Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
Speaker 1: is There Are No Girls on the Internet. So this
Speaker 1: past weekend, my producer Mike and I headed out to
Speaker 1: the iHeart Music Festival in Las Vegas, where we recorded
Speaker 1: a live episode of There No Girls on the Internet
Speaker 1: from the House of Music booths. Ironically, our conversation was
Speaker 1: all about why so many people are surveilling the behavior
Speaker 1: of strangers on social media platforms like TikTok, And we
Speaker 1: had that conversation from a recording booth right on the
Speaker 1: strip where passers by could stop and check out our recording.
Speaker 1: So we were talking about social surveillance while being very
Speaker 1: much surveilled ourselves. So you might hear a little bit
Speaker 1: of music and festival noise in the background of this episode.
Speaker 1: Taping like this was a real first for me, but
Speaker 1: it was super fun and I hope you enjoy it. Hey, there,
Speaker 1: we're recording live from the iHeart podcast studio powered by
Speaker 1: Bose at the House of Music at the iHeart Music Festival. Okay,
Speaker 1: so a real quick fact about me is that I
Speaker 1: am a very nosy person by nature. And if somebody
Speaker 1: has gossip about a stranger, you can rest assured that
Speaker 1: I am interested in it. I want to know details,
Speaker 1: who said what, and then what did she say? Who
Speaker 1: did what? Why did she say that, and then what happened?
Speaker 1: I want follow up. I want details. I'm very invested,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I'm alone. I actually kind of
Speaker 1: think this is just human nature. You know, people want
Speaker 1: to know what's going on in the world around them.
Speaker 1: But what happens when it goes too far and we
Speaker 1: start projecting entire worlds and motivations on the people we've
Speaker 1: never even met. Here's a great example of what I mean.
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago, this TikTok of a woman relaying
Speaker 1: a conversation that she overheard at a cafe blew up.
Speaker 1: The woman said that she overheard a nearby table of
Speaker 1: women essentially talking major crap about a bride who is
Speaker 1: their friend, and they'd all been brides in her wedding.
Speaker 1: The women thought the bride didn't look good. The women
Speaker 1: thought the bride was rude by not letting them pick
Speaker 1: their own hairstyles. The women thought that using rose instead
Speaker 1: of champagne for her toast was like tacki and cheap,
Speaker 1: and worst of all, these women said that they were
Speaker 1: not genuinely happy for this bride. All of their smiling,
Speaker 1: bright faces in the pictures and in the video they
Speaker 1: were faking all of that because in reality they thought
Speaker 1: that this bride looked terrible and that her wedding was tacky,
Speaker 1: cheap and awful. Like apparently it just went on and
Speaker 1: on and on. So the woman who made this TikTok
Speaker 1: said that she just overheard this conversation and that she
Speaker 1: was relaying it to the entire internet because she wanted
Speaker 1: this woman to know that this is how her friends
Speaker 1: and her bridesmaids felt about her, and that perhaps they
Speaker 1: are not her real friends. And I think that might
Speaker 1: partly be true. This woman might have genuinely wanted to
Speaker 1: find the bride to let her know what her friends
Speaker 1: really thought about her wedding. But this TikTok racked up
Speaker 1: over thirty thousand likes and was stitched into edit a
Speaker 1: bunch with people in the comments being like, Oh, we
Speaker 1: gotta find this bride. Where's this bride?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: I want to follow up what happened, find the bride,
Speaker 1: but and I am fully aware that this might be
Speaker 1: a bit of an unpopular opinion. I think if we're
Speaker 1: being honest, obviously it's not nice, and I don't love
Speaker 1: the idea of friends talking crap about one another. But
Speaker 1: if we're being honest, I actually think that complaining about
Speaker 1: people that you love, sometimes behind their backs, is sometimes
Speaker 1: just part of being in relationships with other people. You know,
Speaker 1: I am not too proud or too big to admit
Speaker 1: that I have done it a time or two, hopefully
Speaker 1: not with an earshot of somebody who was gonna live
Speaker 1: tweet the whole thing. But I think it's just part
Speaker 1: of being friends with people sometimes, is that you have
Speaker 1: conflict and that you know, you meet over drinks to
Speaker 1: complain about a friend and this event and get it out.
Speaker 1: So I can almost hear people listening saying, oh, that
Speaker 1: is not true. You should never talk badly about a
Speaker 1: friend or a loved one, And in that I say,
Speaker 1: be so for real right now, Like, come on, I
Speaker 1: think that most everybody, all of us, at one time
Speaker 1: or another, has invented about a friend or a family
Speaker 1: member or a spouse or somebody that we love. And
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily think that a stranger transcribing everything that
Speaker 1: you might say during event session over drinks and then
Speaker 1: blasting it to the entire Internet in the hopes that
Speaker 1: it might get back to the subject, is really that helpful? Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that this TikToker really did a good
Speaker 1: thing for this bride. I actually think like if I
Speaker 1: had seen that, I would be mortified. I would be
Speaker 1: horrified that my friends were talking about this. I would
Speaker 1: be horrified that the details of my wedding were blasted
Speaker 1: to the internet, and the way that my friends felt
Speaker 1: about them were blasted to the Internet. I'd be horrified.
Speaker 1: And so I don't necessarily think it's like that helpful.
Speaker 1: I also think it's possible that this stranger, maybe it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the co text of their particular relationship to
Speaker 1: know like the context of what's being said right There
Speaker 1: might be history there that she doesn't know. There might
Speaker 1: be more to the story. I think just eavesdropping for
Speaker 1: ten minutes into someone's vent session over drinks where they
Speaker 1: don't know that someone else is listening, might not tell
Speaker 1: the entire full magnitude of what's going on. And certainly
Speaker 1: I don't think maybe gives you enough information to comfortably
Speaker 1: and reasonably blast this to the entire Internet. And here's
Speaker 1: another maybe unpopular opinion about all this. This TikToker maybe
Speaker 1: did just genuinely want to give this bride a heads
Speaker 1: up that her friends felt this way about her wedding
Speaker 1: and maybe weren't her real friends. That might be true,
Speaker 1: But I also think that this TikToker probably maybe might
Speaker 1: have realized that she had a juicy story on her hands,
Speaker 1: one that people would naturally want to chime in on
Speaker 1: and she and that it would spread this video far
Speaker 1: and wide. Like I think that she knew people we're
Speaker 1: gonna have opinions about this, or we're gonna be leaving comments,
Speaker 1: and that this video would blow up like it did.
