Reply All - #38 Undo, Undo, Undo

Episode Date: September 7, 2015

On this week's episode of Reply All, we do a Yes Yes No with Alix Spiegel and Lulu Miller of NPR's Invisibilia, and we discuss the one message you've sent across the internet you wish you could take back. Email us a voice memo about the things you wish you could most undo at [e-mail] Subscribe to Invisibilia: www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/ Watch us in Cast Party: www.castparty.org Follow Max Silvestri: www.twitter.com/maxsilvestri 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. So we have a segment on the show called Yes, Yes, No, where our boss, Alex Bloomberg, comes to us with some confusing piece of the internet that he doesn't understand, and we explain it to him. Well, normally it's Alex Bloomberg, but today we've kicked him out of the studio in favor of some friends of ours, the hosts of the NPR podcast Invisibilia,

Lulu Miller and Elise Spiegel. Yeah, if you've never listened to Invisibilia, It is sort of a show about science, but it's really about ideas and people and their brains and just the weirdness of human behavior. It's really good. Guys, thank you so much for doing the show with us. Heck, yeah. Thanks. So we heard a rumor that you guys have a yes, yes, no for us.

We do. So a tweet came to our attention. Should I read it to? Yeah. Yes. Okay, so Maddie Sarapen wrote 225 a.m. researching the Berenstein Bears conspiracy theory and wondering if my entire life has been a lie.

Right. Okay, so do you guys know what the Berenstein Bears' conspiracy is? Yes, yes. Do you guys know what the Berenstein Bears conspiracy is? No. But I kind of have a theory. I have a theory. What's your theory, Lulu?

Okay. I've been wondering about it now for like a week. So I keep thinking it's the Berenstein Bears controversy. And if it's the Berenstein Bears controversy, I think that there was a cigarette in the treehouse, which in subsequent publications of the book they have removed. But then I'm like, no, it's the Berenstein Bears conspiracy theory. So then I've got to go deeper.

And then I think that the author, whose name I cannot recall, and I wished I could do research, but I didn't let myself do any. So I think it's that the author. who in my head is a woman, I think that she implanted nihilistic, depressing messages into Bear and steam bear chitter chatter, such that everyone who read it in the late 70s and 80s grew up with like low-lying underlying depression,

and that's why Americans are so depressed. Well, can I tell you my theory? Yeah, what's yours? Yes. Okay, so my theory is that, Berenstein, the author, created a race. I don't know. Okay.

Berenstein, the author, created a race of really highly intelligent bears, like super intelligent, just like the rats of nymph. And those bears create the internet. And then to math. And that's their role in the internet, they create like the Berenstein Bears children's books because who would possibly believe that somebody like in a children's book would create the internet. So, so in this world, the author of the Berenstein Bears is in fact a highly intelligent bear and the books themselves are just a diversion. No, no, no, no. The author is like a brilliant scientist. Yeah. Who then creates the children's books as a diversion.

Well, good news, guys. You're both right. We can package it from a moment. Okay, so as far as I can remember, the Berenstine Bears were written by Stan and Jan Berenstein. Yeah, a couple named Stan and Jan Berenstein. Okay, at least is closer so far. One for a lease. Well, so wait, you guys, how do you spell Berenstein Bears? Yeah, how do you spell Berenstein? I think it's like Bear, B-E-A-R-E-N-S-T-E-N.

Okay. Like, that's what I would do. Yeah, I agree with that. Okay, so according to this theory you guys are living in, or perhaps at one point did live in, an alternate reality. Because the way that Berenstein bears and St. Gen Berenstein spell Berenstein is, What is it? So the proper spelling is B-E-R-E-N, S-T-A-I-N, Berenstain. Berenstain, like a stain on a Bairn-A-R-N.

Wait, S-T-A-I, Berenstain. Ooh. Yeah, and a few weeks ago, the world collectively woke up to the fact that their name is spelled, S-T-A-I-N. And how did this knowledge come to the fore, though? Okay, so there's this guy, his name is Rob Schwartz, and he runs a website called Stranger Dimensions, which is about like this monster, telekinesis, stuff like that. And he did this article called four weird clues that parallel universes exist. And those four weird clues were things like deja vu and ghost sightings.

