is that something else?

Is is having to teach my parents how to recognize if a video is AI? No. Like, where does that lie in this? That might be media literacy. I think that I was gonna say

that I think that is media literacy.

Yeah.

Yeah. That might be the only thing.

That is the

piece of media literacy that I think is genuinely correct by the traditional definition that has remained.

Penalty, we got it. If you need to teach media literacy, it's the the the curriculum's very short. It's one item. Yeah. Show your parents.

And the and the answer is, it's always AI.

I'm sorry, captain disillusioned. You are now the only media literacy professor in the world.

The only educator. Next up on the subreddit, we got a comment from Nondeterminist System about our chat on digital storage. They write, I'm sympathetic to Hans's position, which to review, Hans's position is you're all gonna die.

He was

freaking out. Be You thinking about that constantly. Yes. So, like, whenever you open up your text edit program on your computer to, like, take a note just to make sure that you capture, like, the grocery list or something you need to do later, you gotta make sure you save it because you're gonna die.

Yeah. You're gonna die. Mhmm.

And you have to make sure that those files

are Every if your eyes touch it or your hands

touch it.

It's your responsibility for those who come after you.

Yeah. And please make sure that you appreciate each individual file as a different individual responsibility.

Of of course. I'm so glad

Hans is at The Hague and not here to defend himself.

Ephemera can certainly be helpful in the mourning process, but but ephemera are meant to be ephemeral and have been painfully so for the vast vast majority of human existence. Personally, I don't think that my life will, one, require tangible reminders to be remembered by my loved ones in the short term, or two, benefit from tangible reminders in the long term. Now, if I were a fur trapper living in seventeen hundreds Kentucky, the journal of my quotidian life may have become a valuable historical relic, a window into everyday travails that would be immortalized via recollection on niche YouTube channels. But even that level of recollection would be contingent upon my musings surviving the very organic process of historical preservation. I worry that our current emphasis on preserving everything will contribute to a collapse in perspective.

When everything is important enough to immortalize, nothing is. So I guess if I felt like anything about my life was important enough to immortalize, maybe I should set it to paper and donate the chronicle to an organization dedicated to preservation, like a museum. Or Hans. Or Hans. Maybe or Hans.

Interesting.

Or if

I don't feel like it's that important, maybe it's better to just let it go. Or maybe I'm being proud in thinking I should be the one to curate what's important about me, and that's a task I should turn over to people who care about me instead. I legitimately don't know. I so my family, there aren't a lot of, like, heirlooms. There aren't a lot of, like, we don't have many documents.

We don't have a lot of photos. It's maybe, like, from each side, there's, like, one or two books just of, like, mostly photos, mostly photographs. And I think that's just because, you know, they didn't have much. They really didn't have anything. Yeah.

You know, they my family my family on both sides were, like, fishermen mostly, like farmers, and like didn't really have anything. And so the I guess what I'm saying is that, like, the small number of things that we do have are cool and feel significant because we have them, and I think because there's not much of that. And I think about what sorts of stuff we're gonna leave behind when when we die for Clem to have to look at with her family when she's older. And, like, I think about it in a very similar way where I'm like, a couple books is probably fine. Yeah.

You know, unless, like, when she's older, you know, like, I'll have a discussion with Clem where I'm like, do you want the guitars? If you want them, they're yours. Like, do you want the studio equipment? Like, those are legitimate collectibles, but, like, none of that stuff exists in my family. There's up until me.

Like, I'm the first one that will have, like, things to give to a kid. And I do feel like it not being a lot is probably meaningful, and I never ever think about any of the digital stuff ever.

Mhmm. Mhmm.

I come from a family of like quilters, like crocheters, knitters, textile people. Yeah. Woah. So like Oh. My mother is an incredible quilter.

And so that is sort of what we have, like she has pieces from like her great grandmother that like, she found fabric collections of and then she turned them into something, and so like, there are all these sort of handmade objects that survive generations that have meaning to them, and then there's also a fair amount of like, you know, furniture that's interesting just by dint of it having been sat on by a couple generations of folks that kind of floats Not a lot of photography, but there's some. And the member chat we had was specifically about our digital collection of photography mostly, and the archiving practices there. And I was actually just talking to my parents about it this weekend, talking about our very conversation, and how very similar very similarly to how non determinist system put it. If everything is worthy of documentation, nothing is, and I don't think I'm just like built for that. I am sort of built for a time where you have eight pictures maximum of somebody and you do the rest of the work.

