Speaker 1: I'm not saying this woman doesn't exist. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: she reads like a woman written by a man. There
Speaker 1: are no girls on the Internet. As a production of
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridge Todd, and this is
Speaker 1: there are no girls on the Internet. So I feel
Speaker 1: like Christmas has kind of come a little bit early
Speaker 1: for me because Mike, as you know, not only am
Speaker 1: I deeply fascinated by identity and technology, but also I
Speaker 1: am deeply fascinated by my other true love, which is scams.
Speaker 1: You know this about me. I love a good scam.
Speaker 1: I love scam content, scam podcasts. Give me all the scams.
Speaker 1: I mean, don't scam me, but I want to be
Speaker 1: not involved in the scam. And then hear about how
Speaker 1: the scam unfolded. So what can be like, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: how they did it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Your love of scams and catfishing is legendary, no doubt.
Speaker 1: So catfishing is a scam that I am specifically interested in.
Speaker 1: And this wild story that was blowing up on Twitter
Speaker 1: last week involves all three identity and technology, scams, and catfishing,
Speaker 1: And as fascinating as I find all of these, I
Speaker 1: also think It's really a story that tells us a
Speaker 1: lot about how people actually think about marginalized folks and technology,
Speaker 1: Like do they actually see us? When they see us?
Speaker 1: Do they respect us when they actually do include us?
Speaker 1: Is that inclusion a gimmick? Is it done to take
Speaker 1: the heat off criticism?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Why is it done? And when they try to include
Speaker 1: us and get it so so so wrong, what does
Speaker 1: that tell us to So let's talk about Devternity. So
Speaker 1: dev Trinity is a tech conference for developers that attendees
Speaker 1: have to pay from as little as four hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty five dollars up to eight hundred and seventy dollars
Speaker 1: to attend. It was founded by Edward Sizoff in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: So this conference had been called out for not having
Speaker 1: a very diverse lineup of speakers, like most of their
Speaker 1: speakers tended to be white men. And to deal with that, Edwards,
Speaker 1: the organizer, allegedly decided to flesh out their lineup by
Speaker 1: tapping into the existing pool of really talented marginalized people
Speaker 1: who have been building and shaking things up in tech
Speaker 1: for a very long time. Oh wait, no, no, no, that's
Speaker 1: not what he did. That would be a normal thing
Speaker 1: to do. What he actually did was flesh out that
Speaker 1: lineup by creating AI generated women speakers to add to
Speaker 1: the lineup. And as if that's not bad enough, like
Speaker 1: that's already pretty bad. It doesn't stop there, because in
Speaker 1: addition to creating those phony women to speak at his conference,
Speaker 1: it was also revealed that Edwards had been running this
Speaker 1: entire like fake female tech influencer Catfish Enterprise, and had
Speaker 1: been doing so for years. Unsurprisingly, the entire thing was
Speaker 1: full of drama and honestly, like, I don't think I
Speaker 1: have ever seen anything unfold quite like this in this before,
Speaker 1: So let's get into it. So this all started when
Speaker 1: engineer Gurgly Orzos was looking into the lineup at deb
Speaker 1: Trinity after a couple of his colleagues were asked to
Speaker 1: speak there. He started looking into the lineup and became
Speaker 1: a little bit suspicious of two of the women's speakers listed.
Speaker 1: So these two women's speakers had been listed as coming
Speaker 1: from a pretty prominent tech company Coinbase, which is like
Speaker 1: a cryptocurrency exchange platform, and a boyco who was on
Speaker 1: the speaker's page listed as a staff engineer at Coinbase,
Speaker 1: and Natalie Slash Natalia. Sometimes it's Natalie, sometimes it's Italia Stadler,
Speaker 1: who was listed as a software craftswoman at Coinbase. So
Speaker 1: one of these women who was listed as working at
Speaker 1: Coinbase said that she was also affiliated with Ethereum, a
Speaker 1: type of cryptocurrency, and Girkley was like, it's a little
Speaker 1: bit odd that somebody would be speaking at a conference
Speaker 1: representing both Coinbase, a cryptocurrency platform, and also a type
Speaker 1: of cryptocurrency. He was like, that didn't seem right to me,
Speaker 1: So he got suspicious and looked into it, and that's
Speaker 1: when he found that these women did not seem to exist.
Speaker 1: They don't have any kind of social presence beyond what
Speaker 1: appears on the conference website. Gurgly tweeted, imagine a tech
Speaker 1: conference having no call for proposals. As they reach out
Speaker 1: to speakers directly, they successfully attract some of the most
Speaker 1: heavy hitter male speakers in tech and three women speakers.
Speaker 1: Now imagine my surprise that two of those women are
Speaker 1: fake profiles. They do not exist, nada. So I gotta
Speaker 1: really give it to Gurgley here. He must have sniffed
Speaker 1: out that something was fishy and then like just held
Speaker 1: it like nursed it like a grudge and held on
Speaker 1: to it like a dog with a bone. Because dude
Speaker 1: did his homework. He found web archives that go back
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty one that list these two non existent
Speaker 1: women as speakers at Debternity. One of them also spoke
Speaker 1: or at least was listed as a speaker back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two as well. In the aftermath of all this,
Speaker 1: Gurgley really did some deep digging. He found a tweet
Speaker 1: from twenty twenty one publicly calling out the conference for
Speaker 1: having a mostly male lineup. On August third, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: Mattie Stratton, a director of developer relations, tweeted, good thing
Speaker 1: I'm not tweeting about tech this week, or else I
Speaker 1: might have to call out de Trinity for pretty much
Speaker 1: having all white dudes as speakers. Given who they listed
Speaker 1: at the top, it doesn't surprise me at all. So
Speaker 1: then Julia Kurshina, also known as Coding Unicorn, who calls
Speaker 1: herself one of the conference co founders, replies, remember Julia's
Speaker 1: name because she is going to become important. Later, Julia
Speaker 1: replies to Matti's sweet saying, Hi, matt Julia from the
Speaker 1: deft Trinity team here, thanks for raising this out of
Speaker 1: the fourteen invited female speakers, three confirmed, two canceled as
Speaker 1: we had to postpone to survive COVID. There is a
Speaker 1: lot to improve, so you can advise on how to
Speaker 1: make the line up better. Let's chat. I'll send you
Speaker 1: a DM. So this very same day that Mattie calls
Speaker 1: out de Trinity for having an all male lineup August third,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, is when de Trinity also coincidentally adds
Speaker 1: their very first fake woman speaker. As I said, Gurgley
Speaker 1: brought receipts. The Defternity conference website has a public GitHub repo.
