Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello and welcome to Never Posts.
Finally, it is spring twenty twenty six mailbag in which we
respond to listener emails, comments, voicemails, voice
messages about our segments. When you have thoughts, send
them our way. They don't even really need to be about the
show. Not sure what color to repaint your bedroom?
Send those swatches over. We will weigh in. Got a kid on the
way and unsure what to name them. Jason has ideas.
Jason Oberholtzer: And they're all German words.
Georgia Hampton: But not the ones you think.
Mike Rugnetta: New exciting German words. Volkswagen. For
your baby today.
Jason Oberholtzer: Hey, gang. It's finally spring, and it's
snowing outside of my window.
Georgia Hampton: I was gonna say it is, for sure undeniably 35
degrees
Mike Rugnetta: right now. Will we ever see the end of winter?
Georgia Hampton: I think this
year, no. I think they're doing it differently.
Mike Rugnetta: We're gonna skip straight to a 100 degrees and
99%. Yes. Yes. Yes. And it will have been because of them.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Welcome to our Los Angeles listeners.
Currently at 95 plus degrees.
Georgia Hampton: Oh my god. Yes.
Mike Rugnetta: I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. Joining me today
in order of tales Georgia first heads Jason first. Woah. Oh.
Never Post producer Georgia Hampton.
Georgia Hampton: Bullshit. Yes. Yes.
Jason Oberholtzer: The unluckiest man alive.
Georgia Hampton: Eat my dust.
Jason Oberholtzer: Okay.
Mike Rugnetta: And Never Post executive producer Jason
Oberholzer.
Jason Oberholtzer: Well, nothing's going my way this
year, is it?
Mike Rugnetta: Hans will not be joining us today because he has
literally been sent to The Hague. A sentence I could
explain, but I will not.
Georgia Hampton: No questions. No.
Mike Rugnetta: Nothing. He knows what he's done.
Jason Oberholtzer: But we don't need him anyway, because we have
you
Mike Rugnetta: That's not true. We obviously We've been we've
been recording for two minutes and thirty seconds, and it's
obvious that we need us.
Jason Oberholtzer: Anyone who's seen any of the livestreams we
have tried to accomplish while Hans has been gone knows we
desperately need him.
Georgia Hampton: God.
Yeah. Me and Jason together
Jason Oberholtzer: Oh my lord.
Georgia Hampton: Trying to stream video games.
Jason Oberholtzer: It's not our fault. We're We're children who
can't do technology.
Georgia Hampton: We're just two infants
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: Using a computer for the first time.
Mike Rugnetta: Oh, but it's so cute. Alright. Let's see what
people had to say about some of the stuff we did.
Georgia Hampton: So we got a very interesting message from
Elise who called in to weigh in about my archive episode, which
was actually my first segment I ever did, about the
disappearance of tween fashion and how the algorithmic Internet
is partially to blame.
Speaker 5: In thinking about the way that tweens dress now, it
definitely is interesting. I'm currently 29, so I'm definitely
someone who shopped a lot at stores, like, limited to when I
was younger. A thought that I've had, and I feel like friends of
similar ages have talked about and it's pretty popular online
that people are always discussing. It's just this
concept of looking at middle schoolers or early high
schoolers or just really any tweens and teens and being like,
wow. They look like adults.
And I think it makes sense within the clothing aspects that
you were talking about on this segment. But, also, the way that
makeup trends have changed is really interesting to me.
Because when I was in middle school, everyone was, you know,
getting into makeup for the first time, And there were a
number of people who were just smearing on crazy eyeliner or
putting on way too much blush. And it felt like this rite of
passage where both in clothing and maybe also in makeup, kids
kind of like, we just looked like shit. And we look back at
pictures, and we're like, damn.
I look like an awkward, weird little middle schooler. And it's
really crazy that it's different now. And they look like many
adults, and I feel like a lot of that has to do with makeup
trends, which I'm sure is also related to the rise of TikTok
and YouTube tutorials and different things like that.
Georgia Hampton: This is a great excuse to talk about my favorite
makeup memory
Jason Oberholtzer: Oh, okay.
Georgia Hampton: Which is one of the first pieces of makeup that
I had was a single eye shadow from Revlon in, like, powder
blue, like, baby baby blue. And I remember going to school with
it just slathered
Mike Rugnetta: Yes.
Georgia Hampton: Over my eyelids.
Mike Rugnetta: Yes.
Georgia Hampton: Dusty eyelashes. I was not wearing
mascara. I hadn't gotten there yet. And I remember being at gym
class, which for some reason was the first class that year with
just, like, a metric ton of baby blue eyeshadow on my eyelids,
feeling very vividly the transition from, like, I am the
most beautiful woman in the world to being, like
Mike Rugnetta: Oh, no.
Speaker 4: Somehow, this is I've made a terrible mistake. Jim Jim
first period, like,
Mike Rugnetta: middle school is the coolest shit in the world.
Georgia Hampton: Evil evil behavior. And that is
Mike Rugnetta: I had to do that every, like, a a couple years
and, like, whole there is no quicker way to be like, oh, I I
have no idea what I'm doing just as a human.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, yeah. Do I hate myself?
Jason Oberholtzer: Because you lack, like, both the old man
wisdom and audacity to show up to school in gym clothes with
your regular clothes in your bag, and then just take a full
fucking shower after gym class.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, wet hair all day? Hello? Hello? Wet hair
all day during my Spanish exam? Anyway Anyway.
This is such a great point because I completely agree. I
mean, when I was first researching this, those
conversations about, like, the tweens at Sephora buying drunk
elephant and doing, like, 12 step skincare routines on, like,
prepubescent skin and using retinol and, like, all of these
products that are really not meant for them at all. I do
agree that I think there's this odd, like, jump to a
presentation of adulthood that is much more smoothed out. And I
think access to makeup tutorials, the social Internet
writ large, influencers, any kind of online video content,
written content, any content that is showing you how to
properly do, like, a cut crease or, like, baking your face or
doing, like, certain kinds of eye makeup looks, it it's just
so much more accessible, which doesn't necessarily have to be
bad, but I do agree that I think there is a sort of beautiful
rite of passage component to being a tween and looking like
shit.
Mike Rugnetta: Looking like an awkward weird gremlin for a Yes.
Couple of Mhmm. This makes me think of like, is the awkward
phase of being a tween and the fashion associated with it sort
of being treated in a way like boredom? Where it's like, it is
something that
Speaker 6: Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta: In the on the individual level, you're like,
oh, this is unpleasant to experience, but what's really
important is the stuff that you get out of that unpleasant
experience. Yes. And so we've sort of, like, massaged away
boredom with devices, and we massage away this kind of, like,
awkward period of dressing and figuring out who you are and
applying makeup and getting haircuts and whatever just like
through content. And, you know, you I mean, may maybe it's maybe
I'm just old man yells at cloud, and what happens now is, like,
the awkward period disappears because you can just figure out
who you are faster because there's more options and there's
you you're exposed to more and more quickly, and so you don't
have to stumble through it. You can just point at something and
be like, I'm Matt.
