252: Devoid of Pop Culture

Overtired 252

[00:00:00] Christina: You’re listening to overtired. I’m Christina Warren here as always with Brett Terpstra. Brett, how are you?

[00:00:11] Brett: I’m I’m swell. I’m swell, Christina, how are you?

[00:00:15] Christina: I’m fine. I’m fine. Uh, you’re swell. Is that like a sarcastic swell? Is that like a, um, a genuine swell? Is that like a

[00:00:22] Brett: So, so swell. Swell means means, okay. It means like, I guess what most people would say, okay, well, most people just say, I’m good if you ask them how they’re doing, but I’ve never, I’ve never been down with that. Like if you asked me how I’m doing, I’m either going to be awesome. Which means like, I’m good. I use hyperbole when answering this question, uh, if I’m just okay.

[00:00:48] And you know, I’m, I’m, I’m swell and if I’m bad, I will fucking tell you about it.

[00:00:55] Christina: I really appreciate your honesty in answering that question because I often. [00:01:00] Am not like I, you know, people are like, how are you? And I’m usually like, I’m good. I’m fine. Even if I’m like hit by a car, like, you know, bleeding, like whatever I’m going to be like, I’m fine. I’m a wasp. Like, this is what we do.

[00:01:13] Like, that’s like the probably waspy his thing about me is, is the, uh, you know, like need to say that you’re fine. Even when you’re not.

[00:01:22] Brett: Yeah, I will tell you, like, if you’re in a zoom meeting and the host says, how are you guys doing today? If your answer is so awesome, it changes the mood of the meeting.

[00:01:34] Christina: Huh?

[00:01:35] Brett: Just try that next time. Someone searched a meeting off like that, just go off mute and be like, I am so awesome. And don’t answer any up life hacks.

[00:01:47] Mental Health Corner

[00:01:47] Christina: I like it. I like it. Uh, okay. So that’s actually a good segue into Brett’s mental health corner. Any updates?

[00:01:54] Brett: Um, so what day was it? Yeah. It was a little manic, right? Last [00:02:00] time we, last time we were recorded. Yeah. Yeah. I had not slept. So that lasted all of one day. Um, and I’ve been, I haven’t been depressed yet. Um, I guess, I guess I have this impending feel this feeling of impending doom. Like it’s gonna get depression.

[00:02:21] Uh, it’s gonna get depression, uh, that like that the depression is coming. Um, which is.

[00:02:28] Christina: the loop, the looming, like on violence of like, yes, it’s coming.

[00:02:32] Brett: It’s going to be shitty because work right now is super stressful. And they, like, I have a project that I’ve been working on pretty much since I started and I had finished it. And when I presented it, they were like, this looks great, except let’s do everything different. And like completely pulled the rug out from under me, move the goalposts down the field.

[00:02:57] So now I’m scrambling. I’m like, oh my God, I’m [00:03:00] going to need, this is I need two weeks. And they’re like, can you do it in a few days? And I’m like, I will try. And then yesterday, my boss is like, Hey, so how about tomorrow? And, and I, so I’ve been working on it all day today, nonstop. I think, I think I did it. I think I did it.

[00:03:21] I think I did two weeks worth of work in two days and I deserve a raise. But if it’s not good enough and I hit a depression and am not able to focus like this, I’m going to be fucked.

[00:03:38] Christina: Yeah. I mean, I think at that point, like you told them, you know, I need the time, um, before that you delivered something and then they changed the deliverables on you and you had to go back and. Skirt it make step up. I mean, look, it’ll get done or it won’t, I’ve become very, uh, Nisha about this sort of thing.

[00:03:59] Brett: [00:04:00] You know, what’s nice though, is if this were a freelance job, there would be all this like renegotiation and everything. And like, I, I would be concerned about how over budget we’re going, but when you have a day job and your salary, you’re already getting paid for this, like you just kind of have to roll with it, but it’s not like it’s not a whole renegotiation thing.

[00:04:21] Christina: No, exactly. It it’s just one of those, like, again, like I said, it’s like, you’re either going to be able to it’s either going to be ready or it’s not like, it’s a very simple thing.

