Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Internet Hey Machine. I am
Speaker 1: so excited to be joined my producer Sophie. Sophie, thank
Speaker 1: you for being here. How are you. I'm well, Bridget
Speaker 1: I am always happy to be here. How are you?
Speaker 1: I am doing well? And I am super excited to
Speaker 1: get into this topic because it's a topic that I
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that I talk at my
Speaker 1: friends about and they're like, we get it. You have
Speaker 1: big feelings about this, so I'm excited to actually do
Speaker 1: a podcast about it. It's been a long time coming.
Speaker 1: That's my That's honestly my favorite type of things where
Speaker 1: you have like a dinner party or you're with your
Speaker 1: friends and you go on a random tangents about something
Speaker 1: in you and then you make it. You make it
Speaker 1: work exactly. I'm very guilty of that. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: so many things. My friends are like, why don't you
Speaker 1: don't do have anybody else who could talk to about this?
Speaker 1: We get it? You're like, yeah, all the people that
Speaker 1: subscribe to listen to me talk um ever heard of
Speaker 1: a podcast? Cool bro. So if you were on the
Speaker 1: internet at all in a you probably remember the backlash
Speaker 1: against the film Cutie's It was all over social media
Speaker 1: and the Internet, in part because it kind of got
Speaker 1: glamed in with the whole save the children thing and
Speaker 1: the whole quan On conspiracy thing that, as you'll probably know,
Speaker 1: have really plagued our online discourse and are still with
Speaker 1: us today, like they really haven't gone anywhere, even though
Speaker 1: they might be out of the headlines. Yeah, the whole
Speaker 1: other a whole couple of shows about that. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know all about it, the way that the ways that
Speaker 1: it can be so insidious, and the ways that things
Speaker 1: can really be taken out of context to become evidence
Speaker 1: of this grand conspiracy around Quanan and child predators. So
Speaker 1: I really think the situation around the movie Cutis is
Speaker 1: kind of a case study of all the different ways
Speaker 1: that online rhetoric can become weaponized because it has so
Speaker 1: many of the textbook hallmarks of bad actors hijacking a conversation,
Speaker 1: and I think it reveals a lot about how messed
Speaker 1: up our online discourse has gotten and the ways that
Speaker 1: it can be weaponized against marginalized people, specifically to undermine
Speaker 1: and exploit the very thing that it is supposedly championing,
Speaker 1: in this case, protecting children. Something to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is that a common tactic of bad actors is to
Speaker 1: hijack a sensitive conversation, you know, one that takes a
Speaker 1: little bit of nuance or thoughtfulness to discuss properly, and
Speaker 1: create an uproar around it that conveniently aligns with some
Speaker 1: kind of preconceived political grievance. And that is exactly what
Speaker 1: happened with the movie Cuties. I also think it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where, you know, I guess I would
Speaker 1: be willing to bet that the majority of people raising
Speaker 1: an issue about the film have not actually even sat
Speaker 1: down and watched it to know exactly what they're raising
Speaker 1: an objection over. Well, yeah, I mean, bad actors never
Speaker 1: do their research, oh never, And I think they rely
Speaker 1: on other people like not doing their research or like
Speaker 1: being a cat like low information folks. Where's like, I
Speaker 1: don't I've not seen the movie, but you're telling me
Speaker 1: that this movie is, you know, the work of a
Speaker 1: child predator. So I guess I'll believe that. You know,
Speaker 1: I think that they're counting on people doing that. Do
Speaker 1: you remember do you remember that phase of Twitter when
Speaker 1: they were like do you want to read the article
Speaker 1: before you share it? I will say I remember when
Speaker 1: Twitter rolled that out and it did get me a
Speaker 1: few times where I'm like, damn, I probably should read
Speaker 1: it right, Like I'm even as somebody who makes content
Speaker 1: about missing disinformation, I am not immune to sharing something
Speaker 1: quickly before I've really given it a read through. And
Speaker 1: so it's a good reminder that we could we could
Speaker 1: all be a little bit better about the source material
Speaker 1: before commenting on the source material that we're that we're
Speaker 1: responding to. Absolutely, that's exactly what our own I'm like,
Speaker 1: did you did you? Did you read that? Do you
Speaker 1: want to read that before your shirt? And it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, like fair enough, robot. Um, I'll get right
Speaker 1: on that, thank you, fair enough robot. So the movie
Speaker 1: Cutie's is, I should say, very much in line with
Speaker 1: my own personal interests. I am a movie person. I
Speaker 1: love movies. I love French cinema specifically and specifically French
Speaker 1: Senegalese cinema. I have a thing for I am a
Speaker 1: sucker for any kind of coming of age film about girlhood.
Speaker 1: You know your Crooklands, your fish tanks, your thirteen love
Speaker 1: them all. If that's a if it's a movie about
Speaker 1: a young girl becoming like figuring out girlhood or like
Speaker 1: young adulthood. I am in and I also grew up
Speaker 1: doing dance squads and like dance teams, which I have
Speaker 1: to say, like growing up in the South, sometimes those
Speaker 1: dance squads were a little bit questionable, I can I
Speaker 1: can admit that. And so when Cutie's premiered, which is
Speaker 1: a movie about a young French Senegalese girl coming of
Speaker 1: age who was involved in dance, I was super super
Speaker 1: excited to see it. I saw it immediately, like before
Speaker 1: it was on Netflix. I had already seen it um
Speaker 1: And so this is not men to be like a
Speaker 1: review of the movie. There are some spoilers. I will
Speaker 1: try to warn folks beforehand if you're planning on watching Cutie's,
Speaker 1: which I think that you should because I do think
Speaker 1: it's a worth bold movie. But I want to get
Speaker 1: into the conversation about what exactly happened with the uproar
Speaker 1: and backlash around this film. Cutie's is a French film
Speaker 1: by director Mimona do Say. It tells the story of
Speaker 1: a coming of age story of Amy, a Muslim Senegalese
Speaker 1: eleven year old in France. It opened at the Sundance
Speaker 1: Festival to rave reviews, accolades, and awards before being acquired
Speaker 1: by Netflix. The plot revolves around an eleven year old
Speaker 1: girl named Amy. Amy's mom and aunt want her to
Speaker 1: be sort of chased and modest and girlish, but she
Speaker 1: ends up meeting this group of cool girls who are
Speaker 1: all on a dance team together. So Amy finds herself
Speaker 1: kind of caught between these two worlds, the traditional chaste
Speaker 1: world represented by her mother and aunt and Islam, and
Speaker 1: this cool, secular, grown up world represented by these cool
Speaker 1: girls on the dance team at her new school. So
Speaker 1: Cute's Explorers. These common themes that most coming of age
Speaker 1: films deal with, you know, family and drama, feeling alienated
Speaker 1: from your family, wanting to fit in and be cool
Speaker 1: and grown up your first period, vying for likes on
Speaker 1: social media, and sexuality. This was the director Deuceray's first film,
Speaker 1: and she said that she saw a bunch of young
Speaker 1: girls dancing on stage in Paris, scantily clad and revealing clothing,
Speaker 1: who were dancing in front of a crowd, and it
Speaker 1: got her curious about the way that society confronts and
Speaker 1: deals with the budding sexuality of girls. So she spent
Speaker 1: a year researching and interviewing preteen girls about their experiences
Speaker 1: and how they felt in society, and that became the
Speaker 1: movie Cuties. She wrote a version of herself as an
Speaker 1: eleven year old um to be the kind of stand
Speaker 1: in for the main character Amy. The film premiered at
Speaker 1: Sundance with zero controversy until it was acquired by Netflix.