Speaker 1: And here's my point. This phenomenon that I'm seeing more
Speaker 1: and more of on social media where people take content
Speaker 1: about the behavior of strangers and people get very very
Speaker 1: invested in like finding them or getting a follow up,
Speaker 1: or getting a part two, or knowing what happened next,
Speaker 1: as if they are following celebrity gossip or watching a movie.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, these people are not celebrities. They're
Speaker 1: just regular people, strangers. Even in a really interesting piece
Speaker 1: for the Conversation, doctor Jenna Drenten, Associate Professor of Marketing
Speaker 1: at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyal University Chicago,
Speaker 1: who study social media behavior, dubs this the TikTok tabloid.
Speaker 1: She writes together these stories represent the emergence of what
Speaker 1: she calls TikTok tabloids, in which users collectively manufacture and
Speaker 1: dramatize stories like an investigative gossip reel. Traditional tabloids place
Speaker 1: the lurid limelight on select berties and public figures, but
Speaker 1: the TikTok tabloid targets everyday people. So, according to doctor Drenten,
Speaker 1: this phenomenon is really This phenomenon is related closely to
Speaker 1: the dynamics of social surveillance, which is using digital technologies
Speaker 1: to keep a close watch on one another while producing
Speaker 1: online content in anticipation of being watched. So this sounds
Speaker 1: very like draconian, like tech dystopian, but it's kind of
Speaker 1: nothing new. Obviously, tabloids have been around for kind of
Speaker 1: a long time. If you lived through the two thousands,
Speaker 1: which was the Golden Age or depending on who you ask,
Speaker 1: dark age of the online tabloid, you probably remember how
Speaker 1: tabloids like TMZ and Perez Hilton would publish the minutia
Speaker 1: of celebrities like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. It was ugly,
Speaker 1: it was racist often, it was misogynistic. It was all
Speaker 1: kinds of like negative things. It just was not a
Speaker 1: good time in media. But I do think that back
Speaker 1: in the twenty's and the twenty tens, there was this
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think this feeling that because these
Speaker 1: were celebrities, because these were famous people and public figures,
Speaker 1: that they weren't real people like you or me as
Speaker 1: a real person, so it was fair game to photograph
Speaker 1: them and obsess and surveil them online whenever they went
Speaker 1: in public. But doctor Drenten says, where tabloid culture used
Speaker 1: to be about the many watching the few, where a
Speaker 1: few people who are celebrities are surveilled by all of
Speaker 1: us and we get to pick apart their behavior. Today
Speaker 1: there's been a shift where that same dynamic has translated
Speaker 1: to everyone watching everyone all the time. We're both they're
Speaker 1: surveillers and they're surveilled.
Speaker 3: That's kind of chilling, Yeah, I mean, it's.
Speaker 1: Actual, especially funny in that we're in the iHeart podcast
Speaker 1: studio here at iHeart the iHeart Radio festival, So like
Speaker 1: we are post casting in a little bit of a fishball,
Speaker 1: I feel, I mean, are we are certainly the surveils
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people keep stopping by, and I can't tell if
Speaker 4: they're looking into like watch us recording this episode or
Speaker 4: just marvel at the bow's headphones.
Speaker 1: They are quite nice, you know that.
Speaker 4: Like bridal party debriefing from the wedding, I think you
Speaker 4: absolutely nailed it about why the person would have blasted
Speaker 4: that on TikTok and like spread.
Speaker 3: It far and wide.
Speaker 4: It's all about her, the person who posted that, like
Speaker 4: trying to get some like trying to get some engagement,
Speaker 4: trying to be like part of this story. Clearly it's
Speaker 4: not about the bride, Like she doesn't know anything about
Speaker 4: the backstory of these women in the relationships.
Speaker 3: And the thing that she doesn't like.
Speaker 4: They you know, all the bridesmaids were not saying is
Speaker 4: how much they loved this person, which clearly they do
Speaker 4: because they went to her tax boring wedding and pretended
Speaker 4: to have a good time for probably like eight hours.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's not further crap on this woman's wedding.
Speaker 1: But yes, here's my thing. Sometimes being in a friendship
Speaker 1: or having a loved one or being in a relationship
Speaker 1: means doing stuff that you don't want to do or
Speaker 1: don't enjoy, or don't like or don't agree with because
Speaker 1: this person is your friend and you love them, and
Speaker 1: so you're not gonna go to brunch after. And also,
Speaker 1: let's be a real wedding. When you're in someone's wedding,
Speaker 1: oftentimes it is like event after event after event, like
Speaker 1: it's like a week long celebration of this person and
Speaker 1: their love. And listen, I have been part of weddings
Speaker 1: that I was not thrilled to be part of. I
Speaker 1: have gotten up early to go play corn hole people
Speaker 1: that I didn't like and had never met before. I
Speaker 1: have soldiered through while hungover and done activity after activity
Speaker 1: after acidine activity. I don't want to get to If
Speaker 1: I go down this rabbit hole, I will. It'll listen,
Speaker 1: this whole episode will be me complaining about one particularly
Speaker 1: involved wedding that I went to. But here's my thing
Speaker 1: is that you do it, you do it out of love.
Speaker 1: And so when you go to the big brunch after
Speaker 1: the all the wedding stuff this is over, You're not
Speaker 1: gonna be sitting there talking about how much we love
Speaker 1: the bride. No, that is implied because you just did
Speaker 1: all this stuff that you didn't want to do out
Speaker 1: out of the obligation of love. Like sometimes that's what
Speaker 1: relationships are like.
Speaker 4: And that feels like a really good example to talk
Speaker 4: about this sort of broader phenomenon that you were talking about,
Speaker 4: like the many on many surveillance that that is happening
Speaker 4: with social media, with TikTok and everything that you know,
Speaker 4: there's so much that gets lost there and like what
Speaker 4: is what are the motivations of the surveillers exactly?
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I think that the woman who brought
Speaker 1: this to TikTok, it's possible that maybe she just like
Speaker 1: wanted this bride to know what was what was going on.
Speaker 1: But I also just think that like in like realistically,
Speaker 1: she also knew she had a juicy story on her
Speaker 1: head and she wanted to blow it up. She wasn't like,
Speaker 1: probably wasn't unhappy that this video got almost half a
Speaker 1: million people to like it. And I think that when
Speaker 1: we're bringing the stories of other people, strangers, people we
Speaker 1: have no connection to, onto the Internet to be surveilled
Speaker 1: in this way, whatever context or nuance or history might
Speaker 1: be present in our relationships. Because relationships are complicated, relationships
Speaker 1: do have nuance, all of that gets lost and instead
Speaker 1: is replaced by the projections of people who don't even
Speaker 1: know these people. So today's culture of social today's culture
Speaker 1: of social surveillance, means that we're all always being watched
Speaker 1: and also watching not just celebrities, we're all tabloid fodder
Speaker 1: now baby. As media scholar Alice E. Merrick puts it,
Speaker 1: social surveillance is the ongoing eavesdropping, investigation, gossip, and inquiry
Speaker 1: that constitutes information gathering by people about their peers, made
Speaker 1: salient by the social digitization normalized by social media. Back
Speaker 1: to doctor Dunton, because she puts it really well. She writes,
Speaker 1: in social surveillance, everyone online is both a guard and
Speaker 1: a prisoner, constantly consuming online content and producing content for
Speaker 1: others to see. This always on dynamic works to control behavior.
