00:01:13.700I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:01:17.400Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:01:21.100abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:24.740These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:28.800Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:40.420There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:01:48.540I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:01:51.280we need to talk about candace owens because and i can't believe i'm saying this0.99
00:01:58.280is she kind of making a little bit of sense now so last week on her podcast candace called out
00:02:04.420president donald trump she criticized trump's attacks on harvard university saying i never
00:02:09.540thought i'd see the day where i'd be rooting for a university over donald j trump and his
00:02:13.640administration but i don't recognize this administration right now i don't recognize
00:02:18.580what's happening. So at face value, it sounds like she's kind of defending free speech. And yeah,
00:02:25.460you might be wondering, am I actually agreeing with Candace Owens a little bit? But hold up,
00:02:30.940don't get too comfortable, because this is not a change of heart for Candace Owens.0.99
00:02:35.020It's a strategy. Candace Owens, I think, is rebranding. And like always, she's using things0.69
00:02:41.260like outrage and celebrity scandal to do it. In this episode, I dive into how Candace Owens is1.00
00:02:47.000leveraging lawsuits like the one involving Blake Lively and Justin Boldani. In the fallout of the1.00
00:02:52.020film, it starts with us to package her politics for a softer, maybe less familiar audience.
00:02:58.380It's the same noxious content, just with a new coat of paint. I broke down her playbook to my
00:03:03.740friends, Samantha and Andy, over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You.
00:03:07.120we're talking about the one the only candace owens speaking of villains
00:03:16.720so like i should say up top like i am weirdly fascinated with her what do you all have thoughts
00:03:25.200is she somebody who on who is on your radar what is your experience what are your experiences
00:03:29.340with candace owens or do you have any uh mine are negative mine are mostly
00:03:36.840negative but uh i uh most of most stuff i know is more recent uh and i didn't know a lot of what
00:03:47.380i know we're going to talk about in here but i will say generally she's someone i'm very wary of
00:03:53.220uh and i have a lot of negative associations with i will say um yes i i do know of her of course
00:04:01.100one of the things that I immediately put me on high alert is that she is one person that my
00:04:07.800racist Trump supporting backwards brother has used as a token in saying, see, we love Black people.0.90
00:04:16.500Oh, that is like that. That has probably been the experience of so many folks listening. And0.97
00:04:22.160I guess what I want to talk about today might actually answer why that is, because she is
00:04:27.220someone that people in my life have, like, cited or mentioned or like, oh, I saw Candace Owens
00:04:33.380talking about this. And I'm like, what? Like, why are you watching Candace Owens? Why are you
00:04:36.680listening to her podcast? So, like, I am, like, weirdly fascinated by her. She is somebody who
00:04:43.060has a legitimately fascinating story. And, like, from where she started to where she wound up,
00:04:50.280I just find deeply interesting. I don't want to focus too much on her, like, personal background,
00:04:55.740But there are some pieces of her early story that I do think are important context for like understanding who she is and sort of the role she has gone on to occupy in the world.
00:05:06.380So Owens grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. And while she was a high school student there, she was like racially harassed in a pretty gnarly way.
00:05:15.100A classmate left her a racist death threat on her voicemail that ended up turning into like a pretty serious local scandal because it turned out the person, her classmate that left that voicemail did so in a group of students that included the son of the then mayor and future Democratic governor of Connecticut, Daniel Molloy.
00:05:34.600So it got, it was really, really blown up into like a little bit of a scandal.
00:05:39.060Candace got lots of support from the local chapter of racial justice organizations like
00:05:43.540the NAACP, and her family ended up suing the Stanford Board of Education in federal court
00:05:48.040for failing to protect her rights, which resulted in a $37,500 settlement.
00:05:53.980After that, she goes on to study journalism at University of Rhode Island before dropping
00:05:58.400So this is really the part of her story where, I have to be honest, I see some
00:06:04.380parallels between me and her. You know, we're both Black women who were sort of early adopters
00:06:10.640of the internet to talk about things like race and culture and politics. Like me, for her,
00:06:15.900that seems to have manifested in a lot of, like, low-hanging fruit posts about, you know,0.99
00:06:23.660politics, like dumb jokes. Like, you know, the early days of blogging about politics online,
00:06:29.360It really was dumb jokes was like and like stupid memes were the lifeblood of that.0.98
00:06:36.940And so in 2015, she was writing blogs, making fun of Trump's penis size to give you a sense of the kind of thing that she was writing about, which honestly is something I would I wasn't doing that, but I could see myself doing it.0.99
00:06:49.400Right. I would definitely chuckle.0.97
00:06:52.020So some people might be surprised to know that Candace actually started her career as like a public intellectual or a public opinion haver or commentator or whatever you want to call it, as a leftist, like a progressive.
