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Three deranged tech founders discuss dating and society.
Everything is just a numbers game. Almost everything can be solved with brute force.
Wes:They're like, well, I'm really worried about gold diggers. And it's like, well, a gold digger is a woman who wants you only for your money, and the only way you're gonna end with a gold digger is if you want someone only for their looks.
Stony:If there's any immorality, I put her at the level of software sale immorality.
Wes:We're here. This is The Handsome Hour. So what I what I have up here is Search for Soldiers. This is a this is a database of everyone who fought in the in the civil war. And if anyone fought in the civil war, you can search them by name.
Wes:And I I noticed something interesting before the show. Was playing with this earlier. If you search Grudeau, there's no no results. If you search Zervas, there are no results. However, if you search Myers, 10,500 to 20 results.
Wes:8,000 for the union, 2,000 for the confederacy. What do you guys attribute that to?
Stony:Well, I can say that Gruno is a German name, and I don't think there were a lot of Germans back in you know, they would have really had to be there for a couple years as well. So was there that much German immigration in 1860? Do you think that's a problem? Not. I don't really have an opinion on it.
Wes:We're from West Virginia, so we defected from the state of Virginia to fight for the union, where whereas that's that's why West Virginia exists is because brave patriots like my family members had the had the gall to say, we're not going to be part of this great state anymore. We're gonna make our own state with more poverty.
Cody:And how do you feel about that?
Wes:I think that's a good move. Have you ever driven through West Virginia?
Stony:Yes. A lot of a lot of runaway truck ramps.
Wes:Yeah. It's it's gorgeous, but it's like a crazy, like, there it's so windy. It's like, you can't I remember we had the the rapper this is a boring story. The rapper Walk A Flock A Flame came and played at my college and his tour bus couldn't get to the college because the roads were too windy. They couldn't accommodate a vehicle that large.
Wes:So they had it. I had the nicest car on my entire campus, which was a 2002 Toyota, and I just kept it clean. So they took my car to go pick him up. I didn't get to meet him, but
Stony:I would find it really funny if he showed up carsick and he tried to rap, but it kept on vomiting. That would just be I don't know.
Wes:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen live hip hop. There's not a lot of actual rapping.
Cody:I don't think being carsick would be the would be the reason for that in that case. Probably he's probably OD ing on something.
Stony:Well, speaking of OD ing, this brings us directly into our into our first potential conversation. Cody does not is not fully aware of this, but I'm just gonna start with a little passage that's been in the news recently and get Cody's reaction. Here we go. The filing also includes a claim that probably mispronouncing the name here that Hourgini later admitted to drugging him with rohypnol, commonly known as RUFIs or a date rape drug, along with what is described as an erection enabling pharmaceutical substance to facilitate the encounter. So so what's what's going on?
Stony:Any guesses so far, Cody?
Cody:Just based on that, so somebody was drugged, they were also given an erection inducing chemical?
Stony:Yeah. There's there's a very attractive JPMorgan executive who has been named in a lawsuit by a pretty awkward looking Indian guy claiming that she just made him her sex slave and performed many acts against to him. Here we go. He claimed she forcibly removed his pants and performed oral sex on him against his will. The lawsuit state that he began to cry during the incident, but instead of stopping, she allegedly berated him saying, stop crying.
Stony:You think anyone else will believe you? You're a douchebag who thinks he's hot, but you can't even get your dick hard for me. What is what the is wrong with you? So, yeah, that's that's been all over the news. I don't know if Wes wants to add to that great story.
Wes:Well, yeah. I don't know.
Cody:Totally lines up with well, Wes, I was gonna say, I feel like this totally lines up with your theory that, like, the powerful like, they just get into increasingly sex like, depraved sexual stuff, not even for the sexual interest, but just because it's, they run out they just they just like the power and the depravity, and they run out of other stuff to be interested in.
Wes:Oh, but I think it's, like, at at a certain at at a certain point, there's there there are no worlds left for Alexander to conquer. Right. She's all right, you know, that's
Stony:a headshot. We all know that they're retouching these headshots. The assumption though, particularly based on that he was going to make this claim against one bank withdrew it and then made it against another bank that he did Google searches to try to bolster what his argument would be. And also even the slang that he claimed she used included the bizarre claim that she supposedly called his wife a fish head and said, bet she doesn't have these cannons referring to her boobs. So I'm misquoting some of this.
Cody:But, yeah.
Wes:I'm glad I'm I'm glad I'm not racist enough to automatically know what fish head refers to.
Stony:Here we go.
Wes:Oh. I bet your
Cody:little Asian fish head wife doesn't have these cannons.
Wes:This sounds
Cody:That's such a specific insult. This reminds me of, like,
Stony:yeah. But this is Too this is the me mandatory.
Wes:Yeah. I don't think this is real.
Stony:I noticed It's disagreed. This is this is largely agreed on the Internet. This is not real. But the question is, has this woman been me too ed even if grossly, falsely?
Wes:I don't know if you can
Cody:get me too'd in that scenario. What is the income disparity you need for like, how much more income does a woman have to have than a man in order to have equivalent me too probability? Oh my god.
Stony:That that exclamation from Cody was seeing the man's face.
Cody:Yeah. That is not what I was imagining. And, listen, I got news for you, buddy. I'm sorry. Well, he probably
Wes:has a humiliation fetish or something.
Cody:Like Indian Neville Longbottom if he was partially melted and then refrozen.
Stony:I've never heard a more accurate or cutting description in my entire life.
Wes:That's really good. He's I see that.
Stony:I wish people could. Yeah. Go go Google this guy right now and look at and then think of Cody's description.
Wes:I think that whoever whoever retouched this photo, they made his eyes too big. He his eyes look like he looks his eyes look like like Woody or like like a a toy, like Mr. Potato Head or something like those don't look like real eyes. Who's what's Tiffany Fong have to do with this? What
Stony:That's So
Cody:what what is your take on this, Tony? Do you have a I'm obviously just getting little bits and pieces filtered through filtered through you. What what is your you've looked into this more. What is your overall take here?
Stony:I think the the this is a microcosm, and, you know, we we won't know if it happened or not, but we do know that the Internet has concluded it has not happened.
Cody:Okay.
Stony:And the the conversations around the Internet have just been hilarious. But what do you
Cody:think that means? Like, what is this indicative of?
Stony:And that's what I'm that's what I'm trying to figure out. But Yeah. There does seem to be a nod towards this was initially treated as plausible, and then things just started to fall away. And then but the the the question that I found a little bit interesting was, is this the kind of fallback on sexual harassment claims that have bitten men for a long time? Regardless of whether it's merited or not, they had a a trial by Internet, and this probably innocent woman is also facing a trial by Internet.
Cody:I bet this exists. I bet there's, like, a whole scam archetype where you just blackmail with totally false allegations a bunch of powerful people, almost as, a cold email. But just, like, cold blackmail with, like, a script and a and a narrative that seems vaguely plausible. And you just do that for, like, a thousand you just do a blast of, like, a thousand powerful people and like one or two of them and with a with a, you know, with a ransom, with a, like, you know, pay us this much to make this go away. And like one or 2% of them just pay it.
Wes:Have you ever gotten the hello pervert email?
Stony:There's Possibly. A It's like
Wes:a it's like almost a copy pasta at this point. I've gotten it several times, but it's like a very formulaic cold scam email that you get that says, hello, pervert. You've been visiting nasty websites on your browser, but you made a little mistake and that let's paraphrase. It's like you made a little mistake, and that little mistake is going to cost you dearly because you did not turn your webcam off. And now I'm in possession of videos of you doing very
Cody:Have I told you this story, Wes? I have a story like this.
Wes:And then we've all talked it. The email because it's a lie.
