You Are Being Unreasonable

An announcement about the future of the You Are Being Unreasonable podcast. 

"It would be hard to patronise a bear." Diving once again into the most horrid spaces on the British internet as we explore what people are talking about this week. We get into British people describing food as 'Moorish', banging around the word 'lush' too much these days, repeating people's names to sound patronising, odd quirks (mostly related to eating frozen food), defining 'family' in order to pass on jewellery and Ikea furniture, and we meet someone shitted off at people saying their name in a private hospital in Australia. Note that this podcast episode also doubles as Simon's will and by listening to it, you are witnessing it for him. This is legal and real.

"Nationalise Tebay, I say." More keen insights into Mumsnet and Reddit's /r/AskUK. This week, we discuss dramatising stories by adding 30 minutes to time periods, what to do if a cat steals your phone, some Randian nonsense about collective responsibility, "trying" to keep in touch, and we discuss the personality and net worth of the Pringles mascot.

"If you go home with someone at the end of the night and they don't do the voices when they read you The Hobbit, don't fuck them." This week's word of the week is 'petty' so look forward to all the pettiness in this episode. We cover a lot of birthday card interactions around thanking card-givers or not writing names in cards; whether online dating should require video and reading from a script; and how to deal with a grifting little boy holding your dog hostage. Somehow this all involves saying please to an app, clapping someone getting up, dogs with smaller dogs as pets, and dating with PowerPoint presentations.

"One Mumsnet, one podcast." We're united in our love of odd web forums and back to discuss more unreasonableness. This week: appending 'Gently...' to a sentence to make it more, well, gentle; sending literal children to work; sleeping through your leaving announcement at work; what to put on your washing line when you have a barbecue; cancelling the flights of someone using your email address; and a lot of discussion about how sentences need both verbs and appropriate punctuation.

CONTENT WARNING: This episode includes discussion of eugenics, forced sterilisation, the Holocaust, and child abuse. It's all contained in the discussion of the fourth thread from 24:50 to 30:12. "Believe it or not, it's Mr. Bean." Delving back into the Room 101 of Mumsnet to dig up the most unreasonable and frankly immoral threads on the AIBU board. What if your partner tells you that they're not your friend? What places in the world give you the weirdest, most immaculate vibes? Should you charge your partner rent or charge for the "wear and tear" of the white goods? Should you move in the car at a petrol station or will that cause petrol to spill? And is it immoral (yes) to force the sterilisation (yes) of someone who "doesn't deserve" to have a child (yes)?

"So she's sending her kids into the woods somewhere..." 100 episodes! We're celebrating with a trip to the Mumsnet Classics board and a journey beyond Mumsnet to look at the wide world of UK forum-posting. On this very special episode, we meet the Penetration Man and ask about reasons for dumping someone, we discuss builders' drinking fifty-one cups of tea and not going to the toilet, we meet an unhoused father gives his children badger meat for lunch, and discuss cancelling dinosaurs for their lack of conservative family values.

"Big jeans for Tik Tok teens." As we hurtle towards our 100th episode, a moment of reflection with some corrections to previous episodes. We also discuss: How does one go to the beach? How does one do beach? And what would a hobbit wear at the beach? What happens when you open a crisp packet upside-down? Is opening crisp packets the best way to come out as LGBT? Are there any women out there without imposter syndrome? And what to do with old pound coins that aren't LEGAL TENDER.

"AIBU to think that maybe my husband is lost in the great abyss of his unending need to be validated?" We're back to provide our commentary on the strangest Mumsnet AIBU threads of the last couple of weeks. This episode, we discuss how to congratulate a husband who can't get enough of that sweet sweet validation, worrying about stealing a cake from a supermarket self-checkout, how people manage to live without bookshelves and what is the worst single book that someone could have, and the frankly terrible take that wearing make-up is a form of catfishing. 

"Pizza. Cheese on toast. Magnums." Like the mighty Ever Given, we are refloated and are making our way safely down the Suez Canal of Mumsnet. This week, we ask: Is it unreasonable for an enterprising mentor to get a job that their mentee went for? Should you email the company that a scam artist works for? What three foods would you eat for the rest of your life? And we discover Mumsnet's surprising response to discussions of the role of the police.

"Where did the Stacys go?" Enjoy this episode of You Are Being Unreasonable... or else. This week we ask if '... or else' is a fun, flirty thing to text or a weird threat, whether you need to tell people where you work as part of a job application, whether people who have been furloughed need to be more productive when they return to work, and we discuss the Mandela Effect, a term which should refer to being a revolutionary anti-racism activist and pioneering reconciliatory statesman but actually refers to slightly misremembering trivial things.

