If I Speak - 60: Are we too addicted to convenience?

Episode Date: April 15, 2025

Ash and Moya answer a mystery question and wonder if our quest for a life of convenience was a mistake. Plus: advice for a listener dating a much, much older man. PSA: We’re going live at EartH in London on 21st May! Stay tuned for tickets next week. Music by Matt Huxley.

Your hair looks very nice. Thank you so much. Can you tell what's different? It's a different color. It is a different color. I have not introduced myself, but I have introduced myself. Wait quickly. This is If I Speak with me, Moira Lothie-McLean and...

Moira's very nice new hair. Moira's very nice new hair and Ash Sarker. I have changed my hair color. Can you describe the hair color to the listeners? I would say, I would say it's like the deep chestnut of a beautiful racehorse. That's so lovely. I would have just called it dark brown.

Okay. I thought you wanted something more. No, no, no. It was just a simple, a simple like, what color is it now? Because it was red. I had an unfortunate epiphany, which is due to the If I Speak TikTok feed, shout out Chloe, who is maintaining the If I Speak TikTok feed. And I saw two because we are posting clips of the podcast on the If I Speak TikTok feed. You can see yourself side by side.

And it's almost like a one-stop color analysis shop. And I realized that my red hair was washing me out and that there's no new blonde hair, but I suspect that was probably washing me out too unless I was really tanned. And then actually my natural color was probably the best. So now not to get too deep into it, but we are on the way back to my natural color. probably the best. So now, not to get too deep into it, but we are on the way back to my natural color.

This is the closest you can get. At the top, it's natural. Down here, it's just all the bleach is covered with a deep brown tint. So it will take years to grow this out and then chop this off again, but we're back on brown for the foreseeable future. I mean, I don't know.

Now I know that it's a online color analysis. I realize that I don't know. I now I know that it's a online color analysis. I realize that I don't I don't know what suits me. Well, Ash, guess what terrible thing I did yesterday. Did you do a color analysis? But worse, the worst way possible, you could do a color analysis. How did you do it? Think of an evil thing that exists at the moment. Um, opioids. Close in terms of the words, letters, sounds. Open AI.

Oh. I used ChatGPT to give me about two hours worth of colour analysis by putting my pictures in there. You burnt down a section of the Amazon rainforest to get your color stuff. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm really sick and I was ill and I just caved.

I caved and the worst thing is... Sorry to that sloth. The worst thing is it was really good. This is how they get you. This is how they fucking get you. What did the robot tell you? Well, it told me that I am a this is no guys, I feel bad. I'm going to influence people just doing it as well.

But it told me things that I knew a little bit, but I needed to know more. So I needed it confirmed and it gave me a full color profile. So I'm a deep water. You put in several pictures and it's good and analyzing those things because it's like easy to pull out data points needs to pull out tones, tells me I'm a deep autumn gives me all my colors. I did everything from makeup, face shape, the way like what style should suit me, where I

should place blush, eyeliner, et cetera. Did body shape, did all, got all my colors, got all my outfits, got all, which is why my makeup looks better today because I listened to chat GPT. What can you say? What can you say? I find it hilarious that like getting your colors done

to come back in such a big way because like in the 90s, that was something that women in their 50s would do. Yeah, like at department stores Well, it's it's the thing is like paying 200 pounds for I think is an absolute crock of shit But I and I think using chat GPT is probably morally very bad My friend would definitely be my friend who's listening to this is cussing me out right now and Haley. I love you so much I'm so sorry But This is linked to the wardrobe clear out that I did recently, which is obviously I chucked some clothes away. And I think I was

just I just don't know what suits me. And don't know what colors work. And I was looking at pictures because of TikTok as well looking at old, looking at the things I wear in my wardrobe and what I'm drawn to. And I thought if I actually understand what does suit me colour-wise and what I like and bring those together, then I maybe won't be such a consumerist little pig anymore. Because I just want to be like, okay, you don't have to try every single fucking style in the world. And guess what? crew neck jumpers don't suit you and having oversized boxy tops when you have you know you have a short torso it doesn't actually work on me I drowned in it and then I wonder why it doesn't work and keep buying it when I bought those rugby tops they look terrible like the colors were fine but

the the shape looked terrible and it's mixing those things together and now now that I've pruned my wardrobe and I kept pruning it, like it's still going down, I still think I should get rid of more, but everything I have left is something that I do wear and wanna hold onto, it's just too much. But now I'm actually setting a challenge for myself to wear all the clothes. And if I don't wear them within a year, they have to go.

But it's that mix of like, what actually suits me shape wise, what suits me color wise. And then when you know that, you don't buy everything you see in a hope of potential. Look, I believe you. Okay. Thousands wouldn't, but I believe you. I'm sorry, Amazon. Shall we do our traditional icebreaker, folks? 73 questions minus 70. We shall. Sorry. For those listeners who may not know, you might hear me blow my nose off mic

because I'm stuffed full of phlegm at the moment. Oh, God bless you. You know what? There's no worse feeling than not being able to breathe through your nostrils with ease. Well, this is the thing. I can breathe. Yesterday I couldn't breathe. When I sit up, I can breathe. But the phlegm is coming out, which is good.

