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Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Join us.

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Speaker 3: Said six.

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Speaker 4: Hello, and welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where

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Speaker 4: we talk to the internet's characters of the see how

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Speaker 4: their moment affected them and what that says about us

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Speaker 4: and the Internet. I'm your host, Jamie Loftus, and today

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Speaker 4: we are closing a chapter of sixteenth Minute, and I'm

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Speaker 4: turning the mic over to you, my listeners, to share

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Speaker 4: your experiences being the main character and reflect a little

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Speaker 4: bit about your experiences online. And normally at the top

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Speaker 4: of an episode, I would go on as I do,

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Speaker 4: but I'm actually on the road right now promoting the

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Speaker 4: paperback version of my book Raw Dog Ian Let's get

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Speaker 4: a horn in there. But I've actually been meeting a

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Speaker 4: lot of sixteenth Minute listeners.

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Speaker 2: It's been really cool. I just I don't know.

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Speaker 4: I work in a series of small rooms and it's

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Speaker 4: easy to forget that people actually are hearing this. But

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Speaker 4: as I'm writing this right now, I am sitting in

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Speaker 4: a hotel bed with my mom, drinking large iced from

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Speaker 4: Dunks in Boston with a mild hangover because my friend

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Speaker 4: Tory and I decided to be annoying at our favorite

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Speaker 4: margarita bar from college until two am last night, So

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Speaker 4: I feel great.

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Speaker 2: I'm home and I'm happy, and.

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Speaker 4: So it just feels like the perfect moment to reflect

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Speaker 4: on what has been a very chaotic and wonderful year

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Speaker 4: with this show. So, in case you missed it, sixteenth minute,

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Speaker 4: the show is here to stay, but after our first year,

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Speaker 4: we are going to be taking a short hiatus and

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Speaker 4: are going to return in the summer with a more

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Speaker 4: seasonal format, closer to the limited series work I did

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Speaker 4: before this week to week format where I'm going to

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Speaker 4: do deep dives and more thorough reporting on the corners

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Speaker 4: of the Internet that I feel are under archived or

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Speaker 4: under explored. So things to look out for the Internet

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Speaker 4: and death, the actual science behind ASMR, a genre I've

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Speaker 4: been consuming for.

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Speaker 2: A decade and know very little about.

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Speaker 4: Think about how the Internet connect to justice, connect to

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Speaker 4: court cases, connects to incarceration. We're going to have a

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Speaker 4: time on the sixteenth minute feed. But this last year

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Speaker 4: talking to the characters of the day from week to

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Speaker 4: week has been so fascinating. I felt so challenged and

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Speaker 4: hopefully have grown a lot as a result. And the

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Speaker 4: most important thing to me is to thank the subjects

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Speaker 4: of this show who have so generously given me and

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Speaker 4: you their trust in sharing their stories.

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Speaker 2: It was really really cool.

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Speaker 4: And an honor to you know, have an and shape

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Speaker 4: those stories.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much.

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Speaker 4: This show has challenged my relationship and continued addiction to

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Speaker 4: the Internet, and you know, more than anything, it's been

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Speaker 4: fun to learn about people whose image and whose legacy

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Speaker 4: we kind of take for granted.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 4: Plus, I'm a yapper and it's terminal, soho worked great

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Speaker 4: for me, And so much of sixteenth minute has been

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Speaker 4: made between here where I am right now in Massachusetts

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Speaker 4: and at home where I live in Los Angeles and

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Speaker 4: making a show like this, as I was saying, mostly

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Speaker 4: on my couch or in hotel rooms or in hospital bathrooms,

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Speaker 4: because yes, the entire thirty to fifty Faral Hogs episode

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Speaker 4: was recorded in a hospital bathroom with our incredible crew

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Speaker 4: of three, my producer Sophie and Ian and weekly voice

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Speaker 4: work from Grant. Making the show feels very small and personal,

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Speaker 4: and so getting ready for this episode and actually hearing

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Speaker 4: your voice memos has been really cool and kind of weird.

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Speaker 2: You guys are freaks.

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Speaker 4: I've been walking around with your voice in my ears

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Speaker 4: for the last week and a half and hearing the

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Speaker 4: ways that this show and the Internet on the whole

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Speaker 4: fits into your life has been really awesome. Not to

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Speaker 4: get all parasocial, but you guys did and I promise, promised,

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Speaker 4: promise to never sell you a meme coin, So let

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Speaker 4: me be Paris for a second. It's really cool to

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Speaker 4: be a small part of your life, and I hope

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Speaker 4: you'll stick around for what's next. Okay, I want to

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Speaker 4: get to your stories because they are amazing, and there

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Speaker 4: was so fucking many of them. What I can promise

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Speaker 4: is that of the one hundred or so submissions I

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Speaker 4: received for this episode, I did listen to every single

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Speaker 4: one of them, and if yours does an air, you.

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Speaker 2: Are so valid, etc. But I had to make cuts

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Speaker 2: of stories that were too similar, or there were.

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Speaker 4: Sometimes sensitive elements that I didn't have time to handle

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Speaker 4: with the proper sensitivity and care the story deserved. So

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Speaker 4: if you submitted, thank you so much for trusting me

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Speaker 4: with your story. If you didn't hear back from me personally,

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Speaker 4: and I think over the course of these stories, we've

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Speaker 4: really covered the full breadth of the human on the

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Speaker 4: Internet experience, because you've sent some of the funniest stuff

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Speaker 4: I've heard about the Internet, and also some of the

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Speaker 4: saddest so so before we get into your voice memos,

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Speaker 4: I wanted to just share the logline for a few

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Speaker 4: stories that didn't make the cut. Ian Let's get some

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Speaker 4: circus music going here, a story about being shamed online

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Speaker 4: for defending oneself from being attacked by a goose, starting

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Speaker 4: a podcast about Drake before Drake was confirmed scary, and

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Speaker 4: becoming famous in Canada, being niche famous as a famous

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Speaker 4: call in person for the podcast My Brother, My Brother

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Speaker 4: and Me, getting cyberbullied on a Harry Potter forum in

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Speaker 4: the nineties, and a message just titled the Ballad of

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Speaker 4: Funky Kong. The list goes on, and let's be clear,

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Speaker 4: let wull be clear, I, Jamie Loftus, have had a

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Speaker 4: little experience being the niche main character myself. This has

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Speaker 4: in fact happened to me twice in the last ten years.

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Speaker 4: The first time was in twenty fifteen, when I did

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Speaker 4: a pick me performance art project that led to headlines

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Speaker 4: like this comedian slash American patriots selling Shrek nudes to

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Speaker 4: benefit Planned Parenthood, which.

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Speaker 2: I have nothing else to say. That's exactly what it

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Speaker 2: sounded like.

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Speaker 4: I painted myself like Shrek and I sold them. And

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Speaker 4: one time I was at a party and my own

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Speaker 4: nude was in the bathroom.

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Speaker 2: Moving on.

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Speaker 4: I also went viral shortly in twenty seventeen when I did,

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Speaker 4: wait for it, yet another pick me performance art piece

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Speaker 4: that led to headlines like this, we talked to the

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Speaker 4: woman who was butt jugging infinite Jest. Again, I don't

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Speaker 4: feel the need to explain this further. It's a pretty

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Speaker 4: direct headline. And I do I have, you know, some

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Speaker 4: love for this younger version of myself now, I mean, folks,

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Speaker 4: she really wanted to be picked and eventually someone did

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Speaker 4: because true fact, Grant, who I'm going to marry, is

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Speaker 4: a fan of infinite jest.

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Speaker 2: There you go.

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Speaker 4: And he had encountered the butt chugging Infinite Gest story

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Speaker 4: when it first happened, and he didn't realize that it

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Speaker 4: was me who had butt chugged the book until he

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Speaker 4: started googling me when he had his little crush. And

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Speaker 4: to me, this is why the Internet is so addictive.

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Speaker 2: Yes, it's awful.

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Speaker 4: Yes, it's this increasingly hostile place that is stealing our data,

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Speaker 4: our time, is weaponizing our own identities against us, while

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Speaker 4: making it nearly impossible to function without it. But sometimes

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Speaker 4: your future husband first heard of you because you were

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Speaker 4: butt chugging infinite jest and you feel seen by the

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Speaker 4: world for a second, and it's hard to find an

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Speaker 4: IRL equivalent of that. I can't explain it. You're gonna

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Speaker 4: hear a lot of that, but you get it because

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Speaker 4: I've heard your voice memos and you're gonna hear a

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Speaker 4: lot of that today, of people's moment in the sun

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Speaker 4: or unwittingly becoming Internet niche famous. And after listening to

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Speaker 4: these stories, I've separated them into a few little categories.

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Speaker 2: Isn't that nice?

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Speaker 4: Arguments about celebrities victim of bad clickbait, Internet grief pets

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Speaker 4: a classic, and of course the life consuming niche Internet

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Speaker 4: forum and other stories sprinkled throughout that I think you'll enjoy.

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Speaker 2: But first we are kicking off or.

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Speaker 4: I was the main character spectacular with the subject of

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Speaker 4: a famous meme who has been on my list of

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Speaker 4: subjects to cover and turned out to be a listener

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Speaker 4: of the show What aget Here's Cliff.

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Speaker 5: Hi, Jamie, my name is Cliff. And while I was

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Speaker 5: never an Internet main character, I had the dubious honor

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Speaker 5: of being one of its first memes. This was back

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Speaker 5: in like the late nineties, where the movie Forrest Gump

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Speaker 5: had just come out. I probably still had AOL And

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Speaker 5: then Forrest Gump he sat on a bench for most

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Speaker 5: of the movie telling a story, and we had a

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Speaker 5: bench that had the phrase been laid off on it,

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Speaker 5: and a friend and I thought it would be funny

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Speaker 5: to take a picture of me sitting and just blocking

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Speaker 5: the word off and haha, half a second of a chuckle,

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Speaker 5: you know. And it only really worked because I was

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Speaker 5: this nerdy, autistic kid and you couldn't tell if I

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Speaker 5: knew what was happening or was completely oblivious. But in

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Speaker 5: a way that did take off a little bit. On

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Speaker 5: the early days of the Internet, of course, someone made

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Speaker 5: a meme out of it, and you know where it

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Speaker 5: said been laid it, they added this kid clearly hasn't,

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Speaker 5: and yeah, it made the rounds. I thought it was

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Speaker 5: funny at the time. I was recognized for it one

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Speaker 5: time a year or two later during college at a

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Speaker 5: party and people asked if I had been laid yet,

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Speaker 5: and when I answered that I had, these cheers went

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Speaker 5: up and everyone gave me drinks. I was odd looking

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Speaker 5: back on it now, but but I don't know what

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Speaker 5: I would have thought if that happened now, because you know,

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Speaker 5: just I would not have been able to handle the

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Speaker 5: sort of experiences a lot of the people that you've

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Speaker 5: interviewed have had. And yeah, so I wonder what it

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Speaker 5: would be like now, or maybe it would have never

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Speaker 5: taken off because it's not something that you can really

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Speaker 5: do anything with because the joke's kind of self contained.

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Speaker 5: But I still see it pop up in the wild

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Speaker 5: once every five ten years or so, just to remind

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Speaker 5: me that the Internet does not forget So anyway, thanks

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Speaker 5: for all you do. I appreciate it and look forward

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Speaker 5: to hearing other people's experiences.

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Speaker 4: Thank you so much for calling in, Cliff. I cannot

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Speaker 4: tell you how delighted I was. Thank you for listening.

