Flex and Frooms, the Flex and Frooms catch up Podcastle and Rooms. Hey, Freak is always Flex and Frooms.
This is such a sad week to start, but.
It's the last week with our producer, isn't it Brookie. Yeah, yeah, she's standing there. Brooks have been through thick and thing with us, but we'll say about her on Friday.
Not through thick and thin.
Posts, ups and downs, through thicken things, but you always be.
I don't think we've ever had a fight.
Not yet.
Yeah, I mean I've definitely pisched. I've definitely pisched you off. Won't say we I'm done and implicating Flex and brook I'll okate Brooks just because we're more bush pigs together. Brooks said, we're very similar. She didn't say that, Bob. Anyway, let's get to the podcast.
She didn't say that about you.
See, if we were toddlers, I think we would be in physical fights. Oh highercent be pulling hair and they'll be playing with blocks afterwards.
Do you want to share?
Yeah?
Literally, we just fucking would. This is flex and Kata.
The thing is, when we were in high school and we were learning education, we should have been learning about friendship group dynamics, because, unlike most things that we were forced to remember in that time, this would be the most important. If you look back on your high school experience and you really start to unpack it, the dynamics there were so important for you to understand the way that the world works and the way that friendships were. You know, like at the time, you don't really think
about am I cool? Am I the glue of the friendship group?
Do people need me here?
What is my value? What is my role? You just play and have your best friends.
Are you sure? Are I talking primary or high?
I'm talking high.
I think about a lot about that. Yeah.
Maybe because I wasn't the.
Cool I.
Had to like keep from my no because you were in the cool group. Yeah, No, it was definitely. I think it's always thought about dynamics for sure. Maybe not the glue thing.
I definitely I always thought dynaunced with me and my best friends, Like I was always really hyper aware of you know, are we still as close?
Are we still close? Are we still close?
Yeah?
But with everybody else it's like we're just we're just the group groups. We all need to be here. But I came across this TikTok video about this guy saying in a really unnecessary complex way that the glue in a friendship group is more complex than we could have ever known.
Oh do I disagree? I'm not sure yet.
Have you ever noticed that in every friend group there's one permutational hangout that doesn't really work? And what I mean by that is, let's say you have a friend group with like six guys in it, and they're all buddies individually. But if you were to take three of those guys, like let's call them Jake, Bill and Bob. Jake, Bill and Bob all like each other, but when they hang out as a trio, they don't really have like
a good vibe. And then if you bring everyone else back, all the other guys in the vibe, vibe is like restored. You're back at equilibrium and things just go well and it's not like they're enemies, but it's almost kind of like certain individuals within the friend group represent certain periodic elements, and if you remove the presence of specific elements, then the relationships become unstable.
He's one of my kings because no, no, no, he's coming to He's talking about the periodic table. Have I ever looked at a period of tib oh Okay, No, However, he's adding in little tiny elements to perd mutation. I said, what he's bolstering up this theory. I totally see the vision in terms of you take a few people out and put them into a room together, the vibes off.
I personally believe if I'm going down my evil route, that is because if you have a group of six people, there's someone who's getting like, who's the butt of the joke, and there's someone who is doing the jokes and everyone's laughing along. I think that's typical group dynamics.
Especially in my school.
Yeah. So if you get like the bottom three and put them together, I'm sorry, then the middle person's starting to play the top.
Person, yeah, because they're like, well, yeah, that's.
Hitting different because the bottom person's like, no, you don't get to be the middle person. You're down in the trenches.
Exactly one of us. Yeah, be put back.
In your place. Do these continue as an adult maybe in more suther ways?
I would say definitely.
I think group dynamics and the way they manifest are definitely more subtle in your adulthood because you aren't having to clock in sixty hours of friendship group dynamics. So maybe you notice that every other birthday party, you know, the dynamics start to form, and people want to sit at the different end of the table, and groups are coming together or arranging an after party or so on
and so forth. But it's not as offensive because I have other friends, I want to hang out with, other places I want to go to, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I do like thinking about the concept because it is both humbling and even eating to think about where you.
