Love at First Site

In our premiere episode, co-hosts Anna Van Valin and Colin Foy take their quest for a healthy relationship with the internet back to the beginning. The two Millennials reminisce about their earliest memories of the internet coming into their middle-schooler lives. For Anna, it was AOL message boards for “The X-Files” superfans, and Colin remembers when his dad gave his mom the most romantic gift of all: her own email address. They trace how we got from waiting all night for a Dave Matthews Band music video to download, to everything from dinner reservations to thermostats being online. In the Troubleshooting segment, they suggest how to take a thoughtful look at our current relationships with the internet, and end the episode with a couple pieces of Internet Gold. Subscribe and stick around!

Connect with us at @themoreuscroll on Instagram & Twitter,  and check out our webpage.

Transcript

THEME MUSIC (00:00)

ANNA (00:19) 
Welcome to the first-ever episode of THE MORE YOU SCROLL, a podcast about trying to stay sane on the internet. I’m Anna Van Valin

COLIN (00:30) 
And I’m Colin Foy.

ANNA (00:32)
Why talk about staying sane on the internet? Colin and I‘ve had a lot of conversations lately about the fact that the internet is here to stay. It’s not a fad, it’s not just for recreation. It’s become how I do my banking/ and order groceries, and even have doctor's appointments. This year 2020, the Covid19 pandemic has pushed so much of our lives into the virtual space, that engaging with the internet has become mandatory. So, if the internet’s not going anywhere, and we rely on it for bigger and bigger portions of our lives, we better figure out how to have a healthy relationship with it. That’s what this show is about.

COLIN (01:15) 
We’re not file, we’re trying to figure this out too. But something we believe is that we are in control. The internet is a tool, and we get to decide how we use it. Over the next 10 episodes, Anna and I are going to try to answer questions like, Do I have to follow everyone I know on Social Media? How much time should we spend online every day? What should or shouldn’t we engage with. How do we build friendships online? How do we navigate the boundary between personal and professional presences? And, the big question, is there a way to have a completely positive, fulfilling life online?

ANNA (01:54) 
We’re not just going to leave you hanging - we’re also going to give you some solutions and suggestions for ways to handle these questions that you can try out in your internet life. And to celebrate what is good about the internet, we’re going to finish off the episodes with a couple pieces of Internet Gold, things to check out or follow online that we love.

COLIN (02:15)
We also want to hear about your experiences, topics, or questions you want us to cover and just generally get to know you, so please connect with us on  Instagram and Twitter, @themoreuscroll (that’s the letter U), email us at whatsup@themoreyouscroll.com, or visit us at http://themoreyouscroll.com…

ANNA (02:37) 
Let’s get ready to scroll…..

MUSIC (02:38) 
GET READY TO SCROLL

COLIN (02:52) 
So as we get into this, we thought it would be fun to talk about our first experiences with the internet because they are so vastly different from our experiences today. Anna, you got started with AOL...

ANNA (03:08)
 Yes.

COLIN (3:09) 
With the very, very early like this is probably the first TV, internet community crossover ever, right?

ANNA (03:16) 
Yeah, for me it was. I'd always had computers, my parents were academics, so we'd have computers in the house, 'cause they were always writing. But then this thing called the internet was happening and at first, I used to... We didn't have it at home, I would ask my dad, "Can I come to your office and look at the internet?" But one of the things that I found was I was a massive fan of The X-Files. And if you haven't watched it, go watch it. It holds up.

COLIN (03:46) 
Does it?

ANNA (03:47) 
Yeah, we're rewatching it now, me and my partner, and I'm very proud of myself because I have not just recited every episode along with the show. [chuckle]

COLIN (03:57) 
So you were a super fan.

ANNA (03:58) 
Yeah, I was a super fan. I got into it through a friend and then I just got really deep in it. And so I wanted to talk about it but all my friends in high school were pretty sick of talking about it with me. I was really... I get mad at people if they hadn't watched it.

COLIN (04:17) 
Wow.

ANNA (04:18) 
And I'd try to explain to them about Nielsen ratings and that the show needs to be renewed, and so it really... The household count really matters.

