Reply All - #146 Summer Hotline

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

This week, PJ and Alex open up the phone lines and try to solve your problems, big and small. Read Joshua Rothman's story on printers here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Vote. Hey, Alex. Hey, PJ. You remember the other day we told people that if they called in, we would help them with their tech and non-tech problems, big and small? I do remember that. The time is now.

All right. Okay. You're ready to open the phone lines? Yes, I'm ready. You said the words, but you didn't sound like you meant them. I hesitating because I just feel like you, you, there's a switch that flips. with you. A switch that flips?

When we turn on the phone lines, we are like, I'm gonna analyze Alex's every word, his sentence structure, everything he does. You feel like, and... Just by hanging out with me,

you're being exposed to criticism? And I'm going to pull out, I'm going to tease out the things that make him most insecure and I'm going to stay them into a microphone to be recorded in perpetuity forever and ever. I'm so sorry you feel that way.

I want you to feel comfortable in this studio. I won't comment on anything you do for the next calls. Which, how many next calls? For the whole time. If you don't want me to, I won't do that. You're my friend. Good.

Of course. Alex, are you ready? Oh, no, this feels so weird. What are you off to? It's like... What's going on, man? So, when I was in college at a girlfriend who was very nice to me. That sounds nice.

And sometimes she would do this thing where she would like, she would like gently caress my face and then slap me as a joke. Would you like me to do that? No, but I feel like that's what's about to happen. You feel gently caressed, but you're afraid of a slap? Yes. I'm sorry, that's how you feel. God, I'm like a wounded animal. It's the worst.

All right, let's take a call. Yeah. Okay. Hello. Hey, how's it going? Good. Who's this? This is Wyatt.

How's it going? Good. So what's your question? Okay, yeah. So basically my apartment is like, it's outing me. It's out. Your apartment is outing you? Yeah, my apartment is outing me.

So if you go on Google right now and you, like, type in my address into Google Maps, this, like, little alert advisory pops up and is like, hey, are you interested in LGBT travel? What? And, I know, is that weird? Can you give us your address? We'll bleep it out. Okay. Uh-huh. Street.

Uh-huh. apartment Oh literally your apartment number Yeah Well it definitely pops up if you add my apartment number in Okay Okay At this location

I'm out LGBT travel Travel travel agency What? Yeah so this past summer I was talking with someone on Scruff And we were talking for a few days And then I like it was like late one night And I was like hey do you just like come over to my apartment and hang out

and I sent him my address. And a few minutes go by and I like see the typing icon like pop up and then go away. And he sends me back this screencap of Google Maps to my house. And there's this like little alert that popped up that said, Are you interested in LGBT travel? Try this. And then like pointed to my apartment. And he was just like, he said back one word.

It was just wow and then blocked me immediately. Really? Why? I don't. Well, so I think the implication was that, like, Google had detected, like, this huge inflow of, like, gay tourists into my apartment and, like, had just, like, put this, like, giant scarlet letter on my apartment. Wait, but what is there, I'm confused. Is there an actual gay travel agency in your apartment or no? No, no, no.

There's no gay travel agency in my apartment. I mean, in your apartment building. No, no, no, it's like a regular apartment building. And it's not like somebody's like running a gay travel agency like out of their home and they're just using their home address? No, but I'm worried that Google thinks that I'm like such a slut that like is effectively a gay travel agency. Do you are? Are you sleeping with like more men than like your friends are by a lot? No. No, definitely not. It's a fair question. Isn't the thing where you don't sleep with that many people, but when you go home the Google Street Veevan always happens to pass. buy?

Do you think that there's an employee at Google who's just like, I keep seeing this guy going home with other guys. I'm going to stick around and see what's happening. Like, is that what you're imagining, PJ? I don't know what I'm imagining. I'm just trying to rule out all possibilities here. This doesn't seem like a likely one. So, and when you say that's outing you, like, are you closeted?

No, no, no, no. I'm actually not so worried about the gay part. I'm worried about, like, the slut part. I think it's, I mean, I really, like my assumption, if you were like, come on over, I'm having a potluck. And I looked up your address and I saw that, I'd be like, oh, there's a travel agency in this building. Like, I wouldn't think, like, clearly what's going on is this guy is just really, really sleeping around. Like, why is your assumption that that's where people are going to jump to? Okay.

So let me explain, like, this is a thing. Like, there's like this famous urban legend that's probably true about like this guy in D.C. who like slept with so many people that people started like checking into him. Like someone like made a location on the internet and then started like, yeah, right? So they would like like on four square or whatever? They would just be like, oh, just like everyone else. I'm checking it at John's house. Yeah, exactly.

So they'd like check into John. How was this story circulated? How did you hear it? Do you remember? I heard it from like at least two different like gays in New York. So your fear is that you have become. Like the guy you heard about it in an urban legend? Or at least to Google thinks that I am.

