[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah, tell me about your floaters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do they float or do they sink like the public wants to know?
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not fair.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did not agree to come on air and have my words be framed in this way.
[SPEAKER_02]: The floaters, my ya, is referring to are the ones in my eyes as in the little dark specks and spots that move around when you look at your eyes.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's never had one before, which isn't saying to me, I'm so jealous, I wish I could see the world through your eyes, because apparently they like mostly affect people over 50, but my vision is like completely disrupted by the presence of these little dots and I say to my yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: that I'm scared I've had a retinal tear because I have had a bunch of them sort of emerge in the last few days.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so for context, I am recording this with sunglasses on.
[SPEAKER_02]: And these particular sunglasses are like weird prescription sunglasses that I bought when I was hungover and took an eye exam.
[SPEAKER_02]: You should not.
[SPEAKER_01]: get your eyes tested when you're hung over because glasses stores are sort of like the whatever circle of hell and you will just kind of make crazy decisions to get out of there and these ones make me look a little bit like a little maga a little maga um i had a bad sleep first thing that i opened my eyes too is a whatsapp call from Hannah i opened the video chat
[SPEAKER_01]: Here it looks like it's like kind of wet right now, so it's been a little like crunched and she's just kind of staring off into space She kind of looks like Kate Hudson Take that, but it was a fact It was a very confusing vibe and then she immediately launched into like how she's experiencing floaters Which like we lived together for so many years and Hannah would take me through all of her various weekly ailments But like floaters never once came up I've also never heard of them for some reason I feel like I'm living in like a dream for the past few days and this is really adding to that Like it's like a never-ending dream nightmare scenario
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I'm so happy to be the cherry on top of your nightmare week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Me and my floater floater.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very interesting that that is a watt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Although you do look cool with your aviators.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't say mag, and that's it's early.
[SPEAKER_02]: The sunglasses aren't even actually making the floaters go away, but the floaters themselves have strained my eyes to the point where I don't like looking at the screen.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know, that's kind of you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I should own a truck.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I kind of feel like I should be like, you don't tell me whether or not I can vaccinate my kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: I look like there are only two genders.
[SPEAKER_02]: United States.
[SPEAKER_02]: Pretty good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah this morning has schooled me on the concept of floaters.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's also schooled me on the concept of aura farming, which I thought I knew about this and turns out I knew nothing.
[SPEAKER_02]: The definition of aura farming I'm working off of might be inaccurate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously I've heard the expression being used, but also resigned myself to the fact that I'm too old for some things and there's just a limit to how many new expressions you can learn.
[SPEAKER_02]: I once at my age, the floater age.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, clearly I'm like aging rapidly so yeah, there's a there's a cap my friend Jacob Shout out to Jacob was like what do you think of Orifarming and I thought the Orifarming was just like things that you I thought was similar to the Performative Mail thing where you're like I'm reading in public that's a version of Orifarming.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I thought it was
[SPEAKER_02]: No, apparently it's like cool gestures or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like doing something over and over again.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's, is this making us sound chopped and dunk?
[SPEAKER_02]: Look, we have to accept the chopped and onke allegations.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we're nearing 30.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bro, I was in an Uber yesterday and the Uber drivers older than I am, like by a long shot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said I was, he was like, what do you like?
[SPEAKER_01]: He was kind of half hitting on me, but he was like, what do you like?
[SPEAKER_01]: 21 or something?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, no, sir, I'm 29.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my, good god, Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he was like, what the hell?
[SPEAKER_01]: That he was like, you look very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then under his breath, he was like, very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very, very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: For like probably like a minute.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, all right, King.
[SPEAKER_01]: Drop me off here.
[SPEAKER_02]: How many stars did you give him?
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't looked yet because I'm bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like a weird mix of flattering and like frustration when I tell people my age and they're like What but I just don't think that people know what 28-year-olds look like like I'm going to look like I'm not a full grown-up until I look old and then it's very clear I'm a grown-up, but like I don't have a womanly frame or
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
[SPEAKER_02]: Teachers.
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
[SPEAKER_02]: Just like as an adult, like I don't look like a grown-up, I'm short.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm quite petite, and I have like, my furniture is historically been small, you know, what a Veronica Lake was.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was like, four and a line or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just mean, I don't, I don't think people know it 28-year-olds look like because 28-year-olds have always played like 20-year-olds on television.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, who we can blame that chick from Beverly Hills, 902-10, the nerdy one who was
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I remember being a kid and finding out that Stacey Dash was like 27 in clueless.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, this ancient woman is playing a high schooler.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, listen, I actually really don't care when older people play high schoolers because like, you can't get a high schooler to do some of the stuff they're asked to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we'll also like, say c-dash look the same age as everyone else.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then that one lady from Beverly Hills, not actually one out, looked unforgivably old.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I was like, you look 35.
[SPEAKER_01]: How old was she when the unit, what's her name?
[SPEAKER_02]: Andrea Zeckerman, or something?
[SPEAKER_01]: So one second, let me figure out how old this lady was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause the rest of them were like still, they were quite young.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I think that they were in their very early 20s.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gabrielle, Curtiss, was, oh, she looks really nice today.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was 30.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, how old was Stockard Channing in Greece?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, oh my god.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ancient, but I give her a little more credit because she was from the Broadway production.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, and Stockard, let's not even scapegoat Stockard Channing, because that fucking guy who played Kinniki was like 50, I swear.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so maybe it was Olivia, and even John was quite old too.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was like 30 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, what?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Grace's 1975.