COLIN (04:25) 
You were evangelizing.

ANNA (04:27) 
I was. Yeah. So then I found AOL, we got one of those discs if you remember, those CD-ROMs that were a month free of... 

COLIN (04:39) 
Yes.

ANNA (04:39) 
You didn't have the internet... You had to install it. So you had the CD and then we had dial-up, which was such drama of nobody... I'd have to schedule it when nobody was gonna be on the phone because if somebody picked up the phone while you were trying to get on the internet, it would just mess up your whole cycle and found these AOL message boards. And they were all these people from all over the world who were just as nerdy and deep into it as I was, and wanted to talk about all the details, and wanted to talk about all their theories, and wanted to talk about Mulder and Scully and their relationship.

COLIN (05:18) 
That must have been so exciting.

ANNA (05:19) 
It made me feel, honestly, a little bit normal. You know what I mean? Like less kind of a freak. Because there are things that we're cool with you being obsessed with. We're cool with you being obsessed with football. We will accept that you're obsessed with the Beatles. We're okay with that. This was long before Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm made geekdom cool.

COLIN (05:46) 
Right. This was not cool.

ANNA (05:47) 
No, no, no. It was not cool.

COLIN (05:48) 
You were probably the only person at your school that was that into X-Files.

ANNA   (05:53) 
Yeah. I mean they were not selling X-Files t-shirts in Target. Now they sell them ironically.

COLIN (06:00) 
Right, right.

ANNA (06:02)
It was fun, it was interesting. And then there began these like you'd make friends 'cause then you'd go in the private chats and you're like, "I liked your post about this thing," and then you'd start chatting with that person, and then these little groups would form and… These words like shipper, that you're shipping, like relationshipping, that all came from the X-Files. It was really the first online community fandom that kind of set a template for other things. 'Cause, it was a unique show, it wasn't... There weren't other shows like that at all. 

COLIN (06:34)
Yeah, and the community was just small enough and just big enough that it worked really well for the internet at that time. AOL was designed for a community like that. That's kind of beautiful. How much time did you spend on it, at your peak? New episodes were Sunday, right? 

ANNA (06:53) 
The first few seasons were on Fridays. So yeah, it would be like a... I would watch it Friday and tape it, obviously. And then I would watch it again Saturday morning once I'd slept on it and thought about a little bit.

COLIN (07:05) 
Fast forward through the ads.

ANNA (07:06) 
Oh, no, man, I was like... The play-pause, the pause-record, you know that move?

COLIN (07:10) 
Oh, yeah.

ANNA (07:11) 
I was solid. 

COLIN (07:12) 
You didn't have to fast-forward it later.

ANNA (07:15) 
No, man. I just needed to streamline that sh*t.

COLIN (07:17) 
Yeah, and then you could fit three episodes on one VHS.

ANNA (07:20) 
Exactly. I was pretty invested in it. And what was funny was then when I went to college, I went to NYU, and these groups, you'd see people's names, people's handles over and over again, and then I met some of them. And when I was first there, there was some kind of film festival and Gillian Anderson, I think it was The House of Mirth, had a movie there coming out there. And so all these people from the message boards flew into New York and were having these little things, were watching X-Files in their hotel rooms. And they were real. And it was so cool. It was so cool to share that. And it's like any hobby, the hobby or the fandom or the thing is the jumping-off point. You have a common interest, whether that's like, I'm super into, I don't know, woodworking, or I'm super into baseball. That can be a common interest and a thing to share, and then you find a few people who you connect within a bigger way. Yeah and some of those friendships have lasted to this day. One of my very best friends, my longest friendships, who's... I one day, many, many years later, performed her wedding ceremony, and we had... She was also starting college in New York. She was in Columbia and I was at NYU. And so we became good friends. And still, send each other X-Files knickknacks and things.

COLIN (08:45) 
That's incredible.

ANNA (08:47) 
It's pretty crazy, right?

COLIN (08:51)  
That is incredible, especially making the transition into real-life friends from Internet at that time. People didn't buy stuff online back then. The internet was not seen as a super safe place.