Fit in the world. Do you think so, yeah, humbling in the.
Sense that it's really easy to make you It's really easy to think that the role you play in the places you navigate like bigger or more important than they are. And then sometimes it's nice to walk into a space and think, damn, you really did.
Need me here.
It didn't give it before I came. And I appreciate that, you know, I see. But with your nearest and dearest, I started saying, maybe about three years ago, that I didn't like hanging in groups because I noticed it felt like high school and I couldn't figure out why, and I said before that my high school experience was quite cool because, in addition to having two groups of core best friends that were part of bigger groups, I just was able to float between heaps of groups, and I
always like I had a good time. But that didn't mean that I wasn't observing other people not having a good time, or other people having a bad time, or not feeling safe comfortable. And you know, it's not fun to be a bystander, but it's also not fun to be everybody's warrior. So I see these group dynamics the same people fighting to be heard or being cut off or being the butt of the joke, And it's funny
until it's not. And then you find yourself in this precarious position where you're like, I can't be bothered doing this again. So when I do hang out in a group situation, you might notice I break off into a little conversation. So I don't have to be across the what's the word I'm looking for, I don't have to be across the way the dynamics devolve.
Well, I think that's because you often assume that position that like comes naturally too.
It's not assumed people do it to you.
Yeah, they'll be like, oh, Lexie, you've got a story, right, and it's like, no, I don't want to talk about that.
Yeah, you do it.
Oh, it's just like and it's not.
I think it's one of those things where people assume I'm an extra by circumstance, not by default. I constantly go into big rooms and sit in the corner and people pull me back in, pull me back in, put me back in. I don't want to be there. I could choose to be there if I wanted to. And there are some instances where I'm like, no, this is fun. I want to have a group conversation. But then the same thing happens, so people are like, this is good,
less eyes on me, we can talk about you. I was like, no, I want to talk about all of us and all of our things, you know so, But instead I don't like that feeling. And we've spoken about it before of having to police the way people do their stuff. So I don't want to go into a group and be like nobody a minion. I just don't want to do group things unless I'm with my nearest endearest and they get how it functions. It's interesting because it's I feel like, yeah, you don't get it unless
you get it. And when I think people assume that if you're good at being social, you must enjoy it, and it's like, no, it's a skill.
What am I good at that? I don't enjoy cleaning? No, that's all. I love cleaning, just not anywhere that you can see it.
You're controlling this now. I good at that.
I don't enjoy being spotless, being a spotless peed. But yeah, I keep thinking about it because I feel we could talk about social dynamics forever and ever and ever, because they're very subtle in the way that we observe them in other people. But obviously from your own experience, everything feels really amplified and personal.
Definitely more where that came from. You always flex and firms.
Flex and frooms.
They're the best word on the street is that careers don't actually exist anymore. I don't want to say this is true or untrue, because realistically I saw half a TikTok and said this, this bops. Basically, someone is suggesting or inferring that back in the days you used to work for equality of life, where you could physically see what you'd work so hard to achieve, the car, the house, the holiday, et cetera. Now people are working to survive
and they're barely scraping by. Everything is expensive, everywhere is inaccessible, and for that reason, people don't want to work to meet bare minimum. They would rather not work and use their wiles to get them to where they need to go.
But little while TikTok.
Yeah, wiles, what's the whiles? Their abilities?
Okay, cool, But listen to this TikTok firm Jordan Underschool the underscool stallion eight.
There is no such thing as a career anymore. Come here because nobody wants a career anymore. You want to know why. Because the new workforce, the new generation of workforce, they're not working for the sake of getting promoted to have a good, long lasting job. We are all working to survive. You cannot have a career if every single day you were worried about if you're going to be able to keep your job or not. Companies are not
instilling any trust at all with their workers. The last job I had, there was somebody who was working at that job for about twenty years. You want to know what happened. That company laid him off. They fired him via email on his day off. So if companies can do that, what's the point of actually wanting a career. Now, we're just looking for jobs that can pay good enough to keep our groceries in our house.
