Don't Blame Me! - BAIW: Betrayed By Coworkers

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

But Am I Wrong: Meghan: Stop having audience cameras at award shows Melisa: Calling coworkers family is a form of harassment But Are You Wrong: False performance review Cutting a friend out of your life But Are They Wrong Meghan: Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher Melisa: Tina Trahan Write In: [e-mail] Weigh In: vote in the weekly poll on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/by.meghan.and.melisa/ Buy Our Merch: https://store.dftba.com/collections/don-t-blame-me Join Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/dontblameme Follow Us: https://www.instagram.com/by.meghan.and.melisa/ https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdYV7J5p/ Follow Meghan: https://www.instagram.com/meghanrienks/ https://twitter.com/meghanrienks https://www.youtube.com/c/meghanrienks Follow Melisa: https://www.instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa/ https://www.instagram.com/diamondmprintproductions https://twitter.com/SheIsNotMelissa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

yo we're here it's time for but am i wrong what is this show megan that's a really great question melissa thank you so much thank you for raising your hand too if anyone saw patreon she didn't raise your hand no you know i'm just gonna lie to you so you join it's a good time watch the video version this is a podcast where we two people who have not once ever been wrong in our lives it is quite literally a modern day miracle marvel we are like me yeah exactly and you know other people have on their driver's license like organ donor ours has we'll be preserving their bodies for science to be studied for all eternity and to that we say you know whatever you need to do do it because these brains these hearts and one of our asses it's big also i'm never going

to die so i'm not sure when this is going to happen so but no no information is there physical human form and then the alien form like you know we'll just be we'll be hop skipping and jumping between um mere mortal bodies i just had on my instagram five instagram thoughts follow me at the same time i don't know what's going on hot recognizes hot no they're like definitely bots yeah i don't know why that happens i don't know why they're here thought bots being your instagram stories and say click this you don't get those they're literally i don't they're always at the top too no it'll just be like who viewed your story and it's all for some reason they figured it out how to get it to the top and it'll just

be like ass cheeks and say click this that's what their name is wow i don't know maybe i haven't noticed but like mine is usually just people i know that they become the top ones yeah that's what i would think too they've hacked the system yep well because we are never wrong with anything ever. We thought it was our duty, our government and moral duty to start a podcast, which is why, hey, you know, the men are going to start using this. This is my duty to start a podcast. The government told me to. And we talk about things in our own lives. We have three different segments. And we also talk about pop culture. We have some audience interaction. We tell you in your life when you're being wrong, but we will break down each one of those segments before we

get into it but really what you need to know is this is ethical shit talking correct consensual and with love public shaming and or tough love in the form of potential bullying and bullying in the sense that's like like a lowercase bullying we want you to do better they're helping you ethical bullying people get so mad when i use bullying as a joke and they're like people have really been bullied i'm like bitch i dropped out of college i locked myself in a closet do you think i don't know what bullying is we can make a he he ha ha about this like please don't use our bullying when i'm i said like you can't bully racism but i think we should pick a different word because bullying is very sensitive subject i go i'm so sorry when someone says you can't

bully racist i'm never once thinking like oh no they're calling me like this is i feel really personally attacked by the bullying statement here nope okay well should we get into our first segment we should but i should probably tell them one of the best parts of this podcast oh you're correct i apologize audience interaction so you know we might have the end all be all the golden gavel we should get gavels and where we say i would love to have a gavel for a show it's a good time i would just need us to have like uh we have to have an unspoken when we look at each other of when you're going to make the noise because i don't like loud sun you don't even like loud sun noises either but i really enjoy i get very i want that part that's usually like gold when

it's wrapped around in the thick part i want it to be pink cute i think yeah we can do i could diy this or we can just buy it see and this is where if you are new here you'll understand the difference between us one of us has contamination issues and the other has crippling adhd one of us loves to start project never finish it one of the other one is big picture efficiency and effectiveness unless i would love to train trade brains for a day it'd be interesting i wouldn't want that for you like i wouldn't want you to have this because i think like if you had your consciousness still you'd be frustrated i want to know what it's like to just be able to talk no melza it's overwhelming because it's like okay well i want to experience it i you you would have

to you'd have to drink a cup of coffee like you'd have to like you'd have to do it if you're going and be me for a day this is our body swapping switcheroo maybe if we do the future film version of it won't give mods as much anxiety as when a teenager swaps bodies with their mother i just still can't get over it yeah i can't i just think it's absolutely disgusting so what i think about is when you go pee and you gotta wash yourself wipe yourself you're just sitting there wiping your mom's cat okay hard pass i understand that she wiped yours when she was a baby when you were baby but not a teenager it's disgusting those are different so um yeah we want audience participation and uh that is our episode called fisting friday it comes out on fridays and you we post all of the

circumstances situations everything from each segment of the podcast in a like vote format on our instagram story and we put them in a highlight but they also all go up at once and you head on over and you vote who you think was wrong in each situation and you can also write in about why you picked what you picked you know what you thought or your instincts and we don't always have like 100 solid of an answer like we're like okay i think this but maybe this this and this so you know you can include that as well and we read those responses on our fisting party episode as well and there's no hard feelings unless there are so like don't worry about it don't worry about it unless you should worry about it but most of the time i'm telling you right now

if you're worried about it you're fine the people who aren't worried about it those the ones i'm like you mean you know people being like please be nice to me and you're like why wouldn't i be nice to you and then other people are like awful and they're like why were you not nice to me i'm like because you're awful see this is one of those rants that i'm talking about it just kept going and going what's that it's like a treadmill and you're trying to get off of it and you're like i'm gonna fall and eat shit that's what it is that's how it feels up there all the time okay and the manager is just high okay i'm done talking our first segment is called but am i wrong and that's when we pick a rant something from our

