Speaker 1: We are back for a brand new season of their
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet. I miss talking to you
Speaker 1: all so much, and since we've been on hiatus, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty excited for a new way to stay in touch
Speaker 1: on Patreon. Over on our new Patreon, you can get
Speaker 1: even more bonus content and just generally support the work
Speaker 1: that we've been doing with the show. So if you
Speaker 1: like what you've been doing and want to hear more
Speaker 1: or just support the show, consider subscribing. You can find
Speaker 1: that at patreon dot com slash tangody that's Ta Nngoti,
Speaker 1: or just search for There No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: On Patreon, there's exclusive audio, exclusive writing, and a monthly
Speaker 1: live chat with me.
Speaker 2: Bridget.
Speaker 1: I wanted to start the Patreon to open up new
Speaker 1: ways to connect with all of you, so I hope
Speaker 1: you'll join me there and help us shape the direction
Speaker 1: of the show. I'll see you over on Patreon.
Speaker 3: Because everybody loves attacking a young woman, right, a young
Speaker 3: woman who has authentically lived her life on the Internet.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
Speaker 1: is There Are No Girls.
Speaker 2: On the Internet.
Speaker 1: In this brand new season that we're calling Present Future,
Speaker 1: we're looking to what's next, the future of tech, the
Speaker 1: future of discourse, the future of platforms, and the future
Speaker 1: of us. But we're starting in kind of a familiar place.
Speaker 1: We've already spent a lot of time talking about disinformation,
Speaker 1: and I usually ask experts one question, So when you
Speaker 1: think about the direction of our media ecosystem and disinformation,
Speaker 1: are you hopeful, Like when you look on the horizon,
Speaker 1: are you hopeful about what's next when it comes to
Speaker 1: the future of combating disinformation. More and more we're seeing
Speaker 1: some targets of particularly heinous disinformation campaigns using the judicial
Speaker 1: system to fight back. Egene Carrol successfully sued former Present
Speaker 1: sident Trump for defamation after he claimed that her allegation
Speaker 1: that he sexually abused her was a lie. It wasn't,
Speaker 1: and a jury ruled against him, and Carol has said
Speaker 1: that she may even sue Trump again because Trump doubled
Speaker 1: down on that defamatory lie in a disastrous CNN town
Speaker 1: hall the very next day after that ruling, and after
Speaker 1: Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News for falsely claiming that
Speaker 1: its voting machines through the twenty twenty election, Fox settled
Speaker 1: for seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars, pretty much
Speaker 1: acknowledging that the network promoting lies about the election in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty was defamatory, and now a new defamation lawsuit
Speaker 1: against Fox News may provide a signal about the future
Speaker 1: of telling lies for profit. Last year, one of the
Speaker 1: nation's leading disinformation experts, Nina Jenkowitz, was appointed by Biden
Speaker 1: to head up the Disinformation Governance Board within the Department
Speaker 1: of Homeland Security to learn about and counter disinformation. And
Speaker 1: immediately afterward, Nina and her family were targetd with lies, threats,
Speaker 1: and harassment Paul while she was pregnant. Days ago, Nina
Speaker 1: filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Could this be
Speaker 1: the blueprint of how we curbed disinformation in the future.
Speaker 1: Shortly after Nina was named to the Governance Board, I
Speaker 1: was scheduled to interview her about her book, How to
Speaker 1: Be a Woman Online, which chronicles online harassment. But we
Speaker 1: couldn't because Nina had to retreat from public life after
Speaker 1: the harassment campaign against her got so bad. And strangely enough,
Speaker 1: Nina isn't even the first person that I've had to
Speaker 1: navigate interviewing while they were basically off the grid because
Speaker 1: of threats, and the continued sting of being silenced and
Speaker 1: not getting to do her work because of lies and
Speaker 1: threats was looming large when I finally did get to
Speaker 1: speak to Nina. So the first time that you and
Speaker 1: I were supposed to talk, it'd were not able to
Speaker 1: do the interview because you were at the target of
Speaker 1: some pretty nasty, heinous harassment. So I have to start
Speaker 1: by just asking how are you.
Speaker 4: I am doing.
Speaker 5: Okay now, Bridget, thanks for asking.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is difficult to recover from something like
Speaker 3: what happened to me, which kind of upended.
Speaker 5: My entire life and the career plan I had.
Speaker 3: And just kind of the short version the TLDR of
Speaker 3: what happened to me is I was appointed to a
Speaker 3: position in the Biden administration to work on a working
Speaker 3: group that was meant to kind of bring together bodies
Speaker 3: within the Department of Homeland Security that were working on
Speaker 3: counter disinformation. That working group was misconstrued in the press
Speaker 3: and mostly the right wing press, as a ministry of
Speaker 3: truth that was going to have the power to censor Americans.
Speaker 5: Of course, we had no such power. Operationally.
Speaker 3: We had no power, we had no full time staff
Speaker 3: except for me, and no budget. So I don't know
Speaker 3: where they thought we were going to do all.
Speaker 5: This, but at any rate, it was totally misconstrued.
Speaker 3: My personal life and like my online presence and all
Speaker 3: sorts of things got dragged through the mud. I was
Speaker 3: eight and a half months pregnant at the time, and
Speaker 3: I ended up leaving the department, and not because of
Speaker 3: the harassment, really, but because the department wasn't sticking up
Speaker 3: for me or for the work, and they ended up
Speaker 3: disbanding the working group and saying there was no need
Speaker 3: for it, which I think is laughable at best. And
Speaker 3: so since then, I obviously have my baby, I've been
Speaker 3: kind of taking some maternity leave, taking time with my family,
Speaker 3: and have kind of been recalibrating what it is I
Speaker 3: want to do and how I want to show up
Speaker 3: and like make an impact in the world. And after
Speaker 3: my unfortunate experience with public service, it's kind of bringing
Speaker 3: me to the conclusion that, like, really the work that
Speaker 3: I want to do has to happen from outside of government, at.
Speaker 5: Least right now, at least with this administration.
Speaker 4: Wow, you know, I where do I even start.
Speaker 1: I'll say, it's something interesting to me that you wrote
Speaker 1: a book about how you survive online harassment as a
Speaker 1: woman and found yourself and a really weird time in
Speaker 1: your life like at the target of that, And it
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of like what I know about
Speaker 1: things like reputational smear campaigns, where it's interesting to me
Speaker 1: that like the administration did not support you. It would
Speaker 1: have been I would have expected they obviously respected your
Speaker 1: leadership enough to give you this position and then to
Speaker 1: turn around and so quickly distance themselves from you is
Speaker 1: really telling to me. And I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the ways that reputational smears work. They want the target
Speaker 1: to feel isolated, and they want to make it seem
Speaker 1: that if somebody sticks up for them that will be
Speaker 1: a bad look for them. So rather than supporting you,
Speaker 1: they just are like, oh, that's just distance.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: I do have to say, I'll give credit where credit
Speaker 3: is due, you know. Secretary Mayorcus went on the Sunday
Speaker 3: shows and called me like an eminent expert, and Jen
Speaker 3: SACKI had some talking points to say at the White
Speaker 3: House podium about me.