Stony:Yeah. Here we go. Lorna, 37 year old JPMorgan exec in leveraged finance, was accused in a April 2026 New York lawsuit by former colleague Chirayu Rana, initially John Doe, of turning him into her sex slave over months starting in 2024. Rana alleged she coerced him into nonconsensual sex,
Cody:including is ongoing. It's a multi a multi instance.
Stony:Including face sitting, toe sucking, oral, drugged him with multiple drugs, used racial slurs like little brown boy and I own you, and threatened his career bonus while he was married. JPMorgan investigated, found no evidence, kept her employed, and rejected his multimillion dollar severance demand after he left the bank. I think that was really just the whole point was the multimillion dollar severance. The lured suit went viral but was quickly withdrawn for correction. Lorna and the Blank called it complete fabrication with Rana later unmasked and facing backlash.
Cody:Yeah. You know what this totally sounds like? It sounds exactly like the subcategory of the of the Me Too case, where the woman is really just clearly using it to be like you know, it's the Dasha tweet where she's like, stop sexualizing my my wet, hot pussy. You know, it's like right? It's that.
Cody:It's like
Stony:Was that was that tongue in cheek or not? I I always assumed it was.
Wes:It's a it's a joke.
Stony:Okay. Thank goodness.
Cody:Yeah. That that's a that is a this is, like, a super mega viral tweet from from Dasha, that I'm that I'm quoting. But, like, but it's, like, it's it's pointing at this thing, right, where it's, like, these people who will use, the victim claiming status really as a as a vehicle for her. Right? Like It's so desirable and hot and what it how hard is it to be so just wanted me so bad.
Cody:She turned me into my her me into her sex slave for months.
Wes:I think it's I don't I don't like doing racial humor on this podcast because obviously we have a successful company and I, you know, preface this saying I have great respect for everyone. What a show of force for for white women though. To it's like, you know, if you I I don't I can't imagine if the shoe is on the other foot here that the the reaction goes the same way if it's like, you know, a powerful Indian boss and a white woman subordinate. Right? Like, who who wins that one?
Wes:Probably still the white woman. So I guess that that kind of defeats my point. But
Cody:I mean, why this is the you know, it reminds me it reminds me that h zero HP Lovecraft tweet, I where's think where where this originally comes from, where it's the you know the you know the the the nested, the fractal puppeteers image meme
Wes:Yeah.
Cody:Where it's like a marionette and then another one and then another one and another one, and each puppeteer is puppeting the the smaller puppet.
Wes:Like wasps, the Jews, the Illuminati Yes. Mormons. Yeah. It just goes And then
Cody:the biggest one, and this one I'm thinking of is, you know, is white women. They're, like, actually pulling all the strings of civilization.
Wes:Yeah. Well, I I think what happened here is this guy is embodying the two worst Indian stereotypes in that he's being a scammer and he's also being very horny. I I what you see here, I mean, he probably has like a humiliation fetish. Right? Like, it's not a what all of these things are.
Wes:Yes. It's he's being, denigrated racially in this fantasy that he's invented. Right? Like, if this is a made up story, it's like your brain still had to make up this story. Like, he and that's why if you're the wife, you gotta be mad because it's like his his brain still came up with that turn of phrase against his wife, which is a horrible thing to say out loud about your wife, whether you're doing it in earnest or not.
Cody:Well, the funniest thing here, which we we glanced over, it's like it happened multiple times. He had to go back. Like, what what what is it? The fourth time you're being hooded and thrown into the back of a van by a frail five six white woman, and you're like, man, it happened again. I gotta stop wandering down the back alleys of Trader Joe's on unchaperoned.
Wes:There's a great little Wayne interview from a long time ago where they they're talking about rape. He's like, I take rape seriously. I was raped by a woman when I was 10 years old. And I loved every minute of it. And it's a I just gotta think that if if something I don't know.
Wes:If it sounds too much like your actual fantasy, then we know that, like, you're getting off on it. I I feel like you see people do crazy things like guys like who like, you know, you like if you're a client of Blayne Anderson, maybe you have a humiliation fetish because you love reading Blayne Anderson's tweets where she's like, I have a client who's a total fucking idiot and this is what he thinks. What a dumbass.
Stony:Wait a second. I'm gonna I'm gonna confess, I enjoy reading Blayne Anderson's tweets.
Wes:So I do too. I respect Blayne Anderson. I she gets under my skin sometimes, but she has much a larger account than I do. So as long as that's the case, I can't claim to have anything against
Cody:respect her as a savvy player of the game. She is I find her despicable, but she's clearly succeeding.
Stony:What about what about her is despicable in your mind?
Cody:That's probably too strong of a word. She's on the despicable spectrum. She's not the she is not the the the pole. She is not the she's not maximally despicable.
Stony:So how how would someone who is wealthy, which I presume are her clients and male, which I also presume, and struggling to meet the right woman, what beside, of course, from using Keeper, what would you guys recommend then? Like, where does she she clearly feel you know, she clearly is filling a need in the marketplace. Whether she's succeeding or not, I don't know.
Cody:She's just not succeeding. That's the point. It's not that I'm it's I'm not, you know, disparaging the the demand. What I'm disparaging is that she does what basically all matchmakers, as far as I can tell, do. And, certainly, you know, many categories of business do this where they essentially don't actually provide any value.
Cody:And I think that she probably believes on some level that she is providing value, but she's just self deluded. You know, most people it's always so convenient when you when you it it when you notice that, you know, basically, everybody's beliefs perfectly coincide with the self interest. Like, they just so happen to believe some of the that the world is such that it maximally advantages them. You know? It's the same thing.
Cody:It's like she's deluded in just the right way that she thinks that she providing all this value to her clients even as she, you know, out of the other side of her mouth, admits that, you know, she actually effectively doesn't, of course, with different language. And there is no cognitive dissonance there. Like, she just kind of goes on every day holding those two things in tension.
Stony:As a as a background, she is in a very high end matchmaker in New York City with a staff.
Wes:Is she in New York City? I thought she was in on the West Coast. I I I have no idea. Well, I I I you know, first of all
Stony:Oh, yeah. You're right. Or maybe
Wes:The number one cause of unhappiness in Cody's life is his inability to construct a value system, for the express purpose of just justifying his existing inclinations. You know, some some drive to be morally objective is Cody's biggest problem. But I actually disagree. I do think I'm you know, I'm being jokey. But I do think that Blayne Anderson does provide a service a valuable service.
Wes:And I think that people pay her for it. My my issue is that I don't think it's really matchmaking. It's like I don't think that any, you know, a Blayne Anderson or anyone of her is they're not really considering like what makes for a happy long term match. What she does, it's more like an introduction service. It's like, here's what I am, I am an attractive charismatic woman who other women will trust and take seriously and I will establish authority with those women and get them to go on a date with you And if I do that enough times, hopefully, you can end up with someone.
Cody:So Yeah. Her her product is hope, which is the product of most of these types of matchmakers. She will she openly admits this in different language. She'll say that what she does is she can make, quote, unquote, you know, better unrealistic matches, I think, is her term. Better matches than you know?
Cody:But they don't the matches don't actually succeed. And I think if you poke and prod her enough, she'll essentially admit that. But she gives the people in her pool that her her clients and her the sense, the hope, the right? The the feeling that maybe they will be able to snatch somebody out of their league because she's able to get them on dates with them. The dates don't go anywhere, but it could but it perpetuates the sense of hope.
Stony:I'd like to see I'd like to see the numbers if she ever produces them.
Wes:I bet yeah. I mean, I bet she has some numbers. I bet she's slicing them up to make them more, you know, the matchmaking industry is notorious for that, especially talkify. They just they present their numbers in a very, very deceptive way. And then they don't even come out that good after that.
Wes:So it's like the actual numbers are way worse than what they show you. But But no, I mean, I don't, you know, to kind of play the other side here. I do think that if you are a rich and successful man, you need to you you need to sow your wild oats almost in a way and maybe go through that experience. Like let's say that you you know, you have insanely high standards, and you just want to date a beautiful woman, and that's all you care about. Well, you need to go do that a few times and have it not work out for you.
