Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - We‘re the GOOD Art Friends

Episode Date: October 9, 2021

Classic organ donation episode of QQ!  This ep the guys talk about the good art friend story, and Soren gets Daniel a present he didn't ask for.  And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks  Hello Tushy.  10% off + free shipping HelloTushy.com/qq .  Thanks BetterHelp.  Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/qq . Thanks Everlywell. For 20% off your at-home lab test:   Everlywell.com/qq . Thanks Hawthorne. Take your quiz and get 10% off your first purchase at hawthorne.co with code QQ

So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. I am one half of this podcast, failed musician Daniel O'Brien, joined as always by my co-host Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, say hello. Hey everybody, I'm Soren Bui. I would love to be able to call myself a failed musician.

The real truth is that music is basically magic as far as I'm concerned. I've been so musically untalented my entire life that i fantasize about it like i'll watch videos in which people sing really well on uh star search type of shows and i'll be like fuck what if that was me what if all of a sudden i could just sing that would be incredible you are uh i mean like like singing i can't speak too much of that because you've never like really given it a fair shot in front of me singing you've done like you've rapped in front of me and you've done like kind of goofy singing um but musically uh you i've watched you play

guitar and bass like the first time i had you over my apartment you're like what's this a bass and you just picked it up and started playing and i was so mad well i mean i had some training i had played bass previously the the amount of things that drove me crazy when i first met you it was like oh man he's in really good shape well i'm not but i spent my time getting funny oh he's funny too and he can write well you know we can't all have everything i'm a bass player and then he's like what's this a bass well that's not entirely fair i mean well first of all thank you uh but also i had played bass before previously and i also am that's like my whole thing is that i get just good enough at everything that if i get to do it for 30 seconds in front of you, you'll think I'm good at it. Yeah. Like everything in my life, people see me movies I haven't seen. I can tell you everything. I can tell you 30 seconds worth of material about them that makes you think I saw it.

Like everything I have done is like, I will really impress you for the first week that we know each other. And then after that, I am just going to like, hope that you'll stick around. Thanks to Hawthorne for supporting Quick Question. Hawthorne is a premium grooming brand that tailors your personal care routine to your unique profile. Take Hawthorne's quiz today and get started on your personalized self-care routine at hawthorne.co and use promo code QQ to get 10% off your first purchase. Thanks to Everly Well for supporting Quick Question. Everly Well is offering a special discount of 20% off an at-home lab test at everlywell.com. Thanks to BetterHelp for supporting Quick Question.

For 10% off your first month, go to betterhelp.com. Start living a better life today. Thanks to HelloTushy for supporting Quick Question. Now, the brand new HelloTushy 3.0 Modern Bidet Attachment is here to level the playing field. It's stylish, eco-friendly is here to level the playing field. It's stylish, eco-friendly, easy to install, and affordable. Go to hellotushy.com slash QQ to get 10% off plus free shipping. I think you're very, you say you're the first week, but I think you're actually very judicious with your secrets like i like years into knowing you i had some friends from jersey staying with me out in la and you came over for i don't know snacks and and drinks or whatever and there

was a lull and you saw a deck of cards and you just started doing magic tricks and i was like this motherfucker i thought i had all of the angles covered on this and here he sees my wonderful friends are bored And he's like oh this will cheer him up Some magic And then you got on your bike and rode off into the night Did I carry my slackline over my shoulder? Yeah that sounds like me

Yeah I mean a lot of this was From being a kid in a cabin Growing up where I didn't have you know if i wanted to see friends it was like a real ordeal we had to go into town i had to make plans with them to go see them and then also get make plans to get picked up it wasn't like right there was there was a bridge you had to cross and the guy demanded a magic trick so as payment of course man is generous he was a troll he was a troll who lived under it um but yeah i i i was spent a lot of time alone and thinking like basically just like plotting for the future

being like what do i want to be i think i'm going to be a magician and then just learning magicianhood and and then realizing later oh no that's no good rollerblading. Rollerblading is the thing. And then getting just like a dilettante, basically. Like just good enough that people are like, okay, well, he's not a beginner. Yeah. And that's everything in my life. Right. He certainly knows more magic than anyone else in this room. And that's not nothing.

Dan, before we begin, I do have like a preamble quick question for you oh sure i sent you a little gift yeah a little while ago uh-huh and uh i don't heard anything from you you specifically i will preface it by saying when i sent it you said is it this thing and uh it was the thing and i said no and you said good because i don't want that yeah and it was the thing. And I said, no. And you said, good. Cause I don't want that. And it was the thing. So some, some, some backstory for our listeners is a few episodes back. Soren found out that when I run, I listened to music through my phone and I run with my phone, my full iPhone eight in my hand the entire time. Headfirst crazy. Yeah. And he said, that's like running around with luggage. And my is in in a lot of ways it's not.

