Goblin Mode

Mia talks to Juniper about the rise of Goblin Mode, our media ecosystem, misinformation, and how journalists' twitter addiction leaves them prey to far right media operations.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's Goblin Mode. Welcome to it could happen here a
podcast that is today in Goblin Mode. Uh, you know
what it's about. You've heard to say it like about
twenty million times. But yeah, I'm your host, Christopher Wong
and uh with me today we have Juniper, who is
a really twitter ship post extraordinary extraordinaire, on to discuss language, media, culture,

(00:31):
of the nature of reality, and Goblin Mode. Junifer, Welcome
to the show. Hiy, how's it going. It's going good.
It's going much better since Goblin Mode ceased control of
the world. We are now living in the age of
Goblin Mode. And Drew marsh said this morning, apparently it's

(00:53):
quite a time. I didn't realize just posting with like
just posting an influence so much around me. I guess
it's been an interesting time for sure. Yeah. So, so
I wanted to talk to you about sort of the
absurdity that is goblin Mode. Um. And I want to
hold off on talking about what goblin Mode like is
or isn't for a bit because I think that's actually,

(01:14):
weirdly the less interesting part. And I want to start
with instead the story of how goblin Mode became like
a thing and why I am reading. I keep I
keep like, every every time I look for more Goblin
mode headlines, there's more Goblin mode headlines like the I
think my favorite so far is from Bloomberg. It's a dieselent.

(01:37):
Diesel prices have gone goblin mode. Forget crude oil. This
could be the real energy emergency. Yeah, that that is
by far one of my favorites to uh. The full
headline too, if you search for that one is it's
what you said, but then it adds on thanks to
the Ukraine War, an official Bloilberg headline with goblin mode

(01:58):
and the Ukraine words. I gotta that's just part of
my favorite one. Amazing. The other part of three that's
extremely funny is that so the people who are doing
these articles keep getting asked someone, and someone's asking like
an intern to find a picture of a goblin, and
they keep posting pictures of orcs, which is like enormously

(02:18):
funny to me. Okay, so I'm not sure what they're
searching to get those. Yeah, I don't know. It's really incredible. Okay,
So yeah, I guess that should So we should start
from the beginning of this story, which is, yeah, can
you talk about your ship post and uh what you
were thinking at the time when you made a ship

(02:40):
post that randomly like has has had months long ripple
effects on the world. Sure, I think you're right though,
like the post itself, and that's like the least interesting
part of all of goblin mode in my opinion as well,
Like just seeing the ripple effect is what's been super

(03:02):
interesting and really funny to me. But um sure yeah,
but the post um basically, I think it was like
the day that um what Kanye West and Julia Fox,
which there's a quick note, I've never heard of Julia
Fox before any of this. So I like sometimes if,
like you know, Twitter is all talking about one thing,

(03:23):
the most recent thing being like the Will Smith slap,
like everyone's talking about that. So whenever like some like
big event like that is happening and everyone's posting about it,
I try to like think of some creative different posts
I can do, you know, just to get in on
the the discourse or whatever you wanna call it. So
I just I really don't know what compelled me to
make a fake headline, but basically, I just I just

(03:45):
decided to search. I think I was driving home from work,
and I just decided to search like Kanye West Julia Fox,
and I just found the first headline and I just
edited it to say, um, Kanye West doesn't like it
when Julia Fox goes gobline basically, and that's why they
broke that was that was the whole lessence of the
of the post itself. Um, And I really didn't think

(04:05):
too deeply about it beyond just making the post, and
it just it caught fire with like I guess what
we would probably call normal normal Twitter, like people that
aren't even like necessarily leftists or anything like us. Um,
it just really caught a hold with the whole of
Twitter and pretty much like most of the people that
saw it. You can you can go back and check

(04:27):
the replies. Most people think it's real at the time
and replying about all things it's real, and no one,
like hardly anyone verified it. It was like kind of
insane to see, Yeah, yeah, I think it's funny because again,
like you could very you could you could just google
this right, like you can just google it and it

(04:47):
would be like, oh wait, ho on, this isn't real,
But like no one did that, and it was like, yeah,
like you could have just easily searched the main part
of the headline, like Kanye West to Julia Fox. It
was literally the second or third headline you could have
found the same website, the same author, but seeing that
it wasn't the correct headline. Although that does remind me

(05:09):
when there was the initial article about my post um,
I forget who wrote it. At this point, I think, yes,
that's right, it was the focus they they they for
some reason, it made the assumption when they decided when
they decided to talk about my tweet that the website,
like the headline that I made made up the original

(05:32):
website like edited that part out. So they thought that
my headline was real, but it was just ed and
taken away. And so that also affected what some people
thought about it too, Like they thought a lot of
people thought it was really real. That's that's what's insane
to me about this. Yeah, and like you and like
like Vogue like picked this up. This was just like

(05:53):
a thing that that like everyone has real. Everyone was
just reporting on it as news and there's so much
like there's so much like incredible stuff about this like
part of it. You know, So what if the articles
that that gets published about this like after, so like
there's this initial period where everyone is running around going like,

(06:16):
oh my god, it was goblin mode, and then Julia
Fox has to make a statement that's like no, there
was no goblin Mode. No one said this. Yeah, yeah,
that's That's the interesting about like the evolution of goblin Mode,
like stemming from my post specifically, is at first the
coverage was talking about whether my post was real or
fake and talking about that aspect of it. But as

