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Monday Mini: Listener Mail · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephan
0:07
Speaker 1: never told your production of iHeart Radio, and today we
0:19
Speaker 1: have a listener of Maile episode for you. Some really
0:22
Speaker 1: fantastic ones that were excited to share. As always, thank you,
0:26
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you so much for taking the time
0:29
Speaker 1: to send these things, because we love them and we
0:32
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Yes we do. And we're gonna start
0:35
Speaker 1: off with Jennifer because I feel like she hears my
0:38
Speaker 1: heart with this email. I really do. She wrote in
0:41
Speaker 1: your episode about story game apps, you explored the ginger options.
0:44
Speaker 1: I think as usual, great episode of points. Thank you
0:47
Speaker 1: very much. My experience with a certain type of those
0:49
Speaker 1: games is maybe tangentital, but it left the lasting impression.
0:53
Speaker 1: L O L. I thought i'd share. I never did
0:55
Speaker 1: download any of these, but I remember the advertising blizz
0:58
Speaker 1: for for sure. I was playing a lot of word Blitz,
1:00
Speaker 1: a Boggle style game and about the only game on
1:03
Speaker 1: Facebook I played years ago. I was addicted to Candy
1:05
Speaker 1: Crush and the one where you own a zoo and
1:07
Speaker 1: collect animals. I don't remember this one, she continues on.
1:11
Speaker 1: I play Animal Crossing too currently. Maybe it's a kid's game.
1:15
Speaker 1: I don't know it's cute. It's not a kid's game.
1:17
Speaker 1: It's not a kid's game. It's still that little quick
1:19
Speaker 1: and she says, I like it. I'm forty four, right
1:21
Speaker 1: here with you, right here with you, Jennifer. So she continues,
1:24
Speaker 1: it was probably two, though the year is kind of fuzzy,
1:27
Speaker 1: and every ad that came up was one of those
1:29
Speaker 1: choose your own adventure style things with a woman and
1:32
Speaker 1: a ridiculous, somewhat misogynist a crisis over the one where
1:35
Speaker 1: there's a guy and his wife and he wants to
1:37
Speaker 1: cross the river, or there's pipe filling up with water
1:39
Speaker 1: and you have to close the valves to make water
1:41
Speaker 1: flow instead of green gunk, or the kitchen one where
1:44
Speaker 1: stuff is breaking and you have three options like wrench, fire, extinguisher,
1:47
Speaker 1: water hose, choosing the wrong order maybe burns everything down.
1:50
Speaker 1: And in the ads they never take you through the
1:53
Speaker 1: best path. Of course, I get it. Yeah, that's just
1:55
Speaker 1: part of the reason it gives me. Is it that hard?
1:57
Speaker 1: Isn't this hard new? Even I get the impulse to
2:02
Speaker 1: just download it already to do the better outcome and
2:04
Speaker 1: help those pitiful characters. It's kind of frustrating to watch
2:08
Speaker 1: and some more misogynistics, but I'm definitely not here to
2:11
Speaker 1: judge anyone who enjoys them liking and enjoying things. It's
2:14
Speaker 1: complicated and we like what we like. Agreed. Also, no
2:18
Speaker 1: hate for the story games. I love to choose your
2:20
Speaker 1: own adventure books as a kid in the similar Commodore
2:23
Speaker 1: Succeed board game a pirate adventure where the product was
2:26
Speaker 1: always what do you want to do now? And you say,
2:28
Speaker 1: go window or pick up bottle and you'd go on
2:31
Speaker 1: a wild adventure hunting for treasure, which was sort of
2:34
Speaker 1: along these lines. Yes, the genre. I wanted to ask
2:37
Speaker 1: if you've seen or was in fact that what you're
2:39
Speaker 1: talking about was the ones where the rather generic names.
2:41
Speaker 1: I've been having trouble googling, and I haven't seen this
2:44
Speaker 1: as in a while. Uh, like I just imagined it.