In a lot of ways it's quite a bit more like running with a phone. And Soren wanted to solve this problem and I asked him, told him not to, and he did it anyway. And he sent me this it's admittedly incredibly lightweight listening device so i can listen to music while i run and there's a little clip on it so i could clip it right onto my shorts or my ear if i wanted to uh it holds a charge it's very easy to uh upload music i guess you're not really uploading music. It just like syncs with my Spotify and I just like pick what playlist from Spotify

I want it to have. Yes. And so it's not like you don't really get Spotify on your thing. You can't just do a random thing. You need to tell it what to play. Like old fashioned iPods and stuff. And I gave it not a shot.

And I thank you very much for your generosity. I mean, not very much. I thank you a normal amount for your generosity for a gift that not only I didn't ask for, I specifically said I didn't want. I used it and I will use it again. I think I'll use it on long runs where I'm just running until I get tired. The running that I normally do now, I'm going for speed lately. And so in addition to having music to listen to, I also want my phone so I can track my distance. And I have an app that tracks like mileage analysis

and tells me where I'm fastest where I'm slowest and I use it to compare against other runs so for the kind of running that I'm doing right now it still makes more sense for me to have my phone I will definitely get use out of this thing so thank you hang on I'm sending you a fifth bit just a second nope nope nope also, the other thing about this, and maybe we can troubleshoot this off mic, it has been devastating for my Bluetooth Raycon wireless, which are normally great, and I love them.

I take them in the gym and on walks and at work and at the mall and in showers or whatever, And it's always great. But now the second that I've had to pair those headphones with a second device that is not my phone, it has made it difficult to transition from one to the next. And like my phone's relationship to those Raycons has never quite recovered since I ran with these. Oh, like your earbuds are like allergic to this thing. Yes. So like this is embarrassing for me, but it's fine.

My phone used to recognize them as Big Daniel's earbuds. And then since I switched over to that device you gave me and then tried to go back to my phone, it doesn't call them that anymore. And often, I would say six out of ten times, I have to unrecognize the

device and then re-recognize it. Instead of what I used to do, which is just pop them in my ears and my phone knows Big Daniel daniel wants to listen to a podcast yeah that's okay that's fair uh complaint not invalid at all because i have the same thing where if i want to listen to my earbuds with my phone i i it's i have to go through a process of like... What's basically going to happen is this little thing that I sent you, it will start searching for your headphones while the headphones are pairing. But the first thing your headphones are going to do is just pair with your phone. So you basically have to get them to forget your phone.

Yes. And then get them to pair with this thing. And then every time you want to use them with your phone, you have to repair. That's, yeah yeah that's troublesome uh but what if i got you another pair of earbuds too so let's see this is a some earbuds and some this is i think you will like this fitbit okay i feel like this gift is finally going to take on i've given you three new things to wear for your run instead of just your phone.

And just so it's clear with our listeners, this is not the gift that you've been teasing for three years now. No, no, no, no. This is just something I heard you were running with your phone and I thought, I know of a solution to that problem

and you didn't consider it a problem, but I did. Yeah. And so I self-righteously went and bought you problem and you didn't consider a problem but i did yeah and so i self-righteously went and and bought you something that you didn't want thinking no but once he tries it he'll enjoy it you know you know what i i do like about that is the kind of thing that uh i wish the the the world was more broadly accepting of which is just random gifts i would say like remove and birthdays and christmas no more birthdays and christmas but keep the world open to random gifts whenever like i was talking to some co-workers after one of our hiatuses and i was like yeah we need to meet up because i got

this other co-worker a gift and they were like oh I didn't know we were buying him gifts like night we're not I saw something and I thought of him so I got it and I'm gonna give it to him and I I like living in in a world where that's where anyone might get gifts at any time and the motivator is you might want this or you might use this or I thought of you when I saw this right that's that that last one is like the impetus, I think, behind all gifts, and it should be. My parents are terrible gift givers, famously bad, in that they will say, well, what do you want?

And I say, well, I mean, that's not really how gifts work, but I want this. And they're like, okay, well, here's some money. Why don't you go get it? And the whole point of a gift is to say there's a backstory to each gift that's never said the subtext is i was thinking about you yeah and while i was not with you and here is this thing that i think you would like like a thing that i saw that reminded me of you uh and that's how gifts should be because then those are the gifts

that that are great and yeah that's not what i'm thinking when it's christmas time i nothing i got is because i thought of you i got it because it's november 28th shit what am i gonna do that's it's really nice that you are buying your gifts by november 28th by the way i have that oh shit feeling on november on december 20th when i'm like oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck what's open you want gems i could get gems for them a geode oh a really nice geode for my brother that'll be great there's a uh family member i don't want to throw under the bus in case other family members Listen to this But a bunch of us were gonna get together on September 19th and she was gonna show up early

But then she bailed because she wanted to get an early start on Christmas shopping and I thought shit. That's so smart She's gonna be done. She's to be done at the end of October. I just have nothing to think about. It's like applying early decision to college where everybody else is freaking out at this time of season. Like you're done. It's the way I felt as a, as a massive nerd. It's the way I felt in college when finals rolled around and everyone was freaking out. And I was like, I I was like I just guys here's here's a here's a life hack if you pay attention the whole time you don't have to study I've tricked the professor by learning uh well if anybody is curious about this little device

it's called a mighty it's it's very small you could put as many Spotify playlists on it as you want it's not like the the old days of like an iPod where you could put 50 songs on it. This thing holds tons and tons of music, and you can just switch between your playlists. And I thought for sure this would be such an easy thing for Dan to run with. I thought you might even clip it to the bill of your hat. No, I clipped it to my shorts. Okay, I did too. That's what I do.

