(upbeat electronic music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I’m Link. – And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are exploring the question, is texting ruining friendships? – Specifically our friendship, Rhett. – Is texting ruining our friendship? – No, we’re not limiting this discussion to just our friendship. I want to analyze my kids and their friendships, and how they use not only texting, I mean we’ll broaden it to technology, we’ll focus in on social media. Wow, I mean, the things as a dad that I find myselves… Did I say myselves? – Yeah, well, you also said, “Wow,” and then said a sentence about being a dad which is very appropriate. “Wow! “I’m a dad.” (both chuckle) – And I find myselves really tackling some odd issues when it comes to social media. And what I think about the quality of relationship you can have when it’s conducted mostly in that way. – Mostly through your phone, not speaking into it, but typing things into it, is another way to say it. – But we should start with us. I think one of the things I’m prepared to do is share our very first text conversation. – Oh. – Our first conversation as friends over text. I have it, I have it on my phone. I’ve told you about it so you have it on your phone. – I do have it on my phone as well. – And we’re gonna share it with you as an opening salvo into the world of technology, texting, and how it impacts friendships. – Yes we’ll get to that in one second. We do wanna let you know that we are going to be at the NC State Fair! I wanna do it like a monster truck announcer because– – You just did. – Rhett and Link, comedians! (chuckles) (heavy metal music) – Wow, dads! – Comedy duo Rhett and Link will be live at the NC State Fair October 12, 7:30 p.m., Dorton Arena! All you gotta do is get admission into the fair and you can show up there to watch Rhett and Link do their thing onstage at Dorton Arena! – Yeah. – For more details and tickets to the fair, go to ncstatefair.org! What’s the name of a monster truck, Bigfoot? Bigfoot will not be present! – Gravedigger. – Gravedigger will not be present! – Little Bigfoot. – Little Bigfoot will be present, hey! (Link chuckles) Rhett and Link will be riding in on the back of Little Bigfoot. – All right, that’s it. Kiko, thank you for adding some sort of music bed of generic metal guitar type thing. Just to really sell what just happened. – Okay, yeah. Was it clear we’re gonna be at the NC State Fair? – I think that was not only clear, it was very powerful. – Okay good. – And you know what? – No need to dwell on it. – Well I’ll dwell on it in a second ’cause just another word about the creative associated with it which we’re developing currently– – Oh the creative. – This is gonna be a freaking bonafide concert, y’all. We’re just kinda dipping our toe, well we’re not dipping out toe in, we’re doing a frickin’– – I’m going at least knee-deep. – We’re doing an hour and a half show, which is music– – Mostly music. – It’s a concert. – It’s not the Tour of Mythicality, okay? – Which if you saw that, was like a theatrical presentation. – We are doing the Tour of Mythicality in November in the northeast, but this is a different show. This is gonna be just a music show. – Because I see the future, Rhett. I can see into 2019. I can see that we might wanna do more concerts. – We’ll see how it goes, man. – Well, if it doesn’t go well at the State Fair, yeah, we won’t think about it anymore. But we’ll have the smell of cow dung wafting in. – Cow dung in one nostril and Polish sausage in another nostril. I love the way those two things mix. – [Link] Yes. (Rhett inhales deeply) – Mm. – A lot of nostalgia, so I’m glad to be going back. All my family members are hitting me up via text. – Well, I told my parents about it and my dad said, “Well, we haven’t been to the NC State Fair “since the first year we were in North Carolina,” which was 1984. – Well, my mom’s husband Lewis, boy, it’s the highlight of his year. He goes multiple times. – I love it, man. – I think it’s like two weeks. He goes multiple times just to go. – Yeah, I’d camp out there if they allowed that. – He loves it, man. Anyway, we have, let’s see, I have dug up the very first text exchange between my good buddy Rhett and I. I have to enter my code on my phone. I couldn’t do it while I was talking, so I had to– – Now I gotta say, I gotta say, that was a little bit of a deceptive teaser. It was a little bit of a misdirection. – Are you saying that because this text exchange between us happened yesterday? – It happened on Saturday. – Okay. – ‘Cause I can see it right now. – Day before yesterday, so let me explain. I’m gonna read this text thread to you, conversation that I initiated. And at a certain point I’ll explain why this is the first of its kind. But it starts with, from me. – I’ll just read my part, so. – “This is pretty cool,” and then I put a screenshot of an Amazon review of our book into a text to you. And then I wrote, “I had never actually gone into Amazon “and read reviews of our book,” and you know, I just needed a little warm and fuzzy feeling from the Mythical Beasts. Who am I kidding? Sometimes you’re just sitting around looking at your phone, and you’re like, I was actually going on Kindle, the Kindle app to download, I wanted to start reading another book on my Kindle. – Right. – And so when I went on there I was like, you know what, I just kinda like to look at the fact that we have a book in there, so I’m gonna do that. – Just to remind myself I’m a published author. – It just makes me– – Mm-mm-mm! – It made me feel good, it’s like, wow, you know what, by the way, since I’m in here. It’s kinda like you go into Barnes and Noble, don’t you ever go by the section to see if our book’s in there? – I have. – Kinda makes you feel like, gives you a little boost. – I don’t camp out there, I walk by there briskly and make eye contact with the book. I don’t touch it. I would never be caught touching my own book in public. – Or like sitting there waiting for someone to come up and– – I’m not an idiot, I’m not a douche bag. – And then I started reading the reviews for the first time and I was blown away with the level with which people will not only write about what they think of the book but write about the connection to us. And so then I screenshot one of those and sent it to you ’cause it made me feel really good. – When you sent this to me– – This is from Hammerton. – I thought, hmm, okay. This isn’t that unusual for you to send a message like this. – This was, I would say totally usual, because this is– – Right and so I responded with, “Yeah, “I’ve read some of those. “Our rating is pretty unprecedented for a book “with that many ratings.” – Oh yeah, another warm fuzzy. Little ego stroke. – At the time I wrote that, I didn’t expect to be reading it publicly back to everyone, I thought it was just for me and you. – Right, we brag even between the two of us in private conversations, but– – But it wasn’t a brag, it was just a, yeah, it’s kind of unusual to have that many ratings and to be five stars. I was like, it’s great, I mean this is a good thing. We’re just celebrating the fact that this is good, that people like the book. – And then I responded, “And the things reviewers are writing “about their connection to us, et cetera, “it’s probably the best place to go to understand “our older post-college audience.” So this is just us working. This is not anything unusual, this is not the first of its kind, this is just another moment via text where I should be relaxing, chilling out on a Saturday afternoon, but instead, I’m trying to