(06:39):
time has gone on, it's kind of evolved away from that,
Like you you won't see any goblin Mode article talk
about the original like Julia fox tweet that jump started
this whole thing anymore. It's kind of like shifted away
from that initial, that initial post, which I found really
interesting that that's what sustaining this. I feel like, yeah,

(07:00):
wanted to read a uh, I wanted to read a
passage from one of the art I don't know why
I'm calling it a passage. It's just like a sentence,
but read part of one of the articles that that
came from up from the the initial search, which is
from the streetwear company called high Snobby. Don't tell me
if I'm like pronouncing that wrong. Uh, well, okay, that's

(07:23):
not not your Twitter. If I'm pronouncing that wrong, My
Twitter is at I right, okay, yell there, Um yeah,
but I want I want to read this quote because
I think it's interesting. So the article, they have this
whole thing that's like, Okay, they get to the denial,
they post your tweet about like, oh my god, I
can't believe Julia Fox had to respond to this, and
then they say, I'm not saying Fox was lying, but

(07:45):
wearing a borderline not suited for work dress, a purse
trimmed and human DNA and d I y I make
up to an Oscar's after party. Is goblin mode to
a t? And I think this brings up an interesting question,
which is to what extent was goblin mode real in
the first place before You're sort of mean to went
went viral? So like the phrase itself, you mean, yeah, yeah,

(08:11):
like what part of the phrase existed before my post? Yeah?
And I think it was also like, what what were
you thinking, Like did you have like a conception of
what goblin mode like was before you made the post?
So so the only thing I had in my mind
at that point. Um, it's it stems from specifically um,

(08:32):
do you do you know the user on Twitter hottie pants?
Do you happen to know that guy? I don't think so.
Now he goes by I think his ad is like
punished Pants or something like that. But anyways, he around
that time, he was posting a lot about like goblins.
He was He would post a lot about like goblin
time and like it's oh, it's Goblin time, and he

(08:54):
would just make like a bunch of just like posts
like that. So goblins were on my mind at that point.
And then I forget his user name, but his um
I think his user name is um uncontrolled. I forget
his user I'll have to tell you afterwards or something.
I don't remember off the top of my head, but
he he made a post that went viral, uh, something

(09:15):
to the effect of like um, your honor, UM. I
was going goblin mode at that time, you know that
format that's like you're in court excuses like, oh, I'm
going goblin mode. It really in my head, that's really
the only reference I had, So I didn't make up
the phrase. A lot of people think I made up
the phrase goblin mode, which I definitely did not. UM,

(09:36):
But I think just there was a lot of people
posting about goblins around that time, like early in mid March,
and I just in my mind, I was like, oh,
you know, I'm just gonna say Goblin Mode on this
this ship post on Fox. I don't I really don't
know why. It's just the first thing that popped in
my head. And whenever something pops in my head, like
a tweet idea, and I laughed myself, I'm like, okay,

(09:57):
I should post it. I don't know, and it seemed
to work. Did you end up? So one of the
things one of the things I think is really interesting
is that, right, So okay, so you have you have
your first wave of like it's the Goblin Mode thing,
and then you have your second wave articles that are
trying to explain what goblin Mode is. And I was
I was wondering if you'd see if you'd actually even

(10:18):
seen the post. I just liked link to the chat um.
There was like, like the thing I'd seen from goblin
Mode before this, like all started, was this like Reddit
was someone on Twitter had a tweet that went viral
about goblin Mode and it was about just like someone
It was about this Reddit post of like someone creeping
around their house and pretending and acting like a goblin. Yes, yes,

(10:41):
So I didn't see that until I made my post,
like in my initial because I think someone linked it
under my post and I was like, oh, Ship, this
is just like a thing, Like this is actually like
a thing. And then I started popping off more because
people saw that reply. I'm real like, oh Ship, this
is like actually a thing. And to my surprise, that
likely worked out for me, Like everything kind of just

(11:02):
came together and a really insane fashion. Oh that's another
tweet to the one that you linked. That's when I
was going, That's when I was in goblin one that
came before my tweet too. Yeah, had you had you
seen that one before you made it? I follow her,
I followed Telgore. I might have seen it. I don't remember.
I remember the other one I was resferencing before. Um,

(11:25):
I might have seen this one now, Yeah, like I
I think like that. That was what was interesting to
me about this was that, like the moment it went viral,
there was this whole sort of like attempt because there
was an attempt to figure out what it is, and
then there was an attempt to like back project a
history on it, and so you get a lot of
these articles and you get a lot of people like

(11:45):
I don't know, like I would talk to people about
this and they would like, you know, okay, so they
do this thing where it's like okay, so they go
to know your meme, they look at the Google trends,
and then like the people sort of like, you know, okay,
Like there was an urban Dictionary thing from like two
thousand nine that was like a completely like a weird
sex thing. It was like completely unrelated to this, but
it was interesting to me the way that people like, Okay,

(12:09):
so you have this thing that goes viral, right, and
like you're just sucking around like there's no act, like
it's just sounds cool. But then like yeah, there's an
extent to which it becomes this like you know, it
gets into the sort of like viralty machine. And so
you have all these journalists who like have to cover
it right because like, you know, the other way the

