Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it could happen. Here the only podcast that
Speaker 1: is on right now in your ears where you can
Speaker 1: listen to us talk about things falling apart and occasionally
Speaker 1: more optimistic stuff. Garrison, is this one of the more
Speaker 1: optimistic stuff days? Not really, Oh great, it's it's things
Speaker 1: falling apart, but in a slightly amusing way. Oh well
Speaker 1: that's fine too. Yeah, it's it's it's gonna be fine.
Speaker 1: So have is any is any of y'all's familiar with
Speaker 1: the Devious Licks? Vaguely? Yeah, so all of all of
Speaker 1: I'm sure all of the I'm sure all of the
Speaker 1: Lick fans are gonna be really excited about today's episode
Speaker 1: because the first half will be we'll be talking about
Speaker 1: all of the all of the Licks. So for for
Speaker 1: those unfamiliar the Devious Licks meme challenge. Things started with
Speaker 1: this video by a kid who had stolen quote unquote
Speaker 1: stolen a bunch of like COVID masks from his school
Speaker 1: and then was showing off his uh his harvest on
Speaker 1: TikTok played over you know, played over a song or
Speaker 1: something as as you do on the tiktoks. So they
Speaker 1: posted the video with this caption. A month into school
Speaker 1: absolutely devious lick and lick. I think lick just means
Speaker 1: like stealing, like like you like stole something and like
Speaker 1: that's like that is a lick. I was so sad
Speaker 1: when I first heard about this. I heard I heard
Speaker 1: someone say devious licks, and I was like, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: the TikTok challenge, and I was like, oh shit, people
Speaker 1: are like walking up to like like they're gonna like
Speaker 1: lick the under side of a bridge or something. And
Speaker 1: then it was not that unfortunately, unfortunately not. Yeah, it is,
Speaker 1: it is. It is a real loss. So this this
Speaker 1: video went very very viral on TikTok very very quickly
Speaker 1: among kids whom's like they're in person. School had just
Speaker 1: had just started. This was this thing in like late August,
Speaker 1: early September of last year, uh, you know, first with
Speaker 1: you know, the initial video then subsequently inspired a bunch
Speaker 1: of copycat school related heists that then posted into TikTok's
Speaker 1: first People just stealing like small, mostly low stakes things,
Speaker 1: usually inside the bathrooms, you know, stuff like toilet paper rolls,
Speaker 1: paper tower rolls, soap from soap dispensers, light bulbs, you know,
Speaker 1: like like floor tiles, just like just like small things.
Speaker 1: But after a while the small fry wasn't was not
Speaker 1: enough anymore. People started to get more brazen, uh more,
Speaker 1: more more devious, you might say, Yeah, they were. They
Speaker 1: moved on to like full on toilet heists and you know,
Speaker 1: electric hand tryers. They stole a teacher's entire desk and
Speaker 1: a whole bathroom sink. So yeah, and eventually they kind
Speaker 1: of dropped all pretense of this being hoisting and just
Speaker 1: started just like destroying the bathrooms, not even stealing things anymore. Yeah, Garrison,
Speaker 1: you and I have a friend who works at a
Speaker 1: school where this has been We got accused of like
Speaker 1: pushing disinformation when we talked about this on Worst Year,
Speaker 1: but it's like, no, we know people who work at
Speaker 1: a school that has not had functional student bathrooms. Happened,
Speaker 1: and it's very funny, as just just just to clarify
Speaker 1: my opinion on it, very funny. Yes, it's yes, they
Speaker 1: but yeah, just just it started. It started with stealing
Speaker 1: and then just Scott turned into let's just destroy the bathrooms,
Speaker 1: which is pretty funny. Kids rock, Kids rock. So obviously, schools,
Speaker 1: teachers and principles were scrambling their confusion only upseeded, uh
Speaker 1: by their being upset because obviously they shouldn't have allowed
Speaker 1: children to be born into a world where TikTok could exist.
Speaker 1: Really is on them, And you know, all of the
Speaker 1: upsettedness by teachers and schools only like contributed to the
Speaker 1: meme with like kids posting their principles reactions to it.
Speaker 1: You know, like like people like like announcing over the intercom,
Speaker 1: like like new rules about how to prevent the bathroom destruction.
Speaker 1: Schools are having to like station staff members outside of
Speaker 1: bathrooms to like like check and hopefully like ward off
Speaker 1: any possible destructive shenanigans. It was, it was this, It
Speaker 1: was it was this entire thing. Uh. And it got
Speaker 1: to the point where TikTok actually had to step in
Speaker 1: to kind of curb this meme. They banned the hashtag
Speaker 1: dvos slick. They took down any content that had anything
Speaker 1: to do with the trend, and this seemed to work.
Speaker 1: After a few weeks, the meme kind of reached the
Speaker 1: end of its virality cycle. Teachers got to breathe a
Speaker 1: sigh of relief. Maybe there would be no more smashed
Speaker 1: bathrooms or stolen desks, you fools, But their calumn did
Speaker 1: not last long. By the end of September, there were
Speaker 1: rumors perculating around that Devious Slicks did. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: perculating percolating. Come on, I don't know, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was, It was, it was. It was said that
Speaker 1: the Davious Slicks may not have a wooden stick through
Speaker 1: its heart, and we may have only witnessed the first wave.
Speaker 1: With something much darker lurking around the corner. On Facebook,
Speaker 1: various parent, teacher and law enforcement groups started circulating some
Speaker 1: purported sorry started circulating some purported Shenanigan plans from the kids.
