(Catch a transcription error? Email us at hello@underunderstood.)

John:
Hey folks, John here. You may have noticed we’ve been gone for a little while. If you missed us in the last episode, season four wrapped up in April. We are still working on a season five right now. Not really sure when it’s going to start, but if you follow us on Twitter, Instagram, online in general, we’ll be sure to make some noise when we know when season five begins. However, our Patreon subscribers know that Overunderstood, our Patreons only podcast, has been going strong every week even during this break. It’s not quite the same as Underunderstood, but it deals in the same world of internet mystery, adjacent stuff. It’s more casual than the main show. And it happens every week for patrons.

John:
This week was a little bit of a special episode of Overunderstood. It is about the television show The Circle. You may know that we did an episode of Underunderstood about this last year for season one. Season two just ended. I had a mystery itch about the show that I couldn’t help but scratch. So we did an Overunderstood about that and we liked it enough that we thought we should put it here in the main feed for Underunderstood subscribers. So, that’s what you’re about to hear, special episode about The Circle. I don’t think you have to be very familiar with The Circle to understand the story. It’s fun. It’s about a professional Santa Claus. You’ll see. And of course, if you like this and you miss us, you can join our Patreon patreon.com/Underunderstood and get an episode of Overunderstood every week, even when the main show is in between seasons. Anyway, here’s this episode. Enjoy.

John:
Hey everybody. The Circle just finished its second season.

Regina:
Shit, I was supposed to watch The Circle.

Adrianne:
Regina!

John:
Regina, you didn’t watch of it?

Regina:
Oh my God. I’m so sorry. I literally didn’t watch any of it.

John:
You realize in the episode of Underunderstood where we all watched The Circle, you had to leave during the episode so they wouldn’t get spoiled for you because you hadn’t finished it.

Adrianne:
Regina, you’re going to love it.

Regina:
And I also just cooked dinner and that’s the only time I watched shows is when I cook dinner and I could have. Guys, I really ruined this.

John:
Okay, Regina. Here’s what I can do. I won’t spoil the ending of The Circle. So you can still be surprised by who won. We will be talking about the characters on The Circle and some of what they did.

Billy:
Do you have to have watched The Circle to listen to this episode?

John:
I hope not.

Regina:
I hope not too.

Billy:
Do you know who Lance Bass is?

Regina:
Yes. Wait, was Lance Bass on The Circle?

John:
Sort of.

Regina:
How, sort of?

John:
We’ll get there. Anyway, if you have no familiarity with The Circle, we did an episode about this television show previously on Underunderstood. A very quick synopsis of what this show is. It is a reality show that in the US, you can view on Netflix. There are multiple versions of the show in different countries. They all shoot in the UK in the same building. The premise of it is there are a bunch of people who occupy single apartments in a building. They never meet each other in person. They only interact through a fake social network called The Circle, which is voice-activated.

Adrianne:
Which is “voice-activated,” in quotations.

The Circle Clip:
Circle, take me to my private albums.

John:
They never meet with each other in person, which means that they can play either as their real selves or they can be a “catfish,” play as someone they’re not. And the idea is that every now and then there are some votes.

The Circle Clip:
To stay in the game, players must become popular. To do that, they can be real or try to fool everyone with a fake profile.

John:
People become less popular and the least popular person in this vote gets voted out of The Circle and they lose. And they’re out of the game. And at the end of the show, somebody wins. It’s a reality show.

Adrianne:
They win $100,000.

John:
And the rules are kind of arbitrary.

Adrianne:
Especially this season.

Billy:
Yes. They’ll just introduce wild card things all the time out of nowhere, that completely change the rules or bring people back from the dead or whatever.

John:
And they seem to be aware that there isn’t much of a game premise happening on the show. I felt like on this season, especially, it was just like, “Watch these people, the game is completely secondary to whatever else is going on on this thing.”

Billy:
I mean, people certainly think they’re playing a game, but it’s a game they have almost no control over, regardless of what they do.

Regina:
Yes. It’s a catfishing game. It’s not a board game. It’s not a strategy game.

Adrianne:
Well, it’s not even a catfishing game, in that there’s no real reward for catfishing.

John:
I just continue to wish that it was more like Survivor where there were more group challenges and things that they had to actually accomplish as a group. And so there was more reason for them to be objectively determining who they want to stick around versus who they don’t.

Adrianne:
Yes. I think this was our problem with the game the first time around is that it’s not really, it’s kind of a nonsense game.

[music]

John:
All right. What I want to talk about is two players in particular. Jack, and Lisa.

