Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Unboss Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
Speaker 1: and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So it's probably no surprise to find out that the Internet,
Speaker 1: particularly social media, is linked to all of us not
Speaker 1: feeling so great. And I have a theory about this
Speaker 1: and I want to bring to you all and to
Speaker 1: do that, I am joined by my producer, Michael A Motto. Michael,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Bridget. I'm excited to talk about being miserable.
Speaker 1: It's like your favorite topic, you know, not really, but yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of. I mean, I I it's funny that we're
Speaker 1: talking about this. Like I think of myself as a
Speaker 1: fairly like a person with a fairly sunny disposition. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty smiley. I'm kind of a look on the bright
Speaker 1: side type. But I definitely feel lately like something is up.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think that we're more miserable, more tense,
Speaker 1: more stress, and we're bringing in that more and more
Speaker 1: to our online spaces. And so I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: really talking through what I think is going on and
Speaker 1: what it means for all of us. Yeah, I'm looking
Speaker 1: forward to hearing your thoughts on it, because I totally
Speaker 1: agree it's it's hard out there. There's just so much
Speaker 1: heavy stuff going on and a lot of it feels
Speaker 1: totally intractable, and uh yes, So I'm glad you got
Speaker 1: I'm glad you gotta figured out what's what's the story?
Speaker 1: Bridget So first I should say that this is not
Speaker 1: totally new ground. I think I've mentioned this on the
Speaker 1: show before, but a study out of Harvard Business School
Speaker 1: found that negativity travels much further and faster on social media,
Speaker 1: particularly Twitter, much faster than positive stories, because you know,
Speaker 1: we all just love to hate. But my question is
Speaker 1: not just about social media. I am more wondering is
Speaker 1: it us. Are we, both as individual roles and as
Speaker 1: a collective citizenry of the United States, are we in
Speaker 1: such a state of fear and anxiety and overwhelm and
Speaker 1: exhaustion right now that when we show up to online
Speaker 1: spaces that we're just bringing more anger and negativity with us.
Speaker 1: On top of all the ways that we know social
Speaker 1: media platforms and algorithms are made to amplify things that
Speaker 1: we hate and negativity, of course, but I'm asking something
Speaker 1: else I'm asking, is it us? And I want to
Speaker 1: be clear. I usually show up to these kinds of
Speaker 1: conversations with lots of research and studies to back up
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. I want to be clear, this is
Speaker 1: pretty much one anecdotal you know. I have a few
Speaker 1: recent examples I think demonstrate a little bit of what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about and what I'm seeing online. And if
Speaker 1: you are very online, like I am, for better or
Speaker 1: for worse, you might have actually seen some of these
Speaker 1: examples play out in real time. And I think the
Speaker 1: way that people acted to them and the discourse that
Speaker 1: popped up around them on social media tells us something
Speaker 1: about where we're at right now. Ask people. I know, Michael,
Speaker 1: you are not someone who really identifies as being very online,
Speaker 1: am I right? Yeah, that's right. I historically have not
Speaker 1: been very online. I in the early parts of like
Speaker 1: the Internet and the nineties and the early aughts, I
Speaker 1: was a lot more and then I just really took
Speaker 1: a pretty big step back from social media h much
Speaker 1: to the betterment of my mental health, I think. But
Speaker 1: over the past year or two I have really increased
Speaker 1: my use of Twitter a lot. And yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the question of like is it us? You know, how
Speaker 1: much of it is is the platforms, but then how
Speaker 1: much of it is us being affected by the platforms
Speaker 1: and then bringing that back and just continuing, uh, continuing
Speaker 1: that feed back loop. You might actually be the most
Speaker 1: offline person who is kind of in my peer group,
Speaker 1: like if I don't include my parents and people who
Speaker 1: are who are not in my peer group, not contemporaries
Speaker 1: of mine. Sometimes we'll have our podcast planning meetings and
Speaker 1: I'll be like, oh my god, did you see this
Speaker 1: thing on the internet, Like this cat is being accused
Speaker 1: of being able list on Twitter? And You'll be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what any of these words mean. I
Speaker 1: don't know what you're saying, like what's happening here? And
Speaker 1: so I you do happy? It seems to come with
Speaker 1: a level of bliss that I envy. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I stress about other things. Yeah, you're always stressing about something.
Speaker 1: I want to be clear, You're not like Mr then
Speaker 1: just not, You're just not stressing about something that strangers
Speaker 1: are doing on the internet necessarily. Yeah, like whether or
Speaker 1: not the cat is ablest, you know, like it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be right. We should all be inclusive and work for
Speaker 1: universal design, but like, you know, you know how cats are. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I want to get into these I've got I've
Speaker 1: I've got them. Lay it out as sort of three vignettes,
Speaker 1: if you will. Uh. The first I'm calling woman enjoys
Speaker 1: coffee in garden, comma with husband. So this was the
Speaker 1: tweet that the first tweet that really stopped me, and
Speaker 1: I had to contend with what I think. I think
Speaker 1: I would describe as an outsized reaction to what I
Speaker 1: thought was a fairly normal tweet. A woman tweeted something
Speaker 1: pretty innocuous. She said, quote, my husband and I wake
Speaker 1: up every morning and bring our coffee out to our
Speaker 1: garden and sit and talk for hours every morning. It
Speaker 1: never gets old. We never run out of things to
Speaker 1: talk about. Love him so much. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think most people might see a tweet like this and
Speaker 1: I might think, how nice for her, what a nice morning.
Speaker 1: Others might see a tweet like this and think nothing. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think it's I don't think it's out of the
Speaker 1: remal possibility that somebody might see this tweet and think,
Speaker 1: you know, oh, she's bragging. Don't like it feels braggy,
Speaker 1: But then keep scrolling, keep moving on, No big deal.