Speaker 1: Everyday people have the power to orchestrate what other users see, read,
Speaker 1: and believe, not only about traditional celebrities but also about
Speaker 1: regular everyday people. So this is not always like a
Speaker 1: nefarious or negative thing, like you know, I think I
Speaker 1: happen to think that, like what this woman did vi
Speaker 1: a TikTok, Like like if the bride did see that TikTok,
Speaker 1: she would be devastated. But it's not always like a
Speaker 1: nefarious or negative thing, where like someone if they see
Speaker 1: what someone has said about them, is going to be devastated.
Speaker 1: Barstool Sports, which is this huge social media platform on TikTok,
Speaker 1: I know, we don't really care for them over here
Speaker 1: in these parts.
Speaker 3: They're not great actors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're definitely not great actors. It's a good way
Speaker 1: to put it. Well, barstool Sports, they're huge on TikTok.
Speaker 1: They reposted a video that somebody took of an older
Speaker 1: woman leaving a movie theater. She's got a cane and
Speaker 1: she's walking pretty slow after seeing the movie Barbie by herself.
Speaker 1: The caption says wholesome moment, and it does. It's interesting
Speaker 1: because like when I saw that video, it is like sweet.
Speaker 1: Like I definitely was like, oh this like old woman
Speaker 1: went to see Barbie, which was like the feminist like
Speaker 1: age unity movie for women of the summer, and like
Speaker 1: I understand what they are going for and what they
Speaker 1: are trying to say. However, it seems like a way
Speaker 1: to really project a story onto a stranger who was
Speaker 1: just living her life. Like being out and about and
Speaker 1: going to see a movie is just automatically cute or
Speaker 1: sad or wholesome just because an older woman and is
Speaker 1: doing it? Right, Like, did the person who took that
Speaker 1: video and uploaded it to the internet and then gave
Speaker 1: Barstool Sports permission to use it? Did they check in
Speaker 1: with her to get her consent? Did they? Is that
Speaker 1: how she would have described that, outing that it was
Speaker 1: like sad or wholesome or something to be like pitied
Speaker 1: or projecting all these emotions onto.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like who knows what's true? Right, Like, we
Speaker 4: don't know this old woman. She could be a raging bitch.
Speaker 1: She could be she could be.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1: Something that you know about me is that I absolutely
Speaker 1: love to go to the movies by myself. It is
Speaker 1: my Nothing makes me happier than going to see a matinee,
Speaker 1: double feeture, sneaking snacks into the movies and then just
Speaker 1: like going by myself so I don't have to I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry. It's like, oh, do the person
Speaker 1: I brought like it or not? Are they enjoying it?
Speaker 1: Do they have to pee? Like, are they gonna be annoying?
Speaker 1: Are they gonna talk? They gonna be on their phone?
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. I find nothing more like pure than
Speaker 1: the joy of going to a movie alone. So I'm
Speaker 1: a woman. I am aging because that's the thing that
Speaker 1: humans do. How many more years do I have to
Speaker 1: go see movies by myself until someone's gonna get a
Speaker 1: video of me doing it? And then now it's like,
Speaker 1: look at this sad old woman trying to go to the.
Speaker 3: Movies by herself hashtag inspiration.
Speaker 1: I know, like maybe I'm just trying to go to
Speaker 1: a movie. Maybe I'm not trying to be someone's like
Speaker 1: inspiration porn or someone's like a wholesome moment, or someone's
Speaker 1: like like, wow, look at this old woman just like
Speaker 1: hasn't laid down and died and still go on to
Speaker 1: see movies. I'm real triumphs, right, Like, how how many
Speaker 1: years do I have?
Speaker 4: And told that is the case, listeners write it, We'd
Speaker 4: love to hear your opinion.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, what age will bridget be like? Just being
Speaker 1: like for I I do feel like for women like
Speaker 1: at a certain age, just like existing is you know,
Speaker 1: it's actually, like slight spoiler from the movie Barbie, they
Speaker 1: kind of play with it in the movie Barbie when
Speaker 1: Barbie sees that older woman and she's like, you're so beautiful,
Speaker 1: and the woman's like, yeah, I know you Like it
Speaker 1: kind of plays with this assumption that we are all.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think that this kind of content
Speaker 1: trains us to automatically project something onto people who are
Speaker 1: just existing, like, oh my god, you're so inspirational for
Speaker 1: daring to be an older woman out living your life and.
Speaker 4: Never really being real about like, you know, the many surveilling,
Speaker 4: the many who gets surveiled.
Speaker 1: It's out.
Speaker 3: It's women.
Speaker 1: It's women.
Speaker 3: We're not looking at dudes.
Speaker 1: It is yes, it is absolutely women like that. I
Speaker 1: completely agree. So a very similar thing to what I
Speaker 1: was just talking about the older woman going to see
Speaker 1: Barbie by herself happened with an Australian influencer who does
Speaker 1: these stunts where he kind of like does things in
Speaker 1: public with strangers that are meant to be kind or wholesome.
Speaker 1: Only in this case, we actually know what the subject,
Speaker 1: who was also an older woman, felt about it because
Speaker 1: she told us.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: This influencer goes up to this older woman who is
Speaker 1: eating alone in a food court and a hands her
Speaker 1: a bouquet of flowers, and it's clearly meant to be
Speaker 1: like a wholesome or heartwarming moment, like a young guy
Speaker 1: brightening the day of this lonely old woman eating by
Speaker 1: herself a random act of kindness, and all the comments
Speaker 1: are like, oh my god, like that is so sweet,
Speaker 1: Like she really deserves those flowers. He's really doing a
Speaker 1: nice thing for this. He probably made that old woman's day,
Speaker 1: and she really probably like needed needed those flowers, needed
Speaker 1: that smile, needed this pickup. You know who didn't feel
Speaker 1: that way. The woman who was got the flowers, so
Speaker 1: she actually didn't like it at all. The woman told
Speaker 1: ABC Radio Melbourne that she had no idea that she
Speaker 1: was being filmed until she received messages from people telling
Speaker 1: her the video had gone megaviral. She basically said that
Speaker 1: she was like eating at this cafe, minding her own business,
Speaker 1: when this influencer comes up to her and asks, can
Speaker 1: you hold these flowers for a minute, So she didn't
Speaker 1: even necessarily realize that like he was giving her flowers
Speaker 1: because he was like, can you hold these for a minute,
Speaker 1: And she was like, oh uh, sure, I guess, thinking
Speaker 1: that like he needed somebody to hold these flowers. Then
Speaker 1: she sees this camera crew filming her, and she did
Speaker 1: She didn't know she was being filmed at first, and
Speaker 1: then she asked them, are you filming this guy giving
Speaker 1: me flowers? And they said no. They said no, they
Speaker 1: said no.
