Sad Boyz - Being a Fan w/ Lauren Shippen

Episode Date: May 14, 2018

Today on Sad Boyz we're joined by self-proclaimed EP, Lauren Shippen, to talk about being a big 'ol fan of things. We discuss how our personalities tend to play out in the media that we like and how discussing our fandom with other people has helped us understand ourselves a bit better. With Lauren this started in fan fiction communities, for Jordan it was video game reviewers and for Jarvis it was basically everything under the sun because he has no chill.   Also in this episode, Jordan watches Seinfeld for the first time. Lauren offers a theory of how the story of the boyz will end and Jarvis has an awkward run-in with a hotel bellhop.   Oh and we talk a lot about hamilton

oh hey uh jarvis jarvis yeah that's right that's me what the fuck are you doing in my house my name is javaris johansson i'm your great great great great grandson what i'm here to tell you oh my god i'm here from the future to tell you that you need to open Twitter DMs so that listeners of the Sad Boys podcast can contact the show to talk about whatever they want, whether it's a topic of interest to them, something they want us to talk about, or maybe even just like the homework that we set for that week. Yeah, I turned on Twitter DMs last week, man.

Huh? They've been on since last week so that so if say like a fan wanted to write in with a question or a topic they wanted to talk about they could just do that right now yeah we've already had a few people write in i oh um so the wait you're from the future yeah it cost a cost a lot of money and lives to get me here i have so many questions yeah uh it's i i don't want to get into it right now i'm kind of in the dumps actually um so one of the trade-offs was that i would dissolve after about 45 seconds wait no please am i gonna be alone forever welcome to sad boys a podcast about feelings and other things also i'm jarvis and i'm jordan and i'm your biggest fan yes wow what an appropriate

i i'm so oh my god this is so awkward i was actually talking to lauren oh hi yeah hello we are my biggest fan today we are joined by the wonderful lauren chippin to discuss fandom yes very excited about this now would you be down to basically run the episode today? Oh, God. I don't know that I can live up to the expectation that Sad Voice has set. We're a little sleepy. We've flown from SF to LA,

so we've all got jet lag for obvious reasons. Sure, yeah. That's a major time zone shift. We're just looking for an opportunity to not do work and instead put that on someone else. Yeah. Okay, I can try and do this. Okay.

So, Jarvis. Yes. How was your week? So on someone else. Yeah. Okay. I can try and do this. Okay. So Jarvis, how was your week? So bad. Wow. Just not good. Didn't get it. What do you think? Didn't do it.

Okay. What do you think? We just ask these contrived questions every episode? We have a clearly structured show that flows seamlessly from segment to segment and does not deviate into weird rambling. Okay. I've never listened, so I wouldn't know.

I would recommend it jaron joined us on a previous episode where we talked about social anxiety a topic you were surprisingly very eloquent about if you can believe it um because i was just playing dead the whole time that was actually an episode that we've gotten a lot of really positive feedback a lot of people writing in and talking about how it made them feel less alone. I love that. And so we thought we might mine you today, Lauren, for something that you are also very knowledgeable about. Being a dork. Being a huge nerd.

How do you get to that nerd town? What did we call your apartment last time we were here? I believe it was a love letter to fandom. I think so. A love letter to fandom fandom we are currently surrounded on all sides by by fandom yes i we are looking at four harry potter prints there's a lot of harry potter stuff there's a bunch of peter wodehouse quotes on the wall there's yeah a bunch of fan art of my own podcast which is hugely narcissistic which is I love it. Which is great. That was the most narcissistic part.

And you just inserted yourself as all of the characters. Yes, exactly. That was pretty weird. It's a weird family Thanksgiving dinner situation where you're all the faces. Dozens of Lauren. Is there anybody foolish enough to not know who you are? Yes, I would love to explain. What is this show we're talking about? What do you do?

What are you? What am I? I am a to explain. What is this show we're talking about? What do you do? What are you? What am I? I am a human person. Last I checked. So, you know, you never know. I make a podcast called The Bright Sessions, which is a science fiction audio drama about people with supernatural abilities in therapy.

And so it is, yeah, it's people having feelings and struggling with things like telepathy and time travel and as we all have it's very relatable because i am a person who goes to therapy and i don't have any superpowers yeah yeah so there's a form of escapism there but also a form of uh relatability do you think you could broach that topic like you walk in you see your therapist you're like okay so this is gonna sound nuts you start delivering the first episode script yeah i keep traveling in time it's really weird weirdest thing and then you can gauge whether or not they're a fan of the podcast right well i it's

so funny because i obviously like do talk to my therapist about the podcast a lot because it's a it's my entire life essentially and the essentially yeah a lot of my anxiety and well and she's it's so funny because it's like she's been with me pretty much since the since the beginning right and so she's sort of seen this show grow and you know and as all these various things have come and she said to me like a couple months ago she was like i want to listen because it sounds like you know it's doing really well and it's you know people like it but she's i don't know if it's ethical for me to listen yeah she feels conflicted about that yeah so she hasn't listened i have a story about this that's like such a good excuse to not

listen to your shitty show yeah oh me too oh god i want to but like ethically you're a guest on my show yeah um no i have recently like had a so for the past year i've been seeing the same therapist so that's going to change because they're a student uh and so they're moving on they're like graduating and going to do a thing but part of the reason of me getting into it was like oh this person's pretty far along in their studies and all of my issues are going to be reviewed by multiple people like i would love a team of uh mental health experts telling me uh giving me advice um but my uh therapist has also seen like my sort of me talking about how i'm spending all this time doing this stuff but then it's like not really popping off the way i want and how it's like come to you

know going to like more and how recently things have been picking up a little bit more and but differently she's been like would it be okay with you if I like actually like listen to your podcast and that was interesting I don't she never I never followed up on it I don't want to I don't want to know but right well because

I feel like for sad boys it is you guys talking about your thoughts and feelings about things yes and so she's jealous on the one I'm getting all the good dish yeah this is Jordan exclusive content so good but it is one of those things where

it's like that's probably stuff that your therapist is maybe aware of or you would talk to them about yeah I think that there is a lot of stuff in the bright sessions that comes from my own struggles with mental health and things in my life but there's also a lot of it that's just pure fabrication and i don't want to say i was listening to and then being like so what was that about are you okay like no that was just pure fiction that's tough

yeah because it's yeah did you have an experience with therapy prior to starting the show? Not really, actually. So my sister is a psychologist, and so I've had a lot of conversations with her and read a lot of things about psychology as sort of an academic pursuit, I guess. Right, right. And I had probably in my life been to maybe like seven or eight therapy sessions over the course of my life. Not yours, ones you just kind of barged in i'm looking for inspiration yeah but then actually doing the show i i after the first season the first nine episodes um were were written and recorded i sort of had the realization that i should give it a whirl and that i should actually like practice what i what i preach so i ended up

finding this therapist and that's i've now been there for two years attending therapy impact the way you wrote dr bright or i guess the situation a little bit yeah well what was particularly weird is because my sister has reviewed a lot of the scripts and has told me about how to write therapy right well sometimes i'll be in like i went to my first therapy session with my therapist that I have now and she literally it's a part of like a larger like teaching institute and so they actually do record all of their sessions

and there's a clock that is on her wall that like ticks and I sort of walked in that space and I was like oh this feels like I've walked into my own show and there have been things that we've done that I will appear in the podcast and then we'll do them in therapy and it's affirming because it's like okay like you know i was on the right track but that's coming more from my sister and just her um professional expertise rather than like right right right cool yeah that's cool

patron only content right here so um the so today we're talking about fandom. And the reason that that is the topic is, I think, twofold. One, we've all had an experience being members of fan communities. And I can only speak for myself, but it has been a huge part of shaping who I am in the world today, for sure. Yeah. How about you, Jordan? Oh, yeah, most definitely. I would say that I am at this point in my life in my early 20s, mid-20s, Jesus,

in two days pushing one year further. Yeah. Well, you're like, you're turning 24, right? I'm turning 24. You're turning 41. Yeah. I'm turning 26. Wow.

You look terrible. I am the oldest person here that is i just turned 27 feeling very old right now wow yeah you were 26 before that um i think so yeah can you tell jarvis any tips um it's pretty good i like being 26 awesome yeah looking forward to it and for 24 yikes well you've gotten through 23 and i feel like 23 was the worst uh yeah nobody likes you in your 23 exactly blink 182 warned us and we should have listened i don't know about you i didn't like being 22 blink 182 blink 182 has warned us about a lot i mean nobody likes you when you're 23 uh they they reminded us about all the small things that aliens are real wake up sheeple um uh no but seriously tom delong has gone off the deep end and it's gone too long it's like a real yeah tom has gone the long way out there and second we

specifically lauren uh and and very much in like a budding way uh for for us have started to form our own communities around the content that we're creating um and i thought it would be really cool to talk about that and and the uh the effect that it continues to have on on us and the way that we continue to exist in those communities yeah particularly since i think my both of our model and i assume in your case as well especially during the meteoric rise of the bright sessions um i have to assume that like all of us have had that sensation of okay my frame of reference for what a fandom is is x creator and as soon as i get to that creator that's when i'm officially a creator yeah prior to having that kind of fan base with that style of interaction yeah i don't count but i can think

of like five or six podcasts that I'm obsessed with that until I receive that kind of feedback, it's just a little thing I do with my buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, interesting. What are the podcasts that you feel like you need to reach to? So the goal for me would always be You Made It Weird. Yeah. You Made It Weird was maybe, in fact, the first podcast I think I ever really listened

to. I got really into it. Anybody who doesn't know is Pete Holmes' show. Right. He interviews various celebrities from popular culture, predominantly comedians and or philosophers here and there. Yeah, yeah. Very interesting show, especially since it's presented through Pete's lens, who himself

has a very interesting experience with all aspects of popular culture and philosophy and lifestyle. But it's also like a fun chronology of his life. The show kicks off around about the point where he's made some pretty significant lifestyle changes. Yeah. of his life the show kicks off around about the point where he's made some pretty significant lifestyle changes yeah and has now reached the point where he is i believe almost married or married already i think he's married yeah yeah he met his to be wife got engaged and got married on the show wow having struggled with that throughout the tenure of the podcast there's also so jordan and i have a lot of similarities uh oh name 15 one of them is that we both

