Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:05] Hey, everyone, it is Lauren here and this is the Llamas podcast. And this morning, well, today, Friday, I am recording so low because Lacey had a trial this week and a death in one of her really good friends, family. So I'm gonna do this solo this week and hopefully we will be back together next week.
[00:00:29] And next week I think we're going to talk some more about mom talk and Taylor, Frankie, Paul and all the Bachelor and legal drama and all that because Lacy wanted to be a part of it. So today I want to talk about a different reality show that's going around that we're getting a lot of talk about and kind of like the implications of it and those type things.
[00:00:55] I will show you. Blanche.
[00:00:57] This is my little Blanche. If you are not watching this and just listening, I'm holding up my little bum bums. Blanche, who is at work with me every day, all four of the girls are.
[00:01:12] And I also have Stitch over there. They bring brightness to my day when it's sometimes hard at work. But. Right. And I showed you Blanche because we know she likes to date sometimes younger men and all men and older, younger. She is not picky. But there's a show on Netflix called Age of Attraction and it is a show where you go on and you do not know people's age and you see if you have a connection regarding without knowing their age. Now, we'll say for a lot of people, sometimes you can't tell their exact age. Like, for instance, there was a guy on there and I probably would have put him like 36. He was actually 43.
[00:01:58] He did not have a single wrinkle in his forehead. So he looked very good. And he did mention he had children. But, you know, you can be whatever age and have two children.
[00:02:09] He didn't mention their ages at first. And then he did mention 15. And I was like, he still could be in his 30s. I had a child at 21, be 36. You know, like depending on when you have your children, you could easily still be in your 30s with a 15 year old.
[00:02:26] So in this show, the whole premise is, like I said, dating without knowing the person's age.
[00:02:32] And so when it ended up, a lot of the couples matched up. There was a guy who was 27 who ended up matching with a woman who was 52. Granted, I think he looked maybe 32, 33. I felt like she looked older than her age. She looked good, but she looked 52. I feel I kind of think she looked 60.
[00:02:54] But she's an attractive lady. Like she Was pretty, all that stuff. And I felt like she was aging pretty naturally, those type things. And then there was one guy and he was 38, which I would have put him about that age. I thought he looked around my age and he matched with a girl that was 22, 23, which I definitely want to put her that age. Like she looked very similar.
[00:03:19] One girl who was 27 matched with a guy who was like 60. I will say he looked good for 60.
[00:03:26] I probably would have put him in his 50s. And her, she probably looked about 30. So she was looking relatively her age.
[00:03:34] But they didn't know ages going into this. But I feel like common sense, she kind of look, I don't know, I don't think that many of us look completely different, different than our age. The one guy who was 43 did match with the girl who was 23. And I will.
[00:03:49] She was a really tall girl. So I don't know. For some reason I think sometimes we put tall people older than what they are. I would have said she was closer to 30 and I thought he was 35. So they may have not realized they truly had a 20 year age gap going on with them. And they actually made a little cute couple on the show. I felt like they have now broken up most the couples from the show. If you watch the reunion that came out with Nick Val, who is the host, who is from Bachelor Nation, who is like 40 and married to a very young 20 year old and they have like two kids.
[00:04:25] But if you watch the show, the reunion show, it was actually not on Netflix, it was on the Vile Files podcast.
[00:04:33] So with this I've seen a lot. I follow some reality groups and everything on Facebook and all that. And a lot of people are talking about grooming and predatory behavior.
[00:04:45] And while I think the show kind of had some gross concepts, like I'm not here for a 20 year age gap. If like the woman who was 52 and matched with a 27 year old had a 29 year old. So not here for that. Like, I'm just not. I feel like if you could be my children's age or you could be my dad's age, like those type things aren't for me. Like I'm 38 now. Like I definitely couldn't see myself with like my husband. Well, I'm 37, I will be 38 this summer. I just aged myself up and My husband is 40.
[00:05:18] We were technically two grades apart in school.
