Speaker 1: There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Radio and Unboss Creative, I'm bridget tout
Speaker 1: and this is there are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: So today is another week where everything feels heavy and
Speaker 1: awful and just too much. So in response, I am
Speaker 1: trying at a new thing that we are tentatively calling
Speaker 1: something on the Internet that doesn't suck, where I talk
Speaker 1: about something related to or on the Internet that doesn't
Speaker 1: suck or once to distract myself from how depressing the
Speaker 1: new cycle has been. And today that thing is celebrating Klanni.
Speaker 1: So this is one of those amazing times where something
Speaker 1: I love from music, our culture intersects with some larger
Speaker 1: trend happening on the Internet. Klanni is a musician, an icon,
Speaker 1: a songwriter, and now we can add a master of
Speaker 1: combating Internet grifters to that list of accomplishments because they
Speaker 1: went viral for shutting down right being internet quasi celebrity
Speaker 1: Christian Walker in a way that was just chef's kiss.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it. So here's what went down.
Speaker 1: Kalani was in their car at a Starbucks drive through
Speaker 1: in California, one that they say they go to regularly.
Speaker 1: Now Colonni is a person of color and identifies as queer.
Speaker 1: And they said that this particular Starbucks, it's decked out
Speaker 1: in pride and trans flags and happens to have a
Speaker 1: lot of young queer people of color working there. While
Speaker 1: they're in the drive through, Klani spots none other than
Speaker 1: Christian Walker in the drive through in his car behind them.
Speaker 1: Now you don't know who Christian Walker is, honestly, consider
Speaker 1: yourself kind of lucky. He's a black, twenty two year old.
Speaker 1: I guess we'll call him a right wing internet personality.
Speaker 1: He led a Gaze for Trump rally back in twenty
Speaker 1: in California. Even though technically he's not gay, he says
Speaker 1: that he is attracted to men. He is a man,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't identify as gay, which whatever, you can
Speaker 1: kind of think of him kind of like Candice Owens
Speaker 1: times a thousand. He will just say whatever awful, hateful
Speaker 1: thing gets in an audience. Being obnoxious and over the
Speaker 1: top is the entire point with him. He also loves Starbucks.
Speaker 1: Going to Starbucks is his thing. If you don't know
Speaker 1: Christian Walker, you probably know his dad, Herschel Walker, who
Speaker 1: is currently running for Senate in Georgia Herschel. Walker himself
Speaker 1: is a real piece of work. Like, for instance, here's
Speaker 1: what he had to say about how air quality works
Speaker 1: to a bunch of thunders just last week. You know,
Speaker 1: control the air. I'll go there to China. So with
Speaker 1: China there got to move, so it moves over to
Speaker 1: and now. So Christian Walker is kind of a right
Speaker 1: wing internet influencer of sorts, but I guess he could
Speaker 1: read more accurately be described as a right wing grifter.
Speaker 1: His entire stick is going on social media drumming up
Speaker 1: lots of outrage about wokeness by making super over the
Speaker 1: top Instagram and TikTok videos about the latest perceived threat
Speaker 1: or grievance posed by the blue haired radical left. He
Speaker 1: has amassed hundreds of thousands of social media followers doing this,
Speaker 1: and I actually bet it's pretty effective because we already
Speaker 1: know that social media platforms love outrageous content and definitely
Speaker 1: prioritize content that is outrageous or inflammatory or over the top,
Speaker 1: which he is. Christian Walker is also a podcaster. His
Speaker 1: podcast is called Uncancellable. Now. I've never actually listened to it,
Speaker 1: but here are a few of the recent episode titles
Speaker 1: just to give you a sense of what we're working with. Here.
Speaker 1: An episode about the tragic school shooting and uvald Texas
Speaker 1: called quote they were innocent unlike George Floyd, one about
Speaker 1: the recent Supreme Court ruling on row called oh Saw, sorry,
Speaker 1: you can't slaughter your kid, and another on Elon Musk's
Speaker 1: deal to buy Twitter called if you oppose Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: You're a racist. Also, I should just say all of
Speaker 1: the titles to the podcast episodes are in all caps,
Speaker 1: which I'm not totally sure why I'm including that information.
