There Are No Girls on the Internet - Mikki Kendall built her career on Twitter. Here’s where she’s going next.

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00:01:12.200 I was having a conversation in the moment

00:01:14.580 and then it became a conversation of the moment. 0.97

00:01:18.360 there are no girls on the internet as a production of iheart radio and unbossed creative

00:01:28.960 i'm bridget todd and this is there are no girls on the internet

00:01:35.960 so to really understand where we're headed next when it comes to platforms and internet discourse 0.88

00:01:44.340 we first need to really understand and reckon with where we've been.

00:01:49.020 And that need is incredibly salient when it comes to online feminist discourse. 1.00

00:01:55.020 Back in 2013, online feminism was still in its girlboss era. 1.00

00:02:00.780 It was the era of Leslie Knope and notorious RBG t-shirts bought on Etsy. 0.97

00:02:06.520 Well-meaning, sure, but perhaps not the most inclusive. 0.91

00:02:10.120 Would it champion black women? 1.00

00:02:13.160 Poor women? 0.99

00:02:14.340 Trans women? And if these women were justifiably angry about not having been included in the

00:02:19.900 movement, would that brand of feminism make room for that anger? Ten years ago, writer Mickey

00:02:26.060 Kendall had had enough. She started the hashtag Solidarity is for White Women on Twitter, 0.87

00:02:31.520 and it took off in a way that's almost kind of hard to imagine here in 2023. 0.95

00:02:36.240 Solidarity is for White Women was meant to pull back the curtain and expose the ways that white

00:02:40.440 feminism had left so many Black and brown women to fend for ourselves. In exposing this,

00:02:46.560 Mickey Kendall changed the face of online feminism. But it didn't necessarily make her well-liked by 1.00

00:02:52.060 the people she was calling out. But for Mickey, if being liked by everyone is the cost of being

00:02:57.900 able to speak her truth, then it's not worth it. I was the most unpopular, popular girl in feminism. 1.00

00:03:10.440 i know how that sounds but it was like i was the mean black girl of sixth grade

00:03:16.240 and it was hilarious to me because i have a life offline and i have friends and things like that

00:03:21.800 but the things that i could say to make people mad that were perfectly innocuous everyone wanted

00:03:29.620 me to know relatively regularly of that like rbg shirt whatever kind of end of feminism 1.00

00:03:36.560 that I was never going to write for Jezebel that I was killing my career or whatever everyone 1.00

00:03:41.680 didn't know these things and the whole time I worked for the federal government like I had a

00:03:45.000 regular job so I wasn't sure what career I was killing right by saying things and then I had

00:03:53.880 all of these black and brown and all of these other people who were fine who we got along great

00:03:57.700 um but there was like a small core group of predominantly white not entirely

00:04:02.780 a predominantly white feminist who really wanted me to know that I was mean to them at regular 1.00

00:04:08.820 intervals. And I understood the performance on display. And then I just was like, well, 0.84

00:04:15.940 I guess you're going to get your feelings hurt today, sis. You'll be all right.

00:04:19.540 In 2013, NPR does a piece about the hashtag Mickey created. They include responses from

00:04:24.980 prominent online feminists, including a white feminist Kendall specifically called out for

00:04:30.060 failing to show up for Black women. Now, the piece was a response to something that she created, 0.99

00:04:34.760 but they didn't even include her. There was pushback, so much so that NPR was forced to

00:04:40.180 address the oversight, saying, Kendall kicked it off, and we should have asked Kendall to

00:04:45.240 participate from the beginning. That was our mistake. NPR eventually invites Kendall to

00:04:50.140 participate in the conversation, where she writes, this is a conversation after conflict,

00:04:55.160 because sometimes the political is personal.

00:04:58.660 Now, there's really no way to engage with conflict as a Black woman publicly 1.00

00:05:02.580 without the stigma of angry or mean clinging to you wherever you go like smoke. 0.97

00:05:08.780 A year later, Mickey is back at NPR as part of a feminist roundtable 1.00

00:05:13.080 in the wake of a piece examining whether online feminism is too toxic, too mean.

00:05:18.300 And in fact, a big part of the piece examines whether Mickey herself is mean or not. 0.98

00:05:25.160 One of the questions that comes up is basically, Mickey, do you think that you're a bully? And your answer is spot on. You're basically like, you know, can people feel however they're going to feel about the things I have to say and the frustrations that I have? Sure.

00:05:39.940 But we're also at a time when people are being duxed, trans people are being threatened. Your answer almost kind of feels like looking into this crystal ball of horrible things to come where we have people who are, you know, losing their rights, being threatened, being killed.

00:05:57.140 And there's always going to be this subsection of people who are like, are they being nice enough about it, though, when they talk about it?

00:06:03.500 so funny story that that round table happens uh basically because the internet bullied npr

00:06:11.520 and not even that i bullied npr the internet bullies npr right so there's that

00:06:16.900 and then because npr was going to have that round table about me without me if that makes sense 0.98

00:06:24.440 and there's been several things already and I was astonished at how just stupid the complaints 0.89

00:06:34.920 were and like listen I'm never going to tell you I'm a nice person right I actually explicitly 0.98

00:06:39.100 tell people if I had a brand it would be affable asshole right but also it took absolutely nothing

00:06:47.760 in an era of doxing, of harassment, to hurt the feelings of some of these people. 0.92

00:06:54.020 And I do mean saying, well, no, you're wrong. 0.77

00:06:57.460 That's a really shitty thing to say.

00:06:59.400 And they were like, you are so mean to me. 0.96

00:07:02.800 Okay.

00:07:05.080 You're still wrong.

00:07:07.740 Cry about it. 0.99

00:07:08.780 And we're still going to talk about how you're fucking up right here. 0.99

00:07:11.860 And it is like this forecast of how we get here, right? 0.98

00:07:15.780 where instead of us having what would be a perfectly normal conversation,

00:07:22.940 for lack of a way of putting it, a perfectly normal conversation

00:07:25.120 about what is happening politically,

00:07:30.120 we spend a lot of time, years in fact,

00:07:32.900 on whether or not it was being said civilly enough, politely enough.

