Sad Boyz - Growing Up Online

Episode Date: November 2, 2017

On today's episode, Jordan and Jarvis discuss their experiences growing up on the internet. How constant access to technology affected their real-life relationships and gave them unexpected strengths, but mostly how playing runescape and being on AIM and MSN left lasting scars. Also, Jordan talks about a hero from LA, Jarvis has unexpected apartment visitor and at the end of the show Jordan tells an amazingly embarrassing story   follow us @sadboyzpod

What is up, everybody? It's your saddest boy, Jarvis. Just wanted to let you know that we recorded this episode as the inaugural episode of Sad Boys a week before the last episode aired. So when you hear us call it episode one, you're not going mad. Well, I mean, you might be. Remember to hit us up in the Twitterverse at Sad Boys Pod and leave us a review on iTunes if you are so inclined. Anyway, let's get this train wreck on the road. On tracks welcome to the sad boys a podcast about feelings and stuff i'm jarvis and i'm a jordan all right every week we take a topic that's really important to us and we get a little weird we get super weird today we'll be talking about growing up on the internet yeah which means we're touching on the games we played the ways we communicated

and the way that all of those things impacted our ongoing lifestyles. Like, there are ways that the two of us interact currently that were enforced heavily by the way that we chatted online. That's true. And the ways that I slighted my online co-players. Online. The fuck is a... He's coming. Insane.

The online... Online. I think I was just saying that, like, I wronged people in video games, and I wanted to say, like, the ways that I slighted the other players. Oh, slighted? Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, when you said slighted, I was leaning DMs. Oh, oh.

So you said slight. That classic American T to D. Jordan, it's episode one of the sad boys it's the official inaugural episode of sad boys yeah the last one was just like an experiment the last time was a special secret journey that we took lying in the same bed in los angeles california drinking uh sparkling wine and now we're in the same bed in San Francisco, California. Drinking sparkling wine. So a lot has changed. Yeah, sparkling wine is now the official drink of Sad Boys. It's important to point that out.

If you're looking for Sad Boys merchandise, you can buy a t-shirt with Jarvis' face on it, and you can buy a full bottle of Carver. Oh, I thought you were just going to say, if you want Sad Boys merchandise, just go to your local corner store. Go to your local corner store. All wine is officially Sad Boys merchandise. And when you give it to the person up front make

sure to say can i get reward points for sad boys with this yeah and with those sad boys reward points you can buy scorn misery that's a that's our breakfast cereal scorn by sad boys it's very thick heavy chunks of bran we do not recommend milk i love bran flakes bran flakes are one of the uh the silent hero of cereal i feel like i used to get made fun of in high school because i would eat bran flakes yeah people would like think that i was weird was muesli a thing here is that just a crazy alien word I just said? No, it was a thing here, but I think only 65-year-old men did. Gerald. That was me.

At age 15, I was a secret 65-year-old man. I loved muesli. Same went for a cereal called Alpen, which you definitely don't have here. We definitely don't have that. That sounds like a disease. It's just fancy muesli. Oh, okay. But it was dynamite, and I remember eating it and getting made fun of and i i remember that being the first time in my life where i ever thought

to myself how dare you you know when you're a kid and you don't have the authority to be angry with people yeah yeah but you're like god i'm too old for this yeah i was like this is my alpen i'll have you know this is fibrous and healthy yeah the people who were making fun of me for eating bran flakes were eating like tricksrix and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Dude, you say Trix and it immediately triggers for me. Trixers. Trixers for me. How

bananas is it that anybody was allowed to eat the cereal that was marketed to children? Do you ever have Cookie Crunch? Do you have that over here? Cookie Crisp? Cookie Crisp, yes. Yes, you mean the over here? Cookie crisp? Cookie crisp, yes. Yes.

You mean the cereal that is just cookies? The only qualifier is milk. If you take the milk away, it's just a crime. Have you ever... When I was a kid, I would buy Chips Ahoy, and then I'd put a bunch of Chips Ahoy in a bowl, and I'd be like, it's jumbo cookie crunch. I fooled you. I fooled you.

You can't. No, give it back these are it's 4,000 calories a bowl if I and I mean maybe this just reflects

with the fact that despite being in my 20s I feel like I'm 800,000 years old if I were to eat a bowl of cookie crisp I would need six days off

there was no way I could go and do things after a bowl of cookie crisp do you know what's disgusting cookie crisp I I one not only did was

cookie grist one of my favorite cereals okay uh that i um and this was like when i was a bit younger this was still when i was uh saturday morning cartoons getting breakfast getting a giant bowl of cereal and just watching uh watching cartoons i would get these giant bowls that are for like mixing like mixing bowls and i would fill them with like a fucking half box of cinnamon toast crunch and then i'd pour whole milk you looking dead in your guardian's eyes and he thought yes that's right i'm on my way out no i i had no idea what i was doing i just thought that's how. I'm on my way out. No, I had no idea what I was doing. I just thought that's how I needed to eat the food. Dude, well, that's why it's so important to not advertise this kind of food to kids.

Because they have no conception of, like, consequences. Yeah, because this is not going to, like, come back to bite you for a really long time. You don't really consider the potential effects of diabetes when you're pouring like a 17 gallon bowl of whole milk wait i'm confused when it came to the cookie crisp lifestyle which of course you you led yeah um were you eating what's the ratio of milk to cookie crisp because this is something that was of high contention when i was a kid so the way i thought about it i was a young scientist i would pour you know what a whole box of cook crush into a bowl

into a bathtub yeah i would pour it into a giant tub and then i would pour whole milk need i remind you whole milk into the cereal until the cereal started to raise. Oh. Like, until the cereal started to float, and then I would stop. And then that gave me the perfect amount. Oh, I see. It gave me the perfect ratio. Okay, so once you'd filled your Olympic swimming pool with cookie crisps.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. At what point did, I mean, how often are you eating this at this point? This is just on Saturday mornings or what? This was just on Saturday mornings that I had the amount of time to eat that big a bowl of cereal. Yeah. Was anybody clocking like, hmm, that seems like a crime. That seems like you're eating a crime. No one thought twice about it.

Yeah, right. It was like, sure. I mean, but then again, like people in my community, like we're eating really unhealthy. It was like we thought that things that were actually really unhealthy for you, like cottage cheese were healthy or things like, you know, apple juice or sun. Like things. Those things are not actually healthy. These are fruits and vegetables. They must be good, right?

Yeah, they're not actually healthy. And I think that there's like been a incredible and also incredibly destructive marketing campaign by like a big juice and big cereal that have, you know, made kids think that this stuff is okay. Oh, no, mom, I can have that. You see it has pulp. That's where all the there is. And like when you find out the actual like truth of how they make that stuff, it's like they got the pulp from like an actual orange and then they just sprinkled it into soda water. The pulp is like your friend's skin. Yeah. It is the worst thing in the world. It's like actual pulp, but also actual full cup of sugar. Welcome to Cynical Boys.

Cynical Boys. Cynical Boys. I'm gonna Grumpy Boys am I right? Grumpy Boys where we take everything from your childhood and we shit on it. We shatter it.

We throw it to the ground and do a big old poopy. But that's not actually what we're talking about today. Though we are talking about childhood. We are talking about nostalgia. Yeah, yeah.

We are talking about the internet. We're talking about growing up online. But first, you wanted to talk about something, Jordan. What was that?

Yes, since this is our inaugural episode, I want to set a standard. I mean, I will need the English national anthem. Oh, okay, sorry. Which you know, obviously. Why wouldn't you? God Save the Queen. Go ahead. And all the lyrics, definitely.

All right, here we go. God save the queen. There's always that hesitation right at the beginning. We really got to save the Queen. Wait, in singing, how did you know that? I just felt it in my bones. It's always nervous and it's always with the energy of, God, we should really save the Queen.

