Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production of iHeart Podcasts and Kaleidoscope.
Speaker 1: I'm os Vlosian, and today Karen Price and I will
Speaker 1: bring you the headlines this week, including how Interpol is
Speaker 1: keeping up with new types of crime. Then on tech Support,
Speaker 1: we'll talk to the Washington Posts Drew Holwell about one
Speaker 1: woman's three year twenty four to seven live stream experiment.
Speaker 2: Some of the people I talked to who were Emily's fans,
Speaker 2: they would go to sleep listening to Emily's voice.
Speaker 1: All of that. On the Weekend Tech It's Friday, May Night.
Speaker 1: So Carol, we have become quite fascinated on this program
Speaker 1: by personas online who aren't exactly what they seem.
Speaker 3: That is absolutely right.
Speaker 4: In last week, you'll remember we did the deep dive
Speaker 4: on AI John Cena, who's the metabot, getting into all
Speaker 4: kinds of illegal sexual situations, which was very disturbing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's right. I've got a story this week
Speaker 1: though about real people pretending to be something they're not
Speaker 1: online and a novel way of catching them out.
Speaker 3: Is that called a dating app?
Speaker 1: They tell me this is basically this is geopolitical catfishing.
Speaker 1: According to cybersecurity experts, thousands of North Korean infiltrators are
Speaker 1: getting hired by Fortune five hundred companies.
Speaker 4: So the North Koreans who aren't fighting with Russia on
Speaker 4: the battlefields of Ukraine are working for large American corporations.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And then once they get hired, they
Speaker 1: collect their wages, but they also steal intellectual property and
Speaker 1: insert malware.
Speaker 3: So in a way, this is another battlefield.
Speaker 1: That's very well put Cara. There's a publication called The
Speaker 1: Register which reported that these North Korean infiltrators have gone
Speaker 1: undetected by masking their IP addresses by creating farms of
Speaker 1: laptops which are physically situated in the US, and then
Speaker 1: they basically pay US people to allow them to remotely
Speaker 1: dial into these laptop farms. They're also of course using
Speaker 1: AI to write job applications as everyone is, and making
Speaker 1: fake LinkedIn profiles. Once they actually get hired there, they
Speaker 1: tend to do very well because they have a whole
Speaker 1: army of other North Koreans helping them do their jobs
Speaker 1: in the background.
Speaker 3: So they have actual coworkers, they have.
Speaker 1: Co workers there as a front man who gets the
Speaker 1: job and then dozens of people who help them do
Speaker 1: an excellent job. And part of the story is actually
Speaker 1: that even when companies become aware, they don't want to
Speaker 1: fire these people because they're so much better than all
Speaker 1: the other employees.
Speaker 3: So they're keeping they get to keep their job.
Speaker 1: I think they probably do in the end to have
Speaker 1: to get rid of them. One cybersecurity expert, however, has
Speaker 1: found a full proof way to catch out a suspected
Speaker 1: North Korean infiltrator in a job interview.
Speaker 3: That's something that I need to know in my every
Speaker 3: day life.
Speaker 1: It all starts with a question, do you know what
Speaker 1: the question is?
Speaker 3: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: How fat is Kim Johnkwun? Ask me the question, how
Speaker 1: fat is Kim junk Wun? Well, you're not too long.
Speaker 1: North Korean infiltrated would immediately close out of the video
Speaker 1: conference because even contemplating that question is to.
Speaker 3: As Wow, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: So that's fake fake people of the wheat story.
Speaker 4: I'll have one next week for you, maybe about me.
Speaker 4: So you love stories about fake people online. I love
Speaker 4: Peanut M and MS very good match.
Speaker 3: Very good. You know who eats Pean and M and MS.
Speaker 4: Probably Kim Johnon He may do he may If you
Speaker 4: can get an eminem into.
Speaker 1: Big red wine enthusiasts.
Speaker 4: French red wine really attressive, of course, not chatewed Diana
Speaker 4: so well. Speaking of Chateau Diana and peanut m and ms,
Speaker 4: there's a new app that is gaining popularity that a
Speaker 4: lot of my friends actually use, and it's this app
Speaker 4: that tells you how guilty your guilty snacking pleasure.
Speaker 1: Is like a calorie counter apple, what.
Speaker 3: Sort of it's like calorie counter adjacent.
Speaker 1: It's called yuka, like the vegetable. That's correct, but it
Speaker 1: also has yuck in it.
Speaker 3: I just made up a new word. That's correct. It's correct.
Speaker 4: That's correct for those of you, like OZ who are
Speaker 4: unfamiliar with it. The app actually lets you scan the
Speaker 4: barcodes of different foods and personal products and then gives
Speaker 4: them a score based on how healthy it is. Everything
Speaker 4: that I've ever scanned is like you will die.
Speaker 1: So you basically you take a photo of the barcode
Speaker 1: and upload it to the app, and then it kind
Speaker 1: of spits out what the product has in it.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1: How did the M and ms do?
Speaker 3: Zero out of one hundred?
Speaker 1: Is actually true?
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yes, the nuts in them?
Speaker 3: What you said?
Speaker 4: They contain at least six additives, four of which it
Speaker 4: rated as high risk.
Speaker 3: Whatever high risk means.
Speaker 4: It's already I'm too far gone because I eat pan
Speaker 4: and Eminem's every single night.
Speaker 3: I call them my night chocolate.
Speaker 1: You know. I read that the app sometimes offers healthier
Speaker 1: alternatives for products that you've scanned or looked up, and
Speaker 1: I'll produce a tory. Actually tried scanning some Twinkies. Sadly,
Speaker 1: there are no alternatives.