Speaker 3: They lied to her.
Speaker 1: They lied to this woman.
Speaker 3: Deception is like, that's the red line for like most things.
Speaker 1: Oh completely agree. So in this interview, this woman says, quote,
Speaker 1: I actually even said to them, look, do you want
Speaker 1: these flowers back? Because I really don't want them. I
Speaker 1: don't want to carry them home on the tram really,
Speaker 1: to be quite frank. Also side note, I love this woman.
Speaker 4: This like old Australian woman who is not interested in
Speaker 4: these flowers.
Speaker 1: Having been to Australia and this is like classic Australian lady.
Speaker 1: Like women in Australia. And I say this with like
Speaker 1: deep love and admiration. They have a bluntness that I
Speaker 1: think is really amazing and they really just like say
Speaker 1: how they feel. And I really dig it, like if
Speaker 1: you're if you were Australian, if I'm getting this like
Speaker 1: way off the mark right in and let me know
Speaker 1: but I've I've met a lot of Australians who are
Speaker 1: just like, very direct and to the point, and this
Speaker 1: sounds like one of them. And I love that for her.
Speaker 1: I love that for her, of that for me, I
Speaker 1: love that for all of us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, she didn't go out to get lunch at
Speaker 4: the food court by herself so that some guy could
Speaker 4: give her flowers. She wasn't like, you know, hoping like
Speaker 4: today will be the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so she actually said that this was a
Speaker 1: little bit of an inconvenience for her because she thought
Speaker 1: that this guy was kind of intruding on her quiet,
Speaker 1: private time. She said, these artificial things are not random
Speaker 1: acts of kindness. So she said that she was kind
Speaker 1: of offended that they were projecting this story under her,
Speaker 1: that she was like this sad, broken down, lonely old
Speaker 1: woman just because she was having a cup of coffee
Speaker 1: by herself, right, Like, I do think it's it's wild
Speaker 1: to me that just existing in public by yourself means
Speaker 1: that these strangers and someone filming that means that strangers
Speaker 1: can come up and project all kinds of stuff. Frankly,
Speaker 1: that is not super flattering. She was like, I'm not
Speaker 1: a lonely, sad, old woman. I'm just getting a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like pretty reductionist of a person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's reductionist is a good way to put it,
Speaker 1: you know. I just I just don't think it's cool
Speaker 1: to package content like this, to have folks project all
Speaker 1: of this onto other people that they don't even know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and connecting it back to that guy who filmed
Speaker 4: this video, clearly his motivation was not to like uplift
Speaker 4: and reaffirm this woman, right like, that might have been
Speaker 4: his facade motivation, but it had nothing to do with her.
Speaker 3: It was all about him. He was using her as
Speaker 3: a prop.
Speaker 1: Okay, first of all, if you want to reaffirm a
Speaker 1: woman in public, leave her the fuck alone, don't come like,
Speaker 1: give her a fly, don't do any of this. But
Speaker 1: the influencer, in his defense, he did apologize and he
Speaker 1: said that I want if she wants him to take
Speaker 1: this video down, he will. He didn't want to vend her,
Speaker 1: but he did double down on his random acts of
Speaker 1: kindness content. And to your point, Mike, it is a
Speaker 1: little bit complicated because we know that TikTok is a
Speaker 1: platform that does reward positive content and So it would
Speaker 1: be nice to think that this influencer was just doing
Speaker 1: this to be altruistic or sweet, or he genuinely wanted
Speaker 1: to like affirm this woman and like make her day.
Speaker 1: But the reality is is that he is an influencer
Speaker 1: who makes money from his social media platform. And if
Speaker 1: you want to build up your platform, making heartwarming, random
Speaker 1: acts of kindness content is a way to do it.
Speaker 1: It is a way to boost your individual profile. And
Speaker 1: especially if you're doing it without consent, that really tells
Speaker 1: me that you're not really genuinely interested in like reaffirming
Speaker 1: or making the day of this random woman. It's about you.
Speaker 1: It is about building your platform and your profile. And
Speaker 1: she in her interview with ABC, she actually says, I
Speaker 1: have a sense that this influencer probably made money from
Speaker 1: this video of me that I actually found deeply offensive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that says a lot.
Speaker 4: You know, he's making money off it, he's getting like,
Speaker 4: he's getting engagement. He probably didn't share that money with her,
Speaker 4: and he offered to take the video down, but that's
Speaker 4: not really what it's about. Like, I guess now I'm
Speaker 4: going to take a turn just projecting onto this woman
Speaker 4: based on nothing, But like I have to.
Speaker 3: Imagine that the thing that made her uncomfortable was not
Speaker 3: like being seen by.
Speaker 4: Millions of TikTokers that she doesn't know, but just the
Speaker 4: general vibe of the thing that she was made to
Speaker 4: participate in without her consent, and that they lied to
Speaker 4: her about during the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that that's one of the things
Speaker 1: that I really want to push back against our in
Speaker 1: our sort of rapidly digitizing culture digital culture, is that
Speaker 1: anybody who goes out in public is just consenting to
Speaker 1: be a character in someone else's story about them, just
Speaker 1: by the your act of leaving their house, going out
Speaker 1: their front door. I think that people have a right
Speaker 1: to privacy. I think that people have a right to
Speaker 1: like go have a sad coffee by themselves or something,
Speaker 1: or like go to a movie alone without someone being like,
Speaker 1: oh look at this, Look at this poor soul just
Speaker 1: really hanging on there, really inspirational to all of us, right, Like,
Speaker 1: sometimes people just want to live their lives. They don't
Speaker 1: want to go outside and accidentally become somebody else's inspiration
Speaker 1: porn just by living their life.
Speaker 4: You know, this is making me thinking of and this
Speaker 4: is a bit of a like sharp left turn.
Speaker 1: Oh left turn no signal.
Speaker 3: Left turn, no signal.
Speaker 4: But uh, those TikTok accounts that are being NPCs where
Speaker 4: they're just kind of like bopping around.
Speaker 1: Ice cream so good, ice cream, so good? Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 4: I think about the Spider Man guy pretty often because
Speaker 4: he's not just like.
Speaker 1: The one where you do you see the one where
Speaker 1: he wrote character.
Speaker 3: I did not see that.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I want to talk offline. I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk offline. It's amazing.