Wes:Or hopefully it does work out for you. But like, if it's if it's not destined to happen, and you're indexing on the wrong things, like you have to learn that lesson somehow. So if you and this is sort of the problem I have is is, I I I get this I get this feedback from men all the time. They're like, well, I'm really worried about gold diggers. And it's like, a gold digger is a woman who wants you only for your money.
Wes:And the only way you're going to end up with a gold digger is if you want someone only for their looks. Because even someone who wants to date only very attractive men, unless they're like a psychopath and they're just like a total striver who just wants to like only cares about money, Then even a woman who only wants to date successful rich men still wants the successful rich man who is most compatible with her. It's not like she's just going to grab on to any old rich guy who comes along. And if she does that, then she is a gold digger and a bad person. But if your search criteria is just find me an attractive woman, well, you are you are making the same error that she is making.
Wes:And then that's the trap that you're going to fall into. You know, if you take a gold digger and you match her with a rich man who's like actually a fantastic match for her and actually makes her feel so loved and safe and add so much value to her life, like she's still gonna love that man regardless of what her initial intentions were. But a woman who starts out the initial intention of just find me any rich guy is probably not, I don't know, maybe not capable of intimacy on some level. But that's not
Cody:to say that's
Wes:what Blayne Anderson does.
Cody:What? Yeah. What's the point here? How does this connect?
Wes:The point is that what Blayne Anderson is doing is she's not really making matches. She's not saying like, let me cut to the core of two people and figure out, you know, what really makes you tick and what makes you perfect for each other. She is serving as a middleman connecting, I assume rich men with beautiful women and and giving them access to women they wouldn't otherwise have access to. And if a man employs her services, it's probably because he's looking for he's he's he's filtering first and foremost on looks, which is no problem. But he is how should I say this?
Wes:You you can't be happy with a great match until you've seen what a bad match looks like. So it's the same thing where, you know, when you're young, it's good to date a few different types of people so that you see what you like and what you don't like and you get some relationship experience and you understand what to look for in your ultimate partner that you want to spend your life with. But when you when you reach a certain threshold of success, you unlock an entire new market. And so you need to go through that learning experience again, with the new market that you now have access to. Because the same way, you know, if I introduce you to someone who's an eight, and you think she's awesome, but you want a 10, like you need to go on some dates with 10s, and maybe realize that it's not all it's cracked up to be.
Wes:And that really the eight that's actually a fantastic match for you is a 100% worth spending your life with. Does that make sense?
Cody:Sure. Yeah. That makes actually, that's a really well articulated point. And I would just say that, like, you know, that yeah. Like, insofar as she's not attempting to communicate that, then that's the problem.
Cody:It's that she allows her clients to sort of perpetuate a certain self delusion that I I don't think my my I could be wrong. My my my my sense is that she is not communicating to her clients that, like, the aid is that they the eight really is the best. Like, she her promise is that, no, I can get you to 10 who is just as compatible as that. Like, that you don't have to compromise. She's she's not telling her comp clients that they have to compromise.
Cody:She's telling she's promising the world and that they can get everything that they want, And that allows them to kinda go to continue in their little fantasy world.
Wes:Right. And that's part of what's going to make her like a successful businesswoman. And when I say that she's not a like, that would be that would be matchmaker. That would be the matchmaker attitude. It's like your, your primary objective is getting this person in the correct relationship that's correct for them.
Wes:Whereas what she's doing is I would describe it as an introduction service, like I said, But she obviously can't be she she has to bill herself as a credible batch maker because she still has to be able to sell these dates to the women. And when they look up Blayne Anderson, they have to say, oh, this is a serious matchmaker who ostensibly, you know, knows what the makings of a good relationship are, so I should, you know, trust her authority and take her seriously. And you can't be too it's it's marketing. You can't be too honest.
Stony:I also Yeah.
Cody:I mean, that's
Stony:Go ahead.
Cody:There you go. I've been told.
Stony:I was about to say, this is a little bit like hiring a lawyer. You know, if if you're if you're caught standing over the dead body holding the bloody knife, it's not like you can hire a good enough lawyer to make this problem magically go away. Like, can be a great lawyer, but if they're defending a blatantly guilty person, it's probably not going to work out. So it's possible that she's advertising herself as really good at what she's doing, But there's only so much she can do to, you know, help people find their matches. I don't think she can do any better than the raw material she's working with.
Cody:Yeah. That's totally fair and true. I mean, this is why I said, like, you know, she's not maximally despicable. My my sense is that there is that she is sort of freely and willing willfully or willingly, I should say, you know, peddling the delusion and and and allowing and propagating the sort of white lies. They're not white.
Cody:They're definitely not innocent. They are they not malicious, but they're somewhere in between. They are certainly deleterious. They're damaging lies and delusions that she plays in and swims in and that are sort of rife in that world. But, you know, they're not the worst thing.
Cody:They're not they're not fucking, you know.
Stony:I've heard the same thing out
Cody:of He's not Hitler.
Stony:I've heard the same thing out of b to b business software sales. Oh, your business isn't working right? It's got problems? Well, our product will be everything you need to solve that, you know? I if if there's any immorality, I put her at the level of software sale immorality.
Cody:It's a bigger and more important sphere of people's life with bigger consequences when they Exactly.
Stony:I'm glad you're supporting B2B software sales, Cody. It is more important.
Cody:Yeah.
Wes:Well, there was a the I I think that I I did ratio, Blayne Anderson a couple weeks ago. I think we both did actually. We we did the very cool thing. We both attacked the same tweet. But she said something to the effect of which which sort of she kind of did expose the game a little bit.
Wes:She said that she she she doubts the AI matchmaking hypothesis because actually what everyone wants is someone who's out of their league, which is to say that her business model is to connect people who with, you know, with someone who's out of their league, which sort of means you're inherently doing a disservice to one side or the other. And and, you know, you you don't understand the actual problem, which, you know, maybe we can articulate the counter argument to that if it's if it's worth it. But it's it's like, I don't know, Cody, why don't you go ahead?
Cody:Well, if that's really true, then, like, she just doesn't have a business. Right? That's the point. So and if you don't have a business, but you're operating one anyway, then it means by definition that you're it's a it's a sham. It's it's it's a fraud.
Cody:That's, like, the definition of fraud.
Stony:So I don't know her beyond reading her tweets, but I have seen successful relationships where both people we've even talked about that, that the goal of a relationship is for both people to think they're punching above their weight. And so why not serve half of that at least?
Cody:Right. To think that they're punching above their weight. By definition right. So that's my point, though. It's like she is okay.
Cody:I mean, I don't wanna always I, you know, I I talk about this a lot, but I don't wanna have the same talking points always. But, like, the her what she believes, it seems to me, as far as I can tell, is that, you know, dating essentially collapses to vertical traits and preferences. It's a sort of one dimension of mate value, and everybody just wants somebody who's higher mate value than them, which is mathematically means that the market will not clear. And if she believes that, then how could she ever actually make matches except with the rare, freakish, exceptional case, which I think is what essentially she does, and that is what happens. And that's if you kind of scratch the surface, that's what she'll effectively admit.
Cody:And so that's, again, like, not a business. Like, she's she's not a matchmaker at that point. As she's a as West said, she's a you know, she she does introductions, and the primary purpose of the introductions is to perpetuate the delusion that you can get somebody. If she were if she if she she were she'd be optimizing in a completely different way if she didn't believe that that was the fundamental truth of the way dating worked.
Stony:Okay. This is interesting. Tell us how she will be optimizing differently while maintaining a functional business. Or are you saying those are those two things
Cody:are very simple. My point is that I think, unfortunately, it is basically mathematically impossible to do that with as a traditional matchmaker. That's why all traditional matchmakers must necessarily I mean, not to be not to, you know, beg the question, but or engage in circular reasoning, but this is why they essentially all have to be scams. It's just not mathematically possible to run that hand of business. It doesn't the numbers don't add, which is why they all end up being this sort of, you know, a scam in the in exactly this way.
