Share & Tell & Neg with Sarah Spain, Charlotte Wilder, and Pablo

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Oh my god, I'm so stupid.

Can you help me with this?

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We should say upfront that it's Charlotte's birthday because I was going to pretend like we're running this later in the week.

And so let's not acknowledge the present tense, but happy birthday, Charlotte.

Thank you so much, Pablo.

What better way to spend it?

Charlotte sat down and was immediately complaining about the ways in which her body is betraying her.

Oh my God.

Last night.

Just wait, honey.

My back just like goes into spasm and I was lying on the floor in a heating pad and then I woke up this morning.

I was like, oh yeah, no, like, I think it's a little better.

And then I went to go for a walk and it was just like shooting pain.

And I was like, you know what?

Welcome to 35.

Welcome to 35.

I was, I was in Amsterdam over the weekend.

Oh, my God.

I'm back because I love you guys.

And

speaking of back, I carried with me two, I don't know what they're called.

They're going to sound disgusting when I say it, but like two massage balls.

Oh, like a lacrosse ball.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just so I could plant them into

my seat and lean against it, quietly massaging myself for seven hours and 15 minutes, because that's kind of older than I am.

Can I tell you that there is a product that you're going to be real fired up to learn exists?

And it is the equivalent of Actually, I think it's three lacrosse balls melded together.

I believe it's called a snake, but I haven't used it in a little while, but I bought it a couple of years ago because I have major back issues.

And it's the equivalent of having multiple lacrosse balls for either that lumbar support or you can use it against a wall or you can use it to like foam roll when you don't want to bring a full roller with you traveling.

You just described almost every Instagram ad that I get served now.

Would you like more balls to put against your body?

Yes.

Can't we be actually yes.

Can we be sponsored by body balls?

Can we be sponsored by a vaguely, well, not even vaguely, just straight up sexual sounding device that you stick into yourself to make yourself feel that much younger.

When you put it that way.

I don't think you stick it in anywhere, Pablo.

It's not a thing you stick into yourself.

I believe that's what you just said.

And that's not what you want.

Well, you know, like pressing into this.

Yes.

Oh, oh, my knots.

My knots.

I would say against.

I would say against yourself.

It's a good distinction.

What I would recommend to literally literally anyone is if you have any back pain, to immediately try to figure out if you can get to the root cause, because I had so many other injuries that when I started to have back stuff, I kind of just thought it would eventually go away.

At the time, I was still playing like rec league flag football, softball, beach volleyball, dodgeball, like all the things.

And when my back started hurting a lot, I was like, yeah, it's just probably another like thing I tweaked.

I'll just wait for it to eventually get better.

And that was not the right choice.

So, whatever's going on, try to figure out because usually back pain is actually a deferral of pain from some other part of your kinetic chain that's not properly working.

And your spine is basically like a bunch of jelly donuts on top of each other.

And there's like jelly in the middle that keeps that like allows your spine to like.

go up and down and like jump.

And when all the jelly gets squeezed out, then you basically just have your spine smacking against itself.

Just a bunch of buns, no jelly.

So the longer you go without treating it and the more jelly that oozes out the harder it is to fix without things like surgery so go to the doctor or 11 d like me until you find one that fixes it

so just to recap you are the person telling me that my vocabulary seems too sexual

what was sexual about that Why, whenever the three of us do a show, it becomes like the horniest episode.

Back.

Literally every word you said.

Sorry.

It's because Pablo's surrounded by women, and

it's a thing he's thought about for years, but never been bold enough to actually try these thoughts and dynamics.

And it's very hard for him to step away from the inner recession of his subconscious.

I just want to thank both of you because I came in here being like, Yeah, my back hurts, but I'm fine, feeling really good.

Now I'm like, oh, I, oh, my back is broken.

I, all the jelly's gone.

I have no jelly left.

You know, I'm not going to say it.

So, when we were talking about what topics to do on the show today,

I sent a text that is the best encapsulation for how I want to start today's show with Zara Spain and Charlotte Wilder.

Hello, guys.

And

it's the text that reads, I'm going to do alpha douche.

So can we play alpha douche?

You do not have to accept her rejection.

I'm a professional dating coach, and I teach guys how to understand the female mind.

Now, if you're one of the people that haven't applied anything in my course or my videos or anything like that, this video is not for you.

This is an advanced technique.

This is for the people that have the course, have my videos, and are applying it, seeing results.

And eventually I'm going to put this in the course.

I just don't have the time right now, so I'm releasing it now.

You don't have to accept or rejection.

Now, here's an example.

I was talking to a girl and she said, oh, you know, I'm not really interested.

And instead of just going, okay, and then just turning that way, I did this.

Why would you not be interested in me?

I'm the best.

Absolutely the best.

And she's like, oh, how?

I'm like, well, you'd have to come over in my house to find out.