lives or something that we're just super heated about that we want to share with you all and each other and then after we explain we'll individually vote if the other is wrong and then take it to y'all on that participation that Megan was talking about. You're up first. Wonderful. So mine is a lukewarm take, maybe a hottest take, very topical. And my hot take is stop having audience cameras at award shows. Stop it. Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. In a generation where everyone's favorite buzzword is parasocial relationships, I don't need an up-close fishbowl kind of view into like how people react to other people constantly would i have said this prior to this year no and coming out with the the video reactions that we saw from this year's a certain

award show there were these clips that came out and one in particular i think once we've gotten this reaction clip which is selena gomez rolling her eyes at chris brown being nominated i'm like needed that's what i needed my my cup runneth over it is full i'm done we don't need to have these audience reaction cameras anymore i'm done with it it's so fucking weird like and i say this is someone who like i like taylor swift like i've been a fan for a very long time they like gave her her own camera and i'm like why after what happened with kanye at the other award show like she makes a point to like she stands up for every person who performs like when people boo like she'll turn around and give people looks like she cheers for everyone she learns all of the songs that

are nominated so she can like sing along because she she tries performing for the camera yeah mobile i mean so because she's very tall and very very very tall very white very blonde her thing really i can't shockingly um and she's blonder than me um but like she people can see so people from the stage can like she and she's seated always at the front so they can like see her and so she always like wants to make sure that like she didn't feel like she couldn't she thought everyone from the stage was booing her when the Kanye thing happened she like couldn't tell if people were on her side and like so she felt like oh shit this entire audience is against me and so she tries to go above and beyond for other artists which I think is totally nice but

now people have made this and like these organizations have like made it about them and I'm like it's not for you and it's not for them so like stop like and then you literally see these clips and she's just like sitting there and they're they're not even doing a zoom lens they are a foot in front of her with this big ass fucking camera she can hardly see what she's watching because they're there in front of it and then it's like okay now you have to perform and now it also doesn't feel genuine and people are giving shit that doesn't feel genuine but then if you're not performing and you're not having a good time then people are giving you shit because you're not reacting the right way like people can't even if you're on zoom people are

just staring at themselves watching how they react all the time so like i just think that we don't need to see I don't need a live view of someone's their reaction to like an hour and a half show like I just don't need it I needed that clip of Selena Gomez and now I'm good and I don't need anything ever again well I mean I need things like food and water but like I don't need that it just feels like companies profiting off of art like just it feels like another thing of profiting off of artists and not their art it's like profiting off of like who they are and like their human interactions like watching them interact with other people and like none of them are actively performing like you're literally just watching them have side conversations

and you're doing this because you know fans like this and like i don't think fans should be able to see this like i think we should be able to like enjoy what an artist puts out when they're doing their thing not like when they're just existing as a human but like it just gets really muddied and it feels like icky it feels like i shouldn't be watching i agree because when i'm watching a show or any performance i just want to see the people that are on stage that's what I'm here to look at and I get so mad when they cut away when I'm enjoying something first of all you're already forcing me to look at it from a certain angle I don't need close-ups to the people on stage I don't need close-ups of the people off stage I just want to see the stage and people

putting on a good-ass show and that's it I don't need anything extra and I really hate when they do that I was trying to learn a dance the other day from a music artist and they cut away also the song is very old from the 90s it's a janet jackson song and i had to find sent me down a rabbit hole which i did enjoy watching this and how the dance evolved at different places but i had to watch several so i could get it from all the angles because they kept cutting away and looking at people in the audience i don't need to see people freaking out over janet jackson it's janet jackson like just let me see her we know unless it's me in the audience i don't need to see it and also you can just send me that footage and i'll let you know if i want you to

include it like this is just not an important thing and the one thing that killed music video specifically but even award shows where they they soft fade away and then they start filming one of the fucking amps and it's like blurry and then it comes into focus i go that's an inanimate object like i genuinely don't i can just hop on over to best buy and i can look at what that looks like like i don't need to see this this just feels like and it feels also insulting to like the fucking dancers perform like singers all of the people like the lighting like costumers like all of this shit i'm like they spent so much fucking goddamn time and we're gonna focus on what like i don't like it me either we have to quit after perfection and after selena gomez gave that look

about chris brown and she posted on her instagram story literally said like don't care like if someone was like this was me and she was like i don't care that's all i need it's chris brown people are not well well well well speaking of well now it's my turn what do you have for us and i know the last couple weeks i've been talking specifically about work things but i feel like they're relatable and one person's been getting on my nerves for weeks now so here's my hot probably lukewarm take depending on what side of the aisle you stand on about this calling co-workers family should be considered harassment i'm offended by that statement if someone called said like we're your family i go that doesn't bode well no it's gaslighting and it's manipulative if and i

want to say like if you see a job posting that has the word family in it run it's a red flag get the hell away. Yes, you do spend a lot of time with these people, but a family they do not make. People say family as a way to make you feel proud of each other, proud of your work. So then everyone will perform high and go above and beyond. What is going above and beyond mean? If I'm going above and beyond, that means I'm not doing just my job. And if people expect you to go above and beyond, then they need to be paying you more because you aren't just doing your job. You don't need to connect with your co-workers on a personal level. When people say family, in most situations, it's either your actual family or your chosen family.

And then there's this sense of loyalty that comes with it. I'm not loyal to the job. I don't expect people that work for me to be loyal to this job either. You are here or there or wherever you work to get a check. You do your work well, do your task well, get a check. If at any time I'm unsatisfied with your work or at any time you're unsatisfied with doing the work, then leave. Like, we don't need to have a conversation about it.

