A/S/L

The internet really gave some of us way too much confidence.

In this episode of Jaded Dame, Athena and Jenn dive headfirst into the chaos of growing up online—cringey stories, questionable decisions, fake confidence, internet alter egos, and the kind of moments that randomly hit you at 2am and make you physically recoil.

What starts as a hilarious walk down memory lane turns into a conversation about identity, insecurity, relationships, and the weird disconnect between who we were online and who we actually were in real life.

This episode is unfiltered, mildly concerning, and painfully relatable for anyone who survived the early internet era with unrestricted access and bad judgment.

In this episode:

• Cringey internet stories
• Online confidence vs real-life confidence
• The “Chad” story
• Growing up online in the wild west internet era
• Friendship dynamics and oversharing
• Looking back at your younger self with equal parts horror and humor
• Why embarrassment is basically a universal experience

Because honestly… some things should’ve stayed offline.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Athena? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 0:02

That's illegal. It was illegal then, it's illegal now. I didn't know it's statutory. This is I'm using a very that statutory rape was a thing? No. I didn't know what statutory meant. I didn't know what rape meant. That's true. I didn't know. I was never I was so sheltered that I didn't know. I didn't know it was illegal to be with an 18, 19 year old.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 0:27

You know, and it's so creepy that this person was 25 and was willing to meet with a 15-year-old. Cringe. That tells you how weird he was. Hi, Jennifer Lee here.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Um, so our episode today, we are gonna talk about the internet because believe it or not, we're older than the internet. Did you know that?

SPEAKER_04 1:20

No, actually, I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 1:21

We're older than we're older than Google. Which is what I threaten my children with all the time when I'm talking to them.

SPEAKER_04 1:29

How old is the internet?

SPEAKER_02 1:31

You know, that's a good question. I'm not sure. But I know we're older than it. Oh? I am wrong?

SPEAKER_05 1:38

Oh, good.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

The internet's birthday, official birthday, is January 1, 1983.

SPEAKER_04 1:45

Okay, yes. The internet is older than I. Okay. Okay. I'm not that old.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

So we're not older than the internet. But okay, when was the first chat room opened? Get this. It says the first chat system, Taco Matic, was launched. Wait, Taco.

SPEAKER_04 2:00

T-A-C-O, Taco?

SPEAKER_02 2:01

T-A-L-K.

SPEAKER_04 2:02

Oh, Taco. Oh, like talking.

SPEAKER_02 2:04

O Matic, yeah. Was launched in 1973.

SPEAKER_04 2:07

It was probably the paperclip in Word. The one that talked back to you is what is it? You remember him? No, I don't remember the talking paperclip. You don't know? When you accessed uh Microsoft Word, the little paper clip.

SPEAKER_02 2:23

I didn't realize that it talked to you. Yeah. I feel like you just unlocked a core memory.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

Yeah, it was literally the first Chat GPT.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

A virtual assistant character known as Clip It.

SPEAKER_04 2:33

Oh, he had a name.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Commonly called Clippy.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Oh, he had a real name, he had a nickname.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

He was a paperclip-shaped animated character who would appear in Microsoft Office applications and offer help with tasks.

SPEAKER_04 2:44

I used it a lot.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Oh, Microsoft 97, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 2:48

That was a good year.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

That was a good year.

SPEAKER_04 2:50

What was um So it was Google?

SPEAKER_02 2:54

The Goog machine?

SPEAKER_04 2:56

No, but what was the Ask Jeeves? Yes. Yes, that was before Google.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

What was the dog one?

SPEAKER_04 3:02

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

You remember the dog one? Fetch?

unknown 3:05

Fetch.

SPEAKER_04 3:06

No, it wasn't Fetch.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Remember it was Ask Jeeves. And then it got a rebrand and it was Ask.com. And you remember we had to put in WWW.

SPEAKER_04 3:15

Oh, I do. And then you had to. You didn't even get the best hit. You got, okay, well, you're gonna have to go to page 20. Hopefully you get a good. I remember that. I didn't like using it. I did not like the internet when I was younger.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

The Goog machine. Oh, this is interesting. The Goog machine has been around for 26 years. September 4th, 1998. Now.

SPEAKER_04 3:35

So I'm older than Google? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

But YouTube is 20 years old.

SPEAKER_04 3:45

Say that timeline again.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

Google 1998. Okay. 26 years old.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

Okay. Google. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

YouTube 20. YupTube. 20 years old. Yeah, in our house, we don't call it YouTube, we call it YupeTube.

SPEAKER_04 3:59

I was all okay. I was like, you're making an error. Error, error, error 404. Yahoo is 31 years old. What was that place called? Neopets.

unknown 4:09

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Was that where we had like colorful tires and stuff?

SPEAKER_04 4:15

My account, it was Mittens336. Anyone feel free to look it up. It's M-I-T-T-I-N-S 336. Can you even look it up again? Yes, you can. I good I did it, oh gosh, sometime last year. And my status on there says seen long, long ago. And I wanted to try and recover it. Okay. But I couldn't. Because my mom, because I ooh, I lived in Texas. I was any like nine, eight or nine. So we had a fake email. I remember it was my mom's email, you go girl123 at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

Um you go girl123 at gmail. Like, do you know how many numbers it has to be right now?

SPEAKER_04 4:53

Oh yeah, like one, two, three, four, twenty-four, fifty, nineteen ninety-five. I don't know. But that's the email we used, and that don't exist no more. And then I had to lie about my birthday on Neopets, so when you're trying to recover the account, you have to answer security questions. I can't pass.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Because you were eight when you hit the school.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

And so my Neopets are really hungry.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

They're in a Tamigachi status right now.

SPEAKER_04 5:16

But I loved it. You started at HTML.

unknown 5:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:19

You could do some basic coding. There was little form boards where you could talk to people. There were guides where you could build clubs. It was the best thing ever.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

I really thought you were gonna say guys.

SPEAKER_04 5:31

Well, there were guys out there. But I was about eight, so I was more interested in my tiger. Oh my gosh, right?

SPEAKER_02 5:38

Oh my gosh. I totally forgot about neopets. On top of that, uh the MySpace aim days. I loved MySpace. Oh my I would be, well, dial up internet and somebody would pick up the home line. What's dial up, Athena?

SPEAKER_04 5:55

Oh you don't remember what dial up is? No, I want you to- What's that sound? E er. No, and you're trying to sneak on the internet with your parents sleeping, you're like, shut up.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

The modem is like crying out for help, and you're like, shut up.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

Trying to sneak on the air.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

I'm trying to talk to people.

SPEAKER_04 6:15

Oh yeah. The MySpace, that was the first thing when I would come home from school. Oh girl. I remember I would skip school to be home. I'd do full glam, whatever you want to call that as a teenager. I'd do my hair, I'd put my extensions in, I'd tease the shit out of it. I'd put on my little emo gear. And then I'd get my camera after I charged it. Okay. Praying that I had a what do you call those things? You are those memory card things called. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah, memory cards.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

Yeah. Put them in my camera, go out and start. And that it wasn't full. Uh-huh. And then those e you guys can't see me. It's when you're looking down, your camera's way above your head and you're just looking down all emo and whatnot.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

And the bathroom photos.

SPEAKER_04 6:56

Oh yeah. And then you can up and the original selfie. The original selfie. All the picture comments and the likes. Oh, it was the best. I edited the shit out of my photos, and the fact that not one person called me out on that. I don't think well. Girl, my body was like more like Wait, it wasn't 4K back then. It was photo bucket.

SPEAKER_02 7:18

What was it? 264 pixel or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 7:21

I don't know. But you could ob the pixel or not, you could see it. And not one person called me out for that one.

SPEAKER_02 7:29

But yeah, the internet days were wild. I mean, I spent a good chunk of time in the AIM chats. I AIM. AIM AOL Instant Messenger. Yeah. I don't remember what my name was nowadays, but.

SPEAKER_04 7:44

Sunsetgirl6988yahoo.com.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

No, that was Yahoo, not AOL. But yeah, like there was uh oh no, it wasn't lose control, it was past that Dutch. So anytime I would listen to Pass That Dutch and that's down that sound came on, I was like, oh my god, my friends are here. Oh, you have it on your phone?