Yeah, because, like, I mean, I've had a boyfriend for a while. Like, I don't really sleep around a whole bunch. Not that I couldn't. I definitely could. But, like, I don't. What I wonder is if you have accidentally walked into an apartment vacated by someone who was targeted by someone who was trying to be catty to them on the internet. You know what I mean?

I'm wondering if you went into an apartment that was vacated by someone who ran a travel agency for day people. Also, if you click on the photos tab on Google Maps of your apartment, there's a logo. It's like a rainbow peace sign. Oh, that's so funny. You know, I thought that this alert was like something that Google popped up for trying to be helpful for like gay tourists. I didn't realize it was like an actual business. Oh, it's an actual business. Okay, so.

Oh. Oh, interesting. So actually, I found, okay, I can help you. There's two ways you can solve this, I think. One is that you can actually just go on Google Maps and report an error. If you Google literally flag wrong address on Google Maps, you could tell Google Maps locations wrong. I think you'll probably get a response. The other thing you could do if that doesn't work is I looked it up and I'm out, LGBT experiences, the travel agency that supposedly you run, it is a real business and they have a real website.

It's I'moutexperiences.com. They're at least now based in West Hollywood. So you could contact them. There's a contact on their website, and you could be like, hey, I think you used to run a travel agency out of my apartment, but it's sending people a wrong place. You should get in touch with Google and be like, hey, fix this. Because it's not helping them for you to have a local reputation that's taking their business away.

I would try Google first. I would give it like a week, and if that doesn't work, I would get in touch with the actual travel agency. All right. Awesome. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thanks. That is a hilarious problem. Thank you for sharing it.

You're welcome. All right. Bye. Bye. I thought you did great. Stop. I thought you did a really job. I take it back. It's not good. It sucks. You're the only person who can be meaner to me by being nice to me. So stop. Let's just answer the phone. Hello. Hello? Oh my God. Hello? Who's this? Oh, hi. This is. My name's G. Grace.

Hi, Grace. What? Can we help you at? Okay, this is my question. So I have a really bad habit of, you know, I'm in kind of like a crazy time of my life right now. I'm going out a lot and drinking a lot. And I have this bad habit of when I am very drunk. I open Tinder.

Oh, no. And I send people these very strange messages. Like, for example, I think, when I sent this weekend said, you are a beautiful sunflower, things like let's ride our bikes into the sunset type stuff. Wait, what would you say is that type stuff?

Like, what category are you in right here? Well, yeah, I don't know. It's just like strange compliments and like overly emotional sentiments, I suppose. Yeah,

it sounds kind of like mushy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's super mushy and just very like, I don't know you at all, and I shouldn't be calling you a beautiful sunflower probably. Okay. So, how can we help? So my question. So besides, like, the obvious, like, don't drink so much, you're just, like, delete Tinder,

those are, like, obvious things. But I was wondering if you thought that it would be possible to, like, create something, like, perhaps, like, a breathalyzer for phones. Oh. So, like, before it lets you open an app, like, you have to breathe into the breathlizer. And if, you know, you know, you feel like, it has to. exist already. I know that people have built that for Google, like that for Gmail, you can both do a thing, I believe, where it doesn't let you email at certain hours, but also where you have

to answer a series of difficult math problems to send emails. I don't know if that thing actually still exists. I think it's hard to do it on your phone itself, though, because it's like, you probably have an iPhone. I do. Like, I think Apple wouldn't let somebody build, like, a breathalizer app on top of their phone. What you could do, honestly, is you could get one of those like pocket breathalizers from CVS or whatever and you could just make a choice like I don't open Tinder over BAC whatever. That's actually not the worst idea. Not only that, but I have another option.

This may seem a little more difficult. Fall in love with someone. And then you can just say that to this. Oh, what a jerk, man. What a jerk. Yeah, just solve your love problems to give you so much anxiety. I would also submit like of all the things you can be doing when you're drunk, Sending a few to compliments to strangers on Tinder is not the worst.

Yeah, that doesn't seem like it's that bad. It's not, but it just is not, it's still just as a weird feeling when I wake up in the morning and I look and I see. I think I'm probably not the only person drunk swiping on Tinder late at night. No, yeah, no, I certainly am not. I honestly, I feel like the main point of dating apps is to make you feel as anxious about, like, the infinite amount of people in the world. And if this is helping you, I would do it. PJ? Yeah.

You're a beautiful sunflower. You mean a lot to me. And you mean a lot to me would be a very weird thing for you to start messaging people. And if there weren't a desk between us right now, I'd give you a huge hug.

Oh, I'm glad that I could inspire this. Have a good day. Thanks so much for calling. Thank you so much. Have a good one. You too. Bye. Hello.

Hi, PJ. That was actually Alex, but I'm also here. And I don't blame you for requesting a different host. What's going on? No, I totally understand. I'm in a Ruby Tuesdays.