Speaker 4: This is like when people say, oh, do you want
Speaker 4: to have sex? Free sex? You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: It's just that to me, Well, it's like how I
Speaker 4: feel about all these alternatives. So I actually have a
Speaker 4: friend who was pushing Yuka on me so hard, and
Speaker 4: I'm like, leave me out of this drama. I don't
Speaker 4: want to see what's in the products that I'm eating.
Speaker 4: But it actually looks like she's not alone. Unsurprisingly, our
Speaker 4: dear RFK Junior and his wife both use Yuka.
Speaker 1: This is the app you use if you want to
Speaker 1: have the feeling of the United States Secretary of Health
Speaker 1: and Human Services constantly whispering over your shoulder about food additives.
Speaker 1: And indeed, those emin ms have red forty, which.
Speaker 4: Is so sad because red eminems are my favorite m
Speaker 4: and ms. You know, I think it speaks to a
Speaker 4: sort of health conscious, make America healthy moment people are having.
Speaker 3: Like if you've been to.
Speaker 4: The grocery store recently, they're putting protein on everything, like
Speaker 4: protein waffles.
Speaker 3: Like, why do I need prote in my popcorn? It's
Speaker 3: just popcorn?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: There are sodas with extra fiber and probiotics in them.
Speaker 4: You've got steak and shake transitioning away from using seed
Speaker 4: oils in French fry, Like if I go to steak
Speaker 4: a chake, I want to eat a French fry. I'm
Speaker 4: not trying to eat like an avocado oil French fry.
Speaker 1: The wood Street Channal reported that Yuka has sixty eight
Speaker 1: million users worldwide, and an average of twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: new US users have joined daily since the beginning of
Speaker 1: this year, twenty five thousand people every day. At the
Speaker 1: beginning of May, Yuka rank as the number one health
Speaker 1: and fitness app in Apple's app store. Not only that,
Speaker 1: major food brands like Campbell's and Chabani have responded to
Speaker 1: customers complaining about the ingredients they find in their products
Speaker 1: while using Yuka.
Speaker 4: I don't want to think that we are all becoming
Speaker 4: Rfki junior. But I think at least once you download
Speaker 4: the app, you can think that you're being health conscious,
Speaker 4: even if it's one time.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the thing is like if you're
Speaker 1: reaching for a bag of M and m's no judgment,
Speaker 1: you kind of know it's not besting anyway.
Speaker 4: Anything that I reach for, It's like, I don't need
Speaker 4: an app to tell me if I'm doing something right now.
Speaker 1: I think if you're choosing between like different frozen dinners,
Speaker 1: for example, and one is like categorically best than the other,
Speaker 1: that like, if you're like it's an input to a
Speaker 1: switching decision versus like should I eat the eminems, I
Speaker 1: can imagine it being more useful.
Speaker 4: Yes, and I do think people are interested in finding
Speaker 4: healthy alternatives, which is an interesting thing.
Speaker 3: I guess that comes out of Yuca. Yes, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: Well, some people are looking into what's going into their food,
Speaker 1: others into what's going into their clusrooms.
Speaker 3: Very nice.
Speaker 1: Thank You've got a headline for us about this.
Speaker 4: I do have a news story for you about what's
Speaker 4: going on in the classroom, a place I haven't been
Speaker 4: in at least fifteen years. Recently, over two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty CEOs, from Microsoft's Satya Nadella to Josh Kushner's Karly
Speaker 4: Klaus to the CEO of the College Board signed an
Speaker 4: open letter calling for computer science and AI to be
Speaker 4: quote a core part of US kindergarten through twelve curricula.
Speaker 4: The letter states that taking just one high school computer
Speaker 4: science course can boost students few wages by eight percent,
Speaker 4: regardless of career path or college attendance.
Speaker 1: One of these moments where we were like in peak,
Speaker 1: everyone should learn to code, and then it was like
Speaker 1: no one should learn to code, and now it's like
Speaker 1: people should learn to code again.
Speaker 4: I know I'd to use a computer very young, and
Speaker 4: my income has not been boosted by eight percent.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you that.
Speaker 1: The letter doesn't specify really how this curriculum should be
Speaker 1: developed and rolled out, but it does point to countries
Speaker 1: like Singapore, China, and South Korea as examples of countries
Speaker 1: they've done this successfully. The letter reads, quote in the
Speaker 1: age of AI, we must prepare our children for the
Speaker 1: future to be AI creators, not just consumers. A basic
Speaker 1: foundation in computer science and AI is crucial for helping
Speaker 1: every student thrive in a technology driven world. Without it,
Speaker 1: there is falling behind.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a huge investment in AI education from countries
Speaker 4: who want to get a long term edge in the
Speaker 4: AI race, Like the UAE. The Amoradi school system will
Speaker 4: add AI as a subject in the upcoming school year
Speaker 4: and will include concepts like ethical awareness and real world applications.
Speaker 4: Schools in Beijing will start offering AI courses in September
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 1: Here in the US, President Trump recently signed an executive
Speaker 1: order calling to emphasize AI competency in schools. The executive
Speaker 1: order also called the establishment of a Presidential Artificial Intelligence
Speaker 1: Challenge and nationwide competition for students and educators demonstrate their
Speaker 1: AI skills.
Speaker 4: This reminds me of the Bass pro fishing Python Hunter
Speaker 4: Bowl in Florida, which is something I really loved. But no, honestly,
Speaker 4: it seems like kids are demonstrating their AI skills, just
Speaker 4: not in the ways that teachers would perhaps like them to.