That's me. I'm gonna do that one.
Jason Oberholtzer: Or does the awkward period just happen
constantly and more publicly, you just look better while it's
happening?
Mike Rugnetta: Okay. Fair.
Georgia Hampton: I mean, that is kind of the thing. I think
because also so much is documented online and there is
so much incentive to document online, And you're as as a young
person, I feel like significantly more susceptible
to being like, oh, well, I should be posting online. Like,
all my friends are online, and I should be participating in this
experience together, which I think is also very normal. I
think there's a version of this that happens to everybody when
they go through this age group. There is such a a I mean,
discomfort an important discomfort in being seen,
stumbling through, and trying and failing to figure something
out.
And everything is so documented and available to not just your
friends, but anyone that that kind of experience becomes a
performance, which then turns it into something that is more
polished, at least, on the outset.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Mhmm. Wear your gym clothes first period if
you have gym class first period. Just wear them to school. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: And might I suggest Revlon's single
eyeshadow palette. Baby powder blue. It's it's coming back.
Speaker 4: It's coming back. It stings the
Jason Oberholtzer: eyes when you sweat.
Georgia Hampton: God, it really that was yeah. That was that was
the big problem there. Georgia,
Jason Oberholtzer: where is the Internet?
Georgia Hampton: Well, Jason, the true Internet is in your
heart.
Mike Rugnetta: No. Get it out. Get it out.
Georgia Hampton: But to answer that question more fully, we
must turn to yet another message from a beloved listener. This
time from Julia, who has written in on, you guessed it, my
segment about where exactly is the Internet and what kind of
place is it. Julia writes, I think a strong contender for the
inheritor to the throne of the computer room is the bed. With
phones being untethered from the cables of the desktop, I have
gravitated to my bed when crossing the threshold into the
online what? Unseelie?
What is that?
Jason Oberholtzer: I don't know.
Georgia Hampton: I mean, look them. Silly? It's kind of Okay.
Sorry.
Mike Rugnetta: That looks purposeful, doesn't it? Right?
Georgia Hampton: I think so.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Unsealy court
Georgia Hampton: this word ever.
Jason Oberholtzer: The dark, malevolent, and often aggressive
faction of fairies in Scottish folklore and fantasy.
Georgia Hampton: Let's go. I'll take that sentence again. Woah.
With phones being untethered from the cables of the desktop,
I've gravitated to my bed when crossing the threshold into the
online unsealy. And I see a lot of people posting that they have
too.
I think this in part comes from people's living situations.
Since we're seeing a shift toward people renting individual
rooms in flats, or as you Americans would put it,
apartments, thank you, The computer room has been dissolved
into storage, or even worse, a bedroom charging two times the
average income. And the bedroom has become one of the few spaces
we feel are actually our own. I think this has significant
implications for both your discussions of third spaces and
people's behavior being unusual online. I have had very few
interactions with anyone in my bed other than sexual partners,
or I guess my cat.
So now a significant amount of social life is occurring from a
space which has had no history of socializing other than the
intensely intimate. Additionally, beds are very
comfortable. If we spend our time in algorithmic feeds and
constant simulation while wrapped up in a literal comfort
blanket, do we further the current moment's fear of boredom
and discomfort? In this situation, we are at our most
physically comfortable and completely alone. Is it any
wonder that we are so sensitive, erratic, and unadventurous?
Julia.
Mike Rugnetta: I think Julia is just right.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. I think this is an amazing observation.
Mike Rugnetta: I think this is ugh. I think when we log on,
maybe, like, a hair shirt and nail chair.
Georgia Hampton: Jared Oppenheim. We are in a position
now more than ever of of creature comforts, both in
sensation, physical sensation of being in a bed, being in
sweatpants, being in your own space that has all the things
you like in it, and then using your phone to be in a space that
has all the things you like in it. And, absolutely, I think
there is a direct correlation between that state of being, And
I I don't know if it's even a conscious feeling, but, like, a
a lack of desire to do anything about it because there is the
risk of boredom, of uncertainty of, like, well, now what do I do
I with my time? What do I how do I interact with the space? Like,
why worry about that when you can just go back on your phone?
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Everything's just a little
harder. Everything's just Yeah. And and, like, I'm more unsure,
you know?
Georgia Hampton: And you're even less incentivized to be in a
state like that.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I think it's such a great metaphor.
Like, the few open up your phone in any particular location.
Right? In one place, in one way, what you said is absolutely
true, Georgia, in the segment, like, you open up the phone and
you automatically, instantly, kind of, like, transport to
another room that is either on top of or below whatever room
you're currently in.
Speaker 4: Inside, within, and without.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Whether it's, like, the train or the
coffee shop or the office or whatever. You know, you it's a
portal into this other space where you keep all the things
that you like. Mhmm. And how interesting to think of that as
like, you know, which one is a metaphor for which?
Like, is the bedroom the metaphor for that weird
psychogeographic space? Or is that space a metaphor for the
bedroom? But it makes it at least feels really right to me.
Jason Oberholtzer: There's another email that came in that
I think actually puts an interesting spin on this. This
came from Ari. Ari says, this episode really made me think
about my relationship with the Internet and work. From 2020 to
2022, work and home were the same place for me and the
combination of those spaces eventually started to drive me
mad. I wanted work to be a place I go to, spend time in, and
leave.
Now, being back in the office full time, I appreciate the
space between my worlds. Still, I spend a lot of time online as
I work. But for some reason, my time on the Internet at work
feels different. When you describe the Internet as a
place, I realized my work Internet is separate from my
home Internet.
Mike Rugnetta: Big screen, big screen, small screen,
Speaker 4: big screen, small screen. Back here again. But so,
Jason Oberholtzer: like, that's also true. Right? We have this
superstructure of emerging to the Internet room when we're on
the train or we're in our bed or we're wherever. But I think the
most discreet difference is work Internet is a different
Internet. And I don't think it's just because there's, like,
certain sites you're not allowed to go to.
It just, like, feels different. It's work Internet.
Georgia Hampton: And I do think it matters where you are going
to the Internet in the sense of on your phone, on your tablet,
on your computer, on a desktop. How visible is your screen to
other people? How big is your screen?
Mike Rugnetta: That's exactly what I was gonna say. Like, how
much of work Internet feeling different is, like, people can
see what I'm doing. Yes.