You're either going to get fired or you're going to quit. Something's going to happen. But if you do your job well, then just keep doing it. We don't need to have, we don't need to know each other on a personal level. Is it nice sometimes when you do connect with co-workers? Of course. Of course. But it's not a requirement for a job. Families also support each other during difficult times. Unless we work together and we are actual friends and talk outside of work, then I don't need your support unless it's in any way affecting your job. If you're going through a

tough time, just let me know. We will make adjustments, but I don't need to know the details just like you don't need to know details on my end also families can be dysfunctional don't bring that shit to work we're here to do business i've been at jobs where people will jokingly call the boss mom or dad don't do that shit and then and then like the boss is yeah on purpose and then the boss will be like hey kiddo can you stay late again it's a form of manipulation there needs to be healthy boundaries set. We don't need to shift power dynamics that can be easily taken advantage of. It's irrational and people get burnt out. Also, it can blur the lines between your actual family and the people you work with. So when like you set a boundary, like every day I'm leaving

work at 6 p.m. so I can be with my family and then they'll be like, you're not being a team player with your work family. Fuck all the way off. The only colleague that I call family or say that we're family is Melanie because she's actually my sister. But even with that, I'm not going to say that in a work situation because that's going to take advantage of the situation. So in conclusion, you are not Vin Diesel. Leave the word family out of it. There's always room for family. I'm going to play this for months and this is going to change his life because maybe he'll understand it coming from you but specifically that last reference is that will

hopefully ring true i wholeheartedly agree with all of that i i also think in the sense of like people joke in the same way about like you know being trauma bonded with like your co-workers and i go so you agree this is not a good family like you're all being abused by like the same quote-unquote parental figures here right so like if i was the boss i'd be like let's remove this language because it does not end up well ever right it's messed up it's truly messed up yeah truly messed up so that's all i have for but am i wrong i have to say i'm like a very like i'm a casual person so like i like talk to like people like i know them and so then when people will be like oh can you like do me a solid i'm like what no i'm this is i'm friendly i'm not a

push like this is not the same thing where it's like could you cut me some slack and i go should i cut you some slack and do more money for free while you get paid the same money that like you get what you're you're okay cool cool cool absolutely not whoa whoa whoa that's the end of this segment now we're going to take a break we're back from our break and we're getting to our next segment which is called but are you wrong and this is where you listeners write in to our email address but am i wrong pod at gmail.com let us know in 300 words or less the circumstance that you have found yourself in past or present that you would like our judgment on were you wrong in this situation so we ask that you it

will be all anonymous you can use pseudonyms and if you're going to have fun with it and like pick an entity to like name it after make it make sense otherwise um we will think you're subtly letting us know this is about like brother fucker or sister wives or something like that we'll we'll we'll implement the lore in there which you might not want and let us know your age the ages of other people involved and make sure when you're formatting it let us know what you would like to know that you're wrong or what you think if we think you're wrong about blank so hi megan and melissa i'm having a dilemma at work i-25 she her reviewed my performance evaluation via our online work portal we had this option we had this option or to meet in person with management i have severe

social anxiety, so I opted to read mine alone. I have worked for this healthcare company for six plus years. We have yearly reviews where they send out a questionnaire to multiple co-workers. Management reviews and takes portions of these answers and adds their own thoughts as well. Here's my issue. Under the team section of my review, my manager wrote that this is where I have major issues in, that I can have a negative attitude when tired or stressed, and I've been heard saying by my direct co-workers, that's not my job to perform tasks. When I tell you this, i just read this i didn't even know we were getting into this whoa whoa whoa i've never said that he also went on extensively about my behavior when i'm stressed or tired and how i how it can be

hard to be around and that co-workers feel affected by this the wild part is over the past one and a half years i've made huge improvements in my depression and anxiety and i feel like i'm easy to be around and so much happier i feel hurt in a way and betrayed by my co-workers so i also consider friends am i wrong for thinking my co-workers betrayed me am i wrong for wanting to distance myself from these people because i thought they were my friends and they're clearly thinking negatively of me i care so much about what people think about me so this has taken a toll on me mentally i think this is a little more complex than just betrayal in the sense because i think like i would definitely feel without i got hurt by this and i would also have read it alone

like i would not have wanted to go i would like want to see it on my own first before someone like telling me so i would just say that like this would definitely because this feels like like more personal than work related in that kind of sense where that would feel like okay this is a little hard but at the same time what kind of review would you have rather had i'm also might be showing my ignorance like i'm not like i haven't worked in a job like this so what is a better review because if i think of like in terms of your co-workers or people who like you if they have to say something somewhat construct like you know not entirely positive somewhat constructive what's like the best thing they could say that won't like affect your job or your performance

in like your completion of your tasks or the quality of what you're doing in my mind your quote-unquote attitude when you do it is at like the least important do you think that's wrong i think that performance reviews are total bs because as long as you're doing the job then you're performing as long as you're doing your job and the task you're getting complete whatever i was once in a performance review that we had like it had to be every month because i probably worked at this job six months and i was being praised in my actual performance review and then when we had our team meeting the boss just got up and just took everything that she said and like turn it into a lie she's like yeah the uh your performance was up but like something

i forgot exactly what it was but like i was hitting all my like going beyond all my cells that i needed to make but i wasn't i was getting through the rotation of people fast so she meant so she was basically saying that like if i took my time then it wouldn't be as high as it was what does it matter i'm getting through everyone be as good yeah i'm getting through everyone and every and everything's high so everybody's making money what's the problem here and she was like happy about it when it was one-on-one and then when she got in front of people then she changed what she was saying and so i've never trusted them i think a lot of people also that work in the professional world agree with me because it's pitting people against each other in a way that