independently were fans of this podcast for a long time. And one thing that's super interesting is how you can also see the arcs of the people who are on the show and Pete's friends like Kumail Nanjiani. He's the first guest on You Made It Weird when it premiered in like 2012, 2011. And prior to that i like listened to camille's podcast that he did with his wife emily called the indoor kids and to see where they are now it's like if you go back and listen to that episode which i have he's talking about how there's this like very personal story that he's like working on a script for and it's like gonna turn into the big sick and he's like really excited and it's just like you you just like it's very similar to how i feel in fandom when i'm like what's gonna happen on lost

or what's gonna happen to these characters in harry potter um where these like real life figures are going through these like arcs of their lives and you can go back and like see the, the lead up. And that is so exciting. And I think that the, the growth that people opened up, like, I think that the, the way that Pete opens up his guests to talk about like their, their lives and their struggles and like sort of how they think about life

in the way that they are is, is super, super cool. That's always been the closest analog for sad boys because the goal in my mind is to perfectly balance and lord knows a while away and we'll continue to work at this but to find that perfect ratio between the comedy and the sincerity right and you know even pete waves here and there it depends on the guest depends the environment depends on his mood depends on his day their day etc yeah but his show captures that energy so often and so comfortably

that i very rarely walk away from an episode without both crying laughing and coming away with some sort of insight do you have an equivalent show for the bright session something that was like a benchmark i mean yeah welcome to night vale i think yeah has to be the one classic and the fact that i now am friends with jine and Jeffrey Cranor is fucking crazy. I think it's, you know, with fiction podcasts, it is a much smaller world that you're dealing with. And so that it's things are maybe a little bit more accessible. But, you know, we certainly do not have the listenership or the fan base or sort of, you know, the just general quality. Quality.

Or the ambition. You know, know really anything but we are both in the same room um but yeah that was really the point for me where i that was sort of my benchmark for what a successful fiction podcast looks like and i think for me it's less about the numbers and just more about kind of feeling like i have a place at the table yes um and the moment i felt like we really arrived as just even a player was when jeffrey crane tweeted out that he was listening to the bright sessions and i remember like texting all of my friends and be like oh my god and he's like a guy that i know and really like and he's a really really good person as joseph and um that's a that's a weird

thing to sort of feel like you're even though the actual like quantity of success or whatever is not the same just feeling like we're peers is feels good i have never related to a statement more in my entire damn life i i feel the same way like uh it's just wanting a seat at the table. It's wanting to become a member of this community that you have appreciated for so long. And I think that all of my experiences with fandom have led to me ultimately trying to contribute to those communities in some way. Yeah. In some capacity. And we will get to all of that in our topic today. But first, Lauren, how was your week?

It's been good. I was on the East Coast last weekend. I was at a Yale podcast conference. Yes. Which was delightful. So these Ivy Leaguers, are they getting into podcasting? Are they enlisting? Yeah.

Yeah, I think they are. It was the Yale School of Management. So one of the grad programs there. And we talked a lot about the business of podcasting. And then I was there to sort of be like one of the people who's like, I'm a creative person. I don't know metrics. But here's how I made a thing. Yeah, you went on the panel.

You drove everyone there. Yeah. It was just Zooey Deschanel playing you. And it was a fun and quirky like like i don't know numbers so good but i sure do like putting out my stuff i sure do like stories so we're looking for somebody that can play a hick zoe playing me a new yorker i think i was I think what I was going for was like the adorkable caricature of like, well, yeah, aw shucks. I, you know, I don't do nothing no good, but I sure do have the spirit and heart. I'm down by the creek. It's exactly what I did in New Haven, Connecticut.

Fit in very well. Now, Connecticut is in the deep south. Is that right? A secret city. A secret is in the deep south is that right a secret secret city in the deep south but it was great because new haven is about uh two hours by train from my uh where i grew up and so i went and was able to see my family and see um some film members i don't get to see all that often who happen to be in town so that was really nice and then it's just been a pretty busy week of wrapping things up for the bright sessions i sorry i was hoping you into that sentence prematurely with it's been a busy week of wrapping okay wow uh well let us have it we do need a new theme song so the bright sessions your podcast

is approaching its series finale. It is. It is. I finished writing it on Monday. Wow. Yep. And then we recorded the penultimate episode yesterday. And I am editing the third to last episode right now. And so it's definitely winding down. And so things are being set in concrete in a way that's kind of scary.

Is there a tangible energy in the room? Does a penultimate episode recording feel different? Yeah, particularly because we've wrapped a couple of actors on series. Oh, weird. You know, and that was weird. Particularly because we're doing these bonus episodes and these spinoffs and things. But there are a couple of actors who, you know, I can't necessarily promise will be in those episodes. You know, like Julia, who plays Dr. Bright, the therapist, is going to be in all of the

bonus episodes. Right. I won't say beyond that, but she'll definitely be in these nine episodes. Yeah. And so even recording the last episode with her when we do that, I feel like we'll sort of feel like the closing of a chapter, but not the closing of a book. Right, right. There have been a couple of actors.

One of our actors yesterday, we wrapped them, and I don't know necessarily exactly if they're going to come back. Or if you'll just never hang out with them socially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll never see them again. I wrapped our friendship. We should mention that you think of all the people who work on your podcast as objects, as pawns. Yes. Tools, I believe you said.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's no use in informing any personal relationship no there's no emotional connection there at all we requested that you started using the term rap because before you were just saying trashed yeah my actors have been trashed they've been trashed yeah i literally take them outside and just put them next to the surprisingly abiding yeah they'll just stand there until trash pickup happens exactly actors are very weak-willed you can just pick them up put them in i exactly it's a very weak will you can just pick them up put them in i think it really just speaks to the way that they've been treated

yeah sag really needs to you know get on top of this stuff um but no i mean it is it is fun because i do work with all my friends um and all of our careers have kind of changed over the past two years and so it feels like um one of my uh my birthday one of my lead actors, you guys share a birthday. And I share a birthday with one of my best friends, Brigham Snow. Hey, I didn't know you shared a birthday with Brigham. We have the exact same birthday. Yeah. That's cool.

Same year? Nope. Okay, that's us too. Yeah. It would be weird. It would be weird. How many years apart? Three.

Yeah. And you guys are only two. So close. We tried for three. It just didn't work. Didn't work. Didn't happen. Yeah.

Selfish mothers. How dare they? Yeah. only two yeah so close we tried for three it just didn't work yeah yeah selfish mothers yeah how dare they yeah we actually had a podcast when we were like a twinkle in our father's eye it was called in utero it was really hard to penetrate uh well both both uh both our hosts that's yeah we were parasites we were uh i was put a parasite in my father's spleen i don't know where it comes from a podcast host has a takes on a whole new meaning a podcaster host podcaster host yeah so so we we always talk about how we feel like we're gonna look back on this time as sort of the original bright sessions run is like oh remember when right right did this thing together because ideally hopefully we'll all go off and have careers separate from each other

those were the days back yeah right and you sort of hear about you know like the old days of like ucb or like second city in toronto and all these actors who like were friends and we're all just recording in your bedroom right exactly and so that's kind of like the the memoir fantasy of this time is sort of and so this is the kind of like end of that initial like three chapter of my memoir right it's a very narcissistic way to view you know i completely empathize i think i was having nostalgic thoughts about my time at patreon oh my god like 2014 right it's like oh i imagine i'll look back one day and think oh what a crazy time it was and i've been working there for like a year yeah but that's so true though because there you just go through so much change in in life uh that thinking back on those times like they are

they are special i i'm a big believer in for one i don't think it's super narcissistic to think about like your life in terms of like these chapters and i think one of my favorite coping mechanisms for like going through tough times is going well this is a pretty good episode of like the life of me right this is informing jarvis in a year yeah this is like this is like the conflict in the second act before i like come back around you know before the triumph and also i'm a big believer in the idea that there's no such thing as like the times of our lives they're like everything that we are experiencing as we're experiencing it and everything is going to seem better in hindsight yeah and so it's like really

we can only help ourselves out by appreciating the moment that philosophy is also a really great way to supplement as you mentioned stressful times but it's also a great way to maximize positive times i remember being locked in a mindset for a good year and a half when I first moved to the States. I've been here almost three years now. But for my first year, year and a half, I was obsessed with the idea that I never wanted to purchase like nice furniture. I never wanted to buy anything physical that was difficult to move because I was in essence transient, right? And that's an identity that I know a lot of immigrants immigrants particularly on like visa statuses like mine that aren't permanent or even really that long especially at this point in my life at that point in my life um struggle with but then eventually i

just started doing it and in and of itself it made me feel more settled yeah it wasn't that i needed to be settled in order to get a cat i needed to get a cat in order to feel settled yeah right right and that's and that's another another reason to do that is you really want as much material for that memoir as possible like you don't want and then for like two and a half years i just kind of thought about getting a cat anyway we're gonna skip those chapters because i didn't do anything yeah and i think we our brains like to sort of categorize things and and have these milestones like okay i'm getting a cat and so that means that i'm semi-permanent and have these milestones like okay i'm getting a cat and

so that means that i'm semi-permanent and that i'm settled or i mean just even thinking about the last five years of being in la before moving out here i you know i graduated college moved out a week later and up until that point your life is just in four-year segments yeah because of school and so to sort of then be able to say like okay well the bright sessions was kind of like grad school and i've only been here for two and a half years but it's been part of this sort of then be able to say like, okay, well, the Bright Sessions was kind of like grad school. And I've only been doing it for two and a half years, but it's been part of this sort of five year period in LA. And now that that's ending, sort of the next thing comes. And it helps me kind of appreciate things as they're happening to sort of put them in

chunks and in stages of life in that way. I think that's a really helpful framework to have. And to that, I will say, this is great, y'all. We're having great y'all we're having a good time we're having a good time this is one of those things that like we'll look back on it and really fondly but right now it's also pretty good that's right yeah i mean i obviously i'm not enjoying this all that much but i think to myself think of the ad revenue yeah yeah think of the monetization which reminds me this episode is sponsored by no one that's right please help no one is sponsoring the show uh use our promo code sad boys nowhere well whatsoever tweet our link to any potential sponsor yeah um and remember build it beautiful. So Jordan, how was your week?

My week was good. Also been rapping a lot. Trying to get as much of that out as possible. Yeah, it's been a very active week. It was only one full day of work. Sorry, two full days of work. Then I flew to LA on Tuesday night. It is now, what day?

