00:00:49.880If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.280Pro 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.
00:01:03.960Each 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.
00:02:21.780Some of it's funny, but I specifically loathe it.
00:02:25.940This sort of new thing I've been seeing in the last few years where brands, their social media accounts will join in on hating on a woman celebrity that everybody has decided that they hate for one reason or another.
00:02:57.320to know all the details about any of these people.
00:02:59.760I vaguely am aware that they are people who exist
00:03:02.140in the zeitgeist, but so Hayley Bieber,
00:03:04.740I saw on Reddit, had posted on Instagram
00:03:07.140that people were saying that she was owed an apology
00:03:10.240from a few years ago when all of these brands
00:03:13.540joined in on dogpiling her and even though i don't really follow these these people that that closely
00:03:20.420i do remember that a few years ago one day it was like i woke up and duolingo and sunny delight and
00:03:30.020all of these other big brands were basically posting on social media actually since you asked
00:03:34.940we hate hayley bieber and it was related to this so-called like feud or spat between hayley bieber
00:03:42.460and selena gomez so like that them having some kind of perceived tension was in the zeitgeist
00:03:49.600and i guess people were probably talking about it online i don't begrudge normies like regular
00:03:55.680people talking about celebrity drama online but i find it so off-putting to see duolingo or sunny
00:04:04.900delight joining in on dogpiling and it's usually a woman like we saw the whole thing go down with0.59
00:04:11.720amber heard how many brands felt comfortable wading into what objectively was a what you know
00:04:20.040a pretty horrific story of abuse i thought that was super weird and i yeah i guess i feel like
00:04:27.980it's often misogyny it's often these brands trafficking in the reliable chestnut that is
00:04:35.660online misogyny joining a hate train on a woman for some reason and cashing in on the engagement
00:04:42.760that that comes it's just such low-hanging fruit i hate it and you're right there does feel like
00:04:48.240there's something particularly unacceptable about it when it's a brand doing it you know as part of
00:04:54.260a strategy to sell more language instructions or packages of orange stuff or like whatever it is
00:05:02.940that they're trying to sell for some reason that feels more objectionable than when it's just some
00:05:10.800individual content creator or regular person it makes the misogyny of it feel even grosser
00:05:21.020yeah imagine waking up and whataburger is tweeting about how much they hate you
00:05:25.880I just find it very strange. And it's something if I if I could pick one super small, low level thing that we could kind of leave behind when it comes to our online landscape.
00:05:37.680If you're asking me for bigger things that we could leave behind, I would give you much more meaningful things.
00:05:42.960If a genie was like you can make one wish, but it has to be very low level, this would probably be it.
00:05:49.180That's probably a good one. You know, you've talked a lot about anti-fandoms and your fascination with them. And it kind of feels like this kind of story is a little brief way for big parts of the Internet to all get together and share the camaraderie of an anti-fandom of hating on some particular woman.0.93
00:06:09.020Yeah, it's exactly an anti-fandom. And it's one of those things where, you know, the Haley Bieber thing was a few years ago. And it sounds like now people are like, hey, maybe that shouldn't have been the standard. Maybe Whataburger should not have been weighing in on this person and what they thought about this person. Maybe that didn't make sense from a brand perspective.
00:06:27.820and I just feel like it's one of those things where it's a lesson that we seem to have to
00:06:33.080collectively learn a lot like I remember Amber Heard some of the ways that brands got involved
00:06:40.100in the Amber Heard conversation was despicable and I feel like now we're all sort of like oh
00:06:46.640maybe that wasn't so cool it would be good if that lesson actually took and we didn't have to
00:06:51.120keep learning it over and over and over again yeah there's so many things like that
00:06:56.120And, you know, for this this one, I wonder if something about not having any strong feelings whatsoever about the people involved makes it easier to see the pattern, because like you, I couldn't tell you the first thing about Haley Bieber.
00:07:13.260You probably know so much more about her than I do.
00:07:15.820I literally know that she's the wife of Justin Bieber.1.00
00:07:21.380But does she, did she deserve to be dogpiled by a bunch of brands?1.00
00:07:29.700Like, would you suggest to me my banter about this?
00:07:32.960I did a little reading about her, and I didn't read anything of anybody accusing her of being, like, bad or anything.
00:07:41.900Like, it doesn't seem like she did anything.
00:07:44.060It's just like one day the Internet woke up and decided they hated her.
00:07:48.120And it's always so funny who that is reserved for, because I don't know, I wouldn't mind seeing an actual abuser on there.
00:07:55.940Like everybody woke up one day and was like, actually, this person who has done demonstrable harm and crime, let's all decide that we hate this person instead of, I don't know, putting him in the White House.
00:08:08.780And actually, Mike, thank you for indulging me on that banter about people that I'm sure that you have no idea who they are.
00:08:14.720But speaking of abusers, I did want to kind of kick us off with a, I guess it's a little bit of a follow up conversation to one of the stories that we talked about in last week's roundup.
00:08:25.360And quick heads up for y'all that this story does involve conversations about sexual abuse.
00:08:30.060So do you remember our conversation about that CNN piece about the so-called online
00:08:36.020rape academy where men were trading tips and tricks about how to drug and assault women?