[SPEAKER_01]: My bro, I feel like Olivia, and even John was old.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, I got a rewatch Greece soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Perfect, maybe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, 78.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so Stockard Channing was 34 or way no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God, RAP Living in John, I didn't know I need to be reminded that she passed away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I forgot too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Living in John was 30, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, okay, Knieki.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's still time for us to play Sandy and Greece.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, RAP, Knieki, I forgot when he passed away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kinniki was younger than both of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, they hadn't discovered SPF yet and like you know how man are They're all in this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: He looked all this hell no fans.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, God bless Jeff Conway.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyways, um, so so
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're not old, is what I'm trying to say.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though you have floaters and even though you don't know what or a farming is, I'm dubious about this explanation of or a farming I need it explained to me in a different way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so the Google AI for what I looked up or a farming, I don't use AI, it's just what came up.
[SPEAKER_02]: Google AI says key aspects of or a farming.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, and then it goes, okay, the goal to look effortlessly cool, confident, or skillful, to boost personal reputation.
[SPEAKER_02]: The origin, popularized by Jen Alpha and Jen Z, often associated with the viral dance by an Indonesian boy on a boat.
[SPEAKER_02]: Examples, striking a cool pose, hitting a personal best at the gem or showcasing quiet confidence, and then the risk is trying too hard or being overly dramatic that can make the act cringe.
[SPEAKER_02]: which results in a loss of aura rather than a gain.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anything popular as a virgin alpha does not need to enter my purview, like I do not know.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's just accept the chopped and hunked allegations.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm also like the generations cooked.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd rather be chopped and hunked than be gen Alpha.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are stalker chatting.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are more things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we can all start singing together again.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, I'm Aia.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm Hannah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is Rehosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we just sat up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is rehash, a podcast about the social media phenomenon that strike a nerve in our culture only to be quickly forgotten, but we think are due for a revisiting.
[SPEAKER_01]: This season is part two of a loose, no-plent-intended history of sex on the internet.
[SPEAKER_01]: The symbiosis is of our two most basic instincts, innovation, and getting off.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you like our show and you want to hear more from us, you can support us on patreon.com-free-podcast where we have bonus episodes and really access to our regular programming.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't want to join the patreon, feel free to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts because that helps us out a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we discuss a website, I'm sure like 60% of our female audience has visited at some point in their adult lives when they were down bad, seeking arrangements.
[SPEAKER_01]: For the uninformed, seeking arrangements is a website that kind of functions like a dating service for sugar baby in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Your young, maybe you're down bad, and you go on seeking arrangements and find someone older and richer than you to basically bank roll you in exchange for certain favors.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah, have you ever perused the site at any point in your life?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think every, I mean, young woman at some point is like, you know, when you're in your early 20s, I think especially you were very much aware of like the capital you have as a young woman who is an adult, but has all the currencies of like youth and not of the crow's feet of late youth.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm currently have.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, of course you're like, well,
[SPEAKER_02]: What if I were the type of person that had the savviness and the business acumen to take advantage of that in a way that benefited me?
[SPEAKER_02]: I, unfortunately, lack the business acumen to have really gone anywhere with it and was living at home with my parents and was like, I can't have a sugar daddy.
[SPEAKER_02]: I literally, like, my mom cooked me dinner last night, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that could be even the perfect time to have a sugar daddy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you're just saving.
[SPEAKER_02]: Far and more economically resourceful, perhaps I would have pulled it off.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, saying that there's only a time in like 2016 or 2017 when I had legitimately two dollars to my name and was away at school where basically I made an account on seeking arrangements and like fully chatted with a couple of people in there before checking out.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was like
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of in my, well, one, I like couldn't afford anything, but this was also in my like female kind of height beast era where I was always on like heroine, which is like, it used to be the girl version of grail.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that they've been one subsumed the other.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not talking about the drug.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I would all feel like heroine or essence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Looking for nonsense and I was like, damn, it'd be really nice to actually be able to afford this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, obviously let alone fucking groceries.
[SPEAKER_02]: That would have been such an insane kind of lower drop if you were like revealing now this far into the podcast that you were a former heroine user.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it would be kind of a cool stealth reveal like I kept it from you all these years as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like finding out here along with the rehash listeners that my best friend of so many years had like a little junkie phase.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, heroin.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought you thought it'd be cool that I felt revealed that I did sugar-baby ink.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it would be crazy that I was keeping that for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: What would be crazy if I was keeping sugar-baby ink for me because I feel like that would have been like, both of them would have made me think you were like a little bit cooler.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, if I didn't hear it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now you're just, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, now you're just the same plain old my yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, you know, damn I wish she did heroin and hand us on a crazy bullshit today.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the glasses.
[SPEAKER_01]: But to be on my video as a bullshit, but basically these dynamics are old as time.
[SPEAKER_01]: The etymology of sugar, baby, and or dadying as terms is hard to trace.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I thought it'd be fun to include.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the earliest was apparently in 1988 when a man named Adolf Spreckles, who was the heir to the Spreckles Sugar Fortune married a much younger woman, and it's been recounted from people who knew them that she called Adolf her Sugar Daddy, and then over the next couple decades it would have evolved into a sling term for a man who exchanges money or gifts for intimacy with a woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was also a candy bar from the James Welsh company that was kind of trying to hop on the trend of the word that was called the Sugar Daddy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, obviously, these relationships predated the naming of this, they would continue afterwards, but when the practice became really systematized and out in the open was in 2006, when a guy named Brandon Wade, who the lingo of our times would probably describe as a
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the literature I was reading for this episode was actually written by Brandon himself, like he's doing a fun time of self-promotion, so I really got a sense of who this guy is.
[SPEAKER_01]: He actually wrote an entire book about seeking arrangements, which operates as like a half history of the site, half instructional guide on how to get.
[SPEAKER_01]: Madlabies in the book he describes himself during his school years as quote an intellectual and quote a quintessential nerd But painstakingly shy around girls He talks about how he didn't get a girlfriend till he was like 19 which like no events But try going to an arts high school where 70% of the population is women and 50% of the men are gay honey like others are struggling as well Okay, it's not just you speak for yourself Fuck you
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's a pretty usual suspects case, like he goes to MIT, he worships Hugh Hefner, who he refers to as Hefther at the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: He definitely, I would say, belongs to that big bang theory class of, like, nerd, misogyny, praying it back, we miss it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of wonder where this guy would fit into the Manosphere today, actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who do you think he'd be in this internet context?
