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.
00:02:13.920a 23-year-old DoorDash delivery driver from Oswego, New York,
00:02:18.540who went viral back in October of 2025
00:02:20.940after delivering an order to a customer
00:02:23.560that she says she found asleep on his couch,
00:02:27.020pants around his ankles exposed when she dropped off the order.
00:02:31.080So Olivia took a video, posted it to TikTok with the tag MeToo,
00:02:35.880and almost 30 million people watched it.
00:02:39.720Olivia's story kind of became an inkblot test for the internet.
00:02:43.780What you saw in her story said a lot about what you already believed going into it.
00:02:48.640When I initially covered Olivia's story, I really tried to lead with empathy, which I would 100% stand by.
00:02:55.240But there's also an update, so here's where things stand now.
00:02:58.100So this week, Olivia was indicted on two felony charges for recording that customer inside his home without its consent and posting it publicly.
00:03:07.300A grand jury reviewed the evidence and moved forward with the charges.
00:03:11.440Olivia pled not guilty and faces up to eight years in prison.
00:03:17.900And I wanted to revisit our initial conversation about what happened from 2025, because I still feel like it really matters.
00:03:25.720But also wanted to make sure that y'all have the full picture before we get into it.
00:03:33.260So we all know the Internet loves a viral story.
00:03:36.580It loves outrage, suspense, villains, drama, all of it.
00:03:40.860But what happens when the story is about a real woman who says that she has been the victim of a sex crime?
00:03:47.560And the platforms that ostensibly should be protecting her punish her instead.
00:03:52.540That is what happened to this woman called Livy, a DoorDash driver in New York State whose story recently went viral on TikTok.
00:03:59.200I wanted to talk about this on the News Roundup, but honestly, I had so much to say about it that I thought,
00:04:04.460this needs to be its own episode because I think it shows us so much about where we're at right now
00:04:10.480when it comes to the state of women speaking up online. Mike, when we were talking about
00:04:16.520potentially doing an episode about this situation in the beginning, when I first started researching
00:04:21.340it, I was just curious about this story. I was seeing this story all over my TikTok feed and I
00:04:26.340wanted to understand it better. But by the end of putting together my research and really doing a
00:04:31.160deep dive into what's going on here, I went from curious to pissed off and also quite worried about
00:04:38.340what this situation means for all of us. So I'm going to get into the logistics of what's going
00:04:43.980on here with this viral DoorDash story on TikTok, how AI is fueling how we got to this place and
00:04:50.360what it all means. It seems like a complicated story, an interesting one. I think a good one
00:04:57.180for you to tell? In some ways, it is complicated, but in other ways, it's very uncomplicated.
00:05:03.420Tale as old as time, the most simple story that we all recognize and understand. It's sort of both
00:05:08.900of those things at once. So here's what's going on. On October 12th, a woman called Libby, who
00:05:14.260does DoorDash for a living, made a TikTok explaining that she got an order on DoorDash
00:05:18.720from a customer who asked her to leave the order on the porch outside. When she got to the customer's
00:05:24.020home, she says that she walks up the stairs to the porch and saw the door partially open and inside
00:05:31.200was the customer laying across the sofa, supposedly asleep, laying motionless with his face covered
00:05:37.460and his pants and underwear down around his ankles exposed from the waist down. I should explain some
00:05:43.720logistics here that the way that the door on the couch is situated, there is no way that anybody0.96
00:05:48.820walking up on this porch, like the door dasher that you summon to your home, would not see
00:05:53.960somebody laying on the on the couch from where the couch is positioned. The couch that he was on
00:05:59.120is right across from the door facing it. Like if somebody was standing on the porch and the door
00:06:03.720was open, somebody sitting on the couch, you would see each other directly. Does that make sense?
00:06:09.320It does. Yeah. And we'll link to the video in the show notes. Yeah. This episode will include
00:06:13.540some visual things. I will do my best to explain them, but this is not a video podcast, so we will
00:06:19.920put the links to the things that you need to see, but I'll make it clear what's going on,
00:06:24.080even if you don't do that. So Livvy's version of what I just explained is illustrated in a TikTok
00:06:31.260that she made and posted that shows her standing outside of this porch with the door open with this
00:06:38.360man exposing himself in full view. Here's what Livy said in her TikTok. The customer who committed
00:06:44.120a crime against me requested that their order be left at their front door. And when I arrived to
00:06:49.920their house, their front door was wide open. It was 59 degrees Fahrenheit. All of their lights were on
00:06:55.180and they were sleeping on the couch within eyesight of the front door with their pants and underwear
00:07:00.680pulled down to their ankles. This person's name is Austin and their last initial is N. I reported
00:07:06.460this to doordash and the police and doordash luckily banned the customer but the police are
00:07:12.140doing nothing i also posted the video that i have of the proof to tiktok and after a day and a half
00:07:18.140of it going completely viral tiktok took down the video for suggestive content and gave my account
00:07:25.360a strike they've also denied my appeal to have it reinstated i'm absolutely reposting the video
00:07:31.000again but with a little sensor blur so it can't be removed for the same reason because this is
00:07:36.380literally the only justice I'm getting. In the wake of my victimhood, the police are doing nothing
00:07:41.140to prevent or stop this man from doing it again. And they're not doing anything to punish him for
00:07:46.480already having done it. So if the only justice I'm going to get is the fact that he's banned
00:07:51.860off the platform and that video went viral and now he can live with that shame and embarrassment,
00:07:57.280then that's what it's going to have to be. So TikTok, keep this video up.