SPEAKER_05 8:03

Your breath. Five, four, three, two, one.

SPEAKER_04 8:09

Oh, was it that breathing? That sound. See, I've I I got into AOL, but I only used it to talk to someone that I met on NeoPets. That's the thing. You don't know at that point.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Was it his real name? Was it not? I don't know. So my internet internet safety. That's gonna be our topic today, guys.

SPEAKER_04 8:31

That's a good segue.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Um, right. I remember in AOL, some person friended me and they were like talking to me, and they're like, Yeah, I went to school with you, blah, blah, blah. The name didn't sound familiar, and like we would talk here and there.

SPEAKER_04 8:46

I went to school with you, like from a like an elementary school in the past or like a present.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

Yeah, like an elementary school in the past because around like 2000 we moved, and I moved from one one elementary to another elementary, and so they were saying that they went to my old elementary school. And I was like, Oh, okay. And like, I don't remember if I brought it up to my parents. Did you turn your book out? I I didn't. I don't maybe I did. I maybe I did, but um, I can't remember now it's so long ago. But regardless, um, I don't know if I brought it up to my parents or not, whatever, but like they were talking, whatever. It never got salacious or anything like that, but like a week later, my parents are like, Oh, so um, are you talking to some person named Blah?

SPEAKER_04 9:32

Oh my god, where is this going?

SPEAKER_02 9:34

It was my parents. It was my parents, like, and they were like, We just wanted to know how you would react to somebody on the internet. No, shit. Like, literally my room, right? I have my own computer, and then they're outside in the hallway with their computer, and they are ailened. Did they have that Missy Elliott entro?

SPEAKER_04 9:52

No, they did not have an alarm. No alarm. It's all mom and dad. They're all giggling in the other. They're like, oh, our alarm went up. Oh my god. What did they uh what did you talk about? I have like I know you said it wasn't anything scandalous, but like how far were they willing to go?

SPEAKER_02 10:08

Right? No, it really didn't go too far. Like, it really didn't go too far or anything like that. Because I was like still trying to figure out who this person was. Yeah. And I wasn't one to like go meet anybody on the interwebs, to be honest with you were you? Oh or estimated? Estimated? I probably was like, I want to say I was like th 12 or 13.

SPEAKER_04 10:29

Okay, so you're at that age.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

I wasn't I wasn't in high school yet from what I remember. Okay. But I want to say I was like 12 or 13.

SPEAKER_04 10:36

Okay. So you were smart enough that you were smart, but you were dumb. I was like this.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

I was like, this kid's name doesn't sound familiar, but if I remember correctly, they were quoting somebody that I went to preschool with. I'm like, oh, we went to preschool. I'm like, I don't remember who I went to preschool with. That part, right? Yeah. So I'm like, I don't know, okay, sure. And like had like this wild name, right? Like they it was like John and then a bunch of letters together. Like, sounds like a mom and daddy. Like a s like a Swedish name, you know how like sometimes they have hidden letters in there that don't have sounds, right? I was like thinking it was like, I was like, ah, I do I go to school with a couple different people who have Swedish last names, but regardless, anyways, my dad points to the calendar and there's a realtor's name and he put it in backwards. And that was the last name. I was like, Yeah. So after that, any new person that popped up on my aim, I was like, that's mom and dad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:28

I was gonna say that's like a little PTSD triggering right there, like everything in the future.

SPEAKER_02 11:33

To this day Instagram, new person, that's mom and dad.

SPEAKER_04 11:38

I can't. Where so okay. So you're on AOL. You get this random message from someone. Yeah. Did you have to change your settings at that point? Like, did your mom and dad be like, hey, we gotta what did like did it show did it show your name? Did it show your age? I'm trying to recall. All I remember is ASL.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

Well, yeah. That was in different chat. I remember we were in like pogo.com or something, which was literally like board games, like checkers, chests, stuff like that. Oh, and it had chat rooms attached to it. And me and my cousin, this is before some slutty shit that goes down there. I don't even know if that's the right word, but my cousin, sorry, Kissy, I'm gonna rat us out. My cousin and I were in those chat rooms in Pogo, and we had to be much younger at the time. Um, and that was the first time I was ever introduced to ASL. And I we were talking to somebody, we're playing checkers talking to somebody. I'm not really paying much attention to it because her and I are like we're taking turns over the keyboard or whatever, and we're at my grandparents' house, so they have they have no idea about the internet or what could happen with the internet. So we're talking, and one person on there asks, like, what's your size? Meaning like bus size. So me in my clever mind is like, where's that Victoria's Secret uh cover? Where's that at?

SPEAKER_04 12:55

Like, let's have been like my foot.

SPEAKER_02 12:57

How high, how high can we go? Oh boy. So I don't even I want to say we were I know we were much younger when we were doing that, but also at the same time, like these people don't know who we are, whatever. Like, you know.

SPEAKER_04 13:11

It's almost like you could create an alter ego for yourself in a way.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

And you wonder why we're here now, right?

SPEAKER_04 13:17

Like we have catfish, like is it catfish is the show? Is that what it's called?

SPEAKER_02 13:21

Yeah, yep. Nev or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

I saw a thing, by the way, just as a side note, that he like broke his spine or something.

unknown 13:29

Ooh.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Yeah, he was in like get better soon, bro. Back accident or something. Yeah, he was in like a boating accident or something, and he like he like fractured his spine or something. He's fine now, but yeah. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 13:40

Yeah, that's intense. Yeah. I don't know. I just when it comes to AOL, which by the way, I said ASL a little bit ago. Osla? Osla? Age, sex, location, just for those that are curious, that is what ASL means. Yes. I always defaulted. 14, female, Miami. Oh I don't know why. And I remember on ASL, if you can remember the little emojis that were on there, I would always go with the girl with the long black hair, and I would always be like, I have long black hair, green eyes. Like, I knew I was flirting, I just didn't know the risk came with me flirting because shit, here's me lying.

SPEAKER_02 14:21

It was the wild west side, yeah. It was the wild west because I feel like, and I'm probably wrong, but I feel like the early days of the internet, there was no like reverse searching IP addresses. There were no and even if you there were, we were we had no idea. We had no idea, no, none whatsoever. Like, I think on the Pogo one, we did like 26 female from like I don't know, San Diego or something like that. Like, again, we're eight doing this, so but I will say my cousin was much more street smart than I was. I was very, very sheltered. So I was like, okay, you know, sounds good, let's do that. So curious. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

I I'm just gonna jump the gun. What would happen if you are claiming to be 26 years old and then you're talking to some 26-year-old?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:13

Would you get in trouble? I I mean You're saying I am 26, whether you're 12 or not, that person on the other end asks you, like, is that legal?

SPEAKER_02 15:22

I feel like the other person on the other end of that would get on in trouble. I'm assuming, yes, an adolescent is gonna get in trouble with that.

SPEAKER_04 15:30

The adult would get in trouble or the adult would get in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

The adolescent, I think, would get a hand slap, to be honest, but the person on the other end of the line, if they can't vet you, they're absolutely in trouble. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 15:41

But you lied about your age.

SPEAKER_02 15:43

Well, so here's the thing, right? My brother was talking to somebody in Facebook Messenger, and disclaimer, my brother is a little bit special needs. Okay, a little bit special needs. So he goes into it with an innocent mind. Yeah, and there was a girl talking to him, and she was like, she's I think she was asking for money, stuff like that. I don't know how old this person was. I don't think they ever met or anything like that, but at some point in time she like revealed that she was a minor.

SPEAKER_04 16:14

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

And so, and my brother, I think, had just turned like 18, maybe 19, but didn't know she was a minor. So, like, but nothing happened. She revealed that she was a minor at some point in time, and my brother not exactly like connecting the dots that he can't talk to people because he just got out of school. So, in in high school, right, 18-year-olds are talking to 14-year-olds. I'm not saying like in a relationship, but you are in the same way. Yeah, yeah. So, maybe for a short amount of time, but it does happen, you know. So, for him, he wasn't totally putting the dots together. And again, they never met, they nothing happened in that sense, but like we had to have like a heart to heart and be like, you have to cut it. Like, you can't unfortunately you have to let that friendship go.