[SPEAKER_02]: I do, like, I mean, if you think about, like, the big bang theory type of archetype, like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, I'm fairly certain at least, okay, just thinking with a big bang theory, those guys all would have ended up on in cell forums because the way they talked about women was fucking insane.
[SPEAKER_02]: This guy, yeah, I think he'd be in the man as fear probably, I think it would, it wouldn't be looks maxing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the wealth version of looks maxing?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's status maxing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Saddest Maxing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he'd probably be in the world of Saddest Maxing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: He is kind of a status Maxer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd also say with the like instructions and the book, he's also a little bit pickapartisty.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, I think you're right about Saddest Maxing.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's exactly what it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we will get into that because he is kind of like originating it almost.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, once again, I continue to wonder if we're in the like techno feudalists all a guard housekeeper in now because a few guys need a revenge for not getting late in high school.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I just can't help but think that like we're in this situation just because of a few geeks.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, people who are like getting to second base are little too busy to be kind of fantasizing about creating artificial intelligence, etc.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like
[SPEAKER_02]: when you're a horny teenager, that's a very distracting thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't really have the time to actually occupy yourself to some greater like scientific or cultural goal, I suppose.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I'm sounding like one of them and like, oh, these teenage girls should have been, you know, hooking up with these guys to save our planet from its pending fate.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I can't tell if we made geek culture, we like legitimized it too much through like the kind of marble era, big bank theory, like all this stuff, if we legitimized it too much to the point that like we've given the virgins too much power, and we should go back to making fun of virgins, or we need to like figure out how to get these virgins laid earlier, the sound so fucked up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I don't know what the solution is at this point for the virgins, but it's something that...
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the problem with virgins is that like they all think that they're going to be zuck, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: They all think they're going to be the one to take that energy and like change the course of history with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like majority of virgins are going to end up in a Goon cave.
[SPEAKER_02]: not actually majority of virgins, but I just mean like most of these people are actually just going to literally like incredibly unsatisfying lives, not influence anything or anyone and remain virgins, but still have that pent-up anger.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not the brand and ways of the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, that's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of them are brand-in-wades.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of them go on to do, um, I don't want to say great things, but like, things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we'll listen up virgins because like, this is how you can do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, he gets an MBA, and I don't know why I wrote it like this, shoots up the management consultant to see near executive to entrepreneur pipeline.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do not mean that he shot this his pipeline.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean that he like ascended through it all the while continuing to struggle at getting pussy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he uses his tech and business skills to develop seeking arrangements.
[SPEAKER_01]: How it works is that aspiring sugar daddy's or mommy's, but those are much fewer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sign up for a paid subscription.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the moment, there's a 30-day platinum membership, which is $150, a 60-day for $380, and then a 30-day diamond membership, which is $375, with diamond your profile gets boosted to the top of the site in like classic dating app fashion.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to actually upgrade to these in order to be able to message people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sugar babies, on the other hand, typically sign up for free.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I was reading about this, I kept thinking about this video, I saw recently, of some tweaked-out guy who's talking about how clubs are for women and rich men, and if you're a broke guy, you have no place there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this guy clearly doesn't love to dance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, clubs aren't about dancing, and so I don't know, there's something so interesting about these hyper-headerless spaces to me, like, there's such a theater to it, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I guess it's not dissimilar from one of those like 18th or 19th century balls, but like, do anything?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just something so interesting about the stratification of these types of, like, you know, ladies getting free type spaces, fuel get kind of seeking arrangements, but like, what is going on with the streets?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think it's just the transactional nature of heterosexual courtship, like, even outside of when you're actually spelling it out and
[SPEAKER_02]: We've all been on dates.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've all had men pay for drinks for us or buy us dinner or go out to a nightclub and a guy that you actually don't even want to talk to offers the buy you drink and you're like, hey, why not I was out for my friends bachelor at and I just knew from the vibe of the place and the vibe of the guy I just looked over at the man by the bar and he bought her round of drinks and it was like
[SPEAKER_02]: Great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Didn't speak to him again.
[SPEAKER_02]: He didn't even try and speak to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is just sometimes what happens in these spaces.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's where men get to feel the power of their financial success if they have it or get to pretend like they do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And women get to kind of feel the power of, you know, being a woman.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, where are the broke men supposed to dance?
[SPEAKER_02]: That just makes me really sad because I think some of the most fun I've had at night clubs is what I was in a relationship when I was sober when I was literally just there to dance with my friends and it doesn't really matter who's around me and I find that the men that are there actually, I know I just told an anecdote where I let this man buy me a drink but like generally speaking, the men who kind of try and intrude on your time,
[SPEAKER_02]: ruin the vibe.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they become this thing that you're all kind of joking about.
[SPEAKER_02]: It like maybe you'll entertain them for five seconds.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like the guys that are there to prowl are like not someone you want to aspire to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's way better to be a broke man listening to the music than a guy with money and his pocket, like looking for someone to, I don't know, spend it on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also I don't think that I'm the right representative of night clubbing experience because I have not been to a proper night club in like a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we did go out for Hannah's birthday like a few years ago and she kind of looked like a baby that night and the men were just flocking to her.
[SPEAKER_01]: But remember, you just looked really young, you had your little tiara on and all the men we convinced them that you were turning 21 or something insane.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, it was, I was wearing a birthday girl bibin, it was my 25th and then I told this guy at the club that I was my 19th birthday and he looked so...
