786: It’s a Game Show! – This American Life

Ira Glass

Act 3– You Didn’t Hear It From Me. No, really, you didn’t. This last game actually happened on another show, a podcast called Normal Gossip. And if you haven’t heard Normal Gossip, the way it works, people in the show basically dish about actual gossip. Like true stories about normal, everyday people sent in by listeners.

And last season, the producers recreated a version of– you know that old game, telephone, where somebody whispers something to the person next to them who whispers it to the person next to them and on down the line. One of our producers, Sean Cole, has this rundown of what happened when they did a version of that on Normal Gossip and how it revealed some interesting things about the stories that we tell each other. Here’s Sean.

Sean Cole

The folks at Normal Gossip, they created the game for a very practical reason. While they were gearing up for season two, they got to talking about how long it had taken during season one for the guests to relax and settle into the conversation.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

And so we were having this brainstorming session where we were talking about ways that we could just give them some more time and space ahead of the recording to loosen up.

Sean Cole

This is the producer of Normal Gossip, Alex Sujong Laughlin.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

And I came up with this idea that what if we had them play a game that is a game of gossip?

Sean Cole

Gossip itself, of course, is sort of like a game of telephone. So they figured, let’s just do that. Alex grabbed one of the gossip stories from their inbox and read it to the first guest that they had. And then recorded her telling it right back, just whatever that person could remember, played that for the second guest, had them tell it back and so on.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

I told them not to take notes, because you don’t generally take notes when somebody’s telling you a gossip story, right? You’re not like–

Sean Cole

Unless you’re a gossip columnist, I suppose.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

Yeah, exactly. Unless you’re me. So yeah, I said do the best you can. If you don’t remember something, that’s fine. If you feel like tweaking a detail for fun, you can.

Sean Cole

But for the most part, try and be pretty faithful to the story you heard. Alex didn’t really expect anything interesting to happen. But then when she listened through to all the versions, she realized she was seeing in real time how gossip works, how a story can evolve and change. That there was a logic to how it changed.

Sure, there was some willy-nilly embellishing here and there. But for the most part, the changes were for a very specific reason. And I’m going to get to that. But first, you need to hear the original version of the story, so that you can appreciate when we get there how different it was by the end of the game.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

Yes, I have the text here.

Sean Cole

I asked Alex to read it to me. I should say with every gossip story they tell on the show, the names and all the identifying details are changed. So it’s completely anonymized. This story concerns two people who they called Kyle and Elliot. They started dating sometime before the pandemic.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

Kyle had grown up super religious and had been married to a woman. But he came out, left his family, left the church, and moved to the city where he met Elliot.

Sean Cole

And Elliot’s really the main character of the story. You need to know that he’s part of this active group chat with some college friends where they talk about their lives.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

Everyone in the group chat was obsessed with Kyle. He was so warm, genuine, thoughtful. They move in together, adopt a cat, and are teaching it all kinds of tricks. Then Elliot proposes and Kyle proposes back. It’s so adorable. The pandemic hits. And the group chat starts doing Zooms as you do. Usually, significant others pop in and say hi. And they all love to see Kyle.

Around June, Elliot mentions that he’s going home for a bit, doesn’t mention Kyle. A few weeks later, the group Zooms and Kyle doesn’t show up. They ask where he is. Elliot says, I didn’t want to bring this up yet, but Kyle has actually left me. Turns out Kyle just packed up and disappeared. Left the cat, no explanation, ghosted his fiance. He disappeared off social media. And nobody knows where he went. Elliot is crushed.

So fast forward a year later. A friend of a friend is scrolling TikTok. And suddenly they see a viral video with Kyle. Turns out Kyle has reinvented himself on TikTok in the last year. He’s suddenly super religious, but also still very much queer. He seems to spend his videos making a lot of references to leaving a toxic relationship and loving yourself. Our friend of a friend is like, what the fuck? Kyle has millions of views, tons of followers. Now we’ve tracked him down, but he’s obviously obliquely talking shit about Elliot. What do you do? Do you tell Elliot?

Sean Cole

It ends with sort of a Dear Abby conundrum type question there. Anyway, that’s where we start. There were eight guests listening to and repeating back some version of this story over the course of an eight week season. It was quite literally a long game. And I’ll just tell you right now. The only parts of the story that didn’t change practically at all were the very beginning.