It is Thursday, correct? It's Thursday. What day it is? What day it is? Boy, you thursday correct it's thursday what day it is what day it is boy you what day it is why it's uh uh please don't kill me it's a rifle what day it is please don't trash me sir i'm but a humble actor i prefer not to sit out in the cold. That is the dynamic of director and actor in LA. It's old man screwed shouting at a child, fetch me an excellent performance.

Oh boy, I'd love to. Yes, mister. Oh blimey. Don't fuck up my vision for this. I'm a creative genius. But yeah, outside of that pretty work intensive, this is a nice like little reprieve. Record a little pod, hang out with some people I care about.

But something pretty exciting happened this week. We touched on it briefly last night, Jarvis, but Lauren... Oh dear. You've listened to Sad Boys, correct? I do. I'm a couple episodes behind. No, no. This isn't like the time that we were last on your couch where Jordan described how

our friend Alexis, when he first met her, he asked her if she was an emotional pervert. That's right. Yeah, don't recall that. Anyway, I... Yes, I'm a dedicated listener of Sad Boys. Oh, thank you.

You're an emotional pervert. I'll take that. A while back and multiple times I've referenced the fact that neither of us have actually ever really watched Seinfeld. Oh, yeah. And yet it seems to have at least in some degree informed our comedic styles. We make a lot of references to it and we constantly do the bit of the Seinfeld and yet it seems to have at least in some degree informed our comedic styles

we make a lot of references to it and we constantly do the bit of the Seinfeld warble they're like which is what we get that from Pete Holmes yeah it's that's the thing we get that from a part we get a second order yeah we have like goodwill purchased bits yeah yeah uh but on the single night I was by myself before Jarvis arrived last night, I watched two and a half full episodes of the television series Seinfeld. Wow. It was on television. First of all, I've got to say, in my like three years here, I've maybe watched 25 hours of terrestrial television in America. Right.

I watch streaming. I don't watch TV. And I bet you most of those hours are in hotel rooms. Almost exclusively. The last time that we shared a hotel room, we watched Key & Peele for like two hours. It was great. It was amazing. It was really funny.

Yeah, it was super good. But as a result, I was blown away by it. You have such smart advertising. Like in the UK, commercials happen at the end of a show and halfway through the show. It's the only time commercials take place.

You have this pacing where you're never watching more than like three or four commercials and then you're never getting more than three minutes of the show and you're constantly on the edge of your seat like okay well that was a funny joke i do want to hear what george is going to say now oh drugs i can buy those okay that's cool all right that's a word i'll hear a lot and not know what it means indeed i die every single time i see an ad for some kind of prescription drug and there is four full minutes

of clarification and of side effects hey you can buy this thing and maybe it'll make your dick hard anyway uh your head will explode your wife will become a dragon and it's just like the most elaborate thing for the rest of the show um but anyway i watched some seinfeld and um as a natural scientist i believe myself to be an entrepreneur at heart um a researcher. I took away some learnings. Great. I would like to share them with each of you. Top boy. Science field. Field of science. Goff science field.

So the big news is I watched Seinfeld and the major takeaway is that it's funny, which I feel like is a big deal. Yeah. Genuinely funny show. Got a couple guffaws out of the kid. I'm enjoying it so far. It was nuts.

Elaine was struggling with something. George said some stuff that really got him into trouble. And Jerry, he was doing some other stuff too. To be totally honest, Jerry Seinfeld was a better actor than I expected. It was not like self-contained. He actually performed fairly well. Right, right. He just was nothing.

Like his struggles were just struggles other characters would be doing more interesting things with and so every funny scene was him interacting with a george and elaine etc right um but in the two and a half episodes i watched my number one takeaway was the rate of bass licks is significantly higher than i was led to expect oh yeah they're all over the place i thought it would be like you know how in Friends, Ross will say like, oh, Chandler, my name is Jeff. And then Chandler will go like, and it'll go. Yeah.

And just fade into another scene. And transition. Yeah, transition. And maybe one every few minutes to keep the pace moving. Crossfade from an external shot to like Ross in bed or the coffee shop. Yeah. I was a break. I forget how that show goes. I'm broken.

I'm resetting your palette. Time for another scene. Half of those transition music stings sound a lot like songs by Blue Oyster Cult. I'm just going to point that out. Maybe that's where they got their inspiration. These are the hot takes that you've been waiting for. Yeah. A 25-year-old television show features musical breaks that sound a lot like 40-year-old rock bands.

But yeah, the velocity bass licks was quite impressive. It was happening on average maybe every 45 seconds. And also, the variety of bass licks was quite impressive. We were talking about it last night. If you just cut out all of the actual content, you would a very interesting experimental boom it's also the tone uh whereas friends sounds a tad melancholy you know it's like a light piano yeah but uh this was oh george is having a date jumped on the scene i was blown away by it it really kept my uh energy high kept me engaged great and george's all the stuff george was doing that's

just crazy uh next big learning was that i only heard four maybe five seinfeld warbles in those two and a half episodes based on my knowledge of you made it weird i was expecting maybe one every scene like you did the thing i can't believe it that's like that's that's how my Arnold Schwarzenegger impression is just. You just can't like say a word. Only vowels. That guy was actually a governor. That's pretty nice. Yeah, it's pretty weird.

And then finally. You won't believe he's president. I have some crazy news. Touché. Ronald Reagan? The actor? Yeah.ald reagan the actor uh the final takeaway was that i actually saw the episode where everybody found out what kramer's first name was i didn't know that was a reveal that was fun yeah first name is cosmo which is

the third time we've referenced the name cosmo in our conversation today yeah it's about the character from fairly old parents and and from Florence Foster Jenkins, who was a real person named Cosmo McMoon. My favorite name of all time. BRB changing my name to Cosmo. Those are my learnings from Seinfeld. Outside of that, my week was not super active. Got some cool

stuff coming up, but no spoilers. How about you, Jarvis? What the hell have you been doing? Well, Jordan, it's our birthday week oh boy for those thank you for those who

that was that was someone who screamed near a tuba the air just happened to flow so our birthday is on Saturday and Jordan was doing some work i figured i would come out and visit um and spend our birthday together because weirdly we have been in the same place for the past three years three birthdays on your birthday on our birthday and an important fact to know is

we've known each other about two and a half years yeah so like so yes okay so here's the story on a cold day now uh so fade in so three years ago my uh good friend jamie started working at patreon with jordan um and she after a while was trying to convince me to join and one of the the things that I was most nervous about was the people seemed nice, but I wasn't really sure what I was getting myself into. Because when you're interviewing at a company, everyone seems nice because they just want you to join. Oh, yeah. And so birthday is coming up. Me and my roommates from college, we're a few years out of college. We're like, let's go to Vegas. Let's get the band back together. A lot of us have moved to New York and to Seattle and to all these places, to Florida.

Let's get everybody back together. Let's go to Vegas and have a good old time. And it'll also happen over my birthday. So I booked my tickets. Cool beans. My friend Jamie hits me up. Hey, a bunch of us for Patreon are going to Vegas. But it wasn't like a Patreon sponsor thing. It was like a bunch of me and my coworkers are going to celebrate another cowork not even but it wasn't like a patreon sponsor thing it was like a bunch of me and my co-workers are going to celebrate another co-worker's birthday in vegas these dates you in to which oh my god i replied with my like ticket stub that i purchased like days prior for the exact same flight that she was like telling me to get now what we haven't checked is whether we purchased the flights at exactly the same time we have it but i don't think we're allowed to check the world might collapse and so

uh we stayed in different places in vegas but we're in the same place a number of times but didn't interact and then we we later interacted uh we knew a time would come we knew a time would come and then the next year also in vegas also in vegas yep uh this year not that time less because it was our birthday it just become a tradition and of course at this point you're working at patreon and as a patreon tradition within our small friend group we just went again yeah and i guess we learned that we had the same birthday as like a thing before we even knew each other yeah so last year also in vegas and then now this year i'm like well we got to keep the tradition going and jordan's going to be in la and then uh we're going to dallas dallas texas um for a thing and so i'm like i'm just taking

some vacation and just gonna have a good old time that's amazing like i i feel like if i were writing the story of your lives it would end in like one of three ways either you turn out to actually be twins you fall in love or one of you kills the other yeah those are likely to happen i've placed my bet yeah i will say it right now my money is on us falling in love you wouldn't have a differing opinion on that would you jordan of course not no definitely not especially if i was a knife away if i was intending to kill you why would i say it now i uh another fun thing uh because we keep having similarities uh crop up um like my best efforts my favorite my favorite recently is that uh we're gonna be in dallas um and then we are flying back to san francisco oh my god this is so stupid uh we're flying back to san francisco

on sunday and um we're like okay uh leave, land five o'clock, cool beans. Let's do it. We book our flights. Jordan sends me his flights. We book our flights. Hours, days pass. We realize we both have flights that leave at the exact same time and arrive at the exact same time in San Francisco, but they're on different airlines and out of different airports

in Dallas. What? So we will be in the same hotel leaving to separate lifts to get to go to separate airports. To that meet in SF. To get on separate flights that both depart and arrive at the same times. Was this like a Miles loyalty program thing or just bad coordination? This was bad coordination this was uh uh bad coordination uh i'm gonna nailed it i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna blame jordan on

this one because homeboy is flying into dfw and flying out of dal uh let's keep him guessing yeah and and jarvis is naturally like why don't i just uh use the same airport uh for consistency. Coward. That's how they get you. So I flew in, I flew in last night and I have had quite a busy week making sure that I decided to take vacation a little bit last minute. So I wanted to make sure I took care of everything I needed to at work and got all my stuff together. I had like a video to edit and I have like an episode of Sad Boys on an edit later today. And I've just been a little tired. And so one thing I'm looking forward to is just like sleeping in hotel rooms a little bit, collecting myself yesterday. I flew, it can only be described as a red eye from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Uh, but that is because it arrived at, uh, 12 Oh 3 PM, um, and departed

prior to that. So technically it still counts. We counts we're tired uh we're both tired we were up late last night just having a good old slumber party um jordan and i do this thing where whenever we're sharing a bed in a hotel room which is a more common occurrence in recent years yeah um we will just like end up having one of those like bedtime conversations that goes for like an hour an hour and a half you got in at maybe close to 1 a.m last night yeah i had kept myself awake by paying four and a half straight hours of mario odyssey for you thank you you're welcome and then the first thing i do when i walk in is uh i call the front desk because i needed to do you want to play this out because it was so it's a two-part

