Speaker 1: Cool Zone media.
Speaker 2: I wish I could tell you that frantically looking up
Speaker 2: incidents of fish falling from the sky cracks the top
Speaker 2: ten of the most demented internet wormholes I've ever gone down.
Speaker 2: But you know that's not true. Still, I am thrilled
Speaker 2: to report to you that there's not one, not two,
Speaker 2: but at least six stories about fish falling from the
Speaker 2: sky that I can talk about off the top of
Speaker 2: my damn head. Australia twenty ten and a small town
Speaker 2: in Australia Northern Territory called Lajamanu, a councilor announced to
Speaker 2: the community that there was a huge storm coming, but
Speaker 2: did not announce that that storm would consist of both
Speaker 2: rain and live fish.
Speaker 3: Oops.
Speaker 2: The fish were pretty small, about the width of two fingers.
Speaker 2: But when fish are falling from the sky and they're
Speaker 2: landing on the ground still alive, there really is no
Speaker 2: sense in being a size queen about it, right, And
Speaker 2: residents in this area claims that this had happened two
Speaker 2: other times in the last fifty years and there's actually
Speaker 2: natural precedent for this, with the reasoning that tornadoes can
Speaker 2: pull water and fish from hundreds of miles away from
Speaker 2: their point of origin. It's like the recent Glen Powell
Speaker 2: documentary Twisters. Next example, Texas, Arcana, Texas, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: on New Year's Eve, Eve, East Texas residents reported seeing
Speaker 2: fish falling from the sky dead ones this time, I
Speaker 2: fear scattered across pavement, and the city itself announced that
Speaker 2: quote unquote animal rain, which is a thing that quote
Speaker 2: unquote animal rain happens when quote small water animals like frogs, crabs,
Speaker 2: and small fish are swept up in water spouts or
Speaker 2: drafts that occur on the surface of the earth. They
Speaker 2: are then rained down at the same time as the rain.
Speaker 2: While it's uncommon, it happens, as evidenced in several places
Speaker 2: in Texarkana today unquote Texas. Bless my text and listeners.
Speaker 2: You already have to deal with the brunt of the
Speaker 2: far hog population, and now this not even the dignity
Speaker 2: of live fish. And I could keep going. The list
Speaker 2: of raining fish locations goes on and on. And there's
Speaker 2: been an uptick of reports in the last fifteen years.
Speaker 2: And this could be for a number of reasons. It
Speaker 2: could be a rise in interest in reporting such things.
Speaker 4: It could be increased.
Speaker 2: Access to personal technology, to share such incidents. It could
Speaker 2: very likely be a creepy side effect of global warming,
Speaker 2: or a combination of all three, but whatever the cause,
Speaker 2: there have been reported cases of either living or dead
Speaker 2: fish raining from the sky reported in Sri Lanka, India, Eviopia, Pennsylvania, Tempico, California,
Speaker 2: the Philippines and Honduras since twenty twelve and today on
Speaker 2: sixteenth minute, what if I was like today we're talking
Speaker 2: about bean Dad. Note today we are talking to and
Speaker 2: with a very recent air of Internet characters of the day.
Speaker 2: One human one fish, either koy or gold depending on
Speaker 2: who you ask, was found on a sunny spring afternoon
Speaker 2: in Manchester, England. A cardiology resident named Ben Beska looked
Speaker 2: outside his bedroom window and saw a wriggling orange shape
Speaker 2: on his lawn. He went downstairs, and, as a man
Speaker 2: in his early thirties, he brought his phone with him
Speaker 2: on autopilot, prepared to update his friend group text in
Speaker 2: the event that anything interesting happened. Listener, something interesting happened.
Speaker 2: What waited for Ben Beska on the lawn was a
Speaker 2: large goldfish in pretty rough shape, you could say due
Speaker 2: to the whole not being underwater thing, but also from
Speaker 2: the impact of what seemed to be a pretty significant fall.
Speaker 2: Ben pokes the fish gently and it moves.
Speaker 4: She's alive.
Speaker 2: She's having the worst day of her life, and he's
Speaker 2: a doctor. He's gonna try and save her. Ben scoops
Speaker 2: the fish into his hand and runs her into his kitchen,
Speaker 2: looking around to find tools to improvise a fish tank with.
Speaker 2: He's never had fish before. He's got cats, and that's
Speaker 2: more or less the opposite. Thinking quickly, he grabs an
Speaker 2: empty freezer drawer and fills it with water, popping the
Speaker 2: injured fish inside. She's not doing great. She's shedding scales,
Speaker 2: but to Ben's surprise, she starts to swim again. Confident
Speaker 2: that he can now take a breath, he hits the
Speaker 2: group chat It's Alice. He fumbles into a text, not
Speaker 2: realizing the second word of his sentence has been auto corrected.
Speaker 2: He meant to write it's alive, but Ben's friends confirm
Speaker 2: his gut instinct. For the first time in recorded history,
Speaker 2: autocorrect did something right. The fish's name would be Alice,
Speaker 2: and a guy who to that point had been a
Speaker 2: cardiology meme posting swifty on Twitter, couldn't wait to tell
Speaker 2: his followers all about it, he tweets on June first,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. But the real show here is the
Speaker 2: picture attached. It's Alice the Giant. I'm just gonna say, goldfish.
Speaker 2: It's better fish Twitter can come for me. In the photo,
Speaker 2: Alice the goldfish is plopped helplessly on a lush green lawn.
Speaker 2: Ben captions the photo.
Speaker 1: So today I found a goldfish just on the grass
Speaker 1: in my back garden. It was alive, I think, and
Speaker 1: I have absolutely no idea where it came from. There's
Speaker 1: no ponds anywhere near, so I took it inside, and.
Speaker 2: In one tweet a legend was born. Ben the Doctor
Speaker 2: and Alice the Goldfish that fell from the sky. Your
Speaker 2: sixteenth minute starts now. Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the
Speaker 2: show where we take a look at the main characters
Speaker 2: of the Internet and see what they show us about ourselves,
Speaker 2: and occasionally, the show where I covertly share more about
Speaker 2: my personal life than is responsible. I've been working on
Speaker 2: this episode for almost two months now, and it's going
Speaker 2: to be our first in real time story of virality,
Speaker 2: A bit of a case study of a flash in
Speaker 2: the pan viral moment and how this attention can affect
Speaker 2: a main character in nearly real time and quick aside,
Speaker 2: for everyone who's sent along requests about the Hawktua girl,
Speaker 2: you're not getting that episode yet. It's way too soon.
Speaker 2: But the sensation is kind of an outlier on today's Internet.
Speaker 2: For most people that get sucked into the algorithm these days,
Speaker 2: this kind of longevity is pretty fleeting.
Speaker 4: The get so famous.
Speaker 2: You spark a week's long culture war route of fame
Speaker 2: was not Ben Beska's destiny, in part because the story
Speaker 2: is really different, but also because Ben is a working professional.
Speaker 2: He's in his thirties, and this chance encounter with Alice
Speaker 2: and a subsequent online fame has to fit into his life.
Speaker 4: Not the other way around.
Speaker 2: And in these far more common cases, if something is
Speaker 2: even a little off, like maybe the person is too
Speaker 2: busy with their normal life to really commit to the
Speaker 2: new lifestyle that the algorithm is foisting upon them. Maybe
Speaker 2: their interest in other things dilutes and confuses a potential
Speaker 2: audience and they move on. Maybe the person who goes
Speaker 2: viral is burdened by the question do I even want
Speaker 2: to be this guy? And that's why Ben and Alice
Speaker 2: the Goldfish is such an interesting story to me. This
Speaker 2: story the makings of a fable. So today we're going
Speaker 2: to talk to Ben about the profound weirdness that takes
Speaker 2: hold in someone's life when the Internet decides that you
Speaker 2: are this guy now actually, And then we're going to
Speaker 2: talk to a psychologist who's been studying how virality affects
Speaker 2: the brain and psyche for decades to give us a
Speaker 2: better idea of what Ben was really going through. So
Speaker 2: come with me, if you will to June twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: Maybe you remember it, an American presidential debate asks the
Speaker 2: question who is more dead? Furiosa is bombing at the
Speaker 2: box office and everyone's afraid to say that it was
Speaker 2: because it was a little mid And in Newcastle, England,
Speaker 2: a young doctor looked out his window to see that
Speaker 2: a fish named Alice had fallen from the sky. So
Speaker 2: where do we leave off with this story? Ben finds
Speaker 2: Alice and discovers her name via a typo in a
Speaker 2: friend group chat, but doesn't post about it to his
Speaker 2: Twitter account right away. He's a doctor, bibe, He's got
Speaker 2: a life to save. So once Alice is safely in
Speaker 2: a freezer drawer and Ben's cats are locked in a
Speaker 2: separate room. He books it to the nearest pet store
Speaker 2: and grabs a small tank to tide Alice over until
Speaker 2: he figures out what to do next. And while she
Speaker 2: was in rough shape when he found her, Alice seems
Speaker 2: to be rallying a little bit. Within two hours, Ben
Speaker 2: has all but brought our orange fin girl back from
Speaker 2: the dead. And at at this point that he starts tweeting.