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Speaker 4: All Right, we're going to keep moving. One of the

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Speaker 4: most interesting middle ground ways to become the character of

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Speaker 4: the day is to say something publicly but not intend

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Speaker 4: for it to break containment. This happens all the time,

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Speaker 4: as we now have al rhithms that are boosted on

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Speaker 4: locking in on trends in a way that no one

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Speaker 4: could have anticipated. That is the wrong side of the

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Speaker 4: internet finds you on this show. This has happened to

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Speaker 4: Willie McNabb of thirty to fifty Faral Hogs fame, It

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Speaker 4: happened to Coffee Wife, it happened to doctor Allie Luke's

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Speaker 4: The Smell Doctor, and it could happen to you. Here's

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Speaker 4: listener and friend and amazing poet Maya Williams.

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Speaker 6: Hi, Jamie, So picture this.

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Speaker 7: April twenty twenty two, I decide to make a TikTok.

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Speaker 7: I don't always make tiktoks, but when I do, apparently

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Speaker 7: this could happen. There's one clip I have of Keiki

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Speaker 7: Palmer being hilarious from a Variety's Light Detector series, genuinely

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Speaker 7: not knowing who Dick Cheney is. And then I have

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Speaker 7: a clip of Tyler Perry on the Variety Light Detector

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Speaker 7: series mimicking Keke Palmer saying, oh, I'm sorry to this man.

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Speaker 7: I don't know who this man is and is, even

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Speaker 7: though he does know JJ Abrams and has worked with

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Speaker 7: them before. And then there's a clip of me saying

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Speaker 7: further proof that he's not funny unless he's mimicking black women.

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Speaker 7: No surprise, to my surprise, up to forty four thousand.

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Speaker 6: Views is upon the video.

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Speaker 7: I receive comments from people of many racial backgrounds saying

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Speaker 7: things like, oh my gosh, I agree with this, and like, yeah,

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Speaker 7: Tyler Perry could do better in entertainment. And then there

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Speaker 7: are some comments that are entirely from black folks who

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Speaker 7: say things like, oh, you're just being a hater, or hey,

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Speaker 7: shut up, or hey, Kiki Palmer has worked with Tyler

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Speaker 7: Perry before, maybe it's okay that he mimics her. And

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Speaker 7: then I end up turning off the comments when someone

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Speaker 7: comments sys wear, are your eyebrows activating like that childhood

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Speaker 7: insecurity that I've received before, And it made me laugh

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Speaker 7: but at the same time made my heart saying. So

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Speaker 7: I'm like, Okay, I'm done with these comments, let's turn

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Speaker 7: them off. But I wanted to share this with you

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Speaker 7: because I'm very curious about what happens when people of

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Speaker 7: marginalized genders are trending because of entertainment media and reacting

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Speaker 7: to it, especially people of marginalized genders who are black people.

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Speaker 4: So Maya brings up a great point at the end

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Speaker 4: of her message, because, as we've talked about on this

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Speaker 4: show many times, the Internet is informed by and often

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Speaker 4: intentionally amplifies real life discrimination particularly in the video driven

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Speaker 4: era that we're in right now. We've looked at stories

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Speaker 4: like this, in particular recently with Taska Brown of Gorilla

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Speaker 4: Glue fame, in which she was faced with rampant misogynire

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Speaker 4: even from within her own community. Tayzonde of Chocolate Rain

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Speaker 4: fame also spoke to this in detail in our recent

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Speaker 4: series with him. Makes me think of a conversation I

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Speaker 4: had recently when I was listen to me.

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Speaker 2: This makes me think of a conversation I had.

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Speaker 4: I sound like a pastor, but this makes me think

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Speaker 4: of a conversation I had recently when I was talking

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Speaker 4: about main characters at UCLA brag, thank you, and yes,

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Speaker 4: I did make sure I was working with professors that

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Speaker 4: were pro Palestine. I spoke at the Center for Critical

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Speaker 4: Internet Theory, and after the talk, a professor who I

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Speaker 4: will not reveal the name of because I cannot wait

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Speaker 4: to speak with her on this show was talking about

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Speaker 4: how pivotal she felt the switch from the text based

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Speaker 4: to video based internet was and how she wished that

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Speaker 4: her students had gotten the chance to experience true Internet anonymity, which,

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Speaker 4: as we all know, could go in a number of directions,

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Speaker 4: but isn't really available now, and we're going to cover

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Speaker 4: stories from that era in a bit. But I hadn't

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Speaker 4: really ever thought of it this way, and there is

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Speaker 4: so much truth to that, because, to continue our celebrity

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Speaker 4: comments spectacular, how someone looks is always commented upon, whether

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Speaker 4: it's the celebrity themselves or the user. Here's Hayden and

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Speaker 4: Jessica Chastain.

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Speaker 2: Hi, Jamie.

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Speaker 1: I have one incident where I was sort of anonymously

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Speaker 1: a main character. Back in late August of twenty seventeen.

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Speaker 1: I was checking Twitter during the workday, as one does

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Speaker 1: when it's slow, and saw that the actress Jessica Chastain

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Speaker 1: had tweeted something I found a little bit inane about

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Speaker 1: the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville that had happened

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Speaker 1: a little bit prior to.

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Speaker 6: That, something about like.

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Speaker 1: Espousing nonviolence when faced with a bunch of violent Nazis

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Speaker 1: that want to eradicate your existence. That she was one

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Speaker 1: of my favorite actresses, and I was already a little

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Speaker 1: bit sensitive to the topic because I'd graduated from BVA

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Speaker 1: and it was a really special place to me, and

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Speaker 1: up to that point it had been the location of

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Speaker 1: like some of the happiest memories of my life that

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Speaker 1: so far, which really had turned sour when you know,

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Speaker 1: all of these places that you recognize in the news

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Speaker 1: was papered over with nazeasonal white supremacists and stud So

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Speaker 1: I just still to this day I sort of have

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Speaker 1: like a knee jerk reaction to people being stupid about it,

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Speaker 1: and I, without really thinking too hard about it, I

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Speaker 1: fired off a tweet to her, like, not even thinking

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Speaker 1: that she would see it, because she had, I think

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Speaker 1: at that point, like half a million followers, and who

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Speaker 1: even can handle your notifications at that level, you know?

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Speaker 1: But it was the Martin Luther King Junior quote about

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Speaker 1: the danger of the white moderate, and I like close

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Speaker 1: Twitter and then went back to doing whatever spreadsheet nonsense

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Speaker 1: I was doing that day. And then I checked back

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Speaker 1: a little bit later and saw that she had replied

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Speaker 1: and was like a step and a half away from

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Speaker 1: calling me a reverse racist, and like we had a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a back and forth before she stopped replying,

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Speaker 1: So I thought that was sort of the end of it,

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Speaker 1: but the issue just continued to snowball some as the

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Speaker 1: day went on, even after she stopped engaging with me

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Speaker 1: directly and like with dealing with other people, because I

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Speaker 1: think at some point that Mary Sue wrote about it,

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Speaker 1: and then by the evening, like one of my Twitter

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Speaker 1: friends had set me an article like the huff Huffing

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Speaker 1: and Post had written about it, and that around that

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Speaker 1: point I started getting a wave of abuse from sort

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Speaker 1: of alt right hyper conservative egg profile stuff. And I

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Speaker 1: had linked it originally to the huff Post article. That

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Speaker 1: was because it was way more mainstream than anything of

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Speaker 1: the mary Sue.

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Speaker 8: Would put out.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So that sort of was it for a while,

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Speaker 1: until a few years later I discovered that the reason

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Speaker 1: I got so much of the right like hyper right

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Speaker 1: wing abuse was because breit Bart had done an article

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Speaker 1: about it. Now, that's just sort of a fun fact

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Speaker 1: that breit Bart put a hit out on me and

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Speaker 1: couldn't even do it right because it was just my

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Speaker 1: Star Wars tand Twitter account. Every year in my calendar

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Speaker 1: there's a little alert for like Chastain Beef Day in

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Speaker 1: late August.

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Speaker 4: And I think I speak for all of us when

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Speaker 4: I say Happy early Jessica Chastain Beef Day to us all.

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Speaker 4: And finally Kelly called in about the harrowing experience of

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Speaker 4: becoming the top comment on a half thought out body

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Speaker 4: shaming meme about Adele.

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Speaker 2: Hello.

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Speaker 9: My name is Kelly. I'm a book designer living in Brooklyn,

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Speaker 9: and I became a very minor main character on Instagram

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Speaker 9: for one day when I got into a fight with

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Speaker 9: a meme account. It was May of twenty twenty, which

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Speaker 9: was famously a good and healthy time for all of us.

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Speaker 9: The singer Adele had just lost weight, and the account

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Speaker 9: Meme Queen, made a post that I still have a

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Speaker 9: screenshot of in my phone because again, good healthy time.

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Speaker 9: The post features two photos of Adele looking thinner than

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Speaker 9: ever before, with text above them that reads, Adele's glow

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Speaker 9: up is what twenty twenty needs right now. The actual

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Speaker 9: caption says, quote, her ex is punching the right now.

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Speaker 9: Because I was glued to my phone on May seventh

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Speaker 9: of twenty twenty for some reason, I was one of

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Speaker 9: the first commenters. I commented quote, Adele has always been

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Speaker 9: hot as fuck. Stop referring to weight loss as glowing up.

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Speaker 2: Please.

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Speaker 9: Unfortunately for me, she saw my comment early on and

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Speaker 9: replied to it saying, quote, no one said about weight loss.

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Speaker 9: Please don't put words in my mouth. Unquote In the

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Speaker 9: screenshot I have on my phone from sixteen hours after

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Speaker 9: the incident. My initial comment had fifteen, three hundred and

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Speaker 9: thirty seven likes and hundreds of replies. As it does,

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Speaker 9: this all happened very fast, and for several hours, I

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Speaker 9: was glued to my phone against the better advice of

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Speaker 9: my friends, replying back to people and arguing about the

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Speaker 9: very definition of the term glow up. And there were

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Speaker 9: a lot of people agreeing with me, and other comments

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Speaker 9: calling out meme Queen for fat phobia, But mine was

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Speaker 9: the one that everyone saw as soon as I opened

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Speaker 9: the comments, and by everyone I also mean trolls. But

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Speaker 9: the thing that is the most memorable to me about

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Speaker 9: this experience is the carrot photo. Several days before the incident,

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Speaker 9: I had posted a photo to my grid off my

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Speaker 9: hand holding a bunch of very beautiful carrots, stems, and leaves.

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Speaker 9: Included the caption said I'm just gonna say it, these

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Speaker 9: carrots are hot. This was conveniently the most recent post

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Speaker 9: on my grid, which meant that it was the one

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Speaker 9: that two or three of the more aggressive trolls from

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Speaker 9: Meme Queen's page decided to comment on. And so I

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Speaker 9: give you the most exquisitely stupid comment a stranger has

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Speaker 9: ever left on my Instagram. So the person who finds

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Speaker 9: carrots hot is the one who doesn't believe in fat shaming.

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Speaker 9: What anyway, I have no way of getting back to

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Speaker 9: the post since it's a meme account that has posted

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Speaker 9: approximately six hundred million times since. But the commenting and

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Speaker 9: fighting continued on for days after the post, and I

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Speaker 9: have no clue how the number shook out in the end,

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Speaker 9: and people forgot about it quickly, and I unfollowed meme

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Speaker 9: Queen because she posted too much weird, fat photic, normy

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Speaker 9: content and not enough memes, which, by the way, can

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Speaker 9: someone please explain to me how a photo of a

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Speaker 9: singer looking thin with a caption about her glow up

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Speaker 9: is a meme. As you've elucidated on this show and others,

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Speaker 9: the conversation around women's bodies in media has not gotten

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Speaker 9: any better. I appreciate all the work you've done to

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Speaker 9: push us towards a better place, though, and I figured

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Speaker 9: i'd share this story if you want to use it,

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Speaker 9: as it's only slightly more relevant than the other. One

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Speaker 9: time that I became a very minor main character, which

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Speaker 9: was because my girlfriend's parents saw Richard Dreyfus go on

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Speaker 9: a homophobic rant at a Jaws event, and I tweeted

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Speaker 9: about it and got quoted by multiple news sources. I

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Speaker 9: love the Internet.

