00:00:52.860And I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.680I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.260Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.820These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.640Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.260If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.640Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:01:45.360Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:51.260There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:03.620I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:09.040So it has been a little while since we've done a news roundup.
00:02:12.380Folks might have noticed that we took a little bit of a break, which, Mike, honestly, is not my favorite thing.
00:02:19.360I, believe it or not, I really value sitting down and just riffing and giving my takes on some news stories and what's going on every week.
00:02:27.500But as you know, we sat down to do it, I think, was that two weeks ago now?
00:02:32.800And I don't know if it was just the news was really getting to me.
00:02:37.880I kind of caught myself really needing a break.
00:02:41.140I imagine that if I was feeling that way, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that the listeners were also feeling that way, just sort of feeling a little bit overwhelmed.
00:02:48.880needing a break. It's hard because, you know, it's important to stay informed. But one of the
00:02:54.200drawbacks of being informed and staying informed is that sometimes it is truly just such a bummer.
00:03:00.700100%. Like the news can be pretty depressing. And yeah, sometimes you just need a break.
00:03:09.340And it really made me think about sort of what we do here on the show, the news roundup.
00:03:14.880I always try to talk about stories that you might not hear elsewhere.
00:03:19.260I might start with a story that everybody's talking about or throw a couple in there if I really am interested to talk about it.
00:03:24.180But I try to have this be something that, you know, you're not going to hear stories necessarily that you would hear anywhere else.
00:03:31.300I try very hard to not talk about the president because unless I have a reason, unless it's like there is a reason to talk about what he's doing or what he said.
00:03:41.040Otherwise, it would just be him all the time.
00:03:44.320And who wants that? There's such a thing as Trump fatigue.
00:03:47.000I think for me, especially some of the Epstein files stuff were really getting to me.
00:03:52.720That was the week that I decided I needed a little bit of a break was an Epstein heavy week.0.99
00:04:00.160And I think it's one of those things where it's a story that everybody's talking about, rightly so.0.96
00:04:04.720But I think we can forget that it's actually a story about horrific abuse and the survivors of that abuse are still around.
00:04:12.040They're like participating in the conversation. And I just something about that, the way that some of the tenor of the conversation was going, it just was hard for me to stay pretty checked in with.
00:04:24.200I did have a little bit of a mild spin out about everything. I'm fine, but it was just a little bit of a rough time. And I just I think that's part of showing up in today's media and news climate where sometimes you're like, you know what, I don't have the mental and emotional capacity for this right now. I need to like not be so checked in for a little bit and come back when I'm feeling more fortified.
00:04:47.380I think it's a good instinct to take care of yourself, make sure that you're in a place where you can show up and contribute. And, you know, in your case, as someone in media, help people stay informed.
00:05:02.300And, you know, I think with the, I mean, I was going to say 24-hour news cycle, but it's like, it feels like we've been saying that for 30 years and it's much faster.
00:05:14.820But, like, things happen so quickly, especially with this Trump administration and their explicit strategy of flooding the zone with horrible stories designed to overwhelm people like us.
00:05:27.320i think it can be tempting to feel like every day is a new crisis and there's urgency to respond to
00:05:35.160this thing right now um but you just can't sustain that indefinitely so uh i'm glad you took a little
00:05:41.620break so yeah i'm just curious i wanted to do a sort of listener check-in you can let us know
00:05:48.360you can email us you can hit us up on spotify comments i genuinely want to know one just how
00:05:53.740are folks feeling with everything and then two you know what is our is if you haven't maybe you're
00:06:00.760like i'm listening to the podcast i like bridget i like mike i like joey i'm the sort of philosophical
00:06:07.860bent of where you end up and what you end up talking about is not something i'm that interested
00:06:11.120in i just like the show that is totally fine i appreciate you we're so happy that you're here
00:06:14.680but if you do have thoughts or feedback about how you engage with news in this moment you know
00:06:20.180especially things like news roundouts. Do you want to hear the hard hitting stories that
00:06:26.480everybody's talking about? Do you want to? Are you are you looking for a little bit of an escape
00:06:30.100from that? Like, I don't know. I find it's such a complicated thing. I find myself in the last two
00:06:36.720weeks, I found myself really gravitating toward escapism and stories that I could really just sort
00:06:41.100of nerd out about. And I hate this feeling of, oh, well, I'm turning to escapism to get a break
00:07:42.220and, two, were kind of a bellwether for where we're all at?
00:07:46.580It was it was every ad was crypto, gambling, AI, crypto, AI.
00:07:54.380Yeah, it's kind of a reflection of the weird, depressing state of our economy, I guess.
00:08:02.880Like those are the companies just making the most money, just bringing it in from from workers and redistributing it to a handful of billionaires.
00:08:15.000Yeah, you mean our scam economy built on a Ponzi scheme of robbing Peter to pay Paul that is currently propping up our entire economic system?
00:08:23.800Yeah, that's the one. That's what they're advertising.
00:08:26.500You know, my old foe, Ring, owned by Amazon, made an appearance. Y'all know I hate Ring.
00:08:34.100I mean, this will be spicy with some of our listeners, especially if you live in the suburbs. I live in the city.
00:08:39.480So I when I visit my friends or visit home in the burbs, I am always surprised by how ubiquitous ring is, how it's just everywhere, everywhere.
00:08:50.140Everyone has it. It's just like infrastructure that people don't really question that much.
