Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships

Ali Abdaal
 
Taimur Abdaal
 
17.May.2020

notes

Ali
My name is Ali. I'm a doctor and YouTuber.
Taimur
I'm Taimur. I'm a data scientist and writer.
Ali
And you're listening to Not Overthinking.
Taimur
The weekly podcast where we think about happiness, creativity and the human condition.
Ali
Hello, and welcome back to Not Overthinking. Taimur, how are you doing today?
Taimur
I'm doing okay, not too bad. This has been I think it's been a good week overall, things at Causal are starting to heat up a little bit. We were covered in a couple of high profile newsletters. There's one called Dense Discovery. I don't know if you've heard of it.
Ali
No, never heard of it.
Taimur
Yeah, they have a few like 10s of 1000s of readers all within
Ali
..you made revenue? like the sort of tech niche. And so they, they post a link to Causal, I think, at the start of the week. And so we've had like a ton of signups. We actually now have people who are paying us as well. So we're starting to like figu
Taimur
Yeah. So we have like a handful of people paying right now, but which we are we're trying to figure out like the right pricing model and that kind of stuff. So we've been chatting to our early users for that. But it's nice. It feels like yeah, between us and the power users who are currently using it. It feels like we're on to some secret that no one else knows about. And it feels very special. Where like, they get it and we get it. But no one else knows about it yet. You know, and it feels like, yeah, it feels like we have a secret.
Ali
Oh, that's interesting. So you've got some revenue, and it seems to be heating up.
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
How does that feel? Like, because it seems like with the whole Corona stuff. Causal hadn't been going so well. But I don't know if, like, did you have any sort of negativity towards be like, "Oh, maybe this won't work after all."
Taimur
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Maybe like three weeks ago? Yeah, three weeks, I was like, oh, man, do we still don't have any paid users or whatever. I've tried to be like, I'm trying to let my sort of outlook on it be less driven by the day to day of like, what's happened this week kind of thing. Because like, you know, a few months ago it used to be the case that like, if if one person logged onto Causal in a given day, I'd be like, "Oh, what a great day someone used Causal." And now we've kind of gotten to the point where we're sort of way past that. And now it's kind of like, you know, everyday, there's multiple people signing up and building interesting models without ever interacting with us. And so now the bar for a good day, is either a ton of signups which we get occasionally when people cover us, or newsletters or Twitter and stuff like that. Or that, you know, a bunch of people build really cool models without talking to us. So, I think having users use it regularly, I think there's almost always at least someone on the app now. So I think that's really motivating. And it's nice to be at that stage rather than the kind of default of no people using your product stage.
Ali
Okay, yeah, that's pretty cool. I suppose that's kind of the case with with anything that we start that kind of grows like, you know, early days of a YouTube channel, you're like, "Oh, my God, I'm on 63 subscribers"
Taimur
Yeah, yes. That kind of stuff.
Ali
And now it's like, "Damn, that video only got 100,000 views in four days, what the hell is going on? I'm going to end my life." And so, you know, the new normal, the hedonic adaptation, all of that kind of stuff. It's good to hear that things have been going, going recently.
Taimur
Yeah, I think we're in a good place. How about you? How's your
Ali
My week has pretty good. All right. Pretty good. Work has been weekend? pretty, pretty fun. Although, I don't know if you've, have you. Okay, I probably should ask this. But have have you seen my video about the Microsoft Surface Go?
Taimur
Surface Go?
Ali
Okay. Microsoft released this new tablet called the Surface Go 2 and I did an unboxing and impressions review of it. And at the moment, it's like 100,000 views.
Taimur
Is that good? Or is that bad?
Ali
2000. I mean, it's fine. It's got 2000 likes and 1000 dislikes.
Taimur
1000 dislikes?
Ali
Yeah, and like, lots and lots of the comments are people being like, "Bro, why the hell did you make this video you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Bro, Obviously, you know, obviously Windows is going to lag if you go for the Pentium processor. Bro, obviously you're not allowed to compare the Microsoft Surface with the iPad Pro because that's a device in a different league" Okay, fair enough. That's a reasonable point. In fairness, I was comparing it with the budget iPad a lot as well. And yeah, bro, obviously "This guy tried to install chrome from the Microsoft Store. He's clearly never used windows before". "Dude stick to motivation productivity videos. Stop screwing around with Windows." And it was like my first experience of the zealotry slasher kind of crusade that comes when you kind of do when you make any kind of video.
Taimur
Yeah, when you talk about any sensitive subject.
Ali
Exactly, exactly. So I didn't realize people would be that weird about it. I thought it was a you know, eventually I changed the title to "Apple fanboy reacts to Microsoft Surface Go" and that actually caused a uptick in viewers. I think the title change cause the video to be more clickbaity and is now a little bit more accurate.
Taimur
Oh, nice.
Ali
So that was interesting because previously like, in the past like three years I've not been like affected by any negative comments in the slightest.
Taimur
Wait, with those gangs comments affected you?
Ali
No, I have this kind of very stable baseline of I don't give a toss about most things in life, as you know. Mostly negative, like, exclusively negative comments kind of fall into that category of I don't, I don't care about this. But there were so many of these and a lot of them had very reasonable points that are it kind of made me feel something a little bit more than nothing
Taimur
Oh, mate. at all.
Ali
And so I thought that was interesting, because I was like, I didn't expect this. I mean, it's like objectively, in the grand scheme of things, I actually don't give a toss. All of these kind of random, random Indian dudes commenting from their kind of, you know, LAN network. I actually don't care. But I think a lot of the criticism was, was warranted and reasonably justified. And so I feel like, I've now learnt some very useful lessons for next time I try and cover this sort of stuff.
Taimur
Oh, so you kind of felt bad because you didn't do a good job, like, objectively or something?
Ali
I mean, I wasn't trying to make it a review. It was just an unboxing and impressions. And I was fairly clear about that. And, but I think the way that I presented it is another way, in hindsight I would have liked to present it. I think my opinions were very valid. But, you know, I think people latched on to the fact that I said the phrase iPad Pro few many times rather than the budget iPad and so 5000 comments were like, "Bro, how can you possibly compare this against the iPad Pro". Even with the budget iPad, the budget, iPad is blazing fast. The budget, Microsoft Surface Go is a slow piece of shit. That was the point I was making. But I didn't get that across. And then kind of watching a few other videos about this sort of topic. I think other reviewers have done it with an element of not being actively hating on it. Sort of like when you're discussing religion, even if you're criticizing a religion, you want to not do it in a kind of beating someone over the face, that way. And so I was thinking, maybe I should kind of police my tone, next time I talk about the frustrations of windows, potentially. But I kind of had all these questions going through my head. And I was like, Oh, this is interesting. I haven't encountered this side of the internet before.
Taimur
Nice. Well, you win some you lose some.
Ali
Exactly. But either way that video is doing well. It's 4 out of 10 on the analytics, which is pretty solid, i.e. above average, and seems to be driving engagement. So we might even potentially hit 700K subs during this live stream. Guys, if you're watching the live stream, and you're not subscribed for some reason. Then do hit the subscribe button. Don't hit the unsubscribe button, because that'd be really annoying.
Taimur
All right, that's a classic thing people do.
Ali
Yeah, exactly. As soon as you come close to.. by the way, for people listening to this on the podcast, we're actually live streaming this on YouTube, on my channel, so you should check it out. Anyway, what are we talking about this week?
Taimur
All right, so this is part three of our series on Transactional Analysis. So people who are watching this on YouTube, you almost certainly will not have listened to the last few episodes about Transaction Analysis. And so probably very little of this will make sense.
Ali
It doesn't matter.