SPEAKER_04 17:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

So, um, and uh obviously like years later he's thriving and stuff like that, but yeah, it was like a lesson for him that we had to like go over.

SPEAKER_04 17:11

So well that's I mean, that's interesting because I mean, as you said that out loud, because it's I mean, I guess it's no different than if you go to a bar, you know how they'll they have like signs that say if you look like you're under 30, you are required to show your right well, what if there's someone that just looks older and they're younger? It's the business that's responsible. So I guess that may probably answers my question because you know what I mean. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Whoever is I guess whoever has the most to lose, you know, has the highest stakes in it.

SPEAKER_04 17:42

On that note, um, ASL.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:45

How many people do you think were we were engaging with were actually who they said they were?

SPEAKER_02 17:50

For me, I know that I was engaging with, I would say, about 80% to 90% of people I knew. Like, because I got their stuff from school and went directly home and talked to them. I don't remember if we had an ad friends system where people could look up your screen name.

SPEAKER_04 18:07

I feel like they could.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

I'm sure they could. I'm I'm positive. I just don't remember that. I know you could search them by screen name, but like I never got random requests.

SPEAKER_04 18:17

Yeah, of like fake accounts and things like that. Right. Or potentially fake accounts. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

I mean, bots weren't a thing then, but you know what I mean? Like so that, yeah, internet's what do you think? What about for you?

SPEAKER_04 18:27

I think everyone I spoke to was fake, very honest. If I mean, if you listen to my my fake alter ego that I put out there, like if I'm saying I'm 26 years old, black haired, green eyes from Miami or whatever age I was, like I know in some I would say I was 14 depending on the age. Like if I got them from NeoPets, uh-huh. I'm 14. Right. I was freaking 12. Like you know, or if I like potentially like if the one was 16, I'd be like, I'm 18 or whatever. Okay, okay. I what I'm trying to say is if I was fabricating it and the amount of people, because different from you, right, I just added everyone that I could. Like on NeoPets and like the guides and the forms, or let's bring MySpace into it because MySpace was MySpace an AOL a connected. No, they weren't connected.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

They were so I feel like AIM started. AOL. I'm thinking of Skype. Well, maybe because I did Skype too with people, they were all different individual platforms, but what I do know is that AIM from my memory, AIM started. AOL Instant Messenger started it. And then MySpace came around like I want to say 2001, 2002 is when it really exploded into popularity. Yeah. Um, because I got MySpace when I was like in freshman or sophomore year of high school, and that was in 2004, 2006.

SPEAKER_04 19:45

I think it was yeah, I think it was freshman two. What were one or two years off?

SPEAKER_02 19:49

I think I graduated 08.

SPEAKER_04 19:50

I graduated 10, so we're two years apart. Okay, two years apart, yeah. So it was just about the same concept. I think it was eighth grade to freshman year I got my space. Don't quote me on that. It's around that duration.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Right.

SPEAKER_04 20:00

But I think that opened the door from a comfortable comfortability? Help me with my vocab. Uh what how can I say comfortable reality?

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Is that what you're trying to say? A comfortability. I was just comfortable. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

So let's we'll just go with let's roll with that one.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Responsibilities.

SPEAKER_04 20:18

I was innocent.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 20:20

And going from AOL to then MySpace, I just played the same game. Okay. With the exception of like, I'm not gonna lie about my hair color, my age, and all that stuff, because it's on my freaking MySpace profile. Right, you had a visual. You don't have black hair, you're not from Miami.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

No. No.

SPEAKER_04 20:37

Um, well, got a funny story for you. Okay. On how this can backfire.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Oh. So right.

SPEAKER_04 20:43

Not necessarily to the extent of what we were just going on. Yeah. But there was a fabrication and age. Okay. Okay. So I got two stories for you. These are very personal stories. Um there was an individual. Let's start with cringy chad. Okay. We're gonna call him cringy chad. Cringy chad, okay. So this happened. Freshman or sophomore year. It's one of the two. I wanna lean towards I think it was freshman year. Okay, so a little bit of a context to 15 16? Yeah. Okay. Probably 15. Well, it's whenever I got my cell phone back. So it was 1516. Okay. I got my first cell phone 1516. Okay. It wasn't a smartphone, it was just like some bricks. The bricks. Yeah. Yeah, give or take. Um so contextual purpose. Um I was in private school.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 21:37

And in Montana. No. So I have a weird upbringing. Okay. I was in public school, uh, elementary school, middle school, and then when we moved from Montana to New Mexico, my family put my sister and I in a Christian private school.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

Um so I'm in this Christian private school, had to make a completely New friends. Is it coed? Yeah, co-ed. Really? Okay. And I bonded with this girl. Let's just call her. Goodness gracious. What do we want to call my friend? Let's call Shelly? Shelly. Okay, we're gonna call her Shelly. So I have my best friend who we're gonna call Shelly. Okay. And my dad at the time had a Christian ministry called Karate for Christ. Okay. And with the church, with with I understand you don't chop for Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

So sorry.

SPEAKER_04 22:35

That's we can't remind us. Sucker punch for God. Sucker punch for St.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Paul.

SPEAKER_04 22:45

No, you don't need to be sorry. It's it is a humorous, it it grabs your attention. It grabs your attention. I'm literally crying right now. My dad, we were okay, there's so much in that story. We did karate growing up. My dad had a passion for it, had his own ministry in Montana, brought it to New Mexico. Didn't go the way he wanted it to.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 23:05

But the reason I am bringing this up is my best friend Shelly and her family were enrolled in that. Okay. So it was like on Wednesdays or something, they would drive down to the church and in the little gymnasium area, that's where they hosted it. Okay. My family wanted me to always go. Jennifer, you need to come. Jennifer, Jennifer! No, I'm no, Dad. I don't want to. I want to be home. And I will never forget Cringy Chad. Because I'm telling my my friend Shelly, and I'm like, I think I'm gonna meet cringy Chad tonight. And I tell her this during the school day. Wait, pause. How did you even find cringy Chad? Cringy Chad, oh yes. Cringy Chad and I, I th MySpace, I believe. Okay. I just it was a profile. I found him. We exchanged phone numbers after we had messaged for a while. Okay. He was attracted to me, I was attracted to him, and now we are communicating via text message.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Did you guys like exchange ages before you guys exchanged phone numbers? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 24:07

Well, I no, I have no idea at this point. I can't remember. Okay, okay. But I didn't think talking to someone 18 plus was a big deal, to be very honest with you. I I truly didn't think that. When you get to high school, you do get a a vortex of reality. You know what I mean? Cool, hot older men, you know, like I'm sorry. I know coming from a freshman that sounds a little cringy, but I mean that was just reality.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

When you say older though, like are we 1820.

SPEAKER_04 24:34

Okay, 1820. I don't mean like 30. I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

We're 30 now, but I'm just saying like I'm just saying, like, you weren't seeing like, I don't know, for for dramatic purposes, you weren't seeing Hugh Hefner and being like, oh yeah. God, no. Okay, okay. I'm just no, he say older men, I was like, that could be a range.

SPEAKER_04 24:54

I just, you know, as a as a freshly 13, 14, whatever age you are, 15, going into freshman year. Yeah, you know, you see older kids going to quote parties, you know, like garage parties or whatever it was that we had back in the day. That seemed like the cool thing to do. Yeah. Those are the people I followed. Okay. And I would see, and because that's the life I wanted to live. I was very sheltered. Hence, I was put into a Christian private school. Right. Um, karate for Christ, you know, like my parents very much sheltered me. I wasn't even allowed to have a boyfriend. I could only have boys that were friends with other friends there. Okay. Looking back, very responsible. Yeah. But that's that's normal. Okay. But so I tell Shelly that I am going to meet cringy Chad. So during the school day, let's just say I'm in English. Okay. We're writing our notes back and forth to each other, and I'm like the modern day text message. The modern day text message. And I'm like, I'm gonna hang out with cringy Chad tonight. And as far as she was concerned, I was going to lose my virginity to cringy Chad. Oh my gosh. Uh-huh. I want to say his profile said he was 18 or 19. That's what I want to say. Okay. Just to put that out there.

