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An interview with the man who keeps uploading my feet to WikiFeet
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sadmann1 6y agoThe internet was a mistake
- Pungsnigel 6y agoNot if you have a fetisch for feet it seems...
- oblio 6y agoWhy? These people were always out there, it's better to take them out in the open and see what's there.
- person_of_color 6y agoThe internet has caused society to devolve into idiocracy. Curtis Yavin might be proved correct.
- oblio 6y agoYou have the causality the other way. Society was always idiocracy, it was just obscured. If anything, the internet is one of our hopes for improving things. But change is rarely short and painless.
- croon 6y agoThe main question I'm struggling with is whether "neutral" people get more or less stupid by being exposed to the previously obscured idiocy (or deliberate nonsense). The jury is still out on that. What has been clear over the last decade or two is that facts, reason and logic doesn't automatically win in the "marketplace of ideas".
- oblio 6y agoIn Romanian we say: "don't act stupid, you risk staying that way". So the folk wisdom would be that neutral people do get stupid. It makes sense, the brain is like a muscle, if you don't exercise it, it withers (at least a bit). And despite how we feel about it, the solution will probably be what we've always done: we promote what we think are good things and demote what we think are bad things (i.e. if you want to take it to the extreme, you can call it censorship, propaganda, etc.). The internet is also slowly getting filtered and I don't think we're losing much for it. Most of the stuff out there is garbage, as you've noticed.
- gpvos 6y agoHa, I just realized the same last week while listening to a podcast miniseries about the Habsburgs, who ruled a large part of Europe for about 1000 years, but not all of them were that bright. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06cqzx5 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06cqzx5
- bigbillheck 6y agoThere's nothing--and I never thought I would be writing this--idiocratic about the foot fetish people, who long-predate the internet, and if Mencius Moldbug says otherwise that's him showing his own limitations.
- iforgotpassword 6y ago:-D But tbh > I’m not hurting anybody, I’m not robbing banks. Just let it ride. He's got a point there. Better this than some pedophile bbs on tor.
- iso1631 6y agoAre peeping toms hurting people?
- reedf1 6y agoVoyeurism is illegal in most places, are you saying that is what this is?
- thendrill 6y agoAs long as you don't frame it as data gathering for targeted ads.
- iso1631 6y agoSomething being illegal and something hurting someone are two separate things.
- suifbwish 6y agoIf you base what is right and wrong of what is illegal you make the perfect model citizen for any dictatorship. Have fun with that.
- saagarjha 6y agoSure, it’s a privacy invasion.
- mrweasel 6y agoThis article gives me the opposite impression, this is exactly what the internet should be. There are people out there who just like feet, and now they have a community, a place to meet others who share their interests (and fetishes). WikiFeet even have reasonable rules, only post people who have an IMDB profile. I'm sure there are a bunch of rules they violate, in terms of copyright and so on, but they're at least trying to be reasonable and impose some guidelines that aren't total off. It awesome and the interview with the guy just makes it better. He's not trying to hurt anyone, he's aware of the issues and have good answers. It's wonderful that for once you do get this retard answers as to why. Mostly it's just idiots who answer "I don't know" or "I just felt like it". I absolutely love this, that article made me a little happier this morning.
- bvm 6y agoThe guy did say he just creates an IMDB page of someone when he wants to upload their feet though which does render that rule...well not pointless but not exactly point...ful?
- ptha 6y agoFrom the article: and I’ll put her name in IMDb. And she didn’t have a page, so I couldn’t post hers. I would take the: "put her name in IMDB" to mean he just did a search. On first reading like you I did think that meant he created an IMDB entry, but the 2nd part of the sentence changed my mind.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andsens 6y agoYeah, I misread it the same way you did. He meant that he was just searching for her name, he wasn't creating a page for her.
- makach 6y ago..and what a wonderful mistake it is... and like children it will grow and make the most amazing, unexpected things! :heart:
- severak_cz 6y agoFor every weird niche hobby there is a guy who is creating literal database of something with almost scientific precision. Mix it with rule 34 and you got things like WikiFeet or some Czech site which is literal database of nude scenes in our whole cinema history (sorted by movies, actresses and director including screencaps of course).