What are you ordering? Onion rings? I got chicken tenders with fries, barbecue sauce, and honey mustard. That is a good order. I'm so nervous you'd pick up. And then the waitress would come, and I'd be like, I'm on the front with this podcast. You better ask a question fast. Things are going downhill.

Okay. I just wanted to know if you knew about this fight over subdomains that Ralph Nader waged in 2000. I didn't. What was the fight? Okay, he did a campaign to try to get a series of subsdomeins that. subdomains that were like consumer advocates of domains, like dot consumer, dot taxpayer, dot shareholder, and most famously dot sucks. Dot sucks?

Yeah, dot sucks. So like Walmart. Dot sucks, like McDonald's dot sucks? Yes. And he proposed that they should, Ican should create a dot sucks foundation, which would be a independent organization to make sure that dot sucks was only used by people who actually wanted to talk about the corporation sucking. Huh. Wait, and just for people that don't know, I can, they're the, basically like the regulatory body that decides which top level domains are going to exist. So wait, so if you would have like an internet right to that every single website would have like a mirror image version of it where people just complained about the company that ran it? That is a great idea. I agree. And who, do you know who shot him down? So I can decided not to go with it, but here's the crazy thing. When they did the re-release of all the major subdomain.

like when dot XYZ and dot NYC and all the new ones came out a few years ago, dot sucks made it through. And now all the companies are just buying up their own dot sucks. Ah, so like McDonald's. DotSucks is just owned by McDonald's. Yes. Yeah, McDonald's. That sucks forwards to the contact us page on McDonald's. A lost revolution.

Wait, hold on one second, okay? Yeah. Yes. Alex Goldman. sucks is available. Why do that to me? PJvote. Oh, I got both of them.

PJ, don't fucking buy my name. Maybe he's protecting you from other people buying it. He's not protecting me. Have you ever listened to this show? You're being so naive right now. He's not protecting me. I don't know why you're yelling at him. It seems like something that'll be chronicle on Alex Goldman.

That sucks. Dude, it's maybe not worth it. They're $329 each. Yeah, fucking don't do it. But they're in my basket if I want. them. Thank you so much. This was really helpful. Thank you. So glad I could help. Enjoy your chicken tenders. Bye.

Bye. I'm so mad. Oh, God. And I was trying to get to it, too, and I just, I'm fat-fingered by computer. I was too slow. It happens. I wouldn't beat yourself up. That's the job of Alex Coleman.combe. Hi, this is PJ and Alex. A little bit. Not great. Who's this? Oh, my God. Jesus Christ. I was fully not expecting me to pick up, So, sorry, I was a bit thoughtful when you picked up.

I am calling from COA in India, and it is raining. Hence why the bad connection. Wait, where are you calling? You're calling from India, but what, like, location are you calling from? Goa? Goa, yeah. I'm from Melbourne myself. But I'm on a road trip with a few friends to Goa.

It's a small beach town in India. What are you doing in Goa? I was born here, so I came to see family. Then I met some old friend. And I just came down to Goa to, you know, just have a fun trip. And what's your name again? It's MAV, MAV. But that's my white name.

My actual name is Marnov. Cool. What's your question? Okay, my question is. So I don't have a license myself, even in Melbourne, where I live. So we wanted to rent a car here. And to do that, we just Googled like a fake, like, New South Wales license and just photoshopped my image on top of it.

You what? We got pulled over by the cops today, and they asked for a license, and I gave it to them, and they just looked at the picture, and they just let me go. And I was like, is it not like a central, like, connected, like, authority that makes sure that, like, you don't get away with this stuff? This is, I've never heard someone making worse decisions than me. First of all, you are so lucky. Did you print it on, like, driver's license paper? Did you eliminate it or anything? Oh, it was just on my phone.

It was a picture. And a reminder, it's not even an actual Photoshop. You know how in Snapchat you can just paste stickers on top of images? So it's literally not even a Photoshop. It's a sticker on a Google Images. So it is definitely so obviously fake. The thing I really appreciate about this, as someone who indulges in this sort of planning, although not to this extent, is like the ingenuity behind doing something so dumb.

Like, it's such a smart, stupid choice. But to answer your question, I don't think there's like an international driver's license database. I think people are like what? It's not like people are going to make fake driver's licenses off of Snapchat. That'd be crazy. I am, I'm like speechless.

Drive more carefully. No, get a license. Get a license. Get a driver's license. But he's already driven to Goa in a car. He has to drive back. Oh, no. I took a flight here.

It's a rental car that we go in Goa for Goa. Yeah, don't drive. He took a plane here. Just walk. Thanks, Dan. Oh, damn. Damn. Also, the fact that you have the level of curiosity where you're like, I really want to know how the international driver's license regulatory body works.

But also, I'm going to make a driver's license on Snapchat. I just, I appreciate the human being that you are. All right, take care, Mav. Thanks a month. Take my call. Thank you. Have a nice day. Bye-bye.

