Speaker 1: Just a quick heads up. Today's episode talks about trafficking.
Speaker 2: Just enjoy this kind of like straw Man Enemy, instead
Speaker 2: of dealing with the rock within their own circles.
Speaker 3: There Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridge
Speaker 1: Toad and this is there Are No Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 1: The Human Trafficking Hotline has identified eighty two thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred and one cases of human trafficking since it's inception.
Speaker 3: Back in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: And the important of an issue as trafficking is it's
Speaker 1: also true that it's become a moral panic, completely untethered
Speaker 1: from the reality of what trafficking actually looks like, to
Speaker 1: the point where Carly Russell, the twenty five year old
Speaker 1: woman in Alabama who lied about being abducted by traffickers,
Speaker 1: repeated a pretty well worn urban legend that traffickers use
Speaker 1: babies to lure women as part of her hoax. Traffickers
Speaker 1: are probably not using babies or strollers to lure women
Speaker 1: into being trafficked, and no, one is probably putting anything
Speaker 1: on your car to mark you for being trafficked, And no,
Speaker 1: your child is not likely to be snatched from a
Speaker 1: target parking lot by a stranger and souls into an
Speaker 1: underground trafficking network. Yet viral conspiracy theories online would help
Speaker 1: us all believe that this isn't just a common occurrence,
Speaker 1: but that the most powerful people in the country are
Speaker 1: also involved, and that the only person who can stop
Speaker 1: it is a rugged white man coming to save the day.
Speaker 1: In the new film Sound of Freedom, Jim Cavezel, who
Speaker 1: you might remember as Christ from Passion of the Christ,
Speaker 1: stars as a fictionalized version of Tim Ballard, formerly of
Speaker 1: the kind of anti trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad. The
Speaker 1: movie has become popular in part because of the moral
Speaker 1: panic around trafficking, and rather than showing a realistic portrayal
Speaker 1: of what trafficking and the work that goes into preventing it,
Speaker 1: looks like it leans on the same kind of misrepresentations
Speaker 1: that fuel the online moral panic around trafficking, turning the
Speaker 1: whole thing into a big hero fantasy.
Speaker 2: I'm Miles Clee. I am a culture writer at Rolling
Speaker 2: Stone focused mostly on the Internet.
Speaker 1: Miles writes about how conspiracy theory is like this one
Speaker 1: take off online. How did you come to be someone
Speaker 1: who covers conspiracy theories and all of these weird pockets
Speaker 1: of the web, Like what draws you to them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I probably started covering the Internet about
Speaker 2: ten years ago when I was working for a website
Speaker 2: called The Daily Dot, which was totally Internet focused, and
Speaker 2: I really got into weird, niche subcultures. I've always loved
Speaker 2: memes and how they were created and kind of tracing
Speaker 2: the archins of a lot of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And you know, conspira these are something that travel very
Speaker 2: much in the same way they go viral. They get
Speaker 2: these web forums, they get these communities that coalesce around them.
Speaker 1: This is something Miles and I have in common the Internet,
Speaker 1: more specifically, explaining some of the weirder, darker pockets of
Speaker 1: the Internet and why what's going on in them is
Speaker 1: worth paying attention to.
Speaker 2: As a reporter, I always liked to explain what was
Speaker 2: going on in these really kind of like niche and
Speaker 2: sort of sort of impenetrable communities that get built around
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of jargon and a lot
Speaker 2: of ideology that you know, the casual reader, if they're
Speaker 2: just encountering a website like that for the first time,
Speaker 2: they have no idea what's going on. And sometimes these
Speaker 2: places are also hard to find or you know, these
Speaker 2: conversations are happening in weird little pockets of the deep web,
Speaker 2: so people don't even know that they're happening. For example,
Speaker 2: you know, unless you're on the QAnon telegram feeds, you're
Speaker 2: not going to see the conversations that are happening there
Speaker 2: and on what people are saying. So I like bringing
Speaker 2: that stuff into the light for larger audience and explaining
Speaker 2: as best I can how these movements get started, why
Speaker 2: people get drawn into them and radicalized by them, and
Speaker 2: you know, in this case, what we're going to talk about,
Speaker 2: you know, how how recruitment doesn't always reflect you know,
Speaker 2: the truth of the really dark stuff going on, because
Speaker 2: on the surface, it can be one thing, it could
Speaker 2: be save the children, anti trafficking, and then that leads
Speaker 2: you down the path to a much more dangerous sort
Speaker 2: of belief set.
Speaker 1: What is it about trafficking, sex trafficking that has become
Speaker 1: this like very sticky thing, this very sticky like conspiracy
Speaker 1: that draws so many, like especially extremists on the right,
Speaker 1: Like why do you think that is such a sticky conspiracy?
Speaker 1: And such a good entry point to some of these
Speaker 1: extremist beliefs and thinking.
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting that when hardcore conservatives talk about trafficking,
Speaker 2: they're only talking about child sex trafficking, which is one
Speaker 2: very specific thing that is not really the large section
Speaker 2: of the problem. Adults who are being forced into labor
Speaker 2: and you know, not children being explicitly sexually assaulted and
Speaker 2: all that. The reason they focus on children, I think
Speaker 2: would bring us back to something like the nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: Satanic Panic, which had a lot of the same themes.
Speaker 2: Children are a great sort of talking point to use
Speaker 2: if you want to demonize and dehumanize your enemy, you know,
Speaker 2: crimes against children, like, what could be worse than that?
Speaker 2: That's what a lot of the rhetoric is focused on,
Speaker 2: is that, you know, anyone who disagrees with them is
Speaker 2: you know, pro child abuse. They're in on it. They're
Speaker 2: probably traffickers, they probably have child porn on their computers
Speaker 2: and all that. It was a lot of the same
Speaker 2: kind of demonization you would see in the Satanic Panic
Speaker 2: in the eighties, which was also again focused on this
Speaker 2: idea that children were being abused on this massive scale.
Speaker 2: Trafficking is a hot onnon issue anyway, and when you
Speaker 2: make it about children, and when you make it about
Speaker 2: sexual abuse, you ensure the most extreme possible reactions. And yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's a horrible thing to consider. They know that
Speaker 2: they can play on people's emotions. And you know, a
Speaker 2: lot of the responses I've gotten for doing a negative
Speaker 2: review of this film are extremely heated because these people
Speaker 2: have imagined a version of trafficking that is specifically focused
Speaker 2: on hurting children, harvesting their organs, drinking their blood, all
Speaker 2: this nonsense stuff that you know, got brought up in
Speaker 2: the Satanic panic in the eighties as well. So they are,
Speaker 2: you know, they're flying off the handle. And they got
Speaker 2: involved in the first place sometimes because of you know,
Speaker 2: harmless sounding campaigns like hashtags Save the Children, which was
Speaker 2: really just a front for a qan on. Because once
Speaker 2: you get people believing that, you know, two million children
Speaker 2: are you know, they are always making up these numbers.