You look at those and you conjure a character, you think about who they might be and you try to connect it to stories you have of them and it comes to life for you rather than a world where I could have feasibly one to one documented without spending that much effort or money, like my entire life from the age of 20. I could have just given that to somebody. I could have done that work and it wouldn't have been that hard or expensive. That's unbelievable. I'm not prepared for that.

I don't want that.

Yes. I yes. I completely agree with that. I can also feel Hans, like, emotionally reacting to this all the way across the ocean, like, just knows we're talking about it. But, yeah, I I feel completely the same way.

I think volume is the enemy of sentimentality in many That's good. Yeah. Crushed it. And I mean, I I do have a good amount of heirlooms and things from generations of family I never even met. Like, my great grandfather made banjos.

So we had, like, a bunch of banjos. But then, you know, like, my mom donated quite a few of them to a museum. And the conversation around what to keep, what to donate, what to sell is a practical one that I have with my specifically with my mom, virtually every single time I come home to visit. Mhmm. It happens constantly.

Often, it's like the first thing that happens when I come home, where we sort of go through the the art on the walls and she'd be like, well, this is you know, you should keep this, you should donate this, you should do this this this this this. Wow. So it's just a conversation that we've had and that we've been having and, like, the awareness of my parents' mortality, of my grandparents' mortality when they were still alive, was abundantly some like, something I was abundantly aware of forever. There was no space for, like, the fantasy of, like, this is never gonna happen, and I'm never gonna have to think about this. Yeah.

I think about it all the time. And when I think about it, I'd land very much where, Jason, you just described landing, which is I am not built to become a museum of myself. Whether that's a curator of a museum of of endless amounts of ephemera, nor a museum of my own life in its minute detail. I think there is so much beauty in being able to imagine and interpret through context of certain ephemera. I think ephemera is very special.

But I think volume can really get in the way of how special it is.

Yeah. Ultimately, where I landed on it during the discussion, where I land on it now is like and I think nondeterminist system put a little bit of this language in there too. Like, it's kind of for other people. If they want more of me or to keep more of that, they can. And I hope they do and they're thinking about it.

But like, I'm gonna do my best. I will keep around what I can. It's a deeply sentimental project. But like, if you want more, it's on you, man. It's on you.

To quote Jason, come and take it. We're gonna take a quick break. When we get back, we're gonna talk about gamers No. And customization.

Yes. Yes. Welcome back. We have got an email from Germany. From Gwyn, I believe, g w y n.

Gwyn wants to talk about video games in relation to George's segment on customization. The death of customization over time from the hallowed halls of my space dripping with your personalized nonsense to the anodyne corridors of Facebook and other

Oh my god.

Corporate dystopian platforms where your personality should not exist and only might perhaps in the personalization of your ads.

Mhmm.

Oh. Win. Writes about video games. Video games, mobile games in particular, and the surrounding spaces have become somewhat of a testing ground for predatory digital practices and business models. There seems to be a pervasive and not completely incorrect sentiment among the business side of the industry that capital g gamers.

Enjoy their gamer swag that they will eat up whatever you market to them, that they will take their increasing exploitation sitting down. Many of them are young and impressionable, not in a, so will somebody think of the children kind of way, but in a way toy companies learn to advertise to kids directly instead of their parents because it's much easier to get their hooks into them. Getting an eight year old to gamble on mom's phone is well, literally two steps removed from taking candy from a baby. They go on to write more about the pervasive addition of monetization stages and ads into games and continue here. Discord has taken what Steam introduced and run with it.

The platform is VC funded unlike the privately owned Valve slash Steam and has been adding more and more monetization features in an effort to become profitable. Since 2017, users have been able to subscribe Discord Nitro, which at first allowed them to use animated avatars, upload bigger files, and a handful of other things. In the last few years, this has expanded exponentially with more and more features added to the platform in order to make the subscription more appealing, and a few things that used to be free locked behind the paywall. You can now get special banners and animated profile backgrounds and emotes and frames and more. You can change the color of your client with Nitro and just generally present yourself much much more ostentatiously than people who don't spend money on Discord.