Speaker 5: But when you're confronting.
Speaker 3: The entire gop lie and rage machine just not enough.
Speaker 3: Like I was on every I think seventy percent of
Speaker 3: Fox News hourly segments for like an entire week, and
Speaker 3: it continued for two weeks after that too. Like everyone
Speaker 3: was like, Oh, it'll go away, don't worry about it.
Speaker 5: It didn't.
Speaker 3: Because everybody loves attacking a young woman, right, a young
Speaker 3: woman who has authentically lived her life on the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's easy to think of people who work on issues
Speaker 1: like disinformation as uptight skulds. It's actually a misconception that
Speaker 1: I've encountered a lot in my work. But Nina's vibe
Speaker 1: is really lively and full of energy, and it lends
Speaker 1: itself perfectly to a platform like TikTok, where she made
Speaker 1: a cute video of her singing in a Mary Poppin'
Speaker 1: style about disinformation. Nina loves musical theater. Now, this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that anybody might try to do
Speaker 1: to connect on their issues with a new audience. But
Speaker 1: if you were watching Fox News, you would think this
Speaker 1: was criminal. They played Nina's TikTok over and over again
Speaker 1: and turned it into an attack, not just an attack
Speaker 1: on Nina's work, but on Nina as a person.
Speaker 5: Part and grief feminist part. Frustrated karaoke singer Jankoitz is
Speaker 5: the last.
Speaker 6: Person who should be trusted with distinguishing between fact and fiction.
Speaker 3: Like there are videos of me performing musical theater people
Speaker 3: like to make fun of that. I had a TikTok
Speaker 3: video where I was like trying to connect with a
Speaker 3: different audience by doing a parody of a Mary Poppins song.
Speaker 3: It was very tongue in cheek and very deliberately silly
Speaker 3: and campy, and everyone was.
Speaker 5: Like, oh my god, this is so cringe. It's not
Speaker 5: fucking cringe. I'm sorry, it's not cringe.
Speaker 3: It's exactly what I wanted it be, and I'm I'm
Speaker 3: not embarrassed of it at all. Frankly, Like Tucker Carlson
Speaker 3: kept playing it over and over on his show, and
Speaker 3: it's like, thanks Tucker, Like now more people have heard
Speaker 3: me sing than I could ever.
Speaker 5: Have hoped for in my entire life. But but what.
Speaker 3: You say is true, Like I think like I wasn't
Speaker 3: close enough for the administration for them to want to
Speaker 3: stick their neck out for me, and the work clearly
Speaker 3: wasn't important enough for them.
Speaker 5: To like risk everything for it.
Speaker 3: And that's disappointing because what is more the core of
Speaker 3: our democracy right now than how our body politic deals
Speaker 3: with information, right or disinformation, frankly, And so that was
Speaker 3: really disappointing. And it was also disappointing because the Biden
Speaker 3: administration made such a big deal about hiring women and
Speaker 3: people of color to political appointments and to the cabinet,
Speaker 3: and it's like, Okay, if you're above a certain level,
Speaker 3: they're gonna they're gonna go to bat for you, but
Speaker 3: not if you're you know, at the level that I am, which, frankly,
Speaker 3: you know, for the amount of attention that people paid
Speaker 3: to me, you'd think I was like God. But I
Speaker 3: was just a GS fifteen, which is like a high
Speaker 3: ranking but not Senate confirmed appointee in Washington, with very
Speaker 3: little decision making power.
Speaker 5: I wasn't.
Speaker 3: I wasn't like, you know, all powerful in DHS. I
Speaker 3: had a lot of layers above me, which you know,
Speaker 3: is illustrated by the way that the whole thing was
Speaker 3: rolled out. If it had been rolled out more transparently
Speaker 3: the way that I had kind of asked for within
Speaker 3: the department, I wouldn't have been in as bad a
Speaker 3: situation as I read.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1: Long ago and what seems like a distant, bygone era.
Speaker 1: We used to say that you should ignore bullies and
Speaker 1: they'll just go away, but it doesn't really work like
Speaker 1: that when it comes to disinformation. Nina was facing an
Speaker 1: onslaught of lies and attacks during her time at the
Speaker 1: Biden administration, and she wasn't even allowed to speak up
Speaker 1: for herself and correct the record, so the only messages
Speaker 1: about her that were out there were smears, lies and attacks.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't let me, you know, speak up for myself,
Speaker 3: which again, if I were above a certain level, I would.
Speaker 5: Have been able to do that.
Speaker 3: So the whole thing was frustrating, and it also just
Speaker 3: kind of goes to show that, like there's a lot
Speaker 3: of work left to do in our institutions, not just government,
Speaker 3: but you know, in journalistic institutions, et cetera, for sticking
Speaker 3: up for people who are on like the public facing
Speaker 3: side of things, especially women and people of color who
Speaker 3: receive such outside harassment online and in real life as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I to prepare for this interview, I
Speaker 1: watched some of the clips, like interviews that you gave
Speaker 1: on shows, and I'm not going to say any names,
Speaker 1: there was one I was like, this guy is basically
Speaker 1: being like I heard this lie about you thoughts, and
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, it's not true.
Speaker 4: You know, Like, I definitely think.
Speaker 1: That It kind of bumps me out that media, the
Speaker 1: people that we ostensibly should be able to count on
Speaker 1: to help people discern the truth, really don't feel any
Speaker 1: obligation to do that. They and in some cases they
Speaker 1: inflame the tensions and lies and give them more oxygen
Speaker 1: and allow them to spread when they should be in
Speaker 1: the business of truth spreading and debunking. You know, I've
Speaker 1: seen people say things like, oh, this board was going
Speaker 1: to have the ability to like control what regular people say,
Speaker 1: And I've also seen you in interviews be very clear
Speaker 1: that if that were the case, you wouldn't be on
Speaker 1: that board because you deeply opposed that, Like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: not trafficking in truth and honest statements. We're trafficking and
Speaker 1: lies and smears, and it's we're not going to get
Speaker 1: anywhere if that's how we continue to do discourse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean it was so one of the
Speaker 3: worst days was when I woke up, and.
Speaker 5: I mean, it was just like three weeks of hell.
