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Speaker 2: I was having a conversation in the moment, and then
Speaker 2: it became a conversation of the moment.
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 on the Internet. So to
Speaker 1: really understand where we're headed next when it comes to
Speaker 1: platforms and internet discourse, we first need to really understand
Speaker 1: and reckon with where we've been, and that need is
Speaker 1: incredibly salient when it comes to online feminist discourse. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, online feminism was still in its girl
Speaker 1: Boss era. It was the era of Leslie Nope and
Speaker 1: notorious RBG T shirts bought on Etsy well meaning, sure,
Speaker 1: but perhaps not the most inclusive. Would it champion black women,
Speaker 1: poor women, trans women, and if these women were justifiably
Speaker 1: angry about not having been included in the movement, would
Speaker 1: that brand of feminism make room for that anger. Ten
Speaker 1: years ago, writer Mickey Kendall had had enough. She started
Speaker 1: the hashtag solidarity is for White Women on Twitter, and
Speaker 1: it took off in a way that's almost kind of
Speaker 1: hard to imagine here in twenty twenty three, Solidarity is
Speaker 1: for White Women was meant to pull back the curtain
Speaker 1: and expose the ways that white feminism had left so
Speaker 1: many black and brown women to fend for ourselves. In
Speaker 1: exposing this, Mickey Kendall changed the face of online feminism,
Speaker 1: but it didn't necessarily make her well liked by the
Speaker 1: people she was calling out. But for Mickey, if being
Speaker 1: liked by everyone is the cost of being able to
Speaker 1: speak her truth, that it's not worth it.
Speaker 2: I was the most unpopular popular girl in feminism, and
Speaker 2: I know how that sounds, but it was like I
Speaker 2: was the mean black girl of sixth grade. And it
Speaker 2: was hilarious to me because I have a life offline
Speaker 2: and I have friends and things like that. But the
Speaker 2: things that I could say to make people mad that
Speaker 2: were perfectly innocuous. Everyone wanted me to know relatively regularly
Speaker 2: of that like RBG shirt whatever kind of into feminism.
Speaker 2: So I was never gonna write for Jezebel that I
Speaker 2: was killing my career or whatever everyone want me to
Speaker 2: know these things. And the whole time I worked for
Speaker 2: the federal government, I had a regular job, so I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure what career I was killing right by saying things.
Speaker 2: And then I had all of these black and brown,
Speaker 2: all of these other people who were fine, we got
Speaker 2: along great, but there was like a small core group
Speaker 2: of predominantly white, not entirely a predominantly white feminists who
Speaker 2: really wanted me to know that I was mean to
Speaker 2: them at regular intervals. And I understood the performance on display,
Speaker 2: and then I just was like, well, I guess you're
Speaker 2: going to get your feelings her today is You'll be
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, MPR does a piece about the hashtag
Speaker 1: Mickey created. They include responses from prominent online feminists, including
Speaker 1: a white feminist. Kendall specifically called out for failing to
Speaker 1: show up for black women. Now the piece was a
Speaker 1: response to something that she created, but they didn't even
Speaker 1: include her. There was pushback so much so that NPR
Speaker 1: was forced to address the oversight, saying Kendall kicked it
Speaker 1: off and we should have asked Kendall to participate from
Speaker 1: the beginning. That was our mistake. NPR eventually invites Kendall
Speaker 1: to participate in the conversation, where she writes, this is
Speaker 1: a conversation after consent because sometimes the political is personal.
Speaker 3: Now, there's really no way.
Speaker 1: To engage with conflict as a black woman publicly without
Speaker 1: the stigma of angry or mean clinging to you wherever
Speaker 1: you go like smoke. A year later, Mickey is back
Speaker 1: at NPR as part of a feminist roundtable in the
Speaker 1: wake of a piece examining whether online feminism is too toxic,
Speaker 1: too mean, and in fact, a big part of the
Speaker 1: piece examines whether Mickey herself is mean or not. One
Speaker 1: of the questions that comes up is basically, Micky, do
Speaker 1: you think that you're a bully?
Speaker 3: And your answer is spot on.
Speaker 1: You're basically like you know you can can people feel
Speaker 1: however they're going to feel about the things I have
Speaker 1: to say and the frustrations that I have. Sure, but
Speaker 1: we're also at a time when people are being taught dosed,
Speaker 1: trans people are being threatened.
Speaker 3: Your answer almost kind.
Speaker 1: Of feels like looking into this crystal ball of horrible
Speaker 1: things to come, where we have people who are you know,
Speaker 1: losing their rights, being threatened, being killed, and there's always
Speaker 1: going to be this subsection of people who are like
Speaker 1: are they being nice enough about it? Though?
Speaker 3: When they talk about it?
Speaker 2: So funny story that roundtable happens basically because the Internet
Speaker 2: bullied in PR, and not even the Eye bullied in PR.
Speaker 2: The Internet bullied in PR. Right, So there's that. And
Speaker 2: then because INPR was going to have that roundtable about
Speaker 2: me without me, if that makes sense, And there's been
Speaker 2: several things already, and I was astonished at how just
Speaker 2: stupid the complaints were. And like, listen, I'm never going
Speaker 2: to tell you I'm a nice person, right. I actually
Speaker 2: explicitly tell people if I had a brand, it would
Speaker 2: be affable asshole. Right. But also, it took absolutely nothing,
Speaker 2: in an era of doxing of harassment, to hurt the
Speaker 2: feelings of some of these people. And I do mean
Speaker 2: saying well, no, you're wrong, that's a really shitty thing
Speaker 2: to say. And they were like, you are so mean
Speaker 2: to me. Okay, you're still wrong, cry about it, and
Speaker 2: we're just not gonna talk about how you're fucking up
Speaker 2: right here. And it is like this forecast of how
Speaker 2: we get here? Right where instead of us having what
Speaker 2: would be a perfectly normal conversation flex we're putting in
Speaker 2: a perfectly normal conversation about what is happening politically. We
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time, years in fact, on whether
Speaker 2: or not it was being said civilly enough, politely enough.
Speaker 2: We needed to work with people who were big. It's
Speaker 2: all of this stuff about you know, coddling assholes that
Speaker 2: I still am not clear where it was supposed to
Speaker 2: get us, because it seems to have gotten us here.
