Interesting story, at the end it culminates into an ad for the website. It should be noted that people who are media-famous are often miserable and it looks like his roommate was silently suffering. Should OP have been a little bit more sympathetic towards that? I didn't see any mention of OP trying to, you know, talk his roommate through the issues like an adult?
I think most people are taught to communicate with people they have problems with. Communication is key to any relationship; you don't need to be a psychotherapist to know this. In the US, proper communication with roommates is a basic social skill that most people learn in college.
You can't expect to do nothing in a bad situation and then complain when it gets even worse. If you read a post about a guy complaining about loud neighbors, you'd be pretty skeptical if he didn't mention "asking them to turn the volume down" even once.
There's a lot left out of this story. Did OP even bother confronting the roommate about his problems? Did OP just remain passive-aggressive and sulk the entire time he lived there? I'm curious why OP left out that side of the story. You can't really hate on the roommate that much if OP didn't even vocalize his concerns to him.
It’s funny that you assume the narrator is a male while I assumed female. I’m not sure whether that would change anything about how to address difficult situations with a male roommate.
I read it like the author moved out with six months expenses in the bank. After six months they hadn't been able to make money off music and weren't having luck finding a job. So while OP was in the hospital they terminated the lease and GTFO. The roommate sounds like a crappy person, but the author has now also made them homeless.
Disorganized lives. Tiktok guy and the writer herself are not ready for real life as it seems. Just because you find a shitty roommate doesn't mean you must move back to Arizona by stealing his stuff. This generation is doomed.
That was a pretty entertaining read. And technically an ad for flip, but I’m not mad - I think it’s low key hilarious that they’re sharing roommate horror stories to sell their product. That’s ingenious.
> He explained that his lease was set to renew, but for some (long, complicated, confusing) reason, he couldn’t put his name on it. My name would be on the lease.
There's the red flag right there. Never ever ever do this with someone you have less than absolute trust in. They can bail at any moment and leave you in debt, and there's nothing you can do.
Seriously, after I read that I was like "every bad thing that comes after this is totally predictable". This is like worse than co-signing a loan. You're basically solely signing a loan, all to take on the risk of someone you've never met.
Seriously, why are there no "avoiding scams" classes in schools?
You'd still learn about categories of scam, so the bar for scammers would be much higher than just "take this thing which worked back in the 1800s and apply it to naive kids".
We need more "avoiding scams" lessons in general, not just in schools. Many of us on HN can smell scams from a mile away, but that's because of the hacker mindset and the natural inclination to see bugs in a system. We are the people who should be educating our friends and family about how to identify and avoid scams.
Exactly. The "hacker mindset" only protects us from scams that aren't specifically marketed towards us. Like bitcoin and all other crypto currency for example.
Perhaps there are different hacker mindsets. Part of what I would call my hacker mindset is a deep distrust of anyone who appears to be strongly motivated by money, and I have thus far been 100% successful in avoiding cryptocurrency scams.
Yeah the obvious thing in this that stood out to me was that if things go wrong the lease is in your name. This means two things. Number 1: You're shafted if he leaves. But Number 2: Technically you're leasing the apartment not him, so you can just turf him out and keep the apartment for yourself if you were motivated enough.
Living with this person sounds miserable, and obviously they're in the wrong for everything, but it's still not cool to go through someone's wallet just because they leave it out just to check their ID.
Yeah, I've had bad roommates before but my reaction has always been to avoid them and want less to do with them, not invade their privacy and find out more about them. I guess that doesn't make for as interesting social media posts [edit: or advertisements] though.
I am sorry, I am not buying this. You entered a 2 year contract with a person that you 've never met. That lives already there but only your name is on the lease. And who is around 20 years old but does plastic surgery to look like a teenager. (is that even a thing?)
And you know what? Screw it. Showing kids videos of pandas eating cucumbers and asking them to be like the pandas, is an ingenious use of narcissism to achieve what parents collectively wasted more energy than north korea's nuclear program ever did. Convincing their kids to eat vegetables.
----
EDIT: I 'll contribute a story of my own.
