Why doesn’t anybody come to my parties?

Claire Haber-Harris has a question. When she sends out an invitation, why does she get a tidal wave of excuses and no's? How could someone claim to have had the same stomach virus three times in a row? Search Engine investigates why a random American mom might be annoying people in her community. Cartoons Hate Her https://www.cartoonshateher.com/ on Substack Become a premium member! https://searchengine.supercast.com/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:25PJ Vogt?

  This is Search Engine. I'm PJ Vogt. No question too big, no question too small. This week, a question that is very small. Not a question of mine, someone else's, but a question I related to very deeply. A question from an internet personality, an anonymous one who writes a Substack I enjoy. I know you prefer to write online under the name Cartoons Hate Her. Is there a first name that we can use for the purposes of this story?

• 0:53Speaker 01

  Yes, so I go by C H H in my comment section, my Discord and stuff. But then, if legacy media wants me to write for them, and sometimes they do, to quote Trump, "They were begging like dogs." They were saying, "Please write for our wonderful publication." But I said, "You can't do it without the beautiful pseudonym. I don't want to do the real name. There's a lot of weird people out there. You've got to use the beautiful pseudonym." So basically, I go by Claire Haber Harris, which is C H H for short.

• 1:24PJ Vogt?

  This was minute two of my interview with Claire. Talking to her, for me, I experienced her like a fireworks factory that someone had accidentally dropped a lit match in. A stunning show, that's also a lot, where I found myself entertained, but not totally sure where to sit. So can you, how do you describe what it is you do?

• 1:44Speaker 01

  I run the number one humor account on Substack, at least as of this day. I don't know if someone's going to overtake me by the time this comes out. I write about social dynamics, anything from friendship, parenting, relationships, dating, marriage, and then also just some random internet pop culture, that kind of stuff. I'll cover a little fashion here and there. I wrote an article about incel gorillas who start their own all-male societies. So you never know what you're doing with my stuff.

• 2:13PJ Vogt?

  You really don't. And recently Claire wrote about this question she had that captivated me. A blog post called "A Full Investigation of Why Nobody Comes to My Parties." The question was simple. In the real world, Claire lives, by her description, an incredibly normie life as a mom somewhere. Two kids, a husband, but with this funny problem. She wants to throw these big parties, nothing debaucherous, just a classy party with dressed up adults and their children. Except when she tries to do it, people don't want to come. A different person would just throw smaller parties or no parties. Claire is not that kind of person. Like, why is throwing parties important to you? Why do you want to throw parties? Why do you want people to come to those parties?

• 2:57Speaker 01

  I think it has so much to do with memories I have as a kid. You know, my parents would throw this really big Christmas party every year, and it was dressy. It was formal. People would come in fancy clothes. They would bring their kids. The kids would be dressed fancy. The kids would like make little innocent mischief around the house, and there would be all this food. And it was like the highlight of my year. My parties are much more low-key, but I do like the idea of like people reasonably putting in the effort to dress up a little bit and go to a party. I will put in the effort. I cook for my parties. I like, I go to so much effort. I make cakes. I make roast duck. I want to do the work, and I love doing the work. I love doing that. All I ask is that people come and that they wear something better than sweatpants.

• 3:39PJ Vogt?

  And so what has happened so far? Like, you have this vision in your head, which is like a party where you cook something, where people dress like above airport-grade clothing. Maybe there's a theme. You, you, what happens when you try to do this?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Every single time, it was the same thing, where I'd invite a lot of people, and a lot of people would say that they were out of town. They couldn't make it. A lot of people wouldn't respond at all. I would be like, okay, I need to follow up, but I don't want to be annoying. I would follow up like three times. No one would respond. And then a week before the party, I'd always be like, I think I've got to cancel this because no one's coming. And this is really humiliating, and I don't think I have any friends. And if I continue with this party, what's going to happen is people are going to show up, see that no one else is there, and they'll be like, this girl's a loser. I don't want to go to her parties again. And then I'm going to have an even smaller group of people next time, and I'm just going to circle the drain time and time again.

• 4:34PJ Vogt?

  How many, when you send out an invitation, like, how many people are you inviting typically?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  It's gotten smaller. So it used to be that I would invite a lot of my coworkers and I would invite a lot of people that I've met once or twice. And I would set this really, really wide nuts, 30, 40 people. And like, maybe eight people would show up. So now I'll invite like 10 couples, 10 families. And I'm lucky if three show up.

• 4:56PJ Vogt?

  That is a low yield. I have to say, like, that is a low yield.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  It's a very low yield.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  One thing, though, is I have to avoid holiday weekends because I'm from an area where apparently no one stays home for any holiday weekend ever. Like, everyone's always out of town. And that's the most common response I get is, I'm out of town. So I have to be very careful.

• 5:17PJ Vogt?

  And you take, I'm out of town, like, when you get that as a common response, you're both thinking, a lot of people are traveling a lot. And some people might be using it as a very, like, convenient social out.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  Oh, completely. I see it as like, every individual person who says it, in the moment, I believe them. And I'm like, okay, sure. But then I look at my invite list and I'm like, okay, I invited 10 people. Seven are out of town on a random weekend in October. What are the odds, you know? And it's like, some of them are lying. I don't know who it is. What I sometimes do is I calculate, oh, this person has been out of town every single time I've invited them. I don't believe. There was one woman that claimed to have a stomach virus three times in a row. She didn't even change the virus. She couldn't even have the decency to get COVID or something. I was like, I don't believe you.