Speaker 3: But I woke up one morning when I was still
Speaker 3: at the department and Bill Maher had on his show
Speaker 3: the night before just spread an absolute, complete piece of
Speaker 3: bass about me.
Speaker 7: The tizarre a Nina Jenkowitz says, she's like some committee
Speaker 7: there within this governing board with the power to quote,
Speaker 7: edit Twitter and add context. Oh you mean, like what
Speaker 7: Twitter is?
Speaker 2: That's what Twitter is.
Speaker 5: When SRI says something you own content.
Speaker 7: Yeah, these are not people in our.
Speaker 5: Government, Okay.
Speaker 3: An anonymous account online that had been for weeks going
Speaker 3: through like all the videos of me ever posted to
Speaker 3: the Internet. They had taken a clip from a conversation
Speaker 3: that I had with a bunch of librarians in the
Speaker 3: state of Georgia, and it was back from January twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one. They had taken it completely out of context
Speaker 3: and made it seem like I had had kind of
Speaker 3: floated this idea of editing people's tweets, but what I
Speaker 3: had actually done, and if you watch the entire kind
Speaker 3: of conversation, it is clear someone asks me, Hey, Nina,
Speaker 3: I just heard about this thing on Twitter called bird Watch.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us about it? And for your listeners
Speaker 3: that might not know. Birdwatch is a program that allows
Speaker 3: people to add context to things that are trending on Twitter.
Speaker 5: So like, let's use Ukraine as an example in the
Speaker 5: UK war.
Speaker 3: If people are claiming something that's trending like Russia was
Speaker 3: responsible for this attack or Ukraine was responsible for this attack,
Speaker 3: people who are you know, trusted individuals can get access
Speaker 3: to this Birdwatch platform, which is now since then open
Speaker 3: to everybody, and just add some context and say, okay,
Speaker 3: here's a link to a news article, here are the
Speaker 3: facts in this scenario. It's kind of like a built
Speaker 3: in fact checking platform.
Speaker 5: I was not.
Speaker 3: Super familiar with it at the time, but I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't like this because I don't want users to
Speaker 3: be kind of the ones that are doing Twitter's work
Speaker 3: for it. And I had this long, involved, nuanced answer
Speaker 3: that I went on for five minutes. He chopped one
Speaker 3: minute of it up, and I assume it's a man,
Speaker 3: because let's see honest. Yeah, so I don't know because
Speaker 3: he is anonymous, but I think it's a man. He
Speaker 3: chopped one one part of it up and just put
Speaker 3: in his tweet Nina wants to edit your tweets, and
Speaker 3: this one absolutely viral.
Speaker 5: Reputable reporters were being like, what if this is true?
Speaker 8: Blah blah blah, and then Bill Maher, without any to
Speaker 8: fact checking whatever, it, goes to his huge audience on
Speaker 8: his late night show and says Nina Jenkwitz and the.
Speaker 5: Disinformation Governance Board want to.
Speaker 9: Be able to edit your tweets, and it's just like,
Speaker 9: first of all, it's a stupid idea, like no, I
Speaker 9: would never ask for that, and second of all, like
Speaker 9: it's not no one tried to do any bit of.
Speaker 5: Fact checking at all. If you follow the video.
Speaker 3: Back to where it came from, you can find out
Speaker 3: that actually, that's not what I said at all. And
Speaker 3: it was not just Bill Maher, but other journalists who
Speaker 3: who frankly, were just recycling this disinformation and not doing
Speaker 3: their due diligence at all.
Speaker 5: And it is disinformation, right.
Speaker 3: Disinformation just isn't about cut and dry fakes or falsehoods.
Speaker 3: It's about misleading information. And there was a lot of
Speaker 3: misleading information presented about me. In fact, I just got
Speaker 3: some more abuse and threats this week because somebody on
Speaker 3: Fox mentioned me, and I was like, huh, what's this uptick?
Speaker 3: About and I found that Greg Gutfield had talked about
Speaker 3: me in a segment recently, and so one person wrote
Speaker 3: to me on Facebook and said that I should be
Speaker 3: thrown in jail for spreading lies about President Trump.
Speaker 5: It's like, it's.
Speaker 3: Interesting how they want to censor me, right, but they're
Speaker 3: not okay with other people censoring them. And that's never
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do in the first place. It's
Speaker 3: just so cecuitous and crazy. Anyway, I'll stop digging now, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, does it do you find that it comes in
Speaker 1: waves like that where it the harassment sort of stops
Speaker 1: and then somebody will mention you and then you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: an uptick and then down tick?
Speaker 4: Is that is that kind of how it trends?
Speaker 5: Oh, one hundred percent?
Speaker 3: And it's always interesting to find out what the kernel is.
Speaker 3: So like, for the first probably seven weeks or so,
Speaker 3: it was just pretty constant, especially the first three weeks.
Speaker 3: It was just constant messages, constant dms, constant tweets, people
Speaker 3: trying to friend me on Facebook and Instagram and whatever.
Speaker 3: I had to lock my Instagram and Twitter accounts because
Speaker 3: there was personal stuff on there that, like I was
Speaker 3: comfortable with like the level of public figure miss that
Speaker 3: I had before people seeing that, but now with people
Speaker 3: doxing me and calling my mother and sending me letters.
Speaker 5: To my home, like not as comfortable.
Speaker 3: So there was that, But then, you know, the craziest
Speaker 3: thing was the culpability that I think.
Speaker 5: Some members of Congress have.
Speaker 3: And I actually wrote a letter to Josh Holly and
Speaker 3: Chuck Grassley because they continued this kind of or like,
Speaker 3: continued perpetrating this harassment of me, and I felt like
Speaker 3: calling them out for it because as members of Congress,
Speaker 3: particularly as senators, they're supposed to be like.
Speaker 5: The more serious, deliberative body.
Speaker 10: Right here's Josh Holly, and your priority is setting up
Speaker 10: a board and hiring someone who has gone to TikTok
Speaker 10: to talk about stopping speech she doesn't like, who has
Speaker 10: mocked voters supporters of the last president. That has been
Speaker 10: your priority. To say that your priorities are misplaced, I
Speaker 10: think is a dramatic understatement. And the time has come,
Speaker 10: I think, mister secretary, for you to resign.
Speaker 3: And Josh Holly on July eighteenth, so two full months
Speaker 3: after I had resigned to the day from DHS, he
Speaker 3: brought me up in a hearing on drones. For some reason,
Speaker 3: there was an acting assistant secretary from DHS who I
Speaker 3: used to work with, who was there, and he spent
Speaker 3: half of his time, half of his allotted time, questioning
Speaker 3: her about my hiring two months after I had resigned,
Speaker 3: rather than talking about you know, unmanned aerial vehicles.
Speaker 5: Right. And so I was just.