Speaker 1: But the thing is a lot of people had a
Speaker 1: very visceral reaction to this tweet. They did not keep
Speaker 1: just keep scrolling. They expressed themselves. So pretty much all
Speaker 1: hell broke loose on Twitter because of this tweet. And
Speaker 1: I have a couple of samples of responses that I
Speaker 1: witnessed with my own eyes, right, So I only want
Speaker 1: to talk about things that I actually saw intervial time, because,
Speaker 1: as I said, I'm very online, so I watched all
Speaker 1: of these things unfold intervial time. Uh. I don't know
Speaker 1: what that says about how I spend my time, but whatever,
Speaker 1: here we go. The sad ways that I spend my
Speaker 1: time is your gain, because I'm here to tell you
Speaker 1: about them if you miss them. Well, you know when
Speaker 1: you were saying, like a lot of people said nothing,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, just sitting here, thinking like what
Speaker 1: does it mean that so many people reacted to that
Speaker 1: tweet that you read about this woman sitting in the
Speaker 1: garden with her husband, you know, and like, Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: it's a little tweet, but like it's pretty innocuous. She's
Speaker 1: not really like she's certainly not harming anyone, she's not
Speaker 1: making any controversial claims like and so the fact that
Speaker 1: so many people would have that reaction and actively write
Speaker 1: a response to it, I was like, Wow, how sad
Speaker 1: for them. Uh, But then here you are paying attention
Speaker 1: and thinking about what those other people are writing, and
Speaker 1: so like you, you're pretty far in it. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: in it. No one is saying that I listen, I
Speaker 1: just before we even get into the vignettes, I am
Speaker 1: very much contextualized within this very online culture. I am
Speaker 1: the call is coming from inside the house. I am
Speaker 1: critiquing it from within. I am not. I don't want
Speaker 1: anyone to think that I see myself as you know,
Speaker 1: kind of above it moral high ground. I'm in it.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm in them. I'm down in the muck.
Speaker 1: I'm with all of you. Okay. So here are some
Speaker 1: of the reactions that I saw to that tweet. The
Speaker 1: first bucket was people basically being like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you must be rich, you know, people saying that she
Speaker 1: must be independently wealthy or very rich and very privileged.
Speaker 1: If she's able to enjoy coffee, have a garden, and
Speaker 1: spend her her and her partner are both able to
Speaker 1: spend their mornings not working. I saw a tweet where
Speaker 1: someone was like, don't y'all work, don't y'all have jobs?
Speaker 1: And she said, oh, I have a small business, and
Speaker 1: so I'm able to make my own schedule. Then I
Speaker 1: saw another reply to that where they said, okay, so
Speaker 1: you're able to have your peaceful mornings because you're exploiting
Speaker 1: the labor of your employees and that gives you the
Speaker 1: ability to enjoy your mornings. Terrible, And she replied, I'm
Speaker 1: a sole employee of my business. So just a lot
Speaker 1: of assumptions about her economic status and her privilege, all
Speaker 1: via her having a garden, her drinking coffee, her spending
Speaker 1: the morning's talking to her husband. Yeah, all assumptions coming
Speaker 1: from the worst possible place of like giving her no
Speaker 1: benefit of any doubt, just like people actively wanting the
Speaker 1: most like, meanest and worst possible way. It could be
Speaker 1: true to be the case, Yes, that she's definitely exploiting
Speaker 1: her employees in order to have like she must be
Speaker 1: doing something bad if she's able to be enjoying this
Speaker 1: like these like nice mornings consistently. So another kind of
Speaker 1: bucket of responses that I saw were contrasting how she
Speaker 1: described her own mornings and what they look like with
Speaker 1: their mornings, and so people whose mornings didn't sound great,
Speaker 1: you know, plagued by things like insomnia, anxiety, loneliness, chronic
Speaker 1: pain or fatigue. Um, and yeah, when you compare waking
Speaker 1: up in the morning feeling lonely and in pain and
Speaker 1: really exhausted in drained, that does not sound as nice
Speaker 1: as waking up in the morning and having coffee in
Speaker 1: a garden. Sure, but again, interesting how when someone puts there,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty innocuous happy thing out into the world,
Speaker 1: people's responses can sometimes be like, well, good for you.
Speaker 1: I'm not having a happy morning. My mornings aren't that happy.
Speaker 1: I don't have a garden, I don't have a partner. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like a like a very personalized response to
Speaker 1: her kind of innocuous happy tweet, which I guess it's
Speaker 1: like fair right, Like she tweeted it publicly. People can
Speaker 1: tweet back if they if they want. But yes, it's
Speaker 1: like you're like, oh, you're happy, how I'm not. You
Speaker 1: shouldn't be either. The thing that you feel good about
Speaker 1: you should feel bad. Yeah. I saw one response that
Speaker 1: was so specific that they replied to her tweet about
Speaker 1: the garden and the coffee and having coffee in the
Speaker 1: garden in the morning. Where I live, the winter snow
Speaker 1: is already starting and my patio is uncovered. As I
Speaker 1: was like, oh wow, like tough break. I can't afford
Speaker 1: a covered patio, like one of those capitalists fat cats
Speaker 1: out here the common people with the uncovered patio. Right.
Speaker 1: So another bucket of response that I saw were people
Speaker 1: saying that it's completely unrealistic to enjoy talking to one
Speaker 1: spouse for hours because most people hate their spouses. I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend any time talking to them, and
Speaker 1: other people saying that like that sounded really braggy and
Speaker 1: insensitive because so many people are lonely and single. And
Speaker 1: then just to claim that like people. I guess people
Speaker 1: went back to her, you know, wedding pictures and stuff
Speaker 1: and glean that she had only been married for a
Speaker 1: couple of months, and it's like, well, yeah, to to
Speaker 1: three months. In sure, you still think your husband is
Speaker 1: brilliant and you enjoy talking to him. Try ten years
Speaker 1: and maybe you'll think he's an idiot and you can't
Speaker 1: even stand the sound of its fucking breathing. You'll want
Speaker 1: to hate him with that coffee cup, you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably gonna heapen but litterally enjoy the moment. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean. Also it's like she's a newlywed, like she's
Speaker 1: allowed to still be in the phase where she enjoys
Speaker 1: the company of her husband and then and like talking
Speaker 1: to him as a fun time. Um. One thing that
Speaker 1: I should note is that in my depths of all
Speaker 1: of this, I did see accusations that the original Garden
Speaker 1: Lady poster, who definitely gives off like spiritual Earth Mama vibes,
Speaker 1: that she posts anti vax content and tread wife content,
Speaker 1: which if you don't know what that is, we did
Speaker 1: an episode with Joe Piazza all about it, so definitely
Speaker 1: check it out. Um. I have to say, I cannot
Speaker 1: confirm or deny any of that from just the cursory
Speaker 1: look that I took at her social media. But I
Speaker 1: almost wonder if it was a pylon first and then
Speaker 1: people find the tweets that quote justify why they did
Speaker 1: the pylon, if that makes sense. Like I almost wonder
Speaker 1: if it's like, well, are you saying that it's okay
Speaker 1: to pile to pile on someone for like tweeting something
Speaker 1: innocuous because six months ago they also had some bad
Speaker 1: takes on vaccines or whatever. Or is it like or
Speaker 1: like like like, are you are you using this to
Speaker 1: justify some behavior that maybe now you're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: looking at that. I kind of wish I hadn't tweet
Speaker 1: at that. Yeah, I mean I looked at it after
Speaker 1: you sent it to me ahead of this episode, and
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of people criticizing the garden tweet.
