Speaker 1: Ah, Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast about
Speaker 1: the ever present fear of death and pale anxiety. Pain
Speaker 1: that is like never leaves, that's just always there in
Speaker 1: the heart of every single person and drives us to
Speaker 1: most of the terrible crimes that we commit as a species.
Speaker 1: What are you doing, Sarah?
Speaker 2: What else?
Speaker 3: I'm here and I'm scared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're all.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: I keep and raised goats, and one of my goats
Speaker 1: gave birth this year, so I've been milking her. You
Speaker 1: can milk a goat for about a year after they
Speaker 1: give birth, you know, something like that. It kind of
Speaker 1: depends a little bit.
Speaker 3: Is it also birth control for the goat?
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about goats biology to tell you that, Sarah, but.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you're accepting that. That's above your pay grade. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's well above my pay grade. I've just figured out milking.
Speaker 3: So I got this this little little lady goat. She's
Speaker 3: a Nigerian dwarf. She's small, She's about the size of
Speaker 3: like a small dog. Nothing bad has ever happened to
Speaker 3: this animal. She has never been been threatened, she's never
Speaker 3: been attacked, she's never been like harmed. All that people
Speaker 3: have ever done for her. All that I've ever done
Speaker 3: for her is go is bring her food and other
Speaker 3: things that she likes. And all that the milking processes
Speaker 3: is her receiving treats while she's milked. And still if
Speaker 3: I move the wrong way around her, if I like,
Speaker 3: you know, like I have to be there's very specific
Speaker 3: ways that I move when she's in there, because if
Speaker 3: I move the wrong way, she will freak out and
Speaker 3: run away. Right, And that's because she is descended from
Speaker 3: a long line of prey animals that had to always
Speaker 3: be ready to be attacked and to try to run
Speaker 3: away from danger.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's the same reason why you know, people had a
Speaker 1: whole fun thing on the internet the other cup a
Speaker 1: few years ago about like if you put like a
Speaker 1: cucumber or something out slightly outside of a cat's field
Speaker 1: of vision, they'll freak out because their instincts tell them
Speaker 1: this is a snake. And we all know this about animals.
Speaker 1: I'm not like.
Speaker 3: People love to scare their people love.
Speaker 1: To scare their cats to make them feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're and it It's interesting to me because like currently
Speaker 1: in right wing media, there's this huge thing with like
Speaker 1: biological reality, and you know, we're going against these deeply
Speaker 1: programmed things when people are allowed to be transgender or
Speaker 1: like biologically men are meant to fight in a felanx
Speaker 1: with a spear and like you're you know, this is
Speaker 1: why you need to pay ten thousand dollars to have
Speaker 1: a man yell at you. Well, you do push ups,
Speaker 1: otherwise you're not connected to your your like ancestral masculinity.
Speaker 1: You got to eat raw meat, you know whatever, kind
Speaker 1: of fucking nonsense. And everyone's fine with like or all
Speaker 1: of these people are fine with the idea that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, my ancestral men were hunters and fighters, so
Speaker 1: I need to do hunting and fighting stuff in order
Speaker 1: to be like truly happy. But nobody likes the nobody
Speaker 1: likes being told. Nobody's willing to accept that, like, well,
Speaker 1: your ancestors were constantly at threat from various kinds of animals,
Speaker 1: and so there is always fear in your heart and nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing will ever make that go away, Like you just
Speaker 1: have to learn how to deal with it and cope
Speaker 1: with it. Because we grew up in a world that
Speaker 1: was deeply, deeply dangerous in ways that like it is
Speaker 1: not anymore, and that's just will always be with you.
Speaker 1: And none of these people want to accept that. They
Speaker 1: want to take the parts of like ancient humanity that
Speaker 1: are like standing with a shield and a spear or
Speaker 1: trying to hunt a fucking gazelle, but they don't want
Speaker 1: to accept that, like the actual thing that will never
Speaker 1: leave us because of our ancestors is fear.
Speaker 5: I don't want to.
Speaker 3: Be too dramatic, but I feel like I'm having a
Speaker 3: breakthrough right now because I feel like I have been
Speaker 3: treating like my life and also the therapy that I've
Speaker 3: been doing as an approach to like, well, I feel
Speaker 3: really fearful and anxious a lot, and that's a failing
Speaker 3: on my part, or like not a moral failing, but
Speaker 3: like that's something that's wrong with me that has to
Speaker 3: do with my personal history, and it's a problem, and I,
Speaker 3: you know, and I to be clear, like I do
Speaker 3: think that I need to deal with that, and we
Speaker 3: all need to learn how to manage fear in our
Speaker 3: own ways and also to trust it at times, but
Speaker 3: seeing it is something that's just part of the organisms
Speaker 3: we are, instead of this idea of like an invading
Speaker 3: presence that shouldn't be there like it's just right. It's
Speaker 3: like it's natural for us to be afraid. That's what
Speaker 3: we're how what we are?
Speaker 1: Yeah, what I'd like people at home to do. You know,
Speaker 1: the next time the fear hits you, right and you
Speaker 1: find yourself wondering why am I so afraid? Instead of
Speaker 1: burrowing into like whatever you said in your like going
Speaker 1: on Twitter and you know, doom scrolling or any of
Speaker 1: that stuff, get on the Internet and look up a
Speaker 1: picture of the skull of a cave bear. Cave bears
Speaker 1: don't exist anymore, but they're much larger than all of
Speaker 1: the all present day bears. They're small compared to cave bears.
Speaker 1: They were like the elephants of bears, and they used
Speaker 1: to murder the shit out of us. And look at
Speaker 1: the skull of a cave bear and realize, like, that's
Speaker 1: why I'm scared right now. It's because many, many years ago,
Speaker 1: my ancestors had to constantly be worried about this fucking
Speaker 1: thing charging out of whatever cave and murdering their entire family.
Speaker 1: And so now I'm sitting at home, in my air
Speaker 1: conditioned house where there are no cave bears, and I'm
Speaker 1: scared like, just look at a picture of a cave bear.
Speaker 1: That's why you're scared.
Speaker 3: It's also just to bring it into horror movies, as
Speaker 3: I must, like, it's fascinating how so many horror movies
Speaker 3: because the House without a Cave Bear makes me think
Speaker 3: of Barbarian and that so many horror movies are about
Speaker 3: the idea and horror stories before that are about the
Speaker 3: idea of something that wants to kill rye. You coming
Speaker 3: out of the past, yeah, because of you know, traumas
Speaker 3: or misdeeds of the pastor just from the past in
Speaker 3: some way, because we act like the present is all
Speaker 3: about our thriving and having fun and being wholesome. But
Speaker 3: really when we're focusing on that, understand on some level,
Speaker 3: like modernity itself is sort of a denial of death.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, I mean that's like with all
Speaker 1: of these like Silicon Valley dudes who just like were
Speaker 1: born at the right time to get incredibly lucky gambling
Speaker 1: on you know, fucking tech companies and suddenly made a
Speaker 1: billion dollars or whatever. Like none of them can get
Speaker 1: over the fact that they're always scared to despite all
Speaker 1: their money and their bodyguards, and so they they can
Speaker 1: coct these, you know, insane things to like I'm going
Speaker 1: to live forever if I do this, or you know,
Speaker 1: it's this, it's this. It's all this denial of the
Speaker 1: reality and inevitability of death, and also this denial that
Speaker 1: like fundamentally we're descended from like little bitty dudes and
Speaker 1: ladies who there were bigger things around that ate them,
Speaker 1: and so we were scared of those things.
Speaker 3: Like it's only it's it's so recently in human existence
Speaker 3: that we've not getting eaten all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were constantly getting eaten by shit. We were
Speaker 1: scared little guys, and so were our cats, you know,
Speaker 1: like just like that's the same reason, like what you got,
Speaker 1: you get like a duck. Why is my dog anxious
Speaker 1: all the time? Well, it's because it's descended from like
Speaker 1: little guys who had to be worried all the time.
Speaker 1: We all are. It's fine anyway, Sarah. On the seventy
Speaker 1: ninth or whatever anniversary of the day the classic Michael
Speaker 1: Bay movie Pearl Harbor was inspired, a woman named Katie Sorensen,
Speaker 1: thirty years old, visited a Michael's craft store in Pedaluma,
Speaker 1: California with her four year old son and one year
Speaker 1: old daughter. Now, Pedaluma is basically a suburb of San Francisco.
Speaker 1: This is relevant to the tech industry stuff we were
Speaker 1: talking about. The median household income is over one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars a year. This is a wealthy suburb. And
Speaker 1: the crime rate in Pedaluma is about one point four
Speaker 1: times below the national average, so fairly safe place. But
Speaker 1: despite how safe and affluent the suburb she lives in is,
Speaker 1: Katie Sorensen was scared. And Katie Sorenson was also a
Speaker 1: small time influencer on Instagram. She's like a mommy influencer.
Speaker 1: Right now her shit has been thoroughly scrubbed from the
Speaker 1: Internet because of what happened next, But based on context clues,
Speaker 1: I think it's fairly safe to say that none of
Speaker 1: her frequent updates prior to December seventh got that much traction.
Speaker 1: She was, in other words, like a failing momfluencer who
Speaker 1: was desperate to find something that would bring followers to
Speaker 1: her account. And here is the post that she made
Speaker 1: in an attempt to do that.
Speaker 6: This week. My children were the targets of attempted kidnap,
Speaker 6: which is such a weird thing to even vocalize, but
Speaker 6: it happened, and I want to share that story with
Speaker 6: you in an effort to raise awareness as to what
Speaker 6: signs to look for and to just encourage parents to
Speaker 6: be more aware of their surroundings and what is going
Speaker 6: on around them.
Speaker 3: I think right now we are so distracted by.
Speaker 6: Everything that's going on in the world that we are
Speaker 6: kind of have our guards up so much about masks
Speaker 6: and wanting to keep our children safe that way, that
Speaker 6: we're forgetting the most important way to keep them safe,
Speaker 6: and that is with us and to not have them
Speaker 6: take in. So I'm going to share a story an
Speaker 6: effort to raise that awareness, but it's I'm not ready.
