If I Speak - 35: Help! My scatty friends can’t meet my standards

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Are you a Black Cat? Or a #cleangirl? Do you have Main Character Energy? Moya has a big theory about the urge to give ourselves new labels. Plus, a listener who feels like her friends and family can��t meet her standards. Email your missed connections and dilemmas to [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

hello hi what's another way to say hello bonjour that was such a basic one uh this is the non-multilingual at least on my part if i speak i'm here with who are you uh soy ash soccer hola mi amigo one day i'll tell the story of how i broke my phone in Spain and couldn't speak any Spanish and had to get from Granada to Seville on a train when my train ticket was on my phone. And the only thing I could say was, ¿Usted inglés? Because I thought that meant, do you speak English? And it reads, ¿You English?

So basically I was going around, panicked yelling as this train was about to leave going you english and the lovely train conductors but i did get back to seville one day i'll tell the full story see the thing that i've learned about spanish is that you just have to throw yourself at the accent you just have to do the most like culturally insensitive version of the accent that you can do and people will appreciate that you're trying which is really really different from english where we're like unless you sound like you're on radio four like you fucking idiot it doesn't matter this is like your seventh language but you fucking idiot and like french where it's like uh unless

you speak with the kind of quality of you know having studied at the sobon i think you are just a stupid roast beef like like in france it doesn't they don't really appreciate the fact you're trying whereas in like any spanish-speaking country my experience has been even if you like do like 50 50 like english spanish people are just like you are trying i get this i appreciate that i think with france actually it's even more tricky and sometimes they do like when you try and speak French I've noticed this but maybe that's just because I have a winning smile and a small childish face so they they're just nice to me but the thing with French is you can as opposed to my anvil face and snaggle tooth grin I mean like I always look just like a child

so they're like oh this poor child is trying to speak French. But with France, it's like you could speak really beautiful, formal French, but French is really slang. Like the actual French that's spoken on the streets is just slang. So it's like German. Like if you learned formal German, you'd be fucked. And so we're like Berlin because they don't really like they speak perfect English and insist on doing it. But also the formal German you'd learn is completely different to like the mishm english and insist on doing it but also the formal german you'd learn is completely different to like the mishmash you speak on the streets french formal

french like there's less of a gap but there's so much slang in in formal french they'd just be like who's this grandma trying to ask me how my day was like and you're like anyway have you got any headlines for me any headlines tell me what's going on you know what my headlines i had a really really chill weekend and it was nice like on friday i just like hung out with my housemate and like had a very malty lager and it was like super chill and really enjoyable. And then after that I had like dinner with my friend and that was just such a like contrast to the weekend before where I like had a big one

and it was like my first big one for ages, like a staying up till 6.30 big one, like really rolled the dice in the old brain chemistry. It was like, let's see how we react emotionally to this. Yeah, you haven't had a big one for so long.'s so long oh my god ash how was it how did you feel um okay so i went to bed and was like it's fine i'll just wake up and i'll be a bit like headache and fine but i woke up still drunk and i was like oh i want to get off this right now but while i was a bit prang about like still being drunk,

my partner and my housemate were both like, you fucking legend. Don't you dare feel bad about this. Like you deserve this one. So long as you enjoyed that, like, because I will say that since I went like sobering Jason, which is the most annoying thing you think of when I wake up and like,

I am, if I, on the very rare occasions i've woken up and been either hung over i don't think i've ever been still drunk sadly but i'm like no no i don't like this and i don't want to do this again because it's so so bad so so long as you like the payoff was worth it you kind of have to look at it as a whole like you know sometimes it's been like that was not worth it you fucking idiot now you just feel like shit and you feel anxious and like well whereas this time I was like no I had a really good time you just got to pay the piper

yeah what about you what are your headlines I'm just a bit worried that uh you know how I was like I'm ready for a relationship that window is closed again because because the sad thing is my work is my relationship it's the most important relationship in my life but my friends and when I now I have a new job I'm like I couldn't even countenance meeting someone right now there would be no room for them I was thinking the other day as I came home and like you know clean the house and made this amazing stew it's like oh thank fuck there isn't a man here getting in my way asking me questions all I want to do is my own shit right now uh there's just no room there's just no room in my life and I become

so I am just worried about how hyper independent I am and whether there will ever be room for someone else but also maybe there's not someone else i need to be making room for look you've just started a new job it would be it would be crazy for you to have like moved city started a new job and been like oh i feel like there's room for a partner right now like no one would feel that it doesn't mean that the window's closed forever it just means that like you are in a process of like changing your life big time yeah and it would be wild to go i feel the loss of a partner right now like because you're experiencing your own agency i think the problem is that i love being hyper independent there's because i do know people who'd move to a new city and be like i really need someone here to validate me to see me to make me like feel less lonely and

that's one extreme people who like think they need another person to make their life real to them. And then you have me at the other extreme, who's like, my friend calls it emotionally anorexic. It's part of a wider scheme of like terms. It's not what she came up with herself. But I know this is bad in a different way. I know that there's no room for anyone, but we can talk about this in another entries of we can talk about it another

episode because i don't i don't fully buy it i just think that that's a like really accurate picture of where you are now yeah and and that's that's great i've got some questions for you okay great go on so this is our icebreaker in the tradition of Condé, Nast's, Vogue, 73 questions, except we don't have time for that. So these are three questions. Question one, what is your YouTube algorithm serving you? I have my history turned off, so it doesn't register anything

