Dylan Marron

EPISODE 34: PELOTON HUSBAND

Tom: Yeah, I think I do, absolutely. There are sometimes where it’s like "uh, maybe I should just put my phone down."

Dylan: (laughter) Oh my God. Tom, that's the new tagline of this show, "Maybe I should put my phone down." Wow.

[Instrumental of “These Dark Times” by Caged Animals begins to play]

Dylan [VOICEOVER INTRODUCTION]: Hey, and welcome back to Conversations with People Who Hate Me, the show where I take a negative online comment and I connect the person who wrote it to the person they wrote it about. Sometimes I speak one-on-one with people who have said mean things to me. Other times I moderate calls between strangers. Today, I'm moderating.

Contrary to the word "hate" in the title, this is actually a very loving show where we get to know the humans on the other side of the screen.

I am your host, Dylan Marron.

It is really hard to pinpoint why exactly something starts trending on the internet. It's not always clear how one thing suddenly becomes such a lightning rod for conversation. That one thing that everyone wants to weigh in on for a period of 24 hours, sometimes more, sometimes less.

Sometimes it's a political matter, which makes sense because it's about a policy that affects people's lives, or an individual politician saying something wrong, or a group of politicians who are doing a certain thing that another group of people doesn't like.

Sometimes though, or I'd say often, the trending topic comes not from politics, but culture. Every day, we come into contact with so many pieces of culture, a song, a film, a TV show, a GIF, a meme, an idea, a quote, a celebrity, a product, an advertisement.

It is estimated that US consumers see upwards of 5,000 ads per day.

So how does just one of those ads become the thing,that seemingly everyone is talking about for a period of time? It's really hard to tell, but that happened.

A few months ago, Peloton, a fitness company, released a commercial for their stationary bike. In this 30-second ad, we see a husband gift his wife their signature exercise bike. Then in montage, the wife starts filming herself using the bike. At the end of the ad, she sits her husband down and they watch her fitness journey on their television screen together. The end. That commercial was released, and then it started trending. For a brief moment on social media, it felt like everyone was talking about this ad. Many were criticizing it. A lot of people were making jokes about it, some for the quality of the ad itself, others for the presentation of gender roles in the story, how the husband buys his wife a fitness product and what that says about our expectations of women's bodies.

This is, of course, the internet, so there was another wave of people criticizing the people criticizing it. Then the people who took part in the ad began to speak out about their involvement, and people criticized the way they spoke out about it.

*sigh*

I cannot interview a trending topic. I sadly also do not have the budget or time to interview every single person who made that topic trend, but I can get to know two individual people who were part of it.

This episode is about a lot of things. It's about what it feels like to be at the center of a trending topic. It's about how we react to those trending topics, and how we react to other people's reactions to those trending topics.

It's about online mobs and how we understand the mission of those mobs, who we think is part of them. It's about what we identify as strength and what we identify as weakness.

It's about confirmation bias and how we interpret information in a way that confirms what we already believe.

You might be thinking, "Why does this matter? This is just an ad. Get over it." This episode is about that, too. Why does this matter? Why does a seemingly insignificant thing ignite people so much? Why do we sometimes feel ignited when we see such a nothing thing ignite other people? It is this weird phenomenon that I would say all of us are susceptible to. We join in to share our two cents about something because we see other people sharing their two cents about it, and then we end up littering the internet with millions of cents, that grow digital mildew like pennies at the bottom of those wish fountains. We toss them into the social media waters. Maybe it makes a splash, maybe it doesn't. We move on.

But there is one person that can't move on. Not because he's torn up about it, but because it is an indelible part of his story. A person who will never forget about this, no matter how much the rest of us have forgotten about it, and his name is Sean Hunter.

[Music fades.]

Sean: Hello?

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Oh, hey. How are you?

Sean: Hey, good. How are you doing?

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Sean is lucky because he has a job that he loves.

Sean: Thank you, yes. I have an amazing job right now. I teach full-time physical education to a school here in Vancouver, kindergarten through grade seven. It's such a pleasure to be able to teach physical education. It's something that I've grown up loving my whole life, and so to be able to do that for other kids and see the pure joy that comes from their faces, it is at the end of the day, an exhausting job, but it's one of those end-of-the-day jobs, you go, "Yes, I did a good thing here." It complements also, the other side of me, which is the acting side of me.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Okay, let's pause right here in the present day and rewind back to July of 2015. Sean had left his childhood home of Vancouver to take a teaching job in a remote town in British Columbia. He's earning money. He has a little community. The teaching experience is good, but then he has this thought.

Sean: The thought was, "I need to try acting."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: So he moves back home to Vancouver, actualizes this thought, and things are going well.

