Speaker 1: Cool zone media.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know if you've heard this one, but
Speaker 2: being a woman on the internet sucks.
Speaker 3: It is bad.
Speaker 2: It is so bad that maybe you just rolled your
Speaker 2: eyes at hearing me say it, like, well, a white
Speaker 2: millennial just said being a woman online is actually really hard,
Speaker 2: and not to be that brave white millennial. But yes,
Speaker 2: it really sucks being a woman on the internet, and
Speaker 2: it sucks so much that it's bad writing for me
Speaker 2: to even tell you that. But if you're a woman, girl,
Speaker 2: non binary, really just not a cis man online and
Speaker 2: other random online users know that, particularly anonymous people, you'll
Speaker 2: get a crash course in gender discrimination the likes of
Speaker 2: which you could not imagine. And of course this happens
Speaker 2: across many lines, and intersecting marginalized identities tends to mean
Speaker 2: worse abuse. That's why we have terms like misogynir to
Speaker 2: describe the elevated prejudice that black women experience, or why
Speaker 2: a study from the National Library of Medicine found that
Speaker 2: gendered racism against Asian American women has gotten worse in
Speaker 2: recent years, causing a community wide decrease in mental health.
Speaker 2: Trans women face threats of violence and violent actions at
Speaker 2: four times the rate of CIS women, compounded by the
Speaker 2: world's most powerful countries passing laws that invalidate their existence
Speaker 2: at best and enable transgenocide at worst. And that's just
Speaker 2: studies that address people who identify as women. Non Binary
Speaker 2: people face a whole separate type of discrimination. There's billions
Speaker 2: of ways to be a woman online and most of
Speaker 2: them fucking suck. And that's because being a woman anywhere
Speaker 2: still tends to fucking suck. That's one of the first
Speaker 2: things you learn on the internet. Don't be marginalized in
Speaker 2: any way, or someone's going to threaten to kill you.
Speaker 2: You could also fall in love or meet your best
Speaker 2: friend in my case, all of the above. That's the
Speaker 2: monkey paw of logging in. It's why when I was
Speaker 2: twelve and posting on message boards lying out of my
Speaker 2: app pretending to be a nineteen year old boy named
Speaker 2: Aaron who wanted to store the band, I got legitimate
Speaker 2: replies and asked what my favorite bands were. And when
Speaker 2: I panicked and admitted I was a twelve year old girl,
Speaker 2: the same people started asking me for pictures of myself
Speaker 2: really cool stuff. And while there were many main characters
Speaker 2: of the Internet who became notorious or were pilloried for
Speaker 2: doing something. A father refuses to open a can of
Speaker 2: beans for his daughter to teach her a lesson. A
Speaker 2: husband loves his curvw wife a little too weird. And
Speaker 2: then there are others who become the character of the
Speaker 2: day for simply existing online. Come with me if you
Speaker 2: will to October twenty twenty two. Shouldn't be a super
Speaker 2: heavy lift. You know it's not not recent. The day
Speaker 2: was October twenty first. Kim Kardashian tried to go to
Speaker 2: a fancy restaurant and an usher concert for her forty
Speaker 2: second birthday, but ends up at an in and Out instead.
Speaker 2: Liz Trust becomes the shortest lived UK Prime Minister of
Speaker 2: all time and really designs after only six weeks. Midnights
Speaker 2: by Taylor Swift comes out, introducing the extremely unpleasant lyric Someday,
Speaker 2: I feel like everybody is a sexy baby into the world. Swifties,
Speaker 2: Please don't contact me. I'm having a hard time right
Speaker 2: now and I can't deal with you. Yes, October twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two. In two short weeks, I would give a
Speaker 2: speech at my friend's wedding and meet the man who
Speaker 2: would ruin my life For the next nine months next
Speaker 2: to a porta potty. So here's some obvious advice I
Speaker 2: can give you. Never talk to a man you meet
Speaker 2: next to a porta potty. The point is being a
Speaker 2: woman online or in the world, or me specifically, is
Speaker 2: a pain in the ass, and our main character is terrific.
Speaker 2: Proof of that with a healthy dose of class dynamic
Speaker 2: discussion to boot the wife who drank coffee in the garden,
Speaker 2: your sixteenth minute begins. Now that's.
Speaker 4: Stay.
Speaker 2: On the morning of October twenty first, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: a twenty four year old woman named Daisy tweeted the
Speaker 2: following from her Twitter account at litl Plant.
Speaker 1: Mommy, my husband and I wake up every morning and
Speaker 1: bring our coffee out to her garden and sit in
Speaker 1: for hours every morning. It never gets old and we
Speaker 1: never run out of things to talk to.
Speaker 2: Love him so much, I know, really fucked up stuff.
Speaker 2: The story here is young woman enjoys coffee and talking
Speaker 2: with her husband for long periods of time. The reaction
Speaker 2: to this story, well.
Speaker 5: I wake up every day with chronic pain carcel tunnel
Speaker 5: syndrome and wash my OCD medication down with an iced
Speaker 5: oat milk lattee.
Speaker 6: But whatever, potato potato? Am I right? For hours?
Speaker 2: Put?
Speaker 6: What if we weren't inherently wealthy and have to work
Speaker 6: and stuff?
Speaker 3: Lol?
Speaker 5: This is cute and no all that did you think
Speaker 5: of all the people who wake up to where it
Speaker 5: grueling hours, wake up on this streets alone or with
Speaker 5: chronic pain? Before posting this, you should be mindful next
Speaker 5: time before bragging about your picture perfect life. You might
Speaker 5: upset someone.
Speaker 6: What is the purpose of this communication? I'm happy for you,
Speaker 6: but it's just smug, self satisfied bragging. If it's true,
Speaker 6: your partner is most likely embarrassed by the tweet, or
Speaker 6: at least they should be. That is, unless you're flogging something.
Speaker 5: Very nice story, But haven't you been married for less
Speaker 5: than four months? This phase will end, It always does.
Speaker 5: Please don't be disheartened when it does. Remember love is
Speaker 5: a choice, not a feeling.
Speaker 6: No. No, they're a small business owner, so they are
Speaker 6: actively participating and taking advantage of other people's labors. They
Speaker 6: can have these blissful mornings. They are capitalism.
Speaker 3: They are capitalism.
Speaker 2: They don't even control the railways or the flow of commerce.
Speaker 2: I know it's not the same thing, but it feels
Speaker 2: like the same thing. I mean, Twitter is undefeated for
Speaker 2: finding me only people on earth who can be crueler
Speaker 2: to you than your own negative self talk, and that's
Speaker 2: just a fact. But to be honest, I was in
Speaker 2: a bad enough place when I saw this story that
Speaker 2: while I recognized that the backlash to this poor woman
Speaker 2: was ridiculous, I kind of resented her to every day.
Speaker 2: I'm doing well financially, but I don't have talking to
Speaker 2: my partner for hours in the garden every day money.
