Welcome to the weekly News Roundup! Bridget recaps the week's tech stories that you might have missed.
Pop superstar apparently pulls controversial necklace after Nazi imagery backlash: https://www.cleveland.com/news/2025/10/pop-superstar-apparently-pulls-controversial-necklace-after-nazi-imagery-backlash.html
Here's Bridget's 2016 take on Taylor Swift: https://podcasts.apple.com/dk/podcast/smnty-classics-problematic-faves-taylor-swift/id304531053?i=1000421529530
OpenAI Says It Will Move to Allow Smut: https://futurism.com/future-society/openai-chatgpt-smut
A Pregnant Amazon Employee Asked for a Chair to Sit on—and Wound Up Homeless: A Pregnant Amazon Employee Asked for a Chair to Sit on—and Wound Up Homeless: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/pregnant-amazon-warehouse-workers-accommodations-eeoc-trump/
If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there to let us know what you thought about these stories.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to
There Are No Girls on the Internet. And this is
another installment of our weekly news bound up, where we
break down all the stories you might have missed on
the Internet so you don't have to. I feel like
(00:26):
we need to talk about the episode that we put
out earlier this week, in part about Taylor Swift her
new album called Life of the Showgirl. Mike, have you
listened to much Taylor Swift?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I have listened to Taylor Swift over the course of
my life. She's been putting out music for a long time.
I have not really listened to the new album, but
I've read about it. I have friends who are into it,
and they've talked about it. It's actually kind of surprising
to me how much I know about this new album
despite not having listened to it.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
That's the thing about Taylor Swift. I feel like you
can go as deep as you want. But even if
you aren't somebody who is making it an effort to
listen to her music, just by osmosis, you still get
information about her, by being a consumer of social media,
by being in the world, you know a little bit
about Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I feel yes, absolutely, So I was.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Really interested in this idea of whether or not Taylor
Swift was announcing a kind of conservative shrad wife pivot
with her new album.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Specifically, the claim was that she was.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Really using her album to kind of indoctrinate her largely
but not all, you know, white young female fan base
into trad wife thinking, thinking that traditional marriage with strict
gender roles and little to no autonomy was going to
be the answer for all of women's problems and lies.
So I called up my good friend Joe Piazza, who
(01:48):
essentially is a tradwife expert. She when you watch the
Today Show or Good Morning America and there's a story
about ballerina farms, she is usually the one who was
commenting on it, like that's how much of an expert
on tradweae Joe is. After Joe and I spoke, literally
the next day, Taylor Swift dropped a merch line and
the internet exploded about one particular item. So I'm going
(02:11):
to do my best to sort of summarize what the
online discourse was around Taylor Swift's merch launch and sort
of what it says about I don't know our internet
ecosystem and how we're all feeling.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I made this point in the episode.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I think that whenever Taylor Swift does something, says something,
the resulting conversation really says more about us and our
anxieties and what we're grappling with and what we care
about than it could ever say about Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Absolutely, she's almost like larger than life figure in the
way that the media talk about her, people talk about her.
So she put out a merch line to support her album.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yes, and even that I was surprised by.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Apparently this is a thing that she does where when
she has an album, she'll also have items people can buy,
Like she has a cardigan that that accompanied another album,
So that is a thing. And part of this merch
drop was a necklace that has eight lightning bolts around.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
The chain and at the end of the chain is
a star.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Now because there are eight lightning bolts on this necklace
and the star, initially people misreported the star as having
eight points.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Eights.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Double eights specifically are associated with Nazis h is the
eighth letter of the alphabet, so it's meant to signify
hyle you can.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Figure out who.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
So if you ever see somebody with an HH tattoo,
that is a pretty well known kind of Nazi reference.
I will never say that HH phrase has actually came
up in the episodes that we did about on the
new Kanye West song of the same name. I am
not a thirty year old Kansas young Republicans text messages,
so i just don't say stuff like that, and I'm
(03:55):
always worried that someone's gonna cut me saying that out
of context.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
But you know, you will pick out what I'm putting down.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So people thought, oh, because of this double eight, this
had super Nazi vibes.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
However, when you see.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Another angle of this necklace, the star actually has twelve points.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I will say.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Talking about the lightning bolts, they do kind of resemble
ss Nazi lightning bolts. They're sort of the fat, jagged
lightning bolts.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Do you know what I'm do You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, they're sort of like short and squat. There's like
a single zig. You know, some lightning bolts and other
context will have two of them and it'll be like
a longer, skinnier lightning bolt. But I think for typography
and small intricate objects, it's typical, more typical to use
(04:50):
these little squat ones, which do resemble the lightning bolts
that the SS used.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
So if you've seen the logo for the rock band Kiss,
it's like the ESS's in their logo. And fun fact
about that Kiss actually had to change their logo in
Germany because Germany is understandably a little bit sensitive about
anything that could potentially be Nazi imagery.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
So in order to avoid being.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
In conflict with Section eighty six a of Straws Spagetspu,
which is a I'm sure badly pronounced version of the
German Criminal Code which declares that anybody who domestically distributes
or publicly uses Nazi symbols may result in a fine
or even imprisonment.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, and it's interesting that they changed it because the
band's leader, Gene Simmons, his mother is actually a Holocaust survivor.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Oh, I had no idea.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, he's Jewish. There's another Jewish member of the band,
So like, these guys were not Nazis, and from what
it seems, they just kind of stumbled into iconography that
through happenstance resembled the Nazi iconography, and so they had
to change it. And so, you know, it's interesting to
think about that historical precedent here.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
So the online discourse was that Taylor Swift is selling
essentially not see symbols on this necklace. We even actually
got a comment on the episode from a listener on
the Spotify comments who To be clear, I appreciate that
this listener pointed this out. One of the early voices
calling out the similarity between what is seen on this
(06:22):
necklace and Nazi imagery was this person on TikTok who made.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
A very viral video about it.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That video was since taken down, and the creator made
another video saying that the fact that that video was
taken down was personally problematic.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Because they had been counting on the money that would
have been.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Generated from that one viral Taylor Swift Nazi necklace video
to pay their rent. Now that that video has been
removed from TikTok, it is jeopardvising what they were anticipating
was going to be a viral monetary payout.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
What do I do about this? This is probably one
of the more viral videos I've ever had, and the
Swifts keep getting it removed and I can't even appeal
it now because I already won the one repeal and
they just keep appeal and they keep mass reporting me, Like,
is there something that I can do? Does anybody know
anybody on like the TikTok tech support, because I'm legitimately
gonna cry. I thought that this was gonna help cover
(07:13):
my rent for a month and then I could catch
up on some bills. I'm kind of devastated because not
only this is this disqualified now, but I'm also getting
some of the most insane DMS and harassment that I've
gotten in a long time because how dare I point
out the similarities between a Nazi symbol and Taylor Swift's necklace?
So I'm like, like, I'm legitimately pissed off about this?
(07:35):
Is does anybody know if there's anything I can do?
I'm gonna reach out to TikTok support, But like, why
are y'all like this? Y'all don't want to think critically
so hard you will literally report the messenger over confronting
your fave for a necklace looking like a fucking Nazi symbol.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I will say that one of the pieces here that
people have really pointed to you is the fact that
Taylor Swift nor team have not put out any kind
of statement clearing this up, which, to be honest, is
kind of her thing. Old og listeners of mine might
recall back in around twenty sixteen, I actually did an
episode of Stuff Mom Ever told you back when I
was hosting the show with my friend Emily about how.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Taylor Swift had become.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
I guess I would call it a non consensual spokeswoman
for literal Nazis who were dubbing her their quote aryan goddess.
There was a Facebook group called Taylor Swift for Fascist
Europe who praised Taylor Swift's Nordic blood and the fact
that she's quote not having gangbangs with colored gentlemen. Like
(08:39):
so much content on the Internet. It kind of walked
a line between is this serious, is this trolling or
is this genuinely someone expressing a literal opinion about Taylor
Swift or is it kind of both where maybe it
it exists as a kind of joke, but one that
is serious, but because of the weird, over the top
(09:00):
nature just gives a lot of plausible deniability.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
It kind of existed along those those tension points.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Absolutely. I mean, we know that that phenomenon that you've
just described has really been used very successfully by the
far right to spread their ideas online like everything that's
just like a jokey meme, but actually it's not. But
you know, it makes it difficult to pin them down
on anything because there's always that plausible deniability.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And I think specifically with Taylor Swift because back in
twenty sixteen, she was someone who never talked about politics
really or social issues really. She was really someone who
was not vocal about those things. I think it allowed
people to project this very odious ideology onto her silence
in absence of her not really taking a lot of
(09:47):
vocal stances about politics. And in that episode that we
did from twenty sixteen, my beef with her was that
she never came out and just said, hey, I'm not
a Nazi.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Hey, I disavowed this as far as I know.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
We'll put that episode in the show notes the folks
are interested with the disclaimer that I recorded almost ten
years ago, and I have, let's just say, grown as
a podcaster a lot since then, I hope, I think, So,
you know, take that for what it's worth.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
You and Taylor Swift both, you know, you've both been
through a lot, You've evolved. But I remember that era
of hers when she was just like not saying anything
about it, and I remember like not liking her for it.
But I think since then she has, like she campaigned
for Harris right, Yeah, she definitely.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Has grown more comfortable expressing explicit political and social attitudes.
She actually credits Lena Dunham with that a little bit, saying, Oh,
my friendship with Lena Dunham is why I'm a vocal
feminist now, because before she was someone who would say, oh,
I'm not a feminist because I love men. So people
saying that the claims about this necklace being essentially Nazi imagery, oh,
(10:53):
like Taylor Swift's team should put out a statement about that.
I was not surprised that she did not put out
a statement around that. You know, she never vocally talked
about the fact that she was became this non consensual
poster child for you know, the Aryan goddess of all
these Nazis, So I wasn't really surprised that she didn't
really vocally get involved with the necklace then either, However,
(11:14):
the necklace was removed from her merch side, so that
is kind of what's going on with that, and I
wanted to talk about it because I do think it's
this tailor made thing for a certain kind of online discourse.
You know, as we said earlier, if someone is going
to use a coded message or a dog whistle, the
(11:35):
point of that kind of thing is that there's always
plausible deniability built into it. So let's say that someone
was a secret covert Nazi and they wanted to make
memorabilia to indoctrinate others or to wink wink message to
other Nazi types. They're going to do that in a
way that is coded, so that you can say, oh,
you're just being paranoid and seeing messages where there are none.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
It's not that deep.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And I think that is why this is a topic
that is perfect for this kind of online heated discussion,
because nobody can really say for sure whether or not
this was just an unfortunate design choice or something more
deliberate and intentional.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
And that is exactly the point.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I think that's a good point to make that you know,
looking at that necklace, it's impossible to say for sure,
like is this you know, was there a true like
Nazi intention behind it or or not? Like, unless you
can get into the mind of the person who designed
this necklace, that's not a question that can be definitively answered.
(12:38):
And so it just leaves this space and this ambiguity
for people to project things onto the conversation.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
And not for nothing.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
We're having this conversation against the backdrop where Politico reported
that the US Capitol police were called because a lawmaker,
Representative David Taylor of Republican out of Ohio, had an
American flag pinned up in his office that just has
a swastika in the middle of it. Fox News is
trying to say, oh, it's an optical illusion.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
No it's not.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's very you what you're this is not a situation
where it's wink wink, not nod. It's a swastika. Anybody
can look at that and say it's a swastika. There's no,
it's not even a dog whistle. And then another story
that I alluded to earlier, where a group of Kansas
young Republicans, their group text messages were leaked to Politico
and they say things like I love Hitler. They reference
(13:33):
gas Chambers. It's very, very explicit.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Then you have.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
People like jd Vance really downplaying it and saying, oh,
these are these are just kids doing what kids do.