experience oh yeah because first it's getting into the hotel so it's a weird hotel it's kind of just a big airbnb with multiple rooms no room service no gym nothing it's literally just rooms shelter hotel nice decor very comfortable service it's just not a full hotel right and so jarvis rolls up and there's a back entrance it's the only way to get in and you hit this little bell right notice that it looks sounds acts like a back entrance but it is the only entrance it is the only entrance and it's directly adjacent to the garage entrance so it looks like you've gone the wrong way exactly but it's also got the main signage for the hotel so i'm like i think this is where i'm supposed to be i walk up to the door check see that it's locked i'm starting to turn around because i'm like certainly there's a more correct entrance and then the intercom starts playing and the guy's just like uh are you checking in or what i don't even remember

so i walk down because i know that you've just arrived and i come halfway through to a conversation of a man turned away from me i come out of the elevator speaking to the the uh intercom and just going do you have a room and you're going i don't know what my room number is it's like this is strange because i think he asked me for, it's like, do you have a room number or some other piece of information? And I was like, I don't have either of those things for this more, like this reason of the person

who checked into my room is already here. And then I roll up like the end of Dirty Dancing. And I just go like, he's staying with me. Don't put Jarvis outside. And then they let me in and so that's the beginning of my relationship with this uh with this person minutes later minutes later we're like gone up to the room it's super hot by the way uh for some reason that's so weird yesterday was so cold i know it's all the odyssey i'd been playing like the lights the lights were

red it was humid we opened windows and couldn't possibly get like airflow to the room it was very strange i believe the shelter the shelter hotel exists within a different plane of existence i would not be surprised you enter through the portal dimension just slightly adjacent to act yeah and so uh and then i had couldn't find my travel toothbrush as i was leaving so i was like fuck it. I'll just go to a CVS. And I first was like, oh, I'll ask the front desk and see if they have one. Because that's a common thing. That's a common ask at hotels. Yeah.

And do you want to role play this one, Jordan? Sure. I'll bet you so. It'll be the bell hop. Oh, yeah. It'll be the bell hop. I press zero on the phone. Ring, ring. Hello, sir. Hi. to enjoy sure i'll bet you so be the bell hop oh yeah you'll be the bell hop i press zero on the phone ring ring hello sir hi um i was wondering if you had a toothbrush around that i could acquire have you ever seen men in black you know that like guy that's made of bugs and he's just a

bunch of skin and he can't really speak properly he's like you can i be getting the car to drive in it's like may i procure yeah i was like and i was like yeah i i used the word procure i said can i do you have a toothbrush around just lying anywhere that i could procure a word that i don't think i've ever said out loud in my life but it really just speaks to like my headspace in that moment the panic of bad dental hygiene flipping out and then the response that he gave me uh i told you what he said right no oh so uh i go yeah do you have a toothbrush around anywhere that i could procure his response to me is no so we don't have any toothbrushes and we don't have any bottles of water no no no he said he said he said so the thing about this hotel is that we don't have any toothbrushes and we don't have any bottles of water and it's such an easy problem to resolve i can fix that for you hotel yeah and it was also a thing that was like why

did he add that extra information as if i'd called and been like i have two very specific requests and i really hope that you can resolve them i think you can fulfill 50 of my requests i'll be fine yeah yeah um and and then uh. And then that was our interaction. It's very bizarre. Yeah. Get out of my way. I've got to catch that train. Carolyn, Carolyn, don't go.

Angelo, is that you? I couldn't let you leave without just telling you something, Carolyn. I love you. I love you more than the stars in the sky. Wow, B'Angelo, I'm flattered. Please, you can't leave without telling me how I can stay in touch with you. Can I send you a letter? Send you an email?

Well, I'm really just on Twitter. That's great. Tell me your handle. I'll follow you. You can follow me. I'll be able to DM you. It's at Sad Boys Pod. Okay, I'm just going to write...

Sorry? Did you say it was at sadboyspod? Yeah, my DMs are open. Right, but it's not your account, right? That's like the show with the two guys? I... They let me share it because I can't afford a Twitter of my own. Right. You know that Twitter's free.

Like, you can just make an account. It doesn't cost any money to... I don't have time to explain me and look. Train's departing. It literally makes... It costs no money. You can just get it free. You can just get it free. So today we're talking about fandom. Oh, that was fun. I like that. Hold on. Okay, wait.

I feel like we're on a roll here, Lauren. Oh, God. The fandom jingle. Fandom, fandom, being a fan is fun anybody that thinks you can't write music is out of their mind because you just need to pick one word and extend either the word multiple times or just one of the letters at the beginning i think yeah i think that they're that's kind of the secret to a lot of music that we're not really talking about yeah it's just thank you so much for that lauren miranda sitting at his desk i don't know what to do and wait

hamilton hamilton hamilton that is hamilton it's true you said you've never heard it yeah i assume i nailed it right absolutely i think the best place to start is at the beginning as i uh as i always do start um good place to start. What? This is a screenwriting course. This is the masterclass with Aaron Sorkin. What were your first experiences with online fan communities, Lauren? For me, it was, so I've been a pretty intense fan of lots of things since I was a kid, fantasy novels, musical theater, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

And then in high school, I got super into this thing called television shows. Oh, wow. I don't know if you've heard of it. Is that like podcasts? Yeah. It's a speaky, right? Yeah. It's one of those talky films.

A talky. A short talky. And I started watching the TV show Bones. Oh. Yes. Which premiered in like 2005. So I was 14 or 15 when I was getting really into it. With that guy that has a brick for a head. What's his name?

David Boreanaz? Alvin Borealis. I thought it was Derek Brickhead. Well, I think I watched it maybe because I was discovering um I was introduced to sort of Joss Whedon's oeuvre at the same time and so I was getting into Angel and you know Dave Boreanaz is leading that um he's Buffy he's Buffy um and you know naturally I had enormous crush on Dave Boreanoreanaz. But I was just talking to a friend about this last night, actually, because we were talking about sort of our first introductions into fan spaces. And I was always like a lurker.

Like, I never really, like, talked on forums. I didn't write fic. I didn't, like, get involved in fandom discourse. But, like, I would sort of consume a lot of fan content. You're absolving. Yes, exactly. Right, right. course but like I would sort of consume a lot of fan content and yes right right and I would in relaying this to my friend I realized that I think I was on YouTube in like the first three weeks that YouTube was around oh wow because I remember searching some sort of search term for bones on

YouTube and this wasn't a point where like Fox was putting up promos on YouTube like you can only see the promos for next week on the Fox website. So just fan vids. And I remember so specifically for weeks and weeks and weeks, I'd keep going back and it would still only be 16 videos. That's all that came up when you search bones on YouTube and like to that, or like, or like Fox bones or TV show bones or whatever it was. You were like showing up at the,

the watering hole and you were getting 16 drops and now now if i i just searched and it's 37 billion results there is always a tsunami around the corner yeah and bones premiered in 2005 and youtube started in what 2005 yeah so it was literally like just those two things happened at the same time and then i went on to like the fox website to see promos for next week and sort of read about it because i was so i was so drawn in yeah and there were like message boards on there and i think it was through that i don't remember specifically but i think it was through that that took me to fanfiction.net yes and that's what i started getting that's that's when everything fell apart that's you at an alcoholics anonymous meeting yeah that's when

it all changed now for those who aren't aware of fan fiction, and specifically fanfiction.net, which is like a juggernaut, I feel, in the world of fan fiction. Lauren, could you please define for us fan fiction? Yes. So fan fiction is what it sounds like. It is fiction stories written by fans of a thing. About a fan. It's like like today I spun around 36 times. Wow.

Bad fan. Hey, he's self-conscious for like a brief sort of fandom fan fiction history lesson. I, as far as I understand it, fan fiction first really became an active thing in fan communities in the 1970s because of Star Trek and because of Spock-Kirk fic. Like shipping them?

Yeah, shipping them. Shipping is a thing where you write stories that give or no, shipping is just the thinking that two characters should be together. That's why I was going to get to that because the origin of shipping comes later, actually, but there were all of these fanzines in the seventies and eighties for star Trek. And people were like trading back thick where Spock and Kirk are, are in a relationship rather than just in love.

Like they are canonically in the show, obviously. Yeah. And then in the nineties with the X files, people started talking about how much they wanted molder and scully to be in a relationship right and they were shipping them and that's where the time yeah yeah and so by the time that i got into fandom in 2005 these things were pretty established and fanfiction.net had cropped up and i think the like early 2000s maybe

before then it was like live journal and dream width and like this you could literally subscribe to mailing lists to get fic and stuff yeah and now it's this thing called archive of our own AO3 which is kind of now a big fic website at least that like that's where I read most of my fiction right right right but I definitely

was in it for I think the reason that a lot of people get into fan fiction was because I was watching bones and I was like I want bones and booth to kiss and they're not kissing and so i'm gonna go i'm in control find some writing where that happens it's like wish fulfillment totally and also presumably at this point in time not a lot of bonus content to be absorbing if you want more bones in your life you get the episodes when they air right exactly and outside of that you're david boreatas free yeah and you've got these long summer hiatuses yeah and i'm just you know dying for the next thing and so yeah actually a lot of

the fic i read wasn't even a romantic fic it was literally just case fic and it was just of these characters solving forensic crimes and it was just and there would be multi-chapter fix i'd basically be getting an episode in between the episodes that were actually airing on the tv show and since it's a procedural show like who's to say that that isn't canon right functionally if they just never reference it again doesn't matter right maybe they did do that thing where i don't know david borianis had to find how his beautiful girlfriend lauren yeah where is she gone it's funny i actually never got into reader insert fic which is where you were kind of like the main character and i always wanted to that's like a very self-serving version of it wait does it read like you are the main person

like it says you know some of that stuff does exist oh okay and there also is like there's stuff that exists where it's like reader slash a character and you can like kind of like fill in your name essentially um like a mad lib yeah Madlib. Yeah. That's like, that's the thing. The big sex. Yeah, exactly. Um,

I just real quick because I want to hear about your fandom, um, beginnings, Jordan. I didn't think I had any relationship to fan fiction as you were talking. And then I remembered that when I was a kid and I got really into Dragon Ball Z, I wrote stories that were just stories that were in that world where it was like me and my friends and I like wrote them and I printed them out like

I printed out the scripts and I gave them to my friends and we would like go outside and play yeah and that was like the first I like didn't realize I was like directing also I was like you'd had a fan production yeah you made a fan film without cameras yeah I just remember printing out on like colored construction paper uh because white printer paper was like harder for me to get at that point in my life um and you were really into ASMR and now it's like hard for me to find construction paper uh and it's very easy for I have all this printer paper lying around Jordan what were your fandom beginnings so interestingly I'm sure that there were earlier versions of fandom. But the first time I can think back to something that I started self-identifying with, like this represents me and I'm connected to this on like an inseparable level.