[SPEAKER_02]: Scared cuz he was like 26.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember this is the opposite.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were like excited by that Okay, so the boys were all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know it was a good vibe check He was not interested when he found out that I was fake 19 You're kind of like imagine you were into him and you're just like fully blew your chances All right, well, okay, so
[SPEAKER_01]: By 2007, Seeking Regions has 100,000 members and got a ton of notoriety and mainstream media.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's only grown since and spawned sister sites, like Seeking Millionaire, which is a millionaire dating website.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what's your price.com, which allows men to bid for a date, miss travel, which is their dating website, where at that point I'm just like tenderable suffice babe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know why you're on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, carrot dating, where men will bribe women for dates.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's also openminded.com which promotes so-called ethical cheating.
[SPEAKER_01]: All run under Wade's purview.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah, you would love openminded.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, no, I'm me and my pro cheating stance.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't worry, it's a platform I'm gonna run on in 2028.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wade is kind of an interesting case because he talks about the dating world as being a place where men are disproportionately represented and pedals minus your ideas about hypergamy, which we'll get into a bit later.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's also oddly sympathetic to women at the same time.
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll be like,
[SPEAKER_01]: In a world where women earn 70 cents to every dollar earned by a man, I've seen countless women struggle to put themselves through school, set up professional careers, raise children alone, or just survive from one day to the next.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like everyone else, I was familiar with their laundry list of complaints against men.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do think this informs a pretty complicated, undercurrent, running below seeking arrangements.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, he's defensive of sugar-babying is something of a logical outgrowth of feminism that when women have more financial freedom, they're able to choose their lifestyles and their relationships they want.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he goes, at seekingarrangement.com, we say it's a logical lifestyle for an independent-minded 21st century individual.
[SPEAKER_01]: Singing arrangement is touted as being an alternative dating site, similar to something like a field, for example.
[SPEAKER_02]: Field is interesting because I think field in Toronto was like a really specific site that I think people would be on, I guess if they were looking for something specific, whereas I think it's more
[SPEAKER_02]: normalized and like used a bit more like a dating like a normal dating app here I guess or like like a box kind of become that everywhere at this point make field weird again 2026 like where all the kingsters you know where are all the boys with their dends of an equity
[SPEAKER_02]: One of these things where you'll see someone from hinge, someone who is a really normal hinge profile and then they're on field and then they're like listing all of their like preferences and then sometimes they'll have like an initial as their name instead of their name and it's like babe, I know your name because I've seen you.
[SPEAKER_01]: later than I am.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, and it's similar to fields in the way that the relationships at fosters are non-traditional and like that's how it ties themselves, which obviously yeah, field has changed over time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it is about it's kind of like alternative style dating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wade says that seeking arrangements ethos is about learning to live the way you want to live rather than what has been socially ascribed to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's something almost like,
[SPEAKER_01]: admirable here in this pragmatism about gender disparities and like the way it produces an inherently transactional paradigm of sexual relationships.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was also kind of taken with his admiration for women's sexual power, like it is encouragement of that power as being its own valuable currency.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I was a little bit like, oh, that's kind of, you know, he knows kind of like worship women in this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: But of course, like this kind of thinking can quickly topple over into more harmful ideas as we will see.
[SPEAKER_01]: What we need to know for now is that Wade rails against the stigma of sugar-babyying as a gold-dicking activity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he says that at seeking arrangements, they're, quote, talking about strong, successful men and women who know what they want and set out to get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're happiness doesn't come at the expense of someone else, but rather in sync with another person.
[SPEAKER_01]: So essentially, with this site, Sugar Babying is framed as like an empowering activity, like a business relationship between clear-headed individuals.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, for legal reasons, seeking arrangements as of vehemently distance itself from the idea of sex work.
[SPEAKER_01]: There terms of service strictly prohibit exchanging sex for money.
[SPEAKER_01]: They also screen babies by doing backup image searches.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if their photo is found on like back page or like escort site, you can be denied entry, chats are also heavily monitored.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Hannah, would you consider sugaring, or should I need to say sugar-baby ink?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because sugaring is just like when you rip the hair out of your, you know, yeah, armpits or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but would you consider sugar-baby ink a form of sex work?
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it enters into this weird gray area because like we said, I mean a lot of heterosexual dating is transactional even if it's not said outright.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think especially casual dating, not all of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean like girlies are definitely dating guys who are asking to like split the bill at the pub with them, broke ass men's and they're doing fine for themselves like
[SPEAKER_02]: but I do think that a lot of the dating market.
[SPEAKER_02]: is quite transactional or at least like the traditional approach that we have.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so when you're especially in like a stage where you're like not sharing a life with someone and you're just going on dates and one person is routinely paying for it and you're like continuing a relationship with someone that's not sugar-babying in the sense that like no one's sending you money perhaps like go shopping but someone is still like treating you like
[SPEAKER_02]: I've gone to dinner at places where I probably wouldn't have spent that much money if I was paying for the dinner.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, for reference, I am currently researching Bonnie Blue and I just tortured myself by listening to her and Andrew Tate on a podcast together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: Andrew Tate, like his argument, is that basically every woman is a sex worker because women are spending men's money and men are paying for suffer women and living off of that money.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I think about like sugar-babying as a form of sex work, it makes me worried about stepping into that territory right of like then seeing like
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, it's hard, because like obviously there are explicit intentions said whereas like with the Android hate stuff, it's like he's just framing every single woman in a relationship with a man as a sex worker, but it's complicated and also like of course that's not even to stigmatize sex work itself.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just that I think it really does exist in a gray area.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't necessarily think that it's as clear cut, but maybe a sugar baby would disagree.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're striking the nail in the head with the inherent transactional nature too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like his historic transactional nature to heterosexual dating, which isn't necessarily the case for all heterosexual partnerships, but it has been the historic purpose of it almost.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the site very much targets college-aged women and all of its spokespeople, including Wade, focus on the idea of like paying off college debt as a major driving factor for joining.
