00:15:16.480or whatever now it's like everything has to say something about yeah the world and i that's what
00:15:23.420i noticed when that went viral initially people and i think i mean just strictly based on how the
00:15:30.060engagement algorithm was working at that time because a lot of people were like let's yell at
00:15:34.060her well but it was not it was an equal parts let's yell at her and then people getting outraged
00:15:40.460that people were yelling at her and that is it's really important to have like both of those i
00:15:45.960think to reach the level of virality that this did but you know this is right like since twitter
00:15:52.720has been leaning harder and harder into algorithmic recommendations for years but um i think we've
00:15:57.520really seen it especially in since the yılan era like really take hold and i think this is an example
00:16:03.860of twitter leaning hard into algorithmic recommendations where suddenly this person is
00:16:07.600in your feed because everybody has an opinion on the commentary about it and everybody wants to
00:16:14.400again project they want to use this innocuous benign sort of generic tweet as a way to posture
00:16:22.000about whatever they want to talk about totally and i think i mean that's a really great point
00:16:28.360that like you know the wave of anger towards this user is one thing but the story doesn't
00:16:35.260really thrive unless she also has thousands of people coming to her defense even though
00:16:40.320she's tweeting you know into presumably to her the void do you remember when that sort of phenomenon
00:16:47.140took oh yeah yeah i was gonna write about this recently because there was this sort of similar
00:16:52.180thing about doordash some person talked about doordash and suddenly it was like five days of
00:16:56.800discourse of well outraged about doordash then people outraged about the outrage but um the
00:17:02.720outrage at people that are expressing they're very you know first of all they shouldn't be
00:17:08.160expressing it at that woman but i can understand things are triggering on the internet whatever
00:17:11.700they get triggered but then it's like the other people getting very triggered that anybody is
00:17:16.820triggered and it's just it just goes bananas but yeah i mean i think also just we're dealing with
00:17:24.540a lot of really big problems in society and people can't reach the people that actually
00:17:30.180can affect change and the people that can affect change and have institutional power don't give a
00:17:34.620at what average people have to say if they don't have money or access themselves to power. So
00:17:39.520these main characters kind of become the only outlet for voicing this anger and people are
00:17:45.880used as props to make these arguments or statements or whatever, because they're at
00:17:52.420least accessible, you know? Yeah. How have you seen as, you know, as our feeds become algorithmically
00:18:00.680driven, how the treatment has changed with regards to gender. Yeah. Well, I think actually
00:18:07.040the hatred of women is sort of fueled virality on the internet for years. And especially since
00:18:13.860the beginning, I mean, I talk about it in the book, but the people that really pioneered the
00:18:19.300content creator industry and some of the people that put themselves online first were women.
00:18:23.240And there's a specific type of woman that gets a lot of hatred, which is sort of a1.00
00:18:27.180semi-attractive or seemingly privileged women, usually an upper middle-class white woman.1.00
00:18:33.820In one sense, they do very well on the internet because they ascribe to traditional beauty0.99
00:18:39.840standards. They're usually somewhat attractive, somewhat privileged, enough to do well online
00:18:46.280or enough to get attention online. But they're also subject to some of the most vicious hate
00:18:51.900because it's just a favorite pastime of the internet to tear women down specifically wives0.95
00:18:57.340because there's this notion of like moms and wives like always doing something wrong or like0.63
00:19:03.480it's misogyny i mean it's just hardcore misogyny and then there's of course a separate type of
00:19:08.220really vicious hatred towards women of color who are also just ripped apart constantly the thing
00:19:14.780is they don't really have the level of privilege and so they often some of these wives curvy wife1.00
00:19:20.300is a good example right you know she's sprung that into brand deals and has a plus size clothing1.00
00:19:24.880partnerships and all of this women of color are not able to take advantage of that virality and1.00
00:19:31.300monetize it the same way i mean this coffee wife woman it doesn't sound like she's leaned into it1.00
00:19:36.320but she could have released her own line of coffee cups or whatever you know like and i don't know1.00
00:19:40.520what she looks like but i think like that people are more accepting of privileged women almost
00:19:47.820pivoting, even though they receive an outside hatred. If you're a conventionally attractive0.99
00:19:54.200wife, mother, or seen as a slightly privileged wife and mother, you're going to get torn apart0.99
00:20:00.040because that is what like misogynists on the internet love to come for. Yeah.1.00
00:20:04.560Thanks again to Taylor. Her book, Extremely Online, is available now.