SPEAKER_02 26:02

So you being in high school, as we just said, you're in a school with seniors. So 18 is normal. If they're a fifth-year senior, 19 is normal. You're 15, almost 16. So to use intertwine.

SPEAKER_04 26:16

It didn't seem necessarily inappropriate.

SPEAKER_02 26:18

And I also want to put out there that during the early 2000s, which I think this is coming out a lot more, the the age gap or like the um I'll I'll quote it as unwanted, unquote unquote. Um, the age difference wasn't really a huge thing.

SPEAKER_04 26:36

It really wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

I really don't remember it being we were really objectified in the early 2000s, to be honest. Like as women.

SPEAKER_04 26:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

I do want to say that. Like I feel looking back and seeing how people talk to me in the early 2000s, I'm like, today that would not fly at all.

SPEAKER_04 26:51

Yeah. You're not wrong.

SPEAKER_02 26:52

So sorry to interrupt. But I do want to put that out there that this, I mean, this is now.

SPEAKER_04 26:57

We were in a different age.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

This is 20 years ago. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:59

Things today, politically correct. Right. You know, you don't speak that way, you know, stay, stay in your lane. That's not how it was back then. Right. Um, God, I sound old saying that. But um, so let's speed this story up. This is gonna get real cringy really fast. So you're right. That's there's a reason he is called cringy Chad. Okay. I'm gonna put a disclaimer out there. If there are little ears listening, this might not be the best. Pause here and come back. Okay. Okay. Pause here and come back. Fast for it about five minutes. So, my parents leave for karate for Christ. Okay. And I'm home by myself. And I'm texting cringy Chad, and I'm telling him, I'm like, here are my coordinates, here are my coordinates. Coordinates. Like, let's get at this park. It's right by my house. And he sends me a picture of how much he wants to see me.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

The first unsolicited of the pictures.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

My first unsolicited picture. Okay. And I'm like, wow. And I'm like, and I'm like, I told Shelly that I might lose my virginity tonight, so I'm gonna send something back. And I don't just send a photo, I send a video. You let your imagination roam. It is as bad as you think it is.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

My eyes are as big as tossers right now. Keep going.

SPEAKER_04 28:28

You are going to die. So Shelly tells her mother that she is very concerned for me for ABC reasons. Right. Well, her family is enrolled in karate for Christ. Right. And decides to tell my dad that Jennifer might be up to something. And to keep eyes. Oh no. They cancel the karate class.

SPEAKER_05 28:57

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 28:58

And they come home. Oh no. And I am laying in bed and I'm like, whatever I'm doing. And I hear the garage opening. And I'm like, what the fuck are they home for? They're an hour early. This wasn't supposed to go down until my parents came home and went to bed, by the way. We're just talking about what's going to happen. So they come home, the garage door opens, the house door opens, and you just hear up the stairs. That's people running up the stairs, by the way. And my mother opens that door and she goes, Where's your phone? And I was like, huh? And I open my phone and I'm trying to. There's no quick delete. There's no quick delete. It was literally like seven steps. There's still a password. You just open the phone. Yeah. And my dad follows behind her and goes, take it! She's trying to get rid of things. Fuck I was. You bet I was.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

The evidence is there. Oh my god. How how dead were you? How dead were you?

SPEAKER_04 30:10

They saw everything.

SPEAKER_02 30:12

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 30:13

They saw everything.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 30:16

And my mom, it's it's I'm just sitting in my room and I'm like.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Hyperventilating, tingly, adrenaline is running. I'm gonna be grounded.

SPEAKER_04 30:27

There's much worse that could be happening right now. People are dying, Kim. Um, so yeah. My parents start texting cringy Chad. As you and yes, but before that happens, they go, Who is this? And I was like, cringy Chad. They're like, where do you know him? And I was all MySpace. They get on my MySpace, they find him, they see his age, and then they ask him. They go, How old are you? pretending to be me.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_04 31:05

And he goes, Well, I should have told you sooner, but I'm actually 25. And you're 15. Uh-huh. Ten years. Uh-huh. Oh my god. He knows I'm 15. He knows I'm my age. I didn't lie. This wasn't some ASL bogus stuff. This was real true. This is me. And then my mom calls him, and I hear this happening because my room was right next to their bedroom. And I hear, we're gonna call the police. We're reporting you if you ever call this number again. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. Like, uh, what it just went. And I was like, oh fuck. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

I have to ask, were you embarrassed? Yes, I was mortified. Okay. Girl, everything. Did you not like, did did the safety not come in to play for you? Like, did you okay? Nope.

SPEAKER_04 32:00

I you know how long I lived in a bubble. Yes. We will get into that another day.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

You were Glenda the Good Witch.

SPEAKER_04 32:08

Yes. And I was blissfully naive. I didn't think anything could happen to me. I was invincible.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 32:15

Safety was not even a concern.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 32:17

He was who he says. He was cringy Chad. He was cringy Chad. He was 18, 19-year-old cringy Chad. That's all I knew, and I didn't care. I can't. Uh-huh. I can't. Never heard from him again.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Well, well.

SPEAKER_04 32:28

Which is probably a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_04 32:31

But the extent that some people do on the internet, whether you think you know who you're talking to, whether you don't know who you're talking to, even when you think you know who you're talking to, are you? Athena? Yes. That's illegal. It was illegal then, it's illegal now. I didn't know it's statutory. This is I'm using a very good that statutory rape was a thing? No. I didn't know what statutory meant. I didn't know what rape meant. That's true. I didn't know. I was never I was so sheltered that I didn't know. I didn't know it was illegal to be with an 18, 19-year-old.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 33:13

You know, and it's so creepy that this person was 25 and was willing to meet with a 15-year-old.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Cringe.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

That tells you how weird he was. I mean, you're not wrong. You're not wrong at by any stretch of the imagination, but I I also know that like this is still happening.

unknown 33:32

You know?

SPEAKER_05 33:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Um, yeah, because fast forward, let's see, that was what, 2006 that happened, I'm assuming, because you said freshman year.

SPEAKER_04 33:41

So six, seven, eight, two thousand five, two thousand seven, give or take. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

Somewhere in there. And then you fast forward to, I don't know, thirteen. And I'm going through that with my firstborn. Thing one? Thing one. So how old is Thang One? Thing One now is 16. Okay. Um, so for her though, I found out we got her a cell phone when she was like.

SPEAKER_03 34:12

Wait, what happened?

SPEAKER_02 34:14

We got we got Thing One a cell phone at like 11, 12, maybe. Yeah. We got her a cell phone. I'm thinking I'm a cool mom. Whatever. Not a big deal. I had a cell phone, I think, when I was in like seventh grade. That's when I got my first cell phone. The brick of a cell phone. You had to T9 your way through life. It wasn't like it is now. Um, and I'm thinking, you know, I I really honestly didn't like think that thing one would figure out how to like bypass the system, basically.

SPEAKER_04 34:52

How so?

SPEAKER_02 34:54

So I want to say, like, during the pandemic, um, so this is now five years ago. During the pandemic, I'm in my office across from her. It is like midnight, maybe one o'clock in the morning. And I'm in my office. Um in your current house? No, in my old apartment. Okay. And we were, I think I was like cutting a podcast. I had a different podcast a long time ago, and I was cutting an episode for that, and I heard like a ringtone for a phone. And I'm like, is it one o'clock in the morning? What are you doing at one o'clock in the morning? So I like bust into her room, and she's on her phone, and I pull it, and I realize she's on a web browser on Instagram. And I'm like, what are you doing? And then she tells me, I didn't want to send the photo, but he told me to do it.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

Oh, so she she put she released it. She's releasing photos.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Right.

SPEAKER_04 35:54

What's happening.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Right. Oh. And then I started going through one, you buried yourself. She was like, figure out what she knows for me. Figures everything. I'm sorry. So I was like, what? What who is this person? And she was like, I don't know. They just started messaging me on Instagram. I'm like, Instagram? You don't have an Instagram.

