Wow If True
Wow If True is your one-stop internet culture shop, explaining how what’s happening online shapes the real world. And we’re the internet experts and real-life besties to unravel it: tech culture journalist Amanda Silberling and science fiction author slash attorney Isabel J. Kim, Esq. More importantly, we’re the only podcast that will mention Neopets and horizontal mergers in the same episode. New episode every other Wednesday.
Episodes
The news cycle of 2025 has somehow once again broken us so severely that we have simply just opted out and decided to talk about Silksong, a game that people waited so long for that they created a whole new genre of shitposting. Also, Undertale and Pokopia, the forthcoming game that makes us confront everything we've ever known about Ditto.
If you were hoping that we were going to talk about The News, check out the new epis...
Did you have to verify your government ID to listen to this podcast? We hope not, but in some parts of the world, this is becoming a reality. We're talking about why age verification laws are becoming more popular in the U.S. and U.K., and how the pursuit of children's online safety -- when legislated irresponsibly -- can just create new problems of surveillance and censorship.
Also, Isabel went to the Hugos. She lost. She ...
We're chatting with Kaila Yu, author of "Fetishized," about her experience growing up online in the 90s and 00s and reckoning with her relationship to Asian fetishization. Yu started as an "import model" and pin-up girl who appeared in "Playboy" and the "Fast and Furious" franchise, then became a MySpace star and lead of the all Asian-American punk band Nylon Pink, and now, she's a writer and content creator studying the p...
We spent last episode taking to AI chatbots. What if we, two humans, simply chatted with each other while speaking in NPR voices? Don't worry, the NPR voices don't last long.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Isabel and Amanda sacrifice the sanctity of their souls and talk to Ani, the very horny anime waifu that is now part of Elon Musk's Grok app. But don't worry, we balance it out by telling you a weirdly wholesome story about Tony Hawk.
[This episode is NSFW; if you do not want to hear an AI panda talk about burning down schools, you also might wanna skip this one]
Sources
Amanda's article about Ani and Bad Rudy
Find Us Online&...
Isabel and Amanda talk about two very different kinds of AI grift. In one, a man pretends to be real social media for the (probably) AI band "The Velvet Sundown." In another, Soham Parekh simply gets employed by every single AI startup at once.
Sources
The Velvet Sundown: https://medium.com/@andrew.frelon/i-am-andrew-frelon-the-guy-running-the-fake-velvet-sundown-twitter-fcab2b7e471b
Isabel and Amanda throw out their other plans and instead talk about the subreddit “myboyfriendisAI” which is about, you guessed it, AI boyfriends and other types of digital partners. We also discuss Meta’s not-amazing practices and the LLM paper doing the rounds on the AI hater part of the internet, with Iz’s human partner weighing in.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at h...
You had questions. We have answers. We tell you about: the most "white lady" email we have sent; our screen time; fears of unexpected wet; life hacks for 29-year-olds specifically; Amanda's undying love for HBO Girls; cursed food content; political memes and earnestness; is there any good use of AI; and, unfortunately, not the 1944 US-Mexico Water Treaty.
Find Us Online
We explore all the ways that various AIs are going weird—sycophantic, white genocide focused, blackmailing its users, and not trusting Chargers fans. Also, we talk way too much about Sam Altman's olive oil choices, the Hugos, and Isabel talks for fifteen minutes about trying to get the internet installed. Which, hey, this is a podcast about the internet. And that includes calling Verizon.
See Privacy Policy at https://art1...
New pope! But why has this thousands-of-years-old process of choosing a new pope been... weirdly online? We're talking about that Vatican's bad OPSEC, the Pope's Twitter, the chimney livestream, and PopeCrave. Yes, we did find out later that the Pope is a White Sox fan.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
We chat with Dr. Claire Aubin, academic, American Nazi expert, and host of "This Guy Sucked," and mostly we just talk about the experience of being on social media as a public intellectual, and also, that one time Amanda worked for a fake professor. If you've ever wondered about academia beef, or how a person could work for a fake professor, this is the episode for you
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and Cal...
Bitches love endurance.Think Twitch stream marathons. Think the 3-week livestream of moose migration happening at the time of this episode's publication. Think the first ever viral MrBeast video in which he simply counts to 100,000.
From the Barkley Marathons to Cory Booker's day-long Senate speech, this is the episode in which we discover that people on the internet really like when people do stuff, but for a long ti...
Amanda and Isabel popcorn all over the place and talk about: Adding Jeffrey Goldberg to signal chats (and other chats!), Shinzo Abe memes, The Daily Routine (banana involved?), and the Ghiblification of All Things. Also, Isabel doesn’t know how to pronounce Charlemagne.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Amanda tells Iz about Claude Plays Pokemon, where an AI wearing the skin of a beloved communal experience simply fails to make it out of Mt. Moon. Then Iz inflicts JD Vance memes on Amanda, explaining another sort of beloved communal experience: making JD Vance edits. Also—brodernism!
Sources
Amanda's article on Claude plays Pokémon
Midroll links
Find Us Online
The Silicon Valley bros are not okay, and neither are their indeterminate number of genetic offspring. We discuss why the rightwing tech elite are obsessed with having babies, and more importantly, how can we possibly move forward with our lives now that we have [spoilers] learned about a new Elon baby live on air?
Sources
“The Tech Baron Seeking to Purge San Francisco of ‘Blues’”
Everyone cites a statistic about how men don't read, but no one knows where that statistic comes from -- so, we did our own very sound scientific study and talked to some men we know about reading. Saunas are involved. Wow if True except every time you ask a man if they read the room gets one degree hotter because we are in a sauna.
Thanks to Eric Silver, Sam Rizer, David Newtown, and an amorphous disembodied chorus of Is...
We’re out here talking about romantasy and lawsuits related to romantasy. No, not the omegaverse one. OK, a little bit the omegaverse one. Also, asking the age of question: do men read. (Also, a note for the sharp-eared listeners, we don't talk about public domain day despite promising it - next ep!)
Find Us Online
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wowiftruepod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wowiftrue
Patreon: https://ww...
We travel back in time to the day after Thanksgiving, a calmer and more peaceful era. Just kidding, we're here talking about the naked knife fight, a reference everyone will only understand in 2026. Amanda reads 98% of Isabel's book, Isabel opines on the neccessity of conventions for publishing, and we talk way too long about pottery and hot ass. Also: fish hats, now trending in orca populations near you.
It's 2025, and we're flipping it turnways by bringing on the people who shape this podcast into something listenable. AKA, Amanda's in Florida and Isabel's talking with Allison and David about: Walmart Birkins, the ethics of smells (and of going viral for the smellthics), whether Tenet was a good movie, and the correct number of times to read the Odyssey.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privac...
We discuss the internet's reaction to the United Healthcare CEO shooting and the suspect, Luigi Mangione, from a perspective sorely missing from the national conversation: two people who also went to Penn. Finally, something we have true expertise in. Also: how attractiveness relates to public opinion, online sentiment toward Luigi, and you know, the whole murder thing.
Links
NYT thinks Luigi is too hot: https://www.kenkl...
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