That means it's a quick one. But your sinuses, how are your sinuses doing? They're good. Yesterday I had to breathe through my mouth the whole time. Today, I'm breathing through my nose. So it's clear and quick. Okay. All right. All right. I'm happy for you.

All right. I've got questions for you, Moya. Let's go. Get to it. Question the first, what is your current earworm right now? Yeah. Usually I'll be able to answer this, but sad point of fact is because I'm working what is essentially a seven-day week at the moment due to various factors and preparing a relocation, I actually haven't even been listening to music. Okay but a song that's stuck in your

head, do you not just have one constantly? No, I'm... some days there is one, some days there isn't one. That isn't actually an earworm in my head at the moment. The last song I hummed was probably Slim Pickens by Sabrina Carpenter, but there's not an earworm right now. How does that one go? How does it go? My throat's fucked. It's like, it's like, pickings. It's all about how there's no men out there. It's like, it's like a boy who's jacked and kind can't find his ass to save my life. I live with him. And he's single. Advertising your housemates on

And he's single. Advertising your housemates on the podcast is funny. Guys, if you would like to play Ash's housemate, you need to write in. Yeah, you have to write in. You have to write in. And I will want the last three months worth of payslips. Okay, question two. Is there a friend whose advice you would always take? Yeah, we spoke about this last podcast. I said there's a friend. Yeah, but you didn't tell me who. You didn't tell me who.

Yeah, because name dropping is gauche, but I've already named it Haley's, so I'm gonna name drop again. I always take Sean's advice. Oh! Yeah. What's so good about her advice? The thing is, if you have a friend who's probably like, one of if not the

smartest person you've ever met, and they marry that with emotional intelligence, you have somebody whose advice is almost always on point. And I also think we have quite similar backgrounds and understand where we're both coming from. So when she gives me advice, it's like, she's able to look at me when I'm freaking out and see all the things that would make me freak out, but also give that sort of like rational advice. And I think I can do the same for her. So her advice is always, I hold a lot of stock in it. But she is also an advice giver for so many people. She'd make an amazing therapist. Final icebreaker question.

If you had to design a producer tag for our very own chow, what would it be? By which I mean something like, Must've done that beat hoe or Mike Will made it. Like, what would it be? You've asked the wrong person this question. What's your answer? It's child Ravens.

Caw, caw! Oh, good Lord. Okay. Moving swiftly on. I've got no words for that one. I've got no words. I one. I've got no words. I'm so sorry. It's okay.

I'm sorry. You know what? Just take me up the vets and have me put down. We've sat two nerds in a room and asked them to design a cool tag for our producer. You know that's never gonna, like, we love music. We're not like cool dudes who can be like mustered on the beat hoe. We're like, do do do do do do do. Like that's the song in my head.

Do do do do do at all times. Do do do do do. Do do do. You know like the monkey in Homer Simpson's mind that's just like clashing symbols together. It's that. We're the embodiment of, you know that little girl who walked into her dad's interview

in the middle of COVID on the BBC? Yeah. That's us. I don't think we can do a tag. Okay. You know what? I think I would feel like you're the little girl marching into the dad's interview and I'm the baby in the little like bouncer-roo thing. I saw one of our colleagues the other day and he was describing the dynamic on the podcast and he said, oh, it works really well because you're like, ah, the one who hasn't got her

shit together. And then Ash is like the rational older sister. And I was like, is that how we come across? I was like, wait, what? He was like, yeah, because the audience can really empathize with your bit because you're like mental and don't have anything together. What? I was, I had such a shock.

Let me tell you that. Let me tell you, I got the shock of my life realizing that's how I come across. Wow. Okay. Well, you know, rational older sister, I'll take that all fucking day. I don't think it's true, but I'll take it. It was an interesting perspective. I'll say that for free.

Okay, ciao. You have a mystery question for us. Ciao Ravens, kaka! Kaka! Producer tag in, you have a mystery question for us. I need to take my phone off silent. It's me. Kaka! I need to take my phone off silent. It's me. Caw caw. Should we sing a bit while we wait for the mystery. Oh, oh, there was a ding. There was a ding.

Oh. Oh. If you could erase one technology from the world, what would it be? I mean, okay, nukes. End of discussion. Next question. Next question.

I think it would probably be nukes. It makes me really anxious sometimes. Like there are times where I find it difficult to get to sleep when I think about how many nukes there are and how many times over we could eradicate human life from this planet, potentially even all life. And that, you know, so there's this, there's this theorist called Paul Virilio, and he's got this theory of the integral accident, which is every time you invent a technology, you also invent its disaster. So the invention of, you know, seafaring technology

is also the invention of the shipwreck. And so when you think about what that means for nuclear weapons, it makes me very anxious. Does the disaster count when they're used intentionally, or is it like Chernobyl? Well, I suppose it could be intentional as well. He's described, I think he calls it the information bomb, which is what happens when we've got so much information stored in the internet? What if there was a massive disaster or wipeout? What would that do to human knowledge? The answer is just nukes, isn't it? The rational answer is nukes because I feel the leverage held by nukes and the psychological power and the fact that there are leaders out there

now who are leaning back even towards nukes as an active threat on the world stage. None of that, like the doomsday clocks ticked a little bit closer to 12. I know that, like the US now, Trump has got this idea for the, I don't think it's nuke per se, but the nuke, nuclear capacity obviously wants to ramp up, but he's got this idea for the Golden Dome.