00:08:54.480Or maybe they do question or they say, but they say, like, I'm not going to be the only person without a ring.
00:08:58.240So I get it. I care about safety. I care about security. But I hate ring.
00:09:03.740Ring is the police. Ring is surveillance.
00:09:06.100If you have ring in your house, you are basically snitching on yourself to the police.
00:09:11.140Side note, I know we talked about this.
00:09:13.740I don't know if you watch Real Housewives of Potomac.
00:09:15.720Wendy Osefo, she was, her and her husband were arrested for insurance fraud charges.
00:09:21.660And when I went, I'm obsessed with Real Housewives of Potomac.
00:09:24.580I was very surprised when this news dropped.
00:09:26.880When she was arrested, I went through the investigative documents.
00:09:31.060And one of the things I could not believe was that she has not been found guilty of a crime.
00:09:35.120She's still going through the court process. But one of the things I was shocked by is that she is being accused of staging a fake burglary while she was out of town and then calling the police and reporting a bunch of luxury goods on her insurance, getting the insurance money and then still having those luxury goods like physically present in the house.
00:09:55.300Like that's what she's being accused of. When the police came, they noted that she has a ring camera in like an outdoor ring camera facing her driveway and a camera inside of her house.
00:10:06.820And during the time that she claimed she was out of town and being robbed by people who broke in to take her luxury goods, neither of those cameras showed any suspicious activity.
00:10:16.800So I'm thinking if you are allegedly, as Wendy O'Setho is being accused of doing, committing some kind of a fraud in your home, why would you have a ring camera that is a camera that like record stuff for the police?
00:10:31.080You just recorded yourself. You just become your own app. What are you doing?
00:10:34.560It's really bad practice. Yeah. Like if you're going to be doing financial crimes, don't have surveillance devices in your home, you know, like pointed at the scene of the crime. It's it's it's a really like mind boggling story. Like I I would have expected more from Wendy. You know, maybe maybe she was burgled by a ghost.
00:10:58.840i mean that's what i'm saying i think that the concept of ring cameras amazon has been so good
00:11:08.680at making them so ubiquitous like really making us believe that you have to have one that if you
00:11:14.840don't have one you're basically being negligent so even if you're someone who and i also think
00:11:19.080there's a i'm kind of going waxing philosophical about this now but i also think there's a dynamic
00:11:24.260at play where people where the assumption the default assumption is I have a ring camera to
00:11:31.180look at other people other people are going to be doing things I need to be aware of other people
00:11:37.860and the idea that like oh I've that camera would be recording me and my actions and that would be
00:11:43.520going to the police I think that doesn't really occur to people because I think that we've
00:11:47.560normalized the idea that surveillance is about other people I'm fine I don't even if I'm doing
00:11:53.000a mild financial crime in out from within my home i'm fine that's what i that's the old to me that's
00:12:01.120the only thing that that makes it make sense why you would be doing crimes and also have a ring
00:12:07.240camera in your home while you do them i think you're exactly right i think the idea of surveillance
00:12:13.220has just been so normalized to the extent people are thinking about it i think you're right that
00:12:20.340They're like, oh, it's it's for other people.
00:12:39.100Well, I don't know if you saw that ad for Ring's new service search party during the Super Bowl.
00:12:46.240It's an ad that really exploits our love of pets and dogs and basically posits that with Ring,
00:12:52.860when a pet is reported missing, the search party feature that is turned on by default, mind you,
00:12:59.820allows Ring doorbell cameras to scan the footage across Ring devices in any neighborhood,
00:13:04.360using AI to identify the potential dog match among many personal devices along a network.
00:13:11.080They made this ad seem super heartwarming, like, oh, missing pets.
00:13:15.580oh this is so sweet but pretty much everybody who saw this ad was a collective boo i do side note i
00:13:24.440do think that the super bowl revealed how fed up with this kind of stuff we are i think that
00:13:29.340more like if you're listening to this podcast you you probably are already on the side of this but
00:13:35.180i think more and more like normie americans are fed up with this dynamic that you described where
00:13:41.700more and more of our rights, our money, our data, our privacy are being extracted from private
00:13:47.880citizens and handed over to a small number of billionaires for their profit. I think that
00:13:54.760something about seeing ad after ad after ad on the Super Bowl really just shows what garbage this0.99
00:14:00.160all is. And I think Americans are starting to wake up and say, actually, do I want this?0.61
00:14:04.500I agree. And I actually am like pretty heartened by the response to this ring ad for exactly that reason. It does seem like something about that broke through that these norms are changing and people like the general public who haven't been super clued into these conversations about ring and flock and all of the other everyday devices that that are sold to us as helpful, but are actually spying on us.
00:14:34.500uh i think people are starting to notice like wait that this this is not good like i don't
00:14:40.860and i'm not sure if it's just the ubiquity of them and the sheer number i also have to wonder if all
00:14:46.760the news about ice has sort of changed the conversation about people's uh perception of what
00:14:54.820like who who might be looking at this footage right like it's one thing when it's the police
00:15:02.820A lot of people, I think, have pretty favorable views of the police because they keep our neighborhoods safe for some people.
00:15:12.680But like ICE, I think, has really changed that where you have these masked goons dragging people out of their cars and like arresting kids and shooting people, acting really violently.