- ewwhite 6y agoI mean, mrskin.com
- stephvd 6y agoFor the sake of curiosity, what does that link contain?
- kioleanu 6y agoExactly what the OP described
- odshoifsdhfs 6y agoA catalog of movies/actresses where they appear nude/in sexy outfits. Mostly softcore information/db on mainstream movies
- TMWNN 6y agoMy understanding is that the site long ago became prominent enough that studios and producers send clips to the site proactively.
- spiralx 6y agoI was expected it to be like Wikifeet but for foreskins lol.
- Bluestein 6y ago"Hollywood’s Hottest Buttholes", an actual headline from that site (!)
- janpot 6y agoIt's so refreshing how this article doesn't try to impose an opinion on me. It really engages me to think about the matter and form my own.
- bartvk 6y agoIt's magnificent in that way, the man in question really is honest and open about it. I especially found the last answer pretty funny: "I had the nurse coming in at night showing me her feet. I actually took her out to dinner a couple times. I can just get girls out of their shoes, it’s a thing I can do."
- voldacar 6y ago> I can just get girls out of their shoes, it’s a thing I can do. absolutely incredible line
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- adventured 6y agoThe article reads like something that I might have seen online 15-20 years ago, before everyone went batshit crazy. It's nice. She covers it very matter-of-fact without trying to force the reader to view it or react to it in a particular way. It's the hallmark of someone with a noble intellect in this day and age.
- toyg 6y agoWikiFeet itself feels very "old internet": a basic site about a very narrow niche, user-powered, with no pretensions and no hope of making any money.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoReminds me of the old "Hot or Not" sites. Remember RateMyVomit and RateMyPoo? Real class acts. Brought to you by the fine people that ran rotten.com. Kids, these days...they don’t know what they’re missing...
- salex89 6y agoHaha, not what I expected to find on HN this morning, but I'm glad I did. Some human quirks are fun. Maybe because this guy doesn't look intimidating.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- everly 6y agoFascinating - and surprisingly positive outcome/interaction - they were both great sports, particularly the writer. Foot people always leave me feeling creeped out when I encounter them online and I think it is at least partly because it seems like many of them enjoy making others squirm about their affinity for feet almost as much as they enjoy the feet themselves.
- timdaub 6y agoLol, that reminded me of "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman".
- orthoxerox 6y agoIt reminded me of "The Sensuous Dirty Old Man" by Isaac Asimov.
- jdsalaro 6y agoI went in thinking "meh, let's check" and was surprised and quite amused about the "wholesomeness" of what could have been a very strange encounter. He seemed respectful and she seemed unbothered by the whole ordeal. Interesting, not my cup of tea, but definitely interesting. Something else that caught my attention was how early he believes his interest for feet developed, as early as six and nine years of age. I wonder how this slightly amusing predilection grows and develops over time, as to even gain sexual connotation.
- vvvvgood633 6y agoIt’s pretty strange, I can remember liking feet in preschool and kindergarten. I have no idea why, though. Lately it’s gotten to be more of an “in theory” than “in practice” thing for me as I’ve come to learn about fungus and micro biome, etc. Eg https://au.news.yahoo.com/man-contracts-lung-infection-smelling-dirty-socks-012805024.html https://au.news.yahoo.com/man-contracts-lung-infection-smell...
- o_____________o 6y ago> I have no idea why, though. Check out the "The Penfield homunculus" and note that in the brain's sensory map, where we process foot sensations is very close to genitalia.
- coldtea 6y agoSure, but how is this relevant though? It's other people's feet people like, not their own (and so don't themselves feel those sensations when they touch them or whatever).