simultaneously stroke my ego and get some work accomplished. How can we utilize these reviews to further understand our demographic and pluh-pluh-pluh-pluh-pluh-pluh-plah. – And you wrote that at 1:36 p.m., and as you can see, I had assumed that, okay, end of conversation. I do not need to respond to this last thing, so I did not respond to it. Thought conversation’s over, it was an exchange of information as is typical given our text history. – And then it got– – Weird. – It got new. I decided to change the subject and I just said, “How was the concert last night?” That’s a first. That’s an absolutely first on our text thread to ask a purely friendly conversation starter text. – We do not use texting in this way– – Ever. – Never have. – Never have. – You may think it sounds weird, but we do not use texting, we use text to exchange information but conversations like, “How was your day?” Or, “How was the concert last night?” always happen in person, okay? – Never done it. – But I just went with it. Okay, I went with it, I said, “Great. “He puts on a really good show.” Now, I was talking about Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, played at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. – I was invited to go by Rhett and I politely declined, for reasons that I’ll get into. – And Jason is one of my favorite artists, and I’ve seen him before live, my wife, actually my whole family loves him. We play his songs all the time in the house, in the car. So I brought everybody, Locke, for a number of reasons didn’t end up being able to go but Jessie and Shepherd and I went, had a great time. So, and I said it, he puts on a really good show, but again– – That’s not the point of this. – I didn’t expand beyond that because I was like, didn’t seem like the time or the place. – It never has been for us before. And again, I do think we maybe should before, we’ll read the rest of this text thread in one second, but just to clarify further, text has just been something that’s been purely for logistics, like we may even go far as to say, “Hey, I wanna hear about the concert.” Like that might be something that I would text. But I wouldn’t say, “How was it?” Let’s have a legitimate friendly conversation right now, be like, let’s put a pin in this until we’re together when we conduct our friendship and then we’ll do that. – Right. – I think it’s how old we are. – Let’s not analyze it all throughout. – Let’s keep going. – Let’s get through it. – See you’re already bored with it, you hate it. – Yeah. – “How was the concert last night?” “Great, he puts on a really good show.” I said, “I just can’t get into his driving rock songs. “I just like the slow ones. “Whereas someone like First Aid Kit,” who we’re going to see soon, “I like all of what they do.” – At this point I’m like, this is weird, we are in a conversation that we’ve never had on the phones before. But again, I don’t dislike it. (Link laughs) I was also doing– – It’s totally true. – I was also doing nothing at the time. – Oh, that’s great. – I was sitting somewhere in my house and I was like, okay, Link wants to talk. Weird. – (laughs) And you said. (Rhett chuckles) – Look how Feldman is like very confused– – I knew you would be– – That we don’t talk like this. And here’s the thing. I’ve said that I wasn’t gonna stop and analyze it. I told you not to analyze it, but now because of his reactions I have to. I told you before this started that I don’t think it’s how old we are, I think it’s a combination of how old we are and how we are, period. Because there are other 40 year old people who text relationally. But it is exclusive, I mean, kids do it almost exclusively. They’re constantly connected in their relationships via text but– – They don’t remember a time when they didn’t do that. – It’s less common. Right, but we had to transition into it and we never did. It didn’t seem right. – And you know an interesting thing, a reminder, at the top of this, I can see your picture, and look at it. This picture is the picture of you the moment you bought your very first iPhone. – And it was the moment you bought your very first iPhone. – We were together. – Picture of you in the same place. – The first thing we did when we got our iPhones was take a picture of each other and store our contact information in our iPhones, and the picture has not changed. You don’t even have a beard, Rhett. – And in the picture, we’re both– – You have a chin strap. – We thought it would be a good idea if the picture of the other person had them on the phone in their picture so that you would be able to picture what they looked like when they were talking to you, which is on a phone. Made sense to me. – That’s the very first picture I ever took, put in there, and then for years after that, sometimes still now on a whim, if I’m entering someone into my contacts. I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called anymore. Address book? Contacts. – Yeah it hasn’t changed that much. – I’ll say, “Hold up your phone like I’m calling you,” and then I’ll take a picture. – It’s a cool thing to do still, in 2018. Get with it, kids. – Never changed that photo. But that’s when we first learned how to do this. We were out of college, we had children. – Right, but okay, but when you questioned the greatness of Jason Isbell because of his driving rock songs, which I think is a little bit of a mischaracterization. – You know what I mean though. – I said, “The harder ones work well in person. “He’s got a really good band.” – And now I’m on a roll relationally, I’m like, “Ah, I could see that. “Did you get recognized? “Dot dot dot, by him?” – I thought that was an interesting way to ask the question because typically the pause, the dot dot dot indicates the pause but when you send it all as one text, I see it all together, but I understood what you were implying, which is, hey I’m asking, did you get recognized as Rhett from Rhett and Link– – By him. – But then by him because you know that I once tweeted at Jason and he tweeted back at me, started following me. One of the greatest– – I actually forgot that. – Honors of my life. – I didn’t know that, I was just making a joke. – And so I said– – Like from stage while he was performing, he stopped everything and singled you out. – And because we’re not good at this relational texting, you can see, we cross-texted in the middle of this. This is the point where I didn’t answer your question. I was adding to my previous answer, but it came later. But it both came at 1:45 p.m., I said, “And the lyrics. “The best. “John Mayer called him the best lyricist today.” Now I must say the reason I said that is because a drunk woman behind me said it during the concert. So I don’t– – Her word is her bond. – I don’t have independent verification of that, but she said a lot of things throughout the evening, and I heard all of them and so did Shepherd. – Oh. – But one thing she did say to her dad who she was with, when her dad was like, “Ah! “I love his lyrics!” The dad was obviously being introduced to Jason Isbell at the concert and he was like, “I just love the lyrics!” And then she was like, “John Mayer says that he’s “the best lyricist of all time, Dad.” (Link chuckles) So I wanted to send that to you, I did. But then I answered your question. – And us using John Mayer as like a measuring stick for greatness, it does show our age. – Because John Mayer is one of the best lyricists of all time as well. – Oh is he? I think he’s great. – I think so. – I think he’s great, I like all of his hard songs and his soft songs. I’m 40! – Okay, John Mayer is amongst the