00:06:53.000You know, they're coming to the border.
00:06:54.520They're trying to steal your kids and get them into street gangs.
00:06:57.020I mean, it's like this Mad Libs where you can just throw in like, OK, which societal outgroup is it going to be?
00:07:03.300What are they doing to our kids today?
00:07:05.540Like it's it's over and over again the same thing.
00:07:08.020So we've both me and my co-host, Sarah Marshall, have become these like accidental insufferable debunkers where we're like, nope, same one.
00:07:19.740So in my research around disinformation, particularly like false panics around things that are rooted in people's identities, so whether it's trans folks, queer folks, you know, immigrants, it is always sort of the same thing.
00:07:33.700Like I feel right now we're seeing all of this legislation sort of meant to make you think as if trans children are like running the world, like trans children are the biggest threat to your kids.0.55
00:07:43.980Totally. And they're and it's the same tropes, right? It's they're coming for your kids. They're recruiting your kids. Like this is the same thing that Anita Bryant said about gay people in the 1970s and the 1980s. Like we're just running exactly the same playbook.0.92
00:07:56.800Anita Bryant was a singer and beauty queen who famously led the Save Our Children campaign that attempted to save children by cracking down on gay people having rights.0.78
00:08:05.420And we're just mad-libbing in a new societal outgroup.1.00
00:08:09.700So, I mean, at the beginning of the pandemic, I read a bunch of books about the Black Plague, just out of morbid curiosity.
00:08:16.660And, you know, what you find in these old panics, you know, these times of societal anxiety, you had some of the biggest pogroms against Jews in Europe in history, right?
00:08:25.760It was like, there's this big thing that we can't explain.
00:08:32.900Like we don't want to look at any existing societal structures.
00:08:35.480We don't want to look at something that's just difficult for us to explain.
00:08:38.200It's sort of out of our scientific knowledge.
00:08:40.280So there's this group here that seems sort of shifty and we don't really like them.1.00
00:08:45.260Let's blame them and kill a bunch of them.0.99
00:08:46.760It's like these things are old, ancient human impulses and they're very difficult to see at the time.0.99
00:08:54.100But zooming out a little bit, you're like, oh, no, this is just what happens during times of anxiety.
00:08:58.140and isn't the perfect recipe for a very anxious society a global pandemic it's probably not a0.97
00:09:06.300coincidence that as covid worsened we saw more and more content about q anon and save the children
00:09:11.000purporting to save kids from some perceived danger lurking out in the world why do you think right
00:09:17.120now this specific moment in politics and culture why are we seeing this resurgence of panic around
00:09:23.080sex trafficking and trafficking, do you think? I mean, it's hard to say exactly. I think,
00:09:28.620you know, this really hit its peak last summer. All of this QAnon hashtag save the children stuff.
00:09:35.260And it really seems like there was a moment where, you know, we're in the middle of a pandemic.
00:09:40.320Information was all over the place, right? Like, remember, we didn't, like, are we wearing masks?
00:09:43.940Are we not wearing masks? Some states are in lockdown. Some states are aggressively not in
00:09:47.700lockdown. It was just this time where nobody really knew what was going on. And there's some
00:09:52.040research that indicates that sort of at times when you're really angry, you search for information
00:09:57.600that reinforces your worldview. And at times when you're really anxious, you are more open to
00:10:03.200information that doesn't reinforce your worldview. So all summer, everybody's inside. We're all on
00:10:10.100our phones. There's nothing else to do. We're looking at the internet. And all of a sudden,
00:10:13.520you have people whose minds are a little bit more open to things like, well, maybe the real danger
00:10:19.160to children isn't COVID. Maybe it's actually these, you know, white van driving traffickers
00:10:24.420who come from other countries and they're going to kidnap my kids and take them abroad or these
00:10:28.400narratives that just make no sense, right? And, you know, at the heart of it, the little seed
00:10:34.200in the middle of it was this insane QAnon stuff, right? Where it's like adrenochrome and like1.00
00:10:38.700Hillary Clinton is like cutting the faces off a baby, like completely nuts stuff. But there's0.96
00:10:42.960enough sort of plausible deniability around that, that you can very easily say, well, I care about
00:10:49.800children. And so what's the harm of sharing this little meme? Like, what's the harm of taking this
00:10:54.860little thing on Facebook that says, you know, infamously, there was one that said that children
00:10:58.940are thousands of times more likely to die of trafficking than of COVID. And so it feels,
00:11:06.240you know, and it was in like the Instagram aesthetic, right, where it's got like the
00:11:09.520little logo and it's in pink and it's very shareable. And it's like, well, what's the harm?