Speaker 3: Incensed by this because it matched with an uptick and
Speaker 3: harassment I got. So I sent them a letter, I
Speaker 3: posted it publicly, and both of them just doubled down
Speaker 3: on it. Rather than saying, you know, we're sorry for
Speaker 3: the harassment that you and your family are getting at
Speaker 3: this like, you know, special time in your life. I
Speaker 3: had a six week old at the time, right, We're
Speaker 3: sorry for this harassment. We're going to condemn the people
Speaker 3: who have been sending you threats. We're going to continue
Speaker 3: our oversight duty as senators, but we're going to pull
Speaker 3: back from like our focus on you. Instead, they both
Speaker 3: doubled down. And so I think this is a really
Speaker 3: sad kind of situation that we find ourselves in America,
Speaker 3: where there are people who are again supposed to be
Speaker 3: setting the tone and example for the way our discourse
Speaker 3: works who are tacitly, if not overtly and deliberately engaging
Speaker 3: in harassment campaigns against people on the other side. These
Speaker 3: things have life or death consequences. And I'm not the
Speaker 3: only one to have gone through this stuff.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We see senators in the GOP endorsing like libs of
Speaker 3: TikTok or whatever, and those people are literally like engaging
Speaker 3: in stochastic terrorism campaigns that are about.
Speaker 5: To bubble over into real life.
Speaker 3: Right, They're going to have real life consequences for trans
Speaker 3: people and in some cases already have. We're just in
Speaker 3: this really precarious situation and I feel like we need
Speaker 3: some accountability and it's just not happening.
Speaker 5: I don't know what it's going to take.
Speaker 3: We've gone through a pandemic that's had public safety consequences
Speaker 3: for the nation. We've gone through, you know, in an surrection,
Speaker 3: we've gone through protests that have been based on to
Speaker 3: some degree disinformation where that have bubble up into clashes
Speaker 3: that have killed people.
Speaker 5: And thinking of Kenosha, right.
Speaker 3: And like, what's it going to take before we come
Speaker 3: to our senses and either elect people who care about
Speaker 3: the truth or like start to have some laws governing
Speaker 3: what you say online the same.
Speaker 5: Way that we do on the street.
Speaker 3: I think people forget that free speech in America is
Speaker 3: not absolute, right, Like, if people were saying these things
Speaker 3: to me or to anybody who gets harassed online on
Speaker 3: the street, you'd be able to get out of a
Speaker 3: restraining order out on them, you'd be able to call
Speaker 3: the cops. But the Internet is like this ungoverned and
Speaker 3: ungovernable place, and I think that's that's kind of scary,
Speaker 3: given how much we live our lives on the internet
Speaker 3: these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I think about this all the time
Speaker 1: of like what is it going to take? What do
Speaker 1: you think is the answer to that question, Like do
Speaker 1: you think that anything would rise to the level where
Speaker 1: people will be like, gee, we need to do something.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I thought that maybe we were having that call to
Speaker 3: action moment last fall when Francis Hogan released her whistleblower
Speaker 3: documents and there were these, you know, series of hearings
Speaker 3: on the Hill and people were so shocked about everything
Speaker 3: that she was saying that it was confirmed. You know,
Speaker 3: this is what was happening to children, This is what
Speaker 3: was happening to different populations around the world.
Speaker 5: This was what was.
Speaker 3: Happening to women, and then you know that just kind
Speaker 3: of fizzled out, like maybe it moved the needle. Maybe
Speaker 3: maybe senators now and members of the House are a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 5: More wise to what was being said.
Speaker 3: And she did come from a non partisan perspective, which
Speaker 3: I think was important to kind of diffuse the polarization
Speaker 3: of this debate, which shouldn't be polarized at all. Right,
Speaker 3: this is not a polarization issue. This affects human beings,
Speaker 3: that affects our democracy, no matter what political party are from.
Speaker 3: But there doesn't seem to have been kind of that
Speaker 3: momentum filled there. And I hope that we can pick
Speaker 3: that back up, But after my experience, I'm pretty pessimistic, right, Like,
Speaker 3: it is really depressing to me that millions, literally millions
Speaker 3: of my fellow Americans have come into contact with me
Speaker 3: and been told to hate me because I'm young, female
Speaker 3: and had the goal to take a job in my
Speaker 3: area of expertise trying to help my country.
Speaker 5: Right, I was not motivated.
Speaker 3: By politics and taking that job, And in fact, prior
Speaker 3: to everything that happened to me, I used to say
Speaker 3: I would take a job working for a reasonable Republican
Speaker 3: who wanted to work on the issues that I wanted
Speaker 3: to work on, whether they were, you know, Russia or
Speaker 3: something about disinformation online.
Speaker 5: I don't think I could say.
Speaker 3: That anymore with a straight face, right, because of the
Speaker 3: lengths they went to ruin my life, and that was deliberate, right.
Speaker 3: You said something about smear campaigns before it was explicit
Speaker 3: that people were saying, we want to make her toxic
Speaker 3: to the bidenmane, and I just think that's that's really
Speaker 3: it's un American, frankly. So I don't know what the
Speaker 3: answer is to your question, bridget I think I think
Speaker 3: we're in a really bad situation, and I don't know
Speaker 3: what it's going to take, and I.
Speaker 5: Fear what it's going to take to wake everybody up.
Speaker 1: Do you think that you would have gotten the same
Speaker 1: level of hate and targeted violence like online violence against
Speaker 1: you had you been a man?
Speaker 4: No, I think not at all. I have to imagine no.
Speaker 3: No, right, because like, first of all, even I think
Speaker 3: Tucker Carlson even said something point blank like it's it's
Speaker 3: like Taylor Lorenz and the Nina Jankwitz is of the
Speaker 3: world that I hate the most, like educated white women
Speaker 3: who think that they educated young white women who think
Speaker 3: that they can tell us what to do or something
Speaker 3: like that, And it's like, I'm not telling you what
Speaker 3: to do, but the fact that I exist and that
Speaker 3: I'm like putting myself into a sphere that you existed
Speaker 3: is what bothers you, right.
Speaker 5: So no, there's that part to it.
Speaker 3: And then the fact that I'm I was young and
Speaker 3: also pregnant, Like people talked about my my family.
Speaker 5: Status constantly on Fox.
Speaker 3: They said things very famously about like how could Biden
Speaker 3: hire her when she's about to go on maternity leave?
Speaker 3: And it's like, because it's against the law to discriminate
Speaker 3: against some money because of their their their parental status,
Speaker 3: not to mention that.
Speaker 5: Like there was the opposite.
Speaker 3: Side of the coin, with people saying like how could
Speaker 3: anyone impregnate her? Or like I bet she's infertile after
Speaker 3: this one, Like it was just like why.