best modern-day lyricist, is that a less sensational thing to say? – I really like John Mayer. – He’s not just good on the guitar, guys. He can write a great song. I then answered the question, “No, didn’t see him,” and then I– – You mean Jason. – Yes. Then I talked about seeing someone that we both know. – Okay we’ll skip this part. – We’re gonna skip over this part. It’s not important. – And then I said, “But fans?” So at this point, am I making this about work again? I mean, this is kinda revealing. I’m getting a little self-conscious now. It’s like I’m talking about my hot tub again. I’m trying to have a friendly conversation with my buddy for the first time ever on text with no agenda. And then I’m like, “Did you get recognized?” – But you gotta contextualize this for people listening, because when we talk about that kinda thing, we’re obviously not bragging to each other. Me telling you that I got recognized is not so I can be like, “Hey man, I got recognized again.” – I was legitimately curious. – It’s a data point for our business. So we talk about it. – We both really love Jason Isbell. You more than me because, we’ve established that, and then you’re there and you get recognized, it’s like, oh, people who have good taste in music also like us. That’s a good sign. – Right, the Venn diagram of good tastes. But then, I said, “No, that was in the VIP area.” Again, I’m not bragging. I’m just relating things to Link here. – I was like, “But still, I might woulda gone “with the VIP area, or was it lame?” – I was like, “Nah, it was nothing. “Same kind of thing we did for the Merle concert “at the Greek before we knew him.” (Rhett chuckles) Sounds like a couple of douches talking. – It really does. We’re horrible at this. – Yeah yeah yeah yeah. – So I’m like, “Yeah. “So no fans there?” I’m like pressing. – Yeah and I was like, “A couple of people got a picture.” – And I’m like, yes. And then, I’m like, I’m going deeper. I’m gonna make a bold choice. – By this point I felt weird because I had been sitting down texting for multiple minutes and I never do this. I don’t just sit down to text. What kinda freak does that? – Right. Me neither. – Right. – But if we were, it wouldn’t be to each other. Because we’re so self-aware of our, like the parameters of our relationship, if we do something that’s not like something that we do in our relationship, alarms start going off. It’s like, oh you started talking over text, or you helped me with my seatbelt. – Yeah yeah yeah yeah. – In the car. It’s like why are you helping me with my seatbelt? – Or you hugged me when you saw me. – Right. – We have groups of friends and all our friends are huggers, and like, we see them all the time– – And we hug them every time. – We hug them and then I kinda go through everybody and then I see you and I’m like, I kinda nod at you. If I even acknowledge you. – Right. – It’s kinda like seeing yourself in the mirror. Do you hug yourself in the mirror, or do you just make eye contact briefly and move on? (both chuckle) – We say we’re like an old married couple, but even an old married couple still hug each other, unabashedly, right? – Yeah. – Maybe they don’t. – They do more than that. – An old married couple, the reason why we’re like an old married couple is that we have our protocols of relationship, of friendship and they’re set, so anything that deviates from that, like having just a friendly text exchange, is a deviation which means it’s odd, which means something must be up. – I was fully committed at this point. – I think this can lead to growth in our relationship. Let’s put a pin in that. We need to come back to that thought, okay. – Yeah we need to get through this so we can get to the analysis. – Oh God, or at least the ad, right? – Yeah we gotta get to the ad. – We gotta put an ad in this podcast. That’s really what matters. Okay. Where was I? – Subject change is what you, you put it in brackets. – I actually put in brackets, subject change. – A sign of age as well. – Yeah, people don’t do that, huh? – I don’t think kids know what brackets are. – I said that, “A fan pointed out that we say “smell of that instead of saying smell that “when we try to get the other person to smell something.” You say, “I saw that comment and I think it’s crazy. “I don’t say that,” and I said, “You’re saying I say that?” and you said, “I would have guessed it, “but I’m saying I don’t think I do.” – And what I meant to say was, “I wouldn’t have guessed it, “but I am saying that I don’t think I do, definitively.” – And I said, “So yes, you are saying that.” – ‘Cause you misunderstood what I was saying and at that point I didn’t respond. – No, you were saying that I did it, and you didn’t. And that ended our conversation and apparently our friendship. – Again, even though we are now face-to-face, what I’m saying is what I meant to write was, “I wouldn’t have guessed that you said that.” – Oh, but instead I took offense. – Yeah yeah. – Like I took pseudo-offense, I thought it was funny but I just thought you were being belligerent, like, “I would have guessed it, “that you said it, but I wouldn’t have said it.” – Exactly, and this is the problem with texting for relationships, okay? This is one of the pitfalls, and I didn’t even realize that this is why the conversation ended. Because what I meant to say was, “Well I would have never said that you would have said it. “If I had to choose between the two of us, “I would guess that you were the one who said it. “But I never heard you say it that I know of, “and I’m pretty sure that I’ve never said it.” Now I’m probably wrong on all counts and I probably will get like a super cut of me saying smella that. Posted to YouTube. – (chuckles) Please do. I wanna see a super cut to see if that’s true or not, because that’s a big question. But there is a bigger question which I want to save until we explore multiple avenues in the quality of friendship when conducted over technology, text, social media. Across our lives, our kids’ lives. Our friends’ lives. – And whether or not that’s good, bad or indifferent. – And let’s come back to this exchange. – Oh you wanna keep coming back to it? – No, at the very end, and see if there’s any ultimate conclusion that we can apply to our own friendship. – Sure, I think that’s a great idea. But first, we wanna take a small break to let you know that Ear Biscuits is brought to you by Better Help. – Yes, I am super excited to share about Better Help if you haven’t heard of it, or even if you have, listen up again. Better Help is an affordable and convenient way to receive therapy and counseling from your home. Better Help seeks to improve mental and social help around the world and it’s professional therapists available to help you with stress, anxiety, depression, relationship problems and more. – Now we’ve been especially excited about working with Better Help ever since we heard about them. – Yeah. – Because therapy is something, well we’ve never talked about it personally. I don’t think, I think we’ve hinted at some things. For me personally, therapy has been a big part of my family’s life, a big part of my wife’s life, and also, she’s thinking about potentially, she’s super interested in it personally. It’s been helpful for her throughout her life but she’s also interested in potentially becoming a therapist at some point or exploring those options. And then, me personally, someone who, I would have told you that, “I ain’t broken. “I ain’t got no issues with myself. “I don’t need therapy,” is what I would have said a year ago, until my wife talked me into going to a therapist. I