
My Roommate's Tik Tok Fame Made My Life Hell (2018) - lifeisstillgood
https://flip.lease/blog/my-roommates-tik-tok-fame-made-my-life-hell
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_bxg1
> 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.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
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?

~~~
rxhernandez
Wouldn't those scammers be taking those same classes in schools and know not
to scam in that particular way?

~~~
taneq
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".

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throwaway66666
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.

~~~
chris_wot
All of these things sound plausible to me. I'm curious why you needed a
throwaway account to post this, however.

~~~
earenndil
About text:

> 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.

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lordleft
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.

~~~
_the_inflator
Yep, flip ad not so in disguise.

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m3nu
Why not kick the panda guy out of the apartment? The lease wasn't in his name
after all.

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jesseschalken
Presumably he couldn't afford the apartment by himself,

~~~
chris_wot
He didn't get paid.

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megablast
He clearly did. And he was running out of savings, as he says.

~~~
chris_wot
He wasn’t being paid, he gave examples where he had to cover for the guy’s
rent.

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mmjaa
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.

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mezi
What an awful made-up story. I wish I did some actual work instead.

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noncoml
Since the lease was in his name why not kick out Alec and find another
roommate? Better than paying to break the lease.

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peterwwillis
Well that's 10 minutes of my life I'm never getting back...

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Mirioron
It's an interesting read, but I wouldn't really blame Tik Tok fame in this
case. Just a shitty roommate.

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mrarjen
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.

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maxk42
This "article" is a clever ad.

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lawrenceyan
This is literally just an ad for a competitor to Tik Tok. Super fake and
/r/hailcorporate.

~~~
anaganisk
Ihavereddit

~~~
system2
I guess everyone on HN is also on reddit. Like 100%.

~~~
etrautmann
I cold turkey quit in 2014 and haven't looked back - so happy to have that
extra 45-60 minutes per day...

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Macross8299
> Three months into the hell of living with him, I saw his wallet sitting out
> in the kitchen. He was passed out drunk in his room, so I looked in it

Oh okay, someone left some glitter in the bathroom so it's okay to root
through their shit.

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Kaveren
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.

~~~
Macross8299
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.

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walrus01
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.

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kkarakk
hn should have a filter for these kinda inane marketing submissions

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spaceflunky
i want to know who this 'muser' is now

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neelkadia
It's banned in India now.

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anonytrary
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?

~~~
gcc_programmer
Are you serious? Are you naive ? Is OP a psychotherapist?

~~~
anonytrary
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.

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taurath
I agree generally - stuff can be talked out. Where the line is drawn is the
rent money. There’s not a side of that story that can be okay.