Speaker 1: Before A Cutie's was even least for American streaming audiences
Speaker 1: on Netflix, Cutie's first generated controversy when Netflix put out
Speaker 1: a poster for the film. So I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: in mind is that it is a textbook staple of
Speaker 1: things like conspiracy theories or mal information, where it will
Speaker 1: be based on an actual nugget of truth. And so
Speaker 1: what it's absolutely true here is that Netflix made a
Speaker 1: very very bad decision about the poster for the film Cutis.
Speaker 1: The poster that they released shows the girls who were
Speaker 1: all like eleven or twelve, posing provocatively in their very
Speaker 1: skimpy dance team outfits, and honestly, like that image is
Speaker 1: not even really representative of the entirety of like what
Speaker 1: the film is about. And it needs to be said
Speaker 1: that the poster that Netflix used is very different from
Speaker 1: the one that was used when it first premiered at
Speaker 1: Sundance before being bought by Netflix. Um So Bridget has
Speaker 1: a screenshot of the two different film post. I thought
Speaker 1: you were showing me two different movies, Like I thought
Speaker 1: there were two different films. Um they look you, they're
Speaker 1: not even there's no correlation exactly right. And so the
Speaker 1: French version that that they used when the movie first
Speaker 1: came out on Sundance has these girls they're shopping. They're
Speaker 1: like wearing age appropriate regular clothes and they're like they
Speaker 1: look like little girls right, Like it's like it's like
Speaker 1: an age appropriate cover. One one reads like fun coming
Speaker 1: of age, and one reads like dance moms toddlers in trs. Yes,
Speaker 1: and I think like the Netflix poster, the girls who
Speaker 1: are quite young are in these provocative poses. It's very
Speaker 1: dance moms. Like as I said, I mean for better,
Speaker 1: for for whatever it's worth. Growing up doing dance team
Speaker 1: and dance groups. These are outfits that we would have
Speaker 1: worn like like I'm I'm not going to act like
Speaker 1: this is like beyond the pale for what little girls
Speaker 1: will will sometimes where in dance teams or pageants, whether
Speaker 1: or not, it's like good or bad or right or
Speaker 1: wrong like that. It's it's fairly common. It's not something
Speaker 1: that is totally beyond the pale in our culture. No,
Speaker 1: absolutely not. But the freeze frame of the dance moves
Speaker 1: that I think they're doing there, like like their mid
Speaker 1: move the poses are are are very matures, what I'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: very mature. And so right away people had the exact
Speaker 1: same response that you just had, and they seized on
Speaker 1: this film that wasn't even out yet because of this
Speaker 1: pretty gross poster that was not really representative of the film.
Speaker 1: I believe that had Netflix not made such a big
Speaker 1: error in how they promoted and marketed this movie, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't even be making this episode. I don't think, like
Speaker 1: I don't think that if they had used the original
Speaker 1: French movie that's like Girls Coming of Age, like totally normal,
Speaker 1: that we would even have seen the kind of controversy
Speaker 1: that accompanied the film. So Netflix apologized for the poster
Speaker 1: and importantly to the filmmaker, and I actually have to
Speaker 1: give Netflix the tiniest bit of credit here. Amidst the
Speaker 1: backlash around the poster, Netflix made it clear that that
Speaker 1: poster was entirely They're bad, you know, they could have
Speaker 1: made a big show of cutting ties with the filmmaker
Speaker 1: publicly and like blaming her. We've seen we've certainly seen
Speaker 1: brands do that before where they're just like, oh, controversy,
Speaker 1: better blame this black woman. But they didn't do that.
Speaker 1: I will. I will give them that Netflix bare minimum,
Speaker 1: bare minimum like way to like do a little Netflix
Speaker 1: co ceo Ted Sara donuts. I'm probably saying that wrong, Ted, okay, Uh.
Speaker 1: Netflix co CEO Ted Saradonus was said to personally called
Speaker 1: Docerae to apologize and to talk to her about, you know,
Speaker 1: potential new projects on Netflix that she could do um
Speaker 1: and the filmmaker said that she felt like that was
Speaker 1: genuine like she she responded very gracefully, and she was like,
Speaker 1: I think that they genuinely felt bad and that they
Speaker 1: were giving me like a genuine apology, but the damage
Speaker 1: was already done. Yeah, too little, too late. So Cuti's
Speaker 1: is a film that I believe is trying to present
Speaker 1: like a complex portrait of the pressures that young girls
Speaker 1: feel around facing their own kind of budding sexuality. But
Speaker 1: because of that poster, the internet hate machine, fueled by
Speaker 1: a combination of right wing grifters, shitty elected officials, and
Speaker 1: Instagram quan on influencers that target women. That whole thing
Speaker 1: that do say was trying to do was completely lost,
Speaker 1: and instead the film was branded as a Netflix's attempt
Speaker 1: to groom children, normalized pedophilia, and in some cases said
Speaker 1: that the film was actually child sexual abuse material or
Speaker 1: like child pornography, and people were just saying that Netflix
Speaker 1: was harming children. They blamed the filmmaker personally, like if
Speaker 1: you google the filmmaker's name, some of the first things
Speaker 1: that like auto complete are like did she go to jail?
