Speaker 1: You're listening to this informed a mini series from There
Speaker 1: Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd. Last
Speaker 1: week we talked to journalists Michael Hobbs on the podcast
Speaker 1: You're Wrong About about the origins of our current moral
Speaker 1: panic around trafficking. I will say just on these kinds
Speaker 1: of things, it's it's never strangers. It's never like these
Speaker 1: kinds of mono myths. Anything that looks like the sort
Speaker 1: of remember the flashing your high beams gang initiation stuff,
Speaker 1: those are totally bunk. Anything involving like random targeting of civilians,
Speaker 1: it's that really never happens. Anything the stranger is kidnapping
Speaker 1: you in broad daylight. I think there's like certain categories
Speaker 1: of anecdotes that are just like these ones never turned
Speaker 1: out to be true, so we should just stop sharing them. Like,
Speaker 1: don't don't feel like you have to warn people about
Speaker 1: anything involving a parking lot. If a parking lot is involved,
Speaker 1: people are safe. A lot of a converse nations creating
Speaker 1: panic around trafficking and parking lots are happening on the
Speaker 1: platform TikTok. Women are using the platform to warn others
Speaker 1: about what they describe as narrowly missing being kidnapped from
Speaker 1: a public place and almost trafficked. But that's not how
Speaker 1: trafficking works. It isn't affluent women being kidnapped from public places.
Speaker 1: So how did these women come to take up so
Speaker 1: much room in the conversations on TikTok around trafficking and
Speaker 1: what's really going on? Hear me out, were you almost
Speaker 1: sex trafficked at target? Or have you fallen victim to
Speaker 1: a false narrative pushed by social media for years now
Speaker 1: perpetuates a false stereotype about what sex trafficking actually looks like,
Speaker 1: because if we actually wanted to talk about what sex
Speaker 1: trafficking actually looks like, required talking about how the kidnapping
Speaker 1: narrative is actually incredibly false, because most victims of sex
Speaker 1: trafficking are actually groomed into it over a long period
Speaker 1: of time by somebody they know and trust. But people
Speaker 1: don't want to talk about that because it's much easier
Speaker 1: to be afraid of boogeyman that it is to hold
Speaker 1: the people you know and trust accountable, which would then
Speaker 1: lead to a larger conversation about why the overwhelming majority
Speaker 1: of people who claim to have almost been sex trafficked
Speaker 1: are usually pretty affluent young whites to straight women. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that every reputable anti kicking organization could tell
Speaker 1: you that the most vulnerable populations for sex trafficking are minority, queer,
Speaker 1: homeless youth, people do not want to talk about this
Speaker 1: because Republicans and evangelicals have been pushing this narrative for decades.
Speaker 1: Is when you have a population that does not know
Speaker 1: the difference between voluntary sex work and sex trafficking, you
Speaker 1: can push for legislation that not only hurts minorities, but
Speaker 1: also hurts and sex where heres they all fucking hate.
Speaker 1: It's time to stop leaving that every scary thing you've
Speaker 1: ever experienced is the work of a sex trafficker and
Speaker 1: start listening to sex workers who know what the signs
Speaker 1: actually look like. That's Jessica. She makes viral content that
Speaker 1: gives accurate information about trafficking and debunks viral misinformation about
Speaker 1: it on TikTok, and she says spreading myths around trafficking
Speaker 1: is doing real harm. So my name is Jessica, but
Speaker 1: online I go about blood bath and beyond. How did
Speaker 1: you come to making TikTok specifically about debunking panics and
Speaker 1: myth around myth ground sex trafficking. So I originally downloaded
Speaker 1: TikTok because I heard there was this new app for
Speaker 1: young kids and everybody was on and it was really cool.
Speaker 1: So I was like, Oh, let's check it out. See
Speaker 1: what all the young kids are doing. So I got
Speaker 1: on it. I was watching a lot of content, and
Speaker 1: then somehow I found this in che of like dungeons
Speaker 1: and dragons content. I was like, Oh, I can make
Speaker 1: fun dungeons and dragons jokes. So I started making content
Speaker 1: like that. But then there was actually a lot of
Speaker 1: sexism involved in that community, and a lot of gatekeeping
Speaker 1: of like, oh, women always play these stereotypical characters and
Speaker 1: they do all of these things. Because what's a really niche,
Speaker 1: nerdy community without putting some sort of stereotype on women,
Speaker 1: And so I just I fell out of that community
Speaker 1: and I started making just random things. It turned into
Speaker 1: like a personal blog for a short while, and then
Speaker 1: I started finding a lot of videos online of people
Speaker 1: asking just random questions and I was like, oh, I
Speaker 1: actually know the answer to that. And I found myself
Speaker 1: in a lot of science and math and technology sort
Speaker 1: of questions. And one of the first things that I
Speaker 1: started covering when it came to human trafficking and how
Speaker 1: I sort of fell into niche I did was there
Speaker 1: was this one viral video going around that was talking
Speaker 1: about how if you receive a text message that talks
Speaker 1: about a failed delivery at HUMPED, like think of if
Speaker 1: you get like text notifications from Amazon and you have
Speaker 1: to like sign for a package or something and it
Speaker 1: says like, oh, we tried to deliver it, but it didn't.