Adrianne:
Sure. Both catfishes.

John:
Both catfishes. So, Jack played as Emily. He’s a 20-year-old student in reality. He played as 21-year-old Emily.

The Circle Clip:
She’s a 21-year-old sorority girl. She’s cute, short, sweet, easy to talk to. Everyone’s going to love her. I think people will be like, “That’s a face I could trust.”

John:
And Lisa played as Lance, as in Lance Bass, her real-life boss, because she is Lance Bass’s personal assistant.

The Circle Clip:
I’m Lisa from Los Angeles. I’m 42-years-old and a personal assistant. My boss is N*SYNC superstar Lance Bass. I can definitely pull off convincing people that I’m Lance. So I know Lance Bass better than Lance Bass knows Lance Bass.

Regina:
Oh wait. So she fully pretended to be a celebrity on the show? Brave.

John:
Yes. This was, I think, one of the things that we said last time that we really wanted out of the show is for someone to either be a celebrity or play as a celebrity.

Adrianne:
It would be even better if it were an actual celebrity pretending to be a normie and then they get voted off in the first round because their schedule is tight and they make a deal with the producers.

Regina:
It’s a Masked Singer situation.

Adrianne:
And then they get to go meet a player and they walk in and they’re Lance Bass and the player would be like, “Oh my God, I thought you were Beatrice.”

John:
So I want to talk about Jack and Lisa. Both of these people were voted off pretty early on the same episode. So one of the twists of the season was that they were going to do an elimination where two players would be going home at the same time. And it was Jack and Lisa.

The Circle Clip:
Oh no. So, that means Emily and Lance got the boot. Damn. So sad.

The Circle Clip:
I played myself.

John:
Each one of them went to pick who they were going to go visit and the producer set it up so that when they entered the room of the person they thought they were visiting, it was actually each other.

The Circle Clip:
No way.

The Circle Clip:
Yes, who are you?

The Circle Clip:
I’m Jack. Nice to meet you.

The Circle Clip:
Lisa. Nice to meet you.

The Circle Clip:
Oh, I’m Emily. Oh I’m Lance.

The Circle Clip:
Oh, what?

John:
So there was this confused moment where it’s like, “Wait, you’re not whoever, you’re not this person.” And then The Circle told them that these two players would be getting a second chance in the game.

The Circle Clip:
No way, let’s go. Oh my God.

John:
And they would be playing together as one catfish character, unbeknownst to the other players.

Regina:
So they were just one person from then on?

John:
From then on, they were one person.

Regina:
Which person?

John:
So, that person was a man named John.

Regina:
Wait, so John was just a totally new person?

The Circle Clip:
Who the fuck is this dude?

The Circle Clip:
He looks really nice.

John:
So The Circle, the computer, gave them a photo of this guy and his occupation. And then Lisa and Jack needed to fill in all the rest of the details and play as this one person for the rest of the game. And that was their second shot at winning. But none of the other characters would know that this is formerly Emily and Lance Bass, would be playing together.

The Circle Clip:
Okay. Circle, please take us to our new player’s profile.

The Circle Clip:
Oh, he’s a psychic. Oh my God.

John:
This catfish character is the only one in the season that wasn’t actually connected to the real contestants. So Jack’s original character was Emily and Jack used a photo of a friend of his to play as Emily. Lisa played as Lance Bass. And so that was obviously Lance Bass in the photo. Lee played as River and he also used a photo of a friend of his and DeLeesa played as Trevor, who was her real-life husband.

Regina:
So who’s John?

John:
Exactly. This guy John is provided by the show. He’s not connected to anybody.

Regina:
Is he connected to some PA?

Adrianne:
Is he a stock photo?

Regina:
Yes, who’s John?

John:
These are all the questions that I had. No, I don’t think it was a stock photo, because they had several photos to choose from. They had different photos of him and they’re all normal looking photos.

Regina:
And they had to get the rights for all of those photos. So they either paid for it or it was somebody that was down.

John:
Or someone that came up in the casting process and they said, we’re not going to put you on the show, but…

Regina:
Right, someone that was down. Yes.

John:
So here is what the show provided to Jack and Lisa. They had a collection of photos of the guy. It wasn’t just one photo. They had the collection like a normal player would get.

The Circle Clip:
Mustache has got to go.

John:
The photos of John are also peculiar. He looks like a middle aged guy with a white handlebar mustache and in half of the photos he’s dressed as Santa Claus.

Regina:
What?