[00:05:22] He's about three years older than me just because of the weight. So I consider Us pretty much the same age. I feel like within five years, especially as adults, once you're out of college and everything. Five years, about the same age.
[00:05:34] But I could not see myself doing dating somebody who was like 20 or 21 because literally I could have been 18 and had them. So to me that's gross. I will say there is a, like if there's a younger guy or an older guy that's attractive, it's not that I can't say they're attractive, but I would not want to have any type of relationship with them.
[00:05:55] But thinking it's gross and giving you the ick factor isn't the same thing as like grooming or predatory behavior. And I've seen a lot of people say, oh well it's predatory, it's grooming. I don't really want. I don't think those words should be thrown around as lightly as people do. I mean, if you are 25 years old dating a 40 year old man, you are an adult, you just have a big age gap. And I don't really think that 40 year old adult is grooming you in a sense because grooming I feel like happens when you are younger because it's messing with the front of your brain and like making you in and molding you to this person. By 22, 23, you're your own person. Yeah, you probably still have a lot of growing to do. But at 23 I was in law school. So like I think I graduated at 24, 25. So like I had went through college. I was an adult at that point.
[00:06:51] I mean, yeah, I made some dumb decisions, but overall I was an adult. So I feel like when people are saying oh is grooming is predatory? When there's this age gap, it's not the right use of the words. Can it be gross? Yes. But I guess to me, yes, I felt the show was gross and it gave me the ick factor. But I mean if you're a 50 year old woman dating a 30 year old man, what do y' all have in common? Is usually my first thought. But realistically, he is an adult, his mind is formed. He made the informed you are not a predator at that point.
[00:07:27] Now if you are a 25 year old man and you've liked this girl since she was 16 and you waited till she was 18, that's different.
[00:07:37] That is considered where you're grooming and those type things, like the celebrity couples that are just gross, like you know, they went like for instance, like Demi Lovato when she was with Will Bow Fez from that 70s show. Like yeah, that was gross because she was underage and he was like waiting for her to get 18. And like those comments that like people have made and that these are the girls are waiting to get 18. I know that was made about a lot of girls in my age range like Hillary Duck, the Olsen twins, Lindsay Lohan, like those type things. That's gross when you're saying waiting for her to turn 18, that I think is more grooming and predatory. But when we're talking about huge age gaps, like the shown age of attraction, but we're all fully formed adults and we didn't meet these people till adults, yeah, it's kind of gross. But I don't think that's grooming or predatory behavior just because you have a large age gap. And I mean it's kind of icky. Like especially the guy that was 38 has like a 15 year old daughter. I think it's kind of gross because like really your 22 year old girlfriend and they are still together. They are one of the couples that are still together. But your girlfriend is closer in age to your daughter than you. So yeah, that's gross. But I mean you see TV like Modern Family, which is one of my favorite sitcoms out there. And yeah, Gloria and Claire are close to the same age, but she didn't think in that, oh, Jay groomed Gloria. No, because she was like 35, 40 years old when they were dating.
[00:09:18] And in the same sense you didn't see in real life when Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello had a huge age gap. I will say that is one of the reasons that I think they had marital problems. Because you know, he was in the age he wanted children and she was kind of past that age. She was in her late 40s and she'd already had a grown child. Like she wasn't into having a child again. And I completely get like if you want to have children in your 40s, that is completely great. But I could understand her not wanting to because I'm tired all the time. So I get it.
[00:09:50] So that's kind of just what I wanted to talk about today. I would love your opinions. Do you really think that those years like those words like grooming and predatory behavior are completely used wrong and want them used correctly? Because I do think it is a really big issue when there is grooming and predatory behavior. But I think when you take it and say it about fully functioning adults, it lessens it from what it is. And I think it is gross when you have a 40 year old man thinking a 15 year old girl is attractive and wanting to have adult relations with her. So I think we need to make sure we kind of use these words in the proper context because when it truly does happen, it is disgusting. So I would love to know your thoughts on that.
