Speaker 1: So real quick before we get started, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to give a quick shout out to all of our
Speaker 1: listeners around the world, and I wanted to let y'all
Speaker 1: know that I am spending most of my July in Portugal.
Speaker 1: I've never been to Portugal before and I am beyond excited.
Speaker 1: And I know we have listeners in Portugal. So if
Speaker 1: you're listening in Portugal and you have a recommendation of
Speaker 1: something I just have to know about or have to
Speaker 1: check out while I'm there, please let me know. And
Speaker 1: if you are a listener and you want to maybe
Speaker 1: do an event or a live show or a meet
Speaker 1: up while I'm in Portugal, please reach out and maybe
Speaker 1: we can try to make it happen. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet. As a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget Todd and this is
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. So this week
Speaker 1: we did the first part of our two part series
Speaker 1: looking at the claim that Lena Dunham sexually abused her sibling.
Speaker 1: Episode one was all about the claim, where it came
Speaker 1: from and the cultural climate that fuelded. Next week we're
Speaker 1: looking more into the contest and one of my main
Speaker 1: reasons for wanting to talk about this issue is because
Speaker 1: I think it really shows what happens when lies, misleading,
Speaker 1: or inaccurate information is injected into conversations about what are
Speaker 1: really serious issues. You know, we're not even really able
Speaker 1: to have a real conversation about what actually happened because
Speaker 1: it gets so muddled with the lies. And it's a problem.
Speaker 1: And this all really reminded me of an episode we
Speaker 1: did with Michael Hobbs, formerly of one of my favorite podcasts,
Speaker 1: You're Wrong About All about how the topic of trafficking
Speaker 1: has kind of suffered from the same thing. So let's
Speaker 1: listen in you're listening to Disinformed, a mini series from
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: Bad guys are coming. They're coming for you, and they're
Speaker 1: coming for your kids. If you spend any time on
Speaker 1: social media in the last few years, you've probably heard
Speaker 1: some version of a story like that. Injers are waiting lurking,
Speaker 1: generally in the parking lot or the aisles of a
Speaker 1: big box store like Target, and they're hunting down women
Speaker 1: and their children to snatch them up in broad daylight
Speaker 1: for trafficking. This is not new at all. I definitely
Speaker 1: grew up hearing horror stories like the one about the
Speaker 1: woman driver terrified by a man tailgating or and flashing
Speaker 1: her high beams at night, but he's actually just trying
Speaker 1: to warn her that a man is in her back
Speaker 1: seat waiting to strike. Those stories definitely made a big
Speaker 1: impression on me. But instead of them just being passed
Speaker 1: around in home room, add in social media and stories
Speaker 1: like this can spread to peak virality online. Stories like
Speaker 1: these are especially common on social media. Just search the
Speaker 1: hashtag sex, traffic and awareness on TikTok and you will
Speaker 1: find thousands of women making videos about how traffickers tied
Speaker 1: a ribbon or a zip tied to their car to
Speaker 1: mark them as a victim, or how a van parked
Speaker 1: too close to them in a parking lot and it
Speaker 1: was a near miss for a trafficking attempt. The only
Speaker 1: issue is this kind of trafficking, where someone is snatched
Speaker 1: by a stranger in a public place, is exceedingly rare,
Speaker 1: Yet videos like these often go viral and social media,
Speaker 1: leading the impression that women should be afraid anytime they
Speaker 1: leave their homes to go to the store. In this
Speaker 1: two part episode, we'll explore the roots of online panics
Speaker 1: around trafficking, why they're so dangerous, and here from two
Speaker 1: people who are fighting back with facts. The podcast You're
Speaker 1: Wrong About is kind of a gold standard for revisiting
Speaker 1: moral panics and debunking the commonly held beliefs that led
Speaker 1: to them. Hosts Michael Hobbs and Sarah Marshall have found
Speaker 1: that in many ways, we're basically just doing a mad
Speaker 1: Lives where the blank is filled with some kind of
Speaker 1: boogeyman society can blame at times when people are feeling
Speaker 1: anxious or scared, like the Satanic panic of the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties, where parents were horrified that satanic cults were
Speaker 1: ritualistically abusing children, only that was never really happening. Basically,
Speaker 1: there was always some big scary threat that we need
Speaker 1: to be watching out for. My name's Michael Hobbs. I'm
Speaker 1: the co host of a podcast called You're Wrong About
Speaker 1: and another podcast called Maintenance Phase So Online. I find
Speaker 1: that so many conversations about big, complex issues, things like
Speaker 1: trafficking or homelessness, are really dominated by people who don't
Speaker 1: really know what they're talking about and who were either
Speaker 1: spreading bad information intentionally or unintentionally when you started making
Speaker 1: you're wrong about where you all starting out to give
Speaker 1: people the tools to push back against this kind of
Speaker 1: bad information. No, like this, this was completely accidental. We
Speaker 1: had no idea when we started that we would find
Speaker 1: out that America keeps having the same moral panic over
Speaker 1: and over again. This was not something that we thought.