John:
So, he’s a bald guy. In his normal photos, he’s a bald guy with this white mustache. And then on top of all this, they’ve given him the profession of psychic and the rest of the profile is blank. And it’s up to Lisa and Jack to fill in the details.

Regina:
This feels like a really big challenge.

Billy:
I mean, they were just grateful to get to keep playing.

Regina:
I’d be pissed. Just let me go home.

The Circle Clip:
This guy gives me grandpa energy. John is my real name. It’s my grandpa’s name.

The Circle Clip:
It’s a solid name.

The Circle Clip:
When you’re thinking about sweet old guys. You’re like, “That’s John.”

John:
So here’s what Jack and Lisa decided on for their biography of John. They picked age 64.

The Circle Clip:
Hometown. We could model him after my grandpa. He’s from West Virginia. That sounds very friendly. Circle, let’s go with Morgantown, West Virginia as our hometown. I like that.

John:
And here’s what they wrote about me.

The Circle Clip:
I’m John, full-time psychic, part-time Santa, who loves adventure. If we want to be the most friendly old fellow, maybe we go gay. We have Courtney and we have River and I know a lot about gay men. Loving partner of 38 years to my amazing husband, Terry, and father to three incredible children. I like John. I think John’s solid.

John:
And then they continue on, I love cook, cozy up with a good book and do improv. All of it is obviously fictitious.

Regina:
Also, if you love adventure, are your hobbies really cooking and reading? Are either of them even psychics?

John:
No, psychic was given to them by the show.

Adrianne:
The joke was that they already know everybody in The Circle. So they could play around with being a psychic and guessing, but not really guessing because they already know everyone.

Regina:
Got it.

John:
But anyway, I’m looking at all of this and I’m like, who is this actual Santa guy? And what is his connection to this show? Because he’s the only one disconnected from these people.

Billy:
In my mind, he can’t be anything other than John, the Santa psychic from West Virginia, who’s been with his loving husband, Terry, for 38 years.

John:
So I wasn’t the only one who wanted to know. Gretchen Smail at Bustle also tried to find out, but she did not succeed. I’m dropping this link in Slack right now.

Adrianne:
“The Circle introduces yet another clever catfish with ‘John.'”

John:
And the social headline was all hail John, The Circle’s delightful psychic Santa Claus. So here’s what this article says. It’s unclear who John’s photos actually belong to in real life. Amusingly, if you reverse Google image search his photo, the suggested related search term is simply senior citizen. Plus an article about how to tell when you’re a senior. While it’s unclear if the real John is related to one of the producers or crew members, applied for the show himself, or is an actor who these photos for The Circle specifically, Netflix confirmed to Bustle that the real John is aware his photo is being used on the show.

Adrianne:
I’m glad.

Regina:
And the real John, John is in quotations? So, the real John is probably not named John.

John:
Well, they don’t know. Almost certainly not though, because they came up with the name John, Jack and Lisa, the contestants.

Billy:
It’s definitely a producer’s dad. I’m calling it now.

Regina:
Yes, I agree.

John:
So what she said is true. If you reverse image search John on Google images, there are no matches for his face, but there is a way creepier reverse image search that the four of us subscribe to. It’s called Pimeyes. Who can explain what Pimeyes is?

Billy:
Pimeyes is an AI-powered, facial recognition image search. So it indexes images all over the web, recognizes the faces in them, and then you upload an image and then basically it’ll give you the closest matches and then they fade out from there to things that don’t match as much. And it does seem to crawl a lot of the internet, including pornographic websites. So by default, it does this weird thing where it only shows you the face and blurs out everything else in the photo, whether it’s pornographic or not.

Adrianne:
Oh, is that why it does that?

John:
That’s so funny.

Billy:
Yes. I believe that’s why it does that rather than trying to determine what is and isn’t porn. They’re like, “We’ll just show the face.” Anyway, sorry. That’s not a crucial part of the description of this thing. But you may have read about this tool because it got a lot of press after the January 6th insurrection in the United States because a lot of internet sleuths were using this tool to try to find people who were at the Capitol building on that day. And I believe many successfully did identify people. It’s unclear to me if the FBI wouldn’t have been able to do it on their own regardless. But I do think a lot of people were successfully ID’d by random internet users using this tool. So it is pretty powerful, it seems.

John:
And this is why I’m a little conflicted about using it for purposes like this, because it’s definitely a somewhat creepy tool, because it is very good at matching faces in places that Google images cannot match. However, we have a subscription to it. And I was like, I want to know who John is. I want to know if I can find what Bustle could not. And sure enough, Pimeyes surfaced a photo from the New York Post and I’m dropping a link in Slack right now. Scroll down on this article to the photo gallery at the bottom.