00:07:06.440In 2015, she was writing this blog called Degree 180, where she wrote pieces criticizing conservative Republicans, writing about, quote, the batshit crazy antics of the Republican Tea Party.
00:07:19.180Something that she wrote in her blog was, quote,
00:07:21.900the good news is they will eventually die off peacefully in their sleep, we hope,
00:07:25.860and then we can get right on with the obvious social change that needs to happen immediately.
00:07:31.000So you really get a sense of her as someone who was this, like,
00:07:33.960young Obama-era progressive using the early internet blogging and things like that
00:07:40.140to really put her voice and her perspective into the world.
00:07:43.300Again, something that, like, frankly, I can really see myself in.
00:08:12.420Like, she wasn't like a known voice or a known name, right?
00:08:15.500And I do think it speaks to the fact that, like, when she switched up her ideology and her perspective and what she was talking about, she got so much more attention.
00:08:25.860Like, as a Black woman leftist who talks about, you know, lefty stuff on the Internet, we're a dime a dozen.
00:08:33.320Nobody is really paying that much attention.
00:08:34.980But when you do the switch up, you really become a much bigger name and you get a lot more attention and a lot more engagement.
00:08:41.140And I think it's a lot more lucrative to be a black woman right winger than it is to be a black woman leftist.
00:09:11.140More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora.
00:09:16.500And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.
00:09:20.780So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.
00:09:23.860Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio.
00:09:28.180Think podcasting can help your business?
00:09:37.900If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:09:44.520This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:09:50.660pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:09:56.700I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:10:03.680I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:10:06.960From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:10:13.340It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:10:21.260Whether 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.
00:10:30.420Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:12:16.660I did a whole series with Cool Zone Media about how Gamergate and just general harassment against women and women of color and minoritized people, you could draw a direct line from that to like our political and social climate today.
00:12:32.720Like this is the stuff that I am like making a string board about and being like, and then this happened and then that happened and then 10 years later this happened.
00:14:26.960And it's funny because this is still an argument that people make
00:14:30.080when they want to restrict the internet today that like all the problems that happen on the
00:14:34.320internet from harassment to child exploitation material all of that could all be solved if you
00:14:40.120needed like your government id to access the internet and so it's funny how these ideas there
00:14:45.320are people pushing that concept today and even i mean like some people who are well-meaning but in
00:14:51.200my opinion incorrect are still pushing that idea and so it's funny how some of these ideas never
00:14:56.100really die they're just recycled like candace owens was talking about this in 2016 and here
00:15:00.460we are in 2025 still talking about it yes yes we are but oh my goodness speaking of things we're
00:15:12.840still talking about another thing we've talked about a lot on this show another thing i've been
00:15:18.280thinking about a lot lately is the radicalization that can happen online and candace owens kind of
00:15:27.400talks about this this is sort of her experience with gamergate so when she exactly that so when
00:15:34.960she came out with social autopsy pretty much everybody hated it right like it was like a
00:15:38.820universal digital boo or like thumbs down and one of the people who was like really not into this
00:15:45.240idea was Zoe Quinn, whose name you might know if you know about Gamergate, because she was someone
00:15:49.220who was pretty viciously attacked in Gamergate. So after all of the backlash from this project
00:15:57.080that Candace tried to put out into the world via Kickstarter, she herself was doxed and harassed.1.00
00:16:03.440And Candace actually blamed Zoe Quinn and other feminists for this harassment and started saying1.00
00:16:08.880so publicly. You can probably guess who loved this and like seized on it. That's right. People1.00
00:16:15.080like Milo Yiannopoulos, people who were promoters of Gamergate and like doing the harassment of1.00
00:16:19.900Gamergate, really hyped up Owens' claims that, yeah, it's the feminists who are the ones who0.90
00:16:25.280are doing the actual online harassment, not, you know, these gamer bros and like right wingers.1.00
00:16:31.480It's actually feminists who are the bad guys here. And this event, Owens credits with her turn from1.00
00:16:37.160progressive to being what she calls a red-pilled radical. She says, quote, I became a conservative
00:16:43.600overnight, I realized that liberals were actually the racists.0.99
00:16:47.740Liberals were actually the trolls.0.59
00:16:49.600And so Annie, you're exactly right that like she describes this as like an overnight turning
00:16:55.640point of her going from being a progressive who was collaborating with the NAACP and writing
00:17:01.380about how awful Republicans and Trump and the Tea Party Republicans were to like overnight
00:17:08.060waking up and being like, no, it is liberals who are the real enemy.
