November 5, 2025 • 49 mins
For this week’s episode, we collaborated with Ryan Broderick and Grant Irving from Panic World to go deep on three middle school rumors. We’ll investigate the false rumor that Ciara announced she was intersex, the “jenkem” panic of the 90s, and the rumor that Marilyn Manson had a rib removed so that he could…you know.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Manny and this is Devin, and this is no
such thing.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
The show where we settle our dawn arguments and yours
by actually doing the research. On today's episode, how did
we all hear that Sierra rumor?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
I No, there's no no such thing, no such thing,
no such thank touch thank no touch thank.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
All Right, So today's episode is actually a collaboration with
our friends over at Panic World, so we would be
joined by Ryan and his producer Grant. It is about
middle school conspiracy theories and rumors. Uh, we're gonna be
talking about a time long long ago, So there's gonna
be some language that is not up to date that
we're gonna be referencing. For example, throughout this episode, we're
(00:56):
gonna use the term hermathodite, which we're using at the
time to refer to intersects people, which, if you do
not know, are people who have sexual anatomy or reproductive
organs or chromosome patterns that do not align with what
we assume to be typical definitions for male or female.
(01:16):
We're also going to be talking about this idea of
people pretending to be a gender that they are not. Obviously,
this is very outdated language, and we know that Trench
people are not pretending to be something that they're not.
I would like to say that that's outdated, but as
we discuss in this episode, this is.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Current day phenomenon. So let's get into it, all.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Right, fellas, we are gathered here today to try and
get to the bottom of something that we've been trying
to get to the bottom of for a very long time. Now,
just some quick text for the listeners. No, where did
you go to middle school?
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Connecticut?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
In Connecticut and New Jersey?
Speaker 6 (02:09):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I went to middle school in Ohio? How about you, Ryan, Massachusetts?
And despite the fact that we all went to different
middle schools or high schools in different states, I'm willing
to bet that we've all heard the same celebrity rumor.
And then, you know, we all went to these schools
in the early two thousands and so what was the
(02:32):
biggest celebrity rumor at your school?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Devin, I'm cheating a little bit because it's what the
episode is about, but it's not.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
It's not a you know, we're talking to the listeners.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It was that Sierra, the R and B singer was born.
At the time we were saying she was born hermapthadite.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Today we would say.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
In yes, and she apparently was on Oprah where she
revealed this to the world.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Does that sound familiar to you, guys.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
I've heard different versions of different celebrities with that thing.
Oh okay, because there was also one for Lady Gaga.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yes, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
We would have been high school or college. Yeah, but
it's come around a bunch.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Basically in middle school, the biggest celebrity rumor was that
Sierra was what we were calling back then a hermaphrodite,
or that she was trans And I've been personally fascinated
by the fact that no matter where you went to
middle school in the United States, you heard of this
(03:37):
rumor or participated in the spreading of it. And the
reason why I'm fascinated is because it was so early
in social media kind of trajectory, or before social media.
I think maybe I was on Zanga at the time,
but we weren't really talking about, you know, celebrity rumors,
and I really wanted to know where this rumor came
(03:59):
from from and how it was able to spread across
the country despite the fact that we weren't really online
in the sense that we were today. But I think
before we try to figure out where this rumor came from,
it's important to kind of contextualize what was happening when
the rumor started.
Speaker 7 (04:19):
So Sierra grew.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Up in College Park, Atlanta. If you've ever listened to
hip hop in the early two thousands, you'll recognize that
neighborhood because it was yelled out in virtually every hip
hop song.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And it's getting best to me of course.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
And in high school she created a girls singing group
called Hearsay with two of her friends. Uh they got
so popular that she got a writing deal with Jazzy Fay.
Together Jazzy Fans here wrote a few demos. One of
(04:55):
those demos is what would Become One two Step, which
is the hit single from her debut album, Goodies in
two thousand and four, So Much, which featured Missy Elliott,
a frequent collaborator of Sierra.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I know you heard about a lot of greatam c
but they ain't got nothing, no men because.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Of Thattua and someone who also had rumors swirling about
her sexuality at the time.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Goodies.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
The album debuted at number three on Billboard's Top two hundred,
and it was around this time that she also became
a sex symbol. She released this single Goodies on the
album Goodies, and I just want to play you guys
some of the lyrics I bet you want the Goodies
that you thought about it got you all hot and
(05:46):
bothered mad because I talk around it. If you're looking
for the goodies, keep on looking because they stay in
the jars. Obviously, the song meaning is that, you know,
everyone around her, people in the music industry, are incredibly
thirsty for Sierra, and she's telling them that, you know,
(06:08):
even though I'm young, like I know what I'm doing,
it's not happening. Get over it. It's like common knowledge,
I guess in American society, where like people will sometimes
make up things about people who have rejected their advances,
and I just I do wonder if that had a
role to play in this rumor getting started.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
So we did an episode kind of about the like
the entertainment world rumor mill and like how it's evolved now,
like the Justin Baldoni stuff. And I have to assume that,
like the new version where they're waging war with like
troll accounts and stuff, is just a digital version of
what was already happening. So like hearing this, which is
the first time I've sort of heard this all put together,
(06:52):
it wouldn't surprise me if she's writing what is effective,
like a shady track about like predatory man in the industry,
and all of a sudden a rumor appears it she
is intersector hermaphrodite that feels totally linked to me.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And as of right now, I have no evidence, but
I think it's interesting when like exactly what time this
rumor started coming?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, so and we looked at you know, went to
classic Google trends, typed in Sierra Man to see when
these rumors started. So there's basically nothing until December of
two thousand and four, and then it starts to go
up a little bit. January starts to go up a
little bit more, and then by February of two thousand
(07:35):
and five, it's when it hits its peak.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Was there any kind of award buzz around goodies?
Speaker 4 (07:44):
She definitely was nominated for a bunch of the kind
of classic awards. I'm not sure if she won any.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I should look up computer because I'm wondering if like
the peak is because of award season buzz or like
I'm wondering, because when we've done sort of similar research,
like there usually is like something that you can kind
of point to be like maybe that's what caused it.
That would be what my thought would be.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Yeah, it could be.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So we looked into this, and in two thousand and five,
Sharah was not up for any major awards, and the
next year, so two thousand and six, she was nominated
for and did end up winning one Grammy Award. So
she was at a party in February of two thousand
and five, a Vibe magazine party, and this is the
quote that everyone sort of keeps going back to New
York Daily News. Ask her about it, as far as
(08:31):
I can tell, this the first time.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
YE ask her about it. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
A lot of people ask her directly about this. This
is not like behind the scenes rumored. This is like, Sierra,
are you a man? This is face to face though.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
And I guess we should mention that part of a
big part of the rumor we heard was that she
had actually addressed the rumors on the Oprah Show. There's
a bit there's a Mandela effect thing happening where all
the thoughts she had already addressed the rumors on Oprah,
which never happened exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
So Vibe ask her basically, what happens and Sierra's like,
you know, it's funny the rumors that I used to
be a man. And she said, the funny thing about
it is that people are saying I said this on Oprah.
I've never been on Oprah. It's gonna take me a
while to get on opraen right, Like I just started
my career. Oprah's like a milestone. I'm not there yet.
(09:20):
So I looked into this. You know, you can't just
take Sierra's word for this. Has she ever been on
Oprah by this point, she had not, but she was
on Regis and Kelly.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
It'll make a television debut.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Want to show with Sierra with goodies?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Sierra, you got the TV guys back in the day,
the air before Oprah's Voting Party special. So I'm like,
maybe people were seeing the ads for you know how
they would be like, all right, you.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Know, I actually just googled this because I was curious
if people were confusing it with another Oprah episode. And
she did do an interesting episode in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well she did actually in two thousand four. You was
segment in August about trans children. Yeah, okay, none of
the kids' names were Sierra. I did go through and
to be like, all right, maybe is there some confusion here,
But yeah, she did do it again in two thousand
(10:18):
and seven. I don't know that that. In two thousand
and four they were calling them trans. They were saying
like gender identity, yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Issues.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
I'm sure that episode has aged great.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I'm sure, yeah, everyone, and there's no reason to think
about it anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
She did a great job. So I feel like Oprah
is the classic. Like if there's a rumor, you say
that you heard it on Oprah. Growing up, there was
another rumor that Tommy Hill figure was on Oprah and
he told Oprah, I don't like black people wearing my clothes.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I remember that.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I remember this my mom, Like.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I said, I was talking to my mom about this
episode and she was like, oh, yeah, I remember. I
literally stopped buying Tommy Hill Figure for like a year
or two.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
There was a boycott.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I remember, yeah, because we all heard that he was like,
I don't like black people wearing my clothes.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
And it just never happened.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
No, why did he was on the show at all. Okay,
I'm so fascinating because, like, clearly there is some sort
of way that these things are spreading, because I definitely
vividly remember up until just a second ago, I thought
that that happened. No, So like how because it wouldn't
have been the Internet, Like, I'm so fascinated.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
How were we because it wasn't like we saw something online,
like hey, I saw on a Reddit thread, you know,
Tommy Hill figure saying he doesn't like black.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
And there's no there's no reports of him ever saying
that and in any kind of context.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
No, it would be crazy if he said it on right, Yeah, yeah,
pretty amazing to Oprah, Yeah that would take anyway.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
The nineties were wild. But I don't know if that Yeah,
how how would that have happened?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So Snop's actually debunked this in February of two thousand
and five. Sierra the Sierra Rumor their best as to
why people think this is happening. It is because there's
a random irishwoman named Sierra who had a blog about
her transition, and they're saying, if you google Sierra at
(12:12):
this time, this is one of the first things that
pops up.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
So people are saying maybe that's the case. Right. So
that's February.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
But in March, still circulating, we got the Herald News
in New Jersey paper.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
There's an eighteen year old Charles.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
They're asking him, Charles' what's the craziest news story you
heard recently?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And he says that Sierra is a man. They printed this.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
That's a good column.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's one it was like get to know your neighbors
segments and that's Charles's.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Fun you know, news story night.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
I actually tried to track down Charles. We found him
and I reached out sent him the photo and he
did not respond.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So we get our first sort of inkling here of
maybe where this is coming from. So in March of
two thousand and five, there's this chain letter that's going around.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Remember chain letters, Yeah, of course they're very important on email.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, on email. And it's a fake article from all
Hip Hop. And the gist of the article is that
Sierra goes on not Oprah but one O six in
Park and.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
She says I am gay.
