Touching on some strange usage of the term "Minimalism", getting into Social Media/Influencers and meeting people from the internet! P.S Geoff thinks he recorded on the wrong microphone lol...
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Touching on some strange usage of the term "Minimalism", getting into Social Media/Influencers and meeting people from the internet! P.S Geoff thinks he recorded on the wrong microphone lol...
Social media
Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Georgie: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Toast & Roast, I am your co-host Georgie and I’m here with Geoff, how are you, Geoff.
Geoff: Yeah, doing good. I literally was telling my team yesterday that I wanted to just shave my head bald, because God, I really want a haircut.
Georgie: So I guess, when was the last time you got a haircut? I assume just before lockdown? A long time before that?
Geoff: Ah, it was actually quite a long time, I got a haircut as soon as pandemic 1 kind of died down, and then I sort of –
Georgie: It’s the same pandemic Geoff. Pandemic 1!
Geoff: Yeah, okay, lockdown 1 kind of died down, and then I think it was April, it was probably April, the last time I got a haircut just before I went to the Gold Coast. So it’s been three months I guess since I got a haircut. And when you go from having a haircut once a month to not having a haircut after three months, it gets kind of annoying.
Georgie: Yeah, my head would be cold.
Geoff: How often do you get a haircut?
Georgie: I actually get one every six months ish, these days? I used to, when I kept my hair long, I probably cut it every couple of years. And then when I kept it short, I probably cut it every three months, but yeah, in the past couple of years, I’ve been doing it every like, six months, and I last got my hair cut in May, but I am feeling like, when this lockdown ends I’ll probably want to –
Geoff: Yeah.
Georgie: Get it trimmed a little bit. Yeah, I mean I’ve had the feeling of wanting to just, like, keep it really short because it’s really long now, so not quite going bald. But, yeah.
Geoff: Yeah. I said, alright team, everybody, are we gonna go bald? The girls were so silent. And I used to have a hair cut every six months. I kind of got to know some of the guys that who get haircuts every month, everywhere like two weeks, they were just in and out with haircuts. And I was like, I sat down and I talked to one of them. Why do you get a haircut so, so often? And they just got accustomed to, like, a certain style, and they wanted to maintain that style, so I thought, that’s a really good point. And so I tried it out, I tried it out every month. And it did – it did make my, like, I didn’t really want to keep a certain style, but it was really comfortable keeping, keeping like a really nice short kind of haircut. So I got used to that short hair, and, and now it’s just growing all over the place. So yeah.
Georgie: Yeah, yeah, I tend to, when I keep a hair style, I mean I tend to keep a hairstyle for, for, for a period of time, and so sometimes for me, as a, as a woman who generally likes to have a long ish hair –when I had it short, I found that I had to cut it more frequently to keep the same style, but when it’s longer, I don’t have to do it as often, but it’s still a matter of like, I’m going to give it a trim and keep it healthy and all this stuff and it’s going to look the same, pretty much, there’s never anything like like a big change.
Geoff: Yeah. You also get drastically different prices to male haircuts, so I can’t.
Georgie: Oh it’s so sexist, but.
Geoff: I mean yeah it is.
Georgie: So yeah, the one that I don’t like is if you have long hair, it costs more, and I’m like, but you’re cutting it off. But I mean, as, as I’ve gotten older and kind of gone to less cheap budget cuts and to more like specialty like hairdressers I kind of understand and appreciate that it’ll cost more for someone’s expertise and for me to also trust the hairdresser. I think that’s a big thing for me to have realised is that to be comfortable and to be able to trust someone with like cutting my hair.
Geoff: Yeah, my friend. She goes to Toni & Guy.
Georgie: Ah yeah.
Geoff: And she says, it’s 50%, the experience and 50% the haircut, because they like, chat with you. I hate talking to my hairdressers so it’s really strange. She, she became friends with her hairdresser. It’s the consistency… and she gets a glass of wine or something like that.
Georgie: Yeah.
Geoff: So I was like okay, you’re paying – I don’t know how much Toni & Guy haircuts cost – for experience.
Georgie: I think they’re around like, maybe even 90 I think like 90 to $100 ish range. Yeah, I get I get a drink at mine as well.
Geoff: Costs too many steaks for your haircut. You got a drink of yours?
Georgie: Yeah, buy don’t go for alcoholic drink how many said like yeah please give me the tea that you have the coffee that you have, whatever.
Geoff: Have you discovered some like nice teas out of going to haircuts?
Georgie: No, I just do that on my own, dude. I’m already like, I’m already a tea snob that I don’t need to go to the hairdresser to… (laughs)
Geoff: You should bring your own tea to the hairdresser, can you steep this for me?