- iSnow 6y agoI'm not a doc but I would argue that the guy must have had severe fungal infection of his feet to get to a point where sniffing his socks poses a health hazard. Maybe even immuno-compromised. I doubt you can contract this from healthy feet even if you sniff them daily :)
- jonathanESSAY 6y agoSOLVED!! Tyler, a single taxpayer, generates business income of $3,000 in 2016. In 2017, he generates an NOL of $2,000. In 2018, he incurs another NOL of $5,000 https://essaywritingg.us/blog/uncategorized/51918/ https://essaywritingg.us/blog/uncategorized/51918/
- jonathanESSAY 6y agohttps://essaywritingg.us/blog/uncategorized/51918/ https://essaywritingg.us/blog/uncategorized/51918/ Tyler, a single taxpayer, generates business income of $3,000 in 2016. In 2017, he generates an NOL of $2,000. In 2018, he incurs another NOL of $5,000. In 2019, he generates a modest business income of $6,000 and then in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic results in an NOL of $13,000. Assume that in all years, Tyler adopts the NOL treatment that results in the earliest and greatest refund. Provide a chronological analysis of Tyler’s treatment of NOLs through 2020.
- alexseman 6y agoMore and more s*t content on HN as years go by...
- tibbydudeza 6y agoI found it interesting , reading for the umpteenth time why Smalltalk or LISP failed to get traction get's boring after a while.
- errantspark 6y agoI genuinely laughed out loud reading this comment. Much love.
- yosito 6y agoTIL there's a wiki website for foot fetishists. I believe everyone has a right to their own fetishes. Nothing wrong with being into feet. But the thing that really puts me off about this interview and the WikiFeet website is the lack of consent. Uploading photos of someone without their consent is wrong. The fact that the purpose is to satisfy a fetish adds an extra layer of creepy. Regardless of how the interviewer feels about it, and regardless of whether the photos came from a public Instagram account, it's not ok to upload photos of someone to a fetish website without their consent.
- camillomiller 6y agoI do not agree. These are photos posted publicly on Instagram or Facebook. Anyone could see them. This website just aggregates them, but there's technically a live link to these pictures. And no, the fact that someone uploads them to a service whose ToS they have accepted makes no difference. You're posting something publicly? To me that's explicit consent that you want people to see them. If those pics were behind even the slightest wall (like a private account) or taken from private messages of course that would be different.
- tobr 6y agoStrongly disagree, both from a legal and moral point of view. Posting something publicly absolutely does not imply that anyone is free to do whatever they want with it.
- contravariant 6y agoCase in point: the existence of copyright licenses.
- yosito 6y agoWhen I upload photos to Instagram, I am not explicitly consenting to my photos being used for people's fetishes, even privately. I can't stop people from doing what they want privately with my public photos, and I know that, but I still find it morally wrong and disturbing. But I'm not sure that it's legal to republish someone's public Instagram photos on another website either. I'm no legal expert, but I believe it's still a copyright violation to copy someone's Instagram photos and use them as content in your own creations. But legal or not, I think it ought to be considered common decency not to post photos of someone on a fetish website without asking for their explicit permission to do so.
- thendrill 6y agoIf the year was 1950 your comment can sound something like: "sure homosexuals don't bother anyone, and I am not saying it is wrong, but regardless of that I am uncomfortable about it and it feels icky and gross to me, and I think it should be wrong..." Do you see the parallel?
- Cederfjard 6y agoThat’s not at all the argument that was being made. I’m sure the grandparent poster would be more than happy for the content to stay up if they had the explicit consent of the people they’re collecting images of.
- thendrill 6y agoThe images were publicly posted. How much more of a consent do we need? The images are not altered only cropped. According to this logic when journalists crop a picture of celebrities they should ask for dress designer consent to not include the dress? Some people like faces some people like feet. Why do we need consent for liking a certain part of picture?
- Cederfjard 6y agoOK, and that might be a fair counterpoint, then. I don’t have a thought out opinion on that. What you said above was completely different however and did not follow.
- detaro 6y agoThat does not automatically grant you the right to repost them elsewhere in a different context.
- EveYoung 6y agoIt's not about consent but copyright. If I share a picture of me, this doesn't give anyone the right to repost it somewhere else.