Speaker 1: GitHub is a place online where developers can show other
Speaker 1: folks that they're working on where you could see the
Speaker 1: full edit history of the conference website. So he included
Speaker 1: a screenshot showing the specific changes to the website and
Speaker 1: the date of those changes. Confirms that Natalia Sladder, software
Speaker 1: craftswoman at Coinbase, was added a few hours after Maddie's
Speaker 1: complaint of the lack of diversity of the conference, two
Speaker 1: hours to be exact. In that edit, Julia, the conference
Speaker 1: co founder, was also added to the speaker's lineup. So
Speaker 1: I don't know that seems pretty suspicious like that timing.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're gonna make up fake people,
Speaker 2: why have all the changes to your website be publicly
Speaker 2: on GitHub.
Speaker 1: Gurgley also found that another one of the fake women
Speaker 1: added to the lineup's headshot was taken from This Person
Speaker 1: does not Exist, which is a site that randomly generates
Speaker 1: pictures of non existent people generated by AI, which is
Speaker 1: like pretty funny that the place where he got these
Speaker 1: pictures really spells out what's going on This Person does
Speaker 1: not Exist. Overall, Gurgley found four non existent people who
Speaker 1: are all women listed as speakers on this conference website
Speaker 1: since they were called out for their lack of women
Speaker 1: speakers back in twenty twenty one. Gurglely writes on his website,
Speaker 1: I decided to share that this conference advertises fake speakers
Speaker 1: and has done so for years. This statement is easily
Speaker 1: verifiable by anybody in the same way that I did.
Speaker 1: I have not seen this type of deceit at any
Speaker 1: other conference, and I've seen enough that I didn't want
Speaker 1: to keep quiet, and honestly, like I got a major
Speaker 1: shout outs to Gurgle here, we will throw the piece
Speaker 1: on his website with all of his receipts in the
Speaker 1: show notes for folks to check out. You definitely should.
Speaker 1: But one of the questions that Gurgley does ask is
Speaker 1: that he got suspicious when he saw this lineup, and
Speaker 1: that he doesn't believe that he is the only person
Speaker 1: who got suspicious, Like he doesn't think he was the
Speaker 1: only person to be like looking at these people up.
Speaker 1: These women were listed as working for very prominent tech companies,
Speaker 1: and so certainly somebody has like looked them up on
Speaker 1: LinkedIn or whatever for whatever reason. Is like, I'm the
Speaker 1: only person who decided to speak up about it who
Speaker 1: didn't want to keep quiet, And even that, to me
Speaker 1: is really interesting, Like I don't know what's really going
Speaker 1: on there, but it almost makes me wonder if the
Speaker 1: vast majority of people at this conference didn't think the
Speaker 1: women speakers were worth really paying attention to so let
Speaker 1: alone like investigating, throwing them into a quick Google search whatever.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were just like prominent male name in tech,
Speaker 1: prominent mail name in tech, prominent male name in tech,
Speaker 1: some useless chick, some useless chick, prominent male name in tech,
Speaker 1: prominent male name in tech. Like maybe it didn't even
Speaker 1: register to them to be paying attention to the women speakers,
Speaker 1: what organizations they represented in what they were talking about.
Speaker 1: Maybe it didn't even register to be looking at them
Speaker 1: all that closely because like they maybe they just like
Speaker 1: didn't value them in the same way. That's just my theory,
Speaker 1: because I do agree with Gurgley here that certainly he
Speaker 1: cannot be the first person who have uncovered this, and
Speaker 1: it did not take a very substantial amount of digging
Speaker 1: to find out that these people weren't necessarily real. So like,
Speaker 1: what's going on?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I feel like we encounter weird stuff
Speaker 2: online all the time, and it's so easy to just
Speaker 2: chalk it up to like maybe it's a scam, or
Speaker 2: maybe the internet is broken, or maybe I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I would like to think that if
Speaker 1: I encountered this, I would have said something.
Speaker 2: Would you have would you have dug? Like Gurgly, I.
Speaker 1: Would have dug for sure if I had sniffed out,
Speaker 1: Like I have a lot of time on my hands
Speaker 1: and I love to do a deep dive, So if
Speaker 1: I had like sniffed out that something funky was going on,
Speaker 1: I probably would have looked into it. I think I'm
Speaker 1: the kind of person who might have like thought that
Speaker 1: I was misunderstanding something, or that I was getting something
Speaker 1: wrong or misreading something. I respect that Gurgle is the
Speaker 1: kind of person who was like, I'm taking this to
Speaker 1: social media right away because something is not right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate that too. Kudos to.
Speaker 3: Let's take a quick break editor back.
Speaker 1: So, Gurgly is pretty suspicious about some of these women
Speaker 1: speakers on the lineup. He does some digging and decides
Speaker 1: to post about this on LinkedIn and Twitter, where the
Speaker 1: Defternity conference founder Edward says off first tweets in response.
Speaker 1: So his response is probably one of the most dramatic
Speaker 1: but also nonsensical explanations I have ever read in my life.
Speaker 1: It is super long, Like it's still up on Twitter
Speaker 1: if folks want to, We'll link to the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but like, I'm not going to read the whole thing here,
Speaker 1: but I will get into a couple of key bits. So,
Speaker 1: first of all, Edward says that, oh no, it is
Speaker 1: not him who has done something wrong. He heavily implies
Speaker 1: that Gurgly must be the bad guy. Why because Gurgley
Speaker 1: took to social media to talk about this in the
Speaker 1: first place. Rather than I guess like contacting him directly privately,
Speaker 1: which means that Gurgley just wants attention, he just wants clout.
Speaker 1: He's jealous, he's trying to take me down. Edwards writes,
Speaker 1: I won't be responding directly to mister Rozov's accusation and
Speaker 1: won't even link to it here, given that he didn't
Speaker 1: even bother contact in me and sharing his concerns. He
Speaker 1: went straight to socials and, using the power of his
Speaker 1: social network, shared all his assumptions without validating them, damaging
Speaker 1: my life's work and reputation. I don't know what his
Speaker 1: intention was, but harm has been done, nothing good, only harm.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's Gurgle who is the bad guy. Because
Speaker 1: Gurgley decided to like ask what's happening, to use his
Speaker 1: platform on social media to ask some really good questions
Speaker 1: that need answers, That alone is evidence of Gurgley being
Speaker 1: the bad guy and try being out to get Edwards.