Have you heard about this? No. So the Golden Dome, another classic Trump administration thing, because it's based obviously on the iron dome, Israel's iron dome. And they're calling it the golden dome because reportedly one of the press secretaries or maybe it was the defense secretary, I can't remember who, mistakenly called the iron dome the golden dome ages ago, and everyone liked

the name. So it's stuck for the US's own version, but Trump really wants to have it. It's like the Iron Dome, just so much more beautiful. Yeah. Much more beautiful. You can't believe it. Yeah. He's like, but he's saying Golden Dome is dead. So that they want to build up the capabilities of the Golden Dome.

And there's already, obviously the classic arms manufacturers have started talking about how, oh, we're the perfect people to build this, make this realized. And it's, I was reading an essay on it by Lawrence Friedman. And the whole thing for the US as well is just like pointless and kind of impossible to realize. But that doesn't mean that billions won't be spent trying to realize it, or at least getting to a stage where some of the capacities are in place. And even that to me is terrifying, just building up the golden dome. I think if nukes went around, I would obviously just get rid of maybe the internet. Yeah, I mean, maybe. But I was thinking about this recently and I was like, how do I say this without sounding like a total like Luddite, which is about how corrosive and deadening convenience can be. And I realized that

this is a tricky one because if you've got disabilities, convenience isn't laziness, it's access. If you want to talk about labor-saving technology in the home, I mean, the fact that women doing laundry don't risk losing their own hand, that's a big deal also. But when I think about something like Deliveroo or Uber Eats or Just Eat and how I feel about myself when I get one, I feel grubby because it's like I've just ordered a taxi for a burrito. Yes, I know you read that on my Instagram. We've all shared the bloody taxi burrito meme. We need to credit our memes, okay? We need to credit. Okay, so right, I credit the meme, feel like I ordered a taxi for my burrito.

And also knowing that these, you know, food delivery platforms couldn't exist if they weren't exploiting migrant labor, basically. Like it makes me feel really rubbish about myself. And yet there is something kind of addictive about convenience. It just wears away at your self-control bit by bit and really, really gradually. And I think it's made us... I was talking to some people yesterday who were doing this war game for like, what if there was a war with Russia? And I was talking to some people yesterday who were doing this war game for like, what if

there was a war with Russia? And I was like, bruv, they are rocking our shit. Them men who are fresh from committing war crimes in the Donbass, who cut their teeth in Chechnya, they're fucking us up. And in part, it's because, you know- You're going to say we've gone soft. We have, convenience has made us go soft. I think, I think you're, there's a clear separation here between what you were talking about before, which is access and accessibility and convenience.

I don't see, some people will argue that Deliveroo, Just Eats or whatever, Access, are they? They cost a lot of money. None of those profits really go to the people actually performing the labor. That's not to me access. That is again, just convenience and people posing as access

in order to make themselves feel better about using it. And I say this as someone who just used chat GPT to do color analysis. Like obviously that's a convenience tool too. All of this, but convenience goes so deep, this idea of convenience. And I think there's a growing discourse about how convenience often overlaps with atomization,

often overlaps with disconnection. There's a reason that when you get a Deliveroo or a Justy, or I don't know, you order your, maybe ordering shopping to your house is different. Cause I think that know, you order your, maybe ordering shopping to your house is different because I think that's, you know, in the old tradition of the grocers coming around with the cart, that's, I think that borders more. I think that borders more.

Like if you order a Sainsbury's to your house and the guy brings it and it's like a big load and you're doing it, I don't think it's like completely like the grocers coming around, but I think it's more like. Okay, all right, but I thought you were talking about like, ASOS or something. No, no, no, no, no, I'm talking about food shopping specifically.

Okay, all right, all right, that's why I was like, what? No, no, clothes shopping, obviously, one of the convenience things, when you're getting all my packages from Vinted or whatever, that's convenience, all of that stuff is convenience. And it's when there is a complete disconnect from the producer, whether that's the producer of the actual product, the seller, the person selling it,

the brand, whatever, and the consumer. And all that you have in the middle is one courier that you often don't see. That's a completely disconnected and atomized process. And the act of eating, I think we feel it most sharply with something like delivery, because the act of eating is meant to be shared. And yeah, sure, you might be getting a takeaway to your mates. In the past takeaways always existed.

You'd go down or there'd be a guy on like a little scooter doing this thing, but this is at scale. And so often delivery is something that you get when you're super tired and you might be like on your own or with your friend, it's just someone passing it to you and you're giving them a code. And the entire sort of idea of like local takeaway from the pizza place or the Chinese where you know the people and you phoned up to get it is gone. It's all so disconnected. It's the same thing. So this, a few days ago, I was away in Birmingham for work. I actually love Birmingham, by the way. Let's add that to the list of cities. Thumbs up.

