Endless Thread - Snacktime: Cake, Camels, and Catfish

Episode Date: August 2, 2018

It's snacktime! Some more of our favorite quick-hits from Reddit.

Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in health care so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lap at WBUR, Boston. Hey, Josh and Amory. Hey, Ben. Hey, Ben. Is this our last snack time for now? For now. Yeah. Is this it? Yeah, we got to get back to our regular episodes next week. So many people who have gotten in touch with us and asked us to stop chewing on things into microphones are going to be so happy. And the people who are like ASMR fans are just going to have to get back to listening to our usual mouth noises that happen naturally. And the people who are BDSM fans, keep waiting.

Next break. It's coming. Okay, so Team Endless Thread is on a break from making our usual in-depth deep dive episodes about stories in this vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. But because we at WBUR Boston's NPR station can't stop browsing Reddit, we figure, eh, why not? Let's keep snacking. We've been snacking for almost a month now. And, you know, we got one more set of snacks for you.

Amory, Josh, shall we snack? Let's do it. I'm hungry. All right. What do you guys got? My snack, I confess, I found in the WBUR kitchen. Oh, man. I'll give you just a quick preview.

The land of forgotten toys. Oh, that's carrot. Is that a carrot? No. I found a bag of Chipotle chips. And just to clarify, the bag has, like, the top half ripped off. It's just, like, the bottom half of the bag. Like, a T-Rex got loose.

Yeah. I just found them and was like, it'll work! It ran to the studio. What about you, Josh? What are you got? I'm jealous of his snack. I also found my snack in the WBR kitchen, but it's more delicious than what Emory is snacking on.

Okay, okay. It is half of a cupcake. Oh, man, we don't get to listen to that. You're not going to quiz me on that since I'm in a different place than you guys today again? There he goes. I'm eating it right now. You don't even know.

So discreet. Okay, Ben, what about you? Okay, you guys ready? I'm going to test it out. Yeah. That's like a juicy peach. Oh, yeah, a piece of fruit. I'm with you.

Okay. I love to eat a peach, but this is a fresh cantaloupe. Oh. Well, we were close. Yeah. A fresh slice of cantaloupe. We were on the right track. I also love a melon.

A melon is good. Never met a melon you didn't like? As long as it's ripe. Okay, we should tell some stories. All right. Who wants to go first? I'm feeling inspired by Josh. Cupcake, because I have a story that is related to cake.

Okay, so this is another, I feel like I say this every week, but this probably is my favorite Reddit post. It was from six years ago now, and she used a throwaway account called I Got You This Cake. Okay. And she was responding to an Ask Reddit post that said, What's your secret that could literally ruin your life if it came out? So she begins. I run a cake business. I charge people hundreds for wedding cakes, like hundreds of dollars.

Every last one is made using Pillsbury Cake Mix I buy for $1 a box at Walmart. Oh my God. You've told me this story, but now that I'm like thinking about it, this person is saving, is making bank. Yeah. off of $1 box cake mix. And she says, you know, people call me the cake girl. My whole life is like a lie because people compliment my cakes all the time. They tell me that they're better than box mix.

But to her credit, she does say that she makes all of her own frostings. She makes all of her own fondant. And she does those beautiful designs like you might see on a cake boss or whatever else exists out there. But no, all of the cakes, She says just add oil, eggs, and water, and you can have a cake just as delicious as hers. So. This is scandalous, but also, like, it makes sense in a way.

Corporate America has kind of perfected the cake mix. You know what I mean? Yeah. She's got to focus on the decorating. Yeah. Those cakes are really good. Those box cakes? Yeah.

So, of course, this post blows up. And a lot of the comments are people saying, dude, it's fine. You're not alone. Another person who runs a cake bakery says, you know, I had a very successful biz for years. I hardly ever baked my own cakes. Oh, my God. Yep. This person also says that she goes a step further than I got you this cake, the poster,

and says that she used to get cases of frozen sheet cake from the store and then decorate those. This is a vast cake-wing case. conspiracy. The whole industry is corrupt. Yes. Another person says my aunt runs a bakery, a popular bakery, and she uses mix. And she doesn't hide that either. Now, this is interesting. She says that her aunt would like use the cake mix as a base. And then from there, she could add in whatever she wanted. So she could put in, you know, like high quality cocoa and chocolate chips. And later in the comments, the O.P, I got you this cake says, yeah, when I make a fruit-flavored cake, I use the mix, and then I cut up the fruit and add fruit juice and make it my own.

So I don't feel that badly about this woman using cake mix box. I mean, using box cake mix. Something like that. I mean, no wonder this woman used a throwaway account. This could, like, if this got out, so, like, crumble her whole career. Crumble her whole career. Clearly she wants to have. have her cake and eat it too, guys. Come on.