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Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Kelly, And when we come back

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Speaker 4: more of your stories, maybe welcome back to sixteenth minute

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Speaker 4: finishing and recording. This script is all that lays between

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Speaker 4: me and getting to meet my baby nephew Max. What

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Speaker 4: a time to be alive. Let's keep moving. My college

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Speaker 4: crush and my algebra teacher came to my book reading

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Speaker 4: last night. Boston is the most perfect place in the world,

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Speaker 4: and that's just a fact. Let's get back into your

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Speaker 4: stories up next. Aspin called in about some of the

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Speaker 4: most blood boilingly dishonest clickbait I have ever heard.

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Speaker 10: When I was eighteen years old in twenty eighteen, I

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Speaker 10: was the media spokesperson for Lush Cosmetics first trans Writes

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Speaker 10: campaign in North America. My key quote was on display

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Speaker 10: in the front window of every North American Lush store.

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Speaker 10: So I got some interest from media companies to have

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Speaker 10: some interviews, which mostly were simple and nice, but Refinery

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Speaker 10: twenty nine put out a pretty wild clickbait article on me.

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Speaker 10: In their beauty diaries titled I'm a trans college student

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Speaker 10: and I spend one thousand, seven hundred and eighty two

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Speaker 10: dollars a year on beauty products, which was wildly inaccurate

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Speaker 10: since I mostly used free samples that I brought home

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Speaker 10: and also included an eight hundred dollars top surgery consultation

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Speaker 10: that I'd attended as one of those beauty products. Media comments, naturally,

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Speaker 10: it went crazy. Thankfully, my full name wasn't ever shared

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Speaker 10: in my interviews, but I was pretty vocal about my

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Speaker 10: involvement in the campaign on social media, so I still

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Speaker 10: got messages from people going is this you?

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Speaker 8: Is it true?

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Speaker 10: Or how can you justify spending this way? And all

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Speaker 10: sorts of vitriolic, hateful comments. And I even got questioned

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Speaker 10: by Lush employees at other stores if they realized who

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Speaker 10: I was. I felt pretty embarrassed and definitely misrepresented, which

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Speaker 10: was a hard place to be in as a transgender

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Speaker 10: teenager representing an entire identity group for an international company.

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Speaker 10: Refinery twenty nine did eventually change the name of the

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Speaker 10: article on search engines, so now it comes up as

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Speaker 10: transgender Man's skincare routine is all Lush products because they're

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Speaker 10: rightfully ashamed of their clickbait lies. It was a niche

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Speaker 10: main character moment, but it really has haunted me ever since.

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Speaker 10: Surgery consultation is a beauty product. Again haunting. It'll never

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Speaker 10: leave me.

439
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:14,199
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for calling in, Aspen.

440
00:25:14,520 --> 00:25:18,040
Speaker 4: I wish I could say I were more surprised that

441
00:25:18,119 --> 00:25:21,520
Speaker 4: a clickbait site would sink so low as to bully

442
00:25:21,600 --> 00:25:26,760
Speaker 4: a trans teenager and misrepresent getting needed care. You deserve better,

443
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:31,600
Speaker 4: Aspen forever. Let's go to the Refinery twenty nine headquarters

444
00:25:31,720 --> 00:25:36,439
Speaker 4: right now. But as other stories sent in demonstrated, not

445
00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:41,240
Speaker 4: all IRL to internet encounters are completely doomed. I mean

446
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,320
Speaker 4: most of them are. But here too, that worked out

447
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:44,960
Speaker 4: rather nicely.

448
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:48,320
Speaker 11: Hi Jamie and sixteenth minute folks, my name's Tom Lum.

449
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:51,200
Speaker 11: We ran into each other on an episode of Never Posts.

450
00:25:51,280 --> 00:25:56,200
Speaker 11: So in twenty twenty one, I was working in software development.

451
00:25:57,320 --> 00:26:01,159
Speaker 11: It was fine. I just was starting to lose my

452
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 11: mind a little bit, and so I saw a job

453
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 11: application to work as a writer for sid Show, which

454
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:10,359
Speaker 11: is a science YouTube channel that I adore. It was

455
00:26:10,359 --> 00:26:13,399
Speaker 11: made by Hank and John Green, who also made stuff

456
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,680
Speaker 11: like Crash Course vlog Brothers and I've been a huge

457
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 11: fan of all other stuff since I was a teen,

458
00:26:18,800 --> 00:26:21,359
Speaker 11: and so I thought, you know what, I should apply

459
00:26:21,440 --> 00:26:24,639
Speaker 11: to this job, mostly on a whim. This was pre

460
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:27,359
Speaker 11: COVID vaccine, so I was just spending all of my

461
00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 11: days at home alone and really starting to lose my mind,

462
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:33,800
Speaker 11: and I was just like, I need to change something,

463
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:36,160
Speaker 11: and this seems cool. I'll just give it a shot.

464
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:39,320
Speaker 11: And part of the application was they wanted examples of

465
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:42,919
Speaker 11: you doing science communication. They need a video. I've been

466
00:26:42,920 --> 00:26:44,760
Speaker 11: meaning to learn how this app works, and I had

467
00:26:44,800 --> 00:26:48,000
Speaker 11: also been meaning to make something about this story I

468
00:26:48,040 --> 00:26:50,160
Speaker 11: had learned in college that I love to tell, which

469
00:26:50,200 --> 00:26:53,840
Speaker 11: is that we once gave Bee's jet lag for science.

470
00:26:54,400 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 11: And then I posted it to my zero followers at

471
00:26:57,960 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 11: like midnight and then went to sleep, and then I

472
00:27:02,119 --> 00:27:06,280
Speaker 11: woke up to five thousand followers, which was the most

473
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:09,680
Speaker 11: I had had on any social media ever. And then

474
00:27:09,680 --> 00:27:12,720
Speaker 11: the videos started to really blow up, like it to

475
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:17,400
Speaker 11: the point where my notifications on TikTok were functionally useless.

476
00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 11: The magazine Popular Science also did a podcast episode about

477
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:25,639
Speaker 11: that TikTok in which they mispronounced my last name because

478
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:29,359
Speaker 11: they saw my username, which is Tom lum person and

479
00:27:29,440 --> 00:27:32,760
Speaker 11: assume my name was Tom Lumperson. I was very lucky

480
00:27:32,800 --> 00:27:36,160
Speaker 11: that this all happened when I was in my late twenties,

481
00:27:36,200 --> 00:27:40,480
Speaker 11: and I had already seen many stories of virality gone

482
00:27:40,480 --> 00:27:42,640
Speaker 11: wrong or going nowhere right.

483
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:43,240
Speaker 12: You know.

484
00:27:43,800 --> 00:27:46,280
Speaker 11: I obviously didn't like quit my job and throw everything

485
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:49,680
Speaker 11: into TikTok, but I started making more of those science videos.

486
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:54,679
Speaker 11: Funny enough, Hank Green commented on that original video, and

487
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:57,240
Speaker 11: then as I kept doing it, we became mutuals and

488
00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:01,920
Speaker 11: then friends. So that was always a truly wild which

489
00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:05,040
Speaker 11: gives me emotional vertigo if I think about too hard.

490
00:28:05,840 --> 00:28:07,600
Speaker 11: I also told Hank. I told Hank, you know, a

491
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 11: few years later, I was like, did you know about that?

492
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:10,239
Speaker 11: And he was like, did we hire you? And I

493
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:12,440
Speaker 11: was like no, but that's fine. It all weren't down

494
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:12,840
Speaker 11: the end.

495
00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 13: Hi, my name is bj Colangelo, and I am telling

496
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:19,160
Speaker 13: the story of the time I was the Twitter main

497
00:28:19,280 --> 00:28:23,479
Speaker 13: character of the day, and fortunately it wasn't for doing

498
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:28,720
Speaker 13: or saying something terrible. It was Halloween twenty seventeen and

499
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 13: I went to the airport way too early, as I

500
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:34,840
Speaker 13: am known to do, and sat down at the bar,

501
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:39,400
Speaker 13: had a drink and met two women who were meeting

502
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:42,960
Speaker 13: for the first time at the airport because they had

503
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:47,400
Speaker 13: suspected that their husbands were having an affair with each other,

504
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:50,960
Speaker 13: and they were flying to where their supposed business trip

505
00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 13: was taking place so that they could finally confront them.

506
00:28:54,920 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 13: It was one of the most fascinating conversations I've ever evesdropped,

507
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:03,640
Speaker 13: and as we were known to do in the late

508
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 13: twenty ten's, on Twitter, I documented the entire conversation. I

509
00:29:08,480 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 13: posted about it, turned my phone off, got on my flight,

510
00:29:11,520 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 13: thought nothing of it, landed, turned my phone on to

511
00:29:15,320 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 13: call a ride share, and my phone practically exploded in

512
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:22,840
Speaker 13: my hand. Because it had gone beyond viral, it ended

513
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 13: up on BBC three. George ta Kai's social media shared it.

514
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 13: All of those weird aggregate sites that just compile popular

515
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:35,160
Speaker 13: tweets for the day did whole stories about it. Cleveland

516
00:29:35,200 --> 00:29:38,800
Speaker 13: Magazine interviewed me about it because it was such a

517
00:29:38,960 --> 00:29:42,800
Speaker 13: huge thing that had happened at the Cleveland airport with me,

518
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 13: somebody who was at the time a journalist working in Cleveland,

519
00:29:47,320 --> 00:29:51,560
Speaker 13: and it was very surreal. But because I had done

520
00:29:51,560 --> 00:29:56,080
Speaker 13: my best to, you know, keep their identities as secret

521
00:29:56,160 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 13: as possible, people were very upset that I isn't now

522
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:05,280
Speaker 13: turning into a private investigator and changing my flights to

523
00:30:05,400 --> 00:30:10,280
Speaker 13: go track these people down to give them closure. Nope,

524
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:12,120
Speaker 13: it's just a weird thing that happened. I have no

525
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 13: idea whatever became of these couples. I have no idea

526
00:30:17,120 --> 00:30:22,080
Speaker 13: what became of their marriages. But it continued to be

527
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 13: viral for days later. Netflix shared it because it has

528
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 13: a little similar pra elements with Grace and Frankie, so

529
00:30:30,640 --> 00:30:34,120
Speaker 13: that put it on even more eyes. And as somebody

530
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 13: who also works as an entertainment journalist, that does mean

531
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:40,360
Speaker 13: that every so often I'll be talking to somebody, I'll

532
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:42,840
Speaker 13: say my name, They'll see what I look like because

533
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:45,520
Speaker 13: I have kind of a distinct look of green hair

534
00:30:45,520 --> 00:30:48,000
Speaker 13: and I've looked the same way for about like a

535
00:30:48,040 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 13: decade now, and they'll ask me, Hey, are you the

536
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 13: lady who tweeted about the women at the airport, And

537
00:30:55,160 --> 00:30:59,280
Speaker 13: I have to say, yes, yes, that was me. Even today,

538
00:30:59,320 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 13: all these years later, I still get people randomly who

539
00:31:02,200 --> 00:31:05,440
Speaker 13: will find me on other social media platforms to ask

540
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:08,600
Speaker 13: me if I ever got closure or if I know

541
00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:11,520
Speaker 13: whatever happened or what became of them, And the answer

542
00:31:11,600 --> 00:31:12,880
Speaker 13: is no, I don't.

