Reply All - #59 Good Job, Alex

Episode Date: March 24, 2016

This week, Alex tries to solve a problem and PJ insults him. Also the return of Email Debt Forgiveness Day. If you’re thinking about sending an email, or if you receive an email for Email Debt Forgiveness day, tell us about it by emailing [e-mail]. We might end up contacting you to appear on the show! Together, we can all make our inboxes less stressful for another year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is just a quick language advisory for this episode. Throughout the course of recording this story, every single person, both hosts and guests, use the word barter when they meant bargain. We know that it's wrong. We won't do it again. Please don't email us about it. All right. Enjoy the show. From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Bow. All right, it's time for me to put on my khakis, lace up my loafers, and crawl under someone's desk.

because it's time for super tech support. All right, PJ, so here's the deal. Are you ready? Yes. I got an email from a woman named Elisa Libby. She works at a college, but in her spare time, she is a young adult writer. And she had a website that she had made to basically promote her writing. Okay.

Elisa Libby.com. Very natural. Makes sense. Yes. Hi, is this Lisa? Yes, Alisa. This is Alex. How are you?

Good. How are you? I am good. Well, first of all, could you do me a favor and just tell me what happened with the... So Elisa emailed me and said, what would you say to a person that has done the ultimate stupid thing? So I was thinking, wow. So Elisa had this website. She had it professionally designed many moons ago when it was still really hard to design a website.

So she had someone to design it for her. Like HTML days. Yes. But it was sort of clunky and difficult to use. So she started getting notices from GoDaddy, and she was just like, fine. This thing can expire. But the thing is that she didn't quite understand what would happen when you let your domain name expire. I think she just assumed that the site itself would go away, but nothing would happen to the domain name.

Like, she could come back to it whenever she wanted. Mm-mm. Are you saying no, she didn't think that or no, that's not what happens? I'm saying the things she believed in the past was not true. Right. It didn't occur to me that now, you know, my URL is out there and I write YA novels. So like any teenager who clicks on that link, like now I'm afraid of where they'll end up and I'd feel horrible. Suddenly there's this website out there, which is her first and last name, which is being used by some other person.

And her big fear basically was like at any moment, suddenly alisa Libby.com could become some kind of porn site. Yeah. that's not what happened. What happened was immediately after her domain name expired. It was just bought. And then, well, I can just show you what it looks like. Why don't we just go to the website? Wow.

Okay. Would you care to describe this? It's a grayscale website. All the text is in, I think, Japanese? It's Japanese. And then there's a happy-looking white man wearing a tuxedo and doffing his top hat, which he's wearing. That is so funny.

Oh, and the gray skull pictures are of bow ties. So I translated this. I used to Google Translate, and it's kind of hard for me to figure out exactly what it's about, but it's about web marketing. It's all in all caps at the top. It just says,

Disadvantages of web marketing, and then right below it says, there's a disadvantage to web marketing. It's funny that it's like spam that's about spam. Do you know what I mean? It's spam that's decrying spam. Oh, right. Yeah, that's good. I appreciate their sense of irony, this Japanese-speaking spammer. And of course, we've talked about something like this on the show before. There's this whole

class of people who make a living, buying websites when they expire, and often selling them back to the previous owners at hugely inflated prices. And it can get very tense and very ugly. And you don't know who to trust. You might remember. Previously, and reply all. So we get this email from him. And it says we now received an unsolicited offer from a brand protection agency for this domain for $7,500. We said, okay, $8,000. That's more. He says, okay.

Then he goes back to them. Then he says the offer is 10. So now we're in a bidding war. If you don't remember this episode, two guys, Max Zelensky and Aaron Lamer, we're interested in buying the website longform.com. But just by emailing questions to the owner about that domain, it caused the price of the domain to skyrocket. So getting your domain back can be tricky, and Elisa didn't know what to do. And the thing about Elisa is, A, she doesn't have thousands of dollars to buy a domain,

and B, she thinks that it's gross to pay someone a bunch of money for something that she basically thinks was stolen from her. What does a reasonable price sound like to you? Oh, that is tough to answer. I'd be willing to pay $50. That's probably very lame, isn't it? I mean, I don't know. It's not so lame.