00:07:37.180 We needed to work with people who were bigots, 0.99

00:07:40.260 all of this stuff about, you know, coddling assholes 0.99

00:07:43.600 that I still am not clear where it was supposed to get us 0.99

00:07:47.560 because it seems to have gotten us here

00:07:49.200 and now the same people who said it was important

00:07:53.200 not to say these things are going,

00:07:54.900 how did we get here?

00:07:57.020 Well, Susan, it started with you saying

00:07:59.780 that it was perfectly okay to not fight for people

00:08:03.280 to have workplace protections if they were trans, right?

00:08:07.780 We had to hear all about your gender criticism

00:08:10.120 or your discomfort with knowing that people

00:08:13.540 that we're not, you exist. And so that's how we end up here. And then on top of that,

00:08:20.180 you had this like wild and wacky idea that anyone who pushed back needed to do so with a plate of

00:08:27.880 cookies and a cup of warm milk and ask you daintily pretty, pretty pleased to care about

00:08:33.020 someone's human rights. So now we're here. Well, I do think that it's kind of gotten us to where

00:08:37.920 we are today and where we might be headed in the future. You know, so much of this kind of

00:08:42.220 both sides, ask nicely, coddling rhetoric, your work does a great job of calling out

00:08:48.100 institutions and individuals with power who maybe do have good intentions and that maybe,

00:08:53.220 you know, I admire or like, but that can let cozy relationships that they have

00:08:57.920 dictate who gets included and who gets left out. You know, if I'm an NPR editor,

00:09:02.360 maybe I'm just reaching out to folks in my network, the folks that I have an existing

00:09:05.720 relationship with, without really seeing or examining how that choice ends up shaping

00:09:10.920 who gets to have a voice and can result in something like someone being excluded from

00:09:15.240 a conversation they started oh and it's funny because i remember at the time people kept saying

00:09:21.100 things like that and i kept not even arguing but i kept pointing out that the well i knew them i

00:09:27.720 didn't know you of it all meant that if you all went to the same school or you hung out in the

00:09:32.960 same circles how are you an expert to anyone else's experience if the only people you talk to

00:09:37.460 were your neighbors, right? It was fascinating to watch because I knew, as several people now know,

00:09:43.520 that if you are talking about some of this class of feminists, they're married to hedge fund 1.00

00:09:48.660 managers or whatever. They come from money, right? And I knew back then, and obviously now, 1.00

00:09:56.000 that some of the conversations we were having around race and class, it was like I was having

00:10:01.220 a conversation with someone who had both their hands tied behind their back in terms of comprehending

00:10:05.260 the stakes because they've never been poor. I don't think I ever really thought about the way

00:10:10.020 that feminism and what it was and who it was for had been largely defined by this like white, 0.99

00:10:16.860 this like very well-meaning white, comfortable white lady class, you know? And like, I don't 1.00

00:10:21.500 think until, honestly, I think it was really your hashtag solidarity is for white women that like 0.73

00:10:26.920 broke something open in our culture that allowed us to see it and give us a language and point to

00:10:32.240 it and talk about it and really start confronting it it's funny uh one of the people when that

00:10:39.360 hashtag happened one of them said i wonder how the world is going to feel when they realize the

00:10:44.200 person who changed the the face of feminism also likes cat gifts on tumblr and i just about died

00:10:52.720 laughing and i was like well what can i tell you um i'm a woman of many tastes or something like

00:10:58.520 back and honestly what happens is that we kept talking around the circles of feminism right

00:11:06.960 around the idea that all women mattered but some women matter more kind of an approach

00:11:13.880 and that some women matter more was never explicitly stated but it was obvious that

00:11:20.780 that was the attitude right because if it wasn't for that we could talk about poverty we could

00:11:28.700 talk about police brutality or gun violence or any of these other topics not as it relates to

00:11:35.120 the suburbs or as it relates to you know manhattan but as it relates to the entire rest of the

00:11:41.040 country and i think one of the reasons that the conversation resonated so much too because

00:11:47.180 a lot of the women who wrote out kind of defending me when like people were like, 0.97

00:11:51.280 oh, she's being divisive, were low-income white women who were like, this is the first time

00:11:59.720 anybody has acknowledged we exist in forever and that we can be feminist and that things are 1.00

00:12:06.720 happening to us that are not happening to you, right? Like when we have those conversations

00:12:11.600 around anti-intellectualism in America, and that's definitely a problem, but I also understand how 0.55

00:12:16.060 it's so easy to create if all you hear from the most prominent intellectuals who look like you

00:12:23.960 is that you don't exist or at least you don't exist enough for them to care about what's

00:12:28.860 happening to you except to blame you for you know how you vote or whatever

00:12:33.580 let's take a quick break

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00:13:28.160 When I was 14 years old,

00:13:30.880 I was kidnapped and held captive

00:13:32.880 for nine months.

00:13:34.380 I survived, and I've spent my life

00:13:36.540 exploring how other people survive

00:13:38.660 what should have destroyed them.

00:13:40.740 I'm Elizabeth Smart,

00:13:42.040 and these are The Survivor Files.

00:13:44.560 I just remember

00:13:45.260 this low, taunting voice

00:13:47.940 next to my ear saying, 1.00

00:13:49.980 shut up, don't say anything. 0.99

00:13:52.720 Every week, I'm with 0.99

00:13:54.120 survivors who live through the unthinkable

00:13:57.160 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:14:01.620 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:14:09.240 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:14:13.140 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:14:16.600 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:14:19.700 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:14:34.080 At our back. 0.60

00:14:36.060 Mickey was prompted to start Solidarity is for White Women in the aftermath of the downfall of Hugo Schweitzer,

00:14:41.700 a college professor, blogger, and self-described male feminist who wrote about feminism at feminist sites like Jezbel.

00:14:49.700 Now, back then, Schweitzer was kind of a big deal in online feminist spaces.

00:14:54.220 He branded himself as a bad boy turned feminist.

00:14:57.500 And on his blog, wrote about his struggles with addiction, sleeping with his college students, 0.93

00:15:02.600 and trying to murder his girlfriend by turning on a gas stove in their house.