But it's really changed my life in terms of running with music. Because for a long time, I didn't run with music. And I was just so bored on runs. And music, having that little soundtrack, as long as it's the right stuff, it really keeps you going. A new song comes on when you're feeling weary and you're like, oh, yes. Nine to five. Yes. Yeah.

feeling weary and you're like oh yes nine to five yes yeah i one of my problems is when i i think we've talked about this before where like my playlist will run out and then spotify will just think like what other songs does he play a lot and then being alive from company will come on and and i'm just like not now you're right that i like this but that's for when i'm being thoughtful or cooking you're slowing me down that's the next step in the ai of spotify or any of those those uh listening devices that uh like pick music for you based on your taste they have to know when i'm in the mood for things like if i'm'm listening to gym type stuff, don't fucking give me band of horses. Don't give me Bon Iver. No.

I don't want to listen to that while I'm doing pushups. I'm not a psychopath. No, you want the doors. You want Hendrix. You know, gym type stuff. Hendrix you know gym type stuff you know what other function I really want from my Amazon listening device when I when I ask her to play music for me is I I need her to know when she's made a mistake and there's no way to communicate that like when I I'll just say play music and she'll say here's a playlist you might like or

here's a station you might like and she'll put something on and when i don't like it i want her to know that she's done a bad job and she needs to work really hard to get out of the doghouse and there's there's no way that i can translate that there should be a doghouse setting yeah like no this sucks yeah you have to know that this is bad try again know why it's bad and show me that you're improving i worry about fucking up my own algorithm when i'm clearly working out or doing something and a song does come on that i really do enjoy but it's just i've listened to it too much or whatever and i'm like now i'm gonna skip it and then i think if i skip it they're gonna think no he's he's done with this yeah and then i can't so i get in a i get in a quite a quandary with

the robots in my life yeah it's also very tough because i shouldn't be in charge of it because if if spotify's algorithm got frustrated with my frustration it would be like well fine we'll listen to you to what you want here's a playlist of the distance six times in a row is that better that's what you like i'm like no only when i'm going fast now i'm walking yeah there's there are songs that i want to listen to only late at night when i'm driving home because i need to sing to them and no other time in my life will i listen to those songs. Yes. And it's very important to me that you know what those songs are and you don't play them any other time because that's fucking embarrassing for me. Hawthorne is a

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the test you return the test to a CLI a certified lab with a prepaid shipping label and then your physician reviewed results and insights are sent back to you in just days over 100 million people have trusted Everly Well with their at-home lab testing. And for listeners of the show, Everly Well is offering a special discount of 20% off an at-home lab test at everlywell.com. That's everlywell.com for 20% off your at-home lab test. Let's get into the show. I have a quick question for you, Soren. Yeah, go ahead. And it ties into you talking about being in the gym. home lab test uh let's get into the show i have a quick question for you soren yeah yeah uh and it

ties into you talking about being in in the gym i know this is kind of uh a hack observation uh but i was wondering you lift you lift more weights like like the amount of weights you you lift are more than the amount that i do and you've been doing it longer and more consistently is there either an amount of weight or an amount of reps where it is ever justified to grunt every time this is like like i know people are always complaining about people making noises in the gym but the last time I was in my gym a couple of days ago, this guy was doing squats with the barbell on his like shoulders. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was doing that and grunting every single time, like very loudly, really making a show of it. And then he eventually left there. And when I passed him on some other machine, was doing uh tricep rope pull downs and he was grunting every step of that and i don't i i genuinely don't know like will i am i just not using am i not pushing myself to my limits will i if i add more weight will that make me grunt uh uncontrollably and is that a good thing?

Or is this guy really making a choice? Yeah. Is he wearing headphones? No. Oh, yeah, that's a choice. So here's the deal. I wear earbuds, as we just talked about, when I'm in the gym. And the other day, I was in between songs while I was doing a workout

and realized I was making a noise and went oh god so it can be involuntary it can yeah um the same way when you're running and like you're yeah i don't know you're you're a few miles in and you're going up a hill or whatever you just start like your breath on the way out just starts going yeah and then you realize you're doing it you're like what am i what am i doing just breathe and you catch yourself but like it for a little while it feels like it's it just wants to come out of you so it's and i think it's probably like maria sharapova who is a tennis player who's famous for grunting she just it became part of her her strike where it was like she felt like she was getting more strength out of it by making a noise and then after that

it was over and so i assume that's what this guy is doing. It's just like he thinks this is helping him somehow. And no, I don't. But to answer your question, no, there's not a single bit of weight that I would ever do where I'd have to groan or grunt while I'm doing it, regardless of what it is. I mean, the most weight you would lift is those squats that he's doing. But I don't think you have to be like, I don't think any of that's necessary.

