Ohhhhh I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Episode Transcript
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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 Tuesday, 06/17/2025 at
09:06AM eastern, and we have abop for you this week. Georgia
talks with Tim Lawrence,professor of cultural studies at
the University of East Londonand author of multiple books

(00:32):
about the history of dancing,DJs, and nightlife about why no
one dances in the club anymore.I bet you can guess.
Then the glorious return of whatis going on here? Where the
Neverpost team brings in poststo the group and asks, yes, that
is right. What is going on here?And also sign offs. But right

(00:59):
now, we're gonna take a quickbreak.
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Give me fuel, give me fire, giveme that which I desire as long
as it's five stories this week.WhatsApp is getting ads and
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Channel owners will now be ableto offer subscriptions in
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(01:46):
and ad placements the StateDepartment of the United States
of America offers up for a fewbucks a month. Disney, assuming
mid journey, the mouse andUniversal are filing suit
against the generative AIstartup claiming it trained
models on archives of work ownedby both studios. Reuters reports
that quote, Horatio Gutierrez,Disney's executive vice

(02:09):
president and chief legalofficer said in a statement, we
are bullish on the promise of AItechnology and optimistic about
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Your Apple Watch is calling thecops while you're moshing. Last

(02:33):
weekend, calls to localemergency services doubled
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like Sleep Token and Kornlargely because the activities
of attendees triggered theirsmart watches crash detection
feature normally used to alertfirst responders to car
collisions and serious falls.According to the Guardian,

(02:54):
quote, police are asking fans tostay online if their device
makes an accidental 999 call orto answer callbacks made by
emergency teams to let us knowyou're safe. TikTok can
influence your opinion ofpoliticians. A new paper
published in Social Media andSociety titled Thirst Traps and
Quick Cuts, the effects ofTikTok edits on evaluations of

(03:17):
politicians finds that quote,thirst trap edits cause an
increase in perception ofpolitician attractiveness and
that badass edits improveoverall evaluation of Donald
Trump, but not Joe Biden.
The study was conducted in Juneof last year ahead of Biden's
exit from the presidential race.We argue, the author's right,

(03:39):
that the proliferation of thetechnologies that make edits
possible represents asignificant shift in the
practice of democratic politics.To date, a primary concern
around digital media is theproliferation of misinformation.
Although facticity is animportant element of digital
media and to democraticpolitics, we argue that it is
more central to textualcommunication than to images or

(04:02):
particularly video. We study anovel form of digital media that
is manifestly not aboutfacticity, end quote.
And finally, Nexus Mods waspurchased by Chosen, an
organization that Eurogamerdescribes as a quote, growth
focused gaming company. I don'tknow what that means, but their

(04:24):
website says, we partner withfounders to help scale what
they've built, amplifying theirimpact, supporting their team
and culture, and ensuring thebusiness thrives for the long
term. Nexus Mods, a hub for gamemodding resources, has been run
by Robin Dark One Scott for morethan two decades. In a statement
on the site's mod blog, Scottwrites, the strain of being

(04:45):
responsible for the behemoth Icreated has taken its toll. The
stress of the job has been aregular source of anxiety and
stress related health issues.
I realized that I have beenburning out and this started to
have an impact on my staff andnexus mods as a whole. So I
firmly believe that the bestthing for the future of Nexus
Mods is for me to step aside andbring in new leadership to steer
the business forward withrenewed energy to make Nexus

(05:08):
Mods the modding community weall truly deserve, end quote.
Nexus members immediately begandigging into the past of the new
management only to findendorsements of both
cryptocurrency and NFTs whichthe new owners have since said
will not be forced upon themodding community. Fingers
crossed. That is the news I havefor you in this week's episode,

(05:32):
Georgia on phones at the club,and then what is going on here?
But first, did you know thatthere was a time in history when
content stopped? When it turnedoff and it wasn't available
anymore? In our interstitialsthis week, sign off messages

(05:54):
from three television networksaired in the late seventies and
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This concludes our schedule of events for today. If
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and times.

Georgia Hampton (07:33):
For the last few months, I've been following
this online conversation arounda strange phenomenon happening
at the club.

Clip (07:42):
We went to a bar the other night, and the DJ was playing
bops. Okay. Kesha was played,Bad Bunny, Gasolina. And me and
my friends were the only onesdancing. You get to the club and
you just stand up.
Or the bar or wherever you go.Wherever you go to hang out,
you're not dancing. Why doesn'tanyone dance anymore? Hello?

(08:06):
Hello?
Why aren't you dancing?

Across my feeds, I keep seeing videos and
tweets and posts in which peopleclaim that out at the club,
nobody dances anymore. And therewas often visual proof of this,
clips where someone pans acrossa packed dance floor only to
show people just standingaround. As this concern started

(08:31):
to swell online, the response toit came in just as quickly.
Basically, and you'll be shockedto hear this, but it's that damn
phone. There are too many phonesout at the function and that's
why nobody's dancing.

Clip (08:45):
You're worried about being on camera so people don't dance.
No one wants to wake up the nextday and see their face on like
the club Instagram page.
Why does no one wanna danceanymore? Like, nobody dances so
boring blah blah blah.
It's because when people dodance,
you guys film them and put it onTikTok. Cut that shit out.