And you'd also have to be okay with kink and you'd also have to be okay with my mastery with ropes and the fact I have multiple women.

And actually, maybe, maybe not.

Maybe, maybe you

wouldn't be the best for me.

And now I did turn it around at the end, but I could have left that part out and still got her to start bantering back and forth.

And she did.

She started going back and forth with me.

And I started building attraction in that because now I had sidestepped her rejection.

Granted, keep in mind, I didn't force it.

I didn't say, no, no, you're,

I just played into her little game.

I knew she was playing with me a little bit or just kind of disengaging.

And I gave her a little bit of fun.

You want to know what I did with her later?

No,

yeah, I absolutely don't want to know.

I should say that I don't know if the song at the end of that video was a song that he like edited in, or if that was just the sound of a car that had pulled up next to him playing that song because he is sitting in his car and it's a very popular TikTok now.

And it's basically about how you don't have to accept rejection from women.

And before I get into how I feel about this, just how do you guys feel about this?

So, my first reaction, Pablo, was that everybody knows guys like this.

Everybody knows a guy who's like a little squirrely and weird and like

all the hair on their beard and their head is like all the same and it's like sort of reddish blonde and it's like, and you're like, what's going on?

And that guy has two choices.

He can either be like the goofy, fun friend who gets out of his own way, or he can become the worst person you've ever met and this guy clearly chose the latter but like i'm i can't even think of anyone i know who's like that but i know that guy yeah whether or not you know someone who claims to have a mastery of ropes i feel like you guys have encountered people in that guy's coaching tree either a predecessor or a descendant.

And that's the kind of type, Sarah, that I wanted to like

almost ethnographically study with you guys, because I am unfortunately fascinated by how one becomes that guy as Charlotte had described it.

I mean, I think what Charlotte nailed is what I felt watching it, which is first like unimaginable levels of cringe and

like

deep-seated memory of being engaged with or attempted to be engaged with by people like this.

and how awful it is and how if they just got out of their own way, found a way to be confident in whatever it is about them that makes them unique even if it's their very dorkiness and quirkiness if it's their mastery of ropes and kink you can find your person that's going to love that what they are always doing instead is trying to figure out how if they just better understood the female mind and tricked women into liking them they could get the women they want Instead of saying, let me look for a woman that wants me and then just be myself confidently and see how attractive that is.

Like,

it's so easy to like understand, but hard to explain to people who aren't naturally confident that all you need to be,

all you need to be to get women is confident.

That's it.

In whatever, like, look at the guys.

You're like, how did he, how did he do that?

How did he pull that off?

You're like, I guarantee you, that guy walks into anywhere.

just authentically and genuinely themselves in whatever weird and unusual ways that might be, even without being the hottest guy.

And people are just drawn to that, that confidence.

So this pitch that Sarah is giving all men on how to attract and even just be a person who can have conversations with women, which is win friends and influence people.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

That confidence being the key.

What's very funny to me about this type of person, which I should say, has an occupation now, pickup artist.

This is a pickup artist.

There's a whole genre that is now decades old about pickup artistry.

And what they sell instead is this complexity that reminds me almost of how an nfl defensive coordinator might talk and i want to show you guys i don't know if you do you guys know who mystery is

no yes like when you said pickup artists it again unlocked this part of my brain that sadly watched multiple episodes of the pickup artist starring mystery whose goal was not to bring out people's natural and awesome uniqueness in a way that would make them confident but rather to completely change them in every way until they could trick people into thinking they were something else so charlotte said no sarah obviously is envisioning mystery right now in her brain and so let's show charlotte mystery so in the first phase a1 we open in the second phase we dhv to get i ois in the third phase we get her to dhv so we can give her i ois and that's attraction

If you go straight into comfort

without doing that,

you will just

go nowhere.

There's no pickup involved.

You're forgetting the plot line.

So banter is something that some people think that, wow,

I was in set for 10 minutes and I was shooting the shit with her and everything was going well, but it didn't lead anywhere.

So I'll say, well, did you qualify her?

Was she even attracted?

Did you upload DHVs into her head?

Does she know that you have had girls in your life in the past?

Has she seen you with girls?

Does she know that you're the leader of men?

That you're pre-selected?

Does she know anything about you?

If the answer is no, then you went straight into comfort and you got stuck in there.

That is mystery.

Or as I like to refer to him now, having just watched that video, the Dan Orlovsky of incels.

Just like doing a telestrator on like DHV.

So DHV, by the way, is demonstrate higher value or a demonstration of higher value.

IOI is an indicator of interest.

A set is a conversation.

And it goes on, right?

Qualify.

You want to qualify.

These are words that

I came to learn in another text message that I sent you guys that was immediately embarrassing.

I explained it.

I read the book by Neil Strauss called The Game.

And the game is not the manual that Mystery and Alphadom slash Douche are selling, but it is a book about them, essentially.