00:08:03.180So Libby says that she reported this man to DoorDash and DoorDash kicked the man off of the platform.
00:08:08.760But they also kicked her off the platform, too, essentially blocking her from being able to make money.
00:08:15.320And she says that DoorDash is her only source of income.
00:08:18.660Hey, guys. So DoorDash just deactivated me two days after I reported my sexual assault.
00:08:24.860Hey, guys, I just lost my job and they won't tell me why.
00:08:28.440I they're supposed to send an email immediately after deactivation providing you the reason why
00:08:34.040and a link to appeal and they didn't so I contacted support and they made me sit on the
00:08:40.520phone with them for 50 minutes just to tell me that they can't tell me the reason why and I have
00:08:44.420to just go ahead and appeal without knowing why so my chances of getting my account that they have
00:08:50.560my money in that account I was working I was literally working and they deactivated me this
00:08:58.220is not this is related they just punished me for posting about my sexual assault while door dashing
00:09:06.900they just fired me and the police are doing nothing i lost my job and that was my only way
00:09:15.560to make money to pay my bills initially liddy said that door dash never even told her why they kicked
00:09:21.680her off the platform though she does say that she feels that it's connected to the tiktok that she
00:09:27.520made about this man, which, yeah, it is. DoorDash put out a statement explaining why they kicked her
00:09:32.840off the platform. Livvy says they made this statement without ever actually talking to her
00:09:37.220directly about why they deactivated her account. She says that when the general public found out
00:09:41.760why she was deactivated from being on DoorDash is the same time that she found out why she was
00:09:47.500deactivated. They never talked to her. They just put out this statement. Here's what DoorDash said.
00:09:51.740No one should ever have to experience sexual assault, harassment, or abuse. And DoorDash
00:09:55.820never deactivate someone for reporting it. Full stop. We take these reports incredibly seriously
00:10:00.860and work closely with law enforcement to investigate and support those affected. However, posting a
00:10:06.240video of a customer in their home and disclosing their personal details publicly is a clear
00:10:10.640violation of our policies. That is the sole reason why this Dasher's account was deactivated,
00:10:15.900along with the customers, while we investigated. DoorDash also told Newsweek that they're
00:10:20.380investigating to make sure that Libby gets whatever full payments she's owed from the
00:10:24.280work she had done from DoorDash because she had not been able to cash out before her account was0.91
00:10:29.100deactivated. Though I have no idea if they're going to make good on this. It's just what they
00:10:33.140said in their statement. So DoorDash is basically saying, you know, hey, we didn't deactivate
00:10:37.760Libby's account because she reported a sex crime. We deactivated her account because she posted
00:10:42.160a video of a DoorDash customer. I'll say it would have been nice if DoorDash told Libby this
00:10:47.720directly rather than simply deactivating her account with money in it. But as we'll talk about
00:10:52.940in a moment, the whole dynamic of gig work is that companies like DoorDash don't really have0.54
00:10:58.880to do shit because they don't have employees, they have contractors. And so I get where Livvy
00:11:04.360is coming from, but that is sort of the nature of the beast here. So a big question that is coming
00:11:09.680up online is whether or not Livvy should have made this video in the first place. Livvy says
00:11:14.420that she had wanted video evidence of what happened. And I will say, had she come to the
00:11:19.360internet without video evidence of what she says happened i'm sure the conversation would have been
00:11:24.780entirely different yeah and you know there's something about this story that really makes
00:11:31.820one want to like i don't know like like weigh in or like pulls you in to want to say like what she
00:11:37.920you know was she in the right was she in the wrong should she have done this or that or
00:11:42.360something about the story really pulls a person in i think and i think you're totally right that
00:11:49.180Without that video, it's hard to even imagine that there would even be any story there beyond, you know, just what what she's going through.
