Podbit · Smosh Reads Reddit Stories
A group of eight 20-somethings rent a Virginia Beach Airbnb that gradually descends into sewage hell: first one toilet, then both, then the shower floods with raw sewage, and finally it starts oozing from the baseboards. The host Paul ignores 12 available emergency plumbers before finally declaring 'This house is fucked.' It's written as a D&D campaign log and it's a masterpiece.
Where this was said
At 51:52 · chapter starts 50:22
Shayne reads the final and most epic story of the episode: a 2019 Reddit post from Today I Fucked Up, narrated in the breathless style of a D&D campaign log complete with dice rolls for damage and a witching hour mis-timed by an hour. Eight guests arrive to a lovely Airbnb in Virginia Beach — wine, chocolates, popcorn — and within hours both toilets are down. Their host Paul is reluctant to call any of the 12 available emergency plumbers a quick Google reveals. [1] — Shayne Topp "A group of eight 20-somethings rent a Virginia Beach Airbnb that gradually descends into sewage hell: first one toilet, then both, then the…" 51:52 When a plumber finally arrives at midnight with Paul and his friend, the 'final blasting' causes raw sewage to erupt from the shower and both toilets. By early morning, it's seeping through the baseboards and pooling in the hallway, cutting the group off from their last suitcases. A brave soul vaults the rising floodwaters. Paul arrives at 11:35 AM, takes in the scene, and says: 'This house is fucked.' They flee. Shayne, Ian, and Amanda are in full hysterics throughout; Ian tops it off by confessing his own tree-root sewer backup story.
Eight people at a Virginia Beach Airbnb experienced complete sewage failure — both toilets stopped working, and raw sewage ultimately flooded from the shower, toilets, and even the baseboards.
A quick Google search revealed 12 available 24-hour emergency plumbers in Virginia Beach, but the Airbnb host initially refused to call any of them.
After the Airbnb sewage disaster story, Ian volunteers that he once had a tree root grow into his main sewer line — and everything he'd flushed came back up through his shower. The hosts dissolve into chaos speculating about what exactly came back up. It's the most earned gross-out moment of the episode.
Most people confuse things they value instrumentally (because they get them other things) with things they value intrinsically (for their own sake). Greenberg's friend stayed in a miserable relationship for years because she was living by her parents' values, not her own — the values map made the mismatch instantly visible.
Jungian analyst James Hollis distills a good life to four things: shut up (have gratitude, stop whining), suit up (prepare yourself to fulfill a role), show up (do the actual work in service of others), and daily get out of stimulus-response to ask what your deeper wish actually is. The whole landscape of self-help slots into just these four bins.
Toward the end of their 20s, many men discover that all the strategies that earned them recognition and success have stopped working. It's a second adolescence — more important than the first — where the question shifts from 'how do I play the game?' to 'who do I actually want to become?' Most people going through it look fragile from the outside. They're actually building a foundation.
Boys are told from childhood not to cry, not to feel, not to be weak — but anger gets a pass. The result: a generation of men who reroute every emotion, including sadness and fear, through the only acceptable channel. Emotional avoidance isn't toughness, it's misdirected sensitivity.
Men need a 'bank account' of masculine status — muscle, money, success — before society grants them permission to express vulnerability. Chris Bumstead can cry at the Olympia and get celebrated. A struggling nobody doing the same thing gets contempt. This creates a tragic paradox where the men who most need emotional support get the least of it.
Emotional sensitivity isn't a defect — it's a high-resolution scanner for human experience. Highly sensitive people pick up body language, tone, and unspoken tension that others miss entirely. In the right environment, that's not a liability. It's a superpower.
Her supervisor told her she was too emotional for the pediatric ICU. So she asked herself: 'What area of medicine can I cry in?' That question led her to psychiatry. Finding the environment that holds your emotional sensitivity isn't retreat — it's strategy.
For someone with RSD, ghosting isn't ambiguity — it's a self-verdict. Their brain doesn't read 'this relationship ended,' it reads 'I am the reason this failed.' No closure means the brain fills the gap with evidence of personal insufficiency, and it keeps filling indefinitely.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
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