Sean: I had a little bit of money in my pocket. I moved out on my own. I started to get an agent. I started to do just background work as well, so a bit of extra work. Going to class, I was auditioning, studying, and being on set. It was a full-on dive into the deep end, so let's go. Let's just do it.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: If you can't already tell, Sean is an incredibly positive person. Just listen to him describe seeing fake rain on a film set.

Sean: --but we had to do a nighttime rain shoot and it wasn't raining, so we did simulated rain. I'd never seen it before I feel like. Simulated rain coming from the sky. These massive towers. But I was learning and experiencing so much about the film industry. It was a tremendous place to be in.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Sean is aware of his positivity.

Sean: I am a positive person. I do--I -- I love acknowledging that I'm a positive person, because I think there's a power in being positive.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: It's all great. Everything's good.

Sean: But it is hard in Vancouver, to earn a living wage, of course.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Like all of us, he's got bills to pay, so he finds himself at a crossroads.

Sean: I had a choice. I got offered a job in the school board again, and I went, "Oh no." It's a great opportunity. Here's a full-time gym position, working at a school like five minutes away from where I live. I was like, "Oh dear. Okay."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: He takes it and he's still at that job now, the one he loves so much. It all turned out great. At the same time, Sean isn't going to fully quit acting, but he has to be responsible to his new gig. So he calls up his agent and says ...

Sean: "I have to tell you, I'm a teacher. I work 9:00 to 3:00. I cannot just leave my gym and go to an audition."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: His agent gets it. Sending him on auditions here and there that fit with his teaching schedule, and then one day, his agent tells him ...

Sean: "Sean, there's a new spin bike comercial coming out. Here's the script. You just need to go to the audition for ... " I think it was an evening audition. "Just go tonight, and go to it." I went, "Okay. Great."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: He goes. He does it.

Sean: I thought I did fine. I forget about it and went back, did my work.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: A few days pass.

Sean: And then he calls me. He goes, "Sean, they want you."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: He got the job.

Sean: Yes. This is great. I get to do my passion again, and I get to do it for a few days, before going back to work.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Sean arrives on set and it's all pretty clear-cut. The plan for the comercial is simple. Sean will place the husband and the story of the ad will go like this.

Sean: It was a husband buying his wife a Peloton. She rode it for a year and then they reflected back on it next Christmas. End. End scene. That was it, right? Everybody on set read the script and went, "Yep, this is what we want."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: They filmed it. Great. Done. In the can. Finally, it comes out and Sean watches it.

Sean: It literally, Dylan, was nothing. It just happened, it was proud of it, and I went, "Yep. There's me on set. I remember those moments."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Okay. End of story. Episode over. No, we know that's not the case. A few days pass. He goes back to the video on YouTube.

Sean: And I started to notice how many downvotes it was getting.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: It doesn't make sense to him.

Sean: But why? What's happening here? Is there something I'm missing? I had no idea that people could feel so passionately about a 30-second clip.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: The commercial then takes on a life of its own, and a lot of people are weighing in. For a brief moment, like I said, it is the thing to talk about. And they're talking about everything. The quality of the ad, the message of the ad, the perceived message of the ad. But luckily ...

Sean: At this point, there was no negativity directed towards me, it was just towards the commercial.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: In the middle of all this, a friend of Sean's, who writes for the magazine, Psychology Today, comes to Sean with an idea.

Sean: He goes, "Sean, I would love if you wrote me about a 600-word piece, on your thoughts with all this negativity, and your whole story -- tell me about--"

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Sean takes him up on it. He drafts it. He writes it and of course, he needs some feedback, so ...

Sean: I showed it to my roommate and he goes, "Yeah, this is very well articulated. Is this how you feel?" I said, "Yeah. This is exactly what's been happening so far." He's like, "Wow. Okay, submit it." We submitted it.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: And it's published. The headline reads, "Peloton Husband Speaks Out," and beneath that is subheader, "Actor Sean Hunter Offers His View on Being Part of a Controversial Ad." The article links to his Instagram. Then suddenly, Sean looks at his phone and sees a ton of new followers.

Sean: While I was receiving all these positive messages in my DMs in Instagram, a few would trickle in, and I would look at it and go, "Oh. That's mean."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Some of it was really mean. Now, Sean's main social media spot is Instagram. He isn't really on Twitter, but I am on Twitter, and I started seeing a lot of people share this article, some of whom were friends of mine. And this is the internet, so a lot of them were sharing it to make fun of it.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: The difference is that now, they're not just taking jabs at an ad, but at a person. It is in this time that I reach out to Sean, and ask if he'd be interested in speaking to one of these people, who said something negative in response to the article. He says, "Yes," but he has one request.

Sean: I'm very intrigued by not knowing what they said, and want to know why said, how they said it, and I want to hear that firsthand, and then react to it. Yeah.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Meaning, he wants to go into the call not knowing who they are, or what they said, which is the first time that has ever happened on this show.