Jason Oberholtzer: I have always thought of that it is completely
destabilizing that I would feasibly break up with my
girlfriend and have an important meeting with my boss in the
exact same location staring at the exact same device, mere
moments from each other, and have to exist as a cohesive
human.
Georgia Hampton: Damn.
Jason Oberholtzer: There's one final email that came in about
Internet places that I don't get because I have not seen any of
this media, and I just want Georgia for you to tell me if
this makes any sense.
Mike Rugnetta: No. Okay. I'll read it because this makes this
makes sense to me.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Mike.
Jason Oberholtzer: Who who knows this media?
Mike Rugnetta: Oh. Okay. So Denise sent an email in, and
Denise said, I had to pause George's piece on what kind of
place is the Internet to make this meme my first one. I'm old.
Probably did it wrong.
I'm from Minnesota. You kids are great.
Georgia Hampton: I'm rooting for you, Denise. First of
Mike Rugnetta: all, huge compliment. I like I like how
Denise being worried that she probably did this wrong seems
somehow connected to us being great. Oh. The the movie
Surrogates 2009 always comes to mind when I feel the wake up
detachment of looking up from my phone, especially the scene
where a disheveled Rosamund Pike staggers out of, quote, the
computer room where she's been linked to her robot surrogate
that has been out in the world being beautiful and amazing. So
the surrogates is a movie that if I remember correctly, Roseman
Pike and Bruce Willis.
Georgia Hampton: Okay.
Mike Rugnetta: It's based on a comic book. It is a very poor
adaptation of what I remember being a very, very good comic
book.
Jason Oberholtzer: Okay.
Mike Rugnetta: And basically, this last sentence that Denise
writes is effectively the premise of the movie, that there
is a murder mystery. I think it's a murder mystery. It's been
a long time. But you can, as a person, have a surrogate. You
can sit strapped into a piece of technology in your room
completely still, kind of like WALL E style Mhmm.
And have this perfected robotic version of yourself walking
around out in the world. And so the two pictures that Denise has
sent is Rosamund Pike's surrogate, who's beautiful, has
perfect skin, flowing blonde, like, you know, nineteen
seventies pinup Yeah. Model So it says me when I'm online on
the first picture, and then me when I turn off my phone and try
and get something real accomplished. And it's Roseman
Pike like, her skin's already blotchy. Yeah.
Her hair is, like, all dirty. She looks very unhappy. Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: One assumes that this is the real person who
has just left the computer room.
Mike Rugnetta: Yes. I like, the way that I describe this is
often it's like scrolling hangover or, like, screen
hangover.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: And it's like, there's a moment where I, like,
you know, when it happens, I kinda come to and I'm like, I
need a glass of water. Literally. I have to go to like,
I both I'm, like, embarrassed, and my throat is dry, and my
skin is itchy, and I need to go take a shower. And
Georgia Hampton: Oh, completely. I feel for, I don't know, maybe,
like, ten to fifteen seconds after I emerge out of the
scroll, kind of like the mental equivalent of coming off the
tilt a whirl, where at first you're like, like, getting your
sea legs back and being like, where am I? And what are my
values? Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: Guys, I gotta update you. Since I deleted
TikTok at the beginning of the year, I scroll so much less.
Like, I try to scroll on Reels and it, like, barely holds the
attention. It's so deeply bad. It's such a watered down drug.
Like, I'm really, like, getting off. This is, my Narcan or
something. Yeah. It's my update. That's a good update.
Mike Rugnetta: Wow, Jason. Your hair looks beautiful.
Jason Oberholtzer: Thank you. Anyway, congratulations, Denise.
You did it. You made a meme. It made sense.
Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: Was great.
Mike Rugnetta: Thank you. Denise, good meme. Nailed it.
Next up, we have a voicemail that was sent in by Penelli on
Hans' segment about Minneapolis and clicktatorship that I'm
gonna respond to because I think it's something that I have a lot
of thoughts about, something I think about pretty frequently.
Speaker 7: The thing about the clicktatorship and how power is
content, policy making is content now, and the the right
the right wing media ecosphere. So I teach civics. I'm a high
school government and economics teacher, and I am required by my
job description of the fact that I teach AP gov, which, you know,
by college board through to be, quote, politically neutral as a
teacher. I'm also required to teach media literacy. What is
media literacy in 2026?
Okay. So as of the twenty sixteen election, everybody was
like, oh, we gotta teach people how to distinguish fake news,
and we gotta teach people to slow down and not trust
everything that comes across their social media scroll. But,
like, all of the lessons that people have come up with and the
ideas of, like, what media literacy means with social media
age are inadequate to handle this. I mean, they just they
don't. And I don't even know, like, how to begin approaching
this in this era as a teacher?
Mike Rugnetta: Penalty, I do not envy you.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, no.
Mike Rugnetta: God. Oh, boy. I'm just
Jason Oberholtzer: sitting here hoping that another sentence
arrives in this message and nope. That's the end of it.
Georgia Hampton: Nope. That's
Mike Rugnetta: it. It's like and that's why we Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I know.
God. I think about this all the time, and I don't I'd like I
don't think I have a good answer. I don't I don't know
that there is a good answer, but here's where I've arrived, and
I'm curious to know what Jason and Georgia think. I agree that
the whole framework of media literacy just kinda doesn't work
anymore.
Georgia Hampton: Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta: And because because the whole framework of
media literacy is to, like, take the media that arrives in front
of you and to compare it to other pieces of media, and to
use your experience out in the world to confirm which of those
things is the one that, like, you feel like most aligns with
what you experience in the world, and to maybe take half
truths from some of those things or to reach an aggregate of
meaning compiled from those things. And so what do you do
when all of those things is wrong? Right? Like, the
information environment, like we talked about with our science
communicators, is, like, so poisoned that it's, like, really
hard to even know that you are getting a full portrait of what
is going on in the world even if you have many, many media
sources at hand.
Jason Oberholtzer: Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta: I think that there are a few things that are
true. The first is there's no future in media literacy if we
don't wanna completely abandon that title or that framework
where you're not intimately familiar with how the media is
made and by whom. Oh, yeah. There's just absolutely no no
way forward without intimate knowledge about who holds the
power in creating the media and what they want in the world. And
what's nice, at least, about right now is that most of the
people who are in positions of power, they're very clear about
what they want.
They kinda go on their own owned media and say it very clearly.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: You just have to believe them, which is maybe
sometimes a little bit hard. Mhmm. I have seen a couple
people render this a few different ways. Cameron
Kunzelman, who does the shelved by genre podcast, who's really
great. He's like a communications professor and a
game studies person, rendered this really succinctly recently
as, I think, something like tired media literacy or retired
media literacy, wired ideology.
