June 7, 2022 • 44 mins
We need to talk about the Amber Heard Johnny Depp defamation trial
Toxic fans have made Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s trial inescapable: https://www.polygon.com/23068724/johnny-depp-amber-heard-trial-twitch-youtube-tiktok
Follow Ryan Brodericks’ newsletter Garbage Day: https://www.garbageday.email
The Bleak Spectacle of the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp Trial by Micheal Hobbes: https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/the-bleak-spectacle-of-the-amber?s=r
The Daily Wire Spent Thousands of Dollars Promoting Anti-Amber Heard Propaganda: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ab3yk/daily-wire-amber-heard-johnny-depp?utm_source=vice_facebook&utm_medium=social
Join our newsletter: Tangoti.com/newsletter
Want to support the show? (thank you!)
Subscribe, tell a friend, leave a review, or buy some merch at There Are No Girls on the Internet’s store: TANGOTI.COM/STORE
Say hello at hello@tangoti.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just a heads up. This episode mentions domestic abuse. The
viral nature of this stuff is tried directly to capital
and you can make a lot of money going really viral,
posting all kinds of breathless updates about this like very
Sad and your trial. There Are No Girls on the Internet.
(00:21):
As a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss Creative.
I'm Bridget Todd and this is there Are No Girls
on the Internet. After Amber Heard published an ed in
The Washington Post. In it, she wrote, quote I spoke
up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath that
(00:43):
has to change. And quote I became a public figure
representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of
our culture's wrath for women who speak out. And finally,
quote I had the rare vantage point of seeing in
real time how institutions protect men accused of abuse. Now,
in these three statements that did not specifically name anyone
(01:04):
as her abuser, a jury of five men and two
women found that Amber Heard defamed her ex husband, actor
Johnny Depp. Back Johnny Depp sued the British tabloid of
the Sun for calling him a wife beater, and he lost. Now,
the judge in that case ruled that Amber Heard's abuse
claims were quote substantially true. But unlike that trial, that
(01:25):
Depth lost in the most recent trial was live streamed
and disseminated and seemingly endless clips on social media. Outside
the Virginia courthouse, people waited for hours. Some hardcore Depth
fanatics even dressed in cosplay of his character Captain Jack
Sparrow from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. Now I
didn't watch the trial, but that doesn't mean I could
(01:45):
escape it. I learned about the trial and memes and
TikTok videos that framed Amber Heard as a crazy, lying,
deceitful bitch, and the right wing website The Daily Wire
spent thousands of dollars spreading this exact message around the Internet.
So does this mean about our digital culture? What does
it mean for women? What does it mean for survivors?
I spoke to Ryan Broderick, tech writer and editor of
(02:08):
Garbage Day, a newsletter about memes and the Internet, about
the trial, the verdict, and what it all says about
the Internet. So, you know, tell us about how you
came to be somebody who studies and pays attention to
memes and what they tell us about society. My villain
origin story I suppose started in college. I was a
journalism major and I liked the Internet a lot, and
(02:29):
I didn't understand why no one in my journalism classes
wanted to talk about what was happening on the Internet.
I was reading all these great websites all the time,
and none of our professors wanted to deal with it.
And so I guess out of spite, I started to
pay more and more attention to what I was seeing
on the Internet. And then when I started to do
my first jobs and internships, there was a lot of
stuff happening online that no one was talking about. So
(02:50):
I thought, Okay, this will be like my way in.
And I never really moved past that. I've always just
been really interested. And now people use the Internet in technology.
I'm I'm a fan of sci fi, so I suppose
that's kind of a part of that as well. Uh.
And now I read a newsletter called Garbage Day, which
is about memes, trends, uh, technology forecasting, stuff like that.
And I have a podcast called The Content Minds, which
(03:13):
is me and a friend named Luke Bailey. He's the
head of audience development for the news in the UK
and we uh basically get in like long protracted fights
about what's happening on Twitter every week. That's that's my
pitch for the show. Um, yeah, I know, and uh,
it's it's good. It's a good time to write about
the Internet and to think about the Internet because I
think after the Trump era where things got very annoying,
(03:37):
we're now in this moment of like infinite possibility and
there's all these really interesting stories happening, whether it's crypto,
the metaverse, TikTok memes, fandoms that are going feral, it's
all just really good stuff. And I feel like I've
been waiting many years for this level of Internet pop
culture breakthrough. I mean, that's actually a great place to
(03:59):
start talking about this trial. You know, in a piece
of our polygon you wrote the trial is set off
a toxic fandom bomb a major social platform. As major
social platforms incentivized the worst human behavior possible to drive
up their engagement metrics, and during depth be heard that
the defensiveness, ugliness, and outrage cycle of online band communities
has infected every corner of the web like a virus,
(04:20):
taking shape of the content that does well on those platforms,
So tell us you know what you mean by that
and what, like, how have you seen this trial playing
out online? Yeah, I mean it's definitely an evolution of
something I think we saw a lot on spaces like
Tumbler and read it ten years ago, when fandoms were
kind of still more niche, you know, the that weird
(04:42):
I'm really kind of obsessed with that weird period of
time between let's say, like the Breaking Bad starting and
the Walking Dad starting and then like the last season
of Game of Thrones, and in that weird period of time,
you go from fandoms being still kind of niche nerdy
things that only kind of pop up are in comic
cons and things like that too. Essentially the mainstream, like
(05:06):
the Disney adults, the Harry Potter adults. These people who
you know, may have been teenagers are in college ten
years ago, and now they're adults and and they're acting
like adults, but they're also still obsessed with fandoms and
the and the Internet has evolved beyond these small corners
on Tumblr and Reddit, so now that this is super
mainstream everywhere, and I think in a lot of ways,
(05:28):
the really disgusting, and I think it is disgusting behavior
that people were engaging in around this trial. Um is
the manifestation of those fandom spaces just not going away
and becoming more entrenched. And I think a lot of
that has to do with the fact that we live
in a time of deeply consolidated pop culture. You know,
(05:48):
Disney owns everything, and if stuff that they don't own,
his own by Netflix, and stuff that they don't own
his own by Warner Brothers, and that's kind of it.
And so these companies, I think they feed into this.
They they sort of the beast, and these fandoms have
become extremely powerful, extremely engaging, extremely sticky culturally, and uh,
(06:09):
they don't. They They're just full of people who act
outrageous all the time and or and or and in
my opinion, getting worse because you know, you may have
seen like fandom blogs fighting with each other as teenagers
on Tumbler ten years ago, but now these are like
full grown adults, spending sometimes like thirty five thousand dollars.
I read one woman paid that much to go to
(06:30):
the trial and like bring al pacas so the Johnny
Depp could pet her alpacas in case he was feeling depressed.
Like this is this is absurd behavior, um, and no
one seems to be thinking it's absurd, which is even
crazier to me. One of the things is that I
want to talk specifically about the Daily Wire and like
what what this trial might mean for like right wing types,
(06:50):
But I don't want to give the impression that it's
all you know, I don't know, I guess. I when
I first heard about this case, I was like, what's
clearly like right wing types, men's rights in cells. But
it's also like this mixed bag of of I guess,
like fandom types. Can you give us a little breakdown
of who you see the major players as? Yeah, So
I've tried to sketch up this landscape, and unfortunately I
(07:12):
have to kind of make like these vague um summaries.
You know, I have to kind of because you're you're
talking about blobs of culture. UM. So think of it
like this. I would say a large chunk of the
people who were pro Johnny Depp are Disney adults, people
who genuinely miss Johnny Depp. Uh. They have like a
(07:32):
nostalgic attachment to him, whether it's the Pirates of the
Caribbean franchise, or some other thing that he's a part of,
and they want him back and they feel like he
shouldn't have been removed from pop culture. You also have
release the Snyder cut people, the the these like fans
of the d C Entertainment universe who believe that Amber Herds,
like interpersonal drama with Johnny Depp, to put it very lightly,
(07:55):
was impacting their ability to see new superhero movies. And
a lot of those guy guys are the same guys
who make YouTube videos about Star Wars characters they don't
like who just had so happened to be women or
people of color. And they're the same guys who are
probably teenagers during the game or game era. So I
sort of see that is like the same man, the
same like horrible Reddit YouTube man. You also have men's
(08:18):
rights activists who see this trial as a proxy battle
for me too. They believe that the me too movement
went too far, even though like nothing happened to any
of the powerful men really, but they believe it it
went too far, and now this is a way to
pull back and and fix things so that like you know,
powerful men can continue being ship heads. You do have
(08:40):
right wingers, though they were pretty late to the trial.
And we'll talk about the Daily Wire in a second,
but they really actually struggled to insert themselves into this
because I don't think this was like really their battlefield. Um.
You also have and this is very interesting because Johnny
Depp was removed from their Fantastic Beasts franchise, which is
a prequel series to Harry Potter. You have Harry Potter
(09:03):
adults who believe that him being removed from the franchise
screwed up the success of that franchise. And because you
have Harry Potter adults, because J. K. Rowling is a
vicious anti trans activist, you have turfs as well. You
have trans exclusively radical feminist. So it's this really bizarre
blob of some of the worst obsessive people on the
Internet who have all rallied around this one trial because
(09:27):
they've decided this is the trial that will also dictate
their weird obsession and and and its relevancy in popular culture. Wow. Yeah,
I mean talking about the Harry Potter stands and like
Turf types, like way to be feminist, smearing a woman
who has survived her of domestic violence like that. I
(09:49):
guess that really shows how deep, they're they're feminist, their
feminist ideology goes yeah. I I interviewed this this she's
she's unbelievable. Her name is Amanda Brandon, I interr reader
for my Polygon piece. She used to work at Tumbler
now she does like trends research and and I couldn't
use this quote because it was just like it was
so much to put it in the piece. But essentially
(10:09):
she she was sort of arguing that the same women
who were or young girls who were bullying other women
and girls on Tumbler fifteen years ago are now the
ones like threatening to murder Amber heard on TikTok as
as like full grown adults. And it's that same toxic
strain of fandom and like a very particular fan fiction
(10:30):
archetype of like loving the the really toxic character that
like I can fix him tight, the raylos, the women
who believe that like Ray should have ended up with
Kylo reyn in Star Wars, Like this very specific kind
of thing seems to be happening around a real person,
and they don't seem to understand that, Like Johnny Depp
(10:51):
isn't any of his characters, He's like, uh, from all
accounts a very bad person. Um. I hope that it's
not defamatory to say I believe he's a bad person. Um.
