Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet is doing a
Speaker 1: live show at Caveat in New York City on Friday.
Speaker 1: You can also attend virtually for wherever you're at in
Speaker 1: the world. We'll have super cool guests, a meet and greet,
Speaker 1: and a lot more. Go to Tango dot com slash
Speaker 1: Live to get tickets. That's t A n g O
Speaker 1: t I dot com slash Live and I cannot wait
Speaker 1: to see you there. Our bodies are open source software,
Speaker 1: right like anybody can dig in, anybody can abstract and
Speaker 1: it's just for the public good. There Are No Girls
Speaker 1: on the Internet as a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this is There
Speaker 1: Are No Girls on the Internet. I believe in the
Speaker 1: power of technology. I wouldn't make this podcast if I didn't.
Speaker 1: But I've also seen the ways that things like misogyny
Speaker 1: and racism are baked into the foundation of technology in
Speaker 1: the Internet, and when so much of it plays such
Speaker 1: a big part in all of our lives, it's something
Speaker 1: we really need to contend with. And the early days
Speaker 1: of YouTube are a great example of exactly what I mean.
Speaker 1: So the story of how YouTube got started is actually
Speaker 1: a story about how a black woman's trauma would be
Speaker 1: the inspiration for an entire generation of streaming technology. It
Speaker 1: can tell us a lot about how we all show
Speaker 1: up online. My decision to change the super Bowl performance
Speaker 1: was actually made after the final rehearsal, and unfortunately the
Speaker 1: whole thing went wrong in the end. So you probably
Speaker 1: remember the super Bowl halftime show back in two thousand four.
Speaker 1: Here's a quick summary of what happened at a high
Speaker 1: point of a historic career that spanned dance, singing, and acting.
Speaker 1: Pop music sensation Janet Jackson was performing at the super
Speaker 1: Bowl halftime show alongside surprise guest Justin Timberlake. As timber
Speaker 1: Lake reached the final line of the song Rock Your Body,
Speaker 1: which goes gonna have You naked by the end of
Speaker 1: this song, he pulls off part of Jackson's costume, exposing
Speaker 1: her breast to a hundred and fifty million viewers for
Speaker 1: a fraction of a second. I remember the incident well
Speaker 1: and the complete media firestorm that it created. Janet Jackson
Speaker 1: was the most searched person for two thousand four and
Speaker 1: two thousand five, and representatives from the television recording device
Speaker 1: TiVo said that not only was the incident the most
Speaker 1: replayed moment in the entire history of the device, but
Speaker 1: it also drove more than twenty people to subscribe to TiVo.
Speaker 1: Now what I remember the clearest about this incident is
Speaker 1: Janet herself talking about how traumatic it was for her.
Speaker 1: It's truly embarrassing to know that ninety million people saw
Speaker 1: my breast and then to see it blown up on
Speaker 1: the internet the size of the computer screen. There are
Speaker 1: much worse things in the world, and for this to
Speaker 1: be such a focus, I don't understand, she told USA Today.
Speaker 1: This moment and our collective reaction to it revealed a
Speaker 1: lot about intersecting issues that we sometimes have trouble talking
Speaker 1: about gender, race, sexuality, all unfolding against a media climate
Speaker 1: ready and willing to publicly denigrate a black woman. To
Speaker 1: better understand this moment, how it led to the creation
Speaker 1: of YouTube, and what it says about our current internet
Speaker 1: landscape for black women and everybody, I turned to Kimberly Foster.
Speaker 1: My name is Kimberly Foster. I am a writer, editor,
Speaker 1: content creator, cultural critic, a whole bunch of things. Kimberly
Speaker 1: has been unpacking black feminist thought online for over a
Speaker 1: decade with her digital community for black women called for Harriet.