00:08:42.980For folks who didn't read that article or didn't hear that conversation, basically CNN
00:08:48.280put out this very deep dive examination that followed the trial of Dominique Pelico, who
00:08:53.760was that man in France who was using websites and communities to recruit men to sexually
00:08:59.000assault his wife while she was drugged and passed out. This story was very shocking. And this
00:09:04.380follow-up piece, just as you were saying, Mike, about how kind of not fringe that scenario is
00:09:11.040and how online it's sort of happening in plain sight in some of these both fringe, but also
00:09:17.760rather mainstream websites was pretty horrifying. And I wanted to clear something up because I've
00:09:26.000seen the way that this story has made the rounds online the cnn report described this website
00:09:31.940motherless.com which hosts this kind of content that shows these drugged women on the website
00:09:38.420men gather in the so-called sleep community to trade tips and tricks for assaulting women so
00:09:45.480this is how cnn put it in these videos men film themselves lifting the closed eyelids of women to
00:09:50.920show that they are sleeping or sedated, with some eye check video surpassing 50,000 views.
00:09:57.880When this story first hit social media, people were saying that the report claimed that 62
00:10:04.020million separate men had visited this website, motherless.com, that teaches men how to engage
00:10:11.200in this kind of behavior. On the internet, that kind of turned into 62 million men attended an
00:10:18.000online rape academy. Now, the majority of the visitors, according to CNN, to this website are
00:10:23.900American. So if that were true, that 62 million men attended an online rape academy, that would
00:10:30.880be so deeply, deeply alarming, right? There's like 162 million men in America. So if 62 million of
00:10:39.020those men were attending this online rape academy and they're mostly all Americans, that would be0.83
00:10:44.120like 40 percent of american men attending an online rape academy which would be horrifying
00:10:48.340however what the report actually said was that it was 62 million visits to this website in february
00:10:57.000alone not that it was 62 million separate men bridget i love that this is a segment where you
00:11:03.100are breaking down the definitions of analytic metrics i had to have you check the math because
00:11:11.820I'm a tech person, but I am like deeply not a math person. And I was like, you'll be so proud
00:11:17.420of me. I came up with that 40% percentage on my own. And then I was like, I have to double check
00:11:23.760to make sure it's right. I've always said this. If somebody got hold of my phone, of all the things
00:11:30.000that I would be embarrassed for them to see, the last thing I put on my phone's calculator would
00:11:35.140be the most deeply embarrassing thing. It would be like, she really needed a calculator to do 20
00:11:39.580minus six the way that i would be so i would rather you see anything else on my phone
00:11:45.220uh this is great though uh you know definitions do matter so bridget what is the difference then
00:11:54.360between if there's 62 million visits that how's that different from 62 million men well the number
00:12:03.900of visits and the number of unique users are different right because a single user can rack
00:12:08.420up many visits. So while we don't know about the precise number of unique visitors who did go to
00:12:14.500that site, it is almost certainly considerably less than 162 million. However, we can do some
00:12:20.760math based on very, very conservative estimates. Like if we assume that the average user had,
00:12:25.740let's say, a thousand visits to this website over the month of February, that would be 35 visits on
00:12:31.780every single day in february which to me would seem like a lot again we're just this is just me
00:12:38.600giving like a conservative estimate and doing some you know napkin math but that would still mean
00:12:43.86062 000 people engaging with this site which again is far below obviously that 62 million number that
00:12:52.360people are putting on social media but to me that is still very bad and still deeply deeply alarming
00:12:59.180Like, to me, there is no need to, you know, that stat, I think that stat speaks for itself in terms of the scope, which I would say is quite alarming and quite bad.
00:13:10.700So a lot of the scrutiny was going to the site that is named in the CNN piece, Motherless.com.
00:13:15.960And on TikTok, people were asking, why isn't there a site where people can list the names of men who are going to sites like this, who are being accused of sexually assaulting women?
00:13:27.760And a TikToker who calls himself the Bearded Leftist said that he was going to start it.
00:13:33.520So he announced that he was starting NameHim.io, which is a website that is meant for people to submit the names of men who they say, you know, where they are making allegations that they have done something untoward.
00:13:46.620The Bearded Leftist says that he is a survivor of sexual violence himself and that the charges were dropped against his abuser.
00:13:53.200so i watched a bunch of his content on tiktok where he's talking about name him basically the
00:13:59.560initial website as the bearded leftist described it was a minimal viable product which is just sort
00:14:05.040of like the version of something that you put that just to get it out into the world that's a
00:14:09.780description of it right yeah that's what a minimum viable product is just like the absolute most
00:14:15.060bare bones version that you can ship to start collecting feedback about how people like it
00:14:21.960what they like, they don't like, data about how people use it. And, you know, what counts as a
00:14:26.900minimum viable product, of course, varies depending on what it is you're trying to do and what domain
00:14:34.300that you're working in. He said that within 24 hours of that minimum viable product being up
00:14:41.340online and live, a thousand names were added. He also added that the site wasn't collecting
00:14:47.900personal information from the people who were adding names to the site. And if there were any
00:14:52.260legal issues with things like lawsuits or defamation, that he was trying to set it up so
00:14:56.740that he would be the legally liable entity personally, not the people submitting names.