Speaker 1: Edwards also uses some pretty choice language defending himself. He writes,
Speaker 1: alex A blain to you what happened, and then you
Speaker 1: decide if my life's work and the upcoming event deserved
Speaker 1: to be ruined and I ought to be lynched. The
Speaker 1: use of the word lynched there is a choice. It
Speaker 1: will not be the last time he uses that word
Speaker 1: to reference what's going on in the situation. So then
Speaker 1: he kind of gets into his explanation of what's going on,
Speaker 1: which is that basically it was a mistake, a mistake
Speaker 1: that he realized happened, but then this didn't have time
Speaker 1: to fix, he says. So he claims that Natalie's name
Speaker 1: and profile was auto generated with a random title, random
Speaker 1: Twitter handle, and random picture, and that he realized that
Speaker 1: this was happening and it was a mistake that he
Speaker 1: intended to fix it, but then he realized that it
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be a quick fix, and that quote,
Speaker 1: it's better to have that demo persona while I'm searching
Speaker 1: for replacement speakers. And first of all, like I am
Speaker 1: no developer, so like, maybe it's not a quick fix.
Speaker 1: Maybe it takes to fix this. I cannot speak for
Speaker 1: whether or not that's true. It does sound like bullshit
Speaker 1: to me, but I don't know. But I have to say,
Speaker 1: even if that is true, like even if what he
Speaker 1: said we take him at his word, it is still
Speaker 1: in my book, pretty deceitful because you're asking people to
Speaker 1: pay eight hundred dollars when you know the lineup that
Speaker 1: you are advertising publicly could not possibly come to fruition. Like,
Speaker 1: what if I'm really interested in whatever this fake person
Speaker 1: Natalie has to say and her line, like her line
Speaker 1: of work and her expertise, and I spend money, I
Speaker 1: plunk down eight hundred dollars to see her speak because
Speaker 1: I'm interested in her, and you advertise her as a speaker.
Speaker 1: That would be deceitful. And it's interesting to me how he,
Speaker 1: in his like explanation, glosses over that so quickly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the deceitfulness here is definitely the worst part.
Speaker 1: So he does say that the conference ended up having
Speaker 1: a less diverse than predicted lineup because these women who
Speaker 1: had agreed to speak all dry for reasons that he
Speaker 1: could not control. He writes, Sandy for health issues, Julia
Speaker 1: switched to helping the organization. You can't do both speaking
Speaker 1: and organization. Sandy and Julia didn't make it to the
Speaker 1: final schedule, but they kept appearing on the website while
Speaker 1: I was looking for a replacement. This partially led to
Speaker 1: an accusation that since they're not part of the schedule.
Speaker 1: We've probably added them just to meet arbitrary diversity criterias.
Speaker 1: This statement is bold and unfair. Sandy and Julia confirmed
Speaker 1: their participation. They should have been part of the final schedule,
Speaker 1: but dropped out for reasons out of our control at
Speaker 1: the worst possible time. Ask Sandy or Julia. So we
Speaker 1: ended up with only one female speaker, Chris. So while
Speaker 1: I was looking for a last minute replacement hoping i'd
Speaker 1: find it, Sandy and Julia were still mentioned on the website.
Speaker 1: So I have to say some of these people did
Speaker 1: end up being real. Christine Howard, who is the head
Speaker 1: of developer relations at Amazon Web Services, confirmed a foural
Speaker 1: four media that she had agreed to speak and that
Speaker 1: she does exist. Sandy Metz is a real person who
Speaker 1: four or four media confirmed did agree to speak and
Speaker 1: had to drop out because she was getting nee surgery.
Speaker 1: The conference founder keeps repeating this like very weird point
Speaker 1: in his defense that none of the fake women ever
Speaker 1: actually made it onto the final lineup, And I don't
Speaker 1: totally know what he means there, but I think that
Speaker 1: what he is saying is that even though these women
Speaker 1: weren't actually speaking, and they were listed as speakers that
Speaker 1: they didn't actually show up to speak, and so like
Speaker 1: nobody was duped, but like, of course they didn't show
Speaker 1: up to speak, they're not real people.
Speaker 2: It sounds like he's saying that Julia had to drop
Speaker 2: out because she was going to be on the organizing committee,
Speaker 2: and I've never heard of that being a rule that like,
Speaker 2: if you're on the organizing committee, you can't speak at
Speaker 2: the conference. Like that's just not a thing that I've
Speaker 2: ever heard, So that doesn't make sense. And then he
Speaker 2: also says that she had to drop out due to
Speaker 2: circumstances beyond their control. But that circumstance was that she
Speaker 2: wanted to be an organizer rather than a speaker, So
Speaker 2: like that also does it make sense?
Speaker 1: No, none of it makes sense. His entire explanation is
Speaker 1: nonsensical to me. So after this whole thing went viral
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Edwards did remove the fake women from the website,
Speaker 1: so I guess apparently, and ended up being a quicker
Speaker 1: fix than he had previously indicated. Like the reason why
Speaker 1: he said that he couldn't he was aware of this
Speaker 1: mistake on the website but couldn't fix it is because
Speaker 1: it was not a quick fix, but apparently quick enough
Speaker 1: that it could be taken care of within a day
Speaker 1: of this going viral on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Right, and the fix was changing some copy on the website,
Speaker 2: which historically in most systems is a pretty quick fix.
Speaker 1: It would take weeks. So lastly, from Edwards's long Twitter explanation,
Speaker 1: you know who is really at thought? Here?
Speaker 2: Can you guess society?
Speaker 1: Society? According to Edward, specifically, cancel culture. He tweeted, I
Speaker 1: said it was a mistake, a bug that turned out
Speaker 1: to be a feature. I even fixed that on my website.
Speaker 1: We're cool, right, No, we want blood. Let's cancel this
Speaker 1: sinner all caps. The amount of hate and lynching I
Speaker 1: keep receiving is as if I would have scammed or
Speaker 1: killed someone. But I won't defend myself because I don't
Speaker 1: feel guilty. I did nothing terrible that I need to
Speaker 1: apologize for. Side note, I'm not sure that Edward knows
Speaker 1: what lynching is like. I would like to sit him
Speaker 1: down and ask him what he thinks it entails. So
Speaker 1: not only is this, in my opinion, like deeply unethical behavior,
Speaker 1: from the perspective of people being asked to pay eight
Speaker 1: up to eight hundred dollars to attend this conference with
Speaker 1: a fake lineup. It also really sucks for the other speakers.
Speaker 1: Scott Hanselman, who is a very well respected person in
Speaker 1: the space who cares a lot about things like inclusion
Speaker 1: and diversity in tech, was slated to speak but pulled
Speaker 1: out after all this happened, tweeted this whole conference debacle
Speaker 1: is so disappointing. Speakers like myself, when invited to a conference,
Speaker 1: will immediately say who all's going to be there? I've
Speaker 1: my rules for participation posted on my site, including an
Speaker 1: inclusive lineup for years. I was duped by fake speakers also,
Speaker 1: and so it's pretty bad when people who have made
Speaker 1: it their thing to use their like Scott Hanselman is
Speaker 1: a white man. The fact that he is someone who
Speaker 1: is like intentionally using his privilege and his reputation and
Speaker 1: his background to try to help inclusion in the space
Speaker 1: and like do what he can to make it more
Speaker 1: inclusive by saying, yeah, if you want me to speak
Speaker 1: at your event, it has to be inclusive. Giving that
Speaker 1: incentive for organizers to make their spaces inclusive. It doesn't
Speaker 1: work if these organizers just lie and just make up
Speaker 1: who is who is going to be on the lineup.