Speaker 4: New York Magazine actually ran an article titled quote everyone
Speaker 4: is cheating their way through college, And there was actually
Speaker 4: a statistic in there that was really striking, which is
Speaker 4: that in a survey of one thousand college students, nearly
Speaker 4: ninety percent the other ten percenter line had used chat
Speaker 4: gpt for homework help. And this was back in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three, before chat gpt became you know, every eighty
Speaker 4: year old's best friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that last ten percent, I think it's probably been
Speaker 1: accounted for since twenty twenty three. One of the students said, quote,
Speaker 1: with chat gipt, I can write an essay in two
Speaker 1: hours that normally takes twelve. It can't be easy being
Speaker 1: k through twelve teacher or college professor these days. Some
Speaker 1: of them have tried devising their own ways to detect
Speaker 1: chatchipt usage in their student's essays. Others say, you can
Speaker 1: tell when an essay is written by a chatbot because
Speaker 1: it's written clunkily or random words. But of course these
Speaker 1: models are just getting better and better.
Speaker 4: I mean, we got away with it in the script,
Speaker 4: didn't we know? I'm kidding, But the way that I
Speaker 4: would have exploited chat gypt at sixteen seventeen eighteen. You know,
Speaker 4: all I had back in my day was free translation
Speaker 4: dot com, which allowed me to write long French essays.
Speaker 1: Yes, you can work well enough to did it depends on.
Speaker 3: As my B plus baby as MYB plus.
Speaker 1: So our next headline is about competition between the US
Speaker 1: and China, but not in the classroom and not really
Speaker 1: an AI, rather in the realm of vehicles. The Wall
Speaker 1: Street Journal around this headline with the story what a
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars electric suv says about the US China
Speaker 1: car rivalry. The car in question is the Toyota BZ
Speaker 1: three X, which is a compact electric suv about the
Speaker 1: same size as the Toyota RAV four, which of course
Speaker 1: is ubiquitous here in the US. But the car has
Speaker 1: a jaw droppingly low price tag.
Speaker 4: If an electric car costs fifteen thousand dollars, it would
Speaker 4: be like a plug and chug driver.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, you can thank China's supply chains for the
Speaker 1: price of the car. Toyota are obviously a Japanese company,
Speaker 1: but the cars are localized in different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: and this suv is made in China using Chinese batteries
Speaker 1: and Chinese driver assistance technology. But when Toyotas are sold
Speaker 1: in the US, the supply chain is way more expensive.
Speaker 1: There's a similar model available here for about forty thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: so someone else, why don't you buy the Chinese version
Speaker 1: and import it. Well, that'd be the most beautiful word
Speaker 1: in English language tariffs, except in this case, bidener are
Speaker 1: tariffs which put one hundred percent tariff on Chinese evs.
Speaker 4: And I don't see Trump reversing that one.
Speaker 1: That's not one of the ones he's going to be
Speaker 1: running back gus for sure.
Speaker 4: But it's a weird thing how much we live in
Speaker 4: this parallel universe with China, Like fifteen thousand versus forty thousand,
Speaker 4: is I guess a one hundred percent tariff?
Speaker 3: There you go, that's that.
Speaker 1: More. And China people buy local car brands that we've
Speaker 1: never heard of here in the US Zeka Ion there
Speaker 1: is one that's slightly more well known called BYD not
Speaker 1: by me. And the technology around these Chinese evs is
Speaker 1: very impressive. C ATL, a Chinese battery manufacturer, recently showed
Speaker 1: off a new EV battery that can put three hundred
Speaker 1: miles of charge into a car battery in just five minutes.
Speaker 3: That's insane.
Speaker 1: These companies in China, these battery companies and car companies
Speaker 1: are really really pulling ahead in the race.
Speaker 3: That's incredible.
Speaker 4: It just seems like cars are a really good reflection
Speaker 4: of the sort of siling off of global economies, at
Speaker 4: least between the US and China, and with the addition
Speaker 4: of more tariffs on Chinese imports, this it probably isn't
Speaker 4: going to change anytime soon.
Speaker 3: Bye. By globalization.
Speaker 1: There is one area though, where countries still work together,
Speaker 1: and that's Interpol.
Speaker 3: You know, you're right about that.
Speaker 4: And I wanted to tell you a little bit about
Speaker 4: this Financial Time story that I read about how Interpol
Speaker 4: has been adapting to the technologies modern criminals are using.
Speaker 4: Interpol you know, is, of course the International Criminal Police Organization.
Speaker 1: Of course I didn't know that. I thought you would.
Speaker 3: You're supposed to know all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I thought it was French Interpol.
Speaker 4: So let me say it again for you, international criminal
Speaker 4: police organization. And they have been engaged in a technological
Speaker 4: arms race with the world's most wanted criminals. I always
Speaker 4: think of inspector Gadget when I think of this stuff.
Speaker 1: The article is a great read, and it describes Interpol's
Speaker 1: innovation lab, which is in Singapore, with an opening scene
Speaker 1: quote a fleet of underwater drones, gleaming and ready for action,
Speaker 1: is lined up along the wall. Nearby a small armory
Speaker 1: of brightly colored three D printed guns displayed on a
Speaker 1: side table. A robot dog named Ino lies prone on
Speaker 1: the floor waiting to be activated.
Speaker 3: There's something filthy.
Speaker 4: When I first read that, I was like, you know,
Speaker 4: I do not like the way they're talking about you
Speaker 4: in this article. He lies prone on the floor. That's
Speaker 4: how you know FT is a British newspaper. But yeah,
Speaker 4: the FT actually interviewed the head of Interpol's Digital Forensics
Speaker 4: team and he said that the advancement of technology in
Speaker 4: the last couple of years is the biggest he's seen,
Speaker 4: which is saying a lot because he's actually been working
Speaker 4: there since the late nineties to keep up with the
Speaker 4: evolution of cybercrime. Interpol actually opened the Singapore Lab in
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen, and these days one of their main focuses
Speaker 4: is identifying AI enabled scams, which, as you know and
Speaker 4: as we know as a listenership, are getting more and.
Speaker 3: More sophisticated with the use of deep fakes.