Speaker 8 (13:31):
And then.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
I'll read what it just says, because it's just crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Sierra's coming out as a lesbian would have been difficult
on its own but also having to admit that she
is really a he on national television was caused for
celebration amongst the gay and lesbian community. No major pop
star singer has ever come out as a transvestite to viewers,
especifically after already releasing an album.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
So I'm gonna ignore like all of the terms that
they're using there because it's a mess. But it is
fascinating to me that that is written as like an
inspirational thing is basically what I like. That's someone made
this up or misunderstood this. I'm imagining that this was
probably shared like within like a black gay email community.
(14:20):
That would be my guess. Yeah, I got a treasure
trove that somebody sent me off, like old chain letters
that I've been like looking at over the last few months,
and it's really fascinating that like they are very similar
to what you would see on Facebook now that they
are written specifically for a group like either a list
serve or like people who know each other. So it's
interesting to me that like that rumor is being shared
(14:41):
positively within some sort of in groups.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
That's cost for celebration.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, Like it's not like they're not being mean a bad.
I mean, they're completely confused on what's happening in every
possible way. But it is interesting that it's like inspirational
as a framing.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
So then that's you know, beginning of March, sort of
mid March, Tierra goes I want in six in Park
and this is the first time we for real, yeah,
for real, it's time.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
So if there are any.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Rumors anything that's going on with's the era, which there
are on the internet and all of the message clear.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Air right now.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Let the people know what's going on.
Speaker 8 (15:17):
Any crazy anything, And you know, I gotta say, none
of them bother me, but I just do it just
to do it, because whatever, there's one thing about me
being a man or something like that before I was
something when I was born, I got a change, really
amaphrodite or something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And they said that I went on Oprah and did it.
Speaker 8 (15:34):
And I'm like, okay, come on, now, you know if
I was on Oprah, like I mean, it takes a
while before that happens with somebody going to Oprah, you
know what I mean, Like that's really big, so we
know that didn't happen. If you can find it, though,
I'll give you one hundred grand and find you around
the water.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
And do everything for it, if taking and play it
for me.
Speaker 8 (15:52):
Yeah, and then there's something else about me being a
lesbian or something like that. I mean, it's so sad,
and I'm sitting right here in the dressing It's like,
it's so funny to me. And want I feel about
in life is that the bigger and better things get
for you, the more people try to bring you down.
Speaker 7 (16:04):
And that's just the way I sens the true.
Speaker 8 (16:05):
So I mean, that's not true.
Speaker 9 (16:07):
I'm gonna say.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
It's not true.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
I watched One of six and park religiously back then, yeah,
and being like, damn all my friends lied to me.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
Yea.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
I remember watching it just being like, what the hell
was that all about?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
So this follows her for a little, you know that
that wasn't the end of it. Of course.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
July two thousand and five, Entertainment Weekly is doing a
write up and they kind of start the article talking about, Hey,
the singer, the story goes was born intersexual and stay
with us here recently out of herself as a lesbian,
her mathedite on Oprah, and it's you know, basically her
giving the line of like, no that's not true. Then
(16:45):
a year later, so November of two thousand and six,
in a Slam magazine article about Kingdom come the not
Great jay Z album. Oh there's a review and out
of no where the writer goes, and trust me, writing
that last sentence hurt me just as much as when
I heard that Sierra was allegedly her math that I
(17:07):
thank god she isn't. This is you know, November two
thousand and six.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
It was actually hard tracking this this writer down. I
finally did no response as well response. I think people
just don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
You know, we give him the opportunity to comment on
what you said November and it's review. And then December
two thousand and six, AP is doing a profile of
her and they're still talking about it.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Associated Press, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
The Associated Press. In December of two thousand and six.
They say she just wants to have fun, she said,
and that includes ignoring wild rumors that began circulating when
she first made a name for herself. People were saying
that she was dating Missy Elliott, who rapped on Sierra's
number one.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Hitber That I remember rumors that like Missy Elliot was
grooming Sierra.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yes, I remember that.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
By two thousand and six, like interest for this was
pretty down and it didn't really pick up until twenty fifteen,
which was when rumors started going around that Sierra and
Future were expecting a kid, which makes sense why people
would be like.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes, sure.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
There was a moment I think in two thousand and
six or seven where she released a song called like
a Boy, so it.
Speaker 10 (18:20):
Sounds I.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
Could switch up the.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Boat not a thing, and I think I remember being
I thought, I remember thinking, oh, she's kind of poking
fun at but it's really about like privilege, I think.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
I think.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So this comes up in one of these articles where
you know, they're making all these innuendos about how people
think she's a man, and that was it.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
That's kind of a trajectory of is Sierra really a man?
And this has come up with Lady Gaga.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Megan Fox, Megan Fox.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It's like any sort of like sex symbol, yes, pop star,
this like comes up.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah, especially like there seems to be some sort of
connection between like a sex symbol who starts to figure
out how to translate that into power and influence. Yes,
like Lady gog in particular, like the claims that she
was intersex or trans appeared like right as she is
starting to kind of do whatever she wants. And that's why,
(19:27):
like I tend to think there's some sort of like
industry rumor mill yeah, that that comes out to like
knock them down a peg when they start to like
break off, And that would sort of make sense here too,
Like she's blowing up and now she's like writing songs
about how like you know, she's gonna do her own
thing or whatever, and she's having a successful album and
(19:48):
then those rumors appear like that. That doesn't seem like
an accident.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
To me, And it makes sense that they go to
the you know, the intersex or trans thing, right, because
it's always like, oh, you were really into this person
and now like something thing that like you know, something's
happening that you didn't know what's happening. You've been fooled,
you've been tricked. So like goes at this like insecurity
that people have about like oh, no, I thought it
was straight, but now I'm into this person who you're
(20:12):
telling me is.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
She must be trained exactly. I mean, it's also just
super hard to prove in fact, like yeah, we should
mention like literally right now, Candice Owens is being sued
by the president and his wife of France.
Speaker 10 (20:27):
Brigitte Macrone, wife of the French president Manuel Macrone, now
says she's going to present scientific and photo evidence in
court to prove her sex. This is part of the
couple's court case here in the US, as they're suing
the woman on the right side of your screen, conservative
commentator Candice Owens for saying on her platforms Macrone was
born male.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
So like that's how pervasive these sort of things come up.
I think.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, it was shocking to me going through this that
so much of this was in like printed like actually.
Speaker 5 (20:55):
I was surprised by that.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I thought it would be more just like blogs and
of course there's people you know, it's a common blogs
and stuff, but a lot of it was like actually
printed in like you know, Chicago Tribune and like AP
like real newspapers.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Well, I think the assumption was that like no one
would ever see it outside of Chicago. It's like it's
not you know, we're very new into a world where
we can see what people in Chicago are reading. Yeah,
like that's kind of a crazy idea. Yeah, we could
see what people in other countries are writing, like that's
never been the case.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
All Right, we're gonna take a little break and then
we're gonna hear about Ryan's favorite middle school conspiracy. So
we had some pretty incredible responses to our shower episode.
Some of you said the episode changed your lives. Carolyn
wrote in saying, Hi, guys, I'm a white girl. We
(21:51):
didn't actually wash her lights in the shower. Your dermatologist
guest embarrassed the hell out of me, So now I
take an extra ten seconds wash my legs. Great job, Carolyn,
But some of you weren't convinced, like this listener who
called in.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
I typically only shower once or twice a week, to
be honest, and in the office two days a week.
So Monday night I'll take a shower so that I'm
clean for Tuesday. Wednesday, I'm fine. Thursday, I go back
into the office, bill home, take another shower, and nobody
has seen to complain to me. Maybe I'll shower on
(22:29):
Friday before the weekend, but like, I don't really care.
Nobody's ever pulled me aside, and like, hey, you.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Stick, I don't know, man.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Then then I think he has doing it too much,
know what the dermatologist said, but I think you're going
a little too much.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
You guys remember like the first time you ever heard
about like drugs, like, oh yeah, my parents house. Yeah, okay.
I also remember sort of like watching like a Dare presentation,
being like should you just be telling us like how
drugs were where to get them? But it's around this
(23:16):
time I think that I first heard of what I've
considered like the funniest, stupidest middle school rumor. I think
it's endlessly funny. Have you guys ever heard of jenkam?
I don't think so.
Speaker 8 (23:29):
No.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Vaguely, the word sounds familiar.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Ab yeah, not the jeans, No, okay, that's jinko. So jenkam.
I'm going to describe it to you and I hopefully
you don't throw up. But there was a rumor in
the late nineties, I want to say, mid to late nineties,
early two thousands that you could get high by pooping
and peeing in a bottle and then huffing it. And
it became a massive moral panic for local news stations
(23:54):
across the country, and it was called jenkam. And I
remember like one I remember hearing about it, the idea
of like two kids were found getting high on jenkom
by the river or whatever, or like by the quarry,
and like it was this thing that like, and I've
talked to other people over the years who remember the
Jenkom panic of the late nineties, And so we're gonna
(24:15):
be talking about the Jenkom panic of the late nineties.
And my producer, Grant, who's over there in his little cuckchair,
he's going to show you a news clip all about jencom.
Speaker 11 (24:26):
Here is a shocking heads up for parents about teen
drug use. One Florida Sheriff's Department warns there's a new
way for your kids to get high and as Fox
series Jack Miller reports, they're using raw sewage.
Speaker 7 (24:39):
The Washington Post, the Drugs Report, and Inside Edition are
all talking about jenkom.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
It could be uh toxic in harmony.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
The bulletin describes jencom as gas produced by raw sewage
that's allowed to ferment. Pictures show young people who appear
to be breathing in jencom. When we mentioned this new
concoction to people on the street here in Jacksonville, not
only had they never heard of it before, but they
said they didn't want to get anywhere near it.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
It sounds horrible. Yeah, I couldn't imagine doing something like that.
That guy looks like the exact kind of guy that
would do Jacob, and the fact that he's like, I
don't want to touch it means it's not real. That's
that's that's how you know, because that guy is like
that guy looks like a bath salts guy, and he's like,
I don't want to touch Jencob.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Honestly, they need to find something better to do with
her life, seriously, because.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
That's just insane.
Speaker 9 (25:31):
I can't imagine anybody doing something like that.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Sounds pretty sick to me.