But I have a couple updates for you guys, too. Okay. Because she has since, although this post was made six years ago, she's posted two updates since then. One was in June of 2015. She says, I actually no longer make cakes. I got a divorce and moved into a much smaller home. And at that point, I had no place to decorate cakes. Although she admits later, you know, further on in the comments,

that she kind of moved into a smaller place intentionally because the cake business was kind of, she's getting kind of burnt out. She was living a lie. But wait, there's more. She met a man on Reddit, and she's about to get married. What?

To this man. Yeah, and this guy convinced her when she moved in with him to keep all of her cake stuff so that if she ever wants to get back into the business, she can. But for now, she has her own business, she hand makes some sort of crafty thing that she sells on Etsy and in local stores.

So she says she hand makes it. You're right. She could just be using the box mix equivalent of whatever artsy creation she's now pushing on people. So I got you this cake from a box. I dig it. Keep it simple. Yeah. All right.

I have a story for you that's from a subreddit. many people think of as kind of like a hot dumpster fire. Oh. This is our relationships. Oh, yeah. Oh, yep. That hot dumpster fire. The title of this post is I, 30 female, just found my fiancé 30 male on an online dating site.

What do I do? Uh-oh. Fiancee, too. I know. Emery, you're about to get married. Yeah. I guess I should go check to see if he's on any dating websites. I think I'm fine too.

But also, but also this is going to turn out in a way that you guys don't expect, or at least I didn't expect. Oh, okay. So my fiancé and I have been together a year and a half. We moved in with one another a few months ago. This is what the post says. Lately he's been a bit distant, red flag. I've been cheated on in the past and have been really insecure with his change in behavior. So this guy claims to, the fiancé claims to the woman who's making this post that he's just kind of stressed out about work and his car broke down, blah, blah, blah.

But she can't sort of get rid of this nagging feeling. So she does a little investigating and she doesn't snoop his phone, but she makes a fake profile on a popular dating site and finds him there. I knew it. I knew she was going to do that. And so this happened in the last month from when we're recording this. And he was last online July 1st. I don't know what to do. How do I confront him?

What do I say? Can our relationship be saved? Do I even want to save it? I feel like I am a wreck right now. Seems very short-sighted on the guy's part. If anyone can find him, like, what does he think is going to happen? Right. So you just want this guy to protect his infidelity better, Josh?

No. I'm just saying it was a bad plan on his part. I mean, if you're going to be, yeah, if you're going to be an asshole, be a smart one. Okay. But no, don't be an asshole in the first place. I think she should absolutely confront him. I agree. So this is what happens. She decides to catfish him. You guys know what catfishing is? It's when someone pretends to be someone they're not online. So I'm assuming she also makes a fake account on this dating site.

and pretends to be a girl that is interested in meeting up with him. Exactly. That is an amazing response. So she catfishes her fiancé, she sends him a message, and then he deletes his account. Oh, no. That's suspicious, right? Definitely. Okay, I'm going to flip this whole script on you guys.

Are you ready? Yeah, mind-blown. Get ready. She decides to basically confront this guy. And when he comes home from work, she shows him the screenshot she took of his profile and asks him what was up. So this is what happens. This is from her update post. Long story short, he was hanging out with his coworker and the coworker was frustrated with figuring out how to navigate the dating site in question.

The fiancé signed into his old account. that was opened in 2013 to try to help his friend figure it out. Is anybody buying this yet? No. No. Apparently a lot had changed on this particular site, and he realized that his knowledge on the site was too out of date, so he logged out, and that was it.

You guys buying this? Are you? A few days later, he sees in his email that he had gotten a message from a woman, his fiancé, the woman making this post, on this site and then he deleted his account. So, he obviously couldn't show me his dating site account, but he did volunteer to show me his email account with all the alerts from the site.

The only woman that had messaged him recently was clearly my fake account. He also realized when we were looking through his email that he had an unused old profile on another dating site, he signed in and deleted that one in front of me. I fessed up about catfishing him. He wasn't upset at all, said he understood completely considering

my history. He was more upset with himself for not realizing that his behavior would make me so insecure. I apologized for not trusting him and catfishing. He apologized for being so distant lately and not deleting his dating profiles ages ago. He offered an open phone, social media email policy between us in case we ever stumble across another trust-but-verified type of situation. To say I'm still suspicious would be an understatement. I think he's legit. It seems like he's overcompensating. Like if he were actually innocent,

he wouldn't feel the need to do all this stuff. Yeah, I'm kind of with Josh here where I think he has realized that he got caught and he's engaged to this woman and he needs to make this right. And so he is jumping through any hoop she wants him to from here to show, look, it'll never happen again.

