The Importance of Being a Fraud

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The more of a fraud you felt like the harder you tried to convey an impression or likable image of yourself so that other people wouldn't find out what a hollow fraudulent person you really were. This kind of cycle that keeps building on itself he calls this like the fraudulent paradox I think. But then that's this is definitely something where awareness of the problem not only doesn't make it better but it makes it worse. Right. Before you get to the end as you were reading it neither of us knew anything about like how like what the the turn that it takes at the very end like how did you like this character what were you thinking about the story. Yeah good good good goodGood,

Our whole lives we’ve been frauds. We’re not exaggerating. Pretty much all we’ve ever done is try to create a certain impression of us in other people. Mostly to be liked or admired. This episode is a perfect example, Tamler pretending to be a cinephile (check out his four favorite pieces of 2019 “pop culture” in the first segment), David trying to connect with the people (Baby Yoda, Keanu Reeves etc.) – and of course what could be more fraudulent than a deep dive into a David Foster Wallace story, rhapsodizing over the endless sentences, the logical paradoxes, the seven-layer bean-dip of metacommentary (Jesus Christ I’m surprised there aren’t like eight footnotes in this episode description), and meanwhile the Partially Examined Life dudes refresh their overcast feeds and wonder through the tiny keyhole of themselves how David and Tamler have sunk so low that they’d ramble on about “Good Old Neon” like a couple of first year Comp-Lit grad students trying to impress that girl who works at the Cajun bakery.