There Are No Girls on the Internet - Emiru Attacked at TwitchCon; Tea App Ends with a Whimper; Charlie Kirk Grifters; Spotify ICE Ads; OpenAI's Browser Never Forgets – NEWS ROUNDUP!

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00:01:03.960 Each 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.

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00:01:19.360 I survived nine months in captivity

00:01:22.940 And I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them

00:01:28.200 I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are The Survivor Files

00:01:32.020 Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable

00:01:35.780 Abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced

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00:01:55.480 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:02:03.600 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:02:09.120 Welcome to There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of technology,

00:02:12.780 identity, and social media. And this is another installment of our weekly news roundup, where we

00:02:17.640 dig into the stories online that you might have missed, so you don't have to. And just a quick

00:02:22.140 heads up, I'm totally fine, but I've just had a somewhat invasive medical procedure. I have been

00:02:29.280 given painkillers. I'm feeling great. But if I sound a little loopy, if the show is a little

00:02:36.420 off the rails, off the tracks, whatever that expression is, please forgive us. That's what's

00:02:41.420 going on so you know this mike listeners know this my favorite thing in the world to talk about

00:02:47.540 is scams so i want to start with some scams no not the scam of your smart toilet or smart light

00:02:54.740 switch or smart cooling mattress crapping out on you because aws was down did you hear about that

00:03:01.800 i did yeah during that day early this week when aws was down and like all of the internet just

00:03:06.860 ground to a halt uh there were people who had uh like internet connected mattresses that went

00:03:15.200 haywire and just like folded up on them i don't know if they folded up on anybody that's what i

00:03:21.400 heard they folded up on them they were crushed i will say it really made me realize how much i

00:03:27.380 have taken for granted that amazon web services runs everything and maybe that's bad maybe it's

00:03:33.640 not cool that this one company runs everything and then it also made me realize too how much

00:03:39.360 stuff out there is tech enabled these days the mattress was probably the weirdest thing imagine

00:03:44.620 being like oh the wi-fi is out so i can't use my smart pillow or whatever i just was really i had

00:03:50.960 never heard of anything like that it really blew my mind yeah it's a good reminder that like maybe

00:03:56.140 your mattress doesn't need to be connected to the internet i have a an air conditioner just like a

00:04:00.560 a window unit air conditioner that is Wi-Fi enabled. I didn't want that. I've never connected

00:04:07.000 it to Wi-Fi. I don't know why I would want that, but it was like a big marketing point

00:04:12.240 on the side of the box when I bought this thing. Oh, I mean, you've heard me complain about this

00:04:16.500 for hours and hours. The saga of me trying to pick a sunrise alarm clock, and I almost bought

00:04:22.420 that alarm clock, the hatch clock, which I did want deeply and badly, but it was way too expensive.

00:04:28.220 And I thought, oh, it might just be worth it.

00:04:31.020 I'm so picky about my alarm clocks.

00:04:32.840 I want such particular features in an alarm clock.

00:04:35.320 And then I realized, oh, no, you don't just plunk down $200 or whatever on the clock.

00:04:39.980 You also have to pay a monthly subscription service fee to use all the features.

00:04:46.040 And you were like, you're not getting an alarm clock subscription.

00:04:50.180 No, that's a bridge too far.

00:04:53.180 No one should have an alarm clock subscription.

00:04:54.860 I'm sorry to the subscription model alarm clock industry, but that's not a thing we need.

00:05:03.520 We have the technology to deliver it for free.

00:05:06.420 I cannot imagine what premium features I would gain access to for $9.99 a month or whatever it is.

00:05:14.480 They have like RuPaul doing wake up affirmations.

00:05:18.740 I mean, I will say I'm not going to lie and say I was totally disinterested in some of these features.

00:05:23.280 I was like down the rabbit hole on this alarm clock purchase, which in the end, I ended up buying one for like $30 and it worked just fine.

00:05:29.840 No. So obviously that level of subscription, complete scam.

00:05:33.680 But I have a couple of scam updates for you all.

00:05:37.320 That sounds great. What scam do you want to start with first?

00:05:40.360 Tea app and the Tea on Her app saga.

00:05:43.120 So we've been talking about this since the summertime.

00:05:45.580 Y'all will recall that the tea app was designed ostensibly for women to be able to spill tea on the men they were interested in potentially dating.

00:05:54.280 It was really marketed as the safety thing, right?

00:05:57.220 A way for women to vet men to make sure that abusers were not running their way into all of our hearts.

00:06:02.880 But when you look a little deeper, it really seemed like it was more of an exploitation thing because this company did not do the bare, bare, bare minimum to keep their users safe.

00:06:11.920 And then their users' information, including driver's licenses that were used to verify people's genders to sign up, were leaked by 4chan.

00:06:20.640 We also covered the male version of the Tee app for men to post Tee about the women that they were interested in dating.

00:06:28.240 And they also had their information leaked.

00:06:30.380 So everybody's getting their information leaked and exposed.

00:06:33.600 Equality. We've done it. Gender equality.

00:06:35.820 What is wild to me is that even as those leaks happened, like when the T app was in the news and the T on her app was in the news because of this massive, massive leak, both versions of the app were incredibly popular, more popular than ever.

00:06:50.160 And so I don't know what it says about us, but people were continuing to use the apps.

00:06:55.320 Yeah, it's disappointing, but not that surprising. I think there's a lot of digital nihilism out there where people just feel like, well, my data is already out there. So what's the harm of just completely exposing a photo of my driver's license and my name and birth date?

00:07:14.560 My address.

00:07:15.920 And my address to all of the Internet.

00:07:19.380 To be clear, those people are deeply misguided and we need to help them realize that they're incorrect.

00:07:25.740 I'd suspect that's a lot of it.

00:07:27.080 So we have another update, which is that both the T app and the T on her app have been removed from the Apple App Store.

00:07:34.100 404 Media, who initially broke this massive story, said that Apple told them in an email that it had removed the app,

00:07:40.340 as well as the tea on her app for failing to meet the company's terms of use around content

00:07:45.120 moderation and user privacy. Apple also said that it received an excessive number of complaints,

00:07:50.660 including ones about the personal data of minors being posted on the app. So pretty bad. Apple

00:07:56.580 said that it has parts of its guidelines that say that apps are not allowed to share someone's

00:08:01.580 personal data without their permission and that any app on their app store needs to have a mechanism

00:08:06.260 for reporting objectionable content.

00:08:08.700 Mike, do you have any idea

00:08:10.160 how the Tea app is responding to all of this,

00:08:12.680 being taken down off the App Store?

00:08:14.820 Uh, are they posting on the Tea on App Store's app?

00:08:20.680 No, but that would be pretty good if they were.

00:08:23.180 Watch out for Apple.

00:08:24.580 This company will kick you off of their App Store

00:08:27.160 without any warning.

00:08:28.660 So weirdly, the Tea app is still just posting

00:08:31.500 on social media like none of this ever happened.