Speaker 1: On TikTok, there was this month by month calendar detailing
Speaker 1: two kids what sick pranks they should play on their
Speaker 1: school for the for the entire rest of the year,
Speaker 1: and a few versions of this calendar were spread around,
Speaker 1: but they all shared the same basic overall structure and
Speaker 1: prank ideas, just some like wording and phrasing changed. And
Speaker 1: the first upcoming challenge for the month of October was
Speaker 1: slap a teacher Sorry. This spread beyond Facebook and including
Speaker 1: to local news. Now another TikTok challenge getting a lot
Speaker 1: of attention tonight, and it's a violent one. Targeting teachers.
Speaker 1: That Nevada Joint Union superintendent asking parents now to tell
Speaker 1: their kids not to participate in this challenge. It encourages
Speaker 1: students to actually slap their teachers. So although the smack
Speaker 1: a teacher line was what really got this thing to
Speaker 1: go viral on Facebook, the main screenshotted calendar that was
Speaker 1: being circulated, the actual October challenge was listed as a
Speaker 1: smack of staff member on the backside. That was that
Speaker 1: was the actual phrasing, which is a little, a little
Speaker 1: bizarre smack of staffer on the backside. Uh. November is
Speaker 1: kiss your friend's girlfriend at school, So again weird, weird phrasing.
Speaker 1: December is deck the halls and show your balls in
Speaker 1: school halls, which that one was probably written by a child.
Speaker 1: But then we get other stuff like January is jab abreast,
Speaker 1: uh so more more sexual assault jokes. February we have
Speaker 1: a mess up school signs. March is make a mess
Speaker 1: in the courtyarder cafeteria. April this one's weird. April is
Speaker 1: a grab some eggs, but eggs is in quotation marks
Speaker 1: with his z at the end. May is ditch day.
Speaker 1: That's fine. June is flip off the front office, Okay,
Speaker 1: who cares? And July is spray and April's fence wow
Speaker 1: graffiti scary. So yeah, that is that is that is
Speaker 1: the calendar of challenges. Some of these seem more I mean,
Speaker 1: we talked about this a couple of months ago, and
Speaker 1: my feeling was that this started as something real, just
Speaker 1: like m yeah and and this this ship was where
Speaker 1: it was. It became nonsense. Was just like people sharing
Speaker 1: things that were going to anger boomers. This and we
Speaker 1: will we will get into this. So yeah. As as
Speaker 1: news about the TikTok challenges spread on Facebook, media, orgs
Speaker 1: picked up on the trend and started showting out headlines
Speaker 1: like TikTok's shocking school Challenges list twenty twenty one revealed
Speaker 1: and devious licks asks students via TikTok to smack a
Speaker 1: staff member that nation's teachers are feeling burnt out. So great,
Speaker 1: great headlines there. So all of that sounds so obviously
Speaker 1: very scary. If if if teens around the country are
Speaker 1: all united in this, in this, in this planned destruction
Speaker 1: of our entire civilization, that that you know, we could
Speaker 1: all be brought onto the brink of via teens destroying
Speaker 1: their schools was so that would be that would be
Speaker 1: kind of fun. But if you stop and think about
Speaker 1: the wording of that list for a sec, you might
Speaker 1: notice some things that just seem off, Like no Gen
Speaker 1: Z kids are saying uh smack a staff member on
Speaker 1: the backside. That is not like you are the first
Speaker 1: member of Generation Z to say backside, backside. And like
Speaker 1: the challenge for April is grab some eggs and eggs
Speaker 1: in quotation arcs with a Z at the end, because yeah,
Speaker 1: all of all of the cool kids today uses Z
Speaker 1: at the end of words to make themselves. Again, it's
Speaker 1: some like fucking gen X or maybe elder millennial piece
Speaker 1: of shit trying to make people angry on the internet.
Speaker 1: And he's just like April, what goes with April? April eggs? Eggs? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Something like all of the language feels
Speaker 1: like what's what someone would write if they were trying
Speaker 1: to imitate what a cool nineties kid would talk like
Speaker 1: on TV. Yeah, it's a lot of people trying to
Speaker 1: write John Hughes movies. Yeah, but so, but all this
Speaker 1: was very viral for like it was the end of September.
Speaker 1: This was this was all massive and we we will.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. I will explain why we're talking about this
Speaker 1: now because this does this, this will circle back to
Speaker 1: actually current events. I'm not not just talking about a
Speaker 1: September twenty twenty one trend. This, this does, this does
Speaker 1: relate to stuff happening currently. But yeah, like suspicious language aside.
Speaker 1: The idea that the youths are purposely plotting on the
Speaker 1: tiktoks to assault teachers and we havoc all year long
Speaker 1: frightened many an adult, especially those that work in the
Speaker 1: education sector, who might have to face the possibility of
Speaker 1: a coordinated zoom er wrath. And you know, the past
Speaker 1: two years had already been kind of a ship show
Speaker 1: for schools, with switching to remote learning then back to
Speaker 1: in person. Well, there's all all debate, all the debate
Speaker 1: around masks and vaccinations and the risk of being inside
Speaker 1: around densely packed you know, groups of filthy, germ written children.
Speaker 1: Plus there's all these kids that got used to being
Speaker 1: home alone for so long learning half to like having
Speaker 1: to learn now how to like socialize in the class environment,
Speaker 1: all while dealing with the same mental trauma that we've
Speaker 1: all been dealing with around around the plague. So so,
Speaker 1: just having faced the actual, very real September devious licks,
Speaker 1: the promise of a year lowing TikTok wave of destruction
Speaker 1: obviously frightened many parents and teachers, with educators on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, starting to take this list as a very
Speaker 1: real threat, with school districts you know, issuing warnings and
Speaker 1: parents were you know informed, like in mass about this
Speaker 1: very very real, very real threat. Educators be aware. That's
Speaker 1: the warning from the California Teachers Association. The group sent
Speaker 1: this message to educators letting them know about a potential
Speaker 1: TikTok trend calling for students to slap a staff member.