2:47
Speaker 1: They're usually called choose your story, or makeover or story
2:50
Speaker 1: just sort of not very descriptive words that don't bring
2:52
Speaker 1: up the images so I can ask us about it.
2:55
Speaker 1: You may have mentioned one of them, but yours for
2:57
Speaker 1: sure sounded different or better than ones I've seen. Advertise,
3:00
Speaker 1: I did find a few with similar graphics to what
3:02
Speaker 1: I remember, and attached screenshots is always the woman in
3:06
Speaker 1: some distress because she by her facial expression, I thinks
3:09
Speaker 1: she looks ugly and needs to fix it to please
3:11
Speaker 1: a man, or to go somewhere. Fancy the sequences they
3:14
Speaker 1: take you through while interrupting my word game, we're always horrendous.
3:18
Speaker 1: I'm willing to concede that they might not all be
3:20
Speaker 1: like this, that it's just advertising tactics. She got harry
3:23
Speaker 1: legs and armpits. There's a big green cloud around her.
3:27
Speaker 1: I guess to say she stinks. She's wearing tattered clothing,
3:30
Speaker 1: her hairs are right, et cetera. It tells you your
3:33
Speaker 1: boyfriend is coming. You have to be ready. You're giving
3:36
Speaker 1: three options, like a razor, soap, and something else. The
3:38
Speaker 1: simulation chooses razor, and it shaves a reverse mohawk down
3:41
Speaker 1: the middle of her head, and she cries. So the
3:43
Speaker 1: slick suited up guy pulls up in the sports car,
3:45
Speaker 1: looks disgusted at her, and drives away, leaving her in tears.
3:49
Speaker 1: Then you were invited to download L O L. I
3:51
Speaker 1: get that marketing employe, you can do better for her
3:54
Speaker 1: is tempting, but the barrage of similar games marketed at
3:57
Speaker 1: a time, we were inside a lot and I was
3:58
Speaker 1: asking myself a lot of things, For instance, who am
4:01
Speaker 1: I shaving my legs for me? Or the patriarchy just
4:04
Speaker 1: left a bad taste in my mouth at the time,
4:06
Speaker 1: I think I see so few references to it that
4:09
Speaker 1: a reference to these games on Twitter recently really caught
4:11
Speaker 1: my eye. Maybe there's an article in the thread too,
4:15
Speaker 1: but I feel like there should have been more chatter
4:16
Speaker 1: about the possible misogyny. I don't know. Maybe no one
4:20
Speaker 1: else was hitting the word blitz games as much as
4:23
Speaker 1: I was during the pandemic. I don't know. Only my
4:25
Speaker 1: husband among people I know, understood the reference. But now
4:28
Speaker 1: because of that Twitter screenshot of the game where the
4:30
Speaker 1: options for the woman are fixed a window or get
4:32
Speaker 1: more bald, my husband, I just yelled more bald when
4:36
Speaker 1: all the chances to something we have to decide all
4:38
Speaker 1: suck equally badly. Yes, So, yes, I know exactly what
4:42
Speaker 1: you're talking about, Jennifer, because I did get this makeover
4:46
Speaker 1: game and I deleted it because it was obnoxious. But
4:48
Speaker 1: it's like Match three games, and then after you build
4:51
Speaker 1: up enough stars or points or whatever whatnot, you can
4:54
Speaker 1: do a makeover. The one you're talking about has changed
4:57
Speaker 1: their recent tactics because before when I downloaded it, it
5:02
Speaker 1: was literally like, we need to fix up this shop.
5:04
Speaker 1: She needs to sell to the customers. Let's get her ready.
5:07
Speaker 1: And I was like, what is this And it was
5:08
Speaker 1: always the I'm burning down the kitchen and I was like, no,
5:12
Speaker 1: it can't be that hard. They got me, they got me,
5:15
Speaker 1: But these have gotten worse where they are. Yes, they're
5:18
Speaker 1: always thinking. You always choose the wrong outfits, and it's
5:21
Speaker 1: always because the husband left you for another woman who
5:25
Speaker 1: is so much hotter, and he literally pushes you aside.