hinted at, in the past, the way that I am changing, now that I’ve turned 40 I kinda feel like I’m continuing to change and I see more and more change happening in my life and hopefully for the better and kinda knowing myself better, and that has been primarily through therapy, so it’s been a huge help to me and I think that regardless of your level of difficulty that you’re going through with any of these things, Better Help can help you as well. – Yeah, and people having access to qualified therapy is extremely important to us, and that’s what makes us excited, so just a couple of notes. Again, it’s done from the comfort of your own home. It can be video, phone, live chat, messaging. You’re given unlimited communication with your therapist at any time so you have flexibility to do counseling on your schedule, and it costs about $65 a week, which is significantly lower than traditional therapy which ranges from $150 to $300 per session. – Yeah, and matching you with a therapist you connect with is very important and they recognize that, so you’re given the freedom to switch therapists at any time, and if those prices which are affordable are not affordable to you on your particular budget, they actually offer financial assistance for those who can’t afford it. – So yeah we want you to go to this specific URL, so remember this for you and the loved ones in your life that you are gonna recommend. Go to betterhelp.com/ear to sign up and see if therapy with Better Help can help. You can find the link in the description below, actually in this video. Again that’s betterhelp.com, don’t forget to add slash ear, from Ear Biscuits. – All right, okay. We’re gonna get back into some of the personal, we’ll analyze that text exchange at the end. We’re gonna get into talking about the way that we’ve kinda relate it to our kids and the way that they are different than us. I thought a good way to get into this is just some stats. You know me and the stats. – Boopity-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop. – These stats come from Psychology Today, and relate to using text as a form of communication. 33% of adults and 77% of 18 to 22 year olds prefer texts over all forms of communication, including in person. – Wow, 77%, 18 to 22 year olds would rather text than anything else. – And I think you can extrapolate that and say that if you’re under 18, that number is definitely higher than 77% so it’s safe to say that more than 77%, more than eight out of 10 kids, teenagers and younger, if you’ve got a phone, prefer texting over all forms of communication. A third of all adults prefer texts to phone calls. Text is the most used form of communication for adults under age 50 and Americans send five times as many texts as compared with phone calls each day. Now just a quick side note really, ’cause I said Americans send all of these texts. 75% of the world uses some type of video chat application, like Skype or WhatsApp, in place of texting. The majority of users around the world average only six minutes of texting daily. So texting at this rate is a bit of a, I don’t wanna say western phenomenon, it’s partly that, but it tends to be places that have had a lot of financial success and everybody has a smartphone. But it’s interesting ’cause a lot of these people in these places have, like India, a lot of people have smartphones and computers but they’re talking to each other via video chat, and I don’t know exactly, I don’t know any of the reasons for why that’s the case, but just an interesting tidbit that came up in this. – Well, I think that we’re approaching this from a weird place, right? As evidenced by our first text exchange as friends being two days ago. We are assimilating to something that our kids and the rest of society as they grow up or just growing into instinctively. So for us, I think that there’s an exercise in seeing how utilizing technology and our phones can increase the quality of our friendships. It’s something that I’ve been very resistant to, whereas most people, and I think younger people, or what I’m afraid of for my kids, I’ll couch it that way, is that the opposite extreme, that if they would prefer to text versus anything else, how does that impact your relationships? And not only that, even your ability to conduct a meaningful relationship, you know? Are they being short-circuited by technology to have a lower capacity for connection? But, I think we should start with our own experience. – Yeah, I think for me, before I looked at the research, which we’re gonna continue to get into, ’cause I’d never really looked at this, I had just heard and also I think just naturally inferred and assumed that it just can’t be a good thing. Sometimes I have a tendency to, and my wife calls me out on this quite a bit, to begin sounding like the old, grumpy man who thinks that this generation, in fact, one time my mom told me that when she was hanging out with Shepherd, who again, at the time was like eight years old. She said Shepherd was talking about something related to Locke and he literally said, “This generation of teenagers.” This is an eight year old speaking. (Link chuckles) You can imagine where he got that from. And I went, okay, well maybe I have been, and I don’t wanna be that guy because every older generation thinks that there are deficits in the younger generation and the reality most often is that yes, there are deficits, but there are also areas in which they are better, more equipped for different things. And you see that as you look, there’s places online. You can go and just analyze the different generations and their propensity to drug abuse and divorce and that kinda thing. And there’s an ebb and flow. Contrary to popular belief, every generation isn’t getting worse and the world isn’t going to hell in a hand basket. It’s a popular narrative, not true. – Well there’s an overall trajectory towards the hell in a hand basket though, right? – No there’s not. In fact– – Might have a couple good years, but– – In fact, it’s absolutely the opposite on the whole. But that’s not what this podcast is about today. – And I think what we’re trying to, so in the spirit of that mindset, I’ve tried to say, you know what, we’ve developed over the past few years a group of friends who, we hang out together. I mean there’s around a dozen of us, which is kinda crazy that we’ve all connected in this way, that we spend a lot of time together. I mean, on any two weeks stretch, we all see each other. – Which is very unusual in Los Angeles. – Yeah, it’s awesome, but what happened was, right from the beginning, they created a text thread and added me to it, added you to it, added our wives to it. The kids of the adults of the group, I think they have their own text thread too. I don’t know that for sure, but they have to. – I don’t know. – I was like, well, and then they just start talking on it. And I just, the first thing I observed was, just a general attitude of, well, I’m not gonna do this. – Well they were doing things like putting memes into the text. – It’s like what am I, a 12 year old? – And I would observe it from a distance and think, this is funny, these are funny people. They’re having a good time. I’m having a good time and sometimes things would get more serious and somebody would share something that they wanted to share with the group, they were dealing with or whatever, and people would offer advice and perspective. – Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a little more than– – This is happening on my phone? – This is a little more than like a mildly inappropriate GIF, this is some