Speaker 2: I don't even think I have garden money. And at
Speaker 2: the time, I hadn't met anyone to either drink coffee
Speaker 2: with or ruin my life with. But to my credit,
Speaker 2: I had the wisdom to not participate in this discourse.
Speaker 2: I did what I think is the much safer move,
Speaker 2: thought about it privately, and kept my fucking mouth shut.
Speaker 2: At the time I'm writing this, this tweet from at
Speaker 2: Little Plant Mommy has three hundred and fourteen thousand likes.
Speaker 2: This is about as close as it gets to a
Speaker 2: full on public siahhing for saying something that isn't only
Speaker 2: innocuous on its face, but also doesn't appear to be
Speaker 2: courting attention outside of Daisy's Twitter circle at this time,
Speaker 2: I think she technically qualifies as a micro influencer, so
Speaker 2: less than twenty thousand followers, not just a rando talking
Speaker 2: to people she only knows in real life, but by
Speaker 2: no means someone who is courting a massive audience. You
Speaker 2: probably follow one hundred people like this. I'm basically this,
Speaker 2: And at the time this tweet was posted, Daisy had
Speaker 2: a discernible aesthetic and things that she talked to her
Speaker 2: audience about frequently, so for her, this tweet wouldn't have
Speaker 2: been outside of the realm of a very normal post
Speaker 2: that she would make about a year before this, the
Speaker 2: only other time the Wayback Machine Internet.
Speaker 3: Archives saved her page.
Speaker 2: Daisy's bio read as.
Speaker 1: Follows naturopathic medicine student, white woman's student emoji, licensed holistic
Speaker 1: beauty specialist, branch emoji, sustainable gardener, white woman gardener emoji.
Speaker 2: A few months before the tweet that shook the Earth,
Speaker 2: she got married to a man named Matt who it
Speaker 2: seems like she loved a whole lot. That's it, and
Speaker 2: her tweets were maybe what you'd expect based on that
Speaker 2: pretty niche with a lot of slightly woo woo wellness
Speaker 2: talk that isn't for everyone, but wasn't trying to be.
Speaker 2: As I read through some of her old stuff, I
Speaker 2: didn't agree with some of it. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: think Dary is as bad as all that, but honestly,
Speaker 2: I probably never would have found her account if it
Speaker 2: weren't for this story. People with as many seven to
Speaker 2: eleven loyalty points as I do are simply not buying
Speaker 2: what our girl Daisy is selling. And by the way,
Speaker 2: the reaction that some of these response tweets imply suggests
Speaker 2: that Daisy owned a business that personified the grueling puppy
Speaker 2: mill that is capitalism with the same energy as if
Speaker 2: she were Jeff Bezos himself. Again, not true. Daisy ran
Speaker 2: a small time esthetician business called The Holistic Esthetician, and
Speaker 2: there's nothing wrong with that outside of being a little
Speaker 2: hard for me to say. It doesn't even seem like
Speaker 2: she has employees, and that might also explain her flexible hours.
Speaker 2: And I can't emphasize enough that for this fairly small
Speaker 2: account less than twenty thousand followers, this was not an
Speaker 2: unusual post. The tweets posted around the same time were
Speaker 2: pretty similar.
Speaker 1: The perfect balance of love and light but also real
Speaker 1: raw and imperfect is what I'm always striving for. Balance. Baby,
Speaker 1: that some highlights and a couple haircuts yesterday after months
Speaker 1: of not doing hair, and they both turned out so
Speaker 1: pretty makes me missdoing hair?
Speaker 2: So why did this tweet about drinking coffee in the
Speaker 2: garden blow up the Twitter algorithm? In a recent episode,
Speaker 2: I spoke with Taylor Lorenz about the phenomenon of the dress,
Speaker 2: and while Coffee Wife isn't a story she reported on
Speaker 2: at the time, she has a lot of experience in
Speaker 2: tracking stories like this, and what she found instructive about
Speaker 2: the drinking coffee in the garden story wasn't that it
Speaker 2: was more upsetting than your average woman doing something and
Speaker 2: getting yelled at online story. It was that the stories
Speaker 2: boost in the algorithm required both backlash to what Daisy
Speaker 2: said and backlash to the backlash. Here's some of our
Speaker 2: talk about that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, what was unique about that one too? Or what
Speaker 7: I think is happening more and more with these newer
Speaker 7: main characters, and I can think got to say Sidney
Speaker 7: Sweeny's a good example of this more recently too, is
Speaker 7: like somebody goes viral and everybody projects their ideology onto
Speaker 7: that person and they become this vehicle for making some
Speaker 7: point about society, and I think we used to not
Speaker 7: do that as much with our main characters. I think
Speaker 7: they were just like we could appreciate that they were
Speaker 7: funny or they were in a viral video or whatever.
Speaker 7: And now it's like everything has to say something about
Speaker 7: the world. And that's what I noticed when that went viral.
Speaker 7: Initially people and.
Speaker 8: I think I mean districtly based on how the engagement
Speaker 8: algorithm was working at that time, because a lot of
Speaker 8: people were like, let's yell at her.
Speaker 9: Well, but it was not.
Speaker 7: It was an equal parts let's yell at her and
Speaker 7: then people getting outraged that people were yelling at her,
Speaker 7: And that is It's really important to have like both
Speaker 7: of those, I think to reach the level of virality
Speaker 7: that this did. But you know this is right, like
Speaker 7: since Twitter has been leaning harder and harder into algorithmic
Speaker 7: recommendations for years, but I think we've really seen it,
Speaker 7: especially since the Elon era like really take hold. And
Speaker 7: I think this is an example of Twitter leaning hard
Speaker 7: into algorithmic recommendations where suddenly this person is in your
Speaker 7: feed because everybody has an opinion on the commentary about it.
Speaker 7: And everybody wants to again project, they want to use
Speaker 7: this innocuous, benign, sort of generic tweet as a way
Speaker 7: to posture about whatever want to talk.
Speaker 8: About totally, And I think, I mean, that's a really
Speaker 8: great point that, like, you know, the wave of anger
Speaker 8: towards this user is one thing, but the story doesn't
Speaker 8: really thrive unless.
Speaker 2: She also has thousands of people coming to her defense,
Speaker 2: even though she's tweeting, you know, into presumably to her
Speaker 2: the void.
Speaker 8: Do you remember when that sort of phenomenon.
Speaker 7: Took Oh yeah, yeah, I was going to write about
Speaker 7: this recently because there was this sort of similar thing
Speaker 7: about door dash. Some person talked about door dash and
Speaker 7: suddenly it was like five days of discourse of people
Speaker 7: outraged about DoorDash, and then people outraged about the outrage.