Speaker 1: Seminole County Schools just sent this letter to principles warning
Speaker 1: them of TikTok's October challenge, saying, quote, in the latest
Speaker 1: TikTok trend, students are asked to calmly walk up to
Speaker 1: their teachers, slap them, and then run off, making sure
Speaker 1: they capture the whole thing on camera. Okay, and we
Speaker 1: are back. So yeah, sure enough. News of teachers getting
Speaker 1: slapped began to circulate from local media into the national sphere,
Speaker 1: alongside headlines like TikTok inspired slap a Teacher challenge assault
Speaker 1: reported at Braintree's East Middle School and Covington police say
Speaker 1: disabled teacher injured and suspected TikTok challenge assault by student. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there was there was, There was a There was
Speaker 1: a few slapping incidents reported onto mainstream onto mainstream news
Speaker 1: was all all tied to the to the TikTok assault.
Speaker 1: A teacher things as student in Louisiana was arrested and
Speaker 1: faced felony charges, with police saying the assault was prompted
Speaker 1: by a quote prompted by a viral social media application
Speaker 1: known as TikTok. Sorry we've done the notorious hacker for
Speaker 1: chat again. Everything circles back application known as TikTok. So yeah,
Speaker 1: in October, there were definitely incidents of students hitting teachers,
Speaker 1: But it's like that that in and of itself is
Speaker 1: not up for debate. This, yes, uh, but the actual
Speaker 1: scale of content spreading this list and the subsequent slapping
Speaker 1: videos on the TikTok platform is something to question because
Speaker 1: writing writing off of the September Davious licks trend, almost
Speaker 1: all media, police, parents, educators were super quick to link
Speaker 1: this list and these few teachers kings to the social
Speaker 1: media platform used by gen Z, the application known as TikTok.
Speaker 1: And so we we have we have all this talk
Speaker 1: on the news and on Facebook. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: if you check TikTok or at like if if if,
Speaker 1: if you're actually on TikTok around this time, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: find any viral videos. So teachers getting slapped or anything
Speaker 1: about this TikTok list of challenges at all. It wasn't
Speaker 1: actually there, like, it wasn't actually on TikTok. This this
Speaker 1: wasn't actually a thing. H So you know, then you know,
Speaker 1: you might be thinking, well, maybe TikTok's doing what they
Speaker 1: did previously just to shut down the original organic deviously challenge.
Speaker 1: What if they're just doing this like preemptively to taking
Speaker 1: down any content related to the list, any like corresponding hashtags, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But when journalists asked TikTok if this was the case,
Speaker 1: they denied this, saying that we have not seen anything
Speaker 1: of this nature on our app. They said the first
Speaker 1: time they TikTok said, the first time they saw the
Speaker 1: list was of screenshot of it on other websites. It
Speaker 1: was not it was not from TikTok. It wasn't actually there.
Speaker 1: So as more and more news circulated and Blaine was
Speaker 1: continuing to be put on TikTok for propagating this list
Speaker 1: of challenges and you know, encouraging teacher assaults, the social
Speaker 1: media platform made a public statement addressing the issue, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: the rumored slap a teacher dare is an insult to
Speaker 1: educators everywhere, and while this is not a trend on TikTok,
Speaker 1: if at any point it shows up, content will be removed.
Speaker 1: So as as much as you would search online on
Speaker 1: TikTok or you know, wherever, you wouldn't find any evidence
Speaker 1: of this list actually being spread through TikTok at all.
Speaker 1: The only thing that you would find about this on
Speaker 1: TikTok is either kids reacting to news clips talking about this,
Speaker 1: or teachers on TikTok complain anywo this as well. It
Speaker 1: wasn't actually a trend. The list was being shared online
Speaker 1: a lot like it was very viral, but almost exclusively
Speaker 1: in Facebook groups for boomers or adults or teachers or police.
Speaker 1: But people seemed real scared of all those groups. Boomers Garrison, Okay,
Speaker 1: that good not died. Yeah, it's it's it's it's like
Speaker 1: a mental ethnicity. Now people, people seem really scared. You know,
Speaker 1: schools were scared. News media loves turning this list into
Speaker 1: like a looming looming Bilgeeman. But it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 1: kids actually spreading it or turning into a challenge, which
Speaker 1: leads you to wonder where did this even come from
Speaker 1: and how did it actually get so viral. So multiple
Speaker 1: and multiple fully separate investigative kind of ordeals into the
Speaker 1: alleged TikTok list of challenges placed its original point of
Speaker 1: virality in the hands of of wait, wait for it,
Speaker 1: wait for it, I'm waiting a police officer. So Officer
Speaker 1: David Gometz, a school resource cause up who runs a
Speaker 1: popular Facebook page under the banner of quote the Truth
Speaker 1: about Youth, which is oh boy, pretty cool. So Gomez
Speaker 1: works at a school in Idaho, Big shocker, and back
Speaker 1: in September, his Facebook page had over thirty three thousand followers.
Speaker 1: Now it has over sixty six thousand, and he uses
Speaker 1: it as a sort of information hub for parents, educators,
Speaker 1: and concerned citizens to talk about the dangers of kids
Speaker 1: on the Internet and all of that jazz. You know,
Speaker 1: Gomez basically tries to be like a kind of like
Speaker 1: influencer for this whole like concerned adult corner of the Internet.