And these a lot of it is is not right wingers,
it's not politically motivated. It's like women who are like
getting tattoos of his lawyer. And then oh my god,
(11:13):
did you see that they were writing erotic fan fiction
about Depth hooking up with his lawyer, Like just insane nonsense,
like craziness. Like I would say, go outside, but they
are going outside. They're going to the trial, which is
so much worse, like stay inside, babe. I don't know,
it's just it's awful. Yeah, I mean, I I know
exactly that type. But I think a lot of Johnny
Depp's uh, the different characters that he's portrayed, really feeds
(11:37):
into it that, Like, you know, you look at like
Edward scissor Hand like, oh, I'm like a like a
really quiet, sweet soul who's very innocent, or like I'm
like a really charming pirate that you just want to
hang out with. I think that like a lot of
people are projecting grown adults are projecting a lot onto
these characters that you know, they're fictional, they're not like
(11:58):
Johnny Depp is not actually a pirate. It he's not
actually this like sensitive guy with scissors for hands. Yeah,
he's not a pirate. He's not He is not Hunter S. Thompson.
He is just like a man who seems to have
a really bad drug and alcohol problem and like as
a series of extremely toxic relationships with other people. So like, yeah,
he's not like your small being that you can yes fix,
(12:21):
you know exactly. And I think you bring up fandom,
and I think that really explains this phenomenon with the
trial that I don't know that I've ever really seen before,
which is the way that it has been memed and
turned into these like fan videos, particularly on TikTok. You know,
I am someone who I'm not too proud to admit that,
like I spent a lot of time hyper analyzing famous
(12:42):
people that I had crushes on to be like, oh
he there was a long and glance here, So that
means this. And I see the way that these videos
have really flooded internet spaces where they have the tinge
of fan videos. Have you seen this? Yeah? No. In fact,
my my coach Luke Bailey on our podcast pointed out
that it's it's essentially the same behavior that was behind
(13:03):
like the Larry shipping from one direction urs the idea
that like Liam and Harry were secretly a couple and
you could prove it by hyper analyzing their hands touching
each other during a press conference. It's the same stuff
we see with bts as well, you know, the it's
it's this idea and in my opinion, it also ties
in with our our obsession with true crime at the moment.
It's this idea that there's so much media being produced.
(13:25):
There's so many videos and images and and takes and
and and spins on a on a thing that I
think as human beings, we assume that all of our
answers can be can be found there. It's the same
thing we start the Gabby Petita disappearance. It's the same
thing we see with like all of these TikTok trends,
where it's like it's your brain almost goes like, Okay,
(13:46):
if if there's a live stream of the trial and
there's so many ways to watch the trial, I must
be able to figure out exactly what's going on. Because
if I'm not able to do that, that's almost like
it's like psychologically upsetting the idea that like you could
be lied to by what you're seeing with your own eyes.
And I think, if I want to give a benefit
of the doubt to anyone involved with making some of
(14:08):
this like horrible content on TikTok, I think that's what's
going on, is this idea, like, oh, of course I
could figure out if he's lying or not, or she's lying,
because like if I couldn't, then I can't trust anything
that I see. You know, Um, maybe that's what's happening. Yeah,
I think that's right. And then I think, like with Discovery,
there's just so much content, so many videos, so many
(14:29):
text messages, that it's I think that we I think
it really demonstrates that we've created an Internet landscape that
is really that incentivizes, I guess, conspiratorial thinking that like
there must be some way to put this all together,
to prove that she is like a gone Girl style
lying bitch who has been for years, you know, coalescing
to take this man down, even though that seems so outlandish.
(14:52):
I almost believe that our Internet spaces are incentivize things
that are the more outlandish they are, the more like
difficult to believe they are more traction they'll get Yeah,
I think that's true. And I'm as as someone who
stares at this stuff all day long. I want to
really be really clear, like I'm not someone who believes
that Internet users are inherently bad or inherently act crazy.
(15:12):
I think they respond to incentives, and they respond to
like different user experience choices, and I think right now
on the Internet, there is not a single social network
that does not sort of incentivize acting like a complete maniac.
I think they all give you like a weird point
system that rewards the worst behavior imaginable, whether that's through
(15:34):
retweets or likes or up votes or your audio trending
or whatever it is. And so when it comes to
a moment like this trial, there's not a place you
can go on the Internet that's not going to give
you more points for being more insane. And that's just
a really sad thing. I wonder what discord conversations have
been like, because that's a place where maybe you're not
(15:55):
incentivized to be awful, although maybe you are. I don't know.
I just think that, like, it's it's unfortunate that the
majority of the people who are falling this trial. We're
following it through TikTok and YouTube, which our platforms that
will reward you for being more extreme and more annoying
than the next person, let's say quick breaks at our back.
(16:31):
On platforms like TikTok and YouTube, content creators have built
entire platforms hyper analyzing the trial, and it really reminds
me of the days of tabloid court TV, I mean O. J.
Simpson trial, were so called body language experts try to
glean whether or not someone is lying or telling the
truth based on the way they use their hands or
purse their lips in videos of the trial. And even
(16:51):
though it's kind of a bunk pseudoscience, claims about body
language to depict Amber heard as a liar have flooded
the internet discourse about trial on YouTube, you're rewarded and
you can kind of be like celebritized. Like I've seen
all of these like body language experts scare quotes around that,
or like legal experts or whatever, really making platforms off
(17:14):
of like like commenting on this trial in a way
that I'm not sure that's healthy for our our our
understanding of what's happening. I'm not sure it's like a
healthier Internet ecosystem when that is so so incentivized to
the point where you can really make a name from it. Yeah,
I mean, like, let's be clear, like there's no such
thing as a body language expert. Like there's just not
like like there's like, like our artificial intelligence stuff would
(17:37):
be much better if we could give it information from
from body language experts. They don't exist. It's not a
thing like there's really and yet and yet there is
this desire to have that because you know, it's like
if someone's on camera, like you want to be able
to get inside their head and know what they're thinking.
But it's not possible. It's just not like and also
I mean I don't want to get to like serious,
(17:59):
but like a trial mutized person, an abused person, an
allegedly abused person is probably not going to act in
public the way you think they act or think they
should act. This is actually very similar to the couch
guys stuff on TikTok. So if you don't know, if
your listeners don't know, a girl walks into surprise for boyfriend.
The boyfriend doesn't react positively or negatively. He just sort
(18:20):
of looks stunned, there's a girl on the couch next
to him. People start making conspiracy theories that he was
cheating and he got caught cheating. None of it was
seems to be real. But I think what's like a
really interesting dynamic sometimes with TikTok in particular, is that
when like video footage hits TikTok of real life that
doesn't look like the cinematic version that we're used to,
(18:41):
people assume it's not real. But that's like saying like, oh,
I can't recognize real life because it doesn't look like
a movie. And kids on TikTok are are reacting really
aggressively what that happens because it makes them uncomfortable, and
I think that was a part of this as well,
another dimension to this trial. Oh my gosh. I mean,
I don't want to get too far off base, but
it We did an episode about why so many like
(19:04):
fabricated videos claiming to be from Ukraine during the invasion.
We're able to like people believe them, and part of
it is that we we have something going on where
when we expect things to look cinematic, and so people
were able to take things from movies or video games
or cartoons and be like, oh, this is what's happening
in Ukraine, and people believed it because of our because
of our need to have things be so cinematic. And
(19:29):
I think we're I think we're losing our ability to
tell when something is real or something it's kind of
bullshit because of it. I think it's worse. I think
we prefer the bullshit because it's more comfortable. Like if
you if you're faced with like raw life in a video,
it's actually pretty uncomfortable. It's like it's like, like, you know,
the Ukraine stuff is disturbing because it doesn't look like
(19:51):
a movie. There's no like action here are running through
the crowd like saving people. It's like it's awful. It's weird.
If you're watching it like essentially a trial about defamation
regarding a domestic violence allegations, it's not gonna look like,
you know, Mr Smith goes to Washington. It's gonna look
like a really sad, weird disolusion of an extremely toxic relationship.
(20:13):
And it's not gonna look good. It's not gonna be funny,
and it's probably not going to be comfortable to watch
it with the we the we storm song, which is like, God,
why why did that song become the song of this trial.
It's bizarre to me because it didn't hurt, didn't physically
hurt me. I have never seen a trial be memed
the way that this trial was. You know that catchy
(20:35):
little song you hear when you log onto a Nintendo
We Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Well. If
you're thinking that no one would ever use such a cheery,
upbeat song on a video from a trial about something
as serious as domestic violence, you would be wrong. Here's
another example. A sneaky sounding song from the children's show
The Backyard Against is often used on TikTok to illustrate
(20:57):
someone being duplicitous or trying to get a way with something.
