[SPEAKER_00]: What's the song of the summer?
[SPEAKER_00]: You're asking me something from Iceman, have you listened to it?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, JoJo said she'd go through it and try and find a song that I'd like or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Try to find the bops.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't listened to a new Drake song in years, but you know what this year is?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey guys, you know what this year is?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the 10-year anniversary of Toronto Girl Summer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Toronto Girl Summer, you may ask.
[SPEAKER_00]: Toronto Girl Summer was 2016 when Drake formerly known as Aubrey Graham put out the album Fuse in which he sat upon the top of the CN Tower, the iconic building in Toronto, and things about things such as Kennedy Road, and
[SPEAKER_00]: Other Toronto locations can't think of them off the top of my hand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trinking every song is shouting like the most butt-fuck Toronto locations you can think of every single time.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, and when I went to fresh, it should take at a salad, you know, he's like, really?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like...
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, my friend Claire Shadow Claire saw Drake at a bar in Yeah, yeah, and he he was I think drinking like in a espresso martini all to himself and he had kind of a stanky based on and she was like Yeah, Drake was out in public by himself I just have such a hard time imagining him at being as famous as it is like existing amongst normal people He was with Suiser Lee's son
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that he actually has like stakes in one of the like Lee ventures or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: A very Toronto affair, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so ten years ago, views from the six came out and never has it felt better to be a girl living in Toronto.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going to a bar, hearing controller dancing with your friends, feeling on top of the world, feeling like
[SPEAKER_00]: Hearing people who went from Toronto express curiosity, genuine curiosity and interest in this place, thinking it was cool, had social cultural capital.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, you know, it kind of went on for a little bit 2019, the Raptors win Toronto on top of the world, where a cool city and then flatline.
[SPEAKER_01]: When Drake falls off, we fall off, unfortunately.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we monitor him in a public way a lot because we're like, well, it's like the weather.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like determining the weather, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when air like ground talk, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stalks, it's like stalks.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like stalks, stalks, stalks, stalks, stalks, ground talks, stalks, stalks, stalks, stalks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: has Drake, you know, done something bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Six more weeks of winter is Drake like up in the public eye.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Toronto Girl Summer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And right now Toronto is really in the pits, but that's for many reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Drake has released three albums and it's the anniversary of Toronto Girl Summer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think really what this means is
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite the fact that we've both abandoned ship, we have both left Toronto, neither of us intended on having a Toronto girl summer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still, I want this next generation of Toronto girlies to be able to experience, but we were privileged enough to experience for even a brief moment in time.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if Iceman's gonna bring Toronto back, I think.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to get out of the hell pit of people abroad talking at me about the Toronto accent, because
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I met someone in the UK when I was visiting who was like, oh, when people make fun of like South London accents, it's kind of wack because that's like, you know, a racialized accent.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like Toronto accent, like that's not at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like it's kind of wack, like it came from nowhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to say, I've written an article about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Toronto accent is a racialized accent when you make fun of it, maybe check yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's existed for a while.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a Caribbean and like North African infused accent.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's similar to something like a South London accent, but it came up in a country that no one thinks about on a global scale.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe look into it more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that people still like don't really understand how.
[SPEAKER_00]: universe Toronto is or like have a hard time I have I had people here I once was walking to someone and then they're like where you from I was like Toronto and I think where you from and then they kind of gave me a long list of like all the places that they've lived and been and they're like this is the what you'll learn if you stick around here like people are from all over the place and it's like bitch how condescending if you if you were really as worldly as you thought you were you would know a few things about Toronto bitch
[SPEAKER_01]: That is so, and people from Toronto were not bumpkins, and it's annoying when people treat us like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think what was exciting about Drake's early reign was that he kind of showed that type of diversity on a global scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I know there's like whatever people were getting mad at him for co-opting, cribbing, culture, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like we can get into the weeds of whether or not people think that's whack, but like it was kind of putting the distinct Toronto vibe on a global scale.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then also him being from Toronto, I think really undermined his credibility in a way that also speaks to people's, like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as a rapper, everyone's like, what are you rapping about?
[SPEAKER_00]: What malaise are you rapping about?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I know, it's all, it's a little rather frustrating, but it's a little rather frustrating, but song of the summer.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, my song of the summer is, um,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I've, no, never mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you can pick, I think that the song of the summer is the song, every it's like espresso.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the song of your summer?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, not, okay, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just watched for research.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just watched that research.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's been maybe wild about Cheryl Strade, who's a woman who likes the PCT when she was in her mid-20s.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was like super unprepared.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyways, it's directed by Jean-Marx Ballet, may he rest in peace, to French Canadian icon.
[SPEAKER_01]: he directed a lot of like big little lies and you can really see the parallels there but the movie ends with a Simon and Garfunkel song named if i could that i actually wasn't familiar with if i could so beautiful i've been bobbing that non-stop while i walk down the streets
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's my current song of the summer feels summery, feels a little bit melancholic, and kind of inspirational, like I feel like driven, I feel like emotional when I was into it, and I think that is my kind of song.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love like, and like the music people, I guess you can correct me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love like a minor chord and like a kind of folkie, like a acoustic song, kind of like girl by the Beatles, love that kind of like minor, like kind of there's something's a little off.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that song.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of haunting.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I could, or both, both.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I could, I've been listening to a lot of John Bias, silver dagger.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been listening to that a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, just I kind of want to hear a woman sing to me in a high register this summer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I mean my favorite kind of like folk or country song is like a really really soprano like vibrato woman, usually from the 70s or 60s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I watched Alice doesn't live here anymore last night.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you seen it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, no, but I've been meaning to.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you would love it, specifically.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ellen Burston is amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Chris Chris Overson's really hot at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Went off criteria and I was like going to watch it and then it's gone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Girl, you can figure something out.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got a VPN.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Hannah, and I'm Maya, and this is Rehash, a podcast about the social media phenomena that strike a nerve in our culture only to be quickly forgotten, but we think are due for a revisiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: This season is part two of a loose, no pen intended history of sex on the internet, the symbiosis of our two most basic instincts, innovation, and getting off.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you like our show and want to hear more from us, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash rehashpodcast where we have monthly bonus episodes, weekly mini episodes, and early access to our regular programming.