A friend of mine is a photographer in Bay area and LA. Since the past few years he only works with instagram models, predominantly asian girls. I spent some time hanging out with him and two models that are also good friends. The first you notice is that... they are completely unremarkable. Shocking right? They didn't treat the waitress bad, and I was never ignored mid sentence in favor of checking instagram notifications. At least no more than a person with a 2-digit follower count would.
And didn't experience a crazy fast do coke and club 6 nights per week culture. Quite the opposite actually, I witnessed the "I 'll take a picture with this drink, and drink only half of it because it has too many calories". I think the most "vapid" thing I witnessed was them being VERY jealous of another influencer who managed to get the "blue verified" icon. That's it. Don't get me wrong, they were kinda shallow, but not magnitudes more than people with no following, that's the thing! I think we love to hate them because they are treated as if they achieved some high-status with no effort. Sure. But we are forgetting that what is projected on social media is total fabrication. Both of them are off instagram now, since they got married (to well-off dudes). Was that an end goal? Was it gold digging? True love? None of my business actually.
None of this is new. LA is full of stories like this, going back decades - beyond the lunatic fringe of modern 'social media influencers', every 6 months LA gets a new wave of kids coming into the city to become the next big thing. Those of us who lived there and weren't involved in Hollywood often referred to the new wave of fresh blood as 'enthusiastic space cadets', because after a few months they'd disappear as if they'd gone to the moon.
That part about him marking everything with sharpy ink and glitter would have been nice for when I had my roommate from hell. I once dried myself off with a towel to half way discover some other traces of matter I didn't want to see... I tossed the towel.
Who sends a person they've never met money via Venmo, for a place to live that they've never visited in person? that's like the #1 rule of how now to get scammmed.
This guy was a huge idiot. He put his name on the lease. He signed a 2 year lease in a place he doesn’t know with a person he doesn’t know. I’m sorry but it has to be said that this guy is a total idiot.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadYou can't expect to do nothing in a bad situation and then complain when it gets even worse. If you read a post about a guy complaining about loud neighbors, you'd be pretty skeptical if he didn't mention "asking them to turn the volume down" even once.
There's a lot left out of this story. Did OP even bother confronting the roommate about his problems? Did OP just remain passive-aggressive and sulk the entire time he lived there? I'm curious why OP left out that side of the story. You can't really hate on the roommate that much if OP didn't even vocalize his concerns to him.
Even without being named explicitly on the lease agreement, AFAIK this “Alec” still maintains full tenants’ rights.
There's the red flag right there. Never ever ever do this with someone you have less than absolute trust in. They can bail at any moment and leave you in debt, and there's nothing you can do.
Seriously, why are there no "avoiding scams" classes in schools?
Now let me tell you about my new ICO, you can get in on the ground floor
And you know what? Screw it. Showing kids videos of pandas eating cucumbers and asking them to be like the pandas, is an ingenious use of narcissism to achieve what parents collectively wasted more energy than north korea's nuclear program ever did. Convincing their kids to eat vegetables.
----
EDIT: I 'll contribute a story of my own.
A friend of mine is a photographer in Bay area and LA. Since the past few years he only works with instagram models, predominantly asian girls. I spent some time hanging out with him and two models that are also good friends. The first you notice is that... they are completely unremarkable. Shocking right? They didn't treat the waitress bad, and I was never ignored mid sentence in favor of checking instagram notifications. At least no more than a person with a 2-digit follower count would. And didn't experience a crazy fast do coke and club 6 nights per week culture. Quite the opposite actually, I witnessed the "I 'll take a picture with this drink, and drink only half of it because it has too many calories". I think the most "vapid" thing I witnessed was them being VERY jealous of another influencer who managed to get the "blue verified" icon. That's it. Don't get me wrong, they were kinda shallow, but not magnitudes more than people with no following, that's the thing! I think we love to hate them because they are treated as if they achieved some high-status with no effort. Sure. But we are forgetting that what is projected on social media is total fabrication. Both of them are off instagram now, since they got married (to well-off dudes). Was that an end goal? Was it gold digging? True love? None of my business actually.
> VP for a SF based startup. Anonymous here to speak my mind freely.
So it looks like a general throwaway account that's not associated with the person, just used for general posting.
Oh okay, someone left some glitter in the bathroom so it's okay to root through their shit.
And which competitor? I figured it was an ad for flip, which is (as far as I can tell) a leasing service.