Speaker 1: David Heinemeir Hansen, the creator of Rubyon Rails, was also
Speaker 1: slated to speak and pulled out, and he said that
Speaker 1: he he asked for his name to be removed from
Speaker 1: the lineup website, a request that was not honored. Oosh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to say, if I had all
Speaker 1: of these like big name, high profile people in the
Speaker 1: tech space dragging me like this, I would just be more.
Speaker 1: This is like like I had nothing to do with this,
Speaker 1: and I'm embarrassed for Edwards, you know, like this would
Speaker 1: be mortifying to me.
Speaker 2: From what I've seen poking around it, like the dep
Speaker 2: Turnity website and Julia's coding Unicorn Instagram account, it seems
Speaker 2: like there Edwards is really into deb Turnity. I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously it's his whole it seems to be his whole
Speaker 2: professional gig. But it's just like the aesthetic trappings of
Speaker 2: coding so far as I can tell, Like maybe there's
Speaker 2: more to it, but like the sense that one gets
Speaker 2: from looking at the social accounts is not that there's
Speaker 2: like deep important wisdom, uh and new stuff being revealed
Speaker 2: at this conference, but it's really just esthetics and social
Speaker 2: aspects of being a coder developer, and so the loss
Speaker 2: of these high profile people that that's got to like
Speaker 2: really sting, right because it seems like the whole thing
Speaker 2: is built on big names and credibility and uh starfucking.
Speaker 1: So I want to get into that more in just
Speaker 1: a bit, because I have picked up on what you're
Speaker 1: saying too, and I think it goes quite a bit
Speaker 1: deeper than that. But specifically about the dep Trinity conference.
Speaker 1: In preparing for this episode, I too like poked around
Speaker 1: their website and their social and the video, like their
Speaker 1: sizzle reel that they have for the event. It basically
Speaker 1: is like debternity, this is a conference people attend. There
Speaker 1: are lanyards like It's like what they're telling me is like,
Speaker 1: this is definitely a tech conference that people go to.
Speaker 1: Like they're not telling me what I will learn, what
Speaker 1: the space feels like, like why I want to show
Speaker 1: up there. It's like they're more interested in the flash
Speaker 1: and surface appearance of a slick tech conference, but it
Speaker 1: feels completely surface level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and maybe we could talk about the name dev Turnity.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? One might say it doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 1: One might even go further and say maybe it's a little.
Speaker 2: Bit fake, yeah, but it is a real name. It
Speaker 2: seems to be a blend of the words dev as
Speaker 2: a developer and eternity as in the time period that
Speaker 2: thirteen year olds will pledge their undying love. I guess
Speaker 2: it's putting those things together with a fake Instagram account
Speaker 2: of a fake woman.
Speaker 1: Well, you don't have to worry about that for too
Speaker 1: much longer because deb Turnity is canceled. Several speakers started
Speaker 1: dropping out for this happened, and the event was meant
Speaker 1: to be in just a few days, so it's not happening.
Speaker 1: So even if it was just that right like, this
Speaker 1: would already be one of the weirdest stories I have
Speaker 1: ever heard happening at a tech conference. But as you hinted,
Speaker 1: it does not stop there because remember Julia Krishina aka
Speaker 1: Coding Unicorn, the conference co founder. So Julia was slated
Speaker 1: to be a speaker at dep Trinity in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and twenty twenty three. She was the
Speaker 1: person who was supposed to speak, but then moved up
Speaker 1: to be an organizer, so she couldn't speak, And we
Speaker 1: think that maybe that's a BS but whatever, She is
Speaker 1: also a pretty established tech influencer. Her Instagram account, called
Speaker 1: Coding Unicorn, goes back to twenty eighteen. She has one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty thousand followers on her account, where her
Speaker 1: bio reads the best coding account on Instagram. Hi, my
Speaker 1: name is Julia. I am a professional software developer posting
Speaker 1: nobs coding career and productivity tips and a dep Trinity fan.
Speaker 1: She's done your basic like influencer stuff. She does giveaways,
Speaker 1: raffles on her platform, all that stuff. Her pictures show
Speaker 1: her presumably working on code and really looking hot, like
Speaker 1: showing a lot of cleavage and just generally kind of
Speaker 1: like being a tech hottie while really hyping up devternity
Speaker 1: events and conferences. But and here's the big reveal, she's
Speaker 1: not even real. It doesn't look like foural four Media
Speaker 1: looked into it. They found ip logs that seem to
Speaker 1: indicate Edwards inviting and then logging into an account belonging
Speaker 1: to Coding Unicorn, which is Julia's social media handle, so
Speaker 1: basically just like logging in as her. A YouTube video
Speaker 1: posted last year by Edwards that had five views when
Speaker 1: foal four Media accessed it showed him logged into his
Speaker 1: own email accounts, as well as one for Coding Unicorn.
Speaker 1: Many of Coding Unicorn's posts are just copied and pasted
Speaker 1: from Edwards's LinkedIn or Instagram without any attribution. Edwards also
Speaker 1: pretty explicitly admits that he is the one responsible for
Speaker 1: the Coding Unicorn account on his LinkedIn profile, saying I
Speaker 1: devote most of my time to growing the most popular
Speaker 1: coding account on Instagram with one hundred and twenty k followers,
Speaker 1: coding Unicorn, without elaborating on exactly what that entails. So
Speaker 1: this is pretty confusing. I think it's time we heard
Speaker 1: from Julia herself. Hi, everybody, it's good in unicorn here.
Speaker 3: Do you want to become an awesome software developer, build
Speaker 3: a successful career, become more podoctic than happy. I'm here
Speaker 3: to have.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, the tech company hash Node published an
Speaker 1: interview with Julia on their Women in Tech blog, all
Speaker 1: about the issues that Julia faces being a woman working
Speaker 1: in a male dominated space. Now, the person that wrote
Speaker 1: that article has confirmed with foural for Media that the
Speaker 1: interview was conducted via email and they never actually spoke. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the interview kind of reads like bad hacker girl fan fiction.
