After a short few seasons greetings, we return to our same unscripted podcast talking about addicting mobile games, getting banned from online video games, online reselling horror stories, super ironic money art being sold as NFTs and physical pieces.
✍🏻 View the transcript for this episode
After a short few seasons greetings, we return to our same unscripted podcast talking about addicting mobile games, getting banned from online video games, online reselling horror stories, super ironic money art being sold as NFTs and physical pieces.
Social media
Toast & Roast:
Georgie:
Geoff:
Geoff 0:12
And welcome back to the new year new podcast, everybody. We have planned a topic today. Jokes. I’m your co-host, Geoff. We do that right?
Georgie 0:31
Yeah.
Geoff 0:32
And I’m here with my co-host Georgie. How’s it going, Georgie?
Georgie 0:36
Yeah, I’m not too bad. I think I’ve been better.
Geoff 0:40
Yeah. It’s, it was honestly like we skipped quite a few episodes.
Georgie 0:46
You mean, a few weeks.
Geoff 0:48
And—few weeks. Yeah. And admittedly is a little bit hard to get back into the recording. But yeah, actually, well, a lot of things have happened. Clearly, we have tons to talk about, that we did not prepare for. So how was, how did you start off your break?
Georgie 1:12
I guess it was Christmas, right? Because Christmas was on the weekend after I finished up work. And that weekend, it was Nick’s family had a roast dinner. It was, it’s called roast dinner. But we we went there for lunch. But you know, it’s like meat, potatoes, carrots, etc. And then during that week, so I had 10 days off. I also saw my family at some point during that weekend, we went to a buffet in this...
Geoff 1:47
Ooh, that’s a crazy thought.
Georgie 1:50
In this climate. And you know, we I am not throwing shade on my mum.
Geoff 1:56
But you’re kind of throwing shade on your mum.
Georgie 2:00
But, we were kind of wondering if she would be nervous about going to a buffet in this global climate. But anyway, everything was fine. And we are all very well. So anyway, my break was, I would say it was well deserved. Like, basically, by the time it was time to go back to work. I feel like I had done what I wanted to do at home, which was – actually no I didn’t – because I did not go back and add the missing transcripts to some of our episodes.
Geoff 2:34
Nobody knows, maybe.
Georgie 2:35
Yeah, but but I actually played that game, Wildfire Swap, which I think I might have mentioned before. And I ended up finishing.
Geoff 2:46
Oh yeah.
Georgie 2:46
Yeah, I ended up finishing the game. Except for two bonus levels. But basically, the thing says completion 100.00%. So I finished it. It was a fun game. And I would go back and play it. But it seems that Wordle is the hot new thing which I have not dared to touch – it – I don’t want to get – I know it was like a non commitment thing. Have you seen on Twitter? How everyone’s –
Geoff 3:13
Wordle? No, I haven’t seen that everyone’s gonna use this word or game. I mean, like I used to play Words with Friends. But I’m assuming this is nothing to say...
Georgie 3:24
No, it’s, it’s call –
Geoff 3:26
Guess the word all in six tries. “Each guess must be a valid five letter word, hit the enter button to submit, after each guess, the coloured tiles will change to show how close your guess was to the word”. So I’m assuming there is a word, the letter W is in this word. And in the correct spot, letter I is this word but the wrong spot, U... So there’s a word that they want you to rearrange letters to find.
Georgie 3:54
So I actually have not played this. But it took off on Twitter because there’s a way you can share your result. Yes. So there’s a social aspect to it. And this is I think this is how it became popular because people started tweeting, emoji green, black and white squares to show not the answer to the puzzle, but to show how quickly they got the answer. And then obviously, there was conversation about is this accessible? And then it’s like, what is this thing, it’s so mysterious? And you know, and now so many people are playing with it. And it originated because the creator wanted to I think he was inspired by like, well, he made it for his partner. So yeah, and didn’t expect it to become this big. But then there’s also a side of –
Geoff 4:52
Josh. Yeah?
Georgie 4:56
There’s also a side of things where people are saying, what, what it’s all like what is the what is the point of this? It’s I think it’s become popular because people have shared their, how they got the answer or how quickly they got the answer. It’s maybe entices a little bit of competition between people. But the nice thing is the creator Josh Josh Wardle, I think what? Yeah.
Geoff 5:24
Yeah.
Georgie 5:26
He made it like a non committal thing. Like, it’s, there’s one puzzle every day, I believe, if I read if I read about it correctly, and it only requires like, a couple of minutes for you to play. And I don’t think you have to come back every single day if you don’t want to. And that is in stark comparison to a lot of other games where you can just get sucked in. And you just open your phone and open some app, some game, and you’re playing it for hours. So I think that’s also part of the nice appeal.