Speaker 1: You really have built your own lane using technology and
Speaker 1: digital media and the Internet with for Harriet. And I
Speaker 1: know that this really came up at a time where
Speaker 1: there wasn't really a lot of spaces to get black
Speaker 1: feminist thought online. I would love to know how that
Speaker 1: came to be, Like how you came to be this,
Speaker 1: this woman who kind of made your own lane having
Speaker 1: an opinion on the Internet. And what does it feel
Speaker 1: like to be such an earlier originator of black feminist
Speaker 1: online discourse? Oh well, first of all, that's so nice.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. I think I've
Speaker 1: always been obsessed with the Internet ever since I can remember.
Speaker 1: We first got on the Internet when I was in
Speaker 1: kindergarten and my mom is an engineer, so she was
Speaker 1: so pro technology and so pro computers and exploration. She
Speaker 1: actually gave me my first HTML book and it's like
Speaker 1: have fun, go crazy, And so ever since I was
Speaker 1: in elementary school, I've just been like, what is this?
Speaker 1: And I learned that you can connect to people and
Speaker 1: create your own spaces and create your own websites. And
Speaker 1: as I got older, I was like oh wait, like
Speaker 1: I can have my own magazine, I can have my
Speaker 1: own website where it's all my thoughts and I have
Speaker 1: complete control. And so I was all in on that
Speaker 1: in my teenage years, blogging and on the message for
Speaker 1: and all of that. And then I went to college
Speaker 1: and I developed a very strong political ideology. In college,
Speaker 1: I discovered black feminism, and so I wanted to figure
Speaker 1: out a way to meld my obsession with the Internet,
Speaker 1: my desire to share my unique viewpoints and my own
Speaker 1: kimberly owned space on the Internet, with this burgeoning political
Speaker 1: ideology that meant a lot to me. And so I
Speaker 1: came up with the idea for for Harriet, which would
Speaker 1: be a black feminist digital community where black women who
Speaker 1: thought like me. Because of course, all black women aren't progressive,
Speaker 1: all black women aren't feminists. I wanted to create a
Speaker 1: congregating space where we could just talk about our lives
Speaker 1: and our experiences and our politics and the childs and tribulations,
Speaker 1: especially as a straight woman of dealing with men, you know.
Speaker 1: And so junior year in college, I I launched this space.
Speaker 1: Since there's been no looking back since then you were
Speaker 1: at Harvard, right, I was did you see someone who
Speaker 1: looked like you doing this, Like it would have never
Speaker 1: occurred to me in college to build my own space
Speaker 1: online using the internet for for other black women who
Speaker 1: felt like me, And how did my same perspectives? Was
Speaker 1: there did you? Because there just wasn't really anybody doing that.
Speaker 1: The only thing I can think of is um Kadijia
Speaker 1: from living single having her own magazine. But we didn't
Speaker 1: really see that. Was there something that made you think like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can do this, or this is a pathway for me,
Speaker 1: or were you just blazing your own blazing your own trail.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm so glad that you asked this question because
Speaker 1: I always say that citation is a fundamental part of
Speaker 1: a black feminist ethics. So I'm so excited I get
Speaker 1: to shout these people out. So when I first decided
Speaker 1: that I wanted to make for Harriet, I was starting
Speaker 1: to creep into black feminist spaces online and they did exist.
Speaker 1: There are a couple that I love of the Feminist Wire,
Speaker 1: which was a great collective of black feminist scholars in
Speaker 1: the academy, and the Krunk Feminist Collective, which was another
Speaker 1: assembly of black feminist women who were academics my viewpoint,
Speaker 1: I felt like was a little bit different because I
Speaker 1: was still so young. I was still trying to figure
Speaker 1: it out, and I wanted to create a way to
Speaker 1: bridge the critical, path breaking work that these women were
Speaker 1: doing in the academy, which I mean I was still
Speaker 1: in college with some of the pop culture stuff that
Speaker 1: I love, which is some of the normal everyday experiences
Speaker 1: of women who maybe wouldn't necessarily identify with feminism, but knew,
Speaker 1: like this ship is fucked up, when we gotta do
Speaker 1: something else. YouTube was initially started as a dating app
Speaker 1: where users could upload videos of themselves talking about what
Speaker 1: they're looking for in a partner, but it wasn't really working.