Speaker 2: And now the same people who said it was important
Speaker 2: not to say these things are going on. How did
Speaker 2: we get here? Well, Susan, it started with you saying
Speaker 2: that it was perfectly okay to not fight for people
Speaker 2: to have workplace protections if they were tramped right. We
Speaker 2: had to hear all about your gender criticism or your
Speaker 2: discomfort with knowing that people that were not you exist,
Speaker 2: and so that's how we end up here. And then
Speaker 2: on top of that, you had this like wild and
Speaker 2: wacky idea that anyone who pushed back needed to do
Speaker 2: so with a plate of cookies and a cup of
Speaker 2: warm milk and ask you daintily, pretty pretty pleased to
Speaker 2: care about someone's human rights. So now we're here, Well.
Speaker 1: I do think that it's kind of gotten us to
Speaker 1: where we are today and where we might be headed
Speaker 1: in the future. You know, so much of this kind
Speaker 1: of both sides ask nicely coddling rhetoric. Your work does
Speaker 1: a great job of calling out institutions and individuals with
Speaker 1: power who maybe do have good intentions and that maybe
Speaker 1: you know, I admire or like, but that can let
Speaker 1: cozy relationships that they have dictate who gets included and
Speaker 1: who gets left out. You know, if I'm an NPR editor,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm just reaching out to folks in my network,
Speaker 1: the folks that I have an existing relationship with, without
Speaker 1: really seeing or examining how that choice ends up shaping
Speaker 1: who gets to have a voice and can result in
Speaker 1: something like someone being excluded from a conversation they started.
Speaker 2: Oh, And it's funny because I remember at the time
Speaker 2: people kept saying things like that, and I kept not
Speaker 2: even arguing, but I kept pointing out that the well
Speaker 2: I knew them, I didn't know you of it all
Speaker 2: meant that if you all went to the same school,
Speaker 2: or you hung out in the same circles, how are
Speaker 2: you an expert in anyone else's experience if the only
Speaker 2: people you talked to were your neighbors. Right. Was fascinating
Speaker 2: to watch because I knew, as several people now do,
Speaker 2: that if you are talking about some of this class
Speaker 2: of feminists, they're married to hedge fund managers or whatever,
Speaker 2: they come from money. Right. And I knew back then
Speaker 2: and obviously now know that some of the conversations we
Speaker 2: were having around race and class, it was like I
Speaker 2: was having a conversation with someone who with both their
Speaker 2: hand tied behind their back in terms of comprehending the
Speaker 2: stacks because they'd never been poor.
Speaker 1: I don't think I ever really thought about the way
Speaker 1: that feminism and what it was and who it was
Speaker 1: for had been largely defined by this like white this
Speaker 1: like very well meeting white, comfortable, white lady class, you know,
Speaker 1: and like I don't think until honestly, I think it
Speaker 1: was really your hashtag solid Areas for white women that
Speaker 1: like broke something open in our culture that allowed us
Speaker 1: to see it and give us a language and point
Speaker 1: to it and talk about it and really start confronting it.
Speaker 2: It's funny. One of the people when that hashtag happened,
Speaker 2: one of them said, I wonder how the world is
Speaker 2: going to feel when they realize the person who changed
Speaker 2: the face of feminism also likes cat gifts on Tumblr.
Speaker 2: And I just about died laughing. And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: what can I tell you? I'm a woman of many
Speaker 2: tastes or something like that. And honestly, what happens is
Speaker 2: that we kept talking around the circles of feminism, right
Speaker 2: around the idea that all women mattered, but some women
Speaker 2: matter more kind of an approach, and that some women
Speaker 2: matter more was never explicitly stated, but it was obvious
Speaker 2: that that was the attitude, right because if it wasn't
Speaker 2: for that, we could talk about poverty, we could talk
Speaker 2: about police brutality or gun violence or any of these
Speaker 2: other topics, not as it relates to the suburbs or
Speaker 2: as it relates to you know, Manhattan, but as it
Speaker 2: relates to the entire rest of the country. And I
Speaker 2: think one of the reasons that the conversation residents so
Speaker 2: much too, because a lot of the women who wrote
Speaker 2: out kind of defending me when people were like, oh,
Speaker 2: she's being divisive, were low income white women who are like,
Speaker 2: this is the first time anybody has acknowledged we exist
Speaker 2: in forever and that we can be feminists, and that
Speaker 2: things are happening to us that are not happening to you,
Speaker 2: right like when we have those conversations are an anti
Speaker 2: intellectualism in America, and that's definitely a problem. But I
Speaker 2: also understand how it's so easy to create if all
Speaker 2: you hear from the most prominent intellectuals who look like
Speaker 2: you is that you don't exist, or at least you
Speaker 2: don't exist enough for them to care about what's happening
Speaker 2: to you, except to blame you for you know, how
Speaker 2: you vote or whatever.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2: At our back.
Speaker 1: Mickey was prompted to start Solidarity as for White Women
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the downfall of Hugo Schweitzer, a
Speaker 1: college professor, blogger, and self described male feminist who wrote
Speaker 1: about feminism at feminist sites like jez bell Now. Back then,
Speaker 1: Schweitzer was kind of a big deal in online feminist spaces.
Speaker 1: He branded himself as a bad boy turned feminist, and
Speaker 1: on his blog wrote about his struggles with addiction, sleeping
Speaker 1: with his college students, and trying to murder his girlfriend
Speaker 1: by turning on a gas stove in their house. It
Speaker 1: was feminism that turned him around and made him see
Speaker 1: the air of his ways, so he claimed. Black women,
Speaker 1: as we so often are, were skeptical of his rise
Speaker 1: to feminist quasi stardom, and even more skeptical of the
Speaker 1: white feminist online spaces that welcomed him. He had a
Speaker 1: penchant for attacking these black women online, but none of this.
Speaker 1: Not trying to murder his girlfriend or attacking black women
Speaker 1: kept him from building up a platform or being welcomed
Speaker 1: in mostly white feminist spaces. Late night on August ninth,
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, Schweizer has what he describes as a meltdown.
Speaker 1: In a succession of rapid fire confession tweets, he admits
Speaker 1: to all of this. He tells black feminists, who had
Speaker 1: been warning about his behavior, you were right. I was
Speaker 1: awful to you because you were in the way. He
Speaker 1: also admits that he did not have the credentials to
Speaker 1: be teaching college courses on feminism and that he quote
Speaker 1: built his career as a well known online male feminist
Speaker 1: on fraudulent pretenses. Now, while this was all going down,
Speaker 1: white feminists who were friendly with Schweitzer expressed worry about
Speaker 1: his mental health and future job prospects. But where was
Speaker 1: the concern for the black women that he admitted attacking online.
Speaker 1: Where was the concern for the students that he admitted
Speaker 1: having inappropriate sexual relationships with. Where was the accountability for
Speaker 1: letting someone like Schweitzer rise up in the ranks of
Speaker 1: online feminism.
