May 9, 2025 • 40 mins
Could you be on a livestream for three years straight? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and Karah explore the push to include AI education in schools, the parallel universe of the Chinese car market and why criminals should be wary of Interpol. On TechSupport, The Washington Post’s technology reporter Drew Harwell reflects on his time shadowing Emilycc, the record-breaking Twitch streamer – and why people have been tuning in 24-hours a day for the past three years.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
I'm os Vlosian, and today Karen Price and I will
bring you the headlines this week, including how Interpol is
keeping up with new types of crime. Then on tech Support,
we'll talk to the Washington Posts Drew Holwell about one
woman's three year twenty four to seven live stream experiment.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Some of the people I talked to who were Emily's fans,
they would go to sleep listening to Emily's voice.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
All of that. On the Weekend Tech It's Friday, May Night.
So Carol, we have become quite fascinated on this program
by personas online who aren't exactly what they seem.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
That is absolutely right.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
In last week, you'll remember we did the deep dive
on AI John Cena, who's the metabot, getting into all
kinds of illegal sexual situations, which was very disturbing.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, well that's right. I've got a story this week
though about real people pretending to be something they're not
online and a novel way of catching them out.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Is that called a dating app?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
They tell me this is basically this is geopolitical catfishing.
According to cybersecurity experts, thousands of North Korean infiltrators are
getting hired by Fortune five hundred companies.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
So the North Koreans who aren't fighting with Russia on
the battlefields of Ukraine are working for large American corporations.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
That's exactly right. And then once they get hired, they
collect their wages, but they also steal intellectual property and
insert malware.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
So in a way, this is another battlefield.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
That's very well put Cara. There's a publication called The
Register which reported that these North Korean infiltrators have gone
undetected by masking their IP addresses by creating farms of
laptops which are physically situated in the US, and then
they basically pay US people to allow them to remotely
dial into these laptop farms. They're also of course using
(02:11):
AI to write job applications as everyone is, and making
fake LinkedIn profiles. Once they actually get hired there, they
tend to do very well because they have a whole
army of other North Koreans helping them do their jobs
in the background.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
So they have actual coworkers, they have.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Co workers there as a front man who gets the
job and then dozens of people who help them do
an excellent job. And part of the story is actually
that even when companies become aware, they don't want to
fire these people because they're so much better than all
the other employees.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So they're keeping they get to keep their job.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I think they probably do in the end to have
to get rid of them. One cybersecurity expert, however, has
found a full proof way to catch out a suspected
North Korean infiltrator in a job interview.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
That's something that I need to know in my every
day life.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It all starts with a question, do you know what
the question is?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
How fat is Kim Johnkwun? Ask me the question, how
fat is Kim junk Wun? Well, you're not too long.
North Korean infiltrated would immediately close out of the video
conference because even contemplating that question is to.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
As Wow, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So that's fake fake people of the wheat story.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I'll have one next week for you, maybe about me.
So you love stories about fake people online. I love
Peanut M and MS very good match.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Very good. You know who eats Pean and M and MS.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Probably Kim Johnon He may do he may If you
can get an eminem into.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Big red wine enthusiasts.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
French red wine really attressive, of course, not chatewed Diana
so well. Speaking of Chateau Diana and peanut m and ms,
there's a new app that is gaining popularity that a
lot of my friends actually use, and it's this app
that tells you how guilty your guilty snacking pleasure.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Is like a calorie counter apple, what.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Sort of it's like calorie counter adjacent.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's called yuka, like the vegetable. That's correct, but it
also has yuck in it.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I just made up a new word. That's correct. It's correct.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
That's correct for those of you, like OZ who are
unfamiliar with it. The app actually lets you scan the
barcodes of different foods and personal products and then gives
them a score based on how healthy it is. Everything
that I've ever scanned is like you will die.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
So you basically you take a photo of the barcode
and upload it to the app, and then it kind
of spits out what the product has in it.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
How did the M and ms do?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Zero out of one hundred?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Is actually true?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yes, the nuts in them?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
What you said?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
They contain at least six additives, four of which it
rated as high risk.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Whatever high risk means.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
It's already I'm too far gone because I eat pan
and Eminem's every single night.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I call them my night chocolate.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
You know. I read that the app sometimes offers healthier
alternatives for products that you've scanned or looked up, and
I'll produce a tory. Actually tried scanning some Twinkies. Sadly,
there are no alternatives.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
This is like when people say, oh, do you want
to have sex? Free sex? You know what I'm saying,
It's just that to me, Well, it's like how I
feel about all these alternatives. So I actually have a
friend who was pushing Yuka on me so hard, and
I'm like, leave me out of this drama. I don't
want to see what's in the products that I'm eating.
But it actually looks like she's not alone. Unsurprisingly, our
(05:28):
dear RFK Junior and his wife both use Yuka.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
This is the app you use if you want to
have the feeling of the United States Secretary of Health
and Human Services constantly whispering over your shoulder about food additives.
And indeed, those emin ms have red forty, which.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Is so sad because red eminems are my favorite m
and ms. You know, I think it speaks to a
sort of health conscious, make America healthy moment people are having.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Like if you've been to.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
The grocery store recently, they're putting protein on everything, like
protein waffles.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Like, why do I need prote in my popcorn? It's
just popcorn?
Speaker 1 (06:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
There are sodas with extra fiber and probiotics in them.
You've got steak and shake transitioning away from using seed
oils in French fry, Like if I go to steak
a chake, I want to eat a French fry. I'm
not trying to eat like an avocado oil French fry.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
The wood Street Channal reported that Yuka has sixty eight
million users worldwide, and an average of twenty five thousand
new US users have joined daily since the beginning of
this year, twenty five thousand people every day. At the
beginning of May, Yuka rank as the number one health
and fitness app in Apple's app store. Not only that,
major food brands like Campbell's and Chabani have responded to
(06:37):
customers complaining about the ingredients they find in their products
while using Yuka.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
I don't want to think that we are all becoming
Rfki junior. But I think at least once you download
the app, you can think that you're being health conscious,
even if it's one time.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
I mean, I think the thing is like if you're
reaching for a bag of M and m's no judgment,
you kind of know it's not besting anyway.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Anything that I reach for, It's like, I don't need
an app to tell me if I'm doing something right now.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I think if you're choosing between like different frozen dinners,
for example, and one is like categorically best than the other,
that like, if you're like it's an input to a
switching decision versus like should I eat the eminems, I
can imagine it being more useful.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Yes, and I do think people are interested in finding
healthy alternatives, which is an interesting thing.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I guess that comes out of Yuca. Yes, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Well, some people are looking into what's going into their food,
others into what's going into their clusrooms.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Very nice.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Thank You've got a headline for us about this.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
I do have a news story for you about what's
going on in the classroom, a place I haven't been
in at least fifteen years. Recently, over two hundred and
fifty CEOs, from Microsoft's Satya Nadella to Josh Kushner's Karly
Klaus to the CEO of the College Board signed an
open letter calling for computer science and AI to be
(07:49):
quote a core part of US kindergarten through twelve curricula.
The letter states that taking just one high school computer
science course can boost students few wages by eight percent,
regardless of career path or college attendance.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
One of these moments where we were like in peak,
everyone should learn to code, and then it was like
no one should learn to code, and now it's like
people should learn to code again.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
I know I'd to use a computer very young, and
my income has not been boosted by eight percent.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
The letter doesn't specify really how this curriculum should be
developed and rolled out, but it does point to countries
like Singapore, China, and South Korea as examples of countries
they've done this successfully. The letter reads, quote in the
age of AI, we must prepare our children for the
future to be AI creators, not just consumers. A basic
foundation in computer science and AI is crucial for helping
(08:37):
every student thrive in a technology driven world. Without it,
there is falling behind.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Yeah, there's a huge investment in AI education from countries
who want to get a long term edge in the
AI race, Like the UAE. The Amoradi school system will
add AI as a subject in the upcoming school year
and will include concepts like ethical awareness and real world applications.
Schools in Beijing will start offering AI courses in September
(09:03):
as well.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Here in the US, President Trump recently signed an executive
order calling to emphasize AI competency in schools. The executive
order also called the establishment of a Presidential Artificial Intelligence
Challenge and nationwide competition for students and educators demonstrate their
AI skills.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
This reminds me of the Bass pro fishing Python Hunter
Bowl in Florida, which is something I really loved. But no, honestly,
it seems like kids are demonstrating their AI skills, just
not in the ways that teachers would perhaps like them to.