[00:04:33] Brett: shitty though, is that so much I’m on the dev REL team and I’m a tech writer and my team has been tasked with originally 150 pieces of new content for the year. And that was just bumped to one 70 because somehow quantity is going to matter more than quality and a good portion of that [00:05:00] content can’t be published.

[00:05:02] Like I’m my project is to develop the pipeline and the platform for publishing that content. So until my project is done, we’re not making any progress on what, uh, KPIs, which I’m told are key progress indicators.

[00:05:19] Christina: right. Or performance indicators? Yes.

[00:05:21] Brett: Yeah that, yeah. Key performance indicators. Like this is all I have to ask every meeting I have to ask.

[00:05:27] What does that mean? Um, but like, we can get any KPIs marked off until I finished my project. So it’s not a, it’s not a, a good one for you. If it gets done, it gets done. It’s like everyone is depending

[00:05:42] Christina: Well, no, you need to get it done, but it is also one of those things. If it’s not going to be done tomorrow or if it’s going to be in tomorrow, but you’re still going to need a couple of days back and forth on it. Like you can’t, I mean, there are only so many hours in the day, right? Like sometimes you have really hard deadlines.

[00:05:59] Like [00:06:00] this is, you know, like we have an event and it is taking place tomorrow at this time. Or like, like your, uh, the, the F1, um, launch, right? Like we’ve already announced this, this has to be live on the page, but sometimes, I mean, like, this is something that. You have something that’s ready to go. You have the pipeline there, there will.

[00:06:21] More than likely be changes even after things

[00:06:24] Brett: Oh, for sure. For sure. Like, we’re going to have MVP minimum viable product, uh, to get this out the door, it’s going to be iterated for a long time. Uh, like my biggest obstacle right now is making it iterative, like planning. So it can scale as I could. I can make a Jekyll site to run my own shit, no problem, but to make a Jekyll site that can have contributed like a hundred different contributors and be able to flex with all the structural changes that’ll happen.

[00:06:57] That takes a lot more planning.

[00:06:59] Christina: Yeah, no, it [00:07:00] does. I mean, I, I only know insofar as like, I know that like our, our doc site. Is, you know, basically it’s kind of run by, by GitHub and markdown and, and anybody can file an issue, you know, if they see something with the doc and they can make a, uh, you know, they, they can either, uh, you know, file like an issue, if there’s a problem or they can file a PR if they want to make a correction or whatever.

[00:07:20] But I mean, and I don’t even know a ton about our infrastructure, but I know that it’s, you know, like complex in

[00:07:27] Brett: that. I do that with the documentation for bunch. Like the bunch code is a private repo. That’s just for me. Um, but the documentation I made into a public repository and when people find something confusing or want to add something, they just make pull requests and it’s super handy to open source, that kind of stuff.

[00:07:48] Christina: Yeah, totally, totally. I mean, and that’s, that’s something that, um, um, like the docs team has done, but I know that it even, it took them. I mean, I’ve been there for four years and so I joined a little bit after they’d already kind [00:08:00] of started. They’re overhaul of everything, but I know that, you know, they’re, they’re still iterating things and they have, you know, plugins and tools and stuff.

[00:08:08] And, um, when we add new things to the platform like Microsoft learn, which, you know, are like these video component, like lessons like that sort of thing, like that had to have a whole new template, um, and, and had a whole new thing in terms of how you submit stuff to it. And yeah, there, there can be lots of stuff, but I have comp I have faith.

[00:08:26] It that you are gonna have done what you need done and, you

[00:08:31] Brett: what I’m debating though is. Okay. So when I, when I went through the onboarding, one of the questions in one of the many forms I filled out was, do you have a disability? And it listed examples of disabilities and it included bipolar. And it also said that disabilities are protected and they want her to know about them because they actually legally have to have so many people would just so, so I, I went ahead, said I have a disability and I’m [00:09:00] debating if, if depression kicks in and I’m unable to complete a high pressure task, I might just go, I’m like, just talk to my manager and see if, uh, if he understands that bipolar is going to get in my way.