Speaker 1: Co found er Joeed Kareem told south By Southwest that
Speaker 1: they actually had to find women on Craigslist and offer
Speaker 1: them twenty dollars to upload videos of themselves to YouTube,
Speaker 1: but even with that cash incentive, people just really weren't interested,
Speaker 1: so the co founders had to go back to the
Speaker 1: drawing board. Janet Jackson's Super Bowl performance happened in two
Speaker 1: thousand four, and about a year later, YouTube's co founders
Speaker 1: were talking about wanting to watch it again, but they
Speaker 1: couldn't back in two thousand five, there was really no
Speaker 1: way to watch the incident or really any online content
Speaker 1: on demand online because this was before streaming video and
Speaker 1: also predates what we think of as viral videos. Unless
Speaker 1: you happen to be recording it on TiVo or on
Speaker 1: an old school DCR, there kind of wasn't a way
Speaker 1: to see it. Kareem told USA Today. They thought, wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be great if people could see and share the
Speaker 1: video of the incident whenever they wanted, And with this,
Speaker 1: the desire to see and shared and consume Janet Jackson's
Speaker 1: breast on demand YouTube was born a year later. I'm
Speaker 1: at Janet Jackson super Fan was one of my first concerts,
Speaker 1: and so one of the things that that people I
Speaker 1: think don't really know a lot about is the way
Speaker 1: that this one traumatic moment in her life really did
Speaker 1: shape a lot of what it means to show up online.
Speaker 1: And so you talked about the way that YouTube was
Speaker 1: really inspired by at her wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl?
Speaker 1: Can you talk to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: I too, am a Janet Jackson stand shout out to
Speaker 1: my mother. When I was twelve years old, she took
Speaker 1: me to see the alf You Tour, which actually was
Speaker 1: a little a little risk at some risking parts in it.
Speaker 1: But I'm so glad that she did that because it
Speaker 1: completely just opened up my mind and just made me
Speaker 1: just hone in on Janet as the originator, the queen
Speaker 1: of pop. Do not debate me, um, and so I
Speaker 1: was really excited for the two part documentary UM that
Speaker 1: she had a hand in because she's been so historically private.
Speaker 1: And of course I watched the documentary and then there's
Speaker 1: all of this commentary about it, and that commentary led
Speaker 1: me to go down all of these little rabbit holes
Speaker 1: and learn more about the incident nipplegate, and so I read,
Speaker 1: I mean, I watched the New York Times little um
Speaker 1: is it a you know this little I hesitate to
Speaker 1: call it documentary, it's like an exploration of the incident,
Speaker 1: watched all kinds of YouTube videos, listen to podcasts about it,
Speaker 1: and I came away feeling differently. But really what struck
Speaker 1: me was how the fearer over this incident, the desire
Speaker 1: for people to see Janet Jackson's exposed nipple, inspired these
Speaker 1: and like science science of um technology to like create
Speaker 1: this technology. So that people could watch it like YouTube, right,
Speaker 1: So the founders of YouTube were like, hey, we need
Speaker 1: to create a platform where like people can see this
Speaker 1: lady's boob on demand. And then they're like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's dedicate our resources to creating this platform where people
Speaker 1: can see this woman's boob on demand, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that her entire life was derailed because of people's desire,
Speaker 1: you know, like the simultaneous desire and repulsion from her boom.
Speaker 1: I thought, I felt like that was really interesting. And
Speaker 1: of course YouTube blows up and it's now, what is
Speaker 1: it the second largest search engine in the world. And
Speaker 1: then Netflix, you know, the founder of or one of
Speaker 1: the heads of Netflix, was like, oh, okay, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a market for streaming, so let's go all in
Speaker 1: on the streaming market that YouTube proved was viable. So
Speaker 1: all of this comes from the desire, a very distinct
Speaker 1: desire for people to see this one particular moment that
Speaker 1: ultimately derailed Janet Jackson's career and changed her life. And
Speaker 1: it's so unfortunate for me, as Janet Jackson stand that
Speaker 1: it's almost like you can't even mentioned Janet without talking
Speaker 1: about nipplegate. When in reality, she's so much more than that.