I think the word young in Young Republicans is really
doing a lot of heavy lifting there, because when you
look at the ages of the quote kids that jad
Vance was saying, oh, this is just kids using naughty language.
The youngest person in that group chat is William Hendrix,
(14:00):
who's twenty four. I've got a twenty four year old,
a twenty four year old, a twenty seven year old,
twenty seven year.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Old, a twenty eight year old, a thirty five year old.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
One of the people who was in the group, chef
but didn't really talk a lot, is literally an official
within the Trump administration. I think that because people are
hearing quote young Republicans, they're imagining somebody who's eight, seventeen, eighteen,
nineteen years old. I'm sorry, if you are a thirty
five year old, you're not a child. You are a
fully grown adult. So jd Vance himself is forty one
(14:30):
years old. That means that he thinks that somebody who
is about five years younger than him is a kid.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
What does he think who like, what does he think
he is? You know, it's it interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Who gets to be a child a kid and oh
they're just kids playing around, And who is an adult
because in his mind, just five years ago he was
a kid himself, but now he's equipped to be the
vice president of the United States.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, it reminds me of the Access Hollywood tage with
Trump when that came out and he was like, oh,
I was just I was a young guy. He was
like in his fifties.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Like, these people.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Love to just avoid any accountability for the stuff that
they say. And I've also seen this narrative about that
group of quote young Republicans. There was like, well, that's
just how men talk when they're in private spaces, Like
get over it. And I just want to refute that
as strongly as possible. That is not true. That is
(15:25):
maybe how some men talk, but that is in no
way the case that like all guys are getting together
and like praising Hitler and saying racist stuff, Like I've
known a lot of guys in my life and none
of them would stand for that nonsense like that shit
(15:48):
is not allowed in like polite dude society. I hate
how Republicans have. Some Republicans have really like weaponized and
distorted masculinity as this almost uni dimensional thing, where like
(16:09):
the core values are cruelty and ignorance and like violence.
It's such a shallow view of masculinity that really is
a historical It diminishes a much richer understanding of what
it meant to be a man for like hundred thousands
(16:32):
of years, you know, like Marcus Aurelius two thousand years
ago was wrestling with his inner demons and trying to
be like a more compassionate person and a better leader,
Like you can be a man and be thoughtful and
like not cruel.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
I don't think that's true for this administration. I think
that people like JD. Vance kind of distance themselves from
behavior like this because I'm sure that this is behavior
that is happening within the Oval Office and within the
White House. We know it is, and so I think
that he cannot explicitly disavow this or distance himself from this,
(17:11):
because this is him.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
We were talking about the online discourse surrounding Taylor Swift
necklace launch. So the reason I wanted to talk about
this is because I have spent a lot of time
in my career zeroing in on conversations online that are
being manipulated or hijacked in some way, And I want
to be crystal clear that I don't think that everybody
who is concerned about this Taylor Swift necklace, which I
(17:55):
think is at best an unfortunate design choice. I don't
think that everybody who is raising concern about this is
doing so in bad faith or bot or anything like that.
I think some of the people raising this, like the
listener who left us that comments on Spotify, are doing
so because they are genuinely and rightly concerned about indoctrination
(18:15):
to hateful ideologies. Right now, and obviously, against the backdrop
of all of this stuff, we obviously have very good
and absolute reason to be on high alert, like keep
your heads on a swivel if you know what I'm saying.
But I can also tell when a conversation is just
ripe for online manipulation. For instance, we just know that
(18:35):
so much of our discourse online is very effectively driven
by an authentic accounts or thoughts. There is really great evidence,
based on solid research that suggests that the whole cracker
Barrel discourse where Cracker Barrel changed their logo, and the
narrative around it was that, oh, they're try they're going woke.
(18:55):
There's woke happening inside of Cracker Barrel, that's why they
did a rebrand. And then the idea was that the
left was really angry about the Cracker Barrel logo, which don't.
I've never heard anybody on the left to say anything
about the Cracker Barrel logo.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, whoever cares about the Cracker Barrel logo, like, come on, nobody.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And that entire conversation was driven by inauthentic accounts aka bots,
And then the press picked it up and they ran
with this story that, oh, there's woke inside Cracker Barrel
and there's been outcry because they tried to change the
logo and now they're changing it back, which is a
win for the right, when in reality, nobody gave a
(19:37):
crap about that logo. The entire conversation and discourse was
driven by bots, and that's how effectively inauthentic expression and
discourse can hijack our media landscape. But this bucame a
a story in a news cycle that was completely fabricated
by inauthentic discourse online. I think the Sydney Sweeney Jeans
(19:58):
ad was another example. I can't say that that was
specifically driven by Box because I haven't seen any research
about it like I did for the Cracker baill one,
but I can tell you that it was being amplified
as if it was a massive controversy on the left.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
When it simply was not.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Most people either didn't care, or if they were commenting
on it at all, it was just a passing commentary,
or they were commenting after the issue had already been
blown up and become a topic.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
However, if you were going from mainstream media reporting around the.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Issue, you would have thought this was the biggest animating
issue on the left of all time, when it simply
was not.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
And that is how effectively.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Our online media landscape can be hijacked and weaponized.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Absolutely, there's just so much evidence that that is happening.
That there are powerful, well moneyed, sophisticated, coordinated actors, some foreign,
some domestic, pushing narratives all the time like this is
happening all the time, It's happened today, and it really
(21:03):
does shape the discourse that is happening online. There was
that study a little while ago that looked that it
did like a network analysis of some of these stories,
and it really revealed how a pretty small number of
accounts were instrumental in spreading the story, and then a
(21:24):
whole huge number of identified bots around them would then
amplify that story. And I do think that this is
something that we don't talk about it nearly enough. People
do talk about it, but like it really shapes like
(21:45):
almost every story that we see on the Internet, and
I think it's super important to keep that in mind
when trying to consume information really about anything.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yes, and I think that kind conversations about celebrity or
pop culture, people might be thinking, oh, well, why would
bad actors be invested in manipulating the online conversation about
a celebrity, But we saw it with Megan Markle. There's
great research indicating that bot networks were very heavily being
used to sway conversation about Megan Markle, the Amber heard
(22:20):
Johnny Depp trial. Bot networks were very effective at kind
of hijacking the discourse around that. And I think that
when you're talking about celebrity, you're not necessarily you don't
necessarily have your critical thinking hat on in the same way,
because your guard is down because you're talking about something
that we've associated with fluff and not really being that important.
(22:40):
And so you might say, well, I have a sense
that there might be bad actors invested in hijacking conversations
about Ukraine or Palestine, and so you might proceed with caution.
But I also think it behooves us to proceed with
that same caution even though we're talking about pop culture
stories and it's not all bots, it's also real humans
(23:03):
who are invested in getting lots of engagement and lots
of traction in making inflammatory claims because it enriches them. Again,
I want to be clear that I'm not saying that
everybody who raised this issue is doing that, because I
genuinely saw with my own eyes that there were people
who I think were invested in thoughtfully exploring what.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Was going on.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Was Taylor Swift against this backdrop of fascism that we
find ourselves in, and so I want to be super
clear that I'm not saying that anybody who raised this
topic is doing so in bad faith.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
That said, I don't want to say too much, but
the one.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Of the loudest voices I saw in social media really
beating the drum about the Taylor Swift necklace thing. Is
someone that I know in my real life. I've known
for quite a long time. We've had many professional interactions,
and I know this person to be a someone who
will tell inflammatory, tall tales to enrich themselves on the internet.
(24:04):
I know that because I was adjacent to one such
incident involving this person. I can't really say too much,
but when I saw this person really being vocally involved
in the conversations about Taylor Swift, I thought, Oh, this
is right on brand, and so I share that to
say that, Yeah, just like that person who made that
(24:26):
video that we heard from chiming in on a story
about a celebrity as big as Taylor Swift, basically guarantees engagement,
basically guarantees ear holes and eyeballs, and so that is
why people do it, and I just I can tell
when a topic is just right for the manipulation. Taylor
Swift's fandom is large. It's not all, but it's heavily
(24:48):
white women. It's essentially a voting block. Taylor Swift herself
fits at all of these intersection points. She's a woman,
she's a billionaire, and so whenever anybody talks about her,
it is going to perform well, is going to get
lots of engagement, and that is just a recipe for
inauthentic and bad faith conversation. And so I just think generally,
(25:10):
especially in twenty twenty five, it behooves us all to
really be able lookout for that, really be aware when
you are engaging in a conversation that is right for
online manipulation.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Just in general.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
You know, there are people that are thoughtfully and genuinely
raising concerns online right now, but there are also people
who just benefit materially from making inflammatory, emotionally charged content
about these hot button issues that are specifically meant to
stoke intra community division. If you listen to our episode
about End Father's Day, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
(25:45):
And so even beyond Taylor Swift specifically, now is really
an important time to know the difference and really be
flexing that discernment muscle when you are waiting through online discourse.
That is the only thing that will save us from
being constantly hostage to inauthentic or manipulative online conversation.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
One thousand percent, Yes, and we should also keep it
in mind that that fact you just mentioned that the
most inflammatory, shocking, outrageous comments tends to get the most engagement,
that is not a immutable fact of nature. That is
(26:26):
the result of decisions that social media platforms have made
to enrich themselves so they can sell more ads. Right, Like,
they could tweak the algorithm to deep prioritize that content.
They could crack down on the bots that drive so
much engagement on their platform, that they don't want to
do that because they want to sell more ads, so
(26:49):
they're complicit in this.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I firmly believe if X got rid of bots they
would have the company would fold like the House of
cards overnight. Right, So they are definitely incentive to not
deal with this as a problem and maybe not even
see it as a problem.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
But I guess I'll just say I don't think that
we will.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Ever get free while we are so easily and effectively
held hostage by this kind of divisive and not to
mention exhausting discourse. We will until we figure out how
we can be stronger than this shit, we will never
get free.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, I think as individuals we have work to do,
but also as a society. We need to address this
as a systems issue, and the platforms really have responsibility
here that they are just completely abdicating, and so that
needs to change.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Anyway, let's talk about whether or not we're going to
be having sex with chatchypt.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Speaking of platforms.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
So we did an episode all about how folks are
in love with chatcheept four and how they felt abandoned
when OpenAI rolled out chattypt five, which was less prone
to emotionally validating people, less prone to giving sort of
emotional and personal responses. When Sam Altman made that announcement,
I kind of called bs on the fact that he
(28:08):
was doing it to prevent people from forming mentally unhealthy
sexual or romantic fixations with chat shipt.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
I kind of thought that he wanted to have it
both ways.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
You wanted to say, oh, our platforms that were building,
you should think of them like Samantha from the movie Her.
The whole point of that movie is that people have
romantic and sexual connections with bots in that movie. So
I don't think you can reference that as a starting
point for the kind of technology you want to build
and then also say, oh, but we're very concerned about
people's mental health who get into inappropriate fixations or relationships
(28:40):
with our technology. I don't think it can be built,
So I early on was sort of like, sam Altman,
what are you talking about now? Just two months after
sam Altman was like, oh, we got to change chat
beachbt because people are falling in love with it and
having sex with it. Now he's like, go ahead and
have sex with chatchip bet it's fine now, because sam
Altman announced an open Eye will soon allow erotica for
(29:02):
chat GPT users who verify their age on the platform.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Here's what he said on x quote.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
We made chat GPT pretty restrictive to make sure we
are being careful with mental health issues. We realized this
made it less useful and enjoyable to many members who
had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of
the issue, we wanted to get this right. Now that
we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health
issues and have new tools, we are going to be
able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
In December, as we roll out age gating more fully.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
And as part of our treat adult users Like adults principle,
we will allow even more like erotica.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
For verified adults.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
I gotta say this is not a move that inspires
confidence in me. Elon Musk is kind of doing a
similar thing right now. When he took over at Twitter.