SPEAKER_03 36:16

Oh yes, she does.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Oh, she's got a Facebook, she has a TikTok, she has an Instagram, she has a Pinterest account, she's got Snapchat, she's got all of it. All of it. And I'm like, where did this person even well? I got their number off of Microsoft when I was playing Xbox. And that wasn't the only one. There was like five of them.

SPEAKER_04 36:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 36:38

So I'm like, so must being fraud girlies from a long time ago, I'm running stuff through any public search record I can to find out who these people are. I'm finding out, they're telling her they're 13-year-olds. I'm finding out not whether or not that's true and they're a part of somebody else's phone plan or not. I can't confirm that. Sure. She loses her phone for two years.

SPEAKER_04 37:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

So it's gone.

SPEAKER_04 37:01

That's how long I lost mine.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

So then, fast forward to eighth grade, she gets her phone back.

SPEAKER_04 37:11

Okay. She's a little bit more matured at this point.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

I'm hoping. I'm like, you haven't had a phone for two flipping years. I've had to entertain you for two years. Sorry. Uh that's rough. I I'm so sorry to the pioneer woman who had zero technology. You had to play with a stick and a rock.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

Good times.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Yeah. So we were, we were now fast forward, we're into you know her um in eighth grade and give her her phone because she's now on a school bus, so she's got to call me when she's needs to be picked up from the school bus stop. And um, it was outside of our like area, so I had to drive like 10 minutes to get her, regardless. I'm monitoring her phone bill at this point because I'm I had blocked on her phone all platforms. She can't get to those platforms anymore. I have like reduced everything down.

SPEAKER_04 38:05

What do you mean by monitor? Like you can read text messages?

SPEAKER_02 38:07

I on her phone, I tell her, I'm like, I'm looking at your phone bill. So anybody you text, anybody you call, I'm looking at that stuff. Okay. And then on her phone, because she has an iPhone, I'm watching her screen time and I'm looking at all of the websites that she's on.

SPEAKER_05 38:22

Got it.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

So come to find out six, seven months into her having this phone, all of a sudden I'm seeing like 40-minute phone calls, and one of my sister-in-laws is like, um, she is talking to somebody labeled my king. And I was like, My king. My king. And I was like, okay, so like she put his name in as my king. That's yeah, that's the contact that she listed it as is my king. So pull her cell phone again, pull up the phone records, and we have she's been deleting text messages. As she sends it, deleting it. So she's gonna lot into your she was like, all right, bet mom. I'm gonna make this even harder.

SPEAKER_05 39:16

Yeah, go ahead. You try and monitor the.

SPEAKER_02 39:18

I know you haven't audited in a couple of months, so I'm gonna snoop in here. So it's interesting thing one. You have 266 text messages that you've sent back and forth according to your screen time. But ironically, today you only have 14 text messages. Oh. Would you like to explain how the math does math? And she was like, I don't know, Mom. I don't literally starts playing stupid.

SPEAKER_04 39:47

My indigestion just came up. I can't.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Playing stupid. I was like, anything you want to share before we go forward? Anything.

SPEAKER_04 39:56

I love I like the Hail Mary. You get one shot.

SPEAKER_02 39:59

Right? She was like, I don't know, Mom. Call Verizon. Figure it out. I have no idea. Oh weird.

SPEAKER_03 40:06

I love it.

SPEAKER_02 40:07

So I printed all 39 pages of the phone bill. And I brought it to her, and I said, look at this. Where did you get these numbers?

SPEAKER_04 40:16

Oh, I know the fear she's feeling.

SPEAKER_02 40:17

Where did you get this? And she was like, one of those phone calls was at 11 o'clock at night. 42 minutes. 11 o'clock at night. I'm pissed at myself because I'm like, how did this slip through? We're looking at it and I'm like, I don't, I was like, I've looked these people up, Ava, and every single one of them is an adult. I was like, I don't know if it's legitimately an adult or somebody on their phone profile, but it's not looking good for you. So she loses her phone for another seven months.

SPEAKER_04 40:51

So What does she do, if you don't mind me asking? What do you mean? Or how did she respond? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Oh, she's crying. She's she's threatening to run away from home. She's then starting to threaten suicide. We are like, she's acting out. And because she's been caught again. Okay. So she embarrassed? Is it that embarrassed? I'm sure she was embarrassed. Okay. I'm absolutely positive.

SPEAKER_04 41:18

So it's coming out in a different outlet. Right. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

But we sit down, and I'm like, what is going on? Do you have too much time? Because we're now in the fallout of the pandemic at this point in time.

SPEAKER_05 41:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:32

And she's like, I couldn't handle the pandemic, Mom. Like being stuck inside the house, not able to see my friends anymore, and not being able to, you know, go to school and have classes and trying to keep up with my studies on the internet, that really messed me up. Like I really didn't have any outlet because if you think about it, everybody had to be six feet apart. It was everybody was fear-mongering. It was very scary. You couldn't touch anybody. You couldn't, we couldn't see our in-laws. You know, because they couldn't you couldn't do anything. Yeah. So, and she was home and I was working, and you know, so in it just wasn't a good time for her.

SPEAKER_04 42:17

So she's validating that's why she was on the phone with someone at that point at night because of the isolation type emotion she was going through.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

Yeah. She's seeking isolation because at the time, too, everybody was just in their off in their own little world. Like, and I she never spoke up to say, I feel lonely. It was never we don't do that, right? Like as teenagers, we're gonna be like, eh, whatever, mom. Like, you do you what I'm gonna do, me, and blah blah blah. But for her, it really, really affected her that on top of her being isolated from all of her friends, like the house is also isolated too. Bub was in and out of town, and he and she just didn't take it well, you know. So we fast forward at school a couple weeks later, where we're returned to school. This is now during the time we're returning to school or whatnot. I get a call from the office, and they're like, Thing one has come to us and says that she has a plan of how she wants to take her life. And I was like, Okay, I'll be right there.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

So thing one at school went to her counselor willingly. They didn't see signs and symptoms, she just went to them.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Yeah, she went to them, or s from my understanding, she said something and somebody was triggered by what she was saying, and they sent her to the front office, and then she told people, she was like, I have a whole plan of how I want to do it. And yeah, and so I go to the front office, and then when she starts figuring out that like this is real, that what you said has consequences, it In the best regard, you know, you don't want somebody to say that and then nothing happens. Like, oh, you're just talking, you're just talking. You know what I mean? Like, she didn't realize that what she said would just go as far as it did, because they called crisis management, crisis management came to the school, they're evaluating her for a 72-hour hold. She's like, I don't want to do a 72-hour hold. And so all of this is coming from social media because finding out that these numbers that she's talking to came from TikTokers that she got from her friends.

SPEAKER_03 44:33

So her friends are talking to these people. Girl.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

So then I had to then send out. Yeah. I s I reached out to the parents of who she said they got them from, and I was like Shelly all over again. Yeah, just kidding. This is a difference. This is much different. Not really, though. Um but I had to reach out and be like, this happened. This is where we are. What I was told is that your child got the information and provided it to mine.

SPEAKER_03 45:00

Is that true?

SPEAKER_02 45:01

I don't know if that I said I don't know if that's true, but my understanding is that there is messages from your child to my child about the same person.

unknown 45:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

So do with that information what you will, and we'll go from there. You know, like I good luck, basically. I have I have my own shit to deal with. So regardless, when it came to thing one and dealing with the whole plan, I tried to get her into multiple mental health things, and nobody would take her because she was a teen who wanted to like unalive herself as the trigger word nowadays, right? So instead what we did is we turned inward towards the family, and all of us started putting her into every single club we could. Um, just we we basically just like outpoured as much support as we could. Sure. So what else can you do? Right. I d I can't get help outside of it, so we're gonna turn inside and hope to God that it works. And it did, you know, honestly, like thing one seems great now. Thing one and I's like relationship is fantastic. Like, and she tells me now, she's like, My friend had to use my phone, she called her mom, just everywhere. That's that's on the phone bill.

SPEAKER_03 46:14

Oh it's like same thing, it's like a PTSD. It really is. Like, I mean, and but that's good, yeah. Like knowing like the first time that's that sucked, right?