Georgie: Yeah. Mine’s better than yours.
Geoff: My uncle does that. He goes to Chinese restaurants and brings his own tea, he gets them to make his tea.
Georgie: No way. I’ll just do it myself at home.
Geoff: Yeah. I feel like they’re skimming his tea. Like, oh this guy gave us like some tea leaves and just take some off the top and then like, steep the rest.
Georgie: Yeah, they probably do that.
Geoff: But yeah, I don’t want to think ill of the of the Chinese restauranteaurs but yeah, when you’re in the middle of, like, Southeast Asia, anything goes. Anything for a quick buck over there I don’t want to generalise a whole damn like sector of the Asian culture.
Georgie: I totally get it, yeah.
Geoff: But you know what I’m talking to you about if you’re listening to this and you’ve been to Southeast Asia, you know what I’m talking about. Anyways, you were you were like, so livid about – you’re pretty angry about something today. Go for it.
Georgie: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so, so I was looking for so I’m, we’ve talked about like trying to make better choices about clothes and like, you know, sustainability and being, being nice to the environment through what we purchase, or even what we don’t purchase. And so I was looking for some locally, ethically, sustainably made underwear brands in like based in Sydney, or Australia, or whatever. I come across this one which I’m not going to name
Geoff: (sniggers)
Georgie: But um, I just thought it was, I thought was hilarious that, you know, it took a while to load everything they must have done, they’ve got some videos, but love images, as you can imagine being an ecommerce website… and just kind of scrolling a little bit, go to the bottom of the page. I reach the bottom of the page where they have the mailing list, incentive, it’s often an incentive and it goes, I’ll read it word for word, it says, “sign up and receive 10% off your first order”. And then under it, in like slightly less emphasised text it goes, “Don’t worry we’re minimalists”, and I was like what the fuck. Wait a minute.
Geoff: Yeah, I feel like, like someone can take that so many different ways, right?
Georgie: Yeah. How do you take it Geoff? Like, what does that mean.
Geoff: Alright, so I, I assume they are talking about not sending you a lot of emails. They’re, they’re minimal in their email sending, but if you dive deeper into, you know, definitions of minimalism, you could say that it’s – like they’re intentional with their emailing you, right?
Georgie: Yeah. Yep, yep.
Geoff: But I guess like, it kind of comes off as a bit awkward because they are giving you 10% off another purchase, which is not a very minimalist angle. And that’s my take on that.
Georgie: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think the thing that I just found funny was it sounds like, as a, as an ethical sustainable brand. It’s like another boast factor, going, not only are we, ethical and sustainable, and all of this stuff, but we’re minimalists.
Geoff: Do you think they’re trying too hard to be woke, even though they’re already, they’re already like ethical enough like telling us that they’re minimalists seems a bit extra.
Georgie: Yeah, exactly right, like, yeah, they just get it’s just like they’re saying, we’re super woke, by the way, and I don’t know, like, as a minimalist myself, I don’t go around flaunting the fact that I’m a minimalist. I don’t know about you but like I feel like you probably agree with me on that one.
Geoff: Yeah, yeah I don’t go around with a badge on on myself saying like I’m a minimalist but –
Georgie: Name Tag.
Geoff: Geoff – minimalist.
Georgie: Geoff – minimalist.
Geoff: I mean it’s on my Twitter profile, it’s on my Twitter profile so maybe I do.
Georgie: You know, it’s on my Twitter profile too so.
Geoff: Maybe we do it as a badge of honor. But yeah, if someone’s talking about something…
Georgie: But, but I don’t, but the fact that you’re wearing the badge though, the fact that you’re wearing the badge, why would you wear a badge if you’re a minimalist.
Geoff: That’s really true, To be honest, it like, is it part of my identity has, has it become so like identifying of me that I felt the need to point out that I’m a minimalist. Um, yeah, I mean, people, people use their jobs as identities, why not use minimalism as an identity.
Georgie: Yeah, I mean I don’t love using – I don’t love using jobs as identities but, but yeah, back to this, like, how you mentioned that there is like, like there is an incentive for you to basically buy a thing because they’re giving you a discount, the way I was also looking at it is that they’re encouraging me to sign up for their mailing lists, and as a minimalist, I just, I have unsubscribed from a lot of mailing lists because I don’t want to be –
Geoff: Oh, you make such a good point. Yes.
Georgie: I don’t want to be targeted by them like, buy this, buy that, you know, I want to buy things of my own accord with with intention. And so for me to sign up, regardless of how little email they send, is me, you know, opting into and subscribing to receiving more shit, like yeah.