• 6:07PJ Vogt?

  Some important context. When Claire moved to the place where she currently lives, she was hoping to make a ton of new friends there. Instead, COVID struck and she and her husband had a baby, then another. And the triple whammy, new home, pandemic, kids, has just made finding people harder than she would have liked. She's got some mom friends from the park, went through a Facebook group, a few wins. But there's something about the conversion from a good first meeting to friendship that is malfunctioning. Claire's not a closer.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Like, here's a great example.

• 6:39PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 01

  I met this woman. She came over to her house with her kids. We had a really nice time and she was like, I definitely want to hang out with you again. This was so fun. We have so much in common and we did have so much in common. And then I invited them to my son's birthday party. And I met her husband at this party. And I said to him, like, oh, I've gotten really close with your wife. She seems so nice. We have so much in common. Um, I don't know if you've gotten to meet my husband at all, but like, it would be great. We could all go out, do something together, even with the kids, if you wanted to bring them. And he very coldly said, well, we have a lot going on this summer. Like, we're going to be out of town a lot. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's fine. We are too, actually. But like, when we get back, let's all work something out. And he was like, well, you know, work is pretty crazy and like, I have a lot going on.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  And I was like, why does this guy not want? Like, he was clearly making excuses and I was like stupidly taking them at face value. Like, I was like shooting down every objection. I was like, oh, yeah, don't worry about it. Like, we can come to you. Like, and then I was like, no, no, it's deliberate. He doesn't want to hang out with me. I don't know why. Like, maybe it was because I was talking to the husband and not the wife. Like, maybe he thought I was hitting on him. Like, I was like, I don't know. But he did not want to hang out with me. And then I never heard from the wife again. And to this day, I still have no idea what it was. It could have been like my kid or it could have been me or it could have been my husband. I don't know. It could have been anything. But I've had so many interactions like that, that after a while, I'm like, something's going on.

• 8:01PJ Vogt?

  And how much do you worry that it is just like, like something about you? Like, how much does your brain say, like, this is a personal thing?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Oh, it always comes back to that. I think that's a likely culprit.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Some of my earliest memories from preschool even, because I have a pretty good memory, is like, something is wrong with me. I don't know what it is. Other people are in on this code. I'm not in on it. I don't get it. A lot of people have speculated that I have autism. I've been tested a lot of times, uh, and I don't. I'm not even like remotely on the spectrum, so I don't know what it is.

• 8:40PJ Vogt?

  Talking to Claire, greeting Claire, it's very obvious you are encountering an unusual person. Not autistic, but has been tested a lot of times. Sort of its own category. She's also been diagnosed with OCD, ADHD. She's a person with a brain that works really well in some ways, less well in others, where the part that sees clearly is constantly trying to describe things to the part that sees fuzzily. You say like you have early, early memories of this feeling of like, whatever, the social rhythm that some people find easily, you only found with difficulty.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  I was the kid not invited to other kids' birthday parties and then no one would ever come to mind. So this is a deep wound from like childhood. And I have a summer birthday, so I'm going to blame some of it on like, people actually traveling. But there was a little girl, I still remember her name. It was Megan. If you're listening now, Megan, yes, I am still angry at you. But she had a birthday party. We were six and she invited the whole class except for me. And I don't know what kind of mother, now as a mother looking back on that, I'm like, what sicko would allow their kid to invite their whole first grade class except this one six-year-old girl? Like, what a horrible person. So I mean, not her fault because she was a child, but like her mother needs to answer for her crimes. And at that age, your parents tell you that you're perfect and amazing. I mean, if you have loving parents. And my parents always told me, oh, you're so likable. I love you so much. You're so funny.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  You're so kind. And so there's this thing where I'm like, well, why doesn't anyone else like me?

• 10:06PJ Vogt?

  I think it's fair to say that some version of this question exists in most people's minds, at least sometimes. Who among us has not had the feeling that they're being off-putting, but don't know why? That their personality has a big green chunk of something in its teeth that everybody else is reacting to, but won't just describe for you? Well, nobody will do it except a podcaster. That's why we're devoting a full episode to documenting one person's potential flaws and faux pas and unusually thick-skinned extrovert who has invited us explicitly to do so. Claire assured me she was prepared to sit with whatever it was we found.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  I think I'm at the point in life where like, I'm a big girl, I can handle it. What I want this to be, not that it's up to me, but like, I just want it to be funny and relatable and like, oh, you know, she's a little awkward. Like, I think that's fine. I'm okay to be roasted a little bit. I'm okay if someone says, "Her parties fucking suck ass," and I've hated every single one, I will laugh at that. But if someone's like, "She's a horrible mother and I suspect that she is a serial killer," I will be very upset. So.

• 11:09PJ Vogt?

  Totally, totally understandable. Like, you are, this is like a very, like, human, human, human, uh, set of concerns.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And so would the next step be for me to send you some people that you should talk to?