00:15:24.080uh so i i have to wonder if it's been like a convergence of these things that uh that have
00:15:31.460led to this moment where i i've personally been quite surprised by the backlash to this ad uh
00:15:37.680but pleasantly so yeah this is a little bit of a non-sequitur but we did this great interview with
00:15:43.080um the attorney for mel kirk that trans grad student who was pulled from classes after that
00:15:49.040student wrote that paper and she lives in Minnesota and she was telling me one of the
00:15:54.860things like we were talking about what was going on in Minnesota and she was like also the ICE0.97
00:15:58.820agents they all drive like assholes and I was just thinking what like even if you were someone0.93
00:16:03.700and she like she obviously is not but let's say that you were someone who was nominally supportive0.98
00:16:09.140of police but then you have 3,000 federal ICE agents descending on your small town and they0.55
00:16:15.400drive around the streets like assholes yeah i was just surprised but i was like oh yeah that would0.52
00:16:20.840be something of note that would that would that would turn the public even even a potentially0.96
00:16:26.000sympathetic public against the actions of what these people are doing something i want to say
00:16:30.720about ring is that you know amazon and ring they did not invent using technology for nefarious
00:16:38.960purposes of surveillance and control and harm that they certainly did not invent that the thing that
00:16:45.040bothers me so much about Ring is that they want to make lots of money by building this kind of
00:16:51.300surveillance technology that harm that I believe harms us all. And they want the public to have
00:16:56.660warm, fuzzy connotations with their product. That's a great point, Bridget. You know, I was
00:17:00.840just listening to an episode of the great podcast Sawbones, where they were talking about the history
00:17:06.360of tear gas and uh you know it was developed it's a whole category of different chemical agents
00:17:15.600actually it's not just one thing uh but they were developed as part of world war one has like
00:17:21.380military grade weapons and then after the war ended these big chemical manufacturing giants
00:17:29.940in the U.S. wanted, you know, they needed to create a market to keep selling these products.
00:17:36.700And so they pushed this big public awareness campaign about how tear gas could be used
00:17:45.720by police departments to help protect the peace and disperse mobs and used as a defensive
00:17:53.060weapon for safety, which I think is a little bit analogous to what you're saying here.
00:17:58.620It is sort of a now guess, but Ring isn't just saying, oh, it's we're we're it's not just crime and police. It's also heartwarming moments with your kids. It's also funny pet videos.
00:18:15.940You know, I don't know if you recall this. Ring once asked us here at this podcast to make an ad that basically described Ring camera footage as the new version of America's Funniest Home Videos that they were really trying to sort of say like, oh, what we're trying to do is tell people the ways that Ring can be used to capture funny or heartwarming footage that you would want to have for your family.
00:18:39.900So would you be willing to summarize and run down some of those instances for Ring? Obviously, the answer was a hard no. But I think that demonstrates it's not just that they want to be seen as, oh, we have other use cases. It is. So I think that your tear gas analogy does sort of work.
00:18:57.920But also, it would be like if the people who made tear gas were like, also, you could use tear gas to when you're having a party and you want everybody to go home, just launch tear gas in your kitchen and people will leave.
00:19:09.380And that'll be a cuddly use case of it.
00:19:12.960I am getting a great image of like Joan Cleaver being like, OK, party's over.1.00
00:19:18.940Time for the tear gas, like wafting through the kitchen.
00:19:21.440uh you know i think one of the things that makes this that dynamic that you just described so
00:19:26.780dystopian like yes that's exactly what they're doing it's like the sort of thing that an orwellian
00:19:35.120government would do like a duplicitous ad campaign to trick people into being surveilled but that's
00:19:42.180not actually what's happening here it's i i don't think amazon is actually interested in
00:19:48.000surveilling people for law enforcement. That's just an unfortunate byproduct.
00:19:53.100I think they're doing all of this, building the surveillance equipment,
00:19:56.720creating these campaigns to sell it to us with cute, cuddly photos and jokes. They're doing
00:20:02.060all of it just to sell more widgets and harvest our data so they can sell other widgets as well.
00:20:09.300Yes. This is from CNBC. In recent years, the company had adopted a softer image,
00:20:14.100positioning its devices as tools to capture porch pirates and family-friendly hijinks.
00:20:19.080After founder Jamie Sminoff returned as CEO last year,
00:20:22.720the company has re-embraced its original mission of fighting crime.
00:24:48.880It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:24:56.780Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:25:05.940Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:26:54.940at Salesforce's internal conference in Las Vegas.