00:11:58.100Exactly. And a lot of people are saying, oh, well, I wouldn't have an issue with what she did if she just sent that video directly to DoorDash and left it at that.
00:12:06.380Like, why did she have to post it to TikTok? And I get that.
00:12:09.240Livvy says that she called the non-emergency police line to report this to the police after she reported it to DoorDash.
00:12:16.480She says a police officer actually came out to speak with her about what she wanted to do.
00:12:21.080She said that she wanted to press charges, if possible, to make sure that this guy was not able to do this to another person.
00:12:27.600In one of her videos, she actually points out that this guy lives in a duplex.
00:12:31.440And she says, what if there had been a kid out on the porch on the other shared unit?
00:12:36.540And so she said that she wanted to report this to the police just to make sure that this wasn't going to be a recurring thing with this guy.
00:12:43.520But she says the police told her that she couldn't really press charges in this state because this man was in his own house and that it wasn't like he got up to lunge toward her or anything like that.
00:12:54.920So Libby says that she posted it because the police essentially weren't doing anything about it, weren't taking it seriously.
00:13:01.300But her posting that video to TikTok is what DoorDash says is the reason for her being deactivated from the platform.
00:13:08.180Honestly, I can't act like I don't see where DoorDash is coming from here,
00:13:11.920that they probably can't have DoorDashers posting videos of their customers like this on TikTok.
00:13:18.240Now, would I have done this if I were Livy?
00:13:21.660Probably not, because personally, at this point in my life,
00:13:24.660I almost never think that bringing something to the Internet is going to make a situation better.
00:13:29.680These days, I have only seen the Internet getting involved, making things worse.
00:13:35.420And, you know, not for nothing, I also don't think that anybody should be posting uncensored photos or video of other people's body without their consent. Like, I want to be clear that that's not something I think is an okay thing to be doing. And yeah, there might be consequences for it.
00:13:51.580Again, Livvy says that she was doing that in an attempt to get some kind of recourse using social media, since she says the police said there was nothing that could be done because this guy was in his own home.
00:14:02.940I get what she's saying, but I also get why her choice of posting this guy's body without the black bar over it on TikTok is a big source of consternation online.
00:14:12.900But I also think we really crave perfect victims, right? Victims who would act and behave exactly like we think that we would act and behave in whatever situation. So the fact that Livy is doing something that I personally would not do doesn't mean anything, right? I think that we really have this idea when we hear something like this, we think, well, what would I do? And if this person didn't do things like I think I would do things, something must be up. She must be lying. That's a red flag.
00:14:41.980I also think the fact that Livvy is on TikTok talking very loudly about this thing that happened to her, I just think people don't like that.
00:14:52.580Like, I'm sad to see that people have taken one specific bit from one of Livvy's mini videos about this where she's very upset and they've turned it into a really hurtful meme on TikTok.0.91
00:15:06.040A man's world! I'm the victim! Remember?
00:15:10.800So they've taken a screenshot, which is a close up of her face, while Livvy is pleading with people to remember that she is the victim in this situation.
00:15:20.160And it's been making the rounds on TikTok.
00:15:21.800If you check the comments of Livvy's other posts on TikTok, people are putting that screenshot of that image of her face, very pained while speaking about this situation, in the comments to make fun of her.
00:15:35.240Her face in this image is tortured and pained because she is very upset.
00:15:41.540And it reminds me, if you've seen that image of it's kind of if you Googled liberal feminist1.00
00:15:48.280triggered, it's a picture that makes her look like she is screaming.0.93
00:15:51.760And it's an image that's become a meme when people want to reference sort of triggered,0.98
00:15:58.800But when you actually look at the real full video that that image was taken from, it's0.90
00:16:04.580a it's a feminist woman in a campus debate and she's just having a fairly normal conversation1.00
00:16:12.680with somebody it's a conversation that's like somewhat hostile because she's citing rape0.69
00:16:17.260statistics or something but she's not screaming she barely even raises her voice in that video
00:16:22.640the only issue is is that she has an expressive face and so in this image she looks like she is
00:16:30.400screaming or having some sort of a triggered shamanist meltdown. But really, she's just having
00:16:35.560a pretty normal conversation with someone. I would say even like a fairly civil conversation with
00:16:40.140somebody. And yet online, she has become the face of triggered lying feminists everywhere.1.00
00:16:47.400Never mind that men like Alex Jones and Andrew Breitbart, like, do you remember seeing what they1.00
00:16:53.320looked like when they would talk? They would be frothing at the mouth and screaming and veins
00:16:59.760popping out of their necks and foreheads and fans loved it so the rules are simply different for men
00:17:06.400you know andrew breitbart did not become the face of triggered men everywhere when he would have
00:17:13.280legit freakouts on camera yeah the the outrage and the performative like energy i think was a big