• 11:27PJ Vogt?

  Yes, that would be the best thing.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Okay, I will do that.

• 11:29PJ Vogt?

  Awesome. All right, thank you.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  All right.

• 11:31PJ Vogt?

  Talk to you soon.

• 11:34PJ Vogt?

  After the break, we go get answers.

• 13:11PJ Vogt?

  Welcome back to the show.

• 13:15PJ Vogt?

  Like everybody else, I like things that are good. A good meal, a good movie. But I can get about as much pleasure out of something that just totally sucks. An AI-written song, someone's generated, that they are now playing for me off their phone speaker, convinced it's completely brilliant. If something is bad enough, trying to just explain to myself what makes it bad is its own pleasure. Autopsy of a stank. How many times in my life, driving home from an open mic night or a play, had I already been mentally running through a kind of true crime story? Who or what killed the fun that could have existed in this place? I'd done it, actually, for about a million parties I'd attended.

• 13:57PJ Vogt?

  I'd just never done it like this, over the phone, for a series of parties I hadn't. Claire had sent me a long list of people who'd agreed to talk. Intimates, like her husband and brother, old friends from her pre-mom life in San Francisco, also new people in her new home. I decided to start there.

• 14:18PJ Vogt?

  How long have you known Claire?

• 14:21Speaker 02

  Okay, so I've known Claire about five years. We met as a mom meetup during the pandemic.

• 14:29PJ Vogt?

  This is Liz, a friend who Claire met through an event organized on the local Facebook Moms group.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  There was a third mom that was there, and she was kind of boring, but I could tell Claire was interesting and funny and, like, neurotic and witty. And I'm like, I shall become her friend.

• 14:43PJ Vogt?

  And so have you been to any of Claire and Nick's parties?

• 14:46Speaker 02

  So, we have kids, so my only experience with her parties has been kids' birthday parties.

• 14:51PJ Vogt?

  And what are they like?

• 14:52Speaker 02

  So, like, basically, they have a, like, great backyard space. They're a shoe-free household, so you take off your shoes, but then you put them back on to go through the back. Or your kids have wet feet in their socks, which also happens to my kids on occasion. But I'm, like, kind of... A laissez faire parent, so I don't care as much about that.

• 15:10PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Um, but you get to the back. Normally, her husband has like a cocktail situation going on, which is sometimes non-alcoholic, sometimes alcohol, depending on where they are in their alcohol journey. And then there's normally like a kid's beverage of some sort that's on the healthier side. And then there's like a birthday cake of some sort. The last time she made like a really beautiful cake herself, it was delicious.

• 15:36PJ Vogt?

  Clues, already scattered clues, dots in search of a line.

• 15:43PJ Vogt?

  Alcohol journey, I filed that in my head in case it meant something. But also, actually, the delicious cake. It meant the food probably wasn't the problem, unless I wondered if Claire could be over studying people's reactions to her cooking. A party failure mode I both encountered and definitely created. Liz continued.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  And then, like normally, the kids are just hanging out for a while. They play on the swing set, they mess around. At like two parties ago, she gave away these really beautiful hand crocheted stuffed animals because she didn't like the waste of like a lot of goodie bags and they were like very precious and sweet, so very thoughtful, very nice. But yeah, like it's a kid's birthday party.

• 16:22PJ Vogt?

  I mean, it sounds nice, though. It doesn't sound...

• 16:24Speaker 02

  It is.

• 16:25PJ Vogt?

  And it's not super structured.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  No, it's super chill, like especially given that it's Claire and Nick. It is significantly more chill than other things in their lives.

• 16:35PJ Vogt?

  And what do you mean by way more chill than some of the other things in their lives?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  You know, like the tidiness of the house is really important to Nick. Claire gets distracted sometimes because she is really focused on her kids and like she really, she's a good mom. She really cares about her kids and like really tries to stay attuned to everything that's going on with them, much more so than I do. We went out for sushi once and it was like an all you can eat sushi place and the kids were playing on a field and like she spent like a significant amount of our time like trying to make sure she could always see her son and that he would come closer, whereas like my kids were just running around like crazy animals and I was just like, whatever. So, yeah, stuff like that.

• 17:14PJ Vogt?

  Hmm. Stuff like that. I put that in my notebook. So it's funny. It's like you're describing people who are like anxious, maybe like verging on uptight, uh, which is totally fine. Uh, but you're not having, what, what confuses me is like, the experience she's having is like, there's something about the party she's throwing, or the way she's throwing them, or something that is putting off some people. There are people who go and never come back, or people who see the invitation and decide not to come. But it's hard because what you're describing sounds very normal and fine.

• 17:44Speaker 02

  It's super normal.

• 17:45PJ Vogt?

  And you've never been, I'm not trying to, I guess I am trying to lead the witness. I'm trying to resist my own temptation to lead the witness, but you've never been at a party of Claire's where you've thought, this party's kind of weird. It should be different.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  No, never like, it was weird. Like, it's, it's always a small gathering, but it's always pleasant.

• 18:01PJ Vogt?

  Huh. Okay.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  I'd say like, maybe if there was more food. Like, I, like, that would be my one piece of feedback. Like, more food would be great.