Speaker 2: Two million children are just kidnapped off their street corners
Speaker 2: every year. They have all these crazy statistics. Once you
Speaker 2: start believing in that, then you believe, in your prime
Speaker 2: to believe in much crazier conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Theory trafficking and child sexual abuse is like a real issue.
Speaker 3: It happens, it's a serious thing.
Speaker 1: But the people who are the loudest in talking about
Speaker 1: I guess I won't even say that, like things that
Speaker 1: are sort of seemingly related, they're they're invested in this
Speaker 1: fantasy version that almost never happens. Right, It is extremely
Speaker 1: unlikely for a child to be snatched out of a
Speaker 1: target parking lot or off of the street by a
Speaker 1: stranger and then sold into trafficking. And yet the people
Speaker 1: who talk about this the loudest, they are very invested
Speaker 1: in this fantasy version and never invested in what is
Speaker 1: actually more likely, Right, Adults being traffic for, you know,
Speaker 1: having their labor exploited, you know, children being preyed on
Speaker 1: by people they know, people in their communities. Those are
Speaker 1: not necessarily issues that they seem very loud about, despite
Speaker 1: the fact that those issues are quite.
Speaker 3: A bit more common.
Speaker 1: Why do they lend themselves towards the fantasy that's like
Speaker 1: not happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, part of this is just denial about
Speaker 2: the reality. You know, in the eighties, it was sort
Speaker 2: of thought that people got the idea that like, you know,
Speaker 2: daycare and nursery school teachers were abusing children ritualistically because
Speaker 2: they were unable to deal with the fact that, you know,
Speaker 2: it was becoming much more widely known that a lot
Speaker 2: of this abuse happens within the family. And if you
Speaker 2: are a religious person, if you are a rightly and
Speaker 2: conservative person, it's really hard to accept the fact that
Speaker 2: this thing that you kind of worship, this nuclear family,
Speaker 2: like this can be the thing that creates harm to children.
Speaker 2: A really hard thing to accept. And by the same token,
Speaker 2: you know Jim Kvitzel, who in this movie is a
Speaker 2: very devout Catholic. It's about Tim Ballard, who is a
Speaker 2: devout Mormon. Both the Mormon Catholic Church have had indescribably
Speaker 2: huge sexual abuse scandals related to children. They don't talk
Speaker 2: about that at all, seemingly, and I think their attempt
Speaker 2: to turn attention to their fantasy version has a lot
Speaker 2: to do with not being able to face the abuse
Speaker 2: that is in their own communities and that they maybe
Speaker 2: even feel subconsciously complicit in. Yeah, you could be doing
Speaker 2: you could be doing a lot of work to try
Speaker 2: to expose pedophiles within the churches and within these conservative institutions, honestly,
Speaker 2: but they don't do that because that would be too hard,
Speaker 2: that would be admitting that they are on the wrong side.
Speaker 2: So they make up, you know, a boogeyman of cabal
Speaker 2: cable pedophiles that are that are Democrats, they are liberals,
Speaker 2: they're Satanists there they are totally outside those conservative circles
Speaker 2: so that they can, yeah, just just enjoy this kind
Speaker 2: of like straw man enemy instead of dealing with the
Speaker 2: rot within their own circles.
Speaker 1: For folks who might not know, if you have not
Speaker 1: if you've not heard of this film, then I envy
Speaker 1: the life that you live on the internet.
Speaker 3: But for folks who might not know, what is the
Speaker 3: Sound of Freedom?
Speaker 2: So The Sound of Freedom is a theoretically a thriller
Speaker 2: drama based on the life of Tim Ballard, who's a
Speaker 2: real guy, and he is the founder of something called
Speaker 2: Operation Underground Railroad, which is a Utah based anti trafficking
Speaker 2: organization which is focused on something called the rescue model,
Speaker 2: or it's it's often criticized as the rescue industry by
Speaker 2: other anti trafficking groups, something that's sort of counterproductive, exaggerated.
Speaker 2: You know, the real work of fighting trafficking, as a
Speaker 2: lot of these orgs say, is slow and bureau and
Speaker 2: you know, takes into account, you know, care for victims
Speaker 2: after they are brought out of these situations, a lot
Speaker 2: of counseling, a lot of psychological work, whereas Oh you
Speaker 2: Are is focused on the pr of heroics or apparent
Speaker 2: heroics because they exaggerate all their missions and so on.
Speaker 2: They are styled as a sort of you know, paramilitary
Speaker 2: that goes into these third world countries. They can't operate
Speaker 2: in the US, obviously, so they go abroad and they
Speaker 2: claim to be you know, at best sort of helping
Speaker 2: local law enforcement in these other countries. But as I say,
Speaker 2: they have really distorted the truth of what they do
Speaker 2: and been criticized by almost every legitimate human trafficking organization,
Speaker 2: while sort of not completely endorsing QAnon ideas, but not
Speaker 2: really doing that much to distance themselves either. So the
Speaker 2: movie focuses on Tim. He's played by Jim Kvitzl. It
Speaker 2: is supposed to be the story of how he went
Speaker 2: from being a federal agent who did busts of guys
Speaker 2: who were doing uploading child pornography to the web, went
Speaker 2: from doing that to ultimately trying to hunt down actual pedophiles,
Speaker 2: usually by posing as one himself, which makes for an
Speaker 2: odd hero in the movie. I have to say, he's
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of the time he's supposed to be
Speaker 2: like acting as a pedophile, So a little weird to
Speaker 2: be reading for that guy. They're just trying to ensnare
Speaker 2: these you know, various nefarious people down in Colombia, And
Speaker 2: in the end, he's really trying to go after this
Speaker 2: one girl because the first boy who rescues in the
Speaker 2: film is the brother of this other girl who is
Speaker 2: still missing, and he has to go deeper and deeper
Speaker 2: into foreign territory ultimately, like you know, into a jungle
Speaker 2: controlled by Colombian rebels to rescue this girl, all of
Speaker 2: which is made up, and it is being treated this
Speaker 2: film as I should say, almost a documentary. It says,
Speaker 2: you know, at the beginning, based on a true story,
Speaker 2: you know, which you know there elements that are true.
