00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.100Pro 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.
00:01:35.740Each 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.
00:03:35.520That was what I really got an appreciation for Amy Poehler and how hilarious she is.
00:03:40.820Like that's that was my my sort of first foray into her.
00:03:43.500I will say, I mean, obviously, I am a fan of hers. I don't personally listen to a lot of podcasts that have celebrities as hosts, which we'll talk about in a moment. I have listened to a few episodes of Annie Poehler's Good Hang podcast. I like it.
00:03:58.840I think that, you know, as far as the celebrities talking to other celebrities genre of podcasts go, it is a pretty decent representative of the genre.
00:04:10.060I really enjoyed the episode that she did with Aubrey Plaza from Parks and Rec.
00:04:15.620It really got into a lot of just very relatable stuff about grief and grieving, which I really appreciated.
00:04:22.540So I'm a fan. I don't want to make it seem like I'm like a hair of Amy Poehler's show.
00:04:26.800I was actually initially really happy with Amy Poehler winning because, A, I think the show was actually pretty fine.
00:04:38.560And then lastly, let's not forget that the alternative is a world where Ben freaking Shapiro won the inaugural Golden Globe for podcasting.
00:05:09.320That's why he talks about celebrities all day long.
00:05:12.320And he's always just talking about Hollywood and all of that because he's obsessed with Hollywood.
00:05:16.820He ran this huge, very explicit for your consideration campaign to try to get nominated for the Golden Globes for Best Podcast.
00:05:25.980The Golden Globes, as folks may or may not know, has long faced a lot of scrutiny about being pay to play.
00:05:32.560So imagine a world where Ben Shapiro essentially gets to buy his way into being platformed by mainstream Hollywood, which is all he has ever wanted.
00:05:43.120So the fact that that did not happen, to me, that's a kind of win no matter how you slice it.
00:05:48.880It's true. A Ben Shapiro loss is a win for the good guys.
00:05:52.980Yes. And Ben Shapiro didn't even get nominated. So yeah, I'll take that as a win.
00:05:58.580So the Golden Globes initially put together a list of the top 25 most listened to shows across Spotify and Apple using downloads, listens and views.
00:06:07.840And then that was the list of shows that were eligible.
00:06:11.020So only 25 of the most popular podcasts were even considered.
00:06:16.320The nominees were Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard on the Wondery Network,
00:07:26.620And it's funny because those are things that I should like.0.99
00:07:30.400Yet whenever I hear him say, do this, I'm like, ugh, shut up.0.95
00:07:34.740I don't know. I don't know what explains it. I did just see this phenomenal clip of, you know, how much I love Cher, of Cher on Dax Shepard's podcast and then Dax Shepard's wife, Kristen Bell.0.96
00:07:51.020And he is essentially questioning Cher, saying, Cher, I heard that you don't think I'm good enough for my wife, Kristen Bell.
00:07:59.900So who do you think that she should be with, if not me?
00:08:02.960Do you think she should be with, like, Brad Pitt?
00:08:05.020I thought that was an interesting person to throw out because, like, Brad Pitt notoriously having some issues with how he treats women.
00:08:13.220So in my opinion, Dax is kind of trying to fluster Cher about why Cher does not think that he is a good enough partner for his wife, Kristen Bell.
00:08:22.920And Cher hits him with, I guess she must see something that I don't in you.
00:08:29.400Oh, man, funny thing to say. It's like completely straight faced, clear delivery.
00:08:35.500I guess she sees something I don't. And she said this on his show.
00:08:39.000She like on his show to deliver this. Wow. Correct.
00:08:42.720I would probably have to retire from public life if Cher said something like that to me.
00:08:48.060Same, same. Although if Cher can come on this podcast and belittle me and everyone in my life anytime she wants,1.00
00:08:55.180And I will I would it would make my year something kind of funny about Amy Poehler's podcast winning against Smartless is that one of the hosts of Smartless is her ex-husband, Will Arnett, who you might know as I think you probably know as the voice of BoJack Horseman.
00:09:11.160I know is as Job Bluth from Arrested Development.
00:09:15.100Oh, I was familiar with his work as Job well before BoJack.
00:09:19.660Both are excellent performances, just really top notch.
00:09:25.180Something that I liked about Amy Poehler's show is that when she first started it, she basically said, hey, I want to start a project where I don't have to put in a ton of effort, just like the men do.
00:09:35.300And I don't know for sure, but I have to imagine that was a dig at SmartList because SmartList is their whole thing, I think, is that they have guests on and they don't really do any prep because they don't know who they get or one of the three co-hosts knows who the guest is and the others don't.
00:09:52.220And so those those the people who don't have not done any prep for that guest.
00:09:56.660I've listened to a couple of episodes, not recently, but when it first came out, there's a ton of buzz about it.
00:10:02.200And I did note that like the guests didn't really get in a whole lot of airtime.
00:10:07.180It was mainly the hosts talking to each other over the guest.
00:10:10.280Oh, my God. So, again, I don't want this to sound like me just hating on podcasts because there are celebrity podcasts that I think are really great.
00:10:16.700And I like, but we do need to steer it back because it is kind of heading that way.