[SPEAKER_00]: 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_00]: Shakespeare, Pablo Picasso, the Beatles, Tom Sandevol, what do all of these people have in common?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you asking me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I've been take a gander.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Beatles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tom Sandable, who's the fourth one?
[SPEAKER_01]: Shakespeare and Pablo Picasso.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's your whole Picasso.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're Tom Sandable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Male luminaries.
[SPEAKER_01]: Artists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's that, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: But more importantly, they all had affairs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, okay, so specifically male luminaries who had affairs.
[SPEAKER_01]: People are going to get so mad that I called Tom Sandival and Luminary.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Luminary's part is more, well, I was really thinking about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I guess, you know, for as long as there has been marriage, there have been affairs, and like it or not, without infidelity, we would be deprived of some of the greatest works of art and history.
[SPEAKER_01]: T. And as we famously know on this podcast, Hannah loves cheating.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm pro-chading.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, I might actually go to queues with that by the end of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my, what do you think it is about the affair that makes it such a good source material?
[SPEAKER_01]: Emotions are extremely high on all sides of a coin.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like it's like the original passion.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the original sensation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the original.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did I say the original sin?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I'm Hindu, but yeah, I think that it's extremely sensational and heightened.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much drama baked into an affair.
[SPEAKER_01]: As we know, tender hearts lead to great art.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that from?
[SPEAKER_01]: I just made it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just, you said as we know, I thought baby, this was like, no, I just feel like you guys, you guys should just know that, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: As we know, we'll be know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, from the way that they're depicted in media, I think that sometimes the fair is sound like they're like in an evidibility.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's almost, it's an, a milestone of the human experience to, to be in sort of a torrid affair, or as the longtime slogan for Ashley Madison said,
[SPEAKER_00]: Life is short, have an affair.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you can tell, this episode is about Ashie Madison, which is a dating website founded in none other than Toronto, Canada, Toronto, Go Summer in 2001.
[SPEAKER_00]: It functions similarly to other dating sites in that you know you make a profile and you talk to other users in your area.
[SPEAKER_00]: Except that rather than chatting to fellow singles, the people on Ashley Madison are married people looking to carry out affairs with one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Ashley Madison is the brainchild of Darren J. Morgan Stern, who came up with the website to name by combining two of the most popular girls names at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because, you know, it's kind of discreet, it's kind of classy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think Ashley and Madison were thought to be like fancy names.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew this fact because I watched a segment about Ashley Madison on the Tire show five billion years ago as a child and it's been like burned and imprinted into my memory where all the capital cities of Canada should live instead of yeah they definitely should live there Queen.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I really, if I, like, sit and think about it, I can recall them, but like, I just, you know, oh, Hannah, Hannah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ashley and Madison are both such distinctly 80s baby names.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The 80s loved a Tiffany.
[SPEAKER_01]: They loved a Brittany.
[SPEAKER_01]: They loved a Chloe.
[SPEAKER_01]: They love Ashley and Madison, but they're kind of like they died a little bit in the 90s.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're not as popular, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like Ashley's not that popular of a name among girls we grew up with, necessarily.
[SPEAKER_01]: Claire is a very popular name among girls we grew up with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hannah is an annoyingly popular name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can't say the same for Maya, but Maya got too much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maya, I feel like I'm seeing an uptake of people's spelling Maya your way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just gonna say it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know, I hate them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the real evil genius behind the whole operation of Ashley Madison was CEO, Noel Bitterman.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Bitterman is responsible for Ashley Madison's like Frank in controversial marketing, including that slogan, Life is Short, Heaven of Fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: He also wrote many of the ads himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna send you a couple, actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can watch them.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I'm sure you can imagine like many television stations and websites refuse to platform these, you know, Ashley Madison put up a big stink because they were banned from advertising at the Super Bowl.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know the extent to the airtime that these fads got, but they certainly put their name on the map.
[SPEAKER_00]: They kind of make me laugh.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to describe them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, so there's a boy one.
[SPEAKER_01]: The boy one is a man who wakes up next to a lady who just like is Chubby and she's sleeping with her mouth open and she's very pretty.
[SPEAKER_01]: In my opinion, but he's like looks repulsed, and he wakes up in the middle of the night and grabs his clothes and runs down the stairs, and the ad is basically like Imagine if you had to like endure a bad one night stand for the rest of your life, or like when I stand with the wrong woman for the rest of your life, and Like the camera pants to a photo of the lady was like some food on her mouth, there's something smiling next to the man
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the girl one is a girl at a dinner with the worst man ever, and it's like, are you on a basically bad date for the rest of your life?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the man's being really shitty and disrespectful, then he's like happy anniversary honey, as he like leaves the date abruptly.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then it's like try Ashley Madison.
[SPEAKER_01]: The girl won a little more understandable than the boy wine I would say, but both.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, pretty crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're certainly in your face.
