00:03:46.960I spoke to Ryan Broderick, tech writer and editor of Garbage Day, a newsletter about memes and the Internet, about the trial, the verdict, and what it all says about the Internet.
00:03:56.600So, you know, tell us about how you came to be somebody who studies and pays attention to memes and what they tell us about society.
00:04:04.960My villain origin story, I suppose, started in college.
00:04:08.160I was a journalism major and I liked the internet a lot. And I didn't understand why no one in my
00:04:12.960journalism classes wanted to talk about what was happening on the internet. I was reading all these
00:04:16.820great websites all the time and none of my professors wanted to deal with it. And so I guess
00:04:21.560out of spite, I started to pay more and more attention to what I was seeing on the internet.
00:04:25.520And then when I started to do my first like jobs and internships, there was a lot of stuff happening
00:04:30.900online that no one was talking about. So I thought, okay, this will be like my way in. And I never
00:04:34.680really moved past that. I've always just been really interested in how people use the internet
00:04:38.800in technology. I'm a fan of sci-fi, so I suppose that's kind of a part of that as well. And now I
00:04:46.640read a newsletter called Garbage Day, which is about memes, trends, technology, forecasting,
00:04:51.440stuff like that. And I have a podcast called The Content Minds, which is me and a friend named
00:04:55.980Luke Bailey. He's the head of audience development for the iNews in the UK. And we basically get in
00:05:02.840like long protracted fights about what's happening on Twitter every week. That's my pitch for the
00:05:07.780show. Yeah, no. And it's good. It's a good time to write about the internet and to think about
00:05:13.780the internet because I think after the Trump era where things got very annoying, we're now in this
00:05:20.320moment of like infinite possibility. And there's all these really interesting stories happening,
00:05:23.760whether it's crypto, the metaverse, TikTok memes, fandoms that are going feral. It's all just really
00:05:30.900good stuff. And I feel like I've been waiting many years for this level of internet pop culture
00:05:37.500breakthrough. I mean, that's actually a great place to start talking about this trial. You know,
00:05:43.480in a piece for Polygon, you wrote, the trial has set off a toxic fandom bomb, as major social
00:05:49.840platforms incentivize the worst human behavior possible to drive up their engagement metrics.
00:05:54.060And during Depp v. Heard, the defensiveness, ugliness, and outrage cycle of online fan
00:05:59.060communities has infected every corner of the web like a virus taking shape of the content that does
00:06:04.180well on those platforms so tell us you know what you mean by that and what like how have you seen
00:06:10.420this trial playing out online yeah i mean it's definitely an evolution of something i think we
00:06:15.600saw a lot on spaces like tumblr and reddit 10 years ago when fandoms were kind of still more
00:06:22.180niche you know the uh that we i'm really kind of obsessed with that weird period of time between
00:06:26.640let's say like the uh breaking bad starting and the walking dead starting and then like the last
00:06:33.900season of game of thrones and in that weird period of time you go from fandoms being still
00:06:38.520kind of niche nerdy things that only kind of pop up during comic cons and things like that to
00:06:43.560essentially uh the the mainstream like uh the disney adults the harry potter adults these
00:06:50.520people who may have been teenagers or in college 10 years ago, and now they're adults. And they're
00:06:58.060acting like adults, but they're also still obsessed with fandoms. And the internet has
00:07:02.360evolved beyond these small corners on Tumblr and Reddit. So now that this is super mainstream
00:07:06.840everywhere. And I think in a lot of ways, the really disgusting, and I think it is disgusting
00:07:12.180behavior that people were engaging in around this trial is the manifestation of those fandom spaces
00:07:21.740just not going away and becoming more entrenched. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact
00:07:26.620that we live in a time of deeply consolidated pop culture. Disney owns everything, and stuff
00:07:32.540that they don't own is owned by Netflix, and stuff that they don't own is owned by Warner Brothers.
00:07:35.440And that's kind of it. And so these companies, I think they feed into this, they, they, they sort of feed the beast. And these fandoms have become extremely powerful, extremely engaging, extremely sticky culturally. And they, they don't, they, they're just full of people who act outrageous all the time and are, and are, and in my opinion, getting worse because, you know, you may have seen like fandom blogs fighting with each other as teenagers on Tumblr 10 years ago.
00:08:05.060But now these are, like, full-grown adults spending sometimes, like, $35,000, I read.
00:08:10.120One woman paid that much to go to the trial and, like, bring alpacas so that Johnny Depp could pet her alpacas in case he was feeling depressed.
00:08:20.980And no one seems to be thinking it's absurd, which is even crazier to me.