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything about, you know, correcting misinformation or
Speaker 1: putting out like accurate vaccine information, because like, how is
Speaker 1: that even relevant to this lady tweeting about drinking coffee
Speaker 1: in her garden. It's not, it's not. This is not
Speaker 1: going to make me sound great, and I'm fully aware
Speaker 1: of that, but I just know the vibe of really
Speaker 1: going all in on criticizing something or someone and then
Speaker 1: needing to justify that to be like, well, I'm not
Speaker 1: the asshole here. She actually said this back in and
Speaker 1: that's why it's okay that here in two I've done
Speaker 1: this to her, you know what I mean? So I
Speaker 1: just I really viscerally get that experience because I I've
Speaker 1: I've been there Yeah, we've all been there. We can
Speaker 1: identify with the idea of finding finding some post talk justification. Uh,
Speaker 1: we humans do that all the time. So probably my
Speaker 1: favorite response to all of this, the tweet and the
Speaker 1: discourse came from Asia Barber, who if you don't know
Speaker 1: who that is, they are a brilliant writer on fashion
Speaker 1: and sustainability and influencing an online culture. Definitely give them
Speaker 1: a follow because they're brilliant, and also buy their book Consumed,
Speaker 1: because it's also really good. But they make this really
Speaker 1: interesting point that people's reaction to Coffee Garden Lady is
Speaker 1: actually an understandable reaction to an online culture built on comparison.
Speaker 1: Asia rites quote, I genuinely think social media has gotten
Speaker 1: us to this miserable place where folks are tired of
Speaker 1: being happy for other people. It's the impact of comparison culture,
Speaker 1: while everyone pretends it doesn't exist. Basically, they go on
Speaker 1: to argue that we're all trained to be happy for
Speaker 1: people when good things happen to them, but especially if
Speaker 1: things in your life are not where you are them
Speaker 1: to be, it can be really draining to have to
Speaker 1: have that expectation of performing happiness for others. And since
Speaker 1: the opposite of happy is, you know, bitter or jealous
Speaker 1: or rageful or spiteful. That's kind of becomes the default
Speaker 1: other response, And so they argue that we should all
Speaker 1: be more comfortable with just having a neutral reaction in
Speaker 1: those situations, that we shouldn't feel forced or have the
Speaker 1: expectation of cheering people on all the time if frankly,
Speaker 1: we just don't have it in us. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we have to then project all of our
Speaker 1: hang ups and our challenges and perceived failings and anxieties
Speaker 1: onto strangers via the internet. As as I writes, quote,
Speaker 1: instead of being a society where we've normalized feeling neutral
Speaker 1: about other people being happy, this app instead tells you
Speaker 1: that you have to have an emotion and if it
Speaker 1: isn't good, it must be bad, so quick make shut
Speaker 1: up because you genuinely just don't want to feel happy
Speaker 1: for this person. And I think that Asia is really
Speaker 1: onto something that we are. I think there's something about
Speaker 1: social media that trains us that if we see something,
Speaker 1: we have to have a like a real reaction to it.
Speaker 1: We have to either like it and smash like or
Speaker 1: hate it and like leave a mean reply or whatever.
Speaker 1: Download it whatever. Like we have kind of lost that
Speaker 1: you can just see something and feel neutral about it.
Speaker 1: And I can understand why that is making us kind
Speaker 1: of emotionally drained and exhausted, where you know, we just
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of other emotions to give other
Speaker 1: than anger and uh, spite and bitterness because of that,
Speaker 1: because of that constant expectation that we always be reacting.
Speaker 1: But it's okay to not have a take, to be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this woman's having our coffee. I'm gonna keep scrolling next thing,
Speaker 1: you know. And I have to say, even though I
Speaker 1: live in the middle of the city in d C,
Speaker 1: I do actually have a garden in my apartment and
Speaker 1: I have been known to spend a morning out there
Speaker 1: with a cup of coffee from time to time. And
Speaker 1: seeing this visceral reaction that everybody had to this coffee
Speaker 1: garden lady, I'm almost afraid to ever tweet a picture
Speaker 1: of my garden because I don't want the Internet coming
Speaker 1: after me. Yeah, and she did eventually tweet a picture
Speaker 1: of her garden, and it's it's very nice. She's gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, her and her husband is a great job
Speaker 1: of transforming their suburban lawn of their modest home into
Speaker 1: a little garden. But it certainly doesn't read like, you know,
Speaker 1: she's some super rich, out of touch person. She's just
Speaker 1: just looks like a normal house where normal people live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not like she said, oh, every morning I fly
Speaker 1: to Paris so I can have authentic Parisian espresso or whatever.
Speaker 1: And I think that we're so drained and so exhausted
Speaker 1: and so tense and tired as Americans that the littlest
Speaker 1: stuff some many expressing the smallest bit. I don't, not
Speaker 1: not even try. I would call this luxury, the smallest
Speaker 1: bit of something that's not toiling, the smallest bit of
Speaker 1: something that's not the misery that I think so many
Speaker 1: of us are rightfully feeling. It's like hits a nerve,
Speaker 1: it's a little trigger point for us. I get it.