00:15:03.760Because of that, he was asking people to only submit names, like not addresses or titles or
00:15:09.420other information like that, because it would make whatever legal ramifications harder for him to
00:15:14.640manage if he said that if people did that he was going to delete their entire entries just to be
00:15:20.360super clear i was unable to see this website before it was taken down so i have no idea if
00:15:26.200any of this is actually true or if any of this like if any of the way that he was saying that
00:15:31.980he wanted to have it set up actually was the case this is just what he this is just how he described
00:15:37.460the setup so i cannot confirm or deny because the site has now been taken down and i actually
00:15:41.920when I went to the site when I put this on the list of stories that I wanted to talk with you
00:15:47.320about it was still up but then when I went to actually do the research it was down so I wasn't
00:15:53.200able to see it in time the bearded leftist said that he was being added he himself was being added
00:16:00.320to the site and his friends and family members were being added as well so people kind of
00:16:06.120understandably had the response of like oh you took it down because you and your buddies were
00:16:10.200being accused of wrongdoing he later clarified that no no what he meant was that the people in
00:16:16.020his life who were being added to the site were like his children and his wife and they were being
00:16:21.560added out of spite by critics of what he was doing right so that so like that was his response to
00:16:28.060that he does say the site is going to be going back up and he promised that it's going to be run
00:16:34.900by women and that he says it's going to be run even better with some of the sort of critiques
00:16:59.100Bearded Leftist himself is a cybersecurity professional.
00:17:02.620So because I wasn't able to see the site for myself, I put out a call on social media for folks who did see the site and what they thought about it.
00:17:09.920And I actually got so I got a couple of interesting responses that I'll read.
00:17:13.200One is from Jasper Ballo, who told me the fact that he had set up the site in a way that made the site a publisher and not a platform made himself extremely vulnerable to bad actors, which had me questioning his credibility as a cybersecurity expert to start with.
00:17:29.160The site itself was a coding mess and which made zero effort to make sure that a report was accurate, leading to a potential defamation case so easy that even one of Trump's lawyers could win.
00:17:40.140Oh, man, I love that he got in a burn of Trump's lawyers.
00:17:47.900And, you know, I want to make it clear that I don't really know anything about the bearded leftist, so I am in no way trying to attack him.
00:17:56.540I saw videos where he was responding to some of the critiques people had put out about him and his work. One of the critiques is that he works for an Israeli cybersecurity firm, which in his video, he actually confirms that. He's like, yeah, I do work for an Israeli cybersecurity firm. That is true. But I don't know enough about him to have any kind of take on him personally. So that's not what this is about.
00:18:20.680but I do know that we have been through this kind of thing a few times before we actually
00:18:29.540have had sites and lists that are meant to be a repository of men's bad behavior before like
00:18:38.500this is not a new idea at all I don't know if it's one of those things where I'm just old and
00:18:45.980have been on the internet for a really long time or if it's one of those things where people don't
00:18:50.700necessarily remember the ephemera of the internet from things that happened just like 10 years ago
00:18:55.880where you know the internet is one of those things where 10 years ago seems like forever ago you know
00:19:02.980we were just talking about how today is the 10-year anniversary of Beyonce's Lemonade and that seems
00:19:07.240that could happen forever ago. But back in 2017, a writer named Maura Donegan, an editor at the
00:19:16.500New Republic, started the shitty media men list. And that was a massive Google spreadsheet where
00:19:23.680people collected stories about men and media who had been accused of bad behavior. And I think it
00:19:30.140was really an attempt to kind of operationalize the sort of whisper network that had been going
00:19:36.380around in media. So in 2017, when this was taking off, I was actually in the online community where
00:19:43.320it was taking off, The Binders, which was like a writing community for women. I'm not sure if
00:19:47.820Binders still exists, but The Binders was this network of online groups that was started after
00:19:55.820Mitt Romney. Do you remember Mitt Romney in the debate saying he was asked about the, you know,
00:20:01.840inclusion for women in his cabinet? And he was like, oh, I've got binders full of women,0.89
00:20:05.780kind of quaint that that was such a big political moment don't you think oh my god yes i mean you
00:20:13.680compare that to anything trump says every single day yeah i missed that time it was a better time
00:20:20.080oh my gosh anyway that comment started an entire online network of women in writing and media
00:20:27.860called the binders that i was pretty active in at the time and so i remember basically watching
00:20:34.420the shitty media men list take off in the binders community in real time like i was there the list
00:20:41.420itself was only up for about 12 hours but then i think buzzfeed was like threatening to write
00:20:47.380an article about it and the the creator of the list took it down so i remember like i remember
00:20:53.380this like it was yesterday the list had names of men in media and writing a lot of them were like
00:20:59.760famous people names that you would recognize names that are still around today and they're
00:21:04.280alleged behavior. And this behavior ranged from things like, oh, he asked me to meet with him to
00:21:12.760discuss my work and my career. And it ended up being a date at a bar from like things like that
00:21:17.660to actual legit sex crimes. I remember there was a guy who was named on the list that I personally
00:21:24.580had worked with, and he was accused of taking new women staffers on suspicious hikes. I say that0.77
00:21:32.740like not like murder hikes not like oh he would take these staffers on hikes and they would never
