Hentai and the Post-Platform Internet

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike Rugnetta (00:10):
Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
podcast for and about theInternet. I'm your host, Mike
Rugnetta. This intro was writtenon Monday, 05/19/2025 at 08:19PM
eastern, and we have asensational show for you this
week. First, what can hentaiteach us about platforms? What

(00:33):
can platforms teach us abouthentai?
We look with Morgan Sung, hostand writer of KQED's fabulous
Internet podcast, close all tabsat this racy genre and what it
reveals about the Internet oftoday. Then Georgia talks with
Wired staff writer BooneAshworth about the tariffs

(00:53):
coming for your fashion microtrends. Office siren, mob wife,
bog chic. Can they survive?Should they survive?
And also ask an expert. Butright now, we're gonna take a
quick break. You're gonna listento some ads unless you're on the
member feed. And when we return,we're gonna talk about a few of
the things that have happenedsince the last time you heard

(01:15):
from us. Get hype.
I've got five stories for youthis week. Scientists, those
freaks absolutely blasted humancells with five g signals to see
if there are any adverse effectsand folks, this is gonna knock
your socks off. There are not.This according to a paper

(01:35):
published in the Proceedings ofthe National Academy of Sciences
of the United States ofAmerica's Nexus Journal. Gizmodo
reports that quote, researchersexposed two types of human skin
cells called fibroblasts andkeratinocytes to five g
electromagnetic waves at twentyseven and forty point five
gigahertz frequencies withvarying levels of intensity.

(01:57):
Ultimately, the report saystheir results show with great
clarity that in human skin cellseven under worst case
conditions, no significantchanges in gene expression or
methylation patterns areobserved after exposure. So no
x-ray vision or lizard skinmutations. I'm sort of
disappointed, honestly. Leadingup to the recent Canadian

(02:21):
election, the TorontoMetropolitan University's social
media lab discovered theexistence of what they're
calling chameleon ads onFacebook, where scammers will
set up a fake Facebook pagelinking to a fake website and
submit seemingly anodyne ads forapproval to the platform. Once
given the green light, scammerswill then switch out the

(02:41):
entirety of the content,replacing harmless if fraudulent
advertisements with, you guessedit, crypto scams, which have
recently featured deepfakesinvolving Canadian politicians.
Scammers, the lab says, willoften switch the content of the
ads back and forth multipletimes, making them harder to
track down. When the scam adsare finally taken down, the lab

(03:03):
says, Facebook will delete themand their associated pages,
which makes research andtherefore prevention more
difficult. The lab calls on Metato better archive scam ads and
their associated pages aftertaking them down so that
researchers can work to preventfurther fraud. Twenty three and

(03:23):
Me has sold to the multibilliondollar New York based
biotechnology company Regeneronfor $256,000,000, 4 0 4 media
reports, which means the geneticdata for the roughly 17,000,000
people who used the company'sservices is worth about $15 a
pop. No word yet on what exactlyRegeneron plans to do with this

(03:44):
vast repository of genetic info,but they have said they expect
23 and me will, quote, continueall consumer genome services
uninterrupted.
In a statement on the sale,Regeneron writes, Regeneron
intends to ensure compliancewith 23andMe's consumer privacy
policies and applicable lawswith respect to the treatment of
customer data. As the successfulbidder, Regeneron is prepared to

(04:05):
detail the intended use ofcustomer data and the privacy
programs and security controlsin place for review by a court
appointed independent customerprivacy ombudsman and other
interested parties. And finally,COSA is back. We talked about

(04:27):
the kids online safety act inepisode 22, don't panic, from
November of last year. It faileda house vote then, but co
sponsors Marsha Blackburn ofTennessee and Richard Blumenthal
of Connecticut have reintroducedit.
The bill nominally requiresplatforms to more effectively
behave in the interest of kidsusing their services, but in
fact could enable politicaltargeting and the removal of

(04:50):
resources crucial to groups liketransgender teens. This is a
complicated issue and a bigstory larger than we have time
for in the news, which is why inthis episode, in our
interstitials, we're talkingagain with Avery Dame Griff, the
historian and lecturer fromepisode 22, about the return of

(05:11):
Xhosa and what you need to knowabout its reintroduction. That's
the news I have for you thisweek. First, how platforms ate
the Internet with the exceptionof hentai, apparently. Then,
will the tariffs come for yourlittle treats?
Spoiler alert, they alreadyhave. But now in our
interstitials, Hans talks withAvery Dame Griff for our first

(05:35):
edition of Ask An Expert aboutthe Kids Online Safety Act.