Speaker 1: But of course, as black women, whenever there's an opportunity,
Speaker 1: we're always going to be reduced, not only to our
Speaker 1: most humiliating moments, what we're going to be reduced down
Speaker 1: to our body parts. And so I thought it was
Speaker 1: really important to note that that moment created these technologies
Speaker 1: that now we're spending all of our time on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that you put that so well, and I
Speaker 1: do want to note I think that when people want
Speaker 1: to disrespect and dinnigrade Janet, they always say, oh, she
Speaker 1: did that at the super Bowl because she her career
Speaker 1: was in the gutter and she was just trying to
Speaker 1: get people talking about her. If your career is in
Speaker 1: the gutter, you're not performing at the super Bowl. Like her,
Speaker 1: her career was massively successful way before that. You know,
Speaker 1: this idea that she was like a nobody who was
Speaker 1: just trying to get attention on this is something I
Speaker 1: hate when people say that because it's just so verifiably false.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the thing. And not to get
Speaker 1: me off of my Janet stand back, but I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that that documentary highlighted the number of records that
Speaker 1: Janet Jackson broke throughout her career. At one point she
Speaker 1: had the biggest she signed the biggest recording deal ever
Speaker 1: for a woman in pop music ever black white, like
Speaker 1: other ever, she was it. There was like she had
Speaker 1: two albums where there was like six top ten singles,
Speaker 1: like this is a huge artists selling out concerts all
Speaker 1: around the world. Like it's easy for us to forget,
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to black women's accomplishments, how enormous
Speaker 1: they are. But Janet was it. And so yes, I
Speaker 1: so agree with you that the idea that she was
Speaker 1: somehow floundering or that she had to do this because
Speaker 1: she needed money or attention or whatever, like she was
Speaker 1: the spectacle, Like she was it. She was if I'm
Speaker 1: right there with you, you know, why do you think
Speaker 1: that it is not like you were talking earlier about
Speaker 1: how things like Netflix and YouTube, but they're their websites
Speaker 1: that we use, our technologies that we use, they're commonplace,
Speaker 1: we use them all the time. Why do you think
Speaker 1: the way that a black woman's trauma was sort of
Speaker 1: the foundation for these things that go on to be
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous in all of our lives. Why is that erased?
Speaker 1: Why do you think that's not a common knowledge. I
Speaker 1: think because black women's bodies, in particular in our traumas,
Speaker 1: generally are seen as public property. There is generally a
Speaker 1: sense of entitlement, like we should just be happy to
Speaker 1: give these things over, to sacrifice them that they are,
Speaker 1: you know, like our bodies are like open source software, right,
Speaker 1: like anybody can dig in, anybody can extract, and it's
Speaker 1: just for the public good. And so there's no, like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, thought given to how is the person you're
Speaker 1: extracting from being harmed by this? In Janet's case, and
Speaker 1: obviously historically, I mean that goes that's centuries. Let's take
Speaker 1: a quick breaker back. I've seen the ways that misogyny
Speaker 1: and massogy noire, the way that sexism and racism intersect
Speaker 1: to oppress Black women specifically, is baked into technology. And
Speaker 1: it's not surprising to me given how many technological innovations
Speaker 1: were inspired by sexism. For instance, back in two thousands three,
Speaker 1: Harvard University student named Mark Zuckerbird made face mash, a
Speaker 1: social media platform to rate women on their looks. Here's
Speaker 1: what zuck himself had to say, I'm a little intoxicated,
Speaker 1: not gonna lie. So what if it's not even ten
Speaker 1: pm and it's a Tuesday night. The Kirkland Dorm Facebook
Speaker 1: is open on my desktop and some of these people
Speaker 1: have pretty horrendous pictures. I almost want to put some
Speaker 1: of these faces next to pictures of farm animals and
Speaker 1: if people vote on which is more attractive. The site
Speaker 1: was taken down by Harvard and a year later Facebook
Speaker 1: was born. So we already know the world is full
Speaker 1: of things like classism, eble iss um, sexism, racism, and
Speaker 1: all the other isms that keep us from being free.