Taimur
We'll do a summary of like the main things that are relevant before we dig into the meat of the episode. But we are specifically talking about various games, we're going to look at a list of different games and analyze them and kind of talk about how maybe we've experienced them in our own lives. That's what we're doing today. It's based on a book called: "Games People Play" by Dr. Eric Berne, MD.
Ali
Okay, Eric Berne, MD. Have you got the book? Can you can show it on camera? It kind of looks cool.
Taimur
Here's the book. Oh, wait. Skype's blurring my background. So if I keep moving it. It's too small. Right? That's the book "Games People Play."
Ali
The psychology of human relationships. That should be the title of this podcast, the psychology of human relationships, games people play that would be sufficiently clickbait.
Taimur
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Ali
I wonder if I can actually change the name of the live stream. Anyway. Sorry, continue. So, I wonder if you can give us a quick summary of what we've talked about in Tansactional Analysis so far.
Taimur
I was gonna ask you to give the summary. Because I've sort of been the teacher and you've been the student, so yeah..
Ali
Right. So I'm going to be senpai? No, no, I'm going to be the sensei now. There were a few other random bits that I want to talk about. We'll chat about those at the end. So the field of Transactional Analysis is kind of like a subsection of psychology where we're trying to analyze relationships, and human interaction in a way that makes sense using a shared kind of language. We have shared languages for practically everything else in life. If we're discussing you know, processor speed, we all know what 2.4 gigahertz means on an Intel Pentium versus Intel Core M processor, as I've told repeatedly over the last several days recently. I've only recently found out that Pentium is actually a 20 year old computer architecture and should not be used. And apparently Microsoft expect people to notice before they buy the budget additions to their product, but that's a conversation for another time. I'm not bitter about it in the slightest. The point is we have a shared language for all these other things that we talked about, but we don't really have a shared language for discussing human interaction. And so Transactional Analysis is an attempt at giving us a shared language for analyzing human interaction. So the premise of Transactional Analysis or TA for short, is that every interaction between human beings is a series of transactions. But in order to understand that, we need to kind of start by considering, essentially, there are three bits of us with inside ourselves. nd inside ourselves, we've got the Adult, we've got the Child, and we've got the Parent. Now, these are kind of named somewhat unintuitively, initially. So bear with me on this front, but initially, we've got the Parent, and the Parent within us is essentially the uncritical part of us that is that believes the stuff that we were told when we were younger, before we had the kind of critical thinking faculties to be able to critically assess the things that we were told. So for example, if our mom were to tell us that we should never put paper in the blue bin. We would just kind of take it as fact that you should never put paper in the blue bin. And we wouldn't, you know, necessarily question why. And potentially 20 years later, we might still find ourselves holding on to this just like feeling slightly weird about putting paper into a blue bin. And if we think about it, we'd realize that "Oh, actually, it's because I had this thing taught to my Parent when I was a child, and therefore, it's just become a part of me." So that's sort of what the Parent with a capital P is inside.
Taimur
Yes, you can think of the Parent as essentially all the cultural baggage that you have, which mostly comes from your actual parents from early childhood, but also a little bit would come from like the society you've grown up in, and things like that. So the sort of the capital P, Parent, inside of you, is basically a set of recordings of all the various things that, you know, parents and authority figures told you when you were younger. Yeah, I think cultural baggage is a good way to think of it. Anyway, next one.
Ali
Nice. Okay, so the parent inside of us holds on to the cultural baggage. Next we have the Child and the Child is sort of like a parent in that it's sort of the stuff that other people told us when we were younger, but the Child is more kind of the feelings that arise from it, as opposed to the cultural baggage itself. So for example, if you were shouted at for doing something, when you were younger, you would have that feeling of like cringing inside, and that would be attached to your Child self. Is that fair to say?
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
And then finally, we have the Adult. The Adult is the will, the Adult part of ourselves, the one that makes rational decisions for the most part. And thinks critically about the world. And in general, the sort of the aim in life is to try and shed the baggage of our Parent and Child and become the Adult in as many ways.
Taimur
It's not quite to shed the baggage of the Parent and Child, but it's to be selective about what you give emphasis to from the Parent and the Child. A lot of your cultural baggage, and a lot of the stuff in your Parents in your capital P, Parent, will actually be stuff that's good, you know? It saves an awful lot of time, if you don't have to think critically about everything. But you want your Adult to kind of control your life and decide what bits from the Parent and what bits from the Child it wants to keep, and also make its own conclusions about things that are neither in the Parent or the Child. So it's not about like getting rid of the Parent and the Child. It's about like the adult being the thing in control.
Ali
Yeah, absolutely. So, that's kind of the Parent, Child, Adult framework, or the PAC framework, Parent, Adult, Child. And so that was what we discussed two episodes back in Episode 1 of Transaction Analysis. And the last episode, we talked about the four different states of Life Positions. Okay, and did you want to explain those? Because I've been talking enough and I need to monitor this chat?
Taimur
Yeah, sure. So, at a reasonably young age, we all conclude something about life and something about ourselves. And there are sort of, there are four things, we conclude one of four different things. The first thing we might conclude is, "I'm not okay, you're okay". The second thing we might conclude is, "I'm not okay, you're not okay". The third thing we might conclude is, I think you're spotting a pattern here. "I'm okay, you're not okay". And the fourth thing we might conclude is, "I'm okay, you're okay". All right. So this is, you know, it's kind of what it sounds like. It's basically a worldview and a view about yourself. So, you know, if most people, the vast majority people, ourselves included, will conclude at a reasonably young age that I'm not okay. You're okay. I.e. that I like myself, I'm kind of lacking in some way. But other people in the world around me are somehow not. And so yeah, I guess it's similar to things around self esteem and things like that. But most of us will conclude I'm not okay. You're okay. And we will live out the rest of our lives, basically trying to become okay. But thinking that we can be okay if we do certain things, you know, if we, you know, have certain achievements or if we get respect from certain people. We'll live a life of "I can be okay, if" and we'll try and sort of get over the "not okay" by kind of doing that. But the point of this whole framework is to make a conscious decision to take the Life Position of "I'm okay, you're okay". So that the, you have to decide that you are going to view the world through a lens in which essentially, everyone has self worth, and everyone is equal layer. This stuff here. All the sort of enlightened people have preached throughout time, right? It's all the same thing about like, you know human equality and loving yourself and loving everyone, that kind of thing. And I think it's summed up nicely by the the phrase, I'm okay, you're okay. And so yeah, the goal of transaction analysis, in a sense is to help you get to this Nirvana of, "I'm okay, you're okay". But actually, the thing that we're talking about today is not really related to Life Positions much. It is related to games. Dude, do you remember what a Game is, Ali?
Ali
Okay, so there's a few different, there's like five different ways in which basically, I think the point was that all human interaction can be split up into five distinct categories. One of these categories is Games. Now a game, so I think it's important to say here that we can also split. Okay, I'm gonna start again. One of the categories is Pastimes, and another of the categories is Games. Pastimes are the sort of thing where, for example, just like discussing the weather, it's a fairly innocuous topic, you know, both parties kind of know how the script goes. And essentially, both parties take something away from this discussion of the weather. There's no clear winner or loser. Whereas crucially, when it comes to Games, there is a winner and there's a loser for the most part. And it's very interesting that a lot of what a lot of the discussions and the transactions, the interactions that we have with other people are games of some sort. I.e. where there's a winner, and there's a loser. And so there's this book of "Games People Play." Which kind of breaks down in interesting detail, the sorts of games that we play in different levels of interaction.
