Speaker 1: You're listening to Disinformed, a mini series from There are
Speaker 1: No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd. Bad guys
Speaker 1: are coming. They're coming for you, and they're coming for
Speaker 1: your kids. If you spent any time on social media
Speaker 1: in the last few years, you've probably heard some version
Speaker 1: of a story like that. Strangers are waiting, lurking, generally
Speaker 1: in the parking lot or the aisles of a big
Speaker 1: box store like Target, and they're hunting down women and
Speaker 1: their children to snatch them up in broad daylight for trafficking.
Speaker 1: This is not new at all. I definitely grew up
Speaker 1: hearing horror stories like the one about the woman driver
Speaker 1: terrified by a man tailgating or and flashing her high
Speaker 1: beams at night, but he's actually just trying to warn
Speaker 1: her that a man is in her back seat waiting
Speaker 1: to strike. Those stories definitely made a big impression on me.
Speaker 1: But instead of them just being passed around in home room,
Speaker 1: add in social media and stories like this can spread
Speaker 1: to peak virality online. Stories like these are especially common
Speaker 1: on social media. Just search the hashtag sex traffic and
Speaker 1: awareness on TikTok and you will find thousands of women
Speaker 1: making videos about how traffickers tied a ribbon or a
Speaker 1: zip tied to their car to mark them as a victim,
Speaker 1: or how a van parked too close to them in
Speaker 1: a parking lot and it was a near miss for
Speaker 1: a trafficking attempt. The only issue is this kind of trafficking,
Speaker 1: where someone is snatched by a stranger in a public place,
Speaker 1: is exceedingly rare. Yet videos like these often go viral
Speaker 1: and social media, leading the impression that women should be
Speaker 1: afraid anytime they leave their homes to go to the store.
Speaker 1: In this two part episode, we'll explore the roots of
Speaker 1: online panics around trafficking, why they're so dangerous, and here
Speaker 1: from two people who are fighting back with facts. The
Speaker 1: podcast You're Wrong About is kind of a gold standard
Speaker 1: for revisiting moral panics and debunking the commonly held beliefs
Speaker 1: that led to them. Hosts Michael Hobbs and Sarah Marshall
Speaker 1: have found that in many ways, we're basically just doing
Speaker 1: a mad Lives where the blank is filled with some
Speaker 1: kind of boogeyman society can blame at times when people
Speaker 1: are feeling anxious are scared, like the Satanic panic of
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, where parents were horrified that satanic
Speaker 1: cults were ritualistically abusing children. Only that was never really happening. Basically,
Speaker 1: there was always some big scary threat that we need
Speaker 1: to be watching out for. My name is Michael Hobbs.
Speaker 1: I'm the co host of a podcast called You're Wrong
Speaker 1: About and another podcast called Maintenance Phase So Online. I
Speaker 1: find that so many conversations about big complex issues, things
Speaker 1: like trafficking or homelessness, are really dominated by people who
Speaker 1: don't really know what they're talking about and who were
Speaker 1: either spreading bad information intentionally or unintentionally. When you started
Speaker 1: making You're Wrong About, where you all setting out to
Speaker 1: give people the tools to push back against this kind
Speaker 1: of bad information. No, like this, this was completely accidental.
Speaker 1: We had no idea when we started that we would
Speaker 1: find out that America keeps having the same moral panic
Speaker 1: over and over again. This was not something that we thought,
Speaker 1: you know, it's all the same thing. It's like a
Speaker 1: tide that comes in and out. You know, the satanic
Speaker 1: panic is always with us, queuing on is always with us.
Speaker 1: We had no idea that we would come up with that.