00:17:11.940I have so many thoughts because I don't I was not a part of the Gamergate world like I did not
00:17:19.480understand what was happening out there in the internets because I was case managing and like
00:17:24.820like groveling in my own like oh everything's worse but like her being docs and all this0.93
00:17:31.960because I'm sure just as many like people who were feminists and who were victims of Gamergate0.94
00:17:39.820and such there were more probably jerks out there who were like no we were definitely against this1.00
00:17:45.360idea and harassing her because they don't want their name out there which is what she was trying0.98
00:17:51.020to do right so but she just picked a group like no it's definitely after she got so much support
00:17:56.200totally so my understanding is that like and and if folks listening are like i was there i remember
00:18:03.300As far as I know, this was, like, feminists having good faith disagreement with Candace's project. And then Candace, probably pumped up by some of these, like, right-wing bro gamer guys who were behind a lot of this harassment. And, like, we have all the receipts for that. Probably pumped up by some of them. Just, like, assumed that these feminists were the ones behind it.0.99
00:18:26.620So like, as far as I know, she, this was not a documented thing, but, you know, certainly0.91
00:18:33.540like I, like I was, I was like pretty in the mix on the internet in these days.0.97
00:18:37.680Certainly this feud between Candace Owens and feminists like Zoe Quinn about Gamergate0.63
00:18:43.620was something that like got her name into the conversation in a way that I don't think1.00
00:19:07.760Like, I don't know how reliable of a narrator she is.1.00
00:19:10.260However, when she says like, oh, overnight, I realized that feminists were the real enemy0.87
00:19:15.080and the people that I should be aligning myself were people like Milo Yiannopoulos.
00:19:19.380I don't think that she's outright lying.
00:19:21.580But I think that what she's saying is probably a lot closer to what you've just said, Sam, that like what she realized was like when I was just a feminist online, I didn't get a lot of attention.
00:19:32.640But when I started publicly beefing with these other feminists, I was getting a lot of attention.0.70
00:19:38.720These these right wing extremist types like Milo Yiannopoulos, who had huge platforms, started paying me more attention and giving me more support, giving me more engagement.0.96
00:19:48.660And, like, I think there's something to this idea that, like, I wouldn't necessarily say that she changed her ideological ideas.
00:19:59.880I think that what she realized was, like, oh, if I align myself with people on the right, that comes with attention.
00:20:07.060I don't know her, but that's my sense.
00:20:08.800Like, I don't think that she's outright misrepresenting this shift.
00:20:12.720But I think it's not necessarily about an ideology so much as it is like, oh, public spats and rage bait and spectacle gets me engagement and attention and that can translate to dollars?
00:29:25.620But for her on her individual level, coming in and being tokened to be on these multimillion dollar shows, because, you know, we know that Alex Jones made a lot of money from his hatred.
00:29:37.040We know that we've seen it. He talks about it.
00:29:38.940uh we know uh charlie kirk as well her coming in and taking their money it's kind of like
00:29:44.260you know i don't hate it for you like i hate what you're saying yeah so i used to think and again
00:29:52.220this is my opinion i don't know her like that or anything but like i used to think like certainly
00:29:56.540she's playing these people she doesn't believe this now i don't know now i now i think she's
00:30:02.160like a true believer but like maybe i i go back and forth and again it's one of those things that
00:30:07.960one of those reasons why i find her so deeply fascinating right because like like as a black
00:30:13.940woman i am tempted to like project like well certainly this is some sort of a i mean it is
00:30:19.020a grift don't get me wrong it is like for sure a grift like she grifted can confirm but like
00:30:24.780i it really it really prompts me to look back at myself to be like well why am i like why like am
00:30:32.160i low-key rooting for her like what is this right right like you're the like you're not my favorite
00:30:38.200but you're not the worst worst exactly i can't figure out where you are in this in the spectrum
00:30:43.520but you know on top of all of that as we were talking about in nashville being like if you go
00:30:48.100outside of the city escape and no people don't know you you're not gonna get this love that you
00:30:54.240think you're getting from this very uh again white supremacist patriarch that you are representing
00:39:45.000Everything I've learned about it has been against my will.
