This Is the Best Commentary We’ve Heard on the Georgia Tech ‘Rapebait’ Email

Anyway, this walk factors in to nearly an hour a day, or five hours a week, and a man can only listen to so much vintage Sum 41 before insanity sets in. So I've had to up my podcast game. I began with the obvious bro-ish choices—the B.S. Report, WTF with Marc Maron, old Stern. But lately, though, far and away my favorite has been FilmDrunk.com's Frotcast (yes, it's a frotting reference), a weekly 90ish-minute conversation about movies and comedy that routinely veers off subject in inspired ways.

The podcast is formed by Vince Mancini and a crew of buddies, Brett, Brendon, and Ben. It's clear they've been tight for a while—there are plenty of inside jokes. But it's worth the deep dive.1 The show is smart, funny, and surprisingly profound, especially when the crew touches on the viral shit we see bounce around from blog to blog in the online hivemind. You can always count on them to deliver a fresh perspective. Which is increasingly rare on the Internet.

Here's why I'm talking about this now (besides pitching you to subscribe on iTunes): Last week, the Frotcast discussed the Georgia Tech “rapebait” email, and they were able to encapsulate something I thought at the time, but couldn't figure out how to put into words. Lost in the midst of calling the email creepy (which it was) and damning the frat guy for being creepy (which he was) stood a pretty obvious statement: This email is one of the dumbest things ever written. It's so, hilariously dumb. And when you hear it read out loud, you want to ridicule it more than take it seriously, which may have ultimately been the Tech guy's intention. As Matt Lieb says on the episode, “It's like a children's book for date rape.”

The discussion begins at the 1-hour, 13-minute mark.

(Again, lest this rile anyone up: Neither the Frotcast nor I am defending the email. Just maybe, though, it's time to stop seeing these emails as nefarious guides to assault, and more as really, really stupid mistakes.)

1If I can just bring up one old episode: Earlier in the year Justin Halpern (of Shit My Dad Says fame) went on the show and told two beautifully insane stories about working with Quentin Tarantino, who is weirder than you can even imagine. That's not a bad place to start listening.