I feel like even intellectually, you shouldn't be doing an entire set of grunts. No, absolutely not. Maybe at the very end of your rep max or whatever, where it's like, you can't keep going. very end of your rep max or whatever right it's like you can't keep going like i need a little extra push or whatever maybe then you might do a little grunt but on on on rep number one you're making noise yeah oh that's a show-offy thing um but i mean you're supposed to exhale right you're supposed to exhale every time that you're pushing or pulling the weight certainly like i i've i have uh like vocalized exhales before yes

i just don't think i've ever two three yeah yeah it's it is a thing i i do have people people at my gym who do a lot of grunting, which is part of the reason I got the headphones, because they play music in my gym. And I was like, oh, this will be good enough. And then I was like, it's not good enough. I hear these other human beings and I don't like it.

I hear their bodies. I don't know. I can't remember if we've talked about this. I know you do music in gyms. I do. I'm all podcasting gyms uh which which yeah i think makes me look at times insane because i'm i i definitely laugh depending on the podcast yeah uh and also times uh i must just look like super spaced out because

i'm listening to uh it could happen here or one of robert evans's other sad the world is ending podcasts that that market that he's cornered and it was like staring off into the space learning about pole pot while i'm in between sets i i used to do that i used to listen to podcasts all the time when i worked out but i found that the podcasts that i listened to were funny enough that they were fucking on my sets like i'd be in the middle of something and I'd laugh. And it just, I mean, nothing deflates you more than laughing in the middle of a set.

And you're like, you can't go on. You're stuck. Um, I like creating, keep doing this. I like creating a fake narrative when I'm, when I'm laughing or smiling at the gym.

And someone just like, man, he really loves lifting weights. He is having a blast. He's very charmed by tricep exercises. Yeah, I used to do that. I used to listen to, so my brother, my brother and me had a Dungeons and Dragons podcast that clearly, not my wheelhouse at all, but that I fell into. And I was like, I love this.

It's so fun to listen to them play. And they're very funny on it and it was it was a problem like i couldn't keep doing it went back to music and music as long as it's not a playlist where i know exactly what's coming next each time if it's something kind of brand new um then i'll be listening to it and sometimes the song will just come on and i'll be like yeah and it will just carry me through a whole another set or a little bit a few more reps like it just it helps yeah anyway i'm sure you get that from running though i do yeah and it and it's i have a couple of different playlists and things that i get into

and now especially that i'm doing like i'm i'm doing very focused speed training and trying to get faster for this upcoming race when i get when I'm getting closer to the end where I really need to, to push through, I get panicked if the next song comes on and it's wrong. Like this is, I need all of us working as hard as we can. And Spotify is not doing it right now. You're supposed to know that we're rounding the corner and I need you to give me that last boost. You're going to the that we're rounding the corner and I need you to give me that last boost. You're going to the doghouse, Spotify.

Yeah, I don't think there's ever a reason to be grunting unless you don't realize you're doing it, which is a God, what a horrifying thing that was for me to realize. Yeah. All right. Well, Daniel, I have a quick question for you. Shoot. This may be one of the rare occurrences where I am keenly aware of something from pop culture and you are blind to it. Yes. And I just want to make sure that I'm right on this. Have you read Who is the Bad Art Friend? to it has been. It's, it was the week that we were recording this. Today's October 8th, Shocktober 8th, Shocktober-hayth. And it was trending on Twitter for what felt like two days. I just saw a bunch of art friend takes and art friend in trending topics. And I didn't

know anything about it. I'm just seeing like snippets of reactions of people who are blown away by this piece. And the other trending thing I saw was something about a kidney. And I later learned that the two things were related. Yes. And it was, as anyone who listens to this podcast now, I have an unhealthy relationship with Twitter. And this is one of those things that is helpful to me because I just saw this and I was like, I don't think I can get caught up in another Twitter discourse today.

And closed my computer and went for a run and went to the gym and took my dog out and cooked. Time had passed and I came back and it was still being talked about on Twitter. And I was like, maybe it's just not for me anymore. Maybe this thing is not for me. Maybe this current version of Twitter where every day is a new thing that we can all collectively get mad about. And like the websites know it. New York Times knows it.

New York Times. You know that website, New York Times. But like these publications know it. New York Times. You know that website, New York Times? But like these publications know it. A lot of them, their goal is what is a piece that is going to trend on Twitter and drive a lot of rage clicks and discourse. That's what we want. So now that all these publications are acutely aware of this, we're just going to see more and more that play directly into this absurd cycle that we encourage. And it's just not a fun or useful or playful version of Twitter. And I think it will ultimately push me off the service. But all that is to say, no,