00:26:57.580he asked all of the international employees who had traveled to the United States for this event
00:27:03.700specifically, he asked them all to stand. So these are people who are probably a lot of immigrants,
00:27:08.420probably a lot of them working on visas, not living in the United States. He asked them all
00:27:12.160to stand before joking that ICE agents were present and monitoring them. This joke, I'm going
00:27:19.540to put that in quotes, drew boos from the crowd. Several employees told media outlets, there's a
00:27:26.440great piece in 404 Media that's almost like a real-time play-by-play of all the different
00:27:31.680staffers reaching out to 404 anonymously to be like, uh, can you believe he said this? You should
00:27:37.040report that he said this. He said this. Y'all, the GP already said he said this. So that gives
00:27:40.580you a sense of how much people were not feeling this joke. And I, I mean, one of the things about
00:27:45.200a joke is that it's generally not just a true statement of fact. I suspect ICE was monitoring
00:27:52.140many of them. Well, when the recording of his speech was published on the internal Salesforce,
00:27:58.140wouldn't you know it, there was some sort of glitch, and that little bit of the speech that
00:28:02.020drew booze was not included in the recording. Isn't that weird? Oh, wow. Yeah, it is weird. I guess
00:28:07.780maybe the batteries in the video cameras must have died or something. This is wild to me. According
00:28:14.340to the news outlet Inc., that was not even his only joke about ICE at the event, because later
00:28:21.060in that meeting, he asked the audience how many of them had not yet used a Slackbot tool before
00:28:25.760joking about ICE being there again. And then he also commented that he wasn't sure what Bad Bunny's
00:28:31.520Super Bowl halftime show was about. But then he threw that in there too. Like, who's this audience
00:28:37.860here? This just sounds like you're like, kind of out of touch Republican uncle just
00:28:44.740free associating things that he doesn't like about culture. What's with all these? What's
00:28:50.340with all these foreign language movies back in my day we had american movies like the wizard of
00:28:56.100oz and gone with the wind whatever happened to that like he's just is he i'm it just sounded
00:29:01.200like his tight vibe on how culture has changed yeah like like i don't know if he's going to give
00:29:07.080me a werther's original or or go on bill maher so it's an especially messed up thing considering
00:29:12.660that salesforce has contracts with ice and this has been really controversial from within the
00:29:18.540company. And after he made this, this joke, I don't, I, it's being reported as a joke. I don't,
00:29:25.700I want to be clear. I don't think it's a joke. It does not have the cadence of a joke to me. I'm not
00:29:28.940sure who would be the, the, what the punchline is, but sure. Well, after that, now almost 1500
00:29:38.000employees have signed an open letter asking him to cut business ties with ICE. In the letter,
00:29:43.940the employees say that they are deeply troubled by media reports detailing Salesforce's pitch to
00:29:48.660use its AI to help the agency expeditiously hire 10,000 new agents and vet tip line reports.
00:29:56.100And yeah, I mean, I just think I don't understand how somebody makes a comment like that and then
00:30:01.720doubles and seemingly triples down on it. I just think it's what happens when tech CEOs are just
00:30:07.580so insulated from the consequences of the technology that they're building and even
00:30:14.160the the real ramifications for the people that they are employing it just i i think you really
00:30:22.700got to be i think i think it's very very revealing it is i i have to wonder how much of it is driven
00:30:30.740by that same normalization of surveillance that you were just talking about in the last segment
00:30:35.700about, you know, this idea that like, oh, surveillance and law enforcement, that's for
00:30:42.040other people. Surely all of you employees who have traveled here from abroad aren't at any risk,
00:30:49.840when in fact, a lot of them probably are at risk, right? Like there's so many stories in the news of
00:30:54.320people with visas, citizens also, but especially people who are here in the U.S. legally on some
00:31:03.720kind of a visa, oftentimes working, getting arrested and detained by ICE for long periods.
00:31:09.960I just read a story about some guy from Ireland who was here on a visa, got detained for like
00:31:13.520three months. So the risk to these workers is very real. And yeah, I have to wonder if
00:31:21.600he just assumed it isn't because Benioff surely is not at risk of getting picked up by ICE.
00:31:30.040And so therefore, neither is anybody else in his mind.
00:31:34.240I also think it's an indication of how tech leaders are feeling about the climate.
00:31:38.740You know, I think other than the federal government, my understanding is tech has been the number one industry by being targeted for layoffs.
00:31:47.000And so I think that he I almost wonder and maybe I'm putting too much past this guy, but I almost wonder if this is him kind of testing the waters of like, what can I get away with?
00:31:57.760What can I say? What horrible thing can I say? And you all basically just have to like nervously laugh through it, even though he got booze because you want to keep this job, because your visa depends on this job.
00:32:10.760I almost wonder if that's what's going on, is that, you know, for a long time, tech workers were really advocating it from within their companies. And I think that it's almost like a show that, oh, the tides have turned. You all are just grateful to have a job. I can get up here and say whatever I want. I don't have any kind of consequences. I'm not worried about it at all.
00:32:30.700But we see how that gamble played off because we're reading about it in a million different news outlets.
00:32:37.220He was audibly booed by his own people.
00:32:39.400And now he's got this open letter from his staff asking him to cut ties with ICE.
00:32:43.540So I think he might have miscalculated on this one.
00:32:46.740Yeah, I mean, who knows what he is thinking?
00:32:49.620I read something online a little bit ago from some Salesforce executives complaining that they had laid off too many people.
00:32:57.020So I think you're right. They've done a pretty substantial number of layoffs also around AI, right? They had this idea that they would just use AI to replace all these people. And it sounds like some of the executives now regret that because they're finding out that AI can't replace all of the people.
00:33:15.220So maybe that message hasn't reached the top of the organization yet.
00:33:22.020But I can't imagine comments like that really engender a lot of goodwill, as evidenced by the flood of tips to 404 Media.
00:33:32.140Yeah, clearly got their top minds on this one.
00:35:09.700Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:35:14.200I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:35:18.660I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:35:26.280They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:35:30.200But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:35:33.640They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:35:36.760Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:35:45.720If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:35:51.640This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:36:04.120I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:36:11.240I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.
00:36:14.820From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:36:20.760It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:36:28.240Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:36:37.840Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:38:10.680about the way that technology can build community, right?
00:38:13.840It is a sweet story. And, you know, when I was reviewing these notes ahead of the show, I was like, huh, this is a really surprising, nice story about something Meta has done.
00:38:24.160What a pleasant change. Can't wait to read more.