Speaker 1: There was this thing going around online that if you
Speaker 1: click the link they provide in that text message, it's
Speaker 1: it's actually coming from sex traffickers and they're gonna low
Speaker 1: jack your location and you're going to become a victim
Speaker 1: of trafficking and they're gonna kidnap you from your home.
Speaker 1: By clicking on that link, you are actually sending your
Speaker 1: precise location to sex traffickers in your local area so
Speaker 1: they can swoop in and come pick your A. S. S
Speaker 1: S up. And I, off the bat knew that that
Speaker 1: wasn't true, That didn't make any sense. That's logistically not
Speaker 1: how something would work, and if you really think about it,
Speaker 1: it just wouldn't work that way. So I ended up
Speaker 1: making a video about that, and that video did very well,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people just saw me in association
Speaker 1: with sex trafficking and misinformation. And so at that point,
Speaker 1: I think it had around a hundred thousand followers, and
Speaker 1: so many of my followers would start tagging me in
Speaker 1: other videos talking about sex trafficking, and they would be like, Oh,
Speaker 1: is this a sex tra sticking thing? Is this a
Speaker 1: sex trafficking thing? So I have this like tiny army
Speaker 1: of people that started tagging me and off of these
Speaker 1: different videos that just talk about sex trafficking. Some of
Speaker 1: them were legitimate and some of them were more on
Speaker 1: that HOAXI or misinformation side. So I've just been constantly
Speaker 1: bombarded with my followers tagging me in these videos, and
Speaker 1: that one thing about like Amazon packages kind of started
Speaker 1: at all. On TikTok, you'll find mostly white women making
Speaker 1: videos that sometimes go viral where I can up thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands and thousands of views about how they were
Speaker 1: nearly trafficked. If you search any hashtag related to trafficking awareness,
Speaker 1: and it's mostly videos of women saying that someone got
Speaker 1: too close to them while they were shopping or finding
Speaker 1: something weird on their car. Just this morning, Jessica sent
Speaker 1: me a TikTok of a woman who found pieces of
Speaker 1: cheese smeared on her car and said this was a
Speaker 1: new tactic that traffickers were using to find their victims.
Speaker 1: Why do you think so many people on social media
Speaker 1: and as off offline as well, Why do you think
Speaker 1: people get so up in arms about these different things.
Speaker 1: It's like, Oh, someone put flowers on my car or
Speaker 1: a zip tie, like these things that people then say like, oh,
Speaker 1: I was an attempted victim of sex trafficking because I
Speaker 1: found honey on my car or I got this kind
Speaker 1: of text messages. Why do you think, like, what's going
Speaker 1: on with this phenomena? You think? I think a lot
Speaker 1: of it has to do with the other ing and
Speaker 1: a lack of education on what sex trafficking truly looks like.
Speaker 1: Because even though it happens in our neighborhoods, it happens
Speaker 1: all around us. So many people distance themselves from that
Speaker 1: crime and the people who commit those crimes. So if
Speaker 1: it's it's easier to say that it's dark, scary strangers
Speaker 1: keep napping you from parking lots than it is to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that it's high school coaches, it's parents, it's boyfriends,
Speaker 1: it's people you know and people you've grown to trust
Speaker 1: or see as good people. So we try to other
Speaker 1: and we try to distance ourselves from the people committing
Speaker 1: those acts that we see as such terrible crimes. So
Speaker 1: it's it's I think it's just a lot easier to
Speaker 1: just pin it on this dark, shadowy figure and then
Speaker 1: just combining that with not really understanding who are the
Speaker 1: most susceptible victims to sex trafficking is. I think it's
Speaker 1: what really built up this phenomenon online. So you might
Speaker 1: be thinking, so, what if people want to make videos
Speaker 1: about trafficking, who is it hurting? Well, the answer is
Speaker 1: that it's actually hurting survivors of sex trafficking because it
Speaker 1: adds to the idea that the victims of trafficking are
Speaker 1: white ladies taken by strangers, when in reality, it's a
Speaker 1: marginalized people like black folks, queer folks, trans folks, and
Speaker 1: people dealing with homelessness. And when organizations get involved to
Speaker 1: try to combat trafficking, they can sometimes conflate trafficking with
Speaker 1: consensual sex work, further criminalizing already marginalized communities. Here's Jessica
Speaker 1: on TikTok explaining what I mean. Hello. This is just
Speaker 1: your daily reminder that most anti trafficking organizations here in
Speaker 1: the United States aren't actually helping trafficking victims. Most of
Speaker 1: these organizations focus on sex trafficking, despite labor trafficking making
Speaker 1: up by some estimates of trafficking victims. Many of these
Speaker 1: multimillion dollar organizations have puritanical Christian values, and the reason
Speaker 1: that they focus on sex trafficking instead of labor trafficking
Speaker 1: is because it is incredibly easy to disguise anti sex
Speaker 1: work legislation as anti trafficking legislation because most people do
Speaker 1: not know the difference. The number one victim of sex
Speaker 1: trafficking in the United States is statistically black women, but
Speaker 1: these organizations love to push for legislation that makes it
Speaker 1: infinitely easier to label them as prostitutes and throw them
Speaker 1: in jail, instead of providing resources they need to escape
Speaker 1: their situation. Instead, push the narrative that the majority of
Speaker 1: victims are kidnapped and held against their rules so that
Speaker 1: they can raise millions of dollars to these rescue missions.