And so the game, it taught me these phrases in a way that

made me genuinely interested in whether these guys have figured out literally anything or whether this language they've developed is entirely something that is a scam.

And

when you're talking about DHVing and IOIing and keynescalating and all of that stuff,

What is just important for everybody to know here is that this stuff has become extraordinarily popular.

That is so depressing.

I have a theory.

I have a theory that the more people use acronyms, the more they rely on acronyms or on vague sentences that don't actually say anything, but signal that they know what they're talking about and you just haven't learned it yet, the more full of shit they are.

Yeah, I agree with with you.

And I also think that in this case, when you're trying to commodify something that is

sort of

inexplicable, which is like chemistry, pheromones,

you know, interacting with other humans, you have to give it special names.

Like what it actually reminds me of, and I know that I will be insulting plenty of people out there and I'm very sorry in advance.

But one of my friends got really into CrossFit and then wanted to become a personal trainer and offered my husband and I some free sessions so that he could say he had clients on his website.

And some of the exercises we were doing were things that have existed forever and that I did in college division one track, but they gave them new names so that they could be CrossFit exercises.

Like one was like a pulse thruster or something.

And it was just a body weight squat.

You know, it was like, that's, I don't think it was something.

I like how all of these exercises get rebranded as American Gladiator-like code names.

Yeah.

Pulse thruster.

Right.

But I mean, that's the point.

It's like, we need our own language approved to you an expertise that will allow us to charge you for this thing that already exists.

I think you're exactly right.

I also think the sort of the, you know, the obvious part of this is that the

necklace.

Well, the necklace is.

He's wearing a son necklace.

Sorry.

The one thing I liked about Mystery was his necklace.

Necklace was a little cool.

So that's called peacocking.

Yeah, I'm kidding.

Charlotte, that's called peacocking.

That is a move.

It reminds me of something I got on vacation, like in Wyoming in fourth grade.

By the way, though, I get

the systematization of this.

The idea that, yes, these are obviously like dorks and nerds who are yearning for some way to get anything resembling confidence.

There is a fundamental,

I will even say relatability on top of sadness to the idea of like, I don't know what to do.

Can someone help me?

And then someone filling that vacuum with,

here is a literal book of things to do.

I get where it starts, but what it

what it does, and this is like both obvious and also, I think, the key to so much of the internet now is that you become convicted in terms of why your approach should work.

And it turns the person you're trying to win over into somebody who is definitionally two-dimensional.

Like, one of the, I wonder if you guys even encountered this in the wild, right?

So, like, one of the things that PUAs, as they are called,

what they stress is a neg.

Sarah, how would you explain a neg if for people who aren't familiar with the vocabulary here?

So negging is actually this thing that I've seen in the wild and occasionally it works on some people,

which is kind of wild and unfortunate because I'd like to say mystery is completely full of shit.

But this kind of like has some vibes that are useful.

This is why this is interesting.

This whole conversation is that there's some stuff in here that is in fact worthwhile.

Right.

And with negging, what I think the end result is that it infers some sort of confidence that someone has that might not actually be there, because only the most confident among us would be willing to say something mean to a beautiful woman instead of just being a pushover who's completely adoring, right?

So they would say something like, hey, Charlotte, that's an interesting t-shirt.

I think my mom has it, but you're somehow still like pulling it off, right?

So it's like kind of mean, like, oh, I don't really want to be wearing what your mom wears, but I look good.

It's this weird sort of like I'm kind of negating you negging I'm finding something negative to say about you but it's not full on like hey you look like

so what's interesting to me about this is I feel like these guys are taking um little kernels of normal things and just putting them on steroids and growing them into like the biggest ears of corn that nobody wants like teasing someone is a great way to build a connection with them.

Like it's charisma.

It's flirt.

It's actually called flirting

where, you know, where you're like, oh my God, like, did my mom give you that shirt?

And like,

you know, and so, but these guys are taking it, calling it something new, making it seem like the man is more in control and he's doing it to someone instead of it being a banter back and forth that the woman is also having agency in.

Yes.

So that power dynamic, the control is like the underlying truth of this, which is that they're typically, when it comes to a pathetic feeling guy and a woman he's interested in, a power imbalance in his head, right?

Like, how can I possibly be enough for this person such that they are attracted to me?

And so people are using negs like, and a basic neg is also like, you got something right here.

And they're like pointing to their nose and they make the woman think that there's like a booger in her nose.

So immediately she's like insecure about that, right?

So that's Charlotte is a guest at the psychological op that this guy's being running.

Yeah.

This guy's been running.

And then look, I just looked up like sample negs and it's like, hey, do you know if there's a zoo in Central Park?

I get the feeling you spent a lot of time at the zoo.

What?

What?

That's just, that's just a sample that I looked up.

Why?

