Halloween Special: Creepy Encounters

This week, Mike and Sarah dissect the Creepy Encounters subreddit and how to handle our creepy feelings in an unsafe time and place.  Digressions include Carol Kane, McDonald's and Uber.  Sarah wonders if human traffickers have taken serial killers’ jobs. 

Here's Mike's new podcast! http://maintenancephase.com

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Where else to find us:
Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads
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Links!

• "I was almost sex trafficked and didn’t realize until nearly a year later"
• "Homeless lady approaches my car while i’m eating alone at the Mcdonald’s, doesn’t realize i’m not stupid"
• "Do not let your Uber Driver cancel your ride while in the car"

Transcript

Sarah: I feel like we're talking more about fears of being trafficked than fears of being murdered. And it's like, what happened to being murdered?

Welcome to You’re Wrong About, the show where I will take any excuse to read to you for a while.

Mike: You're Wrong About, the show that is gradually becoming an audio book, yes. 

Sarah: That's my goal. Yeah. That's one of my insidious plans.

Mike: I am Michael Hobbes. I am a reporter for the Huffington Post. 

Sarah: I'm Sarah Marshall. I'm working on a book about the Satanic Panic. 

Mike: And if you want to support the show, we're on Patreon at patreon.com/yourewrongabout. And we have a slight announcement this week.

Sarah: Yes!

Mike: I have another podcast. I have a sister podcast. 

Sarah: You have a child! 

Mike: It's basically You're Wrong About for fitness and health myths. And it's me and one of my favorite internet people, Your Fat Friend, who many of you are probably already following on Twitter and Instagram. She is delightful and the show is called Maintenance Phase, and you can find it wherever podcasts live.

Sarah: I think that we should start a podcast distribution platform called “Wherever”, because then you get free advertising on every other podcast. But I'm so excited about this show. I feel like this is kind of a long-term obsession of yours. And like, this is a side plant that grew off of some of the research that you did initially as part of this show, and that wanted to have a life of its own, like a strawberry.

Mike: So we've already released our first kind of like an intro episode of sort of who we are where we're at. And then every week we're going to bust a health myth. We're going to talk about the Atkins diet, we're gonna talk about Fen-Phen, we're going to talk about Moon Juice, these sort of like smoothies that are being distributed through the Gwyneth Paltrow-verse. So our first episode is on the President's Physical Fitness Test, and it comes out this week.

Sarah: Stay tuned for not very much time. Don't worry. You'll be getting a surprise soon. 

Mike: But what are we talking about today? 

Sarah: We are talking about a completely different thing. The creepy encounters subreddit, which I have become fascinated by. And we originally recorded this as a bonus episode for our patrons and then basically, we had another episode that I was working on that we were supposed to put out this week and I was really unhappy with it and it just wasn't good yet. So we're giving you the fun one. We hope you want the fun one. If you don't want the fun one, then I don't know what to tell you. And Mike, we should talk about what Reddit is for just a second. And like, why did I start frantically texting you all these things to the point where we decided we had to talk about them? 

Mike: So I'm actually not a big Reddit guy, but my understanding is that Reddit is, there's groups according to interest. So there's like an American Doll group, And there's a “I live in Wisconsin” group, and people post either links that they like, or descriptions of “something funny happened to me today at the bank”. So they're all just sort of like random people posting things and then other people can upvote them and comment them and sort of have a discussion about them. That's how, that's my understanding of how Reddit works. 

 Sarah: Yeah. And within Reddit you have subreddits that can get unbelievably specific. And it also feels to me like a place where people kind of go to like observe other human behavior and submit their own human behaviors for like evaluation by other human beings. 

Mike: And what is the creepy encounters subreddit about?

Sarah: So, while browsing Reddit looking for scary stories, I found the creepy encounters sub Reddit, which is specifically for non-paranormal and non-life threatening events where like, something just kind of gave you a creepy feeling like that's the criteria, but interestingly, the most popular posts there tended to be of the genre of like, I was almost trafficked. I crossed paths with a serial killer maybe. Something almost happened, like something really seriously terrible almost happened, or could have happened, or I feel like it could have happened. And like, I wanted to explore that feeling with you basically and talk about what it means for a nation of people to have that level of fear and what kinds of events inspire it.

Mike: And I wanted to rant to you about all the trafficking stuff that didn't make it into our real episodes. And that's what we got to do. 

Sarah:  I think this is a real episode too-

Mike: Ya know? 

Sarah:  I think this is just a, a wonky one. It's just-- it's got polka dots. 

Mike: It’s the Velveteen rabbit of episodes. It just needs to be loved. 

Sarah: Aww, yeah. 

Mike: So, this is us from a couple of weeks ago talking about trafficking and homelessness and Uber and all kinds of other stuff and, uh, enjoy and we'll see you with other things soon. 

Sarah: Yes. 

Mike: This is a bit different because usually we do like, ‘ask us anything’. But then for the last like five days, Sarah has been frantically sending me trafficking urban legend posts from this Reddit that she found.

Sarah: Uh-huh!

Mike: And so eventually we were like, “Oh, we like, we really want to talk about this, but let's, let's record us talking about this, because this could be a fun bonus episode.” 

Sarah: Well, it was just, I realized that I kept wanting, I-- I read like ten fairly long Reddit posts that I wanted to send you.

Mike: I'm so excited. 

Sarah: And I was restraining myself and just sending you two or three. And I was like, we gotta do something with this because I can't just keep sending him like…  meaningless things to read. So yeah, we decided to do a bonus episode and, uh, let us know if you like it.

Mike: Also, if there's other subreddits that you think we should like dive into and talk about as a bonus episode, let us know.

Sarah: Yeah. I feel like it's one of the, one of my favorite ways. One of the best ways I found to like, feel like I'm peering directly into other people's houses. 

Mike: Yes.

Sarah Ironically, given the substance of the subreddit, we're going to discuss today, which is  our creepy encounters.

Mike: I'm so excited. 

