Endless Thread - Snacktime: Steak And Potatoes

Episode Date: July 19, 2018

Two of Amory and Ben's favorite Reddit posts, both of which have to do with food.

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Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Benny Boy. Joshie, man. Amy. Ammy? Neither. I'm thinking Amy. Oh, no thanks.

You guys ready to snack? Yeah, let's snack. All right. I got some snacks. Okay, what you got? Josh, I feel like you're the kind of guy who might snap into a slim gym. I mean, I'm not opposed. Emery, you're not the kind of gal to snap into a slim gym, but I heard you kind of like barbecue chips, right?

I love barbecue chips. All right. Oh, man, that ends me up with the baked lays. Oh, I said you got some beef jerky over there. Yeah, that's true. I'll share my barbecue chips. I have Matador jerky. What?

Yeah. That's how you know it's really good. Yeah, what makes it matador jerky? I don't have the bowl on the front. Okay. Okay. All right. It was some good crunching over there.

Yeah, I'm good at that. So, um, the theme, obviously of this episode is, um, steak and potatoes. Is that obvious from these snares? I don't know. It might not be obvious, but that's why I'm saying it out loud. I've got the potatoes. Yeah, I've got the steak, you've got the potato. Josh has got some, he's got a steak stick, if you will.

It's classic. Yeah. So we're continuing snack time. Yeah. As stated last week, team endless thread is on a break from making our usual in-depth deep dive episodes about stories on this vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. But because we at Boston's NPR station WBUR and our friends at Reddit love to give you. you things to listen to while you drive to the beach or ride the train to your grandma's house or like skip through the woods to your grandma's house and hopefully don't get apprehended by a wolf.

We're still dropping some stuff into your feed and we're calling these little things snacks, as in snack time. So sit down, kick back, have a good time, make yourself feel good. You deserve it. Yeah, so we're going to be telling some Reddit stories briefly and you've got some snacks to tide you over till the next big meal. All right, Ben. I feel like you got a good one over there. Yeah, I've been saving this one. This is one for the ages. Okay, so I have a great Reddit post,

and this comes from the Reddit.com slash R-slash Relationships community. Are you guys familiar? Yeah. Yeah, of course. All right. So this is from a user called Hollows of Your Heart, and I should say that the post has since been deleted, but through the magic of the internet, I have found it.

So the title of the post is Mine, 31 female, and my husband's 33 males, house guest 33 male, talks incessantly and is driving me insane. So I'm just going to read you the first paragraph of this post and then I'll tell you the rest of the story. My husband Will has a friend named Gary who arrived on Sunday from South Carolina

to stay with us for a week. He's Will's buddy from college, and they haven't seen each other in years, but used to be close. This is the first time I've met Gary. I don't know why I love that this guy's name is Gary, but I do. I can tell that you do. It's always Gary.

You're really enjoying saying that. It's always Gary. Gary. Three days into his visit, and I'm struggling guys, Gary talks almost nonstop. So this guy shows up. He's like sort of a past acquaintance, past friend, current acquaintance.

of this couple. This is the wife writing this. The wife says he literally talked mostly about himself throughout the entire dinner that we had the first night. He kept talking after dinner. He talked until we went to bed. He has an opinion about everything. This woman says her husband and her barely got words in edgewise.

They got talked over. Eventually she's like about to lose it and she excuses herself and goes to bed. So when her husband comes to bed, he's like, I'm so sorry. I remembered that Gary talked a lot, but I didn't know he was going to do it incessantly and rudely. So, like, now these people are like, they're prisoners in their own house, you know, because of this guy who won't shut up and he's going to stay with them for a week. I guarantee you can't guess where this is going to go.

But do you have any guesses? What I'd like to think is that they're going to change the locks. Right. Okay. Josh, any predictions? My first thought was a big public display of animosity. Hmm. You know, that is just vague enough, Josh, that I think you're on the right track. I felt like if I was vague enough, then I would get it probably somewhere close to being correct. Okay.

I like to be very specific and wrong. So the couple decides that they're going to basically put more effort into speaking up and interjecting, right? this is the pact that they make the first night. So the second night, they go out to dinner at a new restaurant, and this woman says, it does not go well. Gary kept trying to monopolize the conversation and would talk over me. I said, excuse me, please allow me to finish. And he laughed and apologized because he, quote, knows he talks too much.

