Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Toad and this
Speaker 1: is There Are No Girls on the Internet Welcome to
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore
Speaker 1: the intersection of identity, social media, technology, and the Internet. However,
Speaker 1: if this is your first time ever listening to the show,
Speaker 1: maybe this is not the episode to start with. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this episode is going to be representative
Speaker 1: of the UVRA that we have built over the last
Speaker 1: four years here that there are No Girls on the Internet. Generally,
Speaker 1: the podcast does not really explore sort of like what's
Speaker 1: going on personally with me as most listeners.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: However, I have been gone from the show since July,
Speaker 1: and I figured it's time to let you all the
Speaker 1: listeners in on some of what's been going on. This
Speaker 1: being a tech I swear there is a tech angled
Speaker 1: what's been going on with me. But yeah, if this
Speaker 1: is your first time listening, Welcome, We're so excited to
Speaker 1: have you. This might not be the one to start with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's probably good advice for people. It's
Speaker 2: gonna be a little different. But Bridgie, it's so nice
Speaker 2: to have you back here? Thank you for recording. And
Speaker 2: I got to ask, how have things been with you?
Speaker 1: If you watch Bravos Real Housewives of New York, you
Speaker 1: know when Derenda is asked like, how are you doing?
Speaker 1: Not well? Bitch? That's how I'm doing not well, bitch.
Speaker 1: Things have been terrible. Things have been very, very bad
Speaker 1: really all aspects of my life, professionally, personally, socially, in
Speaker 1: all the ways that one can be bad. I am bad.
Speaker 1: I feel like people listening are like, what the hell
Speaker 1: is going on out there? Yet it's not been a
Speaker 1: good I've not been a good summer and not been
Speaker 1: a good fall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it's been very rough, and I really
Speaker 2: commend you for wanting to get back on the mic
Speaker 2: talk to listeners about what's been going on with you
Speaker 2: and that you know. I know a lot of listeners
Speaker 2: have written in with concern and expressing their support, which
Speaker 2: was very nice. But so where do you want to start?
Speaker 2: Do you want to just take us through chronologically or
Speaker 2: something else.
Speaker 1: I'll just jump in. So on the fourth of July,
Speaker 1: I'll say, on the fourth of July, I had a
Speaker 1: great fourth of July when kayaking celebrated all the stuff
Speaker 1: that people do, blah blah blah. The next day I
Speaker 1: got a call from my mom saying that my dad
Speaker 1: had had a pretty bad fall down the stairs. People
Speaker 1: who have been following me for a while, like back
Speaker 1: in the stuff I've ever told you days, might recall
Speaker 1: that my dad is disabled, has had a whole host
Speaker 1: of like chronic health issues. You know, he has had
Speaker 1: strokes on the pad. So this was not wholly new
Speaker 1: territory for us as a family, but it was still
Speaker 1: pretty rough news. He had been on the stairs. My
Speaker 1: mom heard a loud crash, came downstairs, he was on
Speaker 1: the ground. She called one when one the whole works.
Speaker 1: The day after that was my brother and sister in law.
Speaker 1: They were having a baby shower in Richmond, Virginia because
Speaker 1: they're expecting twins. They since have had these twins, so
Speaker 1: there are twin me said nephew out in the world,
Speaker 1: which is great. So I came home. I was already
Speaker 1: planning on going to see my family to be at
Speaker 1: this baby shower. I went to the baby shower. Was
Speaker 1: a lovely time. Saw my mom there, my brother there,
Speaker 1: all my family there. After the baby shower was winding down,
Speaker 1: my mom got in her car to drive to the
Speaker 1: hospital to see my dad because he was still hospitalized
Speaker 1: from that fall. Maybe an hour later, I excused myself
Speaker 1: from the baby shower, also got in my car, drove
Speaker 1: to the hospital to meet my mom and my dad.
Speaker 1: Met up in my dad's hospital room. You know, my
Speaker 1: dad was you know, he was in okay condition, like
Speaker 1: was talking alert, you know, had had had some like
Speaker 1: medical stuff going on. But like I was happy to
Speaker 1: see him and happy to see that he was like
Speaker 1: doing I thought, like more or less fun. Spent a
Speaker 1: couple of hours visiting with him in the hospital. My
Speaker 1: mom also my brother soon thereafter, the baby shower wrapped
Speaker 1: up and he met us at the hospital, so the
Speaker 1: entire family at the hospital. All in all, it was
Speaker 1: like a fairly normal day. And I remember thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: I was so worried about my dad and that fall,
Speaker 1: but he actually seems like he's gonna be okay. He
Speaker 1: seemed pretty stable and solid. The next day, I go
Speaker 1: visit my dad in the hospital. I was surprised that
Speaker 1: my mom had not made it, so I'm sort of
Speaker 1: like waiting around for her, like where's Mom, Where's Mom?
Speaker 1: And I tell my dad that I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just like, oh, I haven't heard from Mom all day.
Speaker 1: He's like, that's a new usual. You should have your
Speaker 1: brother go check on her. And he did go check
Speaker 1: on her, and she had passed away. She died very unexpectedly.
Speaker 1: The last time I saw her was we were in
Speaker 1: the hospital with my dad and I had walked her
Speaker 1: to her car, and I guess I feel sort of
Speaker 1: grateful that the last thing I said to her, I
Speaker 1: remember the moment like very clearly. It's like very much
Speaker 1: burned into my memory that the last moment that she
Speaker 1: had with my dad was quite tender, like they hugged
Speaker 1: and they kissed and you know, embraced, and that I
Speaker 1: walked her to her car, and that our last moment
Speaker 1: was tender, like I think I said, I love you,
Speaker 1: And I'm grateful that that's what I said, is the
Speaker 1: last thing, because I certainly had no idea that it
Speaker 1: was going to be the last time that I ever
Speaker 1: saw her alive.
Speaker 2: You know, that's obviously he's so so terrible, I think,
Speaker 2: to be with your dad in the hospital, you know,
Speaker 2: a very concerning fall like he was in the hospital,
Speaker 2: and then to lose your mom unexpectedly like two days later.
Speaker 2: That's like a level of tragedy that I think many,
Speaker 2: if not most people never experienced so like so much,
Speaker 2: and so I just wanted to ask for the listener's benefit, like,
Speaker 2: was did your mom have a lot of health problems?
Speaker 2: Was this like something that was kind of expected or
Speaker 2: or was it more out of the blue.
Speaker 1: Completely out of the blue. My mom, you know, had
Speaker 1: just turned seventy, so which was a big milestone birth
Speaker 1: day for her. But in the scheme of things, seventy
Speaker 1: is quite young, and so she didn't have like major
Speaker 1: health complications. I will say the day, the last day
Speaker 1: that we spent together, the day of my brother's baby shower,
Speaker 1: was like a just a horribly hot day in Virginia.