543
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 8: I do not know.

544
00:31:13,960 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 13: Whatever happened to the shot lady and the gum lady

545
00:31:17,960 --> 00:31:19,880
Speaker 13: or they're probably gay husbands.

546
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:21,920
Speaker 2: Thank you to Tom and BJ.

547
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 4: And BJ's story in particular really stuck with me because

548
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 4: the quote unquote overheard viral Twitter thread was such a

549
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 4: moment in like the late twenty tens, and BJ, to

550
00:31:33,960 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 4: be clear, did the right thing here and properly hid

551
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:40,480
Speaker 4: the identity of the folks that she was overhearing. But

552
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,280
Speaker 4: it is one of my dream subjects to talk more

553
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:47,040
Speaker 4: about how as social media progresses we have this habit

554
00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 4: of knee jerk surveilling each other without being careful. As

555
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:55,640
Speaker 4: BJ was like, social media to some extent is designed

556
00:31:55,720 --> 00:31:58,560
Speaker 4: to of course make us feel bad, but also to

557
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 4: have us surveil our elves and each other. It's something

558
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 4: I have to catch myself doing all the time. But

559
00:32:04,600 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 4: self in pure surveillance isn't what the Internet was built on.

560
00:32:08,880 --> 00:32:12,840
Speaker 4: The Internet was built on, of course, little videos of pets.

561
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 4: Here are two of your pet stories.

562
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:20,479
Speaker 14: Hi, my name is Joel Edmiston. I'm a listener to

563
00:32:20,520 --> 00:32:23,600
Speaker 14: your show. My cat went viral. Basically, my cat went

564
00:32:23,640 --> 00:32:25,560
Speaker 14: into the bathtub and he went in the bath with

565
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 14: water in it, walked around. I take a video, put

566
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 14: some audio on it and put it on TikTok. I

567
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 14: am a comedian. I have, you know, tried to ticked.

568
00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:36,760
Speaker 14: I had tried TikTok at that point, but it didn't

569
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 14: work out and I deleted to some stuff and you know,

570
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:45,320
Speaker 14: just like on YouTube and Instagram trying to make things hit.

571
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 14: But this cat video, I went to sleep, woke up.

572
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:51,680
Speaker 14: It was a gigantic and I've kept making videos. That

573
00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 14: was in twenty twenty one, so I've kept making videos

574
00:32:53,960 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 14: about the cat with water stuff because he does like

575
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,800
Speaker 14: water and he was a kitten at the time. Older now,

576
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:05,440
Speaker 14: I you know, record my narrations over top of the videos.

577
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 14: I'm like pleased with the The account does make me

578
00:33:10,240 --> 00:33:13,880
Speaker 14: feel good because it's it's it's kept up the followers

579
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 14: and stuff. It's on Instagram as well now in a

580
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:18,600
Speaker 14: way that I feel like it is sort of my

581
00:33:18,760 --> 00:33:22,440
Speaker 14: content and not just cat content and having the camera

582
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:24,400
Speaker 14: pointed in the right place when the cat comes on.

583
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 14: I will say, there's a lot of positive feedback on

584
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:31,400
Speaker 14: the page, also a lot of negative feedback that makes

585
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 14: me upset in a way that I wish it didn't. Like, obviously,

586
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 14: the negative negativity is going to be there, but I

587
00:33:38,080 --> 00:33:40,600
Speaker 14: just wish I didn't care so much. I think it's

588
00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 14: called concern trolling when people act concerned for the cat

589
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:48,520
Speaker 14: over the smallest details and pretend they're they're experts, or

590
00:33:48,560 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 14: when they're just calling me names or you know, blah

591
00:33:52,760 --> 00:33:55,640
Speaker 14: blah blah, and it never sees it to amaze me. This

592
00:33:55,720 --> 00:33:58,600
Speaker 14: is a cat after all, this is a cat page

593
00:33:58,840 --> 00:34:03,760
Speaker 14: after all. Yeah, And I can admit that I, especially

594
00:34:03,800 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 14: when things are really viral, I kind of read every comment,

595
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:09,160
Speaker 14: and I wish that I didn't wish that I didn't

596
00:34:09,239 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 14: feel compelled to read every comment. Because here's what I do.

597
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:16,200
Speaker 14: I delete every negative comment that I see. I blocked

598
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:20,359
Speaker 14: the person. It's probably good practice, but the fact that

599
00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:24,120
Speaker 14: I have to read every comment for it, I kind

600
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:28,279
Speaker 14: of like scroll past, you know, thoughtlessly over the positive ones,

601
00:34:28,280 --> 00:34:30,800
Speaker 14: but I see any negativity, it's like a delete.

602
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 8: Hi.

603
00:34:31,920 --> 00:34:34,840
Speaker 15: I go by Sally Saint Rose and I am calling

604
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:38,040
Speaker 15: in to talk about my tiny viral moment of my

605
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 15: fat sphinx named Joby. I rescue and adopt hairless cats,

606
00:34:42,280 --> 00:34:45,200
Speaker 15: and one of my first ones was named Joby. He

607
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:49,440
Speaker 15: was amazing. He was a butterball of wrinkles. And I

608
00:34:49,440 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 15: have always loved taking pictures of my cats and posting

609
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:56,759
Speaker 15: them online. I would post them on Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr.

610
00:34:57,440 --> 00:35:00,319
Speaker 15: One time I woke up and overnight one of the

611
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:03,479
Speaker 15: pictures had gone viral. People had made memes of it,

612
00:35:03,680 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 15: passed it around, so so many people did that, and

613
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,839
Speaker 15: then the next thing, a video went viral of him

614
00:35:11,920 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 15: and one of my other cats in the bathtub. I

615
00:35:15,320 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 15: had made shower caps for them, tiny little cat shower caps.

616
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 15: I hadn't seen anyone do that yet, and I thought

617
00:35:22,320 --> 00:35:25,200
Speaker 15: that was adorable, and so I did that, and I

618
00:35:25,239 --> 00:35:27,560
Speaker 15: was one of the first people to post hairless cats

619
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 15: and the shower cats online and the people went wild

620
00:35:31,760 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 15: for it. I had media companies reaching out to me

621
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:39,400
Speaker 15: to not only you know, use it, but they wanted

622
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:42,880
Speaker 15: to manage it. And I still have a media company

623
00:35:42,920 --> 00:35:47,240
Speaker 15: that manages his videos. They get licensed out to Comedy Central.

624
00:35:47,400 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 15: He was on Key and Peel. It was awesome. I

625
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:55,400
Speaker 15: loved the love that Joby got from people. I was like, Okay,

626
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,160
Speaker 15: everyone feels like me. They loved Joby just as much

627
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:00,920
Speaker 15: as I do. And it was great for a while.

628
00:36:01,239 --> 00:36:04,279
Speaker 15: Then I started getting the hate comments, the hate dms,

629
00:36:05,120 --> 00:36:09,160
Speaker 15: people searching out to find my personal accounts and emails

630
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 15: so they could write me messages to let me know

631
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:15,879
Speaker 15: he's going to die. They want to kill him. He's

632
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:20,040
Speaker 15: so ugly, really bizarre things. But I just, you know,

633
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:22,719
Speaker 15: was like, hey, it's the Internet. Not going to pay

634
00:36:22,760 --> 00:36:26,920
Speaker 15: them any mind. And when he was eleven, he passed

635
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:31,440
Speaker 15: away from his heart condition. He had HCM, which pretty

636
00:36:31,440 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 15: common and hairless breed unfortunately, but he passed away and

637
00:36:36,680 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 15: it was really sad. I was hit by grief really

638
00:36:39,920 --> 00:36:42,919
Speaker 15: really hard, and I would talk about it a little

639
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,840
Speaker 15: bit online. And then I started noticing mass and mass

640
00:36:46,880 --> 00:36:50,960
Speaker 15: amounts of people unfollowing me when he passed away. I

641
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:53,560
Speaker 15: thought it was so bizarre and I was like, why

642
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:57,719
Speaker 15: are people unfollowing just because he's no longer alive? And

643
00:36:57,840 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 15: it was so weird. I couldn't understand. I was like,

644
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:05,000
Speaker 15: do you not love him anymore because he's no longer alive?

645
00:37:05,560 --> 00:37:08,399
Speaker 15: And I did a lot of introspection about what does

646
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:13,480
Speaker 15: this mean and why are people doing this? And I,

647
00:37:13,560 --> 00:37:15,200
Speaker 15: you know, had to come to the realization it's Oh,

648
00:37:15,239 --> 00:37:18,880
Speaker 15: it's the Internet. He was a moment of time for

649
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:23,080
Speaker 15: people and then that was it, and I was putting

650
00:37:23,080 --> 00:37:26,919
Speaker 15: my feelings onto them of how I viewed Jobi of

651
00:37:27,160 --> 00:37:30,680
Speaker 15: my world. I'm, you know, will love him forever. I'll

652
00:37:30,800 --> 00:37:34,000
Speaker 15: have to carry this grief for him forever. And that's

653
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:37,240
Speaker 15: not how other people viewed him. And so it really

654
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:41,840
Speaker 15: puts into perspective other really famous Internet cats that have

655
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:47,600
Speaker 15: passed away. Why they still post them continuously. You have

656
00:37:47,719 --> 00:37:51,319
Speaker 15: to keep up that facade of yes, most people know

657
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:54,520
Speaker 15: that the cat is gone, but you have to keep

658
00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:57,480
Speaker 15: posting their pictures as if they're not. And that has

659
00:37:57,560 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 15: to be really hard.

660
00:37:59,000 --> 00:38:01,680
Speaker 4: Thinking to Jolin Sally for their stories. We talked a

661
00:38:01,680 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 4: little bit about Internet pets in our Moodang episode, but

662
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:08,440
Speaker 4: it's something that I would really like to continue talking

663
00:38:08,440 --> 00:38:13,239
Speaker 4: about because, as Sally is alluding to, pets famously don't

664
00:38:13,280 --> 00:38:15,640
Speaker 4: live as long as us, and so there is this

665
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 4: inevitable I've monetized my pet and now I'm grieving them,

666
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:21,480
Speaker 4: And I just think it's a very interesting thing to

667
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:25,880
Speaker 4: get into more. But while we're talking about foundational pillars

668
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:29,040
Speaker 4: of the Internet, why don't we jump back into the

669
00:38:29,080 --> 00:38:32,560
Speaker 4: good old text based and flash animation forums we were

670
00:38:32,600 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 4: talking about a little earlier a lot of people are

671
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:40,680
Speaker 4: still nostalgic for this Internet. While it had many problems,

672
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 4: it's an era of the Internet we've explored in episodes

673
00:38:44,040 --> 00:38:48,560
Speaker 4: like Badger Badger, Mushroom, an overly attacked girlfriend, or even

674
00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:53,440
Speaker 4: as late historically as the Dress, the days where we

675
00:38:53,600 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 4: could still sort of talk our shit in anonymity and

676
00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 4: things went awry in a completely different way than they

677
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 4: do now Here are your forum stories.

