Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 677: Viral without Permission

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/clarissajanlim/viral-tiktok-consent-panopticontent

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Before we start, I wanted to say Tom is back. You are Tom. Oh yeah, I mean, I am back. And there is no video today because Tom's, my camera totally wasn't working. Right, Cecil? Yes, that definitely is what happened. It's not like our fantastic employee, Ian.

Pause for standing ovation. Yes, what a fantastic employee. We are truly lucky to have him and that he has final edit of the podcast episodes. Even if we request something removed, he is still the one that does the change and posts it. So we really trust his expertise and candor. Anyway, it's not like Ian installed an updated version of our recording software, which bogged down the computer causing the recorded video to become corrupted, which means no video this week. Yeah, it's definitely my fault. I don't know how

to computer machine. Bang, bang, I need to download more RAMs. Computer's broken. Broken down. Bing bong noise. Email. So as you can see, this was out of anyone's hands. No one could have foreseen these issues or taken steps to install a previous version of the software to allow us to swap with little to no interruption. Thank you everyone for your understanding and even more so thank you

Ian. Yes thank you Ian. Thank you Ian. Thank you Ian. Ian. Ian. Ian. This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory hole studios in chicago beyond, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad.

It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. This is episode 677. And Cecil, do not be fooled by cheap, bought it on fucking wish imitation Tom that you heard on the last episode. That fucking discount bargain basement diet watered down light flavored Tom can never compare to the original. I just want to say, I just want to say it was a better conversationalist. No, absolutely not. It didn't even sound like you. It literally didn't even sound like you.

It did a terrible job. It did a terrible job. It did a terrible job. There's no way to replace you, John job. There's no way he can replace you, John Henry. There's no way, John Henry. Got your fucking sledgehammer and your whatever the fuck that guy used to die next to a trailer. I'm a fucking steel driving man and I'm dead. And I blew out my heart.

His fucking heart exploded, but he won. And I guess that's a moral victory. I don't even know what that story's about. It's such a terrible story. It's a terrible story, and history tells us the moral of that story is that John Henry is absolutely

obsolete. There's no John Henrys. There are no John Henrys. He made himself obsolete. He obsoleted himself. You're obsolete if you die at work. Like, oh yeah, you know what? They'll never take my job. Just my life.

And you're like, wait, what? And also like, yeah, man, we invented tools to do that. Like someday they're going to invent an outrage tool. If they invent a podcast outrage tool. I'm already an outrage tool. I'm already a podcast outrage tool. I'm already an outrage tool. I'm already a podcast outrage tool. Come on. It's literally my job.

If my voice does sound weird, I promise it's not Cecil talking to the AI. It's just that I am recovering from COVID. Cecil was so gracious and I wanted to pause real quick and say thank you to Eli, to Heath, and to Aaron who all pinch-hitted while I was recovering. So I'm feeling much better. Not in any danger. I feel good. Just got a weird voice and a bit of a

cough, and the rest of it is over, thankfully. You did have a couple rough days, though. I had some rough days. I don't think I was ever in danger, so I don't want anyone to feel worried for me in that way. I was just real fucking sick. I was just like, I was texting with Cesar and I'm like, there's no way I can record. I can't stop coughing.

There's no recording. I was scheduled when I got COVID, I was scheduled to be on God awful movies and do that show. They did a, they, I watched the movie on a Wednesday night, um, because we were recording on Friday and I watched it on a Wednesday, uh, or maybe it was a Tuesday. Actually, I think it was a Tuesday. I watched it on a Tuesday night and it was that, that one with Gina Carano in it about Hunter Biden's kid or whatever it is.

I don't remember what, or Joe Biden's kid, Hunter Biden something. And I watched it and it was fucking terrible. And I remember sitting there being like, I am sick, I don't feel good. And I'm watching this terrible movie. And then the next day I'm like, I popped the COVID test.

And then I immediately had like the worst fever and like chills. And I felt like shit for hours. It was the worst and I sent Eli a message and was like, literally,

I cannot be on your show this week. I'm very sorry and he came back with no problem. I'm sorry, you're feeling sick or whatever but I was scheduled

to be on another podcast after our show recorded or whatever and we were lucky enough to have one in the can already for us. Yeah, I do remember this. So I missed that Thursday.