And one of them was these stories about people who would go to sleep one day and wake up the next morning and something in their life would be subtly different. But different enough for them to notice and everybody else acted like it was normal. Like what? So like someone would go to sleep and then the next day they would have a different job at their office. or their apartment would be located on a different floor of their apartment building. And in the comments of that story,

someone said to him, you need to look up the Bernstein Bears problem. And so Rob explains that he remembers Berenstein Bears being spelled S-T-E-I-N. And he basically puts forth this theory that we were born in a universe where Berenstein Bears was spelled S-T-E-I-N. And at some point, like, our universe forked

into another universe that spells it S-T-A-I-N. Is there anyone who thinks it was Stain, really? I mean, it is Stain. But is there anyone who thinks that it always was? But is there anyone who really remembers it that way? Actually, now I do want to see a picture of it. I want to see a picture of the book cover. The Berenstain Bears?

Wow. Elise, it is weird. Wait, sorry, can I just... Yeah, yeah. Elise, you should look at a book image. Of the Berenstain? It's unsettling. Oh, you're right.

But what's the conspiracy part? Is the conspiracy... My guess is that the conspiracy... Are you guys... Oh, man, let's make this more complicated. Are you guys familiar with the concept of retconning? Of the concept of who? Retconning?

No. No. Okay, so right conning is when you're on season three of a TV show, and they're like, oh, yes, this is my brother, who I've always had, who you've never heard about before on this show. like retroactive continuity. It's a way to pretend that information happened in the past that never did.

And so in fiction they'll be like, oh, they retconned it. They went back and changed their story. But in real life, sometimes it can feel like someone's retconning you. Like they're pretending you have information that you don't have. Or perhaps on a more conspiratorial level, they're re-illustrating an entire run of children's books and changing the last names of the people who wrote them for reasons that do seem conspiratorial and nefarious. Huh. Okay, so the conspiracy is the whole S-T-A-I-N thing is like that's a huge retcon.

Yeah, like there's some sort of mass psychosis which has been wrought upon the populace by some powerful force. You know, maybe it was the Rothschilds or something. Yeah, that makes sense. I can see that they might have a hand in this. Okay, do you guys feel like you have it? You want to say it back to us? Okay. So, like, Lulu, do you want to kind of give your version of what the Barronstein Bears?

Okay. So, Maddie Sarapen, 225 a.m., colon. Researching the Barronstein Bears conspiracy theory and wondering if my entire life has been a lie. Okay, so what that means is that Maddie had just heard about this. idea that Barronstein is actually spelled Barron Stain. She went back, she started looking at children's image-googling the book, and she saw it written as stain. She got prickles on her arms.

She started Googling some more to see, did some little gnome, the little Rothschild gnome go and take every single book and repaint it, and or was she living a lie? was she living in a different reality and or the far least likely she just misremembered it. And she's freaking out and she can't even fall asleep because, though it's a seemingly

inconsequential, tiny change in one letter, it is somehow so emotionally powerful that it makes her feel like the universe isn't what she thought and so she can't sleep. That was awesome.

But I have a question. I still am dubious that anyone thinks It remembers it as Baron Stain. And, like, if someone does, could we interview them and, like, put them in an fM or I and try to find where the outlet in their robot head is? This feels like it's a job for invisibilia, not for reply, y'all. I would want to hear, though, if somebody, if there is a kid who grew up, you know,

everything else the same, but Baron Stain was normal of them, I would be very happy if they emailed us at least. So we're at yes, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. We got one more yes than you usually do. Yeah. All right, you guys.

This was so fun. Thank you. Yeah, that was fun. Bye. Bye. Coming up after the break, a desperate man looks for the undo button on his life. A desperate man named Alex Goldman. Welcome back to the show.

In our second half, we're going to start with a story from one of my favorite comedians. His name is Max Silvestri. And it's about making a mistake online. Just a warning, if you are listening with kids, now it would be a good time to stop. Here's Max. Okay. So this is kind of sad. I mostly use my email for notes to myself.

