Speaker 1: It's twelve am on a cursed YouTube channel and you're
Speaker 1: listening to Night Call. Hello, and welcome to Night Call,
Speaker 1: a college show for artist Tope in reality. My name
Speaker 1: is Emma Lyyoshida. I am joined on the other line
Speaker 1: by Molly Lambert and Tess Lynch and leader in the show.
Speaker 1: We will be joined by our special guest, Sama calif.
Speaker 1: He is the managing editor of Defector and was the
Speaker 1: former managing editor of dead Spin. We will be talking
Speaker 1: about all sorts of stuff, not limited to but including
Speaker 1: international chihuahuas. Hi, guys, Hey, do you want to take
Speaker 1: a nightcall real quick? Let's do it. Hello, nightcall um.
Speaker 1: My name is Carlos. I am from the Bay Area
Speaker 1: in California, sitting here as the world burns all around me.
Speaker 1: I am calling because I listened to your Monday podcast
Speaker 1: What is this Monday August went for us? And I
Speaker 1: heard you ask us to call in about ghosts and
Speaker 1: the supernatural, and I figured, okay, this is my chance
Speaker 1: because it relates to my mother, who I can only
Speaker 1: go so far as to call, I guess a good
Speaker 1: witch and a channel or she. I grew up and
Speaker 1: I grew up very very traditional conservative Mexican household, very
Speaker 1: very Catholic. Um grew up going to church, you know,
Speaker 1: was an ultimpley blah blah blah blah blood and every
Speaker 1: now is the church sometime around my early team, but
Speaker 1: growing up it was I can only go I can
Speaker 1: only describe my religious upbringing as traditional and also cultish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so my mother growing up, we would go to the
Speaker 1: spiritual medium in Sarina's every week where we would go
Speaker 1: and then she would go into a trance and connect
Speaker 1: to the spirit world and talk to our friends of
Speaker 1: out their relatives that are gone or their ancestors that
Speaker 1: they wanted to hear from. And this was just normal
Speaker 1: for me. We would take cleansing trips to rivers near
Speaker 1: where near Selina I believe, and where people would connect
Speaker 1: to the spirit world and then they would be washed
Speaker 1: of their sins and you would think that it was
Speaker 1: that it would it was. It's hard to describe because
Speaker 1: it wasn't a traumatic cult experience. It was almost a
Speaker 1: boring and off and sometimes pleasant cult experience because they
Speaker 1: didn't forces to participate in rituals other than we're going
Speaker 1: to cleanse you and we're going to go swim in
Speaker 1: the river, because the adults would have their big spiritual
Speaker 1: connection in the kids would just kind of be an
Speaker 1: up river just playing with each other, which I think
Speaker 1: is unique because most people talk about their cult experiences
Speaker 1: as being horrible and awful. And I actually came out
Speaker 1: as queer when I was a teenager, and believe it
Speaker 1: or not, my mother was very accepting. And to her
Speaker 1: she said, oh, yes, I talked to the spirit world
Speaker 1: because and they told me that you would have an
Speaker 1: amazing balance of feminine and masculine energies and to accept me.
Speaker 1: So thanks to the spirit realm, my mother learned to
Speaker 1: love folks that across the LGBT spectrum and continues to
Speaker 1: be one of my best friends to this day. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much Carlos for this call. I Um, first
Speaker 1: of all, I love the spirit world or allies. UM.
Speaker 1: I think we all know this instinctively. But that's good
Speaker 1: on them. UM. I would say, like, you know, I
Speaker 1: know that you described it as cultish, but I think
Speaker 1: that like when you talk about the the kind of
Speaker 1: qualifiers for what occult is, and I think that you know,
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about the vowel a little more later on,
Speaker 1: and I think that this comes into that, like the
Speaker 1: idea of like a high control um environment I think
Speaker 1: is really paramount to something being a cult or not
Speaker 1: like and I think that our our um our theology.
Speaker 1: Buddy John also called it at one point to just
Speaker 1: talk about the difference between like cult like beliefs, like
Speaker 1: what we think of as being kind of fringe e
Speaker 1: versus the actual way that the group works, and the
Speaker 1: way that the group works is more I think makes
Speaker 1: a cult. So I would say you were you were
Speaker 1: in a cult, you were just like a really chill,
Speaker 1: you know, strain of Catholicism because I was also I
Speaker 1: was looking up like I was like, is this like
Speaker 1: how you know commonplaces this like where does this kind
Speaker 1: of medium aspect of Catholicism come in? And like all
Speaker 1: I would run across where like the Catholicism dot com
Speaker 1: sites that are just like mediums are bad. You can't
Speaker 1: consult a medium, it's all evil. You're going to go
Speaker 1: to hell if you do this um which is what
Speaker 1: I you know, what you would think of as being
Speaker 1: the standard response to that kind of thing. But also
Speaker 1: Catholicism is kind of like the most magical of all
Speaker 1: the Christianities. So I don't know. My parents left, um
Speaker 1: were Irish or they were Irish Catholic, and most of
Speaker 1: my extended families Irish Catholic. My parents were raised very religious,
Speaker 1: and my aunt stayed in the church. Um, and she
Speaker 1: was a really big fan of psychics, which you would
Speaker 1: think she would not have been, but she was extremely,
Speaker 1: um really really believed in psychics. I think when my
Speaker 1: mom was pregnant, my aunt bought her a reading that
Speaker 1: turned out to be like very true. And on my
Speaker 1: dad's side, um, there's a lot of superstition. They were very,
Speaker 1: very superstitious Catholic. So there's that's where you kind of like,
Speaker 1: I mean, they wouldn't have seen a psychic or a medium,
Speaker 1: but my dad, like you know, his knuckles are raw
Speaker 1: from knocking on woods sometimes. Um, there's a lot of that,
Speaker 1: a lot of like the salt over your shoulder kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Yeah, it's kind of what makes Catholicism arming,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, Like you know, just the like literally
Speaker 1: believing that the wine is the blood and the bread
Speaker 1: is the body, like which is you know, seems like
Speaker 1: just semantics, but then it actually ends up kind of
Speaker 1: really reforming how those like different denominations of Christianity work. Um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, like it's so weird to like, you know,
Speaker 1: being taught as a kid if you grow up in
Speaker 1: in Christianity or any kind of religion that believes in
Speaker 1: an afterlife that like the people that you love or
Speaker 1: like looking down on you, Like that's so close to
Speaker 1: just being like, yeah, they're straight up ghosts and like
Speaker 1: you can commune with the spirit world if you want to,
Speaker 1: but like that is a big no no, Like you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to believe that. So it's very you know,
Speaker 1: I could see, like, you know, there could be some
Speaker 1: gray area there to take advantage of. Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: to say, I think catholics Ism has the most fun
Speaker 1: uh stuff of the Christianities. Definitely Mexican Catholicism especially has
Speaker 1: just like a lot of beautiful stuff about it. And
Speaker 1: I feel like we've argued about this on the pod before,
Speaker 1: where you guys were sort of more like people should
Speaker 1: make the religions more inclusive rather than always leaving the religions, uh.
Speaker 1: And I think this definitely speaks to that that to
Speaker 1: have a type of Catholicism that is inclusive and welcoming
Speaker 1: of queer people and you know, hopefully pro choice and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Uh, there's a lot of valuable stuff
Speaker 1: about having a community of people that take care of
Speaker 1: each other that doesn't always necessarily make it a cult
Speaker 1: um where promunity does not equal cult Yeah. Um, no,
Speaker 1: it sounds nice. I mean I think that that's something
Speaker 1: that Yeah, that's what we were talking about before, Like
Speaker 1: that's the thing that a lot of people are missing now.
Speaker 1: Is just like, yeah, going out to the river with
Speaker 1: your a bunch of families and hanging out and like
Speaker 1: you know, hanging out with the other kids and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. That's something that I think is missing a
Speaker 1: lot in a lot of cultures right now. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw a church Marquis yesterday that I liked that
Speaker 1: just said like God doesn't social distance. Where where are
Speaker 1: they going with that one? Yeah? I know that could right.
Speaker 1: I thought about it a lot, but they were like,
Speaker 1: God doesn't social distance, Like connect with him and then
Speaker 1: you can have the power of God's immunity. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: would be interested in in in what our theology friend
Speaker 1: John would have to say about this or Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it sounds nice. I liked this call a lot um.