Speaker 1: And the reason they don't talk about labor trafficking is
Speaker 1: because most victims of labor trafficking are undocumented immigrants, and
Speaker 1: that would require talking about how the US loves to
Speaker 1: capitalize on undocumented immigrant labor without actually providing them basic
Speaker 1: human rights. One of your videos that I watched that's
Speaker 1: really breaks this down well, is this idea that so
Speaker 1: many organizations that purport to be around combating trafficking are
Speaker 1: actually one just like very shady. And then too, they're
Speaker 1: doing this thing where they conflate trafficking with sex work,
Speaker 1: and then they you know, they aren't kind of going
Speaker 1: after some of the biggest call breads of actual trafficking,
Speaker 1: like labor, you know, labor trafficking and things like that,
Speaker 1: and they're sort of selling this narrative of little white
Speaker 1: kids getting snatched off the street or or white ladies
Speaker 1: getting like taken in parking lots, and you know, is
Speaker 1: that do you think that's sort of part of it?
Speaker 1: That it's that it's easier to raise a panic around
Speaker 1: the issue when it looks when when you're telling people
Speaker 1: that it looks like this as opposed to like know
Speaker 1: it might be like the coach in your in your
Speaker 1: at your kids school or something. Yeah, definitely, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of those organizations and I it's hard to
Speaker 1: look at an organization that is objectively trying to do
Speaker 1: something good and let's just say like, hey, you're doing
Speaker 1: it wrong, like you hate to do that. So I
Speaker 1: always try to be really careful when I speak of
Speaker 1: these organizations as much as they sometimes frustrate me. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there there are a lot of I call them just
Speaker 1: rescue organizations where they paint this picture. They really tend
Speaker 1: to focus on this idea that sex trafficking is. I
Speaker 1: think the word trafficking is what does it is? The
Speaker 1: associate eight trafficking with being carried across the border, and
Speaker 1: that is so often not the case. Jessica studied mathematics,
Speaker 1: which turns out is actually a pretty useful thing to
Speaker 1: understand when you're responding to viral misinformation around sexualized violence
Speaker 1: and trafficking. So how a studying math and statistics impacted
Speaker 1: your work on TikTok? So I would love to say like, oh,
Speaker 1: I use my degree all the time. Is so valuable,
Speaker 1: like totally like the fifty dollars, I haven't dead, It's
Speaker 1: totally worth it. But in all reality, so I have
Speaker 1: a master's degree in mathematics and I focused on theoretical mathematics,
Speaker 1: so statistics wasn't necessarily my thing, but I definitely had
Speaker 1: to take multiple courses on it in college and then
Speaker 1: for my master's thesis I had to do a lot
Speaker 1: of statistical analysis and research. So a lot of this
Speaker 1: is seeing people throughout stats online, Um like forty million
Speaker 1: people are in trafficking, which is a large, horrifying number.
Speaker 1: But when you really break down exactly where that's coming
Speaker 1: from and you see that analysis of exactly, okay, but
Speaker 1: out of those forty mean people, how many is this?
Speaker 1: What is your definition? How what is your sample size? Exactly?
Speaker 1: How are you collecting this data? It definitely helps to
Speaker 1: have a background in mathematics and understand, okay, like what
Speaker 1: is the importance of sample sizes and how are they
Speaker 1: collecting this and how are they going out and doing
Speaker 1: all of these things. It definitely helps to see what
Speaker 1: happens when that isn't done properly, and unfortunately it's that's
Speaker 1: not as commonly taught in schools. I wish it was
Speaker 1: as understanding how these statistics come about and what are
Speaker 1: the flaws and what can go wrong and how credible
Speaker 1: is this information and where they're getting it? From so
Speaker 1: that definitely comes in hand quite a bit. In response
Speaker 1: to the death of Sarah Evard, a South London woman
Speaker 1: who was found dead this year, the United Nations Entity
Speaker 1: for Gender Equity and Empowerment of Women at leased a
Speaker 1: report that showed that nine pc of women in the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom from ages eighteen to twenty four have been
Speaker 1: victims of sexual harassment in public places. That factoid sparked
Speaker 1: a viral movement on TikTok or Women's at the percent
Speaker 1: number to make really moving videos calling out the sexual
Speaker 1: harassment that we face in public constantly. But a lot
Speaker 1: of men also really latched onto that number. Some said
Speaker 1: that since the study included things like cat calling or
Speaker 1: staring as sexual harassment, that figure must be overblown, and
Speaker 1: it gave a lot of them a really easy excuse
Speaker 1: to just disengage from the conversation altogether because that one
Speaker 1: s that had become kind of a rallying cry for
Speaker 1: talking about sexual harassment and public on TikTok. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: number all that kept me up for multiple days. That is,
Speaker 1: that's a really tough one because the the data science
Speaker 1: in me and the person with the math degree and
Speaker 1: me wants to go hold up, that's that's a really
Speaker 1: really big number. Um, that's that's a very large assumption
Speaker 1: to be making. You better have a lot behind it
Speaker 1: to prove that. But also at the same time, like
Speaker 1: being a woman just existing in the world, it's hard
Speaker 1: not to believe it, Like the amount of times I've
Speaker 1: been cat called or sexually A asked like, oh yeah, no,
Speaker 1: ninety seven percent seems about right. So your your assumption
Speaker 1: is to just go with and be like, yeah, that's accurate.