Here's what I was thinking. Like a brand new domain costs like $10, right? Yeah. So if you say to this guy who snatched up your domain, like, look, I'll give you $100. You're giving him 10 times his investment. Yeah. I'm sure there are very few other Elisa Libby's out there trying to get the Elisa Libby.com. I would be very surprised if there were.

Okay, I think I'd be okay with 100. Could you barter? Are you going to barter on my behalf? Or are you just going to say, hey, 100, take it or leave it? Oh, I will barter. Okay. We'll see what I can do. I'll be honest with you. I'm not known for my bartering skills, but we'll see what happens.

My plan was actually pretty simple. I was just going to figure out who owned the website. so that I could do an end run around those auction sites and just appeal to that person's better nature to sell it back to Elisa at a reasonable price. Okay. So one of the best ways to find out who owns a website is to go to what is called a who is record.

It's a record that's associated with every website on the internet, and it's supposed to tell you who owns the website. It's like a deed for a website. Kind of. The problem is that a lot of them are either inaccurate or they are just protected, so you can't see who owns them. But that wasn't the case with the person who bought Elisa Lippie's website.

It was a gentleman named Monahouhaga, who lives in Singapore. Huh. Did it have a phone number? It did. Really? It had a phone number. It had an address. And I looked up Monahouhaga on the Internet.

Is that a common name or an uncommon name? He's the only one I have found. Huh. And it looked as though he was a Japanese speaker based on his Facebook. Hello? Uh, is Manahohaga there? No. Do I have the right number?

Uh, yeah, you have to write number. Uh, okay. Um, but he's not there right now. No. Okay. Uh, I will try back later. Thank you very much. Patricia. Thanks, bye-bye. Bye. She sounds so suspect. She sounds like, no, she doesn't sound suspect. She sounds suspicious.

That's what I meant. She sounds so suspicious. Yeah, because a dude just called her not explaining what he wanted. asking about somebody. Do you know how stressed out that would make you if that happened to you? Particularly if they're calling

from very far away. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I would be kind of interested assuming I got into person. No, you would not be interested. I have seen the anxious way you crawl through the world. You're not like, oh man,

something I don't understand. It's probably good and interesting. You would be mad. Before you knew what was going on, you would just be mad. You would have been like, how'd you get this number? So,

Oh my God, we are really getting in the weeds here. No, you're so weird. So, Manahou was not there. Manahua was not there. Just forging on. Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to get bogged down in this. Manahua was not there, but I knew I had the right number. Uh-huh.

So I decided to try calling back a couple days later. What's the time difference? The time difference is, well, it was before daylight saving, so it was 13 hours. They're 13 hours ahead of us. So when do you call? Because if you call in the... I was calling at 6 a.m.

on the impression that they would be probably at their house. So were you waking up early to do this? Yes. And I woke up early several times. The next time I called, this is what happened. Hi, hello. I'm trying to reach Minahoehaga. No.

No? Minahouhaga is not there? No. Where do you call? Do you talking about the website? Yeah, I'm talking about websites, yes. Sorry, we have already website department. Thank you.

Oh, I'm trying to buy a website. Oh, you mean you want to buy our website? Not your website, a website. I found a website that is owned by Minahouhaga. Could you please send email first? Yeah, what is the e-mail? Info at zombie.net. Zombie?

Zombie. Z-O-M-B-I-E? Yes. Info at zombie.net. Yes. Okay, thank you. Thank you. You didn't say hello?

So what? So what? It's a human being. So what? Is this entire thing going to be about how I'm a weirdo? You're like nerd detective Alex Goldman. Like you just show up and you're like, I'm here about a website. Yeah, I'm like the worst Philip Marlowe.