Speaker 1: Thank you for thank you for calling Carlos. Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you Carlos. Guys. Speaking of cults, have you guys caught
Speaker 1: with the vow who? Oh? Yeah? Um, I I got
Speaker 1: to both of them since we last spoke, I hadn't
Speaker 1: watched either, and so now I'm all I'm all caught up. Um.
Speaker 1: I do I wish that there was more. I wish
Speaker 1: I could binge mode on this, but I do kind
Speaker 1: of like having going on this journey with it, pacing
Speaker 1: myself out. It's I I keep wanting to watch more.
Speaker 1: It's so good. Um. We talked a little bit last
Speaker 1: week about how I felt like in the first episode
Speaker 1: it was really marketed to me joining this cult. In
Speaker 1: the second episode that went away. Um. But also I
Speaker 1: Molly tweeted the question who does Keith Rawnery look like?
Speaker 1: And I have now devoted I'm not proud to say,
Speaker 1: roughly six hours to try and to find the answer
Speaker 1: to this question. Oh okay, give us some candidates, okay,
Speaker 1: John Bash, chef John Bash from New Orleans. John Ritter also,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, there's a little, there's a little, John Ridder.
Speaker 1: But it's like it's hard because nothing's getting close enough.
Speaker 1: One of the answers on Molly's threat on Twitter was
Speaker 1: Jared Letto on Hamburgers, like fat Jared Letto, like like
Speaker 1: Jared Letto and the movie about the guy who killed
Speaker 1: John Lennon. Um, okay, mmm, he was sort of baby ish.
Speaker 1: It turns out with Jared Letto, Uh, Jared Letto gains weight,
Speaker 1: he looks like more of a little baby. My main
Speaker 1: candidate was David Foster Wallace. Yeah, that's the one that
Speaker 1: I think. It's also just because of the ponytail and
Speaker 1: the headband and stuff, but that like me that led
Speaker 1: me to Netflix displayed a display image, probably because it
Speaker 1: knew I was thinking about this all the time of
Speaker 1: John Cusack and being John Malkovich. Oh yeah, maybe also
Speaker 1: the ponytail doing a lot of work there. But well,
Speaker 1: also the bandana situation is sort of David Foster Wallacey too,
Speaker 1: Like like, um, Keith ree Eari in volleyball mode is
Speaker 1: very David Foster Wallace. Yes, yes, a when he's got
Speaker 1: his hair down, then you know, I can see some
Speaker 1: of these other these other candidates in there. Um, Keith
Speaker 1: Ranieri is a shape shifting face like he's One picture
Speaker 1: of Keith Ranieri might look like John Ridder and another
Speaker 1: looks nothing like John ridder at all. He's got a
Speaker 1: short man energy though he's short, right, like Mark is
Speaker 1: tall and he's short. Um, I you know what, you
Speaker 1: know what I really turned on him. I have to
Speaker 1: say this is so specific, but this is like one
Speaker 1: of the first times I was like, honestly like, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm out. Is In the second episode, Mark is working
Speaker 1: on a movie with Keith that's basically about their relationship,
Speaker 1: with with the Keith stand in being the sort of
Speaker 1: wise man who helps the Mark character, you know, find
Speaker 1: his way through life. But they like drew character designs
Speaker 1: for um for each of them and like this kind
Speaker 1: of cutie anime style, like in a very like kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know comics artists on Patreon type style,
Speaker 1: and it it grossed me out so badly I cannot
Speaker 1: tell you why. It made my stomach just absolutely turned.
Speaker 1: Like the cutie Keith Ranieri avatar was awful to me,
Speaker 1: more awful than any footage of actual Keithreeary. I totally agree.
Speaker 1: It had a wicky how also there was like a
Speaker 1: little of the wicky how um illustration to it, but
Speaker 1: just but knowing what they were doing and like what
Speaker 1: Keith Ranary was kind of up to I was like, you,
Speaker 1: yourself image is gross that you think of yourself this way.
Speaker 1: Somebody pointed out that the movie Camp Nowhere has both
Speaker 1: Alison Mack and uh fellow cult leader Andrew Keegan in
Speaker 1: It made me want to revisit Camp Nowhere, which I
Speaker 1: haven't seen since it came out. But Alison mac is
Speaker 1: a fascinating figure in this movie. She is sort of
Speaker 1: the Gelian to Keith Ranieri's Epstein. Um. She recruits other
Speaker 1: people in. There's not a lot of her though, because
Speaker 1: and I think that's because she's not one of our narrators.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's kind of amazing to see this through
Speaker 1: Mark size, because I think that a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff that's been reported out about this before has been
Speaker 1: about like the women who were a part of this
Speaker 1: inner circle that they're just getting too At the end
Speaker 1: of the second episode, that's like the main thing that
Speaker 1: made headlines and it's the reason why, um, there's a
Speaker 1: lawsuit and everything. But uh, yeah, Like, I think we'll
Speaker 1: probably get more into Alison Macs as we go deeper
Speaker 1: into that aspect of it. I think it's super interesting.
Speaker 1: I have to say I appreciate a male's point of view. Um,
Speaker 1: but I do appreciate Mark's point of view on this
Speaker 1: because it's like he's in this position of like, no,
Speaker 1: he's just my buddy, Like I'm friends with the smartest
Speaker 1: person in the world and having to come to terms
Speaker 1: with the fact that, like there are these women who
Speaker 1: are being put in danger when you are another guy
Speaker 1: and like, you know, and just disposed to believe inside
Speaker 1: with your powerful male friend. That's kind of that's a
Speaker 1: really kind of interesting story that's being told. And I also, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know what, I want to watch? We can watch
Speaker 1: camp nowhere. I want to watch what the bleep do
Speaker 1: we now? I've never watched it before I and it
Speaker 1: was so everywhere. It was like the posters for were
Speaker 1: like every Santa Monica's supermarket in like two thousand five. Like,
Speaker 1: I think that's like an overlooked bit of culture that
Speaker 1: we should revisit for sure. I think it was such
Speaker 1: a canary in the coal mine for the rise of
Speaker 1: conspiracy culture and the rise of sort of woo woo,
Speaker 1: like everything you think you know is wrong and actually
Speaker 1: machine elves control everything in the world. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like everybody who's mega into what the bleep do we
Speaker 1: know back then? Is now an anti vaxtor mom in
Speaker 1: the Palisades Like that, there's a direct line that's like
Speaker 1: a well, the way the way they use language to
Speaker 1: the way they invent new words for things and specific
Speaker 1: terms that are just used within nexium. But so much
Speaker 1: of the stuff they use is also just like self
Speaker 1: help and therapy speak. Um that's in so much other
Speaker 1: self help and therapy internet. I had a fun experience
Speaker 1: this week. I have a tweet about the moon that
Speaker 1: always goes viral when there's a full moon now about
Speaker 1: how it's hard to take a picture of the full moon.
Speaker 1: And I love it because it goes viral with like
Speaker 1: New age people every time there's a full moon now.
Speaker 1: So somebody who reposted it, I was looking at their
Speaker 1: account and a bunch of their posts were about limiting
Speaker 1: beliefs and yeah, but like not in a nexium way,
Speaker 1: justin like, hey, what do you think about yourself that
Speaker 1: you'd like to change? Like what are the things you
Speaker 1: think you can't do? Which is what we all agreed
Speaker 1: sort of was like a good hook to get people
Speaker 1: into a group. Definitely, Well, we're going to take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we come back, crediting a the
Speaker 1: VOW adjacent night email welcome back to night Call. We
Speaker 1: got a We got an email from a listener, uh,
Speaker 1: an anonymous listener that I thought was super interesting and
Speaker 1: was about another kind of Nexium esque organization that I've
Speaker 1: never heard of before. Um, that's what do you want
Speaker 1: to read it? May I please? I'm a longtime listener,
Speaker 1: first time night emailer from Seattle, and it's about noon
Speaker 1: thirty here. I just listened to your most recent episode
Speaker 1: mentioning the VOW HBO docuseries. I had the same initial
Speaker 1: reaction as tests. I feel like I would have totally
Speaker 1: joined second episode, maybe not so much. It was spooky
Speaker 1: to hear in the first episode that Seattle was one
Speaker 1: of the initial center locations. The initial Nexium content also
Speaker 1: reminded me of this manifesting program I had subscribed to
Speaker 1: and since fallen off working on, called to Be Magnet TBM,
Speaker 1: and then a link to to Be Magnetic dot com.