ANNA (09:06) 
And it was definitely I think seen as a fad. It was sort of a fringe thing... It had this reputation of its just people who don't wanna live in real life. So they just live on the internet and that's... And I remember saying, let's say you have depression or something and you don't really know how to deal with it and that's not something that you can talk about out loud or you don't wanna go to a therapist or that your family wouldn't accept that or whatever, you could find other people who experience that. And they're like, "No, that can't replace being in a room with other people." Well, of course not, but you know...

COLIN (09:40) 
But that doesn't mean it's not a good thing.

ANNA (09:42) 
Right. It doesn't mean it's not another resource that can be used for good. But it was seen as this shady, risky, nerdy fringe thing. I think that's a big difference between now and then is not just the exposure, that it's ubiquitous, but the skill. But my grandparents are 95 and they Skype with my family in Ecuador all the time.

COLIN (10:08)
I remember the year. It was my mom's birthday, and my dad gave her an email address for her birthday. That was her main gift, at least that I remember.

ANNA (10:20) 
Did it have a monetary value? What was that?

COLIN (10:24) 
I think you had to buy something.

ANNA (10:27) 
That's true. Maybe it meant that you had internet now.

COLIN (10:31) 
Yeah, I bet that meant that she got the internet on her computer.

ANNA (10:35) 
Ooh.

COLIN (10:37) 
That must have been a pretty nice upgrade to have two computers with dial-up.

ANNA (10:43) 
What?

COLIN (10:45) 
Yeah, two modems.

ANNA (10:47) 
Sweet, sweet dial-up.

COLIN (10:49) 
But I remember it just being such a big thing and it totally changed her schedule in the morning. Every morning...

ANNA (10:57) 
Really?

COLIN (10:59) 
Yeah. She got up, she went downstairs, she turned on her computer and got her new emails downloaded. And got really into that and loved it, and loved the ability to be more in touch with people way faster. I remember that being really big in the house and being a huge shift. That was the biggest shift was when, yeah, when Mom got an email address.

ANNA (11:22) 
But who was she... Did you already have email? Was this the first time internet had come into the home?

COLIN (11:28) 
It wasn't the first time, no.

ANNA (11:31) 
Or normalized?

COLIN (11:32) 
It was the first time it got really normalized. It was a part of daily life. And she would email her sisters and grandparents. The '90s was full of getting our grandparents' new tech that was easy enough for them to use. I remember at one point they got them an email machine.

ANNA (11:56) 
What?

COLIN (11:57) 
It had two or maybe four lines of text at the top on a screen, like a calculator screen.

ANNA (12:05) 
Like a fancy pager?

COLIN (12:06) 
Yeah, and you could hook it up to a modem and type. It had a keyboard and you could type on it. That's all it did. It was just like...

ANNA (12:13) 
Wow.

COLIN (12:15) 
Yeah. No OS, no mouse.

ANNA (12:17) 
An email machine.

COLIN (12:18) 
Yeah, [chuckle] it sounds so archaic.

ANNA (12:23) 
It does. But it does sound like a prototype for an iPhone or something, right?

COLIN (12:27) 
Totally. And then her computer being online meant I could be online more, and I have a distinct memory of the first video I saw online. It was on the Dave Matthews Band official website 'cause I was huge into Dave Matthews Band. And they had a new music video, and they premiered the new music video on their website. And I remember it just being so crazy that we could go online and watch a video-on-demand, just whenever we wanted to. All we had to do was press play and then wait a long time. 

ANNA (13:03) 
And wait. You wait.

COLIN (13:07) 
And I waited an hour. And in that hour I was able to load the first three to four seconds of the video.

ANNA (13:17) 
That is commitment.

COLIN (13:19) 
Yeah, in 240p. It was so small on the screen.

ANNA (13:24) 
Remember when you used to download things and you'd download it and walk away. But then you'd come back every couple of minutes to jiggle the mouse 'cause you didn't want it to like... And this would go for hours. [chuckle]

COLIN (13:37) 
Yeah. What was jiggling the mouse about? Was it just not letting the computer go to sleep or something?

ANNA (13:43)
 Yeah, I think not letting it go to sleep or shut off the connection because it sometimes...