• 18:09PJ Vogt?

  Is it just, is, is it not many snacks?

• 18:11Speaker 02

  There aren't that many snacks, but I don't, I would never say that that was like a turn off to the party.

• 18:16PJ Vogt?

  People appreciate charcuterie, crudités, tiny pigs and tiny blankets. You might even show up for good enough snacks, but their scarcity wasn't a reason for a 70% decline rate. I made my next call. How far back do you go with Claire?

• 18:33Speaker 03

  So we met the summer of 2023, I want to say. So it's been a few years.

• 18:44PJ Vogt?

  This is Meredith, another fellow mom, but less a friend, more an acquaintance. Meredith had, had some different experiences at Claire's parties, although not at the first one. The first one was fine.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  It was lovely. They invited maybe the entire class of families, like not just kids, but whole families to their place for a get together. It was like a beautiful late May or June day. They have this wonderful backyard where they had like a swing set and a, they had a bouncy castle water feature type thing set up and-

• 19:23PJ Vogt?

  Oh, wow. Had they rented the bouncy castle, or did they have a full-

• 19:26Speaker 03

  Oh, no, they owned it. Yes, they owned it.

• 19:30PJ Vogt?

  I've never been to anyone's house who owned a bouncy castle.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  I know. Yeah.

• 19:35PJ Vogt?

  The bouncy castle. There'd been this kid I'd known in junior high. I remember being somewhat ostracized, not because anything was wrong with him, except how badly he was trying to be liked. The decadence and opulence of his seventh grade birthday party. He would have had a bouncy castle. Could the problem here just be the visible sweatiness of it all? But I looked into it. This bouncy castle was actually modest, one you can get on Amazon for about 150 bucks. And besides, the bouncy castle charmed Meredith.

• 20:09Speaker 03

  I was like, wow, okay. The kids were like thrilled, you know? If I had been hosting the party, I would have been like, that was a great success.

• 20:18PJ Vogt?

  Have you ever been to a party at their house that felt unusual or awkward or weird or not fun?

• 20:25Speaker 03

  So the third party, this is in the final party that I was invited to at their house, was different. It was a joint party for Claire and her daughter. It was more indoor and it was a totally different vibe.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  She had invited, there were some family there. There were coworkers there. There were, some of her husband's friends were there. And a tiny smattering of the same preschool parent group was there.

• 21:03PJ Vogt?

  And were they not mushing in a coherent way?

• 21:06Speaker 03

  No, no. I mean, because the coworkers kind of stuck together. And then like the ones of us that had kids, like we were in and out of their basement because that's where like the kids were mostly hanging out.

• 21:19PJ Vogt?

  And they weren't able to reach across the gap? Because sometimes it's fine, like sometimes it's fine. Sometimes people mix, but they were not mixing.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, yeah. I don't think they were mixing that well. I don't think I was mixing that well either. And. Claire was being pulled in a bunch of different directions herself.

• 21:36PJ Vogt?

  What do you mean? Can you describe what that was like?

• 21:38Speaker 03

  She and her daughter had these very cute matching outfits. They were trying to get photos. She was trying to like get drinks and stuff. I don't know. She was like hosting in very normal, expected ways. But I don't remember feeling like she was sort of doing the connecting work.

• 21:55PJ Vogt?

  She wasn't doing like, oh, you should talk to this person and you guys need to talk about Pittsburgh. Cause you guys both went to Pittsburgh one time.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  Right, right, right, right.

• 22:04PJ Vogt?

  Maybe one of the more common forms of bad party in this world. The one where you're an ingredient placed into a mix in which you're never gonna belong. You're mustard squirted into the batter of a cake.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  It was one of those things where, you know, I didn't know how long to stay. It was a very open-ended party and I definitely felt like relieved, you know? I don't know. That it was like coming to.

• 22:33PJ Vogt?

  Like we're gonna be here for the amount of time we need to be here. And when you go, you get in the car and you're like, let's go home.

• 22:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're like, okay, I did that. But it's like so hard cause like I do really appreciate people who are willing to host. And I think it's amazing that she is. So it's, I feel like awful, honestly, being like negative about it in any way. It was just like, it did not feel like a party I wanted to stay at.

• 22:59PJ Vogt?

  I filed these stories away and began to reach out to a new list of people. The San Franciscans, people who'd known Claire longer, even before she was mom. I sent my emails. I waited for responses.

• 23:14PJ Vogt?

  Why do parties matter? I hesitate to say this next bit because I believe it so earnestly, it makes me cringe. But I do think parties matter in a deep, serious way. Parties summon the thing we actually care about: community. Not "community" meaning fans of an influencer, not "community" meaning consumers of a product. Actual community. When people who know each other a lot or a little come together to risk something. Risk being embarrassed or embarrassing, bored or boring. Nobody has time for a party. We all work too much. It's shameful to care about them, certainly as much as I do, certainly as much as Claire does. But I think they reach us somewhere that's deeper than modern. Two inches beneath the surface of our brain,

• 23:59PJ Vogt?

  we're cave people, scared, alone, afraid that when we wake up, the tribe will have moved on and we'll have to fend for ourselves against all these bears. Claire doesn't know what it is about her that drives people away. That woman she tried to befriend, the woman's husband, her group of friends in middle school, who one day, out of nowhere, just permanently voted her off the lunch table. You don't get to do exit interviews with the people who decline your friendship. But a party, it's a way, at least, to test her current phone book, to see if the people whose numbers she knows will actually show up if she calls them. That's why she'd asked about the parties. That's why I was here.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  So my name is Alyssa, and I've known Claire, I don't know how many years, since she very first moved to San Francisco. So maybe 14 or 15 years ago?

