1 00:00:00,400 --> 00:00:03,560 Speaker 1: Hey, this is Jamie Loftus and this is my new 2 00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:07,480 Speaker 1: weekly show, Sixteenth Minute of Fame, the podcast where every 3 00:00:07,480 --> 00:00:10,440 Speaker 1: episode I take a closer look at an Internet character 4 00:00:10,520 --> 00:00:14,280 Speaker 1: of the day. Who were they, what made them so notorious, 5 00:00:14,680 --> 00:00:18,200 Speaker 1: how did the internet or sometimes the algorithm choose them? 6 00:00:18,520 --> 00:00:20,880 Speaker 1: And what does a person do when they're suddenly confronted 7 00:00:20,920 --> 00:00:21,440 Speaker 1: with more. 8 00:00:21,320 --> 00:00:23,479 Speaker 2: Attention than the human psyche can handle. 9 00:00:23,960 --> 00:00:26,920 Speaker 1: If you've listened to solo podcasts of mine before, think 10 00:00:27,040 --> 00:00:28,280 Speaker 1: My Year in Mensa, will. 11 00:00:28,200 --> 00:00:30,680 Speaker 2: Lead a podcast act cast Ghost Church. 12 00:00:31,080 --> 00:00:33,400 Speaker 1: You can expect the same kind of freaky hyper focus 13 00:00:33,440 --> 00:00:37,400 Speaker 1: and research and yes air horns not apologizing for it, 14 00:00:37,720 --> 00:00:40,400 Speaker 1: as well as a lot of interviews with experts. Things 15 00:00:40,400 --> 00:00:43,080 Speaker 1: will get serious sometimes, but I'm mainly here to have 16 00:00:43,159 --> 00:00:45,720 Speaker 1: fun and try to bottle these little bits of Internet 17 00:00:45,800 --> 00:00:48,040 Speaker 1: history that feel like they're slipping away from us. 18 00:00:48,680 --> 00:00:50,920 Speaker 2: And I can almost guarantee. 19 00:00:50,320 --> 00:00:52,599 Speaker 1: That you've heard of a lot of these stories already, 20 00:00:52,880 --> 00:00:56,160 Speaker 1: but probably not after the day they were considered relevant online. 21 00:00:56,920 --> 00:00:59,840 Speaker 1: Take the Dress, a story that went uber viral and 22 00:00:59,880 --> 00:01:03,320 Speaker 1: early twenty fifteen, in spite of being well kind of 23 00:01:03,360 --> 00:01:06,600 Speaker 1: a boring optical illusion, A mother of the bride in 24 00:01:06,600 --> 00:01:09,040 Speaker 1: Scotland took a picture of a dress she was thinking 25 00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:13,039 Speaker 1: about wearing to her daughter's wedding, but she saw the 26 00:01:13,120 --> 00:01:16,080 Speaker 1: dress as blue with black lace, and her daughter saw 27 00:01:16,080 --> 00:01:19,839 Speaker 1: it as white with gold lace. One BuzzFeed post later, 28 00:01:20,319 --> 00:01:23,240 Speaker 1: every single person on the Internet was talking about the 29 00:01:23,319 --> 00:01:27,320 Speaker 1: dress and getting into arguments about why their friend's eyeballs 30 00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:28,200 Speaker 1: were broken. 31 00:01:28,840 --> 00:01:30,160 Speaker 2: It's a weird little story. 32 00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:32,520 Speaker 1: It's not every day that you find yourself weighing in 33 00:01:32,560 --> 00:01:35,240 Speaker 1: on the same boring topic of the day as Taylor Swift. 34 00:01:35,760 --> 00:01:37,959 Speaker 1: But there's a lot more to this story than meets 35 00:01:38,319 --> 00:01:40,479 Speaker 1: the I sorry. 36 00:01:40,200 --> 00:01:41,360 Speaker 2: This is not a fun show. 37 00:01:41,520 --> 00:01:44,440 Speaker 1: I am not that person except for right now in 38 00:01:44,520 --> 00:01:48,800 Speaker 1: the trailer, but never again. And there's a lot of 39 00:01:48,840 --> 00:01:51,440 Speaker 1: interesting things that stemmed from the story of the dress, 40 00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:56,080 Speaker 1: including a pretty interesting discovery in ocular science. But to me, 41 00:01:56,640 --> 00:01:58,640 Speaker 1: the dress is a story about the last couple of 42 00:01:58,680 --> 00:02:01,640 Speaker 1: months when the Internet was still sort of fun. It 43 00:02:01,680 --> 00:02:04,400 Speaker 1: went viral the same day that the net neutrality decision 44 00:02:04,440 --> 00:02:07,800 Speaker 1: went through. It was a success of peak clickbait, the 45 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:10,720 Speaker 1: sorts of websites that underpaid some of your favorite working 46 00:02:10,720 --> 00:02:13,960 Speaker 1: writers today and were designed to monetize the Internet in 47 00:02:14,000 --> 00:02:17,000 Speaker 1: a way that traditional news sources had never figured out. 48 00:02:17,600 --> 00:02:20,200 Speaker 1: It was just a month before Trump announced his candidacy 49 00:02:20,240 --> 00:02:23,960 Speaker 1: for president, taking an already polarized Internet and turning it 50 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:26,560 Speaker 1: into the real and true cesspit that we know it 51 00:02:26,560 --> 00:02:27,160 Speaker 1: as today. 52 00:02:27,760 --> 00:02:29,480 Speaker 2: It was shortly before the stories that. 53 00:02:29,440 --> 00:02:33,000 Speaker 1: Spread across the Internet stopped being driven by exploited millennials 54 00:02:33,040 --> 00:02:37,239 Speaker 1: with useless arts degrees and started being decided by algorithms 55 00:02:37,440 --> 00:02:39,440 Speaker 1: hell bent on growing Internet. 56 00:02:39,120 --> 00:02:42,960 Speaker 2: Usership at all costs and on a long enough timeline. 57 00:02:43,040 --> 00:02:45,560 Speaker 1: The story of the dress is one entangled with abuse 58 00:02:45,880 --> 00:02:47,200 Speaker 1: and media exploitation. 59 00:02:48,120 --> 00:02:49,800 Speaker 2: So is it a harmless. 60 00:02:49,320 --> 00:02:53,200 Speaker 1: Goofy optical illusion story. Yeah, but it's also a lot 61 00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:57,000 Speaker 1: more than that. I'll be talking to Internet historians, experts, 62 00:02:57,160 --> 00:03:00,760 Speaker 1: and yes, main characters themselves to get a fuller picture, 63 00:03:01,240 --> 00:03:05,080 Speaker 1: because I think that even outside these individual experiences, a 64 00:03:05,200 --> 00:03:07,400 Speaker 1: character of the day tells us something about how the 65 00:03:07,400 --> 00:03:10,560 Speaker 1: Internet worked at that time and how the attention economy 66 00:03:10,639 --> 00:03:13,360 Speaker 1: developed into the freaky three headed dragon we know it 67 00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:13,960 Speaker 1: as today. 68 00:03:14,760 --> 00:03:16,520 Speaker 2: Together, we might not be able to. 69 00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:19,919 Speaker 1: Properly log out, almost certainly we won't, but we can 70 00:03:20,280 --> 00:03:23,440 Speaker 1: take a walk down scary Internet memory lane and see 71 00:03:23,480 --> 00:03:24,520 Speaker 1: one day. 72 00:03:24,440 --> 00:03:25,520 Speaker 2: A little more clearly. 73 00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:29,040 Speaker 1: Internet history is a tricky thing to be invested in. 74 00:03:29,480 --> 00:03:32,000 Speaker 1: It feels like every time a bad word business billionaire 75 00:03:32,080 --> 00:03:36,120 Speaker 1: buys up another platform, history starts being erased. With the 76 00:03:36,160 --> 00:03:39,400 Speaker 1: team that cools on media, We're taking these characters sixteenth 77 00:03:39,440 --> 00:03:41,800 Speaker 1: minute of Fame to see what their moment meant to 78 00:03:41,840 --> 00:03:43,920 Speaker 1: them and what it says about us. 79 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:45,280 Speaker 2: So listen to sixteenth 80 00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:48,720 Speaker 1: Minute of Fame on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 81 00:03:48,760 --> 00:03:52,000 Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.