because I don't like being served things. But because of that it just serves me Navara because because the only time on YouTube when it might register or whatever I don't know how it works but because I go on YouTube when we're when we're doing the live shows and I would use it to like check comments or you know and sometimes watch back etc etc the only thing it serves me is basically Navara media but if it was accurate what it would serve me is just endless karaoke videos because i just love i love to do when i like i'm really brain dead what i like to do is stick on a karaoke video just like wail along with it i thought you meant watching other people do karaoke you were like

just loads of like women in the philippines with like an incredible multi-octave range no that's my tiktok i don't use youtube too much because it's too clunky i don't like it on my phone whereas i'm much more of a the gen z cusp tiktoker wait what's your what's your youtube algorithm saying i bet that's juicy oh my youtube algorithm at the moment is serving woodworking because i watch that to go to sleep uh for the times when my partner is away. Okay, this is embarrassing. Dog training videos because I really, really want a dog and I'm trying to convince my partner

by proving how responsible and good at training I would be. You want to get a dog. I really want to get a dog. I really, really want to get a dog. This is big news, Ash. This is like... Is it big news?

Yes, because, not to fall into the old cliche, but we know you don't want children. So if you say you want a dog, it's like you're saying I'm pregnant again. Oh, I mean, I guess so. Because I feel more certain than ever than I don't want kids.

And I've been spending quite a lot of time with babies recently and enjoying it, but also really enjoying the moment when you can like hand that little snotty biological weapon back. Yeah, you go, take it. But investing in a dog that's like a big new commitment i know i really really want one but my partner is at the

moment like he wants one one day he's just like do we want one now do you want to be doing more traveling like you know this is a baby it's a baby i know wait and also we've got discrements on the breed of dog because he wants like so his brother's got this like ginormous dog and it's like a mix of like canne corso and like um you know various kinds of like frightening mastiff and like you know great dane and rottweiler like it is the sweetest dog on the planet like so so sweet but it is like it's a drug dealer's dog like it is a beautiful dog very very affectionate but drug dealer's dog and so my partner's like we should get a dog like that that's a real salt of

the earth working class dog whereas i'm like in london in north london all right i want i want a middle class like portuguese water dog or like a golden doodle or something but anyway so question two oh wait that thing i was going to say was about the breed. So I'm glad that you answered that. But don't fucking get a mastiff in your house. No. I hate those dogs. Get the golden doodle, even though they are very ill and shouldn't be bred. Go on, go on, question two.

All right, question two. How competent are you with chopsticks? To East Asians, probably beginner to useless to uh lots of my fellow friends intermediate i if they if we have a dish if there is pho i will use chopsticks to eat the pho um so i'm not afraid of chopsticks and even though i'm not the best at using them i will endeavor final question do you think you would be any good at presenting your own defence in court? No.

No. Not at all. I've done this in the form of a relationship. Nice and healthy. Against partners who had extensive legal uh both training and approaches to arguments and as we've talked about i just get very like emotions led i get mixed up with what i'm saying i get bamboozled i would i would be rubbish so my emotions get too heightened and i get too passionate about things and just try and no no

like I mean it might change now but I I fear that I would be very bad at defending myself in court I would like to um have representation please your honor what about you are you going up there right so I actually think that in some areas of presenting my own defense in court I'd be like you know I'd be competent for an amateur right so i think that i could like familiarize myself with like what the legal grounds for the defense would be blah blah blah but and this is very big but i think it doesn't matter how good you are at presenting your own defense in court you will always look like a wacko compared to someone who has a lawyer right if anyone says your honor i would like to present

my own defense it very rarely goes well people don't go well that's a well-adjusted human being right like it always seems like a kind of nuts thing to do well it is because you have to be like a full narcissist to do it like the person that always comes to mind is ted bundy yeah wanted to relive his crimes in such detail he just sort of sat with a boner defending himself in court the whole time um the boner by the way is added dramatic effect please do not take that seriously do not take that your true crime podcast as if it's real information it's not but he was he's like the ultimate this is what you look like when you defend yourself in court it would just be like me trying to be a driving instructor without being

able to drive i haven't been trained in this it doesn't make sense to me to do it and i think if you have the delusion that you could do that without being trained to it says more about your personality and maybe convict convict if you're willing to defend yourself in court you are a main character which segues on so well to what i'm about to talk about did you enjoy that so great i did enjoy the segue it's almost like you are a professional podcaster why don't you take us to where the segue was leading us right so my big theory okay and i think this has been talked about in different ways but main mainly a top line way so what i want to talk about today is main character syndrome and i will start

with my opening argument because i'm a prosecutor not a defendant my top line for this is main character syndrome is a response to realizing how big the world is okay and this is a big theory that i think could have gone like six different ways but i wanted to talk about main character syndrome and some of the things that spin off from it so i thought this is a good place to start. So I'm sure someone somewhere has done either like an academic study on this or explained it in a really philosophical way, but I haven't read any of those. So you're going to get the Poundland version.