It's Thursday afternoon and we still haven't saved the Queen. It's all about reminding the people of England to save the queen. Yeah. Hey, Mark. Yeah. Yeah. You, this sounds silly because, you know, obviously you would have because you're responsible.

Well, I was about to go to the park. What are you? Well, you've done all the groceries. Yeah. Yeah. And you've cleaned up and you've done all your chores. I've done. Yeah.

Just about everything I can. The queen? The saving of the queen. She's. I have to go. You've covered the queen. I do need to saving of the Queen. I have to go. I do need to dash to the Queen. Now that you bring that up, I have an Uber's outside.

Why are you running in the direction of the Queen? Hold on. I just like to hang out with the Queen. I just can't get enough of this nice Queen. I can't get enough of the Queen. That's the second national anthem. I can't get enough of the Queen. I can't get enough of this queen oh she is really queen

gosh good god she's queen so queen that's kind of a cool uh like colloquial phrase for like awesome right yeah you're looking so queen today my man that's where yas queen comes from yas queen oh we should mention in the case of this song we are talking about bae we're talking about queen bae do you know bae actually stands for something oh uh be the before anyone else yeah yeah i didn't learn that until like yesterday hot news huh yeah and also not super applicable often when people say bae they're not talking about like their number one priority yeah no one like that's such a it feels so back it feels like a backronym but oh my god that's a good word oh yeah i've never heard backronym before

this we're learning a lot on the sad boys sad boys is actually the number one educational podcast about acronyms about the queen but possibly i mean there's not a lot about cookie crisp we've already covered you know what i want to take a shot in the dark i'm willing to bet that we are the most in-depth podcast that's talked about cookie crisp this year for sure if that is the space on the internet we can carve out for the sad boys i'm here for it that's our demo yeah let's do it uh all right i think we got off topic j Jordan, what was the thing you wanted to talk about? The thing I wanted to talk about was that every episode, before we jump into our topic, we're going to have this little space, just a little banter, just a little bit of fun.

And frankly, Jarvis, while that's a good time, I've got something important to talk about. Okay. I'm going to call this Jordan's Special Space. And in Jordan's Special Space, every week, I'm going to talk about something that matters to me and this week I don't want to get too heavy too early in the podcast but nice pour go back to talking about Jordan's special space Jarvis just poured himself a glass of champagne

that was 91% foam so we have a bit of a tradition on the sad boys which is this is the second time we're recording the sad boys which is that we drink champagne yes uh throughout the podcast the reason is we want to celebrate something we're celebrating our willingness to go through this suffering yeah we're we're celebrating hero gets thrown around a lot these days yes heroes don't sometimes not all heroes wear capes, Jordan.

But all of them drink kava. But all of them drink kava. $12.99 kava. And we, we wanted to open this podcast with the champagne bottle popping. Yeah, that didn't go to plan, huh? And, and right before we recorded,

I took off the little, we took off the little metal caging of the cork. And we let it sit. That was our mistake. And right before we started recording, it just popped and spilled everywhere. It popped and it would not stop. It kept popping.

It Pringle canned. You just don't. Okay. That's fine. Isn't that like a, is that Pringles this thing? Yeah, definitely. Once you pop, you can't stop eating them until you die. It's like a weird curse.

Once you pop, you can't stop eating them until you die. It's like a weird curse. Once you pop, you shall not stop. It's like, I don't know, this weird lady in a cave. Just like, once you pop, you cannot stop. And it's like, oh God, I'm still popping. Okay, that was fun, lady. Once you pop, you shall never stop. You shall not pass. Once you pop, you shall not pass. You shall not pass. Once you pop, you shall not pass.

You shall not pass. And I want to take Jordan's little special moment per episode. Wait, what is this called? Jordan's special space? Jordan's special space. Good call. In this extra special episode of Jordan's special space, in the inaugural Jordan's special space.

Oh my God. Again, don't make me sing God Save the Queen again. Yeah, could you actually just drop, actually, but this time if you could just do Ireland. Oh, okay. No, it would just do Ireland. Oh, okay. No, it would be Northern Ireland. Oh, okay. You know the one.

We're actually going to cut that out for time, but just know that I sang the full national anthem of Northern Ireland for 45 minutes. That was crazy. Where did you even get a full band? Well, I live on top of an Irish pub. They've got to leave. This is crazy.

There's 45 people in my home right now. Get out of here. It's okay. They're good people. In this special portion of Jordan Special Space, I want to talk about something that we both experienced when we were in Los Angeles, California. Los Angles.

Los Angles. The Los Angles City. It's all the secret angles. I want to talk about something that we both encountered, and you don't know what I'm going to talk about. God damn it. You don't know what this special space is. This is just like last time when we talked about people being incredibly sexy in LA.

Yeah. Now, the word hero gets thrown around a lot these days, and not always correctly. Sometimes it's given to people simply doing their job. sometimes it's given to people simply doing their job sometimes it's given to people acting in movies when truly a true hero fights for what they believe in and i want to tell you all right maybe i just start dropping some weird manifesto and a true hero kills a true hero fights for the right insane put the flag down a true hero does what he thinks is right fearlessly and that's a man i want to talk about today i want to dedicate

this time to give a shout out i want i want you to know that i still disagree with jordan's definition of hero but i want him to have a special space but fortunately i am right and i want to dedicate this time all right you've been reading my tumblr but i want to take this special jordan time what was it called again jordan special jordan special please why do you remember that's bizarre uh i want to take this uh jordan special space to dedicate it to a certain man i don't know his name nor do i know him but by god i respect him the word oh wait i already did the word hero um this is insane the word hero i'm a fascist real heroes fight for what they believe sing the national anthem this is jordan specials please kill me uh okay i'm just gonna dive northern ireland

few deserve the title of hero as much as this paragon of virtue. And I speak, of course, of the Lyft driver we got last week that told us to get out of his car because he had to go and feed his cat. A truly fearless paragon of virtue. I had no idea we were going with this i jarvis i'll let you tell the story because it's something that i'm still reeling from the pure bravery of let's call him kenneth he looked like a kenneth kenneth oh my god kenneth the lift driver so we were catching a lift in la and we just hopped in the car as you normally do which is a pretty big portion of the lift experience yeah getting in the car.

Generally, what you expect is you get in the car, and then you go to where you're going, and then it ends. Yeah, I will say, he failed in a pretty major section. Yeah, so we hop in the car, and everything seems fine. And then he just starts getting weirdly passive-aggressive, and he's like, where are you going? We're like, downtown. And then he follows. This is the strangest thing, is that he casually says, where are you going? Like the apps lied to him.

And then when we say, oh, I mean, where are we? We're in like West Hollywood, I think. So anybody doesn't know. It's not super far, but it's like a 20, 30 minute drive with bad traffic. And we go like, oh, we're going to like little boys that have been caught playing with a toy they went out to have. We didn't do anything wrong. Like the app matched us on purpose. With you, sir. We're not the CEOs of Lyft.