Speaker 1: It's just sort of we we research, sort of debunkable
Speaker 1: episodes in history, and when you start to bunking them,
Speaker 1: you're like an hour or two into the research and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, it's this one again. Oh, we're gonna
Speaker 1: do the thing where they're like strangers coming to get
Speaker 1: your kids, right, or there's some societal out group right
Speaker 1: like homeless people, like trans people, like sex offenders that
Speaker 1: we don't like, and we're going to project this extreme
Speaker 1: power onto them. We're going to project this extreme rapaciousness
Speaker 1: onto them. There's millions of them, you know, they're coming
Speaker 1: to the border. They're trying to steal your kids and
Speaker 1: get them into street gangs. I mean, it's it's like
Speaker 1: this mad libs where you can just throw in like, Okay,
Speaker 1: which societal outgroup is it going to be? What are
Speaker 1: they doing to our kids today? Like it's it's over
Speaker 1: and over again the same thing. So we've both me
Speaker 1: and my co host Sarah Marshall have become these like
Speaker 1: accidental insufferable debunkers or we're like, nope, same one. We're
Speaker 1: doing this again, guys, Like let's calm it down. We've
Speaker 1: done this seven times before. So in my research around disinformation,
Speaker 1: particularly like false panics, around things that are rooted in
Speaker 1: people's identity. So whether it's trans folks, queer folks, you know, immigrants,
Speaker 1: it is always sort of the same thing. Like I
Speaker 1: feel right now we're seeing all of the legislations would
Speaker 1: have meant to make you think as if trans children
Speaker 1: are like running the world, Like trans children are the
Speaker 1: biggest threat to your kids, totally and there and and
Speaker 1: it's the same tropes, right, So they're coming for your kids,
Speaker 1: they're recruiting your kids, Like this is the same thing
Speaker 1: that Anita Bryant said about gay people in the seventies
Speaker 1: and the nine eighties, Like we're just running exactly the
Speaker 1: same playbook. Anita Bryant was a singer and beauty queen
Speaker 1: who famously led the Save Our Children campaign that attempted
Speaker 1: to save children by cracking down on gay people having rights.
Speaker 1: And we're just mad living in a new societal outgroup.
Speaker 1: So I mean, at the beginning of the pandemic, I
Speaker 1: read a bunch of books about the Black plague, just
Speaker 1: out of like more, just out of like morbid curiosity.
Speaker 1: And you know what you find in these old panics,
Speaker 1: You know, these times of societal anxiety, you had some
Speaker 1: of the biggest pogroms against Jews in Europe in history, right,
Speaker 1: it was like, there's this big thing we can't explain.
Speaker 1: There's all of these anxieties, people are dying all around me.
Speaker 1: Who can we blame? Like, we don't want to look
Speaker 1: at any existing societal structures. We don't want to look
Speaker 1: at something that's just difficult for us to explain. It's
Speaker 1: sort of out of our scientific knowledge. So, uh, there's
Speaker 1: this group here that seems sort of shifting and we
Speaker 1: don't really like them. Let's blame them and kill a
Speaker 1: bunch of them. It's like these things are old, ancient
Speaker 1: human impulses and they're very difficult to see at the time.
Speaker 1: But zooming out a little bit, you're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: this is just what happens during times of anxiety, and
Speaker 1: isn't the perfect recipe for a very anxious society a
Speaker 1: global pandemic. It's probably not a coincidence that has COVID worsened.
Speaker 1: We saw more and more content about Q and on
Speaker 1: and Save the Children, purporting to save kids from some
Speaker 1: perceived danger lurking out in the world. Why do you
Speaker 1: think right now the specific moment in politics and culture,
Speaker 1: why are we seeing this resurgence of panic around sex
Speaker 1: trafficking and trafficking dowsing. I mean, it's hard to say exactly.
Speaker 1: I think you know this this really hit its peak
Speaker 1: last summer, all of this q and on hashtag save
Speaker 1: the Children's Stuff, and it really seems like there was
Speaker 1: a moment where, you know, we're in the middle of
Speaker 1: a pandemic. Information was all over the place, right like, remember,
Speaker 1: we didn't like, are we wearing masks? Are we not
Speaker 1: wearing masks? Some states are in lockdown, some states are
Speaker 1: aggressively not in lockdown. It was just this time where
Speaker 1: nobody really knew what was going on. And there's some
Speaker 1: research that indicates that sort of at times when you're
Speaker 1: really angry, you search for information that reinforces your worldview,
Speaker 1: and at times when you're really anxious, you are more
Speaker 1: open to information that doesn't reinforce your worldview. So all so,
Speaker 1: all summer, everybody's inside, we're all on our phones, there's
Speaker 1: nothing else to do, We're looking at the internet, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have people whose minds are
Speaker 1: a little bit more open to things like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: the real danger to children isn't COVID, maybe it's actually
Speaker 1: these you know, white van driving traffickers who come from
Speaker 1: other countries and they're going to kidnap my kids and
Speaker 1: take them abroad or these these these narratives that just
Speaker 1: make no sense, right, and you know, at the heart
Speaker 1: of it, the little seed in the middle of it
Speaker 1: was this insane q and on stuff right where it's
Speaker 1: like a dren of chrome and like Hillary Clinton is
Speaker 1: like cutting the faces off a baby, like completely nuts stuff.