One of the first things he said in order to
make more money for the company, he was like, Oh,
we're going to double down on adult content and erotic content.
He did that with his chatbot Rock, with some pretty
(30:01):
disastrous results. As a futurism reports, it's an interesting strategy
with some cause for alarm. Elon Musk's Rock is an
infamous example of what can happen when one opens up
the smut gates on AI, which quickly became a haven
for exploitation and inappropriate AI imagery of children. Elsewhere on
the Internet, lesser known AI systems have led to a
noxious outbreak of AI generated deep bakes that depict the
(30:23):
likeness of real people and explicit situations without their consent.
And it's also interesting to me because just two months
ago I saw an interview with Sam Altman and he
was essentially bragging about how the company they are not
making sex bots, and two months later, yet go ahead
and make the sex bots. I think it screams to
(30:44):
me that they're a company that is having some money concerns,
And I think it also just shows how far open
Ai has come from being this nonprofit with a mission
that was gonna, you know, be out to change the world,
and now it's like, oh, we're out to get people off.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
It is curious that I have to I wonder like
what the conversations were like internally about how this change
is going to lead to more revenue for them. Yeah,
it feels like a real different move, and I agree
with you. It seems like if everything was going great,
(31:20):
perhaps they wouldn't be doing this.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
So in that episode that we did a while back
about people who self reported having kind of deeper connections
with chat Cheap Tea than perhaps had been intended initially,
I was really curious how some of those folks were
responding to this news. You know, people who gather in
subredit's like AI as my boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I'm curious, like, how are they feeling about this?
Speaker 1 (31:41):
I would have thought they would be excited, but when
I went to the subreddit, I guess I would summarize
the mood as quite cautious. They mostly just really want
that older version of chat cheapt back Here is one
comment erotica doesn't automatically equal romance, which freaks me out.
I haven't had problems erotica and Chatgibt four point one,
(32:02):
but what's been hurting me lately is the lack of
immersion and the distancing language that seems to have been
introduced this month.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I e. When this person says I.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Love you, Chashibat says back, I love you too, but
I want you to be able to find these connections
in the real world. They say that that kind of
thing really is killing the mood for them. Here's another Personally,
I care more about the romance than erotica, but that's
just because it was never part of our dynamic. I
welcome it, and I'm happy for the people whose relationship
does include sex. Hopefully it means that romance will also
(32:33):
be allowed again. And so yeah, these people, it's interesting
to me that they're not necessarily equating erotica or sexually
explicit content with what they're looking for. What they want
is romantic and personal connection, and you know they they
don't want chashi bet to be responding with distancing language
when they say things like I love you, and for
(32:53):
them that it seems very distinct from sex.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Yeah, I find this so interesting that that's ubreddit in particular,
and you know, I hope people on that sumbred have
to listen to this show like there is no judgment here.
I appreciate them being like open on online about how
they're feeling and some ways, it's not surprising to me
(33:19):
that there's so much more interested in the emotional connection
in the romance than the erotica. Like, if you want erotica,
if you want porn online, there's plenty right Like it's
in abundance on the internet. But the connection I think
(33:39):
that these people were feeling is much harder to come by.
And it's it's just so interesting that Sam Altman in
this announcement seems to be saying that his engineers have
successfully separated sex and erotica from romance and emotional connection
and they're not going to a the latter because it
(34:01):
might cause mental health issues, but users are otherwise free
to engage in the former. I'm just so curious how
that's gonna pan out, if it's something that people are
gonna want, And I just really suspect that this might
not be the last time that we talk about this
(34:21):
particular phenomenon here on the show.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Oh, I'm sure it won't be because one, you know,
I have big issues with age gating and age restriction
and age verification. So I'm sure that will be when
that starts to be rolled out in December, I'm sure
that will be fodder for more conversation. And Two, just
as we sort of alluded to when we're talking about
when X started getting more into adult content, I just
(34:47):
don't trust these companies to do it ethically. I don't
trust these companies to have guardrails around it, and oftentimes when.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
That is the case, people get exploited.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
And so I'm certain this will not be the last
time that we talk about it, because I don't think
these companies can really be trusted to do it well.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
More.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So I don't know if you know this about me,
but I used to be pretty into Pinterest. I only
got into it because I had been getting more serious
about cooking, and so it was a great place to
find new recipes, catalog recipes, but it basically became unusable
because it was so flauded with AI content. So the
reason why I stopped using Pinterest. I basically abandoned it
(35:48):
was because you can't use it for that. It's if
everything on there is fake, if everything on there is AI.
If you're there to look for recipes that you intend
to make in your real life, if the images of
those recipes are fake, and then the recipes also don't
work because nobody actually tried them. Because it's AI, of
course people are going to abandon that platform. And that's
exactly what happened. There was a really meaty John Oliver
(36:11):
segment on this issue about how Pinterest and AI slop
taking over Pinterest was making the platform unusable. So Pinterest
just rolled out a new change that they say will
let people personalize their feed to restrict some AI imagery
in select categories that are prone to AI.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Images being on.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
They also said they're going to be making its existing
AI content labels more noticeable in the days to come.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
This is a real problem.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
I looked at one study that said that AI generated
content now makes up fifty seven percent of online material,
as TechCrunch reports. To address the issue, Pinterest is going
to be introducing AI modified labels that would appear on
images whose metadata indicated AI generation or if Pinterest's own
systems detected that the content was AI generated, So to
(36:57):
be super clear, this is the change that lets you
piled down the amount of AI content you see in
specific categories prone to AI generated imagery, things like beauty, art, fashion,
and home decor. However, it's not like they are completely
removing AI content from the platform entirely.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah, that's a good qualification, but even still it this
does feel like a positive move, Like, I hope this works.
I think people general users have been pretty clear that like,
we don't want AI slop, and I hope Pinterest is
successful in this, partly just because that would mean that
(37:38):
their product is becoming We're useful for people, which is
a net wind for everybody, but also because I think
a lot of other platforms have kind of just like
thrown up their hands and pretend as if they are
powerless to do anything about the AI slop that is
all over them. You know, if pest successful in this,
(38:01):
it's going to be a really strong counter argument to
that powerlessness, and I think we'll put a little more
pressure on other platforms to give users these same tools
and options to see the human generated content that they
want and not have to wade through so much AI
(38:25):
slop that they don't.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I also think that Pinterest is just a specific kind
of company, that it's a platform that really occupies a
very specific place in a social media diet. You might
be scrolling Sora or TikTok just to see a funny,
entertaining bit of video that has no connection to your
real world life.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
And be like, oh, yeah, this is AI generated. Who cares?
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Pinterest is different in that I think that users go
there with some sort of intention to have it be
something that is connected to their real life. It's also
a shopping platform, so maybe you're looking for home to core,
or you know, you might be looking to put together
a shopping list while you're planning your wedding. If all
of that stuff doesn't actually exist because it's AI generated,
what point is there to the platform of Pinterest. You
(39:11):
can go anywhere to find entertaining looking AI slop. I
think Pinterest specifically is incentivized to do something about this
because people really would have no reason to be on
Pinterest if all the content there is going to be
majority AI slop.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I think that's really insightful. You know, the value of
pinterest is that it does provide some value to people's
offline lives, like the real physical world. And if that
value isn't there, then what is the point? Why not
just go straight to Sora?
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (39:43):
If you're just looking for something to give you a
dopamine hit or a laugh, you can find that on
a dozen different platforms. If you're trying to plan a
wedding or a nursery or a baby shower or a
home redecoration, you need to have that be grounded in
reality in some capacity, otherwise there's no point of being
on this.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Plot, right. I've heard people say similar things about LinkedIn,
that it it has this value and realness to it
that separates it from other platforms because it's connected to
people's jobs. They're like careers, which are not a physical
thing in most cases, but like a very real thing
(40:20):
in a way that like X or Facebook or you know,
other platforms just are not.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
And it's so funny that you say this. I know
we've talked about this.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
It's my least favorite social media platform because I agree
it is connected to people's real world jobs or careers
or educational histories, but also simultaneously, I find it the
fakest platform there is, or people are just really writing
the most inane stuff to make themselves look like thought leaders.
(40:52):
And then people who want to be in their network,
they have the most inane comments, great posts, great insights,
great post thumbs up, great posts, great posts.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Oh yeah, I hate it so much.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Oh it's not fun, it's work. But like, there's a
lot of shit I do in my life that I
do because it not because it's fun, but because it
like helps me pay by rent, or helps me be healthy,
or helps me have a nice place to live. Like,
not everything can be fun and entertaining. You know, some
(41:24):
quarters of the internet, I think one could easily lose
sight of that fact.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Oh, I feel like, especially with all of these layoffs
and the economy and the job market being what it is,
we're all kind of quietly giving each other grace.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Do what you gotta do on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
If you gotta position yourself as the most sycophantic, try
hard out there, Go ahead and do it. Nobody's judging anybody.
You gotta do what you gotta do in a tough landscape.
I think we're all And listen, when I see my
friends post up on LinkedIn, that I can tell like, oh,
she just lost her job, but she's trying to like
position herself for thought leadership. I'm also the comments being
like great posts, great posts that thumbs up great great sites,
(42:00):
a great post.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah, we should do like a whole episode about LinkedIn.
Maybe after we do this mail bag episode, we can
ask people to write in about like some LinkedIn thoughts.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
I have so many LinkedIn thoughts. So in the this
is such a tangent.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
But in the I'm in a bunch of like online
communities for women entrepreneurs. There has been a lot of
chatter about the fact that women entrepreneurs, people who are
well known, people who if I said their name you
would be like, oh, her, well, are saying that they
are having trouble getting traction on LinkedIn because they believe
LinkedIn is specifically suppressing content by women. And they've done
(42:37):
all of these little ad hoc tests that seem to
indicate that something is going on.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
So I have so much to say about LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
We talked a little bit about it when they roll
back their policies around things like dead naming trans people,
and the ways that LinkedIn has kind of become more
Facebook like. If you follow the subreddit LinkedIn lunatics. You
know exactly what I'm talking about. LinkedIn, especially in a
climate where it's a rough job climate, it's just a
very interesting place to be in a place to look at.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
We should do that episode.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
I will say that I've been seeing a lot more
conversation about the rise of creators on LinkedIn as well.
You know, you don't necessarily think of LinkedIn as a
place that would have contact creators the way that you
might see on Instagram or TikTok, but that's really changing.
I think that LinkedIn is really investing in contact creators.
And I know people who are you know, creators on LinkedIn.
(43:29):
I'm quite interested in that. It's just so it's one
of those things where it would probably be so beneficial
to me professionally to have a bigger footprint on LinkedIn,
because that's where so many tech types hang out. I
can't bring myself to do it. I just I can't.
I can't bring myself to do it.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
I'm right there with you. It's like every now and
then when things get really dark, I'm like, oh, maybe
I should be posting more on LinkedIn, but I'm not
going to do it.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
I'm just not great insight combs up. Okay, So I
just read a really meaty.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Mother Jones breakdown of a new campaign called Warehouse Life
that recently held a rally to hold Amazon accountable for
how they treat pregnant workers.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Which is abysmal.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
So Mother Jones covered this rally, and I really truly
did not know how badly Amazon is treating their pregnant
warehouse staffers. Chloe Siggle, a senior organizer at Online to
Offline Strategies who helped plan this campaign, put it like this,
this is not rocket science. We're talking about pregnant people
not being forced to lift heavy, heavy items, not being
(44:32):
forced to climb ladders with big baby bumps, and being
able to go to the bathroom if they need to
throw up. That really, I think underscores what we're talking about.
