Reply All - #1 - An App Sends A Stranger To Say I Love You (Updated)

Episode Date: February 8, 2015

What happens when a woman sends a stocky blond stranger to tell her ex she loves him. (Updated with a new interview!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just a quick program note before we get started. This week's episode is a rebroadcast of our first episode. We're proud of it. Not that many people have heard it. We thought we'd rerun it and take a week to work on something else you guys are going to like. Just know that we somehow accidentally added an extra segment to it in the rebroadcast. That is really good. We, like, found this whole other character that we couldn't find the first time we were reporting it.

And they're really interesting. And, yeah, you'll like it. All right. Enjoy the show. So can you tell me, where you were, like, can you just sort of tell me the story of what happened? That's a great leading question. From Gimlet Media, this is Reply All, a show about the internet.

I'm PJ Vote. And I'm Alex Goldman. And that guy you heard up top is our friend Sam. He works above a bookstore, and one day at work, he got an email from the owner of the bookstore saying, hey, there's someone down here looking for you. And so I walked in the bookstore, and there's this dude there. He's kind of, he's like blonde, short hair, kind of stocky. and he looks at me and he goes, Sam, and he said, yeah, and he goes, it's me, Ariel.

And then he walks up to me and he puts his hand on my shoulder. And he says, I fucking love you and I don't know how to tell you. Sam had never seen this stocky blonde guy before, but he was involved with a woman named Ariel. They dated on and off for a year, and when he'd received him, receive this message, Ariel just moved across the country to Washington, D.C. for work. Ariel had gotten this stranger to deliver her message through an app called Somebody. Maybe you heard about this. It was created by Miranda July, the writer, artist, filmmaker, genius, and here's how it works. Somebody's a messaging app, but instead of receiving a message on your phone,

you receive your message from a total stranger. So like, if I want to message Alex and tell him that we need to record today, I'll send him the message, but it won't go directly to him. Somebody who is physically close to him, a stranger, will get the message and be given directions on how to deliver it to Alex. You can also include stage directions, so I can ask the stranger to yell at Alex that we need to record today or to tell Alex that we need to record today while crying. The idea is to make technology more human, but it also makes it way more awkward by introducing a complete stranger into an intimate interaction. And as you can imagine, this particular interaction was very awkward, not just for the people involved, but for everyone in the bookstore. My co-workers jaw dropped.

The bookstore guy was like, there were like other people in the store. They were all like, and then that kind of just hangs in the air for a minute. And then he says, oh, so hey, like, can I ask you what that was about? I said, no. Like, I don't know you. And then he goes, all right, well, can we take a selfie? Because, like, the app asks you to take a selfie when a message gets delivered. And so I kind of gave this, like, big goofy grin.

And then I was like, dude, I got to go. I just laughed. And then I went back to work. Hi, is this Ariel? Yeah, this is Ariel. This is Alex. Yes, it is. I really appreciate you doing this.

I don't know if I would do it. Yeah, I'm up for it. Why would anyone use this app to send a message so important? We were also curious about why Ariel, Sam's X, would do that. Ariel says that she first heard about the somebody at from Sam back when they were dating. She decided to send the I fucking love you message later at a particularly low moment, right before she was getting ready to move across the country. I was starting to send me goodbye to the city and pack out my life. And I think it finally came down to a particularly

difficult moment. I was just having some, you know, a little bit of that sad to go, mild depression that sets in when you leave your home. I remember just being in my room and going, you know, I'm just going to send it. Ariel actually sent Sam a bunch of messages through the app, both before they'd broken up, after they'd broken up, before she'd moved, after she'd moved, and the others were really innocuous. For Ariel, it didn't feel crazy to send a bunch of messages to Sam, because, and this is the one thing everybody knows about this app,

if they know anything about it, it barely works. Most of the messages users send just never get to their intended recipient. So it kind of felt like I was just sending something out into the ether, and it felt like a little bit of catharsis on my side, like I was working my way up to saying something, but with a very low probability that it would actually end up to him. Of all the messages Ariel sent, Sam only replied once, and nothing about the one reply that he did send

suggested that the message that had gotten through was that message, the I fucking love you message. He sent me an email that said, hey, I got your message, you're somebody message. message. That was super sweet. I'm glad that we can stay friends even as you, you know, move across the country. I was like, oh, great. He got, you know, at that time we had been talking and he'd been having a especially stressful couple of weeks. And so I'd also set him more recently than that message, a message like, you know, keep your chin up, you're a great,