00:20:08.560So talking with Taylor reset how I was thinking about this story a little.
00:20:13.020So to say that the legacy of Coffee Wife is that people hate women online is technically true, but a little undercooked.
00:20:21.800After talking to Taylor, I became convinced that this story is also a pretty damning example of modern online algorithms gaming us to engage with each other.
00:20:31.640Because as I was going back through the quote tweets reacting to Daisy's bold statement, the mean tweets versus the defenses of Daisy are uneven.
00:20:41.400There's more nice comments coming to her defense.
00:20:44.860For every tweet that says they are capitalism, there's also this.
00:20:51.560That lady said she enjoys mornings with her husband and folks said not on my watch.
00:25:40.120This story was tailor-made for the internet rage machine.
00:25:44.280Vox writer Rebecca Jennings referenced as much in a December 2022 essay called
00:25:49.020Every Chronically Online Conversation is the Same, saying,
00:25:53.140If you felt a creeping sense of dread while reading about Daisy and her husband
00:25:57.260enjoying coffee in their garden, it's possible you spend too much time online.
00:26:02.160That's because, despite it seeming innocuous,0.93
00:26:05.060Daisy's post has all the markers of Twitter rage bait.
00:26:07.740And by rage bait, I mean a person sharing an experience that may not be entirely universal.
00:26:14.020I mostly agree with this and do feel that the anger towards Daisy is wildly misplaced.
00:26:22.240This is the kind of anger we reserve for Kardashians throwing parties during a pandemic.
00:26:28.840And this doesn't invalidate any of the anger or frustration that online users that were truly,
00:26:34.340sorry, triggered by Daisy's inoffensive post felt. I mean, hell, Daisy herself articulated this
00:26:41.220feeling better than anyone else. Here she is on that same Anjeli Lu's YouTube podcast.
00:26:47.260You know, as far as what I could say to the people that were doing all of that is I just think
00:26:52.640when you're exuding that much hate to other people, that comes from a place in your heart
00:26:58.420that's hurt. Because I truly believe that, you know, everything that like, we're all just mirrors
00:27:03.820of each other and something about me made them feel something about themselves that was probably
00:27:10.840trauma from who knows when in their life and that caused something and caused them to feel that way
00:27:16.880so I think that that just comes that kind of behavior just comes from someone being hurt and
00:27:21.820I understand that and I have compassion for those people because truly maybe they know better but
00:27:28.000they probably don't know anybody or they're just dealing with their hurt and they're dealing with
00:27:32.080it like that instead of in other healthy ways, you know? So thankfully, Coffee Wife had a mellow
00:27:39.220enough lifestyle to forgive and was offline enough to understand the anger without becoming enraged1.00
00:27:45.600back. When it comes to women behaving in a very particular way to not get a particular reaction,1.00
00:27:52.620Daisy did everything right. All she did wrong was exist in a way that the algorithm was liable to1.00
00:27:59.460boost. When I started this show, the person who was most insistent, along with hundreds of others
00:28:05.280that I talk about coffee wife, was my best friend Julia. And I wanted to know why. Because no matter
00:28:11.200where you fell at the time, what happened over the coffee in the garden tweet was a pretty classic
00:28:16.140public shaming. And Julia is a great comic and writer who wrote a controversial essay for Gawker
00:28:21.660in 2022 called In Defense of Shame. She's literally an authority on shame. And not just because she
00:28:28.940grew up Catholic in New England, but that certainly didn't hurt. And Julia feels strongly
00:28:33.700that Daisy was not deserving of the backlash she got. So, when is shame a necessary tool,
00:28:40.640and when is it whatever the fuck this is? I wanted to ask her about it first.0.94
00:28:45.840I am Julia Clare. I'm a comedian and writer at Crooked Media.