Speaker 1: And it's really tempting to be hopeful and think that
Speaker 1: technology won't just replicate these harmful oppressions, but Kimberly says
Speaker 1: it takes intentional un learning and vigilance to really see
Speaker 1: how these systems show up and intercept, and if tech
Speaker 1: leaders are unable or unwilling to do this work, they'll
Speaker 1: just end up creating technologies that recreate these same harmful systems.
Speaker 1: I believe massa genique, specifically massogyn noir like shout out
Speaker 1: to Moya Bailey, is baked into the foundation of so
Speaker 1: much technology and so much of the experience of being
Speaker 1: on the Internet. And I really see this idea that
Speaker 1: YouTube was founded on this trauma that a black woman
Speaker 1: experienced so publicly is a great example of that. And
Speaker 1: you know, do you agree with this, Like, what do
Speaker 1: you think about that? I think that the foundations of
Speaker 1: our society are built off of misogyn noire, and because
Speaker 1: people are not doing the work to actively unlearn it
Speaker 1: or to actively wrestle with it or deal with their biases,
Speaker 1: that it creeps into every facet of our society. And
Speaker 1: despite the fact that people who work in technology believe
Speaker 1: themselves to be particularly progressive and forward thinking, of course
Speaker 1: it seeps into those worlds as well. And so if
Speaker 1: we're not having conversations constantly about hey, you are perpetuating
Speaker 1: massogyn noir right now, it's it's just gonna be there.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's baked into the cake, it's baked
Speaker 1: into to our psyches. So yeah, it's it's pretty This
Speaker 1: is depressing, but it feels like an inevitability because most
Speaker 1: people aren't doing that work. So you so you see
Speaker 1: technology as kind of amplifying and elevating this massage and
Speaker 1: noir that's just already in society. And so when you
Speaker 1: build something online or when you use technology to build
Speaker 1: something and you don't intentionally work to dismantle that or
Speaker 1: unlearn that or unpack that, you are simply baking that
Speaker 1: same massage no more into whatever you're designing. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: it's massagyn noir and all sorts of other biases homophobia, transphobia, classism,
Speaker 1: it's all of that. We're just it's easy to ignore
Speaker 1: if you don't have to grapple with it every day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean, I feel like I see this. I'm
Speaker 1: like you. I love the Internet. I grew up on
Speaker 1: the internet. The Internet is, you know, my hometown in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And I am not really on
Speaker 1: it like I used to be. I'm not on social
Speaker 1: media like I used to be. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why is that I just see the ways that
Speaker 1: disrespecting black women, fat women, queer black youth will always
Speaker 1: be a winning strategy on social media. This is one
Speaker 1: of the more exhausting parts of showing up online as
Speaker 1: a black woman. Putting us down will always drive engagement
Speaker 1: because platforms are built without intentionally interrogating and unpacking things
Speaker 1: like racism and sexism, and even more broadly, if you've
Speaker 1: ever felt like you see more more negative, divisive, extreme
Speaker 1: more inflammatory content on your feed other than positive, thoughtful content.