Speaker 1: It was like triple digits, you know. I was having
Speaker 1: difficulty being out and about that day. I remember, notably,
Speaker 1: it was like the hottest day of the summer, and
Speaker 1: it was so hot that I remember thinking, like, I
Speaker 1: wonder if they're going to cancel the baby shower because
Speaker 1: it's so hot. Unfortunately, it's a long story, but we
Speaker 1: were unable to do an autopsy, so I will never
Speaker 1: really know what happened, which you know, was difficult for
Speaker 1: me to accept that. But in some ways it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I guess I've come to sort of that conclusion that
Speaker 1: I'm definitely the kind of person who would really like
Speaker 1: perseverates that the right word perseverate on the details and
Speaker 1: the why and the how and the like could this
Speaker 1: have been prevented? And that's definitely like a way that
Speaker 1: I cope. And in some ways it's okay that I
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, it has to be okay. I've
Speaker 1: had to have made peace with the fact that I'll
Speaker 1: never know what happened, and you know that that is
Speaker 1: how it has to be. But when I say it
Speaker 1: was unexpected, like my mom, she had like a ring camera,
Speaker 1: even though you know, we tell how much do I
Speaker 1: rail against those? And my mom didn't listen to the show,
Speaker 1: so she didn't hear we had to say about ring
Speaker 1: So she had one. And the last thing that she
Speaker 1: did was that she called to order delivery, like dinner
Speaker 1: delivery food. And you know, she calls the order in
Speaker 1: on her phone because we now have that. You see
Speaker 1: the delivery driver come to her door, knock on the door,
Speaker 1: you know, wait around, knock again, wait around. She doesn't answer,
Speaker 1: So in between her calling to order food when she
Speaker 1: got home after the last night that I saw her
Speaker 1: at the hospital. She you know that past and you know,
Speaker 1: as horrible as it was, I guess the way that
Speaker 1: I'm trying to cope is really look for the bright
Speaker 1: sides and the positive because the situation was so horrible
Speaker 1: that it's the only thing I can do. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are positives. You know that she spent her last
Speaker 1: day with her whole family. You know, she did not
Speaker 1: appear to have been in any pain, Like it was
Speaker 1: not like she had a fall. She was in her
Speaker 1: in her favorite chair. Like when we found her at first,
Speaker 1: you know, it looked like she was just asleep, so
Speaker 1: she wasn't you know, it wasn't like she was like
Speaker 1: face down on the floor or something, which is something
Speaker 1: that I've sort of been clinging to. But yeah, was
Speaker 1: very deeply unexpected. I was in informed of this by
Speaker 1: my brother at the hospital. I didn't tell my dad.
Speaker 1: I ran out of the hospital one of his nurses, who,
Speaker 1: by the way, a theme of this episode might be
Speaker 1: like shout out to nurses. Nurses are angels, because every
Speaker 1: hero of this story has been a nurse. They'll get
Speaker 1: to that later. But yeah, my dad's nurse was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I like collapsed in the hospital hallway
Speaker 1: and she held me and helped me get up and
Speaker 1: was like she was like, don't tell your dad, just
Speaker 1: go rushed home found her. I don't know if anybody
Speaker 1: out there has ever found a loved one dead, but
Speaker 1: it sticks with you. I guess I'll just put it
Speaker 1: that way. It's very difficult. It's not something I wish on,
Speaker 1: I would ever wish on my worst enemy. It's really hard.
Speaker 1: It's not something you ever like forget.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't imagine how difficult that must have been.
Speaker 2: You know. I think your focus on like trying to
Speaker 2: focus on some of those positive things that I mean,
Speaker 2: I had no idea, but that seems seems like a
Speaker 2: positive thing to think about. And you know, I think
Speaker 2: the fact that it sounds like she when quickly without pain,
Speaker 2: you know, I think that is something that when I've
Speaker 2: had people close to me die often they haven't had that,
Speaker 2: and I wish that they had. So I think that
Speaker 2: truly is something.
Speaker 1: Well spoiler alert, because I get to experience both. I'm special.
Speaker 1: I'm that special that if you've ever wondered, like, well,
Speaker 1: what I rather have my loved one die unexpectedly without
Speaker 1: any pain in her sleep very quickly, or have them
Speaker 1: fade away from a disease for which there is no
Speaker 1: cure slowly, bit by bit. I got to tell you
Speaker 1: both are bad. I'm experiencing both as we speaking. Spoiler
Speaker 1: alert for how terrible the last few months have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I definitely want to come back to your
Speaker 2: mom because I've had I had the opportunity to meet her.
Speaker 2: She was an amazing person and I uh.
Speaker 1: I loved to you, by the way.
Speaker 2: Oh so I definitely want to come back to her.
Speaker 2: But let's complete the story. So, like, what are you
Speaker 2: talking about that you've gotten to experience both well?
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, my dad was in the hospital when
Speaker 1: this happened, and when I left his room, I did
Speaker 1: not tell him that my mom had died because it
Speaker 1: sounds wild to say, but I genuinely did not believe
Speaker 1: it. It was not until I saw her that I started
Speaker 1: to believe it and believe it or not. Even a
Speaker 1: little bit after, I like wasn't sure. I was like,
Speaker 1: maybe something will happen. Once she was like in a casket,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, she probably this probably is what's happening,
Speaker 1: but like that, but like that is how unexpected this
Speaker 1: was to me. So, you know, I went home, was
Speaker 1: talking to my family, and we decided that we had
Speaker 1: to go back to the hospital the next day and
Speaker 1: break the news to my dad. And as hard as
Speaker 1: it was for me, my dad had it worse. I
Speaker 1: really feel for my dad. So we had to break
Speaker 1: the news to him in the hospital that you know,
Speaker 1: he'd seen my mom for the last time, and from
Speaker 1: there it was like something turned off in him. It
Speaker 1: was like and maybe people who have been through something
Speaker 1: like this can chime in and let me know, because
Speaker 1: apparently it is not uncommon, but it was like a
Speaker 1: light somewhere and my dad turned off. And since my
Speaker 1: mom passed away, my dad has continued to get worse
Speaker 1: and worse. Since that day that he was admitted to
Speaker 1: the hospital on the fourth of July. He has not
Speaker 1: walked since then. He has been in either a hospital
Speaker 1: or a rehab facility, back to hospital, back to rehab,
Speaker 1: back to hospital. He has not gone home. He has
Speaker 1: not spent a single solitary moment, not in a facility
Speaker 1: of some kind since then.
Speaker 2: And so just just to chime in, uh so we're
Speaker 2: recording this on November one, and he entered on July fourth,
Speaker 2: so that's.
Speaker 1: That's right months. And to give you a sense, like
Speaker 1: a week before my dad was hospitalized in July, I
Speaker 1: had had lunch with him in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and so
Speaker 1: he got into his car, drove himself the hour and
Speaker 1: changed away to Fredericksburg, walked into the restaurant. We had
Speaker 1: a totally normal you know, no flags were raised. It's
Speaker 1: not like so my dad went from like a pretty
Speaker 1: independent person who had chronic health challenges, had this fall
Speaker 1: and then it was like once once he heard about
Speaker 1: my mom, it was yeah, I just the only I
Speaker 1: can describe it as like something turned off in him.
Speaker 1: And so he has continued to get worse and worse
Speaker 1: and worse. He is currently hospitalized. I have really spent
Speaker 1: most of my time since July with him. It's just yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just been hard. So like I'm still very much
Speaker 1: in this and you know, my mom has passed away.
Speaker 1: My dad is not doing well. I have been living
Speaker 1: in kind of various hotels and Arabian bees in Virginia
Speaker 1: to be with him. Shout out to an amazing nonprofit
Speaker 1: in Richmond. Virginia called Doorways because they provide low cost,
Speaker 1: accessible housing that is near where my dad is hospitalized.
Speaker 1: If not for them, I don't I don't know what
Speaker 1: I would do. Like I've I've spent all my money
Speaker 1: trying to be in Richmond to be with him because
Speaker 1: he can't walk, can't really speak, needs someone to be
Speaker 1: advocating for him, and that person is me. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been that's really been my life for the last
Speaker 1: few months. But I do want to back up because
Speaker 1: I said that this story had a tech angle, and
Speaker 1: I meant it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, you said there was that tech angle.