you're a great kid, you know, you got this kind of thing. I was like, that'll be funny. And so I assumed that's what he receives. So the response I got from him seemed totally appropriate to the message I assume that he received. You can see why she'd make that assumption. That was super sweet is an odd response to I fucking love you. But in Sam's defense, the medium kind of obscured the message. It wasn't like she'd call him on the phone or sent him an email. I mean, how seriously are you supposed to take a message, no matter how heartfelt,

if it's delivered to you through internet performance art? like I can't tell if it was meant to be heavy for her or if she was just meant it as a joke or as a as just you know a thing that she'd fire off at 3 o'clock of the morning via text that instead of sending a text she sent a somebody message. I don't know. Like I don't know what that message meant to her.

I didn't, it had never, it had never crossed my mind that people would use it for actual, you know, real communication. Of course, Ariel was confused by her own motives. I don't know that I had really thought through it that much. In that moment that you sent it, what was your ultimate fantasy idea of what would happen when he got it? I think at best I thought maybe this, in this weird way, would plant a seed that would sit there, maybe for a month, maybe for years, maybe forever. You know, we could

be 80. And at some point, he would be like, hey, you know that one time, like, let's try this again. But, I mean, do you feel that? Do you love him? I do. And I probably still don't know. I don't know how to say that to him. And I probably still won't say that to him. And even if we talked about it, I feel like a conversation that he and I would have about this would still skirt the issue. And I think that's because neither of us really knows what to say with that. So why didn't you want to follow up with her afterward and find out exactly what happened? Or find out exactly what? Why she sent it? I mean, was it just too heavy?

Was it just too much? I was, I don't know. I was, I don't really know if I want to answer that. But, I mean, I was, you know, I was afraid, I was, you know, I was afraid of there being a mismatch of expectations in terms of, you know, where we were at. And as I'm talking to you now, I'm, like, really, you know, nervous about hurting her feeling somehow because I really don't want to do that. I don't know.

I guess I guess I just didn't know how to handle it. About 15 years ago, I was in a very similar situation to Ariel's, as I imagine everyone has been at some time or another. I just moved across the country for college, leaving behind a relationship I was still incredibly invested in. I spent most of the first few weeks in college crying, crying in my dorm room, crying in the line at the food co-op,

crying in the bathroom between classes. when you're in that situation, feeling something you're not sure the other person feels, you're in this weird limbo. Part of you wants to tell them to find out if they feel the same way, and part of you's terrified to tell them, because what if you find out that they don't?

When I came home on spring break, I did the low-tech, high-risk version of what Ariel did. I went to her office during work hours, and I essentially said what amounted to, I fucking love you, and I don't know how to tell you. Her response was, you're embarrassing me at work. For Ariel, the somebody app allowed her to show up at Sam's work and make a big romantic declaration without showing up at Sam's work to make a big romantic declaration.

Me sending a message through a stranger, through a glitchy app, to tell him something so big is kind of inherently that I don't want to look straight at it either. You know, and it gives him the ad of not having to look straight at it on his own. Like we can both, I can kind of, it gave me a little space to put something out there. you know, and knowing that he got it, they put something out there and know that it's been acknowledged, but doesn't have to be fully acknowledged. It doesn't have to exist beyond the fact that it's just out. Well, not until the radio producer comes in and makes you go on his podcast to talk about it. But you can't make either of us really acknowledge to each other what we think of it.

So you guys will just have this conversation through me? You've become a proxy of our somewhat failed relationship. When somebody first premiered, Miranda July released a short film to accompany the app. It opens on a woman sitting at the foot of her bed weeping. She reaches for her phone to make a phone call, but then she stops herself and begins typing. The way Miranda July imagined it, the woman's boyfriend's in a public part. He's a tall, good-looking, bookish guy, not unlike Sam. and he gets approached by a large man in a track suit.

The Sam character's picnicking alone. His name's Caleb. Caleb? Yeah? It's me, Jessica. I so totally love you. I just... I can't...