00:15:06.820 It was feminism that turned him around and made him see the error of his ways, so he claimed. 0.79

00:15:12.060 Black women, as we so often are, were skeptical of his rise to feminist quasi-stardom,

00:15:17.100 and even more skeptical of the white feminist online spaces that welcomed him. 0.88

00:15:22.420 He had a penchant for attacking these Black women online. 0.99

00:15:25.620 But none of this, not trying to murder his girlfriend or attacking Black women, 0.99

00:15:29.980 kept him from building up a platform or being welcomed in mostly white feminist spaces. 0.76

00:15:35.600 Late night on August 9th, 2013, Schweizer has what he describes as a meltdown.

00:15:41.260 In a succession of rapid-fire confession tweets, he admits to all of this.

00:15:46.940 He tells black feminists who had been warning about his behavior, 1.00

00:15:50.500 you were right. 1.00

00:15:51.420 I was awful to you because you were in the way.

00:15:54.340 He also admits that he did not have the credentials to be teaching college courses on feminism

00:15:58.440 and that he, quote, built his career as a well-known online male feminist on fraudulent pretenses.

00:16:05.460 Now, while this was all going down, 1.00

00:16:07.500 white feminists who were friendly with Schweitzer 0.95

00:16:09.600 expressed worry about his mental health and future job prospects.

00:16:14.140 But where was the concern for the Black women that he admitted attacking online? 0.88

00:16:18.400 Where was the concern for the students that he admitted having inappropriate sexual relationships with?

00:16:23.340 Where was the accountability for letting someone like Schweitzer rise up in the ranks of online feminism?

00:16:29.460 None of it sat right with Mickey. 1.00

00:16:31.760 Solidarity is for white women, she tweeted.

00:16:34.500 And it was like she had broken something open.

00:16:37.400 What started as Mickey's response to the movement overlooking Black women became a rallying cry, exposing all the tensions and fractures in feminist spaces online.

00:16:46.520 Do you think if you tweeted, solidarity is for white women today in 2023, it would take off the way that it did back in 2013?

00:16:54.460 I think in theory it could, but in execution what will happen is that Twitter will suppress the hashtag.

00:17:01.580 um because the other reason i think solidified when happens is that it is at the beginning of

00:17:07.660 the concept of hashtags as calls as calls as a call to action so twitter didn't know what to do

00:17:14.880 with me right most of the viral hashtag phenomenon hadn't started yet i'm not saying i actually

00:17:20.940 started it but i'm one of the very early ones where that happened organically and twitter didn't

00:17:27.320 know what it had either twitter was still figuring itself out right like if you were on twitter in

00:17:32.220 2009 you remember a very different twitter than twitter of today right when the hashtag happened

00:17:40.420 it was still kind of like the wild wild west in terms of the algorithm because twitter was still

00:17:44.580 trying to figure out how to make the algorithm work for advertising revenue for all of these

00:17:49.500 things it was still mostly third-party clients making twitter even a usable experience right

00:17:55.980 Twitter had to buy everybody that made Twitter possible to use.

00:18:00.780 When you first started it, did you create it thinking this is going to like crack things open?

00:18:06.280 This is going to hit on something?

00:18:07.680 Or were you just having a moment of frustration?

00:18:10.460 I was pissed off the I know you are playing in my face of it all.

00:18:15.960 Right.

00:18:17.300 I got very, to be honest, on Detroit when it comes out of a very south side of Chicago. 0.99

00:18:22.260 you are fucking with my friend and you are playing in my face and I don't know who you think you're 0.99

00:18:28.400 lying to but like let's be real here right this is before the invention of the phrase be fucking 0.99

00:18:32.740 for real as a popular thing but it was basically that and then in the moment I figured I would say

00:18:42.000 what I had to say I think I fired off probably like a hundred tweets because Twitter was still

00:18:45.500 doing that thing where they rate limit you if you tweet too much in too small a period of time

00:18:48.920 And so I did all those tweets.

00:18:53.360 It turned into this weird juggernaut-ish thing.

00:18:55.880 2013 was a different time on Twitter.

00:18:58.760 You know, it was the platform where one-off tweets could become big news stories or global movements.

00:19:05.000 Solidarity is for White Women allowed Mickey to access platforms that previously had been closed to her. 1.00

00:19:11.120 Before, maybe an editor might have just assigned the coverage of the hashtag that she created to whoever they had on staff. 1.00

00:19:17.220 or maybe just invited whoever was already in their network to talk about it.

00:19:21.660 But now, things were different.

00:19:23.980 Not only was Mickey exposing the lack of inclusion in online feminism, 0.82

00:19:27.840 but also, she was pointing out the lack of inclusion in who gets to tell the story about it. 1.00

00:19:33.280 And where before, her voice was included late,

00:19:35.860 almost as an afterthought to something that she created,

00:19:38.780 now it was unignorable.

00:19:41.180 Her voice, full of all that truth and righteous anger, 0.97

00:19:44.740 had to be included in the conversation.

00:19:47.220 She remembers it as a defining moment.

00:19:49.940 Like, it was one of those really bizarre moments that probably could not happen now in the same way.

00:19:55.260 Because now everybody knows what you say on social media matters.

00:19:58.760 Now everybody does a lot of, like, careful PR-constructing interns tweeting for you.

00:20:06.240 But at the time, we were all just kind of using Twitter and thinking of it as not necessarily shouting into the void,

00:20:13.400 but as just, you know, this will happen now

00:20:17.900 and then it will be ephemeral and go away

00:20:19.980 and none of these things will really matter.

00:20:23.440 Eh, we were wrong.

00:20:26.000 None of the people using social media,

00:20:29.220 early social media that got it to where it is now,

00:20:32.740 understood what we were doing.

00:20:34.280 I'm not even going to say that I understood what I was doing.

