January 11, 2023 • 34 mins
Meghan and Harry are being targeted by a media manipulation campaign.Former counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa breaks down how they’re fighting back.
What Harry and Meghan Can Teach Us About Information Warfare: https://asharangappa.substack.com/p/what-harry-and-meghan-can-teach-us?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Like, Wow, they're kind of trying to expose this. They're
also trying to create a narrative, like they understand that
they're in an information more There Are No Girls on
the Internet as a production of I Heart Radio and
Unboss Creative. I'm bridget Toad and this is There Are
(00:23):
No Girls on the Internet. Last month, former royals Megan
Markel and Prince Harry released a Netflix documentary all about
their decision to step back from the duties involved in
being a member of the royal family, and this week
Harry's new memoir called Spare that chronicled his experiences in
the Royal Family debuts as well. We've talked before about
(00:46):
the wave of racist, sexist, conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns
that target Megan Markle, and in a piece called What
Harry and Megan Can teach Us About Information Warfare, former
FBI count to intelligence agent Asha Vengata says that Harry
and Megan's recent media can actually provide a good blueprint
for how to combat a disinformation campaign in when an
(01:09):
Information war So, let's talk about the piece. It is fascinating.
The pieces called What Harry and Megan Can teach Us
About Information warfare. Um, I know that you're a big
fan of the Royals. What drove you to write this
piece kind of breaking down Megan and Harry and how
what we can take away about propaganda and information. Yeah.
(01:30):
So I sat down to watch their Netflix docuseries thinking
this was just gonna be some mind candy for me.
I'm gonna take a little break, you know, and escape
at all. But I thought it was actually a great
window into some of the stuff that I teach about,
and in particular they describe because what they're doing in
(01:52):
the course of this documentary is really describing the propaganda
machine that is the British tabloid you know, ecosystem, and
how it relates to the royal family. Um. While they
were describing that, it reminded me a lot of about
a lot of research that I've done about our own
(02:12):
media ecosystem in the United States and in particular propaganda
feedback loops that we have, for example, on the far right. UM.
And so I started my ears perked up, and I
just started looking at the entire docuseries through that lens, like, Wow,
they're kind of trying to expose this, They're also trying
to create a narrative, like they understand that they're in
(02:35):
an information war and that's what this is about, you know.
And and then I remembered, I said, Prince Harry is
on the Commission on Misinformation or Information Disorder with the
Afton Institute. And I went and researched that, and I
looked at the report that they just put out, and
I thought, you know, I think that there are some
things that they are actually doing really well in this docuseries,
(02:58):
just from a strategic information were fair perspective, and I
decided to write about it. Okay, So the piece is
so fascinating, and one of the things that you point
out is that it kind of functions as almost like
counter propaganda. Um. You write that that that the film
kind of works to give truth and advantage and our
own information ecosystem. Can you tell us more about what
you mean? Yeah. So I have the sub stack where
(03:21):
I'm teaching basically an online course for anyone who wants
to take it, UM about about information warfare and disinformation
and how we combat it. And one of the things
that I've covered is that we propaganda is such a
loaded word, right, We tend to think of it as
something that's always negative, and it's often used for manipulative
(03:43):
and bad purposes, but there is you know, there is
a place for counterpropaganda where you know, you put out
your narrative. We did this in the Cold War, you know,
we put out our democratic values. We were in ideological battle,
and so you know, in this context, you can't just
seed the information space to an adversary and let them
(04:05):
shape perceptions and opinions. You have to get out there
and tell an affirmative story about the values that you
stand for. That is a form of propagandas white propaganda.
It doesn't mean that it's bad, but I think that
that's what they're doing and that's absolutely what they should
be doing. So there was definitely a time where I
and a lot of us kind of thought that ignoring
(04:26):
certain unsavory things online was the way to go. You know,
when they go low, you go high, be above it,
or don't give that the time of day. Well, it
turns out that the just ignore it strategy was not
the most effective, and it actually allowed conspiracy theories to
fester and get even stronger. Similarly, Asha says we can
(04:47):
take a lesson from the way that Megan and Harry
are not just sitting by while an inaccurate narrative is
created around them. Instead, they're setting the record straight by
going to battle for the truth. Okay, So I have
to say, like, I work in like media trying to
combat things like missin disinformation and online harassment, and I
guess I would say there was a time where I
(05:07):
thought that there were certain conspiracy theories that like, we're
not worthy of coverage, right, And I felt like covering
them was like legitimizing them. And I feel like I've
spent the last few years of my career kind of
playing catchup for that kind of error in strategy, error
in judgment, because you know, by being like, oh, we're
not going to pay attention to that. That's that's crazy,
Like of course democrats aren't eating babies. We're not going
(05:29):
to even like dignify that with a response. You look
and you're like, oh, wow, this is actually kind of
like gotten out of control. And one of the things
that you write about is that the Netflix documentary is
sort of one of the things that it does. It's
like it's getting into the battle for the truth. It's
like at least being on the field. Can you can
you tell us more about like how you see them
doing that. Yeah, I mean they're they're getting into the
(05:52):
battle because they they're putting something out and they're putting
it out at a level and volume that can compete
with this other propagy at a machine like this whole
tabloid system you know, um there, if they were just
tweeting on their own or doing something you know, as individuals,
even though their celebrities, it's just not going to it's asymmetrical.
(06:12):
It's not going to be able to have the same impact,
whereas this docuseries are kind of uh, they're they're in
the fight. And I think to your point about conspiracy theories,
the problem is that what we have now is that
traditional gatekeepers that used to keep lies and conspiracy theories
(06:34):
and really wacky things to the fringes. Those gatekeepers no
longer exist. You know, traditional journalists, you know that had
journalistic you know, standards and things like that. You most
of that stuff used to stay on the fringes. It
could not become mainstream. Well with social media where everybody
can publish anything everybody, you know, we've democratized media, which
(06:59):
is really good in any ways, but it also means
that now anything can become mainstream, so you can't ignore
them because they will gain traction. And lies travel faster
on the Internet and social media than the truth, so
in many ways, the truth is already catching up, and
so you have to get in there. Ideally you get
(07:19):
in there first, um and you get the first mover
mover advantage if you can. Yeah, what do you think
it says about like our current moment in in media
or like digital media, that yeah, we can no longer
depend on traditional quote unquote like media sources or you know,
figures to be those gatekeepers. Like like when you think
(07:41):
about the state of media, are are you are you
hopeful that we can get to a place where like
truth and thoughtfulness and nuance can compete with lies, conspiracy
theories and inflammatory nonsense. I'm hopeful, but I think it's
going to require a lot of work. So I think
we need to think about those types of information as
(08:06):
sort of psychological hacking. Right, Like when you look in
and see all these people who believe in Q and
on and the Democrats are eating babies or whatever, I mean,
they have been hacked. Their brains have literally been hacked
and you know, hijacked, and that they believe these things.