Adrianne:
And this article is called “Kris Kringles are forking over cash to take Santa classes.”

John:
And this is an article from December 24th, 2016.

Adrianne:
That’s him.

Billy:
And he’s named.

Regina:
Dave Saunders.

John:
Yes. The caption on the photo is Dave Saunders, who attended Santa school, is a busy Santa leading up to Christmas. This article is a wild time in itself because they describe Santa schools that are charging hundreds of dollars, sometimes thousands of dollars, to people who want to be mall Santas. They do things like teaching them how to lift a child the correct way so that you can do it hundreds of times in a day and not get tired.

Adrianne:
Or throw out your back.

John:
They teach you to always have both hands showing. It’s a very odd world.

Adrianne:
Also one of the people quoted in this story legally changed his name in 2012 to Santa Claus. “Santa Claus, a Copiague, Long Island resident, who legally changed his name in 2012, said he learned quite a bit through his training at Macy’s Santa program, which he completed in the 1990s. There’s a lot of difficult things that a Santa will face.”

Regina:
Oh, wait. But Dave is from New Jersey.

Billy:
Oh my goodness.

Adrianne:
Did you talk to him?

John:
With this information, I was like, am I going to freak out this Dave Saunders if I find him and no one else has and ultimately-

Dave:
My name is David Saunders.

Regina:
You talked to Dave!

Dave:
I’m actually by trade a career firefighter and I’m a Lieutenant, but I also have a professional Santa Claus business.

John:
So you’re full-time firefighter, part-time Santa?

Dave:
Yes. It’s actually grown more than part-time. I actually do it year-round.

Regina:
What? How does that work?

Dave:
It started out about 10 years ago. My son and I started the business. It was his idea. I do photo shoots for some photographers. I do commercial shoots. I do some ads. And then this year, believe it or not, right now I’m filming a Christmas movie. I’m not at liberty to say what the name is, but it’s going to be big.

Adrianne:
Amazing.

John:
It must have been tough to be in this business during COVID.

Dave:
I’m going to be very honest again. Last year was my busiest year ever.

John:
That’s wild. He also said that it worked to his advantage because a lot of other Santas weren’t working as much.

Regina:
Santa shortage.

John:
So he had a very good year. I really want to know what this movie is also that he is shooting the Santa Claus for. He said there’s a celebrity in it and he is not allowed to talk about who the celebrity is, but it’ll be on multiple networks.

Regina:
How did he end up on The Circle?

John:
That’s what I wanted to talk to him about. So before all this happened with The Circle, were you a fan of The Circle?

Dave:
I’m going to be really honest. This is how it went down, this is just it. I had never heard of the show. So someone put me in on this site called Backstage, which is a site where you can check out if anybody’s hiring for actors for whatever. So I’m on Backstage and I get this email and I thought it was sketchy personally, but they’re like, “Hey, we want to know if you’ll let us use your photos for this show called The Circle and if you’re in agreement, we’ll pay for your photos.” So my son, he’s like, “I never heard of that.” They were from the UK and they said they would wire me the money. So, that was the thing that triggered me about this.

Dave:
So I called them and they were super nice. And they’re like, “We’re not trying to pull one over on you. We’ll send you the link, check it out. If it’s something that you think is cool, great. And if not, don’t worry about it.”

Regina:
But a link to the show?

John:
I would imagine, yes. Because he had never heard of it before. And he was like, “Is this some kind of foreign scam?” Because they’re talking about wiring him money from the UK.

Dave:
So I talked to my son again, we watched it and we started laughing and he’s like, “I don’t know, man, do what you want.” And so I did, I gave them all the photos they wanted and never thought anything else about it.

John:
How long ago was that?

Dave:
Gosh, I want to say that was back in last September.

John:
Wow, so it’s been a while.

Dave:
So they said, “Yes, we’ll pay for your photos.” And they said, “If we use your photos, we’ll send you more money.” So it was probably Christmas time. And I looked in my bank statement, I told my wife like, “Hey, Jane, they actually used my photo.”

Regina:
Wait, they didn’t tell him? They just suddenly gave him a bunch of money?

John:
Yes, this is bonkers to me. The way he knew that he was on The Circle was the direct deposit into his bank account that meant that they had used the photo.

Regina:
I guess that way he couldn’t screenshot an email and post it or anything.

John:
I guess.

Billy:
Or it was just in his contract if we use them, we’ll pay you more.

John:
Did they ever tell you why your photos were in the running?