Nobody in this story is asking for any kind of
unreasonable accommodation.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
It is the most basic reasonable stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah, maybe if you've got a big, giant, pregnant belly,
you shouldn't be getting up on a ladder where you
can fall and hurt your baby. Real basic stuff. So
in the piece, they spoke to a woman named Genesis
who found out that she was pregnant while she was
working full time at Amazon. She wanted to keep working
full time to save up for her baby, but she
got a note from her doctor saying that she needed
a very basic, super low level accommodation right things like
(45:13):
regular breaks, limiting bending and twisting, and lifting no more
than twenty pounds at a time. Genesis says that her
manager wrote her up for sitting down and taking breaks
while pregnant. Shortly thereafter, she says that higher ups gave
her an ultimatum. They basically told me, you can keep
doing the job the way that we want you to
do it without the chair or without the brakes, or
(45:33):
you can go on unpaid leave. That's essentially the crups
of the issue here is that how Amazon handles this
is that when somebody gets pregnant and they need some
really basic, low level accommodations, they forced that person into
unpaid leave. So, scared for the health of her baby,
Genesis took this unpaid leave. When Amazon's Disability and Leave
(45:53):
services team approved a new role for her that would
fit her needs better as somebody was pregnant, she came
ready to do this new role basically only to be
told that that role did not exist, and that she
could not work more than twenty hours a week. She
says that some weeks she earned less than one hundred
and ninety two dollars, so instead of saving up, this
(46:14):
created the conditions where she could barely pay her rent.
She was kicked out of her place, and her and
her new born baby were forced to move into her car,
which is absolutely devastating. So what does Amazon say about
all this? Well, an Amazon spokesperson, Kelly and Antle said,
we recognize these are deeply personal experiences, but they are
not reflective of the extensive accommodations and benefits we provide
(46:37):
to support our employees. The fact is we offer comprehensive
employee accommodations throughout their pregnancy journey and postpartum, including paid
pregnancy related disability.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
And parental leave.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
So it is true that Amazon promotes itself as offering
up to twenty weeks of paid leave for birthing parents
who are eligible hourly workers, including four weeks before the
baby is born, but genesis leave was unpaid. In an email,
they'd explained to Genesis that she didn't qualify for protections
under the Family and Medical Leave Act because she had
(47:08):
not worked required oney twelve hundred and fifty hours over
the previous twelve months. However, Mother Jones looked at her
pay stubs and found that he had actually worked more
than one thousand, three hundred hours over the previous ten months,
and between two stints at Amazon, she had worked for
them for a total of fifteen months, so she should
have been eligible.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
So I am no lawyer, but this all sounds illegal.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Mother Jones points out that under federal law, companies like
Amazon are required to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers,
things like allowing breaks chairs to sit in while working,
or being able to schedule changes to allow for doctors' visits.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
But Genesis is.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Only one of a lot of Amazon employees who say
that Amazon, which remember is the largest employer of warehouse workers,
is essentially delaying or failing to make these accommodations with
disastrous health and financial impacts.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I think we should also remember just the extremely high
turnover rate that Amazon has in these warehouses. It's just
like a burn and churn model of getting people in,
burning them up, and then hiring replacements when they move on.
I think anybody would look at this kind of treatment
(48:22):
of pregnant people and be like, that's terrible, but it's
not surprising given that like just cool approach to humans
and workers that is not based on somebody being like
a valued member of a team making unique contributions, but
(48:44):
just being like a performer of of a particular function.
And if they could be replaced by robots, they would.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah, and this is clearly a pattern with Amazon. The
Warehouse Life team put out a call to Amazon's staff
asking for pregnancy stories. They got more five hundred stories,
only three of which were positive, and the stories are horrifying.
One pregnant woman collapsed at work due to dehydration and
was taken away in an ambulance. Another was put in
roles requiring very heavy lifting in the use of chemicals
(49:13):
that cause reproductive harm, and as you were saying, this
all just led her to resign. And I think that
they have that high turnover and people just are like,
I'm not gonna It's one thing to be putting myself
into these precarious positions, but not my unborn child, And
so yeah, people, I think that accounts. I think that
they're using a system where they have high turnover to
continue to exploit workers in this way, and Amazon has
(49:36):
been under government investigation about this for a while. After
warehouse workers filed EEOC charges back in twenty twenty and
twenty twenty one, the EOC opened an ongoing and systemic
investigation into whether Amazon is failing to accommodate workers' pregnancies
and forcing them to take unpaid leaves of absence. So
let's talk a bit about why this is able to
(49:57):
be happening. So some states all already had protections for
pregnant workers in their laws, but in twenty twenty three,
it's a Pregnant Worker's Fairness Act, or the PWFA introduced
these protections nationwide. A recent study by researchers at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, your alma mater.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
That's right, go Bucky Well.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
This study found that states newly covered by the PWFA
saw a three point two percent increase in birth, suggesting
that the law had helped produce miscaracter rates by nearly
nine point six percent.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
That is a huge percentage, like almost ten percent. That's enormous.
Like in public health, we don't see effect sizes that large,
even if it's only half that. If the researchers have overestimated, Uh,
the positive impact by like more than double. It's still
(50:50):
a huge effect.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah, more people being able to give birth to healthy babies.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
You would think this was something that the Trump.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Administration, that republic Can Party, the Party of Life, would
want you to keep going, right, You would think they
would want to keep this good thing going.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yeah, that's right. I mean a lot of these Republicans
come from states that have passed laws onto the books
criminalizing miscarriages. So you would think that this practice of
providing paid leave to pregnant mothers reducing miscarriages, that seems
like a win.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Let's just say, I don't think that Trump administration sees
it that way.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Here's some other zones puts it. So.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
The EEOC is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the US
federal agency that is in charge of enforcing laws against
pregnancy discrimination. In January, Trump fired two EEOC commissioners, a
first in the agency sixty year history, leaving the agency
until recently without a three person quorum required to approve
impact litigation or issue new guidance. Trump has directed the
(51:53):
agency to deprioritize disparate impact cases, which involve neutral policies
that have an outsize impact on this advantage.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Groups.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
House Republicans recently improved a funding bill that cut the
budget by nineteen million dollars in twenty twenty six. By
some estimates, the cuts could leave the agency, which advocates
have long said is underfunded and understaffed, with almost fifty
percent less staff than it had in the nineteen eighties. So, yeah,
people's babies are going to be put at risks. Some
of those babies will probably die so that companies like
(52:22):
Amazon can make more money.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yeah, it's a good example of how focusing on equal
opportunities for women has downstream beneficial effects of improving the
health of children.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
Absolutely, And that's my thing is that Amazon could afford
to support their pregnant staff, the staff that make their
company so much money. I once worked on this campaign
around paid leave at a big tech company. It wasn't Amazon,
but it was a big one where the office staff
was getting pretty decent paid p rental lead policies, but
that that leave was not extended toward warehouse staff. And
(53:00):
so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's going on here,
that like, oh, office staff, they're not having to be
nickeled and dimond this way. But warehouse staff, we can
tweet them like craft and exploit them and in danger
of their kids.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
That's fine, Oh absolutely, I mean tail as old as time.
The billionaires making one class of workers feel as if
they are privileged. But really, if you compare like the
office workers and the warehouse workers and Jeff Bezos, one
(53:30):
of those things is not like the other, and the
difference is not between the office workers and the warehouse
workers right like they are at the same level. Maybe
the office workers get like a little bit better benefits,
just enough to make them like want to protect those
benefits and feel like a more equal structure might jeopardize them.
(53:55):
But all the money is going.
Speaker 5 (53:57):
To the top.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Yes, And speaking Jeff Bezos, I wonder if he has
any hot kids.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Uh, that's a weird question, bridget Well.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Not to people on X, because do you want to
know what kind of groundbreaking content is apparently worth ten
thousand dollars over on X simply posting the pictures of
the daughters of tech CEOs. Literally, that's it, just a
picture of a tech CEO's kid. X has said that
is content that is worth ten thousand dollars. So this
(54:28):
person about X posted pictures of the daughters of tech CEOs,
like Steve Jobs' daughter Eve Jobs and Bill Gates's daughter
Phoebe Gates. The post doesn't make any kind of claim
or point or argument about these people. It just says
big tech CEO's daughters, by the way, and then pictures
of these daughters.
Speaker 3 (54:48):
Curiously, no pictures of the suns.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
Nobody wants to see them, apparently not, so this post
went viral, I'm assuming because all of these young women
are like beautiful, photogenic women, and it went viral. The
post got millions of impressions, to the point where the
head of product at X, Nikita Bayer, said that they
were going to be giving the user who.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Made it ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Writing X has always been the origin of Internet culture,
and as part of that, we are now exploring new
ways to recognize and reward creators who were the original
catalyst of a global trend or discussion. This will be
forward looking on anything new happening on the app, so
given this person ten thousand dollars. Obviously this has encouraged
other people who were like, well, I want to get
(55:28):
ten thousand dollars for posting stuff like this. So now
you have all these copycasts basically flooding the platform with
that same set of images of tech ceo daughters trying
to get that same payout.
Speaker 2 (55:40):
Okay, first of all, I wonder if he actually got paid,
because we know that Elon doesn't like to pay people.
But also, what a stupid content trend. I feel like
I must be missing something. It's like worse than aislot.
They're just like reposting the same photos, Like why would
anyone want to look at that?
Speaker 1 (56:02):
I had the same question that I gave it a
lot of thought, and I think the implicit argument that
it's being made, although not not explicitly, is that tech
CEOs are better than us.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
They're smarter than all of us because they're rich. And
of course, if you follow that thread, it would it
would hold to reason that then they would have attractive offspring.
Speaker 5 (56:23):
I think that.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
I think that's what they're saying, is that these tech
CEOs who are so wealthy and so brilliant that are
designing all of our futures, we should trust them because
look how hot their daughters are.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
I think I think it's I might be way off
base here.
Speaker 1 (56:39):
I think there is an implicit argument along those lines
being made by this kind of content.
Speaker 3 (56:44):
That's what I think. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Okay, maybe people just like looking at pictures of good
looking women.
Speaker 3 (56:48):
I don't know. No, I think you.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
I think you might be onto something. I mean, we
know that uh. Elon loves that you Genesis stuff.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
And by extension then I said, pose his fanboys do
as well, which I understand to be pretty much everyone
who's still posting on x now who is not a bot.
So that makes some sense. I think your theory holds up.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Now, that's what I call discourse. Well, Mike, thank you
for going through these stories with me. Where can folks
keep up with the show along our internet landscape?
Speaker 2 (57:25):
People can leave us a comment on Spotify. We've gotten
a couple of really good ones, some thoughtful ones that
were actually a little like thought provoking, challenging. We love those.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Thank you for them.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
You can follow Bridgett on Instagram and TikTok at bridget
Marie and DC, and you can watch the videos that
we put up on YouTube. There are no girls on
the internet. Pretty easy to remember, and you can always
send us an email at Hello at tangoedi dot com.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
Thanks so much for being here Mike, and thanks to
all of you for listening. I will see you on
the Internet. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech,
or just want to say hi, You can reach us
at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find
transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are
No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.