Sarah Okay. So this is one of the ones that I couldn't restrain myself from sending to you and it's called “I Was Almost Sex Trafficked and Didn't Realize Until Nearly A Year Later”.  And so the poster writes, 

“I've had some creepy encounters before, but this is the only one where I am positive I was in danger. I was 17 and I had really wanted to learn how to play guitar and this guy I had a crush on offered to teach me how to play. So, we decided to meet at a park one summer afternoon. I got there a bit early and decided to just wait on a bench inside of one of those little hut things you see in every generic suburban park. So I'm sitting on my phone, waiting for the guy to come and all of a sudden this lady pops up out of fucking nowhere! She was a fairly small lady but seemed to be in her forties or fifties and I specifically remember her being incredibly thin and almost dirty looking despite having her hair and makeup done well and wearing very nice clothing. All of this is important later. She walks up to me and tells me she likes my shoes to which I give her a big smile and tell her where I got them. That was probably my first mistake. Then she sits down and begins to start a conversation with me asking how old I was, where I lived, went to school, all of that stuff. Now I immediately thought this was weird, but my hometown is super safe. The lady was incredibly small, so I knew I could take her down if needed. And she was speaking with an accent and didn't seem to know much English. So I figured that maybe she was new here and wanted to make friends and I didn't want to seem rude. So I kept talking to her and just giving her vague answers whenever I could. And then all of a sudden she says, ‘Oh, you're so beautiful. I love your skin and hair’. And without giving me time to react, pulls out her phone and takes a photo of me! Okay, now I'm starting to freak out, but, and I know this is dumb of me, I tell myself that maybe this was just a cultural difference and wasn't actually that weird. So I just kind of didn't react and hoped the guy would show up soon.

So at this point, the lady has been talking to me for about 15 or 20 minutes and I'm getting pretty weirded out and trying to make my responses to her as short as possible in hopes that she'll leave, which she doesn't. Finally, finally, the guy shows up. He is a big military guy that doesn't look like someone you'd want to fuck with. So, I immediately felt safe and made it clear that I knew him. Because this lady was sitting so damn close to me, he thought we knew each other. So, he went up to her and introduced himself. She did not like that at all. Her face kind of fell as soon as she saw him and she tried to hide it, but still hardly spoke to him or acknowledged him at all and instead turned to me and asked if he was my boyfriend. Him and I very quickly said no and made it clear we were just friends. Well apparently, she completely ignored us saying that because almost immediately she gets up and says, ‘Oh, you guys are such a cute couple!’ and pulls out her phone and takes yet another photo of me! But this time in a way that she got my full body in the shot. After she takes the photo she pretty much immediately leaves, and I noticed that she went around a big corner towards the bathrooms and just…  disappears. I never saw her come out of another side.”

Mike: *gasps*

Sarah: So, do you want to break and discuss what we've heard so far?

Mike: Well what struck you about this and what made you want to send it to me?

Sarah: I mean, first of all, that it was just like a classic sex trafficking story of the kind that I've heard sort of warnings and memes go around about because there is this specific sort of sub-genre of human trafficking warnings that I've seen on social media of like “don't talk to women” and that women are recruiting. And even stories about like, if a child is asking for help, don't help them because the traffickers have sent them in. Like, if you see what seems to be an abandoned baby carriage or a baby crying, like don't go look at it because the traffickers will snatch you. Which like,  I think as a plot point in The Great Mouse Detective. It's stuff that's very resonant in a horror movie way and so I was interested in the fact that this is like a classic social media anti-trafficking fear of like a woman is recruiting me for sex trafficking.

Mike: Yeah, I mean it has the structure of so many of these stories where ultimately, if you just wrote down the facts of the story, it's quite sort of every day. “I was sitting in a park, a woman came up to me, she seemed a little strange and she took a photo of me” which is definitely out of the ordinary, but that's like, that's it.

Sarah: Mhmm. 

Mike: I'm always curious about how people think the sort of logistics of this form of recruitment works because from all of the sex workers that I've spoken to, pimps recruiting-- like this does in fact take place on planet earth, but it's almost exclusively of existing sex workers. ‘Managers’, as sex workers call them, will sort of drive around in red light districts and threaten and harass people who are already doing sex work to start to give up some of the profits that they're making. But it's like, if your strategy is just walking up to random people and taking their photos and then trying to recruit them to sex work, that just doesn't seem like a very efficient strategy to me. 

Sarah: Well, I love how your project manager queen abilities are allowing you to undermine the myths of like Wayfair and human trafficking.

So let's talk about this European lady. So she goes to a park, Anytown, USA. She's waiting to happen upon fresh, young, potential trafficking victims of some kind. So she chats them up, she makes small talk, she asked them about their lives and then takes pictures of them. And then where are the pictures going in this scenario?

Mike: I think it's also part of the myth of like, international cartels, right? That she has to show these photos to her boss for like, approval, to get her expenses paid back or something. 

Sarah: Right. That's the weirdest thing about this all. And I guess it makes total sense, is that like, it's not just the idea that there's human trafficking. Like, I believe that. Fine. It's that in all of these stories there is explicitly or implicitly the idea that human trafficking is like a large corporate infrastructure.

Mike: Yes. 

Sarah: That involves middle management. 

Mike: Like she's got a monthly quota. 

Sarah: Yes. And it makes sense to me because it's reflecting how the truly sinister things that happen in America. The companies that look at profit margins, look at how many people have to die for them to be able to guarantee the stockholders a good fiscal quarter. 

Mike: Yeah, those are health insurance companies. You're talking about people who work in health insurance companies.

Sarah: Yeah, health insurance companies. Which is why Saw 6 is such an underrated movie, because it is about health insurance. It has themes. 

Mike: I knew you would bring it back to that somehow. 

Sarah: Yes, I will bring up Saw whenever I possibly can, it's maligned. You know, but it's like, again, like, I just can't stress enough my amazement at the fact that like the calm, reasonable, psychopath that we imagine carrying out the violent crimes, the sexual assaults, the coercions, the abuses that affect people's lives. It's like individuals don't act that way, but companies do. So it's interesting to me that like, our justifiable fears of corporations are being sublimated onto the sexual predator figure. Like, that's interesting. It's a graft, it's a franken-fear. 