[00:09:18] Christina: Yeah. I mean, I think that it’s, I think the hard thing with you is that it’s unpredictable, so you don’t know when it’s going to hit, but I do feel like if it is like, if you feel like you’re in the place where I’m not going to meet this deadline because of this. Yeah. I think you need to have a

[00:09:33] Brett: Like, I don’t wanna, I don’t want it to be seen as like I’m making excuses and I have this like card I can play anytime I want to. I’m just like,

[00:09:41] Christina: No, no, no. And I

[00:09:42] Brett: them to know it’s valid.

[00:09:44] Christina: No, and I don’t think anybody will see it that way. I think that it’s just one of those things where you have to be like, okay, if you know, um, Okay. And, and I, and I think it’s one of the things you don’t want to preemptively say. I think it’s one of those things where in the [00:10:00] event that let’s say that you were like, we have to have this thing done.

[00:10:04] Um, and, and you, for some reason felt like you weren’t able to do it, then you need to just communicate why, so that they can make alternative arrangements, like your bus factor I’m sure. Is the bus factor, meaning like how likely is this to like completely die if bread is hit by a bus tomorrow?

[00:10:22] Brett: Oh, I like that.

[00:10:23] Christina: um, like, you know, it be, uh, frustrating and annoying and bad?

[00:10:29] Yeah. But like, ideally none of us should, should be like that high of a bus factor where like everything stops, you know what I mean?

[00:10:39] Brett: Yeah, no, I’ve always gone out of my way to make sure that. If I disappear just for whatever reason, I liked the idea of a bus bus factor. I like that terminology, but I’ve always gone out of my way to make sure everything I do is documented. Someone else has their finger on the pulse of what I’m doing.

[00:10:56] And I can disappear anytime. I want to, like, that’s a sense of [00:11:00] freedom for me.

[00:11:01] Christina: It is, it is. I mean, some people, and I will admit, like for myself, this was a hard thing to kind of come to terms with, but like we’re all replaceable and there is something freeing. I think when you like, realize that it’s like, no life will go on. If I’m not here, the work will be done. It might not be as good.

[00:11:16] It might be different, but the work will get done. It’s just a matter of making sure that it’s documented and that you’re communicating properly where I’ve made mistakes before is I haven’t communicated well, I wasn’t going to be ready for something and, and that’s not a good thing. So I think communicate when, you know, I’m not going to hit this.

[00:11:34] Um, I like, I wouldn’t do like a preemptive heads up because that might set expectations that can’t be relied on and that’s not accurate. Uh, but you know, being able to be preemptive and be, but like being able to say, like, if you know what’s happening and it’s coming, it’s like, Hey, I’m going to need help on this.

[00:11:52] And that’s the thing too, right? Like, this is the nice thing about the fact that you work for a company now and you work on a team is you’re not an island. [00:12:00] Like you were an island for so long. You had to rely on yourself and you didn’t have anybody else to be able to count on. Um, even if you are working on your own projects, you’re not the only person.

[00:12:11] So there’s, there’s freedom in that too. And knowing, Hey, like it isn’t all on me.

[00:12:17] Brett: Oh, my God. I don’t think I told you who the new person that got hired to my team is

[00:12:22] Christina: No, you didn’t.

[00:12:25] Brett: I want you to guess it’s someone from our past.

[00:12:29] Christina: Um, is it Victor?

[00:12:31] Brett: is That was really good.

[00:12:34] Christina: Okay. So the reason I knew is because you told me that Victor had introduced you to the guy who got you on the job. So that was why I was thinking that, oh my God, that’s awesome. I know he’s been like, he’s been doing his own thing for a while now

[00:12:48] Brett: Well, and he got into, he was working with a startup and, and as startups are want to do, they screwed him. And then he suddenly regretted not taking the job that he got me, uh, [00:13:00] or like that he got me in the door for. And, uh, he came back and, and our manager was super excited. Like he loves Victor so much. Um,

[00:13:10] Christina: great. I mean, this is awesome. I’m really, I’m so happy about this. Cause I know like, yeah, like this is really good and this can be really good for Victor.