Hans Buetow (05:52):
Avery Damegriff, thank you so much for joining us
for the first ever ask anexpert. You truly are an expert.
You are a lecturer in women,gender, and sexuality studies at
Gonzaga University. You alsofounded and you serve as the
primary curator for QueerDigital History Project, which
is an independent communityhistory project, and it catalogs

(06:15):
and archives pre twenty tenLGBTQ spaces online. You also
maintain the archival Internetvideo index, which indexes video
footage of pre Internet andearly Internet communication
platforms.
Your award winning book, the tworevolutions, a history of the
Transgender Internet from NYUPress in 2023, it tracks how the
Internet transformed genderpolitical organizing from the

(06:37):
nineteen eighties to thecontemporary moment. In 2022,
you were selected to be a publichumanities fellow for the
Humanities Washington,developing a series of
interactive online exhibits,teaching guides, and workshops
about the history of LGBTQ pluscommunities in online spaces.
And last autumn, you and I bothworked together on an episode,

(07:00):
that helped us, and I think ouraudience, understand the moral
panics that are driving the pushfor COSA, the Kids Online Safety
Act. Avery, COSA is back in thenews, so we wanted to come to
you and ask you, our COSAexpert, is this bill gonna make
kids safe online?

Avery Dame-Griff (07:19):
Nope.

Asking what comes after platforms is a bit like
asking what comes after cities.They define our landscape so
much that I struggle to picturea horizon that doesn't feature
their hulking shape. If notplatforms as they are now, per
se, then surely we'll continueon inside their hollowed out
shells, dystopic squatters inthe ruins of the old Internet.

(08:06):
To misquote Frederic Jamison,it's a bit easier to imagine the
end of the Internet than the endof platforms. I ask this because
it feels, to run the risk ofoverstating it by putting it
very plainly, like the age ofthe platform is ending and has
maybe even ended.
Facebook, x, Instagram, Airbnb,Uber, etcetera, they all came in

(08:30):
a short amount of time to definemy understanding at least of the
global network. Even from acritical perspective, realizing
that they and the Internet arenot one in the same, it became
more difficult than it shouldhave been for me to think of the
Internet outside of thetotalizing infrastructural ideal

(08:51):
of the platform and platformsthemselves. They began to feel a
bit like the AOL and theCompuServe of my youth, walled
gardens enclosing much largerand freer territory. But what
once felt ubiquitous andfrankly, untoppable is now the

(09:12):
subject of increasing, thoughinsufficient regulation, and
more significantly, publicsuspicion. And rightfully so,
given that this sub era of theplatform Internet has been
defined by social, economic,political, and emotional
turmoil, which if it can't beblamed on the platforms

(09:33):
themselves, portions of thatblame can certainly be placed at
the feet of the people who runthem.
Do these circumstances predictthe demise of the platform? It
has been perhaps difficult toimagine an Internet without
them, but now can we? Must we?What could we stand to gain in

(09:56):
the demise of the platform is aquestion that may help answer if
there is some chance to thepossibility of its
disappearance. Let's considerwhat we lost in the platform's
rise to prominence and what wevalue about it so that it was
allowed to become the organizingprinciple of the last two

(10:18):
decades online.
Along the way, we're gonna talkto journalist Morgan Sung

Morgan Sung (10:24):
I I do love to cover the weird.

And academic Aurelie Petit

Aurelie Petit (10:28):
It's a it's a very European perspective on
media.

About how things got this way and whether they
think there's any chance they'llchange.

Like, the platform is just a middleman,
which would be a good definitionof platform. It's like a
middleman for content between aproducer and, you know, a
consumer.

I don't know if a world without platforms is
possible, and maybe that's justme being, you know, really
myopic because I've I've onlyknown a world with platforms.

In a 2010 New Media and Society paper titled
The Politics of Platforms,researcher and communications
professor Tarlatan Gillespiehelped solidify what exactly a
platform is. He lays out foursenses of the word platform to
ask how each applies to theeponymous piece of Internet
infrastructure. The senses arecomputational, architectural,

(11:28):
figurative, and political. We'lltake each of those in turn. X,
Flickr, eBay, etcetera are aboveall and first pieces of
software.
Quote, infrastructure thatsupports the design and use of
particular applications, endquote. Like Macintosh and PC are
platforms so too are WhatsApp,Snapchat, and Weibo. They are

(11:52):
next, quote, human builtstructures. They're elevated, if
not actually, then conceptuallysuch that one may be better
noticed, better reach anaudience perhaps. Platforms are
then also a starting point forfurther building or growth or
action on the part of developersand on the part of users.