Mike: It’s also a weird blending of things in that these things are hierarchical, right? And they're so sort of internationally connected and they're connected to elites, and there's private jets involved, et cetera. But also, they're so janky that they're walking up to people in parks. 

Sarah: Yes. 

Mike: Right? They're basically door to door salesman.

Sarah: Right, like that's what they make you do when you're like trying to sell leggings on Facebook to other moms. Have you ever heard a story about someone being recruited into sex work by like a random Eastern European lady, like mysteriously chatting with her and taking a photo of her. 

Mike: No. The only, the closest thing I've heard, and I actually just got an email from somebody with a story like this yesterday and I have a call with her later this week is…  it's like romance.

Sarah: Right.

Mike: She's a teenage girl. It's a guy in his like late twenties or early thirties. He's handsome. He's nice to her. And nobody's ever been nice to her before because she grew up in a really shitty family. And it's wrapped up in domestic abuse. This isn't like he's deliberately, calculatedly recruiting her to commercial sex. What he's doing is he just wants to get into a relationship with this person who he is physically attracted to and smitten with. And he's kind of an asshole. And then he starts abusing her, and the abuse escalates, and it escalates more. And eventually it becomes him asking her to have sex with other people so that he can get the money.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mike: This isn't necessarily in his head from day one. I am sure that that has happened in the world. But when we hear real versions of this story, it is almost always in the context of a romantic relationship. It is almost always somebody who has a history of abuse or trauma or a situation that they want to escape from. And it is almost always escalation of existing abuse.

Sarah: Right. And I guess like, why would you lead with like an off-putting little Eastern European lady?

Mike: I know!

Sarah: I made up that she’s Eastern European. because I assume, I'm thinking of like Carol Kane and the argument that the trafficking mean people would counter that with, I believe is because the little European lady isn't threatening. You're not scared of her. And so, that's why they're using women and children as bait. And it's like, yeah, I'm not scared of her, but like, I'm not going to like, take a weird job from her either. 

Mike: Yeah. I mean, the question is like, what's her pitch, right? If her pitch is like, “Hi, I'm a random Carol Kane lady and you can make a thousand dollars a week by sleeping with men,” most teenagers would simply say no to that.

Sarah: Yeah. Or they'd be like, you know what? I fucking hate working at this Jersey Mike's. Keep talking. And then they would either be like, yes, those sound like reasonable labor conditions and context or no, that's no good.

Mike: Yeah and in general without the sort of the romantic entanglement and without the promise of love, she doesn't have a great pitch to these kids to get them to sign up for it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mike: I was actually just chatting the other day with a woman who's a counselor at a domestic violence shelter. And she said that the shelter has around 2000 people that sort of come through the doors for some period of time every year.

Every year, they have around five people that have been in like, something like this, where they end up getting coerced into commercial sex by their boyfriend. And she said in basically 100% of these cases, the people, both of the people involved are homeless. And one or both of the people are on meth, like meth is in some way involved.

So again, we have this idea of like the calculated criminal trafficker who's like recruiting dozens of girls when oftentimes the actual traffickers are like, so addicted that like, they don't necessarily want their girlfriend to be sleeping with guys to make money, but they can't think of any other way and they're so desperate from withdrawals that they will let her sleep with guys for money.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mike: Not to defend this or anything, and some of them are working at a domestic violence shelter is a particular slice of this issue. So, she's also not getting necessarily the big picture 

Sarah: But it’s just saying like, what genus of shitty behavior is this?

Mike: Yes.

Sarah: Like we're not saying it's shitty behavior or that it's not abusive, but it's like, if you have this town where people are being like, you know, stalked by like some kind of big cat and you think it's a tiger, isn't it a relief to find out that it's a bobcat?

Mike: Right.

Sarah: Which can still fuck you up. But it's a little like the bedraggly bobcat. It's not a mythic creature. It's just like, the people who do the most damage in our lives don't have, or often don't have the capacity to be self-aware about the damage they're inflicting or about how dangerous they are or about how harmful their behavior is.

You know, some of the worst abuses are carried out by people who do not see themselves as abusive and who, if you said you're being abusive, would just abuse you more because it's upsetting to them to be told that they're abusive. 

Mike: Ya know, people who do these sort of calculated acts do exist.

Sarah: Yeah.

Mike: But it's far more common for people to sort of stumble into this or escalate their way into this behavior without necessarily envisioning that this was what they wanted all along. 

Sarah: Yeah. I think the amount of like diminishment of what we aspire to call free will, if your body is going through, for example, a bad drug withdrawal is like a very scary thing to contemplate. And I think it's easier to think that there's like, this big corporate human trafficking concern that sends out little European ladies.

Mike: Can I tell the opposite of this story?

Sarah: Yeah.

Mike:  So this was like two weeks ago. I was sitting at like an outdoor cafe, like one of the few places in Seattle where you can sit outdoors, but also get Wi-Fi. And there was a woman nearby who looked to be sort of in her forties. And she asked, like, you know, how do you access the Wi-Fi or something like that? And I helped her and then her computer wasn't working. And then this is the extent of my technical knowledge. I was like, try turning it off and turning it on again. 

Sarah: Uh huh.

Mike: And then the internet worked like the password went through and she sort of, you know, was like, “Hey, where are you from?” and “Do you come here often?” Like, you know, normal kind of in public chatting stuff. And so we were having a lovely little fleeting relationship and then after a couple of minutes, she said, um, “Oh, do you mind watching my stuff while I run inside and grab a drink or whatever. And I was like, sure. And then she came back outside with two Madeline's, like little cookies and she gave me one of the cookies.

Sarah: Awww.

Mike: And she was like, “It's so nice of you to help me fix the, you know, get the Wi-Fi working.” And I was like, that is totally unnecessary. Like I did nothing!

Sarah: That’s so Proustian.

Mike: It was just so nice of her!

Sarah: Yeah.

Mike: And then, since then, I mean, I go to this place relatively frequently because it's like one of the only places you can work outdoors. Like I see her there all the time now. 