You can write it if you read something more in depth on this. So the briefing on this, if you haven't heard of main character syndrome, because you, I don't know, you might not be in the generation that tends to cluster around it or on the social media platforms where it is but it's basically a social media invention it's not a syndrome at all it's it's a shorthand uh and it's main character syndrome when someone's using it in a negative way uh and main character energy when it's being

deployed as a compliment what this is is the idea you, you are the protagonist of not just your own life, but everyone else's too. That you are the bitch who causes all that conversation. That you matter so much. Your story is the main one. You are Harry Potter. You are Elizabeth Bennet. You are Bruce Wayne. You know, this is obviously a really fucking annoying way to look at the world

for anyone else who's hearing it because if you get someone coming along being like i'm main character it says so much about the way they see you in their life and everyone else in their life but i've also to big people up i also you know there's friends of mine who'll be like your main character your main character someone else and i'm interested in the way that that switches from being an annoying thing to something we're trying to use to give people confidence um because we are all stars of our own story to a degree you know uh we we you're not born alone and you don't die alone but you do go through life with your experience as the very first one that sort of collides with the reality around you everyone

else's experience no matter how much you try are things you can relate to rather than directly feel no matter how much of an empath you are side note once i ridiculed the word empath so much a friend later told me that she'd stopped using it to describe herself which i didn't know when i was taking the piss out of empath but if you call yourself an empath you're just projecting your own experience onto other people similar to a main character um but i've been trying to like mull over a lot of things that feel linked to me i mean everything is linked isn't it everything is so linked but i don't have time to get into that now uh so you know this idea that fashion trends have morphed into a homogenous

blob, how all content online is delivered in the same register. Like, why does the democratic presidential candidate know what brat is while she is co-signing a genocide? Like, it is too much. Social media is where everything gets thrown together with no way to sort it but these algorithms. And the algorithms feed you certain things based on the digital footprint that you have left behind and I think and obviously main character syndrome is born of that specific social media experience and this is really obvious because but I want to discuss it anyway because I think rather than being an expression of confidence and power, identifying as the main character is a declaration of really deep insecurity.

And my theory is that it is a response to how big the world is. It's being on someone like social media and realising how giant the world is, how many other people are out there with the exact same attributes as you, the exact same advantages or disadvantages as you, even same life experience, the same thoughts and opinions but also how little that we as individuals

matter or even you know other people even conscious of there's billions of other people in the world most of us never have any idea about each other but we might see each other on social media um and i think main character syndrome is an attempt to seize back this illusion of attention very key and control over your own story and i think everything's become a story because it's you know we already narrativize stuff to ourselves the three acts of the way that we structure the world around us but being on something like social media means even more life is presented as an ongoing narrative uh and attention is the most important currency on these platforms what do you think ash and key question are you a main character

no i'm the villain now like whenever you're watching any kind of like big ip film or talking about a book in in our house it's always like oh you know who are you or what would you be and so we came to the conclusion that if we were in the lord of the rings i would be the eye of sauron uh because he doesn't like leaving his house but he knows everything um and i was like yeah that's interesting um that is actually such a good question like who do you identify as in a in a movie for just for the record when people say stuff to me about like oh sometimes they're like oh your main character or something like this i was like no i am the best friend in the rom-com i am judy greer that's all i'm a facilitating character that's always what i say oh that's bull it's but it's not no it's not because we are all

facilitating characters other people's narratives anyway no no okay right well let's get into the whole like main character framework so like when i was reading through the the you know the show notes and i saw that this what you wanted to bring up like the first thing that came to mind for me is that actually like the single most difficult relationship in my life and i'm going to be very very coy here because it's the kind of thing where like if it got back to the person it would just like explode my whole life but the single most difficult relationship in my life and I mean the one where it just it causes me so much stress and so much anxiety and it really triggers avoidance in me because I don't feel able to change how this relationship works and like some of the things that this person has like said or done um like to me has been

like it's been so crazy like you know part of me is like you know one day when the official secrets act has expired like I will take it to the party I'll be like these things happened it was so crazy um but like for me my experience of that relationship and my experience of that person is that they have protagonist syndrome and actually like in a moment of real anger and this was like after they'd done something so fucking like when I say crazy I mean it was just like insane but like in in that anger and like the thing that happens to me when I'm really really angry and this is like when I am like furious and it takes quite a bit to get me to that place is that I become very sarcastic and I do this like horrible joyless laugh um like it's just a sort of like and it's a laugh of like you are so

fucking absurd and you can't even see it. And I said, like, in the moment, I was like, you have the single worst case of protagonist syndrome that I've ever encountered out of anyone in my life. And they were very angry at me in response to that. And understandably so. So for me, I have never, ever said our main character energy as a compliment right for me it is such a pejorative because it represents you know just an inability or an unwillingness to think about other people and think about what their experience of life might be um and that for me goes to the heart of why I find the relationship with this person so difficult which is that like my experience of

them is that they have no interest in what's going on for me or what my experience might be or like you know anything which is outside of like how they feel and also like quite often a need to assert that either they've had it the worst out of everybody therefore like the attention can only go their way or that they are superior to everybody like it it stresses me out like i can feel myself coming out in like hives just thinking about it so for me it is always always a pejorative um i think though like if you broaden out the discussion to like to what extent does you know do you have to like narrativize elements of your life to cultivate a healthy sense of entitlement i don't think that i've worked out what a healthy sense of entitlement is like you know and i'm sure that there are people listening to this who would think that i've got

an unhealthily engorged sense of entitlement um maybe there are people in to this who would think that i've got an unhealthily engorged sense of entitlement um maybe there are people in my life who think that way too i think from my perspective i find it very difficult in the relationships that matter yeah i feel like you're the opposite i don't feel like you're well i just feel like you need more of a sense of entitlement well you just you just want to give like because that can be very self-aggrandizing in its own way where you go like oh I found it really hard to assert my needs and people are like no you don't like your needs are actually suffocating to me like I want to at least create space that I might be wrong um but like particularly with family relationships I find it really really hard to say like I need this I'm feeling really