00:38:26.900Well, Meta is saying, screw those people and shut the program down.
00:38:32.500For a game like Supernatural, shutting down content production was a death knell that left Dickinson and countless other Supernatural fans blindsided with shock than grief.
00:38:41.340The Supernatural's Facebook page has over 110,000 members, many of whom have written sprawling odes to the game.
00:38:48.420Over 7,000 and counting have also signed a Change.org petition begging Meta and Mark Zuckerberg to rethink the decision.
00:38:54.780They're pissed and they want Meta to know two things.
00:38:57.400Not only has the company royally screwed up, but they're not letting Supernatural go without a fight.
00:39:03.260So I loved this article, unless you can't tell.0.97
00:39:05.940and one of the reasons why is that the piece includes quotes from a bunch of women in their
00:39:11.160in their 40s and 50s who are upset about supernatural being pulled their emails are
00:39:17.220amazing these women are amazing i was gonna try to pick a few quotes to read but they're all gold0.56
00:39:23.240so i was like oh i'm just gonna be reading the whole article here's one my opinion of meta can0.83
00:39:27.960be summed up as and then it's just a bunch of expletives just like a bunch of comic books
00:39:33.840swearing yeah this is from regina lynn a supernatural athlete in her 50s athlete is a
00:39:40.260term that the supernatural community prefers lynn has been playing for five years roughly three to
00:39:44.480four times a week mark zuckerberg helped buy a ballroom for a fascist perhaps it is not surprising
00:39:50.060that he killed supernatural she says yeah she's right so like that's the thing every quote is
00:39:57.000just not only is it spot on factually correct, it also has so much like flair to it. So Lynn,
00:40:04.900that woman that we just heard from, is not alone. Several Supernatural fans contacted The Verge
00:40:09.520saying that they have really noticed that connection between Meta's broader controversies
00:40:14.080and how the company runs things since buying Within, which is the studio that made the game
00:40:19.320that Meta shut down. Now, before Meta acquired Within, it was an indie studio that came out of
00:40:25.700music and films and creative work. It was not really a tech company. In an interview on the
00:40:31.060Decoder podcast, Within's co-founder talked about Supernatural as something that he had built
00:40:35.580to be meaningful to other human beings. He thought of it as more as immersive art than a product
00:40:41.580designed to help Meta dominate the VR market. And so it really does sound like they had built this
00:40:48.080thing really with community in mind, like genuinely trying to build space for other people.
00:40:54.140It got acquired by Meta, and basically the philosophy that the founder described is the exact opposite of what seems to be Meta's philosophy, and that is why the fans are taking this change so personally.
00:41:05.900And the sad thing is, before Meta got involved, it sounds like Supernatural was very successful.
00:41:14.140Supernatural was widely considered a successful VR app before Meta ever entered the picture.
00:41:18.960In fact, when Meta announced its plan to buy it in 2021, the FTC launched a probe to try and block the acquisition,
00:41:25.900partly because Meta had already acquired Beat Saber, a similar VR game, and Supernatural threatened its dominance.
00:41:32.120It was also reported that Meta was keen to snap up the game before Apple, which was rumored to be interested in the game.
00:41:37.240The FTC probe ultimately failed. The acquisition was complete in 2023.
00:41:40.980So it does just seem like Meta didn't have any real interest in this community and keeping it running, even though it was so thriving.
00:41:48.260What they actually had interest in was market share of VR, making sure that Apple didn't get it before they were able to get it, and just buying it as a way to build up their empire in the VR space.
00:42:00.740Yeah, and that was back, you know, three years ago now when the metaverse was still, you know, kind of limping along and they were pretending like it was going to be a thing.
00:42:11.040It is such a sad example of how distorting it can be when companies like Meta with so much money are just able to buy things up without a clear plan for, you know, continuing the value that people get out of it.
00:42:36.220It's especially sad to me because I, you know, I really appreciate pockets where people are able to carve out digital community for themselves, especially people who are not often reflected in technology.
00:42:46.520Right. So like older folks, women, people with mobility challenges.
00:42:50.640And I think it's a indication of exactly what we were talking about when we were talking about the vibes around the Super Bowl.
00:42:56.900I think that it's a small example of how society feels on a larger level right now in certification.
00:43:03.880You can't have anything that is genuinely good for very long until that thing is ruined for profit.
00:43:09.620Here's another quote from one of the supernatural athletes quoted in the piece.
00:43:13.820This is just a small mirror of a huge problem in our society right now.
00:43:17.800The blunt way of saying it is those with the gold make the rules.0.80
00:43:21.380This is what we're fighting on every single level globally right now.
00:43:24.920We're fighting those with money, telling us how our lives will be lived, what we can access, what we can do and what we can say.
00:43:30.780Of course, there are far bigger things to fight for right now, and I do. But if I don't take care of my health, my mental health, my physical body, I have nothing to give or fight with for the big causes.
00:43:41.060that really stuck with me and i think it's one of the reasons why this piece and this story has
00:43:48.440been such a bug in my brain because it does kind of feel all connected that on the on the scale of
00:43:56.500things yes losing your favorite physical fitness vr game because meta bought it and ruined it and
00:44:02.060closed it is a small thing but it does feel like a small mirror to how people are feeling right now
00:44:08.700that like, no, you can't have anything good.
00:44:33.820And it's not like they just lost an app, right?
00:44:37.520It sounds like these people really lost community and a source of meaning in their life.