After I listened to that, I had to Google what a career was because I thought am I confused? Google says a career as an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life, and with opportunities for progress.
Yeah, which makes sense.
This makes sense. Careers don't exist, but it's yours.
Then what are you doing?
I think I just work. I work jobs. I don't think I've done one thing for a significant you know what, I would say, I have a career, but the opportunities for progress are due to me having nine jobs, right, I'm not working at one thing and going up and up and up in the ranks and whatever. I'm a contractor jumping around creating opportunities for myself under the guise
of a career. If this was back in the day, you'd be like, she's a bloodger, you know what I mean, She's just jumped from job to job to hobbyists.
Yeah, do you.
Really think that it's got something to do with people like the whole bare minimum wage, most people not being able to scrape period. Do you think that's where this disillusionment from career comes from, or the fact that like certain careers are withheld for certain people.
I just think that the generation before us, also our parents' generation, the approach to working wasn't meant to be so intertwined with satisfaction. It was a means to an end, and people really understood that. So you know, when you hear that someone's getting paid fifty k year but they're supporting their family before, it's because they understood that's what's required.
Me.
I've got to work a job to support the family that I wanted to have. Now you have people in our generation who don't really want to work, don't really have families, who are allowed to orbit through the world in a very different way to their parents, are given this illusion of agency, and it contradicts the kind of worker you need to be to work in the way that our parents have. And so I feel like the industry, like the job force, hasn't changed. It's always been exclusionary
and exploitative and not that fun. But the means to the goal isn't appealing for people anymore. So even if you could work the same amount of time and get the house eventually at sixty like your family did, or eventually get the car, it's well, I don't really want that.
Do I want to go to Ibifa? Now?
Do you really think that that's how people feel? Now?
People do feel that way, but I think it's futile. I really don't like to think aspirationally about the world anymore. I'm like, for the one that we live in now, for the time that I'm going to be alive, I need to get my bag so I can enjoy. And then you know, they're trying to increase the retirement age in France from sixty two to sixty four. They're trying
to increase retirement ages. So even this idea of getting being able to opt out of working so you can enjoy your life is going to be a thing of the past, of meally, I think people need to be a bit more serious about this mentality of not wanting to work, though, because they don't have the skills to look after themselves. Otherwise, you are not people who have got your life skills and orders. You don't know how to plant your food from scratch. You don't know how
to make anything with your hand. You don't know how to survive. You know, the truck driver's got COVID and everyone's like, wait, I'll just get it eats.
There's no produce food, eats, sapes. That's not how it works.
I feel like people like the idea of not working, but haven't figured out how to live without a source of income. And it's possible people live through poverty like easy, you know, like I'm surprised how my mum was able to raise three, four or five children on a cleaner salary. She didn't did it well. But do I have that lust for life or those survival skills. No, And so I will maintain capitalism in the way that the big dogs of the past have.
I wonder if it changes when your circumstances changed, like when you have a kid. It's like when people say I didn't know, like their whole outlook on life changes when they have a child and everything they do anything for the child. I wonder if that kicks will kick certain people into gear of taking work as something that is a means to an end rather than something that's fun. And you can go up and you can go down and you can go sideways. I think it will change the way that we look at work.
I hope it's not just when people have kids, though. I think they should get to that point on their own time. Now you're gotta be pushed flex And I got a question for the Melbourne pedigree in the room that is frooms. Do men have to pay more money to go to festivals in Melbourne?
I don't know.
Now you don't know.
I've never even heard of this concept.
Why did you pause for so long?
Then?
I was just trying to think if I did know. You know, it's cool to go to festivals. I've been to the Dorf of Dolph.
So I was scrolling as ones does.
I came across a TikTok from someone called danniel Anstey who recently moved from Perth to Melbourne and was recalling some of the changes that she had seen and experience because she'd assumed that it would be.