Speaker 1: Was she arrested? And I think that gives you a
Speaker 1: sense of how personalized this particular smear that she harmed
Speaker 1: children with this movie became. What's really said is that
Speaker 1: this director had nothing to do with that poster. She
Speaker 1: told Deadline. I discovered the poster at the same time
Speaker 1: as the American public. I didn't understand what was going on.
Speaker 1: That was when I went and saw what the poster
Speaker 1: looked like. I received numerous attacks on my character from
Speaker 1: people who had not seen the film, who thought I
Speaker 1: was actually making a film that was apologetic about hyper
Speaker 1: sexualization of children. I received numerous death threats, and so
Speaker 1: you know, I've seen this film. I actually like enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: But whether or not you like this film, or whether
Speaker 1: or not you think it accomplishes its goals of exploring
Speaker 1: the dangers of the hyper sexualization of children and girl else,
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty clear what she was trying to
Speaker 1: do with this film. Maybe you think she didn't accomplish that,
Speaker 1: maybe you think it didn't meet his schools. Fine, but
Speaker 1: like to say that she was making this film to
Speaker 1: exploit and harm girls, it's just not correct. No, it's
Speaker 1: just another example of like the worst people on the
Speaker 1: internet pulling the finger and putting blame on a black
Speaker 1: woman exactly, Like I don't I guess we'll never know,
Speaker 1: But I don't think had she been a white woman
Speaker 1: from Ohio that there would have been the same level
Speaker 1: of scrutiny and controversy from this movie. Like, I think
Speaker 1: that something about her was inherently other and made it
Speaker 1: really easy for folks to jump on the bandwagon of,
Speaker 1: you know, attacking her for being somebody who puts children
Speaker 1: at risks. So she published a piece in The Washington
Speaker 1: Post about the film, and she writes the stories that
Speaker 1: the girls that I spoke to that they shared with
Speaker 1: me were remarkably similar. They saw that the sexier woman
Speaker 1: is on Instagram or TikTok, the more like she gets.
Speaker 1: They try to imitate that sexuality in the beliefs that
Speaker 1: it would make them more popular. Spend an hour on
Speaker 1: social media and you'll see preteens, often in makeup, pouting
Speaker 1: their lips, shrutting their stuff as if they were grown women.
Speaker 1: The problem, of course, is they are not grown women,
Speaker 1: and they don't realize what they're doing. They construct their
Speaker 1: self esteem based on social media likes and the number
Speaker 1: of followers they have. Some people have found certain scenes
Speaker 1: in my film uncomfortable to watch, but if one really
Speaker 1: listens to eleven year old girls, their lives are uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: Here's the director of talking about it for a segment
Speaker 1: called Why I Made Cuties from Netflix. Our girls see
Speaker 1: that the more a woman is overly sexualized on social media,
Speaker 1: the more she's successful. And the children't just imitate what
Speaker 1: the c trying to achieve the same result without on
Speaker 1: this term the meaning and yeah, it's zangerus. Can I
Speaker 1: just say this woman is it? She's gorgeous. She's gorgeous,
Speaker 1: and like the she just oh, such a cool person.
Speaker 1: I'll get into this in the end. But luckily this
Speaker 1: did not like her career is going to be fine,
Speaker 1: Like this is not. We we have not heard the
Speaker 1: last of her. She's fantastic. So I think there is
Speaker 1: definitely a conversation to be had about whether or not
Speaker 1: the film accomplishes the goal of really showing the pitfalls
Speaker 1: and dangers of sexualizing young girls. I love the film.
Speaker 1: I think it does a great job and think it
Speaker 1: hits close to home. However, we didn't really get to
Speaker 1: have the conversation about the film it's merits whether or
Speaker 1: not in it, she's its goals. What actually happened instead
Speaker 1: is where it was like a voltron of bad actors
Speaker 1: from various backgrounds coming together for one goal. You know.
Speaker 1: It was your typical right wing drifters, save the children,
Speaker 1: influencers and elected officials all coming together to say that
Speaker 1: this film was evidence of the elite in quotes, grooming
Speaker 1: kids and support ing pedophilia. This then turned into the
Speaker 1: claim that the film itself was child pornography made by
Speaker 1: a French black pervert, lifestyle influencer and Q and on
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist Rebecca Peiper or better known as love Beck,
Speaker 1: who at the time had a hundred and sixty Instagram
Speaker 1: followers before her account was deleted, posted don't believe pedophilia
Speaker 1: is a rampant problem and don't believe the elite support it.
Speaker 1: How the hell does a show like this and make
Speaker 1: it to a major streaming network. Formerly one of the
Speaker 1: biggest q and on accounts on Instagram, a little miss
Speaker 1: Patriot posted that cuties proves that Netflix promotes pedophilia, and
Speaker 1: she posted this in like that kind of pretty pastel
Speaker 1: instagrammy kind of carousel grid post, and I have to say,
Speaker 1: as a side note, it really calls into question those
Speaker 1: Instagram accounts that will use like a pretty carousel grid
Speaker 1: posts on Instagram to educate you, because let's keep it real,
Speaker 1: like anybody can get a canvas subscription and say whatever
Speaker 1: they want just because it's a pastel, pretty Instagram carousel
Speaker 1: post doesn't mean they're actually saying something that is correct
Speaker 1: and true. So conspiracy theory started pushing the hashtag cancel
Speaker 1: quti's campaign, telling their followers to boycott Netflix by pulling
Speaker 1: their subscriptions, and it seems like it actually had an impact. Antenna,
Speaker 1: which is a data analytics firm that tracks Netflix subscribers
Speaker 1: reported a quote meaningful spike in the rate of people
Speaker 1: cutting subscriptions shortly after the hashtag cancel Netflix went viral,
Speaker 1: and another analytics firm, yipp it Data, also reported that
Speaker 1: in mid September, the churn rate, which is this the
Speaker 1: rate of people who cancel subscriptions in the United States,
Speaker 1: rose materially as the result of the Cuties backlash. Days
Speaker 1: after the hashtag went viral. Yippit Data said that unsubscribes
Speaker 1: are running at nearly eight times the daily levels observed
Speaker 1: in August and reached a multi year high. And I
Speaker 1: had to say, like, even though Netflix publicly did stick
Speaker 1: by Doucerae when this was all happening, there are reports
Speaker 1: that they suppressed the film on their own platform as
Speaker 1: a result of this controversy. According to an interesting report
Speaker 1: by The Verge, Netflix removed Cuties from its Coming Soon
Speaker 1: and popular searches categories, and that it was excluded from
Speaker 1: searches that include the words cute. This is actually probably
Speaker 1: a responsible tweak that they made to their algorithm. The
Speaker 1: Verge report also says that Netflix adjusted its algorithm so
Speaker 1: that search queries such as steamy or sexual movies did
Speaker 1: not surface any children's films, and that Netflix also made
Speaker 1: sure that problematic search terms such as petto did not
Speaker 1: surface Cuti's because their algorithm actually takes into account behavioral data.