Speaker 7: But the outrage at people that are expressing they're very
Speaker 7: you know, first of all, they shouldn't be expressing it
Speaker 7: at that woman. But I can understand things are triggering
Speaker 7: on the internet. Whatever they get triggered, but then it's
Speaker 7: like the other people getting very triggered that anybody is triggered,
Speaker 7: and it's just it just goes bananas. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 7: I think I'll so, just we're dealing with a lot
Speaker 7: of really big problems in society, and people can't reach
Speaker 7: the people that actually can affect change, and the people
Speaker 7: that can affect change and have institutional power don't give
Speaker 7: a shit what average people have to say if they
Speaker 7: don't have money or access themselves to power. So these
Speaker 7: main characters kind of become the only outlet for voicing
Speaker 7: this anger, and people are used as props to make
Speaker 7: these arguments or statements or whatever because they're at least accessible.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, how have you seen, as you know, as our
Speaker 8: feeds become algorithmically driven, how the treatment has changed with
Speaker 8: regards to gender.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I think actually hatred of women is sort
Speaker 7: of fueled virality on the Internet for years, and especially
Speaker 7: since the beginning. I mean, I talk about it in
Speaker 7: the book, But the people that really pioneered the content
Speaker 7: creator industry and some of the people that put themselves
Speaker 7: online first were women. And there's a specific type of
Speaker 7: woman that gets a lot of hatred, which is sort
Speaker 7: of a semi attractive or seemingly privileged women, usually an
Speaker 7: upper middle class white woman. In one sense, they do
Speaker 7: very well on the internet because they ascribe you know,
Speaker 7: they ascribe to traditional beauty standards. You know, they're usually
Speaker 7: somewhat attractive, somewhat privileged, enough to do well online or
Speaker 7: enough to get attention online. But they're also subject to
Speaker 7: some of the most vicious hate because it's just a
Speaker 7: favorite pastime of the Internet to tear women down, specifically wives,
Speaker 7: because there's this notion of like moms and wives like
Speaker 7: always doing something wrong, or like it's misogyny. I mean,
Speaker 7: it's just coore misogyny. And then there's of course a
Speaker 7: separate type of really vicious hatred towards women of color
Speaker 7: or also just ripped apart constantly. The thing is, they
Speaker 7: don't really have the level of privilege, and so they
Speaker 7: often some of these wives. Curvey Wife is a good example, right,
Speaker 7: you know, she's sprung that into brand deals and has
Speaker 7: a plus size clothing partnerships and all of this. Women
Speaker 7: of color are not able to take advantage of that
Speaker 7: virality and monetize it the same way. I mean, this
Speaker 7: Coffee Wife woman doesn't sound like she's leaned into it,
Speaker 7: but she could have released her own line of coffee
Speaker 7: cups or whatever, you know, like and I don't know
Speaker 7: what she looks like, but I think that people are
Speaker 7: more accepting of privileged women, almost pivoting, even though they
Speaker 7: receive an outside hatred. If you're a conventionally attractive wife, mother,
Speaker 7: or seen as a slightly privileged wife and mother, you're
Speaker 7: gonna get torn apart because that is what misogynis on
Speaker 7: the internet. Love to come for Yeah, thanks.
Speaker 2: Again to Taylor. Her book Extremely Online is available now.
Speaker 2: So talking with Taylor reset how I was thinking about
Speaker 2: this story a little. So to say that the legacy
Speaker 2: of Coffee Wife is that people hate women online is
Speaker 2: technically true, but a little undercooked. After talking to Taylor,
Speaker 2: I'm convinced that this story is also a pretty damning
Speaker 2: example of modern online algorithms gaming us to engage with
Speaker 2: each other. Because, as I was going back through the
Speaker 2: quote tweets reacting to Daisy's bold statement, the mean tweets
Speaker 2: versus the defenses of Daisy are uneven. There's more nice
Speaker 2: comments coming to her defense for every tweet that says
Speaker 2: they are capitalism.
Speaker 3: There's also this.
Speaker 6: That lady said she enjoys mornings with her husband, and
Speaker 6: folks said not on my watch.
Speaker 2: I can't afford coffee. The only thing I have to
Speaker 2: drink in the garden is bird bathwater. Because I'm a robin,
Speaker 2: I'm an actual bird. This tweet is not relatable to
Speaker 2: my experience as a literal bird. I can't get a
Speaker 2: house because I'm a bird and can't apply for a mortgage.
Speaker 6: Privileged bitch eat the rich has gone from no one
Speaker 6: should be a billionaire to no one living above the
Speaker 6: poverty level treating themselves and their husband to morning coffee
Speaker 6: and their gardens should be happy.
Speaker 5: I feel like this is called causing so much uproar
Speaker 5: because so many people are experiencing lovelessness and indifference from
Speaker 5: people they're even romantically connected with, and seeing someone experience
Speaker 5: friendship and love that seems calm, balanced and easy is infuriating.
Speaker 2: And when it comes to the algorithm, once you've got
Speaker 2: a class war about the class war, you are cooking.
Speaker 2: In one of the last interviews Daisy gave on the
Speaker 2: subject in December twenty twenty two with YouTuber and Jellylouz,
Speaker 2: she described what it was like experiencing these waves of
Speaker 2: discourse in what felt like a void.
Speaker 4: It just kind of like blew up within like ten
Speaker 4: hours of it posting. I posted it, I noticed that
Speaker 4: like a lot of people were like commenting and liking it,
Speaker 4: and it was kind of going a little viral, and
Speaker 4: like by the next day that I had posted it,
Speaker 4: it was just like totally blown up with lots of
Speaker 4: like lots of negativity and lots of like hate comments
Speaker 4: and people saying all kinds of like crazy stuff about
Speaker 4: me and my husband, and that kind of continued. The
Speaker 4: negativity kind of continued for a little bit, but it
Speaker 4: got to the point by like day like two or
Speaker 4: three where like everybody was just coming in on the
Speaker 4: post and being like this is actually so cute and
Speaker 4: so nice, and like forget about all the haters and
Speaker 4: like all of that stuff. And I feel like, I
Speaker 4: mean when I try to go into the tweet and
Speaker 4: like look for the negativity, I literally can't find negative
Speaker 4: comments anymore because there's been so many thousands of people
Speaker 4: that have just like drowned all of the like meanness
Speaker 4: in positivity and kindness and love. And so then I
Speaker 4: kind of think that it like went in this wave
Speaker 4: of like negativity, and then there was like another wave
Speaker 4: where it was like where it got more popular, but
Speaker 4: then it was like turned into something really sweet and positive.
Speaker 2: She goes on to describe the few days of constant
Speaker 2: attention and requests for comment by embracing the Coffee Lady persona,
Speaker 2: even briefly adding it to her Twitter bio. And not
Speaker 2: everyone would be able to do this, but she takes
Speaker 2: it in stride, leaning into jokes that suggest that this
Speaker 2: was all some big, evil plan. She tweets things like this,
Speaker 2: this was all actually a big plot to draw everybody
Speaker 2: in and then teach them about how to grow their
Speaker 2: own food and heal the earth plant emoji and general
Speaker 2: reflections on the weird, still developing media cycle of those
Speaker 2: last few days in October, she directly confronts the criticism
Speaker 2: in a gentle series of tweets.