I would love to spend time at the zoo.

I get the feeling you spend a lot of time in the library.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I'm brilliant.

This is not working so far.

What do I do next?

All right.

When surrounded by HBs, that's hot babes.

I'm going to open the set.

Kino Escalate.

And then summon a wingman.

All right, Cortez.

Wait, wait.

Did you say keto escalate?

Kino escalate.

Does that mean?

Like kinetic chain, I believe.

Like this is, I, why am I explaining this to you?

Yeah, why do you know all this?

It's, you are supposed to touch somebody in such a way that creates a physical rapport.

Also, just a part of flirting if it's going well.

Also, my worst nightmare.

Like I remember going on dates where there would be an attempt to immediately put a hand on top of my hand on the table or otherwise.

And I would just move away.

And then I would, I would eventually have to say just so you know like i'm not really comfortable touching people right when i get to know them like i just want to get to know someone more because i like i want to i want to say that like living in la especially in the early 2000s oh man the number of

of guys i met that were running this playbook and it was it was very hard to describe because i couldn't just say they're like reading the pickup artist but it was a feeling i had that they had a checklist of what to do and if it didn't work it was the woman's problem for wanting a bad guy or not liking a nice person or not knowing like not respecting that they're a good catch like but it none of it was organic or felt like just a confident guy hanging out it was always like the same exact thing like nagging shows of like value like literally talking about their money or saying i want to take you to go shopping for clothes yeah they're an amogs touching you they're an alpha male of the group

right talking about their alpha.

They're not an AFC, an average, frustrated chump.

Oh my God, you know too many of these.

These better being written down in front of you.

They are definitely not memorized by me.

Honestly, Pablo, do you want to know the female version of this?

It literally was like,

try not to be too confident.

Use baby talk, especially in your 20s.

Men are intimidated by women who are like partners and equals.

So they want to date someone that they feel more manly around.

So it's like, oh my

I'm so stupid.

Can you help me with this?

Like, you have to.

I'm not lying.

I had to, in my 20s, like just start acting like a dumbass who needed help with

on my first dates, just to give them like a second of thinking that they might be in charge ever.

And then once they were interested, then I could go back to my normal self.

But I literally had to- It's a hard pivot, Sarah.

Oh my God.

You guys, the amount of integrity I lost in my, like pride in myself when i just gave up and i started being like no i don't know i'm like what

just started acting like a dumb because otherwise i didn't get any dates

and it worked it worked every time i went on a date my early 20s i got there it was like an internet date and i was immediately like i cannot be here.

He was not like this guy basically, he was like very quiet.

I'm sure he was nice, but you know, when you just show up and you see someone and you're, and not even like, not even what he looked like, the vibe, I was just like, I can't sit here.

We like order beers.

I'm sitting there just boring, feel like I, like my skull is, you know, dropping through my body.

And I was like, I have to, I'll be right back.

And I went outside and I called my roommate at the time, my best friend, Hillary, who we talked about on here before.

Just going to bring her up every time the three of us are together.

And I was like, I cannot be here.

And she was like, oh, I'm sorry.

She's like, oh, also our dishwasher broke.

And I was like, say no more.

Perfect.

And I went back inside and I was like, I'm so sorry.

I

have to go.

And he was like, oh, is everything okay?

I was like, you know, my dishwasher broke and there are just suds everywhere.

And then I left.

Good one.

And I think about him and I feel a little bad.

Because you radicalized him and now he is running.

Exactly.

He's mystery.

This is mystery.

He's just an alpha douche guy.

Wait.

That dude has a sun necklace and is wearing giant giant goggles.

Oh my gosh.

And

it's my fault.

Be kino-escalating more right now.

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This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Veeen Champain, a 14 alcoholic volume, reported by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur design.

Please drink responsibly.

All right, Sarah, what did you bring us today?

What topic did you bring us as a palette cleanser?

It's actually interesting.

We were talking about the

sun necklace that might be the membership requirement for these men's confidence groups.

It reminded me of gravestones that used to have a variety of different

engravings that still.

Sarah is already laughing.

This is the most incredible transition I've ever heard.

Back in the day this is true back in the day there were a series of different um things you could get engraved on your gravestone that stood for things one would be like a weeping willow that was less about the person who lived but more about the people left behind and the grieving that they were doing at the loss there used to be like a sun setting or a sunrising that reflected the time of your life that you died where you lost young or old there was also different um symbols for like um mason

and and different like groups that you could have belonged to that people used to know when they saw your grave, if they saw that symbol, oh, he or she was part of X or Y.

Probably he, because I don't think women were allowed to belong to anything meaningful enough that you would get it on your gravestone back in the day.

Probably just dudes.

But anyway, the point is they're completely abstract and meaningless to most people now.

If you go to a gravestone and you were to see something like that, you wouldn't immediately say, oh, they were a part of this group or they were a member of this.