as i've said before unless i said minutes ago unless you're hanging out with these people outside of work and they are your actual friends they're not your friends they're just people you work with and so because this is essentially even though it's not meant to be a competition people are setting it up to be a competition they're going to do anything to because they can't evaluate themselves but they're going to do anything to make themselves look better especially if you didn't even say these things but let's say you said this isn't my job i'm not going to do it guess what it's not your job so you don't have to do it it's all bs and i just want you to remember that like it's all bs as long as you're doing your job and doing it well and

doing whatever like the company needs from you that's on the job description then you're fine what are they gonna fire you on yeah this feels like a mind game like it is a mind game and it feels like it's superiors putting it against like their employees in a way that like it's make puts you in your place like constantly like makes you feel like not and it's because it's not like if something were actually you could use constructive criticism on like it would be an in the moment correction or help or something like that like you don't like sit on it like it's like therapy tells you like you don't like keep a checks and balances of your head of like arguments you get in and then bring it up quarterly like that's

just like it's not it's not helpful for people like at all like that it's like more helpful if you see a behavior that's not good to like point it out in the moment so then people know what you're referencing but even with co-workers it's like i think people can like melissa said like use it to make themselves look better but also like if you are a co-worker who doesn't say anything negative then that can be like that looks bad on that co-worker for being like oh everything like and it just and it could be that like you know they have to think about like what's the best possible what would i want someone to say about me that still fits the like criticism like it still needs to fall into like a critique so what is the one of that so like i

think like for you you took this personal and there are certain things that like if someone said about me i would definitely without a doubt take personally like melissa you didn't say those things you know this is not true but also even if it was true that's not bad so i think if you can like reframe in the sense that like there's a chance that people did this to try because this is what they do and like this is how they review other people or they did it because this is how they wanted to review you specifically because they feel competition with you but i don't think you'd be wrong at all for like distance yourself from your co-workers i think most people should distance themselves from their co-workers so i don't think that's that's wrong at all if you

want to have a conversation with like someone doesn't have to be a co-worker but like about their a friend's review or if you have a mentor like how they do reviews at their company or i'm sure you could like look on reddit or something like that this is one of those like workplace norms that i would really fucking struggle with like mons told me about one of his reviews and like you have to like self-rate and i was like oh so you give yourself like an a plus and he goes you can't do that and i was like what right and i was like i would have done like there's no like that's just not a thing that like i would have known and like that's just like how some people's brains are built like it can be experienced but it can also just be like i wouldn't if i had to

give like a review for somebody else i would only talk about like all the great wonderful things they do and i would write it in a way hoping that when they read it it makes them feel like good like i wouldn't write it not thinking they would you know what I mean like and that's just like how I work in like what even when I was like we're doing pure grading assignments of that stuff like I would always do it like that if they're like they did something very wrong like I would talk to the teacher because I don't want I wouldn't want that coming from me because I'm like who the fuck am I like this is and so I think that like you're you might be wired a little bit differently in that sense so I would definitely take it personally but that doesn't mean that

it's personal so I think if you can kind of get a larger sample size of again doesn't fit people at your company, but just how these things work. This is just, I think, kind of one of those workplace, unfortunate workplace norms that is not in my mind and maybe your mind intuitive to like how you would go about this. So it's not what it says it is. And so that's what's hard to kind of get to suspend disbelief in thinking like, you know, how would I give a review that I would like to get? Like that would be ideal, but I don't know that every company is going to be like that. yep that's not a real place no and these people aren't your friends unless you're actually friends trust nobody yeah and if you have like friend friends in the corporate setting don't make

friends with the people you work with because it's a competition then a promotion comes up and one of you you're both up for it and one of you gets it and the other one doesn't no it's a lot i find a lot easier to make friends work friends in a larger pool of something that's like an internship or like an assistant where you're all doing different and you're going in different directions but once you reach like a certain like level like that's it's hard and like that becomes psychologically hard for you also to like let go and all that but i would say like if you have anyone who you considered like a close friend at work you specifically said that like you know your depression anxiety were like really rough and you have been working on it

if that you feel like specifically you're like oh cool this person definitely knows a lot about me and like this feels very personal in that sense whether you want to talk to them or not but like that's the first person i would probably cut off like yep if you're going to make friends with people in work do it with people that aren't in your department and then that way maybe you want to get a promotion but not work with the people that you're working with you can make lateral moves over to the other side yeah but then you can't gotta be front you gotta start making friends elsewhere yeah and be cognizant of like are you share are other people sharing as much with you as you're sharing with them yeah and so like that's something that

like i'm i'm not like a vulnerable person but i'm like an overshare but like not to like an emotional level like i'm not talking like i'm like oh whatever throw away kind of a thing but sometimes people can be like oh this person is confiding this is a theory and it's like no know it's like not that deep not that serious like that's just how i talk and then you know people can then think something is more serious than it is less serious whatever it is and they can feel like you might not notice that they think you're sharing something very vulnerable it's not vulnerable but yeah they're also then sharing things that aren't vulnerable that you also think aren't vulnerable but then they think they have this thing on you that this same place

was such a toxic place and it was such a competition with everybody but when i quit they had somebody who used to like she was friends with people that lived in the same apartment building i was in and for some reason she thought me and her were friends i was like see you walking down the street i didn't even know that you knew these people like but you know who i'm she's like you look so familiar oh yeah i was like couldn't tell you who you are you get that literally every time leaves the house I know and so she would confide in me about a lot of things at work and I wouldn't and then they would the people at work would be like we feel like we don't know you why do you need to know me again because I'm showing up to do my job because then when they know you then