Speaker 1: So if you're somebody who was like, I want to
Speaker 1: watch this movie that everyone is saying is like a
Speaker 1: pedophile movie, if you type in petto, ordinarily it would
Speaker 1: have brought up the movie that everyone is typing in
Speaker 1: petal then clicking cutis for. But that they tweaked their
Speaker 1: algorithms so that wasn't the case, so and that in
Speaker 1: that instance, I actually feel like that might have been
Speaker 1: a responsible choice. But it does seem clear from this
Speaker 1: report though, that Netflix did seek to suppress promotion and
Speaker 1: related search queries for Cuties, And I just feel like
Speaker 1: it's pretty shitty for this first time filmmaker that her
Speaker 1: debut film was suppressed on the platform that acquired it
Speaker 1: for reasons that were entirely not her fault, like a
Speaker 1: whole campaign around her film that she had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with. And I think that this that her and
Speaker 1: this project seemed like they both personally took the fall
Speaker 1: for Netflix as bad marketing with that poster and this
Speaker 1: completely disingenuous campaign built on a lot of lies and
Speaker 1: half truth was about her and her film. So I
Speaker 1: actually have a really hard time believing that anybody who
Speaker 1: was making claims about the film being you know, exploitative
Speaker 1: to children actually watched it all the way through because
Speaker 1: much of what is floating around the Internet about the
Speaker 1: film or either outright just lies or completely out of context.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about what actually does go
Speaker 1: down in this movie versus how that was represented online.
Speaker 1: So there's gonna be a spoiler here. So if you
Speaker 1: are planning on watching this movie and you don't want
Speaker 1: it spoiled, there's a spoiler here. So social media accounts
Speaker 1: is pretty big, followings posted like parents warnings and parents
Speaker 1: guides that got a lot of traction online that contain
Speaker 1: lies or that takes some of the scenes out of context.
Speaker 1: For instance, one viral parents guide that I think denis
Speaker 1: to sues every posted says the film contains nudity of
Speaker 1: a minor, and that is just not correct. The only
Speaker 1: nudity in this film is a very brief scene of
Speaker 1: a bare breast, and it's the bare breast of someone
Speaker 1: who is meant to be an opposing dance team member
Speaker 1: as she's getting changed. Um within the universe of the film,
Speaker 1: my senses that the audience is like meant to understand
Speaker 1: this particular woman whose bare breast is shown as a
Speaker 1: bit older, Like it's not it's not like she is
Speaker 1: meant to be a very young like an obviously very
Speaker 1: young character. There's a scene where like there someone is
Speaker 1: changing and they see part of her bare breast, and
Speaker 1: it's meant to be like a cool older girl, not
Speaker 1: a child. And the actor herself was eighteen at the
Speaker 1: time the movie was filmed, and so it's just a lie.
Speaker 1: The actor whose bare breast is shown for a second
Speaker 1: in that movie, not only is she in the film
Speaker 1: meant to be older, she herself the actor is also
Speaker 1: of age. And so there is no child nudity in
Speaker 1: this film of any kind. I saw so many viral
Speaker 1: posts online suggesting otherwise. Another pretty obvious misrepresentation in the
Speaker 1: film is that in a parents guide they say, there's
Speaker 1: this salacious scene in the film that an eleven year
Speaker 1: old girl all and tight leather pants has her pants
Speaker 1: are pulled down and the camera zooms in on her butt.
Speaker 1: And so this is a this this is a really
Speaker 1: interesting one because it really shows how bad actors will
Speaker 1: take this nugget of truth and completely explode it and
Speaker 1: take it out of context. What actually happened is my question,
Speaker 1: because I just know they're they're out here full cap. Well,
Speaker 1: I can tell you bull cap Okay. So again spoiler. So,
Speaker 1: in the movie, Amy is shown as being less financially
Speaker 1: well off than the rest of her friends, and so
Speaker 1: there's a scene where she's trying to look older than
Speaker 1: she is by borrowing her friends like very cool leather pants.
Speaker 1: While she's wearing these pants, trying to say, like it's
Speaker 1: so unbelievably normal, totally like didn't you do that ship
Speaker 1: when you were kid? Yeah, I mean everyone everyone. It's
Speaker 1: like so infuriating that that's what they're Okay. So, in
Speaker 1: the movie, she gets into a fight at school and
Speaker 1: her her leather pants are accidentally yanked off of her,
Speaker 1: and when the pants are yanked off of her, it
Speaker 1: exposes that she's wearing underneath these cool leather pants, she's
Speaker 1: wearing these childish, ratty, oversized underpants that have like obvious
Speaker 1: signs of wear and tear. And so this the scene
Speaker 1: is obviously meant to be embarrassing right, It is not
Speaker 1: a sexy scene. It is clear like she leaves the
Speaker 1: cafeteria in tears and like doesn't come to school the
Speaker 1: next day or whatever because she's so embarrassed. But that
Speaker 1: parents guide would have you believe that it's meant to
Speaker 1: be like a sexy scene or essential scene that she
Speaker 1: takes down her leather pants. But it is a misrepresentation
Speaker 1: of a scene that actually does kind of occur in
Speaker 1: the movie. But it's clearly made the sound worse than
Speaker 1: it is. And that misrepresentation went completely viral, like big
Speaker 1: accounts posted it and it got so much traction online,
Speaker 1: And I honestly think that here is like people who
Speaker 1: haven't seen the movie but like are like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I don't want to see children be
Speaker 1: exploited in film, Like that's bad. When you read the
Speaker 1: salacious misrepresentation, it makes it seem like there's gotta be
Speaker 1: some truth to that to it, and like I can
Speaker 1: see why people share that without like having seen the movie,
Speaker 1: but it totally takes the truth out of context to
Speaker 1: fit a wider agenda. Yeah, I mean I got panted
Speaker 1: in the sixth grade. I was wearing some not greade
Speaker 1: Andy's two not not I relate, Like these are again,
Speaker 1: these are just like fucking normal things in childhood that happened.