I missed that Thursday. And then I was able to record the following Thursday. But for about a week and a half, I was fucking sick as fuck, man. It is not fun. It's the worst. Like it was,

it was the worst and like our whole family, like our family got hit simultaneously with norovirus and COVID. Gosh, man. Half of us got norovirus. other half got covid and then you know hayley hayley recovered from norovirus just in time to catch covid it's just been a wow it's been a train wreck so you know to aaron and to eli and heath and cecil to you i mean like for everybody stepping in while i was away. God, I'm so grateful to you guys

because we got fucking hammered over here. You guys- And people sent us some very nice messages. Curveball. There was a bad curveball thrown right at you, man. We fucking absolutely did. But I'm back, baby. No fucking AIs taking my place.

And- I'll blow my heart out of this show. fucking AIs taking my place. And blow my heart out of this show. You were also able to record for our patrons, for our $2 patrons, the story that we're actually going to be talking about for this whole episode. And the story's name is,

it's from BuzzFeed, What Happens When You Become Viral Content Without Your Consent. Tom read this. It's about a littleeed. What happens when you become viral content without your consent? Tom read this. It's about a little under 20 minutes worth of audio. That's for our $2 patrons. So if you are a $2 patron, you got that in your Patreon feed. And so Tom read this BuzzFeed article for them.

And Tom, what did you get? So initial impressions on this. I know that this is sort of hitting a nerve on you that I think a lot of people are not as sensitive as you are about sort of this sort of content when it comes to social media and that sort of thing. So the story that this sort of, real quick, the article centers a story

where some guy is filmed without his consent by a TikToker. And then a TikTok person uses that film and overlays or underlays or whatever a story that is not true about that person. A false narrative. To create a false narrative in order to get like clicks and views and likes and stuff. It's like, oh, you know, like this person done did me wrong

kind of a story, right? And this person had never even met. My boyfriend's supposed to be out of town and I saw him from an Uber. Yeah. Right, right. And this person had no interaction ever with the TikToker

and it's just a way to create viral bullshit. Because, you know, like the internet thrives on content. It needs more content for the machine, right? It constantly has to churn content for the machine. So people go on and they consume, they create stories in order to feed the insatiable need for the content machine yeah and this person was drawn into that and they hated being drawn into that right and i am i am at once sympathetic to that but i'm like i guess like my point of concern doesn't lie as much with like people are going to be shitty about

other people. They're going to write, you could write a story right now called, I'm going to tell you a story about the time Tom burglarized my house. Right. And I never burglarized your house, but you could write that story and you could take pictures of me, you know, and Photoshop them. Like all that stuff is happening and it is wrong every time it happens, right? It's wrong every time that we do that. But as I was reading this article, I was like, why the fuck do we want this content? Like, that was my focus. My focus was like, I guess I'm sort of like, yeah, focus. My focus was like, I guess I'm sort of like, yeah, people are going to take pictures of other people and turn it into bullshit. And we can't stop people from filming us on the street.

And I don't want to be, I don't want to pause at a world where we can't film people on the street. It's what keeps the cops, like not keeps, it's the only thing that will ever keep cops accountable, not keeps, it's the only thing that will ever keep cops accountable, right? We need to be able to film people. It's a good thing, I think, to be able to film people when they're in public. Sure, sure. Because like, how else are we going to keep people who are powerful accountable? Sure. So like, for me, the focus was like, fucking hell, like, why do I want to consume all these fucking micro-narratives?

You know what I mean? Yeah. And I really got to thinking about that. Like, I consume Reddit. I'm not a voracious consumer of Reddit, but I will browse Reddit. And I will browse to be very, like, to tell on myself. I will sometimes browse, like, the more salacious parts of Reddit,

like the, am I the asshole parts of Reddit? Sure. Like I will read that subreddit from time to time. And I was thinking about that in relation to this story, because it's actually the same thing. My desire to read this sort of micro blogging, mini narrative, confessional bullshit.

It like it creates. It creates the sort of like need like the it's, you know, it's no different than like the tabloids need to like constantly get the next fucking paparazzi picture. Why? Because someone buys the tabloid. get the next fucking paparazzi picture. Why? Because someone buys the tabloid. Why did that TikToker feel the need to take a photo or take a video of somebody walking down the street and then lie about it? Well, because they need to create content, but they only need to create the content because we consume that content, because we are voracious about our desire for these like meaningless micro nothings. And that's really the point of like reflection that I had this week.