- yosito 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pwdisswordfish0 6y ago> So why not just look at feet on Instagram, or screenshot them for yourself? What do you get out of posting them to another website? This question has always been weird to me, but apparently there are people who don’t experience “this thing is good, i wish to contribute” or “this has brought me joy, i wish to give something back”. I mean, thankfully there are still enough others that we can have Wikipedia, where you also don’t get anything in return. Not even “clout”. Sometimes someone will send you a thank you and that’ll make your day. Open Source is another obvious one, but it extends to the real world, too. Some people will plant flowers in public places or do yarnbombing or pick up trash in the neighborhood or whatever. Why do it? What do you get out of it? I mean, I don’t want to be harsh saying “what a dumb question”, but it just kind of makes me uncomfortable how it challenges something that should be celebrated. The next question about it being invasive is good and valid, but this one on its own just sounds like “why not content yourself with passively consuming”. I’m glad he called himself “generous” because it’s true.
- mattmanser 6y agoIt's not something they created. You're not really contributing, it's more akin to showing off your stamp collection, but with sexual undertones that make many feel uncomfortable.
- pwdisswordfish0 6y agoWikipedia contributions are also not something you “created”. In fact, you’re discouraged from adding information you have not taken from somewhere else. Archival, compilation, curation, categorization, making information legible and accessible and persistent is still work. See also archive.org. Whether the specific topic makes some people uncomfortable is beside the point. The question was “why do you try to help a website you like prosper without anything in return”. The reward is a more complete foot database and the good feeling of having helped.
- watwut 6y agoWikipedia contributions are very much created. You are not supposed to copy paste from elsewhere. You are writing own text.
- Clewza313 6y agoAnother wiki for a more mainstream fetish: https://boobpedia.com/boobs/Main_Page https://boobpedia.com/boobs/Main_Page (NSFW) Interestingly, while it's been around for years, the word "boob" means it's basically invisible to Google.
- Loughla 6y agoThe amount of time people spend on this sort of thing, just like the feet wiki in the article, is just fascinating. I'm all for having odd hobbies, but this is just next level.
- thendrill 6y agoI loved the article. More people should devote to their passions.
- Hallmane 6y agoThere's something peaceful about people who know they're 'weird' compared to the masses, but really don't care. Finding confidence in who (and what) I am is really my goal in life. Saying that, I'm not even that 'weird', I just always have thought about me from the perspective of others.
- throw14082020 6y ago> There isn’t much of a community on wikiFeet. It’s not like people can heart the photos or whatever. Now I can see an important problem to solve. Innovation!
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoFeetbook.com? Instafoot?
- pkrotich 6y agoGreat article- I appreciate how pleasant both parties were! Some of us, admittedly, like women with nice ass. I think feet is less creepy if you really think about it. But to each to their own!
- FartyMcFarter 6y agoLiking people's bodies isn't creepy.
- ALittleLight 6y agoTrue, but collecting sexual photos of them and rating them may be.
- ivanche 6y agoIrony is that The Facebook started exactly like that.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoAre photos of people's faces sexual? (obviously not a photo of a face associated with a sexual act, which I assume facebook's original websites were not)
- ivanche 6y agoIt was even before The Facebook became a public website. Zuckerberg smashed some curl + PHP + UI to fetch and display pics of campus girls and "users" could rate their hotness.
- prvc 6y agoInteresting that here is yet another site that depends on IMDB in an essential way. I wonder what happens to that whole ecosystem if the database becomes more limited in how it can be accessed, or if it stops being updated and maintained in the same way.
- jonathanESSAY 6y ago<!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>RNMA’s dive into electric, hybrid, and autonomous vehicles can be seen as a form of</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Multiple Choice</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:list --> <ul><li>mass customization.</li><li>breakaway positioning.</li><li>competitive parity.</li><li>harvesting.</li><li>reverse positioning.</li></ul> <!-- /wp:list --> https://essaywritingg.us/blog/uncategorized/renault-electric-business-model-innovation/ https://essaywritingg.us/blog/uncategorized/renault-electric...
- kergonath 6y agoNote to self: never get a page on IMDB. Not that there is any risk...
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIt's probably not down to you; IMDB is pretty much a wiki I believe. But, not becoming famous is something to strive for. or. not becoming famous is? Either / or.
- drakonka 6y agoI ended up with a page on IMDB for participating in an episode of a tiny web streaming tech show years ago, and apparently you can't just get them removed. It isn't a high bar of fame/publicity to get stuck in there, unfortunately.