It's lost to us now.

And what's now on gravestones that could eventually be the same thing hundreds of years from now are engraved QR codes.

Now, I thought this was new because I saw this particular image on what was probably a TikTok that turned into an Instagram reel because that's how I see TikTok is when someone that's how I contemplate the passing of time and human death is right as a regurgitated TikTok Instagram reel.

That turns into an Instagram.

And when you play the video, which I'm sure we'll maybe play here, although it's mostly visual, so the podcast audience won't get it.

It zooms in and shows you what the QR code sends you to, which is a video of an older couple dancing and dancing like with a lot of energy.

It looks like maybe some sort of swing type dance.

It's not a slow dance.

And it said, this was their last great memory together.

And it was incredibly moving to be like the person buried there isn't just a series of numbers of when they started and ended or a name or even a family or beloved daughter.

They are someone who had this life and this was the part of their life that they wanted remembered.

Can we, can we pause on this part?

just the idea that to me back in my day a gravestone was a stone that had stuff written on it that you didn't scan with a technological device the whole point the whole point is to convey a sense of like ancient permanence that is not about um this feels like someone buying a verified twitter account so they can post more than 180 characters on their gravestone it's like it's it's sort of like so my husband and i have had this argument, conversation for the entirety of our relationship.

His mom used to be a funeral director, and his family talks about death very nonchalantly.

And, oh, did you know who died the other day?

This guy.

And so sad, Christmas Eve.

We went and got his body.

And I'm in the corner of the car, like wanting to cry about a stranger.

And like, Christmas Eve, oh my God, what was his family?

Were they with him?

Did it like, will everyone remember Christmas every year?

Is the guy like that he died and he was in the house and then you had to get like, it's so upsetting to to me because I never talk about death.

It's something I'm working on as I get older because I'm going to need to be in interaction with it.

But I said to my husband, he's like, it's a part of life.

I said, no, it's the end of life.

And he said, no, it's a part of life.

I'm like, no, it's the existence of life not existing anymore.

So it's not part of it.

It's the end of it.

I think I'm coming around to his side because it's a part of life in that the rest of us who are left behind have to deal with it.

But what you're saying is that the gravestone should ultimately show you permanence and the end.

This is all you get is their name and when they lived.

And the QR code would tell you that what you get after their death is still all the memories of who they were in life and that it's worth remembering and telling a full story instead of just wandering by and saying, oh, I wonder that we've all done this.

Oh, 14, that person died.

I wonder what happened to that person that they only made it 14 years.

I think that there is a finality to a gravestone.

Like there's near my parents' house, there's this graveyard.

And I would, I still do this.

I just go for walks and I read the, I read the names and you see, it's exactly what you're saying.

It's like, what little bits of information can I gather from this, you know, beloved daughter?

And, and then you see the families and where they are in relation to each other.

And

I think there's something to me

more moving and spiritual about imagining that and about knowing that those the memories that would be on that QR code are in the heads of the people who love them or love them.

And at a certain point, those memories are gone.

And that's okay.

Yeah, I feel like when I, when I, because Sarah, now I feel like an asshole, because Sarah brought in a topic where I was like, oh, that's dumb.

Sarah's going to think it's dumb.

And Sarah's like, this is actually quietly beautiful.

And I'm like,

but here's, here's why I feel, here's why I feel the way I feel about the ancient permanence I was describing is that there's almost like a democratic aspect to it.

It's like the way that people had to be commemorated eons and eons ago is the same way we're trying to do it now.

There is a constraint to the form that encourages, I think, what Charlotte is saying, which is both an interpretation and almost a beauty of what can you say inside this limited space.

Because when I admittedly am looking through these QR code headstones, I'm like, these are hinge profiles.

It's like, here are my four best, here are my dozen best photos.

Here's me with a finish.

Yes, here's my representative video of me doing something fun.

Here is, and it just feels like I want everybody to have that ability to be remembered the way they want to be remembered.

And so something I love actually in the realm of the

dark and sad, but beautiful is

the obituary.com obits that other people have written

for their loved ones.

And it's not like you submit it to a newspaper and it gets edited.

It's just like, here's, here's a bunch of paragraphs about somebody who really loves someone else.

And I love that and I want that.

But the notion of like, we're going to replace the gravestone, we're going to replace the epitaph with a social media profile is to me, so anti

what I personally want to imagine eternity to be, Sarah.

I agree.

So, but here's, here's one thing I would say is that We were limited by technology in terms of how people were remembered in the past because we did have at the beginning just memories and stories that we told each other.

Then we had a printing press and we had actual letters and books and print.

Then we had photographs that we could add to it.

Now we're just continuing that.

So you're seeing it as a social media profile when in fact, what we're doing is just continuing the storytelling by using what we have now, which is video.

And it's, it's a complicated thing.