actual life stuff happening within a text thread. – Sometimes majorly inappropriate. – (chuckles) Yeah. – Gotta watch yourself. – So then I thought, well, okay, I’ll warm up to it, maybe I’ll try it and then I’m like trying to chime in and I find myself absolutely paralyzed. (Rhett chuckles) Not even beginning to type and delete. Not creating that cloud that then it’s, oh he’s typing. Which doesn’t show up in the group. – I think this is, I don’t think that this is absolutely normal, I think that we’re both a little bit in the abnormal place when it comes to this because what I did, I think a lot of it has to do with the way that we’ve scheduled our day. A lot of the people in the group are super creative and– – They don’t have regimented schedules. – I don’t know of anyone else who has a nine to five. We’re creative, this is what we do for a living, but given our, we got a lot of left brain going on as well, we just naturally sort of fall into this schedule of coming to an office and having meetings and having a bunch of stuff on our schedule and then going home. Everything’s very regimented for us. And so like social text conversations don’t fit naturally, but even when we were at home just sitting there, seeing these texts come through, I early on silented the conversation. – Oh yeah, to not get the notifications. – My phone would just be– (mimics phone buzzing) Once they got going, and I didn’t know how to contribute. Let me just, I wasn’t gonna get to this yet, but let me throw something in there, because, there’s a study that shows, and I think this is very applicable for what we’re talking about and the way that perceive this group. This is in the Journal of Computers and Human Behavior. – Yeah, I got that on my coffee table. – The study found that similarity in texting styles was linked to relationship satisfaction. So texting in the same way at similar frequencies makes people feel like their relationships are going well. Now this was done in the context of romantic relationships but people analyze how connected they are based on if there’s symmetry in their texting. So you’re texting about the same kinda things, you’re texting as often as each other approximately, and so I think that we begin to perceive that because we weren’t participating in the text thread, I think I began to think that maybe they think that I don’t care about them as much as they care about me or whatever, or I don’t care about this group. And we ended up talking about that as a group in person, not on the text thread, ’cause somebody else in the group was like, “I’m sorry, I don’t text. “That’s not what I do,” and then we were like, “Us too! “Sorry, we think it’s really funny and we love all you guys, “but we just don’t, we don’t naturally contribute “in this way, it’s not normal, we don’t do it with anybody. “It’s not just you, it’s me.” – Yeah so we felt self-conscious, but I did notice, even though I was lurking, I felt so much more connected to the group. And I mean, with 12 other people, I mean there’s still like five that do most of the texting, and so I started to soften to it a little bit. To fast forward over a year later, I still don’t text that often. But I appreciate it so much more as a legitimate form of connection. And then recently, I think we experienced the limit of that, you know? ‘Cause we got into some stuff, right? – And I think I have a, I’m gonna go back into some data, which I think informs what happened, and then what happened again up top in our conversation. – ‘Cause I started to get really hopeful. I’m like, man. We try to see each other every week, but if we don’t, we’ve got this thread. Literally, it’s a constant thing that keeps going, a thread of connection. Is that why they call it a thread? – Yep. – Wow! – You just figured it out, you just cracked the code. – I just did it! – Okay, so what’s the problem? What are the pitfalls? And what do they stem from? According to UCLA professor Albert Mehrabian– – Great guy. Weird mustache. – Probably pronouncing that wrong. Albert, you know, Dr. Albert. – I think you’re saying Albert correctly. – During face-to-face conversation, humans, this is the percentage of different factors that you are relying on for communication when you are having a face-to-face conversation. Two homo sapiens talking to each other. 58% of the communication is in the body language. – Over half. – 35% is through vocal tone, pitch, and emphasis. That leaves 7% for content of message. – Ouch. – Okay, so, let me just say that again. In case you didn’t understand. When you’re talking to someone and you’re communicating to them, if they’re picking up what you’re laying down, it is based on 58% body language, 35% vocal tone, pitch and emphasis, the way that you’re speaking, and 7% content of message. Now, Albert, I don’t know you. You may not be omniscient and this may not be exactly 100% true, but I think that the gist is definitely true. You know what I’m saying, it’s like, how do you break down communication? What was the nature of the study? What I’m basically saying though is that, a small percentage, potentially 7%, but definitely a minority of what you’re communicating to someone is related to what you’re saying. – The words coming out of your mouth. Because we’re animals. – Right! – We’ve developed, we’ve evolved in an interactive space. And our communication without each other was way more about all this 58% and 35%, the 93% of communication was the basis of communication before humans evolved the ability to speak. So you were– (aggressively grunting) I can communicate a lot. I can go into my monster truck voice if you want me to. – I tend to think that my ancestors– – Okay. – Distant. It was more like meowing and purring, it was gentler. – Cats? – Cat-like. – Okay. I don’t believe that that’s how the evolutionary tree breaks down, but whatever. – But the bee is my spirit animal. – The point is, we’re at a place where we still, listen, guys, biologically speaking, we haven’t changed much in a couple hundred thousand years. – We’re severely handicapping our ability to communicate when you limit it to that 7%. – We’re funneling– – And that’s not even including spell-check! – We are funneling the breadth– – [Link] Or lack thereof. – Of human communication into this tiny little slit that is 7% of our communication capabilities, meaning that all these things that serve as visual and auditory signals to help you actually understand what people are saying is completely not present when you’re sending a text message, and so– – When you start to get into things, just to go back to the story, with our friend group. I mean, I’m not gonna dish dirt on what we had to deal with, but it was the type of thing that, there were concerns. There was emotions involved. It was heated. – There was a couple of times– – It wasn’t an argument but it was different perspectives. – It became an argument, so there was a couple of things that were misunderstood, a couple of things that were said and a few times people kinda pitched in and said, “Shouldn’t we just talk about this in person?” People kinda wanted to bail on the text thread. I even sent that text at one point, and was like, “Can we just talk about this in person?” Now, we did end up getting together and talking through some of the things that were texted, and I ultimately think that the combination of the two things was good. But I don’t wanna come to that conclusion yet. I don’t wanna get there yet because I think right now what we’re exploring is the inadequacy of text-only communication in relationships, in friendships and relationships. – I’m not