00:00:00.000do we have a right to publicly out cheaters what are medium friendships and would you ever
00:00:12.800photoshop a friend i'm maggie zau and i'm jasmine wallace and you're listening to culture club
00:00:18.560where we chat about pop culture current affairs the internet and our lives
00:00:23.220we acknowledge that the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung people are the custodians of the land we are
00:00:32.740on today we would like to pay our respects to elders past and present we would also like to
00:00:38.660celebrate the rich history of first nations culture and storytelling that we are continually
00:00:43.420learning from this always was and always will be aboriginal land0.70
00:00:48.220i wish i could say that it's mercury retrograde but it's actually not i'm just having the worst
00:00:56.920tech difficulties of my life it's satin retrograde but i've never heard of that
00:01:01.340affecting technology but we have been going through it you know that i google it's satin0.97
00:01:06.220retrograde and then it's all like happy like good stuff and i'm like fuck off i'm like i need
00:01:10.820something to confirm like all my tech nonsense recently but we are here touch wood touch wood
00:01:18.640touch wood this goes okay I'm so sorry this is late we had the worst tech difficulties but we're
00:01:26.000here now I've got a cup of tea we are recording pre-work so it you know it's like two degrees
00:01:31.800outside oh yeah it was very much dark when I woke up which I did not enjoy um I've got a peppermint
00:01:38.400tea what about you jazz uh classic english breakfast with a dash of milk a little bit of
00:01:43.400caffeine but not too much i'd probably like freak out having coffee like this early in the morning
00:01:49.740but let's go i'm excited for this episode me too first things first we need to talk about
00:01:58.700the photos that came out on like sunday night monday morning and that is of paul mescal and
00:02:04.700Gracie Abrams like I know that these are two very popular very cool very hot people but I just my
00:02:10.980brain didn't really compute when I saw them together yeah me too did you see the tweet where
00:02:17.380it was like Gracie Abrams age like spiked on that day like searches for it yeah searches for it
00:02:23.720spiked and I was one of them low-key because in my head she's like 18 I know she's actually 24
00:02:30.940She's 24. She's turning 25 in September. So she is not a baby. Like it's okay, but like so true in my brain. They're like quite far apart in age and also just, I don't know, like not vibes. Vibes is the correct word there. Do we think that this was like a legit date? Like what was going on?
00:02:51.720I mean, the way he was touching her face was pretty intimate.
00:02:54.620I don't know many friends who would, like, reach across the table
00:04:11.140you know you have those guy friends who are just like flirty like that's just there they're full
00:04:16.360of riz oh my god no i am actually in a spiral now because i did not see that and i'm like no
00:04:24.140sorry sir a male friend i don't think a male friend's commenting kill me on like a platonic
00:04:28.940friend's instagram okay i see you i kind of love that kids i'm coming that on well everyone thinks
00:04:36.360that like um paul and daisy are end game anyway no matter who they date like it must it must be a
00:04:43.560lot of pressure to like exist in the world with that like everyone shipping your characters yeah
00:04:49.400i mean and then also but they play into it they play into it yeah but we don't want to get into
00:04:54.240like justin and selena territory you know what i mean like they're friends but whatever they're
00:04:59.060adults they can handle it yes and you're right they kind of do play into it speaking of nepo
00:05:03.780babies did we see emma roberts nepo baby sexism comments over the weekend yes this was one of the
00:05:11.040stories that i saved to chat about on the podcast because i thought it was a very interesting point
00:05:16.440so for those who didn't see it so emma went on this podcast called table for two which is a
00:05:23.100vanity fair thing and she was asked whether becoming a massive movie star was a priority
00:05:28.940for her when she decided to follow in the career footsteps of her father Eric Roberts and of course
00:05:35.760her aunt Julia Roberts. She said no because seeing that level of fame showed her how scary it is but
00:05:44.560there's more. Emma also said there's two sides of the coin. People like to say you know you have a
00:05:50.660leg up because you have family in the industry but then the other side to that is you have to prove
00:05:55.140yourself more also if people don't have good experiences with other people in your family
00:05:59.540then you'll never get a chance everybody loves the kind of overnight success story and so if
00:06:05.580you're kind of not the girl from the middle of nowhere that broke into hollywood it's kind of
