00:01:13.700I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:01:17.400Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:01:21.100abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:24.740These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:28.800Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,
00:01:33.380Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:54.740We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.
00:02:00.760Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:10.700There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:02:18.820I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:24.740So, Mike, when we were talking about what I wanted to do for the episode this week, I was thinking, like, oh, I think I want to talk about the presidential debate.
00:02:32.840I'm going to watch it live to see if anything comes up from it.
00:02:36.760And you actually early on were like, I don't know if that's what you're going to want to talk about.
00:02:42.560I don't know if that's what listeners are going to want to hear about.
00:02:45.320I don't know if the mood is going to want to hear more commentary on that.
00:02:50.500At the time, I was like, oh, I wonder why this is his position.
00:02:54.740Now I'm realizing you are 100% correct
00:07:11.140However, when Haley is sort of delivering this tip, she puts her own kind of enthusiastic spin on it.
00:07:17.960She says, you got to give them that hock toi.
00:07:21.300I'm not like giving it the gravitas that she gives it because it would involve making like deep throat noises.
00:07:28.700And I think that's, if someone's listening to headphones, that's like the grossest thing you can hear. Not in like a sex-shamey way, but in a, it doesn't sound good in the ears kind of way when you're wearing headphones. So it needs to be seen to be understood if you haven't seen it. But she's essentially giving an enthusiastic portrayal of what it sounds and looks like to hawk up spit from one's throat. Does that make sense?
00:07:54.540You've described it accurately so that I'm able to recreate a picture in my head of this video.
00:08:00.060I can't say it makes a lot of sense, but yeah, I know what you're saying.0.88
00:08:03.620She says that one sentence, you got to give him that hock to ya.
00:20:52.680But he says that he suggested to her that she trademarked the phrase and that she's talking to a lawyer about it.
00:20:58.320So, again, I am just purely glad that she is getting her coin because, as we know, as we've talked about on the show, oftentimes people who are these viral sensations do not see a dime, whereas other people make money from their whatever viral phrase or viral thing they do, and they don't see a dime, especially if they're black.
00:21:19.420That is a common thing where the woman who was sitting in her car and was like, eyebrows on fleek, didn't see money from that. That's kind of changed a little bit because she's gotten a few brand deals later on. But in the beginning, everybody was making money off of that except for her.
00:21:35.720But even though HT is making some money off of this, it doesn't sound like it is all like roses and rainbows.
00:21:44.600People early on were deeply trying to track her down.
00:21:57.260According to Rolling Stone, her manager says Welsh, who did not respond to Rolling Stone's request for an interview, is overwhelmed by the attention.
00:22:04.480and she has requested that he not share any personal details about her or feature her face
00:22:09.780on the merchandise. He says, there are some crazy people in the world who have reached after her.
00:22:14.180She's probably one of the most well-known people in the world at this point, but I don't know if
00:22:17.220she's embraced it. So to me, that doesn't sound like something that is necessarily the kind of
00:22:24.180thing that somebody was like looking for welcoming, right? Like maybe when you were drunk, you were
00:22:28.320like, oh, talking to these guys for their street show, why not? But like, who could have predicted
00:23:21.660She talks about how these videos that sometimes do go viral will feature young people usually walking around town after a night out.
00:23:30.500She writes, with a few beers in their blood, they might even say things they regret, especially when their offhand comments begin a conversation online that put a huge spotlight on their life.
00:23:40.140That can feel invasive and overwhelming.
00:23:42.460And another good point to know about this kind of content is that if you agree to be on a video like this and then you change your mind about what you've said after somebody shoved a camera in your face when you were drunk leaving a bar, you don't have a ton of recourse.
00:23:54.540Like, you likely cannot get that content taken down, even if you ask.
00:23:58.540Ultimately, my biggest issue with these kinds of man-on-the-street videos is that anybody, anybody can get a camera and a mic to do this, right?
00:24:07.380When we were talking about the college campus protests, you saw young people declining to give interviews, not just to traditional media, but also to just sort of like person with a camera who I have no idea who this person is.