Like a friend of mine that used to be a sports reporter kind of decided to move on to something else and she started a company that collects memories and digital storytelling as people are in their older years that that they want to pass down to their kids and grandkids.

And, you know, if you didn't ask us all these questions about our life and we pass away and you don't know, here's,

it's like when you can hire someone to write your parents' biography with them, which by the way, I've also had friends do, and they always tell you it's going to be like this many hours.

And then it's usually like 10 times as many hours.

So it costs way more than you expected because your dad has a lot to say.

But it's the same concept.

And so in this, like, I get your point.

I don't even want a gravestone.

I don't think that I, again, don't want to insult people, but I think cemeteries are taking up space that can be used for a million other things, including just like animals and nature that we're constantly taking out for our strip malls.

And so I just want to be cremated and thrown somewhere.

But

I also think that there's a real beauty in saying this was who I was.

I'm not just.

these numbers.

And the one in particular with the two old people dancing, like, obviously that's the best case scenario.

I mean, what if someone decided that they were going to make their own QR code and they were like, me doing a line of blow backstage at the Viper Room and then having a threesome is how I want you all to remember me.

And like, are there, are there guard guardrails for that?

Like, what if it's just a sex tape?

Can you just make a sex tape your QR code for your gravestone?

What if it's a video in which I'm explaining to men around the world that rejection is a choice?

This sort of reminds me of mine of what I brought to talk about.

Oh, what did Charlotte Wilder bring on her birthday?

I want to talk about getting older and about what it feels like to get older because my experience with getting older and I wrote something on my sub stack.

If you're listening and you be so kind as to subscribe, the wilderthings.substack.com.

Scan the QR code now.

You know, I think for me, I found this blog post I wrote when I was 25.

I had thewilderthings.blogspot.com.

It is now lost and gone forever, thank God, as it should be, because things should be ephemeral.

But I had this saved from when I wrote it.

And first of all, I did quote F.

Scott Fitzgerald, which I think as any 25-year-old does when they realize he wrote more than the great Gatsby,

something about, you know, the idea of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time.

I really like that.

But when I was reading this blog post back, I was like, holy, I was terrified.

I was terrified to turn 25.

What did it feel like at the time that made you want to quote,

yeah, great literature to express how you you were feeling.

You know, it felt like

I had this sense.

I wrote actually,

there's this sense of impending doom.

Maybe because it means the excuse of quote, I'm just a dumb kid out of college who doesn't know what she's doing is no longer valid.

And then I say at the same time that I'm kind of strikethrough, totally freaking out, I do know.

that so much of my life is before me and there's still so much possible.

And what this blog post was, was basically me going back and forth being like, oh my God, I hope that I'm able to make myself the life that I want.

And oh my God, what if I'm not able to?

And then being like, no, but I think I'm going to be able to and racing against some clock.

And as I wrote about turning 35, you know, every birthday since 30 for me, I have felt this sense of freedom.

Like the age, it has not phased me.

It has not bothered me.

I was so scared to turn 30 also.

And I sort of realized I was just like, I think because of how our society feels about, you know, Wonderkins and 30 under 30s.

And the most embarrassing thing that I can say publicly is that when I left 29, I was really bummed that I was never natural to the 30 under 30.

And then I felt this sense of freedom.

And now I'm like, thank God.

Like, thank God I wasn't because I was not the best version of myself.

I feel like I keep becoming that.

And for me, especially in this industry,

I feel that the older I get, the the more established I become, the longer I do this,

the less fable I am.

The more I can be in control.

I think in my 20s, I like didn't know that I was in control.

I think I wanted to, I think I thought being liked was more important than

forging my own path the way that I thought I should, because if I wasn't liked, I wouldn't get anywhere.

And it leads to this sort of interesting feedback loop.

But I do feel

so much steadier than I did.

And I look back and I'm like, oh my God, your 20s can be tough.

I don't want to burst your bubble because it may be different for you.

But when I was 35, I felt exactly the same as you, which is I no longer have to try to fit into this expectation of 25 now.

Oh my God, now I'm adult and they do this.

30.

Oh my God, have I done anything to be like exceptional compared to other young people?

Am I young anymore?

Or now am I just a normal person who has to achieve?

Then the problem is, like you said, your career now feels like you're in charge of it.

You're unwithable.

You get to decide.

I'm 43.

I was you.

And I was getting better at my job every day.

I was getting more knowledgeable.

I was meeting more people.

I was bringing more stuff to the company I worked for.

And I started to feel what every woman in her early 40s starts to be told to feel, which is you're going to get squeezed out.

And I was completely completely convinced that it didn't happen to everyone.

And it doesn't.

There are examples.

But if you look across the media landscape, there's this giant divide from about 40 to maybe

65.

Like women get to be old and then we want to kind of hear from them again, maybe, but in that way that we love like Betty White or someone who's stuck around long enough, Gloria Steinem.