COLIN (13:49)
 It would just time out.

ANNA (13:50) 
It took hours just to get on the internet. I remember the first video I saw, too. It was not... I don't think it was on the internet, but it was in the library in elementary school. It was on the computer. I believe it was an Encarta Encyclopedia.

COLIN (14:06) 
Man, those CDs were everywhere.

ANNA (14:08) 
They were.

COLIN (14:09) 
And seemed so valuable.  Well, and it's before Google just put that online. It was just like, "Oh yeah, you wanna look up tigers?" Yeah. You could just... You did do that pretty easily with Google, and you don't have to store that information in your house.

ANNA (15:30) 
But yeah, I was looking at this Encarta CD in the library in like 4th grade, and there was a video of a cheetah. And I clicked play on the video, and the tiny cheetah started running. I remember being amazed that I was watching a real video of a real thing on a computer. (14:53 MUSIC) And this was a long time ago so it was super pixelated it was definitely not 4K like today. But I was floored, and in my nine-year-old mind, I thought, this is what technology is. This is the future.

 ANNA (15:12) 
So we started this conversation by talking about how the internet came into our lives and then grew to be a part of it. But let's talk about how the internet is in our lives now,   and how much has changed since then. Because, for me, it's such a part of everything that it's hard, to sum up, what role it plays now.

COLIN (15:33)
I've been thinking about this, especially we have Google Homes around the house.

ANNA (15:37) 
So do I. I call them my robot house-elves.

COLIN (15:39) 
Oh, yeah. [chuckle] Yeah, I use it all the time. I'll ask it dumb questions. I ask it about the weather a lot, which I feel like it... That's a good sign that I'm turning into my dad. I'll use the Google Home to play things on my tv.

ANNA (15:55) 
Oh, yeah.

COLIN (15:56) 
It's super helpful when I'm cooking, setting timers, and things like that. I'm always using the internet for some reason or other.

ANNA (16:04) 
Yeah, it's pretty astonishing how it's like everything I own has Wi-Fi. My Instant-pot has Wi-Fi. Everything I own has Wi-Fi in it.

COLIN (16:15) 
Yeah, our washer-dryer has Wi-Fi.

ANNA (16:17) 
Right? We have Google Homes in every room in our house. I'm willing to pay for tiny robots in my house that will take sh*t off my plate because being an adult is a never-ending parade of little sh*tty things that you need to do. The TV, it reads me the news, it does the lights, it's just... I've got smart plugs to turn the humidifier on and off. It's everywhere. And one thing I was thinking about was my car, that I have internet in my car now. For a while, it was just that I had my phone in the car to navigate and do things. But I realized when I bought my newest car which was a few years ago, it was 2016. One of my top priorities, it was obviously safety, you gotta look cool.

COLIN (17:07) 
Sure.

ANNA (17:07) 
Good warranty, all that sh*t. But one of them was there has to be some kind of in-car info system that I can either activate or plug into. So now the little maps are just on a screen. I can do zoom, there's an app in my car. But, you know, it is so different from like, we were talking about having our one computer that could get on the internet when we were kids. The iPhone came out in 2008, right?

COLIN (17:34) 
Yeah.

ANNA (17:34) 
So I remember I was in graduate school and I was thinking about getting a new phone and like a couple of people had iPhones. And I asked one of my classmates in my program who had had one if it was worth it. And he was very pensive for a second. And he said, "The iPhone is the answer." And guess what? It f***ing is.

COLIN (17:58) 
It is, yeah. Oh, I love having a camera in my pocket. It's so nice. I used to carry a point and shoot camera around in my baggy jeans back when baggy jeans were a thing. But now I just have this camera and it's so nice.

ANNA (18:13) 
Yeah, what other things do you use your devices for or the internet for? It's weird to even think about it, right? And would name it.

COLIN (18:20) 
Oh, it's so weird to name it. My two favorite things that are more recent discoveries. One is Marco polo, I just love. It's the best of social media and zero trash. [chuckle] And then my other big one is I have, especially since the COVID outbreak, I have been working via Zoom, but I do music production, which I had never done just remotely online with a client. And now I get on Zoom calls and I give them an uplink so they can stream straight out of Pro Tools as I'm mixing or whatever. And they can give me feedback as if they're in the room. And it is so nice.