Beyond individual people commenting on
this, Vox also published a piecea few months ago about this
exact same phenomenon. And theycame to the same conclusion,
that the fear of beingdocumented and having your
likeness shared online was ahuge reason why people choose to
just forgo the act of dancingentirely. And I mean, I get

(09:27):
that. Like, the irony is notlost on me that a lot of the
videos I saw about the lack ofdancing at the club were videos
where people were filming theother patrons at the club not
dancing. Phones are tools ofdistraction in virtually every
part of our lives, but I justwonder what it is about the act

(09:48):
of dancing and publicly dancingwith other people that is so
antithetical to the presence ofa smartphone.

Tim Lawrence (09:58):
If the people around you are not dancing, but
they're just talking, or they'reon their phones or who knows
what, It's not much it's kindahard to have a good time. It's
much easier to have a good timewhen everyone around you
dancing.

That's Tim Lawrence.

I'm the author of three books on the history of,
dance, music, DJ culture, andart culture in New York City in
the nineteen seventies and earlynineteen eighties. I've been
running, two community partiesthat place a high emphasis on,
good stereo sounds, and I'vebeen doing this for twenty two

(10:34):
years now. One is called LuckyCloud Sound System. Another is
called All Our Friends, and I'malso the cohost of a podcast
about music, the dance floor,and counterculture called Love
is the Message.

Tim has spent his career writing about and
immersing himself in clubculture. He speaks about it with
this deep reverence. And as heexplained to me, the act of
dancing in a public settingoffers a kind of experience that
just can't really be replicatedanywhere else.

If we want to, we can just dance in our rooms, by
ourselves. That's a perfectlylegitimate thing to people to
do. But if you do it with otherpeople, you can have much more
of a sense of elation. And thereason the reason this happens
is you will generally be bybeing with other people, you
interact with other people, thenyou can have more of a pre
appreciation of of our existenceand also the way that we

(11:26):
basically cohabit, we with otherhuman beings and, of course,
with everything that is on theplanet. What can happen in these
situations is you can come closeto having a sense of the essence
of what it might be to be human.

Tim went on to mention that a defining feeling
of communal dance is collectivejoy, a term popularized by the
sociologist Barbara Ehrenreichin her 2006 book, Dancing in the
Streets. In the book, sheexamines dance as an act that
generates both a sense oftogetherness with others, and
also individual ecstaticpleasure. And that enjoyment

(12:08):
comes in large part due to thefreedom that can come from being
a member of a collective sharingthe same experience. Near the
end of the book, Ehrenreichexplains that, quote, the
capacity for collective joy isencoded into us almost as deeply
as the capacity for the eroticlove of one human for another.

(12:28):
We can live without it, as mostof us do, but only at the risk
of succumbing to the solitarynightmare of depression.
She writes that later, quote,there is no point to it. No
religious overtones, ideologicalmessage, or money to be made.
Just the chance, which we needmuch more of on this crowded

(12:49):
planet, to acknowledge themiracle of our simultaneous
existence with some sort ofcelebration. To Ehren Reich,
collective joy through publicdance is just that. An excuse to
celebrate, to express oneselffreely among others who are
doing the same.

When people want to get into the go onto a dance
floor and just kind of forgetabout their everyday challenges,
problems, the the things thatmight just kind of you can't
stop, you know, you get stuck inyour mind that you just find
kind of, are undermining yoursense of of of, tranquility,

(13:29):
let's say, or goodwill orhappiness. You get on the dance
floor to let all of that go.

On the dance floor, you're not beholden to
whatever role you hold in,quote, unquote, polite society.
Nobody even knows your name, letalone what job you have or
whether you have student loansor stress out about school. You
get to be anonymous, to expressyourself in a way that might be
more, I mean, free by virtue ofnot needing to hold on to

(14:00):
various components of yourregular life. What's better,
everyone around you isexperiencing this feeling
together, and that feels good,validating, comforting. It's a
reminder that whatever baggageyou left at the door of the club
doesn't define every moment ofyour life, that this can also be
part of your expression too.

(14:22):
An expression in this space iscollective and individual with
both feeding on each other. Theenergy exuberance of the crowd
is added to by your own form ofself expression, by your own
body dancing amidst all theother bodies. It's this perfect
little circuit that is until thephones come in. So I said to

(14:46):
Tim, can you fully expressyourself on the dance floor if
you know there's cameras?

Well, I certainly wouldn't be able to. The phone
on some level is always going todisrupt. It's gonna take you
away from being in that moment.But the the other thing about
the phone is that it then takesyou it affects everyone around
you. So if someone is by you andthey're on the phone, they're
kind of you know, not only arethey not there, but they're not

(15:12):
contributing to the, you know,this dynamism of the party.
It's all these bodies kind of,you know, in this kinetic motion
that can beautifully kind ofconnect together. It's a
circuit, and they interrupt thecircuit.