[00:13:19] Brett: yes, we were. We’re going to be a big ha it’ll be me, Aaron and Victor will be the writers. And, maybe we’ll we should have Victor on the podcast

[00:13:28] Christina: Oh my God. Victory would be great to have on the podcast.

[00:13:31] Brett: Next next week. We’ll see how it goes. Um, but yeah, uh, Victor on and I’m excited because Victor is someone that I trust with like, uh, editing it, like in the same voice that the rest of us are using.

[00:13:46] So it like, he’s perfectly capable. Aaron and I have like documented and worked on like a style guide basically.

[00:13:54] Christina: yes. Yeah, because you need to have like a consistent voice.

[00:13:56] Brett: Victor, as a former editor in chief and a good [00:14:00] writer, uh, he’s going to fit right into that.

[00:14:03] Christina: yeah, no, he’s going to be great. And, um, that’s so awesome. So for listeners out there who don’t know Brett and I’s background,

[00:14:12] Brett: Oh, we probably should have.

[00:14:13] Christina: Yeah. So, so yeah, so, so I’m just, uh, putting this there. So, okay. So 14 years ago in 2007, uh, Brett and I both started writing and for a blog that used to exist called the unofficial apple weblog or T way w and that was honestly the beginning of my career.

[00:14:33] And, um, so much of, uh, well, I guess the real beginning was, was I had a gig with USA today, um, uh, that spring, but that was the beginning of my tech writing career. And, um, you joined a couple of months after me, but not that long after. And Victor was our boss at T UAW and a download squad. Uh, he was the site producer for both of those sites.

[00:14:54] And we wrote, we, both of us were at both of those sites. Um, and then Brett ended up going on to work at [00:15:00] the dev team at AOL. Um, and, and I wound up going to Mashable, but, um, but Victor was our boss and is just a really great guy. And. Um, so this is, this is that’s awesome. I’m really excited about this.

[00:15:16] Brett: Victor is, uh, has, has, um, varied, very varied interests. And, uh, a lot of it is like, he’s just, he’s into magic. He’s into puppets

[00:15:30] Christina: He’s into puppets. He’s into stand up comedy like, like Victor is

[00:15:34] Brett: standup, but he’s also dark. And that’s what I really appreciate

[00:15:37] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. He’s dark. He’s funny. He’s eclectic. That was the really great thing about those old house yawn, like blogging days, um, which don’t exist anymore. Uh, really for lots of reasons, uh, which it is what it is. I mean, I think it’s probably largely a good thing.

[00:15:53] A history of blogging

[00:15:53] Christina: I look back on that time and I was able to do the very rare thing, which [00:16:00] was turn at $10, a post blogging gig into. A full-time six figure salary. Um, as a, as a journalist, uh, most people didn’t do that, but, um, uh, it was one of these, it was this great period of time where you had people who were good writers, they weren’t necessarily professionals, but they were passionate about what they were doing.

[00:16:20] And because the old media hadn’t caught up with what was happening with digital yet you had opportunity for a really big audience of people who were interested in what you did. And so I feel like the talent that we had at TCW and it downloads squad and at the other, um, weblogs zinc sites, like we had a really nice, like mix of just eclectic, interesting people who were really passionate about what they were writing about, which is not the case always.

[00:16:51] Um, with, with professional journalists, like some people are really passionate about their beat. Some people. This is a job, you know, like [00:17:00] I was assigned to cover this and I’m a writer first and I’m going to figure this out.

[00:17:04] Brett: yeah, like this w I too, always my first, uh, like professional blogging gig and I did not re so weblogs was built on this idea that you pay a little for like quick content. And so basically if you wrote a post for two or download squad, you got paid 10 bucks, which is shit.

[00:17:29] And I didn’t know it at the time time until I wrote for like, uh, like life hacker and that they pay 10 times as much for even a short post. Oh, I didn’t realize how bad that pay was until I, until I moved on.

[00:17:48] Christina: Yeah. Yeah, no. And that was a time when you could, it was actually kind of amazing in some cases to get paid at all because everyone was doing blogs, but it was one of those things where it was like, unless you were working for an establishment place, [00:18:00] people were just trying to make it work. So like a lot of people were starting their own blogs, like Mashable, where I worked for seven years, like Pete started it, he was in, he was 19, he was in his parents’ bedroom in Aberdeen, Scotland.