• 24:54PJ Vogt?

  Alyssa's a long-distance friend today, but back in SF, she and Claire were extremely close, which means she attended many of Claire and her husband Nick's parties, and what she had to tell me was informative. For starters, even way back then, these were low-yield parties.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  I would say a handful of people would show up, often the same characters, often...

• 25:16Speaker 04

  Random characters who are like people she was trying to like befriend that week. I don't have a problem with these like smaller group gatherings, but I think in her mind, she always wanted more of a rager. So I guess she interpreted them as being, you know, disappointments, but as an attendee, I never did.

• 25:34PJ Vogt?

  So more evidence that Claire kind of just hodgepodge people together. Some people mind, others don't. But Alyssa, hopefully, had also done a little reporting of her own.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  I asked my own husband for his perspective. I was like, do you remember those parties? And he's like, well, I remember that their place was really small and we would just sort of all be crowded around a TV watching music videos.

• 26:02PJ Vogt?

  Wait, really?

• 26:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. She wanted this like upscale martini drinking vibe in her apartment, but then when you get there, it was definitely like an apartment that was very decorated by Nick. Kind of like looked like a guy's place. It's not as polished compared to where they live now.

• 26:18PJ Vogt?

  Help me see it. Like, how did Nick decorate an apartment back then?

• 26:21Speaker 04

  It was dark, dark. There was sports paraphernalia, like on the walls. There was a license plate that said Ass Man on it, on the wall, which I always loved. And that's what my husband brought up too. He's like, Ass Man. I'm like, yeah, I know. That was so good. We have so many photos of it.

• 26:43PJ Vogt?

  The Ass Man license plate, of course, a Seinfeld reference. Kramer's license plate, one episode. And under the Ass Man plate, they would participate in some strange party rituals, led by Claire's husband.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  So we'd get to his apartment and the TV was always on and he always wanted to show like music videos.

• 27:01PJ Vogt?

  Music videos? Like, do you remember the genre?

• 27:03Speaker 04

  I'm gonna mispronounce it, but David Guetta. He really liked him.

• 27:07PJ Vogt?

  The like, I, like dance music. Like, I think-

• 27:10Speaker 04

  Dance music.

• 27:11PJ Vogt?

  -Guetta's EDM?

• 27:12Speaker 04

  I never watched music videos. Outside of their apartment, I don't think I would ever intentionally look up a music video, but it was, but it's very core to like their, the party scene there. The second genre of events that would happen at these parties would be Claire's impressions.

• 27:29Speaker 04

  I think she did like an Iggy Azalea one. She's always been into doing impressions. Nick would sort of like, you know, get everyone quiet and be like, hold on, hold on. Like Claire is going to do an impression now. It was a little forest, maybe. And, you know, he was always her biggest cheerleader, like laughing it up and thinking it was so great. But I think it was never my husband's sense of humor or something like he was entertained by. Like I all, she is not everyone's cup of tea and her sense of humor is absolutely not everyone's flavor.

• 28:04PJ Vogt?

  Listening to this, I got the feeling I imagine defense attorneys get when they learn something about their client that might not play so well in court. An upscale martini drinking party in a man cave where the hosts go kind of Michael Scott on you. The husband demanding you sit quietly and be an audience for his wife's humorous impressions. While meanwhile, you're also subject to unsolicited David Guetta tracks on YouTube.

• 28:32PJ Vogt?

  This did not sound like my idea of a good party at all. I don't like David Guetta. I would remember that party, but I don't think I would come back for another. What kind of monster would do this to people?

• 28:48Speaker 05

  My name is Nick. I'm her husband. We've been together since she was 19, so 17 years. We've been married almost 12 years. Yeah, we've been together and I know her pretty well. If you have any, if you have any questions.

• 29:01PJ Vogt?

  Nick, not his real name. As Alyssa had alleged, Nick was responsible for those David Guetta tracks. And by his admission, he'd also been egging Claire on when it came to her comedic impersonations.

• 29:14Speaker 05

  She was incredible impersonator. She can like sing and just do like all these different artists. So I like hijacked a party, like make her do like a show for people because she's so, everyone would be laughing and laughing. And it's like, but I always think like, if she put like her talents more in display, I always say that you get more friends that way. That was always my philosophy and she always goes like the complete opposite, like not wanting to like be the center of attention anymore. Never wanting to like talk about her work or anything like that.

• 29:39PJ Vogt?

  It's hard not to appreciate Nick's profound love for his wife, his conviction that she's the funniest person he knows, his desire to show her off. It was sweet. I was even willing to give him a pass on the David Guetta stuff. And so the problem that she is, that she's identifying, that the invitation yield is bad, is this a problem that you also perceive to be real?