00:28:51.940You are the person that I associate most with, like, intensely feeling about this story.
00:28:57.700i am the person you most associate with the concept of shame yes yes and so it really
00:29:05.860you've saved me an interview here by also because yeah like you you felt really uh strongly that
00:29:14.320this woman had been shamed improperly but you do feel tell me your feelings about a proper shaming
00:29:21.300A few years ago, I wrote a piece for Gawker RIP called In Defense of Shame. It was kind of immediately criticized by people who didn't read the piece as it being a defense of shaming. People were basically saying that I was co-signing dogpile culture, co-signing shaming, which is not at all what I was talking about in the piece.
00:29:47.680I think of shame, um, as any lapsed Catholic would, uh, it's a very kind of like internal
00:29:58.060experience, uh, more of a reflective experience, not an external experience.0.57
00:34:49.240Whether 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.
00:34:58.300Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:36:27.200So not to 2016 Ghostbusters this situation, but take a second to imagine how this story would be different if it were a husband tweeting about enjoying time with his wife in said garden.
00:36:39.700I really don't think the reaction would be the same.
00:36:42.160In the context of hetero couples, husbands who adore their wives tend to be lifted up as wife guys in the same way that they're more easily rewarded socially for being an active part of their children's lives.
00:36:54.680And while there was intersecting issues that caused people to project onto Coffee Wife,
00:36:59.640I still think this boiled down to an internet classic.1.00
00:37:02.440Women are fair game for just about anything.1.00
00:37:05.320There's no social incentive for Daisy to say she loves her husband.1.00
00:37:09.780Because when a woman adores spending time with her husband, so what?
00:37:13.860It would be selfish of her to not love spending time with him.
00:37:17.100When a woman takes good care of and loves her children, so what?
00:37:23.120And coming up short in either department is still met with easier, more reflexive criticism, even with gains made in general gender perception.1.00
00:37:32.040But while I do firmly believe that Daisy was dragged online for simply being happy, I want to state the obvious and say, of course, women can fucking suck online.1.00
00:37:42.160There's plenty of precedent for that because women are people.0.99
00:37:45.180And there are clear patterns, en masse and as individuals, for cis white women specifically, like Daisy and myself, to behave in an insensitive at best, bigoted and benefiting from the whiteness that patriarchy and capitalism rewards, and being generally a condescending piece of shit to people who are more marginalized than themselves.0.97
00:38:04.640That's a lot of words to say a no longer trendy term that is still somewhat useful, and it is girlboss.0.95
00:38:12.360There's a bunch of conflicting definitions of this term.
00:38:15.180Some are as simple as, quote, a woman, especially a young woman, who is ambitious and successful in her career, unquote.
00:38:22.320And others, as I think of the girl boss, are connected more closely to women using the language of feminism to accrue power while actively upholding the status quo.
00:38:33.100Probably the most famous example of this is Sheryl Sandberg, who wrote the bestseller Lean In in 2013 to encourage women to advocate for themselves in the workplace.0.63
00:38:42.460She is the ultimate girl boss to me for a few reasons.1.00
00:38:46.960First of all, she is a huge beneficiary of capitalism that is actively harmful.
00:38:52.080She was the COO of Facebook during years and years of infinite growth.1.00
00:38:57.020And second of all, she's using her position as a powerful woman to sell you something.0.98
00:39:02.000And that something is that the only thing holding you back as a woman in the workplace0.92
00:39:06.260is not the system you find yourself in, but something you are neglecting to do.0.84
00:39:11.620It's self-help snake oil that bullies the women who are reading it.
00:40:57.140You know, like we're told is the whole point of social media.
