00:04:15.760But, and I am fully aware that this might be a bit of an unpopular opinion.
00:04:22.440I think if we're being honest, obviously it's not nice.0.95
00:04:26.140And I don't love the idea of friends talking crap about one another.
00:04:29.940But if we're being honest, I actually think that complaining about people that you love, sometimes behind their backs, is sometimes just part of being in relationships with other people.
00:04:41.240You know, I am not too proud or too big to admit that I have done it a time or two, hopefully not with an earshot of somebody who was going to live tweet the whole thing.
00:04:51.000But I think it's just part of being friends with people sometimes is that you have conflict and that, you know, you meet over drinks to complain about a friend and just vent and get it out.
00:05:01.200So I can almost hear people listening saying, oh, that is not true.
00:05:05.780You should never talk badly about a friend or a loved one.
00:05:09.640And to that I say, be so for real right now.
00:05:13.840I think that most everybody, all of us, at one time or another, has vented about a friend or a family member or a spouse or somebody that we love.
00:05:22.280And I don't necessarily think that a stranger transcribing everything that you might say during a vent session over drinks
00:05:29.140and then blasting it to the entire internet in the hopes that it might get back to the subject is really that helpful.
00:05:35.880Like, I don't think that this TikToker really did a good thing for this bride.
00:05:40.220I actually think, like, if I had seen that, I would be mortified.
00:05:44.080I would be horrified that my friends were talking about this.
00:05:47.240I would be horrified that the details of my wedding were blasted to the Internet
00:05:53.240and the way that my friends felt about them were blasted to the Internet.
00:05:57.920And so I don't necessarily think it's, like, that helpful.
00:06:01.160I also think it's possible that this stranger maybe doesn't have the context
00:06:05.300of their particular relationship to know, like, the context of what's being said, right? There
00:06:12.040might be history there that she doesn't know. There might be more to the story. I think just
00:06:16.520eavesdropping for 10 minutes into someone's vent session over drinks where they don't know that
00:06:20.460someone else is listening might not tell the entire full magnitude of what's going on. And
00:06:25.500certainly, I don't think maybe gives you enough information to comfortably and reasonably blast
00:06:30.520this to the entire internet. And here's another maybe unpopular opinion about all this. This
00:06:37.520TikToker maybe did just genuinely want to give this bride a heads up that her friends felt this
00:06:43.940way about her wedding and maybe weren't her real friends. That might be true. But I also think that
00:06:48.980this TikToker probably maybe might have realized that she had a juicy story on her hands. One that0.99
00:06:56.860people would naturally want to chime in on and she and that it would spread this video far and
00:07:03.140wide. Like I think that she knew people were going to have opinions about this and were going to be
00:07:06.920leaving comments and that this video would blow up like it did. And here's my point. This phenomenon
00:07:13.180that I'm seeing more and more of on social media where people take content about the behavior of
00:07:17.860strangers and people get very, very invested in like finding them or getting a follow-up or getting
00:07:24.320a part two or knowing what happened next as if they are following celebrity gossip or watching
00:07:29.600a movie. But here's the thing. These people are not celebrities. They're just regular people,
00:07:35.580strangers even. In a really interesting piece for the conversation, Dr. Jenna Drenton,
00:07:41.540Associate Professor of Marketing at the Quinlan School of Business at La Jolla University,
00:07:45.080Chicago, who studies social media behavior, dubs this the TikTok tabloid. She writes,
00:07:51.060Together, these stories represent the emergence of what she calls TikTok tabloids, in which users collectively manufacture and dramatize stories like an investigative gossip reel.
00:08:02.220Traditional tabloids place the lurid limelight on celebrities and public figures, but the TikTok tabloid targets everyday people.
00:08:10.580So according to Dr. Drenton, this phenomenon is related closely to the dynamics of social surveillance,
00:08:18.440which is using digital technologies to keep a close watch on one another
00:08:21.800while producing online content in anticipation of being watched.
00:08:26.180So this sounds very, like, draconian, like, tech dystopian, but it's kind of nothing new.
00:08:34.000Obviously, tabloids have been around for kind of a long time.
00:08:36.520If you lived through the 2000s, which was the golden age, or depending on who you ask, dark age of the online tabloid,
00:08:44.000you probably remember how tabloids like TMZ and Perez Hilton would publish the minutia of celebrities like Britney Spears and Perez Hilton.