Speaker 1: The ethos on inner child and integration slash self limiting
Speaker 1: beliefs is very similar. TBM also has a term called
Speaker 1: d I Deep Imagining Exercises, which makes me think of
Speaker 1: the next M E M S. T b M slash
Speaker 1: manifestation in general seems to be a popular thing, especially
Speaker 1: in l A. I'm wondering what's your take on subscription
Speaker 1: based self work slash programming or even to be Magnetic specifically?
Speaker 1: Is the industry around self work just gross and praying
Speaker 1: on people that lack self esteem? Isn't that everything? Though?
Speaker 1: I had never heard of to be Magnetic? But then
Speaker 1: looking around the website that the listener sent us, I
Speaker 1: was just like, Oh, this is just I mean, it
Speaker 1: felt so normal. I was just like, this is just
Speaker 1: every girl in l A basically, you know, like every
Speaker 1: every kind of woo woo adjacent jewelry selling us, you know,
Speaker 1: Crystal Workshop doing Lady in La. Like, it felt very
Speaker 1: normal to me. But then when you start to get
Speaker 1: into the subscription aspect of it, not that it's even
Speaker 1: that expensive. It's like four dollars for a year, which
Speaker 1: like I don't know, compared to them to Jordan Peterson's daughters,
Speaker 1: uh meet self help group is a steel Oh. We
Speaker 1: got a very angry message about posting the Jordan Peterson
Speaker 1: and Michaila Peterson meet book that apparently it's not a
Speaker 1: real book, and that was a parody cover. It was
Speaker 1: a parody cover. We got fooled. We got I was
Speaker 1: trying to find out if it was or not. It
Speaker 1: was very unclear on the internet. The internet surrounding Jordan
Speaker 1: Peterson is not somebody was like great fact checking nightcall.
Speaker 1: So sorry, guys. We apologized for falling for insane grifter,
Speaker 1: fake book cover. Everything else was so crazy. Everything else
Speaker 1: is normal in that story though, right, Like the cover
Speaker 1: is like the one thing that makes it crazy that
Speaker 1: that word how are you okay? Anyway? Well to be
Speaker 1: Magnetic describes itself on its website as the number one
Speaker 1: destination for grounded manifestation quote a combination of neuroscience and
Speaker 1: psychology teachings with a little spirituality sprinkled on top. Our
Speaker 1: members manifested when they did the work weekly, Are you
Speaker 1: ready to get out of your own way and manifest
Speaker 1: the life of your dreams? When they use the word
Speaker 1: manifest like that, it just sounds like like not to
Speaker 1: be gross, but like taking a ship like like manifest.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to knock anybody who's found
Speaker 1: this to be useful if they have, but I do
Speaker 1: think it definitely reminds me of um in l a
Speaker 1: the life coaching and also acting classes. Acting classes are
Speaker 1: exactly this get out of your own way. You're the
Speaker 1: only one standing in your own way, will help you
Speaker 1: get out of your own way, which is so strange,
Speaker 1: especially when you tie it into like neuros. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how neuroscience factors into this UM psychology. I guess
Speaker 1: I could understand, but the idea of getting out of
Speaker 1: your own way by handing over a lot of your
Speaker 1: decision making to a like guru type of person a
Speaker 1: little tricky. Well, there's also just I think the fundamental
Speaker 1: problem I have with a lot of these sorts of
Speaker 1: self help UM the mentality of it. The idea of
Speaker 1: getting out of your own way because that's the only
Speaker 1: thing that's holding you back, like puts the onus on
Speaker 1: the individual as opposed to like our fucked up capitalist society.
Speaker 1: Like if you're not manifesting so to speak, right now,
Speaker 1: that it's all on you, that you're blocked in some way.
Speaker 1: I mean that can be true to a degree, Like
Speaker 1: you can be in your own way, you can have
Speaker 1: bad habits and all that kind of stuff, Like that's
Speaker 1: that's totally legit. But like if you take somebody who's
Speaker 1: really struggling right now, say in this particular time when
Speaker 1: you know everybody's unemployed and it's impossible to like get
Speaker 1: certain careers off the ground because certain industry to ground
Speaker 1: to a halt. I e. Acting uh uh. Not that
Speaker 1: that's like necessarily the target demo, but I feel like
Speaker 1: it is. Like it is then it's like that's not
Speaker 1: all on you. And this it's a very actually to
Speaker 1: get back to the Christian values type thing we're talking about.
Speaker 1: It's very like self punishing in a very puritanical calvinist way,
Speaker 1: where it's like you just haven't done the work that
Speaker 1: you need to do in order to have whatever success
Speaker 1: that you want. And that kind of thinking is very
Speaker 1: easy to fall into because that's the way that we're
Speaker 1: all raised, that's our literal culture. Is that you're not
Speaker 1: working hard enough, so that's why you haven't succeeded. So
Speaker 1: I I get a little bit annoyed when I see
Speaker 1: this sort of philosophy espoused, Yeah, for sure. And it's
Speaker 1: that kind of law of attraction stuff that is total bullshit,
Speaker 1: but also is in the Secret and other snake oil
Speaker 1: stuff like that, the idea that if you just want
Speaker 1: something bad and it'll happen if you charge your crystals
Speaker 1: in the right way and you know, do some some
Speaker 1: manifestating manifestating Yeah, and the fact that you're like going
Speaker 1: to take this like you know, like a sprinkling of
Speaker 1: spirituality or like you know, in the stuff that's more
Speaker 1: straight up a spiritual practice and use it. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like half the people coming to
Speaker 1: this or like I want to be an entrepreneur or something.
Speaker 1: There just feels like something there's like a total disconnect
Speaker 1: there between like you know, an actual spiritual practice that
Speaker 1: makes you feel like a more fully realized human being
Speaker 1: and like making money. Like I don't know, this feels
Speaker 1: so so like Instagram, like uh a sponsored ad type
Speaker 1: um aesthetic. Uh. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of Instagram sponsors ads. I would like to
Speaker 1: sponsor us, But you know, it just has that vibe.
Speaker 1: It has this really you know, the design is all perfect.
Speaker 1: It's like very much like an affluent, aspirational kind of
Speaker 1: esthetic that's meant to communicate material success. And yeah, kase
Speaker 1: quix me out. Yeah, Well, because it's preying on people's insecurities.
Speaker 1: It's not like appealing to people's sense of self improvement.
Speaker 1: It's like there's something wrong with you, only we can
Speaker 1: fix it. Yea, I mean it's I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: hard because I remember reading UM one of the Val
Speaker 1: Kilmer profiles that came out pretty recently, like within the
Speaker 1: last year, and how he was talking about how like
Speaker 1: cancer wasn't like he didn't have cancer. He had like
Speaker 1: the I forget the exact phrase, but it was something
Speaker 1: like I was like confronted, but it was I don't
Speaker 1: have cancer, but like cancers somehow attracted into my realm.