(12:30):
journalism boddle works is okay, so you have this trend, right,
people can see it trending. You see something on Twitter,
you do like four sets of Googles, and you write
an article about it, and it's like, well, okay, because
they're trying, you're trying to capitalize on on the clicks
as fast as possible. So when someone googles what is
goblin mode, it's like, Okay, your thing comes up. But
it's interesting because it's like it's like they have to

(12:52):
fill the content in because there isn't any Yeah. Yeah,
that's what it was interesting about the specific that first one,
the focus article, it was just a lot of like
filling in where there was really nothing. Yeah, that's what's
interesting about that. Yeah. And then and then like after that,
like all the other articles are like you get to
see this proliferation of how the media works where it's like, okay,

(13:13):
so you have the initial article, the initial article google
some stuff and it's basically just making it up because
they're they're trying to like give coherence or like give
am meeting to an empty signifier. And then after that,
it's like all of the other articles are just copying
off of the first article, and you get this like
Ora Boris of like everyone just is repeating the same
thing over and over again, and none of them seem

(13:35):
to understand that, like it was not that the thing
that they originally talking about was just kind of like
that's really all it was, and it's it is interesting
to see how it is just able to proliferate off
of as you as you were saying, they just google
search urban, they find an urban dictionary and it's like

(13:58):
my article urban diction. There is a good source. Yeah,
and like I think this this is I mean I
think there's there's like a few interesting things here, one
of which is about how yeah, like I had this before,
Like I'm not sure if I actually talked about this
on the show. So the day of the Atlantis shooting,
Garrison and I spent a lot of time trying to
like track down the shooter and there was there was

(14:21):
this like fake Facebook post that was going around and
you know, Garrison I had spent like a lot of
time looking for this guy and okay, well we realized
that this guy just doesn't have a Facebook, right, and
so we were like so like I was like look
at this, Like I saw his fake Facebook post. I
was like, oh, this is fake. And then like a
bunch of a bunch of like a bunch of like
actual journalists like found you know people because journalists have

(14:43):
been passing around the fake Facebook post as like this
is a post alleged to be a thing. And then
and then suddenly they were like, oh hey this is fake.
Hey you can see all these things like oh look,
it's like uh, you know, like there was like the
it was pretty clear of it. His face had been
copied and pasted into like a thing that's it was

(15:03):
supposed to look like a Facebook post because there was
all these like minor details about that, which is wrong,
and it was like, okay, so this isn't real. But
the media cycle of it was like all of these
people I saw my Twitter post that was like this
is fake, and then they just wrote a story off
of it and like never mentioned that that that they
literally got it from like me fucking around on Twitter.
Like it's like and it's like and it's like you

(15:27):
look at this stuff. And the extent to which these
people are just like these people who are journalist, who
are you know, supposed to people journalists are just like
woefully unprepared. Even people even who people who are extremely
online like winds up being woefully unprepared to deal with
like anything like that. They're woefully unprepared to deal with

(15:49):
anything of any complexity or deal or like figure out
that they're being like hoaxed. Yeah, yeah, no, you're you're
you're really right about that. I mean, I mean I
think this it's I don't know what I would call
this phenomena, but there's definitely something there where it's like
they we'll see something like I don't know, I don't
know what it is about specifically Twitter that like I

(16:12):
feel like that's where a lot of people get news
just in general. But I feel like a lot of
journalists just assume anything that they see. Maybe I'm over generalizing,
but if they see something on Twitter, even if it's
like a joke, like they'll just assume it's real or something.
I'm not. I'm not entirely sure. Like it's super easy
to make a fake post. I do it all the time.

(16:33):
I make all sorts of like fake fake things. Most
of them are more obvious than Goblin But I guess,
but I don't know that they're I don't want to
say journalists are too trusting. Yeah. Well, and I will say,
like there are times where it's genuine, Like when when
you first started posting the headlines of like the actual
Twitter articles that were about Goblin mode, I like I

(16:54):
didn't do about it. Looking too, because I just assume
they were fake. Yeah, lot of people told me, like,
I think specifically, the the one that like most of
my followers realized that they weren't fake anymore was the
one that was like, um as a disabled uh woman,
goblin mode. This goblin mode trend is really problematic, and

(17:18):
people people decided to look that one up and we're like, oh,
it's real. And then everyone was like, wait, we're all
these other ones that you were posting real and I'm
like they were all real, Julia Fox one real. It
was different. Agencies have been all these news organizations have
been writing all this insane shit about nothing. Yeah, and

(17:40):
there's there's you know, I mean, I think that this
one is funny just because like yeah, I mean like
it's goblin mode, right, like it's it's it's it's just funny,
like there's no like yeah. But but I mean I
think that there's an interesting thing that happens with with
the specifically the disabilities one, because the disabilities one isn't
like it's basically about something completely different that the Goblin
Mode things spawned, which is that like, like the the

(18:00):
other thing that happened with Goblin Mode was that. Okay,
so people saw a goblin mode and then physicularly on
like TikTok Um. I don't I don't know if they
knew where it came from, but like people like people
turns goblin mode into an actual thing, where like it
became this thing about like I like, I think I
think this is also influenced by like some of the

(18:22):
like ship post answers that you gave the media people
that were like goblin boe could be whatever you want.
It's when you aren't awake of the pedel or like
you're not doing your makeup in the pandemic or whatever
like yeah, but but but it's interesting field like that.
I really don't know if the TikTok's thing came before