00:41:01.720And given the state of Twitter in the fall of 2022,
00:41:04.780And on this specific week, the algorithm pushing this high engagement story makes a lot of sense.
00:41:12.360There were a number of algorithmic shifts on Twitter and in social media writ large in this year.
00:41:17.900If you're a Twitter user yourself, or I'm not going to say X, please don't contact me about this.
00:41:23.480If you're a Twitter user yourself or a proud Twitter retiree, you might remember when their timeline became completely algorithmically driven instead of what it had been for years and years, which was a real time feed of people you had chosen to follow.
00:41:38.800Now, people you didn't follow would be sorted to the top of your feed if the algorithm thought you were likely to interact with the post based on what you'd interacted with in the past.
00:41:48.820And the people you actually chose to follow might see their content get pushed further and further down.
00:41:55.760Users got really pissed off about this, and Twitter tried to mitigate the issue by splitting everything into two feeds.
00:42:02.540So if you opened the website on your laptop, it would default to the new shitty algorithm feed, and you could shift over to the timeline you'd had for 15 years, but it would take some effort.
00:42:14.640And it's posts like Daisy's that would get sorted into this new algorithmically driven feed, the one you didn't ask for, and the one that no one is prepared to be sorted into.
00:42:26.140And within a week of the Coffee Wife flare-up, a looming Twitter acquisition was finally completed.
00:42:34.360After months of legal wrangling and negotiation, Elon Musk has finally bought social media company Twitter.
00:42:41.760Earlier in 2022, Elon Musk, who I think we can all agree only had the best intentions and deserves the benefit of the doubt,
00:42:50.500offered to buy Twitter on a whim for $54.20 a share,
00:42:55.300just months after he'd become the company's largest shareholder at nearly 10%.
00:42:59.520This put the prospective deal at $44 billion,
00:43:03.500and Twitter accepted the offer very quickly.
00:43:07.020They genuinely didn't seem to think he'd go through with it,
00:43:09.740and accepted to all but resist a hostile takeover from Musk.
00:43:13.420But Musk, determined to pivot the platform to white supremacy,
00:43:16.920doubled down, declaring that his ownership would mean less bots and more, uh, free speech.
00:43:23.620He certainly made good on the former in the fascist content is king sense,
00:43:28.680but the crackdown on bots is pretty hilarious for a site that I can't even pay0.99
00:43:33.220to stop auto-posting my pussy in bio underneath pictures of me and my infant nephew.0.99
00:43:39.760So yeah, this change of ownership was famously a disaster.0.99
00:43:43.600Elon Musk tried to back out of the objectively bad deal that was his idea in July, but wasn't
00:43:49.740able to, and was all but forced to go through with the deal less than a week after Daisy
00:51:52.160And so it was hard for me as somebody who luckily was very privileged and that that wasn't the case for me, right? Like I got COVID, people I know got COVID, but thankfully I didn't lose my loved ones. It wasn't impacting me the way that it was. I'm not an essential worker, right?
00:52:07.380And so I think that for me personally, it was strange to grapple with that.
00:52:15.320This feeling of like, I am going through a tough time and so is everyone.
00:52:20.240I think it, for me, created this dynamic where, I hate to say it, but I was very much like, what about my pain?
00:52:26.960You know, like, when is it going to be my turn for somebody to see me?
00:52:33.620Nobody around me died, but I still had a tough time.
00:52:35.620I was finding myself in this like almost very narcissistic place of wanting somebody to acknowledge what I had been through.
00:52:44.540And so I think with Coffee Lady, I think it was a lot of people who perhaps were wanting someone to see their pain, wanting others to acknowledge their pain and their anxiety and their loneliness and their frustration, which is something that I can relate to really deeply.
00:53:00.360And so I think that's part of why some of the replies that she got would be like, I can't afford a garden. I don't have a husband. You know, I'm alone here. I don't have any friends like like people really making it about themselves and what they lack.