Sarah: Aww. 

Mike: And like we've traded names and stuff and like she's looking for work and I'm like helping her with her interviews and stuff. And like one of the sort of grand tragedies of stories like this, like the meta tragedy is that like, If I wanted to, I could have seen my interaction with her as like somehow sinister. 

Sarah: Oh yeah. You could have gone on, on our creepy encounters and talked about it.

Mike:  Yes! And also like one of the things that you do in these sort of initial small talk conversations is sometimes like you ask questions that people aren't ready to answer. Like, one of the things she asked me was she like, “Do you live near this cafe?” And like, that's a pretty normal question to ask, but if in my brain I was like constantly looking out for traffickers, I'd be like, “Oh, why is she asking me if I live nearby? Does she want to know my address?” Like, why did she buy me a cookie? Right. Like, why is she trying to sort of get on my good graces? Like you can see these things as evil when 99.9% of the time it's like, people maybe just overstepped the mark a little bit.

Sarah: Mmhm. I mean, this is a thing, too. I think that, I think that just happens if you're a human being that lives in a city. Like, you will interact with a lot of people who like, are going to be a little unusual to you and you're going to have a hard time reading them and they're going to maybe be going through something. There's a certain, you know, there's this idea, and a lot of these names going around of like, trust your gut, like, cause like if it feels off like trust your gut, trust your feeling that like if something is off just like trust it. And I feel like we're getting into this weird area where we're assuming that like, if something feels off to you, that means you're going to be like trafficked. 

Trafficked is the new murdered, some things just feel weird. And this idea of assuming that someone who makes you feel weird for any reason, is dangerous to you is going to make you respond with hostility and maybe actually dangerous behavior of your own to someone who's just like, you know, behaves in a way that is confusing to you, but isn't hostile to you at all.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're neglecting the fact that this subreddit post has a twist at the end and it did turn out to be trafficking. 

Sarah: Well, let's pick it back up. Okay, 

“Until about a year later. So I was sitting in my dorm one night falling down a YouTube rabbit hole and I stumbled upon videos of people telling the sex trafficking stories and all of their encounters seemed very familiar to me. All of a sudden, I remembered the encounter I had with that lady at the park, and I decided to Google ‘sex trafficking’ in my hometown to calm my nerves because there was no way this lady was a sex trafficker, right? I Google my hometown and immediately an article pops up about a woman being arrested in my hometown in September for running two sex trafficking rings in my town. I'm thinking this can't be the same lady, and continue reading about how she kidnapped women and girls in my town and held them hostage at a ‘massage center’ and would sell them in the U.S. and ship them out of the country, stuff like that. And then I get to a mugshot and my blood goes cold. On the screen I see a small lady.” 

How small is this lady? I'm picturing like…

Mike: Thumbelina?

Sarah: Yeah, she lives inside of a Russian doll. 

“On the screen I see a small lady with a description saying she's in her fifties. I recognize her immediately and freak out and FaceTime the guy I was with at the time and show him the mugshot to confirm it's her. And without me saying anything, he goes, ‘Oh, that's the lady we met in the park.’”

Mike: Ooooh. 

Sarah: “The thing that probably freaks me out the most was that as far as I'm able to find out, she was the only person arrested and there is no way this lady worked alone. She was incredibly, incredibly tiny.” 

How tiny was she? 

“Yet no one else was found guilty of sex trafficking in my town or anywhere nearby. I have since moved back to my hometown and I truly think that moving away for a year may have saved my ass. Although, I still don't know if someone else has those pictures of me.” 

The end.

Mike: Dun Dun Duuuun. 

Sarah: So yeah. Tell us about what, your thoughts. 

Mike: I mean, all I have is just, in brackets: citation needed. Maybe there was a sex trafficking ring in her town and there was a woman arrested as part of that. And the photo of this woman appeared in the newspaper and this person has like juxtaposed that with the person who spoke to her in the park that day. 

Sarah: Well, but the other thing is that like the news is reporting on stuff that based on how you’ve reported on sex trafficking, doesn't happen. Like they're saying that she's shipping girls out of the country.

I mean, what I find interesting about this post is that I think that this poster, that this all could have happened, like this weird conversation and then like, maybe this lady did work. You know, was arrested on suspicion of sex trafficking and it can be reported on in such an inflammatory way that the poster reasonably makes a very slight leap from that to like shipping containers.

Mike: Mmhm. I mean, I am like pretty fucking brain poisoned from trafficking stuff, and I've never seen a story in the news that said women were being recruited from the U.S. and taken abroad. One thing you hear, I've heard this in so many conversations with like very smart, very educated people. They'll say like city X, they'll say like Portland is a hub for human trafficking.

Sarah: Yes. Everyone thinks their city is a hub for human trafficking the same way that everyone thinks Empire Carpets is a local business that their city has. It's not. I'm sorry.

Mike: But what I've noticed when I ask people, like, why do you say that you know, Portland is a hope for human trafficking. Oftentimes what they say is they'll say, “Oh, it's a port city”. 

Sarah: Right.

Mike: I have done all the like Googling Ninja level stuff that I can do. I have asked people that work in this field, I've asked people that like do international human smuggling. I've asked a lot of people if they have ever heard of immigrants being shipped against their will in a shipping container and no one has ever been able to give me a case of it.

There have been cases where immigrants will go sort of like to the UK or other places in a shipping container willingly. They're like, I will pay you $10,000 to get me into Western Europe on a shipping container. But again, it's like this idea of like, it's a port city and it's a hub. There are not a large number of confirmed cases of this. The whole thing of like immigrants in shipping containers, like we all need to get that out of our vocabulary. 

Sarah: Yeah. And it's something that people assume without thinking it through. Cause like, as with the zip tie on the car thing where like the traffickers will get you by, like they put a zip tie, they connect the handle of your car door to the car door beside it. And then you're going to be trying to get it off and then they'll get you and it's like, why do the traffickers want you to take something sharp out of your purse? 

Mike: Right. So we've been talking about this one fucking Reddit post for like an hour and 10 minutes. 