Speaker 1: Here's a little taste of it. Julia, how'd you get
Speaker 1: into tech? Nine years ago? My parents forced me to
Speaker 1: go to college and get a computer science degree. They
Speaker 1: wanted me to find a nice, quiet office job because
Speaker 1: I was a problem kid, a school rebel. I didn't
Speaker 1: fulfill my parents' dreams. I am still a rebel, but
Speaker 1: one with a computer science degree. So tell me that
Speaker 1: does not sound like like a fantasy version of a
Speaker 1: woman working in tech, Like I'm a rebel. The reason
Speaker 1: why I became a programmer is because my parents were
Speaker 1: looking for me to settle down and find a nice,
Speaker 1: quiet job to stay out of trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds like something from the nineties movie Hackers.
Speaker 1: Which, by the way, I was looking at a picture
Speaker 1: of the fashions from that movie Matthew Lillard in the
Speaker 1: movie Hackers. Like the way that they had imagined how
Speaker 1: computer hackers dress in that movie is really something. I
Speaker 1: guess I'll just leave it at that. So in this interview,
Speaker 1: when Julia is asked about gender bias in tech, will surprised.
Speaker 1: Julia actually thinks that it's men who suffer the most
Speaker 1: when it comes to gender bias. In tech. She says,
Speaker 1: I don't like seeing women as victims because such a
Speaker 1: mindset turns men into suspects. Men suffer from biases equal
Speaker 1: to women. Think of job interviews, we give too much
Speaker 1: attention to gender bias and appreciate other cognition biases, such
Speaker 1: as doubt avoidance, where we make an ill decision just
Speaker 1: to avoid uncertainty or reject a person that doesn't look
Speaker 1: nice enough. Julia's advice for women to deal with gender
Speaker 1: bias stop blaming others for being biased, improve yourself. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it reads to me like this fantasy, fictionalized version of
Speaker 1: a woman in tech who doesn't think that there's any
Speaker 1: kind of gender bias. It is not even interested in
Speaker 1: talking about it. Certainly it would not say that she
Speaker 1: has faced it herself, and it's only interested in improving her.
Speaker 1: Like that just reads like a woman invented by a man.
Speaker 3: More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: So the evidence that links Edwards to being Julia, like
Speaker 1: catfishing as Julia, or at least that indicates that she's
Speaker 1: not a real human, is pretty overwhelming. Some of the
Speaker 1: images that she has posted on Instagram that show computer
Speaker 1: monitors have her logged in under Edwards's name on Lobster's,
Speaker 1: a coding social media form. Edwards and Julia's accounts were
Speaker 1: banned multiple times for sock puppeting in twenty nineteen and
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. The person who runs lobster said, I remember
Speaker 1: being creeped out of the effort involved and choice to
Speaker 1: use Instagram glamour shots. It was just the one profile
Speaker 1: when I saw him, and I'm kind of stunned that
Speaker 1: He's not just continued, but multiplied his efforts again. Many
Speaker 1: of Julia's Instagram posts were copied word for word from
Speaker 1: Edwards's own social media accounts, and The Verge looked into
Speaker 1: the university where Julia claims to have attended for her
Speaker 1: bachelor's degree in information technology on her LinkedIn, and the
Speaker 1: university said that they do not indicate any records of
Speaker 1: a student with her name. I'm also like ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent sure that it is not even the same woman
Speaker 1: in every picture. It's like just a hot woman with
Speaker 1: dark hair and ample cleavage and every picture. But I
Speaker 1: genuinely like, I went back to the very first post
Speaker 1: back in twenty eighteen, and I genuinely think they are
Speaker 1: different people the woman who is used back in twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen when the account first starts, looks very different from
Speaker 1: the woman that is used today. They both have brown
Speaker 1: hair and ample bosom, but that is pretty much where
Speaker 1: the similarities end. Will put a link to a couple
Speaker 1: of pictures of Julia from her Instagram in the show notes,
Speaker 1: and honestly, you can be the judge. Let me know
Speaker 1: if you think this is legit, these are all the
Speaker 1: same women, or if you think something is going on
Speaker 1: and this is kind of complicated, Like I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that I am speaking about this carefully, but
Speaker 1: we need to talk about the way that Julia presents
Speaker 1: physically on Instagram. Like it's clear that he is going
Speaker 1: for a specific kind of look with the way that
Speaker 1: Julia looks on social media, Like she's very conventionally attractive.
Speaker 1: In all of her pictures, she's posed to look like
Speaker 1: I saw somebody describe it as almost like a booth
Speaker 1: babe kind of way, where the cleavage is very prominent.
Speaker 1: The poses are all kind of like like I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call them sexualized, but they're definitely meant to highlight her
Speaker 1: physicality and her looks and her figure. And it's this
Speaker 1: very specific kind of almost like an uncanny valley kind
Speaker 1: of hot where she is in these very clearly posed
Speaker 1: staged pictures that look kind of fake that could not
Speaker 1: possibly be depicting a real area where she's like really
Speaker 1: working like this is. This might sound minor, but one
Speaker 1: of the things about her is that she talks quite
Speaker 1: a bit about how being a developer means that she
Speaker 1: can travel the world, doesn't have a boss, she can
Speaker 1: work from whatever exotic locale that she wants. So in
Speaker 1: one picture, she's meant to be working from like someplace
Speaker 1: like an exotic beach of some kind, and she's holding
Speaker 1: one of those big, giant coconuts where they just chop
Speaker 1: the top off and put a straw in it and
Speaker 1: then you're drinking it. Not the small ones, the big ones.
Speaker 1: So if you've ever had one of those, you know
Speaker 1: that they're like they're coconuts, and so the bottom is
Speaker 1: round it it's not flat. You couldn't put it on
Speaker 1: a table like you would a normal beverage container that
Speaker 1: has a flat bottom. It's rounded. It's a coconut. So
Speaker 1: she's holding it in one hand and working on her
Speaker 1: laptop with another. In what world with somebody whose computer
Speaker 1: is the main thing they work on beholding a tippy
Speaker 1: beverage that you cannot sit down while also working one
Speaker 1: handed on their laptop. I don't buy it never happening.
Speaker 2: Best case scenario. It's a risky move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's risky. So I feel like Julia almost exists
Speaker 1: as this kind of fantasy woman that a man would
Speaker 1: cook up right, heaving, cleavage, beautiful, but also a really
Speaker 1: skilled programmer. She's not a feminist. She doesn't think that
Speaker 1: women have any societal disadvantages because of their gender. She
Speaker 1: has a dirty mouth and makes like Pithy's zingers about
Speaker 1: how people need to worry less about convention and worry
Speaker 1: more about leveling up their tech skills. She describes herself
Speaker 1: as a free thinker. In one post, she talks about
Speaker 1: her favorite podcast. Can you guess who she lists as
Speaker 1: one of her favorite podcasts?
Speaker 2: Is it us? You know we got a tech podcast here?
Speaker 1: No, it's Joe Rogan, of course.