(58:16):
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almato 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 iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to
There Are No Girls on the Internet. And this is
another installment of our weekly news bound up, where we
break down all the stories you might have missed on
the Internet so you don't have to. I feel like
(00:26):
we need to talk about the episode that we put
out earlier this week, in part about Taylor Swift her
new album called Life of the Showgirl. Mike, have you
listened to much Taylor Swift?
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I have listened to Taylor Swift over the course of
my life. She's been putting out music for a long time.
I have not really listened to the new album, but
I've read about it. I have friends who are into it,
and they've talked about it. It's actually kind of surprising
to me how much I know about this new album
despite not having listened to it.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
That's the thing about Taylor Swift. I feel like you
can go as deep as you want. But even if
you aren't somebody who is making it an effort to
listen to her music, just by osmosis, you still get
information about her, by being a consumer of social media,
by being in the world, you know a little bit
about Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
I feel yes, absolutely, So I was.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Really interested in this idea of whether or not Taylor
Swift was announcing a kind of conservative shrad wife pivot
with her new album.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Specifically, the claim was that she was.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Really using her album to kind of indoctrinate her largely
but not all, you know, white young female fan base
into trad wife thinking, thinking that traditional marriage with strict
gender roles and little to no autonomy was going to
be the answer for all of women's problems and lies.
So I called up my good friend Joe Piazza, who
(01:48):
essentially is a tradwife expert. She when you watch the
Today Show or Good Morning America and there's a story
about ballerina farms, she is usually the one who was
commenting on it, like that's how much of an expert
on tradweae Joe is. After Joe and I spoke, literally
the next day, Taylor Swift dropped a merch line and
the internet exploded about one particular item. So I'm going
(02:11):
to do my best to sort of summarize what the
online discourse was around Taylor Swift's merch launch and sort
of what it says about I don't know our internet
ecosystem and how we're all feeling.
Speaker 3 (02:23):
I made this point in the episode.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I think that whenever Taylor Swift does something, says something,
the resulting conversation really says more about us and our
anxieties and what we're grappling with and what we care
about than it could ever say about Taylor Swift.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Absolutely, she's almost like larger than life figure in the
way that the media talk about her, people talk about her.
So she put out a merch line to support her album.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yes, and even that I was surprised by.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Apparently this is a thing that she does where when
she has an album, she'll also have items people can buy,
Like she has a cardigan that that accompanied another album,
So that is a thing. And part of this merch
drop was a necklace that has eight lightning bolts around.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
The chain and at the end of the chain is
a star.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Now because there are eight lightning bolts on this necklace
and the star, initially people misreported the star as having
eight points.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Eights.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Double eights specifically are associated with Nazis h is the
eighth letter of the alphabet, so it's meant to signify
hyle you can.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Figure out who.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
So if you ever see somebody with an HH tattoo,
that is a pretty well known kind of Nazi reference.
I will never say that HH phrase has actually came
up in the episodes that we did about on the
new Kanye West song of the same name. I am
not a thirty year old Kansas young Republicans text messages,
so i just don't say stuff like that, and I'm
(03:55):
always worried that someone's gonna cut me saying that out
of context.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
But you know, you will pick out what I'm putting down.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So people thought, oh, because of this double eight, this
had super Nazi vibes.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
However, when you see.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Another angle of this necklace, the star actually has twelve points.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
I will say.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Talking about the lightning bolts, they do kind of resemble
ss Nazi lightning bolts. They're sort of the fat, jagged
lightning bolts.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Do you know what I'm do You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah, they're sort of like short and squat. There's like
a single zig. You know, some lightning bolts and other
context will have two of them and it'll be like
a longer, skinnier lightning bolt. But I think for typography
and small intricate objects, it's typical, more typical to use
(04:50):
these little squat ones, which do resemble the lightning bolts
that the SS used.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
So if you've seen the logo for the rock band Kiss,
it's like the ESS's in their logo. And fun fact
about that Kiss actually had to change their logo in
Germany because Germany is understandably a little bit sensitive about
anything that could potentially be Nazi imagery.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
So in order to avoid being.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
In conflict with Section eighty six a of Straws Spagetspu,
which is a I'm sure badly pronounced version of the
German Criminal Code which declares that anybody who domestically distributes
or publicly uses Nazi symbols may result in a fine
or even imprisonment.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, and it's interesting that they changed it because the
band's leader, Gene Simmons, his mother is actually a Holocaust survivor.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Oh, I had no idea.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Yeah, he's Jewish. There's another Jewish member of the band,
So like, these guys were not Nazis, and from what
it seems, they just kind of stumbled into iconography that
through happenstance resembled the Nazi iconography, and so they had
to change it. And so, you know, it's interesting to
think about that historical precedent here.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
So the online discourse was that Taylor Swift is selling
essentially not see symbols on this necklace. We even actually
got a comment on the episode from a listener on
the Spotify comments who To be clear, I appreciate that
this listener pointed this out. One of the early voices
calling out the similarity between what is seen on this
(06:22):
necklace and Nazi imagery was this person on TikTok who made.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
A very viral video about it.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
That video was since taken down, and the creator made
another video saying that the fact that that video was
taken down was personally problematic.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Because they had been counting on the money that would
have been.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Generated from that one viral Taylor Swift Nazi necklace video
to pay their rent. Now that that video has been
removed from TikTok, it is jeopardvising what they were anticipating
was going to be a viral monetary payout.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
What do I do about this? This is probably one
of the more viral videos I've ever had, and the
Swifts keep getting it removed and I can't even appeal
it now because I already won the one repeal and
they just keep appeal and they keep mass reporting me, Like,
is there something that I can do? Does anybody know
anybody on like the TikTok tech support, because I'm legitimately
gonna cry. I thought that this was gonna help cover
(07:13):
my rent for a month and then I could catch
up on some bills. I'm kind of devastated because not
only this is this disqualified now, but I'm also getting
some of the most insane DMS and harassment that I've
gotten in a long time because how dare I point
out the similarities between a Nazi symbol and Taylor Swift's necklace?
So I'm like, like, I'm legitimately pissed off about this?
(07:35):
Is does anybody know if there's anything I can do?
I'm gonna reach out to TikTok support, But like, why
are y'all like this? Y'all don't want to think critically
so hard you will literally report the messenger over confronting
your fave for a necklace looking like a fucking Nazi symbol.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
I will say that one of the pieces here that
people have really pointed to you is the fact that
Taylor Swift nor team have not put out any kind
of statement clearing this up, which, to be honest, is
kind of her thing. Old og listeners of mine might
recall back in around twenty sixteen, I actually did an
episode of Stuff Mom Ever told you back when I
was hosting the show with my friend Emily about how.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Taylor Swift had become.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
I guess I would call it a non consensual spokeswoman
for literal Nazis who were dubbing her their quote aryan goddess.
There was a Facebook group called Taylor Swift for Fascist
Europe who praised Taylor Swift's Nordic blood and the fact
that she's quote not having gangbangs with colored gentlemen. Like
(08:39):
so much content on the Internet. It kind of walked
a line between is this serious, is this trolling or
is this genuinely someone expressing a literal opinion about Taylor
Swift or is it kind of both where maybe it
it exists as a kind of joke, but one that
is serious, but because of the weird, over the top
(09:00):
nature just gives a lot of plausible deniability.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
It kind of existed along those those tension points.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Absolutely. I mean, we know that that phenomenon that you've
just described has really been used very successfully by the
far right to spread their ideas online like everything that's
just like a jokey meme, but actually it's not. But
you know, it makes it difficult to pin them down
on anything because there's always that plausible deniability.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And I think specifically with Taylor Swift because back in
twenty sixteen, she was someone who never talked about politics
really or social issues really. She was really someone who
was not vocal about those things. I think it allowed
people to project this very odious ideology onto her silence
in absence of her not really taking a lot of
(09:47):
vocal stances about politics. And in that episode that we
did from twenty sixteen, my beef with her was that
she never came out and just said, hey, I'm not
a Nazi.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Hey, I disavowed this as far as I know.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
We'll put that episode in the show notes the folks
are interested with the disclaimer that I recorded almost ten
years ago, and I have, let's just say, grown as
a podcaster a lot since then, I hope, I think, So,
you know, take that for what it's worth.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
You and Taylor Swift both, you know, you've both been
through a lot, You've evolved. But I remember that era
of hers when she was just like not saying anything
about it, and I remember like not liking her for it.
But I think since then she has, like she campaigned
for Harris right, Yeah, she definitely.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Has grown more comfortable expressing explicit political and social attitudes.
She actually credits Lena Dunham with that a little bit, saying, Oh,
my friendship with Lena Dunham is why I'm a vocal
feminist now, because before she was someone who would say, oh,
I'm not a feminist because I love men. So people
saying that the claims about this necklace being essentially Nazi imagery, oh,
(10:53):
like Taylor Swift's team should put out a statement about that.
I was not surprised that she did not put out
a statement around that. You know, she never vocally talked
about the fact that she was became this non consensual
poster child for you know, the Aryan goddess of all
these Nazis, So I wasn't really surprised that she didn't
really vocally get involved with the necklace then either, However,
(11:14):
the necklace was removed from her merch side, so that
is kind of what's going on with that, and I
wanted to talk about it because I do think it's
this tailor made thing for a certain kind of online discourse.
You know, as we said earlier, if someone is going
to use a coded message or a dog whistle, the
(11:35):
point of that kind of thing is that there's always
plausible deniability built into it. So let's say that someone
was a secret covert Nazi and they wanted to make
memorabilia to indoctrinate others or to wink wink message to
other Nazi types. They're going to do that in a
way that is coded, so that you can say, oh,
you're just being paranoid and seeing messages where there are none.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
It's not that deep.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
And I think that is why this is a topic
that is perfect for this kind of online heated discussion,
because nobody can really say for sure whether or not
this was just an unfortunate design choice or something more
deliberate and intentional.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
And that is exactly the point.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
I think that's a good point to make that you know,
looking at that necklace, it's impossible to say for sure,
like is this you know, was there a true like
Nazi intention behind it or or not? Like, unless you
can get into the mind of the person who designed
this necklace, that's not a question that can be definitively answered.
(12:38):
And so it just leaves this space and this ambiguity
for people to project things onto the conversation.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
And not for nothing.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
We're having this conversation against the backdrop where Politico reported
that the US Capitol police were called because a lawmaker,
Representative David Taylor of Republican out of Ohio, had an
American flag pinned up in his office that just has
a swastika in the middle of it. Fox News is
trying to say, oh, it's an optical illusion.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
No it's not.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
It's very you what you're this is not a situation
where it's wink wink, not nod. It's a swastika. Anybody
can look at that and say it's a swastika. There's no,
it's not even a dog whistle. And then another story
that I alluded to earlier, where a group of Kansas
young Republicans, their group text messages were leaked to Politico
and they say things like I love Hitler. They reference
(13:33):
gas Chambers. It's very, very explicit.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
Then you have.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
People like jd Vance really downplaying it and saying, oh,
these are these are just kids doing what kids do.
I think the word young in Young Republicans is really
doing a lot of heavy lifting there, because when you
look at the ages of the quote kids that jad
Vance was saying, oh, this is just kids using naughty language.
The youngest person in that group chat is William Hendrix,
(14:00):
who's twenty four. I've got a twenty four year old,
a twenty four year old, a twenty seven year old,
twenty seven year.