(12:15):
And finally, they are political.They define or comprise core
beliefs from which a wholeconstellation of positions or
assumptions follow. So whathappens when we put all this
together? Tech companies formsomething between a product and
a place with an aim, a piece ofsoftware that masquerades as a

(12:38):
public space where multipledisparate groups meet around
some collective, though oftenasymmetric purpose that is
usually economic. A platform isa place for people to connect
and share and learn andentertain, but it is only those
things unceasingly as long as itis also a place to connect

(12:58):
brands, people, advertisers,data brokers, and increasingly
governments, their stooges, andagents.
To render this as succinctly aswe can, a platform is a mutable
programmable interface whichelevates some portion of users,
though that may or may not bethe most public facing group,

(13:19):
thus allowing the formation orparticipation in a hierarchy
which creates or recreates apolitical order. This takes us
back to the last of Gillespie'splatform senses. They define
some core set of politicalbeliefs. What might those
beliefs be for, say, Reddit,Pinterest, Threads, Discord,

(13:44):
Tumblr? And having decided onthose, what sorts of rules,
policies, actions, or inactionsreflect those beliefs?
And how does this help create orrecreate a political order that
exists in a much larger senseoutside the bounds of the
platform itself? The answers tothese questions fall under a

(14:08):
distinct area of considerationknown as platform governance. It
feels safe to say that the mostwell known tool in the belt of
platform governance ismoderation. Decisions made

(14:30):
concerning what is allowed to beposted and what is not,
according sometimes to terms ofservice, to community
guidelines, and so on. But in alot of cases, according to
vibes, it is a perennial storyonline to have been deleted,
suspended, banned, limited forposts which pass in some

(14:52):
circumstances, but not others.
There is the ban hammer, butthere is also the vibe axe.
Charting these vibes, lookingcarefully at things which should
trigger moderation but don't, orwhich do but it's unclear why,
can help us in the aim offiguring out what kind of world
those designing and runningplatforms imagine, what sort of

(15:16):
society they desire or feel fortheir own continued existence
they must create. One contenttype that can help us look
deeply into this vibe abyss ishentai, which means something
more broad in Japanese than itdoes in English, but which for
most of our audience willindicate a genre of media at the

(15:36):
edges of both pornography andillustration or animation. I
talked with Morgan Tseng aboutthis, about what we can learn
about platforms through theirtreatment of hentai in the West
and what we can learn abouthentai through its treatment by
platforms. Morgan is ajournalist and culture writer
who covers all things weird,wild, and Internet in many

(16:00):
places, including on her podcastwith KQED called Close All Tabs
with whom we have collaboratedfor this segment.
The first thing I asked her justto get on the same page is what
is hentai exactly?

Hentai is in Japan just under the umbrella of anime
and manga and video games, whereit's just animated. Anything
animated is anime, manga, videogames. Hentai just means that
it's sexually explicit. Andhentai occupies this weird space
in the content ecosystem becauseit's not considered porn. It's

(16:38):
very rarely prioritized on pornsites, but it's also too
explicit for mainstreamstreaming platforms.
So it's kind of shunned.

Hentai doesn't really have a home on the
internet in the West. There'sPornhub, where it was the number
one search term for the pastfour years running, and yet
remains a second class contenttype in ways we'll discuss in a
moment. There's DeviantArt, sortof. There are a lot of pirate
sites, and there's FAKU,arguably the single platform

(17:10):
that made a go at being thewestern Internet's go to hentai
platform. But that proved reallytough.

You know, I was talking to Jacob Grady and he's
a CEO of Faku. Faku is asubscription platform for hentai
manga. They tried to launch ahentai anime platform and
ultimately could not pull itoff. Part of it was licensing
issues, like their licensesexpired. It's it's very
complicated and expensive tolicense anime versus licensing

(17:38):
manga, but a lot of it waspirating.
He was like, we just can'tcompete with pirates.

Why? Why? If something is so popular, has it
proven so difficult to platform?At a moment that platforming
things is what we do on theInternet. It is the hammer of a
network lousy with nails.
We talked to Arly Petty aboutthis. Arly is a researcher of

(18:06):
animation and technology and PhDcandidate in the film studies
department at ConcordiaUniversity Montreal. She wrote
the 2024 paper, the hentaistreaming platform wars,
published in porn studies, andhad this to say on the uphill
battle hentai has had findingits own platform and running
afoul of governance on moregeneral use platforms.

You're taking a media and you're making it
entered like a new ecology andand also a new infrastructure.
Like, for example, you make afilm, like you're a filmmaker
and you're gonna make a film,and then you want your film to
go on YouTube. Well, suddenlythere's a lot of restrictions
because YouTube in itself is notjust a platform for you to go

(18:52):
and like scream at the town andscream at your fellow citizen.
It's actually like its own spacethat is its own policies, its
term of uses, its own like, youknow, if it's a platform where
people can leave comments, ithas its own sociability. So you
kind of have to make up forthis.

Animation has many platforms, of course. But
when the animation ispornographic, it doesn't fit
within the restrictions,policies, and rules of those
platforms. There's a governancemismatch. And pornography has a

lot of

platforms, but when it's animated, it doesn't
fit within the restrictions,policies, and rules of those
platforms. There's a governancemismatch. Take, for instance,
something as base as identityverification, which is required
on Pornhub both to post contentand to make the most money from

(19:48):
that content. Here's Morganagain.