Geoff 5:59
Yeah, most games, they’ll, come up with some kind of daily weekly chore that you have to like, achieve in the bug you to know and to to, like, finish it every day. used to play Genshin Impact? I don’t know if you heard of it.
Georgie 6:19
I’ve heard of it.
Geoff 6:22
Yeah, basically, it’s kind of like, if anyone’s seen Zelda Breath of the Wild, or even just Pokemon. It’s an open world, you kind of explore it with the characters that you have. They’re very, it’s very story driven, as well, there are many characters that you meet in the story. And the the goal of the game is kind of twofold. Actually, let’s roll back a little bit. It’s kind of a strange game to begin with, because it’s built for mobile, and it’s built for your consoles. So it’s strange, because those are two very different demographics and very, very different groups of people to build a game for. Your mobile gamers, they’re looking for short, sharp, good, like instant feedback, kind of game, where, and you only have maybe five minutes to play, or like a 20 minute drive or whatever. Not drive – public transport commute, or something along those lines, right. And usually, it’s kind of like these games Wordle, where it’s sort of like you figure a puzzle out and then you move on, or you get sucked in for hours just figuring out puzzles. But this one is more like ven—adventuring, fighting monsters, collecting things. So they have mixture of different as—different aspects, you have a lot of things to collect, you have a lot of things to level up. And you can only do so much of it in a single day. So if you want to continue, you have to essentially either pay money, or wait till the next day to continue collecting these things. And they have a massive long laundry list every you have your dailies, you got to go in like help someone fight something, picked up something, deliver something, and it’s just on and on. It’s endless. But the but the most interesting part is that it’s Gotcha. If anyone’s never heard of gacha, it’s basically a gambling slot machine. You put money in and you don’t know if you’re gonna win, but if you do win, it’s great.
Georgie 8:36
Wait.
Geoff 8:37
And how they—
Georgie 8:38
Is that—you mean real money, you pay real money?
Geoff 8:42
Yeah, real money, real money. So the enticing aspect of the game is that you meet all these great beautiful design anime characters, as people call it in the anime. Well—waifus—in order to get them in order to add them to your team and collect them you have to play the slot machine. You, you can play the game to collect the currency, in-game currency, to play the slot machine. But really, it’s a chance based, it’s percentage chances. So of course, if you have a lot of money, you increase your percentage chance of getting your favourite waifu. So it’s like a it’s it’s very strange. And people on YouTube videos like I spent a million dollars on Genshin Impact. So you didn’t have to. Like, kudos to the developers though. They put a lot of effort in, it’s a beautiful well designed, it’s a great game without the money. You can play it perfectly fine without the money. But the money aspect is always there. They’re always like, oh, you just can’t do this one thing today because you didn’t pay some money to renew your subscription or whatever. And it’s, yeah, it’s it’s got the community divided the like, it’s a good game. But there’s all this, like, mechanics, weird mechanics that are money based. And so Wordle seems like great. Like you said, it’s a far cry from all of those mobile games that want you to play endlessly and pay money to play endlessly or win. So I got out of it, because I just couldn’t be bothered with the chores anymore. I was like, what’s the point? Like, so what if my weapon gets to level 50? So what if my characters level’s 60, like it just doesn’t mean anything anymore. I think I like the aspect where they had lots of different towns that would that you could explore and, and like find new monsters to fight. The challenge just sort of fell off. And yeah, I got a bunch of friends into the game though. Like, I got two friends who still play further than me. And they say Geoff, you do this all the time. You sell us on a game, and then you
Georgie 11:09
Bail.
Geoff 11:12
You just bail. Yeah.
Georgie 11:14
I think that is like a there’s probably like a graph that illustrates this. But I think with a lot of games that I’ve played like that, where there’s like dailies and things like that, there’s a point we should just stop giving a shit. So I have two examples. So in my youth when I first got on the internet, I played Neopets, which I’m sure a lot of people have heard of.
Geoff 11:39
Yeah, Neopets.
Georgie 11:40
You have a virtual pet. There was a world there are some daily things like that. I’m gonna sound maybe pretty old because I don’t know if these things still exist, but that was like the giant omelette. You get omelette like every day. Unless unless the monster came and you didn’t get omelette I think. You got an omelette...
Geoff 11:58
Oh, wait, no I remember the omelette. Oh my god.
Georgie 12:01
Yeah. And then there was like a lucky thing called the tombola, Tiki tombola or something? And you should, you could get whatever, something, and then there was a shrine.
Geoff 12:13
Wasn’t there like a Wishing Tree or something? Well, wishing well?
Georgie 12:18
Maybe I that might have been after... I don’t remember that one. But there was a—
Geoff 12:22
Yeah, here we go. The Wishing Well. Yeah, get you can get neopoints out of the wishing well.