Speaker 6: I this is hard for me. I'm not ready to
Speaker 6: share this story, but I know it's important and I
Speaker 6: would rather be uncomfortable, an awkward and get the message
Speaker 6: out sooner than wait until I feel composed.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's probably enough, Sophie. So you can see here
Speaker 1: both if you think back to the chain letters we
Speaker 1: were talking about, right, if you think back to that
Speaker 1: murderer in the backseat chain letter we read, you can
Speaker 1: see the same structural harm hallmarks here. Right, there's the
Speaker 1: claim that like parents are not someone like the person
Speaker 1: that this is meant for. You're not paying enough at
Speaker 1: take to a danger that you're not aware of, but
Speaker 1: it's present. Right, you need to be more aware of
Speaker 1: this danger. You need to be more aware of the
Speaker 1: threat that your kids are always facing. Right, there's this.
Speaker 1: It's framed in this like here are suggestion, like I'm
Speaker 1: telling you this so that you can avoid the stangers,
Speaker 1: that you can protect yourself and your loved ones. And
Speaker 1: from there on, like from the point that you know,
Speaker 1: we stopped that video, the story that she was giving continued,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to read a summary of what she
Speaker 1: said in this. In another video from a local Sonoma paper,
Speaker 1: The Press Democrat, she described being followed by an unknown
Speaker 1: man and woman at the Petaluma Michael's craft store on
Speaker 1: North mcdowe Boulevard from the time she arrived in the
Speaker 1: parking lot with her children until they returned to her car.
Speaker 1: In the parking lot, she said the couple approached her
Speaker 1: as she was putting one of her children in a
Speaker 1: car seat, and what she suspected was an attempt to
Speaker 1: grab the stroller. A separate man who spotted Sorensen and
Speaker 1: recognized she was in danger, stepped into help, she said
Speaker 1: in the videos. Meanwhile, she said the pair drove off
Speaker 1: and like, first off, if you are taking your kid
Speaker 1: to a Michael's craft store, the worst thing that is
Speaker 1: going to happen to you that day is being in
Speaker 1: a Michael's Craft store. Right, they are not going to
Speaker 1: get kidnapped. O, They're unpleasant. I would prefer to be
Speaker 1: kidnapped being in a Michael's craft store. You know, you
Speaker 1: meet better people getting kidnapped than you do to have.
Speaker 4: Michael's Craft store due to you, I don't know nothing
Speaker 4: Michael's Craft store.
Speaker 1: Yes, actually I have. The last guy I needed. I
Speaker 1: needed styrofoam cones. And if you need if you need
Speaker 1: a cone in a shape that's made out of styrophoe
Speaker 1: or something made out of styrofoam, like, that's that's where
Speaker 1: you go, is a Michaelson.
Speaker 4: I've had many pleasant experiences at Michael's Craft store, just saying,
Speaker 4: and was never kidnapped.
Speaker 1: No I I I I only go I roll to
Speaker 1: the Michaels like I'm heading to like downtown Fallujah in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five. You know you've got to be
Speaker 1: ready at a Michael's. That's where shit goes down. It's
Speaker 1: their locker. Yeah, like like rolling into a Michael's and
Speaker 1: that in that hurt locker body armor. This will stop
Speaker 1: them from taking me, yeah.
Speaker 3: And also any glitter from getting on here.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. So Sorensen, in addition to posting
Speaker 1: these videos, the first of which almost immediately gets to
Speaker 1: like two million views, which was had never happened to
Speaker 1: her account before, she makes a kidnapping report to the
Speaker 1: Petaluma police, right, so they deemed this a suspicious person's case.
Speaker 1: So her her video goes viral, she makes her report
Speaker 1: to the police, she publishes a second video, and here's
Speaker 1: there's a number of dumb things that that Sorensen does,
Speaker 1: But the stupidest miss error that she makes in this
Speaker 1: grift is in her second video, she brags that there
Speaker 1: are like in order to market it, she says there
Speaker 1: are details in the video that she didn't give the cops,
Speaker 1: which is like saying, in your viral video, I made
Speaker 1: a false police report. You know, don't do that as
Speaker 1: a as a up. If you're going to commit this crime,
Speaker 1: don't make that mistake. So that said, her marketing is good.
Speaker 1: These videos get about four and a half million views
Speaker 1: combined together. But it's a bad idea from a not
Speaker 1: getting arrested standpoint, because while if you don't make a
Speaker 1: police report, you can get away with this kind of
Speaker 1: thing any amount of time. Right, if you're just like
Speaker 1: posting videos saying my kids were nearly kidnapped, here's what
Speaker 1: to avoid, that's fine. Once you make a police report,
Speaker 1: you have created a situation in which you might get
Speaker 1: in trouble. And Sorensen probably still would have been okay.
Speaker 1: But in addition to making a police report, she made
Speaker 1: the further mistake of accusing specific people who had names
Speaker 1: of having been the wanna be pedophile child abductors. Right,
Speaker 1: so the specific people that she made allegations against were
Speaker 1: another couple that was just at Michael's that day, Eddie
Speaker 1: and Sadie Martinez. Again, like she sees like a Hispanic
Speaker 1: couple in the store, she decides, and she claims in
Speaker 1: her videos that she heard them describing her children on
Speaker 1: the phone with a third party, So she thinks they're
Speaker 1: like spotters talking back to the kidnapping base about like
Speaker 1: these kids they can steal, and.
Speaker 3: Just talk about this operation like the last Yeah, we're
Speaker 3: running on three year old white kids.
Speaker 1: Grab her? Yeah, yeah we got oh we need it,
Speaker 1: We need another like uh this this one's like blonde.
Speaker 1: She's got a jumper on. Do we need another jumper kid? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: go ahead and get her. So she she not only
Speaker 1: does she give these people's identifications, she like describes them
Speaker 1: to the police, but she takes pictures of them in
Speaker 1: the store and she posts it on her Instagram.
Speaker 3: Oh huh.
Speaker 1: So now the Martinez is find out about this because
Speaker 1: these postco viral, and her son comes up to Sadie
Speaker 1: Martinez and is like, hey, mom, somebody claims that you
Speaker 1: were part of a kidnapping gang and Michael's you might
Speaker 1: want to you might want to be aware of this.
Speaker 3: I also love how like, okay, so you're in this
Speaker 3: elite kidnapping gang. I love it. You're like, where should
Speaker 3: we go to pick up kids without being noticed? Yeah,
Speaker 3: Michael's craft Michaels cruise around a store and a mini
Speaker 3: mall with eight thousand cameras in it.
Speaker 1: That's also the least if you were to tell me
Speaker 1: this is a kidnapping gang that specifically abducts like sixty
Speaker 1: four year old women, Right, I'd be like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a Michael's. That's that's definitely where you're gonna abduct,
Speaker 1: like where you go for that, Yeah, or guys who
Speaker 1: are weirdly into model trains, Yeah, you're gonna get a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff out a Michael's. But like, kids
Speaker 1: don't go to Michael's. Children do not like Michaels. It's
Speaker 1: not the it's it's the place to get like kind
Speaker 1: of vaguely unsettling Christmas decorations. That's what I go to
Speaker 1: Michael's for.
Speaker 3: Right, you know kidnappers love yeah, kidnappers, So maybe they're
Speaker 3: there on an errand.
Speaker 1: Anyway, And again, the martinez Is are the kind of
Speaker 1: people who go to to a Michael's. Right, they're like
Speaker 1: a middle aged couple shopping for whatever kind of decorations together.
Speaker 1: But this lady decides like, nope, they're part of a
Speaker 1: kidnapping gang. That's the only reason why you know a
Speaker 1: couple would be at a Michael's craft store is to
Speaker 1: steal my children shop is to steal my white children.
Speaker 1: Now this this happens.
Speaker 3: Nobody wants white children. They're terrible, No, no, horrible.
Speaker 1: You can't see.
Speaker 3: Them anything anymore without them having an incident.
Speaker 1: They all got they all got allergies, you know, which
Speaker 1: is because they're not actually abiding by the primal principles
Speaker 1: and eating nothing but raw liver exactly.
Speaker 3: Otherwise you'll never got big and strong like Thank you,
Speaker 3: man who was not on steroids.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Look, this is why I am getting in
Speaker 1: to the to the liver influencer business. Uh. And I'm
Speaker 1: specifically selling freeze dried polar bear liver now, Sarah, A
Speaker 1: lot of doctors, the same guys in the pharma industrial complex,
Speaker 1: will tell you that even a single bite of polar
Speaker 1: bear liver will kill you because of how concentrated the
Speaker 1: vitamins are. It's basically poison, that's what doctor say. But
Speaker 1: you know, if we've learned one thing from the pandemic,
Speaker 1: it's that you can't trust doctors. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: start selling polar bear liver.
Speaker 3: I think the grenades are going to be more ethical.
Speaker 3: But you know, yeah, forget forget about the Franklin expedition,
Speaker 3: yeah orch ever when they all died from doing that,
Speaker 3: yeah in the future.
Speaker 1: Look, they died because they didn't have a grenade launcher.
Speaker 1: If you have a grenade launcher and you eat the
Speaker 1: polar bear liver, then you're fine. Then all the ever
Speaker 1: fear of death will leave you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's you know, small price to pay. It's
Speaker 3: what five ninety nine a month for your uh, your
Speaker 3: liver club.
Speaker 1: It's like three hundred and forty seven dollars a week.
Speaker 1: What it is not, Sarah, The Feds do not like
Speaker 1: you taking this many livers from this many polar bears.
Speaker 1: It has made a lot of problems for me. But
Speaker 1: I do it for you listeners.
Speaker 3: You know, the cost covers legal fees.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So Sorensen makes this post and accuses the
Speaker 1: Martinez being petophy kidnappers. Right in the middle of that period.
Speaker 1: You remember a couple of years back where there were
Speaker 1: a bunch of viral stories of like white people calling
Speaker 1: the cops on people who are not white for bullshit reasons. Right,
Speaker 1: There's that lady who threatened that black bird watcher in
Speaker 1: Central Park. There was there was a lady who called
Speaker 1: nine one one on like a black family and Oakland
Speaker 1: cooking barbecue in the park. You know, these are kind
Speaker 1: of like again in that like Karen sort of viral
Speaker 1: story theme which is almost as reliable a traffic getter
Speaker 1: as a kidnapping stories. So as soon as the Martinez
Speaker 1: is like came forward and you are like this fucking
Speaker 1: mommy blogger like or mommy influencer or whatever like accused
Speaker 1: us of being a pedophile gang, the virality that had
Speaker 1: been really good for Sorenson's follower a count initially kind
Speaker 1: of came back to bite her in the ass. So
Speaker 1: the Pedaluma police made a timely update being like, you know,
Speaker 1: there are inconsistencies between the police report she filed and
Speaker 1: the story she did on Instagram. Sorensen compounded her mistakes
Speaker 1: by doubling down and was like, I want to see
Speaker 1: these people prosecute you did a'll testify in court that
Speaker 1: they were trying to steal my kids. The Michaels people,
Speaker 1: you know, the cops talk to them and Michaels is like,
Speaker 1: we didn't see anything problematic appen. There's no evidence of
Speaker 1: anything happening. So this all ends in Sorenson getting charged
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one with three misdemeanor counts a false
Speaker 1: report of a crime. She was convicted on one count
Speaker 1: and sentenced earlier this year, Just a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: to twelve months of what's called informal probation, which restricts
Speaker 1: her from using social media and requires a four hour
Speaker 1: implicit bias training. She's going to still to that definitely, Like, look,
Speaker 1: I yeah, hard to argue with the fact that, like
Speaker 1: this lady being off social media is good for her, right,
Speaker 1: she should not be on the internet. None of us
Speaker 1: really should, that.