678
00:39:03,600 --> 00:39:05,759
Speaker 16: I'm a nineties kid born in the mid eighties. I

679
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:08,279
Speaker 16: spent my earliest years playing in streets and creeks and

680
00:39:08,320 --> 00:39:10,920
Speaker 16: abandoned store parking lots, doing dumb shit that would likely

681
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:14,680
Speaker 16: make it onto primetime news today. Minor vandalism, simple arts,

682
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:17,280
Speaker 16: and plenty of petty theft, just kids being a fucking

683
00:39:17,360 --> 00:39:20,680
Speaker 16: menace tell us about ten or so. At that point,

684
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:23,680
Speaker 16: my half formed frontal cortex became increasingly aware of the

685
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:27,080
Speaker 16: allure of the Internet. But during my pre teen years

686
00:39:27,080 --> 00:39:29,800
Speaker 16: I spent untold hours trying to ignore the six o'clock

687
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 16: news in the background as I scour the latest links

688
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:35,080
Speaker 16: page on this bb or that usenet. It was pure

689
00:39:35,120 --> 00:39:39,040
Speaker 16: information niche interest, someone's hobby and other's vault or shrine

690
00:39:39,080 --> 00:39:41,440
Speaker 16: to this event or that celebrity. But if actual information

691
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:43,879
Speaker 16: or useful services weren't of interest, the chat rooms were

692
00:39:44,239 --> 00:39:48,719
Speaker 16: something awful, for instance, and for all the negatives associated

693
00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:51,239
Speaker 16: with that particular phase of the Internet, many people my

694
00:39:51,360 --> 00:39:53,759
Speaker 16: age looked back to this as its peak. The bar

695
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 16: for entry did not exist. Have you computer? Have you Internet?

696
00:40:00,120 --> 00:40:00,359
Speaker 12: Yes?

697
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:04,360
Speaker 16: Please enjoy this unfiltered onslaught of the absolute worst takes

698
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:08,040
Speaker 16: in the history of man. Pages upon pages of topic

699
00:40:08,160 --> 00:40:11,360
Speaker 16: and reply on things so momentous as the then current

700
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:15,000
Speaker 16: theft of the US election by one George war Crimes Bush.

701
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:19,279
Speaker 16: By the mid two thousands, advertisements had fully invaded these in.

702
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 12: All other spaces.

703
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:23,800
Speaker 16: Websites cost money to host, and many of these platforms,

704
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:27,960
Speaker 16: forums and chat rooms and infoboards provided no product beyond conversation.

705
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:31,120
Speaker 16: The conversations were free and couldn't pay the bills, so

706
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:34,760
Speaker 16: we started seeing ads everywhere. Jump ahead literally any period

707
00:40:34,800 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 16: of time. We're constantly looking for the humanity and the

708
00:40:37,560 --> 00:40:40,680
Speaker 16: ocean of corportization that has superseded this thing we thought

709
00:40:40,760 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 16: was the future. But the promise of infinite information and

710
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:46,200
Speaker 16: connection at the press of a button has become that

711
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:50,040
Speaker 16: only for data brokers and corporate sales managers. Is part

712
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:52,400
Speaker 16: of the reason we seek out these main characters of

713
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 16: the day, that we can find something enjoyable that doesn't

714
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:59,280
Speaker 16: come with its own custom checkout page is the smallest

715
00:40:59,280 --> 00:41:01,360
Speaker 16: reprieve for the those of us who saw the Internet

716
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:04,719
Speaker 16: as a great and public good before capitalism realized it

717
00:41:04,719 --> 00:41:10,000
Speaker 16: could monetize literally anything. Characters of the day, while increasingly

718
00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:15,040
Speaker 16: fed to us, algorithmically represent the remaining possibility of the platform,

719
00:41:15,680 --> 00:41:19,000
Speaker 16: actual personalities and original thought that managed to get past

720
00:41:19,040 --> 00:41:23,480
Speaker 16: the near complete commoditization of every medium and deliver something

721
00:41:23,560 --> 00:41:27,319
Speaker 16: unique and human in a world increasingly devoid of both

722
00:41:27,360 --> 00:41:28,160
Speaker 16: those qualities.

723
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 17: Hi, Jamie, my name is Alex. I love your show.

724
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:33,359
Speaker 17: Thank you so much for all the hard work making it.

725
00:41:34,080 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 17: In two thousand and five, I was a freshman in

726
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:41,880
Speaker 17: college and I posted a really crude flash animation about

727
00:41:41,880 --> 00:41:45,040
Speaker 17: bathroom etiquette. It was called a Men's Room Monologue. I

728
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:47,880
Speaker 17: posted that on new grounds dot com and it got

729
00:41:48,400 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 17: millions of views, thousands, tens of thousands of comments, and

730
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,560
Speaker 17: I really felt like a main character, like a celebrity.

731
00:41:56,640 --> 00:41:59,760
Speaker 17: For actually a couple of months. The comments were rolling

732
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,960
Speaker 17: in and it really spread around the Internet onto all

733
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,040
Speaker 17: these other weird two thousand and five websites like Ebom's

734
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:08,399
Speaker 17: World and I'll Bin a Black Sheep. People I met

735
00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:11,400
Speaker 17: in real life would find out I made the cartoon

736
00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:14,160
Speaker 17: and get really excited. It was a super cool experience

737
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:18,120
Speaker 17: and people were so positive about it, which is weird

738
00:42:18,120 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 17: looking back, because the cartoon is so badly drawn, the

739
00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:25,000
Speaker 17: audio is terrible, the writing is just so I don't know,

740
00:42:25,040 --> 00:42:27,399
Speaker 17: we'd call it cringe now, like what an eighteen year

741
00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:30,399
Speaker 17: old boy would write in two thousand and five. I'm

742
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:32,319
Speaker 17: grateful for it. It's a little hard to watch now,

743
00:42:32,719 --> 00:42:34,960
Speaker 17: and I'm grateful, I think, to have posted it back then.

744
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:39,200
Speaker 17: I think people wouldn't be as nice about this cartoon now,

745
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:41,760
Speaker 17: but the fact that they were nice kind of helped

746
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:44,800
Speaker 17: push me towards my career as a professional animator.

747
00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:46,800
Speaker 18: I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft

748
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:49,440
Speaker 18: in the mid two thousands, and I was a regular

749
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:51,680
Speaker 18: shit poster on my service forum for about a year

750
00:42:51,719 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 18: or two. Around this time, it was kind of an

751
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 18: open seekert that George Fisher from the band Cannibal Corpse

752
00:42:56,800 --> 00:42:59,080
Speaker 18: played on our server and people were always coming by

753
00:42:59,080 --> 00:43:02,000
Speaker 18: and asking what his character was, and at some point

754
00:43:02,200 --> 00:43:04,560
Speaker 18: someone started saying my character name as a joke.

755
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:06,880
Speaker 12: Things started to get out of hand. At that point.

756
00:43:07,040 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 18: I had no idea who George Fisher was, and I

757
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:11,520
Speaker 18: don't even think I heard a Cannibal Corpse song at

758
00:43:11,560 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 18: that point, ever, so I was really confused when people

759
00:43:15,640 --> 00:43:19,080
Speaker 18: started messaging me and calling me George. I was getting

760
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:21,839
Speaker 18: in game mail from people giving me their actual phone

761
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:25,479
Speaker 18: numbers and women offering me sexual favors with like really

762
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:28,920
Speaker 18: explicit messages. I never responded to anything because it was

763
00:43:28,960 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 18: so awkward, Like I would see my name pop up

764
00:43:32,680 --> 00:43:35,239
Speaker 18: in the comment sections of George Fisher videos when people

765
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:37,520
Speaker 18: were asking what server he plays on. At some point,

766
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:42,000
Speaker 18: the real George Fisher like heard about people going to

767
00:43:42,080 --> 00:43:44,880
Speaker 18: me thinking I was him, and he got kind of

768
00:43:44,960 --> 00:43:47,280
Speaker 18: pissed because he thought I was doing it on purpose,

769
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 18: like I was trying to impersonate him, and my friend

770
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 18: made it pretty clear that George really didn't like me

771
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:56,040
Speaker 18: when the topic came up, and eventually he transferred to

772
00:43:56,080 --> 00:44:00,600
Speaker 18: another server and I started getting less and less messages, thankfully,

773
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:03,719
Speaker 18: but I never got any closure. So I guess if

774
00:44:03,719 --> 00:44:06,360
Speaker 18: you're listening George, or if you're someone who knows George

775
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 18: and can get the word do them. I'm sorry, this

776
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:12,480
Speaker 18: is all a big misunderstanding and I didn't want anything

777
00:44:12,520 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 18: to do anything of this.

778
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:16,479
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, my boys. And when we come back,

779
00:44:16,680 --> 00:44:18,000
Speaker 4: a few more stories.

780
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:24,240
Speaker 2: For the road.

781
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:35,960
Speaker 4: Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the show you write and

782
00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:37,319
Speaker 4: record in bed.

783
00:44:37,080 --> 00:44:40,200
Speaker 2: With your Mom. And here are a few last stories

784
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 2: I like to share.

785
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:46,720
Speaker 4: So when it came to stories about niche internet community trauma.

786
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:48,319
Speaker 2: There was quite a bit to sort through.

787
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:50,960
Speaker 4: I think most people who have been too logged in

788
00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:54,520
Speaker 4: have had experiences like this where one's time and identity

789
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:57,840
Speaker 4: are wrapped up in a community where they feel uniquely seen.

790
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:01,440
Speaker 4: The kind of community that can can consume you without

791
00:45:01,520 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 4: really having the possibility of leaking into your in person

792
00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:10,840
Speaker 4: life in a meaningful way, an actual second life, because

793
00:45:10,880 --> 00:45:14,280
Speaker 4: after all, a niche interest is niche for a reason.

794
00:45:14,600 --> 00:45:17,279
Speaker 4: You had to make a forum in order to find

795
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:20,520
Speaker 4: your people, and the emotional attachments that are formed and

796
00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 4: the validation received on forums like this can really affect

797
00:45:24,520 --> 00:45:27,440
Speaker 4: and shape you, regardless of how big or small that

798
00:45:27,480 --> 00:45:31,839
Speaker 4: community is. Here's Ayumi on being a moderator.

799
00:45:32,440 --> 00:45:36,439
Speaker 19: Hi Jamie, It's Ayumi Shinozaki. While this is a very

800
00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:40,400
Speaker 19: small scale version, of that, I did want to submit

801
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:45,080
Speaker 19: my story just in case it counts for something. Also

802
00:45:45,160 --> 00:45:47,560
Speaker 19: just because even at a smaller scale, it helped me

803
00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:50,319
Speaker 19: really put a lot of things in perspective as to

804
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 19: how I wanted to spend my time on the internet.

805
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:57,840
Speaker 19: Moving forward, Basically, in the early twenty tens, I was

806
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 19: part of a confession blog or a fandom, unsurprisingly magical girls.

807
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:08,040
Speaker 19: So it was Magical Girl Confessions at tumbre dot com

808
00:46:08,080 --> 00:46:10,160
Speaker 19: pretty much right away it started to catch on. I

809
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:12,319
Speaker 19: was very excited about the blog as well, because of

810
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:16,080
Speaker 19: course it seemed like a cool place to gather for

811
00:46:16,360 --> 00:46:19,360
Speaker 19: love of magical girls. So one of the things that

812
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:22,560
Speaker 19: would happen a lot is misgendering. At the time, I

813
00:46:22,680 --> 00:46:25,279
Speaker 19: was not going by shiha pronouns I am now, but

814
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:27,839
Speaker 19: at the time I was not, I was going by

815
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:31,280
Speaker 19: they them or the demi girl pronouns I had created

816
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:33,839
Speaker 19: for myself, which are gjem gear. There was a lot

817
00:46:33,880 --> 00:46:38,160
Speaker 19: of racist things, in particular because I am half Japanese.