Speaker 2: Famous tech podcaster Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: She also likes Tim Ferris, also noted to and she
Speaker 1: does this thing where she photo shops herself into pictures
Speaker 1: with famous tech leaders, like she's a picture of herself
Speaker 1: photoshopped with Elon Musk. Another picture of herself photoshopped with
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. We actually found the source picture and it's
Speaker 1: like she just photoshopped herself over his ex wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was like an iconic photo that was
Speaker 2: the go to photo for Jeff Bezos before they got divorced.
Speaker 2: Like anyone who's seen a photo of Jeff Bezos in
Speaker 2: the twenty tens, like that was it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you really called it. You were like, I've seen
Speaker 1: this picture before, and you found it on reverse Google
Speaker 1: image search very quickly. Side note, if anybody ever watches
Speaker 1: the MTV show Catfish, you know that that's like when
Speaker 1: when somebody who thinks they're being catfished calls Nev Schulman,
Speaker 1: pretty much the only thing he can do is like,
Speaker 1: let's let's reverse Google image search these these pictures. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like the one tool in his toolbox that
Speaker 1: he has. So if they're ever looking for a replacement
Speaker 1: host that show, they could call us because we know
Speaker 1: how to do it too. So I think that Julia
Speaker 1: is like this caricature of a certain type of man's
Speaker 1: dream woman, or like the kind of thing that a
Speaker 1: male programmer might cook up in his head, his fantasy
Speaker 1: as a woman in tech. You know, if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen the movie Gone Girl, it's like the cool girl
Speaker 1: persona but for tech right, like she's cool, she doesn't,
Speaker 1: She's not a feminist, she has a foul mouth. Loves
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan thinks your sexist jokes are really cute. Loves
Speaker 1: Elon musks like. I'm not saying this woman doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying she reads like a woman written by
Speaker 1: a man in his head. And it really reminds me
Speaker 1: of something that an influencer with a very large male
Speaker 1: following once told me. She told me that if your
Speaker 1: audience is men, like if you're trying to curate men
Speaker 1: as your audience and it's men who are consuming your
Speaker 1: content on Instagram, those men are imagining themselves with you.
Speaker 1: So you can't have like other men in your image.
Speaker 1: You can't have anything that would ruin the illusion that
Speaker 1: they could be with you. You can't have that in
Speaker 1: your images. So I think whoever is running Julia's account,
Speaker 1: I think it's probably Edwards is doing so in this
Speaker 1: way that very much lets techy guys imagine that they
Speaker 1: could be traveling the world with this like beautiful, foul mouthed,
Speaker 1: nerdy woman who only wants to talk about leveling up
Speaker 1: her tech skills while wearing like a bikini. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: this Julia account is for men, Like I think that.
Speaker 1: When I first saw it, I thought like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is an account that's trying to boost representation for women
Speaker 1: in tech. Looking at it again, it's like, no, No,
Speaker 1: this is an account for men. This is an account
Speaker 1: that is trying to be a place where male programmers gather,
Speaker 1: like come for the cheesecake, cleavage shots, stay for my
Speaker 1: pithy musings on programming and culture. One commenter on Julia's
Speaker 1: instagram put it really well. They said, I thought this
Speaker 1: group is about programming, but it appears to be a
Speaker 1: group of horny dudes drooling over a girl that always
Speaker 1: pose right next to a laptop, which I thought was
Speaker 1: really funny. So apparently me and that commenter are not
Speaker 1: the only ones who are suspicious. In a twenty twenty
Speaker 1: comment that Julia left on Hacker News, she actually spoke
Speaker 1: to the idea of people not thinking that she is real.
Speaker 1: But peep how she twists this around about making it
Speaker 1: a response to a dig about how women can't be programmers,
Speaker 1: not whether or not she exists at all. In her
Speaker 1: comment on Hacker News, she writes as a female developer
Speaker 1: with sixty k followers on Instagram. I went through all
Speaker 1: of this, programmers. Don't look like that. You're fake, some
Speaker 1: dude writes on your content. Are you a model or
Speaker 1: a coder? Bullies are not the happiest people on the planet.
Speaker 1: Some of them have been harassed or bullied by their
Speaker 1: parents in schools, etc. I discovered the hard way when
Speaker 1: I pay back with the hate, it makes me feel
Speaker 1: bad and also feeds their hate the hardest and probably
Speaker 1: why this solution is to respond with love to those
Speaker 1: unhappy folks or not responding at all. It's very hard,
Speaker 1: but it works.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind Julia wrote this in a comment on
Speaker 1: another post on hacker News, so that means that Edwards
Speaker 1: is likely like not just posting on Instagram as Julia,
Speaker 1: but also doing interviews and in comments across the internet
Speaker 1: as Julia as well.
Speaker 2: WHOA, this goes deep.
Speaker 1: So I've gone through both Julia's account and Edward's account
Speaker 1: from a very beginning, did a lot of scrolling, and
Speaker 1: here is my theory about what I think is going
Speaker 1: on this is not. This is just my opinion. I
Speaker 1: think that Edwards at some point decided that he wanted
Speaker 1: to be like an online tech influencer and market himself
Speaker 1: on social media as somebody who should be listened to
Speaker 1: when it comes to those kind of conversations that kind
Speaker 1: of goes back to what you were saying, Mike about
Speaker 1: how dev turnity. It seems like a kind of shallow
Speaker 1: representation of a tech conference, right. I think that Edwards
Speaker 1: hoarded for himself that tech persona guy like I see
Speaker 1: it a lot on Twitter since Elon Musk took over
Speaker 1: somebody who was always trying to like maximize their games
Speaker 1: and like gamify success and always giving you like eight
Speaker 1: rules for productivity, eight hacks for this, like things that
Speaker 1: aren't even necessarily about tech always, I think, like a
Speaker 1: general influencer on tech but also life. Like that's what
Speaker 1: I think that he wanted to be, and he or
Speaker 1: he thought like, I need to do this. It'll be
Speaker 1: successful for me if I do this, you know, not
Speaker 1: just about tech, but about what books to read, how
Speaker 1: to think about culture. So in twenty sixteen, Edwards' Instagram
Speaker 1: is pretty normal, right, Like it's pictures of his family,
Speaker 1: pretty normal pictures of himself, pictures of himself with like
Speaker 1: a lightsaber from Star Wars or with a Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones characters. But around twenty eighteen, his pictures sort of change.
Speaker 1: They become a lot more polished and a lot more influencery.
Speaker 1: For lack of a better word, he really is like
Speaker 1: marketing himself as a tech luminary. He's taking pictures of
Speaker 1: the books that he's reading. He's you know, in captions,
Speaker 1: giving life advice about tech and life and leveling up.