00:53:15.540And like something about that tweet, I think, highlighted the lack that a lot of people were feeling. And I just I really it's easy to dunk on these people and be like, wow, you're so dysregulated that that's that this woman, this random woman's tweet is making you feel that way. But I also kind of get it.
00:53:32.060You're totally right. And I know I've been guilty of this in the past and probably during the pandemic era internet where you're taking like your personal pain and I've had moments where I'm like, I don't want to see someone happy right now because I'm not.
00:53:46.280And like, I think that there's a lot of that, but some of it is sort of manifesting as a political statement. I can't quite get my head around that phenomenon because I don't want to discount the fact that like class rage and class anxiety online, I mean, it makes total sense.
00:54:03.560I experienced it a lot, especially sort of the further back you go, but she's so clearly not
00:54:11.260the person that can, I think it's interesting online when people dogpile on someone who cannot
00:54:16.800help them. Right. I do think there's a gendered aspect to it. I haven't really kind of grappled
00:54:23.380with this too much just yet, but like, I know for me, when I'm scrolling TikTok or Instagram,0.97
00:54:28.620there is something about the visualization of a woman who seems like she's got her shit together.0.94
00:54:49.180And so I think that coffee ladies tweet, at least for me, triggered a kind of very gendered,
00:54:58.060almost, like, politicized anxiety that there are women out there who are doing it right,
00:55:03.320and Bridget, you are doing it wrong. Like, something about, like, there has never been
00:55:07.420a day where I'm able to start my day serenely drinking coffee in my garden. I actually do
00:55:13.360have a small garden, and I never start my day out there because I start my day like most people,
00:55:17.760like, frazzled, late for a call, just trying to chug some coffee while I'm getting dressed,
00:55:23.060like doing a million other things sure I should be taking a moment smelling the flowers journaling
00:55:29.320yada yada yada but yes gratitude journal exactly but who does that right and so I think there is
00:55:35.380something where women are told that you have that in order to sort of signal that you have it
00:55:40.560together your mornings have to look like xyz and I think that something about coffee lady
00:55:45.660something about that tweet signaled to women like I've got it all together do you feel like0.97
00:55:52.140crap that you don't. I don't think she was, I certainly don't think she was trying to do that,0.90
00:55:56.400but that's, I think that's probably how it hit some of us. The internet, I think like a lot of
00:56:00.380things is sort of built to make women angry at each other and resent each other. And yeah, I mean,
00:56:08.080could you speak to that a little bit? I know that that's your beat. Yes. I mean, it's just a,
00:56:12.700it's just a document, a well-documented fact. Algorithms want women to feel like shit. They1.00
00:56:19.460want women to be comparing themselves to other women. They want women to be feeling bad. They0.83
00:56:23.700want women to be feeling like crap all the time. And algorithms and platforms and tech leaders1.00
00:56:28.760make money off of women feeling like shit about themselves. That's just a fact, right? And so0.99
00:56:33.500if you've ever been scrolling Instagram or TikTok or whatever, and you keep being surfaced content0.68
00:56:38.980that makes you feel like crap, that's not you. You're not crazy or sensitive. Algorithms and0.91
00:56:44.420platforms do that with intention because it keeps you on the platform longer. It keeps you coming
00:56:48.980back and it makes them money. It is a very twisted dynamic that we are a cog in this cycle that is
00:56:55.460making other people, mostly men, rich off of our anxiety, off of our fears, off of us being in
00:57:02.700competition with each other. And rather than like celebrating the ways that we are different,
00:57:07.580celebrating the ways in which like, oh, well, like my brand is this, I'm a hot mess, I own it,
00:57:11.920whatever, whatever. Algorithms trick us into thinking that all of these great things that
00:57:16.100make us who we are, are actually foibles, are actually bad. And yeah, I mean, there's been
00:57:22.060study after study that shows that the more time you spend on particularly Instagram, the more
00:57:27.700young women feel bad about themselves, the more body anxiety they have, the more likely they are
00:57:32.280to engage in things like food issues or disordered eating. And none of that is by mistake. It is all
00:57:37.880by design. It is a feature, not a bug. And that would also apply to Coffee Wife,
00:57:44.840But people were attacking her as if she was the root cause of it. It was very strange. I forget who I was talking to the other day about how they felt like they had fucked up their algorithm because they said that they weren't interested in something. And the algorithm kept serving that to them because they cared enough to say, I'm not interested. And the only way to truly demonstrate you're not interested is to keep scrolling and don't stop.