To better understand this, we need to dig
deeper into this notion of thecrowd. Specifically, the
difference between a crowd andan audience. Barbara Ehrenreich
has an entire chapter of herbook dedicated to what she calls
the revolt of the audience. Shewrites that, quote, the great
innovation of the modern era hasbeen the replacement of older,

(15:58):
more participatory forms offestivity with spectacles in
which the crowd serves merely asan audience, unquote. An
audience is expected to observe,to enjoy perhaps, but not to
participate.
As a member of the audience, youcan clap, you can sing along,
hell, you can even dance, butyou are not the event. An

(16:22):
audience demands the presence ofa spectacle, of a single point
of focus that everyone is thereto observe. But the dance floor
isn't meant to be like that.

The dance floor is is most expressive, most
dynamic, most engaging whenpeople are dancing with each
other rather than looking at theDJ. If the crowd starts to look
at the DJ, then you're justentering into a, let's say, a
rock concert scenario, heroworship, etcetera, which is like

(16:54):
chur. Everyone's facing thepriest. Whereas actually, what
we want is conversation,democracy, interaction,
antiphony, call and response,whatever words we wanna give it.
To me, the the dance is theaudience, if you like.
This doesn't have to be a leaderfigure here. It's about
interacting with thoseimmediately around you and and

(17:16):
feeling this sense of kind ofcollective energy come through
that, and it's and thatsurpasses your yourself as a
individual.

When an errant phone camera appears on the
dance floor, that structurefalls apart. Using your phone is
an inherently individual act,and as such, it severs you from
the communal joy of groupdancing. And sure, posting about
it may bring you joy, but it's akind of extractive joy. Through

(17:45):
the phone, the sense ofenjoyment you receive from
sharing a video and gettinglikes or comments on it serves
more as a commodity than alived, embodied experience. It's
a copy of the real thing.
And don't get me wrong, that canstill feel nice. But the simple
act of pulling out your phone torecord the DJ or yourself or,

(18:07):
God forbid, a stranger on thedance floor, instantly destroys
your role as a member of thecrowd, of the collective, and
turns you into the maker of aspectacle. Your audience, in
this case, isn't anyone in theroom with you. It's your
followers. It's strangersonline.

Something that says, we're gonna capture this
moment and we're gonna, like,take it we're gonna take it
outside of this environmentbecause it's gonna preserve it.
And then that can go online. Itcan be shown to other people. So
on some level, it's a it's apossible breach of privacy,
let's say. It's a possiblebreach of kind of intimacy.
It threatens or it physicallydoes kinda say, okay. This is

(18:54):
this this moment doesn't haveits own integrity.

In a lot of clubs, the reaction to the
problem of phones on the dancefloor is to flat out ban them
entirely. In the time I've beendoing research for this segment,
several clubs have opened thatmake a point to say that cell
phones are not welcome inside.The parties that Tim throws have
no phone policies too.

People think it's a human right to be able to use
your phone, one's phone. It'sincredible. It's almost like
sometimes the most offensivething you can possibly say to
someone is, do you mind notusing your phone? Even though
we've asked this numerous timesover. It's like, oh, I just want
to tell my friend where I am oroh, there's this reason or oh,
there's that reason or oh,there's that reason.

(19:36):
And it's always about like,well, it's it's okay for me, but
but just not anyone else. But mymy it's this is this is this is
why I'm special, basically. Andlook. I I don't it's not
serious. This is again, I don'twant to take any of this too
seriously.
But what we what I do know andwhat the people I work with know

(19:57):
is that it's much nicer. It'sincomparable to have a a dance
floor without phones than than,you know, a dance floor where
everyone's on the phone.

Establishing a no phones policy interrupts that
entitlement that Tim is talkingabout. An entitlement really is
what it feels like here. Notjust feeling entitled to
checking your phone wherever youare, but to use it to document
whatever's going on around youwith little consideration of the
impact that act has on the spaceyou are physically embodying.

(20:32):
It's the entitlement of creatinga spectacle. So if you remove
the sheer possibility of takinga video or posting a photo at
the club, you deny the abilityto create a spectacle and court
an audience.
You're also forced to focus yourenergy on the physical space
that you're in. You have toremain in the real world

(20:53):
environment of the dance floorwithout the possibility of
recontextualizing it somewhereelse. It makes me think of what
Tim said earlier, how peoplecome to dance in order to leave
the stresses of their livesaside, Of what Barbara
Ehrenreich wrote about how theecstasy of communal dance comes
with a shedding of the mask onehas to put on in polite society.

(21:17):
The no phone policy at the clubsuggests to me that part of that
real world baggage is yourphone. And there is a way that
the phone does adhere itself toa kind of role that we are all
expected to play for ourselvesand for each other.
Maybe it's being a poster, or apassive scroller, or a live

(21:37):
streamer. But whatever it is,your relationship with the
social Internet is a kind ofperformance that you do, so long
as you have your phone in yourhand. I do think that there is a
degree of communal enjoymentthat can come from posting
online. It's a very accessibleway of being seen, of sharing an

(21:59):
experience, even if it's justthrough a screen. But it is just
through a screen.
It's a kind of togetherness thatis inherently limited. It's
flat. And as Tim said to me, itoften doesn't really endure.