ANNA (19:03) 
Professionally, yeah. I think that it has opened up so many opportunities, both in terms of just how we work and that for some people in some jobs, obviously not everybody, but for some people in some jobs, it just opens up opportunities. So when things like coronavirus happens, it doesn't completely derail you. You can adjust, which is what we're doing now. I've never really liked the make sure you have a five-year plan like where do you wanna be in five years professionally? To me, it's more about like what kinds of things do I wanna be doing or feeling or who do I wanna be working for? But I think now that question's becoming kind of obsolete because the thing you're doing in five years probably doesn't exist yet, you know?

COLIN (19:45) 
Right. 

ANNA (19:46) 
Like when I started at my last job, no one had thought about doing podcasts. No one had even heard of it. And then during the course of my time there, I launched a podcast division. We put out podcasts but when I got there and people were like, "What is it you want to do here?" It didn't exist yet. The internet is the through line, but the manifestation of it is just coming and coming and coming and changing.

COLIN (20:10) 
Yeah, how is it affecting your relationships now, especially in COVID?

ANNA (20:14) 
I don't really make friends on the internet like I used to do. We've talked about the X-Files message boards.

COLIN (20:20) 
Have you joined any Facebook groups?

ANNA (20:22) 
I'm in some Facebook groups.

COLIN (20:24) 
I love them.

ANNA (20:26) 
They're mostly professional oriented. Although I am in several like plant parent Facebook groups.

COLIN (20:33) 
Oh, cute. That's great.

ANNA (20:35) 
Where we post pictures of our plants and then say, "This plant is getting weird. Does anyone know why my plant is getting weird?" I will say that having the video chat is such a game-changer, having the video component of being able to see people and talk to them, it just adds such a layer of connection and intimacy so that I can talk to my dad for an hour. And it's not the same as being with him, but it is significantly more, I don't know, it's like you miss them less.

COLIN (21:16) 
Definitely, yeah.

ANNA (21:17) 
What about you? How has it affected your relationships? Friendships?

COLIN (21:22) 
The biggest thing is looking back on the last few years, I reconnected with Megan who I married last summer, but that was completely via the internet.

ANNA (21:37) 
I love this story.

COLIN (21:38) 
If Facebook hadn't existed, we would have met and then not seen each other again.

ANNA (21:44) 
Did you initially meet in person?

COLIN (21:46) 
Yeah, we met in person, and then probably a year later I messaged her on Facebook to see if she had been invited to this surprise party that we were throwing for our friend. And she hadn't heard about it. She was like, "Oh, thanks so much." And she came to that party and then we hit it off and started dating. I really believe without seeing her pop up every once in a while in my news feed, that would have never happened and we wouldn't be married, which is crazy. [chuckle]

ANNA (22:18) 
That's amazing.

COLIN (22:20) 
Yeah.

ANNA (22:21) 
It's amazing, right?

COLIN (22:23) 
It's so cool.

ANNA (22:24) 
The internet has become a giant phone book and you can look somebody up. They're gonna be there.

COLIN (22:29) 
Yeah, it's really a good way to keep people in mind.

ANNA (22:32) 
So when the internet started there were all kinds of weird fears about it, some of which have come true, some haven't. What are the things about the internet that concern you but just in your life?

COLIN (22:45) 
Yeah, I'm not really... I'm not concerned about Google listening in on my life. My thought with that is like, "I don't have secrets."

ANNA (22:54) 
Yeah, I feel this the same way in that I'm like, "I'm boring." 

COLIN (22:58) 
Yeah, so my biggest worry is that I'm being an a**. I just wanna help the internet feel really good. If something sets me off, I will post too quickly without thinking about it. I worry about it 'cause it's a real thing, 'cause I am an a** online sometimes. So yeah, that's the biggest thing. How about you?

ANNA (23:23) 
I worry about privacy. Something from 10 years ago that I said that was really obnoxious coming up, or I've been in jobs where my employer saw something I posted personally with my viewing settings as "friends only" and yet they saw it. And I was reprimanded for it because their attitude was I work for them, they own me, and anything I do could reflect badly on them including a tweet.