00:39:46.900I'm like, why do I need to, like, what, like, it's just, like, not something, I don't know, it's just, like, not.
00:39:53.640I mean, in the end, like, because they were trying to compare it to the Johnny Depp Amber Heard case, which I'm like, yo, back off.
00:40:00.720There's so many things that the implication of that alone makes me think I don't want to take this seriously because it's not to that level.
00:40:08.400We have this conversation because like we spoke very quickly before it blew up to this, like the very beginning of the conflict, mainly talking about how domestic violence victims and survivors really were offended by the way that the movie, which is the center of this controversy, was portrayed.
00:40:28.520And then how the ad marketing went for it, like made it all girly, good times, all these things that they were like, this is really kind of offensive.
00:40:37.180Like this language of this entire language of something that is very serious and people have taken very personally and have like a lot of familiarity with and trauma with.
00:40:48.120And then it felt like flat, especially like with how it is now, especially because it's no longer about the movie.
00:40:57.040anymore but but like it's it was we took a small take on that and why romanticizing domestic
00:41:04.060violence is such a such a problem in hollywood and just in our environment in general uh but
00:41:10.020like this was way before everything happened and the back and forth and back and forth
00:41:16.420i will say there's a lot of disdain for blake lively on my feed yes again i did not choose this
00:41:25.400okay so it's so funny that you say this i have experienced the exact same thing so so if folks
00:41:31.780don't know what we're talking about if you are like annie blissfully unaware of like what is
00:41:36.560going on it's it's a situation it's like a little bit complicated and it's ongoing but it's actually
00:41:43.140like a pretty interesting story and it does include a lot of things that i am interested in
00:41:47.080like how celebrities use social media how easily social media platforms can be like weaponized for
00:41:52.560or against a specific person email correspondence where people make themselves look terrible in
00:41:57.700writing because they clearly do not expect these emails to be like in a deposition or in the new
00:42:01.760york times that is my personal favorite thing nothing right when whenever it's like oh we have
00:42:06.300the emails i'm like i'm gonna read every single one of them like please continue to put your
00:42:10.020wrongdoings and in emails and in writing so that i can read them later in a deposition
00:42:14.880so like i do think that folks should like if that seems like the kind of situation that you
00:42:20.400are interested in, like, it is a meaty situation, so, like, definitely listen to podcasts about it
00:42:25.860or whatever. But for our purposes, a quick and dirty summary of what's going on is that Blake
00:42:30.740Lively and Justin Boldoni were in a movie adaptation of the popular Colleen Hoover novel
00:42:35.980called It Starts With Us. In December, Lively filed a legal complaint against Boldoni,
00:42:41.120accusing him of sexual harassment and starting a smear campaign against her. Now, he strongly
00:42:45.880denies that and has sued in response. Both camps are releasing information like text messages and
00:42:52.000emails and like videos and voicemails to make each other look bad. So the case has turned, I mean,
00:42:59.040kind of similar to the Johnny Depp, Amber Heard thing. It's one of those situations that has
00:43:02.260turned into like an inkblot test that changes depending on what version of the story that you
00:43:07.100buy. In version one, Blake Lively was being sexually harassed on set by this like fake
00:43:13.080feminist male ally who was actually an abuser. In version two, Blake Lively is like this egomaniac0.98
00:43:20.120who is using her star power and A-list celebrity network like her husband, Ryan Reynolds, from0.90
00:43:25.280those Deadpool movies to control the narrative around her being a nightmare on set and steamrolling0.53
00:43:30.300everybody else on this project. So Sam, like you, kind of similar to the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard
00:43:37.520thing. And in some ways, I think depending on what silos of the internet you are in,
00:43:43.240you might be algorithmically being given the idea that the public sentiment leans one way or
00:43:49.720another. Like on TikTok, for whatever reason, my TikTok algorithm thinks I hate Blake Lively and
00:43:55.760that I want to see like lots of videos like pouring over every nuance of the ways in which
00:44:02.420she is a fraud, which is not true. She's not someone who like, I spend really any time at
00:44:06.820all thinking about but it's interesting that like the algorithm thinks like oh this is somebody who
00:44:11.300hates blake lively right i agree for some reason i am getting all of the tea on all the awful things
00:44:19.160that blake lively is and all the people who hate her and why they hate her and i'm like i have never
00:44:24.340once i don't know if i've ever seen a blake lively movie i don't think i have if i sisterhood of the
00:44:29.560traveling pants no okay that's usually the one people know like that or i will say say whatever
00:44:36.500you want to about like lively the movie a simple favor slaps she's great in that um did you get
00:44:41.400the tea on how much they hate each other on that what that's what i did i did see an interview
00:44:47.900where um who is her co-star in that anna kendrick right anna kendrick where they were asking her
00:44:52.980about blake live and she does have a very weird response apparently they hate each other and
00:44:57.380that's that's what i've understood that's what they're telling me because they don't ever show