00:10:20.300Okay, well, I'll just say one thing, which I think that SmartList is not for me, because I want to hear what the guest has to say. And I make it a practice of not talking over guests. I've invited you on the show because you're interesting and I want to hear what you have to say.
00:10:37.260I listened to one episode and they asked.
00:10:40.220And so I don't know if this is a common thing with them, but they're talking to a celebrity guest and they ask the guest, where are you from?
00:10:46.000And then the hosts just jump in over the guests and do like a series of escalating bits.
00:10:52.980And they don't really give the guest a chance to get the answer out.
00:11:02.280I just actually wanted to hear the answer.
00:11:03.860I don't expect every podcast that everybody listens to to be challenging, complex stuff, especially today. I think people need their, you know, just pleasant light podcast to have on while they're doing errands or whatever. I have mine that are like that. But I think that Amy Poehler's show is a much better representation of the celebrities talking to celebrities genre because people can get a thought out. I guess SmartList just isn't for me.
00:11:32.340It's also just like they've got a lot of people on the mic, like three hosts is a lot of hosts, right?
00:11:36.880And you add a guest in there that's four people and not just four people, like four celebrities, people who love the limelight.
00:11:43.080And, you know, the turn taking gets a little more challenging.
00:12:07.100It's just a little bit more challenging.
00:12:09.120This is such a non sequitur, but whenever you watch those Manosphere podcasts, which are basically just like YouTube videos at this point, like fresh and fit.
00:12:18.320One of the things beyond the odious things that they're saying about women, one of the points I've always made is they'll have like nine people all mic'd.
00:12:56.540I don't know if we want to go there right now or not.
00:12:58.900But it's it's super interesting. And I think it's related to this thing that I've heard from a bunch of friends of mine who have kids in their teens that like apparently the kids are just watching streamers on YouTube like all day.
00:13:12.620Everybody in my life who has a teenager confirms that their teenager is just like watching YouTube videos of people hanging out, maybe playing video games, maybe doing challenges.
00:13:25.040But it feels kind of similar to what you're describing of like a bunch of people in the room, pretty chaotic, just kind of always on like a three or four hour recording.
00:13:37.500And I guess that's the future of content.
00:13:39.660Oh, I mean, every time I tell somebody I'm a podcaster and they say, where can I watch your show? Part of me dies inside a little bit because, you know, I'm, I'm audio first, audio forever. I mean, people are still engaging with audio content. I saw some very interesting data about this recently where, yes, YouTube is making all these, these gains, but there's still a sizable chunk of audience who wants their podcasts to be audio first and I will always be in that camp.
00:14:09.020However, I do think that you're right, that it speaks to sort of the shifting nature of content and what is content.
00:14:16.540And I think that's why I wanted to talk about the inaugural win for podcasting, because I think it's good to have podcasts being seen as the cultural force that they are.
00:14:29.600And so having there be a category for podcasts at the Golden Globes is a step in that direction, which I think is great.
00:14:36.080However, I was hearing from a lot of my colleagues who were saying, you know, is it really good to have a celebrity podcast?
00:14:44.800Like, it's a celebrity podcast that really hasn't been around for that long.
00:14:48.260Like, as much as I like Good Hang, it has not even been a year.
00:14:52.900So they've had like 30 episodes, maybe.
00:14:55.800What does it say that that is being held up as the award-winning pinnacle of what the medium can do?
00:15:04.360I think that it can feel like, you know, celebrities have TV, celebrities have film, celebrities are increasingly doing things in the literary world.
00:15:13.480And they also have to be taking up a huge footprint in the medium of podcasting.
00:15:19.260And I do think like podcasting, it started as pretty much normal people kind of just talking about things that they really were passionate about.
00:15:28.540And so I can really understand why it feels disappointing to see celebrities held up as this pinnacle of what the medium should and could be when, you know, folks have been grinding it out in the podcast industry for a really long time.
00:15:42.840Sometimes it does feel like, you know, the powers that be feel like there were no podcasts before SmartList got huge in 2020.
00:15:51.340Podcaster Abby Rizuka actually had an interesting op-ed in the New York Times saying that a much fairer way to do it, if the Golden Globes was actually serious about celebrating podcasting and audio, would be to have there be multiple podcast categories rather than just one best podcast award.
00:16:08.040Because she writes, mashing together news, interview show, celebrity driven conversations and self-help monologues doesn't make much sense.
00:16:15.400And that really resonates with me. I was once up for an award for my podcast and I was nominated alongside Kevin Hart's podcast. So it is just sometimes weird when, you know, Kevin Hart and I are vastly different people. We are making vastly different types of shows with vastly different resources. And it's just weird to be considered alongside a big celebrity like Kevin Hart by the powers that be when we're so different.
00:16:40.420well and especially if the powers that be are organizations like the golden globes which comes
00:16:46.360out of hollywood and is really celebrity oriented so it's like not really that surprising i was just
00:16:53.080looking through the list and of the six nominees uh only one of them does not have full episode
00:17:00.580video right and so it's like oh which one up first from npr i'm sure sure sure uh i think that but
00:17:08.040they do post like social video clips but they don't have a full episode and i think it goes
00:17:13.060to what you're saying that like what is a podcast and 10 15 years ago it felt like a very new uh
00:17:24.420channel you know a different type of uh content uh and i don't want to put words in your mouth
00:17:33.020But I think what I'm hearing from you is that like part of the sort of hesitation or skepticism about celebrity podcasts like this is that it feels like they are breaking down the things that make podcasts different, specifically the fact that they are audio first and, you know, maybe a little weird or fringy.