COLIN (23:50) 
Sheesh.

ANNA (23:50) 
My boss was trying to be sneaky in spying on me, but they didn’t know how anything worked. So they created a Twitter account, made their handle their first and last name, and then only followed me.  

COLIN (24:03) 
Amazing.

ANNA (24:04) 
And I was like, "Subtle." [chuckle] And the other thing is just being a woman on the internet. Every woman on the internet is one opinion away from a rape threat. So there is just that constant knowing you're a target just for being in your body and having opinions, and that there's a large contingent that thinks it's okay to not just disagree with you or not even just call you stupid, but to threaten you. 

COLIN (24:34) 
Man, that's the worst. I'm so sorry.

ANNA (24:38) 
Thank you.

COLIN (24:39) 
We gotta change that. We gotta convince all men to just f***ing quit it.

ANNA (24:44) 
Just stop guys.

COLIN (24:47) 
It is so dumb.

ANNA (24:49) 
What do you think the attitude towards the internet overall is now, now that everybody is exposed to it, most people are on it, in it?

COLIN (24:59)
I think if you asked people, they would speak very negatively of it, but then if you looked at their lives, you would see that they're like very logged on and use it all the time.

ANNA (25:13) 
I think there is this sort of unspoken agreement that the internet is bad for you, and that it brings out our sort of worst tendencies and all the things I see about it are you know how you should go on a social media diet or restricting your screen time, and I saw something in the headline was what is the internet doing to us?" Which again, I'm like, "It's not doing anything to us, we are engaging with it and we're using it in a certain way." And it kinda reminds me of other things that in our traditional Christian-Judeo tradition of anything that is enjoyable is bad. So I feel like this is just yet another thing that's like yet another thing that is like, "Oh, you like that? It must be sinful." In the same way that on the one hand we are a culture completely obsessed with sex. Everybody's sex lives from internet stars to senators, and we use sex in everything, in every song, in every ad, in everything, talk about it constantly, but then it's also this dirty secret thing that needs to be legislated and hidden and lied about. 

COLIN (26:27) 
Yeah, I wish people were empowered to use it how they wanted to use it, 'cause that seems to be what the language is really talking about when people talk about going on like a social media diet. Yeah, how do you regain control so that it's not the internet doing something to you, it's you using the internet."

ANNA (26:48) 
Which is part of why we wanted to do this show.

COLIN (26:51) 
Exactly.

ANNA (26:52) 
It was to say, "We're not coming from a place of saying the internet is killing us, the internet's regressing us to Neanderthal status," like, "This is a tool. How do we use it?"

MUSIC

COLIN (27:09)
Next up is our troubleshooting segment, the part of the show where we offer some suggestions or solutions related to what we've been talking about.

MUSIC

ANNA (27:33) 
In today's episode, we haven't really been talking about a problem that needs a solution, so instead we're gonna make some suggestions of things that you can think about that might help you become more aware of your relationship with the internet. Don't forget to connect with us on social media and share some of what you've come up with. We'd love to hear your ideas. We're all troubleshooting together.

COLIN (27:54) 
Take a minute to think about where you started with the internet. What's your first memory of it? What excited you the most about it? And how is that different now?

ANNA (28:04) 
How do you use the internet today? When do you feel like you're using it more than you need to? What are some of the things you like about the way you use the internet? And what are some of the things you might wanna change? Colin, give us an example, what's something you might wanna change about the way you internet?

COLIN (28:22) 
I really don't like how I feel when I've been on social media for more than a half-hour. I feel like I've wasted a lot of time if I spend more than 30 minutes just scrolling. So I'm gonna try to be aware of that and notice what time it is when I start scrolling and then try to end somewhere around 30 minutes this week. How about you?

ANNA (28:48) 
I want to change the fact that I do a lot of internetting late at night. So I'm not great at taking breaks during the day, relaxing during the day, so once I'm in bed and done with the doing of things, then I'm like, "Oh, I'll catch up on the internet." And so it's like 11:30 at night and now I'm starting to read the news. So, I get all riled up and I get upset and I get scared. And kinda like what you're saying with the 30 minutes, it's like you think you're gonna look at it for five minutes, maybe read one article, and then it's built to suck you in, right?

