Reply All - #20 I Want To Break Free

Episode Date: April 13, 2015

Yes Yes No returns, and the story of two people who created a company designed to ghostwrite people’s emotionally difficult emails. Don’t forget to participate in Email Debt Forgiveness Day! Leave us a voicemail at [phone] about your most anxiety inducing unanswered email. All will be forgiven, we promise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, Matt Lieber, Gimlet co-founder. Can I interrupt you for a sec? Okay. So we have a bunch of cursing in this week's episode, and we were just quickly trying to figure out whether you thought we should do a language advisory. There's a bunch of cursing in it? Yes. Yes, you should do a language advisory.

You've been advised. From Gimlet, this is a reply all, a show about the internet. I'm PJ Vote with Alex Goldman and Alex Bloomberg. Welcome to another edition of Yes Yes, No, the hotly contested, much loved. Slightly Reviled Segment on... Wait, slightly reviled? Some people really hate it.

Why? Who hate to? There are a couple of people who've been like, no more yes, yes, no. It's stupid. It's a waste of time. Oh, and people feel like we're making fun of them

for not knowing about dumb internet stuff. Oh, no, no, we're on your side. Yeah. We don't feel good about knowing stuff. And if we didn't know this, we might know, like, other stuff. How to, like, do laundry.

You know how to do laundry? I'm kidding. Of course, I know how to do laundry. I'm a parent. When do you put the salt in? That's a trick question because you use the salt to help dry the clothes. Okay, so yes, yes, no is the segment where Bloomberg brings us things from the internet that he doesn't understand,

and we try to explain them to him. What have you got? All right, so I have a couple of tweets. I did an experiment where I crowdsourced some yes yes-yes-nows, just because I figured this was so exciting. for me, I thought maybe I'd open it up to the rest of the internet, or at least the rest of the internet that reads my Twitter feed, which is 25,000 people. Are you trying to make us feel bad? How many Twitter followers do you guys have? Well, two different numbers, actually. I have six something. I have six, 60, 60 something, six thousand something. That's pretty good. That's really good.

You should be proud of yourself. Oh, how patronizing. I mentioned I have 25,000 followers. Yeah, I heard. So what have you got? What did The crowd, what questions did they turn up? So the crowd, it was amazing. So I got a lot of things that I found utterly mystifying. So I'll just, I'll start here. Okay, so here is a, here's a tweet. And it's a tweet from Joyce Carol Oates, which right away is confusing because Joyce Carol Oates is a famous American author, part of the canon.

She's been writing forever, and she does. doesn't seem like the kind of writer who would have a Twitter presence, although maybe she does. And the tweet is, quote, land, unquote, phones ringing in the wilderness. And that's it. And the guy who sent us this is a guy named Chris Scott. And he wrote, and this is sort of what makes it mystifying to me, is the thing that he wrote when he tweeted this at me. He said, this tweet has haunted me for a long time, and I would like it explained. So to me, it's like, it's a confusing tweet, but I don't know why it's haunting. So why is he haunted? wanted by it. What's going on here? This is a hard one. So, so, so, Alex Goldman, do you know what this tweet means? Are you ready for this? I hope you're ready. I am. No. I do not. P.J. Vote, do you know what this tweet means? Not really. Oh my God. Are we a no, no, no?

Has this ever happened before? No, never. I mean, I mean, I understand Joyce Carolo a Twitter phenomenon because she is a Twitter phenomenon. And there's useful context that we can bring some clues into the investigation. Okay, so what can you tell me? Okay, so Joyce Carroll Oates, as you sort of mentioned, she is a renowned writer. She has both like literary cred and genre cred. She's been writing for a very long time. I think she's in her 70s.

And one of the surprising things about her is that she is, A, an incredibly active Twitter user, and B, kind of a troll. she makes politically provocative statement across the spectrum and seems to kind of like thrive off of and grow stronger from the anger that comes at her. So Gawker wrote a piece telling her that she should delete her Twitter account and they had some examples. So she tweeted in May of 2014,

quote, cat food in China actually is, meaning food in China is made out of cats. Right. It feels racist. And whether or not it is, at least it's just not the kind of thing you expect, like, a celebrated American author to tweet. So, I mean, what's up with that? Is that just like, is Joyce Carol Oates? Is she just making dumb jokes?