00:20:37.660 I was having a conversation in the moment

00:20:39.940 and then it became a conversation

00:20:42.020 of the moment for many topics, right? And then piled into all of that, there's this thing where

00:20:50.760 like a lot of places that had previously seemingly been impossible for anyone to write for

00:20:56.440 were saying, we are missing this conversation. We wanted part of this conversation. And when

00:21:02.820 they reached out to the people they were used to reaching out to, most of them didn't have a clue

00:21:07.240 what was going on or didn't really have anything new to say because they were in my mentions

00:21:12.160 getting yelled at um and so it was matt seaton at the guardian who was the first person to invite me

00:21:19.280 to write about it for a major publication and i think he sent a dm that was something like i know

00:21:26.080 you can yell but can you write wow and he always says i give him too much credit but he does not

00:21:35.500 understand that there's like this very defined moment of I can get in a couple of places but

00:21:44.440 nothing above a certain level and then I wrote for him wrote that piece about what was happening for

00:21:51.340 him and the guardian byline for reasons I will never completely understand opens the door for

00:21:57.880 me to write for all these other places right and I didn't know anything about pitching I didn't

00:22:02.820 know anything about anything but what i can do is write i have opinions i can write them down

00:22:09.060 really fast on a topic and i learned pitching i learned how to freelance kind of in the plane

00:22:16.260 while it was being while it was in the air is there a through line of you tweeting that

00:22:21.720 getting in the guardian and now you're doing what you do now like like do you think that's really

00:22:27.220 the through line if you had not tweeted that and it had not gone mega viral do you see a world in

00:22:31.780 which you would still be in this outcome um I actually weirdly enough I do it just would have

00:22:39.840 been for a different hashtag but I think it would have also opened a slightly different version of

00:22:48.760 this path right where I would be known for talking about fast-tailed girls or um you know

00:22:56.180 one of the other hashtags, but we would have never had necessarily the same conversation 0.99

00:23:02.560 about white feminism and race without Solidarity for White Women. And in some ways that challenging 0.99

00:23:09.140 and acknowledging definitely puts me here in a very specific place where many of the things

00:23:19.120 that people think I want that I never wanted in the first place, they would not necessarily

00:23:24.440 be trying to, you know, tell me, well, you'll never get this. You'll never get that in the

00:23:29.280 same way. I probably would have made more friends. And I probably also would not have been as, as

00:23:34.140 popular as, because I think tapping into that deep well of discontent and talking about it,

00:23:42.020 naming it and talking about my own feelings, but also giving people a sort of permission by proxy

00:23:49.700 to talk about their feelings had not happened before.

00:23:53.320 I remember like watching the Hugo stuff go down.

00:23:58.100 It was just a really dark time.

00:24:00.700 And one of the things that I think your work

00:24:02.760 really helped us see was how little accountability

00:24:05.600 there was for people who supported someone

00:24:08.940 who was pretty open about a disdain for Black women, 0.98

00:24:12.880 you know, harassing Black women in public, 1.00

00:24:15.880 a literal abuser of women. First of all, that he would be able to make a name for himself in 1.00

00:24:22.420 online feminist spaces so easily, and that people would defend him publicly. When all of that stuff 0.98

00:24:28.260 came out, it's still surprising to me how little accountability there was, if not for folks like

00:24:35.560 you. Do you feel that we ever really did a reckoning, a look back of what we learned from

00:24:40.240 that? Because I feel like these things happen, people say what they're going to say, and then

00:24:44.580 everybody kind of moves on. We don't actually get a chance to look back and learn anything or glean

00:24:49.500 anything about how to avoid this or what we should be taking from this. Do you feel that we ever had

00:24:54.240 that moment? People didn't want to have that moment. It was this embarrassing thing where

00:25:00.940 people in the middle of whatever they were saying about me being divisive or about this conversation

00:25:05.960 taking feminism backwards, whatever, realizing after the fact, especially by 2016, that they

00:25:11.500 had been on the wrong side of history and never wanting to look backward again.

00:25:17.520 More after a quick break.

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00:26:07.180 That's 844-844-IHART.

00:26:10.420 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:26:15.880 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:26:22.260 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:26:25.960 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:26:31.380 shut up, don't say anything.

00:26:34.040 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:26:38.580 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:26:43.160 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:26:50.580 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:26:54.540 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:26:57.980 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:27:01.120 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:27:15.360 Let's get right back into it.

00:27:18.020 Mickey did the work of exposing existing tensions and fractures that exist in our movement.

00:27:22.820 But in order to heal tensions, there has to be reflection, honesty, and accountability, which just didn't really happen.

00:27:31.940 So these tensions were left to be exploited by bad actors, like the ones behind the end Father's Day hoax to inflame tensions in feminist online spaces that would take place just a year later.

00:27:43.100 Something that we have talked about quite a bit on this podcast is sort of what came immediately after things like the disinformation troll campaign hashtag and Father's Day.

00:27:55.300 And I think something that solidarity is for white women exposed is the reality and the rawness of these tensions between black women, black feminists and white feminists.

00:28:09.320 And I think that bad actors, trolls, extremists, whatever you want to call it, people who are interested in using social media spaces to cause confusion and chaos, I think the movement's lack of really taking accountability, really examining what happened, really figuring out how we navigate around each other and with each other.

00:28:32.620 I think that you're right. There was, there was broadly not no interest in really doing that and having those conversations. And thus, I think that bad actors know like, okay, well, this is a tension that exists. It's a tension that is being kind of danced around, you know, everyone feels it, but no one's really, people aren't really talking about it openly because they don't want to.

00:28:53.740 We can go in and exploit it. We can go in and seize it and inflame it, and it might be effective because no one's really naming it. No one's really talking about it. Nobody's really interested in taking accountability for their part in it.

00:29:06.020 Do you ever think that the lack of interest in real accountability and looking backward and taking stock just leaves these communities online vulnerable to people who will step in and exploit and talk about it, just not in the way that maybe it's going to be helpful?

00:29:23.540 Oh, I think it absolutely. It's one of those things with just how we got all those feminists talking to like Mila Yiannopoulos and engaging sort of disingenuously with the idea that Megyn Kelly was, you know, not necessarily racist, right?

00:29:47.240 Because everyone started to kind of go, well, you know, people can be swayed, people can be wooed. And I wonder often about the people who at that point kept saying we have to reach out to the other side because the other side was very clearly, very cogently planning to sow discord, very much trying to widen rifts.

00:30:13.260 And also using those conversations, those educational conversations to boost their own platforms, right? Because when you think back to 2013, really all the way up to 2016, and actually even before 2013, a lot of those, well, I want to talk to a white nationalist, a person who identifies as a white separatist, whatever.