After Herd's lawyer held up a makeup palette from the
cosmetics brand Melanni after testifying that Amber used the makeup
to cover bruises that she says that Johnny Depp gave
her the Milanni brand, used video from the trial to
create a cheeky TikTok scored to the Backyard Again song,
pointing out that the specific product that her lawyer held
(21:19):
up had not been released until after Amber heard and
Johnny Depp broke up. Now, her lawyer never actually claimed
that Amber Heard specifically used that Milanni product, just that
she used makeup, but the video pretty clearly implies that
they've caught Amber Heard in a cosmetics bace lie proving
her guilt allah the climactic scene from the film Legally Blonde. Now,
(21:40):
it's clear to me why a brand would want to
get in on this. According to BuzzFeed, that one piece
of content is Milanni Cosmetics is most watched TikTok ever,
with five million views. Now prior to this, none of
their videos has ever broke five thousand views. But it's
pretty distasteful for a makeup brand to benefit from weighing
in on a rial about domestic violence using a cute
(22:02):
see meme on TikTok. And because the jury in this
trial was not sequestered, it's entirely possible that jurors also
watched all of this play out too. It is so weird,
like I remember that thing where um it? During the trial,
Amber Heard said that she used this this makeup to
cover her bruises, and her lawyer held up this makeup
palette Milani and then on TikTok Milani made this like
(22:25):
cutesie response video being like, oh, it didn't come out
until this year, like here's our and I think it's this.
I think it's two things. I think it's one exactly
like you said, like people people want a trial that
regarding abuse to look like a movie where someone's going
to catch somebody in a lie and be like a ha,
and like they're gonna break down and admit that they
(22:47):
were wrong. And I think that, you know, there would
be a time where a big brand getting into the
conversation about a trial regarding domestic violence, a very serious thing,
making a cute see little meme on tick talk using
the Backyard Agin song you know as the sound that
I found that to be so distasteful and I, like
(23:08):
I said, I just have never seen a trial where
people and brands and stuff commented on it like the
like the way that that should be commented on by
the brand if the brand really wants to get into
it is by like a turth public statement, not a
cutely little meme TikTok video. I just found that so distasteful.
I mean, you you you bring up a really good
point and this is like a thing that we're currently
in the middle of and I'm curious how it will end.
(23:29):
I assume. I assume a brand will go uh. I
assume a brand will go too far and this will stop.
But as of right now, brands are sort of in
this post Trump internet era trying to figure out how
they can insert themselves into online conversations. And you know,
for the last like five years, it's actually been pretty
(23:50):
unsafe for a brand to exist on the Internet because
everything is political. They don't want to get involved, they
don't want to like get wrapped up in some polarizing thing.
But now certain brands are being actually, we can be
totally nuts on the Internet and people will like it.
And I you know, I'm waiting for the brand that
goes too far. I'm waiting for the brand that like,
(24:11):
I don't know, like makes a meme about a school
shooting or something like. I'm waiting for the brand that
just like completely goes all the way and then everyone's like, Okay,
we can't, we can't do this anymore. Time to pull back, Yeah, exactly. Um,
And I don't know when that's going to happen, but
I think we're I think we're getting close. I I'm
(24:32):
ready for it to sap more after a quick break,
let's get right back into it. So I didn't pay
very close attention to the trial when it was happening,
(24:53):
and I think I see now that part of the
reason why that is is because I have been swayed
by a deliberate campaign to create doubt and fog, you know,
people who weren't really paying super close attention, but who
were seeing lots of content on social media about the trial.
And I also really didn't see a lot of people
speaking up in support of herd. I just kept seeing
these snippets of the trial that painted amber Heard in
(25:14):
this really negative light. So I think I honestly just
assumed that this must be some sort of complicated situation
where the truth is somewhere in the middle. But if
you look at reporting from people like journalist Michael Hobbs,
who's been chronicling the trial, you can check out some
of his reporting in the show description Amber Heard told
a plausible evidence backstory of abuse. So why did so
(25:35):
many of us like me just kind of stay out
of it. I have to say, like I feel a
little bit like guilty slash weird. I didn't really engage
on this trial until pretty recently. And I think part
of it was that, like probably, like a lot of people,
I'm kind of what you might describe as like a
low information person. I didn't follow the trial. I don't
(25:58):
really love spending time digging into like abuse and things
like that, Like it's just not doesn't feel good or
safe for me. And I feel like part of it
is I have to admit that because of all the
information I was absorbing on TikTok and Twitter and YouTube,
despite the fact that I was not interested in this trial,
not following it at all, Uh, it made it seem
as though, like, oh, like it's a he said she said,
(26:21):
like maybe they were abusive toward each other. It's so murky,
like just stay out of it. And I now kind
of realized like I had been sort of taken by
a full like a like a campaign to make me
think that to make me think like, oh, they're either
a amber heard must be a psycho lying bit or
be the story must be that like it's quote mutual abuse,
(26:44):
say both down awful. I don't know, and I guess
I feel a little bit. It's hard. It's hard to
realize the role that I personally played in carrying water
for people who were interested in misrepresenting what was happening
in this trial. Yeah, I mean, it's not your fault.
It's it's not your fault. It's in the best interests
of everyone involved to make you think that it's it's
(27:05):
in the best interest of of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
TikTok to make this into a larger narrative, to make
this into a proxy fight. And it's in the best
interests for all those people who are making that content
to do that, because they're making lots and lots and
lots of stupid money on it like that, And that's
like the really sad thing is that, like the viral
nature of this stuff is tried directly to capital and
(27:27):
you can make a lot of money going really viral,
posting all kinds of breathless updates about this like very
sad and weird trial. Which I think is the difference
between this and the O. J. Simpson trial, which is
that you have the role now of the individual creators
who were able to jump on the bandwagon in a
way that was not as easy to do in a
pre internet media landscape. Vice News reported that the Daily Wire,
(27:52):
the conservative outlet founded by Ben Shapiro, spent between thirty
five thousand and forty seven thou dollars on Facebook and
Instagram ads promoting art close about the trial, eliciting some
four million impressions. According to Media Matters, these posts from
the Daily Wire pages account for nearly forty seven percent
of posts about the trial from right leading pages and
nearly eight percent of related posts from all news and
(28:15):
politics pages. The content they promoted showed a clear bias
against her, some of which contained outright inaccurate information about
the trial. Immediately following the verdict, Kyle Rittenhouse, who you
might remember became kind of a right wing celebrity after
traveling to Kenosha, Wisconsin with a gun in shooting and
killing two protesters and was later acquitted, has already signaled
(28:37):
that the verdict inspired him to pursue defamation charges against
media who covered his case. I asked Ryan why a
right wing news site like The Daily Wire would be
invested in spreading anti Amber heard messaging. What's going on there?
What do you think is happening? It's so weird because
like okay, so you hear that and you're like, okay,
we and a lot of people were like, we got it,
we we figured it out. This is all fake. No
(29:00):
would think this, and it's a right wing astroturfing campaign
to make people into pro Johnny Depth supporters. And it's like, no,
I went through the metrics. No one's reading the stuff
that the Daily Wires do it there then none of
the articles they're paying to promote are being read by anybody,
which makes me which is like even weirder to be,
which is like they're so far behind the like the
(29:20):
Disney Ladies doing like Jack Sparrow cause play in front
of the courthouse. This is this is like what what
what it seems to be what they're doing. I guess
they have some kind of advertising budget they've got to spend.
Uh you know, maybe it's the because of the dark
money they're getting from like you know, Republican benefactors or
whatever it is. They got to spend their money. So
(29:41):
they're spending the money. And I think what they're what
they're trying to do with it is like packaging in
a way, so that I mean, actually we we we
sort of have the answer now, which is that like
the day after the trial, Kyle Rittenhouse goes on Twitter
and he's like, I'm thinking about suing Cenna or whoever
now for defamation. And I think that's why the Daily
Wire and sort of themselves into this is because they
(30:01):
want to make it really clear to other right wing
like activists and um, you know, media companies that they
can start to weaponize defamation trials in the same way.
And that's why they were so like engaged and invested
in this trial. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out,
like what does this mean, like why would they be invested?
(30:23):
But I do think that's part of it, And I
wonder do you think that it's part of it? Could
also be like I don't know, I went to the
Daily Wire website just to see like what's going on,
and the first thing I got before even going in
was like a pop up that says, what is a
woman like? Click here to find more. But I wonder
if they're like trying to seize on this like high
engagement thing to get more people align. Yeah, I don't know,
(30:46):
like come for the you know, cultural thing that everybody
is talking about. Stay for the like anti trans anti
black nonsense. I think that's definitely true. I mean, their
whole business model, their whole editorial model is like taking
a thing, is like taking a thing that everyone's talking
about and inserting themselves into it, hijacking it and making
it about them. They're and they're they're they're fairly good
(31:08):
at it. You just described like mead drunk out of
wedding exactly. They're just like they're like the worst person
you've ever met at a party. I'm not saying you are,
I'm saying uh, And they, you know not they they're
not gonna ask you any questions about yourself. They just
wanted to talk about whatever they want to talk about,
over and over again. But um, they did this with
their Freedom Convoy a couple of months ago, where it
was happening in Canada and the Daily Wire was largely
(31:31):
responsible for it to start going viral in America on Facebook.
And so I think that they figured that if they
can find these these movements early enough, they can like
turn up the volume for conservatives and then like kick
it up all the way to you know, Fox News
or whatever. And I think that's what they tried to
do with this, But I think that it was too
inherently complicated, uh, like from the fandom perspectives for them
(31:55):
to really like monopolize on it. What do you think
it says about our digital system that, you know, we
have this like kind of bogus quote new site that
is really more of like a content platform that just
has a lot of like click baity material. Like what
do you think of the fact that like that is
seen as a viable whether or it was viable for
(32:16):
them because it seems like nobody was really like reading
that content, but like the fact that that is seen
as a strategy, what do you think it says about
our digital ecosystem? Yeah, so this is really fascinating. Um Like,
and I always used like the Trump era as as
sort of a way to define this new one because
we haven't figured out like what we're really in yet.