00:08:33.760 Their most recent post,

00:08:35.260 and I checked this was their most recent post as of us recording this was on Instagram where they

00:08:40.860 say the first ever girls only space that truly amplifies women's voices and gives them an

00:08:46.220 anonymous space to share their experiences find comfort and get the info they need on the men

00:08:50.600 they're talking to in the name of all caps dating safety heart emoji so the t app is just posting

00:08:57.300 through it and I honestly think that says a lot about the ethos of this particular app you know

00:09:04.220 So the T-app branded itself as this tool that was all about women's empowerment and women's safety.

00:09:10.560 The founder shared this story, which turned out to be, in my opinion, obvious BS about how he decided to make the app because his mom had been on a bunch of bad dates with people who had criminal records.

00:09:23.340 And he just wanted to make a platform for women to be able to stay safe.

00:09:26.980 404 Media talked to a woman who the founder had been trying to come on board as the founder and 0.96

00:09:32.940 she's like, oh, I never heard that story. That story is made up. And I think, you know, it's

00:09:37.560 this platform that was trying to brand itself this way. But at the end of the day, it was just

00:09:42.400 another data hungry startup trying to use feminism and women's safety as a marketing hook. Like a 1.00

00:09:48.960 lot of these stories, I feel they end the same way. A privacy scandal and then a takedown. And I

00:09:54.800 asked for the t app just like fronting on social media pretending that everything is fine i have

00:09:59.560 to wonder if there's even anybody behind that social media account at this point like given

00:10:04.520 how uh just piss poor they were about like security and building the app itself i have to

00:10:11.920 imagine that an equal amount of non-care went into their social media work and like i would not be

00:10:18.760 surprised if they just had chat gpt spit out like a thousand little tweets worth of content and then

00:10:29.320 scheduled them for the rest of time and so it's just like a zombie account uh posting in the hope

00:10:35.800 that a little more data trickles in that's sweet sweet data okay so speaking of obvious scams

00:10:42.220 we told you in our episode about charlie kirk how the literal day after charlie kirk was murdered

00:10:47.740 a site sprang up promising to unmask anybody not being sufficiently mournful in the wake of his

00:10:53.980 death. And that site kind of seemed like it was scamming people. Like from the jump, I remember

00:10:59.100 going to that site and being like, who put their information into this site? Well, that site,

00:11:05.420 initially called Exposed Charlie's Murderers, promised to make a searchable trove of names

00:11:11.120 and workplaces for, quote, the largest firing operation in history. Charlie Kirk would have

00:11:17.180 been so proud. According to DropSite News, the website listed six cryptocurrency blockchains

00:11:22.420 and asked supporters to fund a, quote, highly sophisticated enterprise system that will be

00:11:27.680 impervious to leftist attacks. Basically, it sounds like whoever set this up just collected

00:11:32.920 a bunch of money and then dipped. Over a two-day period, the website's anonymous developers collected

00:11:38.020 more than $30,000 per coin tracker software used for crypto-based taxes. Folks might recall they

00:11:44.200 were initially called Exposed Charlie's Murderers, and then they rebranded as the Charlie Kirk Data

00:11:49.180 Foundation on September 14th. Then the site was deplatformed, and now they basically disappeared

00:11:54.860 altogether with that $30,000 of donations. It really just seems like, according to this piece

00:12:01.360 in DropSite News, they just took a bunch of people's money and then bounced. The group has

00:12:06.300 not responded to several inquiries from DropSite about where the donations went and whether or not

00:12:11.640 they're still planning to create that big database for all the firings.

00:12:14.980 And a lot of the folks who spent money on this enterprise are not happy.

00:12:19.900 I bet. It's probably really upsetting to be a dope.

00:12:24.660 I love how they went from let's make a list of leftists we don't like to

00:12:28.520 let's build a highly sophisticated enterprise system with your money, please.

00:12:33.420 And then wound up with just give us the money and we'll be on our way.

00:12:36.700 Yeah. Like, you know what this is? This is a scam. Just hand it over.

00:12:41.640 You know what it is. So, yeah, people might have gotten scammed, $30,000, 190 crypto payments.

00:12:48.180 And what do they have to show for it? A ghost website and like a bunch of angry donors.

00:12:53.040 And again, just like the T app, I think it is a reminder that in this age of online outrage and online morality,

00:13:00.300 there is always someone ready to monetize your outrage.

00:13:05.240 And sometimes they will just vanish, poof, done, gone. 0.54

00:13:09.080 And just like the T-app, I mean, my big thing with the T-app was that I could sense that it was a company that I thought was trying to materially capitalize on gender wars outrage.

00:13:21.420 And so that was sort of like how they were getting their marketing.

00:13:24.520 And so I just think that any company that pops up, in this case, literally overnight, promising to turn your anger or your fear into something more is probably a company worth thinking twice about getting involved in.

00:13:39.080 That is such good advice. And there's not a lot of like universal good advice in this day and age. But I feel like anybody who is trying to encourage you to push the gas on your outrage. That's like a huge red flag.

00:13:57.560 oh yes like oh you're outraged you're angry you're fearful well give us your driver's license and

00:14:04.180 forty dollars and we can take this to the next level that should be that should be a big red

00:14:09.040 flag just for anybody across the board even before they get to the part where they make the ask for

00:14:13.820 the money just like you should lean into that anger you should lean into that fear you're right

00:14:18.680 to feel those things we need to punish the people who have done this to you uh that's just not

00:14:26.320 not something that somebody who's trying to help is going to say absolutely not speaking of not

00:14:32.300 trying to help big tech's capitulation to the trump administration continues this time it is

00:14:38.360 spotify and ice so we talked a while back about how a number of musicians like massive attack one

00:14:44.960 of my favorite groups sylvian esso one of your favorite groups mike king gizzard and the lizard

00:14:50.140 wizard which the first time you told me about that group i for the entirety of the conversation i did

00:14:55.760 not know if you were making it up or not i said oh this is a real band or is this a band that you're

00:14:59.900 are you trying to get one over on me with this band name you have no idea how many albums they

00:15:03.920 have i still don't know if they're a real band or not oh they're a real band they rock they are uh

00:15:12.000 awesome talented musicians who just like crank out music go listen to rattlesnake okay well

00:15:19.700 you're gonna like them even more now because they have all taken their music off of spotify a lot

00:15:24.980 of these artists cite Spotify founder Daniel X's investment in the AI military company Helsing

00:15:30.860 for why they have removed their music from the platform. And now it's gone from worse to worser,

00:15:37.220 as they say online, because Spotify is running these horrible ICE recruitment ads on their

00:15:41.860 non-paid ad-supported tier. The ads say, in sanctuary cities, you're ordered to stand down

00:15:48.220 while dangerous illegals walk free and urge listeners to, quote, fulfill their mission and

00:15:53.360 Join the mission to protect America by joining ICE.

00:15:56.300 I should say, it is not just Spotify either.

00:15:58.760 YouTube, Pandora, HBO Max, and others also have these ads on their platforms.

00:16:04.100 Pretty distasteful, right?

00:16:05.960 It is distasteful.

00:16:07.320 Well, don't worry, because a Spotify spokesperson says the ads do not violate Spotify advertising policy

00:16:12.600 and that Spotify has no intention of discontinuing those ads.