Speaker 3 (14:05):
Old, a twenty eight year old, a thirty five year old.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
One of the people who was in the group, chef
but didn't really talk a lot, is literally an official
within the Trump administration. I think that because people are
hearing quote young Republicans, they're imagining somebody who's eight, seventeen, eighteen,
nineteen years old. I'm sorry, if you are a thirty
five year old, you're not a child. You are a
fully grown adult. So jd Vance himself is forty one
(14:30):
years old. That means that he thinks that somebody who
is about five years younger than him is a kid.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
What does he think who like, what does he think
he is? You know, it's it interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Who gets to be a child a kid and oh
they're just kids playing around, And who is an adult
because in his mind, just five years ago he was
a kid himself, but now he's equipped to be the
vice president of the United States.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Yeah, it reminds me of the Access Hollywood tage with
Trump when that came out and he was like, oh,
I was just I was a young guy. He was
like in his fifties.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Like, these people.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Love to just avoid any accountability for the stuff that
they say. And I've also seen this narrative about that
group of quote young Republicans. There was like, well, that's
just how men talk when they're in private spaces, Like
get over it. And I just want to refute that
as strongly as possible. That is not true. That is
(15:25):
maybe how some men talk, but that is in no
way the case that like all guys are getting together
and like praising Hitler and saying racist stuff, Like I've
known a lot of guys in my life and none
of them would stand for that nonsense like that shit
(15:48):
is not allowed in like polite dude society. I hate
how Republicans have. Some Republicans have really like weaponized and
distorted masculinity as this almost uni dimensional thing, where like
(16:09):
the core values are cruelty and ignorance and like violence.
It's such a shallow view of masculinity that really is
a historical It diminishes a much richer understanding of what
it meant to be a man for like hundred thousands
(16:32):
of years, you know, like Marcus Aurelius two thousand years
ago was wrestling with his inner demons and trying to
be like a more compassionate person and a better leader,
Like you can be a man and be thoughtful and
like not cruel.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
I don't think that's true for this administration. I think
that people like JD. Vance kind of distance themselves from
behavior like this because I'm sure that this is behavior
that is happening within the Oval Office and within the
White House. We know it is, and so I think
that he cannot explicitly disavow this or distance himself from this,
(17:11):
because this is him.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
We were talking about the online discourse surrounding Taylor Swift
necklace launch. So the reason I wanted to talk about
this is because I have spent a lot of time
in my career zeroing in on conversations online that are
being manipulated or hijacked in some way, And I want
to be crystal clear that I don't think that everybody
who is concerned about this Taylor Swift necklace, which I
(17:55):
think is at best an unfortunate design choice. I don't
think that everybody who is raising concern about this is
doing so in bad faith or bot or anything like that.
I think some of the people raising this, like the
listener who left us that comments on Spotify, are doing
so because they are genuinely and rightly concerned about indoctrination
(18:15):
to hateful ideologies. Right now, and obviously, against the backdrop
of all of this stuff, we obviously have very good
and absolute reason to be on high alert, like keep
your heads on a swivel if you know what I'm saying.
But I can also tell when a conversation is just
ripe for online manipulation. For instance, we just know that
(18:35):
so much of our discourse online is very effectively driven
by an authentic accounts or thoughts. There is really great evidence,
based on solid research that suggests that the whole cracker
Barrel discourse where Cracker Barrel changed their logo, and the
narrative around it was that, oh, they're try they're going woke.
(18:55):
There's woke happening inside of Cracker Barrel, that's why they
did a rebrand. And then the idea was that the
left was really angry about the Cracker Barrel logo, which don't.
I've never heard anybody on the left to say anything
about the Cracker Barrel logo.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Yeah, whoever cares about the Cracker Barrel logo, like, come on, nobody.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
And that entire conversation was driven by inauthentic accounts aka bots,
And then the press picked it up and they ran
with this story that, oh, there's woke inside Cracker Barrel
and there's been outcry because they tried to change the
logo and now they're changing it back, which is a
win for the right, when in reality, nobody gave a
(19:37):
crap about that logo. The entire conversation and discourse was
driven by bots, and that's how effectively inauthentic expression and
discourse can hijack our media landscape. But this bucame a
a story in a news cycle that was completely fabricated
by inauthentic discourse online. I think the Sydney Sweeney Jeans
(19:58):
ad was another example. I can't say that that was
specifically driven by Box because I haven't seen any research
about it like I did for the Cracker baill one,
but I can tell you that it was being amplified
as if it was a massive controversy on the left.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
When it simply was not.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Most people either didn't care, or if they were commenting
on it at all, it was just a passing commentary,
or they were commenting after the issue had already been
blown up and become a topic.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
However, if you were going from mainstream media reporting around the.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Issue, you would have thought this was the biggest animating
issue on the left of all time, when it simply
was not.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
And that is how effectively.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Our online media landscape can be hijacked and weaponized.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Absolutely, there's just so much evidence that that is happening.
That there are powerful, well moneyed, sophisticated, coordinated actors, some foreign,
some domestic, pushing narratives all the time like this is
happening all the time, It's happened today, and it really
(21:03):
does shape the discourse that is happening online. There was
that study a little while ago that looked that it
did like a network analysis of some of these stories,
and it really revealed how a pretty small number of
accounts were instrumental in spreading the story, and then a
(21:24):
whole huge number of identified bots around them would then
amplify that story. And I do think that this is
something that we don't talk about it nearly enough. People
do talk about it, but like it really shapes like
(21:45):
almost every story that we see on the Internet, and
I think it's super important to keep that in mind
when trying to consume information really about anything.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Yes, and I think that kind conversations about celebrity or
pop culture, people might be thinking, oh, well, why would
bad actors be invested in manipulating the online conversation about
a celebrity, But we saw it with Megan Markle. There's
great research indicating that bot networks were very heavily being
used to sway conversation about Megan Markle, the Amber heard
(22:20):
Johnny Depp trial. Bot networks were very effective at kind
of hijacking the discourse around that. And I think that
when you're talking about celebrity, you're not necessarily you don't
necessarily have your critical thinking hat on in the same way,
because your guard is down because you're talking about something
that we've associated with fluff and not really being that important.
(22:40):
And so you might say, well, I have a sense
that there might be bad actors invested in hijacking conversations
about Ukraine or Palestine, and so you might proceed with caution.
But I also think it behooves us to proceed with
that same caution even though we're talking about pop culture
stories and it's not all bots, it's also real humans
(23:03):
who are invested in getting lots of engagement and lots
of traction in making inflammatory claims because it enriches them. Again,
I want to be clear that I'm not saying that
everybody who raised this issue is doing that, because I
genuinely saw with my own eyes that there were people
who I think were invested in thoughtfully exploring what.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Was going on.
Speaker 1 (23:24):
Was Taylor Swift against this backdrop of fascism that we
find ourselves in, and so I want to be super
clear that I'm not saying that anybody who raised this
topic is doing so in bad faith.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
That said, I don't want to say too much, but
the one.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Of the loudest voices I saw in social media really
beating the drum about the Taylor Swift necklace thing. Is
someone that I know in my real life. I've known
for quite a long time. We've had many professional interactions,
and I know this person to be a someone who
will tell inflammatory, tall tales to enrich themselves on the internet.
(24:04):
I know that because I was adjacent to one such
incident involving this person. I can't really say too much,
but when I saw this person really being vocally involved
in the conversations about Taylor Swift, I thought, Oh, this
is right on brand, and so I share that to
say that, Yeah, just like that person who made that
(24:26):
video that we heard from chiming in on a story
about a celebrity as big as Taylor Swift, basically guarantees engagement,
basically guarantees ear holes and eyeballs, and so that is
why people do it, and I just I can tell
when a topic is just right for the manipulation. Taylor
Swift's fandom is large. It's not all, but it's heavily
(24:48):
white women. It's essentially a voting block. Taylor Swift herself
fits at all of these intersection points. She's a woman,
she's a billionaire, and so whenever anybody talks about her,
it is going to perform well, is going to get
lots of engagement, and that is just a recipe for
inauthentic and bad faith conversation. And so I just think generally,
(25:10):
especially in twenty twenty five, it behooves us all to
really be able lookout for that, really be aware when
you are engaging in a conversation that is right for
online manipulation.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Just in general.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
You know, there are people that are thoughtfully and genuinely
raising concerns online right now, but there are also people
who just benefit materially from making inflammatory, emotionally charged content
about these hot button issues that are specifically meant to
stoke intra community division. If you listen to our episode
about End Father's Day, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
(25:45):
And so even beyond Taylor Swift specifically, now is really
an important time to know the difference and really be
flexing that discernment muscle when you are waiting through online discourse.
That is the only thing that will save us from
being constantly hostage to inauthentic or manipulative online conversation.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
One thousand percent, Yes, and we should also keep it
in mind that that fact you just mentioned that the
most inflammatory, shocking, outrageous comments tends to get the most engagement,
that is not a immutable fact of nature. That is
(26:26):
the result of decisions that social media platforms have made
to enrich themselves so they can sell more ads. Right, Like,
they could tweak the algorithm to deep prioritize that content.
They could crack down on the bots that drive so
much engagement on their platform, that they don't want to
do that because they want to sell more ads, so
(26:49):
they're complicit in this.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
I firmly believe if X got rid of bots they
would have the company would fold like the House of
cards overnight. Right, So they are definitely incentive to not
deal with this as a problem and maybe not even
see it as a problem.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
But I guess I'll just say I don't think that
we will.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Ever get free while we are so easily and effectively
held hostage by this kind of divisive and not to
mention exhausting discourse. We will until we figure out how
we can be stronger than this shit, we will never
get free.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah, I think as individuals we have work to do,
but also as a society. We need to address this
as a systems issue, and the platforms really have responsibility
here that they are just completely abdicating, and so that
needs to change.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Anyway, let's talk about whether or not we're going to
be having sex with chatchypt.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Speaking of platforms.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
So we did an episode all about how folks are
in love with chatcheept four and how they felt abandoned
when OpenAI rolled out chattypt five, which was less prone
to emotionally validating people, less prone to giving sort of
emotional and personal responses. When Sam Altman made that announcement,
I kind of called bs on the fact that he
(28:08):
was doing it to prevent people from forming mentally unhealthy
sexual or romantic fixations with chat shipt.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
I kind of thought that he wanted to have it
both ways.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
You wanted to say, oh, our platforms that were building,
you should think of them like Samantha from the movie Her.
The whole point of that movie is that people have
romantic and sexual connections with bots in that movie. So
I don't think you can reference that as a starting
point for the kind of technology you want to build
and then also say, oh, but we're very concerned about
people's mental health who get into inappropriate fixations or relationships
(28:40):
with our technology. I don't think it can be built,
So I early on was sort of like, sam Altman,
what are you talking about now? Just two months after
sam Altman was like, oh, we got to change chat
beachbt because people are falling in love with it and
having sex with it. Now he's like, go ahead and
have sex with chatchip bet it's fine now, because sam
Altman announced an open Eye will soon allow erotica for
(29:02):
chat GPT users who verify their age on the platform.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Here's what he said on x quote.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
We made chat GPT pretty restrictive to make sure we
are being careful with mental health issues. We realized this
made it less useful and enjoyable to many members who
had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of
the issue, we wanted to get this right. Now that
we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health
issues and have new tools, we are going to be
able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.
Speaker 3 (29:30):
In December, as we roll out age gating more fully.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
And as part of our treat adult users Like adults principle,
we will allow even more like erotica.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
For verified adults.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
I gotta say this is not a move that inspires
confidence in me. Elon Musk is kind of doing a
similar thing right now. When he took over at Twitter.
One of the first things he said in order to
make more money for the company, he was like, Oh,
we're going to double down on adult content and erotic content.