I'm into Birmingham. I love Birmingham. And I'll tell you several reasons I love Birmingham. Let's just take a quick detour into Birmingham. Reasons I love Birmingham. It is diverse. There is actually maybe the number one reason. One of the first things I saw was a Afrobeats, I'm a piano night was on this Friday, and they're doing the Grime Orchestra on it'll be passed by the time we're doing it. But there's the Grime Orchestra that they're doing with Birmingham's Symphony Orchestra and Punch Records, which are loads of people that you names will probably recognize but like Deadly, Lady Leisha, and they're coming to London on the 20th of April. Just FYI.

Ah, I mean, if I don't hear if, if an orchestra doesn't do, uh, ghetto coyote, I'll be very annoyed. All these things are happening. Like all these things were happening immediately. And I have to say, it just felt very, I didn't realize how much I'd missed that aspect, like where I live, I know, sorry, I know we're on a massive detour now, but where I live right now is, it's not that there isn't diversity, there's, there's diversity and there's,

there are like ethnic minorities, and I'm not saying you have to go somewhere, there's not an ethnic minority, but I think it was just way more in the vein of what I was used to in this being a real part of the city and like linked in together. Like I remember going on Reddit and people saying there's not even proper like R&B nights in Glasgow, which I don't think is exactly true per se, but it's certainly not a thing the way that it was in London.

And then when I went to Birmingham, immediately I was like, oh my God, yes. The people here felt like they were part of the fabric of the city rather than people who'd clearly moved to the city where there are students or part of the fabric of the city rather than people who'd clearly moved to the city, where there are students or part of like, there's a large migrant population, especially from East Africa, in Glasgow. And there is definitely pockets of segregation. I can't go to the cafes, where like all the delivery drivers hang out because that's where the best food is. And they when I

walked in for the first time, I remember people looking at me like, oh my God, like what's she doing here? Like this random young woman who's clearly not part of this specific demographic. And there's definitely these walls up where you don't see the mixing. And I'm not saying that's true of everything.

Like again, there's loads of people doing, especially with club nights, because I think club nights is where you see it most often, because when there's an audience for a certain type of music, you'll see the club night. But I have, there's like, you know, there's lots of amazing black DJs in Glasgow doing really cool stuff,

but I haven't seen this sort of breadth of nights that I have in like London. And when I came to Birmingham, immediately that was there. And also walking around, I heard the most magic thing of all, my favorite accent, the Jamaican Brum accent, which I think is just stunning. The Jamaican Brum accent. So good.

So this is what I was gonna say about atomization. So I was put up in a hotel, but it wasn't really a hotel. It was called like a stay hub. And to get in, you had a code, and then you had another code to your room. And it was just like a house that had been converted. And it wasn't even an Airbnb. It was just a series of little rooms with little codes to get in. And you didn't see there was no reception, nothing like that. It was purely a self, like everything was self check in, self do this, self do that. You didn't even

see like a housekeeper come around. I'm sure they did. And if I'd been out the right time, I would have seen it. But there was none of that. And it was so disconnected. And I really, as I get older, like I can't afford to stay in hotels on the regs unless I'm going to Europe or whatever. But I really, when I'm traveling, I really miss that experience of like hotels. And it's really nice when my employer occasionally puts me up in even like a motel one or a Premier Inn, because at least you have that face to face time with someone else and there's other guests and there's that communal eating. Whereas this thing was so like there's not a kitchen. There's none of that you have to let you go out to eat, which is fine. But it's just you're so disconnected. No one knows where you are. It's so lonely. And that that

to me is what when we say convenience, there is always this flip side, which is separation. No, I think that's true because like convenience and that sort of like frictionless, streamlined, bare existence, and there's a frictionlessness to spending money. And then there's also like a frictionlessness of the user experience. Um, it takes the absence of people as a good thing, right? Because interactions with people are the friction. And I also think that there's something quite gross about being able to demand things like quiet haircuts or quiet Uber rides. Um, it just, it just turns people into these little service robots for you.

It just turns people into these little service robots for you. But I also think about, you know, I don't want to get too into like the dignity of work or the dignity of labor. Yeah, Kirsten, I'm of course. You know, no, that's just absolute nonsense. No truck with that. No truck with that at all. I don't want to get too into it, but thinking about the difference between what might be a delicious meal that I've ordered versus one that I've put the work into cooking, right? The value and the experience is completely different. Even something as small as, I mean, you were talking about the local takeaway where you'd phone and then you'd walk down to pick it up. I'm not blowing up my spot, so I'm not going to say where it is and I'm not going to say what it is. But there is just like the most old school of old school Chinese takeaways near to where I live. You can only go to pick it up. It won't

deliver. There's no online ordering. You've got to phone them. You've got to go there in person and the prices haven't changed since like 1991. And it's so good. It's like all of the British Chinese takeaway classics, but just done so well, so, so well. And what I also like about it, and this seems to be a bit of a feature of the particular place that I live. This wasn't the case in other parts of London that I've lived in, but I'd be interested to hear from listeners if this resonates with them, which is that there's actually quite a high tolerance for people going to buy things in person. And it is absolutely and 100% the local black community who wants to do that. Who wants to like go to this particular takeaway and is like happy to queue up for like this Caribbean bakery. Like there is something about like, you know, delivery frictionlessness, which people don't seem to want.

