Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Two summers ago, I went to a work function. Now
Speaker 2: I may never know why that work function was a
Speaker 2: private screening of the twenty twenty two Baz Luhrmann film Elvis.
Speaker 2: I may never know, but it was, and I think
Speaker 2: about it a lot. Now, if you like this movie,
Speaker 2: I don't care. If you don't like this movie, I
Speaker 2: do not care. I didn't like it. But there's a
Speaker 2: moment in this movie that got a really big reaction.
Speaker 2: In this Elvis biopic, directed by a white Australian weirdo,
Speaker 2: there is a moment where Elvis's manager, Colonel Tom Parker
Speaker 2: played by Tom Hanks, first hears a young Elvis on
Speaker 2: the radio. As this movie takes comical measures to note,
Speaker 2: Elvis was mainly influenced by black blues artists like Big Boy,
Speaker 2: Crewed Up and Big Mama Thornton, and that's reflected in
Speaker 2: his entire discography. In the scene, Tom Hanks as Colonel
Speaker 2: Parker is shocked to hear that Elvis is white. If
Speaker 2: you spend too much time online, you've probably seen this.
Speaker 3: Now they are not putting a colored boy on the
Speaker 3: hay Ride.
Speaker 4: That's a thing. It is white.
Speaker 5: Is white?
Speaker 6: What do you think tex Arcadam, shall we play for
Speaker 6: the twenty seven time?
Speaker 3: Why?
Speaker 2: Like I love mulin rouge, but applying the mulin rouge
Speaker 2: approach to systemic racism, I don't love it. It has
Speaker 2: to be camp or it's just depressing. So this whole
Speaker 2: movie has a distinct mission to dispel persistent rumors that
Speaker 2: Elvis's career was built on uncredited black music, far more
Speaker 2: than it has any interest in actually writing a black
Speaker 2: character Goofy example. But this scene is the inciting incident
Speaker 2: of the movie, seeing a white artist co opting black
Speaker 2: music and seeing that as a huge marketing opportunity. And
Speaker 2: while Elvis is a very famous example of this phenomenon,
Speaker 2: he was far from the first or last white artist
Speaker 2: to be catapulted to success over his black peers, actively
Speaker 2: profiting from their innovations music that's to this day considered
Speaker 2: pioneering from white artists. Have this same narrative. Led Zeppelin
Speaker 2: demonstrably stole a lot from black artists. They were heavily
Speaker 2: influenced by American blues music. For what they did right
Speaker 2: then at different times plagiarized Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Howland
Speaker 2: Wolf and for what it's worth, plenty of white musicians
Speaker 2: as well, the Beach Boys and the Beatles lifted from
Speaker 2: Chuck Berry. The list goes on. And while the idea
Speaker 2: of music authorship and what constitutes a reasonable copyright lawsuit
Speaker 2: is an extremely complicated one that doesn't always make room
Speaker 2: for influence or the recent rise in pretty ridiculous music
Speaker 2: copyright legal cases, but I'm giving examples that I find undeniable.
Speaker 2: And to compound that, the power dynamic of white artists
Speaker 2: lifting from black artartists means that the white artist always
Speaker 2: has a significantly better shot at financial success on something
Speaker 2: that wasn't originally theirs, regardless of what their interpretation does
Speaker 2: or does not add to the original material. This same
Speaker 2: process took place in the do wop scene in the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. Black groups like the Rivingtons would write a
Speaker 2: song like I have to read this, Please Don't Love
Speaker 2: at Me Papa Ooma Mau Mau paaaa Ma Ma Ma
Speaker 2: Ma Ma, which Family Guy fans will know was popularized
Speaker 2: by a white group covering the song as the trash
Speaker 2: Men's Surf and bird.
Speaker 7: Butt Ma Ma Map Button Map.
Speaker 2: Because very few people complained when white artists did steal
Speaker 2: like this, and it was far easier to get them
Speaker 2: on the radio. All of these groups failed to credit
Speaker 2: or compensate the artists that they took from outside of
Speaker 2: sometimes acknowledging their influences in interviews. Artists have been at
Speaker 2: the forefront of so many artistic movements, only to have
Speaker 2: those innovations borrowed or stolen by white artists who had
Speaker 2: more institutional support put behind them. While being a poor imitation,
Speaker 2: it's one of the many tentacled extensions of white supremacy.
Speaker 2: Oh you thought I was going to bring up white
Speaker 2: supremacy in the first five minutes of the show, Well,
Speaker 2: think again. And this oppression continues to take shape in
Speaker 2: today's social media algorithms, because who's making these algorithms, According
Speaker 2: to the twenty twenty three Diversity report from Tech Report,
Speaker 2: still mostly Yeah, they're white and they are he At present,
Speaker 2: only about a quarter of the massive tech industry consists
Speaker 2: of women, and only seven percent of the tech industry
Speaker 2: are black. So this week we're looking at a few things.
Speaker 2: There's major precedent in a creative space for theft from
Speaker 2: black artists, and the way the internetworks right now, it
Speaker 2: enables white artists to do that which brings me to TikTok.
Speaker 5: Brother, this guy steaks.
Speaker 2: Now, everybody stop booing me. Give Auntie Jamie a fair
Speaker 2: shake here, okay. TikTok, the app where one of the
Speaker 2: most notorious examples of algorithms passing over black creators, came
Speaker 2: to a head in the summer of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: By this time, TikTok was growing fast after first being
Speaker 2: introduced in the US from China back in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: It was already ridiculously popular among young people, but the
Speaker 2: COVID lockdown in twenty twenty brought the app into the
Speaker 2: mega mainstream, introducing a million little subgenres where you could
Speaker 2: become a micro influencer. But what TikTok was best known
Speaker 2: for at this time were viral dances. These dances tended
Speaker 2: to be really short, they were designed to be performed
Speaker 2: to your phone camera, and they would almost always be
Speaker 2: paired with either a song from a huge artist or
Speaker 2: an obscure song that happened to be really danceable, which
Speaker 2: could vault a random musician into the mainstream. The problem
Speaker 2: was where was the credit you, as a TikTok user,
Speaker 2: could choreograph a dance that a pop star would perform,
Speaker 2: but there was no place in the app for the
Speaker 2: choreographer's name. And so all that appropriative failure to credit
Speaker 2: and music that we just talked about that applies to
Speaker 2: dance too. White choreographers have stolen from black choreographers forever.
Speaker 2: It's the plot of bring it on, guys, Like every
Speaker 2: time we get some here, y'all come trying to steal it,
Speaker 2: pins some blonde hair on it and calling it something different.
Speaker 2: We've had the best squad around for years, but no
Speaker 2: one's been able to see what we can do. In
Speaker 2: the first story of sixteenth Minute, where we talked with
Speaker 2: and about the Dodson siblings of Hide Your Kids, Hide
Speaker 2: Your Wife Fame, I spoke with Professor Gabriel Peoples, whose
Speaker 2: upcoming book Go and Viral Uncontrollable Black Performance explores how
Speaker 2: blackness is expressed and interpreted online and I love asking
Speaker 2: guests what other stories they'd like to see covered on
Speaker 2: the show someday, and Professor Peebles did not hesitate.
Speaker 8: How fucking bleak is it that in twenty ten there
Speaker 8: was more attribution that still wasn't sufficient than over ten
Speaker 8: years later, where there was no attribution and no, like nothing,
Speaker 8: I don't have anything intelligent to say about it.
Speaker 5: I just found it depressing.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, we can say her name, right, Juliah Harmon, Yeah,
Speaker 6: yea yeah. So it's like we bring attention to things
Speaker 6: when we interact with things. If you don't like it
Speaker 6: or you don't press play, that is almost like one
Speaker 6: of the easiest but also like most significant things you
Speaker 6: could do in terms of things going.
Speaker 2: Viral or not. Julia Harmon, the Renegade Dance, and the
Speaker 2: Black TikTok Strike, it's a cultural moment that's top of
Speaker 2: mind for a lot of Internet historians because of its
Speaker 2: clear moral stand in the middle of hell. It's a
Speaker 2: story of using the Internet to organize to make artist
Speaker 2: names known, and not just Julia Harmon, but other choreographers
Speaker 2: like Kiara Wilson, Maya Johnson, Chris Cotter, the list goes on.
Speaker 2: Because when it became clear that the algorithm and the
Speaker 2: media were not going to properly credit these black choreographers
Speaker 2: work on TikTok, they went on strike, the Black TikTok
Speaker 2: Strike of twenty twenty one. Your sixteenth minute begins now.