Speaker 2: There is a guy named Tim Ballard who pretends that
Speaker 2: he does this stuff. And yeah, it it really hammers
Speaker 2: this this this message that child sex trafficking is really bad,
Speaker 2: which I don't know why you need a movie to
Speaker 2: tell you that obviously that's not good. We don't need
Speaker 2: to see it. Sort of depicted over and over as
Speaker 2: it is in the film. It's very lurid. It's it's
Speaker 2: almost the audience I was watching it with was sort
Speaker 2: of just totally captivated with these scenes, these preludes to
Speaker 2: like a child being abused by an adult in a
Speaker 2: very voyeuristic, uncomfortable way. But you know, for the people
Speaker 2: who see it and support the film, they come out
Speaker 2: of it thinking they've basically done activism by h by
Speaker 2: watching this and be raising awareness of the problem and
Speaker 2: so on. That is what they're in it for. And
Speaker 2: they're in it for this white savior narrative of this
Speaker 2: guy Tim, this Mormon blonde kind of you know, fat
Speaker 2: dude who says, enough of the red tape in Washington,
Speaker 2: I'm going down there and I'll do it myself, damn it.
Speaker 2: They just love this vigilante narrative. So yeah, that's the movie.
Speaker 1: Even beyond I mean, yikes, even beyond some of the
Speaker 1: like odious depictions of child sexual abuse, it just sounds
Speaker 1: like a movie where you have a lot of questions
Speaker 1: like the choice to make this the hero like narrative,
Speaker 1: questions like oh, the choice to make the hero pretend
Speaker 1: to be an abuser, But they just want to be
Speaker 1: rooting for him. You know, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of questions about some of the some
Speaker 1: of the logic of the film, but you really hit
Speaker 1: on something with this idea that I think there is
Speaker 1: something very enticing to a certain audience of one white
Speaker 1: guy kind of going rogue and rushing in and bringing
Speaker 1: down an entire trafficking ring.
Speaker 3: That is, that is sort of enticing to right wing extremists, right.
Speaker 1: I think it mirrors how a lot of them talked
Speaker 1: about Trump, but a lot of QAnon people especially talked
Speaker 1: about Trump. And I also think that you know, when
Speaker 1: you talked about what some actual anti trafficking work looks like.
Speaker 1: It's not a guy kicking in a door and like
Speaker 1: machine gunning down rebels and grabbing kids and running out
Speaker 1: and then as soon as the bad guys are behind bars,
Speaker 1: the kids are just fine and go back to their
Speaker 1: normal lives.
Speaker 3: The work is long term. It's probably pretty boring.
Speaker 1: It probably involves a lot of like working with counselors
Speaker 1: and things like that. But that's not what these people
Speaker 1: are interested in. They're not interested in the long term,
Speaker 1: boring work. If it's not somebody kicking in a door
Speaker 1: and shooting a gun. They don't seem that invested, Like,
Speaker 1: why is that narve so enticing?
Speaker 2: Because you know it's it's revenge. You don't you don't
Speaker 2: actually want to solve a problem. You want to you
Speaker 2: want to take revenge on these people, and and and
Speaker 2: in a violent way. I mean, the QAnon central tenant
Speaker 2: is uh, the coming storm. You know, they were hoping
Speaker 2: that Trump one day would just say, you know, ladies
Speaker 2: and gentlemen, the storm was upon us. I have arrested, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, several million pedophiles who were in top government
Speaker 2: and media and entertainment positions. And you know, what they
Speaker 2: really yearned for, as is made clear in some of
Speaker 2: the death threats I've gotten, is like they want basically
Speaker 2: public executions of people that they think have touched children
Speaker 2: or whatever. That is. That is very explicit in in
Speaker 2: the feedback I've gotten and in a lot of q
Speaker 2: and On lore it is it is a pure violent fantasy.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think I think it's that simple. I
Speaker 2: think it's that I think it's a bloodlust. And you know,
Speaker 2: they've made they've constructed the most unforgivable possible villains for
Speaker 2: their worldview in order to kind of justify what they
Speaker 2: maybe wanted anyway, which is just to execute democrats, right, Like,
Speaker 2: you can't, you know, you can't. It's almost like you
Speaker 2: can't muse about, you know, hanging Joe Biden from the
Speaker 2: gallows unless you do the work to convince yourself that
Speaker 2: he has sexually assaulted children. And so that's why they
Speaker 2: always posting videos of Biden like sniffing kids or whatever
Speaker 2: their obsession is, right, Like, yeah, I think Biden's a
Speaker 2: weird has a weird, touchy relationship with the public, but
Speaker 2: you do have to do some work to say, okay,
Speaker 2: and he's actually in on this like pedophile cabal that's
Speaker 2: run out of the pizza restaurant in DC, and we're
Speaker 2: going to round all of them up and we will
Speaker 2: all have like the best day in American history when
Speaker 2: you know, all these people are hung from the gallows. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they are trying to justify essentially what is already violent
Speaker 2: feelings towards liberals on the left by you know, trying
Speaker 2: to prove that they're that they're guilty of the worst
Speaker 2: thing than any of us can imagine.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean side note, I live in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And I will never forget the day that someone brought
Speaker 1: a gun to Comet Ping Pong, and like what a.
Speaker 3: I'll just never forget that day.
Speaker 1: It just was like like something that I hadn't really
Speaker 1: spent that much time looking into or like hearing about.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden was like, oh, they brought like
Speaker 1: people like they someone brought a gun. Like it really
Speaker 1: was for me personally when all of this stuff that
Speaker 1: you were talking about before, like these online weird extremist
Speaker 1: pockets of the Internet, became very very real for me personally.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 1: Miles published a less than glowing review of Sound of
Speaker 1: Freedom for Rolling Stone, and afterwards became a target of
Speaker 1: extremists who argued that if anyone had anything negative to
Speaker 1: say about the film, they must secretly be involved in
Speaker 1: trafficking themselves. In fact, right before Miles and I spoke
Speaker 1: for this very interview, protesters were gathering outside of Rolling
Speaker 1: Stones's New York offices with signs referencing Miles by name.
Speaker 1: So I want to talk about the review that you
Speaker 1: wrote in Rolling Stone. It's called Sound of Freedom is
Speaker 1: a superhero movie for dads with brainworms.
Speaker 3: Great title.
Speaker 1: After writing that review, which is like, I think the
Speaker 1: title makes it sound like it's like jokey, but the
Speaker 1: review itself is actually quite measured and like thoughtful and
Speaker 1: well written. It's like clear that you deeply engaged with
Speaker 1: the film. That's is not like a service snark review.
Speaker 1: After that review was published, you've been getting these like
Speaker 1: pretty intense attacks.
Speaker 3: For that review. What has that been like for you
Speaker 3: to deal with?
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, people people worry about me, and I
Speaker 2: get that, but it's it's always been more irritating than scary.