00:08:25.080One of the things is that I want to talk specifically about the Daily Wire and, like, what this trial might mean for, like, right-wing types.
00:08:32.420But I don't want to give the impression that it's all, you know, I don't know.
00:08:36.860I guess when I first heard about this case, I was like, it's clearly like right wing types, men's rights, incels.
00:08:42.240But it's also like this mixed bag of, I guess, like fandom types.
00:08:48.180Can you give us a little breakdown of who you see the major players as?
00:08:51.260Yeah. So I've tried to sketch out this landscape.
00:08:53.400And unfortunately, I have to kind of make like these vague summaries.
00:08:58.260You know, I have to kind of because you're talking about blobs of culture.
00:09:01.480um so think of it like this i would say a large chunk of the people who were pro johnny depp
00:09:08.040are disney adults people who genuinely miss johnny depp uh they have like a nostalgic
00:09:14.720attachment to him whether it's the pirates of the caribbean franchise or some other thing that he's
00:09:19.180a part of and they they want him back and they feel like he shouldn't have been removed from
00:09:22.680pop culture you also have released the snyder cut people the uh the these like fans of the dc
00:09:30.140entertainment universe who believe that Amber Heard's like interpersonal drama with Johnny Depp
00:09:35.120to put it very lightly was impacting their ability to see new superhero movies and a lot of those
00:09:41.540guys are the same guys who make YouTube videos about Star Wars characters they don't like who
00:09:47.060just so happen to be women or people of color and they're the same guys who are probably teenagers
00:09:51.880during the Gamergate era so I sort of see that as like the same man the same like horrible Reddit
00:09:57.500YouTube man. You also have men's rights activists who see this trial as a proxy battle for Me Too.
00:10:04.560They believe that the Me Too movement went too far, even though nothing happened to any of the
00:10:09.580powerful men really. But they believe it went too far and now this is a way to pull back and fix
00:10:15.360things so that powerful men can continue being shitheads. You do have right-wingers, though they0.98
00:10:23.560were pretty late to the trial and we'll talk about the daily wire in a second but they they
00:10:28.680really actually struggled to insert themselves into this because i don't think this was like
00:10:32.440really their battlefield um you also have and this is very interesting because johnny depp was removed
00:10:38.500from the fantastic beast franchise which is a prequel series to harry potter you have harry
00:10:45.100potter adults who believe that him being removed from the franchise screwed up the success of that
00:10:49.460franchise. And because you have Harry Potter adults, and because J.K. Rowling is such a vicious
00:10:53.920anti-trans activist, you have TERFs as well. You have trans-exclusion radical feminists. So it's
00:11:00.880this really bizarre blob of some of the worst obsessive people on the internet who have all
00:11:06.840rallied around this one trial because they've decided this is the trial that will also dictate
00:11:12.160their weird obsession and its relevancy in popular culture.
00:11:18.140Wow. Yeah. I mean, talking about the Harry Potter stans and turf types, way to be feminist,
00:11:27.240smearing a woman who was a survivor of domestic violence. I guess that really shows how deep
00:11:33.080their feminist ideology goes. Yeah. I interviewed this. She's unbelievable. Her name is Amanda1.00
00:11:41.000i interviewed her for my polygon piece she used to work at tumblr now she does like trends research
00:11:46.080and and i couldn't use this quote because it was just like it was so much to put in the piece but
00:11:51.180essentially she she was sort of arguing that the same women who were or young girls who were bullying
00:11:57.120other women and girls on tumblr 15 years ago are now the ones like threatening to murder amber
00:12:04.080heard on tiktok as as like full-grown adults wow and it's that same toxic strain of fandom and like
00:12:10.640a very particular fan fiction archetype of like loving the um the really toxic character that
00:12:18.060like i can fix him type um the raylos the uh the women who believe that like ray should have ended
00:12:24.200up with kylo ren and star wars like this very specific kind of thing seems to be happening
00:12:29.720around a real person and they don't seem to understand that like johnny dev isn't any of
00:12:33.840his characters he's like uh from all accounts a very bad person um i hope that it's not defamatory
00:12:40.760to say i believe he's a bad person um and these a lot of it is is is not right-wingers it's not
00:12:48.860politically motivated it's like women who are like getting tattoos of his lawyer and then oh my god
00:12:55.440did you see that they were writing erotic fan fiction about johnny depp hooking up with his1.00
00:12:59.240lawyer like just insane nonsense like craziness like I would say go outside but they are going
00:13:05.440outside they're going to the trial which is so much worse like stay inside maybe I don't know
00:13:09.500it's just it's awful yeah I mean I I know exactly that type and I think a lot of Johnny Depp's uh
00:13:15.600the different characters that he's portrayed really feeds into it that like you know you
00:13:20.280look at like Edward Scissorhand like oh I'm like a like a really quiet sweet soul who's very
00:13:54.780has a series of extremely toxic relationships with other people so like yeah he's not like
00:14:00.020your small being that you can like fix you know exactly and i think you bring up fandom and i
00:14:06.080think that really explains this phenomenon with the trial that i don't know that i've ever really
00:14:10.680seen before which is the way that it has been memed and turned into these like fan videos