Speaker 1: He writes these long, long posts about like school life
Speaker 1: and digital safety, touching on many topics from like how
Speaker 1: your kids are secretly buying weed and vape pens, or
Speaker 1: like how to tell if your kid is looking at
Speaker 1: pornographic materials, you know, stuff of this nature like here, here's,
Speaker 1: here's here's a few posts from him from from just
Speaker 1: from just a few days ago. Lots of inappropriate behaviors
Speaker 1: pushed on Snapchat desensitize kids to reality. Nude photos, drugs, parties, crimes,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Kids can order almost any illegal drug and
Speaker 1: have it delivered to them on most any place on Snapchat.
Speaker 1: If only only so, He's like, he's like one of
Speaker 1: these types of guys, like you know, you know who, Yeah, yeah, yeah, God,
Speaker 1: if we only lived in that world, I would be
Speaker 1: on Snapchat so hard I would be. I love I
Speaker 1: love idea that Snapchat desensitizes kids to reality by telling
Speaker 1: them about parties and well, I mean any time I look,
Speaker 1: I have a profound negative mental health reaction whenever someone
Speaker 1: tells me about a party. So I would why wouldn't children?
Speaker 1: So so the original devious licks challenge was dying down
Speaker 1: near the end of September. On September twenty second, Officer
Speaker 1: Gomez posted this list of challenges to his thousands of followers.
Speaker 1: In the next few days, the challenge list from his
Speaker 1: page circulated around the web, prompting many nervous school emails,
Speaker 1: terrified newscasts, and ending up actually making the list of
Speaker 1: challenges go completely viral. When asked about the origin of
Speaker 1: the list, he said the first place that he had
Speaker 1: seen it is in a smaller private Facebook group for
Speaker 1: people working in drug and alcohol enforcement and education. He
Speaker 1: called it a drug recognition group. It's like a group
Speaker 1: of like cops and stuff, where like, I found this
Speaker 1: bag of leaves, what is it? Can I can I
Speaker 1: arrest this person? It's like it's it's it's these people
Speaker 1: who like, yeah, post random stuff to figure out what
Speaker 1: drugs they're looking at. So he claims he first saw
Speaker 1: it in this Facebook group, but admitted that he was
Speaker 1: unsure if it'd actually alternated from kids or not let
Speaker 1: let alone on TikTok. He just posted it because he thought,
Speaker 1: you know, better safe than sorry, But you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's funny because Officer Gomez's intention may just have been
Speaker 1: to spread the word about this because he thought it
Speaker 1: was an actual threat, but it turns out that he
Speaker 1: was just the one that gave it online life in
Speaker 1: the first place. So so yeah, But for like the
Speaker 1: actual origin of it, like like for it actually came up,
Speaker 1: as best as we can tell, it seems to. It
Speaker 1: seems to have stem from a school in California. A
Speaker 1: principal claims that a student sent them this list, albeit
Speaker 1: a slightly more a vulgar version, more in line with
Speaker 1: how kids kind of talk now. The teacher then uploaded
Speaker 1: it to a teacher Facebook group. It was then shared
Speaker 1: to this drug recognition group of Officer Gomez, and then
Speaker 1: Gomez or someone along this process rewrote it to add
Speaker 1: the weird like boomer Jen's like like like a nineties
Speaker 1: cool kid language, and then go has posted it, and
Speaker 1: then that results in like the cool kid's attitude, and
Speaker 1: then he posts it, it goes viral. But there's no
Speaker 1: evidence that it was ever on TikTok like at all,
Speaker 1: Like this, we just don't I think it's not actually
Speaker 1: ever on TikTok until the cop posts it So the
Speaker 1: other funny thing is that all of these slapping incidents
Speaker 1: reported on the news, including the one that resulted in
Speaker 1: an arrest, also turns out to have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with the challenge list or TikTok. It was just a
Speaker 1: regular like interpersonal conflict between a student and a teacher,
Speaker 1: because like that happens, like that happens just like every
Speaker 1: once in a while like that. But it had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with TikTok. According to the school and according
Speaker 1: to the police, we had an investigation. A substitute teacher
Speaker 1: choke slam one of the kids in my class, and
Speaker 1: we didn't even have a TikTok. We barely had the
Speaker 1: internet back then. It was a pretty good day at school.
Speaker 1: The principle had to come in and apologize. It was
Speaker 1: very fun. That sounds great. It was yeah, so uh
Speaker 1: so yeah, Like in the end, we're gonna the full
Speaker 1: arc of this right starts in September with the actual
Speaker 1: real devious licks that that that that did, that did exist.
Speaker 1: It was on TikTok, but it was just you know,
Speaker 1: stealing stuff from bathrooms. Uh. It breaks off and and
Speaker 1: and then eventually kind of just like making bathrooms into
Speaker 1: a mess. So but this this, this takes off. It's
Speaker 1: it goes, it goes, it goes pretty pretty viral. Then
Speaker 1: TikTok starts to crack down on it, and after like
Speaker 1: three to four weeks, the meme dies. It's it's you know, people,
Speaker 1: people are bored. There's too much enforcement. It's not fun.