Pornhub, to monetize your content on
Pornhub, if it's animated, youactually have to send, like,
videos of yourself, like,animating and drawing the
content to

prove

that it's you. Yeah. To prove that it's you.

Like, like time lapse work in progress.

Pretty much. Yeah. You have to show that you're
actually, like, making thecontent to be able to, like,
verify it and monetize it. Andif you're monetized, if you're
verified, you can like opt intothis additional level of like
protection where if you're goingto upload your content
exclusively to Pornhub, you gethigher revenue shares and
they'll like send out copyrightinfringement notices on your

(20:28):
behalf. But animated contentcan't do that because they can't
verify that someone else isactually uploading the content,
not the original creator.

Orly summarizes an aspect of this difficulty.
Animated pornography, she says

Doesn't answer to this logic of live action
governance. It's not about realpeople. You cannot ask for
biometrics data for a a cartooncharacter. You cannot ask for
consent. So, like, that's wherestruggle is attention.
Not everything can be platformedor not everything can be
platform everywhere.

And in fact, this unwillingness to answer to the
logic of live action governanceis part of Hentai's deep
history.

I mean, even hentai itself, like Mhmm. A lot of it
is so weird because it was toget around Japan's censorship
laws. Like, the OG tentacleporn, the creator fully
admitted, like, no, they'retentacles because you can't show
penetration with, like,genitalia without getting
censored in Japan. But if you'reusing tentacles like or

(21:34):
monstrous appendages, what'sstopping you?

The difficulty that animated pornography has in
finding its own platform is theresult multiple compounding
issues. There are culturalforces like the conflict that
surrounds explicit mediagenerally and conservative
groups working to ban, restrictaccess to, make it difficult to
make a living from any kind ofpornography, They do this by

(21:59):
pressuring both Internetplatforms and payment processors
used by those platforms likeOnlyFans and Patreon. Then there
are legal and compliance andregulatory challenges. It forced
at the state and federal levelswith half measure laws like
SESTA FAFSA, as well as, again,by the businesses and industries
required to make and sustain aliving in The United States.

(22:22):
Think like banks and stuff,sometimes who have their own
ideas of governance and many ofwhom are themselves attempting
to remain compliant withunclear, unevenly enforced
regulation.
This, of course, creates anenvironment where an army of
pirates flourish. And we haven'teven gotten to the further

(22:42):
ambivalence that surroundshentai specifically, a largely
foreign media type thatstruggles to find a legitimate
place of its own online in theWest in the age of platforms
because there's no governancestructure into which it neatly
fits. How do we chart thesevibes? Unsurprisingly, it seems

(23:06):
media which exists or is pushedtowards the edges will be kept
there and won't be proactivelyfurnished with accommodation
regardless even if the audiencefor that media is sizable. It's
hard to know in which directioneven to be cynical.
The promise of profitability,which is great, is not enough to
overcome the subalternity, thesuppressedness, the

(23:28):
undergroundedness of this media.As predicted, the political
order of the world at large isin some ways created by, but in
other ways reinforced byplatforms. So why keep trying?
Why even attempt to platformthis work? Why not forego this

(23:50):
hassle altogether?
Not everything can be platformedeverywhere, Aurelie says. Maybe
not everything can beplatformed, period. The answer
to this is what one gets with aplatform.

I think people will always use these platforms to
drive audiences to places wheretheir work is safe, whether
that's physical media, whetherthat's, you know, these kind of
paywalled walled gardens fortheir content. I don't think a
lot of people have the theopportunity to opt out of these
platforms. Or I don't think thatthey have that kind of safety

(24:25):
net to totally opt out. But Ithink that a lot of artists are
just making it work by, youknow, trying to have as many
avenues for attention for theirwork as possible, and then
having like a safe place fortheir work to actually exist.

The platform here becomes an island, not something
which infinitely extends, not aplace from which to build and
expand, but a place with anundefeatable limit, a bounded
territory that is nonethelessconnected as all things are
online. What platforms offer isconvenience above all else.

(25:05):
Everything under one earl, anaudience, communication,
community, and sometimes ifyou're lucky, a paycheck. That
is until your own politics orthose of your work challenge or
transgress the political orderthe platform attempts to uphold.
Media at the edges may push tothe center, but only so far
until the winds of governance,the tides of vibe push them back

(25:28):
to the periphery.
This is the constant dance ofmoderation that I think we all
feel online even if we are notfans of or creators of this kind
of media.