Taimur
So Games and Pastimes are both kind of ways people interact they're both kind of there sort of ritualistic pastimes, in particular, it' pretty ritualistic. When you're discussing the weather with someone. You bot know that, you know, what we're doing here is making small talk about th weather, you both kind of know that. You're both kind of, you know, you'r giving each other some mild strokes. Strokes just kind of means, you know acknowledgement or kind of, you're kind of acknowledging your fellow human bei g. You're both kind of stroking each other mildly. And you both go away. Yeah, nd having had a pleasant interaction. That's generally what a Pastime The difference between a Pastime and a Game is that, yeah, like you said, in the game, there is usually a winner and a loser. And in a game, there's something like, there's something ulterior about the way at least one person is behaving. So, you know, in a pastime, if I'm asking you, you know, how's the weather or whatever, it's pretty like, it's pretty innocuous. There's nothing much going on underneath the surface. But in a game, typically, the things that you're saying, are kind of, or at least the things that one person is saying, are not necessarily representative of what they actually feel or what they actually kind of mean, I guess it seems as if we give an example. So one of I think the example that we looked at in depth in the last episode was the example was the game called, "Why don't you? Yes, but." Okay. Do you remember what this game is, Ali?
Ali
"Why don't you? Yes, but." is a game where, let's say we've got White and Black kind of like players in a chess board. And let's say, White goes first, and White says something like, "Hey, would you like to come out to have dinner with me tonight?"
Taimur
Cool. I'll play the role of Black. "I wish I could, but you know, I have so much work to do."
Ali
"Okay, well, maybe I could come over to yours. And we can kind of grab a quick takeaway, and it'll be over in 20 minutes. Just want to see how you're doing? How would that sound?"
Taimur
"Ah, you know, I'm trying to save money though. It's just, it's really hard for me to do these kinds of things."
Ali
"Okay, that's fine. Okay, how about I come over to yours and I'll bring the food or, you know, I've got some spare leftovers, then we can just kind of have a quick meal. And that'll be that."
Taimur
"Yeah, well, you know, I wouldn't want to like cause you the trouble of having to come over and all that kind of stuff."
Ali
"Oh, no, no, no, it's gonna be no trouble at all. I mean, you know, I can literally just come in, I can give you some I can give you a plate, and I could just be on my way. You're only kind of 20 minutes down the road."
Taimur
"Well, you know, I also have to get up early tomorrow. So yeah, I don't know if this is gonna work."
Ali
"Okay, fine." And now your life is the best, there's nothing thing you can do. You're screwed.
Taimur
Yeah. So essentially, the point of this game is that one person -- that was me in this case -- feels that their problems are sort of difficult. And what they're trying to do is essentially prove that their problem is unfixable. And that their situation is completely, you know, that they're completely helpless in this situation, that they're unhappy about some particular thing in their life, and there's nothing that they or anyone else can do about it. So my like, you know, on the surface, you know, I was having a sort of normal conversation about this thing, and I was telling you, you know, perfectly reasonable reasons why I couldn't actually have dinner with you. But underneath what I was really trying to do was prove to myself and to you, that actually, my life sucks, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. And that'll hopefully make me feel a little bit, oh, well get get some kind of, you know, make me feel better about my life, to hopefully give me some, some strange sense of satisfaction from having proved that my life sucks, and no one can help me.
Ali
Yeah. And I suppose in this example, I think you probably should have started with the phrase of "I'm really depressed tonight." And I'd have been like, "Oh, why don't I come cheer you up? Why don't we go out for dinner?" And then you would have kind of launched into this.
Taimur
Yeah. You know, I want to do something. And then you'll be like, "Oh, let's do this thing." And I'll be like, "yes, but no", you know. So that's ike a really common game. And I think we mentioned last time that I definite y run into this a bunch of times. And this game was the original stimulus fo Eric Berne to come up with the entire concept of games. I think he noticed thi , and he was like, Whoa, there's something going on here. Because like, obviously, I think everyone has experienced these kinds of conversations with people, right? So this was the first hint that when people interact something maybe a foot. So that yeah, that's the game of "Why don't you? Yes, but." and essentially, in this episode.. we went probably like half an hour in (laughs). But now, in this episode, we will take a look at a few other games that people might play.
Ali
Okay, right. I'm intrigued. What are the different games that people play?
Taimur
Okay. So in the book, he kind of he splits them up in different categories. There are life games, marital games, party games, sexual games, underworld games, consulting, room games, and good games. Now, I've kind of, I've read through all of these. Some of them, I think, are a bit less relatable than others. So I will, you know, and maybe, you know, I've had limited experiences in my life. And so I won't really get some of these games.
Ali
Okay, so we're not gonna talk about party? (laughter)
Taimur
That was good. That was good. Yeah, so I think we'll go through and let's take a look in a bit more detail at a few of these games that are hopefully a bit more relatable for you and me. There was an interesting example. So Mimi and I have been watching Modern Family with dinner. Rewatching Modern Family season, well, we're on season three now. And there was an episode that we watched yesterday where Claire, so if you haven't watched Modern Family, it's about like three different families, which are all kind of related. Claire is the mom in one of the households, she has a husband and three kids, okay? And Claire in the episode wants to run for her local council. She wants to like be on local council, so she can help a community all that kind of stuff, right? And she goes there to like, sign up, she goes to like the the town hall or whatever, to sign up to run as a local Councillor. And there she like encounters, like one of the other guys who's running for local council. And he's been doing it for like six years straight or something. And he's always won. And so she's kind of intimidated. And then when she gets, you know, there's like a family gathering that evening where all three of the families come together. And, you know, she was busy that day. And so Phil, her husband. Kind of had to take care of the kids and, you know, make sure the various bits and bobs were done. And Phil did'nt do a great job with that, okay? And so, when Claire, you know, when Claire finds out that, you know, Phil had accidentally given one of the kids the wrong medicine, and that another one of the kids had, like, you know, it was death to someone or something like that. It's a comedy show, mind you. Claire is essentially like, oh, man, see Phil? You know, how am I supposed to run for town council when you know I can't trust you to like, take care of the household, you know, back home And so, Claire is kind of having a go at Phil and kind of feeling like a sort of kind of thing. feeling sorry for herself that her family is what's holding her back. And she's kind of whining about this to Gloria, who's the mom in one of the other households. And yeah, Gloria is like so what why don't you run for Town Council, and she was like, well, you saw what happened, you know, I can't leave Phil with the kids. They can't take care of themselves. And then Gloria's like, why you really not running for town council? After a few more times, Claire admits that it's because she's worried that she might lose, and that she's been a housewife for like 15 years or something. And this would be like the first thing that she's tried to do outside of the house. And she's really scared about losing. And so in this instance, Claire is playing a game called "If it weren't for you." where, you know, Claire wants to, part of Claire wants to do this thing, which is run for local council. Another part of Claire is really scared of doing this thing, because it's quite an intimidating thing to do for the first time. And so what Claire does is she essentially finds an excuse not to do it, and kind of blames it on her husband in this case, which is like, yeah, if it weren't for you, I'd be able to sort of do all this stuff. So that's which category, which categories is that in the book?It doesn't matter which category comes into in the book. But yeah, that's one particular game.
Ali
Yeah, I wonder what are the circumstances we see that kind of game and I think it's very popular, even if it's not another person that you're doing it on, but I suppose Transactional Analysis is sort of the framework is for interactions with other people. I don't know. Okay, what's the next one?
Taimur
If you're watching live, this is not gonna be one of the more interesting episodes to watch live, because there's gonna be a lot of me glancing through this book on my screen. And these pauses will be cuts from the podcast recording, they won't be cut if you're watching it live.
Ali
Yeah, by the way, everyone watching this live all 600 of you, please do subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast apps. And I bet we're gonna get a question like, what's the podcast? How do I subscribe? Which goes to show that not everyone listens to podcasts, even though they probably should.