It's perfectly possible that some people, so
enjoy being visible to others,being seen. Let's say being seen
gives them the sense a sense ofexisting in the first place If
they're not being kind of onsome sort of screen, if they're
not being watched and maybeadmired, then they don't really

(22:37):
exist, then maybe this group ofpeople can can only express
themselves fully when they'rebeing watched. My belief is that
this kind of this thrill thethrill that might come with the

(22:59):
idea that you have an audienceis inherently, ephemeral. It's
meaningless. There's somethingaddictive about it, you know,
and it's the reason it'saddictive is that it doesn't it
doesn't doesn't it's not alasting feeling.
So you kind of have to kind ofkeep on being seen. Keep on
being

interesting to me that Tim mentions the idea of
ephemerality here. Because in away, what's more transient, more
temporary than a night out atthe club? You'll never dance the
exact same way twice. You'llnever get to identically repeat
the experience from one night tothe next. Dancing is
intrinsically temporal, anendless series of motions that

(23:49):
disappear and are replaced withnew ones.
And to that point, a video or aphoto of that night has more
staying power. If you post avideo of your friend death
dropping on the dance floor,your Instagram followers can see
it. You can rewatch it, and itexists for much longer than the
experience of seeing it in reallife. But I think the true

(24:10):
staying power when it comes tocollective joy is in the act of
embodied participation. Of trulybeing a member of a crowd, all
dancing and sweating togetherfor no other reason than for the
enjoyment of the experience.
The phone can attract yourattention. It can demand your
participation. A phone is agreat tool for documentation,

(24:34):
for visual evidence of a wildnight out, but it will never be
embodied.

There is no video in the history of the planet
that has been able to remotelycapture what is going on on that
dance floor, not remotely. Wemight give ourselves the
impression that it does, but ifwe think about it, it's that it
can't even come close.

An immense thank you to Tim Lawrence for
sharing his thoughts andexperiences on dance, club
culture, and collective joy. Tofind more of his work, you can
find him at timlawrence.com. Andif you'd like to learn more
about the parties he runs oreven attend them yourself, you
can find information atluckycloudsystems.com and

(25:31):
allourfriends.com. I'll includelinks for all of that in the
show notes. And I'm interestedto hear your thoughts about
phones at the club.
Do you take videos on the dancefloor? Does the threat of being
documented affect how or if youdance publicly? How do you feel
about the no phone policy? Imean, should it be implemented
elsewhere, like at the gym, atthe grocery store, everywhere?

(25:56):
All the information on how toreach us is also in the show
notes.

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Portions of KVIE's dailyprogramming are on film and
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Friends, hello, theydies and gentle thems.
Welcome to what is going onhere? A segment wherein members
of the Neverpost staff bring aposts to the group about which
they would like to ask. What isgoing on here? What?

(28:50):
Could we have done somegoogling? Could we have gone
further down thread? Could wehave cracked a book or gone to
YouTube? Probably. But where isthe fun in that?
In the following segment, weshare things that we found
online that made us want to knowmore and about which we thought
the process of finding out morewould be fun to do together.
Joining us this round in orderof how likely I think it is that

(29:12):
they are descended from anArcturian starseed are Never
post executive producer JasonOberholtzer. Are we ascending or
descending? This is ascending.So Jason, I think you're
probably just a human.

Jason Oberholtzer (29:25):
What gives it away? The depth behind my eyes.

Never post producer Georgia Hampton.

Oh, thank God. I'm just glad I'm not the top
one.

Never post senior producer Hans Buteau already has
the haircut.

Hans Buetow (29:38):
Your emotions might be telling you that you

Hans, no.

Know things about technology.

Go towards you are the light.

I am the light. It's reflecting off of my head.

Alright. Let's find out what is going on here.

Clip (29:56):
Welcome
to today's game.

Okay. I'm gonna send you three posts from
Instagram, and I want you tolook at them in order. Hans, I'm
gonna have you I'm gonna haveyou start with, the aptly titled
post number one.

Post number one.

And tell me what you see.

I'm opening up Instagram. The dress is gold.
Mhmm. It's from Ibiza. Ibiza.
I

hate that.

A woman twirling in a satin ish Yes. Skirt and top
combo on the sand in front of anIbiza sunset.

Still hate that.

Do you do you have to say it like you're on
Love Island?

I was gonna say On

paper, this is my ideal. You mugging me off?

Okay, Hans. Go to post number two, please.

Post number two is opening. Post number two. It
might be the same woman. It'shard to tell because now she's
facing the camera. It is.
Posing video. White this timeinstead of gold. She's wearing
shorts and what looks like an avery woolly angora sweater, that
is collared. Sunglasses, doing aselfie of herself in an elevator

(31:04):
holding a coach bag.

Okay. And now post number three, please, and I
want you to read the caption.

Post number three, the caption says, we're thrilled
to announce our new AI enhancedteam member, Reem. Oh, no. Yes.
I was getting the vibes.

Yeah. Yeah. The vibes were strong.

Who has joined the team as a fashion who has joined
the team joined the team as afashion and lifestyle editor.
Swipe right for her dump of Forher dump

of the Guys.

Oh, you nailed it, Lord.

Who copy edited this? You're probably the AI
editor. Oh,

dump of the day. Good god.

Swipe right for her dump of day one in SL office. I
don't so this is from Sheerluxe?