Sarah: Yes. Very happy with that. 

Mike: We, uh, we think that it's probably not accurate.

Sarah: Yeah. And so here's a comment that says “there is not a single trafficking group that has been profiled that didn't use women as bait, not one. As far as I'm concerned, women are the new leads in trafficking scenarios because people feel safer around women. Always carry pepper spray or something. And if someone tries to take a picture of you, block your face and feel free to defend yourself.”

Mike: Oh my God. If you see any woman, feel free to pepper spray her.

Sarah: Mace her! If you see a teeny tiny woman, step on her like she's a crunchy leaf.

Mike: Do you, uh, do you want to read me some more? 

Sarah: Yes. 

Mike: What are you going to read me? What, what is, what nightmare am I entering into? 

Sarah: So this is called “Homeless Lady Approaches My Car While I'm eating Alone at the McDonald's. Doesn't Realize I'm Not Stupid.”

So, this poster writes, 

“Yes, I was eating in my car. It was late, almost midnight. And the dining room had already been closed up. The town I live in has a lot of poverty. So the occasional bummer beggar isn't really a big deal. So out of the corner of my eye, I see a figure at my window and hear a knock. I instantly make sure my doors are locked and crack the window a bit to speak to her.

She's obviously disheveled, layered up in coats, and toting a big purse in each hand. First, she calmly asks if she can get a ride to the pharmacy. I tell her, I'm sorry, I'm about to head home and I can't. Immediately, she goes into some crocodile tears. I'm sitting there like, dude, there's a Walgreens a block from this McDonald's and a CVS a block down from that. She tells me she's gone to both and they’re closed, suggesting a specific street on which there is an open pharmacy. 

Remember how I said I live here? Yeah. The Walgreens is obviously never closed. I immediately roll up my window and go back to finishing my burger and she starts knocking again on the window loudly. The good thing is the bass in my car is turned all the way up and the sound leaks a lot. So I just cranked up my white ass music until she left. Very creepy just because I could tell half of what she was telling me was a lie.”

Mike: No, it's such a fucking bummer. 

Sarah: Yeah, this one's just sad. 

Mike: I know. I have to share this with people on the internet. I don't know why you have to do it in this like shitty framing.

Sarah: And I feel like cultivating a feeling of like, hostility where sadness could be, is like a way that people get through just like this, this high visibility of human trauma and suffering and like needless human suffering, you know? And, and it is frustrating to just, to live in a society that's visibly breaking down all around you and you can't fix it. I think one of the ways we have of coping with this is to, you know, just decide, like, if I feel off, if someone is like, seems a little, if I feel upset in any way by someone's, uh, interaction with me, then like, I will register that as like fear and hostility. 

Mike: Right. 

Sarah: It feels like one of the things that does is cauterize the wound of just like, accepting what's really going on.

Mike: Right! And it absolves you of the need to be nice to people.

Sarah: Yeah, cause you’re a potential victim at all times. 

Mike: Yeah. One of the most proximate experiences of being a homeless person is shame. People do not look at you. People do not say hello in the morning, homeless people know that society doesn't like homeless people. So like the stigma of being homeless is acutely felt by homeless people. And so one of the best things that you can do, even if you are not comfortable with giving money to homeless people and some people aren't, and I have no interest in changing the, what people do on that front, I have interest in changing how people vote on these issues, but if you are not comfortable giving homeless people, your money, like saying hello to homeless people, introducing yourself. 

If you see the same homeless person in your neighborhood like three or four times, they are your neighbor. You might not like the fact that they are your neighbor, but they fucking are, and you can treat them the same way you treat neighbors in your building, who you don't want to be there. Like you can be civil to them if you are in, I mean, I'm just off on a rant now. This has nothing to do with anything.

Sarah: No, this is great. I love it. 

Mike: I mean, frankly, a lot of people who quote, unquote, seem homeless. They're not homeless. They actually have, like a lot of people do actually live in low income housing.

Sarah: They’re just art students. 

Mike: They're just poor. Like a lot of people live in subsidized housing, but when you live in subsidized housing, you still have to pay at least 30% of your income on the housing.

And so a lot of people don't have enough money left over for food or other things. So, they end up panhandling. So, a lot of people who we call quote, unquote, homeless, they are poor. They're not homeless. Because things are actually really important and it feels important to me to like, not shut off your empathy in the way that like these stories in these subreddits are encouraging you to.

Sarah: Right, like you don't have to feel safe giving a ride to someone or continuing to talk to someone. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Sarah: And like, everyone has the right to eat their burger quietly in their car in the middle of the night. But like sometimes someone really needs a ride to somewhere for whatever reason and is not having their best day and you are the only person who they can ask for that and it just sucks. 

Mike: Yeah. 

Sarah: This has so many upvotes. 

Mike: My favorite comment is the person going, “Are you in Hollywood, California? We also have a McDonald's that's close to a Walgreens and a CVS.”

Sarah: The most stressful thing to me about this entire post is that most of the comments are people discussing the phenomenon that apparently McDonald's is often in the same mini mall as a Walgreens and a CVS as if that's the most interesting thing going on here. 

Mike: It's so weird. 

Sarah: Okay. So this post is called “Sex Trafficker with a Change of Heart?”

Mike: Oh noooo. 

Sarah: And this poster writes, 

“When I was in college, I worked at a small hole in the wall bar, about 20 minutes from a medium-sized city in the Midwest. One night, a guy walked in and sat at the bar. He got a drink and ordered some food and sat at the bar by himself. At some point, this man started to engage in personal conversation with me. Again, totally normal, especially in a place like that. But at some point he started to compliment me on my appearance. Also, again, not hyper unusual since I was 21 years old, five-three, athletic-petite, blue-eyed, with all my teeth. But he started to really attempt to flatter me like saying I was exceptionally beautiful, which honestly, I probably ranked on a four to eight depending on the day and effort. But I can tell you for sure. I was not on the upper end of the spectrum that day.” 

Like, aw honey. 

Mike: Awww. Although, I mean good for her. That's a, that's a wide range. Four to eight!