It's like, I don't know. Explain, please. I have a theory about it, which is, like, sort of crazy. But I've thought about it a lot. Because there's, like, a couple people like Joyce Carol Oates who were, like, pretty, like, they were either beloved or gently liked until they. got Twitter and you just wish that Twitter had not been invented in their lifetime because they've kind of ruined your ability to enjoy their work, or at least like changed the context of what you think about their work.

But Joyce Carol Oates, besides being famously a good writer, she's famous as like a prolific writer and she just tries everything, like a chilling mystery and then like a historical thing. And like she seems very agnostic to what the relationship is between the next thing she's going to do and the last thing. And so maybe she just like is incapable of censoring. any thought that she ever has that she wants to write down. And maybe Twitter just increases the velocity of that in a bad place. Got it.

Does that make any sense? It does. No, it's a good theory. Okay, so we've established some things, but we still have the essential question of the tweet is unanswered. I now have a lot more context about Joyce Carol Oates. I have, and I understand some things about this tweet, but the essential question of the tweet is still unanswered. So I guess we're it maybe, maybe, maybe. Yeah.

I don't think this is just a completely. solvable one. So I have one more thing, which is like, I guess it's sort of within the realm of yes, yes, yes, no. I don't think it's a traditional yes, yes, yes. Have we been doing this long enough to break tradition already? Yeah, it was break tradition. All right. So this guy, Dave Weiner, who's the editor-in-chief of dig.com, he didn't send me just individual tweets. He sent me the entire Twitter streams of certain people. And one of those people was the Twitter stream of Senator Chuck Grassley, the senator from Iowa. Oh, boy.

Yeah. Chuck Grassley. He's like a legend. He's a legend. It's amazing. And it's amazing because it's confusing in a way that none of the other yes-yes-nots have been confusing. What do you mean? Well, it's confusing in a way just because he's not using language in a new internet way that I don't understand. He's using the regular old language, talk about regular old things that I know, but they're just utterly confused. confusing. Like, it's impenetrable. But it's like poetry. It is. Okay, so that, so his Twitter account is just like, it just seems to be just sort of like, here's where I was and here's

who I talked to, and here's what we talked about, but it's, it's just, it's like very listy. This is a total of a sample one. Chuck Grassley six days ago. Keota High School Issues, colon, interaction with president, typical day, ISIS, Govd shutdown, Obamacare, budget, farm bill, gas prices, IRS, hashtag 99 county meetings. That's not a hashtag. That's not a hashtag. And then he has another one, Charlton Town Meeting, issues, cannabis, Iran, patent trolls, SCOTUS, doc fix. It's just like that over and over and over.

It sounds like you make him sound like an ecstatic poet who's like really happy about bureaucracy. There are moments that he, that are like so much more poignant and bizarre in his Twitter feed. That's not even like the craziest of it. Oh, really? Like what? I've got some of his most popular tweets ever up here. Let me read one to you. Fred and I hit a deer on Highway 136 south of Dyersville. After I pulled fender rubbing on tire, we continued to farm.

Assume deer dead. Here's another deer-related one. You've heard saying, deer and headlight look. It is a frightening experience when real deer is there. Wow. Yeah. And these are really, so it also,

gave me the impression that, like, Chuck Cressley is actually tweeting these. Like, I don't think, oh, yeah, yeah. There's no way any social media staff would ever tweet the things. And I think that's part of what makes him so singular in the Twitter universe is most people have, like, a social media team that manicure their tweets for maximum impact. And his is just, like, the unfettered ramblings of Chuck Grassley. And in, like, with all of the weird shorthand and, like, hashtags that no one else would ever use. I don't think it's terrible. I think it's great.

Here's another very good one. It's like what he does is he tries to compact it. He tries to tell a story that in no way can fit in 140 characters in 140 characters. Yeah, that's the other thing is like half of his tweets ended in an ellipsis. Is it like the sentence gets interrupted? And then you're just like, okay, I guess there's more here. Work on farm Friday. Work on farm Friday.

Burning piles of brush. Windy fire got out of control. Thank God for a good neighbor. He helped get under control. Pants burn leg wound. So in order to fit the 140 characters, pants burn leg wound is one word with no spaces. So I don't really have a question about the Chuck Grassley account other than I think we all understand what it means. It's just it was just like I didn't know it was out there and now that I do it's really...