We didn't write the algorithm. Not yet. I mean, let's see where this podcast goes. Our logo's already pink. But we were like, we're going to downtown LA. And he was like, George, I was going to to go home i have to use the restroom and i have to he was a villain from a saturday morning cartoon i i'm i there's gonna be a cookie crisp ad after this i can't believe you've done this to me he man i really have to pee and i have to

yeah that was the crazy thing yeah it was he comfortably just said to us straight up and this is the reason that i think he's my hero of the week in Jordan's special space. I remembered it. He outwardly, fully comfortable, just said, I have to pee and I have to go and feed my cat. And I have all these things that are just like, well, all right, that's not really our problem. That was the first moment where I felt what it would be like to have a kid. Like where somebody's telling me that they really have to go to the bathroom and there's something that i can do about it that they themselves cannot

yeah they weren't fully capable of solving the situation because they can't i mean i should point out he did not tell us to get out he heavily implied it he's just he just like it was like it was like are you seriously just gonna keep ranting and passive-aggressively talking about your cat and how much you have to pee for the next 20 minutes it's like i i told the app i needed to go home and this is downtown la we were crap parents because we should have disciplined him we should have said because he's not gonna learn anything from this experience it's like one of the situations where we make him pee somewhere and we like push his nose just like you do with a kid, yeah. The kid pisses on the floor, you push their face into the pee. For some reason I dropped the metaphor

and thought of him as a cat. It's now his cat, yeah. We should point out, it was a giant cat. That's also not what you do with a cat. I don't know where I got that from, but I just thought it was weird that he was like, I really have to pee, guys. It was really bizarre. He was refreshingly candid. It was actually a tad intimidating. Yeah, and so we were like, you

can just let us out. And he's like, are you sure? Because I really need to pee and I really need to feed my cat. Yeah, actually a tad intimidating. Yeah, and so we were like, you can just let us out. And he's like, are you sure? Because I really need to pee and I really need to feed my cat. Actually, that was, I take away the banner of hero because the second that he started being weirdly passive aggressive about it,

I was like, come on, we just said we'll get out of the car. Yeah, yeah, he also like started like pulling over far before, like he picked us up. A good minute before he stepped out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He he picked us up. A good minute before he stepped out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He like picked us up

and then slowly started pulling over over like the next five minutes going, oh, my cat and I gotta pee. Oh, you sure? Oh, I'm sorry. And then, yeah. And then it's like, all right, we'll get out. The car's already stopped.

The doors are already open. He's already pushed us to the ground. Yeah, it's like, are you in our own are you in our own pee because we did wrong and he's just like are are you are you sure it's like honestly man i don't think we have a choice yeah it's not that serious we'll just call another lift also at this point i would rather stay on the streets of west hollywood forever than encounter the social faux pas of then going well actually could you could you just drive us yeah yeah oh my god oh my god devastating we could do it we had that power we had the ability to wow that makes me uncomfortable thinking that we could have done

that that was really rough and actually i think i'm the real hero because i played i paid a five dollar cancellation fee for his benefit you've got to email support about that in a very broad sense i paid for a man to piss. I paid $5 for a man to go have a piss. You saved a man's cat. Yeah, and his platter. And now that we've covered the important stuff, I had my special space. Time for Jarvis's terrible tone.

Well, this is the first time I'm hearing this section, but I guess it's time for this voice. Oh, no, it's his real self no just kidding uh what if that's what i always sounded like yeah is that if you gilbert godfrey did your entire life i mean he has a podcast he's made it uh yeah so jarvis's terrible time or terrible to terrible tone uh jarvis's lovely lair oh oh threatening oh strangely threatening my lovely lair uh so what's going on with me lately um i found out that i have mice in my apartment oh and i don't know what to do about it hmm that's so when you said that that sounded fun and enticing like you've just gotten wrapped up in a 90s sitcom yeah oh like it's probably like i like i woke up one morning and

there was like a mouse staying on my chest on its hind legs, being like, Hey, Mr. Jarvis! He had a little top hat and a cane. He had a top hat and a cane, and his name was Stuart Big. He's grown up, and for some reason changed his last name.

Times sure do change, Mr. Jarvis. But I've just decided to move in, and I thought I'd wish you a happy good morning. You want to answer my riddles three? So you found mice, and I'm curious. When I hear mice, I think fun, but I'm guessing it's a nightmare. Yeah, I mean, it's like, imagine if in your apartment, it's like I just have all these dogs in my apartment,

and I don't know who owns them. So far, this sounds great. Answers nobody. And they're, and they potentially carry diseases. Yes, that's true. That's the problem. Yeah. So I think it's because our.

Your landlord's a giant piece of cheese. We should mention. Named Mr. Cheese. He's called Big Cheese. And he is the Big Cheese. He is the Big Cheese of your apartment. No, it's, we have our like trash room is like full up it's like uh so i live on top of this irish pub and we share a trash room with them and because i've had new roommates move in like a lot of we've thrown

away a lot of boxes a lot of trash yeah and so the trash room is like full and i think that recology the like trash pickup hasn't come in like over a week. And so now it's just like a den of like destruction. That could be another great name for your section. Your segment is the den of destruction. The den of destruction. Yeah, no, it's a den of dastardly don'ts. Dastardly don'ts and dainty deeds.

Dainty deeds and dastardly don'ts. So your apartment is filled to the brim with mice. Do you have like a rough comprehension of how many? There's like one mouse or two. But it's huge. It's the size of my torso. It's the size of me. It's actually my fourth roommate.

He keeps going to work instead of me. It's better. He's performing so well. It's so weird. I've never had imposter syndrome he's a better culture fit at work he's a better culture fit um except we just like poops in the kitchen i had to rub his nose with it um so i think it's like about one or two and i want to like get rid of them in like a humane way you know it's like i don't want to like kill a thing i just really just don't want it to be here anymore so i'm trying to It's actually not dissimilar from having a roommate you don't like

Because you don't want to kill them You just don't want them to be around anymore Well it would be against the law In one of those cases Whatever You're one of those people? One of those freaking law people? Anyway

Keep drinking the Kool-Aid Jarvis Anyway I've been uh dealing with apartment stuff lately and it's been a little a little scary what's your action i'm gonna be you're gonna get a cat or something dude i don't i can't have uh pets in my apartment so you already do i know i've got illegal ones that is the loophole right yeah you can't tell me what to do i've got my pet broke in yeah now i have some about mice, now that you're the resident expert. Okay. Do they have...

I've also never seen it. Wait, what's the evidence? Like poop. And biting into trash bags. That could be a roommate, though. Yeah, maybe. They're new roommates. They could be weird.

They just nibble on trash. Also, none of them are home. They're all out of town, slash haven't moved in yet. That's because they're embarrassed, because they shit on the floor. It's also very, very tiny shitsits they finished their meal they ate the trash enough about invasion of the mice because we have a main topic today we do we have something we want to talk about that we're pretty excited to talk about it's something we've been chatting about for a while one of the main reasons we wanted to start the show actually because this was like a topic

that immediately came to mind as soon as we thought of sad boys yeah this was like a topic that immediately came to mind as soon as we thought of Sad Boys. Yeah, this was like maybe the first episode that was like a canonical Sad Boys episode idea. Yeah. And the topic is... Growing up online. Yeah. So we are people who spent most probably of our lives connected to the internet

in most of the formative years of our lives. And I wanted to talk about how that influenced the way we are today yeah and not all of it's good that's one thing i mean the the thesis of sad boys is that we address everything right like yeah dig deep enough to the point where we get weird we get uncomfortable we get funny we get happy it's just it's the whole emotional spectrum so we aren't just going to be touching on like the fun ways we use the internet and it helps us grow and educate us we're also going to be touching on like hey in some cases if you're entirely reliant on that kind of communication it can limit your ability to communicate with

people when you get older that's something i want to talk about a little bit some of the struggles that i had and i'm sure that you have some some topics yeah yeah i think that like i want to talk about all those things but not with you goodbye alone with a chat bot maybe maybe maybe zola on aol finally she's back maybe smarter child i love you and other aim bots that pretended to be humans so i want to talk about our first interactions with the internet like yeah what like we really did uh you know come on onto the Internet when it was in its infancy. It had been around for a while, but it really hadn't permeated the culture until when we were, you know, in our formative years. So, yeah, I would say as a consumer product, we pretty much hit it at the peak. Like absolutely.