There's kind of no analysis of this that doesn't just really
fully focus on ideology. Mhmm. And I think I don't know how you
do it as a civics professor or a civics teacher, especially in,
like, AP classes, but there's kind of no way around this where
you don't have to do Marxist analysis of things, and talk
about, like, how capital in all of its forms plays a huge role
in the creation of meaning in the world and how things reach
the level of prevalence that they are. And, like, you're
basically just replacing media literacy with sociology. Yeah.
Whoops. Yeah. But, like, I think we maybe kind of have to.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. I mean, to to your point of, like,
specifically ideological approaches to looking at media,
I think also it just I'm thinking of this idea of having
to present civics and things like that from a, quote,
unquote, politically neutral perspective. How do In a you in
an environment where, like, being politically neutral is now
a kind of I mean, it's a position. It's a position. Like,
it is it is also sort of it its neutrality doesn't exist
anymore.
Mike Rugnetta: No. And I think and I think now being
politically neutral would, in fact, get you being accused of
being a leftist by many of the
Georgia Hampton: you know
Mike Rugnetta: what I mean? Like, have
Georgia Hampton: to gonna say republican. No.
Mike Rugnetta: You have to act like, I think a lot of the
people who are the most mad about this and who are in charge
of a lot of the the media at least would say that, you know,
you have to, like, vociferously affirm their positions or else
you are taking a side.
Georgia Hampton: Sure. Well, yeah. And also it's yeah. It's
the politicization of all topics. Yeah.
It also then, yeah, makes makes for a very difficult
interpretation, if it's even interpretable anymore, of media
literacy if you have to consider neutrality as the goal.
Mike Rugnetta: I mean, I think
Georgia Hampton: Which I don't think you can Yeah. Anymore. I
think that's a problem.
Mike Rugnetta: We're so far like, there's it's really,
really hard to defend the classical journalistic
perspective of, like, positivistic empirical analysis
of, here's what's going on in the world. Like
Georgia Hampton: Oh, yeah. Because I think in the last, I
don't know, at least twenty years, if not more recently,
like, there has, as you said, been this far broader
understanding of who is controlling these media outlets,
what their perspectives are, and also the people controlling
those media outlets becoming people like Jeff Bezos owning
the Washington Post.
Jason Oberholtzer: Right. I think this runs into exactly
where media literacy contains two incorrect words for the
moment. Media literacy would tell you that Jeff Bezos owns
the Washington Post and has done a measurable series of things
with obvious outcomes. And that like Sinclair News shows the
same news feed across the entire world, and here are the people
whose concerns are involved in the operation of that media.
That that is also easy to document, and that the
disagreement lies then past that point onto me bringing that up
is a political position rather than a documentation of like
obvious flows of information that's publicly available.
That is where the literacy is at. So it's not about the media.
Also, media is like a very weird term here because it sort of
assumes some presentation and receiving of information rather
than a a constant interaction with information, which is
really how people engage with information at this point.
Georgia Hampton: I mean, it's content literacy.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. And so maybe it's like content more
than media or maybe it's like we have like transcended media's
screen bound utility to instead constantly be in political
discourse about the things we will or will not be open to
believing about our worldviews. Yeah. And that is really the
consistent meta conversation that's happening regardless of
the formats in the middle.
Mike Rugnetta: And that's before you even get to, like, does the
fact that Brendan Carr approved the merger of the News Corp so
that now one company controls 60% of the news in The United
States, is that is knowing that media literacy, or is that
something else?
Georgia Hampton: Is is having to teach my parents how to
recognize if a video is AI? No. Like, where does that lie in
this? That might be media literacy. I think that I was
gonna say
Jason Oberholtzer: that I think that is media literacy.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. That might be the only thing.
Mike Rugnetta: That is the
Georgia Hampton: piece of media literacy that I think is
genuinely correct by the traditional definition that has
remained.
Mike Rugnetta: Penalty, we got it. If you need to teach media
literacy, it's the the the curriculum's very short. It's
one item. Yeah. Show your parents.
And the and the answer is, it's always AI.
Jason Oberholtzer: I'm sorry, captain disillusioned. You are
now the only media literacy professor in the world.
Mike Rugnetta: The only educator. Next up on the
subreddit, we got a comment from Nondeterminist System about our
chat on digital storage. They write, I'm sympathetic to Hans's
position, which to review, Hans's position is you're all
gonna die.
Speaker 4: He was
Mike Rugnetta: freaking out. Be You thinking about that
constantly. Yes. So, like, whenever you open up your text
edit program on your computer to, like, take a note just to
make sure that you capture, like, the grocery list or
something you need to do later, you gotta make sure you save it
because you're gonna die.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. You're gonna die. Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta: And you have to make sure that those files
Georgia Hampton: are Every if your eyes touch it or your hands
Speaker 8: touch it.
Jason Oberholtzer: It's your responsibility for those who
come after you.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. And please make sure that you appreciate
each individual file as a different individual
responsibility.
Speaker 4: Of of course. I'm so glad
Jason Oberholtzer: Hans is at The Hague and not here to defend
himself.
Mike Rugnetta: Ephemera can certainly be helpful in the
mourning process, but but ephemera are meant to be
ephemeral and have been painfully so for the vast vast
majority of human existence. Personally, I don't think that
my life will, one, require tangible reminders to be
remembered by my loved ones in the short term, or two, benefit
from tangible reminders in the long term. Now, if I were a fur
trapper living in seventeen hundreds Kentucky, the journal
of my quotidian life may have become a valuable historical
relic, a window into everyday travails that would be
immortalized via recollection on niche YouTube channels. But even
that level of recollection would be contingent upon my musings
surviving the very organic process of historical
preservation. I worry that our current emphasis on preserving
everything will contribute to a collapse in perspective.
When everything is important enough to immortalize, nothing
is. So I guess if I felt like anything about my life was
important enough to immortalize, maybe I should set it to paper
and donate the chronicle to an organization dedicated to
preservation, like a museum. Or Hans. Or Hans. Maybe or Hans.
Interesting.
Jason Oberholtzer: Or if
Mike Rugnetta: I don't feel like it's that important, maybe it's
better to just let it go. Or maybe I'm being proud in
thinking I should be the one to curate what's important about
me, and that's a task I should turn over to people who care
about me instead. I legitimately don't know. I so my family,
there aren't a lot of, like, heirlooms. There aren't a lot
of, like, we don't have many documents.
We don't have a lot of photos. It's maybe, like, from each
side, there's, like, one or two books just of, like, mostly
photos, mostly photographs. And I think that's just because, you
know, they didn't have much. They really didn't have
anything. Yeah.