818
00:46:38,560 --> 00:46:42,480
Speaker 19: People would try to talk about how I was into

819
00:46:42,560 --> 00:46:47,080
Speaker 19: Japanese enough for example, and things like that, and also

820
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:50,560
Speaker 19: on the river side accept me as Japanese and then

821
00:46:50,600 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 19: be very racist about it, like a lot of these people,

822
00:46:53,280 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 19: I would say, most of these people never knew me personally,

823
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:57,960
Speaker 19: never took the time to get to know who I was.

824
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:00,440
Speaker 19: They just had this idea of me, and it was

825
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:04,400
Speaker 19: very frustrating, very exhausting. By this point, I had to

826
00:47:04,480 --> 00:47:09,759
Speaker 19: talk to my own therapist about Tumblr, and constantly my

827
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:13,160
Speaker 19: therapist would say, Okay, but why do you need to

828
00:47:13,360 --> 00:47:15,440
Speaker 19: be here, why do you need to be working on

829
00:47:15,480 --> 00:47:18,200
Speaker 19: this blog? But it's clearly hurting you so much. And

830
00:47:18,280 --> 00:47:22,880
Speaker 19: my partner at the time also would express very similar feelings.

831
00:47:23,040 --> 00:47:25,520
Speaker 19: And I had it in my head that if I

832
00:47:25,600 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 19: did things the right way, then maybe people could actually

833
00:47:29,040 --> 00:47:32,160
Speaker 19: see me for who I was and see that like

834
00:47:32,520 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 19: I was separate from these confessions, people were so focused

835
00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:39,800
Speaker 19: on the idea of me that they didn't take the

836
00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:41,360
Speaker 19: time to get to know me as a person, and

837
00:47:41,400 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 19: it was very frustrating. What year is it, Yes, twenty fifteen.

838
00:47:44,680 --> 00:47:48,360
Speaker 19: At near the end of twenty fifteen, my grandmother in

839
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:53,279
Speaker 19: Japan was diagnosed with cancer, and we didn't know what

840
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:56,320
Speaker 19: the situation would be, especially whether or not she might survive.

841
00:47:56,719 --> 00:47:58,360
Speaker 19: Despite the fact that I had not been able to

842
00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:00,839
Speaker 19: go back to Japan for a decade or so with

843
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:04,200
Speaker 19: some emergency money, and I even took that a loane myself.

844
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:07,120
Speaker 19: I went with my mother and my brother back to

845
00:48:07,320 --> 00:48:10,120
Speaker 19: Osaka to see my family for a week, and it

846
00:48:10,160 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 19: was a really great experience. And it was through that

847
00:48:12,600 --> 00:48:15,160
Speaker 19: experience that I realized I really wanted to come back

848
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:17,440
Speaker 19: to Japan. So once I knew I was going to

849
00:48:17,520 --> 00:48:20,120
Speaker 19: leave in February, it became a thing of Okay, I'm

850
00:48:20,120 --> 00:48:23,400
Speaker 19: going to leave America, but I'm also going to leave Tumblr.

851
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,200
Speaker 19: I just realized like there was no way for me

852
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:31,839
Speaker 19: to ever get through to these people because they had

853
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:34,040
Speaker 19: their idea of me, and I knew and I know

854
00:48:34,120 --> 00:48:36,760
Speaker 19: now that no matter what I do on the Internet,

855
00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:40,920
Speaker 19: people will always come to your posts with their idea

856
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:45,719
Speaker 19: of what you represent to them. And I think accepting

857
00:48:45,760 --> 00:48:48,440
Speaker 19: that has been so important to my mental health and

858
00:48:48,560 --> 00:48:51,279
Speaker 19: to my life as a person who has been very

859
00:48:51,320 --> 00:48:56,120
Speaker 19: online all my life. And I'm so so, like so

860
00:48:56,239 --> 00:49:00,400
Speaker 19: much more at peace with my Internet usage. No that

861
00:49:00,600 --> 00:49:05,640
Speaker 19: knowing that, like I can basically just decompartmentalize any weird

862
00:49:05,760 --> 00:49:08,920
Speaker 19: comments that people will send my way if I know, oh,

863
00:49:09,000 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 19: they just don't know who I am they are projecting.

864
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:14,280
Speaker 2: Thank you so much Aumi.

865
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:17,520
Speaker 4: She is also a guest on the Bechdel Cast coming up,

866
00:49:17,600 --> 00:49:19,600
Speaker 4: so jump over to that feed if you run a

867
00:49:19,600 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 4: lot of episodes here. Next up a true pioneer, Casey,

868
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:28,160
Speaker 4: who was a Disney adult before Disney adults were Disney adults.

869
00:49:28,719 --> 00:49:29,240
Speaker 6: Hi, Jamie.

870
00:49:29,320 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 20: My name is Casey and my niche Internet claim to

871
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:34,200
Speaker 20: fame is that I was an early Disney content creator.

872
00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:38,720
Speaker 20: I started posting Disney content on Instagram back in twenty twelve,

873
00:49:39,239 --> 00:49:41,719
Speaker 20: and in March twenty fourteen, I decided to start a

874
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,719
Speaker 20: Disney small shop, and there weren't a lot of us

875
00:49:44,760 --> 00:49:47,280
Speaker 20: back then. There was just a couple. So my business

876
00:49:47,320 --> 00:49:50,560
Speaker 20: grew very quickly, and so did my Instagram following, where

877
00:49:50,560 --> 00:49:53,960
Speaker 20: I posted from the theme parks, I posted my products.

878
00:49:54,239 --> 00:49:57,800
Speaker 20: I would post pretty much every day to stay relevant

879
00:49:57,840 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 20: and to get people to find me. So at its peak,

880
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:05,239
Speaker 20: I probably had around fifty seven thousand followers, which isn't

881
00:50:05,280 --> 00:50:08,640
Speaker 20: a ton, but for twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen,

882
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:11,680
Speaker 20: this is pretty big in the Disney realm. I would

883
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 20: get recognized at the theme parks, I would get asked

884
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 20: for photos, and I made a lot of friends this way.

885
00:50:17,880 --> 00:50:19,839
Speaker 20: As you know, Internet people do. We kind of find

886
00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:22,160
Speaker 20: each other, find our group. But it also made me

887
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:26,759
Speaker 20: more susceptful to toxic friendships. People that were you know,

888
00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:31,000
Speaker 20: clout chasing. They were looking for the kind of bump

889
00:50:31,040 --> 00:50:32,879
Speaker 20: that they would get if I was to tag them

890
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:35,760
Speaker 20: in a photo or be on story with them, things

891
00:50:35,800 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 20: like that. You know. I found it really hard to

892
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:40,759
Speaker 20: enjoy the theme parks as time went on, because I

893
00:50:40,800 --> 00:50:43,800
Speaker 20: always felt like I needed to be on in case,

894
00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:47,200
Speaker 20: you know, I saw a follower or a customer. One time,

895
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:50,840
Speaker 20: a follower's dad posted a selfie in front of my

896
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:55,839
Speaker 20: hotel room door. His daughter found my room and he

897
00:50:56,000 --> 00:50:59,080
Speaker 20: decided to grown man decided to take a photo in

898
00:50:59,080 --> 00:51:01,880
Speaker 20: front of my room and tag me in it and

899
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:07,280
Speaker 20: say neighbors at Disney. So that was probably the scariest.

900
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:07,480
Speaker 2: Thing that happened.

901
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:09,120
Speaker 20: And I had to go to the front desk and

902
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:12,520
Speaker 20: change rooms because I didn't feel very safe there because

903
00:51:12,520 --> 00:51:16,799
Speaker 20: then they started dming me and it was just very strange.

904
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:17,680
Speaker 2: You know.

905
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:23,520
Speaker 20: As time went on, the more stylized like lifestyler, lifestyle

906
00:51:23,760 --> 00:51:28,040
Speaker 20: influencer became more popular, and I was, you know, getting older,

907
00:51:28,120 --> 00:51:31,319
Speaker 20: and people stopped bothering me as much. Or you know,

908
00:51:31,640 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 20: maybe they recognized me, but didn't you know, I wasn't

909
00:51:33,680 --> 00:51:37,279
Speaker 20: relevant anymore, so people didn't bother me at the theme

910
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:40,799
Speaker 20: parks anymore. But I do think that even just this

911
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:46,400
Speaker 20: little small claim to fame can really affect you. And

912
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:49,319
Speaker 20: there are times that I kind of miss, you know,

913
00:51:49,719 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 20: being known, and I can miss the free swag. But

914
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:55,760
Speaker 20: you know, I don't think it's great for your mental

915
00:51:55,800 --> 00:51:58,960
Speaker 20: health to have so many people watching your content and

916
00:51:59,000 --> 00:52:03,960
Speaker 20: commenting their pinions, and the Disney influencers now they have

917
00:52:04,160 --> 00:52:08,480
Speaker 20: Reddit snark pages and reading that would be the worst.

918
00:52:09,160 --> 00:52:11,440
Speaker 20: So I'm probably glad that I was one of the

919
00:52:11,480 --> 00:52:12,160
Speaker 20: early ones.

920
00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:14,360
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Casey, And I want to be

921
00:52:14,480 --> 00:52:17,799
Speaker 4: clear this is a theme park adult safe space in

922
00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:21,840
Speaker 4: case you couldn't glean it from my whole vibe. I

923
00:52:21,920 --> 00:52:26,080
Speaker 4: firmly believe theme park adults either had perfect childhoods or

924
00:52:26,719 --> 00:52:30,480
Speaker 4: very fucked up childhoods and everyone else just doesn't understand.

925
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:33,720
Speaker 4: And finally, we have a story about a niche internet

926
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 4: community that became a central part of Bailey's childhood.

927
00:52:38,800 --> 00:52:40,440
Speaker 6: Hi, Jamie, my name is Bailey.

928
00:52:41,040 --> 00:52:44,839
Speaker 21: I am an avid sixteenth minute listener, and although I've

929
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:48,920
Speaker 21: never had a proper main character moment on the Internet.

930
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:51,480
Speaker 21: I do want to share a little bit about a

931
00:52:51,520 --> 00:52:55,120
Speaker 21: now defunct website that I frequented in my teenage years

932
00:52:55,160 --> 00:52:59,000
Speaker 21: have called debate dot org. Spring break of twenty sixteen,

933
00:53:00,080 --> 00:53:04,880
Speaker 21: I was going to a very conservative middle and high school,

934
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:09,319
Speaker 21: which I was at for six years, and I was

935
00:53:09,400 --> 00:53:14,640
Speaker 21: increasingly frustrated I was one of the only kids there

936
00:53:14,719 --> 00:53:18,719
Speaker 21: who wasn't Mormon. For whatever reason, I decided to join

937
00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:22,360
Speaker 21: debate dot org in a moment of boredom, but also

938
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:27,400
Speaker 21: as an expression of I guess wanting to express intellectual rigor.

939
00:53:27,760 --> 00:53:29,400
Speaker 6: You know, it was twenty sixteen.

940
00:53:30,160 --> 00:53:35,360
Speaker 21: It was post Donald Trump announcing his candidacy for president. Now,

941
00:53:35,440 --> 00:53:38,880
Speaker 21: the structure of debate dot org is interesting because, of

942
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:44,160
Speaker 21: course the main event are the debates, and you could

943
00:53:44,239 --> 00:53:48,840
Speaker 21: vote on other people's debates, but there were also polls

944
00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:52,600
Speaker 21: public forums of different topics. It was a common joke

945
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:56,279
Speaker 21: that I was one of three women who used the site,

946
00:53:56,520 --> 00:54:00,719
Speaker 21: and although that wasn't factually true, it certainly felt like that.