How can you be as normative as you can be so
nobody is gonna look too closeinto you? I was talking to this
content creator who suddenly,yeah, Patreon decided that his
content was too problematic. Onestep too far, but instead of
having a conversation with him,they just cancel his accounts
and it's his entire income thatdisappear. As long as we don't

(26:06):
have like official platform thatare actually have a model to pay
content creators who doanimation, you know, or like
partnership with studios. It'sit's always gonna like Paris,
Paris is always gonna be a veryattractive form of it.

So what comes after the platform? It could
always be more platformsiterating on the design until
asymmetrical aims and theeconomic incentives balance out
to form a governance paradigmthat doesn't or doesn't
unilaterally, recreate existingpolitical hierarchies. Or maybe
after platforms, we'll find whatwas here before, the rest of the

(26:48):
Internet, reached via abreadcrumb trail of links and
hints and suggestions whereverpeople congregate, platforms and
not. I think here about the ideathat post modernism names not an
end to modernism, but aconfrontation with the problems
of modernism. Post meaningcrisis of, not after.

(27:14):
And so perhaps a post platforminternet names an epoch where
there is a wide scalerecognition of the shortcomings
of platforms while they continueto persist. In a way, the
difficulty of hentai finding itsown platform provides a kind of
hope to any and every otherartist, writer, media maker,

(27:39):
person, people everywhere whosework and lives run afoul of only
ever increasingly skittishplatforms, kowtowing to brands,
advertisers, and governments.

So I went into this hentai episode thinking that I
would be telling the story aboutlike some weird curvy dudes and
their tentacle porn. What Iactually found on talking to
people involved in the industryand also fans is that there is
actually, like, a real love forexperimentation in hentai. And a
lot of that is because a lot ofpeople felt very othered. A lot

(28:14):
of people are queer and didn'tfit into the mold anyway.

Yeah.

I was really surprised, finding out how queer
and how provocative hentaireally is, which makes sense. I
mean, queer art is always goingto be provocative. This industry
is more than just some dudestrying to get off to cartoon
girls. It's really it it reallyis a space to experiment and
explore like your relationshipto the world around you.

To hear more about this side of the story,
please go listen to the05/21/2025 episode of close all
tabs, which you can find atnpr.org, k q e d Org, and
wherever you get your podcasts,just search for close all tabs.
I talked to Morgan in moredetail about the regulatory

(29:12):
environment which keeps explicitmedia suppressed and she talks
at length about hentai'scultural position. It's a great
episode. Please go listen.Thanks to Morgan Sung,
Christopher Agusa, Maya Cueva,and Jen Chen for co producing
this segment with us andinviting me to talk with them on
close all tabs.
It was a huge pleasure andthanks also to Arly Petit for

(29:35):
chatting with us. We'll putlinks to her work in the show
notes. There were easily a dozenor more ideas that didn't make
its way into this segment. Ifeel like we've just barely

(29:56):
sketched an outline of what'spossible to be said here. Like,
didn't get to, how does theposition of being a hentai
artist online right now possiblypredict the position of all
digital creators in a postplatform Internet?
How do the governance structuresof platforms inform or shape
wider culture, if they are infact the powerful arbiters of

(30:19):
popularity that so many of themclaim to be and that so many of
us, I think, give them credit asbeing. What does creative
community look like on aninternet defined by separate but
connected websites versusplatforms where, you know, if
not everybody, then bigcommunities of people gather. I

(30:39):
would love to hear your thoughtson the post platform Internet
and what explicit media mightpredict of its arrival. Related
to these ideas or not, you canemail us, leave us a voice memo,
all the ways you can get aholdof us are in the show notes.

So Avery Dame Griff, is this new version of
the bill meaningfully differentfrom the one that died last fall
in which supporters said itwould protect children by
forcing platforms to deal with,quote, unquote, harms that they
faced? But critics were sayingof it that it would have given
overly broad license forpolitically motivated targeting

(31:51):
of marginalized groups. Have theauthors addressed those
criticisms at all in this newbill?

Not really.

Georgia Hampton (32:17):
What do you think is the oldest piece of
clothing you have?

Boone Ashworth (32:21):
Oh my god. That's such a good question. I
have a pair of pants. I have apair of pants that I inherited
from my grandfather when hepassed away. And they're a pair
of perfectly good jeans and Iwore them a whole bunch.
And then they got a tear in themAnd I have sewn them back up and

(32:42):
patched them. And it's a littleunsightly, but I still wear them
when I'm not, like, going towork or anything because it's a
it there is sentimental value inthat pair of pants. So I and I
don't know how long he had thembefore I started wearing them,
but it they're they're they'repretty old.

That's Boone Ashworth. He's a staff writer at
Wired's Gear Desk. A lot of hisreporting covers sustainability
and repairability, and it'sthose two things that made me
want to talk to him for thissegment. I've been curious how
the ongoing tariff situation inThe United States is going to
affect the way we buy clothingonline. And by that, I really

(33:27):
mean on specific Chinese basedsites like Shein.