Sarah: “He started to tell me that I had modeling material, that he could see me in magazines, that I was just something special. Then he started to tell me about how he had a buddy in Florida who ran a modeling agency, and I would be perfect for him. He started talking about money I could make, and it could just be a part-time thing. At some point in my naivety, I was really intrigued. I never thought of myself like that, but hey, this guy seems nice and genuine so he must really mean it. I could also make some extra money. Looking back on that thought process, I cringe.

 After he sweet talked me, we exchanged contact information. He gave me an email address and asked me to send pictures of myself when I had the chance. He then said he’d get me connected with his friend in Florida. He finished his meal and went on his way. The next day I went home and like the stupid, clueless and naive”-  all in caps - “girl, I was, I freaking emailed him! I literally remember being so excited too. Like, eek! Can't wait to be a model!”

Mike: Sweetie. 

Sarah: “A few days passed with no response. Then I got a reply back to him. He thanked me for the email, but then said something to the effect of ‘you're a very sweet girl and you have a good future ahead of you and that he wasn't going to forward this to his friend.’

I remember being disappointed. WTF. I thought he didn't like my pictures. I am 28 years old now. And it wasn't until recently, did I realize that I think I dodged a major bullet by being sex trafficked. Just looking back at that place in general, I was in a really precarious position. Also, I just wonder about the change of heart. I wish I remembered the exact verbiage and what pictures I sent. I recently tried to find this email exchange, but I must've used my school account. And that has since been deleted.” And the top comment says, “I don't think sex trafficking LOL more like a pervert, pretending he has a friend in the modeling field so you will send him pics. It's happened to me multiple times, but me being skeptical has never fell for it.”

Mike: Uh, I know it's just like such a standard story of just like a dick-ish dude in a bar. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Mike: Using a line on the girl like that night. And then she emails him like three days later and he's like, what? who? what girl? Wait a couple days to email back. And is like, uh, like he wants to let her down easy and not be a dick. 

Sarah: Or he just wanted to get the pictures out of her and he has them. He's like, great, bye. 

Mike: Yeah. Uh, this is the thing it's like this trafficking stuff has resulted in just like straight-forward stories of dudes, like trying to sexually assault you to trying to have sex with you in like a normal way have now become like, ‘I was almost trafficked’ stories.

Sarah: Right. And I feel like it's like, you have to call it trafficking to like to legitimize how creepy it is. And it's like, no, it's just fucking creepy.

Mike: It’s just fucking creepy.

Sarah: It's creepy that he would get pictures out of you that way. Like, I don't know. It's funny to me that this is a story that has very few up votes. This has like 50 up votes. The, I-was-eating-in-my-car-outside-a-McDonald's-and-a-homeless-woman-bothered-me story has like almost 2000 up votes and this one's creepy. 

Mike: Yeah.

Sarah: And I feel like it is unsuccessful on the subreddit because it's not, it's obviously not the thing that the poster thinks it is, but it's creepy! And in a way it's, you know, it's creepier because like she doesn't even realize still, what was going on.

Mike: Yeah. Do you want to tell the Uber drivers story? I thought that was really good. 

Sarah: Yeah, here I'll open it. And so this is another example of one that to me is quite creepy and it's called “Do Not Let Your Uber Driver Cancel Your Ride While in the Car” and you're going to read it.

Okay. This is extremely long. So I'm going to do some paraphrasing. So this is a woman. She went out dancing with friends. She's very drunk. Her phone is dead. And so her friends do the thing where they're like, I'll get you an Uber using my account or whatever. And so her friends basically put her in this Uber. She's super drunk. The Uber driver’s sort of heading vaguely toward her home.

And then he asked her if she wants some weed and she's like, “I don't know”. But then he sorta like, pushes it on her, like, “Oh, it'll help you sleep”, or whatever. And then she's like, “Okay, yeah, I'll take some weed”. But then this is like, kind of a bait-and-switch. He says, “Okay, well I have to cancel the ride really quick because I can't give it to you while I'm on the clock.” So all of a sudden, he cancels her ride so he can give her this joint. So she says “It's starting to hit me now. I'm not in the car with an Uber driver, but with some stranger.” Which is what an Uber driver is.

Mike: Yes!

Sarah: Which is like an astute observation that that is what an Uber driver is. 

Mike: I can't call anyone and he's trying to give me weed that could have anything in it. 

“For the next minute, we're pretty quiet. Or maybe I just can't remember any small talk you tried to make, because I was beginning to panic. Every time he handed me the joint, I would take fake hits, just breathing it into my mouth and not into my lungs. I felt tired, clumsy and weak, the kind of drunk where you're almost to the point of nausea. And now I couldn't do much of anything to defend myself. As I'm freaking out, I look up to see if this guy is sort of noticing and I make eye contact with him in the mirror. He was staring at me, but I couldn't read his expression. Finally. He says something along the lines of, ‘well, let's get out of here’.

I tell him, I'll just call another Uber to get home thinking. At this point, it might even be safer to walk and he says, no, I still have your address. I'll just take you home. For a moment I was relieved. I tried to calm myself down thinking he hadn't actually done anything threatening. Maybe he was just your typical stoner guy and I'm overreacting.”

So he starts driving, technically driving her home, but like not really taking her home, he's like on the freeway, but she's watching these exits go past. 

Sarah: Yeah. This is a Portland story. So I know exactly where all of this is, and this is a situation I've been in. Yeah. She's trying to get back to PSU student housing, which is where I also lived at one time. So basically, she was at a club or a bar in Southeast Portland. She wants to get to Portland State, which is in Southwest Portland. So they just have to go over the first bridge they can find going East to West. And instead of doing that, he's going North and just bypassing bridge after bridge.

Mike:  She says, 

“I've been racking my brain for a way to make him actually take me home and say something to the effect of, ‘Hey, my boyfriend is waiting for me at home,’ which was true, though I set it in a very meek way. My driver says nothing, but he did take the next exit for a bridge and basically hung a giant U-turn and started taking me home. Even as we're on the West side of town heading South, I'm still shaking and have my hand on the door handle, thinking about just hopping out at a red light, the closer we get to my apartment.