Speaker 4: But I love his because he's not just like reacting
Speaker 4: to the TikTok gifts that he receives, but he's he's saying,
Speaker 4: like Spider Man things like ooh, this city is really
Speaker 4: seeing some dark times, you know, like I.
Speaker 1: Really miss my aunt. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like maybe that's a reaction to this like constant surveillance
Speaker 4: vibe of people, you know, wanting to put themselves out
Speaker 4: there and choosing how they how they show up.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, I do think that everybody deserves the right to
Speaker 1: choose how they show up. I think about this a
Speaker 1: lot because, like, I am someone who leaves my house
Speaker 1: looking pretty bummy a lot of the time, and if
Speaker 1: someone got a video of me when I was like
Speaker 1: out and about just trying to get a cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: not looking my best, which is often that would I
Speaker 1: would be horrified if somebody took a picture of me,
Speaker 1: like suggesting something about me that wasn't true, just based
Speaker 1: on a glance of me. Like, I just think that
Speaker 1: it invites us to boil people, people who are complex
Speaker 1: beings into like flatten them into a character based on
Speaker 1: a ten second like observation of them out on the street,
Speaker 1: which I don't think. I think that should be should
Speaker 1: be resisting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like you said, it's just going out in
Speaker 4: public should not mean an invitation to be recorded and
Speaker 4: made a character in somebody else's story or account, especially
Speaker 4: when there's an account that they are.
Speaker 3: Monetizing as an influencer.
Speaker 4: It's so easy to project onto people, and it's worth interrogating,
Speaker 4: like what are these stories that we.
Speaker 3: Project onto them?
Speaker 4: Like I remember I saw this thing a little bit
Speaker 4: ago online somebody posted a photo of a woman reading
Speaker 4: a book at a bar. She was sitting at the
Speaker 4: bar reading her book, and the caption was something with
Speaker 4: the effect of like, ooh, look at this pick me
Speaker 4: like trying to act all smart and like sit at
Speaker 4: the bar and read her book. And the person who
Speaker 4: was in the photo responded and she was like, first
Speaker 4: of all, that photo was from like several years ago,
Speaker 4: So whoever took this, you know, without my consent, they've
Speaker 4: just been sitting on this photo for years chosen to
Speaker 4: circulate it now. And I was waiting for my friend
Speaker 4: who was the bartender to get off her shift, like
Speaker 4: I would go there a lot, I would hang out,
Speaker 4: And so it just says so much that somebody like
Speaker 4: chose to post that photo and chose to be like,
Speaker 4: oh look at this, pick me this, you know, vapid
Speaker 4: pathetic woman.
Speaker 1: Also, it's wild to me in that story that people
Speaker 1: assume automatically that this woman is pretending to read or
Speaker 1: is like performatively reading because she wants to look a
Speaker 1: certain way in public, projecting that. I feel like that
Speaker 1: can only come from someone who has done that. It
Speaker 1: is like deeply insecure about it. Some people are just
Speaker 1: genuinely enjoying reading, Like, yeah, you don't have to project
Speaker 1: all kinds of weird stuff. And her just going to
Speaker 1: a bar and bringing a book does not like she's
Speaker 1: not consenting to being a character in this fan fiction
Speaker 1: that you've written about her, about how she's a pick
Speaker 1: me trying to look deep at the bar, when in
Speaker 1: reality she's like, I was just waiting for my friend.
Speaker 1: I can't read a book.
Speaker 2: Damn. Yeah.
Speaker 3: People love projecting stuff onto others.
Speaker 1: Okay, so speaking of projection, we have we cannot have
Speaker 1: this conversation without talking about the pinnacle of internet projection
Speaker 1: and projecting things onto strangers. You might not you're not
Speaker 1: very online, Mike, so you might not have seen this.
Speaker 1: This is a story that I followed like relentlessly. You
Speaker 1: might not have seen it. Do the words West Elm
Speaker 1: Caleb mean anything to you?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: They do? Yeah, tell me what you know. No, you
Speaker 1: don't know this story. Now you're on the spot and
Speaker 1: you don't actually know. Tell me what you know.
Speaker 4: Okay, well let me give it a shut. Now that
Speaker 4: I'm feeling surveilled.
Speaker 1: You're double surveiled. You're surveiled in the fish bowl of
Speaker 1: this recording studio, and you're surveiled because I'm putting you
Speaker 1: on blust.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: So West Elm Caleb was a guy who lived in
Speaker 4: New York. He would like go out on dates, and
Speaker 4: he was not a good date. He was like disrespectful
Speaker 4: to the women that he was dating. I feel like
Speaker 4: he was not like abusive or violent or anything, but
Speaker 4: just like would like, you know, hook up and then
Speaker 4: not call them like that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Okay. I so I am genuinely surprised, Like I don't
Speaker 1: know who filled you in on West Elm Caleb, or
Speaker 1: if when I'm not around to like bet like bore
Speaker 1: you with internet stories, if you're actually like following TikTok
Speaker 1: and like you know all the drama. You're like, here's
Speaker 1: what the girls are up to. You actually know all
Speaker 1: of it in great detail.
Speaker 3: I know something, you know somethings.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that was more or less right. So West
Speaker 1: Elm Caleb. He was this guy in New York City.
Speaker 1: He worked as a furniture designer at the furniture store
Speaker 1: West Elm. He Yeah, basically just like you said he
Speaker 1: was on Hinge. He is like a stuck six ' four,
Speaker 1: he has a mustache, furniture designer. He basically his whole
Speaker 1: thing was matching on Hinge. Yeah, just generally like not
Speaker 1: being a good date, telling women like, oh, you're the
Speaker 1: first guy, the first person i've dated from gone on
Speaker 1: a date with from hinge when like in reality, he
Speaker 1: was like Hinge dating at the fuck up. But another
Speaker 1: thing that they said is that he would make up
Speaker 1: he had a Spotify playlist that he would send and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, I made this playlist for you, and
Speaker 1: really he was sending it to all the women. Basically,
Speaker 1: this guy, it sounds like he was like doing a
Speaker 1: number like a Hinge date numbers game where he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like get as many get with as
Speaker 1: many women as I can. So I'm just going to
Speaker 1: like like go on as many dates as I can.
Speaker 1: And the main thing that I think caused the caused
Speaker 1: this to be like a story that we're talking about now,
Speaker 1: is that he they accused him of like love bombing,
Speaker 1: that he would text them lots of complimentary stuff, be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I like thank you so much, I'm so serious about this,
Speaker 1: I want to be serious with you, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and then ghost them, which isn't cool, Like, like, you know,
Speaker 1: is is it a good way to date?
Speaker 4: No, it's a it's lying, right, it's saying things that
Speaker 4: aren't true to get what you want in a sexual way.
Speaker 3: Like that's not cool, that's gross.