Speaker 2: These people, you can tell, you know, even even the
Speaker 2: more I shouldn't say reasonable ones, but even even the
Speaker 2: less kind of threatening messages. These people don't really live
Speaker 2: in consensus reality that most of us would recognize. A
Speaker 2: lot of them think that I'm going to be arrested
Speaker 2: any minute, or I'm going to lose my job any minute. No,
Speaker 2: I have bosses who you know, wanted me to run
Speaker 2: this story and publish it for me and stand by
Speaker 2: me and stand by the stand by the review, which
Speaker 2: you know, as you said, it's it's not even that particular,
Speaker 2: that that extreme. It's just a negative review of a
Speaker 2: film that is nominally based on a true story. But
Speaker 2: it's mostly fictional, and you know, a lot of the
Speaker 2: a lot of the irate responses are boiled down to
Speaker 2: know this all really happened, you idiot. On the on
Speaker 2: the death threat side, it's pretty funny because what I
Speaker 2: see in them is a desire to become like the
Speaker 2: hero they're seeing on the screen. They want to become
Speaker 2: this avenging person. They want to come and find me
Speaker 2: and and kill me because they imagine me to be
Speaker 2: like the bad guys in the movie, and they want
Speaker 2: to be the good guy in the movie. Which is
Speaker 2: funny because the whole movie is an exercise in in LARPing.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like it's live action role play. It's
Speaker 2: like Tim himself, you know, has totally misrepresented what he does.
Speaker 2: He's acting like he's this savior that he's not. The
Speaker 2: movie then furthers that narrative and and and mythologizes him
Speaker 2: in a completely phony way to this to be this
Speaker 2: vigilante character. And then everyone who watches the movie gets
Speaker 2: to imagine themselves as that person. And one way they
Speaker 2: can do that is by finding someone who had a
Speaker 2: negative review of the film deciding that that person is
Speaker 2: also a child sex trafficker, because why else would you
Speaker 2: write a negative review of this movie unless you were
Speaker 2: trying to cover up something. They decide that I've like
Speaker 2: somehow outed myself, which by the way, would have been
Speaker 2: very stupid of me, Like if I were a child trafficker,
Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't go anywhere near this movie. But anyway,
Speaker 2: then they get to send me these really horrible emails
Speaker 2: where they are basically talking out of their ass, trying
Speaker 2: to sound really tough and scary, trying to sound like
Speaker 2: they're you know, it's all like I'm your worst nightmare,
Speaker 2: I'm coming to find you. I'm going to enjoy our conversation.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like they all try to sound like Liam Neeson
Speaker 2: and Taken, which is, you know, basically what the you know,
Speaker 2: if you made a better version of this movie, that
Speaker 2: it would probably be more like that, like like a
Speaker 2: like a Hollywood a real Hollywood action movie, because by
Speaker 2: the way, this movie is so boring. It has like
Speaker 2: no no real action or tension or narrative states at all.
Speaker 2: It's just it's just like trauma porn essentially, So that's
Speaker 2: what they try to sound like in these in these threats.
Speaker 2: For the most part, Sometimes they're just trying to convince
Speaker 2: me that, you know, crazy c stuff is real. Sometimes
Speaker 2: they're just saying that I worship Satan. Yeah, there are
Speaker 2: some protesters apparently right now at the you know, Rolling
Speaker 2: Stones offices in New York who have signs calling me
Speaker 2: and another colleague who wrote about, you know, trafficking in
Speaker 2: this movie, calling us demons, so that it doesn't make
Speaker 2: their side look totally on kilter, you know that, I
Speaker 2: don't know that you can really get new people, recruit
Speaker 2: new people to your movement if you are, you know,
Speaker 2: accusing somebody of drinking children's blood because of a movie
Speaker 2: review they wrote. It just it just doesn't comfort with
Speaker 2: like your actual stated goals as like, you know, it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Let's say this too. You know a lot of them,
Speaker 2: a lot of them think that trafficking is this huge problem.
Speaker 2: While does harassing me do anything to alleviate the problem
Speaker 2: of trafficking. No, it's just that's but that's what they're
Speaker 2: focused on because they think they've done the work by
Speaker 2: seeing this movie. They think that, you know, they're part
Speaker 2: of they're part of the solution now, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: they have plenty of free time to just yell at
Speaker 2: me I.
Speaker 1: On this show, we cover a lot of like harassment
Speaker 1: and hate campaigns, and particularly among people who are marginalized,
Speaker 1: but not all And something that is vc time and
Speaker 1: time again is how they people who are whipped into
Speaker 1: a frenzy and targeting somebody, they will take really innocuous,
Speaker 1: harmless things from their digital life or digital footprint and
Speaker 1: then like add this sort of conspiratorialchine, right, Like so
Speaker 1: you posted an innocuous and very cute shirtless selfie and
Speaker 1: you said like, oh, I'm having a slut moment, and
Speaker 1: people on the internet might like I'm not even sure
Speaker 1: what they're trying to say, Like it's like, this is
Speaker 1: the person who is against who doesn't want people to
Speaker 1: see this movie that's against sex trafficking, And it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure the the like through line that
Speaker 1: they're that they're trying to make other than that, like
Speaker 1: this totally innocuous, normal human behavior of posting a picture
Speaker 1: of yourself online is somehow like nefarious because you posted it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess they're looking for anything that they can
Speaker 2: use to paint me as some sort of sexual deviant,
Speaker 2: like if I have, like if I express any sexuality
Speaker 2: at all, which I will sometimes do online a.
Speaker 3: Human expressing sexuality. What are you? Are you? Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I like to mix it up. I
Speaker 2: like to flirt online all that stuff. And it's like, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, I could even I could even talk about
Speaker 2: having sex with an adult human woman and that would
Speaker 2: be somehow construed as like me being a pedophile, Like
Speaker 2: they would have no problem going for that. The other
Speaker 2: thing is, yeah, they will try to just they will
Speaker 2: just take random photos. You know, there's obviously a lot
Speaker 2: of photos of me around, and I don't know if
Speaker 2: they will like just put that up in the in
Speaker 2: their stories about me, as if it has anything to
Speaker 2: do with like what they're supposedly accusing me of. It's
Speaker 2: just like a convenient thing for so that people can
Speaker 2: then harass me, like based on how I look like
Speaker 2: a funny thing. I've been getting as is, some real weirdos,
Speaker 2: some real far out weirdos, are saying that they like
Speaker 2: they recognize my like physiognomy as being like a like
Speaker 2: a pedo or a deviant or whatever, Like it's literally
Speaker 2: like phrenology for child abusers. They think that they can
Speaker 2: like look at my skull shape and know that I am.