Speaker 1: It's just it, come on people. Yeah, And I do
Speaker 1: think it's beaks like a larger discomfort that people have
Speaker 1: around coming of age stories for women and girls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that people are really uncomfortable around that and
Speaker 1: like these things, Like there are things in the movie
Speaker 1: that rings so true to me. If you have gotten
Speaker 1: pants in elementary school or like middle school, someone saying like, oh,
Speaker 1: that was like a sexually charged moment, You're like, actually,
Speaker 1: it was really embarrassing exactly. You're like, you're no, I was.
Speaker 1: Come on people, Like, it's like, no, I was pe class,
Speaker 1: I was in the sixth grade. Um, I was wearing
Speaker 1: the wrong day of the week underwear and clearly clearly
Speaker 1: still still embarrassed by that part. Yeah, like it's Becaure's
Speaker 1: another scene in the movie where she finds a condom
Speaker 1: on the ground and she doesn't know what it is
Speaker 1: and she blows it up like a balloon, and yeah,
Speaker 1: describing that as like a sexually charged scene, like I
Speaker 1: would argue that, like that's actually the weird thing to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, little kids ex imploring these things they
Speaker 1: don't totally understand, like that's normal, and showing that on
Speaker 1: screen is probably normal and good and fine. Adding some
Speaker 1: sort of nefarious intent to it to something that most
Speaker 1: little kids go through, that's I think it's a little
Speaker 1: bit sucked up. So I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: the sharing of inaccurate content about Cut's online really came
Speaker 1: from like low information folks who haven't seen the film
Speaker 1: but are interested in standing up against material that harms kids.
Speaker 1: Something about those posts is that they always make it
Speaker 1: seem like no reasonable person would not agree that this
Speaker 1: is exploitation of miners, right, and so they say like, obviously,
Speaker 1: having showing a child naked in a Netflix movie is
Speaker 1: not good, and most people would say like, oh, I agree,
Speaker 1: that's not good. But the fact of the matter is
Speaker 1: they didn't do that, and so they just traffic in
Speaker 1: these inaccurate or misconstrued, out of context statements when that
Speaker 1: this isn't the case and in reality. Deu ser Ray
Speaker 1: says that a trained counselor was present on set during
Speaker 1: the filming in the movie, and that the project was
Speaker 1: approved by the French government's child protection authorities, and that
Speaker 1: the actors that they had their parents on set to
Speaker 1: and the film does contain a few scenes of young
Speaker 1: girls like twerking and dancing in skimpy outfits. Another spoiler,
Speaker 1: like the scene that probably generated the most conversation and
Speaker 1: controversy and the one that has depicted on the poster,
Speaker 1: is the movie's big climactic ending. The girls have their
Speaker 1: big dance contest. They've been practicing for the whole film,
Speaker 1: and they get on stage and they do this very
Speaker 1: age inappropriate dance. They're grinding, they're tworking, and they're wearing
Speaker 1: their skimpy outfits. But the entire point of the film
Speaker 1: is the crowd that is watching them dance in the movie,
Speaker 1: and I guess also us as the audience at home
Speaker 1: is horrified. The crowd is audibly booing, they're covering their
Speaker 1: their kids eyes so they can't see it. Some of
Speaker 1: them turn to leave and disgust, and it's clear that
Speaker 1: the girls do not have the maturity or the context
Speaker 1: to understand why the way they're dancing like isn't okay
Speaker 1: and why it's not being well received by the audience
Speaker 1: they're dancing for. You know, the main character Amy. When
Speaker 1: the audience has this negative reaction, she runs away crying,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the movie, she has clearly
Speaker 1: decided that this this world of like dancing is not
Speaker 1: for her. At the end of the movie, she's living
Speaker 1: a much more modest life and like playing age appropriate games.
Speaker 1: And it's clear that like, oh, I had this little
Speaker 1: interlude with dancing and it was not great for me,
Speaker 1: and now I'm not doing it anymore. And so it's
Speaker 1: interesting that people say that this movie, like how can
Speaker 1: I put this? There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to
Speaker 1: be made about this film and the way that it
Speaker 1: handles girlhood sexuality. Like I've seen criticisms that say that
Speaker 1: the dancing scenes with the girls are gratuitous. I've seen
Speaker 1: some arguments that seemed to be suggesting that the film,
Speaker 1: which is pretty clearly making an argument against the sexualization
Speaker 1: of children, is actually attempting to do that by engaging
Speaker 1: in the very thing it is critiquing. Like if you've
Speaker 1: seen the movie Kids. When a Kid's First came out,
Speaker 1: it was accused of the exact same thing, right that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's a movie that's supposed to be critiquing child drug
Speaker 1: use by showing child drug youse. So this is like
Speaker 1: a well worn film criticism. Those are all, you know,
Speaker 1: fair arguments, but they're very different than accusing this filmmaker
Speaker 1: of breaking the law and being a child pornographer, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what happened, and so Cutius became this like
Speaker 1: very popular thing to bash online. I saw a few
Speaker 1: big name people standing up for the filmmaker, but I
Speaker 1: really recall there was a climate that this French black
Speaker 1: woman made this racy film involving children, and people just
Speaker 1: did not want to take the risk of waiting into
Speaker 1: that controversy. This is actually a tactic called a reputational smear,
Speaker 1: where people make your personal brand so toxic that other
Speaker 1: people don't want to take any kind of risk and
Speaker 1: being associated with you. And I think do Sae being
Speaker 1: a black woman and also Senegalese and also French, probably
Speaker 1: is part of why that can't that kind of attack
Speaker 1: was so effective because I think when you're a black
Speaker 1: woman and you're visible, I just think it's different. People
Speaker 1: are going to be less likely to stick their neck
Speaker 1: out and defend you when you're being attacked in this
Speaker 1: like very very uh inflammatory way. And it's funny. I
Speaker 1: actually recall when this was all happening. In being nervous
Speaker 1: about making a podcast episode about it, I was like,
Speaker 1: the climate is so the climate is, the climate was
Speaker 1: so like tense and it was I was like, it
Speaker 1: wasn't a great time for most people. It absolutely was
Speaker 1: not a great time. And you know, I think it
Speaker 1: really contributed to this climate of silence where people who
Speaker 1: see what's going on and they see like, oh, this
Speaker 1: person is being hung out to dry, are also afraid
Speaker 1: to speak up. I think part of the way that
Speaker 1: these attacks work, and I recall a lot of bad
Speaker 1: actors making and spreading content based on lies and misrepresentations
Speaker 1: that made it seem like calling this movie a crime,
Speaker 1: calling this movie child pornography was reasonable even for folks
Speaker 1: who had not seen it for themselves, and it created
Speaker 1: the condition for a climate where elected officials were condemning
Speaker 1: this movie and also urging for the government to take
Speaker 1: action against it. Here's a brief roundup of all the
Speaker 1: different electeds that came out against this movie. U S.
Speaker 1: Senator Mike Lee sent a letter directly to Netflix's CEO
Speaker 1: Read Hastings, asking for quote an explanation on hastings As
Speaker 1: views as to whether or not the potential exploitation of
Speaker 1: miners in the film constitutes criminal behavior. Uh cool, Mr
Speaker 1: Anti Democracy himself got it? Cool? Cool? Who's next, mailed
Speaker 1: presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard. Yeah, Oh, I would love to
Speaker 1: never think about her again. I She exceplicitly called the
Speaker 1: movie quote child porn and said that it would whet
Speaker 1: the appetite of pedophiles and help fuel the child sex
Speaker 1: trafficking trade. Like oh girl on yeah, like come on,
Speaker 1: Ted Crew coming. You knew he was coming. He sent
Speaker 1: a letter to the Department of Justice to quote investigate
Speaker 1: whether Netflix, It's executive or the filmmakers violated any federal
Speaker 1: laws against the production and distribution of chop pornography. Tom
Speaker 1: Cotton and Representative Jim Banks also called to the d
Speaker 1: o J to take legal action against Netflix. Cotton excemplicitly
Speaker 1: accused Netflix and Do Surray of a crime, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: there's no excuse for the sexualization of children, and Netflix's
Speaker 1: decision to promote the film Cuties is disgusting at best
Speaker 1: and a serious crime at worst. On these people watch
Speaker 1: the movie continue? Oh absolutely, fucking you think fucking Ted
Speaker 1: Crew is sitting through a two hour movie about sucking
Speaker 1: French Senegalese girlhood. Absolutely, it's probably on a plane to Camcoon.
Speaker 1: Representatives Ken Buck and Andy Biggs of Arizona called for
Speaker 1: the d O jay to investigate, and the state attorneys general,
Speaker 1: by the way, I didn't know that the pluralization of
Speaker 1: attorney general is attorneys general, so that is it's gonna
Speaker 1: it sounds incorrect, but it is correct. The good you
Speaker 1: know noted um cool. Yeah, if you ever have to
Speaker 1: pluralize attorney general, it's an attorney general. State attors general stated,
Speaker 1: I don't like it, very ghoulish. Continue found it sounds
Speaker 1: like I'm like, I support you, um, don't don't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't like it. But the attorney's general of Ohio, Florida, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and Texas also asked for Netflix to remove the film. Also,
Speaker 1: isn't it funny how nobody talked about like free speech,
Speaker 1: cancel culture, These things that people on the right are
Speaker 1: supposed to be so aggrieved by didn't even come up.
Speaker 1: Government officials asking for Netflix to take down a film
Speaker 1: didn't need free speech, didn't even free speech. Who we
Speaker 1: don't know her didn't even come up. In true truly
Speaker 1: incredible what they what they think is important exactly. So,
Speaker 1: like you said, I would be willing to bet my
Speaker 1: entire life savings that at that whole list that I
Speaker 1: read of alexid officials responding did not watch the film,
Speaker 1: single one bet my fucking life savings on it. And eventually, this,
Speaker 1: you know, went from I guess like grandstanding and puffery
Speaker 1: to a grand jury in Tyler, Texas, indicting Netflix on
Speaker 1: the charge of promoting lewd visual material depicting a child.
Speaker 1: The indictment claims that Cuties holds no serious literary, artistic, political,
Speaker 1: or scientific value. And what is wild is that this
Speaker 1: attempt of an indictment is still going on. In November,
Speaker 1: a federal judge issued an injunction that blocks that Texas
Speaker 1: prosecutor from bringing child pornography charges against Netflix for distributing
Speaker 1: the film. And just two days ago, December five, the prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Tyler County District Attorney Lucas Babin, filed a notice indicating
Speaker 1: that he will appeal the rule the ruling to the
Speaker 1: Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. And so this guy is like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not dropping this. I Am going to continue to
Speaker 1: pursue pursue charges against this film. And what's interesting to
Speaker 1: me is that most of the elected officials who you know,
Speaker 1: had a problem with this film and and tried to
Speaker 1: pursue the Department of Justice to to look into it,
Speaker 1: they've mostly all dropped this right, like, and I part
Speaker 1: of me wonders, why is it that some one like
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz can be so loud and vocal about attacking
Speaker 1: a film that I bet he hasn't seen, but then
Speaker 1: it can just be quietly dropped, right, Like, I think
Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a mark against the way
Speaker 1: that like right wing elected officials use these cultural flashpoints
Speaker 1: as like little stunts where they want to like speak
Speaker 1: up about them, and I may just drop it, like
Speaker 1: I would be curious to know, like, do you still
Speaker 1: think that this movie is child pornography? Do you still
Speaker 1: think the d o J should investigate? Do you still
Speaker 1: believe that was an effective use of your time in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, your duty to your represent your
Speaker 1: your the people that got you in office, Like the
Speaker 1: way I'm confident in saying they forgot they tweeted about
Speaker 1: it and have moved on to bullying some other marginalized
Speaker 1: group of people. Yeah, I would be. I would totally agree.
Speaker 1: And the way that they're able to evoke these things
Speaker 1: loudly and just move on doesn't sit right with me,
Speaker 1: because there's real people on the other end of them,
Speaker 1: Like Do Suray is a real person with our real
Speaker 1: career that she's trying to build. That they can just
Speaker 1: evoke her name and her work misrepresented and lie about
Speaker 1: it and vocally accused her of a crime and then
Speaker 1: just move on really does not sit right with me.
Speaker 1: Something that I think is kind of interesting here is
Speaker 1: like you might be thinking, why would all of these
Speaker 1: right wing should heads be interested in attacking Netflix and
Speaker 1: this like kind of obscure French film, And I think
Speaker 1: it has a lot to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: culture is by and large seen as the domain of
Speaker 1: the left, and so these right wing extremists they have
Speaker 1: to attack purveyors of culture. Right these attacks are highly
Speaker 1: politically charged. So on Tucker carlston segment about the film
Speaker 1: and the controversy around it, first he framed it as
Speaker 1: an attack on what he calls quote the media elite.
Speaker 1: Listen to this. I begin this segment with the warning
Speaker 1: something we never do, but the footage we're about to
Speaker 1: show you comes from a film that was released yesterday
Speaker 1: on the streaming service Netflix. It's called Cuties. We've edited
Speaker 1: to obscure the most sexual parts because we have no choice,
Speaker 1: but it's still over the top and disturbing. As you
Speaker 1: watch it, remember that our media class, the gatekeepers of entertainment,
Speaker 1: have no problem with it. In fact, they love it.
Speaker 1: A sure sign the civilization is in trouble. The New
Speaker 1: Yorker magazine, which after almost a hundred years has become
Speaker 1: truly a garbage publication, unfortunately, called this film quote extraordinary
Speaker 1: and said that only evangelicals don't like it. The Telegraph
Speaker 1: newspaper said it's an important film quote in an age
Speaker 1: terrified of child sexuality Late Rome for real. We're not
Speaker 1: going to show you a portion of what. So it's
Speaker 1: interesting how Tucker Carlston frames this film the controversy around it,
Speaker 1: as an attack on the New Yorker, the media elite,
Speaker 1: the Telegraph right like it's so written. I think it
Speaker 1: really reveals how these attacks are just kind of proxy
Speaker 1: wars for this larger culture wars, highly politicized thing that
Speaker 1: they're trying to wage here. And it doesn't matter that
Speaker 1: that the first time filmmaker gets sort of like caught
Speaker 1: in the crossfire. Um again, here's later into that segment.
Speaker 1: Here's how his guest talks about Uh. The people that
Speaker 1: she says are quote staying silent and allowing this film
Speaker 1: to exploit children and yet curiously silent Tucker are the
Speaker 1: Obama's is Susan Rice who's involved. Also, she's on their
Speaker 1: Netflix board. Obama is uh to deal with Harry and
Speaker 1: Megan Harry of England and Megan Markel. Uh, they are
Speaker 1: They've got it like an over reportedly of one million
Speaker 1: dollar deal with Netflix. A word from any of these
Speaker 1: people could stop this in it tracks, and they should.
Speaker 1: They should say something. People. Okay, you guys have it there.
Speaker 1: But the fact is, can I just sit in a
Speaker 1: court of law? Fox what a lawsuit? By saying that
Speaker 1: they couldn't they couldn't imagine anybody to take Chucker Carlson
Speaker 1: seriously as an actual newsperson because clearly he's doing a
Speaker 1: character that that for first of all, Second of all, yeah,
Speaker 1: these people are such fucking goals. None of you watched
Speaker 1: the movie. All of you are just prediculous. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: just that's Harriet Megan. It's like any chance to to
Speaker 1: pick on Megan Markel um cool um exactly the way
Speaker 1: that they effectively like pull make this an attack on
Speaker 1: Megan Markele. Oh my god, another black person. I can
Speaker 1: point the finger at um oh cool. Let's like, let's sake,
Speaker 1: let's take the opportunity for to blame them for a
Speaker 1: movie we have not seen exactly. And so yeah, they
Speaker 1: use this film to take a at the Obama's. The
Speaker 1: Obamas at the time had a high profile deal with
Speaker 1: Netflix to produce documentaries Fox News. As Rachel Campo Stuffy
Speaker 1: wrote in a piece for the Federalists called Michelle Obama
Speaker 1: is complicit in Netflix child porn film Cuties. She writes,
Speaker 1: quote at a time in the left has declared that
Speaker 1: silence is violence, Michelle obama silence on the Netflix's controversial
Speaker 1: movie Cuties has not gone unnoticed. And again, it's such
Speaker 1: a disingenuous way to use this film to attack people
Speaker 1: that they clearly already have a pre established grievance against.
Speaker 1: And so it's interesting how culture becomes a stand in
Speaker 1: for these political grievances that clearly these It's like they're
Speaker 1: barely able to mask it when they talk about it.
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing for them. It should be embarrassing. And I
Speaker 1: guess all of this is to say that, like, the
Speaker 1: sad part to me about this is the way that
Speaker 1: bad acts are so good at you know, I have
Speaker 1: a good part of it is that, like, it all
Speaker 1: comes back to this grain of truth and the reality
Speaker 1: is is that we actually do live in a world
Speaker 1: where far too many young people are survivors and victims
Speaker 1: of sexual abuse and violence and things like grooming, and
Speaker 1: we don't have a society that offers those folks a
Speaker 1: ton of support. And bad actors they seize on this
Speaker 1: heartbreaking reality, and in lieu of support, they offer dangerous
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories and the smearing of regular people as predators
Speaker 1: and threats to children. And my my real question is, like,
Speaker 1: because all of those elected officials were too busy drumming
Speaker 1: up these attacks on the movie Hughties, that was time
Speaker 1: not spent actually scrutinizing the online platforms that we know
Speaker 1: our actual purveyors of child sexual abuse material, platforms like Facebook.
Speaker 1: Facebook is the number one platform responsible or sexually explicit
Speaker 1: material involving the abuse of children. That's just a fact,
Speaker 1: And so isn't it interesting that all these elected officials
Speaker 1: came out against this movie Cutie's but baxt time they
Speaker 1: could have been actually speaking to what we know actually
Speaker 1: pose real threats to children. And I think turning something
Speaker 1: as important as protecting the survivors of childhood sexual abuse
Speaker 1: into just another way of scoring cheap political points is
Speaker 1: a symptom of the fact that our society has really
Speaker 1: has a problem, Like we're not talking about anything that
Speaker 1: can actually be of use to vulnerable people. Were only
Speaker 1: interested in partisan attacks and fucking grandstanding and stunts, and
Speaker 1: it's it makes MU sick. And I think the same
Speaker 1: way that the grooming of children is like a real,
Speaker 1: very serious issue. But if you turn that into a
Speaker 1: way to attack LGBTQ people or drag queens or whatever,
Speaker 1: the people who are act really grooming kids, they can
Speaker 1: just go on examined. It's like, Okay, well, please continue
Speaker 1: to say that drag queens are the threat to kids,
Speaker 1: and I'll just be over here continuing my business of
Speaker 1: actually endangering children. And so the reason why this is
Speaker 1: such an important thing to me is that we have
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to have the real conversation
Speaker 1: and not allow extremists and bad actors and grifters to
Speaker 1: distract us with you know, the shiny object of this
Speaker 1: film is the threat to children when the real threat
Speaker 1: to threats to children go unexamined and fifty percent. Please
Speaker 1: stop worrying about movies you have not seen. Do not
Speaker 1: do not cover what you think they cover. Please stop
Speaker 1: worrying about drag queen reading story time at libraries, You
Speaker 1: dumb people. I cannot stand to you. I could go
Speaker 1: on a rap. I will not feel like disastrous incompetence
Speaker 1: and the negligence to do their jobs is baffling and
Speaker 1: damaging to so many people, specifically marginalized people. And exactly
Speaker 1: I hate you all. I can't believe that you are
Speaker 1: allowed to decide things for anybody. Yeah, and I mean
Speaker 1: this is like a like a tried and true thing
Speaker 1: that we see when it comes to disinformation and conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: They just take all the air and the oxygen out
Speaker 1: of the room, and so we don't really have the
Speaker 1: space to have our real conversation about the actual threats
Speaker 1: to the people and the kids because so much room
Speaker 1: is taken out of Like when was the last time
Speaker 1: you saw an article that a news article about an
Speaker 1: actual threat to children. It's all these days, it's all
Speaker 1: completely made up threats, right like, And what's really scary
Speaker 1: to me is how baselessly accusing someone of being a
Speaker 1: child predator or a pedophile, or a child pornographer or
Speaker 1: a groomer or a threat to children, how has made
Speaker 1: this real comeback as a solid way to attack somebody
Speaker 1: that you don't like, just like what happened to the
Speaker 1: filmmaker Douce Array. It is dangerous, It can lead to
Speaker 1: real world violence, and in fact, we know it already has.
Speaker 1: I would be remiss to not mention the fact that
Speaker 1: just last week Elon Musk smeared Yol Roth, Twitter's former
Speaker 1: head of trust and Safety, who is gay, baselessly insinuating
Speaker 1: that he is a child predator, and of course a
Speaker 1: few days later CNN reported that Roth had to flee
Speaker 1: his home for his own safety. We should really be
Speaker 1: afraid that basically attacking anybody that you don't like is
Speaker 1: a child predator is now a go to strategy for extremists.
Speaker 1: And so that's my big thing is like when we
Speaker 1: have a culture where made up threats based on conspiracy theories,
Speaker 1: lies and attacks on people's identity are able to take
Speaker 1: up a lot of room. It endangers us all because
Speaker 1: we're not able to make room for the conversation about
Speaker 1: how we keep people safe that we need to be having.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, this is my this is my plea
Speaker 1: to to be better. We can't have that, like, like
Speaker 1: maybe focus on the sex trafficking of indigenous girls, not
Speaker 1: on a movie, not on a movie that you haven't seen. Again,
Speaker 1: Like I can't emphasize this enough. They have not seen
Speaker 1: the movie, and they have formed opinions off of some
Speaker 1: tweet Like I said, do you want to read the
Speaker 1: article before you share it? Literally? This is exactly that exactly,
Speaker 1: and like I could talk all day about this, but like,
Speaker 1: there are so many ways that children and young people
Speaker 1: are being endangered and exploited in the United States, and
Speaker 1: if you actually gave a ship about that, there are
Speaker 1: things that you could do. Some of them are big
Speaker 1: systemic things, but some of them are like pretty easy
Speaker 1: to accomplish. We don't even have that conversation and instead
Speaker 1: we're given a conversation about sucking nonsense. And so I
Speaker 1: would like to posit that we need to stop paying
Speaker 1: like we cannot allow for the non sense to proliferate
Speaker 1: and take all the air out of the room, because
Speaker 1: that is exactly what they're counting on. People like Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz don't have actual solutions to offer people. All they
Speaker 1: have the stunts and grandstanding, and so I think the
Speaker 1: more that we can peel back the curtain and show
Speaker 1: that that's all they have to offer us, the better
Speaker 1: we all will be. I think that's where we ended.
Speaker 1: That's all I got, Sophie, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being down to have this conversation with me. I get
Speaker 1: a little rag, but there's no because I too love
Speaker 1: a dinner party and I too love saying about things
Speaker 1: and then making it into a podcast. So I'm glad
Speaker 1: that we're on the same page here. If you would
Speaker 1: like me to come to your dinner party and scream
Speaker 1: about Cutie's, just let me know. I'm happy to, yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you don't, what's wrong with you? It's so interesting? Bridget,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me on Um. Where
Speaker 1: can people follow you? Well? You can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Bridget Marie. Yeah I'm still they're tweeting away.
Speaker 1: Follow me on Instagram at Bridget Marie. You see, and
Speaker 1: as always, check out the whole slate of cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media shows because they're looking awesome and you should be listening.
Speaker 1: I have no bias there, and I completely agree. I
Speaker 1: also think that they are wonderful. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having me on uh the show that I produce. Um,
Speaker 1: we'll be back probably with a with some kind of
Speaker 1: a bonus, a bonus there, or another episode. Let's just
Speaker 1: look out for it. You're subscribed and if you're not,
Speaker 1: why Okay, Bye bye. Internet Hate Machine is a production
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: check out our website cool zone media dot com, or
Speaker 1: find us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.