00:17:53.320Yes. Oh, I'm glad that you brought up that second point, because this is why I'm not a huge fan of your typical celebrity talking to celebrity podcast, because with some big exceptions, you know, I think Julia Louis-Dreyfus, her podcast Wiser Than Me, I think is to me, that is the pinnacle of what a celebrity podcast can be and like a way to sort of break the mold and do it a little bit differently.
00:18:17.500However, you know, you listen, if you listen to if there's a celebrity making the rounds because they've got a project to promote, you hear them on one celebrity podcast and you don't need to hear them on several others because it's usually the same.
00:18:30.840They're making the same points or telling the same stories. And I feel like podcasting is was meant to be or got it start as a different kind of medium where you're hearing things that you wouldn't ordinarily hear.
00:18:42.540You know, it's not the same thing as flipping through an Us Weekly or an entertainment magazine where you have a sense that this is all just PR, that person's got the talking points, they've been contractually obligated, they're going to talk about the project, this amount of time, whatever, whatever.
00:18:55.360And I do think we lose something when, I mean, it's like a double-edged sword because I just said, I think it's good to see podcasting getting its due and getting celebrated as the cultural force that I know that it is.
00:19:08.540and two i think that in order to have that you lose a little bit of the the scrappiness that
00:19:14.480made podcasting good in the first place i think right the the feeling that you're not just
00:19:19.160listening to some curated pr thing that you could hear anywhere on a million different shows and so0.96
00:19:24.360it is it is it is a little tenuous i guess yeah man this new stuff it's bullshit it's not like0.96
00:19:30.260it's not real like it used to be you know back in the day that's uh that's my impersonation0.93
00:19:36.700of an old person which is not that different from what i actually believe we sound very out of touch
00:19:43.920how are these young people watching three-hour youtube live streams ever heard of npr ever heard
00:19:51.540of this american life teenagers that's how we sound i'm sure yeah let's take a quick break
00:20:06.700behind every night spent making the kids lunches there's a lot of suspense will they finally eat
00:20:13.640the veggies will the pesto survive the first bite will the lunchbox come home empty half full or
00:20:19.280come home at all and will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers
00:20:23.640get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed
00:20:29.440for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details
00:21:32.560Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:21:37.000I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:21:41.560I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:21:48.520They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:21:53.020But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:21:56.460They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:21:59.540Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:08.500If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:22:14.420This 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.
00:22:26.900I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:22:34.020I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:22:37.540From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:22:43.540It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:22:51.020Whether 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.
00:23:00.620Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:23:14.660so over holiday break i saw this story that went viral that appeared to be from a staffer at an
00:23:21.880unnamed food delivery app the story that he told sounds very damning to the point where it trended
00:23:27.980across social media drove people to boycott doordash the post did not call out doordash by
00:23:33.280name but that was the the company that was believed to be being described by this post
00:23:37.220so in this post reddit user throwaway whistleblow said that he was a software engineer about to leave
00:23:44.440a food delivery app company, so he was going to spill all the dirty secrets and all the tea
00:23:48.980about how this company operates. Basically, he said that this company is rigged against delivery
00:23:55.160drivers. Here's a bit of what the post said. You guys always suspect the algorithms are rigged
00:24:00.020against you, but the reality is actually so much more depressing than the conspiracy theories.
00:24:04.300I'm a back-end engineer. I sit in the weekly sprint planning meetings where product managers
00:24:08.560discuss how to squeeze another 0.4% margin out of, quote, human assets. That's literally what
00:24:13.820they call drivers in the database schemas. They talk about these people like they're resource
00:24:18.060nodes in a video game, not fathers and mothers trying to pay rent. He also says that if you ever
00:24:23.120do priority delivery or you pay a little bit more to get your stuff sent directly to you, he says
00:24:28.180that's a scam. First off, priority delivery is a total scam. It was pitched to us as a quote
00:24:33.880psychological value add. Like I said in the title, when you pay that extra $2.99, it changes a Boolean
00:24:39.780flag in the order JSON, but the dispatch logic literally ignores it. It does nothing to speed
00:24:45.480you up. We actually ran an A-B test last year where we didn't speed up the priority orders.
00:24:50.260We just purposely delayed non-priority orders by five to 10 minutes to make the priority ones
00:24:54.760feel faster by comparison. Management loved the results. We generated millions in pure profit
00:25:00.700just by making the standard service worse, not by making premium service any better.
00:25:05.160So people who order from delivery apps are being scammed.
00:25:08.980But what's worse, he says, is how they treat delivery drivers.
00:25:12.860The thing that actually makes me sick and the main reason I'm quitting is the, quote, desperation score.
00:25:18.340We have a hidden metric for drivers that tracks how desperate they are for cash based on their acceptance behavior.
00:25:23.720If a driver usually logs on at 10 p.m. and accepts every garbage $3 order instantly without hesitation, the Aldo tags them as high desperation.