947
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 21: I ended up meeting two people in real life that

948
00:54:04,800 --> 00:54:08,080
Speaker 21: I met on debate dot org. I watched Rocky Horror

949
00:54:08,160 --> 00:54:11,319
Speaker 21: Picture Show for the first time with him and weirdly enough,

950
00:54:11,440 --> 00:54:15,000
Speaker 21: my dad. I completely lied to him and said that

951
00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:17,520
Speaker 21: I knew him from school. He was a couple of

952
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:21,759
Speaker 21: years older than me. The other person I met was

953
00:54:22,280 --> 00:54:25,600
Speaker 21: my ex older than me. I should not have been

954
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:31,400
Speaker 21: in a relationship with them, and it took up a

955
00:54:31,440 --> 00:54:34,239
Speaker 21: lot of my life, or what felt like a lot

956
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:36,920
Speaker 21: of my life at the time. I was involved with

957
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 21: this person from age thirteen to sixteen in different capacities,

958
00:54:44,280 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 21: as friends, as sexual partners, as friends again before COVID

959
00:54:51,760 --> 00:54:55,200
Speaker 21: happened and I.

960
00:54:54,320 --> 00:54:57,000
Speaker 6: Slowly disentangled myself.

961
00:54:58,000 --> 00:55:01,480
Speaker 21: Why I'm talking about debate dot org right now is

962
00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 21: because I have a lot of complicated feelings in that

963
00:55:05,239 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 21: it is no longer an accessible website. I think I

964
00:55:09,520 --> 00:55:12,000
Speaker 21: discovered that about a year or two ago when I

965
00:55:12,040 --> 00:55:15,719
Speaker 21: was trying to go and view my old profile as

966
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:19,560
Speaker 21: sort of a self flagellation exercise, and then found I

967
00:55:19,600 --> 00:55:23,120
Speaker 21: could no longer access the website. And I've tried multiple

968
00:55:23,160 --> 00:55:27,280
Speaker 21: times since then, including right before recording this, to see

969
00:55:27,719 --> 00:55:32,400
Speaker 21: and you cannot access the website. That comes with a

970
00:55:32,560 --> 00:55:39,480
Speaker 21: mix of relief and grief. I think often about a

971
00:55:39,560 --> 00:55:43,400
Speaker 21: remark that you made in an episode of Sixteenth Minute

972
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:47,600
Speaker 21: that we the listeners were listening to a future piece

973
00:55:47,640 --> 00:55:51,520
Speaker 21: of lost media, and that is what debate dot org

974
00:55:51,600 --> 00:55:55,719
Speaker 21: has kind of turned into. The grief comes in because

975
00:55:56,200 --> 00:56:00,359
Speaker 21: I no longer have a portion of my life that

976
00:56:00,680 --> 00:56:04,680
Speaker 21: is documented. Oh that's my cat. She is mourning it

977
00:56:04,719 --> 00:56:08,800
Speaker 21: as well. Because of the ages that I was active

978
00:56:08,960 --> 00:56:16,400
Speaker 21: on that website. It shows a weird transition where I

979
00:56:16,560 --> 00:56:22,080
Speaker 21: was crystallizing my opinions that I still hold on certain things.

980
00:56:22,520 --> 00:56:26,799
Speaker 21: It's where I discovered David Lynch. It's where I discovered

981
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:30,200
Speaker 21: a lot of different music that I now love. It's

982
00:56:30,280 --> 00:56:35,000
Speaker 21: where I formalized some political opinions that I still have

983
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:35,960
Speaker 21: to this day.

984
00:56:36,320 --> 00:56:38,040
Speaker 6: Debate dot org was a fever dream.

985
00:56:38,600 --> 00:56:40,600
Speaker 21: I guess I'm happy I was a part of it

986
00:56:41,120 --> 00:56:44,640
Speaker 21: while I was around. I certainly will not be passing

987
00:56:44,680 --> 00:56:49,319
Speaker 21: on stories of it to my children and grandchildren if

988
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 21: they survive on a burning planet.

989
00:56:51,360 --> 00:56:53,440
Speaker 4: Thank you so much to Bailey. There's so much to

990
00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:55,759
Speaker 4: think about with that story, but the first thing that

991
00:56:55,840 --> 00:56:59,839
Speaker 4: jumps to my mind is we should probably all hunt

992
00:56:59,840 --> 00:57:06,080
Speaker 4: your right. Thank you so much for setting in your story. Okay,

993
00:57:06,640 --> 00:57:09,879
Speaker 4: I saved the sticky stuff for last, as I wont

994
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:13,840
Speaker 4: to do. As many of you might know, About half

995
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:17,920
Speaker 4: of the first year of sixteenth Minute was produced while

996
00:57:18,040 --> 00:57:22,640
Speaker 4: my dad was actively sick in Massachusetts and I was

997
00:57:22,760 --> 00:57:26,480
Speaker 4: caretaking for him along with my mom and brother in

998
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 4: our extended family, and the other half of this show

999
00:57:30,880 --> 00:57:36,640
Speaker 4: has been produced after he passed away. Something that I

1000
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:40,959
Speaker 4: don't care how parasocial it is. Listener messages and being

1001
00:57:41,000 --> 00:57:43,640
Speaker 4: able to talk about it a little bit on this

1002
00:57:43,800 --> 00:57:46,480
Speaker 4: show shortly after really was a.

1003
00:57:46,680 --> 00:57:49,000
Speaker 2: Tremendously healing and cool thing.

1004
00:57:49,160 --> 00:57:51,800
Speaker 4: It was the first time I felt like in control

1005
00:57:52,280 --> 00:57:55,320
Speaker 4: of what was happening in a long time. But suvice

1006
00:57:55,400 --> 00:57:58,040
Speaker 4: it to say I've been weirdly in the trenches for

1007
00:57:58,160 --> 00:58:02,160
Speaker 4: this year of studying Internet history, and the fact is

1008
00:58:02,440 --> 00:58:08,040
Speaker 4: that the Internet's relationship with grief and grieving is I

1009
00:58:08,120 --> 00:58:12,560
Speaker 4: think one of its strength. I'm very lucky to have

1010
00:58:12,640 --> 00:58:16,760
Speaker 4: a great in person support system, but sometimes you wake

1011
00:58:16,840 --> 00:58:18,480
Speaker 4: up in a cold sweat at three in the morning

1012
00:58:18,840 --> 00:58:21,800
Speaker 4: and you're alone, and you just need to read a

1013
00:58:21,840 --> 00:58:25,040
Speaker 4: Reddit post about how someone has felt the same way

1014
00:58:25,080 --> 00:58:28,240
Speaker 4: you have and that it sucks, and then it doesn't

1015
00:58:28,280 --> 00:58:31,360
Speaker 4: really get better, it just gets different.

1016
00:58:32,240 --> 00:58:34,240
Speaker 2: And for people who aren't.

1017
00:58:33,960 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 4: As lucky as me to have a reliable in person

1018
00:58:38,040 --> 00:58:43,680
Speaker 4: support system, the Internet can be transformative in processing one's

1019
00:58:43,880 --> 00:58:48,440
Speaker 4: grief or, as the case may be, processing one's recovery

1020
00:58:48,640 --> 00:58:49,560
Speaker 4: from addiction.

1021
00:58:50,080 --> 00:58:52,600
Speaker 2: There are still good.

1022
00:58:52,480 --> 00:58:57,600
Speaker 4: Corners of the Internet, and so I really appreciated these

1023
00:58:57,640 --> 00:59:01,360
Speaker 4: stories about the Internet and processing grief.

1024
00:59:02,040 --> 00:59:02,880
Speaker 2: Here's Jake.

1025
00:59:03,480 --> 00:59:07,440
Speaker 8: Hey, Jamie, my name is Jake. Personally, I am twenty

1026
00:59:07,480 --> 00:59:12,560
Speaker 8: six years old, and I started, I guess, interacting with

1027
00:59:13,160 --> 00:59:18,400
Speaker 8: the Internet in a real consistent way. I would say

1028
00:59:18,520 --> 00:59:21,040
Speaker 8: starting I was like seven or eight. Honestly, I do

1029
00:59:21,120 --> 00:59:26,120
Speaker 8: have a very specific memory that feels just like significant

1030
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:28,479
Speaker 8: somehow in a way I can't really put words too.

1031
00:59:28,760 --> 00:59:34,360
Speaker 22: I in fifth grade had a friend pass away, and

1032
00:59:35,560 --> 00:59:40,240
Speaker 22: it was honestly a pretty traumatic accident.

1033
00:59:40,520 --> 00:59:44,360
Speaker 8: He drowned, And I have a very distinct.

1034
00:59:43,960 --> 00:59:50,200
Speaker 23: Memory of learning the news and immediately going on the

1035
00:59:50,200 --> 00:59:55,040
Speaker 23: Internet to help me understand. And I remember getting on

1036
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:59,840
Speaker 23: Google with like the old Google, like still Sarah font

1037
01:00:00,520 --> 01:00:02,240
Speaker 23: back when it was a functional surge engine.

1038
01:00:02,240 --> 01:00:02,479
Speaker 12: Too.

1039
01:00:03,440 --> 01:00:06,440
Speaker 8: I typed in, you know, like what happens after you die?

1040
01:00:06,960 --> 01:00:10,640
Speaker 8: And like is Heaven real? And like a bunch of

1041
01:00:10,960 --> 01:00:16,320
Speaker 8: like honestly pretty like deep philosophical questions just asking Google.

1042
01:00:16,560 --> 01:00:20,640
Speaker 8: I mean, I'm a grown adult now, I've done my

1043
01:00:20,880 --> 01:00:25,440
Speaker 8: fair share of therapy and processing outside of that experience,

1044
01:00:25,520 --> 01:00:28,440
Speaker 8: but it always looking back has struck me as a

1045
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:36,760
Speaker 8: maybe novel to this era that I immediately went on

1046
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:42,120
Speaker 8: the Internet to cope with grief at such a young age. Anyway,

1047
01:00:42,840 --> 01:00:47,720
Speaker 8: maybe I'm just maybe I'm inflating my own importance here

1048
01:00:47,720 --> 01:00:49,480
Speaker 8: a little bit. Anyway, love the show.

1049
01:00:49,920 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 4: I want to hug baby Jake so much, and to

1050
01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:55,920
Speaker 4: close us out here is Ben.

1051
01:00:56,240 --> 01:00:57,800
Speaker 12: Hey, how's it going? My name's Ben.

1052
01:00:58,000 --> 01:01:01,120
Speaker 24: And in the early twenty tens, ish I was a

1053
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 24: main character minor main character on Reddit for a couple

1054
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:08,440
Speaker 24: of days. I was a senior in college, as probably

1055
01:01:08,760 --> 01:01:11,320
Speaker 24: three or four weeks from graduation, and my grandfather, who

1056
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:15,000
Speaker 24: had also graduated from that school, was losing his battle

1057
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,480
Speaker 24: with cancer and was in the process of being moved

1058
01:01:17,640 --> 01:01:20,840
Speaker 24: to in home hospice care. I had been home to

1059
01:01:20,920 --> 01:01:23,400
Speaker 24: visit him a couple of weeks earlier and say goodbye,

1060
01:01:24,240 --> 01:01:29,080
Speaker 24: and even then he was determined, even if they caught

1061
01:01:29,120 --> 01:01:31,320
Speaker 24: me up there in an ambulance, I'm going to that graduation.