Speaker 3: Really should, but especially not hers.
Speaker 1: Especially not her.
Speaker 3: But wow, I mean, you know, I don't think harsher
Speaker 3: punishment fixes anything for anybody. It's a question of who
Speaker 3: gets too much rather than who gets too little. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it is, I mean that is, and that's a remarkably
Speaker 3: light sentence for fucking up someone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have that.
Speaker 3: I shall say that.
Speaker 1: She's probably gonna spend I think, like thirty days in
Speaker 1: jail and then she's got like a work release program,
Speaker 1: so you know, it's not I don't know, like what
Speaker 1: I would say is like the proper penalty here or whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm not angry that it's like too harsh, I'll say
Speaker 1: that much.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So, while this has been celebrated online, you know, as
Speaker 1: soon as this this lady got convicted, you know, people
Speaker 1: were obviously like, look, this dumb racist committed fraud, and
Speaker 1: they paid the price. Despite the fact that like, that's
Speaker 1: kind of how the story has gotten, you know, remembered. Now,
Speaker 1: Sorenson had a pretty good reason to think that this
Speaker 1: would work out for her, because, again, fake kidnapping stories
Speaker 1: are one of the most reliable kinds of viral content
Speaker 1: in multiple forms of social media. In twenty nineteen, Snope
Speaker 1: started receiving inquiries about a Facebook meme that warned of
Speaker 1: a sex trafficking plot in Florence, Kentucky. Variations of this
Speaker 1: meme tended to show a photo of a red rose
Speaker 1: stuck to a car door with text like this, There
Speaker 1: have been recent incidents in northern Kentucky about sex traffickers
Speaker 1: leaving roses on victims cars. The roses have a chemical
Speaker 1: on them to make you pass out so they can
Speaker 1: grab you. One incident happened in a Walmart parking lot
Speaker 1: in Florence, Kentucky. Please be careful, ladies.
Speaker 3: First of all, there's a lot worse happening in a
Speaker 3: Walmart parking lot. Oh God, all humanity. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 3: a I'm glad to hear it's not Southern Kentucky, just
Speaker 3: northern Kentucky.
Speaker 1: There you get, yeah, very Kentucky. Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: specific poison that you can put on a rose only
Speaker 1: grows in northern Kentucky, so it's hard to get down.
Speaker 1: Oh well so yeah, yeah, I don't like.
Speaker 3: If I were going to start a sex trafficking ring,
Speaker 3: I would go for a population center. I would be
Speaker 3: worried about starting from scratch. Yeah, but I'm not an expert, so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, we I mean we do talk frequently
Speaker 1: about like what we would do where were a sex
Speaker 1: trafficking rain But I think we can all agree Florence,
Speaker 1: Kentucky is where it was, where you start.
Speaker 3: That's this is like, you know, Michelle remembers the book
Speaker 3: that started the Satanic panic, is like there are two
Speaker 3: centers worldwide, centers for organized Satanism and they are I
Speaker 3: think Geneva, Switzerland and Victoria, b C.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yep, yeah, of course why.
Speaker 3: Did they Was it for the climate? Do they get
Speaker 3: whether it's nice in the woods?
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, yeah, watching.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 1: Comments on one example of this meme, which was shared
Speaker 1: about six and a half thousand times on Facebook, range
Speaker 1: from readers pointing out that it's an obvious fake to
Speaker 1: crying about how to prave the world has become and
Speaker 1: talking about how they always bring a gun with them everywhere.
Speaker 1: Snop's quickly found that the photo for the initial version
Speaker 1: of the meme was a fake. It was pulled from
Speaker 1: an unrelated blog post. It was just like someone, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, people put roses and cardors or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like a here's your Valentine's Day, you know thing,
Speaker 1: honey or whatever like that's I.
Speaker 3: Think, sorry, I hope you see this when you finish
Speaker 3: your shift at Derby's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're like something like that. So what that means, though,
Speaker 1: is because the original photo had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: a kidnapping conspiracy, there was intent behind the fake. Right.
Speaker 1: We can debate as to whether or not maybe Sorensen
Speaker 1: was like someone who just was unreasonably paranoid or whatever,
Speaker 1: although I think she was probably making a conscious fake.
Speaker 1: But this was definitely a conscious fake. This is not
Speaker 1: somebody panicking because their brain got poisoned by viral media
Speaker 1: or whatever. This is someone choosing to knowingly spread a
Speaker 1: false kidnapping story. And I'm going to read another quote
Speaker 1: from that Snopes article, the twenty nineteen Rose Hoax was
Speaker 1: not the first sex trafficking scared to emerge from Kentucky
Speaker 1: in recent years. In late twenty seventeen, some social media
Speaker 1: users in the Louisville and Florence area in the north
Speaker 1: state claimed you have been approached or harassed in public.
Speaker 1: Those purported incidents were quickly linked without evidence, to human trafficking,
Speaker 1: and the local branch of a controversial church was forced
Speaker 1: to defend its member against allegations of sex tracks. And
Speaker 1: this is this is a little where it gets weird
Speaker 1: because a big part of why Kentucky is key to
Speaker 1: that or is center to so many of these memes
Speaker 1: is that there's a church in northern Kentucky called the
Speaker 1: World Mission Society of God. It is absolutely a cult.
Speaker 1: It's one of those weird Seventh Day Adventist cults that
Speaker 1: was founded in South Korea by a guy who declared
Speaker 1: himself Jesus Christ. You know, it's one of those things.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of those, right, and they have been
Speaker 1: It's definitely one of those things where like they've been
Speaker 1: accused of like brainwashing and abuse of psychological control tactics,
Speaker 1: but they don't take people off the street. What's happening
Speaker 1: here is that like this cult is in is local
Speaker 1: people know it's shady, and when folks come up to
Speaker 1: them to prostolytize, they think that they're about to be
Speaker 1: like kidnapped, and so that's part of where all this
Speaker 1: comes from. They haven't accused of human trafficking and a
Speaker 1: bunch of places, but they've never been convicted of anything.
Speaker 1: Police have cleared them. I don't have any desire to
Speaker 1: defend this cult, but I don't think what they're doing
Speaker 1: is like pulling people off the street. I think it's
Speaker 1: what cults do, right, it's normal cult staff.
Speaker 3: All right, maybe our most successful cult scientology, Like you
Speaker 3: don't have to grab people, you just let them wander
Speaker 3: into your center downtown and that you traffic them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a tunnel spider or the snakes that
Speaker 1: were the ancestor of the cucumbers that scare our cats.
Speaker 1: That's I think that works. Yeah, that's moil it's fine.
Speaker 1: So in this case, in the case of these specific
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, the police in Kentucky where have been like
Speaker 1: reasonably good about being like there's no evidence behind this.
Speaker 1: But as a general rule, law enforcement is usually part
Speaker 1: of the hype cycle of these sort of like fake
Speaker 1: kidnapping rumors than they are part of washing the hype cycle.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, Facebook memes started spreading in College Station,
Speaker 1: Texas about a kidnapping plot that involved zip tying a
Speaker 1: victim's windshield wipers together and then abducting the inevitably female
Speaker 1: victim while she struggles to take them off. One version
Speaker 1: of the meme ends with this very chain lettery call
Speaker 1: to action. I've made this post public and would love
Speaker 1: it if you'd share it with your friends and family.
Speaker 1: Please be aware of your surroundings and drive somewhere safe
Speaker 1: with a lot of people around before trying to remove
Speaker 1: them if this happens to you. And the College station
Speaker 1: police started getting queries once this post went viral, and
Speaker 1: so they took to Twitter and they posted on Twitter,
Speaker 1: did you see the post about zip ties and human trafficking.
Speaker 1: We don't know whether traffickers are doing this or if
Speaker 1: it's a distraction technique used by a would be thief.
Speaker 1: Either way, always be aware of your surroundings and hashtags
Speaker 1: see something, say something, so they immediately like buy into
Speaker 1: this and spread this absolute nonsense. And then roughly a
Speaker 1: week later after people get angry at them post an
Speaker 1: update saying to be clear, zip ties we're described to
Speaker 1: officers as having been found in a college station mall
Speaker 1: parking lot. However, it is extremely unlikely this tactic would
Speaker 1: be related to human tres trafficking. Hashtag verify facts before
Speaker 1: sharing alarming posts. That's not how hashtags were College Station
Speaker 1: Police Department. But also you are the ones who didn't
Speaker 1: verify shit before sharing.
Speaker 3: It, so so weird past self three hours ago?
Speaker 1: Do better, don't have done. It's also like, well, why
Speaker 1: else would people be zip tying Whinshill weaberon. I don't know,
Speaker 1: kids are fucking with people. Look, I may have at
Speaker 1: a certain point when I was drunk and younger, stolen
Speaker 1: a bike lock and locked the gates of an apartment complex,
Speaker 1: you know, for no reason other than I was a
Speaker 1: drunk little asshole. You know, maybe I did that. Uh.
Speaker 3: Sometimes never allowed for the existence of drunk little assholes.
Speaker 3: And it's a major plot.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, like and it's again it's it's this Okham's
Speaker 1: razors sort of thing. What is what is the is
Speaker 1: the simplest likeliest explanation Cuman trafficking gangs are carrying out
Speaker 1: a complicated plot or some asshole did a thing.
Speaker 3: By feel like some asshole?
Speaker 5: Is it?
Speaker 3: You know ninety eight percent of the time, and then
Speaker 3: the other two percent it's pretty much the government.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's either an asshole or the government.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Speaking of the government, you know who governs my life.
Speaker 3: Sarah starting my phoneus picked that moment to vibrate.