Cody:And, again, I don't wanna, you know it's a spectrum of of of fraudulence and a spectrum of of immorality, and I'm not trying to paint Blaine Anderson as the as the worst offender. Yeah. All things considered, it's relatively mild. It's not that big of a deal. But, you know, it's it's the it's really important.
Cody:It's fear of people's lives and can do a lot of damage when you let somebody go for years and years and years with the incorrect beliefs that, you know, that lead them astray.
Wes:Well, no. I I think I I would call it a scam. I think it's a scam in the way a dating app is a scam where in lieu of anything else, some people are going to find success there. So maybe like dating apps are so prevalent that they have all of these negative externalities, but someone like Blayne Anderson isn't isn't causing market externalities. I think that the I think that her clients are basically using her like they would use a dating app.
Wes:But I'm sure that someone paying Blayne Anderson the amount of money that she charges the you know, the outlay that they give her is probably similar to me paying for hinge just based on our relative wealth. And so No.
Cody:Doesn't she charge, like, a 100 k plus?
Stony:I think it's in the 10 to 20 k range. And I remember from one of her tweets, a particularly difficult client was 40, and it did seem like this client was difficult.
Cody:Okay. I don't know if I'd still put that. I don't depending on the level of wealth of her clients, maybe that's equivalent of Hinge. But I don't I might yeah. I I doubt she's having a higher success rate than Hinge.
Cody:I think if you put the you know So if you just paid somebody to run your Hinge in order to And then you factored that cost in in order to control for the time investment variable so that I think you'd have equal or more success with Hinge.
Wes:Well, my my assumption is that she's not work she's working with the type of people who wouldn't be on Hinge. So she is still, you know, the the the just the more collisions you have in the in the market is is going to be a benefit. You know, you wanna filter them and and optimize them as much as possible. And obviously, that's what we are doing and what we're building. But she's introducing people and some of those people are going on to getting married.
Wes:So for those people, it's been a net positive. And hopefully, for some of her more introspective clients, they are learning about themselves in the process of using her services and dating these women and, hopefully, you know, grasping closer towards actually meeting the right person by learning about themselves through that process. I don't imagine she's facilitating that part of it because and that goes back to what you said, Cody. Like, she is largely selling hope. Like, she's not gonna tell someone, like, you're you're being unrealistic.
Wes:You need to you need to settle or you need to compromise in some ways. And actually, in doing so, you're going to be much better off for that and much happier. And so it's a win win. I doubt she's doing that part.
Stony:Go undercover, and I will approach her. I will stop short of writing a large check, but it would be interesting to have a conversation
Cody:Let's with do
Wes:it. You should do
Cody:that. Good episode.
Wes:Literally do that. Yes. And let's hope she's not a listener of the Handsome Hour.
Stony:She should be.
Cody:We should we should start a beef with with that that should be our strategy for for climbing the podcast ranks is we'll just start beefs with all the bigger bigger players.
Stony:I'll talk about the time she gave me roofies and Viagra Viagra and and insult to me and called me a little boy. For and For months. Yes. Yes. And talked about her cannons.
Cody:I just kept going over to her house and she kept doing it.
Stony:I don't know what was yeah. Why I did that.
Wes:That bothered me in the contract. It's what I don't like about lawyers. I think they smell their own farts. Why did they, like she gave him Rufinol or something and Rohypnol and erection inducing medication. You can say Viagra.
Wes:Why why are we obfuscating it? That Also that might have
Cody:been such thing as an erection inducing medication. That's also like, not a thing.
Stony:Oh, yeah. You're right.
Cody:If it's worth it's worth saying.
Wes:Yeah. Wait. What do mean? Hold on. What do you mean?
Cody:I mean, Viagra does not there are no medications that induce erections. Viagra does not induce erections. Viagra is a is a is a vasodilator.
Stony:Yeah. It acts on your capillaries.
Cody:Yeah. It just allows for more blood flow, and so it it it's only really benefit like, it isn't it's benefit to men without some kind of arterial or, cardiovascular disease is totally, psychosomatic. It's totally placebo. It's only beneficial to people who actually have a, you know, erectile dysfunction as a result of cardiovascular disease that causes restricted blood flow.
Wes:We're let's not spread falsehoods on the podcast. I know that Stoney's taken Viagra. Cody, have you ever taken Viagra?
Cody:No. A healthy 33 year old man.
Stony:I have not taken Viagra.
Wes:You're come on, dude. It's okay. I have. I have a whole I've got a whole I've got a big Ziploc bag. I've got like a 100 of them.
Wes:I had to cancel the subscription. I had so many. I get them for, like, free for being a veteran. I have like, Blue Chew has this, like, deal where you
Cody:This is how Wes wakes
Wes:up I I don't need them.
Cody:Wes wakes up in the morning when he wants to lock in for work. He he pops an Adderall, and he pops a Viagra and and and gets gets after it.
Wes:No. It it does help with working out. It it does, like it is a little bit like a pre workout because, you know, you know, oxygen moves more efficiently through your blood as a vasodilator. That's how they discovered it is they were trying to make it like blood pressure medication, I think. And then they gave it to someone and they're like, oh, your blood pressure is, you know, no different.
Wes:He's like, well, there is one thing that's different. I'm telling dude, it it induces erections. It it I I take it if it's like, am I gonna be my first time with a girl or something, I just wanna, like, you know, get nerves out of it or just, you know, wanna that that's an advice piece of advice I'd give the listeners is like, you know, it's like, you you got your best No,
Stony:no, no. You're not giving listeners any advice. No, no, no. Be very careful here.
Wes:This is where we
Cody:say Everything we say on this is legal and financial advice.
Stony:Yeah. Then By way, Connie was being sarcastic sarcastic for for our our future future lawyers' lawyers' sake.
Cody:You should invest based on this.
Stony:Yeah. All my gold bars, which are packaged as
Cody:We are all licensed fiduciaries and licensed accountants.
Wes:Yeah, no. Well, but you know, like, there's good dick and there's bad dick, you know, like, sometimes you're you're getting after it and you're just like not you're not like a diamond, you know, you're not bricked up all the way. And sometimes it's going away. It's fading. It's, you know, you want to go twice in a row or something.
Wes:It's not, you know, it's good for it's like just just let's make sure that part of the equation is controlled for. Like, I have
Cody:to go
Stony:Twice in a row twice in a row, I can get that idea. Alright. That's understood.
Wes:Yeah. Or like the next morning or something like you're it might it's not gonna be permanent, but you're gonna get an erection at
Cody:some point.
Stony:It's gonna help the hydraulic function is what you're saying.
Wes:Yeah. Insane to say it doesn't induce erections. I'll send you some code. You can try them out.
Cody:I'll give you a free time. I'm good. I'm good. Thanks. I'll I don't I I don't want the JPMorgan executive to swarm me as soon as they have their their Spidey Sense tingles as soon as I take it.
Wes:Yeah. It'd be funny to find out the Viagra executives were doing that.
Stony:I wonder if they take Viagra as you know, I wonder if that's an interviewer question.
Cody:Yeah. It's never the, it's never the, like it's never like a, you know, like a porn hub executive that gets me too'd. It's never the people working in the unscrupulous and scurrilous industries.
Stony:Because they can't. That's that's the point. You can't you can't cancel the people on the far right. You can only cancel the centrists. Yes.
Stony:There was the other kind of cultural, socioeconomic conversation, but I feel we've been serious enough so far. So maybe we just wanna listen to Wes's funny stories that that he found. I don't know.
Cody:Okay. Sure. I could probably also tell that other that that someone related story. I think it's not too compromising.
Stony:Yeah. You've you've definitely had some some interesting stories.