Speaker 4: Sixteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome back. We have our first TikTok story on the
Speaker 2: show today, So start shaking in your tiny little boots
Speaker 2: if you're outside Leonardo DiCaprio's fuck range. The character, or
Speaker 2: rather the moment that we're covering this week is the
Speaker 2: Black TikTok strike in summer twenty twenty one, and it's
Speaker 2: the sort of subject that requires quite a bit of
Speaker 2: context because the reason that the Black TikTok strike was
Speaker 2: significant is deeply entrenched, not just an Internet history, but
Speaker 2: history history. So return with me, and I'm so sorry
Speaker 2: to June twenty twenty one. While many in the US
Speaker 2: are getting their first COVID vaccines, others are in full
Speaker 2: blown denial and believe that none of it was real,
Speaker 2: which ends great for them. The FBI w the general
Speaker 2: public that QAnon followers could engage in quote unquote real
Speaker 2: world violence, and if there's anyone that knows about real
Speaker 2: world violence, I mean, I guess it's the FBI. And
Speaker 2: I am desperately hoping that m Night Scheimelin's Old will
Speaker 2: come to the drive in theater nearest my apartment because
Speaker 2: it's the funniest idea for a movie that I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: And the Black TikTok strike takes place, and by this
Speaker 2: time TikTok had become a major cultural force. Everything I
Speaker 2: talked about today was also talked about on TikTok. Why
Speaker 2: you should get your COVID vaccine, Why you shouldn't get
Speaker 2: your COVID vaccine, Why old is the funniest idea for
Speaker 2: a movie anyone's ever had. But twenty nineteen to twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one era TikTok was truly all about dance videos. Theoretically,
Speaker 2: if you could choreograph a short dance to a new
Speaker 2: song and it caught on, your account could blow up overnight.
Speaker 2: This wouldn't just be great for users looking to build
Speaker 2: an audience, it also quickly became an important facet of
Speaker 2: the music industry, because if you can engineer a song
Speaker 2: that's a hit on TikTok, you're well on your way
Speaker 2: to making it to the Billboard charts and then in CVS.
Speaker 2: In ten years, TikTok was considered to be a new
Speaker 2: and distinct social media platform, but it did bring in
Speaker 2: a lot of elements that people liked from other apps.
Speaker 2: You could find a truncated deep dive or beauty content
Speaker 2: like on YouTube. The app's algorithm tended to hook on
Speaker 2: to bad sketch comedy like on Vine, and it connected
Speaker 2: with music unlike any app before it had. But even
Speaker 2: though it was unique, a familiar pattern in who became
Speaker 2: famous on TikTok quickly emerged. While black creators were frequently
Speaker 2: choreographing in the dances that would become most popular, the
Speaker 2: big success stories suddenly making millions were young white TikTokers
Speaker 2: names like Charlie Demilio and Addison Ray, White teenagers who
Speaker 2: have gone on to have successful mainstream careers, owed much
Speaker 2: of their early dominance to the choreography they were performing,
Speaker 2: and they routinely failed to credit choreographers as their audiences
Speaker 2: continued to grow in the millions. And while seeming like
Speaker 2: perfectly nice people, I'm not here to bullyeve people who
Speaker 2: were kids at the time, Both of them expressed some
Speaker 2: bafflement as to why they had become famous dancing on
Speaker 2: TikTok over anybody else. Charlie said this to mel magazine
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I wish I could give everyone an explanation as to
Speaker 1: what happened, but I have no idea. I'm just doing
Speaker 1: what I do every day and posting it I guess
Speaker 1: it's very insane to me, as it is for everyone
Speaker 1: else watching.
Speaker 2: And this was also baffling to the black choreographers making
Speaker 2: the dances. Lack of credit is something that's affected choreographers
Speaker 2: of all backgrounds for a long time. I didn't know
Speaker 2: this before doing research for this episode, but copywriting a
Speaker 2: dance is notoriously difficult, and there's really only been ways
Speaker 2: to do it in the United States since around the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. In this case, the issue is compounded with
Speaker 2: who the TikTok algorithm favored. A report from The Intercept
Speaker 2: in March twenty twenty featured TikTok employee whistleblowers saying that
Speaker 2: they were asked to filter people out considered quote unquote
Speaker 2: unattractive or who appeared to live in poverty. And on
Speaker 2: top of that, TikTok just isn't built to credit choreographers
Speaker 2: in the way it's built to credit musicians. But that's
Speaker 2: not to say that things are much better on the
Speaker 2: musician side. TikTok, like Spotify, gives its artists the rough
Speaker 2: mathematical figure of peep and poop poo when it comes
Speaker 2: to royalties, But the bare minimum here is that the
Speaker 2: artist's name and song are listed every time they're used.
Speaker 2: Not so for choreographers, even when that might be the
Speaker 2: main draw of the video in the first place. And
Speaker 2: at the time Demilio was becoming famous late twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: there were little to no common practices among users to
Speaker 2: credit people that the app didn't already do automatically, which
Speaker 2: could that by the time a dance got popular enough
Speaker 2: to make it into your feed, it might be extremely
Speaker 2: difficult to figure out who had done the original choreography,
Speaker 2: even if you wanted to. So how do we get
Speaker 2: from TikTok becoming one of the fastest growing apps in
Speaker 2: the world pre pandemic to the black TikTok strike of
Speaker 2: summer twenty twenty one. You've got to understand the most
Speaker 2: prominent story that led up to this the story of
Speaker 2: a black teenage creator who demanded credit for her own choreography,
Speaker 2: Julia Harmon, who Professor Peoples mentioned, there's.
Speaker 9: A superstar Jelaiah Harmon we bow in her presence, wow,
Speaker 9: the original creator of the Renegade.
Speaker 2: If you don't know Julia's name, you've definitely seen her
Speaker 2: most famous work, the Renegade Dance, probably the most famous
Speaker 2: dance to ever blow up on TikTok that was first
Speaker 2: choreographed by her back in September twenty nineteen. Julia, who
Speaker 2: was then only fourteen years old and living in the
Speaker 2: suburbs of Atlanta, was the daughter of two educators and
Speaker 2: was a prolific dancer, lessons, competing and generally just being
Speaker 2: a kid. She choreographed a dance for TikTok to the
Speaker 2: song Lottery by k Camp and called it the Renegade Dance. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to include like three seconds of the song
Speaker 2: so that you can remember what it sounded like. Please
Speaker 2: nobody sue me that song. If you were on the internet,
Speaker 2: it was inescapable and she didn't even post it to
Speaker 2: TikTok the first time she shared it. There's a documentary
Speaker 2: series that was made about Julia in twenty twenty one
Speaker 2: from director Kayla Johnson where Julia talks about the day
Speaker 2: that the Renegade Dance was first posted. And on one hand,
Speaker 2: it was something that she was doing for fun, but
Speaker 2: she's got a strategy here too. She's very much a
Speaker 2: kid of the Internet and knows that dances and posts
Speaker 2: don't always take off on the first try.
Speaker 10: So the first day I created Renegue, it was just
Speaker 10: a normal day for me. I come home from school,
Speaker 10: I was getting ready for a dance class that day,
Speaker 10: and I have found this song called Lottery on somebody
Speaker 10: else's page, and I just thought it was a really
Speaker 10: cool song to make a dance too, So I just decided.
Speaker 5: I was like, sure, why not.
Speaker 10: After I created the dance, I sent it to my
Speaker 10: friend on Instagram and I told her to learn it
Speaker 10: so we could do it as like a collapse, and
Speaker 10: I put our videos together on like a little posting
Speaker 10: and so I posted it on Instagram.
Speaker 5: First.
Speaker 10: It really didn't go viral. I really wasn't on TikTok.
Speaker 10: I was more so on Instagram. As it went to TikTok,
Speaker 10: it got viral on TikTok and I didn't even know.
Speaker 5: But then I was just like laying in my bed
Speaker 5: one morning and.
Speaker 10: I saw that everybody was doing this dance and at
Speaker 10: first I wasn't sure that it was mine because they
Speaker 10: weren't doing the right one. So I was like, Okay,
Speaker 10: maybe it's really not. But like it was like two
Speaker 10: maybe two or three people that actually did it the
Speaker 10: right way, and I was like Okay, yeah, this is
Speaker 10: my dance, so like I need credit.
Speaker 2: And once the dancers cross posted to TikTok, it blows
Speaker 2: up quickly. It was Julia's dance. Everyone was doing and
Speaker 2: anybody who was anybody at the time was doing it.
Speaker 2: Mainstream celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Lizzo now canceled. Internet
Speaker 2: celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Lizzo. The list goes on. Now,
Speaker 2: for those of you who live under a rock, I
Speaker 2: hope you're well and I envy you. And just so
Speaker 2: you know, what Julia just described is how TikTok generally
Speaker 2: worked for choreographers at this time. Find a song you like,
Speaker 2: post your dance, and hope the algorithm swallows it into
Speaker 2: its big, gaping hr Geiger mouth. And while the algorithm
Speaker 2: sometimes boosts content for indiscernible reasons, it's really easy to
Speaker 2: understand why the renegade dance took off. It's really fucking cool,
Speaker 2: and Julia is trained in five styles of dance, but
Speaker 2: in the algorithm, what takes this dance to the next
Speaker 2: level are the then it girls of TikTok, Charlie d'milio
Speaker 2: and Addison Ray my.
Speaker 11: TikTok name is Charlie d'milio, Dixie dmilio, Addison r E.
Speaker 4: I mean, get with it, guys, get on TikTok, follow
Speaker 4: these ladies.
Speaker 2: So the Renegade Dance is a hit.
Speaker 10: But Jua continues, they weren't tagging me when they did
Speaker 10: the dance. They either weren't tagging you, no, or they
Speaker 10: were tagging Charlie. When I saw that, I started comming
Speaker 10: a hunred people's post, like hey my nance, Hey does
Speaker 10: my nance? Can't give me credit.