Geoff: Oh my god, you’re so right. It’s so anti minimalistic, I mean for us to sign up to newsletters that actively try and entice you to purchase things outside of the intention cycle. Whoa. That’s deep.
Georgie: Yep. So deep.
Geoff: Yeah. And, and I mean like, that also like, goes back to talking about – I don’t think we’ve actually talked about this yet but – social media stuff, right, if you watch The Social Dilemma or whatever, on Netflix, they talk a lot about how –
Georgie: Oh yeah, I haven’t watched that yet.
Geoff: Oh you haven’t?
Georgie: No. Yeah.
Geoff: Give it, give it a watch, I think it’s a good perspective, it also kind of like, it’s kind of like a minimalism thing, I suppose, but I’m gonna try really hard to tie it here, but basically they talked about how the idea behind social media now is to change one’s behaviour. Is to essentially, all those ads and stuff, is about enticing you to make, like, consumerist purchases, rather than intentional purchases, and they do a really good deep dive into, into the fact that social media, you should really treat it as a tool, rather than let social media control you. Because, and it’s not about the data that they’re collecting from you. That’s important. It’s about the platform being able to change your behaviour, and that, that shit really kind of put it – put the social medias in a different perspective. Like, I always treated social media as a tool, I didn’t feel like I was being manipulated, and I knew that the stuff is being – is manipulating behaviour, but it’s kind of one thing to know about it. And it’s another thing to resist it, and I – and I find it, like slightly interesting and also quite sad, because a lot of people are probably buying all that stuff. I also get a common criticism from co workers that I buy a lot of stuff off Instagram ads. Like, I’m not even – not even I’m impervious to the Instagram ads.
Georgie: Yeah, I, I have to admit that I’ve also been targeted by Instagram ads which, some of which are found not very useful. And that, I guess I feel like I’ve also used [it] as a tool, most of the time to kind of, you know, find inspiration for things, but it’s all, it’s always about the control, I think. If you have a good amount of control of what you follow, what you consume, then you probably are less likely to feel like you’re being manipulated, but I know, I guess there are a lot of people who don’t realise that, because I guess maybe they’re just in too deep. They’ve been following a bunch of different things that when it instills like jealousy, or it’s like “I want that”
Geoff: Yeah.
Georgie: Or, you know, they start comparing themselves, the comparison thing is a pretty bad one, because people start comparing themselves to others, who have more than them, or are more than them, or they feel that they’re just worthless compared to especially the whole influencer thing.
Geoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the influencer thing – I’ve just been thinking about it lately, and my basic take so far is that I don’t think influencers, actually, you know, provide much to society. Let’s be real. Like, I’m not saying that influencing is easy by any means and it’s a perfectly legitimate business model, in this day and age –
Georgie: Mhmm.
Geoff: But if you have a look at things that you do to earn money. The money to prod–product, use the what –
Georgie: Product place?
Geoff: Not product place. It’s the it’s the money to productivity ratio, I guess. It’s kind of like when you, when you get money for producing something, that product goes out into the world, and benefits somebody
Georgie: Generate an income?
Geoff: Benefits somebody, you’re a farmer, you get paid, you produce a tomato, and then tomato goes out, and someone buys a tomato, and someone has a tomato. Even us in software, you like – it’s a little bit, it’s a little bit shaky, but, like, you build something that actually helps somebody else, achieve a goal that gets that money right the whole cycle.
Georgie: Yep.
Geoff: But when you come to influencing or what is it exactly, producing that, then that then kind of like enriches someone’s life.
Georgie: Yeah. Yeah, it doesn’t directly do that it feels like it’s, it feels like so a bunch of ads and marketing?
Geoff: Yeah.
Georgie: Depending on the kind of content I think, as well, like, some, some influences go on to create a course based on, like some of their own skills or some of their own knowledge, and they, they kind of enrich people’s lives that way? So I know a couple of YouTubers who’ve made like a – because I like, follow a lot of style and fashion things – they make like a course to find your personal style, or something. Which, which would help somebody. But that’s like, you know, branching off the typical social media, because they’re doing something…
Geoff: Ah, OK, yeah.
Georgie: Yeah something else, something that is deliberately more enriching, without that they would just be creating content, like, yeah.