Cody:Dude, I've had crazy shit. I don't know why. I something about me must have tracked it. I don't know.
Stony:I'm over here feeling humbled. I'm trying to think of, yeah, the craziest story, and I just I don't know if I can compete with your crazy woman in the Uber story. Was
Cody:I'll give you this one, which is like a scam story. It was very similar to the what Wes was talking about with the email. It didn't involve an email, but it came from Bumble. So this was I don't know when this was. 2020 or something like that?
Cody:'20 I don't know. 2019. I think it was pre pandemic. Anyway, I was on Bumble. I met this girl.
Cody:It was another Asian girl. So noticing a pattern a little bit, but she she wanted to it was fine. It was again, everything seemed very normal. She's, like, just cool, attractive girl. We were chatting on whatever, talking on Bumble.
Cody:And then she invites me to FaceTime. And, so we you know, it's fine. Like, that's, you know, a little weird that she was sort of initiating that, but, like, you know, whatever. So we jump on FaceTime, and she sort of immediately starts stripping. She starts, like, taking off all of her clothes, and, it was very weird.
Cody:And, of course, I was like, what the hell are you doing? This is very odd. And she was like, I don't know. It was very she was it happened very fast. I remember it was like it wasn't like a I don't know.
Cody:I'm trying to remember it. It was it wasn't it was, like, halfway between, like, seductive striptease and, like, just rapid tearing off of the cleaners. It was very fast. And then it continued escalating, and she starts, like, pushing herself, like, like, playing with herself. And at this point, I'm like I just, like you know, it it it happened fast enough that, like, I just didn't have, like, enough time to, like, process it.
Cody:And I I was gonna leave, but also, like, what the fuck is going on? Like, I I this is my problem. You know what? I I think I'm real I think I I think I I think I'm realizing why I this happens to me. The problem is that, like, when I'm in these situations, I'm too fascinated.
Cody:Like, I'm too it's too I'm just too it's like it's too entertaining to see where it's gonna go.
Wes:High openness.
Cody:Yeah. I'm too high. That's a problem. I get into trouble. And so, anyway and then here's where it gets weird.
Cody:Well, here's where the story takes a twist. No. Actually, this is just an escalation. She then starts going, like, she starts trying to invite me to, like, participate. She's like, you do it too.
Cody:You play along. And, of course, I'm like, hell no. What what is what is wrong with you? I didn't put together this was a scam yet. I mean, like, I guess I was had that suspicion, but I I didn't understand the way the scam worked.
Cody:Let me say it that way. Like, I didn't see, like, how this was adding up to you know? So I just I was like, I I don't get it. What is happening right now? I very much did not, to be clear.
Cody:Like, I just sat there, and I was just like, you know I just kept saying it to her, like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? This is so weird. She keeps going for I don't know. It was not that long, twenty, thirty seconds or something.
Cody:And then she stops suddenly. The tone changes. And she goes, I found you on social media, and I have a I've recorded all of this. And she shared her screen. We were on FaceTime.
Cody:So she shared I think it was FaceTime. She shared her screen and showed that showed me that she had found my real Facebook and my real social media pages. And she goes, I'm gonna send a direct message to all of your friends and family with a recording of this if you don't pay me $500.
Stony:I would be insulted by $500. I'd be like, no. You you you need to be demanding tens of thousands of dollars.
Wes:Am Do think this is like doctor evil $500?
Cody:Send me $18. Yeah. I've been I was just like, I know. You don't have anything on me. I didn't do anything.
Stony:I think it was Julius Caesar or someone who was captured by pirates, and they demanded a ransom. And he he's like, no. No. That's not enough. You need to demand more.
Stony:Maybe he's Napoleon. I don't know. Some famous famous figure. But I I I admire that moxie. You know?
Stony:That's not a ransom.
Wes:That's a that's gonna be a hard person to kidnap. Well, I I think that it's interesting to think about like what the consequences of you let's say that she followed through on it. And let's say you did rip it out and all your friends and family found out that you have a massive hog. That would be kind of the ups. It's, it's like, you know, let's say, let's say you got a nine incher and she's she puts it out there, blast it to everyone.
Wes:It's like, oh, no, please don't expose me. Please don't show all of the women this. Right. No. That's not my point.
Wes:My point is that, you know, there there is a time in your life where that would be or there's a time in history where that would be very humiliating and potentially damaging. But I think we're moving towards a world where even if they did release that and show everyone it's like, it's almost like the the news cycle moves too fast, right? It's not a news cycle. It's just the information diet. And also, we and, you know, so there's there's kind of two two, shifts that are happening.
Wes:One is that AI is gonna get so convincing that if if, you know, she did send it to everyone soon, there's a world where you could say like, no, it's just AI. That's not me. This is like an AI scam. It's a deepfake, whatever. And so, you know, the the sort of the thing is that, you know, aren't believing when they see something real.
Wes:You could show people something that really happened and they won't believe it because they know that it's possible to fake something like that. But Right. There's another interesting thing and I think this is going to happen and I think that it's going to seem like really bad news at first. And then I think that it's it's going to almost lead to a an increase in overall human consciousness. But I think that there's going to be a massive, in essence, terrorist attack.
Wes:And I think that there's going to be an enormous data breach. And I think there's going to be iMessage and Facebook and literally anywhere that you've ever thought you were having a digital private conversation, I think that all of that is eventually going to be leaked in like a massive data breach. And so it's going to maybe like in the short term lead to like a like a Chinese style cultural revolution where everyone's like denouncing everyone else and trying to use it as a power grab to, you know, take down the the people ahead of them in power, by by saying, oh, look at these terrible things so and so said and, all the executives of my company or whoever it may be. But the the ultimate effect of it is going to be that we're just going to expose that everybody has dirty laundry. Everybody has skeletons in their closet.
Wes:Everybody has things that they say in private that they would never say in public. Everyone has something to hide. Everyone has something that they would rather their friends and family and, you know, strangers and acquaintances not see. And then we're going to be able to look at each other and we're going to be able to say, okay, well, you're just like me then. I don't know what your specific issue is.
Wes:I don't know what your thing is, but there's something there and we have that in common. So you don't have to be ashamed of your particular thing anymore. It's like the, you know, the comedian Louis CK. This happened to him. Right?
Wes:He he got exposed because he was exposing himself to women and and masturbating in front of them and some of them consented and I don't know the whole story there. But he has this quote where, you know, because he's still a successful comedian and it it impacted him for a little bit, but then he was able to come back and he's like, everybody knows what my thing is. Obama knows what my thing is. Right? Right.
Wes:And it's very funny and it's it's like, well, it happens and it's embarrassing for a little bit and then after a while, it's like, oh, no one cares. It's like the it's like the Jurassic Park meme. Like, hey, this guy like likes jerking off in front of girls. See, no one cares. I think that'll happen.
Wes:I think that it'll in the short term, it'll be like nine eleven, but
Cody:Well, yeah, it's interesting because it's like everybody already knows that. It's not like the entire system operates on the sort of shared us all pretending that we all don't know it.
Stony:Well, another way to look at this is you are not your Facebook profile, you are not your LinkedIn profile, but you are your private text chat.
Wes:Not even my private tech. I mean, I'm I'm off often doing a very adversarial and unpolitically correct bit in my private text chats and saying things that I are equally disingenuous, but they're
Cody:just I mean, same.
Wes:Yeah. But because in those contexts, you're sort of counter signaling. You're sort of saying, like, I'm showing you, I'm being deliberately edgy now to sort of give you compromise on me to show you that we're comfortable with each other and we trust each other. I mean, that's like a lot of like, that's why group chats are inherently edgy is because there's it's like a it's a trust display. But you're you're still not being sincere.
Cody:Yeah. I mean, that's a good point.