Speaker 1: It's not cool. So I want to be clear that
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that west Elm Caleb's dating behavior is great.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you one thing. If he ghosted
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, you can bet your ass that
Speaker 1: you would hear me overhear me talking so much craft
Speaker 1: about him at brunch. If he did this to a
Speaker 1: friend of mine, absolutely, But the Internet came for Caleb
Speaker 1: in this completely over the top way. They made him
Speaker 1: the He was like the Internet villain for a week.
Speaker 1: They published his full first and last name, and his
Speaker 1: workplace the dating app Kepler, even may or Keepler. The
Speaker 1: dating app Keepler even made a billboard that reads red
Speaker 1: flags six ' four mustache furniture designer, in an obvious
Speaker 1: reference to Caleb's dating profile. So I think people got
Speaker 1: very invested in the West Elm Caleb sate saga because
Speaker 1: it was like a live action, in real time movie plot,
Speaker 1: like if you've ever seen that movie John Tucker Must Die.
Speaker 1: It kind of seemed like that movie where you know
Speaker 1: three or four girls from like different walks of life,
Speaker 1: like that athlete girl, the cool girl, this the nerd girl,
Speaker 1: all come together when they realize that they're dating the
Speaker 1: same guy. And John Tucker is playing all of them,
Speaker 1: and they they overcome their differences to like come together
Speaker 1: and you know, get revenge on him. I love that movie.
Speaker 1: I love that plot. I love that as a trope. However,
Speaker 1: and I get how what feeling like you're using the
Speaker 1: internet to watch this play out in real time is
Speaker 1: like very satisfying. But here's the thing. We shouldn't be
Speaker 1: treating real people navigating their real lives characters in a
Speaker 1: movie playing out for us, because that's not what's happening.
Speaker 1: These are strangers, people that we don't know, and projecting
Speaker 1: them and casting them into this like movie plot that
Speaker 1: that we've cooked up with them as the main characters
Speaker 1: isn't really that healthy.
Speaker 3: Dad, It's definitely not. You know, people didn't sign up
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 4: And even if it feels good, like an act of
Speaker 4: justice in the case of west elm Caleb, if you're
Speaker 4: someone who finds his behavior like particularly egregious and feels
Speaker 4: that women in Manhattan like needed to be warned, that's
Speaker 4: it's still, like you said, like taking ordinary people and
Speaker 4: making their lives like characters in a movie and projecting
Speaker 4: onto it in a way that is like part of
Speaker 4: a pattern that's not serving all of us.
Speaker 2: More. After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: I found this really interesting. All of the different instances
Speaker 1: that we've talked about in this episode have all taken
Speaker 1: place on the platform TikTok, not Facebook, not Instagram, TikTok,
Speaker 1: and I think that is not by accident. And a
Speaker 1: piece for Wired, Mark Hill argues that TikTok is actually
Speaker 1: the platform that lends itself most to this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: because the platform relies on a kind of digital world
Speaker 1: building and digital collaborative play, and that you know, when
Speaker 1: we were all young, we had dolls to act out
Speaker 1: dramas on when we were kids. You know, projecting these
Speaker 1: like made up dramas and motivations onto like dolls is
Speaker 1: what we was how we play it as kids. As
Speaker 1: adult we basically do the same thing, but instead of dolls,
Speaker 1: we have real people via TikTok. In the twenty twenty paper,
Speaker 1: TikTok and the Algorithmized Cell, researchers argue the platform is
Speaker 1: different from other social networking sites because it's less about
Speaker 1: connecting with a network of friends and more a site
Speaker 1: for public performance heavily built on intra personal engagement. While
Speaker 1: creating content for a trending algorithm. While similarly egocentric and
Speaker 1: concern with the performance and management of self identity, TikTok
Speaker 1: rewrites the mechanisms of this process through a design that
Speaker 1: guides users in a different direction than other social media sites.
Speaker 1: They write, essentially, it's a digital sandbox that invites make believe.
Speaker 1: The unplanned back and forth motion between creators makes the
Speaker 1: app an incredible social media playground. TikTok users play and
Speaker 1: perform in simulated characters and settings. This video creation app
Speaker 1: is an escape from reality. So this really goes back
Speaker 1: to what you were saying about the non player characters
Speaker 1: and sort of how people are looking for this escape
Speaker 1: from reality and like performing that TikTok is a specifically
Speaker 1: good place for that kind of performance. And I think
Speaker 1: that's why we see TikTok becoming this platform where it's
Speaker 1: so easy to project entire worlds or attitudes or motivations
Speaker 1: or whatever onto strangers. Hey, oh my god, we are
Speaker 1: the surveilled right.
Speaker 2: Now, but we love it.
Speaker 4: For those of you listening at home, Bridget is connecting
Speaker 4: with the fans outside the booth might be strong.
Speaker 1: I'm sure she's just heard of this podcast list like
Speaker 1: Passerby might be more accurate, but I'll take it. I'll
Speaker 1: take what I can get.
Speaker 3: But you know, we signed up for this.
Speaker 1: No, I love it. This is this is I love it.
Speaker 1: I'm loving it. Taking a little pick right now, we're
Speaker 1: cutting all of this out in the real episode. Don't worry. No,
Speaker 1: You've no one I'll ever hear this. It'll just be you.
Speaker 1: Mike the producer on the other end, I'm sure is like,
Speaker 1: please stop people. But yeah, so, I mean it actually
Speaker 1: is like it's fitting for the episode about what it
Speaker 1: feels like to be hyper surveilled. I'm actually kind of
Speaker 1: enjoying this. But I signed up for this. I knew.
Speaker 1: I knew coming here I was gonna be like surveilled
Speaker 1: and looked at by people while I was podcasting. I
Speaker 1: knew that was what I was gonna be getting into.
Speaker 1: That'd be totally different if I was just waking up,
Speaker 1: going walking to get a coffee or trying to online
Speaker 1: date and doing it badly and doing it, you know,
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a louse. Uh, That would like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that you're necessarily should be signing up
Speaker 1: to have the way that you behave in these situations
Speaker 1: be blasted to the entire internet. I'll tell you another
Speaker 1: example that I saw. I saw this example where a
Speaker 1: woman had matched with somebody on a dating site and
Speaker 1: they sent her this I I thought it was like charming.
Speaker 1: I would have like texted this guy back, but he
Speaker 1: sent her this voice note that basically made him sound
Speaker 1: if I'm being honest, it made him sound like kind
Speaker 1: of my type, like kind of maybe a little bit. Uh.
Speaker 1: He sounded like a human equivalent of a Golden retriever,
Speaker 1: kind of like eager and dumb, which is definitely my type.
Speaker 3: It's a type.