Speaker 1: But there's enough sort of plausible deniability around that that
Speaker 1: you can very easily say, well, I care about children,
Speaker 1: and so what's the harm of sharing this little mean like,
Speaker 1: what's the harm of taking this little thing on Facebook
Speaker 1: that says, you know, infamously there was one that said
Speaker 1: that children are thousands of times more likely to die
Speaker 1: of trafficking than of COVID And so it feels, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was in like the the Instagram aesthetic right
Speaker 1: where it's got like the little logo and it's in
Speaker 1: pink and it's very share able, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: what's the harm, Like I might as well share that,
Speaker 1: you know, if it helps save a kid or two,
Speaker 1: then I'm doing something good and up some sort of
Speaker 1: that's a feeling of certainty in the world, right, But
Speaker 1: nobody thinks about what it does to reinforce these just
Speaker 1: deranged myths that aren't helping children, they're not helping non children,
Speaker 1: they're not helping anybody. But it's it's easy to forget
Speaker 1: that when you're like, well, what's the harm of sharing this?
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden these bananas memes start
Speaker 1: just bouncing around the internet for months. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: list honestly listening to your wrong about with something that
Speaker 1: really helped make that transition for me, because you know,
Speaker 1: for a while, I'd be like, well, if this person
Speaker 1: thinks it's going to do some good to share this
Speaker 1: unstrewn meme on their Facebook page about traffic younger, about children,
Speaker 1: who is it hurting? Now I've come to see that, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if we over emphasize the risks of little kids being
Speaker 1: like snatched up or things like that, what are we
Speaker 1: under what are we under emphasizing you know, kids like
Speaker 1: youth who are facing homelessness, youth who are are put
Speaker 1: in precarious or you know, bad or dangerous situations, things
Speaker 1: that are much more common, Like if we focus on
Speaker 1: this big scary thing that isn't happening. All of the
Speaker 1: things that actually are happening, we're just taking attention away
Speaker 1: from that, right. And there's also this retributive aspect to
Speaker 1: where a lot of those memes that went around we're
Speaker 1: about sort of catching the pedophiles, catching the traffickers. You know,
Speaker 1: we have to find the evil people and we have
Speaker 1: to root them out of our society. And that's not
Speaker 1: where the threats to children come from. The threats to
Speaker 1: children are primarily in the family. A lot of it
Speaker 1: is things like homelessness. There's very few youth homeless shelters
Speaker 1: in most cities in America. There's also a completely broken
Speaker 1: foster care system. So when you look at things like
Speaker 1: the sort of Missing and Exploited Child hotline, of the
Speaker 1: calls are coming from foster care. So when we talk
Speaker 1: about trafficking, we're mostly talking about runaways. We're mostly talking
Speaker 1: about kids who are abused at home, abused in foster care.
Speaker 1: They're queer, they're trans they need a place to stay,
Speaker 1: they don't need somebody else to go to jail forever.