Speaker 1: It's really sad to look at the thousands of hateful
Speaker 1: comments on this post, most saying spending time with your
Speaker 1: spouse is only for the rich, jobless trust fund kids,
Speaker 1: saying our marriage won't last. It really shows why a
Speaker 1: lot of marriages probably don't last. It's one thing to
Speaker 1: get to spend hours a day with your partner, We
Speaker 1: are very blessed, But most of the replies are implying
Speaker 1: that couples shouldn't have to spend time together and if
Speaker 1: they do you must be rich, y'all are truly silly,
Speaker 1: but thank you to all the sweet comments. I love
Speaker 1: you so much, double heart emoji.
Speaker 2: And to directly address her haters who claimed that she
Speaker 2: was capitalism, Daisy tweeted this.
Speaker 1: To answer your questions, we are not rich by any means.
Speaker 1: We've worked extremely hard to get to where we're at.
Speaker 1: We live very minimally and consciously and work jobs that
Speaker 1: match our lifestyle and allow us to live the life
Speaker 1: that we do. Thank you for all the love that
Speaker 1: uplifting comments. You know who you are red heart emoji.
Speaker 2: Daisy threads the needle pretty beautifully here.
Speaker 7: Then.
Speaker 2: I think this is a good example of how women
Speaker 2: have to conduct themselves very carefully online to not get
Speaker 2: anger from people. She's not ignoring it, but if it
Speaker 2: does upset her in any way, which it could be
Speaker 2: justified to do, she doesn't indicate that publicly. She and
Speaker 2: her husband post a number of other pictures in their garden,
Speaker 2: which it turns out is where they live in a
Speaker 2: community in northern California, where he teaches yoga and she
Speaker 2: runs her small esthetician business. They tweeted pictures of them
Speaker 2: eating breakfast, drinking the famous coffee, and while they never
Speaker 2: dropped their tax returns or the degree of privilege that
Speaker 2: they grew up with, the question is, why should they
Speaker 2: have to? Because the algorithm said so, There's no way
Speaker 2: around it. This story was tailor made for the Internet
Speaker 2: rage machine. Box writer Rebecca Jennings referenced as much in
Speaker 2: a December twenty twenty two essay called every chronically online
Speaker 2: conversation is the same, saying if you felt a creeping
Speaker 2: sense of dread while reading about Daisy and her husband
Speaker 2: enjoying coffee in their garden, it's possible you spend too
Speaker 2: much time online. That's because despite it seeming innocuous, Daisy's
Speaker 2: post has all the markers of Twitter rage bait, and
Speaker 2: by rage bait, I mean a person sharing an experience
Speaker 2: that may not be entirely universal. I mostly agree with
Speaker 2: this and do feel that the anger towards Daisy is
Speaker 2: wildly misplaced. This is the kind of anger we reserve
Speaker 2: for Kardashians throwing parties during a pandemic, and this doesn't
Speaker 2: invalidate any of the anger or frustration that online users
Speaker 2: that were truly sorry triggered by Daisy's inoffensive post. Fault
Speaker 2: I mean hell, Daisy herself articulated this feeling better than
Speaker 2: anyone else here. She is on that same Angelilou's YouTube podcast.
Speaker 4: You know, as far as what I could say to
Speaker 4: the people that were doing all of that is, I
Speaker 4: just think when you're exuding that much hate to other people,
Speaker 4: that comes from a place in your heart that's hurt,
Speaker 4: because I truly believe that you know everything that like,
Speaker 4: we're all just mirrors of each other, and something about
Speaker 4: me made them feel something about themselves that was probably
Speaker 4: trauma from who knows when in their life, and that
Speaker 4: caused something and caused them to feel that way. So
Speaker 4: I think that that just comes. That kind of behavior
Speaker 4: just comes from someone being hurt. And I understand that,
Speaker 4: and I have compascity for those people because truly, maybe
Speaker 4: they know better, but they probably don't know any better.
Speaker 4: They're just dealing with their hurt and they're dealing with
Speaker 4: it like that instead of in other healthy ways.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So thankfully Coffee Wife had a mellow enough lifestyle to
Speaker 2: forgive and was offline enough to understand the anger without
Speaker 2: becoming enraged. Back when it comes to women behaving in
Speaker 2: a very particular way to not get a particular reaction.
Speaker 2: Daisy did everything right. All she did wrong was exist
Speaker 2: in a way that the algorithm was liable to boost.
Speaker 2: When I started this show, the person who was most insistent,
Speaker 2: along with hundreds of others that I talk about coffee wife,
Speaker 2: was my best friend Julia, and I wanted to know why,
Speaker 2: because no matter where you fell at the time, what
Speaker 2: happened over the coffee in the garden tweet was a
Speaker 2: pretty classic public shaming. And Julia is a great comic
Speaker 2: and writer who wrote a controversial essay for Gawker in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two called in Defense of Shame. She's literally
Speaker 2: an authority on shame, and not just because she grew
Speaker 2: up Catholic in New England. But that certainly didn't hurt,
Speaker 2: and Julia feels strongly that Daisy was not deserving of
Speaker 2: the backlash she got. So when is shame a necessary
Speaker 2: tool and when is it? Whatever the fuck this is,
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask her about it first.
Speaker 9: I am Julia Claire. I'm a comedian and writer at
Speaker 9: Crooked Media.
Speaker 2: You are the person that I associate most with like
Speaker 2: intensely feeling about this story.
Speaker 9: I am the person you most associate with the concept
Speaker 9: of shame.
Speaker 10: Yes, yes, and so it really you've saved me an
Speaker 10: interview here by also because yeah, like you felt really
Speaker 10: strongly that this woman had been shamed improperly, but you
Speaker 10: do feel tell me your feelings about a proper shaming.
Speaker 9: A few years ago, I wrote piece for gaker Rip
Speaker 9: called in Defense of Shame. Was kind of immediately criticized
Speaker 9: by people who didn't read the piece as a defense
Speaker 9: being a defensive shaming. People were basically saying that I
Speaker 9: was co signing dog pile culture, co signing shaming, which
Speaker 9: is not at all what I was talking about in
Speaker 9: the piece. I think of shame as any lapsed Catholic would.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 9: It's a very kind of like internal experience, more of
Speaker 9: a reflective experience, not an external experience. Shame is for
Speaker 9: Shame is for me. It's not for you, you know, it's
Speaker 9: like so to me. I mean basically, like my my
Speaker 9: defense of shame was that more people need to be
Speaker 9: kind of in touch with their own shame. And I
Speaker 9: honestly think that like a lot of the I think
Speaker 9: the fact that a lot of people aren't is the
Speaker 9: reason why they end up projecting on other people. But yeah,
Speaker 9: this was one of those things like that was a
Speaker 9: clear case of shaming in a way that was completely
Speaker 9: needless and silly. Honestly, you're yelling at this twenty something
Speaker 9: woman because she's having a lovely morning, right, kill yourself.
Speaker 2: Is there a productive way to shame someone on the internet.
Speaker 9: That's a really good question. I think you have to.