So once we get about two blocks from my apartment, I lie and tell him it's easiest to stop here and he can let me out. Again, he doesn't say anything, but does slow the car. I'm flooded with relief and even feel myself smile. But when I go to open the door, it's locked. I try to lift the lock mechanism manually, but it won't budge.

I look up at him instinctually to see what's up and he's got his head turned almost fully toward me, shoulders still facing the road, smiling at me, the worst fucking smile I've ever seen. It looked so mocking and it just did not reach his eyes at all. I started shaking and crying and asking him to open the door.

I was so freaked out and still very drunk. And thank God he did. I will never forget the sensation of vulnerability, not just being drunk in his car with no way to contact anyone. But even as I got out of the car, I kept feeling like he would somehow grab the back of my shirt and pull me back in as silly as that sounds. The next day, I convinced myself I was freaking out over nothing, but in my gut, I had truly felt in danger the night before.

The big thing that made me think of this was recently hearing about Ed Kemper, the coed killer would go for practice runs, picking up hitchhikers and seeing if he could get the passenger/potential victims to trust him, or how far out of his comfort zone he could push them without them saying anything. Obviously this guy wasn't Ed Kemper, but I hate wondering if that night was a practice run of sorts for my Uber driver.” 

This story fucking sucks. 

Sarah: Yeah, exactly. This story fucking sucks. A lot of the stories with very few upvotes in the subreddit are like, a creepy guy followed me creepily around Walmart and like no one cares about those stories.

And so, I find it really sad that the poster had to start thinking of her Uber driver as a burgeoning serial killer potentially, in order to take this experience seriously. And it's like, it was fucking creepy. Like this guy was like, without speaking, taking you to a second location. He'd like given you drugs and was like, uh, nothing good was going to happen.

It's terrifying. That story is enough. Without there being any serial killer stuff in it. 

Mike: It sounds like just like a prelude to sexual assault. 

Sarah: Yes. And even if he thinks like “I'm picking up a girl and this is consensual'', it's like, great so you find someone, drug her. Like, that's the most charitable possible interpretation that anyone could come up with. And then it's like, well, then we're dealing with someone who doesn't understand the difference between a consensual pickup and basically kidnapping someone, which is a whole other bigger conversation. 

Mike: What do you make of the, I think the thing, because as a gay person, I don't understand all the weird, gender-y stuff at play here at all. What do you think of the ending where she says ‘my boyfriend is waiting for me’ and that seems to work?

Sarah: It's very interesting, right? 

Mike: It's weird. 

Sarah: I mean, I've done this in less extreme circumstances where someone is just sort of aggressively hitting on me and not taking cues at all. And they just kind of keep chiseling in. And this is like how men routinely talk to women in public, because women are socialized for our entire lives to like be polite. And I've had the experience of alluding to a boyfriend, fictional or not, and they just like, turn off. They're like, “Oh”. And it's like, so you don't think that my apparent interest in you is relevant at all, but the fact that I have a boy you're like, “Oh, Oh, you- your owned, sorry, you are, you already belong to someone.” 

Mike: I guess. 

Sarah: This kind of zoomed out really fast, but like, the, I feel like the whole problem with like relations between men and women trying to date each other at this point, you know, relations between the genders like… 

Mike: We're all the way zoomed out, go for it. 

Sarah: We’re all the way zoomed out.

Mike: Proceed. 

Sarah: It’s like the institution of marriage, from what I understand came into being, as we know it today, when society became agrarian. Like we're zoomed-er out than you even thought. And did so because it was a way of managing property, passing on property, amassing wealth.

Mike: Establishing parentage, yeah.

Sarah: Controlling parentage, controlling lineage, et cetera. All of that stuff, capitalism, you know, and this is the time when the institution of marriage, as we understand it now is born and this is what it's about. It's not about romance. It's not about love. It's not about partnership, really. It's about, you know, making it and the way that we have decided as a society to make it. And so the, the family becomes the unit rather than the collective, which is I think where we really went wrong. 

Anyway, this subreddit post. So our understanding of marriage, our understanding of, you know, heteronormative, heterosexual, cis-normative love, we are trying to revise a property law thing into romance, and it cannot be done! And so, just like the way that men treat women, the way that boys treat girls, as if they are property who are going to be owned by someone. And it doesn't matter if someone is interested in you, that's not relevant. What's relevant is if someone else owns them already. 

Mike: It feels, I mean, I'm completely saying this from no information because this, I do not understand this shit at all, but it seems like it, like, it killed the mood for him.

Sarah: Hmm

Mike: I don't know if that's like he got moral qualms or like, it just sort of like boner-wise, he wasn't as interested in it anymore. Like, it just seems like that had this weird sorta like nonintellectual effect on him, because intellectually nothing has changed at all. 

Sarah: Yeah. Cause he's not functioning intellectually if he's like, doing something this horrible. 

Mike: Right. Because if you're contemplating sexual assault, the immorality of sexually assaulting somebody with a boyfriend is not distinct from the immorality of sexually assaulting someone with a boyfriend. 

Sarah: I don't know, maybe. I don't know. Maybe it is. 

Mike: That's why this is such a rich text. It's like, I'm planning on robbing the bank and then it's like, “Oh, they're closed on Tuesdays”. And I'm like, oh, nevermind. I don't want to rob the bank anymore. Right? It's like this weird piece of information that doesn't matter.

Sarah:  Yeah. I don't want to break into a closed place of business. Yeah. It is that level of weirdness.

Mike: Question. Because, as an expert in zoomed out gender relations, do you think it would have had a similar effect on him if she had said, “I'm a lesbian”? 

Sarah: No.

Mike: Okay.

Sarah: I do not. And I think if she'd said, “my girlfriend is at home”, I suspect that that likely wouldn't have had the same effect either. 

Mike: Interesting.

Sarah: I think that the feeling that another man has like, figuratively, the scent of another man's urine was on this woman all along and he didn't realize that like, that's, I think that's the, the mood killer. Not to get to criminal minds-y, but like, yeah.