Speaker 1: And so basically he leaves this like voice note that
Speaker 1: is very nice, but it's like, hey, uh so, uh,
Speaker 1: I just want to leave you a voice note. I yeah,
Speaker 1: I just like liked your vibe. But you had a
Speaker 1: cool vibe. I would love to take you out maybe
Speaker 1: being good to macha. Yeah, if you're into that. I
Speaker 1: just got back from an art show. You're like art,
Speaker 1: Let's go see some art and get some maya. All right, peace?
Speaker 1: And basically this guy sounded stupid.
Speaker 3: You would date that?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you have no idea? What my We've
Speaker 1: not really talked about it. You have no idea what
Speaker 1: my dating history is like that I would have called
Speaker 1: him back with the quickness. I would have gone to
Speaker 1: see art and gotten macha with him. For sure.
Speaker 3: The art would have been so bad.
Speaker 1: It would have been so bad, and his opinions about
Speaker 1: it would have been bad. I'm not saying this guy
Speaker 1: was goddamn or Albert Einstein or anything. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: like he sent an earnest, sweet voice note, and her
Speaker 1: and her friends basically they made a TikTok where they
Speaker 1: were kind of re enacting the voice notes. They were
Speaker 1: playing his voice note and they were lip syncing to
Speaker 1: it while like doing a little like funny bit, And
Speaker 1: that was their TikTok. And I get that that's funny,
Speaker 1: and I get that, like dating is hard, but I
Speaker 1: also think that if somebody is genuinely trying to connect
Speaker 1: with you, even if you're not interested, blasting him on
Speaker 1: the internet for his genuine, non creepy, non scummy, non
Speaker 1: abusive voice note to you, I don't think it's very cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it feels mean, but I guess it does kind
Speaker 4: of highlight that there's kind of a gray area. I
Speaker 4: guess there's I follow this instrog macout Tinder, date disasters
Speaker 4: or something oh like that. Uh, and it's bad and
Speaker 4: it's like it's mainly men sending like really offensive, bad
Speaker 4: messages and it's.
Speaker 3: Funny to see them dunked on.
Speaker 4: But there's you know, this story makes me think that
Speaker 4: there's I don't know, a continuum from like really bad
Speaker 4: worthy of being blasted to the internet to like just
Speaker 4: kind of silly and maybe dopey and like we could
Speaker 4: have some fun making fun of it.
Speaker 3: But maybe that is mean.
Speaker 1: Well I so, God, that's it's complicated. I agree with you, right.
Speaker 1: I think that dating, particularly online dating, is a healthscape.
Speaker 1: I think that people will say growth messed up things
Speaker 1: to you. I don't really have a problem with those
Speaker 1: people being aired out. Like if you send some like
Speaker 1: untoward stuff to somebody, I think that like you get
Speaker 1: what you get. But if someone is just sending you
Speaker 1: like a like an earnest message of trying to connect
Speaker 1: with you, I think that online dating, you were automatically
Speaker 1: in a little bit of a vulnerable place. And if
Speaker 1: you're coming to try to connect with somebody in a
Speaker 1: real way, even if you're not interested, I think it's
Speaker 1: one thing to make fun of the message with your friends,
Speaker 1: the group chat if another thing to make a public TikTok,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know anybody in this TikTok and I
Speaker 1: saw this, It's like, why was that necessary? But I
Speaker 1: do think that your point highlights how complicated online connection
Speaker 1: and online dating is in this day and age. I
Speaker 1: think that, like people have to put up with a
Speaker 1: lot of behavior that maybe doesn't rise to like being abusive,
Speaker 1: but doesn't feel good. Like it doesn't feel good to
Speaker 1: be ghosted. I got ghosted once and I hated it right, Like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't.
Speaker 3: Feel good once.
Speaker 1: I mean, how has they even ghosted?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: It was just like not a thing that I would
Speaker 4: count that was just like par.
Speaker 3: For the course with online dating. Oh I maybe it's me,
Speaker 3: Oh don't I don't think it's me.
Speaker 1: So I I mean, I've heard different ghost philosophies that,
Speaker 1: like some people say, you know, if we just like
Speaker 1: match on Tinder, I don't know you. I don't owe
Speaker 1: you being like hey, I don't want to meet up.
Speaker 1: This is like I don't owe you that message. I
Speaker 1: don't know how I feel. I haven't online dated enough
Speaker 1: to like have a real opinion about this. I believe
Speaker 1: that like if you. I don't know. I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't even want to say, like, I've only been ghosted
Speaker 1: once and it's stuck with me, and I it was,
Speaker 1: it was it stuck with me enough that I was
Speaker 1: like you you it's it's a five minute text. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: it's not working out, good luck, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess you know.
Speaker 4: So I haven't been online dating in years, but back
Speaker 4: when I was, it kind of was a numbers game,
Speaker 4: and like I didn't want some sort of long drawn
Speaker 4: out explanation of like why it wasn't gonna go on.
Speaker 3: Just yeah, like don't right back, I get the message.
Speaker 1: But you're fine with being ghosted?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean with like a casual it would be
Speaker 4: different if it was like we've gone out several times
Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden you disappeared, that would
Speaker 4: be a different thing. But like, you know, we go
Speaker 4: out once, or maybe like don't even go out once,
Speaker 4: right because like on you know, you match with somebody
Speaker 4: on tender, you exchange some text messages and uh and
Speaker 4: then they just like stop replying, right, like message received.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess if that's your definition of ghosting, maybe
Speaker 1: I have ghosts.
Speaker 3: In some people. Yeah, maybe it's just a difference of definition.
Speaker 1: I think that's true. But I guess my point is that, like.
Speaker 3: What was the one that stuck with you?
Speaker 1: Uh, the time that I had concrete plans to meet
Speaker 1: at a specific place at a specific time and I
Speaker 1: went there and not only did this person not show up,
Speaker 1: they didn't have the courtesy of texting me to tell
Speaker 1: me that they weren't gonna show up. That was a
Speaker 1: ghosting that sticks with me because I was like, couldn't
Speaker 1: you couldn't you could have texted that you're not gonna
Speaker 1: come and get this. This motherfucker had the nerve to
Speaker 1: text me a couple of weeks later like Hey, what
Speaker 1: are you up to? Guess who didn't reply me. Anyway,
Speaker 1: My point is is that I think that navigating online
Speaker 1: dating especially is really complex, and it's like full of
Speaker 1: feelings that don't feel good, vulnerability putting yourself out there,
Speaker 1: and I think that that can lead to this feeling
Speaker 1: where people feel like it's okay to make public what
Speaker 1: is said to them in the in the context of
Speaker 1: online dating. I think it's if somebody is being abusive
Speaker 1: or awful or be on the pale, absolutely, but someone
Speaker 1: just being like a bit dopey, Like whatever happened to
Speaker 1: just talking shit with your friends, you know, whatever happened
Speaker 1: to like just like making fun of somebody in the
Speaker 1: group text you gotta make a TikTok You got to
Speaker 1: bring me into this. A stranger who doesn't even know
Speaker 1: anybody is involved in this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, maybe maybe, like the existential question there is, like
Speaker 4: what do we owe strangers? Is a stranger fair game
Speaker 4: for you know, talking about in public because we're just strangers,
Speaker 4: Like I'm essentially a member of the public to them.