I just can't be your girlfriend anymore. I can't. It's not anything you did. You're perfect. You're perfect. I just need some space. I just need some space You're gonna be all right, man, you got this

Since the app came out in August The coverage of somebody's been pretty uniform Initial excitement And then a wave of stories about how the app's a glitchy mess That barely works But watching this trailer, you realize that Ariel and Sam Are actually kind of exactly the use case That Miranda July had imagined

How often does that happen That a prototype ends up being used Exactly the way its creator intended Because of all the bugs Miranda July's taking the somebody app offline for the time being, with a promise of somebody 2.0 coming out in the near future. But maybe that glitchy inconsistency is less a bug than a feature. An emotional Russian roulette that will embolden users to tell people how truly fucking love they are.

After the break, we talked to the guy who delivered Ariel's message to Sam. Welcome back to reply all. When we first did this story last November, the one person we didn't talk to was the stocky blonde guy, the one who delivered the message to Sam. We couldn't find him. But not long after this episode aired, he found us on Twitter. His name's Andrew Calloway, and he's a filmmaker.

One of Andrew's friends had heard the first episode of Reply All and wrote him an email saying, I think this is about you, dude. I was in the middle of a shoot when I saw the email, so I was like, shit, I'm going to listen to this right now. And, like, all I caught was, like, the I'm supposedly blonde and stocky. So I was just, like, walking around, like, hey, would you describe me as stocky?

Is that? I mean, you know, just. Just like, just be honest. Be honest. When Andrew first saw the somebody message from Ariel, he was in his car driving from San Francisco to L.A., and he actually got off the freeway to deliver it. When you saw the message that was supposed to be sent to Sam,

like, what did you think? This is a good one. If it's sincere. And, okay, and normally, like, if you ever actually want to deliver somebody message, the person who's supposed to receive the message has to say that they're available. And only after that does it send you the GPS coordinates. And so, like, I drove to the intersection and then just kind of looked around at people on the street and, like, went in to, like, various bars.

It takes a certain amount of fearlessness to do this, to, like, go and hunt someone down in the world. Yeah, it was crazy. I felt, I felt like in Terminator 2, where he's looking for the kid, and he's like, have you seen this boy? You know? because I was just walking into places like, like, hey, do you know this person? And they'd be like, no. And I'd be like, bye.

And then just walk out. And then, well, yeah, finally I found the bookstore. And I was like, hey, does Sam work here? And then he came down with one of his coworkers. So I would say, I said, Sam? And he says, yeah. And then it's me, Ariel. You know?

I mean, I, I mean, I. I feel like I would say, oh, that's a cool app. That's a really clever idea. And then I would never use it. Yeah. It was an obsession. So how many messages would you say you delivered? I delivered exactly 69 messages.

Wow. I mean, what was the particular appeal for you that made you want to become the messenger? Well, okay. I had just broken up with a girl. And that was kind of difficult. And then the very next day, like the day, the day that I started delivering messages, like I found out that my dad had cancer.

And well, and it was a thing like everybody in the family knew he was dying. But he really didn't want to admit it. So right up until the end, every conversation I had with him, there was this layer of like, we can't talk about the real thing. So, and that, I mean, that was hard. That was hard for me. I mean, both with my dad and with my ex, there were communication problems there that I, like, couldn't overcome. And this is, like, a weird kind of way of, like, trying to, like, help somebody else communicate something that was hard for them to communicate instead of, like, dealing with my own shit.

So, so in lieu of being able to talk to, like, to, like, scream the truth in your dad. dad's face. You got to deliver like tiny little nuggets of truth to other people around the city. Yeah. Well, when you phrase it like that. But, but, but, I mean, it was just weird that it like came at that like exact moment where it was like, fuck, I need something to like do. And I don't know. I just, I latched onto it, you know, and it's like, it's like somebody has to fucking deliver these messages. me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. This episode was produced by

Lena Maseetis, Chris Neri, Caitlin, and Trutie Pinnam and Amy. We were edited by Alex Bloomberg. Our theme song is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Our ad music is by Build Building. Also, we screwed something up last week, and I wanted to apologize. We found our story on Kim Kardashian's

butt and the web architecture that made it possible through the really wonderful piece by Paul Ford. And in the first broadcast of the show, we didn't credit him. I'm sorry, we're sorry. It's a lousy thing to do, and we won't do it again. You can subscribe to us by going to iTunes.com slash reply, or if you do not like iTunes, which is totally okay, go to replyall.com for a feed for the podcatcher of your choice. Thanks a lot, everybody. We'll see you next Wednesday.