Speaker 3: None of it.
Speaker 1: Set right with Mickey. Solidarity is for White women? She tweeted,
Speaker 1: and it was like she had broken something open. What
Speaker 1: started is Mickey's response to the movement overlooking black way
Speaker 1: became a rallying cry, exposing all the tensions and fractures
Speaker 1: in feminist spaces online. Do you think if you tweeted
Speaker 1: solidarity is for White women today in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: it would take off the way that it did back
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: I think in theory it couldn't. But in execution, what
Speaker 2: will happen is that Twitter will suppress the hashtag because
Speaker 2: the other reason I think solidary twitterment happens is that
Speaker 2: it is at the beginning of the concept of hashtags
Speaker 2: as calls, as a call to action. So Twitter didn't
Speaker 2: know what to do with me right, Most of the
Speaker 2: viral hashtag phenomenon hadn't studying it. I'm not saying I
Speaker 2: actually started it, but I'm one of the very early
Speaker 2: ones where that happened organically and Twitter didn't know what
Speaker 2: it had either. Twitter was still figuring itself out. Right,
Speaker 2: Like if you were on Twitter in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 2: you remember a very different Twitter than Twitter of today.
Speaker 2: Right when the hashtag happened, it was still kind of
Speaker 2: like the wild Wild West in turn of the algorithm,
Speaker 2: because Twitter was still trying to figure out how to
Speaker 2: make the algorithm work for advertising revenue for all of
Speaker 2: these things. It was still mostly third party clients making
Speaker 2: Twitter even a usable experience, right, Twitter had to buy
Speaker 2: everybody that made Twitter possible to use.
Speaker 1: When you first started it, did you create it thinking
Speaker 1: this is going to like crack things open, this is
Speaker 1: going to hit on something, or were you just having
Speaker 1: a moment of frustration.
Speaker 2: I was pissed off the I know you are playing
Speaker 2: in my face of it, all right, I got very
Speaker 2: to be honest on your twitterment comes out of a
Speaker 2: very south side of Chicago. You are fucking with my
Speaker 2: friend and you were playing in my face. And I
Speaker 2: don't know who you think you're lying to, but like,
Speaker 2: let's be real here, right. This is before the invention
Speaker 2: of the phrase be fucking for real as a popular thing,
Speaker 2: but it was basically that. And then in the moment
Speaker 2: I figured I would say what I had to say,
Speaker 2: I think I fired off probably like one hundred tweets
Speaker 2: because Twitter were still doing the thing where they rate
Speaker 2: limit you to tweet too much in too small a
Speaker 2: period of time, and so I did all those tweets.
Speaker 2: It turned into this weird juggernauge thing.
Speaker 1: Twenty thirteen was a different time on Twitter.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It was the platform where one off tweets could become
Speaker 1: big news stories or global movements. Solidarity is for White
Speaker 1: women allowed Mickey to access platforms that previously had been
Speaker 1: closed to her. Before maybe an editor might have just
Speaker 1: assigned the coverage of the hashtag that she created to
Speaker 1: whoever they had on staff, or maybe just invited whoever
Speaker 1: was already in their network to talk about it. But
Speaker 1: now things were different. Not only was Mickey exposing the
Speaker 1: lack of inclusion and online feminism, but also she was
Speaker 1: pointing out the lack of inclusion and who gets to
Speaker 1: tell a story about it, and where before her voice
Speaker 1: was included late, almost as an afterthought, is something that
Speaker 1: she created. Now it was unignorable. Her voice full of
Speaker 1: all that truth and righteous anger, had to be included
Speaker 1: in the conversation. She remembers it as a defining moment.
Speaker 2: Like it was one of those really bizarre moments that
Speaker 2: probably could not happen now in the same way, because
Speaker 2: now everybody knows what you say on social media matters.
Speaker 2: Now everybody does a lot of like careful pr constructing,
Speaker 2: interns tweeting for you. But at the time we were
Speaker 2: all just kind of using Twitter and thinking of a
Speaker 2: not necessarily shouting into the void, but as just you know,
Speaker 2: this will happen now, and then it will be ephemeral
Speaker 2: and go away and none of these things will really matter.
Speaker 2: We were wrong. None of the people using social media,
Speaker 2: early social media that got it to where it is
Speaker 2: now understood what we were doing. I'm not even gonna
Speaker 2: say that I understood what I was doing. I was
Speaker 2: having a conversation in the moment, and then and it
Speaker 2: became a conversation of the moment for many topics right,
Speaker 2: and then piled into all of that, there's this thing
Speaker 2: where like a lot of places that had previously seemingly
Speaker 2: been impossible for anyone to write for. We're saying we
Speaker 2: are missing this conversation. We wanted part of this conversation.
Speaker 2: And when they reached out to the people they were
Speaker 2: used to reaching out to, most of them didn't have
Speaker 2: a clue what was going on or didn't really have
Speaker 2: anything new to say because they were in my mentions
Speaker 2: getting yelled at. And so it was Matt Seton at
Speaker 2: The Guardian who was the first person to invite me
Speaker 2: to write about it for a major publication. And I
Speaker 2: think he sent me a DM that was something like,
Speaker 2: I know you can yell, but can you write? Wow?
Speaker 2: And he always says I give him too much credit,
Speaker 2: but he does not understand that there's like this very
Speaker 2: difine moment of of I can get in a couple
Speaker 2: of places, but nothing above a certain level. And then
Speaker 2: I wrote for him with a piece about what was
Speaker 2: happening for him and The Guardian byline for reasons I
Speaker 2: will never completely understand, opened the door for me to
Speaker 2: write for all these other places. Right. And I didn't
Speaker 2: know anything about pitching. I didn't know anything about anything.
Speaker 2: But what I can do is write. I have opinions.
Speaker 2: I can write them down really fast on a topic,
Speaker 2: and I learned pitching. I learned how to freelance kind
Speaker 2: of in the plane while it was being while it
Speaker 2: was in the air.
Speaker 1: Is there a through line of you tweeting that, getting
Speaker 1: in the Guardian and now you're doing what you do now?
Speaker 3: Like, do you think that's.
Speaker 1: Really the through line if you had not tweeted that,
Speaker 1: if it had knock gone megaviral.
Speaker 3: Do you see a world in which you would still
Speaker 3: be in this outcome?
Speaker 2: I actually, weirdly enough, I do. It just would have
Speaker 2: been for a different hashtag. But I think it would
Speaker 2: have also opened a slightly different version of this path
Speaker 2: right where I would be known for talking about fast
Speaker 2: tailed girls or you know, one of the other hashtags.