Speaker 2: Once Charlie performs the Renegade Dance in October twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: it causes the dance to take off even more, but
Speaker 2: Charlie is repeatedly mistakenly credited for having choreographed it, something
Speaker 2: that she and her team do not seem to be
Speaker 2: in a rush too correct. It's unclear whether Charlie and
Speaker 2: because Charlie was a kid, her parents and as soon
Speaker 2: to be signed agents at United Talent knew who they
Speaker 2: were ripping off when they built a massive career off it.
Speaker 2: But before you knew it, Charlie was being called the
Speaker 2: CEO of Renegade and was performing in a Super Bowl
Speaker 2: commercial for Zionist Thomas. Here's Charlie teaching her sister Dixie
Speaker 2: the Renegade dance back in January twenty twenty, without crediting
Speaker 2: Juleia or even the musician.
Speaker 5: I taught my sister how did do Renegade?
Speaker 12: So I'm such a good dancer, but I'm just gonna
Speaker 12: let her teach me so.
Speaker 2: Julia's parents weren't Internet natives and didn't really get why
Speaker 2: she was upset for the lack of credit, which left
Speaker 2: the teenager on her own at first, but by the
Speaker 2: time these videos with Charlie and Dixie were coming out
Speaker 2: at the beginning of twenty twenty, the rest of the
Speaker 2: extremely online were starting to get as frustrated as Julia
Speaker 2: was for the Damelio's failure to credit her. Barry Siegal,
Speaker 2: who was the head of content at a now defunct
Speaker 2: video sharing platform called Dubsmash, reached out to Julia to
Speaker 2: confirm that she was Renegade's original creator. When she confirmed that,
Speaker 2: Siegel asked her if she'd want to speak to someone
Speaker 2: from The New York Times. That's someone was friend of
Speaker 2: this very show, Taylor Lorenz Twist, and once the mainstream
Speaker 2: media showed up, it clicked for Jelia's family. Their daughter
Speaker 2: was very right to be pissed off, and the failure
Speaker 2: of other TikTokers to credit her work was cheating her
Speaker 2: out of what could be a massively lucrative career online.
Speaker 2: Because look, Earley's account was primarily full of other people's dances,
Speaker 2: and it hadn't prevented her, a wealthy white teenager from Connecticut,
Speaker 2: from going from less than a million followers in the
Speaker 2: summer of twenty nineteen to fifty million followers in April
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, and it translated those numbers on TikTok to
Speaker 2: millions of dollars in the bank. White creators and their
Speaker 2: teams were discovering, performing and profiting from black creators work,
Speaker 2: and the entertainment industry took their teeny tiny little sunglasses
Speaker 2: off and said, what And while they made a shitload
Speaker 2: of money and they're very much fine, are lesser side
Speaker 2: casualties of this story of algorithmic and entertainment money greed.
Speaker 2: Because no, they weren't great dancers. But in the internet's
Speaker 2: classic way, there became a corner of TikTok where you
Speaker 2: could rack up millions of views mocking these girls while
Speaker 2: they were still kids. But these kids and their families
Speaker 2: and their agents were making bank off of all of it,
Speaker 2: all while Julia Harmon remained invisible to the mainstream until
Speaker 2: February twenty twenty, the profile of Jelaia in The Times,
Speaker 2: as well as a Vox piece from earlier that month
Speaker 2: by Rebecca Jennings that examined how viral dances were nearly
Speaker 2: impossible to get copyrighted, finally sparked a public demand for
Speaker 2: her work to be acknowledged. After months of effort, the
Speaker 2: girl from Atlanta finally had a massive platform to advocate
Speaker 2: for herself. In the Times piece, Lorenz talked to Julia
Speaker 2: about her struggle to be heard while continuing life as
Speaker 2: a normal kid, and expanded on how the lack of
Speaker 2: crediting practices on TikTok often pushed already marginalized creators out
Speaker 2: of the picture entirely. Jelaia's profile immediately sparked an internet
Speaker 2: wide discussion about the erasure of black artists and how
Speaker 2: easy these platforms made it to not credit anyone at all.
Speaker 2: In her interview, Julia said she wasn't upset with Charlie,
Speaker 2: She just wanted credit and the Damelio's publicist caught wind.
Speaker 2: Charlie responded, I know.
Speaker 1: It's associated with me, but I'm so happy to give
Speaker 1: Julaiya credit and I'd love to collaborate with her.
Speaker 2: Thanks Charle. According to her publicist, Charlie hadn't known who
Speaker 2: would choreographed the dance that she was performing during the
Speaker 2: largest period of growth in her accounts and TikTok's history.
Speaker 2: Why didn't anyone check? Okay? Jamie's stay focused? Two days later,
Speaker 2: on February fifteenth, the NBA Slam Dunk Contest happens in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and there were TikTokers who were announced to be attending
Speaker 2: the game, Charlie and Dixie Demilio and Addison Ray.
Speaker 4: I'm ready to make a lot of content with a
Speaker 4: lot of new people.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm with two of some of.
Speaker 9: The best TikTokers there are, so I'm excited to just
Speaker 9: make a bunch of pre a lot of dancing, maybe
Speaker 9: try some new stuff.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 2: This appearance happened so close to Julia's feature in the
Speaker 2: Times that people online were pissed, and rightfully so, because
Speaker 2: at the game and in content posted by the TikTokers
Speaker 2: and the NBA, the Renegade dance was featured without credit.
Speaker 2: Then on February sixteenth, the actual NBA All Star Game.
Speaker 2: Just a quick aside, it took me so long to
Speaker 2: figure out how All Star Weekend works. I don't care. Anyways,
Speaker 2: it appeared that someone at the NBA had done their
Speaker 2: research because Julia Harmon was announced as a guest at
Speaker 2: the game to perform her original choreography, and on that
Speaker 2: same day, she posted a collab TikTok with Charlie and Addison. So,
Speaker 2: after months of regularly performing Julaia's work, Charlie posts a
Speaker 2: TikTok of herself, Addison Ray, and Julia Harmon performing Renegade
Speaker 2: together and not for nothing, Julaia is doing laps around them. Anyways,
Speaker 2: here's the caption.
Speaker 1: Guys, I would love to introduce you to at underscore period.
Speaker 1: XO x LAII. I'm so happy that she's able to
Speaker 1: teach me the original choreography that she made.
Speaker 5: She is the best.
Speaker 2: This move is generally well received, though some don't hesitate
Speaker 2: to call it out for what it appeared to be.
Speaker 2: The NBA and celebrity TikTokers realizing in the eleventh to
Speaker 2: do right by Julia, only after a New York Times
Speaker 2: profile and a wave of public outrage had encouraged them
Speaker 2: to do so. Nevertheless, Jalaya performed Renegade at the NBA
Speaker 2: All Star Game solo. She was great, It was awesome,
Speaker 2: and it finally sent her up for some of the
Speaker 2: cloud that she had been owed for nearly five months
Speaker 2: at that point. Later that week, she appeared on Ellen.
Speaker 2: Her TikTok followers spiked to over two million by April,
Speaker 2: and the twenty twenty one documentary got put into production.
Speaker 2: As far as the media was concerned, that was that
Speaker 2: Julia had asked for her credit, She'd received it, and
Speaker 2: the world had moved on, and so did the TikTok
Speaker 2: celebrities she had collaborated with, moving on to careers in
Speaker 2: reality TV and CVS music.
Speaker 5: Hey guys, guess what, we have a new show on Hulu.
Speaker 5: Find now what our lives are really like behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: After February twenty twenty, things got really awesome. The year
Speaker 2: was shaped by global tragedy, a curse to American election,
Speaker 2: and a major reckoning with race in America, particularly with
Speaker 2: the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer. This was
Speaker 2: also a moment for racial reckoning on TikTok, creators called
Speaker 2: the platform out for content suppression that may, and TikTok
Speaker 2: issued an apology saying.
Speaker 14: We acknowledge and apologize to our black creators and community
Speaker 14: who have felt unsafe, unsupported, or suppressed. We don't ever
Speaker 14: want anyone to feel that way. We welcome the voices
Speaker 14: of the black community wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2: But by early twenty twenty one, the common consensus was
Speaker 2: that the tweaks to the algorithm and the diversity of
Speaker 2: the staff was not moving the needle enough. Twenty twenty
Speaker 2: into twenty twenty one had also been a major moment
Speaker 2: for labor discussions online, particularly after so many were unable
Speaker 2: to work with lockdown restrictions in place and governmental assistance
Speaker 2: in the US being merely impossible to come by in
Speaker 2: a sustainable way, and so a number of people were
Speaker 2: motivated to say, what the fuck? Why would I show
Speaker 2: up for a labor system that has not shown up
Speaker 2: for me. This prompted a series of strikes in the West,
Speaker 2: rent strikes, tuition strikes, workers' strikes, and workers organizing in
Speaker 2: industries where unions had either dissolved or decreased in power.
Speaker 2: In the last several decades among young people, the promise
Speaker 2: of unionization became more prominent than I'd ever seen in
Speaker 2: my lifetime. I got so into unionizing that I fucked
Speaker 2: a guy in the union. Around the same time that
Speaker 2: the Great Resignation took place, workers were voluntarily leaving their
Speaker 2: jobs in huge numbers early in twenty twenty because of
Speaker 2: how poorly their employers had treated them in terms of safety, wages,
Speaker 2: and benefits during the pandemic, and let's be honest, way before.