[00:18:12] And he was just like, I’m really into this web 2.0 shit. So I’m just going to start a blog and then it, you know, turned into a business. Um, and, and he’s a millionaire now, which good for him. Um, I am trying not to be salty. Um, but, uh, but he built it into a real business, even though it didn’t quite end the way, uh, you know, we would have wanted it still around, still doing its thing and, uh, But the weblogs model because AOL bought it a couple of months before we joined.

[00:18:43] And, and so that was kind of like, there was like this big war between like weblogs Inc and Gawker because the Gawker sites, although they did have some salaried employees, a lot of it was also paper post. And, um, you know, you were, you were just getting out [00:19:00] there, you were just like creating, you’re just trying to like, get your name out there.

[00:19:03] You’re just trying to kind of like hustle and, and do it. And yeah, like you said, the money was nothing. Um, I always treated it cause it for you, it wasn’t like your main gig for me was, and I didn’t make enough to pay anything on that. Like I, you know what I mean? Like I was still like

[00:19:20] Brett: How many posts could you possibly like? There’s no way you could write enough posts in a month to pay rent on 10 bucks at posts.

[00:19:26] Christina: Absolutely not. And I would get an additional fee for doing some of the video stuff and like features you would get a little bit more, but no, I mean, I think at like max, I was probably able to get in. Yeah. 800 bucks a month or something, which you know, and that was like, if I working across three sites and that’s on like working my ass off, right.

[00:19:43] Like I’m not making shit. Um, I was young enough and I even F that I looked at it and I was like, look, I’m a really good writer. I don’t have the pedigree in terms of like, I haven’t, I don’t have a graduate degree in journalism. I don’t go to [00:20:00] Columbia or NYU. I’m not going to be able to get a job at Conde Nast, even though I’m better than their writers.

[00:20:08] Right. Like I knew that I was like, I’m not getting an internship at a magazine and I’m not getting an internship at a newspaper that will pay anything. So I have to build this brand myself. And then the hope was, at least for me, the hope was I was like, if I can do well at this. Then someone else will be able to pick me up and pay me.

[00:20:27] And I was really lucky because first what happened was that AMC, the movie chain signed me on a contract where they paid me $1,500 a month for, for blogging, um, certain number of stories a day. And I would do it in the morning and it was really easy work. Um, almost no original reporting. And then Mashable hired me, um, in, uh, August of 2009.

[00:20:50] And, and their, their starting salary was like $48,000 a year, which at that time in my life, like imagine going from like not making $800 a month to [00:21:00] suddenly like, you know, actually having enough money for it, for rent and stuff. It was, it was life changing. Um, but I got really lucky because in retrospect, like I look back and I’m like, God, how, how was I so naive that I just assumed, okay.

[00:21:14] If I just do this for a couple of years, enough people are going to like me, I’m going to be called up to the big leagues. I mean,

[00:21:20] Brett: Yeah, that’s what I was going to say was you were talking about like, being passionate about your beat and for the short period where I wrote for life hacker, I, I was, I just kept getting handed stories that I did not give a shit about. And, and I would write my, you know, 200 to 700 words, whatever it called for.

[00:21:42] And I would just be bullshitting just like to fill word count because I don’t care. I just, I just was trying not to, you know, those posts that you actually express an opinion in, and then you get like just vicious reader feedback. [00:22:00] Um, I was trying to avoid that because it was one of the largest platforms I had blogged on.

[00:22:07] Christina: Yeah. And, and the, the life hacker commenters were certainly nicer than on the other sites, but that community, like, I remember when I first started at gizmo. Which was, you know, a couple of weeks before Gawker formally ended. And so already the commentary is, were angry and freaking out and taking it out on the people whose fault it definitely was not right.

[00:22:29] It’s like the commenters are all worried about where they’re going to go. And we’re like, look, we don’t know who’s going to buy us. We just hope we’re still employed. Right. But so you had like a, um, in, in some of the sites, all the sites have their own communities of readers. Um, it’s less now because the, the company that bought all those properties from Univision has just done such a piss, poor job of everything and, and morale there isn’t an all time low, but you know, you have like this community of commenters and they feel like a certain ownership of things.

