Don't Blame Me! - Privileged Friends

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

For But Am I Wrong Meghan: BridalTok is one of the worst sides of influencing Melisa: Gun violence needs to end and it starts with the manufacturers In But Am You Wrong: Distancing yourself from friends Taking break from a friend Big dog, little kitten During chores during a potential exposure And in But Are They Wrong AKA "Rachel of The Week" they nominate: Meghan: Madison Russo Melisa: Pat Grassley Write In: [e-mail] Weigh In: Vote in the weekly poll on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meghanandmelissa 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/meghanandmelisa 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

hey hi hello welcome to another episode of but am i wrong yeah yeah yeah starring two people who have never been wrong just know though that in tomorrow's episode where we read the results of last week's something happens while we're recording that is me being right but if and melissa being the thing is is if you take it percentage wise of how many times i was right versus how many times you're wrong it's probably like i mean versus how many times you were right you're probably right about 0.09 but in that moment i was right 200 whatever it's a numbers game, everybody. Welcome to another episode where we are two people who have never once been wrong in our lives, and we are going to tell you when you are wrong. We're also

going to tell each other in our lives, hey, are we wrong with the situation? We never are. You can watch on Patreon to see Melissa do a little shaky shake. It happens to both of us. It happens all the fucking time. The latest episode of Love Island, maybe it wasn't the latest, it made me feel hard. It made my nips real hard. If you want to watch this, and I'm over to Patreon so you can see us in all of our glory. We look cute today. We do.

I'm blue. We have three segments of the show. We will get into each of them as they occur. But one of our favorite parts is you all get to vote on who you think is wrong in each of our segments by going to our Instagram. These episodes come out on Thursday. We usually post the votes on Friday.

And by we, I mean me. And if I haven't posted them and it's Friday, feel free to send me a DM and be like, hey girl, unless I'm traveling, like just give me a little friendly reminder. then we read the results on our friday episode which is called fisting friday because we're oh yeah making sexual jokes out of absolutely everything we do okay that's i hate that it's like i'm fine with the over exaggeration but when you make it like real no i hate like i don't like

that like i really i really don't like that some people do it's for them it's not for me and i'm the only person here we're talking to an audience uh that is not in the room with us are they are they it's the audience in the room with us right now so yeah it's a great time we also post the votes straight to the highlights as soon as they're up so if you're missing one when you're looking at the stories do that they're only there for 24 hours though and then if you vote with the unpopular opinion or maybe it was the one that you wrote in about or even if it's a popular opinion if you have thoughts feelings send us a message so we can read it out loud and start a dialogue a conversation on the fisting friday episode because you know you need while you're fisting

more talking you have to talk your way through it that sounds so procedural like medical it kind of is i mean in what depending on your context well i know a doctor that that is his job is to fix prolapsed buttholes and he's known as the fisting doctor that you go to in florida he's a good looking man yeah that's nice looking hands well manicured you'd have to if that's like your whole job is like even subconsciously i would be like let me look at your hands if you're i know you're not fisting me as the operation but i would like to know what's going into my body yeah anyways without further ado shall we hop in to our first segment which is but am i wrong where we tell each other things that are happening in our lives currently a situation and we ask the other

am i wrong or we present a hot take with the class or rants we decided on that last week so mine is a combination of a hot take and a rant and i say specifically like kind of a rant because i've touched on a subset of this before but i think don't come for me that bridal talk might be one of like the absolute worst sides and like pockets of influencing i've never been on it so enlighten me it's like my fucking phone knows that i'm engaged and they're like so we must be serving you like bride content. And some of the stuff that I see is totally fine. Like there are like I think wedding planners who do videos talking about like cost breakdowns or like how they do these things like helpful, great, informational, wonderful people trying on

dresses. I'm like, oh, cute, like fun, great, whatever. But there are people who like you'll see in their bio that's like 2023 bride or something like it becomes a part of their identity and then their entire TikTok account is about wedding planning and there are again there's someone who I follow who reviews like Vogue weddings and like not in a like bitchy way or not even in like a cunty way like in just like oh and I loved this and it's so pretty and they'll talk about the details and then they also review like people will send in their own weddings and like she'll do like the photo stuff but then she also like talks about fashion she talks about like how to source different items and it's not about really her wedding planning process so i just want

to say there's a very stark difference to me between making your wedding your social media brand that you're like you're not a professional in the space you're not getting paid for you're making this time in your life like your entire social media identity versus you know being fascinated and interested in weddings and talking about them in like forever on in your content so I think this is where the really hot take and maybe conspiracy theory comes in. I think that there's an intentional pipeline from traditional from from bridal TikTok and being a bridal influencer to the traditional housewife gender roles. And then I think there's an unintentional brand identity of becoming like my entire identity is in being a bride. And I think because we see

all these people not you me I see all of these things that it kind of gets conflated that people are like oh I'm gonna start making bridal TikTok videos and become one of those TikTok brides without realizing that half of the people they're watching have then suddenly turned into like day in my life as like a as a as my first day as a wife and my day in the life is like my as a wife and like you know like someone asked like why we didn't live together before we got married and that's because you know a man has no incentive to marry you if you're just a girlfriend who's already cooking for him and cleaning for him like why would he spend the money on a ring when he's getting it all for free and i'm like i'm not shocked at all that you are saying this that's

to me the intentional pipeline to that and at most it like usually promotes you at most it permits promotes like useless consumerism and like there's this bubble because the wedding trend cycle is so fast it's I think honestly probably faster than even fashion and like anything else like people like oh this wedding is so 2022 like this wedding is like so dated like you can't do this anymore like this is so gross this is so like 2014 Pinterest blah blah blah that there's like an increased pressure to spend money on a singular day so your audience is also like fleeting and this is from the sides of like not just like regular people just sharing their wedding it's people who like try to make that their I don't know it kind of feels like