They like that they go to the shop to get their thing. I slightly disagree that it's that you've like, I think that's what you're seeing in your local area. But I don't think that that's like there's an ethnic breakdown. I think it's more generational personally, because it's so, yeah. I think it might be generational. I also think it might be like a class thing. Like, I think it might be like a working class thing and like, you know, the sort of like.

I don't think we can make any. It's so distinct, it's so distinctive. Yeah, maybe in where you live, which is a specific, yeah, well, everyone knows you live in Tottenham, but maybe in Tottenham, but I think there's different, I think it's more, there's class and like class and generational probably are overlapping here because you're more likely to get the generations who are that particular generation who are from a particular background are still on show in places like Tottenham or Peckham. Because I would say you'd also see them Peckham,, but then you're not gonna see the people who are behind doors who are ordering the deliveries, the Uber eats. Sure, like by its nature, that's invisible.

But what I will say about this particular takeaway is that the younger generation go there as well, because everyone knows it's shit hot. I mean, but like, do you ever feel enfeebled by convenience? Like I think this about like fixing things around the house. I know this is going to sound really tiny because it is tiny, but when my partner wants to fix something himself, it stresses me out. To be fair, there are good reasons for it to stress me out. It's a chaotic, noisy,

and very long experience. If the washing machine is broken or something, he'll like, no, I'll just order the part and I'll like find a YouTube video and fix it myself. And I'm like, oh, this is going to take fucking ages, like, can we just get someone in to do it? But I mistrust that in myself, right? That I want this sort of like convenient option of get someone in to do it rather than the self-reliance of learning how to do it. Did you see that study the other day which talks about how British DIY skills are on a massive decrease because we can just get someone else into do it and that our generation hasn't inherited any DIY skills? Because I think this is something that lives rent free. I actually have something

else I want to say about queuing in a minute and going out in person. Flip side, but bank that thought because I think this all the time. Right now I need to get someone in to dismantle my bed and take some nails out and do some poly filler. Are these tasks that I probably actually could do? If I just gave myself the time and space to them? Yes, 100%. I could still use a drill to take some nails out of my bed. I could learn how to quickly poly fill it.

It takes five minutes. I'm not going to do that because I'm just like, I could learn how to quickly polyfill it, it takes five minutes. I'm not gonna do that because I'm just like, I don't wanna fuck it up. Also another part of this study was the fact that loads of us live in rented houses, so we're not- So there's a high cost to fucking it up. There's a high cost to fucking up. We don't wanna take that risk.

And you've got something like TaskRabbit. All of those things come together and mean that we're just used to saying, okay, I'm going to outsource this labor to someone else. And also this idea of, I guess, maybe some, we don't have more disposable income per se, but there's definitely different ways we allocate disposable income. Whereas my mum would have got someone else in, but that someone else would be my relatives. Like my relatives just redid our bathroom at home because all of my cousins and like my uncles are all mechanics and

builders and my stepdad is a builder who built all of his houses and also a mechanic who fixed everything. And I've grown up around this and I actually wrote something about this, how shamed I feel when I go back, and it's like, I can't do anything. I can write on a laptop. I can't put a, like- I can do my tippy-tappy little job. I can tippy-tappy on a laptop. I can't drill a hole in a wall.

I don't know how to work out what a loading, what is it, a loading wall? What's it called? Load-bearing wall. Load-bearing wall is. I don't know how to work out what a loading, what is it, a loading wall? What's it called? Low bearing wall. Low bearing wall is, I don't know how to hang things. I can't fill holes. I can't fit, like the best I can do is sort the low pressure on the boiler.

Which to be fair, I told my housemate I was gonna do it the other week. So that's not a skill everyone has, but that's not, it's just opening a tap and closing a tap again. It's not hard. I can't pay. You know what, you know what, like this is something where like,

the fact it stresses me out is a sign that like I want to do it. Yeah. Right. Or like I need to do it. Need to learn. Like when, when it came to, there was a heating element which was broken in the dishwasher and that was a classic, I want to get a man in situation. And my partner was like, am I not a man?

Am I not? I'm right here. I'm right here. Did he fix it? And it did stress me out to see him like pulling out the dishwasher and experimenting a bit with how to do it. And I do think that maybe it could be done in less chaotic ways. And I also think that maybe I should just be not in the house when he does it.

But the fact is that he fixed it. He ordered the part online, he watched the YouTube video and he did the damn thing. And so I think that part of getting better, and this maybe is a wider theme that we discuss in various ways is don't be so scared of getting the thing wrong. Now, obviously, if you live in rented accommodation and you're going to be paying through the nose, it's a different thing. It's a different thing.