But this did start to happen during the Trump ere
which is that like all of American culture kind of
(32:40):
flowed through Trump, like Trump's tweets, which was extremely annoying
and like whatever what happened during the day was set
by his Twitter account. Um then that went away, But
the urge to have like a thing that everyone in
America all fights about all day has stuck, and so
try ending topics now, at least in America and then
(33:02):
a few other countries. I've seen this too, but particularly
in America are training topics aren't really trending topics. They're
more like capture the flag. So let's say the the
trial we're talking of the depth heard trial, and it's trending,
every single community on the Internet is going to try
to insert themselves into that trending topic. Not because they
(33:22):
particularly care about the trial. Maybe they do, but I'm
gonna guess that overwhelmingly what they really care about is
attention for their particular cause, their particular advocacy, their particular community.
And you see this a lot on like every like
every side of the political spectrum, like, for instance, like um,
I saw a bunch of people immediately after the Vivaldi
shooting being like, conservatives, uh, won't let women have abortions,
(33:45):
but they will force their children to go to school,
and then they won't protect them when they get to school.
You know, I'm paraphrasing, And it's like, oh, but like
the abortion debate is is one debate and the school
streeting debate is another debate. But immediately progressive actors are like, know,
these are the same debate, and it's like, but they're
they're they're not, They're really not, I mean other than
the debate of hating Republicans, which I can get behind,
(34:07):
you know, like that's how like our brains work now.
So it's it's like, oh, it's the death Heard trial,
but it's not just the death Heard trial. It's also
the entire meat to movement. It's also the way defamation works.
It's also Kyle Rittenhouse now wants to sue the Washington Post.
It's like all of this stuff has to fit the
trending thing, and the Republicans are much better at it
than than the Democrats. You have Christopher Rufo at the
(34:30):
Manhattan Institute. He's the grand architect of the anti critical
race theory movement that's like spreading it through small towns
in America right now. And he's kind of created the
playbook of like whatever's turning that day, no matter what
it is, no matter how stupid it is. Like literally,
right now, while we're talking, a bunch Republicans are pissing
their pants over a thing that Pizza Hut is doing,
and they're not pointing at Pizza Hut and being like
(34:51):
this is the sign of all wokeness and it's got
to go. And they're really good at it. They're really
good at just like finding anything on Twitter and raging
about it, oh day all week. Progressives, liberals, leftist, they're
not so good at it. And I think it's very
disorienting for people. And it's supposed to be You're supposed
to feel the way you felt, which is like, I
don't know what's going on. I'm just seeing everyone yelling
(35:11):
about it. There must be a reason because they, because
like conservatives in particular, know that none of us have
enough time to dig to the bottom of the trash
heap and figure out that there's nothing there. There's nothing
to talk about. It's just it's it's nonsense. But if
they spew enough nonsense, they can distract is long enough
to take aware of voting rights. That's that seems to
be the entire game plan. Oh that's I mean, you've
(35:32):
really said it, and I think that, like, that's exactly
how I felt that. It was just like seems like
a bunch of nonsense. I don't have time to get involved.
I don't have time to have a take. I don't
have time to do any investigation and it's going to
tune it out. And yeah, I mean, I think it's
like one of the results of the of our current
internet landscape is that like it's so hard to just
have a thoughtful conversation about the thing. Everything is a
(35:54):
proxy war. Like we're no longer able to just have
a thoughtful subsidence of conversation about abortion rights or whatever,
because it's like we're talking about eighteen different things, and
it's like I can understand why people are just like, Nope,
I'm checking out. I'm not going to follow it. It's
too much. Uh. And meanwhile, we're all just so like
heated and distracted that we're just not really able to
(36:15):
to zero in on what it's actually substitutively happening. Yeah,
and and and what's even like more insidious is that, like,
for the most part, mainstream media disregards anything that's happening
in the celebrity sphere as frivolous because it's typically seen
something that's either written about by women, read by women,
cared about the way by women. You see this reaction
with Kim Kardashian stuff. She's the most famous woman on earth,
(36:38):
She's like the Maryland role of our time. And yet
we don't take her, you know, largely, she's relegated to
the celebrity pages. And so what's crazy, and like you've
been driving me crazy watching this is that like this
is one of the most like cataclysmic defamation precedents that's
ever happening in American history. Like this woman was sued
over three sentences in an op ed in the in
the Washington Post, and and and no serious journals for
(37:01):
the Capital of j is freaking out about that. That
this is a massive blow to press freedom in America
because now any man powerful enough to hire a legal
team and set up a kangaroo court with a livestream
somewhere can bully anyway to the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse
immediately was like, yeah, I'm gonna do everybody. And and
because this is about two celebrities, and this is about
like a crazy woman and like her actor husband or whatever,
(37:23):
her ex husband, Like, no one's taking it seriously. And
I think the conservatives know that really well. They know
that they can insert whatever they want because like you know,
the serious man men on CNN aren't gonna like talk
about this with the gravity that are acquires, which is
which is also you know, as I said, very insidious,
and it's very sad because this is scary. This is
like a scary thing. Yeah, And I think you really
(37:46):
named something that I don't think i've I've had language
to talk about, which is that when you have people
who are flooding the space, whether it's you know, right
wing journalists or like Disney adults on TikTok, and there's
not like substitutive pushback or like bunking, it's just yeah,
it's so hard to like like basically it's like we're
(38:06):
playing catch up. I guess, like the truth and the
reality of what's happening is playing catchup, and it's so
much harder when you have so many people who have
been like really effectively changing the conversation for a long time. Yeah,
and like these people don't care if they're if they're wrong,
like like they don't really care if they even understand
what the trials about, Like they don't, Like I think
(38:28):
there's this knee jerk response from a lot of other
people where they're like, okay, like if we can just
like get the facts out, everyone can agree like they
used to in the nineties, and it's like they didn't
you just couldn't hear them. Now you can hear them,
and unfortunately, some of them can be louder than you.
And so there's like we're in this really weird landscape
where it's like we don't have the illusion of cultural
(38:50):
consensus that we had twenty or thirty years ago. We
probably never did, I mean, like to find a grandparent
and asked them how they feel about like a particular
news event from thirty sears ago. They're probably have a
very different take than somebody else. But now it's all
happened at the same time, and certain communities, certain political
movements are better at playing with that chaos, I think,
(39:13):
than others, and the rest of us just have to
suffer because it's super annoying and very confusing. On Wednesday,
the jury and the trial found that heard to Fame
Johnny Depp in that Washington Post piece from in which
she called herself a public figure representing domestic abuse depth
was awarded more than ten million dollars in damages. You know,
you mentioned earlier sort of how big of a precedent
(39:35):
this set and it's very scary, you know, given that
we saw the verdict just I guess was that yesterday. Yeah,
given that we saw the verdict yesterday that um heard
has to it what did in fact libel depth according
to the jury and has to pay back more than
her net worth and damage? Is like, what do you
see the impact being in media? In journalism and then
(39:56):
just you know generally sort of for all of us
for survived risk of the internet, Like, where do you
see this going? Yeah? I mean the first thing is
just like anyone who's experienced domestic abuse, anyone who believes
that they experienced domestic abuse just is not going to
feel as confident coming forward about it. I read a
statistic yesterday, I think it came from a Rolling Stone
piece about how just one advocacy group for domestic violence SVIRUS,
(40:19):
was saying that hundreds of women immediately heard the verdict
and pulled like any anything to do with that charity.
And they didn't they didn't want to go forward with
any sort of prosecution or anything they wanted to. They
don't want to do it. So that's that's the immediate impact.
And that's like that, that's the that's the silent one.
You know. The next one is that like we're gonna
see much. I think we're gonna see what's called a
(40:40):
chilling effect on free speech. You know, for for the
free speech warriors on the right wing, they sure it
don't seem to want the rest of us to speak. Um.
So you know that the idea of an op ed
like the one that caused this trial happening again is
probably much rarer. Now. I think a lot of the
reporting that was happening around those kinds of stories won't
happen the same way again. You'll need you'll need to
(41:01):
have harder evidence, tighter reporting guidelines. They'll be more fear
of retribution and things like that. Um. And then like
I just think that you know, we we don't really
totally understand like what live streaming a trial does to
(41:21):
its verdict. And that's that kind of a more open
ended one. This was a circus. And like you know,
in Johnny Depp's legal team I think sought out this
particular court because in this particular judge, because I knew
it would be an absolute circus. And you know, the
the judge will probably go on to get our own
TV show on some right wing news channel. So like
there's just no there's no account of there's no there's
nothing you can do because everyone involved. It's just in
(41:42):
bad faith. It's just it's it's a mess. I mean,
it's funny you say like it's a circus, and I
know that you mean that as a figure of speech.
But there were lamas, Like there were lamas and people
dressed like pirates, and like there's like face painting going on.
It was a literal circus. I mean, it's a really good,
I guess, cautionary reminder of how like I feel that
(42:04):
with the injection of the Internet and lots of strangers
eyes on things, we can have very good things, like
people can really get accountability. But also it can really
quickly turn the tide in ways that I think we
should really be aware of. Yeah, and I don't think
we know yet. I don't think we know exactly how
it turns the tide or shapes public opinion. Yet we
(42:25):
know that like it causes chaos. We know that it
like impacts people's understanding of events, but we really don't
know like long term, like how people will understand this um.
I suspect that this traum in particular will be one
that's like studied and media course is going forward. I mean,
it is the closest thing we have to like the
the internet eras o J trial or or or um,
(42:47):
the Watergate hearings or something, which sounds kind of crazy
to like elevate the level, But so far it's kind
of as close as we've come. Unless we get the
actual insurrection hearings. This is probably like the big one
that we're gonna like study survivors and their advocates are
wondering what comes next after this precedent setting trial. Toronto Burke,
(43:07):
the founder of the me too movement, set in a
statement following the verdict, this movement is very much alive.