[SPEAKER_00]: If your business is explicitly targeting people who want to do something that is considered socially inappropriate, you may as well kind of go full force with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it's like the kind of villain thing where it's like when someone's being so outrageously villainous, you kind of have to be like, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's like it'd be scummy if you're gonna be scummy be scummy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suppose Yeah, there's like something in thousands something almost satisfying about how like overly foul it is like it's like Go be suck because you're like at least it's honest, which I don't know what that says about me But I also think there's something about like reflecting back on that time and you're like what things really is bad It's I remember or like we're saying they were and then you'd watch stuff like that and you're like oh, yeah, yeah Yeah, they were they were pretty grimy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's cooked
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but yeah, so Norl bitterman, he was left to kind of find all of these creative ways of promoting the company because, surprisingly, such classy ads as these, uh, we're not getting as much airtime as he wanted, so he, he did think such as he created pro monogamy blogs.
[SPEAKER_00]: to write in flammatory posts about Ashley Madison.
[SPEAKER_00]: Create like fake, bad publicity, and he even made anti Ashley Madison ad campaigns.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to send you one of these.
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, like, if places weren't going to post or air the actual ads for Ashley Madison, then like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they would share these ads that were supposed to be ads against Ashley Madison, but in a way are still promoting what the company does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoa.
[SPEAKER_00]: She sent me something.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's on Vimeo.
[SPEAKER_01]: That ballad gets him in a very good sketch.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like so fake that it seems comical.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was like supposed to almost seem a bit fake.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it has like the I think the element of like the out so basically it's this blonde man and he's like We don't agree with Ashley Madison as like a American and a loving father and husband my marriage matters and it it brings in this big Silver man fond and it kind of crushes out Ashley Madison like it just fuels there's something kind of satire cool about it inherently it feels like Tim Robinson yeah, that's really funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're such trolls
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yeah, this is really like a lesson, a crash course on the art of trolling, but yeah, Bitterman also guarded attention by making rounds at like various daytime television shows.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw him on the tire show as a child.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was on the view.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was on all of these shows.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd often bring his wife alongside, and in his interviews he would sit like stone-faced while the TV host asks him if he, you know, he felt any remorse over potentially ruining people's marriages, and he sort of always gave the same spiel, which was like Ashley Madison is a pragmatic approach to the inevitable.
[SPEAKER_00]: He insisted that like Ashley Madison wasn't causing anyone to cheat, who wasn't already going to do so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not he wasn't saying that everyone cheats, but like if you're going to cheat, it's better than hiring an escort or conducting a workplace affair.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you may as well use this website.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, what do you think of this sort of chicken in the egg situation?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like do you think a site like Ashley Madison?
[SPEAKER_00]: would maybe get someone to consider having an affair that like wasn't really heavily thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Having like this option or do you think that he's right that like if you weren't gonna cheat, you wouldn't be on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, if my math is correct to these guys, I think would be a part of like the Lachke generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they're kind of advertising towards the Lachke generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you guys don't know what that is, it's kid to kind of grip within the first wave of like,
[SPEAKER_01]: mass divorce rates where they would have to, they would be like a latch key on the door so that they could let themselves in and out of the house.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because they were so like unattended too because they were children of divorce.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that like a lot of cynicism started kind of creeping up in the decades during the latch key era and then like in the decades afterwards about like the sanctity of marriage.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that when you look at Gen Z today,
[SPEAKER_01]: younger and younger kids are gonna be married.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was not the case for like our parents generation.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like our parents generation One got married a lot later like we're a lot more lucy-goosey with these kind of traditional values for the most part and then also a lot of people dorsed and I think like
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's like playing into a cynicism that may have already been there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to say, I mean, it's similar to the Bob House episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, would actually incentivize people to cheat, who would never have thought of cheating, or people who are looking to cheat, finding a venue to do so, and would have probably found a venue to do so anyways.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say the latter probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't, I don't necessarily think
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's something about, like, perhaps not letting in a fair fall into your lap, but, like, being able to, like, act on that instinct, because I think even people in really healthy marriages, I'm sure I still have the thought running through their mind of, like, it's going on outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes it easier, like, a kind of streamlines the cheating process.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're planning a workplace affair.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just sort of happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know, I guess if you're gonna go through the trouble of like creating and paying for a profile on the site though, like you most want to an affair, like you're putting your credit card in.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ashim Addison supposedly from an outsider's POV seems to be like growing and thriving over the years and by 2015 it's boasting about having a user base of 37 million members when don't don't don't it gets hacked.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I don't know if you heard about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's a whole like Netflix talkie series about this, that I'm sure a lot of people have seen definitely like pretty in depth coverage of the hack, but basically someone or someone's going by the name of the impact team hacked into Ashley Madison's parent company servers.
[SPEAKER_00]: and basically we're able to access everything from customer data to internal emails.
[SPEAKER_00]: The impact team leaked a small portion of the compromised data and threatened to release more if avid life, the parent company did not permanently shut down the site.
[SPEAKER_00]: So along with this hack, they left a manifesto explaining their motivations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And their main gripe was that Ashley Madison advertised a full delete option, which would supposedly wipe a user's entire profile and information from the server.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were charging 19 USD for this, and it was being kind of positive as if it was different from just deactivating or like taking down your profile.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like clean slate, which obviously, if you're having an affair, you might feel compelled to pay that extra bit of money to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, the leak proved this whole thing to be a lie, because Ashie Madison still had the credit card information for all of their former users.
[SPEAKER_00]: So their names were still attached to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would not like getting rid of it in its entirety.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they also were sort of making it very difficult for people to find other means of taking down their account.