00:25:32.500Once they're tagged, the system then deliberately stops showing them high-paying orders.
00:25:36.680The logic is, why pay this guy $15 for a run when they know he's desperate enough to do it for $6?
00:25:43.280We save the good tips for casual drivers and hook them in and gamify their experience
00:25:47.840while the full-timers get grinded into dust.
00:25:56.220And it is sort of surprising to see it written in black and white,
00:26:00.760But it really does align certainly with the sort of attitude I think a lot of tech companies have towards their users and particularly gig economy platforms like DoorDash or Uber, which are notoriously cruel and penny pinching.
00:26:24.100So it really aligns with that narrative of conspiracy and exploitation.
00:26:31.640And I think that's the reason why it went so viral so quickly and struck a chord, because it's written in a way that really kind of confirms our worst and sort of deepest suspicions about these types of gig and delivery app platforms that people are just being exploited all up and through in ways that I think that we all have a sense is happening.
00:26:52.800And so the idea that these tech companies are just always going to be pushing the boundaries of what they can legally get away with to make money and like playing on people's desperation and ways that keep them locked in.
00:27:03.480A lot of this is like based on stuff that we essentially already know that these companies are doing. Right. And so we know that these platforms have a history of like straight up stealing tips from drivers or creating a system that is designed to avoid getting busted by law enforcement, things like that, like things that we know are happening.
00:27:23.080So I think that that's why this post really struck a chord with people, because it rings so true about what we all know and probably suspect about using these platforms.
00:27:35.020Only there is one big problem about this post.
00:27:39.780Journalist Casey Newton at Platformer discovered that the post is fake.
00:27:43.700So I will say I spent a non-trivial amount of time reading comments about this post and sort of engaging with what was laid out in this post.
00:27:52.420So when I found out that it was a hoax, I was pretty invested. Casey Newton says that he got in touch with the post author and immediately alarm bells started ringing. Right. So the first is that the post itself was like very well written. But then when Casey was messaging back and forth with the person who wrote the post, the messages were full of like grammatical errors and spelling errors as if the person that he was speaking to and the person that wrote the post were not the same.
00:28:21.300Casey continues, over the next half hour, we chatted a bit about his experience.
00:28:25.360Like most people who leak information like this, his paramount concern was to remain anonymous.
00:28:29.820While he told me he wanted to share more with me, he also said that most of the other news agencies had contacted him, required far more personal information, spelled incorrectly, that I'm willing to risk.
00:28:42.280Casey then asks for like some tangible proof that he works for a food delivery app at all.
00:28:47.440And he sends over an Uber Eats employee badge that Casey is able to determine was actually generated using Gemini AI.
00:28:56.260So Casey is like, OK, this is obviously BS.
00:28:58.960But he asks, you know, is there anything else that you can show me that actually confirms that you genuinely are an engineer at Uber Eats?
00:29:06.840This is where things get interesting to me because he sends Casey this 18-page document saying, these documents will corroborate my claims.
00:29:16.720What he sends is a report called a Loch Nette-T, High Dimensional Temporal Supply State Modeling.
00:29:24.060So I took a look at this document because Casey linked the whole thing in his piece.
00:29:29.860Casey describes it as, quote, the bulk of the document appears to describe a technical architecture for the AI system behind the desperation score, the whistleblower alleges in his original posts.
00:29:41.440By the end, though, it had also offered support for each of the other claims in the post, even when they had no obvious connection to the score.
00:29:49.180For example, it describes, quote, automated grayballing protocols for regulatory evasion, an apparent reference to Uber's old grayball tool for hiding itself from regulators.
00:29:58.920It's not clear why a technical paper on system architecture would also include an extended section on regulatory affairs.
00:30:06.440So this I find so interesting because, you know, I read through the doc and I am sad to say, I don't think I would have initially clocked this as a fake right away.
00:30:19.740Neither did Casey, you know, for the record.
00:30:21.340I guess part of me is thinking, why would someone go out of their way to create such a dense document to fool a reporter?
00:30:33.860That's what I was initially thinking when I was reading this.
00:30:37.560Did you take a look at that document at all?
00:30:40.100And it really, you know, it contains a lot of jargon and it's written quite technically in ways that at a casual skim seems legitimate.
00:30:52.540And a lot of documents like that, when you look at them, if you're not a technical person using it because you're trying to, like, build an integration or, like, really understand the nitty gritty, you're just kind of skimming it.
00:31:05.820And it's hard to not have your eyes glaze over.
00:31:10.320So I think your question of like, yeah, why would somebody create an 18 page document for this scam?
00:31:18.720Like, what is what is the goal of this scam?
00:31:22.740I can't blame this journalist for at first not clocking it as inauthentic because it suggests that that it is.
00:31:33.040And I think this is like unusual to have such an investment on the part of scammers in propping up a scam that has a very questionable payoff.
00:31:46.960Yes. So Casey actually writes that he this is the weirdest thing he's ever been sent in the course of his career.
00:31:54.200And so he talks about how, you know, exactly what we just said.
00:31:57.620Why would someone go through the trouble of creating a fake badge?
00:31:59.700Why would someone go through the trouble of creating this like dense technical report?