New York Magazine actually ran an article titled quote everyone
is cheating their way through college, And there was actually
a statistic in there that was really striking, which is
(09:42):
that in a survey of one thousand college students, nearly
ninety percent the other ten percenter line had used chat
gpt for homework help. And this was back in twenty
twenty three, before chat gpt became you know, every eighty
year old's best friend.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, that last ten percent, I think it's probably been
accounted for since twenty twenty three. One of the students said, quote,
with chat gipt, I can write an essay in two
hours that normally takes twelve. It can't be easy being
k through twelve teacher or college professor these days. Some
of them have tried devising their own ways to detect
chatchipt usage in their student's essays. Others say, you can
tell when an essay is written by a chatbot because
(10:17):
it's written clunkily or random words. But of course these
models are just getting better and better.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
I mean, we got away with it in the script,
didn't we know? I'm kidding, But the way that I
would have exploited chat gypt at sixteen seventeen eighteen. You know,
all I had back in my day was free translation
dot com, which allowed me to write long French essays.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yes, you can work well enough to did it depends on.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
As my B plus baby as MYB plus.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So our next headline is about competition between the US
and China, but not in the classroom and not really
an AI, rather in the realm of vehicles. The Wall
Street Journal around this headline with the story what a
fifteen thousand dollars electric suv says about the US China
car rivalry. The car in question is the Toyota BZ
(11:05):
three X, which is a compact electric suv about the
same size as the Toyota RAV four, which of course
is ubiquitous here in the US. But the car has
a jaw droppingly low price tag.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
If an electric car costs fifteen thousand dollars, it would
be like a plug and chug driver.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, Well, you can thank China's supply chains for the
price of the car. Toyota are obviously a Japanese company,
but the cars are localized in different parts of the world,
and this suv is made in China using Chinese batteries
and Chinese driver assistance technology. But when Toyotas are sold
in the US, the supply chain is way more expensive.
There's a similar model available here for about forty thousand dollars,
(11:46):
so someone else, why don't you buy the Chinese version
and import it. Well, that'd be the most beautiful word
in English language tariffs, except in this case, bidener are
tariffs which put one hundred percent tariff on Chinese evs.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
And I don't see Trump reversing that one.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That's not one of the ones he's going to be
running back gus for sure.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
But it's a weird thing how much we live in
this parallel universe with China, Like fifteen thousand versus forty thousand,
is I guess a one hundred percent tariff?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
There you go, that's that.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
More. And China people buy local car brands that we've
never heard of here in the US Zeka Ion there
is one that's slightly more well known called BYD not
by me. And the technology around these Chinese evs is
very impressive. C ATL, a Chinese battery manufacturer, recently showed
off a new EV battery that can put three hundred
(12:37):
miles of charge into a car battery in just five minutes.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
That's insane.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
These companies in China, these battery companies and car companies
are really really pulling ahead in the race.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
That's incredible.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
It just seems like cars are a really good reflection
of the sort of siling off of global economies, at
least between the US and China, and with the addition
of more tariffs on Chinese imports, this it probably isn't
going to change anytime soon.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Bye. By globalization.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
There is one area though, where countries still work together,
and that's Interpol.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
You know, you're right about that.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
And I wanted to tell you a little bit about
this Financial Time story that I read about how Interpol
has been adapting to the technologies modern criminals are using.
Interpol you know, is, of course the International Criminal Police Organization.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Of course I didn't know that. I thought you would.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
You're supposed to know all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I thought it was French Interpol.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
So let me say it again for you, international criminal
police organization. And they have been engaged in a technological
arms race with the world's most wanted criminals. I always
think of inspector Gadget when I think of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
The article is a great read, and it describes Interpol's
innovation lab, which is in Singapore, with an opening scene
quote a fleet of underwater drones, gleaming and ready for action,
is lined up along the wall. Nearby a small armory
of brightly colored three D printed guns displayed on a
side table. A robot dog named Ino lies prone on
(14:05):
the floor waiting to be activated.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
There's something filthy.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
When I first read that, I was like, you know,
I do not like the way they're talking about you
in this article. He lies prone on the floor. That's
how you know FT is a British newspaper. But yeah,
the FT actually interviewed the head of Interpol's Digital Forensics
team and he said that the advancement of technology in
the last couple of years is the biggest he's seen,
which is saying a lot because he's actually been working
there since the late nineties to keep up with the
(14:31):
evolution of cybercrime. Interpol actually opened the Singapore Lab in
twenty fifteen, and these days one of their main focuses
is identifying AI enabled scams, which, as you know and
as we know as a listenership, are getting more and.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
More sophisticated with the use of deep fakes.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Just a decade ago we were dealing with the Nigerian
print scam, and now we are trying to tackle deep
fake romance scams, sextortion and multimillion dollar phishing attacks. So
when the FT reporter visited the Interpol lab, it was
monitoring nearly three point five million attempted cyber attacks, and
he was told that that was fairly typical.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I especially like the section about the robot canine units.
Some of the models Interpol has are the size of
a German shepherd, and they can run up to seven
and a half miles per hour, and they can jump
pretty high. And they can also be sort of two
way microphone systems carrying audio messages, which apparently can be
quite handy in hostage situations.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Yeah, so say what you want about technology being used
for morally dubious ends, but if I were the hostage
in that situation, at least my confusion would distract from
my panic, Like you'd be waiting for your captors to
untie you while they argue with a robot dog.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Like. Also, robot dogs can't retire or get sick or
get sick.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
I actually just heard this story about how bomb squad
unit dogs have to retire with their owners.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Essentially, so the New York Police dogs basically they're one
person dogs.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
And if they're handle or retire, they're like woh, Wow,
come to my retirement party.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Where's these robot dogs?
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Exactly the root, completely owner agnostic.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
But one of the big takeaways from the piece, this
ft piece, is that even with the innovation Lab, Interpol's
job is never over.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
We talked about dogs, Now it's time for game of
cat and mouse.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Criminals will catch up and vice versa. You know, take
ghost guns for example. They are popular amongst criminals because,
unlike traditional firearms, they do not have serial numbers, and
so Interpol is now trying to figure out how to
link a ghost gun to their specific printers by analyzing
the composition of the materials in order to figure out
their origin.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I joked about cat and mouse gains. But you can
just imagine how the next innovation will be disguising the
variable compositions of these ghost guns. We've got a couple
more headlines to run through, Starting with another crime story.
The Guardian reports that a trial over a road rage
induced killing of a man called Chris Pelk is underway,
(17:01):
starring Chris Pelke and Ai. Generated Pelky appeared in a
video calling for forgiveness for the man accused of shooting
him in what maybe the first AI delivered victim impact
statement ever delivered in a courtroom. I'm going to play
a fore.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Now, in another life, we probably could have been friends.
I believe in forgiveness and in God who forgives.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I always have and I still do.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
I love what does he keep saying.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
I love that AI Judge shows out towards I love
that AI.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Oh my god, yea incredible.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
The script was written by Pelky's sister and brother in law.
They fed the AI model, you know, images and video
of Pelki, but they actually wrote this script and I
thought it was quite quite moving that they would want
to go so far and above and beyond to give
a victim impact statement asking for forgiveness for the shooter.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
It's incredible. Also, this is essentially a deep fake because
of their brother. And I've seen a lot of deep fakes.
This one is very good. Other than that it looked
sort of computer generated. It is computer generated, so another
deep fake news. Do you remember that picture of the
late Pope France is wearing a Montclair puffer jacket.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, this Ski Ski Sheek. It was like supreme Pope.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
It was the Supreme Pope. It was AI generated but beloved. Nonetheless,
and now we sort of have a sequel to this.
The White House posted an AI generated picture of President
Trump dressed as the Pope hat robe, cross everything.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
True, respect, that's right.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
This post on X comes weeks after the passing of
Pope Francis and days after Trump said to media I'd
like to be Pope. There's been plenty of backlash from
state leaders to the New York archbishop, but when the
BBC asked a spokesperson for the Vatican to comment, they declined.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Finally, move over Hershey, Pennsylvania. According to The New York Times,
SpaceX is building a company town. Officially, residents of an
area surrounding SpaceX's launch site in the southern tip of
Texas have voted to create a city called star Base.
Starbase will be home to some three thy five hundred
SpaceX employees, and the proposed city boundaries include land owned
(19:14):
by the company and planned areas to build more housing.