Speaker 1: You know, it's all the same thing. It's like a
Speaker 1: tide that comes in and out, you know, the Satanic
Speaker 1: panic is always with us, q on is always with us.
Speaker 1: We had no idea that we would come up with that.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of we we research sort of debunk
Speaker 1: able episodes in history, and when you start to bunking them,
Speaker 1: you're like an hour or two into the research and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, it's this one again. Oh, we're going
Speaker 1: to do the thing where they're like strangers coming to
Speaker 1: get your kids, right, or there's some societal out group, right,
Speaker 1: like homeless people, like trans people, like sex offenders that
Speaker 1: we don't like, and we're going to project this extreme
Speaker 1: power onto them. We're going to project this extreme rapaciousness
Speaker 1: onto them. There's millions of them, you know, they're coming
Speaker 1: to the border, they're trying to steal your kids and
Speaker 1: get them into street gangs. I mean, it's it's like
Speaker 1: this mad libs where you can just throw in like okay,
Speaker 1: which societal outgroup is it going to be? What are
Speaker 1: they doing to our kids today? Like it's it's over
Speaker 1: and over again the same thing. So we've both me
Speaker 1: and my co host Sarah Marshall have become these like
Speaker 1: accidental insufferable debunkers who were like, nope, same one. We're
Speaker 1: doing this again, guys, Like, let's calm it down. We've
Speaker 1: done this seven times before. So in my research around disinformation,
Speaker 1: particularly like false panics, around things that are rooted in
Speaker 1: people's identities. So whether it's trans folks, queer folks, you know, immigrants,
Speaker 1: it is always sort of the same thing. Like I
Speaker 1: feel right now we're seeing all of the legislations would
Speaker 1: have meant to make you think as if trans children
Speaker 1: are like running the world, Like children are totally and
Speaker 1: there and and it's the same tropes, right, So they're
Speaker 1: coming for your kids, They're recruiting your kids, Like this
Speaker 1: is the same thing that Anita Bryant said about gay
Speaker 1: people in the seventies and the nineteen eighties, Like we're
Speaker 1: just running exactly the same playbook. Anita Bryant was a
Speaker 1: singer and beauty queen who famously led the Save Our
Speaker 1: Children campaign that attempted to save children by cracking down
Speaker 1: on gay people having rights. And we're just mad living
Speaker 1: in a new societal outgroup. So I mean, at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the pandemic, I read a bunch of books
Speaker 1: about the Black Plague, just out of like more, just
Speaker 1: out of like morbid curiosity. And you know what you
Speaker 1: find in these old panics, you know, these times of
Speaker 1: societal anxiety. You had some of the biggest pogroms against
Speaker 1: Jews in Europe in history. Right, it was like, there's
Speaker 1: this big thing we can't explain. There's all of these anxieties.
Speaker 1: People are dying all around me. Who can we blame? Like,
Speaker 1: we don't want to look at any existing societal structures.
Speaker 1: We don't want to look at something that's just difficult
Speaker 1: for us to explain. It's sort of out of our
Speaker 1: scientific knowledge. So, uh, there's this group here that seems
Speaker 1: sort of shifting, and we don't really like them. Let's
Speaker 1: blame them and kill a bunch of them. It's like
Speaker 1: these things are old, ancient human impulses, and they're very
Speaker 1: difficult to see at the time, but zooming out a
Speaker 1: little bit, you're like, oh no, this is just what
Speaker 1: happens during times of anxiety, and isn't the perfect recipe
Speaker 1: for a very anxious society a global pandemic. It's probably
Speaker 1: not a coincidence that has COVID worsened. We saw more
Speaker 1: and more content about Q and on and Save the Children,
Speaker 1: purporting to save kids from some perceived danger lurking out
Speaker 1: in the world. Why do you think right now the
Speaker 1: specific moment in politics and culture, why are we seeing
Speaker 1: this pursurgence of panic around sex trafficking and trafficking view thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to say exactly. I think you
Speaker 1: know this this really hit its peak last summer, all
Speaker 1: of this Q and on hashtag save the children stuff,
Speaker 1: and it really seems like there was a moment where,
Speaker 1: you know, we're in the middle of a pandemic. Information
Speaker 1: was all over the pace, right like, remember, we didn't
Speaker 1: like are we wearing masks? Are we not wearing masks?