You know, they my family my family on both sides were, like,
fishermen mostly, like farmers, and like didn't really have
anything. And so the I guess what I'm saying is that, like,
the small number of things that we do have are cool and feel
significant because we have them, and I think because
there's not much of that. And I think about what sorts of stuff
we're gonna leave behind when when we die for Clem to have to
look at with her family when she's older. And, like, I think
about it in a very similar way where I'm like, a couple books
is probably fine. Yeah.
You know, unless, like, when she's older, you know, like,
I'll have a discussion with Clem where I'm like, do you want the
guitars? If you want them, they're yours. Like, do you want
the studio equipment? Like, those are legitimate
collectibles, but, like, none of that stuff exists in my family.
There's up until me.
Like, I'm the first one that will have, like, things to give
to a kid. And I do feel like it not being a lot is probably
meaningful, and I never ever think about any of the digital
stuff ever.
Georgia Hampton: Mhmm. Mhmm.
Jason Oberholtzer: I come from a family of like quilters, like
crocheters, knitters, textile people. Yeah. Woah. So like Oh.
My mother is an incredible quilter.
And so that is sort of what we have, like she has pieces from
like her great grandmother that like, she found fabric
collections of and then she turned them into something, and
so like, there are all these sort of handmade objects that
survive generations that have meaning to them, and then
there's also a fair amount of like, you know, furniture that's
interesting just by dint of it having been sat on by a couple
generations of folks that kind of floats Not a lot of
photography, but there's some. And the member chat we had was
specifically about our digital collection of photography
mostly, and the archiving practices there. And I was
actually just talking to my parents about it this weekend,
talking about our very conversation, and how very
similar very similarly to how non determinist system put it.
If everything is worthy of documentation, nothing is, and I
don't think I'm just like built for that. I am sort of built for
a time where you have eight pictures maximum of somebody and
you do the rest of the work.
You look at those and you conjure a character, you think
about who they might be and you try to connect it to stories you
have of them and it comes to life for you rather than a world
where I could have feasibly one to one documented without
spending that much effort or money, like my entire life from
the age of 20. I could have just given that to somebody. I could
have done that work and it wouldn't have been that hard or
expensive. That's unbelievable. I'm not prepared for that.
I don't want that.
Georgia Hampton: Yes. I yes. I completely agree with that. I
can also feel Hans, like, emotionally reacting to this all
the way across the ocean, like, just knows we're talking about
it. But, yeah, I I feel completely the same way.
I think volume is the enemy of sentimentality in many That's
good. Yeah. Crushed it. And I mean, I I do have a good amount
of heirlooms and things from generations of family I never
even met. Like, my great grandfather made banjos.
So we had, like, a bunch of banjos. But then, you know,
like, my mom donated quite a few of them to a museum. And the
conversation around what to keep, what to donate, what to
sell is a practical one that I have with my specifically with
my mom, virtually every single time I come home to visit. Mhmm.
It happens constantly.
Often, it's like the first thing that happens when I come home,
where we sort of go through the the art on the walls and she'd
be like, well, this is you know, you should keep this, you should
donate this, you should do this this this this this. Wow. So
it's just a conversation that we've had and that we've been
having and, like, the awareness of my parents' mortality, of my
grandparents' mortality when they were still alive, was
abundantly some like, something I was abundantly aware of
forever. There was no space for, like, the fantasy of, like, this
is never gonna happen, and I'm never gonna have to think about
this. Yeah.
I think about it all the time. And when I think about it, I'd
land very much where, Jason, you just described landing, which is
I am not built to become a museum of myself. Whether that's
a curator of a museum of of endless amounts of ephemera, nor
a museum of my own life in its minute detail. I think there is
so much beauty in being able to imagine and interpret through
context of certain ephemera. I think ephemera is very special.
But I think volume can really get in the way of how special it
is.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Ultimately, where I landed on it
during the discussion, where I land on it now is like and I
think nondeterminist system put a little bit of this language in
there too. Like, it's kind of for other people. If they want
more of me or to keep more of that, they can. And I hope they
do and they're thinking about it.
But like, I'm gonna do my best. I will keep around what I can.
It's a deeply sentimental project. But like, if you want
more, it's on you, man. It's on you.
Mike Rugnetta: To quote Jason, come and take it. We're gonna
take a quick break. When we get back, we're gonna talk about
gamers No. And customization.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yes. Yes. Welcome back. We have got an
email from Germany. From Gwyn, I believe, g w y n.
Gwyn wants to talk about video games in relation to George's
segment on customization. The death of customization over time
from the hallowed halls of my space dripping with your
personalized nonsense to the anodyne corridors of Facebook
and other
Georgia Hampton: Oh my god.
Jason Oberholtzer: Corporate dystopian platforms where your
personality should not exist and only might perhaps in the
personalization of your ads.
Georgia Hampton: Mhmm.
Jason Oberholtzer: Oh. Win. Writes about video games. Video
games, mobile games in particular, and the surrounding
spaces have become somewhat of a testing ground for predatory
digital practices and business models. There seems to be a
pervasive and not completely incorrect sentiment among the
business side of the industry that capital g gamers.
Enjoy their gamer swag that they will eat up whatever you market
to them, that they will take their increasing exploitation
sitting down. Many of them are young and impressionable, not in
a, so will somebody think of the children kind of way, but in a
way toy companies learn to advertise to kids directly
instead of their parents because it's much easier to get their
hooks into them. Getting an eight year old to gamble on
mom's phone is well, literally two steps removed from taking
candy from a baby. They go on to write more about the pervasive
addition of monetization stages and ads into games and continue
here. Discord has taken what Steam introduced and run with
it.
The platform is VC funded unlike the privately owned Valve slash
Steam and has been adding more and more monetization features
in an effort to become profitable. Since 2017, users
have been able to subscribe Discord Nitro, which at first
allowed them to use animated avatars, upload bigger files,
and a handful of other things. In the last few years, this has
expanded exponentially with more and more features added to the
platform in order to make the subscription more appealing, and
a few things that used to be free locked behind the paywall.
You can now get special banners and animated profile backgrounds
and emotes and frames and more. You can change the color of your
client with Nitro and just generally present yourself much
much more ostentatiously than people who don't spend money on
Discord.
They continue later. All of this is gamification and is obviously
in shitification. And assuming that nothing fundamentally
changes about the ways in which we collectively use social
media, I think this might well be what's to come for the more
mainstream social platforms. You can already buy a Twitter
subscription and get that blue tick. What's stopping them from
making that more appealing by making your profile all sparkly
for a little extra cash?
The digital gifts and hats and whatnot you can give people on
TikTok live aren't that far removed from their counterparts
on Steam. I think this is so good. Oh my on gamers to mass
media adopting of the will buy some silly little trinkets and
maybe reclaim some personalization of our online
spaces seems so accurate.