Speaker 2: So by spring twenty twenty one, the conversations around race
Speaker 2: and labor among young people had been on a steady uptick,
Speaker 2: and a lot of demonstration had been organized either online
Speaker 2: or in person using the Internet. It's literally one of
Speaker 2: the only things that's good for that and listening to
Speaker 2: my little podcast. So this would be an exceptionally bad
Speaker 2: time for Addison Ray to perform a bunch of TikTok
Speaker 2: dancers on Jimmy fallon that March right, to perform dances
Speaker 2: without giving credit while promoting her pivot to pop music.
Speaker 15: Right right, Addison performed dances to songs like Corvette, Corvette Up, Savage,
Speaker 15: Laffy Taffy, and more. All of those dances we just
Speaker 15: named were choreographed by black creators. So people took to
Speaker 15: Twitter to write things like the fact that Addison Ray
Speaker 15: is champion for TikTok dancers whilst the black creatives that
Speaker 15: made them and never get the same platform. Will never
Speaker 15: sit right with me, and this is what white privilege
Speaker 15: looks like. Black creators innovate dances and do them amazingly,
Speaker 15: but Addison Ray gets invited on Fallon to perform them
Speaker 15: in a who hum way. She's not racist, Fallon's not racist,
Speaker 15: but somehow the black dancers are erased even though they
Speaker 15: dance better.
Speaker 2: Right. That clip is from Clever News, by the way,
Speaker 2: because I credit people just a year after being fronted
Speaker 2: about it the first time. Not only a failure on
Speaker 2: the Addison Ray side, a huge failure on the Jimmy
Speaker 2: Fallon side. She's the face of the problem, but it's
Speaker 2: a problem of many faces. And the Fallon team caught
Speaker 2: on to that because after this wave of criticism, the
Speaker 2: description on the YouTube upload of this clip, which to
Speaker 2: no one surprise no longer exists, now suddenly included links
Speaker 2: to the original choreographer's TikTok accounts. Uh huh uh huh
Speaker 2: uh huh. The online outrage was so intense that both
Speaker 2: Addison and Fallon had to respond. Addison Ray apologized when
Speaker 2: confronted by Human Devil's TMZ.
Speaker 11: I think they were all credited in the original YouTube posting,
Speaker 11: but it's kind of hard to credit during the show.
Speaker 11: But they all know that I love them so much,
Speaker 11: and I mean I support all of them so much,
Speaker 11: and hopefully one day we can all meet up and
Speaker 11: dance together.
Speaker 2: And Jimmy Fallon responded by inviting the creators of the
Speaker 2: dances that Addison had performed on his next show.
Speaker 16: On our last show before break, we did a bit
Speaker 16: with Addison Ray where she taught me eight viral TikTok dances.
Speaker 16: Now we recognize that the creators of those dances deserve
Speaker 16: to have their own spotlight. So right now, some of
Speaker 16: the creators will join me to talk about how their
Speaker 16: dance went viral and then perform the dance themselves.
Speaker 2: See Bullying Works. Fallon brings on over Zoom. Unfortunately, choreographers Maya,
Speaker 2: Nicole Johnson and Chris Carter of the Updance, Dorian Scott
Speaker 2: of the Corvette Corvette Dance, Flyboy Fu and Indy of
Speaker 2: the Laffy Taffy Dance, Greg Dahl, Adam Snyder and Nate
Speaker 2: Nail of the Blinding Lights Dance, and Kiara Wilson of
Speaker 2: the Savage Dance, which was wonderful for these creators but
Speaker 2: understandably did not win a lot of trust back. The
Speaker 2: fact that this slip had happened made it clear that
Speaker 2: it would very likely happen again, and so in June
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, a number of black TikTokers announced they
Speaker 2: were going on indefinite strike. User capin Ken Knuckles said
Speaker 2: in a no longer available video, for all my melanated
Speaker 2: brothers and sisters of the African diaspora, we are on strike.
Speaker 2: We are not making a dance for thoughtshit. We're just
Speaker 2: going to let them keep flailing. It just shows how
Speaker 2: much you need us to make a dance, because on
Speaker 2: the app there was a need for a TikTok dance.
Speaker 2: On June eleventh, Megan thee Stallion released thought Shit, a
Speaker 2: song literally designed to dominate TikTok, But when black choreographers
Speaker 2: agreed to not feed a dance into the algorithm that
Speaker 2: their white counterparts would take to fallon and half ass
Speaker 2: apologize for later, no strong trend emerged all while the
Speaker 2: black TikTok strike tag racked up over six million views
Speaker 2: and in mainstream media this became a pretty big story.
Speaker 2: It was on the nightly news. Kenyon Lee or Kenti
Speaker 2: dot Heaven on TikTok, was a participant and organizer in
Speaker 2: the strike and spoke to ABC News shortly after the
Speaker 2: strike was first announced.
Speaker 7: Them going in creating these challenges under these sounds, like
Speaker 7: help those sounds get boosted into the algorithm and.
Speaker 2: If its native.
Speaker 12: Kenyon Lee is a viral content creator and computer science major.
Speaker 2: He says part of the blame goes to TikTok.
Speaker 7: It's really centered around uniting people under like one trend,
Speaker 7: So essentially like promotes you to take content, and they
Speaker 7: don't really have a system in play to show people
Speaker 7: who start, you know, any dances or anything under that.
Speaker 5: Sound, So how can you get credit.
Speaker 7: It's definitely going to take somebody in like the back
Speaker 7: end side of like TikTok to really come in and
Speaker 7: just like find some type of way to like mark
Speaker 7: whoever is trending in the meantime in your video description,
Speaker 7: You're going to want to make it really clear that
Speaker 7: you were the one that started this trend, plus the
Speaker 7: hashtag to you know, seal the deal.
Speaker 2: Another voice in this discussion was TikToker and cultural commentator
Speaker 2: Amanda Bennett, founder of Define and Empower, a consultancy firm
Speaker 2: who advises businesses from a black feminist perspective. I caught
Speaker 2: up with her about the strike almost three years later
Speaker 2: and whytt was so important.
Speaker 4: Hi. I am doctor Amanda Bennett. I am a poet,
Speaker 4: a writer, a facilitator, and an educator. I primarily think
Speaker 4: and write about black feminist cultural criticism and black women
Speaker 4: of pop culture.
Speaker 2: How were you first made aware of this strike?
Speaker 4: I was made aware of it because I was a
Speaker 4: creator on TikTok at the time, and I happened to
Speaker 4: see a lot of different black TikTokers talking about their
Speaker 4: work having been stolen in the past and no longer
Speaker 4: wanting to contribute to that psycho exploitation. When Megan the
Speaker 4: Stallion's song thought Shit came out and so they were saying,
Speaker 4: We're not actually going to make a dance for this song.
Speaker 4: We're not going to lie y'all to steal from us once.
Speaker 2: Again, something I find fascinating is just how community organizing
Speaker 2: online and how that is extremely complicated, But I mean,
Speaker 2: I feel like this is a clear case for how
Speaker 2: successful it can be. Can you walk me through sort
Speaker 2: of how this strike was organized?
Speaker 4: Sure, I wasn't one of the organizers. I'm more so
Speaker 4: a commentator, but yeah, it seems that a couple of
Speaker 4: young black women on TikTok began to notice this pattern
Speaker 4: and then began to commune kate with other dancers such
Speaker 4: as Kiera Wilson and Jelia Harman, to say, Hey, we're
Speaker 4: not going to a lot of people to work to
Speaker 4: continue to be stolen, and here's how we kind of
Speaker 4: develop a hashtag to be able to respond to this.
Speaker 2: And as a commentator, had you seen something like this
Speaker 2: organized online before? Was there precedent for it in this space?
Speaker 4: Honestly, not to this degree. I typically only really seeing
Speaker 4: young black creators making the dancers for the different songs,
Speaker 4: but not actually pushing back against racism. Although in a
Speaker 4: lot of cases I did notice that many black creators
Speaker 4: were being censored or having their videos taken down, and
Speaker 4: there was ways of pushback toward that against TikTok, but
Speaker 4: it hadn't been organized into this kind of format before.
Speaker 2: I am curious to get into the historical context for this,
Speaker 2: because you spoke about this in your commentary at the time.
Speaker 2: What is the historical precedent for this, for this behavior
Speaker 2: from white creators in general, stealing from black creators with outccreditation.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean, unfortunately, the history goes back several centuries.
Speaker 4: Even in the video, I had the example of Jack
Speaker 4: Daniels whiskey where and a slave man named near Sprain
Speaker 4: actually came up with the formula and idea for the
Speaker 4: Jack Daniels whiskey. But Jack Daniels then owned him and
Speaker 4: his family basically exploited their ideas and their labor with
Speaker 4: no compensation towards the family. And now today we have
Speaker 4: a brand called Uncle Nears where folks are taking back
Speaker 4: that idea and that wealth. But it's just one example.