(18:43):
or after. I really I think it's after. Yeah, from
what I've seen, it's it seems like it actually became
a thing after. And that was really interesting to me too,
because it was like it's this way in which, like
you know, okay, so you start running into these sort
of like fundamental problems about the nature of reality where

(19:03):
it's like, okay, so we made this thing that is fake, right,
but then it became real because enough enough people believed
it was real that it turned into a thing that
people actually use to describe stuff, and then you know
that that's how you get to like you get a
bunch of people complaining about how like there was an
article that was like the great resignation and going goblin

(19:25):
mode or like the two great threats to employers is
they try to force people back to work, Like yeah,
it's it's like the goblin mode, like self manifested into reality.
Like I feel like a lot of journalists are saying,
like people being lazy and like, you know how the
whole meme of like oh, no one wants to work anymore.

(19:45):
I feel like a lot of people are trying to
like attributing like oh, not wanting to work and being
lazy to goblin mode. And it's it's self manifested through
the media or TikTok or whatever whatever it may be.
I actually don't know, but it's it's become a thing
now and in a really strange way. Yeah. Yeah, And
I think I think this is like this is an
interesting way of looking like, you know, like this was

(20:06):
the whole sort of like like in in terms of
like okay, insofar as posting can actually affect reality, which
it can, but not as much as people seem to
think like there are there are there are people who
like seem to think that like the three letter agencies
care what they post on Twitter, which is like it's

(20:26):
like no, no, no, hold on, hold on. If if
we post correctly interventions, it won't happen. It's like if
you seen the c I A like like like there's
there's this whole thing where it's like, you know, I
mean this, it's okay, this this is gonna be the
like someone's gonna pull this out of context and be like, hey,
look at I do Chris is but like you know,
like this is this is kind of what happened with Trump,

(20:47):
which like this is this isn't like what the meme
magic was like if you just mean something long enough,
you can kind of turn it into reality by just
sort of convincing enough people that it's real that it
and and you know and once you've done that, like
you you have effectively made the thing real. Right. It
was interesting about this one is is just like it's
like a lot of people like do that on purpose, right,

(21:08):
Like this is how this is like there's a lot
of propaganda stuff that works like this or like, you know,
this is like what the meme like before Chan Trump
bullshit was like you just just like completely like as
a joke on accidents. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't attend this.
I just mean I just wanted to make a one
off joke. Yeah I didn't think that would happen. But
you're you're you're totally right about the whole Like I don't.
I don't know how much like the Trump magic was

(21:29):
really a self manifestation of him kind of just winning
the election and becoming popular with a certain people. But
it definitely feels like like that self manifestation of like
posting to a certain extent really can become real if
it's just like hits a certain site, guyst of some
sort and like they just didn't. I think a crucial
part of it is it needs to get picked up

(21:50):
by the media and taken seriously by journalists specifically, because
the thing that really, uh, I feel like broke the
camel's back for Goblin about specifically was the first journalist
that reached out to me because she she wanted to
interview me about the whole, the whole experience like and
her coverage of it was about the whole fake main thing,
and then how it became sort of a thing in

(22:12):
that aspect um, and then um from there, they all
a lot of different journalists and websites referred back to
that article, and now it seems to be the one
that everyone's referring to now is the Guardian article about
it that seems to be like a media's favorite piece
about it, which is the one that talks more about
it being like a lifestyle trend. And I think that's

(22:35):
where it really went off, is when like some people
took in the TikTok aspect of it and kind of
manifested it that way. I think it's a couple of
interesting political consequences of this, one of which is that like,

(22:58):
like Twitter as a platform isn't really I mean, since
Trump got banned, it's kind of like it hasn't really
been where most like stuff is happening, like TikTok is exploding.
I mean, you still like the boomers on Facebook. Like
it hasn't like it hasn't been the sort of like
driving force of politics that normally is. But the one
thing that it has is that all of the journalists

(23:19):
are still on there, and that means that like yeah,
like there's all these weird political concequences. Were like, yeah,
you can sort of like like you can just sort
of will things into existence by convincing journalists that it's real.
And that's I think really scary in a lot of
ways for because you know, like the people who are
really really good at the sort of manipulation or right

(23:39):
wingers and right wingers could have sort of like like
I don't know, like I people are probably mad about
me for this, but like one of the things that
I remember from like God was just two dozen sixteen.
It was like there was this whole discourse about like, uh,
like there's a bunch of like all a bunch of
people are really mad about like there being a black

(24:00):
storm Trooper and Star Wars, yeah, the whole Yeah that's
interesting about it was like yeah, I think I think
that was just yeah, yeah, there there. There's the thing
that was interesting about it was like so I know
people who like who like looked into it beforehand, and
it was like the only people who were talking about
this it was like people who were confused because they

(24:21):
thought that stormtroopers were all clones and we're like wait,
why wait and then and the other thing there are
other group of people who were mad about this was
storm Front, and store Front was able to like turn
this into like like a discourse, like they able to
they were ably convinced journalists like this was a real
thing that like a significant number people are mad about,
and then it like actually turned into a thing that