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not happy that I get it and
Speaker 1: identify with it, but I do understand it. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: like you're saying, it's it's two things. It's the having
Speaker 1: that emotional reaction of like anger or jealousy or resentment
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, um and then also saying something
Speaker 1: about it, you know, like not just like feeling annoyed
Speaker 1: and scrolling past you know, like I said before, I
Speaker 1: look at Twitter, you know, probably a couple hours a
Speaker 1: day if you add it all together. And I see
Speaker 1: ship that I find annoying all the time, but I
Speaker 1: don't need to weigh in on it. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: and it's I spend I mean even just like literally
Speaker 1: but for you. And I got on the mic before
Speaker 1: we were recording, I was like, have you heard about
Speaker 1: this tech bro who took an uber from Manhattan to Philly?
Speaker 1: And he says that the three different state governments charged
Speaker 1: him all these fees, and I was so I was
Speaker 1: so meticulously He included a screenshot of the different tolls
Speaker 1: and fees that he was charged, and I was so
Speaker 1: meticulously going through this. I was like, this is an
Speaker 1: adding up. Something's not right here. I lived in New York.
Speaker 1: This is what is its route? And I do think
Speaker 1: there's something about the Internet that invites too much scrutiny
Speaker 1: and too much emotional investment into the ongoings of strangers
Speaker 1: and people and purchased. It's partially due to to the
Speaker 1: way that algorithms work, Like the reason why I saw
Speaker 1: Hollin Tunnel tweet most because Twitter it was a trend, right,
Speaker 1: and so you know someone can eat It's it's so
Speaker 1: easy to gamify that game of five people's willingness to
Speaker 1: be become emotionally invested in the business of strangers. It's
Speaker 1: so easy to gamify that against us. Yeah, there's the
Speaker 1: algorithm that really incentivizes negative content, right, because it's just
Speaker 1: it's just an empirical fact that algorithms reward negative content
Speaker 1: with more likes, more visibility. But maybe just blaming it
Speaker 1: all on the algorithm is kind of letting us as
Speaker 1: a population off a little easy, right, Like why are
Speaker 1: we showing up that way? Exactly? And that's I mean,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I'm hoping to get out in this episode. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's the algorithms. Yes, it's the way that tech leaders
Speaker 1: have designed these platforms to continue to keep us on edge, angry,
Speaker 1: and divided for their material benefit. But what's going on
Speaker 1: with us? Are we are we good? Are we are
Speaker 1: we all good? So let's take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then I want to get into our second then yet
Speaker 1: and we are back. So we were just talking about
Speaker 1: the viral garden Lady tweet. And after I saw the
Speaker 1: garden Lady tweet. I realized that this kind of highly personal,
Speaker 1: aggrieved response to the innocuous happiness of others was everywhere
Speaker 1: on social media, like this Garden Lady tweet. Once I
Speaker 1: saw that I was seeing this kind of response everywhere,
Speaker 1: which brings me to our next vignette, which I'm calling
Speaker 1: professor gifts students with books. So in this situation, a
Speaker 1: college professor who has this very inspiring backstory. He's the
Speaker 1: son of too incarcerated parents, first in his family to
Speaker 1: go to college, and now he's a professor. He tweeted
Speaker 1: a picture of his campus office, which I have to
Speaker 1: say is just gorgeous. It's like one of those offices
Speaker 1: from a movie, you know, with the built in bookshelves,
Speaker 1: where all the walls are shelves, and it's just gorgeous.
Speaker 1: It's like very meticulously decorated, and it's one of those
Speaker 1: offices that anybody would die for. It's gorgeous. And he tweeted,
Speaker 1: quote my rule, any student who comes to my office
Speaker 1: hours can keep any book on my shelf that they like.
Speaker 1: All they need to do is ask. I had a
Speaker 1: professor who used to do this back in college, and
Speaker 1: I've always remembered how special. It made the teacher student relationship.
Speaker 1: Let's continue this tradition. Uh that's nice, right, that's very nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to grad school. It's been way more time
Speaker 1: there than I should have. And uh, what he's describing
Speaker 1: sounds like the ideal professor scenario. Like it sounds nice,
Speaker 1: it sounds friendly, it sounds supportive, it sounds generous, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a nice thing. I also went to grad school. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever once went to office hours ever,
Speaker 1: which is probably not surprising that I ended up dropping out.
Speaker 1: Had my professors acted like this and and ben like
Speaker 1: this and you know, cultivated the kind of environment where
Speaker 1: they were giving out these books as a token of
Speaker 1: our really our our academic relationship, I might have stuck
Speaker 1: around grad school. But alas um, I remember seeing this
Speaker 1: tweet and thinking how nice it was, and you know,
Speaker 1: I got I got warm fuzzies, and for a while,
Speaker 1: all of the responses were other academics basically being like,
Speaker 1: this is really nice. This is really the book the
Speaker 1: ideal situation that you want between you know, students and
Speaker 1: teachers where they feel this kind of connection and that
Speaker 1: connection is crystallized and symbolized in this way. Everyone one
Speaker 1: was loving it. But then another professor responded, let's call
Speaker 1: him Professor Petty. Professor Petty responded, accusing book professor of
Speaker 1: telling everyone what a great guy he was via what
Speaker 1: he called quote lifestyle porn. Professor Petty wrote, a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of tweets. It was a whole back and forth
Speaker 1: which I with this, the entire thing go down, h
Speaker 1: Professor Petty, he's a he's a couple of his. Professor
Speaker 1: Petty's responses says, you've got a lovely office, dude, and
Speaker 1: you're rich enough to be able to give away the
Speaker 1: problem that you decorate your office with. That's not political,
Speaker 1: that's ghosh. I'm assist white man who's working in an
Speaker 1: academic environment without a giant office bigger than my living room,
Speaker 1: nor with enough money or budget to give away the
Speaker 1: things that I need to do my job. To any
Speaker 1: student who asks check yourself. He goes on to say,
Speaker 1: just seems to me like highly curated, performative, humble brags
Speaker 1: made superciliously from positions of extreme, unexamined privilege don't form
Speaker 1: the basis of inherently radical politics. You may disagree, I
Speaker 1: guess how can I do more than one thing at once.