[SPEAKER_00]: without paying for like the $19 full delete, so the impact team, this team was like, your frauds and your like, calling people out of their money essentially, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because Ashley Madison was much more expensive to use than like a lot of typical dating sites.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, because they're like, we have old secrets, like your, your basically, yeah, up your privacy with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: basically, but women could join for free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women could, like, have my thinking limited charts, but men would basically, you'd be able to sign up, but then you'd have to pay to have tokens to be able to chat with other people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait, I'm not seeing that in the same, like, I'm intrigued because I understand it in the terms of seeking arrangements, but this is there, what does their stance, like, women should be allowed to cheat?
[SPEAKER_01]: So they, like, give them free profile and all that shit.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you might be able to imagine, like the popularity of Ashley Madison amongst women versus men was much lower.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, like you want men to use this, you want them to be able to find women.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you want them to feel like there are women on the site that would be worth blowing up their entire lives over as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bro, true, true, true, true, true.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which also led to people that like, avid life basically being hired to create fake Ashley Madison profiles for women, bots that we're chatting with men, like a huge inflation of their numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that 37 million user member base.
[SPEAKER_00]: very likely a fraction of that when you actually like wild.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's not really clear how many women were on there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like in the docu-series they had former coes, former employees who were on there who were basically saying like, yeah, if you were a man on Ashley Madison there was a really good chance you're talking to a bot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that is a crazy scam, but it makes sense like when you really think about like the sociology of it It makes a ton of sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course it does and so and also the ad about the woman like the ad that's centered on the woman versus the one on the man seems was like so much more empathetic You know what I mean like the man one was kind of making him seem like a scoundrel
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's the woman?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it kind of was looking at the difference between, like, you know, quote unquote, why women she versus why men she men for, like, aesthetic purposes and women for, like, treat, like, that feeling, like, loved and treated, which obviously does not matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is a crazy generalization, like, that is not always the case in any way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think she needs complicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, yeah, you could see their stance on it is very, like, gendered.
[SPEAKER_00]: totally yeah and but they were still trying to like suggest that there's a 50 50 split between men and women on the site so crazy we know yeah it's not true um also yeah obviously like these accusations were happening before the impact team had like done the leak before any of that and so as i'm sure you can imagine the like whatever semblance of credibility actually Madison
[SPEAKER_00]: was completely wiped out.
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, avid life media did not take down Ashti Madison, like upon the request of the impact team.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as a result, the entirety of their customer data was released.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everybody who had had an account on there within, I think there was a cut off, but like within a pretty large time frame, had all of their information out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: there were like lists going around and additionally the private emails of Joel bitumen were also released and so these emails revealed that even though bitumen was going on talk shows and he was bringing his wife around and being like we have a great monogamous marriage but I'm just like creating this service for other people right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Turns out he was trying to hire escorts.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was trying to hire team age escorts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like 19 18-year-old girls.
[SPEAKER_00]: These emails revealed all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: His poor wife had literally been on billboards for asking Madison.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was also like a really hard for me to have, but that's what they're sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fair enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't particularly related them to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry Queen.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, so
[SPEAKER_00]: interesting that he was engaging in the exact behavior that he was saying that Ashleigh Madison would deter people from doing, which is hiring sex workers outside of your marriage to cheat on your wife, but yeah, as Bitterman would end up like stepping down from his position following this leak.
[SPEAKER_00]: As part of the other people who were involved in the data leak, they were less being created of names involved, there were news papers publishing them, people were like going through it to see how many people had like .mil or .gov email addresses.
[SPEAKER_00]: high ranking public figures were implicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was mostly men listed because women didn't have to give credit cards to sign up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like a lot of this was through credit card information.
[SPEAKER_00]: So more men were sort of caught up in like the firestorm of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: but the media basically had like a field day, an Australian radio show had people call in to ask if their spouse was on the list, and someone was, oh, and then I mean, the consequences like we're really devastating in general, you know, people receive death threats, people lost their jobs, and multiple people hook their own lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, multiple.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, there were a few suicides from this, from the people who got caught cheating.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like there was one instance that was, it's, they talk about it and they interview the men's widow in the hockey series, but I think he was like working for church and she saw him that morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he went to work and he'd like gotten a call or someone was like look we found your name like involved in this leak We're gonna have to have a talk and then he went home and took his own life before with a call A week later about it from like what kind of like his he was working with like a church or like a Okay, so it's like the church called yeah, but like people were multiple people lost their jobs like
[SPEAKER_00]: Marriage is obviously we're being destroyed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it was public information and I think a lot of people were having like a lot of fun Going through the names and Circumstance people out and basically like setting them up for their come up and says because you know We famously love to catch a cheater online.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which brings me to last summer I'm sure you all remember the cold-play cheating scandal
[SPEAKER_01]: This is so funny because I was just listening to Lena Dunham on Monica Lewinsky's podcast talking about this, I'm not getting 10 minutes before we started recording.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, that's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you've seen this video, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want me to describe it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Jade, do you think you can, like, recall enough, do you?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's pretty simple, it's just like a man and a woman kind of conundling, and then the jump-o-tron turns on to them, and they, like, quickly separate in shock and, like, embarrassment, and then it, like, their identities were revealed, and it was two people who were having an affair with each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he was, like, a pretty high-ranking CEO, I want to say, and she worked under him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, he was the CEO for a software development company and she was the head of PR.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, bad PR.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait, not PR, maybe it was HR.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, yeah, she was the head of HR different.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also bad HR.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was the head of HR.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to her though, they were not having an affair.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is...
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her, she spoke to the New York Times like months later.