Yes. Sheerluxe is a UK fashion publication, a
la, you know, Vogue, Cosmo,stuff like that.

Okay. So you were right to say Ibiza.

Yes. Actually, I really were.

I could sense it.

So yeah. Reem, all the posts that I had you
look at are, like, her doinginfluencer things, like telling
you what outfit she was wearing,being in Ibiza, but she's not
real.

And also that which means the clothes that she's
wearing are not real.

I don't know who likes this. Yeah. Like, who
is this for?

Who is this for? This is for an executive
who feels like they will beaccused of falling behind if
they don't integrate AI intowhat they're doing.

I think that's exactly right. That's a great
answer. God. That's I think Ithink, Georgia, your response is
exactly right. Yeah.
So like, I'm looking at I'mlooking at one of the images on
ReemBot's grid, and it's her ona street holding a matcha latte

(32:59):
and a bag that is roughly thesame color as the matcha latte
and wearing sunglasses and biggold earrings and a gold
bracelet. And then you go to thenext image in the carousel and
she's gone. It's a benchsomewhere else with a then a
picture of the purse and thematcha latte with like a more of
a gradient look to it. And thenthe third is the shoes, the

(33:19):
bracelet, and the earrings, allof which also look AI generated.

Interesting.

So that I mean, like, yeah. I guess my question
is like, what okay. What are weadvertising here?

Well, this is exactly it.
Right? I'm like, I think Jason, you're
completely right that this isbasically like for shareholders,
for for people in the c suitewho feel like they have to adopt
AI, but it is still kind ofdoing nothing.

Don't know. Which I think is is exposed more
because the objects that don'tneed to be generated are. Like
you could pitch the idea forhaving an AI spokesperson as
like novel and fun andpotentially engaging in a way
that would get attention fromniche independent podcasters.
And like have that charactertalk about items or pop into the

(34:08):
universe and exist with itemsand then show a real item that a
human could buy, rather than inframes absent this character
have AI generated objects.

And then, like, further down the grid, there are
image carousels where it's like,almost like a a a photo collage
of images from fashion catalogsof like I'm looking at one of
purses. Yeah. And it is a it isliterally a photo collage of
purses from catalogs, enumeratedlike one by one with who made

(34:39):
them and what the product iscalled. But then there's just an
inset oval photo of the AIgenerated model.

Yep. Yeah.

And she's like, I collected these so that you
could see them all in one place.You're like, okay.

Guess like, but we know you didn't do that. It's
part of her dump of the day,Mike. Yeah.

And that is what's going on here. Yep.

I have discovered a subreddit. And I
would like to know what is goingon here. Mike, would you be so
kind as to describe what whathappens to you as you join this
subreddit?

Yeah. What? Okay.

It's hard to figure out where to put the eyes
first.

That's true. Yeah. Hold on. I gotta lie down.
Okay.
So we're

at we're at our fifth world picks. This was
created 10/07/2011. It's got91,000 members, and it is in the
top 2% of subs by size. Therules of the sub are submissions
must be fifth worldly.Submissions must have clear and
concise imagery.

(35:56):
Post quality content be nice. Wecan see what I can only kind of
maybe describe as like, if youdid a blender adaptation of an
MC Escher painting Yes.

Mhmm.

But like elaborated on it 10 times and
then used the color scheme ofthe old school Windows
screensaver that was the pipes.Yes.

My lord. Wow.

That's such

a good description.

Nailed it exactly. Holy moly.

What you're picturing to your audience? Yep.
It's exactly that.

It's that.

And then the one below it is like, it's sort of
like you're looking down into asquare well that has a similar
color scheme to it, maybe alittle bit more orange. But the
vibe is no longer M. C. Escher.It's more like traditional South
American art.

Yes.

The one after that is like a strange Janice
faced sculpture of some kind.

This is when the genre sort

of Right?

Yeah. Yeah. The genre really takes a turn here.
Floating mug in the sky.

I was gonna point that one out because the
caption is just addiction.

Addiction. Right? Mike, I'd like you to do
me a favor. Yeah. I'd like yougo to top.
Yeah. And then I'd like you togo all time. And then I'd like
you to talk.

My god.

Babe, you better

talk fast

because it is challenging.

What is happening?

It's much longer than I thought it was gonna be.
Okay. So nine nine years ago,someone posted what is obviously
the best post on this.

We should have just ended here like as a as a
society. Yeah.

This is a video. It's a GIF actually. So there's
no sound. There's what lookslike a Rottweiler maybe riding a
three d man shape in likenineteen nineties, early two
thousand style three drendering.

Sure.

So a Rottweiler riding a man shape down what
looks at first like a mountain,but turns out to be the chest of
a statue bent over backwards.

Yes.

So the they ride the chest down to the throat off
the chin and as they ride offthe chin, the eyes open and the
tongue extends and then they getswallowed? No. They sort of No.
Jump off like a sick skateboardjump.

There's sort of a metal creature man.

It's like a huge I'm gonna

go ahead and I'm just gonna stop there and I'm
not gonna describe the rest ofit. There's a snowy owl, there's
a I was gonna say gotta mentionthe snowy owl. This defeats
language. I also I mean, maybeit's because this attitude has
been cemented more since then.This feels less fifth world y to
me than Mhmm.
The group of images that we sawsorted by most recent.