Georgie 12:28
Oh, yeah, that one. But that was like, it got so popular.
Geoff 12:30
You donate and what you wish for.
Georgie 12:32
I think it got really popular that it was pretty tough. So I have pretty I have four Neopets and then I think each of them had a pet pet. You know, I was very invested in this because I had never played games. Actually. No wait. I’m wrong. But I mean, as in, this was the first game—
Geoff 12:52
Haha we have a whole video game podcast.
Georgie 12:54
Yeah. We, I did play games before Neopets. But I guess this was like, this was new, right? It was super interactive. And because there was this notion of being able to get something every day without spending money. I was like, yeah, totally. I’m dedicated every day. I gotta get an omelette from the giant omelette.
Geoff 13:12
Exactly.
Georgie 13:13
And then I had this, they had a Neohome, you can make your own Neohome if you had enough money, man. And I just remember... And then there’s all the paint brush, anyway, doesn’t really matter. My point is one day. I don’t know what I did wrong. Or if, I mean I did something wrong, but I can’t remember what it was. But my account got blocked. Yeah, I had, I had two accounts. One of them was just like this on the side thing just to play some of the games. I maybe cheated by transferring money from the second account my primary account, basically my primary account with all of my pet—actually, the pets still exist. I think when your account gets blocked, they exist but they they start to starve and are in a dying state but they never actually die. If you don’t feed them.
Geoff 13:59
Yeah, I don’t think the pets die.
Georgie 14:01
Yeah. And I tried to get my second account up to the standard of my first one. And after—like not very much effort at all. I decided, You know what? I don’t give a shit. This is like a digital world. These pets are digital. I have spent a lot of time on this. It was fun. I can go in there and play games when I want. I can get the frickin free omelette. But I don’t care to have like this, this kind of status in this world of Neopets anymore. And it’s like, what’s the brag—the bragging rights I don’t really care anymore. And I think a lot of games do that these days where you have this special—where you pay, I paid money for this thing in this game because in-app purchases, and then you’re like, I don’t know, people admire that and you’re famous and shit and I just I don’t give a fuck.
Geoff 14:56
Yeah, yeah. I guess in the same time I was playing Neopets, also played this game called Habbo Hotel.
Georgie 15:04
Yeah.
Geoff 15:05
And this also shows a bit of my age. But that was a game where I held so much status it was, it was a little bit, you know, is a little bit pointless, of course, to have status on an online game. But it, it gave me a sense of pride because what I had done was actually not spent a single cent, but actually collected way more furniture, by the way, like the game is run on a trade system of furniture, you can put money in to get coins, and you can have a subscription that gets you exclusive furniture for the VIP club. As long as like every month, it’s an exclusive furniture. So you can kind of see that if you’re part of the club, you get to have this specific piece of furniture that you could sell to someone else for more. So it was one of those games where I... actually typically in most of these kinds of games, I don’t spend money, I, I work off trade. So I’ll get some furniture from a friend of mine that didn’t want any and then I’d trade it up and trade it up and continue with the trade up, the, kind of like Pokemon cards. So I had amassed a semi modest fortune just by not paying money. And I thought that was like, pretty awesome. And I knew all the big names in the hotel. And I actually learned how to code from one of the people I met in the game. So it’s it was it was a pretty cool time on the internet, where not everyone was out to outright scam you or like steal your identity, or yeah, or any of that kind of stuff. So that was that was pretty cool. And then of course I was, I got bored of it. Oh, my account got fro—not frozen, suspended. So in the game, there are certain shortcuts in the game. One of the shortcuts was to automatically send whatever you’ve typed in the chat input as a bubble into into the chat room.
Georgie 17:27
Yeah.
Geoff 17:29
And there was this phishing scam on at the time, where people will say, Oh, type your password into the chat box. And, and then hit this special command. And you will, you’ll earn a lot of credits, you will earn a lot of coins.
Georgie 17:45
Oh no.
Geoff 17:46
So we’re doing this to other other people who didn’t know better. And I was sitting in my room, innocent, you know, with my, with my friends. And I said, “lol this phishing scam is so lame, why is everybody falling for it?” And the mod saw that I was talking about it. And they banned me for life.
Georgie 18:15
I mean, what I mean, like, I don’t know, like, I don’t think you did. I mean, I get it. But—
Geoff 18:26
It wasn’t that bad. I wasn’t asking somebody...
Georgie 18:29
Yeah.
Geoff 18:30
...to to it. Their reasoning. Their reasoning was that what if someone who wasn’t my friend walked in through that door and did the scam? Like what if? I mean, you got other people literally talking to us, like asking other people to do it. And here I am criticising it. Just got banned for life.
