Empty Nest & Lie to Friends

Is the phrase "empty nest" offensive? One writer thinks it is and Dangerous Dave talks about it. Plus, is it OK to lie to our friends? Maybe in the case of someone who is always late, possibly.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Please, he's stuber in the den with dangerous day? Is
this a fair pointer? Should another case of people being
offended by everything? A writer for slate dot Com thinks
that we should stop saying the words empty nester. She
thinks it's subtly offensive or even damaging term because the
word empty conveys only absence. It's a word that almost

(00:22):
never gets used in a positive way. She also thinks
it's outdated term because a lot of empty nests really
don't stay that way anymore. How many times have you
seen a baby bird fly off and then come back
four years later and stick around for another decade. So
the term empty nest has been around for over a century,
coined in nineteen fourteen, and came to describe the short

(00:43):
of malaise once all the kids are gone. So she
thinks it's time to replace it with next chapter. My
kids are finally gone. Time to move on to the
next chapter. The only problem is it doesn't really work
as a noun. You can't say you're a next chapter
right now, she thinks, though it's more Posso okay, why
would a person be offended by empty nester? I could

(01:04):
think of a lot more things to call this lady
than who would be a lot more offensive in the
two So is it acceptable to lie to your friends?
Most people would agree probably not. You probably want to
avoid it. But there's a woman on TikTok going viral
after her friends made a dinner reservation told her it
was eight o'clock, it was actually at eight thirty. In
other words, they knew she would be late because she's

(01:25):
always late. Turned out they were right. She showed up
at eight twenty two, and the hostess said she was
the first to arrive. So, from an ethics standpart, is
it okay? One expert weighed in and said it's best
to avoid lying, but confronting your friend can also backfire
by making you seem controlling. So maybe lying and tricking
them into shaming them to being on time. Either way,

(01:45):
people online seem to be concerned about the ethics, more
focused about how rude it is to be chronically late.
One person was warning her the next step is to
just forget inviting you. So is it okay to lie
to your friends? You know? The thing is, I hate
people that are late. Let me rephrase that. I don't
hate people that are late. I hate when people are late.
I don't hate the people, but I hate the act.

(02:07):
Go ahead, waste your time, don't waste mine. Tune in
again for another episode of Deeper in the Den with
Dangerous daved right here.