So that was really my point of reflection was, was less like, is the creation of this content problematic? I mean, it just obviously is, but like our consumption, our desire to want this kind of not nothing because it's Cecil. It's just the most nothing of nothings. Right. Like, and the example is like, Oh, like

here's, I saw my man stepping out with an, you know, while he, who can't, why, why do I care about the micro narrative bullshit of people I've never met? It's so pointlessly voyeuristic in these sort of tiny minuscule ways. Like I think it makes us fucking worse people. It makes us petty. It makes us very petty. And, and I think, I think one of the things that I was thinking when you were talking was, you know, there is a lot of versions of someone putting context-free pictures or something like that. And they've taken out the context that someone had put up and they just posted the picture. And it's a terrible, useless picture.

It doesn't mean anything, right? It'll be like of a dog or something. But someone will say something like, you know, my dog turned six today and he's like the bestest boy or whatever. And that'll get like 20,000 upvotes. And it only got the upvotes because of the context in which they gave the, they framed the narrative. For another instance is if you ever see a fight on there, one of the things that will be listed is something like bully gets payback from student who he's been

bullying all quarter or something. And you have no context. You don't know what's happening. You just see a guy get fucking rocked, right? So you just see a guy get rocked and you're like, I have no context. But someone there is giving you that context. And it's very often it's bullshit.

It doesn't, it's not a thing, right? Well, how often in life does a bully get his ass kicked and it's filmed and exists in perpet thing, right? Well, how often in life does a bully get his ass kicked and it's filmed and, you know, exists in perpetuity, right? I mean, like bullies get away with it because, you know, most of the time they don't get their ass kicked. And so like, this is the one time it just so happened to get filmed

and then it's on the internet and we get to all watch it. Or are you fucking fluffing this up so you can get up dudes? You know what I mean? And that's what this is all about. That's where this, you know, they are the ones who supply this content. And the more sort of salacious or the more justified something is, the more they make it, they build it up to be a thing. Like I said, like a bully getting is a comeuppance is a thing that I think a lot of people desire. And so if they can create that desire in them. And in this instance, it was this woman who was like taking a picture of some random dude. And that random dude was just walking down the street. She snapped the photo and then

she put underneath when your man tells you that he's going to be out of town and you see him while you're driving by in your Uber. Now, she had never met this person before in her life. And this went viral over a million views. And this guy is just sitting there on his phone. And then the comments come in because they all think he's the villain, right? They all think he's the bad guy. Here's somebody I can attack because this person gave me the sort of privilege to enter into their drama. And now I can enter into their drama and I can in some ways, you know, tell this person how bad they are. And this is one of those weird things we do where we want to kind of, you know,

I don't know, mete out justice to someone, right? Somebody did something wrong and we want to mete out that justice. That's what I mean. Literally, look at a lot of our systems in this country, especially our quote unquote justice system. And that's literally what it is. We want to mete out justice, what we call justice. But what we really want is we just want to hurt somebody to make ourselves feel better. And that's really what it's all about. And that's what this is all about. That's what this guy got fucking awful comments, like genuinely awful comments.

And then this woman apologizes in a real sort of shitty way. She apologizes, but then she gets death threats. And you're just like, what is happening, man? Like why? You're giving her death threats for apologizing wrong? Like what is happening? Why? You're giving her death threats for apologizing wrong?

Like, what is happening? Yeah, it's all of it is designed by these systems that we are just players in to create outrage upon outrage, right? There's outrage when this guy does this thing and that gets a million views. Then there's an outrage that she misrepresented. And then there's an outrage that her apology wasn't good. And the point of it, the point of it is to keep us all emotionally tethered yeah but i really was thinking about and like i know like i'm that guy with the fucking social medias but like i don't think i'm wrong like we should be careful about where we emotionally tether ourselves even in these

like small minuscule ways. You know, you're absolutely right. Like you can take any picture or any video and you can caption anything you want underneath it. Right. And it all seems like harmless fun, except for that. Like, even if, even if it's just a picture of a dog, who's the bestest boy. Right. So even like pulling the human element entirely out of it, I'm not convinced that it's really all just harmless fun.