[00:22:59] And some of them [00:23:00] are mean, some of them are like really mean life hacker tends to be nice. The Jalopnik people tended to be nice.

[00:23:07] Brett: Um,

[00:23:08] Christina: The Gizmodo people could be brutal. And, and so when I first joined, they were like, you don’t have to sign up, you don’t have to respond to comments, whatever. I was like, dude, put me in coach, I’m here for it.

[00:23:18] Right. I was like, so ganged up. Cause like I love, I love a fight. Um, but uh, also it, fortunately for me, very rarely, I mean, I would get the typical like, like shut up cunt stuff, but like, it was actually more, it was less common than you would think. Like I felt bad because some of the other writers got it so much worse than me.

[00:23:40] And like I was newer and I’m like, okay, they’re being nice to me. I guess. I remember there was one time though. I did like, this was actually really funny because it sort of went viral, but my, my reply sort of went viral on another platform. So. I was in a car. Um, I was late to work and so I didn’t take the [00:24:00] subway.

[00:24:00] I took like an Uber and I, um, had written like this exhausted comparison review of a bunch of different laptops and I made a video for it. And I had said basically that the, the Dell wound up caning coming out, like better than, than the Mac book at the time, in terms of like all around. Like if you don’t want to not go west, like in terms of, uh, features, price, battery, life, whatever, like it came up better.

[00:24:26] And it surprised me. And some commentary was like, you know, all you are as reviewer. You don’t know anything about repair support costs or any of this or that. And, and so I just kind of. Jotted off an email. And I was like, actually, I was a support tech in college and I’ve been certified to work on apple things and I’ve done actual PC repair and whatnot, and just like kind of listed things off.

[00:24:49] And it was just, you know, like I didn’t, I wasn’t even that mean, it was just kind of like one of those things. And somehow like my response to this guy trying to mansplain me and tell me, I didn’t know how to do my job. Like someone, [00:25:00] um, screenshot I did and put it on Twitter and then like it became popular and it was so funny.

[00:25:04] Cause I remember getting. Like slacks from people who didn’t even work on editorial, like from product people, like from women in product who were like, thank you so much for saying that this is so awesome to be able to stand up to this. And the commentary is just like ate him alive. And that was actually, that’s one of my favorite memories of the comments of that era was just then like eating him alive.

[00:25:25] And then he tried to come back and like backtrack it and be like, oh no, I wasn’t saying. And they all like just came after him for that. And then he was like, I’m sorry, Christina was having a bad day.

[00:25:34] Brett: Yeah.

[00:25:35] Christina: very funny. Which, which, you know, that’s, it’s nice when that happens, but it’s also funny. It’s nice to be in a world where like, you don’t have to deal with that.

[00:25:44] Like, I mean, I do on YouTube comments sometimes, but, but in general, most people are very nice in, uh, in corporate Def Rahel versus vicious commenters on the internet.

[00:25:55] Brett: I, uh, I, I, uh, called the commenter a Dick once in a [00:26:00] response and then immediately I apologize for it.

[00:26:04] Christina: Yeah.

[00:26:04] Brett: their response was, yeah, no, I’m sorry. I was having a bad day. So now. Anytime I read a mean email or a mean comment. I just go ahead and like give myself that response in advance. I just assume they’re having a bad day,

[00:26:19] Christina: Yeah.

[00:26:20] Brett: especially with customer support, because that’s totally different.

[00:26:23] Like you have to be polite with customer support.

[00:26:25] Christina: do, you do like, like it’s one of those things where it’s just it’s uh, yeah. Um, you can’t, um, yeah. Uh, you have to be like above it and it sucks. Although, like, it gets to the point where obviously, if people are cursing at you or saying other things, you have the right to be like, I’m not going to talk anymore, but yeah.

[00:26:44] You have to be the bigger person.

[00:26:46] Brett: So I want to tell you about my customer support experience with the New York times, but I’m going to tell you about ritual protein for.

[00:26:54] Christina: Yes, please do.