Geoff: Yeah, yeah. I guess there’s like so many different avenues for content creation and society itself has become such heavy consumers of, of content. But yeah I guess there’s some angles that you can take when, when you’ve garnered a whole bunch of people looking at you, then, then what? Right. But yeah, I guess, the, the other spectrum is that they’ve garnered a whole bunch of people and they’re now trying to get their followers to buy into Bitcoin, or like a cryptocurrency and they’re pumping and dumping, so there’s like, there’s such a big spectrum.
Georgie: Yeah, I think that it’s, it’s a, it’s such a problem because, I mean, you’ve probably seen some influences say like straight up: This is an ad. Just so you know it’s an ad and they’ve been sponsored. And I guess they’re trying to make a make a living, make money, of what they’re doing. And as authentic as they may be – and this takes me back to when I first started my blog which was like, yeah in 2003 or something and it started getting popular in, like 2008 or something like that. And I tried to – I mean, I never really tried to make money off it, and because I just blogged for my own personal reasons, like I enjoyed writing, and I enjoyed sharing my voice with the world, and people would always ask me, like, “Why don’t you monetise it? Your blog is so popular“, and things like that. And not so much that I had a fear of me losing that authenticity, but I just didn’t feel like it felt right? Like to just, you know, make it into a money-making machine when it was something that, was just really like important and personal and special to me. I, full disclosure that I do, like, have some like paid links or advertisements in some of my blog posts, but I put that on my terms and conditions, and I don’t tend to link to stuff that I don’t like personally like advocate or believe in. So, yeah, but I think people make money full time of like social media and blogging, and I don’t know if you can usually tell that there is some aspect of it that is just not as genuine as maybe some of the more authentic things that people – those people posts as well. Like you can see you can tell the difference between some of their content sometimes.
Geoff: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a pretty hard landscape, I guess, when it comes to you scrolling through Instagram and it like recommending some, some influences. But yeah from, from my perspective, it’s, it’s all a bunch of garbage. Like, just scrolling picture.
Georgie: It’s noise, just noise.
Geoff: Yeah scrolling picture after picture of someone trying on outfits, and I’m sure people like seeing, like, what outfits look like on, on certain people, and then they might feel that they might feel influenced to go purchase that thing. But that kind of like, that kind of level of influencing seems like, like, like getting a notification or being manipulated into into purchasing things or wanting to purchase things all the time, which, which no, it’s not a very minimalist approach to, to, to life. So when I see that kind of stuff, it does, it does get on. It gets on my radar because it’s not the, it’s not a very minimalist way to live. And, similar to how I turn off all notifications for all social media, it’s, it’s not something I ever want, like. I don’t ever want social media to reach out to me. Like, it’s there for me to use enough for them to, to kind of try and manipulate my time. Having said that, scrolling, scrolling you know the Tik Toks and the reels and crap like that.
Georgie: Haha, I’ve fallen into that trap but I also have all my notifications off, like the only ones I have on are for like, Messages, phone calls, and then for like, certain important conversations in Slack, and mostly that’s like, like not really on while I’m not working. But like, I don’t understand how people can like I, because I’ve never really been at situation where I see people try on outfits and I feel like I want that thing. And this might be missing this as a short, not white, Asian woman.
Geoff: Okay. Because you’ve realised that your body type is nowhere near.
Georgie: You know with. Yeah. So yeah, I, people I see modelling this stuff, I have kind of conditioned myself to not really look at the person who is modelling the clothes and this is the same when I’m shopping online as well. I’ve conditioned myself to simply look at the clothes and go. Is that gonna look like good on me. Is that does that something I like to wear? And the same with the way that they style those things, because you know they’re they’re all posing in the photos and like, oh god, I’ve got to tell you something. So, the one I’ve seen is usually they say the model is wearing a certain size, but then I’ve seen photos where they obviously haven’t edited the photos properly, and like, the woman’s got a dress on, and she’s you know, as, as models go – like they usually pretty, pretty skinny and not really, there’s no, there’s no, we’re still working on like inclusivity and having diversity in models, right. But what I’ve seen is they’ve got the dress and it’s too big for the model, and they’ve gotten those bulldog clips…
Geoff: Ahh, yep.
Georgie: And they’ve clipped the back of the dress because it’s too big for the model. And I’ve seen instances where they’ve forgotten to edit that out. And I’m looking at it, going, yeah, it’s like, you know before you realise, it like, it fits her perfectly, and you get an idea of the shape of the dress or whatever, and then you go what the fuck is that? And just like this is not it’s not even, it’s not even a fail it just feels like being scammed, because you’re being made to believe how this dress fits on someone and how it’s gonna look, and I feel bad for women. I mean, I’m pretty sure this probably happens to some men as well, but it’s probably worse for women. But I feel so bad for women who, who haven’t yet, kind of conditioned themselves to realise that what they’re seeing in the pictures is, is not fake, but it’s, it’s obviously rehearsed, it’s practiced, it’s not going to be quite like the real thing.