5:29
Speaker 1: It is awful. There's another game, but I haven't seen
5:32
Speaker 1: I haven't played it, but like it's similar to this
5:34
Speaker 1: where apparently, in order for this dude to get his fortune,
5:38
Speaker 1: he has this very ugly girl quote unquote, and it's
5:41
Speaker 1: literally she has facial hair and stinks and so you
5:46
Speaker 1: can't fix that. There's no way to fix that. And
5:47
Speaker 1: by the way, why do we need to fix that
5:49
Speaker 1: for any of this? And what is the scenario in general?
5:51
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, you're so ugly, I have had
5:53
Speaker 1: to leave you. He actually says that in the ad,
5:55
Speaker 1: there's a lot and yes, as in fact, the Lily's
5:58
Speaker 1: Garden that told you about that I love for a minute,
6:01
Speaker 1: and I think Jennifer might understand they use that tactic
6:03
Speaker 1: for a second, and I was like, wait, what where
6:05
Speaker 1: the main character who is with this dude leaves her
6:09
Speaker 1: for her uh, for the neighbor, which is not a
6:11
Speaker 1: scenario in the game whatsoever. It never comes out. That's
6:15
Speaker 1: never been a thing. So these Yeah, we definitely had
6:18
Speaker 1: talked about Jennifer previously, how these as are doing something
6:22
Speaker 1: new by doing literally a click baity story plot that
6:26
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the game, and this is
6:29
Speaker 1: similar to that. Yeah, I mean that's I would love
6:32
Speaker 1: to come back and talk about this more in depth,
6:35
Speaker 1: because when I was reading this message, I would be like,
6:38
Speaker 1: what she stinks and she has to shave her legs
6:43
Speaker 1: and this is the game was It is so bad
6:46
Speaker 1: because one of them is like, if you shave, if
6:48
Speaker 1: you pick the wrong thing to shave her with, yeas
6:51
Speaker 1: you shave your head. And I'm like what And I'm
6:54
Speaker 1: going to say it's a little racist. I'm putting that
6:56
Speaker 1: out there because a lot of the times the women
6:58
Speaker 1: have long dreaded hair. But it's you know what I mean.
7:01
Speaker 1: Like it's supposed to be dirty quote unquote, and I'm
7:03
Speaker 1: like this still some white nonsense. This feels like some
7:07
Speaker 1: white nonsense right here. Well, thanks for bringing this. I
7:12
Speaker 1: I never Thismantha clearly has with you and I need
7:15
Speaker 1: to talk. I think you guys are on the same
7:18
Speaker 1: waveleng but I would love to come back and talk
7:21
Speaker 1: about this. That's interesting. Um Kate wrote a few years back.
7:25
Speaker 1: I heard the advice of saying I'm fine versus it's fine,
7:28
Speaker 1: as by saying it's fine, you're dismissing the trauma as
7:31
Speaker 1: not important. Uh and okay. The change of language, too,
7:35
Speaker 1: I'm fine, shifts the narrative to you being okay without
7:37
Speaker 1: undermining the trauma you've experienced. It really helps me shift
7:41
Speaker 1: my thinking as women are taught to underplay their trauma
7:43
Speaker 1: and make everyone else comfortable, even at their own detriment.
7:46
Speaker 1: This language shift has also helped me stop this people pleasing.