Mike Rugnetta: What do they call it on MySpace? Blingify? I think
so.
Jason Oberholtzer: Sounds right.
Georgia Hampton: The whole time you were reading Jason, I was
sort of experiencing the entire grieving process, all the stages
of grief. Because it is so sad how true this is. That, of
course, customization, which was something that was so beloved
and so special about, at least, my early experience of being
online, is now monetized and weaponized and used as a tool in
a in a larger, horrible machine of getting you to invest in
micro transactions and spend money that you don't necessarily
think about until it all adds up and you're like, uh-oh, I can't
afford groceries. I think this is so true.
Mike Rugnetta: Someone take the lathe of heaven from me. Just
take it take it from me so that I'm not holding it when I say
this. Just take here, George. I'm gonna hand it to you. Thank
you.
Here's the
Georgia Hampton: wave of heaven.
Mike Rugnetta: Okay. Sharing the Ready? I'm gonna say a string of
words. Social media profile skin loot boxes.
Georgia Hampton: Stop it. Mike, stop it. Stop it. Stop.
Jason Oberholtzer: Just a
Georgia Hampton: I'm just a baby, Mike.
Jason Oberholtzer: God. Someone is going to become a billionaire
because you just said that. And it won't be me.
Georgia Hampton: How could you? How could you, Mike? How could
you do this?
Mike Rugnetta: We often get accused on Fun City of
predicting the future, except it's the bad future. Yeah. And
so maybe we can get some of that credit here on the Yeah. This
seems inevitable. And Discord will absolutely be the first.
Right? If they haven't already done it and I'm just not aware
of it.
Georgia Hampton: Although, I don't know. I could see Meta
doing this as well. Like, I could see it being like, hey.
Remember when we basically devoured Myspace in front of all
of you?
Mike Rugnetta: Like, no. No. No. No.
Georgia Hampton: If we just gave it back to you at a price.
Jason Oberholtzer: Hey. Does Justin Timberlake still have
Myspace? Because I've got some ideas.
Georgia Hampton: I know how to save the world tour. Next up is
Liz calling in with her thoughts on my segment about why nobody
dances at the club anymore and how smartphones are to blame.
Speaker 8: I was hearing about the discussion about places
where you use of phone as explicitly, prohibited, And you
mentioned church, sir. And I am driving back from my church, and
I regret to inform you that it's not really true anymore even
though the message there is still on the And I've been a
volunteer for my church for a long time. And, like, I have to
have WhatsApp business constantly open because I have
to watch the church WhatsApp number. And, like, when we are
studying our religious texts, then there's a lot of language
that's from a long time ago that uses very weird words, and we
have to look words up. So we have to use our phones for that.
And, you know, that ship has sailed, and it sucks. But at the
same time, it's good to have those tools. But when people are
just, like, I don't know, browsing Instagram during church
functions or whatever, like, that's usually called out. So
it's like it's we we try to use it well, like, it as a tool, but
it's still always an uphill battle. But it's like that
that's the place where I have that most healthy relationship
with my phone.
So that's something.
Jason Oberholtzer: So that's something. So that's something.
That is something. You know what this made me think? We've talked
about this in Never Watches when we're watching great movies of
one particular year in the nineties.
When we envision future technology, it usually is
devices that are somewhat form and functionally related to what
they do. They look like a thing. Like, if you were to say, we
have these ancient religious texts and scholars are going to
need to translate and transliterate them across all
these things, you would imagine some, like, cool fucking tome
reading table that, like, doesn't your fucking minority
reporting on it. And, like, it just sucks if it's just your
phone. It's always your phone.
It's the same Yeah. Dumb little shit that
Mike Rugnetta: does everything. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: There's nothing cool. They gotta, like,
look at old text with their fucking Instagram machine, and,
like, that is why things are lame. Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: Not to bring customization back into it, but
because the phones all just kinda look like this big soft
rectangle, like, with rounded edges
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Boo.
Mike Rugnetta: And
Georgia Hampton: and not some beautiful gilded specialized
sort of holy feeling object.
Jason Oberholtzer: Right? Like, we could make a digital object
that was, like, commensurately reverential to the rest of the
spiritual architecture of the building.
Georgia Hampton: And every day, we refuse to do it. Yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: Is this what straying further from god's
light is? Is the light the light of the screen?
Jason Oberholtzer: Oh. The length of heaven is still in my
hands, Mike.
Mike Rugnetta: Give it back. Give it back. I just wanna know
what the church WhatsApp is like.
Georgia Hampton: Oh my god.
Mike Rugnetta: Drama. Alright. Next up, Drew wants us to know
more about Empreg Garfis. Hi.
Georgia Hampton: Okay. This
Speaker 6: is Drew. First time, long time supporter of the show.
I'm listening to Mailbag number five. I'm about forty minutes
in. You guys are talking about, quote, Garfies, and you talked
specifically about one that has a large, you know, maybe
distended belly and big hoohas.
And I really think I can't see the image, but I really think
this is not a, like, a fat satisfied Garfield that ate a
lot of lasagna did we get here? But maybe a Garfield that is
pregnant. This comes from, like, like, fantasy pregnancy type
stuff where, like, males get pregnant called mpreg. I just
feel like it's pregnant Garfield, and I think you should
know. Thank you much for doing the show.
Bye.
Mike Rugnetta: I don't even think we need to respond. I
think we can just file this under FYI. Yeah. Is this show
good?
Georgia Hampton: I think this shows that it is very good.
Jason Oberholtzer: Okay. Alright.
Georgia Hampton: I can't believe we were so blind.
Mike Rugnetta: I should have looked at that, and I should
have said immediately, m preg garphys.
Georgia Hampton: He's got the glow. He's got the glow. I know
exactly what that means.
Mike Rugnetta: Alright. And finally, here it is. If we can
find the theme music from Hans before we have to publish this,
a Molly's Corner.
Speaker 9: If you were all on a season of the traitors, who
would you collectively, banish at the round table? Like, who
would you think was a traitor? Thank you. And oh oh, wait. And
who who do you think actually would be a traitor?
Might be the same question. Might not be.
Georgia Hampton: Have fun. Oh my god.
Jason Oberholtzer: I don't know how the traitor works.
Georgia Hampton: I do. Alright. So for those who are unfamiliar,
the traders is basically a hidden role competitive reality
It's like mafia. Game. Yeah.
Okay. Where, like, in the very beginning, a couple people are
chosen as the traitors. Every episode, there is a roundtable
where everyone, traitors and faithful included, votes someone
to be banished who they think is a traitor. And that person has
to reveal if they're a traitor or not, and all remaining
traitors then get to choose someone that they're going to
murder. So just, like, remove from the game completely.