Geoff: Yeah, and I guess like, generally, when, let’s say someone who hasn’t conditioned themselves like that, looks at all of these models, and I guess at a younger age, they would basically say, well, in order for me to look good in those clothes, I have to actually look like that model. Which is, yeah, which is kind of unfortunate.
Georgie: Yeah sad and deeper, like a deeper issue as well. Yeah.
Geoff: Yeah. And social media, obviously, like times 100 times 1000. That, that, that feeling of not just clothing, everything, right? Everyone’s got this highlight reel on their Instagram of their beautiful wonderful life. And you’re all – everyone’s just sitting there, looking at all these beautiful wonderful lives and thinking that their life should be exactly like that, or would want their life to be like that, which is. Yeah, unfortunate.
Georgie: Yeah, but the thing is Instagram hasn’t always been like that I think that’s what makes it most sad like Instagram hasn’t always been like, here is my, every highlight of my life. It’s all perfect and stuff. Like I first joined Instagram in I think it was 2012, back when people didn’t really write those – funnily enough, I do this too – but people didn’t write those long form captions, they just posted the picture, and that was it.
Geoff: Yeah, cuz it used to be a photography platform people, It used to be a photography platform! Photography.
Georgie: But you chucked the filter on it and stuff… But then it kind of evolved to, like, like and I’ve done, I’m very guilty of having deleted some photos, but I deleted some photos that – that were actually not part of, they were not what I consider like, the highlight reel of my life, because they were just photos of food I’d eaten, or low quality photos –
Geoff: Just trash photos.
Georgie: Like selfies and all that kind of thing. The funny thing is, what I originally and I don’t know about you but what I originally followed other people for on Instagram was precisely that I wanted to see their lives and I want to see them, the selfies with their dogs I want to see them take photos of the plants in that garden that kind of thing. And I really like how my friend Chris puts this, he’s
Geoff: You actually wanted a blog.
Georgie: My friend Chris put it put it as like, it’s like looking at your friends photo albums, and I was like, I think he went to as a joke, initially, but like that’s precisely what I want to see on Instagram, not this like refined marketed shit and, you know, all these ads and like, look at my outfits and things like that, like I love, I love Instagram for when I see like people who are close to me, or friends who I know, just post, you know selfies of themselves or with their dogs or just something that going on in their house, like they’re renovating or whatever, and that’s, that’s what I enjoy about it, and it’s so easy to just, yeah.
Geoff: So you’d like that it’s a blog, you like that people blogging on Instagram now, because before it used to just be a bunch of stills with maybe some random ass caption.
Georgie: But it used to be like that as well. It’s kind of like it’s going in like a sine wave I guess you could say? Like it was like that to some extent, I don’t know when did you join?
Geoff: 2012.
Georgie: Sounds like you don’t know what I’m talking about! Oh, so same.
Geoff: I didn’t, didn’t follow people that that was probably the key here. I just posted photos, like I’m scrolling through mine now. And right at the bottom the very first photo I have it’s like a cup of mocha. Fancy. A fancy hot chocolate. I think it was Koko Black, Yeah. Koko Black chocolate hot chocolate. And then they’re like, very closely after is this is this glass. You know the glass bottles that you get with I don’t know I guess, tomato, tomato sauce, like you get tomato sauce?
Georgie: Yes.
Geoff: My mum had left this bottle in the back of the fridge too long, and it grew, grew to mould. So I took a photo of the mould it looks kind of like fuzzy rolling hills.
Georgie: Haha. Yep.
Geoff: This is the kind of shit I used to post until, so that that’s very, you know, very in life kind of stuff and then I got a little bit more serious with the photos and stopped posting too many personal stuff. Removed my personality – my personal life out of photos, rather.
Georgie: Yeah, I kind of see that pattern in your feed. So in mine, I think the first photo is, if I remember correctly I think the first photo is actually a photo of my friend Seb, who I went to uni with. I think he might be listening to this podcast. Hello Seb! So, I took a photo of him, like he was looking over like a balcony or something at uni, and I just took a photo from behind, I was like, don’t move! I want to take a photo of this. And then I think some early photos was like that was one of my friends at work holding some balloons. I think there might – I don’t know, probably a couple of photos of me and my ex. Couple of yeah, those photos with friends and that kind of thing, and then I don’t remember when but at some point I just started only posting things that were like, landscapes, and then I started – now it’s like very much, there are a lot of photos of me now that Nick has taken, and that’s – it’s all my like, nice outfits and things that I, you know, want to I want to show off in terms of my wardrobe and then it’s often accompanied by this long-form super deep nostalgic ish caption. That’s, that’s my style these days.