00:16:16.960 And the spokesperson says, chill out, y'all, because if you don't want to hear these ads,

00:16:22.240 listeners are free to thumbs up or thumbs down these ads which would supposedly mean that I

00:16:28.880 guess these ads would play a little less often on your personalized feed to me that simply does not

00:16:34.840 address the problem and the fact that the spokesperson was like oh people can just like

00:16:38.680 say they don't like these ads via thumbs down it just shows to me how not seriously Spotify is

00:16:44.020 taking this I also love how the ads just become like another form of content like oh I love this

00:16:49.520 ad. Give me more of these ads. No one says that. No one wants that. Stereogum reports that the

00:16:54.860 record label Epitaph, which has bands like Bad Religion and Pennywise, and then their sister

00:17:00.200 label Anti, which has musicians like Nico Case, Nick Cave and Tom Waits, have both posted a

00:17:05.880 message calling for Spotify to remove these ads. So Snopes reached out to the Department of Homeland

00:17:11.260 Security, which oversees ICE, about these ads. The assistant DHS secretary responded, basically

00:17:16.620 saying, yeah, we're doing a huge nationwide recruitment campaign, saying, quote, the ICE

00:17:22.120 recruitment campaign is a resounding success with more than 150 applications rolling in from

00:17:26.960 patriotic Americans answering the call to defend the homeland by helping to arrest and remove the

00:17:32.780 worst of the worst from our country. You know, people who are being arrested lawfully at court

00:17:37.460 appointments or appointments with their attorney or people who are trying to pursue gainful

00:17:42.840 employment to put food on their table, you know, the worst of the worst people.

00:17:45.520 It's one of the most cruel and duplicitous things this cruel and duplicitous administration has done and continues doing is attempting to smear all immigrants to this country as the worst of the worst, as if everyone who's an immigrant here is like a dangerous criminal, when the data is pretty clear that like immigrants in this country are less likely to commit violent crimes than Native-born Americans. 0.99

00:18:07.300 Yes. And I think, you know, first of all, don't let anybody ever tell you that technology is neutral ever again, because I think what these Spotify ads really show us is how deeply entwined big tech has become with government power and our current administration, even the most odious parts of it.

00:18:23.580 When you have platforms claiming neutrality while profiting off of these ICE recruitment ads, it's not neutral at all.

00:18:30.460 It is a choice for artists to see their music as protests.

00:18:34.060 That choice probably makes Spotify feel a lot less like a platform for creativity and more like an arm of the state.

00:18:40.260 And I think the content of these ads in the ads, they're not even pretending to be neutral, right?

00:18:46.780 They don't sound like ads that are recruiting people to nonpartisan civil service or government jobs.

00:18:52.460 They sound like campaign ads for the Trump administration.

00:18:55.800 Their ads are partisan as hell.

00:18:57.740 Yeah, they use the exact same language.

00:19:01.380 And like most messaging out of the Trump administration, they're full of lies, lies about people and lies about our cities being crime ridden hell holes filled with the worst of the worst, as they call it.

00:19:14.040 Yeah, there's nothing neutral about it.

00:19:15.660 And people are leaving Spotify in protest. 0.99

00:19:18.720 And so if you are hearing this and you're like, fuck ICE, fuck Spotify, just go to bit.ly slash cancel Spotify. 0.99

00:19:26.680 They have an entire page of resources to help organize folks who are interested in vorekiting Spotify. 0.99

00:19:31.740 We will put that in the show notes.

00:19:35.920 More after a quick break.

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00:20:27.520 if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality welcome home

00:20:33.700 This 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.

00:20:46.160 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:20:53.280 I'm going to have to look up this story.

00:20:55.160 I'm obsessed.

00:20:55.940 I'm obsessed.

00:20:56.280 from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments

00:21:01.280 nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling

00:21:07.840 characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart

00:21:13.120 pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much

00:21:17.860 you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever

00:21:24.340 you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held

00:21:31.740 captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what

00:21:38.200 should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember

00:21:44.540 this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week I'm with 0.97

00:21:53.420 survivors who lived through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going

00:22:00.240 to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started

00:22:06.920 screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories

00:22:13.660 about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:22:19.000 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:22:32.820 Let's get right back into it. 0.93

00:22:37.180 Speaking of ICE lies, I don't think anybody needs to be reminded that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is a liar. 1.00

00:22:44.680 But now she is lying on a specific Black youth. 0.95

00:22:48.180 So she has been saying that drug cartels were placing bounties on ICE agents' heads.

00:22:54.440 Then the official DHS account posted a video purporting to show a young Black man

00:23:00.380 featuring an on-screen message that reads,

00:23:04.020 ICE, we're on the way. Word in the streets, cartels put a 50K bounty on y'all.

00:23:09.240 Only the person in this video said,

00:23:11.700 I never said that. That was not what my video was about.

00:23:14.080 They stole my video and made this up.

00:23:15.960 So he said it was an old TikTok that he made where he wasn't talking about ICE at all.

00:23:21.280 He was actually talking about Iran as a joke and that DHS took the video, edited it to make it seem like he was threatening ICE before disseminating it.

00:23:30.560 Here's a little bit of what he had to say.

00:23:31.860 Then I seen the caption and then I was like, wait, I didn't do that.

00:23:37.460 I still got the video saved on my draft months ago on TikTok, bro.

00:23:41.880 I'm going to pull it up right here. 0.77

00:23:44.400 Here's the fucked up part. 0.94

00:23:45.960 the federal government is involved with something that i didn't do like what so this is what they 0.86

00:23:54.200 reposted off my tiktok that video got taken down so here's what they reposted on their page

00:24:03.520 now that video is going crazy ahead on twitter bro now i'm a threat to the government with

00:24:12.540 something that I didn't do, bro.

00:24:16.580 I'm being called a wannabe YN,

00:24:18.800 a wannabe gangster

00:24:19.980 over a video that I didn't caption

00:24:24.060 or I didn't post.

00:24:27.400 DHS is sticking by what they said.

00:24:29.420 A DHS spokesperson told The Independent,

00:24:31.800 this young man posted violent threats of murder

00:24:34.080 against our law enforcement.

00:24:35.240 He then deleted it when he was called out

00:24:37.240 and attempted to deny all wrongdoing.

00:24:39.300 We have the receipts and the internet is forever.

00:24:41.600 DHS did not edit, change, use AI or any other manner to alter this video.

00:24:46.240 So I don't know for sure.

00:24:47.700 And this is just my opinion about how they are able to say this about this man's video.

00:24:52.620 This man has been so clear that it was about Iran.

00:24:55.260 I never mentioned ICE.

00:24:56.380 This video was months old.

00:24:58.800 What they're saying is not true.

00:24:59.880 I think what DHS is saying is that we did not use AI or edit the video,

00:25:05.520 But that putting text on somebody else's video, they're probably banking on people not seeing that as editing because that is so commonplace on TikTok.

00:25:15.880 So they're saying we didn't change what he does in the video via AI or manipulate it.

00:25:21.760 But in my opinion, what they're probably leaving out pretty crucially is that certainly he did not put that text on the screen about a 50K bounty.

00:25:30.900 They added that.

00:25:31.960 So I think that it kind of reminds me of the MS.

00:25:34.480 Do you remember the MS-13 thing where they very clearly went in and typed MS-13 on a tattoo for President Trump?