And when you look at in the cyber intrusion realm,
like the technical intrusion, when people when companies get hacked,
(08:27):
what they talk about is that, yes, you need to
defend and deter the hackers, you need to try to
prevent them from coming in, but at some point you
kind of have to acknowledge everybody's gonna get hacked and
the best thing you can do is to be resilient
when it happens. And so I think the key is
how do we create resilience among the people who are
(08:49):
going to be consuming and are targeted by this information? Um.
One of the things you just mentioned is what it
is really about media media literacy. How do you train
people to understand the sources of information that they're consuming
and um, be more critical about it. Um, you know,
digital literacy, civic literacy, so that you understand how the
(09:11):
government works, so it becomes harder to believe dumb conspiracy
theories about it, you know. UM. So I think that
there's a lot of things that we need to do
to build resilience. Unfortunately, I think we spend a lot
of time focusing on the social media platforms and how
they should police themselves, and I personally think those platforms
are kind of bad actors, right, Like they're like the
(09:32):
tobacco industry, Like they have they have an addictive product
that's bad for everybody, and people are hooked, and they
have no financial interest in making it better. They really don't.
My my partner works in tobacco control and we make
this comparison all the time where every now and then
(09:52):
Facebook will come out with a very polished ad that's
like Facebook cares about digital literacy or blah blah blah,
and it's like or protect democracy, and it's like then
you would shut down. It's like the same way that
like there's not a saper cigarette. If you were really
interested in like making a product that's not harming everybody
and breaking all of our brains, you would dismantle and
shut down. You would, you would burn the company. Now,
(10:14):
they don't care about you, They don't care about democracy.
They care about making a buck. And if you look
at the top performing sites on Facebook, for example, what
is it like ripe bard and dam Bungee. I mean
these are you know, during COVID, it was the you know,
COVID misinformation sites, the anti vack sites that were that
were the most I had the most engagement on Facebook,
(10:38):
So um, no, they don't care about you or me.
And I think, you know, because the damage is in
many ways invisible. Unlike with tobacco, you're not you know,
you don't have people dying of cancer, and when you
can point to something, it becomes harder to really wrap
our minds around. Although with the Facebook whistleblower last year
(11:01):
Francis Hugan, you know, we have seen you know, harms
manifest for example with teens, teenage girls and suicidal tendencies
and things like that that have come out of social media.
So maybe if we can start to approach it in
a public health mindset the way we did with smoking,
maybe we can start to get some regulations. But I
(11:23):
really think the regulatory aspect is going to be very
slow and long term, and what we need in the
short term is to build resilience on our side. Let's
take a quick break at our back. It doesn't sound
(11:51):
like you're holding out hope for like certainly not for
tech leaders at platforms to police themselves appropriately or responsibly
or ethically. It doesn't like you're really putting a lot
of hope into like government to sort of take action.
So an absence of like tech leaders doing anything or
government doing anything, what like, Like is the resilience factor
(12:13):
on us as individuals, like just like really making sure
that we understand what we're consuming and what it's like,
what it's trying to get us to think or not think. Yes,
I think that it's up to us as consumers of
this technology, as consumers of the information like the substance
of the information, and I think also as citizens in
(12:36):
terms of understanding our relationship with other people. Most of
these disinformation narratives, like even the Megan Harry thing, like
it's all about trying to create cleavages, right like whose
side are you on? Are you? Are you Harry Megan?
Are you William Kate? Like it's all about division, division
and tribalism and whose team are you on? And what
(13:00):
we need to do I think also is think about
our relationships offline, because the more that we can build
true human connection in real life across all of these
different social cleavages and beliefs and ideologies or whatever, the
much it becomes much harder to divide you when you're
(13:21):
when you're online. Yeah, that's something that we talked about
a lot on the show is the way that these
because things become kind of like turned into a really
specific binary And so if you're someone like I'm not
a huge person who is into the Royals that much
as a black woman, I liked it that I like
(13:42):
the idea of like a black princess. I know she
wasn't a princess, but whatever, we definitely called her black princess.
I liked that. Like, I was no huge Megan Markles fan.
I wasn't like a big consumer of media around the Royals,
but the way that it was so clear that it
was like, well, are you a kid or a Megan
and like how racialized and criticized that was. There wasn't
really a place for the casual person who was like,
(14:03):
I'm interested in like casually following this person that I
kind of like, but I don't necessarily want to feel
like I need to take these take a binary side
in this way. And so when things become flattened out
into this like tribalistic binary vibe, the people who are
interested in just having thoughtful conversations or don't really feel
(14:25):
one right or the other kind of get drowned out
because it's like Are you with her or with her?
Are you with these people? Are those people? Like? It
really doesn't leave a place for nuance, No, it doesn't
at all. Um. There's a term for it. It's called Cyberbalkanization,
which means that you know, when you're online, things become
very narrow. I mean, even if you look at something
like a Facebook group, right, it's it's all like along
(14:47):
one theme and one topic, and it's great, it's a
great way to bring people together along that dimension, but
you're also not connecting on all these other dimensions. The
other thing that happens on social media is is you're
creating these tribal alliances, but you're also not like exchanging
actual human cues. Like you know, you're not seeing people's faces,
(15:09):
and you know you're not seeing the other side, right,
which makes it you know, if you're actually in a
debate with someone in real life, like there's a certain
amount of respect and you know, because you're you're human, right, Like,
you actually have a human connection there. In person, it's
much easier to become more toxic because it's so depersonalized
(15:32):
online and the other the other side is kind of
abstract or anonymous in a way, um, and it gets
really ugly really fast. Yeah. I have found myself as
a like a personal exercise trying to really engage in
discourse online with strangers in a way that really I
(15:53):
don't know. I just so something about the exercise of
like getting into a debate on Twitter or something like
your color is your your your fur is up, like
you're just like and so like you can I feel
it myself, like you can so quickly be like so
hostile and You're like, well, if we were just two
people talking at a cafe, would I default to hostility?
And so I'm really as a personal exercise trying to
(16:14):
like really be mindful of that dynamic of like, if
somebody is disagreeing with me about something that really is
of no consequence on the internet, what like is it
Why is my first instinct to be like a hostile
response or I'm part of me wonders if it's because
a lot of the times, like you, you kind of
kind of sense that you're like followers are watching and
(16:34):
maybe you want to like really dunk on this person
so that other people will be like, yeah, I go you.