I'm really not. Because what it does also, Cecil, is I think it drives in us and reinforces and pushes our need to seek out and find information that makes us feel good as information. And that's not how we should ever get information. Like we should have like clear lines of departure from that, which is entertainment. And we put it in the entertainment box and that, which is information. And we put it in the information box. But like, when I look at it,

what I mean by that is when I turn on the TV and I watch a Marvel movie, there is no part of me that needs that caption to be true or not true in order for me to feel emotionally engaged. But I'm only emotionally engaged to the TikTok video or the Instagram reel or whatever if I believe at least in some part that the caption reflects something important about the picture. I have to believe the interaction between the caption and the photo

or the caption of the video. So it's encouraging me to believe untrue things unskeptically. So it's encouraging me to believe untrue things unskeptically. It absolutely is emotionally reinforcing that connection between credulity and entertainment. Sure. And credulity and entertainment shouldn't be linked. Like, not just inextricably, they should always, we should always be trying to pull that apart because it isn't harmless, because it encourages us to keep seeking out information that makes us feel good. Because when we're seeking out entertainment, we're seeking it out in these sort of infotainment-esque ways. Yeah. And when you think about Reddit itself,

that's built off of emotional value. So I see something, especially on Reddit, where there's necessity of emotion. Now, I'm not saying all on a Reddit that where there's a necessity of emotion. Now I'm not saying like all of it is, but certainly when you talk about like, like for instance, there's a, there's a subreddit I, I, I sometimes go to called idiots in cars and like, you can watch somebody driving down the road and I don't even, I don't ever, you don't need a thing in there, right? Like you don't need a caption because what you'll see is somebody driving down the road and somebody coming in and like missing him and cutting them off or, or getting in front of him and break checking them and whatever. Right. And so, you know, that itself has its own, it has its own emotion on you because you've been

behind the wheel of a car, you know what it's like to be fucked with and you're angry about it. And so you fucking upvote it. Right. And so it's like built on these systems that make us interact with the content and get us involved in it emotionally. Now, that's not all the stuff because there's plenty of other content out there that's a lot more cerebral and things like that and a lot of discussions that are a lot more cerebral. So I won't want to say it's all, but there are subreddits that specifically feed on that sort of thing. And genuinely think about your feed. Think about the, you know, we talked about this in the past, like when you scroll down on Facebook and there's those fucking, those reels, right? The reels that stop me are almost always somebody making like a, like a, like a tool or somebody's using like a router or somebody's using, I almost always stop at those.

And so the thing sees and it knows now, like the fucking computer in my phone knows and then it'll just fill that all the way up. So every time I scroll down, I'll do that. And so I had to stop scrolling down and stopping at the boobies bouncing up and down and start looking at the other stuff. So it wouldn't be just boobies, but no, but you know what I mean? Like it'll just figure you out. It just knows you, right?

So it's like, I know you and I'll figure your shit out. I know you said a while ago, you're watching guys, like a guy get punched in the face and you're like, well, I'll stop for that. I saw a guy get punched. What's happening? And then now your phone is like, I will show you every guy getting punched in the face forever. Yeah. That's a great point. So the systems have gotten smart enough. I have never interacted with a real. So I have never commented. Well, I guess that's not true. I comment every time I see a Mike Tyson thing, I always comment, this man's a rapist. So I never never commented. Well, I guess that's not true. I comment every time I see a Mike Tyson thing. I always comment, this man's a rapist. So I never, like, because in the comment section, it's always like, greatest of all time.

And I always comment. Anytime I see Mike Tyson, I always comment anywhere, this man is a rapist. So it's like my only thing I ever interact with. But I never like, share, whatever, a reel. And I just don't, you know? But the system knows what I've stopped on. The system knows what I've watched. And I watch, like, I watch fitness stuff, right?

So I watch, and my reels, Cecil, have become this weird, crazy, toxic, masculine space now. My reels are horrible because you're exactly right. Like I have stopped and watched like UFC videos, right? Or like tool videos. Same thing.

Like people building shit. I'm like, ooh, how'd you build that? You know, like that's kind of cool. And like fitness stuff. And so it is decided that I am a certain type of man. Sure. And it shows me this like, right.