And this will define parts of who I am. Came kind of late. Like there were plenty of shows and movies and TV that I'd fallen in love with. Huge fan of Zorro when I was growing up. And to this day, I'm obsessed with sword fighting in movies. I was a major fan of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and got really obsessed with the mythology and maybe even read some fan fiction around that.

But the first time I remember really connecting as a fan boy, a self-identified fan boy, would be weirdly with video game critics. Oh, interesting. I'm talking like maybe 2010, starting around 2010. I was really into a website called The Escapist. Yes. Still active.

Not a super active website, but the creators affiliated with it who are either still with them or left. I watched to this day. I was in a web series done through The Escapist. Wait, what was it? Natural 20. It was about D&D. Wait, I watched that show.

Did you really? Whoa. Oh, this is spooktacular. I for sure have seen you in that show. is really weird that's really weird birthday oh my god oh my god i had red hair then so i looked a little bit this is weird that is weird i was obsessed with the escapists i was applying for jobs there when i was like 12 but yeah i was i was obsessed with them for a really long time and uh throughout that tenure i mostly fell in love with creators like uh ben yatsy crowshaw who does a show called zero punctuation that still runs to this day that i watch week over week which is just a games review show but pushed

through a lens of a very very uh idiosyncratic writer he has a very specific style he has an excellent oration tone like he's very pleasant to listen to and he's a really talented writer um and then that shifted to uh now video essays many of the people that i fell in love with on the escapist are now prolific video video essay writers such as bob chipman bob chipman is probably the closest thing i have to like a patron saint creatively at this point right but he started on the escapist where he had some traction same goes for jim sterling these are all people that initially were doing a lot of content on the es list even though they dabbled in other websites and thinking back on it that was my fanboyism and much like you wrote fan fiction i wrote my own reviews and i would publish them on a self-published blog which would get no traction and i i would send them into

the escapist and they would reply saying this had no structure this is the most buck wild thing i've ever read did you write this in 20 minutes and i'd be like yes very much so uh but i became obsessed with that community um to the point where for a very long time i intended to go into the games press only falling out of it as the closer that i got and the more freelance stuff i did throughout my teens you know here and there i would get articles published on sites the closer i got to that industry the more i just like some of the problematic elements right not a great gender divide not the world's best approach to women in gaming and it's not so much that i think it's so negative that i couldn't have entered that space but it's just not a fight i wanted to fight right yeah um but video games in general design of of, production of, release of, and critique of was the thing that I think I fell in love with immediately, even before film.

So you hit on something that's really interesting to me, which is the identity that you assign to these things. You identify with these communities, you identify with these creators, these worlds in a lot of cases, Jordan, in your decision to like, like sort of falling out of, of games press aspirationally was part of that, you know, issue with like the, the way that women are treated in games and in the games industry related to

like, I don't want to assign this to my identity because this is like baggage that comes with it. And like now, cause, cause theoretically you'd be where you stand ethically versus like your industry.

There's like a moral imperative to be like fighting that fight, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, the genesis of that entire issue is the fact that the games industry by design has always been very insular. Even at this point

where it is a multi-billion dollar industry that is as popular as film and television it treats itself like it's very insular a lot of stuff's very cloak and dagger the way the games press industry operates is still kind of peculiar and not well expressed and there's a lot of drama that circulates way after the fact it's just like it's still a very it acts like it's in its infancy even though it isn't and that insular nature which at the time i saw via the gender divide is just a thing i don't find very appealing and i think the reason that i studied film despite yeah i would say that games are closer to a pure passion for me than than film ever was although you know i have my love for film was because i wanted to enter an industry

that was out of its infancy and had perspective i was more interested in that i didn't like the idea of assigning myself. I'm the guy that knows games and nothing else. Right. Because if you know games, you don't read books. If you know games, you don't do sports. None of these things. It's just games.

Whereas film always felt like a space where I could enter, find people that associate themselves with gaming as well, and then maybe make my way into a new community. That's one of the nice things about podcasting. Right. Podcasting is broad enough that entering podcasting doesn't really restrict you yeah yeah yeah that was always my fear with the games press but yeah um self-identification i feel like is a big part of why people connect with fandom totally why fan fiction can be so appealing yeah because if you go like oh man the dexter finale really stinks yeah i identified with those characters so i'm just gonna say that's not what happened uh which you know specifically dexter the best part about um

the the sixth season of dexter because i watched the whole thing naturally as it was airing and the subreddit uh the dexter subreddit just it just it just, they turned on the show. They turned on the show in the sixth season. Yeah. And, and, and then, and then it was an enjoyable show to watch because you wanted to know how the community was going to react.

You were, you were looking for the, like the memes, uh, and like the jokes about how, uh, the sixth season never happened. And like sort of these things about the opposite of things that happened in

the show, uh that happened in the show uh being like the top most voted things it's like it was really awesome how like this character had this amazing emotional arc that finally like tied up cleanly and it would just be like a photo of like a character who like had their head blown off inexplicably um and uh and i i thought that was really uh really special we were actually discussing this last night because we were talking a little bit about how this was the first time we stayed in a hotel room together since Sad Boys died, at least in LA specifically. And so much has changed since then, particularly the placement of the show and the number of

people that listen to it consistently. And what it made me think of, which we discussed, was the show has very recently stopped being ours for a long time. This was a thing I did with my friend Jarvis. It was a fun way to exercise our comedy and emotional muscles. And it was a thing i did with my friend jarvis it was a fun way to exercise our comedy and emotional muscles and it was a nice bit of accountability creatively we kept ourselves accountable jarvis is flexing his editing muscles i'm writing dumb things that i share on the show it's just a nice shared collective creative space and then maybe in the

last seven episodes or so as the listener ramped up considerably the listener count i would not be able to suddenly say actually now the show's this i could just go like now i want it to be a fiction podcast or now i want it to be an advice show because the thing the show is currently is owned by the listeners right like as soon as we take that away from them we don't take them with us the show is gone yeah the the shared experience the shared fandom you know people more than are going to write fan fiction about us. You can shit me in Jarvis, far away. I've got no problem with that.

I'm sure that'll come in its time. Oh, score. RPFIC is a really, real person FIC is a big. RPFIC. RPF, yeah. It's a big section of the internet. You have such an impressive lexicon. Okay, I mean, I, so.

Is it mostly acronyms? It sounds like a lot of acronyms. I want to hear about jarvis's beginnings with fandom oh yeah um but then yeah i have some thoughts about about that i honestly feel like my fandom is the same thing as my appreciation of the art now like i i cannot it is very hard for me to appreciate something in a vacuum. I sign up for the whole community. Yeah. And I'm that way with music. I like can't, if there's an artist, like for example, a lot of like the SoundCloud rappers

that like are really big right now who like glorify lean and like doing all these drugs and having all these, you know know it's just like a lifestyle that i don't identify with and and a lot of people can just be like i like this music and for me i can't for me it's like i i have to identify with the lived experience being expressed and not identify with it in terms of like having it but in terms of like this is a world that i want to get to know this is a this is a way that I want to expand my understanding of the world. This story is set in Westeros and I want to learn about Westeros. Right, right, right.

And I think back to like my experiences with art. And I have a lot of the similar sort of beats that you all were talking about. So television was big. Video games were big. Podcasts were big. Video games were big. Podcasts were big. TV shows were big. And all of that stuff, in books specifically Harry Potter, all of that stuff goes deep for every single thing. So if I was into a band, I watched all of their supplementary material.

I would go to their shows. I would know all the members of the band i would know all of the like the crew the people who are involved the people they're working with who they're collaborating with what that community like i was sort of building this like broader uh map of the community um and i was that way for like this band called the cab and for like fallout boy i remember the cab really yeah or like fallout boy and panic of the disco like the reason that part of the reason was that the community around them was a community uh like i don't know what the radiohead community looks like it's probably fine but there was something about like the the the way the people in the community were people who i wanted to be friends

with the people who i like wanted to be around. And then the things that shape me as a person now are those communities that I was in. So like RuneScape, I played RuneScape a lot. I listened to RuneScape podcasts. I submitted questions to RuneScape podcasts, was in the forums, learned Photoshop to make forum signatures for the forums. Oh, while being the coolest kid at school yeah yeah uh or or like um

or lost like i got super into lost and that was a great example of like oh we have a nine month break between the seasons how am i going to supplement this and it's like well i listen to a ton of podcasts that are theorizing about it because it helps me stay inside of the world. You know, like it's the content itself is really just filling in more of the picture. But but we're still like the community is taking a step back from the picture and talking about it and trying to figure out where it's going. And and that it made me feel so a part of something. Yeah. And in that that's like that's always been like a really meaningful meaningful thing

for me and like harry potter was a similar way vlog brothers like when i got into youtube and stuff is there anything that you've dove into with the same level of enthusiasm and obsession in maybe the last year hamilton oh yeah nice uh so like hamilton is a great example of a modern thing for me because I, I didn't know that I still had the capacity. I, you know what I mean? Like,

cause there's like this literally the free time. Like it's a lot of work to be that into something. Well, yeah. So it's like, um, there is this, uh,

youthful exuberance to, um, being a member of a, of a fandom. And it's like you, you, the way that the way that i engage is very different than i i once did but i didn't know that i still had it in me to absorb something the way that i did with hamilton and it was so it spoke to me so instantly like

i i remember uh uh hearing all the fuss right about Hamilton and then going well I'm not really in a musical theater uh uh at least all that much like not that I'm gonna drop everything and like listen to this thing even though it's like supposed to be really popular but um oh also weird fandom thing of mine I just get deeply into the things that I'm into so like late night television and like Saturday Night Live like yeah I was like very into the conan o'brien's and then and then the jimmy fallon's are coming through late night and and and and the roots joining like late night and saturday night live and the arcs of all these characters and the people and where they come from and where they go to and uh where they're coming from where they're going where did you come from where did you go um and and that stuck in your head for five years so uh the reason that i listened to hamilton

it's everything is connected uh i think that that's like my main thesis here yeah the reason that i listened to hamilton is because i saw the track list for the hamilton mixtape which was produced by the roots and had the roots on it. And I was like, okay, this is a world that I feel a part of. And so because I like try to engage in the things, like I'm a fan of few things I optimize for depth, I think over, over breadth. And so, and so in that, I'm just so much more deeply connected to, to all of the individual things that I'm into. So when the roots collaborate with somebody, I'm like, oh, this is like my world expanding. This is like a crossover episode, you know?