Speaker 4: Just a decade ago we were dealing with the Nigerian
Speaker 4: print scam, and now we are trying to tackle deep
Speaker 4: fake romance scams, sextortion and multimillion dollar phishing attacks. So
Speaker 4: when the FT reporter visited the Interpol lab, it was
Speaker 4: monitoring nearly three point five million attempted cyber attacks, and
Speaker 4: he was told that that was fairly typical.
Speaker 1: I especially like the section about the robot canine units.
Speaker 1: Some of the models Interpol has are the size of
Speaker 1: a German shepherd, and they can run up to seven
Speaker 1: and a half miles per hour, and they can jump
Speaker 1: pretty high. And they can also be sort of two
Speaker 1: way microphone systems carrying audio messages, which apparently can be
Speaker 1: quite handy in hostage situations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so say what you want about technology being used
Speaker 4: for morally dubious ends, but if I were the hostage
Speaker 4: in that situation, at least my confusion would distract from
Speaker 4: my panic, Like you'd be waiting for your captors to
Speaker 4: untie you while they argue with a robot dog.
Speaker 3: Like. Also, robot dogs can't retire or get sick or
Speaker 3: get sick.
Speaker 4: I actually just heard this story about how bomb squad
Speaker 4: unit dogs have to retire with their owners.
Speaker 1: Essentially, so the New York Police dogs basically they're one
Speaker 1: person dogs.
Speaker 4: And if they're handle or retire, they're like woh, Wow,
Speaker 4: come to my retirement party.
Speaker 1: Where's these robot dogs?
Speaker 4: Exactly the root, completely owner agnostic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But one of the big takeaways from the piece, this
Speaker 4: ft piece, is that even with the innovation Lab, Interpol's
Speaker 4: job is never over.
Speaker 1: We talked about dogs, Now it's time for game of
Speaker 1: cat and mouse.
Speaker 4: Criminals will catch up and vice versa. You know, take
Speaker 4: ghost guns for example. They are popular amongst criminals because,
Speaker 4: unlike traditional firearms, they do not have serial numbers, and
Speaker 4: so Interpol is now trying to figure out how to
Speaker 4: link a ghost gun to their specific printers by analyzing
Speaker 4: the composition of the materials in order to figure out
Speaker 4: their origin.
Speaker 1: I joked about cat and mouse gains. But you can
Speaker 1: just imagine how the next innovation will be disguising the
Speaker 1: variable compositions of these ghost guns. We've got a couple
Speaker 1: more headlines to run through, Starting with another crime story.
Speaker 1: The Guardian reports that a trial over a road rage
Speaker 1: induced killing of a man called Chris Pelk is underway,
Speaker 1: starring Chris Pelke and Ai. Generated Pelky appeared in a
Speaker 1: video calling for forgiveness for the man accused of shooting
Speaker 1: him in what maybe the first AI delivered victim impact
Speaker 1: statement ever delivered in a courtroom. I'm going to play
Speaker 1: a fore.
Speaker 3: Now, in another life, we probably could have been friends.
Speaker 3: I believe in forgiveness and in God who forgives.
Speaker 1: I always have and I still do.
Speaker 3: I love what does he keep saying.
Speaker 1: I love that AI Judge shows out towards I love
Speaker 1: that AI.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, yea incredible.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: The script was written by Pelky's sister and brother in law.
Speaker 1: They fed the AI model, you know, images and video
Speaker 1: of Pelki, but they actually wrote this script and I
Speaker 1: thought it was quite quite moving that they would want
Speaker 1: to go so far and above and beyond to give
Speaker 1: a victim impact statement asking for forgiveness for the shooter.
Speaker 4: It's incredible. Also, this is essentially a deep fake because
Speaker 4: of their brother. And I've seen a lot of deep fakes.
Speaker 4: This one is very good. Other than that it looked
Speaker 4: sort of computer generated. It is computer generated, so another
Speaker 4: deep fake news. Do you remember that picture of the
Speaker 4: late Pope France is wearing a Montclair puffer jacket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this Ski Ski Sheek. It was like supreme Pope.
Speaker 4: It was the Supreme Pope. It was AI generated but beloved. Nonetheless,
Speaker 4: and now we sort of have a sequel to this.
Speaker 4: The White House posted an AI generated picture of President
Speaker 4: Trump dressed as the Pope hat robe, cross everything.
Speaker 1: True, respect, that's right.
Speaker 4: This post on X comes weeks after the passing of
Speaker 4: Pope Francis and days after Trump said to media I'd
Speaker 4: like to be Pope. There's been plenty of backlash from
Speaker 4: state leaders to the New York archbishop, but when the
Speaker 4: BBC asked a spokesperson for the Vatican to comment, they declined.
Speaker 1: Finally, move over Hershey, Pennsylvania. According to The New York Times,
Speaker 1: SpaceX is building a company town. Officially, residents of an
Speaker 1: area surrounding SpaceX's launch site in the southern tip of
Speaker 1: Texas have voted to create a city called star Base.
Speaker 1: Starbase will be home to some three thy five hundred
Speaker 1: SpaceX employees, and the proposed city boundaries include land owned
Speaker 1: by the company and planned areas to build more housing.
Speaker 1: SpaceX has filed paperwork with the state of Texas to
Speaker 1: build a school, a power plant, and of course, a
Speaker 1: sushi restaurant near He's hose. Yeah, that's why his main
Speaker 1: residence is wild and where he voted. Apparently, the new
Speaker 1: designation will also allow SpaceX to close a nearby beach
Speaker 1: for rocket launches without the permission of the wider community.
Speaker 4: And today we take you out on a joke from
Speaker 4: care Price, which is, yes, I work at the Starbucks
Speaker 4: in Starbase. That's good.
Speaker 2: That's very good.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break now, and then
Speaker 1: we're joined by the Washington Posts Drew Harwell to learn
Speaker 1: about the three year live streaming marathon of Emily CC.