Speaker 2: But we would have never had necessarily the same conversation
Speaker 2: about white feminism and race without salaries for white women.
Speaker 2: And in some ways that challenging and acknowledging definitely puts
Speaker 2: me here in a very specific place where many of
Speaker 2: the things that people think I want that I never
Speaker 2: wanted in the first place, they would not necessarily be
Speaker 2: trying to, you know, tell me, well, you'll never get this,
Speaker 2: you'll never get that. In the same way, I probably
Speaker 2: would have made more friends, and I probably also would
Speaker 2: not have been as popular as because I think tapping
Speaker 2: into that deep well of discontent and talking about it,
Speaker 2: like naming it and talking about my own feelings, but
Speaker 2: also giving people a sort of permission by proxy to
Speaker 2: talk about their feelings had not happened before.
Speaker 1: I remember, like watching the Hugo stuff go down. It
Speaker 1: was just a really dark time. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that I think your work really helped us see
Speaker 1: was how little accountability there was for people who supported
Speaker 1: someone who was pretty open about a disdain for black women,
Speaker 1: you know, harassing black women in public, a literal abuser
Speaker 1: of women first of all, that he would be able
Speaker 1: to make a name for himself in online feminist spaces
Speaker 1: so easily, and that people would defend him publicly when all.
Speaker 3: Of that stuff came out.
Speaker 1: It's still surprising to me how little accountability there was,
Speaker 1: if not for folks like you. Do you feel that
Speaker 1: we ever really did a reckoning a look back of
Speaker 1: what we learned from that, Because I feel like these
Speaker 1: things happen, people say what they're going to say, and
Speaker 1: then everybody kind of moves on. We don't actually get
Speaker 1: a chance to look back and learn anything. Or glean
Speaker 1: anything about how to avoid this or what we should
Speaker 1: be taking from this. Do you feel that we ever
Speaker 1: had that moment?
Speaker 2: People didn't want to have that moment. It was this
Speaker 2: embarrassing thing where people in the middle of whatever they
Speaker 2: were saying about me being divisive, were about this conversation
Speaker 2: taking feminism backwards whatever, realizing after the fact, especially by
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, that they had been on the wrong side
Speaker 2: of history and never wanting to look backward again. More.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: Mickey did the work of exposing existing tensions and fractures
Speaker 1: that exist in our movement, but in order to heal
Speaker 1: tensions there has to be reflection, honesty, and accountability, which
Speaker 1: just didn't really happen. So these tensions were left to
Speaker 1: be exploited by bad actors like the ones behind the
Speaker 1: end Father's Day hoax to inflame tensions and feminist online
Speaker 1: spaces that would take place just a year later. Something
Speaker 1: that we have talked about quite a bit on this
Speaker 1: podcast is sort of what came immediately after things like
Speaker 1: the disinformation troll campaign hashtag and Father's Day and I
Speaker 1: think something that solidarity is for white women. It supposed
Speaker 1: is the reality and the rawness of these tensions between
Speaker 1: black women, black feminists and white feminists. And I think
Speaker 1: that bad actors, trolls, what are extremists, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to call it, people who are interested in using social
Speaker 1: media spaces to cause confusion and chaos. I think the
Speaker 1: movement's lack of really taking accountability, really examining what happened,
Speaker 1: really figuring out how we navigate the navigate around each
Speaker 1: other and with each other. I think that you're right,
Speaker 1: there was broadly not no interest in really doing that
Speaker 1: and having those conversations. And thus I think that bad
Speaker 1: actors know like, Okay, well, this is an attension that exists.
Speaker 1: It's a tension that is being kind of danced around.
Speaker 1: You know, everyone feels it, but no one's really People
Speaker 1: aren't really talking about it openly because they don't want to.
Speaker 1: We can go in and exploit it, We can go
Speaker 1: in and like seize it and inflame it, and it
Speaker 1: might be effective because no one's really naming it, no
Speaker 1: one's really talking about it, nobody's really interested in taking
Speaker 1: accountability for their part in it. Do you ever think
Speaker 1: that the lack of interest in real accountability and looking
Speaker 1: backward and taking stock just leaves these communities online vulnerable
Speaker 1: to people who who will step in and exploit and
Speaker 1: talk about it, just not in the way that maybe
Speaker 1: it's going to be helpful.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think it appts resolutely. It's one of those
Speaker 2: things with just how we got all those feminists talking
Speaker 2: to like Meatleianopolis and engaging sort of disingenuously with the
Speaker 2: idea that Megan Kelly was not necessarily racist, right, because
Speaker 2: everyone started to kind of go, well, you know, people
Speaker 2: can be swayed, people can be wooed. And I wonder
Speaker 2: often about the people who at that point kept saying,
Speaker 2: we have to reach out to the other side, because
Speaker 2: the other side was very clearly, very cogently planning to
Speaker 2: sow discord, very much trying to widen riffs, and also
Speaker 2: using those conversations, those educational conversations, to boost their own platforms,
Speaker 2: right because when you think back to twenty thirteen, to
Speaker 2: all they are twenty sixteen, actually even before twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: a lot of those well I want to talk to
Speaker 2: a white nationalist, a person who identifies as a white
Speaker 2: separatist whatever. You remember all of those news stories, all
Speaker 2: of the like inside the mind of a clansman kind
Speaker 2: of news stories. Right, for a while, nobody had ever
Speaker 2: given them a platform. I just saw this thing the
Speaker 2: other day. There's an account that shills itself as like
Speaker 2: the American Nazi whatever. Right. They bought a blue check
Speaker 2: mark on Twitter, and they have millions of followers, and
Speaker 2: they said, essentially, this never could have happened ten years ago,
Speaker 2: which is true. It wouldn't have been able to happen
Speaker 2: ten years ago. Now they can look like they're a
Speaker 2: real legitimate account.
Speaker 1: I mean, kind of just gives away the game where
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, thanks to Elon Musk, I would have
Speaker 1: never been able to build up this the legitimized platform
Speaker 1: I have now to spread my Nazi shit.
Speaker 3: Thanks.