Georgie 18:55
Yeah, you weren’t encouraging it. You were just having a laugh. Maybe, maybe they just felt like some kind of empathy. You know, like if you know, someone had fallen for that and, or their friend did and they saw your message and were offended. It’s fine. It’s just a game, Geoff. Just a game.
Geoff 19:16
Yeah. In any case, um, a lot of my friends submitted er, appeals for me. And I was like, Okay, guys, you got to stop sending appeals. They probably will start getting aggressive.
Georgie 19:33
Yeah.
Geoff 19:34
To shut you up. But yeah, I think did it end? I think it was a like a seven year ban. And it ended in 2017 or something.
Georgie 19:48
Oh, really? So it wasn’t forever.
Geoff 19:49
I hadn’t, sh—yeah, like lifelong ban was like seven nine years. So it was a long time. Every time I checked back, oh, my God, it’s still got a long time to go.
Georgie 20:00
It’s a long time for the internet.
Geoff 20:03
Yeah, because it was like a daily thing. I’d check, I’d like, login, hang out with my friends. And so I, I lost, I lost basically that, but I basically started a second account and then I left my—my room was unlocked, so I could just like hang out in the same room. Oh, of course no one came back. Because—
Georgie 20:25
They didn’t know your new account?
Geoff 20:28
No, the thing, the thing is about the game is that it’s really anything you want to make it. You just have a room, and you just have furniture. So a lot of people created services, we’re talking hospitals, armies, shops, casinos, stuff like that. That’s predominantly how people made their fortune. If you ran a casino, you obviously make a fortune because people actually given you furniture or money. And then you’re rolling the dice. And if they guessed the right number that comes up after the dice, they get double the double back. What are the chances of a one in six, one in six chances of you getting the right number.
Georgie 21:12
It’s pretty good.
Geoff 21:13
So, um, so I was the owner of a service based establishment. And so when the owner gets banned, I can no longer operate it. And therefore, oh, kills, kills the game, really. And I wasn’t bothered amassing my fortune again. So it’s like, okay, nevermind. Yeah. See you later. Left the game.
Georgie 21:40
Yeah, this conversation is...
Geoff 21:42
But yes.
Georgie 21:43
Dangerously...
Geoff 21:44
On a completely different topic.
Georgie 21:46
...drifting into, no but this is drifting into a territory that I don’t want to go into. But.
Geoff 21:57
What would that be, that territory that you don’t want to go to?
Georgie 22:00
Well we’re talking about digital stuff, and paying money for stuff that’s not tangible?
Geoff 22:11
Ohhh. NFTs.
Georgie 22:15
I won’t talk about that. I won’t talk about that. But I will talk about an artist who did a pretty cool exhibition of art related to this, parodying this. Her name is she’s she’s she goes by Red Hongyi. I don’t know if pronounced that correctly, but, R-E-D H-O-N-G-Y-I. She’s known for having done artworks with, with like food, really amazing artworks. And she did this exhibition called Memebank. And she had created these artworks that looked like giant banknotes from different countries, such as the US. Singapore, Malaysia. Yes. So she made these artworks that were basically giant bills, like money bills, representing currencies from the United States, Malaysia, Singapore. I can’t remember the other ones. I’ll have to look it up. But...
Geoff 23:33
“We are not your average bank.”
Georgie 23:36
Yes. So there were these giant notes, but they borrow—
Geoff 23:40
Well every neo bank these days is a meme bank.
Georgie 23:43
Yeah, but the thing is, this is a work of art. This is like an exhibition. So she made these giant bills. And they, each of them were inspired by like memes, or like things that kind of poked fun at this, like crypto NFT, whatever, this, this whole thing. And then she I think she did an auction for the artworks. And with it, and the thing is like she did the auction, like with NFTs.
Geoff 24:18
Yeah. So it’s super ironic, satire.
Georgie 24:21
Then you actually got the artwork, but you also get like the copper plate. So you can actually reprint the money if you wanted to. So it was a really, I thought was really funny.
Geoff 24:31
That’s so good.
Georgie 24:33
It’s good commentary on such things.
Geoff 24:36
That’s an experience. Yeah, we won’t get into the hardships of the art economy. People who buy art, because just because they think it’s cool to spend a million dollars on a piece of art. Regardless of what the piece of art is, I’m sure you can see a lot of like, you know, when YouTubers they do grand house tours or whatever, and they say this look at my piece of art that I spent a billion dollars on, just so that they can say that spent a billion dollars on it. But yeah, the, switching topics completely, as I was gonna say, I spent the last week, I guess I was on break for, yeah, two weeks as well. Two weeks, and maybe the last for the last two weeks, I’ve been trying to sell a bunch of stuff on on Gumtree and Facebook. And my god, I tell you, the people out there, I don’t understand them. Like, you see something online, you go, hey, I want that thing. That person has the thing. And so you reach out and you say, Can I have the thing? And then the other person says, yes. What do you what’s the next logical step? Everybody? What’s that next logical step? Is it A) Is it A) Cool, uh, how much, how much can I get down for or like, when can we meet, price is good. Solid, you know? Or B) ghost. I’ll leave that up to you.