The moment it started becoming something that was actually viable, not as a thing you treat yourself to. Maybe, dude, we're getting old. There is a significant possibility that there are like teens listening to this that have no idea what we're talking about. Like who never even touched dial up. Yeah. So as a result, like there was a point in time where the Internet was just something you dabbled in. In the same way you don't go to the movie theater every night. Right, right.

Like the Internet was a thing. Oh, I'm going to give the internet a bit of a shot. I'm going to try a little bit of internet today. Oh, yeah. You know, like 30 minutes here, 20 minutes there. Providing nobody requires a phone call. Yeah. Because if somebody called the phone, bing, gone.

Yeah. Oh, my God. We should get into that as well. Devastating. But what was Jordan Cope's first interaction with the internet? The first ones that I remember. So my mom was actually, when I was very young, she had a marketing background.

So she was pretty early to the flow. She was first wave internet. So I got to access it when I was about five, six years old. Oh, wow. And as a result, I have very distinct memories of not really being able to do anything. Like the idea was there like oh hey jordan here's the internet and you can connect i guess and you're like oh but how uh well you'll need the exact address of the thing you're trying to look up because there was no google there was

no broader function so i guess you were five and like 99 right yeah i was just like oh this seems neat and i get why it's good yeah but it's kind of like if you gave a phone to a baby and they're like, well, not a smartphone, just the ability to call people. Oh, another thing that, you know, does no longer exist, a regular phone. Yeah, a regular phone. Welcome to old cast. I remember when I was in elementary school,

or excuse me, when I was in middle school, I had a friend whose household didn't have a landline phone oh and they just had cell phones and i was like what whoa the heck like you people are crazy y'all are from the jetsons or or even like these people don't even know what's good for them they like only have cell phones they don't know all the benefits of having a landline phone but they were just the power of the landline yeah yeah no they were right through and through so uh so you had your first experience when you were about five but what was the first experience that you had when you were really activated like as a young person well

funnily enough and i think we're going to talk about this at length because uh in case nobody could tell by listening to the show for five seconds we're massive nerds yes um and we both indulge pretty excessively in runescape during our formative years and i oh hell yeah and i personally uh pretty early on into my internet career gone pretty heavy into runescape my dude oh yeah i was playing runescape in um primary school okay which is like the combination of middle school and it's a bit of middle school and a bit it's all of elementary school it's like a hybrid um so in my later years in primary school we were playing runescape and i had absolutely no interest in playing the game itself i was just completely blown away by the fact that i could communicate with my friend robin who lived you

know four streets down the way yeah yeah life he. Life! He's chatting! He's in my computer! Get out of there, Robin! Come hang out with me! Like, that was enough for me for a really long time. Now, we should explain what RuneScape is, because I'm sure we're going to talk about this. RuneScape is what's called a MMORPG, which stands for Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. And essentially, it was like a big chat room,

except also there was a game on top of it. There's like a systematic game function, but it's powered by the idea that you can work with other people. Exactly. So you had an avatar and you could wear armor and you could fight monsters and you could develop skills like mining

and I don't know, fishing. You could hit a tree with an axe really good. Oh, yeah. You could just cut wood for hours. Well, this is the thing. Like, we should put out, RuneScape is effectively like a labor training game. It is a game entirely built around let's build a factory and watch these children work. Because it's not a fun game.

I mean, in a lot of ways, it's not fun. But in a lot of ways, it was fun. I don't know. It's interesting because I maybe played RuneScape for like a lot longer than you. Sure. In fact, I so recently as a couple years ago hopped back into RuneScape. Oh, yeah? Me and Russell, who were just like, let's just see.

Let's just see what's going on over there. That's like visiting your hometown, right? Yeah, it's like visiting your hometown. You're like, wow, let's just see. Let's just see what's going on over there. That's like visiting your hometown, right? Yeah, it's like visiting your hometown. You're like, wow, a lot has changed. And yet some things haven't. Yeah, but some things stay the same. RuneScape is in a class of game that, you know, a much more popular game, World of Warcraft,

dominated for the majority of the time in which those games were in the cultural zeitgeist. Now, the reason we kind of wanted to talk about RuneScape, which we'll touch on a little bit more, is because this was sort of the genesis of learning to engage with people online. Yeah. Which right now, I think, is a thing we take for granted. Like, the basic function of how we, the kind of terminology we use now

and the nomenclature that is uh baseline the kind of things that you use instinctually yeah were formulated in runescape that was like that was my earliest experiences that's what segued me to using aim and msn and being able to communicate one-to-one and where you know we transcended the game and we were just chatting and hanging out i learned to type in rununeScape. Yeah, exactly. I learned about markets. I learned things like AFK. Oh, yeah. I learned all the cool web speak.

Dude, some of my cringiest moments to date have definitely been using RuneScape language outside of RuneScape. Oh. I specifically remember a very conscious moment in my teenhood where i went all right it's time to stop using the letter u for the word u oh i'm ringing in y and o because i'm an adult wow so my first experience with the internet was my aunt who got her computer she was like the first to get a computer so i think my first

experience with the internet was my aunt who was like the first to get a computer. So I think my first experience with the internet was my aunt, who was like the first person in our family to get a computer. So she bought it and it was like this big event. We all went over to her house and they let me, I think I was like seven or so. So it was around 99. So it was like, you know, Windows 98.

And they like let me like put it together and like try to hook up things because I knew. I didn't know anything about technology, but they were just like, let the kid play around with the computer. You had the virality to handle that. You were young and powerful and you'll figure it out. I was willing to bang my head against the technology until it did my bidding. And I just remember spending a lot of time doing two things.

AOL chat rooms and Dragon Ball Z fan sites. My man! Where I would use her printer, which was fucking state-of-the-art technology, to print images from the internet onto pieces of paper. Whoa! Which I would then put inside of sheet protectors and carry around in a binder and show them

to my friends. This is from the online. Yeah. It's like if I went around now and was like, check out this image I found on the internet. Yeah. But the reason was that dial-up, you couldn can spend that much time on the internet at any given time because people had to you know take phone calls and what have you yeah so your time on the internet felt amazing precious it was so special and and every link you clicked every bit you

scrolled oh my god it's new information yeah and at any point there was like kind of the oh will someone have to kick me off the internet it's like a little bit of a fire under you or am i supposed to do this yeah yeah it's like what might happen you you were afraid to indulge in anything that might grab you for too long because you might have to get kicked off the internet like so that happened in games when i didn't know that if i could like god you know uh oh can i go can i go to the wilderness right now like who knows if my aunt's gonna need to use i go can i go to the wilderness right now like who knows if my aunt's gonna need to use a telephone can i go to the wildy yeah yeah or the wildy as we call it my mom's listening to this podcast right now and she knows for a fact that she destroyed several

excellent raids to the wildy oh my gosh joy cope oh my gosh yeah no i. Oh my gosh. Yeah, no, I think the most angry I'd ever gotten. So in RuneScape, you could go into what's called the wilderness, which was where the normal game, you could cut wood and it was cool and you could fish and it was cool and you could mine ore and it was cool. But there was a player versus player element that lived in this far, far North part of the map called the wilderness. And, uh, that was like the scary part where if you killed another player, you got all of their, all of the stuff that they were wearing,

you got all of their equipment and all of their items. It was very, everyone had these like delusions of grandeur that one day, like something, uh, that one day some like really rich player would walk into the wilderness and you'd be able to kill them and steal all their stuff dude i this is literally just lord of the flies yeah because we have no frame of reference at this point in our lives right like i haven't been playing overwatch at this point i've been

playing call of duty i don't have like this backlog of video game experience to contextualize what it's like when you're playing something competitive in a game. I didn't play competitive sports. I was like, you know, nine years old. I had nothing to go on. And as a result, the idea that you could go to a place and have physical conflict was crazy.