00:08:54.440It was ugly. It was racist often. It was misogynistic. It was all kinds of like negative things.
00:09:04.780But I do think that back in the 2000s and the 2010s, there was this, I don't know, I think this feeling that because these were celebrities, because these were famous people and public figures, that they weren't real people like you or me as a real person.
00:09:21.900So it was fair game to photograph them and obsess and surveil them online whenever they went in public.
00:09:29.020But Dr. Drenton says where tabloid culture used to be about the many watching the few, where a few people who are celebrities are surveilled by all of us and we get to pick apart their behavior.
00:09:41.580Today, there's been a shift where that same dynamic has translated to everyone watching everyone all the time.
00:09:49.020We're both they're surveillers and they're surveilled.
00:09:54.680Yeah, I mean, it's actually especially funny in that we're in the iHeart podcast studio here at iHeart, the iHeart Radio Festival.
00:10:03.680So, like, we are podcasting in a little bit of a fishbowl.
00:10:07.540I feel, I mean, we are certainly the surveilled right now.
00:10:11.560Yeah, people keep stopping by and I can't tell if they're looking in to, like, watch us recording this episode or just marvel at the Bose headphones.
00:19:51.440Yeah, at what age will Bridget be, like, just being, like, I do feel like for women, like, at a certain age, just, like, existing is, you know, actually, like, slight spoiler for the movie Barbie.0.52
00:20:04.760They kind of play with it in the movie Barbie when Barbie sees that older woman and she's like, you're so beautiful.
00:20:48.140It is. Yes, it is absolutely women like that. I completely agree. So a very similar thing to what I was just talking about, the older woman going to see Barbie by herself happened with an Australian influencer who does these stunts where he kind of like does things in public with strangers that are meant to be kind or wholesome.1.00
00:21:11.120only in this case we actually know what the subject who was also an older woman felt about it
00:21:17.320because she told us so this influencer goes up to this older woman who is eating alone in a food
00:21:24.240court and he hands her a bouquet of flowers and it's clearly meant to be like a wholesome or
00:21:29.720heartwarming moment like a young guy brightening the day of this lonely old woman eating by herself
00:21:35.340a random act of kindness and all the comments are like oh my god like that is so sweet like
00:21:42.000she's really deserves those flowers he's really doing a nice thing for this he probably made that
00:21:47.140old woman's day and she really probably like needed those needed those flowers needed that
00:21:52.300smile needed this pickup you know who didn't feel that way the woman who was got the flowers
00:21:57.500so she actually didn't like it at all the woman told abc radio melbourne that she had no idea that
00:22:04.280she was being filmed until she received messages from people telling her the video had gone mega
00:22:08.960viral she basically said that she was like eating at this cafe minding her own business when this
00:22:14.400influencer comes up to her and asks can you hold these flowers for a minute so she didn't even
00:22:19.320necessarily realize that like he was giving her flowers because he was like can you hold these
00:22:24.120for a minute and she was like oh uh sure i guess thinking that like he needed somebody to hold
00:22:29.700these flowers then she sees this camera crew filming her and she didn't she didn't know she
00:22:35.160was being filmed at first and then she asked them are you filming this guy giving me flowers and they
00:22:40.660said no they said no they said no they lied to her they lied to this woman deception is like
00:22:46.400that's the red line for like most things oh completely agree so in this interview this woman
00:22:51.840says quote i actually even said to them look do you want these flowers back because i really don't
00:22:57.460want them i don't want to carry them home on the tram really to be quite frank also side note i
00:23:03.500love this woman this like old australian woman who is not interested in these flowers also having
00:23:08.820been to australia i can this is like classic australian lady like women in australia and i
00:23:14.320say this with like deep love and admiration they have a bluntness that i think is really amazing
00:23:20.980and they really just like say how they feel and i really dig it like if you're if you were
00:23:26.420australian if i'm if i'm getting this like way off the mark write it and let me know but i've i've
00:23:31.680met a lot of australians who are just like very direct and to the point and this sounds like one
00:23:35.140of them and i love that for her i love that for her i love that for me i love that for all of us
00:23:38.400yeah like she didn't go out to get lunch at the food court by herself so that some guy could give
00:23:44.940her flowers she wasn't like you know hoping like today will be the day yeah and so she actually
00:23:50.300says that this was a little bit of an inconvenience for her because she thought that this guy was kind
00:23:55.160of intruding on her quiet private time she said these artificial things are not random acts of
00:24:02.540kindness so she said that she was kind of offended that they were projecting this story under her
00:24:09.560that she was like this sad broken down lonely old woman just because she was having a cup of coffee
00:24:16.240by herself right like i do think it's it's wild to me that just existing in public by yourself
00:25:37.120But he did double down on his random acts of kindness content.