• 30:03Speaker 05

  It's definitely a problem. Yes, yes. It is. It's, it's, it's been a problem. So we lived in San Francisco for a while. And back then, we never had big turnouts, but we always had a good group of people. And since we moved, we've just never had consistent turnouts. And she really likes throwing parties. She grew up and, you know, her family always threw parties, these big extravagant parties. So she's always trying to do this. It just never comes to fruition.

• 30:34PJ Vogt?

  And what do you suspect is going on?

• 30:37Speaker 05

  Well, I, I think there's probably like a pie of, of a lot of different reasons. I'm sure I'm part of the problem. Like, I also have OCD. I, I can definitely get like hyper fixated with people like, scratching a table or leaving a glass of water on a table without a coaster. So that's a little piece of the pie. I think like she can definitely get very anxious when her kids aren't in sight. And I think like at a party, that probably can make people feel a little bit uncomfortable or like, I mean, the other thing she, you know, a lot of the moms typically were like, were like, even to like a party would wear like maybe just like nice sweatpants, I mean, not, not very dressed, but she comes like fully dressed up, right? I think that could also make people feel a little bit uncomfortable.

• 31:18PJ Vogt?

  The thing about the clothes, I'd actually wondered about this too. One recurring theme on Claire's Substack on cartoons hate her is the outfits she wears. She often makes her own clothes. She posts photos with her face blocked out. Internet commenters have remarked on her fashion. Someone called her clothes indecent and modest. They're being prudes, but anyone who dresses remarkably risks annoying some people. Nick and Claire had both noted that sometimes women in particular react badly to Claire, like the women at the office where she used to work.

• 31:51Speaker 05

  People she worked with, like the cool girls from work that would come, and they would be like very mean to her.

• 31:56PJ Vogt?

  They'd be mean at the party?

• 31:57Speaker 05

  They just, they would just not like pay attention to her, really engage with her. I remember like, we were getting the party ready, and we were on the roof deck and we saw someone like waiting at the bottom. It had a huge bottle of rosé. I was like, you can, you know, you can come in. It was like starting to rain. You can come in like, no, no, no, I don't want to come in till the other girls are here.

• 32:14PJ Vogt?

  Oh my god.

• 32:15Speaker 05

  She was like waiting outside with the bottle. She didn't want to be just like in there with Claire until all the other girls from work that she was friends with were there too.

• 32:23PJ Vogt?

  That's just really painful.

• 32:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's had a lot of really painful experiences. I thought it just stopped. I just like do not care that much. I just, I just don't see why it's the effort or the stress. It puts you through so much stress. I don't get why she keeps doing this to herself.

• 32:39PJ Vogt?

  Nick would prefer to not see his wife get hurt like this over and over again. He wishes they could just stick to dinner with friends. The big parties aren't even fun. Nick's brain doesn't have the feature Claire's does. A deep curiosity to know why some people don't like him, which is a sane position.

• 32:59PJ Vogt?

  Because all of us are annoying and boring some of the time in ways we'll never detect. How many times have I been at a party telling what I think is a hilarious anecdote? When I noticed that the person I've been talking at, their phone has the Uber screen on it. Because while I was enjoying how funny I think I am, they were summoning an escape pod. It's just a fact of being a person. And unless you're a politician or a celebrity, the world will never tell you the specifics of your unfavorables. But for Claire, the unfavorables were impossible to ignore because her whole life she found herself bumping into them.

• 33:39PJ Vogt?

  Months had passed now. I'd mostly worked through the list Claire had sent. Everybody had grasped a part of the elephant. It wasn't even that mysterious. For one, Claire's very anxious. It's not uncommon for her to have a freak out because she's convinced something terrible has happened to her husband or her kids. Another part of the elephant is Claire's sense of humor. A distinct flavor, not for everyone. Big performer, the kind of person who once so thoroughly hijacked a party with her Lana Del Rey impression that no one could hear anything else. A ham like that is never going to be for everyone.

• 34:15PJ Vogt?

  Although Claire says she's purposely, over the years, taught herself to dial that down, to spend less time trying to be funny, more time trying to just ask people questions about themselves. But still, the RSVPs were coming back nos, and at such a higher rate than any of this would have predicted. The last person I talked to probably should have been the first, a person who could see every part of the elephant. Claire's brother. He knew he'd always known why nobody goes to his sister's parties.

• 34:45PJ Vogt?

  It was like he'd been waiting for my call.

• 34:50PJ Vogt?

  I guess, first of all, is your perception that this is a real thing? Like, do you feel like people don't go to your sister's parties?

• 34:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, so like, my sister and I are like really, really, really best friends. And by the way, this is not background. Like, you could print this. She's just like a very difficult and annoying person. But like, she's my absolute best friend. So like, for example, today, she's like texted me like over 100 times about the hantavirus and like whether she's gonna like die from hantavirus.

• 35:25PJ Vogt?

  When you say over 100 times, are you speaking rhetorically?

• 35:28Speaker 06

  No, no, no. I think that the number of texts about hantavirus are probably about close to 100, and they were probably over 100 yesterday.

• 35:35PJ Vogt?

  Oh, that's a lot.