(24:41):
a significant number of people are mad about. Because you
can sort of just like like you you can start
these like panics and like this is one of the
things we're talking about in our trans episodes were like,
you know, a fairly small network of well funded people
can cause like enormous swass of the US you just
lose their ship and get extremely violent and get like

(25:05):
you know, and and and the specific thing they're mad
about changes like pretty frequently. But you can just sort
of like if if you're able to manipulate the media
well enough and you you know that there's other ways
to do is like you know, you could do it
by like weird memes. You can do it by you know,
being the cops, or just like having press releases that
you send out you can have you can do it
through like these sort of like astro turf, Like I

(25:29):
don't know, you have like an astro turf intellectual like
what's his name, markat Ufo, But it's it's it's interesting
to me that like they all seem to work, like
the pathway through it all seems to be very similar.
Which is what you do is you convince a bunch
of media people or something is real, and then once
once they start taking it seriously, it sort of manifests
itself into reality. Yeah, I know that, that is what

(25:53):
I realized what was happening, Like I one of my
initial points that I was trying to make after um
the whole goblin thing. After the first article came out,
I was like, it really made me realized, like how
potent fake I hate saying this phrase just because it's
become such like a nothing sort of phrase, but like
fake news, how how easy it is to just like

(26:14):
what if instead of goblin mode? I decided like, let's
say I'm like a crazy right winger and I had
this weird sgeist moments causing a panic about like trans people,
and I made like a fake tweet like that you
would we see that happened all the time, like trans
people pee. A lot of people hate us um, and
it would be super easy. Put it in the right community. Um,

(26:36):
make this fake tweet or a fake headline, and people
right wing or specifically will go wild and it'll really
influence the discourse. I mean, look at the current I
mean it's it's kind of over now. But the last
it was last week the swimmer, the trans swimmer, that
was the women's competition. I mean, the amount of vitriol
that was able to be created over that, just like

(26:58):
imagine what like as you had like a well funded,
tight network of um but I don't know, but for
lack of a better phrase, like fake news creators just
all they need to do is put something out on Facebook,
the boomers see it, and then it's over. What One
of the things I learned about, like well, I was
doing research for Weirdly an episode about Reverend Moon, was

(27:21):
that like people figured so this is sort of like
this is like how the Republicans came to power, Like
that they figured out you could do shoot like this
and like rubber Fugieri like in like in like the
sixties figured out that like if you just if you
sent like you could just send letters to like they work.
I guess there were't even boomers up if you just
send letters to old people that would say stuff like

(27:43):
a planned parenthood is harvesting baby fetuses. You could just
get the really mad and it's like and it's funny
because you know in the cities, like he's he's doing
this like by mail, right, like he is mailing you
a chain letter. It's just stuff. Yeah, it became just
like a product amount. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like

(28:03):
it's it's weird because you can watch them invent this
and then it's like, oh, yeah, this guy was funded
by like a weird cult guy who was trying to
take over the world, who was being backed by the
Korean CIA, and it's like, I don't know, it gets
into this, Yeah, it all sort of comes back into
this weird thing where yeah, I mean I like one

(28:25):
of one of the the sort political transformations I've had
since I started working here was like I didn't take
like it's sort of a similar to what you were saying,
Like I didn't take the like weaponized unreality like fake
new stuff like that seriously. And then it was like
you cover it every day and it's like, oh my god,
like the like the weird like like watching like four Chan,
like invents the I A shouly don't know if it's

(28:45):
Portune was one of watching like just weird right wing
like message boards invents like the Ukrainian bio lab thing,
which like Grant Meanwall Now tweets about and like like
like like the official state media of Russia and China
are like talking about these bio labs and it's like

(29:06):
it's turned into this weird like like thing where like yeah,
like actual countries with like nuclear weapons are like basically
using ship posters as like as like a way to
do propaganda. Is it's just like really weird. I don't know,
it's it's this really weird and incredibly disturbing media space

(29:28):
to live in. Yeah, it's it's like a it's a
weird synthesis of ship posters just posting online to like
whatever audience and I guess like media of some sort
and not maybe not like um in the in the
case with the biolab, I don't know too much about that,
especially cause I'm black by Gun Greenwald, so I don't
see a lot of stuff. Yeah, but yeah, no, it's

(29:51):
it's interesting how how kind of interlocked there and and
to your point about the earlier about the whole Trump
made magic thing. Like I I didn't take that too
seriously at the time, Like inten I was like, oh,
all these silly right wingers making these means like this
isn't gonna do anything. Like I I don't, I truly
don't know if it really had an effect, but I

(30:12):
mean it's we can't really ignore the power of that.
Just simply manifesting something, even if it's artificial, can actually
have a hole on certain people. Um as you were
saying with the mailing letters. I mean, if you just
say enough, if you say something enough to the right
type of person, they'll just believe it. I mean, it's

(30:32):
it's not hard to lie to people as horrible as
those to say. It's really not that hard to lie
to people. Yeah, Like, I mean that's the whole sort
of like everyone yelling groomer like constantly about trans people.
It's like, yeah, they just lied over and over again.
And like half the people who were like saying this
stuff are actually pedophiles And it doesn't matter because you know,
if you just like do this ship over and over again,

(30:54):
you get these you get just get these like hate bobs,
and it's yeah, no, the right wing right wing or
specifically are phenomenal creating hate mobs. Yeah, it's kind of
incredible to witness. It's it's really scary, but it's it's
an incredible thing to see. There's not really an equivalent,
i would say, on the left in the way that