00:21:37.740be heard from again but still like that like i remember like that was enough to be like
00:21:41.940you know it's like not appropriate to be taking women junior like new women junior staff on hikes
00:21:48.800and it is like i don't know it doesn't sound nefarious but it is the kind of thing that
00:21:55.600would be like i'm thinking about it now and i'm like yeah that would be really weird
00:21:58.340it's like oh first day in the office want to go for a hike yeah probably not advised yeah don't
00:22:03.600take the new junior female staff on hikes like just go for coffee if you want to like talk about0.98
00:22:09.320her career or whatever do a one-on-one just go for a walk around the city like a hike is
00:22:14.480i sort of get why they included that yeah i mean if you're taking people on hikes make
00:22:18.120sure you're taking everybody on group hike
00:25:39.320so we're talking about people's calls to build an online list of men who have been accused of
00:25:47.020bad behavior in the wake of that cnn investigation around that so-called online rape academy and i0.83
00:25:53.880was talking about how we actually did have this almost 10 years ago with the shitty media men
00:26:00.200list, which does kind of provide a template for what it was actually like when women start naming
00:26:05.620names on a list. I remember something else about the list is that not all of the behavior that was
00:26:12.040described by the men who were on the list was sexual. I remember there was a very prominent
00:26:18.540gay male culture writer, a writer who's writing like I at the time like really enjoyed. And the
00:26:24.560accusation was that he was just like really disrespectful and snaky to the junior women
00:26:30.460staffers and was going out of his way to sort of undermine their career trajectories, but not in a
00:26:36.400sexual way. And so not all of the bad behavior is like sexual harassment. Some of it is just,
00:26:41.460you know, this person disrespects women and has a pattern of disrespecting women in ways that are
00:26:47.120not overtly sexualized. So what ended up happening with this list was that this writer,
00:26:53.500Stephen Elliott, who folks might remember, he's the founder of that site, The Rumpus,0.76
00:26:57.940was included in this shitty media man list. So Elliott had faced some public allegations in the
00:27:04.620past. In 2015, a writer wrote a piece in Tin House about what she described as this uncomfortable
00:27:10.780experience with Elliott during his visit to her writing program. She said that he kept asking her
00:27:16.260to share her bed and that afterward sent out a newsletter about the situation that made her feel
00:27:22.220like she was being blamed for what he had done. And so Elliot was included in that shitty media0.75
00:27:30.220man list. His entry included, quote, rape accusations, sexual harassment, and coercion.0.99
00:27:36.800So how all of this ends is that Elliot sued Donegan, the creator of the list. Now, to be clear,
00:27:44.040Donegan wasn't adding all of the entries herself. It was like a massive spreadsheet where people
00:27:49.620could add entries, but she had just like created that doc. And so the lawsuit was settled in 2023
00:27:56.560with Elliot receiving a six-figure settlement from Donegan. But that shitty media men list also
00:28:03.880sparked investigations into the behavior of some men who were named on that list. And those men0.78
00:28:11.200were found to have violated the standards of their workplaces, including places like The Atlantic,
00:28:16.420the Paris Review, and BuzzFeed. And so a handful of men, because they were included in that list,
00:28:22.600were actually investigated by these outlets, found to have done something wrong, and were
00:28:27.420either fired or resigned. So that's a little bit of history of when people say, why don't we have
00:28:35.300lists like this? We have had lists like this. Also, there's the T app, which is a little bit
00:28:40.840different. We talked about it on the podcast. We'll put the episode in the show notes. But
00:28:44.380the t-app was this app for women to share information about men uh the t-app did collect
00:28:51.920a lot of information about users which name him.io says that they're they're trying to do the
00:28:57.360opposite the information that the t-app collected included driver's licenses that were unredacted
00:29:03.520so it had people's addresses on them it was also built in a very insecure way where the information
00:29:09.620was just accessible essentially it's not even it was accessible to the point where it's not even
00:29:15.140really accurate to say that the site was hacked it was more like just a very insecure site that
00:29:20.520essentially let this information accessible so like hacked isn't even really the right word
00:29:24.800so again name him says that it doesn't want it to be the kind of thing where you have to put
00:29:30.880personal information to post again i can't confirm any of that but my big beef with the t app
00:29:36.960was that I sensed that it was an attempt on the part of the creators to capitalize on gendered
00:29:44.580harm. And again, I don't know the bearded leftist. I cannot speak to his motivations,
00:29:49.020but I can speak in general terms that I don't think rushing to create a tool to help women
00:29:55.900is always such a good dynamic. It definitely sounds good. And I like that men are trying
00:30:03.040to offer solutions because frankly they should be however and this is just my opinion y'all can
00:30:09.980feel free to disagree but given the sensitive nature of what name him.io is about i think that
00:30:17.940women deserve something better than a minimum viable product right a minimum viable product
00:30:24.740does not say to me cyber security is being treated very seriously from the start and is
00:30:30.500baked in as a consideration maybe it is i have no way of knowing but what it says to me is
00:30:36.480everybody online right now is talking about this online rape academy and i need to get something
00:30:42.900out immediately that speaks to this moment to capture this moment that everybody is talking
00:30:48.140about to capitalize on it that's that is my sense of what's going on here i felt the same way uh
00:30:55.100And just like you, I immediately started thinking about the T app as soon as we started talking about this, because it does seem so similar in terms of being a rush job that maybe does have good intentions of trying to help people.