00:32:03.040But then it's like, well, wait a minute. Today, this report can be generated within minutes, the same as the badge, right?
00:32:10.200With AI tools, it does make it very easy to create this kind of thing.
00:32:14.900And I think that is why I was so interested in this story.
00:32:18.700As Casey writes, I would love to tell you that having had this experience, I'll be less likely to fall for a similar ruse in the future.
00:32:24.780The truth is, given how quickly AI systems are improving, I'm becoming more worried.
00:32:29.260The infopocalypse that scholars like Aviv Ovidaya were warning about in 2017 looks increasingly more plausible.
00:32:36.760That future was worrisome enough when it was a looming cloud on the horizon.
00:32:40.440It feels different now that real people are messaging it to me over Signal.
00:32:44.400And I think another good point is that this is like a legit tried and true obfuscation tactic,
00:32:50.460like Operation Overload, where you just overwhelm media and journalists with fake reports to confuse and distract and overwhelm.
00:32:59.260so that they cannot spend that time blushing out real leads.
00:33:03.100Just to be clear, I don't think that that's what's happening here.
00:33:06.160I think this is probably just somebody with too much time on their hands
00:33:08.860who was looking for attention over the holiday.
00:33:12.640It is a really interesting story because at the same time
00:33:17.040that Casey was having these back and forths with the alleged whistleblower
00:33:22.600and trying to verify the accuracy of this story,
00:33:25.400it was already spreading across social media and we often give the guidance on this show and other
00:33:33.480people give the guidance that if there's something if you have a big emotional reaction to something
00:33:37.940that you see on social media you should take a pause and step back and you know really evaluate
00:33:42.860is this true or are there some red flags that maybe it's not true and it feels like with this
00:33:49.460story in particular the set of things that we need to do that to it has really been expanded
00:33:55.620yes i mean i guess that's what i'm saying is that we are living in an information ecosystem where it
00:34:04.360is harder and harder to trust things so i guess it just behooves all of us to verify everything
00:34:09.480and that is a that is a high bar also when you look at the the fake document the fake report
00:34:16.640that he generated it basically reads like uber eats or doordash laying out our evil plan like if
00:34:24.620i were writing a movie about an evil company that was doing something nefarious to people
00:34:28.560this is the kind of document that would accompany it in a fictional universe yes and the document
00:34:34.580would be loaded on a flash drive that was like the subject of scrutiny and pursuit yes or uh if
00:34:43.960you're watching the net a floppy disk and it would be give us the disk that would be a repeated
00:34:49.280refrain and you know i think it just goes to show that the kind of harm that these companies are
00:34:56.280actually doing they are not likely to spell it out like this like casey is right why would a document
00:35:02.680about the desperation score include evidence of all these other unrelated harms that they're also
00:35:09.140doing unless they were putting together like a like a dossier of their crimes and evil and
00:35:14.660wrongdoing and yeah i mean i just don't think that companies are likely to spell it out that way
00:35:20.820listen we've talked on the show facebook puts truly absurd things in writing and i hope they
00:35:27.640continue that practice for my own benefit but even if facebook is not writing out a document
00:35:34.380that spells out an evil initiative that has like a 12 point plan for all the evil they plan to
00:35:39.600inflict on people. I think these companies, the harm that they do is actually more insidious and
00:35:44.560less likely to be explicitly laid out in a document like this. 100 percent. You know,
00:35:50.360it's like the banality of evil. The harm that these companies are doing is spread out across
00:35:55.320a thousand different initiatives, all being worked on by teams of engineers who
00:35:59.880uh probably have good intentions or not ill will and it all just adds up to the larger
00:36:09.860i don't want to use the word evil but like i guess oppression and disenfranchisement uh
00:36:17.120exploitation there well that's the that's the right word again yes and i think the fact that
00:36:23.000we all i mean i'll just speak for myself that i believed this so quickly i think reveals a truism
00:36:28.980Because deep down, I think a lot of us know we shouldn't be giving these companies our money because they do evil things and we don't need a secret evil plan to be revealed.
00:36:37.840We can just look at what we already know that they actually are doing because they are doing a lot of harm and a lot of evil things.
00:36:45.060I'm like, you don't need an engineer to go rogue and blow the whistle on it to know these things.
00:36:50.840And also just the importance of fact checking and why that's so important right now.
00:36:56.300You know, just because a post goes viral and gets a lot of viral traction doesn't mean it's true.
00:37:02.240And speaking of that, we talked a bit about this, you and me, last week.
00:37:07.440But I wanted to quickly give an update on the Renee Good situation because I have seen so much misinformation and disinformation online about Renee Good and what happened to her.
00:37:19.140And I just wanted to briefly touch on two of them.
00:37:22.700So I saw this viral post all over social media claiming to show Good's arrest records.
00:37:29.280The post claims that Good had an extensive criminal record, including serious charges for things like child endangerment, domestic abuse and battery of a police officer.
00:37:38.480So I just want to make it super clear. If you need to like clip this bit of the podcast and send it to your right wing Facebook addicted auntie or something, please feel free. If you see posts like this online, you should know they are fabricated and not even fabricated well because the first batch of these posts that I saw, they list the wrong birth date for good.