Is fifth world y something that you understand,
Mike? No. Know what that is.

Father Garrett (39:01):
And not

outside of this. I would say that this is like,
this is one of those places onthe internet where like the
whole purpose is to just sort oflike divine and solidify this
vibe. Yeah. And there's sort ofno other purpose than to be
like, to vibe navigate, youknow, like Mhmm. To just try to
find or make things that seem tocohere in a way that is really

(39:23):
hard to describe.
But when you see it, you'relike, oh, yeah, that is fifth
worldly.

In the rules, it defines submissions must be
fifth worldly if you expand itout. Oh. It has a definition.
Oh.

Must depict or seem to originate from another
dimension, must either besurreal or bizarre, or attempt
to convey a novel emotion orexperience. Which I think that
that aligns with everything thatwe've said so Yeah.

Asked and answered.

Who hasn't had that novel experience?

Alright. I wanna ask the room real quick before
you if I say wacky Tic Tac, doyou know what that means? Wacky
Tic Tac?

Wacky Tic Tac? No. I don't want to.

No. She said nervously.

Okay. Well, we're going back to Reddit. Uh-huh.
Georgia, can you please read thedescription of it before you
open it?

Oh my god. Okay. Okay.

We're off to such a good start.

We really are.

I have seen the face of god and it was weeping.
Banana.

Okay. Now you know where we are? Yeah.

Let's open that up. Oh.

Say it the way the wacky Tic Tacs would
have you say it.

Banana. Yes.

Yeah. We're in minion land.

Yeah. We're I'm I'm in the minion system. I'm in
the walls.

Yeah.

Okay. So just going through here, it's it's
all sorts of content involvingminions. The kind that as you
may imagine, oh, wait. Nevermind.

Right? Your expectation got subverted.

It's So

you start and you're like, this is this is a
grandma on Facebook.

Okay. It's just literally about to say, your
aunt on Facebook was like, happyTuesday everyone. God bless
America.

Yeah. These are no But like if minions were the
thing that lives behind thediner in Mulholland Drive.

Oh my god. And what's funny is that not all of
them have been so we should saywhat is what's going on here is
that they're yes. It's thisformat of, you know, minion
photos photos.

Like in TikTok. It's documentary.

Documentary of the real creature minions that
live among us. Images ofminions, you know, with wigs or
making a funny face or pointingat themselves and has the sort
of structure of of what we werejust describing of, like, you
know, sometimes a girl just needs
to let loose or whatever. But but every, one
that I'm seeing now, actually, Iwas wrong. They're all like

(42:02):
this.

They're all like

this. So, like, you know, a couple down, is two
minions smiling at at you andsort of pointing at themselves
and it says, exercise? I thoughtyou said, and then someone
clearly superimposed overwhatever it originally said,
Bush did nine eleven.

The, the title of the post would seem to suggest
that what is, covered over isextra fries.

Yes. Because the the caption is no extra
fries today.

Now, that's funny. I like that. This George
Bush two nine eleven thing, I'mnot sure about that quite as
much.

You have like under the title God has abandoned us,
you have a very grainy hungoverminion that says exercise? I
sell a 130 grams of crackcocaine behind my local middle
school, run over 21 innocentchildren with a hijacked bus,
evade $82,000 in taxes, andcommit severe war crimes in Iraq
every day. That counts. Right?

Yeah. There's a lot of, like, a newly restored
World War one photo that is whatlooks like an already AI
generated black and white imageof soldiers on the battlefield,
and then a minion stormingalongside them. My god.

And so it keeps going, and there's a it's a wide
variety. It's not all political.There's like a cuck life one.
Mhmm. There's all of these.
It's but it's like it's likeyour auntie is the filthiest
person who like the filthiesttin hattiness wearing person and
is still into the sameaesthetic. And the whole thing

(43:37):
is wacky Tic Tacs, which Ilooked up, there is such a thing
as a Minion Tic Tac. They'rebanana flavored, which

Of course.

There are 97,000 people in this, and the title is
God is Dead.

This does have a sort of sheen of a a 4chan or
4chan adjacent.

It's just it just is just leaning so hard into the
irony of,

you know,

the minions are from Despicable Me, they're
funny little guys, they're, youknow, innocent, strange little
characters. And now, you know,here's a book they're next to
Bush did nine eleven and on aimage that says, have one finger
for a reason, woodworkingaccident. Like, it's just That's
one of

the more like, you know, palatable ones.

Yeah. One of the most palatable. Yeah. Yeah. And
I agree.
Like, it it's it's very muchthat kind of like that 4chan
style of ironic distance orironic detachment.

So this is really just an a repeated joke over and
over, if I'm understandingcorrectly, of isn't it funny to
put these cute little memed upthings in actually despicable
situations?

Yes. It's people making fun of Facebook
aunties by, you know, imaginingwhat if they were edge lords.

Edge lord is exactly the word. Because this
is sort of a classic, like,internet Right.

Vibe. This is like terminal posting, you know?
Like, this is

Yeah. Yes.