Taimur
There is an interesting game in party games category called "Blemish" and I think like, yeah, this game isn't necessarily like, these games you touched on this moment ago, they're actually not necessarily directly played with someone else like it can also be just like, an internal sort of thing with yourself. And so one of the games that, which Berne seems to have noticed is called "Blemish".
Ali
Okay, how does that work?
Taimur
It's a game in which essentially, you're coming from the sort of the Child position of, you know, I'm no good, I'm not okay. In order to sort of connect with another person, you have to sort of take the Parent role, and find a reason to think that they're not okay, either. So it's almost like, you know, you're sort of insecure about yourself, and you don't really feel comfortable with a new person until you found some blemish with them as well. And then it's like, okay, they're not okay, as well. So let's say yeah, now I can sort of connect with them or whatever.
Ali
Okay, so for example?
Taimur
So I think this kind of, I feel like this comes up a lot. I I've heard people say this a lot in you know, when you're sort of looking at someone who's like really successful something or someone who's like, really rich, whatever. And someone might say something like, Yeah, but are they really happy, though? Or like, Yeah, but I heard I heard things aren't good at home. Or Elon Musk had a divorce (laughs) you know, this kind of stuff. I think this is like, it's a pretty common sort of mindset, where you are always trying to bring other people down to your level before you feel comfortable with them, you know? That's one of them, we can move on.
Ali
Yeah, I'm trying to rack my brain to think if there are any examples from my life, or I can think of myself playing this game. I mean, the thing that comes to mind is, you know, how people say and this is definitely true that we connect with others, often based on vulnerabilities and showing someone else a vulnerability of your own makes it a lot easier to connect with them because then they think, Oh, you know, this guy's you know, he's what, he's one of the lads. He's got vulnerabilities as well.
Taimur
Yeah, we're both not okay.
Ali
Yeah, I wonder if that comes into this category of blemish games. Because I mean, I want to say it doesn't because I think that's like a very reasonable thing. Like, you can be okay and think the other person is being okay, but still recognize that actually, if I open up about how I stepped in a puddle and lost my keys this morning, that's more likely to endear me to someone else than if I talk about how I just hit 700,000 subscribers on YouTube.
Taimur
I don't know, I think that's a dodgy phrase because you're thinking about how you can best endear yourself to someone else, which sounds like pretty not okay, kind of thing to do.
Ali
No, I think you can be okay, but also recognize that you know, there are that, you know, I want to connect with this person and one way of doing that is by showing vulnerabilities.
Taimur
I don't know man.. like that seems. Like the way to connect with someone is to keep it real. Not to think like I would like to connect with this person.
Ali
What do you mean by keeping it real?
Taimur
..pull out a vulnerability card from my deck, ha. I play the "I stepped to the puddle and loss my keys this morning" card. You know, like, come on, that's not really keeping it real.
Ali
What do you mean by keeping it real? I've been reading a lot about storytelling as well. And it's a common thing that when telling a story, ideally, you want to tell a story that way, where you start off as a jerk, and then you end up kind of being transformed into slightly less of a jerk in that experience. You would probably say, applying this lens of kind of I'm not okay, you're not okay, well, like whatever. Oh, the fact that you're even thinking of crafting a story in order to entertain people is a sign that you're not okay.
Taimur
No, no, no. Crafting a story to entertain people is fine. But there is something ulterior in nature about thinking. I should tell this up to tell someone a vulnerability of mine so that they liked me more. There's something ulterior in nature about that. Do you agree?
Ali
Yeah, I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing.
Taimur
Yeah, I don't think it's that much a bad thing, either. But I also don't think it's like, keeping it real.
Ali
What the hell does keeping it real? Alright, you've got to define your tone, keeping it real. Because at the moment, that's just like a blanket, sort of a blanket. Oh, it's not keeping it real. All right, shuts down any conversation.
Taimur
Okay, by keeping it real, I kind of mean, where, you know, and I'm sure you've experienced, actually, even you have experienced this on occasion, where you are interacting with someone. And, you know, it's like when there's no model, there's no like analysis thread running in your head about like, what's going on in this conversation, how can I guide this, whatever. It's when you're just like, in the moment, you're just vibing. You know, that that's like keeping it real. That's like an authentic interaction. And if you're sort of thinking, if you're in a conversation, and someone is talking to you, and while they're talking to you, you're thinking, "I wonder how to endear myself to them, or how to endear them to me." I don't know, I don't know how it's phrased. If someone's talking to you in conversation, and half of your mind is thinking about what next move you can make to make them like you more. That's obviously not keeping it real. I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. Like, you know, I'm not saying it's like a terrible thing, but at the same time, it's not keeping it real.
Ali
Okay, I would argue that fine. I would argue that the more you do this, the more natural it becomes.
Taimur
Yeah, for sure. I'm not saying it can't be a gateway for..
Ali
And for a lot of people, it is keeping it real by sharing a vulnerability as opposed to talking about like, I don't know, whatever. Which is my issue with the framing of this like, for example, as you become better at storytelling, you stop having to think so hard about, you know, the story you craft and you just kind of naturally appreciate what kind of makes a good story and you will kind of fit the pieces in your mind accordingly. And in a way, you have an ulterior motive that you want to tell a good story. And you are keeping it real, you're just applying a known element of human psychology to what what you're saying to increase its impact, which is not anti keeping it real. Equally, me choosing to share how I stepped to the puddle and lost my keys is not anti keeping it real, even if the most salient thing that happened to me that day was I just landed this huge promotion. But I know I don't want to mention that because this person is having a bad day, for example. And that and with the fact that I mention my promotion is gonna m ke him feel worse. Like I think it's completely fine to have these sorts of u terior motives and to sort of, in a way, be managing the emotions of others as y u're chatting to them, which I don't think you'll disagree with.
Taimur
No, I don't disagree with that. But I also think it's not keeping it real. It's not look, it's obviously not an entirely two way authentic interaction. If one person is actively, you know, fairly actively managing the emotions of you. I'm not saying you shouldn't do that. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm saying it's not..
Ali
You're saying it's not keeping it real.
Okay, fine. Fair enough. It is not keeping it real. But I don't think as in that sense, I don't think keeping it real should be a goal.
Taimur
I think you want to be able to do it as much as possible. And like..
Ali
I mean, yeah, sure. But you also want to be able to emotionally manage, you know, to manage the emotions of others, so as to be a positive influence to the world rather than.
Taimur
Yeah, for sure. Wait, how did we get to this, because like the context of this was t
Ali
We got into this with the blemish thing, and you were objecting to... The thing I said was that sharing vulnerabilities is an important part of connecting with others. And you said, "Yeah, but I play my vulnerability card, haha, thats not keeping it real".
Taimur
That's not exactly what I meant. We have recording. We can get back. (laughter)
Ali
That's fine. Okay, what's the next game people play? Let's move on. (laughter) Oh, we have an interesting comment from the ...Suzette1234. "How can you keep it real when our reality is changing all the time? We don't really know who we are anyway. We are changing constantly. So does the story that we're telling ourselves." I think what you'd say in response to that is the definition of keeping it real is not having an ulterior motive to what you're saying in a way to influence and try to influence someone else. And so it doesn't really have anything to do with the fact that we change all the time. I could be keeping it real when I'm 13. And equally also be keeping it real when I'm 23 even though the person who I am at 13 and 23 is radically different.
Taimur
Yeah, I'm not, I don't think either of us are trying to make any claim about how there is one true authentic self that you have to be for your whole life. Yeah, I think it's about like the timescales, like you definitely change over time. But your interactions with people at any point in time can, you can still keep it real. Even though it might be different to the interaction you would have had with them a year previously or something. Okay, so there is a sexual game called Rapo. (laughter)
Ali
What is the sexual game called Rapo?