Yeah. If I can be perfectly honest with you, it is all nerves. I find it very anxiety-inducing. You don't sound nervous. Oh, that's good. You sound creepy. Well, that's not great. If I had to choose between the two,

God, that's a tough call. Nervous or creepy? I think I'm going to go with creepy. Really? We are at once again. No, this is it, man. This is it. We're going down a rabbit hole.

The rabbit hole is where we go. So, info at zombie. Wait, knock, knock. Who's there? Website design. Website design, who? I didn't say hello because I'm Alex Goldman. So info at zombie.

dot net. I emailed it and it's not a real email address. Really? Yeah, it's not real. I think that that was like legitimate language barrier, a guy trying to get me off the phone. I think I misheard him and he was just like, yes, fine, go away. So I knew that if I was going to do this, I needed to actually get the services of an interpreter. So I contacted Ayakato, who's helped us in the past. And I is a total saint because basically I was like, here's what we need to do. We need to wake up every morning at 6 a.m. Call Singapore in the hopes of reaching

Manahu Haga. So this is this morning. This morning? Yes. Okay, this is 6.30 in the morning. I think this is attempt

number seven or eight. You sound like you're about to try to record a ghost. Good morning. Good morning. Today's the day. I can feel it. It is the day. That's Ayah.

It has to be. Yeah, it has to be. Thanks so much for doing this. Give me just a second. I'm just going to get this guy's number in here, and then we'll give him a call. You sound so tired. Your voice is like 30 octaves lower. I was exhausted.

Uh-huh. All right, we're dialing. Hi, my-huh. Oh, my-mish. Ha'ahsandesio? Uh, yeah. No, no, I'm not... Oh, so you know,

I'm from New York from, you know, she's but I'm saying, I'm trying to tell me, I'm taking, right, right, right, right, so, right, so, um,

Arisa Libby. I don't know if you heard it, but she's just, just asked about the domain of Lisa Libby, I'll play it back for you. Uh, uh, Arisa Libby. Raleigh.com of a little to talk to

talk to call to call Alisa Alisa Ribi dot com the web

The world is so big and weird Okay now I should note that as you know we're big

fans of hold music in this office Yes I previously in a previous super tech

support I found the best hold music Yes this is the worst old music

Wait he has personal at his home hold music when he puts people on hold? I'm getting there. Okay.

So he put us on hold, and this is what I heard. But you know this song. What is this song? Brow, I hate the song. I'm so with you. This is the worst whole music.

It's like a parade in hell. Okay, so turns out the gentleman that we were talking to is not Manahouhaga. Really? Yes. Here's the deal.

You remember how in the episode that we referred to earlier, where we were trying to get the longform.org website, we eventually ran into a guy whose name was Michael Birkins, who sold maybe 100 websites a year, but they were all very high value. Yeah. So Michael Burkins is like a big shot in the domain world. But Manahouhaga, you could think of him as sort of like the owner of a giant thrift store,

because he flips this equation. He buys websites that are of pretty low value, but he buys thousands of them. Okay. So he's the owner of about 11,000 domains. Wow. So is this like one of his guys? This is someone who works for him. And that's why we got hold music.

Because I'm calling an office. I'm not calling Manao's house. Right, because it's nighttime there. I can hear other people at his office. Yeah, you can hear people in the background. Other podcasts calling for other domain names. Can you know, how much of the money,

so you talk to you, so you talk to you, oh, what was that? She got excited. uh... uh... paypal pay pay pay for you

you know a cut out of you know US dollars hi paypal there alex

yes so he said we can buy four hundred dollars by um paypal that's great okay um

can you ask Did you try and barter with him at all? Is there any way we can go cheaper than that? Oh, let me show. Oh, thank you. She's bartering? I asked her if we could get it for any cheaper. Oh, my God.

Okay, I'm a bit too difficult. Yeah, it's a $100. Okay, it's a deal. So we got the domain back from a Naho Haga. What's happening now is in a couple of hours. hours, they're going to, they're going to issue an authorization code that will allow me to transfer the domains to ownership. Uh-huh.