Speaker 7 (25:34):
Huh, okay, not anything you would ever consider.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Never what are your thoughts?
Speaker 5 (25:38):
Here?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Are your first reacted?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
Isn't Jencob essentially how the ninja turtles are created in
this like the fumes from human from waste, that's disgusting.
I don't think I've ever heard of this, so.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
You two, haven't you ever hearing? But what's the context
you heard it in?
Speaker 5 (25:54):
I mean, I don't think I heard. I don't think
it permeated to the news where I was. I think
I just heard it from some other kids. It must
have been something like that.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
What I'm curious about is it was it a thing happening?
Is are we talking about a trend here or like
this it's a rumor of something that actually wasn't happening.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Well, we're gonna get into that, but I would first
sort of classify along with like all the other like
get high on your own stories like smoking banana peals, or.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
They have a highlighter, highlighter.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, exactly, So so let's let's let's run through it here.
Nineteen ninety five. According to Snopes, it's the first. The
first documentation of Jenkim comes from an international newswire service
in Luksaka, Zambia, and it reads, human excrement is scooped
up from the edges of the sewer ponds in old
(26:46):
cans of containers, which are covered with a polyurethane bag
and left a steward froment for a week. The contents
are then inhaled, and the result is a lung full
of biogases and a powerful hit. Jencom Hoffers bury their
entire face in the ghastly mask, gasping it all in
Oh my God. And so we had talked earlier in
the first half about how like one of the most
(27:07):
interesting things about like the the late nineties and the
two thousands is the move to being able to see
all of the news for the first time. Like the
news went from like a thing you saw on your TV,
local affiliates or local newspaper, and then maybe you have
a national newspaper, but online, all of a sudden, these
articles are being uploaded. You saw the old screenshot of
the Washington Post. There is that really what it used
(27:28):
to look like?
Speaker 7 (27:28):
Ye?
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, these things looked ugly as hell. And you were
also seeing the rise of websites like the Drug Report,
which launches like in the mid to late nineties. Who
are now aggregating this stuff because it's like no one
kind of thought about it was an afterthought. Do you
guys know about aeroid dot org? M okay, I love
aeroid dot org. It is a website. It's essentially the
Wikipedia of drugs, and it has a whole section called
(27:50):
trip reports where people like take drugs and then write
out like insane stories of it's a lot of people
robot tripping in the bathrooms of taco bells across the country,
and so they they like look into it and they
say it's not gonna get you high, and they say,
we have no knowledge about the accuracy of these reports,
but it's certainly possible. The kids in Zambia thought it
would be funny to make up a story for adult
(28:13):
aid workers that they were inhaling the s who were
gas to get high, which I think is like very possible.
By the late nineties, the story is stuck around long
enough to make it to the New York Times and
the BBC, so the BBC rights jenkim is cheap, potent
and very popular among the thousands of street children in Lutsaka.
When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to
steal petrol, these youngsters turn to Jenkam as a way
(28:34):
of getting high. It lasts about an hour, says one user,
sixteen year old Luke Mombande, who prefers Jenkam to other substances.
With glue, I just hear voices in my head. But
with jenkin I see visions, I see my mother who
is dead, and I forget about the problems in my life.
So I think there's a couple of things. One, I
do believe that erowood users are absolute freaks enough to
(28:55):
have tested it like they will test anything. I also
think it's possible that there were nine or ten translation
issues happening here. I also think that the BBC, especially
in the late nineties, was looking for poverty porn, and
there's like an entire genre of this. I think that
(29:15):
there's also like a thread that takes this all the
way to Crocodile. Do you remember that? So crocodile was
a drug that was purportedly being used by Russians in
the late two thousands, where they would mix gasoline and
heroin and their skin would fall off.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Not only in the late nineties and two thousands, where
people suddenly being able to see the news for the
first time, they were creating blogs to write poorly about
the rest of the world. So you had like I
Love Africa dot com or whatever, and it's some white
guy who has no idea was talking about and he's
like blogging about his time as an aid worker there,
or I Love Russia dot com and it's weird, crazy
(29:56):
Russian story. So that's sort of the environment that this
is taking place in. I guess, like, do you guys
remember anything even similar to this in your in your
early days on the Internet, like like weird news stories
that would sort of fly by, or weird blogs like
writing about this kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Well, I remember like the Marilyn Manson rumor that he
like removed his his rib cage so that he could.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Go down on himself. That was the big one in
my middle.
Speaker 11 (30:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
But in terms of like these kind of like kind
of fleeting drug related not not not a whole ton,
I guess, like with Jencom, even though I'm sure it's
made up to some degree, it does feel believable. I
guess because of the because of the cost effectiveness. I
suppose like it is free. I suppose you just made
(30:47):
a model. Yeah, and if it's getting you, if it's
supposedly getting you a better high, then you.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Can see visions. You can see your dead mom in
a vision with this one. But glue, you only hear stuff.
I looked into this for the first time a couple
of years ago, twenty fifteen. I was on a podcast
I used to run with my friend Katie called Internet Explorer.
We looked into it and we basically found that it
(31:16):
was completely fake and largely a way to troll local
police and local media. And Grant is going to show
you an image that looks gross. Oh my god, it
looks like a little boy sticking a straw into a
bottle full of poop and pea.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Which aren't you supposed to huf it? Why is he?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
But if you didn't know that and you just saw
this imagery, be like, was there a glass bottle of
you who like?
Speaker 9 (31:46):
Yes?
Speaker 11 (31:47):
Now?
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Okay, So this is a young man who went by
Pickwick on the message board totsy dot com and he
posted these photos of what appeared to be him huffing
balloons full of poop and pea and bottles it with
straws and stuff, And he wrote, Okay, today I set
it up and put the bottle in the hot sun.
(32:08):
My friend took pictures of all the steps. First I
shpit in the battle, then I pissed in it. I
took a balloon and I stretched it over the top
to catch all the gases. Now wait a few days
and hope the balloon fills up. Then he posts again, well,
today I finally did it. I probably became the first
person in America to huff his own shit gas. He
then continues, after breathing in, I immediately felt that I
(32:30):
was passing out. I did not even have time to
spit before I became unconscious. When I woke up, my
spittle had oozed out of my mouth down my chin.
I asked my friend how long I was out for.
He said about a minute, and that he had repeatedly
tried to wake me up, but I would not wake up.
After I was fully into the dream like state, visual
hallucinations began to start. I had fleeting visions people who
seemed completely random, like my second grade teacher. At the
(32:51):
peak of my trip, I saw things like pillars and
my lung that disappeared into shapes, and like, obviously he's
making this up to see if can get people to
huff their own shit. Yeah, Like, I think that is
the way to think about this. What do you think
happens next in this story? After now we have message
board users trying to convince each other.
Speaker 9 (33:12):
To do this.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
What do you think happens next?
Speaker 6 (33:13):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (33:14):
Man, I imagine like a sizable amount of people try
it and don't get high and realize they've been had.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
Someone has to get sick from actually trying it.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
So we don't have a ton of data on that,
but what we do have is how it spreads to
four chan next, and the idea is to send letters
to your principle to get your principal to hire a
DARE officer to then tell the kids at your school
about Genish God. And so we have a massive wall
(33:45):
of text here. I'm going to read some of it here.
So you're supposed to email this to your school principle. Okay,
so you're supposed to it, says Step one, email us
to your principal. Step two, question mark, question mark, question mark,
Step three profit. And what you're supposed to write is
I am writing anonymous because I do not want my
child to get in any trouble. But I need to
alert you to something your students are doing that it
is potentially very dangerous. Yesterday afternoon, I came home early
(34:08):
to find my son and his friends getting high on
something called jenkam, which they had which they say they
heard about at school. This jenkam is the most disgusting
thing I've ever heard of. And then I'm not going
to describe how they describe how.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
To do it.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
And can you guess what happens once people started doing.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
This, Oh, the school, it's definitely took debate computer.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yes, this is from the Collier County Sheriff's Office Criminal
Intelligence Bureau, and it is a drug bulletin about a
new drug called jenkam.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Oh they've got the image of the kid, and that's right,
good for him.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
And this is actually very similar to a couple of
bulletins we found passing around Mexico. Do you remember the
Momo challenge.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Momo challenge.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
It was like a disgusting statue that if you looked
at it, it would like curse you on the internet.
So it became like a huge mass panic that like
children were committing suicide after seeing this statue of this
evil chicken woman, and Mexican police were creating bulletins like
that and passing them around as well. So like this
is this is how far back this idea goes. And
then of course the Washington Post they write about it,
(35:12):
they fall for it, they take down the post. Oh,
Fox News falls for it, and they write, we wouldn't
classify it as a drug so much because it's faces
and urine, says Garrison County as spokesman for the Drug
Edforce and Administration in Washington. You pretty much you pretty
(35:34):
much hit the at the bottom of the.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Barrel if you experiment which fair.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Yeah, and eventually Pickwick, the guy who does the pictures
of him huffing the bottle, he admits that it's all
fake and that what you've been looking at, don't worry
is a mixture of nutella, water flour, and beer, and
he wrote, I never inhaled any poop gas and got
high off it. I have deleted the pictures, hopefully no
weirdos save them on his computer. Yeah we did. Yeah,
(36:02):
I just don't want people to ever recognize me as
the kid who have poop gas. Well, sorry, Bud, So.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
This is him feelings like some level of guilt that
all of these places picked it up. I thought that
was kind of the goal.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
I think it's a couple of things. One, I think
we are at a really pivotal moment in the late
ninety two thousands where the Internet is just getting big
and no one really understands how big it's getting, and
you have early message boards that are beginning to network
with larger message boards. Four Chan comes around in like
two thousand and three thousand and four, So like all
of that stuff is starting, the media is probably doing
(36:38):
a thing, and I'm trying to like think back to
my time in that period like in Jay school, and
I'm learning about it, and I believe what it was
was like you had a newsroom. They'd write their stories
and then they would just upload them online and forget
about it. So they're all of a sudden getting viral
traffic for the first time, and they're like the first
big viral New York Times piece. I forget what it was.