00:14:15.540particularly on tiktok you know i am someone who i'm not too proud to admit that like i spent a lot
00:14:21.360of time hyper analyzing famous people that I had crushes on to be like, oh, he there was a longing
00:14:27.780glance here. So that means this. And I see the way that these videos have really flooded internet
00:14:33.600spaces where they have the tinge of fan videos. Have you seen this? Yeah, no. In fact, my co-host
00:14:39.960Luke Bailey on our podcast pointed out that it's essentially the same behavior that was behind
00:14:44.900the Larry shipping from One Directioners. The idea that Liam and Harry were secretly a couple
00:14:50.340And you could prove it by hyper analyzing their hands, touching each other during a press conference. It's the same stuff we see with BTS as well. You know, it's this idea. And in my opinion, it also ties in with our obsession with true crime at the moment. It's this idea that there's so much media being produced. There's so many videos and images and takes and spins on a thing that I think as human beings, we assume that all of our answers can be found there.
00:15:20.340it's the same thing we saw the gabby petita disappearance is the same thing we see with
00:15:23.560like all of these tiktok trends where it's like your brain almost goes like okay if if there's
00:15:28.880a live stream of the trial and there's so many ways to watch the trial i must be able to figure
00:15:35.400out exactly what's going on because if i'm not able to do that that's almost like it's like
00:15:39.920psychologically upsetting the idea that like you could be lied to by what you're seeing with your
00:15:44.980own eyes and and i think if i want to give a benefit of the doubt to anyone involved with
00:15:49.660making some of this like horrible content on tiktok i think that's what's going on is this
00:15:54.160idea like oh of course i could figure out if he's lying or not or she's lying because like
00:15:58.240if i couldn't then i can't trust anything that i see you know um maybe that's what's happening
00:16:04.120yeah i think that's right and i think like with discovery there's just so much content so many
00:16:09.900videos so many text messages that it's i think that we i think it really demonstrates that we've
00:16:15.500created an internet landscape that is really that incentivizes i guess conspiratorial thinking that
00:16:20.780like there must be some way to put this all together to prove that she is like a gone girl1.00
00:16:24.680style lying bitch who has been for years you know coalescing to take this man down right even though0.98
00:16:32.140that seems so outlandish i almost believe that our internet spaces are like incentivize things1.00
00:16:37.860that are the more outlandish they are the more like difficult to believe they are the more
00:16:41.880traction they'll get. Yeah, I think that's true. And as someone who stares at this stuff all day
00:16:47.020long, I want to really be really clear. I'm not someone who believes that internet users are
00:16:50.820inherently bad or inherently act crazy. I think they respond to incentives and they respond to
00:16:57.780different user experience choices. And I think right now on the internet, there is not a single
00:17:03.680social network that does not sort of incentivize acting like a complete maniac. I think they all
00:17:09.500give you like a weird point system that rewards the worst behavior imaginable, whether that's
00:17:15.780through retweets or likes or upvotes or your audio trending or whatever it is. And so when it comes
00:17:23.340to a moment like this trial, there's not a place you can go on the internet that's not going to0.63
00:17:27.400give you more points for being more insane. And that's just a really sad thing. I wonder what
00:17:34.100discord conversations have been like, because that's a place where maybe you're not incentivized
00:17:38.140to be awful although maybe you are i don't know i i just think that like it's it's unfortunate that
00:17:43.580the majority of the people who are following this trial we're following it through tiktok
00:17:47.580and youtube which are platforms that will reward you for being more extreme
00:17:53.480and more annoying than the next person
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00:18:24.520canadian restaurants excluding quebec run a business and not thinking about podcasting
00:18:28.860Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify
00:18:33.780and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined.
00:18:38.960So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend
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00:18:48.040Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-iHeart to get started. That's 844-844-iHeart.
00:18:56.520when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent
00:19:04.200my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart
00:19:10.240and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying
00:19:17.880shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable
00:19:24.520So I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.0.66
00:19:29.980I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:19:37.360They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:19:41.340But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:19:44.780They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:19:47.920Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:19:56.860If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:20:02.800This 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.
00:20:15.280I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:20:22.380I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:20:25.820From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:20:31.920It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:20:39.440Whether 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.