Speaker 1: And I think that he must have done this for
Speaker 1: a little bit of time and maybe not seen success
Speaker 1: or growth, and then sometime in twenty eighteen he creates
Speaker 1: Julia's page. Now, the first few pictures on Julia's Instagram account, interestingly,
Speaker 1: don't show Julia's face right. They're just like disembodied body parts,
Speaker 1: like in one at the close up of her cleavage
Speaker 1: holding a book about programming called Elegant Objects up against
Speaker 1: her chest. In another, it's just her feet while she's
Speaker 1: like got a laptop on her lap in some In
Speaker 1: many of them, she is using her hands to obscure
Speaker 1: her face or like has her face down. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: think that Covid was probably like beneficial to these people
Speaker 1: because in a lot of the images post Covid you
Speaker 1: see Julia wearing a face mask, and so I think
Speaker 1: they were like, oh, great, we've got a reason to
Speaker 1: not show her face. And so, you know, at first,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about how deeply insulting this entire thing
Speaker 1: is to women in tech. You know, this idea that
Speaker 1: says that being a woman in tech means like wearing
Speaker 1: a bikini that says GitHub on it and showing off
Speaker 1: your body while there's like a laptop vaguely in the
Speaker 1: background or whatever. But I also want to say that, like,
Speaker 1: not only is it incredibly insulting to women, and it's
Speaker 1: also incredibly insulting to men. I think, like, I think
Speaker 1: that Edwards thinks that men are so horny and stupid
Speaker 1: that they won't even notice that it is not the
Speaker 1: same woman in every picture. Like, they are so stupid
Speaker 1: and horny that if you create a fictional version of
Speaker 1: their own fantasy that is just projecting their desires back
Speaker 1: at them, they will be invested and also believe that
Speaker 1: person actually exists.
Speaker 2: So that's a lot of effort. What do you think
Speaker 2: is getting out of all of this well.
Speaker 1: First of all, I think this is partially just a
Speaker 1: good old fashioned financial scam. Julia is meant to hype
Speaker 1: up his own conferences and tech entities, right like she
Speaker 1: has deb Trinity in her bio next to a little heart.
Speaker 1: She often wears like Debterrinity shirts and talks about how
Speaker 1: much she loves the conferences. People have to pay as
Speaker 1: much as eight hundred dollars to go to these events
Speaker 1: that Julia hypes up to her one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand Instagram or one hundred and twenty thousand Instagram followers.
Speaker 1: Edwards also sells master classes, and so I think that
Speaker 1: Julia in some ways is just like having your own
Speaker 1: built in sexy tech influencer to hype up whatever the
Speaker 1: thing is that you're selling, and it's just like a
Speaker 1: straightforward financial grift. But I also think it doesn't stop there,
Speaker 1: because that wouldn't explain the effort that it takes to
Speaker 1: like comment as Julia on Hacker News right, to comment
Speaker 1: in articles as Julia right, because that's a different thing.
Speaker 1: So I also think that there might be like a
Speaker 1: kind of clout that comes with being Julia, this attractive
Speaker 1: woman in technology. You know, I almost would feel differently
Speaker 1: if Edwards was you know, if when he was asked
Speaker 1: to do an interview for a blog about women in tech,
Speaker 1: if he was like, oh, this is just a persona
Speaker 1: like I don't want to take up room. I don't
Speaker 1: want to take away a slot from another an actual
Speaker 1: human woman in tech. But he did those interviews specifically
Speaker 1: about being a woman in tech, and he did them
Speaker 1: as Julia. He could have it would be pretty weird,
Speaker 1: but he could have been like, oh, well, this is
Speaker 1: what I've learned as a man running an account as
Speaker 1: a woman persona in tech, Like, like, there are all
Speaker 1: kinds of things he could have done that I feel
Speaker 1: like I would be looking at it a little bit
Speaker 1: less side i e. But he didn't do any of
Speaker 1: those things, And so I think there must be like
Speaker 1: an element to this that must be fun, Like it's
Speaker 1: probably fun to see your following and reach grow, like
Speaker 1: I think that he if he was unable to be
Speaker 1: a tech influencer when he's just like some guy, when
Speaker 1: he's a sexy woman. I certainly it's easier to grow
Speaker 1: an audience of programmer men when you're a sexy woman.
Speaker 1: And I think it probably is fun and intoxicating to
Speaker 1: see your following and reach grow. So I think that
Speaker 1: Julia allowed for Edwards to be the tech influencer that
Speaker 1: he never got to be as himself, that he never
Speaker 1: would be as himself because his musings aren't really that novel.
Speaker 1: They're not really that good, right saying. If you're listing
Speaker 1: a list of podcasts for folks to check out, and
Speaker 1: top three is Joe Rogan the most popular podcaster in
Speaker 1: the world, I'm sorry, that's not really novel advice. If
Speaker 1: the books that you're suggesting people read are books like
Speaker 1: Atomic Habits, I'm sorry that book is in every airport
Speaker 1: in the country. These are not novel takes. This is
Speaker 1: not novel advice. I think that he's somebody who wanted
Speaker 1: the shine of being a tech luminary, somebody who could
Speaker 1: give sage wisdom, that people when he spoke, people would listen.
Speaker 1: But I don't think he had that in him, and
Speaker 1: so I think that doing it as Julia was the
Speaker 1: only way that he could do it and actually make
Speaker 1: an impact, which is actually kind of sad when you
Speaker 1: think about it that way.
Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense when you say it
Speaker 2: like that. The thing that I just have to keep wondering,
Speaker 2: is what was the bigger thing for him? What was
Speaker 2: the bigger piece of the motivation. Was it the financial
Speaker 2: grift and cosplaying Julia was just the way to get
Speaker 2: the following that would allow him to sell tickets to
Speaker 2: like make the financial grift work. Or was the bigger
Speaker 2: motivation being part of that cool kids club of tech
Speaker 2: guys who talk about their agile practices and post changes
Speaker 2: to their website to get hub for some ridiculous reason.
Speaker 1: If I I mean, I will have to ask Edwards.
Speaker 1: I would happily interview him. If he wants to do
Speaker 1: the interview, ask Julia, we'll figure that out. But no,
Speaker 1: I think it's gotta be the latter. I think that, like,
Speaker 1: especially in tech, I think that's a current. I think
Speaker 1: getting to feel like you're somebody who people listen to
Speaker 1: it feels good. And I think that it's a space
Speaker 1: where I mean, I think it's a space where people
Speaker 1: were like, when you're a guy, A lot of guys
Speaker 1: who are like pretty mediocre rise to that get to
Speaker 1: have those kinds of platforms. I think that he probably
Speaker 1: just saw some of those guys and was like, why
Speaker 1: not me? And so I think it's got to be.
Speaker 1: I think the grift was probably a part of it,
Speaker 1: but I think if, in my opinion, not the only part.