00:06:09.900an eye roll of like well your dad was this that wasn't the exact headline we'll get into that in0.99
00:06:17.020a second but i'm so tired of nepo babies saying that like yeah you have to prove yourself more0.85
00:06:24.740it's giving Kendall Jenner being like I had to work 10 times as hard to prove that I can be a0.99
00:06:29.720supermodel like you wouldn't even be in those rooms if it wasn't for your family don't know
00:06:34.340if I could say the same for Emma like she's a good actress but it's just this is why people0.99
00:06:39.420like shit on Emma Babies all the time yeah no I don't know I'm not the biggest Emma Roberts fan0.99
00:06:44.420um please remember sorry I think I need to put on the record like she was arrested for domestic0.98
00:06:49.220violence um but anyway that's not what we're talking about here uh yeah I think Emma's quotes
00:06:56.380that kind of shit me is when she's saying that you know you've got to prove yourself like everybody
00:07:01.520that's trying out for the same role she is no matter their background has to prove themselves0.99
00:07:06.300so that's the point of an audition yeah literally it's like oh sorry you've also got to do that
00:07:11.580process which you know irks me so what caught the media's attention was her comment after this which
00:07:19.760is i always joke why is no one calling out george clooney for being a nepo baby his aunt rosemary
00:07:26.040clooney was an icon i feel like young girls get it harder with the nepo baby thing like i don't
00:07:31.180really see people calling out sons of famous actors not that they should be called out you0.68
00:07:35.900know what this um harks back to that massive feature in vulture which was all about nepo babies
00:07:42.760and i did go back and check and like their cover of the magazine was pretty almost like 50 50 split
00:07:49.120like male and female nepo babies but i do think there is a slant to criticizing women who fall
00:07:56.720under this category yeah i do think that emma had a point with that one i think it's easy to
00:08:03.040discredit especially young women i don't think that like hating on nepo babies is going anywhere
00:08:09.500and i think there's an increase in it because celebrity culture is on its way out and people0.98
00:08:16.200are tired of wealth and class inequalities and seeing the gap widen and widen with every fucking
00:08:22.880year and so they will like always kind of call out the inequality whether you think that's fair or0.91
00:08:31.240not but like nepo babies get really defensive about it um gwyneth paltrow called the term
00:08:40.020nepo baby an ugly moniker and dakota johnson said that the nepo baby discourse is incredibly
00:08:47.360annoying and boring if you're a journalist then write about something else that's just lame0.89
00:08:52.020yeah that's her quote there so true like to your point about you know the rise of class divides0.93
00:08:58.940and everything i feel like nepo babies get the general public so riled up because we all have
00:09:04.440general we all have nepo babies in our lives and in our industries to varying degrees it's something
00:09:11.120that's not just um in the entertainment business so like yeah i'm glad we're talking about it
00:09:17.120speak on privilege speak on like you know why in these rooms
00:09:21.340jazz question for you do you think it's ever okay to expose a cheating person that you don't know
00:09:34.260online oh this is such a an ethical conundrum but i'm gonna go with no if i have to be black
00:09:45.360and wide about it no this is a question that's kind of got the internet in another tizzy this
00:09:51.640past week there was this viral tiktok going around about plain guy did you hear about this
00:09:58.120this man i saw like a screenshot of it and i saw the headlines but i didn't watch the actual video
00:10:04.320it's another one of those internet stories where it's kind of washed over me uh-huh and fair enough
00:10:09.880um i saw like a screenshot of this and essentially it's this woman her name is caroline who has
00:10:15.920posted this video on tiktok of this man and this other woman um on the same flight as her so
00:10:24.500the part of her caption reads if this man is your husband flying united airlines flight 2140 from
00:10:32.140houston to new york he's probably going to be staying with katie tonight caroline then goes
00:10:37.040on to explain that they met at the airport bar he then convinced her to swap seats with someone so
00:10:42.540they could sit next to each other and apparently they talked about his job hobbies and his eight
00:10:47.560year old daughter she ends the caption with i wouldn't have known he was married if he hadn't
00:10:53.200been wearing his wedding ring do your thing tiktok i hate the fact that you obviously can't see it
00:11:00.700when maggie's reading it out but in that um in that text there's a laughing crying emoji
00:11:06.020and i'm like you are about to blow up a family like whether you agree with the cheetah or not