they know how to manipulate you and then when I quit they had that person even though we were on the same level she was not a boss they had her call me and ask why i quit i'm just concerned i was like she left this message of course didn't answer she left a message on my voicemail but no no and then also her and the boss were like friends like actual friends but then when they started working together they started hating each other and then she would tell me all this stuff about the boss and i was just like why do y'all feel like that you need to share everything because now i know personal information about this woman that i should know there is nothing that gives me a quicker ick than when someone tells i don't even have to like the person but

if someone tells me something where i go that person would not tell me that about themselves and it's like uh-uh we can gossip all you want if it relates to what all but if you tell me something about someone i'm not no no no no no no because that means you talk about me like that to other people yep and that's why i'm not telling you any of my secret yeah biggest thing we feel like we don't know you i'm doing my work good good you don't know me oh these the audacity of these people mine's the opposite people like i really feel like i know you i'm like you don't at all they're like but you talk about me like you share so much i go in truly you've scratched the surface people have sent me things they're like this reminds me of megan i was like nothing

about this is megan it's like when people are like you're very like you know pessimistic person i was like i'm like so not like i'm like delusional i'm not like toxic positivity but like i'm i would say i'm like a delusional realist in a sense like i'm realistic about some things you're like no no most of the time i'm like i'm convinced everything's gonna work out fine like everything's gonna fall on my lap and everything will be fine like i am too well that's and that is why i can only be friends with people like like it's so frustrating the other way i'm like what's the point because like it's all made up anyway what the fuck is the point yes it's all made up have it's all fake have fun assume the best why assume the worst it's all made up all right so here's the

next one. My name is Melissa. Just a PSA to everyone. My name has one S in it. I need to know if I'm wrong about this situation with my quote-unquote friend. So I, 29-year-old Mel, he, him, have known James, 30-year-old Mel, he, him, since college. We had the same major, worked for the same business, and attended the same graduate school. When I met James, he had got just gotten engaged to his now husband mark 30 years old male i have spent a lot of time with both of them and attended their wedding i have never approved of james's behavior in the relationship he frequently complains about mark to mutual friends of theirs and had inappropriate friendships that i believe were emotional cheating etc i distanced myself from him but it was

difficult as we both work for the same company it's all work related today and then he followed me to the same small less than 20 people graduate program during our program we had a voluntary month-long internship that required a stay in a state four hours from our school that james and i both attended at different times after returning home james confided in me and another friend that he was having an affair with someone in this other city and they were sleeping together. Once home, he told Mark we had class five days a week instead of four and spent every Friday driving four hours there and four hours back to see this other person. The other classmate and I forced him to confess to Mark. Months later, they are staying together and in therapy.

after graduation i cut james out but he thinks i am leaving him in his time of need and since mark forgave him it doesn't make sense for us to still be mad am i wrong for cutting james out no why are you friends with him the whole time i thought that this was like mark yeah and then yeah so now i'm realizing that you're friends with the problem yeah and you have been here's my thing and this might be a hot take but if you don't approve of someone's marriage or their relationship don't attend their wedding because that attending someone's wedding is putting a seal of improvement on it you approved of it and then also i don't think you're wrong you cut them out your life at this point so you did what needed to be

done James can't just be like well Mark got over it so why can't you no because you're just because Mark is okay with it doesn't mean that that is you don't that if you stayed friends with him you would say that I have the same ethics as you and it's okay when you know that he's probably still doing this and he's a liar like he's a liar he's not just like a cheater but he's a cheater and a liar and he includes you into this lie that's the worst part i think that i actually knew someone that did this to me when someone confides in me something that i think is like so atrocious and abysmal and they say it in a way that it's like fellow comrade i'm like whoa what did i do that made you think that like i would be cool with this or i'm on your side

like that makes me have to like okay i have to reevaluate how i've been behaving in this friendship that made you think that like i was a safe person to share this information with or anything like that like so i think that like you distancing yourself from him that's an important factor in all this to me because you know i think yes attending the wedding is a sale of approval but i also think like maintaining a friendship with someone who is doing arbitrarily bad things that are also not specific to romantic relationships like lying like you know disrespect like those are things like i don't value in my friendships so like what other people do in their other friendships and their romantic relationships to an extent sure none of my business but also

kind of my business if i know that like you treat other people poorly i don't want to be an exception to the rule like i don't want also because like in my mind i'm like that's not permanent like shoes that other shoes gonna drop or you're talking about about me behind my back like i care about you know the people you surround yourself with are also a reflection of you to other people but also like to me myself like you get if you hang out with certain friends who like you speak talk a certain way like have like a certain kind of like we used to call it camp like camp lingo like you're like you're coming back saying these same phrases like you become an amalgamation of like the people you surround yourself with whether consciously or unconsciously

if you're a bad person and i don't really know that i can then unconsciously become a shitty person until i'm snapped out of it because i blatantly see you do something really fucking shitty so i think that like you've gotten about this in all of like the right way and it's very clear that like he's following you everywhere and the the cutting off like melissa said like i think that's the right but leaving someone in their time of need is he doesn't need you he needs to work on his relationship and that has nothing there's nothing you do or whatever like you don't know but like he created this situation and i thought what does he need what does he need if he's getting a more emotional support from mark his husband and he's going to therapy and you've said