Speaker 1: And when we're sharing these means that are sort of
Speaker 1: blaming all of these societal problems on these societal others
Speaker 1: that we already don't like or a little bit wary of. Anyway,
Speaker 1: all we're really doing is contributing to these retributive solutions
Speaker 1: which do not make children safer. Yeah, and I also
Speaker 1: think it does kind of come down to what you
Speaker 1: were talking about before, this idea of like wanting to
Speaker 1: catch the bad guys. That's so much more exciting and fun. Then, Oh,
Speaker 1: we need to confront some of these systemic ills in
Speaker 1: our society that allow for already marginalized people fault through
Speaker 1: the cracks. That's boring. It's so much more fun to
Speaker 1: be like, Yeah, I'm gonna track down these bad guys.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break. Our back on Instagram video
Speaker 1: made by mom influencer Katie Sorenson, where she said that
Speaker 1: two strangers tried to kidnap her kids and a Michael's
Speaker 1: craft store in California, got over two million views Monday
Speaker 1: of this week. My children were the targets of attempted kidnap,
Speaker 1: which is such a weird thing to even vocalize. Um,
Speaker 1: but it happened, um. And I want to share that
Speaker 1: story with you in an effort to raise awareness as
Speaker 1: to what signs to look for and to just encourage
Speaker 1: parents to be more aware of their surroundings and what
Speaker 1: is going on around them. Sorenson said that she overheard
Speaker 1: the couple making comments about her kid's appearance, and the
Speaker 1: man even tried to grab at her child stroller. But
Speaker 1: when the couple saw their picture being posted on saved
Speaker 1: the children forms online in connection with an attempted kidnapping,
Speaker 1: they came forward to deny any wrongdoing and cooperated with
Speaker 1: the police investigation. Grandparents themselves, they said they had just
Speaker 1: been discussing their own grandkids, not Sorenson's kids. Their daughter
Speaker 1: says Sorenson's allegations were racially motivated because their parents are Latino.
Speaker 1: Police cleared the couple of any wrongdoing and closed the case,
Speaker 1: and Sorenson says that she shared her story just to
Speaker 1: warn other parents to remain vigilant. But this is a
Speaker 1: great example of why sharing stories just for awareness is
Speaker 1: not always a helpful thing to do. It also over
Speaker 1: emphasizes the idea that white kids are at risk for
Speaker 1: being kidnapped by strangers from public places and affluent suburbs,
Speaker 1: which when it comes to trafficking, is exceedingly rare, while
Speaker 1: de emphasizing that the existing threats out there are much
Speaker 1: more likely to be family members, are trusted community members
Speaker 1: praying on vulnerable people, and that those targeted are more
Speaker 1: often than not marginalized youth, queer kids, or trans kids,
Speaker 1: or kids facing poverty or homelessness. Like someone who's kidnapping
Speaker 1: children and taking them across state lines and keeping them
Speaker 1: in motel rooms and forcing them to have sex with people,
Speaker 1: which almost doesn't exist. I mean, then the number of
Speaker 1: confirmed cases of that you can almost count on one
Speaker 1: or two hands. It's extremely rare. Kids are running away
Speaker 1: from home, they don't have a place to stay, they
Speaker 1: don't feel safe where they're sleeping. They end up sleeping
Speaker 1: on the streets. Somebody pulls up in a car and says,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a place to stay tonight if you
Speaker 1: have sex with me Like that is something. It's called
Speaker 1: survival sex. It is a very well known phenomenon. It
Speaker 1: is a huge problem. And the way that you solve
Speaker 1: it isn't by putting anybody in jail. It's having a
Speaker 1: phone number for those kids to call and a van
Speaker 1: comes and picks them up and takes them somewhere safe.
Speaker 1: And we've known this forever and we're not doing anything
Speaker 1: about it, and so that's less memable, that's less sort
Speaker 1: of satisfying to share online. But it's like we just
Speaker 1: need more places for kids to go. Who needs somewhere
Speaker 1: to sleep? Like that's it, absolutely, And I think you
Speaker 1: make a good point that the people who are often
Speaker 1: targeted for this kind of thing are queer kids, trans kids,
Speaker 1: youth of color, black youth. And I think it's so
Speaker 1: interesting that if you spend any time scrolled in TikTok,
Speaker 1: the people who are taking up the most space in
Speaker 1: terms of talking about the risk that trafficking poses are
Speaker 1: white women, you know, suburban white women. And so I
Speaker 1: can't help but see this real disconnect in terms of
Speaker 1: who is actually the target and the actual person who
Speaker 1: is harmed by this and the people who are talking
Speaker 1: about it and making the most content about it and
Speaker 1: sort of like scarrying people about it. What what do
Speaker 1: you think is going on there? I will just say
Speaker 1: for the record, no one is doing zip ties on
Speaker 1: your car a target. No one is hiding under your
Speaker 1: car to cut your ankle with a razor blade. I mean,
Speaker 1: the minute you google or even like you don't even
Speaker 1: have to google, you just have to think about these things.