They continue later. All of this is gamification and is obviously in shitification. And assuming that nothing fundamentally changes about the ways in which we collectively use social media, I think this might well be what's to come for the more mainstream social platforms. You can already buy a Twitter subscription and get that blue tick. What's stopping them from making that more appealing by making your profile all sparkly for a little extra cash?

The digital gifts and hats and whatnot you can give people on TikTok live aren't that far removed from their counterparts on Steam. I think this is so good. Oh my on gamers to mass media adopting of the will buy some silly little trinkets and maybe reclaim some personalization of our online spaces seems so accurate.

What do they call it on MySpace? Blingify? I think so.

Sounds right.

The whole time you were reading Jason, I was sort of experiencing the entire grieving process, all the stages of grief. Because it is so sad how true this is. That, of course, customization, which was something that was so beloved and so special about, at least, my early experience of being online, is now monetized and weaponized and used as a tool in a in a larger, horrible machine of getting you to invest in micro transactions and spend money that you don't necessarily think about until it all adds up and you're like, uh-oh, I can't afford groceries. I think this is so true.

Someone take the lathe of heaven from me. Just take it take it from me so that I'm not holding it when I say this. Just take here, George. I'm gonna hand it to you. Thank you.

Here's the

wave of heaven.

Okay. Sharing the Ready? I'm gonna say a string of words. Social media profile skin loot boxes.

Stop it. Mike, stop it. Stop it. Stop.

Just a

I'm just a baby, Mike.

God. Someone is going to become a billionaire because you just said that. And it won't be me.

How could you? How could you, Mike? How could you do this?

We often get accused on Fun City of predicting the future, except it's the bad future. Yeah. And so maybe we can get some of that credit here on the Yeah. This seems inevitable. And Discord will absolutely be the first.

Right? If they haven't already done it and I'm just not aware of it.

Although, I don't know. I could see Meta doing this as well. Like, I could see it being like, hey. Remember when we basically devoured Myspace in front of all of you?

Like, no. No. No. No.

If we just gave it back to you at a price.

Hey. Does Justin Timberlake still have Myspace? Because I've got some ideas.

I know how to save the world tour. Next up is Liz calling in with her thoughts on my segment about why nobody dances at the club anymore and how smartphones are to blame.

I was hearing about the discussion about places where you use of phone as explicitly, prohibited, And you mentioned church, sir. And I am driving back from my church, and I regret to inform you that it's not really true anymore even though the message there is still on the And I've been a volunteer for my church for a long time. And, like, I have to have WhatsApp business constantly open because I have to watch the church WhatsApp number. And, like, when we are studying our religious texts, then there's a lot of language that's from a long time ago that uses very weird words, and we have to look words up. So we have to use our phones for that.

And, you know, that ship has sailed, and it sucks. But at the same time, it's good to have those tools. But when people are just, like, I don't know, browsing Instagram during church functions or whatever, like, that's usually called out. So it's like it's we we try to use it well, like, it as a tool, but it's still always an uphill battle. But it's like that that's the place where I have that most healthy relationship with my phone.

So that's something.

So that's something. So that's something. That is something. You know what this made me think? We've talked about this in Never Watches when we're watching great movies of one particular year in the nineties.

When we envision future technology, it usually is devices that are somewhat form and functionally related to what they do. They look like a thing. Like, if you were to say, we have these ancient religious texts and scholars are going to need to translate and transliterate them across all these things, you would imagine some, like, cool fucking tome reading table that, like, doesn't your fucking minority reporting on it. And, like, it just sucks if it's just your phone. It's always your phone.

It's the same Yeah. Dumb little shit that

does everything. Yeah. Yeah.

There's nothing cool. They gotta, like, look at old text with their fucking Instagram machine, and, like, that is why things are lame. Yeah.

Not to bring customization back into it, but because the phones all just kinda look like this big soft rectangle, like, with rounded edges

Yeah. Boo.

And

and not some beautiful gilded specialized sort of holy feeling object.