trying to get into the details of the story, which are not appropriate to go into here, so we’re not gonna do that, but the only point I’m making is, I experienced firsthand pushing the deepest connection with the heart and the mind via text and just hitting a wall and saying, “All right, we have to get together “to finish this conversation. “This can’t happen digitally.” So we explored the depths of it. – Well we kinda went through what I think is ultimately and it’s kinda what just happened with us at the beginning of this is what we would kinda prescribe as the method of using text and face-to-face conversation in conjunction. Let’s wait to totally land that plane. Because I think that, when I think about my kids and when I was looking at this research, I was like, I kinda feel like I should talk to my kids about this because I would have never, I knew that all these visual and auditory cues were things that were huge in communication, but I’m also not necessarily texting on my phone, but text-based communication, email, is something that I believe in. In fact, a lot of times, even though I can engage in a conversation and I can usually get my thoughts across in a pretty compelling way, I prefer many times to type things out because you have a chance to kinda center yourself and move through the information at the pace that you want without interruption, without having to justify things as you go, when you do a vocal exchange with somebody. – A vocal exchange. – Or verbal exchange. ♪ La la la la la ♪ I ironically am doing it right now. – The research suggests that text-based relationships, texting in the context of a relationship can give you the illusion of closeness. But it actually is decreasing relational stability and satisfaction, because you feel like– – It makes it worse? Is that what you’re saying? – Yes. So there is a risk that if you are relying primarily on textual communication in a relationship, you are creating a false sense of intimacy and closeness but because that 93% of yourself that this person would be getting if it was a face-to-face conversation is not present ultimately. And again, this is based on a bunch of studies kinda together analyzed and people coming to conclusions about those, is that it makes you feel like you’re connected, but ultimately, if you’re not actually having face-to-face connection, you’re not nearly as close as you perceive. I think it’s ultimately true in friendships, but it kind of is really, really, it’s exacerbated in the context of a romantic relationship. – I mean obviously there are many successful in the real world romantic relationships that started or even continued for long periods of time that were just like text-based. Pen-pal based (chuckling), you know? – I’m not trying to diminish that, I’m just saying that there are risks. – I would venture to guess that anyone who has a successful relationship in the real world that went through just text for a long time, when they added that component of actually being in the same space, having the complete ability to communication, that that added a facet to the relationship that they would not prefer to give up. – And it may actually make or break a relationship. You know what I’m saying? So you may be like, “Ugh, this kinda seemed to work.” Again, I think this happens all the time. You start an online relationship with somebody, you think there’s an incredible connection, because again, it creates a connection that’s very isolated and funneled down to this one sort of form of communication, and it doesn’t mean that other parts of your brain are not involved. In terms of the way that you’re responding… When you get a text from somebody, there’s a dopamine rush and you get into this dopamine loop where you’re waiting to have somebody react. And yeah, Feldman, catfishing is a great example. That’s the prime example of you think you’ve got a connection with somebody and then you found out you got catfished. But even sort of short of that– – What happens with that, by the way? – It’s when you meet a girl online and it’s really just a big dude in his basement who’s catfishing you. – For what? – To get money from you, to just get off on it. There’s multiple reasons that somebody would do that. – How would they get money from you? – Hey, we’ve got this connection, but I really need braces. (chuckles) – Oh but you don’t… – Could you send me $3,000 so I can get braces? – But you never meet in person? That’s kinda the– – Well my point, where I was going was, when you do meet in person and it’s just a big dude in his basement, it doesn’t have the same effect as if it was like a hot girl without braces. – Well but his teeth are straight, right? – Yeah yeah, when the host of Catfished, there’s a show on MTV, you should watch it. – Oh I don’t have that station. – But what I’m talking about is not catfishing but just like, oh, we had this connection. And this can happen in the context of an already existent relationship, right, you could be like, “You were in Brazil for a month and we communicated “via text and it seemed like we were so close “and then you showed up and it was like, ugh, “there’s nothing there in person. “Can you go back to Brazil so we can text?” Again, there’s something happening in your brain, you’re rewarding yourself for this communication, but are you really connecting? – And let’s bring it back to friendship and our kids. I think the thing that I’m concerned about is that you have these shallow friendships that are just, it’s caption-based conversations, you know? It’s like a little blip-blip, and a blip-blip here. I mean, I don’t look at the specifics of their conversations. I talk to my kids about the conversations that they’re having and we strive to have a level of openness there. But I just get concerned that, again, as we experienced, you can only really care for somebody so much. Even if it’s a lot, over text, as a friend. So I’m not talking romantically. I just think that, being able to, on one hand, tell the difference between who’s an acquaintance and who’s an actual friend. Who’s somebody who’s gonna be there for you. I mean that’s why the Friends theme song is the way it is, ’cause that’s what a friend is, man. ♪ I’ll be there for you ♪ They’ll be there for you, man. – Not– ♪ I will text you ♪ – Yeah. – That would be different. – I’ll be there for you. – Right. – Shallow. ♪ I’ll send a meme to you ♪ – Versus deep. It’s the difference between like getting along with people, like oh, we have fun texting each other. The memes! – Mhm. – The meme things. Versus, being connected. I mean there’s a certain level of, once you really get in it with somebody like as a true friend, you’re gonna have conflict, you’re gonna have problems. To have love, like friendly love, not romantic love. – Friendly love. – To have that friendly love, there’s a whole slew of problems and challenges that come along with that that are easily avoidable if you just keep the conversation shallower and text-based and it’s an illusion. – Well the reason we do it is because it’s super convenient and easy, it’s much easier– – Sure. – It’s on my terms, it’s on my time and I can say what I want to and I don’t have to see your immediate reaction. It’s so tempting to reduce a relationship to a text-based exchange ’cause it is so convenient and easy and that’s why we do it. You know what, it’s not going away, and we’re not saying that it should go away. And because of the plasticity of our brains, especially the brains of our kids. Again, with the research, studies are showing that their brains are adapting to this level of communication