Speaker 1: And like, with things like that, it's hard because to
Speaker 1: me they seem a little out there. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I'm like, if you feel bad or thinking
Speaker 1: that way, you were very sick, like you should think
Speaker 1: that way, you know, do do you? But then when
Speaker 1: you see how some of these websites are packaged, and
Speaker 1: especially in the context of watching the Vow and seeing
Speaker 1: how something that did start out, even though I don't
Speaker 1: believe it ever had anyone's best intentions at heart, but
Speaker 1: it started out seemingly pretty innocuous, And then by episode
Speaker 1: two we already see that there's like a splinter group
Speaker 1: forming of these women UM who are doing things that
Speaker 1: are drastically different than we're presented in the first episode.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of when you look at this website
Speaker 1: um for to be Magnetic, you kind of can see that,
Speaker 1: like the way that this is being packaged is already
Speaker 1: like inherently, as Emily said, like you're towards more of
Speaker 1: like a material success or a kind of like tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek. If you've run out of things to buy,
Speaker 1: you buy the like program that tells you that you're
Speaker 1: better than you were before you had it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: subscribe to positive thinking. And the thing about the thing
Speaker 1: about Nexium that is coming across now in the second
Speaker 1: episode is like, if it weren't for the sex cult
Speaker 1: inside of it, it would just be like a multi
Speaker 1: level marketing scheme that sort of new age and it
Speaker 1: might just still exist today. Yeah. Yeah, that's the kind
Speaker 1: of fascinating thing about it is like that, Yeah, there,
Speaker 1: it would just be kind of a you know, maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit fringing, maybe a little a bit of
Speaker 1: a waste of money type thing. Like I do still
Speaker 1: think that like whatever, like what we know of of
Speaker 1: Keith threw nearis technologies are like a lot of it
Speaker 1: seems kind of legit to be honest, but to be honest,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, but the fact that then there is,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, one in twenty people who are attracted
Speaker 1: to that kind of thing also have a real propensity
Speaker 1: for like self negation already and are willing and like
Speaker 1: almost wanting to get into this sort of thing where
Speaker 1: somebody else is dictating what their life is. Like I
Speaker 1: think that that is like, that's like and and people
Speaker 1: are always going to be there to take advantage of that,
Speaker 1: like if you're a person who wants direction, right, And
Speaker 1: that's why people fall victim to dictators also obviously and fascism,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people do want to be told
Speaker 1: what to do, and it makes sense why because the
Speaker 1: world is fucking scary and confusing and people just want
Speaker 1: like mommy and daddy to step in and be like,
Speaker 1: here's what you do. And that can be very easily
Speaker 1: used to manipulate and exploit people, which is why you
Speaker 1: shouldn't trust anybody that's trying to position themselves as like
Speaker 1: a parental figure. Usually yeah yeah, but yeah once once once, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody's like telling you to call them master, and it's
Speaker 1: not in a fun, kinky way, maybe maybe that's a
Speaker 1: red flag. Maybe you know, personal fascism is is not cool,
Speaker 1: just the way that geopolitical fascism isn't either. Well. Also,
Speaker 1: going back to our first call that we today from Carlos,
Speaker 1: I think what seems apparent is that our understanding of
Speaker 1: cults has come a really long way in the past
Speaker 1: few decades. And I think that certainly, like at one
Speaker 1: point a cult, like if if you had an experience
Speaker 1: where it was like a lot of people going and
Speaker 1: like you know, contacting dead ancestors and like engaging in
Speaker 1: baptism rituals and stuff like that, that those things seem
Speaker 1: like out if they're outside of your experience, it would
Speaker 1: seem easy to classify those as like a fringe group
Speaker 1: of a religion, and like maybe that seems like a
Speaker 1: cult to you. But then looking into UM the kind
Speaker 1: of like newer weird self improvement systems like like Nexium
Speaker 1: and things of that, ilk you see that the real
Speaker 1: difference is who if the leader is a person who
Speaker 1: is UM like Keith Rawniery kind of prescribing something that's
Speaker 1: so I mean, one of the things that struck me
Speaker 1: about the second episode was Bonnie, who is Mark's wife
Speaker 1: was writing a crew an episode three or two. I
Speaker 1: can't remember if storks yeah, and they sure showed that.
Speaker 1: I was like, I knew it, but she wrote down
Speaker 1: her schedule. And the people who were successful within this organization,
Speaker 1: we're being sleep deprived. They were being so overworked just
Speaker 1: to break them down. And so but then you you
Speaker 1: see the potential for that in other more innocuous seeming
Speaker 1: self help groups where if you subscribe to something and
Speaker 1: you're investing money and self improvement, you're investing in this
Speaker 1: kind of like projected image of the really healthy looking
Speaker 1: lady in the sun hat who's like taking care of herself.
Speaker 1: Then there is a sense of like, you don't want
Speaker 1: the failure of not working hard enough to achieve something
Speaker 1: you You know, if it were easy to achieve, you
Speaker 1: think you you would have already achieved it without help.
Speaker 1: So now that you're committing to this, it seems like
Speaker 1: there's the potential to drive someone to a point where
Speaker 1: you are breaking down the things that kind of hold
Speaker 1: the individual together in order to control them. Right, And
Speaker 1: like the technology, a lot of it just seems kind
Speaker 1: of taken from talk therapy, and so it feels similar
Speaker 1: to scientology in that way of being like, don't get therapy.
Speaker 1: Therapy is bad. We've got this thing that's just like
Speaker 1: therapy and that will have some of the benefits of therapy,
Speaker 1: but also we're gonna like take advantage of how vulnerable
Speaker 1: we're making you feel. Yeah, well, I'm I'm, I'm all in,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm excited for the next episode. I know how
Speaker 1: many episodes are there of this. I think there's like
Speaker 1: nine nine. Yeah, so yeah, we're gonna We're gonna keep
Speaker 1: checking back in with it. Let us know your thoughts
Speaker 1: about the vow and nextium and all that stuff. Give
Speaker 1: us a night call one to four oh four six
Speaker 1: night or a night email at night Call Podcast at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. Let us know what you think about
Speaker 1: that or anything else in the world. Um, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick bake and when we come back, our
Speaker 1: guest sam Are is going to join us and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about those chihuahuas. Welcome Tonightcall. We are
Speaker 1: now joined by our guests, Samur Caliph uh Sama. Calip
Speaker 1: has written for Slate, New Republic, and Popular. He was
Speaker 1: previously a managing editor at dead Spin, and he is
Speaker 1: now a managing editor at Defector, which is a brand
Speaker 1: new site which is either launching now or very soon
Speaker 1: at defector dot com. It's a worker owned sports blog
Speaker 1: and media company that is uh yeah, I'm very exciting.
Speaker 1: So Hi, welcome Sama, Thank you for having me, Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. We have a lot we want to
Speaker 1: talk about. We got we got a question that like
Speaker 1: actually talks about a subject that we talked about a lot,
Speaker 1: which is sort of like lost versions of the Internet. Um,
Speaker 1: we had a question about just like what were the
Speaker 1: sites that we were escaping to now, like the idea
Speaker 1: of going to websites, and it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: it feels a little bit antiquated now with social media
Speaker 1: and like Twitter just being the place where everybody who
Speaker 1: cares about reading stuff online is going. But um, I
Speaker 1: know you guys are kind is seeking to rethink that
Speaker 1: a little bit with the factor um what what's your
Speaker 1: what's your what's your feeling on that, like about the
Speaker 1: website hang out and like the future of websites. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like social media kind of consolidated
Speaker 1: a lot of it and just we did out a
Speaker 1: lot of the smaller places where people would go to
Speaker 1: just find communities. I mean and also there are probably
Speaker 1: other factors to just in terms of how people react
Speaker 1: on the Internet these days, But yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: factor was trying to just create like we we want
Speaker 1: to break news and we want to do reporting, and
Speaker 1: we want to write stuff that people want to read.
Speaker 1: But also there is a sense that we do want
Speaker 1: to create like a nice community that people want to
Speaker 1: be a part of, and hopefully like doesn't need to
Speaker 1: be moderated too well because people kind of grasp the
Speaker 1: expectations going in. So I mean, in terms of other
Speaker 1: sites that I go to for an escape, I play
Speaker 1: a lot of like online chess, and I'd like, fine,
Speaker 1: like any s emulator sites use that that online chess
Speaker 1: was like taking over and becoming dangerous dangerous chess, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you have money and wrapped up in it.