7:49
Speaker 1: I've emailed you a couple of times before, one about
7:51
Speaker 1: Pooh and another about horror movies, as I love them
7:53
Speaker 1: the movies not who. I have a ticket to see Bodies, Bodies,
7:56
Speaker 1: Bodies and a Welsh horror movie called Feast. I'm also
7:59
Speaker 1: going to a British horror film festival called fright Fest,
8:02
Speaker 1: which is this weekend. Well, that sounds great, that all
8:05
Speaker 1: sounds fun. I'm assuming it's in Britain, but I could
8:10
Speaker 1: be wrong. I guess I couldn't assume. But this was
8:13
Speaker 1: in response to something I said in the Happy Hour
8:15
Speaker 1: where I thought my dad, the ghost of my dad
8:17
Speaker 1: was haunting me, where I was like, it's fine, is
8:20
Speaker 1: sign's fine? So this is this is good advice because
8:22
Speaker 1: essentially that's what I meant. I'm fine. It's hard I
8:25
Speaker 1: say it in that way that indicates I'm not, but
8:29
Speaker 1: I mostly at my promise. Mm hmmm. So thank you
8:34
Speaker 1: for that message, Helena wrote, I wanted to send another
8:51
Speaker 1: raving fan letter on your recent episode of women and
8:53
Speaker 1: student Debt. It spoke so much to me. I'm a
8:56
Speaker 1: bit closer to Annie and age. So my collection of
8:58
Speaker 1: student debt started a while ago. When I graduated in
9:01
Speaker 1: two thousand five, I was only seventeen thousand dollars away
9:04
Speaker 1: from four years at a private institution. What made my
9:07
Speaker 1: debt bloom was that I had to go back for
9:09
Speaker 1: a master's degree, not once, but twice. I wound up
9:12
Speaker 1: with nearly eighty thousand dollars. I finished the first one
9:15
Speaker 1: in two thousand eight, right before the economic crash, and
9:18
Speaker 1: when that happened, I couldn't find work at all. I
9:20
Speaker 1: couldn't even get a part time a retail gig because
9:22
Speaker 1: they would look at my education and say, oh, you're
9:25
Speaker 1: not going to stick around, So I couldn't find employment
9:27
Speaker 1: to even make payments. When I finished the second masters,
9:30
Speaker 1: inten it still took two full years to find a
9:33
Speaker 1: job in my field. The really awful part with that
9:36
Speaker 1: is that the job I did eventually get was only
9:38
Speaker 1: part time at the time I was hired, and took
9:40
Speaker 1: three years before I became a full time employee, and
9:42
Speaker 1: only paid me at a rate that reflected the bachelor's degree,
9:45
Speaker 1: not two masters. Of course, it's still more money than
9:48
Speaker 1: I've ever made in my life, but I can't live
9:50
Speaker 1: by myself, and I couldn't start saving for retirement until
9:53
Speaker 1: I was thirty five. My only shining light in this
9:56
Speaker 1: has been that all of my debt has been in
9:58
Speaker 1: federal loans, so I have definitely been able to enjoy
10:01
Speaker 1: the pay as you earn and the working in a
10:03
Speaker 1: field that qualifies for the loan forgiveness. Program, if that
10:06
Speaker 1: will even exist after I've made twenty payments. It's frustrating
10:10
Speaker 1: to realize that I have carried this debt since I
10:11
Speaker 1: was twenty two, but I couldn't even start to make
10:14
Speaker 1: payments until I was thirty five, and it's supposed to
10:16
Speaker 1: be forgiven after ten years of consistent payments. Maybe I've
10:20
Speaker 1: definitely taken advantage of the break offered by the pandemic pause. However,
10:25
Speaker 1: if I had ever refinanced my loans for a lower
10:27
Speaker 1: interest rate, they would have become private loans and I
10:30
Speaker 1: would have had to still make payments. Two other things
10:33
Speaker 1: that have happened during this pause that have driven me
10:35
Speaker 1: absolutely crazy, one of which is the sheer level of
10:38
Speaker 1: uncertainty and misinformation I've been getting from the company that
10:41
Speaker 1: owned my loans fed Loan in this case, I called
10:46
Speaker 1: three different times at different points during this pause and
10:48
Speaker 1: received different answers as to what was being covered in
10:51
Speaker 1: the pause. One person told me that the pause would
10:53
Speaker 1: pause the interest rate, the payment itself wouldn't be collected,
10:56
Speaker 1: but that it would still count towards the loan forgiveness
10:59
Speaker 1: program in terms of aim it. So they suggested that
11:01
Speaker 1: the months where I was paused and not making a
11:03
Speaker 1: payment would still be counted at the end toward my loan.