(31:14):
um even maybe in liberals there's an equivalent, but like
on the on the left, there's not really like an
equivalent to like some like a mob in that way. Yeah,
I mean I think that's you know, like, Okay, there's
always an extent to which like these stuff, the stuff
has like material constraints, Like you know, I thought to

(31:35):
talk about like constantly on this show, the fact that
like this is like this is the stuff that the
de cons believed and then they ran into the material
constraints of the Iraq War and the entire project imploded.
And like, I mean, I think one of the reasons
why this is easier for the right is that like
there's the there there's a there's a there's there's a
there's always a political base for them that is there

(31:56):
that they can access fairly easily, which is okay, they
may they have access to like you know, that they
have access to like a vast swath of petit bars wall.
They have access to a bunch of white business owners.
They have access to like this sort of like this
like white professional class, they have access to the sort
of like white gentry e class, and like those people

(32:19):
can very easily be sort of like whipped into a
frothing rage, and like part of it is because like
that that's essentially that's just what they' that's what their
class interest is. That's what they're sort of like like
their status of the racial hierarchy like brings them to
do already. And you could sort of like you know,
if you just shovel a bit of coal on it,
you can you can make the fire go absolutely. And

(32:42):
I mean it's talked about a lot, I'm sure, but
like the one thing that is really powerful is Fox News. Yeah.
Fox News will pick up literally anything like I saw
I saw post on Twitter just the other day, screenshot
or just just a picture of Fox News and they
cited the libs of TikTok Twitter account talking about school classrooms.

(33:05):
It's like, what is that like not like the right
wingers will just take the source of a random Twitter
user that has a take takes messages from random people
that message them and then that's their news like that
just to to to to to be fair to Fox News,
which is not a thing I will ever say again, Uh,
it wouldn't. It wouldn't surprise me if that whole thing,

(33:25):
like because so the I don't know if you saw
this the Lives of TikTok person is like, is that
that thing is run by an old Bush administration person?
Really I did not know that. Yeah, so it wouldn't.
I mean, Okay, like there there there's probably a three
and four chance that they just saw someone who's like
trying to own the libs on TikTok. But there's like
a one in four chance that like all the old
like Bush network people like know each other and that's

(33:47):
why they're promoting it. That's that's a good point. That's
a good point. I mean they have to know that.
Well maybe I don't know, Like it's it's one of
those things where it's like it becomes I don't know,
it becomes really difficult to to know the extent to
which the beliefs. Yeah, well how organized they are into

(34:09):
the extent to which they believe what they're saying. Because
part of that like that becomes like you know, if if,
if you know who's behind that, it becomes easier to
sort of be like, oh yeah, we're just sort of
playing a game. But it could also just be like, now,
this is this is content that we like, uh, we
were all too lazy to go or just message the
person to see who they are, Like I mean they

(34:29):
had the specifically in this case, the lives of TikTok Lady.
They had her like on TALX news ones talking oh
yeah yeah, referenced her multiple times, so they have to
know her. Yea, yeah, yeah, that that's that. That's another
technique that they do a lot, which that they take
someone who is like you know, like a like an
old part, like who's literally a Republican operative, right, and

(34:52):
just laundered them as an actress. Actually, the funny part
is you see, like like the New York Times and
Ship like all the main street outlets do the same
thing to you where it's like, yeah, well, well, like
any time you see an article that is like I
was a Democratic voter, but I'm going to vote for
the Republicans, nine times out of ten, that person is
a Republican operative. And if you google their name and

(35:13):
look hard enough, you can just find it. And it's
like and that's the only thing. Yeah, That's another thing,
was like I don't know whether they whether they're just
lazy and don't check, or whether they're just sort of
like doing this kind of like I don't know that
what what what? Whether whether they're doing this on purpose,

(35:35):
because I mean that, you know, that's that's the thing
with journalism, Like it's it's difficult to like, when someone
screws something up, it's it's difficult to determine a lot
of times whether it's malice or whether it's they're just
the only research they did was they googled something. Yeah,
I feel like in the realblem that we're talking about

(35:55):
right now, it's like right wingers, I think a lot
of it Obviously it's pretty malicious a lot of the
time at least, But in terms of like the whole
goblin mode situation where that that stemmed off just from
like random like Guardian whatever articles, I think I think
that was just more of like, oh, let's kind of
trying to explain this thing that is apparently now a

(36:16):
trend and we're manifesting it in real time. Yeah, I
do think there's like a distinction between that ex I
feel there's no like like with the goblin mode, there's
there's no nefarious aspect of it, but that like technique
can be used in a very nefarious way, and I
think that manifests in the most easy to waste, easiest

(36:37):
to see ways in right wing media. Yeah, I do
want to also mention that, like, yeah, I I think
I said briefly, like the people who do this the
most often are cops, Like the cops, and if if

(37:00):
you see a story about the police in the mainstap
of newspaper and you see the same story in another paper,
it's because they're basically printing a press release. And you know,
I mean this this gets used to like launder just
straight up police lies about shootings they manufactured, like the
entire crime wave thing, like the whole thing about people
taking boxes off of trains. It's like, yeah, you look

(37:23):
into it and it's like, yeah, there's these like there's
sort of like shadowy police networks of people who are
basically running I mean, they have enormous budgets to do
this too, Like they have these enormous um like departmental
like public outreach budgets and those public outreach budgets are
basically them running information ops on us, which is incredibly fun.