Speaker 2: So let's hear the tweet that started it all one
Speaker 2: more time, captioned with a picture of a helpless Alice
Speaker 2: in the grass.
Speaker 1: So today I found a goldfish just on the grass
Speaker 1: in my back garden. It was alive, I think, and
Speaker 1: I have absolutely no idea where it came from. There's
Speaker 1: no pawns anywhere near, so I took it inside.
Speaker 2: Now, this is the tweet of a man who knows
Speaker 2: how a viral thread begins, and unlike many attempted viral threads,
Speaker 2: Ben's story has the narrative juice to trickle into today's
Speaker 2: Twitter algorithm. And while I could not explain to you
Speaker 2: what the endgame of Twitter's current iteration is, I do
Speaker 2: know that its algorithmically driven platform was absolutely the reason
Speaker 2: Alice the goldfish came into my life. I first saw
Speaker 2: Ben's tweets the day after this saga began. So Ben's
Speaker 2: thread continues, accompanied by carefully documented pictures and videos. He
Speaker 2: tweets it was.
Speaker 1: Alive, although not very happy in an old freezer draw
Speaker 1: much happier in an actual and hastily bought tank. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I have a fish now thumbs up emoji for me.
Speaker 2: This last tweet is the money shot. Two posts after
Speaker 2: being found fallen from the sky on his lawn, there's
Speaker 2: a video of Alice the goldfish swimming along happily in
Speaker 2: a small aquarium.
Speaker 4: It's a cartoon.
Speaker 2: And before you ask, how did a fish fall from
Speaker 2: the sky, look, I can't guarantee an answer. I'm all
Speaker 2: out of answers. How Alice got there is between Alice
Speaker 2: and God. But of course this is the first question
Speaker 2: that a lot of Twitter users have, and we immediately
Speaker 2: have this class exploit in opinion. We have the likely
Speaker 2: explanation of how Alice fell from the sky, which Ben Beska,
Speaker 2: most media outlets and a couple of naturalists on Twitter
Speaker 2: have subscribed to. And there are the unhinged conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2: Here is the likely reason quoted here from BBC News.
Speaker 1: Doctor Besker suspected a bird had picked up the fish
Speaker 1: from a nearby pond and dropped it while carrying it away. However,
Speaker 1: he said there are no ponds close by, and he
Speaker 1: thought it must therefore have traveled a quote reasonable distance
Speaker 1: end quote.
Speaker 2: Basca continued in the same piece.
Speaker 1: It's been quite funny. Some of the comments are really
Speaker 1: quite funny, and about a thousand people said they thought
Speaker 1: a bird dropped it.
Speaker 2: Look, I'm not too proud to admit that I first
Speaker 2: read this story and was like what And then I
Speaker 2: read that Ben Besco lived near a body of water
Speaker 2: and a bird almost certainly caught and then dropped alice,
Speaker 2: and I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense for me.
Speaker 2: This explanation made the whole story less mysterious and more
Speaker 2: of a Pixar movie I would watch. But remember, this
Speaker 2: is Twitter. We're talking about a place where for every
Speaker 2: post there's an equal and opposite conspiracy post, and honestly
Speaker 2: a place where it's not completely unreasonable to doubt that
Speaker 2: a narrator is just doing something for attention. Patterns of
Speaker 2: lying for clout are super common on social media and
Speaker 2: have produced some of my favorite memes of all time.
Speaker 2: I'm talking Ruth Konda forever, I'm talking cinnamon toos shrimp.
Speaker 2: The list goes on. And with that in mind, here
Speaker 2: are the conspiracy theories about Ben and Alice. People who,
Speaker 2: for what I can tell, assume that Ben bought a goldfish,
Speaker 2: threw it on his lawn, and took a picture of
Speaker 2: it in hopes that the Twitter algorithm would swallow it whole.
Speaker 3: The tweet says, so this is fake and I'm contributing.
Speaker 2: Sorry, but this is just really misguided to me. Ben
Speaker 2: Beska until this point has been a terminally online but
Speaker 2: pretty keeping in his own lane kind of poster. He
Speaker 2: would tweet frequently, but it was mainly memes and observations
Speaker 2: about the medical world, about Taylor Swift, and about boy
Speaker 2: genius communities he was already a part of, and from
Speaker 2: what I can tell, most of his interactions prior to
Speaker 2: Alice's arrival from either a bird Heaven or Besca's own
Speaker 2: evil plan, or people he'd already spoken with before. So
Speaker 2: do I think this guy's a con artist? No, I don't.
Speaker 2: I think he's a very online guy in his thirties.
Speaker 2: But surprisingly, while there is this paranoia that Ben faked
Speaker 2: the Alice story at first. Those theories die out pretty
Speaker 2: quickly as the story gained mainstream media and the likely
Speaker 2: cause of the bird dropping Alice seemed to make sense
Speaker 2: to more people than not. No, the true controversy of
Speaker 2: this story has to do with, wait for it, the
Speaker 2: aquarium community. For fuck's sake, here's what they had to say.
Speaker 3: You can remove the big bushy plant for more space.
Speaker 3: That guy will need at least a twenty gallon tank.
Speaker 3: That's the pond variety, so it's not going to be
Speaker 3: happy in a small space.
Speaker 1: A tank needs time to cycle properly in order to
Speaker 1: process fish waste. You can buy bacteria to help speed
Speaker 1: up the process, but in the meantime, make sure you
Speaker 1: do very frequent water changes with properly treated water in
Speaker 1: order to keep it alive.
Speaker 2: You, guys, I'm gonna hold my tongue here. I cannot
Speaker 2: get canceled by the aquarium community today.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: Part of what's interesting to me about this story is
Speaker 2: the raw speed that it moves with, in part because
Speaker 2: ben Beska is interacting with people about Alice on Twitter
Speaker 2: in basically real time and pushing the algorithm within hours,
Speaker 2: and ben Beska finds himself bending off criticisms from aquarium
Speaker 2: aficionados on the same day that he finds Alice. June first,
Speaker 2: he hastily continues this original, increasingly viral thread. At present,
Speaker 2: it has over two hundred thousand likes. He continues this
Speaker 2: every general dread with defenses of this small fish tank
Speaker 2: you bought in haste, saying.
Speaker 1: Repeat after me, a hastily bought temporary tank is better
Speaker 1: for a goldfish than laying dead in the grass.
Speaker 2: Folks. You hate to see it, But the aquarium community
Speaker 2: clearly got to Ben, and he tweets later in the
Speaker 2: day as he continues to observe Alice the goldfish, and
Speaker 2: I can hear the aquarium community grumbling she's a coyfish,
Speaker 2: but she's a goldfish to me, Ben continues.
Speaker 1: You happen to find a mostly dead goldfish on your
Speaker 1: lawn and tweet about saving its life, and your applies
Speaker 1: are filled with people saying you should have planned this better.
