Podbit · Smosh Reads Reddit Stories
Xavier told his girlfriend a heartbreaking story about Liam to guilt her into letting him join every date. Dead mom. Absent dad. No friends. All of it made up. Liam has a fiancée studying in Europe and a full family. Xavier just didn't want to be alone with his girlfriend.
Where this was said
At 25:00 · chapter starts 19:05
Shayne introduces the second story from r/Relationships: a 22-year-old whose boyfriend 'Xavier' insists on bringing his friend 'Liam' everywhere — dates, the mall, movie nights — citing Liam's tragic backstory (dead mom, absent dad, no siblings or girlfriend) as emotional leverage. OP is guilt-tripped every time she tries to set a boundary and eventually decides to break up with Xavier. She arranges a private meeting — and he brings Liam. In front of Liam, she delivers the breakup. Xavier crumbles. Liam gets angry and reveals that everything Xavier told her about his life was fabricated: Liam has a fiancée studying abroad in Europe, real siblings, and a living mother. The hosts try to decode Xavier's motives — Angela theorizes he needed Liam as a social security blanket, while Shayne suggests Xavier may have been trying to frame Liam in compromising photos to break up Liam's relationship. Amanda and Angela share personal stories about being intimidated by crushes in middle school, and the hosts conclude that Xavier was simply a manipulative liar who was probably afraid to be alone with his girlfriend.
Every tragic detail Xavier told his girlfriend about Liam — dead mom, absent dad, no siblings, no girlfriend — was fabricated. Liam actually has a fiancée, living siblings, and a living mother.
Liam revealed that the real reason he tagged along on dates was that his fiancée was completing a study abroad program in Europe and he simply had nothing else to do — not the tragic loneliness Xavier had fabricated.
Erin Brockovich describes data center expansion as 'a full-on assault' hitting communities across water, electricity, noise, air pollution, and land loss. She calls it the biggest bipartisan conversation she's seen in her 30-year career — and warns that tech companies didn't see the coming backlash.
Demanding an emergency fund balance on a first date is the wrong approach. What you're really looking for is someone with character, maturity, and a direction — not a perfect financial snapshot. You can build a budget in 20 minutes; you can't build character that fast.
The fear of not being financially ready to have children is almost always a failure to run the real budget. On $110K a year, you can afford a child. What you can't afford is the fantasy nursery, the bigger car, and staying home on one income without a plan.
You've already said enough. The enabling, the financial dysfunction, the fear it'll land in your lap — if you can't say yes with full confidence, the answer is no. Tell Mom to rent a cheap one-bedroom, sell her house, and buy a condo near the grandkids instead.
Bobby watching a father hold his baby triggered an existential moment: he and Andrew might be missing fatherhood. They priced out adoption ($40K–$70K private, $0–$2K foster care) and briefly considered adopting a child to timeshare like a condo.
In 1950, 60% of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today it's roughly 1 in 10. Capitalism and economic growth did that — nothing else has ever worked at scale. The challenge now isn't generating enough wealth; it's building the political will to distribute it.
The manosphere begins with genuinely useful advice — get fit, be ambitious, find a partner. But it rapidly devolves into dominance, misogyny, and crypto university grifts. The most famous manosphere figures are running $50-a-month Ponzi schemes, exploiting the very loneliness they pretend to cure.
Throughout human history, only 40% of men have ever reproduced. Romantic success has never been guaranteed — it has always required effort, self-development, and resilience. The incel movement's core lie is telling men they're owed something that no man has ever been owed.
The most common word Scott Galloway has heard in his life is no. That's not a failure — it's the mechanism through which great yeses are earned. For shy young men, the path forward is simple: approach people, accept rejection, repeat. Resilience to discomfort is the only real competitive advantage.
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