Speaker 1: The thing is I would be like I would be
Speaker 1: like Howard Ratner right now if I was betting on
Speaker 1: chess games and myself like I would be deep in
Speaker 1: the hole and getting chased by bookies. But now I
Speaker 1: just I picked it up because I used to play
Speaker 1: when I was younger. I was never like any good
Speaker 1: or like ranked or anything. I would just play with
Speaker 1: my dad and like friends and stuff, and it seemed
Speaker 1: like a good hobby that would keep my brain like active,
Speaker 1: but in the end, it actually is just like making
Speaker 1: me extremely frustrated all the time. Like I I understand
Speaker 1: how people like I would never been like a really
Speaker 1: big golf person, but I understand why people gets so
Speaker 1: addicted and piste off by the game and keep coming
Speaker 1: back to it. I've been playing a lot of online
Speaker 1: boggle um and having a similar boggles more boggles really
Speaker 1: my speed, but it so I play on word twist
Speaker 1: dot org and there there's this user I think her
Speaker 1: name is like mom of four Boys or something, and
Speaker 1: I'll think, like that was that was like a pretty
Speaker 1: good game of boggle right there. Test And then I'll
Speaker 1: look and it will say the average score, and then
Speaker 1: the high score and the average scores all like I
Speaker 1: think I've only beaten the average score once and it
Speaker 1: probably was because like not that many people have played
Speaker 1: that board. But Mom of four Boys is like consistently
Speaker 1: like doubling and tripling my score and I'm working like
Speaker 1: so hard, but it reminds me. It's that kind of
Speaker 1: like compulsive like when you're sick of the scroll, you
Speaker 1: then do the like, you know, refreshing the game kind
Speaker 1: of thing, but it doesn't. It's not as good. There's
Speaker 1: nobody you're playing. It's just you're playing on a board
Speaker 1: by yourself, and then they're comparing your score to other
Speaker 1: people's scores, which is why I like it. I used
Speaker 1: to play um online Scrabble a lot, but then e
Speaker 1: A like changed it and now it's unplayable. So that
Speaker 1: was my solution to like scratch that itch. But um,
Speaker 1: it's it's just and then and the games are so
Speaker 1: short there two minutes, so you just like play one
Speaker 1: and then you're just like go go go, uh, which
Speaker 1: is terrible. I used to do so many online games,
Speaker 1: like Yahoo games used to be like a major thing
Speaker 1: they had, like the that word scramble game where you
Speaker 1: find the different words within the I mean it's very
Speaker 1: boggle adjacent. I can't remember the name of it anymore.
Speaker 1: But then I feel like all kind of low stakes
Speaker 1: online game playing, like word games and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: A lot of it moved to Facebook, and I always
Speaker 1: thought that was so weird. When Facebook and got into
Speaker 1: like hosting games, it just felt like a con to
Speaker 1: get you to be like logging more hours on Facebook,
Speaker 1: even if you're just like tending to your farm Ville
Speaker 1: farm or something. So I haven't really like, you know,
Speaker 1: And now I'm thinking back with great fondness and nostalgia
Speaker 1: about like hanging out on Yahoo Games games dot Yahoo
Speaker 1: dot com when I was at work study, uh employee
Speaker 1: my film school. Well, if you want to play the boggle,
Speaker 1: it's called word Twist, but it's hosted by some something
Speaker 1: called puzzle Baron. Ah. Yes, I would love to be
Speaker 1: on the property of a baron when I huzzled Baron. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So um for for people who don't know, and we
Speaker 1: we we get a little bit inside baseball on media,
Speaker 1: sometimes here but um and sometimes on other forms like
Speaker 1: we had a we had a live stream where we
Speaker 1: suddenly just became a media chat. Um. So for for
Speaker 1: people who maybe don't know, can you kind of explain
Speaker 1: that the writer owned or the worker owned um model
Speaker 1: for defector and what that means and why that's important
Speaker 1: and different from how the majority of blogs and media
Speaker 1: outlets work. Sure, so um we were everybody who is
Speaker 1: everybody except for one person at the Factor was part
Speaker 1: of dead Spin and we all um left under. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go into the circumstances too much,
Speaker 1: because I feel like they're already public anyway, but we
Speaker 1: left under circumstances that were caused by bad experiences with
Speaker 1: the owners. So um, what we're doing with the Factor
Speaker 1: is its worker owned and that everybody has a piece
Speaker 1: of equity. Everybody gets to vote on major decisions. So
Speaker 1: we still have like an editor in chief and we
Speaker 1: have somebody Jasper Wayang, who's in charge of um like
Speaker 1: the business side of the site, but all the workers
Speaker 1: are able to hold them accountable with a vote if
Speaker 1: it comes to that, so they're we're putting like safeguards
Speaker 1: in place in that so they have there's nobody in
Speaker 1: any position of power who can just uni literally make
Speaker 1: decisions basically, Yeah, which feels like the most I don't know,
Speaker 1: like logical way for a site like that to be run,
Speaker 1: but I think like maybe a lot of people got
Speaker 1: a crash course and like how most media companies actually
Speaker 1: work from that episode of succession where it's just like
Speaker 1: this really oftentimes labyrinthine thing that you know, billionaires decided
Speaker 1: to get a stake in who don't really care about
Speaker 1: the future of the site and the people who work
Speaker 1: for it, and it's just kind of a mess. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think like when you think of a publication
Speaker 1: that a group of people are working on together, like
Speaker 1: that feels like a much more kind of organic, cloistic
Speaker 1: way for it to be run. But it's unfortunately not
Speaker 1: very common now. I was interested because Dad's been up
Speaker 1: all night. I know you did a bit of that
Speaker 1: sammer and that was that kind of to me. Was like,
Speaker 1: it's one of those nostalgic kind of things of like
Speaker 1: the late night blog as opposed to the late night Twitter. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm probably I'm maybe too old to really enjoy Twitter.
Speaker 1: Is my reasoning for why I don't, um, because I
Speaker 1: just like I feel as though whenever I used Twitter,
Speaker 1: like late at night and everyone's like enjoying the late
Speaker 1: night Twitter vibe, I'm like, I really liked this on
Speaker 1: blogs and I don't know why it was such a
Speaker 1: novelty to be like it's night, but we're writing online,
Speaker 1: like we're all here at night, we're all up. Um.
Speaker 1: But it it made me think of, you know, when
Speaker 1: we got this inquiry from a listener about like what
Speaker 1: kind of sites do you go to to escape the
Speaker 1: hell that we live in? I was like well dead
Speaker 1: Spin was one, um for sure, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: now dad Spin exists, but it's but de factor is
Speaker 1: really dead Spin. Um yeah um. But it's just like
Speaker 1: it is hard to find what used to be kind
Speaker 1: of like the soul of the Internet. And I think,
Speaker 1: like what Emi Lisa too, is that a lot of
Speaker 1: that is because we've kind of seen how like companies
Speaker 1: can mismanage sites that do you have really great communities
Speaker 1: built in, make it so hard for people to put
Speaker 1: out the content that they're really excited to put out,
Speaker 1: and it just becomes like this bureaucratic mess. So I
Speaker 1: think it's exciting that you guys are doing this, but
Speaker 1: I also like I wish everything were sped up and
Speaker 1: that there were more sites like popping up, like I mean,
Speaker 1: hopefully it'll set the tone. Yeah, my question is are
Speaker 1: you guys going to stick to sports? We will not
Speaker 1: be sticking to sports. Yeah, there are some ideas. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've just been tossing around ideas for either recurring features
Speaker 1: or just one off things, and we're definitely open to
Speaker 1: doing whatever. And we're also doing stuff on We're trying
Speaker 1: out like a Twitch stream, which we never really even
Speaker 1: thought about. Like at the old place. But I think
Speaker 1: that will offer our ability to like go outside of
Speaker 1: just like talking about last night's game or whatever for
Speaker 1: an hour. From my limited experience with Twitch, which is
Speaker 1: mostly with night call live streams, that does feel like
Speaker 1: the most logical kind of analog between something like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of like hanging out on a
Speaker 1: blog or hanging out in the common section of something,
Speaker 1: just because it is like it's contained, you can actually
Speaker 1: see a list of who's there. Like I stumbled across
Speaker 1: when I was on a a deep dive. UM this
Speaker 1: uh like anarchist radio station, like a web a web
Speaker 1: radio thing, and it had a chat room and I've
Speaker 1: never heard of this thing before, but suddenly I found
Speaker 1: myself in the chat room for this radio station. There
Speaker 1: were two other people in it, and it was that
Speaker 1: was it. And I was just like, wow, when do
Speaker 1: you stumble across like a truly intimate space like that
Speaker 1: on on the internet, where you know you can still
Speaker 1: have a degree of anonymity, but it's not for the
Speaker 1: sake of being able to say whatever you want. It's
Speaker 1: just like kind of an adventure. UM. That feels like Twitch.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the closest to that of like a
Speaker 1: big kind of commonly used platform that that I can
Speaker 1: think of now. Yeah, I definitely agree. I feel like
Speaker 1: some of that public access feeling of Twitch really gets
Speaker 1: at what I liked about the old Internet. My friends
Speaker 1: Jack and Kate have daily morning show called Jack Am
Speaker 1: that I watch every day that it's like one of
Speaker 1: the only things that feels like it gives me routine
Speaker 1: right now, which I also think people are really thirsty for.