And then he kept talking. My husband then interjects and says, Gary, I would like to hear what Brie has to say. I also love that this woman's name is Brie. I'm not sure why. So Gary apologizes again, let's the wife talk. And as soon as she finishes, he nods. And then he starts continuing with whichever conversation he was already basically having with himself.

Like he doesn't acknowledge what she says in any way. Oh, no. She says, I was done being polite at this point. I was mad and highly irritated. I had already had a couple of drinks. and I thought, quote, f*** this noise. So the food arrives and Gary keeps talking.

He doesn't actually start eating his food. No. He just keeps talking. So this woman says, so I pushed my salad aside and grabbed his plate of untouched steak. And I started eating it. Whoa.

He stopped talking. He looked stunned and he said, Bree, what are you doing? I ignored him and kept eating his steak. Oh, man, Bree. He starts to look kind of pissed and he says, please stop eating my steak. I ignore him still and ignored Will's death stare,

this is her husband, and kept eating Gary's steak. I ate the whole thing. They watched me and Gary didn't speak a word the whole time and I got to eat in glorious silence. Then I apologized to Gary and said some shit about how I know I eat too much and should have let him finish his steak.

It's a power move right there. So Gary tried to like laugh it off. He didn't talk at all on the ride home. She says, so yeah, my husband is beyond pissed at me, which I don't understand why the husband is pissed at her, but anyway, and has asked me to apologize to Gary. I don't know about that. I've agreed to apologize because what I did was not the right way

to handle this situation. My question is, how do I handle this? for the remainder of the week, should I just stay away from him or is that being more rude on top of my super rudeness? TLDR, my husband's college friend, is staying with us for a week

and he talks incessantly and I have reacted poorly and insanely. What do I do with the remaining week? I'm definitely Team Bree here. I don't think she did anything wrong. Get that guy out of her house. I mean, I need some more information about how they know Gary.

Like, did Gary go to their wedding? Is he a close... No, I don't think so. very close friend. This is like a past college friend who happens to be coming into town and hits Will up and is like, listen, man, can I crash at your place? That's what I'm taking from this. So this doesn't sound like a relationship that needs to necessarily be maintained, nor would

she want to maintain it, nor would she want to encourage Gary to hit them up again next time he's in town and needs a place to stay. Right. And like, I don't understand why the husband is mad. I mean, I guess maybe like the husband feels some responsibility to, to show Gary a good time or something like that while he's there. But like this, like, I'm kind of mad at the husband for taking issue with this. Yeah, Bree's got to steal some of his food too.

Yeah. Gary needs one of those on-off buttons like C3Pio has. You just like, nope. You are done, Gary, for the day. Damn pie, maybe gracious. Also, just for the record, when I imagine Brie eating this man's steak, I imagine her not using a fork and knife. I imagine her taking the steak with her bare hands and ripping it, ripping pieces off with her teeth.

Whoa, that would be super gross. That's definitely what Bree would do. Totally. Okay, so I think we should look at the comments together briefly. Okay. One of the top comments is assert dominance masterclass. Which I like. Upside down positive, this user apparently wrote,

your response of eating his steak was what was needed outside of the quote normal social cues to make him register that there was an issue. So this guy is just like not picking up that there's an issue. It's a wordy description to basically say you were speaking his language to get him to hear you. Rude or not rude is almost besides the point. The dude must be shown his self-absorbed behavior and you carried the flag well done. What do you think about that? I feel like that's making it seem like Gary is not responsible for his own talkative actions. That's fair.

I found a comment I like. Hit me. Tiger Lily 38 says, Yeah, I would apologize and make sure Gary knows why you did that. Acknowledge that you handled it very poorly. See if he changes his behavior. If not, stay away from him. It's literally one week.

I agree with that because I think in this case, on the one hand, yes, she outweirded Gary. But on the other hand, if Gary is already so oblivious, he's just going to think that she is the bad guy, and I think she does need to clarify, look, I did this for this reason. I'm sorry, it was a little childish, but no one can shut you up.

And so I had to do this, and I don't want her to, I don't want her to be misunderstood. I don't want Gary to then post on Reddit and be like, Dude, this woman ate my steak, and then we'll all see Gary's point of view because we'll go, that's crazy. Why'd she do that? Fair. Case closed. Case closed. More snack attacks in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics.