Speaker 2: You know that I'm like abusing children, like they literally
Speaker 2: think that it's It's pretty fucking wild. Some of it
Speaker 2: is just you know, baseline like bigotry, Like I do
Speaker 2: have people, I'm not Jewish, but I do have people,
Speaker 2: you know, calling me like a blood drinking jew or whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm not gay, but I have a lot of people
Speaker 2: using homophobic slurs, so whatever. You know, it's just happens
Speaker 2: to be that I like live in la and wear
Speaker 2: tank tops, so I guess I look gay enough to them,
Speaker 2: and yeah, so so so a lot of the a
Speaker 2: lot of the like spreading the pictures around, is just
Speaker 2: to give people something to latch onto in terms of
Speaker 2: like what they're going to say about you or how
Speaker 2: they're going to use your physical appearance to try to argue,
Speaker 2: you know, their non existent point. And sometimes having the
Speaker 2: pictures is just so uh that somebody can screen grab
Speaker 2: it and then email you your own photo and say like,
Speaker 2: now I know what you look like, like I'm coming
Speaker 2: to get you, and you know, I'm not too worried
Speaker 2: about that. Just because these are the same people who
Speaker 2: think that all major America and metropolis are war zones,
Speaker 2: that they would never slip in, and our head of
Speaker 2: security has you know, has tracked down a couple of
Speaker 2: the people who have sent me the death threats and said, oh,
Speaker 2: you know this so and zone never leaves like this
Speaker 2: hundred mile radius of this small little like you know,
Speaker 2: Middle America town that they live in, because of course
Speaker 2: not they didn't, and none of them really have the
Speaker 2: wherewith all our capability to find me, let alone you know,
Speaker 2: carry out of active domestic terror at my at my
Speaker 2: place at residence. So it's it's annoying and it's unhinged,
Speaker 2: but I will be okay.
Speaker 1: Have you ever experienced this kind of targeted hate campaign
Speaker 1: before or is this like a new thing?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, I mean I guess the last big one
Speaker 2: would have been some anti vaxers were very upset with me,
Speaker 2: because if you call an anti vaxxer an anti vaxxer,
Speaker 2: that's they view that as the worst insult in the world,
Speaker 2: and so they'll will harass you for like a good week. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and then you know, over the years, there's just been
Speaker 2: various other groups that really gave it to me. Ironically,
Speaker 2: I think the funniest or the or the nastiest comments
Speaker 2: I ever got were when I went inside like a
Speaker 2: Facebook group for women who like shame other women's engagement rings.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know exactly that proof you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Actually, I got in there and I reported on it
Speaker 2: and I was getting uh and those wine mombs were
Speaker 2: just harassing me for a week about that. That was
Speaker 2: pretty funny. So, you know, it does. It's not always
Speaker 2: a conspiracy group. It's not always right wingers. It's it's
Speaker 2: any any kind of like extreme enough community. If you
Speaker 2: report on them, honestly, they they'll come after you. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I've I've dealt with waves of abuse before on the right.
Speaker 2: Another one was, you know, I wrote, I wrote something
Speaker 2: about how companies that go woke don't actually go broke,
Speaker 2: and people have been and still bringing that up and
Speaker 2: still getting pretty mad, you know, and like, I'm sorry, Ann,
Speaker 2: how's their bush still exists? They're fine. It's it's you know,
Speaker 2: like you're not drinking a bod light, who cares? They
Speaker 2: still get They still get mad at that, but yeah,
Speaker 2: just just about anything. Usually the attention like wears off
Speaker 2: after a couple of days, Like they don't have they're
Speaker 2: not super committed to this stuff. For the most part,
Speaker 2: they forget they find something else that would get mad about.
Speaker 2: They find other people to harass, and then they come
Speaker 2: back to me weeks later about another article, like just
Speaker 2: totally not remembering that they were mad at me like
Speaker 2: two months ago. So they start all over again.
Speaker 1: More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: Sound of Freedom is doing well at the box office.
Speaker 1: It made over one hundred million dollars, selling almost nine
Speaker 1: million tickets, a new theatrical milestone for its production company,
Speaker 1: Angel Studios. It's playing at AMC Theaters, the largest theater
Speaker 1: chain of the United States. But if you believe some
Speaker 1: theater goers, this box office smash success has happened in
Speaker 1: spite of the best efforts of theaters to sabotage the movie.
Speaker 1: And this thing goes all the way from the bottom
Speaker 1: the fifteen year old person selling popcorn behind the counter,
Speaker 1: to the very tippy top to AMC CEO, who, for
Speaker 1: some reason, despite agreeing to show Sound of Freedom at
Speaker 1: six hundred locations nationwide, is now trying to keep people
Speaker 1: from seeing the movie through nefarious means. Now, obviously none
Speaker 1: of this is happening. It's just more conspiracy theories in
Speaker 1: the fantasies of the target audience of Sound of Freedom,
Speaker 1: the film is both being suppressed while also being wildly successful.
Speaker 1: Moviegoers have even taken to social media to complain that
Speaker 1: theaters are breaking the air conditioning, or turning the air
Speaker 1: conditioning up too high, or making the theater smell stinky,
Speaker 1: all in an effort to prevent people from seeing the truth,
Speaker 1: that is, seeing a movie they've already.
Speaker 3: Paid money for.
Speaker 1: Question Mark here's what AMC CEO Adam Aaron had to say. Sadly,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories are so prevalent in America, so much garbage
Speaker 1: information is spread. More than one million people have watched
Speaker 1: Sound of Freedom at AMC theaters, more than any other
Speaker 1: theater chain on the planet, Yet people falsely claim otherwise.
Speaker 3: It's so bizarre, and he's right.
Speaker 1: These are people who have been so taken in by
Speaker 1: conspiratorial thinking. A movie theater being chilly can only be
Speaker 1: evidence of a grand conspiracy with them at the center
Speaker 1: as both hero and victim. One big conspiracy theory about
Speaker 1: the film that I I'm really curious for your take
Speaker 1: that pedophiles and their protectors are like sabotaging showings of
Speaker 1: the film, so like the ac didn't work.
Speaker 3: The AC was working too well, that the sound was funky.
Speaker 1: Do these people no longer believe in a world where
Speaker 1: just coincidences or mistakes happen that, like, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: the AC doesn't work in an old theater. Is everything
Speaker 1: part of a grand conspiracy where they are at the center.