00:20:49.000Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:21:16.620try to glean whether or not someone is lying
00:21:18.800or telling the truth based on the way they use their hands
00:21:21.140or purse their lips in videos of the trial.
00:21:23.900And even though it's kind of a bunk pseudoscience,
00:21:26.940claims about body language to depict Amber Heard as a liar
00:21:30.260have flooded the internet discourse about the trial.
00:21:33.240On YouTube, you're rewarded and you can kind of be like, celebritized. Like I've seen all of these like, body language experts, scare quotes around that, or like, legal experts or whatever, really making platforms off of like, like, commenting on this trial in a way that I'm not sure that's healthy for our understanding of what's happening. I'm not sure it's like a healthier internet ecosystem when that is so incentivized to the point where you can really make a name from it.
00:22:00.340Yeah, I mean, like, let's be clear, like, there's no such thing as a body language expert. Like, there's just not like, like, there's like, like, our artificial intelligence stuff would be much better if we could give it information from body language experts, they don't exist. It's not a thing. Like, there's really, and yet, and yet there is this desire to have that because, you know, it's like, if someone's on camera, like, you want to be able to get inside their head and know what they're thinking, but it's not possible. It's just not like, and also, I mean, I don't want to get too
00:22:30.340like serious but like a traumatized person an abused person an allegedly abused person
00:22:35.680is probably not going to act in public the way you think they act or think they should act this
00:22:41.420is actually very similar to the the couch guy stuff on tiktok so if you don't know if your
00:22:46.020listeners don't know a girl walks in to surprise her boyfriend the boyfriend doesn't react positively
00:22:51.760or negatively he just sort of looks stunned there's a girl on the couch next to him people
00:22:55.540start making conspiracy theories that he was cheating and he got caught cheating none of it
00:22:59.140was seems to be real but i think what's like a really interesting dynamic sometimes with tiktok
00:23:04.320in particular is that when like video footage hits tiktok of real life that doesn't look like
00:23:11.240the cinematic version that we're used to people assume it's not real but that's like saying like
00:23:16.720oh i can't recognize real life because it doesn't look like a movie and kids on tiktok are reacting
00:23:23.260really aggressively when that happens because it like makes them uncomfortable and i think that was
00:23:26.980a part of this as well, another dimension to this trial. Oh, my gosh. I mean, I don't want to get
00:23:31.340too far off base, but we did an episode about why so many like fabricated videos claiming to be from
00:23:39.160Ukraine during the invasion were able to like people believe them. And part of it is that we
00:23:44.300have something going on where we expect things to look cinematic. And so people were able to
00:23:50.020take things from movies or video games or cartoons and be like, oh, this is what's happening in
00:23:53.860ukraine and people believed it because of our because of our need to have things be so cinematic
00:24:00.600and i think we're i think we're losing our ability to tell when something is real or something is0.97
00:24:06.040kind of bullshit because of it i think it's worse i think we prefer the bullshit because it's more0.98
00:24:10.680comfortable like i if you if you're faced with like raw life in a video it's actually pretty0.99
00:24:18.540uncomfortable it's like it's like like you know the ukraine stuff was is is disturbing because
00:24:23.540it doesn't look like a movie there's no like action hero running through the crowd like saving
00:24:27.020people it's like it's awful it's weird if you're watching it like essentially a trial about
00:24:31.880defamation regarding a domestic violence allegations it's not gonna look like you know
00:24:38.540mr smith goes to washington it's gonna look like a really sad weird dissolution of an extremely
00:24:44.640toxic relationship and it's not gonna look good it's not gonna be funny and it's probably not
00:24:48.960gonna be comfortable to watch it with the we the we storm song oh my gosh why why did that song
00:24:55.420become the song of this trial it's bizarre to me because it didn't hurt didn't physically hurt me
00:25:02.120i have never seen a trial be memed the way that this trial was you know that catchy little song
00:25:08.960you hear when you log on to a nintendo we doot doot doot doot doot doot well if you're thinking
00:25:14.620that no one would ever use such a cheery, upbeat song
00:26:10.060a la the climactic scene from the film Legally Blonde.
00:26:13.140Now, it's clear to me why a brand would want to get in on this.
00:26:16.940According to BuzzFeed, that one piece of content is Milani Cosmetics' most watched TikTok ever with 5 million views.
00:26:24.480Now, prior to this, none of their videos had ever broke 500,000 views.
00:26:28.040But it's pretty distasteful for a makeup brand to benefit from weighing in on a trial about domestic violence using a cutesy meme on TikTok.
00:26:35.900And because the jury in this trial was not sequestered, it's entirely possible that jurors also watched all of this play out too.