Speaker 2: So Ben does get some hate, but that is vastly
Speaker 2: outdone by the effusive love and praise at this pretty
Speaker 2: charming story. Most users are incredibly charmed and stoked about this,
Speaker 2: and it seems like Alice the goldfish is poised to
Speaker 2: become a modern classic Internet animal. She's got the potential
Speaker 2: of a grumpy cat, of a Marnie the dog, of
Speaker 2: a yon cat. The list goes on because there is
Speaker 2: a sort of playbook to make these kinds of things
Speaker 2: happened once the public is excited about an animal that's
Speaker 2: either extremely adorable or has a really compelling story, and
Speaker 2: almost right away that seems where this story is headed.
Speaker 2: The story goes viral around the UK in the first
Speaker 2: three days of June. Mystery as Live Doctor finds goldfish
Speaker 2: in garden Junior Doctor goes viral after rescuing live fish
Speaker 2: from garden, lawn and Newcastle. I found a goldfish seconds
Speaker 2: from death in my garden. Now I'm keeping it as
Speaker 2: my pet. And here's the singular point where Ben and
Speaker 2: Alice Besca and the Hawktua Girl converge. They're both very
Speaker 2: amenable to speak with the press, and they appear to
Speaker 2: respond to reporters very quickly. Ben gives interviews to a
Speaker 2: number of different places, and while most are just rehashing
Speaker 2: the story of discovering Alice, anyone hoping to find out
Speaker 2: how Alice was doing now could follow Ben on Twitter,
Speaker 2: updates were coming fast and furious. In the next couple days,
Speaker 2: he provided updates on not just Alice, but on.
Speaker 4: His aquarium journey.
Speaker 2: Early on, he tweets back and forth with an aquarium
Speaker 2: company that offers him free advice and even better, a
Speaker 2: free aquarium. Next critical to the viral internet pet phenomenon,
Speaker 2: a separate account pops up for Alice the Goldfish. Her
Speaker 2: handle is at Alice Besca. She quote tweets a picture
Speaker 2: Ben posted of Alice the Goldfish in that small tank
Speaker 2: with this little zinger emergency.
Speaker 3: Has it not so bad?
Speaker 6: I guess?
Speaker 3: But fuck me, this studio fat is kind of small.
Speaker 2: Then she replies to Ben.
Speaker 3: Got anything bigger love?
Speaker 2: Immediately Ben starts interacting with the alis Basca account. So
Speaker 2: at the time I made assumptions, and even I ended
Speaker 2: up messing this up. I assumed that this was Ben
Speaker 2: talking to an account pretending to be Alice that he
Speaker 2: had created himself. When it turns out that just a
Speaker 2: daily this account had been created by a fan of Alice,
Speaker 2: so free of charge, this fan was already performing the
Speaker 2: next step in creating an iconic Internet animal, creating a
Speaker 2: specific editorial voice which sounds super corny, but think of
Speaker 2: an Internet animal you like. In most cases, there is
Speaker 2: a specific kind of caption that you'll read for a
Speaker 2: familiar animal, and Alice Besca's voice was lovingly antagonistic toward
Speaker 2: Ben's incompetence as a new fish owner, making in jokes
Speaker 2: that people who had been following the whole saga could appreciate. Then,
Speaker 2: another step on the journey to engage fans in making
Speaker 2: Alice a legitimate Internet pet, Ben launches a gofund me
Speaker 2: to help fund the aquarium equipment he needs.
Speaker 4: Here's what he.
Speaker 1: Posts now, apparently I need a bigg a tank and
Speaker 1: chemicals another random things that apparently a fish needs. At
Speaker 1: least that's what everyone on Twitter is saying. I would
Speaker 1: appreciate your help in helping me find a nice at home.
Speaker 1: My amazing story has also been covered in the news
Speaker 1: read more in The Evening Standard, The Guardian, or The Mirror.
Speaker 2: Things chug along like this for a couple days, with
Speaker 2: Ben Beska's account providing updates on Alice as fan art
Speaker 2: and puff pieces continue to roll in paintings, memes. A
Speaker 2: high coup for Alice the Goldfish who Lived. Twitter was
Speaker 2: incredulous when Alice met Ben. The Alice Besca account is
Speaker 2: posting regularly, and by June fifth, just four days after
Speaker 2: this all began, Ben tweets.
Speaker 1: Hey, Alis Besca, do you want a boyfriend or a
Speaker 1: sister slash brother?
Speaker 2: Enter Barney, a blackfish who arrives. On June sixth, the
Speaker 2: Alice account quote tweets a picture of Barney and captions
Speaker 2: it goth BF. By this time, there's also merch. On
Speaker 2: June fifth, the Alice account, not Ben himself, launches a
Speaker 2: tentative merch store consisting of multiple Alice designs. At this point,
Speaker 2: it feels clear that Ben Besca wants to make this
Speaker 2: a thing. I first got in touch with Ben on
Speaker 2: June fourth. I was on top of it, and we
Speaker 2: planned to speak on June sixth, but then he went quiet,
Speaker 2: and not just in our chat, but on social media
Speaker 2: all together. And I assume that was because he's still
Speaker 2: a junior doctor and said that he was going to
Speaker 2: be attending a conference pretty soon, and that was true,
Speaker 2: but that's not why he went quiet. What happened was
Speaker 2: Alice died. And Okay, maybe this is corny, but I
Speaker 2: saw this song referenced by many Alice fans when the
Speaker 2: news originally broke. So we are going to get the
Speaker 2: karaoke track from Candle in the Wind Bumping in Alice's memory.
Speaker 4: Full drama.
Speaker 1: Hmm, beautiful.
Speaker 2: It's the classic for a reason. Ben broke his silence
Speaker 2: on Twitter on June eighth.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, I have some very sad news to share. Alice
Speaker 1: has passed from her injuries and is now interentally swimming
Speaker 1: in the big fish tank in the sky rip. Alice
Speaker 1: is now the fish that lived for a.
Speaker 2: Bit, and the cynical among us thought, well, this really
Speaker 2: fucks up the Pixar story. And I've thought about this
Speaker 2: a ridiculous amount because it is really sad. But I
Speaker 2: also think it's kind of beautiful, right because if Ben
Speaker 2: hadn't found her, Alice would have died a week earlier,
Speaker 2: and through the combination of a strange twist of feet
Speaker 2: in a loose jawed predatory bird, Ben Besca was able
Speaker 2: to give Alice the goldfish another week of life that
Speaker 2: was spent in comfort, with adoration and good food and
Speaker 2: a new friend, Barney, and unbeknownst to Alice, worldwide notoriety.
Speaker 2: I think it's really sweet and I'm weak. It didn't
Speaker 2: make me cry, but this is a show about social media,
Speaker 2: not our capacity to thighs with dead fish. So my
Speaker 2: curiosity was how did Ben, the Alisbasca account, and the
Speaker 2: press handle this tragic development. After the death announcement from Ben,
Speaker 2: Alice's story gets another small.
Speaker 4: Bump in mainstream media.
Speaker 2: Man who adopted fish he found in his garden shares
Speaker 2: sad update, and then Ben is left to figure out basically,
Speaker 2: does he try to keep this thing going in the
Speaker 2: wake of a pet he's slowly fallen in love with
Speaker 2: dying or does he just go back to who he
Speaker 2: was a week ago. First, he amplifies the public mourning
Speaker 2: of Alice, the memorial drawings of her being welcomed into
Speaker 2: the Great Cooy Pond in the sky, a drawing of
Speaker 2: Steve Irwin's angel telling Alice you did great girl, her
Speaker 2: photo edited onto the cover of Elton John's Candle in
Speaker 2: the Wind. The Alis Besca account posts.
Speaker 3: Do not fear death so much, but rather the you're
Speaker 3: not a good life.
Speaker 2: It all feels fitting, and then the Alice Basca account
Speaker 2: keeps tweeting. June twelfth, Alice quote tweets Ben posting fan
Speaker 2: art of her saying.
Speaker 3: Im g look at me slaying posthumously. June fourteenth, three
Speaker 3: days until the T shirt. Shit, I'm so excited for
Speaker 3: everyone to get their shirts.
Speaker 2: June twenty first, when Ben posts a picture of the
Speaker 2: new massive gifted fish tank that Alice didn't live long
Speaker 2: enough to enjoy.
Speaker 3: Wow, He's moved on quick.