Speaker 2: Yes, well they wanted first of all, they want to
Speaker 2: be the protagonists. They want to be the hero and
Speaker 2: the victim at once. That's an important thing. So not
Speaker 2: only is the film so successful, but also we're being
Speaker 2: persecuted and the movies being suppressed. They just have to
Speaker 2: have it with ways, always have to be the protagonist,
Speaker 2: always have to be the victim. And yes, they are
Speaker 2: living in a world where, you know, it is actually
Speaker 2: a QAnon catchphrase, there are no coincidences. That's that's that's
Speaker 2: a tenet of the ideology. So no, they're not able
Speaker 2: to process anything that happens to them as anything other
Speaker 2: than connected to this vast web of conspiracy. So yeah,
Speaker 2: the mommy bloggers on TikTok who come out and say, oh,
Speaker 2: the AC wasn't working. I just had an email, a
Speaker 2: really deranged email from someone who insisted that AMC is
Speaker 2: spraying a bad smelling chemical into the theaters that are
Speaker 2: showing this, and I don't know, I think I've I
Speaker 2: think I've smelled something bad in a movie theater before
Speaker 2: and not really thought that that was part of connected
Speaker 2: to some larger plot. The movie has only been successful
Speaker 2: because it's showing in thousands of AMC theaters, As the
Speaker 2: CEO has kind of crankly pointed out time and again,
Speaker 2: you know, I think I wonder if he might be
Speaker 2: having some regrets about helping this film get the distribution
Speaker 2: it did, because yeah, he's they sold some, they suld
Speaker 2: some a million tickets or whatever, but it's it's it's
Speaker 2: not been a not been a picnic for them. I
Speaker 2: know that. If you go on Reddit, there's a really
Speaker 2: great subreddit I recommend where movie theater employees chat to
Speaker 2: each other and they are all just complaining about how
Speaker 2: terrible these audiences are, how rude they are, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to bring them in on the conspiracy beliefs, and yeah,
Speaker 2: like you know, one movie theater employee said they were
Speaker 2: not they weren't interested in and the patron was legging,
Speaker 2: you're too woke. You need to go see this movie.
Speaker 2: It's important, and you know, just really just really curmudgeingly
Speaker 2: weird old boomers who are who I think don't go
Speaker 2: to the movies that often anyway, are showing up for
Speaker 2: this one because I think it's their duty, their solemn duty,
Speaker 2: to see this movie. And then you know, they encounter
Speaker 2: the mild inconveniences that any of us might experience at
Speaker 2: any movie showing, and yeah, they have to build that
Speaker 2: into a drama, and a drama that is part of
Speaker 2: the larger scope of all the very stupid things they believe.
Speaker 3: Oof. I feel so bad for like the sixteen.
Speaker 1: Year old kids making a minimum wage serving popcorn at
Speaker 1: this theater, just thinking like, oh god, these people are
Speaker 1: going to come in and be the worst yea.
Speaker 2: And imagine thinking those kids are like CIA or something
Speaker 2: like right that they've been Oh I'm sorry, we planted
Speaker 2: We planted some high schoolers there to project the film
Speaker 2: upside down and slightly blurry for the first five minutes.
Speaker 2: Before you know, someone complained. It just boggles the mind.
Speaker 3: There is this.
Speaker 1: Real persecution complex happening that I find so peculiar, where
Speaker 1: you know, this idea that most people, whether they're in
Speaker 1: government or Hollywood or behind the counter, bid a movie
Speaker 1: theater that most people are like pro sex offender, pro
Speaker 1: child abuse, and that these people, well, they're the like
Speaker 1: minority few decent people who are fighting back. I think
Speaker 1: most people would agree most reasonable people are like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I obviously don't think abusing children is good. But yet
Speaker 1: they have like created this fantasy where everybody is pro
Speaker 1: child abuse except for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think if you went by their estimates, probably
Speaker 2: like ninety percent of the country our pedophiles, just like
Speaker 2: everyone everyone in a major city, anyone who doesn't go
Speaker 2: to church, anyone who's you know, doesn't doesn't get in
Speaker 2: on conservative boycotts and vote for Trump and this, that
Speaker 2: and the other. They are all in on it. And
Speaker 2: you know that's that's just a way to again sort
Speaker 2: of other eyes and dehumanize your political opponents, because you know,
Speaker 2: it's they're not really satisfied with having a political or
Speaker 2: policy disagreement, right, It's not good enough for them to say, oh,
Speaker 2: like we we we think taxes should be like this,
Speaker 2: or or you know, we think we think welfare should
Speaker 2: should operate this way. They're so they're so beyond that,
Speaker 2: and you know, I think I think it is just
Speaker 2: an element of the Christo fascism that underlies Q and
Speaker 2: on that relies on you know, not this not really
Speaker 2: being a political dispute, it is. It is a moral
Speaker 2: and it's a religious dispute. And you know, an element
Speaker 2: of an important element of fascism is to is to
Speaker 2: dehumanize your opponents, and that way you are justified in taking,
Speaker 2: you know, the most extreme possible action against them. So
Speaker 2: it just so happens that they have to throw about
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the country in that bucket in order
Speaker 2: to do it. But hey, they're all in on a
Speaker 2: grief minority rule anyway. I mean, that's how Trump, you know,
Speaker 2: got elected in the first place. It's the angry minority
Speaker 2: trying to ride rough shot over everyone else.
Speaker 1: Something that really bothers me about this whole conversation is
Speaker 1: how it actually would be good to have like substantive
Speaker 1: public conversations about things like trafficking or child sexual abuse,
Speaker 1: because those things are horrible and.
Speaker 3: They do happen.
Speaker 1: But because these extremists just hijack these conversations and make
Speaker 1: them about fantasies and nonsense, we're not able to have
Speaker 1: them because it just turns up the temperature too much.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the film Cutis, which we've talked about
Speaker 1: quite a bit on this on this podcast, and how
Speaker 1: like I had not seen Cutis, and I, you know,
Speaker 1: completely got like believed this horrible campaign that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's child pornography and this and that, And when I
Speaker 1: watched it for myself, I was like, Oh, it's fine
Speaker 1: if somebody didn't like this movie, but calling it child
Speaker 1: pornography is just not correct. I looked into all of
Speaker 1: the ways that like that conversation was completely hijacked by
Speaker 1: people who were not based in reality, and how easy
Speaker 1: it was for people who we're just sort of casually
Speaker 1: following it to be like, oh, it seems like this
Speaker 1: movie was bad.
Speaker 3: Even today, I.
Speaker 1: See so many people saying like this movie was proof
Speaker 1: positive that Netflix and Hollywood is run by child abusers.
Speaker 1: Even when I was researching but this conversation, I saw
Speaker 1: somebody tweet like, oh, well, of course Miles didn't like
Speaker 1: Sound Deaf Freedom because he really liked this pervert movie
Speaker 1: and it links to a rolling Stone piece.
Speaker 3: I guess I wonder, are we past the.
Speaker 1: Fact where we can have public conversation about these issues
Speaker 1: that are so important in ways that are real that
Speaker 1: actually are grounded in what trafficking looks like and how
Speaker 1: to prevent it, or the kinds of pressure that young
Speaker 1: girls like like in the movie Acuties are actually facing.