COLIN (29:28) 
Yeah.

ANNA (29:29) 
So then once you're in this, it gets hard to turn it off 'cause you're like, "But I need to know more and I need to know more, and what about this?" And then when I go to sleep that's the last thing I've put into my psyche before I go to sleep. So I wanna change that. Can I take more breaks during the day to catch up with the news so that it's not piling up or I'm not shocked by it by the time I get to it? so I'm trying to practice that and hoping that will help with my internetting late at night.

COLIN (30:01) 
Very cool. I love it.

ANNA (30:03) 
We'll let you know how it goes, listeners.

INTERNET GOLD MUSIC

COLIN (30:09) 
Every week we end our episode with some internet gold.

ANNA (30:12) 
Right, we need a sound effect for internet gold.

COLIN (30:14) 
Oh yeah, I'll make something.

MUSIC

COLIN (30:26) 
Anna, what's your good internet find this week?

ANNA (30:28) 
It's on Twitter. I should see if it's on Instagram and things, but it's called Rate My Room. It's @ratemyskyperoom. And it is just someone who takes screenshots because now we're all home, takes screenshots of experts on the news or celebrities who are talking or whatever, who are on Zoom, and then rates the room that they're in.

COLIN (30:52) 
Amazing.

ANNA (30:53) 
And so it'll be like you have too many books. You need a plant. None of your colors match, three out of 10. Or it'll be like, "Great light, perfect balance with your artwork. Your desk is a little cluttered, seven out of 10." [chuckle]

COLIN (31:10) 
I love this.

ANNA (31:11) 
And then the best part is that they will show these before and afters of... They will feature some random journalist or whatever and rate their room, and then they'll show that journalist again the next time they're on some Zoom call and they will have taken the advice. They will have changed the room based on what they got by Rate My Room.

COLIN (31:33) 
Awesome.

ANNA (31:34) 
It's benign. There's nothing mean. It's just kind of delightful commentary on this new weirdness. 

COLIN (31:42) 
Oh, man.

ANNA (31:43) 
What's your internet gold?

COLIN (33:44) 
Mine is an Instagram account called Cheap Old Houses. I have this dream. So ever since the quarantine, my friend Trevor said, "Yeah, I kind of have just been thinking like why am I living in LA, if all I can do in LA is be in LA? I can't see any of the people. I can't go to things. It just seems like a waste of money." So I've had this fantasy of buying a really cheap house somewhere and moving.

ANNA (32:15) 
In LA or anywhere?

COLIN (32:17) 
Anywhere, so I found Cheap Old Houses and it's amazing. All the houses are usually less than 100 grand. Some of them are well-kept, some of them are in shambles. They're all over the country, and if you want, you can go to their website and see the actual listing. I'm pretty sure they've actually sold some houses through this account.

ANNA (32:40)
Wow.

COLIN (32:41) 
But yeah, it's really...

ANNA (32:42) 
And so this caters to us millennials who never had a chance, we just never had a chance.

COLIN (32:48) 
Oh, totally. Every day I get to like, yeah, fantasize about living in one of these houses and just dream of what I would do with each room. It’s really nice.

ANNA (32:58) 
So check those out, guys.

MUSIC OUTRO

ANNA (33:08)
Well, we gotta log off. That’s a wrap for the first episode of The More You Scroll, thank you for joining us. Please subscribe and stick around for the rest of the season.

COLIN (33:18) 
To help other listeners find this show please leave us a 5-star rating and review on your platform of choice. Connect with us online @themoreuscroll and themoreuscroll.com, let us know what you thought of this episode, and tag friends you think would like it.      

ANNA (33:36) 
The More You Scroll is a production of Lindenfield Studio and Van Valin Productions. I’m Anna Van Valin

COLIN (33:41) 
I’m Colin Foy. Scroll you next time…

ANNA (33:44) 
Should we say that in unison?

MUSIC