It shows me all this and it's gotten increasingly. And Cecil, this is without interacting. This is without sharing, commenting, liking. Without interacting, I am watching these reels. It's just touching it. All you did was touch it. They are moving me further and further to the right. Not me, but they're moving my content further and further to the right with exactly that. I see all this Andrew Tate stuff. I see all this crazy, really

conservative, bad, misogynist marriage advice stuff. I see some really upsetting shit. And I've not even interacted with the reels except for to be like, oh, I like watching UFC. I'll stop. I'll pause real quick and watch that. Yeah. I've heard watch something like that. Here's the other thing too, is that I noticed that they stopped. And this is good for me because I don't like to touch them, but they've stopped and now they just play a tiny little bit. So they want you to touch them so that they can see which ones you're more interested in. Because before it used to have to scroll past them and then they would play all the way through. But they don't do that anymore. So if you scroll down on Facebook, they stop.

They go for like a second and they stop. And so it like piques your interest to do. Anyway, we're getting off a little bit on tangent. We're getting off. But really, it's insidious. It's insidious, right? Because what TikTok is doing, you know, to go to bring it back, what TikTok is doing is they're getting people to, you know, how many TikToks can you look at in a minute? You know, is it 60? You know what I mean? I don't know. I don't know how many you can look through.

Is it a second? Is it two seconds? 30? I don't know. But you know, when something like this crosses, somebody will look at it and be like, oh, what a fucking asshole. This guy's fucking cheating on this girl or he's, he's pretending he's somewhere. He's not, I mean, he's not technically cheating on her because there's nobody with him. He's just, he's by himself. He's just, he's ditching his girl. Why is he ditching his girl? What a jackass. And then maybe they'll be like, well, what is, you know, what is happening with her life? And they click on her and maybe she's attractive. And then they're like, well, shit, what an asshole. And now they're more like invested in,

you know, that person and trying to be like, like, I can't believe somebody would do this. And that's literally what the comments were. When you scroll down the comments, people were like, I can't believe somebody, you're worth more than this guy.

This guy, he's not on your level. And then the other shit, they were like, he's really skinny and ugly. And they were just like attacking him really badly. And he's got it and he's got to fight this. He didn't want it. He was standing on a street corner. He just standing there and then somebody like fills up this thing. No relationship whatsoever fills this thing out. He's now in this situation where he's, he's viral and he doesn't have any control whatsoever over

all this. And, and the other thing that's galling about this. And the other thing that's galling about this, and the other thing that I don't like, is that, like, let's say somebody does this and then they're like, oh, I was just kidding or whatever, and they deleted it. That's not what she did. What happened was, is a bunch of people started fucking commenting and she was playing along with them.

She's like, oh, let's not jump to conclusions. I haven't heard from him yet. She's pretending it's a real thing in the comments. She's playing it up in the comments. So she's created a narrative that she's now going on about and trying to continue that narrative in the comment structure afterwards. And so it's not a good thing. And then the worst part about this is there's no recourse for this guy. What can he do? He can call her out, which is what he did.

And eventually it did get taken down, but it got over a million views. It's not like that didn't help benefit her. A bunch of people probably followed her because of it. And so like, like that's a bonus for her. And then he didn't really get anything out of it. All he did was like,

please take it down. She took it down. And then like she apologized and then she deleted the apology because she apologized. I was like, please take it down. She took it down and then like she apologized and then she deleted the apology because she apologized. I was like, shit. She was like talking about how consent needs to be discussed

or whatever. She used some language where you're just like, what the fuck? But in any case, you know, she's not, she's not,

she didn't, nothing happened to her. He can't do anything about it, you know? And so there's just this, this weird part of his life where he was worried that random people were attacking him for no reason for something he didn't even do. Yeah. Well, it's, it's really striking. Like one, a couple of things that you

said, like really stand out to me. One of them is that the, the incentive structure for these systems has nothing to do with the truth of the content, the quality of the content. All the incentive structures incentivize is the amount of interaction with the content. Yeah. That's the only thing that is. They don't incentivize good interaction, bad interaction. It's not like any other thing that we do, right?