Speaker 4: Even I've been thinking a lot about Beyonce's album Cowboy
Speaker 4: Carter and how she basically reclaiming the genre of country
Speaker 4: music for black creators. So much of country music is
Speaker 4: taken from black culture. So for example, the banjo is
Speaker 4: actually an African derived instrument. Beyonce talks a lot about
Speaker 4: Linda Martel, who was a black woman country singer in
Speaker 4: the mid twentieth century, and I think that Beyonce the
Speaker 4: album opens up a wider conversation about cultural appropriation, particularly
Speaker 4: in music. So even you know, black artists who had
Speaker 4: their style and ideas taken to create artists like Elvis
Speaker 4: for example, is one of those examples. So there is
Speaker 4: a really long history of black people creating an idea
Speaker 4: or a genre of music, or a way of dancing,
Speaker 4: and then having larger white corporations or white artists appropriate
Speaker 4: that without it giving them any credit or compensation.
Speaker 2: I'm interested in, as you were observing this roll out,
Speaker 2: how did you feel about the immediate results? How did
Speaker 2: you feel about the media response. I always think about
Speaker 2: the you know, the Jimmy fallon back and forth. What
Speaker 2: you felt about sort of what the response when this
Speaker 2: went public was?
Speaker 4: Absolutely yeah, And I think that is a way that
Speaker 4: companies and big institutions are able to protect themselves and
Speaker 4: to avoid kind of do that internal di work. You know,
Speaker 4: I work in tech. I have a lot of friendsy
Speaker 4: work in tech, and particularly for us as black and brown,
Speaker 4: queer people, people living with disabilities, we notice that there
Speaker 4: is a tendency to uplift and higher. People who identify
Speaker 4: as white or men are heterosexual, and when there are
Speaker 4: not people who are from diverse backgrounds in the room,
Speaker 4: you're not going to be able to make intentional and
Speaker 4: mindful and inclusive decisions regarding programming and even regarding who
Speaker 4: gets credited. So the actual infrastructure of these systems and
Speaker 4: these algorithms are made by people who are out of
Speaker 4: touch with these kind of ideas around inclusivity, and that
Speaker 4: is a problem. So you can actually get substantial responses
Speaker 4: when these incidents occur because they just don't know or
Speaker 4: don't care to know.
Speaker 2: And then in terms of how the public sort of
Speaker 2: received the organizers kind of going public and saying, hey,
Speaker 2: we are not going to choreograph anything to the new
Speaker 2: Megan thee Stallion work. From your perspective, how did that
Speaker 2: sort of roll out go?
Speaker 4: I definitely noticed a lot of pushback from white folks
Speaker 4: on TikTok. I think that there was a kind of
Speaker 4: entitlement or expectation that black people would kind of always
Speaker 4: produce these dancewers for them. And it's interesting how as
Speaker 4: a kind of unspoken expectation and that you don't want
Speaker 4: to admit that you are paying such close attention to
Speaker 4: Black culture, but you're wanting to rely on it to
Speaker 4: be able to have a sense of creativity or culture
Speaker 4: or community. And that kind of goes back to our
Speaker 4: previous point about the long history of cultural appropriation and
Speaker 4: white community is often relying on Black art and creativity
Speaker 4: to have a sense of soulfulness of community, of togetherness,
Speaker 4: of expression. But obviously black people are not merely an
Speaker 4: engine or white creative expression. They're actually human beings who
Speaker 4: are entitled to and worthy of respect and consideration and compensation.
Speaker 4: So I think when that invisible contract is breached, that
Speaker 4: can trigger a lot of white anger.
Speaker 2: Are you still actively on TikTok?
Speaker 4: I actually haven't been active on TikTok the last couple
Speaker 4: of years for many of the reasons that I actually
Speaker 4: talked about about. I made a post about sexual equoitation
Speaker 4: of black women during slavery and the stereotypes that emerged
Speaker 4: around that, such as the Jezebel, and that was taken
Speaker 4: down because it was inappropriate, and just kind of having
Speaker 4: conflict with TikTok over me making these videos about Black
Speaker 4: American history and structural oppression and having to feel as
Speaker 4: if I was being censored, so I kind of stepped
Speaker 4: away from that platform.
Speaker 2: That is incredibly frustrated, and it's frustrating that that it
Speaker 2: does end up discouraging creators from making really useful material.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that companies aren't a place where
Speaker 4: they are aware, you know, post orgeployed, that they have
Speaker 4: to make some kind of effort to keep up with
Speaker 4: the times and improve inclusivity. But the infrastructure of most
Speaker 4: tech corporations is just so byzantine that it can be
Speaker 4: difficult to push like actual change forward. And obviously, these
Speaker 4: coled companies are ultimately existing to create a profit, and
Speaker 4: so I think a lot of business models are thinking
Speaker 4: that profit is tied to facilitating white comfort. So if
Speaker 4: your ideal customer or your centralized customer is a white,
Speaker 4: upper middle class person living in the Midwest, that's not
Speaker 4: going to facilitate free speech or free creative expression among
Speaker 4: you know, a black working class person living in a city,
Speaker 4: for example. They're just not being thought of as the
Speaker 4: target demographic that should be focused on. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 4: really good question. I mean, I think there are a
Speaker 4: couple of ways. I think you can also offer direct
Speaker 4: support to creators. So demo them, cash app them, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Share their work, credit their work, as we saw on
Speaker 4: the boshed example, collective organizing around particular hashtags or strikes.
Speaker 4: Even really looking into the actual structure of these different companies,
Speaker 4: you know, do they have black people in roles other
Speaker 4: than DEI and so what are they and if they're
Speaker 4: not present in those roles, maybe put a bit of
Speaker 4: pressure in the company of do you have someone thinking
Speaker 4: about inclusivity in your algorithm team for example?
Speaker 2: Well, Amanda, thank you so much for talking with us.
Speaker 4: Of course, thank you so much for having me. I'm
Speaker 4: happy to be part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Amanda Bennett, who's work you
Speaker 2: can follow over at Define and empower. And when we
Speaker 2: come back, I speak to one of TikTok's most successful choreographers,
Speaker 2: Kiara Wilson, creator of the Savage Dance and one of
Speaker 2: the first people to copyright their viral dance. Welcome back
Speaker 2: to sixteenth minute. The peak of my dance career was
Speaker 2: doing a hip hop dance to Rihanna's Dysturbia in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine. I was bad. And we're back with
Speaker 2: more about the black TikTok Strike of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: While Julia Harmon and the Renegade Dance was the most
Speaker 2: commonly cited dance example that led to the Black TikTok Strike,
Speaker 2: a close second was by TikToker and choreographer Kiara Wilson.
Speaker 2: She was one of the creators featured on Jimmy Fallon
Speaker 2: in April twenty twenty one because Addison Rey had performed
Speaker 2: it on the show previously without crediting her. And while
Speaker 2: Kiara didn't formally participate in the Black TikTok Strike, she
Speaker 2: actually took things one step further. She started the process
Speaker 2: of copywriting her dance in collaboration with choreographer JAKEL. Knight.
Speaker 2: I wanted to hear all about it and about this
Speaker 2: process overall, and I was really excited to catch up
Speaker 2: with her.
Speaker 12: I am Kiara, I was Wilson. I am now a leech.
Speaker 12: I got married. I got congratulations, thank you.
Speaker 5: I have been married for almost two years.
Speaker 14: So.
Speaker 12: I grew up in a small town in Ohio, very
Speaker 12: small town.
Speaker 5: It's called Mansfield. Probably don't know what that.
Speaker 12: Is, but it's right outside of Columbus, so yeah, pretty
Speaker 12: much there.
Speaker 5: I grew up. I was a dancer my whole life.
Speaker 12: From age seven, I was tumbling, flipping, doing all that.
Speaker 12: I just absolutely loved the just dance in general. I
Speaker 12: was a cheerleader in high school, all that fun stuff
Speaker 12: and basically where it all started in a small town.
Speaker 4: I love dance and.
Speaker 12: So I just wanted to pursue it more after high school.
Speaker 12: So that's when I That was in twenty nineteen and
Speaker 12: I had graduated. That's when I really started to get
Speaker 12: into doing it outside of graduating and stuff.
Speaker 2: So what a weird time to have just graduated high.
Speaker 12: School, just graduated, then COVID wants to come around and
Speaker 12: just in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: So yeah, like you think your life is about to start.
Speaker 2: And then just like you can tell from your TikTok
Speaker 2: presence even back then that like you're a very experienced dancer,
Speaker 2: you're a very talented choreographer. What was sort of your
Speaker 2: path into choreographing?
Speaker 12: So yes, I actually did choreograph a little bit, but
Speaker 12: it was like just for fun, Like I never did
Speaker 12: it like as a job or I just did it
Speaker 12: for fun, Like I would just make up a dance
Speaker 12: in my head and then like maybe I'll show it
Speaker 12: to somebody, but it wasn't nothing like big or spectacular.
Speaker 12: And then I had actually moved away from my hometown
Speaker 12: when I did graduate, I moved in with my sister
Speaker 12: to Texas and that's where I am currently living now.
Speaker 12: And I actually did join a dance team and I
Speaker 12: was choreographing for a small kids jazz group. I was
Speaker 12: just doing cool through jazz dances to like kids songs,
Speaker 12: but that was also just for fun. That was just
Speaker 12: like a little after school program for the kids, and
Speaker 12: I just ended up making dances for them and that
Speaker 12: rolled into TikTok because that was literally the same, like
Speaker 12: not the same month, maybe like a month later.