00:26:42.440It is so weird. Like, I remember that thing where during the trial, Amber Heard said that she used this makeup to cover her bruises and her lawyer held up this makeup palette, Milani.
00:26:54.440And then on TikTok, Milani made this like cutesy response video being like, ooh, it didn't come out until this year. Like, here's our.
00:27:02.420And I think it's two things. I think it's one, exactly like you said, people want a trial regarding abuse to look like a movie where someone's going to catch somebody in a lie and be like, aha, and they're going to break down and admit that they were wrong.
00:27:20.040And I think that, you know, there would be a time where a big brand getting into the conversation about a trial regarding domestic violence, a very serious thing, making a cutesy little meme on TikTok using the Backyardigans song, you know, as the sound.
00:27:40.080And like I said, I just have never seen a trial where people and brands and stuff commented on it.
00:27:45.600Like the way that that should be commented on by the brand, if the brand really wants to get into it, is by like a terse public statement, not a cutesy little meme TikTok video.
00:27:55.240I mean, you bring up a really good point.
00:27:57.740And this is like a thing that we're currently in the middle of, and I'm curious how it will end.
00:28:01.780I assume a brand will go too far and this will stop.
00:28:08.200But as of right now, brands are sort of in this post-Trump internet era, trying to figure out how they can insert themselves into online conversations.
00:28:19.880And, you know, for the last like five years, it's actually been pretty unsafe for a brand to exist on the internet because everything is political.
00:29:35.500run a business and not thinking about podcasting think again more americans listen to podcasts
00:29:41.580than ad-supported streaming music from spotify and pandora and as the number one podcaster
00:29:46.300iheart's twice as large as the next two combined so whatever your customers listen to they'll hear
00:29:51.140your message plus only iheart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio
00:29:56.120think podcasting can help your business think iheart streaming radio and podcasting let us show
00:30:02.220you at iHeartAdvertising.com. That's iHeartAdvertising.com. When I was 14 years old,
00:30:08.960I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived and I've spent my life exploring how
00:30:15.480other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart and these are the
00:30:21.300Survivor Files. I just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say0.96
00:30:29.500anything. Every week I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up
00:30:36.980without a doubt he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my
00:30:43.860bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:30:51.220But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make
00:30:56.940it out alive listen to the survivor files with elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple
00:31:03.340podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts if your bookshelf and your for you page are equally
00:31:09.220important to your personality welcome home this is prose society the weekly podcast that's part
00:31:16.560book club part group chat for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks
00:31:21.280pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every
00:31:26.480week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone
00:31:30.840can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. So obsessed.
00:31:35.860From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments,
00:31:40.720nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:31:46.840characters, then that is the Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives,
00:31:51.560smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too
00:31:56.460much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
00:32:02.940or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.
00:32:11.480Let's get right back into it. So I didn't pay very close attention to the trial when it was
00:32:16.120happening. And I think I see now that part of the reason why that is, is because I had been swayed
00:32:21.140by a deliberate campaign to create doubt and fog. You know, people who weren't really paying
00:32:26.080super close attention, but who were seeing lots of content on social media about the trial.
00:32:30.820And I also really didn't see a lot of people speaking up in support of Heard.
00:32:34.380I just kept seeing these snippets of the trial that painted Amber Heard in this really negative
00:32:38.480light. So I think I honestly just assumed that this must be some sort of complicated situation
00:32:43.760where the truth is somewhere in the middle. But if you look at reporting from people like
00:32:47.940journalist Michael Hobbs, who's been chronicling the trial, you can check out some of his reporting
00:32:52.040in the show description, Amber Heard told a plausible evidence backstory of abuse.
00:32:57.520So why did so many of us, like me, just kind of stay out of it?