Georgie 26:29
Well, well, if you’re on Carousell, which I no longer use, because most people would pick B. Or they’d be like, they’d pick B. And then they do C. Which is like, ah, yes, sorry, I don’t want this anymore. And it’s like come on, you just wasted my time.
Geoff 26:47
And it just doesn’t make sense.
Georgie 26:48
Too many of those people.
Geoff 26:49
The thing is, I had a very wide range of responses, right, everything from B through to F, maybe even Z. So I’ll regale a couple of the standout ones that I can remember.
Georgie 27:04
Should I get the popcorn.
Geoff 27:05
Yeah, maybe I’ll try with a little bit of a less extreme one first. Person, person says, I want to buy the thing, finds out I’m too far away. And I say well, I can drive and meet you in the middle. And they say, okay. And the next logical step is to arrange a time, but nothing happened. It literally, they just ghosted, and then I’m like, question mark? And they’re like, oh, I have a friend. He’s kind of coming back from Melbourne. On next Monday. Yeah.
Georgie 27:42
Wait, before you continue. This is no way to start a sentence. “I have a friend”.
Geoff 27:52
Yeah. So...
Georgie 27:55
Dodgy.
Geoff 27:56
I’m like, okay.
Georgie 27:56
I’m like yeah, this is dodgy.
Geoff 27:58
Yeah, totally. Like, okay. Um, sure. Your friend in my area. I’ll probably just said it, Burwood. I could meet them. That’s fine. Uh, day comes around, and they say, oh, sorry, my friend’s stuck in Melbourne. I’m like, of course, they’re stuck in Melbourne. Or rather, they’re just not back yet. Next two days. I’m like, okay. And they say, you know what? Let’s do Thursday. And I’m like, if and they said, if it’s not if it’s not sold by Thursday, let me know. I let them know, on Thursday, that it wasn’t sold. They said they’re busy. Now. I don’t, I don’t know what’s wrong. You said that you want to buy something and you don’t just don’t keep it open, a couple hours open that day to come and pick it up. Anyways, so that’s not even the worst one. The worst one is this person. They said that they are coming down that they’re they’re prepared to pay the price for the, for the item and they’re like, okay, I’ll come pick it up from Burwood. I’m like, that sounds great. I’ll see you on X day, around X time. And then they then later revealed that they’re coming down from Newcastle and they got stuck in traffic. Now, I had been sitting in the location at time for half an hour to 40 minutes already. I was quite, I was quite keen to sell this thing. And they said, oh, I’m stuck in traffic. Are you home all day? I’m like, Yeah, sure. We’ll be there. Maybe in a couple, like in an hour. And then they reveal that they’re like, oh, so can you meet me in like Wentworthville. And I’m like—
Wait, wait, hang on. Wait, wait, wait. Are you serious? That’s, that’s that’s like around my hood where I grew up. Yeah. And that’s far.
That’s like an hour off drive. An hour, probably more like 30 to 40 minute drive. I’m like, no, that’s my limit is about 15, 20 minute radius. Want me to drive 40 minutes away? I’m like, No. And they said, it’s just because I’m going to Wentworthville, I need to drop something off. And then I’m going straight to Blacktown which is the opposite direction. Like, right?
Georgie 30:21
Yeah, that’s even further out west.
Geoff 30:23
I’ll meet you halfway. There’s a Harvey Norman halfway. I’ll meet you there. I was standing in Harvey Norman, for one and a half hours. Was that one and a half hours? Just probably keeping
Georgie 30:39
Dude I would have just given up at this point.
Geoff 30:42
Probably. I was like, debating right? Was it shorter for me to go to Wentworthville and give it to them? Or is it by principle, I want to be here? Want to stay here. But what really annoyed me to be fair, I was okay. If they told me what was happening, if—because, you know, this could be infinite. If someone just said, I’ll meet you X place X time and then they’re half an hour, 40 minutes late, but I never knew if they’re going to come at all. So I’m there for 30, 40 minutes. One and a half is probably an over est—over exaggeration, but 30, 40 minutes, and they messaged me, they’re like, Oh, our car’s broken. Our car broke down in Wentworthville.
Georgie 31:27
What wait...