Speaker 2: So and again I want to get to hearing about
Speaker 2: your mom. But what is the what's the tech angle
Speaker 2: in this story?
Speaker 1: Well, so the day that my mom passed away was
Speaker 1: July seventh. That was the day that we found her
Speaker 1: less than twelve hours later. Imagine my surprise when an
Speaker 1: obituary is published and goes semi viral on social media
Speaker 1: about my mom. Now you might be asking, oh, did
Speaker 1: someone in your family write this obituary like very early
Speaker 1: on and submit it. That's what we thought, right, And
Speaker 1: it makes sense that you would be thinking that, But
Speaker 1: that is not what happened, So less than twelve hours
Speaker 1: after we found my mom's dead body in her house,
Speaker 1: before we had ever even informed my own father, Coamma,
Speaker 1: her husband, Kamma, her next of kin of her death.
Speaker 1: Imagine my surprise when a scammy AI obituary, pirate, piece
Speaker 1: of shit media, whatever you want to call it, website
Speaker 1: publishes a badly written, hacky, full of errors, full of
Speaker 1: insidious ads obituary for my mom. This was before we
Speaker 1: had a chance to go to the hospital to talk
Speaker 1: to my dad. This was before we had informed the
Speaker 1: entirety of our family. This was truly even before I
Speaker 1: had really like internalized what had happened, This had already
Speaker 1: gone viral on Facebook. Now I should say I would
Speaker 1: call my mom kind of a local celebrity in our town.
Speaker 1: My mom was a really respected and distinguished pediatrician, and basically,
Speaker 1: if you were like a black person in Richmond, she
Speaker 1: was probably your pediatrician, or you knew somebody who she
Speaker 1: was their doctor. She has been in private practice for decades,
Speaker 1: and so generations and generations and generations of people have
Speaker 1: been treated by her. I would say that she's kind
Speaker 1: of a town hero. Like when I would go out
Speaker 1: to dinner with her, go to the mall with her. People.
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding. And this is not just like the
Speaker 1: rosy sheen that I'm putting on her because she was
Speaker 1: my mom. This is like, like I mean this literally,
Speaker 1: people would run out of shops to hug her for
Speaker 1: saving their lives. I've seen this happen multiple times on
Speaker 1: multiple different outings. People have run from inside shops to
Speaker 1: hug her and say, you saved my daughter's life, you
Speaker 1: saved my son's life, you saved my sister's life. Right,
Speaker 1: So my mom was she a public figure, and I
Speaker 1: think it's a little debatable. However, she was somebody that
Speaker 1: had a profile in my town. I'll put it that way.
Speaker 1: And so here's what I think happened. From the technical side. So,
Speaker 1: my mom was a doctor who was like known for
Speaker 1: never canceling appointments. She loved what she did. She was
Speaker 1: a really hard worker. I think that when waves and
Speaker 1: waves of appointments started getting canceled, rumors start flying that
Speaker 1: something has happened to her. Because the demographic that she
Speaker 1: serves in Richmond is also a demographic that is like
Speaker 1: heavy on Facebook. If you searched my mom's name on Facebook.
Speaker 1: It is like thousands and thousands and thousands of people
Speaker 1: who are being like, what's going on with with my mom?
Speaker 1: What's going on with her? What's going on with her?
Speaker 1: You know? Is she alive? Is she okay? I've done
Speaker 1: a lot of looking into this. Here's what I think
Speaker 1: is going on. From a technical standpoint, I think that
Speaker 1: people who are running scammy AI obituary shops online are
Speaker 1: clogging it when someone's name is enjoying a boost from search,
Speaker 1: when people are searching for someone's name a lot, when
Speaker 1: people are using someone's name a lot on social media,
Speaker 1: and that's how they determine we're going to cook up
Speaker 1: an AI generated obituary for this person. And that is
Speaker 1: exactly what they did. So I'm not kidding. I knew
Speaker 1: she was gone for less than twelve hours when this
Speaker 1: piece was published, and when it was published, it went
Speaker 1: wildly viral on Facebook, to the point where people that
Speaker 1: I had not spoken to in years, people I certainly
Speaker 1: didn't tell what was going on, were texting me sending
Speaker 1: me the link to the obituary being like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I heard about your mom. I'm so sorry, right, and
Speaker 1: so mind you we hadn't talked to my dad yet.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess, like depending on how you look
Speaker 1: at it. Luckily, my dad was not in a position
Speaker 1: where he could be scrolling his phone. Had my dad
Speaker 1: had his phone, he absolutely would have heard the news
Speaker 1: about the death of his wife from Facebook. There's no
Speaker 1: way that he would not have. The saving grace is
Speaker 1: that my dad, in his state, was not able to
Speaker 1: have his phone and be looking at his phone. Had
Speaker 1: he had access to his phone, that is how he
Speaker 1: would have found out about his wife passing away, not
Speaker 1: from his kids, not from his family. I have to
Speaker 1: pause there because, like, even talking about it now, it
Speaker 1: makes me want to vomit. It like it fills me
Speaker 1: with such rage and disgust for my fellow human that
Speaker 1: it makes me I mean, you know, give report on
Speaker 1: tech harms for four years and then they happen to you,
Speaker 1: and you can't believe that the depravity and the depths
Speaker 1: that people will go for to generate a quick buck online.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's truly despicable. I think there are a lot
Speaker 2: of different perspectives in society. People have different values, but
Speaker 2: I think one thing that pretty much every human I've
Speaker 2: ever met, like has in common is that everybody recognizes
Speaker 2: that when you lose a close member of your family,
Speaker 2: that's hard and there should be some respect given. And
Speaker 2: uh to take that kind of event and just turn
Speaker 2: it into more seo chum to drive clicks or whatever
Speaker 2: the scam was to monetize this event that to you
Speaker 2: was like one of the most difficult things you've ever
Speaker 2: been through, and to them is just like another data
Speaker 2: point to monetize. It really is despicable and highlights like
Speaker 2: the worst of the ways that technology can harm us.
Speaker 1: This was the worst day of my life was the
Speaker 1: day that I found my mom's dead body in her house.
Speaker 1: Every day since then has been a living nightmare from
Speaker 1: which there is no waking up. And I will not
Speaker 1: rest until the people who have monetized this day of
Speaker 1: mine lose everything. This is like it's fucking war with me.
Speaker 1: I will never be over this. It will be I will.
Speaker 1: I will go to my grave shaming these people and
Speaker 1: talking about this and speaking about this. So this is
Speaker 1: not over by a long shot. I have some names,
Speaker 1: so one of us you'll hear later on. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm coming for all of you people, So I hope
Speaker 1: you're fucking ready let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1: So you said you wanted to circle back to talking
Speaker 1: about my mom, So let's do that because anybody who
Speaker 1: knew my mom, met my mom, ever experienced my mom,
Speaker 1: will tell you that she was a force. Like Again,
Speaker 1: this is not me saying this because I'm her daughter,
Speaker 1: although I do have a special affinity for her obviously,
Speaker 1: But my mom was born into abject poverty in rural Virginia.
Speaker 1: As an orphan. She worked in farms. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just like a farm hand, bounced from family to family
Speaker 1: and foster care working on farms in rural Virginia. She
Speaker 1: was born with nothing. She worked her way up, was
Speaker 1: at the top of her school in college, top of
Speaker 1: her classes in med school, became probably the top rated
Speaker 1: pediatrician in our town. Right the day that she died.