that you don't approve of what he's been doing what does he need from you it makes me think that the relationship is not as strong as he's letting on and he thinks if other people leave him for his actions it will teeter mark over the edge where he's already probably straddling of oh wow yeah no i shouldn't do that but i also think that like friendship wise if you see someone like people can do bad things and like you can look at them and be like you know i you're i think it's a product of circumstance a mistake or whatever but like again we said this from the beginning but like if your instinct is to cut someone out you that's not your it's a it's years of backlogged of reasons why it's no one's really doing that based on one interaction but you don't

like how he treats another person romantic or not like that's a very unattractive quality in even like like a work friend let alone like a friend friend and it wasn't on it wasn't just cheating it was an ongoing affair and that's like letting you know about it and like letting you know that's like a really shit position to put someone in and also like you weren't even that close at that point so like it just feels like you want to brag about it or whatever like it just he needs more people to be involved in his chaos it's not just enough to cause the chaos imagine cheating having an affair and lying about school i have questions about the taxes driving four hours it's actually eight hours total because four hours there and four hours

back i have questions about taxes like a school i don't know if you can write off if it's like a graduate program if you can write off your gas for said tax like for whatever it is but i'm just like do you share finances like i i would just like how do you so bold and brazen actual trash human trash all right you're not wrong not at all we're gonna take a break and when we get back we'll get into but are they wrong and we're back so I would like to nominate Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher

for writing their character letters for danny masterson and this has been like a case that's been going on for a very long time um the cut actually has a really good article kind of coming from like the beginning of the allegations to even when the allegations became public and all because right now i will say that scientology is doing a real good job with the seo of making none of the allegations or claims really anything more than a sentence and it's specifically adding in a lot of doubt in people's minds because of it so Danny Masterson has been convicted for 30 years to life which when I saw was like shocking not in the sense that that's not what he deserves he deserves more like this is on like Brock Turner got like three months or something

like it's just unheard of and so immediately i was like whoa what what happened i want to give major fucking kudos to the judge the judge and this is like la courts stood up against scientology which is not a thing like you can't do that like lapd they've got scientology i mean scientology has lapd in their pocket like they've got a fucking deal and lapd and you know la courts also have a long relationship and it doesn't favor victims and so this judge really went for it and made and made an example in the positive sense of the kind of psychological turmoil and what happens when you abuse your power as someone who's a Scientologist and a famous Hollywood actor but um yeah milan ashen wrote character letters for it which are abysmal specifically the part

that like i rolled my eyes so fucking hard wasn't talking about how you know he really helped people maintain a drug-free lifestyle which is not just a nod to scientology denny masterson drugged all these women and so they're specifically trying to enter in like he didn't do drugs and it's like you don't have to do drugs to use drugs to drug people and assault them harm them rape them like it's just fucking irrelevant they bring up his daughter like you know since he's become a father and when they ashton ended his letter being like and i think you'd be like a really a huge shame for his daughter essentially being like if his daughter grows out grows up without a dad like she would be a victim and it's like the idea of potential victims over actual ones who have

already suffered harm this idea it gave me it's the same fucking shit as oh well if you get an abortion what if what if you killed the person who's going to cure cancer and it's like oh my god like this hypothetical sort of shit to like tug at the heartstrings just pissed me off and i was livid watching the whole thing and diving deeper into ashton kutcher's organization thorn i've followed like and see a lot of people who uh retweet and engage with a lot of sex workers and advocates on Twitter and they've never been for his company. I am a lot of red flags usually when it comes out with like against sex trafficking because I am against sex trafficking. But a lot of the jargon is used in a way to evoke an emotional response to a not actual threat without addressing

like the actual threats of trafficking and specifically for children. And there's been all these deep dives that it's like he's doing it with like CIA and like his tech stuff. And it's all about normalizing like you know tech in the homes and it's also anti any sort of like sex work and it's not about decriminalizing it's about you know not being for any sex work even consensual and then finally I saw this someone had mentioned on TikTok I'm not sure who it was I saw it from a couple people I don't know who the first person to say it was that like in the video response when Mila and Ashton are appalling like quote-unquote apologizing when they're like we're talking about the guy we knew Mila's like hella fucking pissed like he's acting like he's trying to be sad she's

like pissed and someone was like I feel like maybe she didn't want to do it and he told like he was like come on we got to do this and she's mad which I think like there is a chance that like maybe she's she's mad at the viewers she's mad at like she's mad at the people who are mad at them or she's fucking mad at her husband who has put this position because also like she was a kid on that 70s show and i do have a i have more grace for her because she also ended up marrying the guy who was exponentially older than her and i like i do in a lot of these situations i'm holding out hope that she divorces him and she steps back from this realizes all does a lot of fucking work and you know co-parents but recognizes that like oh shit yeah this is not like a sunk cost of I did

this so I might as well stick it out and see it through it's awful and there is a lot of speculation that's coming out from this now because Chrissy Bixler who is one of Danny Masterson's victims who alleged victims who was one of the only people who was named in the trial who did not get conviction it was like eight to four and you have to have you not unanimous vote but if you had gone from still people were on her side that she was the girlfriend who had seen all this she's posting on her stories about how ashton kutcher's girlfriend when they were younger she had been murdered and there's uh the implication in it is that ashton kutcher saw it left didn't say anything and called danny and she was there with speakerphone and danny and scientology lapd

like walked him through what to do and so then they let the roommate discover the body the next morning and that he arrived i think they said like the he talked to her at four and then he arrived at like 10 50 p.m and she was killed at some span of that which we can you know for someone to sleep at night might make him feel better no like thinking that like oh she definitely was dead by the time i got there there's maybe not could have prevented you know maybe the guy who had done it like and it there's all of these different factors that like is no one's saying that he he killed her but not saying what you know in that you time is of the essence yeah danny wasn't the only person that he called that night he called all of his team