Geoff: Alright, I scrolled to the very bottom of your Instagram. I got, I got my nails done.
Georgie: Is there, the one with my nose bleeding, is that still there?
Geoff: Yeah, go ahead, like. Why is this nosebleed?
Georgie: Yeah, just like content warning if anyone doesn’t really like talking about nosebleeds. There was a period of time, like maybe my early twenties where I was just really prone to nosebleeds, and it was usually triggered by going from a really cold place like outside, to a really warm place like indoors, where the heater was on. So like, sudden changes in temperature would like, trigger that, and I found it actually quite amusing. There was one time I was, it was in the middle of winter and I was going to a job interview, and my parents drove me to the station in in the car. And I sat in the back and just because it was cold outside. And then I’d gone inside the car where it was really warm. My nose just started like bleeding. I think the funniest – the funniest instance my nose was bleeding, and it was also very inconvenient was, I was in Japan. And I don’t know Geoff if you know there’s that like, I don’t know if it’s a real thing, or a meme or something about in anime, when your nose is bleeding you’re like sexually aroused.
Geoff: Yes. Yes.
Georgie: Yeah, okay. Because I was a bit conscious when this.
Geoff: As if I wouldn’t know this!
Georgie: Yeah, you’re you’re a big Japan fan. So anyway, I was in Japan, it was like December, so it was very cold. And I got on the train, and just, and my nose feels dry when this happens. Like it gets really dry and then I’m like, oh, then it feels a bit sniffly, and then that’s the point at which I’m like, oh some blood vessels burst, meant I was gonna bleed. So I was, yeah, I was on the train and this, this old woman was nice and she gave me a packet of tissues and I was like, oh hope she doesn’t think I’m just like, sexually aroused.
Geoff: Hahaha.
Georgie: But it happened so frequently on that trip because I was frequently outside, and then just going into the station, and my nose would just go off, just like dripping blood.
Geoff: So, fortunately, fortunately for you, it’s only associated males I believe. The nosebleed.
Georgie: Oh really.
Geoff: Yeah.
Georgie: Okay, good.
Geoff: Arousal meme stereotype.
Georgie: That’s funny. I thought it was just like anybody. But yeah, that’s, that’s my funny story, I don’t know why it doesn’t happen anymore, but I just found it very amusing. And I knew what triggered that nosebleeds. So, yeah.
Geoff: I’ve never had a nosebleed.
Georgie: Never?
Geoff: Never had a nosebleed. Yep. similar to something people normally have like cold sores, I don’t I’ve never had a cold sore either. Apparently you only get cold sores after, after being in contact with someone else who has, who has cold sores.
Georgie: Yeah cos I think it’s a form of like herpes or something so it is kind of like, not – I can’t remember if it was contagious but it’s just spread by like being contact with someone else.
Geoff: Oh my god, I found the photo of when you first met Monica.
Georgie: Oh you did oh my god, yes.
Geoff: 2014 what were you, what were you doing?
Georgie: Yeah. Okay, this is funny because we weren’t actually supposed to be at that train station, but I was with my ex and my ex and I would get off at the train station, and he would give me all the time because he’d pockets caught it. So like, if I wasn’t, like, if I was just going home on my own without my ex I wouldn’t have been at this train station and Monica – oh, context by the way, Monica is, Monica is a friend of mine whom I met online. When I believe she was 10 and I was like 14.
Geoff: Woah. Dodgy stuff here.
Georgie: We met through, we met through blogging. Yeah, so we met through blogging and I read her blog and she was just like, for a 10 year old like, I don’t know if like I should cut this out or, because I don’t know if it’s like giving away personal information anyway just cut it appropriately. So Monica’s parents were going through a divorce and for someone who’s 10 years old and kind of like experiencing that, she was writing really maturely. And I just couldn’t, I guess I didn’t think much of her age because she just, when I spoke – when we talked online, I just thought she was –
Geoff: The written word.
Georgie: She was dealing with it really maturely. Yeah. So yeah, a couple years later, we were texting because we exchanged phone numbers. We never talked on the phone or anything, but we knew what each other looked like because we had our blogs to go off, and this is, you know, I think this is like in the era of when you know, creepy people online weren’t quite a thing. Or maybe we were just in a safe circle but anyway.
Geoff: People weren’t posing – males weren’t posing as females using AI filters that, that was probably not a thing back then.