Sean: I'm quite excited actually, if I could say.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Yes, he absolutely can say that he's excited, and he should be. Out of the countless people on Twitter who weighed in on the newly discovered identity of the Peloton husband, there was one man named Tom, who came across the Phycology Today article and commented, "What a loser." I reached out to Tom and he agreed to speak with Sean on the phone.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Now, as you just heard, Sean is a full three-dimensional human, but you know the vibe of this show. It's about finding out Tom's full 3-D humanness too. Before I connected the two of them, I spoke to Tom one-on-one.

Tom: Hey Dylan. This is me on headset. Is this good, or do you want me to try to just take the headphones off? Your call.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: We got settled. He took off the headset so I could hear him a little more clearly, and I got to learn a little more about him.

Tom: Okay. Yeah, my name's Tom Sauer I'm 39 years old. I leave in New Port Beach, California. I uh--.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Through this, I found out that he had a background in the Armed Forces.

Tom: I worked with a lot of special operations and intelligence guys in my previous life, so-to-speak. I'm a former US Navy Explosive Ordinance Disposal Officer, so I'm--.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: His time in the Navy took him from the fields into the office, and then ...

Tom: When I stopped having as much fun and I got to a certain point in my career where it was really just desk jobs, the Navy made a huge mistake, and they sent me to business school.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Where he started meeting entrepreneurs and business-minded folk.

Tom: I just realized, "These guys are doing really well. They're making a lot of money and they seem like they're having fun." If I'm not jumping out of planes with my friends and going diving in the Tropics and blowing shit up, I wanted to try something different so--

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: So he started a business of his own, a recovery center in Orange County for drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

Tom: From a business perspective, it's growing and serves a public need, but we're also actually helping people. We're going into an industry that I think is lucrative, serves a public good, but we're not just selling hotdogs.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: He shared with me that the incentive behind it hit quite close to home.

Tom: My biological father died, when I was 18 years old, of a drug overdose. He struggled with addiction his entire life. He was in and out of rehab centers. I think he was kind of passed around, for lack of a better term. There's a lot of rehab centers there that really just see dollar signs on you.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: He wanted to create a place that treated people like humans.

Tom: To me, it helps me to get up in the morning.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: So that's Tom. And yes, Tom is a social media user, with a focus on Twitter.

Tom: I do have fun, basically in there, making jabs at people every once in a while, because it's twitter, which actually does take us to where the whole initiative of this topic, about the whole Peloton thing.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Like many on social media, he saw the ad.

Tom: I think it was my girlfriend who was tweeting about it. I didn't really pay any mind to the ad, I mean granted, I don't think buying a Peloton, like a fitness gift for a significant other, that is not specifically asked for, maybe not the best choice. But I didn't really think it was all that bad. Then that's where we come to the point where the Peloton husband, who maybe he's in frame for three or four seconds, in the whole thing, then this outage goes towards him.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Then, Tom comes across the Phycology Today article, where Sean responded to the controversy.

Tom: That's where I'm like, "Enough. I've had enough of this." When I saw this, I'm like, "What is this?" I'm like, "Oh get the fuck out. Come on, man."

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: Which Tom saw as a sign of weakness.

Tom: He caved and withered to the mob.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: This all leads to a bigger thing that upsets him.

Tom: I guess at the end of the day, it comes down to, I'm sick and tired of everyone being so fucking sensitive (laughter).

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: So in respond to the Psychology Today article, he tweeted, "What a loser."

Tom: Yeah. I did. I'll tell you what, I would recharacterize it as maybe not labeling him, but it probably doesn't sound as good of a tweet, but it was a, "What a weak move. What a loser move." Trust me.

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: But he's on this show, so he's ready to talk.

Tom: I'm looking forward it. I mean, I got to say there's a part of me that says, "Okay. Hey man, I don't really think you're a loser, but I do think that that was the wrong move." I'd be very curious to know if that was made under some sort of duress or perceived duress, or if you really just came out and did that because you're so scared of offending anybody. I would really like to know the answer to that.

[BREAK]

[Phone rings. All guests are now connected.]

Tom: Hello, this is Tom.

Sean: Hello. Hello.

Dylan: We're all here.

Tom: Hey Sean.

Sean: Hey. Hey. Good morning.

Tom: Morning.

Dylan: Let us do this. Rather than jumping into exactly what we're here to talk about, I would love for you guys to get to know each other. I guess, Sean, why don't you kick it off, and give Tom a little bio about you?

Sean: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Sounds good. So Thomas, nice to meet you.

Tom: Pleasure meeting you.

Sean: Yeah. I'm a teacher from Vancouver, British Colombia, here in Canada-

Dylan [VOICEOVER]: In this portion of the call, Sean and Tom get to know each other. But since you, listener, have already heard this stuff, I'm going to speed you up to a moment when Tom is talking about his use of the internet.