Somebody's going to try and kill you, young Jordan Cope. I've never been more, I think that I felt all of my most intense emotions inside of the wilderness in RuneScape I think we both emotionally peaked in the wilderness to this day

I felt the most exhilarating highs I felt like I once cried playing RuneScape wait really? yeah yeah I accidentally traded away a million coins to someone. Oh, Jarvis, my sweet little man. I was so happy that I'd saved up a mil. And that was, like, a lot of money in RuneScape.

Big deal. You know, back then. That was before the economy inflated and million didn't mean anything anymore. Russell and I played RuneScape as adults, and we instantly made 100 mil. Yeah. runescape as adults um and we instantly made 100 mil like yeah we instantly just because we realized that there was so much of a there was so much social engineering to the game and so much like merchanting that like if you were an adult with like an adult brain you could manipulate other people like really this thing with value i'm just gonna sell it for more money yeah yeah

but that's not a thing you understand as a kid the magic thing i know we're harping on runescape but understand that we're not actually talking about runescape we're talking about the social dynamics of human beings way earlier than you're supposed to engage with that stuff like this was hey let's take some seven eight year old kids and expose them to mercantile techniques oh my god violence and like i i seriously give credit i didn't even really enjoy runescape i enjoyed it a bit but i enjoyed the social aspect more than anything else but i attribute runescape with educating how i approach things that i still apply today yeah i uh i mean runescape had a free market so you could kind of like learn how how that worked, how you could become a merchant and buy things low and sell them high, how you could take advantage of market fluctuations

and seasonality and things like that. And also how you could betray people. I remember this guy. Consequence-free, too. I remember this guy's screen name. I was super young. He taught me a bunch of things about the game i met this guy online and he was like oh let's go into the wilderness and he like took me deep in the

wilderness and then he started attacking me and i i felt like i trusted this guy he like traded me a couple of uh a couple of things that were expensive like art pieces of armor and stuff and he betrayed my trust he was like oh i'm now going to kill you and i was like what you can't the world's a perfect place we were friends i was like oh my god i i i like learned so much like i was like oh okay you can't trust people with everything he gave you cynicism he gave me the gift of cynicism he gave me cynicism his name was bet 42 do you think we're gonna find a better 42 i uh bet 42 if you're listening i look what you did to jarvis look what you did to me you made me a cynical and then i became a horrible person yeah after i was wronged by that guy i would like get people to trust me and trade me

things and then i would just like disappear jarvis you son of did you ever do what he did uh oh yeah many times you son of a gun many times the bullying cycle oh my goodness it was yeah and and for like this no well for reference i played runescape in middle school which is like uh which is when i was like 11 to to 13 and that was the real years where i was like just a horrible human well that's where you have to define your moral compass yeah yeah or not in your case you haven't developed empathy so you're like pure id and you're pure like it's lord of the flies you know what i mean like you have no you have no respect for your fellow man or anything like that and and you just are just

horrible you have your pure instinctual id but you also don't have the foresight for consequence oh yeah so you're like oh i know i'll screw this guy over i can't see that biting me well also the consequence was like very it's not like in the real world where the consequence is very immediate and it's very related to the people who are in your you know immediate vicinity it was like oh i'll just log into a different world from now on all this I'll just log on to a different server. I just will never run into this person ever. And so you didn't feel any of the consequences.

Nope, no need to. And yeah, that was very formative for the early years. I think that I was very manipulative in a way that I like unlearned like later in life. Yeah. I would say we'll talk about this a little bit more because we can talk a little bit about like aim and MSN messaging and digital chat. But like there are things and like social engineering techniques that I implicitly learn through stuff like that that i to this day have to consciously avoid oh yeah like when you're chatting to somebody in an online space which we see an abundance of yeah you could be a piece of shit and you can do it so tactfully that people don't really blame you

for being a piece of shit you've just engineered a bad situation and that's something that we we were trained to do by bet 49 or whatever his name was that 42 oh wow you're crying um yeah yeah i think that like it it kind of made me vigilant to you know what people could really be trying to do behind the scenes like people say one thing when they mean another absolutely uh uh and it made me like more skeptical of like people's intentions so yeah i think runescape was like i mean we're talking about runescape because it was a very formative part of our online experience right but as we got older i mean i'm speaking for myself but i assume you're pretty much in the same space as i got older i started to find new avenues for that

same experience like one or two other games as i grew and developed but then eventually i found myself with msn now i don't what was your software equivalent oh we used aim am but it's the same system right it's just like your friend pops online you're like open up a chat blah blah it's facebook messenger but a hundred years ago yeah i also used msn a bit for video game conversations right but it's all chat could to be clear i took runescape to like the logical conclusion i was like a serious i've listened to runescape podcast i like yeah i had like a i was well known in the community you were the runescape i was the rune boy boy i was rune before sad boys i was rune boy i was rune Boy. Now, I bring this up because even more so than RuneScape in a lot of the games I played growing up,

I would say that MSN, in my experience, and AIM in your experience, that pretty much defined, to this day, the way I communicate online. I think it really set in place a lot of the norms around textual communication. Oh, yes. This was the precursor to to text particularly when it comes to flirtation yeah when i was in my mid to late teens and i you know send a little girl a text and she sends you a text and i remember using all the techniques and like do i reply within the hour all of that was established on msn oh interesting i um

didn't learn any of that till later. I was too busy playing video games. Fair enough. Yeah. No, seriously. I took that for a long time. You took it to a pro tier. Yeah. But one interesting thing is like, yeah, texting.

Texting used to be a thing that not everybody could do. Yeah. In the States, I don't know what it was like for you, but not everybody had unlimited texting. Texting was like an expensive thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It cost actual money to send individual messages. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't get my first, I got my first cell phone in like middle school, but it was a prepaid Virgin Mobile cell phone.

Right. And you got what, like 200 texts total? Yeah, like a month. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so I was like, don't text me. And I, so I did a lot more. I did a lot more i

did a lot of phone calls back there yeah well you had to i mean i wasn't there but i assume it was exactly the same as uh being live during a war you had to carefully ration all of your survival instincts and oh yeah yeah you had to go well please only text me after this time because then i can commodify it and then yeah well make sure to call me on the first because then I'll have new call time. You would also get mad at people who texted you, which was something you didn't even have control of if you think about it. And you still lost. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, oh, it's like you have 200 texts a month. But if a spam number figures out your number, they can just text you 200 times until you can't text anymore. And it's like, wait, what? It'd be like if I just went, man, I really want your your money and i could just take it because i wanted it a lot yeah it's like uh jordan actually only has a 200 text plant oh great i'm just gonna send him 200 text messages which is a denial of service attack that is that is a crime that is a cyber crime now as a question because we've talked

a little bit about like the mediums we were into and the ways that we learned and developed i'm curious because mostly we've talked about the positive we've talked about like uh what these did for us on a grander scale and how they helped us develop what would you peg as the major negative from this experience like this dependency on online communication in a lot of your formative years well i think that i was able to get all of the value out of communication without ever really learning to communicate in person. Like with strangers, I met so many strangers on the internet that I was able to meet and build relationships with. And eventually, like I said, meet, but I meant like meet digitally. I eventually met people in real life that i'd only

known online um but when it came to my like me in the real world i wasn't good at making friends with people like with with strangers yeah because i mean that's the training right trial by fire and then suddenly you found a more approachable version and now there's no trial yeah and it's like i never i never played a sport i never did any of these things where i was like forced to clash with uh with strangers so i just knew people from my classes and i kind of found my like click yeah uh and i just hung out with those people from the beginning to the end and in and then yeah i think it really stunted my ability to build relationships in person. No, I feel that.