Speaker 1: Some states are in lockdown, some states are aggressively not
Speaker 1: in lockdown. It was just this time where nobody really
Speaker 1: knew what was going on, And there's some research that
Speaker 1: indicates that sort of at times when you're really angry,
Speaker 1: you search for information that reinforces your worldview, and at
Speaker 1: times when you're really anxious, you are more open to
Speaker 1: information that doesn't reinforce your worldview. So all so, all summer,
Speaker 1: everybody's inside, we're all on our phones, there's nothing else
Speaker 1: to do, We're looking at the Internet, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you have people whose minds are a little
Speaker 1: bit more open to things like, well, maybe the real
Speaker 1: danger to children isn't COVID. Maybe it's actually these you know,
Speaker 1: white van driving traffickers who come from other countries and
Speaker 1: they're going to kidnap my kids and take them abroad
Speaker 1: or these these these narratives that just make no sense, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, at the heart of it, the little
Speaker 1: seed in the middle of it was this insane Q
Speaker 1: and on stuff right where it's like a dren of
Speaker 1: chrome and like Hillary Clinton is like cutting the faces
Speaker 1: off a baby, like completely nuts stuff. But there's enough
Speaker 1: sort of plausible deniability around that that you can very
Speaker 1: easily say, well, I care about children, and so what's
Speaker 1: the harm of sharing this little meme? Like what's the
Speaker 1: harm of taking this little thing on Facebook that says,
Speaker 1: you know, infamously there was one that said that children
Speaker 1: are thousands of times more likely to die of trafficking
Speaker 1: than of COVID, and so it feels, you know, and
Speaker 1: it was in like the the Instagram aesthetic right where
Speaker 1: it's got like the little logo and it's in pink,
Speaker 1: and it's very share able, and it's like, well, what's
Speaker 1: the harm, Like I might as well share that, you know,
Speaker 1: if it helps save a kid or two, then I'm
Speaker 1: doing something good. And that's some sort of that's a
Speaker 1: feeling of certainty in the world, right, But nobody thinks
Speaker 1: about what it does to reinforce these just deranged myths
Speaker 1: that aren't helping children, they're not helping non children, they're
Speaker 1: not helping anybody. But it's it's easy to forget that
Speaker 1: when you're like, well, what's the harm of sharing this?
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden these bananas memes start
Speaker 1: just bouncing around the Internet for months. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this out of listening to your wrong about with something
Speaker 1: that really helped make that transition for me, because you know,
Speaker 1: for a while, I'd like, well, if this person thinks
Speaker 1: it's going to do some good to share this unstrewn
Speaker 1: meme on their Facebook page about traffic and about child
Speaker 1: Who is it hurting? Now? I've come to see that. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if we over emphasize the risks of little kids being
Speaker 1: like snatched up or things like that, what are we
Speaker 1: under what are we under emphasizing you know, kids like
Speaker 1: youth who are facing homelessness, youth who are are put
Speaker 1: in precarious or you know, bad or dangerous situations, things
Speaker 1: that are much more common. Like if we focus on
Speaker 1: this big scary thing that isn't happening, all of the
Speaker 1: things that actually are happening, we're just taking attention away
Speaker 1: from that, right. And there's also this retributive aspect to
Speaker 1: where a lot of those memes that went around we're
Speaker 1: about sort of catching the pedophiles, catching the traffickers. You know,
Speaker 1: we have to find the evil people and we have
Speaker 1: to root them out of our society. And that's not
Speaker 1: where the threats to children come from. The threats to
Speaker 1: children are primarily in the family. A lot of it
Speaker 1: is things like homelessness. There's a very few youth homeless
Speaker 1: shelters in most cities in America, there's also a completely
Speaker 1: broken foster care system. So when you look at things
Speaker 1: like the sort of Missing and Exploited Child hotline, of
Speaker 1: the calls are coming from foster care. So when we
Speaker 1: talk about trafficking, we're mostly talking about runaways. We're mostly
Speaker 1: talking about kids who are abused at home, abused in
Speaker 1: foster care. They're queer, they're trans, they need a place
Speaker 1: to stay, they don't need somebody else to go to
Speaker 1: jail forever. And when we're sharing these means that are
Speaker 1: sort of blaming all of these societal problems on these
Speaker 1: societal others that we already don't like or a little
Speaker 1: bit wary of. Anyway, all we're really doing is contributing
Speaker 1: to these retributive solutions which do not make children safer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I also think it does kind of come down
Speaker 1: to what you were talking about before, this idea of
Speaker 1: like wanting to catch the bad guys. That's so much
Speaker 1: more exciting and fun. Then, Oh, we need to confront
Speaker 1: some of these systemic ills in our society that allow
Speaker 1: for already marginalized people of fault with the cracks. That's boring.