00:11:13.240Like, I might as well share that, you know, if it helps save a kid or two, then I'm doing something
00:11:17.260good. And that's some sort of, that's a feeling of certainty in the world, right? But nobody thinks
00:11:22.540about what it does to reinforce these just deranged myths that aren't helping children.
00:11:28.540They're not helping non-children. They're not helping anybody. But it's easy to forget that
00:11:33.620when you're like, well, what's the harm of sharing this? And then all of a sudden these
00:11:36.240bananas memes start just bouncing around the internet for months yeah i think this honestly
00:11:41.720listening to you're wrong about was something that really helped make that transition for me
00:11:46.480because you know for a while i'd be like well if this person thinks it's going to do some good to
00:11:50.780share this untrue meme on their facebook page about trafficking or about children who isn't
00:11:55.920hurting now i've come to see that okay well if we overemphasize the risks of little kids being
00:12:02.500like snatched up or things like that. What are we under? What are we under emphasizing? You know,
00:12:07.400kids like youth who are facing homelessness, youth who are put in precarious or, you know,
00:12:13.240bad or dangerous situations, things that are much more common. Like if we focus on this big,
00:12:18.520scary thing that isn't happening, all of the things that actually are happening,
00:12:21.960we're just taking attention away from that. Right. And there's also this retributive aspect
00:12:26.360to where a lot of those memes that went around were about sort of catching the pedophiles,
00:12:30.000catching the traffickers. You know, we have to find the evil people and we have to root them out
00:12:33.760of our society. And that's not where the threats to children come from. The threats to children
00:12:37.820are primarily in the family. A lot of it is things like homelessness. There's very few youth homeless
00:12:42.840shelters in most cities in America. There's also a completely broken foster care system. So when
00:12:48.360you look at things like the sort of missing and exploited child hotline, 80% of the calls are
00:12:53.940coming from foster care. So when we talk about trafficking, we're mostly talking about runaways.
00:12:58.260We're mostly talking about kids who are abused at home, abused in foster care, they're queer, they're trans, they need a place to stay. They don't need somebody else to go to jail forever. And when we're sharing these memes that are sort of blaming all of these societal problems on these societal others that we already don't like or a little bit wary of anyway, all we're really doing is contributing to these retributive solutions, which do not make children safer.
00:13:20.680Yeah. And I also think it does kind of come down to what you were talking about before,
00:13:24.540this idea of like wanting to catch the bad guys. That's so much more exciting and fun than,
00:13:30.260oh, we need to confront some of these systemic ills in our society that allow for already
00:13:35.060marginalized people to fall through the cracks. That's boring. It's so much more fun to be like,
00:13:39.120yeah, I'm going to track down these bad guys. Let's take a quick break.
00:13:49.720The new Red Bull Dragonberry and Tropicberry Energizers, now at McDonald's.
00:13:56.620Made with freeze-dried fruit and an electric burst of flavor.
00:14:01.200The all-new Red Bull Energizers, now at McDonald's.
00:14:05.340This product may not be right for you.
00:14:06.980High in caffeine. Details at mcdonalds.ca.
00:14:08.700At participating Canadian restaurants, excluding Quebec.
00:14:10.980Run a business and not thinking about podcasting?
00:14:41.380When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:14:47.260I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:14:53.620I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:14:57.320I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:15:05.400Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:15:09.640I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:15:14.420I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:15:21.940They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:15:25.900But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:15:29.360They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:15:33.000Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:15:40.780If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:15:47.660This 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.