A lot similar.
She said, the one thing that's like really confusing her is why do men have to pay more to go to festivals?
So she says, and.
I don't know which festival she was talking about, but when you go to buy your tickets, you have to reveal what your gender identity is, and based on your gender identity, the tickets will cost more or less.
And apparently is what Daniel said, Apparently.
They do it to ensure the ratio between men and women is I don't want to say even, because that's not a party. But I don't know what the dominant gender is meant to be at these festivals.
How come you don't know this? I don't even know if it's true.
Is a festival like vight car racing or like the air show? Because then I can see that there's a I feel.
Like this is a young music festival vine nothing's coming.
Well, I don't identify it as a man, so I've never been on the receiving end of having to pay.
You had to, You're okay, I don't also pay. I don't also pay you to go to festivals either. They organize them for me, so I don't really know how I was doing it.
I'm no, I've never even heard of this, but I like it for obvious reasons.
I mean, what reasons?
Paying less as a woman seems fair? Seventy eight cents to the door. Need I remind you? I don't remind you. I think it's cool and I fully back it. I want to know what festival this is. I could take a random guess, but I'm probably gonna make some enemies if I didn't, I'll.
Take a guess.
Ad Potentially this is due for Jason.
Oh, you reckon.
Maybe I can't think of any of the massive, massive festivals doing this and getting away with it, because they'd be blowback. There definitely be a blowback on the dams. Don't you worry about that?
Do you like it? Don't comment?
Great? Imagine me I'm ducking all the festivals. I'm saying that women are cool and.
You meant it with your chest, and I want you to be comfortable to express yourself.
This sound.
I'm not gonna say it's fake news, because people's personal experiences are real. But I need to know which festivals and I need to know why, and I need to understand what this ratio is.
I think this is Perth propaganda. I think this chick's come over from Perth and thought. You know, it's not all that cracked up to be. I'm gonna make sure my other Perth diis ins don't get on the plane over what I don't know. I say that's the word Mark McGown. It's one of your croonies. Is he stilling power? Okay?
It is Okita Flex and Frooms Flex and froms.
My name is Frooms Frumi, Fruminda Frumucci, and I am otherwise known as Karen self confessed Karen. As we talk about sometimes on the show, you need to be careful how you describe yourself in life, because that can be how you become. However, this segment is just too good to refuse, and it is how do I say, chronicling? All the ways in which my behavior could be are conceived as Karen esque. I went out to a gig the other day. I went out to watch the Slingers
in Melbourne. They are a rock band, like a garage rock band, kind of remind me of like the OC the bands you'd seen the OC. If you're familiar with that show and.
Live in the past, why can't your references be from the late in two thousands everything, it's gotta be from the you two thousand and two thousand and four babes.
Were here, were here?
Get into this calendar year.
Listen. I'll try and update the references. But when the references are good.
You know, OC not even Wat's that one that's a girl, that new surf one.
With John b who Outer Banks, Outer Banks never.
I haven't seen it, but I just know there would be some rock dogs in that one.
I'm obsessed.
I watching it for the second time over again. Really, I mean, i'd watch it, but I don't really like TV. I just liked that.
Oh miss, I've watched sixteen episode sixteen seasons of Sex and the City.
I don't really watch TV, you know, I don't know.
It's just timeless.
Yeah, but sorry go.
However, just before you roasted me, there, went to this gig and I rock in. I haven't drunk because I just come away from doing a gig myself. I rock in and I like trip walking into the club and the guy's like, hey, hey, hey, hey hey, and I'm like listen, I'm sober, like I got my car keys. He's like that's a really bad idea, like did you drive? And I was like, king, I'm not a drunk driver. Please give me some respects.
I don't even believe you. Now I'm on his side. I feel wait a second, but he.
Was cheeky, he was young, and he was like, okay, okay, let me in, but he's like, you be careful, so still thinking that I'm drunk. Next minute, well, like at the end of the gig, I leave the mosh that we'd gotten into. Thank you to our young surfer king who like pulled me through the crowds so much easier for pushing people to get through the king surfer type king.