00:25:43.260 And then later in a debate, it was clear that President Trump did not understand that somebody had obviously gone in and written MS-13, but that was not the literal image of a tattoo.

00:25:54.300 And like, it's a semantics of it. It's so stupid. But I think that's what's going on here. If I had to say, this is just my opinion. 1.00

00:26:00.020 I mean, it makes sense what you've described. It's insane that that is something that the Department of Homeland Security could be credibly accused of doing. But absolutely. I mean, they use that same kind of like gotcha technicalities about semantics and court filings with judges.

00:26:23.440 so why wouldn't they use them with the american public the the words they had on the screen

00:26:29.920 ice were on the way word in the street cartels put a 50k bounty on you all so like what we're

00:26:37.820 supposed to believe is that this youth heard somebody on the streets say that some unspecified

00:26:43.980 cartels have a bounty and so he's hoping to collect that he's just gonna like

00:26:50.860 attack an ICE officer and then show up at some unspecified cartel headquarters and be like,

00:26:59.540 where's my $50,000? That's what we're meant to believe is a real thing.

00:27:06.100 Yeah, it doesn't quite pass the sniff test with me either, I have to say. And who wouldn't want

00:27:13.060 to join the ranks of an organization like this? Who wouldn't want to work with people like this?

00:27:17.560 God, yeah.

00:27:19.080 Yeah, that's just the, I mean,

00:27:21.500 they talk about going after the worst of the worst.

00:27:24.240 They should really look at their own ranks.

00:27:26.480 Like, these are not the best of the best.

00:27:28.400 They're not sending their best.

00:27:30.100 Okay, so this is a little bit of a tough story,

00:27:32.180 so trigger warning up top,

00:27:33.600 but we have to talk about the climate going on

00:27:36.240 toward women streamers right now. 0.99

00:27:38.800 Weeks ago, streamers Valkyrie and QT Cinderella

00:27:42.500 said that they were really worried about going to TwitchCon this year,

00:27:45.340 which is a big gathering of live streamers and the people that watch them.

00:27:49.540 They were specifically concerned about things like lack security

00:27:52.800 at events where live streamers gather

00:27:55.740 after some pretty high-profile events

00:27:57.980 where folks were able to crash those events.

00:28:01.600 They also pointed to an increasing number of violent or harassing incidents,

00:28:05.760 specifically targeting women who make digital content and live stream content.

00:28:10.120 Twitch's CEO, Dan Clancy, who runs TwitchCon, which is owned by Amazon,

00:28:14.000 said that the company takes security very seriously but unfortunately on the first day

00:28:20.080 of TwitchCon the popular streamer Amiru was assaulted during a meet and greet at the event

00:28:26.060 so I saw the video of what happened it's horrifying she's standing there there's people around

00:28:31.660 and basically this big guy rushes up to her and grabs her to me I mean I wasn't there but to me

00:28:38.660 it almost looked like he was trying to choke her but other people said that he was trying to

00:28:42.480 like grab her to kiss her either way it is terrifying her security guard who was standing

00:28:48.320 nearby shoves the man and then the man is just sort of allowed to visibly kind of walk away

00:28:54.800 twitch later clarified that that man was found apprehended and removed from the event and banned

00:29:00.180 from future events according to tube filter they say that it's worth noting that the security

00:29:05.640 personnel who pushed that man is not this streamer's preferred bodyguard because her

00:29:11.180 preferred bodyguard was permabanned from TwitchCon because at a previous event, he physically stopped

00:29:17.140 a man who had been stalking Amiru around the convention. Now, she explained that her bodyguard

00:29:22.220 did not push, punch, or hurt the stalker in any way. He just held it in place. But because he

00:29:27.740 physically engaged the stalker, he is no longer allowed to work with her or protect her at TwitchCon

00:29:34.000 events. So when she was assaulted at TwitchCon this time around, her preferred security guard

00:29:38.920 was not there because these organizers had banned him.

00:29:42.400 So in a statement, Amiru disputed much of Twitch's account

00:29:46.640 of what happened during this assault.

00:29:48.440 She said that what they said was a blatant lie.

00:29:51.480 Here's what she had to say about the incident.

00:29:53.500 Yesterday, the man who assaulted me was allowed to cross multiple barriers

00:29:56.780 at TwitchCon and even in front of another creator's meet and greet

00:29:59.740 tried to grab me and kiss me.

00:30:01.840 Fortunately, he wasn't able to, but a lot of people have pointed out

00:30:04.700 that it could have been a lot worse.

00:30:06.140 I'm obviously shaken up by what happened,

00:30:07.680 and it's not the first time that I've dealt with something like this.

00:30:10.280 But to tell you honestly, I'm a lot more hurt and upset

00:30:13.460 by how Twitch handled it during and after the fact.

00:30:16.500 I don't understand how he was allowed to make it to me in the first place.

00:30:19.900 The security in the clip who reacts is my own security.

00:30:22.920 It's true, my favorite and usual security guard was banned

00:30:25.220 for holding a stalker's arm to bring him to police at a past TwitchCon.

00:30:28.820 However, there were at least three or four other TwitchCon security staff in the area

00:30:33.560 who did not react and let the guy walk away.

00:30:35.800 as you can see in the clip, since they don't even appear in the frame, lol.

00:30:39.820 She says that the people in the clip who are checking on her are her own friends and staff,

00:30:44.420 and that none of the TwitchCon staff even came to ask what was happening or that she was okay.

00:30:49.820 It gets worse because she says,

00:30:51.400 my friend who was present told me Twitch security were also behind the booth afterward,

00:30:55.880 joking about how they didn't see what happened and immediately laughing

00:30:59.000 and moving on to talk about something else.

00:31:01.680 So if no one was checking if I was okay or needed anything,

00:31:04.500 and they let the guy run away initially.

00:31:06.480 I have no idea what anyone hired

00:31:08.080 to keep the event safe was doing.

00:31:10.040 In Twitch's statement,

00:31:11.080 they said the guy was immediately caught and detained.

00:31:13.580 I'm sorry, but that is a blatant lie.

00:31:16.240 He was allowed to walk away from my meet and greet

00:31:18.260 and I didn't hear that he was caught

00:31:19.820 until hours after he attacked me.

00:31:21.900 And it felt like this only happened

00:31:23.200 because of my manager pressing for it,

00:31:25.140 not because TwitchCon staff present

00:31:27.240 thought it was a big deal.

00:31:29.080 And yeah, I really feel for her.

00:31:31.940 It's horrifying that this has happened.

00:31:33.600 You know, there have been other incidents where people run up on celebrities or public figures that they have parasocial relationships with and things end much worse.

00:31:44.280 You know, people like Christina Grimmie, who in 2016 was doing a meet and greet and was killed by a obsessive stalker who went up to her meet and greet and murdered her just in front of all of her fans.

00:31:57.740 And so what this live streamer is saying is absolutely true.

00:32:01.020 As horrifying as what happened to her is, it genuinely could have been a lot worse.

00:32:05.740 And it sounds like what she's saying is that TwitchCon staff didn't do a ton to make sure that she was okay afterward.