And I'm just trying to really unlearn all of that
because I do think it's like not the healthiest instinct
to show up with absolutely, And you have to remember
that these platforms are sort of designed for that, right um.
They want you to Emotional reactivity drives engagement, and that's
(16:58):
why the content that triggers that emotional reactivity is going
to be the stuff that you most likely see, Like
you're not going to see the boring post that you're like, oh,
I just learned about the political situation and you know
New Guinea or I don't know whatever, Right um, It's
gonna be something really crazy and that pushes your buttons
(17:19):
and that's the whole point. That's what keeps you addicted.
Then you start scrolling and then you start you know, responding,
and you know that's what makes the money. You are
the product. That's what you have to remember. And I
I am with you, like I succumbed to it myself,
but I I'm trying to be more mindful and to
think about when I get triggered that way, that's the
(17:43):
cue to get off, because at the end of the day,
it's actually not that worth it, Like who are these
people and you don't even know if they're real. It
could be like some it could be Ivan in St.
Petersburg sitting in a troll form like you don't even
know um so, but yeah, that what you're feeling is real,
um And it's designed to do that because that's what
(18:04):
keeps you on the platform. As someone who has worked
in counter intelligence, like, I don't even know how to
ask this without sounding not informed. With the way that
I'm framing this does not sound informed. Feel free to
let me know, because I am certainly not the expert.
But you know, you mentioned like you don't even know
if these people are real. And we've covered quite a
(18:24):
bit this idea of bad actors impersonating people getting into
online communities and like causing chaos and confusion. What is
going on there? Like like why would a for like
why would it foreign Asian be invested in me bridget
todd um in my kitchen getting hot under the collar
(18:45):
and like rage tweeting somebody like like like why is
that a tactic that we see? Because when they do
it on a mass scale, it erodes try among the citizenry.
I mean, what how you feel when you're online is
(19:05):
going to carry out carry over when you go out
into real life, right, Like that you carry that with you.
I mean, I have found even in the last five years,
like I'm kind of more mistrustful in general, and I
walk around like I see people you know, and it's
I have to like think about who I am and
who I want to be in the space. But it
(19:27):
it's Sow's division and it's So's chaos. And with the
more that you're on Twitter arguing with some person, you're
not out uh doing you know, you're not volunteering, You're
not um being civically engaged. You're not um you know,
going to a show at a theater or sports of
(19:47):
it where you're like, you know, forging. I think healthier
connections and for places like Russia that can't compete with
us technologically, militarily, economically, They're objective is to have us
implode from within, to create dysfunction and discord, have us
all hate each other, ideally, have us all shoot each other,
(20:10):
and essentially bring and have us lose faith in our
institutions and bring our entire form of society and governments
to a standstill. That's what they want. And I hate
to say, I mean, like I agree, and I hate
to say that we have people in the United States
(20:31):
who are kind of like doing this like helping them along.
It's like absolutely, It's like makes me want to pull
my hair out where I'm like, don't you see that
this is what they want? Don't you see that you're
just doing the work of bad actors for them? Yes? No, absolutely,
I think, um, their interests are aligned with a subset
(20:52):
of UH actors, including political actors. I mean they're we
got we have a group now that's holding our House
of Representatives hostage, right, these are people who trying to
overthrow the government. Yes, it's one of those things where
there's a little bit of truth because I can understand
somebody who was like, I'm not going to trust these
(21:13):
people to govern, to govern for me, and it's like, yeah,
I could like, like, I I agree that having people
lose trust in our institutions it's like bad and like
what bad actors want. But on the other hand, part
of me is like, well, they're not making it very
difficult for someone trusting these like cookie people. I will
say I think in that regard, the midterm elections were
(21:35):
I think heartening. You know, you had a lot of
these election deniers defeated, and I do think that there's
I think the pendulum is gonna move, maybe slowly, but
it is going to move in the direction because people
are sick of it. And I do think people are
more aware now of you know, what is being done
(21:56):
to us and um that you know, it's up to
us to try to take it in another direction. Absolutely,
I kind of agree with you. I think that people
that are just like sick of it, it's enough already,
like already, yeah, Like we like we have to be
able to have like a baseline understanding of reality. And
(22:19):
if we don't have that, like we don't have anything more.
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
(22:40):
One of the things that you talk about in your
piece is something called the propaganda feedback loop that that
was coined by the Columbia law professor benkler Uh And
this I really blew my mind and the way that
you saw it working in the dialogue around Harry and Megan.
Can you tell us a bit about how you see that,
what it is, and how you see it function. Yeah,
(23:01):
So the propaganda feedback loop, this is developed by Columbia
law professor Yoki Bankler, who co authored a book called
Network Propaganda. But what they were describing is that in
the United States, the the right wing media system is
basically a closed system. So you have sort of the
(23:24):
symbiotic relationships where these outlets like Fox News provide favorable
coverage of particular political figures who then will go on
those shows, and then the audience for that is sort
of siloed, right, like they are not getting other narratives
because they're sort of sucked into this, and so they're
in an alternate reality. To get to what you were
(23:45):
saying before, like before you live in alternate realities. We
can't function. That is an alternate reality. It's very hard
to pierce that. What that um this is unrelated to
the meganpiece, but what what they are trying to show
in that book is um that the media, the center
of gravity on the left and right are asymmetrical, meaning
(24:08):
that that propaganda feedback loop is existing in UM is
a system that allows for conspiracy theories and false narratives
and all of that being and there's nothing external that
can come in and check it or correct for it.
Whereas even if you have more of a left bias
in traditional media CNN, MSNBC, whatever, there are still guard
(24:32):
rails there that prevent largely you know, complete conspiracies or
false narratives from piercing it. And so you have like
two different media ecosystems, and one that is just more
truthful than the other. What I saw playing out with
Megan and Harry is that they were describing a similar
feedback loop with the British tabloids and the Royal palace.
(24:58):
Um it's called the Royal rota, which is this I
guess some handful of these tabloids or these outlets, and
there's just sort of this implicit understanding that as long
as the members of the royal family pose and you know,
give them content, both in terms of you know, photographs, stories,
(25:22):
dirt on other people in the royal family, then they
get rewarded by favorable coverage or at least by distracting
from bad coverage by covering other people. It's really sad,
I mean it was, you know. It's essentially they're like
circus animals where they have to be on display all
the time, and this media system can like punish them
(25:44):
if they're not, if they don't play along, then they
can like you know, circulate these narratives and it creates
these incentives for members of the royal family to actually
throw each other under the bus in order to take
you know, take the heat off themselves, or to get
and you for whatever reason. And you see this playing out,
I think, you know, with even Harry and his brother, right,
(26:07):
I think this was one of the main reasons that
he was really upset with his brother. Um. I don't
know that the public audience in the UK is as
you know, if there's as much capture as there is here.