And then I learned, oh, they produced the original Broadway cast recording and the mixtape doesn't come out yet. Hold on. Let me just go listen to that. And then I remember it like i remember where i was sitting i was in my kitchen i play it i start walking into work before i get down the stairs of my like apartment i'm like oh fuck this is a thing like get it now this i immediately was like oh i'm in i'm in and then i was like i want to i want to hear where this goes i'm at least i like don't like the first song i'm like i'm bought in like and then the second song i was like hold the fucking phone because because the the reason that hamilton was so

so immediately aligned with me was you know the entry point was like oh uh quest love produced this cool uh but the the thing that hooked me was that the influences and the world that lin-manuel miranda comes from is other than the the musical theater part which i didn't have that background he was in freestyle love supreme he did videos with college humor he's obsessed with like the old school hip-hop that i was obsessed with not only is it a narrative that you can get like bought into but it's one that you share 90 of it's it's like the the friend that you grew up with made a thing where it's an homage to the shit that you both like yeah and that's like what was in it for me well and i think because lin-manuel miranda is so clearly a fan himself such a fan and i think of those people who have

such enthusiasm and passion for the art that has shaped them are really good at creating art that then is influential and shapes other people. Like for me, the entry point with Hamilton, I was very fortunate in that I saw Hamilton the week the soundtrack came out. Whoa. So it's like my I was happened to be in New York and it was, you know, opened, I think maybe six weeks, you know, before then. You had woken up inside the theater after a long night.

And my parents are big Broadway people. And so they were like, oh, you're home. We want to see the show. It's supposed to be really, really good. It was at the public for a while. You know, we're going to go see it. And then like that, like three days later, the soundtrack dropped and it was just like the biggest thing in the world. But I went in with like no preconceived notions.

Everybody in the theater had never heard it before this like modest production that seems to be getting some uh picking up some steam yeah what was that experience like for you exceptional i mean it is it i remember sort of sitting i i was crying by the end of the first number just because it was the way that it was staged was sort of like a beautiful kind of portrait of America just in that very first number. Yeah. I saw Hamilton after I'd listened and internalized the soundtrack. Yeah. Deeply.

Right. I knew every word to everything. Yeah. The visual of seeing it. Tears. Yeah. Well, and I was a music major in college and one of the papers that I wrote, the biggest paper I wrote in college was about historical narrative in 20th century American musical theater and how you tell a history through musical theater. Oh, wow.

And I also went to school in Colonial Williamsburg, which is. Right, right. So it's like Hamilton is like. Yeah. In the 1700s. It's still stuck in 1770 uh 1778 i think yeah yeah so here's the thing if you couldn't tell i've never seen any of hamilton yeah and for the longest time it has been on the bucket list it's something that i'm interested in seeing i hold no ill will against it a little overwhelmed by the cult but now that that's died down a little bit it sounds like it feels like the right time for me to finally dive into something that seems relatively tailor-made for me and oddly enough Jarvis's point just prior to that

I think is finally crystallizing why I haven't done it yet and it's because I only want to listen to Hamilton if it's the thing I'm obsessed with for six months right and there's two hesitations around that one the community that I would be doing that in collaboration with is already so many steps ahead of me that I have so much prep to do. It'd be like sometimes we jam at the office, right? When I joined Patreon, I wasn't very talented at improvising musically. Again, still not that much, but I can on drums. So now I play drums with people.

And I feel a little bit like at this point, I don't even know how to play an instrument. I don't even know what the frame of reference is for talking about Hamilton. And part two is there are things I'm very, very passionate about right now that take up pretty much all of my RAM. Right. Spent on those things. And I think my issue is that a lot of people have assumed that I don't want to watch Hamilton due to some sort of reservations about musical theater or rap or Lin-Manuel Miranda or whatever. And it's literally just I also have never watched um the Godfather part two I love the Godfather part one and I know when I watch part two I'm gonna be thinking about it for like four days yeah I just need to allot four days at some point

yeah I totally get that I get that yeah because when you're when you're a huge fan of something it does take up so much emotional energy and I mean i i have friends recommending me things all the time when they're like you're absolutely going to love this and i'm like yeah listen i know but like i'm deep in the trenches yeah other thing right now i don't have enough love to give exactly i agree i know it's like almost like your friend being like i want to set you up with this person you're like okay yeah but i'm actually in a relationship right now so i can't no no no but you don't understand for this person you love them. And it's like, let me see this relationship out first. So two things. Jordan, definitely no pressure on the Hamilton stuff, but we've floated the

idea of doing a completely separate episode on Hamilton, which, you know, just from this discussion feels like something that could bear fruit um where jordan listens to hamilton for the first time and we talk about it uh if you would be interested in that definitely let us know yeah we will put that somewhere yeah yeah we'll put it somewhere ham boys um and the second thing i wanted to say is that from you know what we've all said so far it feels like fandom serves this purpose of like connecting us and connecting our experience to to something else it like we've got all these like tendrils and we've got all these like feelers that are out in the world that are grown from our experience and fandom allows us to like latch some of those into something and like sort of engage in a way that we didn't know was available

to us. And I think it could also help for me at least contextualize some of my own like emotions and thoughts about things. Like one of my best friends, Megan, is a friend that I know through fandom and we're both huge fans of lots of different things. And we there's some overlap, but there is certain things that she's really into that I'm not into and vice versa. Right. And we are also both writers and sort of, you know, are constantly thinking about story and character in that way as well. Right.

And so we talk through like, you know, when we saw infinity where we like had a long conversation about it afterwards and the things that we liked and we didn't like and, and what have you. And it's been really interesting and sort of two years of friendship with her to see the things that are consistent with us. And we've kind of come up with like trope names that are like she's into that thing and this is my thing and every time we're like consuming a new piece of

media and we start to break it down we're like oh yeah and there's my thing again there's your thing again that's the thing that you like and that I like and it's just really interesting to sort of see how even my own personality plays out in the media that I like and the things that I connect with in that media yeah yeah yeah and I don't know that's something I would have discovered on my own unless I was like having those conversations with other fans yeah yeah it's it's I mean like any other creative dialect what you consume is in and of itself a way of expressing yourself I think a lot of the time people make the assumption that to create is your way of communicating right it has to be outward for it to be communication but if you self-identify as

the world's biggest harry potter fan there are certain connotations and assumptions i can make about your personality type as a result and that's not necessarily always a bad thing if i say to you that i really don't like hamilton what i'm doing is performing as a version of somebody that doesn't like all of the things affiliated right yeah yeah like i do that with video game culture in some cases i identify as a fan of certain games and a staunch advocate against other games yes because i think it speaks to the version of myself that i want you to think that i am right well and even identifying as a fan i think is something that's only been that i've only personally felt okay with doing in the past couple years yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, when I was reading,

yeah, when I was reading fan fiction in high school, I wasn't telling a single soul about it, you know? And then it sort of fell off in high school or in college and I got back into it sort of late college. And then I moved out here and I met a friend who we sort of discovered early on in our friendship that we both were into fandom things. And it sort of, that was the first person

where it's like we would get drinks every couple of weeks and I would sort of pour out all of my fandom stuff on her yeah now i've been opened up through her and through some other people to a larger world of fandom and now it's something that i like wear proudly but for a while it felt kind of like a dirty secret that's the cool thing about being an adult is that when you're a kid or especially an adolescent every single person is doing their best to be one version of people. Yes. Everybody is trying to be the cool person

that doesn't care, is not obsessed with anything and gets whatever they want. That's like everything you dress a certain way because you think it will inform that perception of you. You say certain things that will inform that perception of you. Everybody's trying to be Tony Stark.

Nobody's trying to be anything else. And then all of a sudden you get to like 2021 and you find other people that are like, my's ant-man and you're like wait what is that loud i also really like ant-man and then suddenly you start building a community of ant-man fans and all of a sudden ant-man is everybody's favorite thing you're reading ant-man fan fiction because who cares you're only performing yourself you're finding a way to express the version of yourself you actually are as opposed to the 20 odd years you spend trying to perform to a version you've been told is the right exactly i identify with that so much like even with something as simple as like the bands

that you're into i was very embarrassed to be into fallout boy and panic at the disco when i was in middle school and in high school and i continued to to listen and be a fan of that but i didn't have an outlet. It was very personal. It was very like, so I'm just going to be over here and I'm not going to talk to anybody about this. But I personally think it's the coolest thing in the world when Jay-Z did the opener for Fall Out Boy's 2007 album, Infinity on High. And I was like like this is important uh uh or i like really identify with like the moody lyrics that like pete wentz used to contribute to the band uh i don't know if you've

heard any recent fallaway albums but they are not the same uh lyrics is pretty charitable um but uh only in recent years like for example uh lauren tweeted about panic at the disco and then i was like oh shit dog like let me jump into a text thread about this uh because i know we need to figure out if we're seeing them in august yeah yes yeah i need to make sure that doesn't conflict with my friend's wedding uh but because i will go to the gig i just don't want to give myself that choice. It's like, look, I'm already dating someone. So that like it's my wedding. There's so much there's so much comfort in being able to be your true self and not be this like bottled up version of like anxiety of like trying to, you know, make sure that you you toggle things things such that your external, um, performance of yourself is in line with like what you think people want. Yeah. Like panic, I feel like is a

great example for me just because I saw them. I was reflecting on this maybe with you the other day through text. Um, we were talking about it that I saw panic disco in was freshman year of high school for me so it was like 2004 2005 brennan murray was 18 years old yeah yeah this was like such a dynamic performer and then you know they kept making albums and stuff and it kind of became like pop punk sort of went out of fashion and i was also becoming the insufferable music hipster that i was in sort of late high school early college which thank god you were able to escape. Thank God. You've become the approachable, accessible ADU. Approachable and yet still insufferable music expert. And now I'm, and it's sort of, I went through this thing of like,

oh yeah, like, I mean, Panic is, you know, it's fun. Like, yeah, I still like listening to it. Whereas now I'm like, no, Panic is still making good music. Like, objectively, their albums are good and I will defend them. And they're still for 10 years they've been no for 15 years they've been one of my favorite bands and it's like they're yeah there's so much like there's a lot of subjectivity in music big surprise uh and i think that like people use that uh i think that people use their tastes to put down others in

with with subjective things like oh you like that movie well it's bad yeah that's another thing you escape as you age ideally yeah ideally because you're not in that environment where everybody's striving to be tony stark you begin to move into an environment where nobody's really sure what you're supposed to be so it just reduces the chance that they're going to criticize you for the way you are because what adolescence is it's not even like criticizing that you like the band or that the band is bad they're're just like, that's the wrong one. Exactly. And you are wrong for thinking that.