00:32:12.620 And that TwitchCon staff really neglected to take this kind of thing seriously.

00:32:16.960 To the point where she says, I'm never coming back to one of these things again, which honestly, I can't even blame her.

00:32:21.740 Yeah, I don't blame her either.

00:32:24.500 It sounds to me that women in this community have been warning about the way that this community treats women contact creators for some time.

00:32:32.440 Here's how NBC put it.

00:32:33.480 To many fans online, her assault validated long-running fears about streamer safety at in-person events, particularly scheduled meet-and-greets where fans know exactly where a particular creator will be ahead of time.

00:32:45.000 Some streamers online claim that they canceled their meet-and-greets or skipped this year's TwitchCon altogether because of existing concerns about security,

00:32:52.200 While others said that they plan to shun future TwitchCon events in solidarity with Amiru.

00:32:56.980 So I think that, one, it's the tale as old as time that we talk about on this show all the time of women saying, hey, this thing is happening in the community. 0.76

00:33:06.240 It is potentially dangerous. 0.87

00:33:07.760 Somebody needs to do something.

00:33:09.100 It not being taken super seriously.

00:33:11.820 It being allowed to fester.

00:33:13.660 The women sort of being made to just deal with it on their own and this kind of thing happening.

00:33:17.900 But I also do think if I'm just being real, I think that Twitch probably is the kind of company where they make their real money from their mega users, people who probably are more likely to have a deep, unhealthy, parasocial relationship with some of their favorite content creators.

00:33:35.960 And so I have a feeling that Twitch perhaps does not want to alienate those people because they are their cash cows. They're making a ton of money from them. And so the company probably can't really alienate the people who are making the company the most money.

00:33:51.340 And that has just got to be more likely to be the kind of people who have unhealthy relationships or parasocial relationships with streamers.

00:33:59.920 And so that has to be part of the problem here of like Twitch probably doesn't want to just ban all these people because there's tons of money to be made from these people.

00:34:09.580 certainly checks out with what we've seen uh just across tech companies in general

00:34:15.920 and also you know the fact that twitch is the platform on which this all of this happens right

00:34:24.240 it's like it's a platform and it's also kind of an ecosystem where these creators make their living

00:34:30.400 and fans and viewers i think many not all but like many spend a lot of their time

00:34:38.100 watching streamers on this platform and so it's both like uh sort of tempting to call like a

00:34:46.460 decentralized ecosystem where there are creators and viewers and money flowing back and forth

00:34:51.680 but also like very not decentralized and there's really like one you know twitch like runs the

00:34:57.080 whole thing and uh what a lot of power to have over uh a community like this

00:35:04.380 More after a quick break.

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00:36:15.580 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:36:21.500 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,

00:36:27.660 pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the

00:36:32.260 same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books,

00:36:37.680 the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:36:40.940 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.

00:36:44.680 From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,

00:36:49.540 nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling

00:36:55.680 characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart

00:37:00.940 pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much

00:37:05.700 you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever

00:37:12.160 you get your podcasts see you between the pages when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held

00:37:19.560 captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

00:37:25.780 what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the Survivor Files. I just

00:37:31.940 remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything. Every week I'm 0.68

00:37:41.060 with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going

00:37:48.060 to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and I just started

00:37:54.760 screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories

00:38:01.480 about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:38:07.360 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:38:13.280 or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:38:18.060 Let's get right back into it.

00:38:26.380 So OpenAI just released their web browser called Atlas, and I've been reading into it.

00:38:31.980 I have not used it myself.

00:38:33.480 I'll get to why in a moment, but I think folks should be a little bit wary of Atlas because

00:38:40.180 Atlas sounds to me like a privacy nightmare, even in a landscape where a lot of browsers

00:38:46.680 are bad on privacy. According to a piece I read in the post called ChatGPT just came out with

00:38:51.700 its own web browser. Use it with caution. The browser from OpenAI out-surveils even Google

00:38:57.620 Chrome and that is saying something. It doesn't just log which websites you visit. It also stores

00:39:03.260 quote memories of what you look at and what you do on those sites. It can even grab control of

00:39:09.620 your mouse and browse for you. Yikes. Atlas works to learn a ton about you. If you grant permission

00:39:16.380 during setup, the browser builds a trove of memories about the sites that you visit and

00:39:20.960 surfaces them when you need them. So you could tell Atlas, for instance, open the Halloween

00:39:26.360 decorations I was looking at last week in some tabs and it could do it. Creepy. Atlas remembers

00:39:31.980 not just website addresses, but quote, facts and insights from the sites themselves based on

00:39:37.280 summaries of the content OpenAI makes on its own servers. So for instance, it might remember that

00:39:42.520 you have a trip coming up and that you prefer Delta Airlines and use Google calendars. So these

00:39:47.660 memories would shape your experience across the browser. ChatGPT then tailors its responses to

00:39:53.060 your Atlas memories in future chats. And the browser's home screen offers personalized

00:39:57.680 suggestions of things that you should do next, such as find a vegetarian recipe. So if you are

00:40:02.780 cool with trading this amount of your privacy and data security for convenience, maybe all of this

00:40:08.720 doesn't sound so bad maybe you're like oh it will be convenient for my browser to know that i only

00:40:13.020 fly delta and surface me delta flights only right i was just talking about digital nihilism sure

00:40:18.260 let's go i mean i on the one hand i hear it right i hear that however it would be very convenient

00:40:26.380 these things would be super convenient uh but at what cost bridget i mean is it really that much

00:40:33.260 were convenient is it that hard to just go to google flights and then pick out the delta flights

00:40:39.360 yourself is it is it really that big of a convenience oh my god i already looked up these

00:40:44.520 halloween decorations last week i'm supposed to do it again now what are computers for like even

00:40:51.280 in these examples that they're giving us we're clearly this is open ai's rosy version of it

00:40:56.560 where it's going to save you so much time and effort doesn't really sound like it saves you

00:40:59.520 that much time i mean we're ultimately just talking about hitting keys on a keyboard here

00:41:03.180 and clicking a mouse yeah but anyway so it would be convenient uh so is that the whole thing just

00:41:08.660 like the convenience of privacy yeah just can end the segment right there that's it nothing else to

00:41:14.020 say oh wait only it does not take much to imagine the kind of memories that you might not want your

00:41:20.700 search engine remembering about you forever and i gotta say this level of surveillance and

00:41:27.100 remembering is particularly fraught in our current social and political climate. For instance,

00:41:32.180 when Jeffrey Fowler from The Post asked OpenAI if governments would be able to ask OpenAI to

00:41:37.600 hand over people's browsing data and memories, or what happens if they're researching activities

00:41:42.620 that are not legal in certain states, such as abortion, OpenAI did not immediately reply to

00:41:49.100 his question. Which, yeah, for as convenient as it would be to not have to sort through

00:41:54.700 all the non-Delta flights that are being serviced for me, this feels bad to me.