But between 40 and 65, we're like, oh, we just don't really want to look at you anymore because you remind us that aging happens.

And we place so much value in women's aesthetics even if they're writers and radio people and people who are ostensibly not connected to their looks right we kind of deeply and maybe subconsciously associate their value with youth

and then we stop listening and there's this giant gap of like we just don't hear that much from women of a certain age.

And I hope that doesn't happen to you, but and and I'm sure there's plenty of people will say like my career stuff has nothing to do with that.

But I was told by the women who came before me, just so you know, as soon as you get to a certain age, they're going to want someone who knows as much as you do in a younger body that they can pay less.

And if she doesn't know as much and hasn't done as much work, they'll just say, ah, it's still worth doing.

And I look at a lot of the people who are around my age and came in around the same time as me.

And most of us have gotten shoved off to do other things.

I mean, I think that's partly, Sarah, that's not bursting my bubble at all.

That's partly why I wrote that.

What I wrote, what I wrote right now of where, where am I?

Because, and I was very careful to say I don't know how I'll feel in 10 years and in 20 years and 30 years, you know,

fingers crossed, like I should be so lucky.

And I think that

part of

what I hope for is

the ability to keep, it's not that I feel It's not that I feel unf ⁇ withable.

I feel less f ⁇ withable.

You know, and I think that's an important distinction.

I feel like

when the day comes where I am, where people do try to f with me again, not in the way like I'm naive, so they're going to take advantage of me, but in the way that I know too much, so I'm now a threat, so I need to be pushed out.

I hope that I have the wherewithal to be strategic enough to navigate that as well.

I think that to me is where I, you know, I can see it coming.

And it's more about not reverting to what I did before, which was still trying to please people, but doing what I need to do, even if that means I am no longer at the place that I thought I was going to be, if that makes sense.

Right.

Do you guys feel that then that like there's like a what's the way I want to put it?

Do you feel like there's a less romantic?

And I say that not in the sense of pickup artistry, but in the sense of like

an optimism,

a poetic optimism around what this is, what we're doing in work and in life is.

You get that sense?

Because you're describing a harsh reality that is like the antithesis of the

F.

Scott Fitzgerald quote.

I think the industry is negative.

My thoughts on aging within the industry, my thoughts on life are exactly like Charlotte.

The older I get, the less pressure, the more happiness, the more confidence in myself, the more surety, the less f ⁇ I have to give for that doesn't matter.

Like it's all the stuff that when I was younger, I thought older women were lying about.

Like I was like, oh, they just don't want to get older.

So then they're now telling us, oh, your 30s are great.

Your 40s are.

And then you get there and you're like, oh man, this is so much better.

It's you just that people pleasing and that worrying about stuff that doesn't matter is not there.

So it's hard because I'm trying to reconcile now this like general happiness and satisfaction in life that feels like I know more about myself and the world than ever before while simultaneously fighting this this unfortunate reality of a business that doesn't give a.

But I don't think, but I think Pablo, like in general, the optimism, the hopefulness, all the stuff that is in F Scott and in Charlotte's substack is spot on for me.

Do you feel that way when you get older?

I

am mostly thinking about how, A, I am blessed with the genetics of Asian skin and God, God help me because these natural oils do a lot of the work.

And I also think about, yeah, look, I don't think,

truly, I do not worry about my appearance, which is what an amazing thing, right?

I don't worry about that.

And I assume that that's not what I'm going to be graded on, which is so vastly unlike what your experience has been and will be.

And so is the world that we live in, a world of PUAs and AMOGs.

But I also think about how vastly

unlikable I find my previous selves while also having affection for them.

So I had a blog too.

It was called Poblog.

Wow, we all had just unbelievable.

Yeah.

Nailed it.

But Pa Blog was also on Tumblr for a while.

And Tumblr was a place where you could do anything.

And what I did was chronicle every single meal I ate.

Oh, no.

So I was that guy.

I was the person who was saying like a picture of my lunch and I described my lunch.

Sort of awesome.

That was every when it wasn't great or special or

even when it was the most mundane.

That is, that's actually fascinating to me though.

And that, but that person I cannot even begin to relate to anymore because I again can't decide what to put on my Instagram grid.

And I'm like, that guy wanted people to know what he was eating for.

I was the definition of the thing you make fun of as like a millennial on the internet, telling me what he had for lunch.

Yes, in fact, in

exhaustive detail for years.

And I deleted all of it.

I was like, I don't want anybody to know I did this.

Not until a introspective opportunity comes along on a podcast that I host with my friends someday.

Will I ever speak of this?

It is horrifying.

And I feel like that every 10 years where I'm like, I don't want to read what I wrote.

I might not want to listen to this in 10 years because I just feel like I am changing in ways that I hope are directionally correct,

but leaves my younger self feeling like less of myself.