Probably 50% of my email is like reminders to myself or like grocery lists that I take to the store. And I use it a lot for stand-up. I never carry paper with me because I'm a stand-up comedian, like things happen in life where you want to remember. What I do is I write myself and you know. email if like something weird or funny happens with the subject line to do so that I know that like when I am sitting down to write stand up I go through all the emails from myself with to do I have like a little label for them and I go through and I try to like write out the bit do you have any of these that you can read off your phone I just like want an idea of what yeah totally write you right to

yourself one is two hospital beds instead of a couch that is like about how that's funny my girlfriend and I were talking about getting a sex sectional couch, you know, like an L shape because we just watch so much TV that we want to actually lie down. But then we were arguing about like, well, who will get the lie down part? And she was like, I'm always going to get it. I'm sorry. And I was like, well, maybe we should get like a Ush sectional so that we have like two shases so we can always both be lying down. And then she's like, I don't even know if that's a thing. And why are we getting the little connecting part in the middle? And what I realized we were arguing for is two hospital beds. We want a sectional, no middle part

that goes up and down and you can change the sheets and has a guard. real so you don't fall off. So my home office is my bedroom, and I live right next to an elementary school. And when I say right next to, I mean, like, I'm on the second floor in the back of a building, probably 10 feet away is their playground. And it's like all I hear all day long, all I'm trying to write, is kids at play, and what kids at play sound like is just constantly, constantly. And it doesn't seem negative.

I don't think it's like a bad school. but it's like it's kind of like bird song. I think it's how they talk to one another because they'll all be just screaming and looking. They'll be like touching involved, but sometimes I feel like they're like telling each other things. So they'll be like, and then like two kids will switch groups

and it feels like something was accomplished. And then after like 45 minutes, the bell goes off, they go inside and another class comes out. So they just start screaming again. So like during the school year from basically like September and June when I'm trying to like write and work in my apartment, all I hear is kids screaming.

And if you were a freelancer and spent a lot of time alone in your apartment, sometimes you take breaks. I take a sort of break often where I masturbate. I have nothing to be ashamed of, Alex. I agree. But so when it comes time to take this break, and I'm not saying it's scheduled, but it's like a mid-afternoon thing, these kids are always outside screaming.

So I've realized I had this ritual to like prepare the room for blocking them out. So I would put music on so I wouldn't hear the screams. and then I would close the curtains. So I was doing these two things, the noise and the curtains with startling regularity. And I was like, this is ridiculous. I need to make a joke out of this because this is so embarrassing that I have like a little routine before I masturbate. So I took my phone out and I sent myself a quick email that was the subject line to do. and then the body was closed curtains

before jerking off in front of children. And that's a brisk sentence, but it's just for me to remember, you know? So I sent it, and I was like, I'll hopefully make a story out of that. And then, like, a few days later, I was, like, looking through all my, like, to do things to, like, write a bit.

So I searched, and it did pop up in my sent items, but this has never happened before. I had not sent it to myself. Gmail, I guess, in my hurry to get this email sent, had not auto-completed my own name, Max Silvestri, it had auto-completed another Max that was in my contacts, who I don't even really speak with.

This makes me feel, I just feel so queasy right now. I feel sick to my stomach. Even if I was like, no, I was just writing a joke about how I closed the curtains before I jerk off in front of it. Like, that's not a, you wouldn't be like, oh, no, no, no, no, yeah, totally. Totally, I get that. We all do that. And he did not do me the courtesy of replying,

and then I realized he'd unfriended me on Facebook. Have you written drafts of the email that you want to send him? Yeah, exactly. I had like, like, I could have just replied to the one I sent, being like, hey, but I got as far as, hey. So he's out there in New York. You could run into him at any moment. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I'm moving to Los Angeles soon, and I feel like probably a large reason is just that I never run into him ever again. Because I think maybe I'm willing to tell the story and put it out there. I feel like this is the only way to dissolve the tension with him is just be like, hey, this is what the misunderstanding comes from. I can't handle emailing you directly about it having to explain my thought process. But now I've worked it out. You know, I've used this mic here as like therapy. So that was very bad. I mean, it was worse than bad.

Okay, yeah, it's worse than bad. And it actually reminds me of an Alex Goldman story that I don't think you've ever talked about on the radio. Yeah, it's a little painful to talk about on the radio, to be honest, which is, I assume, why you're bringing it up. That is partly true. But also, I think that the same way that Max's story feels like a real-life waking nightmare,

yours has that same quality. And we've been working on this new segment called Undo, Undo, Undo, where we want our listeners to send in stories of the worst single accidental moment where they sent an email that they shouldn't have or posted something that they shouldn't have, the thing that they most want to take back. And I don't think it's fair to ask other people to give us their stories of that if you're not willing to tell your story of that. So I think you have to tell your story of that. All right. So I had just broken up with a girl that I'd been that I'd been dating for. Okay, let me start over. How old were you that this happened?