00:38:01.960They list the wrong age and an incorrectly spelled name. And none of the claims of the
00:38:08.720arrest history that they point out in these fake images can be verified in any court database.
00:38:14.360I will say to me, they look AI generated because arrest records, they'll generally include things
00:38:21.160like a case number or a jurisdiction name or, you know, they look like official law enforcement
00:38:26.080documentation. None of these images look right to me. I don't know for sure if they're AI generated,
00:38:32.320but to me, they look like they are AI generated. It's also strange because imagine what a complete
00:38:39.580loser you have to be to be using AI to generate fake arrest records of a murdered mom. But0.98
00:38:48.040that is who we're dealing with here. People who are that big of a loser.1.00
00:39:31.000The next best thing they can do is make Renee look guilty.
00:39:34.940I really agreed with this post that I saw from friend of the show, Molly Conger, about the cell phone footage the officer took while killing Good.
00:39:42.720because if you saw that video her last words to him are very calm she's saying something like
00:39:48.420that's fine dude i'm not mad at you she's having a completely calm reaction and the officer calls0.60
00:39:53.660her a bitch and so you might have thought you know why would they release this this footage
00:40:00.280it's so incriminating and as molly puts it they didn't leak it to make the shooter look innocent1.00
00:40:05.380but to make the victim look guilty not guilty of a crime guilty of having a visibly queer wife0.56
00:40:11.180guilty of liberalism, guilty of opposing the regime. They don't seek to exonerate themselves0.84
00:40:16.240only to demonstrate who deserves to die. And I completely agreed with that. I think that it's
00:40:22.940about being like, oh, this woman is clearly like alternative looking, queer looking, you know,
00:40:28.640in a relationship with a woman. I think that that's what they're, that's the case that they're
00:40:32.840trying to build. And then the leap is, and thus she clearly does not support the regime and thus
00:40:39.000she deserves to die like that like that's the case that they are building yes absolutely i mean
00:40:43.420that's their whole thing is just pitting americans against each other like she's not one of us you1.00
00:40:50.420know christy gnome went out and gave a speech with a lectern that had a phrase on it something like1.00
00:40:57.400if you take one of ours we take all of yours or something and just right there printed on her
00:41:04.160licturn dividing people into like us and them uh that's their whole thing and yeah not at all
00:41:13.460surprising that they're using their one tactic to smear this woman who uh who they murdered
00:41:20.740into that end another piece of i guess i'll call it malinformation malinformation is different from
00:41:27.860misinformation or disinformation. It is information that while technically is true, intentionally
00:41:34.440leaves out context or is otherwise misleading with intention. A bit of that that I have seen
00:41:40.380posting around are one of the images circulating of Goode. So the main image that you've probably
00:41:46.660seen of Renee Goode is this image of her wearing a red dress with her hair down, kind of puzzled
00:41:53.380and blowing in the wind with her shoulders exposed.
00:41:56.620And this is the image that I think a lot of news reports are using of her.
00:42:00.220That is an actual image of Good from a 2020 Facebook post
00:42:03.580from the Old Dominic University English department in Virginia
00:42:09.460So I have seen that image of her where she looks sort of much more
00:42:13.720kind of like conventionally and traditionally feminine,
00:42:16.760juxtaposed with another image of her where her hair is really short
00:42:21.140or perhaps it's pulled back and she's a lot less glammed up than the one that I described earlier.
00:42:26.440Or it's an image of her as a as a still from the image on the day that she was killed, which you
00:42:32.320know when she was killed, she had just returned from dropping her child at school. And, you know,
00:42:36.860she's dressed like it. Right. They live in Minnesota. It's cold. So unsurprisingly, she's
00:42:41.960dressed like exactly what you would expect. A mom would be dressed in a Minnesota winter after0.50
00:42:46.100dropping a kid off at school. So the posts that I have seen that are trying to create that
00:42:50.840juxtaposition, say things like, oh, well, this is why I don't trust the mainstream media,
00:42:55.520because the media is trying to make it seem like good was this nice lady who was like me.
00:43:01.960But in reality, she had short hair or, you know, she did not look very glammed up on the day that
00:43:09.180she was killed. And the spirit of the post is like, oh, the mainstream lying media is trying
00:43:15.260to make it look like good was attractive and feminine. But here's another image of her with
00:43:20.340short hair. And again, I think that this narrative really says more about the people who are pushing
00:43:27.740it than it could ever say about good. Because again, most people understand that the image
00:43:32.940that you use to announce a professional accomplishment, like winning a poetry prize,
00:43:36.560is going to be different than how you dress when you're dropping your kids at school in the middle
00:43:40.320of winter in Minnesota. But, and I think this is what Molly Conger's post that I read earlier
00:43:44.440really gets at. It's this idea that Renee Good wasn't a white mom like we're white moms. She was
00:43:52.720a different kind of white mom, and thus she deserved to die, right? She might have been1.00
00:43:57.440visibly queer. She might have had short hair. She might have not been wearing a dress at the day of0.99
00:44:03.560her murder like the media is showing us pictures of her wearing a dress. The media is showing us
00:44:08.020pictures of her having long hair, but in reality, her hair might have been pulled up or it might
00:44:12.700have been really short and i think that it's what it's trying to say is these are all reasons why
00:44:17.400we don't have to have any empathy toward her right these are all reasons why she deserved whatever
00:44:21.680happened to her because of how she presents like that is what they are really saying yeah it's so
00:44:26.980uncharitable and it really highlights this other dynamic of the internet which is to flatten people
00:44:34.000because the reality is that she was both she was the woman in the dress who won an award and she
00:44:40.280was also the busy mom who was dropping her kid off. And those juxtaposition photos are pushing
00:44:47.960this idea that like, no, you have to choose. She was either one or the other. It's very
00:44:52.960reductivist and also kind of absurd and at odds with just what we know about how people exist in
00:45:01.680the world. And it makes me so angry that even in death, this is how this is what people are doing.