SpaceX has filed paperwork with the state of Texas to
build a school, a power plant, and of course, a
sushi restaurant near He's hose. Yeah, that's why his main
residence is wild and where he voted. Apparently, the new
designation will also allow SpaceX to close a nearby beach
(19:35):
for rocket launches without the permission of the wider community.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And today we take you out on a joke from
care Price, which is, yes, I work at the Starbucks
in Starbase. That's good.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
That's very good.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
We're going to take a quick break now, and then
we're joined by the Washington Posts Drew Harwell to learn
about the three year live streaming marathon of Emily CC.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Stay with us, I can help, but wonder would I
watch someone drink a Starbucks from starbas on a live
(20:22):
stream or.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Eat a Starburst from Stargate. This brings us to our
next segment, which is a story I can't stop thinking about.
For a lot of teens and young adults, sitting down
and watching your favorite streamer play a video game or
live react to an event is as natural as watching
the Kardashians. And the Bravo of the live streaming world
(20:45):
is Twitch, a subsidiary of Amazon. Some of Twitch's most
popular streamers have tens of thousands of paid subscribers and
millions of views on their streams. They include political commentators
like Hassan Pika, gamers like Ninja, and marathon streamers like
kai sannot who will stream for hours at a time,
interacting with their subscribers and even performing requested stunts for
(21:08):
a fee, of course.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
But there's one streamer in particular, a twenty eight year
old Texas woman who goes by the username Emily CC,
who has taken this concept of the live stream marathon
to a whole different level. For the past three years,
Emily has streamed her life twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week. She streams while driving, sleeping, shopping,
and only disappears from the camera to use the restroom.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
As you can imagine, it is a huge sacrifice to
broadcast your life NonStop. I think I read the last
time she went on a date was seven years ago.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
This to me is like peak parasocial And what surprises
me most is that she has over three hundred and
twenty thousand followers.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, it's part social experiment, it's part next generation reality TV,
it's part monetizing your own life with the hustle, and
it encapsulates everything you said in terms of this increasingly personal,
parasocial way that people interact with other people they don't
know online. And recently, The Washington Post published a profile
of EMILYCC and with thrilled to have the author, the
(22:11):
technology reporter Drew Harwell here with us today, Drew, Welcome
to tech stuff. Thanks for having me. So I actually
have Twitch dot tv slash EMILYCC open in front of
me right now. Emily is unfortunately asleep while her dog
is awake in the crate in front of her bed,
and she has the subhead on her Twitch. I'm in
an article watch post exclamation mark, Social record exclamation mark.
(22:33):
So evidently she wasn't too upset with your reporting. But
how did this come about?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I cover creators to the post And one day I
was just sort of, you know, procrastinating on X and
I saw this clip of Kai Sanai. He's like the
biggest star there is on Twitch. He was doing this
month long stream called Mafia than Io from his mansion
and between a couple of his stunts, they were just
kind of sitting around the computer and they were like, hey,
let's look up the longest streaming which person we can,
(23:01):
And they pulled up Emily and she was just shocked,
right because she was at home, like playing some goofy
video game and they both had this connection and she
was crying and Kai was really blown away, and she
talked about, you know, how she had been streaming for
three years twenty four to seven, never stopped, how she
was so tired, and yet she felt like she couldn't
(23:22):
quit the stream because she was so committed to it.
And it just struck me as such a fascinating human
story because the things she has to do to abide
by this like crazy challenge are wild, but to just
a great example of how inhuman the demands for streamers
can be, right. I mean, these are people who really
want to stand out on the Internet, and to do so,
(23:43):
they have to push themselves to the limits, and they
do so not knowing whether it'll pay off, not knowing
whether they'll even be streaming to anybody, or just you know,
five people and just sort of wasted time. So just
struck me as, you know, a fascinating example of so
many things we have to deal with on the modern Internet.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
How did you persuade her to sit? First? Story? And
then will you in the twitch? While you were doing
your reporting, I guess you were.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
So I'll start with her. I just reached out to her,
you know, I'd like doing profiles on creators, influencers and
the creator economy. I'd like doing narrative journalism, and so
I reach out to them and say, hey, just let
me tell your story. I want to understand you. I
want our readers to understand you. We have a pretty
old reader base, so a lot of this stuff is
very new to them. But I think, you know, in
my mind, I always see them as labor stories. These
(24:25):
are people who see the Internet as a career and
you know, the workplace for them is their home and
the Internet, and they don't really have a lot of
labor protections. They work for faceless companies who they hope
to make money from, but who basically don't care if
they live or die, right because there's always going to
be another twenty three year old streamer. So yeah, I
(24:47):
just took reaching out to Emily, and you know, she
was very game, and it was funny because everything I
talked with her about was on stream and it was
a really new experience for crazy, you know, it was crazy.
It was great. When I do these stories, I have
a kind of pre interview phase where I talked to
them over the phone. I walked them through this whole
weird experience of having a reporter shadow them, and so
(25:09):
we did some phone calls, we did some video calls
over Discord, which is kind of like a twitch communication
platform of choice. And then yeah, of course I spent
time with her in Austin. All of it was live streamed,
and so I could see in the chat as a
thousand people were watching. They were commenting on every question
I was asking, and you know, I'm asking sensitive questions
about like her lack of sex life, her bad experiences
(25:32):
with her parents, and how depressed she is. And this
whole time, the commenters are like either making fun of
the question or saying like, oh, well, I knew you
could ask about that, or you know, if I ask
a nice question, they're like, oh w like when for
mister Washington Post, or they'd call me unk as in
like uncle, like the old guy. So it was just
like so funny, and you know, for her, it was
(25:54):
like the most usual, normal thing in the world to
have people just commenting on that. But actually, when I
was in Austin with her, she stepped the way to
the bathroom for a minute and I was just sitting
alone in front of her computer while everybody was still
watching me. Everybody was posting these comments, and I felt
like my face flush. It just it's such an unusual
experience to have so many people watching you. And I
really felt in that moment like I understood more of
(26:16):
what she put herself through. Our lizard brains are not
built to process this amount of attention at all times,
and yet that was just normal for her, So it
gave me a good sense of what she has to
go through.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
That's an incredible image, just imagining the journalist as the
subject moves away, sort of doing exactly what the subject
is used to doing, and just yes looked at in
that way.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
It was wild. I mean you could basically still pull
up the clips now with me with her and like
petting her dog. You know, it's to see it on
the other side of the screen and to see that
place where she lives, not just in the box on
my monitor, but actually in real life.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
It was like it's like you got to watch The
Truman Show and then play a character in it for
a moment and then leave again. Talk about the record.
This is as of Friday May ninth, How long will
Emily have been doing this for?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
She has been online streaming twenty four to seven for
one two hundred and seventy nine days, and that's twenty
four to seven. You know, she does go to sleep,
she takes showers, you know, there's stuff when she's not
on camera, but all of that the camera has been
on recording and you can actually see in the data
it's wild. Like nobody really attempts that. It is a
crazy record, probably for good reason. But there are a
(27:27):
lot of marathon streamers who do long streams a month,
a week, two months, and they put themselves through these
wild challenges right where they'll lock themselves into a closet
or like ty Sinai, he basically created his own circus
with over like stunts and celebrity cameos, and you know,
it's a really interesting kind of entertainment because we're used
(27:48):
to these disparate blocks of like I watch a TV
show for thirty minutes, but these streamers, like they foster
that parasocial relationship with people where it's like my fans
are going to wake up, They're going to turn on
my Twitch, They're going to see what I'm doing. They're
going to watch me all day. They're just going to
have me in a tab on their computer thinking about me.
And some of the people I talk to who were
Emily's fans. They would go to sleep listening to Emily's voice,
(28:11):
and she was the background noise of their life. And
the stuff Emily puts herself through is I think fascinating.
But also these people who devote their lives to her
are really interesting too, because they really do see Emily
as a friend. And the more time I spent with Emily,
the more I got it. If I'm going to be
spending a lot of time alone by myself, it makes
sense to just have this person kind of there. It's
(28:33):
sort of like there's a person in the room, like
I have a roommate, and you know, if I can
relate to somebody like Emily, if I can relate to
the people I see on TV, why wouldn't I want
them around all the time. So you kind of get
where it comes from. We can kind of like scrutinize
are these real relationships? Are these real friendships? Like? Are
they real?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
You know?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Is this just like an illusion? But I think people
do kind of get something from it, and I think
it's kind of interesting to understand the gift and the
curse of how this stuff comes together.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Can you just talk a little bit about how she
got started doing this because it started differently than it
is now.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
So she was an only child. She grew up you know,
on screens, watching TV shows and video games. She was nineteen,
she was working at a CBS as a cashier, not
really knowing what she wanted to do with her life.
A lot of her friends had moved away. She kind
of stayed home. She didn't have a lot of money.
