Scott had discovered a social-media imbalance
Scott and Chris agreed they were not big on public displays of affection.
Then Scott raised a different kind of PDA.
Online, he felt the friendship was distinctly one-sided.
Chris appeared in Scott’s posts and stories regularly.
Scott did not feel he received the same visibility in return.
That led to a wider question about couples and friends who clearly cared about each other in real life but had completely different rules about social media.
Listeners knew exactly what he meant
One listener said it had taken her boyfriend a year and a half to post a picture of them together, despite her own Instagram containing an entire highlight reel devoted to the relationship.
His defence was that he did not need to post about somebody when he was actually with them.
Another message described a similarly unequal lock-screen situation.
One partner had a lovely photograph of the couple.
The other apparently had a random monkey from Google Photos.
Scott accepted there was no universal rule.
The problem came when two people attached completely different meanings to the same online gesture.
Amy could barely hear Chris
Producer Amy joined the show while suffering from an ear infection.
She insisted she was not properly ill, just in pain and slightly off balance.
The strangest effect was that she could hear Scott perfectly because he was loud enough to cut through everything.
Chris, by comparison, sounded tiny and distant.
Naturally he took this personally.
Pop songs got the metal treatment
The quiz included a round of heavy-metal versions of familiar songs.
The point was to recognise mainstream pop records after guitars, screaming vocals and much more aggressive production had been layered over them.
Scott and Chris found some immediately recognisable and others nearly impossible.
It was a suitably loud end to an episode which had started with the quieter question of why some people simply refused to put their partners on Instagram.
COMMENTS