00:31:10.800but it's just too much of a rush job you know and it just in this particular domain of trying to
00:31:19.520deal with the very serious problem of sexual assault and abuse it just feels irresponsible
00:31:26.820to put a product out there that exposes so many people to so much risk right like not just the
00:31:34.240people being named uh who like maybe they could be falsely accused maybe it's a real accusation
00:31:43.040who knows but not just them but also the people doing the naming themselves who you know could
00:31:48.840be legally responsible for defamation or other forms of retaliation so i feel like good intentions
00:31:55.800are nice and of course i understand that you know you want to get early feedback on your app you
00:32:02.060want to put an mvp version of you know your new game or your productivity app or whatever it is
00:32:08.640you have that makes a lot of sense but for a situation like this where the stakes are so
00:32:15.360serious it just feels really reckless to put something out there with minimum viable protections
00:32:21.720and safeguards so i asked a cyber security researcher who goes by semicolon expected on
00:32:27.320social media about the site and like what if what some of the problems that they saw with it were
00:32:33.440and again i i presented i thought you know it's the the idea of like a minimum viable product i
00:32:39.880feel like when we're talking about something as sensitive and delicate as sexual assault i don't
00:32:45.040think that that kind of cuts it and they said i'd argue it's not the mvp that's the problem
00:32:49.860but rather he can call it an mvp only because he didn't actually specify any functionality
00:32:56.060aside from ad entry and I guess login registration to qualify as minimally viable. The bar for
00:33:03.580minimal viable product was in hell. If I sent out a Google form, it would have exceeded his
00:33:09.100requirement to be considered minimally viable. A Qualtrics survey, which is like a survey tool
00:33:14.860with the settings to toss IPs once it filters out spam and bots turned on, would have been
00:33:20.180a better implementation. You can quote that. So that, again, that really helped me understand
00:33:26.320sort of like what we're dealing with that, you know, back in 2017, when people were like,
00:33:30.800let's come up with a list of men that are accused of wrongdoing, it was just a Google doc. And so
00:33:36.140this cybersecurity researcher is saying like, even that might've been more secure than the
00:33:41.620product that he put out into the world and told women to use, to, you know, put the names of
00:33:49.020people that they were accusing of wrongdoing yeah it just feels like uh a really insufficient amount
00:33:58.040of forethought and care and consideration to wade into something that is so serious yeah
00:34:07.120again i just think the stakes are very high and any kind of conversation about sexual assault and
00:34:15.140misconduct needs to be grounded in compassion and care anything less is very reckless and
00:34:21.500it risks actually doing more harm to the people that you say that you're trying to help like i
00:34:26.240would argue the t app probably did more harm because it exposed the addresses of women at a
00:34:32.760time when you know bad actors online were looking to get revenge on women for daring to speak up
00:34:39.400about their experiences with men i would say that like the t app is an example of an organization
00:34:44.360that I think actually did more harm than good for the community.
00:34:48.640They were ostensibly saying that they wanted to help.
00:34:50.800The stakes are just very high for safety to be like an afterthought
00:34:55.260or a placeholder in a product roadmap.
00:34:57.980And I will say in Bearded Leftist's comments,
00:35:01.920there are tons of folks who totally disagree with what I am saying.
00:35:07.660There are so many people, like I went to see like what the conversation was
00:35:11.020in on tiktok about this and there are people saying like we should be lifting him up because
00:35:17.700he's doing something like there was one comment that stuck with me that was like somebody was
00:35:21.880critiquing the the site and then somebody else was like well what are you doing to protect women
00:35:26.740what are you doing to to shield women from sexual assault and it's just so it's just so interesting
00:35:32.480to me because it almost kind of becomes a parasocial thing where you know people like
00:35:38.260this creator and they like his vibe. They like what he's doing. They like what he stands for
00:35:43.380generally. So then they are advocating for this specific intervention, whether or not that
00:35:49.280specific intervention is actually a meaningfully good thing. And I'm not trying to like crap on0.96
00:35:55.020this guy, although I'm sure it sounds that way. But I don't think that something as serious as
00:36:00.420sexual violence needs men rushing in with a solution that is not thought out well, that
00:36:07.640could potentially cause more harm like that t app and let's say this site was really not secure or
00:36:14.040had big problems people saying well we'll support you either way because we like you and you're
00:36:20.240doing something i i just don't think is really it like parasocial stan culture where folks will
00:36:27.980support whatever a creator is doing and be in their comments like yes thank you so much regardless of
00:36:33.260what that thing is regardless of whether that thing helps or hurts or meaningfully makes a
00:36:37.080difference or whatever, is not going to get us to a place where we can have the meaningful
00:36:41.700solutions to sexual violence that we all deserve.
00:38:37.300They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:38:41.120But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:38:44.780They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:38:48.360Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart
00:38:51.120on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:38:56.140If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:39:03.020This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:39:15.200I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:39:22.320I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:39:25.500From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:39:32.240It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:39:39.400Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:39:48.940Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:49:00.880I joined a work call from my delivery room.
00:49:04.680Here's what it taught me about B2B sales.
00:49:09.680If this was 2017, I could totally see that blog post.
00:49:14.340i haven't i've been threatening to do i i'm full of tantrums today i'm so sorry listeners
00:49:18.680i've been threatening to do a linkedin episode for the longest time because0.82
00:49:22.720linkedin is full of shit like that it's just like psychopaths who it's full i i never know0.99
00:49:29.740if it's like a joke or some sort of performance or what but like it is full of shit like that1.00
00:49:34.380the most eyebrow raising allegation in her suit to me involves the company's former ceo0.99
00:49:40.300James Warren. So in the complaint, she says that Warren made her meet him alone at his home and
00:49:46.540would comment on her appearance. When she reported that a male client was hitting on her, Warren
00:49:51.920allegedly told her that she should just be flattered. And then when she asked why Donaldson,
00:49:56.660Mr. Beast, wouldn't work with her on certain projects, Warren, she said, told her, and this
00:50:02.480is a direct quote from the filing, quote, yeah, Jimmy gets really awkward around beautiful women.
00:50:07.880let's just say that when you're around and he goes to the restroom he's not actually using the
00:50:13.380restroom. Yuck. Beast Industries responded to that specific allegation by calling it fabricated
00:50:21.520purely to generate headlines and added that the claim exploits Mr. Beast's eye condition and
00:50:27.800Crohn's disease both of which he has like publicly discussed. So more broadly Mr. Beast's company is
00:50:34.500pushing back on the entire lawsuit, calling it clout chasing and built on deliberate misrepresentations.