vulnerable or I need your care and I need your love in a way where I don't have to like immediately give it back to like then feel that I'm like worthy of it so yeah in terms of what how you have to narrate things to cultivate a healthy sense of entitlement um I think everyone has to do that some extent I think the place where like I do it and have to like narrate what I'm doing and like kind you know almost romanticize it a little bit is like when I'm doing like mainstream media like if it's like question time or something like that I have to create this whole kind of like little bubble around myself where like I listen to certain kinds of music and I like get myself like I prime myself so that I feel like a heavyweight boxer who is like fighting for the

championship belt and you know I think about what the last song that I'm gonna hear is before I like walk out on the set like a boxer so I can like do that thing um so I don't think that all all kinds of like narrating or like kind of romanticization or like kind of fictionalization of your life and your experience is bad I think that can help people do things which are like demanding of them whatever that might be but for me oh main character syndrome purely purely a pejorative i love that there's there's two different things that like paths that i want to go down here and one is to my empathy because I think what kind of undercuts this is empathy and whether and I'm blaming social media here but I think there's probably other things at play like we could talk the political undercurrent as well I'm sure um bring up that word individualism but it's like empathy is something that you have to cultivate and

i wonder because i spent i'm talking about the platforms i spend a lot of time on so i see this a lot like you know scrolling through say tiktok again and again and again where everyone is their own little main character and they're talking about being the main character and constant like videos on how to how to glow up how to behave in a you know this this classy way how to be like the main character of someone else's story it's just fascinating the stuff that they serve me as a young woman they've identified that I'm a young woman and this is what I need to see um and the other path down here is this idea of like i guess narrative and manifestation is almost part of it like why do we tell ourselves certain narratives and why more and more we encouraged i think by this peer

to peer sort of chat about main character energy or whatever romanticizing your life and narrativizing your life which i think are sort of the same sides of maybe a triple-sided coin which doesn't even exist but i've just invented it um and this idea of like more and more we need to retreat into this this manifestation idea that if you said like i watched a video the other day where this woman was talking about how she at 28 broke off this long-term relationship and how she felt there was no one there around that she was able to date and that she you know she wasn't going to get her romantic goals and she said that she just literally did this thing where she told both the men she dated and herself that she had so much choice so many options and that

when she was being treated badly she was just like it's fine there's loads out there and she was like in reality my dms weren't full like no no one's biting but i kept telling myself this again and again and again i thought it was an interesting like way to position yourself and narrative and this idea of almost like manifesting yourself into someone else so there's different bits there it's like what is the narrative people when people say main character energy why is that insecurity to me like is that an insecurity that is debilitating i think i think we probably agree that yes but there's others out there who would say that being a main character is just you know the classic devil's avocado being a main character just means that you're talking yourself into being uh you know this more confident this more

empowered person I want to pick why I think that's actually a sign of insecurity um but I also want to go down the empathy and the manifestation routes because I think empathy is it's something that's talked about a lot but it's maybe missing more in the day-to-day than i don't know i don't want to go roast into glasses about the past but it does feel at least in the current moment it feels like empathy is a thing that's brought up constantly but i don't see it in uh abundance and i don't think empathy is like people say oh you're naturally empathetic you're this and that i don't think that's true because i think i'm someone who's considered quite empathetic in my personal relationships i have been told this multiple times and it's

fucking hard you have to practice it it's not something that just comes naturally sometimes i think i'm a bit of a sociopath in like my instinct base desires and what I want to do or want to say and you have to not do that you have to like really make yourself see things from other people's perspectives and really try and put yourself in their shoes someone said something I'll give another example before I shut her the fuck up and stop trying to hog the main character stage shut Shout out to fuck up. Shout out to fuck up. So the other day there was a, there was a brief, there was a disagreement I had with someone on social media and I really

wanted to, they'd caught me a bad time. I really wanted to be like, shut the fuck up. Why do you think you could talk to me like this? You don't know me. And then I just, and then I was like,

okay, if I respond like this, I don't know anything about their life. I don't know me um and then i just and then i was like okay if i respond like this i don't know anything about their life i don't know anything about this person i don't know what's happened to them today the same way they don't know anything about me if i respond to them with this fire and this you know this this this anger and this projection of all my rage which built from something else completely clearly because i didn't know them then there was there was a real like i had to put myself in their shoes i was like imagine how you would feel and how you would respond if you were met by this this response from someone you just messaged and yeah they messaged me in a really rude way and yeah they

were one of those like classic parasocial bit of a nuts person on social media but i had a choice then whether i could really go ham on this random person which also there's constraints on doing because if you have even a bit of a public profile you actually can't say the shit you want to say most of the time it's very constraining it's like you talked about Ash your anger is not going to be taken the same way as other people's anger and I ended up just calling this person rude and I but said, look, I don't know you. I don't want to argue with you. I get your feedback. Thank you for sharing it.

They responded in a way that was absolutely insane. But I was really proud of myself for trying to empathise with where they were coming from. And even if I didn't agree, I was like, no, I have to think about what this has come from in this person. And behave in a way that my conduct, I'm not be ashamed of it afterwards and that's a constant practice it's like sometimes my friends will talk about stuff and I always say my friends talk about stuff sometimes general people just talk about things and I'm like I don't give a fuck and then I think hmm but think of all this like stupid banal stuff you talk about and they pretend to give a fuck about that you make yourself give a fuck that's empathy making yourself give a fuck and i think more and more people are so wrapped up in their own narrative

and wanting to be seen that they forget that being seen or being like uh other people responding them to in the way where suddenly they're the main character depends on whether they give a fuck about other people you have to make yourself give a fuck to get some fucks in return i mean i think i think there's i mean there's so many things to respond to i think the first thing is like just to take it back to the whole like main character thing is that this is why rituals and social rituals are really important because they can give people an opportunity to be at the center of everyone's regard in a way that we can all agree is like manageable and good because it's going to come around and that can be something as like stupid as like birthday parties or leaving dues or weddings like you know it was really really wonderful this summer to like go to my best friend's wedding and see her be the main character