Oh, I heard server, and I was like, what does that mean?
What does it mean? Glassy? I came out to get my mates and beers, you know, not considering that it would be very difficult for me to get back in through the throngs of people. So I go out get the beer and I'm meeling around near the door of the festival, sorry, near the door of the gig. I look to my left as a bouncer looking at.
Me hold.
Two pints of freaking.
Lager, and I just look at him and go oh, And I just knew at that point I can't convince his king that I'm not drunk. But I have really had to like suppress the Karen to not be like, hey, like, I'm not drunk. Like it's just so hard when there is a lack of when there's a misrepresentation. I just felt so like I just couldn't.
Maybe he'd recognize you from one of your other occasions of getting near it, and he thought, you know what, I'm not doing this.
Again, not doing it again, this one, not this chick now. I was very respectful that night.
Good night.
I didn't have I didn't have a lick to drink. I had a full strength lemonade got me through the night. But to that bouncer, I'll be coming back to the hotel in Richmond, the Corner Hotel. Go to some amazing gigs. If you're in Sydney or any other city and you go to Melbourne, make sure you go to the Corner and watch some live music and listen. I don't condone heavy drinking. In fact, I would say I'm a reformed sober person, not through knee, just through want of listening
to some amazing podcasts about I'm serious. I do not condone binge drinking.
But when you say reformed sober, that means you're not sober anymore.
Oh sorry, I'm a reformed like casual drinker. I definitely yeah, you're a liar too. Fru meno boommmy like smile. You're listening to Flex and Frooms on Kater. In this life, there are two types of people. People that say tomato, people that say tomato, people that have sparkling water, people that don't, people that drink diet coke. People are on
that full strength tip. There is another type of person who is not another type of person, and that comes to quirky names, what Wi fi names, and this is TikTok from at r J m colo Okay wi Fi names.
I think you should use because they're funny.
Number one FBI surveillance van. Insert your house number.
That's a classic number two virus dot your house number, easily identifiable for your house, but nobody outside of your house is going.
To connect to that.
This one only works if you live in like a town but like dairy queen, and then everybody will think a dairy queen is coming just the cemetery.
No one would ever connect to that. You pick a neighbor that you don't like and then you just put.
Their address as your WiFi, just scare them.
It's times like these where I realized there really is so many hours in a day, and there's so many people with so many hours and little why do you do something?
Get a skills, you a lot of language.
It is not to hear that people really enjoy simple pleasures, because I'm sure I've told you a story or three where we like, get a job out of here, get wrecked.
I do like the idea of a van because I wonder if there's like a technology you can use to hack into people's Wi Fi to use it.
I'm sure there.
Would be like the first virus ever made, would be like how to hack into someone's Wi Fi.
There was a time I felt.
Like, I feel as though there was a time where overnight we all had Wi Fi passwords.
What do you mean?
I just felt like if you lived in an apartment, it was so easy to access somebody else's Wi Fi. And then suddenly it was like, no, no passwords. We're using passwords now.
And we've got the passwords, all the keys you have to get.
On the password for let's share.
I want to thank oh, mister Apple or missus Apple. I don't know who's running the company's deed nowadays. I don't know if he was around when this happened. But when you go on your iPhone when you're at someone's house, say hey, can I have your Wi Fi? Hit the wi fi says, you want to share this with Lucinda? Whoa the amount of rising in my body? When you're studying and you have a friend over for study at school and they go, what's your WiFi? Why am I brummaging?
Why am I calling my mom? Calling my mum at work? I'm gonna have to go through ten people say sorry, he the cents court. Now say get on the phone. Okay, this is urchin. No one else in the house knows what's going on, and I need the bloody Wi Fi password, So yeah, change your wife, be crazy, get get a customers number plate.
What's yours at?
Belong t Belong TPG one two four six.
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