Right? Like, we could make a digital object that was, like, commensurately reverential to the rest of the spiritual architecture of the building.

And every day, we refuse to do it. Yeah.

Is this what straying further from god's light is? Is the light the light of the screen?

Oh. The length of heaven is still in my hands, Mike.

Give it back. Give it back. I just wanna know what the church WhatsApp is like.

Oh my god.

Drama. Alright. Next up, Drew wants us to know more about Empreg Garfis. Hi.

Okay. This

is Drew. First time, long time supporter of the show. I'm listening to Mailbag number five. I'm about forty minutes in. You guys are talking about, quote, Garfies, and you talked specifically about one that has a large, you know, maybe distended belly and big hoohas.

And I really think I can't see the image, but I really think this is not a, like, a fat satisfied Garfield that ate a lot of lasagna did we get here? But maybe a Garfield that is pregnant. This comes from, like, like, fantasy pregnancy type stuff where, like, males get pregnant called mpreg. I just feel like it's pregnant Garfield, and I think you should know. Thank you much for doing the show.

Bye.

I don't even think we need to respond. I think we can just file this under FYI. Yeah. Is this show good?

I think this shows that it is very good.

Okay. Alright.

I can't believe we were so blind.

I should have looked at that, and I should have said immediately, m preg garphys.

He's got the glow. He's got the glow. I know exactly what that means.

Alright. And finally, here it is. If we can find the theme music from Hans before we have to publish this, a Molly's Corner.

If you were all on a season of the traitors, who would you collectively, banish at the round table? Like, who would you think was a traitor? Thank you. And oh oh, wait. And who who do you think actually would be a traitor?

Might be the same question. Might not be.

Have fun. Oh my god.

I don't know how the traitor works.

I do. Alright. So for those who are unfamiliar, the traders is basically a hidden role competitive reality It's like mafia. Game. Yeah.

Okay. Where, like, in the very beginning, a couple people are chosen as the traitors. Every episode, there is a roundtable where everyone, traitors and faithful included, votes someone to be banished who they think is a traitor. And that person has to reveal if they're a traitor or not, and all remaining traitors then get to choose someone that they're going to murder. So just, like, remove from the game completely.

Okay.

So if I had to pick who I think is a traitor in our group, it's probably the person at The Hague right now.

I literally was about to say the same show.

But as for who has the temperament for it, which I think is Molly's second question, not just like, who would I vote out, but who would actually betray me.

Okay. Hold on. And do it with a smile.

Yeah. Same answer.

Wow. Wow. Damn. Yeah. I don't does friend of the show, Meagle Jnarden, count as Yeah.

Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna say, I think Meagle I think Meagle.

Yeah.

It could

be one of us three. Right? No.

We're very trustworthy here.

Think we're aware

that actually, usually, there are three traders chosen

at the beginning of the game.

Just us. Mhmm. I think we're in an oops all traders call.

Right?

I'm gonna be so honest.

And we've just and we've just voted to out the only two faithful people.

Yes. So we win?

But that means we win the game.

Does that mean is Audrey the Alan Cumming of the group? Yes.

She'd be honored. Oh, yes. And now for everyone's favorite postscript to the show, Jason wrestles with the listeners Yes. In a segment we like to call one word graffiti, or as the first submitter Weston put it, is it two word graffiti now? It's impossible to say, I hope Jason will be okay.

He won't be, but that's not your problem. No.

Weston's first submission here is a one word graffiti that they say is very Kiwi, a very Kiwi word, and it is on the side of a transformer box and it says jandal, and pictured under it looks to be a thong sandal.

Yeah. Yeah. Jandal. Flip flop. Is it that's the word jandal with a picture of a jandal.

That's a jandal? That's a jandal?

Just so we're clear.

Just so it's clear.

Yeah. Alright. I'll take your word for it. Going back to the subreddit, a place you can all hang out r slash never post.

I believe this is from Talia.

Talia sends in

the word caring. In a beautiful font.

A considered and caring font.

It's great. It's like bright, all lowercase, on the side of King Tut. Mhmm. What's King Tut? King Tut's the place for

Nepalese food?

Oh. Painted on the side of King Tut, the place for Nepalese food.