Woman

There were two guys in a relationship together.

Woman

Two guys. There is Elliot and there’s Kyle, right?

Man

A gay couple.

Woman

Elliot–

Man

Elliot and Kyle.

Woman

Meets Kyle.

Man

They start dating. They like each other. They move in together.

Sean Cole

And the very end, where the friends see the TikTok video and ask themselves the question.

Woman

And the question is–

Man

Do we tell Elliot or not?

Woman

Do we tell Elliot?

Man

Should we tell him–

Man

About this TikTok?

Woman

They don’t know what they’re supposed to do.

Woman

Yeah, would you tell Elliot?

Man

I’d tell Elliot in a heartbeat.

Sean Cole

Almost everything else became completely unrecognizable. By the way, Tobin Low, who was in Act 1, happened to be a guest on Normal Gossip when they did this. Maybe you heard his voice in there. With the first couple of folks, the changes are relatively small. The very first guest, Danielle Henderson– she’s a TV writer– she inserts this scene where Elliot discovers that Kyle has left.

Danielle Henderson

And then he goes back to their apartment that they share, their place that they share. And Kyle is gone. He has packed up everything.

Sean Cole

But it’s still the same plot as the original. The second person, Kalyn Kahler, who writes about sports– when she heard Danielle say that Kyle packed up everything, seems to have taken that to mean everything.

Kalyn Kahler

Kyle is gone. The apartment is empty. There is no note. There is no trace of Kyle. It’s like he never lived there. He probably took all his furniture and food and whatever.

Sean Cole

She also– I think inadvertently– leaves out a pretty important detail at the end, the fact that Kyle is still gay. Probably just didn’t think to mention it. Besides that, she casually ad libs this kind of loose dialogue in the beginning where Elliot’s friends are all aflutter about meeting Kyle.

Kalyn Kahler

Everyone is very curious, like who’s Kyle? Elliot, introduce us to Kyle. We want to meet your new boyfriend. Like you’re so happy, how are things going?

Sean Cole

But those few alterations set us up for some real misunderstandings that are about to take off with the third person, Tracy Clayton of the podcast Strong Black Legends. She hears this part.

Kalyn Kahler

Everyone is very curious, like who’s Kyle? Elliot, introduce us to Kyle.

Sean Cole

And takes it to mean that the friend group never does meet Kyle, which is very different. That and the missing detail of Kyle still being gay leads to this ending from Tracy. Again, the friends are scrolling TikTok.

Tracy Clayton

And so they come across a TikTok of a very evangelical, like born-again Christian, very strict. Everything that’s not in the Bible is wrong type of person. And he’s just going off and saying all of this terrible stuff. And probably very anti-trans, anti anti-racism, anti-everything good. And it’s just going off about all this wild stuff. But then this man starts talking about this terrible, toxic relationship that he was in. And dropping all these hints, but not really saying too much, so nobody really knew if he was talking about Elliot or not. But the friends are like, he’s definitely talking about Elliot. That’s so fucked up.

Sean Cole

Also, this new, somewhat more sinister version of Kyle took even more from the apartment than he did before.

Tracy Clayton

The cat is gone.

Sean Cole

First mention of Kyle taking the cat with him. All of those embellishments are crystallized and even built upon in the fourth iteration of the story, which is sort of tag team told by Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber, who host another gossip podcast called Who? Weekly. More than anyone else, they really tried to imagine themselves into the heads of the friend group. Like when Elliot tells them, I just moved in with this guy Kyle and we got a cat together.

Lindsey Weber

And his friends are assumedly like, who? How do we not know this person? Why– you moved in with somebody. You got a cat with them. And we don’t even know who it is. But you know what, we’re so happy for you. We’re going to feel positive about this. This is how I would feel, I guess, if a friend of mine did this to me. Although I would be a little mad, but that’s OK. That’s my thing. Not these people–

Bobby Finger

I’d feel a little sus. In the back of my head, I’d be a little sus.

Lindsey Weber

Yeah, because you can’t just drop in the group chat that’s active all fucking day long, oh, hey, by the way, I live with someone and we have a cat.

Bobby Finger

Yeah, I get the feeling the friends haven’t even like seen a photo– or the friends have seen a photo. Wait, no, the friends have not seen a photo. I think the friends never even saw a photo of this person.