You're having the wrong feelings. Yeah. Yeah. I have a little flip side question for the crew. Yes. To close us out. We're feeling, we're going to get a little bit negative. Oh boy.

You ready to go a little negative? Let's do it. I mention it because I have a number of these and I'm sure the two of you do as well. Yes. I don't know what the answer is but i guarantee it's on board i'll sign it in blood uh what fandoms have you belonged to in the past and maybe still dabble in that have some problematic elements or or yeah have revealed themselves to be not necessarily the best people projects whatever okay so there is this there is this author who i

was on a panel with at emerald city comic-con like a year and a half ago then i started following on twitter his name is sam sykes he's and he's an excellent twitter to follow um and he has this tweet of the like six stages of toxic fandom and it's like i like this i love this i own this i hate this i must destroy i don't know if i'm getting those exactly right but it's essentially that progression and i don't know i think my biggest fandom that i have my sort of longest standing and most consistent fandom that i'm a part of is the fandom fandom i find and that's what i had a youtube channel for like three years that was called according to tumblr and i tried to explain tv shows based off their tumblr tag still such a great concept bring it back immediately um and the last bright sessions episode jumps

little plug at the end yeah please go to youtube gang um and because i really find fandom as a construct and sort of as a community on its own very interesting and i don't know of a fandom that has been around for a number of years that has not soured at least somewhat sure i don't know i i think that just eventually sort of it's you know the snake eats its own tail i think yeah for me i was the thing that actually got me back into reading fan fiction in college was bbc sherlock which is in of itself a fan fiction absolutely but that was it's so funny because i literally wrote a paper um after the uh i wrote a lot of papers about uh things that i was a fan of in college and i took this great class called engendering crime where we talked about uh crime

or gender dynamics in crime fiction and i wrote a paper about um sexuality in sherlock holmes and i it was a comparison of the original stories the um rdj movies and elementary and sort of how these different things approach um sherlock holmes sexuality in a different way and my sort of conclusion was like i you know he's sort of in the original canon, a non-sexual, non-romantic person. And then in the RDJ, they try to make him, they sort of have this like homo-romantic relationship with Watson and Holmes. But then he falls in love with Rachel McAdams. And then in elementary, he is heterosexual and has sort of this bro relationship with female Watson. And sort of the interesting gender and sexuality dynamics that exist there.

And then BBC Sherlock came out and I was i was like oh these guys are in love like i don't know what's happening here i don't normally ship these characters but in this context they're in love and that's what got me back into into fic and that's also i think a fandom that maybe eventually soured me on the show itself oh yeah because the fandom eventually there's still some wonderful pockets and there's still some really really great fan art and great fanfic but it just sort of became this this very aggressive place what else is a bit of toxic um there's i mean as with a lot of things there are sort of the ship wars so there are the shippers and the antis and you know if you are an anti holmes watson shipper john lock is the is the ship name um then you kind of like you are constantly in hostile territory if you don't

ship that and then it's like oh i see you know and and and there's all this um constant like picking a part of the show and meta and i think think that some of that has value. And I do think that Steve Moffat is one of the more misogynistic writers who's been given the opportunity to do interesting things with women and has just squandered them. Yeah, he's a, what is it? Oh, a hack. He's a hack. He's a hack writer that can't write. Yes, yeah.

And I actually really disliked the final season of Sherlock for not fandom reasons at all and purely for structure and character reasons. It's just a bad season. It's just a bad season of Sherlock for not fandom reasons at all and purely for for structure and character reasons it's just a bad season um but yeah I think just the sort of like constant judgment of of each other's fandom I think is something that I find sort of unbearably toxic of like okay I am a fan of this and I expect you to be a fan of this in the same way that I am and if you're not then I don't want to talk to. And the thing I love about fandom is that you can express your fan fandom in whatever way you want to express it. It's just so paradoxical. The reason that this community exists is because there is this single prescriptive version of events. And then there is the free world, the free land where we do whatever we want.

We play and we explore. It's like, stop playing wrong. But then Sandcastle's bad. Well, right. and that's like the word fanon is like fan canon and it oh my another one yeah oh i'm full of these and that in certain fandoms that carries a lot of weight of like oh like the fanon is this way and it's but you're absolutely right you're sort of limiting the playground that you have right you as a fan you're only allowed to deviate on the existing fanon so it's established that homes and what's in a relationship for example right and you can also write that maybe there's a third party that sure because it has to exist that those two are in love exactly and i you know i'm sure there are lots of great pockets

of the sherlock fandom still but i just as somebody even just an observer who wasn't waiting into these discussions just found myself exhausted even watching them happen that i eventually unfollowed all the tumblers that i was following and i stopped reading fic and i just got i just got tired yeah yeah that was probably my most recent one that's yeah that's super interesting for me um sad boys it's done oh yeah i mean the sad boys fandom is disillusioned um i think that there's a i don't know if this is like a broad fandom but it is certainly a community of like people who are fans of like hip-hop and music and stuff yeah i uh that's one place where i i maybe have individuals that i connect with about things but it is very hard for me to engage in the community

at large because of how much their uh people are pitting artists against one another uh and that's like not like can these people not just like express their truths or whatever um the sound cloud rapper space in particular can be pretty volatile uh yeah i don't even know what that like that situation is like but for me it's just uh for example, I like J. Cole. And the reason that I like J. Cole is for the reason that I like a lot of people. I like his story. And I like where like, he's also like problematic in a lot of ways. Like, I don't think he's leveled up his he's, he like sort of co-opted the like, I'm a rapper so i can like talk about women in a certain way uh and then hasn't sort of elevated his dialogue even though he like positions himself as like a conscious like type type rapper so i think that's a missed opportunity that's like one an issue for me like listening to the music sometimes but uh oftentimes i'm like conflicted between suspending my like disbelief to enjoy the thing and like sort of being bogged down in sort of the cultural aspects that propagate like that behavior. But anyway, like the reason I'm a fan of him is that like he has a background that I really identify with.

Like he's half black. He's half white. He grew up poor. He moved to Nework to like make it big but he didn't do it without a plan because he didn't have a money safety net so he like went to school in new york to get himself to new york and he like went on scholarship and he did well in school so he like doesn't fit the normal mold of like kanye west who was like affluent already and like dropped out of college because that was a privilege that he had or like the um or like the little

waynes who like get uh discovered in like a bad like in a bad neighborhood or whatever and then are like sort of taken under the wing of somebody who like develops them as an artist uh or like the drakes who are like uh affluent like the whole time right um and and were already like working actors and like didn't even consider going to college in the first place. And like so his story was something that I really identified with. And I like I do enjoy the music he makes. But I think that the community at some point decided that they hated him. And he like became a meme in the community. And it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.

And it like it's really weird because i don't like people are like oh he's boring or whatever and then there's like a meme of like him going like double platinum with no features uh uh which it just like uh i just don't understand like there's just so much hate for him uh and and i think for some people like um the needle drop uh specifically it's not he's telling himself he doesn't he doesn't hate him but uh he sort of encapsulates this um this feeling of like disappointment or like missed opportunity for him which i identify with the most right like so i actually identify with his opinion the most what i don't identify is with people who like people are just like just take

that opinion off the shelf like oh i'm just gonna be negative about this do i listen to the music no and then when i listen to it i like go into it thinking it's gonna be uh it's gonna be bad yeah this is gonna save me so much time yeah yeah i already believe this and so for me it's like annoying because i actually connected with the stuff and i feel dismissed a lot of times by the community that um like sours that and and that's what's most annoying to me about like communities in general is when people try to take away from like ran on others parades essentially yeah because it invalidates your emotions which is like a sucky thing to have happen it's fanon it's the same fan it's the same type of human being yeah somebody

that only finds personal validation in devalidation. Yes, exactly. Like value and validation is a zero-sum game. Right. And if somebody has the wrong opinion, your opinion values less. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just not the case. Yeah.

And so, yeah, that's my answer. How about you, Jordan? I'm really wrestling with it, man. There's a lot of potential options. I mean, a really obvious one would be love for the video game art and disdain for the industry. Sure. That's a difficult dichotomy that I've felt for many years. But at the same time, I feel relatively separated from that.

Like, I don't really, I'm not really an active fan of video games as far as the conversation goes. I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of friends in the press and affiliated with it that write about games and some that make them and i'm allowed to kind of live vicariously through that but i don't go on forums i don't get involved in dialogues i very rarely talk about it even on this show it's just like a thing i enjoy in the background right one that might be a little closer is that uh i really love a certain set of let's play channels so set of video game Let's Play channels. I don't watch many of them these days just because they're like a high time cost,

low calorie experience. Not a lot of like creative artistic fiber in those. They're very background friendly. Yeah, exactly. It's atmospheric entertainment, which is fine. But in most cases these days, if I need something stimulating like my lizard brain while I do some kind of menial task it's going to be a podcast or it's going to be something where at least absorbing long-term learnings you know something better it's it is

denser than a let's play i'm comfortable saying that about a podcast and it's this sort of uh empty calorie entertainment is valuable but i see less and less of it but there are two channels that i watch pretty consistently um and of those two channels and many more that I tend to dabble in there there's a lot of leaning towards pretty problematic comedy and the thing is with problematic comedy is that personally I have no problem with it I still find it funny and we've talked about on this show maybe only a few episodes ago in hard questions that nothing is beyond joking about it it's pretty feasible my issue that the thing that i struggle with is that i know a huge portion of this fan base are young kids especially on the channels that i watch right right fun house i'm a huge fan of financing it's a fucking hysterical channel they aim a little older than the typical

let's play channel it's usually you know 15 25 kind of age but a lot of their jokes are like misogynistic and a lot of occasionally it'll be like racially or stereotype themed humor the kid is on board i think that's hysterical and i cry laughing every single time but it's very difficult for me to want to engage with that community when i know that a huge portion of it are impressionable young kids yeah that will take a lot of it at face value um i sometimes feel myself being pulled between two very distinct demographics which is like scumbag online meme boy sure and then cuck sjw there's like two versions of jordan cope that you can buy at the store yeah and like one of them is ultra aware of gender dynamics and sexual identity and and wanting to be as uh passionate and empathic as possible and the other one genuinely thinks it's kind of funny

when somebody does an accent of another race. Well, because you can separate, like you were old enough and aware enough of the world to be able to separate the sort of comedy from the message behind it. Yeah, and if I felt like I'm hanging out with the people from a fun house or whatever, then totally, I'm on board, ha ha, goofs and gaffs.