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Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org. slash creative studio. All right, for our second snack of the day, Amory, this is a story we all know,

but I feel like you discovered it, so you should tell it. This is a story that makes me laugh out loud, no matter how many times I read it or reread it. Okay, so I'm not going to give away the headline or the person's username because I just want our listeners to experience this kind of the way that I first did. It was from the Today I Fed Up community, which we've established as one of my favorites. And the post starts, let me tell you that I have made a bad mistake this evening.

The start of any epic story. Yeah. My girlfriend, who let me tell you, are we noticing a pattern here already? Yes. Is only my second girlfriend of all time said, I am, quote, invited to dinner. I'm not sure why that's in quotes, with her and her parents. I was very aghast, nervous, and bashful to be invited to such a situation, but I knew it must be done. Okay, so the guy is going to go to his girlfriend's parents' house for dinner, pretty standard, relatable. situation. Standard relatable and also he's writing about it in the most non-standard weirdest way

possible. Yeah, a gassed. He was aghast. I was aghast that I had to go to my new girlfriend's house for dinner. Yeah. So he decides, I don't know why you would do this in a fit of nerves, but he decides he's going to play a practical joke on his girlfriend's parents. So of course, we pick back up with him saying, well, let me tell you, backfired on my face. I'll tell you. I'll tell you. I'll tell you how. So this guy sees that baked potatoes are being served for dinner, as part of the dinner at least. And he decides, I'm going to pretend that I don't know what a potato is, that I've never seen a potato before. I have no idea what's been put in front of me. So he asks his girlfriend's parents, this looks very interesting. What is this? And they stared at me, he writes, and the

mother said, it's a baked potato. And I was saying, oh, interesting, a baked, sorry, what is it again? She was like, a potato. So he says, a potato. Oh, interesting. Never heard of a potato. Looks pretty good. So the parents at first are kind of like, what? And they're not sure if this is a joke and if they should laugh or if they would actually be making fun of him. So they ask him, do you really not know what a potato is? He writes, not only had I never eaten a potato, I had never heard the word potato. So this guy is committing fully. I just picture him being like, potato.

Potato. Potato. It's true. If you'd never heard the word potato, that would be kind of fun. Potato? Yes. So the parents start getting annoyed. the dad especially. He's convinced that this guy is just messing with them.

So he says, you know, I don't know what to tell you. I've never seen a potato before. So he takes a bite of the potato. And he makes a high-pitched noise and says, tastes very strange. Which, no matter what you're being served, you probably shouldn't say that at your girlfriend's parents' house when they've invited you over for dinner. No. The girlfriend is so annoyed with him that she leaves the room. She's like, you're on your own. I can't help you.

The father is enraged and he says, get the F out of my house. And this guy is like, oh, that's an irrational way to respond just because I've never heard of a potato. So now this guy, he just has to commit to not knowing what a potato is. And he has continued to pretend that that was his very first potato with his girlfriend because he just, he can't back out of this joke now. he's in too deep. It's such a good story. I mean, I don't know why it's so good. Part of it is the writing.

Oh, yeah. Which is, like, ridiculous, but also, like, very clear and concise and funny in the way that the story gets laid out. But also, like, I don't know, just the fact that he sticks to his guns at every juncture when clearly he should be bailing. Like, every joke ends up with a person sort of revealing the silliness. and he like never reveals the silliness of his plan. He just sticks to his guns until they kick him out of the house. Yeah, I should also say that I omitted like 50, well, let me tell you. Like, which also add to the humor of this, the, well, let me tell you, I had to commit 100% at this point.

And then later talking about the dad, well, let me tell you, he got very annoyed. Well, let me tell you, he didn't take that kindly. So he says, and again, this was written about three years ago, he says that he thought the girlfriend was going to break up with him anyway. But this person who posted this story on Reddit, they did so under the username, Not No Potato, which I love, because I've just been calling this the Not No Potato story. And this is the only thing that that user ever posted on Reddit.

They responded to like a couple of comments, but then completely disappeared. They haven't deleted the account. I have messaged them more than once to try to find out who they are and get them to come on and tell the story himself, but no response from not no potato. I have to say,

anytime I meet someone now who hasn't heard of Reddit and I talk about that I work on this podcast, this is always the story that I send to them to be like, yeah, Reddit is really freaking funny. Yeah. Like read this. Yeah. Doesn't he ask for advice in the post, sort of invites advice?