00:30:38.820 You remember all of those news stories, all of the, like, inside the mind of a Klansman kind of news stories, right, for a while.

00:30:49.760 Nobody had ever given them a platform.

00:30:52.300 I just saw this thing the other day.

00:30:53.660 There's an account that chills itself.

00:30:55.360 It's like the American Nazi whatever, right?

00:30:58.260 They bought a blue checkmark on Twitter, and they have millions of followers. 0.75

00:31:03.020 And they said, essentially, this never could have happened 10 years ago, which is true.

00:31:08.620 it wouldn't have been able to happen 10 years ago now they can look like they're a real legitimate

00:31:13.060 account i mean kind of just gives away the game where it's like oh thanks to elon musk i would

00:31:18.440 have never been able to build up this the the legitimized platform i have now to spread my

00:31:23.700 nazi shit thanks and that is essentially what it said it's essentially uh and you know we've seen 0.95

00:31:31.680 several times now even when we're talking about at protests and things and we've been talking 0.99

00:31:37.940 for years about inside police circles, the number of very clearly white nationalists,

00:31:46.880 white supremacists, whatever we're calling ourselves this week, white separatists,

00:31:50.600 police officers complete with the visible ink, right? And when we bring it up and people say, 0.53

00:31:59.080 oh, well, you know, what can you do? And it's kind of like, actually, several years ago,

00:32:03.520 we were trying to get people to do something about it. And you said that that wasn't a feminist

00:32:07.400 issue. You said that that was just some guys online. They were harmless. You said, whatever. 0.99

00:32:14.580 Now here we are. And I need you to not even just take accountability. I need you to start swinging,

00:32:23.300 not still talk about how we can reach them.

00:32:26.300 Twitter was where people who were not traditionally centered or heard could really build power.

00:32:31.400 Black Lives Matter championed racial justice in the wake of police violence.

00:32:35.600 Survivors started Me Too to push back against sexual violence.

00:32:39.360 So when Elon Musk bought Twitter, one of my first questions was,

00:32:42.880 what does this mean for the future of marginalized communities being able to build power and start movements?

00:32:48.280 It's a fair question.

00:32:49.920 But Mickey reminds us that our communities are resilient and that we'll always find a way.

00:32:55.320 How do you see the state that Twitter is in and sort of social media more broadly,

00:33:00.420 How do you see that impacting marginalized communities' ability to build up power and build up a voice?

00:33:07.180 I think in some ways, and this is going to sound real strange, but the existence of TikTok and all the competing other sites will help, you know, Mastodon, all of these things, will help marginalized communities find a place to rebuild the networks that they had on Twitter for some levels.

00:33:29.420 levels of of rebuild here um but only because twitter was already not particularly usable for

00:33:37.440 community anymore once all eyes were on twitter it seemed like all the time remember that like

00:33:42.540 weird period of time where anything you tweeted could wind up on your television screen that

00:33:46.980 night as news or in an article yeah that was a wild time right people already started to kind

00:33:55.060 of migrate away from Twitter, right? Twitter's popularity as a social media app was on a decline.

00:34:00.660 People were just abandoning their Twitter accounts, whatever, and moving to Discord and all these other

00:34:05.200 places. And so I think it will make it more difficult to kick off an initial group, but also

00:34:12.860 in some ways now it is easier to have those conversations without necessarily as much

00:34:18.840 trolling. This weird split where like, yes, the loss of Twitter is a big deal, but also Twitter

00:34:24.300 was already being lost before this

00:34:27.740 because the focus, hyper-focused on Black Twitter,

00:34:31.060 but also generally the focus on

00:34:33.280 what are those people over there talking about together

00:34:36.140 had made people uncomfortable

00:34:38.040 having certain conversations in the public.

00:34:40.180 I think Sedet Harry has a great piece in Wired

00:34:43.880 that kind of speaks to this,

00:34:44.920 of the inherent feeling of being both othered

00:34:51.600 and also watched. 0.80

00:34:53.360 Like, I definitely felt that when it came to being part of Black Twitter for a while, where you definitely feel like these people over here are doing something distinct of their own, and let's lurk at it.

00:35:04.180 It kind of, in a lot of ways, you wanted to be having these insular conversations, but the feeling that they were happening in a bit of a fishbowl digitally.

00:35:12.640 And that, I think, that level of surveillance culture is not something I'm going to miss, right?

00:35:19.540 i i had already twitter for me had been rendered largely unusable for like socializing with

00:35:26.400 friends kinds of things a while before this because and not even in a major way but in a

00:35:32.700 no matter what there was always someone who had thoughts feelings opinions right and it's like

00:35:38.740 the api is being altered to prevent a lot of third-party clients i know like today someone

00:35:45.240 was saying that one of the things that made Twitter usable for visually impaired users,

00:35:50.060 it's no longer going to work.

00:35:53.280 Hearing impaired users are going to have slightly more time, but some of the tools they use,

00:35:57.800 it's not going to be there anymore.

00:35:59.440 Things like that, right?

00:36:00.420 Alt text, all of these things.

00:36:02.780 And I feel like Twitter served a very high level and low level sort of purpose, but also

00:36:12.000 So we are going to have to go back to the pre-Twitter days of jumping from platform to platform for a while, right?

00:36:20.420 We got really comfortable with Twitter and Facebook kind of being seen as stable entities.

00:36:25.620 But I don't know when the last time I went on Facebook for any real meaningful purpose.

00:36:30.280 I don't like the interface.

00:36:32.540 And on Twitter, that surveillance level had made it

00:36:36.560 so that you were kind of tweeting a little,

00:36:39.960 looking at what people were talking about

00:36:41.200 and leaving for a lot of users who are, you know,

00:36:44.000 like I'm a power user

00:36:45.320 because I used to use Twitter all day long.

00:36:49.120 I would send hundreds of tweets a day,

00:36:50.820 chatting it up, talking to people,

00:36:52.560 having thoughts on in public, whatever.

00:36:54.920 Because of all of the eyes on me,

00:36:58.060 which always sounds slightly paranoid,

00:36:59.400 but because of that,

00:37:01.600 I had already scaled back my Twitter usage heavily, not even in purpose, not even like, oh, I'm going to keep these things to myself.