00:44:43.140And like you said, an outlet, an opportunity to work on their physical health, which is connected to mental health as well.
00:44:54.160Like all of those things are so valuable.
00:44:55.600And it's there's like this notable asymmetry that when Meta is selling some new product or feature, it's going to revolutionize our lives and become the most important thing that turns society upside down and is just like transformative.
00:45:15.180But then when something is taken away, well, it's, you know, it's just just an app like, you know, get another app.
00:45:20.200Yeah. And as you were speaking, I mean, you know this, but I love movies. I'm obsessed with film. And for a while, somebody used Reddit in my neighborhood to start an in-person movie club where the idea was they'd pick a movie every month. Anybody who wanted could go watch the movie.
00:45:39.900then you would go to a bar across the street and then talk about the movie and that that was really
00:45:43.880the extent of it and I came to realize how much I didn't just enjoy this as a film goer
00:45:54.440the community aspect of it having a reason to like it was it was during a bit of a tough time
00:45:59.840for me personally where I was having a lot of trouble socially and feeling quite isolated and
00:46:05.360having this low-level thing that got me out of my apartment, got me around other people,
00:46:10.440got me talking, but in this kind of safe-feeling way of like, oh, you're talking about a movie
00:46:14.600that you just saw. So you don't have to go deep. You can just talk about the movie. Then when
00:46:20.220all of the stuff happened around ICE and immigration, the person who was running that
00:46:25.640community, unfortunately, they were impacted by that. So they chose to leave the United States
00:46:32.660and that community shut down and I took it like I cried I took it very hard and I think I had not
00:46:40.540realized exactly what you said these we don't you really don't get a lot of places where you
00:46:45.440genuinely feel like this is my community these are my people I can show up it is I can show up
00:46:51.640where I'm at it is it is low lift to show up the barrier like there are less barriers that feels
00:46:57.000good when that is taken away it's so tempting to be like why am I so upset it's just a video game
00:47:02.640It's just a movie club. But that is real. Those are real things. And the way that people are
00:47:08.740responding, I think, really shows that. And yeah, I just really appreciate what these folks are
00:47:15.700going through and what the loss that it actually does constitute for their life, because that is
00:47:21.300meaningful. This is from the article. It's not just about making friends. Marginalized users
00:47:26.880say supernatural, let them exercise without judgment. Inside the headset, they could lunge,0.84
00:47:31.720squat and swipe at targets just like anyone else. They didn't have to worry about being looked down
00:47:36.240on for not having six-pack abs, being older, working out in a wheelchair, or having limited
00:47:40.720range of movement. The feeling is that if you have something that truly makes people feel seen
00:47:45.200and allowing people to build community, selling it to a company like Meta will just end up killing
00:47:49.380it. Other app developers should take note of how capriciously Meta fought for and then ditched
00:47:54.020Supernatural. If you make something you love, you might make a pile of money selling it to Meta,
00:47:58.720but they're likely to mismanage and kill it.
00:48:00.760This is from an early adopter of Supernatural.
00:48:03.260Yes, and, you know, one of the things you mentioned in there
00:48:06.720is how rare it can feel to find these little pockets of community
00:48:12.320and just generally good vibes on the internet.
00:48:16.420And I think this story neatly illustrates a theme
00:48:24.140is not the result of forces of nature, right?
00:48:27.600there's not like some natural order that dictates that our internet needs to feel as bad as it often
00:48:32.580does these are choices that people many of them men most of the men but like humans are making
00:48:40.560business choices that humans are making to buy those pieces of good places on the internet
00:48:49.240and then integrate them into this profit machine that just obliterates the community spirit for the purpose of feeding their shareholders.
00:49:06.700And it's one of the drawbacks of what happens when these companies get so big and powerful that they can just do that and think nothing of it.
00:49:13.480Here's a quote from another supernatural athlete.
00:49:16.380I despise Meta, along with the oligarchs, the top 1% that continue to destroy our world and kill anything that brings joy and beauty of human experience and connection because their only goal is to make a profit.
00:49:28.400This person says that she finds it overwhelming to convey just how much Supernatural's community has impacted her.
00:49:33.800And yeah, I think it's exactly what you're saying that these companies, it's not happenstance. I think it is part of the strategy is to obliterate the things that feed the little pockets that people are able to carve out that make them feel good.
00:49:53.540One silver lining is that there is one Supernatural fan
00:49:56.480who was trying to build his own version for the Apple Vision Pro.
00:49:59.980When asked why he is building something for Apple's VR headset
00:50:21.020They do mourn and grieve, but then they find other platforms, they build their own version, they advocate, they refuse to let go of that community that they built. And like Meta might have the money and the power to shut down Supernatural, but they cannot kill what these people created together.
00:50:37.620That is community. That will outlast Mark Zuckerberg. That will outlast all of these platforms. And I think that is the real lesson here that big tech can and does destroy a lot of things. But community is a lot harder to kill than you think, especially when you've got like women in their 60s who know how to write a great quote, reaching out to reporters like good luck.
00:50:57.760yeah you know i suspect a lot of these women are gonna be fine and find find something better and
00:51:04.320it it sucks that they have to go through this and it's like really depressing that it often feels
00:51:09.520like everything good is only temporary because it's just a matter of time before meta buys it
00:51:16.780and kills it basically uh i guess maybe that's like if we're gonna look for a silver lining
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00:53:01.460If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality,
00:53:05.860welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club,
00:53:11.780part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks
00:53:15.980Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:53:19.580I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:53:26.960I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:53:30.540From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:53:36.500It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:53:44.020Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:53:53.560Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:55:11.700Okay, so a little bit of a switch of gears. Have you ever been scrolling social media or Reddit or TikTok and seen police body cam footage, or maybe it's on YouTube, of a young woman being arrested? Have you ever seen content like that?