Speaker 1: The week after that, the whole family was meant to
Speaker 1: be going to Virginia Beach to watch her get a
Speaker 1: massive award for pediatrics. Right, my mom has been on
Speaker 1: National Spotlight, She's been on the Today Show talking about
Speaker 1: the work that she's done for childhood literacy. She is
Speaker 1: an amazing person who has had a dynamic and multifaceted
Speaker 1: life story. Anybody who has met her could tell you
Speaker 1: what a colorful person she was, What a smart person
Speaker 1: she was, What a funny person she was, What a
Speaker 1: warm person, what she was, What a passionate person she was,
Speaker 1: What an a pitiated person she was? Like she was
Speaker 1: a person who lived in full color. Right. The thing
Speaker 1: that pisses me off the mo about this AI obituary
Speaker 1: that they published about her is that it's so generic
Speaker 1: and so flat. They say, oh, she was a pediatrician
Speaker 1: who was specialized in children's medicine. Well, what the fuck
Speaker 1: else would a pediatrician specialize in. That's like saying, oh,
Speaker 1: he was a firefighter who specialized in flames. Obviously she
Speaker 1: specialized in children's medicine. The way that it's written, it's
Speaker 1: just the most AI generated, flat piece of bullshit I
Speaker 1: have ever read in my life, And it is so
Speaker 1: deeply offensive to me. If a human was sitting down
Speaker 1: to write an obituary about my mom, there are so
Speaker 1: many things that you obviously would have included. The first
Speaker 1: obituary that was published, because there was a handful of them,
Speaker 1: did not include one single detail. It was all vagaries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I know we have a lot
Speaker 2: of younger listeners who maybe have not yet had the
Speaker 2: experience of having a close loved one die. And to you,
Speaker 2: I say, congratulations. Keep writing that wave as long as
Speaker 2: you can, but it is coming, and when it does,
Speaker 2: you will realize that obituaries are important. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I personally didn't really think much of them until my
Speaker 2: grandparents passed a few years ago and I was very
Speaker 2: close with them. I personally wrote their obituaries and it
Speaker 2: was a really meaningful thing for me, and I think
Speaker 2: something meaningful for my family, and it just really like,
Speaker 2: it means a lot to have an obituary that does
Speaker 2: reflect who the person was in their life, and yet
Speaker 2: the sting of having that taken away, it would make
Speaker 2: my blood boil.
Speaker 1: Oh, my blood is boiling, my friend, my blood is boiling.
Speaker 1: And it is even worse that I am not alone.
Speaker 1: So it turns out that this kind of practice is
Speaker 1: actually commonplace, and it's been going on for a while.
Speaker 1: It has been made worse by the proliferation of AI.
Speaker 1: Funeral homes have actually been fighting oh bitch, wear a scam,
Speaker 1: obituary pirates whatever you want to call it, for fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty years, but it's really taken off with technology. I
Speaker 1: actually was interviewed for an article in Fast Company after
Speaker 1: this happened. The article I'll link it in the show notes,
Speaker 1: but it's like almost difficult for me to read because
Speaker 1: when I was interviewed, I was still very much I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm still in the thick of it now, but I
Speaker 1: was like really in the thick of it then. And
Speaker 1: in the interview, I feel like I come off as
Speaker 1: like unwell, and I was unwell, like I really was,
Speaker 1: you know, I had just buried my mom. I had
Speaker 1: and this was totally unexpected. I was literally sleeping in
Speaker 1: my dad's I see you room for a month, so
Speaker 1: like his room has a couch in it, I was
Speaker 1: just curling up on my couch and that's where I
Speaker 1: was living for a literal month. I was dealing with
Speaker 1: all of his health stuff, talking to doctors every day,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to you know, you know,
Speaker 1: my mom died unexpectedly, so trying to figure out all
Speaker 1: of her like a state stuff, her will, like all
Speaker 1: of this like incredibly complicated stuff, funeral arrangements, stuff that
Speaker 1: we had never talked about, which we'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a minute. But I was just struggling. I was
Speaker 1: I was on well. So it's almost hard for me
Speaker 1: to go back and read that article because I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like I was really in it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when someone is going through one of the most difficult times.
Speaker 1: For me, it wasn't just one of the most it
Speaker 1: was the most difficult time of my entire life. Having
Speaker 1: there be obituary pirates who are capitalizing off of that,
Speaker 1: and adding to that, I wanted to die. It just
Speaker 1: was really hard. And you know what made it worse
Speaker 1: was that the AI generated obituaries hit the Internet very
Speaker 1: quickly and went viral on Facebook very quickly. And so
Speaker 1: when our family actually submitted a real obituary written by
Speaker 1: my aunt Ruth, who did a beautiful job, when that
Speaker 1: was submitted to the funeral home and put on line
Speaker 1: for a while, the AI generated obituary still had more reach.
Speaker 1: Like when you googled my mom's name plus obituary, the
Speaker 1: ones that were written by her family with actual information,
Speaker 1: not to mention, you know, no inaccuracies. Because the AI
Speaker 1: generated ones had inaccuracies, those were not as high up
Speaker 1: on Google for a time as the ones that were bullshit,
Speaker 1: and so you know, you were talking about how obituaries matter.
Speaker 1: They matter for so many reasons, not the least of
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the obituary written by our family
Speaker 1: had information about the services, information about how you could
Speaker 1: connect with the family. I go on to these, you know,
Speaker 1: AI scammy sites, and there are real people who my
Speaker 1: mom actually knew leaving condolences. They don't know that that
Speaker 1: has nothing. Our family didn't authorize that, they didn't put
Speaker 1: that up right. And so that's just a logistical reason
Speaker 1: as to why these are so messed up. But you're right,
Speaker 1: obituaries matter. Obituaries it it matters when someone passes away.
Speaker 1: The act of writing an obituary is important, and you know,
Speaker 1: you write them for other people. You write them for humans.
Speaker 1: You don't write them to generate money. And you don't
Speaker 1: take away someone's right to mourn their mother the way
Speaker 1: that they want to do it. You don't take that
Speaker 1: away from them. That was stolen from me. Other than
Speaker 1: my close family and like my close close circle of friends,
Speaker 1: I didn't tell anybody my mom passed away, and they
Speaker 1: all knew. They all knew from that AI bullshit. I
Speaker 1: can't even express what that feels like like I feel
Speaker 1: like I was robbed of the opportunity to mourn my
Speaker 1: mother on my own terms. Grieving is hard enough, having
Speaker 1: to grieve in this digital fish bowl is just I
Speaker 1: can't even describe what that felt like. I'm still I'm
Speaker 1: still not over it. Maybe I'll never be over it.
Speaker 1: And you know, I just distinctly remember having this moment
Speaker 1: maybe an hour after my family met at my dad's
Speaker 1: hospital room to tell him that my mom had died,
Speaker 1: where it was me, my brother, my sister in law,
Speaker 1: my aunts, my mom's sisters, and somebody had sent one
Speaker 1: of the AI generated obituaries to my aunt, and we
Speaker 1: all had this moment where we were like who published this,
Speaker 1: who submitted this? And I don't want to say we
Speaker 1: were like accusing each other, but it was a tense moment.
Speaker 1: It was a moment of like, who in this very
Speaker 1: close circle of like friends and family went to the
Speaker 1: media and come to find out, none of us did.