00:50:40.760They also released a screenshot showing that the staffer signed an employee handbook in March of
00:50:45.9602025 that they said laid out the FMLA and parental leave policies, which they say contradicts her
00:50:53.060claim that she was kept in the dark about the company's expectations around maternity and
00:50:57.260parental leave. They say that it was this staffer herself who, in fact, asked to be able to work
00:51:03.840during her maternity leave that it was not a demand the company made which I have no idea
00:51:09.380you know we'll see how that shakes out I have a hard time believing that but I don't know
00:51:16.280you know even if that is true that's not how it works like if you've ever worked in a legitimate
00:51:25.000company that is interested in like doing things by the book and not getting sued for things like
00:51:29.760this they take parental leave extremely seriously like i remember uh at my former job one of my
00:51:37.740co-workers had to go out on parental leave and it was made clear to her and everyone else on the
00:51:44.660team that when she was on leave no one was to contact her and if she reached out we were not
00:51:50.460to respond yeah i mean sometimes you have to say like i think good companies that care about this
00:51:55.860and take it seriously, they put provisions in place where it's like, if she reaches out,
00:51:59.760do not reply. She is on leave. And it is, it's not just like out of the goodness of their heart,
00:52:04.280there is a legal requirement that is set by the government for how this is mandated. It's not up
00:52:09.100to the individual, you know, staffer. So the complaint also takes aim at the company's
00:52:15.660internal handbook, which is called the Beast Bible, which includes lines like, quote,
00:52:21.160quote, it's okay for the boys to be childish. And guidance suggested that talents should be
00:52:26.260able to draw explicit images on whiteboards during videos. I really feel like that says
00:52:34.000a lot about the culture. That's a direct line from this handbook. So I feel like that says a
00:52:39.780lot about the culture cultivated at this organization. And it's also worth noting
00:52:44.280that this is not Mr. Beast's only legal headache right now. He's also fighting a separate class
00:52:50.400action lawsuit over beast game season one which alleges that contestants were subjected to unsafe
00:52:56.420working conditions instances of sexual harassment and that production attempted to fraudulently claim
00:53:02.060tax credits from the state of nevada so this is my kind of my thing about mr beast to me his entire
00:53:09.480brand is sort of built on this image of a generous goofy harmless guy who just loves giving stuff
00:53:16.420away just a good guy and if the allegations that we've just talked about in this lawsuit are true
00:53:21.940it kind of sounds like he has built this company in the same way that a lot of kind of fast growing
00:53:30.200companies run by young men with a lot of unchecked power do tend to operate where women are expected
00:53:36.540to perform and tolerate and stay quiet and sort of be the adults in the room and tolerate a lot
00:53:41.400of stuff that they really shouldn't have to tolerate uh some of which is like against the law
00:53:45.280uh and then when this woman didn't she was basically shown the door after having a baby
00:53:53.200that's not that's not a like that's a that's a very familiar story to me i guess is what i'm saying
00:53:58.720you know having it be written in the handbook that it's okay for the boys to be childish
00:54:04.180i think really kind of provides written clarity about who this workplace was built for and around
00:54:12.560And so I almost wonder if like that's one of the reasons why I just like never clicked with this particular creator is because I do think his content is just built on this fantasy of consequence free excess, right? Money is just a spectacle to be doled out. Generosity or philanthropy is just entertainment.
00:54:31.940And I think that these lawsuits are starting to sort of reveal, well, who pays? Like nothing is consequence free. So who is paying that consequence? Who is paying for the less visible costs of producing this fantasy?
00:54:46.180and you know we we don't know how this lawsuit will shake out we will definitely keep you updated
00:54:50.800if we hear more but i do think that that the disconnect between his public persona and what
00:54:59.540i imagine to be the sort of machinations that that keep that persona going and that and that
00:55:05.080you know empire going is like why i i have found him like personally kind of off-putting
00:57:02.840They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:57:07.280But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:57:10.740They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:57:14.360Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:57:22.800If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:57:28.740This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:57:41.220I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:57:48.320I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:57:51.460From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:57:57.860It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:58:05.780Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:58:14.940Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:58:32.900So Wired just put out this very long, but very interesting, worth reading piece about
00:58:39.160what happened to a trans woman who just wanted to watch a basketball game at Madison Square Garden.
00:58:46.240What happened to her will probably make you rethink if you have Knicks tickets coming up.
00:58:50.080So it is no surprise or secret that just showing up at Madison Square Garden or really any kind of a big event like that involves a lot of surveillance and privacy violations.
00:59:01.680You expect this now, but Madison Square Garden was kind of an early adopter of these kinds of draconian policies.
00:59:08.640But it turns out that Madison Square Garden's policies are not just invasive.