Geoff 31:28
Like, so you waited 30 to 40 minutes to tell me that your car’s broken down. We’re trying to get a ride. We’ll meet you there, in... We’ll meet, we’ll meet you there when we get a ride. Ten, fifteen minutes passed. I’m like, Have you got a ride yet? No response. This person literally takes like 15, 20, 25 minutes to respond to any message. So I’ve been there, again, for probably a total of an hour. And they are the most unresponsive people. I’m like, look, I’m happy to wait around for an hour. As long as I know you are coming. Like, “hey, I’ll meet you there” and then never never show up. I don’t know what you’re doing. So, yeah, so I’m like hanging around. Sidebar. There’s way too many people at Harvey Norman.
Georgie 32:27
Hey, which which Harvey Norman?
Geoff 32:28
It’s the, it’s the Auburn, like massive like store. They have three—they have three Harvey Normans in the area. I don’t get it.
Georgie 32:38
Let me guess it’s like Auburn, Lidcombe, Strathfield. Harvey Norman in every single...
Geoff 32:42
All in Auburn. It’s like li...I think it’s the Auburn Harvey Norman Mega Store. What a... Harvey Norman Mega Store. The thing is Harvey Norman—
Georgie 32:51
Oh like one of the super things.
Geoff 32:53
Flagship store. So I mean, let’s be real everybody. Harvey Norman’s prices aren’t great. I still don’t know why everybody’s there buying things. Um, so I’m like, if you don’t respond in the next five minutes, I’m just I’m gonna leave and you can come pick it up in Burwood, at your leisure, if you—if at all. And they said, Yeah, cheers. Maybe we’ll come, well, maybe we’ll come to Burwood later today. It’s 5pm. How much later are you going to arrive? So we joke, we joked at night, I was just like, talking to Dorinda saying, man, it’s like 10pm. You think they’re gonna rock up, and pick up this this camera. Like, Jesus. So I gave them two hours of my life essentially. To try sell this thing. The cherry on the top, I must tell you is—
Georgie 33:54
Oh no.
Geoff 33:55
The next day. They said wow, what a terrible timing like mess that was yesterday. I’m not your friend. Don’t commiserate with me.
Georgie 34:12
Oh my god.
Geoff 34:14
Like, if we’re in the area, like I’m back, back in Sydney on the 16th of Jan. I like—I’m not gonna keep hanging around until the 16th of Jan. Mind you, this was like last week. So it is tomorrow or something like that.
Georgie 34:35
You know, you know what’s funny is like, I completely empathise with you. But at the same time, like sometimes I want to give the other person like the benefit of the doubt, like maybe something did go wrong.
Geoff 34:46
Yeah.
Georgie 34:47
Right. But, but they could have communicated with you. Like, look, I need to go to Blacktown to meet up with my boys in the hood. Okay. Can we meet, can we meet somewhere on my, on my route? You know, like—
Geoff 35:04
Yeah, this trickle.
Georgie 35:04
And then like to communicate about the car breaking down? Like, I don’t know, I think they lacked the empathy to be like, we’re really sorry. Like, this is so unexpected that, you know, like, the car broke down, not come back to you the next day and be like, oh, poor me. And I’m so sorry by the way that’s just like, you know, hand flick action, kind of.
Geoff 35:27
Yeah.
Georgie 35:28
Not very, not very respectful of your time.
Geoff 35:31
And that’s the only thing I’m really peeved about is is the is the disrespect of my time.
Georgie 35:38
Communication was poor.
Geoff 35:39
Yeah.
Georgie 35:40
Yeah.
Geoff 35:41
I understand your car broke down. And you’re trying to find a ride. But because you’re in stationary position, you can give me a little more update. You know, every five minutes like, yep, couldn’t find a ride. I’m sorry. See you later. Right? This is like classic on the hook, dragging me through the, like, mud. Kind of.
Georgie 36:06
Dragging you through all of like, inner west, western Sydney.
Geoff 36:09
Oh, god. Yeah. So I took a very good look around Harvey Norman flagship store, though. It is pretty impressive.
Georgie 36:17
Yeah? No...
Geoff 36:19
They’ve got everything from gaming computers to like, flooring. I like Yeah. Okay, maybe, if you really wanted everything in one place, that’s the place to go. I ended up selling the thing prior to the, to that person coming back to me. I think they even even like maybe a few days ago, they said something along the lines of, oh, I’m I’m in town again. Do you reckon you could sell it to me or whatever? And I said, sure. And then and then they ghost me. And I was like, I don’t understand. Do you want this? Do you not want this? This is a very, it’s a very confusing predicament.
Georgie 37:06
You know, like, when I think about, like, if I was in that person’s place, I wanted to buy something off somebody in this kind of way, like, you know, not like on eBay. But like, with some face to face contact. I would try to provide as much information upfront as possible. Like, look, I’m interested in this thing, and so and so, or, you know, like, I would try to open up the every part of the conversation. Like, I want this thing. If you can, can you post it to me like if and if that’s not an option. It’s like, I live in this area. I can meet up here. And I’m usually free on these days. And then like, then the person can just answer the questions. And we can like, quickly set up a meeting. None of this like dragging through the mud shit.