00:55:32.780So, me too. I've seen so many videos like this on the internet, but it really never occurred to me why that is or where they're coming from. The reason why we're seeing so much of them is because it is an industry online of obtaining police body cam footage of arrests, specifically arrests of young women, and then putting those videos on YouTube for profit.
00:55:55.840This was all revealed in a fascinating deep dive into all of this in New York Mag.
00:56:01.400The piece speaks to this woman who used to have a drinking problem.
00:56:50.220The article reads, the unlucky ones have been watched and mocked millions of times. They have been ogled, insulted and abused. They are mostly women, mostly between the ages of 18 and 25 and mostly powerless to stop their online humiliations. So far, YouTube channels featuring such videos have generated over a billion views and counting.
00:57:09.200when you go to videos like this like i i encounter them on social media all the time and never really
00:57:14.340thought about them the comments are always what a brat like they're they're all they're almost0.89
00:57:20.040kind of sexualized not in the way where people are saying that they want to have sex with these0.97
00:57:28.320women but the the it's it's just comments humiliating women that's i mean i mean i i
00:57:36.980That's the only way I can describe it. Like, go pull up one of these videos and look at the comments. And it's clear that people are really enjoying ogling and humiliating these women in the comments.1.00
00:57:48.560And I think it's a gross example of something that we talk about on the show a ton, which is how misogyny and the chance for people to leave comments humiliating women across the Internet.
00:58:00.940Admittedly, women behaving badly, you know, DUIs are not a good thing to get.1.00
00:58:04.820But that will always find a market.1.00
00:58:07.320There will always be a marketplace for that online.
00:58:09.080There will always be an audience for that online.
00:58:10.700And I think, you know, we really have to contend with what that means for society.
00:58:17.640So the reason why this is possible at all is because of the widespread adoption of body cameras by police departments across the country.
01:07:45.900So I don't know if it's, I know that we had it in my town.
01:07:49.760I don't know if it's like a national thing or if it's a smattering of states.
01:07:52.480I think it might probably be in states that have more lenient transparency laws,
01:07:57.000But there's a paper in my town called The Gotcha that it was just pictures of mugshots.0.76
01:08:02.320And usually it was either hot women or like people who had I mean, it was either hot women or people who had like face tattoos or teeth missing.
01:08:14.260Very, very clearly misogynistic and meant to like for people to gawk at lower income people and people essentially having the worst day of their lives.
01:08:24.040And the thing about the gotcha was it was your mugshot before you ever even had your day in court.
01:08:29.560So someone could have been legitimately mistakenly arrested or like exonerated or, you know, charges dismissed.
01:08:36.580You are still holding a picture of their mugshot in the gotcha.
01:08:40.220It's an unsettling fact of human nature how much we love to gawk at the misfortune of others.
01:08:47.700I was really surprised to find out how easy it is to obtain these arrest videos.
01:08:51.640So New York Mags spoke to Andrew Caggianio, who was the president of the New Jersey State Association of Chiefs of Police.
01:08:57.780And he basically explained the process.
01:08:59.680Somebody will submit a public records request for every DUI arrest in the township.
01:09:04.780They'll go through the list and cross out all the men's names.
01:09:07.680Then they'll request the arrest footage for what's left, just the women.
01:09:12.000A few months later, those videos start appearing online.
01:09:14.620Young women drunk are barely able to speak clearly during their arrests.
01:09:17.640And this guy who is like the chief of police or whatever says exactly what you said. Like, why should someone who faces their day in court, faces consequences, pays fine, whatever, that should be the end of it. Why should these people be having the worst moment of their lives broadcast across the Internet forever?
01:09:37.800You know, these videos capture people at rock bottom having the worst day of their lives, like your uncle said.
01:09:44.800Why should that moment haunt them for the rest of their lives so that somebody else can make a quick buck by putting it on YouTube?
01:09:51.740They spoke to the city clerk in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
01:09:55.600And basically, she said that we have been inundated by public records requests, which increased 140 percent from 2024 to 2025 since these videos channels have become a thing.
01:10:04.520What we have been told is that we are on some kind of list for requesters, stating that we are a municipality that is easy to get records from.
01:10:12.120And again, inevitably, that footage winds up on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.
01:10:16.460The people who wind up in this video really have very little recourse.
01:10:21.420You know, the more humiliating the arrest, the better the content.
01:10:24.500The most viral videos can be really devastating for the people who are in them.
01:10:27.960It can damage relationships with friends and family, frustrating job searches, scarring their psyches.
01:10:33.180And they really can't do anything about it because unless a video has been excessively editorialized, there's really not a legal recourse here.
01:10:42.120You know, they can't sue YouTube or Facebook because of Section 230, which largely shields content providers from responsibility for the videos on their platforms.
01:10:51.600And so they don't really have that option. Notably, there is also a shakedown element of what's happening here, too,
01:10:57.560because the people who are in the arrest videos are essentially extorted to have those videos taken down.
01:11:04.380Some subjects have complained to channel owners and then been shaken down for a fee.