Speaker 4: Stay with us, I can help, but wonder would I
Speaker 4: watch someone drink a Starbucks from starbas on a live
Speaker 4: stream or.
Speaker 1: Eat a Starburst from Stargate. This brings us to our
Speaker 1: next segment, which is a story I can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 1: For a lot of teens and young adults, sitting down
Speaker 1: and watching your favorite streamer play a video game or
Speaker 1: live react to an event is as natural as watching
Speaker 1: the Kardashians. And the Bravo of the live streaming world
Speaker 1: is Twitch, a subsidiary of Amazon. Some of Twitch's most
Speaker 1: popular streamers have tens of thousands of paid subscribers and
Speaker 1: millions of views on their streams. They include political commentators
Speaker 1: like Hassan Pika, gamers like Ninja, and marathon streamers like
Speaker 1: kai sannot who will stream for hours at a time,
Speaker 1: interacting with their subscribers and even performing requested stunts for
Speaker 1: a fee, of course.
Speaker 4: But there's one streamer in particular, a twenty eight year
Speaker 4: old Texas woman who goes by the username Emily CC,
Speaker 4: who has taken this concept of the live stream marathon
Speaker 4: to a whole different level. For the past three years,
Speaker 4: Emily has streamed her life twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 4: seven days a week. She streams while driving, sleeping, shopping,
Speaker 4: and only disappears from the camera to use the restroom.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, it is a huge sacrifice to
Speaker 1: broadcast your life NonStop. I think I read the last
Speaker 1: time she went on a date was seven years ago.
Speaker 4: This to me is like peak parasocial And what surprises
Speaker 4: me most is that she has over three hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty thousand followers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's part social experiment, it's part next generation reality TV,
Speaker 1: it's part monetizing your own life with the hustle, and
Speaker 1: it encapsulates everything you said in terms of this increasingly personal,
Speaker 1: parasocial way that people interact with other people they don't
Speaker 1: know online. And recently, The Washington Post published a profile
Speaker 1: of EMILYCC and with thrilled to have the author, the
Speaker 1: technology reporter Drew Harwell here with us today, Drew, Welcome
Speaker 1: to tech stuff. Thanks for having me. So I actually
Speaker 1: have Twitch dot tv slash EMILYCC open in front of
Speaker 1: me right now. Emily is unfortunately asleep while her dog
Speaker 1: is awake in the crate in front of her bed,
Speaker 1: and she has the subhead on her Twitch. I'm in
Speaker 1: an article watch post exclamation mark, Social record exclamation mark.
Speaker 1: So evidently she wasn't too upset with your reporting. But
Speaker 1: how did this come about?
Speaker 2: I cover creators to the post And one day I
Speaker 2: was just sort of, you know, procrastinating on X and
Speaker 2: I saw this clip of Kai Sanai. He's like the
Speaker 2: biggest star there is on Twitch. He was doing this
Speaker 2: month long stream called Mafia than Io from his mansion
Speaker 2: and between a couple of his stunts, they were just
Speaker 2: kind of sitting around the computer and they were like, hey,
Speaker 2: let's look up the longest streaming which person we can,
Speaker 2: And they pulled up Emily and she was just shocked,
Speaker 2: right because she was at home, like playing some goofy
Speaker 2: video game and they both had this connection and she
Speaker 2: was crying and Kai was really blown away, and she
Speaker 2: talked about, you know, how she had been streaming for
Speaker 2: three years twenty four to seven, never stopped, how she
Speaker 2: was so tired, and yet she felt like she couldn't
Speaker 2: quit the stream because she was so committed to it.
Speaker 2: And it just struck me as such a fascinating human
Speaker 2: story because the things she has to do to abide
Speaker 2: by this like crazy challenge are wild, but to just
Speaker 2: a great example of how inhuman the demands for streamers
Speaker 2: can be, right. I mean, these are people who really
Speaker 2: want to stand out on the Internet, and to do so,
Speaker 2: they have to push themselves to the limits, and they
Speaker 2: do so not knowing whether it'll pay off, not knowing
Speaker 2: whether they'll even be streaming to anybody, or just you know,
Speaker 2: five people and just sort of wasted time. So just
Speaker 2: struck me as, you know, a fascinating example of so
Speaker 2: many things we have to deal with on the modern Internet.
Speaker 1: How did you persuade her to sit? First? Story? And
Speaker 1: then will you in the twitch? While you were doing
Speaker 1: your reporting, I guess you were.
Speaker 2: So I'll start with her. I just reached out to her,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd like doing profiles on creators, influencers and
Speaker 2: the creator economy. I'd like doing narrative journalism, and so
Speaker 2: I reach out to them and say, hey, just let
Speaker 2: me tell your story. I want to understand you. I
Speaker 2: want our readers to understand you. We have a pretty
Speaker 2: old reader base, so a lot of this stuff is
Speaker 2: very new to them. But I think, you know, in
Speaker 2: my mind, I always see them as labor stories. These
Speaker 2: are people who see the Internet as a career and
Speaker 2: you know, the workplace for them is their home and
Speaker 2: the Internet, and they don't really have a lot of
Speaker 2: labor protections. They work for faceless companies who they hope
Speaker 2: to make money from, but who basically don't care if
Speaker 2: they live or die, right because there's always going to
Speaker 2: be another twenty three year old streamer. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: just took reaching out to Emily, and you know, she
Speaker 2: was very game, and it was funny because everything I
Speaker 2: talked with her about was on stream and it was
Speaker 2: a really new experience for crazy, you know, it was crazy.