00:42:00.520 Yeah. You could also imagine a lot of things beyond abortion that you might not want the

00:42:08.560 Trump administration knowing about you engaging in. Certainly abortion is high on the list,

00:42:13.140 but who you voted for, what kind of questions you might have about the Trump administration,

00:42:21.920 uh who knows what these creeps might want to know about us and i have seen very little

00:42:30.640 evidence to make me believe that open ai or any other big tech company would not

00:42:35.840 just happily hand it over so that's bad but there is one good thing that has come from this and this

00:42:42.120 is a review of atlas from ai security pioneer desez de susanna cox can i read this to you

00:42:48.820 because it is phenomenal.

00:42:50.160 Yes, please.

00:42:51.180 Do you love how much memory Chrome uses,

00:42:53.760 but wish it supplied out of you more?

00:42:55.540 And also, as a bonus,

00:42:57.420 came with multiple security backdoors.

00:42:59.720 Well, great news.

00:43:01.020 Open AI's new browser promises to deliver on all three.

00:43:04.820 It's called Atlas,

00:43:06.020 and it finally answers the question,

00:43:08.240 can a browser be even more insecure,

00:43:10.680 privacy-violating, and bloated?

00:43:12.680 Yes, now it can.

00:43:14.480 We've all been there, 1.00

00:43:15.580 reading the stupid internet with our boring eye holes 1.00

00:43:18.720 using our own brains like a bunch of literal primates 1.00

00:43:22.720 and thought there has to be a better way.

00:43:25.720 Well, now there is.

00:43:28.020 Wish your financial information was guarded

00:43:30.160 with all the prompt injectable security of AI agents?

00:43:34.200 Guess what?

00:43:35.160 Atlas can make purchases.

00:43:37.340 Want a browser that reads everything you do

00:43:39.720 and reports it to big tech slash the government

00:43:41.940 slash Sam Altman's personal media bank?

00:43:44.540 Now you can have it all in Atlas, the AI-powered browser.

00:43:48.720 simply turn over all your financial information browsing habits and details of your personal life

00:43:53.620 to a big company and start to feel smarter slash more productive slash cooler slash more attractive

00:43:59.240 slash wealthier right away wow thanks ai wow that was art that was really good so at least we got

00:44:07.140 that review out of the whole thing it's probably worth it i don't know if you know this about me

00:44:12.420 but i really dig this report that comes out of ucla center for scholars and storytellers every

00:44:18.380 year called Teens and Screens. It's one of the dorkiest things about me that when this report

00:44:24.060 comes out, I comb through it. I just find it so interesting. And basically, this report offers

00:44:29.600 insights into the taste and preferences of young media consumers. Oh, that's really interesting.

00:44:35.960 Why do you like this particular one so much, Bridget? I just think that young media consumers,

00:44:41.640 they can really tell us a lot about where we're headed. And they're also a niche group that I

00:44:46.660 think is very easy to not listen to. And so they'll be telling us, hey, we want X, Y, Z. And it's just

00:44:52.860 very easy for people to be like, you don't want X, you want Y. So something about this report, I just

00:44:58.200 think it really tells us a lot about what young people are feeling and thinking about media, as

00:45:03.100 opposed to listening to people talk over them about what they want from media. This year's report is

00:45:09.660 titled Get Real, Relatability on Demand, because the findings show that teens and youth are really

00:45:16.340 craving things like relatability and authentic representations across metrics as it pertains to

00:45:22.560 media right now. So the study surveyed 1,500 Americans between the ages of 10 and 24 about

00:45:27.900 their media consumption habits and preferences. According to Variety, the sample was proportionally

00:45:32.120 reflective of the United States Gen Z population in terms of racial, ethnic, gender, sexuality,

00:45:37.560 ability, economic, and geographic diversity. That is pretty cool. So how are young Americans

00:45:46.220 consuming media? Well, I would say this was probably the most surprising bit from the study,

00:45:51.760 which is that, surprisingly, young people are not completely done with traditional media.

00:45:57.020 I would have thought that young people are only getting their media from social media.

00:46:00.980 Not the case. According to this study, 53% of young Americans discuss movies and television

00:46:05.700 shows with friends more than they discuss content that they watch on social media, which really

00:46:10.600 surprised me because I would be thinking, oh, what young people are consuming television and

00:46:14.360 movies? They're all just watching the TikToks, right? No, not so. They also really like animation,

00:46:21.260 which I, of course, love because I love animation. Gen Z shows a distinct preference for animation.

00:46:27.800 The percentage of adolescents who prefer animated content over live action rose from 42% last year

00:46:33.060 to 48.5% this year, and that is not just for younger teens.

00:46:37.960 Nearly 48% of respondents aged 19 to 24 also preferred animation.

00:46:43.400 I am so curious what that is about.

00:46:46.260 I would say I also have a slight preference toward animated content.

00:46:51.240 I wish I could say what that was about.

00:46:53.460 I don't really know what it's about with me,

00:46:55.580 and I'm so curious what this is about for the younger folks surveyed.

00:47:00.040 Yeah, it's a good question.

00:47:01.080 I also have always really liked animation, and it's tempting to think that maybe the young people are just, like, coming around to finally see things the way that I do, but I suspect that's probably not what's actually happening here.

00:47:15.620 You want to know something else young people are into, according to this study?

00:47:19.520 Uh, what else are they into?

00:47:22.040 It's so wholesome.

00:47:23.120 Just going to see movies with their friends.

00:47:25.760 Going to see a new movie in theaters

00:47:27.640 would be the top-ranked weekend activity

00:47:30.720 for a second year in a row,

00:47:32.640 if cost were not a factor.

00:47:34.320 And teens are saying they would rather go see a new movie

00:47:36.820 in the theater with their friends

00:47:37.840 over playing video games with friends

00:47:39.980 or going to concerts with friends.

00:47:41.740 Oh, they want to go see a movie.

00:47:43.360 I get it.

00:47:43.840 Going to see a movie.

00:47:45.360 Remember just a couple years ago,

00:47:46.820 people were like,

00:47:47.380 no one's ever going to go to the movies again.

00:47:49.220 The theaters are dying.

00:47:51.680 Seems like that's not really happening.

00:47:53.500 In our episode with Stacey Spikes, the founder of MoviePass,

00:47:57.180 he dropped a surprising stat on me that going to see movies in theater

00:48:00.880 is still the number one leisure activity of Americans,

00:48:03.740 which, again, I also hear things like, oh, streaming is going to kill movie theaters.

00:48:08.800 Nobody's going to go to the movies anymore.

00:48:10.540 I just went to see a theatrical release of that new Paul Thomas Anderson movie,

00:48:14.940 One Battle After Another.

00:48:16.240 I went on an off time.

00:48:17.460 I went weekday, matinee, completely packed house, full theater.

00:48:23.140 So from my anecdotal experiences, people are still going to the movies,

00:48:26.060 and the teens agree with me.

00:48:27.460 Oh, you saw One Battle After Another.

00:48:29.020 I've seen so many people talking about that.

00:48:31.460 What did you think?

00:48:33.300 Hey, this is Future Bridget.

00:48:34.740 So just real quick, Mike and I have a very quick, spoiler-free discussion

00:48:38.980 of the movie One Battle After Another here.

00:48:41.460 We share a few basic, overarching comments about the movie,

00:48:44.480 but no real spoilers.