Speaker 9: I think if there is, you really have to be
Speaker 9: punching up. Like the whole thing with Coffee wife is
Speaker 9: that she was just some kind of like random lady.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 9: It's very different if we're all piling on to like
Speaker 9: I mean, there are some people who are really impervious
Speaker 9: to it. So it like, you know, Elon Musk seems
Speaker 9: to just revel in the fact that everyone hates him.
Speaker 9: But as far as a productive way to shame, to
Speaker 9: shame the average per I mean no, I don't think so,
Speaker 9: and I and I really again, I don't advocate for
Speaker 9: shame as an external force. I think all of our
Speaker 9: shame should be internal, and it should be between us
Speaker 9: and the Lord. Your parents are going to be so pleased,
Speaker 9: I know, Father Leroy at Saint Edward's Parish, your impact
Speaker 9: has felt on this podcast absolutely.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to my best friend Julia Claire.
Speaker 2: But you can catch every day over at Crooked Media
Speaker 2: and we'll be right back with more of Coffee Wife's
Speaker 2: sixteenth minute. Welcome back to sixteenth minute today. I've had
Speaker 2: six cups of coffee and still no husband in sight.
Speaker 2: We're talking coffee wife. So not to twenty sixteen ghostbusters
Speaker 2: this situation. But take a second to imagine how this
Speaker 2: story would be different if it were a husband tweeting
Speaker 2: about enjoying time with his wife in said garden. I
Speaker 2: really don't think the reaction would be the same. In
Speaker 2: the context of hetero couples. Husbands who adore their wives
Speaker 2: tend to be lifted up as wife guys in the
Speaker 2: same way that they're more easily rewarded socially for being
Speaker 2: an active part of their children's lives. And while there's
Speaker 2: intersecting issues that caused people to project onto Coffee Wife,
Speaker 2: I still think this boiled down to an Internet classic.
Speaker 2: Women are fair game for just about anything. There's no
Speaker 2: social incentive for Daisy to say she loves her husband,
Speaker 2: because when a woman adores spending time with her husband,
Speaker 2: so what it would be selfish of her and not
Speaker 2: love spending time with him when a woman takes good
Speaker 2: care of and loves her children, So what, That's the
Speaker 2: natural expectation, and coming up short in either department is
Speaker 2: still met with easier, more reflexive criticism, even with gains
Speaker 2: made in general gender perception.
Speaker 3: But while I do firmly.
Speaker 2: Believe that Daisy was dragged online for simply being happy,
Speaker 2: I want to state the obvious and say, of course
Speaker 2: women can fucking suck online. There's plenty of precedent for that,
Speaker 2: because women are people, and there are clear patterns en
Speaker 2: mass and as individuals for assists white women specifically like
Speaker 2: Daisy and myself, to behave in an insensitive at best,
Speaker 2: bigoted and benefiting from the whiteness that patriarchy and capitalism rewards,
Speaker 2: and being generally a condescending piece of shit to people
Speaker 2: who are more marginalized than themselves. That's a lot of
Speaker 2: words to say a no longer trendy term that is
Speaker 2: still somewhat useful, and it is girl boss. There's a
Speaker 2: bunch of conflicting definitions of this term. Some are as
Speaker 2: simple as quote a woman, especially a young woman who
Speaker 2: is ambitious and successful in her career unquote, and others
Speaker 2: as I think of the girl boss are connected more
Speaker 2: closely to women using the language of feminism to accrue
Speaker 2: power while actively upholding the status quo. Probably the most
Speaker 2: famous example of this is Sheryl Sandberg, who wrote the
Speaker 2: best seller Lean In in twenty thirteen to encourage women
Speaker 2: to advocate for themselves in the workplace. She is the
Speaker 2: ultimate girl boss to me for a few reasons. First
Speaker 2: of all, she is a huge beneficiary of capitalism that
Speaker 2: is actively harmful. She was the COO of Facebook during
Speaker 2: years and years of infinite growth. And second of all,
Speaker 2: she's using her position as a powerful woman to sell
Speaker 2: you something and not something. Is that the only thing
Speaker 2: holding you back as a woman in the workplace is
Speaker 2: not the system you find yourself in, but something you
Speaker 2: are neglecting to do it self. Helps snake oil that
Speaker 2: bullies the women who are reading it.
Speaker 3: Here's a quote.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry if this sounds harsh or surprises anyone, but
Speaker 2: this is where we are. If you want the outcome
Speaker 2: to be different, you will have to do something about it. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's your fault. She also says this, we need to
Speaker 2: stop telling women get a mentor and you will excel. Instead,
Speaker 2: we need to tell them excel and you will get
Speaker 2: a mentor Oh it's my fault, twenty dollars well spent,
Speaker 2: thanks Cheryl. That's the kind of girl boss shit we're
Speaker 2: talking about. So a very instructive term that is often
Speaker 2: misused after being sucked into this linguistic, misogynist vortex. The
Speaker 2: difficulty with the girl boss tag gets to why I
Speaker 2: think Coffee Wife was done so dirty. There are people
Speaker 2: who aren't big fans of women who glommed onto this
Speaker 2: word to use it interchangeably with all women or women
Speaker 2: who had any power over them at work. If your
Speaker 2: manager is a woman, that doesn't mean she is cynically
Speaker 2: using tools of the patriarchy to oppress you while assuring
Speaker 2: other women they're doing something wrong in order to personally profit.
Speaker 2: It's a very specific set of behaviors, and being a
Speaker 2: girl boss doesn't mean the women in question haven't experienced
Speaker 2: gender discrimination themselves. In fact, I'd wager that all of
Speaker 2: them have. This simply does not describe a woo woo
Speaker 2: twenty four year old drinking coffee in the garden. The
Speaker 2: anger is valid, but it is misplaced. Daisy wasn't trying
Speaker 2: to make money by saying this. She wasn't aiming to
Speaker 2: change minds or hurt anyone, or, according to her, even
Speaker 2: reach outside of her normal audience. She was just sharing
Speaker 2: something you know, like we're told is the whole point
Speaker 2: of social media, And given the state of Twitter in
Speaker 2: the fall of twenty twenty two and on this specific week,
Speaker 2: the algorithm pushing this high engagement story makes a lot
Speaker 2: of sense. There were a number of algorithmic shifts on
Speaker 2: Twitter and in social media writ large in this year.