(37:47):
You know that that is absolutely like a real phenomena.
I don't know too much about it specifically in cops,
but I know, I know the White House does that
all the time, where it's like, oh, there's a White
House leap and it's like, oh, no, they wanted people
to see this. This is entirely intentional. Yeah, they try
a balloon stuff a lot, and that's I don't know,
and like that this is this is goblin mode, is

(38:11):
like the fun version of looking at how all this
stuff works. But this stuff happens with stuff that is
extremely deadly and has real world consequences, and yeah, it's
it's it's something we need to be thinking about and
trying to I don't know if used for good is
the right thing, but like it's something that we need

(38:32):
to be really conscious of as we're dealing with, you know,
a bunch of fascists trying to murder everyone. Absolutely, I
mean that that's been the most interesting thing about this
to me is watching Like I hate calling it this,
but just for lack of a better word, kind of
like goblin mode is like being manufactured, like manufacturing consent

(38:53):
in real time, like from the genesis of my post,
watching it in real time, seeing all these articles come
out and kind of all time to each other and
refer back to each other. It's been it's been kind
of eye opening about this topic that I think a
lot of leftists kind of know a lot about, Like
in terms of like media manipulation. You're it's you're right

(39:13):
when you said it's like the fun version of that. Yeah,
and it has been the fun version of it. But
deep down it's like, oh, this is kind of like
how they did like they this might be dramatic, but
like how they did the Iraq War in real time,
Like this is on some level, it's very similar strategy,
like media strategy. And I think, I mean, I think

(39:34):
I think there's specifically goblamode. I think there's because because
like the Iraq War, there's a lot of just malice
there and but but in this one, it's like, yeah,
like that, you know, not all of the media, like
all of them, Like Okay, in order for something that's
completely fake to get traction, it doesn't require everyone involved
being malicious. What it requires is one person saying a thing,

(39:57):
and then a bunch of journalists being too lazy to
actually look into something and then just you know, basically
reprinting the article but like rewriting a few things, which
happens constantly, and yeah, and and that, like, you know,
the thing I think that's scary about that is it
reduces the number of actors who actually have to be
involved in a thing for it to just sort of

(40:17):
like take off like this, which yeah, like and I
think like there's there's an extent to which okay, like
it rocks, Like something on that scale is pretty rare
because it requires, like in an enormous amount of buying
from a lot of people. But there's lots of small

(40:39):
examples of this stuff that just happens sort of constantly
and that stuff like yeah, I mean, you know, as
we've been talking about, like that, that that kind of
thing with small numbers of actors and then people just
sort of lazily reprinting articles like that stuff, right. I mean,
I think the best example of this is currently, at
least just in my mind because I am trans the
the whole trans planic that's happening right now. I think

(41:00):
that's a really good example of it. It's just where
like some website will print this certain thing and then
it becomes a hysterical panic. Yeah, there's talking about it. Yeah,
Like I think that's the most recent example that was
that spa where it was like some person claimed like
made it made a bunch of claims where they were

(41:20):
like they might have seen a trans person maybe, and
it turned into just like literally mobs showing up at
this spa, like anti transbobs, just like a bunch of
fascists showing up a bunch of like like yeah, and
that kind of stuff. Yeah. That that affects reality. Yeah, people,

(41:42):
that really affects people. Yeah. And and like the the
the other one, the other one that that we've talked
about in the trans episodes is people to people are
starting to do this kind of stuff with gender clinics,
and it's you know, yeah, and it's like yeah, like
that that's only a matter of time before they start
killing people. Like yeah, that is that is the same. Yeah.

(42:02):
The media can easily whip someone into frenzy to do that.
I mean we've seen that in the past with I think,
as you referenced before, like the whole like abortion whole,
like in the nineties and the early two thousands, the
whole abortion panic. Yeah, I mean we saw we saw
people die over stuff like that. Yeah, the bombings, like

(42:22):
and you know, and the other thing is that like
they're winning, like they are on the verge of after
this like half a century long battle, like they are
on the verge of our turning ro he weighed. Yeah, yeah,
like you know that. And that's I think a really
grim thing for the left where it's like, like, what

(42:43):
one of the asymmetries here is that like if a
leftist like assassinated the head of Ice right like they were,
like I would be in prison in like a day
and a half. There'd be like fifteen people who be
shot in police raids, like yeah, be you know, but
like when when the right wing just like it do terrorism,
like just murders abortional writers, it works. And that's a

(43:06):
really grim asymmetry, but it's sort of the reality of
the situation that brand right. And Yeah, that reminds me
of the This is a while ago. This was during
the Black Lives Matter protests. I don't even remember why
he was on the um fed's radar, but there was
the dude I think in Portland's and there was like
a there was like a raid and they just shot

(43:28):
the dude in the remember that, Yeah, yeah, I mean
it happened again in Uh Yeah, they murdered him. And
then like it happened again with Winston Smith in uh
in Minneapolis where like the like the cops were mad
at him because he was like he was one of
the leaders of that's happening in Minneapolis and they just
walked up and shot him. Yeah and yeah, and it's