Speaker 1: Everything seems to be just so skewed toward fantasy and
Speaker 1: inflammatory nonsense. Have you lost the ability to have these
Speaker 1: real conversations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I think it is something we
Speaker 2: have to really concentrate on fighting. Know that the the
Speaker 2: irony of the whole Cuties thing. By the way, I've
Speaker 2: never seen that. I didn't write that article. That's just
Speaker 2: another Stone article from before I worked here, And I
Speaker 2: did get a lot of responses of you know, you
Speaker 2: must have loved Cuties whatever, you know, the which I think,
Speaker 2: you know was accused of sexualizing the children, about doing
Speaker 2: it from a satirical point of view, I don't know.
Speaker 2: But the the funny thing is Sound of Freedom is
Speaker 2: also sexualizing children. There there's an entire scene of this
Speaker 2: trafficker woman who's kind of getting the girl dolled up,
Speaker 2: like she's getting, you know, doing a beauty pageant, which
Speaker 2: I think is what Cuties is about.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: She's like she's, you know, she's doing her hair, she's putting,
Speaker 2: she's putting a lipstick on her even though she's only
Speaker 2: like seven years old. You know, this is all They're
Speaker 2: doing the same thing in a sense. Uh, they are
Speaker 2: sensationalizing this and they and they are enjoying the spectacle
Speaker 2: of you know, these children being trafficked. It's really horrible
Speaker 2: on the on the ability to have the conversation, Yeah,
Speaker 2: we are too many people are really caving, I think
Speaker 2: too to these outside pressures. I was just reading a
Speaker 2: story about in Michigan about this woman who ran a
Speaker 2: nonprofit for children who were sexually abused. And she had
Speaker 2: she had run this for about twenty five years, doing
Speaker 2: really important, really good work to help these children who
Speaker 2: had been traumatized and so and so horribly treated. She
Speaker 2: was basically forced to retire early by a mob in
Speaker 2: the in the county that was, you know, calling for
Speaker 2: her head because the nonprofit had happened to support a
Speaker 2: pride campaign. So these anti groomer lunatics showed up, uh
Speaker 2: at you know, city council just demanded that she go.
Speaker 2: And you know, this is someone who was like going
Speaker 2: to retire like maybe next year. She's like she's like,
Speaker 2: fuck it, I'm just leaving now. I'm I don't want
Speaker 2: to deal with this, and that is something we have
Speaker 2: seen in school boards and all local governments all across
Speaker 2: the country. Is a lot of reasonable people don't want
Speaker 2: to sit there and be screamed at by conspiracy theorists
Speaker 2: like at every public meeting, so they just leave and
Speaker 2: then the craziest takeover. So that's that's a real problem,
Speaker 2: and that's part of the reason we're not able to
Speaker 2: have these conversations is that a lot of these institutions
Speaker 2: are being taken over by people who believe this crazy stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, I did get I did get a threatening
Speaker 2: email from a guy who's literally on like a mental
Speaker 2: health board in the county where he's from. So I
Speaker 2: had to pour that to like his his boss basically
Speaker 2: and say, like, you know, it's this guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, imagine sending you that attached to your real name,
Speaker 1: your employment.
Speaker 2: He had his phone number in the email, Like it's
Speaker 2: just I don't know. It just goes to show you
Speaker 2: how far gone they are and and how you know,
Speaker 2: how detached they are from the consequences of what they're
Speaker 2: saying and doing because they think they're right and they
Speaker 2: think they will be vindicated in the end. But you
Speaker 2: know that storm is never going to come. They're never
Speaker 2: going to get the big finale they're waiting for. But
Speaker 2: they can just keep putting it off forever and keep
Speaker 2: doubling down and keep accusing everyone else of all the
Speaker 2: stuff that you know, oh actually, like you know, it's
Speaker 2: probably the youth pastor in your town who's abusing kids.
Speaker 2: But you know, sure keep emailing me.
Speaker 1: You know, you write in your review that the film
Speaker 1: is like, for the most part, kind of grounded in
Speaker 1: our universe, as opposed to being like completely completely over
Speaker 1: the top and like overtly Qanani.
Speaker 3: Do you think.
Speaker 1: That that is to sort of draw more people who
Speaker 1: might think of themselves as more moderate into all of this.
Speaker 2: Well, to be clear, the movie was finished before QAnon
Speaker 2: really took hold. I think it was finished in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 2: so they didn't really even have the opportunity to make
Speaker 2: it as crazy as you know, some of the stuff
Speaker 2: that Jim Cavizel says, Becausekvizel says that they're drinking children's
Speaker 2: blood and harvesting their adrenochrome and all that, there was
Speaker 2: never going to be uh that kind of stuff in
Speaker 2: the film, because it's just too, it was made too
Speaker 2: long ago. What what is useful about that? For from
Speaker 2: the point of view of recruitment is, yes, it does
Speaker 2: seem more reasonable, and it does seem like a more
Speaker 2: a more grounded cry for justice. The average person who
Speaker 2: went in there without any context would maybe think the
Speaker 2: movie was like a little bit slow and and and depressing,
Speaker 2: but they would not think to immediately uh, connect it
Speaker 2: to like some wilder conspiracy theories. It's it's useful because
Speaker 2: it taps into the same ground level fears that get
Speaker 2: people into QAnon, you know, save the children campaigns, that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. If you can be convinced that this
Speaker 2: is a problem the way invalid in his organization had
Speaker 2: described it, then you are much more susceptible to believe
Speaker 2: the crazier and crazier things that have emerged basically since
Speaker 2: they finished making this movie, because that the crazy QAnon
Speaker 2: stuff is built on the original conception of just oh,
Speaker 2: there's two million children get snatched off the street every year.
Speaker 2: You know, that was the starting point, you know when
Speaker 2: Oure was founded in like twenty thirteen, that that's the
Speaker 2: narrative there, and we need to we need to have
Speaker 2: a rescue industry we need to parachute in there and
Speaker 2: get them. That was the starting point, and that was
Speaker 2: you know, all very catered to a religious crowd, to
Speaker 2: a right wing crowd, and it eventually mistastasized into the
Speaker 2: q andon we know today. So in a way, what
Speaker 2: you're seeing with this movie is a predecessor to to
Speaker 2: a lot of the views that followed, and in that sense, it,
Speaker 2: you know, it could very easily be the thing that
Speaker 2: gets people down the rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: Do you see it being used as a recruitment tool
Speaker 1: long term?