Speaker 1: You are absolutely right. Researchers at Harvard analyze one tweets
Speaker 1: and found that negativity was about more prevalence and positivity,
Speaker 1: and that negative tweets engaged more users, and a similar
Speaker 1: yales that eat found that social media platforms like Twitter
Speaker 1: amplify expressions of moral outrage over time because users learn
Speaker 1: the language of outrage gets rewarded with an increased number
Speaker 1: of likes and shares. And I see this a lot
Speaker 1: on Twitter, where people will tweet inflammatory things specifically because
Speaker 1: they know it will be hard for the rest of
Speaker 1: us to avoid engaging with it. I see it in
Speaker 1: the way that like if you follow some of these
Speaker 1: accounts on places like Instagram, where they'll they'll have a
Speaker 1: post where it's like a picture of a black woman
Speaker 1: or particularly a picture of like a black queer child, right,
Speaker 1: and they'll post it knowing full well what they are doing,
Speaker 1: knowing full well that that is going to drive engagement.
Speaker 1: And it has this this kind of the sheen of
Speaker 1: plausible deniability where they're not saying anything, they're simply posting
Speaker 1: a picture of a queer black child, and you know,
Speaker 1: asking people what they think. And I find that to
Speaker 1: be such an indication of the ways that social media
Speaker 1: platforms and digital platforms will always be able to count
Speaker 1: on disrespecting and denigrating marginalized people for engagement, and in
Speaker 1: fact that engagement is incentivized and it's baked into the
Speaker 1: experience of using some of these platforms. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: incredibly toxic cycle. The Internet, largely in social media platforms
Speaker 1: in particular, are fueled by outrage and abuse. Abuse happens,
Speaker 1: we see it, we experience it, we're traumatized, and then
Speaker 1: of course people are outraged, and that is the engagement circle,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's abuse after abuse after abuse. You're
Speaker 1: trying to scold somebody, express your distaste, express your scorn,
Speaker 1: and you're typing your little fingers away. Um you might
Speaker 1: even you know, this is a thing that I'm not
Speaker 1: sure we've reconnected with, like your reposting abuse of content
Speaker 1: to say this is abuses. So it just travels for
Speaker 1: there in further in the outrage fuels the comments and
Speaker 1: the response videos and the posts, and we're all really
Speaker 1: and truly in a very um a horrible, I think
Speaker 1: psychologically really damaging cycle with how these platforms are are
Speaker 1: set up. Oh absolutely. I mean I I used to
Speaker 1: when I first got on TikTok, I used to follow
Speaker 1: a lot of creators who their whole thing was and
Speaker 1: and no shade of these people. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: like they're bad people, but it just wasn't for me.
Speaker 1: Their whole thing would be you know, look at this
Speaker 1: video of someone being racist, like but like and you know,
Speaker 1: I guess I just and I would, I would engage
Speaker 1: with these videos, but they would leave me feeling so
Speaker 1: empty and so bad and so sort of distrustful. And
Speaker 1: it just reinforced this idea of you know, I can't
Speaker 1: trust them when I go outside, I can't trust people outside,
Speaker 1: I can't trust my neighbors. Like it really fueled been
Speaker 1: kind of scary in me, I guess, and it made
Speaker 1: me realize I want more, Like I want more from platforms.
Speaker 1: I want to be offered more than outrage and abuse
Speaker 1: and disrespect and detigration. Can't we have better conversations and
Speaker 1: better and better experiences online? It seems like maybe we
Speaker 1: can't anymore. Oh, I know people hate the phrase safe spaces.
Speaker 1: I know that that's become kind of like a boogeyman,
Speaker 1: like the word woke has. But I do think that
Speaker 1: increasingly people are trying to forge spaces where they're not
Speaker 1: going to be inundated with trauma and awfulness and abuse
Speaker 1: of content all the time. I think that is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why platforms like discord have blown up
Speaker 1: over the past eighteen months. I know, for me, I
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time on private communities like the
Speaker 1: Patreon community, which is hard, right because, as I understand,
Speaker 1: you're always erecting barriers when you are putting things behind
Speaker 1: a paywall. Um. But for my own mental health, for
Speaker 1: my own well being as a public person who has
Speaker 1: experienced so much abuse, I just have felt better by saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to have this conversation out in
Speaker 1: the big world, out on the big Internet. We're going
Speaker 1: to keep it on the discord. We're gonna keep it
Speaker 1: on the Patreon, where maybe I can't trust all of
Speaker 1: the people who are there because I don't know some
Speaker 1: bad actors make it in, but there's some filters, and
Speaker 1: I feel like that's increasingly what's happening. People are moving
Speaker 1: from the open Internet, open platforms, to Facebook groups, to discords,
Speaker 1: to patreons to private communities. Yeah, I've definitely noticed that.