Tiktok Clip (33:30):
This Black Friday, shop crazy low prices on Shein
and see why Shein is America'stop fashion destination.

From the jump, the Trump administration has
been constantly moving thegoalposts on its tariff plans on
Chinese goods entering The US.Back in February, the goal was a
10% tariff across the board. InMarch, it changed to 20%. On
what Trump ridiculously calledLiberation Day on April 2, his

(34:04):
administration tacked on anadditional 34% tax on Chinese
products. Then, a few weekslater, the administration
announced that it will actuallyimpose a 125% tariff on Chinese
products effective immediately.
As of me writing this segment,there's tariffs ranging from

(34:26):
that 125% to 145%, or a packagefee of a hundred dollars. But
that's also going to change onJune 1 when the package fee is
set to double to $200.

We've done a lot of reporting here on Wired about
how just it's going to be, youknow, months later is when these
effects are really going tostart kicking in. I mean, you're
you're seeing price increasesnow across the board. But it
will be a bit before, you know,shelves are empty if we get to
that point. But we are rapidlyapproaching it.

And as these changes happen, a lot of Chinese
companies have tried to swervethe worst of these tariffs in a
few ways, such as shippingproducts like iPhones to India
in order to get a more favorablerate, or relying on what's
already stored in US basedfacilities.

All of these retailers have large stockpiles,
like months worth of stockpilesof whatever products they're
trying to sell that they'reprobably gonna be able to go
through for a little bit oftime. I think as we get closer
to the end of the year is whenwe're gonna start really seeing
things not be able to beproduced in quite the same way

(35:39):
if tariffs are still at thelevels they are.

For consumers, the vibe in response to the
tariffs, at least on my feeds,has been buy now before it's too
late. And a lot of the panicI've been interested in centers
specifically around fast fashionbrands.

I'm not typically one to crash out on TikTok, but
what do you mean I have to pay$277.90 in duties on an outfit
that's a hundred and $70.

The tariffs are shaking and I'm really not
kidding.

I get it that we're not supposed to shop at Sheen
anymore. I get it. But where amI supposed to go for cheap
clothes now? Where am I gonnago? Amazon?
Is that much better? I can'tshop at Zara. I can't shop at
Revolve all the time. It is tooexpensive. So where do I go just
for some cheap cute clothes?
Make it make sense.

Shein and other budget sites like it, such as
TEMU, have previously benefitedfrom the de minimis exception, a
tariff loophole that allowsgoods that cost less than $800
to come into The US duty free.And that's great for a brand
like Shein, where you canbasically buy anything for a
price that is unbelievably low.Like, unnervingly, I am begging

(37:03):
you to think about why this isso cheap in the first place low.
The cheapness of Sheehan'sclothing has also made it
virtually essential to theonline trend cycle, especially
during the peak of micro trends.With prices so cheap, you can
really try on whatever style isin right now without worrying

(37:24):
about investing in clothing thatmight be out of fashion in a
matter of weeks.
Want to put together a mob wifeaesthetic fit? Great. Because
you can buy a floor lengthbodycon dress in cheetah print
on Shein with a purse to matchfor the low, low price of
$18.99. If I type in officesiren into the Shein search bar,

(37:46):
one of the top results is a$15.23 2 piece set titled,
Cosmina two Pieces ElegantOutfit for Business Casual Women
Office Siren Style Similar toInfluencer Design, coquette old
money style sexy. There is nopresumption that the clothes you

(38:07):
order from Shein will be highquality or even necessarily look
like the pictures online.
The point is the price.Regardless of the trend du jour,
Shein has something for you at aprice so unimaginably affordable
that it almost feels ridiculousnot to buy it. And if something

(38:28):
falls apart, you can just buyanother pair of $9 Palazzo pants
and call it a day. It encouragesa shopping experience that is
all about buying new, buyingcheap, and buying a lot.

The whole promise of these sites was, you
know, buying something soincredibly cheap and feeling
like you, you know, shoppinglike a billionaire. You're
you're getting these incredibledeals. I think if that goes away
a little bit, then just thatsentiment, that feeling of, oh,
I'm getting this crazy deal forall of these clothes will go
away. And then I think that kindof just like takes away a little

(39:02):
bit of the value prop for siteslike this. So I don't I I I
think that prices might notskyrocket all that much quite
yet, But I don't know if theyneed to get all that much higher
before people start to feel thepinch a little bit more.

And if that happens, where will people go?

You know, back Amazon. I mean, maybe we maybe
we all pull a Macklemore and goto the thrift shop. Sorry.