00:45:08.800This is how we will treat people. It is nothing new, right? Like we do it to black and brown people who are killed by the state all the time. You know, he's no angel. That is commonplace.
00:45:23.260And I just I think there's something about all of these gender hang ups that people are putting on her in death that really says something about what exactly is being sort of enforced or policed here by all of these other people.
00:45:39.100And you're so right that it is flattened. But I think that these are not real people. I don't think I don't think Renee Good's life is as like a real I don't think that these people who are doing this are seeing her life as a real life that was worth caring about.
00:45:53.780that she had a kid and a partner and a community who loved her and a background and a, you know,
00:45:59.700like, I don't think they see her like that. They see themselves like that. But I don't think that
00:46:04.380you could say the things that people have said about her online and actually see her as a person.
00:46:10.560And it just infuriates me that we're in this place where human life is just so cheap, you know,
00:46:18.820Like, this woman was killed. She was killed in the street by the state. And I just, I don't know, I don't have a fully fleshed out thought, but it just really disgusts me how cheap, quote, the party of life is when we're talking about actual life.
00:46:40.180Like human lives are worth more. And I don't know. I mean, like, what can I say? I don't think anybody listening will be surprised if they'll do it to her. They'll do it to any of us. You know, we can't even expect dignity in death. And it's just really heartbreaking.
00:46:56.960Yeah. And infuriating. I think a lot of people are really angry. Like, I don't know if you've seen the photos of protests in Minneapolis and elsewhere around the country. But I think this has really motivated a lot of people. And it's people can see the video. And it's pretty obvious that what the administration is saying is bullshit.
00:47:21.620Yeah, I have seen people that I have not expected speaking out about this. And if you see the video, it's very clear what's going on. And I think part of this is getting people to reject what they see with their own eyes like that. I think that's part of it.0.98
00:47:41.580Yeah, I think you're right. I think they're losing people who have maybe not been paying super close attention or maybe were willing to take them at their word in the past. And as they just keep pushing the boundaries of what they're asking people to believe, despite the evidence that they can see in front of them, I think you're right that they are losing people.
00:51:25.180All right, Bridget, have we got anything maybe a little bit less heavy to talk about here?
00:51:30.980I do, because I want to talk about this guy who said that he got dumped by his AI chatbot girlfriend for not supporting feminism.
00:51:39.180So take this story with a huge grain of salt, given what we were talking about with Casey and the fake DoorDash hoax story.
00:51:48.720And we'll talk about that in a moment.
00:51:50.240So basically the story here is that Yahoo reported that this guy gets into it with a chatbot when the chatbot says something about feminism.
00:51:59.900Y'all know I had my own spat with ChatGPT where it refused to generate accurate information about OpenAI's former board member Larry Summers and his connection to Epstein.
00:52:08.940Shout out to a listener who sent us a hilarious meme where it's Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec telling the clerk at Home Depot,
00:52:15.680I know more than you, but it's just me talking to Chachi PT about Larry Summers.0.98
00:52:21.000Anyway, back to the feminist chatbot.1.00
00:52:23.060So he has a post where he says, my AI girlfriend is feminist.0.99
00:52:27.000He says to the chatbot, you are a feminist.
00:52:57.440AI girlfriends are some weird feminist propaganda again.0.91
00:53:01.260So I have to say, assuming this is real,
00:53:04.660the chatbot would probably be pulling from available data online.1.00
00:53:09.420So this claim that the chatbot has been programmed to be feminist,
00:53:14.180is like probably not what's going on he goes on to say in the comments quote the thing is I have0.98
00:53:22.340slept with hundreds of women probably thousands almost all of them were feminist and all want to0.99
00:53:27.740go their own way I'm not sure if that suits me but what more can I do they just want to be laid
00:53:33.020what more can I do can someone explain this to me and now even chatbots are like that I think this1.00
00:53:38.820is harmful for all of us what's so bad about only sleeping with a man why does a woman always have0.58
00:53:44.140to find someone with fat pockets. Is that a good thing? I don't think so. So the replies to this1.00
00:53:49.700are pretty good. One reply says, a program designed to agree with almost everything you say is like a
00:53:54.860getaway from me. And so that comment really got me thinking because what exactly do you think is
00:54:02.400going on here? Like we know that chatbots are basically programmed to tell you what they want
00:54:07.360to hear. Do you think this guy essentially asked the chatbot to say something feminist so that he0.96
00:54:13.500could screenshot this and make this post about a conspiracy theory that big feminist is programming
00:54:20.420chatbots to be feminist like what do you think is going on here i think that's such a good question0.90
00:54:24.920i don't know what's going on uh you know i don't have any more information anybody else but like
00:54:30.380it definitely seems like something is going on and i i do have a theory so again assuming that
00:54:37.460any of this is true and he didn't just manufacture those screenshots uh i think a lot of guys like
00:54:44.100him who are really into like gender war partisanship and see their identity as being
00:54:52.440something defined in opposition to women i think they actually want a feminist girlfriend or at
00:54:58.500least they're attracted to feminist women uh because if they weren't like why the obsession1.00
00:55:04.260This guy says that he has slept with thousands of feminists, which like, OK, sure, buddy. But like there's plenty of conservative women in the world for him to interact with if he wanted to. So I think there's some kind of like unconscious or maybe even conscious thrill of the chase thing, like wanting what you can't have going on.0.96
00:55:25.640And I'm not the first person to point that out, but I do think it's relevant here because if that's true, then it offers an alternative explanation of where the AI chatbot, which, as people pointed out, is a piece of software designed to give people what they think they want.