SPEAKER_04 46:24

But like the second time this had mass amount of consequences, and it feels like that's what like related to her or sat with her better than the first situation, which is interesting the evolution in like when that happened to me, yeah, and how it's happening now. Right, but it's just so weird that I don't weird's not a good word, but coincidental? Well, it's interesting that her friends had that, if that's what truly transpired. Not saying thing one's a liar or anything. Right. I don't mean it like that. No, I get that. It's just interesting because like I freewilled, found this person, added, engaged. This was something a friend gave. Like, that's like a trusted source. Right. It's interesting how the development through time and technology, how actually more easier it is to have access, uh I don't know how else to say it, to children. Right. And not knowing who's there.

SPEAKER_02 47:18

Well so fast forward now, and I know that we have another story that we need to get back to you. So don't think I didn't forget. Close I want to have my mind blowing ugly in. But the thing of the matter is is that I've learned now that kids are talking on Google Maps. That's what I said.

SPEAKER_04 47:42

But apparently I can't even get Google Maps to connect to my car. No one talks to me on Google Maps. I'm looking down at my phone. Don't arrest me.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

But that's what I'm hearing is that people are finding random spots on maps and they're leaving comments. You and that's how people are communicating.

SPEAKER_04 48:02

Like how it shows your location and where you're at or Google Maps.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

What I was told is Google Maps, but obviously I'm getting I'm old.

SPEAKER_05 48:09

I'm old. We're not old.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

Um I'm getting I'm getting source information from people on the internet who are like, hey, safety-wise, just want to give you a heads up. People are leaving comments on Google Maps.

SPEAKER_04 48:24

When you go to a location, as soon as it's done, it asks you for a review. You can start how adequate the navigation was, and I wonder if that's what it means where you leave a comment.

SPEAKER_02 48:32

See, I haven't looked into it.

SPEAKER_04 48:34

I didn't know you could communicate. Yeah, that's worth looking into. I'm curious now.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

And there's another site that I follow, and they talk about internet safety for children and talk about Roblox. And Roblox is Roblox and Minecraft are huge for kids, right? So with with with Roblox, I'm sorry, I'm laughing because as soon as I say something, it triggers Jen and he goes to write something with like the most caveman of penmanship.

SPEAKER_04 49:03

I'll forget. I have to write it down.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

But yeah, like they're saying that they're going from Roblox, they're connecting on a platform site called Discord, and then on Discord, they are the fuck is that? Discord is the chat room.

SPEAKER_04 49:14

God, I don't even know.

SPEAKER_02 49:16

I know. There's so many different avenues of people connecting with kids nowadays that it really It's easy. It's so much easier than it was back in the day. I don't know. Exactly. I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

I have to say this. Please. Do you have Disney Plus?

SPEAKER_02 49:32

I do.

SPEAKER_04 49:33

What do you think of it? When you access the app, what do you think of it? Or would you like me just to say my emotions?

SPEAKER_02 49:39

Say your emotions because honestly, I'm not on Disney Plus.

SPEAKER_04 49:42

I'm disgusted. Really? Why? I am disgusted. I I have my TV on behind me and I'm willing to stand up and turn the app on to see what you see. Okay. I am not quoting the show name correctly. I have no biased, unbiased, and I'm still gonna get the show name wrong, so it doesn't even matter if I'm trying to keep it, whatever. Pretend the show's called That Sex Was Good. Oh why is it when I click on the Disney Plus icon on my remote and it takes me to the Disney Plus app? Why the fuck am I seeing that? It's Disney. It's a children's company. Children's company.

SPEAKER_02 50:14

Oh, yours is set up differently than mine.

SPEAKER_04 50:17

It might be.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

Because I have six profiles on my Disney profile.

SPEAKER_04 50:21

I have Jennifer. Okay. But when I open it. I don't know if I have to click my name or if it just defaults to it. I don't want to see that. Right, right. I'm on Disney to watch Disney. I want to watch Toy Story. I want to watch Peppa Pig.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

But Disney has bought all these different platforms now.

SPEAKER_04 50:39

That's what I don't get. Monopoly. I mean, and that's a whole ass other conversation.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 50:44

But the fact that Disney is a when you think of Disney, you think of children. You think of Disneyland, you think of Disney World, you think of Disney.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:52

And how corrupt Disney is, look at freaking, oh god, I'm gonna go into a whole rampager and I don't want to do that right now. But what I am getting at is how much potentially explicit things, and I don't mean explicit in the exact terminology, I mean it in that's not good for a kid to see.

SPEAKER_05 51:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:11

If there's settings, that's great. I'm glad there's settings, but it's Disney.

SPEAKER_02 51:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

And I don't like that that intertwinement that's been happening because I'm like, that you're going down a whole other avenue of things that make it very easily accessible for children. How easy is it for kids to crack shit? Not very hard.

SPEAKER_02 51:29

Yeah, that's true. They're smart. That's true. Because so for me, when I turn on the Disney Plus app, it it shows us all of our profiles. And the girls all have their own profile that is set to their age group. So, like for I I don't know why Bub did this, but now maybe that's why. When you click on our profile, because it's set for all ages, like up to MA, you have to put in a code to get into our profile.

SPEAKER_04 51:58

Okay, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

But the girls do not. When but when you go into the girls' ones, it's set for different age brackets. So they get different things of algorithms when they go into. So if I go into Tolly's, it's short little like minute-long episodes of Mickey Mouse.

SPEAKER_04 52:14

Mine logged me right in. Okay. So just for context, what's happening right now while she was saying that, I pulled up my Disney app. This is what immediately pops up. So Disney apparently has Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, Hulu, ESPN, and okay, you can see I watch a lot of cheesy things. I love Lizzie. I have Lizzie McGuire, Honey, we shrunk ourselves. It's not displaying right now. I've I've adjusted the algorithm because I've been pretty heavily active on it recently. Okay. But to the point that I want to say is when I originally opened it, it was advertising some show that had in the title Sex. Okay. And so I'm like, imagine if I was 13 and I just opened this and I'd be like, oh, what's that? Boom, click. Well, am I watching something appropriate, non-appropriate? Are there settings, are there not settings? I don't know. Right. But what I'm trying, my whole purpose in that rampage of a spill is how easily thing how how do I phrase this? How easily accessible it is for children to enter things they should not be in.

SPEAKER_02 53:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

And I don't like them.

SPEAKER_02 53:23

Well, if you think about it too, like the 90s and early 2000s, we That was harder.

SPEAKER_04 53:29

You had to stay up till nine o'clock to see a freaking what was that comedy central Girls Gone Wild commercial? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn't understand why my parents are like, turn that off, turn that, change the channel. Yeah. That's when South Park would come on. Not that I was allowed to watch that, but that is when those commercials came on. And it was you turn that off.

SPEAKER_02 53:49

It was after a certain time. It it was like they were like playing with it, you know, like how far could they go? But now it's gone too far. In recent days, it really is just out there. Like we are, I think also we're so desensitized to it as well that a lot of the time it doesn't even like register that maybe so-and-so shouldn't be seeing or whatever. I'm not saying that's happening on purpose, but you know, when I turn on Netflix, right now it's the sneaky link, I think is what's the first thing that pops up.

SPEAKER_04 54:22

I think that's the one app I don't have.

SPEAKER_02 54:24

Okay, but easily accessible. Flash back to early gen. As you have heard my two stories of thing one. Let's flash back to my thing for early my thing for. So what did young Jen do? Okay. At what age? So aside from cringy Chad.

SPEAKER_04 54:44

So cringy Chad set the platform.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

Started it. Okay, as did thing one. Okay, she had two instances. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 54:50

Yeah, and I have a very similar thing, similar to thing one, that then something even bigger happened.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 54:58

But the wonderful news is mom and dad did not find out. But it's still a cringy story. Okay, so we went over cringy Chad. Jennifer loses her phone. Okay. I was grounded for a year or two. I don't even remember how long I was grounded. I think I got my phone. I got my phone back when I was it was a year. Because I got it back when I was 16, 16 and a half. Okay. So I am a I am a junior. I'm a junior at this point because I went from Christian private school. Okay. And then I went to public school. Okay. Kind of make whole new friends again. Okay. So on MySpace, I meet someone named Black Winter. His name is Black Winter. That was his screen name. And uh I don't I don't know if it's a trauma response or what. I don't remember a lot about this. I remember what he looked like. Okay. I do not remember the dialogue. I do not remember the conversation, but my thing was to meet people at parks. I don't know why. Because that's where I was going to meet Cringy Chad too. Oh, you're going to meet. Yeah, so basically my house, when you walked out the house, oh God, I'm really bad at perspective. Let's call it 500 feet to the main road. And then across the street was a park. It was a very big park.