Tom: I do enjoy Twitter a little bit. It is fun.

Sean: (laugher) absolutely.

Tom: I really just use Twitter as my news aggregator, so-to-speak. I'm used to just working my ass off in the business, but when I'm not doing that or spending time with my girlfriend or working out, I open up Twitter and read the news, talk a little shit (DYLAN LAUGHTER) and get off. That's about it.

Dylan: But talking a little shit is exactly why this show exists, so that's perfect and we're happy that happened. We can now turn to, of course, what we're to talk about.

Sean: Yes.

Dylan: And I want to lovingly remind both of you that there is villain, there's no victim on this show. It's just humans coming together, chatting, talking, doing their thing. Tom, actually this is the first time this has ever happened on this show, but Sean has specifically asked to not know what the comment was until we talk about it right now. So this is very exciting for us.

Sean: Yes. So the reason, Tom, specifically, that I didn't want to know is because what we just talked about, to me, is the most important, which is getting to know you and hearing your background. So to hear your backstory first, was more important because of course, I didn't have any prior judgements going, "Oh, Tom said this about my commercial," or whatever you did say. (DYLAN: MHM) It was more so, "I want to know, of course, this person, before we get into the real meat and potatoes of our conversation."

Tom: Dylan, do you we just get into it or I mean, is it the big reveal? Or do you want to get right into it? What would you like to do?

Dylan: Yeah, let's get right into it. I'm happy to pull the bandaid off here, but in response to that Psychology Today article, Tom, you tweeted, "What a loser."

Sean: Aha

Dylan: (laughter) And here we are.

Tom: How dare me!

Dylan: No, no, no. No, there's no shaming. There's no shaming. (laughter) We understand that these platforms encourage negativity. This is what we want. We're all humans, I affirm you both. Tom, what made you say that?

Tom: I saw the original article was published from Psychology Today, and I wrote, "What a loser." Now, what that was in reference to was not the fact that you played a role in that commercial.

Sean: Yeah

Tom: And it wasn't even the fact that you got dragged for it in social media, (DYLAN: MHM) but what I took issue with was the apology. Now, one thing I don't know and I'd like to ask you, is were you approached or were you otherwise directly called for or attacked, or did somebody solicit an apology or an explanation? Because the way I saw it is you were-- you had a role in this commercial and.

Sean: Yeah

Tom: no offense, but it very kind of a small, supporting role.

Sean: Of course it was.

Tom: (crosstalk: I don't even think you) at all mind it.

Sean: Oh, no, no offense taken at all. I mean, it was literally two words (INAUDIBLE TOM CROSSTALK) and I think five seconds. Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Tom: Yeah. When I saw the commercial, I didn't really think anything of it. My, you know, annoyance or the eye-roll, was to the outrage about it, because I thought, "That's just silly and stupid." Then when people were attacking you, I thought that was silly and stupid.

Sean: Oh yeah, yeah

Tom: But this is Twitter. Let's not get too serious about some of this. And then-

Sean: Of course.

Tom: But what I did take issue with is the coming out apology, like, "I'm so sorry." In my mind, I don't like the idea of giving into the Twitter mob, so-to-speak. I think that gives them what they want and fuels that fire. I'm curious to know though, Sean, did somebody come after you or approach you? How'd that play out? Or did you do that unsolicited? What happened?

Sean: Yeah. Tom, I'm wondering which apology this was. Sorry, I'm a little bit lost at which one.

Tom: (laughter) Which apology? Oh, man.

Dylan: I think, Tom, you're specifically referring to what he was saying in the Psychology Today article?

Tom: Right. I guess it was the apology in that. Yeah. That's what I was referring to.

Sean: The Psychology Today piece was written before pretty much any of this had happened. The commercial was released on the 21st. So my friend Alec ... So we've known each other for 10 years here in Vancouver. We've grown up together. He's a PhD student at UBC and he writes for Psychology Today. So he asked me, just as a personal gesture, just to respond to some of the articles and some of the articles and some of the tweets that he had sent me, because they did. When I started to read them, they blew me away. I was wondering, "Why?" Just why, Tom, there was such a big response to this small commercial. Just like you said, my role was almost an extra role. You could verify that because I only did have two lines or so. My last little bit in the commercial is just looking at my wife and that's it. So it is a very, very small role. So that was why I wrote the Psychology Today piece, was not only was it for a friend, but it was kind of for a response into all these things he had sent me. It was very easy to write. It was quite straightforward. I honestly, Tom, did not know it would lead to all of this media. I had not idea. I thought this was it. I was just going to write a response. The next day, I remember, when it was posted, I had started to receive messages back towards me, and I had a gut feeling. I went, "Oh my goodness. Is this-- was this the right thing to do?" But I had this moment of going, "You know what? I'm ready to speak out." Of course, the words that you said, it was such a small thing that you said, right? I'm not going into my (inaudible)--

Tom: --It's Twitter! (laughter)

Sean: It's Twitter, right? But that's what's interesting as well. Because it's Twitter, does it give power to people, saying that, "Oh, it is okay to say messages like that, because it's just Twitter"?