00:55:40.180The chatbot correctly clocked that he didn't want an AI chatbot partner to agree with him about his conservative trad wife ideas or whatever he might have been saying, because we didn't get to see those screenshots. But he wanted it to take on this feminist persona so that he could fight with it. And then when that happened, he was so titillated or proud of himself that he went on to Reddit to brag about it. That's what I think is going on here.
00:56:07.040Mike, Mike, Mike, producer Mike. I don't want to get too into it because I don't often talk about my own personal life on the podcast. I will just say, as a woman who has sometimes been in close proximity to men, as a lifelong feminist, even before that was the thing that Beyonce was putting up on the stage in front of her concert.
00:56:32.120I'll just say what you said rings very true to me, that there are men out there who their desire
00:56:41.280is not for, because there are plenty of conservative women out there. There are plenty
00:56:45.780of women who want to have traditional gender roles in their romantic or sexual relationship.
00:56:52.260There are a lot of guys who claim those are the kind of women that they want. And I can confirm0.99
00:56:58.860Those are not the women they go after.
00:57:22.740He says, the way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient,
00:57:27.560but he never falls in love with a subservient woman. He's attracted to independent women.
00:57:32.920He's like an exotic bird collector, she said. He only wants a woman who is free because his dream
00:57:37.860is to put her in a cage. And yeah, I just can confirm as a pretty independent woman that this
00:57:45.780is a thing that happens. You know, there are plenty of conservative minded women out there1.00
00:57:51.020who want to have a trad wife situation yeah and you would think that wouldn't men who want this1.00
00:57:58.920be happier getting paired up with a woman who wants this the men do not see it that way the
00:58:03.840men don't feel that way i guess can confirm right and this isn't like some deep mysterious secret
00:58:11.660that we have discovered this like a lot of these guys are not the most sophisticated actors out
00:58:16.900there and so this is like a node thing and i think the chatbot picked up on that and so it was just
00:58:22.480role-playing exactly what he wanted because that's what the chatbots do they give people what they
00:58:28.300want that's my theory i don't know if you're a chatbot let us know what you think i mean i we
00:58:37.380we have a non-trivial percentage of listeners who are engaged in sex work or have been engaged in
00:58:44.120sex work and i have heard from some of those folks who say who probably say hell yeah like men
00:58:49.240and this this is this is no surprise to me that the chatbot would be picking up on you want me to
00:58:55.400mimic an independent woman who is not taking your bs and be told that directly yeah i'm also so
00:59:02.820curious what kind of reaction he thought he was going to get online like in in our notes doc you
00:59:09.360You included a screenshot of what he posted on Reddit, and it has negative one upvote, which is pretty funny.
00:59:18.820I feel like if he had put it in like a red pill manosphere space, it might have gotten more upvote.
00:59:26.960So maybe it was just the wrong audience.1.00
00:59:29.780They probably would have agreed, this is big feminism programming chatbots to be feminists.1.00
00:59:35.960Yeah, the conspiracy goes all the way down.0.98
00:59:39.360Real quick before we go, you and I were talking about this very quickly off mic. Do you remember how in our last episode that we recorded, I said the phrase, free two birds with one key to replace your barbaric and outdated and violent phrase that you repeat often, both on the podcast and in real life, kill two birds with one stone?
01:00:02.080I do remember that. I felt particularly wounded because I like that phrase. I really like efficiency and, you know, but I can see it's a little violent. Maybe people don't love bird-killing imagery. I can take a suggestion.
01:00:18.620Okay, well, listener Kate Girl gave us a new one that I loved. You can feed two birds with one scone.
01:00:25.060that's pretty adorable uh i do also love scones so yeah i can make this switch use it in
01:00:33.780conversation today let's make fetch happen thanks for listening kate and thanks to all of you for
01:00:38.460listening yeah thank you bridget uh listeners can write us an email at hello at tangody.com
01:00:45.180they can leave comments on spotify just like kate did and they can follow bridget on social media0.73
01:01:50.960I survived nine months in captivity and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive
01:02:02.400what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are The Survivor Files. Every
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01:02:13.800and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
01:02:19.000Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:02:27.380If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
01:02:33.160Pro 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.
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