SPEAKER_02 56:08

A big park, okay.

SPEAKER_04 56:09

So I don't, I wasn't gonna have people come to my house. I had a little bit of intelligence where I was like, I really shouldn't know where I live. So we would meet I'd meet people at the park. Uh-huh. And uh one night, keep in mind, I just got my phone back. I just got it back. I maybe one week into my new phone.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

I feel like you and Sing One are like connected by spirits.

SPEAKER_04 56:29

Yeah, it's a very similar to what happens, but um I decide one night that I am going tonight is the night we lose the V card. This I don't know why this was such a hot topic on my head as a teenager.

SPEAKER_02 56:42

Honestly, though, it was like everybody in school was doing by the time you're 18.

SPEAKER_04 56:46

Right. That was the thing. That's true.

SPEAKER_02 56:48

If you're a virgin, what many movies during that time? I'll have to Google it for the next episode. But how many movies at that time were talking about getting rid of it? Because it was such a taboo topic to have it.

SPEAKER_04 57:01

Yeah, right. We were raised on American Pie. Right. And scary movie. Not necessarily a scary movie if you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's what yeah. So I sneak out 12, 12 o'clock. Yeah, it was 12 o'clock because my sister worked at Sonic at this point, um, and she was at work. We were just talking about that. We were just talking about that before we were recording. Um we go to the park. I get in his car at midnight. Uh-huh. And it happened. Uh-huh. Now the worst thing you can even imagine happens. Oh no. Parks have curfews. Yes, they do. And we're just a random car in a parking lot with lights on. Whew! I'm 16 and a half. This part is this is actually there's a lot of things, knowing what I know now, a lot of areas of opportunity. But I'm just gonna talk through this. Okay. The cops show up. They have a high beam on their car, they're shining it on the vehicle. I am but Nycon. Oh no. And they get on their microphone. Get out of the vehicle. Get out of the vehicle. He gets out first. I can't find my sh stuff to save my life. I can't find my shirt. I can't find my bra. I'm panicking. And I'm like like looking around. Get out of the car now, everyone. A cop had me butt naked. I had underwear on. Is this a male officer? Uh-huh. Two of them. Spotlight on the vehicle. By standards that are that could have driven by, not that a lot of people are driving by at midnight. Right. Anyone could have seen me. I'm a car. I'm a minor. I get out of the car and I'm just sobbing. And I'm like trying to cover myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, I can't find my shirt. Like sobbing. Yeah. And they're like, find it. And so then I got to find my shirt and I put my clothes on and whatever. And we're standing there and the officers start questioning us. This guy is supposed to be 17, by the way. It's another frickin' screen. That's what he told you. Uh-huh. It's another frickin' scenario of cringy chad. Oh no. And um he goes, How old are you? And he goes, I'm 19. And he's not that old, so that's good.

SPEAKER_02 59:16

I mean he's It's not 10 years like it was.

SPEAKER_04 59:19

It's not cringy 25 Chad.

SPEAKER_02 59:21

I'm not, I'm not downplaying this, but I'm just saying like the age difference wasn't huge, but still bad. Still bad. Still bad.

SPEAKER_04 59:27

Still considered statutory.

SPEAKER_02 59:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:30

And he says that, and I'm all, the fuck? Like I was like, I thought you were, and that's what comes out of my mouth. I'm like, I thought you were 17. And he go, and he just kind of looked at me and he goes, How old are you? And I'm like, 16 and a half. Like I was like, I'm almost 17, like trying to make it seem better. That half just pushed up. Oh, she's cleared. Oh yeah, that's fine. The half is in there. Um, and he goes, You need to call someone over 18 to come pick you up. And then they booked him. He went to jail. I have I never heard from that man again.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:03

Well.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:03

Uh-huh. Never heard from him again. I have no idea what happened I have no idea what happened to him. I don't even know his actual name. Yeah, sad, right? So, my sister. Sissy. Me calling my sister. And you park. What? I'm at the park. What do you mean you're at the park? Come pick me up. And she's like, so she's like, she didn't really question me. She shows up and they're like, are you over 18? They're like, yeah, they're like, who are you? She goes, I'm her sister. Like, we need to see your license. They show the license, our last name matches. They're like, and that's the next part. You just let me go. I mean, granted, the last names matched. You check the ID, but like, I'm surprised you didn't ask for my parents. What if I just found my madam? Sagittory rape. Right. But you also had a minor out of the car and you just fucking saw me naked. Right. There's a lot of things that have happened in this.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

And there was no like blanket that they brought you or nothing. Nope.

unknown 1:01:01

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:02

Had me stand. Yeah, that's what I'm there's a lot. That's a whole other conversation too.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:07

I'm I'm I mean I'm like reflecting on what we have just talked about. And I'm like, hmm, he's 19. Uh, it's cringy, you know, whatever. But I'm more like picking apart the police part of this, but both are wrong. Both are very wrong.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:25

I get that, but it's just like, you know, oh, that's that's that's I think reflecting on it now, I'm like, did they realize that they made a mistake and they didn't really care? Because they are probably like, she didn't they don't she doesn't want her parents to know. She's not gonna tell her parents. Right. Yeah, go home with your sister. Yeah. I got away with it. Parents never found out. My sister didn't know the extent at that time what had happened. Right. I just told her I was sneaking out with a friend and we got caught at the park. That's all I told my sister. Police didn't even recap what had happened. Oh my god. Another slap on the wrist. Shame, shame, Popo. I respect law enforcement, just that this was just a very malicious, not malicious, but a very unfortunate.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:04

It wasn't thorough. Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:06

That's I like that better. That was very, very unthorough. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I never heard from him again. Well, never spoke to him. His profile was gone. I don't know what happened, but it wasn't until um, because me and my sister we weren't that close uh growing up. She despised me.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:25

Look at y'all now. Look at y'all now.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:28

This is what dreams are made up.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

I just saw she had Lizzie McGuire on her history and Disney McGuire.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:34

It's fresh on the head now. But um, yeah, so it's another thing. Like you think you're talking to one person online and you're just not, and that's I mean, to today, that's they those things still happen.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:46

You actually met up with one. You try to meet up with the other.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:52

Yeah. Shesh.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:54

Cringy Chad should be in prison.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:57

We cringy Chad should be. But that's the thing. My parents never reported it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

I don't know if Cringy Chad ever made it to prison.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:04

At some point, I'm sure he did. I wish I could remember his last name. I remember his name, I just don't remember his last name. Uh-huh. Let alone being able to find him. He probably has a received hairline at those points. Karma. Karma is my boyfriend. But uh, yeah, so those are my two very unfortunate childhood stories that stick out very fresh in my brain. Um, and that is a very unfortunate V card story that I get to share with everyone's like, how'd your first time go? Well, please recalled. Never spoke to him again. Oh my god. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:36

We'll go over my virginity card story another day. Like it was not with uh somebody over the age of 18, but regardless, we'll go over that another day. But you know, we've talked about the past, we have talked about the present of internet technology and not in all the ripples of the effects of all things that can happen.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:55

But I feel my younger self like I wish I could do it differently. Uh-huh. And you know how everyone talks about like when you're this age, you'll understand when you're older. Well, you can't go back and do things differently. You just have to grow and have the experiences that you have that that build you and mold you into who you are.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:15

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:16

Um so with that said, like I mentioned like, you know, cringy Chad and Black Winter and all of those things. And if I could go back and do it differently, I would. Yeah. Like and I'm I'm I'm spilling right now, but I'm on TikTok yesterday, and there's this video of this girl who's 19. And this guy, I'm sure you've seen it. He's pretty popular on TikTok, but he goes up to her and he said he said some sexual comment along the lines of, Would you let him rock your world? And she goes, No, I'm a virgin. And he goes, and the same face you made. He made that he would he was like, What? Okay. And he's like, How old are you? She goes, 19. He goes, and you're he's like, no, you're not. Like that's some abstract. So she is dressed provocatively. Oh, oh, okay. She's just wearing, she's just, she's beautiful. Okay. She's younger and she's in great shape. Okay. So they pulled her for an image.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:06