You all want to play ping pong and have your
way with the hashtag because it doesn't mean anything to you,
so you try to kill it every few months. But
it means something to millions and millions of folks. It
means freedom, it means community, it means safety, it means power.
(43:29):
You can't kill us. We are beyond the hashtag. We
are a movement. 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 tangodi dot com.
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me bridgetad. It's a production of I Heeart Radio and
(43:52):
Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tera Harrison
is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our
contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want
to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
For more podcasts from I heeart Radio, check out the
iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Just a heads up. This episode mentions domestic abuse. The
viral nature of this stuff is tried directly to capital
and you can make a lot of money going really viral,
posting all kinds of breathless updates about this like very
Sad and your trial. There Are No Girls on the Internet.
(00:21):
As a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss Creative.
I'm Bridget Todd and this is there Are No Girls
on the Internet. After Amber Heard published an ed in
The Washington Post. In it, she wrote, quote I spoke
up against sexual violence and faced our culture's wrath that
(00:43):
has to change. And quote I became a public figure
representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of
our culture's wrath for women who speak out. And finally,
quote I had the rare vantage point of seeing in
real time how institutions protect men accused of abuse. Now,
in these three statements that did not specifically name anyone
(01:04):
as her abuser, a jury of five men and two
women found that Amber Heard defamed her ex husband, actor
Johnny Depp. Back Johnny Depp sued the British tabloid of
the Sun for calling him a wife beater, and he lost. Now,
the judge in that case ruled that Amber Heard's abuse
claims were quote substantially true. But unlike that trial, that
(01:25):
Depth lost in the most recent trial was live streamed
and disseminated and seemingly endless clips on social media. Outside
the Virginia courthouse, people waited for hours. Some hardcore Depth
fanatics even dressed in cosplay of his character Captain Jack
Sparrow from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. Now I
didn't watch the trial, but that doesn't mean I could
(01:45):
escape it. I learned about the trial and memes and
TikTok videos that framed Amber Heard as a crazy, lying,
deceitful bitch, and the right wing website The Daily Wire
spent thousands of dollars spreading this exact message around the Internet.
So does this mean about our digital culture? What does
it mean for women? What does it mean for survivors?
I spoke to Ryan Broderick, tech writer and editor of
(02:08):
Garbage Day, a newsletter about memes and the Internet, about
the trial, the verdict, and what it all says about
the Internet. So, you know, tell us about how you
came to be somebody who studies and pays attention to
memes and what they tell us about society. My villain
origin story I suppose started in college. I was a
journalism major and I liked the Internet a lot, and
(02:29):
I didn't understand why no one in my journalism classes
wanted to talk about what was happening on the Internet.
I was reading all these great websites all the time,
and none of our professors wanted to deal with it.
And so I guess out of spite, I started to
pay more and more attention to what I was seeing
on the Internet. And then when I started to do
my first jobs and internships, there was a lot of
stuff happening online that no one was talking about. So
(02:50):
I thought, Okay, this will be like my way in.
And I never really moved past that. I've always just
been really interested. And now people use the Internet in technology.
I'm I'm a fan of sci fi, so I suppose
that's kind of a part of that as well. Uh.
And now I read a newsletter called Garbage Day, which
is about memes, trends, uh, technology forecasting, stuff like that.
And I have a podcast called The Content Minds, which
(03:13):
is me and a friend named Luke Bailey. He's the
head of audience development for the news in the UK
and we uh basically get in like long protracted fights
about what's happening on Twitter every week. That's that's my
pitch for the show. Um, yeah, I know, and uh,
it's it's good. It's a good time to write about
the Internet and to think about the Internet because I
think after the Trump era where things got very annoying,
(03:37):
we're now in this moment of like infinite possibility and
there's all these really interesting stories happening, whether it's crypto,
the metaverse, TikTok memes, fandoms that are going feral, it's
all just really good stuff. And I feel like I've
been waiting many years for this level of Internet pop
culture breakthrough. I mean, that's actually a great place to
(03:59):
start talking about this trial. You know, in a piece
of our polygon you wrote the trial is set off
a toxic fandom bomb a major social platform. As major
social platforms incentivized the worst human behavior possible to drive
up their engagement metrics, and during depth be heard that
the defensiveness, ugliness, and outrage cycle of online band communities
has infected every corner of the web like a virus,
(04:20):
taking shape of the content that does well on those platforms,
So tell us you know what you mean by that
and what, like, how have you seen this trial playing
out online? Yeah, I mean it's definitely an evolution of
something I think we saw a lot on spaces like
Tumbler and read it ten years ago, when fandoms were
kind of still more niche, you know, the that weird
(04:42):
I'm really kind of obsessed with that weird period of
time between let's say, like the Breaking Bad starting and
the Walking Dad starting and then like the last season
of Game of Thrones, and in that weird period of time,
you go from fandoms being still kind of niche nerdy
things that only kind of pop up are in comic
cons and things like that too. Essentially the mainstream, like
(05:06):
the Disney adults, the Harry Potter adults. These people who
you know, may have been teenagers are in college ten
years ago, and now they're adults and and they're acting
like adults, but they're also still obsessed with fandoms and
the and the Internet has evolved beyond these small corners
on Tumblr and Reddit, so now that this is super
mainstream everywhere, and I think in a lot of ways,
(05:28):
the really disgusting, and I think it is disgusting behavior
that people were engaging in around this trial. Um is
the manifestation of those fandom spaces just not going away
and becoming more entrenched. And I think a lot of
that has to do with the fact that we live
in a time of deeply consolidated pop culture. You know,
(05:48):
Disney owns everything, and if stuff that they don't own,
his own by Netflix, and stuff that they don't own
his own by Warner Brothers, and that's kind of it.
And so these companies, I think they feed into this.
They they sort of the beast, and these fandoms have
become extremely powerful, extremely engaging, extremely sticky culturally, and uh,
(06:09):
they don't. They They're just full of people who act
outrageous all the time and or and or and in
my opinion, getting worse because you know, you may have
seen like fandom blogs fighting with each other as teenagers
on Tumbler ten years ago, but now these are like
full grown adults, spending sometimes like thirty five thousand dollars.
I read one woman paid that much to go to
(06:30):
the trial and like bring al pacas so the Johnny
Depp could pet her alpacas in case he was feeling depressed.
Like this is this is absurd behavior, um, and no
one seems to be thinking it's absurd, which is even
crazier to me. One of the things is that I
want to talk specifically about the Daily Wire and like
what what this trial might mean for like right wing types,
(06:50):
But I don't want to give the impression that it's
all you know, I don't know, I guess. I when
I first heard about this case, I was like, what's
clearly like right wing types, men's rights in cells. But
it's also like this mixed bag of of I guess,
like fandom types. Can you give us a little breakdown
of who you see the major players as? Yeah, So
I've tried to sketch up this landscape, and unfortunately I
(07:12):
have to kind of make like these vague um summaries.
You know, I have to kind of because you're you're
talking about blobs of culture. UM. So think of it
like this. I would say a large chunk of the
people who were pro Johnny Depp are Disney adults, people
who genuinely miss Johnny Depp. Uh. They have like a
(07:32):
nostalgic attachment to him, whether it's the Pirates of the
Caribbean franchise, or some other thing that he's a part of,
and they want him back and they feel like he
shouldn't have been removed from pop culture. You also have
release the Snyder cut people, the the these like fans
of the d C Entertainment universe who believe that Amber Herds,
like interpersonal drama with Johnny Depp, to put it very lightly,
(07:55):
was impacting their ability to see new superhero movies. And
a lot of those guy guys are the same guys
who make YouTube videos about Star Wars characters they don't
like who just had so happened to be women or
people of color. And they're the same guys who are
probably teenagers during the game or game era. So I
sort of see that is like the same man, the
same like horrible Reddit YouTube man. You also have men's
(08:18):
rights activists who see this trial as a proxy battle
for me too. They believe that the me too movement
went too far, even though like nothing happened to any
of the powerful men really, but they believe it it
went too far, and now this is a way to
pull back and and fix things so that like you know,
powerful men can continue being ship heads. You do have
(08:40):
right wingers, though they were pretty late to the trial.
And we'll talk about the Daily Wire in a second,
but they really actually struggled to insert themselves into this
because I don't think this was like really their battlefield. Um.
You also have and this is very interesting because Johnny
Depp was removed from their Fantastic Beasts franchise, which is
a prequel series to Harry Potter. You have Harry Potter
(09:03):
adults who believe that him being removed from the franchise
screwed up the success of that franchise. And because you
have Harry Potter adults, because J. K. Rowling is a
vicious anti trans activist, you have turfs as well. You
have trans exclusively radical feminist. So it's this really bizarre
blob of some of the worst obsessive people on the
Internet who have all rallied around this one trial because
(09:27):
they've decided this is the trial that will also dictate
their weird obsession and and and its relevancy in popular culture. Wow. Yeah,
I mean talking about the Harry Potter stands and like
Turf types, like way to be feminist, smearing a woman
who has survived her of domestic violence like that. I
(09:49):
guess that really shows how deep, they're they're feminist, their
feminist ideology goes yeah. I I interviewed this this she's
she's unbelievable. Her name is Amanda Brandon, I interr reader
for my Polygon piece. She used to work at Tumbler
now she does like trends research and and I couldn't
use this quote because it was just like it was
so much to put it in the piece. But essentially
(10:09):
she she was sort of arguing that the same women
who were or young girls who were bullying other women
and girls on Tumbler fifteen years ago are now the
ones like threatening to murder Amber heard on TikTok as
as like full grown adults. And it's that same toxic
strain of fandom and like a very particular fan fiction
(10:30):
archetype of like loving the the really toxic character that
like I can fix him tight, the raylos, the women
who believe that like Ray should have ended up with
Kylo reyn in Star Wars, Like this very specific kind
of thing seems to be happening around a real person,
and they don't seem to understand that, Like Johnny Depp
(10:51):
isn't any of his characters, He's like, uh, from all
accounts a very bad person. Um. I hope that it's
not defamatory to say I believe he's a bad person. Um.