and also like because she's you know she's a woman of exquisite taste and also the the means to see that taste manifested in the material world around her like she looked beautiful and she looked like you know she was really leaning into like she clearly had an image of her head of what she wanted it to be like and she created it and then she stepped into that fantasy for you know two days apart from when she broke her foot that was that was not in the mood board um and it was it was really wonderful you know if that was the only way in which you could interact with her right every time you wanted to interact with her you had to step into her fantasy that would be unbearable but for those two days when it was

her wedding and it's this moment where it's of course it's about her partnership and her love with her husband but it's also about you know weddings are a time where you you reflect on on the wholeness of that person and everything it took to get them there and all the things they've experienced and all the things you've experienced together it was gorgeous it was wonderful it was it was wonderful. There's an intimacy to it as well. So that was a setting where someone being the main character, literally for the day, sorry, there was a groom there too, but the bride's the main character. It's not alienating, or it wasn't alienating for me at least because it was it was at this moment where i got to really see her have something that she wanted in exactly the way that she wanted and then you do think about all those times where she didn't fucking get what she

wanted and it was really fucking difficult and those were like the rough stormy times that forms your friendship like you know you're pulled into that contrast the thing which i find difficult is when there are people who you know either because they don't have a great sense of who they are and so they're constantly trying out identities and trying to work out which one fits you know i find it difficult to be pulled in with those people because they are always drawing you into this fantasy idea of who they are and that is the sort of um basis of how you're supposed to interact with them and that's really really hard because one i'm like this is inauthentic and like two this is draining because my job here is to reinforce this fantasy of who you are and i can't connect with real you three you're not connecting with anything to do with me because this is all about holding up this like edifice um and so i think that that's where you know the the main character

energy or you know main character syndrome whatever it becomes exhausting so it's not that someone can never be the main character it's just that i think when it's like outside of those rituals or outside that like you know sometimes when you're a night out and you're like wow my god so and so is on fire like the form they are on is crazy like when that happens and you're like oh incredible right but that's really got to be a one-off because if that's every time that person stops being a catalyst for something fun and they start becoming something of like an attention vampire and you just go oh what the you are exhausting like this is all on your terms like can't do that all the time so yeah for me like how often like you know is it sort of ritualized in a way that everyone can understand these are quite important things to think about when it's like how bearable

is like being a main character um i think you're right which is that there is an insecurity and i think a a fear maybe and it's not a single fear it's lots of fears which get bundled up into one which i think can like result in i think sometimes i guess the word i would use is imposition right an imposition of this fantasy of who you are and other people and a sort of demand whether implicit or explicit that everyone upholds it I think that comes from fear that comes from fear that people aren't going to find you like if you are just yourself or like you know by yourself or you're not putting in overtime there's a fear that people aren't going to find you uh that you're going to be alone there's a fear that you don't really know how to be a person so you're relying on these like

pop cultural archetypes to learn how to do it like you know one of the things that like my mom's hatred of child actors is like legendary she fucking hates all child actors like and there's like basically two films she can name where she's like, that child actor was bearable. And it's because they weren't famous child actors at all. She fucking hates them. And the reason why is because she's like, it's not just the actor and that sort of like artifice, which I find horrible.

It's the fact that children then model themselves on this child actor and every child becomes more annoying because of it. And I think this plays out as like adults like there's a way in which people talk which is so affected and is like so drawn from pop culture um and i also you know i i have been like this maybe i'm still like this i don't know but like i definitely have been like this it's just like oh for fuck's sakes being like a normal person um like deeply deeply irritating but again comes from fear comes from a fear that like you don't know how to be a person that you don't you don't know how to be like winning or charming or desirable or attractive

even like you know it on your own terms that's that's really fascinating you say this idea of like needing to fit into an archetype because you don't think i mean the idea of what is your real self who is your real self what is authentic is a whole other conversation but this idea that archetypes are easy to cling to now for a certain demographic of people because this is not everyone etc etc and i do think this is most keenly played out in people who have an attraction to certain social media platforms, perhaps because then it's like a, you go there for specific reasons and you have a reinforcing message. But I, again, I'm seeing so many videos at the moment because I'm a young woman who probably like, you know, occasionally watches like fashion beauty content on how to be charming,

how to be popular, how to, all this 1950s, this stuff was written into books in the 1950s and sold as guides to girls how to be winning and charming how to make men like how to be a black cat and there's a weird like fake pseudo-feminist twist on some of this stuff which is the idea of like how to get him under your spell and make him like you know pay for your stuff but it's still like it's the same messaging which is how to be appealing and this idea of how to be winning and charming sometimes people say it's like how to win friends and i believe it to a degree but there is always an underlying kind of messaging about how to be desirable and desirable obviously comes with a lot of weight about what that means in this world but yeah these these videos crop up and as i said like the term black cat i've refused to

watch any videos what is what is that it's this is the problem i refuse to watch any videos more than two seconds because i'm like i don't need this in my life i don't need this in my life i think it's being aloof i think it's the idea i'd have to it's a tiktok invention it's another archetype they've come up with like black cat and golden retrievers it's another stupid all the tiktok inventions are just parceled together cod psychology um it's just yeah i'm trying to look up what black cat actually means here it's something like it's being aloof it's being a little mysterious enigmatic and being like really interesting black cat something like that i don't please don't write and tell me exactly what this means i don't need to know um but it's