Speaker 1: It's not fun anymore. And then we have this calendar
Speaker 1: list of challenges, right, possibly trying to spin off of
Speaker 1: like the devious licks thing and Gloman from the previous trend,
Speaker 1: or it was perhaps just written as like, uh, like
Speaker 1: a non serious joke. But the thing is like, it's
Speaker 1: not actually found on TikTok. Right, So, even if this
Speaker 1: list was originally made by a kid, uh, it's it
Speaker 1: was not known by other kids on a national level,
Speaker 1: either online or in person. But where it does get
Speaker 1: a visibility is through adults, and not on TikTok, but
Speaker 1: on Facebook. Initially being passed around by teachers and school
Speaker 1: administrators and other adults, ran on the Facebook platform and
Speaker 1: really accelerating from there. Right, we have we have, we
Speaker 1: have Gomez and then it's all over Facebook, It's all
Speaker 1: over Instagram, it's all over news articles, TV stations, and
Speaker 1: eventually does go. It eventually does get to TikTok, but
Speaker 1: not with kids talking about it instead of with teachers
Speaker 1: talking about it. But at this point, the story of
Speaker 1: the TikTok slap a teacher challenge was just tuned like
Speaker 1: enticing right. It had like enough of a grain of
Speaker 1: truth by piggybacking off of the real devious licks. But
Speaker 1: it was able to grow into this like entire false
Speaker 1: reality because there were enough ingredients for a good story.
Speaker 1: And that's where like perceptions of truth really flourishing, is
Speaker 1: good stories. And then we found out a few weeks
Speaker 1: ago there was there was this article by Taylor Lawrence
Speaker 1: Uh in the Washington Post that there there actually may
Speaker 1: have been some kind of behind the scenes fuckory making
Speaker 1: this trend to go as viral as it did. And
Speaker 1: we will we will get into that after after this,
Speaker 1: after this ad break. So have fun listening to these ads,
Speaker 1: and then we will talk about the behind the seams
Speaker 1: of making these these false online trends. Hello, we are back.
Speaker 1: So turns out lots of lots of there's lots of
Speaker 1: lots of fuckory happening. H to make to make, to make,
Speaker 1: to make narratives to make stories right. It's a all
Speaker 1: you know, turns out that not everything you read on
Speaker 1: the internet is true. Uh, pretty pretty shocking revelation here.
Speaker 1: So it came out a few weeks ago that Facebook
Speaker 1: was actually paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms
Speaker 1: in the country to orchestrate a national campaign to turn
Speaker 1: the public opinion negatively towards TikTok. The campaign was it
Speaker 1: was placing it include placing like op eds and letters,
Speaker 1: two editors of like, you know, major major news outlets,
Speaker 1: promoting of false, false stories about about like the growth
Speaker 1: of alleged TikTok trends that actually had started on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and then you know, trying to push reporters and politicians
Speaker 1: into helping them, you know, damage the perception of TikTok
Speaker 1: on like a nationwide level. Eventually. You know, Facebook was
Speaker 1: obviously funding this because it you know, TikTok is their
Speaker 1: biggest competitor at the moment. So it's a it's actually
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. It's so it's it's it's it's with this
Speaker 1: Republican digital uh consulting firm called Targeted Victory. So this
Speaker 1: was the thing that Facebook was actually paying for to
Speaker 1: to to prompt these false stories. Uh targeted Victory has
Speaker 1: been routinely working for Facebook for over the years. You know,
Speaker 1: they were they were involved in the twenty sixteen congressional
Speaker 1: hearings around Facebook doing stuff like with like election Medley stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, all the stuff related to like Cambridge Analytica.
Speaker 1: They were, they were had a small part to play
Speaker 1: in that kind of thing as well. So they also
Speaker 1: receive a lot of Republican funding. They got a thing
Speaker 1: over over a two hundred and thirty seven million dollars
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, according to data compiled by open Secrets,
Speaker 1: which is uh yeah, it's uh that biggest biggest payments
Speaker 1: came from a national GOP Congressional Committee and America First Action,
Speaker 1: which is of a superPAC ran by pro Trump folks.
Speaker 1: So that this is this is the group that was
Speaker 1: that was doing a lot of the behind this and
Speaker 1: stuff to specifically tie tiktokoto making it look bad, to
Speaker 1: specifically make Facebook look good and push people more onto Facebook.
Speaker 1: When this article first dropped, I know, Robert you said that, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a interesting, interesting little thing that is probably
Speaker 1: worth talking about in terms of how it affects politics
Speaker 1: and social media and like the intersection thereof yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit, so a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: the news dropped about this because of employees with the firm.
Speaker 1: We're tasked to undermine TikTok through nationwide media and while
Speaker 1: being campaign and then lots of their internal emails for
Speaker 1: this effort were shared with Washington Post. So this is
Speaker 1: this is how we kind of fed out about this.
Speaker 1: More recently, their task was to quote get the message
Speaker 1: out that while meta Facebook is the current punching bag,
Speaker 1: TikTok is the real threat, especially as a four non
Speaker 1: app that is number one and sharing data that young
Speaker 1: teens are using, according to the director of the firm.