Bye. Hello. Hi, who's this? Wait, what? Oh, my God. Hello? Hello? Did you just take the phone from somebody else?

Yeah, it sounds like there are a lot of people there. Hello? No, no, this is just two people. Hi. Who's this? I was using my little brother to call you both on my phone and on his. That's very nice of you to do that. Yeah, we're just staying at home because it's summer. What question do you have? Well, okay, so we don't have internet right now, and we were bored. Wait, how come your internet's out?

I don't know. It's just like the service or something. I don't know. I can't really contact anyone because I don't know like our internet login stuff. Where are your parents just at work? Yeah. Got it. My question is related to the internet thing actually.

What should we do while we wait for the internet? Oh, while you wait? Yeah, because we're teenagers and we don't really know how to do anything without the internet. I feel like a grand person wrote this script for. you. I feel like you're like you're like propaganda, like you're anti-teen propaganda. Since you are totally doing the, since you're totally doing like the teenage, the script of a teenager without internet, can I just, can I just carry that to its logical conclusion? What is it's logical conclusion is like go outside. Oh yeah, that's true. Go outside. Go out. Like, go ride your bike. Go to the park. Go skateboard. Isn't that what kids do? The thing is we live like right next to a highway. So there's not to be any.

can do. Check. Outside. Okay. What about games? I have like three games on my phone and like three games on my laptop. What about games that aren't on computers or anything like that? I've never felt this way before. Like what about monopoly?

Oh, Monopoly. So goddamn boring. I don't have monopoly. Like, I don't know what board games we have. How much time do you have to kill? Yeah. When do your parents get home? Um, in like two hours. Okay, there might be things in your house that look like pieces of the internet that have been printed out and stapled together. There will be a picture on the front like a screenshot. It's almost like Twitter, but it's way longer.

Do you have any of those? Um, I don't think anything looks like Twitter, but I do have things that are called books. Is that what you're referring to? That's what I'm referring to. Could you read a book for two hours? I could read a book for two hours, but that's just... I'm so bored. I've got it.

Draw. Oh, draw. Get some printer paper. Do you know how to play Exquisite Corpse? Do you know that game? Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. What? What is that?

Okay, so the deal is exquisite corpses, you take a piece of paper and you fold it into fours, I guess, and you draw, like, the feet of something, and then you pass it to your brother, and he will draw, like, the midsection of something, and then pass it back to you, and you draw the head. and then you unfold it and you get this like weird, bizarre monster creature that you guys have made together. It's a fun game. That's really cool. I mean, now that I'm in the world of paper, you could just start making paper airplanes, see who could throw.

There's the farthest. I think you had it with Exquisite Corpse. I feel like Exquisite Corpse is going to buy you guys an hour. Yeah. All right. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Thank you. All right.

Enjoy the rest of your boring day. Thank you. Have fun. Bye. All right. You too. Bye. Bye.

God, do you remember that feeling? Yeah. Boring summer day. That agonizing feeling. Hello. Hey, is this PJ or Alex? That's Alex. This is PJ.

Don't say that's Alex about yourself. That being me is Alex. That being PJ is PJ. Seems clear, right? Well, hey there, Alex and PJ. Who's this? This is Chris. Chris, what do you need?

So my, I wasn't necessarily calling to ask a question. I more wanted to answer a question. So. No one ever does this for us. Every once in a while you guys have a, or at least a couple times maybe, I think, you guys have asked whether or not someone is a PJ or an Alex. Oh, yeah, this is a question Alex needs to know the answer to with everybody. No. If Alex isn't like a horrifying, like, an accident, the EMT show up, that's like his first question before he accepts treatment.

And whether or not he's a PJ or an Alex. Yeah, he needs to know. Come on. It's pretty important. He put it into his wedding vows. I'd only known you for like six months when I got it. married. Do you remember how I didn't invite you to my wedding? I do remember.

This is how I know you're an Alex. They're a really important six months. What is the, what were you? I'm a mess. Ask away Alex. I'm a mess. So why did you reference this? What do you want to tell us? He wants to tell you whether the one question you've been dying to hear the answer to, is he a PJ or is he an Alex? Yes. So I am an

Alex. Why? The reason that I'm an Alex is I also sit in a shower. Yeah! All right, baby! That's right! Listen, you're not alone. So many people have gotten in touch to tell me. It's so much more comfortable.

It's so comfortable. Oh, that's awesome. Wait, so just to clarify something, because this has come up a few times since that episode went out. Mm-hmm. When you say you sit in the shower, are you sitting on a bench or a seat? No. No, just right in the tub.

Crisscross applesau? No, I stretch my legs out. You just kind of lean forward. Or lean back in the bathtub or... Oh, against the wall. Yeah, against the wall. So what was the first depressive episode you had where you realized that this was how you wanted to bathe? So that was kind of funny.