Speaker 1: That reflects what I've personally seen in my life. So
Speaker 1: when I come in and I think that's why I'm
Speaker 1: in a unique position to be talking about it is
Speaker 1: because I've seen men, or at least mail presenting individuals
Speaker 1: come online and talk about that and they are immediately
Speaker 1: shot down. They're like, you're not allowed to be talking
Speaker 1: about this. You are the problem. How dare you try
Speaker 1: to tell us or try to speak over our experiences. So,
Speaker 1: as a woman who has a little bit more technical
Speaker 1: understanding of how these studies work, I think it's valuable
Speaker 1: for me to come in and say, hey, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: sure ninety seven is pretty close to what it actually is.
Speaker 1: It wasn't meant to be this all encompassing perfect study
Speaker 1: that was going to get thrown around by the entire
Speaker 1: world and turned into a massive movement. It was a
Speaker 1: self selected study and this organization just wanted to get
Speaker 1: a rough idea. They weren't trying to make it this
Speaker 1: monolith of an idea, so just to criticize it, but
Speaker 1: to still put it in the frame of yes, this
Speaker 1: is an absolutely massive problem. But like, if we're going
Speaker 1: to be throwing around numbers like this that have such
Speaker 1: a large impact, we should make sure that these are
Speaker 1: solid numbers that have the science behind it to back
Speaker 1: it up, because otherwise you will run into an instance
Speaker 1: where a whole ton of men are going to come
Speaker 1: back at you and say, no, that study was BS.
Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense. No it, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: I'm not going to engage in this conversation because the
Speaker 1: math was bad and that is their immediate go to.
Speaker 1: So if we're going to engage in these conversations, we
Speaker 1: need to have rock solid numbers. That's such a good
Speaker 1: point because I can see I used to an earlier
Speaker 1: iteration of me used to spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: like arguing with guys and Reddit and things like that,
Speaker 1: and so it's like as soon as soon as they're like,
Speaker 1: oh well, I think your numbers are are not accurate,
Speaker 1: Like it really is a way for them to just
Speaker 1: sort of shut the conversation down. Yeah, part of the
Speaker 1: one of the videos that I made talking about I
Speaker 1: think I ended the video on something like bad math
Speaker 1: is in an excuse to leave the conversation, And that
Speaker 1: chunk of my video got stitched like to times of
Speaker 1: women being like she gets it, And I think that
Speaker 1: was really what helped engage in the conversation. Is, yeah,
Speaker 1: the math was flawed. We should talk about that because
Speaker 1: we want to make sure that we're getting accurate information.
Speaker 1: But like, also, this is a societal phenomenon and getting
Speaker 1: a perfect number is never going to be easy because
Speaker 1: you can do sample sizing, but there's gonna be so
Speaker 1: many individual experiences or different cultures and communities that behave
Speaker 1: differently around women that it's that's not an easy number
Speaker 1: to get. So yeah, we're probably gonna be going off
Speaker 1: of a couple of assumptions here and there. But just
Speaker 1: because the series flaw doesn't mean that like the amount
Speaker 1: of women who resonated with that statistic should speak for itself.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break back. It's not hard for
Speaker 1: me to believe that almost all women have been sexually
Speaker 1: harassed in public because I'm a woman. The reality is
Speaker 1: that we put up with so much creepy, sexist gross
Speaker 1: off at her everyday lives. And it isn't okay when
Speaker 1: women's stories about being almost trafficked go viral on TikTok.
Speaker 1: People tag Jessica in the comments like she's supposed to
Speaker 1: rush in and call the woman out for making it
Speaker 1: up for attention, But Jessica says, even if the women
Speaker 1: who make these videos are probably not about to be
Speaker 1: trafficked from a target, they are probably very genuinely in
Speaker 1: situations that feel creepy or unsafe, because the experiences of
Speaker 1: being a woman in public often feel creepy and unsafe.
Speaker 1: That dude who gets way too close to you while
Speaker 1: you're shopping might not be a trafficker, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean women are wrong for feeling skeewed out when that
Speaker 1: kind of thing happens, And Jessica is not interested in
Speaker 1: invalidating women's experiences. More often than not, the videos were
Speaker 1: and I hate to say calling them out, but offering
Speaker 1: criticism or offering insight. The time in videos I'm getting tagged,
Speaker 1: and it is a woman sharing an experience that she
Speaker 1: believes she was almost trafficked. And whether or not I
Speaker 1: even respond to those videos, I'm tagged in them hundreds
Speaker 1: of times. Whenever one when where a video goes viral,
Speaker 1: I'm I have to turn off TikTok for a little
Speaker 1: while because my notifications get so bad. I can't focus
Speaker 1: on my engagement with comments I get because people tagging
Speaker 1: me in that video was so overwhelming. And more often
Speaker 1: than not, it's a young woman and I hate to generalize,
Speaker 1: but this is usually what it is. Is it's a
Speaker 1: young white woman who was experiencing something in a grocery store,
Speaker 1: maybe Target, maybe home deepot, some sort of store where
Speaker 1: they walked out to their car and something suspicious was
Speaker 1: on their car. And objectively, it is weird when you
Speaker 1: walk out of your car and there's like a zip
Speaker 1: tie on your handle, or there's like a weird pamphlet
Speaker 1: under your windshield like that. That's kind of odd. But
Speaker 1: they sometimes they jump to the conclusion, and sometimes the
Speaker 1: comments suction jumps to the conclusion that they were near
Speaker 1: miss for a sex trafficking incident, and that they were
Speaker 1: almost kidnapped, and that they were almost to be never
Speaker 1: seen again. And those are so difficult to talk about
Speaker 1: because it's so hard to come into that offering any
Speaker 1: sort of spotlight onto what sex trafficking actually looks like
Speaker 1: without coming off like you're invalidating their experience. So often
Speaker 1: the criticism I receive is, how dare you invalidate their experience?