those archetypes like the main character archetype it's like anything from that to clean girl there's these all but they're all mismatched and they're not like real archetypes the way real they're not like traditional archetypes the way they've been established saying like psychology even cod psychology like the myers-briggs like the mediator, whatever. These are a bricolage. Yeah, bringing out the AS level comms and culture, a bricolage of difference of like terms and influences to create this new Frankenstein's monster of archetypes. So you end up with people being like, I'm a clean girl, black cat, main character,

whatever things. And it's because it's these's these i guess it's these things that make them feel like they have a selfhood that makes just by being like i wear these small gold earrings and i slick my hair back and i won't respond to a man's text within 30 minutes or whatever and then obviously like that is very heteronormative and very like heterosexual coded but i see this stuff on like the queers of the internet because my uh tiktok algorithm also thinks that i'm a lesbian which is fascinating my friend's like do you do you want to explore that at all i'm like no just because i have short hair and you know hate man doesn't mean anything uh my youtube definitely thinks i'm a i'm a man it's like ah working

videos can i also you know interest you in brain force plus and like it's honestly fascinating that if you're like, I don't actually care that much about this dating content. They're like, yay, you must be a lesbian. And yes, I love Chapel Road and I watch every single video of her. Who cares? But the thing that's really interesting, like, you know, this thing about like, oh, you know, being a black cat or like,

you know, being a clean cat or whatever. God, I feel so old um is that it presumes a lack of permanence and a lack of commitment in your relationships and that is such a bad place to start from because one even if you are single even if you are dating you have committed relationships hopefully with your friends with your family people you've been in your life a long time and so if you're if you're bringing that kind of like hyperactive insecure like you know inauthentic you know artificial trying to like maximize yourself dating. If you're bringing that into your other relationships, people are going to be like, what the fuck? Like, like it's like rubbing a cat backwards. It's just like, it is off putting. I'm

sorry. It is. Even I think like if you are single, even if you are dating, if you're coming out of relationship, whatever, whatever, you have to, to I think feel and like root yourself in the other forms of commitment that are in your life like you have to let that stabilize you you know and I think that that is you know obviously I've been in like a committed romantic relationship for a long time but I do remember the difference between me bringing that artificial self into like everything I was doing in terms of friendship and feeling quite afraid like always feeling afraid that like you know people wouldn't like me unless I like kept my foot on the accelerator somehow to then just being like no these people aren't going to leave like this is commitment this is like a real commitment that i have and then from that being able to like move

through relationships and dating just like with a little bit more of an even keel i i know that like i sound like a broken record because i'm always talking about commitment and i'm always talking about like stability but that is just like those those are the most important things in my life and they're the most important things in my life because like i have had the fucking year of hell right like dead parent sister in and out of hospital sibling in prison without that stability and without that sense of commitment i would be a fruit loop and so that's why i'm always advocating for it because like life is really hard and you can't you can't go like if i went through this year going well this makes me

the main character because all these things are happening to me oh my god like i that that would be the only way i can think of to make all those experiences worse yeah though you this yeah the sense of like um insularity and paranoia that would bring as well to be like i'm the main character of this particular story and there's no one there to support me i'm just like on my own and isolated there's a fascinating sort of like twist on that idea of like main character being a good thing it's also like it's happening to a system right it's happening to a family system and i think just to go back to like what is the difference between like a healthy level of narrative narrativization and when people are like self-deluding i think it's when the story detaches itself from contact

with other people and detaches itself from the system that it's in like that is toxic i just wanted to bookend with uh the thing the talk the discussion about archetypes also made me think about how the archetypes have because like we live in such a visual culture now archetypes moved from being i guess a set of character traits to being a set of sort of visual signifiers and it's fascinating to see like and i was thinking about again queer communities so you know you have archetypes of um so like often interestingly in the gay community the ones that have been transmitted to the mainstream are archetypes that rest on sort of sexual behaviors but now they mean so much more so like a top and a bottom have very different signifiers both visual and characteristic and they're used to shorthand to

mean something else completely than just the way that you have sex most often and again like in the lesbian communities or like the bi communities or pan or whatever look if you're a woman having sex with a woman then there's like you know you have like mask and femme and and butchers separate and all these things have like I know from my tiktok algorithm have come to me and also my friends I do have friends in real life just to say I'm not always on tiktok but um they've come to mean completely different things like there was a really there's a funny spoof at the moment by this guy who like pretends to be uh you know a soft boy douchebag wearing carhartt that he never um actually has used in like manual labor before and he did a video the other day being like when i'm in like a love bombing and ghosting competition with a with a masked lesbian and it was just them going like carabiner for carabiner and like brat record like javelin it was like a fascinating we can go bar to bar but it said so

much about what these archetypes now represent and there's just finally there's one thing that's happened recently which is the word twink has undergone a huge change and is used almost as a pejorative now it's not used and loads of people point this out this is not an original thought i'm saying it's just something i want to air twink used to mean you know like the skinny very young looking effeminate cutesy pipe guys in the gay community like a little twink you know like a little twink um and it's now used as a pejorative way and lots of uh individuals have pointed out that twink has become a stand-in way to use the f slur without saying the f slur because you can't say that now so people just throw the word twink out

as a synonym for the f slur which i think is so interesting and shows the way that language evolves when something becomes taboo something will take its place and you'll always find a way anyway archetypes main characters empathy insularity we covered a lot we need to now cover a problem we've covered so much ground and you know what i feel i feel that there's a lot more to like dig into about it i think like maybe if there's one thing to like put a pin in and explore later it's like you know when you talk about like you know brat record for chapel rowan and carabiner for carabiner isn't it interesting that all of these signifiers of who you are are actually acts of consumption well yeah