Speaker 1: Just to be able to wake up and check a
Speaker 1: site or watch a show or listen to a podcast weekly. Uh,
Speaker 1: makes people feel like there's some sort of grounding in time.
Speaker 1: One of the things Um sam Or that you said
Speaker 1: that you've also found comfort in is the international celebrity
Speaker 1: chihuahua scene. How did you find How did you find
Speaker 1: these fancy dogs? I think like originally it was they's
Speaker 1: just like one of those random tweets where there's a
Speaker 1: video and it's completely unsourced and somebody's using it for
Speaker 1: a completely different thing, Like it was these two chihuahua
Speaker 1: standing up on the side of a car window and
Speaker 1: one of them kind of dramatically like slumps down in
Speaker 1: the way, Like it wasn't like passing out or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just like it lost its balance and my girlfriend
Speaker 1: head there. I think tracked down like who who owned
Speaker 1: that chuaua like on Instagram because it wasn't like a
Speaker 1: relatively obscure account, but it just wasn't like known very well.
Speaker 1: And it's a Their names are Toro and Maguro, and
Speaker 1: I think I believe Magurro means tuna in Japanese and
Speaker 1: I think it's is it Magaro is like, um uh,
Speaker 1: what's the I'm gonna look it up. It's it's a
Speaker 1: different kind of thing. It is a fish. I might
Speaker 1: gone that wrong, but yeah. The Instagram is like k Yoshihara,
Speaker 1: which I'm not sure where that or that just might
Speaker 1: be the person's name. But two chaua is one of
Speaker 1: them is like pretty normal and like it's a has
Speaker 1: like white fur, and the other one is has like
Speaker 1: a mysterious thing where it walks kind of funny. But
Speaker 1: then like if you pointed out in the comments, the
Speaker 1: owner gets really offended and mad and just like doesn't
Speaker 1: want to talk about it. And I think one person
Speaker 1: as is like is she okay? Like why is she
Speaker 1: walking like that? And the translation was like mcgarrow lives
Speaker 1: hard every day, and it is a struggle for her
Speaker 1: which one is which, because I'm looking at the account
Speaker 1: right now, and one of them is genuinely kind of
Speaker 1: is starting to have the amphibious head effect, like has
Speaker 1: kind of eyes on either side of its head because
Speaker 1: its head is so small. I'm assuming that the fun
Speaker 1: colored one. Yes, that's mcgarrow. Okay, yeah, mcgarrow does look
Speaker 1: like she lives hard. I mean, a lot of these
Speaker 1: chihuahua's there, you can, like I scrolled kind of back
Speaker 1: in the archives of some of them. We looked at
Speaker 1: a lot of chihuahuas, um and when they're puppies, chihuahuas
Speaker 1: are very cute and like very you know all a
Speaker 1: lot of these chihuahuas seem willing to pose with green
Speaker 1: apples in tiny hat. That's that kind of thing with bobbles.
Speaker 1: But then it's hard because like many small dogs, chihuahua
Speaker 1: is like they you know, they start to show their
Speaker 1: age when they're like fourteen, they get like the I
Speaker 1: thing and like maybe tooth problems. And it's hard because
Speaker 1: it's like this sped up thing of being a celebrity
Speaker 1: where it's like you don't want to you don't want
Speaker 1: to read mean comments on like the once beautiful whatever
Speaker 1: Popo and Palm, and it's like now they're living those
Speaker 1: hard lives. There's there's definitely one account um it's called
Speaker 1: like Naggy Coo or something like it similar to that.
Speaker 1: There's like a few numbers after the word. But they
Speaker 1: definitely close a bunch of them as strollers. But also
Speaker 1: it's very clear that they use the same Instagram filters
Speaker 1: that like callistic ging grips uses like her and new
Speaker 1: and it's just like very smooth faces for all them.
Speaker 1: That's so weird, Sweeten that chihuahua. Please, uh well, should
Speaker 1: we take a night email from one of our listeners? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh this is great. So this comes to us from
Speaker 1: our listener Aaron, who writes, it's eleven forty seven pm
Speaker 1: in I think it's is it ocoee or so I
Speaker 1: don't know in Florida Ocoee Florida. And as a new
Speaker 1: listener to your podcast, I've been listening to older episodes
Speaker 1: and one episode you all discussed the computer generated content
Speaker 1: on YouTube that uses popular children's characters in search terms
Speaker 1: to create bizarre content men to trick the algorithm into
Speaker 1: auto playing those videos. This reminded me of something that
Speaker 1: I found in college. A large part of my final
Speaker 1: semester involved me editing a student film, and I spent
Speaker 1: many late nights in the editing lab working on my cut,
Speaker 1: along with two other editors working on their films. Often,
Speaker 1: as the nights dragged on, we would end up getting
Speaker 1: distracted by looking up done and stuff on YouTube. And
Speaker 1: this was sort of does typing in numbers and letters
Speaker 1: and a file type and the YouTube search bar e g.
Speaker 1: Three F seven dot MP four and seeing what came up.
Speaker 1: A lot of the content we found were things like
Speaker 1: accidentally uploaded vacation videos or picture tours of homes for sale.
Speaker 1: How However, one night, we stumbled across something that felt
Speaker 1: much more sinister. The link we open started playing bizarre
Speaker 1: beeps and tones, and random shapes and lines in various
Speaker 1: colors started sliding across the screen. It felt like something
Speaker 1: dark and forbidden, like we had entered an episode of
Speaker 1: Black Mirror and we're going to be brainwashed or killed
Speaker 1: off one by one. The best explanation we can make
Speaker 1: of it was that it was some kind of AI
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to make a human figure
Speaker 1: out of geometric shapes. If you scroll through their page
Speaker 1: from oldest to newest videos, you can see the algorithm
Speaker 1: seemed to figure out how to make a basic face
Speaker 1: and maybe even at a basic body shape. So, um,
Speaker 1: so this is a you can find this on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I think there's like maybe like twenty something views on
Speaker 1: a lot of these videos. Like nobody's looking at these.
Speaker 1: But the um, it was, it was it was it.
Speaker 1: I was playing, I I clicked on it. I was like,
Speaker 1: is that in my mind from talking about this scar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really scary. The name of the account is sweet peat.
Speaker 1: Sweet Peach has a subscribers somehow on YouTube, but like
Speaker 1: twenty views per video, so I don't know who's who's
Speaker 1: checking on sweet Peach. The name sweet Peaches is really
Speaker 1: scary in the context of how abstract this is. I
Speaker 1: would love to know what I mean. All the file
Speaker 1: names are just like a series of letters and numbers.
Speaker 1: I wonder what they put into the search to find
Speaker 1: this account. But this is some real good weirdo late
Speaker 1: night like internet trawlling material. Um, and it does feel
Speaker 1: like the Ring or something like, Oh if I watched this,
Speaker 1: am I gonna have finanniurism or something like it's very weird.
Speaker 1: It's it's super scary, and I don't know, are you
Speaker 1: guys familiar with webdriver Torso. No, that's how so familiar
Speaker 1: drug my memory, it's from so. The only reason I
Speaker 1: I was not familiar with reb webdriver Torso until I
Speaker 1: searched sweet Peach and then found a Reddit post that said,
Speaker 1: this reminds me of webdriver Torso, and webdriver Torso has
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia page and stuff, so I guess in um,
Speaker 1: people discovered this YouTube channel called webdriver Torso and they
Speaker 1: were like, it was very similar to this. Um it
Speaker 1: was you know, like these kind of like shapes like
Speaker 1: a like like mostly squares, and it kind of just
Speaker 1: it was like nothing, but it was a lot like this,
Speaker 1: but not as uh intricate like this has drawings of faces.
Speaker 1: This was just like square, square, red and blue. And
Speaker 1: people who noticed it like started talking about it, and
Speaker 1: they became convinced that it was like, you know, all
Speaker 1: of these conspiracy theories started popping up of like aliens
Speaker 1: trying to get in touch with us. It's bi videos,
Speaker 1: and I guess three of the videos were like strange.