00:25:40.640And to your point, Mike, it is a little bit complicated because we know that TikTok is a platform that does reward positive content.
00:25:49.660And so it would be nice to think that this influencer was just doing this to be altruistic or sweet or he genuinely wanted to, like, affirm this woman and, like, make her day.
00:25:59.840But the reality is, is that he is an influencer who makes money from his social media platform.
00:26:05.880And if you want to build up your platform, making heartwarming, random acts of kindness content is a way to do it.
00:26:14.420It is a way to boost your individual profile.
00:26:17.680And especially if you're doing it without consent, that really tells me that you're not really genuinely interested in, like, reaffirming or making the day of this random woman.
00:26:30.460It is about building your platform and your profile.
00:26:33.000And she, in her interview with ABC, she actually says, I have a sense that this influencer probably made money from this video of me that I actually found deeply offensive.
00:26:52.980He probably didn't share that money with her.
00:26:55.200And he offered to take the video down.
00:26:56.740But that's not really what it's about.
00:26:58.700But, like, I guess now I'm going to take a turn just projecting onto this woman based on nothing.0.98
00:27:06.420But, like, I have to imagine that the thing that made her uncomfortable was not, like, being seen by millions of TikTokers that she doesn't know.0.85
00:27:17.040But just the general vibe of the thing that she was made to participate in without her consent.0.89
00:27:24.380And that they lied to her about during the thing.
00:27:27.120Yeah. And I think that that's one of the things that I really want to push back against in our sort of rapidly digitizing culture, digital culture, is that anybody who goes out in public is just consenting to be a character in someone else's story about them just by the sheer act of leaving their house, going out their front door.
00:27:54.660I think that people have a right to privacy.
00:27:56.680I think that people have a right to, like, go have a sad coffee by themselves or something.
00:28:02.420Or, like, go to a movie alone without someone being like, oh, look at this poor soul just really hanging on there.
00:28:09.780Really inspirational to all of us, right?
00:28:12.080Like, sometimes people just want to live their lives.
00:28:14.360They don't want to go outside and accidentally become somebody else's inspiration porn just by living their life.
00:28:21.920You know what this is making me thinking of?
00:28:23.520And this is a bit of a sharp left turn.
00:28:53.520But I love his because he's not just, like, reacting to the TikTok gifts that he receives, but he's saying, like, Spider-Man things, like, ooh, this city is really seeing some dark times, you know?
00:29:07.260Like, maybe that's a reaction to this, like, constant surveillance vibe of people, you know, wanting to put themselves out there and choosing how they show up.
00:29:19.320Well, I do think that everybody deserves the right to choose how they show up.
00:29:25.500I think about this a lot because, like, I am someone who leaves my house looking pretty bummy a lot of the time.
00:29:31.540And if someone got a video of me when I was, like, out and about just trying to get a cup of coffee, not looking my best, which is often, I would be horrified.
00:29:43.300If somebody took a picture of me, like, suggesting something about me that wasn't true just based on a glance of me, like, I just think that it invites us to boil people, people who are complex beings, into, like, flatten them into a character based on a 10-second, like, observation of them out on the street, which I don't think, I think that we should be resisting.
00:30:08.560yeah and like you said it's just going out in public should not be an invitation to be
00:30:16.320recorded and made a character in somebody else's like story or account especially when it's an
00:30:21.820account that they are monetizing as an influencer it's so easy to project onto people and it's worth
00:30:29.080interrogating like what are these stories that we project onto them like i remember i saw this thing
00:31:55.740Like, she's not consenting to being a character in this fan fiction that you've written about her, about how she's a pick me trying to look deep at the bar.
00:32:05.940When in reality, she's like, I was just waiting for my friend.
00:32:10.400People love projecting stuff onto others.
00:32:12.800Okay, so speaking of projection, we cannot have this conversation without talking about the pinnacle of internet projection and projecting things onto strangers.