00:17:21.360part of it for those guys absolutely so i think this image and clip of livy speaking with a pained
00:17:28.780face, having a big emotion, says a lot about how we want and expect women to behave after
00:17:34.820experiencing something traumatic and how much stigma there is around labeling oneself as a
00:17:39.680victim. I also think we want victims who are quiet about what they've experienced. When someone is
00:17:44.880screaming about it, even if whatever happened to them is worth screaming about, I think for a lot
00:17:50.300of people, they automatically assume that that person screaming is in the wrong because what we
00:17:55.620actually want is a society where women who are harmed also just shut up about it. So people are
00:18:01.360also taking issue with the fact that Livvy says that she was, quote, sexually assaulted in her
00:18:06.480TikTok, saying, how could someone sexually assault you if they didn't touch you, if you never had
00:18:11.880physical contact? This is a little bit in the weeds, but according to the Office on Violence
00:18:16.060Against Women, the term sexual assault means any non-consensual sexual act prescribed by federal,
00:18:22.180tribal, or state law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent. But in a legal sense,
00:18:28.040state laws can vary, so can the definitions used for sexual assault. So flashing or indecent
00:18:34.180exposure may be a sexual offense and a sex crime, but it is not always classified legally as sexual
00:18:41.940assault in a strict legal sense because that depends on the state. It really strikes me as
00:18:47.220an odd thing to get hung up on, this specific legal designation, the way that a lot of people
00:18:52.240have on TikTok to call Livy a liar. But I did want to mention it. And I guess I wish that all
00:18:58.560of this discourse about the technical definitions of sexual assault versus sexual offense versus
00:19:02.900sex crime was happening in an effort to educate people rather than belittle this woman who says0.95
00:19:08.640that she was forced to look at a stranger's penis while just trying to do her job. But here we are.0.98
00:19:13.660Like I've seen a lot of people say Libby is lying about saying that she was sexually assaulted and that minimizes actual sexual assault and makes it harder for actual victims.
00:19:24.300But indecent exposure is very much a sex crime, even if it is not specifically legally categorized as sexual assault.
00:19:31.960It's very clear to me that people who are bringing this up are trying to use it to parse Libby's words, to make her look like an unreliable narrator and a liar.
00:19:41.580They're not doing it in an effort to actually advocate for victims of sexualized violence, because even if this is not legally a sexual assault the way that Libby says it is, it is still a sex crime.
00:19:53.660Yeah, I think a good sort of test for that sort of thing is like, why don't you try it at work?
00:19:59.080Like if it's not actually any sort of a problem, just go ahead and do it at work and see what happens.
00:20:04.180Yeah, I want all of these guys who are saying it's not actually a crime.
00:20:08.860Yeah, do it to your HR lady and see what she says.
00:21:21.780If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:21:26.760This 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.
00:21:40.180I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:21:47.160I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:21:50.420From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:21:56.820It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:22:04.740Whether 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.
00:22:13.900Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:26:23.880Everybody is talking about somebody else's life. I think they truly illustrate how deeply surveilled we are socially as a society, how we are doing the surveilling and we are the surveilled.
00:26:36.600And I think this is especially bad for women because when the internet turns on women, even famous women who are the victims of abuse, people like Meg Thee Stallion or Amber Heard, it's not just speculation. It is the reliable misogyny of the internet being so easily weaponized against her to smear her and silence her.
00:26:57.500All the old tropes around gender that we all know, women lie for attention, women can't be trusted, good innocent men are having their lives ruined over nothing by lying bitches.0.96
00:27:10.440All of these tired old tropes that permeate how we talk about and understand gender get dialed up to 11 on social media because misogyny will always find an audience online just by the nature of how social media is designed.0.97
00:27:25.680And this is a feature, not a bug. It is how our platforms were designed from their earliest days. I will say it till I'm blue in the face. Never forget that Facebook started as a way for Zuckerberg to get revenge on women who did not want to date him. So this is just baked into our internet ecosystem. And I think we really see it with how this whole Livvy situation is playing out.
00:27:47.780So after Libby shared her story, people online started saying that she is not really a victim in this situation because she did not just innocently walk up to the DoorDash customer's door and find him naked from the waist down as she claimed.
00:28:02.420She actually walked up to a closed door, opened it without knocking and without permission, saw an undressed man asleep in his own home, took a video of him exposed, posted it online, and that she is the one who is actually violating him.
00:28:19.660That is the narrative that is really taken off online.
00:28:22.680Well, that's odd because that is not what is depicted in that video that she posted.
00:28:28.760In that video she posted, she doesn't open the door.