Speaker 2: That is essentially what it said, essentially. And you know,
Speaker 2: we've seen several times now, even when we're talking about
Speaker 2: at protests and things, and we've been talking for years
Speaker 2: about inside police circles, the number of very clearly white nationalists,
Speaker 2: white supremacist whatever we're calling ourselves this week, white separatists
Speaker 2: police officers, complete with the visible ink, right, And when
Speaker 2: we bring it up and people say, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 2: what can you do? And it's kind of like, actually,
Speaker 2: several years ago, we were trying to get people to
Speaker 2: do something about it, and you said that that wasn't
Speaker 2: a feminist issue. You said that that was just some
Speaker 2: guys online. They were harmless. You said, whatever, now here
Speaker 2: we are and I need you to not even just
Speaker 2: take accountability. I need you to start swinging, not still
Speaker 2: talk about how we can reach them.
Speaker 1: Twitter was where people who were not traditionally centered or
Speaker 1: heard could really build power. Black Lives Matter championed racial
Speaker 1: justice in the wake of police violence. Survivors started me
Speaker 1: Too to push back against sexual violence. So when Elon
Speaker 1: Musk bought Twitter, one of my first questions was, what
Speaker 1: does this mean for the future of marginalized communities being
Speaker 1: able to build power and start movements. It's a fair question,
Speaker 1: but Mickey reminds us that our communities are resilient and
Speaker 1: that we'll always find a way.
Speaker 3: How do you.
Speaker 1: See the state that Twitter is in, and sort of
Speaker 1: social media more broadly, how do you see that impacting
Speaker 1: marginalized community's ability to build up power and build up
Speaker 1: a voice.
Speaker 2: I think in some ways, and this is going to
Speaker 2: sound real strange, but the existence of TikTok and all
Speaker 2: the competing other sites will help you master it on.
Speaker 2: All of these things will help marginalized communities find a
Speaker 2: place to rebuild the networks that they had on Twitter
Speaker 2: for some levels of rebuild here, but only because Twitter
Speaker 2: was already not particularly usable for community anymore. Once all
Speaker 2: eyes were on Twitter, it seemed like all the time.
Speaker 2: I remember that like weird period of time where anything
Speaker 2: you tweeted could wind up on your television screen that
Speaker 2: night is news or in an article.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a wild time.
Speaker 2: Right. People have already started to kind of migrate away
Speaker 2: from Twitter. Right, Twitter's popularity as a social media app
Speaker 2: was on the decline. People were just abandoning their Twitter
Speaker 2: accounts whatever and moving to discord and all these other places.
Speaker 2: And so I think it will make it more difficult
Speaker 2: to kick off an initial group. But also in some
Speaker 2: ways now it is easier to have those conversations without
Speaker 2: necessarily as much trolling. This weird split where like, yes,
Speaker 2: the loss of Twitter is a big deal, but also
Speaker 2: Twitter was already being lost before this because the focus
Speaker 2: hyper focused on black Twitter, but also generally the focus
Speaker 2: on whether those people over there talking about together had
Speaker 2: made people uncomfortable having certain conversations in public.
Speaker 1: I think Sadet Harry has a great piece and wired
Speaker 1: that kind of speaks to this of like the feeling
Speaker 1: of kind of the inherent feeling of being both othered
Speaker 1: and also watched. Like I definitely felt that when it
Speaker 1: came to being part of black Twitter for a while,
Speaker 1: where you definitely feel like these people over here are
Speaker 1: doing something distinct of their own and let's lurk at it.
Speaker 1: It kind of in a lot of ways you wanted
Speaker 1: to be having these insult conversations with them, but the
Speaker 1: feeling that they were happening and a bit of a
Speaker 1: fish bowl digitally.
Speaker 2: And that I think that level of surveillance culture is
Speaker 2: not something I'm going to miss, right, I had already
Speaker 2: Twitter for me had been rendered largely unusable for like
Speaker 2: socializing with friends kinds of things a while before this,
Speaker 2: because and not even in a major way, but in
Speaker 2: a no matter what, there was always someone who had thoughts, feelings, opinions, right,
Speaker 2: and as like the API is being altered to prevent
Speaker 2: a lot of third party clients. I know, like today
Speaker 2: someone was saying that one of the things that made
Speaker 2: Twitter usable for visually impaired users, it's no longer going
Speaker 2: to work. Hearing impaired users are going to have slightly
Speaker 2: more time, but some of the tools they use, it's
Speaker 2: not going to be there anymore, things like that, right,
Speaker 2: all text, all of these things. And I feel like
Speaker 2: Twitter served a very high level and low level sort
Speaker 2: of purpose. But also we are going to have to
Speaker 2: go back to the pre Twitter days of jumping from
Speaker 2: platform to platform for a while, right, we got really
Speaker 2: comfortable with Twitter and Facebook kind of being seen as
Speaker 2: stable entities. But I don't know when the last time
Speaker 2: I went on Facebook for any real meaningful purpose. I
Speaker 2: don't like the interface, and on Twitter, that surveillance level
Speaker 2: had made it so that you were kind of tweeting
Speaker 2: a little looking at what people were talking about, and
Speaker 2: leaving for a lot of users who are you know,
Speaker 2: like I'm a power user because I used to use
Speaker 2: Twitter all day long. I would send hundreds of tweet today,
Speaker 2: chatting it out, talking to people, having thoughts on in
Speaker 2: public whatever. Because of all of the the eyes on me,
Speaker 2: which always sounds slightly paranoid, But because of that, I
Speaker 2: had already scaled back my Twitter usage heavily, not even
Speaker 2: in purpose, not even like, oh I'm going to keep
Speaker 2: these things to myself. It was just annoying. And now
Speaker 2: with what's what's happening? How much platform time do I
Speaker 2: want to spend with trolls? How useful is it?
Speaker 3: I thought you're in your piece for MIT Tech Review,
Speaker 3: I think that you.
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly how you put it, but you
Speaker 1: had it like it's not it's not a plaque form
Speaker 1: to live one's life, you know, It's like it's not
Speaker 1: a place where you're where you're necessarily going to look
Speaker 1: for connection.
Speaker 3: And it sounded like an even in your personal life.
Speaker 1: That Twitter just wasn't it for you anymore, that like
Speaker 1: you just weren't interested that you described it. When you
Speaker 1: when you do show up there, it feels like it's
Speaker 1: out of habit more than anything else. It's not like
Speaker 1: you're going there looking for connection.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because I can tell you a really stupid
Speaker 2: story about how I got I got done with using
Speaker 2: Twitter socially. I was talking to a friend of mine
Speaker 2: and we were talking about a workout routine that we
Speaker 2: had both tried, and someone briefly tried to turn that
Speaker 2: into like pro like fat phobic. Oh this is really
Speaker 2: fat phobic. Having this conversation in public, and we had
Speaker 2: said nothing about anyone's bodies, not even really our own,
Speaker 2: other than the usual uh yeah, I tried blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: It was really rough, kind of you know, he talked
Speaker 2: about things, and I couldn't figure out how we got there.