00:32:26.620You might not, you're not very online, Mike, so you might not have seen this.
00:32:31.300This is a story that I followed, like, relentlessly.
00:32:58.160So West at Home Caleb was a guy who lived in New York.
00:33:02.920He would, like, go out on dates and he was not a good date.
00:33:07.000He was, like, disrespectful to the women that he was dating.
00:33:11.160I feel like he was not, like, abusive or violent or anything, but just, like, would, like, you know, hook up and then not call them, like, that kind of thing.
00:33:24.700Like, I don't know who filled you in on West Elm Caleb, or if when I'm not around to, like, bet, like, bore you with internet stories, if you're actually, like, following TikTok and, like, you know all the drama.0.52
00:33:36.420You're like, here's what the girlies are up to.
00:33:37.700You actually know all of it in great detail.
00:35:07.860It's not cool. So I want to be clear that I'm not saying that West Elm Caleb's dating behavior is great.
00:35:13.360And I can tell you one thing. If he ghosted a friend of mine, you can bet your ass that you would hear me overhear me talking so much crap about him at brunch if he did this to a friend of mine.0.96
00:35:24.300absolutely, but the internet came for Caleb in this completely over-the-top way. They made him,0.97
00:35:31.860he was like the internet villain for a week. They published his full first and last name
00:35:36.940and his workplace. The dating app Kepler even made, or Kepler, the dating app Kepler even made
00:35:44.180a billboard that reads, Red Flags, 6'4", Mustache, Furniture Designer, in an obvious reference to
00:35:51.760caleb's dating profile so i think people got very invested in the west elm caleb saga because it was
00:35:59.520like a live action in real time movie plot like if you've ever seen that movie john tucker must die
00:36:07.100it kind of seemed like that movie where you know three or four girls from like different walks of
00:36:13.280life like that athlete girl the cool girl this the nerd girl all come together when they realize that
00:36:20.000they're dating the same guy and John Tucker is playing all of them and they they overcome their
00:36:25.320differences to like come together and you know get revenge on him I love that movie I love that plot
00:36:32.540I love that as a trope however and I get how what feeling like you're using the internet to watch
00:36:40.680this play out in real time is like very satisfying but here's the thing we shouldn't be treating real
00:36:47.800people navigating their real lives like characters in a movie playing out for us because that's not
00:36:53.780what's happening these are strangers people that we don't know and projecting them and casting them
00:36:59.440into this like movie plot that we've that we've cooked up with them as the main characters isn't
00:37:04.520really that healthy yeah it's definitely not uh you know people didn't sign up for that and
00:37:10.120even if it feels good like an act of justice in the case of West Elm Caleb if you're someone who
00:37:19.700finds his behavior like particularly egregious and feels that women in Manhattan like needed to
00:37:25.860be warned uh that's it's still like you said like taking ordinary people and making their lives like
00:37:35.780characters in a movie and projecting onto it in a way that is like part of a pattern that's not
00:37:42.260serving all of us. More after a quick break.
00:40:02.400In a piece for Wired, Mark Hill argues that TikTok is actually the platform that lends itself most to this kind of thing because the platform relies on a kind of digital world building and digital collaborative play.
00:40:14.680And that, you know, when we were all young, we had dolls to act out dramas on when we were kids, you know, projecting these like made up dramas and motivations onto like dolls is how we played as kids.
00:40:28.620As adults, we basically do the same thing, but instead of dolls, we have real people via TikTok.
00:40:36.160In the 2020 paper, TikTok and the Algorithmized Cell, researchers argue the platform is different from other social networking sites
00:40:44.480because it's less about connecting with a network of friends and more a site for public performance heavily built on intrapersonal engagement
00:40:52.160while creating content for a trending algorithm.
00:40:54.700While similarly egocentric and concerned with the performance and management of self-identity,
00:40:59.920TikTok rewrites the mechanisms of this process through a design that guides users in a different direction than other social media sites, they write.
00:41:06.860Essentially, it's a digital sandbox that invites make-believe.
00:41:10.520The unplanned back-and-forth motion between creators makes the app an incredible social media playground.
00:41:17.420TikTok users play and perform in simulated characters and settings.
00:41:21.080This video creation app is an escape from reality.
00:41:23.540So this really goes back to what you were saying about the non-player characters and sort of how people are looking for this escape from reality and like performing that TikTok is a specifically good place for that kind of performance.