[SPEAKER_00]: According to her, she was separated from her husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was also apparently separating from his wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd like hung out in like a non-sexual non-ormantic capacity outside of work and she developed a crush on him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was their first time hanging out like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the first time they'd ever kissed according to her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, what they're doing in the kiss cam video is pretty innocent.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just literally has his arms around her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, things were made worse when Chris Martin remarks on Mike, either they're having an affair or they're very shy, crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, obviously, it's like a really scandalous, like kind of salacious video.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, I don't know if we have his side of the account and...
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously like maybe she's giving like a more sanitized version because as I'm sure you can imagine like this sort of ruined her life For the subsequent and the life of her family Yeah, so she's you know her kids don't like being seen with her in public They both had just stepped down from their jobs They kind of like obviously nothing continued on between the two of them afterwards They've been hiding out my God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just disgusting
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I find this really interesting because it's a scandal that's fallen in a long lineage of very public cheating scandals, most of which are what celebrities obviously these are two normal people.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's kind of amazing and fascinating to me why we continue to get so much enjoyment and like glee out of publicly shaming adultery and like do you have any
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's only probably gotten worse since Ashley Madison, to be honest, like I think during the Me Too era, a lot of things because there was such a lack of clarity about the spectrum of public shaming and the spectrum of punishment versus act, whatever, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a lot got conflated into it, and I think cheating got conflated into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember there was a girl in Montreal who did like a call out post.
[SPEAKER_01]: basically trying to cancel her ex because he cheated on her and she the way it was framed and written and like presented was in the style of like a colo post about like a rapist for example right and it was like what is the line here and that was on a very local scale but I do think that cheating kind of got absorbed into the wider me too umbrella pair that with like Twitter and like
[SPEAKER_01]: A lack of nuance, morality politics, teenagers who have never touched grass, more-alizing adults who have.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like the perfect storm for the type of environment, shot and Freudad.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that we've just never lost our human instinct to throw tomatoes to watch a public hanging.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that this is just like the new iteration of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we're any different in the realm of wanting to cheat on each other, and I don't think we're any different in the realm of wanting to shame each other for doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think that we've changed since the Scarlet Letter, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we now have this like mass venue to put out our feelings about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it doesn't require us to go into the public square and be seen as crude spectators like now we can do it anonymously.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like even more powerful.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's even more mass power there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, because still when you can turn the round on eyes and flip it and be like, well, what have you done?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what is your, like, what have you guilty of?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you don't have to show your face at all, so you can just kind of moralize from your couch.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's all very, like, dangerous.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think I think cheating getting absorbed into me too is like one of the more frightening things I've watched in recent years, which I think the track guys really showed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the level of punishment that came with Ned Fulmer.
[SPEAKER_01]: was on par with like someone who had done something like like a sex crime.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like they're like even the backlash towards John Malini is like what are we mad about?
[SPEAKER_00]: Mind your business and this is what I said on the try guys episode and I'll say it now is that like being a cheater like cheating on your wife does not make you like a the ret to the public like it doesn't make you like I can understand you being a pariah in your community but as your public figure
[SPEAKER_00]: you being like a not so standout boyfriend or husband is not really our business in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm not talking about abuse and I know that perhaps like maybe people put those things on par with each other and like I'm not undermining like the emotional damage that happens with cheating but like at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think someone that needs to be cast out of public life, even if perhaps they may or may not need to face consequences within their private life.
[SPEAKER_01]: My biggest gripe with the internet is defining people by the worst thing they've ever done.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the internet never being able to let go of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every time you look at a Lena Dunham video, because I'm very absorbed in the Lena Dunham world right now, the first thing that comes up at the top of every moment section is, oh, you guys are platforming this molester because she touched her sister's genitals when she was fucking sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, that is like, this is not even the worst thing someone's done because I was a child, but it's like the internet just refuses to forget things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And sometimes, it's things that people haven't even willingly put on their, like, your warned about, okay, be careful about what you put on the internet, it's going to be there forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: But some things are forced onto the internet, and non-consensually, like these people on the jumpbo trial, and it's like, they didn't even put it there to begin with, and no one will ever let them forget it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think people like to kind of talk about it like we're like moving away from that culturally, but I think was still love, like good, uh, public hanging word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Emerald's Fennel got something, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just kidding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that was more like people jacking off at home hanging, but she was she was getting somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are these people not jacking off in like a spiritual sense?
[SPEAKER_01]: I, yeah, the queens are definitely rubbing one out on Twitter about it, but it's like definitely like, you know, she took it to its extreme for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yeah, she's not like great with metaphor that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so yeah, I think we both see infidelity as like a complicated, somewhat maybe morally great subject.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like to say kind of contrarian, controversial things about cheating that like are, I'm being hyperbolic.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you give me a couple of Martinez, I will say some things and
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, it's complicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I love when Hannah has a couple more teens.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: I go evil mode, but because cheating is so common, I do think it's worth trying to understand a bit about like why people cheat and like widen yeah, choose to engage in this kind of behavior.
[SPEAKER_00]: I found an anonymously written article in Toronto life from 2013 from someone who claims to have spent a year on Ashley Madison.
[SPEAKER_00]: The author has said she'd been with her husband since university and she says they were in a loving marriage that you know they'd had two kids together and a house in the suburbs and a cottage and you know all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had a busy and successful career which her husband was supportive of and you know by all accounts they lived a fairly idealized life.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, she describes turning 46 and hitting a
[SPEAKER_00]: she realized she was middle aged and she starts investing in her appearance and trying to quote delay the inevitable.