I don't know anything about this please tell me so I can participate and this thing I never wanted to know about yeah well the the reason that this is is I think it's held the public's attention for so long is that there's so many takes to be had from it like it's just it's not like there are two factions and there are two sides it's there are so many pieces of this that you can latch on to and be like no this is the most important part and other people are like no no no no no this is what's valuable to be taken from this thing and uh there are nobody's a good guy in it um oh excellent yeah which means that there's you know there have been other pieces like this like that uh cat person one we talked about where there's everybody, you can pick somebody who

you're like, well, they're my guy. Or like, that's my team right there. And you already know that there are faults with your team, but you just sort of have to accept them. And so you could just do the us against them kind of thing. Or you just go through this whole thing and you're like, wait a second. There's a whole lot we didn't ever discuss about how about just like writer groups and uh side threads where certain people aren't invited and how that common that is among workspaces and like just talk about

that for millions of days but okay so here's the general story go so what do you think uh so the general story is that there was a woman in a writer's group uh uh all of them are like burgeoning writers they're writing short stories that are occasionally getting published and stuff and they're they're at that level none of these people are tom clancy or stephen king it's not it's it's sally rooney and margaret atwood i don't know them but yes oh sally rooney's uh uh like the author right now it's fine go on okay uh okay and so i would i would put like patricia lockwood in this category and so they are they're like burgeoning and like some of them are finding more success than others this one woman is not finding a ton of success and she decides to do this conspicuously altruistic thing which is

uh give up one of her kidneys she doesn't know who the kidney is going to she just to find i don't know where like she's lacking in some quadrant of her life and she wants purpose and so her purpose is going to be i will give up uh a kidney and and because strangers need these things just as badly and i'm bringing bring something to this person. Okay, she must be a real villain because that is a very cynical interpretation of someone donating a kidney anonymously Let me immediately jump to she must have some fucking hole in her life this Worthless failed writers got nothing going on on so she's just trying to be

useful to someone i have betrayed which side i'm on so early but let me just uh let me just quickly read you so what happened was she did it and then went to created a another private writers group that was like an offshoot of this other group writers community that she was in and just just created this group to tell them about how she donated this kidney and here's how she did it she said personally my childhood was marked marked by trauma and abuse i didn't have the opportunity to form secure attachments with my family of origin a positive outcome of my early life is empathy that it opened a well of possibilities between me and strangers. While perhaps many more people would be motivated to donate an organ to a friend or family member in need, to me, the suffering of strangers is just as real.

Ellipses. Throughout my preparation to become a donor, ellipses, I focused a majority of my mental energy on imagining and celebrating you. And she's writing this letter to the person that she's giving the organ to. and celebrating you. And she's writing this letter to the person that she's giving the organ to. And so she, when I say conspicuously righteous,

she did this and then created a group of people that was like, hey, you're not going to believe this, but I donated a kidney. Right. And she's not saying,

hey friends, I donated a kidney. She is presenting this piece of writing as her announcement or as a piece of writing that she wants evaluated by her friends. She't want this evaluated she's just making this an announcement but like separating out a group to like and then like she she starts celebrating

on facebook as her kidneyversary uh each year and stuff and but she's not getting the this is becoming a part of her personality like she's decided this is who i am now and she's met with kind of like radio silence from this group a few people reached out to her and were like ah good that's really that's really cool of you but she wasn't getting the uh admiration that she had anticipated from this group and she didn't quite understand why this is somebody who's not super self-aware it becomes clear throughout the article but she was like i did this very nice thing and nobody has none of these other writers care that i donated my kidney and she's upset about that until she finds out that this one writer who's got a little bit more successful

than she is uh has now written a story and it's basically a story about um a self-righteous white woman who donates a kidney to somebody else and is doing it for the wrong reason she's doing it to like build a relationship with the whoever uh whoever she gives it to right and and for basically the same reasons as this woman and in the story she she writes a letter that's very similar and so and this woman dorland who is the one who donated her kidney sorry what's one more time dorland dorland yeah i would have led with that yeah so our our our two main characters are sonja larson and uh dorland i can't remember what dorland's first name is a don don dorland don dorland never mind and uh did you think dorlin was her first name yeah like

dorlin smith or whatever i was like if you would just say so there's this woman dorlin i'd be like stop right there villain there's don and sonia so another thing you need to know about sonia is that sonia is asian american and she the story has some uh racial undertones as well because the woman who needs the kidney is uh of as Asian descent and she doesn't want this she doesn't want to give this white woman this weird satisfaction and self-righteousness over her by like carrying this organ around inside of her so

Dorland finds out this happened she goes to her friend Larson and she's like what the fuck that you even used like words that I had written and she's like no I honestly didn't do it on purpose this has nothing to do with you this is not about you um you don't own kidneys like kidneys can't be your topic forever and uh and then uh some weird things start happening where like she find dorland starts finding out more and more details about how this actually is about her

until she finally she uncovers an early draft of this thing that she had read on some podcast that sonia had read on some podcast in which she says uh almost a word-for-word uh letter within the short story that dorland had written so she's like this is mine like this is you stole my words so even though she's the clear antagonist of this short story and like she looks she doesn't look good at all this does not make her look good she's like those are still my words plagiarist and so the story starts to catch fire and starts to do very very well and they've created community and then like it's getting published everywhere and so everywhere that's getting published dorland is calling and being