00:15:59.780I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:16:06.960I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:17:08.040and I want to share that story with you in an effort to raise awareness as to what signs to
00:17:12.760look for and to just encourage parents to be more aware of their surroundings and what is going on
00:17:17.900around them. Sorenson said that she overheard the couple making comments about her kid's appearance
00:17:22.920and the man even tried to grab at her child's stroller. But when the couple saw their picture
00:17:27.780being posted on Save the Children forums online, in connection with an attempted kidnapping,
00:17:32.840they came forward to deny any wrongdoing and cooperated with the police investigation.
00:17:37.580Grandparents themselves, they said they had just been discussing their own grandkids, not Sorenson's kids.
00:17:42.880Their daughter says Sorenson's allegations were racially motivated because her parents are Latino.
00:17:48.220Police cleared the couple of any wrongdoing and closed the case.
00:17:51.480And Sorenson says that she shared her story just to warn other parents to remain vigilant.
00:17:55.880But this is a great example of why sharing stories just for awareness is not always a helpful thing to do.
00:18:01.560It also overemphasizes the idea that white kids are at risk for being kidnapped by strangers from public places and affluent suburbs,
00:18:09.080which when it comes to trafficking is exceedingly rare,
00:18:11.940while deemphasizing that the existing threats out there are much more likely to be family members or trusted community members preying on vulnerable people,
00:18:19.600and that those targeted are more often than not marginalized youth, queer kids or trans kids or kids facing poverty or homelessness.
00:18:26.100Like someone who's kidnapping children and taking them across state lines and keeping them in motel rooms and forcing them to have sex with people, which almost doesn't exist.
00:18:35.140I mean, the number of confirmed cases of that, you can almost count on one or two hands.
00:23:49.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:23:53.800I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:23:58.260I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:24:05.340They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:24:09.780But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:24:13.220They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:24:16.860Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:24:25.300If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:24:31.260This 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.
00:24:43.720I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:24:50.820I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:24:53.960From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:25:00.740It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:25:07.860Whether 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.
00:25:17.440Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:25:45.180But what about when women talk about people they know abusing their power?0.98
00:25:48.480People in their communities or in their own homes?
00:25:51.320Even though the actual threat is much more likely to be someone you know, not a stranger in a van, women are not always supported when we speak up about it.
00:26:00.000I do think as a society, it's okay for women and families to call out like quote unquote bad guys if they're scary monsters showing up in a van.0.86
00:26:11.220But if it's somebody that lives with somebody in your family, somebody in your church, somebody in your community, like we're pretty uncomfortable with women, you know, calling out people in those positions who abuse their power.
00:26:22.360But if somehow it's like totally fine if you're thinking of it as like calling out a bad guy in a van.
00:26:29.120And that's also that's another aspect of marginalization, right?
00:26:30.940That if it's a poor mother, maybe she's a single mom, maybe she's working two jobs and she doesn't see her kids that much.
00:26:35.920And she goes to some authority and she says, you know, I feel a little bit weird about this soccer coach.
00:27:11.600And, you know, you talk a little bit, you talked a bit about, like, zip ties on your car and people hiding under your car.
00:27:17.560Like, what role do you think that local media and also law enforcement has to play in this?
00:27:23.900Because I've read articles where on its face, it would appear that a police officer or somebody in law enforcement has confirmed, yes, we saw this zip tie on the cars and this is a trafficking thing.
00:27:35.580But actually, when you like dig, dig, dig a little deeper into it, you're like, OK, this police officer is confirming that this person called the police and they came for this reason.
00:27:43.400But it's not actually there's not actually any proof that like this was tied to a trafficking attempt.
00:27:49.400What role do you think that journalists and law enforcement should play in making sure that these panics don't spin out of control?0.63
00:27:55.260One of the ones, I think it was last summer, maybe last fall, was these poor people had0.95
00:28:00.520their wedding and they had some flowers left over from their wedding and they thought it
00:28:03.980would be cute to put them on people's car in a parking lot.