[SPEAKER_01]: You even actually get special perks if you sign up with a dot-edu email address.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in this current moment,
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to be like a condemned or like fallen woman to become a sex worker, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: People from all sorts of economic backgrounds are struggling to make rent or in the US, especially pay off ridiculous amounts of student debt.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think being driven to enter into like non-romantic transactional relationships with men in order to live more freely does kind of position babying as something done out of necessity, which has been the case for sex workers historically.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, they're like tons of cases where sex isn't on the table.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, that is pretty common with sugar-babying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I know people who have had sugar-datties who they don't sleep with at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there isn't element of intimacy involved in a man wanting even just like company from a woman and paying for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the other side of things, many of these men who were daddyying report that their jobs are also so demanding as to not have enough time in their day-to-day lives to keep up a romantic relationship, so they turn to something in which they have control over the level of time spent together and like the level of intimacy, they like to control what the baby's wear, like the accounts I was reading were talking about help.
[SPEAKER_01]: the men would ask them to come with like blowouts and like high heels and whatever, falsies, but yeah, they can control that.
[SPEAKER_01]: In one article I read, this one daddy says, I can't separate the fact that I have resources from who I am.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a part of me, and it's something I have to offer 20 somethings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another baby is like, you know, it's really funny to me when people say that I'm selling my body.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of all the work I've done, this isn't abusive to my body.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of my clients are computer industry workers about half.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I ask myself,
[SPEAKER_01]: These men spend 40 hours a week hunched over a desk.
[SPEAKER_01]: They live alone, eat alone, drive to work alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Other than seeing me, they don't seem to have time for a social life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought it was really interesting because you're seeing how kind of like a neoliberal economy with zero safety nets where work is life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, really does affect us all from all ends of the spectrum.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, it just kind of made me wonder whether this is so different from like, creating go-fund means for healthcare costs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you see the parallels there?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, I think people have been trying to like ascend their class through romantic relationships for time, like that's not like a new thing at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: But then also like, yeah, I can see, I mean, there's something interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like a gig economy thing where it's like, I don't can't do the commitment of owning a car, so I take Uber's.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, I can't have
[SPEAKER_02]: Strange relationship for someone feels like a certain level of loyalty to me because of the like money that's on the table But that can be done then on like my terms and doesn't require emotional commitment per se But there is like some investment there.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like gig economy It's xwork I guess
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's five trillion percent what's going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like an hyper-individualized like band-aid solution to kind of more systemic class problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, okay, ladies, since you're going to struggle to pay rent because of this economic system, why don't you just go get this random man to pay for you?
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, hey, guys, can you cover my medical bills because I had this accident?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't afford healthcare because the system sucks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I need to turn to like, these individuals to help me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess the main difference being like when you do those GoFundMe is right, you're kind of relying on the pure generosity of other people, but with something like sugar, baby, and someone else is getting something else out of it on the other end.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're like giving what you have to offer I suppose it's like well, I can't offer money But I have something else that's valuable which my company.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, my body and that's what kind of theaters into sex work There's this book by Elizabeth Bernstein called temporarily yours intimacy authenticity and the commerce of sex Where she talks about how there was always an assumption that the more women entered the workforce and gained financial independence The less reason we would have for sex work to exist
[SPEAKER_01]: But pauses that actually as time has gone on the opposite has happened, where people from, quote, the new middle class and the creative classes are entering into commercial sexual encounters.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do think of sugar-babying personally as a form of sex work that is responding to the neoliberal conditions of like instability, precarity and loneliness.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's just understood as an elevated, elevated form of sex work because sex work doesn't always have to be, because of the sex doesn't always have to be on the table and it's more about like companionship than sexual gratification, a little bit more long term.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also kind of exploded during that whole sex work as empowerment.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, a slut walk era where sex workers were positioned in the media as like entrepreneurs and you can see seeking arrangements using a lot of that same language on their side.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of generalizing happening on the side of Wade and his cronies about dating culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: He talks extensively about the concept of hypergamy, which has been culturally understood as women dating up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Clip of killers always talking about hypergamy.
[SPEAKER_01]: because he's convinced that women are uglier than the men they do, which is fucking crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, like the undershirt of women dating up so dating men who have like more financial status than they do, or in particular terms who are hotter than them, in his book, Wade says that seeking arrangements was born out of frustration with conventional dating websites, and that, quote, here intelligent success and wealth count as much, or more than superficial qualities, such as physical appearance, well-tone pecks, or being up on the last trendy trends.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like the ratio of women to men is much greater on seeking arrangements than on other websites and in a smaller pool, I'm a bigger fish.
[SPEAKER_01]: Guys like me stand out as gentlemen.
[SPEAKER_01]: The women on the side value are assets and shower us with attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seeking arrangement is my attempt to level the playing field.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think about this Anna?
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess my experience and perspective of dating as a woman is the complete opposite of how these men like to present it.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's this idea that women hold all the power in our hands and like, you know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it differs on the circles you're in, but in our sort of circles, at least.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you have a woman who has everything to offer, usually probably like makes more money than the guys she's dating or is going to.