(43:50):
it's it is a really bleak look at you know,
how this country actually works, which is not really what
I expected this episode to be. I just like, we'll
do a fun episode about Goblin Bode and now it's like, yeah,
he was the state just assassinating people and they're gonna
keep doing it. And also they're gonna like to start
bombing abortion well, I mean to keep bombing abortion clinics

(44:12):
and start bombing gender clinics, and it's like that doesn't
actually happen, but but yeah, I think it was. Our
point was that it was like we've seen that happen
in the past. Yeah, of the reactionary media fueling the
hysteria through it doesn't even matter if it's real or
fake stories. That's that's the main issue, is it can
be totally fake and it'll it'll just fuel hysterics against anyone,

(44:37):
any any target. Yeah, that's just like yeah, like what
the we should probably close out. But like the one
that's been fun for me, and by fun, I mean
dear God, has been the fucking the Hunt biolab ship,
which was like literally like like literally this this was
this like literally this whole thing was a sie up
by Steve Bannett who was like, this is how we

(44:58):
can have Trump win the election by by by uniting
everyone in like anti Asian hate, and like it worked,
Like well, I mean, okay, he lost the election, but
like you know, all like eventually this is this just
like completely crank, like absolutely batship. All the people who
are advocating for it are like like they like they're

(45:20):
like mushroom scientists or they're like people who like you know,
like like they're they're like weird. I ever met In Truthers.
Like all these people, you know, like were were legitimized
by the media and like that had that had an
enormous impact on the last sort of two years of
anti Asian violence. Like that's like that that's the thing

(45:40):
that to get as bad as it did. And again,
it is just completely fake. There's nothing it's it's that
they're just they're just you know, like a bunch of
fascists made up a lie about a plague so that
they could try to win an election by like murdering
Asian people. And yeah, and it's it's That's interesting thing
is that if you look at um, like was about like, oh,

(46:01):
how do you feel about China? Like you go back
even just four years ago, most people were like, I
don't have exact numbers on my head, um, but most
people it was like maybe split like oh, like China
is kind of scary, or like China's okay, but like
most Americans at this point, even like a lot of
liberals do not like China. Like it's like even the
rest like China. It's like it was just manifested through

(46:23):
the whole maybe not all through the whole Buhanu lab
but just the last few years and years of both
Biden's government and Trump's government ratcheting hard against um China,
and just like anti China or even anti Chinese like
people sentiments. Yeah, there's there's an interesting thing there too,

(46:43):
where it's like, okay, so for the first about so
that this pivot starts when which when Trump starts a
trade war, right, and there's this interesting thing where it's
like for the first about two years of it, it
was like the views about China were changing, but the
actual level of anti Asian violence wasn't doing much. But
then when COVID hit, it was like you know, it
was it was it was kind of like an abstract thing, right,

(47:04):
it was like, okay, well we don't like China, but
like there was nothing that there wasn't like a super
strong like the thing you could point to to directly
tie it to Asian people. And then the moment the
moment the pandemic started, and then the moment that like
Wuhan ship started, it was like suddenly there was like
a concrete thing that you could point to, and it

(47:25):
was that was like, hey, look it's the Chinese people.
The they're they're they're they're spreading the plague, they benefactured
the plague. The lab is because they're dirty, and like
the moment became that was when everything just like all
the attack skyrocketed like that. That's that's that's when like
everything just sort of like really like kicked off and

(47:45):
that was hysterics. That was like the target and hysteria
of I would say, yeah, yeah, and it's you know,
the fun thing I'm bracing for is like, yeah, this
looks like it's gonna be the Democrat strategy two as
well Republican strategy, and it's like, oh, hey, more of
us are gonna die. This is gonna be fun. So yeah, yeah, yeah,

(48:10):
it's kind of scary. Yeah, this just started out as
a fun episode. But yeah, it's how God was fun,
so I guess it was still a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah.
Do you have anything else that you want to say
or do you want to tell people where to find you? Um?
I don't really have anything to say necessarily. All I
really do on the internet, at least, like my my
whole interimnet in a private presence right now is just

(48:31):
on Twitter. Um. If you want to follow me, it's
um at mell mell meu. UM. I don't know if
you'll have like that linked or anything. It's kind of
hard to spell with the last the whole MEU it's
i'm eu w. But that's really all I have is
just my Twitter. Yeah, that's all that's all I really
do online. I mean, it is extremely funny, and every

(48:53):
once in a while you create Goblin Mode as an
actual thing, which is Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I have
a good time on Twitter people. People complain about that
website a lot, but yeah, since I joined it, like
twenty nineteen or whatever, I haven't looked back. It's it's
a lot of fun. I've got a lot of cool people. Yeah,

(49:14):
I've known of you for a while, but it's nice
to actually talk to you. You too, Yeah, yeah, it was.
It was a good time. Yeah, So go Goblin Mode.
Don't let the fascist murder trans people. Uh yeah, this
this is maybe it could happen here. You can find

(49:35):
us on Twitter, Instagram at happen here pot Uh yeah,
have fun, find cool trinkets suppressed the turfs gotta you
gotta have the trinkets. You gotta find the That's what
goblin modes all about, getting trinkets. That's right, all right,

(49:58):
the bio folks. It could happen here. As a production
of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts
or Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources
for it could happen here. Updated monthly at cool Zone

(50:18):
Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.