00:28:07.200And then people came out to their cars and found a flower and they freaked out.
00:28:19.780And what was amazing was the cops sort of like reinforced this.
00:28:24.580It's like, oh, you know, we've had threats recently of trafficking.
00:28:27.540You know, we've heard rumors of trafficking.
00:28:29.260And of course, the local media reinforces this too, that, you know, trafficking is a
00:28:32.600huge problem in this area and it could happen to anyone, but not in this particular case.
00:28:37.240And there's no sort of attempt to debunk the meta myth here that people are staking
00:28:43.140you out in parking lots to kidnap you.
00:28:45.660Like that, even for like truly evil people, that doesn't make that much sense.
00:28:49.840Parking lots are really, really public and it's like broad daylight.
00:28:52.460And why would you leave a flower to, like, communicate with the other traffickers?
00:28:57.220Like, just text the other traffickers.
00:28:58.960Like, it doesn't make any sense on any level.
00:29:01.060But we get this weird credulity, especially around this issue, that, you know, one of the tenets of journalism is you're supposed to do sort of both sides, right?
00:29:10.220We saw this for climate change for years, right?
00:29:11.940Like, there's the people that say that climate change is real, and then there's the whack jobs who say that it's not, but we have to put both of them on the air, right?
00:29:18.960But then weirdly, when it comes to trafficking and these other stranger danger myths, there's
00:29:22.960no need to speak to like actual sex workers who are like, uh, this is not how sex work
00:29:37.620So it's just really frustrating that there isn't the same level of scrutiny and the same
00:29:42.080journalistic standards applied to these kinds of stories that hit something like really
00:29:46.200deep within us of like, oh, this is the danger I have to worry about. Yeah. I think I hadn't even
00:29:51.180thought about that, but it's a good point. And I, part of me wonders if it's a little bit of,
00:29:57.060of hesitation because, and I struggle with this as well. You don't want to feel like you're
00:30:01.800invalidating somebody's experience, right? Like if somebody feels like they were targeted or they
00:30:07.400were like something sketchy was going on, I want people to feel like that experience is okay to
00:30:13.060talk about. But I also don't want someone to use that experience to feel something that's just not
00:30:18.700true that's going to result in more harm. Right. And there's also there are real cases of this
00:30:23.040happening. I mean, this is one of the challenges with moral panics is that most moral panics,
00:30:27.260they never come from nothing. Right. We had this massive panic in the 1980s and 1990s about,
00:30:32.000quote unquote, stranger danger that, you know, kids were going to come and steal your kids.
00:30:35.460And like there were some truly horrific, awful, heartbreaking cases where this really did happen.
00:30:40.140This is why, this is how we got all of these, you know, Jacob's law and Megan's law and all these laws that are named after kids and things like the Amber Alerts.
00:30:47.960So there were real cases, but the problem is that these very small number of truly heartbreaking true cases get expanded into this massive national problem that we all need to be worried about.
00:30:59.300And it very quickly becomes this thing of like, well, if it saves one child, right, we can sacrifice our civil liberties, we can incarcerate a bunch of people on sort of spurious grounds if it saves one child.
00:31:11.640And one thing, you know, as somebody who is a urban cyclist and somebody who takes like urban safety very seriously, this is not a standard that we apply to the lives of children in other contexts, right?
00:31:23.540If you want to save the life of one child, you'd crack down on guns. Guns kill 3,000 kids a year. Cars kill 6,000 kids a year, right? You could make the speed limit in every single city 15 miles an hour throughout the country and you would literally save the lives of like 1,500 kids because most kids are killed by speeding cars.
00:31:41.400But that's not a sacrifice that we're willing to make, because that's something that I would have to sacrifice. I would have to drive slower. Whereas whenever it comes to these, you know, if it saves the life of one child, these kinds of sacrifices, it's always somebody else who's going to make the sacrifice. It's somebody else who's going to go to jail. The effects of this are going to be inflicted on a societal outgroup.