Speaker 1: It's so much more fun to be like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna track down these bad guys. Listen a quick break.
Speaker 1: They're back on Instagram. Video made by a mom influencer,
Speaker 1: Katie Sorenson, where she said that two strangers tried to
Speaker 1: kidnap her kids in a Michael's craft store in California,
Speaker 1: got over two million views Monday of this week. My
Speaker 1: children were the targets of attempted kidnap, which is such
Speaker 1: a weird thing to even vocalize. Um, but it happened, um,
Speaker 1: and I want to share that story with you in
Speaker 1: an effort to raise awareness as to what signs to
Speaker 1: look for and to just encourage parents to be more
Speaker 1: aware of their surroundings and what is going on around them.
Speaker 1: Sorenson said that she overheard the couple making comments about
Speaker 1: her kid's appearance, and the man even tried to grab
Speaker 1: at her child stroller. But when the couple saw their
Speaker 1: picture being posted on saved the children forms online in
Speaker 1: connection with an attempted kidnapping, they came forward to deny
Speaker 1: any wrongdoing and cooperated with the police investigation. Grandparents themselves,
Speaker 1: they said they had just been discussing their own grandkids,
Speaker 1: not Sorensen's kids. Their daughter says Sorensen's allegations were racially
Speaker 1: motivated because their parents are Latino. Police cleared the couple
Speaker 1: of any wrongdoing and closed the case, and Sorensen says
Speaker 1: that she shared her story just to warn other parents
Speaker 1: to remain vigilant. But this is a great example of
Speaker 1: why sharing stories just for awareness is not always a
Speaker 1: helpful thing to do. It also over emphasizes the idea
Speaker 1: that white kids are at risk for being kidnapped by
Speaker 1: strangers from public places and affluent suburbs, which when it
Speaker 1: comes to trafficking, is exceedingly rare, while de emphasizing that
Speaker 1: the existing threats out there are much more likely to
Speaker 1: be family members or trusted community members praying on vulnerable people,
Speaker 1: and that those targeted are more often than not marginalized youth,
Speaker 1: queer kids, or trans kids, or kids facing poverty or homelessness.
Speaker 1: Like someone who's kidnapping children and taking them across state
Speaker 1: lines and keeping them in motel rooms and forcing them
Speaker 1: to have sex with people, which almost doesn't exist. I mean,
Speaker 1: then the number of confirmed cases of that you can
Speaker 1: almost count on one or two hands. It's extremely rare.
Speaker 1: Kids are running away from home, they don't have a
Speaker 1: place to stay. They don't feel safe where they're sleeping,
Speaker 1: they end up sleeping on the streets. Somebody pulls up
Speaker 1: in a car and says, I'll give you a place
Speaker 1: to stay tonight if you have sex with me. Like
Speaker 1: that is something. It's called survival sex. It is a
Speaker 1: very well known phenomenon. It is a huge problem. And
Speaker 1: the way that you solve it isn't by putting anybody
Speaker 1: in jail. It's having a phone number for those kids
Speaker 1: to call and a van comes and picks them up
Speaker 1: and takes them somewhere safe. And we've known this forever
Speaker 1: and we're not doing anything about it, and so that's
Speaker 1: less meimable, that's less sort of satisfying to share online.
Speaker 1: But it's like, we just need more places for kids
Speaker 1: to go. Who needs somewhere to sleep? Like that's it, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think you make a good point that the
Speaker 1: people who are often targeted for this kind of thing
Speaker 1: are queer kids, trans kids, youth of color, black youth.