00:41:39.780And I think that's why we see TikTok becoming this platform where it's so easy to project entire worlds or attitudes or motivations or whatever onto strangers.
00:50:35.720Like, I'm essentially a member of the public to them.
00:50:39.240But then again, if we have an interaction, we're no longer strangers, and maybe we do owe them something.
00:50:45.220You're listening to There Are No Girls on the Internet, live at the iHeart Podcast Studio, powered by Bose, at the House of Music at iHeart Music Festival.
00:50:53.680And we were just talking about what we owe strangers, and why so many times it seems like these dramas and situations involving people we don't even know get served to us on platforms like TikTok.
00:51:08.360And one thing that is interesting is that I do think that TikTok has some unique features as a platform
00:51:13.120that make this kind of everyday people tabloid content that we're talking about really take off.
00:51:18.780The language that is used on the platform and has really been normalized on the platform,
00:51:22.600I'm talking about things like story time or if you are so-and-so and you live in such-and-such,
00:51:29.340listen up because I just heard your friends da-da-da-da.
00:51:31.600Like, there's a certain kind of language or, you know, way of speaking on TikTok that I think triggers our brain into thinking that we have a kind of faux intimacy and that it gets your brains, like, wanting to hear that, like, juicy gossip.
00:51:51.260Like, it gets your, like, gossip center and your brain kind of tingling.
00:51:59.480I can't tell you how many times I've been up late really invested in a story about people that I've never met, that I will never met, in a place, in a part of the world that I don't live in, that I've never even visited, that I'm like, I got to find out what happened.
00:52:19.600Why should I be this invested in the dramas of people that I don't know?
00:52:22.540So as Dr. Denton points out, TikTok's storytelling practices mimic exclusive reports, hot takes, and cliffhanger media.
00:52:31.040TikTokers dangle tantalizing bits of stories in front of viewers with caveats like, like for part two, or by serializing their content.
00:52:41.840These stories then take on lives of their own, becoming culturally embedded memes.
00:52:46.140and I'm sure if you've if folks listening are on TikTok when somebody says
00:52:50.640it's telling a story and you're invested in it and then they're like oh I'm running out of time
00:52:55.800I'm gonna do a part two and you're like oh well that was a letdown like you you don't get that
00:53:00.380whatever that brain you know thing is that happens when you get a story completed you don't get and
00:53:08.300And I think that TikTokers on the platform specifically are like using that, keep serializing stories and keeping us invested.
00:53:17.360And that's one way that TikTok is specifically well poised to get us all invested in the dramas of strangers.
00:53:25.420And of course, the more of this content that we consume, the more we're training algorithms that that is the kind of content that we want to see and engage with.
00:53:33.260it's this cycle where we are the never-ended surveiller and also surveilled and that is my
00:53:40.300big point that most of the content relies on projecting these stories onto strangers the
00:53:47.460more that we consume that kind of content engage with that kind of content and normalize that kind
00:53:52.040of content the more we are going to train be trained to like see the world in this way when
00:53:57.200we're out and about right the more we're going to see like when we see an older woman out enjoying
00:54:02.900a movie, we're going to think, oh, not only is it normal, but it might be sweet and wholesome0.99
00:54:09.580to like whip out my phone and get a video of her without her consent and blast it to the whole
00:54:15.440internet, right? I think that the more that we consume this content, the more we normalize this0.94
00:54:20.500cycle, the cycle of us being both the surveilled and the surveiller. It invites us to see strangers
00:54:27.600as characters in worlds that we have built in our heads and putting that on the internet for
00:54:32.060thousands to feed into as well but people don't exist to be unwitting characters in the fictionalized
00:54:38.300dramas that people cook up for them that is not how the world works we are all just trying to get0.92
00:54:43.300through the fucking day speaking of getting through the day you know that's something that0.84
00:54:47.480has helped me get through this uh complicated podcast taping in the iheart podcast studio0.97
00:54:55.460here at the iheart music festival i could think of a couple things are you talking about these
00:55:01.200amazing Bose headphones that we're wearing?
00:55:03.460Why did I think you were going to be like,
00:55:04.960is it the gin and tonic that you had before the taping?
00:55:08.060Yeah, I'm talking about the Bose headphones.
00:56:36.260If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.
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00:56:57.760If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:57:03.820Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:57:12.100Each 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.