Speaker 2: Because by this time Ben Beska has chosen the direction
Speaker 2: he's going in. He's doubling down on fish. At the
Speaker 2: time of Alice's death, the free fish tank was already
Speaker 2: in the mail, and he'd already gotten her a goth
Speaker 2: BF in the form of Barney. So after taking some
Speaker 2: time to mourn Alice at a UK Taylor Swift aerostour
Speaker 2: that he'd had tickets to for months, he seems to
Speaker 2: decide to keep going. By mid June, Ben had to
Speaker 2: wonder Carrie Bradshaw voice, what does he do after Alice?
Speaker 2: On June eighteenth, less than two weeks after Alice's premature death,
Speaker 2: I asked him just that our interview when we come back,
Speaker 2: welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm getting dangerously close to
Speaker 2: becoming a train guy, and today we're talking about junior
Speaker 2: doctor Ben Beska and Alice the goldfish who fell from
Speaker 2: the sky. And as much as I would like to
Speaker 2: interview Alice myself, I am at present unable to communicate
Speaker 2: with fish, and also she's dead. Given these barriers to entry,
Speaker 2: I instead decided to reach out to the fish poster himself,
Speaker 2: Ben Vesca.
Speaker 7: So.
Speaker 2: I actually interviewed Ben Wewiss this episode once on June eighteenth,
Speaker 2: while this story was still developing, and then over a
Speaker 2: month later in late July. You don't need me to
Speaker 2: tell you that a month can be u Alexies apart
Speaker 2: when it comes to viral stories. Before we first talked
Speaker 2: over Zoom just a few days after Alice the Fish
Speaker 2: passed away. Besco was both very receptive to talk to
Speaker 2: me and the press in general, but was kind of
Speaker 2: hard to pin down because it's not like becoming the
Speaker 2: goldfish guy meant that he quit his extremely demanding job
Speaker 2: working as a cardiology resident at an English hospital. But
Speaker 2: I kept bugging him because I'm really good at that,
Speaker 2: and when we found time to catch up, he was
Speaker 2: in good humor and understandably a little overwhelmed from the
Speaker 2: events of the week. Here is our chat from June.
Speaker 4: Who are you then, Deska.
Speaker 7: So I'm from England, from Newcast so I've been a doctor.
Speaker 7: I don't know a long time now. I can't remember
Speaker 7: being a doctor for a while. I studied in Newcastle,
Speaker 7: went to Medicol to Newcastle, stayed in Newcastle. My number
Speaker 7: one hobby is now keeping fish, but prior to last
Speaker 7: week that was not my main hobby. I mainly used Twitter. Actually,
Speaker 7: I mean, as you say, you look through it and
Speaker 7: there was a very minimal fish content on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a huge pivot moment.
Speaker 7: There's a pivot. There's a big pervot mainly used it
Speaker 7: for medicine stuff, basically stuff sprinkled with bits of you know,
Speaker 7: Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridges and artists like that, which
Speaker 7: I like. But it was a big, big pivot recently
Speaker 7: to fish. And I think now there's like twenty thousand
Speaker 7: extra people following me, all who care about fish. So
Speaker 7: I've had to change my you know, what I talk
Speaker 7: about significantly anything that isn't fish related. Effectively, I get
Speaker 7: lots of abuse for not being fish related. Really already,
Speaker 7: I mean, Tom, I assume it's tongue in cheek abuse. Yeah,
Speaker 7: who knows. But I sent a tweet about some boring
Speaker 7: medicine stuff. People reply saying, oh, yes, but what's this
Speaker 7: got to do with the fish?
Speaker 2: Okay, I want to talk about that in a bit
Speaker 2: of like how when you become notorious for one thing
Speaker 2: that all of a sudden that is like the yardstick,
Speaker 2: that it's.
Speaker 7: Like your entire personality.
Speaker 4: Now, well, before we.
Speaker 2: Get there, you want to be taken through this biblical
Speaker 2: event of finding Alice.
Speaker 4: It was June first.
Speaker 7: So I was when was I think. I was upstairs
Speaker 7: initially in my house, and I heard mag eyes, you know, squawking,
Speaker 7: was like, what the hell is going on? And I
Speaker 7: saw this gold thing on the lawn. So I went downstairs,
Speaker 7: went outside, and there was a fish on the floor
Speaker 7: in the grass. I didn't really understand what was happening,
Speaker 7: no kidding, And she wasn't moving. She was just kind
Speaker 7: of like still on the floor. And I was like, oh, right,
Speaker 7: the dead fish. Fine, don't ask him any questions. So
Speaker 7: I took a picture of the fish being because no,
Speaker 7: I knew no one would believe me, you know, when
Speaker 7: I said there was a fish on the on the floor,
Speaker 7: and I sent the photo to my friend and I said,
Speaker 7: there's a fish in the garden, and I was like,
Speaker 7: what are you talking about? But then the fish moved,
Speaker 7: it gills moved, but she was thin. They breathe, which
Speaker 7: she was suffocating, really, wasn't she?
Speaker 2: So yeah?
Speaker 7: And I was like, oh God, but what do I
Speaker 7: do in this situation? So when I ran inside and
Speaker 7: I just put the sink on, filled up the think
Speaker 7: and picked up by a tail, run inside and it
Speaker 7: started doing a classic fish thing, the fish fly. I
Speaker 7: was like bloody and it was gross because it was
Speaker 7: like slimy and it was a fish. It was alive,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So threw threw her in the seak and I mean
Speaker 7: she was kind of still and not really moving. I mean,
Speaker 7: it was a fish. I fell on the lawn. I
Speaker 7: need some kind of container to put her in. I
Speaker 7: found a freezer draw which was a number, you know,
Speaker 7: I don't know. It was the only container I could
Speaker 7: think to put something so large and filled up with water.
Speaker 7: Put the fish in and it wasn't really moving still.
Speaker 7: I kind of like tapped the box and then it
Speaker 7: started swimming around and amongst the water was you know,
Speaker 7: loads of scales that I think had probably fallen off
Speaker 7: a whatever trauma leader to you know, my back garden.
Speaker 7: You know, that's a story of how I found the
Speaker 7: fish and the first two minutes of her second life.
Speaker 2: You've got Alice in the free search drawer. She's slowly
Speaker 2: coming to what is the distance To.
Speaker 7: Clarify, because numerous people actually thought this, she wasn't actually
Speaker 7: in the freezer, the freezer draw side of the freezer.
Speaker 4: I think that was clear in your video.
Speaker 8: It was.
Speaker 7: I think it was very clear. But people on Twitter,
Speaker 7: you know, you know how the internet is.
Speaker 2: What is the amount of time between finding Alice, getting
Speaker 2: her into a receptacle and sharing it online?
Speaker 7: Probably half an hour. So I put the fish in
Speaker 7: the drawer. I left the house to go to the
Speaker 7: neary shop to buy a fish tank or something better
Speaker 7: than the drawer, you know, because I know the fish
Speaker 7: need you know, chemicals or something. I know a lot
Speaker 7: more now about that, but I knew that basically that
Speaker 7: fish needed some kind of chemicals. I literally went to
Speaker 7: the closer shop, bought a tank, bought some chemicals, came home,
Speaker 7: put it in that tank. I think at that point
Speaker 7: I tweeted about it. I mean, within the first half
Speaker 7: an hour or so. It's you know, my normal friends
Speaker 7: that you tweet, you know that the normal medical twitter people.
Speaker 7: Then it's sort of snowballs and snowballs and snowballs, and
Speaker 7: it goes mad maybe within half an hour an hour,
Speaker 7: so you can't track how large it gets because you
Speaker 7: know every second there's twenty notifications and you can't keep
Speaker 7: track of anything.
Speaker 4: Had you ever been through anything like it?
Speaker 7: No, I thought I'd achieved something like this with a
Speaker 7: Nobel prize or some kind of genuine achievement. But no, no,
Speaker 7: it's a fish.
Speaker 4: So the story blows up.
Speaker 2: Something I noticed early on there was a lot of
Speaker 2: or not a lot of, but at least some doubt
Speaker 2: cast onto the story.