Tom: Maybe. Actually, I know it sounds silly, but maybe. I mean maybe there's also part of my humor that's comes out of my background. I mean.

Sean: Yes

Tom: I say worse things to my closest friends--

Sean: Mhm. As we all do. Tom, we all do.

Tom: Right. And and uh, I guess that--Granted, this was just me scanning. I saw this article, scanned through it very quickly. I'm like, "Oh my God. Come on, man,"

Sean: Yeah, yeah

Tom: When I saw that. Granted, I hear you, man, I guess my take on that would've been more or a, "Hey, I was an actor doing a role in a commercial. Fuck off," (laughter) more or less--

Sean: Yeah, absolutely--

Tom: which I think might've been the appropriate response, but of course, that could probably just get worse. Yeah, I get it,

Sean: totally....And Tom--

Tom: (crosstalk: however, I think that we're just-)

Sean: Totally. Tom, I wanted to add in there, because that's what interesting about the two worlds that I live in constantly, as a teacher and an actor, when I am in the public eye, like we are right now, doing a podcast, I always have to be extra careful of my words, just because being a teacher.

Tom: Yeah

Sean: as well. I don't know if one of my 10-year-old, 11-year-old or 12-year-old students is listening to me right now.

Tom: sure.

Sean: So that's the thing. I can never be too harsh with my words, even if I might feel them,

Tom: Right Right

Sean: just like you said, because they are easy responses that I can say and I do feel. But am I going to say it? I can't. That's the thing. So I have to use-

Tom: Yeah, that makes sense. Now, maybe not use those specific words. Now I feel bad. Dylan, can we bleep this out? Bleep out my profanity. What if Sean's kids are listening? Now I feel bad.

Dylan: They're listening right now. Actually, I meant to tell you, they're all on the phone right now, here. Surprise. Sean, your entire class is here.

Sean: Tom, we're going to sing a song for you and it's going to go well.

Dylan: Yeah. That's actually the big-- big, I told you both this wasn't a got-you podcast, but I wanted to tell you, this is actually a got-you podcast, with just a bunch of elementary schoolers singing.

Sean: We're switching genres halfway through it, and it's just the way it is.

Dylan: We're switching genres. Switching my entire voice and platform right now. Uhm so mTom, your problem was not with the commercial. Your problem was more with the response to the commercial. Of course, Tom, please jump in and correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, but then you saw that the actor from the commercial responded to it, and just the fact that he responded to it in any other way, other than, to quote you, "Fuck that. Fuck all of you," you were like, "Oh my god, you were kind of bowing down to the mob," right?

Sean: Yes.

Tom: Yeah. I think he was caving to the mob, and that's one thing I definitely learned, at least in my opinion, it's caving to the mob, unless you're really wrong, unless you really made a misstep, and Sean, I don't think you did in any way, you're just by doing your job. I don't think you did anything wrong. But I think unless somebody did really commit a real sin, so-to-speak, yeah, don't cave to the mob.

Dylan: I think, and this is almost giving empathy to members of any mob, is that you don't know that you're part of a mob. I know that, Tom, you tweeting that in response to a response to the mob, and then unknowingly, you two are joining a different kind of mob by railing against the response to it. Do you know what mean? I think-

Tom: Absolutely. The counter outrage, and then the counter, counter outage.

Dylan: Mhm I mean when you wrote this, Tom, you had, I assume, no idea that Sean would ever read it.

Tom: Pretty sure he wouldn't, but I mean I wasn't afraid of it if he had. (DYLAN: YEAH) I'll put it that way, (DYLAN: YEAH YEAH YEAH) because it is Twitter. (laughter)

Sean: Exactly.

Dylan: Completely. It's this weird thing where we're speaking publicly, but it can feel like we're speaking privately too.

Tom: Absolutely

Dylan: What is the thing about the idea of a mob that upsets you?

Tom: The mob doesn't really upset me. I kind of laugh at it. I guess for me, it's kind of this eye-roll, like, "Oh my God, people. What is wrong with you?" So I guess if that's me being upset, I suppose it is.

Dylan: No, well, that's a good correction, but I guess, what prompts the eye-roll for you?

Tom: I think mob in general, I think there's a lot of folks on there, that are just kind of bored and don't have enough going on in their real lives. I think there are a lot of people who have their own preconceived notions of the way the world is. And people make emotional formulations or emotional opinions, and then they use whatever facts they can to cherry-pick, to use logic and reason to rationalize their opinions. (DYLAN: MHM) I think we're all guilty of this, myself included, (DYLAN: MHM) everywhere, whether (DYLAN: MHM) that's confirmation bias (DYLAN: MHM) or anything like that. We love to see information that supports whatever opinion we may have reached on an emotional level.