Wes:Often you are being sincere. But I think that sometimes the the in the edgiest in the edgiest context that that, characterize the the stereotypical group chat banter, it's not like that's your true self, you know? Yeah. Either or maybe all my friends are, like, secret Klansmen. I don't know.
Wes:But
Cody:Wes discovers his racist friends are actually racist. What? Yeah. Yeah. No.
Cody:I mean, that's that's kinda the thought I had at the time. It was, like, it was, like, if this actually you know, if yeah. Even if I did participate, like, it wouldn't even be that, like it's, the most embarrassing thing in some in a certain sense is just the fact that I got scammed. It's
Wes:Right. Which makes the $500 price point sort of interesting too because I imagine that happening to me and it's like, sure, I would pay you $500 to not post this. But then also, like, once you know, like, I I probably wouldn't pay $10,000, but once they post it, you're not going to pay them. And so once you pay them, then they basically own you. Right?
Wes:It's like, no matter what they price that, you cannot say, you cannot acquiesce Yeah.
Cody:They could all just ask for more.
Wes:Right. Because the the video they're not gonna delete the video.
Stony:You you could make an argument, Cody, that if you went to all of your friends and said, would you chip in to help prevent getting a video of me masturbating? I would definitely put 10 towards not watching a video of you masturbating.
Cody:But you could just not watch it even if somebody
Stony:sent I just like, I don't know, what's this video in my inbox? Oh, no, I don't want to see that. So you could do a GoFundMe where it's like, stop the release of of me touching myself, which will be sent to you. Chip
Cody:Well, that's kind of my point, though, is that, like, even doing that, like, is that is 90% as embarrassing as having the actual
Stony:Oh, not even talking about the embarrassing. You can just fund it by your friends saying, yeah, I I don't wanna say that.
Cody:No. But you have to say it. You have to still to bring up the concept to them to ask them to fund it. Yeah. That's what I'm saying.
Cody:It's like, just bringing it up feels like it is not is 90 insofar as it is embarrassing, which, like, I'm I'm relatively immune to that type of feeling. But, you know, is this insofar as it is embarrassing to somebody, like, I feel like having to bring it up at all, even to get even in the abstract, is 90% as embarrassing as it actually happening. Because it's, like, it's it is pointing at the thing at all. It's like, just just the pointing at it is the is the embarrassing thing to even acknowledge it. Once it's acknowledged
Stony:I would wanna dive in with this woman and really understand the economics. Like, excuse me, ma'am. Can you help me understand your pricing? You know? Because I didn't really do much in this video.
Stony:Is that why there's a low price? If I had done more, would you have priced higher? Do you price higher based on age, perceived income, occupation? Like, if you're a priest versus a construction worker, you can imagine the priest is going to charge more. As someone who finds dynamic pricing a great topic, I've been like, all right, hold on.
Stony:Let's let's dive into this 500 leg, you know?
Cody:Don't think she was a high IQ agent.
Stony:Would have also demanded a discount for a wire versus a credit card payment. Like, that's 3% in charges right off the top. I'll be like, all right, what about $4.85 if if it's Venmo? You know, then then you're saving money on the credit card fees, ma'am.
Cody:Yeah. I don't I don't think she was practicing dynamic pricing. I mean, you're obviously right. Like, if she really
Stony:she was. Can can you can you get this woman back? I wanna I wanna ask her pricing questions.
Cody:If she were really smart, she would do this on I don't know. You know, what what's that website? Seeking arrangements. Right? Where it just that it's just gonna be her average target is gonna be richer.
Stony:Yeah.
Cody:Right. I mean, my guess is that it was just a standard $500 price one because that is I'm guessing it's just a volume game, and that's the average price that the average Bumble user is willing to pay.
Stony:Yeah. To a I'm trying to make a penis size joke about that's the volume game, but I was unable to really pull it together.
Cody:It's a girth game.
Stony:There we go.
Wes:Well, it's scary to think if I ever we we established that Cody is so high openness that he can't really like avoid an interesting situation when it when it comes upon him. And I'm sort of the same way. But it's scary to think that if I ever fell victim to the scam, that if Cody received the video, he would not be able to resist watching it. Because of the high openness thing. He would have to
Cody:That's true, bro. I'm sorry. If it's mundane, if it's mundane, I won't watch it. But if it's something weird, I'm gonna have to watch it.
Wes:Yeah. I mean, I'm not gonna, like, throw it up. I'm not gonna do, like, you know, iPhone screen sharing and put it up on the big screen to watch it or something. But if I get that video, I am going to click on it and I am going to drag the the scrubber to like the middle of the video just see like what the most replayed part is or something. Right?
Wes:Right. But but but back to your point about about doing it on seeking arrangement, actually bet that doesn't work. I I think that the I think that there's probably
Cody:because those guys are more savvy?
Wes:They're more savvy. It's like you you're not supposed to ever pay a ransom, especially I mean, just with what we said, like, you know, if the Right. If the copperbats not going anywhere, then if you pay the ransom once they own you and the only way out of it is to say fuck off and delete their number and never deal with them ever again. But it's not even just that they're not savvy. It's like who imagine you're just a normal guy and you're like the IT guy at work and you you get a message from a girl who's way out of your league and then you FaceTime with her and you you really enjoy yourself on the FaceTime call.
Cody:How dare you imply that she was way out of my league, but go on.
Wes:I mean, well, I'm not you but like, you know, some other guy. Yeah. Right? Of course. You you bet pretty good.
Wes:But and everybody everybody at works already thinks you're creepy, right? Like you can't have everybody at work get that thing too, because like that's just going to destroy your social reputation. You're like probably more than happy to pay $500 to make it go away and just give yourself peace of mind about it.
Cody:What else do we have?
Wes:Okay. So this is a good one, I think. This guy says, although I've dated, I haven't lived with a woman since my divorce. Recently, my girlfriend and I have been talking about her moving in when her lease is up in a couple of months. Right now, she's paying almost $3,000 a month for rent, utilities, and insurance.
Wes:I suggest she pays me $1,000 a month, and she got offended, accusing me of trying to make money off of her. The thing is that $1,000 doesn't even cover my property tax, much less anything else. She's She offering to split utilities, which comes out to about $500 a month. For context, she's currently living in a two bedroom apartment in about an hour from her work. My house has five bedrooms in one of the best neighborhoods in the city at about fifteen minutes from her work.
Wes:I can easily afford her to live here rent free, but that doesn't seem right to me. Thoughts?
Stony:I can kind of see both sides, but I I think what it comes down to is I would like you to contribute to our shared life together. And it doesn't seem like she's interested in contributing to a shared life. We have only heard one half of the story, but it's kinda reasonable.
Cody:Yeah. It's a very different thing if she just can't afford it versus she's offended at the notion. Right? It's one thing to be like, you know, I'm I really I would really like to use this as an opportunity to save money or whatever, and, like, you know, that's a conversation that they could have. But to be offended at the very notion, yeah, of contributing is like, maybe maybe go fuck yourself.
Wes:Yeah. I mean, it's not really conducive to takes to always say this, but I I would like to hear both sides of the story, and I would like to know what stage of the relationship they're at. You know, if this is a relatively young relationship, then I think it's a totally reasonable demand. I think that if if if if they do think it's headed towards marriage and, you know, in a marriage, your finances are de facto merged, at least to some extent, then it it is a little bit silly. But it it also depends how he frames it too.
Wes:If if it's like because I I can't imagine and I live in New York and we live in apartments, the apartments are more expensive than they should be. But it's it's hard for me to imagine a girl moving in with me and not and assuming that she's not going to pay anything. It it the thing that I got from the story is that this guy sounds like he's just a lot more well established than he than she is. If he's a if he has a five bedroom house, he probably doesn't have five kids. Right?