I looked it up years ago. I think happens in
(36:58):
like two thousand and nine, when like they're like, whoa,
this is like a big thing of traffic. So all
of these stories are being passed around, no one's really
paying attention, and these worlds are colliding. And I think,
if I had to imagine this, pickquick kid was like,
uh oh, you know, if you have pictures showing up
in like a bulletin for like local law enforcement, who's
like a whole other thing here, Like local law enforcement
(37:20):
have been using the Internet in weird ways for twenty
thirty years that no one really still to this day
pays attention to. I think all these horses are just
combining in ways where like people just weren't prepared for
how viral it could go.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
It's interesting too, how the Sheriff's department handled this. I mean,
on one hand, I wonder what is their responsibility, But
on the other hand, it's like they didn't seem to
do any kind of an investigation to see whether it
was real or not before they put out this.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
They're trying to get ahead of it.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yeah, I feel like that's all the sort of like
kid panics, like they just react first and then try it.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
I don't know. I don't even know if they ever
try to, like you, if it's real.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
Well, like, Ryan, have you looked into like did you
ever cover the tie pods thing?
Speaker 12 (38:00):
Teenagers appearing to eat laundry detergent pods and posting the
pictures on social media. Photos showed the pods being used.
It's pizza toppings or a bowl of them mixed with
bleach for breakfast.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
That seems like the more modern corollary, and I'm curious
how that.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
What we found was that the majority of tiepods being
smoked or huffed or eaten or whatever were either from
trolls or darker like there was a string of old
people with dementia thinking they were candy and it was
one of those things where it like bubbled up out
(38:38):
of consumer reports and sort of took on a life
of its own and no one really knew how to
deal with it. A similar trajectory would be Nike will Chicken,
Like the idea of that TikTok users are boy and
Chicken and Nike, Well, which I did do eventually, by
the way, it smells horrible, don't do it, but you
can find that on our pages. But like it's another
(38:59):
one where it's like the institutions don't know how to
address the rumor without amplifying it. Yeah. Yeah, And so
like one because you know, with journalists, like if local
law enforcement have a press conference and like teenagers are
huffing their own shit, the journalists is like, well, police today,
So the teenagers are huffing their own shit, And nowhere
in that in that interaction is anyone going, well, are
(39:22):
they huffing their own shit? Yeah, And like that is
kind of the story of almost all of American media.
Like we're at in a kind of more serious twist
on this, Like this is playing out right now with
like ice raids and stuff, like local law enforcement will
say something, or or a law enforcement agency or a
government agency will say something, and journalists will just write
down that they set it, and by the time that
that travels there might be another journalists in the background
(39:44):
going well is this real? Is this right? And people
have already moved on, and like it can happen for
silly stuff and it can happen for serious stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I thought about this with the ice rates stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
But are making now these like crazy social media like
videos that are like, yeah, it's like a movie and
you're showing people's faces and I'm like, Okay, we don't
know what these people have done at all. And now
you're in some like hype reel for for ice right,
(40:13):
and it's like you just took me out of my home.
It's like what if there are no charges on this person.
It's like it's already too far gone. Yeah, you're already well.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
I think that's the evolution of a story like Jenkin,
which is like like, now the institutions have direct access
to information channels. As we looked into more panics into
the twenty tens, tide pods, for instance, you'll just start
to see local fentanyl is a great example of this,
where the law enforcement just have a Facebook page. Yeah,
(40:42):
and he just posted the Facebook page like people are
dying from like touching fentanyl and there's no journalists involved there.
And the final evolution of that would be the the
DHS doing like sizzle reels for ice raids where they
don't need any media coverage. They can just transmit it directly.
And that is a really weird world to live, because
it wasn't that this one was good. I mean, the
(41:02):
old world pretty is jenkin, but the new world, God
knows what's happening. Yeah, you know, after the break, we're
going to be talking about something that's already popped up today,
which is Marilyn Manson trying to suck his own dick,
which was the big rumor, probably the biggest rumor of
my middle school. But we're going to talk about that
right afterward from our sponsors, who are probably furious. Okay,
(41:41):
So you guys had been wondering about the Marilyn Manson rumor,
and we did a little digging into where this came from,
and according to Hysteria mag the rumor began on the
twenty seventh of November nineteen ninety four, which is actually
kind of wild that like it has like an exact date. Yeah,
(42:02):
Marilyn Manson was arrested after a show for violating the
Adult Entertainment Code, and police arrested him after being under
the impression that Manson had performed oral sex on a
man while performing on stage, but as it turns out.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
He wasn't.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Rather it was Jack Off Jill vocalist Jessica, who was
apparently wearing a prosthetic penis at the gig, with Manson
stimulating oral sex on the appendage. He was held for
sixteen hours and then released without charge. And that I
think the double confusion of that spread and turned into
him sucking himself off, and then it was how would
(42:35):
he suck himself off?
Speaker 4 (42:36):
And it was he got too ribsy, So people were
trying to rationalize what they were they saw.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Exactly, I do think so we live in a time
of like peak rumors peak conspiracies. There's so many it's
hard to pay attention. The really pernicious ones. All seemed
to kind of touch on the idea of revealing someone
being part of a subculture, something that we part of
(43:02):
society that we don't pay attention to. Whether it's drug users,
or it's trans people, are gay people's it's people who
are considered like outside of the mainstream and like the
really successful rumors seem to work when you claim that
someone well known is actually part of that. And and
and I think there's a kind of fear of the
(43:23):
other required there. There's something like tantalizing, and it's hard
to prove. It's hard to disprove on the other person.
They can't they can say no, and you just don't
believe them.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
It's funny should mention we actually spoke to an expert
about rumors and why we attached to rumors, especially celebrity rumors,
what we get out of them.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Yeah, So I spoke to Charlotte Debaker. She's a researcher
out of Belgium, and her research focuses on gossip and
rumors and kind of the historical and evolutionary purpose they
have served for humans.
Speaker 9 (43:58):
Gossip became this system to vicariously learn from the experiences
of other people, but it also became like a reputation
mechanism to control free writers, people that were gonna take
away benefits from you.
Speaker 5 (44:11):
And a lot of it's like survival. So it's like
you learn, like, don't do this drug, it's gonna kill you.
Speaker 9 (44:17):
And you not only warn others like other animals will
shout out these alarm calls when there's a dangerous animal
or predator coming up. We humans start gossiping about be careful.
You have to be careful about that person. And at
the same time, because gossip has like multiple effects, it's
also slendering the reputation of that person, So you're not
(44:40):
only warning others about the potential danger, but at the
same time you're also giving a punishment to the person
that you're targeting by ruining their reputation.
Speaker 5 (44:52):
Then you build a community just based on talking about
these other people, and then there's just like the parasocial element,
which has only gotten more increased with time, where it's
like we become so attached to these people and it's
all we're talking about, you know, Britney Spears or Sierra
or whoever, and it's obviously one sided.
Speaker 9 (45:07):
Our stone age minds are not designed by evolution to
perceive these celebrities as no members of our real social network.
So you see them, you start to feel emotional about them.
Some you like very much, some you dislike very much,
and then the mechanisms for why you gossip about real
(45:28):
life people start to transmit to gossiping about these celebrities
as well. You want to slender Taylor Swift versus Blake Lively,
choose a camp and then you start to slender the
one person and then praise the other one or vice versa.
Speaker 5 (45:43):
Then, of course, just the way they spread, it's like
Sierra even answering dignifying these questions with like, well, no,
of course, not only just feeds the fire, and that
I think has even gotten worse in more recent times.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
You know, it's interesting to me, how like if you
look at it on a timeline, like the the nineties
are really bad for this stuff, and the two thousands
still pretty bad, but like it's changing. And then it
does kind of feel like between like twenty ten and
like August twenty fourteen, the start of gamer Gate, there's
(46:17):
a kind of a moment where it actually feels like
things are getting better, Like information is kind of flowing
at a speed where we can like say that's fake,
that's not fake, Like media organizations are interested in debunking stuff.
Debunking doesn't feel tied to a culture war thing yet, Yeah,
and then it flips and it gets progressively worse, and
then after COVID it feels like we are basically back
(46:38):
in the nineties again, and I think a lot of
it has to do with like ephemorality, Like TikTok feels
as ephemeral as nineties TV to me, where you will
see a TikTok and you'll pass you by and you
won't think about it, and then you'll just like be
repeating some insane thing you heard and you won't be
able to find it.
Speaker 5 (46:56):
Yeah, you're not referencing it directly, so it's like you're
changing little things.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
It's Yeah, I even find myself because I use I
use x still Twitter because it's like you can see
all the bad people on there, and so it's great
for my job. But I have found myself like accidentally
absorbing through osmosis random stuff I'm seeing and then like
saying it out loud to someone there and being like,
what are you talking about. It's there's definitely something about
(47:24):
like not being able to like catch stuff passing you by,
like because like a rumor is effectively like someone just
told you this thing and then it's in your head
and you repeat it without really thinking, and like the
Internet has sort of become that, you know, like it
is just this rumor factory, which I do think to
tie back to the thing at the top, like is
being weaponized by you know, people in the entertainment industry
(47:45):
who know that they can make Reddit accounts and they
can make Instagram accounts and you know, flood the zone
that way.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Thank you to our friends Grant Irving and Ryan Broderick
for working with us on this one. It was a
weird one.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
If you want some more weird times about the Internet,
check out their podcast Panic World.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
So if you want to follow me, you can find
me as Ryan hays This on Blue Sky or Broadwick
on x or Ryan Hayses on Instagram. Panic World is
Panic World everywhere you'll find it. Just search type into
Little Ai. It's a Panic World up great, so much fun. Yeah,
it's awesome.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
See it all together.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our
executive producers are Kate Osbourne and mangest Hatti Kudur. The
show was created by Manny Fidel Nor Friedman and me
Devin Joseph. The theme end credit song is by Manny
mixing my Steve Bone. Audition of music for this episode
by Zeno Atarelli. Our guest this week was Charlotte the
(48:52):
Baker visit no such thing, not show to subscribe to
our newsletter.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
You got feedback for the boys, or you got a
so you want us to answer.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Email us at Man, email Adevin at gmail dot com,
or if you're in the US, you can leave a
voicemail for us at the number in our show notes.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Sure to show with a friend and we'll see you
next
Speaker 3 (49:12):
Week's such things
I'm Manny and this is Devin, and this is no
such thing.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
The show where we settle our dawn arguments and yours
by actually doing the research. On today's episode, how did
we all hear that Sierra rumor?