Speaker 1: Like wow, wow. Well, while while Sarah checks her phone,
Speaker 1: you should check out these advertisements. Wow, those products, My god.
Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a service like that? Not me, Sarah,
Speaker 1: I have to, like the college station police say, if
Speaker 1: I'm going to do the see something say something thing here,
Speaker 1: because you knocked over your recorder and then bent down
Speaker 1: to get it without checking to see if a kidnapping
Speaker 1: gang was any they might have knocked your recorder off
Speaker 1: the desk so that they could get you.
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing is, there's been a kidnapper under
Speaker 3: my bed for three weeks now, but I mean he's
Speaker 3: just passed out under there. I think he just needed
Speaker 3: a place to relax and it's fun. Yeah, I thank
Speaker 3: you again.
Speaker 1: By the way, hashtag kidnappers need shelter too. I don't
Speaker 1: know I'm doing there.
Speaker 3: So it is like, yeah, the kidnapper is a great
Speaker 3: way to see any person in your field of vision
Speaker 3: who you don't want to see as a fellow human being.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, they're kidnappers, they're pedophiles, they're a rape
Speaker 1: gang or whatever. Yeah, it's I mean, that's part of
Speaker 1: how this thing can be utilized by fascists. Right. Fundamentally,
Speaker 1: fascism's power comes from the fact that we're all anxious
Speaker 1: and scared all the time. And if you can convince
Speaker 1: people that you can take that anxiety away by hurting
Speaker 1: a specific group, then you can do a lot of things.
Speaker 1: You can get away with quite a bit, it turns.
Speaker 3: Out, and you can all wear snazzy little outfits because
Speaker 3: apparently what men want is to wear snazzy little outfits,
Speaker 3: but it doesn't occur to them to just do something
Speaker 3: harmless like drill team.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and unfortunately, I feel like we were trying, Like
Speaker 1: for a while, there was the idea that like, what
Speaker 1: if we let men dress up in snazzy little outfits
Speaker 1: and pretend to be you know, soldiers, are fascists, will
Speaker 1: that make them less you know, likely to do real
Speaker 1: world harm? And no, apparently not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we tried it.
Speaker 1: We tried it. We tried it, folks, No sorry.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Another frequent spreader of bullshit kidnapping stories are local radio stations,
Speaker 1: which often find themselves desperate for content that they can
Speaker 1: read life on air to hopefully keep people tuning in,
Speaker 1: and also who often like run little seo websites that
Speaker 1: exist to pull in views based on keywords and shit
Speaker 1: in order to get advertising money. Our employers come into
Speaker 1: this story in a little bit.
Speaker 6: So.
Speaker 1: One example of this comes from February twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: when a local Omaha radio station KFAB posted an article
Speaker 1: on their website titled if you find a water bottle
Speaker 1: on your car drive away, you might be in danger now.
Speaker 3: Wotius ruined Jessica's water bottle?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So the title there is a pretty perfect
Speaker 1: blend of both seo friendly click you know, click getting
Speaker 1: titling and old school chain letter tactics.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The article warned readers that unspecified abductors were leaving water
Speaker 1: bottles on cars to mark their targets. This is a
Speaker 1: tactic used by traffickers and kidnappers to get you to
Speaker 1: exit your vehicle and take whatever is on top of
Speaker 1: the car off. If you have this happen and something
Speaker 1: is on the hood of your car when you come
Speaker 1: back to it, leave it there, drive away. It'll fall
Speaker 1: off on its own. It's also like.
Speaker 3: And I say this in exasperation frequently, but has no
Speaker 3: one seen Henry a portrait of a serial killer. You
Speaker 3: just got to follow somebody home. You don't have to
Speaker 3: do the water bottle trick. Henry is not wasting his
Speaker 3: money on water bottles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that gets expensive and it's bad for the ocean.
Speaker 1: We support here at Coolzone ethical kidnapping. Right, if you're
Speaker 1: going to run a kidnapping gang, I'm abducting people from
Speaker 1: target parking lots, please don't waste water bottles or use
Speaker 1: recycled water bottles. Right, those boxes of water. You can
Speaker 1: put a box of water on top of somebody's car,
Speaker 1: steal them, traffic them, you know, sell them to Algeria. Right,
Speaker 1: you know that's fine, that's it.
Speaker 3: Can't box water do Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: Why when when when we sell enslaved suburban white people
Speaker 1: here at cool Zone Media, each one of them comes
Speaker 1: with a guarantee that no plastic water bottles will be
Speaker 1: used in the abduction. Right, all all all of those,
Speaker 1: it's all those like cans of liquid death that's what
Speaker 1: we do. You know, we have we have a sponsorship
Speaker 1: with the Liquid Death people for our kidnapping gangs.
Speaker 3: It's so hard to ethink we kidnap these days. It's
Speaker 3: great to know people are still doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's worth it. It's worth it, Sarah. You
Speaker 1: know the extra it costs us a little more. It
Speaker 1: does cut down on profits a little bit. But I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, that's our responsibility is a member
Speaker 1: of the community. You know, we want to give back.
Speaker 3: Just kidnapping to make money. You're kidnapping because you love it.
Speaker 1: It's the love of the game, right. It makes me
Speaker 1: so sad that there's all these nickel and diming kidnappers
Speaker 1: out there. Right, you're in the best industry in the world. Baby,
Speaker 1: you know, enjoy it.
Speaker 3: See, that's all there is to it.
Speaker 1: Yeahah, so again, I probably don't need to tell you
Speaker 1: there's zero evidence that kidnappers are using water bottles to
Speaker 1: trick people up.
Speaker 3: Like if you if someone has already entered their car
Speaker 3: and you need them to exit it again to take
Speaker 3: off a water bottle, it seems like you've had ample
Speaker 3: opportunity to kidnap them already. Like if you need to
Speaker 3: kidnap that if.
Speaker 1: It makes fun at them, and I probably don't need
Speaker 1: to tell you that there's zero evidence for this. Snope
Speaker 1: snotes that the origin for this find of the story
Speaker 1: was a TikTok video posted by quote a woman who
Speaker 1: said she had a random encounter with a stranger acting
Speaker 1: oddly around her car in them all parking lot and
Speaker 1: later found a water bottle on the hood of her
Speaker 1: car and posited, based on nothing that these two things
Speaker 1: were somehow related.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you something. I had a weird interaction
Speaker 3: in a parking lot last night at Winko. And you
Speaker 3: know what that was. It's because I was at Winco
Speaker 3: and people at Winco are having a time and we're
Speaker 3: all getting through it. And I mean, parking lots are
Speaker 3: one of the rare spaces where people from different walks
Speaker 3: of life or exact interact, and you can, yeah, you
Speaker 3: can see that in these reactions.
Speaker 1: That's why so many that's why it's all parking lots,
Speaker 1: and that's why, like affluent people have to use the
Speaker 1: same parking lots as everyone else, and they often resent
Speaker 1: that deeply, and you know, they're probably a lot of
Speaker 1: them are the same kind of people who believe that,
Speaker 1: like the existence of homeless folks is like a constant
Speaker 1: threat to their life, right, Like it's the greatest threat
Speaker 1: in the world is that they are homeless people somewhere,
Speaker 1: or that you know, if the more high density, low
Speaker 1: income housing is created in their town, it'll like ruin
Speaker 1: you know, their their life or whatever. Like it's it's this.
Speaker 1: It's the same reason why rich people hate the TSA
Speaker 1: with a special passion that they don't reserve for like
Speaker 1: regular cops. It's because they can't avoid the TSA unless
Speaker 1: they're super super bitch. But like normal, rich people have
Speaker 1: to go through the same TSA that the rest of
Speaker 1: us do, and they hate it. Yeah, anyway, it's whatever,
Speaker 1: I like, I it's I think a lot of this
Speaker 1: probably is the result of people who don't normally go
Speaker 1: out in the world in a situation where they don't
Speaker 1: have total control, like you know, and they encounter someone
Speaker 1: who is either having a mental health crisis or just
Speaker 1: is a kind of person they wouldn't socialize with normally,
Speaker 1: and they this this sets off that part in their
Speaker 1: brain that like corresponds to the part of the brain
Speaker 1: that gets set off in a cat that sees a cucumber, right,
Speaker 1: and they and they feel like I'm in danger. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm in danger because something like unfamiliar has occurred. And
Speaker 1: then the pattern making parts of our brain like put
Speaker 1: together in the rest of it, right, Like, Oh, I
Speaker 1: found a water bottle on my car, and thirty minutes
Speaker 1: earlier I saw a person who was like talking to themselves,
Speaker 1: and so this must be evidence of an international kidnapping
Speaker 1: gay and so who would.
Speaker 3: Put a water bottle on my car but someone having
Speaker 3: a mental health episode who clearly is therefore in the
Speaker 3: perfect position to run a kidnapping ring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3: So and it's like, I mean, think of when little
Speaker 3: kids meet somebody new, yeah, and that they feel unsure
Speaker 3: and they are freaked out, and then they need a
Speaker 3: second to warm up, and then they take it and
Speaker 3: they don't develop a conspiracy theory about that person, which
Speaker 3: I think is really charming of them.
Speaker 1: What I love, Sarah, what makes me really happy and
Speaker 1: feel good about the future, is thinking about how many
Speaker 1: of the people who make these little conspiracy theories based
Speaker 1: on anodyne shit then repeat those conspiracy theories to their
Speaker 1: children and say, you must be worried at all times,
Speaker 1: there's always there's kidnapping gangs everywhere. Mommy saved you from
Speaker 1: kidnappers today by noticing the water bottle and then pulling
Speaker 1: her glock out in the parking lot. You know, like,
Speaker 1: it's great, it's cool that that happens.
Speaker 3: Great for the kids. It's known to shit to be
Speaker 3: great for the kids. My god, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's dope. So what we are seeing here in that
Speaker 1: story I just related is evidence of the kind of
Speaker 1: food chain that these fake crime kidnapping panic stories exist in.