- iSnow 6y agoLooking at the headline I tensed up feeling how intrusive and even abusive this could feel for her. Was happy to find a good-natured exchange between the two and the guy didn't come over as creepy at all, even though his hobby probably will feel like stalking to other women. I guess it's because feet just toe the line between ordinary photos - there are huge celeb sites - and more intimate ones you wouldn't want to see posted online.
- Ruthalas 6y agoThat last sentence is appreciated. :)
- kleiba 6y agoYou know how every now and then someone comments "That's it, HN has officially become Reddit" or something along those lines? Well, I think this would be a good opportunity... (Usually, those comments get downvoted, so please feel free.)
- thendrill 6y agoNahh nahh. You are absolutely right. I love it when the techno "elite" throws out their principles the moment something feels icky but has no set social norms only parallels that are to icky to think about in an objective way. So you are absolutely correct. Hn is just reddit suddenly
- Nursie 6y agoWho has principles that state it’s ok to take someone else’s personal pics from social media and post them as effectively porn?
- thendrill 6y agoSo it is ok for bloggers, journalists, fan sites, meme sites, meme factories etc. To take someone's publicly posted pic and use it for amusement or personal gain? But it is not ok for a group of collectors to organize collections on internet out of crops of publicy posted photos, for something completely legal?
- Nursie 6y agoYou’re setting up a straw man and then knocking it down, as such I feel no need to argue with this.
- Karsteski 6y agoWhy do you think they are downvoted? To me, it comes across as pretentious grandstanding, but I also understand the sentiment. I've not been using hacker news for very long, so I'm not familiar with what was posted 5+ years ago
- joelbluminator 6y agoWas WikiFeet built with Elixir?
- o_p 6y agoHow come theres no Smell Transfer Protocol yet
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoMaybe because the STP abbreviation has already been claimed by a bunch of other things? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STP#Computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STP#Computing Anyway I'm opting out of that one, I like my internet scent-free. I guess there may be some people who are really into smelling?
- Der_Einzige 6y agoIsn't this what the brapper crypto is for? /S
- throwaway889900 6y agoSadly there is no RGB of scents.
- icha 6y agoThis article is so absurd it feels surreal reading it.
- jmmcd 6y agoOff-topic, but the man in the interview reminds me of this lovely song about a foot fetish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XDCoVoeMKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XDCoVoeMKs
- mensetmanusman 6y agoIt would be hilarious if Instagram changed their site consent form to simply say that ‘your feet may end up on a foot fetish website.’ How many users would continue to use Instagram?
- rincebrain 6y agoThere's also a pretty amusing epilogue/footnote to the article from the author, which I'll quote verbatim here: "At the end of our interview he asked me to print out the piece, step in paint, step on the story, and mail it to him with my foot autograph. I might." - https://twitter.com/LEBassett/status/1379878161589153793 https://twitter.com/LEBassett/status/1379878161589153793
- ColeyG 6y agofootnote
- Ceezy 6y agoGathering people informations to put them in a porn like website (without their consent) doesn't sound like a brilliant idea to me.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
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- xyst 6y agoSome people like boobs, others like ass, and a subsection of people just love feet. I guess if you really think about it, adoring any body part is a “fetish”. It’s just socially acceptable to like tits or ass, and society has deemed adoration of feet as undesirable.
- ndespres 6y agoAdoring the reproductive parts of our bodies seems like a normal biological response though being so fascinated by them that you would be a a contributor to WikiButt or whatever would also be strange to me. To fetishize the foot is something different.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoWhat does reproductive mean here? Because faces, breasts, hair, and even butts aren't specifically part of the reproductive systems, but are all normally adored. I would think things that signal healthiness or contributors to increased chances of survival are subject to a biological response, rather than specifically reproductive parts. In which case, a foot devoid of issues can be a pretty big signal of healthiness, for example one not subject to bunions or flat footedness, etc.
- sandos 6y agoAll this is very sweet for some reason. I mean, its not the guyfs fault, right, its just the way he is wired? Now, if it would have been 'young kids' instead of 'feet' it would be rather more unsettling. And I don't think many would think "its not his fault".