incentivize good interaction, bad and right. It's not like, it's not like any other thing that we do, right? Where it's like, I want to sell a lot of t-shirts that people like. I want to get, you know, if I sell a t-shirt and people like it, they'll buy more too. It's just, even if they hate something, as long as they've interacted with it, then it is good. It is this system incentivizes the interaction itself. So good interactions and bad interactions, as long as they're emotionally powerful, they are equally financially viable. And that should give us all pause. We should look at any system that doesn't differentiate between truth and not truth, between quantity and quality, we should look at that system and be like, why do I want to engage that system? Like, what am I, am I going to be edified

from this? Am I going to get something meaningful out of this? And it's not enough, I don't think, to say, well, I'm entertained by it. Like, you know know what if i went to the fucking roman coliseum i know this is a ridiculous hyperbolic example i would not be bored but that's also not the point right like there are some things where we might say like i don't think this is like a net positive that that i need to have here i don't think that like this is something and it's it's this like i have this phrase in my head. And that phrase is, well, I got an opinion about that. And anytime your knee jerk is like, well, hey, I got an opinion about that. Maybe that's actually a space where you should stop and consider, do you really have an opinion about that?

Are you even sure that that happened at all? Is your opinion about that adding anything meaningful to a conversation? Or are we just, you know, because one of the things this guy got to have in this interaction is he got to have hundreds of people calling him ugly yeah how does that fucking feel to anyone you know like i'll raise my hand like in this doing this show for 16 years we've had our fair share of people like interacting with us in really negative ways and like calling us like ugly and fat and like all kinds of, and it's hairy and gross. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. No, it's not unpleasant. Yeah. Literally nobody likes that. And it's not like, well, it's the internet you asked for.

This guy didn't fucking ask for it. He wasn't even there. That's a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think one of the things too is like, I think there's a couple of different levels of people on the internet, right?

There's these innocent bystanders, these people a couple of different levels of people on the internet, right? There's these innocent bystanders, these people that like, you just got put on the internet and you didn't have any choice of your decision-making to actually go on the internet. Somebody puts you on there, right? Like these people, some of these people might not even have a Facebook account

and somebody take their picture and put them up there and they're like, well, what the fuck? I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be the subject of some TikTok or whatever. That being said, I think there is something to being a person who's putting yourself out there. And I know we do that, right? Like you and I put ourselves out there, right? So, you know, there are moments that somebody says something to me and I have to, I have to let that shit roll off my back sometimes. Sometimes I just have to be like, yeah, man, whatever. I just have to let that roll off my

back. That's how it works. I put myself in the world. I put my face out there. I put my, my voice out there. And if somebody's shitty to me, then somebody's shitty to me. And that's just how it works. It's like, it's okay. You know? And I think that there's, there's also like, there's also like a middle ground between those two. And you know, there was a, there's a show we do citation needed. Right. And so like we do this citation needed show. And, you know, there was a, there was a show, we do Citation Needed, right? And so like we do this Citation Needed show and there's another show out there that like rates podcasts.

They're like really bitchy people who like go listen to podcasts and then they're super shitty about the podcast that they find. And now they didn't like Citation Needed, I think, I'm pretty sure I didn't listen to the show, but they like,

what happened was as soon as they listened to it and they posted it on their feed, a couple of their people came and tweeted at us as like a couple of their people came and tweeted at us as like a couple of their followers sort of went after us. And like, they tried to make fun of us a little. And I was like, whatever, I don't care.

Like fucking, I like the show I put out. Who cares what you think? But, you know, and I didn't pay much attention to it afterwards. But if you look at their thing, at like who they go after, like if they're going after big shows, fine. If they're going after shows even that make money off their shows like us, that's fine. Right? they're going after big shows, fine. If they're going after shows, even that make money off their shows, like us, that's fine. Right? Like, I think we're fair

game. Like, sure. We put a show out there. And if you don't like that show, and if you want to make fun of that show, because that's your, your bit, that's cool. I'm not crazy about you weaponizing your followers, but you know, you do you, whatever you want to do. But you know, some of the shows that they rate or they go after will be like a tiny little show about like some two ladies in Houston that are realtors that are just having a conversation. And they're probably not making any money off the show. They're just having like a small podcast that might have like a hundred listeners. And they're like mercilessly attacking these people. And you're like, okay, see, now there's a middle ground, right? There's a middle ground. Sure. The people who get paid for their content, the people who are out there in the world who are putting themselves out there who have