Speaker 2: It was great. When I do these stories, I have
Speaker 2: a kind of pre interview phase where I talked to
Speaker 2: them over the phone. I walked them through this whole
Speaker 2: weird experience of having a reporter shadow them, and so
Speaker 2: we did some phone calls, we did some video calls
Speaker 2: over Discord, which is kind of like a twitch communication
Speaker 2: platform of choice. And then yeah, of course I spent
Speaker 2: time with her in Austin. All of it was live streamed,
Speaker 2: and so I could see in the chat as a
Speaker 2: thousand people were watching. They were commenting on every question
Speaker 2: I was asking, and you know, I'm asking sensitive questions
Speaker 2: about like her lack of sex life, her bad experiences
Speaker 2: with her parents, and how depressed she is. And this
Speaker 2: whole time, the commenters are like either making fun of
Speaker 2: the question or saying like, oh, well, I knew you
Speaker 2: could ask about that, or you know, if I ask
Speaker 2: a nice question, they're like, oh w like when for
Speaker 2: mister Washington Post, or they'd call me unk as in
Speaker 2: like uncle, like the old guy. So it was just
Speaker 2: like so funny, and you know, for her, it was
Speaker 2: like the most usual, normal thing in the world to
Speaker 2: have people just commenting on that. But actually, when I
Speaker 2: was in Austin with her, she stepped the way to
Speaker 2: the bathroom for a minute and I was just sitting
Speaker 2: alone in front of her computer while everybody was still
Speaker 2: watching me. Everybody was posting these comments, and I felt
Speaker 2: like my face flush. It just it's such an unusual
Speaker 2: experience to have so many people watching you. And I
Speaker 2: really felt in that moment like I understood more of
Speaker 2: what she put herself through. Our lizard brains are not
Speaker 2: built to process this amount of attention at all times,
Speaker 2: and yet that was just normal for her, So it
Speaker 2: gave me a good sense of what she has to
Speaker 2: go through.
Speaker 4: That's an incredible image, just imagining the journalist as the
Speaker 4: subject moves away, sort of doing exactly what the subject
Speaker 4: is used to doing, and just yes looked at in
Speaker 4: that way.
Speaker 2: It was wild. I mean you could basically still pull
Speaker 2: up the clips now with me with her and like
Speaker 2: petting her dog. You know, it's to see it on
Speaker 2: the other side of the screen and to see that
Speaker 2: place where she lives, not just in the box on
Speaker 2: my monitor, but actually in real life.
Speaker 1: It was like it's like you got to watch The
Speaker 1: Truman Show and then play a character in it for
Speaker 1: a moment and then leave again. Talk about the record.
Speaker 1: This is as of Friday May ninth, How long will
Speaker 1: Emily have been doing this for?
Speaker 2: She has been online streaming twenty four to seven for
Speaker 2: one two hundred and seventy nine days, and that's twenty
Speaker 2: four to seven. You know, she does go to sleep,
Speaker 2: she takes showers, you know, there's stuff when she's not
Speaker 2: on camera, but all of that the camera has been
Speaker 2: on recording and you can actually see in the data
Speaker 2: it's wild. Like nobody really attempts that. It is a
Speaker 2: crazy record, probably for good reason. But there are a
Speaker 2: lot of marathon streamers who do long streams a month,
Speaker 2: a week, two months, and they put themselves through these
Speaker 2: wild challenges right where they'll lock themselves into a closet
Speaker 2: or like ty Sinai, he basically created his own circus
Speaker 2: with over like stunts and celebrity cameos, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's a really interesting kind of entertainment because we're used
Speaker 2: to these disparate blocks of like I watch a TV
Speaker 2: show for thirty minutes, but these streamers, like they foster
Speaker 2: that parasocial relationship with people where it's like my fans
Speaker 2: are going to wake up, They're going to turn on
Speaker 2: my Twitch, They're going to see what I'm doing. They're
Speaker 2: going to watch me all day. They're just going to
Speaker 2: have me in a tab on their computer thinking about me.
Speaker 2: And some of the people I talk to who were
Speaker 2: Emily's fans. They would go to sleep listening to Emily's voice,
Speaker 2: and she was the background noise of their life. And
Speaker 2: the stuff Emily puts herself through is I think fascinating.
Speaker 2: But also these people who devote their lives to her
Speaker 2: are really interesting too, because they really do see Emily
Speaker 2: as a friend. And the more time I spent with Emily,
Speaker 2: the more I got it. If I'm going to be
Speaker 2: spending a lot of time alone by myself, it makes
Speaker 2: sense to just have this person kind of there. It's
Speaker 2: sort of like there's a person in the room, like
Speaker 2: I have a roommate, and you know, if I can
Speaker 2: relate to somebody like Emily, if I can relate to
Speaker 2: the people I see on TV, why wouldn't I want
Speaker 2: them around all the time. So you kind of get
Speaker 2: where it comes from. We can kind of like scrutinize
Speaker 2: are these real relationships? Are these real friendships? Like? Are
Speaker 2: they real?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Is this just like an illusion? But I think people
Speaker 2: do kind of get something from it, and I think
Speaker 2: it's kind of interesting to understand the gift and the
Speaker 2: curse of how this stuff comes together.
Speaker 4: Can you just talk a little bit about how she
Speaker 4: got started doing this because it started differently than it
Speaker 4: is now.
Speaker 2: So she was an only child. She grew up you know,
Speaker 2: on screens, watching TV shows and video games. She was nineteen,
Speaker 2: she was working at a CBS as a cashier, not
Speaker 2: really knowing what she wanted to do with her life.
Speaker 2: A lot of her friends had moved away. She kind
Speaker 2: of stayed home. She didn't have a lot of money.