She had a boyfriend who was obsessed with playing video games,
and she would go over to his house and kind
(29:31):
of bring her laptop and basically entertain herself. Why he
was busy gaming, and I think basically to put her off,
he said, you know, why don't you like stream yourself
on Twitch? Like you've got no friends, right, Like you
just do your own thing on the internet. And she
saw that as like, Okay, maybe this is a way
to build friendships and make friends, and so she started
like a lot of streamers do, where she was playing
(29:53):
you know, World of Warcraft, a multiplayer games and recording
her face in the box on the corn the screen.
And you can go back and actually see the statistics
of her first streams, like nobody was watching, right, A
couple people here and there, and she just kept doing
it and she felt I think, a sense of purpose
from it because she wasn't getting purpose from her school,
(30:14):
wasn't really feeling it in her job, and this was
something that she could do on her own, devote her
life to, and she just kept doing it and doing
it and doing it. And this happens with a lot
of creators where you know they are really driven to
be the best they can be, and their computer is
always there, their webcam is always there. So she just
really kind of fell into it and now jumped to
(30:34):
three years later, it has become her life and you know,
she doesn't even really know a way to stop because
it's been so so critical to how she lives.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
And the numbers are important, but I want to also
talk about the money, like she has paying subscribers, but
can she actually live on this wage?
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Let me break down kind of the revenue of how
this works for creators, because it is really interesting. I
think she can make a living wage. She's not a millionaire.
There is a class of people who are millionaires on Twitch,
like a lot of creator platforms, it's a one percent problem.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
There's the one percent of Twitch.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Totally kind of like the one percent of Hollywood, right,
and the one percent of Major League sports where there's
a lot of people who just basically straight by. She's
kind of I would say, maybe the upper middle class.
It sounds like based off of her following, she makes
probably around five thousand dollars a month, maybe more, maybe
ten thousand dollars a month, so it's nothing to sneer at.
(31:28):
And on Twitch, if you get a number of followers,
you can get a share of the subscriptions. People pay
Twitch six dollars a month to subscribe to her channel.
You can watch her for free, but if you subscribe,
you get special emojis, you can you know, send her messages.
You get these little perks of subscriptions. So there's that.
(31:48):
Then on Twitch, people can donate to you outright. They
can give you tips. A lot of times people will
drop into your stream, maybe make fun of you or
do a crazy sound effect. There's been situations where like
Emily will go out to the grocery store and an
elevator and someone will prank her by like paying a
dollar to play like a fart noise over her cell
phone just kind of embarrass her in person. So you know,
(32:11):
she lives alone. She lives in an apartment. She doesn't
really do anything, but she makes more than she would
have made at CBS. And this is something she talked
about where she feels like this is capitalism. She's just
making a living. However, she feels like she can you know,
she felt like, I could finish at community college and
stay working at CVS, or I could do this other
risky thing, And why would I not do it? Because
(32:34):
I'm making more than I ever would have done, you know,
moving groceries around.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
What's it costing her to do this? I don't mean
financially so much as personally.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, it's costing her a lot, I think, And she
talks about this pretty openly. You know, for three years
she has devoted her life to being online all the time.
So there's kind of the tangible stuff.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
She wasn't flying anywhere because then she would be offline
for a little bit, so she couldn't stream. She was
saying no to wedding invitations, right. She's talked about she
went to like a club with a friend one time
and the service was really bad in the club, so
she had to leave. And she's talked about losing friends
because not everybody wants to be on a stream with
(33:16):
hanging out with her. She doesn't have a good relationship
with her parents. Her parents don't really understand what she's doing.
They don't want to be on stream. So there's a
lot of kind of like human losses. But I think also,
you know, she started to wonder just about the opportunity cost.
When you're devoting twenty four seven to your stream, you're
not doing a bunch of other things that might make
(33:37):
you happier, might lead to something else. And so you know,
she's still making those judgments every day, but there's a
lot that goes into it that she's had to sacrifice
just to be part of this crowd.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Why do you put this in let's say the history
of like reality TV experiments and as a famous Doky
series recently about the Japanese man who lived in that
room being broadcast for like two years and you know,
was really at the edge of his sanity by the
end of that experience. And the contestant, right, there's a
woman you mentioned in your piece called Jennifer Ringley who
(34:10):
had a continuous broadcast of her life back in the
early two thousands. I guess what's new and what's old
and what does all of this say about us?
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So I find them really interesting examples because it shows
that some of this is not new, and I think
it speaks to this human impulse in us that desires
to watch people be people and to just look at
them through the glass. It's why we watch reality TV.
So why I watch reality TV, right, I want to
see people interact in these situations and process that. I
(34:43):
think what's changed from that is that it has become
normalized to the point where we are all creators in
a way. Right. We use social media all the time,
we perform for our family and friends on the internet.
It's just become something that seems not so crazy more.
And I think it's kind of expanded the Overton window
on what we feel is acceptable. When you know, one
(35:04):
hundred years ago, it would have been crazy that we
would ever watch somebody in all of these private moments
or even make money off of it.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
There's also this kind of algorithmic bias towards extreme content, right,
But there's this interesting element of this story where the
algorithmic bias towards extreme content mix people behave or incentivizes
people to behave in more extreme ways. In real life,
there is a British only fans creator who you mentioned
in your story called Lily Phillips, who ran a stunt
(35:33):
where she slept I think, with one hundred men in
twenty four hours and it kind of broke the internet
a few months ago, and then another sort of YouTube
creator made a kind of interview piece with her where
she broke down, which kind of broke the internet a
second time. Can you tell us a bit about how
it intersects with this story.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, I mean we have to remember this is a
this is a business, right, and with only fans with Twitch,
with a lot of social media, these people are competing
for the currency of the Internet, which is attention. Right,
the only way to get attention versus all of the
thousands of other people you're competing with is to raise
the bar, to do something crazier, to do something that
(36:12):
people can't look away from. I mean, you see it
on x formerly Twitter right, where people will say crazy,
outlandish conspiracy theories and they want to outdo the next
right wing influencer by saying something crazier because they know
that it doesn't matter if what they're saying is right,
it matters that it pisses people off. And engages people,
(36:32):
gets people to watch them. What if I'm kind of
unusual about Twitch? Is that unlike with TikTok, where people
really want like the most just gut punching five second
video that they can make, Twitch really relishes and being
this long form thing that people can watch for six hours.
So there's a lot of like banal content on Twitch
that you wonder like why would somebody watch somebody playing
(36:55):
video games or playing chess, or studying or coding a
computer program, all of which is on Twitch. But then
you see people like Emily who it's kind of the
mix of just a banal kind of normal life, but
also you want to watch to see is she going
to finally quit? Is she going to reach her breaking point?
She's gone three years, Like is she going to you know,
(37:17):
just freak out and run away? So there's that kind
of mix of wanting to see somebody in their normal element,
but also kind of expecting something bad is going to
happen from this crazy challenge she's putting herself through.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
I mean, she's talked about having a kind of end point,
like she's not just doing this to do this, she
wants to do it so that she can have a house,
and be married by the time she's thirty years old.
So do you, now having interviewed her, feel like there's
an endpoint for her and is it looking like she's
on the trajectory to have the things that she wants.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I think with Emily, she shifts her end goal out
all the time, so it's hard to know when she
will ever reach an endpoint. And she even says now
she doesn't see any reason to quit yet kind of
hears these clocks in her head of I want to
buy a house by thirty, I want to get married,
you know, all these kind of like basic societal impulses
(38:09):
that a lot of us here. But you know, it's
hard for her to think of like what a life
would be like not on camera. I think it would
be a big culture shock when or if it ever happens.
When you're doing something day in and day out for
three years, to be able to break away from that
will be really challenging. And you know, I tried to
press her on this point because she said she wants
to be married in a couple of years, but she
(38:31):
still thinks she might be streaming in five years, And
I said, well, are you going to be like pregnant
and streaming. Are you going to be like streaming your wedding? Like,
how does this work? And so I think she's still
trying to figure out what bat'll look like and if
it will work or if she'll have to kind of
bend on either the life goals she has or kind
of these twitch goals.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Drew, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Thank you, Drew.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff, I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
And I'm os Valosan. This episode was produced by Eliza
Dennis and Victoria Domingez. It was executive produced by me,
Kara Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel
for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Beheath Fraser and Jack
Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch rode Themesol.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Join us next Wednesday for tex Stuff The Story, when
we will share an in depth conversation with game designer
him Gingold about every millennial's favorite game, Simsony.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Please rate, review and reach out to us at text
aff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear
from you.
Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
I'm os Vlosian, and today Karen Price and I will
bring you the headlines this week, including how Interpol is
keeping up with new types of crime. Then on tech Support,
we'll talk to the Washington Posts Drew Holwell about one
woman's three year twenty four to seven live stream experiment.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Some of the people I talked to who were Emily's fans,
they would go to sleep listening to Emily's voice.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
All of that. On the Weekend Tech It's Friday, May Night.
So Carol, we have become quite fascinated on this program
by personas online who aren't exactly what they seem.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
That is absolutely right.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
In last week, you'll remember we did the deep dive
on AI John Cena, who's the metabot, getting into all
kinds of illegal sexual situations, which was very disturbing.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah, well that's right. I've got a story this week
though about real people pretending to be something they're not
online and a novel way of catching them out.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Is that called a dating app?
Speaker 1 (01:21):
They tell me this is basically this is geopolitical catfishing.
According to cybersecurity experts, thousands of North Korean infiltrators are
getting hired by Fortune five hundred companies.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
So the North Koreans who aren't fighting with Russia on
the battlefields of Ukraine are working for large American corporations.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
That's exactly right. And then once they get hired, they
collect their wages, but they also steal intellectual property and
insert malware.
Speaker 3 (01:47):
So in a way, this is another battlefield.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
That's very well put Cara. There's a publication called The
Register which reported that these North Korean infiltrators have gone
undetected by masking their IP addresses by creating farms of
laptops which are physically situated in the US, and then
they basically pay US people to allow them to remotely
dial into these laptop farms. They're also of course using
(02:11):
AI to write job applications as everyone is, and making
fake LinkedIn profiles. Once they actually get hired there, they
tend to do very well because they have a whole
army of other North Koreans helping them do their jobs
in the background.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
So they have actual coworkers, they have.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Co workers there as a front man who gets the
job and then dozens of people who help them do
an excellent job. And part of the story is actually
that even when companies become aware, they don't want to
fire these people because they're so much better than all
the other employees.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So they're keeping they get to keep their job.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I think they probably do in the end to have
to get rid of them. One cybersecurity expert, however, has
found a full proof way to catch out a suspected
North Korean infiltrator in a job interview.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
That's something that I need to know in my every
day life.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
It all starts with a question, do you know what
the question is?
Speaker 3 (02:58):
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
How fat is Kim Johnkwun? Ask me the question, how
fat is Kim junk Wun? Well, you're not too long.
North Korean infiltrated would immediately close out of the video
conference because even contemplating that question is to.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
As Wow, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So that's fake fake people of the wheat story.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
I'll have one next week for you, maybe about me.
So you love stories about fake people online. I love
Peanut M and MS very good match.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Very good. You know who eats Pean and M and MS.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Probably Kim Johnon He may do he may If you
can get an eminem into.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Big red wine enthusiasts.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
French red wine really attressive, of course, not chatewed Diana
so well. Speaking of Chateau Diana and peanut m and ms,
there's a new app that is gaining popularity that a
lot of my friends actually use, and it's this app
that tells you how guilty your guilty snacking pleasure.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Is like a calorie counter apple, what.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Sort of it's like calorie counter adjacent.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
It's called yuka, like the vegetable. That's correct, but it
also has yuck in it.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I just made up a new word. That's correct. It's correct.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
That's correct for those of you, like OZ who are
unfamiliar with it. The app actually lets you scan the
barcodes of different foods and personal products and then gives
them a score based on how healthy it is. Everything
that I've ever scanned is like you will die.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
So you basically you take a photo of the barcode
and upload it to the app, and then it kind
of spits out what the product has in it.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
How did the M and ms do?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Zero out of one hundred?
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Is actually true?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yes, the nuts in them?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
What you said?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
They contain at least six additives, four of which it
rated as high risk.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Whatever high risk means.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
It's already I'm too far gone because I eat pan
and Eminem's every single night.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I call them my night chocolate.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
You know. I read that the app sometimes offers healthier
alternatives for products that you've scanned or looked up, and
I'll produce a tory. Actually tried scanning some Twinkies. Sadly,
there are no alternatives.
Speaker 4 (05:06):
This is like when people say, oh, do you want
to have sex? Free sex? You know what I'm saying,
It's just that to me, Well, it's like how I
feel about all these alternatives. So I actually have a
friend who was pushing Yuka on me so hard, and
I'm like, leave me out of this drama. I don't
want to see what's in the products that I'm eating.
But it actually looks like she's not alone. Unsurprisingly, our
(05:28):
dear RFK Junior and his wife both use Yuka.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
This is the app you use if you want to
have the feeling of the United States Secretary of Health
and Human Services constantly whispering over your shoulder about food additives.
And indeed, those emin ms have red forty, which.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
Is so sad because red eminems are my favorite m
and ms. You know, I think it speaks to a
sort of health conscious, make America healthy moment people are having.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Like if you've been to.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
The grocery store recently, they're putting protein on everything, like
protein waffles.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Like, why do I need prote in my popcorn? It's
just popcorn?
Speaker 1 (06:02):
You know.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
There are sodas with extra fiber and probiotics in them.
You've got steak and shake transitioning away from using seed
oils in French fry, Like if I go to steak
a chake, I want to eat a French fry. I'm
not trying to eat like an avocado oil French fry.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
The wood Street Channal reported that Yuka has sixty eight
million users worldwide, and an average of twenty five thousand
new US users have joined daily since the beginning of
this year, twenty five thousand people every day. At the
beginning of May, Yuka rank as the number one health
and fitness app in Apple's app store. Not only that,
major food brands like Campbell's and Chabani have responded to
(06:37):
customers complaining about the ingredients they find in their products
while using Yuka.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
I don't want to think that we are all becoming
Rfki junior. But I think at least once you download
the app, you can think that you're being health conscious,
even if it's one time.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
I mean, I think the thing is like if you're
reaching for a bag of M and m's no judgment,
you kind of know it's not besting anyway.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Anything that I reach for, It's like, I don't need
an app to tell me if I'm doing something right now.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
I think if you're choosing between like different frozen dinners,
for example, and one is like categorically best than the other,
that like, if you're like it's an input to a
switching decision versus like should I eat the eminems, I
can imagine it being more useful.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
Yes, and I do think people are interested in finding
healthy alternatives, which is an interesting thing.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I guess that comes out of Yuca. Yes, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Well, some people are looking into what's going into their food,
others into what's going into their clusrooms.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Very nice.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Thank You've got a headline for us about this.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
I do have a news story for you about what's
going on in the classroom, a place I haven't been
in at least fifteen years. Recently, over two hundred and
fifty CEOs, from Microsoft's Satya Nadella to Josh Kushner's Karly
Klaus to the CEO of the College Board signed an
open letter calling for computer science and AI to be
(07:49):
quote a core part of US kindergarten through twelve curricula.
The letter states that taking just one high school computer
science course can boost students few wages by eight percent,
regardless of career path or college attendance.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
One of these moments where we were like in peak,
everyone should learn to code, and then it was like
no one should learn to code, and now it's like
people should learn to code again.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
I know I'd to use a computer very young, and
my income has not been boosted by eight percent.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
The letter doesn't specify really how this curriculum should be
developed and rolled out, but it does point to countries
like Singapore, China, and South Korea as examples of countries
they've done this successfully. The letter reads, quote in the
age of AI, we must prepare our children for the
future to be AI creators, not just consumers. A basic
foundation in computer science and AI is crucial for helping
(08:37):
every student thrive in a technology driven world. Without it,
there is falling behind.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Yeah, there's a huge investment in AI education from countries
who want to get a long term edge in the
AI race, Like the UAE. The Amoradi school system will
add AI as a subject in the upcoming school year
and will include concepts like ethical awareness and real world applications.
Schools in Beijing will start offering AI courses in September
(09:03):
as well.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Here in the US, President Trump recently signed an executive
order calling to emphasize AI competency in schools. The executive
order also called the establishment of a Presidential Artificial Intelligence
Challenge and nationwide competition for students and educators demonstrate their
AI skills.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
This reminds me of the Bass pro fishing Python Hunter
Bowl in Florida, which is something I really loved. But no, honestly,
it seems like kids are demonstrating their AI skills, just
not in the ways that teachers would perhaps like them to.