Speaker 1: I mean, I still have a Facebook, I bare use it,
Speaker 1: and the only reason that I am there at all
Speaker 1: is because of private Facebook groups. It's the only thing
Speaker 1: that keeps me there. And it's so interesting how we
Speaker 1: have really moved toward kind of like thinking about our
Speaker 1: Internet experiences and spaces as more like camp fires, like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna curate who comes, We're all going to have
Speaker 1: this shared interest and that's what we're going to gather around,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just you know, public forms. Anybody come
Speaker 1: on in. And you know, I know that you've talked
Speaker 1: quite a bit about this idea of scale and the
Speaker 1: way that that trying to grow things to be the biggest, biggest,
Speaker 1: biggest thing kind of will always be at odds with
Speaker 1: it's like feelings like care and and and intention and
Speaker 1: so it seems like one of those things where it's like,
Speaker 1: if you're doing something behind a paywall, yeah, maybe it
Speaker 1: will never be the biggest community with everybody there where
Speaker 1: you're making tons of money, and maybe that's okay. Maybe
Speaker 1: maybe being able to have a little bit more intentionality
Speaker 1: around the communities that you build and have a little
Speaker 1: bit more of control over it in that way, Maybe
Speaker 1: that's okay. And maybe not maybe going into building these
Speaker 1: spaces with a with a goal that is not making
Speaker 1: them as a big or as powerful or as lucrative
Speaker 1: as they can be, maybe that's okay. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you mentioned incentives earlier, and really the incentive structures for everybody,
Speaker 1: including creators, are so messed up. And so I agree
Speaker 1: with you that there are things that I'm just not
Speaker 1: gonna do anymore. I'm not gonna make the video about
Speaker 1: look at this horrible thing that just happened, look at
Speaker 1: this black woman being abused. Let's be I. I am
Speaker 1: not in that space anymore. It's just too harmful to me.
Speaker 1: Like I just I can't deal with it anymore. But
Speaker 1: I understand that so many creators understand. They see that
Speaker 1: that's where the engagement is, which means that's where the
Speaker 1: money is. And it is already so difficult as a creator,
Speaker 1: particularly as a black creator, to make a living. I
Speaker 1: see what people are doing when they're doing that. I'm
Speaker 1: speaking from a place of extreme privilege when I say
Speaker 1: I can opt out of doing that stuff now because
Speaker 1: I've built up such a strong supportive community of people
Speaker 1: who are saying, Kim, I value your voice. So I
Speaker 1: want to be in the community where we can talk
Speaker 1: more intimately about things that Sometimes they are traumatic, sometimes
Speaker 1: they are um hard to deal with. Sometimes we are
Speaker 1: going deep on misogyn noir and all sorts of other oppressions.
Speaker 1: But there's fundamentally an ethic of care in all of
Speaker 1: those conversations. I am so conscientious about how I facilitate
Speaker 1: those discussions, how I participate in them, who was brought
Speaker 1: into them. And that's really not possible when your only
Speaker 1: your only goal is to get bigger, When your only
Speaker 1: goal is to get more views, more followers, more eyeballs.
Speaker 1: Everybody is coming to the conversation and a lot of
Speaker 1: those people are coming to it with malice. And I
Speaker 1: feel so much empathy for the people who are stuck
Speaker 1: in that cycle because the Internet is just not created
Speaker 1: for people to thrive and take care of their mental health.