Speaker 1: They were not like the others. One of them was
Speaker 1: um it was. The title was basically a shortened form
Speaker 1: of temporary Rick Rule nine teen five, where one of
Speaker 1: the squares becomes Rick Astley dancing. One of them is
Speaker 1: only available in France and you have to pay to
Speaker 1: watch it, and it's um the I think it's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's a Spanish dubbed episode of Aquitine Hunger
Speaker 1: Force and you have to like pay to watch it.
Speaker 1: But everyone, no one could figure out what it was.
Speaker 1: And then finally um YouTube admitted that it was like
Speaker 1: an internal kind of training thing, so it was um,
Speaker 1: you know, they were trying to see if we make
Speaker 1: this simple video and then upload it, like what's the
Speaker 1: differentiation in quality from what we recorded to what we see?
Speaker 1: But if you google webdriver Torso then the Google logo
Speaker 1: becomes webdriver Torso themed. I want to try try it.
Speaker 1: It's almost weird when you see the backstage of the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very oh my god, it happened. Oh scary. But
Speaker 1: it's like, this doesn't seem like an in internal YouTube thing.
Speaker 1: But you wonder if maybe it's like trying to train.
Speaker 1: It's like training itself to be better at uploading videos.
Speaker 1: But it's at the name Sweet Peach is just it's
Speaker 1: weird because it doesn't think well. I think that there's
Speaker 1: something like before knowing that this is an internal YouTube thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: With webdever Torso, it just feels like, um, like you know,
Speaker 1: an art project or something, because it's very you know,
Speaker 1: it looks like a mandrean or something, and like webdriver
Speaker 1: Torso is such a like net art sounded name. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like a project, feels like somebody you know
Speaker 1: doing some art, trying to be creative or whatever. The
Speaker 1: thing about the Sweet Peach thing is something about the
Speaker 1: faces and that things that almost look like faces make
Speaker 1: it feel much more like the machine is becoming self
Speaker 1: aware and like it's in its embryonic stage and we
Speaker 1: must stop it. Lawnmower Peach, it's very lawnmower man. Have
Speaker 1: you ever found anything like true really weird and unexplainable
Speaker 1: like that, or do you have a favorite one of
Speaker 1: those summer like just weird little pockets in the Internet.
Speaker 1: I haven't personally, but I was looking at that Sweet
Speaker 1: Peach channel after you sent it, and I was just curious,
Speaker 1: like because it seems like it's so it's using like
Speaker 1: the same kind of foundational elements, like to the point
Speaker 1: where maybe something like somebody made a bot or something.
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, let's see how many videos this
Speaker 1: can create out of these certain elements. But it seems
Speaker 1: like all the videos are uploaded in October, but not
Speaker 1: all in the same day. So I'm looking at one
Speaker 1: that was uploaded in April. I'm gonna far enough. This
Speaker 1: is not this where they uploaded this year. I didn't
Speaker 1: look it was last year. Um, yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: them were uploaded in October and then there are Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's like the large bulk of them. It looks like
Speaker 1: we're a floated in October. I was looking at one
Speaker 1: from April for some so maybe that was like the
Speaker 1: first one. Yeah. I love something like this where it's
Speaker 1: impossible to tell if it's just like an actual industrial
Speaker 1: back channel or if it's like someone trying to make
Speaker 1: a creepy pasta. It definitely seems automated, like the bulk
Speaker 1: of this is like beyond somebody trying to like somebody
Speaker 1: just like planting some scary stuff like it feels it
Speaker 1: does feel like there's some kind of automation or bought
Speaker 1: behind this because they're just such a volume of stuff
Speaker 1: and oh my god, it's creepy. It's really creepy. Those
Speaker 1: tones are very creepy. Town and Pokemon, like the level
Speaker 1: that's supposed to make like make you want to kill yourself.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you another conspiracy I just heard about?
Speaker 1: Actually that's very similar to what you're talking about, which
Speaker 1: is like the idea of tones that will make you
Speaker 1: do something. Yeah, And there's that that like that feels
Speaker 1: like a very kind of you know, it's like this
Speaker 1: sort of horror movie version of what everybody kind of
Speaker 1: were afraid of with the Internet when it first started
Speaker 1: to become a thing, which is like, oh, you're going
Speaker 1: to accidentally stumble into something that's truly dangerous or that's
Speaker 1: either going to steal all your money or you know,
Speaker 1: open you up to some kind of physical tag or whatever.
Speaker 1: So there is like I feel like we all have
Speaker 1: a sort of basic fear about the Internet, you know,
Speaker 1: no matter how many iterations of it we have lived through,
Speaker 1: where there's still this thing of like I could find
Speaker 1: the haunted website. Yeah. And also as you like see
Speaker 1: people go off the deep end because of stuff they
Speaker 1: learned about on the Internet and conspiracy stuff, which I
Speaker 1: feel like has been happening more and more so. My
Speaker 1: friend Carter Cruse was talking about this phenomenon of like
Speaker 1: she just you know, just like you follow somebody and
Speaker 1: then they suddenly just take a turn into conspiracy town.
Speaker 1: And she was saying, like I had been noticing this too.
Speaker 1: Just look like some random like hot girls I fall
Speaker 1: oh that are like musicians or models or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then they'll just start posting about like que stuff. And
Speaker 1: she was saying, she was like, oh, did you encounter this?
Speaker 1: She followed somebody who then started posting about a conspiracy
Speaker 1: that involved people putting tones in music that are going
Speaker 1: to like make you do stuff, brainwash you and make
Speaker 1: you do stuff. What kind of music is this? But yeah,
Speaker 1: is it like current music? Yeah? I think the idea
Speaker 1: was like probably electronic music or pop music that you
Speaker 1: know they're there brainwashing you by putting certain tones that
Speaker 1: make you feel certain ways in music. Um, which is
Speaker 1: also the kind of the plot line of the Josie
Speaker 1: and the Pussycats movie right. Um. But also it came
Speaker 1: up on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills on the other
Speaker 1: context that there's like a calming tone. We talked about
Speaker 1: this before, I think, but I hadn't thought about its
Speaker 1: corollary if they're being like the evil tones in music,
Speaker 1: the one that kick starts the disintegration of your brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she was like, I don't know if I'm like,
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to follow this person because it's
Speaker 1: too weird. But I was like, I've just been noticing
Speaker 1: that more and more that people will just take a
Speaker 1: turn into some conspiracy and just never come back. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there there's also a very fine line between
Speaker 1: people who were who are kind of like hippie hippie dippy,
Speaker 1: happy good hippies who then become kind of anti vax
Speaker 1: and then become Q and on like this. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: so much cross breeding right now between new age anti
Speaker 1: vax stuff and Q and on because sort of the
Speaker 1: center of the ven diagram is like, hey, we love children, right,
Speaker 1: you care about children, Come on in. But it's scary
Speaker 1: to me, it's very scary. How do you bring people
Speaker 1: back from that? I mean it's this whole Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the conspiracy thing in general, just like getting off of
Speaker 1: the addiction of finding connections between things, like we've been
Speaker 1: talking about. I feel like the last few weeks. It's like,
Speaker 1: once you kind of start that line of thinking, it's
Speaker 1: really hard to break out of it and be like, no,
Speaker 1: there are things that are just random, like there are
Speaker 1: things that are just the way things are like. But
Speaker 1: if there's a you know, you'd defy feel very about everything,
Speaker 1: or one large, you know, conspiracy, then there's something actually
Speaker 1: kind of comforting about that. In some way, the chihuahuas
Speaker 1: are spelling out messages. They're trying to tell us something
Speaker 1: with their crusty eyes. They're trying to tell us. Before
Speaker 1: we let you go, Sammer, we wanted to briefly discuss
Speaker 1: so Emily is. Now. She's shuttling back and forth between
Speaker 1: a couple of different places, but she is spending some
Speaker 1: time in a house that has haunted. I mean, I
Speaker 1: live there, you live, yeah, but now you're not there.