Dylan: Yeah. I'm certainly guilty of that too.

Tom: Yeah. I think that what's interesting is that someone's political opinion is, people hate to admit it, but is really not formed by reason. It's really formed by your psychological temperament.

Dylan: Yeah. I also think something that might be universal, in what bothers us about mobs, is specifically mobs that don't represent something we agree with, we're really good at judging mobs we're not part of, and really bad at judging.

Tom: Right

Dylan: mobs we unknowingly are part of, if that makes sense.

Tom: And we attribute characteristics that are not necessarily true, as well.

Dylan: Totally. Totally. Tom, since I know you're more Conservative, perhaps seeing a more Liberal mob get really angry, I'm sure can more of an eye-roll in you. As, as -- I mean is that correct? Do you think that's fair?

Tom: Yeah. I'd say that typically, it seems as though having open conversation is something that most folks on the left appear to be less open to. (laughter).

Sean: Mm

Tom: It's not just that the other side has a bad idea, that can and should be proven wrong, but that they themselves are bad evil people. "They must me racist. They must be sexist. They're probably homophobic." This kind of idea, when it's like, no. That's not actually true.

Dylan: It's so funny because I told you each separately on the phone, that I was like, "Weirdly, this is not a political conversation."

Sean: Yeah (laughter)

Dylan: I think it's funny because I actually think, on the contrary, I was wrong. It is a political conversation, because it's about who we attribute the identity of the mob to, what mobs we eye-roll at, what mobs we identify as part of, even if we don't realize that we're part of it. To kind of go back to the comment, the commercial and all that stuff. Sean, do you have any regret of, I guess two-parter, doing the commercial, and/or writing the Psychology Today piece?

Sean: Um so. I have absolutely zero regrets doing the commercial.

Dylan: Okay

Sean: Love the commercial. I still watch it. I had a great day on set, those two days. I have no problems with the commercial. I got paid quite well to work on set there.

Dylan: Yes.

Sean: I was able to afford a Peloton because of it, and finish the story here. So the days-

Dylan: I just want to say that's exactly what they want, that they paid you for a Peloton commercial, and then you bought a Peloton. An ad in and of itself.

Sean: Isn't that funny?

Dylan: Yeah.

Sean: Isn't that funny. But yeah, no. I always celebrate when another actor gets a commercial, or a film or television role. It is a big deal for us Vancouver actors. I'm super proud to have that honor of being on set and be the actor for the day. It's something that not a lot of people do get to experience. The Psychology Today piece, I definitely had a moment of regret where I was getting a lot of messages going, "Oh, was this the right thing to do? Did I articulate myself well, and did I say the right things?" I read over the Psychology Today piece. I said, "Yes," and I said, "You know what? Yeah." I'm going to go back to, of course, teaching tomorrow. And I have ya know -- I'm very excited to see my kids again. We're starting basketball, which is always a great sport for everybody. And I’m just keen. I'm keen. I'm keen to get back at it. So yeah. No regrets.

Dylan: No regrets. Then Tom, do you regret writing that tweet?

Tom: I'd say that given what I had, the information I saw, I'd say in that moment, I mean had I presented with everything, no, I wouldn't regret it, in the sense of me being-- doing the flippant Twitter comment, (laughter) because I do say a lot of flippant things on Twitter-

Dylan: (laughter) That's okay. We accept.

Sean: Tom, if I could add in there, I don't think you should have a regret. I think it should always just be something to learn from, whether it be something, a positive thing you learned from, a negative thing that you've learned from it. Everything that we say, of course, we have to be held accountable for, and keeping that mindset as we go throughout our lives, into the future and with every choice that we make.

Tom: Absolutely. I'll tell you as well, I don't regret it in the fact that had I not done that,

Sean: Yeah

Tom: I wouldn't have been contacted by Dylan. I wouldn't have gotten.

Sean: Yeah

Tom: been able to talk to you, at least on the phone, and had this actually.

Sean: That's right

Tom: really cool experience. So no-

Sean: Isn't this a great experience? That's the point, right?

Tom: It was cool. It was really cool. Did not even see it --And quite frankly, wasn't until Dylan shot me a DM ... I'd kind of forgotten about the comment, (laughter) to be honest. I'm like, "What was this? What did I say? Oh, I did say that. I guess I did." (laughter)

Dylan: I know. I was just going to say that this is the weird and terrifying paradox of the internet, which is that we forget about everything that we've written, but of course, it's in a public forum.

Sean: Yes.

Tom: Right

Dylan: So now that we're winding it down, wrapping up the call, are there any final questions you have for each other? Or final things you want to say?