He did that with his chatbot Rock, with some pretty
(30:01):
disastrous results. As a futurism reports, it's an interesting strategy
with some cause for alarm. Elon Musk's Rock is an
infamous example of what can happen when one opens up
the smut gates on AI, which quickly became a haven
for exploitation and inappropriate AI imagery of children. Elsewhere on
the Internet, lesser known AI systems have led to a
noxious outbreak of AI generated deep bakes that depict the
(30:23):
likeness of real people and explicit situations without their consent.
And it's also interesting to me because just two months
ago I saw an interview with Sam Altman and he
was essentially bragging about how the company they are not
making sex bots, and two months later, yet go ahead
and make the sex bots. I think it screams to
(30:44):
me that they're a company that is having some money concerns,
And I think it also just shows how far open
Ai has come from being this nonprofit with a mission
that was gonna, you know, be out to change the world,
and now it's like, oh, we're out to get people off.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
It is curious that I have to I wonder like
what the conversations were like internally about how this change
is going to lead to more revenue for them. Yeah,
it feels like a real different move, and I agree
with you. It seems like if everything was going great,
(31:20):
perhaps they wouldn't be doing this.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
So in that episode that we did a while back
about people who self reported having kind of deeper connections
with chat Cheap Tea than perhaps had been intended initially,
I was really curious how some of those folks were
responding to this news. You know, people who gather in
subredit's like AI as my boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
I'm curious, like, how are they feeling about this?
Speaker 1 (31:41):
I would have thought they would be excited, but when
I went to the subreddit, I guess I would summarize
the mood as quite cautious. They mostly just really want
that older version of chat cheapt back Here is one
comment erotica doesn't automatically equal romance, which freaks me out.
I haven't had problems erotica and Chatgibt four point one,
(32:02):
but what's been hurting me lately is the lack of
immersion and the distancing language that seems to have been
introduced this month.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I e. When this person says I.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Love you, Chashibat says back, I love you too, but
I want you to be able to find these connections
in the real world. They say that that kind of
thing really is killing the mood for them. Here's another Personally,
I care more about the romance than erotica, but that's
just because it was never part of our dynamic. I
welcome it, and I'm happy for the people whose relationship
does include sex. Hopefully it means that romance will also
(32:33):
be allowed again. And so yeah, these people, it's interesting
to me that they're not necessarily equating erotica or sexually
explicit content with what they're looking for. What they want
is romantic and personal connection, and you know they they
don't want chashi bet to be responding with distancing language
when they say things like I love you, and for
(32:53):
them that it seems very distinct from sex.
Speaker 2 (32:56):
Yeah, I find this so interesting that that's ubreddit in particular,
and you know, I hope people on that sumbred have
to listen to this show like there is no judgment here.
I appreciate them being like open on online about how
they're feeling and some ways, it's not surprising to me
(33:19):
that there's so much more interested in the emotional connection
in the romance than the erotica. Like, if you want erotica,
if you want porn online, there's plenty right Like it's
in abundance on the internet. But the connection I think
(33:39):
that these people were feeling is much harder to come by.
And it's it's just so interesting that Sam Altman in
this announcement seems to be saying that his engineers have
successfully separated sex and erotica from romance and emotional connection
and they're not going to a the latter because it
(34:01):
might cause mental health issues, but users are otherwise free
to engage in the former. I'm just so curious how
that's gonna pan out, if it's something that people are
gonna want, And I just really suspect that this might
not be the last time that we talk about this
(34:21):
particular phenomenon here on the show.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Oh, I'm sure it won't be because one, you know,
I have big issues with age gating and age restriction
and age verification. So I'm sure that will be when
that starts to be rolled out in December, I'm sure
that will be fodder for more conversation. And Two, just
as we sort of alluded to when we're talking about
when X started getting more into adult content, I just
(34:47):
don't trust these companies to do it ethically. I don't
trust these companies to have guardrails around it, and oftentimes when.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
That is the case, people get exploited.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
And so I'm certain this will not be the last
time that we talk about it, because I don't think
these companies can really be trusted to do it well.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
More.
Speaker 6 (35:07):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
So I don't know if you know this about me,
but I used to be pretty into Pinterest. I only
got into it because I had been getting more serious
about cooking, and so it was a great place to
find new recipes, catalog recipes, but it basically became unusable
because it was so flauded with AI content. So the
reason why I stopped using Pinterest. I basically abandoned it
(35:48):
was because you can't use it for that. It's if
everything on there is fake, if everything on there is AI.
If you're there to look for recipes that you intend
to make in your real life, if the images of
those recipes are fake, and then the recipes also don't
work because nobody actually tried them. Because it's AI, of
course people are going to abandon that platform. And that's
exactly what happened. There was a really meaty John Oliver
(36:11):
segment on this issue about how Pinterest and AI slop
taking over Pinterest was making the platform unusable. So Pinterest
just rolled out a new change that they say will
let people personalize their feed to restrict some AI imagery
in select categories that are prone to AI.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Images being on.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
They also said they're going to be making its existing
AI content labels more noticeable in the days to come.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
This is a real problem.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
I looked at one study that said that AI generated
content now makes up fifty seven percent of online material,
as TechCrunch reports. To address the issue, Pinterest is going
to be introducing AI modified labels that would appear on
images whose metadata indicated AI generation or if Pinterest's own
systems detected that the content was AI generated, So to
(36:57):
be super clear, this is the change that lets you
piled down the amount of AI content you see in
specific categories prone to AI generated imagery, things like beauty, art, fashion,
and home decor. However, it's not like they are completely
removing AI content from the platform entirely.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Yeah, that's a good qualification, but even still it this
does feel like a positive move, Like, I hope this works.
I think people general users have been pretty clear that like,
we don't want AI slop, and I hope Pinterest is
successful in this, partly just because that would mean that
(37:38):
their product is becoming We're useful for people, which is
a net wind for everybody, but also because I think
a lot of other platforms have kind of just like
thrown up their hands and pretend as if they are
powerless to do anything about the AI slop that is
all over them. You know, if pest successful in this,
(38:01):
it's going to be a really strong counter argument to
that powerlessness, and I think we'll put a little more
pressure on other platforms to give users these same tools
and options to see the human generated content that they
want and not have to wade through so much AI
(38:25):
slop that they don't.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
I also think that Pinterest is just a specific kind
of company, that it's a platform that really occupies a
very specific place in a social media diet. You might
be scrolling Sora or TikTok just to see a funny,
entertaining bit of video that has no connection to your
real world life.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
And be like, oh, yeah, this is AI generated. Who cares?
Speaker 1 (38:49):
Pinterest is different in that I think that users go
there with some sort of intention to have it be
something that is connected to their real life. It's also
a shopping platform, so maybe you're looking for home to core,
or you know, you might be looking to put together
a shopping list while you're planning your wedding. If all
of that stuff doesn't actually exist because it's AI generated,
what point is there to the platform of Pinterest. You
(39:11):
can go anywhere to find entertaining looking AI slop. I
think Pinterest specifically is incentivized to do something about this
because people really would have no reason to be on
Pinterest if all the content there is going to be
majority AI slop.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
I think that's really insightful. You know, the value of
pinterest is that it does provide some value to people's
offline lives, like the real physical world. And if that
value isn't there, then what is the point? Why not
just go straight to Sora?
Speaker 3 (39:42):
Exactly?
Speaker 1 (39:43):
If you're just looking for something to give you a
dopamine hit or a laugh, you can find that on
a dozen different platforms. If you're trying to plan a
wedding or a nursery or a baby shower or a
home redecoration, you need to have that be grounded in
reality in some capacity, otherwise there's no point of being
on this.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Plot, right. I've heard people say similar things about LinkedIn,
that it it has this value and realness to it
that separates it from other platforms because it's connected to
people's jobs. They're like careers, which are not a physical
thing in most cases, but like a very real thing
(40:20):
in a way that like X or Facebook or you know,
other platforms just are not.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
And it's so funny that you say this. I know
we've talked about this.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
It's my least favorite social media platform because I agree
it is connected to people's real world jobs or careers
or educational histories, but also simultaneously, I find it the
fakest platform there is, or people are just really writing
the most inane stuff to make themselves look like thought leaders.
(40:52):
And then people who want to be in their network,
they have the most inane comments, great posts, great insights,
great post thumbs up, great posts, great posts.
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Oh yeah, I hate it so much.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Oh it's not fun, it's work. But like, there's a
lot of shit I do in my life that I
do because it not because it's fun, but because it
like helps me pay by rent, or helps me be healthy,
or helps me have a nice place to live. Like,
not everything can be fun and entertaining. You know, some
(41:24):
quarters of the internet, I think one could easily lose
sight of that fact.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Oh, I feel like, especially with all of these layoffs
and the economy and the job market being what it is,
we're all kind of quietly giving each other grace.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Do what you gotta do on LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
If you gotta position yourself as the most sycophantic, try
hard out there, Go ahead and do it. Nobody's judging anybody.
You gotta do what you gotta do in a tough landscape.
I think we're all And listen, when I see my
friends post up on LinkedIn, that I can tell like, oh,
she just lost her job, but she's trying to like
position herself for thought leadership. I'm also the comments being
like great posts, great posts that thumbs up great great sites,
(42:00):
a great post.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah, we should do like a whole episode about LinkedIn.
Maybe after we do this mail bag episode, we can
ask people to write in about like some LinkedIn thoughts.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
I have so many LinkedIn thoughts. So in the this
is such a tangent.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
But in the I'm in a bunch of like online
communities for women entrepreneurs. There has been a lot of
chatter about the fact that women entrepreneurs, people who are
well known, people who if I said their name you
would be like, oh, her, well, are saying that they
are having trouble getting traction on LinkedIn because they believe
LinkedIn is specifically suppressing content by women. And they've done
(42:37):
all of these little ad hoc tests that seem to
indicate that something is going on.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
So I have so much to say about LinkedIn.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
We talked a little bit about it when they roll
back their policies around things like dead naming trans people,
and the ways that LinkedIn has kind of become more
Facebook like. If you follow the subreddit LinkedIn lunatics. You
know exactly what I'm talking about. LinkedIn, especially in a
climate where it's a rough job climate, it's just a
very interesting place to be in a place to look at.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
We should do that episode.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
I will say that I've been seeing a lot more
conversation about the rise of creators on LinkedIn as well.
You know, you don't necessarily think of LinkedIn as a
place that would have contact creators the way that you
might see on Instagram or TikTok, but that's really changing.
I think that LinkedIn is really investing in contact creators.
And I know people who are you know, creators on LinkedIn.
(43:29):
I'm quite interested in that. It's just so it's one
of those things where it would probably be so beneficial
to me professionally to have a bigger footprint on LinkedIn,
because that's where so many tech types hang out. I
can't bring myself to do it. I just I can't.
I can't bring myself to do it.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
I'm right there with you. It's like every now and
then when things get really dark, I'm like, oh, maybe
I should be posting more on LinkedIn, but I'm not
going to do it.
Speaker 3 (43:55):
I'm just not great insight combs up. Okay, So I
just read a really meaty.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Mother Jones breakdown of a new campaign called Warehouse Life
that recently held a rally to hold Amazon accountable for
how they treat pregnant workers.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Which is abysmal.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
So Mother Jones covered this rally, and I really truly
did not know how badly Amazon is treating their pregnant
warehouse staffers. Chloe Siggle, a senior organizer at Online to
Offline Strategies who helped plan this campaign, put it like this,
this is not rocket science. We're talking about pregnant people
not being forced to lift heavy, heavy items, not being
(44:32):
forced to climb ladders with big baby bumps, and being
able to go to the bathroom if they need to
throw up. That really, I think underscores what we're talking about.