Speaker 1: That was just just a thing that was taken from
Speaker 1: us by scammers. And so yeah, that was a moment
Speaker 1: on top of the worst moment of my life that
Speaker 1: we didn't need as a family. We already had enough
Speaker 1: on our plates as a family, and yeah, the fact
Speaker 1: that this is a common practice is just unacceptable. Here's
Speaker 1: a here, there's a bit from the Fast Company article
Speaker 1: that I was quoted in. I didn't say this, but
Speaker 1: this was what the journalist wrote. AI generated obits are
Speaker 1: now filling the web, marking a new chapter in the
Speaker 1: quest to monetize grief. Many of these sites turning out
Speaker 1: AI generated content exploiting the dead are based in Asia
Speaker 1: and appear to be run solely to generate ad revenue.
Speaker 1: As I said, my mom was a bit of a
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm a call of a celebrity, but
Speaker 1: like she was like a known entity in our town. However,
Speaker 1: Fast Company also spoke to people who didn't have any
Speaker 1: kind of public profile, for whom these scammy rags still
Speaker 1: published AI obituaries for. In some cases, the person is
Speaker 1: not even really dead. A journalist wrote a piece about
Speaker 1: the anxiety that she experiences while driving on LA's freeways,
Speaker 1: and she told CNN that she believes that the spike
Speaker 1: in online traffic attached to her name from that piece
Speaker 1: being published is why scammers decided to say that she
Speaker 1: died on the internet. Their hope is that that little
Speaker 1: spike in traffic attached to her name means that more
Speaker 1: people will click on that obituary, which will lead to
Speaker 1: monetary revenue for whoever's putting that up. But she wasn't dead.
Speaker 1: In fact, she was sitting in a hospital room helping
Speaker 1: a friend through surgery when her phone started blowing up
Speaker 1: because these videos of AI generated news anchors were talking
Speaker 1: about how she died in a car crash. She said,
Speaker 1: I was sad. Reading your own obituary is a surreal experience.
Speaker 1: After speaking with experts, I was scared for myself, for
Speaker 1: all journalists, and for our society. And yeah, I'm also scared. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is scary. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you mentioned, that was talked
Speaker 2: about in some of those articles that you shared ahead
Speaker 2: of this recording was the idea that these obituary pirates
Speaker 2: have been doing this for twenty years, maybe a little
Speaker 2: bit longer, and so it does seem like a good
Speaker 2: example of the sort of harm that has been ongoing,
Speaker 2: the sort of tech enabled harm that has really been
Speaker 2: like turbocharged with AI to allow them to churn these
Speaker 2: out so much faster and more cheaply.
Speaker 1: Exactly, but even the ones that are not necessarily AI
Speaker 1: generated are still pretty creepy. Kate nibs Over at Wired
Speaker 1: reported on how YouTubers are modifying this practice by just
Speaker 1: summarizing obituaries of dead strangers in videos. Somebody was upset
Speaker 1: enough by this after watching strangers make videos hastily summarizing
Speaker 1: a good friend's death that they reached out to her,
Speaker 1: she writes. Sometimes these obituary YouTubers promote products in the
Speaker 1: video description, like a two hundred and twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: vitamin sea cream for sale on Amazon. Sometimes they just
Speaker 1: list strings of SEO, baiting keywords like death, cause of death, die, rip,
Speaker 1: what happened? While each channel differs from the next in
Speaker 1: small ways, there's a unifying aesthetic. Everything looks rushed and careless.
Speaker 1: There's no hint of emotion or acknowledgment that they're discussing
Speaker 1: someone's greatest tragedy. And as you said, Mike, this is
Speaker 1: not new. Funeral homes have been dealing with obituary aggravator
Speaker 1: sites for fifteen or twenty years. This is from Courtney Miller,
Speaker 1: chief strategy officer at MkJ Marketing, who specializes in funeral services.
Speaker 1: She says that the site's trall news articles and local
Speaker 1: funeral home websites looking for an initial death announcement that
Speaker 1: has basic details like name, age, and where a service
Speaker 1: might be held. They then scrape and republish that content
Speaker 1: at scale using templated formats or today increasingly AI tools.
Speaker 1: So basically these people are just exploiting SEO and like
Speaker 1: Google trends and things like that. SEO expert Chris silver
Speaker 1: Smith says there's a whole new strategy in search rankings,
Speaker 1: and I believe it's based off of getting information that
Speaker 1: someone has died and seeing there's a little spike in
Speaker 1: traffic perhaps in a specific region for that person's name,
Speaker 1: and rapidly optimizing and publishing articles about the person to
Speaker 1: get these dribbles of search traffic.
Speaker 2: Dribbles of search traffic is such a like diminutive term,
Speaker 2: but that feels correct here, Like it's hard to imagine
Speaker 2: that they're making any sort of serious money off any
Speaker 2: individual obituary, And I guess it's really like the scale
Speaker 2: of it that allows this to be a fruitful enterprise
Speaker 2: for these scammers to take people's lives and flatten them
Speaker 2: down in this way, to almost like turn people's death
Speaker 2: into a commodity, Like what is the business model there
Speaker 2: is it that Well.
Speaker 1: It's pretty much exactly that. They just start playing on
Speaker 1: the surge of interest in keywords related to death s'suck
Speaker 1: my mom's name, and they just pump out low effort
Speaker 1: content to try to capitalize on that flow of web traffic.
Speaker 1: It's really a numbers game, and I think that's why
Speaker 1: it kind of like has to be so low effort,
Speaker 1: because I don't think that anybody was making a lot
Speaker 1: of money individually from my mom's AIBS obituary. But if
Speaker 1: you do it for enough people, if you crank them out,
Speaker 1: crank them out, and crank them out in aggregate, you
Speaker 1: can probably make some money. And obituaries really are big business.
Speaker 1: A Wired piece called the Morbid War over online Obituaries
Speaker 1: from twenty twenty one describes this company, Echovita. These people
Speaker 1: are basically a ring of obituary scammers. So companies like
Speaker 1: Echovita they take this scam a step further. So Echovita
Speaker 1: was sued by Service Corporation International, which is like a
Speaker 1: conglamorate of fifteen hundred funeral homes, and they alleged that
Speaker 1: the company was scraping details from obituaries written by family
Speaker 1: members from funeral home websites and just republishing them. Quote.
Speaker 1: Mining people's personal data at the lowest point in their
Speaker 1: lives is disappointing. A spokesperson for the Funeral Conglamorate told
Speaker 1: Wired in an email. So Echovita makes money through purporting
Speaker 1: to connect mourners with flower delivery services or other like
Speaker 1: funeral services that they then profit from. But wait, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Did I give these fucking goals permission to profit financially
Speaker 1: from my mom's death? No? I fucking didn't. I've never
Speaker 1: talked to these people. I don't know these people, and
Speaker 1: yet when I searched their scam enterprise website, what you know,
Speaker 1: there's my mom's name, there's my mom's information next to
Speaker 1: these like insidious scammy pop up ads that are like, oh,
Speaker 1: for thirty dollars, you can plant a tree in honor
Speaker 1: of my mom. Also side note, my mom would have
Speaker 1: hated that. She would have thought that was so hacky.
Speaker 1: She would have never approved that. I didn't approve that,
Speaker 1: yet on their website, these guls are making money off
Speaker 1: of my dead mother without anybody in my family's permission.
Speaker 2: So terrible and like big money, Like you said.
Speaker 1: Right, So, according to a piece about another lawsuit against Ecuovida,
Speaker 1: the company has an option for people to claim an
Speaker 1: obituary right. So I could provide documentation to Echovida proving
Speaker 1: that my mom is my mom at If I did that,
Speaker 1: I could then take a cut of whatever profit they
Speaker 1: make from flowers, in candles or whatever else. But I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: that is just gross. Why should I have to prove
Speaker 1: to you that I am my mother's daughter. You a
Speaker 1: stranger that I have not provided to have anything to
Speaker 1: do with me or my family. Why do I need
Speaker 1: to provide documentation to you to prove anything? Who gave
Speaker 1: you permission to have my mom's name on your scam website?