00:33:04.220I have to say, like, I feel a little bit, like, guilty slash weird. I didn't really engage on
00:33:11.300this trial until pretty recently. And I think part of it was that, like, probably like a lot
00:33:16.100of people, I'm kind of what you might describe as like a low information person. I didn't follow
00:33:20.460the trial I don't really love spending time digging into like abuse and things like that
00:33:25.820like it's just not doesn't feel good or safe for me and I feel like part of it is I have to admit
00:33:31.240that because of all the information I was absorbing on TikTok and Twitter and YouTube despite the fact
00:33:36.620that I was not interested in this trial not following it at all uh it made it seem as though
00:33:41.600like oh like it's a he said she said like maybe they were abusive toward each other it's so murky
00:33:47.880Just stay out of it. And I now kind of realize I had been sort of taken by a campaign to make me think that, to make me think like, oh, they're either A, Amber Heard must be a psycho lying bitch or B, the story must be that it's, quote, mutual abuse.0.97
00:34:07.300they both sound awful i don't know and i guess i feel a little bit it's hard it's hard to realize0.87
00:34:13.080the role that i personally played in carrying water for people who were interested in misrepresenting
00:34:18.620what was happening in this trial yeah i mean it's not your fault um it's it's not your fault uh
00:34:24.760it's in the best interest of everyone involved to make you think that it's it's in the best
00:34:29.320interest of of platforms like facebook instagram youtube tiktok to make this into a larger narrative
00:34:35.580to make this into a proxy fight and it's in the best interest for all those people who are making0.86
00:34:39.260that content to do that because they're making lots and lots and lots of stupid money on it
00:34:43.840like and that's like the really sad thing is that like the viral nature of this stuff is tied0.90
00:34:49.460directly to capital and you can make a lot of money going really viral posting all kinds of
00:34:54.920breathless updates about this like very sad and weird trial which uh i think is the difference
00:34:59.800between this and the O.J. Simpson trial,
00:36:24.180And it's a right wing astroturfing campaign to make people into pro Johnny Depp supporters.
00:36:29.320And it's like, no, I went through the metrics.
00:36:31.680No one's reading the stuff that the Daily Wire is doing.
00:36:34.880None of the articles they're paying to promote are being read by anybody, which makes me, which is like even weirder to me, which is like they're so far behind the like the Disney ladies doing like Jack Sparrow cosplay in front of the courthouse.
00:36:48.880this is this is like what what it seems to be what they're doing i guess they have some kind
00:36:54.940of advertising budget they got to spend uh you know maybe it's the because of the dark money
00:36:59.840they're getting from like you know republican benefactors or whatever it is they got to spend
00:37:03.720their money so they're spending the money and i think what they're what they're trying to do with
00:37:08.140it is like package it in a way so that i mean actually we we sort of have the answer now which
00:37:13.700is that like the day after the trial kyle rittenhouse goes on twitter and he's like
00:37:17.000I'm thinking about suing CNN or whoever now for defamation. And I think that's why the Daily Wire inserted themselves into this is because they want to make it really clear to other right wing, like activists and, you know, media companies that they can start to weaponize defamation trials in the same way. And that's why they were so like engaged and invested in this trial.
00:37:39.320yeah i think that's right i mean i spent a lot of time trying to figure out like what does this
00:37:45.000mean like why would they be invested but i do think that's part of it and i wonder do you think
00:37:49.500that it's part of it could also be like i don't know i went to the daily wire website just to see
00:37:54.660like what's going on and the first thing i got before even going in was like a pop-up that says
00:37:58.840what is a woman like click here to find more and i wonder if they're like trying to seize on this
00:38:04.380like high engagement thing to to get more people aligned yeah i don't know like come for the you
00:38:11.680know cultural thing that everybody is talking about stay for the like anti-trans anti-black
00:38:16.080nonsense i think that's definitely true i mean their whole business model their whole editorial
00:38:20.180model is like taking a thing is like taking a thing that everyone's talking about and inserting
00:38:26.920themselves into it hijacking it and making it about them they're and they're they're they're
00:38:31.260fairly good at it um you just described like me drunk at a wedding yeah exactly they're just like
00:38:36.120they're like the worst person you've ever met at a party i'm not saying you are i'm saying they
00:38:40.180are uh and they you know nothing they're not going to ask you any questions about yourself
00:38:44.460they just want to talk about whatever they want to talk about over and over again but um they did
00:38:49.120this with the freedom convoy a couple months ago where it was happening in canada and the daily
00:38:53.000wire was largely responsible for it to start going viral in america on facebook and so i think that
00:38:58.380they figured that if they can find these these movements early enough they can like turn up the
00:39:03.620volume for conservatives and then like kick it up all the way to you know fox news or whatever
00:39:08.560and i think that's what they tried to do with this but i think that it was too inherently
00:39:14.340complicated uh like from the fandom perspectives for them to really like monopolize on it what do
00:39:20.960you think it says about our digital ecosystem that you know we have this like kind of bogus
00:39:26.780quote new site that is really more of like a content platform that just has a lot of like
00:39:32.040clickbaity material like what do you think of the fact that like that is seen as a viable
00:39:37.940whether or not it was viable for them because it seems like nobody was really like reading that
00:39:41.800content but like the fact that that is seen as a strategy what do you think it says about our
00:39:45.920digital ecosystem yeah so this is really fascinating um like and and i always use like
00:39:52.400the trump era as as sort of a way to define this new one because we haven't figured out like what
00:39:56.460we're really in yet but this did start to happen during the trump era which is that like all of
00:40:01.580american culture kind of flowed through trump like trump's tweets which was extremely annoying
00:40:07.660and like whatever what happened during the day was set by his twitter account um then that went
00:40:13.580away but the urge to have like a thing that everyone in america all fights about all day
00:40:20.000has stuck. And so trending topics now, at least in America, and in a few other countries I've
00:40:26.660seen this too, but particularly in America, our trending topics aren't really trending topics.