Speaker 2: If you're a Twitter user yourself or I'm not going
Speaker 2: to say X, please don't contact me about this. If
Speaker 2: you're a Twitter user yourself or a proud Twitter retiree,
Speaker 2: you might remember when their timeline became completely algorithmically driven
Speaker 2: instead of what it had been for years and years,
Speaker 2: which was a real time feed of people you had
Speaker 2: chosen to follow. Now, people you didn't follow would be
Speaker 2: sorted to the top of your feed if the algorithm
Speaker 2: thought you were likely to interact with the post based
Speaker 2: on what you'd interacted with in the past, and the
Speaker 2: people you actually chose to follow might see their content
Speaker 2: get pushed further and further down. Users got really pissed
Speaker 2: off about this, and Twitter tried to mitigate the issue
Speaker 2: by splitting everything into two feeds, So if you opened
Speaker 2: the website on your laptop, it would default the new
Speaker 2: shitty algorithm feed and you could shift over to the
Speaker 2: timeline you'd had for fifteen years. But it would take
Speaker 2: some effort, and it's ghost like daisies that would get
Speaker 2: sorted into this new algorithmically driven feed, the one you
Speaker 2: didn't ask for and the one that no one is
Speaker 2: prepared to be sorted into. And within a week of
Speaker 2: the coffee Wi flare up, a looming Twitter acquisition was
Speaker 2: finally completed. After months of legal wrangling and negotiation, Elon
Speaker 2: Musk has finally bought social media company Twitter. Earlier in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, Elon Musk, who I think we can
Speaker 2: all agree only had the best intentions and deserves the
Speaker 2: benefit of the doubt, offered to buy Twitter on a
Speaker 2: whim for fifty four dollars and twenty cents a share,
Speaker 2: just months after he'd become the company's largest shareholder at
Speaker 2: nearly ten percent. This put the prospective deal at forty
Speaker 2: four billion dollars, and Twitter accepted the offer very quickly.
Speaker 2: They genuinely didn't seem to think he'd go through with
Speaker 2: it and accepted to all but resist a hostile takeover
Speaker 2: from Musk, But Musk, determined to pivot the platform to
Speaker 2: white supremacy, doubled down, declaring that his ownership would mean
Speaker 2: less bots and more free speech. He certainly made good
Speaker 2: on the former in the fascist content is king sense,
Speaker 2: but the crackdown on bots is pretty hilarious for a
Speaker 2: site that I can't even pay to stop auto posting
Speaker 2: my pussy and bio underneath pictures of me and my
Speaker 2: infant nephew. So yeah, this change of ownership was famously
Speaker 2: a disaster. Elon Musk tried to back out of the
Speaker 2: objectively bad deal that was his idea in July, but
Speaker 2: wasn't able to and was all but forced to go
Speaker 2: through with the deal less than a week after. Daisy
Speaker 2: was declared the Coffee Wife, and what happened after that
Speaker 2: was well, it's why Twitter has been in sharp decline
Speaker 2: ever since. Just a small sampler platter of incidents since
Speaker 2: this time, welcoming Donald Trump, Kanye and Alex Jones back
Speaker 2: to Twitter and generally promoting, challenging Mark Zuckerberg to a
Speaker 2: cage match, and tanking the company's net worth by over
Speaker 2: fifty percent. There's a very depressing lens that we can
Speaker 2: see the coffee wife incident through as this dying gasp
Speaker 2: of old school misogyny on Twitter moments before it was
Speaker 2: about to get much, much, much worse, and how bad
Speaker 2: hasn't gotten on the internet since twenty twenty two. I
Speaker 2: went to an expert, my pal Bridget Todd, host of
Speaker 2: the Incredible podcast there are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 2: Here's our chat. My name is Bridget Todd.
Speaker 11: I am the host and creator of Iheartradios Tech and
Speaker 11: culture podcast. There are no girls on the Internet, And
Speaker 11: I guess you could say I'm a tech Internet enthusiast, aficionado,
Speaker 11: whatever you want to say.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to talk coffee wife with you. Why do
Speaker 2: you think that people had such a strong emotional reaction
Speaker 2: to coffee Wife.
Speaker 11: Well, one, I think it's absolutely algorithmic, right. I think
Speaker 11: that we know a lot about how algorithms work. I
Speaker 11: think that they absolutely are feeding us and pushing us
Speaker 11: content that is going to elicit strong reactions, emotional reactions
Speaker 11: from us. So even if you don't know this woman,
Speaker 11: don't follow this woman. She wasn't like somebody who had
Speaker 11: a ton of followers. She had a relatively small account.
Speaker 11: Platforms know this is content that it's eliciting strong reaction,
Speaker 11: strong engagement. Let's make sure that more people see it,
Speaker 11: you know, that's the name of the game for platforms. However,
Speaker 11: I do think that the timeframe kind of matters, Like
Speaker 11: I think that this was a time where do you
Speaker 11: remember how in the very beginning of the pandemic we
Speaker 11: were Also there was a sort of novelty to it
Speaker 11: where it was like, who knows what's happening? But then
Speaker 11: that kind of were off, and then it was like, well,
Speaker 11: I guess this is just all of our lives now.
Speaker 11: And I think that this happened at a time when
Speaker 11: a lot of people were just sort of grappling with that.
Speaker 11: I think for me personally, it was a time where
Speaker 11: I was spending way more time than I should have
Speaker 11: been on screens on the internet, really paying a lot
Speaker 11: of attention to what strangers on the Internet were doing,
Speaker 11: because I didn't have a lot going on outside of that, right,
Speaker 11: I wasn't going out the way I used to all
Speaker 11: of that, And I also think we were all feeling
Speaker 11: the sort of like existential dread of how reality feels
Speaker 11: right now. Right, everything is expensive, Rents are rising, Inflation
Speaker 11: is terrible. It just feels like we are being squeezed
Speaker 11: from so many different ankles.
Speaker 3: And so when somebody comes along.
Speaker 11: With just pure the pure joy of a you know,
Speaker 11: having coffee in their garden with their husband every morning,
Speaker 11: and you know, isn't this nice, it's like a trigger
Speaker 11: that It's not surprising to me that it was this
Speaker 11: big tension point for so many people.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting. I think of all the conversations I've
Speaker 2: been having, I'd be curious what you think about that,
Speaker 2: Like how the pandemic sort of warped our relationship to
Speaker 2: the internet and what it looks like trying to sort
Speaker 2: of return to straddling real life and internet life.
Speaker 11: Yeah, boy, do I identify with that and feel you
Speaker 11: on that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can speak for myself.
Speaker 11: I am not proud of what the pandemic, how I
Speaker 11: responded to the pandemic socially, right, I also am a
Speaker 11: pretty socially anxious person. I'm somebody who's in my head
Speaker 11: a lot, and I'm not proud to say this, but
Speaker 11: I would bet that I'm not the only person who
Speaker 11: feels this way. I think during the pandemic. You know,
Speaker 11: we were watching people die, we were watching people lose
Speaker 11: loved ones, we were watching people lose their livelihoods. It
Speaker 11: was a really tough time, and so it was hard
Speaker 11: for me as somebody who luckily was very privileged, and
Speaker 11: that that wasn't the case for me, right, Like I
Speaker 11: got COVID. People I know got COVID, but thankfully I
Speaker 11: didn't lose my loved ones.
Speaker 3: It wasn't impacting me the way that it was.
Speaker 11: I'm not an essential right, and so I think that
Speaker 11: for me personally, it was strange to deep to grapple
Speaker 11: with that, this feeling of like I am going through
Speaker 11: a tough time and so is everyone. I think it
Speaker 11: for me created this dynamic where I hate to say it,
Speaker 11: but I was very much like what about my pain?