00:24:20.000a lot of people were kind of chastising these youth being like, oh, well, how do they expect
00:24:25.020to get their message out if they're not giving interviews? But actually, they were being really
00:24:30.200smart because if you have not vetted who this person is, they could be literally anybody with
00:24:34.780any kind of agenda. You have no idea. And so if you are trying to put a curated message out into
00:24:39.740the world, you should not be talking to a rando, just putting a camera in your face where you don't
00:24:45.100even know their name. They could be anybody. As Maitnor Evans puts it in her piece, with traditional
00:24:50.280media, there is an expectation that the interviewer is acting in good faith, and when speaking to an
00:24:54.860ordinary person, present them in a neutral but respectful light. These street-style interviews
00:24:59.400don't always follow the same principles, and that all is captured in these viral moments.
00:25:04.140Yeah, that's such a good point that, you know, people taking part in some sort of interview when
00:25:09.880they're they've been drinking or they're out on the street it is always a risk that anything you
00:25:15.200say to a camera is going to appear on the internet and be there forever and you know i i think it's
00:25:21.660particularly fraught when in the particular context that ht girl got caught in of you know at night
00:25:28.400out on the street in front of a bunch of bars it is appropriate to talk with other adults about
00:25:33.500sexual stuff. But then that same video played on everybody's TikTok algorithm in the middle of the
00:25:40.620day to like kids at school or like your parents, just people who are not in that context where
00:25:47.680it's no longer appropriate. Yeah, that's got to feel really crummy. And I can see how she would
00:25:54.060feel overwhelmed and wanting to hide from it. And ultimately, that is like really my issue with
00:26:00.520this style of interview, the subject has no idea how it will be used. They have no control over how
00:26:05.740it will be used. And whatever framing is projected onto it after the fact, they just have no control
00:26:09.940over that. And I think that by definition, by nature, that is at its heart exploitative.
00:26:15.360Because it's not like HT girl sees any money from the millions of views and all the attention that
00:26:21.020that channel got from her vulnerable moment. You know, if she wants to capitalize off that,0.92
00:26:26.520she is sort of forced to do a merchandising deal if she wants to make money from that and i think
00:26:31.360that we should really be thinking about the ways that these viral moments kind of force people into
00:26:37.860a limelight i would argue this is my opinion that like if you've been drinking and you are caught in
00:26:43.880one of those moments you can't you can't you're not fully consenting to everything that comes next
00:26:48.780sure she you know when they put a camera in her face she answered and did the interview but who
00:26:53.420could have ever imagined the way it would go viral the way it would blow up and so by nature i feel
00:26:58.720like it's a little bit exploitative and we should be talking about that side of viral moments not
00:27:02.800just how funny they are how pop culture zeitgeist they are whatever yeah and also the people who
00:27:10.360like doxed her and were trying to find her job like why like what if those people did something
00:27:15.480else with their time yeah if you go on twitter you have all of these people i think a lot of
00:27:21.460them are bots, to be honest with you, purporting to be like, oh, I found her OnlyFans or like
00:27:26.880there was video that I believe to be AI generated, but don't quote me on that,
00:27:31.800implying that they have found like uncensored content of her online. It just really speaks
00:27:37.120to this cottage industry that is so common in our current digital media climate, where
00:27:43.260when a woman kind of gets a moment of stardom, already you have people who are like in the0.86
00:27:49.040woodwork trying to capitalize on that, trying to be like, oh, you know, how can I make a quick buck?0.99
00:27:54.180How can I get a little engagement from that too? And I think there's never been an easier time to
00:27:58.480do that than right now. Oh, that's so interesting. I didn't appreciate that aspect of it, but it
00:28:03.960makes sense. I was thinking that these were like moral scolds who were trying to sex shame her,0.62
00:28:09.700but it actually makes more sense that it's like bots and scams. It's bots and scams, like bots0.73
00:28:15.740and scams 2024. Don't give your credit card information to anybody. Somebody puts a camera
00:28:20.580on your face, pull your hoodie up and walk away. Just stay inside. Just stay inside. So all of this
00:28:27.400leads me to a semi-related, but not actually related incident. And I'm calling that the ESPN
00:28:34.540ice cream incident. This one is actually really simple. Two women go to a baseball game. They eat
00:28:40.900ice cream cones that's really it story over end of sentence period well not exactly because espn
00:28:48.300decided to do a 20 second segment that is just a close-up of these two young women eating ice
00:28:54.760cream and they obviously don't know they're being filmed like this they don't they like like it's
00:28:59.040obvious that they don't know that it's like a zooming in on their face and on their mouths as
00:29:04.300they eat this ice cream with commentary the commentators are doing play-by-play commentary
00:29:08.920of their ice cream licking, the commentator is like, oh yeah, you got to lick that liquid before
00:29:13.340it melts. The whole thing, I mean, I don't want to pile on, but you get the drift. The video was
00:29:20.340published to TikTok, and it honestly does not take a genius to imagine what kind of comments people
00:29:25.540are leaving on this video of two young women eating ice cream. TikTok users start comparing
00:29:30.940the two young women to HT Girl, including one named Corey Cadell, who goes by Airboats of
00:29:36.900Oklahoma saying, I think Hawk Twa is about to get replaced. His video saying that got over 200,000
00:29:43.200views before he deleted his account because one of the women in the video actually called him out
00:29:48.160on TikTok. So one of the women who was videoed eating ice cream at this baseball game spoke up
00:29:53.760on TikTok. She said, it was just a 20 second segment of just eating ice cream or licking
00:29:58.620our ice cream. And he said, 20 seconds dedicated with commentary to just us eating our ice cream.