[SPEAKER_02]: Dating a man that doesn't check any box at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like me, and it's just getting so much gratification from like the smallest gestures.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I feel like I sound like a femme cell or something, but I just mean like,
[SPEAKER_02]: That is not the lived experience I've had.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't necessarily think that our friends of the types of women they're referring to and these men are the types of men that our friends would date, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It gets a different, like we're not working in finance, we're not going to like night clubs, like these people would be going to, like it's a different vibe.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to the dive bar.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like, I think dive bar dating and nightclub dating are in vastly different experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: That being said, I still am like the imaginative creative thinking a woman will do to kind of convince herself that she's attracted to a guy for whatever reason, like I just have a hard time believing that we're walking around with these extensive checklists.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once again, I dated a guy once who Hannah described
[SPEAKER_02]: So, like, like he collects bugs, which is even worse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I was bugs.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I really, I wrote a little note.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there I said, Brandon Wade should go to Toronto.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he would thrive there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's it's like it's like Adam Friedland talking to curricular.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, okay, maybe in Florida like you got to look a certain way to pick up women in night clubs, but like, yeah, you just need a skateboard in some cities to like have some of the hottest girls you'll ever meet like throwing themselves up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not even that dude, not even the skateboard.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't need anything to draw on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you can just be next to a guy with his skateboard.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can like, around a guy with his skateboard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, skateboarded Jason.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know I also find interesting how he distinguishes physical qualities as being like superficial as opposed to having like success and wealth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which are like deeper qualities.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does feel like it's sewing the seeds of insult.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess maybe in a way that also benefits women at least rather than whatever like, you know, the black pillow guys are doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like,
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess I think that the Black Pill guys are the guys that just like don't even see that future for themselves, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: These are the guys that feel like they have like the hope or they have an out, but I think ultimately they all still view women and like the way women date the same way.
[SPEAKER_02]: which is that like women are looking for something more like there's an ulterior motive to whatever it is and that men by virtue of being men on their own like don't stand a chance which you know that's the impression you get when you've never met a woman but you've washed 2,000 like rom-coms or something no totally
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and in one puff piece he wrote a bit himself for CNN.
[UNKNOWN]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: How are you allowed to do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, he definitely are, but he, I think it was in promotion for his books, so he was doing kind of like, it potentially was like, I exerts from his book that were being spliced into different, different news channels.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he wrote that little girls grow up believing they're going to find Mr. Wright, who is wealthy, successful, and handsome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and then one of Wade's spokespeople said in another interview that women will always find the man with a good job.
[SPEAKER_01]: The difference is that seeking arrangement is
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, don't you find that so untrue?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yes, we grow up with the idea of nights and shining armor, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, equally prevalent to that where these like romantic notions of choosing the working class guy, like, I feel like Titanic had such a stranglehold over me and like, who can forget track?
[SPEAKER_02]: For example, I would argue that like almost all the media we grew up with.
[SPEAKER_02]: presented a narrative where a woman or girl is like lusting after this richer guy or like this perfect quote-unquote man the prince charming and then subversion she realizes it's her goofy guy next to her literally material it looks well i mean also that guy was Chris Chris uh Evan so yeah
[SPEAKER_02]: But like, pretty in pink?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, that's a narrative where she picks the hot rich popular boy over the goofy little gay sidekick, but like But that was 30 plus years ago, uh, things have changed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mean popular boy versus goofy twinkle You better for worse the goofy twinks are running this world
[SPEAKER_01]: I would love to I will take a goofy twink any day like if you can make me laugh I'll take you like I'll take you Are you kidding me if you also had a goofy twink option?
[SPEAKER_02]: You I'd be pressing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I'm just kidding You can be serious and I know you are
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like they're probably saying this because seeking arrangements was very much established on the principle that love is dead.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like at one point, the way legit that love is a concept invented by poor people, which did make me laugh.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's hard to tell if seeking arrangements is a pragmatic or pessimistic answer to the dating scene.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think pragmatism and pessimism can go hand in hand.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that pragmatism is the answer to a pessimistic outlook.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm walking through.
[SPEAKER_02]: True.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the Miranda Hobbes, but I think there is an very pessimistic, almost sometimes like a nihilistic outlook to love and dating in the modern age and we are trying to find like solutions that are yes pragmatic but I think primarily profitable.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like how can we profit off of this dire situation and then present it as like a smart workaround or like a way of
[SPEAKER_01]: That was kind of what we talked about in our dating apps episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like every single app is attempting to find the gap in the market.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the gap is always just like people aren't in love enough anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to make them fall actually love.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this one is like, this is like, it's like the opposite of hinge, basically.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's like love isn't real, give us your money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which I kind of, I do appreciate just like the frankness of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like hinge is the same as your machine.
[SPEAKER_02]: You heard it here, I'm going to say it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Love is real.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I get married to a man from hinge, I need hinge to, like, do they pay for people's weddings?
[SPEAKER_01]: That'd be kind of cool.
[SPEAKER_02]: I bet they'd put you on their posters.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, no, I guess, like, I'm sorry, unfortunately, Zoro and Mom Donnie, like, that's the best hinge success story.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're going to be writing off of that forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know it's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I ever tell you that I saw an apartment hunting video?
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to be a doctor who's watching like apartment tour videos.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the tour videos was of, like, the gayest man that's ever existed in his wife.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they had a sex wing in their living room.
[SPEAKER_01]: And every one of the comments was like, this man is literally the gayest man on earth and it turned out he was the founder of the hinge.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like an old video and I think it got taken down, but it was on this like really like small channel.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was just like actually so gay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is he a goofy twink?
[SPEAKER_01]: I should watch more interviews with him, but in that video he seemed extremely like not like a goofy twink like a serious twink for realsies.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyways, can't, was there any glaring reason that you decided not to follow through with seeking arrangements?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, like I said, I was living with my parents, so I couldn't just be like, I'm going out to meet like a 40 year old man for dinner, any other things that would make you nervous about doing something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, like I think that it takes a level of clearheadedness and like savviness and not compartmentalization because I don't know, again, like I do think this is sort of like a gray area thing, but like I just think at the age where it's
[SPEAKER_02]: that thought had caused my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think I really felt like I had the mature grasp on sex in love and money and all of that stuff like really to have been a fruitful sugar baby.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was very sensitive.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's just say that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just don't think it would have been for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we know people who've done it and like they've had positive experiences with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's true, but okay, well this book's version for seeking arrangements mentioned that their site removed all the risk of dating and named love is the risk that people were taking, but that the transactional dynamic would eliminate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But can you think of some other pretty obvious risks he was forgetting there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Safety?