Okay.
Jason Oberholtzer: So if I had to pick who I think is a traitor
in our group, it's probably the person at The Hague right now.
Georgia Hampton: I literally was about to say the same show.
Jason Oberholtzer: But as for who has the temperament for it,
which I think is Molly's second question, not just like, who
would I vote out, but who would actually betray me.
Georgia Hampton: Okay. Hold on. And do it with a smile.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Same answer.
Mike Rugnetta: Wow. Wow. Damn. Yeah. I don't does friend of the
show, Meagle Jnarden, count as Yeah.
Yeah. I'm gonna I'm gonna say, I think Meagle I think Meagle.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah.
Speaker 9: It could
Jason Oberholtzer: be one of us three. Right? No.
Mike Rugnetta: We're very trustworthy here.
Jason Oberholtzer: Think we're aware
Georgia Hampton: that actually, usually, there are three traders
chosen
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the game.
Georgia Hampton: Just us. Mhmm. I think we're in an oops all
traders call.
Mike Rugnetta: Right?
Georgia Hampton: I'm gonna be so honest.
Mike Rugnetta: And we've just and we've just voted to out the
only two faithful people.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yes. So we win?
Georgia Hampton: But that means we win the game.
Mike Rugnetta: Does that mean is Audrey the Alan Cumming of the
group? Yes.
Jason Oberholtzer: She'd be honored. Oh, yes. And now for
everyone's favorite postscript to the show, Jason wrestles with
the listeners Yes. In a segment we like to call one word
graffiti, or as the first submitter Weston put it, is it
two word graffiti now? It's impossible to say, I hope Jason
will be okay.
Mike Rugnetta: He won't be, but that's not your problem. No.
Jason Oberholtzer: Weston's first submission here is a one
word graffiti that they say is very Kiwi, a very Kiwi word, and
it is on the side of a transformer box and it says
jandal, and pictured under it looks to be a thong sandal.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Yeah. Jandal. Flip flop. Is it that's
the word jandal with a picture of a jandal.
Jason Oberholtzer: That's a jandal? That's a jandal?
Georgia Hampton: Just so we're clear.
Mike Rugnetta: Just so it's clear.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Alright. I'll take your word for
it. Going back to the subreddit, a place you can all hang out r
slash never post.
Mike Rugnetta: I believe this is from Talia.
Jason Oberholtzer: Talia sends in
Georgia Hampton: the word caring. In a beautiful font.
Jason Oberholtzer: A considered and caring font.
Mike Rugnetta: It's great. It's like bright, all lowercase, on
the side of King Tut. Mhmm. What's King Tut? King Tut's the
place for
Georgia Hampton: Nepalese food?
Mike Rugnetta: Oh. Painted on the side of King Tut, the place
for Nepalese food.
Jason Oberholtzer: Our next submission from the subreddit
comes from Mothalax, who has on the side of a DHL van, either
Moses with an m or Hoses with an h. What do we think?
Mike Rugnetta: I'm I'm going with Moses because that first
letter has a little package. Yes. You know?
Georgia Hampton: Yes. I was gonna say the exact same thing.
It has a sort of like v.
Jason Oberholtzer: The traders have spoken. It's Moses.
Georgia Hampton: And so it is writ.
Mike Rugnetta: Also, like, you know, you've heard of cool s's,
but cool h's, o's, and e's? Woah. Oh. They abound here. Just
a quick reminder, we're gonna put all these on the website so
you can see them, and you should.
Jason Oberholtzer: Next one from the
Mike Rugnetta: This next one in particular, I think, slaps. This
is maybe the best one we've ever gotten. It's awesome. I love
Jason Oberholtzer: it. This comes to us via the subreddit
from GigaDumpy. Woah. And I am struggling to describe it.
Georgia, can you use some art school words on this?
Georgia Hampton: Okay. So we're looking at a a a kind of script,
I would say, that's almost like calligraphic.
Mike Rugnetta: But it is definitely graffiti in like,
graffiti style lettering, but Yes. Calligraphic in nature.
Georgia Hampton: But, yeah, like, with this sort of quality
that has a lot of filigree and, like, accenting on each letter
and, like, some of the tails of the letters are really long and
then, like, turn into a circle with a bunch of lines. But it
does undeniably say absorbo. And that's so important.
Mike Rugnetta: It does. You cannot argue that it says
absorbo. Yeah. Absorbo. And we also know from the post that
this is from the inside of a porta potty.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, let's go. God.
Jason Oberholtzer: That's good. It's despicable. And I love it.
Mike Rugnetta: Jason, I'm curious if you think this next
one counts.
Jason Oberholtzer: Now this
Georgia Hampton: Oh, yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: This submission from land of doom, I
feel like is rage bait. You are trying to get me mad because you
have submitted me a finger drawing in the snow of the word
high with an exclamation point. This is not graffiti. This is
snow.
Georgia Hampton: But what what is a line in the snow if not
graffiti ephemera, Jason?
Jason Oberholtzer: Oh, come. This is don't you
Mike Rugnetta: fucking take take a picture take a picture. We're
all gonna die.
Georgia Hampton: We're all gonna die. We have to remember this.
Jason Oberholtzer: Hans might think this is precious graffiti
worth surviving, but I think this is a sand castle that
deserves to go back into the sea. To you, land of doom, I say
no. I say no. This is not one word graffiti.
Georgia Hampton: But, Jason, what are we if not sandcastles
that will one day return to the sea?
Mike Rugnetta: Okay. Alright. Too many art school words.
Jason Oberholtzer: You're cut off.
Georgia Hampton: You have woken the bees. Alright.
Mike Rugnetta: Take your notebook to the seaside. Next
up,
Jason Oberholtzer: we have j j c mouldery in the subreddit with
droidica. Droidica. One word, d r o I d I k a droidica, which I
understand is like a misspelling of a Star Wars term.
Mike Rugnetta: Okay. I would just like to comment on the fact
that this is on the side of a good barn directly next to some
train tracks.
Jason Oberholtzer: I'm told in the comments that this is in the
Hudson Valley. So hello neighbor.
Georgia Hampton: Gotta go look for it
Jason Oberholtzer: Our next submission, I love. This is good
and this is right and the kind of thing I want. This comes from
Colin, and on the side of a beautiful green building is the
word green written in yellow. Yellow. And that's what I like.
Awesome. Amazing. And finally, for the one word graffiti
section, Mike, it looks like you submitted something of your very
own.
Mike Rugnetta: Oh. I did. There is one word graffiti that is
showing up all over Bed Stuy. This person has ups, as they
say, everywhere, and it is in all caps, always the same style
lettering, and it just says guillotine.