00:30:04.180We all knew what direction that video was going to head in.
00:30:06.780And lo and behold, the creeps of TikTok got a hold of it because we woke up getting compared0.97
00:30:11.080to the Hawk Twa girl, which no shade to her, girl do whatever.0.63
00:30:15.260So I want to double click on that because I don't think that she's trying to shame
00:30:19.840HT girl for her viral moment, but just saying like, what did her viral moment have to do
00:30:30.140And so, yeah, I think it's important that none of this is to sex shame H.T. Girl, who actually gave very good oral sex advice. But the whole thing is just kind of gross. And I think it confirms that women are considered fair game to have our behavior scrutinized, surveilled, and sexualized, even if we are not doing anything inherently sexual.0.98
00:30:50.240Yes, HT Girl decided to chime in for that interview about oral sex.0.91
00:30:53.940But even then, I don't think it means that people should be able to comb through her0.98
00:30:57.120social media for her personal information and try to find out where she works and all
00:32:35.860like trying to get the perfect selfie, blah, blah, blah.
00:32:37.960Really, I think leaning on some negative,
00:32:41.040misogynistic tropes about women, right?
00:32:42.940What he didn't say is that at the stadium, that moment actually was a selfie moment.
00:32:50.120So like on the Jumbotron, it was like, let's have a five second selfie moment.
00:32:54.460And so the Jumbotron instructed the entire stadium to spend a minute getting selfies.0.89
00:32:59.400And those women were doing exactly that.1.00
00:33:01.780And to make it seem like they specifically were doing something that was like vapid,
00:33:06.980just really put this misogynistic sheen on them doing totally normal behavior that, in fact,
00:33:13.080the baseball stadium asked them to do. And so I remember these sorority women, they really had1.00
00:33:18.920an eloquent clap back. They were like, oh, we were doing exactly what we were instructed to do by
00:33:23.680the stadium. And if we're so vapid, how come our sorority actually has this massive service focus
00:33:29.920and we do community service projects all the goddamn time? So this negative attitude that0.97
00:33:35.320the commentators had projected on it, they really did a great job of exposing like, yeah,
00:33:40.160it's just misogyny. It's just hostility to women in male-dominated spaces. Like, if I am not here0.98
00:33:44.920to be sexually titillating you by my public presence in this space, I am here to be your0.77
00:33:50.460punching bag for whatever misogynistic tropes you feel like throwing out this day. So I don't go to
00:33:55.660a ton of sporting events, but apparently when you were sitting behind the dugout, like these two
00:34:00.960young women eating ice cream on ESPN were, there was always like a higher potential for being on0.83
00:34:06.380camera. But it was a very different thing, like being zoomed in on while licking an ice cream
00:34:12.400cone. The site, awful announcing, which I did not know that a media entity existed to
00:34:19.420critical analysis of sports announcing, but I'm glad it exists. They also pointed out something,
00:34:25.380which is that they say, also bizarre was the fact that the same broadcast briefly focused
00:34:30.780on a woman eating a lollipop less than 20 minutes after the ice cream incident. ESPN switched off
00:34:36.400the woman eating a lollipop after about three seconds, but not before the camera intentionally0.99
00:34:40.600put her in focus. Weird. I'm sorry, that's weird, right? Yeah, I mean, I feel like whoever was
00:34:47.760directing the videography that day really had something on their mind. I mean, you come to
00:34:53.140watch a baseball game and it turns into a who's licking what-a-thon. Yeah, seriously. I feel like
00:35:00.760Like you, or I don't remember if you were quoting Annie, really nailed it by, you know, it's just an opportunity for casual misogyny and sexualization, which I guess in the repertoire of this videographer, maybe lots of sports people who are like, you know, directing where the camera goes to.