This is endgame posting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Well, thanks. That's that's helpful. It's sort
of what I thought, but it's alot more.

And it's really validating to know that a wacky
TikTok is not commonly known.

That's what's going on here?

We've learned what's going on here, but at
what cost?

We've got one more what's going on here, but
we are going to lose one GeorgiaHampton because she's got
somewhere more important to beright now.

I gotta go kill all the minions. Oh, no. I'm
stopping this once and for all.

Georgia, thank you for joining us. Bye.

Godspeed.

Okay. I have something that I first
encountered about a month ago.And I have been going out of my
way. I wanna know what it is sobad. And I have not gone and
searched to learn because Iwanted to bring it to what's
going on here.

(46:08):
From what I can figure out, thisis not new.

Okay.

By this, I mean, a a person. This person. I get
served their videos all the timeand like everywhere. And I think
it's probably because I watchthem because I'm like, what? I
mean, it's the name of thesegment for a reason.
What is going on here?

And the algorithm is like, this guy loves

this. This guy

loves this. So, Jason. Yeah. I have four videos.
Okay.
And this is the first one.

Okay. The name, Sufi Blower. What we have
here is a man with a microphone.When I press play, we'll figure
out what he does with thatpower. It's in a public space, a
crowded public space.
A lot of folks have their handson their foreheads. Is that him

(47:05):
making this noise? Okay. He'slike sort of beatboxing a little
bit.

It feels like he's like slamming his diaphragm,
like his abdomen to make hisdiaphragm work.

Yeah. He's engaging his diaphragm with his
hands. He's sort of like I needa pan down here, but looks like
he's kind of chilling his bellyand

Yeah.

Okay. I'm gonna send you a second video.

I just watched this man on Facebook,
now to TikTok. Okay. Because hewas doing his hands. Okay. He's
sort of pulling at a necklace, arope, round beaded.
Perhaps beaded is hard to see, Ineed better fidelity on these
buddy. And he's doing that samedeep breath thing into a
microphone in a public settingand this one has like a delay

(47:52):
slapped to it and a big reverb.There

are people screaming in the background,
like scream, like someone'sbeing attacked.

Yes. Okay. And the same we pan to the
crowd, they have their hands ontheir heads again, they're
screaming.

And the crowd is huge. Huge. How is this how
would you describe this man'smanner of dress?

He's got he's got a black head wrap, but like
a multi colored sort of set ofrobes.

And someone else is holding the microphone in
front of him. Right.

I mean, I would call it like a ceremonial
robe even, like there arereligious overtones to this
certainly, but I don't have thecultural conversants to know.

To say exactly Yeah. The article of clothing.

Exactly.

Mhmm.

So here are two of his own videos. Okay.

Oh, he's not hitting his diaphragm.

No. He's not at all. He's just like fiddling
with yanking this necklace, thisbeaded white beaded necklace.
He's What about

a rosary?

Yeah. Yeah. It's a good That's a good way to
describe it. It is basicallyessentially a rosary. I don't
see a cross.
And the comments on this onecomments on this one include,
I'm Christian but even I cantell this is not Islam and
someone else saying this is notIslam. Someone else saying, I've
been seeing this dude a lot inmy feed lately, but why are
women screaming while he spitsinto the mic? Really trying to

(49:17):
underline that this is notIslam, which makes me think
there are comments that havemaybe been buried here where
people are being unkind aboutIslam or making assumptions
there. And those more than noare making sure that we know
that no, that is not what isgoing on here.

So based on just what I've seen from the comments
of getting served these videos,is that this guy is a
controversial spiritual leaderof some kind.

That's what I'm picking up.

Yeah. Right? Related to Islam somehow.
Perhaps tenuously in the eyes ofa big group of people. I guess
my question is like, why andwhat's the deal with the breath?
Mhmm. But like, you know, goinginto a delay line while pulling
on this necklace with peoplelosing their minds.

I mean, it certainly has, you know,
overtones of some of our moreecstatic American traditions.

Like speaking in tongues and

tongues, or yelling, or the fun little slap
the forehead and watch themcrumble move.

You know, his name is, I'm gonna say it
probably very wrong, Haqqa'tebHussein.

Okay. So he's got a he's got a website.

Serving humanity in the name of Allah SWT. Right?
Every week, thousands of peoplemake their way to Dab'ar e
Aliyah Balawara Sharif andAstana Aliyahkar, Saddan.

It seems to be Northeastern Pakistan.

To receive Allah SWT's blessing through the doom
and dua insufflation andsupplication of Kaladar I Duran
Haqqateb Hussein Ali BadshahSakhar m e. So this is my sense
and this was what I was hopingwe could maybe figure out is

(51:11):
like, is this guy like a JoelOsteen who is, you know,
nominally associated with somereligion, but really is just
enriching himself. Yeah. Butthat still doesn't answer the
question of like, why theseelements? Like, I I wanna
understand the beads and thebreathing and the hands on the
forehead Yeah.
And the like kneeling with thehands behind the head. I'm sure

(51:34):
all of this is, like, deeplyrooted in, like, religious
symbolism that we just are notfamiliar with.