00:11:13.140you're about to implode a family most likely also for the entertainment of strangers i'm like when
00:11:21.500i see stuff like this i'm like we really haven't graduated from like the gladiator period where we
00:11:26.140love seeing people get ripped apart because i just don't think that this is like when i see
00:11:31.680like stuff like that i'm like god this is actually so sad like how is this entertainment and i don't
00:11:37.840know if it's helping the woman by by like publicly humiliating her this is the thing i completely
00:11:45.040agree with you because of course tiktok did its thing and within 24 hours they found the guy
00:11:51.360his wife and like started showing photos of their family together um and i was reading an article
00:11:57.760in the cut about this um it's called exposing cheaters isn't always a flex by angelina chapin
00:12:04.060um and yeah you know she talks about you know we don't know the insides of this marriage maybe
00:12:10.220they're open maybe they've got an arrangement or and you know if he was cheating like this is not
00:12:16.700the way to find out like how is this helpful or kind to anyone involved yes um a tiktoker who goes
00:12:25.060by at pretty critical blasted the op for invading the couple's privacy and said now all their
00:12:31.720friends know and all their family know everyone that they know professionally knows if she wants
00:12:36.640to leave the husband now everyone knows why if she wants to stay with her husband and work it out1.00
00:12:41.180now everybody has an opinion on whether or not she should have yes maybe she would prefer not0.99
00:12:46.280to have the potential deterioration of a marriage turned into a tiktok reality show for the morbid
00:12:51.420fascination of strangers without her consent wrote another commenter but you don't care and are just
00:12:57.140in this for the tmz of it all oh it's so true that we have turned like strangers lives into tmz
00:13:04.000episodes like i think we've had conversations do you remember a while ago it was like oh people
00:13:09.180are npcs like non-playable characters like people in public like we're treating them
00:13:14.740like their side characters and usually it was like people of color so grim or like servers or1.00
00:13:20.480whatever yeah it's like people don't exist for your entertainment like these are people with1.00
00:13:25.400full lives with whatever's going on like not saying that i agree with what happened in that
00:13:30.820scenario but i'm like why is that posted on tiktok totally we have spoken about like this kind of
00:13:35.880tiktok surveillance culture before in another setting which was like kelsey kotzel who's an0.95
00:13:41.240influencer actually alike she like posted a video of her overhearing a conversation between0.99
00:13:48.020bridesmaids at a brunch and they were all bitching about the bride and the wedding and saying like
00:13:52.440how much they didn't like it or how stressful it was or whatever and that actually made news
00:13:57.440headlines for like this kind of new social media phenomenon of like overhearing something in public
00:14:06.340or seeing something in public and like making content out of it getting like a million billion
00:14:10.260likes but then inadvertently or maybe on purpose like blowing up people's lives people don't yeah
00:14:16.520you're so right like people don't think of other people as like having these like complicated
00:14:21.060lives like everyone does yeah people just see it as very black and white which is like this man
00:14:27.220looks like he's cheating cheating is bad so therefore he like we should expose him that's
00:14:32.860all they're thinking and to get to the point of like you know is this actually helping the wife
00:14:38.380the invisible wife in this scenario uh referring back to that cut article the writer writes
00:14:44.280the video strips playing guy's wife of any agency reducing her to a hologram onto which people can
00:14:50.600project their own baggage while an online sisterhood has formed around the wife it's
00:14:55.480unclear whether she wants the camaraderie she hasn't recorded her own video expressing gratitude
00:15:00.460towards caroline and the internet sleuths or responded to any of the commenters who have
00:15:05.240tagged her. Instead, she's been silent, her TikTok account set to private.
00:15:15.700I feel like Culture Club is slowly turning into like a friendship analysis podcast. There's been
00:15:21.260so many conversations we've had over the last few months relating to friendship, but I think
00:15:26.260there must be a reason why there's all this cultural commentary around them.
00:15:30.540I feel like friendships are hopefully one of the types of relationships we can depend on and that are with us from like childhood to older age and they come in various forms and you know it's not as exclusive as a romantic relationship it's something that perhaps we can all kind of relate to what do you think?