You feel like you want to celebrate it? I like it. His most popular tweet ever, which I think is probably his most inscrutable tweet ever, Windsor Heights Dairy Queen is a good place for you know what. No one knows what. Don't you want to know so badly what the Windsor Heights Dairy Queen is a good place? We've got a call. Knowing what I know about Chuck Grassley, he's probably talking about ice cream.

Ice cream. Like that's the only thing he could be talking about. So it turns out we didn't actually have to call the Dairy Queen because an Iowa political reporter named Samantha Joe Roth actually caught up with Chuck Grassley and found out what it was he was talking about. I meant this. I wanted to give Windsor Heights Dairy Queen some credit for making good Dairy Queen and doing you know what. And what do you do at Dairy Queen? You eat Dairy Queen. What were you eating? Well, normally I have a Blizzard, Rhesus or Snickers. But this particular time, I had just plain vanilla and chocolate ice cream.

Coming up after the break, we hear from two people who try to rid the world of shame and instead just end up setting their lives on fire. So Alex Yes Remember when we announced the holiday last week? I do I have some news about it But actually I guess just I should catch out any listeners up who missed last week's episode

We invented a holiday Email debt forgiveness day April 30th It's the day where you are allowed to respond To emails that you'd been putting off responding to Because you're too anxious And you're allowed to respond without apologizing For all the time that's passed

So We announced this. We got a lot of feedback. Mostly letters of support, a little bit of flack. I think one person yelled at us for not saying international. And then a couple of people were like, man, get over it, you babies. And then other people just ignored it anyway. And people are celebrating the holiday in other countries.

And they left us messages about it. Hi, PJ and Alex. This is Moriel calling from Tel Aviv. I'm riding my bike to work. And I actually stopped and did a fifth pump in the air. When I heard about April 30th. The dude did a fist pump when he heard about what is now apparently called international email debt forgiveness day. You say that like you're mad about it being international.

I'm not mad about it being international. It's amazing to watch something take on its own force and grow bigger than you could ever possibly have imagined. Yeah, I agree. But I knew once you came up with this, it was going to be huge. I knew that it was tapping into everyone's darkest places. Yes. But then we got one email that just read, Oh, God, be careful.

It's a terrible Pandora's box you open. Yes, that's right. And, of course, that is the guy that I wanted to talk to. So what did you mean by that? So back in the day, this was 2011? June-ish, May-ish? It seems to be summer of 2011. Yeah, this seems like a million years ago now, by the way.

We saw Raville Comerson here and I got it in our heads that we were going to start a service to help people. This is Corey Sika. He's a writer. as is his friend Sarah Villcomerson. And back in the summer of 2011, they had a big idea. So this all started because we had a friend, one of our really close friends, who we were all out together one night talking, and he was having a horrible time trying to decide how to send an uncomfortable email

to someone he had been blowing off for like years, basically. What was the email about? It was so, so not a big deal. Like it was a friend of his had gotten in touch and said, like, oh, it's been a while, I just want to see how you were doing. Like, nothing emotionally complicated. And he just felt like he couldn't do it. So Corey and Sara took a crack at it.

They wrote the email. It was just like, hey, I'm so sorry. I've been so swamped late. We haven't been able to connect. It's been really busy over here. Thanks so much. I don't, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's friends on the email.

Everything was fine. That should have been the end of it. But instead, they realized, hey, we're good at this. Wouldn't it be great? If we're professional writers, we can help people get out of these uncomfortable situations. This ridiculously simple email favor prompted them to think the four words that have gotten more people into more trouble than almost any others. Let's go into business. So they did.

They made a website. Shame be gone.com. And there was a queen song that played when you loved on. Oh, right. You got a little queen video when you submitted. Which queen song? I want to be free. I want to break free. Yeah, that's it.

So you go to the site and there'd be a form. And the forum would ask you, what's your problem? What's the unanswered email? what's the goal you want. Do you want to patch things up? Do you want to get laid? Do you want to express anger? How much did this service cost?

What was a sliding scale? And it was pay what you want? They said they wanted to be like the Met, like the museum. And they would tell us, they'd be like, yeah, 10 bucks. And then we'd be like, great. Sounds good. What was coming in? Like, who was writing to you?