Speaker 1: It just feels kind of relevant to note, like even
Speaker 1: his podcast titled or just constantly yelling grievances at the listener.
Speaker 1: So this is someone who makes money, makes a living
Speaker 1: off of really engineering stunts to have a big outrageous
Speaker 1: reaction to to get tons of clicks and engagement on
Speaker 1: social media listeners to his podcast, boost his platform, rints,
Speaker 1: washed repeat. It's actually a pretty good scam, I bet,
Speaker 1: And he's the kind of right wing scammer that I
Speaker 1: feel like we're seeing more and more of these days,
Speaker 1: people who just live to exploit and inflame tensions and
Speaker 1: existing divisions for their own personal gain. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if it makes us more divided or more angry or
Speaker 1: less trusting. If it gets him eyeballs and clicks and listeners,
Speaker 1: He'll do it. People Christian Walker make money doing this.
Speaker 1: This is their job. They're able to spin the attention
Speaker 1: and notoriety and engagement they get into building bigger and
Speaker 1: more lucrative platforms. And it's clear that this kind of
Speaker 1: tactic really relies on attention. Like That's how scammers like
Speaker 1: Christian have been able to gamify social media platforms, just
Speaker 1: by doing the most and doing whatever it takes to
Speaker 1: make a huge, big scene to get lots of attention.
Speaker 1: That is until Klanni saw Christian Walker getting ready to
Speaker 1: do his thing in the Starbucks drive through and foiled
Speaker 1: his plans. Let's say a quick break out her back, Okay,
Speaker 1: so Klanni says. They notice Christian Walker behind them at
Speaker 1: the drive through, about to take a video of the
Speaker 1: Starbucks barista on his phone. Killani noted that this paricular
Speaker 1: Starbucks was still all decked out and Pride flags and
Speaker 1: trans flags for a Pride last month. I see behind
Speaker 1: me that kid, Christian Walker visibly losing his ship in
Speaker 1: the car via my two mirrors screen work. I'm not
Speaker 1: screen recording, but doing this on his screen to zoom
Speaker 1: in and film the Starbucks workers and film all the
Speaker 1: flags that are in the Starbucks windows. This Starbucks is
Speaker 1: covered in gay flags, trans flags like American remixed gay flags.
Speaker 1: I see him losing his ship the whole time. Mind you,
Speaker 1: it's going slow as ship because there's so many people
Speaker 1: in the line. He proceeds to get to the little
Speaker 1: order box thing, and it's clearly harassing whoever is behind
Speaker 1: the order box thing, and like going back to his phone,
Speaker 1: like and and I'm like, oh, I feel like this
Speaker 1: man is gonna come up to the window and harass
Speaker 1: all these workers. Now, I go to this Starbucks often,
Speaker 1: and I also know and can bysibly see that everybody
Speaker 1: that works there is like a color and a lot
Speaker 1: of them. I can't assume these things but seemed queer
Speaker 1: to me. Notably, shin Walker himself celebrated Pride Month by
Speaker 1: posting a picture of himself giving the finger to some
Speaker 1: Pride flags that he encountered out in public on Instagram
Speaker 1: with the caption stop expecting people to respect you if
Speaker 1: you shut down traffic to walk around the streets barely
Speaker 1: clothed now. Colonne says that they are familiar with Christian
Speaker 1: Walker's whole thing and saw him getting ready to take
Speaker 1: this video of the burst them and all the Pride flags,
Speaker 1: so they decided to warn the staff to let them
Speaker 1: know that, hey, this is a person who is a
Speaker 1: known provocateur who engineers little stunts for social media. They
Speaker 1: also called him an asshole. So it gets to the
Speaker 1: one doow and I'm like, Yo, just letting you'll know
Speaker 1: that guy behind me that's not like Republican Trump supporter
Speaker 1: kid who is has a habit of like harassing you know,
Speaker 1: this community, even though he's a part of it. Don't
Speaker 1: fucking blows my mind. I'm like, watch out because he's
Speaker 1: coming up here with his sucking his his phone ready
Speaker 1: to record. They're like, yeah, I know that kid. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like he's a fucking asshole, like because I've just watched
Speaker 1: him being an asshole for the last ten minutes. Right.