[00:26:55] Brett: So, uh, because we have to, we have to keep the lights on people. [00:27:00] This is,

[00:27:00] Christina: Yeah.

[00:27:01] Brett: this is for everybody’s good. Um,

[00:27:04] green powders can feel intimidating with all that, no pain, no gain stuff associated with them, but the truth is deep down like cellular level deep.

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[00:29:28] Christina: Yes. Thank you so much ritual.

[00:29:30] Paying too much for the Times

[00:29:30] Brett: So I tried to cancel my New York times subscription,

[00:29:34] Christina: Oh no. Yeah, I’ve done this. Tell me about.

[00:29:37] Brett: so, okay. So I was paying 17 bucks a month for the New York times.

[00:29:42] Christina: Which is too much. You can get a better deal. Go on

[00:29:45] Brett: Yes, so that I don’t read it enough to justify 20 bucks a month. So I go to cancel and you have two options. You can call a phone number or you can do a live chat. You can’t [00:30:00] just click, cancel my subscription.

[00:30:01] Christina: No, you

[00:30:02] Brett: So I do the live chat and I get this.

[00:30:05] Hi, how can I help you? Blah, blah, blah. And I said, please cancel my subscription. And I’m sorry to see you. I’m sorry to hear you want to go. Can I ask why? And, um, I wanted to respond with, just cancel my subscription, but instead I responded with just the word budget, um, cause I’m not feeling talkative. I’m pissed that I have to go through this. Uh, and they come back and they’re like, I would be honored to offer you your exact same plan for basically they got me down to like seven bucks a month and, and, and I took it cause I,

[00:30:41] Christina: Absolutely cause at $7 a month, that’s worth

[00:30:42] Brett: It covers the crossword puzzle too.

[00:30:45] Christina: Well, that’s that? Okay. See, this is the thing, the crossword puzzle, especially if you have a partner who really likes the crossword puzzle, man, they used to sell that. I think they still do as like a subscription just on its own.

[00:30:56] Brett: Yeah, they do. But it was included in the package I had. [00:31:00] So, and, and, you know, and I was willing to get a subscription to it on its own, but seven bucks a month, I can justify that. I read just enough New York times and do just enough crossword puzzles. So now it’s affordable, but it annoys me that they have a special rate for people who want to cancel

[00:31:17] Christina: Oh, I agree. No. And, and, and, um, a lot of places are like this, where if you call them like cable as the same way, like if you call and cancel, like.

[00:31:24] Brett: for sure.

[00:31:25] Christina: They, they will give it to you, but I’ve, I’ve, I’ve run into this. Um, okay. So my, my thing with the times, and this was like five years ago, but they had a deal where they had started doing in-app purchases, I guess, on the iPhone.

[00:31:40] And the deal was, cause I think I still pay the same rate. Let me see what my rate for the New York times is. Um, yeah, so I pay $120 a year for their digital, all access package, which is not as good as what you’re paying, but it’s $10 a month. And like you, you know, completely, um, like, like good. [00:32:00] And, um, I had been paying, I think I was paying like $15 a month or $18 a month or whatever.

[00:32:06] And so I went through the same thing where I was like, okay, can I just switch my account over? Right. And they were like, no, you have to cancel and then sign up for a new thing. And I was like, okay. And when I was on the phone with them to cancel, they were like, well, we can give you this rate. And they were giving me like a better rate than, you know, like, uh, had been paying, but it still wasn’t as good as like the subscribing in the app rate.

[00:32:29] And so I was like talking to the person. I was like, you understand that? I’m not going to agree to keep my you’d like, like the email address I have attached to this account does not matter enough from me. You know what I mean? Like, like I will just create a new user ID is not a big deal. So I wound up canceling, um, and resubscribing in the app, but the advantage of that is that five years later, if I need ever need to cancel my subscription, I can just cancel it in the yeah.

[00:32:57] Brett: Yeah, totally.

[00:32:58] Christina: Which is nice, but yeah, [00:33:00] but they do that and it’s frustrating. The, the magazine companies do it too. Like, I don’t think that the new Yorker would necessarily give me a discount. Again. I subscribed to the new Yorker through the app store. The frustration thing there is that that means I don’t get a tote bag, but whatever, um, which you’d be shocked, how much money the frickin new Yorker makes off of there.