Speaker 5: Is this even something that anybody's talking about?
Speaker 3: And men absolutely never get that stuff, and in fact,
Speaker 3: if they're found to be cheating or philandering, like they're
Speaker 3: celebrated for that. And plus you know, there was the
Speaker 3: stuff about my looks and weight gain during pregnancy. Men
Speaker 3: were like enlarging pictures of my chin, which had some
Speaker 3: pregnancy acneonic.
Speaker 5: God forbid, it's not something you can really control.
Speaker 3: They were talking about my weight gain, like then after
Speaker 3: I gave birth and the New York Times took a
Speaker 3: picture of me for an article they did. The first
Speaker 3: thing a couple of guys said was that I had
Speaker 3: big boobs, and it was.
Speaker 5: Like, well, yeah, I'm breastfeeding right now. One guy actually was.
Speaker 3: Like, imagine if what she did with those boobs was
Speaker 3: I think they used a different word obviously, was feed
Speaker 3: children instead of spread lies.
Speaker 5: And it's like, oh, funny, you should mention that. But
Speaker 5: it's just like a man would never write.
Speaker 3: And they say all the time, oh, we get the
Speaker 3: same sort of stuff, and it's like, no, like the
Speaker 3: worst sort of sexualized something that somebody could call you
Speaker 3: as a dick, right, and that's not so bad. It's
Speaker 3: certainly not calling you Joe Biden's cum dumpster, which is
Speaker 3: one of the many things that people have said to me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so upsetting.
Speaker 1: And I also feel like when it comes to women,
Speaker 1: when women are harassed, it's not just them, it's their partner,
Speaker 1: it's their mom, it's their kids. It's it's her family
Speaker 1: and the people around her, And so what.
Speaker 4: Adds this extra layer of.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's something you have to think
Speaker 1: about where it's like, well, do I really want to
Speaker 1: engage in like this public line up work because I
Speaker 1: don't want my partner to be harassed, don't want my
Speaker 1: kids to be targeted.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: And a lot of the women that I've interviewed in
Speaker 3: the course of my research for my book, as well
Speaker 3: as the research I've done on women in politics, they
Speaker 3: bring that up a lot, especially women of color. So
Speaker 3: for women of color, often what will happen is they'll
Speaker 3: get docks more frequently than white women, or their families
Speaker 3: will be threatened. So one woman in a focus group
Speaker 3: that I did was, I mean, this just really stuck
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 5: She said, you know, we don't.
Speaker 3: We will often get messages that say, oh, we don't.
Speaker 3: We hope your son doesn't end up like Trayvon Martin or.
Speaker 5: Things like that.
Speaker 3: And it's just like, I mean, especially as a mom,
Speaker 3: but I hope that that resonates with anybody, Like it's
Speaker 3: clearly a threat.
Speaker 5: Number one and two, Like, what a horrible thing to say.
Speaker 3: It's just like layers of on layers of intersectional abuse,
Speaker 3: and that's where the platforms I think really fall short.
Speaker 3: They'll see something like that and AI certainly won't understand
Speaker 3: the intent behind that.
Speaker 5: And even if you write a little note.
Speaker 3: To Twitter or to Facebook and say like, look at this,
Speaker 3: this is racist, violent threat, they're not gonna take it
Speaker 3: down because it's not. It doesn't say like explicitly I
Speaker 3: want to come kill your son, or I hope someone
Speaker 3: comes to kill your son.
Speaker 10: And.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we have a long way to
Speaker 3: go there, and certainly as women, as you say, it's
Speaker 3: not just us, it's our families. It's like I had
Speaker 3: to call up, you know, my brother who shares a
Speaker 3: last name with me, and hope and say, you know,
Speaker 3: I hope that the boys, your sons have their social
Speaker 3: media profiles locked down. Like what a heartbreaking conversation to
Speaker 3: have to have with a bunch of teenageers who probably
Speaker 3: want to do the exact exact opposite. You know.
Speaker 2: More, after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: I keep reading these articles about how historic numbers of
Speaker 1: women and women of color and black women are running
Speaker 1: for office, which is great but I know the reality
Speaker 1: is that they have to have this extra layer of consideration,
Speaker 1: not to mention extra expense of thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: online and digital security in these ways and in real
Speaker 1: life security in these ways.
Speaker 4: And it really do you feel like we're in a
Speaker 4: situation where that is just the cost of wanting to.
Speaker 1: Be in public service for these folks, Like we're just like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, like you have to factor that in when
Speaker 1: you if you want to run for office or be
Speaker 1: a pub but you're really dingaged in civic life and
Speaker 1: civic discourse.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, it is the cost, but it absolutely should not
Speaker 3: be the cost.
Speaker 5: That should not be normal.
Speaker 3: We shouldn't just roll over and say if you're a
Speaker 3: woman or a woman of color, or disabled woman or
Speaker 3: a trans woman in politics that were in public life
Speaker 3: written large, that you have to spend all this extra money.
Speaker 3: I mean, let me just list a couple of the
Speaker 3: things that I pay for. I have an anti dooxing
Speaker 3: service that scrubs my personal information from the Internet and
Speaker 3: that of my family.
Speaker 5: That's a couple hundred dollars a year.
Speaker 3: I have When we had to upgrade our home security
Speaker 3: after everything happened, because again we were doxed. If we
Speaker 3: ever decide to move from the house that got doxed,
Speaker 3: we'll have to probably pay a lawyer to put our
Speaker 3: home in.
Speaker 5: A trust so that that doesn't happen again. Let's see.
Speaker 3: I also pay for block Party, which if your listeners
Speaker 3: haven't it is a really good tool for basically anybody
Speaker 3: dealing with online abuse. It will auto mute people interacting
Speaker 3: with you, and you can have kind of different levels
Speaker 3: of sensitivity for the replies that you want to get through.
Speaker 3: On Twitter, you can also block people if they've liked
Speaker 3: or retweeted in abusive or threatening tweets.
Speaker 5: So as a result of using.
Speaker 3: Block party, I've I've blocked cool White a few people
Speaker 3: because I don't want to. I don't frankly want to
Speaker 3: interact with anybody who thinks it's funny to like delight
Speaker 3: in one of the worst things ever happening to me. So,
Speaker 3: I mean, already, that's like a couple hundred dollars a year,
Speaker 3: and for freelance journalists or for people who you know
Speaker 3: are working in nonprofit jobs or things like that. Even
Speaker 3: government jobs, like the government certainly did not compensate me
Speaker 3: enough for what I went through.
Speaker 5: Let's just say.