01:03:19.420it's like tim robinson like there's gonna be like depositions where they're talking about
01:03:24.980his fedora he also was in a really embarrassing americana band where one of the songs that they
01:03:30.440play is about his former friend harvey weinstein called i should have known okay so he sounds like
01:03:37.460a pretty i don't know paranoid petty i don't know choose your p adjective kind of guy uh but so how
01:03:48.420about this trans woman what is the story with what happened to her yes so back to this trans woman
01:03:55.040nina so nina just wanted to watch the next game at the garden in 2021 so nina was regularly going
01:04:01.540to the next games according to one former madison square gardens security staffer she became a
01:04:08.240fixation for this guy ever soul who was the head of madison square garden security ever soul he's
01:04:14.540a former senior director of global investigations at Oracle, instructed his deputies to compile0.56
01:04:19.840workups or open source intelligent dossiers on Nina, this trans woman who just wanted to go to0.57
01:04:25.880a basketball game. He made sure that Nina was in the garden's face recognition system and ordered
01:04:31.320the garden security apparatus to focus specifically on her. This is from a lawsuit filed by former
01:04:39.160MSG security staffer, Donnie Ingrassolino. Not because this trans woman, Nina, was any kind of
01:04:47.400a threat or a danger to anything, but because she was a trans woman. Eversol, that head of MSG0.94
01:04:55.400security, allegedly wanted to, quote, keep her away from the players because she is trans.0.96
01:05:01.560according to the lawsuit Eversol targeted Nina because of her gender identity and it does sound
01:05:09.480like it's a kind of situation where the staff who were forced to conduct this kind of surveillance
01:05:13.620on Nina were really uncomfortable with being told to do this because they was they believed it to be
01:05:19.600a clear act of profiling according to one former staffer Nina posed no threat so the staffers make
01:05:27.960it super clear, Nina wasn't doing anything that she wasn't meant to be doing. She wasn't taking0.76
01:05:32.140pictures in restricted areas or like being a nuisance. She was just a trans woman walking1.00
01:05:37.340around the garden at a basketball game. But Eversol, that head of security, his orders were
01:05:43.800explicit. Keep watching. According to the lawsuit, he showed Nina's picture in several weekly meetings,
01:05:49.760misgendering her and telling employees to watch out for, quote, him or whatever it is. Oh, that is
01:05:56.080horrible. According to that former MSG security staffer, Donnie Ingrassolino, who filed a lawsuit
01:06:01.800over all of this, he contends in his court filing that the head of security did not similarly limit
01:06:08.060access to others who socialized with athletes, including individuals who had extensive criminal
01:06:13.360histories and had the potential of posing a legitimate threat to Madison Square Garden. So
01:06:18.400all manner of creeps and criminals are totally free to socialize with the players and the staff0.94
01:06:25.780However, they were given explicit instructions to keep Nina away from the players because she was trans.
01:06:32.140I mean, this sounds like a worst case scenario of exactly why we should all be concerned about the rise of these private surveillance companies, private security companies that act like private armies, just enforcing whatever arbitrary preferences or prejudices that their owners have.0.99
01:06:58.180exactly that's such a good point of like when people say things like oh well what do i care
01:07:04.620about surveillance and the creeping rise of sort of the normalization of this kind of deep deep
01:07:10.960intense unreasonable surveillance this is why the kinds of things the article says get people on0.97
01:07:17.480dolan's personal shit list are things like tweeting about the knicks or tweeting unfavorably about his0.97
01:07:24.660ownership and you know things like that like things that anybody might do so nina that trans0.99
01:07:30.360woman went to a pride night at the garden and they have a dossier of her literal every movement
01:07:36.420from scanning her ticket grabbing a beer chatting with the worker hugging one of the ushers
01:07:42.020complete with images like screenshots of her doing this again the report gave no insight into why
01:07:49.140this level of scrutiny was warranted. And every staffer that Wired spoke to about it agreed it
01:07:54.920was excessive, which to me is like the understatement of the century. So one night,
01:07:59.640Nina moves to what they call the celebrity seats, right? They're the seats where if someone is0.94
01:08:04.940sitting there, they're probably going to be photographed or included in a televised broadcast
01:08:10.160of the game. And it was very clear that the fact that Nina, this trans woman, was sitting in those
01:08:15.460seats was not okay. According to that lawsuit from the former MSG security staffer in Grasolino,
01:08:22.980the security company claimed that if an, quote, openly trans woman was noticed,
01:08:27.960it could, quote, damage MSG's reputation. The first former employee adds that they were told
01:08:33.520that the very sight of Nina would make the top brass at the garden uncomfortable.
01:08:38.720I mean, this sounds like the sort of thing that we would expect from, like,
01:08:42.700an arena in the middle of kansas or something but like this is new york city like is this
01:08:49.340really the first trans woman they've ever seen like the idea that one trans woman on the video
01:08:58.280feed would somehow damage the garden's reputation an institution in the middle of new york city
01:09:06.420that seats like i don't know however many tens of thousands of people it's it's not just
01:09:12.760prejudice and discriminatory it's absurd it's absolutely like i don't know if i sound
01:09:20.140pollyanna-ish i cannot and then we have all kinds of examples of tech companies using shady tactics
01:09:28.000to get ahead right like tiktok back when it under its previous ownership was spying on journalists
01:09:34.880terrible, like should not happen. But I understood like what it was they were looking for. It's like
01:09:41.020a very specific in scope thing they were doing, a bad thing to be sure, but I understand it.
01:09:48.200I cannot understand why it makes sense to spend the money and the energy to have this level of1.00
01:09:55.460surveillance on like one trans person. I simply, it simply does not make any sense to me. I cannot1.00
01:10:00.140understand why this is a good use of anyone's time or money i'm so curious at what point she
01:10:06.900discovered that this was happening because it sounds like she would go to the garden a lot and
01:10:11.340so i like to imagine she's just like hanging out you know drinking a beer eating a hot dog and
01:10:18.420there's meanwhile there's like dozens of security people like whispering into radios tracking her
01:10:24.340every move that's literally what's going on so unfortunately nina was eventually banned from the0.98
01:10:29.860Garden for what that former security staffer's lawsuit said was a faked stalking allegation.