Speaker 1: If I've given the books I need for my job away,
Speaker 1: you seem to treat books as props and window dressing
Speaker 1: rather than tools of the trade. Super weird. I donate
Speaker 1: things that I don't need or have dupes of, but
Speaker 1: giving away books on request odd. So Professor Petty really yeah,
Speaker 1: he Professor Petty did not like this, and he really
Speaker 1: wanted like this was I read them as one pair rack,
Speaker 1: but this was like a bunch of tweets. He was
Speaker 1: like back in forth, really digging in. Super sillious. Even
Speaker 1: I know, I also love like what I like academic
Speaker 1: e sounding drag. This is, I guess I'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's so petty. I don't know, so I don't
Speaker 1: know how many people you follow in like academic Twitter,
Speaker 1: but definitely professors like tweeting about what it means to
Speaker 1: be a good professor and providing good mentorship and like
Speaker 1: different ways to be a good mentor. That's like a
Speaker 1: common thing that people post about, right, So book professor
Speaker 1: is I think totally within those normal boundaries of talking
Speaker 1: about it. And you know, it sounds like things are
Speaker 1: working out pretty well for book professor, and that's great.
Speaker 1: You know, lots of people have nice things happen to them.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that they're bad. Yes, And I should
Speaker 1: also reveal one of the reasons why the optics of
Speaker 1: this just weren't great was that book professor is black
Speaker 1: and Professor Petty is white. And so the optics of
Speaker 1: a white professor scolding a black professor and calling him
Speaker 1: privileged and saying, you know, you're you've got all this
Speaker 1: unexamined privilege and I don't have a big office and
Speaker 1: you do, and that's bad. It's just not a great look,
Speaker 1: it's really not And also being a professor who like
Speaker 1: can't do his job without his books, it sounds pretty
Speaker 1: grim for Professor Petty. Yes, and you know, I also
Speaker 1: think that the way that Professor Petty reframed those tweets
Speaker 1: and his responses really strip away a lot of the
Speaker 1: context of professor books, you know, his background as an
Speaker 1: academic who faced all of these challenges to get where
Speaker 1: he is, kind of returning the favor of this kind
Speaker 1: gesture that a professor did to him when he was
Speaker 1: coming up. Professor Petty really just flattens that situation. It
Speaker 1: takes all the new nuance out of it and turns
Speaker 1: it into someone humble bracking on the internet. But that's
Speaker 1: not really the spirit of what Professor Books said in
Speaker 1: the first place. Yeah, it really isn't. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know where Professor Petty works, but it's probably
Speaker 1: not like a fourteenth century monastery where there's like three
Speaker 1: books that a team of monks has been working on
Speaker 1: over generations. You know, like there's a lot of books.
Speaker 1: Most professors I know who have offices and universities have
Speaker 1: more books than they know what to do with, right,
Speaker 1: and so giving away books to students it's pretty common.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, it's it's it is completely common, and
Speaker 1: so as they do. Black academia. Twitter really came together
Speaker 1: to gather Professor Petty and support Professor Books, and eventually
Speaker 1: Professor Petty deleted his tweets and apologized, saying that he
Speaker 1: was taking his frustrations with academia out on the wrong person,
Speaker 1: which yeah, obviously I think I could tell I mean
Speaker 1: this person, and yeah, you didn't do anything wrong. You're
Speaker 1: taking all your anger out on him, And partially I
Speaker 1: get it, right, if you're an academic sitting in your
Speaker 1: tiny office watching everybody give props and accolades to another
Speaker 1: academic in their big, gleaming, beautiful office. Of course, I
Speaker 1: think it's a little bit understandable for that to feel
Speaker 1: sort of personal, you know, And I am super again
Speaker 1: I don't love that. I sort of partially get it
Speaker 1: because I am super familiar with that feeling of why
Speaker 1: not me? Why do I have to cheer on others
Speaker 1: who have the things that I want but don't have
Speaker 1: access to. Part of me gets that because yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: a petty bitch. I've I've I've definitely felt that thought
Speaker 1: that before. Who hasn't. But I also think that it
Speaker 1: seems like it's very easy to get riled up by
Speaker 1: something that a stranger post as a proxy for your
Speaker 1: feelings about assist amic or institutional frustration, right, because sometimes
Speaker 1: the villain is some something like big and lofty. You know,
Speaker 1: the college that you teach at is underfunding your department
Speaker 1: or not investing in infrastructure, so your office is horrible
Speaker 1: and tiny. But those things do not have, you know,
Speaker 1: visible Twitter accounts that you can yell at and like
Speaker 1: yell your grievances toward other academics tweeting pictures of their big,
Speaker 1: cool offices. They do they're much more visible and easier
Speaker 1: to take your frustrations out on. Yeah, I cannot understand.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of things in academia to be frustrated and
Speaker 1: angry about, but like you said, don't take them out
Speaker 1: on a professor who is just trying to do something
Speaker 1: nice for students. You know, maybe it is a little
Speaker 1: eye rollie, you know, if that's how you feel, fine,
Speaker 1: But uh, I guess after all this, I kind of
Speaker 1: feel sorry for Professor Petty that he's in such a bad,
Speaker 1: dire emotional play that like just like bubbled over and
Speaker 1: he felt that he had to express his frustration on
Speaker 1: on professor books. Well, this is exactly what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I think that we're all I think that we're in
Speaker 1: a state of constant emotionality and and and kind of
Speaker 1: like I think that for a lot of us feeling
Speaker 1: bleak right now, and so we're on this hair we're
Speaker 1: showing up to online spaces on this hair trigger that
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've really felt the same way before.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's exactly what my what my claim is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Professor Petty probably would have had a much nicer night
Speaker 1: if he just like went out and talked with his friends,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, or when scrolling Twitter saw that picture