What were the first ones? Let's see, I think this was an early one. Here is a satisfied customer. Oh. So this woman, yes, this woman was saying that she had a year earlier had sponsored a little boy in Africa. And she said, I picked one with the same birthday as my son. I'm a single mom. And I was really excited to get to know him.

My plan had been to send him a letter, some toys, and a picture of me and my son. But of course, time passed. Things happened. His birthday went by, Christmas went by, perfect opportunities to send something. But I never knew what to say. I feel like the worst sponsor ever. Until now, I was too embarrassed to ask anyone else what to do. See?

So she was happy to hear from us. So what did you guys tell her to say? So you said, I think you need to send a note of introduction. Don't worry about the bells and whistles for the first one. I still feel this way. Right. Dear name, this is a very late letter of introduction, one which I'm sorry I've waited for so long to send. But I did now want to say hello and let you know a little bit about me as I hope it to be more in regular touch with you.

A sentence or two about you. I had balls going. Wait, was a sentence or two about you? That was me writing to her to include there. She should like do a little filler in the cake. Just throw it in. Wait, what was after a thing or two about you? That was literally like I hope all was well going with all.

well with you and hope to hear from you soon. It's literally like that. Like, that's all she had to say was, hi, it's me. I'd love to be in touch with you more. How are things? I'm great. Case closed. They make it look easy. And they're answering all sorts of letters. How do I get out of this weird obligation I've committed to? How do I tell someone that I like them?

How do I yell at my former coworker for not doing her job the last week before she left? And as they're whipping out these helpful responses, Corey and Sara start to pick out patterns. Oh, so there was a couple genres of emails we noticed. Okay. And easily divisible between the two of us. Oh, that's also true.

Yeah. Wait, you guys had specialties? Yes. Mine was weddings. Say someone forgets to RSVP. People who don't RSVP to their wedding and just never let them know whether they're coming or not, it's like a friendship ender. Sara had a lot of experience patching up those kinds of situations. And then Corey's specialty was boundaries and complicated family dynamics.

Like, I can't talk to my sister. Like, there's a lot of that stuff. And because they're great at answering these emails, people start to take notice. The reporters came out as hot. That's the scary thing. Yeah, so some people started to write about it. Like, Good did something on it. And Gizmodo wrote about it.

MSN. They were a hot commodity. So because people started writing about them, they started getting more letters, and the letters started to get more intense. Mm-hmm. Like, there's this one from somebody who had a suicidal roommate, and they needed to send a letter to that roommate saying they didn't want to live with them anymore. Or this one, my father is in kidney failure, and I'm a donor match.

I'm 28 and I already have health issues with my weight and I know that giving up a kidney would most certainly reduce my lifespan if I remain heavy. I love my father but I don't want to give him my kidney. I'd like to have someone find the words for me that can explain that I love him but I can't give him my kidney. There's an option for him to keep looking on the list but at 63 most organs don't go to the oldest in our society

and using a dialysis machine is not an option. And then there's a place where they can say what outcome they'd like and he says I'd like to keep my father's love and what they're willing to pay, and he says $100. God, I have no clue how I'd respond to that. Yeah. Somebody else were to say that they were worried about their sister, that she was an alcoholic.

She'd get drunk and then walk her dog in the neighborhood. And then she would go to neighbor's houses and she would ask them if she could come inside just so that her dog could get water. And while they were getting water for her dog, she would raid their liquor cabinets. Oh, my God. And they wanted, the letter writer wanted to know what is the email I can send to my sister so that she'll stop doing this, so that she'll understand that she's an alcoholic, so that she'll understand that I love her and that I'm worried about her and that things have to change.

Like, so that she'll hear it. Wow. Yeah. So in the most dire cases, they would refer people to professionals. But overall, they were starting to feel just like in over their heads. Kind of lost. because in the beginning, they'd been answering emails that were really simple, the way other people's problems can seem really simple. But these problems they were getting now were not problems that could be solved by a simple email.

They were personal and hairy and not at all what they'd signed up for. And so they started to feel like their problems. And the thing is, when it comes to their own problematic emails, Koreans are, by their own admission, pretty bad at answering emails. We're not just like, you know, the hair club for men. And like, I'm not just the president. I'm also a client. Like, I have all these problems.