Speaker 4: What was the nature of that, and like, how did
Speaker 4: you handle it?
Speaker 7: Yeah? So I think the first doubt there was people
Speaker 7: suggesting that I went out bought a fish, a large goldfish,
Speaker 7: and I don't know if you can buy them when
Speaker 7: they're big, put it on the lawn, like, battered around
Speaker 7: a bit, ripped a few of its, you know, took
Speaker 7: somewhere the scales off, and then posted on the internet,
Speaker 7: which makes no sense at all, is completely illogical. I mean,
Speaker 7: I believe they probably think the Earth is flat as well.
Speaker 2: My internet brain says like, there's just enough evidence, not
Speaker 2: in this story, but that people will do wild shit
Speaker 2: for a story that gets absurd levels of engagement.
Speaker 7: The thing about the Internet is that anyone that has
Speaker 7: grown up on the Internet knows you have to approach
Speaker 7: anything with a load of skepticism, because nothing is true
Speaker 7: on the internet, is it. But this story I think
Speaker 7: is so obscene that it's almost not scriptable. It's just
Speaker 7: so bunkers. Why would I make that up? Why would
Speaker 7: anyone make that up? But then everyone else actually pivoted.
Speaker 7: I mean everyone's an expert on the internet, as you know.
Speaker 7: I was then told that the tank was too small.
Speaker 7: So the fish that was dead, well, I don't know,
Speaker 7: semi dead, was put into a tank of water, and
Speaker 7: apparently that tank was not good enough, and I was
Speaker 7: actually told by someone that the fish would have been
Speaker 7: better on the lawn.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, wherey.
Speaker 7: Normal people are on the internet, doesn't it.
Speaker 9: People were saying, you know, you needed a thirty forty
Speaker 9: to fifty gallon tank, and I was like, why would
Speaker 9: I have that much water stored in a receptor just
Speaker 9: just in case a fish appeared?
Speaker 7: If I was prepared, like very good evidence, I would
Speaker 7: have put the fish on the lawn.
Speaker 4: That's true. Yes, it would be like, oh and he
Speaker 4: just happened to happen.
Speaker 2: What was your relationship to the internet, you know, before
Speaker 2: this incident.
Speaker 7: Well, I kind of grew up on the internet, you know,
Speaker 7: typical many or chronically online, and I understand the nuances
Speaker 7: of the Internet.
Speaker 4: What is the next step?
Speaker 2: At what point are you like, we got to start
Speaker 2: out as an account, like where do you go from there?
Speaker 7: So I actually didn't start that account really really, it's
Speaker 7: one of the people on med Twitter isn't me started
Speaker 7: it as a joke, obviously as a joke. It's truly,
Speaker 7: it is truly brilliant. It's a very good idea. I
Speaker 7: think it's even more funny that I didn't set the
Speaker 7: accoun The tweets coming from that account have been actually
Speaker 7: very funny. You read they are very good.
Speaker 2: It's only the other person who's run the account. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: she has her own social media teape.
Speaker 4: That's wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it felt like growing up online as well.
Speaker 2: You know you see famous Internet animals and how there's
Speaker 2: like a like a voice curated for them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so he's not me, not me.
Speaker 2: So in the meantime, as she is becoming a main
Speaker 2: character unbeknownst to her. What are the next steps with Alice?
Speaker 2: You've got her in the smaller tank. People are giving
Speaker 2: you shit what happens next?
Speaker 7: But put all the chemicals in and remove the chemicals
Speaker 7: you're not meant to have. I don't want to talk
Speaker 7: too much about that because then it becomes like a
Speaker 7: fish care podcast, which I.
Speaker 4: Think, yeah, that might be all good.
Speaker 7: Set up a tank and make sure the tank was okay,
Speaker 7: and then I had to go to a conference with you. There.
Speaker 7: It was very anxious time leaving this newly found half
Speaker 7: dead fish in a tank.
Speaker 4: He had a camera right brilliant to keep an eye on.
Speaker 7: To keep an eye what it was. It was like
Speaker 7: a camera from like just a normal you know, like
Speaker 7: a security camera thing. I moved Pep and I on
Speaker 7: the level of anxiety that leads to that.
Speaker 4: But we no, I mean, it's I'd be interested to hear.
Speaker 7: It's just law, isn't it. I'm not sure. I'm not
Speaker 7: sure that's the term, you know, like it's just I
Speaker 7: don't know. I mean, I don't know how to define.
Speaker 7: It is a weird circumstance that I found this fish lived,
Speaker 7: But then I had to leave the house and I
Speaker 7: didn't like that. I'd rather care for the fish in
Speaker 7: a weird way make sure she doesn't die. She didn't
Speaker 7: at that time.
Speaker 4: You did get to see her again, Yes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yes, I came home and fine.
Speaker 2: So while you're at this conference, do people know that
Speaker 2: you're the guy or is it like you're being normal
Speaker 2: Ben at this conference and secretly, you know, checking your
Speaker 2: fish camera.
Speaker 7: I mean I was being normal Ben, but everyone knew.
Speaker 7: And it was very embarrassing really because at this point
Speaker 7: it hit like the national media and the media actually
Speaker 7: and people had seen it and people have said, oh,
Speaker 7: I saw this in the Guardian. It's almost surreal the situation.
Speaker 7: It's difficult to explain how you get to the point
Speaker 7: of people you've not met reading about you in an
Speaker 7: actual newspaper about a fish you've had on the floor.
Speaker 4: It's a weird story.
Speaker 2: But I So there's a series of things that happen.
Speaker 2: It seems like Alice moves into a bigger tank, she
Speaker 2: gets a boyfriend, there's a merch store, there's a GoFundMe
Speaker 2: take me through this series of days. It's so much happened.
Speaker 7: So the first thing that happened was a go fund me,
Speaker 7: and that was because I had maybe one thousand people
Speaker 7: tell me the tank was too small, and I was like,
Speaker 7: all right, fine, I'll buy a new tank in because
Speaker 7: that's what the Internet tells me to do. But then
Speaker 7: looking at fish tanks, they're so expensive and I was like, well,
Speaker 7: I can't justify spending you know, two three hundred quid.
Speaker 7: So I made this go for me. Mainly, it was
Speaker 7: mainly aimed at the people who will giving me shit
Speaker 7: saying you should get a bigger tank if you care
Speaker 7: about animals. I was like, well, thank you very much,
Speaker 7: you do it. But that actually got a lot of traction.
Speaker 7: I got a lot of a lot of money donated
Speaker 7: to that. But then a company called Fluvial, well known
Speaker 7: fish company, but I didn't I don't know this. I
Speaker 7: didn't know this at the time messaged me and said, oh,
Speaker 7: we can give you a tank for Alice. And I
Speaker 7: was like, oh, that's nice, that's good. So I didn't
Speaker 7: need the money on the go for me after all.
Speaker 7: So I rough unded all that back and they gat
Speaker 7: And you know, you're on the internet and you asked
Speaker 7: for advice about stuff, and people give you loads of
Speaker 7: ship whereas this email. There was this bloke at this
Speaker 7: company that I was emailing and you know, stupid questions
Speaker 7: about fish I didn't know the answer to, but which
Speaker 7: were patently stupid. I would email and ask him and
Speaker 7: held answered me and you know, give me actual advice
Speaker 7: rather than telling me I'm an idiot for not having
Speaker 7: a tank set up the MERRG. I actually bought all
Speaker 7: of those T shirts. I think it's shipping soon. That
Speaker 7: was that wasn't set up by me. That was set
Speaker 7: up by Alice the fish aunt Alice mainly as a
Speaker 7: tongue in cheek thing because people get asking for it,
Speaker 7: but then people including me, bought stuff from it.
Speaker 4: Yes, I emerged from your own fish.
Speaker 7: That's great, but I think that ships soon. So I've
Speaker 7: got a T shirt with a picture of half dead
Speaker 7: fish on.
Speaker 2: And then Barney came into the mix. How did Barney
Speaker 2: come into the mix?