Mike: It's like the weird lizard respect for other men or like some weird guy code shit.

Sarah: Which is the thing where like, heterosexuality is fundamentally about other men. 

Mike: Right!

Sarah: It's very weird. It's all too weird. 

Mike: Damn. 

Sarah: Let's close with something fun. I want to close with something light.

Mike: Oh God, is there something light on this subreddit? 

Sarah: There are. Yeah. Let me just find, let me find something real quick. 

Mike: There's one called “Staring Down a Serial Killer”. That sounds absolutely true.

Sarah: Yeaaah. 

Mike: “I Think My Dog Has a Stalker”. That's pretty good. 

Sarah: That one actually is really intense. That one is dark. I'm serious. 

Mike: *laughing* Okay, I'm not clicking. I'm not expanding it.

Sarah: Oh, here's a good one. I've got a good one. 

Mike: Okay. 

Sarah: “My Roommate's Boyfriend Came into My Room at 2:00 AM”. 

Mike: Oooooh.

Sarah: “So this happened last night. At 2:00 AM, I hear my door open, and it was really dark in my room so I thought it was my roommate. Well, the person walks straight to my laundry basket and starts shuffling through it as if looking for something. I sit up and say, “Hey, is everything okay?” No response. The person then proceeds to walk back out of my room and close the door behind them. I got up and opened my door to see my roommate's boyfriend staring at himself in the bathroom mirror.

I, again, ask if he's all right and no response. I just closed and locked my door and got back in bed. This morning I told my roommate what happened. Her BF had left for the day and she said she found my towel and bra in her room this morning… Basically, he was sleepwalking, but it creeped me the fuck out.”

Mike: Are we not supposed to steal bras from female roommates and then flex our muscles in front of a mirror for a couple of hours in the middle of the night? What next? 

Sarah: I think it's, don't be so obvious about it. 

Mike: This reminds me of my roommate when I lived in Denmark, whose name I'm not going to give, but we can call him Matt. This is like one of the most conventionally attractive people I've ever known in my entire life. He was like super Danish, six foot one, 2% body fat. He looked like a goddamn Abercrombie and Fitch model, which means I was not remotely interested like, I was not attracted to him at all. 

Sarah: But it's like that movie with like, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Monica Potter where she lives in a house full of supermodels. You're just like, yes, yes, the supermodels. 

Mike: Yeah exactly. I'm just like, whatever, like you look like a goddamn underwear box, but like, I don't actually care. Like it doesn't, it doesn't do anything for me. But anyway, so I had already lived there for like six months at this point. No romantic tension between us whatsoever. Like nothing. He would have dudes over. I would have dudes over. It was completely chill. 

One time It was like three in the morning on a Friday night. I was sleeping because I'm a loser and I never do anything at night. I don't drink. So I'm just like stone sober, sleeping. All of a sudden I feel this like handshaking me and I'm like, what the fuck? I wake up and it's Matt and he's ludicrously drunk. Like he smells like a goddamn brewery. It is Munich in October. I'm like, is the house on fire? Like what, what do you need me for? And he says out of nowhere, he's like, “So, I brought a guy home. He's really cute. Do you want to have a threesome with us?” I was like, what the fuck? Like you guys are both super wasted. I don't even know what this guy looks like. 

Sarah: Could be anyone. 

Mike: And I was like, Matt, you're not even like, we don't, this is not… 

Sarah: There’s no precedent for this!

Mike: Exactly, like what are…  this is a different category of people than we've been to each other. And I was like, are you even like, attracted to me? Are you nursing some, like, thing? And he's like, “No, not really”. Alright man! And then I politely declined, and they presumably went and enjoyed themselves. And then we never fucking talked about it again. I lived there for six more months.

Sarah: I mean, I feel like when people are super drunk, I mean, that's why drunk people go to McDonald's. Like, you're impulsive and like, something might sound good to you that wouldn't at any other time. 

Mike: I know!

Sarah: And I feel like maybe just, yeah, that you were like a warm body in that situation. Yeah.

Mike: I know! And now I wish that I had done it just so that I could like play with his like body and like, see it.

Sarah: Ooh, yeah. 

Mike: You know, like really, really, really nice bodies are like kind of fascinating. 

Sarah: Oh yeah, totally. 

Mike: You're like, oh look, you have a muscle there. And like, I don't have this vein, like, what does this vein do? 

Sarah: That's the attractiveness veins. 

Mike: Yes, exactly.

Sarah: It's hard to make a considered decision when you're woken up at that hour, though.

Mike: I know! I was like, send an email, make a calendar invite. Let's discuss this. 

Sarah: Give me a Google calendar invite for a threesome. Yeah.

Mike: But anyway, Matt, even though that's not your real name, if you're out there, I'm still not attracted to you or interested in any way. I hope I hope you're having a good life. We're still friends on Facebook. 

Sarah: Matt, if you're out there. We love you. Fuck off. 

Mike: And I still want to touch your veins. 

Sarah: Well, anyway… 

Mike: Anyway! 

Sarah: That actually reminds me of a point that I had like an hour ago and forgot about, which is that the shipping port, the, you know, port city human trafficking thing reminds me. because I have been rereading it lately, of Bram Stoker's Dracula, where, do you recall how Dracula arrives in-- in jolly old England? 

Mike: Oh, right. Isn’t he shipped?

Sarah: It's a small shipping container. It is a coffin, in fact. And that is how he arrives, and I think that's a very interesting storytelling choice because Dracula, being an Eastern European immigrant, who preys on the pure blood of young English women, I think was preying on some of the human trafficking fears that Victorians were having. On fears about immigrants and on fears about populations, that it was politically advantageous to demonize. And so, yes. Dracula. Trafficking victims, question mark?

Mike:  Look, if only Dracula hadn't spoken to that lady in the park that day. 

Sarah: Yeah. 

Mike: Everything would have been fine. 

Sarah: That teeny tiny lady.

Mike: The woman who emerged from his pocket that day and took a photo of him.