like she stole this it's plagiarized it's plagiarized. It's plagiarized. And some places are backing off and saying, we can't publish this anymore because somebody has claimed plagiarism. So she's sort of ruining this other woman, Sonia's life. It becomes a lawsuit eventually, gets out of hand. And then this is the most important part to me. There's discovery in a lawsuit. And part of the discovery is that all the side texts and messages of the people in these writers groups comes to light and dorling gets to see them all and she is just getting eviscerated by these writers like absolutely destroyed in these side texts and these side whatsapps or whatever they are and she gets to see all of them and yeah obviously that's very very

hard for her um where it leaves it is that they're still not on speaking terms this is still like a pending thing where they're still she's still claiming some ownership of it and and you know it has these racial tones to it as well which is uh with very broad strokes here is a white woman saying to an asian american i wrote part of what you're what you're i'm like i'm all i want ownership of some of what you wrote i i demand it and the other one was balking at that and saying like no like life is up for grabs um everything that i encounter in my life like the my friends if they tell me a story like I may use aspects of that

for the kernel of a story and then by the end it will be completely different it will be other people and that's exactly what I did I used your letter and then I changed it into something completely different and it became a different story the woman in the story is not you anymore anymore and so

there's like that's where the bad art friend things comes from it's like who's who's actually being a bad friend here is it is it dorland for saying no you can't use things that i've told you uh because those are mine uh or is it the other woman for being like i'm just gonna borrow from every aspect of my life and so like you know obviously that creates a lot of controversy online with people deciding whether what qualifies as ip but then the part that like really gets to me is every single group of people that you know they all have a side group where they talk shit about you where guaranteed you've been talked shit about in a separate group where you posted something and everybody else was like, fucking get over here, get over here. You're not going to believe

this. And I was like, that's, it's, and that's where I think a lot of people are clowning on this as well. Cause this woman Dorland is so not self-aware that this must've been a huge, huge blow to her. And I was like, that feels like something you need to, everybody should prepare for in their own lives. At some point you're gonna find out people said some about you i think it was incredibly humbling when i first like my my my first few months at at this current job and we're we're all in the writer's room together and i would say something and then time would go by and i'd hear typing and two people would start laughing oh okay i see

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I shouldn't have. I should have just been listening and shut the fuck up. And I didn't. And because of that, like I was just, everybody was such good friends. And I was like, I will fall into this immediately. I will be your best friends too. I'll be the best friend too. And I was just trying too hard. And I would like tell stories because that's what everybody else was doing. And it just wasn't landing the same way. And I was like, I don't, I don't understand what's happening. And I mean, that's what everybody else was doing and it just wasn't landing the same way and i was like i don't i don't understand what's happening and i mean that's a good story like that's a good joke and they're just like they're not they're ready to be mad at me or like ready for it not to work because i was already overstepping my bounds yeah and it got to the point where uh i was in a room

once and started to say something. And as I started to talk, I saw two writers look at each other, like give each other like a look, like, here we go. Devastating. And I was like, I couldn't even finish it. I was like, you know, let's just move on. And really, because there's so much said there. There is a conversation, at least one that's already taken place between them about me and me fucking up somehow that i'm completely blind to and that and then this look meant we you know that thing we talked about and i was like oh like oh my god yeah are you so self-aware how is this happening

it's humiliating in the moment but it's also like it's uh i i do think it's it's a part of life and maybe that's like a cynical view for me to admit that like yeah shit talking is a natural part of life there's no way around it people are going to talk shit behind each other's backs but it it's it is certainly something that i was like oh these these people they're they're there are definitely side conversations about me and and they are not man look how well the newcomer is doing they're negative uh but you know this will this will pass too everywhere i've i've ever been i've eventually found my groove and like i can't upload the experiences of my past jobs or my past friend groups onto this room right now. I just have to wait it out and trust that eventually they will warm up to me.

And then together, we could talk shit about some other mark. Yeah, that's the dream. As soon as they start talking shit about somebody else in front of you, it's so, it's such a relief. And I think that that's like where this stuff stems from is that if you're concerned people are talking shit about you and then they're comfortable enough to talk shit about somebody else in front of you, you're like, I'm in it. I'm in the team. It's fine. I love working with a coworker and talking shit about another coworker and then thinking like, man, it's really cool that this is the first time you've ever done this, right? Never before. You're never done doing this about me yeah uh so i i i can sympathize somewhat with dorland even though i i hate her i hate her in the story yes like yeah

uh i don't think she's a good person i i i uh but she was also made to feel crazy like she's a sympathetic character and like a relatable character but relatable in a way that like that is not an element of myself that i like yeah and and if i thought uh if i truly thought someone stole something someone close to me stole something of mine and was gaining a lot of traction in a Piece or a pilot or a screenplay or whatever if I really believed it in my gut that this was stolen from me a chunk Of it was stolen from me if someone sat me down and it was like, okay If you pursue this it's gonna go to court and we're gonna have to get a subpoena for group texts from all your friends Now she can keep it. It's fine.