Speaker 1: And I think it's so interesting that if you spend
Speaker 1: any time scrawled in TikTok, the people who are taking
Speaker 1: up the most space in terms of talking about the
Speaker 1: risk that trafficking poses are white women, you know, suburban
Speaker 1: white women, And so I can't help but see this
Speaker 1: real disconnect in terms of who is actually the target
Speaker 1: and the actual person who is harmed by this and
Speaker 1: the people who are talking about it and making the
Speaker 1: most content about it. Ins but of like scaring people
Speaker 1: about it. What what do you think is going on there?
Speaker 1: I will just say for the record, no one is
Speaker 1: doing zip ties on your car at target. No one
Speaker 1: is hiding under your car to cut your ankle with
Speaker 1: the razor blade. I mean, the minute you google, or
Speaker 1: even like you don't even have to google, you just
Speaker 1: have to think about these things. Does it make sense
Speaker 1: to lie down underneath somebody's car for hours and wait
Speaker 1: for them with like a razor blade in your hand
Speaker 1: and then slice their achilles heel? Like that's not a
Speaker 1: fun or smart thing to do for somebody who wants
Speaker 1: to try to kill you, Right, So, all of these
Speaker 1: kinds of stories, it's just it's very important to just say,
Speaker 1: like on their face, stuff like this really doesn't happen
Speaker 1: very much. We know that the primary risks to women
Speaker 1: are from their partners and from their dad's And if
Speaker 1: you're somebody younger. It's like a soccer coach or somebody
Speaker 1: in power. Right, it's like a weird scout leader who's
Speaker 1: asking you to stay over at his house the night
Speaker 1: before one of these camping trips. Like these are these
Speaker 1: are the threats to people and to children, and they're
Speaker 1: mostly from people who have enough societal power that you
Speaker 1: don't trust your gut. So one of the things you
Speaker 1: find in a lot of these stories his parents will say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we thought it was a little bit weird that,
Speaker 1: you know, the priest asked our son to sleep over,
Speaker 1: but you know he's a priest. How could he ever,
Speaker 1: you know, how could he ever harm our son. He's like,
Speaker 1: this felt weird to us, but you know he has
Speaker 1: this sort of societally bestowed power that makes us not
Speaker 1: trust our gut. Like this is what power does. And
Speaker 1: so the thing that we need to look for our
Speaker 1: places where we have power in society and we don't
Speaker 1: have accountability, and we already have so much accountability, like
Speaker 1: I don't want to imply that, like there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as somebody in a white van who's kidnapping kids whatever.
Speaker 1: It It's much more common for someone to abuse the
Speaker 1: trust of children and and especially abuse the trust of
Speaker 1: marginalized children. Right, because if you don't feel safe at home,
Speaker 1: you might turn to a soccer coach as somebody to
Speaker 1: talk to, as somebody who feels safe, even though they aren't. Right,
Speaker 1: this is the process of sort of making somebody unsafe
Speaker 1: and physically threatening somebody often does come down to tricking
Speaker 1: them and looking for these elements of marginalization that and
Speaker 1: looking for these aspects of marginalization that make them easier
Speaker 1: to trick. So at every level, it's the vulnerable kids.
Speaker 1: It's finding the vulnerable kids and giving them actual safe
Speaker 1: places to go and safe adults to actually talk to
Speaker 1: about this stuff. So again boring, but like that's that's
Speaker 1: not something that you can see and target, but it's
Speaker 1: this is what society needs, and it's what we've needed
Speaker 1: for decades. We're just not doing well. After a quick break,
Speaker 1: let's get right back into it. When women make videos
Speaker 1: on social media about them or their kids narrowly escaping
Speaker 1: being hunted by would be traffickers, they often go viral.
Speaker 1: That's because we've deemed it okay to talk about the
Speaker 1: perceived threat of strangers or the other. But what about
Speaker 1: when women talk about people they know of using their power,
Speaker 1: people in their communities or in their own homes, even
Speaker 1: though the actual threat is much more likely to be
Speaker 1: someone you know, not a stranger in a van. Women
Speaker 1: are not always supported when we speak up about it.
Speaker 1: I do think as a society it's okay for women
Speaker 1: and families to call out like, quote unquote bad guys
Speaker 1: if they're scary monsters showing up in a van. But
Speaker 1: if it's somebody that lives with, somebody in your family,
Speaker 1: somebody in your church, somebody in your community, Like, we're
Speaker 1: pretty uncomfortable with women, you know, calling out people in
Speaker 1: those positions who abuse their power. But if somehow it's
Speaker 1: like totally fine, if you're thinking of it is like
Speaker 1: calling out a bad guy at a van. And that's
Speaker 1: also that's another aspect of marginalization, right that if it's
Speaker 1: a poor mother, maybe she's a single mom, maybe she's
Speaker 1: working two jobs, and she doesn't see her kids that much,
Speaker 1: and she goes to some authority and she says, you know,
Speaker 1: I feel a little bit weird about this soccer coach.