Taimur
I'll just read it out from the book without having to paraphrase.
Ali
Okay. All right, here we go. Let's mark this as not...
Taimur
First degree "Rapo" or "Kiss Off" is popular at social gatherings and consists essentially, of mild flirtation. White signals that she is available and gets her pleasure from the man's pursuits. As soon as he has committed himself, the game is over. If she was polite, she may say quite frankly, I appreciate your compliments, and thank you very much, and move on to the next conquest. If she's less generous, she may simply leave him. A skillful player can make this game last for a long time at a large social gathering by moving around frequently for the man has to carry out complicated maneuvers in order to follow her without being too obvious.
Ali
Okay, that's it.
Taimur
Yeah, I've definitely known this to be played. There are girls on your university who would very, very consciously and intentionally play this game for fun at the club, and parties and things. Yeah, people definitely play this game. Have you ever played this game?
Ali
As White?
Taimur
I haven't played this game as White.
Ali
I don't think I have.
Taimur
I don't think I've played this game as White.
Ali
Have I ever played this game? So back in heyday of my youth, in my university days. I think I was guilty of playing this game, but not like, like more macro rather than micro.
Taimur
What the hell does that mean?
Ali
As in more like, more long term rather than in an individual social gathering?
Taimur
Wait, what do you mean?
Ali
In the sense of, I think, in my kind of early days of university, if I saw someone who I was attracted to in some way, I would kind of I would kind of flirt with the intent of getting them to like me. And then once they did, I would kind of lose interest.
Taimur
Okay.
Ali
Often. And this is a fairly standard thing that people do. And I think it's a fairly common complaint that girls levy against guys for the most part, if we're gender stereotyping, that all they want is the chase and they've got the thing, then they don't really care anymore. Equally, guys, would have that complaint against girls a lot as well. So I think that's kind of what's the game is.
Taimur
Yeah, actually, when you say that, I think, yeah, there was an instance in which I played White, but this was before University. This was in sixth form.
Ali
Really? (laughs) What? Have you told me about this?
Taimur
I don't know. Maybe? It was long time ago.
Ali
Okay. We could talk about it after the show.
Taimur
Yeah, so that's "Rapo" what else do we have? Oh, okay, this is the one that we mentioned in the last episode. This one is called "Uproar" Which is allegedly. Okay, we talked about this before, but we didn't mention it by name in the last epsiode. It's a classical game played between domineering fathers and teenage daughters, where there is a sexually inhibited mother. Father comes home from work and finds fault with daughter, who answers impudently whereupon father finds faults, their voices rise, and the clash becomes more acute. And the outcome depends on who has the initiative. Either the father retires to his bedroom and slams the door. Or the daughter retires to her bedroom and slams a door or both returns to their respective bedrooms and slam the doors. But like, yeah, they sort of kick off, kick off a little "Uproar" and yeah, this was the thing where I think we talked about this last episode. I said, like, this is a good book and stuff. And this Berne guy seemed to have.. onto something with this. But like a lot of the examples and a lot of the -- like some of the stuff, he says just seems a bit too extreme. And I don't really buy it.
Ali
But, like in fairness. You and I haven't really grew up in a household where there are daughters or father. So I wonder if we had and we had the same level of sort of kind of overthinking as we do, whether we'd be like actually, I could kind of see that. I wonder if that would happen.
Taimur
I wonder and see. I mean, the next slide is Uproar offers a distressing but effective solution to the sexual problems that arise between fathers and teenage daughters in certain households. Often, they can only live in the same house together if they're angry at each other. Slamming the doors and all of this stuff and emphasizing that the house has seperate bedrooms. I get that part makes sense. But the part where Berne does the classics like the psychologist thing of like, making it like a sex thing. I feel, it just, I'm not really convinced. And again, like, I don't have much data for this, but like, I feel like there are probably better explanations for why fathers and daughters end up in this game of "Uproar" than some weird sexual problem between them. That's the thing I think a bit far fetched.
Ali
It seems a bit of a stretch, doesn't it?
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
But then, a lot of psychologists ultimately, like whatever their method of analysis, they always arrive at the sex. I mean, it's like with most kind of schools of philosophy, or almost kind of moral codes within religions, they mostly arrive at like the golden rule of "do unto others as you have them do unto you". Like I mean, a lot of things converge on to that. A lot of things converge on to the whole stoicism, thing of control your emotions, and actually, you can choose your own thoughts. Maybe there's something to it. but who knows? We have no data, one way or another.
Taimur
And Berne goes a step further, he says that, in general "Uproar" may be played by any two people who are trying to avoid sexual intimacy. It is relatively rare between teenage boys and their female relatives, because it is easier for teenage boys to escape from the house in the evening than for other members of the family. This book was written in the 1950s or something. Yeah, so a lot of the examples and norms are quite different now. At an earlier age, brothers and sisters can set up effective barriers and partial satisfactions through physical combat. A pattern which has various motivations at different ages, and which in America is a semi ritualistic form of uproar.
Ali
What was the last bit?
Taimur
Brothers and Sisters at an early age play "Uproar" through physical combat. Like having a physical fight to like, I don't know, handle the sexual tension between them or something?
Ali
I mean, you had a lot of physical fights up until like, what changed? (laughter) We won't get into that. Anyway. Let's move on.
Taimur
Okay, so the whole category of underworld games is kind of weird, because it is actually like, criminal games. It's between like, it's like a category of games that are played between like criminals and law enforcement. So it's maybe interesting. All right. It's probably the kind of stuff you'll see on crime shows and things. And if you're a criminal and or a policeman, you might see this in real life. It's not gonna be that relatable for most people. I think the marital games category is interesting.
Ali
Okay, yeah, I've been tricked by that as well. I feel like what was that one? Where? "If it weren't for you." that sounds like it probably. Was more likely to be a marital game.
Taimur
Yeah, that may we may well be in the section. But the first one in this section sounds pretty good. So this is a game called "Corner". Okay "Corner" allegedly consists of a disingenuous refusal to play the game o another. Yeah, it's like a barrier to intimacy. So this is how it goes down Mrs. White suggest to her husband that they should go to a movie. Mr. White agrees. Then, Mrs. White makes an unconscious flip. She mentions quite natur lly, in the course of conversation that the house needs painting. This is an ex ensive project. And Mr. White has recently told her that their finances are s rained. And he has requested her not to embarrass or annoy him by sugge ting unusual expenditures, at least until the beginning of the next month. There ore, this is a bad time for Mrs. White to have brought up the house needi And so you know, Mrs. White they're about to go out to the movies. Mrs. White g painting. then mentions, oh we need to paint the house. The husband takes offense and s kind of like, Look, man, I know, we need to paint the house. I told you, we h ven't got money or something. You know why you bring this up now? And then rs. White takes offense and says that if he is in one of his bad moods, she will not go to the movies with him. And he had best go by himself. And then Mr. Whit is like, fine. If you don't want to go, I will go with myself or like with t e boys or whatever. And then Mr. White goes out to the movie, leaving Mrs. Whi e at home to nurse her injured feelings. So I feel like this..thi
Ali
And Mrs. White was the one who wanted to go to the movie in the first place.
Taimur
Yeah, so I think Mrs. White is like the winner. She kind of sets up the game.
Ali
Okay.