Lindsey Weber

Bobby, we’re telling the story. It’s our story, so you can say that if you just want to say.

Bobby Finger

The friends never saw a photo of this person. They don’t even know what this person looks like. They just know their name is Kyle.

Sean Cole

You get the sense, listening to Bobby and Lindsey, that they know they’re embellishing some of the details. But they’re also hewing pretty closely to the basic plot points they heard in Tracy Clayton’s version. So Kyle robs Elliot blind, takes the cat. Elliot’s crushed. The friends are trying to be supportive.

Bobby Finger

The friends are– one of them, at least, is on their TikTok page on their FYP–

Sean Cole

FYP is the For You page.

Bobby Finger

And on the FYP is a video of an evangelical TikTok influencer who is apparently extremely religious, extremely fundamentalist, has really problematic opinions–

Lindsey Weber

And is viral.

Bobby Finger

And is like, here’s my lifestyle. I’m viral for these horrible opinions. Oh, look at my cute cat Greg. And then the friends are like, wait–

Lindsey Weber

Wait, I have another twist. He’s like, I’m straight. That’s the–

Bobby Finger

Right. Yes.

Lindsey Weber

Like he’s like, I was in this awful relationship, but I found God. Here’s my cat, Greg.

Bobby Finger

I’m straight.

Lindsey Weber

And my ex was toxic. And the friends see the TikTok and they’re sharing it. And they’re like, is this about Elliot?

Sean Cole

This, of course, is a huge change. They’re naming the cat Greg. I’m kidding. The fact of Kyle now being straight. Funnily, this is the first iteration of the story where the detail of Kyle being previously married to a woman was left out. So in the original, Kyle was with a woman in the beginning of the story. Now he’s with women at the end. And more and more, Kyle is becoming a villain. Until by the fifth telling of the story, he’s out and out malicious, even criminal. That version, the fifth one, was the one told by our very own Tobin Low.

Tobin Low

They are also getting a cat together. Let’s call the cat Mr. Mistoffelees from Cats the musical, as one does.

Sean Cole

And I know this will sound biased because I work with him. But his version is really one of my favorites in this reverse Groundhog Day movie about Elliot and Kyle.

Tobin Low

Cut to one of his friends in the middle of the night scrolling through TikTok, as one does, comes across a TikTok on their For You page. And it is this guy talking about how he catfishes people. His whole thing is that he pretends to be gay. He gets in these relationships.

He’s actually like a very religious, conservative person. And so he’s like catfishing these dudes to be in relationships with him. And it’s all a sham. It’s all a sham. And so then he goes into like I recently did this to a guy. We got a cat together, Mr. Mistoffelees. And then I took him for all he’s worth. And actually, it was a really bad toxic relationship.

Sean Cole

Did you hear what happened there? Basically, Tobin took these loose facts from Bobby and Lindsey’s telling– the empty apartment, Kyle being straight, and very religious and conservative– and he combines all those things.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

Into a catfishing scam artist, who is not only doing that, but bragging about it on TikTok.

Sean Cole

This is Alex again, the Normal Gossip producer.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

Which seems to me like– honestly, this is the turn that makes the least logical sense to me. Sorry, Tobin. But like if he’s a scam artist, why would you be bragging about it? Then your scam is ruined. You know?

Sean Cole

I hadn’t even thought of that.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

And it’s funny, because Tobin has said multiple times, he thought he was telling it perfectly.

Tobin Low

I stand by what I said. I thought that I told it exactly as it was told to me.

Sean Cole

This, of course, is my colleague Tobin Low. He deigned to consent to an interview for this story.

Tobin Low

And if you had asked me afterwards, the only liberty I was very conscious of taking was changing the cat’s name, which I thought was just fun and harmless.

Sean Cole

To be fair, Bobby did use the word scam one time in his and Lindsey’s telling of the story. But there was nothing about catfishing. And certainly no mention of multiple victims of same. Tobin ultimately heard the original version of the story. And I had to wonder what he thought about it.

Tobin Low

I think I was surprised that they were happy at one point. Or like they had a really good relationship.

Sean Cole

Right.

Tobin Low

I think that I would have assumed that that would survive in some way in the retellings. The original’s just kind of sad. And then it becomes extraordinary in a way that like by the end, people’s hurt is not the focus.

Sean Cole

Yeah.