00:48:45.620 but just an fyi after trying to go in 100 fresh before seeing the movie okay here we go so i love

00:48:53.240 paul thomas anderson boogie nights is my favorite movie of all time if anybody asks me what my

00:48:57.720 favorite movie is i will probably say boogie nights it's a masterpiece so paul thomas anderson

00:49:02.540 is my guy i love him um i really liked one battle after another i thought it was a perfectly

00:49:09.760 enjoyable movie thought it was a good time it was a long movie but it was one of those movies where

00:49:15.440 you're never

00:49:17.900 you're never looking at your watch

00:49:19.840 thinking how long have you been in the theater

00:49:20.980 I don't know if I

00:49:24.040 would say how

00:49:26.040 I felt about the movie matches

00:49:27.820 the hype that I feel like it

00:49:30.040 got and I don't want

00:49:32.000 to give anything away for folks who haven't seen it

00:49:33.840 I have big

00:49:35.480 let's just say I have big questions

00:49:37.520 about

00:49:38.980 some of the way that the movie

00:49:41.360 deals with race

00:49:43.420 particularly black women

00:49:44.980 um i think i don't if folks haven't seen it if you've seen it i want to talk about it with you

00:49:50.000 because a lot of my friends have not seen it there's one and i don't want to give anything

00:49:53.480 away so i'm speaking very cryptically and people people who haven't seen it are like this is

00:49:57.020 boring as hell but there's one particular character and if you've seen the movie you 0.92

00:50:01.060 know exactly who i'm talking about that i feel like we are not really let in to what the fuck 0.91

00:50:07.020 is going on with her and why and i feel like i have a lot of questions and um i don't think it 0.93

00:50:13.220 was the most loving depiction of black women i've ever seen on screen i'll put it that way

00:50:17.700 what did you think about it uh well yeah i also don't want to like surprise spoil people who

00:50:23.900 haven't seen it yet uh i i agree it was it was a fun movie it was funny it was well paced it was

00:50:29.580 like really well acted uh just a bunch of like great actors doing a phenomenal job with it if i

00:50:37.620 were to criticize it I would say that like it deals with some themes that feel like very relevant

00:50:45.180 right now uh and I think that's part of what's contributing to the hype but I feel like it deals

00:50:50.840 with them kind of superficially and uh you know I after I left the theater I was like that was fun

00:50:58.360 but then thinking back on it I was like well why did that character do that like what was that

00:51:03.020 characters motivation why uh and why is it important why do i as a viewer like care about

00:51:09.180 them uh i i yeah that was kind of my impression it was a fun good action movie uh a lot to like

00:51:21.720 about it uh but not like it wasn't a deep thinker maybe because we can sneak in a recap episode and

00:51:27.700 we'll make it fit the tech theme or fuck it maybe we'll just have a one-off like i want to talk about

00:51:32.280 this movie episode and i'm owed that i've been doing this show for five years i can i'm owed 0.79

00:51:38.340 that all right well don't don't turn against the the little structure that we have here

00:51:43.500 oh you know that if you let me it'll just be like a straight you know i we we re-watched

00:51:51.240 mrs doubtfire the other day and i was like this might make a good recap but you were like

00:51:54.840 what about this is technology like nothing it's just an interesting movie yeah we have to draw

00:52:00.220 the lines somewhere okay so back to the teens teens are really craving relatable media and

00:52:08.520 relatable stories right now 32 percent that they want to see relatable stories on screen more so

00:52:14.980 than in fantasy or aspirational stories they want to see stories with quote people with lives like

00:52:20.180 mine i have to imagine that's why super wealthy out-of-touch celebrities is just not clicking

00:52:26.040 with people anymore particularly youth people like kim kardashian i think that like in this

00:52:29.940 day and age, nobody really wants to see that. Even if you at one point you could connect with

00:52:33.960 that aspirationally, young people are really not trying to see people living these aspirational

00:52:40.160 out-of-touch stories. What they want is people who have relatable lives and relatable stories

00:52:44.680 and lives like theirs. The 14 to 24 demographic, they show significant preferences for stories

00:52:50.300 about friendship. Specifically, almost 60% say that they want to see more content where the

00:52:55.640 central relationship are friendship. And they are a little less interested in romantic relationships

00:53:01.680 on screen. 54.9% want to see more different gender friendships on screen, while 49% want to see same

00:53:09.080 gender friendships. And specifically, they want to see friendships where they have healthy conflict

00:53:13.860 resolution. I really do feel like young people are telling us something about their lives and

00:53:20.140 what they want their lives and relationships to be like they want they want friendship and healthy

00:53:25.660 friendships at the core of their lives and they want to see friends have conflict but where that

00:53:30.960 conflict that when it does come up it's resolved in a healthy manner and part of me wonders if

00:53:35.920 that's a reaction to our our current online ecosystem where it seems like nothing can ever

00:53:40.860 be be no conflict can ever be managed at a healthy at a healthy way yeah i'm sure there's a lot of

00:53:46.620 very interesting stuff to dig into there about like you know one of the functions that entertainment

00:53:52.660 has served for years and years is to show people something aspirational right like it's the stuff

00:54:00.360 that people want to see in entertainment is something that that they aspire to and

00:54:03.700 it sounds like for many of the young people in this survey for the traditional ideas of

00:54:12.120 aspirational lifestyles of celebrities and wealthy people are not resonating. And what they do aspire

00:54:18.320 to is like healthy friendships and healthy conflict resolution. Maybe because it's like kind of scarce

00:54:24.600 these days, or at least seems pretty scarce. I think that's got to be part of it. And they're

00:54:29.600 really not interested in things like sex or romantic relationships being depicted on screen.

00:54:36.480 Romance actually ranked third to last on the list of topics that youth want to see explored on

00:54:41.440 screens. And 60.9% said that they want to see romantic relationship depicted as, quote,

00:54:47.780 more about the friendship between the couple than sex. 48.4% said that there is too much sex

00:54:53.720 and sexual content in TV and movies. Toxic relationships and love triangles also ranked

00:54:59.040 among the most tiresome or uninteresting tropes for young viewers. I know that there has been a

00:55:05.540 ton of talk about Gen Z being prudes or prudish or having an issue with sex. And I'm sure some of

00:55:13.020 that is true. And I want to dig into that. But it does seem like what they're telling us is that

00:55:17.320 they want friendships, healthy friendships with healthy conflict resolution at the heart. And

00:55:23.060 they want genuine, real connection. And I don't know, maybe it's not that Gen Z is prudish. Maybe

00:55:29.080 they're just tired of seeing intimacy without intimacy, right? Like what they're asking for

00:55:34.280 is not less love, but maybe like a different kind of love that feels grounded in connection

00:55:40.020 and friendship and care, not just chemistry. And I say this as someone who is fully like a horny

00:55:46.020 person who is only really interested in horny content. But the results of this survey when it

00:55:52.180 comes to wanting to see sex on screen could not have been more different than I felt when I was

00:55:56.760 young. All I wanted to do was like watch horny people on screen when I was a young person. And

00:56:02.340 that has not changed so i have to say that but i also get where they're coming from of saying hey

00:56:08.320 i can get sexy content anywhere i want to see real healthy meaty relationships and friendships

00:56:14.960 on screen not just horny content it makes sense i mean sex is ubiquitous on the internet right