Speaker 2: And then there's this entire conversation happening in my mentions
Speaker 2: about whether or not this conversation with my friend about
Speaker 2: a workout we had both tried was really about something else,
Speaker 2: and I thought I have hit the point where we
Speaker 2: are reading into things. I always wondered how that would feel. Oh,
Speaker 2: I don't care for it, right, And so then me
Speaker 2: and my friends started to have those conversations not on public.
Speaker 2: On Twitter, we s don't have them, We just have
Speaker 2: them in a group chat, And as more things moved
Speaker 2: to the group chat, I have a hustling, bustling series
Speaker 2: of group chats going on. I don't necessarily think to
Speaker 2: go to Twitter in the same way in my personal
Speaker 2: life anymore. I don't even necessarily react to everything on Twitter,
Speaker 2: because sometimes news stories pass by, or someone tweeting something
Speaker 2: passes by, and in my brain, I think this does
Speaker 2: not pass the smell test. But It's not worth getting
Speaker 2: into it with people who are buying in on the
Speaker 2: spot to whatever is being said, because they're going to
Speaker 2: find out in a few minutes or a few hours
Speaker 2: that they were wrong, and they're going to want to
Speaker 2: erase all of their tweets about this, all of their
Speaker 2: engagement with this, you know. And I don't even need
Speaker 2: to jump in and participate. I can have this conversation
Speaker 2: with people who actually have a conversation.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is something I have absolutely felt that the
Speaker 1: story that you told about the workout with your friend.
Speaker 1: I have this theory that, like so something, we've reached
Speaker 1: a point where we have visibility into too many conversations
Speaker 1: between strangers where people are just injecting their own and
Speaker 1: like injecting and projecting a lot of their own stuff
Speaker 1: onto the conversations of.
Speaker 3: Strangers in ways that if you did it in real.
Speaker 1: Life, if you were in a cafeteria and two people
Speaker 1: were talking about a workout they had done, and I
Speaker 1: walked up to their table and sat down and said,
Speaker 1: this conversation is pat phobic and maybe it's actually about
Speaker 1: something else altogether, you would think that was.
Speaker 3: The weirdest thing in the world.
Speaker 1: And I think that we've I do think that we've
Speaker 1: hit a point where these platforms cease to be useful
Speaker 1: when they when they are when they feel this way,
Speaker 1: because because it's just not it's not an enjoy it
Speaker 1: doesn't not a way to connect with people that feels enjoyable,
Speaker 1: that level of surveillance, every little thing that you say,
Speaker 1: feeling like someone's going to take it the wrong way
Speaker 1: or project their own their own stuff onto it.
Speaker 2: Well, and this is the thing, because I definitely started
Speaker 2: to feel like and a certain point, is this about
Speaker 2: what I said? Or am I just where you put
Speaker 2: your feelings? And I think a lot of it is
Speaker 2: just where they put their feelings right, And that's the case.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't need to be here for this.
Speaker 2: And I think that, and then I think about how
Speaker 2: many of my friends who like I have a friend
Speaker 2: who pointed out to me one day I ever tweeted
Speaker 2: something she said because I thought it was funny, and
Speaker 2: she says, I know you didn't mean any harm, but
Speaker 2: can you not retweet me because I always end up
Speaker 2: with all of this crap in my mentions And I
Speaker 2: was very apologetic, offeratedly tweet and she was like, no, no, No,
Speaker 2: it's not like it's your fault. I just know your
Speaker 2: level of visibility is too much for me, and I
Speaker 2: hadn't I you know, like the frog and boiling water.
Speaker 2: I had gotten used to it, but I hadn't thought
Speaker 2: about what it feels like to kind of be thrust
Speaker 2: into this level of thing. And even though I was
Speaker 2: still occasionally retweet people or whatever or quote tweet them,
Speaker 2: I try to be more judicious. I'm not always successful.
Speaker 2: I always think about it, but I try to be
Speaker 2: more judicious when I do do it, because there's this
Speaker 2: point in the hypervisibility where I don't want people to
Speaker 2: be having a conversation about the things they didn't say.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about the things they did say,
Speaker 2: or I have a thought about what they said kind
Speaker 2: of thing. And I don't know where we go on
Speaker 2: Twitter with that, Like I don't see a way to
Speaker 2: salvage that part at this point.
Speaker 1: You know the way that you put that of like,
Speaker 1: am I just the place where you put your feelings.
Speaker 1: I'm not super visible on any social media platform, but
Speaker 1: I do wonder if that has something to do with
Speaker 1: you being a black woman, that do you something about
Speaker 1: the way that you show up online for folks as
Speaker 1: a black woman, means that you are the place where
Speaker 1: a lot of their feelings go. That, whether it's feelings
Speaker 1: of anger or wanting to call somebody out or wanting
Speaker 1: to show you something so that you have a publicly
Speaker 1: angry reaction, and that feels a certain way for them,
Speaker 1: like we're we're you kind of aren't a real person,
Speaker 1: You're just this abstraction online for them to project whatever
Speaker 1: they want onto you.
Speaker 3: Do you do you ever feel that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, it's one of the those things. First of all,
Speaker 2: I had to tell people to stop sending me things
Speaker 2: for me to respond to, right, Like, for a while
Speaker 2: their people would tagged me in their arguments with random people.
Speaker 2: I don't know you, I don't know them. I'm not
Speaker 2: joining into the middle of a conversation whatever. But also
Speaker 2: it started to feel like I am not a person.
Speaker 2: Oh God, so many people to go because and this
Speaker 2: is another sort of silly story, someone was mad about
Speaker 2: something I had said. Apparently they started tweeting it about
Speaker 2: it at around three am my time. Okay, somewhere in
Speaker 2: the following four hours they had worked themselves up to
Speaker 2: the point that you know, I was avoiding them. I
Speaker 2: was ignoring them? How dare I was? You know, a coward?
Speaker 2: Blah blah blah, And I get up, I get my
Speaker 2: kids out the door to school. And I used to
Speaker 2: for a while on my way to work. I would,
Speaker 2: you know, far around on Twitter on the way in,
Speaker 2: and I log on and I'm like, what is is this?
Speaker 2: Because I was asleep? It is seven am, right, what
Speaker 2: the heck are you doing? What is wrong with you?