Speaker 1: People might not believe her. They're like, isn't she a
Speaker 1: bad mother anyway? Right? So at every level. Marginalization makes
Speaker 1: it so much harder to address these problems because that
Speaker 1: just gives you know, the priest is going to have
Speaker 1: a lot more credibility than the single mom who's not
Speaker 1: home as much as she'd like to be. So at
Speaker 1: every level, these are the things that we have to
Speaker 1: address and setting up formal systems to investigate these things
Speaker 1: and actual accountability mechanisms. So I keep saying I only
Speaker 1: have one argument on the show, but like we just
Speaker 1: need to do the boring stuff, Like I wish it
Speaker 1: was more interesting than that. No, it's so true. And
Speaker 1: you know, you talk a little bit. You talked a
Speaker 1: bit about like zip ties on your car and people
Speaker 1: hiding under your car. Like what role do you think
Speaker 1: that local media and also law enforcement has to play
Speaker 1: in this because I I've read articles where on its
Speaker 1: face it would appear that a police officer or somebody
Speaker 1: in law enforcement has confirmed, yes, we saw this zip
Speaker 1: gi on the cars and this is a trafficking thing.
Speaker 1: But actually when you like dig dig, dig a little
Speaker 1: deeper into it, you're like, Okay, this police officer is
Speaker 1: confirming that this person called the police and they came
Speaker 1: for this reason. But it's not actually, it's not actually
Speaker 1: any proof that like this was tied to a trafficking attempt.
Speaker 1: What world do you think that journalists and law enforcement
Speaker 1: should play and making sure that these panics don't spin
Speaker 1: out of control. If one of the ones I think
Speaker 1: it was last summer maybe last fall, was these poor
Speaker 1: people had their wedding and they had some flowers left
Speaker 1: over from their wedding, and they thought it would be
Speaker 1: cute to put them on people's car in a parking lot,
Speaker 1: and then people came out to their cars and found
Speaker 1: a flower and they freaked out there like it's traffickers.
Speaker 1: I marked the traffickers after me, and these poor people
Speaker 1: who are just trying to do something nice or like
Speaker 1: all of a sudden sort of smeared as traffickers. And
Speaker 1: what was amazing was the cops sort of like re
Speaker 1: enforced this. It's like, oh, you know, we've we've had
Speaker 1: threats recently of trafficking, and you know, we've we've heard
Speaker 1: rumors of trafficking, and of course the local media reinforces
Speaker 1: this too that you know, trafficking is a huge problem
Speaker 1: in this area and it could happen to anyone, but
Speaker 1: not in this particular case, and there's no sort of
Speaker 1: attempt to debunk the meta myth here that people are
Speaker 1: staking you out in parking lots to kidnap you. Like
Speaker 1: that even even for like truly evil people, that doesn't
Speaker 1: make that much sense. Parking lots are really really public,
Speaker 1: and it's like broad daylight. And why would you leave
Speaker 1: a flower to like communicate with the other traffickers, like
Speaker 1: just text the other traffickers, Like it doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense on any level. But we get this weird credulity,
Speaker 1: especially around this issue that you know, one of the
Speaker 1: tenants of journalism is you're supposed to do sort of
Speaker 1: both sides. Right. We saw this for climate change for years, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's the people that say the climate change is
Speaker 1: real and then there's the whack jobs who say that
Speaker 1: it's not. But we have to put both of them
Speaker 1: on the air. Right. But then, weirdly, when it comes
Speaker 1: to trafficking and these other stranger danger myths, there's no
Speaker 1: need to speak to like actual sex workers whore like,
Speaker 1: this is not how sex work works. There's no need
Speaker 1: to talk to actual child advocates or social workers. There's
Speaker 1: no need to talk to anybody who's skeptical of this.