00:15:51.540I also think there's a loneliness epidemic at the moment so I wonder if people are writing about
00:15:57.140friendships more um like I've seen a lot of books about friendship being published even in Australia
00:16:02.960in the last year there must be something in the water but some new friendship discourse just
00:16:09.220dropped this week and it is spurred from a New York Times article by Lisa Miller titled The
00:16:15.400Vexing Problem of the Medium Friend they're not our besties but they're more than just acquaintances
00:16:20.580how much of ourselves do we owe them did you see this this week yes i saw this from a tiktok
00:16:29.560the user is miriam underscore tinny and this person is so good at finding like really great
00:16:34.980articles and just like talking through them so that's how i also saw this but when i saw this
00:16:41.180headline and um and that descriptor i was like oh i don't know how i feel about this because i was
00:16:47.580like is this just another label that we're going to smack on a friend like why do we have to like
00:16:54.420label everything like this and also how much do we owe someone in our lives that is an important
00:17:01.180question but it can also feel quite clinical yes super clinical and like psychology or like they
00:17:06.960call it therapy speak right yeah I was the same when I first saw the headline I really was like
00:17:12.400why are we now optimizing our friendships this like surely isn't good for our relationships and
00:17:19.500our friendships but reading the article it is pretty balanced and raises an interesting question
00:17:25.280so we are going to get into it the crux of the article is explaining what a medium friend is
00:17:30.680so the writer says medium friends are genuine friends you share history circumstances or
00:17:38.280interests. Medium friends make you laugh, bring news, offer insights or expertise. But unlike the
00:17:45.120closest friends, medium friends test the limits of your time, love and energy. There are only so1.00
00:17:50.680many dinners in a week, so many people with whom you can be incessantly texting. Medium friends
00:17:55.860prove the lie in any naive attempt to be all things to all people. Okay, no, wait, even though1.00
00:18:01.940I, sorry, as we'll keep getting into it, I do agree with lots of pieces of this, but I just
00:18:07.160think that this like it's an attempt to keep like people and like friends like with a is that what
00:18:14.460do they say like a yardstick away from us like distance yourself because I'm thinking in my own
00:18:19.780lives like you know a medium friend isn't set as a medium friend for life like I've got friends
00:18:25.720who are very new friends in my life but I value them so closely and I understand medium friend
00:18:31.500isn't about the time that you know somebody but I just oh okay no maybe we'll just continue
00:18:36.880sorry yeah i do think that this is an interesting point it says with a lover partner or a very close
00:18:45.300friend you may negotiate imbalances hash out wounds or betrayals but somehow such conversations
00:18:51.660feel impossible in the medium realm i agree with this because i notice as well if i have a conflict
00:18:59.660with a quote-unquote medium friend not that i would ever label my friends that way but
00:19:04.300um someone who's not like a close close friend sometimes I just feel like I'd rather just let
00:19:11.400it go because the thought of like having the emotional conversation whatever it may be about
00:19:18.840it's almost not worth the stress or the effort and it's almost like just a oh that's good to
00:19:27.720know like just put it in the back of your brain of like okay good to know like I won't do that
00:19:31.040again or i'll be mindful of this for next time oh i completely agree i think this is not very
00:19:37.740good trade of mine but i will rarely hash out something in a friendship unless i'm close with
00:19:43.660a person so if i ever do bring up something with you um not you directed at jazz but like you
00:19:49.620generally um that's because i value our friendship and we are close otherwise i just you know i like
00:19:56.860I really really despise bringing it up in friendships which is yeah not that healthy I
00:20:03.380guess yeah well I wonder why I reckon it's because with with when you're in a relationship
00:20:10.020and you have like an issue or like maybe a family member you kind of like the weight of it it's like
00:20:17.540we need to work this out because I can't not have you in my life whereas with friends it's like
00:20:22.860is it kind of oh well if that doesn't work out with you then I can just turn to like this person
00:20:28.800and spend that like that friendship time with this person but I agree with that speaking for
00:20:34.640myself it's also that in uh like romantic relationships and with my family I feel like
00:20:40.700I can show more so like my full self like the uglier sides of myself but with friends you still
00:20:46.280kind of maintain like not an image that's terrible but i mean like perhaps i don't show like
00:20:54.920my worst sides i'd say yes me too this is so interesting the writer references an article
00:21:05.920from 1993 by the oxford evolutionary psychologist robin dunbar who states that humans actually have
00:21:13.140the brain capacity to maintain about 150 friendships with five or six at the very core
00:21:18.900including certain family members 10 to 15 in the second tier and 30 to 40 in the third tier the
00:21:25.860fourth tier encompasses everyone else you are not embarrassed to greet upon meeting accidentally in
00:21:30.960an airport lounge in the middle of the night and the fifth gigantic ring is composed of acquaintances
00:21:36.900The article continues to reference this psychologist and says, we aren't explicit about ground rules with our medium friends in the way we are with our best friends or lovers because we want to avoid hurt feelings.