Tom: If you want to get out of the cold, Sean, come on down to Orange County.

Sean: Absolutely. I recently went down to Los Angeles actually, and I was like, "Man, the weather here is just so much nicer." I'm looking outside right now. It's gray and cloudy and raining. I mean that's just Vancouver in a nutshell. But yes, I happily accept that offer, Tom. That would be amazing.

Tom: I got to say that this who experience has been actually, not only has it been very enjoyable and honestly, just overall, I feel so much better for it. It's great. Thank you, Sean, for tolerating my mean tweet, and Dylan, thank you for putting something like this together. This is great. I think what you're doing, Dylan, is fantastic. It really is. We need more people like you.

Dylan: Oh, well, what if I did this just for that compliment? I cut everything you guys have said (laughter) before this moment. It's actually a very short episode. It's just Tom's compliment. No, I really do appreciate that. I guess with that said, you guys, it's been a pleasure.

Tom: It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

Sean: Yes. Thank you, Dylan. Thank you for hosting us.

Dylan: Of course.

Sean: Tom, thanks to you. It was great to meet you today. It was great to talk to you, and I really appreciated your voice and opinions. It was awesome. Thanks so much, Tom.

Tom: Pleasure. Thanks Sean. Bye guys.

[PHONE HANGS UP]

Dylan: Typically, the episode ends there. We hang up, we call it day, and go about our respective lives. But as I was editing this episode, I kept thinking about what had sparked Tom to make his comment in the first place. As you just heard, it was the Psychology Today article, specifically, the fact that Sean had apologized in it. Now, I went back to the article and read it like five times to make sure, but there was no apology. After kicking myself a few times, for not catching this on the call and bringing it up in the conversation, I considered maybe just recording a voiceover post script, where I fact checked this, and ended it by saying something snarky, like, "Listener, there was not apology in the article." But that's not in the style of this show, because Tom wouldn't have been able to respond to that. So what I did is I sent Tom a final cut of this episode, so that he could hear it. Then I called him.

[Phone rings. Tom picks up.]

Tom: Dylan?

Dylan: Hey.

Tom: Hey. Hey.

Dylan: Tom, you've now listened to a cut of your part of the episode. How are you feeling about it?

Tom: Well, I feel pretty good. I thought it was funny.

Dylan: Okay, good. So when you identified what annoyed you about the Psychology Today article, you said that you didn't like that Sean was caving to the mob and apologizing, right?

Tom: Yeah. I think it was and I think I said before, that anything less than defiance is some sort of caving. It's feeding the bear, so-to-speak.

Dylan: We'll come back to that in a moment, but I've gone back to the article a bunch of times, but there's no direct apology. I would say if anything, he like expresses a curiosity about the mob, but I didn't want to record a post script where I just that, and fact check you. I wanted you to be able to respond to that. So what do you make of that? Is it something that you misread? What do you think?

Tom: Well, I think that a lot of times, with a lot of these articles, they tell you up in the front, in the subtile, it kind of predisposes you to tell you have you're supposed to interpret it.

Dylan: Mhm

Tom: When I got it, it seemed as though he was saying, "I really hope this doesn't affect my career negatively." Et cetera, et cetera. I think it was more about kind of saying to the mob, "Please don't hurt my career. I'm a good guy, I swear."

Dylan: Yeah. I'm looking at the subtitle now. It says, "Peloton Husband Speaks Out: Actor Sean Hunter Offers His View on Being Involved in a Criticized Ad." And I certainly, I mean, just to be totally transparent, I mean I know that I feel very swayed by headlines, and guess what?

Tom: Yeah

Dylan: I want to confess something to you, which is that I have read headlines, and then formed opinions about what is in the article.

Tom: Yeah

Dylan: So this is my confession to you. So, I mean one thing to bring up, and to your credit, you're the one who brought it up on the call, but it's the sense of confirmation bias, a.

Tom: Yeah

Dylan: And the fact that we all do it. Using myself as an example, I know that when I'm reading a piece that seems to be critical of Conservatives, I will think that I know what the rest of the piece says.

Tom: Sure

Dylan: It's not just political. If it's critical of anyone who I'm already critical of,

Tom: Yeah

Dylan: then I'm like, "Great, I know what it says," and I pat myself on the back and take a little walk in my top hat.

Tom: They're giving you red meat. They're telling you what you want to hear.

Dylan: Totally. I'll let you define this so I'm not putting words in your mouth, but I wonder if there was a sense of confirmation bias for you, in that you, you came in expecting something and it wasn't what was actually in the article, but as you said, you read between the lines and found it in the article.

Tom: Yeah

Dylan: Do you think that's part of it?

Tom: Yeah, oh I think confirmation bias is ... I mean we all fall victim to it. I think it's very possible, and actually even likely, when I read into it a little bit more than maybe Sean had intended me to.