Speaker 2: Kind of thing? And this person who had spun themselves
Speaker 2: into a frenzy in the middle of the night says,
Speaker 2: I completely forgot the difference in time zone. You weren't
Speaker 2: ignoring me. I'm sorry, and ends up deleting probably like
Speaker 2: forty tweets. But also, I had never responded to you,
Speaker 2: and you had never thought about the fact that I
Speaker 2: wasn't awake just because you were. It didn't even occur
Speaker 2: to you. Person whose name I won't say that I
Speaker 2: was a person with a life and responsibility, so right,
Speaker 2: like had not even crossed their mind. I have a joke,
Speaker 2: I tell friends there are no sick days on the internet,
Speaker 2: and yet in real life people take off work, So
Speaker 2: how do we expect people to be available? Twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven online.
Speaker 1: It makes no sense, and yet that is how everyone
Speaker 1: is operating.
Speaker 3: Sometimes.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I've seen people get very for lack of
Speaker 2: a way of putting it, get very in their feelings
Speaker 2: about someone not being available the moment they want them
Speaker 2: to be available online. And I sometimes have to also,
Speaker 2: and I have this whole thing I also say where
Speaker 2: I say parasocial relationships are beating people's asses every day
Speaker 2: right where. You enjoy this person, you enjoy their content whatever,
Speaker 2: or you don't, You hate them, you hate watch whatever.
Speaker 2: You don't realize anymore that that person does not know you,
Speaker 2: however much you feel like you know them. They don't
Speaker 2: know you. They are online on whatever their schedule is,
Speaker 2: and the rest of their time they are doing whatever
Speaker 2: it is they're doing right, whether they've got a family,
Speaker 2: or they've got a day job, or heck, they're writing
Speaker 2: a book or making songs whatever. People for whom the
Speaker 2: Internet is life, and there are people for whom the
Speaker 2: Internet is a job, and they overlap, but they are
Speaker 2: not necessarily the same people. And for people for whom
Speaker 2: the Internet is a job, there are specific times, hours,
Speaker 2: whatever that they are available and the rest of the time,
Speaker 2: no matter how much it may frustrate you person who
Speaker 2: perceives yourself to be in a parasocial relationship with them,
Speaker 2: they are not going to be available to And it
Speaker 2: happens to celebrities, and we've all kind of normalized that
Speaker 2: level of parasocial relationship, but increasingly it is happening to
Speaker 2: people just who speaks on the internet. Right, you can
Speaker 2: get fans, followers, supporters, whatever we're calling them, just by
Speaker 2: being a person who speaks online. The problem is that
Speaker 2: every word you say will not be the gospel truth.
Speaker 2: Everything you think will not be right for none of
Speaker 2: us right. But also the people following you may or
Speaker 2: may not really be paid attention to the reality that
Speaker 2: you are a whole person. One of the things that
Speaker 2: always sticks out to me is this idea that because
Speaker 2: you like someone, they can never be wrong. They absolutely
Speaker 2: can be wrong. Did that make sense outside of my head?
Speaker 3: It made so much sense.
Speaker 1: And the vibe of because I like this person, I
Speaker 1: am team them for life. If they say anything wrong,
Speaker 1: it must be right. I don't think there's a that's
Speaker 1: gotta be one of the most dangerous toxic vibes that
Speaker 1: we have, where I mean, I see it play out
Speaker 1: all the time and like, these are people. They're not
Speaker 1: gonna Just because somebody had a great take or wrote
Speaker 1: a great piece on one thing doesn't mean that you
Speaker 1: should blindly sign up for their takes on everything. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, be invested in them never being wrong.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like, like, I don't know how.
Speaker 1: We got to such a weird place when it comes
Speaker 1: to relationships and how they function online.
Speaker 2: I think part of what's happened, unfortunately, and I'm seeing
Speaker 2: this even more on TikTok, is that the entertainment people
Speaker 2: get right. Let's call it, like the skits you see
Speaker 2: on TikTok, the storytelling whatever on Twitter. All of these
Speaker 2: things that have happened over and over again on various platforms,
Speaker 2: makes people feel like this stuff is there for them.
Speaker 2: It is not necessarily that this person is doing something
Speaker 2: to entertain themselves that you happen to like. It has
Speaker 2: become Oh, this performance is for me, this article, this
Speaker 2: writing is whatever is for me, and therefore everything here
Speaker 2: is about me for me, and I don't have to
Speaker 2: have any sense of boundaries or limits or really grasp
Speaker 2: that this was just someone making a thing that was
Speaker 2: in their head. Right, we feel an ownership stake in
Speaker 2: the things we are fans of.
Speaker 1: I was a fan of Twitter ten years ago, as
Speaker 1: much as I criticized it, and that ownership stake Mickey
Speaker 1: describes well, as I watched the platform that I once
Speaker 1: loved become something else entirely I feel that too, So
Speaker 1: What's next? In a piece for MIT Tech Review, Mickey
Speaker 1: looks back on a career that she's built in part
Speaker 1: on Twitter and what the future of platforms holds. Twitter's
Speaker 1: importance five years ago cannot be overstated, she writes, But
Speaker 1: now as we look at the possibility of a future
Speaker 1: without Twitter, will anything really change for the average person
Speaker 1: who uses the Internet but doesn't live on it? Seting
Speaker 1: the scene for where we are and where we go next?
Speaker 1: Like I've seen so many people, myself included, writing about
Speaker 1: how much Twitter sucks now that Elon Musk has taken
Speaker 1: over blah blah blah. But in your MIT Tech Review
Speaker 1: piece you kind of pick up on something else that it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Elon must sucks and Twitter sucks because of him and
Speaker 1: all of that, But really, do you think that something
Speaker 1: there's sort of a larger cultural shift happening that is
Speaker 1: actually being mirrored via our use of technology, that it's
Speaker 1: not just about elon Musk being like sucking and ruining Twitter.
Speaker 1: Something else is happening where folks are just not that
Speaker 1: invested in showing in showing up on platforms like Twitter.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're spending more time on platforms like TikTok, Maybe
Speaker 1: they're less interested in social media as we all get older, Like,
Speaker 1: do you think something is happening more broadly in culture
Speaker 1: and that we're just visual experiencing that through technology in
Speaker 1: our relationship to it.
Speaker 2: I think what's happening is that for a lot of
Speaker 2: people as we are getting older, the earlier social media users,
Speaker 2: but also for a lot of people who grew up
Speaker 2: with social media. And I was having this conversation with
Speaker 2: a college student last night. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 2: there is a sense that the need to always be on,
Speaker 2: to always think about what people are perceiving of you,
Speaker 2: that you have no privacy online is driving a lot
Speaker 2: of people away from social media. Right once we started
Speaker 2: to hit a place where your social media could not
Speaker 2: just be used against your in terms of job stuff,
Speaker 2: but you don't know how it's going to be used
Speaker 2: because brands are using it. You're showing up on the
Speaker 2: news it can be used against you if you said
Speaker 2: something offensive, people dig up old offensive things you said.