00:28:39.580So one is just sort of logistical.0.89
00:28:41.440Because Libby had to remove the original footage that she uploaded to TikTok from the platform,
00:28:46.220it has become somewhat difficult, though not impossible,
00:28:48.840to find the original video that she uploaded about the situation.
00:28:52.340And that has allowed people to really fill the gap in with their own idea of what must have happened.
00:28:57.700So if you search TikTok for DoorDash lady, DoorDash situation, whatever, you will find people saying with certainty that, yes, they know that Libby pushed this closed door open.
00:29:09.460That has just become accepted as fact in this situation.
00:29:13.200When I was just doing research, somebody on a different platform, Threads, said, oh, why is everybody, what's going on with this DoorDash situation?
00:29:21.200Somebody else replied, she opened a closed door and is acting like she's a victim because of it.
00:29:26.280i replied can you link me to proof how do you know this is there proof everybody is like there
00:29:32.300is no proof everyone's just saying they've seen proof but there is no proof there are even people
00:29:37.440making jokey tiktoks purporting to recreate livy's pov where she pushes open a closed door and then
00:29:45.820whines like oh no i'm being assaulted by a naked man in his own home i'm the victim i'm posting
00:29:53.240you on TikTok because I'm the victim. I have to say some of these videos being made to make fun
00:29:58.900of Livy do seem to be AI generated. They're using AI generators like Sora. But I'm sad to say that
00:30:06.320a lot of them that I've seen are real people, real women taking the TikTok to make fun of Livy
00:30:13.220for saying this happened to her. So it's just sort of become understood as the facts of what
00:30:20.360happened without any proof at all that it's actually true. And importantly, there are people
00:30:26.780saying that there is another angle or that the man in this situation uploaded ring camera footage
00:30:34.400proving that Livy actually opened a closed door without his permission and was the one violating
00:30:40.500him. I kind of went down the rabbit hole on this one. You know, we talked a little bit about how
00:30:47.440with the Taylor Swift conversation, how you can just really sniff it out when a conversation
00:30:53.960happening online is not happening in a normal, authentic way. You can just tell where there are
00:31:01.040real people jumping on a bandwagon. And then also some of it is not authentic conversation.
00:31:08.160Mike, I know that when we were having a pitch meeting, I was trying to explain what was going
00:31:12.700on with what I had seen on TikTok. And I felt like when we were speaking, I felt compelled to
00:31:18.160keep reiterating to you that I was 100 percent stone cold sober while I was speaking about this,
00:31:23.940because I felt like the way that I was talking about it made me seem like I was not sober.
00:31:29.080Do you remember this? Yeah, I remember you showing me a couple of videos back to back where
00:31:35.980totally different people were saying the exact same thing, like word for word, the exact same
00:31:42.140script about like i i woke up and i saw this story and i had to get into it but like word for word
00:31:49.620and it it was weird it was like i felt like uh like living in the truman show or something like
00:31:56.740the algorithm was these videos were created just to like convince you of something yes so it is not
00:32:05.860totally uncommon for a human creator to recreate a TikTok that another human creator has made.
00:32:13.600Like I've seen that. I know that happens, but that wasn't this. This was the same identical
00:32:18.300cadence, the same identity. It was, it was, yeah, it was as if they were reading a script.
00:32:22.840And then I realized one of these is AI. Like genuinely, I thought I was going crazy until I
00:32:30.080saw this TikTok that broke it down. Everybody's talking about the DoorDash girl. I was looking at
00:32:34.380certain videos and i came across this one i saw the original video of the doordash girl and i'm
00:32:39.240a little bit confused now that i woke up and see everything that's happening when i saw it i said
00:32:43.100hey i understand why doordash well i guess fired you and why you're a block from the app now as
00:32:49.100for the guy that's a little weird right why are they saying the same thing in a very similar tone
00:32:52.300in a very similar cadence uh is there a script is somebody copying somebody or is that video on the0.99
00:32:56.640right fucking ai is it ai and not just that video her entire fucking page is artificial intelligence0.98
00:33:02.900generated video okay now when you look at the page you can kind of tell it's just gibberish0.99
00:33:07.400uh there's no there's no like links or anything no name but when you just scroll by these videos
00:33:11.560it's pretty hard to tell unless you're really paying attention to how she speaks and it gets0.64
00:33:15.160even weirder because muurls on tiktok who is a human tiktoker on tiktok says that somebody stole
00:33:24.740her likeness stole her voice generated an ai version of her to make it appear as though she
00:33:31.240weighed in on this DoorDash situation when she did it. I would not have known that this was an AI0.91
00:33:37.700clone of a real person unless I really, really looked. If I'm just swipe, swipe, swiping, I don't
00:33:43.400think I would have clocked that this is AI. If I had not also come across this woman saying, hey,0.92
00:33:47.740this isn't me, it's an AI clone of me that somebody has made, please report it. So you can really see
00:33:53.240how the proliferation of AI can turbocharge manipulated, inauthentic conversation about a
00:34:00.220hot-button, charged topic, even when it's not about a big celebrity like Taylor Swift,
00:34:54.360And so I really think at some point in the future, we're going to look back at this time and just like shake our heads.