Speaker 2: This is always like the stupidest question in the world,
Speaker 2: But what were you hoping? What happened in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: when you get out of high school, you moved to Texas,
Speaker 2: You're with your sister, you're choreographing on the side, Like
Speaker 2: what were you hoping for in that first year getting
Speaker 2: out of high school?
Speaker 12: So I actually was planning on going to the military,
Speaker 12: like that was my plan. And one of the reasons
Speaker 12: why I did come to Texas was to focus on
Speaker 12: getting into the military because my sister was in the military,
Speaker 12: and I was also watching over my niece at the
Speaker 12: time because she had to go to work. So that
Speaker 12: was really the whole reason why I didn't come down
Speaker 12: to Texas. So that was really my main focus. I
Speaker 12: was studying, I would work out and all that, and
Speaker 12: then on top of that, I was I was just like,
Speaker 12: I need a break. I need a break, and then
Speaker 12: that's when I started to create the dance.
Speaker 5: So it's crazy how things tie together.
Speaker 2: At the time you started posting on TikTok more, what
Speaker 2: was your relationship like to the internet, you know, as
Speaker 2: you were growing up.
Speaker 5: So I love the Internet. I stayed on all the time, literally,
Speaker 5: I don't think though.
Speaker 12: I didn't really post like, okay, I was trying to
Speaker 12: go viral or anything. I just posted like a regular
Speaker 12: like people posting like Easter pitch or stuff like that.
Speaker 5: I never like try to.
Speaker 4: Go viral.
Speaker 5: I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 5: just I loved it.
Speaker 12: I love TikTok, I loved dubsmash, all those different apps.
Speaker 12: I was on them and I was learning all the
Speaker 12: dances on them. So I think that's really what made
Speaker 12: me gravitate towards TikTok so much because there were so
Speaker 12: many dances on there and I'm just like, I just
Speaker 12: want to learn these these it seems so fun. And
Speaker 12: you're fresh out of high school and you were doing
Speaker 12: dancer whole life. You're like, this is like bring me
Speaker 12: back to my roots, you know.
Speaker 2: So, dude, when you're choreographing a dance for TikTok, are
Speaker 2: you approaching it differently? I'm assuming yes, but like, how
Speaker 2: do you approach it versus you know, something for the stage,
Speaker 2: something for the kids, whatever it is.
Speaker 12: So, first off, good thing about TikTok you only have
Speaker 12: to make like a fifteen second dance.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you have.
Speaker 12: To think about how you're going to cram the moves
Speaker 12: and make it look good in fifteen seconds, so versus
Speaker 12: a one minute long dance, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So I think that's really.
Speaker 12: What made my approach like that way, because I knew
Speaker 12: I didn't have as much time, so we have to make.
Speaker 5: It good in short and sweet.
Speaker 12: That way everybody can do it and it was perfect
Speaker 12: for all ages versus a minute long dance that you
Speaker 12: know you have all the time in the world.
Speaker 2: I think it has a huge part to do with
Speaker 2: like why you're why the Savage Challenge became so successful,
Speaker 2: as like anyone can do it, but anyone can't do it.
Speaker 5: Well, definitely understand that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's just TikTok dances. I guess the Savage Challenge.
Speaker 2: You posted it in March twenty twenty, right, yes, very
Speaker 2: very top of COVID lockdown. How does your life change
Speaker 2: immediately around this time, even like notwithstanding with the post?
Speaker 5: Okay, so it changed like rapid speed.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I did the dance, It went viral, everyone was
Speaker 12: doing it, and in those processes, my numbers were going up,
Speaker 12: so I was growing on all platforms. I would get
Speaker 12: promotions and ads, so like people reach out and be like,
Speaker 12: can you make up a dance to my song that
Speaker 12: I just recorded or something like along those lines or
Speaker 12: an ad, so like say like just a brand, they
Speaker 12: would reach out and be like, we want you to
Speaker 12: make a dance to this song or make a dance
Speaker 12: to something that we are you doing, like a service
Speaker 12: or something.
Speaker 5: So that's really the big shift.
Speaker 2: What was your follower account like before this? Like how
Speaker 2: rapid a shift are we talking?
Speaker 12: I probably only had one hundred followers maybe okay, one
Speaker 12: hundred to one thousand, I'll give that right.
Speaker 2: And all of this happening like in the context of
Speaker 2: COVID too, like you're when you're dealing with all this,
Speaker 2: are you just sort of with your sister and your niece,
Speaker 2: Like what is your day to day life like at this.
Speaker 5: Time, I was with my sister, my niece.
Speaker 12: I was sitting around like I would when people would
Speaker 12: reach out for me to choreograph. I would like, write
Speaker 12: it down, Okay, I need to do this for this
Speaker 12: amount that just write them down in the pop in
Speaker 12: my headphones, and I would just choreograph to the song
Speaker 12: like I would listen to the song, get in the groove, whatever.
Speaker 12: And then the months later, I actually had a boyfriend
Speaker 12: at the time, so that's who I'm married too now.
Speaker 12: But he was back in Ohio, so I went and
Speaker 12: got him and brought him to Texas with me to live.
Speaker 5: So that's how we got.
Speaker 2: I know that you said you made an original post
Speaker 2: that didn't do great, and then you did it again.
Speaker 2: What was that like revision process? Like a lot of
Speaker 2: what I'm interested in is like how to make these weird,
Speaker 2: confusing like opaque algorithms work in your favor. Which sounded
Speaker 2: like you were kind of trying to do. So walk
Speaker 2: me through sort of what that thought process was.
Speaker 12: So at the time, everyone honestly was doing this, I
Speaker 12: feel like. So they would post like day one of
Speaker 12: trying to get my dance viral or day two, day three.
Speaker 5: They would just keep.
Speaker 12: Going until either they went viral or like you know,
Speaker 12: they would give up. But I was just like, Okay,
Speaker 12: I'm gonna try that because I'm not going to give
Speaker 12: up on this one. Like I think this one, this
Speaker 12: one's this is pretty good. So I did the day one.
Speaker 12: Like everyone used to ask me, like, was there like
Speaker 12: a way you used to dress? Did that change the way?
Speaker 12: Like you went viral? And honestly, no, I can be honest.
Speaker 12: The first day I had on a some some leggings,
Speaker 12: I believe in a little crop top, and the second
Speaker 12: day I had on pajamas.
Speaker 5: So it's kind of like it's like and the second
Speaker 5: day is the one that went viral, so it's like
Speaker 5: not really on what you're wearing.
Speaker 12: It's just like I don't I don't even I couldn't
Speaker 12: even tell you still to this day.
Speaker 5: I don't even know how.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Like, yeah, it took off, I think
Speaker 2: after day two pretty aggressively. And so you're you're a
Speaker 2: teenager that is dealing with COVID, You've just graduated from
Speaker 2: high school. How do you process and handle sort of
Speaker 2: the volume of people reaching out? How do you sort
Speaker 2: of sift your way through it and like also protect
Speaker 2: your brain?
Speaker 12: Yeah, it was a lot at first, trust Yeah, Oh
Speaker 12: my gosh, it was a lot at the time.
Speaker 5: I did end up.
Speaker 12: Getting a PR, so I think that's really what helped
Speaker 12: so much. And then of course my family they were
Speaker 12: there to help me like set everything up and tell
Speaker 12: me like, okay, this is when you need to do this,
Speaker 12: or like you have an interview at this time, you know.
Speaker 12: But as a teenager, it definitely was a lot. But
Speaker 12: I learned very fast, Like it's fast paced. So you
Speaker 12: got to get it going and got to get it out.
Speaker 2: There and it worked. And so as you're getting these
Speaker 2: offers through twenty twenty, you're starting to choreograph kind of
Speaker 2: full time. Did that feel like a natural transition? Was
Speaker 2: it like you had to sort of renegotiate what you
Speaker 2: wanted your life to look like or yeah, as your
Speaker 2: life kind of changed overnight, how are you processing that.
Speaker 12: So it was like, uh, should I still go to
Speaker 12: the military, And then I'm like, no, I shouldn't.
Speaker 5: Like I'm literally living in like you know, like spotlight
Speaker 5: right now.
Speaker 12: That would ruin everything that I could potentially have going on.
Speaker 12: So I was just like I didn't want to risk it.
Speaker 12: So it was a hard decision to like be like, no,
Speaker 12: we got to go in a different direction. But you know, God,
Speaker 12: he is always with me, and that was my path
Speaker 12: that I was supposed to walk, So I walked.
Speaker 5: It in faith.
Speaker 2: That rocks. Oh that's so cool. It really like I yeah,
Speaker 2: You're like, oh, yeah, I guess I'll just be a
Speaker 2: full time choreographer.
Speaker 12: Yeah right.
Speaker 2: And your family was, I mean, your support system. It
Speaker 2: sounds like everyone was on board with this too.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 12: Everyone love that this happened like no one would ever imagine.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty one, there's sort of a whole second
Speaker 2: phase to the Savage challenge that is tied into this
Speaker 2: larger conversation around crediting black artists and this whole labor conversation.
Speaker 2: When did you feel sort of the tenor of that conversation.
Speaker 5: Shift the shift? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 12: It wasn't like I think once everyone realized like what
Speaker 12: happened with Jilea with the Renegade dance, we all just
Speaker 12: collectively decided we need to start crediting creators because we
Speaker 12: don't need anyone else stealing anybody else's career I guess
Speaker 12: you could say, or just their lifestyle. So I think
Speaker 12: just after that incident, everyone just decided, like, we're going
Speaker 12: to start making sure everybody gives their credit.