00:37:09.700 It was just annoying.

00:37:11.580 And now with what's happening, how much platform time do I want to spend with trolls?

00:37:17.620 How useful is it?

00:37:19.360 I saw in your piece for MIT Tech Review, I think that you, I can't remember exactly how you put it, but you had it, like, it's not a platform to live one's life.

00:37:28.380 You know, it's like, it's not a place where you're necessarily going to look for a connection.

00:37:33.340 And it sounded like even in your personal life that Twitter just wasn't it for you anymore,

00:37:39.380 that like you just weren't interested.

00:37:41.240 I think that you described it when you do show up there, it feels like it's out of habit

00:37:45.220 more than anything else.

00:37:46.340 It's not like you're going there looking for connection. 0.99

00:37:49.460 Oh, yeah, because I can tell you a really stupid story about how I got done with using 0.93

00:37:56.640 Twitter socially I was talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about um a workout routine 0.98

00:38:04.020 that we had both tried and someone briefly tried to turn that into like pro um like a fat phobic

00:38:15.980 oh this is really fat phobic having this conversation in public and we had said

00:38:21.940 nothing about anyone's bodies not even really our own other than the usual uh

00:38:26.640 Yeah, I tried blah, blah, blah. It was really rough, kind of. You know how you talk about things. And I couldn't figure out how we got there. And then there's this entire conversation happening in my mentions about whether or not this conversation with my friend about a workout we had both tried was really about something else.

00:38:46.960 And I thought, I have hit the point where we are reading into things.

00:38:51.720 I always wondered how that would feel.

00:38:53.860 Oh, I don't care for it, right?

00:38:56.720 And so then me and my friends started to have those conversations, not in public, on Twitter.

00:39:00.400 We still have them.

00:39:01.120 We just have them in a group chat.

00:39:02.860 And as more things move to the group chat, I have a hustling, bustling series of group chats going on.

00:39:12.100 I don't necessarily think to go to Twitter in the same way in my personal life anymore.

00:39:18.980 I don't even necessarily react to everything on Twitter because sometimes news stories pass by

00:39:25.220 or someone tweeting something passes by. And in my brain, I think this does not pass the smell test.

00:39:31.820 But it's not worth getting into it with people who are buying in on the spot to whatever is being said

00:39:37.220 because they're going to find out in a few minutes or a few hours that they were wrong

00:39:41.520 And they're going to want to erase all of their tweets about this, all of their engagement with this, you know, and I don't even need to jump in and participate.

00:39:53.020 I can have this conversation with people who actually have a conversation.

00:39:56.740 Oh, this is something I have absolutely felt.

00:39:58.940 The story that you told about the workout with your friend, I have this theory that we've reached a point where we have visibility into too many conversations between strangers, where people are just injecting and projecting a lot of their own stuff onto the conversations of strangers in ways that if you did it in real life,

00:40:25.980 If you were in a cafeteria and two people were talking about a workout they had done, and I walked up to their table and sat down and said, this conversation is fatphobic, and maybe it's actually about something else altogether, you would think that was the weirdest thing in the world.

00:40:39.180 And I think that we've, I do think that we've hit a point where these platforms cease to

00:40:44.000 be useful when they, when they are, when they feel this way, because, because it's just

00:40:47.940 not, it's not a, an enjoy, it's not a way to connect with people that feels enjoyable.

00:40:53.060 That level of surveillance, every little thing that you say, feeling like someone's

00:40:57.380 going to take it the wrong way or project their own, their own stuff onto it.

00:41:02.240 Well, and this is the thing, because I definitely started to feel like at a certain point,

00:41:09.180 Is this about what I said, or am I just where you put your feelings?

00:41:18.200 And I think a lot of it is just where they put their feelings, right?

00:41:23.400 And if that's the case, I don't need to be here for this.

00:41:27.780 And I think that, and then I think about how many of my friends who, like I have a friend who pointed out to me one day, I tweeted something she said because I thought it was funny.

00:41:36.420 And she says, I know you didn't mean any harm, but can you not retweet me?

00:41:39.980 Because I always end up with all of this crap in my mentions.

00:41:43.660 And I was, you know, very apologetic, offered to tweet. 0.75

00:41:45.880 And she was like, no, no, no, it's not like it's your fault.

00:41:47.740 I just know your level of visibility is too much for me.

00:41:54.980 And I hadn't, I, you know, like the frog in boiling water, I had gotten used to it.

00:41:59.740 But I hadn't thought about what it feels like to kind of be thrust into this level of thing.

00:42:05.820 And even though I will still occasionally retweet people or whatever, or quote tweet them, I try to be more judicious. I'm not always successful. I don't always think about impact, but I try to be more judicious when I do do it because there's this point in the hypervisibility where I don't want people to be having a conversation about the things they didn't say.

00:42:25.280 um i want to talk about the things they did say or i have a thought about what they said kind of

00:42:32.660 and i don't know where we go on twitter with that like i don't see a way to salvage that part

00:42:40.080 at this point you know the way that you put that of like am i just a place where you put your

00:42:44.720 feelings i'm not super visible on on any social media platform but i do wonder if that has

00:42:50.820 something to do with you being a Black woman, that you, something about the way that you show

00:42:56.960 up online for folks as a Black woman means that you are the place where a lot of their feelings 0.85

00:43:03.320 go. That whether it's feelings of anger or wanting to call somebody out or wanting to show you

00:43:09.860 something so that you have a publicly angry reaction, and that feels a certain way for them,

00:43:13.700 where you kind of aren't a real person. You're just this abstraction online for them to

00:43:20.700 project whatever they want onto you do you ever feel that oh absolutely it's one of those things

00:43:26.820 first of all i had to tell people to stop sending me things for me to respond to right like for a

00:43:31.120 while there people would tag me in their arguments with random people i don't know you i don't know

00:43:35.780 them i'm not joining into the middle of a conversation whatever but also it started to feel

00:43:43.360 like i am not a person oh god so many people to go um because and this is another sort of silly

00:43:53.120 story someone was mad about something i had said apparently they started tweeting about it at

00:43:59.000 around 3 a.m my time okay somewhere in the following four hours they had worked themselves

00:44:07.180 up to the point that you know i was avoiding them i was ignoring them how dare i was i you know a 0.53

00:44:12.820 coward, blah, blah, blah. And I get up, I get my kids out the door to school. And I used to for a

00:44:18.780 while on my way to work, I would, you know, fart around on Twitter on the way in. And I log on and

00:44:25.020 I'm like, what is this? Because I was asleep. It is 7 a.m., right? What the heck are you doing?