And what I want to do is transfer the domain's ownership to Elisa and then redirect ElisaLivie. com to like a Tumblr page of you and me with, that says, we got your domain back. Why do you want to do that? Because then I can get her on the phone and say, can you go look at your website? And it will be a nice surprise. Okay. Feels a little self-aggrandizing as all. I was thinking that we could do like Hulk Hogan muscles.

Like we're... The look on your face. The look on your face is amazing. Like, you hire somebody to fix something for you. They fix it, but like they're so proud of themselves. Like, they're like, hey, I found the car. But guess what else? I spray painted my face on it because I'm the best.

and this is definitely about me. Just give the lady her domain back. You don't have to write yourself an ode. We can make a teller page, whatever. So, yeah, I'm really proud of this one. Yeah, that's very obvious. Why can't you just say good job? Because you do such a good job saying it to yourself.

Hey, we were able to negotiate this painful divorce settlement for you. And also, I wrote a song about what a great lawyer I am. There are a lot of times our reporting just leads us down blind alleys and we never get anywhere. Uh-huh. This feels like getting somewhere and I feel really happy about it. That's totally fair. You should go to jail. You know what?

You don't deserve to be on the web page. I'm going to do it by myself. Cool. Because I'm the only person who ever congratulates me on anything anyway. Good job, Alex. God. That's so real. Hello, this is Elisa. Hi, Lisa, it's Alex Goldman. How are you?

I'm good. How are you? I am good. So, are you at a place where you can open up Elisa Libby.com? Just take a look at it. Yeah, yeah. Hold on one sec. Hey, Lisa. I got your website back. It's a photo of my smiling face. Yeah, that's awesome.

Oh, my God. So. I'm so impressed I'm so thankful I said to PJ Hey we should make a website where we are smiling on it and say we got your website back

and he was like You're such a narcissist Why don't you just give her Her domain back you weirdo And I was like Don't you think that would be funny? No I think it's funny Okay great

That's what I wanted to hear I'm really excited to rub that in his face Yeah It is funny And frankly it will As it would be confusing maybe for people expecting to see a young adult author, and instead seeing someone just smiling maniacally,

sorry, but kind of maniacally, like it might inspire me to actually put something here, you know, like something about my books. Elisa Libby is the author of the novels The Kings Rose and the Blood Confession and the owner of Elisa Libby.com. If you want to see what Elisa's website used to look like, or if you want to see my grinning maniacal face, at the moment you won't see either at elisa liby.com,

but you can go to replyall.fail, where we will have posted links to both. Coming up after the break, it's that time of year again. Alex. Yes. Do you remember last year when we invented a holiday? Yeah, how could I forget? We invented a holiday. That's like a big thing.

It's the type of thing you remember. Yeah. So do you want to remind people what it was? We invented a holiday. And to be perfectly fair, I think that this was mostly. your invention because it speaks to a problem that I have. Your deepest anxieties. Called email debt forgiveness day.

It is April 30th and it is a day where you are allowed to send an email no matter how late it is as though no time has passed. So if you are 10 months overdue on an email on April 30th, email debt forgiveness day, you can send that email. No apologies. No guilt. When you think about who you would want a message on email debt forgiveness day, I don't care if it's an email or a text message or whatever.

Like, what comes to mind for you? Like, what has been festering for you? My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Lothar. Wow. She was super cool. She, like, recognized in me, things in my personality that I think are so fundamental that, like, I and no one else really recognized at the time. Like what? Like, my obsession with, like, dumb pop culture and...

In fourth grade? Yeah. She, like, encouraged me to sort of go down those rabbit holes a little bit. She encouraged me when I was, I was really in the Rolling Stones at the time. She was like, yeah, yeah, here's a book about the Rolling Stones. You should read up on them and learn all about their albums and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's great. And she was great.