• 35:35Speaker 06

  And like, that's like, I ignore her like when I don't want to like respond to it. But she's like, she's like a genius and genuinely one of the most originally funny and like amazing people ever. But like, she does a lot of things that would make her being like a really popular party host difficult.

• 35:56PJ Vogt?

  Claire's brother would paint me a picture of Claire at a party that was clearer than anyone before had. But before he did that, he needed me to see what I'd been missing in Claire's story, the skeleton key to all of this.

• 36:08Speaker 06

  So she's like never been popular like at all. Like she's always been like quite widely disliked because she has a very polarizing set of traits. For one, she has a very narrow series of interests and the people who do have those interests are almost never women. So like groups of women like usually like hate her because she's constantly violating conformity and like being different in a way that's very unsettling and uncomfortable.

• 36:33PJ Vogt?

  And what is she trying to engage them in conversation? When you say she has a narrow set of interests.

• 36:37Speaker 06

  For example, like she's really into like social taboo conceptually, which is very funny because she doesn't have very good social skills, but she's very interested in other people's bad likes. So like anything that's like cringe, like she really loves cringe.

• 36:51PJ Vogt?

  Oh, okay.

• 36:52Speaker 06

  And so like she has like kind of the sense of humor and the disposition of like a Mountain Dew drinking Redditor, like Reddit bro. But like obviously, like if you talk to her, like she doesn't give off that impression right away. She's like.

• 37:04PJ Vogt?

  She looks like a very normal person.

• 37:06Speaker 06

  Yeah, so like people like see her and they think like, oh, like I know this kind of like woman. And then they like talk to her and if she's like being completely authentic, they're like very immediately bothered by her and she like has never known why.

• 37:19PJ Vogt?

  Because just to, I want, just want to make sure I have a clear picture of this. It's like she looks like a person who like maybe like.

• 37:26Speaker 06

  Normal girl.

• 37:27PJ Vogt?

  Yeah, wants to talk about how great The Office was or something or like Parks and Rec.

• 37:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:31PJ Vogt?

  And then instead.

• 37:32Speaker 06

  Not at all.

• 37:33PJ Vogt?

  She's reading really off putting, like she wants to spend her time online looking at like weird subcultures that are being made in terrible ways and talk about with you.

• 37:41Speaker 06

  So she was like really into, not into as in being a supporter of, like really into in terms of like being a lurker of like Red Pill and incel blogs, like years before that was like a thing. Like in like 2013, she was like reading like Red Pill blogs.

• 37:56PJ Vogt?

  Cause she's just like, what are these sickos thinking?

• 37:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, she was really into it.

• 38:01PJ Vogt?

  To his mind, terminally online cringe merchant is the realist version of his sister, what she actually cares about, what she can actually connect with other people over in a real way. He thinks the solution to all this is clear. Claire should stop trying to fit in with normal people. She's not normal. Find a scene of weirdos where she can be herself. But what he's seen instead is a person who's taken the wrong lesson from being shunned so much, who now just keeps trying harder and harder to fit in, particularly after leaving San Francisco.

• 38:31Speaker 06

  When she moved, she was like, okay, this time is going to be different. So now what she does is she like performs the role a lot. So I, in short, I don't think her parties are well attended because I don't think they're fun. I've been to them. I don't think they're fun. And the reason why I don't think they're fun is that she's like pretending to be someone who throws like well-liked normie parties.

• 38:57PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 38:57Speaker 06

  For the normal person, it's a kind of like off-putting bizarre performance. And to me, it's like a hilariously inadequate performance.

• 39:08PJ Vogt?

  I want to put VR goggles over my eyes right now. I've walked into one of her parties.

• 39:14Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 39:15PJ Vogt?

  What happens?

• 39:15Speaker 06

  So like at these kinds of parties, I feel like I'm going to a movie with my favorite comedic actor, but it's a drama and their performance is bad and boring.

• 39:26PJ Vogt?

  Hmm.

• 39:27Speaker 06

  And so it's like she is performing her idea of what a mom should be and what a woman in her 30s should be.

• 39:36PJ Vogt?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:37Speaker 06

  And it's like, it's just very boring. Because the thing about it is that she doesn't have that many things to talk about. She has a couple of things to talk about endlessly, but those are not appropriate topics usually. So it's like, if I meet someone who's a civil engineer designing bridges, I like pretend to care about bridges for 20 minutes and like try to learn as much as I can about like bridges.

• 39:59PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 06

  And then her eyes just like glaze over. Not because she's mean, but because something in her brain like does not fire properly.

• 40:06PJ Vogt?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Speaker 06

  And she just like can't care. So she'll be like, oh, how is that? And they'll be like, it's pretty good. And she'll be like, okay, like, do you work in office? She really hates working in office because she's just like always bullied when she's in office. Like, her main way of relating to other people's jobs is like, do you have to be in an office? Because like...

• 40:25Speaker 06

  So they're like, yep, you know, I have to be in office. And she's like, oh, sorry about that, you know?

• 40:31PJ Vogt?

  Claire's brother sees his sister as a closeted person who isn't really passing, except not in a tragic way, in a slapstick way, like if Bigfoot put on a suit and tried to ride the subway unnoticed. He thinks for Claire to have an actually fun party, she'd have to fill it with the kinds of people who appreciate her as her, instead of these normies who are not quite falling for her regular person impression.