and their brains are, parts of their brains that kinda connect their thoughts to their– – Thumbs? – Their thumbs and their index fingers and basically the part of their brain that controls that fine motor skills, they are adapting and becoming better at it, and they’re better at it than we will ever be because their neuroplasticity is way higher. It’s not gonna go away. They’re gonna keep doing it, and I think that there are positives. To use the analogy that another guy in Psychology Today, Zack Carter used, he talked about a cake and he was like, building a relationship out of text is like having a cake that is icing only. – Mhm. – So it may look and feel like a cake, but when you kinda go into it, there’s less substance and where’s the cake? Whereas, I don’t personally, and I know you don’t, I don’t like cake without icing. Right, it adds some moisture to the whole thing, and so I do think that if texting is– – I don’t like a lot of icing, though. – Just the right amount, right? But you wanna have a cake, you wanna have a real foundation for a relationship and that is actually your contact and your real face-to-face conversations and your quality time that you spend with each other. But then the icing on the cake that makes the cake even better and makes the cake what it is, at least in the context of modern society, is text-based communication. Because I think ultimately, what happened the other day– – So one, two punch of just constant contact or more frequent contact– – Because we’ve experienced– – It keeps it alive, it keeps it vibrant in between those moments of connecting in person. – Because we have actually benefited from this text thread that we have amongst our friends. – Oh yeah. – And even the situation that we just brought up, we would have never gotten together and talked with everybody– – In the time frame which we did if it wasn’t for– – If it weren’t for that text thread. – Text thread. – So to me, I think that there is a healthy balance between the two but first of all, you can’t blame anybody who says, “I’m not gonna text at all, “and I’m just gonna have a complete “face-to-face conversation.” It’s a little Luddite-ish, but– – Uh-oh. – I think that ultimately, where you could go very wrong is if you begin to conduct your relationships exclusively on texts and what I think that the kids are doing in this generation, this generation of teenagers, they’re beginning and ending romantic relationships via texts. They’re breaking up via text. They’re asking to go out via text. They’re saying, “Will you go to the prom with me?” via text. – That is an imbalance. – And I gotta say, listen, I know it’s easy, but it’s too easy, it’s too convenient, it’s too narrow, it’s not broad. It’s not relying on who you are as a person, it’s relying on 7% of who you are, communicating to 7% of who someone else is. It’s not 100% to 100% connection. – So you’re really only breaking up with 7% of the person. – Yeah, if you broke up with somebody via text, you’re still 93% in a relationship with them. That’s a fact. Science says it, deal with it. ♪ I’ll give a meme to you ♪ (Link chuckles) – Yeah, so I hope to help my kids begin to understand that texting and the phone in general is just a tool that you can abuse it in so many ways, of course, but when it comes to relationships– – Sometimes I throw mine and I see if the Gorilla Glass will hold up. – You gotta know that it’s not, it can’t be the center, the cakey center of your friendships. If you wanna build real friendships, of which you’re fortunate to have two to five close friends. By the way, I was reading that studies show that you really can’t have more than 150 friends at any level, like acquaintance level. – ‘Cause that was the size of communities of our ancestors. – It’s a brain thing. It’s a brain capacity thing that actually befriends– – Once you get above that, once communities, ancient communities got above about 150 people, the group dynamics began to break down and they had to break up and become new groups. – And so now what we have are, you have those active friends, which there may be five close friends and like 15 at the next layer and the layers go out of how connected you actually are to them. You get to a point where you’ve got dormant friends who you can reconnect with if you happen to be in the same town but you don’t live there anymore, you’re visiting, and then you’ve got all across Facebook, if you’re into that, commemorative friends. Oh I went to summer camp with that person, and now we’re just like, they’re just floating out here as a commemorative– – Complimenting each others’ babies. – I think that ultimately using the tools properly, our kids can be, there’s a level of connection that they can have that we didn’t experience, and to get back to us, that I think there’s an opportunity for us. I think, maybe we can find ourselves, I’m just gonna throw that out there, having a conversation over text, and just, as if we were talking to each other. – I think it’s a great thing. I think for us it’s definitely a great thing. – What if we did that? – I think it would only enhance things, ’cause one of the things, I find that if there is an issue that I need to deal with, I often, and this may be a little bit, it may be cowardly. If there’s a situation where there’s some conflict, I typically like to send an opening, written communication as sort of a thesis of like, these are some things that I want to explore, but this is not the end of the conversation. I’m not expecting textual communication back. It’s like, this is like my opening salvo and now let’s talk about it. I think a combination of text communication and face-to-face communication can be a great way to get through conflict. – [Link] And you know what? – And to conduct a relationship. – Christy and I actually did that last week. I’d totally forgotten about it within the context of this conversation that, we were dealing with something. She’s got, we’re separated. I’m here, she’s there, and she’s talking about, okay this is what I’m going through. These are thoughts that are going through my mind based on a conversation we had last night. I’m not gonna call it an argument, but it was a argument. – It was just a conversation. A spicy one. – It was great because, you know we had to put a pin in things. We slept on it and then I had to go to work, but then, I sent her a text. I was like, “I look forward to continuing our conversation.” And she actually, she wrote out, I was like whoa, two paragraphs come through. – She had it locked and loaded in the Notes app and just copy and pasted it. – And it was great. – She’s ready for you to text. – It was difficult to get that in the middle of the day, but ultimately, it was better than not getting it, ’cause I could, on the drive home, I reflected on her thoughts, so then, we were that much further along when we sat down and had the rest of the conversation. – Mhm. – Which still was like, okay, two hours of focused, let’s continue this conversation. The work of marriage. We wouldn’t have gotten nearly that far if it wasn’t for that preamble that she sent. – And sometimes, being able to communication when you’re not together– – That’s a result of this friend group too. Just to toss that in there. ‘Cause I think we’re all learning how we can utilize it. – Jessie and I have done exactly what you’re talking about an we did it before the friend group. There’s been a couple of times where, we do have an argument, and we go to sleep and we wake up and we’re either, the communication climate is a little cold, if you will. (Link chuckles) And then at some