Speaker 1: So the story is cooked up initially by a mix
Speaker 1: of people who are just a little out of their
Speaker 1: minds or by actual bad actors wanting to spread conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories and paranoia and stuff on Facebook or TikTok. Oftentimes
Speaker 1: it's people who like are spreading stuff they know is
Speaker 1: not true because they know we'll get them followers. And
Speaker 1: then the laziest actors in our media ecosystem, the people
Speaker 1: putting together these shitty little seo grabbing articles for like
Speaker 1: local news sites and shit, take this viral story, churn
Speaker 1: out a quick article with no fact checking, and that
Speaker 1: helps the story spread even for the right and it
Speaker 1: makes it seem like it's a real thing, because now
Speaker 1: look that's a news station that's covering this thing. There
Speaker 1: must be an epidemic. I found one example of one
Speaker 1: of these articles on Distractify, which exists making taking shit
Speaker 1: that went viral on the Internet and turning it into
Speaker 1: very low quality content. The article seems to have been
Speaker 1: inspired by a TikTok video posted by a woman named
Speaker 1: Aaron Dawn, who recorded a four minute video about coming
Speaker 1: back from a shopping trip and finding a sheet of
Speaker 1: paper on her car door. She claims was soaked in
Speaker 1: a chemical that injured her. Now, Aaron provides no photographic No,
Speaker 1: she may, we'll get to that. But like, she provided
Speaker 1: no evidence that this had happened at all. But she
Speaker 1: did film a recreation of finding the paper on her car,
Speaker 1: where like, she put a piece of paper on her
Speaker 1: car and filmed herself finding it.
Speaker 3: You're a Robert Stack. This is not unsolved, mister.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so everyone gets to be Robert Stack. Now
Speaker 1: that's what TikTok has given us. God, so she rates
Speaker 1: over this recreation that she films. When I saw it,
Speaker 1: I just picked it up with my fingernails and I
Speaker 1: tossed it out. I didn't touch the napkin, but guess what,
Speaker 1: I still opened the door with my fingertips. I asked
Speaker 1: my husband, did you put a napkin in my door?
Speaker 1: And he was like no, So immediately I started looking
Speaker 1: for hand sanitizer. Now she experienced no real symptoms because
Speaker 1: poisons like this are so difficult to make an apply
Speaker 1: that they functionally don't exist. Right, it could someone make
Speaker 1: a poison that you could like put on a napkin
Speaker 1: and it could impact, yes, But it's like that's like
Speaker 1: the CIA, right, like random kidd like were like Putin
Speaker 1: or Putin and like here's the thing, like Putin has
Speaker 1: done it a few times, right, but like it didn't
Speaker 1: work fair, Like the wrong people got got a lot
Speaker 1: of the time. Like if you look up, we've covered
Speaker 1: like the fucking Sidney Gottlieb. I think he was the
Speaker 1: CIA's poisoner in chief, and like they were bad at it,
Speaker 1: like they kept trying to make these poisons and like
Speaker 1: usually it would not work fair. That's why Fidel Castro
Speaker 1: was still alive. None of this stuff works very well.
Speaker 1: It certainly does not work reliably enough to be abducting
Speaker 1: people from target parking lots as like a casual deal.
Speaker 1: So he is on what is her name, Aaron Dawn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, let's use like really top narc stuff
Speaker 3: on Aaron.
Speaker 1: Now. It's one of those. It does remind me a
Speaker 1: little bit about like right after nine to eleven happened
Speaker 1: to kids in my middle school, where like al Qaeda
Speaker 1: is gonna get our school next, and it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I don't think. I don't think Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden is aware of Plano, Texas. Like we're probably
Speaker 1: good actually, but it is like, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that it it like after nine to eleven, people believe
Speaker 1: that kind of shit because they've just seen an insane
Speaker 1: thing happen on television, right, And I think part of
Speaker 1: why folks are more primed to believe stuff like this
Speaker 1: is they you know, they're on the news and they
Speaker 1: hear like, oh, all of these cops you know, had
Speaker 1: seizures because they were near a fentanel thing, and like
Speaker 1: that's bullshit, that's not real. But like a lot of
Speaker 1: the cops who are having these reactions, like a lot
Speaker 1: of them are lying, but a lot of them are
Speaker 1: just people like they bought it right, Like they're having
Speaker 1: a hysterical reaction because they are also dumb little monkeys
Speaker 1: who are scared all the time, and someone gave them
Speaker 1: a focus for it, right, And Aaron, whether she's a
Speaker 1: con artist or a dumb little monkey, claims that she
Speaker 1: had horrible reactions as a result of this poison that
Speaker 1: her handwet numbs. She had her husband take there. And
Speaker 1: it's really interesting because like her husband, she had her
Speaker 1: call nine one one, and she specifically says that they
Speaker 1: called then one because they weren't in their normal area
Speaker 1: and didn't know where the nearest er was, which I
Speaker 1: also feel like says a lot about them, where like
Speaker 1: we're always thinking about where the nearest er is, you know,
Speaker 1: but we left our normal area. You know, don't ever
Speaker 1: leave your normal area because then you won't know where
Speaker 1: that like when you get poisoned by kidnappers's.
Speaker 3: Very like terry or lie. Yeah, I just like to
Speaker 3: be in my area and it's like okay, but yeah,
Speaker 3: that means that your fears when you're outside your area
Speaker 3: aren't necessarily about what's really happening.
Speaker 1: Yes, she claims that the doctors at the hospital diagnosed
Speaker 1: her with acute poisoning from an unknown substance. Karen, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm mainly interested in this because of the way that
Speaker 1: this gets covered by Distractify who they dress their their
Speaker 1: article about Aaron's bullshit, and like I would say, it's
Speaker 1: like the panoply of journalism, right, they put journalism's clothes
Speaker 1: on this story, but it's not really journalism. Here's how
Speaker 1: the article opens. According to the ACLU, there are anywhere
Speaker 1: from fourteen thou five hundred to seventeen thousand, five hundred
Speaker 1: people trafficked in the United States each and every year.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, California reported the highest number of cases
Speaker 1: in the country, with fifteen hundred and seven people trafficked
Speaker 1: in the state alone. A staggering thirty two percent of
Speaker 1: people who are trafficked were purportedly done so by an
Speaker 1: inanimate partner of theirs. However, there have been a growing
Speaker 1: number of kidnapping stories attempts circulating on social media that
Speaker 1: are tied to trafficking. See like, hey, you want to
Speaker 1: know what all those most of those human trafficking cases
Speaker 1: are and like, fucking Californian whatever, it's not suburban moms
Speaker 1: getting abducted in parking lots. It's the people who pick
Speaker 1: your fucking fruit, right, Like, it's it's that that is
Speaker 1: super common and obviously is a huge problem, but it's
Speaker 1: not the kind of problem that you can make Aaron
Speaker 1: Dawn care about, right because she she wants to go
Speaker 1: on social media. Grapes, Yeah, grapes. So again, it's also like,
Speaker 1: let's start with you know, a huge the biggest chunk
Speaker 1: of people who are traffic are done by a lot
Speaker 1: are trafficked by an intimate partner. Like that's how trafficking
Speaker 1: actually occurs. However, we've seen a lot of stories on
Speaker 1: social media, so like, that's literally like all that there
Speaker 1: is to this this claim. Anyway. The article then brings
Speaker 1: up the tragic case of Eliza Fletcher, who was an
Speaker 1: actual young woman who was abducted and murdered while jogging
Speaker 1: not all that long ago, and again, shit happens, right,
Speaker 1: Tragic stores like this do occur, but not often. There's
Speaker 1: three hundred and eighty million people in this country or whatever, right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's very sad about what happened to Eliza Fletcher. Probably
Speaker 1: not something you should take general like information about your
Speaker 1: life on like.
Speaker 3: And also that it's a some asshole crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like definitely a problem, definitely bad, not evidence
Speaker 1: that you are in danger, you know, And it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's frustrating because like the reasonable way to respond to
Speaker 1: Eliza Fletchers, like, yeah, you should try to, like, you know,
Speaker 1: be aware of your surroundings and stuff, because shit does happen.
Speaker 1: You should generally, you know, keep keep an eye out,
Speaker 1: you know, don't lose yourself completely, and you know, whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing, you know, have some situational awareness. But that
Speaker 1: always gets turned into like be frightened at all times
Speaker 1: when you really it's like, you know, look both ways
Speaker 1: before crossing the street, you know, but.
Speaker 3: I don't and assume the absolute worst about everybody, like
Speaker 3: not just the worst within the context of the situation,
Speaker 3: but the worst thing a person could possibly do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like so that twenty eighteen story of
Speaker 1: a shirt on a car being used to market is
Speaker 1: repeated in the article as evidence that these things are
Speaker 1: a quote common ploy of traffickers. And that's an example
Speaker 1: of kind of the article, you know, form of spreading
Speaker 1: this disinformation. Another good example of like how this shit
Speaker 1: spreads is this twenty twenty one TikTok video posted by
Speaker 1: a user named mimes there.
Speaker 7: So I went to church on Sunday for about an
Speaker 7: hour and I came back out and there was melted cheese.
Speaker 3: On my car.
Speaker 7: So I called my friend and her mom to come
Speaker 7: help me scrape it off. And as soon as they came,
Speaker 7: this white van with like stickers and they were wearing
Speaker 7: masks smoking, pulled out of a parking space that was
Speaker 7: two spots away from me, and they went to the
Speaker 7: other parking lot across the street where they could watch
Speaker 7: us clean off the cheese. And here's a.
Speaker 1: Picture of the cheese.
Speaker 7: So this is the cheese like halfway scraped off two pieces.
Speaker 7: It would literally took an hour for me to scrape
Speaker 7: all this off. I personally had no idea that they
Speaker 7: were using this as a tactic to take people now.
Speaker 7: And if I hadn't called my friend that I could
Speaker 7: have easily been taken within the hour that it took
Speaker 7: me to take off the cheese. And this happened at
Speaker 7: my church, So I can't even imagine where they're trying
Speaker 7: to use it.
Speaker 1: An hour to scrape off the cheese. It is a
Speaker 1: slice of crafted America.
Speaker 3: So drive home, Drive home, honey. The cheese.
Speaker 4: Also, it was it was, it was like a craft
Speaker 4: slice like it's like a sie I don't know how
Speaker 4: that could take that long.
Speaker 3: There's multiple humans, but go on, people live in a
Speaker 3: universe without little brothers.
Speaker 1: No, obviously we all saw the numbers on that video.
Speaker 1: It's been shared thousands and thousands in towns, the huge
Speaker 1: It's very it went super viral. It is. There's a
Speaker 1: lot going on there, like the fact that she's like,
Speaker 1: these people in a white van were wearing masks and smoking?
Speaker 1: Were they doing both of those things? Mims? Really, how
Speaker 1: does one do that?
Speaker 3: Maybe there were some lefties having a cigarette.