Speaker 1: How dare you tell them what they should be feeling?
Speaker 1: How dare you tell them that they shouldn't be afraid?
Speaker 1: And I never want to tell somebody you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: afraid in that instance. It's more so let's talk about
Speaker 1: what the fear like. What let's rationalize the fear here.
Speaker 1: Kidnappings they're incredibly rare, but they do happen, Sexual assaults,
Speaker 1: just random violence on the streets. Those things do happen,
Speaker 1: and we've seen that, especially with what happened to the
Speaker 1: UK recently. But sex trafficking is an incredibly specific crime
Speaker 1: with incredibly, it has an incredibly specific definition that people
Speaker 1: have really run wild with. It is the new stranger
Speaker 1: danger to me, what is it like for you to
Speaker 1: have to walk that incredibly I guess specific line of
Speaker 1: wanting to give actual, fact based content out there, but
Speaker 1: also not wanting to sound like you're invalidating someone experience
Speaker 1: or not making it. I guess. I feel like when
Speaker 1: we're talking about women on the internet, it is so
Speaker 1: easy to be like, Oh, these two women are going
Speaker 1: at it. This woman says she was almost traffic. This
Speaker 1: other woman says that she's a liar. They're having a
Speaker 1: cat fight. I feel like this when women have discourse online,
Speaker 1: it is so easy for that discourse to be distorted
Speaker 1: into some kind of a cat fight. And I feel
Speaker 1: that you probably have to walk a real specific line.
Speaker 1: What's that like for you? Um, it is difficult, to
Speaker 1: say the least. And I've definitely screwed Like to say
Speaker 1: I got it perfect the first time is an absolute lie.
Speaker 1: I've definitely screwed it up before. I've walked into those
Speaker 1: conversations with an attitude that was not appropriate. And it
Speaker 1: took me a long time to learn that. And I
Speaker 1: deleted Benny videos and apologized to many individuals and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. My tone was inappropriate. How I came
Speaker 1: across was inappropriate. I did not mean to present myself
Speaker 1: in the way that I did. And intent over impact
Speaker 1: is such an important phrase when you're talking about content online,
Speaker 1: particularly because TikTok is such a per evasive beast. A
Speaker 1: woman can describe an instance that happened to her and
Speaker 1: people can jump to the conclusion of sex trafficking and
Speaker 1: you can put that a sixty second video so easily,
Speaker 1: and it goes viral so quickly. That is that is catinet.
Speaker 1: People love it. But when somebody comes in and says,
Speaker 1: let's have this extremely nuanced, complicated conversation about what sex
Speaker 1: trafficking actually looks like and why this misinformation is actually
Speaker 1: really harmful, and why we're still allowed to be afraid,
Speaker 1: but we need to contextualize that fear in a really
Speaker 1: important way that is really hard to fit into sixty seconds. Um.
Speaker 1: So the reason I've asked people to stop tagging me
Speaker 1: and people still do. It's not the end of the world,
Speaker 1: but so many times I'll experience the situation where my
Speaker 1: followers will tag me in a video and you can
Speaker 1: tag somebody in a video and then leave a comment
Speaker 1: on that same tag, and they'll be like, hey, at
Speaker 1: blood Beth and beyond, this is complete bullshit, right, or
Speaker 1: this is she's lying, right, and those are such terrible
Speaker 1: things to say, And to an extent, a creator can
Speaker 1: only control how their audience interacts with their content so
Speaker 1: much I can. I can't stop people from doing that,
Speaker 1: but I can still outwardly put my face on it
Speaker 1: and say that's not an appropriate way to engage in
Speaker 1: this conversation. Is it going to stop people from doing it?
Speaker 1: Not at all, But it's at least going to try
Speaker 1: to help and at least somebody out there will see
Speaker 1: the importance of having this conversation in a very delicate,
Speaker 1: nuanced way. There's there's just so many women who make
Speaker 1: these videos genuinely scared, and I understand that they are
Speaker 1: genuinely fearful. And I know where that fear is coming
Speaker 1: come from, because I am also a woman in America
Speaker 1: who goes to Target and finds weird things and parking lots.