Speaker 7: I imagine I know nothing about fish, but I imagine it's
Speaker 7: lonely to be a fish in a tank on your
Speaker 7: own without a mate. So I went to shop and
Speaker 7: bought a new fish to go along with Alice. I
Speaker 7: picked Barney. I'm not sure why I picked the name Barney,
Speaker 7: but I think he kind of suited him. And I
Speaker 7: realized I'm accidentally naming these fish tropical iphoons in terms
Speaker 7: of like the age.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 8: The next fish, I think, all sudden done.
Speaker 2: You had Alice for about a week, right, a week? Yeah,
Speaker 2: tell me about her, tell me about like this weird experience.
Speaker 7: It's kind of the odd thing about it is that
Speaker 7: it's given me a really like a new hobby out
Speaker 7: of nowhere. And I've got a weird connection to this
Speaker 7: stupid fish now Barney, I mean, because of the relationship
Speaker 7: that I then found on the law. Right, But you'd
Speaker 7: think that fish didn't have personalities, but you kind of
Speaker 7: notice things about them. It's me projecting my own you know,
Speaker 7: like my own care about these fish, you know, onto
Speaker 7: the fish arm. So I'm going to keep Barney, obviously,
Speaker 7: I'm not going to kill him. Alice's memory in this
Speaker 7: bigger tank, and then get you know, get him some
Speaker 7: mates to keep him company. So it's the start of
Speaker 7: a beautiful hobby. Can you say, a beautiful hobby?
Speaker 2: When Alice passed away, did you just did you find her?
Speaker 4: One morning? What happened?
Speaker 7: Yeah? So I found her. She was just in the
Speaker 7: tank in the morning, like in a typical fishy way,
Speaker 7: like floating in the tank. It actually upset me, to
Speaker 7: be fair, because I was like, why you only know
Speaker 7: this fish for a week? And I think I think
Speaker 7: it's a concept that it was nearly dead or maybe dead,
Speaker 7: and I saved her and then she died. I just died.
Speaker 7: Despite that, it's a bit like, oh, you know, like
Speaker 7: you tried and failed, and it's a bit sad.
Speaker 4: But you didn't fail though I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's like part of what I was a
Speaker 2: random person online that was very moved by this because
Speaker 2: it was just like you, you gave this creature a
Speaker 2: lovely last week of their life.
Speaker 4: That's so it was really kind.
Speaker 7: And I suppose it's nicer to again I don't know,
Speaker 7: but I suppose it's nicer to die in a tank
Speaker 7: than it is on the lawn.
Speaker 2: I think within minutes when you when you posted that
Speaker 2: she'd passed away and there is a huge outpouring.
Speaker 4: What was what was that like?
Speaker 7: It was nice? Actually, it seems like I mean, there's
Speaker 7: a lot of funny responses because it's the best way
Speaker 7: to deal with sadness is to take the piss, which
Speaker 7: is good. I enjoyed it. But the fact that the
Speaker 7: story is like resonated a bit and it's made people happy.
Speaker 7: You know, it's a wholesome story, isn't it. It's a
Speaker 7: bit of a sad end, it's still a wholesome.
Speaker 4: Story, it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fan art was there's so much of it,
Speaker 2: first of all, and it was very sweet.
Speaker 4: And then you went to a Taylor Swift concert and
Speaker 4: I went to a.
Speaker 7: Taylor Swift concert, the traditional way to send off a fish.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On the internet side, I want to go back to
Speaker 2: what you were talking about at the beginning, where now
Speaker 2: it's like, how big did your online audience grow in.
Speaker 4: The space of this very chaotic week with Alice?
Speaker 7: I think maybe ten to fifteen thousand. I mean I
Speaker 7: only had I think, like five thousand to start with.
Speaker 7: But yeah, so I've gained fifteen thousand people that care
Speaker 7: only about fish.
Speaker 4: Now where do you go from here?
Speaker 7: I'm opening a branded set of pet shops. No, No,
Speaker 7: I don't know. I mean I'm gonna I mean, Barney's
Speaker 7: obviously still here. I imagine people still want to hear
Speaker 7: some updates about that fish that's salad fish, his new
Speaker 7: friends called CD except well when they finally get there.
Speaker 7: But still every tweet I make that isn't about fish
Speaker 7: gets a lot of fish for bliind. So you know,
Speaker 7: it's a bit like you've got to give the audience
Speaker 7: what they.
Speaker 4: Want, more fish content to come.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's more fish content to come. Yeah. The path
Speaker 7: of polase resistance wasn't it? Just continue on that and
Speaker 7: it's easier than writing it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Ben. We'll be hearing more
Speaker 2: from him soon. And when we come back, I consult
Speaker 2: an expert to ask the follow up question. Most of
Speaker 2: you were too cowardly too. What does becoming the fish
Speaker 2: guy do to your brain? Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
Speaker 2: When I was in fifth grade, my class inexplicably did
Speaker 2: a production of Hamlet, and I got to play Hamlet,
Speaker 2: but only acts one through three. So I got to
Speaker 2: do Hamlet up until I killed Polonius, and then Katya
Speaker 2: Andrad just did the rest of it. We were both
Speaker 2: really good, And today we are talking about a fish
Speaker 2: that fell from the sky and derailed the life of
Speaker 2: a junior doctor. So after I spoke with Ben Baska,
Speaker 2: I kept an eye on his posts, and sure enough,
Speaker 2: by fish empire has continued to grow. Less than two
Speaker 2: months after Alice. The man has over fifteen fish, a
Speaker 2: whole ass ecosystem, and the tank has a golden decal
Speaker 2: on the side that reads the Alice Memorial Tank and
Speaker 2: is flanked by fan art from her Brief, Beautiful Week
Speaker 2: with Ben. Ben's story felt like a great opportunity to
Speaker 2: ask something that I've been wondering about since this show began.
Speaker 2: What does going viral do to you psychologically? There's no
Speaker 2: definitive answer, but psychologists have been studying this for decades
Speaker 2: at this point, and I consulted one of Internet Psychology's
Speaker 2: go to guys, doctor Elias Ambujade, clinical professor, researcher and
Speaker 2: writer at Stanford where he is the chief of the
Speaker 2: Anxiety Disorder Section and director of the OCD Clinic and
Speaker 2: the Impulse Controlled Disorders Clinic. Instead of asking him, as
Speaker 2: a lifelong OCD sufferer, how to personally improve my life,
Speaker 2: I asked him about the fish guy. Abujade is also
Speaker 2: the author of the new book A Leader's Destiny as
Speaker 2: well as the twenty twelve book Virtually You The Dangerous
Speaker 2: Powers of the E Personality. Talking about these isolated examples
Speaker 2: like Ben Besca and Alice. The goldfish is what doctor
Speaker 2: Abujade does best in my opinion, and he gave me
Speaker 2: some insight into what Ben was going through and what
Speaker 2: you can do if the algorithm tries to kill you
Speaker 2: like an English bird of prey wood to a large goldfish.
Speaker 5: Here's our talk, Elias Abusheti. I'm a clinical professor at
Speaker 5: Stanford University. I also run the program and Internet Health
Speaker 5: and Society at SEARS, and I am medical center. I
Speaker 5: study the intersection of technology and psychology and have done
Speaker 5: so almost twenty years now, hard to believe, and have
Speaker 5: addressed my work both to the general audience of Internet
Speaker 5: choosers but also scientists researchers.
Speaker 2: So interested in your work, especially because I mean a
Speaker 2: very eventful twenty years for life online in your study
Speaker 2: and observation, what does receiving a ton of unexpected attention
Speaker 2: online due to you.
Speaker 5: Well, online attention has in a way become a proxy
Speaker 5: for self worth. We value ourselves to the extent that
Speaker 5: we get likes, retweets, and all manner of online attention.
Speaker 5: It is a very valuable currency and that in that sense,
Speaker 5: and going viral represents sort of the extreme version of this,
Speaker 5: you know, something that everyone online is supposed to aspire
Speaker 5: to because it represents popularity, it represents cloud, and it
Speaker 5: represents self esteem.