1062
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:36,360
Speaker 24: But it was clear he was not making his way

1063
01:01:36,360 --> 01:01:39,439
Speaker 24: across the house to the bathroom, let alone the track

1064
01:01:39,560 --> 01:01:44,400
Speaker 24: up to Central Minnesota from rural Iowa. So while I

1065
01:01:44,440 --> 01:01:47,520
Speaker 24: was there, my folks were going through photos prepping for

1066
01:01:47,560 --> 01:01:49,640
Speaker 24: memorials things like that, and they found some photos of

1067
01:01:49,800 --> 01:01:53,680
Speaker 24: Grandpa on campus, and you know, I thought it would

1068
01:01:53,720 --> 01:01:58,480
Speaker 24: be a nice thing to replicate those photos and as

1069
01:01:58,520 --> 01:02:01,920
Speaker 24: a way to have a together as part of this

1070
01:02:02,000 --> 01:02:05,919
Speaker 24: process of graduating in this time of transition, and even

1071
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:11,000
Speaker 24: though he couldn't be there physically. So when I got

1072
01:02:11,000 --> 01:02:13,800
Speaker 24: back up to campus, my girlfriend and I went and

1073
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:16,400
Speaker 24: found those spots out on campus, you know, kind of

1074
01:02:16,400 --> 01:02:18,680
Speaker 24: look at the hillside and the trees and subtract sixty

1075
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:21,920
Speaker 24: years and imagine if that building wasn't there. You know,

1076
01:02:21,960 --> 01:02:23,640
Speaker 24: I kind of dressed like him. He was wearing a

1077
01:02:23,760 --> 01:02:26,200
Speaker 24: checked flannel shirt and some khakis. So I found a

1078
01:02:26,400 --> 01:02:29,720
Speaker 24: checked flannel shirt and some khakis and took the photos,

1079
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:33,520
Speaker 24: kind of posed like him and sent them emailed them

1080
01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:35,800
Speaker 24: back home to mom and dad. So this was, like

1081
01:02:35,840 --> 01:02:38,040
Speaker 24: I said, early twenty tens, so kind of early days

1082
01:02:38,080 --> 01:02:40,280
Speaker 24: of kind of right before the turn to the modern

1083
01:02:40,760 --> 01:02:45,480
Speaker 24: social media age, and kind of promptly just threw them

1084
01:02:45,560 --> 01:02:48,200
Speaker 24: up on without thinking on our slash picks, and they

1085
01:02:48,200 --> 01:02:49,960
Speaker 24: pretty quickly shot up to being the top post on

1086
01:02:49,960 --> 01:02:52,640
Speaker 24: the sub and then quickly after that turned into the

1087
01:02:52,640 --> 01:02:58,000
Speaker 24: top ten fifteen posts of Reddit. And obviously that comes

1088
01:02:58,000 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 24: with like a deluge of comments, less imposing.

1089
01:03:01,000 --> 01:03:02,960
Speaker 12: Then than it is now. Obviously it's not coming to

1090
01:03:03,000 --> 01:03:03,440
Speaker 12: my phone.

1091
01:03:03,760 --> 01:03:05,600
Speaker 24: I didn't have a phone that was capable of that.

1092
01:03:05,680 --> 01:03:07,800
Speaker 24: It was all browser based. But I think I was

1093
01:03:08,240 --> 01:03:11,400
Speaker 24: happy for the distraction, right. It was, you know, I'm

1094
01:03:11,400 --> 01:03:13,720
Speaker 24: going through this major turning of a page in my life,

1095
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:18,560
Speaker 24: this chapter change, graduating college, rite of passage, becoming an adult,

1096
01:03:18,840 --> 01:03:21,320
Speaker 24: but also having you know this, my Grandpa's going to

1097
01:03:21,440 --> 01:03:24,240
Speaker 24: die in the middle of all of this weight hanging

1098
01:03:24,320 --> 01:03:28,080
Speaker 24: over my head. So to have this kind of like

1099
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:32,080
Speaker 24: proactive thing I can do talking about Grandpa with people

1100
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:35,360
Speaker 24: on the internet, I think felt productive in a way

1101
01:03:35,360 --> 01:03:40,200
Speaker 24: that like taking tests and writing papers didn't to distract

1102
01:03:40,240 --> 01:03:43,240
Speaker 24: me from it all. So it was it was kind

1103
01:03:43,240 --> 01:03:44,880
Speaker 24: of an It was a good distraction, and most of

1104
01:03:44,920 --> 01:03:45,600
Speaker 24: it was positive.

1105
01:03:45,720 --> 01:03:45,840
Speaker 12: Right.

1106
01:03:45,920 --> 01:03:48,680
Speaker 24: There's obviously edge cases. You had your militant atheists who

1107
01:03:48,760 --> 01:03:50,680
Speaker 24: wanted you to know that you know it was it

1108
01:03:50,680 --> 01:03:53,000
Speaker 24: was a travesty that these Catholics are still allowed to

1109
01:03:53,040 --> 01:03:57,680
Speaker 24: run schools and brainwash the minds of our youths. I

1110
01:03:57,720 --> 01:04:02,160
Speaker 24: studied theology in school, and nothing turns you against the

1111
01:04:02,240 --> 01:04:04,919
Speaker 24: church like studying church history. Plenty of folks who really

1112
01:04:05,000 --> 01:04:07,520
Speaker 24: needed me to know that in the title where I

1113
01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:12,520
Speaker 24: put my grandfather and I sixty years apart, YadA, YadA, YadA,

1114
01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:16,520
Speaker 24: the correct grammar is my grandfather and me. So I

1115
01:04:16,560 --> 01:04:20,280
Speaker 24: obviously needed my bachelor's degree to be stripped from me.

1116
01:04:20,560 --> 01:04:24,160
Speaker 24: But all of it was pretty pretty positive, you know,

1117
01:04:24,240 --> 01:04:26,600
Speaker 24: all in good fun. Like I said, I dressed like

1118
01:04:26,640 --> 01:04:31,040
Speaker 24: my grandpa in the photos, and so Maclamore's thrift Shop

1119
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:34,720
Speaker 24: had just come out. There's the line, I wear your

1120
01:04:34,760 --> 01:04:39,480
Speaker 24: granddad's clothes, I look incredible. So lots of folks posting that.

1121
01:04:39,720 --> 01:04:41,720
Speaker 24: On the flip side, there were also folks posting that

1122
01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:43,640
Speaker 24: they needed me to know that my grandfather was far

1123
01:04:43,640 --> 01:04:46,040
Speaker 24: more attractive than I ever would be, and you know

1124
01:04:46,080 --> 01:04:49,720
Speaker 24: that's fair. That went on for about for a couple

1125
01:04:49,800 --> 01:04:52,160
Speaker 24: of days, and then the people who write about what's

1126
01:04:52,240 --> 01:04:57,720
Speaker 24: going on on the internet started reaching out. There were

1127
01:04:57,760 --> 01:04:59,400
Speaker 24: only a few of them. The only one that I

1128
01:04:59,400 --> 01:05:01,600
Speaker 24: actually talked with it was the only one that I

1129
01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:07,480
Speaker 24: could verify kind of as a real person, and they

1130
01:05:07,480 --> 01:05:11,880
Speaker 24: were a blogger at the Huffington Post, plus fifty section.

1131
01:05:13,720 --> 01:05:15,080
Speaker 24: I think at that point I was kind of like

1132
01:05:15,560 --> 01:05:17,680
Speaker 24: starting to make the realization that, like, oh, I should

1133
01:05:17,680 --> 01:05:19,920
Speaker 24: probably be a little bit more private with this public

1134
01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:22,320
Speaker 24: airing of grief. But by the time that we kind

1135
01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:24,560
Speaker 24: of sussed that we weren't both trying to scam each other,

1136
01:05:25,800 --> 01:05:28,440
Speaker 24: Grandpa died, and so where they were looking for probably

1137
01:05:28,520 --> 01:05:31,720
Speaker 24: a little bit more perfunctory like I'm so excited to graduate.

1138
01:05:31,800 --> 01:05:35,600
Speaker 24: I love my grandpa so much. They got a theology

1139
01:05:35,640 --> 01:05:39,840
Speaker 24: major process in grief, philosophizing about family and what we

1140
01:05:39,920 --> 01:05:43,680
Speaker 24: leave behind and the impacts on lives that we have.

1141
01:05:43,920 --> 01:05:46,120
Speaker 24: To their credit, they posted what was essentially, you know,

1142
01:05:46,840 --> 01:05:49,240
Speaker 24: a little bit of an essay mixed with an obituary,

1143
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:51,800
Speaker 24: and it still exists out there to this day, and

1144
01:05:52,160 --> 01:05:55,760
Speaker 24: it's something that I'm glad is there for me to revisit,

1145
01:05:56,120 --> 01:05:58,720
Speaker 24: you know, until the day some executive turns it into

1146
01:05:58,720 --> 01:06:00,920
Speaker 24: a piece of lost media. Think at twenty two, I

1147
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:04,680
Speaker 24: would have had the wherewithal to write down how I

1148
01:06:04,720 --> 01:06:09,640
Speaker 24: was feeling and to share my thought processes more than

1149
01:06:09,800 --> 01:06:13,040
Speaker 24: just like talking with my roommates and my sisters, So

1150
01:06:13,480 --> 01:06:15,600
Speaker 24: to have this thing that I can revisit, see this

1151
01:06:15,680 --> 01:06:16,760
Speaker 24: snapshot of who I.

1152
01:06:16,760 --> 01:06:18,480
Speaker 12: Was at this moment in time.

1153
01:06:18,720 --> 01:06:21,720
Speaker 24: As you know, kind of my entire world is shifting

1154
01:06:22,160 --> 01:06:23,600
Speaker 24: in addition to losing my grandpa.

1155
01:06:23,760 --> 01:06:25,400
Speaker 12: Is a nice thing to have. It's a nice artifact

1156
01:06:25,400 --> 01:06:26,840
Speaker 12: to have of who I was.

1157
01:06:27,280 --> 01:06:30,040
Speaker 4: Thank you so much to Jake and to Ben. And

1158
01:06:30,080 --> 01:06:33,360
Speaker 4: on that note, we close out this chapter of sixteenth Minute.

1159
01:06:34,000 --> 01:06:36,600
Speaker 4: What do we do with the Internet? This massive thing

1160
01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:41,080
Speaker 4: that billionaires will not truly let belong to us? Are

1161
01:06:41,160 --> 01:06:45,600
Speaker 4: the good parts, the communal parts, even the healing parts,

1162
01:06:45,640 --> 01:06:48,560
Speaker 4: worth all the damage that it is done to us

1163
01:06:48,800 --> 01:06:52,480
Speaker 4: and to the planet and will continue to We're going

1164
01:06:52,520 --> 01:06:56,080
Speaker 4: to keep talking about it, but until next time, This

1165
01:06:56,280 --> 01:06:59,720
Speaker 4: is Jamie Loftus and you are listening to a future

1166
01:06:59,760 --> 01:07:01,360
Speaker 4: piece of lost media.

1167
01:07:02,120 --> 01:07:02,680
Speaker 2: Look soon.

1168
01:07:07,040 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 4: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and Iheartwordtaps.

1169
01:07:11,160 --> 01:07:14,480
Speaker 4: It is written, hosted, and produced by me Jamie Rostis.

1170
01:07:14,720 --> 01:07:18,080
Speaker 4: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The

1171
01:07:18,120 --> 01:07:22,080
Speaker 4: amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.

1172
01:07:22,640 --> 01:07:24,960
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen.

1173
01:07:25,560 --> 01:07:29,040
Speaker 4: Voice acting is from Brant Crater and pet shout outs

1174
01:07:29,040 --> 01:07:31,960
Speaker 4: to our dog producer Anderson my Kats Flee and Casper

1175
01:07:32,080 --> 01:07:34,479
Speaker 4: and my pet rockbird who will outlive us all.

1176
01:07:34,840 --> 01:07:35,200
Speaker 2: Bye.