Speaker 1: Does it make sense to lie down underneath somebody's car
Speaker 1: for hours and wait for them with like a racer
Speaker 1: blade in your hand and then slice their achilles heel?
Speaker 1: Like that's not a fun or smart thing to do
Speaker 1: for somebody who wants to try to kill you, Right, So,
Speaker 1: all of these kinds of stories, it's just it's very
Speaker 1: important to just say, like on their face, stuff like
Speaker 1: this really doesn't happen very much. We know that the
Speaker 1: primary risks to women are from their partners and from
Speaker 1: their dad's And if you're somebody younger, it's like a
Speaker 1: soccer coach or somebody in power. Right, it's like a
Speaker 1: weird scout leader who's asking you to stay over at
Speaker 1: his house the night before one of these camping trips.
Speaker 1: Like these are these are the threats to people and
Speaker 1: to children, and they're mostly from people who have enough
Speaker 1: societal power that you don't trust your gut. So one
Speaker 1: of the things you find in a lot of these stories,
Speaker 1: his parents will say, well, you know, we thought it
Speaker 1: was a little bit weird that, you know, the priest
Speaker 1: asked our son to sleep over, but you know, he's
Speaker 1: a priest. How could he ever? You know, how could
Speaker 1: he ever harm our son? He's a like this felt
Speaker 1: weird to us, but you know he has this sort
Speaker 1: of societally bestowed power that makes us not trust our gut,
Speaker 1: Like this is what power does. And so the thing
Speaker 1: that we need to look for our places where we
Speaker 1: have power in society and we don't have accountability, and
Speaker 1: we already have so much accountability, Like I don't want
Speaker 1: to imply that, Like there's no such thing as somebody
Speaker 1: in a white van who's kidnapping kids, whatever, But it's
Speaker 1: much more common for someone to abuse the trust of children,
Speaker 1: and and especially abuse the trust of marginalized children. Right,
Speaker 1: because if you don't feel safe at home, you might
Speaker 1: turn to a soccer coach as somebody to talk to,
Speaker 1: as somebody who feels safe even though they aren't. Right.
Speaker 1: This is the process of sort of making somebody unsafe
Speaker 1: and physically threatening somebody often does come down to tricking
Speaker 1: them and looking for these elements of marginalization that and
Speaker 1: looking for these aspects of marginalization that make them easier
Speaker 1: to trick. So at every level, it's of vulnerable kids.
Speaker 1: It's finding the vulnerable kids and giving them actual safe
Speaker 1: places to go and safe adults to actually talk to
Speaker 1: you about this stuff. So again boring, but like that's
Speaker 1: that's not something that you can see in target, but
Speaker 1: it's this is what society needs, and it's what we've
Speaker 1: needed for decades. We're just not doing more. After a
Speaker 1: quick break, let's get right back into it. When women
Speaker 1: make videos on social media about them or their kids
Speaker 1: narrowly escaping being hunted by would be traffickers, they often
Speaker 1: go viral. That's because we've deemed it okay to talk
Speaker 1: about the perceived threat of strangers or the other. But
Speaker 1: what about when women talk about people they know of
Speaker 1: using their power, people in their communities or in their
Speaker 1: own homes, even though the actual threat is much more
Speaker 1: likely to be someone you know, not a stranger in
Speaker 1: a van. Women are not always supported when we speak
Speaker 1: up about it. I do think as a society it's
Speaker 1: okay for women and families to call out like, quote
Speaker 1: unquote bad guys if they're scary monsters showing up at
Speaker 1: a van, But if it's somebody that lives with, somebody
Speaker 1: in your family, somebody in your church, somebody in your community, Like,
Speaker 1: we're pretty uncomfortable with women, you know, calling out people
Speaker 1: in those positions who abuse their power. But if it somehow,
Speaker 1: it's like totally fine, if you're thinking of it as
Speaker 1: like calling out a bad guy in a van. And
Speaker 1: that's also that's another aspect of marginalization, right that if
Speaker 1: it's a poor mother, maybe she's a single mom, maybe
Speaker 1: she's working two jobs, and she doesn't see her kids
Speaker 1: that much, and she goes to some authority and she says,
Speaker 1: you know, I feel a little bit weird about the
Speaker 1: soccer coach. People might not believe her. They're like, isn't
Speaker 1: she a bad mother anyway? Right, So, at every level,
Speaker 1: marginalization makes it so much harder to address these problems
Speaker 1: because that just gives you know, the priest is going
Speaker 1: to have a lot more credibility than the single mom
Speaker 1: who's not home as much as she'd like to be.