Nobody in this story is asking for any kind of
unreasonable accommodation.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
It is the most basic reasonable stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah, maybe if you've got a big, giant, pregnant belly,
you shouldn't be getting up on a ladder where you
can fall and hurt your baby. Real basic stuff. So
in the piece, they spoke to a woman named Genesis
who found out that she was pregnant while she was
working full time at Amazon. She wanted to keep working
full time to save up for her baby, but she
got a note from her doctor saying that she needed
a very basic, super low level accommodation right things like
(45:13):
regular breaks, limiting bending and twisting, and lifting no more
than twenty pounds at a time. Genesis says that her
manager wrote her up for sitting down and taking breaks
while pregnant. Shortly thereafter, she says that higher ups gave
her an ultimatum. They basically told me, you can keep
doing the job the way that we want you to
do it without the chair or without the brakes, or
(45:33):
you can go on unpaid leave. That's essentially the crups
of the issue here is that how Amazon handles this
is that when somebody gets pregnant and they need some
really basic, low level accommodations, they forced that person into
unpaid leave. So, scared for the health of her baby,
Genesis took this unpaid leave. When Amazon's Disability and Leave
(45:53):
services team approved a new role for her that would
fit her needs better as somebody was pregnant, she came
ready to do this new role basically only to be
told that that role did not exist, and that she
could not work more than twenty hours a week. She
says that some weeks she earned less than one hundred
and ninety two dollars, so instead of saving up, this
(46:14):
created the conditions where she could barely pay her rent.
She was kicked out of her place, and her and
her new born baby were forced to move into her car,
which is absolutely devastating. So what does Amazon say about
all this? Well, an Amazon spokesperson, Kelly and Antle said,
we recognize these are deeply personal experiences, but they are
not reflective of the extensive accommodations and benefits we provide
(46:37):
to support our employees. The fact is we offer comprehensive
employee accommodations throughout their pregnancy journey and postpartum, including paid
pregnancy related disability.
Speaker 3 (46:46):
And parental leave.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
So it is true that Amazon promotes itself as offering
up to twenty weeks of paid leave for birthing parents
who are eligible hourly workers, including four weeks before the
baby is born, but genesis leave was unpaid. In an email,
they'd explained to Genesis that she didn't qualify for protections
under the Family and Medical Leave Act because she had
(47:08):
not worked required oney twelve hundred and fifty hours over
the previous twelve months. However, Mother Jones looked at her
pay stubs and found that he had actually worked more
than one thousand, three hundred hours over the previous ten months,
and between two stints at Amazon, she had worked for
them for a total of fifteen months, so she should
have been eligible.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
So I am no lawyer, but this all sounds illegal.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Mother Jones points out that under federal law, companies like
Amazon are required to provide reasonable accommodations to pregnant workers,
things like allowing breaks chairs to sit in while working,
or being able to schedule changes to allow for doctors' visits.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
But Genesis is.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Only one of a lot of Amazon employees who say
that Amazon, which remember is the largest employer of warehouse workers,
is essentially delaying or failing to make these accommodations with
disastrous health and financial impacts.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
I think we should also remember just the extremely high
turnover rate that Amazon has in these warehouses. It's just
like a burn and churn model of getting people in,
burning them up, and then hiring replacements when they move on.
I think anybody would look at this kind of treatment
(48:22):
of pregnant people and be like, that's terrible, but it's
not surprising given that like just cool approach to humans
and workers that is not based on somebody being like
a valued member of a team making unique contributions, but
(48:44):
just being like a performer of of a particular function.
And if they could be replaced by robots, they would.
Speaker 1 (48:52):
Yeah, and this is clearly a pattern with Amazon. The
Warehouse Life team put out a call to Amazon's staff
asking for pregnancy stories. They got more five hundred stories,
only three of which were positive, and the stories are horrifying.
One pregnant woman collapsed at work due to dehydration and
was taken away in an ambulance. Another was put in
roles requiring very heavy lifting in the use of chemicals
(49:13):
that cause reproductive harm, and as you were saying, this
all just led her to resign. And I think that
they have that high turnover and people just are like,
I'm not gonna It's one thing to be putting myself
into these precarious positions, but not my unborn child, And
so yeah, people, I think that accounts. I think that
they're using a system where they have high turnover to
continue to exploit workers in this way, and Amazon has
(49:36):
been under government investigation about this for a while. After
warehouse workers filed EEOC charges back in twenty twenty and
twenty twenty one, the EOC opened an ongoing and systemic
investigation into whether Amazon is failing to accommodate workers' pregnancies
and forcing them to take unpaid leaves of absence. So
let's talk a bit about why this is able to
(49:57):
be happening. So some states all already had protections for
pregnant workers in their laws, but in twenty twenty three,
it's a Pregnant Worker's Fairness Act, or the PWFA introduced
these protections nationwide. A recent study by researchers at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, your alma mater.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
That's right, go Bucky Well.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
This study found that states newly covered by the PWFA
saw a three point two percent increase in birth, suggesting
that the law had helped produce miscaracter rates by nearly
nine point six percent.
Speaker 2 (50:28):
That is a huge percentage, like almost ten percent. That's enormous.
Like in public health, we don't see effect sizes that large,
even if it's only half that. If the researchers have overestimated, Uh,
the positive impact by like more than double. It's still
(50:50):
a huge effect.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah, more people being able to give birth to healthy babies.
Speaker 3 (50:56):
You would think this was something that the Trump.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Administration, that republic Can Party, the Party of Life, would
want you to keep going, right, You would think they
would want to keep this good thing going.
Speaker 2 (51:06):
Yeah, that's right. I mean a lot of these Republicans
come from states that have passed laws onto the books
criminalizing miscarriages. So you would think that this practice of
providing paid leave to pregnant mothers reducing miscarriages, that seems
like a win.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
Let's just say, I don't think that Trump administration sees
it that way.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
Here's some other zones puts it. So.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
The EEOC is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the US
federal agency that is in charge of enforcing laws against
pregnancy discrimination. In January, Trump fired two EEOC commissioners, a
first in the agency sixty year history, leaving the agency
until recently without a three person quorum required to approve
impact litigation or issue new guidance. Trump has directed the
(51:53):
agency to deprioritize disparate impact cases, which involve neutral policies
that have an outsize impact on this advantage.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Groups.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
House Republicans recently improved a funding bill that cut the
budget by nineteen million dollars in twenty twenty six. By
some estimates, the cuts could leave the agency, which advocates
have long said is underfunded and understaffed, with almost fifty
percent less staff than it had in the nineteen eighties. So, yeah,
people's babies are going to be put at risks. Some
of those babies will probably die so that companies like
(52:22):
Amazon can make more money.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
Yeah, it's a good example of how focusing on equal
opportunities for women has downstream beneficial effects of improving the
health of children.
Speaker 1 (52:38):
Absolutely, And that's my thing is that Amazon could afford
to support their pregnant staff, the staff that make their
company so much money. I once worked on this campaign
around paid leave at a big tech company. It wasn't Amazon,
but it was a big one where the office staff
was getting pretty decent paid p rental lead policies, but
that that leave was not extended toward warehouse staff. And
(53:00):
so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what's going on here,
that like, oh, office staff, they're not having to be
nickeled and dimond this way. But warehouse staff, we can
tweet them like craft and exploit them and in danger
of their kids.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
That's fine, Oh absolutely, I mean tail as old as time.
The billionaires making one class of workers feel as if
they are privileged. But really, if you compare like the
office workers and the warehouse workers and Jeff Bezos, one
(53:30):
of those things is not like the other, and the
difference is not between the office workers and the warehouse
workers right like they are at the same level. Maybe
the office workers get like a little bit better benefits,
just enough to make them like want to protect those
benefits and feel like a more equal structure might jeopardize them.
(53:55):
But all the money is going.
Speaker 5 (53:57):
To the top.
Speaker 1 (53:58):
Yes, And speaking Jeff Bezos, I wonder if he has
any hot kids.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
Uh, that's a weird question, bridget Well.
Speaker 1 (54:06):
Not to people on X, because do you want to
know what kind of groundbreaking content is apparently worth ten
thousand dollars over on X simply posting the pictures of
the daughters of tech CEOs. Literally, that's it, just a
picture of a tech CEO's kid. X has said that
is content that is worth ten thousand dollars. So this
(54:28):
person about X posted pictures of the daughters of tech CEOs,
like Steve Jobs' daughter Eve Jobs and Bill Gates's daughter
Phoebe Gates. The post doesn't make any kind of claim
or point or argument about these people. It just says
big tech CEO's daughters, by the way, and then pictures
of these daughters.
Speaker 3 (54:48):
Curiously, no pictures of the suns.
Speaker 1 (54:51):
Nobody wants to see them, apparently not, so this post
went viral, I'm assuming because all of these young women
are like beautiful, photogenic women, and it went viral. The
post got millions of impressions, to the point where the
head of product at X, Nikita Bayer, said that they
were going to be giving the user who.
Speaker 3 (55:06):
Made it ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 1 (55:08):
Writing X has always been the origin of Internet culture,
and as part of that, we are now exploring new
ways to recognize and reward creators who were the original
catalyst of a global trend or discussion. This will be
forward looking on anything new happening on the app, so
given this person ten thousand dollars. Obviously this has encouraged
other people who were like, well, I want to get
(55:28):
ten thousand dollars for posting stuff like this. So now
you have all these copycasts basically flooding the platform with
that same set of images of tech ceo daughters trying
to get that same payout.
Speaker 2 (55:40):
Okay, first of all, I wonder if he actually got paid,
because we know that Elon doesn't like to pay people.
But also, what a stupid content trend. I feel like
I must be missing something. It's like worse than aislot.
They're just like reposting the same photos, Like why would
anyone want to look at that?
Speaker 1 (56:02):
I had the same question that I gave it a
lot of thought, and I think the implicit argument that
it's being made, although not not explicitly, is that tech
CEOs are better than us.
Speaker 3 (56:13):
They're smarter than all of us because they're rich. And
of course, if you follow that thread, it would it
would hold to reason that then they would have attractive offspring.
Speaker 5 (56:23):
I think that.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
I think that's what they're saying, is that these tech
CEOs who are so wealthy and so brilliant that are
designing all of our futures, we should trust them because
look how hot their daughters are.
Speaker 3 (56:36):
I think I think it's I might be way off
base here.
Speaker 1 (56:39):
I think there is an implicit argument along those lines
being made by this kind of content.
Speaker 3 (56:44):
That's what I think. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Okay, maybe people just like looking at pictures of good
looking women.
Speaker 3 (56:48):
I don't know. No, I think you.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
I think you might be onto something. I mean, we
know that uh. Elon loves that you Genesis stuff.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
And by extension then I said, pose his fanboys do
as well, which I understand to be pretty much everyone
who's still posting on x now who is not a bot.
So that makes some sense. I think your theory holds up.
Speaker 1 (57:12):
Now, that's what I call discourse. Well, Mike, thank you
for going through these stories with me. Where can folks
keep up with the show along our internet landscape?
Speaker 2 (57:25):
People can leave us a comment on Spotify. We've gotten
a couple of really good ones, some thoughtful ones that
were actually a little like thought provoking, challenging. We love those.
Speaker 3 (57:36):
Thank you for them.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
You can follow Bridgett on Instagram and TikTok at bridget
Marie and DC, and you can watch the videos that
we put up on YouTube. There are no girls on
the internet. Pretty easy to remember, and you can always
send us an email at Hello at tangoedi dot com.
Speaker 1 (57:55):
Thanks so much for being here Mike, and thanks to
all of you for listening. I will see you on
the Internet. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech,
or just want to say hi, You can reach us
at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find
transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are
No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.
(58:16):
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almato 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 iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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