I'm not strong. I'm not strong enough for that. Imagine that it was something that you wrote and you felt like, yeah, this is good. And then the thing that was stolen was stolen just to dunk on in somebody else's story. Like you'd be like, forget it. That is like, I will be a different, I will move. I will move away. So I never have to deal with the embarrassment of that.

I will move. I will move away so I never have to deal with the embarrassment of that. I would be so quiet if our friend Michael Swaim sold a screenplay about these two assholes who started a podcast together

and just circle jerked for an hour or 30 if they were tired every week. And it was so transparently us. You would not hear a peep transparently us. I would, you would not hear a peep out of me. I would like congratulations, man. What a brain you have to create such pure fiction.

What a spectacular imagination you must have. Yes. But this woman, Doral and I sympathize with only in the, I, when I fucked up at work a bunch in the beginning yes and i thought well i don't know the rules yet i was mad you know you want to put it onto somebody else you don't want it to be your fault so i was like well i don't know the rules and nobody told me the rules there's

just sort of like these tacit agreements in the room of like here's who's allowed to talk who's allowed to get last like and i thought i thought this was all happening and i was getting very paranoid about it and everything and i thought ah the next person who starts shouldn't have to deal with this i will tell them like here this is you're not expected to speak you're not expected to speak in the first two weeks you don't have to you're not expected to put jokes in like you're not expected you don't have to do these things here and like trying to like i wanted to prep whoever was next and i was like so they don't have to go through this the after that we hired another woman uh i tried to like tell her like show her the ropes

because i knew no one else would like tell her what was expected of her and she fucking took to it like like like she just hit the ground running in a way that she did not need me at all yes and that was a special humiliation where i was like oh everybody else is good at this right because at that point you're thinking like everyone goes through it oh no okay oh not everyone goes okay that's fine uh i'll okay good good no good for her yeah and she's a darling of the of the of the uh whole team now like she's so good and her pitches are really good and she in just this way that's just humiliating i also uh i completely understand sonia's side of things and this is this is very top of mind right now because uh i just had uh some friends and i got together to go over each other's pilots i just written a pilot and

we were just like talking them out and uh it's the the the roughest possible version of a pilot and there's stuff in there now that that i know needs to change because it's it's real life stuff it's something that someone has said in my life or it's like yeah very specific names of shops and restaurants and places that i don't know if i would need to change for legal purposes but i would still want to change for just like basic autobiographical purposes so i understand this woman who's just like here's a placeholder that i'm going to morph and expand on and like receive notes about and change based on that until it mutates into its own thing i that scans for me as a reasonable writing process of course you start with uh that's what gives you the flavor

of it like that's what tells you what the it helped paint it for you in your own mind as you're building around this thing that really does exist. Because that's so clear and crystal in your mind that you're like, ah, okay, I can, this is a foundation that which I can build off of. And then later I'll just remove the foundation and put something else there. And so, yeah, absolutely. What she's doing is the writer process. And, you know, just working at Cracked, we were writing constantly.

process. And you know, just working at Cracked, we were writing constantly. You would see stuff that you, jokes that you'd made in my work or somebody else's work. I see things that we've said on our own in Jason's books, like things like that, where I'm like, that's good. Like that's what you should do. Like you should be building based on the things that you have available to you. And we're all close enough that we're like, yeah, no big deal. I think that it would be a very different situation if there was somebody very who had just written one article, maybe came to visit the offices. They did a joke or something just like on the fly. And then they saw it show up later in your work because we're not friends. You're you're just some there's a clear power dynamic and that's what i think this i think

that's what this woman's complaint is is that like we're not that close of friends actually and you took this thing of mine but also it's like you took it on to fucking shit all over it and that's a especially humiliation and i understand why she'd want revenge but boy oh boy this is the wrong way to go about it one last detail i need to provide for you oh man this new york times story she reached out to the new york times to give them this story dorland yes oh dorland yeah so dorland dorland dorland yeah that's like a detail that came along maybe half a day after the article was released so this so self-awareness for some people you just never learn it you can't get it yeah even even after you've gone to court we're all in we've all got degrees of self-reflection and

and uh understanding of self and it's so scary to think because you i immediately put myself on one end i'm like no i'm the smartest i know the most i know myself i know myself and you just don't you just don't and there's you've got these blind spots and other people are picking up on them and they're fucking talking about them i love i think I love, I think at some, there are some points where I feel like my insecurities really hurt me and stop me from making great connections. But I think, I think overall it's a net positive because I will never reach a point where I believe so much in my own rightness that I will expose myself like this door lid person did. I will never reach a point where I'm in a fight with a friend of mine, so I'm going to call the New York Times. Absolutely not. I'm at so many turns convinced that I've done something wrong and that the people around me hate me.

And I think that's been really great for me so far. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I used to probably be more like that. I used to think I was right all the time when I was younger. And it wasn't just a product of youth. It was a product of perspective.

Before I had to really take into consideration that maybe other perspectives were valid. That whatever I was saying, like I'll give a fat shaming as, as an example where like fat shaming six years ago was something that was completely acceptable in movies. I'm watching Sopranos right now. And Oh, me too.