New York Magazine actually ran an article titled quote everyone
is cheating their way through college, And there was actually
a statistic in there that was really striking, which is
(09:42):
that in a survey of one thousand college students, nearly
ninety percent the other ten percenter line had used chat
gpt for homework help. And this was back in twenty
twenty three, before chat gpt became you know, every eighty
year old's best friend.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Yeah, that last ten percent, I think it's probably been
accounted for since twenty twenty three. One of the students said, quote,
with chat gipt, I can write an essay in two
hours that normally takes twelve. It can't be easy being
k through twelve teacher or college professor these days. Some
of them have tried devising their own ways to detect
chatchipt usage in their student's essays. Others say, you can
tell when an essay is written by a chatbot because
(10:17):
it's written clunkily or random words. But of course these
models are just getting better and better.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
I mean, we got away with it in the script,
didn't we know? I'm kidding, But the way that I
would have exploited chat gypt at sixteen seventeen eighteen. You know,
all I had back in my day was free translation
dot com, which allowed me to write long French essays.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yes, you can work well enough to did it depends on.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
As my B plus baby as MYB plus.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So our next headline is about competition between the US
and China, but not in the classroom and not really
an AI, rather in the realm of vehicles. The Wall
Street Journal around this headline with the story what a
fifteen thousand dollars electric suv says about the US China
car rivalry. The car in question is the Toyota BZ
(11:05):
three X, which is a compact electric suv about the
same size as the Toyota RAV four, which of course
is ubiquitous here in the US. But the car has
a jaw droppingly low price tag.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
If an electric car costs fifteen thousand dollars, it would
be like a plug and chug driver.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, Well, you can thank China's supply chains for the
price of the car. Toyota are obviously a Japanese company,
but the cars are localized in different parts of the world,
and this suv is made in China using Chinese batteries
and Chinese driver assistance technology. But when Toyotas are sold
in the US, the supply chain is way more expensive.
There's a similar model available here for about forty thousand dollars,
(11:46):
so someone else, why don't you buy the Chinese version
and import it. Well, that'd be the most beautiful word
in English language tariffs, except in this case, bidener are
tariffs which put one hundred percent tariff on Chinese evs.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
And I don't see Trump reversing that one.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
That's not one of the ones he's going to be
running back gus for sure.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
But it's a weird thing how much we live in
this parallel universe with China, Like fifteen thousand versus forty thousand,
is I guess a one hundred percent tariff?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
There you go, that's that.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
More. And China people buy local car brands that we've
never heard of here in the US Zeka Ion there
is one that's slightly more well known called BYD not
by me. And the technology around these Chinese evs is
very impressive. C ATL, a Chinese battery manufacturer, recently showed
off a new EV battery that can put three hundred
(12:37):
miles of charge into a car battery in just five minutes.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
That's insane.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
These companies in China, these battery companies and car companies
are really really pulling ahead in the race.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
That's incredible.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
It just seems like cars are a really good reflection
of the sort of siling off of global economies, at
least between the US and China, and with the addition
of more tariffs on Chinese imports, this it probably isn't
going to change anytime soon.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
Bye. By globalization.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
There is one area though, where countries still work together,
and that's Interpol.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
You know, you're right about that.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
And I wanted to tell you a little bit about
this Financial Time story that I read about how Interpol
has been adapting to the technologies modern criminals are using.
Interpol you know, is, of course the International Criminal Police Organization.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
Of course I didn't know that. I thought you would.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
You're supposed to know all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
I thought it was French Interpol.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
So let me say it again for you, international criminal
police organization. And they have been engaged in a technological
arms race with the world's most wanted criminals. I always
think of inspector Gadget when I think of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
The article is a great read, and it describes Interpol's
innovation lab, which is in Singapore, with an opening scene
quote a fleet of underwater drones, gleaming and ready for action,
is lined up along the wall. Nearby a small armory
of brightly colored three D printed guns displayed on a
side table. A robot dog named Ino lies prone on
(14:05):
the floor waiting to be activated.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
There's something filthy.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
When I first read that, I was like, you know,
I do not like the way they're talking about you
in this article. He lies prone on the floor. That's
how you know FT is a British newspaper. But yeah,
the FT actually interviewed the head of Interpol's Digital Forensics
team and he said that the advancement of technology in
the last couple of years is the biggest he's seen,
which is saying a lot because he's actually been working
there since the late nineties to keep up with the
(14:31):
evolution of cybercrime. Interpol actually opened the Singapore Lab in
twenty fifteen, and these days one of their main focuses
is identifying AI enabled scams, which, as you know and
as we know as a listenership, are getting more and.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
More sophisticated with the use of deep fakes.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
Just a decade ago we were dealing with the Nigerian
print scam, and now we are trying to tackle deep
fake romance scams, sextortion and multimillion dollar phishing attacks. So
when the FT reporter visited the Interpol lab, it was
monitoring nearly three point five million attempted cyber attacks, and
he was told that that was fairly typical.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I especially like the section about the robot canine units.
Some of the models Interpol has are the size of
a German shepherd, and they can run up to seven
and a half miles per hour, and they can jump
pretty high. And they can also be sort of two
way microphone systems carrying audio messages, which apparently can be
quite handy in hostage situations.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
Yeah, so say what you want about technology being used
for morally dubious ends, but if I were the hostage
in that situation, at least my confusion would distract from
my panic, Like you'd be waiting for your captors to
untie you while they argue with a robot dog.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Like. Also, robot dogs can't retire or get sick or
get sick.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
I actually just heard this story about how bomb squad
unit dogs have to retire with their owners.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Essentially, so the New York Police dogs basically they're one
person dogs.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
And if they're handle or retire, they're like woh, Wow,
come to my retirement party.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Where's these robot dogs?
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Exactly the root, completely owner agnostic.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
But one of the big takeaways from the piece, this
ft piece, is that even with the innovation Lab, Interpol's
job is never over.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
We talked about dogs, Now it's time for game of
cat and mouse.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
Criminals will catch up and vice versa. You know, take
ghost guns for example. They are popular amongst criminals because,
unlike traditional firearms, they do not have serial numbers, and
so Interpol is now trying to figure out how to
link a ghost gun to their specific printers by analyzing
the composition of the materials in order to figure out
their origin.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I joked about cat and mouse gains. But you can
just imagine how the next innovation will be disguising the
variable compositions of these ghost guns. We've got a couple
more headlines to run through, Starting with another crime story.
The Guardian reports that a trial over a road rage
induced killing of a man called Chris Pelk is underway,
(17:01):
starring Chris Pelke and Ai. Generated Pelky appeared in a
video calling for forgiveness for the man accused of shooting
him in what maybe the first AI delivered victim impact
statement ever delivered in a courtroom. I'm going to play
a fore.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Now, in another life, we probably could have been friends.
I believe in forgiveness and in God who forgives.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I always have and I still do.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
I love what does he keep saying.
Speaker 1 (17:28):
I love that AI Judge shows out towards I love
that AI.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Oh my god, yea incredible.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
The script was written by Pelky's sister and brother in law.
They fed the AI model, you know, images and video
of Pelki, but they actually wrote this script and I
thought it was quite quite moving that they would want
to go so far and above and beyond to give
a victim impact statement asking for forgiveness for the shooter.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
It's incredible. Also, this is essentially a deep fake because
of their brother. And I've seen a lot of deep fakes.
This one is very good. Other than that it looked
sort of computer generated. It is computer generated, so another
deep fake news. Do you remember that picture of the
late Pope France is wearing a Montclair puffer jacket.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, this Ski Ski Sheek. It was like supreme Pope.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
It was the Supreme Pope. It was AI generated but beloved. Nonetheless,
and now we sort of have a sequel to this.
The White House posted an AI generated picture of President
Trump dressed as the Pope hat robe, cross everything.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
True, respect, that's right.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
This post on X comes weeks after the passing of
Pope Francis and days after Trump said to media I'd
like to be Pope. There's been plenty of backlash from
state leaders to the New York archbishop, but when the
BBC asked a spokesperson for the Vatican to comment, they declined.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Finally, move over Hershey, Pennsylvania. According to The New York Times,
SpaceX is building a company town. Officially, residents of an
area surrounding SpaceX's launch site in the southern tip of
Texas have voted to create a city called star Base.
Starbase will be home to some three thy five hundred
SpaceX employees, and the proposed city boundaries include land owned
(19:14):
by the company and planned areas to build more housing.
SpaceX has filed paperwork with the state of Texas to
build a school, a power plant, and of course, a
sushi restaurant near He's hose. Yeah, that's why his main
residence is wild and where he voted. Apparently, the new
designation will also allow SpaceX to close a nearby beach
(19:35):
for rocket launches without the permission of the wider community.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And today we take you out on a joke from
care Price, which is, yes, I work at the Starbucks
in Starbase. That's good.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
That's very good.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
We're going to take a quick break now, and then
we're joined by the Washington Posts Drew Harwell to learn
about the three year live streaming marathon of Emily CC.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Stay with us, I can help, but wonder would I
watch someone drink a Starbucks from starbas on a live
(20:22):
stream or.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Eat a Starburst from Stargate. This brings us to our
next segment, which is a story I can't stop thinking about.