Taimur
And yeah, so apparently that there are two possible gimmicks in this game. The first is that Mrs. White knows very well from past experience that she's not supposed to take his annoyance seriously. He's not like, genuinely annoyed or angry or anything. But what he really wants is for her to show some appreciation of how hard he works to earn their living and then they can go off to the movies together. But you know, when it you know, when it comes to that point, she refuses to play; so she refuses to be like, you know, "you're right. I know how hard you work. I know it's tough, I'm sorry for bringing the thing up". And he feels let down. And then he is disappointed and resentful and she gets to stay at home, looking abused, but with a secret feeling of triumph. So that's if like Mrs. White kind of initiated the game and set up. If it was actually Mr. White, then in this case, Mr. White knows very well from past experience that he's not supposed to take her seriously, when she brings up the house painting when they're about to go to the movies. Why'd you take that seriously, what she really wants is to be honeyed out of it, and then they would go off happy together. So she really wants him to be like, "Oh, yes, you know, we should paint the house, I'm sorry, I haven't gotten to that yet" or something. And then they're both happy and they go to the movies. However, he refuses to play that game. He knows what she wants him to say. But he pretends he doesn't. And he leaves the house feeling cheerful and relieved, but looking wronged. So yeah, in both cases, whatever the dynamic is, they're both like taking the other person literally when they know that like that is not what the other person wants. And that's not what they should be doing. They're kind of being stubborn about, I don't know, like letting the other person off or something. And so you're kind of pushing the other person into this corner where either they have to sort of succumb and play your game, in which case you win. Or there's this kind of dramatic "fine, you go, you go to the movies" kind of thing. And once again, after all this he brings it back. (laughter) He's done it again, Dr. Berne. Both of them find the movies sexually.. (laughter) This is ridiculous. Right. The reason they played this game, is that both of them find the movies sexually stimulating. And it is more or less anticipated that after they return from the movies, they will make love hence whichever one of them wants to avoid intimacy sets up the game. This is all a long drawn out flat to not have to, you know, do it after they go to the cinema.
Ali
Oh my goodness. (laughter)
Taimur
Yeah. When he says this kind of stuff. I'm like, come on, dude. You had it so good up to that point. Why did you? Why did you say that?
Ali
Alright, so I guess we have to send a text to all of our married friends. To be like, hey, if we take the number of times you've been to the cinema versus the number of times you've made love having gone to the cinema: Is that number close to one?
Taimur
Yeah. So yeah, I can definitely relate to that. I feel like, I'm sure I've had that situation with you when we were younger or something. Or like, I'm sure that comes out. (laughter)
Ali
I mean, if you did, I wasn't aware.
Taimur
You don't remember? (laughter) Wow. You know, like the kind of stubborn thing where you decide to, like, you know, what's going on. You know you could take the bait, or you could like, be mature about it. And you decide to, like, you know, be stubborn.
Ali
Decide to be stubborn about it..
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
I feel like, yeah. There's a lot of circumstances. I feel like in most aspects of life, other than in interactions with Mimi, I am pretty good at kind of being..., as it were, and just playing the game. (laughter)
Taimur
I'm always surprised at how unenlightened you are when you're at home, when it comes to things.
Ali
I'm pretty enlightened in general.
Taimur
I think everyone's kind of like that with their family and stuff. Eric, I was watching an interview with from like, the 1960s, with Eric Berne. And he talks about, like, you know, sometimes he will end up in shouting matches with his kids. And like, his Adult won't be in control. And he, you know, some reason he's good with most people, but sometimes with his kids, you know, the feelings come out with something.
Ali
Yeah, I think family falls into that category. Like, I've got lots and lots of friends also, who, I like to think, who talk about kind of when they go home for the weekend, the whole house becomes like a shouting match. And they just cannot imagine living like that in any other aspect of life, other than when they go home for the weekend.
Taimur
Yeah, I think the thing is like most of the time you've spent it with your family is when you are a child. And so when you come home -- and I've levied this beef against you, in the past, even before this Transaction Analysis stuff, where I think I said, I said something like, you know, when you come home, you basically behave like your old teenage self, where you expect everything to be done for you. And you just kind of sit around and you don't take any responsibility for things. And so yeah, I think it fits nicely into the the PAC framework where you're sort of thrown back into your Child self, and you're kind of everyone is back into their old roles from 15 years ago. Where there is a Parent and there's a Child, when it should really be, you know, there's an Adult and there is another Adult.
Ali
Yeah, agreed. That's a constant struggle.
Taimur
Yeah. But I think it also comes with practice. I think you're not home that often. So you're not like.
Ali
I haven't got the spaced repetition.
Taimur
Yeah, you don't have the spaced repetition. But as I think, I think now Mimi and I are at a point where we spent a decent amount of time together especially in quarantine. And so whenever there as a possible game of
Ali
So what's an example of a recent game of "Corner" you've played "Corner" to be played, one of us will back out and we won't play that game.(l ughter) I think it's fairly where you have set up the game?
Taimur
Look, there are certain things that I try "Corner" Mimi with. (laughter)
Ali
This is interesting.
Taimur
There are certain set of topics, which I'm keen to explore and get to the bottom.
Ali
Like incest?
Taimur
No, we've talked about that.
Ali
Okay, we've hashed that out.
Taimur
Yeah, I think you were there when we did it. There are certain topics that we disagree on, that I know we disagree on. And I would quite like to get to the bottom of these disagreements. So that, not to change anyone's mind. But just so that we're both clear on exactly where we disagree. And like, you know.
Ali
So you say you want to play the game of I"ve got you now, you son of a bitch".
Taimur
No! Maybe there's an element of that because I feel like I'm right, or something. And I get to feel righteous when we're discussing these things. But yeah, they're like a handful of things where we just fundamentally disagree, and I would really like to hash them out. Mimi's less keen on that most of the time. And so often when I'll try and bring that up. She won't take the bait.
Ali
Oh, okay. Is there an example of a thing that you fundamentally disagree on that you can share?
Taimur
Let me think.
Ali
Possibly the TV situation?
Taimur
Yeah, I think when it comes to like buying things. Mimi's general stance is --
Ali
Yeah, just like spending money in general.
Taimur
Yeah, Mimi's general stance is. Like we don't need it, we shouldn't buy it. Whereas my general stance is like, Ah, you know, we can afford it, we can have nice things kind of thing. But yeah, there's a few things about that. Anyway, I think we'll do maybe a couple more, and then we'll call it quits, because we've been about an hour.
Ali
Yeah, we've been going for 58 minutes so far.
Taimur
So this is a good one. Oh, mate. I think the three of us have actually played this. Me, you and Mimi. So this is this is called "Courtroom" and it's essentially like, it's like, yeah, you know what it is. It's like where two people are having a disagreement. And then there's like a third party who the two people try and like bring in, just sort of saying..
Ali
The third party.
Taimur
(laughter) Is he being reasonable? Yeah, this is a three handed game. A plaintiff, a defendant and a judge. And in the example that Berne's given this is the the husband, the wife, and the therapist, where you know, the husband, you know, there'll be a like a group therapy session, couples therapy or something. And the husband will say something like, "Oh, let me tell you what, what the missus did yesterday. She took this," you know, whatever. And the wife is like, "No, here's what really happened. You know, he did this. And, you know, just before that he actually did that as well". And the husband's like, "well, look, Mr. Therapist. I'm glad you've had a chance to say both sides of the story. I really want things to be fair. You know, you've heard both sides and.. I'm right, aren't I?" (laughter) You know, this kind of thing. Yeah, I've definitely been in this situation a bunch of times. I feel like I'm often the the therapist role when two other people having having a little tiff.
Ali
Yeah, I would probably agree with that.