exactly because consumerism has become like these visual signifiers are done through how we consume which we talked about i think in a previous episode a bit of how like consumption has become a stand-in for saying about who you are rather than acts and it's also because it's all visual so of course it's going to be done through possessions and style and it's not even just like brands it's like the thrifted jacket doesn't even have to be brand it says so much about the things you consume become a standing for personality but we have to dilemma we have to look at some personalities dilemme this is i'm in big trouble which is our regular dilemmas segment so if you have a problem that you would like us to chew over like hyenas over a carcass please email us at if i speak at navarra media dot com that is if i speak at navarra media dot com uh moya do you want to read yeah go on

do it if i go on go on gov go on then, go on then, go on then. You English? You English? You still English? Okay, right, right. Dear if I speak, I have a small ongoing crisis that I think it's time I sorted out. I have a fairness problem. Great, first step is admitting it. There are certain things I want. I want my friends to be on time when we're planning to meet up. I my boyfriend to call me more I want my flatmates to clean up I want things so then I think it's best to express this to the people in my life there's a standard I

want so I better let it be known so I put it out there or I tell them I'm upset if they've done something against that standard but then for reason, they don't meet that standard. They just can't, or sometimes they can, and sometimes they can't, and whatever, they're human. So I think, fine, no point always getting upset with them. They're free to do what they want. Brackets, be late, not cool, be messy. But if that's the case, I'll do the same. So I do the same. But then, I'm not over the standard. I want those things still. They matter to me. Except suddenly I've lost the ground I stand on because I'm a hypocrite now. I've been late and I've purposely not called as much and I've left my dishes in the sink.

And now who's going to take me seriously? It's not fair to demand things if you don't do them too. So what do I do? I find resentment from unfairness so hard to deal with. I don't want to have a standard that I stick to myself if nobody else will meet it because I'm afraid of resenting them I usually flip to my other belief of everything goes to avoid resentments but our relationships inevitably unfair and I need to accept that and not run from a resentment I also don't want to accept things that I actually don't like that much I want people in my life to be on a similar wavelength but I am human I'm so capable

of being imperfect too sometimes I create a standard and it's actually so stressful to stick to it myself it's very hard having to do my dishes all the time welcome to adulthood or should I completely lean to my imperfect humanity and let anyone do anything and at the same time forgive myself and allow myself to do anything too within reason it just feels like I'd be downplaying my internal standards a little but it would be a more peaceful existence. I think I'm like this with my family and I feel very little resentment towards them. I stand up for myself but ultimately I don't care that much if someone does something against my standards. The hypocrisy when I yo-yo is what's causing the most trouble. I feel I need to choose one belief and stick to it. So what do you guys think? Do I stand firm in what I want and at the same time have everything have to be constantly perfect and kind

of resent everyone? Or do I be much more chill and allow people to do what they want and equally allow myself to do what I want but then slightly abandon my standards? Maybe there's a middle ground but I don't know what it is or how it would work. Anyway I have so much trust in your judgments. I love the podcast. It's taught me so much and i think you're both very intelligent and mature with your advice let me know what you think and please don't judge me too harshly for my toddler-like obsession with fairness thanks oh are you a vergo i write this letter it's really spoke to me it spoke to me so much um yeah i mean special one you have you're very special because you're just like us you're so special you're the specialist you're the most special you're the specialist special one you're the main special it's like you've scraped the insides of

like my skull and like sort of smeared it on an email and i'm like, well, yep, there I am. I mean, and so I, I'm saying everything I'm about to say from like, it's me perspective. Um, I don't think it's fairness you have a problem with. There's actually vulnerability and control. Um, because it is difficult when you have relationships and they're ones that you rely on and they are in some profound way, not like you. And they don't value all the things that you value like I am I am just like you special one like it's really important to me to be on time and sometimes I make myself late to try and look cool which is the least cool thing anyone can do um you know I'm always like in this like internal like house wrestle um about like the you know not not just like

the amount of time spent cleaning but like the way in which it's done or like whose responsibility it is to like monitor like you know the various things to do with domestic labor and i think that the thing you've got to kind of like come to terms with is that like you can you can have standards and you can say hey this thing's really important to me but where you will land will never be at where the standard is right because that's just not that's just not how people work right if they don't think that things like punctuality is important or like you know doing the dishes straight away they will never meet you exactly where you are. And that's where you have got to give up an element of control. Closeness comes at the expense of control. Like that's, that's kind of like a horrible rule of human life. It's one that I

struggle with a lot. I think that it's, it's understandable that you feel resentful about these things, but I suppose the thing I'd encourage you to think is that if you feel resentful in every aspect of your life in terms of family, friends, partner, you know everything then you've got to start asking yourself what you're bringing to the table, what assumptions do you have about what your role is or has to be, is it just about like well I have these standards and it's about making the world a certain way or is it about making yourself a certain way and thinking that you've got to do these things and got to be responsible for these things in order to be valued as a person those are the things I'd encourage you to think about it's about

vulnerability it's about control and maybe maybe maybe it's about the role that you have developed over many years in all your relationships yeah i mean everything ash says is great analysis i think of the underlying feelings but the question that i want to address is how do you deal with this in a practical reality because i'm a very controlling controlled uh what's another word for those things where's the power of three person i am someone who likes control of their surroundings i like to have control over my schedule and my life um i want to exercise way too much control over the behavior of others so they fit within that and i've had to learn how to not let that out so much that it means that I need a lonely existence and no one likes me and I think I've been pretty successful