Speaker 2: She had a boyfriend who was obsessed with playing video games,
Speaker 2: and she would go over to his house and kind
Speaker 2: of bring her laptop and basically entertain herself. Why he
Speaker 2: was busy gaming, and I think basically to put her off,
Speaker 2: he said, you know, why don't you like stream yourself
Speaker 2: on Twitch? Like you've got no friends, right, Like you
Speaker 2: just do your own thing on the internet. And she
Speaker 2: saw that as like, Okay, maybe this is a way
Speaker 2: to build friendships and make friends, and so she started
Speaker 2: like a lot of streamers do, where she was playing
Speaker 2: you know, World of Warcraft, a multiplayer games and recording
Speaker 2: her face in the box on the corn the screen.
Speaker 2: And you can go back and actually see the statistics
Speaker 2: of her first streams, like nobody was watching, right, A
Speaker 2: couple people here and there, and she just kept doing
Speaker 2: it and she felt I think, a sense of purpose
Speaker 2: from it because she wasn't getting purpose from her school,
Speaker 2: wasn't really feeling it in her job, and this was
Speaker 2: something that she could do on her own, devote her
Speaker 2: life to, and she just kept doing it and doing
Speaker 2: it and doing it. And this happens with a lot
Speaker 2: of creators where you know they are really driven to
Speaker 2: be the best they can be, and their computer is
Speaker 2: always there, their webcam is always there. So she just
Speaker 2: really kind of fell into it and now jumped to
Speaker 2: three years later, it has become her life and you know,
Speaker 2: she doesn't even really know a way to stop because
Speaker 2: it's been so so critical to how she lives.
Speaker 4: And the numbers are important, but I want to also
Speaker 4: talk about the money, like she has paying subscribers, but
Speaker 4: can she actually live on this wage?
Speaker 2: Let me break down kind of the revenue of how
Speaker 2: this works for creators, because it is really interesting. I
Speaker 2: think she can make a living wage. She's not a millionaire.
Speaker 2: There is a class of people who are millionaires on Twitch,
Speaker 2: like a lot of creator platforms, it's a one percent problem.
Speaker 3: There's the one percent of Twitch.
Speaker 2: Totally kind of like the one percent of Hollywood, right,
Speaker 2: and the one percent of Major League sports where there's
Speaker 2: a lot of people who just basically straight by. She's
Speaker 2: kind of I would say, maybe the upper middle class.
Speaker 2: It sounds like based off of her following, she makes
Speaker 2: probably around five thousand dollars a month, maybe more, maybe
Speaker 2: ten thousand dollars a month, so it's nothing to sneer at.
Speaker 2: And on Twitch, if you get a number of followers,
Speaker 2: you can get a share of the subscriptions. People pay
Speaker 2: Twitch six dollars a month to subscribe to her channel.
Speaker 2: You can watch her for free, but if you subscribe,
Speaker 2: you get special emojis, you can you know, send her messages.
Speaker 2: You get these little perks of subscriptions. So there's that.
Speaker 2: Then on Twitch, people can donate to you outright. They
Speaker 2: can give you tips. A lot of times people will
Speaker 2: drop into your stream, maybe make fun of you or
Speaker 2: do a crazy sound effect. There's been situations where like
Speaker 2: Emily will go out to the grocery store and an
Speaker 2: elevator and someone will prank her by like paying a
Speaker 2: dollar to play like a fart noise over her cell
Speaker 2: phone just kind of embarrass her in person. So you know,
Speaker 2: she lives alone. She lives in an apartment. She doesn't
Speaker 2: really do anything, but she makes more than she would
Speaker 2: have made at CBS. And this is something she talked
Speaker 2: about where she feels like this is capitalism. She's just
Speaker 2: making a living. However, she feels like she can you know,
Speaker 2: she felt like, I could finish at community college and
Speaker 2: stay working at CVS, or I could do this other
Speaker 2: risky thing, And why would I not do it? Because
Speaker 2: I'm making more than I ever would have done, you know,
Speaker 2: moving groceries around.
Speaker 1: What's it costing her to do this? I don't mean
Speaker 1: financially so much as personally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's costing her a lot, I think, And she
Speaker 2: talks about this pretty openly. You know, for three years
Speaker 2: she has devoted her life to being online all the time.
Speaker 2: So there's kind of the tangible stuff.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: She wasn't flying anywhere because then she would be offline
Speaker 2: for a little bit, so she couldn't stream. She was
Speaker 2: saying no to wedding invitations, right. She's talked about she
Speaker 2: went to like a club with a friend one time
Speaker 2: and the service was really bad in the club, so
Speaker 2: she had to leave. And she's talked about losing friends
Speaker 2: because not everybody wants to be on a stream with
Speaker 2: hanging out with her. She doesn't have a good relationship
Speaker 2: with her parents. Her parents don't really understand what she's doing.
Speaker 2: They don't want to be on stream. So there's a
Speaker 2: lot of kind of like human losses. But I think also,
Speaker 2: you know, she started to wonder just about the opportunity cost.
Speaker 2: When you're devoting twenty four seven to your stream, you're
Speaker 2: not doing a bunch of other things that might make
Speaker 2: you happier, might lead to something else. And so you know,
Speaker 2: she's still making those judgments every day, but there's a
Speaker 2: lot that goes into it that she's had to sacrifice
Speaker 2: just to be part of this crowd.
Speaker 1: Why do you put this in let's say the history
Speaker 1: of like reality TV experiments and as a famous Doky
Speaker 1: series recently about the Japanese man who lived in that
Speaker 1: room being broadcast for like two years and you know,
Speaker 1: was really at the edge of his sanity by the
Speaker 1: end of that experience. And the contestant, right, there's a
Speaker 1: woman you mentioned in your piece called Jennifer Ringley who
Speaker 1: had a continuous broadcast of her life back in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands. I guess what's new and what's old
Speaker 1: and what does all of this say about us?
Speaker 2: So I find them really interesting examples because it shows
Speaker 2: that some of this is not new, and I think
Speaker 2: it speaks to this human impulse in us that desires
Speaker 2: to watch people be people and to just look at
Speaker 2: them through the glass. It's why we watch reality TV.