So when I was thinking about it, so our origin stories is pretty much the same. It was right around middle school and high school time. I don't like morning. So I wanted to kind of sleep a little bit more. I'm sorry that this happened to you. I'm really proud of you for standing up for what you believe in. In the face of this kind of. The dumbest populist movement that has ever happened.

You know what? Which is saying something. It's one of the greatest, it is definitely one of the greatest joys in life. Yeah, I know. It's just like a simple... Have you guys checked out sunsets? Sunsets are pretty good. Sunsets suck compared to a show.

They're pretty cool, but I mean, yeah. All right, man. Thank you for standing with me on this. Well, thanks for taking the call, guys. Take care. Thanks, you too. Hello, this is Alex and PJ. Hi, this is Jose.

I can't believe I actually got through. That's crazy. Where are you calling from? I'm from Dallas, Texas. What can we help you with? It's an Instagram-related question. Sure. So let me move to a quieter location.

This is a little sensitive. Where are you right now? I'm in my office. Ooh, I just found a conference for the sent fee. Okay, so, um, hmm, basically like, so I'm gay, and I'm not out because family, reason, blah, blah. And Instagram has a feature where you can see the activity of, the people that you're following. So like when you like somebody's picture,

it shows up in that weird little thing that people, yeah, the following tab. And I was wondering if you knew of a way to like hide that because I have a lot of like friends that are out and that you can, you know, I want to like their pictures

because I support them. They're big people. But I also somewhat like my family to see that somehow. Like specifically, I've got my brother and my aunt on there. And I'm just like, my brother's savvy enough. My aunt, not so much.

I don't think she even uses it, but, you know. And your brother doesn't know. Still that little fear. Yeah, still that fear in my heart, you know. You need a Finsta. Yeah, you got to have two Instagram accounts. You have to have an Instagram that your parents don't see. And then you just, you use a slightly different name and you lock it.

Yeah. That's ridiculous. It's literally what everybody under the age of 25 does, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, a lot of people do it. And like, people that don't even have, like, huge. Like, just because the Instagram's great, but the problem is, like, you want to say different things to different people, and they make so many things public by default on that. Because even, like, if you're really worried about protecting your privacy for now, like, your following list could be something where somebody figures it out. You know what I mean?

Yeah, I would just create a separate one for your friends. And when you're ready, that may change, but I would keep it. How something that feels like something you wouldn't want to do? Create a Finsta? Yeah. I guess more than anything, it's just like, it's such a pain to have to go through and, like, recreate your contacts list, you know? Yeah. The weird situation.

Does your brother use Instagram a lot? Yeah, he's pretty active on it. And you're not at a place where you're ready to come out to him. No. I don't know if that'll ever happen. That's stressful, man. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry you're dealing with that.

Uh, well, it is what it is. I think you're in the Finsta market then. Yeah, I think that's the only way to do it. I guess I'm in the Finster market. It's kind of fun, though. It's kind of a way of telling some people that you trust them. You know what I mean? Do you have one?

Couldn't say. Oh, my God, you don't trust me. Oh, no. Fair enough. Hello, this is Alex. Who's this? This is Anna. Hey, Anna.

I want to know why printers are so bad. Oh, my God. I want to know that. I don't know. I don't know why it's sort of like all technology was moving forward at about the same pace. And then printers just got held back in eighth grade and like never proceeded. Do you know what I mean? A plus page project that I've been working on for like three months.

And three printers consecutively broke at wall trying to print this project. I had to get my grandmother to print it for me because everybody in my family had their printer break. So I just, I don't know why this like always happens. and why they seem to break at the most inopportune time. Like, it feels like every other technology has come so far and printers are still just stuck in, like, 2005. And I wanted to know if there was, like, some big reason for that, or if it's just sometimes things are bad.

I don't know. We can try to find out and call you back after we're done taking calls today. I feel like there has to be an answer. All right. Thanks, Anna. Thanks for calling. Thanks for picking up. Bye.

Bye. Hi. Hello. Who's this? My name's Tristan. What can we help you with? I think I have a super tech support. Ooh, all right, let's do it.

So for the past couple of years, this weird thing has been happening with my Spotify account. Okay. Can I guess? Sure. Just because I think we've gotten a bunch of emails about this. Are there songs in your most listened to playlist that you've never listened to? It's not just songs. It's specifically the Moana soundtrack.

What? Always the Moana soundtrack? Always the Moana soundtrack. A couple times I think like the Grateful Dead showed up. This happened so much that at the end of the year when you get like your most listened to artists, I had this guy show up that I didn't recognize. It's the guy that scored Moana.