For a lot of teens and young adults, sitting down
and watching your favorite streamer play a video game or
live react to an event is as natural as watching
the Kardashians. And the Bravo of the live streaming world
(20:45):
is Twitch, a subsidiary of Amazon. Some of Twitch's most
popular streamers have tens of thousands of paid subscribers and
millions of views on their streams. They include political commentators
like Hassan Pika, gamers like Ninja, and marathon streamers like
kai sannot who will stream for hours at a time,
interacting with their subscribers and even performing requested stunts for
(21:08):
a fee, of course.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
But there's one streamer in particular, a twenty eight year
old Texas woman who goes by the username Emily CC,
who has taken this concept of the live stream marathon
to a whole different level. For the past three years,
Emily has streamed her life twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week. She streams while driving, sleeping, shopping,
and only disappears from the camera to use the restroom.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
As you can imagine, it is a huge sacrifice to
broadcast your life NonStop. I think I read the last
time she went on a date was seven years ago.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
This to me is like peak parasocial And what surprises
me most is that she has over three hundred and
twenty thousand followers.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, it's part social experiment, it's part next generation reality TV,
it's part monetizing your own life with the hustle, and
it encapsulates everything you said in terms of this increasingly personal,
parasocial way that people interact with other people they don't
know online. And recently, The Washington Post published a profile
of EMILYCC and with thrilled to have the author, the
(22:11):
technology reporter Drew Harwell here with us today, Drew, Welcome
to tech stuff. Thanks for having me. So I actually
have Twitch dot tv slash EMILYCC open in front of
me right now. Emily is unfortunately asleep while her dog
is awake in the crate in front of her bed,
and she has the subhead on her Twitch. I'm in
an article watch post exclamation mark, Social record exclamation mark.
(22:33):
So evidently she wasn't too upset with your reporting. But
how did this come about?
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I cover creators to the post And one day I
was just sort of, you know, procrastinating on X and
I saw this clip of Kai Sanai. He's like the
biggest star there is on Twitch. He was doing this
month long stream called Mafia than Io from his mansion
and between a couple of his stunts, they were just
kind of sitting around the computer and they were like, hey,
let's look up the longest streaming which person we can,
(23:01):
And they pulled up Emily and she was just shocked,
right because she was at home, like playing some goofy
video game and they both had this connection and she
was crying and Kai was really blown away, and she
talked about, you know, how she had been streaming for
three years twenty four to seven, never stopped, how she
was so tired, and yet she felt like she couldn't
(23:22):
quit the stream because she was so committed to it.
And it just struck me as such a fascinating human
story because the things she has to do to abide
by this like crazy challenge are wild, but to just
a great example of how inhuman the demands for streamers
can be, right. I mean, these are people who really
want to stand out on the Internet, and to do so,
(23:43):
they have to push themselves to the limits, and they
do so not knowing whether it'll pay off, not knowing
whether they'll even be streaming to anybody, or just you know,
five people and just sort of wasted time. So just
struck me as, you know, a fascinating example of so
many things we have to deal with on the modern Internet.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
How did you persuade her to sit? First? Story? And
then will you in the twitch? While you were doing
your reporting, I guess you were.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
So I'll start with her. I just reached out to her,
you know, I'd like doing profiles on creators, influencers and
the creator economy. I'd like doing narrative journalism, and so
I reach out to them and say, hey, just let
me tell your story. I want to understand you. I
want our readers to understand you. We have a pretty
old reader base, so a lot of this stuff is
very new to them. But I think, you know, in
my mind, I always see them as labor stories. These
(24:25):
are people who see the Internet as a career and
you know, the workplace for them is their home and
the Internet, and they don't really have a lot of
labor protections. They work for faceless companies who they hope
to make money from, but who basically don't care if
they live or die, right because there's always going to
be another twenty three year old streamer. So yeah, I
(24:47):
just took reaching out to Emily, and you know, she
was very game, and it was funny because everything I
talked with her about was on stream and it was
a really new experience for crazy, you know, it was crazy.
It was great. When I do these stories, I have
a kind of pre interview phase where I talked to
them over the phone. I walked them through this whole
weird experience of having a reporter shadow them, and so
(25:09):
we did some phone calls, we did some video calls
over Discord, which is kind of like a twitch communication
platform of choice. And then yeah, of course I spent
time with her in Austin. All of it was live streamed,
and so I could see in the chat as a
thousand people were watching. They were commenting on every question
I was asking, and you know, I'm asking sensitive questions
about like her lack of sex life, her bad experiences
(25:32):
with her parents, and how depressed she is. And this
whole time, the commenters are like either making fun of
the question or saying like, oh, well, I knew you
could ask about that, or you know, if I ask
a nice question, they're like, oh w like when for
mister Washington Post, or they'd call me unk as in
like uncle, like the old guy. So it was just
like so funny, and you know, for her, it was
(25:54):
like the most usual, normal thing in the world to
have people just commenting on that. But actually, when I
was in Austin with her, she stepped the way to
the bathroom for a minute and I was just sitting
alone in front of her computer while everybody was still
watching me. Everybody was posting these comments, and I felt
like my face flush. It just it's such an unusual
experience to have so many people watching you. And I
really felt in that moment like I understood more of
(26:16):
what she put herself through. Our lizard brains are not
built to process this amount of attention at all times,
and yet that was just normal for her, So it
gave me a good sense of what she has to
go through.
Speaker 4 (26:28):
That's an incredible image, just imagining the journalist as the
subject moves away, sort of doing exactly what the subject
is used to doing, and just yes looked at in
that way.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
It was wild. I mean you could basically still pull
up the clips now with me with her and like
petting her dog. You know, it's to see it on
the other side of the screen and to see that
place where she lives, not just in the box on
my monitor, but actually in real life.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
It was like it's like you got to watch The
Truman Show and then play a character in it for
a moment and then leave again. Talk about the record.
This is as of Friday May ninth, How long will
Emily have been doing this for?
Speaker 2 (27:05):
She has been online streaming twenty four to seven for
one two hundred and seventy nine days, and that's twenty
four to seven. You know, she does go to sleep,
she takes showers, you know, there's stuff when she's not
on camera, but all of that the camera has been
on recording and you can actually see in the data
it's wild. Like nobody really attempts that. It is a
crazy record, probably for good reason. But there are a
(27:27):
lot of marathon streamers who do long streams a month,
a week, two months, and they put themselves through these
wild challenges right where they'll lock themselves into a closet
or like ty Sinai, he basically created his own circus
with over like stunts and celebrity cameos, and you know,
it's a really interesting kind of entertainment because we're used
(27:48):
to these disparate blocks of like I watch a TV
show for thirty minutes, but these streamers, like they foster
that parasocial relationship with people where it's like my fans
are going to wake up, They're going to turn on
my Twitch, They're going to see what I'm doing. They're
going to watch me all day. They're just going to
have me in a tab on their computer thinking about me.
And some of the people I talk to who were
Emily's fans. They would go to sleep listening to Emily's voice,
(28:11):
and she was the background noise of their life. And
the stuff Emily puts herself through is I think fascinating.
But also these people who devote their lives to her
are really interesting too, because they really do see Emily
as a friend. And the more time I spent with Emily,
the more I got it. If I'm going to be
spending a lot of time alone by myself, it makes
sense to just have this person kind of there. It's
(28:33):
sort of like there's a person in the room, like
I have a roommate, and you know, if I can
relate to somebody like Emily, if I can relate to
the people I see on TV, why wouldn't I want
them around all the time. So you kind of get
where it comes from. We can kind of like scrutinize
are these real relationships? Are these real friendships? Like? Are
they real?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
You know?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Is this just like an illusion? But I think people
do kind of get something from it, and I think
it's kind of interesting to understand the gift and the
curse of how this stuff comes together.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Can you just talk a little bit about how she
got started doing this because it started differently than it
is now.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
So she was an only child. She grew up you know,
on screens, watching TV shows and video games. She was nineteen,
she was working at a CBS as a cashier, not
really knowing what she wanted to do with her life.
A lot of her friends had moved away. She kind
of stayed home. She didn't have a lot of money.