I don't know if there is siloed, so I'm not
sure if it's necessarily the exact same as our the
propaganda feedback loop on the right here, but that that
(26:29):
symbiotic relationship between the Royal Palace and these tabloids, to me,
um was what I saw playing out. A truism about
false information is that while it can be good to
debunk lies on the Internet, it doesn't always work, especially
with folks who are deeply committed to a false reality.
So rather than trying to debunk all the different conspiracy
(26:51):
theories and misleading statements out there one by one, like no,
Megan Markle did not wear a fake tell me to
fake a pregnancy, or no, she did not use a
doll as a standing for her baby, because that would
never work for people who are fully and deeply invested
in an alternate reality. Instead, Megan and Harry are shifting
the conversation. One of the things that I think is
(27:13):
so fascinating that you point out in your piece is
how I think because it being this like closed feedback
loop where an outsider is never gonna be able to
pierce it, never gonna be able to like somebody who
is a true believer, they're probably never gonna be able
to really get any kind of alternative, you know, perspective
in there is that they don't really focus on debunking
(27:35):
a lot of the lies and misinformation coming out of
out of this. Instead, they kind of change the narrative
and like peel back the curtain as World of Explored
explore the ways that the monarchy is this like dysfunctional,
toxic system. So do you think that's like why they
sort of do it that way, that they're like, we're
not going to debunk all of the lies and half truths,
(27:55):
we are instead going to like tell a different story. Yeah,
they just change into the debate, right, Like they just
reframed the whole controversy, which I think was smart a
because of what you just said. You're not going to
convince people who already believe something, but you're just changing
the paradigm and you're exposing how how the tactic works.
(28:16):
This is the key to neutralizing, as we would say
in the intelligence world, disinformation is. I mean, you can
fact check, you can counter that's and that's helpful, but
it's often not super productive people people, It's very hard
to undo someone's belief what they have it. What you
(28:37):
can do is explained to them what's being done to them,
and then that might open their eyes and make them
more skeptical of what they consume after that. Right, Um,
you're kind of pulling back the curtain and I think
they did that very smartly, and by reframing the entire
controversy in terms of, you know, this is how the
(29:00):
royal family is exploited by this you know, tabloid system
that makes money off of this voyeurism of the public. Um,
it really places both those outlets and I think the
Royal Palace in a defensive posture because now they have
to explain like why do you go along with this? Right?
(29:22):
Why are you into the outlets? Like why are you
exploiting them. So I mean, I'm not surprised that. I'm
sure the British media is really really mad because they
just got completely exposed and called out. Yeah, and I'm
sure when Harry's book comes out next week, like, I'm
sure they're all like nobody in the in the Palace
is like having a good time. I'm sure everybody it's
(29:43):
very stressed of a lot on their plates. Yes, I
think I read some snippets of that today or I
saw some tidbits like I guess there's drama about how
William was beating up on Harry. I don't know something
like that, So it sounds it sounds like lots of
drama will be revealed. What do you think that either
(30:03):
the Netflix show or just generally like the media ecosystem
around the Megan and Harry, do you think that it
tells us anything about how we can counter other more
like broad or wide spread disinformation campaigns like critical race
theory or you know, drag queens are out to harm
your kids like things like that, Like do you think
there's any lessons to be learned there? There are definitely
(30:26):
lessons to be learned, And you know, the CRT thing
I mean the reframing the controversy is really important there, right,
because that's a very deliberate, uh psy op basically a
psychological operation to take this term critical race theory and
basically make it a catch all phrase for teaching anything
(30:47):
having to do with race or you know, no one
can define it, and that's that's the key, right, It
becomes shorthand it's like Hunter Biden's laptop, it's you know, groomers,
all these like these buzzwords that no one really understands,
but it just becomes associated with that. So if you
try to engage on that term, you're always going to
(31:08):
be losing. I would see people saying, but critical race
theory isn't taught in you know, elementary schools. It's not.
But at this point you're already you're accepting the term.
Why are you Why are you fighting about that? You know,
why not respond with why would you not want children
to learn about the history of the United States, including
(31:29):
stand with slavery? Like that's the question, whatever you want
to call it. But you know, so it just to
to reframe it, to stop using the terms that are
being given to you, being stopped using the assumptions that
are being given to you because it's a trap. It's
a trap to make you engage in that and then
to basically, you know, keep you tied up in that loop.
(31:53):
You gotta get out of the loop. Got get out
of the loop. That's that's words to live by. One
of my last questions for you, how is Diana is
a musical? Oh? My god? Did you watch that clip?
I I watched the breakdancing because I was like, really,
(32:15):
wasn't it so bad? It's like, I wasn't I had
nothing to do with the production, and I was embarrassed.
I was so embarrassed. I know, I know, I was like,
aren't thee Like do these people have no dignity? Um? No,
it's oh, it's so bad. You have to It's actually
so bad. You have to watch it. So it's so bad.
It loops back around too good. Yes, you have to
(32:37):
watch it. There's a there's a there's a the Thrilla
in Manila with Camilla, which is like a faue like
boxing fight between Diana and come out. Like. I mean,
it's so it's just so dumb and the lyrics are
(32:57):
so dumb. And this person who plays diet Anna is
not a convincing Diana at all right, Like it's this
sort of like why are you doing this? But you
can't stop watching it. I was like rubbernecking the whole time.
All right, Well, that's going on my list. It sounds
like choices were made in this production. Definitely have to
check it out. Yes, where can people follow all the
(33:21):
very fascinating work that you are up to? I think
the best place if you're interested in the topics we
talked about today is my sub stack Asha Rainappa dot
sub stack dot com. UM. That's where I've been writing
about this stuff. I have free content. If you're interested
in taking the course, you can sign up for that too. UM.
(33:44):
I am on Twitter, though, I'll be honest, I'm trying
to clean off. I'm trying to use that as a
tool to enhance other parts of my professional life. UM
and to not let it suck up my whole time.
That's one of my New Year's solutions. So but you
can follow me there to it's Asha rang Appa Underscore
(34:04):
UM and you can. Those are the two main places.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or
just want to say hi. You can reach us at
Hello at Tangdi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.