But polyfilling walls, it's basically impossible to fuck up. Like, you could do that. You could absolutely do that. You put the polyfiller in, you let it cure, you sand it off, job done. Job done. Even that to me sounds so difficult. And yeah, it should not be, it should not be. But it's, again, I want a frictionless experience. And this isn't frictionless,

there's no friction when you're sanding the wall. The flip side also is what I was going to come back to about in-person experience is there is, however, at the same time as we've got these frictionless experiences, there's the rise of the extreme friction experience, which is people our age being willing to queue for hyped up restaurants and bakeries, which I think is absolutely fascinating. I was outside this, I was walking up Southampton Road, no, Southampton Way the other this, I was walking up Southampton Road, no, Southampton Way the other day. No, it was Southampton Road, Southampton Way is in Peckham,

what am I talking about? Southampton Road in the middle of London Holborn. And there was like a mob outside this one restaurant. And it was loads of like students, bit younger than me I would say. I mean, obviously younger than me, I'm 30 like students a bit younger than me I would say I mean obviously younger than me I'm 30 now baby but younger than like Methuselah about 20 21 to 25ish like maybe some 19 years thrown in they were spending their student loan and it was just absolutely the key

was massive and it was for this restaurant called Swiss Butter and I looked it up and it's just like shit steak the reviews are bad shit steak but it gone viral and there's this restaurant called Swiss Butter and I looked it up and it's just like shit steak. The reviews are bad, shit steak, but it gone viral. And there's this place in London Bridge that's all over my TikTok at the moment called Agora. The queues are at least an hour long, maybe two. It's a Greek place. I think it's just one of Michelin star, but I might be wrong. That might be another Greek place. Either way, it's the place of now. You've got Toad Baker, you've got Fortitude. I could give you so many names of places where I see people queuing for hours sometimes on end. Now I hate queuing as we know, so I won't do it. I've never been to Toad for that reason. I've not been to any of these restaurants.

I went to uni with one of the girls who runs Toad. There you go. Well, I know people who work there. Becca. Yeah, yeah. Apparently amazing. I will never know because I refuse to queue. Um, the last time I queued was for a restaurant was Roti King and I'd been there loads of times before, but it just happened. It was really cold as well. And it was the meal never lives up to the queue. You, it could be the best food you'll eat in the world.

It will never live up to the queue because the experience of queuing for that long is so unpleasant. You're so hungry. It wouldn't, and the meal is so quick. I'll queue for 15 minutes tops. That's max. And also once I was in the Glastonbury queue last year, that ruined my ability to queue,

like I get actual queue trauma now. But I'm fascinated at the same time we've got this convenience where we're like, I want my food, I'll pay for it to come even quicker than it should come. I'll literally spend an extra fiver, which will not go to the driver, to get it here in 20 minutes.

My burrito, my burrito in its taxi, boom, boom. A burrito taxi. A burrito taxi, boom, boom. But at the same time, there is a willingness for certain restaurants that have been co-signed or certain bakeries to go and stand for hours of your precious life. And I want to know, are these two cheeks of the same ass?

Well, I mean mean the willingness to cue is a reflection of virality and when places are able to tap into a kind of virality whether that's you know deliberately courted by doing Instagram friendly things and a creation of some kind of spectacle. And it's interesting to me what are the Instagram friendly foods. I can't remember what the Italian word is for it, but you know the Italian like cream buns? Oh yeah, they're maritozzi or something. They're massive on Instagram.

And I nearly ate one and then I remembered, I don't like cream. So why would I eat a cream bun? Maritotsi. Yeah, they're called Maritotsi. Yeah. And they're really beautiful. And it's, you know, because you've got this, you know, beautiful spherical bun, and then a sort of, you know, perfect segment of cream and it's, it's satisfying, right? When you see someone, like with the knife, like scrape off the excess. But, and you know how I feel about Italian food. I love Italian food and I would never hear a word against Italian food. The maratazzi, meh, meh, like, like it's not actually good. It's just that there is a sort of ASMR like quality of what we see in terms of how it's prepared, which then makes you want to have it. I think that lots of the, you know, like the sando's and the sort of like perfect rectangular nature of it.

I mean, But I think it's this thing of like, with the only certain experiences now, for lots of people, are afforded the weight of like it being worth to go and have that full eating experience. And it's something that's been co-signed by social media. Whereas with other things like just a regular dinner, it's just delivery. And they're not thinking that you can actually have a special experience with all these different meals. It has to be like, I'm going to Agora to have this very trendy meal. I've been told it's going to be this way. So I'm going to go do it.

I do think I mean, people have always been sheep. Let's not let's not fuck about with herd mentality. But the way the herd mentality is expressed through specific physical inflection points that tend to be restaurants nowadays. It's crazy, guys. Why are you queuing for an hour? The food will never live up to it. And you look stupid. When I see someone in that queue, I'm like, you're stupid.