Speaker 2: And how generous of them to give you some undefined
Speaker 2: cut of their choschke sales.
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure that people would actually get the
Speaker 1: flowers or the tree is actually planted, because, according to
Speaker 1: the trust Pilot reviews and EcoVida, the flowers that people
Speaker 1: are sending the money to buy might not even show up,
Speaker 1: and the company is just like pocketing the money. Here's
Speaker 1: one review from trust Pilot quote, these are leech companies
Speaker 1: that take obituaries from legitimate funeral home site and post
Speaker 1: them on their own sites to profit from The obituary
Speaker 1: is often inaccurate. They are just trying to sell try,
Speaker 1: et cetera without permission or authorization from their families. They
Speaker 1: just did this to us on the loss of my
Speaker 1: fourteen year old grandson. Our funeral director has made several
Speaker 1: attempts to stop this, but always hits a dead end.
Speaker 1: I have warned everyone we shared our obituary with, and
Speaker 1: I am writing a letter to the Secretary of State.
Speaker 2: It's kind of surprising that they are still doing this
Speaker 2: with impunity, given stories like that from a grandmother who
Speaker 2: sounds like she's pretty mad. Listening to you sounds like
Speaker 2: you're pretty mad. I wouldn't want to be the focus
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 1: Ire Oh Ethovida CEO, Paco Laclerk, your name is going
Speaker 1: to be on my lips and on my fingers for
Speaker 1: the rest of both of our lives. I'm going to
Speaker 1: be on your ass like white on Rice. You will
Speaker 1: never shake me. My family is own an apology. I
Speaker 1: am getting that apology, rest assured. Also, fun fact about
Speaker 1: Ecovita is like, I mean, you know, Mike, you know
Speaker 1: I love reading when there's like a review site and
Speaker 1: somebody leaves a bad review, owner comes on to be like,
Speaker 1: that's not true. You did get those chicken fingers blah.
Speaker 1: If you go on to the trust pilot reviews for Echovida,
Speaker 1: somebody I assume it's Echovida ceo Paco la Clerk is
Speaker 1: arguing back with everybody. So because if all of these
Speaker 1: people being like, these people are scammers, they are trying
Speaker 1: to profit off the death of my child, These people
Speaker 1: are ghouls, And then you have the owner or somebody
Speaker 1: replying to each of you being like, that's not true.
Speaker 1: We're a legitimate business. You're lying. If you find yourself
Speaker 1: arguing back with dozens of people who are who are
Speaker 1: accusing you angrily of scamming and making money from their
Speaker 1: dead family members, give it up, Like, at what point
Speaker 1: are you? At what point did you take a step
Speaker 1: back and be like, am I the ghoul? Here? Am
Speaker 1: I the one and the wrong here? Like, once you're
Speaker 1: arguing with multiple people who are grieving, the asshole is
Speaker 1: you Pacoh? Yeah?
Speaker 2: That does seem like it should be a pretty clear
Speaker 2: signal that like maybe one needs to take a look
Speaker 2: at what they are doing. If they are are engaged
Speaker 2: in lots of online disputes with grieving family members.
Speaker 1: Correct, So let's talk more about our friend. Pascal Paco,
Speaker 1: la Clerk, owner of Echo Vita so Lecourt, claims that
Speaker 1: his company their mission is virtuous. He's just informing the
Speaker 1: public of recent deaths at the public service. He says
Speaker 1: that anybody can publish obituaries on his website for free
Speaker 1: and says quote, in reality, the funeral home should never
Speaker 1: be the owner of an obituary. The obituary's purpose is
Speaker 1: to share information with the public. So in my case,
Speaker 1: is it Paco's job to inform my ill father of
Speaker 1: the unexpected death of his wife of forty years. Is
Speaker 1: it Paco's job or is it his family's job? Because
Speaker 1: I feel like my dad doesn't even know who Paco
Speaker 1: fucking is and he needs to stay out of it.
Speaker 1: This idea that he is doing a virtuous public service
Speaker 1: and that the public has a right to know when
Speaker 1: someone passes. If you've ever had the misfortune of having
Speaker 1: to bury a loved one, especially unexpectedly, it is very
Speaker 1: difficult and it is nobody's business but the family and
Speaker 1: the grieving person to decide how and when that information
Speaker 1: is distributed. What is this idea that when somebody dies automatically,
Speaker 1: the entire public has to be informed. Like I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: it is such a callous way of robbing the grieving
Speaker 1: from what should be an intimate process that they can
Speaker 1: work out on their own as a family. Nobody has
Speaker 1: the right to swoop in and inform the public before
Speaker 1: the family is even ready to do that, and they
Speaker 1: certainly shouldn't be doing it to make a quick buck.
Speaker 2: Like Pascal Paco Laclerk is truly detestable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a real piece of shit. More after a
Speaker 1: quick break, let's get right back into it. So you
Speaker 1: might be wondering how did Egovida come to be? Well,
Speaker 1: before Echovida, there was a company called Afterlife that was
Speaker 1: shuddered after a ruling, a twenty million dollar ruling against
Speaker 1: them for pirating the obituaries and pictures of dead people
Speaker 1: in order to profit from grieving families. I have to
Speaker 1: say the judge in this case, Federal Court Judge Catherine Kine,
Speaker 1: really laid down the law, and she said that the
Speaker 1: reason she was being so intense was because she thought
Speaker 1: that their behavior was high handed, reprehensible, and marked a
Speaker 1: departure from standards of decency, and so she was like,
Speaker 1: I need to like make an example of them so
Speaker 1: they will never never do this again. Get a load
Speaker 1: of this quote that Paco gave to The Globe after
Speaker 1: the judge's ruling on Afterlives. So Afterlives, unlike Echovida, Echovida
Speaker 1: at least uses Ai to kind of Frankenstein the obituaries
Speaker 1: just enough so they sound a little bit different. So
Speaker 1: it's like not totally just explicitly copy and pasting. After
Speaker 1: Lives was just that touching obituary that you wrote for
Speaker 1: your grandfather, Mike, They would just a copy paste on that.
Speaker 1: Bad boy, steal a picture of your grandfather from your Facebook,
Speaker 1: put it up there, add a link to buy a
Speaker 1: tree that maybe between you and me nobody would ever get,
Speaker 1: pocket the money and fucking profit, and then bounce to
Speaker 1: the next one.
Speaker 2: How would you feel about that, Well, sir, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: like it.
Speaker 1: No, So it might not surprise you to find that
Speaker 1: that is against the law. But after that twenty million
Speaker 1: dollar ruling which shuddered Afterlife, this is the quote that
Speaker 1: our friend Paco stand up Guy, gave to the Globe.
Speaker 1: Quote the day we heard that publishing obituaries on the
Speaker 1: Internet similar to that of newspapers, and using photos and
Speaker 1: original text was unacceptable. We immediately stopped operating the company. Homie,
Speaker 1: why would you think that stealing the photos of dead
Speaker 1: strangers is an acceptable way to make money in the
Speaker 1: first place.
Speaker 2: And then he went on to start this other company
Speaker 2: that does the same thing but a little bit different
Speaker 2: so that it can avoid copyright infringement.