Speaker 2: I was joking with some friends on another podcast because
Speaker 2: I think everyone has, at least anyone who went to
Speaker 2: public school has the experience of a Remember when they
Speaker 2: showed us this movie in health class for some reason,
Speaker 2: because I was supposed to teach us something. I mean
Speaker 2: I remember learning about like, uh like menopause and uh
Speaker 2: a menstruation, both from two different special episodes at the
Speaker 2: Bill Cosby Show. So we were joking that like, uh,
Speaker 2: that someday this is going to be shown in like
Speaker 2: schools that that uh, you know, possibly even well meaning
Speaker 2: health teacher and maybe a conservative area would say, oh
Speaker 2: I should I should show like my ninth grader this
Speaker 2: movie to warn them about the dangers of human trafficking
Speaker 2: or you know, something like that, Like I really do
Speaker 2: think it will be held up as this, you know,
Speaker 2: important message movie, and like you know, potentially, yes, you
Speaker 2: could use it to on the path to like indoctrination
Speaker 2: as far as just trying to convince people who young
Speaker 2: and old that that this is the reality of trafficking.
Speaker 2: And you know you saw that on the Q and
Speaker 2: on boards too when it came out. They were very
Speaker 2: excited about some older audiences seeing this. They were pleased
Speaker 2: that it wasn't too crazy because it wouldn't it wouldn't
Speaker 2: turn off the average viewer right away, they might be
Speaker 2: drawn deeper into into the conspiracy rabbit hole. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know how long term successful it can be,
Speaker 2: just because it is a really bad, unpleasant film, like
Speaker 2: on the face of it, and it would probably be
Speaker 2: more effective it was better made, more and more entertaining.
Speaker 3: A well written movie.
Speaker 2: No no, And and I think we actually already have
Speaker 2: hit our upper limit on like who is going to
Speaker 2: see it? I think everyone who was going to see
Speaker 2: it has seen it, so it will be up to
Speaker 2: those people to I don't know, try to force it
Speaker 2: on their children, which is again when I'm my my
Speaker 2: friends and I were joking about it on another podcast,
Speaker 2: which is, yeah, can can they keep it going? Can
Speaker 2: they sustain it as this like emblematic you know, triumph?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know that they would even
Speaker 2: bother too, because they again, they get so distracted so easily,
Speaker 2: they just move on to the next thing. And you know,
Speaker 2: once they're done supporting this, there's going to be something
Speaker 2: else in Angel Studios, you know, is gearing up to
Speaker 2: release a few more movies, and you know they're going
Speaker 2: to be They're going to be the big i think,
Speaker 2: right wing religious alternative to like Hollywood production. So we're
Speaker 2: likely to just get more stories and you know about
Speaker 2: other other other themes that appeal to this demographic, and
Speaker 2: they're just going to to those movies instead and probably
Speaker 2: forget about this one.
Speaker 1: I could absolutely see this movie being shown to health
Speaker 1: classes in a like five years time I went to
Speaker 1: school in the South.
Speaker 3: This is this is exactly the kind of movie they
Speaker 3: would have shown us.
Speaker 1: And I think I've said this on the show before,
Speaker 1: but before the first time I traveled to Europe, my
Speaker 1: dad was like, you've got to watch this documentary about
Speaker 1: staying safe overseas and it was taken.
Speaker 3: I was like, it's not a documentary.
Speaker 1: One of my last questions for you is, you know
Speaker 1: I have seen possibly like well meaning people say that
Speaker 1: even if this film is not an accurate representation of trafficking,
Speaker 1: which it's not, it's still good because it raises awareness
Speaker 1: about the issue.
Speaker 3: And like any awareness is good awareness.
Speaker 2: You know, what do you say to that, you know,
Speaker 2: awareness is overrated anyway? Who cares? If you're aware? That's
Speaker 2: it's it's a pet peeve of mine, honestly, to be like,
Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't it doesn't even have to apply
Speaker 2: to this, you know, like awareness of breast cancer, Like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm aware of it, but like my awareness doesn't really
Speaker 2: contribute to solving the problem, right, That's one two. I
Speaker 2: don't think awareness can have any value if it if
Speaker 2: the awareness you have is misrepresentation of the issue, it
Speaker 2: doesn't help people to be misinformed. And that's what this
Speaker 2: movie is. It's misinformation. There's a lot you could read,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of other trafficking organizations you
Speaker 2: could listen to, but that's not just like a two
Speaker 2: hour movie. You can PLoP down with your popcorn and
Speaker 2: feel like you've accomplished something. So no, it's the awareness
Speaker 2: is not Awareness is not helpful?
Speaker 3: Yeah at all, Miles is right.
Speaker 1: I think we've awarenessed the discourse around trafficking so much
Speaker 1: that the way we talk about it is no longer
Speaker 1: grounded in reality anymore. So how could that awareness ever
Speaker 1: be helpful? The actual red flags and warning signs have
Speaker 1: taken a backseat to fantasy and urban legend. When Carly
Speaker 1: Russell wanted to fake her own abduction, it's telling that
Speaker 1: she just recreated something that sounds like it's out of
Speaker 1: a movie. It tells me that our understanding of the
Speaker 1: issue has been completely warped by misrepresentations masquerading as raising awareness,
Speaker 1: and in the end, it actually makes us.
Speaker 3: All less safe.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear more of my thoughts specifically
Speaker 1: on the Carly Russell abduction hoax and what it says
Speaker 1: about our discourse around trafficking.
Speaker 3: Check out our patreon at patreon dot com. Slash tengoty.
Speaker 1: So as soon as I heard her say that, I
Speaker 1: was like, this story is probably going to turn out
Speaker 1: to be more than me, more than it sounds. I
Speaker 1: didn't know you know the lengths to which this was
Speaker 1: a hoax. At that point, like I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: wait and see. But I saw people that I trusted
Speaker 1: retweeting that story, and I can totally understand why even
Speaker 1: though I knew that something more was happening to this
Speaker 1: story than a woman being kidnapped in trafficked, I still
Speaker 1: didn't want to openly be like she's lying or something
Speaker 1: is not right here. I think it's the same reason
Speaker 1: that a lot of people felt that when it comes
Speaker 1: to black women or other marginalized people, we are not
Speaker 1: often listened to or supported or believed when we speak
Speaker 1: up about facing abuse when something is happening to us,
Speaker 1: right Like, we know that marginalized people are overwhelmingly likely
Speaker 1: to be the victims of crimes, yet our stories are
Speaker 1: often underreported or not told at all. And so I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the reasons why even though I
Speaker 1: didn't think this story was like on the up and up,
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna be like, she's lying whatever, because it's
Speaker 1: this weird thing where you don't want to be the
Speaker 1: person that is not believing of black women when we
Speaker 1: know black women are so statistically unlikely to be believed,
Speaker 1: got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 1: just want to say hi. You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tenggody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio, an unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 1: is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and.
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