Taimur
Yeah. So I think that's a, that's an interesting one, I think as well as going a bit deeper into this into like, trying to figure out like,what should the therapist actually do in this situation? You know, it's kind of like. So like, the antithesis to this game i.e. like the thing that needs to be done to kind of break the game, is that the therapist says to the husband, "you're absolutely right". And then if the husband relaxes, complacently or triumphantly, if the husband feels like triumphant about the therapist, validating them and saying that they're right, then the therapist should ask, "How do you feel about me saying that?" And then the husband replies, "I feel fine." You know,the husband's actually really happy. The husband says, you know, "yeah, I feel fine". And then the therapist says, "Actually, I lied, I think you're wrong." Then the husband says, "Well, actually, you know, I knew that all along." And if he's not honest, he will show some reaction that makes it clear that a game is in progress. You're basically trying to highlight the fact that this is a stupid game they're playing.
Ali
As a therapist, your job is to say, guys, this is a stupid game your playing, stop it.
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
Okay, yeah, that seems reasonable. I can definitely think of more than one example of when the three of us have played that particular game.
Taimur
Yes, that's an interesting one. We will do one more game, party game. We've kind of done three interesting party games.
Ali
And just as a general comment for people listening in on the live. Partly, I'm sorry that we're not interacting with the live. Partly it's because you know, this is a podcast, and you know, in a podcast, you have to kind of keep the topic, on topic for the most part. Partly because there on average of that one in every 300 comments is relevant to the podcast about 100 in every 300 comments are, "Are you guys fasting?" And another 200 are just kind of random comments. But thank you very much for the compliments about the glasses and about how they love Taimur's laugh. Taimur, will you go with me? How do you guys cope in exam season etc, but kind of just as a quick explainer as to why we're not actively interacting with the chat. If anyone would like to send us a Super Chat, then we would interact with the chat so thank you Rgb and Visionstealth for the two donation so far. Taimur, guess how much money we've made off this podcast so far.
Taimur
Fiver?
Ali
No, mate. Two pound forty.
Taimur
Nice.
Ali
Yeah. Anyway, what's one more?
Taimur
Actually, there's another category, which he calls "Good Games"
Ali
Oh, yeah, that sounds interesting. That sounds like games that are actually not necessarily bad.
Taimur
I'm trying to see what it actually is. Don't forget that a lot of this, like Transaction Analysis stuff is as like a tool for psychiatry, you know, a tool for like a therapist or a psychiatrist to use with their patients. And so, ah, okay, that's interesting. Ah, so a "Good Game" is actually not completely good. But it's a game where it's still a game, there's still something ulterior going on. They're not like keeping it real or whatever. But the social contribution outweighs the complexity of the motivations. So like it's definitely a game and they're not keeping it real. But it's also not the worst thing in the world. And so for example, there's one called, there's one called "Happy to help" Where, in this game, White is consistently helpful to other people with some ulterior motive. He may be doing penance for past wickedness. Covering up for present wickedness, making friends in order to exploit them later or seeking prestige. So White is like, doing nice things so that people thinks he's nice. But whoever questions his motives must also give him credit for his actions. After all, people can cover up the past wickedness by becoming more wicked, or exploiting people, rather than being generous, you know, right? So some philanthropists, for example, are more interested in competition than in benevolence. And I think and if you watch like these shows, of like, like Gossip Girl and stuff, you get the impression that all these kind of the upper classes often have like a philanthropy pissing contest with one another of like, she threw that charity ball or gala or something, you know, we have to like, one up them kind of thing. And so like, there's a game going on, but like, the net result is not so bad. It's like, I guess a lot of money is going to good causes.
Ali
Yeah. Okay. So that's what you mean by kind of "Good Game"
Taimur
Yeah. And apparently, this game as an exploitative maneuver is the basis for a large proportion of public relations in America.
Ali
Public relations as in?
Taimur
Just like, the way people interact with one another.
Ali
Oh, so not like PR?
Taimur
Not like PR, but just like, yeah, just like, and it's perhaps one of the most pleasant and constructive of the commercial games. Yep.
Ali
Yeah, that is cool. So those are some of the games that people play. I feel like we could have spent half an hour introducing the topic. Another 10 minutes discussing games we talked about last episode. But it's fine. We got to keep the content machine running. Right?
Taimur
Yeah. Oh, wait, there's one more which seems interesting, its very short. It's called the "Homely Sage" and apparently, this is a probably a script rather than a game doesn't really matter, who cares? Where a well educated and sophisticated man learns as much as he can about all sorts of things. Besides his own business. When he reaches retirement age, he moves from the big city, where he held a responsible position to a small town. There it soon becomes known that people can go to him with their problems of whatever kind. And he can help them out. And he's like, you know, he's like the Homely Sage. And so he finds in this new environment, the status as the Homely Sage. He's not making any pretenses he's always willing to listen. But apparently, there is something gamey going on. When people intentionally set up set this kind of role up for themselves.
Ali
Almost like doing like live stream Q and A's and stuff, trying to be like the Homely Sage.
Taimur
Yes.
Ali
Oh, by the way, thank you. Thank you..for the two pound 60 keeping it real. We've now made a fiver off this podcast episode, Taimur.
Taimur
Legendary.
Ali
Yeah, winning at life. Thank you very much to everyone who's donated.
Taimur
All right. Okay, that wraps up. We are not going to have another episode about Transaction Analysis. I've said that this is a, I care deeply about this topic. I hope to be.
Ali
Yeah, you should make a book club video about this.
Taimur
Yeah, I definitely wanna produce more content about this and like, in a better way, I feel like that, like, you're gonna Game Call me as saying, "Look how hard I've tried." But yeah, I put some effort into summarizing and making notes about the topic so that we can have these three episodes on them. I think it's still fairly kind of disorganized and a bit of a jumble, and requires a bit more thinking and structure of the best way to communicate the topic. So I'd like to be doing more of that over the next few months. But yeah, this is the last episode we'll have on transaction analysis. If you're interested, the best book you should get on the topic is called "I'm OK, You're OK" by Thomas Anthony Harris. Once you've read that, you might enjoy "Games People Play" by Dr. Eric Berne.
Ali
Awesome. So a few other random bits. So I've been trying to. So basically, I think I might message you about this. But I've been trying to come up with like, the name for a series. A series of videos where I talk about life lessons that I've learned from like influential people in my life. Right? And I put this out on Twitter. I started using Twitter, quite properly, which has been wonderful. It's fast become my favorite way of just like posting random stuff. Just because of the, it's just so great. It feels more like a real time communication, rather than Instagram or YouTube, like YouTube is sort of like extreme end of kind of one to many. And Instagram is also fairly extreme one to many. And occasionally you get a DM, which then becomes one to one. Whereas Twitter is sort of like, a nice way of like putting out a question and actually getting almost real time interaction back. And then it becomes very easy to reply to these sorts of things anyway. So Twitter is great. But I kind of asked the question on Twitter about what should I name the series, and someone suggested calling it League of Legends. And I thought that would be really, really bad. And so I mentioned it to Christian, he's my editor on Slack. And he said, "Well, it would sort of be like having a YouTube show where you talk about World War Two tactics and calling it World of Warcraft". And I was thinking, that would be so funny. And he was like, it wouldn't be that funny. So I'd be curious as to where you stand on this, this side of the debate.
Taimur
I don't think it's that funny, I think (laughs) yeah, I mean, it's maybe like the first time you see it's like, oh, haha, that's a video game. But it's not funny. I don't think anyone else cares about the title at all. I think you need to get your head up.
Ali
I think the title is very important, because the title is what makes the series brandable. And if a series has like a good name, you're far more likely to kind of continue doing it. Like MKBHD, Marques has a series about cars called Auto Focus.
Taimur
Okay, that's a good name. That's a good name.