I think what you're also talking about is something that happens for some people much younger and some people much older and some people never, which is the idea that your brain is not yourself.

You can step outside and look down at it and decide to question why you're reacting in a way, feeling in a way.

And a lot of people never do that, but it's like the biggest part of maturity for me is that idea of like, if I'm about to react to something and it doesn't feel quite right, ask myself, why, why did I feel the urge?

Is it embarrassment?

Is it anger?

Is it like, and is that a feeling that I want to have?

Is the person who I want to be someone who reacts that way?

And can I choose to react differently?

And you can do it all in like a second, right?

Like, as opposed to letting your emotions or your reactions control you, you're in charge.

I think I saw something going around and I'm not going to get it just right, but someone said, like, wow, school has really changed because a teacher told us a kid that imagine that their angry response was a fish in a pond.

You're not the fish, you're the pond.

You get to decide that all these things swimming around in you have a place, but when they get their moment and when you notice them and when you use them, you aren't that thing that can't stop itself.

And I do think that when you get older, that's a huge part of it.

I'm writing down, are you a fish or are you a pond?

Because that is a great opener.

This is water.

Are you a fan of that?

Another quote that most people find when they're 25.

That's a

blog for sure.

I also put Steve Jobs' commencement speech that was quoted on there.

Oh, so I had a lot of that.

Oh, just a throw pillow onto which

humanity's greatest cliches can be stitched.

Live life love, I'm sure, at some point.

I do think

in this house, we drink wine.

I don't have any of those.

those thankfully i cook with wine sometimes i even put it in the food um i think i think also there's a level of strategy with like how does this emotion serve me and if it doesn't serve me maybe i can adaptive embarrassment adaptive embarrassment is something that i think charlotte you have

you seem like you have mastered it at age 35.

what is that um it's kind of like ropes

No.

Wait, is this a pickup artist thing?

Yeah.

It's hard to tell.

Yeah, he's nagging you.

He's like, like, You're so often embarrassed that you've figured out how to use it.

You're constantly embarrassing yourself.

Oh, I hate this.

I got got.

I was like, wait, what?

Really?

Cool.

Were you suddenly really attracted to Pablo and interested in his mastery of ropes?

Ropes.

No.

But wait, ropes.

What did we find out today, guys, here on Pablo Torre Finds Out, a show where we find out things?

I found out that you are surprisingly poetic about

the continuation of a tradition like a cemetery and a gravestone.

I would not have imagined you as someone who would find such beauty in the idea that, regardless of the tools that we have, doing the same thing that they did hundreds and hundreds of years ago to commemorate a life is meaningful.

And it was a compelling argument and it moved me.

I didn't expect it from you.

I also never in a billion, million, trillion years, gajillion even, would have

thought that you would be host and talk about as food guy.

I just mainly because if anything, I thought your cringeworthy previous habits would be so highfalutin that even you would be like, settle down, partner.

And instead, they were the opposite.

They were incredibly dull and requiring no intellect, which is not something I ever thought you would want to put out into the world as a representation of yourself.

This turned into the insult lane real quick.

Oh, you got nagged.

Started off.

You got nagged.

No, that was not an appraisal that I was down with.

And then I just felt my pride in my former self, which I already said I disliked now having to like because a woman made fun of it.

Which feels like it brings us back around to how we started this episode with pickup artists and how you you get radicalized.

What I found out today, really, though, the through line, I like to try to find a through line through the things we talk about, which seem disparate and unlike and actually are quite cosmically aligned, is that we've talked about three topics in which everybody is trying their best to be remembered the way that they want to be remembered.

That is...

the beating heart of every sad sack dude who wants to attend a pickup artist boot camp.

That is at the core of the couple who wants to be remembered dancing unto eternity through a QR code on their gravestone.

And that is 25 and now 35-year-old Charlotte trying to figure out what adaptive embarrassment is.

And I'm not being embarrassed by being called adaptively embarrassing.

And I do think that in the end, like, far be it from me to tell you what your yum is.

I'm not here to yuck your yum, even if it's ropes,

provided there's a legal context that you know, makes this not actually criminal.

And consent, yeah, consent.

Exactly, consensual mastery of ropes.

Totally fine with Pablitore finds out.

But

I do think that we are going to be remembered as far less than

we want.

That's a very negative ending, Pablo.

And I would like to posit that instead of being remembered for less than we imagine, instead we far underestimate the incredible impact that we have on every single person that we meet.

And therefore, our memory is much more about the collective feeling that we gave other people and what we did for them.

So thinking less about legacy as an act and more about a continuation of acts of every single moment of your life, which is back to your lunch and just be in the moment and appreciate that tuna sandwich.

I also think less about how will we be remembered when we're dead, but how do people think of us right now?

Yes.

I think you guys are both freaks, to be honest.

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.