I'm actually somewhat on the same boat. The thing that I would point to as like the key negative is probably, to be honest, the time investment. And this isn't in the case of RuneScape. It's in the case of chatting. MSN for me was just, I would spend a day a day on msn oh wow i would sit down it's a saturday summer sunny lovely i'm chatting to a friend then all of a sudden oh shit lola just logged online hey what's up lola we're chatting to lola oh wait my good friend callum i haven't chatted to callum all day i'm chatting to callum oh shit like i could

just lose a day yeah yeah because the idea that like uh it's kind of like that old experiment where uh they're familiar with this they um there's a classic psychological experiment where they would give rats access to a button that would actively stimulate their um uh serotonin gland yeah and it would just hit them with serotonin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Objective happiness. Right, right. And they discovered that all the rat would do is hit the button until it would almost die. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because it's like, well, it's perfect. I'm perfectly happy. Why would I do anything else? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was exactly that. I would be hungry, bored, like almost bored, thirsty, tired, sick. But I'd be like, well, this is stimulating the thing that teenagers like i'm 14 years old and i'm stimulating the feeling of engaging with another human being yeah you know i um i was very

similar except i think i had a few friends that i was talking to and i think what i developed was which is a negative is like a addiction to that where if you couldn't control it like if your friend was like offline or your friend was like not responding to you uh i remember feeling so upset and so like yeah when someone was online and they were like talking to someone else and it would be like oh are you talking to like yeah it's like being in 19 relationships yeah yeah no it would No, it would be like, oh, are you talking to Joe? It's like, yeah, he's talking to me. Why isn't he talking to me? Why is he talking to Joe?

This is also the age where, I mean, personally, we both grew up in fatherless households. Yeah. And it's fair to say it's a term I'm pretty comfortable with. And as a result, like, male validation was not, you know, it was appreciated, right? Like, if you're chatting on an msn with somebody it's in their life like hey you're my best friend i'm like oh wow thank you so cool thanks dude finally so if somebody was like chatting you know uh steve's chatting of william i'm like but like why not me weren't we weren't we friends why not me well i thought

i thought we hung out. I thought we were still friends. I remember several occasions. I have one particularly cringy memory. You'll spot how cringy it is based on a key phrase. The key phrase is club penguin. Immediately we're in cringe town. Choo choo. Train pulling into the station.

I don't remember the context but i remember that i had a air quotes best friend the best club penguin friend and all i remember is i remember shit about that game but all i remember is it was one this one occasion where i spent no less than a full half hour after my best friend logged off right sitting in the corner of a chat space yeah this is a very isolating conversation because not every club penguin club penguin is a chat room but you have an avatar that you can move around yeah it's even more basic than runescape there's no game component it's just a chat room yeah it's just a chat room i i moved my little character to the corner of the

room and i just hit uh sad i just hit the sad reaction. In Club Penguin, your emote floats above your head. Oh, my God. So I was just floating sad. And I was clearly looking for attention. Oh, my God. But at the time, I was like, I'm just expressing how much I miss Mike. You know, we're having such a nice time hanging out. Wait, did you know Mike in real life?

Nope. Oh, my God. I sure did not know Mike. I'm trying to bring maximum cringe. Oh, my God. I did not know Mike. How long had to bring maximum cringe. Oh, my God. I did not know Mike. How long had you known Mike before this? Oh, God knows.

No more than a week. Oh, my God. There's no way. So you met Mike. Met my good friend, Mike. You guys became best friends in a week. A week of ruined Club Penguin friendship. We became best friends because he also really liked the Arctic Monkeys album that I was into.

That's strange. I associate arctic monkeys with like maturity oh arctic monkeys was big and young englishman i see i see of my demo we're big into arctic monkeys so he loved it we were chatting i'm thinking it feels like talking about world's weird romance in italy i we just we met in Italy. We met in the balloon party room. And we started talking about the... He was just using emotes that I'd never seen you so articulately before. Yeah, it was like a winky face followed by a frown. What does that even mean?

We kiss. Immediately. And then one day he just logged off and sat there in the corner and i spammed the sad emoji this was also i should point out like emojis are pretty fresh at this point emoticons are a lot more common oh yeah i'm throwing in a couple of emoticons to mix it up i'm chucking in in, you know, colon, apostrophe, smile. And it's like, wait, he's smiling because he had a positive memory. But he also looks a little sad.

Like, a lot of very confusing emotions. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember somebody. This is how vivid this is. How depressing that I have such an incredibly vivid memory. I forget, like, names of extended family members. But I remember Bet 42. But you remember Bet 42. And I favorite movies. But you remember Bet 42.

And I vividly remember somebody coming up to me and asking what's wrong. And that being one of the most validating moments of my entire life. Because I was like, yes, my performance worked. Oh my God. I used to do that shit all the time. Like just strategically logging off of like AIM.

Yeah. Or like putting in statuses that were like, I walk a lonely road. You son of a bitch. The.m yeah or or like putting in statuses that were like i walk a lonely road yeah no it's like it's like wow is this is this or is not this a cry for fucking attention god i mean since we're talking about it i do want to touch on like i mean we've kind of been going on a chronology here like here's super young kid we engage with runescape because it's one of the first things we really really fell in love with online and then we move a little bit further we're on aim i want to talk about when facebook came out okay well can were you ever on

myspace or were you ever on any other social bebo you're super into bebo yeah super irish startup i think bebo big in ireland yeah i don't know you know one of our big over here right yeah yeah not big over here uh though it was headquartered here. Oh, well, Bebo, for anybody who doesn't know, is functionally speaking MySpace. It's MySpace with a little bit more emphasis on multiple pages. It was kind of like a Squarespace MySpace crossover. Okay, all I know is that one of our current co-workers

used to work at Bebo. Yes, they did. And they're my favorite because of that. They have a lot of social cachet with me um but like so we we had these little minimal uh we had these little mini facebooks effectively pre-facebook facebooks at this point i think facebook is just a harvard thing we can barely touch it yeah yeah and as a result i mean what are we talking this is 2003 well 2004 is when facebook dropped right so we're playing we're on b-, we're on MySpace. And I want to bring this up because I think this is my most socially despicable. Okay.

Like this is the point where I've moved from raw innocence to like social manipulation. Okay. I'm setting particular statuses and I'm sending out particular messages to an engineer the responses and validation that I want. You know what I mean? Right, right, right. Like I'm putting out like a...'m putting out like a sad emoji sad emoji it doesn't even matter dot dot dot and then you're like you leave that for a day oh you've got some tasty comments that is what's colloquially known as vague booking oh never heard that before but that's accurate yeah but it was like i mean that's

on facebook i was pretty guilty of that as well in, my most cringy moment that resulted in me deleting the social media account when I discovered it later in life was that this was in high school. So this is 2007. How old are you? 14. Oh, peak cringe. Peak cringe. And it was also right before. It was like right in the beginning of Facebook where I had a Facebook account, but I was also on MySpace and I was also on this thing called Zanga.

News to me. Zanga was like a live journal competitor. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ooh, never good for teens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was just like a freaking compose text area where it was like, write your feelings, man. Dude, how peculiar is it that so many of these apps were marketed to the people that had the least to say?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, oh, oh, a text box? You, like, crack your knuckles? Oh, time to get going. Not only do I have nothing of interest or consequence, but also I have no writing experience. Yeah, I have no writing writing experience no life experience of consequence and i feel so strongly about it yeah i'm very sure that what i have to say matters despite

the fact that i can't structure spell or be interesting yeah i i just like want to uh find new york times best-selling authors and like find a live show them their live journal and see how they react. But I found my old Zynga and on the Zynga, I was Zynga.com slash Jarv15 because it kind of looks like Jarvis. So I was writing about my freshman year of high school, about how I hated all of my classes and about how I wanted to be in these other classes with my friends because of like some other thing that I'll get into later. But I just like i don't want to be here this is horrible it doesn't even matter uh it was like a lot of it doesn't even matter a lot of lincoln

park um yeah lyrics uh what have i done but i don't even want to go into details it's so cringy but like as soon as i saw it uh in like modern times i immediately deleted the account blood fired out of your nose yeah i don't even remember like i blacked out when i blacked in it was like account deleted congratulations deleted laptop erased yeah yeah it was like clothes burned thank goodness you've you've improved the average quality of uh content on our site by deleting all of yours. Yeah, if you delete your old LiveJournal account, it doesn't say account deleted, it says thank you.