00:35:00.240And I can't wait to get to that future.
00:35:02.740Yes. And what's so interesting to me is the woman who was cloned, the real woman, really put it well that this is a credibility issue.
00:35:11.120If you are a big TikToker and you make your living, like I'm a podcaster, I make my living putting my ideas out into the world, expressing myself, using my voice.
00:35:22.000If somebody cloned me, which please don't do that if you're listening and you're thinking, I'm going to make a Bridget clone, please don't. But if somebody did, that could materially harm me as somebody whose credibility and body of work depends on people being able to trust me, people being able to take what I say as something they should be listening to to help them understand the world.
00:35:43.400If somebody steals my voice and my likeness to just say whatever, to weigh in on things that I would never weigh in on or put ideas out into the world that I would never express, that could materially harm me in a real way.
00:35:56.000Yeah, that's not like some new concept. Like we've had laws about that sort of thing for many, many years, right? You can't just like impersonate someone else. Like obviously there are laws against that in the offline world, but somehow with this new technology, people are acting like it's fine, even though it's like the exact same dynamic and the exact same risk.
00:36:20.220But what if you could impersonate somebody else and make a little change doing it?
00:40:16.220The only video footage of the situation that I have found is the footage that Libby took initially, which backs up her version of what she says happened.
00:41:59.220Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:42:03.780I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:42:08.240I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:42:15.860They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:42:19.760But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:42:23.200They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:42:26.340Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:42:35.280If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:42:41.220This 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.
00:42:53.700I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:43:00.800I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:43:04.240From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:43:10.340It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:43:17.860Whether 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.
00:43:27.420Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:43:41.900now i want to be clear it is entirely possible that livy did push that door open and then whip
00:43:52.040out her phone and start filming to make a video that backs up her version of events it's entirely
00:43:58.940possible that that happened we have no way of knowing for sure i am a mere spectator here
00:44:03.800just like everybody in this situation but to me that makes absolutely no sense
00:44:09.560just doesn't pass muster earlier in this episode you talked about how this whole story uh one of
00:44:16.500the things that shows is how surveilled we all are and i think that's a good insight and part of
00:44:23.180that fact of life these days is that there's an expectation of surveillance that of course
00:44:31.440there's going to be multiple camera angles and there's like more footage from somewhere else and
00:44:37.360And, you know, I have to wonder if that maybe is part of why people are so eager to believe that the other footage is out there because, you know, this thing happened and there's a lot of interest about it.
00:44:50.240And so, of course, there has to be more footage when, in fact, most things that happen in the world do not get recorded on video.
00:44:56.500Yeah. But again, I think it goes back to that true crime brain rot where people assume everything is going to happen the way it would happen in a fictional movie or a fictional series.
00:45:09.740And in reality, there probably isn't going to be any, you know, extended footage that she didn't know was being recorded that comes out.
00:45:18.820It could happen. But I feel like if it was going to happen, it would have happened already. Right.
00:45:23.680The footage that we have is the footage that we have.
00:45:26.420And, you know, this claim that Livy pushed the door open herself, you know that my forever problematic fave is Judge Judy.
00:47:01.700of sexual violence or misconduct are true.
00:47:04.660But when you already have a narrative in your head
00:47:07.720that women lie about sexual abuse for attention, which the internet definitely adds to, none of
00:47:14.260that reality makes any sense. It all just goes right out the window. And I think it illustrates
00:47:19.380how people will believe absolutely anything without proof to validate this worldview about
00:47:25.460women and support a worldview where people don't speak up when something like this happens to them.1.00
00:47:30.180If the entire internet is going to come together and use this arsenal of AI tools to discredit a0.54
00:47:36.100survivor of sexualized violence, less and less people are going to come forward. And I have to
00:47:40.460think that is the point of all of this. And here is something that I just have to add and have to
00:47:47.460say. A lot of people on TikTok are saying, hey, this guy was just drunk or high, passed out in
00:47:54.820his own home. Even if he did have the door open, he didn't really do anything wrong. So obviously,
00:48:02.500as i said i don't know any more about this situation than anybody else does i'm just
00:48:06.540watching it from the sidelines but come on women know when a man is trying to expose himself
00:48:15.800to get his sexual kicks we know i have had strangers expose themselves to me twice in my life
00:48:24.540the first one happened when i was maybe 15 a man i was walking down the street outside of my high
00:48:30.220school and a man called me over and was like, I'm in his car and was like, I'm, can you help me? I'm
00:48:35.640lost looking for directions. He had a map unfolded out on his lap. And when I came over, he moved the
00:48:43.240map and exposed himself to me. And it wasn't a misunderstanding. It wasn't ambiguous. I didn't
00:48:51.800like misunderstand something. I knew exactly what was going on instantly right away. Women know when
00:48:59.620a man is trying to do this. The fact that people are rushing in to give this man the benefit of0.97
00:49:04.860the doubt, I think is really discounting the reality that women live in where this kind of
00:49:09.680thing happens. I have to wonder if the men who are saying, oh, this is totally normal behavior,
00:49:15.560even if he did leave the door open and have his self-exposed, it's not that big of a deal.