00:44:36.360 What is wrong with you kind of thing? And this person who had spun themselves into a frenzy in

00:44:41.820 the middle of the night says i completely forgot the difference in time zones you weren't ignoring

00:44:49.220 me i'm sorry and ends up deleting probably like 40 tweets but also i had never responded to you

00:44:54.900 and you had never thought about the fact that i wasn't awake just because you were it didn't even

00:45:02.080 occur to you person whose name i i won't say that i was a person with a life and responsibilities

00:45:08.200 right like had not even crossed their mind i have a joke i tell friends there are no sick days

00:45:14.340 on the internet and yet in real life people take off work so how do we expect people to

00:45:22.080 be available 24 7 online it makes no sense and yet that is how everyone is operating sometimes

00:45:28.940 oh yeah i've seen people get very for lack of a way of putting it get very in their feelings

00:45:36.140 about someone not being available

00:45:38.980 the moment they want them to be available online.

00:45:43.880 And I sometimes have to also,

00:45:47.280 and I have this whole thing I also say

00:45:48.580 where I say parasocial relationships 0.99

00:45:50.580 are beating people's asses every day, right? 0.97

00:45:54.960 Where you enjoy this person, 0.99

00:45:57.320 you enjoy their content, whatever,

00:45:58.760 or you don't, you hate them,

00:45:59.920 you hate watch, whatever.

00:46:01.660 You don't realize anymore

00:46:03.460 that that person does not know you.

00:46:06.140 However much you feel like you know them, they don't know you.

00:46:10.220 They are online on whatever their schedule is, and the rest of their time, they are doing whatever it is they're doing, right?

00:46:17.340 Whether they've got a family or they've got a day job, or heck, they're writing a book or making songs, whatever.

00:46:25.880 There are people for whom the internet is life, and there are people for whom the internet is a job.

00:46:30.280 And they overlap, but they are not necessarily the same people.

00:46:34.340 and for people for whom the internet is a job there are specific times hours whatever that

00:46:41.420 they are available and the rest of the time no matter how much it may frustrate you person who

00:46:46.260 perceives yourself to be in a parasocial relationship with them they are not going

00:46:50.500 to be available to you and it happens to celebrities and we've all kind of normalized

00:46:54.380 that level of parasocial relationship but increasingly it is happening to people

00:46:59.540 just who speaks on the internet, right?

00:47:05.900 You can get fans, followers, supporters,

00:47:08.160 whatever we're calling them,

00:47:09.220 just by being a person who speaks online.

00:47:12.920 The problem is that every word you say

00:47:15.660 will not be the gospel truth.

00:47:17.140 Everything you think will not be right

00:47:18.660 for none of us, right?

00:47:21.000 But also the people following you

00:47:24.300 may or may not really be paying attention

00:47:26.720 to the reality that you are a whole person.

00:47:29.540 One of the things that always sticks out to me is this idea that because you like someone, they can never be wrong. They absolutely can be wrong. Did that make sense outside of my head?

00:47:41.980 It made so much sense. And the vibe of because I like this person, I am team them for life. If they say anything wrong, it must be right. I don't think there's a that's got to be one of the most dangerous, toxic vibes that we have where I see it play out all the time.

00:48:02.680 And, like, these are people, they're not going to, just because somebody had a great take or wrote a great piece on one thing doesn't mean that you should blindly sign up for their takes on everything and, like, be invested in them never being wrong, you know?

00:48:16.800 It's like, I don't know how we got to such a weird place when it comes to relationships and how they function online.

00:48:22.740 I think part of what's happened, unfortunately, and I'm seeing this even more on TikTok, is that the entertainment people get, right, let's call it like the skits you see on TikTok, the storytelling, whatever, on Twitter, all of these things that have happened over and over again on various platforms, makes people feel like this stuff is there for them.

00:48:48.240 it is not necessarily that this person is doing something to entertain themselves that you happen

00:48:55.000 to like it has become oh this performance is for me this article this writing this whatever is for

00:49:01.240 me and therefore everything here is about me for me and i don't have to have any sense of boundaries

00:49:09.120 or limits or really grasp that this was just someone making a thing that was in their head

00:49:15.420 Right? We feel an ownership stake in the things we are fans of.

00:49:21.820 I was a fan of Twitter 10 years ago, as much as I criticized it.

00:49:25.580 And that ownership stake Mickey describes?

00:49:28.540 Well, as I watch the platform that I once loved become something else entirely, I feel that too.

00:49:34.700 So what's next?

00:49:36.100 In a piece for MIT Tech Review, Mickey looks back on a career that she's built in part on Twitter and what the future of platforms holds.

00:49:44.100 Twitter's importance five years ago cannot be overstated, she writes.

00:49:47.640 But now, as we look at the possibility of a future without Twitter,

00:49:51.440 will anything really change for the average person who uses the internet but doesn't live on it?

00:49:56.920 Setting the scene for where we are and where we go next.

00:50:00.320 Like, I've seen so many people, myself included, writing about how much Twitter sucks now that Elon Musk has taken over, blah, blah, blah.

00:50:08.140 But in your MIT tech review piece, you kind of pick up on something else. 0.96

00:50:11.660 Yeah, Elon Musk sucks and Twitter sucks because of him and all of that. But really, do you think that something there's sort of a larger cultural shift happening that is actually being mirrored via our use of technology?

00:50:27.040 That it's not just about Elon Musk being like sucking and ruining Twitter. Something else is happening where folks are just not that invested in showing up on platforms like Twitter.

00:50:37.380 Maybe they're spending more time on platforms like TikTok. Maybe they're less interested in social media as we all get older. Do you think something is happening more broadly in culture and that we're just experiencing that through technology and our relationship to it?