Speaker 11: You know, Like why is like when is it going
Speaker 11: to be my turn for somebody to see me? Like
Speaker 11: I wasn't an essential worker. Nobody around me died, but
Speaker 11: I still had a tough time. I was finding myself
Speaker 11: in this like almost very narcissistic place of wanting somebody
Speaker 11: to acknowledge what I had been through. And so I
Speaker 11: think with Coffee Lady, I think it was a lot
Speaker 11: of people who perhaps were wanting someone to see their pain,
Speaker 11: wanting others to acknowledge their pain and their anxiety and
Speaker 11: their loneliness and their frustration, which is something that I
Speaker 11: can relate to really deeply, and so I think that's
Speaker 11: part of why, because some of the replies that she
Speaker 11: got would be like, I can't afford it, Garden, I
Speaker 11: don't have a husband. You know, I'm alone here, I
Speaker 11: don't have any friends, Like people really making it about
Speaker 11: themselves and what they lack, and like something about that
Speaker 11: tweet I think highlighted the lack that a lot of
Speaker 11: people were feeling. And I just I really, it's easy
Speaker 11: to dunk on these people and be like, Wow, you're
Speaker 11: so dysregulated that that's that this woman, this random woman's
Speaker 11: tweet is making you feel that way.
Speaker 3: But I also kind of get it.
Speaker 9: You're totally right.
Speaker 2: And I know I've been guilty of this in the
Speaker 2: past and probably during the pandemic era Internet, where you're
Speaker 2: taking like your personal pain and I've had moments where
Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't want to see someone happy right
Speaker 2: now because I'm not, And like, I think that there's
Speaker 2: a lot of that, but some of it is sort
Speaker 2: of manifesting as a political statement. I can't quite get
Speaker 2: my head around that phenomenon because I don't want to
Speaker 2: discount the fact that like class rage and class anxiety online.
Speaker 2: I mean, it makes total sense. I experienced it a lot,
Speaker 2: especially it's sort of the further back you go, but
Speaker 2: she's so clearly not the person that can. I think
Speaker 2: it's interesting online when people dogpile on someone who cannot
Speaker 2: help them, right.
Speaker 3: I do think there's a gendered aspect to it.
Speaker 11: I haven't really kind of grappled with this too much
Speaker 11: just yet, but like I know, for me, when I'm
Speaker 11: scrolling TikTok or Instagram, there is something about the visualization
Speaker 11: of a woman who seems like she's got her shit together,
Speaker 11: she's got it all figured out. She wears the perfect
Speaker 11: two piece you know, workout set, she eats right, she
Speaker 11: starts her day with like lemon water or macha instead
Speaker 11: of coffee.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 2: It is three gorgeous children who are wealthy act yeah.
Speaker 11: Exactly, And so I think that coffee ladies tweet, at
Speaker 11: least for me, triggered a kind of very gendered, almost
Speaker 11: like politicized anxiety that there are women out there who
Speaker 11: are doing it right and bridget you are doing it wrong,
Speaker 11: like something about like like there has never been a
Speaker 11: day where I'm able to start my day.
Speaker 3: Serenely drinking coffee in my garden.
Speaker 11: I actually do have a small garden, and I never
Speaker 11: start my day out there because I start my day
Speaker 11: like most people, like frazzled late for a call, just
Speaker 11: trying to chug some coffee while I'm getting dressed, like
Speaker 11: doing a million other things. Sure I shouldn't be taking
Speaker 11: a moment smelling the flowers, journaling, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 2: But yes, gratitude journal exactly.
Speaker 3: But who does that right?
Speaker 11: And so I think there is something where women are
Speaker 11: told that you have to in order to sort of
Speaker 11: signal that you have it together, your mornings have to
Speaker 11: look like X Y Z. And I think that something
Speaker 11: about coffee Lady, something about that tweet signaled to women
Speaker 11: like I've got it all together? Do you feel like
Speaker 11: craft that you don't. I don't think she was. I
Speaker 11: certainly don't think she was trying to do that. But
Speaker 11: that's I think that's probably how it hit some of us.
Speaker 2: The Internet, I think, like a lot of things, is
Speaker 2: sort of built to make women angry at each other. Yes,
Speaker 2: and present each other and yeah, I mean, could you
Speaker 2: speak to that a little bit? I know that that's
Speaker 2: your beat.
Speaker 11: Yes, I mean, it's just a document, a well documented fact.
Speaker 11: Algorithms want women to feel like shit. They want women
Speaker 11: to be comparing themselves to other women, they want women
Speaker 11: to be feeling bad. They want women to be feeling
Speaker 11: like crap all the time. And algorithms and platforms and
Speaker 11: tech leaders make money off of women feeling like shit
Speaker 11: about themselves.
Speaker 3: That's just a fact, right.
Speaker 11: And so if you've ever been scrolling Instagram or TikTok
Speaker 11: or whatever and you keep being surfaced content that makes
Speaker 11: you feel like crap, that's not you. You're not crazy
Speaker 11: or sensitive. Algorithms and platforms do that with intention because
Speaker 11: it keeps you on the platform longer, it keeps you
Speaker 11: coming back, and it makes them money. It is a
Speaker 11: very twisted dynamic that we are a cog in this
Speaker 11: cycle that is making other people, mostly men, rich off
Speaker 11: of our anxiety, off of our fears, off of us.
Speaker 3: Being in competition with each other.
Speaker 11: And rather than like celebrating the ways that we are different,
Speaker 11: celebrating the ways in which like, oh, well, like my
Speaker 11: brand is this, I'm a hot mess, I own it.
Speaker 3: Whatever.
Speaker 11: Whatever algorithms trick us into thinking that all of these
Speaker 11: great things that make us who we are are actually foibles,
Speaker 11: are actually bad And yeah, I mean there's been study
Speaker 11: after study that shows that the more time you spend
Speaker 11: on particularly Instagram, the more young women feel bad about themselves,
Speaker 11: the more body anxiety they have, the more likely they
Speaker 11: are to engage in things like food issues or disordered eating.
Speaker 11: And none of that is by mistake and it's all
Speaker 11: by design. It is a feature, not a bug.
Speaker 2: And that and that would also apply to Coffee Life.
Speaker 2: That people were attacking her as if she was like
Speaker 2: the root cause of it. It was very strange. I
Speaker 2: forget who I was talking to the other day about
Speaker 2: how they felt like they had fucked up their algorithm
Speaker 2: because they said that they weren't interested in something and
Speaker 2: the algorithm kept serving that to them because they cared
Speaker 2: enough to say I'm not interested. And the only way
Speaker 2: to true, truly demonstrate you're not interested is to keep
Speaker 2: scrolling and don't stop. But like if you are, if
Speaker 2: you theoretically you know, see like a coffee wife, TikTok
Speaker 2: come up and you care enough to say I don't
Speaker 2: like this, the algorithm will serve it to you again.