Speaker 1: It's just like, well, cops say, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: trafficking out there, so let's just tell people that. So
Speaker 1: it's just really frustrating that there isn't the same level
Speaker 1: of scrutiny and the same journalistic standards applied to these
Speaker 1: kinds of stories that hits something like really deep within
Speaker 1: us of like, oh, this is the danger I have
Speaker 1: to worry about. Yeah, I think I hadn't even thought
Speaker 1: about that. But it's a good point, and I part
Speaker 1: of me wonders if it's a little bit of hesitation
Speaker 1: because and I struggled with this as well. You don't
Speaker 1: want to feel like you're invalidating somebody's experience, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if somebody feels like like they were targeted or they
Speaker 1: were like something sketchy was going on, I want people
Speaker 1: to feel like that experience is okay to talk about.
Speaker 1: But I also don't want someone to use that experience
Speaker 1: to feel something that's just not true that's going to
Speaker 1: a result in more harm. Right, And there's also there
Speaker 1: are real cases of this opening. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of the challenges with moral panics is that most
Speaker 1: moral panics, they never come from nothing right, we had
Speaker 1: this massive panic in the nineteen eighties and nineties about
Speaker 1: quote unquote stranger danger that you know, kids were gonna
Speaker 1: come and steal your kids, and like, there were some
Speaker 1: truly horrific, awful, heartbreaking cases where this really did happen.
Speaker 1: This is why, this is how we got all of
Speaker 1: these you know, Jacob's Law and Megan's Law and all
Speaker 1: these laws that are named after kids and things like
Speaker 1: the Amber alerts. So there were real cases. But the
Speaker 1: problems that these these very small number of truly heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: true cases get expanded into this massive national problem that
Speaker 1: we all need to be worried about, and it very
Speaker 1: quickly becomes this thing of like, well, if it saves
Speaker 1: one child, right, we can sacrifice our civil liberties. We
Speaker 1: can incarceerate a bunch of people on sort of spurious
Speaker 1: grounds if it saves one child and one thing, you know,
Speaker 1: as somebody who is a urban cyclist and somebody who
Speaker 1: takes like urban safety very seriously. This is not a
Speaker 1: standard that we apply to the lives of children in
Speaker 1: other contexts. Right, If you if you want to save
Speaker 1: the life of one child, you crack down on guns.
Speaker 1: Guns kill three thousand kids a year, cars kill six
Speaker 1: thousand kids a year. Right, you could make the speed
Speaker 1: limit in every single city fifteen miles an hour throughout
Speaker 1: the country, and you would literally save the lives of
Speaker 1: like kids, because most kids are killed by speeding cars.
Speaker 1: But that's not a sacrifice that we're willing to make
Speaker 1: because that's something that I would have to sacrifice. I
Speaker 1: would have to I would have to drive slower. Whereas
Speaker 1: whenever it comes to these you know, if it saves
Speaker 1: a life of one child, these kinds of sacrifices, it's
Speaker 1: always somebody else who's going to make the sacrifice. It's
Speaker 1: somebody else who's gonna go to jail. That the effects
Speaker 1: of this are going to be inflicted on a societal outgroup.
Speaker 1: So this this entire logic of like, you know, we
Speaker 1: must do this to save one child. That's great logic,
Speaker 1: but it's not a logic that we apply to any
Speaker 1: other social problem. That's so true, And I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the idea that the people who are going
Speaker 1: to be further criminalized harmed by this by when we
Speaker 1: make laws, you know, kind of quickly, as long as
Speaker 1: it's not like me feeling that repercussion, you know, as
Speaker 1: long as someone else dealing with it, I think that
Speaker 1: we're much more comfortable with that. What can we do
Speaker 1: to avoid falling into moral panics, even ones that are
Speaker 1: like well intentioned? You know, how can we avoid this
Speaker 1: on a on a wider scale. I mean, I want
Speaker 1: to say, like, be careful with what you share, but
Speaker 1: like I'm not all that careful with what I share. Like,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of information out there, it's really hard
Speaker 1: like people, you know, we shouldn't all be having to
Speaker 1: read the nutrition label on every single piece of information.
Speaker 1: I will say, just on these kinds of things, it's
Speaker 1: it's never strangers. It's never like these kinds of mono myths.
Speaker 1: Anything that looks like the sort of remember the flashing
Speaker 1: your high beams gang initiation stuff, Those are totally bunk.
Speaker 1: Anything involving like random targeting of civilians, it's that really
Speaker 1: never happens. Anything the stranger is kidnapping you in broad daylight.