It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan
(34:27):
Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer
and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm
your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow,
rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts
from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Like, Wow, they're kind of trying to expose this. They're
also trying to create a narrative, like they understand that
they're in an information more There Are No Girls on
the Internet as a production of I Heart Radio and
Unboss Creative. I'm bridget Toad and this is There Are
(00:23):
No Girls on the Internet. Last month, former royals Megan
Markel and Prince Harry released a Netflix documentary all about
their decision to step back from the duties involved in
being a member of the royal family, and this week
Harry's new memoir called Spare that chronicled his experiences in
the Royal Family debuts as well. We've talked before about
(00:46):
the wave of racist, sexist, conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns
that target Megan Markle, and in a piece called What
Harry and Megan Can teach Us About Information Warfare, former
FBI count to intelligence agent Asha Vengata says that Harry
and Megan's recent media can actually provide a good blueprint
for how to combat a disinformation campaign in when an
(01:09):
Information war So, let's talk about the piece. It is fascinating.
The pieces called What Harry and Megan Can teach Us
About Information warfare. Um, I know that you're a big
fan of the Royals. What drove you to write this
piece kind of breaking down Megan and Harry and how
what we can take away about propaganda and information. Yeah.
(01:30):
So I sat down to watch their Netflix docuseries thinking
this was just gonna be some mind candy for me.
I'm gonna take a little break, you know, and escape
at all. But I thought it was actually a great
window into some of the stuff that I teach about,
and in particular they describe because what they're doing in
(01:52):
the course of this documentary is really describing the propaganda
machine that is the British tabloid you know, ecosystem, and
how it relates to the royal family. Um. While they
were describing that, it reminded me a lot of about
a lot of research that I've done about our own
(02:12):
media ecosystem in the United States and in particular propaganda
feedback loops that we have, for example, on the far right. UM.
And so I started my ears perked up, and I
just started looking at the entire docuseries through that lens, like, Wow,
they're kind of trying to expose this, They're also trying
to create a narrative, like they understand that they're in
(02:35):
an information war and that's what this is about, you know.
And and then I remembered, I said, Prince Harry is
on the Commission on Misinformation or Information Disorder with the
Afton Institute. And I went and researched that, and I
looked at the report that they just put out, and
I thought, you know, I think that there are some
things that they are actually doing really well in this docuseries,
(02:58):
just from a strategic information were fair perspective, and I
decided to write about it. Okay, So the piece is
so fascinating, and one of the things that you point
out is that it kind of functions as almost like
counter propaganda. Um. You write that that that the film
kind of works to give truth and advantage and our
own information ecosystem. Can you tell us more about what
you mean? Yeah. So I have the sub stack where
(03:21):
I'm teaching basically an online course for anyone who wants
to take it, UM about about information warfare and disinformation
and how we combat it. And one of the things
that I've covered is that we propaganda is such a
loaded word, right, We tend to think of it as
something that's always negative, and it's often used for manipulative
(03:43):
and bad purposes, but there is you know, there is
a place for counterpropaganda where you know, you put out
your narrative. We did this in the Cold War, you know,
we put out our democratic values. We were in ideological battle,
and so you know, in this context, you can't just
seed the information space to an adversary and let them
(04:05):
shape perceptions and opinions. You have to get out there
and tell an affirmative story about the values that you
stand for. That is a form of propagandas white propaganda.
It doesn't mean that it's bad, but I think that
that's what they're doing and that's absolutely what they should
be doing. So there was definitely a time where I
and a lot of us kind of thought that ignoring
(04:26):
certain unsavory things online was the way to go. You know,
when they go low, you go high, be above it,
or don't give that the time of day. Well, it
turns out that the just ignore it strategy was not
the most effective, and it actually allowed conspiracy theories to
fester and get even stronger. Similarly, Asha says we can
(04:47):
take a lesson from the way that Megan and Harry
are not just sitting by while an inaccurate narrative is
created around them. Instead, they're setting the record straight by
going to battle for the truth. Okay, So I have
to say, like, I work in like media trying to
combat things like missin disinformation and online harassment, and I
guess I would say there was a time where I
(05:07):
thought that there were certain conspiracy theories that like, we're
not worthy of coverage, right, And I felt like covering
them was like legitimizing them. And I feel like I've
spent the last few years of my career kind of
playing catchup for that kind of error in strategy, error
in judgment, because you know, by being like, oh, we're
not going to pay attention to that. That's that's crazy,
Like of course democrats aren't eating babies. We're not going
(05:29):
to even like dignify that with a response. You look
and you're like, oh, wow, this is actually kind of
like gotten out of control. And one of the things
that you write about is that the Netflix documentary is
sort of one of the things that it does. It's
like it's getting into the battle for the truth. It's
like at least being on the field. Can you can
you tell us more about like how you see them
doing that. Yeah, I mean they're they're getting into the
(05:52):
battle because they they're putting something out and they're putting
it out at a level and volume that can compete
with this other propagy at a machine like this whole
tabloid system you know, um there, if they were just
tweeting on their own or doing something you know, as individuals,
even though their celebrities, it's just not going to it's asymmetrical.
(06:12):
It's not going to be able to have the same impact,
whereas this docuseries are kind of uh, they're they're in
the fight. And I think to your point about conspiracy theories,
the problem is that what we have now is that
traditional gatekeepers that used to keep lies and conspiracy theories
(06:34):
and really wacky things to the fringes. Those gatekeepers no
longer exist. You know, traditional journalists, you know that had
journalistic you know, standards and things like that. You most
of that stuff used to stay on the fringes. It
could not become mainstream. Well with social media where everybody
can publish anything everybody, you know, we've democratized media, which
(06:59):
is really good in any ways, but it also means
that now anything can become mainstream, so you can't ignore
them because they will gain traction. And lies travel faster
on the Internet and social media than the truth, so
in many ways, the truth is already catching up, and
so you have to get in there. Ideally you get
(07:19):
in there first, um and you get the first mover
mover advantage if you can. Yeah, what do you think
it says about like our current moment in in media
or like digital media, that yeah, we can no longer
depend on traditional quote unquote like media sources or you know,
figures to be those gatekeepers. Like like when you think
(07:41):
about the state of media, are are you are you
hopeful that we can get to a place where like
truth and thoughtfulness and nuance can compete with lies, conspiracy
theories and inflammatory nonsense. I'm hopeful, but I think it's
going to require a lot of work. So I think
we need to think about those types of information as
(08:06):
sort of psychological hacking. Right, Like when you look in
and see all these people who believe in Q and
on and the Democrats are eating babies or whatever, I mean,
they have been hacked. Their brains have literally been hacked
and you know, hijacked, and that they believe these things.