00:58:11.760But like, if you are, if you theoretically, you know, see like a coffee wife, TikTok come up and you care enough to say, I don't like this, the algorithm will serve it to you again. And so I ran an experiment and it's completely true. Like that, the kind of content I went out of my way to say, I don't like this. The algorithm responds by being like, well, maybe you'll interact with it negatively because it makes you feel bad.
00:58:38.060Yes. And so I've experienced the exact same thing. I completely agree with you. And imagine how harmful that is when it's content that you find triggering, right? When it's content that you have identified that might not be safe or healthy for me to see and engage with, right? If the algorithm has gleaned like, oh, she has a little bit of an issue with XYZ, let's keep showing it to her and see what happens. That's not really that cool.
00:59:03.580The part that's hard is even when I'm looking for it, it's hard to escape the emotional experience of, I don't want to see that. And feeling that your anger, for whatever reason, routes at the person because the real enemy has no face.
00:59:26.680And so I feel like there is this sort of very human instinct to try to place a face and a name to what is bothering you when in reality it is something much larger, like social media algorithms that are trying to make you upset, like the concept of class and these huge things.0.86
00:59:49.580And it's finding a sort of villain of the day to take it out on, even when that person sucks. In this case, they didn't. But sometimes they do. But it still doesn't. It's so unproductive.0.84
01:00:02.280Yeah, we are making a bunch of random people proxies for a lot of our very valid anger and pain and fear.
01:00:09.780That's why I always say, like, it's a game and we're all being played.
01:00:13.560The only winner here are tech platforms and people who run them and people who make money from them.
01:00:18.200And so even if you are running a successful little grift for a while, engagement baiting and all of that, all it takes is one algorithmic tweak.
01:00:26.900And then you don't have the eyeballs or the attention of the world any longer.
01:00:30.780And so, yeah, it's a game and we're all being played.
01:00:35.140What can we, what can the collective learn from Coffee Wife?
01:00:41.980Something that I found really interesting about the Coffee Wife saga was how everybody assumed she was wealthy because she has a garden.0.87
01:00:48.640And I found that to be really interesting because she was like, oh, it's not like a fancy garden.
01:00:54.880It's just a small garden in my regular home.
01:00:58.660I think that it is very easy, and I say this because I've done it, to trick yourself into thinking, like, the things that I want, I can't have.
01:01:10.720And I think that that really, the coffee wife thing really showed me that a lot of us feel like we can't have things that we actually can have.
01:01:21.420I don't know if that makes sense, but the fact that so many people were like, well, you have to be rich to have a garden.
01:01:26.520And it's like, well, actually, I don't think that's the case. And people who are not rich have gardens all the time. And like, why are you assuming that the pastime of gardening is something that only the wealthy can do? Even if you live in a small apartment, you can still have like a window garden or something. I think that we I think it's easy to trick ourselves into thinking the things that we want, we cannot have. So that's one.
01:01:45.080Two, I would say, yeah, we really have to be better at understanding where we put our pain and who we make the proxies for our pain.
01:01:57.780I would say if the person you are tweeting at cannot change the circumstances that you're upset about, maybe you're putting your rage and your anger and your emotionality in the wrong place.
01:02:07.480And that we should direct our rage and anger and emotionality to the right places, right?
01:02:12.720I know those places tend to be structural and institutional and faceless, but we got to we got to really have a sense of what forces are actually making us unhappy.
01:02:22.900And it's probably not this lady drinking coffee in her garden.
01:02:26.420Thank you so much to Bridget Todd.0.99
01:02:28.400Listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet every single week.