Speaker 1: I think there's like certain categories of anecdotes that are
Speaker 1: just like these ones never turn out to be true,
Speaker 1: so we should just stop sharing them. Like, don't don't
Speaker 1: feel like you have to warn people about anything involving
Speaker 1: a parking lot if a parking lot is involved, people
Speaker 1: are safe. I mean they're all like videotaped at this
Speaker 1: point exactly like people are safe and parking lots just
Speaker 1: like leave the parking lots alone. It's fine. It's so
Speaker 1: funny because I went back and listened to the episode
Speaker 1: that y'all did about sex trafficking and the list of
Speaker 1: things that they tell young people to look out for
Speaker 1: that could be signs of trafficking. Things like if somebody
Speaker 1: is moody, or if somebody all of a sudden starts
Speaker 1: dressing different or wearing different clothes, or if they get
Speaker 1: a bar code tattoo as somebody who grew up kind
Speaker 1: of you know, gothy goth adjacent, ALTI adjacent. I know
Speaker 1: two different people who had bar code tattoos. Right, All
Speaker 1: of the warning signs of trafficking are like teenage stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, she's moody, or like, like her taste
Speaker 1: in music changes. You're like, that's not a sign of trafficking,
Speaker 1: that's a sign of teenager nous. That's a sign a
Speaker 1: sign of adolessis Yeah. So another I mean another like
Speaker 1: rule of thumb that just don't share anything involving trafficking basically, like,
Speaker 1: I think this, this word, this whole field is so
Speaker 1: tainted at this point that it's just not useful to
Speaker 1: share any of the viral post statistics like until we
Speaker 1: know more, just like hold off on the trafficking stuff. Gang. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's great advice. I would also say, like, not
Speaker 1: that I think that any celebrities listen to this, listen
Speaker 1: to my podcast, but when well meeting celebrities get involved
Speaker 1: in a trafficking campaign, shut it down right, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're a good guy, don't use you, don't. It
Speaker 1: sets me when I see celebrities who I'm sure like
Speaker 1: their hardest in the right place, but like getting involved
Speaker 1: in trafficking campaigns that are tied to specific legislation like
Speaker 1: Sesta Fosta, It's like, oh, like it just does such
Speaker 1: a bad look on such a complicated issue. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the biggest thing is that, you know, the trafficking
Speaker 1: field right now is this weird, unholy alliance between very
Speaker 1: well meaning celebrities and anything well meaning people and not
Speaker 1: well meaning, mostly Republican legislatures who want to use this
Speaker 1: as an excuse to crackdown on immigration, to crack down
Speaker 1: on sex work to crack down on children anything that
Speaker 1: they perceive as posing a threat to children, which is
Speaker 1: mostly like trans people. So I think any time we
Speaker 1: have any bills being pushed by these super Republican legislators,
Speaker 1: I think, just like be careful with that stuff. Like
Speaker 1: any time you have the religious right and the Republican
Speaker 1: Party pushing one of these bills, like just slow down
Speaker 1: and like ask actual sex workers, like what is in
Speaker 1: this bill and are you in support of it? Like
Speaker 1: over and over again, we end up talking over the
Speaker 1: groups that actually get affected by this and just like, know,
Speaker 1: some sex workers follow a bunch of sex workers online
Speaker 1: and see what they're mad about, and like they are
Speaker 1: not mad about this kind of stuff. They're mad about
Speaker 1: the legislators that are trying to take their rights away. Again,
Speaker 1: there is so much to say about how we talk
Speaker 1: about trafficking online, especially on TikTok, where so many viral
Speaker 1: claims about trafficking take off. Next we'll hear from Jessica,
Speaker 1: who goes by blood Bath and Beyond on TikTok about
Speaker 1: her use of TikTok to spread accurate information about trafficking.
Speaker 1: When we start drowning out that conversation we're We're not
Speaker 1: only are we not letting that get the spotlight where
Speaker 1: it really needs to be the forefront of this conversation,
Speaker 1: we're also hurting the actual victims directly themselves because we're
Speaker 1: creating this idea and this culture around what trafficking looks
Speaker 1: like and what the average victim looks like. So when
Speaker 1: a victim comes forward and says I think I was
Speaker 1: sex trafficked or I need help, people are less inclined
Speaker 1: to believe them because we've created this narrative that most
Speaker 1: trafficking victims are innocent, upper middle class white women getting
Speaker 1: kdnapped from target. If you enjoyed this podcast, please help
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Speaker 1: Dis Informed is brought to you by There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet. It's a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Unbossed. Creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Toy Harrison is our supervising producer and engineer. Michael Amatto
Speaker 1: is our contributing producer. I'm your host Bridget Tod For
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