Speaker 3 (00:15):
I No, there's no no such thing, no such thing,
no such thank touch thank no touch thank.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
All Right, So today's episode is actually a collaboration with
our friends over at Panic World, so we would be
joined by Ryan and his producer Grant. It is about
middle school conspiracy theories and rumors. Uh, we're gonna be
talking about a time long long ago, So there's gonna
be some language that is not up to date that
we're gonna be referencing. For example, throughout this episode, we're
(00:56):
gonna use the term hermathodite, which we're using at the
time to refer to intersects people, which, if you do
not know, are people who have sexual anatomy or reproductive
organs or chromosome patterns that do not align with what
we assume to be typical definitions for male or female.
(01:16):
We're also going to be talking about this idea of
people pretending to be a gender that they are not. Obviously,
this is very outdated language, and we know that Trench
people are not pretending to be something that they're not.
I would like to say that that's outdated, but as
we discuss in this episode, this is.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Current day phenomenon. So let's get into it, all.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
Right, fellas, we are gathered here today to try and
get to the bottom of something that we've been trying
to get to the bottom of for a very long time. Now,
just some quick text for the listeners. No, where did
you go to middle school?
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Connecticut?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
In Connecticut and New Jersey?
Speaker 6 (02:09):
Okay?
Speaker 4 (02:09):
I went to middle school in Ohio? How about you, Ryan, Massachusetts?
And despite the fact that we all went to different
middle schools or high schools in different states, I'm willing
to bet that we've all heard the same celebrity rumor.
And then, you know, we all went to these schools
in the early two thousands and so what was the
(02:32):
biggest celebrity rumor at your school?
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Devin, I'm cheating a little bit because it's what the
episode is about, but it's not.
Speaker 4 (02:41):
It's not a you know, we're talking to the listeners.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It was that Sierra, the R and B singer was born.
At the time we were saying she was born hermapthadite.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Today we would say.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
In yes, and she apparently was on Oprah where she
revealed this to the world.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Does that sound familiar to you, guys.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
I've heard different versions of different celebrities with that thing.
Oh okay, because there was also one for Lady Gaga.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
Yes, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
We would have been high school or college. Yeah, but
it's come around a bunch.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Basically in middle school, the biggest celebrity rumor was that
Sierra was what we were calling back then a hermaphrodite,
or that she was trans And I've been personally fascinated
by the fact that no matter where you went to
middle school in the United States, you heard of this
(03:37):
rumor or participated in the spreading of it. And the
reason why I'm fascinated is because it was so early
in social media kind of trajectory, or before social media.
I think maybe I was on Zanga at the time,
but we weren't really talking about, you know, celebrity rumors,
and I really wanted to know where this rumor came
(03:59):
from from and how it was able to spread across
the country despite the fact that we weren't really online
in the sense that we were today. But I think
before we try to figure out where this rumor came from,
it's important to kind of contextualize what was happening when
the rumor started.
Speaker 7 (04:19):
So Sierra grew.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Up in College Park, Atlanta. If you've ever listened to
hip hop in the early two thousands, you'll recognize that
neighborhood because it was yelled out in virtually every hip
hop song.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And it's getting best to me of course.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
And in high school she created a girls singing group
called Hearsay with two of her friends. Uh they got
so popular that she got a writing deal with Jazzy Fay.
Together Jazzy Fans here wrote a few demos. One of
(04:55):
those demos is what would Become One two Step, which
is the hit single from her debut album, Goodies in
two thousand and four, So Much, which featured Missy Elliott,
a frequent collaborator of Sierra.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
I know you heard about a lot of greatam c
but they ain't got nothing, no men because.
Speaker 4 (05:17):
Of Thattua and someone who also had rumors swirling about
her sexuality at the time.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Goodies.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
The album debuted at number three on Billboard's Top two hundred,
and it was around this time that she also became
a sex symbol. She released this single Goodies on the
album Goodies, and I just want to play you guys
some of the lyrics I bet you want the Goodies
that you thought about it got you all hot and
(05:46):
bothered mad because I talk around it. If you're looking
for the goodies, keep on looking because they stay in
the jars. Obviously, the song meaning is that, you know,
everyone around her, people in the music industry, are incredibly
thirsty for Sierra, and she's telling them that, you know,
(06:08):
even though I'm young, like I know what I'm doing,
it's not happening. Get over it. It's like common knowledge,
I guess in American society, where like people will sometimes
make up things about people who have rejected their advances,
and I just I do wonder if that had a
role to play in this rumor getting started.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
So we did an episode kind of about the like
the entertainment world rumor mill and like how it's evolved now,
like the Justin Baldoni stuff. And I have to assume that,
like the new version where they're waging war with like
troll accounts and stuff, is just a digital version of
what was already happening. So like hearing this, which is
the first time I've sort of heard this all put together,
(06:52):
it wouldn't surprise me if she's writing what is effective,
like a shady track about like predatory man in the industry,
and all of a sudden a rumor appears it she
is intersector hermaphrodite that feels totally linked to me.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
And as of right now, I have no evidence, but
I think it's interesting when like exactly what time this
rumor started coming?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Yeah, so and we looked at you know, went to
classic Google trends, typed in Sierra Man to see when
these rumors started. So there's basically nothing until December of
two thousand and four, and then it starts to go
up a little bit. January starts to go up a
little bit more, and then by February of two thousand
(07:35):
and five, it's when it hits its peak.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Was there any kind of award buzz around goodies?
Speaker 4 (07:44):
She definitely was nominated for a bunch of the kind
of classic awards. I'm not sure if she won any.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I should look up computer because I'm wondering if like
the peak is because of award season buzz or like
I'm wondering, because when we've done sort of similar research,
like there usually is like something that you can kind
of point to be like maybe that's what caused it.
That would be what my thought would be.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
Yeah, it could be.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
So we looked into this, and in two thousand and five,
Sharah was not up for any major awards, and the
next year, so two thousand and six, she was nominated
for and did end up winning one Grammy Award. So
she was at a party in February of two thousand
and five, a Vibe magazine party, and this is the
quote that everyone sort of keeps going back to New
York Daily News. Ask her about it, as far as
(08:31):
I can tell, this the first time.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
YE ask her about it. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
A lot of people ask her directly about this. This
is not like behind the scenes rumored. This is like, Sierra,
are you a man? This is face to face though.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
And I guess we should mention that part of a
big part of the rumor we heard was that she
had actually addressed the rumors on the Oprah Show. There's
a bit there's a Mandela effect thing happening where all
the thoughts she had already addressed the rumors on Oprah,
which never happened exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
So Vibe ask her basically, what happens and Sierra's like,
you know, it's funny the rumors that I used to
be a man. And she said, the funny thing about
it is that people are saying I said this on Oprah.
I've never been on Oprah. It's gonna take me a
while to get on opraen right, Like I just started
my career. Oprah's like a milestone. I'm not there yet.
(09:20):
So I looked into this. You know, you can't just
take Sierra's word for this. Has she ever been on
Oprah by this point, she had not, but she was
on Regis and Kelly.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
It'll make a television debut.
Speaker 5 (09:33):
Want to show with Sierra with goodies?
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Sierra, you got the TV guys back in the day,
the air before Oprah's Voting Party special. So I'm like,
maybe people were seeing the ads for you know how
they would be like, all right, you.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Know, I actually just googled this because I was curious
if people were confusing it with another Oprah episode. And
she did do an interesting episode in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Well she did actually in two thousand four. You was
segment in August about trans children. Yeah, okay, none of
the kids' names were Sierra. I did go through and
to be like, all right, maybe is there some confusion here,
But yeah, she did do it again in two thousand
(10:18):
and seven. I don't know that that. In two thousand
and four they were calling them trans. They were saying
like gender identity, yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Issues.
Speaker 5 (10:24):
I'm sure that episode has aged great.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I'm sure, yeah, everyone, and there's no reason to think
about it anymore.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
She did a great job. So I feel like Oprah
is the classic. Like if there's a rumor, you say
that you heard it on Oprah. Growing up, there was
another rumor that Tommy Hill figure was on Oprah and
he told Oprah, I don't like black people wearing my clothes.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
I remember that.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
I remember this my mom, Like.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I said, I was talking to my mom about this
episode and she was like, oh, yeah, I remember. I
literally stopped buying Tommy Hill Figure for like a year
or two.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
There was a boycott.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I remember, yeah, because we all heard that he was like,
I don't like black people wearing my clothes.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
And it just never happened.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
No, why did he was on the show at all. Okay,
I'm so fascinating because, like, clearly there is some sort
of way that these things are spreading, because I definitely
vividly remember up until just a second ago, I thought
that that happened. No, So like how because it wouldn't
have been the Internet, Like, I'm so fascinated.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
How were we because it wasn't like we saw something online,
like hey, I saw on a Reddit thread, you know,
Tommy Hill figure saying he doesn't like black.
Speaker 4 (11:32):
And there's no there's no reports of him ever saying
that and in any kind of context.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
No, it would be crazy if he said it on right, Yeah, yeah,
pretty amazing to Oprah, Yeah that would take anyway.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
The nineties were wild. But I don't know if that Yeah,
how how would that have happened?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
So Snop's actually debunked this in February of two thousand
and five. Sierra the Sierra Rumor their best as to
why people think this is happening. It is because there's
a random irishwoman named Sierra who had a blog about
her transition, and they're saying, if you google Sierra at
(12:12):
this time, this is one of the first things that
pops up.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
So people are saying maybe that's the case. Right. So
that's February.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
But in March, still circulating, we got the Herald News
in New Jersey paper.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
There's an eighteen year old Charles.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
They're asking him, Charles' what's the craziest news story you
heard recently?
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And he says that Sierra is a man. They printed this.
Speaker 5 (12:39):
That's a good column.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
It's one it was like get to know your neighbors
segments and that's Charles's.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Fun you know, news story night.
Speaker 4 (12:49):
I actually tried to track down Charles. We found him
and I reached out sent him the photo and he
did not respond.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So we get our first sort of inkling here of
maybe where this is coming from. So in March of
two thousand and five, there's this chain letter that's going around.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Remember chain letters, Yeah, of course they're very important on email.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, on email. And it's a fake article from all
Hip Hop. And the gist of the article is that
Sierra goes on not Oprah but one O six in
Park and.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
She says I am gay.
Speaker 8 (13:31):
And then.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
I'll read what it just says, because it's just crazy.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Sierra's coming out as a lesbian would have been difficult
on its own but also having to admit that she
is really a he on national television was caused for
celebration amongst the gay and lesbian community. No major pop
star singer has ever come out as a transvestite to viewers,
especifically after already releasing an album.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
So I'm gonna ignore like all of the terms that
they're using there because it's a mess. But it is
fascinating to me that that is written as like an
inspirational thing is basically what I like. That's someone made
this up or misunderstood this. I'm imagining that this was
probably shared like within like a black gay email community.