Speaker 1: had the whatever reaction he had clocked it, asked himself
Speaker 1: a couple of leading questions, like, oh, this is really
Speaker 1: you're really annoyed about this? Why that would lead him
Speaker 1: to the the result of like, oh, I'm frustrated with
Speaker 1: my own situation in academia. I have frustrations about what's
Speaker 1: happening on my own campus, and that's I think that
Speaker 1: would be so much more productive. And maybe he it's
Speaker 1: it's almost like he got there eventually, but I think
Speaker 1: he could have had a much nicer time if he
Speaker 1: got there without being dragged by all of black academic
Speaker 1: Twitter with like with withering, fucking takedowns. You know, black
Speaker 1: Twitter users are like a like a sharp tengued bunch too,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure some of those had to hurt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that probably sucked. If he felt bad before, he probably
Speaker 1: feels worse now exactly. And so this actually reminded me
Speaker 1: of you know, I said earlier that it's been a
Speaker 1: while since I feel like I've seen people showing up
Speaker 1: on this like hair trigger with misery and anxiety, And
Speaker 1: it actually reminded me of the way that I felt
Speaker 1: in the early days of the pandemic, you know, I
Speaker 1: and like that was a hard time for all of
Speaker 1: us and easy for me to be my you know,
Speaker 1: apertment garden feeling whatever I was feeling. But you know,
Speaker 1: I remember, I would get super upset and super angry
Speaker 1: about all of these pictures of maskless patrons at crowded
Speaker 1: bars and restaurants. And this was during the part of
Speaker 1: the pandemic where I was like pretty deeply distancing, and
Speaker 1: so I was really feeling the emotional and physical and
Speaker 1: the mental strain of all that distancing. It was not
Speaker 1: a great time, and I would get almost like deeply
Speaker 1: irrationally rageful at these images, and I would have to
Speaker 1: do the work of reminding myself, Like, Okay, Bridget, are
Speaker 1: you really mad that this like nineteen year old college
Speaker 1: student in wherever I went to this crowded bar? Or
Speaker 1: are you mad that like institutions and people and people
Speaker 1: with power and political leaders should have made better options
Speaker 1: to support people? Right, maybe our political leaders should have
Speaker 1: taken bolder action to keep those bars closed and like
Speaker 1: meaningfully paid and supported people to stay home, and you know,
Speaker 1: made better decisions to keep people safe, Like, there's there
Speaker 1: was no picture of that on social media. What I
Speaker 1: did have was pictures of like nineteen year old college
Speaker 1: students partying. Let's be real, when I was nineteen, I
Speaker 1: probably would have been partying during a pandemic too, because
Speaker 1: I wasn't very smart. But I had to really work
Speaker 1: to remind myself that just because the people I am
Speaker 1: seeing partying every single time I opened my social media
Speaker 1: apps are so visible, the actual thing that I am
Speaker 1: angry about is not them partying, is that our leaders
Speaker 1: have failed us so bad that it turned it into
Speaker 1: like a personal choice, and that those places were available
Speaker 1: to be overcrowded and all of that. Like, but it
Speaker 1: is work, and I think that so often we are
Speaker 1: using people who are visible as a proxy for our anger,
Speaker 1: which is often times rightful about something that is institutional
Speaker 1: and not so visible, which brings me to my last
Speaker 1: man yette, which we'll get into after a real quick break.
Speaker 1: Let's get right back into it. So we were talking
Speaker 1: about how sometimes are anger on social media, we're using
Speaker 1: visible people as proxies for our anger, that maybe it
Speaker 1: would be better directed toward institutions, which brings me to
Speaker 1: my last one. Yet which I'm calling woman complains about
Speaker 1: male shoppers for grocery delivery. App Let me set the
Speaker 1: stage for you. So, are you familiar with the joke
Speaker 1: women be shopping? Women be shopping? Is there more to
Speaker 1: the No, that's the whole thing. Okay, I'm familiar with it. Then, Okay,
Speaker 1: Well this is basically that in reverse, which is men
Speaker 1: don't be shopping. Uh So, it's just like pretty well
Speaker 1: worn online discourse that pops up online fairly regularly, and
Speaker 1: it's the idea that men are bad grocery shoppers. They
Speaker 1: pick bad fruit. You know, you can't trust them to
Speaker 1: pick a good avocado, Well, will get the worst one.
Speaker 1: They don't know where stuff is if you don't give
Speaker 1: them a meticulous list, will come back with the wrong thing.
Speaker 1: Women need to essentially FaceTime men and like walk them
Speaker 1: virtually through a grocery store for them to get to
Speaker 1: be able to do anything right, to the point where
Speaker 1: it's almost better to just do it. If you're sending
Speaker 1: a man to shop for you, it's almost better just
Speaker 1: do it yourself because he's gonna do a terrible job.
Speaker 1: And so this discourse definitely plays into a lot of
Speaker 1: like hot button topics around gender and things like that, right,
Speaker 1: it it deals with domestic labor like grocery shopping being
Speaker 1: kind of assigned as female labor. You know, the idea
Speaker 1: of men uh beenizing their incompetence, which basically means like
Speaker 1: being so bad at grocery shopping that they won't even
Speaker 1: do it, and so like the woman will just do
Speaker 1: it herself even if they are a sensibly being paid
Speaker 1: to the person who tweeted the tweet I'm about to
Speaker 1: read didn't say what grocery delivery app that she was using,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it was a go puff or insta cart.
Speaker 1: But it really dips into our expectations around how we
Speaker 1: treat gig workers who are mostly being like paid sub
Speaker 1: optimal wages and likely being misclassified as an independent contractor
Speaker 1: to do the labor of someone else, and just the
Speaker 1: general ethics around gig work in general, which I know
Speaker 1: is a hot button issue. All of this is to
Speaker 1: say that you already know this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: topic where everyone has an opinion, just a flashpoint of
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things. So last week a woman tweeted,
Speaker 1: quote my last time using grocery delivery, and I got
Speaker 1: a man he started refunding stuff that I knew, dang
Speaker 1: well the store had. I was so pissed. I got
Speaker 1: in the car and went to the store. He was
Speaker 1: at bro was literally standing in one aisle on the phone.