Speaker 3: Oh, and you know, I am lucky that I was
Speaker 3: able to have enough savings to cover that stuff. But
Speaker 3: there was a time not so long ago, a couple
Speaker 3: of years ago, before my first book came out, where
Speaker 3: like I wasn't paying taxes because I wasn't making enough
Speaker 3: profit to be paying taxes, you know.
Speaker 5: So it's it's real.
Speaker 3: Uh, the cost is real, and it is not fair,
Speaker 3: and we need to make sure that, especially in journalism,
Speaker 3: that when freelancers are being hired, that they're being compensated adequately,
Speaker 3: and that they're covered legally by the publishers that they're
Speaker 3: working for. That you know, any institution, be a academic, government, nonprofit,
Speaker 3: et cetera, they're covering their employees as well.
Speaker 5: Because the way that you.
Speaker 3: Feel safe to speak up is knowing that people have
Speaker 3: got your back, and they've got your back in a
Speaker 3: material way.
Speaker 5: Not just like you know, a philosophical way, like.
Speaker 6: Of course we of course we should uh support your
Speaker 6: right to a free speech, but when push comes to shove,
Speaker 6: they're not gonna you know, pay for you to relocate
Speaker 6: if you need to, or pay for a lawyer.
Speaker 5: All that stuff is super super important.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's something I see a lot of like particularly
Speaker 1: in newsrooms where you know, if a young woman journalist
Speaker 1: is being targeted or threatened.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think that we're just starting to have a conversation
Speaker 1: about how newsrooms can be supportive. But I think for
Speaker 1: a long time it was just like good luck. And
Speaker 1: also don't talk about it publicly because it will make
Speaker 1: us look bad. So just suffer in silence and be
Speaker 1: isolated and get no support and turn that shame inward
Speaker 1: and we will continue.
Speaker 4: To function business as usual.
Speaker 1: Like I think that, like what you said about cost
Speaker 1: material cost is such a good point. And I think
Speaker 1: back to like when I was a freelance journalist. I
Speaker 1: made no money, right, I was like really barely getting by,
Speaker 1: like scraping by, and to be expected to shoulder this
Speaker 1: burden that my male white colleagues will never have to shoulder.
Speaker 1: It's just not fair. It's not equitable.
Speaker 5: No, no, not at all.
Speaker 3: And like then on the government side too, going back
Speaker 3: to the whole thing about like Biden, you know, making
Speaker 3: it a commendable effort to hire people of color and
Speaker 3: women into his administration. I think, and I've said this
Speaker 3: to people in the administration since this happened to me, like,
Speaker 3: not only do you need to be prepared to stick
Speaker 3: up for those people, but you.
Speaker 5: There's probably some conversation that you need.
Speaker 3: To have with some people a certain level or above
Speaker 3: saying like, Okay, here's the types of things that might
Speaker 3: happen to you, Like let's make sure that you are protected.
Speaker 3: Let's make sure that you can put in a registration
Speaker 3: or a like deregistration request to the county to get
Speaker 3: your name off of the documents for your house because
Speaker 3: you're a public official. Now, like yes, in my mind,
Speaker 3: did that think? Did that cross my mind as like
Speaker 3: something that might happen? Sort of, I hoped that it wouldn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't think it was going to be as bad
Speaker 3: that as it was. But like probably everybody in our
Speaker 3: polarized environment who's going into government should get at that
Speaker 3: kind of council, anybody going into public service, not just
Speaker 3: at the federal level. I mean, look what's happening to
Speaker 3: election workers, right. It's the sad truth of the time
Speaker 3: that we live in and the tactics that people are
Speaker 3: using to try to get their way. But it takes
Speaker 3: a toll, and like without loved ones, without friends who
Speaker 3: have been helping me go through my replies and like
Speaker 3: helping me keep track of the mentions of me on
Speaker 3: alternative news streams and things like that. I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't know what I would have done, probably just like
Speaker 3: completely retreated from the online space. And that's exactly what
Speaker 3: it's meant to do, right, It's meant to push us out,
Speaker 3: to silence us, and I'm not going.
Speaker 5: To let that happen. I'm glad there are people around
Speaker 5: me who don't want that to happen to me. But
Speaker 5: not everybody has that. Not everybody has.
Speaker 3: That monetary psychological support that is so critical to getting
Speaker 3: through these difficult times, and they're happening to more and
Speaker 3: more people.
Speaker 1: It's great to want to elect women, support women, hire women,
Speaker 1: but you also need to be honest about what those
Speaker 1: women will face and have an understanding of what you're
Speaker 1: going to do to create the conditions for that woman
Speaker 1: to thrive, because it can't just be like, yeah, support
Speaker 1: black women, yes, like more women this and that, but
Speaker 1: then like, once they get to the place that you
Speaker 1: champion them to get to, they are on their own
Speaker 1: for this highly charged attacks that they will face because
Speaker 1: they got to this position that you said that you
Speaker 1: wanted them to be in, Like it has to be
Speaker 1: a fuller conversation about what it looks like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and you know, I I don't know what I.
Speaker 3: Say this a lot like in future positions, whether they're
Speaker 3: in public service or not, Like when I'm being interviewed, what.
Speaker 5: Will I say? Like will I be like?
Speaker 3: And if X, Y, and Z happens, what are you
Speaker 3: guys going to do? Like I feel like I'm going
Speaker 3: to run this trust deficit for the rest of my life.
Speaker 3: And I don't know that a lot of organizations are
Speaker 3: going to have a good answer. But like in good conscience,
Speaker 3: go into that sort of environment if I don't feel
Speaker 3: either like I've got somebody supporting me or a group
Speaker 3: of people supporting me, or am I going to have
Speaker 3: the authority to be able to make the decisions that
Speaker 3: will create those like support systems for other people?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 3: And it's hard for me also to encourage young women
Speaker 3: to go into public service after what happened to me.
Speaker 3: I've been giving them the advice like, if you want
Speaker 3: to do it, you should do it, but just recognize
Speaker 3: what's in the realm of possibility.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, so speaking of that, you know, the book How
Speaker 1: to Be a Woman Online. What advice do you have
Speaker 1: for women who are just trying to exist on the internet.
Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned earlier in our interview that you
Speaker 1: were really attacked for being a woman who has lived
Speaker 1: your life and had social media the way that we
Speaker 1: all have, and they created a cost for that. They
Speaker 1: dinged you for doing something that in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: we all do. And so I guess my question is, like,
Speaker 1: what kind of advice do you give for women listening
Speaker 1: who want to participate in civic and public life are
Speaker 1: also on women online?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: What do you say?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a really delicate balance.