Speaker 1: Right, yes, yes, exactly that. And so the new company, EcoVida,
Speaker 1: it is big business. Paco says that he this company
Speaker 1: has generated five million dollars in revenue off of people's
Speaker 1: obituaries in twenty twenty alone. Much like Afterlives, the company
Speaker 1: that was shuttered after that twenty million dollar ruling, Ecovita
Speaker 1: takes commissions on flowers, candles, and tree sales. The only
Speaker 1: difference is he's not republishing or stealing the obituaries verbatim
Speaker 1: and pictures of dead people. He's sort of pulling information
Speaker 1: from other obituaries, so there's a little bit of grayl
Speaker 1: area and then profiting off of them. But still oftentimes
Speaker 1: those obituaries are incorrect or have incomplete information.
Speaker 2: Going back to the AI generated obituary about your mom.
Speaker 2: It was shocking how they could cram so little information
Speaker 2: into so many words. It just really was like so vague.
Speaker 2: As a little experiment, I asked chat gpt to write
Speaker 2: me a five hundred word obituary for a beloved pediatrician
Speaker 2: from Richmond, and it was almost identical that flattening that
Speaker 2: you talked about. I think, you know, this phenomenon does
Speaker 2: highlight a lot of the tech stuff that we've talked
Speaker 2: about for years, and I think one of them is
Speaker 2: how technology has this tendency to just flatten us, and,
Speaker 2: like you said, for these obituaries, just harvest what's available,
Speaker 2: make up what isn't, and then just churn out some
Speaker 2: chum exactly.
Speaker 1: One of the people also interviewed for that Fast Company
Speaker 1: article talked about losing his father and his father had
Speaker 1: been a service member, and in the AI generated version
Speaker 1: of his dad's obituary, it is this like like they
Speaker 1: made up awards that he never won. They made him
Speaker 1: a more decorated veteran than he was, and he was like,
Speaker 1: my dad was a great guy. But I can see
Speaker 1: where the AI tried to like jazz up this story,
Speaker 1: and I guess it sort of goes back to what
Speaker 1: you were saying is that obituaries are for humans. They're
Speaker 1: for the living to grieve people that we loved. They
Speaker 1: are a record for how we lived, who we were,
Speaker 1: how we loved, who loved us, who knew us. Writing
Speaker 1: an obituary for somebody is an intimate, special act. It
Speaker 1: is adding to the public record of who they were.
Speaker 1: I don't want to live in a world where it's
Speaker 1: just another way for a tech douche to make money.
Speaker 1: I don't want to live in a world where my
Speaker 1: mom's beautiful, colorful, full, dynamic, crazy life is just flattened
Speaker 1: out so people like Paco La Clerk can get a
Speaker 1: nickel in their bank account. That is not the world
Speaker 1: I want to live in. Grieving and death is hard enough.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Like that judge said, who you read from it
Speaker 2: violates basic ideas of decency. Somebody ought to do something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Paco la Clerk says, quote, I want to
Speaker 1: use technology to become a disruptor of the industry, meeting
Speaker 1: the funeral industry. Paco la Clerk, I don't know you,
Speaker 1: we have never met. I don't want my mom's death
Speaker 1: and my grieving process to be a pit stop on
Speaker 1: your disruption of the funeral industry. I don't give a
Speaker 1: fuck about your disruption. You have no right to be
Speaker 1: exploiting grieving people using technology. This is what kills me
Speaker 1: about this person is that the way that he speaks
Speaker 1: in these interviews, I would almost respect it more if
Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, I'm a scammer. It's a scam.
Speaker 1: It's if I do it enough times, I make a
Speaker 1: quick buck. That's why I'm doing it. It's a financial scam.
Speaker 1: At least I would be like, Okay, he's being honest.
Speaker 1: The thing that kills me is that, because it has
Speaker 1: to do with technology, he wants to exploit my dead
Speaker 1: mom and my family for money and also be seen
Speaker 1: as a titan of industry for doing it. He wants
Speaker 1: to be seen as a thought leader for doing it.
Speaker 1: He is a scammer. If I took a picture of
Speaker 1: Pacola Clerk's dead family member and screen printed it on
Speaker 1: a T shirt and started selling it down on Fourteenth Street,
Speaker 1: you will call me a scammer. Right, that's a scam
Speaker 1: If I did that with that his permission. Because it
Speaker 1: involves technology, he believes that it is some kind of
Speaker 1: a disruption, as opposed to what it is which is
Speaker 1: a violation. And I refuse to live in a world
Speaker 1: where somebody can exploit me and my mom and my
Speaker 1: family for money for their financial gain against my will,
Speaker 1: without my permission, and also have the gall to see
Speaker 1: himself as a goddamn visionary not on my watch. So again,
Speaker 1: this is not gonna be the last time we talked
Speaker 1: about Pacola, Clerk, Paco. Look, Clerk, I am your new
Speaker 1: biggest fan. We're going to talk about you every fucking week. Uh,
Speaker 1: get used.
Speaker 2: To it, all right, bridget So how do you want
Speaker 2: to land this plane? Do you want to circle back
Speaker 2: to your mom, you want to talk about your dad,
Speaker 2: You want to share what you've learned about going through
Speaker 2: this process that might help listeners who are either going
Speaker 2: through it or maybe aren't going through it yet but
Speaker 2: see it coming down the pike.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, what can I say? I would say
Speaker 1: everybody listening to this, if you have parents in your life,
Speaker 1: loved ones, older folks. My mom died unexpectedly and none
Speaker 1: of her affairs were in order, I'll put it that way,
Speaker 1: and it's made everything much harder. And yeah, I would say,
Speaker 1: if you are avoiding a tough conversation with your mom
Speaker 1: or your dad or your aunt about what their end
Speaker 1: of life plans look like. Have the conversation, because you're
Speaker 1: going to be dealing with it one way or the other.
Speaker 1: One route is it's gonna be hard regardless. So you
Speaker 1: got to decide if you want to have that conversation
Speaker 1: and get affairs an order now and have it be
Speaker 1: regular hard or hard hard. So that's one. So end
Speaker 1: of life care plans, whatever needs to be arranged. I
Speaker 1: really implore people to make those arrangements while you can,
Speaker 1: because it's very difficult to make them otherwise. Take it
Speaker 1: from me. Yeah, I would also say, like I am
Speaker 1: still very much in it. If I sound not like myself,
Speaker 1: it's because I am not myself and I don't know
Speaker 1: if myself is ever coming back. This might be a
Speaker 1: permanent change for me. And yeah, it's just as hard
Speaker 1: as everything was. I think the feeling of having my
Speaker 1: grief be exploited, Like I don't think I ever really
Speaker 1: got to privately grieve my mom and grieve my dad,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, and like really sort of
Speaker 1: grieve what happened to my family. There's been a real
Speaker 1: lack of intimacy. I can't quite describe the feeling of
Speaker 1: being in like a digital fish bowl while you're going
Speaker 1: through something as hard and intimate as grief. It was
Speaker 1: really invasive. I have to say, like I really kind
Speaker 1: of shut down, you know, when those AI obituaries hit
Speaker 1: social media. I was not yet ready to talk about
Speaker 1: what was happening, and I had to talk about it
Speaker 1: because people were texting me about it and asking me
Speaker 1: about it because of these obituaries and so like, I
Speaker 1: didn't even want to post my own kind of private
Speaker 1: tribute to my mom because of all of this. I like,
Speaker 1: I really still haven't because the time that I would
Speaker 1: have done that, I was dealing with this, right I
Speaker 1: was like trying to find where these plate, where these
Speaker 1: AI obituary pirates were based, and trying to get things
Speaker 1: taken down off of the Internet and all of that. Right,
Speaker 1: so I felt very exposed and it was very hard.