Holy shit. There's a lot of fat shaming in that. And, uh, it's played for laughs. It's not played as like, uh, these guys are mean it's played as like,

Oh, he got him good yeah and uh early on when you know articles first started being released or like when lindy west was first talking about no stop making fun we know we're fucking fat it's something we deal with every single day people shout out their car windows

at us and stuff or like they start go for a run and people will clap at them this pedantic way uh and uh at the time i was like, no, no, it's not a, it's not a thing. And then as I started to like really consider it, I was like, Oh, you know what? It's a thing. And I had to actually consider it. And I had to think about it. And there have been a lot of those things in my life, especially recently,

where I'm like, I think maybe I don't think I'm right ever. The minute somebody disagrees with me, I have to just shut the fuck up and go home and think about that for a very long time, which is what I think we all should be doing right now, by the way. Man, this is such a

dense, rich text. It feels like a crime that the whole thing can't be about this strange this strange woman's relationship with her kidney Yeah, like that's That's your miniseries. I didn't even need all this other drama. I was I was taking a bath in kidney versary She's really it's become her identity in a way that like when you have a challenge, you're like, oh, I'm a dad.

That's what I do. It's on all my shirts. It's on all my mugs. You see? Yeah. And in a way that I was like, oh, this is not good and then seeing the decisions that she made along the way to try and like rally people behind not her the cause but behind her was like oh no no no no dawn we need we gotta have a talk poor dawn yeah never she'll never know and that's her curse to live with uh dawn if you're listening, it gets better.

It absolutely will not, Don. Okay. Well, that's all. I'm glad that I got to share that with you, Dan. That was really nice for me. That was therapeutic. I was, that was very different than what I thought it was going to be. I had used enough Twitter context clues that I had constructed an alternate narrative,

and I really thought I had it right. I thought this was going to be a story about a woman who was mad at her writer friends because she had caught them not reading her writing. Oh. I don't know how I constructed that narrative, but just from the bits and pieces that I'd seen, and it was like, kidney something something, group chat something something, writer,

who was a bad art friend. I thought, okay, you're a bad friend if, you are a bad friend to this woman if you don't read everything she's ever written yeah okay yeah that's a very clear black and white of like who's who's wrong who's right and people can take sides on that this is so this is nebulous and gray and it really could have just been a story you're absolutely right it could have just been a story about a woman who's like and now i'm gonna get my kidney away and why isn't everybody talking about it every second of the day yeah she could have gone viral on her own just from from whatever that post was and then we're like okay yeah this will kill half an hour

or half a day on twitter yeah but man well anyway i don't talk shit about you. You should know that. Yeah, I don't talk shit about you either. Yeah, I only have nice things to say. And by the way, I don't even know who I would talk to about it. I guess maybe in the crack days. But I would always stand up for you and come to your defense. I think I'm trying to think if there's ever a time. Oh, we talk about that you were the dad on vacations. That was the only time where I'd be like, oh, yeah.

But that's a that's I wouldn't even qualify that as talking shit. That's like somebody needs to take that job on. And that's why Dan's so stressed right now. Yeah. And I wear that on purpose. Yeah. Or not on, like, I'm fine with it. I understand.

But yeah, there's certainly, I see it at my job all the time man and i'm ashamed to say that i've taken part in it and we all do and it's really i i don't know what where to go from there i don't know i think i just try to be better about it just try to bow out of that stuff i'm certainly trying to do it less i was i was talking to a friend of ours last time i was in la that i hadn't seen in a while and talking specifically about an incident of shit talking behind someone's back uh i can't remember if it was at work or a friend group and she was like why did you do that and i was like oh because it's what people

do and she's like yeah why do they have to oh and she's she's like this like like a genuine sweet person who is who is navigating the world this way as just like a positive force and she was like just don't do it just don't what do you get out of it and i'm like well i what i get out of it is i feel good in a very shitty way yes yeah uh and it it gosh if I really was thinking about it what do I get out of it power yeah sense of belonging I yeah if there's nothing more soul-shattering than when you try to engage somebody with some shit like that and like yeah you're testing the waters and they're like no no I think they're great yeah

when you find out something that when you discover something that we all do is just something that you do yeah it's a bummer yeah but i'll tell you i'll i'll tell you who she is offline she fucking sucks you'll hate her all right well thanks everybody uh i'm gonna end the show now All right. Well, thanks, everybody. I'm going to end the show now. You can follow us on Twitter. You can follow Daniel at DOB underscore Inc. You can follow me, Soren, at Soren underscore LTD. You can follow our CFO, Bacon, at MakeMeBaconPlease, spelled P-L-S.

Or quick question at QQ underscore Soren and Dan. You can email us at QQ with Soren and Daniel at gmail.com. You know what? I read more. I don't even check the email. But when people subscribe to our Patreon, I think there's always the option of asking a question there or a message, and those come directly to my email. So I actually do check the messages from Patreon.

That's Patreon slash quick question. And you can follow, find, and hire our producer and sound engineer, Gabe at GabeHarder.com. All right, bye.