00:35:19.160I feel like they're always looking for something interesting to put on screen, like, oh, a cute baby or like a guy eating a messy hot dog or a guy dancing or something.
00:35:28.720And it's unfortunate that casual misogyny and non-consensual sexualization are in that same mix of, like, fun tropes to put on the Jumbotron.
00:39:52.080And again, the way that some of the people, not the announcers, because the announcers were not the ones comparing her to HT Girl,
00:39:58.940But the way that commentators on TikTok, like that guy who deleted his account after being called out by one of these young women, the way that they engage in this sexual fantasy world building, right, using this 20 second video of women doing something totally humdrum to build out this sexualized fantasy world around these women, what they might be like sexually, based on like a 20 second clip of them minding their business, you know, it's all world building.
00:40:26.100Yeah. And we might really go out of our way to be super generous to ESPN and the people who made this choice to put those women on there on the screen. Like maybe 20 years ago, that would have hit one way, like still not great, but maybe not like the worst thing.
00:40:47.920But in this new context that we live in, where something like that is going to end up on the internet, and even the most subtle, non-overt wink to sexualization, once it gets on the internet, is fodder for this sexual fantasy world building that you're describing and opens the people up to a level of scrutiny that far exceeds what might have been possible, you know, 20 years ago during a television broadcast of a game.
00:41:16.780This is kind of unrelated, but that's actually how creeps circumvent AI guardrails to create sexualized, non-consensual deepfakes. So when those AI deepfakes of Taylor Swift, which depicted her at a sporting event, when those were going viral, the way that creeps generated them, because you can't just go onto an AI image generator and say, like, show me a depiction of a famous person doing a sex act.
00:41:43.700What they did was they said, like, show me an image of Taylor Swift eating a hot dog or eating an ice cream, doing something that would look kind of sexual if you doctored it.
00:41:53.880And so they were getting those images that would depict an image of Taylor Swift doing something a certain kind of way, you know what I'm saying, and then edit those images to make them look more sexual.
00:42:03.260So it's interesting to me how whether or not it's using AI or it's just like this is an image of a woman eating a hot dog or an ice cream, creeps are going to do some sexual world building around that regardless.
00:42:15.260And that world bringing really brings me to the last instance that I want to talk about, which happened on a plane.
00:42:21.420So a woman on TikTok named Caroline Rened posted a TikTok of a man talking to a woman with the caption,
00:42:27.660if this man is your husband flying at United Airlines flight 2140 from Houston to New York,
00:42:32.340he's probably going to be staying with Katie tonight.
00:42:35.080She says this man met a woman at the airport bar,
00:42:38.020convinced her to change seats with somebody else on the plane so they could spend the flight drinking together.
00:42:42.720Apparently they were going on and on talking about his job, his eight-year-old daughter.
00:49:17.180And then they have projected this jilted wife story onto the situation while also kind of recasting themselves as the jilted wife.
00:49:25.640So I think it's a lot of people who are like, I have been cheated on. It sucks. I want to kind of get my vengeance by playing that out in the lives of these strangers.0.98
00:49:36.600And it really reminded me of this research paper that came out in 2020 called TikTok and the Algorithmized Self, where the researchers basically argue that TikTok is unique from other social media platforms because it is less about connecting with a network of friends and more a site built on, quote, a public performance heavily built on interpersonal engagement while creating content for an algorithm.
00:49:57.880And so essentially, it's this like big digital sandbox that invites make-believe.
00:50:02.900They write, the unplanned back and forth motion between creators makes the app an incredible