And maybe he's trying to like hold himself to that fact that it'll never happen again by doing the whole, open email account thing. I think this guy made an honest mistake. He was trying to help a friend. He screwed up. And he didn't, because he was about to get married,

he just didn't think about the fact that this could be problematic because, like, he's operating from the position of, clearly, I'm not doing anything wrong. So I'm not worried about this. And then when he realizes that he has done something wrong, he's like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. Also, worth noting that she went back and looked at the pictures he had on this dating account, this dating website account.

They're all pictures from before when they were dating. I'm kind of curious if she hadn't screenshoted that and talked to him about it. Would he have openly talked to her about it? Not necessarily that he has to, but I don't know. Maybe it's my own pre-wedding feelings right now, but I'm all for transparency and just talking to each other. And I just want some reassurance that that would have happened either way. I get the continuing suspicion, but I think that these guys are going to be okay. I'm going to predict that they get married and live happily ever after, and nobody in this relationship ever gets catfished again.

I hope so. I support it. More snacking. a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing, or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know.

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Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Josh, you're up. All right. So you told me to find a story on Reddit, and I did kind of. Oh, no. There we go. Gosh, the problem, child.

I do have one question for you guys. Okay. Do you like riddles? No, I really don't. I love them, but I'm terrible at them. Okay, great. This is perfect. Emory hates them and you're terrible at them because I have a riddle.

Perfect. We're doing it. Okay, so this is an Ask Reddit thread. That was just, what's your favorite riddle? Okay. Posted one year ago by Tuttle Slam Jam 85. Okay. All right, Tuttle Slam Jam.

See what you got. A king is dying and he has twin sons. The king tells them. them, they have to race across the desert on their camels. Whoever's camel comes in last gets to be king. So the brothers take off riding side by side, slowly trekking across the desert. About the halfway point, they run into a man sitting around a fire. The brothers decide to stop and take a break because, you know, they have all the time in the world. They tell the man their story and why they're traveling across the desert. The man tells them something after hearing their story and immediately

afterwards, the twins jump on the camels and race off as fast as possible. What did the man around the fire tell them? That is the question. This is good. I like this. Yeah. It's like something to do with a play on words with coming in last, really meaning coming in first. But it's like... You're onto something.

Come in last. You keep saying it maybe. you'll get it. To come in last. To come in last. My first thought was like, if your dad is dying and you try to come in last, he's going to die before you get there and you won't get to say goodbye to him. Yeah, I had that thought too. Why would he want to make you king?

So he's just, it was like a trick question or a trick challenge? Yeah. No, that's wrong. But that's not, yeah, because that's not how riddles work. What about, what about something where whoever arrives last? is somehow going to be killed? Let me re-read you a line from the story. Okay.

Whoever's camel comes in last gets to be the king. Oh, the camel. The camel. The camel comes in last. Okay, so what did the man at the fire tell them? He told them. That they have to tire the camel out. They got to get the camel tired.

Nope. No, because even if they raced, like, say, that they raced on foot, did you say anything about that? That they both took on... No, they got back on their camels. Right? Immediately afterwards,

the twins jump on the camels and race off as fast as possible. I have the answer. I'm staring at it. Tell me when you guys are ready. Give us a minute. Are you ready? Are you ready for the reveal?

Yeah, you better. I don't like being too stupid to solve this. I know. This is why I don't like riddles because I like to think of myself. as having a brain and riddles make me feel like I just don't. Yeah. All right, for the sake of time and everybody's insanity.

Josh, what do we got? All right. What did the man around the fire tell them? Switch camels. I still don't get it. I'm not hearing many sounds of relief. Right. Switch camels.

So they'd be racing, right. So you'd be, yes, of course. Ben, you get it. Yes, of course, because if you beat the other guy on the other guy's camel, then your camel comes in last. True. That is correct. Of course. Of course.

Clearly. Josh, I never want to hear another riddle out of you again. I'll have a riddle next week. I have many more, but we don't have time for them. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, who, when we have. ask if she likes the episode we've put together. She sometimes says,

W.T.F. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and she makes sure our stories meet the bar of mildly interesting. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus and John Parati, who, whenever we're in the field recording, remind us that nature is lit. Our web producer is Megan Kelly,

who looks at our attempts at writing web copying, as... Aw. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and whenever we try to have a serious conversation with him, He's all. I'm a toddler. Our interns are James Lindbergh and Josh Luckens.

Our theme music is by Squelcher. This week's episode, Art is called Midnight Snack. It is by user Ketrocopter on Reddit. We are Endless underscore Thread. If you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today,

you can hit us up there. This show was produced by Josh Swartz. Also my co-host and producer, Amory Severson. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. and I'll let myself out.