Speaker 1: So Christian must have heard this exchange because he got
Speaker 1: out of his car while still filming on his phone
Speaker 1: and had this verbal interaction with Colonne. Ma'am, ma'am, you
Speaker 1: don't need to tell Barista's that I'm an asshole for
Speaker 1: because I have an opinion. Get your drink and go
Speaker 1: and go away. I I can have an opinion like
Speaker 1: everybody else. Why are you entitled to an opinion and
Speaker 1: not me. You want to tell Garissa's I'm an asshole,
Speaker 1: Well guess what you're You're the asshole. You are an asshole,
Speaker 1: Get your drink and go. Okay, So this is what
Speaker 1: I love about how all this went down. Colony says
Speaker 1: that they happened to be in the middle of a
Speaker 1: phone therapy session when this all started, and the session
Speaker 1: was all about the dangers of taking your anger out
Speaker 1: on other people. They had kind of an aha moment
Speaker 1: where they realized that they had ruined Christian Walker's plans
Speaker 1: to get some outrageous video at the expense of the
Speaker 1: Starbucks staffers, and that he was probably looking to film
Speaker 1: a big outrageous blow out with them instead. And I'm
Speaker 1: just having this AHA moment with my therapist and I'm
Speaker 1: going I know what you want to do. You want
Speaker 1: to get a reaction out of me so that you
Speaker 1: can go viral and then you can pose this as
Speaker 1: some kind of take on people with my political stance
Speaker 1: or assume political stance and people from from my community,
Speaker 1: people like me, etcetera, etcetera. So Klanni did not take
Speaker 1: the bait. They denied Christians ability to have this big
Speaker 1: blow up that he needs to get attention and engagement
Speaker 1: on social media for his whole thing to work. And
Speaker 1: dude was pissed. And I think Klanni also just shares
Speaker 1: a really great workable template for how we should be
Speaker 1: dealing with Internet grifters like Christian Walker. But we don't
Speaker 1: give them the big reaction that they want, all the
Speaker 1: attention that they want, all the engagement that they want.
Speaker 1: It takes away their power. And now for the cherry
Speaker 1: on top. Christian tweeted out a video of his altercation
Speaker 1: with Klanni, calling them quote a mediocre singer that everyone
Speaker 1: has forgotten about, but you know who never forget the
Speaker 1: internet and Twitter user Nakisha r G had their receipts
Speaker 1: because in Christian Walker wasn't saying that Kalani was a
Speaker 1: mediocre singer. In fact, he tweeted, I love Klanni so much,
Speaker 1: so I guess he's no longer a fan then, So
Speaker 1: in these dark times, I am really clinging to any
Speaker 1: little thing I can get to bring myself a little
Speaker 1: bit of joy, a little bit of a laugh, a
Speaker 1: little bit of spark when it feels like everything is
Speaker 1: on fire, and I really want to celebrate these little
Speaker 1: internet joys together. So, listeners, what is bringing you joy online?
Speaker 1: I don't care how small, or how petty, or how
Speaker 1: civilly it is. I want to hear about it. I
Speaker 1: want to make episodes about it. Please get in touch
Speaker 1: with me. Let's find ways to cling to joy together
Speaker 1: in a dark world. Let's bring the light to fight
Speaker 1: the darkness. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great week.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for ways to support the show, check
Speaker 1: out our mark store at tangodi dot com slash store.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Toad.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss Creative, edited
Speaker 1: by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry
Speaker 1: Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amata was
Speaker 1: our contributing producer, I'm your host, Bridgetad. If you want
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