but danny's the one that gave him advice also allegedly also i don't think they were it was his girlfriend i think they were just dating yeah dating i think he was picking her up for yeah a date yeah because we're going to like an after party for something but even in the way the letters are written you can tell that like how all of the women who've testified against him like all of that how they speak about him is still how ashton amila speak about him in the sense that like he's the power but they're talking about it in a way that is a critique and this is not good but ashton amila are like no he's like the mentor he was like he led everybody and it's like you're saying the same thing but without the fucking perspective like this person is manipulative

abusive and like you are entrapped in this web and you are doing the bidding you are participating in all of this and it just is like infuriating and makes me so upset and so mad um and i want to read uh this is a comment on i think on lily and jocelyn's video on their podcast talking about it And someone said from Mel J. Steven or Stefan, they said victims can't get reduced sentences. Victim can't victims can't get paroled. Victims can't use character references to escape their abuse, which I don't believe in the character references. And in this sense, because the justice system is like so fucking flawed and you could be completely innocent and have all of the most wonderful care.

Like and it's not going to change. It's a matter of what they want to do. and this is the only time i think we've ever seen someone who has been a sexual predator and a rapist for years be sentenced to this like level of it so like most of the time when we're using these letters like ashna mila's letters would have done a lot more and i think that's the most like violent part of what they did knowing that these trials hardly ever even go to fucking trial let alone get sentenced and you you know that those letters are so powerful that they do have a huge opportunity to sway all of that and you're a celebrity and you're gonna do that and also

these are a lot of these are like women you've known maybe not personally in like social circles but like this is all of the same time period like it just makes me like livid and like so upset and so mad like you could a family member a friend a close friend like a partner like could get if someone did something awful horrible and someone asked me right about like all the great times we had together no so fuck them also fuck house and habit the instagram account who's a just a abuser loving piece of shit um who is just trying to harass chrissy bixler and other victims to further her agenda which is pander to misogynists and abusers to further her financial success so i hate it all me too yeah and not just those two but a lot of their co-stars wrote letters

and they also didn't think it was going to be public information and so that is an issue in itself too because the same thing happened when fucking tori i was about to say do you think that when that came out they were all like i think they were already on or they don't even know who that is either one but um so swift with it but like they did this because they didn't think it was going to be seen and this tells you what kind of people they are i don't care about your organization i don't give a shit about your organization and what you say you do to the public what you do in private in a company you keep is far more fucking important because also yep charities and organizations major fucking tax write-offs first time i signed with an agency

they were like what charities like to align yourself with it's a good deal business-wise yep and it's not a bad thing but you just can't look at it like this person is a saint for doing this exclusively and therefore this absolves them from any future wrongdoings right and we also don't need to praise Topher Grace because I think I mean his wife posted something which was like pro-victim so did Christina Ricci so did Kathy Griffin which that was a very impactful one on TikTok but uh I will just urge everybody as specifically us as women men are not going to be our saviors in this and so like we do not need to be like this man sucks but look how much better this man nope nope so i'm happy that his wife is speaking out i hope he also speaks out and i feel

bad that he got the i guess like reaming he got in the public i knew nothing about this time of hollywood i didn't know anything about that either a rel like it's just but i asked like mox and i think i asked mox's brother and he was like he didn't really watch it but someone we talked to was like oh they watched all of it and it was apparently like in my mind the comparison was like lindsey lohan hillary duff level like feuding and of like people hating each other not wanting to work with each other and all of that and so the press took one specific angle with it like yeah that was hard but he's also the only one who's consistently worked since yeah that's true all right my turn i knew it was gonna you were gonna do something heavy so i did something a

little lighter it's not as serious but it is serious because people in real estate discuss me in a way that like that they see everything as like building their investment portfolio so i have to be coded about what i'm gonna say because this is heavily involved in things on the writer's strike side even though this show is old as hell i still know what you're talking about but i'm ready to figure it out okay so a story of a lovely lady who yeah i know that yes so a movie think of a tv show in the 70s about a blended family with three girls and three boys and then they rebooted it in the 90s as a very funny hee hee ha ha about the show where they were essentially making fun of it in a smart way and they had the theme song look like it took

place over zoom well that's what i am referring to so uh tina trahan t-r-a-h-a-n not sure if i'm pronouncing it right she bought the house that looks that's the exterior for the house and is complaining about it and calling it the worst investment that she's ever made so um back in 2018 a tv network where they do home improvements they bought the home and then renovated it so it looked exactly like how it looked on that TV show. And so then Tina was like, no one is going in there to make pork chops, pork chops and applesauce in the kitchen. It's a quote from the show, pork chops and applesauce, you say? And so she said, anything you might do to make this house livable would take away from what I consider artwork. And so she lives in Bel Air. And so

since she was such a big fan of the show she was like let me go drop 3.2 million dollars on this house that's in studio city that is too much money for home and studios right so when they were putting this house on the market after that home improvement network renovated it they're like we weren't sure how much to sell it from for so we were like was it going to be anywhere from 2 million to 10 million because of the sentimental values of it what and so they landed on 3.2 million and to some that work in this industry they thought it was a bargain but like i said she said it was the worst investment ever because no one's ever gonna live with it it's almost like a lifestyle a life-size dollhouse and i'm like if you're gonna buy something that's that much