Speaker 1: You never know, Yeah, it was Antifa. The fact that
Speaker 1: it happens in her like, right, I think it's again,
Speaker 1: I don't know. These things are kind of an even
Speaker 1: mix between people who are just looking for conspiracies everywhere
Speaker 1: because the Internet has so thoroughly damaged them and people
Speaker 1: who are lying to get virality and followers. I don't
Speaker 1: know which one, Mims. Is The fact that she says
Speaker 1: it's in a church parking lot, like even at church,
Speaker 1: you're not safe, right, Like everywhere's dangerous. You know they're
Speaker 1: coming after Christians, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 3: Oh, definitely not safe. I also wonder to what extent
Speaker 3: this is about, like having an experience that you don't
Speaker 3: understand the logic of, like there's cheese on your car
Speaker 3: if this actually happened or something like that, and being
Speaker 3: trained to see any object in this case as a
Speaker 3: threat and then being like and then leaning into it
Speaker 3: when you want and maybe like elaborating and embroidering, because
Speaker 3: there's like this huge incentive both to go with your
Speaker 3: fear and then to like tell this ridiculous story about
Speaker 3: it because it'll, you know, because not only is it altruistic,
Speaker 3: but it's going to get you attention and followers.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, and uh yeah, that's that's cool. So I
Speaker 1: look into Mims because I'm trying to figure out which
Speaker 1: one is she. Is she someone who's who's just terminally pilled,
Speaker 1: or is she somebody who's you know, run a running
Speaker 1: a con Her oldest video is from the start of
Speaker 1: the pandemic. She's in a car looking at a friend
Speaker 1: who's sitting in the car next to her. Pretty normal
Speaker 1: snapshot of the loneliness that came from that period of time. Right.
Speaker 1: There are videos where she does like her makeup, or
Speaker 1: she dances, or she lifts weights, but all of those
Speaker 1: on her account get between a couple of hundred and
Speaker 1: at most two or three thousand views. She has one
Speaker 1: video of herself in kind of like form fitting athletic
Speaker 1: wear hugging a friend dressed similarly with texts that says
Speaker 1: when you hear big titties are out displayed. That's got
Speaker 1: twenty two thousand views. It is her second most popular video.
Speaker 1: Several of her videos are just like athletes try dancing,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that where she's with a friend
Speaker 1: and they're like doing dances or whatever. Normal TikTok, I
Speaker 1: would say, normal shit. That looks like attempts to go
Speaker 1: viral on TikTok. Right, this looks like the account of
Speaker 1: someone who's trying out stuff to be an online influencer. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try doing the makeup, see if that works.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try doing dancing videos or workout and
Speaker 1: see if like that goes viral for me. And none
Speaker 1: of that stuff really took off, Like I said, her
Speaker 1: biggest other video is that like when you hear big
Speaker 1: titties are out? Video at twenty two thousand views. This
Speaker 1: if you find a slice of cheese on your car
Speaker 1: video has four hundred and forty six thousand videos and
Speaker 1: I Suspect views, and I Suspect is responsible for most
Speaker 1: of her four thousand or so followers. Mims's post was
Speaker 1: duly picked up by the bottom feeders of the Internet,
Speaker 1: in this case our corporate overlord's at iHeartRadio, who posted
Speaker 1: an article titled if you find a slice of cheese
Speaker 1: on your car, you might be in danger. There's no
Speaker 1: attempt to even provide journalistic context on this one, just
Speaker 1: the line. It might sound silly, but a TikTok user
Speaker 1: named Mimi is very serious about her experience. Great great,
Speaker 1: great work, guys. Now, all of this would be easy
Speaker 1: to ignore as just more harmless disinformation if it weren't
Speaker 1: for shit like Phoebe copis murdering Daniel Garcia right like that,
Speaker 1: that's the grounding. This is all like seems like silliest
Speaker 1: Internet bullshit, but like this affects people. It causes them
Speaker 1: to think they are in danger, and they take steps
Speaker 1: to defend themselves, and that sometimes leads to people getting
Speaker 1: It's the same as those like stories of like folks
Speaker 1: shooting at people who back into their driveway to like
Speaker 1: turn their car around. Right, people die from this shit.
Speaker 1: And I guarantee you sometimes it's Fox, sometimes it's TikTok,
Speaker 1: sometimes face, but it's all this shit that's everywhere, right,
Speaker 1: So you know, stuff like this have part of what's
Speaker 1: going to spread cases like this, and what's going to
Speaker 1: spread like is the fact that stories like this are
Speaker 1: everywhere because they're a profitable industry, right, this is a
Speaker 1: business spreading this shit. I found this video on TikTok
Speaker 1: while I was doing my research for that article that's
Speaker 1: going to be on my substack Chatterzone that's got six
Speaker 1: point nine million views, and it's just a collection of
Speaker 1: everything we've talked about, like, watch this thing nice.
Speaker 2: If you see this, run. If you see money in
Speaker 2: your windshield, you need to run away fast. They're trying
Speaker 2: to get you to get out of your car and
Speaker 2: grab the money. If you see this, you need to
Speaker 2: get in your car some other way. This is a
Speaker 2: sign that this is probably laced with something. People's hands
Speaker 2: have gone numb, they have passed out. It is a trick.
Speaker 2: Do not touch this.
Speaker 3: If you see this. They have labeled this. This is
Speaker 3: what they're labeling.
Speaker 2: They're saying, this is a woman who is alone, that
Speaker 2: someone has been watching you. They see you're alone. They
Speaker 2: think you're vulnerable. You need to go home, and you
Speaker 2: need to cut this off. This is meant to pause
Speaker 2: you so that someone from underneath the car can cut
Speaker 2: your achilles heel and so that you're distracted, gives them
Speaker 2: enough time. Something that looks the most innocent. But you're
Speaker 2: gonna notice this one. It's gonna be placed here after
Speaker 2: you're already.
Speaker 4: In your car.
Speaker 2: Your goal is to get you out of your car.
Speaker 2: You just want to check your surroundings, okay, because there's
Speaker 2: so many different ways.
Speaker 1: For you don't want to get out of your car
Speaker 1: and be texting.
Speaker 2: You don't want to go to your car before.
Speaker 1: This has so many views, it's been shared so widely.
Speaker 1: It's just again it's it's let's make people scared and
Speaker 1: then sell them weapons using affiliate links on my TikTok.
Speaker 1: Six point nine million views. It's literally everything from the Snopes,
Speaker 1: Like I think this this was definitely made by someone
Speaker 1: who went through all of those Snopes collections of like
Speaker 1: different of like you know, zip tie on the door,
Speaker 1: piece of cheese, you know, fucking napkin stuck it, and
Speaker 1: they just made a video to scare people collecting all
Speaker 1: that shit they x the disinformation debunking stuff as a source.
Speaker 1: Like that's what this lady did. I hate, I hate
Speaker 1: this person.
Speaker 3: It's god. Yeah, it's very crafty. I'll say that she's
Speaker 3: crafty like ice is cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's crafty, crafty like ice is cold. And you
Speaker 1: know who else is crafty? The sponsors of our show,
Speaker 1: who definitely don't have anything to do with that article
Speaker 1: we talked about earlier. We're gonna get in trouble for
Speaker 1: that one, Sophie. Nah, all right, well we are back anyway.
Speaker 1: So it's cool. And in addition to causing you know,
Speaker 1: we've talked about how all of these kind of paranoid,
Speaker 1: paranoid conspiracy theories about kidnapping, in addition to causing like
Speaker 1: you know, brain damage to some people, this stuff provides
Speaker 1: cover for other kinds of scammers. And this brings me
Speaker 1: to a particular new kind of con that's been enabled
Speaker 1: by modern AI tools. This is fun, Sarah, You're gonna
Speaker 1: like this. You ever heard of fake kidnapping scams or
Speaker 1: virtual kidnappings?
Speaker 5: Ooh?
Speaker 3: I think as like a phishing strategy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the idea has existed for a while. I found
Speaker 1: a twenty fourteen warning from the San Antonio FBI Press Office,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to read that to you. Now, this
Speaker 1: is how it existed. This other stuff worked prior to AI. Right.
Speaker 1: Over the past several years, San Antonio FBI, along with
Speaker 1: many state and local enforcement law enforcement partners, received reports
Speaker 1: from the public regarding extortion schemes, often referred to as
Speaker 1: virtual kidnappings. These schemes typically involve an individual or criminal
Speaker 1: organization who contacts a victim via telephone and demands payment
Speaker 1: for the return of a kidnapped family member or friend,
Speaker 1: while no actual kidnapping has taken place. The callers often
Speaker 1: use co conspirators to convince their victims of the legitimacy
Speaker 1: of the threat. For example, a caller might attempt to
Speaker 1: convince a victim that his daughter was kidnapped by having
Speaker 1: a young female scream for help in the background during
Speaker 1: the call. Now, that's like not an easy con to
Speaker 1: pull off in the pre AI era, Like not only
Speaker 1: do you have to have like multiple people, but like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, let me talk to them, right, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to give money to a kidnapper if I
Speaker 1: can't hear from the person kidnapped. You know, but AI
Speaker 1: has made that possible. Particularly, the thing that's made it
Speaker 1: possible is both the existence of various AI tools that
Speaker 1: can let you kind of like clone or fake a voice,
Speaker 1: and the fact that basically every young person is posting
Speaker 1: videos on TikTok that have their voice all the time,
Speaker 1: right like, so there is It provides you with the
Speaker 1: ability to mimic, particularly people's kids, with pretty reasonable accuracy.
Speaker 1: And that's what we've started to see. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: post for you another TikTok video, this one not spreading disinformation. Well, kit,
Speaker 1: well here, I'm just gonna play.
Speaker 5: This thing new scam alert. I usually don't fall for scams,
Speaker 5: but they got me listen to this. So I got
Speaker 5: a call from mom mom last night around seven pm.
Speaker 5: The call came in, It showed her number, it showed
Speaker 5: her name. How I have it stored in my phone?
Speaker 5: I answered, Hey, Mom, what's up? And I heard my
Speaker 5: mom's voice like kind of fading away, like someone was
Speaker 5: taking the phone away from her, and I heard like weeks.
Speaker 5: This guy then gets on the phone and he goes, hey,
Speaker 5: I have your mom, and if you don't send me money,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna kill this bitch, and I was.
Speaker 1: Uh, okay, who is this?