It's stupid to queue for this long, unless you are truly, truly like there for a reason where you're like, I have to review this place for something. Or why are you there? You are missing out on so much, especially in London. Especially in London. You're missing out on great food. There is, but I think so many places you could go.

It makes me mad. It makes me angry. You don't need. So I think like, you know, Deliveroo Uber Eats, there's the frictionless of the experience. It's, you know, taxi burrito. I think we've like, we've gotten a grip on like, there's something kind of infantilizing about it as well, right?

Like, like I do think being able to satiate your every whim is probably bad. Like all, not all your whims are good and having some constraint on them, I think is important. I think we've talked about the sort of like viral, like, you know, going to have to queue for a restaurant. But then there is this other thing which is about creating a nice experience for yourself, is that I think that sometimes people can be a bit too reliant on recipes, can be a bit too reliant on recipes. And when it comes to something like the principles of cooking, right?

Learn the principles. Learn the principles and learn how to taste what you're putting together to see if it will be nice or not. You don't need the permission of Bon Appetit or whoever else it is to tell you what's going to taste good and I think that there is something there which is so timid like like like you know it's a timid culture which is like makes you afraid to like try doing some polyfillers a timid culture which makes you afraid to cook without a recipe like you can and you know I'm timid myself when it comes to DIY but when it comes to

cooking like I'm really like I'm not I fucking when it comes to DIY, but when it comes to cooking, I'm really not. I fucking came up with the most banging marinade and dressing for salmon the other day, which was just me putting a load of shit that I happened to have into a blender. And it was ginger, it was a little bit of garlic, it was sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, tiny bit of honey and tarragon. And no one would have taught me to do that. I was just like, oh, tarragon and ginger, that might go nicely. And if it's horrible, fuck it. It was so banging. That sounds amazing. Can you write that down for me? Because I'm always looking for a salmon marinade. I do think you're to me, I mean, I know we have to dilemma in a second, but

I think the timid culture is the thing that we've hit on here. And I think it infects different people in different spaces. Like I'm very, I used to be very timid about even asking for a table at a restaurant. I was so scared of like the rejection and embarrassment, public embarrassment by them saying no. And now it's like, it doesn't matter. But I see it in my own profession. And I was talking about this the other day. One of the reasons that I think there's so few reporters coming up in journalism, like young people who can just go out and ask questions.

And I suffer from this myself, is that there's a timidity culture there about just going out and being like, I need to ask you a question just to a random person on the street about something that's happened. It's all done via online. We're used to being having the buffer of a screen. And that comes back to delivery, convenience, frictionless experience, timidity and frictionless go together. Like, but I guess to like round it off, because I think you're completely right,

which is, you know, what kind of technology would you get rid of? I stand by nukes. All right. I stand by nukes is number one. Yeah. But I think if we're talking about an impact of technology, and how technology has created this frictionless consumer experience, but also has had an impact of saying this is where you should go. You know, this is if you're going to cook yourself like this is what you have do, is that's become so enfeebling, whether it's convenience or whether it's the sort of curated experience of like, you know, going to all the viral places. It has atrophied your own capacity to do things and exercise your

own judgment and exercise your own taste. Don't go to a Gora and Barra market, not for another six months, guys. I will judge you, sorry. Next, dilemmas. Next. This is, I'm in Big Trouble, which is our dilemmas segment. If you are in big trouble, then send us an email too. If I speak at navaramedia.com. Ash, do you want to read it out? This is a nice and concise one. Yeah, I have to say and we do we do love a nice and concise dilemma.

Dear Ashen Moyer, I love your podcast and I'm a new listener but long time fan. I wanted some advice on a weird relationship if you can call it that, that I have with a man three decades older than me. I'm 24 and met this guy online some years ago. He was married and has two children not too far off my own age. I think he was just looking for intimacy as his wife, they are now divorced, wasn't sexual with him. I know how this sounds and I understand if you think I'm an awful person but I've known him since I was 18 and I've always really liked him. I still see him a lot but just sexually and I grapple a lot with the fact that I'm not only the other woman but he's old enough to be my own father. Due to my own

personal issues with losing a dad at a young age I feel like there must be something there with my innate attraction to him. Believe it or not he's incredibly kind and thoughtful and seems like a gentle guy. Should I just stop seeing him? I feel awful, but I love spending time with him. I don't know. Please let me know your thoughts. Kind regards, special one.

We'll see. What's the problem? The problem, like my question is what bit do you feel really bad about? Like what is the bit you actually feel bad about? Is it that he's older than you? Is it that you, I think you had an affair, but I can't really tell from the letter,

because if you're both single now and he's much older than you. They did have an affair. They did have an affair, but they're now divorced. Yeah, they're now divorced. I feel, you're like, he's really kind of thoughtful. He seems like a gentle guy. Should I stop seeing him?

I feel awful, but I love him. Why do you feel awful? That's what I need to know in order to give you advice. You haven't identified why you feel awful. And I think you need to identify to yourself why you feel awful. Like, what is it exactly? Is it the affair?