Speaker 1: That is so true, And I should just say the
Speaker 1: research is very clear that most social media platforms really
Speaker 1: do amplify it incentivize uh, you know, extremist content, inflammatory content,
Speaker 1: outrageous content that is negative over content that is thoughtful,
Speaker 1: that is nuanced, and so I think what you just
Speaker 1: described it, it's it's like a it's like a cycle
Speaker 1: where platforms are have have incentivized that kind of content
Speaker 1: and they're making money off of it, and it just
Speaker 1: keeps us all, you know, like you said, stuck in
Speaker 1: this cycle that is not prioritizing care more after a
Speaker 1: quick break, So, if you've ever wondered I wonder what
Speaker 1: Bridget is up to when she's not making the podcast that,
Speaker 1: I have great news for you. We just launched our
Speaker 1: brand new newsletter where I'm gonna be writing about things
Speaker 1: I'm paying attention to online, interesting stories that didn't make
Speaker 1: it to the podcast, and a whole lot more. I
Speaker 1: promise you will never spam you. You can subscribe to
Speaker 1: our newsletter at Tanodi dot com slash newsletter and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be like a useful newsletter. I promise you can
Speaker 1: also support the show by checking out our merch store
Speaker 1: at tangoti dot com slash store. Let's get right back
Speaker 1: into it. How do you think we get to a
Speaker 1: place where platforms and online spaces are not built on
Speaker 1: things like disrespect or you know, outrageousness or being inflammatory
Speaker 1: or use but can actually feel like care, you know,
Speaker 1: like the space that you've built, or should we just
Speaker 1: be focused on, you know, building our own ship. As
Speaker 1: I know that you are a big advocate for man.
Speaker 1: People ask me this all the time. I think that
Speaker 1: one good place to start this is a beginning and
Speaker 1: not the end is I think that platforms need to
Speaker 1: be very serious about paying creators better, giving out money,
Speaker 1: giving out grants, paying creators. I mean, even when they
Speaker 1: do start to offer these incentives, like Instagram now has
Speaker 1: started offering incentives for reels and content and all of that,
Speaker 1: it's so little money or it's so there's no rhyme
Speaker 1: or reason to how you get paid and how much
Speaker 1: you get paid. If there was transparency around that, I
Speaker 1: think that that would be really, really helpful. But honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't think that we're ever going to get equity
Speaker 1: or anything that even looks like justice from any of
Speaker 1: the platforms that we have right now. I think that
Speaker 1: the sea word is coming capitalism and the goals and
Speaker 1: desires of these platforms are irreconcilable with the goal and
Speaker 1: the need for content creators, specifically marginalized content creators, to
Speaker 1: take care of themselves, to be able to take breaks
Speaker 1: to not have to exploit every single abuse in offense.
Speaker 1: I just don't see I just don't see the possibility
Speaker 1: for that at this time. I think it's like tear
Speaker 1: it all down and try again. I mean, that's so
Speaker 1: often the answer when we ask these big questions recognizing
Speaker 1: that it's systemic, it's institutional, right, It's like we need
Speaker 1: completely new paradigms and new systems or something that. You know,
Speaker 1: I definitely advocate for people, particularly marginalized creators, but really
Speaker 1: anybody to take breaks when they need it from the
Speaker 1: Internet all of that. But you can't take breaks or
Speaker 1: like self care your way out of something that is structural.
Speaker 1: And so I think sometimes it's an unsatisfying answer that like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to brun it all down to start again.
Speaker 1: But that's the answer. Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to bullshit people, right, Like I understand that Twitter is
Speaker 1: always going to be about trying to optimize profits for shareholders.
Speaker 1: I understand that Meta is always going to be about
Speaker 1: trying to get the most advertising dollars, trying to get
Speaker 1: the most screen time, right, the most daily active users.
Speaker 1: That's not going to change. So we just gotta be
Speaker 1: honest about what we're working with Here, got a story
Speaker 1: about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to
Speaker 1: say hi? You can reach us at Hello at tang
Speaker 1: godi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's
Speaker 1: episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod. It's a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I heeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.