Speaker 1: The tweet got over seventy likes, almost four thousand retweets,
Speaker 1: and too many responses to count. So you're just standing
Speaker 1: there on his phone. Yeah, I think he was just
Speaker 1: I think that she's trying to say he was just
Speaker 1: standing there on his phone saying things that she knew
Speaker 1: that they had in stock were out of stock, and
Speaker 1: like being like, oh, refund, oh refund if you if
Speaker 1: you have not used instat cart, if they go to
Speaker 1: the store and they don't have a thing that you want,
Speaker 1: they just refunded. And so she's saying that he was
Speaker 1: just refunded, refunded, refunded, and not actually shopping, just like
Speaker 1: refunding everything. Well, of the three fignettes, I'm pretty sympathetic
Speaker 1: to to what are wecalling her. Unhappy grocery lady. Unhappy
Speaker 1: grocery lady. I mean that does so kind of annoying.
Speaker 1: I am with you there, and Okay, so these are
Speaker 1: the buckets of responses that I saw so some people thought,
Speaker 1: you know everyone, or some people kind of are like
Speaker 1: you right that, Like everyone has a right to expect
Speaker 1: that if they're paying for a service, that sort of
Speaker 1: should be done correctly. Like if you paid to get
Speaker 1: a haircut and the barber messed up your hair, most
Speaker 1: people will be like, oh, well, it's reasonable to complain
Speaker 1: about that, because you should get what you pay for. Um.
Speaker 1: Other people thought that the woman who initially made the
Speaker 1: tweet was coming off as like lazy and entitled, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna complain about the person shopping for you,
Speaker 1: you should get the groceries yourself. And one of those
Speaker 1: responses came from George's the Cat. You may remember George
Speaker 1: the Cat. Are you familiar with George the Cat? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with George, so you may remember George the Cat.
Speaker 1: He rose to Twitter fame after a viral asque Creddit
Speaker 1: post about two cats, one name Jeans and the other
Speaker 1: name George's, who lived in an office together. Um, and
Speaker 1: George has turned into something of a I guess a
Speaker 1: leftist celebrity cat on Twitter. George's or whoever is running
Speaker 1: this Twitter page on George's behalf replied to his over
Speaker 1: two d thousand followers idea go get your own groceries,
Speaker 1: and this response did not go over well. Um, some
Speaker 1: disability advocates pointed out that, especially during a pandemic, that
Speaker 1: not everyone actually can go get their own groceries, and
Speaker 1: so George was accused of perpetuating able ism for this response,
Speaker 1: and so the entire discourse kind of got a little
Speaker 1: complicated after that, and some of the accusations that I
Speaker 1: saw were, like, it sounds like this discourse has reached
Speaker 1: a weird conclusion where some folks are, you know, defending
Speaker 1: an able bodied woman in confronting a gig worker at
Speaker 1: a grocery store, you know, by using the fact that
Speaker 1: people with disabilities need to sometimes have to rely on
Speaker 1: services like insta cart to do so. So the converse
Speaker 1: the discourse just got very complicated and very big and
Speaker 1: very involved. And I think it's a good example of
Speaker 1: exactly what I was talking about before, how anything except
Speaker 1: the visible individuals are kind of just removed from the conversation, right,
Speaker 1: And so most people are either blaming the quote entitled
Speaker 1: grocery lady or the quote lazy, bad male shopper, because
Speaker 1: that's so much easier and more visible than grappling with
Speaker 1: any kind of a bigger picture. So looking at the
Speaker 1: politics of apps like insta Cart or go puff for instance,
Speaker 1: or the people who designed the app. And I also
Speaker 1: think when gig apps like insta carts oftentimes have exploitation
Speaker 1: built into them as a feature. Of course, nobody has
Speaker 1: having a good time. The person who is being underpaid
Speaker 1: to shop is probably not having a great time. The
Speaker 1: person who feels that they were getting sub optimal service
Speaker 1: because that person is underpaid for that labor, it's also
Speaker 1: not having a great time. And so I think it's
Speaker 1: one of those situations where the real villain is the
Speaker 1: app or the more more specifically the tech leaders who
Speaker 1: build the app and get rich off of it. Yeah, slutely.
Speaker 1: And people have complained about poor working conditions at insta
Speaker 1: Cart for a long time, and they there's a unionization effort.
Speaker 1: I think, like, what was that like a year ago
Speaker 1: now that they you know, fought and and suppressed and yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe if they paid their workers decently, called them workers,
Speaker 1: treated them as workers, and uh, you know, worked with them,
Speaker 1: they would be able to provide the level of service
Speaker 1: that grocery lady is looking for. But they choose not
Speaker 1: to do that. You know, it's like it's hard to
Speaker 1: really fault. You know, there's some some gig worker for
Speaker 1: not taking the gig work seriously because it's gig work,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's probably not how I would have
Speaker 1: done it, But I don't know what's going on with
Speaker 1: this guy. And I also think this idea, you know,
Speaker 1: when people talked about people with disabilities and the fact
Speaker 1: that they often do have to rely on services like
Speaker 1: insta Cart to get their groceries, I think again that's
Speaker 1: a situation where the failing is institutional, because people with
Speaker 1: disabilities should have accessible, reliable, affordable services to help them
Speaker 1: live their lives and to get them the things that
Speaker 1: they need in their lives with, you know, and instead
Speaker 1: they're given this a private app like insta Cart that
Speaker 1: really functions more like a pricey luxury service and so
Speaker 1: it's not super accessible that has all this exploitation built
Speaker 1: into it. Um never mind the fact that I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's lots of disabled folks who work who are forced
Speaker 1: to do gig work and are being underpaid, and so
Speaker 1: again I think these are are issues are really institutional,
Speaker 1: but so often it's easier to blame the visible parties.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not the tech leaders who get rich
Speaker 1: off of apps like insta cart or the institutional failings.
Speaker 1: These people and things are not so easy to find
Speaker 1: and yell at on Twitter. But the person who tweeted
Speaker 1: about having a bad experience on instacart, well, she sure is.
Speaker 1: She's very easy to find. He tweeted about it. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And it's there's more of that same post talk justification,
Speaker 1: like with garden Lady, where after the fact, after people
Speaker 1: were already piling on, they were searching for reasons to
Speaker 1: dislike her, you know, like, oh, she's anti vax which
Speaker 1: maybe she's, maybe she's not. I have no idea. But
Speaker 1: obviously the whole reason that everybody was tweeting about her
Speaker 1: wasn't because of her positions about vaccination, right, It was
Speaker 1: just some justification people found after the fact to justify
Speaker 1: what they all already wanted to do. And you know,
Speaker 1: suggesting that this seemingly able bodied person just go and
Speaker 1: get her own groceries. It's you know, it's like a
Speaker 1: level of snark that one would exist on the Internet.