11:07
Speaker 1: This doesn't make sense, but this is what I was told.
11:10
Speaker 1: My loan was also sold during this pause, and I've
11:13
Speaker 1: heard almost nothing from the new lender. I still don't
11:16
Speaker 1: know what is going on with it. Mostly I'm using
11:19
Speaker 1: the pause to be able to save money and even
11:21
Speaker 1: look into getting a car and starting up a college
11:23
Speaker 1: savings program for my niece. Once this whole thing ends,
11:26
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm going to do, so thank
11:28
Speaker 1: you so much for covering this topic. I work in
11:30
Speaker 1: a higher education and really wonder about the damage that's
11:33
Speaker 1: being done to young people, especially women of color, when
11:35
Speaker 1: it comes to loans. I'm even more concerned about the
11:38
Speaker 1: graduate education because really, once you get past that bachelor's
11:42
Speaker 1: there's very little in terms of postgraduate funding other than loans.
11:46
Speaker 1: It's a vicious cycle, right um, And I'm right with you, Elena,
11:50
Speaker 1: Like I did this. My loan was exactly the same
11:53
Speaker 1: as yours where it came from fed Lows. It got sold.
11:55
Speaker 1: I don't know what is happening. It just went away.
11:57
Speaker 1: It just went away for like a year, and I
11:59
Speaker 1: was like, where do I even access this. How did
12:02
Speaker 1: this go? And of course the FED loan is a
12:05
Speaker 1: conversation about how the fact that they could not make
12:07
Speaker 1: a deal with the federal government, so therefore they decided
12:10
Speaker 1: to just distribute all of the uh the different loans out,
12:13
Speaker 1: which happens a lot, which I'm finding out with my
12:16
Speaker 1: house UH payments as it's been sold three times already
12:19
Speaker 1: and I've only had it for three months, y'all three months?
12:23
Speaker 1: Like this doesn't make sense. I don't quite understand it.
12:25
Speaker 1: I got panic moments because I was like, wait, did
12:27
Speaker 1: they said that there was no interest? But wait, are
12:29
Speaker 1: they saying there's no interest right now? Or have they
12:31
Speaker 1: been counting the interest where much like with all this
12:34
Speaker 1: stuff that was happening with rentals, they're like, you can't
12:36
Speaker 1: penalize renters, they can't pay it, blah blah blah. But
12:38
Speaker 1: when it came back they suddenly had an interest rates
12:41
Speaker 1: that said, oh, but we were keeping tabs of it
12:43
Speaker 1: and this is how much you owe an interest um
12:45
Speaker 1: and then backtracking it. So there's no promise that that's
12:48
Speaker 1: not going to happen. As we know, there is some
12:50
Speaker 1: forgiveness happening, but it seems minimal in comparison to who
12:53
Speaker 1: is helping. This is where we were talking about. This
12:56
Speaker 1: is structural racism because it's only really helps people of
13:00
Speaker 1: higher status anyway, because when we see the people who
13:02
Speaker 1: take out that amount of loans ten to twenty is
13:05
Speaker 1: most likely going to be in the white community, Asian
13:07
Speaker 1: communities actually too, So it's very obvious that it's not
13:11
Speaker 1: helping people of color. Is not helping everyone is helping
13:15
Speaker 1: a certain amount of people, of course, not something is
13:17
Speaker 1: better than nothing. To get that as one of those
13:20
Speaker 1: who are like, Okay, well at least I get it,
13:22
Speaker 1: I guess to a certain extent that does talk about
13:25
Speaker 1: that bigger conversation. And then, yeah, graduate programs are expensive, expensive,
13:30
Speaker 1: and if you're in a work field like teaching or
13:33
Speaker 1: social work, it's not it's almost not worth it, but
13:36
Speaker 1: you have to have it because your degree seems so
13:39
Speaker 1: without the master's level. Yeah, and I'm really glad you
13:42
Speaker 1: brought up this point in this this letter, because um,
13:45
Speaker 1: I had a friend once who told me like, essentially
13:50
Speaker 1: she was going to stop short of getting her masters
13:53
Speaker 1: because she knew she wouldn't be able to find as
13:55
Speaker 1: many jobs because people didn't want to pay for her
13:57
Speaker 1: having the masters, but she still needed the experience, which
14:00
Speaker 1: I was like, that's that's ridiculous, shady. This whole process
14:05
Speaker 1: is shady for sure, and feels like that that are
14:08
Speaker 1: specialized by marginalized communities do require it more so than others.