Speaker 2: Was crediting? Was that like a conversation you were thinking
Speaker 2: about prior to your dance sort of being picked up
Speaker 2: and becoming this huge thing.
Speaker 5: No, honestly I did not, and so long ago.
Speaker 12: I don't believe I actually may have back then though,
Speaker 12: like I genuinely cannot remember, but I'm gonna say no,
Speaker 12: until everyone knew like, okay, we need to seriously put
Speaker 12: dance creds and then like tag the creator.
Speaker 2: And this is also the year of like the Jimmy
Speaker 2: Fallon appearance and stuff like that. How did that sort
Speaker 2: of come across your desk?
Speaker 12: So Jimmy Fallon was receiving backlash from bringing Charlie on.
Speaker 12: I do believe that's who was on and she was
Speaker 12: doing black people's dances. So everyone did not like that,
Speaker 12: and everyone was definitely going and attacking, so I think
Speaker 12: it was just in his best interest for him to
Speaker 12: just bring us on there and either we do Yeah,
Speaker 12: we did do our dances actually, but it was over zoomed.
Speaker 12: So for me, it was kind of like, dang, she
Speaker 12: still could have like when a person, But of course
Speaker 12: COVID was a thing.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it is what it is, but it was it.
Speaker 12: Was really fun. It was really fun, and it was
Speaker 12: a great experience.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I mean the thing that struck me about
Speaker 2: that was like, I think this is more of just
Speaker 2: like a pr So you have this sort of huge
Speaker 2: burst in followers and work in twenty twenty. Does that
Speaker 2: multiply again in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 12: Yes, and it still does currently. So it's it's definitely
Speaker 12: it's my full time and I'm just so thankful that
Speaker 12: it has continued on and I can continue to entertain
Speaker 12: and inspire people.
Speaker 2: The last thing I wanted your insight on getting your
Speaker 2: dance copyrighted? How did that come about? And how do
Speaker 2: you do that? I'd never heard of that happening on
Speaker 2: the internet before, and it feels like it should just
Speaker 2: be a precedent that exists, So how did that happen?
Speaker 12: Yeah, so the idea was always there to copyright even
Speaker 12: before it was.
Speaker 5: Like said and done.
Speaker 12: I guess that you kind of say. Basically it was
Speaker 12: JaQuel Knights. He's a big choreographer. It was his idea
Speaker 12: to get everyone copyrighted. The process is still in the process,
Speaker 12: so I can't really say much about how it happened,
Speaker 12: how it works and stuff. I just it was just
Speaker 12: his idea to get everyone's stuff. So I definitely had
Speaker 12: a copyright my dances because it was just going everywhere,
Speaker 12: like and it's even in a movie called Dumb Money.
Speaker 2: So did you compensated for that or yeah?
Speaker 5: I did. Yes.
Speaker 12: So it's nice to see like my work and other
Speaker 12: things and it's it's just so amazing, just like for.
Speaker 2: My So seeing you sort of be a part of
Speaker 2: a movement to be like yeah, and you need to.
Speaker 12: Maybe everyone deserves to get paid for something they've created
Speaker 12: or worked for.
Speaker 2: So what are you up to right now and is
Speaker 2: there anything that you are like looking forward to or
Speaker 2: want to get into moving forward?
Speaker 12: So currently I am a stay at home mommy and
Speaker 12: I still am a full time time content creator. Of course,
Speaker 12: right now, I am just trying to transition my content
Speaker 12: to family lifestyle, but obviously dance is always.
Speaker 5: Going to be a part of me.
Speaker 12: Really, my goals are for myself and my family is
Speaker 12: we're trying to punch hard on YouTube. We're trying to
Speaker 12: just get more traction on YouTube, get more travel type
Speaker 12: deals and stuff like that, you know, so more family
Speaker 12: things because I absolutely love my family.
Speaker 2: To stay in the influencer space, but switch to something
Speaker 2: that matches more of what your life looks like.
Speaker 12: Now, yeah, absolutely, that was a great way of putting it. Yes,
Speaker 12: that is exactly because that is literally my life.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much to Kiara Wilson, whose work you
Speaker 2: can follow now over at keykey dot ja na Jah
Speaker 2: on TikTok and YouTube. I really hope the copyright works
Speaker 2: out and we will be right back with more on
Speaker 2: why this is actually the computer's fault. Welcome back to
Speaker 2: sixteenth minute. I was at a hospital recently and there
Speaker 2: was this choir of church ladies that came every Tuesday
Speaker 2: night and would just sing outside everyone's room, one by one,
Speaker 2: without ever asking if you wanted them to. They didn't
Speaker 2: take requests, they wouldn't stop singing aba, and I felt
Speaker 2: awkward and started dancing supportively, and so they just kept
Speaker 2: singing get a life, ladies. No one likes it. And
Speaker 2: today on the podcast we are talking about something that
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with that. We are talking about
Speaker 2: the black TikTok strike of twenty twenty one. And I
Speaker 2: hope that after hearing from Kiara Wilson and Amanda Bennett,
Speaker 2: you have a better idea of the cultural forces that
Speaker 2: led to black users having to fight to be credited
Speaker 2: for their own work. But I still had questions about
Speaker 2: how this was enabled through algorithms. Fortunately, biases in algorithms
Speaker 2: is a fast growing area of study and there's no
Speaker 2: shortage of reporting on the issue. One of the leading
Speaker 2: voices on this issue is black poet of code, Joy Bollamwini,
Speaker 2: the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and author of
Speaker 2: Unmasking AI, My mission to protect what is human in
Speaker 2: a world of machines. She was inspired to do all
Speaker 2: of the above while in grad school at MIT, when
Speaker 2: she had a first hand experience of the basic racism
Speaker 2: that's cooked into our algorithms. She was trying to design
Speaker 2: a mirror that would detect a user's face and provide
Speaker 2: a positive affirmation and the art. Joy used a generic
Speaker 2: line of face detection code, only to find that it
Speaker 2: didn't detect her face, and then when she put on
Speaker 2: a creepy V for Vendetta style white mask on, it
Speaker 2: suddenly did detect her face. The algorithm had not been
Speaker 2: designed to recognize her as a person. This is from
Speaker 2: a TED talk she did back in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 3: So I used generic facial recognition software to build the system,
Speaker 3: but found that it was really hard to test it
Speaker 3: unless if I wore a white mask. Unfortunately, I've run
Speaker 3: into this issue before.
Speaker 2: Another terrific writer on this topic is Meredith Broussard, author
Speaker 2: of More Than a Glitch, Confronting race, gender, and ability
Speaker 2: bias in Tech. She's currently an associate professor at NYU
Speaker 2: and the Research director at the NYU Alliance for Public
Speaker 2: Interest Technology, and she tackles algorithmic bias from all sides.
Speaker 2: She examines how racism, transphobia, classism, and more are features
Speaker 2: of these systems, not bugs. And so I asked her
Speaker 2: how algorithms like TikTok can get away with it. Important
Speaker 2: sort of repeating theme in your book is the way
Speaker 2: that algorithms just in general are presented by the people
Speaker 2: who design them as this impartial thing that can theoretically
Speaker 2: make decisions better than a human and all of their biases,
Speaker 2: and you pretty cleanly deconstruct why that is what would
Speaker 2: need to happen for an algorithm to work cleanly? Is
Speaker 2: it possible?
Speaker 9: You know, sometimes it's possible and sometimes it's not. So
Speaker 9: we get into this binary thinking sometimes when it comes
Speaker 9: to computers solving problems, and the world is not always binary.
Speaker 9: So I would say two things. I would say that
Speaker 9: all of the problems that are easy to solve using
Speaker 9: algorithms or using code have been solved, and we are
Speaker 9: only left with the really complicated problems. So we are
Speaker 9: in a very different era right now, and using mathematical
Speaker 9: methods to solve social problems is not always a good strategy.
Speaker 9: A computer can only calculate mathematical fairness, and mathematical fairness
Speaker 9: is not the same as social justice. So this explains
Speaker 9: why we've run into so many problems when we try
Speaker 9: and use computers to solve social problems. So computer is
Speaker 9: not the right tool for every task. It's about the context,
Speaker 9: and we just need a more nuanced approach to computational
Speaker 9: problem solving.
Speaker 2: So I'm curious if you have thoughts on how social
Speaker 2: media has us algorithms.
Speaker 9: So I think that there are a couple of things
Speaker 9: going on. I think that we should talk about our
Speaker 9: shared fantasies around what social media algorithms can do, and
Speaker 9: then we should also talk about the effect that people
Speaker 9: using algorithms has on the information ecosystem. At the beginning
Speaker 9: of the social media era, there was this collective fantasy
Speaker 9: that somehow was going to be possible to make algorithms,
Speaker 9: that we're going to govern our social interaction spaces, That
Speaker 9: the algorithms were going to replace the curation function of journalists,
Speaker 9: That algorithms were going to be able to mediate conversations,
Speaker 9: that algorithms are going to be able to bring people together,
Speaker 9: that the algorithmic spaces were going to replace irl spaces.