at that it's been a long hard road and I've still got lots of it to go down but it's you know the way I break this down is first of all you need to learn how to do calming exercises in the moment when you are pranging out because someone has not done their dishes or pranging out because someone is late uh or what what was the other standard you mentioned there was another one as well call me more prang out because your boyfriend is not calling me more you have to first of all breathe you have to breathe you have to take the time 10 deep breaths is a magical thing and you have to really consider in that moment okay what i want to do is i want to immediately text this person and tell them how

they have upset me and how it has wounded me in some way that feels much much deeper than just leaving the dishes out or not being on time because it is disrespectful to me and that means that they don't like me or that they don't value me you have to breathe through that and you have to think hmm maybe that's not what's going on here and also if it is going on like do I have any evidence of that that's beyond them leaving the dishes out then you have to think how am I going to deal with this this situation in this moment the dishes are stressing me out I don't want there to be dirty dishes in the kitchen can i live with these dirty dishes until my housemate gets home and then i say hey is it okay if you do your dishes

or will i do the dishes and just accept that it is more important to me to not have the dishes there than it is to wait for my housemate and resent them this is practical advice at the moment sometimes i do the fucking dishes sometimes i'm like actually it's fine i will leave the dishes you can have the conversation later with your housemate but never have a conversation when you are in the moment and when your entire nervous system is screaming at you about the loss of control because it will not go over the way you think it goes over and it will not end well every time recently i have had an immediate conversation about something that's frustrated me in that moment i think that's the most important thing in the world and i make that stressful for another person when it actually doesn't just

because it's stressful for me but it doesn't have to be and if you calm yourself down and think about it it will become less stressful for you because you're accepting there are things that you cannot have control over in that immediate sense it's also this is hilarious not to get all star signy but i am a double virgo not of sun a moon and a rising and if we want to lean into astrology then my co-star every time it says a virgo thing it's like oh that's really me and there was a one yesterday about how do you react when people disappoint you and the virgo one said you prepared for the disappointment and you already knew what you were going to do i think that applies to control too you need to prepare for the fact that your standards

are all the standards that you hold like ash says there's always gonna be a middle gap how do you fill that gap if you know that a friend is constantly going to be late you can communicate lie to them and tell them the time half an hour earlier that's part of it but you can communicate lie to them and tell them the time half an hour earlier that's part of it but you can communicate with them as well i have a friend who is constantly late and you have to come up with your own sort of lines which mean that if they're crossed you're not going to cut them off but you just are going to get on with your fucking day so say you're going to the cinema and you know your friend is constantly you say hey shall we meet half an hour earlier and you suspect they might still be late even then. What are you going to do?

You say to them beforehand, you just have to set the expectations to be like, you know, 4.30, just so you know, I will go into the cinema, but I'll be sat here, like come join me. And you have to be prepared to just enjoy the thing on its own terms, even if that person has not shown up

in the way they want to. Because you can let that, like there's some instances, I don't know if shown up in the way they want to because you can let that like there's some instances i don't know if you're getting jilted the altar where you can let that lateness ruin your day and that is like so fine but there's other instances where it's like okay this person is is late constantly and you've talked to them about it you've communicated they can't meet it if you decide that is a break you know a deal breaker and that you're unhappy with other aspects of the friendship or the relationship, whatever, then yeah,

there's been people that I've been like, Hey, I don't want to date anymore because you're, you know, two hours late for everything. And I don't think we can, we have enough time to conduct this in a way that I want to. And they've been so chill with that.

Cause I've really been like, it's no hard feelings. It's just like a mismatch. But with a friend, if there's someone who's always 30 minutes late again, tell them the earlier time, but also prepare to just go and do the activity, to dinner say i can order for you and it's about it is about communication it's about just saying like this again and again but also accepting that they

might not change the behavior how are you going to continue your life in a way that is pleasurable for you despite that there's so like i take a book to everything i take a kindle everywhere like i have things i want to do i have place i want to wander around and i realize now if things you know get out of control and i don't have this rigid iron grip of the exact sequencing of events it's okay it's fine no one is gonna die when i'm late for stuff now i just say i'm late and i accept i'm late moving faster like cycling my hardest is not going to change the fact I'm late. So I just cycle at a normal pace. Just set the expectations.

Be aware. The thing I fucking hate is when I set expectations. Well, I mean, I hate when I set expectations and people don't meet them. The thing I hate is when I try and give people outs and try and say, look, I understand that this is going to be late. You're not going to be able to meet this standard.

That's okay. And they insist that they will will that's what's fucking annoying when you're like and you know they won't so you have to prepare for that but just in case you have to prepare that they might that's what's fucking annoying the last thing I want to say is you've tied yourself in knots here about whether you should meet your own standards stick to your own fucking standards if you like just stick to them you don't need to go back and forth and go with other people's clean your dishes have your house fucking standards. If you like, just stick to them. You don't need to go back and forth and go with other people's. Clean your dishes, have your house the way you want

to have it within the space that you're allowed to have it. If you want your boyfriend to call you more, have that conversation. I think that's a slightly separate thing. But if you don't meet your own standards, you will just resent people for making you drop them. Even though they didn't make you,

you drop them yourself. It's okay to be Monica Geller. Yeah, we exist. We're valid. We have badges and we will let you have one if you meet real monikers exist anyway it has been another episode of if i speak who have you been i've been monica geller oh i too have been monica geller how crazy we have no rachel next time bye Bye. Bye.