(14:20):
That would be my guess. Yeah, I got a treasure
trove that somebody sent me off, like old chain letters
that I've been like looking at over the last few months,
and it's really fascinating that like they are very similar
to what you would see on Facebook now that they
are written specifically for a group like either a list
serve or like people who know each other. So it's
interesting to me that like that rumor is being shared
(14:41):
positively within some sort of in groups.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
That's cost for celebration.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
Yeah, Like it's not like they're not being mean a bad.
I mean, they're completely confused on what's happening in every
possible way. But it is interesting that it's like inspirational
as a framing.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
So then that's you know, beginning of March, sort of
mid March, Tierra goes I want in six in Park
and this is the first time we for real, yeah,
for real, it's time.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
So if there are any.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Rumors anything that's going on with's the era, which there
are on the internet and all of the message clear.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Air right now.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Let the people know what's going on.
Speaker 8 (15:17):
Any crazy anything, And you know, I gotta say, none
of them bother me, but I just do it just
to do it, because whatever, there's one thing about me
being a man or something like that before I was
something when I was born, I got a change, really
amaphrodite or something like that.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And they said that I went on Oprah and did it.
Speaker 8 (15:34):
And I'm like, okay, come on, now, you know if
I was on Oprah, like I mean, it takes a
while before that happens with somebody going to Oprah, you
know what I mean, Like that's really big, so we
know that didn't happen. If you can find it, though,
I'll give you one hundred grand and find you around
the water.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
And do everything for it, if taking and play it
for me.
Speaker 8 (15:52):
Yeah, and then there's something else about me being a
lesbian or something like that. I mean, it's so sad,
and I'm sitting right here in the dressing It's like,
it's so funny to me. And want I feel about
in life is that the bigger and better things get
for you, the more people try to bring you down.
Speaker 7 (16:04):
And that's just the way I sens the true.
Speaker 8 (16:05):
So I mean, that's not true.
Speaker 9 (16:07):
I'm gonna say.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
It's not true.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
I watched One of six and park religiously back then, yeah,
and being like, damn all my friends lied to me.
Speaker 7 (16:15):
Yea.
Speaker 4 (16:16):
I remember watching it just being like, what the hell
was that all about?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
So this follows her for a little, you know that
that wasn't the end of it. Of course.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
July two thousand and five, Entertainment Weekly is doing a
write up and they kind of start the article talking about, Hey,
the singer, the story goes was born intersexual and stay
with us here recently out of herself as a lesbian,
her mathedite on Oprah, and it's you know, basically her
giving the line of like, no that's not true. Then
(16:45):
a year later, so November of two thousand and six,
in a Slam magazine article about Kingdom come the not
Great jay Z album. Oh there's a review and out
of no where the writer goes, and trust me, writing
that last sentence hurt me just as much as when
I heard that Sierra was allegedly her math that I
(17:07):
thank god she isn't. This is you know, November two
thousand and six.
Speaker 4 (17:13):
It was actually hard tracking this this writer down. I
finally did no response as well response. I think people
just don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
You know, we give him the opportunity to comment on
what you said November and it's review. And then December
two thousand and six, AP is doing a profile of
her and they're still talking about it.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Associated Press, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
The Associated Press. In December of two thousand and six.
They say she just wants to have fun, she said,
and that includes ignoring wild rumors that began circulating when
she first made a name for herself. People were saying
that she was dating Missy Elliott, who rapped on Sierra's
number one.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Hitber That I remember rumors that like Missy Elliot was
grooming Sierra.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Yes, I remember that.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
By two thousand and six, like interest for this was
pretty down and it didn't really pick up until twenty fifteen,
which was when rumors started going around that Sierra and
Future were expecting a kid, which makes sense why people
would be like.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes, sure.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
There was a moment I think in two thousand and
six or seven where she released a song called like
a Boy, so it.
Speaker 10 (18:20):
Sounds I.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
Could switch up the.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
Boat not a thing, and I think I remember being
I thought, I remember thinking, oh, she's kind of poking
fun at but it's really about like privilege, I think.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
I think.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
So this comes up in one of these articles where
you know, they're making all these innuendos about how people
think she's a man, and that was it.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
That's kind of a trajectory of is Sierra really a man?
And this has come up with Lady Gaga.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Megan Fox, Megan Fox.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It's like any sort of like sex symbol, yes, pop star,
this like comes up.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah, especially like there seems to be some sort of
connection between like a sex symbol who starts to figure
out how to translate that into power and influence. Yes,
like Lady gog in particular, like the claims that she
was intersex or trans appeared like right as she is
starting to kind of do whatever she wants. And that's why,
(19:27):
like I tend to think there's some sort of like
industry rumor mill yeah, that that comes out to like
knock them down a peg when they start to like
break off, And that would sort of make sense here too,
Like she's blowing up and now she's like writing songs
about how like you know, she's gonna do her own
thing or whatever, and she's having a successful album and
(19:48):
then those rumors appear like that. That doesn't seem like
an accident.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
To me, And it makes sense that they go to
the you know, the intersex or trans thing, right, because
it's always like, oh, you were really into this person
and now like something thing that like you know, something's
happening that you didn't know what's happening. You've been fooled,
you've been tricked. So like goes at this like insecurity
that people have about like oh, no, I thought it
was straight, but now I'm into this person who you're
(20:12):
telling me is.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
She must be trained exactly. I mean, it's also just
super hard to prove in fact, like yeah, we should
mention like literally right now, Candice Owens is being sued
by the president and his wife of France.
Speaker 10 (20:27):
Brigitte Macrone, wife of the French president Manuel Macrone, now
says she's going to present scientific and photo evidence in
court to prove her sex. This is part of the
couple's court case here in the US, as they're suing
the woman on the right side of your screen, conservative
commentator Candice Owens for saying on her platforms Macrone was
born male.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
So like that's how pervasive these sort of things come up.
I think.
Speaker 2 (20:49):
Yeah, it was shocking to me going through this that
so much of this was in like printed like actually.
Speaker 5 (20:55):
I was surprised by that.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I thought it would be more just like blogs and
of course there's people you know, it's a common blogs
and stuff, but a lot of it was like actually
printed in like you know, Chicago Tribune and like AP
like real newspapers.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Well, I think the assumption was that like no one
would ever see it outside of Chicago. It's like it's
not you know, we're very new into a world where
we can see what people in Chicago are reading. Yeah,
like that's kind of a crazy idea. Yeah, we could
see what people in other countries are writing, like that's
never been the case.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
All Right, we're gonna take a little break and then
we're gonna hear about Ryan's favorite middle school conspiracy. So
we had some pretty incredible responses to our shower episode.
Some of you said the episode changed your lives. Carolyn
wrote in saying, Hi, guys, I'm a white girl. We
(21:51):
didn't actually wash her lights in the shower. Your dermatologist
guest embarrassed the hell out of me, So now I
take an extra ten seconds wash my legs. Great job, Carolyn,
But some of you weren't convinced, like this listener who
called in.
Speaker 6 (22:07):
I typically only shower once or twice a week, to
be honest, and in the office two days a week.
So Monday night I'll take a shower so that I'm
clean for Tuesday. Wednesday, I'm fine. Thursday, I go back
into the office, bill home, take another shower, and nobody
has seen to complain to me. Maybe I'll shower on
(22:29):
Friday before the weekend, but like, I don't really care.
Nobody's ever pulled me aside, and like, hey, you.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Stick, I don't know, man.
Speaker 6 (22:38):
Then then I think he has doing it too much,
know what the dermatologist said, but I think you're going
a little too much.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (22:53):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
You guys remember like the first time you ever heard
about like drugs, like, oh yeah, my parents house. Yeah, okay.
I also remember sort of like watching like a Dare presentation,
being like should you just be telling us like how
drugs were where to get them? But it's around this
(23:16):
time I think that I first heard of what I've
considered like the funniest, stupidest middle school rumor. I think
it's endlessly funny. Have you guys ever heard of jenkam?
I don't think so.
Speaker 8 (23:29):
No.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Vaguely, the word sounds familiar.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
Ab yeah, not the jeans, No, okay, that's jinko. So jenkam.
I'm going to describe it to you and I hopefully
you don't throw up. But there was a rumor in
the late nineties, I want to say, mid to late nineties,
early two thousands that you could get high by pooping
and peeing in a bottle and then huffing it. And
it became a massive moral panic for local news stations
(23:54):
across the country, and it was called jenkam. And I
remember like one I remember hearing about it, the idea
of like two kids were found getting high on jenkom
by the river or whatever, or like by the quarry,
and like it was this thing that like, and I've
talked to other people over the years who remember the
Jenkom panic of the late nineties, And so we're gonna
(24:15):
be talking about the Jenkom panic of the late nineties.
And my producer, Grant, who's over there in his little cuckchair,
he's going to show you a news clip all about jencom.
Speaker 11 (24:26):
Here is a shocking heads up for parents about teen
drug use. One Florida Sheriff's Department warns there's a new
way for your kids to get high and as Fox
series Jack Miller reports, they're using raw sewage.
Speaker 7 (24:39):
The Washington Post, the Drugs Report, and Inside Edition are
all talking about jenkom.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
It could be uh toxic in harmony.
Speaker 7 (24:48):
The bulletin describes jencom as gas produced by raw sewage
that's allowed to ferment. Pictures show young people who appear
to be breathing in jencom. When we mentioned this new
concoction to people on the street here in Jacksonville, not
only had they never heard of it before, but they
said they didn't want to get anywhere near it.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
It sounds horrible. Yeah, I couldn't imagine doing something like that.
That guy looks like the exact kind of guy that
would do Jacob, and the fact that he's like, I
don't want to touch it means it's not real. That's
that's that's how you know, because that guy is like
that guy looks like a bath salts guy, and he's like,
I don't want to touch Jencob.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Honestly, they need to find something better to do with
her life, seriously, because.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
That's just insane.
Speaker 9 (25:31):
I can't imagine anybody doing something like that.
Speaker 5 (25:33):
Sounds pretty sick to me.
Speaker 7 (25:34):
Huh, okay, not anything you would ever consider.
Speaker 3 (25:37):
Never what are your thoughts?