"CAKE UP, MUMMY!" We're pleased to outline the roadmap for easing restrictions on this podcast. Soon you'll be able to listen to this podcast outside with one other person. This episode, we thoroughly roast those hyper-capitalist predatory 20 year-olds who are invariably business coaches, recruitment agents, or estate agents. Is it unreasonable to object to a builder taking a fireplace (after you've told them to take it)? What about objecting to work making you walk 1000 steps a day? Is it unreasonable to take a neighbour as a platonic cuddle-friend? Or to stop asking neighbours to keep meowing out the window? References: The redecorated globe: https://twitter.com/leemc87/status/1365059611288559617 Northern Independence Party angry at a parasitic landlord: https://twitter.com/FreeNorthNow/status/1364909811746414592

"Opening a big coat and it's just full of dog collars." Everyone is mad at runners and Mumsnet is folding in on itself by discussing GETTING RID OF THE AIBU BOARD. Our livelihood! This week a friend is accused of being beloved Peanuts character, Snoopy, during Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings, nights out with as the only woman in a man-dominated workplace, how to deal with stray penises in friends' photos, a radical suggestion to remove AIBU and restructure Mumsnet entirely into thematic categories, and Simon is offering church offices and roles for money. So Simony.

"The pedagogical approach for postgraduates is INSTANT FEEDBACK." We're still in lockdown and Mumsnet has as little good chat as we do. But we struggle on and discuss taking a fancy little three year-old to a pre-deputante ball at the Ritz, being complimented on one's "very nice vagina", tips on how to bag a wealthy man while avoiding all discussion of structural inequality, and Simon gets angry about fees discourse in UK Higher Education. Again.

"Serving poutine for six out of a shopping basket." Join us as we explore the last social media site that hasn't banned Donald J. Trump and answer more Am I Being Unreasonable questions. Are we allowed to remove shopping baskets from supermarkets or not? Where have all the walkers in my Wicker Man-esque folk horror village come from? How much cheese does the McDonald's Filet-O-Fish come with and how much would Jon Bon Jovi want on his Filet-O-Fish? Is this mysterious essay in an envelope evidence of a husband's sordid affair? We end the episode with this classic mystery and, in a surprising turn of events, actually solve it!

"And what are you?" New year, new You Are Being Unreasonable. Mumsnet AIBU are struggling with an excess of weirdness this year and we investigate this madness with a general review of the state of Mumsnet's AIBU board in 2021. We also discuss defining people entirely by their function to capital, whether musicals are the most efficient information-delivery mechanism that there is, and a couple of Mumsnet ideas to deal with coronavirus in the UK: more clapping and/or full communism.

"I agree. But not with a lot of passion." A Christmas Eve spectactular! Join us as we dive into Christmas Mumsnet and discuss the lack of realism of flying reindeers, paying Dr. Christmas to decorate your house for the holidays and the 2018 masterpiece, CHRISTMAS MADE TO ORDER, Christmas "virtue signalling" and propping up charities through shoeboxes, putting Christmas jammies into a Christmas Room 101 Hell-dimension, and our holiday gift guide for 30 year-old vegan hipster men.

"Why do people always start with peas?!" Our not-quite Christmas episode! Among the many non-Christmas related threads we discuss this week, we worry about our increasing reliance on vaccines (without actually knowing what vaccines are) and discuss hot bread injections, a partner describes his mother as an artist despite her having no creative outlet, Sainsbury's rank us based on how much passata we buy and we discuss our ASMR of boiling passata, and some manager tries to trick us into talking about dossing while working-from-home. You can't fool us, Manager!

"I think the workers should seize the means of production: the office kettle." Secrets abound this week as we share our exciting and closely guarded secret supermarket buys. Why not share your closely guarded secret supermarket buys with us on Twitter? Lord knows there's nothing else to do. We also determine whose kimchi is whose and becoming the best wife in the world, look at the intelligence-measuring properties of quiz shows and changing the IQ test to a Frasier-based test, examine the yawning gap between labour and capital as expressed through the prism of the office kitchen, and we think about the radio call-in energy of mindless questions about closely guarded secret supermarket buys.

"It's important that I keep my blood-cocaine levels up because I'm breastfeeding this '80s child." People on Mumsnet are so different to the people we know in real life. This is entirely a good thing as we discover as we dive into the site again. This week, we discuss a husband complaining about creamy garlicky pasta bakes because he'd prefer to scoff Maccies and burning a curry so much it turns into a kebab, or someone rounding up their age, how people on Mumsnet are nothing like any of the people in real life, the meaning of the phrase "up for grabs" and encouraging people to drop cash through the letterbox, rounding up ages and enjoying a Jesus-themed birthday party at 33, and we meet Mumsnet's new mascot, the Mumsnet Chicken.