Oh my God. And then it stopped for a while, but I'm looking at my recently played right now and the Moana soundtrack is back in it. What do you think is going on? on. I have no idea. I feel like my Spotify has been hacked by a weird child that's obsessed with Milana and maybe the grateful dare. I'm curious, do you use Spotify both on your desktop, on your computer and on your phone? Yep. Okay. Does anybody else ever have access to your

computer or your phone? Like a child that loves Disney movies? No. Do you know anyone who likes Disney soundtracks. Yes, I do, but they have their own Spotify. Have you, like, gone to your parents' house and logged into it for any reason? No. Like, at this point, I've changed my Spotify password so many times that I don't even know what it is. So if I were to sign it to it to somebody else's account, I'd have to reset it again. When you change your password, how do you go about doing it? I use Safari for some reason, and I just use the, like, the strong password generator. Hmm. We can look into this for you. I mean, we now work for a first, Spotify.

I will say, though, that I have looked into something that is very similar as a super tech support, and I haven't been able to crack it. But people have been getting in touch with us saying, like, hey, I would look at my most recently played, and it would be stuff I've never heard of. Right. But in the other cases that I've gotten, it's always been stuff that I've never heard of and didn't sound like anything that any normal human beak would listen to. There's a band that was getting played all the time. That was called Tree Relaction. Tree Relaction? T-R-E-R-E-L-A-C-T-I-O-N.

Tree-R-E-L-A-C-T-I-O-N. Really good? Do you want to hear it? Yeah. All right. Here we go. Oh, this is horrible. This is like music you like.

This is not like music I like. It's Cynthia. It is Cynthia, but this isn't music. It sounds like if you went in for a massage, but it was a trick and the massage was actually supposed to stress you out. Like, they just start punching you with a stapler. This would be that stapler massage music. Oh, okay. I've heard of a tree relaxation. What, you don't like that?

No. And the thing is, like, if you Google tree relaction, they have no presence online whatsoever. They have no social media, no website, no tour dates, no Facebook. And my theory is some guy banged out some terrible music on a keyboard in like 10 minutes, uploaded the songs to Spotify, and is now hacking people's accounts to get listens for those songs so that he can get money from the royalties that Spotify. pays to musicians. And according to the tree relaction page on Spotify, they've had 21,000 listeners this month. Actually, this has happened to me, too. Like, all, so on my best of 2017, all the

songs I've never actually listened to, the one thing I notice they have in common is, like, the one song that I supposedly listen to has, like, hundreds of thousands of listens, then every other song will have, like, 1,000 listens. What are some of the band names? One is called Lesport, and their hit song, Tell No One About Tonight. Can you imagine me like getting down to this in my house? This song is a jam! I promise you I've never listened to the song on purpose. Oh, I'm feeling it.

Wait, are there lyrics? Keep it going. I like the bass synth. They have a song called Show Me Your Penes. Never mind, I don't like them anymore. You can turn this off. This song's hot. Anyway, the thing I don't get is, like, if people are hacking into other people's accounts to just, like, rack up lots of downloads for their obscure bands, why would it turns to be getting Moana? Like, are the hackers Disney?

Yeah, but why would Disney be doing that? That's the thing that doesn't make any sense. What, okay, so another thing that used to happen that hasn't happened so much lately is that, like, it used to pause my Spotify all the time. And that was so annoying. That's how, that's, that's something. That's something. Because if it's pausing your Spotify, usually what that means is that your Spotify account's being played somewhere else. You can't use the same Spotify account in two places at the same time.

Right. That makes me wonder if it's a person. Yeah, it feels like a person to me. Can you check? Okay. Can you go? This probably won't turn anything up. Are you at a computer?

I can get a computer. So if you go into your account settings and search Spotify offline devices, it'll show you every device that is connected to your Spotify. and I wonder if you look at that if you'll see anything you don't recognize. Okay. Here. Log in. Okay, it's hard to tell.

What do you say? It just says iPhone. I mean, there's four iPhones here, though. It could be every iPhone you've had. Have you had four iPhones over the time you've had Spotify? Yeah, it's totally possible because the earliest one is from 2016.

But it doesn't show any laptops or anything. It just shows I mean, I could remove all of them. That's what happens. I would try it. Remove all devices. I would try that and see if that actually does it. Like if you logged it on somebody's phone a million years ago and forgot about it.

All right. Yeah, no, I'll let you know if anything changes now that I've taken off all these offline devices. Yeah. That makes me wonder. In the meantime, we are going to dig into this and see if we can get an answer for you. Okay. Thanks. Let us now.

All right. Take care, Tristan. All right. Thanks so much. All right, sure. right do you want to hear show me your penis

no but I can't deny these guys are good they are kind of good what are they called the sports after the break we get some answers

welcome back to the show okay Alex we have gotten out we've gotten some answers do you want to start with the Spotify question yeah let's give Tristan a ring

hello hey Tristan how's it going hey how's it going oh yeah good how you done good all right

So I have updates. I bring news. Oh, man. Okay. What do you got? So we were trying to think about someone we should talk to about compromised Spotify accounts or like how someone would get into them. And I decided to get in touch with this hacker that we've had on the show before. Do you remember the Snapchat thief episode?