Speaker 1: So this is that's the type of stuff they're talking
Speaker 1: about behind the scenes in terms of how they're trying
Speaker 1: to push push stuff to get people stopped talking about
Speaker 1: how bad Facebook is. Because this was also right after
Speaker 1: all of like the Facebook Bright part stuff was happening
Speaker 1: in terms of how much Facebook pushes extremist content to
Speaker 1: you know, boomers and stuff. And then the other thing
Speaker 1: that they were doing was specifically trying to craft messaging
Speaker 1: to get bills past and try to get attorneys general
Speaker 1: to focus on to focus on this to launch investigations
Speaker 1: into how like TikTok harms children and teens, and that
Speaker 1: part actually was successful, so you can you can look
Speaker 1: at the emails talking about this plan, and then soon
Speaker 1: after there was actually a coalition of a state attorneys
Speaker 1: general to launch a probe into whether TikTok is harmful
Speaker 1: to children and teens, So you can actually look at
Speaker 1: the behind the scenes stuff that they were trying to
Speaker 1: do and then see how fast they were successful in
Speaker 1: doing this stuff. And all this also comes at the
Speaker 1: point that Facebook was for the first time actually losing users,
Speaker 1: and as soon as TikTok was launched and got so
Speaker 1: much more popular, it also took down a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of users from from Instagram, which was also owned by
Speaker 1: Facebook obviously, so there's there's a Facebook. Researchers said that
Speaker 1: teens were spending about three times there's more time on
Speaker 1: TikTok than Instagram, and this is this was all part
Speaker 1: of the same kind of overall effort to both like
Speaker 1: do stuff to influence elections and politics, but also just
Speaker 1: do stuff to make kids think Facebook is cool, which
Speaker 1: good good luck with that one. Then, in terms of
Speaker 1: like the devious licks stuff. Uh. In other emails that
Speaker 1: that were that that were leaked, Uh, we got we
Speaker 1: got a targeted victory. People urging their partners to push
Speaker 1: false stories to look or you know, stories that are
Speaker 1: sometimes tied in truth, but amplifying them, tying TikTok to
Speaker 1: various like dangerous, dangerous trends, you know, in terms of
Speaker 1: like save the children and rhetoric. Right, this idea that
Speaker 1: face that that TikTok is harmful to the well being
Speaker 1: of kids. One of the emails has has a line
Speaker 1: here saying that the dream would be to get stories
Speaker 1: with headlines like from dances to danger how TikTok has
Speaker 1: become the most harmful social media's face for kids. So
Speaker 1: that's the type of headlines they're like trying to push. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of the things that they do is trying
Speaker 1: to amplify negative TikTok coverage. They have the Scoogle document
Speaker 1: titled bad TikTok Clips, which was shared internally and included
Speaker 1: links to dubious news stories setting TikTok as the original
Speaker 1: point of various like dangerous teen trends, and they were
Speaker 1: they were trying to like take these stories and push
Speaker 1: them out through other means, you know, so on Facebook
Speaker 1: and stuff. Right to take any instance of this and
Speaker 1: boost it like inorganically. Right, it's people's jobs to use
Speaker 1: social media to affect public opinion. So one trend that
Speaker 1: target Victory specifically was enhancing was the devious licks challenge,
Speaker 1: including the initial one to vandalize the school property. Through
Speaker 1: the bad TikTok Clips document, the firm was pushing stories
Speaker 1: about the devious les challenge across in local media across Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, and Washington DC. I do find it interesting
Speaker 1: that they have a lot of these ones closer to Washington,
Speaker 1: DC to specifically affect politicians, Like they're doing stuff to
Speaker 1: amplify stuff to convince politicians specifically to start making political changes.
Speaker 1: And this actually led Senator Richard Bluementhal, a Democrat from Connecticut,
Speaker 1: to write a letter in September calling on TikTok executives
Speaker 1: to testify in front of a Senate committee, saying that
Speaker 1: the app has been repeatedly misused and abused to promote
Speaker 1: behavior and actions that encourage harmful and destructive acts. So yeah,
Speaker 1: like it worked, like they're specifically targeting the type of
Speaker 1: news that politicians will see in areas that politicians live,
Speaker 1: to get them to start trying to affect change around
Speaker 1: social media, specifically the social media that kids use, and
Speaker 1: amplifying the social media that boomers use. Facebook, which is
Speaker 1: already is like a cesspool of spreading conservative disinformation. That's
Speaker 1: like the entire that's the entire bit that they're trying
Speaker 1: to do here, And so they were working on the
Speaker 1: original September challenge. Also in October, Targeted Victory was working
Speaker 1: to spread the rumors of the slap a teacher TikTok challenge,
Speaker 1: which as we know, was not actually a TikTok challenge,
Speaker 1: but they they were doing. They were also contributing to
Speaker 1: inflating this this this trend, which is funny because obviously
Speaker 1: they were being paid by Facebook, they were being paid
Speaker 1: by the GOP and you know, Facebook is the place
Speaker 1: where this actually started. Yeah, so you know, but like
Speaker 1: again with every if you can tie anything to like
Speaker 1: a little bit of truth, it makes whatever story you're
Speaker 1: trying to make so much more impactful. Right, The firm
Speaker 1: was careful to you both like genuine concerns and then
Speaker 1: just amplify them or exaggerate them into like unfounded anxieties
Speaker 1: to to you know, get people to start questioning the
Speaker 1: safety of these of these applications. So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's actually it's actually it's like a it's a
Speaker 1: pretty clever setup that they have they have going here,
Speaker 1: and they've been really successful. Like it's it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: the the the October Davious lex trend with like this
Speaker 1: with slap teacher was extremely extremely, extremely success successful in
Speaker 1: terms of how they affect what is seen as truth
Speaker 1: and how and how how much news stories and how
Speaker 1: much news coverage was just kind of unconsciously and just
Speaker 1: mindlessly repeating the stuff that they've heard. The other funny
Speaker 1: thing that that target Targeted Victory does is, uh, they
Speaker 1: they help write letters that are from concerned parents quote
Speaker 1: unquote that gets sent out to newspapers to be published
Speaker 1: in their like letters to the editor section. Yeah there
Speaker 1: we go. Yeah, So they specifically try to write off
Speaker 1: eds targeting TikTok and then place them in around the country,
Speaker 1: especially in key congressional districts. On March twelfth, a letter
Speaker 1: to the editor that targeted Victory officials helped write ran
Speaker 1: in the in the Denver Post The letter said it
Speaker 1: was from a concerned new Parrot, and it claimed that
Speaker 1: TikTok was harmful to children's mental health, raising concerns over
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, data privacy, and that many people
Speaker 1: suspect that China is deliberately collecting behavioral data on our kids.