[SPEAKER_00]: She and her husband are still like having sex at this time but it's less frequent and it's no longer exciting, it's predictable and she says she's also become resentful of the amount of time that she's having to like dedicate to all of the different family obligations.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, she decides to try Ashley Madison after a friend of hers revealed she was having an affair with someone to met on the website.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said it triggered a paying of envy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when her family went out of town, she decided to create an account and soon was spending at least an hour a day on Ashley Madison.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, like based off of like the information I've given you like what do you think her motivations are like this woman who seems to have like an okay marriage But is being enticed to go out and seek in a fair midlife on we
[SPEAKER_01]: I think just midlife crisis probably, a little bit of boredom.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think women when they entered the domestic sphere.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this goes for men too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm not saying this doesn't go for men at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does also, but like, feeling like the second you hit domestic life, you are like no longer a public person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you no longer are publicly viable.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're no longer seen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think because we've been taught to attach so much of our self-worth to the way we are perceived and desired.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like something, a part of you kind of dies, I would imagine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm worried for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Still being somewhat young, but on the precipice of 30, I think that a part of you dies, and she was maybe looking to reintegrate that part of herself and to feel desired and seen and maybe push the boundaries of her moral life, I guess, her, what, where her morals are when we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she sounds like someone also like, you know, who's been with someone for so long.
[SPEAKER_00]: That maybe is trying to make up for like, missed experiences, or just like reconnect with her you, then she talks about delaying the inevitable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think feeling like you're saying, yeah, there's like feeling alive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like you can get so stuck and bogged down in married life and it's no one's fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can have the best relationship ever and I'm talking like I'm married But this is what I have heard like and what I've observed of the married folk I know But like yeah, it's a bogged you down.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get so stagnated and to routines you have to work so hard to get out of that and it's like Yeah, you want to feel alive.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and so, you know, who would agree with you is Esther Perrell, the famous rapper, who wrote an article for the Atlantic called Why Happy People Cheat, which explores just that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that, but I, this is my intro to Esther Perrell, because I, I, behind the times.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she spoke to a woman with the surname Priya for the article, who was in a similar predicament to the Toronto Life author.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was having a fair, and Priya told Perrell that the experience made her, quote, feel like a teenager with a boyfriend and that it made her feel alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Perrell says that Priya's affair is, quote, a crisis of identity and internal rearrangement of her personality.
[SPEAKER_00]: As she nears the mid-century mark, she is having her own belated adolescent rebellion, which, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought was really poignant.
[SPEAKER_01]: I witnessed, among a lot of people, I knew from call it like university, let's say, myself included who had entered into, and I think Hannah, you can probably relate to this too, like long-term relationships at a very young age.
[SPEAKER_01]: Relationships that helped to kind of like stabilize you, because like at that age, you're so untethered, you're so, you're like a spinning top.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are like having new hormones,
[SPEAKER_01]: That no one tells you about in like young adulthood you're thrown out of the nest You're like drinking legally like you're doing all this stuff that's really stabilizing you You enter into a long term relationship that stabilizes that But I found and I've talked about this with friends a lot that you kind of enter like a granny stage in your early 20s And I think that was something I've seen about a lot of people I know and then when you hit your mid 20s those relationships and for one reason or another
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you kind of like relive the adolescence you live to the teenager all within a pretty short time span between teenagehood and now We're like, I felt like I was a granny.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was so domesticated in my early 20s.
[SPEAKER_01]: No one's fault And then in my mid to late 20s I went crazy like I was like being kind of bad and like drinking way more and like partying a lot and probably making like poor choices, but
[SPEAKER_01]: It did kind of reinvigorate my lust for life like something that I kind of lost in a long-term relationship, because we were acting so married.
[SPEAKER_00]: A thousand percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, like you said, like I had a similar experience and I think when you're young, you're still the oldest you've ever been.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you think you grow out of things and you think that like you've hit like a stagnant kind of state.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you keep going and you realize that no, you are so much more malleable, you are so much more unstable, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can kind of be bad, whatever, quote-unquote, with a wiseness that you didn't have when you were a teenager and being bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that I needed to kind of stabilize myself my mental health and really be restricted with myself and boring for a while in order to kind of come out of that and now be able to be fun within the restraints that I'm able to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think, I don't know, I don't feel bad about my crazy era.
[SPEAKER_01]: to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I would say I'm still in a bit of a crazy era.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have so much time to make up for, I think, a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's fun to watch.
[SPEAKER_00]: My ears, like, so enabling.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I just care about my friend.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, I like encouraging human complexity and like, I don't think any time I do something that's like a bit morally dubious.
[SPEAKER_00]: My ears, like, I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, but Hannah, when you do something, actually bad, I do check you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd also don't believe in like lying to your friends or being like girl power with their friends when they're being so bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think accountability is also important.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all about balance.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about balance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something really interesting that Pearl says has to do with how we understand like the cultural significance of infertility.
[SPEAKER_00]: She writes infertility may be ubiquitous, but the way we make meaning of it, how we define it, experience it, and talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: is ultimately linked to the particular time and place for the drama and folds.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this she says is because the meaning and function of the institution of marriage is so context-dependent.
[SPEAKER_00]: She suggests that the reason affairs and contemporary Western cultures are looked at in terms of their like betrayal is because marriage today is also generally regarded as a willing commitment based on a singular love for another person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she says we are also in, quote, an age of entitlement where sex is a right linked to our individuality, our self actualization, and our freedom, and that the conscious choice we make to reign in our sexual freedom is a testament to the seriousness of our commitment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the way we as a society see it in choosing to break that commitment, we are undermining this love.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder, in order to keep the institution of marriage alive, or I guess to justify it in times where it doesn't necessarily have the same functional purpose that it once did, do you think we've had to build up the mythic status of love?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if we're necessarily mythologizing love more than it ever has.