00:40:30.600They're more like capture the flag. So let's say we're talking about the DEP-HERD trial and it's
00:40:38.780trending. Every single community on the internet is going to try to insert themselves into that
00:40:44.420trending topic, not because they particularly care about the trial. Maybe they do, but I'm
00:40:49.220to guess that overwhelmingly what they really care about is attention for their particular cause,
00:40:53.500their particular advocacy, their particular community. And you see this a lot on like every,
00:40:58.260like every side of the political spectrum. Like for instance, like, um, I saw a bunch of people
00:41:02.320immediately after the Uvalde shooting being like conservatives, uh, won't let women have abortions,
00:41:08.780but they will force their children to go to school and then they won't protect them when
00:41:12.580they get to school. You know, I'm paraphrasing and it's like, Oh, but like the abortion debate
00:41:18.360is is one debate and the school shooting debate is another debate but immediately progressive
00:41:22.540activists are like no these are the same debate and it's like but they're they're they're not
00:41:25.820they're really not i mean other than the debate of hating republicans which i can get behind but
00:41:30.000you know like that's how like our brains work now so it's it's like oh it's the depp heard trial but
00:41:36.280it's not just the depp heard trial it's also the entire me too movement it's also the way
00:41:40.760defamation works it's also kyle rittenhouse now wants to sue the washington post it's like all
00:41:44.700of this stuff has to fit the trending thing. And the Republicans are much better at it than the
00:41:51.120Democrats. You have Christopher Ruffo at the Manhattan Institute. He's the grand architect
00:41:55.840of the anti-critical race theory movement that's like spreading through small towns in America
00:41:59.900right now. And he's kind of created the playbook of like, whatever's trending that day, no matter
00:42:05.280what it is, no matter how stupid it is, like literally right now, while we're talking, a bunch0.99
00:42:09.700of Republicans are pissing their pants over a thing that Pizza Hut is doing. And they're pointing1.00
00:42:13.460at pizza hut and being like, this is the sign of all wokeness and it's got to go. And they're
00:42:18.540really good at it. They're really good at just like finding a thing on Twitter and raging about
00:42:22.420it all day, all week, progressives, liberals, leftists, they're not so good at it. And I think
00:42:28.560it's very disorienting for people. And it's supposed to be, you're supposed to feel the
00:42:31.680way you felt, which is like, I don't know what's going on. I'm just seeing everyone yelling about
00:42:35.340it. There must be a reason because they, because like conservatives in particular know that none
00:42:40.040of us have enough time to dig to the bottom of the trash heap and figure out that there's nothing
00:42:43.340there. There's nothing to talk of. It's just, it's, it's nonsense. But if they spew enough
00:42:48.200nonsense, they can distract us long enough to take away our voting rights. That's, that seems
00:42:52.520to be the entire game plan. Oh, that's, I mean, you really said it. And I think that like, that's
00:42:57.200exactly how I felt. I was just like, seems like a bunch of nonsense. I don't have time to get
00:43:02.220involved. I don't have time to have a take. I don't have time to do any investigation. I'm just
00:43:05.900going to tune it out. And yeah, I mean, I think it's like one of the results of, of the, of our
00:43:12.340current internet landscape is that like it's so hard to just have a thoughtful conversation about
00:43:16.760the thing everything is a proxy war like we're no longer able to just have a thoughtful substantive
00:43:21.060conversation about abortion rights or whatever because it's like we're talking about 18 different
00:43:26.640things and it's like i can understand why people are just like nope i'm checking out i'm not going
00:43:31.380to follow it it's too much uh and meanwhile we're all just so like heated and distracted that we're
00:43:36.980just not really able to zero in on what is actually substantively happening yeah and and
00:43:43.500what's even like more insidious is that like for the most part mainstream media disregards anything
00:43:49.820that's happening in the celebrity sphere as frivolous because it's typically seen as something
00:43:53.960that's either written about by women read by women cared about by women you see this reaction with0.97
00:43:58.740kim kardashian stuff she's the most famous woman on earth she's like the marilyn roe of our time0.99
00:44:02.520And yet we don't take her, you know, largely she's relegated to the celebrity pages.
00:44:06.900And so what's crazy and like been driving me crazy watching this is that like this is one of the most like cataclysmic defamation precedents that's ever happened in American history.