Ali
And the fact that he's got a good name means that he, I'm sure, is incentivized to make more videos about it, because like, "Hey, guys, welcome to the episode of Auto Focus. Today, we're talking about the Tesla Model"
Taimur
Look, I totally buy the importance of brand. You know, you're preaching to the choir here, but like League of Legends is like a funny name. But a lot of people who come across that it's gonna be like, oh, like some like gaming video. I don't care about this. Like, it's just a weird brand.
Ali
Like, obviously they won't, it would be more like the title of the video would be like 10 lessons I learned from Gary Vaynerchuk and the opening of video will be like, "Hey, guys, welcome back to League of Legends, the series where I talk about lessons I've learned from famous people."
Taimur
Yeah, I guess look it's fine.... it's alright.
Ali
Anyway, I had this other idea. So you probably don't know. But I open most of my YouTube videos and my newsletters with the phrase "Hey, friends."
Taimur
Yes, I've seen this.
Ali
And, wonderful. And it seems like I've experimented with not doing that. And there's always people in the comments being like, "Oh, where was the hey, friends, I've been waiting for the hey friends" which is kind of what you want, when you're kind of building a quick brand, because you want to create these sort of..
Taimur
It's memes.
Ali
Yeah, yeah. The shared terminology. That sort of thing. And so I was thinking, what if this series gets called "The Friendzone".
Taimur
What would that be about?
Ali
As in the series about, so for example: Welcome back to "The Friendzone" where we talk about mentors that have helped me over the years who don't know that I exist. The first member of the "The Friendzone" is Gary Vaynerchuk who I learned this 10 lessons from.
Taimur
Okay.
Ali
..As like a somewhat interesting, that also then unlocks the option of for example, I want to make like a sort of community type thing at some point.
Taimur
Yeah, I think..
Ali
I'm calling that "The Friendzone" would make a lot.
Taimur
Yeah, that's, that sounds a lot more fitting for like, for the community type thing. Rather than like, the learning from mentors.
Ali
So, I mean the learning from experts, would sort of be a tongue in cheek of the first honorary member of "The Friendzone" is Gary Vaynerchuk for elping me by writing these books he doesn't know really exist; but here are t e lessons I learned from him. type situation.
Taimur
Yeah, that's kind of funny. I guess.
Ali
I think that would be kind of funny and kind of clever. Which is all you can really hope for with these sorts of (laughs).. It's mildly amusing.
Taimur
Yeah, it's mildly amusing. Sure. I'll give you that.
Ali
Cool. That's fine. I've got your seal of approval. I've got your permission.... Hogback to Episode 3. Why do we seek permission?
Taimur
Yeah, something like that.
Ali
Something like that. Have we got anything interesting in the chat? No, not really. But yeah, thank you for everyone for tuning in for all the things.
Taimur
We need to do an insight of the week and then we need to read a review.
Ali
Okay.
Taimur
Insight of the week. I had one, which I've been mulling over I've gone and done a Twitter poll yesterday. Here's the poll. "You're reading something aloud in English. It includes a person's name, which comes from another language, for example, French, you are familiar with this language, but far from fluent. How do you pronounce the name when you're reading out loud? Do you use the English pronunciation? Or do you attempt to use the correct pronunciation?"
Ali
I think it's a middle ground.
Taimur
Yes.
Ali
Because if you attempt to use the correct pronunciation, you can sound like a twat.
Taimur
Yeah.
Ali
And it's always a little, it sounds like you're trying too hard if you use the actual correct pronunciation. But equally, if I was referring to someone called Ali, I would call them Ali Ali, I would call them I would call them Muhammad rather than Mohammed with a 'ha'. Because that would just be a little bit odd in..
Taimur
Right. Yeah.
Ali
..in conversation. I don't know what were the results of your
Taimur
What do you think they were like? What percentage of people do Twitter poll? you think would use English versus trying the correct pronunciation? I remember actually seeing it was a 30% would use the English pronunciation 70% would use the correct pronunciation, which is a lot more skewed than I thought it would be more balanced. Yeah, I think the reason I was thinking about it was because it does feel really cringy or something to kind of switch. Like, if you're reading something in English, and you see like a word in French. It feels cringy to like, be like, da, da, da, da, (immitates a french accent). Yeah. Like, yeah. And so I was thinking about, like, why does it feel.. why does it feel so cringy? And why does it you know? And I think my best guess for why it feels cringy is because there's a concern that other people might feel like you're trying too hard or trying to show off or something. A bit like the thing we talked about, like playing piano in public. Like, you don't want to seem like a show off or something like that, so you're kind of preempting that. I think you're right, there's always like a bit middle ground, I think in most, yeah, in most words there's like an uncontroversial middle ground where you sort of, you get the shape of the word right. But you don't get like the nuance sounds. So like, in French, for example, you can you know, if you're like a, there's a classic dish called Moules Frites. Its mussels and chips. And if you're like, I don't know, if you're English or something, you probably, you know, if you see that written down, and you were pronouncing in English, you probably say like "malas frites" or something, right? But you're not going to do that, you know it's roughly pronounced Moules Frites, you probably say Moules Frites, but you won't make the effort to say the French "r" so you wouldn't say like "Frite" (French pronounciation) or whatever, you know? So I think in most of the time, there's like an uncontroversial middle ground where you make a respectful attempt, but not like not take it too far.
Ali
Yeah, this reminds me there was an article in The Onion many many years ago, which where the headline was, "Man sweats, wondering how he's gonna pronounce croissant"
Taimur
(laughter) That's so good!
Ali
Because he's like, "Hey, could I get a latte and a croissant" (french pronounication) or a croissant, right, however you want to pronounce it.
Taimur
Yeah, there's a real spectrum of how far you could take that one. (laughter) Yeah, I think the Americans have a good solution. The sort of accepted pronunciation is just croissant. And like, everyone's happy. Anyway, yeah, that's my insight for the week. Do you wanna read a review and then we can call it quits?
Ali
Yes, I'm going on chartable.com. And no, how do I see our reviews?
Taimur
Click on the reviews thing, mate.
Ali
Oh, says reviews. All right, here we go from, oh, it's a review called Best Podcast award from (username).
Taimur
You pretentious twat.
Ali
(username) that's more like it. (username) thank you, (username) via Apple podcast from France. He says, "Wow, I finally found way to leave a review. After listening to the podcast for years, you guys are the ones who made it easy for me with your link. Here's a link that works even if you're on iPhone. I love your podcast. You guys chemistry is pure and refreshing. Two smart brothers talking about stuff that matters with a spin of intelligence and elegance. So, Taimur, remember when you said that you love washing your hands? Lately, I've been thinking about you every time I do wash my hands a lot. You're definitely a rock star. Ali love your YouTube channel to bits, love the podcast because I can work in my business while listening to you guys. You guys keep me entertained and informed kudos to you, merci beacoup."
Taimur
That a really nice review; that was impressive french accent. I think it was really good.
Ali
That's very kind.
Taimur
Like an impression. You know, it was like a good take the piss out of the french. A good fake french accent.
Ali
I've been watching a lot of (..).
Taimur
Nice.
Ali
Alrighty, we better call it quits. Thank you everyone listening.
Taimur
Good sesh.
Ali
See you all next week. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening.
Taimur
If you liked this episode, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts on the Apple podcast website. If you're not using an iPhone, there's a link in the show notes.
Ali
If you've got any thoughts on this episode, or any ideas for new podcast topics. We'd love to get an audio message from you with your conundrum, question or just anything that we could discuss.
Taimur
Yeah, if you're up for having your voice played on the podcast and your question being the springboard for our discussion, email us an audio file mp3 or voice note to hi@notoverthinking.com.
Ali
If you've got thoughts, but you'd rather not have your voice played publicly, that's fine as well tweet or DM us at @noverthinking on Twitter please.