the MLM uh influencer version like a get rich quick thing like oh if I throw on these hashtags here like this video is going to blow up and like this is going to be what blows me up but weddings are just very much keeping up with the Joneses and I can't imagine this helps with like the lack of identity and no longer feeling special like after the wedding ends and I think it sometimes it feels like people seek out these echo chambers to justify what they're doing and it's like a really expensive bubble and then when you're watching these things and you're already spending let's say fifteen thousand dollars on something and someone's like oh and you can upgrade i'm upgrading this to this and this and this and i think that's like a lot of the time people talk about how

planning a wedding can be really isolating and it's because no one can really relate to you deciding between to spend ten thousand dollars on white chairs or twenty thousand dollars on acrylic chairs it's not like a or an eggshell or a cream like it's not the plight that everybody else has i also wonder what if the marriage fails which you know it becomes a divorce account honestly i'm telling you right now i would love that more i think like doing that so much more but also it feels like it's another way to make like the wedding process and season of your life not really about the couple or the marriage but just about appearances of it and i saw someone who's like going through and like granted they were donating like all of their like oh i'm

donating all of my bridal clothes but someone's like oh my god I need bridal clothes and it's like oh well for the engagement shout like all of these different events it's like oh I haven't had those it's like oh well you should ask if someone's gonna plan those for you and it's just like holy fucking shit like this is it's already such a huge expensive fucking industry and then I don't know people who aren't getting caught up with influencer trends or spending a lot of money and being influenced by what people say in a wedding you're already spending so much fucking money. So people just end up spending more and more and more monies. And I think all of this boils down to that, like planning a wedding and becoming a bride is one of the few times when I

think we like celebrate women and femininity in our society. And it's not only allowed, but encouraged by everybody. And I can imagine that that's intoxicating. And that's like, I think probably how we get to that bridezilla trope that it's like, we're telling women that this is the most important part of your lives. You've officially been picked. Like now you've a wedding dress. This is all about you. This is you. Like you don't have to sacrifice anything you want, which women are never fucking told like at all. It's always like you're too high maintenance. Like you're doing this, like you need to be more chill. But then we put like this threshold cap on it. And if you go past it, you're a bridezilla. But it's like, but you created the

monster. You started the monster. Like you made women feel worthless and like shit until they get married. And then when they're engaged, you tell them that like they've accomplished everything. They're doing everything right. This is amazing and perfect. And you finally give the praise and then you feed the monster and then you tell them they've become a monster while all the while just swiping their credit cards over and over and over again and I think there's a big difference between going on YouTube to like watch someone do this do like a DIY for their wedding or a creator like filming something that was like successful or their experience of the aftermath or even like a daily vlog of it but they're watching it back they're editing it and it's all in the

span of at least days if not like weeks over a time period of all of this versus you know tiktok you pick up your phone and you record a smash or pass on 2023 wedding trends and it blows you add the hashtags knowing that it's going to blow up and like go viral like really really really fucking quickly and it's gonna go straight to the audience of brides who are like doom scrolling to see if their own wedding passes the test and on short form platforms like tiktok negative things with the algorithm do better and so like it just can feed into like the absolute toxicity of it and all this spans because i mean all this started from two different videos but one was because a girl made a video stitching someone else's wedding video accusing them of copying her wedding who

cares melissa it's you could open pinterest and it's the same wedding but it's like holy fucking shit you place all this important that's what i mean i'm like you get in this echo chamber and you place all of this importance on it that all these decisions that you're making that are really fucking expensive you have to feel so secure in them and like so special and so unique that like nobody has ever done it before but everybody's done it fucking before but the idea that nobody has done it before and that's what everyone is striving for with the wedding is literally an impossible goal that's just letting the only people who are entertaining that like all of your vendors and shit they're just doing that to get more money out of you and then you're

going to accuse this couple of copying your wedding that was like so perfect and like so special all of that like literally even if they did who gave a fuck and also you're not about the the show that you're putting on it's about you making a commitment to your partner but if you're gonna be a bridal influencer people will be influenced that's true too like what the fuck and like to me i'm like i really hope that video it blew up i'm like i hope it's a wake-up call for people that it's like some things are not supposed to be monetized and something that is like whether you deem marriage like sacred or a wedding or whatever but like if you have an individual individuality complex hi me hello gatekeep gaslight gatekeep girl boss your

fucking wedding people always ask me where my stuff is from and i'm like i'm an aquarius no it's just like if you don't want it people to copy you don't be an influencer yeah and and the whole thing i just feel like is so toxic because there's not really any anything good that comes out of it you become a successful bridal talk influencer people only want to see brides who are actively planning their wedding your wedding's done what the fuck is your content like it has not been about you and then you've made your entire identity an event like a day like an event not even like your marriage or your wedding and i can also think that assume that that weighs kind of heavy on your partner especially because the wedding planning stuff is not easy and like there

are stuff that's hard or stressful but when you are making that content then if you only make the content of the hard stuff that's going on then all you're doing is complaining and getting in an echo chamber of other people complaining or you're not talking about the things that are hard but then a lot of people won't even talk about their own wedding so like you know talk about it like things that are kind of like obscure or whatever and it just feels like it's it's like a get famous quick but then you fall just as quickly and hope your social media and your influence doesn't fail along with like your marriage and your relationship and your sense of identity like it just it feels so specifically targeted at brides and that there's no way to

succeed you only fail like you're either i'm not like other girls or you're a bridezilla like it's just and it's like a gazillion dollar industry which we talked about in like a last a couple i mean a while ago about the wedding industrial complex but it's just you don't have to participate in it and you can have you can share your wedding you can share all of that stuff without fitting into this like niche on TikTok that like I I think most people would look back on in a while and be like wow I don't like this yeah so I'm like watching all this shit I'm like oh my god what if you statistically it's highly likely that you will get divorced so have fun at least share that with us