Dylan: Yeah. I don't think there's anything weird about that. I think that.

Tom: Yeah

Dylan: you behaved in the way the internet expects you to behave. (laughter) In fact, I would say you did everything right. I mean one thing I'm curious about is do you feel like your political views color this at all, not like, "Because Conservative, therefor confirmation bias," but in the same way that because I'm very much on the left, I feel that confirmation bias colors my views in a certain way. So do you feel like you were especially upset at what you perceived to be a woke left-leaning mob?

Tom: Yes.

Dylan: Yeah

Tom: In a word, yes. I think so. Absolutely. This is one of those little issues that pops up and gets everyone's attention for a few days or a few weeks, and then it kind of falls off and now we're on to the next outrage. And uh Yeah, I think, absolutely, given the fact that obviously, I lean right on most things,

Dylan: Mhm

Tom: that I think it's certainly possible that I kind of came in, interpreting it a certain way, like, "Oh, here we go again."

Dylan: Mhm

Tom: I think that's where it initially came from. One thing I got to say is this whole experience with the call and the podcast, everything like that, has totally changed my opinion on it, and my opinion of Sean. I'm like, "This is fantastic."

Dylan: Wow.

Tom: Yeah, it was great.

Dylan: I'm glad that it changed your perspective on Sean, but my secret hope is that perhaps it also made you consider the mob differently. Do you think differently about that at all?

Tom: Yeah, I think I do, absolutely. There are sometimes where, "Maybe I should just put my phone down."

Dylan: (laughter) Oh my God. Tom, that's the new tagline of this show, "Maybe I should put my phone down." Wow. I don't mean that in a critical way to you. I just think it's, yes, of course I will agree that I think there's a group of people who use Progressivism as a weapon, to kind of prove their own purity almost.

Tom: It's like a religion.

Dylan: Yes. I would say I think that's totally fair. I think in a lot of ways, there are religious qualities to it.

Tom: Yes

Dylan: That being said, because I am of that side, I'm also able to differentiate and say, "Oh, well there are people who are really good-faith activists, who are falsely lumped into that mob. There are people who are trying to actively make change, who are falsely lumped into that mob," whereas it is so much easier for me to identify the failings and the flaws of the anti-woke mob, the anti-Progressive mob,

Tom: Yeah

Dylan: but that's just because I'm not part of it.

Tom: Right

Dylan: I actually say that in a pretty loving way, where I'm like, "Oh, this is an interesting thing, if we just take a step back from it, look at it together, and we're like, 'Huh. Well, we're all just figuring it out.'"

Tom: Yeah, yeah

Dylan: I really just think that's our minds trying to save themselves,

Tom: Right

Dylan: and being like, "You're putting too much information into me right now, so I have to shut down and make really basic reads of people."

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dylan:So this ability to see the uniqueness of ever single individual person is something I love doing,

Tom: Yeah

Dylan: but I love doing it because I have the privilege of doing it, because I have the time to do it. This is what I do for a living. People don't have the time for this. It's just easier to shut down and kind of file people away, into buckets almost.

Tom: Yeah. Yeah, I know. I agree. Yeah, that can happen. That absolutely can happen.

Dylan: Yeah. So here we are. Well, look at us-

Tom: But I absolutely love this experience and I looked at-

Dylan: Oh, great.

Tom: Yeah, it was fantastic. Yeah, I definitely learned a whole lot about how all this works.

Dylan: Well, this is all we can ask in our sweet little hearts. (laughter) Tom, this has been such a pleasure. Yeah, thank you for doing this follow-up call so that we could dig into this a little more.

Tom: Sure!

Dylan: I'm glad you got to be part of the final word, so it wasn't just me having the last word.

Tom: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dylan. Appreciate it.

Dylan: Of course. Well, I will talk to you soon, Tom, okay.

Tom: Absolutely. All right, thanks a lot. Talk soon.

Dylan: Bye Tom.

Tom: K, bye.

[Phone call ends with a hang up sound. The drumbeat from ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals kicks in.]

Dylan [VOICEOVER CLOSING CREDITS]: If you'd like to be a guest on this show or have an idea for an episode, please visit www.conversationswithpeoplewhohateme.com for more information.

Conversations with People Who Hate Me is a production of Night Vale Presents. Christy Gressman is the executive producer. Vincent Cacchione is the sound engineer and mixer. Emily Newman and Mark Stoll are the associate producers. The theme song is These Dark Times, by Caged Animals. The logo was designed by Phillip Blackowl, with a photo by Mindy Tucker. This podcast was created, produced and hosted by me, Dylan Marron.

Special thanks to Adam Cecil and our publicist, Megan Larson.

We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode but until then, remember, there is a human on the other side of the screen.

[Chorus of ‘These Dark Times’ by Caged Animals plays.]