And when you look at in the cyber intrusion realm,
like the technical intrusion, when people when companies get hacked,
(08:27):
what they talk about is that, yes, you need to
defend and deter the hackers, you need to try to
prevent them from coming in, but at some point you
kind of have to acknowledge everybody's gonna get hacked and
the best thing you can do is to be resilient
when it happens. And so I think the key is
how do we create resilience among the people who are
(08:49):
going to be consuming and are targeted by this information? Um.
One of the things you just mentioned is what it
is really about media media literacy. How do you train
people to understand the sources of information that they're consuming
and um, be more critical about it. Um, you know,
digital literacy, civic literacy, so that you understand how the
(09:11):
government works, so it becomes harder to believe dumb conspiracy
theories about it, you know. UM. So I think that
there's a lot of things that we need to do
to build resilience. Unfortunately, I think we spend a lot
of time focusing on the social media platforms and how
they should police themselves, and I personally think those platforms
are kind of bad actors, right, Like they're like the
(09:32):
tobacco industry, Like they have they have an addictive product
that's bad for everybody, and people are hooked, and they
have no financial interest in making it better. They really don't.
My my partner works in tobacco control and we make
this comparison all the time where every now and then
(09:52):
Facebook will come out with a very polished ad that's
like Facebook cares about digital literacy or blah blah blah,
and it's like or protect democracy, and it's like then
you would shut down. It's like the same way that
like there's not a saper cigarette. If you were really
interested in like making a product that's not harming everybody
and breaking all of our brains, you would dismantle and
shut down. You would, you would burn the company. Now,
(10:14):
they don't care about you, They don't care about democracy.
They care about making a buck. And if you look
at the top performing sites on Facebook, for example, what
is it like ripe bard and dam Bungee. I mean
these are you know, during COVID, it was the you know,
COVID misinformation sites, the anti vack sites that were that
were the most I had the most engagement on Facebook,
(10:38):
So um, no, they don't care about you or me.
And I think, you know, because the damage is in
many ways invisible. Unlike with tobacco, you're not you know,
you don't have people dying of cancer, and when you
can point to something, it becomes harder to really wrap
our minds around. Although with the Facebook whistleblower last year
(11:01):
Francis Hugan, you know, we have seen you know, harms
manifest for example with teens, teenage girls and suicidal tendencies
and things like that that have come out of social media.
So maybe if we can start to approach it in
a public health mindset the way we did with smoking,
maybe we can start to get some regulations. But I
(11:23):
really think the regulatory aspect is going to be very
slow and long term, and what we need in the
short term is to build resilience on our side. Let's
take a quick break at our back. It doesn't sound
(11:51):
like you're holding out hope for like certainly not for
tech leaders at platforms to police themselves appropriately or responsibly
or ethically. It doesn't like you're really putting a lot
of hope into like government to sort of take action.
So an absence of like tech leaders doing anything or
government doing anything, what like, Like is the resilience factor
(12:13):
on us as individuals, like just like really making sure
that we understand what we're consuming and what it's like,
what it's trying to get us to think or not think. Yes,
I think that it's up to us as consumers of
this technology, as consumers of the information like the substance
of the information, and I think also as citizens in
(12:36):
terms of understanding our relationship with other people. Most of
these disinformation narratives, like even the Megan Harry thing, like
it's all about trying to create cleavages, right like whose
side are you on? Are you? Are you Harry Megan?
Are you William Kate? Like it's all about division, division
and tribalism and whose team are you on? And what
(13:00):
we need to do I think also is think about
our relationships offline, because the more that we can build
true human connection in real life across all of these
different social cleavages and beliefs and ideologies or whatever, the
much it becomes much harder to divide you when you're
(13:21):
when you're online. Yeah, that's something that we talked about
a lot on the show is the way that these
because things become kind of like turned into a really
specific binary And so if you're someone like I'm not
a huge person who is into the Royals that much
as a black woman, I liked it that I like
(13:42):
the idea of like a black princess. I know she
wasn't a princess, but whatever, we definitely called her black princess.
I liked that. Like, I was no huge Megan Markles fan.
I wasn't like a big consumer of media around the Royals,
but the way that it was so clear that it
was like, well, are you a kid or a Megan
and like how racialized and criticized that was. There wasn't
really a place for the casual person who was like,
(14:03):
I'm interested in like casually following this person that I
kind of like, but I don't necessarily want to feel
like I need to take these take a binary side
in this way. And so when things become flattened out
into this like tribalistic binary vibe, the people who are
interested in just having thoughtful conversations or don't really feel
(14:25):
one right or the other kind of get drowned out
because it's like Are you with her or with her?
Are you with these people? Are those people? Like? It
really doesn't leave a place for nuance, No, it doesn't
at all. Um. There's a term for it. It's called Cyberbalkanization,
which means that you know, when you're online, things become
very narrow. I mean, even if you look at something
like a Facebook group, right, it's it's all like along
(14:47):
one theme and one topic, and it's great, it's a
great way to bring people together along that dimension, but
you're also not connecting on all these other dimensions. The
other thing that happens on social media is is you're
creating these tribal alliances, but you're also not like exchanging
actual human cues. Like you know, you're not seeing people's faces,
(15:09):
and you know you're not seeing the other side, right,
which makes it you know, if you're actually in a
debate with someone in real life, like there's a certain
amount of respect and you know, because you're you're human, right, Like,
you actually have a human connection there. In person, it's
much easier to become more toxic because it's so depersonalized
(15:32):
online and the other the other side is kind of
abstract or anonymous in a way, um, and it gets
really ugly really fast. Yeah. I have found myself as
a like a personal exercise trying to really engage in
discourse online with strangers in a way that really I
(15:53):
don't know. I just so something about the exercise of
like getting into a debate on Twitter or something like
your color is your your your fur is up, like
you're just like and so like you can I feel
it myself, like you can so quickly be like so
hostile and You're like, well, if we were just two
people talking at a cafe, would I default to hostility?
And so I'm really as a personal exercise trying to
(16:14):
like really be mindful of that dynamic of like, if
somebody is disagreeing with me about something that really is
of no consequence on the internet, what like is it
Why is my first instinct to be like a hostile
response or I'm part of me wonders if it's because
a lot of the times, like you, you kind of
kind of sense that you're like followers are watching and
(16:34):
maybe you want to like really dunk on this person
so that other people will be like, yeah, I go you.