Speaker 4: But then again, if we have an interaction, we're no
Speaker 4: longer strangers, and maybe we do owe them something.
Speaker 1: You're listening to there Are No Girls on the Internet
Speaker 1: live at the iHeart Podcast Studio powered by Both at
Speaker 1: the House of Music at iHeart Music Festival, and we
Speaker 1: were just talking about what we owe strangers and why.
Speaker 1: So many times it seems like these traumas and situations
Speaker 1: involving people we don't even know get served to us
Speaker 1: on platforms like TikTok. And one thing that is interesting
Speaker 1: is that I do think that TikTok has some unique
Speaker 1: features as a platform that make this kind of everyday
Speaker 1: people tabloid content that we're talking about really take off
Speaker 1: the language that is used on the platform and has
Speaker 1: really been normalized on the platform. I'm talking about things
Speaker 1: like story time or if you are so and so
Speaker 1: and you live in such and such, listen up, because
Speaker 1: I just heard your friends da da da dah. Like
Speaker 1: there's a certain kind of language or you know, way
Speaker 1: of speaking that I on TikTok that I think triggers
Speaker 1: our brain into thinking that we have a kind of
Speaker 1: faux intimacy, and that it gets your brains like wanting
Speaker 1: to hear that like juicy gossip, Like it gets your
Speaker 1: like Gossip Center and your brain kind of tingling.
Speaker 4: Yeah, faux intimacy. That that feels right.
Speaker 3: I feel like there's something there.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I've been up
Speaker 1: late really invested in a story about people that I've
Speaker 1: never met, that I will never met, in a place
Speaker 1: and a part of the world that I don't live
Speaker 1: in that I've never been visited, that I'm like, I
Speaker 1: gotta find out what happened. I need to know, And
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, it's like a faux intimacy. Why why
Speaker 1: do I feel like I should be this and why Like,
Speaker 1: why should I be this invested in the in the
Speaker 1: dramas of people that I don't know? So, as doctor
Speaker 1: Dentin points out, TikTok's storytelling practices mimic exclusive reports, hot takes,
Speaker 1: and cliffhanger media, Tiktoker's dangle tantalizing bit of Tiktoker's dangle
Speaker 1: tantalizing bits of stories in front of viewers with caveats
Speaker 1: like like for part two or by serializing their content,
Speaker 1: these stories then take on lives of their own, becoming
Speaker 1: culturally embedded memes. And I'm sure if you've if folks
Speaker 1: listening are on TikTok, when somebody says is telling a
Speaker 1: story and you're invested in it, and then they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm running out of time, I'm gonna do a part two,
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, well that was a leftdown, Like
Speaker 1: you you don't get that whatever that brain you know
Speaker 1: thing is that happens when you get a story completed,
Speaker 1: you don't get And I think that TikTokers on the
Speaker 1: platform specifically are like using that, keep serializing stories and
Speaker 1: keeping us invested in That's one way that TikTok is
Speaker 1: specifically well poised to get us all invested in the
Speaker 1: dramas of strangers. And of course, the more of this
Speaker 1: content that we consume, the more we're training algorithms that
Speaker 1: that is the kind of content that we want to
Speaker 1: see and engage with. It's this cycle where we are
Speaker 1: the never ended surveiller and also surveiled, And that is
Speaker 1: my big point that most of the content relies on
Speaker 1: projecting these stories onto strangers. The more that we consume
Speaker 1: that kind of content, engage with that kind of content,
Speaker 1: and normalize that kind of content, the more we are
Speaker 1: going to train be trained to like see the world
Speaker 1: in this way when we're out and about, right, the
Speaker 1: more we're going to see, like when we see an
Speaker 1: older woman out enjoying a movie, we're gonna think.
Speaker 5: Oh, not only is it normal, but it might be
Speaker 5: sweet and wholesome to like whip out my phone and
Speaker 5: get a video of her without her content and blast
Speaker 5: it to the whole internet.
Speaker 1: Right. I think that the more that we consume this content,
Speaker 1: the more we normalize this cycle, the cycle of us
Speaker 1: being both the surveiled and the surveiler. It invites us
Speaker 1: to see strangers as characters in worlds that we have
Speaker 1: built in our heads and putting that on the Internet
Speaker 1: for thousands to feet into as well. But people don't
Speaker 1: exist to the unwitting characters and the fictionalized dramas that
Speaker 1: people cook up for them. That is not how the
Speaker 1: world works. We are all just trying to get through
Speaker 1: the fucking day. Speaking of getting through the day, you know,
Speaker 1: that's something that has helped me get through this uh
Speaker 1: complicated podcast taping in the iHeart Podcast studio here at
Speaker 1: the iHeart Music Festival.
Speaker 4: I could think of a couple things. Are you talking
Speaker 4: about these amazing Bose headphones that we're wearing.
Speaker 1: Why don't think you're gonna be like, is it the
Speaker 1: Gin and Tonic that you had before the taping? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the Bow's headphones. These things that are nice.
Speaker 1: These are definitely a step up from what I usually use,
Speaker 1: uh and they I was a little bit skeptical of
Speaker 1: their noise canceling qualities, but these really canceled the noise.
Speaker 1: Like we are at a music festival, the bass is pumpin',
Speaker 1: but I can only really hear myself clear and loud.
Speaker 1: They are great chin up shoulders, back music, blasting, press
Speaker 1: play and take charge of the music. With bow quiet comfort,
Speaker 1: noise canceling headphones with customizable high fidelity audio and the
Speaker 1: ability to shut out the outside noise as you please.
Speaker 1: These over the ear headphones come in an iconic design
Speaker 1: with colors that are as bold as you. So strut
Speaker 1: and stride along with the beat to the sound that
Speaker 1: puts you on top of the world. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you something, talk about shutting out the world. We are
Speaker 1: shutting out a loud music festival to focus on this podcast,
Speaker 1: and Bose has given us the ability to do that.
Speaker 1: So thank you. Bos got a story about an interesting
Speaker 1: thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You
Speaker 1: can reach us at Hello at tengodi dot com. You
Speaker 1: can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengodi dot com.
Speaker 1: There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
Speaker 1: me bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our
Speaker 1: producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want to help
Speaker 1: us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts for
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.