And these a lot of it is is not right wingers,
it's not politically motivated. It's like women who are like
getting tattoos of his lawyer. And then oh my god,
(11:13):
did you see that they were writing erotic fan fiction
about Depth hooking up with his lawyer, Like just insane nonsense,
like craziness. Like I would say, go outside, but they
are going outside. They're going to the trial, which is
so much worse, like stay inside, babe. I don't know,
it's just it's awful. Yeah, I mean, I I know
exactly that type. But I think a lot of Johnny
Depp's uh, the different characters that he's portrayed, really feeds
(11:37):
into it that, Like, you know, you look at like
Edward scissor Hand like, oh, I'm like a like a
really quiet, sweet soul who's very innocent, or like I'm
like a really charming pirate that you just want to
hang out with. I think that like a lot of
people are projecting grown adults are projecting a lot onto
these characters that you know, they're fictional, they're not like
(11:58):
Johnny Depp is not actually a pirate. It he's not
actually this like sensitive guy with scissors for hands. Yeah,
he's not a pirate. He's not He is not Hunter S. Thompson.
He is just like a man who seems to have
a really bad drug and alcohol problem and like as
a series of extremely toxic relationships with other people. So like, yeah,
he's not like your small being that you can yes fix,
(12:21):
you know exactly. And I think you bring up fandom,
and I think that really explains this phenomenon with the
trial that I don't know that I've ever really seen before,
which is the way that it has been memed and
turned into these like fan videos, particularly on TikTok. You know,
I am someone who I'm not too proud to admit that,
like I spent a lot of time hyper analyzing famous
(12:42):
people that I had crushes on to be like, oh
he there was a long and glance here, So that
means this. And I see the way that these videos
have really flooded internet spaces where they have the tinge
of fan videos. Have you seen this? Yeah? No. In fact,
my my coach Luke Bailey on our podcast pointed out
that it's it's essentially the same behavior that was behind
(13:03):
like the Larry shipping from one direction urs the idea
that like Liam and Harry were secretly a couple and
you could prove it by hyper analyzing their hands touching
each other during a press conference. It's the same stuff
we see with bts as well, you know, the it's
it's this idea and in my opinion, it also ties
in with our our obsession with true crime at the moment.
It's this idea that there's so much media being produced.
(13:25):
There's so many videos and images and and takes and
and and spins on a on a thing that I
think as human beings, we assume that all of our
answers can be can be found there. It's the same
thing we start the Gabby Petita disappearance. It's the same
thing we see with like all of these TikTok trends,
where it's like it's your brain almost goes like, Okay,
(13:46):
if if there's a live stream of the trial and
there's so many ways to watch the trial, I must
be able to figure out exactly what's going on. Because
if I'm not able to do that, that's almost like
it's like psychologically upsetting the idea that like you could
be lied to by what you're seeing with your own eyes.
And I think, if I want to give a benefit
of the doubt to anyone involved with making some of
(14:08):
this like horrible content on TikTok, I think that's what's
going on, is this idea, like, oh, of course I
could figure out if he's lying or not, or she's lying,
because like if I couldn't, then I can't trust anything
that I see. You know, Um, maybe that's what's happening. Yeah,
I think that's right. And then I think, like with Discovery,
there's just so much content, so many videos, so many
(14:29):
text messages, that it's I think that we I think
it really demonstrates that we've created an Internet landscape that
is really that incentivizes, I guess, conspiratorial thinking that like
there must be some way to put this all together,
to prove that she is like a gone Girl style
lying bitch who has been for years, you know, coalescing
to take this man down, even though that seems so outlandish.
(14:52):
I almost believe that our Internet spaces are incentivize things
that are the more outlandish they are, the more like
difficult to believe they are more traction they'll get Yeah,
I think that's true. And I'm as as someone who
stares at this stuff all day long. I want to
really be really clear, like I'm not someone who believes
that Internet users are inherently bad or inherently act crazy.
(15:12):
I think they respond to incentives, and they respond to
like different user experience choices, and I think right now
on the Internet, there is not a single social network
that does not sort of incentivize acting like a complete maniac.
I think they all give you like a weird point
system that rewards the worst behavior imaginable, whether that's through
(15:34):
retweets or likes or up votes or your audio trending
or whatever it is. And so when it comes to
a moment like this trial, there's not a place you
can go on the Internet that's not going to give
you more points for being more insane. And that's just
a really sad thing. I wonder what discord conversations have
been like, because that's a place where maybe you're not
(15:55):
incentivized to be awful, although maybe you are. I don't know.
I just think that, like, it's it's unfortunate that the
majority of the people who are falling this trial. We're
following it through TikTok and YouTube, which our platforms that
will reward you for being more extreme and more annoying
than the next person, let's say quick breaks at our back.
(16:31):
On platforms like TikTok and YouTube, content creators have built
entire platforms hyper analyzing the trial, and it really reminds
me of the days of tabloid court TV, I mean O. J.
Simpson trial, were so called body language experts try to
glean whether or not someone is lying or telling the
truth based on the way they use their hands or
purse their lips in videos of the trial. And even
(16:51):
though it's kind of a bunk pseudoscience, claims about body
language to depict Amber heard as a liar have flooded
the internet discourse about trial on YouTube, you're rewarded and
you can kind of be like celebritized. Like I've seen
all of these like body language experts scare quotes around that,
or like legal experts or whatever, really making platforms off
(17:14):
of like like commenting on this trial in a way
that I'm not sure that's healthy for our our our
understanding of what's happening. I'm not sure it's like a
healthier Internet ecosystem when that is so so incentivized to
the point where you can really make a name from it. Yeah,
I mean, like, let's be clear, like there's no such
thing as a body language expert. Like there's just not
like like there's like, like our artificial intelligence stuff would
(17:37):
be much better if we could give it information from
from body language experts. They don't exist. It's not a
thing like there's really and yet and yet there is
this desire to have that because you know, it's like
if someone's on camera, like you want to be able
to get inside their head and know what they're thinking.
But it's not possible. It's just not like and also
I mean I don't want to get to like serious,
(17:59):
but like a trial mutized person, an abused person, an
allegedly abused person is probably not going to act in
public the way you think they act or think they
should act. This is actually very similar to the couch
guys stuff on TikTok. So if you don't know, if
your listeners don't know, a girl walks into surprise for boyfriend.
The boyfriend doesn't react positively or negatively. He just sort
(18:20):
of looks stunned, there's a girl on the couch next
to him. People start making conspiracy theories that he was
cheating and he got caught cheating. None of it was
seems to be real. But I think what's like a
really interesting dynamic sometimes with TikTok in particular, is that
when like video footage hits TikTok of real life that
doesn't look like the cinematic version that we're used to,
(18:41):
people assume it's not real. But that's like saying like, oh,
I can't recognize real life because it doesn't look like
a movie. And kids on TikTok are are reacting really
aggressively what that happens because it makes them uncomfortable, and
I think that was a part of this as well,
another dimension to this trial. Oh my gosh. I mean,
I don't want to get too far off base, but
it We did an episode about why so many like
(19:04):
fabricated videos claiming to be from Ukraine during the invasion.
We're able to like people believe them, and part of
it is that we we have something going on where
when we expect things to look cinematic, and so people
were able to take things from movies or video games
or cartoons and be like, oh, this is what's happening
in Ukraine, and people believed it because of our because
of our need to have things be so cinematic. And
(19:29):
I think we're I think we're losing our ability to
tell when something is real or something it's kind of
bullshit because of it. I think it's worse. I think
we prefer the bullshit because it's more comfortable. Like if
you if you're faced with like raw life in a video,
it's actually pretty uncomfortable. It's like it's like, like, you know,
the Ukraine stuff is disturbing because it doesn't look like
(19:51):
a movie. There's no like action here are running through
the crowd like saving people. It's like it's awful. It's weird.
If you're watching it like essentially a trial about defamation
regarding a domestic violence allegations, it's not gonna look like,
you know, Mr Smith goes to Washington. It's gonna look
like a really sad, weird disolusion of an extremely toxic relationship.
(20:13):
And it's not gonna look good. It's not gonna be funny,
and it's probably not going to be comfortable to watch
it with the we the we storm song, which is like, God,
why why did that song become the song of this trial.
It's bizarre to me because it didn't hurt, didn't physically
hurt me. I have never seen a trial be memed
the way that this trial was. You know that catchy
(20:35):
little song you hear when you log onto a Nintendo
We Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Well. If
you're thinking that no one would ever use such a cheery,
upbeat song on a video from a trial about something
as serious as domestic violence, you would be wrong. Here's
another example. A sneaky sounding song from the children's show
The Backyard Against is often used on TikTok to illustrate
(20:57):
someone being duplicitous or trying to get a way with something.
After Herd's lawyer held up a makeup palette from the
cosmetics brand Melanni after testifying that Amber used the makeup
to cover bruises that she says that Johnny Depp gave
her the Milanni brand, used video from the trial to
create a cheeky TikTok scored to the Backyard Again song,
pointing out that the specific product that her lawyer held
(21:19):
up had not been released until after Amber heard and
Johnny Depp broke up. Now, her lawyer never actually claimed
that Amber Heard specifically used that Milanni product, just that
she used makeup, but the video pretty clearly implies that
they've caught Amber Heard in a cosmetics bace lie proving
her guilt allah the climactic scene from the film Legally Blonde. Now,
(21:40):
it's clear to me why a brand would want to
get in on this. According to BuzzFeed, that one piece
of content is Milanni Cosmetics is most watched TikTok ever,
with five million views. Now prior to this, none of
their videos has ever broke five thousand views. But it's
pretty distasteful for a makeup brand to benefit from weighing
in on a rial about domestic violence using a cute
(22:02):
see meme on TikTok. And because the jury in this
trial was not sequestered, it's entirely possible that jurors also
watched all of this play out too. It is so weird,
like I remember that thing where um it? During the trial,
Amber Heard said that she used this this makeup to
cover her bruises, and her lawyer held up this makeup
palette Milani and then on TikTok Milani made this like
(22:25):
cutesie response video being like, oh, it didn't come out
until this year, like here's our and I think it's this.