00:45:01.420up together on the red carpet so when i say my feed really feeds to the fact that i must hate
00:45:08.080blake lively when i don't know this person and like i like not that i know any celebrity like
00:45:13.620that but i'm like but i've never at one point have i looked her up or like she's not on my feed i
00:45:20.240don't look her up on my like searches i guess the one time it was for the it ends with us
00:45:25.380damn it every time i research something for the show it messes me up but anyway yeah
00:45:30.700but yeah no that is I'm like I guess we really don't trust Blake Lively we being a TikTok0.95
00:45:39.720yeah my TikTok FYP the same as you like I was trying to get to the bottom of like what was
00:45:46.460going on with this this Justin and Blake thing and one of my cousins who I would like lovingly
00:45:51.820describe as a normie and that she's not like super online she's not you know deep in the depths of
00:49:41.200Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:49:45.740I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:49:50.180I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:49:57.800They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:50:01.720But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:50:05.160They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:50:08.280Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:50:17.240If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:50:23.160This 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.
00:50:35.640I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:50:42.760I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:50:46.280From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:50:52.280It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:50:59.760Whether 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.
00:51:09.360Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:51:16.500you know the other parts of this with as much as my algorithm wants to show me all the anti
00:51:28.120Blake Lively stuff as well as all of the controversy because yes I would get updates
00:51:32.580about the SNL thing about how everybody snubbed Ryan Reynolds I was like did they
00:51:35.940okay but like interestingly I did get content not from Candace Owens but other creators reminding me
00:51:46.500and everybody listening, that Candace Owens is a right-winged fanatic and that they need to be0.99
00:51:51.440wary of the information she's giving about this specific case. Yes. So I think that's like why I
00:51:57.260wanted to make this episode. This is a general reminder of who Candace Owens is. And like,
00:52:02.760we all love celebrity gossip. I know I do. But like, let's just remember who she is and the
00:52:08.440source. And like, she might want to rebrand herself, but let's just keep it at the forefront
00:52:14.020front of our minds who she is and what she's about. And like, she's really has exploded in
00:52:19.480popularity from this coverage. You know, it's been attracting a lot more viewers beyond her normal
00:52:25.360right-wing extremist base, like you were saying, Sam. It's like normies like my cousins, my cousins
00:52:29.780who might not have any idea who she is. They just think she's an entertainment journalist.0.72
00:52:33.460All of this has meant explosive growth and engagement for Owens. Here's how the cut put it
00:52:37.240in that piece. Since Owens started covering the Lively Baldoni case, her YouTube channel has
00:52:41.660exploded in popularity, allowing her to attract a much larger fan base than the audience of
00:52:45.860hardcore conservatives she has amassed over the years. Each episode about Lively and Baldani
00:52:50.740racks up at least 1.5 million views. In the past month alone, Owens has amassed more than
00:52:56.260450,000 new subscribers on YouTube, and her total video views have quadrupled since this time last
00:53:02.380year, according to data from the analytics platform Social Blade. Over the past three
00:53:06.880months, her audience on YouTube has also started skewing 65% female, according to data provided by
00:53:12.220a spokesperson, a market shift from her past fan base. So this has all been great news for Owens
00:53:18.040and where her audience used to be like men, you know, like probably like your brother, right? Like
00:53:24.820right-wing men. By covering this story, she's really attracting a lot of women.1.00
00:53:29.580oh my stomach kind of hurts um it is really interesting that this came in with gamer gate
00:53:38.620as well because like we were saying gamer gate was such a mess and there were so many men
00:53:46.920who who would be like see this woman agrees with me and i hate it because sometimes i'm like why
00:53:54.920i just want to have a conversation about why i don't like this game and now you've made it into
00:54:00.220this woman agrees with me and now you're using it to attract more women to be like see
00:54:07.980we're on the we are correct and you are wrong and so when you see things like this
00:54:15.700where she started out with mostly men and then she's attracting like all of these women i feel
00:54:24.240like um it's worth asking why do you think this took off for her this story so one I will say
00:54:35.560that like Candace actually is pretty interesting to listen to like I don't agree with what she's
00:54:40.600saying but she does like even when she was a progressive blogger she does have like a point
00:54:46.220of view and a clear voice and I think that really comes through in her coverage of Blake Lively
00:54:50.400You know, she has this way of speaking that signals to you like, oh, this person is really breaking it down. It's the same reason why things on TikTok, things like story time or like I'm spilling the tea really holds people's attention. I think that Candace really does know how to do that. One, I think the second kind of gets at what you were saying, Annie, that we just love misogyny.