Speaker 2: So why I watch reality TV, right, I want to
Speaker 2: see people interact in these situations and process that. I
Speaker 2: think what's changed from that is that it has become
Speaker 2: normalized to the point where we are all creators in
Speaker 2: a way. Right. We use social media all the time,
Speaker 2: we perform for our family and friends on the internet.
Speaker 2: It's just become something that seems not so crazy more.
Speaker 2: And I think it's kind of expanded the Overton window
Speaker 2: on what we feel is acceptable. When you know, one
Speaker 2: hundred years ago, it would have been crazy that we
Speaker 2: would ever watch somebody in all of these private moments
Speaker 2: or even make money off of it.
Speaker 1: There's also this kind of algorithmic bias towards extreme content, right,
Speaker 1: But there's this interesting element of this story where the
Speaker 1: algorithmic bias towards extreme content mix people behave or incentivizes
Speaker 1: people to behave in more extreme ways. In real life,
Speaker 1: there is a British only fans creator who you mentioned
Speaker 1: in your story called Lily Phillips, who ran a stunt
Speaker 1: where she slept I think, with one hundred men in
Speaker 1: twenty four hours and it kind of broke the internet
Speaker 1: a few months ago, and then another sort of YouTube
Speaker 1: creator made a kind of interview piece with her where
Speaker 1: she broke down, which kind of broke the internet a
Speaker 1: second time. Can you tell us a bit about how
Speaker 1: it intersects with this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we have to remember this is a
Speaker 2: this is a business, right, and with only fans with Twitch,
Speaker 2: with a lot of social media, these people are competing
Speaker 2: for the currency of the Internet, which is attention. Right,
Speaker 2: the only way to get attention versus all of the
Speaker 2: thousands of other people you're competing with is to raise
Speaker 2: the bar, to do something crazier, to do something that
Speaker 2: people can't look away from. I mean, you see it
Speaker 2: on x formerly Twitter right, where people will say crazy,
Speaker 2: outlandish conspiracy theories and they want to outdo the next
Speaker 2: right wing influencer by saying something crazier because they know
Speaker 2: that it doesn't matter if what they're saying is right,
Speaker 2: it matters that it pisses people off. And engages people,
Speaker 2: gets people to watch them. What if I'm kind of
Speaker 2: unusual about Twitch? Is that unlike with TikTok, where people
Speaker 2: really want like the most just gut punching five second
Speaker 2: video that they can make, Twitch really relishes and being
Speaker 2: this long form thing that people can watch for six hours.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of like banal content on Twitch
Speaker 2: that you wonder like why would somebody watch somebody playing
Speaker 2: video games or playing chess, or studying or coding a
Speaker 2: computer program, all of which is on Twitch. But then
Speaker 2: you see people like Emily who it's kind of the
Speaker 2: mix of just a banal kind of normal life, but
Speaker 2: also you want to watch to see is she going
Speaker 2: to finally quit? Is she going to reach her breaking point?
Speaker 2: She's gone three years, Like is she going to you know,
Speaker 2: just freak out and run away? So there's that kind
Speaker 2: of mix of wanting to see somebody in their normal element,
Speaker 2: but also kind of expecting something bad is going to
Speaker 2: happen from this crazy challenge she's putting herself through.
Speaker 4: I mean, she's talked about having a kind of end point,
Speaker 4: like she's not just doing this to do this, she
Speaker 4: wants to do it so that she can have a house,
Speaker 4: and be married by the time she's thirty years old.
Speaker 4: So do you, now having interviewed her, feel like there's
Speaker 4: an endpoint for her and is it looking like she's
Speaker 4: on the trajectory to have the things that she wants.
Speaker 2: I think with Emily, she shifts her end goal out
Speaker 2: all the time, so it's hard to know when she
Speaker 2: will ever reach an endpoint. And she even says now
Speaker 2: she doesn't see any reason to quit yet kind of
Speaker 2: hears these clocks in her head of I want to
Speaker 2: buy a house by thirty, I want to get married,
Speaker 2: you know, all these kind of like basic societal impulses
Speaker 2: that a lot of us here. But you know, it's
Speaker 2: hard for her to think of like what a life
Speaker 2: would be like not on camera. I think it would
Speaker 2: be a big culture shock when or if it ever happens.
Speaker 2: When you're doing something day in and day out for
Speaker 2: three years, to be able to break away from that
Speaker 2: will be really challenging. And you know, I tried to
Speaker 2: press her on this point because she said she wants
Speaker 2: to be married in a couple of years, but she
Speaker 2: still thinks she might be streaming in five years, And
Speaker 2: I said, well, are you going to be like pregnant
Speaker 2: and streaming. Are you going to be like streaming your wedding? Like,
Speaker 2: how does this work? And so I think she's still
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what bat'll look like and if
Speaker 2: it will work or if she'll have to kind of
Speaker 2: bend on either the life goals she has or kind
Speaker 2: of these twitch goals.
Speaker 3: Drew, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Drew.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: That's it for this week for tech Stuff, I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 1: And I'm os Valosan. This episode was produced by Eliza
Speaker 1: Dennis and Victoria Domingez. It was executive produced by me,
Speaker 1: Kara Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvel
Speaker 1: for iHeart Podcasts. The engineer is Beheath Fraser and Jack
Speaker 1: Insley mixed this episode. Kyle Murdoch rode Themesol.
Speaker 4: Join us next Wednesday for tex Stuff The Story, when
Speaker 4: we will share an in depth conversation with game designer
Speaker 4: him Gingold about every millennial's favorite game, Simsony.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review and reach out to us at text
Speaker 1: aff podcast at gmail dot com. We want to hear
Speaker 1: from you.