00:49:19.660I think that they are trying to create the conditions where if they did that or something
00:49:23.140similar, it wouldn't be a big deal. That's the only reason I could think why you would jump to
00:49:26.780normalize. What I think we all can sort of see is like not normal behavior. So again, this is just
00:49:33.060my opinion, but you're not going to be able to convince me that somebody who summoned a door
00:49:36.960dasher to their home just happened to be waiting adjacent from the porch that they summoned them to
00:49:42.220with their pants down. I'm unwilling to believe this was not purposeful. This is my opinion,
00:49:47.540but it is backed up by so much research about what we know women experience who are doing
00:49:55.540gig work. Because gig work, things like Lyft, Uber, Uber Eats, DoorDash, it's just like this
00:50:01.700for women. A study by University of British Columbia interviewed 20 women gig workers
00:50:06.720in home services, food delivery, and rideshare in the U.S. and Canada and found that women
00:50:11.420often experience harassment, unwanted sexual comments or behavior, feel unsafe, and face
00:50:17.040limited recourse. One woman they spoke to put it like this. She just said, is it worth it?
00:50:22.340Most of the time, it's not. So you just don't.
00:50:25.540Their study also found that women just brush off harassment because of things like rating systems, where if they get enough bad ratings, they'll be kicked off the platform.1.00
00:50:34.620Fear of retaliation. All of that leads to women just brushing off this kind of harassment.1.00
00:50:39.400That same research highlights that platforms often have gender agnostic design in that the systems do not account for women's specific vulnerabilities.0.98
00:50:48.340And that gender agnostic design just leads to women workers opting out of riskier time.
00:50:54.760So saying, I'm not going to go to this.
00:50:56.080I'm not going to I'm going to not take this order if it's dark out or if it's in a bad
00:51:00.000neighborhood or something like that, which then worsens income gaps.
00:51:03.920A separate study by The Markup found that among app based drivers in Chicago, a high0.91
00:51:09.600percentage felt unsafe and that female drivers reported higher rates of sexual harassment.
00:51:14.920Another UK-based study found that while app-based couriers who are mostly male
00:51:19.680faced harassment and assault, female couriers had particular difficulties
00:51:23.560accessing reporting mechanisms and felt less supported.
00:51:27.540So the research about women in gig work pretty much backs up
00:51:31.300what most of us anecdotally probably already knew,
00:51:34.000that this kind of sexualized harassment and abuse of women gig workers is not rare.
00:51:39.920It's actually an occupational hazard recognized by scores of research.
00:51:44.160That's why I didn't want to say Libby was fired from DoorDash, really, because in a gig economy, it just comes with a lot less support for workers, especially workers who are women who are victims of sexualized abuse while working.0.96
00:51:57.740That's kind of the nature of the beast with the gig economy.0.95
00:52:01.380There's a lot less support structures, things like reporting and deactivation protections and retaliation protections.
00:52:07.920And when they do have these things, they're pretty inconsistent.
00:52:10.200The design of the gig economy, you have people who these companies say are independent contractors, not employees.
00:52:16.660Things like app rating systems and algorithmic dispatch often puts workers in vulnerable positions where they have less insight and don't have access to things like formal HR.
00:52:26.760You know, humans, we know, can be pretty variable in these uncontrolled environments.
00:52:32.480On top of that, you have this power asymmetry baked in, right, where the worker risks losing access to the platform or getting bad ratings if they complain, where they might get kicked off of this app that is a source of income for them that they need.
00:52:47.340And so all of this makes it a perfect environment for the kind of thing that Livy says that she experienced while doing DoorDash.
00:52:55.460And so while all these big creators on TikTok are arguing that Livy pushed this door open without permission to engineer this whole thing to make herself an online victim, my question is, what is more likely that Livy manipulated this whole situation just to get attention online and make herself sound like a victim online?