Speaker 2: And so I ran an experiment and it's completely true,
Speaker 2: like that the kind of content I went out of
Speaker 2: my way to say I don't like this. The algorithm
Speaker 2: responds by being like, well, maybe you'll interact with it
Speaker 2: negatively because it makes you feel bad.
Speaker 11: Yes, And so it's so I've experienced the exact same thing.
Speaker 3: I completely agree with you.
Speaker 11: And imagine how harmful that is when it's content that
Speaker 11: you find triggering. Right, when it's content that you have
Speaker 11: identified like that might not be safe or healthy for
Speaker 11: me to see and engage with. Right if the algorithm
Speaker 11: has has gleaned like, oh, she has a little bit
Speaker 11: of an issue with X y Z. Let's keep showing
Speaker 11: it to her and see what happens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, really, that cool.
Speaker 2: The part that's hard is even when I'm looking for it,
Speaker 2: it's hard to escape the like emotional experience of I
Speaker 2: don't want to see that, and like feeling that your
Speaker 2: anger for whatever reason does seem to it routes at
Speaker 2: the person because you can't you know the real kind
Speaker 2: of Yeah, this sounds conspiratorial, but like the real enemy
Speaker 2: has no face right, And so I feel like there
Speaker 2: is this sort of very human instinct to try to
Speaker 2: place a face and a name to what is bothering you,
Speaker 2: when in reality it is something much larger, like you know,
Speaker 2: social media algorithms that are trying to make you upset,
Speaker 2: like the concept of class and like these huge things.
Speaker 2: And it's finding a sort of villain of the day
Speaker 2: to take it out on, even when that person sucks.
Speaker 2: In this case, they didn't, but sometimes they do, but
Speaker 2: it still doesn't it's so unproductive.
Speaker 11: Yeah, we are making a bunch of random people proxies
Speaker 11: for a lot of our very valid anger and pain
Speaker 11: and fear. That's why I always say, like, we're it's
Speaker 11: a game and we're all being played. The only winner
Speaker 11: here are tech platforms and people who run them and
Speaker 11: people who make money from them. And so even if
Speaker 11: you are running a successful little grift for a while,
Speaker 11: engagement mating and all of that, all it takes is
Speaker 11: one algorithmic tweak and then no one's You don't have
Speaker 11: the eyeballs or the attention of the world any longer.
Speaker 11: And so, yeah, it's it's a game, and we're all
Speaker 11: being played.
Speaker 2: What can we What can the collective learn from Coffee Wife.
Speaker 11: Something that I found really interesting about the Coffee Wife
Speaker 11: saga was how everybody assumed she was wealthy because she
Speaker 11: has a garden. And I found that to be really
Speaker 11: interesting because she was like, Oh, it's not like a
Speaker 11: fancy garden, it's just a small garden in my like
Speaker 11: regular home.
Speaker 3: I think that it.
Speaker 11: Is very easy and I say this because I've done
Speaker 11: it to trick yourself into thinking, like, the things that
Speaker 11: I want I can't have. I am, I am, I
Speaker 11: could never have a garden. And I think that that
Speaker 11: really the Coffee Wife thing really showed me that a
Speaker 11: lot of us feel like we can't have things that
Speaker 11: we actually can have. I don't know if that makes sense,
Speaker 11: but the fact that so many people were like, well,
Speaker 11: you have to be rich to have a garden, and
Speaker 11: it's like, well, actually, I don't think that's the case,
Speaker 11: and people who are not rich have gardens all the time,
Speaker 11: And like, why are you assuming that the pastime of
Speaker 11: gardening is something that only the wealthy can do. Even
Speaker 11: if you live in a small apartment, you can still
Speaker 11: have like a window garden or something. I think that
Speaker 11: I think it's easy to trick ourselves into thinking the
Speaker 11: things that we want we cannot have.
Speaker 3: So that's one two.
Speaker 11: I would say, yeah, we really have to be better
Speaker 11: at understanding where we put our pain and who we
Speaker 11: make the proxies for our pain. I would say, if
Speaker 11: the person you are tweeting at cannot change the circumstances
Speaker 11: that you're upset about, maybe you're putting your rage and
Speaker 11: your anger and your emotionality in the wrong place, and
Speaker 11: that we should direct our rage and anger and emotionality
Speaker 11: to the right places.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 11: I know those places tend to be structural and institutional
Speaker 11: and faithless, but we gotta really have a sense of
Speaker 11: what forces are actually making us unhappy, and it's probably
Speaker 11: not this lady drinking coffee in her garden.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to bridget Todd. Listen to there
Speaker 2: are no girls on the internet every single week, I
Speaker 2: sure do. So what became of our coffee wife legend?
Speaker 2: Daisy didn't respond to my request for an interview, and
Speaker 2: I respect that she just wants to be a person
Speaker 2: who does pleasant things with people she likes. Some people
Speaker 2: just don't want a dumb bitch podcaster interfering with their life,
Speaker 2: and I have to accept that as far as her
Speaker 2: online persona, Daisy is no longer Coffee Wife. She is
Speaker 2: Daisy and appears to be spending her time generally not
Speaker 2: on Twitter nowadays. She lives in Bali, India, and is
Speaker 2: returning to her lashes business later in the year. I
Speaker 2: have no idea if she's a wife, if she drinks coffee,
Speaker 2: but she's certainly Daisy, and I like Daisy, and with
Speaker 2: that the coffee wife. Your sixteenth minute ends. Now, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm on the couch with my boyfriend drinking coffee. Close enough.
Speaker 5: Oh I should I guess it?
Speaker 6: Should hold I should hold it.
Speaker 3: You're right, get your coffee.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but hey, coffee in the morning, even after I've
Speaker 5: gotten off my damn shift, coffee with my wife.
Speaker 9: And we don't have a garden. We do have a.
Speaker 3: Little deck, but I just kind of we have.
Speaker 5: A bug in the house though, Casper, Casper, two.
Speaker 9: Bugs, we do, two bugs.
Speaker 8: I just the deck kind of stresses me out because
Speaker 8: there's so much pollution. Who we're across the street from
Speaker 8: a We shouldn't say where we.
Speaker 5: Are, No, we should, but you can visualize the pollution
Speaker 5: because we can see.
Speaker 4: All of the gathering dust.
Speaker 5: Just so much dust the accumulated ducks.
Speaker 2: So you just walked up to Casper and started kissing him.
Speaker 5: They are, they're kissing right now, and there's looking Casper's forehead.
Speaker 2: You love saying you're so dirty, You're so dirty. They're
Speaker 2: the same size.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 3: It's great.
Speaker 5: We could try this in a garden at some point though,
Speaker 5: don't you think.
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 Lichtterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Special thanks to
Speaker 2: Grant Creator and Sophie Lichterman for doing voiceover and pet
Speaker 2: shout outs to our dog producer Anderson my cat's fleeing
Speaker 2: Casper and by pet Rothbert who will outload us all.
Speaker 2: Bye b