• 40:59Speaker 06

  When I host house parties, which are well-attended, by the way, I talk about her all the time, but like all just the freak-flying stuff, like all the like zany stuff that she does. And like, the people who are my friends, who like, don't know her, are all like, this sounds like the coolest, funniest person ever.

• 41:20Speaker 06

  But she like, is so scarred from being bullied for being that person, that she just can't do it anymore. So she came to visit me, and I literally organized on Partyful, a like, Claire meet and greet, to have all my friends come meet her in person. And she was being so boring. And I took her aside, and I was like, what are you doing? And she's like, I'm just like, I'm being polite with your friends. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, that's not what they're here for. Do your thing. Like, do whatever you want. Like, that's what they want. And she was like, oh, are you sure? Like, isn't that gonna be like rude? And I was like, no, no, no, like, you're allowed to. And then five minutes later, she's like, doing her like, whole song and dance, like, people are loving it. And this is like, why, rather than asking, like, why don't people come to her parties? Like, the more interesting thing is, like, why do people on the internet like her?

• 42:05PJ Vogt?

  I, this is what I've been thinking about the whole time you've been talking.

• 42:08Speaker 06

  The story of me knowing her is that no one likes her. And then like, suddenly, now, everyone likes her.

• 42:13PJ Vogt?

  Online?

• 42:14Speaker 06

  Online, but not in person.

• 42:16PJ Vogt?

  It's funny, the internet is a party, sort of, kind of, that she's throwing in her Substack, and she's like-

• 42:21Speaker 06

  People love it.

• 42:21PJ Vogt?

  Top of the leaderboard.

• 42:22Speaker 06

  People love it. Yes.

• 42:28PJ Vogt?

  I called Claire to tell her everything I'd learned. She laughed. She laughed a lot as I listed off everything people had said they thought might be off-putting about her. For every negative trait, she had a story, often a funny one, about times when she exhibited it. But when it came to her brother's advice to remove her mask, find rooms where she could do that easily, stop trying to fit in in normie town, she rejected that.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  I think my brother's off-base there because I think he's viewing it through his eyes, where he thinks who I am is great, but I have to break it to him, like, most people don't like who I am. Most people find me really insufferable when I am filterless and talk a lot and perform constantly and am very focused on myself. Most people find that very tiring.

• 43:12PJ Vogt?

  The lesson she's learned over the years is more like, be yourself, but carefully. Not all at once. And she had an update for me. She's still not throwing successful parties, but she said something seems to be shifting. Her social calendar feels less anemic. She said just that week, on three separate occasions, it was her making the excuses for why she couldn't find time.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  My kid got a cold and I had to be the person, "Oh, my kid got sick. Like, I can't..." And it was true. I wasn't making it up. But it's like, I never thought I would be the person canceling. Like, I used to be the person where it's like, unless it's a medical emergency, I will do anything to get someone to hang out with me because I just have so few opportunities. And this week, I was like, you know what? I actually can postpone things. Which did give me some insight into why people set up cancel on me. Like, maybe it isn't always me. Like, maybe they actually are busy and people are just busier than I am.

• 44:00PJ Vogt?

  And this new social success Claire is having, she attributes it to the strategy she's followed: toning down the louder parts of her personality.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  I can't be that person with people I'm just meeting. I can't go up to a mom at the park and be like, "Want to hear my Trump impression?" Like, 1% chance she wants to hear it, you know? So that's just, you know, how it is. And so even though it is a little phony, it's a temporary stage where eventually I do slowly sort of drop the mask and like, people get to know me and, you know, I get them nice and comfortable and then I'm like, "Ah, I'm doing Trump impressions!"

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Actually, this one couple had us over for dinner, and I did the Trump impression, and we have not heard from them since.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Listening and learning. They say that they are very busy with travel sports, which I'm told is a real thing, so I don't want to discount it. But the travel sports appeared to have begun after your favorite president made the... Someone else.

• 45:11PJ Vogt?

  Claire Haber-Harris. If you'd like to come to the party she throws every week on the internet, you can find her at cartoonshateher. I say this with all admiration. It's a super weird hang. Not for everyone.

• 46:08PJ Vogt?

  Search Engine is a presentation of Odyssey. It was created by me, PJ Vogt, and Truthy Pinamaneni. Garrett Graham is our senior producer. Emily Multer is our associate producer. Our production intern is Piper Dumont. Theme, original composition, and mixing by Armin Vazarian. Fact checking this week by Natsumi Ajisaka. Our executive producer is Leah Reese-Dennis. Thanks to the rest of the team at Odyssey. Rob Morandi, Craig Cox, Eric Donnelly, Colin Gaynor, Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Kirk Courtney, and Hillary Schaff. If you have a business and would like to advertise on Search Engine, please email us, [email protected]. Subject line: Advertising. You can also send your questions there if you have a question for the show. If you would like to not hear ads on the show,

• 46:53PJ Vogt?

  you can sign up for incognito mode, our paid feed. You also get bonus episodes. You can find that feed at searchengine.show. Your contributions there are what help us keep this whole thing running. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.