Speaker 3: So I've interviewed people who run the gamut of like
Speaker 3: they've kind of kept a lot of their personal stuff
Speaker 3: off the internet, to like people like me who are
Speaker 3: super super online. Right, And I still have no regrets,
Speaker 3: Like I again that TikTok video, still not embarrassed of
Speaker 3: it to this day. The things that people were making
Speaker 3: fun of it.
Speaker 1: Did numbers like You're like kind of prolific on TikTok.
Speaker 5: I had to log it down.
Speaker 3: Now I don't even do it anymore, But I'm trying
Speaker 3: to get into Instagram reels.
Speaker 5: It's hard. It's hard for a millennial like me. I'm like,
Speaker 5: what is this? But you know, like.
Speaker 3: I don't regret any of it, but I also recognize
Speaker 3: that it's not for everybody, and so I think there's
Speaker 3: a delicate balance.
Speaker 5: You have to draw that line for yourself.
Speaker 3: The thing that I encourage everybody to do is, no
Speaker 3: matter how you're gonna interact online, to understand what's going
Speaker 3: to keep you safe tech wise and opsec wise. So like,
Speaker 3: don't post pictures of you in front of your house
Speaker 3: or like at the bar you frequent, right Like, it
Speaker 3: is so easy for bad actors to geolocate you. Look
Speaker 3: what happened to Keffle's where she was docks a second time,
Speaker 3: just based on the pattern of the hotel sheets to
Speaker 3: the hotel she had fled to with her cat, Right Like,
Speaker 3: we have to be extraordinarily careful. But if you're posting
Speaker 3: things not in real time, like have a little bit
Speaker 3: of a lag, If you're not posting from the same
Speaker 3: location and giving away like clues to your pattern of life,
Speaker 3: that's that's much better online practice for pictures and videos
Speaker 3: and things like that. When it comes to it, security
Speaker 3: just a couple of easy fixes that are kind of
Speaker 3: set it and forget it for everybody. Make sure you
Speaker 3: know you're using two factor authentication, complex passwords, and a
Speaker 3: password manager. If you're traveling to dangerous countries like authoritarian countries,
Speaker 3: basically you'll probably want to have like a burner phone
Speaker 3: or a burner laptop to make sure that your comms
Speaker 3: are secure.
Speaker 5: Using a VPN is a good idea.
Speaker 3: When you're on you know, more open Wi Fi and
Speaker 3: on your home network. Things like that I think are
Speaker 3: just really important for people who might be targets of
Speaker 3: hacking or other kind of cyber harassment issues from doxing
Speaker 3: to cyber stocking. All of that's super important for you
Speaker 3: to keep in mind. And that knowing that I have
Speaker 3: that extra layer of security like makes me feel more
Speaker 3: empowered to speak out. And then beyond that, cultivating a
Speaker 3: network of people who get what you do and who
Speaker 3: you can go to when the going gets tough, and
Speaker 3: that's harder than it seems. The first time I dealt
Speaker 3: with online harassment, which admittedly was nothing compared to what
Speaker 3: I went through this spring, a lot of my friends
Speaker 3: and family didn't get it right, Like they were like, ah,
Speaker 3: just ignore the trolls, don't feed the trolls, don't go
Speaker 3: on Twitter. And I'm like, but my life and my
Speaker 3: work is on Twitter, right, You're basically asking.
Speaker 5: Me to not work and not put myself out there.
Speaker 3: And I think once they understood that, then I had
Speaker 3: a little bit more support. But frankly, the people that
Speaker 3: I rely on most when this stuff is going on
Speaker 3: are the super online writers and folks who are kind
Speaker 3: of in my sphere that understand how this stuff works
Speaker 3: and so cultivate that.
Speaker 5: Community for yourself. I think that's.
Speaker 3: Paramount, frankly, and I hope that everybody's able to do it.
Speaker 3: And if you ever need anything, you know, shout out,
Speaker 3: reach out. I'm happy to help listeners. And of course
Speaker 3: you bridget however, And I know you had written me
Speaker 3: a note when the shit was going down, and I
Speaker 3: appreciated that.
Speaker 5: That stuff goes a long way.
Speaker 3: So if you see everybody else going through stuff, be
Speaker 3: an active online bystander, you know, report stuff, send them
Speaker 3: a note of solidarity.
Speaker 5: All of it matters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's such good advice because I think
Speaker 1: these kinds of attacks, they are meant to make the
Speaker 1: person feel isolated, and so just knowing that, like I'm
Speaker 1: not isolated. People see what's happening to me and they
Speaker 1: support me is so key and it's interesting. I was
Speaker 1: at this gathering for people who work in the conspiracy
Speaker 1: theory space, and one of the questions that they asked
Speaker 1: early on was, you know, what are some of the
Speaker 1: particulars of doing this work?
Speaker 4: And almost everybody.
Speaker 1: Said some version of my partner, my friends don't really
Speaker 1: get what I do, and so I am carrying around
Speaker 1: a lot of like very specific baggage that the people
Speaker 1: around me can't even necessarily really unpack, understand or even
Speaker 1: really see. And I really felt that it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you are dealing with some particular stuff that is so
Speaker 1: specific and can be so heavy and ugly and hard,
Speaker 1: and you're sometimes just dealing with it in a way
Speaker 1: that feels like you're alone.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and even when people do reach out, you know,
Speaker 3: and this is not their fault at all, but like
Speaker 3: still to this day, people will say to me, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm so sorry for what you're what you went through,
Speaker 3: or like back when it was all happening, they'd be like,
Speaker 3: is there anything I can do, And like the answer
Speaker 3: is no. For the most part, Like with the exception
Speaker 3: of your close friends just like coming by with food
Speaker 3: and like trying to take you out of it watching
Speaker 3: some trashy TV or something like that. Like there's not
Speaker 3: much that people can really do besides listen, and even
Speaker 3: then you're talking to them about it, and all they
Speaker 3: can do is like not and pat you on the
Speaker 3: back unless they've gone through it too. And so again
Speaker 3: that's why those very specific networks of super online people
Speaker 3: were really important to me when the when it was
Speaker 3: all kind of happening. But that also brings me to
Speaker 3: another important point, which is therapy is so important. Without
Speaker 3: my therapist, I definitely would be kind of lost, and
Speaker 3: she has done the really important kind of reminding me that,
Speaker 3: like what you went through is not normal, and it's
Speaker 3: okay to still feel kind of shitty about it, and
Speaker 3: no one's expecting you to have recovered from it already,
Speaker 3: Like you're still allowed to have feelings about it and
Speaker 3: be mad about it and be sad about it and frustrated.