Yeah. Mhmm. I'm just I'm poking around more at
the website, at this man'swebsite, and there's a thing
called Wazifa Taspeh, which iscurative. And it says, to cure
ill cure from illnesses,solution to problems or worries,

(52:00):
righteous offspring income slashjob, peace and blessings in the
home, righteous marriages ofchildren, etcetera, in the
essence for all good, righteouspurposes. When?
To be recited after Namaz ESR.How? After Namaz ESR, recite
Durud e 11 times, Surah Kothar100 times, followed by 11 times.

(52:22):
So you have this pattern ofrecitation that you need to do.
And then following thecompletion of Wazifa, you can
make dua for yourself or anyoneelse for any good purpose.
It is it is also allowed to blowupon to insufflate water after
completing this wazifah and todrink it or to give the
insufflated water to somepatient to drink, any illness

(52:44):
will subside. Mhmm. So you'remaking an elixir with your
breath, and I wonder if that'sthe idea is he's breathing he's
making his breath after he'sdone this cleansing ritual is
being breathed upon all of thecrowds. Right.

Naturally, in the way that air does get
amplified and moved Yeah.Through the microphone. Yeah.
There's a healing tab on hispage where some of these
miracles are listed that I havefound now. Things that he claims
to have done, or this websiteclaims that he has done include,
a little boy had hole in hisheart cured.

After four and the dom the dom is the is the breath
water.

Okay. Cured after four dom. Man suffering
from incurable jaundice of theliver is cured. Girl who lost
her sight for seven monthsrecovers her eyesight. Epilepsy,
liver cancer, village had wellsof hard water.
Someone couldn't speak forfifteen years. These are among
the victories that he istallying up.

So you can participate live and have these
healing properties expelled atyou.

Little girl got dumb from Facebook live.

Yeah.

She had been unable to walk and doctors
declare she would never be ableto walk again. She was able to
walk from second to woah.

I don't know, man. Yeah. May yeah. Maybe I am
cynical. Like, maybe they arepurporting that this happens
over the Internet as well.
And Yeah. This is an earnesteffort to provide healing and
that they believe they areproviding through all of man's
available resources includingthe social web.

There's a long tradition of this in both
religious and secular spaces. Imean, placebos are a thing Yeah.
And not just, you know, I don'tknow, maybe this is working for
people, but people have beendoing this, laying hands on
people, doing all I mean, that'sthe big tent thing, you know.

Yeah. I mean, ultimately, think, you know, we
are probably waiting into acontended area for which we have
none of the signifiers lined upto figure out any sort of Yeah.
Way finding. I think that'sprobably very right.

Yeah. Audience, if you have things to tell us
about this, I wanna know allabout them.

Wanna know more.

Okay. I think we did it Hans, Jason. Thank you
for puzzling through what goeson on the Internet. Thank you to
Georgia in absentia. Audience,are there things that you see on
the Internet about which youthink what is going on here?
Or if you your self know what isgoing on here and you have been

(55:19):
shouting at your phone, at yourcar stereo, at your speaker in
your kitchen At your loved ones.Turn those shouts into words in
an email and send them to us andtell us. Tell us, please. What
is going on here?

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye. Good night, everyone.

Signoff (55:56):
It's a star studded hour with Ed McMahon. Careers
are being launched on themillion and a half dollar Star
Search eighty six. Tuesday at07:30 on thirty two. And now
Channel thirty two brings youthis thought for today. Speaking
is Father Garrett Barton of St.

(56:17):
Michael Church.

Our whole being craves for the use of our own
life to make it the life ofsomeone else and someone else
happy. And by helping them out,we're doing something for them,
for our self, and for oursupreme being. So you can't lose
that way. And therefore, you gotto put aside all the little

(56:42):
things that are said and thelittle things that are done. As
long as you are doing what youknow is right, what else cares?
What else matters? You're goingto get rewarded, and I wish the
good almighty would come downand really show us the rewards
that you already have from allthe good that you've done. The

(57:03):
good Lord praises you, and if hedidn't praise you, well, he'd
let you know. So we can do lotsand lots of good things. We can
be so happy in helping otherpeople.
We can lift up this world andour little small world that we
roam around. It can be so muchwonderful if we make it so. And

(57:25):
it doesn't take anyone butyourself to make up your mind.
I'm going to do something aboutit so that tomorrow, the whole
world, my world, will bedifferent.

Signoff (57:40):
You've been listening to the thought for today with
Father Garrett Martin of SaintMichael Church.

That is the show we have
for you this week. We're gonnabe back here in
the main feed on Wednesday, July2. A Neverpost membership is $4
and I think you should go getone right now at neverpo dot s
t. Neverpost's producers areAudrey Evans, Georgia Hampton,
and the mysterious doctor firstname last name. Our senior
producer is Hans Buto. Ourexecutive producer is Jason

(59:02):
Oberholzer.
And the show's host, that's me,is Mike Rugnetta. Through night
lava like eyelids softlyopening, the first cry of
creation's volcano flickers. Inthe branches of your limbs, the
premonitions build theirtwittering nests. Excerpt of

(59:24):
Dancer by Nelly Sacks. NeverPost is a production of charts
and leisure.
It's distributed by Radiotopia.

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