[SPEAKER_01]: Being, I think that love is just kind of like, lost its, yeah, lost its material purpose in the way that it used to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we're, we're like, it's so poorly defined at this point that we don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it never has been like fully defined, but I think there was more material value again, to like getting married or like sharing assets in the name of love that, yeah, I don't really know what do you think?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know either, I guess, it's like, like, we seem to think that love, like when it's true love is like powerful enough to course correct any other human impulse.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not necessarily saying that that's this period as well, but like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess when I think about like, people who are sort of like mindlessly and aimlessly using the apps to connect with people, people who are like going through these situationships,
[SPEAKER_00]: and like waiting for something that's going to really capture them, like in rapture them, like take them out of this like place, like she's saying, like this sort of phase of like self-actualization and like have enough power to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels like maybe like we need love to feel like magic in order to like really Believe in it or like it needs to like show itself in this Maybe more like love retreat love like magic and like unless you know Harry Potter's on a fucking broomstick like going over your head You're like how could I commit to this relationship?
[SPEAKER_00]: How could I take a risk?
[SPEAKER_00]: How could I try and like grow or build something with someone and I guess Maybe that's because like
[SPEAKER_00]: in order to like choose to enter something as kind of expensive and like complicated as a marriage without like the kind of clear benefits that like it would have given you back in the day or like somewhere else in the world it really needs to feel like that it needs to feel
[SPEAKER_00]: like this one instance in your life, where things almost supernatural.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also think love has extremely contrasting ideals placed to like, you know, there's the idea that love is healing, you know, that I'm, it's self-optimizing, like, that's what Pearl says.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I'm gonna be a better person when I fall in love.
[SPEAKER_01]: I met someone and they make me whole, and then there's the idea that love is pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And those two ideas are very wrapped up in it, and so I think when you cheat, you're kind of betraying, but then also re-infigurating the both of those ideas, like you're betraying the idea that love heals you because you're going out and seeking something that undermines the idea that you've been healed or you're like,
[SPEAKER_01]: reopening the wound or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're not being a good person the way love should turn you into, but then also love is pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you are kind of like sparking that like I think you know there's the idea that an affair can actually save a marriage, which people have talked about sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Pearl kind of suggests that like that could be the case.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean baby girl.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's like been recent media that kind of Paws it's that concept, you know, or like explorers that idea that like you need to bring the pain back into love When love becomes too stagnant you need to like reinvigorate the emotional spark you need to bring the pain you to bring the tension back and the friction
[SPEAKER_01]: Which Esther Pearl talks about a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: She really believes in the idea of friction.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, when people find themselves in a frictionless marriage, it's like, well, let's bring the friction in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where's the friction?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an affair sometimes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, I think like, when we moralize, it's like, I just don't think that that's a very holistic understanding of the way that relationships work and the way that the self works and the human condition works.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, Perrell identifies this sort of fallacy of modern marriage, which really identified my personal fears about the whole thing, and she says that contained within the small circle of the wedding band are vastly contradictory ideals.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want our chosen partner to offer stability, safety, predictability, and dependability, and we want the same present to supply all mystery, adventure, and risk, which she suggests, yeah, these expectations of marriage
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you think of this theory?
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally, yeah, because how can someone, like, you really, you can't be both unless you're totally manufacturing that within your relationship, like, oh, like, role-playing or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: To kind of keep the spark alive, but ultimately, like, how are you supposed to kind of ethically, quote-unquote, keep that spark going and keep that push and pull going without it feeling kind of falsified, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, like, an affair feels like the only real way
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think when I, you know, I'm a couple of Martinez in and I'm being a bit of a shock jockey, this is sort of the heart of what I'm getting at is that, you know, having not been married, but, you know, watching married people and sort of...
[SPEAKER_00]: thinking about the institution.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just have a really hard time imagining that like you will not hit a point where you kind of have that break.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether or not you act on it is a whole other story but like I just think that like and there are probably exceptions but like most human beings are going to probably like experience a thing where they're like I am not like content
[SPEAKER_00]: fully within this singular story that I'm now going to live out for decades.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know that marriage just can be like many things you can have phases, you can have this, and you can have that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I kind of like, and I, okay, I feel about saying this because I've only time I was ever cheated on, I was like 17, and I don't know if that counts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: I have immense empathy for people who have been cheated on.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also, I have empathy for people I know who have had affairs who have cheated.
[SPEAKER_00]: because I think that usually, and this is what prerogates at this in the article, it's not necessarily always because there's an issue plaguing the relationship or an issue with the partner.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's you, I've heard her say this too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like it's not necessarily like a reflection of your love for the other person, but there might just be something else that needs fixing and like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like we get things out of those types of experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when you're single and you're dating, like each kind of person you're seeing, you're gonna get something out of that experience and grow from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like when you're just with one person, like, and you're cut off from that, I can imagine feeling stagnated for whatever reason in life and like wanting some sort of an outlet or some sort of like push in a direction or something to occupy your mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a difference between acting on it and like disobeying someone's trust and having those urges.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I also think that like human beings and human behavior is complicated and that like we really as someone who's not had an affair I don't necessarily think I can stand here on like a moral high ground and critique people who have because I haven't been pushed to that position yet in my life and not yet but like I haven't and I don't necessarily, I can't say,
[SPEAKER_00]: what, I don't know, I can't predict how I would act.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have also been cheated on a bit older, and I have also had the impulse too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one time I felt like I did, we were in a November relationship, I hooked up with someone else, and I immediately like, I just have a compulsive honesty, like I find it really, really hard to be dishonest, but that's because that's a reflection of like who I am and my personality.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's pros and cons to it, like I think the older I get, the less of a filter I have, that gets me into trouble.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as sometimes I would like to be more restrained, but then there's also people who are kind of repressed and have difficulty.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not really about honesty, but difficulty expressing their feelings.