So I was 20, I was in my early 20s. It was the AOL Instant Messenger era. I was living in a college town. And I had just broken up with a woman and I had started dating a new woman fairly shortly afterward. Like a few months? No. Like a couple weeks. Oh, geez.

I knew that. So I was doing what I always did at the time, which was login. to AOL and chat at my friends. And if my friends weren't there, leave them long soliloquies that they could respond to when they show up. And I went to chat one of my friends and tell him sort of, you know,

my psychological status at the time. Like how I felt about my previous relationship, how I felt about this current relationship, all the complicated emotions I had about having broken up with someone and all the excitement I had about dating someone new. And how were you feeling about your ex and how were you feeling about the person

you were currently dating? I was feeling guilt about my ex-girlfriend. I was feeling very excited about the current relationship. And, you know, it's all complicated. It was one of those complicated situations where you feel sad about something ending and simultaneously excited about something beginning. And I dumped all of this information onto AOL, onto AOM.

I got up. I went to get something from the fridge or use the bathroom or something. I don't remember. I sat back down and looked at the screen and realized that I had sent this not to my friend, but to my ex-girlfriend. I had sent her all this information about how I felt about her, about this new relationship she had no idea about, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack. Jesus Christ. And it was just sort of hanging there.

She had not responded to it. it was like it was like a bomb in free fall that had not yet detonated but at any moment she could just walk to her computer and she would see all of this so how did you come clean

like what kind of email did you send her apologizing oh my God why are you doing this to me this is the worst this makes me want to die so I I lived in a college town and it was small

and she did not live far away so rather than being a normal human being and coming clean and maybe having a conversation that might have brought some closure to our relationship, or at least made me seem somewhat respectable. I just, I ran over to her house, I knocked on her door, and for the life of me, I cannot remember what I said, but I basically got into her house on false pretenses. Did she let you in, or did someone else let you? She let me in. She lived alone. So I got it, I knocked on her door, and I told her, and I said, we need to talk. And it was clear to me by her.

her demeanor that she had not yet seen this I am. Like I was okay. I came in and I talked to her for a minute and then I said I needed to use the bathroom. And I went to the bathroom and on my way back from the bathroom, I went into her study, turned on her monitor and closed the I.M window. That's amazing. It's not amazing. It's like such a chump move.

The whole thing is so bad. Like it just makes me feel so terrible. Like you wish that you'd been more. straightforward or whatever. Either I wish I'd been smarter in the first place or if I had done it, like, I could have just owned up to it and not been such like a weasel that I had

to sneak into someone's house. So we're kind of on the hunt now, right? Like, we want to find, we want to find out if there's a story that is as bad or worse than either of these. Like, like, the world is vast and infinite and, like, people's capacity for mistakes is

even larger. I just want to know if there is anybody who listens to a show who can say like something like this happened to me, but it was much, much worse than a message that causes you to break and enter and commit computer crimes. Yeah, so we want your stories of a mistake that you made in an instant online. It doesn't have to be sexual or about a relationship.

It doesn't even have to be an email that went to the wrong place. If you've had one of these moments, you already know what we're talking about. So if you do have one of these, record a voice memo of yourself on your phone and send it to undo at gimletmedia.com. That's our preference only because the sound quality is better. If you don't have a smartphone, call our voicemail at 9-17-475-6668.

I never even considered that I was committing a computer crime. Do you think the statute of limitations is passed on that? How long ago is it? Over 10 years ago, probably 12, 13. Statute of limitations, computer fraud, and abuse acts. Oh, there's a two-year statute of limitations. All right. Reply is me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman.

We're produced by Tim Howard, Struthie Permananey, and Fia Bennon. Production held this week from Sylvie Douglas. We were engineered by Rick Kwan. If you cannot get enough of me and Alex, we dropped in on BuzzFeed's Internet Explorer podcast this week. It was really fun. You should go give it a listen. Matt Lieber is a night to yourself, just long enough.

so you remember you like other people. Our theme music is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Buildings. Our Matt Leaver this week was from Lulu Miller, who sent us an email full of great ones. You can find more episodes of our show at iTunes.com slash replyall and at replyall.ro. Thanks for listening.

We'll see you next Wednesday.