Speaker 1: And I think that you know, has weird of a
Speaker 1: story as this is. I do think it all goes
Speaker 1: back to this persistent myth that there are no women
Speaker 1: in tech. It's the myth that I started this podcast
Speaker 1: to bust, you know, Like Edwards was quoted as saying,
Speaker 1: the real problem is that there are not enough women
Speaker 1: out there that he could book to speak, and that
Speaker 1: tech conferences are all chasing this very small group of
Speaker 1: women and that's the problem. He said, there have been
Speaker 1: thousands of events chasing the same small subgroup of women
Speaker 1: speakers and not to me really like that reveals to
Speaker 1: me a really just messed up way of understanding and
Speaker 1: thinking about marginalized people and technology. If you, if you
Speaker 1: truly believe that how it works is there's a small
Speaker 1: handful of people that go to every conference that's because
Speaker 1: every other are on every stage, and that every conference
Speaker 1: is just like booking those same people. That to me
Speaker 1: signals that like, first of all, you don't really know
Speaker 1: the space, because that's just it makes me laugh. But
Speaker 1: second of all, you don't really care. You don't really
Speaker 1: care about uplifting marginalized voices. You maybe have gleaned that
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, you can't have a lineup of
Speaker 1: all white men at a tech conference without somebody saying
Speaker 1: something about it, and so you know that you need
Speaker 1: to not have people saying something about it, But you
Speaker 1: don't really care beyond that. And I think it also
Speaker 1: shows to me that he didn't think it was worth
Speaker 1: it to do the real work, like somehow this elaborate
Speaker 1: catfish AI generated scam to him was less work than
Speaker 1: just like widening your network of marginalized people. And honestly,
Speaker 1: it's like other conferences managed to do that work of
Speaker 1: lifting up actual marginalized humans who exist in the space
Speaker 1: without inventing fake people, right. Valerie Phoenix, the founder of
Speaker 1: Tech by Choice, which is a group that highlights underestimated
Speaker 1: people in tech, really put it well on Twitter. Valerie says,
Speaker 1: the last few days, I've felt like a slap in
Speaker 1: the face to many of us whose experiences are seen
Speaker 1: as cosplay or engagement. I've dedicated countless hours to running
Speaker 1: Tech by Choice, a nonprofit focused on helping underrepresented groups
Speaker 1: thrive in tech through education, resources and mentorship. It's never
Speaker 1: been about engagement, status or power. It's about making a difference.
Speaker 1: Every Grifter and Catfish story, we push engagement towards overshadows
Speaker 1: marginalized individuals real struggles and victories in tech. And I
Speaker 1: guess that's really how I feel like. There are so
Speaker 1: many women and trans folks and non binary folks and
Speaker 1: queer folks and black folks and people of color in
Speaker 1: the space that the and these kind of stunts just
Speaker 1: like further complicate that experience for us even more. This
Speaker 1: might be a bit of a tangent, but I did
Speaker 1: want to talk about it because I remember we talked
Speaker 1: about the Grace Hopper conference and how this men showed
Speaker 1: up and like overran this conference that was specifically supposed
Speaker 1: to be a place for women in tech. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that we did not talk about in
Speaker 1: that episode that is absolutely true that actually a listener
Speaker 1: correctly called me out on not raising in that episode,
Speaker 1: is that a climate where men are taking opportunities like
Speaker 1: this away from marginalized people really also hurts gender nonconforming folks,
Speaker 1: trans folks, people who are butcher or mask So it
Speaker 1: creates this climate where people feel like they need to
Speaker 1: be suspicious of these folks when these are the same
Speaker 1: people who should be feeling comfortable and included in these spaces, right,
Speaker 1: it creates the conditions where folks feel like even more
Speaker 1: surveiled and watched and sidelined and pushed out of these
Speaker 1: spaces where they really ought to be included. And so
Speaker 1: stunts like this one just make it harder for actual
Speaker 1: marginalized people humans who exist in tech. You know, we
Speaker 1: already have to prove we belong, Prove we aren't fake,
Speaker 1: Prove we are real, prove we're in tech, Prove we
Speaker 1: know what we're doing, and now prove that we exist,
Speaker 1: that we're actually humans. Like I've actually already seen men
Speaker 1: on Twitter saying that this whole catfish thing just proves
Speaker 1: like what happens when people focus too much on diversity.
Speaker 1: So this whole debacle of a man doing something bad
Speaker 1: is already being used to further marginalize and punish people
Speaker 1: who are already marginalized in tech. Like it never ends.
Speaker 1: And I think it really is important that like, inclusion
Speaker 1: is not something that you do for points or cud
Speaker 1: or to get followers to your bake account, or to
Speaker 1: grift or to avoid getting called out. It really matters.
Speaker 1: Like we've talked about this on across several episodes, it
Speaker 1: matters that our spaces where technology is being built include
Speaker 1: as many voices as they can. It matters for all
Speaker 1: of us. And so I think that people like Edwards
Speaker 1: just don't get it right. They just see it as
Speaker 1: this cosmetic thing that you can use to boost your
Speaker 1: own credibility, and that it really hurts. It hurts. It
Speaker 1: hurts that this is how they see us. It really does.
Speaker 2: It also seems like it's not clear what Edwards is
Speaker 2: actually building. So the idea that like you'll build it
Speaker 2: better if you have more diverse viewpoints in the room,
Speaker 2: like you'll end up with a better product, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure he would get that because it's not clear like
Speaker 2: what he has built other than like a scammy conference.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I think again it goes back to your
Speaker 1: point of using the veneer of like tech bro just
Speaker 1: to build your personal brand, not to build anything real,
Speaker 1: anything that matters. And yeah, I don't like it. I
Speaker 1: don't think it. I don't think it serves us when
Speaker 1: that is seen as a currency. I don't think it
Speaker 1: serves us. So I wanted to end a little bit
Speaker 1: of a where are they now? So Edwards has been
Speaker 1: pretty quiet on Twitter after this whole thing unfolded. His
Speaker 1: last tweets are still his tweets about being canceled, and
Speaker 1: you know his weird explanations from November twenty fifth, the
Speaker 1: Departy conference is canceled. As for Julia, Well, on November seventeenth,
Speaker 1: she hinted that maybe she's re examining her priorities and
Speaker 1: might be spending less time on Instagram on her last
Speaker 1: post on November seventeenth, saying, I started posting less on
Speaker 1: Instagram since my life priorities have shanged significantly, or maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just getting older, So maybe we'll be hearing a
Speaker 1: little bit less from Julia on Instagram. Got a story
Speaker 1: about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to
Speaker 1: say hi? You can reach us at Hello at tangody
Speaker 1: dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode
Speaker 1: at tengody dot com. There Are No Girls on the
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