Speaker 2: I mean, at this point of like, it's fairly common
Speaker 2: knowledge the internet is addictive, But in your estimation, has
Speaker 2: it evolved in the ways it's become addictive? What are
Speaker 2: the changes you've noticed in the way that we're sort
Speaker 2: of kept tethered to social media and to the Internet.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think a lot of the obvious problems
Speaker 5: that most people recognize today, we're already there, you know,
Speaker 5: a couple of decades ago, and what we've seen is
Speaker 5: just this kind of intensification and.
Speaker 6: Gradual worstening.
Speaker 5: One personality trait I've I've worked on and talked about
Speaker 5: is narcissism. And and you can see how if you
Speaker 5: have any sort of vulnerability to that, or any kind
Speaker 5: of kernel of that and your personality structure, the Internet
Speaker 5: can and intensify it, you know, by giving you a stage,
Speaker 5: by giving you quote unquote followers, by by increasing your
Speaker 5: sense of how how popular and effective you are. It's
Speaker 5: hard for anyone to be totally immune to that. But
Speaker 5: if you already have those tendencies, and then they can
Speaker 5: become quite magnified. That's what we see, I think, repeatedly
Speaker 5: and an online That's just one of the many personality
Speaker 5: traits that the Internet and Internet related technologies act on.
Speaker 5: And they've all as the Internet has evolved, they've all
Speaker 5: been kind of further intensified.
Speaker 2: And and and again it feels like there's a common
Speaker 2: consensus that I agree with that this is clearly bad
Speaker 2: for me, But I can also directly point to so
Speaker 2: many positive in my life, whether it was community building
Speaker 2: or relationships or whatever it was, that wouldn't have been
Speaker 2: possible without the Internet. Because you've observed this and studied
Speaker 2: this for so long. For people that do have a
Speaker 2: healthier relationship to the Internet, what is the balance? You know,
Speaker 2: you always get sort of the classic go touch grasp,
Speaker 2: but in so many ways, you know, jobs or communication,
Speaker 2: it's now there's not many alternatives. How have you seen
Speaker 2: people successfully manage relationships with this technology?
Speaker 6: Well, it is.
Speaker 5: It is a very fricky balance, I think, and it's
Speaker 5: gotten almost impossible to pull off because, as you pointed out,
Speaker 5: you know, you can't be a professional today and not have.
Speaker 6: A strong online presence.
Speaker 5: You can't be you know, a quote unquote normal teenager
Speaker 5: and not have a social media presence. So these things
Speaker 5: have become very ingrained. And I think sort of how
Speaker 5: culture has evolved is by the time we recognize that
Speaker 5: the dangers we had already become addicted, and the culture
Speaker 5: has moved so sort of deep into embracing these technologies
Speaker 5: that we can't turn looklock. So it's not about kind
Speaker 5: of going back to nineteen ninety seven or whatever. It's
Speaker 5: more about trying to maintain some grounding in real life,
Speaker 5: whatever that means anymore. And I think there's some, you know,
Speaker 5: there's some encouraging signals in that direction, Like I teach
Speaker 5: undergrads at Tanford and Berkeley, and there seems to be
Speaker 5: sort of a newfound respect and a new kind of
Speaker 5: coolness attached to going off of the of the online
Speaker 5: a grid that least temporarily. We see people souring on
Speaker 5: online dating, for example, thinking the greatest decision not to
Speaker 5: look for a partner or romantic interests on dating apps.
Speaker 5: So there are attempts, I think, overall their healthy ones.
Speaker 5: But again, our goal should not be, you know, believe
Speaker 5: the last twenty years of our lives.
Speaker 2: Right going back to the subject of this interview, he's
Speaker 2: this really nice guy named Ben who found a live
Speaker 2: goldfish that had fallen out of a bird's beak. It
Speaker 2: fell into his lawn and he rescued it while it
Speaker 2: was still alive, and this was he tweeted about it.
Speaker 2: He was, you know, an active Twitter user. It was
Speaker 2: interesting as we were talking just listening to him be like,
Speaker 2: this is really exciting, but it's also really weird, and
Speaker 2: it comes with kind of this very specific pressure to
Speaker 2: feel like, you know, this is you now. And I
Speaker 2: know you've written a book called Virtually You, The Internet
Speaker 2: and the Fracturing of the Self.
Speaker 6: Could you tell me a.
Speaker 2: Little bit about that as we are constructing our Internet selves.
Speaker 2: This feels like a very kind of like extreme specific example,
Speaker 2: but I could feel sort of the nucleus of listening
Speaker 2: to someone kind of shifting the way they've constructed themselves
Speaker 2: online because of this random thing that happened to them
Speaker 2: and went viral.
Speaker 5: And my book Virtually You, I talked about how we
Speaker 5: have an e personality that I can be quite distinct
Speaker 5: from how we from normal life. So we tend to
Speaker 5: be more aggressive on to be more impulsive. We tend
Speaker 5: to show more narcissism, less patients, et cetera, and that
Speaker 5: version of ourselves can be can feel more sort of attractive,
Speaker 5: more liberated to us, and we end up buying into it,
Speaker 5: sometimes excessively and sometimes at the expense of who we
Speaker 5: really are and what our real personality structure is about. Now,
Speaker 5: in this example you shared, it does seem like you
Speaker 5: know a nice individual who had some sort of strange
Speaker 5: thing happened to him practically overnight. Has his life became
Speaker 5: about that, And I see parallels with what I've written about.
Speaker 5: But what I what I like about how you described
Speaker 5: him is that he recognized that it's weird. He recognized
Speaker 5: that it doesn't doesn't quite make make sense, and sometimes
Speaker 5: online we stopped like we lose that ability to distinguish
Speaker 5: between what's like weird and what's real, what's fake and
Speaker 5: what's around it. You also say that he recognizes that
Speaker 5: the pressure of kind of embracing this persona keeping it going,
Speaker 5: And I also appreciate that about the story, because most
Speaker 5: of us or many of us, don't see it as
Speaker 5: as pressure. We end up somehow again liking it more
Speaker 5: than we should without acknowledging the pressure person that's not
Speaker 5: really who we are.
Speaker 2: It felt like he was saying and I would feel
Speaker 2: the same way in the same position, Like you've been
Speaker 2: given this strange gift, you know, of all of these.
Speaker 5: Eyes and in the gifts of virality, Yes.
Speaker 2: The gift and the curse. I mean, I think of
Speaker 2: all of these other people who are turned into these
Speaker 2: Internet main characters, and how some people you know know
Speaker 2: I reject this, I don't want anything to do with this,
Speaker 2: and others. You can see the wheels turning a little
Speaker 2: bit of like, how like is it possible to make
Speaker 2: this moment a part of who I am?
Speaker 4: Does it even make I think?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think there is a way to have
Speaker 5: fun with it, embrace it temporarily without allowing it to
Speaker 5: get to your head too much. I mean, the thing
Speaker 5: about virality is that it doesn't last, right, Like we
Speaker 5: we get tired of people who go viral and stories
Speaker 5: that go viral pretty quickly. I mean, online we're constantly
Speaker 5: on the about you know, the next big thing or
Speaker 5: the next story. I think acknowledging this aspect of virality
Speaker 5: is important if you don't want to end up being,
Speaker 5: you know, the victim of it, right because if you
Speaker 5: embrace it and assume that you can keep it up,
Speaker 5: then you're going against all the lessons that internet history
Speaker 5: has taught us.
Speaker 6: But if you can, you.
Speaker 5: Know, play with it, have fun with it, but you know,
Speaker 5: remember how long that it's not going to be superlasting,
Speaker 5: then I think that's that's a healthy or more realistic approach.
Speaker 2: If I came to you and said, hey, I just
Speaker 2: completely randomly became an Internet main character, I don't really
Speaker 2: want this attention, I'm overwhelmed by it.
Speaker 4: How would you advise me?
Speaker 5: I guess one thing I would I would tell you
Speaker 5: is to reassure you that internet memes have a finite
Speaker 5: lifespan that as heavy and overwhelming as this feels, as
Speaker 5: everlastings as it feels, it has a beginning and middle, end,
Speaker 5: an end, and it will be shorter living than you
Speaker 5: probably assume it is. I would I would caution you
Speaker 5: against responding, you know, impulsively to whatever the situation is,
Speaker 5: because that's another thing that people under pressure will do
Speaker 5: online and they end up up often regretting their reaction.