Speaker 1: So at every level, these are the things that we
Speaker 1: have to address and setting up formal systems to investigate
Speaker 1: these things and act will accountability mechanisms. So I I
Speaker 1: keep saying, I only have one argument on the show,
Speaker 1: but like we just need to do the boring stuff,
Speaker 1: Like I wish it was more interesting than that. No,
Speaker 1: it's so true, and you know, you talk a little bit.
Speaker 1: You talked a bit about like zip ties on your
Speaker 1: car and people hiding under your car, Like what role
Speaker 1: do you think that local media and also law enforcement
Speaker 1: has to play in this? Because I I've read articles
Speaker 1: where on its face it would appear that a police
Speaker 1: officer or somebody in law enforcement has confirmed, yes, we
Speaker 1: saw this zip ti on the cars and this is
Speaker 1: a trafficking thing. But actually when you like dig dig,
Speaker 1: dig a little deeper into it, you're like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: police officer is confirming that this person called the police
Speaker 1: and they came for this reason, but it's not actually
Speaker 1: there's not actually any proof that like this was tied
Speaker 1: to a trafficking attempt. What role do you think that
Speaker 1: journalists and law enforcement should play and making sure that
Speaker 1: these panics don't spin out of control. If one of
Speaker 1: the ones I think it was last summer maybe last fall,
Speaker 1: was these poor people had their wedding and they had
Speaker 1: some flowers left over from their wedding, and they thought
Speaker 1: it would be cute to put them on people's car
Speaker 1: in a parking lot. And then people came out to
Speaker 1: their cars and found a flower and they freaked out
Speaker 1: there like it's traffickers. I marked the traffickers are after me,
Speaker 1: and these poor people who are just trying to do
Speaker 1: something nice or like all of a sudden sort of
Speaker 1: smeared as traffickers. And what was amazing was the cops
Speaker 1: sort of like reinforced this. It's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've had threats recently of trafficking, and you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've heard rumors of trafficking, and of course the
Speaker 1: local media reinforces this too, that you know, trafficking is
Speaker 1: a huge problem in this area and it could happen
Speaker 1: to anyone, but not in this particular case. And there's
Speaker 1: no sort of attempt to debunk the meta myth here
Speaker 1: that people are staking you out in parking lots to
Speaker 1: kidnap you like that even even for like truly evil people,
Speaker 1: that doesn't make that much sense. Parking lots are really
Speaker 1: really public and it's like broad daylight, And why would
Speaker 1: you leave a flower to like communicate with the other traffickers,
Speaker 1: like just text the other traffickers, Like it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense on any level, But we get this weird credulity,
Speaker 1: especially around this issue that you know, one of the
Speaker 1: tenets of journalism is you're supposed to do sort of
Speaker 1: both sides. Right. We saw this for climate change for years, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's the people that say the climate change is
Speaker 1: real and then there's the whack jobs who say that
Speaker 1: it's not. But we have to put both of them
Speaker 1: on the air. Right. But then, weirdly, when it comes
Speaker 1: to trafficking and these other stranger danger myths, there's no
Speaker 1: need to speak to like actual sex workers who are like, uh,
Speaker 1: this is not how sex work works. There's no need
Speaker 1: to talk to actual child advocates or social workers. There's
Speaker 1: no need to talk to anybody who's skeptical of this.
Speaker 1: It's just like, well, cops say there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: trafficking out there, so let's just tell people that. So
Speaker 1: it's just really frustrating that there isn't the same level
Speaker 1: of scrutiny and the same journalistic standards applied to these
Speaker 1: kinds of stories that hits something like really deep within
Speaker 1: us of like, oh, this is the danger I have
Speaker 1: to worry about. Yeah, I think I haven't even thought
Speaker 1: about that. But it's a good point, and I part
Speaker 1: of me wonders if it's a little bit of hesitation
Speaker 1: because and I've trugled with this as well. You don't
Speaker 1: want to feel like you're invalidating somebody's experience, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if somebody feels like like they were targeted or they
Speaker 1: were like something sketchy was going on, I want people
Speaker 1: to feel like that experience is okay to talk about.