Remind me again? Really putting him on the spot here. PJ, do you remember the show? Surely you listen to every single episode. It's fine. That was somebody had a Snapchat handle. that got stolen by hackers who went after people with specific handles that they wanted because they were short or it was an unusual username. Yeah.

I remember that now. That was the one where you went into the chat room with the teenage hackers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they eventually apologized? Well, Kevin, the hacker who actually ended up apologizing in that episode, I got in touch with him to ask him about hacking into Spotify accounts. Hey, man, you there? Yeah, hello? Hey, how's it going?

It's been a while. How are you? Good to talk to you. Yeah. Kevin told me there are a lot of compromised Spotify accounts floating around that are for sale and are very cheap. So in this case, Spotify, there's like free versions of Spotify that have ads and then there's the premium. Right, right. So I'm assuming the person that called in had a premium Spotify and someone else bought the account for like a dollar or 50 cents or however much they go for. And then they just signed in and they use it.

And it makes sense that Spotify accounts would get hacked because, first of all, it's, like, not a thing that you necessarily throw your best password at because, like, the consequences are pretty low. And also, if somebody's stealing your Spotify, I guess you would notice because sometimes it wouldn't play music. But a lot of times you wouldn't. And so the thing that I didn't understand was, Tristan, you told us that you changed your password a bunch of times. And so I asked Kevin how it would be possible that someone could still be getting into your account. Do you have any idea why something like that would happen? No idea. I mean, unless he's like getting fished over and over again, which I doubt. Right. I don't think you can brute force Spotify accounts. I think they get locked out now. Hey, this is Anna. I'm a producer on Refile. What does brute force mean? So brute forcing is like getting every possible character from like one through six, for example. So AAA all the way to AAAA1. And it'd just like go down the line. It'd be millions of millions of lines, millions of combinations. But yeah, that's a lot of resources just to get into one guy's account. But I don't think that's the case at all, honestly.

And then I asked him about my theory, right? My theory that there's someone out there who's like uploading bad music and... Using stolen spot-by accounts to get their plays way up. Yeah. And he was like, that's ridiculous. The royalties are like super low, aren't they? They would like need millions of plays to like get any. anything like worth it, you know?

Yeah. But I think you also need like a, like a musician account or whatever, like an official account to get the royalties. And then to get that, like to get paid out, they'd have to like docs themselves. And I don't know how far someone would go through all that. All right, fine. Just poke holes in my theory, whatever.

Yeah, I don't know how far someone would go. Because if anything came back to them, they'd be kind of, you know, in trouble. Right. Kevin didn't really know what could be happening with bands, like tree relaction or with Tristan's particular unique problem with Moana and the Grateful Dead. And so I thought that if I was going to get an answer to this, I would have to go to Spotify directly. So I went to my boss's boss and I was like, hey, what is the deal with this? Can you help?

And he got back to me and he put me in touch with the PR person. And the PR person told me that my theory about people hacking accounts to play songs to collect royalties, that actually has happened in the past. Really? Yeah. Interesting. And I was like, oh, my God, that's amazing. I feel so validated. That said, I don't... It's still a Disney.

I don't think Disney needs that kind of money. Or the dead. Or the grateful dead. And as much as I hate to say this, because it feels like I'm accusing you of something, I feel like it has to be someone who has or had access to your account. Oh, yeah. The one thing that I think is, so I can't solve the work yet,

is that thing that you told me to do, which was log out of offline devices. Yeah. Because there was like, there was maybe, like, it was hard to tell, but there might have been like one extra iPhone on there. I wonder if the offline devices logout thing did it. Since you've done that, have you seen any Grateful Dead or Moana appear in your recently played? No, the Grateful Dead still in my heavy rotation, but that could just be because it calculates that like monthly or something.

Yeah, right. I feel like if that is indeed the case, one day you're going to be hanging out with some friend who it has not occurred to you to wonder about, and you're going to get in the car with them, and they're going to start blasting the Mwana soundtrack, and it'll be like, it was you. Okay, but if the problem's fixed, that feels good.

Yeah, check back with us if the problem persists. And also, if our listeners think that I've got it totally wrong, I'd be open to hear what they think might be going on. Okay. All right, well, let us know. And thanks so much for calling Tristan. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for helping me out.

Yeah, appreciate it. Take care. All right, sure. Bye. Bye. Hello? Hi, Anna. Yeah.