Is it because he's older? Is it because you have daddy issues? You need to understand why you feel awful before you can unpick what is wrong with this relationship. I can't just sit here and say, it's wrong. You're two single adults. Yes, there's definitely an imbalance of power dynamic, but I haven't got enough details to judge exactly what that's about. And I'm not going to, you're not going to stop seeing him. Read this dilemma back. You're not going to stop seeing him.

You have to decide for yourself why you feel bad before you can understand why you might stop seeing him. Otherwise, it's just a general feeling of feeling bad all the time while you see him and then beat yourself up. I think maybe what this special one is asking for, it's not for advice per se, and it's not for should I keep seeing him or not. I think what the special one wants is an outside perspective on what's happening. Like I think that's what you want. And I'll give it

based on the limited information that you've provided us with. But here's what I would be saying to you if you were my younger sibling or a younger person in my friendship group. Number one, why is it solely up to you to work out the wrongness of this? I think what's happened is that you've internalized the guilt and the shame that this guy really should be feeling. Because if you've had an intimate relationship since you were 18 and he was married at first and has two kids similar to age and you, the guilt and the shame really should be on him. Because yes, if you're 18, it's legal. You know, there's nothing, there's nothing in the law to stop someone who's, you

know, three decades older than an 18 year old having an intimate or sexual relationship with them. But it's one of those situations where you go, oh, it's technically legal. But if he was my friend who was my age, right, I'm 32, and he was having an affair with an 18 year old, I would be like, what the fuck are you doing? And I think I would say to him, it's morally wrong what you're doing. It's morally wrong because there's no possible way

you can be equals. You can, and I've seen this happen a million times, I've seen older men put younger women up on a pedestal, but that's not actually a relationship of equals. There is no way for you guys to be equal partners in shaping what this relationship is. And that would make me look at the guy sideways. Actually, like, you know, if it was a woman who was my age and an 18-year-old guy, I would look at them sideways.

It kind of doesn't matter what the gender arrangement is. I'd be looking at them hella hella sideways. The second thing is, you've come up with an explanation of why he's attractive to you, which is that you think it's connected to the loss of your dad. And I do think that there might be something in that. There is this compulsion for us to repeat our traumas and to put ourselves in situations

which may resemble it in some way. The older man who might be on the verge of leaving, either through, you know, maybe your dad left or, you know, in this case, you know, he died, right? But it's on the verge of not being in your life anymore and you thinking, well, maybe I can fix it by making the story different with the sexual relationship. That's an old story and you're not the only one to found yourself in it. I've done that before, right? I've done that before when I was much younger.

You have an explanation of why you're in this situation. But again, I would ask you to flip the gaze around and ask why is he interested, right? What was attractive about you? That's not to say that you're unattractive. That's not to say that you're not clever, that you're not self-possessing, that you don't have all these qualities. But the fact is, the simple fact of that particular age difference and the fact you're 18, that alone should be enough to stop a man of that age, I think. My sense of affairs and what I would also then count

as what I'd call like an escape hatch relationship is that he was looking for an opportunity to feel things about himself that he couldn't in his marriage. And that's not just to do with sex, maybe that's to do with him feeling young. And maybe that's to do with him feeling like his life isn't over and make him feel that it's all ahead of him. And maybe the position that you're in now is that you're still something of his escape hatch, right? You're still a place where he can

live out a fantasy about himself. And my question for you, special one, is that what you want to be? Do you want to be a secret room where someone can go, you know, go into every so often and act out a fantasy of themselves and then leave and then close the door on you? And I think that you're more deserving than that. I don't have anything to add. I don't know why I find older man dilemmas so hard. And I think it's because as the, maybe as the child of a deadbeat who then died, and I went in the complete opposite direction, I just find, I just can't look at it directly. I'm like, just either leave or don't leave.

I get very yes or no binary about it, but I think your advice is great, Ash. Do you want to, do you have time for one more? No, you're meant to be, you're popping up. Oh no, we don't have time for one more. Sorry, you've given us a hard out that we're respecting. We're respecting your hard out. You know what, I like that you respect my boundaries.

Also, by the time this comes out, it'll nearly be your birthday. So, happy birthday for two days from when this comes out. Oh, that's really sweet. That's very, very sweet of you. I'm just not that big on birthdays. I know, as we get older, it's just like, it's another day and every, especially when you have so many days

that are special with your friends, it means less. But I have recently, I have been reminded by some friends that they really care about their birthdays. So it's nice just to be like, here you go. Here's a little birthday wish. I'm entering my Jesus year. Are you going to resurrect? Okay, there's the 27 club and then there's the Jesus club.

Yeah. Catch me on Calvary Hill. You won't be able to miss me. I'll be like this. Well, I'm just going to say astrologically, this should be an incredible year for you because several planets are entering Aries for the first time in, I think, 30 years?

Yeah, Saturn, maybe it's 10 years. But there's been a long transit through Pisces and now they're entering the planet of doing impulse your planet. So it should be really good year for you. I think that's all Voodoo. But anyway, this has been If I Speak. This has been If I Woo Woo. If I Woo!

See you next week. Bye! Bye!