Speaker 1: But I also don't want someone to use that experience
Speaker 1: to fuel something that's just not true that's going for
Speaker 1: a result in more harm. Right. And there's also there
Speaker 1: are real cases of this happening. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: one of the challenges with moral panics is that most
Speaker 1: moral panics, they never come from nothing. Right. We had
Speaker 1: this massive panic in the nineteen eighties and nines about
Speaker 1: quote unquote stranger danger that you know, kids were gonna
Speaker 1: come and steal your kids, and like, there were some
Speaker 1: truly horrific, awful, heartbreaking cases where this really did happen.
Speaker 1: This is why, this is how we got all of
Speaker 1: these you know, Jacob's Law and Megan's Law and all
Speaker 1: these laws that are named after kids and things like
Speaker 1: the Amber alerts. So there were real cases. But the
Speaker 1: problems that these these very small number of truly heartbreaking,
Speaker 1: true cases get expanded into this massive national problem that
Speaker 1: we all need to be worried about, and very quickly
Speaker 1: becomes this thing of like, well, if it saves one child, right,
Speaker 1: we can sacrifice our civil liberties. We can incarceerate a
Speaker 1: bunch of people on sort of spurious grounds if it
Speaker 1: saves one child and one thing, you know, as somebody
Speaker 1: who is a urban cyclist and somebody who takes like
Speaker 1: urban safety very seriously. This is not a standard that
Speaker 1: we apply to the lives of children in other contexts. Right,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to save the life of
Speaker 1: one child, you'd crack down on guns. Guns kill three
Speaker 1: thousand kids a year. Cars kill six thousand kids a year. Right,
Speaker 1: you could make the speed limit in every single city
Speaker 1: fifteen miles an hour throughout the country, and you would
Speaker 1: literally save the lives of kids, because most kids are
Speaker 1: killed by speeding cars. But that's not a sacrifice that
Speaker 1: we're willing to make, because that's something that I would
Speaker 1: have to sacrifice. I would have to I would have
Speaker 1: to drive slower. Whereas whenever it comes to these you know,
Speaker 1: if it saves a life of one child, these kinds
Speaker 1: of sacrifices, it's always somebody else who's going to make
Speaker 1: the sacrifice, it's somebody else who's gonna go to jail
Speaker 1: that the effects of this are going to be in
Speaker 1: did on a societal out group. So this this entire
Speaker 1: logic of like, you know, we must do this to
Speaker 1: save one child. That's great logic, but it's not a
Speaker 1: logic that we applied to any other social problem. That's
Speaker 1: so true, and I think, yeah, I think the idea
Speaker 1: that the people who are going to be further criminalized
Speaker 1: harmed by this by like when we make laws, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of quickly as long as it's not like me
Speaker 1: feeling that repercussion, you know, as long as that someone
Speaker 1: else dealing with it, I think that we're much more
Speaker 1: comfortable with that. What can we do to avoid falling
Speaker 1: into moral panics, even ones that are like well intentioned,
Speaker 1: you know, how can we avoid this on a on
Speaker 1: a wider scale. I mean, I want to say, like
Speaker 1: be careful with what you share, but like I'm not
Speaker 1: all that careful with what I share. Like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of information out there. It's really hard like people,
Speaker 1: you know, we shouldn't all be having to read the
Speaker 1: nutrition label on every single piece of information. I will say,
Speaker 1: just on these kinds of things. It's it's never strangers.
Speaker 1: It's never like these kinds of mono myths. Anything that
Speaker 1: looks like the sort of remember the flashing your high
Speaker 1: beams gang initiation stuff, Those are totally bunk. Anything involving
Speaker 1: like random targeting of civilians, it's that really never happens.