[SPEAKER_01]: Difficulty sharing with another person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Difficulty admitting like when they're wrong, and I don't think that necessarily means that someone's a malicious or bad person, like everyone is just so different and handle things completely differently.
[SPEAKER_01]: And,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have empathy for the person who cheated on me.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just extremely complicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not for you for me, but it was a different situation in different situations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also young though, we could have empathy for the back of that person was a teenager, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I don't, I don't hold them to any kind of a kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to have empathy for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, yeah, I think we can acknowledge the person with a teenager.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's like, yeah,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it's so case-by-case, and I think that the more our society is repressive and scrutinizing and punishing the more people are going to, the people are going to keep doing this stuff that they're going to be even more secretive about it, you know, and so it's like
[SPEAKER_01]: When you give people the room to breathe and be able to talk about their bad behavior, or talk about their morally grave behavior, I think that's actually the path towards healing and understanding, and I think that shaming is actually one of the worst.
[SPEAKER_01]: things you can do.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's the most counterproductive thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it promotes recitivism, or it promotes someone completely turning into themselves and isolating themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, recitivism like becoming even maybe more extreme in there about behavior.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's like, I just don't, yeah, I just don't believe it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think shame is a terrible, terrible idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I also like going kind of back to what we were saying earlier like I think that when we're young we have this idea and I had that like all of our foolish impulses and our selfish impulses are going to do there with age and the older I get the more I'm realizing like how naive that thought is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I was confiding with a friend about like a crush recently and she said, I was like, oh my god, it's it's so frustrating, it's whatever, and she said, good to feel them occasionally remind you your life, which is what we were saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just, I do think that there is something that's reawoken when you have these sort of unrealistic and impractical feelings for another person, like feelings that you can't really make any real life of you, which are often the situations that become affairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not really someone you've a future with, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of absence of a future or like a picture of a future is part of what makes it enticing because you can't you're restrained and you don't even have to think about things in the long term and Like this is my experiences like a 29-year-old woman of being like wow I had a crush reminded me of when I was young I can't fathom what it would be like to be like a wife and mother in her forties like to kind of Feel that disconnected from the very feeling set, you know remind you of your
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think the older you become the more, like, in many cases, the more measured your emotions become.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, the times that I felt, oh, most, like, making art, like you suggested the beginning of this episode, the times that I felt most buzzingly human, like, that have slowed me down, are, like, some of my worst times.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, when I, when I have been, like, in the depth of despair, like, I have never felt each moment on a moment to moment basis.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I sometimes I don't want that at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like it, but sometimes those are like the moments that produce the most Yeah, creative potential sometimes like I don't know it's a movie's feel different songs sound different food tastes different You can't sleep Yeah, I don't know and yeah again, I have completely empathy for people have been cheated on it It is one of the worst feelings in the world, but I think it's a multiple truth situation
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not talking about like serial cheaters who treat the people they date like like discardable like whatever to try this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about affairs and I think I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think those are kind of two different things almost.
[SPEAKER_00]: definitely like well so much like the empathy I guess we're describing like it's more for the types of situations that parallel is outlining in this article.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think when it comes to people who are going and making accounts on Ashley Madison, seeking them out, I feel a bit more complicated about it like
[SPEAKER_00]: I think there's something a bit more pathological there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they should be dogs and I don't think that their lives should be ruined in the capacity that they were.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, even then that's complicated though because even we'll talk about it oh, you know, a man are looking to trade in their wife for a younger hutter version.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, okay, but when we also talk about someone feeling desired in a relationship, sometimes, and I just think the instance of it is higher among men, but like men also want to feel desire.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like, ah, it's just really complicated.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes people are like scared and don't know how to like maybe they're not meeting as many people to go happen affair with so they make an online for about like like I wonder if like in the age of the apps where dating can feel you know like ordering delivery like it's so easy to touch of a button like
[SPEAKER_00]: Do married people, maybe they feel left out or more tempted to see like what that experience is like Because the woman who wrote the Toronto Life article she was on Ashley Madison like I said earlier like for an hour a day And she went on over half a dozen dates before she landed in like this brief affair with a man that ended because he couldn't perform
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and he was like, oh, it's because I'm so guilty over having an affair.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't get it up, but then when she went to go and delete her account, she saw his profile back up and so she was sort of like, that's an ill in the coffin like he's a player and she realized like, yeah, most of the guys on the site were probably scheming guys and you know, she had it pretty good with her loving and supportive husband
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that perhaps like the jealousy that married people might have already feel like when talking to single friends or people who are dating and like looking at that like grass as a greener situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: do you think it might be like exacerbated by this like culture of dating apps because dating, if you if you haven't actually felt the you know horror that is being on the apps like I think from an outsider's perspective it might seem really enticing or fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, of course, when I was in a relationship and I wanted the relationship to end all like I think about it was like how fun it would be to be on the apps and all my friends were like, girl, you do not know how bad dating and turn on it is and then I learned the hard way and yeah, we all do Yeah, but also somehow you get more attention when you're in relationships for some reason, I find like what people can smell desperation on you when you're seeing um, but
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I think it's definitely exacerbated.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think people in relationships who have been in relationships for a long time, sometimes predating the apps, have no fucking clue what it's like being single.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they kind of like moralize your bad single behavior, you're like literally shut the fuck up because one day you're gonna have an affair, and you're gonna want me to be there for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think a little human compassion on both salads is important.
[SPEAKER_01]: T.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.