Tobin Low

It’s like sort of how wild people’s actions are and like you’ve sort of drifted far away from the original, smaller, more human hurt.

Sean Cole

And he has a theory as to how they all collectively got there.

Tobin Low

In retrospect, I think what happened is that everyone knew that there was this thing coming in the story where Kyle was going to leave Elliot. And that’s sort of like– all roads lead to this big moment in the story. And I think to some degree, we were all reverse engineering to that moment. Like how do you explain the beats of what happened? How do you explain everyone’s actions, so that that makes sense and lands really hard?

Sean Cole

Right.

Tobin Low

So that you recreate the same gasp that you had when you heard it.

Sean Cole

Right.

Tobin Low

So that I can create that moment again.

Sean Cole

Because in the original, there is no explanation. And you’re just kind of like, what the heck?

Tobin Low

Yes.

Sean Cole

And that’s an uncomfortable feeling.

Tobin Low

Right, exactly.

Sean Cole

Just like it is in life. But of course, as Tobin had to remind me, the original story is life. That version wasn’t part of a game. It really happened. Weirdly, there was only one more major change to the story after Tobin’s version. When the comedian Brian Park tells it next, the guy in the TikTok video is not Kyle but one of Kyle’s many unsuspecting victims, warning other TikTokers to watch out for this predator, which of course, makes a lot more sense. Oh, and there’s no mention of them getting a cat.

And then the two versions after that are basically identical to Brian’s. It’s like there were no more questions to be answered. No gaps in understanding. All of the reverse engineering Tobin talked about was complete, which makes you wonder if there’s a natural end to a game like this. If you can only retell the story so many times before it plateaus, stays static.

I bet you that happens to urban myths, too. Alex Sujong Laughlin says watching the story go through all of those changes was kind of thrilling. It was like seeing your own little monster come alive on the laboratory table. But by the last couple two, three versions of the story, she had this other feeling as well.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

It makes me feel sad.

Sean Cole

Why?

Alex Sujong Laughlin

It makes me think of the way that people become caricatures to each other. And it just feels like, you know, I don’t know. Not to be all didactic and stuff, but we’re talking the night before election day. And I’ve watched this play out for months, the way that people just get flattened into you know, conservative rednecks who hate everybody or radical feminazis who want to kill babies.

Sean Cole

Right.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

And it just– it bums me out to see it happen so quickly, even in such a low stakes story.

Sean Cole

It’s sort of like all of us are playing the game, all the time.

Alex Sujong Laughlin

Yeah. And like maybe in those moments when you feel like you want to jump to a conclusion or flatten somebody because it makes the story better, maybe don’t. You know? Maybe don’t. I don’t know. I would like to create fewer of these monster Kyles, even if they’re fictional.

Sean Cole

That seems like a worthy slogan on behalf of decency and fairness to others. Let’s create fewer monster Kyles. Only a handful of people in the world would understand what it means, of course. But just like the juiciest gossip, maybe it would spread.

Ira Glass

Sean Cole is one of the producers of our program. To hear the full episode that Normal Gossip did where all this plays out, you can find that and their other episodes wherever you get your podcasts. By the way, the friends did tell Elliot about the TikTok. He laughed.

Our program was produced today by Tobin Low. People who put together today’s show include Elna Baker, Chris Benderev, Zoe Chace, Sean Cole, Michal Comite, Aviva DeKornfeld, Valerie Kipnis, Stowe Nelson, Katherine Rae Mondo, Nadia Reiman, Ryan Rumery, Charlotte Sleeper, Lilly Sullivan, Frances Swanson, Christopher Swetala, Matt Tierney, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurrahman. Our senior editor is David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor is Emanuele Berry.

Special thanks today to John Bistline, Cen Qian, Justin Ellis, Kelsey McKinney, Jae Towle-Viera, and Geoff Triplett. Melissa Lott, our contestant in the climate game show– she has a podcast of her own, The Big Switch, about the transition to a net zero world. Our website, where right now you can find all kinds of merch– onesies, t-shirts, sweatshirts, Public Radio tattoos for your holiday shopping– thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. Special thanks as always to our program’s co-founder, Mr. Torey Malatia. He’s actually on his way to the office right now, probably because I sent him this.

George Gray

Torey Malatia, come on down. You’re the next contestant on This American Life.

Ira Glass

I’m Ira Glass. Back next week, with more stories of This American Life.