Georgie: Yeah, yeah.
Geoff: Did you hear about that?
Georgie: Yeah, sounds familiar, but a little dodgy.
Geoff: It’s Japanese guy, and he had used the face, face tune or face swapping app to make himself look like. My guess an early 20s like idol. Female. Yeah, so he, he had this Instagram he had a massive following, and then I’m not so sure how or what happened. I think maybe the filter failed at some point.
Georgie: And he got founded? Like everyone was like, oh my god.
Geoff: He got found out, yeah, yeah. There’s a whole article about motor motorcycle dude, posing as young female. And he got found out, and his, he basically said, oh here we go. “Popular female Japanese biker turns out to be a 50 year old man with Faceapp”. And, yeah, let me send you, let me send you a picture of this just to give you full context. I’ll link it in the show notes. But
Georgie: Oh wow. Yeah, that’s… yeah. That’s pretty obvious.
Geoff: It’s very drastic isn’t it. In any case, when they interviewed him he basically said, no one wants to see a 50 year old man with his motorcycle. Everyone just wants to see, like, these cute girls, and he had actually inspired a lot of people to go to pick up motorcycles, a lot of females to pick up motorcycles because of this Instagram. So, it’s, it’s like half and half, like –
Georgie: It’s like half a good story, how about God, that’s creepy. Yeah.
Geoff: It’s like, oh, there’s a guy, posing as a female like he’s basically catfishing people into, into a good hobby like.
Georgie: But was that his original intention? I think that’s the important question to ask. Is that was his intention to get people interested in motorcycling or interested in him, or what was it.
Geoff: No, I think, let’s have a read. It says, a beautiful biker documenting her life in Japan. So, I think he was.
Georgie: Oh, so he wanted to maybe get popularity, from, from his life.
Geoff: He just wanted…
Georgie: He wanted to fit in… Oh that’s a little bit sad.
Geoff: It’s super sad!
Georgie: That’s, like, you know, poor guy wanted to just share his life with the world and have people like, interested in it, but he decided to kinda pose as a woman, because he knew he’d get more attention that way.
Geoff: Yeah, it’s super sad. Yeah, he wasn’t catfishing people. Yeah, he was tired kind of catfishing people but he wasn’t like maliciously catfishing.
Georgie: Yeah. Okay, so it’s… So it’s not creepy but it is kind of it does kind of tell you about you know, the way, what people are interested in. Like people are just interested in young women and, you know, that leads to, you know, prey – preying on young women, and this is a whole other, like, kind of societal issue, right, yeah. So, anyway.
Geoff: So yeah, poor guy felt like he had to pose as a woman to get anyone interested in his life and what he was doing.
Georgie: It does make you feel a little bad for him. So anyway. We’ve established he wasn’t really quite a creep. We’ll talk about my friend Monica and how I met her and how it wasn’t really when creeps on the internet were a big thing. So yeah. So what year did you say it was? 2014?
Geoff: I think you said 2014.
Georgie: So that might have been like seven years after we talked online and we first talked.
Geoff: Woah.
Georgie: Yeah it was not until seven years later. We knew that we lived in the same sort of area in Sydney. Um, we just never really thought about meeting up or anything. Because meeting up wasn’t really a thing. These days I think it’s a bit more common, like you have an internet friend, and you meet them…
Geoff: Is it? Is it really?
Georgie: I don’t know, maybe you just haven’t had that experience. Because I’ve had a few times, where I’ve met people online, and we have common interests, and when I’m in –
Geoff: I guess Twitter…
Georgie: Yeah. And when I’m in, in the hood, or they’re over here, um, yeah. So anyway, I get off the train, and because I know what Monica looks like. I recognise this girl, sitting on the bench as I get off the train and it looks like her. And I just keep walking, my ex and I walk up the stairs and we’re about to leave the station, and I send Monica a text message. And I said, hey I just saw someone at this station – I’m not disclosing the name of the station by the way, um
Geoff: Western Sydney.
Georgie: Somewhere in Western Sydney, it’s so big you can try and guess which station it was. Yeah I saw someone at the station sitting on the bench and she looked a lot like you. And then she literally texts me back in like, all uppercase, she goes, OH MY GOD, WHERE ARE YOU! And so I figured from that message, it must have been her, right? So I turned around and I run back, and we just, we just recognised each other immediately, and then we just hug and like, oh my god. She was telling me how she wasn’t really supposed to be at this station because she didn’t go there often but she was seeing a friend, just a one-off. So yeah, it was an exciting first moment meeting someone not-planned kind of thing. Yeah.