Geoff 37:49
Yeah, I did have a really good experience with one person. They said, I want to, I want to buy the thing. Can you do it for this price? I said yes. And I gave them two options. I’m sorry, oh, I can meet you midway between where you are, or you or you can come to Burwood, I don’t care. And they said no worries, whichever is easiest for you. And I was like, okay, Burwood. So they linked me a Waze map, location, trip tracker. Literally watching them drive to me. And I was like, whoa, this is great. But.
Georgie 38:27
That’s, oh, that reminds me. You know, I said, we saw my parents. And we, we went to a buffet. My brother was running a little bit late, his driving with his girlfriend. And he sent in a group chat, in like an iMessage group chat, to myself and my mother and my dad, like the ETA thing. Like, you just, there’s a way you can do it on the iPhone. He just sent them where, where you are. And like the ETA. My mum had never seen this before. She was obsessively looking at his location. She’s like, it hasn’t updated, he hasn’t moved it. And she was like, “the ETA hasn’t moved at all. It still says 6:02. I told him to get here before six”. And I’m like, just chill. And then she put her phone away. Like 30 seconds later, she wanted to have another look. She’s like this...
Geoff 39:17
It is so novel, it is.
Georgie 39:20
Trying to tell her it doesn’t update. It’s not completely real time. It will update in a minute. But it was it was funny to watch. To watch her reaction.
Geoff 39:30
Yeah, yeah. I guess I think another weird thing I came across whilst trying to sell my stuff is that people wanted to pay through PayPal, which is kind of okay, but there’s fees involved. There were a couple people who wanted me to ship things. And I decided to use—I don’t know if you know the feature paypal.me?
Georgie 39:54
Yeah I know it.
Geoff 39:55
Yep, so I was like, I’m done giving people my add—my email address. Because they’re like, we, I send it through, like your PayPal email. And I said nah, use this link. People refused. I was like, why?
Georgie 40:09
Why?
Geoff 40:10
One person said it didn’t outright didn’t work for them. And I said, Okay, payID, Beem it. I don’t, I don’t care. Like he can send me straight cash. But they insisted, PayPal email only. I understand that PayPal does some coverage if you if you don’t get the item or whatever. But they said, okay. And then they didn’t send the money. And I was like uh, I guess they don’t want it. Like, why? Why do, why do these people exist? I’ve also had somebody say, right, cool. You know what? I’ll give you your asking price. I’m like, sweet. I’ll send you the money right now. You you mail it immediately. And I said, show me the sent receipt. Yeah, exactly. Just immediately like you what you think I’m Amazon Prime Now. Prime?
Georgie 41:07
You think I’m gonna start—
Geoff 41:07
Prime before?
Georgie 41:12
You think I’m gonna stop taking this shit to mail this thing to you?
Geoff 41:14
Yeah, exactly.
Georgie 41:16
Let me have my bowel movement.
Geoff 41:20
So I’m like, dude, and they like they even made it even sweeter. They were like, I’ll pay you more so that you ship it to me. I’m like, okay, okay, buddy.
Georgie 41:30
Yeah, no shit, it costs money.
Geoff 41:33
So I said, send me—show me the send receipt for the transaction. And I’ll mail it today. And they’re like, they didn’t send it to me. But they kept trying to push me to mail it. I’m like, Look, I’m not sending it until you give me the send receipt. And they would—
Georgie 41:49
This reeks of Nigerian scams.
Geoff 41:50
Yeah, it was... They did that three times before they shut up. I’m like, I’m not sending you shit, until I see money in my account. So that that is basically the short and long of my horrific... this is I tried to sell everything at the same time, so I didn’t have to deal with this shit ever again.
Georgie 42:12
Yeah, feels.
Geoff 42:13
Yeah. So that was basically majority of my last two weeks. Just meeting people selling things. Not meeting them. I mailed the camera in the end to somebody who sent a bank transfer to me. I’m like, woah, you bank transferred me.
Georgie 42:32
Yeah.
Geoff 42:32
Okay. You’re lucky I’m not a Nigerian scam. Sucker, I still got the camera. Nah jokes. I sent it to them. So yeah, that’s that’s pretty much. I mean, I bought an Apple TV. Which is pretty awesome.
Georgie 42:51
Oh, yeah? Yeah, we had to replace ours.
Geoff 42:55
Oh what happened?
Georgie 42:57
Just carked it. I don’t know, we had ours since 2017. And I think it just wasn’t starting up again.
Geoff 43:04
Did you have yours inside the media console behind the door or something like that? Or did you have it on top of the table?
Georgie 43:10
No. Just just straight up on top of the, the television unit, like next to it. Why, is it bad to like store it in...