- Taylor_OD 6y agoI'm not sure the point you are trying to make other than to try to normalize pedophilia. I'm for reducing the stigma around individuals who have pedophiliac thoughts but do not act on them but that is not what you are describing. You are talking about someone acting on them.
- drakonka 6y agoStealing photos to repost them on a fetish website without consent or license definitely is "the guy' fault".
- imwillofficial 6y agoThis was awesome. I laughed so hard. Made my day better.
- tediousdemise 6y agoEnjoyable read. I like how the Q&A playfully abstracts that Robert likes beating his meat to feet. Sometimes you don’t need or want to know the low level details of your implementation :-)
- nickysielicki 6y agoThere is link-tracking on this article, and that's fine -- whatever. What blows my mind is how my browser (latest firefox) is seemingly enabling it. When you hover over the first link, it clearly shows in the bottom left corner that it will link to 'wikifeet.com', but if you actually click the link, my adblocker stops me from being redirected to 'redirectingat.com'. Why does my browser lie to me like this? edit: inspect element clearly shows <a href="https://www.wikifeet.com/Laura_Bassett"> my wikiFeet page</a> What's going on here? Is it replacing the links on mousedown?
- detaro 6y agoThe alternative would be showing "I can't tell you what happens if you click here". An interesting question if that's better or not. > What's going on here? Is it replacing the links on mousedown? Yes. Observe what happens to the URL shown when you right-click the link.
- polote 6y ago> Is it replacing the links on mousedown? Yes, mousedown replace the href attribute, and then a few milliseconds after put the original link back. To debug that king of thing, you just put a break point on attribute modification of the link attributes, and you will see there is js triggered
- danaliv 6y agoGlad to hear the majority of Hacker News thinks it's ok to sexualize and catalog pictures of me without my consent. At least now I know who I'm dealing with here instead of merely suspecting it.
- polote 6y agoThe thing is that all her information are public. and if you type her name on google you will directly find her instagram which display the same photos
- floatingatoll 6y agoFinding someone’s name in a phonebook doesn’t give you permission to represent yourself as them.
- rovolo 6y agoThe issue danaliv is talking about is not the sharing of public information. It's the act of curation which adds additional meaning to that public information.
- whatshisface 6y agoIf I had to guess, they're taking the tone of the author for granted, as an authority on how they're supposed to feel about it.
- udhdhxnxn 6y agoDon't post your sexy feet online and you won't get creeps viewing them
- nonameiguess 6y agoI don't want to sound like I'm defending the paparazzi or anything, but they are the source of many if not most of these pictures for the true celebrities. For better or worse, expose things to the public as a public figure and they're going to be catalogued by someone. Wikifeet tries to ensure a person is actually a public figure via the IMDB requirement as there is really no objective and automated way to tell the difference. Should this woman qualify? She's been a well-known writer for over a decade, guest starred on several cable news shows, which is why she is on IMDB. Apparently, she's the woman who accused Chris Matthews of improper green room behavior, which led to his dismissal from MSNBC. I can't say that means she deserves to lose all right to privacy forever, but that is unfortunately the tradeoff you make becoming even just a minor public figure, and she doesn't seem to mind. A person who really desires privacy can get some of it at least, more than this. Wikifeet doesn't allow anything like revenge porn or posting of hacked or stolen photos, and you can request to get them taken down if they belong to you. Wikifeet also has a section of their site for people not classified as public figures, but you can only post pictures of yourself there and they're catalogued separately from the celebrities. For what it's worth, if you go to her page, she seems to have posted more photos herself, which explicitly say they're dedicated to her fans on Wikifeet. And her site rating is up to 5 stars now.
- jancsika 6y ago> I don’t really get anything out of it. I just like to share it. I mean, people like feet, like me, and you have beautiful feet, and I just put it on there. I just think I’m helping other people out. I mean, I do save some for myself. Yet Sci-hub is not legal. I think I'm in the wrong timeline. Are there others out like me? Where do you go to chat, and may I chat there, please?
- Traubenfuchs 6y ago> I actually took her out to dinner a couple times. I can just get girls out of their shoes, it’s a thing I can do. I would really like to know how that works.