No. He just ends it by saying the only way I can ever get out of this is for them to buy, them being his girlfriend's parents, for them to buy that I don't know what a potato is. I wish I had never started it, but I can't go back. I think she will break up with me anyway. So he's like, he's given up. He knows that he has now committed to a pretty, I mean, that's like potato chips. He knows he's got no chance.

Yeah, he's got not. no chance. We're talking a lot of potato foods that he now has to commit to never having seen or heard of, like potato chips and French fries and hash browns and home fries. And, you know, this is not just a baked potato that he has screwed himself with. All right, this is my favorite comment on that post. It's by Mingusias. Okay. And it says, invite your girlfriend to meet your parents. Have your father take her aside and ask if potatoes were served at the dinner with her parents. When she says yes, he looks alarmed, mutters something about, quote, wanting to keep them from him and never mentions the subject again.

Whole potato conspiracy. I could never commit to something like this fully. This is next level commitment. Yeah. A couple more comments. Here's one that I completely agree with. Someone says, I think O.P., or the original poster, is George Costanza. That's the only explanation. Which is perfect. That is very George Costanza. Like, that's his move in Seinfeld, right? To stick to something far beyond the rate of diminishing returns.

Yeah. I can't go back, Jerry. I'm caught in my own web of lies. But then I have to read this one. It kind of breaks my heart. But I'm going for it. Okay. Someone writes,

I call shenanigans. This is a direct liftoff from an episode in the British TV series, Kuku. In the first or second episode of the first season, this hippie guy goes to meet his significant other's parents and genuinely does not know what potatoes are. The clincher, he was also served baked potatoes. What? Ben and Josh, I have to play you guys a piece of tape.

What is this? It's lamb noazette. No. What is this? It's a jacket potato. Jacket potato. Yeah. Well, Lorna, I have to say,

it's fucking delicious. Oh, thanks. Oh, my God. That's so good. Season one, episode one of Kuku. It's now on Netflix. Andy Samburg was the voice you just heard there, not knowing what a baked or jacket potato

is... He says potato just like I said potato. That's right. Now, this doesn't mean that this guy's story... That it hasn't happened to someone else. That hasn't happened to someone else. Because someone could have taken this TV show as their inspiration to pull the move. Exactly. So at the very least, with the O.P., what not-no-potato didn't do here is if he got the idea from this show, Kuku, he did not reveal the inspiration behind this story. Which is a little disingenuous. I'm still so into it.

I'm going to stay a believer that this guy really did pull off this stunt and got kicked out of his girlfriend's house. And not no potato, if you are out there, we're dying to hear from you, and we have some questions. Please. We have more than some. We have a lot of questions. All the questions. Thanks for that delicious potato snack. You're welcome.

Yum potato. You guys, I brought you dessert. No way. Sweet tart. Sweet tarts. Josh? Yeah. Should I try throwing you a sweet tart right now?

Right into my mouth? Yeah, sure, if you want. If you're a game, if we've reached that point in our relationship. I think we have. I'm ready. You ready? Yeah. Oh, that was right off the tooth.

That really, that really hurt. You know what? I think that's, Emery? No. No, Josh just made it look so fun. Emery's good. You had all the fun for me. Thank you.

All right, snack time is over for now, but we'll be back next week. And during our break from regular episodes, there's more snacks coming. But also, may I suggest, a hearty meal? My dudes, we have a bunch of great episodes in our back catalog. Fantastic vintage, everyone. They hold up, I swear. Pop the cork. Take a swing.

Swish one back and forth between two cheeks and smack your lips as you peer through the glass before nodding in agreement, won't you? Come on, you've got time. Check them out. of course. 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 ask if she likes the episode we've put together, she sometimes says, WTF.

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 recording in the field, remind us that nature is. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who looks at our attempts at writing web copy and goes, Aw. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and whenever we try to have a serious conversation with him, he's all... You, I'm a toddler.

Our interns are James Lindberg and Josh Luckins. Our theme music is by Squelcher. Thanks to the Redditor with a mean but great username, you slash suck at life for our artwork this week. It's a watercolor called steak and potatoes. Appropriate. 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. Hit us up there. Our show is produced by Josh Swartz, also my co-host and

producer, Amory Seabretson. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out.