Speaker 1: They're trying to hack our children's brains. The letter also
Speaker 1: issued support for Colorado Attorney General Phil Wiser weight Wheezers.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say Weezer Yep, yep, yep, yep, Phil Weezer's
Speaker 1: famed founder of the band Weezer. They were, yeah, but
Speaker 1: the letter issued support for him, including his is to
Speaker 1: join a coalition of attorney general investigating TikTok's impact on
Speaker 1: American youths. So yeah. There was a very similar letter, uh,
Speaker 1: drafted by Targeted Victory again that ran in in other
Speaker 1: other kind of smaller local papers throughout the country trying
Speaker 1: to link negative news stories about TikTok that Targeted Victory
Speaker 1: had specifically sought to amplify. Some of the letters that
Speaker 1: were getting circulated were signed by like members at the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party. They were they were They were signed by
Speaker 1: various politicians in terms of like no trying to create
Speaker 1: this thing that looks grassroots to this prenator out and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, we have these concerns. Do you want
Speaker 1: to do you endorse our concerns so then they can
Speaker 1: then make it seem way more legit than just like
Speaker 1: a concerned parent. Uh, it's it's pretty good, you know.
Speaker 1: An email sent a few weeks ago targeted Victory asked
Speaker 1: their teams to be prepared to share the opense that
Speaker 1: you're working on right now. Uh, Colorado and Iowa, can
Speaker 1: you talk? Can you talk about the TikTok opens you
Speaker 1: got you you you both but you both got. So
Speaker 1: they're specifically targeting districts where the Senate Senate like challenges
Speaker 1: are actually more of a more more of a toss up.
Speaker 1: So specifically trying to do this whole TikTok is dangerous
Speaker 1: to the kids thing in these in these places, it's
Speaker 1: uh yeah, it's a it's it's it's pretty it's pretty fun.
Speaker 1: Because none of these letters, none of these op eds,
Speaker 1: if you read them, there's no indication that Facebook is
Speaker 1: funding them. There's no indication that the GOP is funding them. Right,
Speaker 1: It's that is the it is the whole like astro
Speaker 1: AstroTurf thing, right, that is, that is the entire idea
Speaker 1: is that they look they look totally legit. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that was that was my my, my, those those were
Speaker 1: right notes in terms of the what the DV slicks
Speaker 1: and the SABA teacher thing actually was, and then how
Speaker 1: there was all this behind the scenes fuckery trying to
Speaker 1: inflate it, and how it's specifically getting inflated to tie
Speaker 1: into like local elections that are happening in the mid terms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what what thoughts, what thoughts do y'all have on on
Speaker 1: these on these fun, fun little disinformation rackets they have
Speaker 1: they have going on. We might do like another full
Speaker 1: episode on this at some point. But there's there's an
Speaker 1: interesting angle here where Facebook's one sort of taking the
Speaker 1: China angle on this a lot, and it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes at less in this, but yeah, you in this.
Speaker 1: They they founded this, uh, they founded this advocacy group
Speaker 1: called I think it's American Edge, where they have all
Speaker 1: these things that are like, uh, that's like them in
Speaker 1: a bunch of weapons manufacturers, like, founded this lobbying group
Speaker 1: and they keep saying things like, oh, China's threatening our
Speaker 1: competitive edge. So we can't do anti trust legislation. If
Speaker 1: we do anti trust legislation, the Russia China alliance will
Speaker 1: like defeat the US. And so it's interesting. That's like
Speaker 1: they're I don't know if Facebook seems to have like
Speaker 1: well okay, so so they have this problem where like
Speaker 1: the metaphorse stuff just flops and they're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: we need to make money. And it's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: so you know there's the the two ways to make money,
Speaker 1: or you create something that people want to use, and
Speaker 1: that's hard. That's hard. They did that once and then
Speaker 1: they accidentally turned it into an engine that breaks democracy
Speaker 1: and accelerates ethnic cleansings. So yeah, you don't want them.
Speaker 1: You don't want them trying to make another new thing. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the other thing Targeted Victory was doing was specifically amplifying
Speaker 1: pro Facebook content. Yeah, but like how Facebook is supporting
Speaker 1: local black owned businesses and like all all all that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, so you know you have
Speaker 1: that on the one hand, or it's like yeah, they're
Speaker 1: not they're not doing anything else. And the second way
Speaker 1: they that you do this stuff is by strategic sabotage
Speaker 1: of your competition. And this is what Facebook is doing
Speaker 1: right now is and they've launched basically full on in
Speaker 1: strategic sabotage angle. They've launched into this this sort of
Speaker 1: like preemptive defense stuff about anti trust being like, ah, hey,
Speaker 1: look at China. If we yeah, if we don't have
Speaker 1: tech monopolies doing genocides, China will have tech monopolies doing genocides.
Speaker 1: And it's like That's the other funny thing is that
Speaker 1: whenever Zuckerberg gets accused of trying to create monopolies around
Speaker 1: social media, he's always like, but TikTok exists, But no,
Speaker 1: it's great because yeah, like they they like specifically say this.