14:12
Speaker 1: Is a thing. It's a thing. We'll come back to it.
14:16
Speaker 1: But moving on, Maureen wrote, I was so excited to
14:20
Speaker 1: see your episode on Rogue one in my feed. That's
14:23
Speaker 1: my favorite Star Wars movie and one of my two
14:25
Speaker 1: current fandoms that I write fan fic for. Samantha will
14:28
Speaker 1: be happy to know that Everybody Lives and Nobody Dies
14:31
Speaker 1: is the most popular tag for the fandom, and in fact,
14:34
Speaker 1: Rogue one is the third highest fandom with a tag
14:37
Speaker 1: on AO three. I do appreciate this, thank you. Basically,
14:41
Speaker 1: everyone finished the movie and went so the last ten
14:44
Speaker 1: minutes didn't happen, right right, agreed. Everyone also went to
14:49
Speaker 1: in Bays are Totally married, which I love that too. Anyway,
14:52
Speaker 1: I enjoyed hearing your thoughts, especially Samantha screaming I don't
14:56
Speaker 1: I was a friend of me because I was having
14:59
Speaker 1: a marine. It's front of these love the show and
15:03
Speaker 1: keep it up. Yes, well I do appreciate that no
15:05
Speaker 1: one dies in the Fani thank you for that. But
15:07
Speaker 1: I feel like this could be the beginning of a
15:08
Speaker 1: friend of the situation. I love that it's the third
15:11
Speaker 1: highest fandom with that tag that I mean, that makes sense.
15:14
Speaker 1: I wanted to include this one. I we mentioned it
15:16
Speaker 1: before in past episodes because people did get a kick
15:19
Speaker 1: out of you your sufferings. Metho still not happy, but
15:23
Speaker 1: Roguan is in theater is back in theaters right now
15:26
Speaker 1: because the show and Or is coming out that is related. Uh,
15:29
Speaker 1: and it just broke a record where it became. It
15:35
Speaker 1: is now in the top ten all time releases of
15:38
Speaker 1: IMAX movies. So hey, hey, you may not like it,
15:42
Speaker 1: but that's I will not be there. I immediately sent
15:46
Speaker 1: you a text and was like, you're going to be
15:47
Speaker 1: first in line, right silence exactly, Yes. Well, thanks so
15:53
Speaker 1: much to all of the listeners who have written to
15:56
Speaker 1: us uh in this message. Thank you for letting us
15:58
Speaker 1: read your letters and it to everyone who has written
16:01
Speaker 1: as and we love getting these messages. So if you
16:04
Speaker 1: would like to write to us, you can. Our email
16:06
Speaker 1: is Steffania mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com. You
16:09
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter at bomb Stuff podcast or
16:11
Speaker 1: Instagram and Stuff I Never told You. Thanks as always
16:13
Speaker 1: to our super producer Christina, thank you, and thanks to
16:16
Speaker 1: you for listening Stuff I Never Told you the protection
16:18
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. For more podcast from my Heart Radio,
16:20
Speaker 1: you can visit the heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or
16:22
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows