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Speaker 1: Ah, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about

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Speaker 1: the ever present fear of death and pale anxiety. Pain

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Speaker 1: that is like never leaves, that's just always there in

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Speaker 1: the heart of every single person and drives us to

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Speaker 1: most of the terrible crimes that we commit as a species.

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Speaker 1: What are you doing, Sarah?

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Speaker 2: What else?

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Speaker 3: I'm here and I'm scared.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're all.

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Speaker 4: So.

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Speaker 1: I keep and raised goats, and one of my goats

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Speaker 1: gave birth this year, so I've been milking her. You

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Speaker 1: can milk a goat for about a year after they

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Speaker 1: give birth, you know, something like that. It kind of

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Speaker 1: depends a little bit.

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Speaker 3: Is it also birth control for the goat?

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Speaker 1: I don't know enough about goats biology to tell you that, Sarah, but.

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Speaker 3: I appreciate you're accepting that. That's above your pay grade. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: that's well above my pay grade. I've just figured out milking.

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Speaker 3: So I got this this little little lady goat. She's

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Speaker 3: a Nigerian dwarf. She's small, She's about the size of

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Speaker 3: like a small dog. Nothing bad has ever happened to

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Speaker 3: this animal. She has never been been threatened, she's never

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Speaker 3: been attacked, she's never been like harmed. All that people

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Speaker 3: have ever done for her. All that I've ever done

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Speaker 3: for her is go is bring her food and other

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Speaker 3: things that she likes. And all that the milking processes

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Speaker 3: is her receiving treats while she's milked. And still if

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Speaker 3: I move the wrong way around her, if I like,

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Speaker 3: you know, like I have to be there's very specific

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Speaker 3: ways that I move when she's in there, because if

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Speaker 3: I move the wrong way, she will freak out and

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Speaker 3: run away. Right, And that's because she is descended from

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Speaker 3: a long line of prey animals that had to always

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Speaker 3: be ready to be attacked and to try to run

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Speaker 3: away from danger.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: It's the same reason why you know, people had a

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Speaker 1: whole fun thing on the internet the other cup a

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Speaker 1: few years ago about like if you put like a

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Speaker 1: cucumber or something out slightly outside of a cat's field

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Speaker 1: of vision, they'll freak out because their instincts tell them

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Speaker 1: this is a snake. And we all know this about animals.

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Speaker 1: I'm not like.

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Speaker 3: People love to scare their people love.

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Speaker 1: To scare their cats to make them feel like, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're and it It's interesting to me because like currently

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Speaker 1: in right wing media, there's this huge thing with like

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Speaker 1: biological reality, and you know, we're going against these deeply

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Speaker 1: programmed things when people are allowed to be transgender or

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Speaker 1: like biologically men are meant to fight in a felanx

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Speaker 1: with a spear and like you're you know, this is

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Speaker 1: why you need to pay ten thousand dollars to have

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Speaker 1: a man yell at you. Well, you do push ups,

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Speaker 1: otherwise you're not connected to your your like ancestral masculinity.

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Speaker 1: You got to eat raw meat, you know whatever, kind

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Speaker 1: of fucking nonsense. And everyone's fine with like or all

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Speaker 1: of these people are fine with the idea that, like,

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Speaker 1: you know, my ancestral men were hunters and fighters, so

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Speaker 1: I need to do hunting and fighting stuff in order

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Speaker 1: to be like truly happy. But nobody likes the nobody

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Speaker 1: likes being told. Nobody's willing to accept that, like, well,

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Speaker 1: your ancestors were constantly at threat from various kinds of animals,

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Speaker 1: and so there is always fear in your heart and nothing,

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Speaker 1: nothing will ever make that go away, Like you just

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Speaker 1: have to learn how to deal with it and cope

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Speaker 1: with it. Because we grew up in a world that

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Speaker 1: was deeply, deeply dangerous in ways that like it is

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Speaker 1: not anymore, and that's just will always be with you.

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Speaker 1: And none of these people want to accept that. They

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Speaker 1: want to take the parts of like ancient humanity that

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Speaker 1: are like standing with a shield and a spear or

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Speaker 1: trying to hunt a fucking gazelle, but they don't want

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Speaker 1: to accept that, like the actual thing that will never

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Speaker 1: leave us because of our ancestors is fear.

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Speaker 5: I don't want to.

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Speaker 3: Be too dramatic, but I feel like I'm having a

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Speaker 3: breakthrough right now because I feel like I have been

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Speaker 3: treating like my life and also the therapy that I've

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Speaker 3: been doing as an approach to like, well, I feel

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Speaker 3: really fearful and anxious a lot, and that's a failing

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Speaker 3: on my part, or like not a moral failing, but

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Speaker 3: like that's something that's wrong with me that has to

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Speaker 3: do with my personal history, and it's a problem, and I,

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Speaker 3: you know, and I to be clear, like I do

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Speaker 3: think that I need to deal with that, and we

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Speaker 3: all need to learn how to manage fear in our

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Speaker 3: own ways and also to trust it at times, but

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Speaker 3: seeing it is something that's just part of the organisms

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Speaker 3: we are, instead of this idea of like an invading

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Speaker 3: presence that shouldn't be there like it's just right. It's

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Speaker 3: like it's natural for us to be afraid. That's what

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Speaker 3: we're how what we are?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, what I'd like people at home to do. You know,

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Speaker 1: the next time the fear hits you, right and you

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Speaker 1: find yourself wondering why am I so afraid? Instead of

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Speaker 1: burrowing into like whatever you said in your like going

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Speaker 1: on Twitter and you know, doom scrolling or any of

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Speaker 1: that stuff, get on the Internet and look up a

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Speaker 1: picture of the skull of a cave bear. Cave bears

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Speaker 1: don't exist anymore, but they're much larger than all of

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Speaker 1: the all present day bears. They're small compared to cave bears.

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Speaker 1: They were like the elephants of bears, and they used

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Speaker 1: to murder the shit out of us. And look at

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Speaker 1: the skull of a cave bear and realize, like, that's

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Speaker 1: why I'm scared right now. It's because many, many years ago,

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Speaker 1: my ancestors had to constantly be worried about this fucking

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Speaker 1: thing charging out of whatever cave and murdering their entire family.

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Speaker 1: And so now I'm sitting at home, in my air

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Speaker 1: conditioned house where there are no cave bears, and I'm

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Speaker 1: scared like, just look at a picture of a cave bear.

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Speaker 1: That's why you're scared.

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Speaker 3: It's also just to bring it into horror movies, as

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Speaker 3: I must, like, it's fascinating how so many horror movies

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Speaker 3: because the House without a Cave Bear makes me think

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Speaker 3: of Barbarian and that so many horror movies are about

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Speaker 3: the idea and horror stories before that are about the

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Speaker 3: idea of something that wants to kill rye. You coming

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Speaker 3: out of the past, yeah, because of you know, traumas

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Speaker 3: or misdeeds of the pastor just from the past in

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Speaker 3: some way, because we act like the present is all

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Speaker 3: about our thriving and having fun and being wholesome. But

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Speaker 3: really when we're focusing on that, understand on some level,

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Speaker 3: like modernity itself is sort of a denial of death.

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Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, I mean that's like with all

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Speaker 1: of these like Silicon Valley dudes who just like were

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Speaker 1: born at the right time to get incredibly lucky gambling

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Speaker 1: on you know, fucking tech companies and suddenly made a

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Speaker 1: billion dollars or whatever. Like none of them can get

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Speaker 1: over the fact that they're always scared to despite all

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Speaker 1: their money and their bodyguards, and so they they can

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Speaker 1: coct these, you know, insane things to like I'm going

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Speaker 1: to live forever if I do this, or you know,

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Speaker 1: it's this, it's this. It's all this denial of the

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Speaker 1: reality and inevitability of death, and also this denial that

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Speaker 1: like fundamentally we're descended from like little bitty dudes and

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Speaker 1: ladies who there were bigger things around that ate them,

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Speaker 1: and so we were scared of those things.

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Speaker 3: Like it's only it's it's so recently in human existence

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Speaker 3: that we've not getting eaten all the time.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we were constantly getting eaten by shit. We were

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Speaker 1: scared little guys, and so were our cats, you know,

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Speaker 1: like just like that's the same reason, like what you got,

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Speaker 1: you get like a duck. Why is my dog anxious

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Speaker 1: all the time? Well, it's because it's descended from like

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Speaker 1: little guys who had to be worried all the time.

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Speaker 1: We all are. It's fine anyway, Sarah. On the seventy

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Speaker 1: ninth or whatever anniversary of the day the classic Michael

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Speaker 1: Bay movie Pearl Harbor was inspired, a woman named Katie Sorensen,

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Speaker 1: thirty years old, visited a Michael's craft store in Pedaluma,

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Speaker 1: California with her four year old son and one year

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Speaker 1: old daughter. Now, Pedaluma is basically a suburb of San Francisco.

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Speaker 1: This is relevant to the tech industry stuff we were

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Speaker 1: talking about. The median household income is over one hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year. This is a wealthy suburb. And

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Speaker 1: the crime rate in Pedaluma is about one point four

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Speaker 1: times below the national average, so fairly safe place. But

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Speaker 1: despite how safe and affluent the suburb she lives in is,

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Speaker 1: Katie Sorensen was scared. And Katie Sorenson was also a

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Speaker 1: small time influencer on Instagram. She's like a mommy influencer.

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Speaker 1: Right now her shit has been thoroughly scrubbed from the

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Speaker 1: Internet because of what happened next, But based on context clues,

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Speaker 1: I think it's fairly safe to say that none of

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Speaker 1: her frequent updates prior to December seventh got that much traction.

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Speaker 1: She was, in other words, like a failing momfluencer who

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Speaker 1: was desperate to find something that would bring followers to

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Speaker 1: her account. And here is the post that she made

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Speaker 1: in an attempt to do that.

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Speaker 6: This week. My children were the targets of attempted kidnap,

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Speaker 6: which is such a weird thing to even vocalize, but

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Speaker 6: it happened, and I want to share that story with

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Speaker 6: you in an effort to raise awareness as to what

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Speaker 6: signs to look for and to just encourage parents to

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Speaker 6: be more aware of their surroundings and what is going

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Speaker 6: on around them.

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Speaker 3: I think right now we are so distracted by.

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Speaker 6: Everything that's going on in the world that we are

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Speaker 6: kind of have our guards up so much about masks

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Speaker 6: and wanting to keep our children safe that way, that

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Speaker 6: we're forgetting the most important way to keep them safe,

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Speaker 6: and that is with us and to not have them

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Speaker 6: take in. So I'm going to share a story an

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Speaker 6: effort to raise that awareness, but it's I'm not ready.

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Speaker 6: I this is hard for me. I'm not ready to

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Speaker 6: share this story, but I know it's important and I

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Speaker 6: would rather be uncomfortable, an awkward and get the message

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Speaker 6: out sooner than wait until I feel composed.

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Speaker 1: Okay, that's probably enough, Sophie. So you can see here

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Speaker 1: both if you think back to the chain letters we

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Speaker 1: were talking about, right, if you think back to that

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Speaker 1: murderer in the backseat chain letter we read, you can

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Speaker 1: see the same structural harm hallmarks here. Right, there's the

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Speaker 1: claim that like parents are not someone like the person

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Speaker 1: that this is meant for. You're not paying enough at

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Speaker 1: take to a danger that you're not aware of, but

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Speaker 1: it's present. Right, you need to be more aware of

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Speaker 1: this danger. You need to be more aware of the

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Speaker 1: threat that your kids are always facing. Right, there's this.

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Speaker 1: It's framed in this like here are suggestion, like I'm

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Speaker 1: telling you this so that you can avoid the stangers,

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Speaker 1: that you can protect yourself and your loved ones. And

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Speaker 1: from there on, like from the point that you know,

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Speaker 1: we stopped that video, the story that she was giving continued,

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Speaker 1: and I'm going to read a summary of what she

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Speaker 1: said in this. In another video from a local Sonoma paper,

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Speaker 1: The Press Democrat, she described being followed by an unknown

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Speaker 1: man and woman at the Petaluma Michael's craft store on

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Speaker 1: North mcdowe Boulevard from the time she arrived in the

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Speaker 1: parking lot with her children until they returned to her car.

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Speaker 1: In the parking lot, she said the couple approached her

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Speaker 1: as she was putting one of her children in a

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Speaker 1: car seat, and what she suspected was an attempt to

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Speaker 1: grab the stroller. A separate man who spotted Sorensen and

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Speaker 1: recognized she was in danger, stepped into help, she said

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Speaker 1: in the videos. Meanwhile, she said the pair drove off

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Speaker 1: and like, first off, if you are taking your kid

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Speaker 1: to a Michael's craft store, the worst thing that is

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Speaker 1: going to happen to you that day is being in

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Speaker 1: a Michael's Craft store. Right, they are not going to

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Speaker 1: get kidnapped. O, They're unpleasant. I would prefer to be

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Speaker 1: kidnapped being in a Michael's craft store. You know, you

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Speaker 1: meet better people getting kidnapped than you do to have.

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Speaker 4: Michael's Craft store due to you, I don't know nothing

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Speaker 4: Michael's Craft store.

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Speaker 1: Yes, actually I have. The last guy I needed. I

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Speaker 1: needed styrofoam cones. And if you need if you need

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Speaker 1: a cone in a shape that's made out of styrophoe

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Speaker 1: or something made out of styrofoam, like, that's that's where

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Speaker 1: you go, is a Michaelson.

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Speaker 4: I've had many pleasant experiences at Michael's Craft store, just saying,

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Speaker 4: and was never kidnapped.

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Speaker 1: No I I I I only go I roll to

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Speaker 1: the Michaels like I'm heading to like downtown Fallujah in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and five. You know you've got to be

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Speaker 1: ready at a Michael's. That's where shit goes down. It's

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Speaker 1: their locker. Yeah, like like rolling into a Michael's and

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Speaker 1: that in that hurt locker body armor. This will stop

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Speaker 1: them from taking me, yeah.

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Speaker 3: And also any glitter from getting on here.

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Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. So Sorensen, in addition to posting

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Speaker 1: these videos, the first of which almost immediately gets to

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Speaker 1: like two million views, which was had never happened to

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Speaker 1: her account before, she makes a kidnapping report to the

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Speaker 1: Petaluma police, right, so they deemed this a suspicious person's case.

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Speaker 1: So her her video goes viral, she makes her report

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Speaker 1: to the police, she publishes a second video, and here's

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Speaker 1: there's a number of dumb things that that Sorensen does,

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Speaker 1: But the stupidest miss error that she makes in this

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Speaker 1: grift is in her second video, she brags that there

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Speaker 1: are like in order to market it, she says there

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Speaker 1: are details in the video that she didn't give the cops,

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Speaker 1: which is like saying, in your viral video, I made

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Speaker 1: a false police report. You know, don't do that as

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Speaker 1: a as a up. If you're going to commit this crime,

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Speaker 1: don't make that mistake. So that said, her marketing is good.

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Speaker 1: These videos get about four and a half million views

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Speaker 1: combined together. But it's a bad idea from a not

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Speaker 1: getting arrested standpoint, because while if you don't make a

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Speaker 1: police report, you can get away with this kind of

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Speaker 1: thing any amount of time. Right, if you're just like

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Speaker 1: posting videos saying my kids were nearly kidnapped, here's what

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Speaker 1: to avoid, that's fine. Once you make a police report,

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Speaker 1: you have created a situation in which you might get

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Speaker 1: in trouble. And Sorensen probably still would have been okay.

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Speaker 1: But in addition to making a police report, she made

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Speaker 1: the further mistake of accusing specific people who had names

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Speaker 1: of having been the wanna be pedophile child abductors. Right,

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Speaker 1: so the specific people that she made allegations against were

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Speaker 1: another couple that was just at Michael's that day, Eddie

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Speaker 1: and Sadie Martinez. Again, like she sees like a Hispanic

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Speaker 1: couple in the store, she decides, and she claims in

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Speaker 1: her videos that she heard them describing her children on

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Speaker 1: the phone with a third party, So she thinks they're

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Speaker 1: like spotters talking back to the kidnapping base about like

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Speaker 1: these kids they can steal, and.

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Speaker 3: Just talk about this operation like the last Yeah, we're

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Speaker 3: running on three year old white kids.

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Speaker 1: Grab her? Yeah, yeah we got oh we need it,

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Speaker 1: We need another like uh this this one's like blonde.

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Speaker 1: She's got a jumper on. Do we need another jumper kid? Yeah, Like,

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Speaker 1: go ahead and get her. So she she not only

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Speaker 1: does she give these people's identifications, she like describes them

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Speaker 1: to the police, but she takes pictures of them in

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Speaker 1: the store and she posts it on her Instagram.

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Speaker 3: Oh huh.

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Speaker 1: So now the Martinez is find out about this because

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Speaker 1: these postco viral, and her son comes up to Sadie

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Speaker 1: Martinez and is like, hey, mom, somebody claims that you

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Speaker 1: were part of a kidnapping gang and Michael's you might

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Speaker 1: want to you might want to be aware of this.

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Speaker 3: I also love how like, okay, so you're in this

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Speaker 3: elite kidnapping gang. I love it. You're like, where should

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Speaker 3: we go to pick up kids without being noticed? Yeah,

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Speaker 3: Michael's craft Michaels cruise around a store and a mini

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Speaker 3: mall with eight thousand cameras in it.

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Speaker 1: That's also the least if you were to tell me

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Speaker 1: this is a kidnapping gang that specifically abducts like sixty

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Speaker 1: four year old women, Right, I'd be like, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a Michael's. That's that's definitely where you're gonna abduct,

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Speaker 1: like where you go for that, Yeah, or guys who

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Speaker 1: are weirdly into model trains, Yeah, you're gonna get a

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Speaker 1: lot of that stuff out a Michael's. But like, kids

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Speaker 1: don't go to Michael's. Children do not like Michaels. It's

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Speaker 1: not the it's it's the place to get like kind

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Speaker 1: of vaguely unsettling Christmas decorations. That's what I go to

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Speaker 1: Michael's for.

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Speaker 3: Right, you know kidnappers love yeah, kidnappers, So maybe they're

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Speaker 3: there on an errand.

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Speaker 1: Anyway, And again, the martinez Is are the kind of

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Speaker 1: people who go to to a Michael's. Right, they're like

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Speaker 1: a middle aged couple shopping for whatever kind of decorations together.

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Speaker 1: But this lady decides like, nope, they're part of a

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Speaker 1: kidnapping gang. That's the only reason why you know a

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Speaker 1: couple would be at a Michael's craft store is to

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Speaker 1: steal my children shop is to steal my white children.

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Speaker 1: Now this this happens.

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Speaker 3: Nobody wants white children. They're terrible, No, no, horrible.

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Speaker 1: You can't see.

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Speaker 3: Them anything anymore without them having an incident.

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Speaker 1: They all got they all got allergies, you know, which

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Speaker 1: is because they're not actually abiding by the primal principles

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Speaker 1: and eating nothing but raw liver exactly.

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Speaker 3: Otherwise you'll never got big and strong like Thank you,

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Speaker 3: man who was not on steroids.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. Look, this is why I am getting in

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Speaker 1: to the to the liver influencer business. Uh. And I'm

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Speaker 1: specifically selling freeze dried polar bear liver now, Sarah, A

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Speaker 1: lot of doctors, the same guys in the pharma industrial complex,

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Speaker 1: will tell you that even a single bite of polar

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Speaker 1: bear liver will kill you because of how concentrated the

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Speaker 1: vitamins are. It's basically poison, that's what doctor say. But

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Speaker 1: you know, if we've learned one thing from the pandemic,

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Speaker 1: it's that you can't trust doctors. So I'm going to

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Speaker 1: start selling polar bear liver.

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Speaker 3: I think the grenades are going to be more ethical.

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Speaker 3: But you know, yeah, forget forget about the Franklin expedition,

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Speaker 3: yeah orch ever when they all died from doing that,

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Speaker 3: yeah in the future.

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Speaker 1: Look, they died because they didn't have a grenade launcher.

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Speaker 1: If you have a grenade launcher and you eat the

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Speaker 1: polar bear liver, then you're fine. Then all the ever

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Speaker 1: fear of death will leave you.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's you know, small price to pay. It's

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Speaker 3: what five ninety nine a month for your uh, your

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Speaker 3: liver club.

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Speaker 1: It's like three hundred and forty seven dollars a week.

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Speaker 1: What it is not, Sarah, The Feds do not like

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Speaker 1: you taking this many livers from this many polar bears.

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Speaker 1: It has made a lot of problems for me. But

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Speaker 1: I do it for you listeners.

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Speaker 3: You know, the cost covers legal fees.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So Sorensen makes this post and accuses the

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Speaker 1: Martinez being petophy kidnappers. Right in the middle of that period.

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Speaker 1: You remember a couple of years back where there were

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Speaker 1: a bunch of viral stories of like white people calling

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Speaker 1: the cops on people who are not white for bullshit reasons. Right,

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Speaker 1: There's that lady who threatened that black bird watcher in

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Speaker 1: Central Park. There was there was a lady who called

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Speaker 1: nine one one on like a black family and Oakland

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Speaker 1: cooking barbecue in the park. You know, these are kind

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Speaker 1: of like again in that like Karen sort of viral

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Speaker 1: story theme which is almost as reliable a traffic getter

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Speaker 1: as a kidnapping stories. So as soon as the Martinez

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Speaker 1: is like came forward and you are like this fucking

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Speaker 1: mommy blogger like or mommy influencer or whatever like accused

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Speaker 1: us of being a pedophile gang, the virality that had

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Speaker 1: been really good for Sorenson's follower a count initially kind

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Speaker 1: of came back to bite her in the ass. So

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Speaker 1: the Pedaluma police made a timely update being like, you know,

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Speaker 1: there are inconsistencies between the police report she filed and

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Speaker 1: the story she did on Instagram. Sorensen compounded her mistakes

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Speaker 1: by doubling down and was like, I want to see

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Speaker 1: these people prosecute you did a'll testify in court that

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Speaker 1: they were trying to steal my kids. The Michaels people,

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Speaker 1: you know, the cops talk to them and Michaels is like,

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Speaker 1: we didn't see anything problematic appen. There's no evidence of

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Speaker 1: anything happening. So this all ends in Sorenson getting charged

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one with three misdemeanor counts a false

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Speaker 1: report of a crime. She was convicted on one count

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Speaker 1: and sentenced earlier this year, Just a couple of weeks ago,

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Speaker 1: to twelve months of what's called informal probation, which restricts

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Speaker 1: her from using social media and requires a four hour

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Speaker 1: implicit bias training. She's going to still to that definitely, Like, look,

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Speaker 1: I yeah, hard to argue with the fact that, like

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Speaker 1: this lady being off social media is good for her, right,

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Speaker 1: she should not be on the internet. None of us

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Speaker 1: really should, that.

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Speaker 3: Really should, but especially not hers.

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Speaker 1: Especially not her.

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Speaker 3: But wow, I mean, you know, I don't think harsher

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Speaker 3: punishment fixes anything for anybody. It's a question of who

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Speaker 3: gets too much rather than who gets too little. But yeah,

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Speaker 3: it is, I mean that is, and that's a remarkably

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Speaker 3: light sentence for fucking up someone.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I have that.

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Speaker 3: I shall say that.

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Speaker 1: She's probably gonna spend I think, like thirty days in

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Speaker 1: jail and then she's got like a work release program,

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Speaker 1: so you know, it's not I don't know, like what

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Speaker 1: I would say is like the proper penalty here or whatever.

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00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:22,600
Speaker 1: I'm not angry that it's like too harsh, I'll say

402
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Speaker 1: that much.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 1: So, while this has been celebrated online, you know, as

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Speaker 1: soon as this this lady got convicted, you know, people

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Speaker 1: were obviously like, look, this dumb racist committed fraud, and

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Speaker 1: they paid the price. Despite the fact that like, that's

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Speaker 1: kind of how the story has gotten, you know, remembered. Now,

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Speaker 1: Sorenson had a pretty good reason to think that this

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Speaker 1: would work out for her, because, again, fake kidnapping stories

411
00:20:47,359 --> 00:20:49,800
Speaker 1: are one of the most reliable kinds of viral content

412
00:20:49,880 --> 00:20:53,920
Speaker 1: in multiple forms of social media. In twenty nineteen, Snope

413
00:20:53,920 --> 00:20:56,720
Speaker 1: started receiving inquiries about a Facebook meme that warned of

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Speaker 1: a sex trafficking plot in Florence, Kentucky. Variations of this

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00:21:01,119 --> 00:21:03,760
Speaker 1: meme tended to show a photo of a red rose

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Speaker 1: stuck to a car door with text like this, There

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Speaker 1: have been recent incidents in northern Kentucky about sex traffickers

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Speaker 1: leaving roses on victims cars. The roses have a chemical

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00:21:12,440 --> 00:21:14,040
Speaker 1: on them to make you pass out so they can

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Speaker 1: grab you. One incident happened in a Walmart parking lot

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Speaker 1: in Florence, Kentucky. Please be careful, ladies.

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Speaker 3: First of all, there's a lot worse happening in a

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Speaker 3: Walmart parking lot. Oh God, all humanity. Yeah, but it's

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Speaker 3: a I'm glad to hear it's not Southern Kentucky, just

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Speaker 3: northern Kentucky.

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Speaker 1: There you get, yeah, very Kentucky. Well, you know, the

427
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Speaker 1: specific poison that you can put on a rose only

428
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Speaker 1: grows in northern Kentucky, so it's hard to get down.

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Speaker 1: Oh well so yeah, yeah, I don't like.

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Speaker 3: If I were going to start a sex trafficking ring,

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Speaker 3: I would go for a population center. I would be

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Speaker 3: worried about starting from scratch. Yeah, but I'm not an expert, so.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, we I mean we do talk frequently

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Speaker 1: about like what we would do where were a sex

435
00:22:00,560 --> 00:22:03,080
Speaker 1: trafficking rain But I think we can all agree Florence,

436
00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:05,520
Speaker 1: Kentucky is where it was, where you start.

437
00:22:06,720 --> 00:22:09,640
Speaker 3: That's this is like, you know, Michelle remembers the book

438
00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:12,040
Speaker 3: that started the Satanic panic, is like there are two

439
00:22:13,040 --> 00:22:17,119
Speaker 3: centers worldwide, centers for organized Satanism and they are I

440
00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:20,520
Speaker 3: think Geneva, Switzerland and Victoria, b C.

441
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,160
Speaker 1: And it's like, yep, yeah, of course why.

442
00:22:22,960 --> 00:22:25,000
Speaker 3: Did they Was it for the climate? Do they get

443
00:22:25,000 --> 00:22:26,680
Speaker 3: whether it's nice in the woods?

444
00:22:26,800 --> 00:22:31,399
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, yeah, watching.

445
00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:34,119
Speaker 5: So.

446
00:22:35,080 --> 00:22:37,680
Speaker 1: Comments on one example of this meme, which was shared

447
00:22:37,720 --> 00:22:40,760
Speaker 1: about six and a half thousand times on Facebook, range

448
00:22:40,760 --> 00:22:43,000
Speaker 1: from readers pointing out that it's an obvious fake to

449
00:22:43,080 --> 00:22:44,919
Speaker 1: crying about how to prave the world has become and

450
00:22:44,960 --> 00:22:47,320
Speaker 1: talking about how they always bring a gun with them everywhere.

451
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:50,240
Speaker 1: Snop's quickly found that the photo for the initial version

452
00:22:50,280 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 1: of the meme was a fake. It was pulled from

453
00:22:51,840 --> 00:22:54,760
Speaker 1: an unrelated blog post. It was just like someone, I

454
00:22:54,760 --> 00:22:57,119
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, people put roses and cardors or whatever.

455
00:22:57,160 --> 00:22:59,680
Speaker 1: It's like a here's your Valentine's Day, you know thing,

456
00:22:59,720 --> 00:23:01,160
Speaker 1: honey or whatever like that's I.

457
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,720
Speaker 3: Think, sorry, I hope you see this when you finish

458
00:23:03,720 --> 00:23:04,760
Speaker 3: your shift at Derby's.

459
00:23:05,040 --> 00:23:08,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like something like that. So what that means, though,

460
00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:10,920
Speaker 1: is because the original photo had nothing to do with

461
00:23:10,960 --> 00:23:14,680
Speaker 1: a kidnapping conspiracy, there was intent behind the fake. Right.

462
00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:17,560
Speaker 1: We can debate as to whether or not maybe Sorensen

463
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:21,639
Speaker 1: was like someone who just was unreasonably paranoid or whatever,

464
00:23:22,280 --> 00:23:24,800
Speaker 1: although I think she was probably making a conscious fake.

465
00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:27,919
Speaker 1: But this was definitely a conscious fake. This is not

466
00:23:28,080 --> 00:23:31,800
Speaker 1: somebody panicking because their brain got poisoned by viral media

467
00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:34,679
Speaker 1: or whatever. This is someone choosing to knowingly spread a

468
00:23:34,680 --> 00:23:37,200
Speaker 1: false kidnapping story. And I'm going to read another quote

469
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,480
Speaker 1: from that Snopes article, the twenty nineteen Rose Hoax was

470
00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:43,160
Speaker 1: not the first sex trafficking scared to emerge from Kentucky

471
00:23:43,160 --> 00:23:46,359
Speaker 1: in recent years. In late twenty seventeen, some social media

472
00:23:46,440 --> 00:23:48,760
Speaker 1: users in the Louisville and Florence area in the north

473
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:51,240
Speaker 1: state claimed you have been approached or harassed in public.

474
00:23:51,480 --> 00:23:54,920
Speaker 1: Those purported incidents were quickly linked without evidence, to human trafficking,

475
00:23:55,160 --> 00:23:57,840
Speaker 1: and the local branch of a controversial church was forced

476
00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:01,159
Speaker 1: to defend its member against allegations of sex tracks. And

477
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:03,280
Speaker 1: this is this is a little where it gets weird

478
00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 1: because a big part of why Kentucky is key to

479
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:09,920
Speaker 1: that or is center to so many of these memes

480
00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:13,000
Speaker 1: is that there's a church in northern Kentucky called the

481
00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:17,399
Speaker 1: World Mission Society of God. It is absolutely a cult.

482
00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:20,359
Speaker 1: It's one of those weird Seventh Day Adventist cults that

483
00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 1: was founded in South Korea by a guy who declared

484
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:26,280
Speaker 1: himself Jesus Christ. You know, it's one of those things.

485
00:24:26,320 --> 00:24:29,480
Speaker 1: There's a couple of those, right, and they have been

486
00:24:29,800 --> 00:24:31,760
Speaker 1: It's definitely one of those things where like they've been

487
00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:35,720
Speaker 1: accused of like brainwashing and abuse of psychological control tactics,

488
00:24:35,720 --> 00:24:37,800
Speaker 1: but they don't take people off the street. What's happening

489
00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:41,439
Speaker 1: here is that like this cult is in is local

490
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 1: people know it's shady, and when folks come up to

491
00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:47,119
Speaker 1: them to prostolytize, they think that they're about to be

492
00:24:47,200 --> 00:24:49,520
Speaker 1: like kidnapped, and so that's part of where all this

493
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: comes from. They haven't accused of human trafficking and a

494
00:24:53,560 --> 00:24:56,399
Speaker 1: bunch of places, but they've never been convicted of anything.

495
00:24:56,440 --> 00:24:58,840
Speaker 1: Police have cleared them. I don't have any desire to

496
00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 1: defend this cult, but I don't think what they're doing

497
00:25:00,720 --> 00:25:03,560
Speaker 1: is like pulling people off the street. I think it's

498
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:05,960
Speaker 1: what cults do, right, it's normal cult staff.

499
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:12,159
Speaker 3: All right, maybe our most successful cult scientology, Like you

500
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:14,439
Speaker 3: don't have to grab people, you just let them wander

501
00:25:14,480 --> 00:25:17,639
Speaker 3: into your center downtown and that you traffic them.

502
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:21,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a tunnel spider or the snakes that

503
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:26,040
Speaker 1: were the ancestor of the cucumbers that scare our cats.

504
00:25:27,200 --> 00:25:30,040
Speaker 1: That's I think that works. Yeah, that's moil it's fine.

505
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 1: So in this case, in the case of these specific

506
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, the police in Kentucky where have been like

507
00:25:38,080 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: reasonably good about being like there's no evidence behind this.

508
00:25:42,359 --> 00:25:45,920
Speaker 1: But as a general rule, law enforcement is usually part

509
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,720
Speaker 1: of the hype cycle of these sort of like fake

510
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:52,359
Speaker 1: kidnapping rumors than they are part of washing the hype cycle.

511
00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:56,359
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, Facebook memes started spreading in College Station,

512
00:25:56,600 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 1: Texas about a kidnapping plot that involved zip tying a

513
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:03,520
Speaker 1: victim's windshield wipers together and then abducting the inevitably female

514
00:26:03,600 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 1: victim while she struggles to take them off. One version

515
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 1: of the meme ends with this very chain lettery call

516
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:11,399
Speaker 1: to action. I've made this post public and would love

517
00:26:11,440 --> 00:26:13,080
Speaker 1: it if you'd share it with your friends and family.

518
00:26:13,119 --> 00:26:15,440
Speaker 1: Please be aware of your surroundings and drive somewhere safe

519
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:17,720
Speaker 1: with a lot of people around before trying to remove

520
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:20,639
Speaker 1: them if this happens to you. And the College station

521
00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 1: police started getting queries once this post went viral, and

522
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 1: so they took to Twitter and they posted on Twitter,

523
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,000
Speaker 1: did you see the post about zip ties and human trafficking.

524
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:31,719
Speaker 1: We don't know whether traffickers are doing this or if

525
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 1: it's a distraction technique used by a would be thief.

526
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: Either way, always be aware of your surroundings and hashtags

527
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:43,640
Speaker 1: see something, say something, so they immediately like buy into

528
00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:47,040
Speaker 1: this and spread this absolute nonsense. And then roughly a

529
00:26:47,080 --> 00:26:49,879
Speaker 1: week later after people get angry at them post an

530
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:53,000
Speaker 1: update saying to be clear, zip ties we're described to

531
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:55,840
Speaker 1: officers as having been found in a college station mall

532
00:26:55,920 --> 00:26:59,080
Speaker 1: parking lot. However, it is extremely unlikely this tactic would

533
00:26:59,080 --> 00:27:02,440
Speaker 1: be related to human tres trafficking. Hashtag verify facts before

534
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 1: sharing alarming posts. That's not how hashtags were College Station

535
00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:11,080
Speaker 1: Police Department. But also you are the ones who didn't

536
00:27:11,160 --> 00:27:13,000
Speaker 1: verify shit before sharing.

537
00:27:12,680 --> 00:27:16,480
Speaker 3: It, so so weird past self three hours ago?

538
00:27:16,720 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: Do better, don't have done. It's also like, well, why

539
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: else would people be zip tying Whinshill weaberon. I don't know,

540
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:27,080
Speaker 1: kids are fucking with people. Look, I may have at

541
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:30,360
Speaker 1: a certain point when I was drunk and younger, stolen

542
00:27:30,400 --> 00:27:33,359
Speaker 1: a bike lock and locked the gates of an apartment complex,

543
00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:35,280
Speaker 1: you know, for no reason other than I was a

544
00:27:35,320 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 1: drunk little asshole. You know, maybe I did that. Uh.

545
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:42,320
Speaker 3: Sometimes never allowed for the existence of drunk little assholes.

546
00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:43,639
Speaker 3: And it's a major plot.

547
00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:47,720
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, like and it's again it's it's this Okham's

548
00:27:47,800 --> 00:27:50,280
Speaker 1: razors sort of thing. What is what is the is

549
00:27:50,640 --> 00:27:55,959
Speaker 1: the simplest likeliest explanation Cuman trafficking gangs are carrying out

550
00:27:56,000 --> 00:27:59,080
Speaker 1: a complicated plot or some asshole did a thing.

551
00:27:59,760 --> 00:28:02,920
Speaker 3: By feel like some asshole?

552
00:28:03,119 --> 00:28:03,359
Speaker 5: Is it?

553
00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:06,159
Speaker 3: You know ninety eight percent of the time, and then

554
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 3: the other two percent it's pretty much the government.

555
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:11,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's either an asshole or the government.

556
00:28:11,320 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 2: Right.

557
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:16,840
Speaker 1: Speaking of the government, you know who governs my life.

558
00:28:17,040 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 3: Sarah starting my phoneus picked that moment to vibrate.

559
00:28:22,359 --> 00:28:25,840
Speaker 1: Like wow, wow. Well, while while Sarah checks her phone,

560
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:37,800
Speaker 1: you should check out these advertisements. Wow, those products, My god.

561
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:42,840
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a service like that? Not me, Sarah,

562
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 1: I have to, like the college station police say, if

563
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 1: I'm going to do the see something say something thing here,

564
00:28:49,360 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 1: because you knocked over your recorder and then bent down

565
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:55,080
Speaker 1: to get it without checking to see if a kidnapping

566
00:28:55,160 --> 00:28:57,840
Speaker 1: gang was any they might have knocked your recorder off

567
00:28:57,840 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 1: the desk so that they could get you.

568
00:28:59,880 --> 00:29:01,960
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing is, there's been a kidnapper under

569
00:29:02,000 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 3: my bed for three weeks now, but I mean he's

570
00:29:04,520 --> 00:29:06,760
Speaker 3: just passed out under there. I think he just needed

571
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 3: a place to relax and it's fun. Yeah, I thank

572
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:10,640
Speaker 3: you again.

573
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:16,960
Speaker 1: By the way, hashtag kidnappers need shelter too. I don't

574
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:17,920
Speaker 1: know I'm doing there.

575
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 3: So it is like, yeah, the kidnapper is a great

576
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 3: way to see any person in your field of vision

577
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:25,320
Speaker 3: who you don't want to see as a fellow human being.

578
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:28,720
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, they're kidnappers, they're pedophiles, they're a rape

579
00:29:28,760 --> 00:29:34,080
Speaker 1: gang or whatever. Yeah, it's I mean, that's part of

580
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:37,480
Speaker 1: how this thing can be utilized by fascists. Right. Fundamentally,

581
00:29:37,840 --> 00:29:40,800
Speaker 1: fascism's power comes from the fact that we're all anxious

582
00:29:40,840 --> 00:29:42,960
Speaker 1: and scared all the time. And if you can convince

583
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:46,120
Speaker 1: people that you can take that anxiety away by hurting

584
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:48,880
Speaker 1: a specific group, then you can do a lot of things.

585
00:29:48,960 --> 00:29:50,920
Speaker 1: You can get away with quite a bit, it turns.

586
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 3: Out, and you can all wear snazzy little outfits because

587
00:29:54,440 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 3: apparently what men want is to wear snazzy little outfits,

588
00:29:57,560 --> 00:29:59,440
Speaker 3: but it doesn't occur to them to just do something

589
00:29:59,520 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 3: harmless like drill team.

590
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:04,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, and unfortunately, I feel like we were trying, Like

591
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:06,040
Speaker 1: for a while, there was the idea that like, what

592
00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:08,440
Speaker 1: if we let men dress up in snazzy little outfits

593
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:12,040
Speaker 1: and pretend to be you know, soldiers, are fascists, will

594
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:15,040
Speaker 1: that make them less you know, likely to do real

595
00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:17,680
Speaker 1: world harm? And no, apparently not.

596
00:30:17,800 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, we tried it.

597
00:30:19,480 --> 00:30:22,760
Speaker 1: We tried it. We tried it, folks, No sorry.

598
00:30:23,040 --> 00:30:23,200
Speaker 4: So.

599
00:30:23,400 --> 00:30:27,720
Speaker 1: Another frequent spreader of bullshit kidnapping stories are local radio stations,

600
00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 1: which often find themselves desperate for content that they can

601
00:30:30,800 --> 00:30:33,440
Speaker 1: read life on air to hopefully keep people tuning in,

602
00:30:33,480 --> 00:30:37,600
Speaker 1: and also who often like run little seo websites that

603
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:41,280
Speaker 1: exist to pull in views based on keywords and shit

604
00:30:41,360 --> 00:30:45,880
Speaker 1: in order to get advertising money. Our employers come into

605
00:30:45,880 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 1: this story in a little bit.

606
00:30:47,520 --> 00:30:47,600
Speaker 6: So.

607
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:50,920
Speaker 1: One example of this comes from February twenty twenty one,

608
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 1: when a local Omaha radio station KFAB posted an article

609
00:30:54,760 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 1: on their website titled if you find a water bottle

610
00:30:57,000 --> 00:31:00,960
Speaker 1: on your car drive away, you might be in danger now.

611
00:31:00,320 --> 00:31:03,040
Speaker 3: Wotius ruined Jessica's water bottle?

612
00:31:03,560 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So the title there is a pretty perfect

613
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: blend of both seo friendly click you know, click getting

614
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: titling and old school chain letter tactics.

615
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:14,320
Speaker 2: Right.

616
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:18,240
Speaker 1: The article warned readers that unspecified abductors were leaving water

617
00:31:18,280 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 1: bottles on cars to mark their targets. This is a

618
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:23,240
Speaker 1: tactic used by traffickers and kidnappers to get you to

619
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:25,240
Speaker 1: exit your vehicle and take whatever is on top of

620
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 1: the car off. If you have this happen and something

621
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:28,640
Speaker 1: is on the hood of your car when you come

622
00:31:28,680 --> 00:31:30,960
Speaker 1: back to it, leave it there, drive away. It'll fall

623
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: off on its own. It's also like.

624
00:31:35,160 --> 00:31:38,240
Speaker 3: And I say this in exasperation frequently, but has no

625
00:31:38,280 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 3: one seen Henry a portrait of a serial killer. You

626
00:31:41,160 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 3: just got to follow somebody home. You don't have to

627
00:31:43,120 --> 00:31:45,320
Speaker 3: do the water bottle trick. Henry is not wasting his

628
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 3: money on water bottles.

629
00:31:47,120 --> 00:31:49,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, that gets expensive and it's bad for the ocean.

630
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 1: We support here at Coolzone ethical kidnapping. Right, if you're

631
00:31:54,840 --> 00:31:58,040
Speaker 1: going to run a kidnapping gang, I'm abducting people from

632
00:31:58,040 --> 00:32:02,000
Speaker 1: target parking lots, please don't waste water bottles or use

633
00:32:02,040 --> 00:32:04,600
Speaker 1: recycled water bottles. Right, those boxes of water. You can

634
00:32:04,640 --> 00:32:06,400
Speaker 1: put a box of water on top of somebody's car,

635
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:09,760
Speaker 1: steal them, traffic them, you know, sell them to Algeria. Right,

636
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 1: you know that's fine, that's it.

637
00:32:11,280 --> 00:32:14,080
Speaker 3: Can't box water do Yeah, that's.

638
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 1: Why when when when we sell enslaved suburban white people

639
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 1: here at cool Zone Media, each one of them comes

640
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:24,280
Speaker 1: with a guarantee that no plastic water bottles will be

641
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:27,600
Speaker 1: used in the abduction. Right, all all all of those,

642
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:29,960
Speaker 1: it's all those like cans of liquid death that's what

643
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 1: we do. You know, we have we have a sponsorship

644
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:35,800
Speaker 1: with the Liquid Death people for our kidnapping gangs.

645
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 3: It's so hard to ethink we kidnap these days. It's

646
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 3: great to know people are still doing.

647
00:32:39,920 --> 00:32:42,160
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's worth it. It's worth it, Sarah. You

648
00:32:42,200 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 1: know the extra it costs us a little more. It

649
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:47,640
Speaker 1: does cut down on profits a little bit. But I

650
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, that's our responsibility is a member

651
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 1: of the community. You know, we want to give back.

652
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 3: Just kidnapping to make money. You're kidnapping because you love it.

653
00:32:56,160 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: It's the love of the game, right. It makes me

654
00:32:58,920 --> 00:33:02,040
Speaker 1: so sad that there's all these nickel and diming kidnappers

655
00:33:02,080 --> 00:33:05,080
Speaker 1: out there. Right, you're in the best industry in the world. Baby,

656
00:33:05,200 --> 00:33:06,120
Speaker 1: you know, enjoy it.

657
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:11,880
Speaker 3: See, that's all there is to it.

658
00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:14,600
Speaker 1: Yeahah, so again, I probably don't need to tell you

659
00:33:14,640 --> 00:33:18,000
Speaker 1: there's zero evidence that kidnappers are using water bottles to

660
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:19,480
Speaker 1: trick people up.

661
00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 3: Like if you if someone has already entered their car

662
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:28,000
Speaker 3: and you need them to exit it again to take

663
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:30,160
Speaker 3: off a water bottle, it seems like you've had ample

664
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:32,680
Speaker 3: opportunity to kidnap them already. Like if you need to

665
00:33:32,760 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 3: kidnap that if.

666
00:33:33,360 --> 00:33:36,680
Speaker 1: It makes fun at them, and I probably don't need

667
00:33:36,720 --> 00:33:38,840
Speaker 1: to tell you that there's zero evidence for this. Snope

668
00:33:38,880 --> 00:33:41,120
Speaker 1: snotes that the origin for this find of the story

669
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 1: was a TikTok video posted by quote a woman who

670
00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:46,600
Speaker 1: said she had a random encounter with a stranger acting

671
00:33:46,640 --> 00:33:48,960
Speaker 1: oddly around her car in them all parking lot and

672
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:50,760
Speaker 1: later found a water bottle on the hood of her

673
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:53,280
Speaker 1: car and posited, based on nothing that these two things

674
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:54,240
Speaker 1: were somehow related.

675
00:33:54,760 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 3: Let me tell you something. I had a weird interaction

676
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:59,280
Speaker 3: in a parking lot last night at Winko. And you

677
00:33:59,280 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 3: know what that was. It's because I was at Winco

678
00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:04,680
Speaker 3: and people at Winco are having a time and we're

679
00:34:04,720 --> 00:34:07,280
Speaker 3: all getting through it. And I mean, parking lots are

680
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:10,080
Speaker 3: one of the rare spaces where people from different walks

681
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:13,279
Speaker 3: of life or exact interact, and you can, yeah, you

682
00:34:13,280 --> 00:34:14,640
Speaker 3: can see that in these reactions.

683
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 1: That's why so many that's why it's all parking lots,

684
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:23,279
Speaker 1: and that's why, like affluent people have to use the

685
00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: same parking lots as everyone else, and they often resent

686
00:34:28,120 --> 00:34:30,840
Speaker 1: that deeply, and you know, they're probably a lot of

687
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: them are the same kind of people who believe that,

688
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: like the existence of homeless folks is like a constant

689
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 1: threat to their life, right, Like it's the greatest threat

690
00:34:39,360 --> 00:34:41,640
Speaker 1: in the world is that they are homeless people somewhere,

691
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:47,560
Speaker 1: or that you know, if the more high density, low

692
00:34:47,600 --> 00:34:50,320
Speaker 1: income housing is created in their town, it'll like ruin

693
00:34:50,600 --> 00:34:53,480
Speaker 1: you know, their their life or whatever. Like it's it's this.

694
00:34:54,560 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: It's the same reason why rich people hate the TSA

695
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:01,160
Speaker 1: with a special passion that they don't reserve for like

696
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:04,760
Speaker 1: regular cops. It's because they can't avoid the TSA unless

697
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:08,279
Speaker 1: they're super super bitch. But like normal, rich people have

698
00:35:08,320 --> 00:35:10,200
Speaker 1: to go through the same TSA that the rest of

699
00:35:10,280 --> 00:35:13,520
Speaker 1: us do, and they hate it. Yeah, anyway, it's whatever,

700
00:35:13,640 --> 00:35:21,759
Speaker 1: I like, I it's I think a lot of this

701
00:35:21,920 --> 00:35:27,160
Speaker 1: probably is the result of people who don't normally go

702
00:35:27,320 --> 00:35:29,560
Speaker 1: out in the world in a situation where they don't

703
00:35:29,600 --> 00:35:33,520
Speaker 1: have total control, like you know, and they encounter someone

704
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: who is either having a mental health crisis or just

705
00:35:37,239 --> 00:35:40,160
Speaker 1: is a kind of person they wouldn't socialize with normally,

706
00:35:40,600 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 1: and they this this sets off that part in their

707
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:45,879
Speaker 1: brain that like corresponds to the part of the brain

708
00:35:45,920 --> 00:35:48,439
Speaker 1: that gets set off in a cat that sees a cucumber, right,

709
00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:51,279
Speaker 1: and they and they feel like I'm in danger. Now,

710
00:35:51,320 --> 00:35:56,239
Speaker 1: I'm in danger because something like unfamiliar has occurred. And

711
00:35:56,840 --> 00:35:59,359
Speaker 1: then the pattern making parts of our brain like put

712
00:35:59,360 --> 00:36:02,080
Speaker 1: together in the rest of it, right, Like, Oh, I

713
00:36:02,080 --> 00:36:04,600
Speaker 1: found a water bottle on my car, and thirty minutes

714
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:08,279
Speaker 1: earlier I saw a person who was like talking to themselves,

715
00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:11,880
Speaker 1: and so this must be evidence of an international kidnapping

716
00:36:11,920 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: gay and so who would.

717
00:36:13,440 --> 00:36:16,080
Speaker 3: Put a water bottle on my car but someone having

718
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:19,360
Speaker 3: a mental health episode who clearly is therefore in the

719
00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 3: perfect position to run a kidnapping ring.

720
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:23,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah, it's great.

721
00:36:23,560 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 3: So and it's like, I mean, think of when little

722
00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:30,320
Speaker 3: kids meet somebody new, yeah, and that they feel unsure

723
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 3: and they are freaked out, and then they need a

724
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:35,480
Speaker 3: second to warm up, and then they take it and

725
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:39,439
Speaker 3: they don't develop a conspiracy theory about that person, which

726
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:40,919
Speaker 3: I think is really charming of them.

727
00:36:41,360 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: What I love, Sarah, what makes me really happy and

728
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:46,480
Speaker 1: feel good about the future, is thinking about how many

729
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 1: of the people who make these little conspiracy theories based

730
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:54,279
Speaker 1: on anodyne shit then repeat those conspiracy theories to their

731
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:56,800
Speaker 1: children and say, you must be worried at all times,

732
00:36:56,920 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: there's always there's kidnapping gangs everywhere. Mommy saved you from

733
00:37:00,239 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: kidnappers today by noticing the water bottle and then pulling

734
00:37:03,640 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 1: her glock out in the parking lot. You know, like,

735
00:37:06,560 --> 00:37:08,440
Speaker 1: it's great, it's cool that that happens.

736
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:11,319
Speaker 3: Great for the kids. It's known to shit to be

737
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:13,759
Speaker 3: great for the kids. My god, yeah, yeah.

738
00:37:13,480 --> 00:37:17,520
Speaker 1: It's dope. So what we are seeing here in that

739
00:37:17,600 --> 00:37:20,319
Speaker 1: story I just related is evidence of the kind of

740
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: food chain that these fake crime kidnapping panic stories exist in.

741
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:28,240
Speaker 1: So the story is cooked up initially by a mix

742
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:31,200
Speaker 1: of people who are just a little out of their

743
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:35,319
Speaker 1: minds or by actual bad actors wanting to spread conspiracy

744
00:37:35,360 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 1: theories and paranoia and stuff on Facebook or TikTok. Oftentimes

745
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,200
Speaker 1: it's people who like are spreading stuff they know is

746
00:37:43,239 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 1: not true because they know we'll get them followers. And

747
00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: then the laziest actors in our media ecosystem, the people

748
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:52,360
Speaker 1: putting together these shitty little seo grabbing articles for like

749
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:55,839
Speaker 1: local news sites and shit, take this viral story, churn

750
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:58,360
Speaker 1: out a quick article with no fact checking, and that

751
00:37:58,520 --> 00:38:00,960
Speaker 1: helps the story spread even for the right and it

752
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:03,120
Speaker 1: makes it seem like it's a real thing, because now

753
00:38:03,239 --> 00:38:05,440
Speaker 1: look that's a news station that's covering this thing. There

754
00:38:05,480 --> 00:38:08,680
Speaker 1: must be an epidemic. I found one example of one

755
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:12,600
Speaker 1: of these articles on Distractify, which exists making taking shit

756
00:38:12,640 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: that went viral on the Internet and turning it into

757
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:18,120
Speaker 1: very low quality content. The article seems to have been

758
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:20,839
Speaker 1: inspired by a TikTok video posted by a woman named

759
00:38:20,880 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 1: Aaron Dawn, who recorded a four minute video about coming

760
00:38:24,120 --> 00:38:26,200
Speaker 1: back from a shopping trip and finding a sheet of

761
00:38:26,200 --> 00:38:28,960
Speaker 1: paper on her car door. She claims was soaked in

762
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:34,879
Speaker 1: a chemical that injured her. Now, Aaron provides no photographic No,

763
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:38,200
Speaker 1: she may, we'll get to that. But like, she provided

764
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 1: no evidence that this had happened at all. But she

765
00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:43,439
Speaker 1: did film a recreation of finding the paper on her car,

766
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:45,759
Speaker 1: where like, she put a piece of paper on her

767
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:47,600
Speaker 1: car and filmed herself finding it.

768
00:38:47,840 --> 00:38:50,439
Speaker 3: You're a Robert Stack. This is not unsolved, mister.

769
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:54,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so everyone gets to be Robert Stack. Now

770
00:38:54,280 --> 00:39:00,319
Speaker 1: that's what TikTok has given us. God, so she rates

771
00:39:00,440 --> 00:39:03,880
Speaker 1: over this recreation that she films. When I saw it,

772
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 1: I just picked it up with my fingernails and I

773
00:39:05,640 --> 00:39:08,000
Speaker 1: tossed it out. I didn't touch the napkin, but guess what,

774
00:39:08,080 --> 00:39:10,239
Speaker 1: I still opened the door with my fingertips. I asked

775
00:39:10,239 --> 00:39:12,000
Speaker 1: my husband, did you put a napkin in my door?

776
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:14,160
Speaker 1: And he was like no, So immediately I started looking

777
00:39:14,160 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 1: for hand sanitizer. Now she experienced no real symptoms because

778
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 1: poisons like this are so difficult to make an apply

779
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 1: that they functionally don't exist. Right, it could someone make

780
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:27,640
Speaker 1: a poison that you could like put on a napkin

781
00:39:27,719 --> 00:39:30,319
Speaker 1: and it could impact, yes, But it's like that's like

782
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:35,360
Speaker 1: the CIA, right, like random kidd like were like Putin

783
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:38,879
Speaker 1: or Putin and like here's the thing, like Putin has

784
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 1: done it a few times, right, but like it didn't

785
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:44,919
Speaker 1: work fair, Like the wrong people got got a lot

786
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:46,760
Speaker 1: of the time. Like if you look up, we've covered

787
00:39:46,840 --> 00:39:50,200
Speaker 1: like the fucking Sidney Gottlieb. I think he was the

788
00:39:50,239 --> 00:39:54,239
Speaker 1: CIA's poisoner in chief, and like they were bad at it,

789
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:56,520
Speaker 1: like they kept trying to make these poisons and like

790
00:39:56,680 --> 00:39:59,200
Speaker 1: usually it would not work fair. That's why Fidel Castro

791
00:39:59,280 --> 00:40:01,840
Speaker 1: was still alive. None of this stuff works very well.

792
00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:04,800
Speaker 1: It certainly does not work reliably enough to be abducting

793
00:40:04,800 --> 00:40:09,520
Speaker 1: people from target parking lots as like a casual deal.

794
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:15,800
Speaker 1: So he is on what is her name, Aaron Dawn.

795
00:40:16,280 --> 00:40:19,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, let's use like really top narc stuff

796
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:20,280
Speaker 3: on Aaron.

797
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:25,120
Speaker 1: Now. It's one of those. It does remind me a

798
00:40:25,120 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 1: little bit about like right after nine to eleven happened

799
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:29,960
Speaker 1: to kids in my middle school, where like al Qaeda

800
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:31,719
Speaker 1: is gonna get our school next, and it's like, I

801
00:40:31,719 --> 00:40:34,040
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I don't think. I don't think Osama

802
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: bin Laden is aware of Plano, Texas. Like we're probably

803
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:46,440
Speaker 1: good actually, but it is like, you know, I think

804
00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 1: that it it like after nine to eleven, people believe

805
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:52,200
Speaker 1: that kind of shit because they've just seen an insane

806
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 1: thing happen on television, right, And I think part of

807
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 1: why folks are more primed to believe stuff like this

808
00:40:59,200 --> 00:41:01,120
Speaker 1: is they you know, they're on the news and they

809
00:41:01,120 --> 00:41:03,279
Speaker 1: hear like, oh, all of these cops you know, had

810
00:41:03,320 --> 00:41:05,600
Speaker 1: seizures because they were near a fentanel thing, and like

811
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:08,520
Speaker 1: that's bullshit, that's not real. But like a lot of

812
00:41:08,560 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: the cops who are having these reactions, like a lot

813
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:12,719
Speaker 1: of them are lying, but a lot of them are

814
00:41:12,760 --> 00:41:15,319
Speaker 1: just people like they bought it right, Like they're having

815
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:19,400
Speaker 1: a hysterical reaction because they are also dumb little monkeys

816
00:41:19,440 --> 00:41:21,359
Speaker 1: who are scared all the time, and someone gave them

817
00:41:21,360 --> 00:41:25,080
Speaker 1: a focus for it, right, And Aaron, whether she's a

818
00:41:25,120 --> 00:41:27,920
Speaker 1: con artist or a dumb little monkey, claims that she

819
00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:31,759
Speaker 1: had horrible reactions as a result of this poison that

820
00:41:31,800 --> 00:41:34,080
Speaker 1: her handwet numbs. She had her husband take there. And

821
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:38,000
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because like her husband, she had her

822
00:41:38,040 --> 00:41:40,759
Speaker 1: call nine one one, and she specifically says that they

823
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:43,000
Speaker 1: called then one because they weren't in their normal area

824
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: and didn't know where the nearest er was, which I

825
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:47,640
Speaker 1: also feel like says a lot about them, where like

826
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:50,600
Speaker 1: we're always thinking about where the nearest er is, you know,

827
00:41:50,640 --> 00:41:52,600
Speaker 1: but we left our normal area. You know, don't ever

828
00:41:52,680 --> 00:41:54,399
Speaker 1: leave your normal area because then you won't know where

829
00:41:54,440 --> 00:42:00,560
Speaker 1: that like when you get poisoned by kidnappers's.

830
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:01,600
Speaker 3: Very like terry or lie. Yeah, I just like to

831
00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:04,480
Speaker 3: be in my area and it's like okay, but yeah,

832
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:06,880
Speaker 3: that means that your fears when you're outside your area

833
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:09,040
Speaker 3: aren't necessarily about what's really happening.

834
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:13,600
Speaker 1: Yes, she claims that the doctors at the hospital diagnosed

835
00:42:13,600 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: her with acute poisoning from an unknown substance. Karen, it's interesting.

836
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:21,279
Speaker 1: I'm mainly interested in this because of the way that

837
00:42:21,320 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: this gets covered by Distractify who they dress their their

838
00:42:25,719 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 1: article about Aaron's bullshit, and like I would say, it's

839
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:32,000
Speaker 1: like the panoply of journalism, right, they put journalism's clothes

840
00:42:32,080 --> 00:42:34,799
Speaker 1: on this story, but it's not really journalism. Here's how

841
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:38,240
Speaker 1: the article opens. According to the ACLU, there are anywhere

842
00:42:38,239 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 1: from fourteen thou five hundred to seventeen thousand, five hundred

843
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:43,279
Speaker 1: people trafficked in the United States each and every year.

844
00:42:43,400 --> 00:42:46,000
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, California reported the highest number of cases

845
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:48,400
Speaker 1: in the country, with fifteen hundred and seven people trafficked

846
00:42:48,440 --> 00:42:50,520
Speaker 1: in the state alone. A staggering thirty two percent of

847
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 1: people who are trafficked were purportedly done so by an

848
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:55,080
Speaker 1: inanimate partner of theirs. However, there have been a growing

849
00:42:55,160 --> 00:42:58,120
Speaker 1: number of kidnapping stories attempts circulating on social media that

850
00:42:58,160 --> 00:43:04,000
Speaker 1: are tied to trafficking. See like, hey, you want to

851
00:43:04,040 --> 00:43:06,800
Speaker 1: know what all those most of those human trafficking cases

852
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:10,320
Speaker 1: are and like, fucking Californian whatever, it's not suburban moms

853
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: getting abducted in parking lots. It's the people who pick

854
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:16,520
Speaker 1: your fucking fruit, right, Like, it's it's that that is

855
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:21,440
Speaker 1: super common and obviously is a huge problem, but it's

856
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:23,120
Speaker 1: not the kind of problem that you can make Aaron

857
00:43:23,160 --> 00:43:26,759
Speaker 1: Dawn care about, right because she she wants to go

858
00:43:27,160 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 1: on social media. Grapes, Yeah, grapes. So again, it's also like,

859
00:43:34,520 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: let's start with you know, a huge the biggest chunk

860
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:39,839
Speaker 1: of people who are traffic are done by a lot

861
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:43,000
Speaker 1: are trafficked by an intimate partner. Like that's how trafficking

862
00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:46,080
Speaker 1: actually occurs. However, we've seen a lot of stories on

863
00:43:46,160 --> 00:43:49,759
Speaker 1: social media, so like, that's literally like all that there

864
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 1: is to this this claim. Anyway. The article then brings

865
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:55,160
Speaker 1: up the tragic case of Eliza Fletcher, who was an

866
00:43:55,200 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: actual young woman who was abducted and murdered while jogging

867
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:02,040
Speaker 1: not all that long ago, and again, shit happens, right,

868
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:05,799
Speaker 1: Tragic stores like this do occur, but not often. There's

869
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: three hundred and eighty million people in this country or whatever, right, Like,

870
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:12,560
Speaker 1: it's very sad about what happened to Eliza Fletcher. Probably

871
00:44:12,560 --> 00:44:16,359
Speaker 1: not something you should take general like information about your

872
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:17,399
Speaker 1: life on like.

873
00:44:17,680 --> 00:44:19,560
Speaker 3: And also that it's a some asshole crime.

874
00:44:19,920 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like definitely a problem, definitely bad, not evidence

875
00:44:24,719 --> 00:44:30,080
Speaker 1: that you are in danger, you know, And it's yeah,

876
00:44:30,160 --> 00:44:32,680
Speaker 1: it's frustrating because like the reasonable way to respond to

877
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:35,560
Speaker 1: Eliza Fletchers, like, yeah, you should try to, like, you know,

878
00:44:35,680 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 1: be aware of your surroundings and stuff, because shit does happen.

879
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:42,000
Speaker 1: You should generally, you know, keep keep an eye out,

880
00:44:42,080 --> 00:44:45,520
Speaker 1: you know, don't lose yourself completely, and you know, whatever

881
00:44:45,560 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: you're doing, you know, have some situational awareness. But that

882
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:51,720
Speaker 1: always gets turned into like be frightened at all times

883
00:44:51,760 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: when you really it's like, you know, look both ways

884
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:57,680
Speaker 1: before crossing the street, you know, but.

885
00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:00,839
Speaker 3: I don't and assume the absolute worst about everybody, like

886
00:45:00,920 --> 00:45:03,480
Speaker 3: not just the worst within the context of the situation,

887
00:45:03,600 --> 00:45:05,880
Speaker 3: but the worst thing a person could possibly do.

888
00:45:06,680 --> 00:45:11,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like so that twenty eighteen story of

889
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:14,120
Speaker 1: a shirt on a car being used to market is

890
00:45:14,160 --> 00:45:16,400
Speaker 1: repeated in the article as evidence that these things are

891
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:20,280
Speaker 1: a quote common ploy of traffickers. And that's an example

892
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:23,840
Speaker 1: of kind of the article, you know, form of spreading

893
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 1: this disinformation. Another good example of like how this shit

894
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:31,560
Speaker 1: spreads is this twenty twenty one TikTok video posted by

895
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:34,600
Speaker 1: a user named mimes there.

896
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 7: So I went to church on Sunday for about an

897
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:39,560
Speaker 7: hour and I came back out and there was melted cheese.

898
00:45:39,320 --> 00:45:40,000
Speaker 3: On my car.

899
00:45:40,360 --> 00:45:42,000
Speaker 7: So I called my friend and her mom to come

900
00:45:42,000 --> 00:45:44,959
Speaker 7: help me scrape it off. And as soon as they came,

901
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:48,080
Speaker 7: this white van with like stickers and they were wearing

902
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:51,680
Speaker 7: masks smoking, pulled out of a parking space that was

903
00:45:51,760 --> 00:45:54,480
Speaker 7: two spots away from me, and they went to the

904
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:57,200
Speaker 7: other parking lot across the street where they could watch

905
00:45:57,280 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 7: us clean off the cheese. And here's a.

906
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 1: Picture of the cheese.

907
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,839
Speaker 7: So this is the cheese like halfway scraped off two pieces.

908
00:46:04,080 --> 00:46:06,360
Speaker 7: It would literally took an hour for me to scrape

909
00:46:06,360 --> 00:46:09,040
Speaker 7: all this off. I personally had no idea that they

910
00:46:09,080 --> 00:46:11,279
Speaker 7: were using this as a tactic to take people now.

911
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:13,560
Speaker 7: And if I hadn't called my friend that I could

912
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 7: have easily been taken within the hour that it took

913
00:46:15,960 --> 00:46:18,600
Speaker 7: me to take off the cheese. And this happened at

914
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:21,360
Speaker 7: my church, So I can't even imagine where they're trying

915
00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:22,840
Speaker 7: to use it.

916
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:26,440
Speaker 1: An hour to scrape off the cheese. It is a

917
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 1: slice of crafted America.

918
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:31,719
Speaker 3: So drive home, Drive home, honey. The cheese.

919
00:46:31,960 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 4: Also, it was it was, it was like a craft

920
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:38,640
Speaker 4: slice like it's like a sie I don't know how

921
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:39,600
Speaker 4: that could take that long.

922
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:42,800
Speaker 3: There's multiple humans, but go on, people live in a

923
00:46:42,920 --> 00:46:44,480
Speaker 3: universe without little brothers.

924
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:48,680
Speaker 1: No, obviously we all saw the numbers on that video.

925
00:46:48,719 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 1: It's been shared thousands and thousands in towns, the huge

926
00:46:51,600 --> 00:46:55,120
Speaker 1: It's very it went super viral. It is. There's a

927
00:46:55,160 --> 00:46:57,759
Speaker 1: lot going on there, like the fact that she's like,

928
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,560
Speaker 1: these people in a white van were wearing masks and smoking?

929
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:04,280
Speaker 1: Were they doing both of those things? Mims? Really, how

930
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:05,160
Speaker 1: does one do that?

931
00:47:05,640 --> 00:47:08,040
Speaker 3: Maybe there were some lefties having a cigarette.

932
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: You never know, Yeah, it was Antifa. The fact that

933
00:47:11,680 --> 00:47:14,440
Speaker 1: it happens in her like, right, I think it's again,

934
00:47:14,840 --> 00:47:17,759
Speaker 1: I don't know. These things are kind of an even

935
00:47:17,800 --> 00:47:22,640
Speaker 1: mix between people who are just looking for conspiracies everywhere

936
00:47:22,680 --> 00:47:26,040
Speaker 1: because the Internet has so thoroughly damaged them and people

937
00:47:26,040 --> 00:47:29,319
Speaker 1: who are lying to get virality and followers. I don't

938
00:47:29,360 --> 00:47:31,919
Speaker 1: know which one, Mims. Is The fact that she says

939
00:47:31,920 --> 00:47:34,319
Speaker 1: it's in a church parking lot, like even at church,

940
00:47:34,360 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 1: you're not safe, right, Like everywhere's dangerous. You know they're

941
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:39,040
Speaker 1: coming after Christians, YadA, YadA, YadA.

942
00:47:39,120 --> 00:47:42,480
Speaker 3: Oh, definitely not safe. I also wonder to what extent

943
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:47,040
Speaker 3: this is about, like having an experience that you don't

944
00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 3: understand the logic of, like there's cheese on your car

945
00:47:50,080 --> 00:47:53,400
Speaker 3: if this actually happened or something like that, and being

946
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:56,640
Speaker 3: trained to see any object in this case as a

947
00:47:56,680 --> 00:47:59,839
Speaker 3: threat and then being like and then leaning into it

948
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:03,080
Speaker 3: when you want and maybe like elaborating and embroidering, because

949
00:48:03,080 --> 00:48:06,359
Speaker 3: there's like this huge incentive both to go with your

950
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:10,240
Speaker 3: fear and then to like tell this ridiculous story about

951
00:48:10,239 --> 00:48:13,920
Speaker 3: it because it'll, you know, because not only is it altruistic,

952
00:48:14,000 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 3: but it's going to get you attention and followers.

953
00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, and uh yeah, that's that's cool. So I

954
00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:22,919
Speaker 1: look into Mims because I'm trying to figure out which

955
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:26,720
Speaker 1: one is she. Is she someone who's who's just terminally pilled,

956
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:29,720
Speaker 1: or is she somebody who's you know, run a running

957
00:48:29,760 --> 00:48:32,799
Speaker 1: a con Her oldest video is from the start of

958
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:34,959
Speaker 1: the pandemic. She's in a car looking at a friend

959
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:36,959
Speaker 1: who's sitting in the car next to her. Pretty normal

960
00:48:37,000 --> 00:48:39,759
Speaker 1: snapshot of the loneliness that came from that period of time. Right.

961
00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:43,239
Speaker 1: There are videos where she does like her makeup, or

962
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:46,000
Speaker 1: she dances, or she lifts weights, but all of those

963
00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:47,920
Speaker 1: on her account get between a couple of hundred and

964
00:48:47,960 --> 00:48:50,359
Speaker 1: at most two or three thousand views. She has one

965
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,920
Speaker 1: video of herself in kind of like form fitting athletic

966
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:57,000
Speaker 1: wear hugging a friend dressed similarly with texts that says

967
00:48:57,040 --> 00:48:59,839
Speaker 1: when you hear big titties are out displayed. That's got

968
00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:02,959
Speaker 1: twenty two thousand views. It is her second most popular video.

969
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:07,280
Speaker 1: Several of her videos are just like athletes try dancing,

970
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:09,920
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that where she's with a friend

971
00:49:09,960 --> 00:49:14,160
Speaker 1: and they're like doing dances or whatever. Normal TikTok, I

972
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:16,960
Speaker 1: would say, normal shit. That looks like attempts to go

973
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:19,560
Speaker 1: viral on TikTok. Right, this looks like the account of

974
00:49:19,640 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: someone who's trying out stuff to be an online influencer. Right,

975
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:25,279
Speaker 1: I'm going to try doing the makeup, see if that works.

976
00:49:25,320 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 1: I'm going to try doing dancing videos or workout and

977
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:30,680
Speaker 1: see if like that goes viral for me. And none

978
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 1: of that stuff really took off, Like I said, her

979
00:49:34,440 --> 00:49:36,879
Speaker 1: biggest other video is that like when you hear big

980
00:49:36,920 --> 00:49:39,600
Speaker 1: titties are out? Video at twenty two thousand views. This

981
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:41,879
Speaker 1: if you find a slice of cheese on your car

982
00:49:41,960 --> 00:49:44,680
Speaker 1: video has four hundred and forty six thousand videos and

983
00:49:44,719 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: I Suspect views, and I Suspect is responsible for most

984
00:49:47,440 --> 00:49:51,800
Speaker 1: of her four thousand or so followers. Mims's post was

985
00:49:51,880 --> 00:49:54,120
Speaker 1: duly picked up by the bottom feeders of the Internet,

986
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:57,840
Speaker 1: in this case our corporate overlord's at iHeartRadio, who posted

987
00:49:57,880 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 1: an article titled if you find a slice of cheese

988
00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:03,160
Speaker 1: on your car, you might be in danger. There's no

989
00:50:03,200 --> 00:50:06,319
Speaker 1: attempt to even provide journalistic context on this one, just

990
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:09,000
Speaker 1: the line. It might sound silly, but a TikTok user

991
00:50:09,040 --> 00:50:12,879
Speaker 1: named Mimi is very serious about her experience. Great great,

992
00:50:13,120 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: great work, guys. Now, all of this would be easy

993
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 1: to ignore as just more harmless disinformation if it weren't

994
00:50:21,120 --> 00:50:24,360
Speaker 1: for shit like Phoebe copis murdering Daniel Garcia right like that,

995
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 1: that's the grounding. This is all like seems like silliest

996
00:50:27,000 --> 00:50:30,319
Speaker 1: Internet bullshit, but like this affects people. It causes them

997
00:50:30,320 --> 00:50:33,080
Speaker 1: to think they are in danger, and they take steps

998
00:50:33,120 --> 00:50:35,600
Speaker 1: to defend themselves, and that sometimes leads to people getting

999
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:38,080
Speaker 1: It's the same as those like stories of like folks

1000
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 1: shooting at people who back into their driveway to like

1001
00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:43,279
Speaker 1: turn their car around. Right, people die from this shit.

1002
00:50:43,320 --> 00:50:46,600
Speaker 1: And I guarantee you sometimes it's Fox, sometimes it's TikTok,

1003
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: sometimes face, but it's all this shit that's everywhere, right,

1004
00:50:51,600 --> 00:50:56,759
Speaker 1: So you know, stuff like this have part of what's

1005
00:50:56,800 --> 00:50:58,719
Speaker 1: going to spread cases like this, and what's going to

1006
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:03,000
Speaker 1: spread like is the fact that stories like this are

1007
00:51:03,080 --> 00:51:06,880
Speaker 1: everywhere because they're a profitable industry, right, this is a

1008
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:11,880
Speaker 1: business spreading this shit. I found this video on TikTok

1009
00:51:11,920 --> 00:51:14,120
Speaker 1: while I was doing my research for that article that's

1010
00:51:14,160 --> 00:51:16,959
Speaker 1: going to be on my substack Chatterzone that's got six

1011
00:51:17,000 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 1: point nine million views, and it's just a collection of

1012
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 1: everything we've talked about, like, watch this thing nice.

1013
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:25,719
Speaker 2: If you see this, run. If you see money in

1014
00:51:25,719 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 2: your windshield, you need to run away fast. They're trying

1015
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 2: to get you to get out of your car and

1016
00:51:30,200 --> 00:51:32,960
Speaker 2: grab the money. If you see this, you need to

1017
00:51:33,000 --> 00:51:36,200
Speaker 2: get in your car some other way. This is a

1018
00:51:36,239 --> 00:51:39,920
Speaker 2: sign that this is probably laced with something. People's hands

1019
00:51:39,920 --> 00:51:42,960
Speaker 2: have gone numb, they have passed out. It is a trick.

1020
00:51:43,400 --> 00:51:44,480
Speaker 2: Do not touch this.

1021
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:47,440
Speaker 3: If you see this. They have labeled this. This is

1022
00:51:47,480 --> 00:51:48,360
Speaker 3: what they're labeling.

1023
00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:50,440
Speaker 2: They're saying, this is a woman who is alone, that

1024
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 2: someone has been watching you. They see you're alone. They

1025
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:55,799
Speaker 2: think you're vulnerable. You need to go home, and you

1026
00:51:55,840 --> 00:51:57,800
Speaker 2: need to cut this off. This is meant to pause

1027
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 2: you so that someone from underneath the car can cut

1028
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:03,759
Speaker 2: your achilles heel and so that you're distracted, gives them

1029
00:52:03,840 --> 00:52:07,279
Speaker 2: enough time. Something that looks the most innocent. But you're

1030
00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 2: gonna notice this one. It's gonna be placed here after

1031
00:52:09,680 --> 00:52:10,400
Speaker 2: you're already.

1032
00:52:10,120 --> 00:52:10,560
Speaker 4: In your car.

1033
00:52:10,800 --> 00:52:12,799
Speaker 2: Your goal is to get you out of your car.

1034
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:15,319
Speaker 2: You just want to check your surroundings, okay, because there's

1035
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 2: so many different ways.

1036
00:52:16,840 --> 00:52:19,080
Speaker 1: For you don't want to get out of your car

1037
00:52:19,160 --> 00:52:19,680
Speaker 1: and be texting.

1038
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:21,040
Speaker 2: You don't want to go to your car before.

1039
00:52:21,120 --> 00:52:24,440
Speaker 1: This has so many views, it's been shared so widely.

1040
00:52:24,560 --> 00:52:29,719
Speaker 1: It's just again it's it's let's make people scared and

1041
00:52:29,760 --> 00:52:33,360
Speaker 1: then sell them weapons using affiliate links on my TikTok.

1042
00:52:33,840 --> 00:52:37,240
Speaker 1: Six point nine million views. It's literally everything from the Snopes,

1043
00:52:37,280 --> 00:52:39,600
Speaker 1: Like I think this this was definitely made by someone

1044
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:42,520
Speaker 1: who went through all of those Snopes collections of like

1045
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:45,439
Speaker 1: different of like you know, zip tie on the door,

1046
00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:48,719
Speaker 1: piece of cheese, you know, fucking napkin stuck it, and

1047
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:51,799
Speaker 1: they just made a video to scare people collecting all

1048
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:56,600
Speaker 1: that shit they x the disinformation debunking stuff as a source.

1049
00:52:57,200 --> 00:53:00,279
Speaker 1: Like that's what this lady did. I hate, I hate

1050
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:00,800
Speaker 1: this person.

1051
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:07,040
Speaker 3: It's god. Yeah, it's very crafty. I'll say that she's

1052
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 3: crafty like ice is cold.

1053
00:53:08,960 --> 00:53:11,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's crafty, crafty like ice is cold. And you

1054
00:53:11,320 --> 00:53:16,120
Speaker 1: know who else is crafty? The sponsors of our show,

1055
00:53:16,800 --> 00:53:19,840
Speaker 1: who definitely don't have anything to do with that article

1056
00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:25,279
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. We're gonna get in trouble for

1057
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:41,640
Speaker 1: that one, Sophie. Nah, all right, well we are back anyway.

1058
00:53:42,239 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 1: So it's cool. And in addition to causing you know,

1059
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:51,759
Speaker 1: we've talked about how all of these kind of paranoid,

1060
00:53:51,880 --> 00:53:55,200
Speaker 1: paranoid conspiracy theories about kidnapping, in addition to causing like

1061
00:53:55,640 --> 00:53:59,000
Speaker 1: you know, brain damage to some people, this stuff provides

1062
00:53:59,080 --> 00:54:02,799
Speaker 1: cover for other kinds of scammers. And this brings me

1063
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:05,520
Speaker 1: to a particular new kind of con that's been enabled

1064
00:54:05,560 --> 00:54:08,320
Speaker 1: by modern AI tools. This is fun, Sarah, You're gonna

1065
00:54:08,400 --> 00:54:11,440
Speaker 1: like this. You ever heard of fake kidnapping scams or

1066
00:54:11,520 --> 00:54:12,680
Speaker 1: virtual kidnappings?

1067
00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:13,760
Speaker 5: Ooh?

1068
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:17,520
Speaker 3: I think as like a phishing strategy.

1069
00:54:17,640 --> 00:54:21,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea has existed for a while. I found

1070
00:54:21,400 --> 00:54:24,880
Speaker 1: a twenty fourteen warning from the San Antonio FBI Press Office,

1071
00:54:24,880 --> 00:54:26,120
Speaker 1: and I'm going to read that to you. Now, this

1072
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:29,359
Speaker 1: is how it existed. This other stuff worked prior to AI. Right.

1073
00:54:29,760 --> 00:54:32,080
Speaker 1: Over the past several years, San Antonio FBI, along with

1074
00:54:32,080 --> 00:54:35,080
Speaker 1: many state and local enforcement law enforcement partners, received reports

1075
00:54:35,080 --> 00:54:37,719
Speaker 1: from the public regarding extortion schemes, often referred to as

1076
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:41,520
Speaker 1: virtual kidnappings. These schemes typically involve an individual or criminal

1077
00:54:41,600 --> 00:54:44,520
Speaker 1: organization who contacts a victim via telephone and demands payment

1078
00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:47,240
Speaker 1: for the return of a kidnapped family member or friend,

1079
00:54:47,239 --> 00:54:49,600
Speaker 1: while no actual kidnapping has taken place. The callers often

1080
00:54:49,680 --> 00:54:52,560
Speaker 1: use co conspirators to convince their victims of the legitimacy

1081
00:54:52,560 --> 00:54:54,640
Speaker 1: of the threat. For example, a caller might attempt to

1082
00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:56,960
Speaker 1: convince a victim that his daughter was kidnapped by having

1083
00:54:57,000 --> 00:54:59,200
Speaker 1: a young female scream for help in the background during

1084
00:54:59,200 --> 00:55:03,840
Speaker 1: the call. Now, that's like not an easy con to

1085
00:55:03,920 --> 00:55:06,279
Speaker 1: pull off in the pre AI era, Like not only

1086
00:55:06,280 --> 00:55:08,040
Speaker 1: do you have to have like multiple people, but like,

1087
00:55:08,200 --> 00:55:10,200
Speaker 1: I don't know, let me talk to them, right, I'm

1088
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:11,960
Speaker 1: not going to give money to a kidnapper if I

1089
00:55:12,000 --> 00:55:16,200
Speaker 1: can't hear from the person kidnapped. You know, but AI

1090
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:18,640
Speaker 1: has made that possible. Particularly, the thing that's made it

1091
00:55:18,640 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: possible is both the existence of various AI tools that

1092
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:23,520
Speaker 1: can let you kind of like clone or fake a voice,

1093
00:55:23,920 --> 00:55:28,760
Speaker 1: and the fact that basically every young person is posting

1094
00:55:28,840 --> 00:55:31,160
Speaker 1: videos on TikTok that have their voice all the time,

1095
00:55:31,400 --> 00:55:35,279
Speaker 1: right like, so there is It provides you with the

1096
00:55:35,320 --> 00:55:40,239
Speaker 1: ability to mimic, particularly people's kids, with pretty reasonable accuracy.

1097
00:55:40,840 --> 00:55:43,839
Speaker 1: And that's what we've started to see. And I'm gonna

1098
00:55:43,880 --> 00:55:50,560
Speaker 1: post for you another TikTok video, this one not spreading disinformation. Well, kit,

1099
00:55:50,640 --> 00:55:52,760
Speaker 1: well here, I'm just gonna play.

1100
00:55:52,520 --> 00:55:56,560
Speaker 5: This thing new scam alert. I usually don't fall for scams,

1101
00:55:56,560 --> 00:55:59,279
Speaker 5: but they got me listen to this. So I got

1102
00:55:59,280 --> 00:56:02,040
Speaker 5: a call from mom mom last night around seven pm.

1103
00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:05,680
Speaker 5: The call came in, It showed her number, it showed

1104
00:56:05,719 --> 00:56:07,800
Speaker 5: her name. How I have it stored in my phone?

1105
00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:11,279
Speaker 5: I answered, Hey, Mom, what's up? And I heard my

1106
00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:14,400
Speaker 5: mom's voice like kind of fading away, like someone was

1107
00:56:14,480 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 5: taking the phone away from her, and I heard like weeks.

1108
00:56:18,160 --> 00:56:21,479
Speaker 5: This guy then gets on the phone and he goes, hey,

1109
00:56:21,960 --> 00:56:24,439
Speaker 5: I have your mom, and if you don't send me money,

1110
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:26,680
Speaker 5: I'm gonna kill this bitch, and I was.

1111
00:56:27,200 --> 00:56:28,759
Speaker 1: Uh, okay, who is this?

1112
00:56:28,920 --> 00:56:31,600
Speaker 5: Like what is going on now? Mind you, My mom

1113
00:56:31,920 --> 00:56:35,040
Speaker 5: works in home health, so her job is to go

1114
00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:39,040
Speaker 5: to patients' homes and do self assessments. So in my head,

1115
00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:42,400
Speaker 5: I'm like, it's happened, like a patient has taken her

1116
00:56:42,600 --> 00:56:45,319
Speaker 5: hostage and this is for real. And the guy on

1117
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:48,080
Speaker 5: the phone, him and his girlfriend or whoever she was,

1118
00:56:48,120 --> 00:56:51,799
Speaker 5: were such good actors, so he's like yelling at me

1119
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:54,399
Speaker 5: and really pressuring me to get this money sent back.

1120
00:56:55,239 --> 00:56:58,480
Speaker 1: So like, first off, I wanted to clip put this

1121
00:56:58,520 --> 00:57:01,400
Speaker 1: because it is an example of a viral TikTok posts

1122
00:57:01,400 --> 00:57:04,120
Speaker 1: that's not spreading disinformation. This is a real thing. I

1123
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:06,080
Speaker 1: have no reason to believe this. Woe's not telling the truth.

1124
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:10,440
Speaker 1: And there is evidence from good like reputable journalism that

1125
00:57:10,560 --> 00:57:15,040
Speaker 1: fake kidnapping scams like this have become more common because

1126
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:17,600
Speaker 1: with these kind of tools, you can fake someone's voice,

1127
00:57:17,720 --> 00:57:19,360
Speaker 1: you know, and all you needed is a second to

1128
00:57:19,400 --> 00:57:22,440
Speaker 1: say honey, help me or whatever, and then a person

1129
00:57:22,520 --> 00:57:24,360
Speaker 1: gets on and you do the you do the con

1130
00:57:24,440 --> 00:57:28,920
Speaker 1: from there, right, and like you know this lady, I

1131
00:57:28,960 --> 00:57:32,360
Speaker 1: think did find out what was happening, But like you

1132
00:57:32,400 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: can see, like It's interesting because, like she says, well,

1133
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:39,200
Speaker 1: you know, my mom's job is going into people's houses.

1134
00:57:39,240 --> 00:57:40,960
Speaker 1: She's the home healthcare worker. So I've always, in the

1135
00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:43,080
Speaker 1: back of my mind been worried that something might happen

1136
00:57:43,120 --> 00:57:46,240
Speaker 1: to her. Right, So it's both this, I've always everyone's

1137
00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:50,440
Speaker 1: always anxious because we're we're stupid monkeys. And also, you know,

1138
00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:54,160
Speaker 1: we all have things that we you know, fears that

1139
00:57:54,240 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 1: are are con cognizant. Right if you have like a

1140
00:57:56,560 --> 00:57:58,440
Speaker 1: loved one who's got a long commute or whatever, you

1141
00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:00,560
Speaker 1: worry about him dying in a car crash or something.

1142
00:58:01,040 --> 00:58:04,360
Speaker 1: In this case, you know this this this like woman

1143
00:58:04,440 --> 00:58:09,400
Speaker 1: gets like these people target her for whatever reason, And like, yeah,

1144
00:58:09,480 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 1: that's tough because like, you're not stupid. If you hear

1145
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:15,440
Speaker 1: your loved one's voice and someone say send me money,

1146
00:58:15,440 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 1: I have dumb or gullible for falling for that. That's

1147
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:21,760
Speaker 1: an insane thing to have to be worried about, right that,

1148
00:58:21,920 --> 00:58:25,080
Speaker 1: Like someone can fake your mom's voice. That's nuts. That's

1149
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:29,560
Speaker 1: like like again, it's and it's but it's also I

1150
00:58:29,600 --> 00:58:32,960
Speaker 1: do think the climate of all of these fake stories

1151
00:58:33,160 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: makes decent people more likely to fall for stuff like this,

1152
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:40,680
Speaker 1: because they're already prime to believe there's kidnapping gangs everywhere, right.

1153
00:58:41,520 --> 00:58:43,760
Speaker 3: And because everywhere you look there's something you've never heard

1154
00:58:43,800 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 3: of happening, So in a sense, why not this other thing.

1155
00:58:46,920 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: This is why my general response to anyone who calls

1156
00:58:50,760 --> 00:58:53,200
Speaker 1: me is go ahead kill them. I don't care. I

1157
00:58:53,240 --> 00:58:54,720
Speaker 1: say that no matter why they call it.

1158
00:58:54,800 --> 00:58:56,600
Speaker 4: That's actually how you answer the phone.

1159
00:58:57,080 --> 00:58:57,400
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1160
00:58:57,480 --> 00:59:00,560
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm like, hey, Robert, and you're like, go ahead

1161
00:59:00,640 --> 00:59:01,160
Speaker 4: kill them.

1162
00:59:01,160 --> 00:59:03,320
Speaker 1: Fucking cut their throat. I don't give a shit.

1163
00:59:03,640 --> 00:59:08,120
Speaker 4: I'm like, a, is the episode good? Can I publish it?

1164
00:59:09,000 --> 00:59:09,320
Speaker 5: Death?

1165
00:59:12,120 --> 00:59:12,400
Speaker 1: Yeah?

1166
00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:15,920
Speaker 3: So anyway, I think, Sophie, but I don't want to

1167
00:59:15,960 --> 00:59:16,160
Speaker 3: do that.

1168
00:59:16,320 --> 00:59:18,960
Speaker 1: Like, again, you don't need to be worried about kidnapping,

1169
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:20,800
Speaker 1: but you should, as we're going to talk about, you

1170
00:59:20,800 --> 00:59:24,040
Speaker 1: should be worried about getting scammed because it's scams are

1171
00:59:24,040 --> 00:59:26,800
Speaker 1: more common than they've ever been, and they are more

1172
00:59:26,880 --> 00:59:29,760
Speaker 1: tailored towards individual people because of the kind of tools

1173
00:59:29,760 --> 00:59:33,680
Speaker 1: that exist. The first of these scams have started hitting victims,

1174
00:59:33,720 --> 00:59:35,920
Speaker 1: as I've stated. In April of this year, in Arizona,

1175
00:59:35,960 --> 00:59:38,520
Speaker 1: family received a phone call from their fifteen year old daughter,

1176
00:59:38,600 --> 00:59:40,720
Speaker 1: who sounded distraught and handed the phone over to a

1177
00:59:40,720 --> 00:59:43,200
Speaker 1: man who told them, you call the police, you call anybody.

1178
00:59:43,240 --> 00:59:45,120
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pop her so full of drugs. I'm going

1179
00:59:45,120 --> 00:59:46,360
Speaker 1: to have my way with her, and I'm going to

1180
00:59:46,400 --> 00:59:49,560
Speaker 1: drop her off in Mexico. And you see, again, it's

1181
00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:51,720
Speaker 1: all the shit we've been talking about since Phoebe Copus.

1182
00:59:51,800 --> 00:59:51,960
Speaker 4: Right.

1183
00:59:52,800 --> 00:59:56,240
Speaker 1: There's kidnapping gangs. There's drugs that people have that will

1184
00:59:56,320 --> 00:59:59,080
Speaker 1: knock folks out. You know, probably a little bit of fentanyl,

1185
00:59:59,120 --> 01:00:01,840
Speaker 1: conspiracy shit mix some of that. There's Mexico, right, you

1186
01:00:01,920 --> 01:00:05,360
Speaker 1: bring up Mexico that scares people. Yeah, yeah, Like all

1187
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:10,400
Speaker 1: of these it's all all there now. Thankfully in this case,

1188
01:00:10,480 --> 01:00:13,320
Speaker 1: this the girl who like got her voice cloned for

1189
01:00:13,360 --> 01:00:15,680
Speaker 1: this scam, Her mom was like at a public place,

1190
01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:18,400
Speaker 1: so she gets the call and she freaks out like

1191
01:00:18,480 --> 01:00:21,080
Speaker 1: you do when you think your daughter's been kidnapped. Very

1192
01:00:21,080 --> 01:00:24,120
Speaker 1: reasonable time to freak out. But other people around her

1193
01:00:24,160 --> 01:00:27,080
Speaker 1: they call nine one one and like have the presence

1194
01:00:27,080 --> 01:00:29,680
Speaker 1: of mind to call her husband and be like, is

1195
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:32,120
Speaker 1: your daughter around and he's like, yeah, she's at home.

1196
01:00:32,160 --> 01:00:35,320
Speaker 1: They're like okay, ma'am, you're we're good. Like something else

1197
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:38,960
Speaker 1: that's happening here, you know. But you know it that

1198
01:00:39,120 --> 01:00:42,280
Speaker 1: illustrates how advanced these scams have become. The mom in

1199
01:00:42,360 --> 01:00:45,280
Speaker 1: this case later told local news it was completely her voice,

1200
01:00:45,320 --> 01:00:47,520
Speaker 1: it was her inflection, it was the way she would

1201
01:00:47,520 --> 01:00:50,680
Speaker 1: have cried. I never doubted for one second it was her.

1202
01:00:50,960 --> 01:00:56,080
Speaker 1: That's the freaky part that really got me to my core. Yeah, which, like, yeah,

1203
01:00:56,080 --> 01:00:59,800
Speaker 1: that would be very frightening, right, very most people. Now

1204
01:01:00,080 --> 01:01:02,760
Speaker 1: you've been you're aware that this is a thing. It's

1205
01:01:02,840 --> 01:01:06,040
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, kidnappers in a fuck or

1206
01:01:06,080 --> 01:01:08,520
Speaker 1: it's kind of like hijackers in a plane with box cutters. Right,

1207
01:01:08,800 --> 01:01:11,919
Speaker 1: that's a real threat when it's never happened before. Now,

1208
01:01:12,000 --> 01:01:13,800
Speaker 1: if anyone tried to like take over a plane with

1209
01:01:13,800 --> 01:01:15,640
Speaker 1: box cutters, everyone the plane's going to beat them to

1210
01:01:15,640 --> 01:01:22,640
Speaker 1: death with luggage, right, Like it's yeah, yeah exactly. But

1211
01:01:23,400 --> 01:01:26,000
Speaker 1: you know, when you're not aware that this is a scam,

1212
01:01:26,440 --> 01:01:31,160
Speaker 1: of course, it is fucking horrifying, harrowing, And that brings

1213
01:01:31,240 --> 01:01:33,640
Speaker 1: us to the Hidden Bastard for this week's episode. I

1214
01:01:33,640 --> 01:01:36,560
Speaker 1: know it's taken several hours to get to this point, Sarah,

1215
01:01:36,600 --> 01:01:37,200
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.

1216
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:41,000
Speaker 3: We're already a thousand years old. It's getting a little older.

1217
01:01:41,160 --> 01:01:43,880
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly we are. We are ancients, as old as

1218
01:01:43,920 --> 01:01:46,800
Speaker 1: the trees. I am. I am an int you know,

1219
01:01:47,400 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 1: I remember? Yeah anyway, whatever, So yeah, obviously, like Phoebe

1220
01:01:54,920 --> 01:01:59,400
Speaker 1: Copis did a horrible thing, But the part of why

1221
01:01:59,520 --> 01:02:02,920
Speaker 1: she did that horrible thing was that she had been

1222
01:02:03,040 --> 01:02:08,320
Speaker 1: kind of this ever present ecosystem of you are in danger,

1223
01:02:08,360 --> 01:02:12,320
Speaker 1: you are at risk, people are attacking you. Like most

1224
01:02:12,400 --> 01:02:15,080
Speaker 1: people aren't going to murder someone, you know, even if

1225
01:02:15,080 --> 01:02:17,120
Speaker 1: they buy into that stuff, but a certain number of

1226
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:19,520
Speaker 1: people will murder people as a result of this kind

1227
01:02:19,520 --> 01:02:22,360
Speaker 1: of shit, right, And I think one of the things

1228
01:02:22,360 --> 01:02:25,919
Speaker 1: that feeds into that ever present feeling that you're at risk,

1229
01:02:25,960 --> 01:02:28,320
Speaker 1: that you're under attack, you have to defend yourself is

1230
01:02:28,320 --> 01:02:31,920
Speaker 1: that all of us are under attack at all times

1231
01:02:32,560 --> 01:02:35,200
Speaker 1: through every single form of communication that we own. The

1232
01:02:35,240 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 1: attack is not kidnapping gangs, it's not human traffickers. But like,

1233
01:02:39,440 --> 01:02:42,640
Speaker 1: look at how many emails you've gotten today and comb

1234
01:02:42,640 --> 01:02:44,440
Speaker 1: through your spam filter, see how many of them are

1235
01:02:44,480 --> 01:02:47,080
Speaker 1: attempts for people to fish you or to like how

1236
01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:49,880
Speaker 1: many text messages or phone calls did you get today

1237
01:02:50,160 --> 01:02:53,600
Speaker 1: that are from scam? Likely? You know, how many like

1238
01:02:53,760 --> 01:02:56,120
Speaker 1: pieces of things like shit did you get in the mail.

1239
01:02:56,000 --> 01:02:58,160
Speaker 3: Like I got to call this morning from a lovely

1240
01:02:58,200 --> 01:03:00,760
Speaker 3: British robot who wanted to sell me how health insurance?

1241
01:03:00,880 --> 01:03:04,560
Speaker 1: Exactly? That is an attack, right, That's not an attack

1242
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 1: like a kidnapping. It's not something, but it is. That

1243
01:03:07,000 --> 01:03:10,560
Speaker 1: is someone trying to harm you, right, like Sarah, someone

1244
01:03:10,600 --> 01:03:12,880
Speaker 1: tried to hurt you today through the phone. You know,

1245
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:15,640
Speaker 1: someone is trying to hurt all of us every day

1246
01:03:15,720 --> 01:03:18,720
Speaker 1: through our phones and various other methods of communication.

1247
01:03:19,000 --> 01:03:21,360
Speaker 4: And what did we learn? How is Sarah supposed to

1248
01:03:21,400 --> 01:03:22,840
Speaker 4: answer the phone from now on?

1249
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:26,160
Speaker 3: Kill the hostage, Kill the hostage.

1250
01:03:26,200 --> 01:03:29,640
Speaker 1: That's right, we all really Sarah, all of this. We

1251
01:03:29,640 --> 01:03:32,360
Speaker 1: could all learn a lot from the movie Speed right,

1252
01:03:32,680 --> 01:03:36,520
Speaker 1: put a bullet in that hostage's kneecap, do what Keanu

1253
01:03:36,560 --> 01:03:36,960
Speaker 1: would do.

1254
01:03:37,240 --> 01:03:38,680
Speaker 3: It's only Jeff Daniels.

1255
01:03:40,080 --> 01:03:43,400
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was Jeff Daniels. Huh. I like him.

1256
01:03:43,600 --> 01:03:48,000
Speaker 1: So I feel like the fact that we are all

1257
01:03:48,640 --> 01:03:53,040
Speaker 1: constantly being attacked by con artists, you know, even if

1258
01:03:53,360 --> 01:03:55,840
Speaker 1: the vast majority of those attacks fail, even if the

1259
01:03:55,880 --> 01:04:00,440
Speaker 1: vast majority those are obvious and laughable, contributes to the

1260
01:04:00,560 --> 01:04:04,720
Speaker 1: mindset that makes people more likely to believe this kind

1261
01:04:04,760 --> 01:04:09,160
Speaker 1: of kidnapping shit, Right, we're paranoid. There's reason to be paranoid,

1262
01:04:09,560 --> 01:04:12,600
Speaker 1: but it's not there's nothing fun in being like Well,

1263
01:04:12,640 --> 01:04:15,880
Speaker 1: because of a variety of different kinds of deregulation and

1264
01:04:16,040 --> 01:04:20,320
Speaker 1: just plain old failures to foresee any need for regulation,

1265
01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:23,440
Speaker 1: every method of communication we have has been infested by

1266
01:04:23,440 --> 01:04:25,919
Speaker 1: con artists and scammers to a degree that has never

1267
01:04:25,960 --> 01:04:29,880
Speaker 1: been present in human history before, and that contributes to

1268
01:04:29,920 --> 01:04:32,720
Speaker 1: a mindset where people don't trust anybody else. Right, instead

1269
01:04:32,720 --> 01:04:35,000
Speaker 1: of saying that, like we want to believe, it's just

1270
01:04:35,080 --> 01:04:37,000
Speaker 1: sexier to believe that you're like the center of a

1271
01:04:37,040 --> 01:04:40,480
Speaker 1: taken story, right, thanks, Yeah.

1272
01:04:40,600 --> 01:04:43,760
Speaker 3: And instead of being attacked by one thousand tiny scammers

1273
01:04:43,800 --> 01:04:45,560
Speaker 3: every week who are trying to make a little bit

1274
01:04:45,560 --> 01:04:49,880
Speaker 3: of money. It's it's like a fabulous espionage kidnapping ring.

1275
01:04:50,080 --> 01:04:53,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's much sexier, and it's but I do want

1276
01:04:53,440 --> 01:04:55,040
Speaker 1: to kind of I want to spend a little bit

1277
01:04:55,040 --> 01:04:58,440
Speaker 1: of time here at the end talking about how bad

1278
01:04:58,720 --> 01:05:00,560
Speaker 1: this has gotten in numbers, because I think this is

1279
01:05:00,600 --> 01:05:04,520
Speaker 1: something everyone's sort of aware that we're all getting approached

1280
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:08,680
Speaker 1: by scammers more often, But like, there's this isn't just

1281
01:05:08,720 --> 01:05:11,560
Speaker 1: a thing that you think because it happens to you

1282
01:05:11,720 --> 01:05:15,440
Speaker 1: might be more common, this is objectively happening. Phishing scams

1283
01:05:15,480 --> 01:05:18,000
Speaker 1: hit a historic high in Q four of twenty twenty two,

1284
01:05:18,320 --> 01:05:21,400
Speaker 1: with four point seven million reported attacks, which is a

1285
01:05:21,400 --> 01:05:25,360
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty percent increase since twenty nineteen. A

1286
01:05:25,400 --> 01:05:28,320
Speaker 1: research right up I found from a research firm Compaatech

1287
01:05:28,400 --> 01:05:31,160
Speaker 1: noted quote October twenty twenty two saw more than one

1288
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:35,240
Speaker 1: hundred thousand unique email subject lines, the largest number ever recorded.

1289
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:37,240
Speaker 1: This shows that hackers are more likely than ever to

1290
01:05:37,280 --> 01:05:39,520
Speaker 1: tailor their approach rather than using the same template for

1291
01:05:39,560 --> 01:05:41,640
Speaker 1: every victim. This is one of these things that like

1292
01:05:42,240 --> 01:05:45,160
Speaker 1: the increasing development of these AI tools has allowed, is

1293
01:05:45,160 --> 01:05:49,480
Speaker 1: it makes it easier to kind of instead of like

1294
01:05:49,560 --> 01:05:54,200
Speaker 1: going for the lowest common denominator, actually tailoring stuff for individuals. Right, Like,

1295
01:05:54,280 --> 01:05:57,160
Speaker 1: you can't do a fake kidnapping scam where you're cloning

1296
01:05:57,200 --> 01:06:01,240
Speaker 1: somebody's mom's voice without like target that person. You're not

1297
01:06:01,400 --> 01:06:04,640
Speaker 1: like randomly going after that, right It's because it's it

1298
01:06:04,680 --> 01:06:06,760
Speaker 1: takes some effort to clone a voice like that. You

1299
01:06:06,800 --> 01:06:09,200
Speaker 1: have to know something about the person. And this is

1300
01:06:09,200 --> 01:06:11,440
Speaker 1: what we're seeing across the board, not only a growth

1301
01:06:11,440 --> 01:06:14,200
Speaker 1: in the number of scams targeting Americans, but smarter and

1302
01:06:14,240 --> 01:06:18,840
Speaker 1: more personalized scams. It remains true that about ninety five

1303
01:06:18,840 --> 01:06:22,560
Speaker 1: percent of all cybersecurity issues are the result of human error.

1304
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:26,600
Speaker 1: But I think that statistic is actually the way it

1305
01:06:26,640 --> 01:06:29,600
Speaker 1: is framed is problematic because when you say ninety five

1306
01:06:29,600 --> 01:06:31,840
Speaker 1: percent of cybersecurity issues the result of human error, what

1307
01:06:31,880 --> 01:06:33,120
Speaker 1: I think most people hear is that like, oh, a

1308
01:06:33,160 --> 01:06:36,520
Speaker 1: dummy clicked a link they shouldn't have clicked. What a dummy? No, no, no,

1309
01:06:36,720 --> 01:06:39,520
Speaker 1: it's a human error. If you wire someone money because

1310
01:06:39,520 --> 01:06:42,160
Speaker 1: you believe your mom has been kidnapped, that doesn't mean

1311
01:06:42,160 --> 01:06:47,160
Speaker 1: it's not understandable if you're not aware of the con right. See.

1312
01:06:47,360 --> 01:06:49,680
Speaker 1: And the fact that people feel like if I fall

1313
01:06:49,720 --> 01:06:52,680
Speaker 1: for something, if I get conned, I did something dumb,

1314
01:06:53,040 --> 01:06:56,080
Speaker 1: means they don't report when they're victimized a lot because

1315
01:06:56,080 --> 01:06:57,680
Speaker 1: they think people will make fun of them. This is

1316
01:06:57,720 --> 01:07:01,760
Speaker 1: an actual problem, right, This is a societal level problem

1317
01:07:02,040 --> 01:07:04,840
Speaker 1: that people feel this way when they are victimized. Z

1318
01:07:05,000 --> 01:07:08,440
Speaker 1: Scalers Threat Labs twenty twenty three phishing report warned that chat, GPT,

1319
01:07:08,560 --> 01:07:10,800
Speaker 1: and other AI tools can also be used to create

1320
01:07:10,840 --> 01:07:14,520
Speaker 1: fake login pages for users who have no coding knowledge. Themselves.

1321
01:07:14,840 --> 01:07:17,360
Speaker 1: They can use these fake login pages in order to

1322
01:07:17,400 --> 01:07:19,480
Speaker 1: like fake that it's someone's bank or whatever, and they

1323
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:21,520
Speaker 1: can insert malware through that, they can get you know,

1324
01:07:21,520 --> 01:07:23,200
Speaker 1: there's a wide variety of ways they can fuck with

1325
01:07:23,200 --> 01:07:27,760
Speaker 1: people through that. And eventually these same AI tools will

1326
01:07:27,760 --> 01:07:32,760
Speaker 1: be utilized effectively and like, you know, software that is

1327
01:07:32,800 --> 01:07:34,800
Speaker 1: meant to protect people from this, but it's just not

1328
01:07:34,920 --> 01:07:38,040
Speaker 1: good at that yet. There's too many false positives, Like

1329
01:07:38,080 --> 01:07:40,800
Speaker 1: when you're scanning email, you know, using AI tools and

1330
01:07:40,840 --> 01:07:43,000
Speaker 1: whatnot to try to determine which ones are fishing attempts.

1331
01:07:43,040 --> 01:07:45,960
Speaker 1: And like if a quarter of your emails are getting

1332
01:07:46,000 --> 01:07:49,240
Speaker 1: like deleted by an AI because it mistakenly thinks that

1333
01:07:49,280 --> 01:07:51,480
Speaker 1: they're you know, that causes a problem for you just

1334
01:07:51,480 --> 01:07:54,640
Speaker 1: can't It's It's what I'm saying here is that I'm

1335
01:07:54,640 --> 01:07:57,640
Speaker 1: not trying to fear monger about the technology in general.

1336
01:07:57,680 --> 01:08:00,960
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that new technology tends to be

1337
01:08:01,080 --> 01:08:04,920
Speaker 1: more profitable for attackers before it becomes useful for defending

1338
01:08:04,960 --> 01:08:08,800
Speaker 1: people in this situation, and so that's part of the problem.

1339
01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:11,920
Speaker 1: The primary victims of this new wave of scams are

1340
01:08:11,920 --> 01:08:15,600
Speaker 1: the elderly. The FBI Internet Crime Report last year claimed

1341
01:08:15,600 --> 01:08:18,599
Speaker 1: that Americans over age sixty lost and estimated one point

1342
01:08:18,680 --> 01:08:22,439
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars to fraud, the highest number ever reported

1343
01:08:22,479 --> 01:08:25,400
Speaker 1: for any age group, and an increase. You want to

1344
01:08:25,439 --> 01:08:29,439
Speaker 1: guess how much this amount has increased over the last

1345
01:08:29,439 --> 01:08:35,160
Speaker 1: three years. So okay, well, no, not quite that high,

1346
01:08:35,200 --> 01:08:37,360
Speaker 1: but it is an increase of eighty four percent since

1347
01:08:37,400 --> 01:08:38,160
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one.

1348
01:08:39,120 --> 01:08:39,920
Speaker 3: Still so much.

1349
01:08:40,439 --> 01:08:43,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, that it's huge. It's like so much more common now.

1350
01:08:44,200 --> 01:08:46,320
Speaker 1: I found an article, a very good article in The

1351
01:08:46,360 --> 01:08:48,799
Speaker 1: Advocate that gives some texture to the kinds of scams

1352
01:08:48,800 --> 01:08:52,040
Speaker 1: that are increasingly hitting the elderly. Matthews, fifty two of

1353
01:08:52,080 --> 01:08:54,759
Speaker 1: Baton Rouge told victims he could make investments on their behalf,

1354
01:08:54,840 --> 01:08:57,280
Speaker 1: assured them that they could make high rates of return,

1355
01:08:57,320 --> 01:08:59,360
Speaker 1: and threatened to injure them if they did not make payments,

1356
01:08:59,360 --> 01:09:02,479
Speaker 1: according to his guilty plea. In a similar case in April,

1357
01:09:02,640 --> 01:09:05,880
Speaker 1: Muhammad Alam fifty pleaded guilty to computer fraud scheme that

1358
01:09:05,880 --> 01:09:09,160
Speaker 1: targeted elderly victims in the US, including Louisiana, and took

1359
01:09:09,200 --> 01:09:12,240
Speaker 1: in about three hundred and forty thousand fraudulent profits. Alam

1360
01:09:12,280 --> 01:09:14,400
Speaker 1: and other members of the scheme tricked victims into thinking

1361
01:09:14,439 --> 01:09:16,640
Speaker 1: their computers needed support, then offered to fix them for

1362
01:09:16,680 --> 01:09:19,160
Speaker 1: a fee. After the victims paid, Alum would seek access

1363
01:09:19,160 --> 01:09:20,680
Speaker 1: to their bank accounts under the guys that they were

1364
01:09:20,800 --> 01:09:23,320
Speaker 1: entitled to a discount and manipulate account balances, so the

1365
01:09:23,360 --> 01:09:25,599
Speaker 1: victims thought that they owed money to the computer company.

1366
01:09:26,960 --> 01:09:29,800
Speaker 1: So adults age sixty and older are not only likely

1367
01:09:29,880 --> 01:09:32,160
Speaker 1: er to be scammed, they are the least likely to

1368
01:09:32,280 --> 01:09:35,600
Speaker 1: report being victimized to the authorities. They don't want to

1369
01:09:35,640 --> 01:09:38,000
Speaker 1: call the police. Again. This is like when these people,

1370
01:09:38,080 --> 01:09:40,240
Speaker 1: when victims are interviewed, the number one reason they give

1371
01:09:40,280 --> 01:09:42,800
Speaker 1: for not reporting that they've been victimized is they think

1372
01:09:42,840 --> 01:09:45,479
Speaker 1: they will be blamed or mocked for falling for a Khan.

1373
01:09:46,640 --> 01:09:49,800
Speaker 1: Kathy Stokes, director of fraud Prevention for the AARP, told

1374
01:09:49,800 --> 01:09:52,719
Speaker 1: the Advocate this, well, you gave someone of that information,

1375
01:09:52,800 --> 01:09:54,880
Speaker 1: so there's nothing we can do. Fundamentally, we've got to

1376
01:09:54,960 --> 01:09:58,160
Speaker 1: change that. People are losing what amounts to generational wealth

1377
01:09:58,200 --> 01:10:00,640
Speaker 1: these days. Like we're not just talking about nickel and

1378
01:10:00,680 --> 01:10:05,960
Speaker 1: diming people. We are talking about taking someone's retirement savings,

1379
01:10:06,280 --> 01:10:08,680
Speaker 1: you know, taking money that they would have passed on

1380
01:10:08,720 --> 01:10:10,439
Speaker 1: to their kids. Like we are talking about like people

1381
01:10:10,560 --> 01:10:14,360
Speaker 1: people's lives are being destroyed by this stuff. And there's

1382
01:10:14,439 --> 01:10:16,800
Speaker 1: again they don't even feel like they can report having

1383
01:10:17,040 --> 01:10:19,240
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money stolen from them because they'll be

1384
01:10:19,520 --> 01:10:22,400
Speaker 1: mocked for like being a dumb old person who fell

1385
01:10:22,439 --> 01:10:25,920
Speaker 1: for a scam. That's like somebody building a fake website

1386
01:10:25,960 --> 01:10:27,680
Speaker 1: to trap them and shit. A lot of the time.

1387
01:10:27,760 --> 01:10:30,120
Speaker 1: Sometimes yeah, people are greedy or whatever and they get

1388
01:10:30,439 --> 01:10:33,240
Speaker 1: trapped that way. But like phone scams are close to

1389
01:10:33,280 --> 01:10:35,679
Speaker 1: an all time high, phishing scams and text message scams

1390
01:10:35,720 --> 01:10:38,080
Speaker 1: are hitting people at the highest levels ever. And add

1391
01:10:38,080 --> 01:10:41,000
Speaker 1: into this the fact that social media has like spent

1392
01:10:41,120 --> 01:10:44,360
Speaker 1: years goading people to read and report and share paranoid

1393
01:10:44,360 --> 01:10:48,640
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, it shouldn't be surprising that by most measurements,

1394
01:10:48,720 --> 01:10:51,639
Speaker 1: social trust in American society is at its lowest level

1395
01:10:51,680 --> 01:10:54,720
Speaker 1: in living memory. In the early nineteen seventies, when Chaine

1396
01:10:54,800 --> 01:10:57,960
Speaker 1: letters about backseat slashers went from mailbox to mailbox, about

1397
01:10:57,960 --> 01:11:01,240
Speaker 1: half of Americans reported to the American National Election Survey

1398
01:11:01,439 --> 01:11:05,040
Speaker 1: that they believed most people could be trusted. Today, less

1399
01:11:05,080 --> 01:11:07,559
Speaker 1: than a third of Americans respond the same way. A

1400
01:11:07,640 --> 01:11:10,440
Speaker 1: recent poll found that social trust is lowest for Americans

1401
01:11:10,479 --> 01:11:13,599
Speaker 1: over sixty five, which is understandable when you realize how

1402
01:11:13,680 --> 01:11:16,160
Speaker 1: much of them are being bombarded by attempts to steal

1403
01:11:16,200 --> 01:11:19,960
Speaker 1: their fucking savings. And it's like, I don't know, Like

1404
01:11:20,040 --> 01:11:22,080
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of what I've got so far. I

1405
01:11:22,120 --> 01:11:26,400
Speaker 1: don't I don't know what to do about this because

1406
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:29,280
Speaker 1: like I kind of low key think this is one

1407
01:11:29,280 --> 01:11:31,640
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems in the country. This is like,

1408
01:11:32,280 --> 01:11:34,000
Speaker 1: you know, when you talk about people being worried that

1409
01:11:34,160 --> 01:11:36,720
Speaker 1: you know of civil violence of like you know we're

1410
01:11:36,760 --> 01:11:39,280
Speaker 1: going to have like like this feeds into that to

1411
01:11:39,360 --> 01:11:41,639
Speaker 1: a huge degree. Like look up those stories of people

1412
01:11:41,720 --> 01:11:45,360
Speaker 1: shooting folks and their driveway. They're not young, right, They're old.

1413
01:11:45,640 --> 01:11:47,840
Speaker 1: And I don't please don't take this as me being

1414
01:11:47,880 --> 01:11:50,360
Speaker 1: like it's understandable that they murdered a young woman in

1415
01:11:50,400 --> 01:11:54,160
Speaker 1: their driveway. It's like no, But when you bombarded people

1416
01:11:54,280 --> 01:11:58,080
Speaker 1: both with conspiracy theories about how they're in danger and

1417
01:11:58,160 --> 01:12:01,559
Speaker 1: you're also constantly trying to them every hour of every day,

1418
01:12:01,920 --> 01:12:04,400
Speaker 1: some of them will lose their minds and a lot

1419
01:12:04,439 --> 01:12:06,760
Speaker 1: of them will have guns. You know, like it's that's

1420
01:12:06,800 --> 01:12:08,240
Speaker 1: a problem, we should deal with it.

1421
01:12:09,479 --> 01:12:13,000
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and you know, and you make some good points,

1422
01:12:13,840 --> 01:12:17,240
Speaker 3: but I really think there's a bigger problem in this country,

1423
01:12:17,320 --> 01:12:19,880
Speaker 3: and it's that someone puts on a car.

1424
01:12:20,040 --> 01:12:24,559
Speaker 1: Someone well, you know, like like I always say, you

1425
01:12:24,600 --> 01:12:27,280
Speaker 1: say this often in your podcast, You're wrong about If

1426
01:12:27,320 --> 01:12:30,880
Speaker 1: you see cheese on your car, pull out a glock

1427
01:12:31,040 --> 01:12:33,599
Speaker 1: and just open fire, empty it into.

1428
01:12:33,360 --> 01:12:36,680
Speaker 3: You see she's on your car, Just yeah, jump the

1429
01:12:36,760 --> 01:12:40,040
Speaker 3: man off the bomb honestly, just level the city or

1430
01:12:40,080 --> 01:12:41,200
Speaker 3: and it's time to start over.

1431
01:12:41,479 --> 01:12:45,799
Speaker 1: This is why I always say, never go any public

1432
01:12:45,800 --> 01:12:48,800
Speaker 1: place without a six thousand pound ammodium nitrate bomb, you know,

1433
01:12:49,200 --> 01:12:50,640
Speaker 1: just in case you'd rather need it.

1434
01:12:51,640 --> 01:12:54,200
Speaker 3: Do say that often better to have.

1435
01:12:54,200 --> 01:12:55,840
Speaker 1: It and not need it than need it and not

1436
01:12:56,000 --> 01:12:57,800
Speaker 1: have it, you know. That's why I always tow a

1437
01:12:57,880 --> 01:13:01,559
Speaker 1: rider truck behind my car, always ready, you know, in

1438
01:13:01,560 --> 01:13:04,479
Speaker 1: case I have to detonate a parking lot to protect

1439
01:13:04,520 --> 01:13:10,680
Speaker 1: my I don't know, Sarah, what do we do here?

1440
01:13:10,680 --> 01:13:11,719
Speaker 1: How do we fix this?

1441
01:13:13,640 --> 01:13:13,880
Speaker 5: Oh?

1442
01:13:13,920 --> 01:13:17,320
Speaker 3: Gosh? I mean, I think that a lot of this problem,

1443
01:13:17,520 --> 01:13:20,200
Speaker 3: as far as I can tell, as people replacing their

1444
01:13:20,400 --> 01:13:23,679
Speaker 3: actual life with the Internet in various other forms of media,

1445
01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:27,280
Speaker 3: you know, the epidemic of loneliness among Americans and especially

1446
01:13:27,320 --> 01:13:31,080
Speaker 3: Americans over sixty. I really think that part of the

1447
01:13:31,120 --> 01:13:33,639
Speaker 3: answer is for us to actually talk to each other more,

1448
01:13:33,680 --> 01:13:37,040
Speaker 3: which is slightly ironic for me to be saying, because

1449
01:13:37,040 --> 01:13:40,120
Speaker 3: we are doing this over zoom. But hey, I'm looking

1450
01:13:40,200 --> 01:13:42,320
Speaker 3: you in the face. Yeah, that's the right thing.

1451
01:13:42,479 --> 01:13:45,040
Speaker 4: And I'll see you in like an hour and a

1452
01:13:45,120 --> 01:13:46,759
Speaker 4: half in person. Yeah.

1453
01:13:46,840 --> 01:13:50,240
Speaker 3: And we're gonna eat popcorn together, even popcorn together, eat

1454
01:13:50,320 --> 01:13:52,719
Speaker 3: cheese together, not alone.

1455
01:13:53,200 --> 01:13:55,679
Speaker 4: Don't put it on somebody's car if.

1456
01:13:55,560 --> 01:13:59,919
Speaker 1: You see a water on your car again. Hand grenade,

1457
01:14:00,120 --> 01:14:02,640
Speaker 1: you know, keep one of those German stick grenades in

1458
01:14:02,680 --> 01:14:05,080
Speaker 1: your belt at all time so you can just hurl

1459
01:14:05,120 --> 01:14:07,800
Speaker 1: it at your vehicle if you see a trash bag

1460
01:14:07,880 --> 01:14:09,000
Speaker 1: nearby that scares you.

1461
01:14:09,760 --> 01:14:10,160
Speaker 3: Yeaheah.

1462
01:14:10,240 --> 01:14:10,479
Speaker 4: I mean.

1463
01:14:10,920 --> 01:14:13,880
Speaker 3: The point is that if you kill absolutely everyone, you

1464
01:14:13,960 --> 01:14:16,960
Speaker 3: will be safe. This is why game of all this.

1465
01:14:17,160 --> 01:14:19,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's why you know. I'm glad that we

1466
01:14:19,439 --> 01:14:22,320
Speaker 1: finally have a movie coming out about my personal hero,

1467
01:14:22,479 --> 01:14:26,760
Speaker 1: Robert Oppenheimer. I think the real tragedy of Oppenheimer is

1468
01:14:26,800 --> 01:14:30,800
Speaker 1: that we stopped at like twelve or thirteen thousand nuclear weapons, right,

1469
01:14:31,120 --> 01:14:33,439
Speaker 1: we need one for every person on every if everyone

1470
01:14:33,520 --> 01:14:36,920
Speaker 1: has a nuke, Like, look at how peaceful relations between

1471
01:14:36,960 --> 01:14:38,880
Speaker 1: the US and the Soviet Union State because of all

1472
01:14:38,920 --> 01:14:42,759
Speaker 1: the nukes. If we each have a nuke, right, everything's fine.

1473
01:14:43,280 --> 01:14:46,840
Speaker 3: Yes, peace through proliferation, just like Ronnie said, Just like

1474
01:14:46,960 --> 01:14:47,599
Speaker 3: Ronnie said.

1475
01:14:48,000 --> 01:14:53,439
Speaker 1: Anyway, Sarah got anything to plug?

1476
01:14:54,360 --> 01:14:56,800
Speaker 3: I have a podcast called You Wrong About It's also

1477
01:14:56,960 --> 01:15:01,559
Speaker 3: very much about Bastards. If if you like this show,

1478
01:15:03,160 --> 01:15:04,720
Speaker 3: I'm not going to tell you that you will like

1479
01:15:04,840 --> 01:15:07,840
Speaker 3: my show. You could like my show, but I don't know.

1480
01:15:07,880 --> 01:15:09,720
Speaker 3: I won't tell you what to do, but that's my show.

1481
01:15:09,840 --> 01:15:13,080
Speaker 3: I have a feelings podcast about movies called You Are

1482
01:15:13,120 --> 01:15:20,320
Speaker 3: Good and I want to plug. The Lloyd Center Ice

1483
01:15:20,400 --> 01:15:23,640
Speaker 3: Rink in Portland, Oregon. There is talk of it being demolished.

1484
01:15:23,760 --> 01:15:26,599
Speaker 3: Don't let it happen. Go skating with your friends.

1485
01:15:27,479 --> 01:15:30,360
Speaker 1: Protect the Lloyd Center Ice Rink. But again, if you're

1486
01:15:30,360 --> 01:15:31,960
Speaker 1: in that parking lot, you know.

1487
01:15:32,520 --> 01:15:33,760
Speaker 3: All bets are off.

1488
01:15:33,760 --> 01:15:40,360
Speaker 1: You better roll in with an armored vehicle. Good stuff,

1489
01:15:41,520 --> 01:15:42,759
Speaker 1: all right. That's the episode.

1490
01:15:42,880 --> 01:15:44,760
Speaker 3: Bye Bye.

1491
01:15:45,960 --> 01:15:48,920
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1492
01:15:49,040 --> 01:15:52,320
Speaker 4: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia

1493
01:15:52,479 --> 01:15:55,679
Speaker 4: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1494
01:15:55,760 --> 01:15:58,160
Speaker 4: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.