But I mean, yeah, that is kind of what's
happening on some corners of theInternet. Beyond your brick and
mortar vintage stores, resaleapps like Depop and Poshmark
have been exploding inpopularity. Last year, Depop
grossed $85,000,000 in revenue.And you can actually buy a lot

(39:55):
of Sheehan clothing on Depop.And it's still, like, single
digits price point cheap.
So sure. Yeah. We should all bebuying secondhand more in
general. It's usually moreeconomical. It's a nice way to
avoid contributing to theoverproduction of new clothing.
It's also a much moreintentional way of shopping. On

(40:17):
Shein, using their website islike scrolling TikTok, an
endless list of garments thatyou can just page through
forever, add to cart, andpurchase without really thinking
about what you're even buying.It creates this online shopping
landscape that overvalues theperformance of having stuff at

(40:37):
the cost of any individual pieceof clothing. A single pair of
pants isn't special in thisecosystem. Having the ability to
buy 12 pairs of pants is thethrill you get here.
Volume is the name of the game.The people I saw worrying about
the possible price hikes onShein were overwhelmingly people

(40:59):
who make haul content. And theemotional payoff of making those
videos doesn't come from findingthat one dress you love. It's
about having this huge bag ofstuff that's trendy right now
because that's also crucial tothis performance based shopping
experience. On Shein, you canbuy an entire closet's worth of

(41:23):
office siren inspired clothingat the drop of a hat, instantly
cementing you as an authority onthat trend or whatever trend is
hot right now.
And trendy in this context justmeans single use clothing
destined to go out of style andbe doomed for the donation pile.
More clothes for the trashisland in the Pacific Ocean. So

(41:50):
what happens is this feedbackloop of trends and content
around shopping that is built onthis foundation where clothing
is just as important to you ashow much of it you're able to
get. But with the incomingtariffs threatening to disrupt
this ecosystem of masspurchasing, I think something's
gotta give. I wanna answer thequestion I asked Boone at the

(42:16):
top of this segment.
What's the oldest piece ofclothing you own? I do have some
hand me downs that are olderthan I am, but the oldest item
that I bought are a pair ofplain black Doc Marten leather
boots. I got them when I was 19,and they're perfect. They've
traveled around the world withme. They've been waterlogged and

(42:38):
caked with mud and dust and leftscarred and nicked by who even
knows what.
I've replaced the laces multipletimes. And honestly, I should
probably do that again soon.This winter, I finally resoled
them. They're my favorite shoes.They carry a lot of sentimental
weight for me.
And with the deal's forwardmentality of mass ordering from

(43:01):
Shein, you just won't get that.There's no sentimentality there.
And I just wonder if in themidst of these conversations
about tariffs and the changingcosts of everything, if what
might be worth looking at is howwe emotionally relate to the
clothing we buy. Or frankly, theclothes we already have in the

(43:25):
first place. So this dovetailsquite nicely into something
you've written about before,which is the right to repair.
Could you give me a sense ofwhat that factors in to dealing

(43:46):
with the ongoing tariffsituation?

Yeah. So so the right to repair is sort of the
broad term for a generalmovement of people who want it
to be easier to fix the stuffthat you already own. Cars are a
great example of this. If yourwindshield breaks, you don't
replace the whole car. You getto replace just the windshield.
And, yes, that costs money, butit's cheaper than buying a brand

(44:10):
new vehicle. So the idea is kindof having that, for all the
devices that we own, whetherit's computers, smartphones, you
know, smart watches, heck, evenclothes.

When I resold my Docs, it wasn't cheap, but it
was definitely cheaper thanbuying a new pair of boots and
breaking them in. Plus, I couldnever replace them because, I
mean, I did spend a lot of timebreaking them in, but also
because they're special. I don'twant to replace them. Following

(44:41):
the conversation around thetariffs and clothing in
particular, I've been wonderingif repairing instead of buying
could become, I mean, the trenddu jour. Or better yet, break us
out of the trend dominatedshopping cycle entirely.
But that also goes completelyagainst the kind of shopping

(45:03):
that Sheehan and its cohort ofsites have built their entire
empires upon.

You know, I guess what value you find in the
clothes that you are wearingwill will change based on, you
know, how much new stuff you'reable to buy, what the options
are. And I also think it's gonnadepend on the product too.
Right? It's gonna depend on ifit's something that is easily
repairable. Something that youalready got cheap might not be

(45:31):
the best quality and so it mightjust not last longer.
And that's that's the problemwith something like that.