Speaker 5: Like what is going on now? Mind you, My mom
Speaker 5: works in home health, so her job is to go
Speaker 5: to patients' homes and do self assessments. So in my head,
Speaker 5: I'm like, it's happened, like a patient has taken her
Speaker 5: hostage and this is for real. And the guy on
Speaker 5: the phone, him and his girlfriend or whoever she was,
Speaker 5: were such good actors, so he's like yelling at me
Speaker 5: and really pressuring me to get this money sent back.
Speaker 1: So like, first off, I wanted to clip put this
Speaker 1: because it is an example of a viral TikTok posts
Speaker 1: that's not spreading disinformation. This is a real thing. I
Speaker 1: have no reason to believe this. Woe's not telling the truth.
Speaker 1: And there is evidence from good like reputable journalism that
Speaker 1: fake kidnapping scams like this have become more common because
Speaker 1: with these kind of tools, you can fake someone's voice,
Speaker 1: you know, and all you needed is a second to
Speaker 1: say honey, help me or whatever, and then a person
Speaker 1: gets on and you do the you do the con
Speaker 1: from there, right, and like you know this lady, I
Speaker 1: think did find out what was happening, But like you
Speaker 1: can see, like It's interesting because, like she says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, my mom's job is going into people's houses.
Speaker 1: She's the home healthcare worker. So I've always, in the
Speaker 1: back of my mind been worried that something might happen
Speaker 1: to her. Right, So it's both this, I've always everyone's
Speaker 1: always anxious because we're we're stupid monkeys. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: we all have things that we you know, fears that
Speaker 1: are are con cognizant. Right if you have like a
Speaker 1: loved one who's got a long commute or whatever, you
Speaker 1: worry about him dying in a car crash or something.
Speaker 1: In this case, you know this this this like woman
Speaker 1: gets like these people target her for whatever reason, And like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's tough because like, you're not stupid. If you hear
Speaker 1: your loved one's voice and someone say send me money,
Speaker 1: I have dumb or gullible for falling for that. That's
Speaker 1: an insane thing to have to be worried about, right that,
Speaker 1: Like someone can fake your mom's voice. That's nuts. That's
Speaker 1: like like again, it's and it's but it's also I
Speaker 1: do think the climate of all of these fake stories
Speaker 1: makes decent people more likely to fall for stuff like this,
Speaker 1: because they're already prime to believe there's kidnapping gangs everywhere, right.
Speaker 3: And because everywhere you look there's something you've never heard
Speaker 3: of happening, So in a sense, why not this other thing.
Speaker 1: This is why my general response to anyone who calls
Speaker 1: me is go ahead kill them. I don't care. I
Speaker 1: say that no matter why they call it.
Speaker 4: That's actually how you answer the phone.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm like, hey, Robert, and you're like, go ahead
Speaker 4: kill them.
Speaker 1: Fucking cut their throat. I don't give a shit.
Speaker 4: I'm like, a, is the episode good? Can I publish it?
Speaker 5: Death?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So anyway, I think, Sophie, but I don't want to
Speaker 3: do that.
Speaker 1: Like, again, you don't need to be worried about kidnapping,
Speaker 1: but you should, as we're going to talk about, you
Speaker 1: should be worried about getting scammed because it's scams are
Speaker 1: more common than they've ever been, and they are more
Speaker 1: tailored towards individual people because of the kind of tools
Speaker 1: that exist. The first of these scams have started hitting victims,
Speaker 1: as I've stated. In April of this year, in Arizona,
Speaker 1: family received a phone call from their fifteen year old daughter,
Speaker 1: who sounded distraught and handed the phone over to a
Speaker 1: man who told them, you call the police, you call anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pop her so full of drugs. I'm going
Speaker 1: to have my way with her, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: drop her off in Mexico. And you see, again, it's
Speaker 1: all the shit we've been talking about since Phoebe Copus.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: There's kidnapping gangs. There's drugs that people have that will
Speaker 1: knock folks out. You know, probably a little bit of fentanyl,
Speaker 1: conspiracy shit mix some of that. There's Mexico, right, you
Speaker 1: bring up Mexico that scares people. Yeah, yeah, Like all
Speaker 1: of these it's all all there now. Thankfully in this case,
Speaker 1: this the girl who like got her voice cloned for
Speaker 1: this scam, Her mom was like at a public place,
Speaker 1: so she gets the call and she freaks out like
Speaker 1: you do when you think your daughter's been kidnapped. Very
Speaker 1: reasonable time to freak out. But other people around her
Speaker 1: they call nine one one and like have the presence
Speaker 1: of mind to call her husband and be like, is
Speaker 1: your daughter around and he's like, yeah, she's at home.
Speaker 1: They're like okay, ma'am, you're we're good. Like something else
Speaker 1: that's happening here, you know. But you know it that
Speaker 1: illustrates how advanced these scams have become. The mom in
Speaker 1: this case later told local news it was completely her voice,
Speaker 1: it was her inflection, it was the way she would
Speaker 1: have cried. I never doubted for one second it was her.
Speaker 1: That's the freaky part that really got me to my core. Yeah, which, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be very frightening, right, very most people. Now
Speaker 1: you've been you're aware that this is a thing. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, kidnappers in a fuck or
Speaker 1: it's kind of like hijackers in a plane with box cutters. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a real threat when it's never happened before. Now,
Speaker 1: if anyone tried to like take over a plane with
Speaker 1: box cutters, everyone the plane's going to beat them to
Speaker 1: death with luggage, right, Like it's yeah, yeah exactly. But
Speaker 1: you know, when you're not aware that this is a scam,
Speaker 1: of course, it is fucking horrifying, harrowing, And that brings
Speaker 1: us to the Hidden Bastard for this week's episode. I
Speaker 1: know it's taken several hours to get to this point, Sarah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: We're already a thousand years old. It's getting a little older.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly we are. We are ancients, as old as
Speaker 1: the trees. I am. I am an int you know,
Speaker 1: I remember? Yeah anyway, whatever, So yeah, obviously, like Phoebe
Speaker 1: Copis did a horrible thing, But the part of why
Speaker 1: she did that horrible thing was that she had been
Speaker 1: kind of this ever present ecosystem of you are in danger,
Speaker 1: you are at risk, people are attacking you. Like most
Speaker 1: people aren't going to murder someone, you know, even if
Speaker 1: they buy into that stuff, but a certain number of
Speaker 1: people will murder people as a result of this kind
Speaker 1: of shit, right, And I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that feeds into that ever present feeling that you're at risk,
Speaker 1: that you're under attack, you have to defend yourself is
Speaker 1: that all of us are under attack at all times
Speaker 1: through every single form of communication that we own. The
Speaker 1: attack is not kidnapping gangs, it's not human traffickers. But like,
Speaker 1: look at how many emails you've gotten today and comb
Speaker 1: through your spam filter, see how many of them are
Speaker 1: attempts for people to fish you or to like how
Speaker 1: many text messages or phone calls did you get today
Speaker 1: that are from scam? Likely? You know, how many like
Speaker 1: pieces of things like shit did you get in the mail.
Speaker 3: Like I got to call this morning from a lovely
Speaker 3: British robot who wanted to sell me how health insurance?
Speaker 1: Exactly? That is an attack, right, That's not an attack
Speaker 1: like a kidnapping. It's not something, but it is. That
Speaker 1: is someone trying to harm you, right, like Sarah, someone
Speaker 1: tried to hurt you today through the phone. You know,
Speaker 1: someone is trying to hurt all of us every day
Speaker 1: through our phones and various other methods of communication.
Speaker 4: And what did we learn? How is Sarah supposed to
Speaker 4: answer the phone from now on?
Speaker 3: Kill the hostage, Kill the hostage.
Speaker 1: That's right, we all really Sarah, all of this. We
Speaker 1: could all learn a lot from the movie Speed right,
Speaker 1: put a bullet in that hostage's kneecap, do what Keanu
Speaker 1: would do.
Speaker 3: It's only Jeff Daniels.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was Jeff Daniels. Huh. I like him.
Speaker 1: So I feel like the fact that we are all
Speaker 1: constantly being attacked by con artists, you know, even if
Speaker 1: the vast majority of those attacks fail, even if the
Speaker 1: vast majority those are obvious and laughable, contributes to the
Speaker 1: mindset that makes people more likely to believe this kind
Speaker 1: of kidnapping shit, Right, we're paranoid. There's reason to be paranoid,
Speaker 1: but it's not there's nothing fun in being like Well,
Speaker 1: because of a variety of different kinds of deregulation and
Speaker 1: just plain old failures to foresee any need for regulation,
Speaker 1: every method of communication we have has been infested by
Speaker 1: con artists and scammers to a degree that has never
Speaker 1: been present in human history before, and that contributes to
Speaker 1: a mindset where people don't trust anybody else. Right, instead
Speaker 1: of saying that, like we want to believe, it's just
Speaker 1: sexier to believe that you're like the center of a
Speaker 1: taken story, right, thanks, Yeah.
Speaker 3: And instead of being attacked by one thousand tiny scammers
Speaker 3: every week who are trying to make a little bit
Speaker 3: of money. It's it's like a fabulous espionage kidnapping ring.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's much sexier, and it's but I do want
Speaker 1: to kind of I want to spend a little bit
Speaker 1: of time here at the end talking about how bad
Speaker 1: this has gotten in numbers, because I think this is
Speaker 1: something everyone's sort of aware that we're all getting approached
Speaker 1: by scammers more often, But like, there's this isn't just
Speaker 1: a thing that you think because it happens to you
Speaker 1: might be more common, this is objectively happening. Phishing scams
Speaker 1: hit a historic high in Q four of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: with four point seven million reported attacks, which is a
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty percent increase since twenty nineteen. A
Speaker 1: research right up I found from a research firm Compaatech
Speaker 1: noted quote October twenty twenty two saw more than one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand unique email subject lines, the largest number ever recorded.
Speaker 1: This shows that hackers are more likely than ever to
Speaker 1: tailor their approach rather than using the same template for
Speaker 1: every victim. This is one of these things that like
Speaker 1: the increasing development of these AI tools has allowed, is
Speaker 1: it makes it easier to kind of instead of like
Speaker 1: going for the lowest common denominator, actually tailoring stuff for individuals. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can't do a fake kidnapping scam where you're cloning
Speaker 1: somebody's mom's voice without like target that person. You're not
Speaker 1: like randomly going after that, right It's because it's it
Speaker 1: takes some effort to clone a voice like that. You
Speaker 1: have to know something about the person. And this is
Speaker 1: what we're seeing across the board, not only a growth
Speaker 1: in the number of scams targeting Americans, but smarter and
Speaker 1: more personalized scams. It remains true that about ninety five
Speaker 1: percent of all cybersecurity issues are the result of human error.