Speaker 1: I am still very much in it. So this is
Speaker 1: not the sort of like ending of like and now
Speaker 1: everything's okay. Everything is terrible for me and I don't
Speaker 1: know when it's going to get better. But I would
Speaker 1: say the thing that I have learned from all of
Speaker 1: this is that when we talk about things like AI.
Speaker 1: It really does matter, right, like obituaries matter. Some things
Speaker 1: are for humans, some things are There are things that
Speaker 1: connect us to our humanity, there are things that connect
Speaker 1: us to the experience of being human. All of us
Speaker 1: is going to die. I'm so sorry to say this,
Speaker 1: but everyone listening right now, if you have not already,
Speaker 1: you are going to be burying a parent or someone
Speaker 1: that you know and love. And that is a universal
Speaker 1: that is something that connects us and makes us all human.
Speaker 1: And so we got to decide whether this, this thing
Speaker 1: that connects us to our humanity, is a thing that
Speaker 1: we are going to allow tech companies and tech leaders
Speaker 1: to exploit to make money for themselves against our will.
Speaker 1: And I think that this is I am. I am.
Speaker 1: If I have ever put a a line in the sand,
Speaker 1: I am doing it now. We have to fight this.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to live in a world where when you
Speaker 1: lose somebody this is acceptable, let alone commonplace. I will
Speaker 1: not stand for it. I don't think any of us
Speaker 1: should stand for this. Nobody deserves to live in that world.
Speaker 1: That is not a world that I want to live in.
Speaker 2: All right, All right, well, so are we going to
Speaker 2: be back here again next week to talk about. Uh,
Speaker 2: let's see what's up next on the agenda. Poco Laclerk.
Speaker 1: I'll say this, Pascal, Paco Laclerk, get in touch with me.
Speaker 1: I want to hear from you. I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you. I know I'm going to be on your
Speaker 1: radar soon. However, if you come to me, we can
Speaker 1: deal with this. I'd have you on the show. We
Speaker 1: can talk whatever you want to do, but this is
Speaker 1: sort of your window. I'm going to be a problem
Speaker 1: for you. Mark my words. If anybody knows him, you
Speaker 1: can send him this episode. I'm going to be a
Speaker 1: problem for you one way or another. Make it easy
Speaker 1: for yourself by getting in touch with me. I'll just
Speaker 1: leave it there.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, Bridget, thanks for coming and recording this. I
Speaker 2: know listeners will I don't want to say be happy
Speaker 2: to hear from you, given the subject matter, but listeners
Speaker 2: have been asking, and so it's and I know it
Speaker 2: was difficult, but I do really hope that I don't know,
Speaker 2: recording this episode maybe helps you start to feel a
Speaker 2: little bit normal. You know, you mentioned that you don't
Speaker 2: know if you're ever coming back, and you know we're
Speaker 2: always changing all the time, and something like this I'm
Speaker 2: sure would profoundly change a person. But you'll get through it,
Speaker 2: and I hope that you know, we can all get
Speaker 2: through it together. And I know you're not planning. We're
Speaker 2: not coming back into regular production right now, but hopefully,
Speaker 2: hopefully we'll get back there when you're ready.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for going on this journey with me, Mike.
Speaker 2: My mom loved you, and there were so many things
Speaker 2: about your mom. I maybe got to know like one
Speaker 2: percent of things about your mom. But the first time
Speaker 2: that we met, you know, this is the public health
Speaker 2: nerd in me. We talked about childhood let exposure because
Speaker 2: that is some research that I did while I was
Speaker 2: in grad school. And it turned out that throughout her
Speaker 2: career she had worked with the State of Virginia or
Speaker 2: the Virginia Department of Public Health to really advocate for
Speaker 2: and get enacted a set of programs to reduce the
Speaker 2: prevalence of childhood let exposure for kids in the state
Speaker 2: of Virginia, which is so important. And you know, I'm
Speaker 2: sure that that made a huge difference in the lives
Speaker 2: of hundreds of thousands of children. So, you know, just
Speaker 2: just one little detail of this amazing woman and I
Speaker 2: really feel grateful that I got to meet her.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to tell the egg story. So,
Speaker 1: like Mike notes, I love eggs. I'm obsessed with eggs,
Speaker 1: and my mom also really loved eggs. And we go
Speaker 1: to dinner, so it's like I think it was just
Speaker 1: was it you? Me and her. We were at dinner
Speaker 1: and she ordered like ten plates of devils.
Speaker 2: They were good, and she just kept ordering more plates
Speaker 2: of deviled eggs and we kept eating them, so like
Speaker 2: eating them, just kept eating eggs.
Speaker 1: I was in heaven and I didn't think anything was
Speaker 1: weird because I love eggs and I know my mom
Speaker 1: loves eggs, So like, had you not said something going
Speaker 1: to be I was like, what do you mean it's
Speaker 1: not normal to eat twelve deviled eggs in a city? God,
Speaker 1: I'm also was really, I I don't want that will
Speaker 1: be here. If it's just like a free for all
Speaker 1: with me telling stories of my mom, I could. I
Speaker 1: could do it for my dad too. But like she
Speaker 1: really was like a great person. She had a great laugh.
Speaker 1: There was God, I would kill to hear my mom's
Speaker 1: laugh again, Like it was like music. She had a
Speaker 1: really and she was easy to laugh that was My
Speaker 1: favorite quality about my mom is that she was really smiley,
Speaker 1: easy to laugh. It's something I aspire to and I
Speaker 1: hope it's something that I carrie in her and she
Speaker 1: The other thing about her is that she loved her granddaughter.
Speaker 1: It is such a tragedy that she did not get
Speaker 1: to meet her newest grandkids because my brother and his
Speaker 1: wife had twins, so there's two new ones out there.
Speaker 1: But she had a really special relationship with my niece
Speaker 1: and she spent a lot of time with her, and
Speaker 1: my niece will will laugh in a way that my
Speaker 1: mom did. That kind of gets me. I see a
Speaker 1: lot of my mom in my niece and she's only four,
Speaker 1: but she'll say things or she'll laugh in a kind
Speaker 1: of way, and I really it's like almost scary how
Speaker 1: I can see my mom shining through my niece. And
Speaker 1: I hope she I know, I hope she haunts me.
Speaker 1: I just like would do anything to just talk to her,
Speaker 1: like one more time. So yeah, like I know, people
Speaker 1: have all different kinds of relationships with their family, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard. It's very hard to lose them.
Speaker 1: And whether you lose them because they pass away or
Speaker 1: you lose them because they're not in your life for
Speaker 1: another reason, or whether you lose them because they're like
Speaker 1: my dad dealing with dementia and you've kind of lost
Speaker 1: them even though they're still here. It's just so hard.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I hate to end it on a bummer,
Speaker 1: but this is what it means to be a human
Speaker 1: and everybody has to go through this. I'm not the
Speaker 1: first person to go through this. People listening will all
Speaker 1: go through this in some capacity. And you know, as
Speaker 1: hard as it is, we don't have to tolerate it
Speaker 1: being made harder in these ways that pull us apart
Speaker 1: from who we are as humans, Like this is human,
Speaker 1: this is greef. It's ugly, it's horrible, it's messy already.
Speaker 1: It doesn't also have to be a way that we
Speaker 1: get exploited. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech,
Speaker 1: or just want to say hi? You can read us
Speaker 1: at Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find
Speaker 1: transcripts for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed. Creative Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 1: and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 1: check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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