[00:33:18] Just off of like the

[00:33:19] Brett: Are you a tote bag person? Do you

[00:33:22] Christina: I’m not,

[00:33:22] Brett: a tote bag?

[00:33:24] Christina: I mean, sometimes I have enough of them and I probably have a new Yorker one, but, but the new Yorker is I’m not even joking. Like they’ve made shitloads of money just on people subscribing because they want the tote bag. Um, but yeah, but it’s one of those funny things where like, I think it was wired where they wound up giving me like a year for like $10 or something.

[00:33:46] I have to physically get the magazine. I also get the digital stuff, but. You know, I’ll deal with that. I usually throw it away. Sorry to wired. But, uh, I don’t, I don’t deal with physical magazines, but it was like $10. I was like, [00:34:00] yeah. Okay. I’ll, I’ll deal with that. But, um, yeah, I know it’s frustrating that you have to call to do that.

[00:34:07] And it’s also frustrating. They have the different things, but I guess it is one of those old lessons where like, everything is malleable. I think that the, probably the one company, and I don’t know if actually they probably still have wiggle room too. I was trying to think of like the wall street journal has a wiggle room.

[00:34:22] They probably do have a wiggle room, but I doubt that it’s as much as the times, the wall street journals always been like one of the publications, I respect them in so far as they’ve always had a pay wall. And like, it’s been more and less poorest at times, but they’ve never been, but they’ve never been like, you can just go to our website and read everything.

[00:34:40] Like they had a paywall on the nineties, so, um, which I respect about them, but their subscription is like $400 a year or something.

[00:34:50] Brett: I recently subscribed to Jacoby.

[00:34:54] Christina: yeah,

[00:34:55] Brett: Uh, you know, for my socialist reading

[00:34:58] Christina: was going to

[00:34:58] Brett: and, uh, and [00:35:00] it’s a quarterly and the first issue I got came with a card that asked me if I wanted to pay for, like, I was like a $275 donation. And they would like, I don’t remember what the deal was. They would like give a subscription to someone, but basically you’re, you’re showing support for, for a socialist publication, but it was just funny.

[00:35:22] Cause I’m used to wired magazine where they’re like, Hey, give us five bucks and we’ll send you another five years worth of magazines.

[00:35:28] Christina: right,

[00:35:29] Brett: And your COVID like give us $275 and we’ll give a magazine to someone else.

[00:35:34] Christina: right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh, Joe Kuvan or Jacobin or whatever they’re like,

[00:35:39] Brett: I, I’m not sure how to say

[00:35:40] Christina: Yeah. I, I, I’m not sure either, but they’re like pleased. Yes. I, I need to have, uh, money please. I give ’em. Okay. So I, um, so Deadspin, uh, rip, um, best blog ever. I mean, it still exists, but it’s scabbed spin now and fuck those people, um, genuinely, uh, who, who, um, work on it [00:36:00] now?

[00:36:00] Um, they started their own site defector and I last year gave them, um, a thousand dollars, um, as they were starting up, um, to like be a subscriber. And I think that I’m coming up on like the renewal thing, and I think they’re going to renew me for a thousand dollars and I feel bad. Cause part of me I’m like, look, I’ll give you $50, a hundred dollars, whatever a year.

[00:36:22] I don’t know if I want to keep giving them a thousand dollars, but at the same time I want to support like independent media. So.

[00:36:32] Brett: Um, yeah. Like my brain went somewhere during all of this and it didn’t come back. Like I had a thought and I was going to continue this conversation. Oh, well, you know, don’t tell our other sponsors this, but you want to know who my favorite sponsor is.

[00:36:52] Christina: a text expander.

[00:36:54] Brett: my God. Yes.

[00:36:56] Sponsor: TextExpander

[00:36:56] Christina: I love text expander so

[00:36:57] Brett: Out of all of this sponsor’s products that I use, [00:37:00] text expanders, the one I use the most often with the most pleasure.

[00:37:06] Christina: Yeah. I, I