Speaker 5 (25:38):
Here?
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Are your first reacted?
Speaker 4 (25:40):
Isn't Jencob essentially how the ninja turtles are created in
this like the fumes from human from waste, that's disgusting.
I don't think I've ever heard of this, so.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
You two, haven't you ever hearing? But what's the context
you heard it in?
Speaker 5 (25:54):
I mean, I don't think I heard. I don't think
it permeated to the news where I was. I think
I just heard it from some other kids. It must
have been something like that.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
What I'm curious about is it was it a thing happening?
Is are we talking about a trend here or like
this it's a rumor of something that actually wasn't happening.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
Well, we're gonna get into that, but I would first
sort of classify along with like all the other like
get high on your own stories like smoking banana peals, or.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
They have a highlighter, highlighter.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, exactly, So so let's let's let's run through it here.
Nineteen ninety five. According to Snopes, it's the first. The
first documentation of Jenkim comes from an international newswire service
in Luksaka, Zambia, and it reads, human excrement is scooped
up from the edges of the sewer ponds in old
(26:46):
cans of containers, which are covered with a polyurethane bag
and left a steward froment for a week. The contents
are then inhaled, and the result is a lung full
of biogases and a powerful hit. Jencom Hoffers bury their
entire face in the ghastly mask, gasping it all in
Oh my God. And so we had talked earlier in
the first half about how like one of the most
(27:07):
interesting things about like the the late nineties and the
two thousands is the move to being able to see
all of the news for the first time. Like the
news went from like a thing you saw on your TV,
local affiliates or local newspaper, and then maybe you have
a national newspaper, but online, all of a sudden, these
articles are being uploaded. You saw the old screenshot of
the Washington Post. There is that really what it used
(27:28):
to look like?
Speaker 7 (27:28):
Ye?
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Yeah, these things looked ugly as hell. And you were
also seeing the rise of websites like the Drug Report,
which launches like in the mid to late nineties. Who
are now aggregating this stuff because it's like no one
kind of thought about it was an afterthought. Do you
guys know about aeroid dot org? M okay, I love
aeroid dot org. It is a website. It's essentially the
Wikipedia of drugs, and it has a whole section called
(27:50):
trip reports where people like take drugs and then write
out like insane stories of it's a lot of people
robot tripping in the bathrooms of taco bells across the country,
and so they they like look into it and they
say it's not gonna get you high, and they say,
we have no knowledge about the accuracy of these reports,
but it's certainly possible. The kids in Zambia thought it
would be funny to make up a story for adult
(28:13):
aid workers that they were inhaling the s who were
gas to get high, which I think is like very possible.
By the late nineties, the story is stuck around long
enough to make it to the New York Times and
the BBC, so the BBC rights jenkim is cheap, potent
and very popular among the thousands of street children in Lutsaka.
When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to
steal petrol, these youngsters turn to Jenkam as a way
(28:34):
of getting high. It lasts about an hour, says one user,
sixteen year old Luke Mombande, who prefers Jenkam to other substances.
With glue, I just hear voices in my head. But
with jenkin I see visions, I see my mother who
is dead, and I forget about the problems in my life.
So I think there's a couple of things. One, I
do believe that erowood users are absolute freaks enough to
(28:55):
have tested it like they will test anything. I also
think it's possible that there were nine or ten translation
issues happening here. I also think that the BBC, especially
in the late nineties, was looking for poverty porn, and
there's like an entire genre of this. I think that
(29:15):
there's also like a thread that takes this all the
way to Crocodile. Do you remember that? So crocodile was
a drug that was purportedly being used by Russians in
the late two thousands, where they would mix gasoline and
heroin and their skin would fall off.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Not only in the late nineties and two thousands, where
people suddenly being able to see the news for the
first time, they were creating blogs to write poorly about
the rest of the world. So you had like I
Love Africa dot com or whatever, and it's some white
guy who has no idea was talking about and he's
like blogging about his time as an aid worker there,
or I Love Russia dot com and it's weird, crazy
(29:56):
Russian story. So that's sort of the environment that this
is taking place in. I guess, like, do you guys
remember anything even similar to this in your in your
early days on the Internet, like like weird news stories
that would sort of fly by, or weird blogs like
writing about this kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (30:15):
Well, I remember like the Marilyn Manson rumor that he
like removed his his rib cage so that he could.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Go down on himself. That was the big one in
my middle.
Speaker 11 (30:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
But in terms of like these kind of like kind
of fleeting drug related not not not a whole ton,
I guess, like with Jencom, even though I'm sure it's
made up to some degree, it does feel believable. I
guess because of the because of the cost effectiveness. I
suppose like it is free. I suppose you just made
(30:47):
a model. Yeah, and if it's getting you, if it's
supposedly getting you a better high, then you.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
Can see visions. You can see your dead mom in
a vision with this one. But glue, you only hear stuff.
I looked into this for the first time a couple
of years ago, twenty fifteen. I was on a podcast
I used to run with my friend Katie called Internet Explorer.
We looked into it and we basically found that it
(31:16):
was completely fake and largely a way to troll local
police and local media. And Grant is going to show
you an image that looks gross. Oh my god, it
looks like a little boy sticking a straw into a
bottle full of poop and pea.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Which aren't you supposed to huf it? Why is he?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
But if you didn't know that and you just saw
this imagery, be like, was there a glass bottle of
you who like?
Speaker 9 (31:46):
Yes?
Speaker 11 (31:47):
Now?
Speaker 3 (31:48):
Okay, So this is a young man who went by
Pickwick on the message board totsy dot com and he
posted these photos of what appeared to be him huffing
balloons full of poop and pea and bottles it with
straws and stuff, And he wrote, Okay, today I set
it up and put the bottle in the hot sun.
(32:08):
My friend took pictures of all the steps. First I
shpit in the battle, then I pissed in it. I
took a balloon and I stretched it over the top
to catch all the gases. Now wait a few days
and hope the balloon fills up. Then he posts again, well,
today I finally did it. I probably became the first
person in America to huff his own shit gas. He
then continues, after breathing in, I immediately felt that I
(32:30):
was passing out. I did not even have time to
spit before I became unconscious. When I woke up, my
spittle had oozed out of my mouth down my chin.
I asked my friend how long I was out for.
He said about a minute, and that he had repeatedly
tried to wake me up, but I would not wake up.
After I was fully into the dream like state, visual
hallucinations began to start. I had fleeting visions people who
seemed completely random, like my second grade teacher. At the
(32:51):
peak of my trip, I saw things like pillars and
my lung that disappeared into shapes, and like, obviously he's
making this up to see if can get people to
huff their own shit. Yeah, Like, I think that is
the way to think about this. What do you think
happens next in this story? After now we have message
board users trying to convince each other.
Speaker 9 (33:12):
To do this.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
What do you think happens next?
Speaker 6 (33:13):
Oh?
Speaker 4 (33:14):
Man, I imagine like a sizable amount of people try
it and don't get high and realize they've been had.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
Someone has to get sick from actually trying it.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
So we don't have a ton of data on that,
but what we do have is how it spreads to
four chan next, and the idea is to send letters
to your principle to get your principal to hire a
DARE officer to then tell the kids at your school
about Genish God. And so we have a massive wall
(33:45):
of text here. I'm going to read some of it here.
So you're supposed to email this to your school principle. Okay,
so you're supposed to it, says Step one, email us
to your principal. Step two, question mark, question mark, question mark,
Step three profit. And what you're supposed to write is
I am writing anonymous because I do not want my
child to get in any trouble. But I need to
alert you to something your students are doing that it
is potentially very dangerous. Yesterday afternoon, I came home early
(34:08):
to find my son and his friends getting high on
something called jenkam, which they had which they say they
heard about at school. This jenkam is the most disgusting
thing I've ever heard of. And then I'm not going
to describe how they describe how.
Speaker 6 (34:19):
To do it.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
And can you guess what happens once people started doing.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
This, Oh, the school, it's definitely took debate computer.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yes, this is from the Collier County Sheriff's Office Criminal
Intelligence Bureau, and it is a drug bulletin about a
new drug called jenkam.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
Oh they've got the image of the kid, and that's right,
good for him.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
And this is actually very similar to a couple of
bulletins we found passing around Mexico. Do you remember the
Momo challenge.
Speaker 4 (34:49):
Momo challenge.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
It was like a disgusting statue that if you looked
at it, it would like curse you on the internet.
So it became like a huge mass panic that like
children were committing suicide after seeing this statue of this
evil chicken woman, and Mexican police were creating bulletins like
that and passing them around as well. So like this
is this is how far back this idea goes. And
then of course the Washington Post they write about it,
(35:12):
they fall for it, they take down the post. Oh,
Fox News falls for it, and they write, we wouldn't
classify it as a drug so much because it's faces
and urine, says Garrison County as spokesman for the Drug
Edforce and Administration in Washington. You pretty much you pretty
(35:34):
much hit the at the bottom of the.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Barrel if you experiment which fair.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Yeah, and eventually Pickwick, the guy who does the pictures
of him huffing the bottle, he admits that it's all
fake and that what you've been looking at, don't worry
is a mixture of nutella, water flour, and beer, and
he wrote, I never inhaled any poop gas and got
high off it. I have deleted the pictures, hopefully no
weirdos save them on his computer. Yeah we did. Yeah,
(36:02):
I just don't want people to ever recognize me as
the kid who have poop gas. Well, sorry, Bud, So.
Speaker 4 (36:09):
This is him feelings like some level of guilt that
all of these places picked it up. I thought that
was kind of the goal.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
I think it's a couple of things. One, I think
we are at a really pivotal moment in the late
ninety two thousands where the Internet is just getting big
and no one really understands how big it's getting, and
you have early message boards that are beginning to network
with larger message boards. Four Chan comes around in like
two thousand and three thousand and four, So like all
of that stuff is starting, the media is probably doing
(36:38):
a thing, and I'm trying to like think back to
my time in that period like in Jay school, and
I'm learning about it, and I believe what it was
was like you had a newsroom. They'd write their stories
and then they would just upload them online and forget
about it. So they're all of a sudden getting viral
traffic for the first time, and they're like the first
big viral New York Times piece. I forget what it was.