Yeah. Thank God. We got better. Yeah, I fortunately, for whatever reason, never really got into the blogging scene. Instead, my scene was mainly status updates. Was that a thing you got into? Were you putting weirdly vague booking, as you put it?

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Strang strangely enigmatic statuses intended to get attention oh most definitely so i think i actually got into vague booking like at the beginning of facebook for me like i think my high school got facebook in like 2007 right and i would oh boy i would just like have the things good or bad it was like it doesn't even matter no one notices like oh gosh my skin is peeling off yeah yeah from just hearing this it was i would i would uh even be more specific like and this is like when i was 18 so i really didn't get out of or 17 i really didn't get out of this for a while but i remember i didn't get into my dream school and i posted a basic status about it i was like so i guess i'm not good enough for this school and i was like geez man it's such a tricky thing do you have um so i through some

extended family and also just like friends of friends i do have a few uh friends on facebook of around 16 17 18 of that era right and as a result i i get a peek every now and then i get a little peek into this world into this melodramatic stuff what it's like right now do you feel like it's a necessary step or is this something that can be mitigated because for me personally while it was very embarrassing i also kind of felt like i got it out of my system you know it was a nice venue for that i think it's a necessary step here's how i here's how i think about it you know how like a baby cries yes and it's basically like pay attention to me and sometimes parents will be like i'm just gonna let it cry because it should not get used to receiving attention every single time it cries sure yeah some parents do that well yeah some parents do that that's kind of uh maybe

it's not a good idea i don't know but in this metaphor like i think it's important to get that stuff out and realize that you're not always going to get what you need yes like and then you have to learn to cope which is sort of the danger of a very insular social media relationship because if you do have a friend group that's always going to reply with a pretty supportive and open message one it's good because at least you have a positive support network but you're also never gonna learn not to passive aggressively post weird enigmatic statuses about yourself i guess that's a good point i maybe my like middle school and high school friends weren't super in touch with their emotions but like when i would post that stuff nobody would respond yeah i was like total zero so i was just like i guess i had to learn to deal uh on my own slowly but surely i think that started the the healing process for me yeah i

want to give a shout out to my friend finn who on the i want to say ninth or tenth time i posted a status that was like i hate this town i hate living here this sucks man and i did i like the town just fine but you know've got the energy and everything. I was like, yeah, this sucks. Look at my fedora. And he posted on one of those, shut up. Stop always talking about this. Just like a very clean cut status.

Right. And to this day, I have not made another post in that genre. Oh, wow. That was like good bullying. Wow. He cyber bullied me right. I never got anything like that. Oh, no. I can post something for you if you want that. i'm gonna i'm gonna write a status right now i'm doing it right now i jarvis stop this sucks i don't want to be here cut it out no one likes me that's the thing though

because it's it's such a risky move to post stuff like that i understand the comp the compulsion because it's yeah you're rolling the dice and either you get nothing or you get immediate validation right but there's surely plenty and plenty of people that just get the no validation oh yeah and then it becomes a super unhealthy cycle where you're oh yeah i never got i i like don't think i mean maybe a little bit i got some validation but for the most part i felt like i was just like shouting into an empty uh an empty room just like a quarry yeah yeah and i was like nobody loves me and then it bounces back nobody loves you yeah it's like how did how did that wait this quarry that's not what i said is this quarry my only friend yeah um no i think i had some sort of people, and then I configured it so that my family members couldn't see my posts.

Ooh. Yeah. Yeah, it was bad. Now, that's interesting. Was it because they were going to reply, or you were just embarrassed by the content? I think it was because I didn't want it from them. Oh, interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, notice me, but only my friends. Yeah, yeah. I think like, notice me, but only my friends. Yeah, yeah. I think that's what it was. Yeah. What a trickily privileged position, too. Yeah, yeah. Because I was exactly the same.

I was like, well, my mom likes me, and I've got my family in my life, and they think I'm cool. But I don't care about their opinions. It's about Mark from down the road. Yeah, it's about Mike. Come back, Mike. My mom can't do a fucking kickflip. Come back to the balloon lounge. Come i miss you so colon apostrophe sad that's like that kind of goes back to uh what you were saying about like engineering things so that they would receive the response you wanted yeah it's like i would engineer facebook posts so that they got the response that i wanted which was like the people

who are my friends noticing me or whatever i even did that shit in person i was like horrible i i want to wait through what this is like in person let's role play this shit uh well it would be like i took things super personally and then i would just like shut down and like be really quiet and like not react in like a social situation the thing in this context oh anything it would be like me misperceiving someone as like not noticing me or not like or making fun of me or something like that right maybe anything just being like extra sensitive somebody drops like oh how about this you say You say like taking things for granted instead of taking things for granted. Yeah.

And then people are like, wait, what? Yeah. And then suddenly. And then it like goes black and white and like raindrops start falling. I can't believe they've exposed me. Yeah. For the monster that I am. Exactly.

And then I would just like shut down because I think I had this other thing where I like felt like I needed to be like perfect and good in all situations. And if I would ever like make a mistake, I would take it extra hard. And so I would just shut down and not talk to anybody. Now, do you think that that trait of yours, however prevalent it was or still is, is unique to the Jarvis experience? Or do you think that's just indicative of being a teen? I think it was like, I don't think it's rare but i do think that it was like a component of my experience and it played out online uh in that way where i would like feel

bad and then i would like look for validation and other people like i would like message people and try to oh you know like so and so isn't working out for me. I really wish it was. Eh? Eh? Eh? And your thoughts? Yeah. I sure hope they're the same. I sure hope you have the opinion that I am amazing. Because I need that from everyone. It's Mark.

Yeah. It's Mark again. No, Mike, sorry. It's like, you know, it's Mike. It's like weirdly the Facebook name changes to Bet42. And I'm like, wait a second. No, no. Yeah, and then he just like strikes me down with a rune scimitar.

His signature weapon. His signature weapon. Yeah, what if it turns out that the Mike I was in love with is the guy that hurt you? What if I was bet 42? What if? You know, because I... Stop stabbing me! Jordan just whipped out an adamant type long sword.

Yeah. Come to the wilderness with me. Like, just for fun? Just for kicks? Dude, it's always a blast. Yeah, okay. That sounds fun. Level two, right?

I like you you seem trustworthy you seem like a man worthy of my affections so jordan yo uh we've been talking a lot about growing up online and i think it's time for it to come to a close yes because we're fully grown yeah done developing no more improvements necessary yeah well i mean i'm 25 so my brain stopped developing how could i get any better so i mean this is just where it ends i think that is all jokes aside i think that's a dangerously prevalent mindset oh really oh i've hit 20 all done oh yeah yeah i think that a lot of people don't have like growth growth mindset all ready to go yeah i wrapped up my growth i

think my least favorite thing that someone could say is like um that's just how i am oh my god jump into a lake jump jump into a lake covered in cinder blocks and like jump in directly okay i want you to get on top of a bridge right and i want you to dive bomb uh-huh directly into the mouth of an alligator okay there we go i want that alligator to chew you up spit you off a mountain and when you land off of the mountain you turn into like a xylophone and you play your teeth because of me i want nothing to do with you yeah i i really do dislike that perspective uh because it's just an excuse for a lot of like destructive and horrible behavior my bad bro i guess i killed your dad but classic me i mean i'm finished developing so i'd say like my final thoughts Overall would be for

Anybody listening to go back Through like the chronology of their Time on the internet their time growing up In that kind of environment identify the Things that you did that were weird and Uncomfortable and strange and potentially Even a little bit creepy and own Them like absorb them even just

Talking about I'm sure talking about bet 42 In your case I'm talking about Mike'm sure talking about bet 42 in your case oh man talking about mike my best friend in the whole world probably 40 now that mike was already 40 for sure from day one uh it makes me uncomfortable like i i think go back look at those things and take ownership of them because i think there's a lot of power in uh reminiscing looking at your cringy painful weird awkward moments and just moving past them taking the powerful positive moments and discarding the grossness yeah i think for me um i think there's always a lot of like back in my day with anybody who's like not from this

generation and i don't necessarily agree with that i think that we go through the same growth phases but our individual experiences are mapped to whatever the medium is or whatever the environment is at that point yeah so i think that we learned the same lessons slightly differently or we learned like you know even us two years apart and of course with the cultural difference i'm sure there was a wealth of changes yeah but the function was, I'm sure there was a wealth of changes. Yeah. But the function was the same. Yeah.