Geoff: That’s cute. You know every day I hope that I would accidentally bump into Nataile Tran from Community Channel. But I mean, eight years, it hasn’t happened. I feel like it’s a lost cause.
Georgie: Yeah, I do think about that as well, with other people in Sydney.
Geoff: They’re in hiding. Where are ya at!
Georgie: Where are you…! Sometimes I talk to Nick about, what would you do if you see this person on the street? I think we’ve had this conversation as well, I think you said that you’re not really the kind of person to walk up and say hi, or?
Geoff: Yeah, I don’t idolise anybody really. So anytime if I saw a celebrity or something like that, it’s probably… I wouldn’t do anything. Let them live their life.
Georgie: That’s, yeah. I don’t really want to idolise, but having been a concert photographer but also starting out being a fan of some of these bands, like I didn’t want to come across as weird, right? So I wanted to be able to have a conversation, and say, look, like your music, but yeah, not to go all fangirly, so to speak. It takes a bit of practice to maintain composure sometimes.
Geoff: Yeah, I guess your angle is to let them know that their artistry is appreciated, right.
Georgie: Yeah. Oh did I tell you about this person, who actually – she read my blog and she saw me at the station and I had no idea who she was. But my mum was dropping myself and Nick off at the station to go to work. And she goes, hey are you Georgie? And I’m like, mm yeah? She was probably about my age, a bit younger. She was like, oh yeah I read your blog. And she was like really shy, it was so nice though. She was like, I read your blog and I didn’t even know who she was. But I realised she was also following me on Twitter and I had seen that she followed me but she didn’t really interact with me. But yeah, it was just nice. And kind of like, my maybe – one of my first encounters with someone just in public who read my blog.
Geoff: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the closest thing I have to that is people randomly knowing who I am, or bringing me up with friends. I think you actually told me a story about how you met somebody who knew who I was?
Georgie: Yeah. They worked with you at a previous company. I was like oh do you know Geoff? And they were like yeah, and you didn’t really know him, I think.
Geoff: Yeah exactly. So a lot of people know who I am, but I may or may not know who they are. And I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing that my reputation somehow precedes me.
Georgie: Oh that‘s pretty funny.
Geoff: I mean I had that point in time where um, I think I called it Yesvember, where for the whole of November I said yes to a lot of things. I went to hackathons, like back-to-back weeks, with Phuong. Yeah, that was the time where I met a lot of people.
Georgie: Met a lot of people. Yeah.
Geoff: And I guess I was impressionable. So. Yeah. A few of them float around and any time someone mentions do you know this guy who worked at Domain. Yes, it’s Geoff!
Georgie: Yeah.
Geoff: I think, I’ve met people from online before. so back in the day I ran a few anime-related online communities. And some of them were from San Francisco. So when I went over for work, I met up with them briefly. So that was kind of interesting. I didn’t think it was weird.
Georgie: But you had a community established I guess.
Geoff: Yeah we’d been talking for like, years.
Georgie: It’s almost like you knew each other.
Geoff: Yeah.
Georgie: I can relate to that because that’s kind of what blogging was like. You had like, it wasn’t just flat out strangers. But you’d actually been interacting with these people for, quite some time.
Geoff: It was kind of strange because the whole idea behind the community was anonymity.
Georgie: Haha. OK.
Geoff: It’s like everybody, was so into the anonymity thing, in the chat room. So somehow, I think somebody suggested that we do Secret Santa. And I have no idea why a bunch of teenagers were so open to giving every – like a bunch of random people on the internet their address.
Georgie: Their address…
Geoff: I don’t think it lasted very long. I think we were maybe all anonymous for six months to a year, and then it just kind of all, all of it just came out of the bag. Because you know, the conversation progresses. And you just start talking about where you live…
Georgie: Yeah, you build up that trust. Because you have started by identifying common interests and I think you have trust in these people because you’ve already kind of made the connection?
Geoff: Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is coming from a guy who freelanced for someone online and and accepted a free trip to San Francisco. Fully expecting there was a 30 to 40 percent chance of being abducted.
Georgie: So in a nutshell. Stay safe kids.
Geoff: Stay safe kids.
Georgie: And stay frosty. But yeah, you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at @ToastRoastPod.
Geoff: And don’t forget to follow us on the big ones. The Apple Podcasts, the – what’s the other one, Spotify Podcasts. And the Big Apple.
Georgie: And The Big Grapefruit. And The Big Apple. But yeah that‘s a wrap, we will see you next time!
Geoff: See you next week, bye!
Georgie: Bye!