Speaker 1: But I think that statistic is actually the way it
Speaker 1: is framed is problematic because when you say ninety five
Speaker 1: percent of cybersecurity issues the result of human error, what
Speaker 1: I think most people hear is that like, oh, a
Speaker 1: dummy clicked a link they shouldn't have clicked. What a dummy? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's a human error. If you wire someone money because
Speaker 1: you believe your mom has been kidnapped, that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's not understandable if you're not aware of the con right. See.
Speaker 1: And the fact that people feel like if I fall
Speaker 1: for something, if I get conned, I did something dumb,
Speaker 1: means they don't report when they're victimized a lot because
Speaker 1: they think people will make fun of them. This is
Speaker 1: an actual problem, right, This is a societal level problem
Speaker 1: that people feel this way when they are victimized. Z
Speaker 1: Scalers Threat Labs twenty twenty three phishing report warned that chat, GPT,
Speaker 1: and other AI tools can also be used to create
Speaker 1: fake login pages for users who have no coding knowledge. Themselves.
Speaker 1: They can use these fake login pages in order to
Speaker 1: like fake that it's someone's bank or whatever, and they
Speaker 1: can insert malware through that, they can get you know,
Speaker 1: there's a wide variety of ways they can fuck with
Speaker 1: people through that. And eventually these same AI tools will
Speaker 1: be utilized effectively and like, you know, software that is
Speaker 1: meant to protect people from this, but it's just not
Speaker 1: good at that yet. There's too many false positives, Like
Speaker 1: when you're scanning email, you know, using AI tools and
Speaker 1: whatnot to try to determine which ones are fishing attempts.
Speaker 1: And like if a quarter of your emails are getting
Speaker 1: like deleted by an AI because it mistakenly thinks that
Speaker 1: they're you know, that causes a problem for you just
Speaker 1: can't It's It's what I'm saying here is that I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to fear monger about the technology in general.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that new technology tends to be
Speaker 1: more profitable for attackers before it becomes useful for defending
Speaker 1: people in this situation, and so that's part of the problem.
Speaker 1: The primary victims of this new wave of scams are
Speaker 1: the elderly. The FBI Internet Crime Report last year claimed
Speaker 1: that Americans over age sixty lost and estimated one point
Speaker 1: seven billion dollars to fraud, the highest number ever reported
Speaker 1: for any age group, and an increase. You want to
Speaker 1: guess how much this amount has increased over the last
Speaker 1: three years. So okay, well, no, not quite that high,
Speaker 1: but it is an increase of eighty four percent since
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: Still so much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that it's huge. It's like so much more common now.
Speaker 1: I found an article, a very good article in The
Speaker 1: Advocate that gives some texture to the kinds of scams
Speaker 1: that are increasingly hitting the elderly. Matthews, fifty two of
Speaker 1: Baton Rouge told victims he could make investments on their behalf,
Speaker 1: assured them that they could make high rates of return,
Speaker 1: and threatened to injure them if they did not make payments,
Speaker 1: according to his guilty plea. In a similar case in April,
Speaker 1: Muhammad Alam fifty pleaded guilty to computer fraud scheme that
Speaker 1: targeted elderly victims in the US, including Louisiana, and took
Speaker 1: in about three hundred and forty thousand fraudulent profits. Alam
Speaker 1: and other members of the scheme tricked victims into thinking
Speaker 1: their computers needed support, then offered to fix them for
Speaker 1: a fee. After the victims paid, Alum would seek access
Speaker 1: to their bank accounts under the guys that they were
Speaker 1: entitled to a discount and manipulate account balances, so the
Speaker 1: victims thought that they owed money to the computer company.
Speaker 1: So adults age sixty and older are not only likely
Speaker 1: er to be scammed, they are the least likely to
Speaker 1: report being victimized to the authorities. They don't want to
Speaker 1: call the police. Again. This is like when these people,
Speaker 1: when victims are interviewed, the number one reason they give
Speaker 1: for not reporting that they've been victimized is they think
Speaker 1: they will be blamed or mocked for falling for a Khan.
Speaker 1: Kathy Stokes, director of fraud Prevention for the AARP, told
Speaker 1: the Advocate this, well, you gave someone of that information,
Speaker 1: so there's nothing we can do. Fundamentally, we've got to
Speaker 1: change that. People are losing what amounts to generational wealth
Speaker 1: these days. Like we're not just talking about nickel and
Speaker 1: diming people. We are talking about taking someone's retirement savings,
Speaker 1: you know, taking money that they would have passed on
Speaker 1: to their kids. Like we are talking about like people
Speaker 1: people's lives are being destroyed by this stuff. And there's
Speaker 1: again they don't even feel like they can report having
Speaker 1: huge amounts of money stolen from them because they'll be
Speaker 1: mocked for like being a dumb old person who fell
Speaker 1: for a scam. That's like somebody building a fake website
Speaker 1: to trap them and shit. A lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Sometimes yeah, people are greedy or whatever and they get
Speaker 1: trapped that way. But like phone scams are close to
Speaker 1: an all time high, phishing scams and text message scams
Speaker 1: are hitting people at the highest levels ever. And add
Speaker 1: into this the fact that social media has like spent
Speaker 1: years goading people to read and report and share paranoid
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, it shouldn't be surprising that by most measurements,
Speaker 1: social trust in American society is at its lowest level
Speaker 1: in living memory. In the early nineteen seventies, when Chaine
Speaker 1: letters about backseat slashers went from mailbox to mailbox, about
Speaker 1: half of Americans reported to the American National Election Survey
Speaker 1: that they believed most people could be trusted. Today, less
Speaker 1: than a third of Americans respond the same way. A
Speaker 1: recent poll found that social trust is lowest for Americans
Speaker 1: over sixty five, which is understandable when you realize how
Speaker 1: much of them are being bombarded by attempts to steal
Speaker 1: their fucking savings. And it's like, I don't know, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of what I've got so far. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know what to do about this because
Speaker 1: like I kind of low key think this is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems in the country. This is like,
Speaker 1: you know, when you talk about people being worried that
Speaker 1: you know of civil violence of like you know we're
Speaker 1: going to have like like this feeds into that to
Speaker 1: a huge degree. Like look up those stories of people
Speaker 1: shooting folks and their driveway. They're not young, right, They're old.
Speaker 1: And I don't please don't take this as me being
Speaker 1: like it's understandable that they murdered a young woman in
Speaker 1: their driveway. It's like no, But when you bombarded people
Speaker 1: both with conspiracy theories about how they're in danger and
Speaker 1: you're also constantly trying to them every hour of every day,
Speaker 1: some of them will lose their minds and a lot
Speaker 1: of them will have guns. You know, like it's that's
Speaker 1: a problem, we should deal with it.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and you know, and you make some good points,
Speaker 3: but I really think there's a bigger problem in this country,
Speaker 3: and it's that someone puts on a car.
Speaker 1: Someone well, you know, like like I always say, you
Speaker 1: say this often in your podcast, You're wrong about If
Speaker 1: you see cheese on your car, pull out a glock
Speaker 1: and just open fire, empty it into.
Speaker 3: You see she's on your car, Just yeah, jump the
Speaker 3: man off the bomb honestly, just level the city or
Speaker 3: and it's time to start over.
Speaker 1: This is why I always say, never go any public
Speaker 1: place without a six thousand pound ammodium nitrate bomb, you know,
Speaker 1: just in case you'd rather need it.
Speaker 3: Do say that often better to have.
Speaker 1: It and not need it than need it and not
Speaker 1: have it, you know. That's why I always tow a
Speaker 1: rider truck behind my car, always ready, you know, in
Speaker 1: case I have to detonate a parking lot to protect
Speaker 1: my I don't know, Sarah, what do we do here?
Speaker 1: How do we fix this?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: Gosh? I mean, I think that a lot of this problem,
Speaker 3: as far as I can tell, as people replacing their
Speaker 3: actual life with the Internet in various other forms of media,
Speaker 3: you know, the epidemic of loneliness among Americans and especially
Speaker 3: Americans over sixty. I really think that part of the
Speaker 3: answer is for us to actually talk to each other more,
Speaker 3: which is slightly ironic for me to be saying, because
Speaker 3: we are doing this over zoom. But hey, I'm looking
Speaker 3: you in the face. Yeah, that's the right thing.
Speaker 4: And I'll see you in like an hour and a
Speaker 4: half in person. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And we're gonna eat popcorn together, even popcorn together, eat
Speaker 3: cheese together, not alone.
Speaker 4: Don't put it on somebody's car if.
Speaker 1: You see a water on your car again. Hand grenade,
Speaker 1: you know, keep one of those German stick grenades in
Speaker 1: your belt at all time so you can just hurl
Speaker 1: it at your vehicle if you see a trash bag
Speaker 1: nearby that scares you.
Speaker 3: Yeaheah.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 3: The point is that if you kill absolutely everyone, you
Speaker 3: will be safe. This is why game of all this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's why you know. I'm glad that we
Speaker 1: finally have a movie coming out about my personal hero,
Speaker 1: Robert Oppenheimer. I think the real tragedy of Oppenheimer is
Speaker 1: that we stopped at like twelve or thirteen thousand nuclear weapons, right,
Speaker 1: we need one for every person on every if everyone
Speaker 1: has a nuke, Like, look at how peaceful relations between
Speaker 1: the US and the Soviet Union State because of all
Speaker 1: the nukes. If we each have a nuke, right, everything's fine.
Speaker 3: Yes, peace through proliferation, just like Ronnie said, Just like
Speaker 3: Ronnie said.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Sarah got anything to plug?
Speaker 3: I have a podcast called You Wrong About It's also
Speaker 3: very much about Bastards. If if you like this show,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to tell you that you will like
Speaker 3: my show. You could like my show, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: I won't tell you what to do, but that's my show.
Speaker 3: I have a feelings podcast about movies called You Are
Speaker 3: Good and I want to plug. The Lloyd Center Ice
Speaker 3: Rink in Portland, Oregon. There is talk of it being demolished.
Speaker 3: Don't let it happen. Go skating with your friends.
Speaker 1: Protect the Lloyd Center Ice Rink. But again, if you're
Speaker 1: in that parking lot, you know.
Speaker 3: All bets are off.
Speaker 1: You better roll in with an armored vehicle. Good stuff,
Speaker 1: all right. That's the episode.
Speaker 3: Bye Bye.
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