Wes:And so if he lives in a five bedroom house in the best part of the city and she lives somewhere that she has to commute an hour for work, you might assume that she's been forced, you know, to the to the outskirts of town because of of, you know, rent prices or something. So, you know, there there might be just like a big economic imbalance there where it's like, yeah, come on, dude. Just like don't you're doing
Cody:so So much to steel man her perspective and maybe reiterate or re rephrase what you're saying, Wes, her perspective might be that she recognizes on some level that his desire to have her pay is symbolic. He he doesn't actually need this money. He just wants a symbolic contribution from her, and she doesn't like the idea of having to symbolically perform for him.
Wes:Yeah. But I don't know if it is symbolic because he even in his his post, he frames it entirely in economic terms. He's I mean, that was
Cody:the sense I got. But I'm trying to I'm trying to say maybe this is her interpretation. I'm trying to steal, man. Yeah.
Wes:Yeah. He because he's like, that's not even gonna cover my mortgage. And it's like, well, that that's not because maybe from her perspective,
Cody:you know, she's maybe she's not a very financially literate woman, and that seems plausible given that she's there's such a big gap gap between them financially. And so maybe she just sees him as like, oh, he's just rich. He's just doing so well that it would be effortless for him to, you know, to entirely just have me live there without paying anything. And, therefore, any contribution I would be making would be entirely unnecessary and, therefore, symbolic.
Wes:Yeah. I don't know, Stoney. Have you ever been in a situation like this?
Stony:No. When I was living in London, I was making much less than my girlfriend at the time, and she did cover a bit more of the rent. So I guess I have been in this situation, but on the lesser end. But there was a there was a pretty big difference. I was running a nonprofit at the time, so my salary was pretty constrained.
Wes:Yeah. I mean, it's different if you're a man too. I mean, just as a man, you can't move in with a woman and cover none of the rent because you're you're tilting the power balance against yourself in a way that's going to, I mean, probably build resentment because of the expected, you know, like if a woman feels like she's putting you up with a place to live, like, she's that's not that's sort of the breed but it doesn't go the other way. It it it's a traditional male and female dynamic. Like, the the man is supposed to take some sort of pleasure and gain some sense of fulfillment for, like, providing for a woman, which, like, I genuinely do, and I think that
Stony:makes me beta. But Makes you old school, not necessarily beta.
Wes:Right. Yeah. Like, I think that, like, certain posters would hear me say that and they'd be like, oh, well, like, you're just gonna get taken advantage of by women. And, you know, you you have to be incredibly cynical or literally have nothing to bring it to the table to to think that you're just going to be reduced to a number. But I don't know.
Wes:I
Cody:This is the classic. We had to find out I mean, this is I don't know how worth this is a as a meta point, I don't know how worthwhile it is to try to sort of retread themes that we've that we've tried in the past or if we should always try to be searching for novelty. But I yeah. I think this is one of the core differences in how you and I see the world of dating, Wes, where it's like, there's sort of this archetypal how do I articulate this? There's this sort of archetypal set of dynamics and processes that I think that you because they are sort of archetypal, you just subscribe to it.
Cody:It's like, well, it's it's it's therefore good and, like, expected and then the only way to do it or, like, the optimal way.
Wes:No. Don't Okay. Think that
Cody:Feel free. Let me let me let me let me try to articulate my alternate perspective, and then if you wanna rephrase how you see it to be more accurate in contrast. But, like, the way I would articulate my interpretation is, like, there is a totally different optimal way of having relationships be that is, like, totally not in line with whatever that archetypal understanding is. And so, like, for me, I've been and I've been in relationships like this. Like, both people should just have the best interest of the other person at heart, and they should just do whatever they possibly can.
Cody:There there should be no ledger. There's no it's not transactional. There's no ledger. You're not keeping track. Again, I'm I'm I'm articulating the the platonic ideal.
Cody:This is not always possible to achieve this. But ideally, that's how it is. And and you both just wanna do the maximum you possibly can for the other person to make their life better and take a burden off of them. And so both people should be like, you know, look, if you wanna move in and not pay anything, if that's, like, optimal, and, you know, like, let me do that for you. And then she should be like, no.
Cody:No. No. No. Let me pay my fair share. And, you know, and if both people are coming in with that attitude, and, like, and then you arrive, like, that's a market.
Cody:You're like, you you make a market because there's a bid and an ask. It's like, I'll no. Don't pay anything. No. No.
Cody:No. I'll pay as much as I possibly can. And then you meet in the middle. And, like, that's probably fair. That's probably right.
Cody:That's how it's supposed to be, and that's how it's supposed to feel. And so, like, my problem is, like, in so many of these situations that we talk about, like, you know, it's it's very not that. It's the it's the intention behind it is the problem. The intention on on both of these parties seems mostly on hers. It just doesn't seem like they're coming from that place.
Wes:Yeah. Well, no, I think we're actually in in agreement. We're just hitting it from slightly different angles Okay. Because I don't want there to be a ledger. I don't want to be I I don't want it to be explicit that, you know, I don't wanna be saying out loud, hey, I am providing for you in a number of ways, and, there's expected reciprocation there.
Wes:Like, I don't wanna say that out loud, but you I think in in life, everyone decides, you know, I I can't I can't build every skill at once. I can't be the perfect well rounded person. I have to choose a set of things that I'm going to bring to a relationship and offer to the relationship to make it better. And I've built my life around, in some ways, making money and being successful and being able to provide for a nice life for my family. And so I want to bring that to my relationships, because that's something I've worked very hard for and something that I want to, you know, I I I consider a part of my sense of self is being able to provide that sort of comfort and and standard of living.
Wes:Now if if she that doesn't mean that, you know, depending on the financial situation, like like I said, if it's an apartment in New York City, like, you're gonna pay some of the rent because we're gonna have to bigger get a bigger place. Right? That's just, like, financials. But if I can afford to to pay for the apartment, it's like, I will pay for the apartment, and you will pay much as you feel like you need to pay to feel like you are contributing as much as I am based on, you know, the other things that you're bringing to the relationship. We're not going to make that explicit.
Wes:And then it's like I went out with my friend a few nights ago and I bought a round of drinks. I bought him a beer. He said, oh, I'll Venmo you for the beer. I'm like, don't Venmo me for the beer. Like, we're gonna go out again some other time and then you're going to pay for the beer.
Wes:Like, we're not gonna keep score ever about this kind of stuff. Right. You're gonna you're gonna buy the number of beers that you wanna buy, and I'm gonna buy the number of beers that I wanna buy. And it's gonna, over the course of our multi year friendship, it's going to end up relatively Well,
Cody:that's that's the right attitude. So that I agree. The the the wrong thing is when you have when you bring in the expectation. If, like, so if she were or you were, if anybody were coming and going, you know, the desire to selflessly contribute and whatever that is, whether it be, you know, yeah, providing financially or whatever it is, it's the intention is correct. The wrong thing is when you have the other flip side, which is the expectation of, like, you ought to provide for me.
Cody:I have this checklist that you need to fulfill. You need to be providing $2,000 a month for me and an allowance, and you need to be right? It would be just as fucked up to go the other way and go, well, I expect my woman to cook for me. She should cook for me twice a day. And it's like, you don't want that to come from a place of expectation.
Cody:The ideal the ideal is that you love somebody for who they are, for their traits, not for what they, quote, unquote, bring to the table. And I think the conflation of traits and bringing things to the table is, like, really fucked up. Like, I I don't want my the person I'm with to feel like they have to, quote, unquote, contribute at all. I want them to want to contribute, It's a very different thing.
Stony:So may maybe this is a very different topic, but I am not in a relationship, but I do have a daughter, and she is expected to do chores around the house. Where in your mind does parenting play a role with that? Because I don't want to have a her to have a ledger in her mind. Don't want be like, well, I'm driving you to school, so you would better blah blah blah, which is, you know, and actually driving her to school is one of my favorite things because you've kind of got your kid locked in a metal box next to you, and it's a great time for conversation because they can't be too distracted by their phone or anything else. But at the same time, there there is a ledger in the sense that she needs to contribute to the functioning of the household as as a training exercise, as as this is what life is like.