Speaker 1: They their quote is, we need to get that message
Speaker 1: out that while Facebook is the current punching bag, TikTok
Speaker 1: is the real threat, especially as a foreign owned app
Speaker 1: like that. That is that is the actual quote. That's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're specifically doing that exact thing. Yeah, they're the leading
Speaker 1: youth is nfobiaing institution because you can watch them sort
Speaker 1: of pushing all of the like the political buttons of
Speaker 1: the last few years. It's like they're they're they're they're
Speaker 1: basically replaying like the Trump like the Trump right stuff, right,
Speaker 1: Like they figure out that rhetoric works. So they're doing Okay,
Speaker 1: they're doing this sort of like uh like they're doing
Speaker 1: sort of anti China's cenophobia. They're doing save the children. Yep,
Speaker 1: they're doing like they're doing all of this like your
Speaker 1: kids are unsafe stuff and yeah it's it's working great
Speaker 1: for them. So this is this is fun U. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, they're they're they're definitely trying yep. I mean,
Speaker 1: and the specific things that targeted Victory tries to do
Speaker 1: the place that's funded by both Facebook and the GOP
Speaker 1: is that they specialize in Uh. Well, they they say
Speaker 1: they do. They do crisis practice and corporate affairs offerings,
Speaker 1: uh for for their clients growing need for the issues
Speaker 1: of management and executive positioning, saying that it wants to
Speaker 1: focus on efforts to move toward authentic storytelling with a
Speaker 1: hyperlocal approach. So that is that's all the words they
Speaker 1: used to talk about how they do grassroots disinformation authentic
Speaker 1: storytelling with a hyperlocal approach. Yeah, faking letters from parents
Speaker 1: to local news sites who are hungry for content in
Speaker 1: order to cause a moral panic about TikTok. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: on average people trust their local news way more than
Speaker 1: they trust their national news. So they shouldn't because they
Speaker 1: should not because it's all read by like two companies.
Speaker 1: Yeah uh so yeah, I mean, but like they have
Speaker 1: they have a lot of money. They've they have a
Speaker 1: lot of money. It's there. It's the they're they're one
Speaker 1: of the biggest recipients of Republican campaigns spending. Now they're
Speaker 1: receiving money from Facebook. They happen for a while, but
Speaker 1: they're spending, They're they're spending more money now. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think this is a it's really important to
Speaker 1: be skeptical of online trends because turns out online trends
Speaker 1: can be pretty astroturfed. I mean, we can look right
Speaker 1: now at all of the all of like the groomer stuff. Right.
Speaker 1: Online trends do not need to be organic. Uh they're
Speaker 1: like I always say, the next time you feel like
Speaker 1: you see something on Facebook or Twitter and you feel
Speaker 1: like you want to share it because it's outrageous, instead
Speaker 1: just go set off a bomb at a power substation. Okay,
Speaker 1: just simple ethical behavior. That'll that that won't play into
Speaker 1: these people's hands. And in terms of all of the
Speaker 1: stuff that like with Facebook, trying to specifically demonize kids
Speaker 1: demonized TikTok to influence elections. Like, if you're interested in
Speaker 1: what trends kids are actually into, just just like ask them,
Speaker 1: like you could talk to them like with like words
Speaker 1: and like with your mouth and use your like human ears. Uh,
Speaker 1: because it turns out they will actually explain it. Because yeah,
Speaker 1: and if just if anyone asked a kid about this
Speaker 1: list of challenges in like October, they would say, No,
Speaker 1: that's that's not a thing. That's that's not that seems
Speaker 1: something like adults are really interested in. But nope, that's
Speaker 1: not actually a thing. Just assume they're basically the same
Speaker 1: that kids always are, but with different like technology and shit.
Speaker 1: Like when I was a kid and our senior class,
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids conspired to crash a car into
Speaker 1: the little pond that was on campus because it was
Speaker 1: destructive and funny. Kids like to do destructive funny things.
Speaker 1: Kids don't like to do whatever April egg bullshit or
Speaker 1: grip takes. That's all of the challenges that are just
Speaker 1: like sexual assaults. You're like, that's actually not something that
Speaker 1: a lot of kids are into. It turns out just
Speaker 1: like kind of things back to being in like like
Speaker 1: tenth grade and would you have giggled at this If so,
Speaker 1: it's probably a thing some kids have done. Like it's
Speaker 1: as simple as that. So anyway, with this is the
Speaker 1: episode we wanted to do specifically on how just like
Speaker 1: social media disacformation is trying to affect elections, leading to
Speaker 1: leading to leading into the midterms, and then tomorrow we
Speaker 1: will discuss more midterm related stuff with all of this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff with with all of this like disafformation stuff,
Speaker 1: TikTok and Facebook stuff, all kind of just like floating
Speaker 1: in the back of our minds as we move on
Speaker 1: to talking about the mid terms and why and how
Speaker 1: they might you know, affect politics going forward, and you
Speaker 1: know how they might affect you know stuff or unclimate
Speaker 1: change stuff around different you know, mini collapses, all of that,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff. So but I think as it
Speaker 1: looks like we have we have reached the time that
Speaker 1: we need to do today. So I believe that doesn't
Speaker 1: for us this week if you want to if you
Speaker 1: want to do the social media is because hey, after
Speaker 1: we talked about social media for like fifty minutes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's let's plug our social media Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 1: Instagram and by Facebook at cool Zone Media and Happened
Speaker 1: Here pod Yeah anyway, Uh, listen to the kids and
Speaker 1: don't believe trends. Bye. It could Happen here as a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com or
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Speaker 1: it could Happen Here, Updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot
Speaker 1: com slash sources. Thanks for listening.