00:55:12.740And I think if that misogyny can be laced with, like, a threat of conspiracy, it's even better, right?
00:55:19.300Like, social media platforms are always going to amplify things like misogyny or misogynoir or racism or transphobia.
00:55:27.200I think all of that is just baked into what it means to show up on social media.
00:55:31.200And I think Owens really, in a savvy way, takes that a step further by breaking all of this down like she's explaining a conspiracy, right?
00:55:40.480So she's not just saying, like, here's my take on Blake Lively or here's what's going on with the Blake Lively case or, you know, here's why even, like, here's why I don't like Blake Lively.
00:55:51.420She has this tinge of, like, she's uncovering this dark truth about this successful woman to take her down.
00:55:59.100Like, of course that's going to take off.1.00
01:04:15.360that includes her other extremist attitudes,0.98
01:04:18.060really using this Blake Lively celebrity scandal1.00
01:04:21.020as the hook. And I think because celebrity stories, especially ones that involve women,
01:04:25.380are so often just like considered fluff. So a lot of people who care about like extremist content
01:04:31.600or ideology might not be paying that much attention to how these stories that you might
01:04:35.820see on Us Weekly are tapping into those ideologies and unleashing those ideologies on a brand new
01:04:41.400audience. And so I think that's especially concerning when you're talking about things
01:04:45.580It's like celebrity because, you know, when I'm reading celebrity scandals or like reading Us Weekly, I might not be primed to have my like BS detector on and up because it just is like you think of it as a less charged space.
01:04:58.200And so I think that it really can be more dangerous because it lends itself to people being more susceptible to ideological content they might not be expecting without even realizing it.
01:05:09.520And, like, I think it's very easy for Candace Owens to go from, like, saying Blake Lively0.57
01:05:15.100is lying to, like, women lie to women can't be trusted to, like, women should not have
01:05:20.360jobs, which I'm not just, like, pulling that out of nowhere.0.99
01:05:23.180That is a stance that Candace Owens has explicitly advocated for, that women should not have1.00
01:06:02.860and how they've been able to influence young men.
01:06:05.780Like this is coming in as influencing young women0.73
01:06:08.480I mean, just today I'm seeing a lot of content about how the younger generations are being red-pilled, as they would say, which is fitting here.
01:06:18.880And things like the soft live content being a beginning for a lot of young women not realizing they're getting that kind of brand.
01:06:27.560We've talked about that with self-care.
01:06:29.460We've talked about that with yoga and the clean lifestyle type of thing.
01:06:34.340how that easily becomes a pipeline for the conservative right-wing community.
01:06:40.360And this is kind of that big story, except that we see her branding and we know who she is.1.00
01:06:44.780But if you don't know from jump her stance, this is definitely a worrisome tactic.0.95
01:06:51.240Because we know things like true crime and celebrity gossip, like it's geared towards young women.0.99
01:06:57.820It's geared towards women in general.0.68
01:06:59.260And they also spend a lot of money and they spend a lot of time in it, investigating and taking part of it.0.98
01:07:03.960So it's really worrisome. Like, it is comical, as we were talking at the beginning, like, what is this, to very concerning and understanding that when we let this stuff go, like you were saying, like, this is fluff content, but in actuality, it's feeding into a conservative ideal that becomes mainstream, and it's usually really dangerous.