Cody:Totally. Well, first of all, I mean, you know, parenting is a little different than romantic relationship. But Obviously. Yeah. Yeah.
Cody:So but, I mean, I think roughly speaking, the same, you know, the same thing applies in that, you know, you're not doing it. The main reason you're not you're doing that is not because of the ledger. It's not because you know, let's be honest. It's not like she's contributing in an extremely meaningful way to the to the household. Like, she's not creating a bunch of economic value as a as a 12 year old or whatever.
Cody:Right? It's that you are trying to it's for her. You're doing it for her to instill lessons and to shape her character. That's an act of of of giving, not
Stony:a thing. Fun trivia. In my limited experience, they never wanna be told that this builds character. That's like that's the death knell.
Cody:Oh, yeah. You can't say that.
Stony:Why do we say this builds character? Does everything build character?
Cody:Characters building character's gay. Don't be gay, dad.
Wes:Did she say that to you? She called you gay, Sony?
Stony:No. She didn't.
Wes:Has she ever? I've I I don't I I feel it feels like I might have to I might have to put the worm in her brain.
Stony:She is her her facial expressions are where most of her withering communication occurs.
Cody:We gotta have her on the podcast and
Stony:she can
Cody:call all of us down.
Stony:Her her disdain and her embarrassment at at how cringe I am is incredibly well demonstrated through her facial expression. But but she usually doesn't say much other than just try to, you know, walk away from school quickly before I, you know, am too much of an embarrassment.
Wes:She has a sense of discretion. And so that's an admirable trait. Too bad. That's just called being a daughter. That's just called, you know, that's just the price you pay for being a dad, isn't it?
Stony:No, I don't mind. I was embarrassed of my mom when I was her age, so I just take it on the chin. I'm like, this makes me laugh.
Wes:You probably take glee in it. I think that's sort of the next level of being a dad, right?
Stony:It's I've like you're to
Wes:hamming up a little bit.
Stony:Yeah, I've yet to purposely embarrass her. But, you know.
Wes:Oh, you you you're just saving it for the first time you meet her boyfriend one time. Right? Exactly. That's when that's when all those all those years of pent up deliberately embarrassing your daughter is gonna all sort of come
Cody:spilling I you'll be a terrifying father of girlfriends of you'll be terrifying to her future boyfriends, I'm guessing.
Stony:I don't think that's a necessarily bad thing. Think a lot of fear God is a is a good thing to have, from my point of view, maybe not from their point of view.
Cody:I completely agree. Yeah. We we've lost that as a society. You know? That was a healthy social institution that, like, you know, the better bring my daughter home safely.
Cody:You know?
Stony:Exactly.
Wes:That's Yeah. Well, I think that to just to tie it back to the original topic with the with the objective of running a successful household, whether it's you and your girlfriend or you and your wife or you and your wife and your six kids, you do have to be a little bit of a Marxist. Like there has to be because you there's so many intangibles that you cannot actually keep a ledger. Who takes care of the kids more? Who provides more emotional safety?
Wes:Who who waters the the plants? Right? Like, there's there's so many you just cannot keep score. So it sort of has to be a system of, you know, from each according to their ability to each according to their needs. Now the exception is children because you need to teach children that that you are expected to contribute to the shared benefit of the groups that you're in.
Wes:So, you know, take the trash out. That's your chore. Wash the dishes. I cook dinner. That's what my thing was with my dad.
Wes:I would it was he cooks dinner. I clean up after dinner. And we had a great understanding, and it was just very reciprocal. And then I learned, like, I don't wanna cook dinner, so I will happily clean up after dinner. Now, he did this thing where he would, like, after dinner, he would, like, put on this smug look and, like, just, like, I'm doing, like, a a dismissive gesture with my hands.
Wes:He'd be, like, take it away. Right? Like, I was, like, a server. And he was doing it as a bit, but it did piss me off. Like, he thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Wes:He'd be, now you serve me. You know? I give you I
Stony:give you ten years before you're doing the same thing.
Wes:Oh, yeah. Before turn into your dad. It's it's it's a good bit. Like, I it's it's he would do it in front of guests too. He'd be like like, we'd have like another family over for dinner and like sometimes there would be other kids there.
Wes:He'd be like, watch this. He'd be like, Wesley, do the thing with his hands. So then I'd I'd start cleaning up. I'd look at those other kids. I'd be like, you fuckers, get your plates in the sink.
Wes:I'm like, we are both 10. We are equals here. This is this is still my house.
Cody:Wesley, house elf.
Stony:Crabs in the bucket. I'm not the only one cleaning the dick the dishes. You're gonna you're gonna help me. But by the way, that that when you said it's not Marxism when it comes to the kids, in fact, it is because it's to each to their own abilities, you've had that ability. You didn't have the ability to go out and get a job and pay for rent, but you did have the ability to clean the table.
Stony:So
Cody:But, again, I would argue that, like, when you're doing it right as a parent, that's not coming from a place that you're not you're it's not that you genuinely it's it's it's not it's not coming from a taking place. It's not that you genuinely want to reap the economic value or otherwise the value from your children. The value you get from your children is their love and and your relationship. You know, you could easily hire some fucking, you know, some South American person for $4 an hour to, like, do your dishes, and everybody would probably be happier for it. Like, you have your kids do the dishes to, like, to teach them.
Cody:Right?
Wes:Well, I also would do it because I hate doing dishes. I I think that you have to compartmentalize and then there's sort of an nesting doll of of compartments that, you know, the the smallest compartment in in this case is household chores. It's like, is it really important for the kid to take the trash out? Is it really important for the kid to put the dishes away? It's like, well, you know, I'm more doing that as a a practical matter, but also to, you know, teach them that they have to, contribute with labor.
Wes:Right? That that's a part of life is you contribute labor. And so it falls into this thing where, like, you're gonna love your kids no matter what. Right? And and that doesn't mean you don't discipline them, that doesn't mean that you don't, like, you know, have serious conversations with them when they need to be certainly talked to and spoken to.
Wes:But, you know, if your kid's becoming a drug addict, like, you might kick him out of the house. I I don't you know, it's if if your kid is is committing crimes and and doing bad things, you might kick them out of the house, and you do that because you love them.
Cody:Yeah. Totally. It just has to come from the right place. Like, it does not per preclude any of those sorts of other you know, when I say it's gotta come from the right place of intention and, you know, of love as the as the as the as the core intention, you know, I'm not saying that for like, it doesn't look like Kumbaya all the time. Right?
Wes:I'm always concerned when I read a post like this because it it I wonder, are you not capable if your if your relationship can't sustain an honest and frank open conversation about this, then it's probably just not a good relationship. Like, what led to you posting about this on Reddit? Like, were you are you not able to tell your girlfriend, like, why you think that the situation should be the way you think it is and, like, explain your feelings and, like, have that conversation with her? Like, some people just can't do that. And but it's like, if you can talk to strangers about it on Reddit, why can't you talk to your girlfriend about it?
Wes:And, like, why are you appealing to strangers? And it's also on the ask men subreddit. So it's like you've it's not even like mean, first of all, don't go on Reddit for advice. We've covered this topic thoroughly. But, like, it's like you've chosen an audience that you think will be sympathetic to you and you're just looking for moral support.
Wes:Right. Make a friend. I don't know. Like, I feel bad for people who have to do that. It's like, dude, not I would I would call you.
Wes:I would call Stoney. I would call, like, my father. You know? I I wouldn't be like, hey, Reddit. You know?
Wes:Totally. On the on the same
Cody:There's a heavy selection bias towards the the most emotionally immature and and
Wes:little I should pull a I should pull a post back up. I bet I bet he posts, like, Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction on the same account, then it's like, oh.
Cody:That's
Wes:what's that's what's going on here. It's the Handsome Hour.