This is partially why we wanted to do it. But then I couldn't get past my own personality, I guess. So Sara decided to just embrace her true self. I started blocking all my shipment got email. But you started blocking the email? He told me to. We got in bad. It was so bad.

It was really bad. It added to my email debt load astoundingly. And, you know, in fairness, we had full-time jobs that involved writing. So it wasn't. You know. That's a very good point. It's still super lame. And for Corey, the emails just piled up unread.

They bothered him. It was just the taunting of the inbox. It's like you knew there were these like appeals in there from like people's like darkest personal selves sometimes. And also sometimes like totally normal selves are just like, hey, this is like a little thing I could use like a hand with. And we wanted to help. He'd wanted to bail people out of email debt. He'd had good intentions. But at this point, he was like an insolvent bank, just holding everybody's.

email debt, and he had no way to get rid of it. Until one day, he finally saw his exit. You know what I should really do is just let the domain expire. So they shut it down. Did you feel guilty? No, I think we felt so free that we were like, great, who cares? Run, run, run, run. Like, just don't look back. Yeah, oh yeah. We're like, shut it down, get out. If we're out of the building, let it on fire. So Corey said the main thing he learned from all this is that the trick isn't really what words you use. Like the content of the email barely matters. It's just that you fucking send something.

I work with a guy Matt Buchanan whose emails are like the ultimate in brevity. And I've learned a lot from them. At first I was sort of horrified they were to send these emails that would literally be like, yes. And I was like, oh my God, you can't do that to people. You have to like butted them up and ask about their dog and like tell them about the time you were in church when you were 12. Like, it's, I'm dumb. Like, he's right.

Just literally be like, got it, thanks. And, like, people, if people think you're too brusk and, like, not are not overcompensating enough for the weird chilliness of email, forget them. Like, just send the email. If it's three words, fine. Like, do your best, like, try and do it right. But, like, forget the rest of it. It's going to eat your life.

But what if somebody, how do you apply that philosophy to an email that's, like, I always wish I told you that I loved you or. Got it. That's a little harder. I mean, in some cases, those are the emails that are least likely to get answered. They just, and also here's the other thing, no email you write is ever going to do them justice. So you might as well do it like a decent bad job as opposed to doing no job. You're just not going to rise to the challenge.

It's not going to happen. You can't write. We just don't write emails like letters anymore. It doesn't exist. Just give up. What did Corey say to you? with respect to our project. I don't think he thinks that email is a solvable problem.

But, I mean, are you reconsidering this grand plan now? Do you think this might be a terrible idea? No, I think it's a wonderful idea. Because I think the nice thing about Holiday is it gives you one more chance to just do the thing and not try to get it perfect and just say, hey, I'm sorry. I didn't get back to you before because I didn't know what to say, but I, you know, whatever it is. Like, I do love you or you have to stop stealing things.

from me. Also, we don't have to feign any expertise. Like, we don't have to pretend that we know the best way to answer this. We're just giving people an out. And I think everybody's kind of owed that out, you know? Yeah. Alex, one more thing. What? You know Matt Farley, the world's greatest songwriter? You mean that dude who has 17,000 songs on Spotify and also also has his phone number on his Twitter feed so you can call him and have him write a song about whatever you want? Yeah, that guy. He wrote an anthem for Email Debt Forgiveness Day. Oh, he's the best.

What will they say if you respond after several months have gone? Email Debt Forgiveness Day, oh yeah. Even when that message lands on page two, you know it's still something that you've got to do. Keep on putting it off, but only until the very last day of it. Reply All is me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. We were produced by Tim Howard and Surruthy Pinnaminani, and edited by Alex Bloomberg. Matt Lieber is a three-day weekend. Our show was mixed by the Reverend John DeLore.

Our theme music was by the mysterious brakemaster cylinder, and our ad music was from Build Buildings. We continue to be on a lot of websites. You can hear the show at iTunes.com slash Reply All, and we put up excerpts from this episode on dig.com. Our website is replyall.limo, which was designed in partnership with athletics. Sarahville Comerson hosts a great radio show for Sirius called Women on Pop that you should check out, and you can find Corey Sika's writing at the online magazine The All. That's AWL.

Thanks to everybody who helped with that stupid prank last week, Alex got 2,760 tweets. It was very hilarious. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.