00:44:17.180Like this woman was sued over three sentences in an op ed in the New York, in the Washington Post.
00:44:22.220And and no serious journalist for the capital J is freaking out about that.
00:44:26.780that this is a massive blow to press freedom in america because now any man powerful enough to
00:44:32.200hire a legal team and set up a kangaroo court with a live stream somewhere can bully any to
00:44:37.520the fact that kyle rittenhouse immediately was like yeah i'm gonna sue everybody and and because
00:44:41.420this is about two celebrities and this is about like a crazy woman and like her actor husband or
00:44:46.640whatever ex-husband like no one's taking it seriously and i think the conservatives know
00:44:50.580that really well they know that they can insert whatever they want because like you know the the
00:44:55.300the serious men on CNN aren't going to like talk about this with the gravity
00:44:59.860that it requires, which is, which is also, you know, as I said,
00:45:02.800very insidious. I mean, it's very sad because this is scary.
00:45:17.240right wing journalists or like Disney adults on Tik TOK and there's not like
00:45:21.480substantive pushback or like debunking it's just yeah it's so hard to like like basically it's like
00:45:29.260we're playing catch-up i guess like the the the truth and the reality of what's happening is
00:45:33.700playing catch-up and it's so much harder when you have so many people who have been like
00:45:37.020really effectively changing the conversation for a long time yeah and like these people don't care
00:45:43.780if they're if they're wrong like like they're they don't really care if they even understand
00:45:47.820what the trial's about like they don't like i think there's this knee-jerk response from a lot
00:45:53.320of other people where they're like okay like if we can just like get the facts out everyone can
00:45:58.200agree like they used to in the 90s and it's like they didn't that you just couldn't hear them now
00:46:04.640you can hear them and unfortunately some of them can be louder than you and so there's like we're
00:46:09.100in this really weird landscape where it's like we don't have the illusion of cultural consensus that
00:46:14.540we had 20 or 30 years ago. We probably never did. I mean, like to find a grandparent and ask them
00:46:20.700how they feel about like a particular news event from 30 years ago, they're probably gonna have a
00:46:24.100very different take than somebody else. But now it's all happened at the same time. And certain
00:46:30.300communities, certain political movements are better at playing with that chaos, I think,
00:46:36.740than others. And the rest of us just have to suffer because it's super annoying and very confusing.
00:46:42.300On Wednesday, the jury on the trial found that Hurd defamed Johnny Depp in that Washington Post piece from 2018 in which she called herself a public figure representing domestic abuse.
00:46:52.000Depp was awarded more than $10 million in damages.
00:46:54.780You know, you mentioned earlier sort of how big of a precedent this sets, and it's very scary.
00:47:00.420You know, given that we saw the verdict just, I guess, was that yesterday?
00:47:03.440But given that we saw the verdict yesterday that Hurd has to – what did, in fact, libel death, according to the jury, and has to pay back more than her net worth in damages, like, what do you see the impact being in media, in journalism?
00:47:19.020And then just, you know, generally sort of for all of us, for survivors, for the internet, like, where do you see this going?
00:47:25.040Yeah. I mean, the first thing is just like anyone who's experienced domestic abuse, anyone who believes that they've experienced domestic abuse just is not going to feel as confident coming forward about it. I read a statistic yesterday. I think it came from a Rolling Stone piece about how just one advocacy group for domestic violence survivors was saying that hundreds of women immediately heard the verdict and pulled like anything to do with that charity.
00:47:49.400And they didn't they didn't want to go forward with any sort of prosecution or anything they wanted.
00:47:53.840They don't want to do it. So that's that's the immediate impact.
00:47:56.240And that's like that's that's the that's the silent one.
00:47:58.440You know, the next one is that, like, we're going to see much.
00:48:01.920I think we're going to see what's called a chilling effect on free speech, you know, for for the free speech warriors on the right wing.
00:48:07.940They sure don't seem to want the rest of us to speak.
00:48:10.980So, you know, the idea of an op ed like the one that caused this trial happening again is probably much rarer now.
00:48:17.500I think a lot of the reporting that was happening around those kinds of stories won't happen the same way again. You'll need to have harder evidence, tighter reporting guidelines. There'll be more fear of retribution and things like that.
00:48:32.460Um, and then like, I just think that, you know, we, we don't really totally understand
00:48:41.220like what live streaming a trial does to its verdict.
00:48:45.600And that's a kind of a more open-ended one.
00:48:47.900This was a circus and like, you know, and Johnny Depp's legal team, I think sought out
00:48:51.740this particular court because they, and this particular judge, cause they knew it would