point during the day, someone will instigate a text conversation that is an apology or an explanation, and again, it isn’t for the purposes of solving the conflict or reconciling via text, but sometimes when you’re not in each others’ presence and you’ve had time to cool off and you’re not just sitting there across from the person that the last time you were with them, you were arguing with them. You get this text and you can process it in your own world, in the privacy of your own thoughts, and I think it does set up, it’s an opening volley that gives you the opportunity to then go and take the conflict and address it face-to-face. I do think that it’s very helpful, very purposeful. – Yeah and that’s deep work. Like I said, that is the work of marriage or of a relationship and can obviously be applied to friendships, but I think for us, let’s start simple. Let’s just start with a few memes. – Memes, it’s meme time. – I think we can search in that thing and find ourselves. – Yeah, I’ve done it. You want me to send you GIFs of you and you send me GIFs of me? – No, I want you to be you and me be me. Let’s communicate to each other using– – But only GIFs. – Oh man, we are really, we’re completing the loop of douchey. – Yeah, the douche loop. – The douche loop. (chuckles) – Rounding the turn on the douche loop. (Link chuckles) Little Bigfoot! – Currently in my hot tub, sending GIFs of myself to my friend Rhett. – From one douche to another. – In this hot tub. (Link chuckles) – Now one thing I will say that we didn’t talk about. We hinted at it a little bit earlier when we were talking about the way the rest of the world communicates. I don’t know what the research indicates on video chats. – Mhm. – I have noticed, now my kids don’t do this. But I have seen the teens talking to each other– – Lincoln uses Houseparty. – Video chat is very common. And again, I don’t know the data, I don’t know how many people are doing it. – He’s like doing his homework, he’s got his phone propped up on his desk. – Yeah but, again, I don’t know what the percentages are, but at that point you are getting body language and you are getting voice tone and emphasis. You’re getting a very large percentage. You’re just not getting smell and breath. Which might be great, you know, ’cause if somebody’s got halitosis, that kinda becomes 100% of what you’re thinking about. – Yeah. – So if there’s a way to take that out of the equation. So anyway, maybe that’s one of the great things about video chat and I’m assuming at some point, they keep talking about it, and they keep saying it’s gonna happen. Holograms, man. But holograms will be able to perfectly capture what you’re trying to communicate. – Not perfectly, I’m sure. – Well you know, almost perfectly. – There’ll be glitches. – Here’s what I’ll say. – Be glitches and like a not will be removed and then the whole meaning of what you’re saying will change because you left out the negative. – That could happen, but 30 years from now, I think people will be breaking up with holograms. And that will count. I think that’ll be an official break up if you break up via hologram. – I don’t want to beat a dead horse but I’m having second thoughts about this me and you– – Sending memes? – Texting it up as friends. Let’s back off of memes ’cause that was just me being stupid. But, I don’t know, man. If there’s a third person, we can do it. Like when Mike from back in North Carolina texted us that he took a dump in the Trader Joe’s and then he comes out, he’s washing his hands, and then a woman walks in and it was– – He was in the wrong bathroom. – He was in Trader Jan’s bathroom. (Rhett chuckles) – Right. – And we laughed that up, and we each said a little funny thing in response. – You wanna get Mike in on a text thread just so we don’t feel weird about memeing each other? I think we’ll just turn him into a third douche, is honestly what I think will happen. I think douche spreads. (chuckles) I think it’s contagious. I think douchery is contagious, and I think– – See we can’t call it that. That undermines everything we’re saying. – Can we put that on a t-shirt, can we sell that? Douchery is contagious. We’ll sell it on the dark web then. – Douche loop. I like douche loop better. – Yeah, we’ll put that in the dark, mythical.store/darkweb. Eh, I don’t think that’s how you get to the dark web. – My point is, we can’t characterize us having a friendly text exchange as being douchey. It’s only douchey when we’re talking about ourselves in like a self-absorbed way. I mean but just having a talk, having a text– – But you did just– – When we just talk, we’re not being douches. – But you did just realize, like three weeks ago, that your phone was waterproof so you could be texting from the hot tub. I’m just saying. Sometimes just for kicks, I’ve got my Bluetooth music going and I just put my phone under the surface of the hot tub just so the music goes away and then I bring it back up, just to experience technology. – (chuckles) Once you told me that my phone was waterproof– – Link’s had two generations of iPhone that were waterproof and didn’t know it until we were in Fiji. Speaking of douchebags. (Link laughs) – This is the most self-aware podcast. – We were snorkeling in Fiji and I had my phone out. No, it was when I was videoing you guys, my kids and your kids and you on the banana boat being pulled behind the thing. And you were like, “Man. “Phone’s waterproof?” I was like, “Yeah, so is yours, man. “We got the same phone.” – And you dunk it in the water. – It was mind-blowing. – And I can’t believe it. So then, yeah actually last week, my family was all outside in the hot tub. – Mhm. – And I wasn’t outside and I came outside and I had my phone in my hand and I jumped in… Dove in the pool and then I swam up to where they were. And I pulled up my phone and acted like I was talking on it ’cause I thought that would be cool. – Yeah yeah, it would have been cool in like 2015. – And then– (Rhett chuckles softly) And then, Lily was like, “Dad, you just dove in “with your glasses on and your glasses are “at the bottom of the pool.” – Oh, Dad move. – “Wow, Dad.” I had to swim down there and retrieve my glasses. – I know you’re scared of going to the bottom of the pool so how was that? (laughing in unison) (Link chuckles) – Oh man, who knew that our friendship– – I wish I could have filmed you in the bottom of the pool. – Could go to another level– – Panicking. – Because we’re gonna text each other. I am so excited for us, Rhett. – Yeah, so I don’t know what the moral of the story is. I guess it’s some combination of texting and face-to-face communication is the basis of true friendship and romantic relationships. Don’t text too much. Don’t– – Text too little either. – Text too little. – Don’t do that. – You wanna be in the Goldilocks region when it comes to texting and face-to-face contact. – So let us know what you think. Join the conversation, use #EarBiscuits, wherever hashtags are used, and we’ll continue the conversation. I enjoy that. What do you say, Jade? Say hello. – I’m gonna text you something. – I wish I could make her bark. Wah-wah-wah-wah. Oh, that was a little, she just licked the microphone. Did you hear that? Wah-wah-wah-wah. That’s my voice, not hers. Okay, bye. – [Rhett] To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety and make sure you don’t miss an episode, follow the links in the description to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch more of our daily show Good Mythical Morning, click the playlist on the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your Mythical best.