And it doesn't necessarily affect my enjoyment of the content but it limits me from wanting to go to say a live show or it limits me from wanting to go to a meetup it's like not an environment i would want to place myself inside of right whereas uh like my brother and my brother and me definitely ascribes to that other version of jordan cove yes i went along to their live show while we were in podcon yeah and the entire time i was surrounded by people like dressed up in cute little outfits and having fun conversations about gender identity i was like this is nice this is wholesome and safe yeah nobody's getting hurt at the very least people are getting questioned and then maybe

they're exploring but it's not coming from a place of conflict conflict so i think this has all been great um fandom is like disagree on that one all right well yeah i don't know fandom i think has been really important uh to me and my development and i look forward to like the fandoms that come along in the future you know yeah perhaps it will be who knows it's time um for you know what it's time for it's time for Lauren to sing the theme to pen pals pen pals wow pretty concise yeah yeah no it's it's actually quite impressive how much you can communicate with such a short message I do think we should like have some fun little musical bits for all the segments um we've just found them so would you like to read this would

you like me to read this oh that would be amazing so yeah so uh first um pen pals is a segment where we hear from you the listener you specifically and you know who you are yeah dan one dan we're watching you that is fine um so to explain a little bit about pen pals aka pen pals uh pen pals is a segment that we do every single week where and last week we did a whole episode about it's true uh where fans and listeners of the podcast which i consider to be to be two independent things there are people who have to listen yeah obligatory listeners oh someone actually told me that they were listening to music and then in their up next on their itunes our podcast started playing which is a situation we described going to a party and doing on purpose if you're a real fan of the show you should put it on but their. But their message to me was, now, I didn't listen.

Because I wasn't in the mood to. I was in a good mood and I didn't want to be brought down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pep House is a weekly segment where we get messages from our fans and listeners. And they send all sorts of thoughts, ideas, references to previous episodes, topic ideas. Anything's welcome. We read them all. We reply to as many as we can.

And our favorites end up on the show and are read by guests if guests are around here i am i'm around all right so this is an email from sage with the subject line you're appreciated wait there's a first name sage yeah that's dope that's a cool name that's a great name dear boys with a z very nicely done sage i didn't think i would write in but after your episode on relationships i realized how much the pod has improved my quality of life. I'm currently a freshman in college, and I spend most of my time studying. It's always been difficult for me to connect with people in a way that I find meaningful, which has recently been amplified by my fear of not succeeding academically. That's very real.

That's so real. I found my way to the pod by stumbling across one of Jarvis' YouTube videos, and it's become something I look forward to every week. Superficially, the pod is a way I feel involved in witty banter, but I gain the most value from hearing you out yourselves. And EP in the fullest, it has been enormously validating to hear you boys confess so many feelings I identify with. I can't tell you how much it's meant to hear you openly discuss things as seemingly insignificant as sometimes being forgetful

to grappling with self-worth and depression. Especially for someone considering computer science, you fit the archetype of success that so many people in my position aspire to. It can be easy to forget what's real sometimes and lose yourself imagining the effortlessly fulfilling lives other people must lead. Thank you for keeping it real

in a way that shows not even the boys have it all figured out, and that's all right. Sage! I know! That is a beautifully written letter! I had not read that. I hadn't heard a word.

Jordan hadn't read it. I read it to a friend of mine and they literally teared up. That is gorgeous. That was so sweet. It's so nice. It's so nice. And I, that's just, it's such a special message. And it meant a lot to me to read that.

And I thank you so much, Lauren, for reading it. Thanks for letting me. It was beautiful. And I, yeah, no, I wanted to share it with Jordan I wanted to share it with you all because I none of us have it figured out for one yeah and not even close not even close

and it's just yeah I think that we can get hung up on this like external picture of success that doesn't really include any of the work that's happening behind the scenes or the struggles that are happening behind the scenes. There's like this great graphic of an iceberg. There's a comic Lauren showed me today that's like success. And it's like this huge iceberg

and it's like, cool success. And then under that, it's like depression, you know, like not feeling good enough. Failures. Yeah. Failures. And it's just like all of those things. I think we try so hard as a society to pass as successful that we hide all of that stuff that lies below the surface. I think the implication generally when people talk about their own success in a like not so sincere way when it's performative success is that success is mutually exclusive from the issues that can lead to right yeah depression etc etc and that's just not the case at all

like that's that's a little bit like saying i ate a meal so i never need to drink water yeah it's all composite pieces making the full human being right and sage i'm sorry that you are worried about your academic prospects i think think you're going to kick ass. I don't know anything about you, but you seem like an intelligent and articulate person. I mean, yeah, that writing was on point and it seems like your priorities are really good. If I could prescribe you anything, it would be make sure that the focus on your studies isn't taking away from other things in relationships that you value. Be sure to give those time because at the end of the day, that's what you're going to remember.

And I mean, to a certain degree, and I think that you'll take this as you will, but we all strive for balance. And when things are too out of whack, it can lead to wonky results. Yeah. Find whatever your thing is that is rejuvenative yeah and if you're a freshman in college and you're already thinking and engaging with these things then you're on the right track oh you're ahead of the pack you are way so far ahead of the pack quite a bit uh yeah much love to sage if uh i mean no pressure uh but if you

would like to um write in or send us an audio message that we'll read or play and comment on on the show and inevitably be the second best message we've ever received yeah that was out of control pressure yeah um we see but i mean this is a great example like we see this external success at a pen pal's message we don't know the struggle you only we only know the surface of like the struggle that went into even getting to the point of writing that message. I think a lot of people write in and the first thing they say is like, I, you know, never saw myself as someone who would write into a show like this, or I never do this, but I felt like I had to say something. There's that overcoming that makes me really proud that we have in some way inspired people sort of over these

like barriers um just to be the forum where people can push their limits is fine with me same it somewhat speaks to the quality of the podcast but in most cases i find it just speaks to the quality of the individual that they've for whatever reason been able to surmount the fear of sending that message yeah hey it's all on you sage we didn't do shit and we're yeah we're the instruments right and the music is this experience that we all share um and that isn't being talked about enough big thumbs up to sage yeah i dedicate this episode to sage yes use the power to be academically successful thirded if that's a thing i can say it just sounds wrong it does sound like third

thirded um that's like a i was gonna make an enders game reference but we don't like orson scott card yeah he's alive i let that reach god 100 but i thought he was dead all right so if you are inspired by sage to share your story with us um via you know writing a message on twitter at sad boys pod or sending us an email at sad boys pod at gmail.com or even going to sad boys pod.com to send in a thing feel free to do so many options there are i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing i eat it on the wind it will find its way to us i won't have a smoke signal say justin three times in a mirror and i shall appear yeah Yeah. No, I think we decided in a previous episode that one of us appears. But it's not clear which.

The magician that dictates that rule still can't tell us apart. So it's really whichever is closest. God, that'd be so disappointing if somebody does it three times, one of us appears and they go, no. Oh, you? No, I have to open another one. Oh, dang. I wanted Lauren. one oh dang i wanted lauren your homework uh for this episode of sad boys is just to let us know what fandoms that you've been a part of or what fandoms have been important to you over the course of your uh of your life

what helped you develop into the wonderful human you are now especially you sage my favorite fan of all time yes tell us your fandoms yeah this video is sponsored by sage give in sage advice and then lauren does the theme uh for sage advice for sage's letter that you wrote yeah oh god pen pals wait which which thing am i doing new theme a new theme for sage god it's really panicked you god you're so good at this every time every time oh no she's she's time-traveled. We lost her. Oh, no, I'm coming. And if you want to send in those homeworks,

you can hit us up on Twitter at sadboyspod, on email at sadboyspod at gmail.com, and, you know, go ahead and submit a pen pal if you'd like at sadboyspod.com. Lauren, let's say, theoretically, I literally can't imagine this is the case, but say somebody heard you on this episode and they're like i want more lauren shippen in my life well they should

talk to their doctor first first of all question everything yeah question your whole life um you could follow me on the social media at lauren shippen on instagram twitter you can uh go to the bright sessions.com if you would like to hear my podcast you gotta go fast it's gonna disappear and uh jordan if the listeners of the show enjoyed it but really they enjoyed a very you know specific british third of it it's a good part yeah yeah uh where how might they how might they reach you uh if they want that extra third slice of britain uh in their life a little bit more aggressively you can go ahead and follow me on twitter at Jordan Adika. One word, A-D-I-K-A is the way you spell that word.

It's my middle name. It's a real word. Stop asking. Also, no, screw Twitter. Go to Instagram because I decided today I'm going to get good at Instagram. Okay. We were talking earlier. I'm not very good at social media.

I'm not very consistent. I struggle to care about it. But I want to be the kind of person that's good at Instagram. That seems like a neat skill. Yeah. So starting today, head over there. There'll be a new picture that I took today of, I don't know, my cat or something. Check it out.

And Jarvis, where can they find you? You can find me on Twitter at Jarvis, Instagram, Magic Jarvis, and YouTube at youtube.com slash Jarvis Johnson. Jarvis, if they go to your youtube channel right now what video would you recommend they watch say they've never seen a jarvis video ever never ever fortunate enough to escape the black hole you could watch actually my newest video i'm bad at math it's like a it's it's kind of like a video that is all the types of videos that i've made all put together um so that gives you a good idea of like what the channel is um other than that recent popular videos uh why i don't code anymore which is a video where i talk

about a recent career transition that i made um we do have fun we do have fun we do we end every episode of sad boys with a particular phrase and jordan and i have been trying a thing recently where we sing this part and you can just talk the last bit, you know. But she's so good at making up songs. I know, this is the irony of this thing. We just, the one time we take away the opportunity. We love you. And we're sorry.

So, so, so sorry. Boom! Boom! That was fun fun that was great we did have fun we did have fun we did have fun