Speaker 1: I have to go to because the ghosts have taken
Speaker 1: over the internet. I have to I have to go
Speaker 1: elsewhere for internet. So also, you said that you were
Speaker 1: chasing mice where they are there mice and ghosts in
Speaker 1: that house? Oh yes, oh yeah, I am not alone
Speaker 1: no matter what the context is. Yeah. Um, but Sammer,
Speaker 1: we asked you if you had because you're from New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and we were like, is it very haunted? Because
Speaker 1: New England as a whole is haunted. But we kind
Speaker 1: of agree New Hampshire is not like the most haunted
Speaker 1: place in New England. I think it's Connecticut, maybe I would.
Speaker 1: I think it's like a two way race between Massachusetts
Speaker 1: and Connecticut because Massachusetts kind of I mean, I had
Speaker 1: the Sale, which trials obviously, and that that gives you
Speaker 1: a pretty big lead in terms of haunted occurrences in
Speaker 1: the state. But yeah, Connecticut is I don't want to
Speaker 1: say sneaky haunted, but oh yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: Rhode Island is the most haunted New England state because
Speaker 1: because of the vampire thing, because HP love Craft in
Speaker 1: a girl and Poe not too. But it's a good
Speaker 1: point they leaned into being haunted themed. But I think
Speaker 1: Connectic kid is the scariest there you go, um, but
Speaker 1: in a different way, just like Stepford Stepford wise, which
Speaker 1: is different than ghosts automatons. Uh. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't really spent that much time in New England proper.
Speaker 1: I think, like in general, I mean I get like
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, the earliest settled places or
Speaker 1: like you know, the earliest colonized places in the United
Speaker 1: States as being kind of haunted and cursed in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. But I haven't really spent that much
Speaker 1: time in them. The one thing I will say, though,
Speaker 1: and I feel like this has come up before on
Speaker 1: this podcast because I lived in New York for like
Speaker 1: five years. That's the bulk of my experience on the
Speaker 1: on the East Coast. But I think that New York
Speaker 1: City is actually like one of the least haunted places
Speaker 1: in the country. There's no room for ghosts. There's no
Speaker 1: room for ghosts. Um, there's too much like overlap, like
Speaker 1: too much overlapping energy. I think that they get crowded out.
Speaker 1: Like I would like to cite a little text called
Speaker 1: the Ghostbusters here you counter your argument the ghosts live
Speaker 1: as a fantasy. They live in the subway tunnels and
Speaker 1: in the libraries. They don't they Honestly, I think they
Speaker 1: don't like people like the New Yorker. Ghosts are not
Speaker 1: fans of crowds. That's how it feels like they've been
Speaker 1: chased out. They're not fans of tourists. Who is wonder
Speaker 1: if the New York ghosts are just like talking among
Speaker 1: themselves when some one of the ghosts smooth out to
Speaker 1: like Connecticut or Massachusetts, like New York is going to
Speaker 1: handle it New York. New York is undead. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: you pointed us to a New Hampshire magazine article what
Speaker 1: is it? Yeah? I think and they um there were
Speaker 1: a few different examples of like hauntings in New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: The Hotel ports Smith Um is this old mansion that
Speaker 1: was turned into an inn, and that one sounds pretty
Speaker 1: haunted because and they and the ghosts I guess, like
Speaker 1: to play with ice from the ice machine. Yeah, someone
Speaker 1: sit out to me because it's just so specific, like
Speaker 1: the the ghost really like messing with the ice and
Speaker 1: just putting in piles. I feel an interesting ghost activity.
Speaker 1: All bed and breakfasts are haunted, but usually by like
Speaker 1: the proprietor of the bed and breakfast? Is that a fact?
Speaker 1: I just find people's old, dusty things to be haunted
Speaker 1: like obviously California is also very haunted, extremely um, but
Speaker 1: there's less of like the you know a blanket from
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty to connect you to the time when the
Speaker 1: haunting is It's true. The airbnb thing is also like
Speaker 1: we've talked about airbnb is being haunted or not, and
Speaker 1: you know there's such a wide swath of levels of hauntings.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about like, Okay, so you could be
Speaker 1: in like an old historical house and in New England
Speaker 1: and rent that it's like your picturesque getaway or something.
Speaker 1: But is that more or less Like you know, if
Speaker 1: you're living in somebody's home or somebody's like vacation home
Speaker 1: or something, is that more or less haunted than being
Speaker 1: in a place it's like a New Bill department that's
Speaker 1: like just there to be an Airbnb, and there's this
Speaker 1: kind of soulless and empty, like I'm more spooked out
Speaker 1: by the ladder than the former. I would rather have
Speaker 1: some It's kind of like the probiotics of of the
Speaker 1: spirit world, Like I want some fauna of some flora
Speaker 1: in in in in the mix, Like I can't have
Speaker 1: a completely blank slate. That feels unhealthy. And that backs
Speaker 1: up why New York is not haunted, is like the
Speaker 1: humans are the probiotics. Yes, I think that's a great analysis.
Speaker 1: I think we're developing a universal theory, which is just
Speaker 1: that like landlords are all ghouls, that's who's haunting these properties,
Speaker 1: but also New Hampshire, famous for the live free or
Speaker 1: die motto, it does have a sort of reputation as
Speaker 1: a sanctuary for people such as Veto on The Sopranos
Speaker 1: and more recently, Gillian Maxwell. So I think Gee Lane's
Speaker 1: House in New Hampshire might be the most haunted place
Speaker 1: in New England. Now, yeah, any place like I think
Speaker 1: that's maybe the only the only places that's haunted In
Speaker 1: New York City too, Is any place that Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 1: or Gillian Maxwell has lived like that's haunted? Haunted? I
Speaker 1: think there aren't other creepy apartments in New York though,
Speaker 1: come on, there's a whole network. Stanley Kubrick tried to
Speaker 1: tell us there are so many. I find, as I've said,
Speaker 1: I find any rich person apartment in New York to
Speaker 1: be totally haunted. I think that the if you're going
Speaker 1: to say that there are haunted New York apartments that
Speaker 1: are not related to Epstein, I'm going to say that
Speaker 1: they're the lofts, because lofts ghost love lofts. I think,
Speaker 1: because as you know, ghost haunt a property like the land,
Speaker 1: they don't haunt the building but I think that they
Speaker 1: would be. And then the path that the ghosts take
Speaker 1: supposedly doesn't have to do with the layout of the
Speaker 1: place as it now is, but as it once was.
Speaker 1: So in aloft, you take away all the walls, right,
Speaker 1: and I think that makes ghost sad. I say, I
Speaker 1: feel bad, vibe and wass Do ghosts also open floor
Speaker 1: plans and offices? Yes, for sure, especially now that we're
Speaker 1: all quarantined. We all should hate those things. Yeah. Wait,
Speaker 1: but if they hate them, they stay away from them?
Speaker 1: Or are they They're but angry? They're they're angry, they're
Speaker 1: always here. Haunting really is not Maybe I'm redefining everything now.
Speaker 1: It's not optional they have to haunt it. But it's
Speaker 1: like if I have to haunt an open floor plan office,
Speaker 1: then like, well what if it's like ghosts are all
Speaker 1: around us, but the haunting means a ghost that's pissed.
Speaker 1: It doesn't like there could be ghosts in my house,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't consider it haunted because they don't do
Speaker 1: anything to me, or they're just regretful. I just saw
Speaker 1: the movie Ghost, which all takes place soon like an
Speaker 1: insane New York loft and ghost haunts aloft in that,
Speaker 1: but also, yeah, maybe the ghosts are just mad about gentrification.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, I guess I'm interested in the
Speaker 1: idea that you would treat a ghost the way you
Speaker 1: would treat like a spider, and that it ultimately serves
Speaker 1: a good and only if it's mad, we'll like you
Speaker 1: hear from it. Yeah that's right, Yeah, only if it's
Speaker 1: been disturbed. Uh well, Samurai, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us, Thank you for talking about ghosts in Chihuahua's
Speaker 1: with us. UM, where can people find you? And um
Speaker 1: and where can people find and engage with Defector as well?
Speaker 1: So Defector if they wanted to subscribe, they'll go to
Speaker 1: defector dot com. Um, we're also on Twitter at Defector
Speaker 1: Media and I'm just at Twitter dot com slash nice. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us, and everybody go
Speaker 1: check out Defector, which will hopefully be live when you're
Speaker 1: read this, if not very very soon, so check it out.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Sammer, and thank you so much for
Speaker 1: listening to Nightcall. You can follow us on Instagram at
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