And generally, every couple of years or so, I will send her an email, which is like, hey, just want to let you know where I am, how I'm doing, what I'm up to. Uh-huh. Who was the last person to send an email between the two of you? Like, did she send you an email on you after hanging? She sent me an email, which was sort of a response to mine, which was like, this is what I'm up to it. so great to hear from you and probably asked a couple questions. I haven't spoken to her since reply all started. Why not? Because it's like usually the emails that you send on email debt forgiveness day are the ones that require a lot more brain power and emotion than the stuff that

you dash off during a normal day. So like every time I'm like, I should sit down and write that. I don't have the energy for it. So who are you planning on sending something to? You know what? I actually have a lot of, I have a lot of people where, so I'm really weird over email, which is to say, like, I won't answer, but then I'll answer. Like, for instance, people will send his email and say they want advice about doing podcasting stuff. A lot of times I'll just be too busy. I won't email back. And then, like, the fourth person, I'll send them, like, a six-paragraph essay about what I think they should do. And it's, like, very intense. And I think they're surprised. And then they'll be like, thank you. And one more question. And then, like, I'll never show up again. So I'd actually like to

just do cleanup on a bunch of times where I had like a really emotional back and forth with the person and then like didn't actually just finish it. I think it would be very confusing to be on the other end of that. Yeah. Yeah. It's not like you're doing the fade away. No. It's like I'm coming on too strong and then

disappearing. Huh. Yeah, there's actually a bunch of those. I'm starting to think about it and my stomach is starting to like vinegar. And actually some of my worst debt isn't even email. Like voicemail. Voicemail is really bad.

I have 384 Unlistened to voicemails. I think I have 85 and 85 voicemails. Oh, that's Bush League. And a lot of them are just from my grandmother who I know is just going to be like, call me back, sweetie, I love you,

which is great, but I can just call her back. But you don't listen to the voicemail. Right. I actually have a solution for that. I found this app, this free app called No VM that disables your voicemail. So I'm not getting any more stuff there. My dad was like, did you disable your voice?

And I was like, yes, yes, I did. Wow. What happens when does it just never pick up? It rings forever. Okay, so last year when we did email debt for your own to say, it turned out to be exciting for people in a way that we hadn't really anticipated. Like, I don't think we'd realized how many people had the same problems that we do. And we kept hearing from people afterwards who were upset that they'd missed it.

So if you want to do it this year, here's how it works. It's very straightforward. If you have some sort of message you've been putting off, on April 30th, send it. We're going to have a, on our blog on the website, replyall.como, there will be just like a thing describing what email debt forgiveness day is. You can just include a link to that and then include that in your email and people will click the link and they'll know what's going on. And also, in the run-up, if there's something that you're particularly agonizing over, something that feels surprising or just insane, get in touch with us about it.

Just send us an email at reply all at gimbledmedia.com. In the subject line, put email debt forgiveness day and tell us what you're worried about. And if you need help, ask via email. PJ won't answer. I'll answer. That's actually true. Box email opened and read. The thought of writing backfill.

You keep on until replying feels impossible. What will they say if there's several months have gone? You'll feel no shame and you'll get no blame. Email debt forgiveness day, oh yeah. Everybody else's inbox is the same. Email debt forgiveness day, oh, yeah. The email debt forgiveness day anthem was written and performed by the very talented Matt Farley. He's written songs about basically every single thing on earth.

And if you'd like to commission an ode, he takes custom song orders. Reply All is me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. We were produced this week by Tim Howard, Truthy Pinnaminani, and Fia Benin. Production assistance from Mervin de Gagnos. We were edited by Peter Clowney and mixed by Rick Kwan. Matt Lieber is one more hour of sleep. Special thanks this week to Ayacato.

Our theme music is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Buildings. You can find more episodes of the show at iTunes.com slash Reply All. you can find this week's episode in article form on dig.com, and our website is replyall.com. Thank you for listening. We will see you next Wednesday. You had the chance to help,

and you did not refuse it. You suffered through some unbearable hold music. You got off early to use the phone with somebody in a far-off time zone because you wanted to retrieve elisa libby.com. And I'm here. to tell you Alex Goldman you did it that's right Alex you did a good job