00:32:01.900So this entire logic of like, you know, we must do this to save one child, that's great
00:32:07.300logic, but it's not a logic that we apply to any other social problem.
00:32:52.580I will say just on these kinds of things, it's never strangers.
00:32:57.860It's never like these kinds of monomyths, anything that looks like the sort of, remember the flashing your high beams, gang initiation stuff.
00:33:39.820It's so funny because I went back and listened to the episode that y'all did about sex trafficking and the list of things that they tell young people to look out for that could be signs of trafficking.
00:33:48.460things like if somebody is moody or if somebody all of a sudden starts dressing different or
00:33:53.580wearing different clothes or if they get a barcode tattoo as somebody who grew up kind of you know
00:33:58.420gothy goth adjacent alti adjacent i knew two different people who had barcode tattoos right
00:34:04.560all of the warning signs of trafficking are like teenage stuff it's like oh she's moody or like
00:34:10.640like her taste in music changes you're like that's not a sign of trafficking that's a sign
00:34:15.220of teenager-ness yeah it's a sign a sign of adolescence yeah so another i mean another
00:34:21.140like rule of thumb is just don't share anything involving trafficking basically like i think
00:34:25.060this this word this whole field is so tainted at this point that it's just not useful to share any
00:34:31.440of the viral post statistics like until we know more just like hold off on the trafficking stuff
00:34:37.440gang yeah that's that's great advice i would also say like not that i think that any celebrities
00:34:42.380listen to this listen to my podcast but uh when well-meaning celebrities get involved in a
00:34:48.260trafficking campaign shut it down right like i'm sure you're a good guy don't use it don't
00:34:54.000it upsets me when i see celebrities who i'm sure like their heart is in the right place
00:34:58.240but like getting involved in trafficking campaigns that are tied to specific legislation like
00:35:05.520festa fosta it's like oh like it just is such a bad look on such a complicated issue yeah i think
00:35:11.000The biggest thing is that the trafficking field right now is this weird unholy alliance between very well-meaning celebrities and I think well-meaning people and not well-meaning mostly Republican legislatures who want to use this as an excuse to crack down on immigration, to crack down on sex work, to crack down on children, anything that they perceive as posing a threat to children, which is mostly like trans people.0.63
00:35:37.720So I think anytime we have any bills being pushed by these super Republican legislators, I think just like be careful with that stuff. Like anytime you have the religious right and the Republican Party pushing one of these bills, like just slow down and like ask actual sex workers, like what is in this bill and are you in support of it?
00:36:00.100Like, over and over again, we end up talking over the groups that actually get affected by this and just, like, know some sex workers, follow a bunch of sex workers online and see what they're mad about.
00:36:09.040And, like, they are not mad about this kind of stuff.
00:36:12.260They're mad about the legislators that are trying to take their rights away again.
00:36:16.360There is so much to say about how we talk about trafficking online, especially on TikTok, where so many viral claims about trafficking take off.
00:36:24.340Next, we'll hear from Jessica, who goes by Bloodbath and Beyond on TikTok, about her
00:36:29.320use of TikTok to spread accurate information about trafficking.
00:36:32.820When we start drowning out that conversation, we're not only are we not letting that get
00:36:39.120the spotlight where it really needs to be the forefront of this conversation, we are
00:36:42.860also hurting the actual victims directly themselves because we're creating this idea and this
00:36:48.040culture around what trafficking looks like and what the average victim looks like.
00:36:51.160So when a victim comes forward and says, I think I was sex trafficked or I need help, people are less inclined to believe them because we've created this narrative that most trafficking victims are innocent, upper middle class white women getting kidnapped from Target.
00:37:10.380If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing.
00:37:17.880Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi?
00:37:21.160We'd love to hear from you at hello at tangody.com.1.00
00:37:24.400Disinformed is brought to you by There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:37:27.140It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.
00:37:30.020Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.
00:37:32.160Tari Harrison is our supervising producer and engineer.
00:37:35.140Michael Amato is our contributing producer.