Our next submission from the subreddit comes from Mothalax, who has on the side of a DHL van, either Moses with an m or Hoses with an h. What do we think?

I'm I'm going with Moses because that first letter has a little package. Yes. You know?

Yes. I was gonna say the exact same thing. It has a sort of like v.

The traders have spoken. It's Moses.

And so it is writ.

Also, like, you know, you've heard of cool s's, but cool h's, o's, and e's? Woah. Oh. They abound here. Just a quick reminder, we're gonna put all these on the website so you can see them, and you should.

Next one from the

This next one in particular, I think, slaps. This is maybe the best one we've ever gotten. It's awesome. I love

it. This comes to us via the subreddit from GigaDumpy. Woah. And I am struggling to describe it. Georgia, can you use some art school words on this?

Okay. So we're looking at a a a kind of script, I would say, that's almost like calligraphic.

But it is definitely graffiti in like, graffiti style lettering, but Yes. Calligraphic in nature.

But, yeah, like, with this sort of quality that has a lot of filigree and, like, accenting on each letter and, like, some of the tails of the letters are really long and then, like, turn into a circle with a bunch of lines. But it does undeniably say absorbo. And that's so important.

It does. You cannot argue that it says absorbo. Yeah. Absorbo. And we also know from the post that this is from the inside of a porta potty.

Oh, let's go. God.

That's good. It's despicable. And I love it.

Jason, I'm curious if you think this next one counts.

Now this

Oh, yeah.

This submission from land of doom, I feel like is rage bait. You are trying to get me mad because you have submitted me a finger drawing in the snow of the word high with an exclamation point. This is not graffiti. This is snow.

But what what is a line in the snow if not graffiti ephemera, Jason?

Oh, come. This is don't you

fucking take take a picture take a picture. We're all gonna die.

We're all gonna die. We have to remember this.

Hans might think this is precious graffiti worth surviving, but I think this is a sand castle that deserves to go back into the sea. To you, land of doom, I say no. I say no. This is not one word graffiti.

But, Jason, what are we if not sandcastles that will one day return to the sea?

Okay. Alright. Too many art school words.

You're cut off.

You have woken the bees. Alright.

Take your notebook to the seaside. Next up,

we have j j c mouldery in the subreddit with droidica. Droidica. One word, d r o I d I k a droidica, which I understand is like a misspelling of a Star Wars term.

Okay. I would just like to comment on the fact that this is on the side of a good barn directly next to some train tracks.

I'm told in the comments that this is in the Hudson Valley. So hello neighbor.

Gotta go look for it

Our next submission, I love. This is good and this is right and the kind of thing I want. This comes from Colin, and on the side of a beautiful green building is the word green written in yellow. Yellow. And that's what I like.

Awesome. Amazing. And finally, for the one word graffiti section, Mike, it looks like you submitted something of your very own.

Oh. I did. There is one word graffiti that is showing up all over Bed Stuy. This person has ups, as they say, everywhere, and it is in all caps, always the same style lettering, and it just says guillotine.

Hell, yeah.

Guillotine is guillotine is all over the place in Bed Stuy at the moment.

Thank you for your service, guillotine. Spreading the message one word at a time, which is what I like.

Okay. So but now we've also got a bunch of two word submissions. And

to be fair, this is what I told people they were allowed to do this year. On the final recording of 2025, I opened up the possibility for two word graffiti for this year. So I am accepting it and we got some stuff that has come in. Josh b sends in two examples. Well, no.

One of them is two word graffiti. The other I don't know.

The second one is I'm mad again.

Yeah. I gotta be done.

This one's not it's demonstrably I'm trying to be charitable.

I'm trying to broaden the parameters by which people can send me graffiti, and still, they send me fucking finger diagrams in the snow. Anyway, gotta move on.

It's if you give a mouse a cookie. Right? That's what's happening. Yeah.

Alright. Well, first he sends is two word graffiti. The iconic Houston one forty five b someone across a bridge across a highway, which I believe you it's iconic. It looks beautiful. It's a wonderful thing to say to people in two words on the side of a bridge.

Bonus, Josh is also sending me the tag of the Nighthawk, which says beware the Nighthawk and is found on the side of the building which he says is a Houston icon, a knockoff Batman who calls themselves the Nighthawk, which I think is exciting.