when you want to live in it but no she thought like it was really going to be an investment also her husband is the former chief of um a big network that that tv show about the family and business was on cable network so imagine you loving a tv show so much and you're just like i want that house and you just go buy it and then you come you never want to live in it and then you just complain about having it and then you go to several news outlets and and talk about it and now you're just like oh i guess i'll just you know use it to have fundraisers in and charitable charitable events that's literally what she said i'm baffled that so does this person you said their husband works in the industry did she work in the industry i didn't see anywhere where it

said that she does she ever visited a set before because i'm telling you right now like the books aren't real like the milk is real like all those things i'm like this is like it's not functional and so like you can't want to like oh this is perfect the thing is is that it didn't it was just the exterior and then the home improvement show but she bought it after that yes and but they redid it so it actually like it is functional but it's just like who wants to live in a place that looks like the 70s like that like everything in there is from the 70s yeah and also a lot of those home improvement shows like it is almost like set deck from like a scripted tv show where it's like they're doing it quickly like things aren't it's not necessarily of quality like

craftsmanship or of like product so it's like it's about the closest match not about how well it fits or what works or what is like most useful like we're going for basing off of like a flat image to like match that it's just i'm i'm shocked someone from here or who like worked in like or worked in industry bought it like that's the most shocking part of all of it to me yeah it's what like why and then you complain about it and you don't even live there so that tells me she has like a portfolio of things if she just buys because she likes it do you think it's on airbnb it has to be right she said that she just wants to use it for charity events so i don't know oh my god and if you google it the address is just there yeah i can't believe

they bought it the home improvement network bought it for 5.5 million from it was in a family which i'm i'm happy for them because it'd been in their family for years for the record they're saying studio city it is technically north hollywood that resale value this is embarrassing embarrassing it is embarrassing like i wouldn't tell anyone like i would like there's no way if a news outlet reached out to me i'd be like you have the wrong person like i'm so sorry that's not me i didn't buy that but like who do you think reached out like who doesn't think no one reached out to her she reached out she wanted to be it's it's being covered in the wall street journal like that's where the original interview was in the wall street journal it's in people it's on now

this news that's where i originally saw it like it's everywhere so i'm like who was your pr person why did you think this was good pr did you think that maybe if you did this then someone that was a bigger fan than you that had bigger pockets would be like i want that house this is like so embarrassing imagine like i'm a fan of some things like i'm a big fucking fan but there are certain levels of fandom where like keep that to yourself like first of all you want to spend five million three million dollars on a fandom do you don't do it publicly like that and then be upset that you did this yourself or make it like a museum like when it's on one of those the double decker tour buses those red ones and they drive by like hollywood homes like open it up and charge

people to come into it yeah one of the um guys who lives in one of the paint painted ladies in san francisco he does that but like he like hosts not like through those kinds of tours but like there are a lot of walking tours but he also hosts his own tours where you can come to his house pay a fee and he like walks you through everything and he has like the history of the house and like all of that and that's definitely a much smaller niche of fans and i as one who's a fan of that i love those houses but like it's a much smaller niche than this is oh the the realtors have commented on what tina has a great sense of humor and didn't purchase property as an income producing objective uh it's not an investment for her in the sense she's going to flip it she

bought it with the intention of hosting charity events and to keep it intact the house is a work of art it's not a typical property it's not a liver live it's not a livable home with modern conveniences i'm just like as the heart the housing mark as it market as it is i'm happy for that family though yeah you know how like there's this whole thing of like i feel it too like people like have these beautiful old houses or like of really of their time whatever your style and taste is varies but like you know something that is from the time and they just gut it and make it all like modern and gray and awful i'm not for that but i think there's a happy medium i love a mid-century modern home that has like appliances that look like they're from the time but they're

new like i've there's a beautiful house that i saw that they remodeled it enough where it looked like it was actually in arkansas go figure there's a cup there there's some famous architect who does that and there's the museum there in bentonville but this yes but i'm telling you about this specific house was in little rock arkansas and like they were just putting on the same family had owned it for years but then they updated it completely but it still had all the characteristics of the old house and it was immaculate it was beautiful yeah like and i i think this is a little specifically a little crazy because it's the exterior home like so they gutted it and then made it look like the interior which that home improvement show they did it because they could

because it was content and they invited all the original kids to it like it was like a whole thing yeah like it was a whole thing you could walk down any street in north hollywood and say that's the you could walk down any street in north hollywood or if they're saying studio city and you're not going to be able to tell which house is which like this looks like every other bitch with love like this is just a very like it's supposed to be a standard house that is nondescript from the out like it's just supposed to be the everyday man's home and like there are so many of those houses that look exactly like that and you could make your you could build a whole house to look exactly like that for less money and live farther from the

right way yep anyways thank you for sharing that i literally have not even seen that and i can't wait to rant about it to monster later today we hope you all enjoyed this episode of but am i wrong if you have any insight you have got like oh i have i have some things to say i have opinions head on over to our instagram and vote in this week's episode of but am i wrong on our instagram who was wrong who you think was wrong in each situation you can let us know your thoughts and feelings and we can read it aloud in fisting friday and stay tuned tomorrow to get the results from last week and as always you can tag us and things you can send us a dm we'd really love to hear you talk about this and the same caveat we always say if you're going to tag us in a video

please send a video first and then send the message with hey this is about x y and z so we know if it's something we want to open or maybe we've already seen it could be traumatizing or it could also just be disgusting because people are like hey you hate what was the one that they kept sent sprinkles we just kept seeing videos of spring i hate sprinkles why do i want to see a sprinkle video looks like fucking wax don't get me started again okay anyways we hope you all enjoyed and we will struggle back next week goodbye but am i wrong is a production by me megan rinks and me melissa demonts plus diamond imprint productions post-production by coco lorenz and production assistance by melanie d watson