Same destination, different route. Yeah, exactly. Like, and that means that you probably like, when did you get Facebook? 06, 07. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, like in, in, in your development, that was like you were coming in. Yeah, I was early high school. Okay.

I guess I was exactly the same. So maybe there's no difference. We take it all back. All the growth that we talked about, it's over. Nothing mattered after all. But I think that a lot of those experiences are just as valuable as experiences in the real world. And I think because I spent so much time online, I actually got a lot of valuable learning out that I'm able to still apply in the real world now. Yeah, I think too often, and I'm just as guilty of this, maybe you can speak to the same, but far too often people are fearful to look back on the previous versions of themselves.

This is something I've talked about. Actually, my mum has brought this up to me in the past. Shout out to Joy Cope, second shout out of the podcast. Coolest lady in the world. She's pointed out to me that at several points in my life, I've said things to her like, well, I just changed X about me. Like, oh, I got in shape or I stopped eating this or I changed this thing. Right. Now I'm Jordan version 6.0 or something.

Yeah. And she's pointed out, well, it's actually pretty unhealthy to live a life where you're consciously trying to avoid previous versions of yourself. Right. Constantly trying to upgrade. There's nothing wrong with being a composite of everything being a sum of your parts yeah and for me a big part of that is jumping in and thinking damn i made some cringy msn statuses yeah damn i sent some messages that made me look like a massive tool and that's okay because those learnings are what makes me hopefully not send those messages anymore. Yeah, I think that thinking back on those experiences, like you don't think about each individual like thing you did.

Yeah. But in aggregate, those basically inform my current online behavior. Absolutely. It's the reason that, and we didn't touch on this, but it's the reason that like I don't notice ads, but my like 60-year year old aunt like cannot avoid them or like can't tell a fishy website from a real website. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like all of that comes from like spending hours and hours and hours developing this intuition.

And that's where an intuition is is based on previous experiences. And I think that now, having grown up online, we are best equipped to tackle the medium head on. I think if I'm going to give a little bit of homework to all four listeners, including you and me, I want them to go out and I want them to find an old Facebook status and a MySpace status if you still have the account. What was the Zanga?

Zinga? Zanga, yeah. I want you to go to a Zanga status if you still have the account. What was the Zanga? Zinga? What was the... Zanga, yeah. Zanga. I want you to go to a Zanga account if you used to have one, and I want you to tweet whatever the cringiest under 140 character line you can find from one of those sources at sadboyspod with a Z. That's sadboyspod

with a Z. Because it will make me, even if it makes you fucking miserable, it'll make john coat very happy and that's really all that matters and for the show i will be tweeting on sad boys pod my cringiest facebook post we will both tweet one out we'll both i'll find one yeah we will and because sad boys is about growth it's about being true to who we are and i am a guy who had a bunch of cringy facebook statuses in 2007 and uh i'll i'll tweet out a really good one for y'all we are each men built out of lego pieces and some of those lego pieces are very cringy and it's okay to put those out in the world so check out the

sad boys pod twitter account for incredibly upsetting statuses probably just about like bet 42 screwing you over and in my case me me putting out like mike where did you go mine's probably gonna be about college uh admissions or something yeah mine more than likely is going to be in the vein of uh i don't like this town that i'm growing up in oh oh god oh no i want to do a follow-up episode we have it on our topic list to just do like a cringy memories episode but uh we can talk about this in more length there but i definitely oh god even thinking about it hurts me oh okay i have to say it right i can't not i guess you have to at this point sad voice is all about weird vulnerability this is rewarding

the people who've listened this far very impressive both of us are re-listening to the podcast we made it this far nobody else maybe joy cope third shout out of the podcast um so i would put lyrics oh no yeah already bad right here we go like dillinger escape plan lyrics or uh i don't know architect lyrics or something i was very into speed and hardcore metal at a certain point in my life. Okay. So I'm like 14, 15 at this point. 15-year-old Jordan posts a paragraph of lyrics and then tags a girl in it.

Oh, no! Yes, dude! Just like a name at the end, or even maybe just a comment, or like it was a photo just oh god i feel like that's the very worst version of what we were talking about with it because when you make a call out that's somewhat vague like yeah yeah everything's falling apart at least you're giving people the option to engage yeah if you put like sharon if you put like uh on the wings of an angel and then put at sharon where are you where you at girl

yeah it's like um it wouldn't even be a comment it would just be the name it's like i i wish you would just notice me because i love you sharon sharon sharon sharon sharon sharon sharon oh my god did they ever respond i'm not to my knowledge i i actually remember one um where i just posted oh god this sucks i've got to save some of these for the for the the cringe episode but there was a uh one that i posted that was a dillinger escape plan lyric that went bitch on the wolf and i was like yeah edgy right i'm using the word bitch my mom's on facebook she's gonna be so mad at me but i don't even care and uh there was a girl called beth wolf that i knew oh i made up her first name to protect her out of everybody but she uh replied and was like haha that's me my name wolf ha ha ha and then i sent her like a

message like ha ha ha what are you up to? I'd like to apologize to my family, all that all those that love me, all of my friends and my landlord, because by God they're going to kick me out after saying that out loud. Yeah, I don't know how to follow that actually. You know what would help me, Travis? What would help you? Is if you and several

other people tweeted at the Sad Boys pod account. Yes. Oh, with their cringy sad stories because if anything i'm hoping that there's one far worse than mine and that i get a little bit of immunity because people are going to be listening to this podcast for years and it's going to be incredibly depressing um well i like that you think so highly of this podcast if you will be listening for years hello barack hussein jones pajama hussein pajamas Hello, Barack. Hussein Jones. Pajama. Hussein Pajama.

Barack Hussein Pajamas. No relation. His sleepy cousin. His cousin with a completely different last name. With the same first and middle name. Rhymes. Bizarrely. So this has been the Sad Boys. We do have fun.

We do have fun. But if the listeners themselves had fun, which I highly doubt, but if for whatever reason they did, how can they get even more fun out of the sad boys? You got to subscribe to the cast. You got to sub to the cast. You got to sub to the cast. Sub to the cast.

And if they do sub to the cast, what do they have to look forward to? You've got to look forward to some amazing topics, some amazing guests. I wish I could tell you the guests, but they're not all confirmed yet. If only some of them are locked down, it would be weird to socially pressure them. We don't want to do that to them, but trust me, it's going to be awesome. There are going to be some very interesting guests and some very provocative topics. We are going to talk about work-life balance. We're going to talk about...

Creative vulnerability. Sexuality. Race. It's going to get... It's going to get cray, y'all. It's going to get cray-cray. So we've got to get going, but before we do... We just want to say...

Thank you. I love you. And I'm sorry. Boom.