Speaker 1: But because I also do so much debunking, even just
Speaker 1: putting my name in the commets and tagging at blood
Speaker 1: bath and beyond, so many women see that as you
Speaker 1: don't believe me, and that's become so incredibly difficult to
Speaker 1: try to walk And I still think about it now,
Speaker 1: How can I adjust my content in a way that
Speaker 1: people don't see me as like the ha ha you wrong. No,
Speaker 1: you you're not allowed to say those things. It's inappropriate,
Speaker 1: or you're you're lying, you're making stuff up, you're looking
Speaker 1: for attention. I never want that air around my content
Speaker 1: and around my presence on the Internet. But I'm still
Speaker 1: trying to figure out that nice little balance, and I'm
Speaker 1: getting better at it, but it's still it's difficult. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate the honest response that you just gave
Speaker 1: because I feel, you know, especially online, it can be
Speaker 1: so hard to be like, yeah, I get it wrong sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've a lot of my work involves like thinking through
Speaker 1: my own behavior and apologizing for it. We're appropriate, like
Speaker 1: I think admitting that is it is like rare online,
Speaker 1: I guess, and admitting that it's kind of a journey
Speaker 1: that you that you are trying to sort out how
Speaker 1: you become an like how you model ethical and responsible
Speaker 1: content and making sure that you're not like invalidating the
Speaker 1: experiences of other women. I just really appreciate that that
Speaker 1: you're bringing that nuance to the conversation, because, especially on
Speaker 1: these platforms where you only get sixty seconds, that nuance
Speaker 1: is so so able to get lost, and I think people,
Speaker 1: a lot of people online are looking for a fight.
Speaker 1: They're looking for that conflict. They're looking for like they
Speaker 1: want to see two people in conflict and not two
Speaker 1: people in in dialogue or in discussion or in community.
Speaker 1: When people tag you in videos and kind of give
Speaker 1: the perception of like, oh, you're you're shutting this person
Speaker 1: down or you're calling them out, and the blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Something that I think kind of gets lost in this
Speaker 1: is when we talk about bad actors. How local reporting
Speaker 1: and police narratives were like I read these articles you're
Speaker 1: shitty hometown local news website, you know, and it'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: someone found zip ties on their car at the parking lot.
Speaker 1: This police officer corroborates that it happened, and they do
Speaker 1: the whole story, and one might read the story and say, oh,
Speaker 1: well this is clearly this is correct, you know. They
Speaker 1: they they quote a police officer who confirms it happened.
Speaker 1: And then when you actually think about it, like was
Speaker 1: this this article said nothing? It didn't. It didn't. There
Speaker 1: was no evidence of anything you know, untoward happened, And
Speaker 1: I guess it's so easy to point the finger at women,
Speaker 1: many of whom are probably you know, going through the
Speaker 1: experience of being a woman in America, which can be
Speaker 1: very scary, who maybe are genuinely worried for their life
Speaker 1: or their safety, and then we don't focus on like
Speaker 1: the reporter who decided this was newsworthy, or the police
Speaker 1: officer who didn't clearly say there was no evidence this
Speaker 1: person thought they were being sex trafficked, but like, you know,
Speaker 1: here's what really happened or whatever. I guess. I wonder
Speaker 1: it feels like it's easier to point the finger at
Speaker 1: women as the bad actors and not sort of larger
Speaker 1: institutional bad actors like reporters who write floppy rush stories
Speaker 1: or like policet you know, law enforcement who don't tell
Speaker 1: the whole story. Absolutely, that is one of the most
Speaker 1: difficult things I have to deal with as far as
Speaker 1: when I do get pushed back online, I received so
Speaker 1: many like an instance, will be all make a video
Speaker 1: talking about how this zip tai phenomenon of finding a
Speaker 1: zip tie on your on the handle of your car
Speaker 1: is not indicative of being marked for sex trafficking. And
Speaker 1: my entire comments section, hundreds of comments and people saying,
Speaker 1: know what happened to my small town? The police said
Speaker 1: it was a thing. It happened to me. The police
Speaker 1: confirmed it as a thing. And police confirming that it
Speaker 1: is an act of sex trafficking is not the same
Speaker 1: as them releasing something saying we're investigating it. And that
Speaker 1: is so critical. And I really wish that the journalistic
Speaker 1: standard with those smaller towns that reported that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff was just a ant bit higher because it could
Speaker 1: alleviate so much confusion, because if there's like there was,
Speaker 1: there was one online I had seen where it was
Speaker 1: an individual it was. This was a viral TikTok, and
Speaker 1: it drove me absolutely insane. It was a woman who
Speaker 1: was in the car in her car, I think it
Speaker 1: was a Walmart, and she was looking around at the
Speaker 1: cars nearby her and she saw one car had a
Speaker 1: like a string tied to its handle and she was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: the sex traffickers. It's them. I know it's them, And
Speaker 1: it would absolutely viral, overnight explosion, millions of views, and
Speaker 1: the woman who actually drove that car recognized it and
Speaker 1: responded in a video saying, that's my car. Here's proof,
Speaker 1: this is my car. Um that was just the string
Speaker 1: from a birthday balloon I had tied to my car.
Speaker 1: I completely forgot about and it's been there for weeks.