[00:10:33] Also, since this is going to be a little bit shorter podcast, it's just me. I'm just going to talk a minute because I watched the show on Apple tv. Severance.
[00:10:42] So the whole premise of this show is your brain is severed. And like when you go to work, work you doesn't know what happens with home you and home you doesn't know work you. So it's like two completely different.
[00:10:56] You're the same person, but your brain doesn't know about the other person's feelings, emotions. I mean you still like are a functioning person. It's just like so in the show when they get in the elevator and they're going down to the basement where the severed floor is, their brains just switch and they become the severed person. And then on the elevator, on the way out, so like there's eight hours a day you're at work is a completely different life. And it's like that person doesn't exist except in the severed floor.
[00:11:27] And so that's kind of the whole premise of the show.
[00:11:33] Adam Scott is one of the main characters on it, his own Parks and Rec. So that's one of the reason that I started watching it.
[00:11:40] Also, I'm not gonna lie, I thought it was a completely finished series. No, I have to wait another year. It's just now filming season three, so I gotta wait another year to see what happens. I thought it was done. So that's one of the reasons I watched it because I do like to binge and see everything but. But I really got drawn into this show. And I'm curious how many of you watch this show. But also like the ethical implications obviously like this is if this were to ever happen. Like you can see like in the show, the reason he is drawn to it is because he is a widower and he's lost his wife and like he is in such grief and depression, it just separates him. So like he was a college professor and this just separates himself so he can live this other life and go to work and function and have a job because he had lost his job because he was dealing with alcoholism and depression and all those things. So it just like cut his brain so that way he could work, have a job, make money. And for eight hours of that, of the day, not be depressed.
[00:12:41] But the severed people in the show that are down there working do have interactions. They find love, they find friendship, they have emotions. I mean, it is. It's a really complex thing. And, you know, I'm thinking, how many people would truly want to do this? And I'm sure there are people out there that would if this was came up. And how do those ethical implications play out?
[00:13:08] Like, when do ethics in the law, like, if this truly could happen, could this be legal? Because could this be ethical? Like, could it be legal but not ethical kind of things? And it just really got me thinking about that in the world we're living in, could we seriously put a chip in our brains to sever it into multiple parts where memories aren't? And I don't know, the show's really good.
[00:13:31] Give it a try. But it just really got me kind of thinking deeper on that level. Like, what if this ever did happen? And, like, so a lot of times the severed employee wants to quit the job because they don't like this bubble they're living in, but their outside personality says, no, you're not going to quit because we need this job to make money. And it's almost like. And then there was, like, they do bring in a religious aspect of it. Like, one of the characters on there, like, asked kids, like, I believe they were like, Lutherans or Catholics. I'm not sure what denomination they were, but they were Christian. And they were like, well, do the severed people have a separate, like, way to go to heaven because your brain separated? Like, what if this side accepted, you know, Jesus and this side didn't? I don't know. It, like, got me thinking. It was more deep in, like, than I thought it would be. Like, honestly, I didn't even know what the show was about. It's called Severance, and I saw Adam Scott. I thought it was going to be some dark comedy, which it, in ways, is comedic. It is dark. But I guess I was thinking we're gonna watch Step Brothers or Parks and Rec, and we end up with this, like, this big psychological thing. So I think there's a lot of, like, ethics and implications in that show that I think really I could dive a whole lot deeper into. And I think some of this stuff is stuff we're going to have to think about as the world does become, with more AI, more computer intelligence. Like, where is that line between, like, what is right and wrong legally? And where are we ethically? Because ethics and legal don't always match up. I mean, for a while, we know it was legal to be segregated. Sec. Segregated.
[00:15:20] Was that ethical? No. So, like, kind of seeing, I think that's always been interesting is the implication between law and ethics. And they don't always line up, but that is my podcast for today.
[00:15:33] If y' all have questions, drop us a dm, let us know, and hopefully me and Lacey will be back tomorrow.