01:10:36.440Mr. Eversol fabricated a stalking allegation to justify banning her from the Garden. That's from
01:10:41.460his lawsuit. Meanwhile, every Madison Square Garden security source that Wired spoke to
01:10:46.900said that that charge was not true, that it was a smear, but it worked. And that's what I'm saying.
01:10:53.020This could happen to any of us. You don't have to have done anything wrong. They could, in fact,
01:10:58.040be the one stalking you for no reason and then turn around and say oh she's stalking us and then1.00
01:11:04.600ban you and not for nothing this is terrible time if Nina is this big Knicks fans the Knicks is
01:11:10.120finally having a good season for once and they ban her when she would post on Instagram she had0.86
01:11:14.940like a pretty good little Instagram following she would get lots of engagement on her posts
01:11:18.520if anything they ought to be thanking her that she was like showing love to their to their terrible
01:11:23.560team that has had loss after loss after loss previously. So beyond the stuff with Nina,
01:11:29.520that trans woman, the former staff that they talked to about the head of Madison Square Garden's head
01:11:35.480of security just paints a very damning portrait. They say that he's always waving his gun around
01:11:41.440like he's in that show Miami Vice. I want to be clear that I'm not saying that this guy is on
01:11:47.260cocaine, but I do really know cocaine behavior. And this sounds like cocaine behavior to me.
01:11:53.560i'm not making any kind of allegations i'm not saying he's on cocaine i'm just saying this
01:11:58.280sounds like cocaine behavior to me i mean former staffers saying that he is always waving his gun
01:12:04.400around what does that sound like to you that's a pretty weird workplace vibe so this is really
01:12:11.320wild so the piece spoke to nick's legend and honestly the one person who it sounds like is
01:12:17.320not afraid of dolan charles oakley who used to play for the knicks they spoke to him on the record
01:12:22.440He said that he went to a basketball game and that according to another Madison Square Garden security source that Wired spoke to, there were discussions about tracking Oakley, even as he left Madison Square Garden and traveled hundreds of miles away after the game.
01:12:38.400The source said, quote, they wanted to have us doing covert surveillance operations on him just to see where he was at and what he was doing at the time to try to dig up something to use.
01:22:04.320and then Emily's fans started sending payments
01:22:07.480for that contact and exchanging messages he says i was doing basically nothing and i was just and
01:22:13.500it was just flooded with money he said he made a few thousand dollars off the account in just a
01:22:18.620few days though he did not enjoy the interactive aspects he said that one guy sent me a video with0.58
01:22:24.240emily's nude on a tablet on a pillow and he was basically recording himself having sex with a
01:22:29.000pillow it was incredibly weird but then he sent me a 50 tip so i was like okay do what you want1.00
01:22:33.780Now, this is kind of funny, and I am pro-scamming stupid conservative men out of their money, but this is misogyny, right? Like, becoming a sexy woman online to cash in only really works if you see women as a commodity to sort of just be digitally emulated.0.97
01:22:55.620We sort of get into this in our audio book, Love at First Prompt, which folks can preorder at loveatfirstprompt.ai.
01:23:01.860But an actual human woman doing sex work on the Internet is a lot more likely to be moderated and censored online than an AI generated fake woman being run by a man.
01:23:14.500Like Instagram only deleted this account after Wired reached out for comment. Like they like it wasn't like Instagram proactively deleted it like they do with so many accounts run by actual human women who are involved in anything even remotely considered related to like erotic content.
01:23:32.840And so it does create a landscape where actual human women are being erased in this and sort of being replaced by AI that is easily just run by men.
01:23:47.040Well, interestingly, you might be wondering, would this work if you made a leftist AI-generated babe?
01:23:56.620No, there seems to be no parallel on the left.
01:23:59.400Sam learned this when he created a short-lived liberal counterpart for Emily on Instagram.
01:24:04.940He says, Democrats just know that it's AI slops, so they don't engage much.
01:24:10.060Sam's explanation for why MAGA influencer accounts work is blunt.1.00
01:24:13.960Quote, the MAGA crowd is made up of dumb people, like super dumb people, and they just fall for it.0.99
01:24:20.740Before we go, you know this about me.0.99
01:24:23.780if you let me talk about movie and tv recommendations it would be a whole separate
01:24:30.640episode that's why i try to like rein it in you do and you do a pretty good job but
01:24:35.580do you have a recommendation that you would like to share with our listeners i do and it is the
01:24:42.060comeback on hbo it's a show that i love when it first came out it's got lisa kudrow from friends
01:24:48.160And she plays Valerie Cherish, this sitcom star who is trying to like relaunch her career.
01:24:55.880And she's on a show right now that is being written by AI.
01:25:35.540I so you watched it the first time around because it was on in like the early 2000s or something and then was off the air for like 15 years, 20 years.
01:25:47.560And it's funny that it's back. It's funny that it's called The Comeback.
01:25:51.660And Lisa Kudrow is just like so funny in it.
01:25:54.040her character her character is just so like anxious and relentlessly positive and smiling
01:26:01.980and optimistic not optimistic even but just like she has an intense anxious energy that i feel
01:26:11.640all of us can relate to feeling pressure to bring that energy to our professional
01:27:25.120If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts.
01:27:28.820For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:27:45.040I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
01:27:53.840I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
01:27:57.360Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
01:28:04.980These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
01:28:08.360Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:28:16.760If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
01:28:22.520Pro 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.
01:28:30.820Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture
01:28:34.300with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.