I think it's two things. I think it's one exactly
like you said, like people people want a trial that
regarding abuse to look like a movie where someone's going
to catch somebody in a lie and be like a ha,
and like they're gonna break down and admit that they
(22:47):
were wrong. And I think that, you know, there would
be a time where a big brand getting into the
conversation about a trial regarding domestic violence, a very serious thing,
making a cute see little meme on tick talk using
the Backyard Agin song you know as the sound that
I found that to be so distasteful and I, like
(23:08):
I said, I just have never seen a trial where
people and brands and stuff commented on it like the
like the way that that should be commented on by
the brand if the brand really wants to get into
it is by like a turth public statement, not a
cutely little meme TikTok video. I just found that so distasteful.
I mean, you you you bring up a really good
point and this is like a thing that we're currently
in the middle of and I'm curious how it will end.
(23:29):
I assume. I assume a brand will go uh. I
assume a brand will go too far and this will stop.
But as of right now, brands are sort of in
this post Trump internet era trying to figure out how
they can insert themselves into online conversations. And you know,
for the last like five years, it's actually been pretty
(23:50):
unsafe for a brand to exist on the Internet because
everything is political. They don't want to get involved, they
don't want to like get wrapped up in some polarizing thing.
But now certain brands are being actually, we can be
totally nuts on the Internet and people will like it.
And I you know, I'm waiting for the brand that
goes too far. I'm waiting for the brand that like,
(24:11):
I don't know, like makes a meme about a school
shooting or something like. I'm waiting for the brand that
just like completely goes all the way and then everyone's like, Okay,
we can't, we can't do this anymore. Time to pull back, Yeah, exactly. Um,
And I don't know when that's going to happen, but
I think we're I think we're getting close. I I'm
(24:32):
ready for it to sap more after a quick break,
let's get right back into it. So I didn't pay
very close attention to the trial when it was happening,
(24:53):
and I think I see now that part of the
reason why that is is because I have been swayed
by a deliberate campaign to create doubt and fog, you know,
people who weren't really paying super close attention, but who
were seeing lots of content on social media about the trial.
And I also really didn't see a lot of people
speaking up in support of herd. I just kept seeing
these snippets of the trial that painted amber Heard in
(25:14):
this really negative light. So I think I honestly just
assumed that this must be some sort of complicated situation
where the truth is somewhere in the middle. But if
you look at reporting from people like journalist Michael Hobbs,
who's been chronicling the trial, you can check out some
of his reporting in the show description Amber Heard told
a plausible evidence backstory of abuse. So why did so
(25:35):
many of us like me just kind of stay out
of it. I have to say, like I feel a
little bit like guilty slash weird. I didn't really engage
on this trial until pretty recently. And I think part
of it was that, like probably, like a lot of people,
I'm kind of what you might describe as like a
low information person. I didn't follow the trial. I don't
(25:58):
really love spending time digging into like abuse and things
like that, Like it's just not doesn't feel good or
safe for me. And I feel like part of it
is I have to admit that because of all the
information I was absorbing on TikTok and Twitter and YouTube,
despite the fact that I was not interested in this trial,
not following it at all, Uh, it made it seem
as though, like, oh, like it's a he said she said,
(26:21):
like maybe they were abusive toward each other. It's so murky,
like just stay out of it. And I now kind
of realized like I had been sort of taken by
a full like a like a campaign to make me
think that to make me think like, oh, they're either
a amber heard must be a psycho lying bit or
be the story must be that like it's quote mutual abuse,
(26:44):
say both down awful. I don't know, and I guess
I feel a little bit. It's hard. It's hard to
realize the role that I personally played in carrying water
for people who were interested in misrepresenting what was happening
in this trial. Yeah, I mean, it's not your fault.
It's it's not your fault. It's in the best interests
of everyone involved to make you think that it's it's
(27:05):
in the best interest of of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube,
TikTok to make this into a larger narrative, to make
this into a proxy fight. And it's in the best
interests for all those people who are making that content
to do that, because they're making lots and lots and
lots of stupid money on it like that, And that's
like the really sad thing is that, like the viral
nature of this stuff is tried directly to capital and
(27:27):
you can make a lot of money going really viral,
posting all kinds of breathless updates about this like very
sad and weird trial. Which I think is the difference
between this and the O. J. Simpson trial, which is
that you have the role now of the individual creators
who were able to jump on the bandwagon in a
way that was not as easy to do in a
pre internet media landscape. Vice News reported that the Daily Wire,
(27:52):
the conservative outlet founded by Ben Shapiro, spent between thirty
five thousand and forty seven thou dollars on Facebook and
Instagram ads promoting art close about the trial, eliciting some
four million impressions. According to Media Matters, these posts from
the Daily Wire pages account for nearly forty seven percent
of posts about the trial from right leading pages and
nearly eight percent of related posts from all news and
(28:15):
politics pages. The content they promoted showed a clear bias
against her, some of which contained outright inaccurate information about
the trial. Immediately following the verdict, Kyle Rittenhouse, who you
might remember became kind of a right wing celebrity after
traveling to Kenosha, Wisconsin with a gun in shooting and
killing two protesters and was later acquitted, has already signaled
(28:37):
that the verdict inspired him to pursue defamation charges against
media who covered his case. I asked Ryan why a
right wing news site like The Daily Wire would be
invested in spreading anti Amber heard messaging. What's going on there?
What do you think is happening? It's so weird because
like okay, so you hear that and you're like, okay,
we and a lot of people were like, we got it,
we we figured it out. This is all fake. No
(29:00):
would think this, and it's a right wing astroturfing campaign
to make people into pro Johnny Depth supporters. And it's like, no,
I went through the metrics. No one's reading the stuff
that the Daily Wires do it there then none of
the articles they're paying to promote are being read by anybody,
which makes me which is like even weirder to be,
which is like they're so far behind the like the
(29:20):
Disney Ladies doing like Jack Sparrow cause play in front
of the courthouse. This is this is like what what
what it seems to be what they're doing. I guess
they have some kind of advertising budget they've got to spend.
Uh you know, maybe it's the because of the dark
money they're getting from like you know, Republican benefactors or
whatever it is. They got to spend their money. So
(29:41):
they're spending the money. And I think what they're what
they're trying to do with it is like packaging in
a way, so that I mean, actually we we we
sort of have the answer now, which is that like
the day after the trial, Kyle Rittenhouse goes on Twitter
and he's like, I'm thinking about suing Cenna or whoever
now for defamation. And I think that's why the Daily
Wire and sort of themselves into this is because they
(30:01):
want to make it really clear to other right wing
like activists and um, you know, media companies that they
can start to weaponize defamation trials in the same way.
And that's why they were so like engaged and invested
in this trial. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out,
like what does this mean, like why would they be invested?
(30:23):
But I do think that's part of it, And I
wonder do you think that it's part of it? Could
also be like I don't know, I went to the
Daily Wire website just to see like what's going on,
and the first thing I got before even going in
was like a pop up that says, what is a
woman like? Click here to find more. But I wonder
if they're like trying to seize on this like high
engagement thing to get more people align. Yeah, I don't know,
(30:46):
like come for the you know, cultural thing that everybody
is talking about. Stay for the like anti trans anti
black nonsense. I think that's definitely true. I mean, their
whole business model, their whole editorial model is like taking
a thing, is like taking a thing that everyone's talking
about and inserting themselves into it, hijacking it and making
it about them. They're and they're they're they're fairly good
(31:08):
at it. You just described like mead drunk out of
wedding exactly. They're just like they're like the worst person
you've ever met at a party. I'm not saying you are,
I'm saying uh, And they, you know not they they're
not gonna ask you any questions about yourself. They just
wanted to talk about whatever they want to talk about,
over and over again. But um, they did this with
their Freedom Convoy a couple of months ago, where it
was happening in Canada and the Daily Wire was largely
(31:31):
responsible for it to start going viral in America on Facebook.
And so I think that they figured that if they
can find these these movements early enough, they can like
turn up the volume for conservatives and then like kick
it up all the way to you know, Fox News
or whatever. And I think that's what they tried to
do with this, But I think that it was too
inherently complicated, uh, like from the fandom perspectives for them
(31:55):
to really like monopolize on it. What do you think
it says about our digital system that, you know, we
have this like kind of bogus quote new site that
is really more of like a content platform that just
has a lot of like click baity material. Like what
do you think of the fact that like that is
seen as a viable whether or it was viable for
(32:16):
them because it seems like nobody was really like reading
that content, but like the fact that that is seen
as a strategy, what do you think it says about
our digital ecosystem? Yeah, so this is really fascinating. Um Like,
and I always used like the Trump era as as
sort of a way to define this new one because
we haven't figured out like what we're really in yet.
But this did start to happen during the Trump ere
which is that like all of American culture kind of
(32:40):
flowed through Trump, like Trump's tweets, which was extremely annoying
and like whatever what happened during the day was set
by his Twitter account. Um then that went away, But
the urge to have like a thing that everyone in
America all fights about all day has stuck, and so
try ending topics now, at least in America and then
(33:02):
a few other countries. I've seen this too, but particularly
in America are training topics aren't really trending topics. They're
more like capture the flag. So let's say the the
trial we're talking of the depth heard trial, and it's trending,
every single community on the Internet is going to try
to insert themselves into that trending topic. Not because they
(33:22):
particularly care about the trial. Maybe they do, but I'm
gonna guess that overwhelmingly what they really care about is
attention for their particular cause, their particular advocacy, their particular community.