Okay. So the beware is kind of an accessory to the main tag, which is the Nighthawk.

Yeah. I would say so. I wonder if they say other things in other tags about the Nighthawk, like, was here or is coming.

I'm gonna say just the Nighthawk, in case you're listening, just

And you are.

On off chance. You could do better, pal.

Yeah.

No. I don't wanna I don't I I don't want them to do

better. I love

it. Scrawled nonsense on the side of this building.

It's just like capital letters, handwriting. I love it. Never do anything else.

I prefer this Batman to the buttoned up one.

It does it is a tag that reads as sudden.

Yes. Oh, yes. Like, I was just sort of walking down the stairs, like Yeah. Yeah. Oh.

Oh, that's right. I'm a Nighthawk.

Yeah. Like as though like as though in a moment, the Nighthawk had to put this here.

Yes. Well, the spirit overtook them.

Yeah. Josh Pelton sent in a few eligible pieces of graffiti, one of which I particularly appreciated and is two words. And Mike, you wanna describe a piece of graffiti?

Yeah. This looks like some marker on the inside of a frosted window. It's hard to tell the larger context because it's pretty close-up. And it sort of looks like a piece of, like, the outline, drawn in black marker of a piece of paper towel that you've ripped from the dispenser, in the bathroom, and written on it in all caps are two words, and those words are magnum dong.

Yeah. That's good. Hell, yeah. See, we all like that.

That's the kind of thing I like.

It's good. I really like the next one too.

Yeah. This one is one of

my favorites.

This one's so good.

Georgia, this one deserves the art school treatment.

Oh, and I'm happy to deliver it. So we're looking at a sidewalk, specifically a manhole cover. And below it, in two layers of spray paint, first is green, second is pink, it says vault, question mark, and then under it, in parentheses, empty.

Though that could be what the Nighthawk has written to throw you

off his

Just what

they want

us to think. So do you think do you think our tagger arrived at this sewer cover, scroll down vault, excitedly went down, looked around, and came back up, and really disappointed, followed up with empty.

Empty. Just letting the next guy know.

Yeah. Sorry. You were in a Dark Souls game, just giving you the directions. I think this one's particularly gorgeous. It just it's nice to look at and it's the kind of thing I like and it's why two words full of graffiti is something that I now allow.

It's so my question for this was gonna be whether or not this counts because I don't think that this is graffiti. I think that this is probably functional text for a utility worker. Because if you look, there's there's spray paint on the side of the picture too that seems to draw an outline of what is maybe a utility cable in the same in the same color.

See, one of the things that I like is to have fun and the things you're saying aren't fun.

Fair. Fair. Fair. I take it back. I take it back.

Thank you. I don't claim this energy.

Yeah. Perfect.

Thank you, Lenny, for sending that in. That's truly a delight.

It is really good.

Yeah. One of the things I don't like Uh-oh. Is when somebody sends me in four words of graffiti. I'm not even gonna talk about it. Favy fake, you know who you are and you know that sending four words of graffiti means I won't read it.

Called out. Four words in this economy? Are you kidding me?

Let's end on a high note. Jason, what's this last thing you've put here under the heading poem?

Oh, this will cool us all down. So many mailbags ago, Michael Bukino had sent in a poem that they had written and we had read on the air called Bugs on My Beard. They have since animated that poem in a delightful little YouTube video that we will put in the links here. And I figure it's been since it is our custom to end things with poetry wherever possible, that perhaps we can just play ourselves out in Michael's own reading of his own poem, the bugs in my beard, and send us all into this good good night.

I think that's a great idea.

Love it.

Happy spring everybody. Let me go get my shovel.

The bugs in my beard I bring back from my bike ride are just souvenirs from failed attempt flybys. Buzzing and bumping and flipping and flapping, jittering, jumping, slithering, slapping. One proboscis, two antennae, 600,000 limbs, shiny shells, wondrous wings, and a slimy trail of mucin. Each camouflage colorful cute creepy crawly itching a lift on the fuzzy face trolley can look like a lot at the end of my hall, but these little critters don't bug me at

all. Okay.

Bye. Bye. Bye.