00:50:51.240 I think what's happening is that for a lot of people,

00:50:56.280 A, as we are getting older, the earlier social media users,

00:51:00.000 but also for a lot of people who grew up with social media,

00:51:02.980 and I was having this conversation with a college student last night,

00:51:05.200 as a matter of fact,

00:51:06.100 there is a sense that the need to always be on,

00:51:11.160 to always think about what people are perceiving of you,

00:51:15.480 that you have no privacy online,

00:51:17.580 is driving a lot of people away from social media.

00:51:21.240 right once we started to hit a place where your social media could not just be used against you

00:51:27.960 in terms of job stuff but you don't know how it's going to be used because brands are using it you're

00:51:34.820 showing up on the news it can be used against you if you said something offensive people dig up old

00:51:40.560 offensive things you said you may or may not so feel that way because it was seven eight nine

00:51:45.220 years for all of these things people started to feel like well what's the use of social media

00:51:49.400 if I can't actually enjoy it.

00:51:53.140 If I can't just hang out

00:51:55.060 and spend time with my friends and have fun.

00:51:57.440 And we're seeing people sort of trend somewhat on TikTok.

00:52:00.300 I suspect there will be another platform or two

00:52:02.280 before we settle wherever we're settling next

00:52:04.120 in terms of social media.

00:52:05.800 We're seeing people kind of trend back

00:52:07.180 almost to the days of like blogger and live journal

00:52:10.400 where you have a carefully curated private list

00:52:13.860 of people you talk to.

00:52:15.820 And maybe you have some things that are public,

00:52:18.140 But you don't let everyone see what you're doing. You don't have your business in everyone's eyeballs because you don't want everyone else's business in your eyeballs.

00:52:29.640 I think that we are also going to see the rise of those kids who were the early mommy blogger content, right? Like parent blog content kids. They're almost adults now. Some of them are legally adults.

00:52:44.360 i think for a lot of them the financial impact of having been content for 20 years but not

00:52:52.600 necessarily being paid for being that content and having that experience shape their future

00:52:58.520 means we're going to see a lot of people in in court in federal court very soon right because

00:53:05.060 for all that we have said about the most successful of them the kids who were memes whatever those

00:53:10.140 kids have grown up and yet when you google their names it's the meme it's the mommy blog content

00:53:15.700 it's the pictures of them with a poopy diaper on their head or whatever that comes up and mom and

00:53:22.440 dad or grandpa grandpa our guardians whoever they made the money they got the checks but the kids

00:53:28.560 get consequences i don't foresee those kids being interested in social media and i think they will be

00:53:34.040 part of a growing number of people who are just like we should not know this much about each other

00:53:39.500 about total strangers. I think people will still use social media to some degree, but I think the

00:53:43.760 way we use it is going to change again. So you think that we should really be letting the younger

00:53:48.080 generation take the lead. Where do you see them leading us? Yeah, I think they will have some

00:53:55.560 form. I think that they're going to like kind of reinvent private social media, right? Whether it

00:54:00.340 will be Snapchat or something else, but I think they're going to reinvent that kind of thing.

00:54:04.360 um where they'll want to be able to talk to their friends but i don't know that they're

00:54:09.220 going to want to be able to talk to their friends in a way the general public can see

00:54:13.320 because i'll be honest not being able to like

00:54:17.020 lock individual tweets was always a weird thing about twitter

00:54:20.920 it always invited a certain level of harassment and and just unpleasant context because twitter

00:54:31.720 definitely knew, right, way before we got to any of the conversations. Twitter definitely knew

00:54:36.640 about 4chan and on Reddit and all of those things, right? And we're seeing people who post on Reddit

00:54:41.800 say, oh man, this stuff is going all over. These things are going viral. I'm sure some of that is

00:54:47.820 intentional. I just don't know that we really need to see everything with your face attached.

00:54:54.140 yeah I I hate being perceived on social media I'm every time I like have a few glasses of wine and

00:55:02.260 spent and like actually do some tweeting when I wake up the next day and I see like oh you've got

00:55:07.260 five replies I'm like oh no why did I do this to myself I hate it so much and I mean I think

00:55:13.880 the answer unfortunately is um it used to be fun it used to be great to like hang out and talk to

00:55:21.560 your friends and sometimes you slip up and you forget that the way social media functions has

00:55:26.300 also changed right like we've changed but also now you have people who get online and they're

00:55:32.660 looking for a fight and they don't care who it's with and it doesn't have to be on a particular

00:55:36.480 topic it's not something they feel passionately about it's something that they just want someplace

00:55:42.700 to argue right and a lot of times like we call it sea lining right the guys that just want a good

00:55:47.500 debate and then won't go away what else do you do but decide okay well people have perceived me

00:55:56.040 this person won't leave me alone or these people or whatever sure you meet the conversations you

00:56:01.920 do all of these things but at a certain point where's the payoff for you in getting online in

00:56:08.000 the first place right i don't know if it wasn't still related to like my books my work my whatever

00:56:15.560 I don't know if I, right now, if I were coming into social media now, right, like I was 24

00:56:21.320 years old or whatever, and my job didn't require it, I'm not sure how much I'd use it.

00:56:26.380 Well, I guess this leads me to kind of my awkward final question, which is,

00:56:30.580 where can folks keep in touch with you?

00:56:33.660 After all this, it feels weird to be like, oh, should they tweet at you?

00:56:37.280 But where can folks, like, what are you up to next?

00:56:39.860 And where can folks keep in touch with all your work?

00:56:41.960 So I have a website.

00:56:44.080 I'm on TikTok.

00:56:44.600 i'm on twitter i'm on instagram my handle is always the same i am carnethea here there and

00:56:50.860 everywhere and if uh it is not carnethea you'll figure it out very quickly um and then i'm

00:56:58.360 currently after i get back from this trip i am working on my next book and it is really an

00:57:05.900 autopsy of the american dream so it's gonna be a lot people are gonna hate it or they're gonna

00:57:12.400 love it. There's not going to be

00:57:14.160 a lot in between. They're going to have some

00:57:16.160 feelings.

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00:57:28.340 find transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com. 1.00

00:57:31.340 There Are No Girls on the Internet

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There Are No Girls on the Internet - May 24, 2023

Mikki Kendall built her career on Twitter. Here’s where she’s going next.

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