Geoff 43:18
No, I mean, I store all my stuff in in, in a media unit. It’s like a balmy, like, 40 degrees in there all the time. That that... probably not 40. That’s over exaggerating. But I’m always worried that like my server, my Apple TV my like, like smart home hub, will just like, cark it, because it’s just so hot in there. I thought about putting a little USB powered fan in there.
Georgie 43:44
A little fan?
Geoff 43:47
Why don’t media units come with fans? Like seems...
Georgie 43:52
Cuz... I think because people traditionally didn’t put media stuff like tech in there. They used to put like—
Geoff 44:00
VCRs.
Georgie 44:01
Decorative. Camcorder.
Geoff 44:07
My LCD player.
Georgie 44:11
Wait, what’s an LCD player?
Geoff 44:13
Oh, sorry. Not an LCD player. Sorry. LaserDisc player. It’s a laser, laser disc.
Georgie 44:19
Oh. Is that the one that has like a, what is it called? There’s one that’s like a VCD. It’s not like—
Geoff 44:28
Oh, yeah.
Georgie 44:29
It’s got video and audio but not a DVD.
Geoff 44:30
That was before. That was between I think it was between the tape... Yeah, Video CD. Wait. VCD Yeah, compact disc. I think that’s... Oh, yeah. Laser disc was the awkward middle person. So—they had tapes. And then they made the LaserDisc was huge. And then they made the VCDs, which are the small ones. And I was like, What am I doing with this big ass laser disc? Now that you’ve come out with the compact version? In the literally couple of years after that. 1993 versus LaserDisc.
Georgie 45:07
You know, you know what really amuses me about the development, history of like CDs, DVDs is like when you used to have floppy disks, and you’d put, you’d store files on that. And then you wanted to put something on a CD, but it wasn’t rewritable. So you just put it on the CD, and like that, that was it. And then I just remember coming across like rewritable, CDs, and going like, oh, my god, yeah, I could put some songs on this, give it to my friend and give it back. And like we can trade shit. And this is like before USBs, or when USBs were like super expensive.
Geoff 45:43
Yeah.
Georgie 45:44
And then I remember this one time, I think I might have accidentally put something on a non rewritable. And I was just annoyed, because that’s not what I wanted.
Geoff 45:54
Yeah, when when writable CDs came out, it was it was next level, just I sat that burning burning disks with very, very legal content. And, and you started with those ones. I think we got music, made our own music tapes and stuff like that for the car.
Georgie 46:18
Mixtape!
Geoff 46:20
And then, and then DVD writers came out and oh, boy. That... that was a good time, where you could make a backup of all your documents. The legal legal documents.
Georgie 46:34
And it would fit. It would fit on the desk, and it’s like eight gigs. It was like the amount you could put on it as well.
Geoff 46:41
And then...
Georgie 46:41
It was like, instead of just measly 500 megabytes, you had like a whole like, you had a gigabyte.
Geoff 46:49
Yeah. And then there came double sided DVDs.
Georgie 46:57
Wait, do I even remember these?
Geoff 46:59
You can record on both sides. You can burn on both sides of the TV—of the disk. Which is great.
Georgie 47:05
Oh my God, I don’t even know if I ever experienced this...
Geoff 47:08
Yeah, I mean, then you could start printing on top of the discs and you’re just like, okay, alright, slow down. Don’t need any artwork on my discs. Okay.
Georgie 47:20
You know, before you could do that, I was like literally drawing on pieces of round paper and sticking them on the discs.
Geoff 47:28
Yeah, just take a marker to it.
Georgie 47:30
Yeah, I put a lot of effort. Yeah, I put a lot of effort into my like, mixtapes because I want—and I, I found them, an empty jewel case, or I just got rid of something else. And then like, make my own album art and things like that.
Geoff 47:42
That’s pretty cool. That’s pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, that’s showing our age with with disc, disc technology. Playing the Discman. But yeah. Speak, speaking of things going out of style, this episode of the podcast. So yeah, thanks, thanks for listening. You can follow, you can follow us on @toastroastpod, Twitter, Instagram, mostly Twitter.
Georgie 48:17
Yes, yes, that’s correct.
Geoff 48:19
That’s the correct, yeah.
Georgie 48:20
You can listen to us on all the big things. The Apple, the Spotify. The, there’s some other ones in there. But also the extremely failing audio you’ve had to deal with, which you probably will have no idea about. Because Geoff is going to edit this like a champ.
Geoff 48:38
Technical difficulties. Yeah. But yeah, hope everybody had a good New Year’s holiday despite conditions, and we’ll see you all next week.
Georgie 48:54
New episodes every Monday. Bye.
Geoff 48:56
Oh, yeah, new—next Monday. Bye.