Speaker 1: Anything the stranger is kidnapping you in broad daylight. I
Speaker 1: think there's like certain categories of anecdotes that are just
Speaker 1: like these ones never turned out to be true, so
Speaker 1: we should just stop sharing them. Like, don't don't feel
Speaker 1: like you have to warn people about anything involving a
Speaker 1: parking lot. If a parking lot is involved, people are safe.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're all like videotaped at this point exactly
Speaker 1: like people are safe and parking lots just like, leave
Speaker 1: the parking lots alone. It's fine. It's so funny because
Speaker 1: I went back and listened to the episode that y'all
Speaker 1: did about sex trafficking and the list of things that
Speaker 1: they tell young people to look out for that could
Speaker 1: be signs of trafficking, things like if somebody is moody,
Speaker 1: or if somebody all of a sudden starts dressing different
Speaker 1: or wearing different clothes, or if they get a bar
Speaker 1: code tattoo as somebody who grew up kind of you know,
Speaker 1: gothy goth Jason Alti adjacent. I knew two different people
Speaker 1: who had bar colde tattoos. Right, all of the warning
Speaker 1: signs of trafficking are like teenage stuff. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's moody or like like her taste in music changes.
Speaker 1: You're like, that's not a sign of trafficking. That's a
Speaker 1: sign of teenager nous. That's a side a side of
Speaker 1: adolessis Yeah. So another I mean another like rule of
Speaker 1: thumb that just don't share anything involving trafficking basically, like
Speaker 1: I think this, this word, this whole field is so
Speaker 1: tainted at this point that it's just not useful to
Speaker 1: share any of the viral post statistics like until we
Speaker 1: know more, just like hold off on the trafficking stuff. Gang, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's great advice. I would also say, like, not
Speaker 1: that I think that any celebrities listen to this, listen
Speaker 1: to my podcast, but when well meeting celebrities get involved
Speaker 1: in a trafficking campaign, shut it down, right, Like, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you're a good guy, don't use you don't It
Speaker 1: sets me when I see celebrities who I'm sure like
Speaker 1: their hardest in the right place, but like getting involved
Speaker 1: in trafficking campaigns that are tied to specific legislation like
Speaker 1: Sesta Fasta. It's like, oh, like it's just does such
Speaker 1: a bad look on such a complicated issue. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think the biggest thing is that, you know, the trafficking
Speaker 1: field right now is this weird, unholy alliance between very
Speaker 1: well meaning celebrities and anythink well meaning people and not
Speaker 1: well meaning, mostly Republican legislatures who want to use this
Speaker 1: as an excuse to crackdown on immigration, to crack down
Speaker 1: on sex work, to crack down on children, anything that
Speaker 1: they perceive as posing a threat to children, which is
Speaker 1: mostly like trans people. So I think any time we
Speaker 1: have any bills being pushed by these super Republican legislators,
Speaker 1: I think, just like be careful with that stuff. Like
Speaker 1: any time you have the religious right and the Republican
Speaker 1: Party pushing one of these bills, like just slow down
Speaker 1: and like ask actual sex workers, like what is in
Speaker 1: this bill and are you in support of it? Like
Speaker 1: over and over again, we end up talking over the
Speaker 1: groups that actually get affected by this and just like, know,
Speaker 1: some sex workers follow a bunch of sex workers online
Speaker 1: and see what they're mad about, and like, they are
Speaker 1: not mad about this kind of stuff. They're mad about
Speaker 1: the legislators that are trying to take their rights away again.
Speaker 1: There is so much to say about how we talk
Speaker 1: about trafficking online, especially on TikTok, where so many viral
Speaker 1: claims about trafficking take off. Next we'll hear from Jessica,
Speaker 1: who goes by blood Bath and Beyond on TikTok, about
Speaker 1: her use of TikTok to spread accurate information about trafficking.
Speaker 1: When we start drowning out that conversation, we're we're not
Speaker 1: only are we not letting that get the spotlight where
Speaker 1: it really needs to be the forefront of this conversation,
Speaker 1: we are also hurting the actual victims directly themselves, because
Speaker 1: we're creating this idea and this culture around what trafficking
Speaker 1: looks like and what the average victim looks like. So
Speaker 1: when a victim comes forward and says I think I
Speaker 1: was sex trafficked or I need help, people are less
Speaker 1: inclined to believe them because we've created this narrative that
Speaker 1: most trafficking victims are innocent, upper middle class white women
Speaker 1: getting kidnapped from Target. If you enjoyed this podcast, please
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Speaker 1: Try Harrison is our supervising producer, and engineer. Michael Lamato
Speaker 1: is our contributing producer. I'm your host Bridget tod. For
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