Dave:
No, I asked them, I was like, “Why me? I’m a nobody.” They’re like, “Well, we just look for unique people.”

John:
Were they looking for a Santa specifically, because they pulled a bunch of Santa photos?

Dave:
I don’t know. They’re like, “Yes, we need half Santa, half you.” And I’m like “Okay.” That took some time for just photos of me.

John:
So I confirmed that the show does use sites like Backstage or Mandy to find folks to use in the photos, but they were not specifically looking for a Santa. They were just looking for someone who would be a good opposite for both Lisa and Jack to play as. I asked Dave about, “Okay, you don’t watch The Circle, but a lot of people do. Did anyone recognize you when your photo wound up on The Circle?”

Dave:
I guess it was maybe three weeks ago or whatever when it started, even when you sent me the email. One night I’m laying in bed and my phone starts blowing up and people are like, “Hey, man, you’re on this show.” And I was like, “What?” So I told my wife, I was like, “Hey, man, pop on Netflix.” And sure enough people are sending pictures. And of course then people are like, “Did they use your photos without you?” I was like, “It’s all good, man.”

John:
I love this guy.

Regina:
Yes, I like John. I’m a fan.

John:
Dave is actually 47, not 64.

Regina:
And also not gay.

John:
Also not gay. Right. He’s married to a woman. So I had up the John profile and I wanted to go through it with Dave and just see how close they got to his actual life. So it’s John, is the name they picked. Obviously incorrect. They put age 64. Totally wrong.

John:
Now the occupation that Netflix gave them was psychic. Are you really a psychic?

Dave:
No. If I were, I’d go get a lottery ticket today.

John:
And then about me is, “Hey everybody, I’m John. Full-time psychic, part-time Santa, who loves adventure.” Do you love adventure?

Dave:
I guess if I know you, I’m outgoing, but I’m pretty introverted. I stay home a lot.

John:
“Loving partner of 38 years to my amazing husband, Terry, and father to three incredible children.” Sounds like you don’t have a husband.

Dave:
Nope, but that’s fine. I thought that was hilarious.

John:
You’re not old enough to have been with any partner for 38 years. Three incredible children. You have at least one.

Dave:
Between my wife and I, we have five.

John:
They undershot. “I love to cook, cozy up with a good book, and do improv.”

Dave:
Well, I do love to cook, but I’m not reading much.

John:
One out of three. So they did medium, I think.

Billy:
I love it. He’s got a great attitude about it all.

John:
He really does. He is so nice. And he was so excited to talk too. The Netflix person got in touch with him to tell him about the rules and also if anybody like me reached out, to funnel everything through her. And so, she arranged some other special stuff for Dave.

Dave:
She put me in touch with Lisa and Jack who played my part and they’re so cool. So I talked to Jack first, he’s 20 and he’s in college. So I was talking to him and I was like, “Hey, man, you know I’m only 47, right?” Because he thought I was 60 something. And he was like, “Man, I’m sorry.” No, dude. It’s so cool. He’s so nice and such a nice kid. And I did a Facebook live with Lee and he is so nice and I wasn’t expecting it. I was just watching his Facebook live and he is like, “Oh my God.” And he pulled me in and we had a blast. He’s so kind. His name’s Doak, who is the character he played, River.

John:
The real name is Doak? Okay.

Dave:
Yes. So he had him on and that’s why I was watching. And so we were all talking and he’s just so kind, he is just a genuinely kind individual. I just love that guy, man. I could just hug him all day.

John:
I love how this roped him into being a super hardcore Circle fan where he’s just casually watching the Facebook live of Lee and River.

John:
Would you ever compete on the Circle?

Dave:
Yes, heck yes. For sure.

John:
Would you play as a catfish or as yourself?

Dave:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. I would play myself so well. I think it’d be fun to be a catfish and try to do something different. I think the catfish did really well.

Regina:
Next season.

John:
He would be great on The Circle. The Circle has had a lot of success with people with Delco accents, which is a very similar accent to the accent he has. Yes, Philly region accents.

Billy:
Did you ask him to say the word gas?

Regina:
John, damn. Missed opportunity.

John:
And by the way, if you want a Santa for your next virtual anything he’s on Cameo, YouTube, Instagram. He’s under the business name Santa department 25.

Regina:
That’s what you’re all getting for Christmas this year.

John:
That of course was Overunderstood. If you like what you heard, you can get an episode every single week by going to patreon.com/Underunderstood and becoming a Patreon. Thanks for listening. We will be back with season five sooner than later. See ya.