00:53:15.400or that this guy was sexually harassing a woman gig worker in a way the research could not make
00:53:22.660clear is incredibly commonplace for women who do this kind of work. And so my question is,
00:53:28.860why are we not talking about what we know about the risks and lack of support for women in the
00:53:35.000gig economy like Livy? In a different social media landscape, that would be the conversation
00:53:40.200we will be having. But I think it's a lot more lucrative to instead talk about how Livvy is a
00:53:46.240liar who is lying for attention on the internet. And the man who exposed himself to a gig worker
00:53:52.520did nothing wrong. Because if there's one thing that this moment with Livvy has showed me about
00:53:57.920the internet, especially big accounts on platforms like TikTok, and honestly across every platform,
00:54:04.340is that they will straight up lie about a woman who says that she was a victim of sexual abuse
00:54:09.820if it gets them clicks and that is a problem these people are materially benefiting from
00:54:17.000lying about livy there is money in outrage there's clout in being the first one to jump on a story
00:54:23.080whether or not it's true i saw somebody with lots and lots and lots of followers say that livy had
00:54:29.140been arrested for a false report for falsely calling 9-1-1 to report this man to the authorities
00:54:35.580Keep in mind, Libby herself said that she called a non-emergency line and that a police officer actually showed up to have a conversation with her about it.
00:54:42.620So why would she have been arrested for that?
00:54:46.100People will just get on this platform and lie to millions of people, and they are financially incentivized to do so.
00:54:54.920They don't care about whether or not what they are saying is true.
00:54:57.940They don't care about context, and they don't care about helping anybody understand what is actually happening here, what actually went on.
00:55:04.980they only care about engagement, even if that means lying about somebody who is already going
00:55:10.800through something awful. And when that person is a woman, the algorithm practically throws a0.82
00:55:17.160goddamn party. I started researching this story because I just wanted to know what was going on.0.99
00:55:21.340I was curious. But the more and more videos I watched of people with huge platforms and lots
00:55:27.200and lots of followers across the internet saying things about Livy that are lies or are just
00:55:32.840completely unsubstantiated and not backed up by anything that's pulled out of whole cloth,
00:55:37.120it really pissed me off. So she gets online and makes up a story that she was essayed by this
00:55:45.540gentleman. And it's just come out today that she was lying about it, that the man was asleep,
00:55:52.300had passed out on the couch and his pants just happened to be down a little bit. So she walked
00:55:57.480into this man's house without his permission, saw him on the couch and started taking photos of him0.84
00:56:04.260and then sent those photos to her boss, claiming that this man that was passed out assaulted her.
00:56:14.660First of all, did she just give the worst name to false accusing men of that, which you should
00:56:22.560never do because now you'll never be trusted this is like if i was that dude i would sue doordash
00:56:29.360for millions and millions and millions of dollars and that girl she's not going to be able to show
00:56:35.960her face in public ever again and i say this to say that misogyny always finds an audience online0.96
00:56:43.100it is reliable it performs it puts money in pockets and butts in seats saying she's lying1.00
00:56:49.640She's crazy. She just wants attention. All of those old stereotypes, dusting them off and redoing them for the Internet age will always do numbers.1.00
00:57:00.940And that is what is so dangerous about this, because it doesn't just pile on one woman who got deactivated from DoorDash.0.97
00:57:07.860It sends a message to everyone that women who call out creepy behavior, threatening behavior, illegal behavior should just shut up.
00:57:16.760that the men who do this kind of thing deserve protection, even if that means lying for them,
00:57:22.980making AI generated or manipulated content to support and exonerate them, and inventing facts
00:57:28.680out of whole cloth to excuse their behavior. And when you step back and look at this in a bigger
00:57:33.840picture, the political and social moment that we're in right now, where our rights are being
00:57:38.760literally rolled back, the fact that social media can be so easily gamified and weaponized to
00:57:45.580silence women should really scare the hell out of us. Because if the algorithm keeps on rewarding
00:57:51.760misogyny and lies and cruelty and punish people who are just trying to speak up, and if we keep
00:57:57.900letting online engagement be the arbiter of what is real and what is not, then it is not just going
00:58:02.980to be women like Livy who lose. It's going to be all of us. Got a story about an interesting thing
00:58:13.760in tech, or just want to say hi, you can reach us at hello at tangody.com. You can also find
00:58:18.560transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created1.00
00:58:22.600by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland
00:58:27.420is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our
00:58:32.300contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us
00:58:37.360on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
00:58:41.880Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:59:11.880the unthinkable. Abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what
00:59:18.320it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the
00:59:23.980iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and
00:59:29.740your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a
00:59:35.460weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice
00:59:39.920and Love Island to serve the same level of discourse.