And you see this a lot on like every like
every side of the political spectrum, like, for instance, like um,
I saw a bunch of people immediately after the Vivaldi
shooting being like, conservatives, uh, won't let women have abortions,
(33:45):
but they will force their children to go to school,
and then they won't protect them when they get to school.
You know, I'm paraphrasing, And it's like, oh, but like
the abortion debate is is one debate and the school
streeting debate is another debate. But immediately progressive actors are like, know,
these are the same debate, and it's like, but they're
they're they're not, They're really not, I mean other than
the debate of hating Republicans, which I can get behind,
(34:07):
you know, like that's how like our brains work now.
So it's it's like, oh, it's the death Heard trial,
but it's not just the death Heard trial. It's also
the entire meat to movement. It's also the way defamation works.
It's also Kyle Rittenhouse now wants to sue the Washington Post.
It's like all of this stuff has to fit the
trending thing, and the Republicans are much better at it
than than the Democrats. You have Christopher Rufo at the
(34:30):
Manhattan Institute. He's the grand architect of the anti critical
race theory movement that's like spreading it through small towns
in America right now. And he's kind of created the
playbook of like whatever's turning that day, no matter what
it is, no matter how stupid it is. Like literally,
right now, while we're talking, a bunch Republicans are pissing
their pants over a thing that Pizza Hut is doing,
and they're not pointing at Pizza Hut and being like
(34:51):
this is the sign of all wokeness and it's got
to go. And they're really good at it. They're really
good at just like finding anything on Twitter and raging
about it, oh day all week. Progressives, liberals, leftist, they're
not so good at it. And I think it's very
disorienting for people. And it's supposed to be You're supposed
to feel the way you felt, which is like, I
don't know what's going on. I'm just seeing everyone yelling
(35:11):
about it. There must be a reason because they, because
like conservatives in particular, know that none of us have
enough time to dig to the bottom of the trash
heap and figure out that there's nothing there. There's nothing
to talk about. It's just it's it's nonsense. But if
they spew enough nonsense, they can distract is long enough
to take aware of voting rights. That's that seems to
be the entire game plan. Oh that's I mean, you've
(35:32):
really said it, and I think that, like, that's exactly
how I felt that. It was just like seems like
a bunch of nonsense. I don't have time to get involved.
I don't have time to have a take. I don't
have time to do any investigation and it's going to
tune it out. And yeah, I mean, I think it's
like one of the results of the of our current
internet landscape is that like it's so hard to just
have a thoughtful conversation about the thing. Everything is a
(35:54):
proxy war. Like we're no longer able to just have
a thoughtful subsidence of conversation about abortion rights or whatever,
because it's like we're talking about eighteen different things, and
it's like I can understand why people are just like, Nope,
I'm checking out. I'm not going to follow it. It's
too much. Uh. And meanwhile, we're all just so like
heated and distracted that we're just not really able to
(36:15):
to zero in on what it's actually substitutively happening. Yeah,
and and and what's even like more insidious is that, like,
for the most part, mainstream media disregards anything that's happening
in the celebrity sphere as frivolous because it's typically seen
something that's either written about by women, read by women,
cared about the way by women. You see this reaction
with Kim Kardashian stuff. She's the most famous woman on earth,
(36:38):
She's like the Maryland role of our time. And yet
we don't take her, you know, largely, she's relegated to
the celebrity pages. And so what's crazy, and like you've
been driving me crazy watching this is that like this
is one of the most like cataclysmic defamation precedents that's
ever happening in American history. Like this woman was sued
over three sentences in an op ed in the in
the Washington Post, and and and no serious journals for
(37:01):
the Capital of j is freaking out about that. That
this is a massive blow to press freedom in America
because now any man powerful enough to hire a legal
team and set up a kangaroo court with a livestream
somewhere can bully anyway to the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse
immediately was like, yeah, I'm gonna do everybody. And and
because this is about two celebrities, and this is about
like a crazy woman and like her actor husband or whatever,
(37:23):
her ex husband, Like, no one's taking it seriously. And
I think the conservatives know that really well. They know
that they can insert whatever they want because like you know,
the serious man men on CNN aren't gonna like talk
about this with the gravity that are acquires, which is
which is also you know, as I said, very insidious,
and it's very sad because this is scary. This is
like a scary thing. Yeah, And I think you really
(37:46):
named something that I don't think i've I've had language
to talk about, which is that when you have people
who are flooding the space, whether it's you know, right
wing journalists or like Disney adults on TikTok, and there's
not like substitutive pushback or like bunking, it's just yeah,
it's so hard to like like basically it's like we're
(38:06):
playing catch up. I guess, like the truth and the
reality of what's happening is playing catchup, and it's so
much harder when you have so many people who have
been like really effectively changing the conversation for a long time. Yeah,
and like these people don't care if they're if they're wrong,
like like they don't really care if they even understand
what the trials about, Like they don't, Like I think
(38:28):
there's this knee jerk response from a lot of other
people where they're like, okay, like if we can just
like get the facts out, everyone can agree like they
used to in the nineties, and it's like they didn't
you just couldn't hear them. Now you can hear them,
and unfortunately, some of them can be louder than you.
And so there's like we're in this really weird landscape
where it's like we don't have the illusion of cultural
(38:50):
consensus that we had twenty or thirty years ago. We
probably never did, I mean, like to find a grandparent
and asked them how they feel about like a particular
news event from thirty sears ago. They're probably have a
very different take than somebody else. But now it's all
happened at the same time, and certain communities, certain political
movements are better at playing with that chaos, I think,
(39:13):
than others, and the rest of us just have to
suffer because it's super annoying and very confusing. On Wednesday,
the jury and the trial found that heard to Fame
Johnny Depp in that Washington Post piece from in which
she called herself a public figure representing domestic abuse depth
was awarded more than ten million dollars in damages. You know,
you mentioned earlier sort of how big of a precedent
(39:35):
this set and it's very scary, you know, given that
we saw the verdict just I guess was that yesterday. Yeah,
given that we saw the verdict yesterday that um heard
has to it what did in fact libel depth according
to the jury and has to pay back more than
her net worth and damage? Is like, what do you
see the impact being in media? In journalism and then
(39:56):
just you know generally sort of for all of us
for survived risk of the internet, Like, where do you
see this going? Yeah? I mean the first thing is
just like anyone who's experienced domestic abuse, anyone who believes
that they experienced domestic abuse just is not going to
feel as confident coming forward about it. I read a
statistic yesterday, I think it came from a Rolling Stone
piece about how just one advocacy group for domestic violence SVIRUS,
(40:19):
was saying that hundreds of women immediately heard the verdict
and pulled like any anything to do with that charity.
And they didn't they didn't want to go forward with
any sort of prosecution or anything they wanted to. They
don't want to do it. So that's that's the immediate impact.
And that's like that, that's the that's the silent one.
You know. The next one is that like we're gonna
see much. I think we're gonna see what's called a
(40:40):
chilling effect on free speech. You know, for for the
free speech warriors on the right wing, they sure it
don't seem to want the rest of us to speak. Um.
So you know that the idea of an op ed
like the one that caused this trial happening again is
probably much rarer. Now. I think a lot of the
reporting that was happening around those kinds of stories won't
happen the same way again. You'll need you'll need to
(41:01):
have harder evidence, tighter reporting guidelines. They'll be more fear
of retribution and things like that. Um. And then like
I just think that you know, we we don't really
totally understand like what live streaming a trial does to
(41:21):
its verdict. And that's that kind of a more open
ended one. This was a circus. And like you know,
in Johnny Depp's legal team I think sought out this
particular court because in this particular judge, because I knew
it would be an absolute circus. And you know, the
the judge will probably go on to get our own
TV show on some right wing news channel. So like
there's just no there's no account of there's no there's
nothing you can do because everyone involved. It's just in
(41:42):
bad faith. It's just it's it's a mess. I mean,
it's funny you say like it's a circus, and I
know that you mean that as a figure of speech.
But there were lamas, Like there were lamas and people
dressed like pirates, and like there's like face painting going on.
It was a literal circus. I mean, it's a really good,
I guess, cautionary reminder of how like I feel that
(42:04):
with the injection of the Internet and lots of strangers
eyes on things, we can have very good things, like
people can really get accountability. But also it can really
quickly turn the tide in ways that I think we
should really be aware of. Yeah, and I don't think
we know yet. I don't think we know exactly how
it turns the tide or shapes public opinion. Yet we
(42:25):
know that like it causes chaos. We know that it
like impacts people's understanding of events, but we really don't
know like long term, like how people will understand this um.
I suspect that this traum in particular will be one
that's like studied and media course is going forward. I mean,
it is the closest thing we have to like the
the internet eras o J trial or or or um,
(42:47):
the Watergate hearings or something, which sounds kind of crazy
to like elevate the level, But so far it's kind
of as close as we've come. Unless we get the
actual insurrection hearings. This is probably like the big one
that we're gonna like study survivors and their advocates are
wondering what comes next after this precedent setting trial. Toronto Burke,
(43:07):
the founder of the me too movement, set in a
statement following the verdict, this movement is very much alive.
You all want to play ping pong and have your
way with the hashtag because it doesn't mean anything to you,
so you try to kill it every few months. But
it means something to millions and millions of folks. It
means freedom, it means community, it means safety, it means power.
(43:29):
You can't kill us. We are beyond the hashtag. We
are a movement. 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 tangodi dot com.
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me bridgetad. It's a production of I Heeart Radio and
(43:52):
Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tera Harrison
is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our
contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want
to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
For more podcasts from I heeart Radio, check out the
iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.