I looked it up years ago. I think happens in
(36:58):
like two thousand and nine, when like they're like, whoa,
this is like a big thing of traffic. So all
of these stories are being passed around, no one's really
paying attention, and these worlds are colliding. And I think,
if I had to imagine this, pickquick kid was like,
uh oh, you know, if you have pictures showing up
in like a bulletin for like local law enforcement, who's
like a whole other thing here, Like local law enforcement
(37:20):
have been using the Internet in weird ways for twenty
thirty years that no one really still to this day
pays attention to. I think all these horses are just
combining in ways where like people just weren't prepared for
how viral it could go.
Speaker 4 (37:31):
It's interesting too, how the Sheriff's department handled this. I mean,
on one hand, I wonder what is their responsibility, But
on the other hand, it's like they didn't seem to
do any kind of an investigation to see whether it
was real or not before they put out this.
Speaker 5 (37:44):
They're trying to get ahead of it.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Yeah, I feel like that's all the sort of like
kid panics, like they just react first and then try it.
Speaker 1 (37:52):
I don't know. I don't even know if they ever
try to, like you, if it's real.
Speaker 5 (37:56):
Well, like, Ryan, have you looked into like did you
ever cover the tie pods thing?
Speaker 12 (38:00):
Teenagers appearing to eat laundry detergent pods and posting the
pictures on social media. Photos showed the pods being used.
It's pizza toppings or a bowl of them mixed with
bleach for breakfast.
Speaker 5 (38:13):
That seems like the more modern corollary, and I'm curious
how that.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
What we found was that the majority of tiepods being
smoked or huffed or eaten or whatever were either from
trolls or darker like there was a string of old
people with dementia thinking they were candy and it was
one of those things where it like bubbled up out
(38:38):
of consumer reports and sort of took on a life
of its own and no one really knew how to
deal with it. A similar trajectory would be Nike will Chicken,
Like the idea of that TikTok users are boy and
Chicken and Nike, Well, which I did do eventually, by
the way, it smells horrible, don't do it, but you
can find that on our pages. But like it's another
(38:59):
one where it's like the institutions don't know how to
address the rumor without amplifying it. Yeah. Yeah, And so
like one because you know, with journalists, like if local
law enforcement have a press conference and like teenagers are
huffing their own shit, the journalists is like, well, police today,
So the teenagers are huffing their own shit, And nowhere
in that in that interaction is anyone going, well, are
(39:22):
they huffing their own shit? Yeah, And like that is
kind of the story of almost all of American media.
Like we're at in a kind of more serious twist
on this, Like this is playing out right now with
like ice raids and stuff, like local law enforcement will
say something, or or a law enforcement agency or a
government agency will say something, and journalists will just write
down that they set it, and by the time that
that travels there might be another journalists in the background
(39:44):
going well is this real? Is this right? And people
have already moved on, and like it can happen for
silly stuff and it can happen for serious stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I thought about this with the ice rates stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
But are making now these like crazy social media like
videos that are like, yeah, it's like a movie and
you're showing people's faces and I'm like, Okay, we don't
know what these people have done at all. And now
you're in some like hype reel for for ice right,
(40:13):
and it's like you just took me out of my home.
It's like what if there are no charges on this person.
It's like it's already too far gone. Yeah, you're already well.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
I think that's the evolution of a story like Jenkin,
which is like like, now the institutions have direct access
to information channels. As we looked into more panics into
the twenty tens, tide pods, for instance, you'll just start
to see local fentanyl is a great example of this,
where the law enforcement just have a Facebook page. Yeah,
(40:42):
and he just posted the Facebook page like people are
dying from like touching fentanyl and there's no journalists involved there.
And the final evolution of that would be the the
DHS doing like sizzle reels for ice raids where they
don't need any media coverage. They can just transmit it directly.
And that is a really weird world to live, because
it wasn't that this one was good. I mean, the
(41:02):
old world pretty is jenkin, but the new world, God
knows what's happening. Yeah, you know, after the break, we're
going to be talking about something that's already popped up today,
which is Marilyn Manson trying to suck his own dick,
which was the big rumor, probably the biggest rumor of
my middle school. But we're going to talk about that
right afterward from our sponsors, who are probably furious. Okay,
(41:41):
So you guys had been wondering about the Marilyn Manson rumor,
and we did a little digging into where this came from,
and according to Hysteria mag the rumor began on the
twenty seventh of November nineteen ninety four, which is actually
kind of wild that like it has like an exact date. Yeah,
(42:02):
Marilyn Manson was arrested after a show for violating the
Adult Entertainment Code, and police arrested him after being under
the impression that Manson had performed oral sex on a
man while performing on stage, but as it turns out.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
He wasn't.
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Rather it was Jack Off Jill vocalist Jessica, who was
apparently wearing a prosthetic penis at the gig, with Manson
stimulating oral sex on the appendage. He was held for
sixteen hours and then released without charge. And that I
think the double confusion of that spread and turned into
him sucking himself off, and then it was how would
(42:35):
he suck himself off?
Speaker 4 (42:36):
And it was he got too ribsy, So people were
trying to rationalize what they were they saw.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Exactly, I do think so we live in a time
of like peak rumors peak conspiracies. There's so many it's
hard to pay attention. The really pernicious ones. All seemed
to kind of touch on the idea of revealing someone
being part of a subculture, something that we part of
(43:02):
society that we don't pay attention to. Whether it's drug users,
or it's trans people, are gay people's it's people who
are considered like outside of the mainstream and like the
really successful rumors seem to work when you claim that
someone well known is actually part of that. And and
and I think there's a kind of fear of the
(43:23):
other required there. There's something like tantalizing, and it's hard
to prove. It's hard to disprove on the other person.
They can't they can say no, and you just don't
believe them.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
It's funny should mention we actually spoke to an expert
about rumors and why we attached to rumors, especially celebrity rumors,
what we get out of them.
Speaker 5 (43:44):
Yeah, So I spoke to Charlotte Debaker. She's a researcher
out of Belgium, and her research focuses on gossip and
rumors and kind of the historical and evolutionary purpose they
have served for humans.
Speaker 9 (43:58):
Gossip became this system to vicariously learn from the experiences
of other people, but it also became like a reputation
mechanism to control free writers, people that were gonna take
away benefits from you.
Speaker 5 (44:11):
And a lot of it's like survival. So it's like
you learn, like, don't do this drug, it's gonna kill you.
Speaker 9 (44:17):
And you not only warn others like other animals will
shout out these alarm calls when there's a dangerous animal
or predator coming up. We humans start gossiping about be careful.
You have to be careful about that person. And at
the same time, because gossip has like multiple effects, it's
also slendering the reputation of that person, So you're not
(44:40):
only warning others about the potential danger, but at the
same time you're also giving a punishment to the person
that you're targeting by ruining their reputation.
Speaker 5 (44:52):
Then you build a community just based on talking about
these other people, and then there's just like the parasocial element,
which has only gotten more increased with time, where it's
like we become so attached to these people and it's
all we're talking about, you know, Britney Spears or Sierra
or whoever, and it's obviously one sided.
Speaker 9 (45:07):
Our stone age minds are not designed by evolution to
perceive these celebrities as no members of our real social network.
So you see them, you start to feel emotional about them.
Some you like very much, some you dislike very much,
and then the mechanisms for why you gossip about real
(45:28):
life people start to transmit to gossiping about these celebrities
as well. You want to slender Taylor Swift versus Blake Lively,
choose a camp and then you start to slender the
one person and then praise the other one or vice versa.
Speaker 5 (45:43):
Then, of course, just the way they spread, it's like
Sierra even answering dignifying these questions with like, well, no,
of course, not only just feeds the fire, and that
I think has even gotten worse in more recent times.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
You know, it's interesting to me, how like if you
look at it on a timeline, like the the nineties
are really bad for this stuff, and the two thousands
still pretty bad, but like it's changing. And then it
does kind of feel like between like twenty ten and
like August twenty fourteen, the start of gamer Gate, there's
(46:17):
a kind of a moment where it actually feels like
things are getting better, Like information is kind of flowing
at a speed where we can like say that's fake,
that's not fake, Like media organizations are interested in debunking stuff.
Debunking doesn't feel tied to a culture war thing yet, Yeah,
and then it flips and it gets progressively worse, and
then after COVID it feels like we are basically back
(46:38):
in the nineties again, and I think a lot of
it has to do with like ephemorality, Like TikTok feels
as ephemeral as nineties TV to me, where you will
see a TikTok and you'll pass you by and you
won't think about it, and then you'll just like be
repeating some insane thing you heard and you won't be
able to find it.
Speaker 5 (46:56):
Yeah, you're not referencing it directly, so it's like you're
changing little things.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
It's Yeah, I even find myself because I use I
use x still Twitter because it's like you can see
all the bad people on there, and so it's great
for my job. But I have found myself like accidentally
absorbing through osmosis random stuff I'm seeing and then like
saying it out loud to someone there and being like,
what are you talking about. It's there's definitely something about
(47:24):
like not being able to like catch stuff passing you by,
like because like a rumor is effectively like someone just
told you this thing and then it's in your head
and you repeat it without really thinking, and like the
Internet has sort of become that, you know, like it
is just this rumor factory, which I do think to
tie back to the thing at the top, like is
being weaponized by you know, people in the entertainment industry
(47:45):
who know that they can make Reddit accounts and they
can make Instagram accounts and you know, flood the zone
that way.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Thank you to our friends Grant Irving and Ryan Broderick
for working with us on this one. It was a
weird one.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
If you want some more weird times about the Internet,
check out their podcast Panic World.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
So if you want to follow me, you can find
me as Ryan hays This on Blue Sky or Broadwick
on x or Ryan Hayses on Instagram. Panic World is
Panic World everywhere you'll find it. Just search type into
Little Ai. It's a Panic World up great, so much fun. Yeah,
it's awesome.
Speaker 4 (48:22):
See it all together.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
No such thing as a production of Kaleidoscope Content. Our
executive producers are Kate Osbourne and mangest Hatti Kudur. The
show was created by Manny Fidel Nor Friedman and me
Devin Joseph. The theme end credit song is by Manny
mixing my Steve Bone. Audition of music for this episode
by Zeno Atarelli. Our guest this week was Charlotte the
(48:52):
Baker visit no such thing, not show to subscribe to
our newsletter.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
You got feedback for the boys, or you got a
so you want us to answer.
Speaker 2 (49:01):
Email us at Man, email Adevin at gmail dot com,
or if you're in the US, you can leave a
voicemail for us at the number in our show notes.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Sure to show with a friend and we'll see you
next
Speaker 3 (49:12):
Week's such things
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