Georgia Hampton: Hell, yeah.
Mike Rugnetta: Guillotine is guillotine is all over the place
in Bed Stuy at the moment.
Jason Oberholtzer: Thank you for your service, guillotine.
Spreading the message one word at a time, which is what I like.
Mike Rugnetta: Okay. So but now we've also got a bunch of two
word submissions. And
Jason Oberholtzer: to be fair, this is what I told people they
were allowed to do this year. On the final recording of 2025, I
opened up the possibility for two word graffiti for this year.
So I am accepting it and we got some stuff that has come in.
Josh b sends in two examples. Well, no.
One of them is two word graffiti. The other I don't
know.
Mike Rugnetta: The second one is I'm mad again.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. I gotta be done.
Georgia Hampton: This one's not it's demonstrably I'm trying to
be charitable.
Jason Oberholtzer: I'm trying to broaden the parameters by which
people can send me graffiti, and still, they send me fucking
finger diagrams in the snow. Anyway, gotta move on.
Georgia Hampton: It's if you give a mouse a cookie. Right?
That's what's happening. Yeah.
Jason Oberholtzer: Alright. Well, first he sends is two word
graffiti. The iconic Houston one forty five b someone across a
bridge across a highway, which I believe you it's iconic. It
looks beautiful. It's a wonderful thing to say to people
in two words on the side of a bridge.
Bonus, Josh is also sending me the tag of the Nighthawk, which
says beware the Nighthawk and is found on the side of the
building which he says is a Houston icon, a knockoff Batman
who calls themselves the Nighthawk, which I think is
exciting.
Mike Rugnetta: Okay. So the beware is kind of an accessory
to the main tag, which is the Nighthawk.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. I would say so. I wonder if they say
other things in other tags about the Nighthawk, like, was here or
is coming.
Mike Rugnetta: I'm gonna say just the Nighthawk, in case
you're listening, just
Georgia Hampton: And you are.
Mike Rugnetta: On off chance. You could do better, pal.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah.
Georgia Hampton: No. I don't wanna I don't I I don't want
them to do
Mike Rugnetta: better. I love
Jason Oberholtzer: it. Scrawled nonsense on the side of this
building.
Georgia Hampton: It's just like capital letters, handwriting. I
love it. Never do anything else.
Jason Oberholtzer: I prefer this Batman to the buttoned up one.
Mike Rugnetta: It does it is a tag that reads as sudden.
Georgia Hampton: Yes. Oh, yes. Like, I was just sort of walking
down the stairs, like Yeah. Yeah. Oh.
Oh, that's right. I'm a Nighthawk.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Like as though like as though in a
moment, the Nighthawk had to put this here.
Georgia Hampton: Yes. Well, the spirit overtook them.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Josh Pelton sent in a few eligible
pieces of graffiti, one of which I particularly appreciated and
is two words. And Mike, you wanna describe a piece of
graffiti?
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. This looks like some marker on the inside
of a frosted window. It's hard to tell the larger context
because it's pretty close-up. And it sort of looks like a
piece of, like, the outline, drawn in black marker of a piece
of paper towel that you've ripped from the dispenser, in
the bathroom, and written on it in all caps are two words, and
those words are magnum dong.
Georgia Hampton: Yeah. That's good. Hell, yeah. See, we all
like that.
Jason Oberholtzer: That's the kind of thing I like.
Mike Rugnetta: It's good. I really like the next one too.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. This one is one of
Mike Rugnetta: my favorites.
Georgia Hampton: This one's so good.
Jason Oberholtzer: Georgia, this one deserves the art school
treatment.
Georgia Hampton: Oh, and I'm happy to deliver it. So we're
looking at a sidewalk, specifically a manhole cover.
And below it, in two layers of spray paint, first is green,
second is pink, it says vault, question mark, and then under
it, in parentheses, empty.
Mike Rugnetta: Though that could be what the Nighthawk has
written to throw you
Jason Oberholtzer: off his
Mike Rugnetta: Just what
Speaker 4: they want
Jason Oberholtzer: us to think. So do you think do you think our
tagger arrived at this sewer cover, scroll down vault,
excitedly went down, looked around, and came back up, and
really disappointed, followed up with empty.
Mike Rugnetta: Empty. Just letting the next guy know.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Sorry. You were in a Dark Souls game,
just giving you the directions. I think this one's particularly
gorgeous. It just it's nice to look at and it's the kind of
thing I like and it's why two words full of graffiti is
something that I now allow.
Mike Rugnetta: It's so my question for this was gonna be
whether or not this counts because I don't think that this
is graffiti. I think that this is probably functional text for
a utility worker. Because if you look, there's there's spray
paint on the side of the picture too that seems to draw an
outline of what is maybe a utility cable in the same in the
same color.
Jason Oberholtzer: See, one of the things that I like is to
have fun and the things you're saying aren't fun.
Mike Rugnetta: Fair. Fair. Fair. I take it back. I take it back.
Georgia Hampton: Thank you. I don't claim this energy.
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Perfect.
Jason Oberholtzer: Thank you, Lenny, for sending that in.
That's truly a delight.
Mike Rugnetta: It is really good.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. One of the things I don't like Uh-oh.
Is when somebody sends me in four words of graffiti. I'm not
even gonna talk about it. Favy fake, you know who you are and
you know that sending four words of graffiti means I won't read
it.
Called out. Four words in this economy? Are you kidding me?
Mike Rugnetta: Let's end on a high note. Jason, what's this
last thing you've put here under the heading poem?
Jason Oberholtzer: Oh, this will cool us all down. So many
mailbags ago, Michael Bukino had sent in a poem that they had
written and we had read on the air called Bugs on My Beard.
They have since animated that poem in a delightful little
YouTube video that we will put in the links here. And I figure
it's been since it is our custom to end things with poetry
wherever possible, that perhaps we can just play ourselves out
in Michael's own reading of his own poem, the bugs in my beard,
and send us all into this good good night.
Mike Rugnetta: I think that's a great idea.
Georgia Hampton: Love it.
Jason Oberholtzer: Happy spring everybody. Let me go get my
shovel.
Speaker 10: The bugs in my beard I bring back from my bike ride
are just souvenirs from failed attempt flybys. Buzzing and
bumping and flipping and flapping, jittering, jumping,
slithering, slapping. One proboscis, two antennae, 600,000
limbs, shiny shells, wondrous wings, and a slimy trail of
mucin. Each camouflage colorful cute creepy crawly itching a
lift on the fuzzy face trolley can look like a lot at the end
of my hall, but these little critters don't bug me at
Mike Rugnetta: all. Okay.
Jason Oberholtzer: Bye. Bye. Bye.