And I'm just trying to really unlearn all of that
because I do think it's like not the healthiest instinct
to show up with absolutely, And you have to remember
that these platforms are sort of designed for that, right um.
They want you to Emotional reactivity drives engagement, and that's
(16:58):
why the content that triggers that emotional reactivity is going
to be the stuff that you most likely see, Like
you're not going to see the boring post that you're like, oh,
I just learned about the political situation and you know
New Guinea or I don't know whatever, Right um, It's
gonna be something really crazy and that pushes your buttons
(17:19):
and that's the whole point. That's what keeps you addicted.
Then you start scrolling and then you start you know, responding,
and you know that's what makes the money. You are
the product. That's what you have to remember. And I
I am with you, like I succumbed to it myself,
but I I'm trying to be more mindful and to
think about when I get triggered that way, that's the
(17:43):
cue to get off, because at the end of the day,
it's actually not that worth it, Like who are these
people and you don't even know if they're real. It
could be like some it could be Ivan in St.
Petersburg sitting in a troll form like you don't even
know um so, but yeah, that what you're feeling is real,
um And it's designed to do that because that's what
(18:04):
keeps you on the platform. As someone who has worked
in counter intelligence, like, I don't even know how to
ask this without sounding not informed. With the way that
I'm framing this does not sound informed. Feel free to
let me know, because I am certainly not the expert.
But you know, you mentioned like you don't even know
if these people are real. And we've covered quite a
(18:24):
bit this idea of bad actors impersonating people getting into
online communities and like causing chaos and confusion. What is
going on there? Like like why would a for like
why would it foreign Asian be invested in me bridget
todd um in my kitchen getting hot under the collar
(18:45):
and like rage tweeting somebody like like like why is
that a tactic that we see? Because when they do
it on a mass scale, it erodes try among the citizenry.
I mean, what how you feel when you're online is
(19:05):
going to carry out carry over when you go out
into real life, right, Like that you carry that with you.
I mean, I have found even in the last five years,
like I'm kind of more mistrustful in general, and I
walk around like I see people you know, and it's
I have to like think about who I am and
who I want to be in the space. But it
(19:27):
it's Sow's division and it's So's chaos. And with the
more that you're on Twitter arguing with some person, you're
not out uh doing you know, you're not volunteering, You're
not um being civically engaged. You're not um you know,
going to a show at a theater or sports of
(19:47):
it where you're like, you know, forging. I think healthier
connections and for places like Russia that can't compete with
us technologically, militarily, economically, They're objective is to have us
implode from within, to create dysfunction and discord, have us
all hate each other, ideally, have us all shoot each other,
(20:10):
and essentially bring and have us lose faith in our
institutions and bring our entire form of society and governments
to a standstill. That's what they want. And I hate
to say, I mean, like I agree, and I hate
to say that we have people in the United States
(20:31):
who are kind of like doing this like helping them along.
It's like absolutely, It's like makes me want to pull
my hair out where I'm like, don't you see that
this is what they want? Don't you see that you're
just doing the work of bad actors for them? Yes? No, absolutely,
I think, um, their interests are aligned with a subset
(20:52):
of UH actors, including political actors. I mean they're we
got we have a group now that's holding our House
of Representatives hostage, right, these are people who trying to
overthrow the government. Yes, it's one of those things where
there's a little bit of truth because I can understand
somebody who was like, I'm not going to trust these
(21:13):
people to govern, to govern for me, and it's like, yeah,
I could like, like, I I agree that having people
lose trust in our institutions it's like bad and like
what bad actors want. But on the other hand, part
of me is like, well, they're not making it very
difficult for someone trusting these like cookie people. I will
say I think in that regard, the midterm elections were
(21:35):
I think heartening. You know, you had a lot of
these election deniers defeated, and I do think that there's
I think the pendulum is gonna move, maybe slowly, but
it is going to move in the direction because people
are sick of it. And I do think people are
more aware now of you know, what is being done
(21:56):
to us and um that you know, it's up to
us to try to take it in another direction. Absolutely,
I kind of agree with you. I think that people
that are just like sick of it, it's enough already,
like already, yeah, Like we like we have to be
able to have like a baseline understanding of reality. And
(22:19):
if we don't have that, like we don't have anything more.
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
(22:40):
One of the things that you talk about in your
piece is something called the propaganda feedback loop that that
was coined by the Columbia law professor benkler Uh And
this I really blew my mind and the way that
you saw it working in the dialogue around Harry and Megan.
Can you tell us a bit about how you see that,
what it is, and how you see it function. Yeah,
(23:01):
So the propaganda feedback loop, this is developed by Columbia
law professor Yoki Bankler, who co authored a book called
Network Propaganda. But what they were describing is that in
the United States, the the right wing media system is
basically a closed system. So you have sort of the
(23:24):
symbiotic relationships where these outlets like Fox News provide favorable
coverage of particular political figures who then will go on
those shows, and then the audience for that is sort
of siloed, right, like they are not getting other narratives
because they're sort of sucked into this, and so they're
in an alternate reality. To get to what you were
(23:45):
saying before, like before you live in alternate realities. We
can't function. That is an alternate reality. It's very hard
to pierce that. What that um this is unrelated to
the meganpiece, but what what they are trying to show
in that book is um that the media, the center
of gravity on the left and right are asymmetrical, meaning
(24:08):
that that propaganda feedback loop is existing in UM is
a system that allows for conspiracy theories and false narratives
and all of that being and there's nothing external that
can come in and check it or correct for it.
Whereas even if you have more of a left bias
in traditional media CNN, MSNBC, whatever, there are still guard
(24:32):
rails there that prevent largely you know, complete conspiracies or
false narratives from piercing it. And so you have like
two different media ecosystems, and one that is just more
truthful than the other. What I saw playing out with
Megan and Harry is that they were describing a similar
feedback loop with the British tabloids and the Royal palace.
(24:58):
Um it's called the Royal rota, which is this I
guess some handful of these tabloids or these outlets, and
there's just sort of this implicit understanding that as long
as the members of the royal family pose and you know,
give them content, both in terms of you know, photographs, stories,
(25:22):
dirt on other people in the royal family, then they
get rewarded by favorable coverage or at least by distracting
from bad coverage by covering other people. It's really sad,
I mean it was, you know. It's essentially they're like
circus animals where they have to be on display all
the time, and this media system can like punish them
(25:44):
if they're not, if they don't play along, then they
can like you know, circulate these narratives and it creates
these incentives for members of the royal family to actually
throw each other under the bus in order to take
you know, take the heat off themselves, or to get
and you for whatever reason. And you see this playing out,
I think, you know, with even Harry and his brother, right,
(26:07):
I think this was one of the main reasons that
he was really upset with his brother. Um. I don't
know that the public audience in the UK is as
you know, if there's as much capture as there is here.