Speaker 2: You may or may not still feel that way because
Speaker 2: it was seven, eight, nine years ago. All of these things.
Speaker 2: People started to feel like, well, what's the use of
Speaker 2: social media if I can't actually enjoy it, if I
Speaker 2: can't just hang out and spend time with my friends
Speaker 2: and have fun. And we're seeing people sort of trend
Speaker 2: someone on TikTok. I suspect there will be another platform
Speaker 2: or two before we settle wherever we're settling next. In
Speaker 2: terms of social media, we're seeing people kind of trend
Speaker 2: back almost to the days of like blogger and live journal,
Speaker 2: where you have a carefully curated private list of people
Speaker 2: you talk to, and maybe you have some things that
Speaker 2: are public, but you don't let everyone see what you're doing.
Speaker 2: You don't have your business in everyone's eyeballs because you
Speaker 2: don't want everyone else's business in your eyeballs. I think
Speaker 2: that we're also going to see the rise of those
Speaker 2: kids who were the early mommy blogger content, right like
Speaker 2: parent blog blog content. Kids there are almost adults now,
Speaker 2: some of them are legally adults. I think for a
Speaker 2: lot of them, the financial impact of having been content
Speaker 2: for twenty years but not necessarily being paid for being
Speaker 2: that content and having that experience shape their future means
Speaker 2: we're going to see a lot of people in court,
Speaker 2: in federal court very soon, right, Because for all that
Speaker 2: we have said, and about the most successful of them,
Speaker 2: the kids who were memes whatever, those kids have grown up,
Speaker 2: and yet when you google their names, it's the meme,
Speaker 2: it's the mommy blog content, it's the pictures of them
Speaker 2: with a poopy diaper on their head or whatever that
Speaker 2: comes up. And mom and dad or grandpa grandpa are
Speaker 2: guardians whoever they may. The money, they got the checks,
Speaker 2: but the kids get consequences. I don't foresee those kids
Speaker 2: being interested in social media, and I think they will
Speaker 2: be part of a growing number of people who are
Speaker 2: just like we should not know this much about each other,
Speaker 2: about total strangers. I think people will still use social
Speaker 2: media to some degree, but I think the way we
Speaker 2: use it is going to change again.
Speaker 1: So you think that we should really be letting the
Speaker 1: younger generation take the lead. Where do you see them
Speaker 1: leading us?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I think they will have some form.
Speaker 2: I think that they're going to like kind of reinvent
Speaker 2: private social media, right, whether it will be Snapchat or
Speaker 2: something else. But I think they're going to reinvent that
Speaker 2: kind of thing where they'll want to be able to
Speaker 2: talk to their friends. But I don't know that they're
Speaker 2: going to want to be able to talk to their
Speaker 2: friends in the way the general public can see. Because
Speaker 2: I'll be honest, not being able to like lock individual
Speaker 2: tweets was always a weird thing about Twitter. It always
Speaker 2: invites a certain level of harassment and just unpleasant context.
Speaker 2: Because Twitter definitely knew right way before we got to
Speaker 2: any of the conversations Cie works around here. Twitter definitely
Speaker 2: knew about four chan and on Reddit and all of
Speaker 2: those things, right, And we're seeing people who post on
Speaker 2: Reddit say, oh man, this stuff is going all over
Speaker 2: these things are going viral. I'm sure some of that
Speaker 2: is intentional. I just don't know that we really need
Speaker 2: to see everything with your face attached.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hate being perceived on social media. I'm every time
Speaker 1: I have a few glasses of wine and spend like
Speaker 1: actually do some tweeting. When I wake up the next
Speaker 1: day and I see like, oh, you've got five replies,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh no, why did I do this to myself.
Speaker 3: I hate it so.
Speaker 2: Much, and I mean, I think the answer, unfortunately is
Speaker 2: it used to be fun. It used to be great
Speaker 2: to like hang out and talk to your friends, and
Speaker 2: sometimes you slip up and you forget that. The way
Speaker 2: social media functions it also changed, right, like we've changed.
Speaker 2: But also now you have people who get online and
Speaker 2: they're looking for a fight, and they don't care who
Speaker 2: it's with, and it doesn't have to be on a
Speaker 2: particular topic. It's not something they feel passionately about. It's
Speaker 2: something that they just want someplace to argue, right, And
Speaker 2: a lot of times, like we call it sea lioning, right,
Speaker 2: the guys that just want a good debate and then
Speaker 2: won't go away. What else do you do but decide, okay,
Speaker 2: well people have perceived me, this person won't leave me alone,
Speaker 2: or these people or whatever. Sure, you meet, the conversations,
Speaker 2: you do all of these things. But at a certain point,
Speaker 2: where's the payoff for you in getting online in the
Speaker 2: first place? Right? I don't know if it wasn't still
Speaker 2: related to like my books, my work, my whatever. I
Speaker 2: don't know if I right now, if I were coming
Speaker 2: into social media now, right, like I was twenty four
Speaker 2: years old or whatever, and my job didn't require it.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how much I'd use it.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess this leads me to kind of my
Speaker 1: awkward final question, which is where can folks keep in
Speaker 1: touch with you?
Speaker 3: After all? After all this?
Speaker 1: It feels weird to be like, ohould they tweet at you?
Speaker 1: But where can folks like what? Like? What are you
Speaker 1: up to next? And where can folks keep in touch
Speaker 1: with all your work?
Speaker 2: So I have a website, I'm on TikTok, I'm on Twitter,
Speaker 2: I'm on Instagram. My handle is always the same. I
Speaker 2: am Carnethia here, there, and everywhere, and if uh it
Speaker 2: is not Carnesia, you'll figure it out very quickly. And
Speaker 2: then I'm currently after I get back from this trip,
Speaker 2: I am working on my next book and it is
Speaker 2: really an autopsy of the American dream. So it's gonna
Speaker 2: be a lot. People are gonna hate it or you're
Speaker 2: gonna love it. They're they're not. There's not gonna be
Speaker 2: a lot in between. We're gonna have some feelings.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I
Speaker 1: just want to say hi. You can just have hello
Speaker 1: at Tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts for
Speaker 1: today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls
Speaker 1: on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod. It's
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative Jonathan Strickland is
Speaker 1: our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.
Speaker 1: Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.
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