Speaker 1: But ah, but it does feel like people were piling
Speaker 1: on and like looking for reasons to support one side
Speaker 1: or the other because of problems caused by those larger
Speaker 1: systemic forces and instant cart itself or I guess we
Speaker 1: don't know if it was instant cart, but whatever the
Speaker 1: app was, Like you said, they're not visible. Uh, grocery
Speaker 1: lady is visible, George is visible. Unfortunately the gig worker
Speaker 1: wasn't visible. I know, I what if he tweeted his
Speaker 1: side of the story, like, lady, I'm getting paid nothing
Speaker 1: to do this. Okay, He's probably out there, has no
Speaker 1: idea any of this is happening. He's probably knowing how
Speaker 1: men grocery shop probably out there are stuck in the
Speaker 1: aisle trying to pick a good avocado. He was just
Speaker 1: trying to call somebody to come help him fight his
Speaker 1: way out. Meanwhile, there are celebrity cats tweeting about him.
Speaker 1: We we live in such a weird, weird timeline, like
Speaker 1: like the such a weird timeline, And that cat probably
Speaker 1: makes way more than he does. Oh for sure, no
Speaker 1: question in my mind, how was that George is an
Speaker 1: office cat? Like George's making money, He's given books to
Speaker 1: little kittens. I know. I want the controversies to fold
Speaker 1: back in on themselves, where someone is angry that it
Speaker 1: has a nice office and is gifting books to kittens
Speaker 1: and doing it in a garden. M that's the worst part,
Speaker 1: that he's doing it in a garden. So all of
Speaker 1: this is to say that, you know, I saw lots
Speaker 1: of people in response to all of these vignettes being like, Wow,
Speaker 1: people are so miserable. You know, I would never share
Speaker 1: my happy moment with with the internet because people are
Speaker 1: so miserable they're just going to crap all over it.
Speaker 1: And I kind of agree, not in the you know,
Speaker 1: kind of snarky like, oh you're so miserable, log off,
Speaker 1: touch grass kind of way. I meet it in the
Speaker 1: real way. I think that we as Americans are just
Speaker 1: really miserable right now. We're living through a pandemic economic instability,
Speaker 1: climate instability, worsening division, political anxiety, and our institutions, who
Speaker 1: are offensibly here to provide us support, really showed us
Speaker 1: that we're kind of just on our own. And I
Speaker 1: think everyone is exhausted. We're working more and more and more.
Speaker 1: The cost of everything is going up, and so this
Speaker 1: is not sustainable. People have less leisure time, less time
Speaker 1: to rest or even just process things. And so I
Speaker 1: feel like as a result, we're all just showing up
Speaker 1: tense and anxious and on edge. And when we are
Speaker 1: showing up online, we're bringing all of that tension with us.
Speaker 1: And of course this is all exploited by social media
Speaker 1: platforms that we already know specifically feed as content that
Speaker 1: enrages us and encourages us to pile on strangers and
Speaker 1: turn them into proxies for our pain. And I guess
Speaker 1: I just want better for us. I want better for
Speaker 1: all of us. Yeah, we deserve it. I mean it.
Speaker 1: It is kind of a great American tradition to like
Speaker 1: find proxies and blame them for our problems. But it
Speaker 1: seems to really be showing up in a different way
Speaker 1: now that now that we've got social media. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: And to be clear, people have been miserable since forever.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be miserable people out there until the end,
Speaker 1: until the end of time, and they've always been there.
Speaker 1: But I think social media obviously is inflaming something in us.
Speaker 1: And I think as we grapple with you know, what
Speaker 1: it means to be a person in which is not
Speaker 1: always so fun, I think it can put us in
Speaker 1: a situation where it's really locking us into a cycle
Speaker 1: of misery where we're angry intense, algorithms are showing us
Speaker 1: things that are that are making us even more angry intense,
Speaker 1: and the cycle continues, and I just want better, and
Speaker 1: we all realize it. Like it's kind of surprising when
Speaker 1: you say it like that, that like we all know
Speaker 1: what makes us angry, intense and anxious. Uh, and you know,
Speaker 1: reduces our ability to pay attention to things. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really seem sustainable, right, Like what don't you think like
Speaker 1: irrational people would figure out something else. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is. Like obviously, I like the internet,
Speaker 1: you know, I work on this show even but like
Speaker 1: I don't know. It feels like this isn't it, This
Speaker 1: ain't it, this saint it. I can tell you. I
Speaker 1: can tell you this is not it. And honestly, this
Speaker 1: is a lot of like wild speculation and anecdotal evidence
Speaker 1: on my part. This is not a typical show that
Speaker 1: we do. You can probably tell. But I also just
Speaker 1: really want to know what you all think. If you're listening,
Speaker 1: you know, have you been feeling this palpable anxiety in
Speaker 1: misery online or off? You know, I've seen people say
Speaker 1: that you shouldn't share any of your happy stuff with
Speaker 1: the internet because they're just gonna crap all over it
Speaker 1: and tear it apart. Do you agree? Do you do
Speaker 1: you keep your happy stuff offline because you don't want
Speaker 1: someone to turn you into the next garden lady or
Speaker 1: the next book professor. I'm really curious. Let us know
Speaker 1: how you feel, how you've been dealing with all of this. Um,
Speaker 1: if I'm way off base, I want to hear that too.
Speaker 1: You can hit us up at Hello at tangoti dot com.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to hear from you and Michael. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being here. I know when something
Speaker 1: is going on on the internet, and I want to
Speaker 1: have a kind of offline perspective. I can always count
Speaker 1: on you. Yeah, it's generally pretty pretty offline perspective. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. I love talking with you, and
Speaker 1: it's an interesting topic. I'm glid you brought it up
Speaker 1: and wanted to talk about it, and I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to seeing and hearing what listeners have to say me too.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our
Speaker 1: producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help
Speaker 1: us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from I heeart Radio, check out the iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: And then I have to him with and then I
Speaker 1: have to m with