Speaker 3: And that's been really important. And I have a whole
Speaker 3: section in my book about like the role that that
Speaker 3: has played. Again even before the worst harassment that I've
Speaker 3: dealt with, and some resources for folks who maybe can't
Speaker 3: afford therapy because it is the way our insurance system
Speaker 3: works here is totally stupid and like paying out of
Speaker 3: pocket is ridiculous and difficult. But if your insurance doesn't
Speaker 3: cover it, there are options for you. If you're on
Speaker 3: a campus, A lot of universities have good mental health services.
Speaker 3: A lot of states also have either groups that you
Speaker 3: can go to or like low cost therapists you can access,
Speaker 3: and then a lot of therapists have sliding scale fees
Speaker 3: as well, so that folks who are on lower income
Speaker 3: can can can access those services. And it's I think
Speaker 3: it's really important, and there's this stigma around accessing mental
Speaker 3: health services, but push yourself to to get over that
Speaker 3: that hurdle because it's a great resource.
Speaker 1: To have, absolutely And I guess that brings me to
Speaker 1: one of my last questions of like you deal You've
Speaker 1: dealt with.
Speaker 4: A lot, You deal with a lot. What keeps you like?
Speaker 1: What brings you joy? What makes you happy? How do
Speaker 1: you how do you reconnect with Nina and recharge?
Speaker 4: Like what what? What does that cups for you?
Speaker 3: That's a hard one because my life has changed so
Speaker 3: substantively since all This happened like literally for weeks, three
Speaker 3: weeks before I gave birth, as like when I resigned
Speaker 3: from the government. So I'm a totally different person, not
Speaker 3: just because of like my entire life outlook changing, but
Speaker 3: because I'm a mom now, so like hanging out with
Speaker 3: my kid, love that and it truly is a life
Speaker 3: changing experience to like be the sole.
Speaker 5: Source of food and.
Speaker 3: Like protector of another human being. I'm really lucky to have,
Speaker 3: you know, a great husband who is an amazing dad
Speaker 3: and has been an amazing partner through like something he
Speaker 3: definitely did not sign up for when we got married
Speaker 3: ten years ago, that is for sure.
Speaker 5: So spending time with them has been great.
Speaker 3: Connecting with nature so I love hiking, and I've just
Speaker 3: started getting back to hiking post pregnancy, so getting back
Speaker 3: outdoors has been great. Travel really kind of fills my
Speaker 3: cup and like experiencing different perspectives. I'm also a huge
Speaker 3: music fan and theater fan, and that has been somewhat
Speaker 3: dampened during the pandemic because of large gatherings, and I
Speaker 3: haven't been able to do a show since since pre
Speaker 3: pandemic and probably won't happen for a while now that
Speaker 3: I have a young kid, but you know, enjoying the arts,
Speaker 3: experiencing that connecting with other people that way, I think
Speaker 3: is something that's so special. And that's also you know,
Speaker 3: not to bring it back to the abuse and make
Speaker 3: it sad, but that's one of the things that's most
Speaker 3: peculiar about like the abuse against me, people saying like, ah,
Speaker 3: she's a theater kid, as if like I'm sorry, is
Speaker 3: that a crime? Like Also, musical theater is one of
Speaker 3: our like uniquely American exports, right, like it's it's a
Speaker 3: way that America contributes to.
Speaker 5: Culture around the world.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, how are these people seriously telling
Speaker 3: me they've never enjoyed a musical in their life if so,
Speaker 3: like whatever, like.
Speaker 1: Oh, musical theater kids like like theater kids, the world
Speaker 1: go around. If we didn't have theater kids, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be joy in the world. Thank God for like enthusiastic
Speaker 1: like young people who enthusiastically enjoy things and make things.
Speaker 5: And you know what, like.
Speaker 11: It's it's I'm tired of this like narrative that it's
Speaker 11: uncool to be happy or enthusiastic about something like yeah,
Speaker 11: I'm a nerd and I'm like totally okay with that.
Speaker 3: We should all wear that proudly. Some people nerd out
Speaker 3: about cars. I nerd out about lyrics from musicals and
Speaker 3: and music, and like, you know, every to each their own.
Speaker 3: That's the beautiful thing about America, right And so anyway,
Speaker 3: I've gone off on a tangent now.
Speaker 5: But those are the things that that keep me, keep
Speaker 5: me happy.
Speaker 3: Also, like I do identify with what Hillary Clinton said
Speaker 3: in about the worst times of her life, where she
Speaker 3: just she focused on the work. And so I have
Speaker 3: been absolutely wholeheartedly, probably too much, throwing myself into the
Speaker 3: world since I've been back from maternity leave, and I'm
Speaker 3: really committed to building a better Internet, whether that's an
Speaker 3: Internet free from disinformation coming from Russia or an Internet
Speaker 3: that's free from nasty abuse coming from right and frankly
Speaker 3: some far left wing men on the internet.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm so grateful that we have you in this work.
Speaker 4: I'm glad that you seem.
Speaker 2: Like you're doing that.
Speaker 1: You've got that, You've got your people, you've got your community,
Speaker 1: because the Lord knows we need you especially right now.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you, Bridget.
Speaker 3: You know, I think you got me on a slightly
Speaker 3: more optimistic sunny day.
Speaker 5: There are definitely days where I'm.
Speaker 3: Dropping f bombs left and right and hate everyone, but no,
Speaker 3: I'm here. And my message to everybody who's going through
Speaker 3: this or might go through this at some point is like,
Speaker 3: don't give one inch.
Speaker 5: Back, and I'm not giving an inch. I'm going to
Speaker 5: go a mile ahead.
Speaker 1: Though Nina filed her defamation lawsuit against Fox News last Wednesday,
Speaker 1: she can't get back what they took from her, but
Speaker 1: maybe her lawsuit and others like it will change the
Speaker 1: math for big networks that traffic and lies and disinformation.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the first episode of Present Future,
Speaker 1: brought to you by There No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Next week, I'll be interviewing author, activist, and og Twitter
Speaker 1: personality Mickey Kendall, who built her platform on the early
Speaker 1: days of Twitter. We talk about what it was like
Speaker 1: back then, how it changed, and where she sees the
Speaker 1: Twitter community going in the future. And I have to
Speaker 1: make one more plug for the Patreon. I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to use it as a way to connect with all
Speaker 1: of you and to share exclusive interviews and writings with
Speaker 1: the patrons who support the show. Just go to patreon
Speaker 1: dot com and search for there or No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet, and as always, I would love to hear
Speaker 1: from you at Hello at tangoti dot com. Let us
Speaker 1: know what you thought of today's episode and what kind
Speaker 1: of stories that you'd like to hear during the rest
Speaker 1: of this season as we investigate this weird present future.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
Speaker 1: me Ridget Codds. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed
Speaker 1: Creative edited by Joey pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato
Speaker 1: is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If
Speaker 1: you want to help us grow, rate and review us
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Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.