Speaker 1: But that didn't go nearly as viral, and the police
Speaker 1: in the area ended up putting out a piece talking
Speaker 1: about how like, oh, we're investigating this, we're going to
Speaker 1: look into it. But people see that as validation of
Speaker 1: oh the police confirmed it, Like, no, they're just acknowledging
Speaker 1: that this occurred online. That is very different because when
Speaker 1: we start seeing all these things online, people are going
Speaker 1: to be looking for these signs and they're immediately going
Speaker 1: to start calling the police. So police get inundated with
Speaker 1: this misinformation constantly. But the press releases they put out saying,
Speaker 1: we're getting so many reports of this and we can't
Speaker 1: find any evidence that it's actual sex trafficking. Isn't nearly
Speaker 1: as fun to share online, oh, man, think so much
Speaker 1: of it comes down to what's fun or what's wild,
Speaker 1: or what's exciting to share online. You know, recently, I
Speaker 1: was in the car and I flipped some kind of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory radio station just for a second, and in
Speaker 1: the thirty seconds that I was listening, they were talking
Speaker 1: about how Bill Gates is gonna micro ship us all
Speaker 1: with the COVID nineteen vaccine and how he's going to
Speaker 1: force us all to eat cockroaches. And I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: anybody that's really pushing accurate or reasonable or measured information,
Speaker 1: how can we compete with that? You know, that is
Speaker 1: compelling content? And I do think that so much of
Speaker 1: what it comes down to when it comes to sharing
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories or misinformation comes down to what is fun
Speaker 1: to share online or you know, what is exciting or
Speaker 1: wild to believe. Absolutely, I think I shouldn't say my
Speaker 1: favorite example, but the example that's ringing all the alarm
Speaker 1: bells in my head is way Fair so um for
Speaker 1: those who don't know. Back in June of it was
Speaker 1: last year. June last year, Uh, there was a conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory going around that there were all these high ticket,
Speaker 1: high priced items on Wayfair with absolutely outrageou unreasonable prices,
Speaker 1: like this industrial shelving unit was going for online. And
Speaker 1: somebody had noticed that the names they gave of these
Speaker 1: products kind of like how when you go into Ikea
Speaker 1: they all have unique names. Some of the names matched
Speaker 1: that of women who, at some point in the last
Speaker 1: decade or so had gone missing, and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: obviously this means that Wayfair is selling these women online,
Speaker 1: because that's a completely reasonable conclusion to jump to. What
Speaker 1: else could it be? What else could it be? Exactly more,
Speaker 1: After a quick break, let's get right back into it,
Speaker 1: we had to actually put out a statement saying they
Speaker 1: were not involved in human trafficking. There is, of course
Speaker 1: no truth to these claims. The products sold in question
Speaker 1: are industrial grade cabinets that are accurately they told USA today,
Speaker 1: And the whole incident had really obvious ties to the
Speaker 1: Q and non conspiracy theory. And so actually Michael Hobbs
Speaker 1: from You're Wrong About did an amazing piece talking about
Speaker 1: breaking all of that down. But that's not nearly as
Speaker 1: exciting because everybody wants this. There was a grand conspiracy,
Speaker 1: and it was this evil personnel along it. It was
Speaker 1: George Soros, it was Amazon, it was all these bad actors.
Speaker 1: They just there. There are reasons to not like certain
Speaker 1: large corporations. We don't need to come up with these
Speaker 1: outrageous conspiracies not to like Wayfair. A lot of people
Speaker 1: don't like Wayfair because they provided furniture for the holding
Speaker 1: cells at the border for children that's a reason to
Speaker 1: not like them. We don't have to tell everybody that
Speaker 1: they're secretly trafficking children. The reasons to not like them
Speaker 1: are right there. So how can people be better involved
Speaker 1: in conversations around trafficking? All the time, I'm getting comments
Speaker 1: from people asking, Okay, you've taught me what it isn't
Speaker 1: now what can I do to help trafficking victims? I
Speaker 1: would like to write the wrong idea of spreading us
Speaker 1: information misinformation? What can I do to help the victims?
Speaker 1: And the number one thing I think that everyday people
Speaker 1: can do is just when conversations of sex trafficking come up,
Speaker 1: research look into it. A lot of these larger organizations
Speaker 1: like the Playist Project is one of my favorite, because
Speaker 1: they have such an intense and thorough myths and facts
Speaker 1: page breaking down exactly the popular ones you see online
Speaker 1: like are they doing this? No? Are they doing this? Well? Yes,
Speaker 1: that is a thing. They give so much nuance to it.
Speaker 1: Even a simple Google search or just knowing some more
Speaker 1: reliable organizations that provide better information on this and running
Speaker 1: it by them first before you're sharing it, because what
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know is that so much
Speaker 1: of this is fueled by this idea of I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's true, but I'm going to share it
Speaker 1: just in case. That sentence keeps me up at night.