01:11:09.200It's a variant on mugshot extortion, a practice in which websites acquire booking photos of recent arrests,
01:11:15.380post them online and then remove them only when compensated.
01:11:19.100So in the article, they talked to like a couple of lawyers who basically say,
01:11:51.460just to give you a sense of how complex
01:11:53.520all is. They spoke to a few advocates who worked on that body camera legislation. And so some of
01:11:58.880the suggestions that people have made is like, oh, maybe you could automatically blur people's
01:12:02.840faces in the footage that gets uploaded. But really, it sounds like the spirit of the body
01:12:08.620camera footage process is designed to mostly be about the officer and their conduct, not the
01:12:14.320person they've arrested. So it seems like this kind of change might be harder to institute after
01:12:19.180the fact. They spoke to Drew Hanson, who was a state senator from Washington state, who introduced
01:12:24.100this complex, comprehensive bill on body camera footage back in 2016, which he described as by
01:12:30.780far one of the most complex pieces of legislation I have ever worked on in my 15 years of public
01:12:35.020service. He said that it was extremely thorny, vexing and difficult to write the bill, balancing
01:12:40.060the public's right to know with people's reasonable expectations for privacy, which makes
01:12:44.500complete sense to me. Ultimately, the bill that they did draft relied on a standard from common
01:12:49.840law. Anything that is, quote, not of legitimate concern to the public was prohibited from release,
01:12:54.920including footage captured inside of medical buildings or footage of domestic violence
01:12:58.840victims. But that bill predates the online humiliation industry. So it is not really
01:13:05.600able to address the situation at all. So it's like one of those situations where the legislation,
01:13:10.580even though it only came out in 2016 it's not current enough to address our actual digital
01:13:17.900climate in 2026 boy isn't that interesting uh yeah what a thorny problem uh i suspect that
01:13:27.640this is something that we're going to be talking about more and more right as there are more cameras
01:13:33.560more microphones deployed in our public environments
01:13:39.140and attached to police officers' bodies,
01:13:41.900and AI systems just constantly integrating them,
01:13:48.260face search, facial recognition getting so easy.
01:13:52.320I think these problems are just going to keep getting more acute.
01:13:57.220And, yeah, I really hope that we start taking it more seriously and, you know, that the backlash to that ring camera ad suggests that maybe people are ready to start having that conversation.
01:14:17.480But I think this story really goes to show how complex some of those conversations ultimately need to be.
01:14:23.720They there was an idea floated in the piece that basically, even though these videos are sexist and gross and coercive and humiliating, they spoke to an ACLU attorney who basically said, yes, these videos are awful.
01:14:40.440But the importance of transparency and the importance of the public interest in knowing how people are interacting with the government outweighs generally a person's personal interest in not being embarrassed.
01:14:53.200And that, you know, in most cases, it is a tradeoff, according to this ACLU attorney, that people should be willing to accept.
01:15:02.800And he goes on to describe a terrible situation of a black youth who was shot and killed by police.
01:15:07.940The police said, oh, he the kid lunged at me with a knife.
01:15:12.120The body cam footage, once they were able to sue for the release, showed that he was walking away when he was shot.
01:15:16.800And so this attorney basically says that occasional online humiliations are an unfortunate price to pay for the broader interest in transparency.
01:15:25.640New York Mag took that argument to one of these women who has a video of her DUI arrest on YouTube right now that she's terrified is going to be revealed and go viral and ruin her life.
01:15:35.980They presented her with that argument and asked her what she thought.
01:15:39.520And she said she understands the point, but she is very frustrated by the either or.
01:15:44.580She cannot accept that the only way to help one set of marginalized people is by punishing another set of marginalized people.
01:15:52.020And the video that she points out are usually of young women like herself.
01:15:55.860I've never seen a dude. So why is it incumbent on these women to suffer all to prevent injustices that should not be occurring in the first place?
01:16:03.420And I just I think that is really an interesting point and speaks to how if we're going to get serious about talking about and addressing surveillance and what it actually means and how it actually impacts and shows up on our lives, we're going to have to have some complex, thorny conversations.
01:16:21.360And I think her point really shows that. But I will say one other thing, which is that all of that is true. The same way that we don't have to tolerate ring camera ads that try to sell us surveillance as warm and cute and funny and like cuddly and about finding lost pets.
01:16:41.100We don't have to tolerate these coercive, sexist, gross videos of young women, drunk young women being arrested as public sources of education.
01:16:53.060Just, you know, their humiliation content and humiliation content involving young women always will generate a quick buck and a click.1.00
01:17:01.380You don't have to pretend they're a social good on top of it.
01:17:03.700So, Bridget, just one thing real quick before we wrap up here.
01:17:07.140Our listener, Deb, who's written in before, asked us to share something about the Save Our Signs campaign, which is this campaign to document signage at national parks and national sites, which, you know, when you think of national sites, you often think of like Yosemite Park and natural beauty, which is a big part of it.
01:17:31.720But there's also a lot of cultural stuff that is captured and described at these national sites of things that have happened there so that we can learn about our past, which is not always super great.
01:17:46.820There's a lot of stuff in American history that does not paint white settlers in the most flattering light, for example.
01:17:57.480It's super important to talk about that stuff.
01:18:01.720Um, but the Trump administration does not like it.
01:18:06.760And so they had this campaign to take down any signage and any national sites that can
01:18:12.620be interpreted as critical of Americans or, uh, any particular race, uh, just really an