larger platforms i feel like those people they've got to deal with some shit there's some shit that has to roll to them and that's just okay we're just gonna have to deal with that that's the system that we created it's a democratized system that we all have to sort of buy into but then there's sort of a middle ground where there's just a person who's kind of putting their stuff out there but they're not expecting a ton of people to get at it. And then they just get fucking dogpiled by some shitty podcast that they're fucking bitchy fucks

who want to attack other people. And then you're just like, well, that's just a random, that's like a random couple of moms with a microphone having a conversation that nobody, they don't think anybody's going to listen to. And then you're railing them

on your shitty fucking bitchy podcast. And so like, like I think they're, you know, like, like in a lot of ways, it's weaponizing your own content. And I don't think it's just TikTok. I think there's a lot of people out there that get weaponized content. You and I made a decision years ago. I don't know if you remember this, but we, we covered a woman. She had uploaded herself to TikTok and she had done this prayer and I think she was crying or something. And we covered it on the show and I think the next week you and I had a conversation. We said, we're not going to do that again. If you're just some rando, we're not doing that again. We're not going to just find fucking, because I can find a million fucking random people that are just some random dude who uploaded something.

But if you're actively trying to hurt somebody, we'll cover you. If you're actively one of these large preachers, we'll cover you. But other than that, I'm going to try to stay away. Now, I know we haven't, but I will try to stay away as often as possible from the people who are just some random dude on TikTok.

And I will not watch their content if I can avoid it. I think there's a huge difference between attacking someone's passion project. You know, like that's kind of what you're describing. It's like, oh, this is two moms doing a show because it's like, oh, I'm passionate about, you know, welcome to the, you know, azaleas in Houston hour, you know?

And we're going to talk about azaleas because we love Azaleas. And you're like, look, why, what do you get out of that? What, it is exactly the same point. Like when you're going after, when you're going after people that don't have any power, any influence, then you're bullying. That's just bullying. Yeah.

That's just bullying. It's just straight bullying. But let's just, let's just call it for what it is. Yeah, that's just bullying. It's just straight bullying. you paid if you put out a if you put out a video it goes viral because people dogpiled right they dogpile good or they dogpile bad but to create the dogpile is to generate fucking revenue in these systems and as people we can we can't opt out of being like victimized by that but we can opt out of engaging it as consumers. We can say, you know what? I don't have to dogpile. The thing is too, it won't make your evening any better. You won't remember having done it. It doesn't matter to you. If you stopped doing it,

I guarantee to you, listener, I guarantee to you, if you just never it here i guarantee to you listener i guarantee to you if you just never do it again you'll never remember not doing it it will not matter it will affect your quality of life literally not at all to stop being the person who's like well i got an opinion on that nothing changes nothing changes because you don't remember doing it. You don't, it literally doesn't matter to you. It's designed not to have staying power. Yeah. You know, what's interesting too is,

you know, when you say that dogpiling, one of the things that I respect about the Gam Crew is when their followers in the past have gone after some of these movie creators, they've reached out to their followers and said, hey, knock that shit off. Like, yeah, these are guys that put some Christian content out in the world. And yeah, we're kind of having a go at them, right? But that doesn't mean you get to go tell them about it. You get to go put it in their face to say, people fucking hate you and you deserve this, right? There's a difference between somebody talking about me behind my back and I never fucking know because who the fuck cares? It never affected me, right? It matters when I find out about it. It

matters when somebody tells me about it and that's something that they've gone out of their way. Like their show Banks on sort of banging on some of these people and don't get me wrong. The stories and the, and the, and the themes in some of those things are awful and reinforce awful morality. So I'm not, I'm not giving those people a pass, but I am saying that they've done a good job of saying, don't go after those people. You don't need to tell them that we're telling, you don't need to go tweet at that David Elliott White or whatever his name is. You don't have to go after that guy. telling you don't need to go tweet at that David Elliot White or whatever his name is you don't have to go after that guy like you don't have to tweet at him and tell him we made fun of him like let's just enjoy that we you know had a fun time watching his movie and forget about it yeah it's I you know and I don't want to like pretend that there isn't something