[SPEAKER_01]: Precisely dull.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is the obvious safety element.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, yeah, seeking arrangements does have an extensive page about it on their site, but also, like, lots of accounts were coming out over the years that Brokeys were on the site, trying to scam women.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not Brokeys!
[SPEAKER_00]: Brokeys!
[SPEAKER_00]: Get to the ski park!
[SPEAKER_01]: There was one big New York Times piece in 2018 about a woman who had joined for all the classic reasons we talked about like movie to New York with student debt, wanting disposable income,
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, who met this guy on the site named Ron, and to summarize a bit for you, Ron says that they should meet in downtown Brooklyn, midday, and he gets the girl to book the hotel room for him on the basis that he likes a dynamic or the baby feels like a personal assistant.
[SPEAKER_01]: He tells her to bring a friend, so she gets her friend to join, and tells them exactly how to dress, and then when they're in the room, they ask him to pay the $2,500 that they arrange for this meeting up front, and he says that he'll pay through the PayPal app,
[SPEAKER_01]: He's like, oh, um, request me and so they like request him and then he goes on this phone and like taps it a bunch and he's like, okay, it's done and then he makes him turn off their phones before they all have sex and the girls give him a massage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once that's done and he's gone, they realize that he never actually accepted the PayPal request and they figure out that he's actually, he's actually a public servant and a student and he's married with kids and not the high-flying investment banker that he says he was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turns out it's a bit like
[SPEAKER_01]: In that, like over time, a bunch of regular ask guys were on there looking to score some hoties, and the holidays were getting bamboozled in the process.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the Times asked Wade to comment on the situation, he said that the girl had been engaging in sex for money, and so was violating the terms of service.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's kind of the genius of it all, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because what much of sugar-babe being is is exchanging sacks and intimacy for money and gifts, but not in like third spaces, like strip clubs or motels, and usually happening over longer periods of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, like we said, it's a great area.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so because of this, seeking arrangements can constantly issue any responsibility they have to the girls.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can take accountability for safety infractions, but the second that money is on the table it becomes solicitation, and thus like not under their domain, even though this is basically the entire purpose of their service.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the entire purpose of their service, like when seeking arrangements was being dreamed up, do you think that like the explicit intention was for escorting essentially like that kind of payment, where someone's sending someone a specific sum of money for a date, or was it more like
[SPEAKER_02]: set up to be kind of a transactional type relationship where you go on dates and then maybe someone sends you money to like spoil you or, you know, replicate the kind of relationship that you might be in if you were actually dating a wealthier man.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it could be both.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot of wink-wink nudges, especially in the early years, about the sexual undertones of it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, it's sexy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the website had all these like sexy stock photos on it and it's
[SPEAKER_01]: like what is sugar-babying?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like what is the difference between that and escorting?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I guess it's the longer-term companionship, but like it's so case-by-case, like every relationship that comes out of seeking arrangements is different, but like a lot of them are determined by gifts and money.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the second money is there, and the second sex is there, you're kind of fudge, because it's illegal.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: This was, you know, kind of the entire purpose of their service or at least an extreme suggestion that this was what the service was about.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is until recently.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I produced the website and I was struck by how different it looked to when like I first used it for example.
[SPEAKER_01]: It used to be quite a bit like busier and harder to navigate.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you remember how it looked before Hannah.
[SPEAKER_01]: a long time ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't really remember it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, basically now it has a much more like sleek and like visually pleasing interface.
[SPEAKER_01]: The photos are a lot more vague as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like hot men and women driving in like nice cars or dancing on a night out or like they'll just be picture of like a nice hotel villa.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rather than like yeah, the old stalk looking image isn't like some blonde sitting on the lap of an old guy that like used to be there.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've also dropped arrangements from the name and changed their name just to seeking.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also noticed another huge change on their about us page.
[SPEAKER_01]: They say in bold letters that, seeking today is distinctly different from its original model.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sugar dating, financial arrangements, and mutually beneficial relationship structures are explicitly prohibited under seeking community standards.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seeking is now designed exclusively for building genuine and aspirational partnerships.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's no longer a sugar site, but like, instead just a luxury dating site.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's trying to be right, except it'll never be right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You will never be right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ryan is also such a fucking scam.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh yeah, Ryan's stupid ways of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Accounts there just kind of disappearing into the ether and apparently like my friend was telling me that when you delete your account, like it actually still exists.
[SPEAKER_01]: So people will still see it and think you're on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like a lot of the time you'll be seeing people who actually delete their accounts like months ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every few months will be like final spend money on Raya and then I'll download it and then suddenly I'm like matched with people and like when did this happen?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it'll be like the most random ask guy and I'm like, I do not remember clicking on you, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fun to like the novelty of playing Raya and just being like, what celebrities gonna show up in this deck of people and then you're like, I'm obviously not matching with this celebrity and then you and who knows if they're even seeing you because they're so few swipes a day, even though you're fucking paying for the service, it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's why the famous guys I'm matching with me, it's because they haven't seen me yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's why LaKithe's stand field didn't match me all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I looked further into this and it looks like the change happened when Wade got married to his current wife, the slating named Dana, who he met in Ukraine when she was working under him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ha ha, that's what she said or something nice one.
[SPEAKER_01]: thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Apparently Dana has played a major hand in reforming the site and says that this is all done in service of eliminating fraud and protecting women's safety and encouraging meaningful hypergamous relationships which is so funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: Meaningful hypergamous relationships I want to t-shirt that says that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Can that be our merch?
[SPEAKER_01]: yeah that'd be kind of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of like empty corporate speak going on here but basically Dana says an interview that's seeking is about hypergamy 2.0 which she says is about quote the desire to uplift one another to give and receive equally as represented by my relationship with my husband.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the new seeking in her words is about building authentic connections and quote allows for a much more effective approach to dating in relationships with
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your thoughts on this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why the change from being a specialized service?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think it'll be effective?