Speaker 1: It is so frustrating because so many people just see
Speaker 1: it as I don't want to take or I don't
Speaker 1: want to or I don't know how to engage in
Speaker 1: checking if this is accurate. I'm just going to share
Speaker 1: it just in case. And that's why TikTok is so frush,
Speaker 1: because the barrier for entry of sharing this information is
Speaker 1: so low. It takes two seconds to comment, it takes
Speaker 1: two seconds to duet a video, which is another way
Speaker 1: of sharing it onto your own platform. And it is
Speaker 1: so frustrating because when we share this information online, we're
Speaker 1: drowning out actually reliable, good information talking about the signs
Speaker 1: of sex trafficking. And even aside from that, like we
Speaker 1: can have an incredibly nuanced conversation talking about how statistically
Speaker 1: the most likely victims of trafficking are black women, homeless individuals,
Speaker 1: LGBT youth, kids in the foster system, people who are
Speaker 1: down on their luck or don't have a steady, reliable
Speaker 1: network of resources around them to help them if they need,
Speaker 1: if they need assistance. But when we when we start
Speaker 1: drowning out that conversation, we are we're not only are
Speaker 1: we not letting that get the spotlight where it really
Speaker 1: needs to be the forefront of this conversation, we are
Speaker 1: also hurting the actual victims directly themselves because we're creating
Speaker 1: this idea and this culture around what trafficking looks like
Speaker 1: and what the average victim looks like. So when a
Speaker 1: victim comes forward and says, I think I was sex
Speaker 1: trafficked or I need help, people are less inclined to
Speaker 1: believe them because we've created this narrative that most trafficking
Speaker 1: victims are innocent, upper middle class white women getting kidnapped
Speaker 1: from target and it was against their will. Which is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things is people have this idea
Speaker 1: that the majority of trafficking victims it started some sort
Speaker 1: of violent, aggressive crime like being kidnapped, when in reality,
Speaker 1: most victims of trafficking were groomed into it and they
Speaker 1: did it to a degree willingly to start, or they
Speaker 1: were coerced into it by somebody they know and trust.
Speaker 1: And when we're not educating people on that, they're less
Speaker 1: likely to look out for those in their community that
Speaker 1: are likely to fall victim to that sort of activity,
Speaker 1: and we're we're actively harming the victims that we're we
Speaker 1: think we're helping when we share that information. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's so true. And I also think kind of
Speaker 1: going back to that nuance, I think the idea that
Speaker 1: someone could be I mean, I don't want to say willingly,
Speaker 1: but like willingly, with like heavy scare quoth willingly I
Speaker 1: got evolved in sex trafficking. I think there's something about
Speaker 1: that that makes it hard for people to stay along
Speaker 1: for the conversation because we've created this idea that like, oh,
Speaker 1: sex trafficking victims were women, were white women who were
Speaker 1: snatched from target against their will. And it's so much
Speaker 1: more difficult to have that conversation of like, well, if
Speaker 1: you were down on your luck and already marginalized or
Speaker 1: disadvantage in some way, and somebody that you trust came
Speaker 1: along and kind of groomed you into it, so you
Speaker 1: went along with that heavy scare quotes exactly willingly, like
Speaker 1: like that is such a more complex conversation to have.
Speaker 1: And if you've been if you've been primed to think
Speaker 1: of sex trafficing can only be the white woman snatched
Speaker 1: from a target. I'm not interested in having the conversation
Speaker 1: about how it actually goes down more often in reality. Exactly,
Speaker 1: it's it's so rarely affluent women getting snatched, and it's
Speaker 1: when that's the people who take the spotlight in these conversations.
Speaker 1: We're not going to pay attention to the queer, trans
Speaker 1: black kid who got kicked out of their house because
Speaker 1: their parents didn't agree with that situation, and now they're
Speaker 1: desperate for money and they're willing to perform sex work,
Speaker 1: and now that they're in that and they're becoming adjusted
Speaker 1: to it's somebody's taking advantage of them and grooming them
Speaker 1: into a situation where they cannot escape and it becomes
Speaker 1: a forced situation. And it's so incredibly frustrating that time
Speaker 1: and time again, white women are taking the spotlight away
Speaker 1: from marginalized communities. Which is why personally, I feel so
Speaker 1: it feels so important as a white woman to talk
Speaker 1: about this because I often feel like when white women
Speaker 1: have and this is generalizing a lot, but when white
Speaker 1: women have built this idea in their head of what
Speaker 1: their reality looks like, a marginalized individual coming in and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you're actually really taking the spotlight, or you're really you're
Speaker 1: really consuming this conversation and holding it away from people
Speaker 1: that are more likely to be involved in what you're
Speaker 1: so afraid of. When that's coming from marginalized voices, I
Speaker 1: feel like white women are less inclined listen, which is
Speaker 1: unfortunate and terrible. But if I can start to help
Speaker 1: bridge that gap at all and be like, hey, fellow
Speaker 1: white women here, I used to think like you, and
Speaker 1: it's actually really toxic. Let's talk about it. If I
Speaker 1: can help bridge that gap, I wish we lived in
Speaker 1: a world where marginalized people were supported. When we spoke
Speaker 1: up about somebody in a position of trust abusing their power,
Speaker 1: that person is so much more likely to be a
Speaker 1: trafficking perpetrator than a stranger and a target parking lot
Speaker 1: in broad daylight. And when women speak up about dudes
Speaker 1: being creepy in public, we should believe them. It shouldn't
Speaker 1: have to be described as a mere trafficking attempt for
Speaker 1: women to be heard and supported. If you've enjoyed this podcast,
Speaker 1: please help us grow by subscribing. Got a story about
Speaker 1: an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi.
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you at Hello at tangoi
Speaker 1: dot com. Disinformed is brought to you by There Are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet. It's a production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio and Unbust Creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Tory Harrison is our supervising producer, and engineer. Michael Lamotto
Speaker 1: is our contributing producer. I'm your host Bridget Tod. For
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