Hey, it's PJ and Alex. Hi, PJ. Hi, Alex. For a second, I didn't think you're going to say hi to Alex. I was on board with it as a choice. I got an answer for you about why printers don't get better. I am so intrigued. I have to tell you, it was completely.

fascinating. Like, I did not understand how complicated printers are, like the entire world that goes on inside these stupid things. Wow. So I called this reporter who actually spent a long time trying to figure out the answer to this. Can you just introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Joshua Rothman and I'm the ideas editor of New Yorker.com. So basically, Joshua got curious about this the same way that you did. There was just one day at his office a while back where the printer got jammed and he was just like, why? Yep. He said in his mind's eye he saw like a super cut of every time he'd been standing in front of a jammed printer. And so he wanted to find out like what the deal is. And then I went and Googled it and I went down sort of a Google Scholar rabbit hole. And I found that there's, you know, an entire engineering subfield sort of organized around jams because it's not just printers that jam.

You know, all sorts of different things jam. So like cassette tapes jam and, you know, guns jam. You know, things like Apple Pickers jam. Apple pickers jam? Yeah, like just jamming is a problem in general. So specifically in the world of printers, there are people who just spend their whole lives obsessing over how to stop a printer from jamming.

And he embedded with this elite team of anti-jam experts at Xerox, because Xerox, I guess, is like the cutting edge for this stuff, which I did not know. Huh. He says one of the reasons that we still get so many jams is that printers keep getting smaller and smaller. And so this whole process has to happen in a tighter and tighter space. The way that the printer works,

the way that it negotiates all these twists and turns is with vacuum. This blew my mind. It's fans and vacuum. That's what adheres the paper to the little conveyor belts, pushes the sheets of paper around the turns. So that's why, you know, the sound of printer makes, that fan, that's why that's essentially like a vacuum cleaner. And it's pulling the paper, you know, into the right spot,

like flush with the drum that then the toner, you know, is adhered to. And then the toner is fused to that sheet of paper by, like, super high heat. So this is why when the paper comes out of the printer, it's like toasty. Yeah. And paper is made from trees, and these organic fibers, you know, shrink in high heat, but then in other ways they expand. So you might have paper that expands more in one dimension than another, or it might curl. Because paper is not uniform. Like, trees aren't uniform.

So it's an organic material fundamentally, and it's going through, like, the ringer. So every piece of paper is different. You know, it depends what kind of tree it came from. It even depends what part of the larger roll of paper they cut it out of. And every piece of paper, because it's different, it's going to behave differently as it's getting pulled through all the different rollers inside the printer. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. The other thing he said, which really surprised me, is that even though it feels like printers are jamming at the same rate or more often or it's like it getting better, he said actually things are getting better.

We just don't notice it. The jam rate isn't really higher now than it was before, and in fact, it's lower. But you print faster. You know, if you could only print 10 pages a minute in 2001, you know, it seemed like jams happen less often. But now you can print, you know, like 25 pages a minute. And you're actually getting fewer jams. But, you know, the total volume of printing basically keeps going up and the speed goes up and so jams. I thought it's a real, it's a limitation.

I totally forgot about that. Like literally I just had a flashback to being in like fifth grade and like watching a single sheet of paper print over the course of like four minutes. Yeah, it's totally crazy. When you learned all this stuff, did it change how you, like now when you're in the office and the printer jams, do you feel the exact same frustration to the exact same paper cut? Do you feel like it's like a miracle? Like, how do you, how does this change your relationship to printer jams? Well, I got to say, I mean, when I was reporting this story, I mean, I spent a lot of time watching slow-mo video taken from inside printers, right? Which is like how they do this.

And when you watch those videos, it's like the scale of the printer changes in your mind. it becomes a massive space with these huge objects zooming around at some completely out of control speed. I mean, it's basically really interesting to kind of like look in there and be like, huh. You know, it was when the paper was trying to make it around this like hairpin turn. It didn't quite make it. You know, that's the reason. Yeah. I mean, in a way, printers now are a thing that stands in my mind for like incredible human achievement.

I mean, that this thing that used to be the size of a building. or used to be, you know, dozens of feet long can now be compact. And to maintain always the current jam rate is like an extraordinary, extraordinary achievement. To make it smaller and smaller and faster without making it jam all the time is like totally nuts. Makes sense because this is something that I've talked about with my sister before and she's like, feels like things from the internet like aren't necessarily even meant to become. things in physical space and the fact that they're able to at all is kind of wild. So do you feel in any way less frustrated about paper jabs now?

Yeah, I think so. At least I'll get like, I mean, at least it works sometimes. Is there anything else you were wondering about? I think I'm good. Okay, cool. Thanks for your question. Thanks, Anna. Thank you so much for your answer. Have a cool summer. You too. Bye.

All. Reply All is hosted by PJ Vote and me, Alex Goldman. We're produced by Shruthy Pinnamanini, Fia Benin, Damiano Marquetti, Anna Foley, Jessica Young, and Emmanuel Jochi. Our editor is Tim Howard. We're mixed by Rick Kwan. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our intern is Emily Rostic. Special thanks to everyone who called in.

Our theme song is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Build Buildings. Matt Lieber is finding a waterfall on a hike. You can listen to our show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.