I thought you were meaning that she was like in a revealing outfit. Not saying that's bad. I'm not saying that that's a welcoming kit. I'm just saying when I was picturing it, it was provocative in my mind. Keep going.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:17

Yeah. And it was almost, he was so flabbergasted that she was actually almost uh pointed as a liar.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:24

And it's she's like, no, I'm saving it until I'm married. And when I hear that, like when I was a kid, I was like, I'm not gonna save it till I'm married. You know, I didn't understand that. But knowing what I've been through, yeah, you know, from cringy Chad till 33-year-old Jennifer, like I wish I could do it differently. I would do it differently. I'm you know, I'm I'm happy that I'm the person that I am, and it's allowed me to build a lot of emotional empathy. I think that's what's formulated that that part of me.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:53

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:54

But you know, if I could do it differently, I would.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:57

You know, and hindsight's.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:00

2020, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:00

Yeah. Yep. So, you know, as I say some of these things, like I I I personally cringe a little bit, like thinking about like past experiences and and that mentality I was in in that moment. And just you know, wanting to fit in. Yeah. To be very honest. Like I went from a Christian private school to a public school and I didn't I probably didn't hang around the best people. Okay. They did things. I wanted to be like them. I wanted to do those things. That's why I was so like, okay, it didn't work out with cringy chat. Who's next? You know, because I wanted to be like my friends. I wanted to share those stories and conversations. Yeah. Not knowing what it meant.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:41

Right. If you if you think about your environment, right? Your environment was sheltered. Um and it was the attempt of being wholesome was there. The the ingredients of being wholesome were there. Your parents were trying to raise you with good values.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:59

And they did.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:00

And they were trying to invoke rules to keep you safe. I know that you moved a lot. You always had to have a new beginning in your back pocket, right? And so, and going from public to private back to public and having those transitions in adolescence, especially in your teen years.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:19

There was another, and I didn't say this, um, even in uh first grade, second grade, I was in private school, Christian private school. Okay. So public, private, public, private, public, private, constant flip.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:28

Yes. Having to make new friends every single time. And honestly, from my understanding of this, I I haven't had this, but you reinvent yourself every single time.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:37

I wish I did.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:39

It may not be it may not be like a massive change. I know that some people who are military brats, right? The quote unquote military brats, they have to re like they have to reintroduce themselves or they just remain introverts, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:52

Um, and I know you, you're an introverted extrovert. 50-50. You are 50-50.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:59

Um you get three solid golden hours with me. And then I'm like, get out.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:04

Let's watch Disney. Um, but I think when you have to go through that transition, I don't I don't blame you for craving attention when that's the goal for everybody. When you walk through the halls in high school, people are making out. People are gossiping. We are literally in an adult world in an adolescent age. You know what I mean? And during that time, everything was in tangible writing. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like if a note flipped out of your pocket, they had your whole life in their hands, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:39

Did you ever have a notebook by chance?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:40

Oh, I have binders of all of my my notes. Like I have binders upon binders at home of all of the notes. Yeah. Exactly. Here you go. Like, and some of us did have cell phones, but they were really cracking down on cell phones in school. Oh, yeah. And we didn't have the option of like pulling out or like um, I guess like hiding it or whatever. You we have watches now. We have like, I don't know, there is a crackdown on it, but there's not in schools.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:06

Um back then they could take it for the whole day.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:08

Oh yeah. I mean, I'm I'm sure they still do that now. So I'm gonna ask you, based on everything in the internet safety portion of this, not so much dating. Um, and I'm gonna cut this out in a second. But basically, my question to you when it comes to internet safety and reflecting on where you were in an adolescent, yeah. If you could write your younger self just a couple of lines and say, Dear Jen Lee, dear baby Jen Lee, what would you say? You're gonna love this. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:38

You are going to love the way your brain becomes. Okay. That's really all I can say, because then there's that's such an open answer. Yeah. But to me that's very meaningful.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:50

Because I did not have a mentality that I had when I was a kid. And knowing what I know now and knowing I would do it differently, it makes me feel better. If I would still say, you know what? That's life. I had an experience, that's it. That's a little icky. But knowing that there is a little bit of regret around it, and if I could do it differently, I would. I like that. And I think if my younger self could experience my mentality for up to two minutes and just see what I see right now, know what I know now, experience the memories that I have developed over my life, she would think about what she's about to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:32

Instead of just hearing from your mom and dad, don't do that, you know, knowing experiencing it. That would be really cool. But I'm I'm not gonna shame myself for it. I'm proud of the person I've become. I'm proud that I can recognize things and do things differently. Yeah. I'm proud that I am anti-Jenny, even though I know I said it's not Jenny. Everyone still calls me Jenny. Um I'm anti-Jenny to a lot of people's kids. And the fact that their kids like to ask me things and hear it from me, yeah, that's meaningful. Yeah. You know, so I think my younger self would like to talk to me for about two minutes and know. You know what I mean? So I don't know if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:12

That answers your question, but Well, Thing Two told me on the way out here, she's like, You're gonna go see Jenny. And I was like, Yeah, she goes, tell her I love her and I miss her.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:21

What did she tell me about the peanut?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:23

Oh, um, we did a peanut allergy test.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:26

But really quick, uh Athena was on her way over, she had her children in her vehicle, and thing two popped up while she's doing a video and she sent it to me, and she goes, Do you want to say anything to Jenny? And she goes, All I heard was peanut. And I was like, Peanut. So anyway, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:43

Well, thing two is very allergic to peanuts. Oh we did a peanut allergy test when she was like a year and a half and it came back on like a three scale. Okay. Out of, I want to say like twenty is the scale, one to twenty. Well, we just did another panel because she she she really wants to experience Reese's PCs.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:03

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:04

So she's like, can I do another panel to see if I'm still allergic? And it came back worse. Oh shit. So she's like, she was devastated. She was crying in the car.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:13

Reese's PCs suck. It's all about Reese's peanut butter cup.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:18

Reese's caramel peanut butter cups.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:20

They have they have like white chocolate now. It's even a freaking peanut butter cup at this point. So good. You could probably put almonds in it.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:26

Regardless. I well, I told her I was like, do you want me to sacrifice peanuts for you? Because I'll do it with you.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:31

Why would you do that?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:32

Because she was devastated and I wanted to make it better.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:37

You want to s I don't have peanut butter, but I give you some.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:39

I've watched the sneaky linked trailer, so I think of that Reese's PCs might be my sneaky link. Don't tell thing to a exactly.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:49

Um but yeah, that's what that was. Yeah, makes sense. So that's young gen to or older gen to young gen, but I know you talked a lot about thing one to three, but what about a what about Athena? I know you've had some things that eventually we'll touch on with thinking generally speaking.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:12

I for picking an age, because I know that it was you basically writing like your 15-year-old self, right? Maybe in between was it, Blackwinter and Cringy Shad. Cringy Shad. Cringy Shad. Um so if I was gonna say to my 15-year-old self, I would say, dear Athena, it's gonna get better. It's gonna get a hell of a lot worse, but it's gonna get better at the end. Um, because my story absolutely has some tragedy in it, and I know yours does too, and we'll get there eventually. We're just this is the first couple of recordings, so they're gonna be rough. But the overall message to her would say it's gonna get worse before it gets better, but you'll be happy at the end. Just stick to it. I love that. Yeah, trust your inner thoughts, like trust your inner voice. She's gonna be very quiet, but you have to listen to her because she is always right. Girl. I love it. So with that, um, we're gonna close out. All my love. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.jaded.dame. That's TikTok, and then on Instagram, I'm at jaded dame podcast, or you can follow me individually at Athena Money Ma on Instagram. Also, um, don't forget to rate us on your preferred podcast platform and give us a follow. See you next week. Say hell yeah.