That's the thing. Right? Like, is it even
worth it to try to mend yourpaper thin miniskirt you got for
$3 when you could just buyanother one, even for a slightly
more expensive price. And that'sthe lure of Shein. Right?
It's so easy. It's so cheap.It's like breathing. You don't

(45:57):
have to think about it. But I dothink there's merit here in
thinking beyond what a site cansell us.
And instead, consider how weinteract with what we buy in a
way that isn't about the promiseof volume, but instead the
promise of longevity. Wherevalue is not determined by how

(46:19):
much you buy, it's about havingan active relationship with the
clothing that you have. Whetheryou buy it or got it in a
clothing swap or had it handeddown to you by a parent, looking
at clothing through a lens oflongevity encourages you to
think about what garments youactually want to come along with
you as you live your life. It'sabout what clothing has real

(46:43):
emotional value to you. Now, ifI bought that Cosmina two pieces
elegant outfits for businesscasual women suit set from Shein
and the stitching fell apart, Iwouldn't care about it because I
know I never cared that muchabout it anyway.
But if my beloved pair of Docsneeded new laces, I wouldn't

(47:05):
think twice about replacingthem. If the leather started to
crack, I would learn what kindof wax I needed to condition it,
and I would do that becausethey're important to me. They're
worth mending. And listen, Igenuinely don't know if I really

(47:26):
believe that the tariffs aresomehow going to magic away
these fast fashion heavy hittersthat openly use sweatshop labor
and produce clothing that isdestined for a landfill. That
just doesn't seem realistic.
But I do think that right now,we have a chance to look more
closely at our online shoppingecosystem and ask ourselves if

(47:48):
it's even working for us. Buyingmore and more clothing chains
you to a trend cycle that isalways moving faster than you.
In that kind of system, more isjust never going to be enough.
You are never going to catch up.And maybe it's time to just stop

(48:11):
chasing.

There's a lot about our society that makes you
feel like you are not goodenough because you don't have
the newest thing. Right? I mean,that's just that's just
capitalism. That's just how thethe system works. And, you know,
sometimes they're right.
Sometimes you do need a newerthing. It's okay. But also, I
think this gets us into a spacewhere if we have to deal with

(48:36):
these increases in prices andall these tariffs as nuts as
this whole thing is, if we cankind of take control of it in a
way by keeping control of fixingour own stuff, I think that's a
more positive way to look at itthan just kind of wallowing in
the anxiety as I was doingearlier, you know.

Boone, thank you so much for chatting with
me. Where else can people findmore of your work?

You can find my work on wired.com. If you got a
tip for me, hit me up at boondot ten on signal.

Before I go, I'd love to ask you the question
that started segment. What's theoldest piece of clothing you
own? What's worth keepingaround? The links for how to
reach us are in the show notes.

Avery,

what does the reintroduction of COSA, the kids
online safety act, what does itmean?

Well, COSA is basically just as bad a bill as
the last time it was introduced,and it still likely won't
effectively solve any of theproblems it claims to address.
These are things that arecomplicated. They're
infrastructural and socialissues, and they require a lot
more than government regulation,but especially not regulation

(50:39):
that looks like COSA. Becauseeven with some of the changes
that the sponsor co sponsorshave added, other political
actors like the HeritageFoundation have already made it
clear that they aim to use thisregulation as a way and quoting
from them to guard kids against,again, quoting, from the harms
of transgender content. And thisis an argument made by Evan

(51:03):
Greer of of fight from thefuture, and I agree with it.
As she's pointed out, this focuson kind of content neutral
elements we see in COSA, thingslike algorithmic
recommendations, they can stillbe used to because the bill
focuses on it to restrict accessto a variety of content,
including LGBTQ content on thegrounds that this content makes

(51:26):
youth depressed or anxious. I'malso sort of concerned about the
possibilities that platformswill just engage in anticipatory
compliance again by making itharder for youth to encounter
anything that could fall underthis duty of care provision or
sort of, like, trigger any ofthe elements of it. And we see
this, like, with recentrollbacks of protections related

(51:47):
to sexuality and gender identityby YouTube and meta platforms
suggests that they're willing toshift their policies and
practices in ways that aredemonstrably worse for their
queer and trans users, but willappease those in power.
Ultimately, COSA doesn't solvethe problems it claims to. It's

(52:08):
likely just gonna become aweapon to push LGBTQ folks
further out of public life.

Even if it fails though

Mhmm. Do you

think this is the last time that we see
legislation like this proposed?

Oh, absolutely not.

That is the show we have for you this week. We're
gonna be back here in the mainfeed on Wednesday, June 4. I'm
gonna keep it simple. $4 amonth, you can become a
Neverpost member and that helpsus continue to make the show. Do
we give you things for that $4?
Yes. To be honest, the mediathat you get in return pales in
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(53:30):
Neverpost's producers are AudreyEvans, Georgia Hampton, and the
mysterious doctor first name,last name. Our senior producer
is Hans Buto. Our executiveproducer is Jason Oberholzer.
And the show's host, that's me,is Mike Grignetta. Luminary of

(53:52):
the systems of pleasure,toddlers' tea time in the Noah's
Ark.
Fog, frost, and thaw for clothesof velvet, for horses.
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(54:13):
purpose, forth to fresh fieldsand pastures new. Excerpt of A
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