I don't know if there is siloed, so I'm not
sure if it's necessarily the exact same as our the
propaganda feedback loop on the right here, but that that
(26:29):
symbiotic relationship between the Royal Palace and these tabloids, to me,
um was what I saw playing out. A truism about
false information is that while it can be good to
debunk lies on the Internet, it doesn't always work, especially
with folks who are deeply committed to a false reality.
So rather than trying to debunk all the different conspiracy
(26:51):
theories and misleading statements out there one by one, like no,
Megan Markle did not wear a fake tell me to
fake a pregnancy, or no, she did not use a
doll as a standing for her baby, because that would
never work for people who are fully and deeply invested
in an alternate reality. Instead, Megan and Harry are shifting
the conversation. One of the things that I think is
(27:13):
so fascinating that you point out in your piece is
how I think because it being this like closed feedback
loop where an outsider is never gonna be able to
pierce it, never gonna be able to like somebody who
is a true believer, they're probably never gonna be able
to really get any kind of alternative, you know, perspective
in there is that they don't really focus on debunking
(27:35):
a lot of the lies and misinformation coming out of
out of this. Instead, they kind of change the narrative
and like peel back the curtain as World of Explored
explore the ways that the monarchy is this like dysfunctional,
toxic system. So do you think that's like why they
sort of do it that way, that they're like, we're
not going to debunk all of the lies and half truths,
(27:55):
we are instead going to like tell a different story. Yeah,
they just change into the debate, right, Like they just
reframed the whole controversy, which I think was smart a
because of what you just said. You're not going to
convince people who already believe something, but you're just changing
the paradigm and you're exposing how how the tactic works.
(28:16):
This is the key to neutralizing, as we would say
in the intelligence world, disinformation is. I mean, you can
fact check, you can counter that's and that's helpful, but
it's often not super productive people people, It's very hard
to undo someone's belief what they have it. What you
(28:37):
can do is explained to them what's being done to them,
and then that might open their eyes and make them
more skeptical of what they consume after that. Right, Um,
you're kind of pulling back the curtain and I think
they did that very smartly, and by reframing the entire
controversy in terms of, you know, this is how the
(29:00):
royal family is exploited by this you know, tabloid system
that makes money off of this voyeurism of the public. Um,
it really places both those outlets and I think the
Royal Palace in a defensive posture because now they have
to explain like why do you go along with this? Right?
(29:22):
Why are you into the outlets? Like why are you
exploiting them. So I mean, I'm not surprised that. I'm
sure the British media is really really mad because they
just got completely exposed and called out. Yeah, and I'm
sure when Harry's book comes out next week, like, I'm
sure they're all like nobody in the in the Palace
is like having a good time. I'm sure everybody it's
(29:43):
very stressed of a lot on their plates. Yes, I
think I read some snippets of that today or I
saw some tidbits like I guess there's drama about how
William was beating up on Harry. I don't know something
like that, So it sounds it sounds like lots of
drama will be revealed. What do you think that either
(30:03):
the Netflix show or just generally like the media ecosystem
around the Megan and Harry, do you think that it
tells us anything about how we can counter other more
like broad or wide spread disinformation campaigns like critical race
theory or you know, drag queens are out to harm
your kids like things like that, Like do you think
there's any lessons to be learned there? There are definitely
(30:26):
lessons to be learned, And you know, the CRT thing
I mean the reframing the controversy is really important there, right,
because that's a very deliberate, uh psy op basically a
psychological operation to take this term critical race theory and
basically make it a catch all phrase for teaching anything
(30:47):
having to do with race or you know, no one
can define it, and that's that's the key, right, It
becomes shorthand it's like Hunter Biden's laptop, it's you know, groomers,
all these like these buzzwords that no one really understands,
but it just becomes associated with that. So if you
try to engage on that term, you're always going to
(31:08):
be losing. I would see people saying, but critical race
theory isn't taught in you know, elementary schools. It's not.
But at this point you're already you're accepting the term.
Why are you Why are you fighting about that? You know,
why not respond with why would you not want children
to learn about the history of the United States, including
(31:29):
stand with slavery? Like that's the question, whatever you want
to call it. But you know, so it just to
to reframe it, to stop using the terms that are
being given to you, being stopped using the assumptions that
are being given to you because it's a trap. It's
a trap to make you engage in that and then
to basically, you know, keep you tied up in that loop.
(31:53):
You gotta get out of the loop. Got get out
of the loop. That's that's words to live by. One
of my last questions for you, how is Diana is
a musical? Oh? My god? Did you watch that clip?
I I watched the breakdancing because I was like, really,
(32:15):
wasn't it so bad? It's like, I wasn't I had
nothing to do with the production, and I was embarrassed.
I was so embarrassed. I know, I know, I was like,
aren't thee Like do these people have no dignity? Um? No,
it's oh, it's so bad. You have to It's actually
so bad. You have to watch it. So it's so bad.
It loops back around too good. Yes, you have to
(32:37):
watch it. There's a there's a there's a the Thrilla
in Manila with Camilla, which is like a faue like
boxing fight between Diana and come out. Like. I mean,
it's so it's just so dumb and the lyrics are
(32:57):
so dumb. And this person who plays diet Anna is
not a convincing Diana at all right, Like it's this
sort of like why are you doing this? But you
can't stop watching it. I was like rubbernecking the whole time.
All right, Well, that's going on my list. It sounds
like choices were made in this production. Definitely have to
check it out. Yes, where can people follow all the
(33:21):
very fascinating work that you are up to? I think
the best place if you're interested in the topics we
talked about today is my sub stack Asha Rainappa dot
sub stack dot com. UM. That's where I've been writing
about this stuff. I have free content. If you're interested
in taking the course, you can sign up for that too. UM.
(33:44):
I am on Twitter, though, I'll be honest, I'm trying
to clean off. I'm trying to use that as a
tool to enhance other parts of my professional life. UM
and to not let it suck up my whole time.
That's one of my New Year's solutions. So but you
can follow me there to it's Asha rang Appa Underscore
(34:04):
UM and you can. Those are the two main places.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or
just want to say hi. You can reach us at
Hello at Tangdi dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.
It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan
(34:27):
Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer
and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm
your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow,
rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts
from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast,
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