Speaker 9: And this collective fantasy was so compelling so many people
Speaker 9: believed it that people started to act as if that
Speaker 9: were happening, right, as if that were true. But the
Speaker 9: algorithms do a really bad job, right, and so now
Speaker 9: we're left with what we have now, which is misinformation, chaos,
Speaker 9: journalists without jobs, compromise democracy. It's partly about the collective fantasy.
Speaker 9: But it's partly about what happens when people use systems
Speaker 9: and the systems change human behavior, but then also the
Speaker 9: systems changed to adapt to what the people are doing
Speaker 9: in them. One of the ideas that I really rely
Speaker 9: on heavily is something that comes from Rehab Benjamin's book
Speaker 9: Race After Technology, and this is the idea that algorithmic
Speaker 9: systems discriminate by default. Right, So, for a very long time,
Speaker 9: there was this perception out there that algorithms were neutral
Speaker 9: or unbiased or objective, and that's a kind of pro
Speaker 9: technology bias that I call technoschauvinism, and.
Speaker 5: It's not at all true.
Speaker 9: Technological solutions are not necessarily superior to others. It's about
Speaker 9: the right tool for the task. And sometimes the right
Speaker 9: tool for the task is undoubtedly a computer, and sometimes
Speaker 9: it's something simple like a book in the hands of
Speaker 9: a child sitting at a parent's lap. One is not
Speaker 9: inherently better than the other. Right, So we can push
Speaker 9: back against technoschauvinism, and if we adopt the frame that
Speaker 9: algorithmic systems discriminate by default, well, we can see the
Speaker 9: poor treatment of marginalized groups on the internet. In a
Speaker 9: different light, we can see it as inevitable. Right, So
Speaker 9: if we assume that there is going to be a
Speaker 9: lot of sexism, that there are not going to be
Speaker 9: protections for women in or appropriate protections for women in
Speaker 9: online spaces the way that there are not appropriate protections
Speaker 9: in the real world, well then you know we're a
Speaker 9: little more prepared when these things happen. So something that
Speaker 9: I think about a lot is I think about stack overflow,
Speaker 9: which is this website that has a lot of answers
Speaker 9: to programming questions. And the profession of professional computer programmers
Speaker 9: could not exist at this point without stack overflow because
Speaker 9: everybody goes there to look up answers to code questions
Speaker 9: and ask code questions, and it has this like pretty
Speaker 9: dreadful and toxic climate. And I always wondered, well, why
Speaker 9: is this thing so essential and yet so And then
Speaker 9: I looked one time at a at a survey of
Speaker 9: who are the people on stack overflow, and it turns
Speaker 9: out it's mostly like twenty something guys, and I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 9: this explains a lot about why I have always felt,
Speaker 9: you know, unwelcome as a woman of color who is
Speaker 9: no longer in her twenties, So the fact that this
Speaker 9: really essential resource on the Internet is populated by people
Speaker 9: being unpleasant to each other, it says a lot to
Speaker 9: me about what the dominant culture is among the people
Speaker 9: who make Internet technologies.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask a little bit as well, how
Speaker 2: algorithms have a consistent tendency to conspire against some target
Speaker 2: people of color.
Speaker 9: I think it goes back to this idea of discrimination
Speaker 9: by default. So let's take facial recognition and let's think
Speaker 9: about the historical view. So facial recognition, a kind of
Speaker 9: AI technology that we have today, is biased against people
Speaker 9: with darker skin. It's better at recognizing men than women.
Speaker 9: I Trans and non binary folks are generally not recognized
Speaker 9: at all, better at recognized people light skin people.
Speaker 4: With dark skin.
Speaker 9: So facial recognition technologies are built on earlier technologies. So
Speaker 9: computer vision as a field is built on top of
Speaker 9: color photography. Color photography, of course, was preceded by black
Speaker 9: and white photography, and at every step of the way
Speaker 9: there has been profound racism in the representation, and so
Speaker 9: we see that continuing today. Let's go back to color film.
Speaker 9: When Kodak developed it was a big revolution, but it
Speaker 9: was tuned for light skin, so labs were given these
Speaker 9: things called Shirley cards, which featured a white woman named Shirley,
Speaker 9: usually holding like pillows or balloons or something in primary colors.
Speaker 9: And these are the cards that labs were supposed to
Speaker 9: use to tune their color photography equipment. But the Shirley
Speaker 9: cards did not include a range of browns, and so
Speaker 9: browns came out muddy in color photos. And this persisted
Speaker 9: through the nineteen seventies, and in the nineteen seventies Kodak
Speaker 9: finally started including a range of browns on the color
Speaker 9: tuning cards, and darker skinned people looked better in photographs. Well,
Speaker 9: this was not because Kodak had some kind of racial
Speaker 9: reckoning or some kind of a weakening. It was because
Speaker 9: furniture makers complained. Furniture makers refused to switch over from
Speaker 9: black and white catalog photography to color photography and the
Speaker 9: catalogs because they complained that their walnut and mahogany furniture
Speaker 9: looked money. So Kodak responded to the furniture and manufacturers,
Speaker 9: not to the millions of people. We see this same
Speaker 9: problem happening then, not just in color photography, but it
Speaker 9: also happened in uh cinematography. One of the big revolutions
Speaker 9: of Isa's show Insecure was there were all these articles
Speaker 9: written about like how the lighting was so great because
Speaker 9: guess what that a black cinematographer who had like did
Speaker 9: the lighting so that people with darker skin looked fantastic.
Speaker 9: So all of these all of these things have been
Speaker 9: happening all along. It's not really surprising that facial recognition
Speaker 9: had these kinds of problems because all the predecessor technologies
Speaker 9: had these kinds of problems.
Speaker 2: And so what you need.
Speaker 9: To do is you need to examine what's going on
Speaker 9: in the underlying social system. So when we have you know,
Speaker 9: like the gender Shades project that reveals this big flaw
Speaker 9: and facial facial recognition, people like to talk about that
Speaker 9: as a glitch, as something that is easily fixed, you know,
Speaker 9: just just oh, let's just like write a ticket for
Speaker 9: it and just fix it.
Speaker 2: It's it's a blip, it's not important.
Speaker 9: But my argument is that we should look at things
Speaker 9: like this as indicative of larger social problems, and it's
Speaker 9: an indicator that we need to step take a step
Speaker 9: back and reassess what's going on socially. In addition to
Speaker 9: rebuilding the code, and rebuilding the code, by the way,
Speaker 9: is always way more expensive and time consuming and complicated
Speaker 9: than anybody imagines.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much again to Meredith Broussard. I cannot
Speaker 2: recommend her book more than a glitch confronting race, gender,
Speaker 2: and ability bias in tech enough. Ultimately, it's hard to
Speaker 2: determine how successful the Black TikTok strike of twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one was. Online boycotts of an app as dominant as
Speaker 2: TikTok are extremely hard to make a dent in, at
Speaker 2: least for now, because as I record this, there's a
Speaker 2: possibility it won't be available in the US much longer.
Speaker 2: But the strike was a critical inflection point. Black TikTokers
Speaker 2: were sick of getting lip service from the platform, the media,
Speaker 2: and the white TikTokers ripping them off. It's an ongoing fight,
Speaker 2: but this was an important battle. Crediting choreographers on TikTok
Speaker 2: has improved, if not changed entirely, because of stories like
Speaker 2: Kiara Wilson and Julia Harmon. Creators will fight back, and
Speaker 2: there's no shortage of things to fight for. Racism in
Speaker 2: the TikTok algorithm persists. Many cited a continuation of the
Speaker 2: strike after creators found themselves being flagged for quote inappropriate
Speaker 2: content unquote every time they used the word black in
Speaker 2: their bio. The influencer pay gap is very much a thing,
Speaker 2: and after TikTok pledged to hire more black employees back
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty years later, reports that racism still persisted
Speaker 2: within the company and that employees concerns were not taken
Speaker 2: seriously came to light and appropriation is still happening in
Speaker 2: TikTok choreography. Major atte dances from black choreographers have been
Speaker 2: slowly overtaken by algorithm provided white girls. Again just last year,
Speaker 2: another historically black dance style being lifted. But June twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one was an exciting moment for labor, for racial
Speaker 2: justice and for creators demanding to be treated barely. The
Speaker 2: Internet should not forget about it, and I hope it's
Speaker 2: inspiration for further action the Black TikTok strike of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one. Your sixteenth minute ends when our algorithms aren't
Speaker 2: don shit anymore. Thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 2: sixteenth minute, and if you enjoyed this episode, support our
Speaker 2: guests and keep learning about the myriad ways that algorithms
Speaker 2: amplify racism with works like Meredith Brizard's more Than a Glitch,
Speaker 2: Algorithms of Oppression by Sophia Omosha Noble and the Great
Speaker 2: joy Bolamwini's Unmasking Ai. Here's that hospital choir singing Abba God, you.
Speaker 13: Can, you can job having the time of your love. Oh,
Speaker 13: watch that scene, dancing, Watch that scene, dig in the dancing.
Speaker 4: Could.
Speaker 2: Sixteenth Minute is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans Lee.
Speaker 2: Izzie ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet. Shout
Speaker 2: outs to our dog producer Anderson my Kat's Flee and
Speaker 2: Casper and by Pet Rockbert who will outlive us all Bye.