[SPEAKER_02]: My assumption when you first said that was that it had something to do with sister foster or foster sister, I can't remember.
[SPEAKER_02]: It thought to sister.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought that it was to do with the fact that it is
[SPEAKER_02]: really kind of murky waters to be advertising a service that could be interpreted as a place where sex workers arranged to meet John's, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if it's kind of layered in all of this other jargon and isn't, you know, if that's the reputation that it has and people are trying to come down on any sort of promotion of sex work on the internet, then
[SPEAKER_02]: It wouldn't seem like inevitable that seeking arrangements would take a hit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm kind of surprised that it wouldn't have earlier.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the fact that it wasn't even because of that, it was because of a him entering this relationship is, well, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we like, it could be a mixture of all of the above, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, they're not going to come out and say it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I can't imagine that considering, I mean, go listen to last season on sex if you haven't, but like, considering all of the different like avenues that were affected by these laws, I just have a really hard time believing that seeking arrangements was able to kind of like,
[SPEAKER_02]: keep on keeping on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I imagine that would have played a role for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also do think it's really funny that they're like, well, we found a meaningful relationship, which is a relationship that came from her working bodytham, which to me feels, you know, hilarious.
[SPEAKER_02]: characteristic of the types of relationships that would thrive in a seeking arrangements type of world, but let's not blame a woman entirely.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure the government is also just a labor or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think that there's a lot going on here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think a big reason they did this, yeah, was to officially distance themselves from the negative connotations associated with sugarring.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does make me think that with the unpredictability of these dynamics, it might not be possible for something as corporatized as this just to stain itself when this brand of alternative relationship is so like illicit and has so much proximity to sex work and is contingent upon somewhat like dangerous gender dynamics and power imbalances.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do also feel like this is the same thing as every platform just kind of like like you were even saying with field like absorbing the affordances of the others.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just corporate speak and kind of more to protect the liability of the company than it is to foster like authentic connections because like what the fuck are you talking about why wouldn't I just go on like hinge or riot or the league if I wanted something if the league if I wanted something authentic or like luxury like
[SPEAKER_01]: It just feels very classic like a brand promising a service and then pulling it out from underneath you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also think that luxury itself is sort of like a coded word because I think that raya isn't obviously functioning as same way as seeking arrangements but like
[SPEAKER_02]: Raya, a lot of Raya, is men who seem to be financially successful in whatever field they are and then, like, women that should be on the violent because they're like women who are hot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women who are hot, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: The amount of people have mentioned that I've had Raya too and they're like, how did you get on Raya?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, okay, I got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not Raya hot, but like, oh, they definitely mean like, oh, they, they thought you had to be like a celebs love.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, but also like I think there's a model of like this isn't even a bash gets something there's a model of the type of woman that like gets on raya and is like there for the guys who are like I make enough money like yes it started off as maybe people in the arts or like people who were
[SPEAKER_02]: successful or like exclusive, but now I think it has sort of spiritually become like an echo of this sort of transactional relationship set up because totally.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's like it is a bit of finance pros and bodies, which is good for them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately until the kids then feel gets back to me, I've yet to really find my place on the app.
[SPEAKER_01]: Quick, keep stamp field.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was my that's my one who I don't want to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: I rejected me my year.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes How why haven't we discussed this bond?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure we did
[SPEAKER_01]: I was kind of thinking that surely this was a terrible business move, but I was reading on the sugar baby's subreddit that this hasn't really deterred people from still fostering sugar relationships on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more of like a brand change than anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: But wow, it is just like such a jump from like the nerd machismo of Wade back in 2009, like, as opposed to this current iteration of Wade, like he was just so-
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is what this is, and like what's wrong with that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he was so in that destigmatizing era, but like you can see how seeking arrangements has kind of been taken up by the waves of culture.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's that.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's maxed to Normiehood and or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I know he's status maxed to be like a low level Normie or whatever the fucking now he's fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Girls, if you are looking for other options, I hear dashflur.com is a popular alternative, but do not hold me to that, and I don't know that much about the website, so I'm gonna white my hands of liability here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I read it about it on like a separate it, but that was the alternative that the people were giving.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess to end off, Wade said in his book back in 2009 that things to his website, the next generations would never be able to imagine the terrible sense of isolation he felt as a guy with no game, but lots of smarts and money.
[SPEAKER_01]: He predicted, now, every kind of life or lifestyle variation, every permutation, every possible minority, gay, to warflowers, people with freckles, you name it, there's an all-line group of more likely a dozen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just thought this was kind of rich.
[SPEAKER_02]: Were you going to ask me for my input as a person with freckles?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think is a person with freckles like this?
[SPEAKER_01]: As a part of that minority?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, have you joined like some sort of people with freckles sex club on the internet?
[SPEAKER_01]: That is so the idea of seeking out someone who also has freckles to me is so deeply unsettling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also he wasn't like dwarves.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's a dwarf lovers.
[SPEAKER_01]: The truly oppressed group.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just kind of thought this was rich and also like insanely depressing because as we saw in the first two episodes of the season like the younger generations are experiencing
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, maybe then anyone ever has in this regard and I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think people like wait or partly to blame for that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, did you think it reinforces this sort of again complicated and not exactly true narrative that men are looking for sex and women are looking for money, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So of course, like making a business model off of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: entire concept isn't going to help reassure like young people who are coming up in dating that if they're a woman the only thing they have to offer is they're like looks or they're like sexuality and as a man the only thing you have to offer is you're a success in your finances.
[SPEAKER_02]: like, no, I don't think it's like doing any good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think that he invented this concept and I don't think that it wouldn't have not thrived without his contributions, but having it like spelt out there on a literal app probably isn't really getting like the best message out there.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's evidence for in cells to point to as like look at society, look at how it's being spelt out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think what we really need to be asking is what about the people with freckles and like what about the messages that they have absorbed and what if you're a broke bitch with freckles like where do you go from there?