I'm gonna be an influencer soon what are you gonna influence mine it'll be a tight niche but I can't say it oh okay because she's the product I have I'm getting it for my birthday but there's also a wait list for it so I probably won't have it till March so I just want everyone to know that like there's no way for me to even fucking guess what she's talking about I've told you about it before i told you i wanted this thing oh my god melissa you want like a fucking like zero gravity amniotic fluid chamber like i don't know if like there's so many things it fucking could be anyway um here's mine it is a rant it's serious so are you implying that my bridal tiktok rant was not serious i'm implying that mine is very serious so we've got both in

this episode then yeah i'm ready all right so mine is gun violence needs to end and it starts with the manufacturers can't it's not a hot take it's it's dare i say a frozen take right so today is january 25th shootings that made the headlines in the last four days we've got the monterey park california shooting where 11 are dead nine wounded wounded at a lunar new year celebration then in baton rouge louisiana there was 12 wounded at a nightclub in des moines iowa two students are dead and one teacher was wounded at a youth outreach center half moon bay california seven dead one wounded at two separate plant nurseries and then oakland california one dead seven wounded at a gas station. I actually wrote this yesterday and I saw this morning there was another shooting

that was like a headline where a lot of people injured at another nightclub. But according to Everytown, which is a movement of parents, students, survivors that help with gun education, every day there are more than 110 people shot and killed and more than 200 are shot and wounded. That's every single day. And so every year, the gun industry rakes in approximately $9 billion while we pay with our lives. So gun violence kills more than 40,000 people and wounds twice as many each year. Some of the top manufacturers of guns are Glock, Smith & Wesson, Taurus, and Ruger. And Students Demand Action shared that there are 17 demands for gun industry to take a step up. And I'm not going to say all of them, but here are a few, and they seem pretty reasonable. Stop making AR-15s and other assault weapons that use high-capacity magazines.

stop marketing to kids and teens stop using fear-based ads to sell guns stop marketing weapons of war to civilians and using military imagery to sell guns and stop working they literally work with tv shows and movies to get their gun and video games to get their guns as product placement which sounds outrageous no like until you said this i thought a glock was a kind of gun, not a brand. And I'm like, oh, but it's name dropped for a fee the same way that like Pepsi is. Yes. Yes. And so the Gifford Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, if you don't know who the Giffords are, just take a second to look it up. They have an article about the gun industry immunity, which states that with every other industry in the United States, civil liability

can be used as an important check or irresponsible and harmful industry behaviors. But the profit-seeking gun industry has enjoyed enormous exemptions from liability and accountability in court since President Bush signed the Federal Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act in law in 2005.

Many states have also enacted similar laws that shield firearm and ammunition manufacturer dealers and other industry members from any kind of like civil suits that they can receive and so there's like there's no civil liability for anything that happens with gun violence which is not the same thing like if i sit on this couch and it like the leg falls off then i could sue the company even if i was the one that screwed the legs on yeah even like with cars yeah like the guns misfire guns have like there's room for error in manufacturer error as well as user error which there's liability

in cars for both of those things and every town says that firearms are not regulated like are not regulated like other consumer products the law is regulating how many guns may be sold or outdated and members of the gun industry that skirt the law enjoy special legal protection guns are not required to have safety features that are shown to reduce unintentional shootings and theft information is hidden from the public on which gun dealers supply firearms recovered in crime gun dealers are rarely inspected or held accountable even though violations are common gun manufacturers and sellers that skirt the law have a unique broad immunity from legal accountability so it's past time for this to be regulated in the united states and i'm just sick

of every day waking up to something of somebody getting injured or shot from a gun or somebody just going on angry retaliations against people or people just shooting for quote-unquote fun and hurting themselves too yeah i think that like similarly to how on the packs of cigarettes it has to say like this is led to cancer or whatever like i think it should say like this is how many people have died by gun violence but also specifically i think it should have the statistic where having a gun in your home is more likely to be used against you and i think it's like whatever the the actual percentage and numbers of it but it's your it is far less likely that you will use your gun and self-defense at your home it is more likely that your partner or someone else will use

it against you resulting in death of you or a loved one right and that one because again the self-defense definition like like you're saying like it's or the justification of it and like it's all like military and like oh i'm like patriotism like protect your family and all of that kind of shit and that's a lie like that's not true and that's like statistically not what's happening and so you should have to disclose that to people who when you're telling them they're buying it for their own safety you should let them know like we told you that like this will help you stay safe but you should know statistically this is actually having this in your home puts you at risk way more right right in the same way that we have to take a test to drive a car to have a

waiting period before we can operate it by ourselves like that should be a whole thing and the gun manufacturers should be like that should be something that they should be for because that also protect it should protect them but it doesn't yeah and like across our country we need the same gun laws in every fucking state but again it needs to be accountability and like that's how you have regulations there like that's why companies have hr to protect themselves but when there's no consequence then there's no reason for them to have any regulations there because once again capitalism nine billion dollars they make a year yeah and everyone should also check up on uh who in your area local politicians as well who has received money from

the nra and you'll notice and the gun manufacturers themselves too there's a a huge political reason and the reason is not that they believe that guns are our right and that they're for our safety it's because they're being paid off which should also be illegal yep you shouldn't be able to take but they're the ones that get lost i know that's what i mean like it's just a cycle a cycle of incompetence capitalism and greed and yeah and corruption so you're uh obviously not wrong because it's a rant and uh it's all factually correct Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. Let's take a break. And we're back from our break and we're going to hop into our next segment, which is,

But are you wrong? Where you write into our email address, butamirongpod at gmail.com and you let us know a situation in your life where you want our insight, us to hit with the bedazzled gavel. If you are in the right or wrong, if you're the hero or villain in your situation,

we do require that you keep it under 300 words and it's all anonymous. So give fake names. If you want to include names, if you would like to include pronouns of you and other people who are involved, please do so. and make sure you let us know your ages

so we can get like a nice well-rounded sense before we go into a, you know, our jury deliberation of two. You're up. Okay. Hi, Eminem. I, female 18, I'm in a very different point in my life

compared to my friends. I didn't get into my uni of choice, so I've taken a gap year instead in my country of birth and have been cut off financially by my parents. For context, I grew up internationally as a child of diplomats, that sounds like a Mary-Kate Ashley movie, and attended many international expensive private schools, which most classmates came from extremely rich backgrounds.

Annual tuition was close to a U.S. college tuition, making many of my friends very privileged and wealthy people that have now gotten into their dream universities abroad and are being completely financially supported by their parents. For example, my ex-boyfriend's parents are paying double the cost of his dorm room so he doesn't have to share. Meanwhile, I'm living alone, employed as a kindergarten assistant teacher, which honestly forced me to be mature. I found interacting with many of my friends to be almost unbearable at times in part of my own jealousy. I wish I was in their positions right now, focusing on midterms or frat parties instead of worrying about trying to cover my health care. I am frustrated and exhausted by every

interaction with acquaintances asking me about my life stage and feeling like I owe them an explanation. I feel guilty for judging them and being annoyed at them when they aren't deliberately trying to hurt my feelings with their occasional ignorance. However, the clear divide in economic position and to a degree privilege is not something i know how to grapple with so my question is am i wrong to gradually distance myself from these friends or should i be reflecting internally on why i am jealous uncomfortable thanks and love all the podcasts i don't think that you're wrong at all for wanting to distance yourselves i think the way i would go about it in the way that i wish i had done was that like i wish that i had intentionally sought out friends and people

who came from similar backgrounds that as me because people can be like amazingly great and like you said like unintentional ignorance or like not recognizing their own privilege or whatever like i have a much higher threshold for that when that's not the only fucking thing i'm surrounded by and I think that you getting fed up with them I'm sure like there's probably situations where like there might be some specific people who you're like no you're just we're growing apart and like you're just an ignorant ass and I don't want to be friends with you anymore but there might also be some people who you'll have more patience for them and being able to like answer a question if you feel comfortable and then have them learn from that and then not

ask that again, or to like be educated on that and like take the initiative when that's not who you're spending all of your time with, because like that does feel really othering. So I would like seek out, I know you're not asking for advice, but like, I think that having a natural distance grow is great, but I don't think that, I think you're in a really isolating part of your life right now. And so I don't think the solution is to isolate yourself from everybody. I think it's like take some distance from the people who are like making you feel shitty about your situation even if it's unintentionally and then seek out people who you feel like you can really relate to I had a core group of friends growing up that didn't grow up in Marin with we all didn't

grow up with as much money they all had more money than we we did and I had a couple friends who had less money than I grew up with and like I don't know what I would have done without that and I wish that I had that I wish I'd fostered those relationships more and I wished like even as an adult like that I had more you know friends that had similar like even like becoming like working on like sets and stuff making friends with people who also didn't come from like incredibly privileged or not even privileged because like I grew up privileged and so did they but like incredibly like wealthy backgrounds with a huge safety net and that's also financial but then also just like family support it was really it was nice and it was like oh there are some conversations i

can only really have with you and then i can have them with my other friends but i'm able to have someone i can relate to so then when i talk to my other friends about it i'm not looking i'm not trying to get something out of them that they can't give me you know yeah and the thing is 18 is such a transitional point in your life anyway some of these people you probably wouldn't remain And even if you weren't cut off from your parents, you probably wouldn't have remained friends with them. But I do think like a lot of your friendship, your core friendship, when you're just friends with somebody, it's because you have certain things in common and you're not going to be

friends with somebody that you have absolutely nothing in common with because that's not a friendship thing. It's like you wouldn't cultivate a friendship with them. But when you do have a friendship, it's usually based on at least one thing that you have in common. So if there's some of your friends that you still have some things in common with that, you know, are able to check their privilege, then remain friends with them. But I don't think you're wrong from distancing yourself from people that you no longer have a common bond with or you might not have even had a common bond. It was just that you you were in the situation you were in. You're kind of forced to be with those people anyway.

And then when you get older, you're not necessarily forced to be with certain people. So then your friendship group diversifies. Yeah. Because I have friends that have so much more money than I do. And some of the things they talk about, and I'm just like, not relatable. But like some of their struggles, I'm just like, not relatable at all. But like we have a lot of other things in common. Yeah.

And if that's the only thing they can talk about, then I'm like, okay, we're just really different people now. like if i can talk about your money and like your struggles i don't like say like sounds cunty but like behind your back but i'm like if you come to me and you're like oh my god like i just our 15 million dollar penthouse is drafty i'm like okay but if that's all you want to talk about like you're you're the worst thing that have happened in your life are the worst things have ever happened in your life like you can't have that barometer and threshold but like if that's the only thing that we talk about then there's not like you said there's not much left to the friendship there's no friendship there is no friendship so I don't think you're wrong

but I also think like reflecting internally on why you're jealous and uncomfortable I don't want to say it's not that complicated but like I think you know like jealousy is not a I think it's kind of it's an intense emotion but I wouldn't say it's the most complex and I don't think we need to like whittle it down to exactly what it is because it's recognizing envy and jealousy and all of that like it doesn't have to mean more than that it just it that's what it is yeah and then you can process it as opposed to trying to like explain it away it doesn't make you a bad person so owning that and being like okay this is taking over my life so i need to supplement this yeah all right my turn hi eminem i 28 female she her and rachel you're you knew what

you're doing when you use that name 28 female she her were best friends for over 10 years and had always said we would be in each other's weddings. Three years ago, I got into my first relationship and she was already a year into her relationship. My boyfriend and I have minor disagreements. Rachel proceeded to tell me every time we had a disagreement that I should break up with him and that I couldn't trust him. There were never any cheating arguments. I told her that I trusted him and we have a very healthy, open line of communication. I've been in therapy and I can communicate. She couldn't understand this, which led me telling her I needed some space from her and her negativity. This space lasted eight months and I had begun healing after going through a rough

mental health patch after moving to a new town. She reached out to me and rather than asking how I had been, she immediately dismissed my feelings and made the whole thing about her and how the friendship was one-sided and she had always put the effort in she had and she ditched me every time she got into a relationship and missed my birthdays because she was too hungover I tried to explain why her comments had been hurtful to which she said it wasn't hurtful you just can't accept that someone might not always have your best interest at heart what a fucking cunt after that we cut ties and have blocked each other on everything recently another friend told me that rachel had gotten engaged and split from her fiance during the eight months we hadn't been

talking am i wrong for not giving a shit about her or should i reach back out absolutely not you're not wrong this person seems awful they also seem like they were projecting their feelings about their own relationship onto you and click i mean it didn't work out so it's not like they were meant to be with that person anyway she's also rude like this is first she complained about everything in your relationship when it was just small things everybody nobody's gonna have a perfect relationship and even small things just still like they're it's nothing and then her reaching out and saying that it wasn't hurtful you can't just accept that someone might not always have your best interest at heart like is she talking about like she thinks that her

boyfriend doesn't have her best interest her or is she saying that like i don't have your best that she's saying i don't i think that's what she's saying it's like i you can't you can't fault me because i don't always have your best interest at heart because i'm narcissist and only care about myself yeah this is i would not want to be i would not want to be friends with this person no she scares me yeah like this is like big loser creepy type of person yeah i feel like she's got that like glimmer in her eyes you go oh yeah oh even when she smiles it's like i can't trust that bitch the smiles don't reach the fucking corner no i bet if you look at some fucking pictures of her she might not even appear in the photographs it's like a vampire the flash

she's like where is she don't reach out to her don't ever talk to this girl again yeah i just don't know that you even were best friends uh with this i will say some unsolicited advice to like pretty much everyone complaining about your partner that's like a long term or whatever when it's about a general thing where it's like we're talking about you know if it's in cis heterosexual relationships when like women are talking about like weaponized incompetence with like men and whatever i think that is great but like when you your your friends your family anyone when you like vent about a relate your relationship like the shitty things to a friend every time they kind of happen it's pretty natural that some people just aren't going to forget it like and some

people are just going to like because they're not there for the apology they're not there for the making up for it so like they kind of it does people kind of like log it in the back of their head and a lot of the times that prevents people from like going to therapy when they should go to therapy or also talking things through like with their partner and so I think that being intentional about what who you share what with when it's like people that you know are mature adults who understand relationships who can like know that there's an ebb and flow and also like really like your partner and like they're not rooting for them to fail and or a friend who's in a very similar position to you and you both go into it those conversations knowing that you relate to

the other person and there's no bad feelings there uh like in in the long run but i would say that like i think this is she's a bad friend but i think even good friends can be bad friends in these situations but i think she's a bad friend in all situations i literally cannot just like look you in the eyes and just tell you that i never have your best intentions this is giving me like that's a flashback and then something else happens like what a part of me really wants to believe she meant that she thinks that her boyfriend doesn't have her best interest in her but like how does that even relate it doesn't that's so creepy does she know where you live I'm afraid.

Okay, your turn. Okay. So my boyfriend and I have been dating for about a month, and he would always bring his dog over when he'd come to my place because he didn't like to leave her alone. I got a foster kitten that weighed half a pound and was in rough shape because she had puncture wounds. My boyfriend wanted to come over and meet her,

and I told him he couldn't bring the dog because I didn't want the dog around the kitten while she was still so little and vulnerable. My boyfriend got upset and offended and kept saying his dog wouldn't hurt the kitten and things like that, and then he ended up not coming over. Am I wrong for that?

no what i'm just like i'm curious how old he is which is why we ask for like to people include ages and stuff because even if it's like a dog regardless or like a new dog it can even be new to you but it's like an adult dog like do people does he not understand like the introduction of pets like you have to you know go through all that shit like and that's with a adult a healthy non-traumatized like you have a a tiny half pound kitten and he's gonna what does he think this is gonna be like a an animated movie right and that's he's gonna facilitate the meat if he wants to meet that i just a dog can just like they they think that they're being gentle because how animals play and you know they kind of toss each other around so like no you can't

predict how the dog is going to react you can't predict how the dog's going to react around you yeah that's not quality time you're spending with your girlfriend like if you want to have like a 20 minute like let's like i'll bring the dog like in the dog will be in the car we'll like bring the scent of the dog around like we'll we'll like we'll slowly gradually increase all of this but he's not even doing that and you've only been dating a month i'm sorry if i was going to go in month and they brought their dog over every unless i fucking loved the dog and i like had but like my the level of like you have to make sure you have nothing that the dog can like get into that could then hurt themselves or like poison themselves like within that level like

you have to like baby proof a home that's like your place for their pet yeah like that to me is just i don't find that like endearing and like i do love dogs but that's not i don't think that that bodes well one month in no for that unless you're asking like oh bring the dog yeah i want an update i know me too i are y'all still dating this is just not the move for me this is not the vibe i there's i i would be shocked if you're still dating anyway is your boyfriend at home all day because otherwise but some people are home all day yeah us included but your boyfriend just never leaves his dog alone then have someone come to your place then and like if the dog goes like i just can't imagine that that's also like in the best interest and the most fun for the

dog right either anyway no you're not wrong no not at all next up for me hey megan and melissa i she they need to know if i'm wrong for wanting more support from my partner he him 30 while sick the writer's 28 you skipped that part but just fyi to people great you're welcome we've been together 5.5 years and household responsibilities have always been a sore spot in our relationship he's not the type of person who feels overwhelmed with clutter i am however i shut down easily because of childhood neglect and still learning how to ask for help. I've listened to his feedback and agree that when at my limit, I can come across aggressive. So I've changed the way I ask to help. I ask for help to be a we instead of a you. I've gotten better at approaching housework

as a team and communicating the why behind something that's important to me. We have an accountability calendar so we both know what the other's personal goals are and can check in if support is needed that being said i awoke from my rona coma after i've never heard that neither have i and the way you've wrote it looks like like it's a like a baja blast like i'd see a tm after it no that's what i mean it looks like a frozen beverage at a fast food chain only to see boxes everywhere no dent made in the yard work dishes undone countertop sticky etc while stressful i never communicated that i liked him to help and i don't expect him to to without asking i approached the conversation this morning with in the future i think it could really help for us to take things

off the person's plate when they're sick. He became defensive and looked at me as though I was asking for a kidney. I should mention he had a three-day weekend, and even though I was asleep in my own room all day for five days straight, he left his room only when absolutely necessary. While I respect that he was afraid of getting sick himself, am I wrong for asking for more support when something as contagious as COVID is involved well for me as someone who is very afraid of COVID what and we're very lax here and I also like have a compromised immune system I would be in my room as much as possible I wouldn't be doing any other work like if it was his dishes that were left dirty yes he should be cleaning it but if it was your dishes I wouldn't

touch them and i know you know there are safety precautions you can take but i'm a little too like i'm not i'm not gonna touch it until a few days have passed and the virus has died off of those utensils and so even if he had a four-day weekend it wasn't like he was on vacation he was in his own room you know staying away from the germs so sorry but i'm on his side for this me too i think if he was like hanging out in the common space and was like in and out of the house like it was like going out exactly like in and out like all of that kind of thing if it was clear that it was just a he viewed your sick time as an off time like an off time for him versus a you're sick we're locking down yeah and this is also affecting me then i that's where i i think

the the difference in it in it is i do think that like i'm glad you mentioned that like household responsibilities have always been a sore spot because i think that's what's coming from this but again i'm also curious like you said you didn't leave your room for five days like so did he make you food and then leave it by the door or did you text him like i'm going into the kitchen to like grab this this and this and then you like escaped as quickly as possible because Because I think both of those I can still see like, you know, if he's the only time he's spending in common space is to like cook his own food and cook you food or grab you takeout or whatever like that. Like he's doing stuff for you and he's but he's not he's not getting ahead of tasks. And, you know, he might be nervous that he was going to get sick and that he was nervous about that and knowing that the period in which he could have gotten sick.

so then if you didn't want to do a lot of like yard work or like things to kind of get a head start on some things or things that have been back like uh backlogged that he was like okay well there's a chance i'm gonna get sick and i don't want to exert energy on the chance that like i might be sick but i'm not testing positive yet because that's also like everyone says now with long covid it's like lay in a room with like the fucking lights off don't even think don't even read just like sleep as much as possible and like don't use a lot of energy so i think that you know in in general communicating if you're out of town or something and like you're going to do like for a weekend and you would like if they can get like your partner can get some stuff done similar to

way that he could say that like to you that's something that is needs to be communicated before because people can't meet your expectations but i think in this instance i think even if you communicated before i think it would be perfectly reasonable for him to be like i'm not comfortable with that but i think this is i think that this is weighing on you because it's been a sore spot so but i think in this instance i think it's very justified yeah if he looked at you like you asked for a kidney then i'm guessing he feels the same way that's the part that i'm just like that to me is you're trying to not get sick and like not getting covid is a way higher priority even like a sticky counter right but again i think in a different instance where there's not

a incredibly contagious illness involved i think that you would be totally justified in wanting even if you were just working late it's like we should always pick up in a shared household like picking up the slack for what like you know meeting people where they are it's never going to be 50 50 but i just don't think these are the circumstances yeah so i'm sorry you're wrong All right. We're going to take another break. And we're back with our final segment. should I tell them what it is or would you like to tell them you can tell them since you're

first up I am first up our first segment is our third segment is my goodness our third segment is but are they wrong where we nominate someone in the news pop culture someone that you know we think deserves to be voted and crowned wrong

of the week someone who's doing the most in not a positive way and it can range from anything to news politics very serious not serious the ongoing saga of scam toast you know okay so i would like to nominate madison russo who's so specific and i saw this first on someone's tiktok and i want to give them a shout out because they're doing some great work and their TikTok is Scrub Hacks. Madison Russo is a 19-year-old woman, which you know it's

gotta be bad if I'm coming for a 19-year-old, who has been accused of stealing more than $37,000 from people who have been trying to help her for her cancer treatment that she does not have. So she started a GoFundMe, and she is currently facing a count of theft, according to the Eldridge Police Department. And she received about $37,300 from 439 donors claiming that she had leukemia, pancreatic cancer, and a football-sized tumor around her spine. She shared that she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on her GoFundMe page on March 9th, 2022. And the GoFundMe says that she, as a St. Rose Ambrose University student, she was diagnosed with cancer on February 10th, 2022 and started a vigorous chemotherapy and radiation treatment to battle the disease.

As one can imagine, this diagnosis has been very hard on Maddie's family. Just like with any cancer diagnosis, the cost of medical bills, gas, meals, and expense can be a burden. And that's something this family should not have to worry about. So let's just talk about unpacking her social media. So she has kind of become a cancer influencer in the sharing of things. And when someone brought up how she had been going through this rigorous chemotherapy and she hadn't lost her hair, which, you know, not everyone loses their hair. She then posted a picture of hair in her sink. she said like oh my hair is like falling out in clumps and the hair's cut like it's straight

cut and it's I'm gonna say it looks not like real hair but it might be her real hair that she cut from the back where you can't see any of it but it's clearly snipped ends of hair and when asked how she was doing this it was because she said that she had oral chemo and her specific brand of chemo doesn't cause hair loss just thinning which is not a thing and again thinning is coming from the root right i was gonna say thinning is still hair loss it's not a three inch haircut that you do in your sink and then she goes on to say that she just takes biotin and she shows holds up the hers package shows like another one that her mom got her and you know i wouldn't be shocked if there was a link tree in her bio where you could get her

probiotin that she's saying has helped her with this. So also on her social media, she is posting photos of like blood transfusions, like chemotherapy, all this. And if you do a reverse image Google search, not her images. Sometimes there are also other people on Instagram who do have cancer, who she's not just stealing like a stock image photo or something from a fucking hospital website. No, it's from like legitimate cancer patients who are documenting their own journeys she talked about how she you know has shows her port which looking pretty pretty messy not really how it should be and then when zoomed in this creator who is making this tiktok sees that it's a nurse who's doing this tiktok that the port is a gi tube and she put the

part that goes into the port in her nose so even if it was a gi like a functioning gi tube it's the wrong way and it's so clear that it's not not real and the eldritch police department was made aware of russo on january 11 2023 that's a almost a year after the gofundme was launched and they subpoenaed russo's medical records showed that she's never been diagnosed with any type of cancer or tumor from any medical facility within the quad cities or surrounding area she alleged that she had like had her pancreatic cancer was stage two acute lymphoblastic leukemia and the tumor again on her spine so last july she also appeared on a facebook page for the national pancreas foundation speaking about her story oh my fucking melissa it gets it's so fucking it's wild it's a

five minute video has uh also now since been deleted and it was also highlighted in the north scott press newspaper where her she talked about her journey with cancer she made all of these claims very openly also including to multiple media outlets podcasts and social media and she spoke at the at her st ambrose university again also as well as the chicago-based national pancreatic foundation so people on social media thought it was sus and specifically cancer patients and people who have cared for people with cancer have noticed discrepancies in her story she also posted all these like links and things on linkedin so people are trying to figure out if like her parents had any idea and like had participated in this she also had posted another

creator and someone who is like known within the cancer community had passed and when they passed maddie made a post about it and talked about how you know really made it about herself and about how like this journey is so scary and she's like spent so many countless nights on the phone with her and like how this girl helped talk her through her cancer so when in this other girl's like you know last year of life spent time on the phone consoling someone who is faking having cancer and um she also picks and chooses at these public events she goes to wearing wigs and not well done wigs poorly done very obvious wigs to imply that she has lost her hair which she hasn't and she's showing them there she also has like pictures of like her spine that she has like done with like

the like a it looks like a crooked band-aid on it also the specific gi tube can be bought on amazon like it's just so so so so fucking much um yeah i'm looking at our mugshot right now and oh she's also so thick i know she says she's like well i've been blessed with like really thick hair so like yeah i'm not really losing much and also she is so fucking tan like she's so fucking tan the whole time she's not looking sallow she's not having any of this like she was like posting things about like you know going on runs and and doing all of it like it's like she wanted to get caught that's the part that people are like someone everyone thinks that there has to have been an adult in her life that enabled this because there's no way that her family and like you have to have

someone corroborating the story and like no one ever asked like hey can i let me go to chemo with you because you can't just drive away from chemo that's what i mean i'm like so your parents or somebody has to be in on it so then they're continuing this and so she was arrested uh this past week and she was booked into scott county jail and she yesterday and the day we're recording this is wednesday january 25th and i think it was yesterday tuesday she posted bond which was ten thousand dollars so she's out on bond and it's like i would recommend looking at the other woman's TikTok where she's like going through all of this shit, but scrub hacks. She's like kind of unpacking all of that stuff. And she even has people who have sent screenshots of like messages

that like they're dealing with cancer. And like Maddie reached out to them and was like, let's talk like, I'm so sorry. Like, let's like, you know, I'm here for you, blah, blah, blah. and she documented all of this and it was so easily not real and like I don't want to divert blame from her because you make the conscious choice but again there has to be something else there has to be another person involved in this

so that's what everybody's trying to like waiting and I think even in the last TikTok that Scrub Hacks said something along the lines of like I've had some people who, like, let me know that there was somebody else involved in this, but until it's, like, reported or I have, like, confirmation, I'm not going to be sharing that information. So people are wondering if it's, I think, I think the girl has a boyfriend or a partner or parent or someone who also willingly participated in all of this. And they will get arrested, too. Yeah. and it's like individuals non-profits and businesses all donated all of this yeah

money i saw that gofundme is refunding everyone their money yeah but there's other things that she's gotten like there's someone in my life who had cancer like pay that's yeah and i was like food people dropping off meals like like you know offsetting a lot of like your responsibilities and even just like being really overly kind to you and like buying you a starbucks like just anything like big or small like anyone who has dealt with a health thing or you've been with people who've dealt with health things like people treat you differently like and it's not just kindness it's with tasks and like oh i'm running to target can i get you people aren't going to get their time back nor their like mental energy that they've

spend worrying about you they won't trust they may not trust other people yeah i fucking can't stand that like instagram i mean that the reddit subreddit like people like illness fakers and like people claiming that like all these people like fake illnesses and shit and there are some people who do but then they make they bring up the questioning for everyone to do that and like to be frank when people are faking illnesses they fake things like cancer like they fake things that are pretty easily disprovable like they're pretty easy to prove that they don't have because they're seeking attention and attention you need to you need to create doubt so that creates more attention there right but it's fucking wild and then just documenting it

anyways all right well rightfully said this week mine is pat grassley who is a senator and according to him, farmer from Iowa, he wants to end the supplemental nutrition assistance program in Iowa, also known as SNAP or food stamps. To him, he says, everyone wants to, this is a quote, everyone wants to make this new education savings account program look like the true threat to public education. If you look at the cost, if you want to look at the true budget impact on what things really are challenging in the budget for public education or private education whatever it be it's these entitlement programs they're the ones that are growing within the budget and are putting pressure on us being able to fund our priorities so um the proposal would make iowa

one of the first states in the nation to offer universal education savings account that could be spent on private school tuition i just have to say government your state doesn't pay for private schools the voucher style scholarships would be worth seven thousand five hundred and ninety eight dollars per students in the first year instead of you know giving monies to the public schools you're just giving people vouchers to go to private schools how much are the private schools paying you right i just want to um highlight what he said if these entitlement programs it's these entitlement programs they're the ones that are growing within the budget but you know speaking of people being entitled he's the grandson of u.s senator chuck grassley

who is 89 years old and in 2022 he was elected to his eighth term in the senate and then back to what I was saying. Iowa has a $1.8 billion budget surplus. He's thinking to limit food stamp recipients to essentially being WIC recipients, which would only be the new assistant program. And WIC is designed for expecting mothers. So getting rid of SNAP would cut meat, poultry, fish, canned fruits, and vegetables, and items commonly used for food preparation like butter, flour spices and seasonings etc and with wick you can only get milk juice cereal bread rice pasta fresh fruit vegetables eggs and yogurt and so no meat and brands too yeah there's also shortages there's a lot of like like expecting others who couldn't get for the formula that was

covered by wick and so then you can use like ebt like food stamps to cover other it gives you more options. Right. But also the thing is SNAP is a federally funded program, not a state funded program. And the state only pays half of the administrative costs, which for Iowa constituted only $27.84 per case per month in 2020, less than the cost per case in 18 other states. Cutting this would save the state pretty much nothing, or actually they would end up paying federal costs more because, according to Luke Elzinga, the chair of the Iowa Hungry Coalition, the administrative costs to try to kick people off the program would only increase the cost to the state. So Iowa would have to run a complete asset check on every application to ensure that they do not exceed the cutoff of $2,750 per household, $4,250 if somebody is disabled or over 60. and so even if somebody loses their job they don't automatically get approved for wick you i mean for a snap you have to go through all your savings and then have no money to even be approved for

this so it's not like it's even cost effective to do this like for a family of eight it's showing that the max gross monthly income is less than five thousand dollars for a family of eight And so I also want to point out that the Grassley Family Farm has received over $1.75 million in federal subsidies over the past two decades, and more than $1 million of it was classified as a commodity subsidy, something the government pays farmers to make up the difference when the free market crop prices fell to reach the effective reference point. So they're not even making enough crops to really like they're making enough to be considered a farm, but not enough to make money. So the Grassley's grow on their 750 acres in Butler County. So, again, like he's taking money from the government. Who really is the entitled one here? Again, be careful who you elect to local government.

really really look at the people that are being elected because they're not that smart they don't know what they're doing so if you ever i mean look looking at recent people that have won offices including the last president if you feel so inclined to run for office even if you don't feel like you're educated enough you are you are that was really my takeaway when trump got elected i was like wow i am erratic and smart enough to be president like to use the reddit term like a lot of politicians rage bait and so they like create faux crises to get people to vote for them right and then when their constituents are like okay let's do they're like okay yeah yeah we're going we're going for all of this like they're they're banking on you not googling because you

didn't google during the election to find out that that's not a real thing and they're making you not googling now to know that this is not right there's a lot of companies that are also like strictly against this bill um because they're like it doesn't make sense but including tyson chicken which has two plants and making more money than his family farm is so well a lot of benefits a lot of companies benefit from doing these participating these programs because it can be a tax break for them like let's just talk about capitalism in regards to food stamps like that keeps capitalism running and also the states that have the most people on food stamps are also red states and these are the people who voted for you're gonna take because if it's not enough

supplies that are going out for the people in your state then they're gonna take that planet away too so you're gonna take jobs away from your state pretty anti-capitalist of you yeah so again And if you feel so inclined and you're like, I don't know where to start, go to EmergeAmerica.org and they'll help you. They will give you a mentor to help you run for office. Yeah. Regardless of where you are in your state and your circumstance, if you're finding yourself stretched thin financially, look into assistant programs in your state. because where i grew up we weren't on assistance by any means but what was considered low income where i lived would not be considered low income in other places like don't don't think of it like a universal number if you're in a high cost of living area and you you might be eligible for

assistance and even if you are not eligible for federal or state assistance you can also look into organizations who will kind of bridge that gap because they know that a lot of places are only going to be helping people who are actively in poverty maintaining their level of impoverishment not worse but it's not getting anyone out of poverty right so there are organizations who kind of bridge that middle ground and help out in that way yeah because even like i believe for snap in iowa you like if you have two cars you don't qualify yeah there are a lot of like loopholes so they don't have to cover for as much but there's a lot of grassroots organizations who that will yeah actually yeah that's like the one thing that capitalism didn't

account for is everyone who's been fucked over by banding together and working together for that yep so okay well that's it megan you can't make thinly veiled threats on this part i know okay yes that is it that's it the end we hope you all enjoyed this podcast if you want to vote you should tomorrow and if not tomorrow message me but head on over to our instagram and vote who you thought was wrong in every situation if you have things you want us to talk about next week either your own hot takes rants things you want to hear us deep dive on or you want to nominate rachel of the week you can tag us on instagram send it to our dms tag us on tiktok our individual ones or our joint one probably make sure you add our individuals because i don't check our joint

one as much i couldn't tell you the last time i logged into it either so tag our personal ones and go comment on our Instagram who your personal Rachel of the week is. Yes, please. And you should all know what Melissa recently told me. Meghan Markle's first name is Rachel.

And that bitch, she was, she's original. Who knew? Who was like, I'm out. I'm going by Meghan. Meghan with an H. We're swapping that middle name first. Iconic.

Okay, Van, goodbye. We'll circle back. Oh yeah, that is how we end this one. 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