00:56:22.520 you're you're always like two clicks away maybe three it's true and again when i was in high

00:56:28.040 school, my favorite film was The Talented Mr. Ripley, which is a film about horny, hot people

00:56:33.000 having horny, hot antics. But I can absolutely understand where these young people are coming

00:56:38.520 from. Who would you say is the best friend in Talented Mr. Ripley? Oh, that's easy. Freddy,

00:56:46.060 played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. May he rest in peace. Also, he's a real show stealer in

00:56:50.660 that movie. Every scene that he's in, he's like popping off the screen. He's one of my favorite

00:56:56.620 actress also fantastic and boogie nights by the way a little callback but yeah if there was if

00:57:00.860 there were if there was a best friend in that movie it would have i think i would have to go to

00:57:05.040 freddie but even freddie is a hornball the first time that you see freddie the first he's it's one

00:57:11.620 of my favorite character being introduced in a movie ever he's driving his tiny sports car

00:57:17.180 through a plaza in italy parks someplace he's not supposed to park and then gets out and then 0.99

00:57:22.640 leers at a woman walking by and says don't you want to fuck every woman you see just once 0.99

00:57:27.820 bravo may he rest in peace yeah interesting choice for best friend because he's pretty like 1.00

00:57:35.240 self-motivated he i don't think that he is motivated by any particular love of dickie

00:57:41.460 he just hates tom yes he just hates tom i think that when i was growing up there was a an

00:57:49.000 intersection of being a theater kid a computer kid and horny because when i was growing up there

00:57:56.220 was another movie that came out when i was just leaving high school called closer another jude

00:58:01.180 law movie now that i'm thinking about it and it was all about these grown-up sexy adults in london

00:58:07.660 having horny sexy misunderstandings all these movies that i was when i was watching when i was

00:58:12.540 young closer i'm not even sure was a good movie i think i was just horny it also had a kick-ass

00:58:19.460 soundtrack it did it did i i had it on cd man i was if you if you were a nerdy person who was

00:58:27.120 falling and falling deep into the world of like fantasy through film what were the movies that

00:58:32.620 you were obsessed with when you were coming up i need to know this i'm sure i'm sure we have some

00:58:36.200 overlap did you have any you ever see the movie tank girl oh my god who do you think you're talking

00:58:42.120 to man i remember like me and a couple of my friends we were having a sleepover at my friend's

00:58:50.260 house like that's how old we were we were not driving like like our moms had dropped us off

00:58:55.160 and we went to the video store we rented tank girl and we watched it like three times in a row

00:59:01.020 the old heads know it was all about jet girl actually oh yes she was remember tank girl's

00:59:08.720 friend i sure do friend in quotes she was a good friend so yeah that gen z would love that movie

00:59:19.220 it is a it's an exploration of of complex friendship on screen we need more of that

00:59:25.120 yeah they probably would they'd probably like that a lot better than taylor mr ripley that

00:59:29.180 probably make them uncomfortable or i mean even when i was reading this this survey i was like

00:59:34.180 OK, well, youth don't like, you know, love triangles and toxic love and sex on screen.

00:59:41.100 But the terrible sort of reimagining of talented Mr. Ripley, Saltburn, which I do kind of love.

00:59:49.160 And there were movies that were super horny that I think were popular with youth.

00:59:53.800 Challengers is another one.

00:59:54.940 So I don't know.

00:59:55.740 I will be curious to put that in conversation with the survey of what do the youth want?

00:59:59.680 What are they into?

01:00:00.380 Yeah. And, you know, as a science, social scientist, I like hate to burst the bubble and rain on the parade.

01:00:08.160 But like sometimes sometimes kids lie on surveys.

01:00:13.380 So kids are like, I would never want to see sex on screen. Are you crazy? 1.00

01:00:18.240 Yeah. Who would want such a thing? 0.99

01:00:19.960 And maybe it's not lying, you know, but it's like.

01:00:25.000 Everybody has trouble with surveys, especially things about like preferences, like even adults.

01:00:29.840 We don't know what we want. We struggle to articulate what we want, even if we know what it is. And half the time we we don't even know what we want. And so asking like a 14 year old to report what kind of entertainment is super valuable to do.

01:00:45.060 when I in no way mean to diminish the survey,

01:00:47.680 it's like so wonderful to like actually have data

01:00:51.740 on what they say.

01:00:53.640 But like, we do need to interpret it

01:00:56.800 with like a little bit of a grain of salt

01:00:58.400 that like perhaps it is not a clear window

01:01:02.180 into the mind of the youth.

01:01:04.840 And in fact, there probably is a little bit

01:01:07.620 of like aspirational filtering

01:01:09.860 in the way that they respond on a survey like this.

01:01:12.380 there's a podcast that i love called uh yeah dude where they read surveys and they're always so

01:01:17.620 funny and they the surveys i always find this fascinating because it'll be but it'll be the

01:01:22.320 most basic question question on a survey do you own a toaster oven 70 no 20 yes 10 i'm not sure

01:01:36.240 i can't answer i don't know like who are these people was like you know they'll ask the most

01:01:41.280 basic questions about their life did you go out of the country this year yes no i couldn't say

01:01:48.840 for sure i don't know like what do you mean what as as they ask somebody who designed surveys

01:01:54.900 what accounts for that it could be any number of things like maybe they genuinely don't know

01:02:00.320 maybe there's some whoa they genuinely don't know what are you talking about all kinds of crazy 0.71

01:02:07.700 shit happens in people's lives right like you couldn't especially when you're talking about 0.98

01:02:12.980 population surveys where they sample like 1500 people all kinds of crazy shit is happening in 0.99

01:02:20.960 that sample of people's lives and so like some people probably got some weird stuff going on

01:02:26.180 that you know maybe they inherited a storage locker which may or may not contain a toaster oven

01:02:32.600 and so they don't know whether what is in there uh maybe they just don't feel like answering the

01:02:37.580 question but it is important to include that it when you're when you're designing the survey as

01:02:42.380 the researcher it's important to include that kind of option because otherwise if you force those

01:02:48.520 people to respond one of the other ways uh you're just kind of like gunking it up if they truly

01:02:54.280 don't know or like can't give a straight answer for whatever reason well don't gunk up your surveys

01:02:59.600 people words to live by mike thank you for being here where can folks keep in touch with our

01:03:05.820 podcast you can leave comments right on spotify uh maybe comment about what you think about their

01:03:11.880 new policy about ice right there in the comments on spotify uh or what you think about our comments

01:03:18.560 on the topic uh you can write anything you want in the spotify comments you can also email read

01:03:24.880 them all she does uh you can email us at hello at tangoni.com uh we're gonna do that mailbag

01:03:31.700 episode uh pretty soon uh the official window is closed but if you email us something really good

01:03:37.000 we can we can probably work something out sneak it in uh you can follow bridget on tiktok and

01:03:42.500 instagram at bridgetmarie in dc and you can follow the show on youtube at there are no girls on the

01:03:49.440 internet and uh we look forward to interacting with you there thanks so much for being here

01:03:55.380 mike thanks to all of you for listening and i will see you on the internet

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - October 24, 2025

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