Speaker 5: I think through how you react, don't do anything that
Speaker 5: might sort of compound the problem. Lastly, I've done a
Speaker 5: lot of work on privacy.
Speaker 6: Online privacy.
Speaker 5: Yes, you know, one of the biggest sort of victims
Speaker 5: of online culture, the fact that we now live in
Speaker 5: a privacy age, and privacy and healthy psychology go hand
Speaker 5: in hand. So I would urge you, despite this sort
Speaker 5: of viral state that you're in, I would urge you
Speaker 5: to be protective of your privacy to the extent that
Speaker 5: you can, despite the Internet attention.
Speaker 2: And then the flip side of that, the flip side
Speaker 2: of that question is I approach you and I say
Speaker 2: I want to go viral, I want to become famous online.
Speaker 2: I think I can handle it, and I don't think
Speaker 2: it'll affect me.
Speaker 4: How would you advise me?
Speaker 5: What I would do in this case is, you know,
Speaker 5: put my therapist's hat on and ask what it is
Speaker 5: about you know, your your current life, your offline life,
Speaker 5: even your online life that feels so empty and hollow
Speaker 5: that you would be desperately seeking online fame. I would
Speaker 5: recommend that you not look for online fame for the
Speaker 5: sake of online fame.
Speaker 6: But but do what you want.
Speaker 5: To do and go for the goals you always wanted
Speaker 5: to go for. And if internet fame happens, it will
Speaker 5: be for the right reasons and not for the sake of.
Speaker 4: I love that answer.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's like sometimes it happens, but hopefully God, I
Speaker 2: mean for the few that it happens on their terms.
Speaker 10: I think just the idea of wanting Internet frame at
Speaker 10: all costs, I mean, that's the track that a lot
Speaker 10: of culture falls into, right Like I want to be
Speaker 10: an influence or whatever whatever it takes, and that's just
Speaker 10: not healthy.
Speaker 2: And then my last question is I don't know if
Speaker 2: this is a hard question in or not, so I
Speaker 2: apologize in advance. Is there anything about the state of
Speaker 2: today's Internet how we're consuming to feel positive about.
Speaker 5: I think there's a new found awareness that we may
Speaker 5: have embraced some technologies, we may have embraced some platforms
Speaker 5: blindly without sort of thinking through our behavior. There's I
Speaker 5: think broad recognition around that, and I think that's the
Speaker 5: necessary first step toward being able to correct things. You know,
Speaker 5: like awareness, education are absolutely essential, and I think there's
Speaker 5: a lot more of that today compared to even a
Speaker 5: couple of years ago. That's the silver lining I see.
Speaker 5: Whether it's sufficient is a different story altogether, but at
Speaker 5: least it's necessary that we have a healthier dose of
Speaker 5: that now compared to the recent past.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to doctor Abujade, and you can
Speaker 2: find his new book, A Leader's Destiny by Psychology, Personality
Speaker 2: and character make all the difference at the link in
Speaker 2: the description. A little over a month after Ben Baskett
Speaker 2: and I first talked, I checked in again to see
Speaker 2: how he was doing and tell him a little bit
Speaker 2: about my chat with doctor Abujade.
Speaker 4: Who are his updates?
Speaker 8: Hi?
Speaker 4: Ben, how are you good?
Speaker 7: Thank you? How are you?
Speaker 2: So we haven't spoken since about this time the last month.
Speaker 2: Tell me what has changed in your in your fish life?
Speaker 7: So I now have three fish name name. So Barney
Speaker 7: is the original companion to Alice. He's still around. He
Speaker 7: did have some kind of weird fungal infection for a while,
Speaker 7: which I think is new. But he's better and I
Speaker 7: think actually it's salt that cured him. Apparently salt is
Speaker 7: like a cure all for goldfish. We've got Daphne, looks
Speaker 7: a little bit like Alice, but it is a bit stockier.
Speaker 7: And then we've got Edgar, who is a bit like
Speaker 7: a bruiser kind of bloke who's got like a little mustache.
Speaker 7: I imagine him like a American prohibition kind of guy
Speaker 7: with a with a mini gun.
Speaker 2: Okay, I like that. There is also, yeah, the applied
Speaker 2: personality is that is critical a pet ownership.
Speaker 7: It's very important. And then obviously we've got Charlie's Angels,
Speaker 7: which I think I had last time. I can't remember.
Speaker 7: Loads of mini fish. There's how there's thirteen of them,
Speaker 7: loads of mini little fish.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, that's this is wonderful news. Is this like
Speaker 2: a lifelong thing, have you? Because that was my question
Speaker 2: going in, I was like, is he going to commit
Speaker 2: to being the fish guy?
Speaker 7: I think I think it's probably yes, given everything has
Speaker 7: gone well with the you know, no fish has died.
Speaker 7: I mean, Barney tried his best, but you know, no
Speaker 7: fish has died. So it may be that I'm not
Speaker 7: terrible at keeping fish. And I'm sure I said this
Speaker 7: last time, but every time that I post anything on
Speaker 7: Twitter that isn't directly fish related, I almost get abuse
Speaker 7: for not posting about the fish. How there you have
Speaker 7: other hobbies or other things to talk about. People have
Speaker 7: said things like, oh, yes, you know, we followed you
Speaker 7: for the fish and now we're learning about you know,
Speaker 7: the intricacies of the UK medical system.
Speaker 4: That's fascinating.
Speaker 2: I have a theory that, Yeah, people that casually follow
Speaker 2: any one online get really upset if they learn more
Speaker 2: than like three things about you, Like you just cannot
Speaker 2: be too multifaceted or people kind of freak out. It
Speaker 2: seems like you're posting whatever the fuck you want. Anyways,
Speaker 2: Do you do you.
Speaker 4: Feel pressure to fish post a certain amount?
Speaker 7: No? Not really. I mean I like posting about the
Speaker 7: fish because they are quite funny and the amount of
Speaker 7: you know, stupid ship any animal does, let alone a
Speaker 7: load of fish, you know, Sharing that on Twitter is
Speaker 7: actually quite it's quite entertaining. It's also it's a good
Speaker 7: way to sort of like document as well, you know,
Speaker 7: things that have changed over the past month or so.
Speaker 2: You know, we'll keep doing this. I'll check in with
Speaker 2: you in a year and see how life has changed.
Speaker 2: Any fish goals, anything that you like, want to do
Speaker 2: that you haven't done. Are you going to expand? Are
Speaker 2: you going to maintain? What's what's the plan?
Speaker 7: So apparently someone warmed me about this before. It's called
Speaker 7: multi tank syndrome, and essentially you start with one fish
Speaker 7: or one tank and it's never enough. It's sort of
Speaker 7: like an addiction, and then you keep buying more tanks
Speaker 7: until your house is more tanks than house. I want
Speaker 7: a marine tank for saltwater time.
Speaker 4: Oh wow, that's good.
Speaker 2: That's serious, right, it's a serious Well, that's I'm so
Speaker 2: glad that Alice has brought this new facet of your life.
Speaker 7: It's going to be I'm quite excited to see what
Speaker 7: my electric bill is going to do. I imagine it's
Speaker 7: going to go up significantly, such as.
Speaker 4: The life of a fish father. Well, well, thank you
Speaker 4: for catching.
Speaker 7: Up with me, then no problem.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much to Ben Beska for being gained to
Speaker 2: this unhinged case study.
Speaker 4: And you can.
Speaker 2: Follow his ongoing fish adventure on Twitter at besca. And
Speaker 2: with that, Alice, our dearly departed goldfish and Ben Basca
Speaker 2: your sixteenth minute end now and for our moment of
Speaker 2: fun this week. This is a pet episode. Here is
Speaker 2: my perfect eldest boy Flee singing you a beautiful song.
Speaker 8: My boy soprano, See you next week.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 4: The amazing Ian.
Speaker 2: Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme
Speaker 2: song is by Sad thirteen and Pet shout outs to
Speaker 2: our dog producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper, and my
Speaker 2: pet Rockbird will outlive us on bye
Speaker 5: Mm hmm