She had a boyfriend who was obsessed with playing video games,
and she would go over to his house and kind
(29:31):
of bring her laptop and basically entertain herself. Why he
was busy gaming, and I think basically to put her off,
he said, you know, why don't you like stream yourself
on Twitch? Like you've got no friends, right, Like you
just do your own thing on the internet. And she
saw that as like, Okay, maybe this is a way
to build friendships and make friends, and so she started
like a lot of streamers do, where she was playing
(29:53):
you know, World of Warcraft, a multiplayer games and recording
her face in the box on the corn the screen.
And you can go back and actually see the statistics
of her first streams, like nobody was watching, right, A
couple people here and there, and she just kept doing
it and she felt I think, a sense of purpose
from it because she wasn't getting purpose from her school,
(30:14):
wasn't really feeling it in her job, and this was
something that she could do on her own, devote her
life to, and she just kept doing it and doing
it and doing it. And this happens with a lot
of creators where you know they are really driven to
be the best they can be, and their computer is
always there, their webcam is always there. So she just
really kind of fell into it and now jumped to
(30:34):
three years later, it has become her life and you know,
she doesn't even really know a way to stop because
it's been so so critical to how she lives.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
And the numbers are important, but I want to also
talk about the money, like she has paying subscribers, but
can she actually live on this wage?
Speaker 2 (30:51):
Let me break down kind of the revenue of how
this works for creators, because it is really interesting. I
think she can make a living wage. She's not a millionaire.
There is a class of people who are millionaires on Twitch,
like a lot of creator platforms, it's a one percent problem.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
There's the one percent of Twitch.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Totally kind of like the one percent of Hollywood, right,
and the one percent of Major League sports where there's
a lot of people who just basically straight by. She's
kind of I would say, maybe the upper middle class.
It sounds like based off of her following, she makes
probably around five thousand dollars a month, maybe more, maybe
ten thousand dollars a month, so it's nothing to sneer at.
(31:28):
And on Twitch, if you get a number of followers,
you can get a share of the subscriptions. People pay
Twitch six dollars a month to subscribe to her channel.
You can watch her for free, but if you subscribe,
you get special emojis, you can you know, send her messages.
You get these little perks of subscriptions. So there's that.
(31:48):
Then on Twitch, people can donate to you outright. They
can give you tips. A lot of times people will
drop into your stream, maybe make fun of you or
do a crazy sound effect. There's been situations where like
Emily will go out to the grocery store and an
elevator and someone will prank her by like paying a
dollar to play like a fart noise over her cell
phone just kind of embarrass her in person. So you know,
(32:11):
she lives alone. She lives in an apartment. She doesn't
really do anything, but she makes more than she would
have made at CBS. And this is something she talked
about where she feels like this is capitalism. She's just
making a living. However, she feels like she can you know,
she felt like, I could finish at community college and
stay working at CVS, or I could do this other
risky thing, And why would I not do it? Because
(32:34):
I'm making more than I ever would have done, you know,
moving groceries around.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
What's it costing her to do this? I don't mean
financially so much as personally.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, it's costing her a lot, I think, And she
talks about this pretty openly. You know, for three years
she has devoted her life to being online all the time.
So there's kind of the tangible stuff.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Right.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
She wasn't flying anywhere because then she would be offline
for a little bit, so she couldn't stream. She was
saying no to wedding invitations, right. She's talked about she
went to like a club with a friend one time
and the service was really bad in the club, so
she had to leave. And she's talked about losing friends
because not everybody wants to be on a stream with
(33:16):
hanging out with her. She doesn't have a good relationship
with her parents. Her parents don't really understand what she's doing.
They don't want to be on stream. So there's a
lot of kind of like human losses. But I think also,
you know, she started to wonder just about the opportunity cost.
When you're devoting twenty four seven to your stream, you're
not doing a bunch of other things that might make
(33:37):
you happier, might lead to something else. And so you know,
she's still making those judgments every day, but there's a
lot that goes into it that she's had to sacrifice
just to be part of this crowd.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Why do you put this in let's say the history
of like reality TV experiments and as a famous Doky
series recently about the Japanese man who lived in that
room being broadcast for like two years and you know,
was really at the edge of his sanity by the
end of that experience. And the contestant, right, there's a
woman you mentioned in your piece called Jennifer Ringley who
(34:10):
had a continuous broadcast of her life back in the
early two thousands. I guess what's new and what's old
and what does all of this say about us?
Speaker 2 (34:18):
So I find them really interesting examples because it shows
that some of this is not new, and I think
it speaks to this human impulse in us that desires
to watch people be people and to just look at
them through the glass. It's why we watch reality TV.
So why I watch reality TV, right, I want to
see people interact in these situations and process that. I
(34:43):
think what's changed from that is that it has become
normalized to the point where we are all creators in
a way. Right. We use social media all the time,
we perform for our family and friends on the internet.
It's just become something that seems not so crazy more.
And I think it's kind of expanded the Overton window
on what we feel is acceptable. When you know, one
(35:04):
hundred years ago, it would have been crazy that we
would ever watch somebody in all of these private moments
or even make money off of it.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
There's also this kind of algorithmic bias towards extreme content, right,
But there's this interesting element of this story where the
algorithmic bias towards extreme content mix people behave or incentivizes
people to behave in more extreme ways. In real life,
there is a British only fans creator who you mentioned
in your story called Lily Phillips, who ran a stunt
(35:33):
where she slept I think, with one hundred men in
twenty four hours and it kind of broke the internet
a few months ago, and then another sort of YouTube
creator made a kind of interview piece with her where
she broke down, which kind of broke the internet a
second time. Can you tell us a bit about how
it intersects with this story.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, I mean we have to remember this is a
this is a business, right, and with only fans with Twitch,
with a lot of social media, these people are competing
for the currency of the Internet, which is attention. Right,
the only way to get attention versus all of the
thousands of other people you're competing with is to raise
the bar, to do something crazier, to do something that
(36:12):
people can't look away from. I mean, you see it
on x formerly Twitter right, where people will say crazy,
outlandish conspiracy theories and they want to outdo the next
right wing influencer by saying something crazier because they know
that it doesn't matter if what they're saying is right,
it matters that it pisses people off. And engages people,
(36:32):
gets people to watch them. What if I'm kind of
unusual about Twitch? Is that unlike with TikTok, where people
really want like the most just gut punching five second
video that they can make, Twitch really relishes and being
this long form thing that people can watch for six hours.
So there's a lot of like banal content on Twitch
that you wonder like why would somebody watch somebody playing
(36:55):
video games or playing chess, or studying or coding a
computer program, all of which is on Twitch. But then
you see people like Emily who it's kind of the
mix of just a banal kind of normal life, but
also you want to watch to see is she going
to finally quit? Is she going to reach her breaking point?
She's gone three years, Like is she going to you know,
(37:17):
just freak out and run away? So there's that kind
of mix of wanting to see somebody in their normal element,
but also kind of expecting something bad is going to
happen from this crazy challenge she's putting herself through.
Speaker 4 (37:29):
I mean, she's talked about having a kind of end point,
like she's not just doing this to do this, she
wants to do it so that she can have a house,
and be married by the time she's thirty years old.
So do you, now having interviewed her, feel like there's
an endpoint for her and is it looking like she's
on the trajectory to have the things that she wants.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I think with Emily, she shifts her end goal out
all the time, so it's hard to know when she
will ever reach an endpoint. And she even says now
she doesn't see any reason to quit yet kind of
hears these clocks in her head of I want to
buy a house by thirty, I want to get married,
you know, all these kind of like basic societal impulses
(38:09):
that a lot of us here. But you know, it's
hard for her to think of like what a life
would be like not on camera. I think it would
be a big culture shock when or if it ever happens.
When you're doing something day in and day out for
three years, to be able to break away from that
will be really challenging. And you know, I tried to
press her on this point because she said she wants
to be married in a couple of years, but she
(38:31):
still thinks she might be streaming in five years, And
I said, well, are you going to be like pregnant
and streaming. Are you going to be like streaming your wedding? Like,
how does this work? And so I think she's still
trying to figure out what bat'll look like and if
it will work or if she'll have to kind of
bend on either the life goals she has or kind
of these twitch goals.
Speaker 3 (39:01):
Drew, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1 (39:03):
Thank you, Drew.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
That's it for this week for tech Stuff, I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
And I'm os Valosan. This episode was produced by Eliza
Dennis and Victoria Domingez. It was executive produced by me,
Kara Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel
for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Beheath Fraser and Jack
Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch rode Themesol.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Join us next Wednesday for tex Stuff The Story, when
we will share an in depth conversation with game designer
him Gingold about every millennial's favorite game, Simsony.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Please rate, review and reach out to us at text
aff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear
from you.
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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