about all of our natures mine included that doesn't enjoy schadenfreude, right? We all enjoy schadenfreude. We're built to enjoy schadenfreude. But I think we can have our cake and eat it too to some degree. We can pile on. If you want to watch videos of people behaving badly in order for you to have feelings about people behaving badly like if that's what you enjoy find powerful people to behave badly go to those spaces those spaces exist right like why are we looking to just like watch random everyday people who are no different

than you or i like like why are we moving into spaces where we get to like hold those people in contempt in order to feel better about ourselves that really should be we should have a moment of genuine introspection about that if that's how we like to spend part of our evening on our phone you know we all we all do it all of us myself include the biggest fucking luddite you'll meet like we all will sit and like watch tv with our loved ones and fuck around on our phones at the same time we absolutely all do it but maybe we ought to be like all things i think introspective about like the ways that we do it and how we interact yeah and like where we spend that time. Like we, we get, and this is so fucking trite, but like, I don't care. We get so little time to spend and it seems so unwise to me

to spend it dog piling on random powerless strangers in order to generate money for someone else. Right? Like, think about what you're doing when you do that. When you do that, you are lining the pockets of somebody else. That's what you're doing. You're buying a product with your time. When you're dogpiling into that, you are creating money. You are adding fucking revenue into that system through like the misfortune of random strangers.

And I just, that strikes me as like something we should think about whether we want to be a part of. There's a, rest of this article, there's two other examples. And so one of the examples is hideous. It's this poor woman who has these, she has a condition where she has, she develops cysts on her nerve endings.

And so she's wearing, it's fucking, and she, I watched her video. She's fucking amazing. Her reaction video to the person who fucking made fun of her was awesome. But like, she's sitting there and she's just on the fucking train and she's got shorts on because it's 90 degrees and she's just on the fucking train and she's got shorts on

because it's 90 degrees and she has some lumps on her legs because she has a condition and this was right during the monkey pox thing that's going on and somebody put

a monkey face on there with a question mark and they put that there's a TikTok song that's like oh no oh no it like says it over and over and it's a very famous thing

that a bunch of people on a bunch of memes have. But in any case, they put it on there and then they put the monkey thing like, does this person have monkey pox? And she's like, fucking, I don't have monkey pox.

I have a condition. Thanks for fucking attacking me after I've had to go through years of therapy to try to fucking build myself up. And you fucking, just some rando puts me out there and gets me viral. And I'm just, I'm just

a person. I'm just going to fucking work and you can see a lump on me. And so you film it and it's grotesque and attacking somebody. This is also that people at Walmart thing, right? Years ago, this people at Walmart thing was a big thing where people would just take pictures. This happens all the time. It's still on the internet. It's not like it's gone away. If you want to find pictures of random people that aren't traditionally beautiful, right, then you can absolutely go find those people and watch a bunch of people making fun of them. It still happens to this day. I think it's starting to lessen, but it's very much still there. So that's a thing that, like, this was a grotesque. To be honest, I was more appalled with the second story than I was with the first story.

The first story is bad, right? This poor guy, bad. But the second story, I was just like, what a fucking cocksucker. I would add that too. Even if that lady had had monkey pox, like gonna we're gonna shame people for having a disease really like it's 2023 we haven't figured out that like maybe that's something we should like it's a fucking virus people catch virus i literally am recovering from covid like who it's yeah we like shaming other people for things that are not within their control.

Yeah. It's such a fucking lowbrow, low class fucking thing to do. It just is. And to be perfectly blunt, shamelessly consuming that is also lowbrow. And it really, it just really is. You know, there's the last story in there. And the last story is like fucking everything. The last story to just to tie it all back to your framing point in the beginning, the very last story has this guy go up to like an older lady and hand her flowers to hold, and then he just walks away.

And he's like, made this lady's day, day you know because i randomly did an act of kindness and i you know gave this stranger flowers or whatever and people just ate it up people just ate it oh my god what a nice thing to do well context this lady was exactly what they wanted to see yeah fucking a she did but that story that narrative that was being told to underlie that short clip of video dehumanized the hell out of the lady who actually got the flowers. Because she didn't want those fucking flowers. And she didn't want to be in a fucking video. And she didn't make her goddamn day. It ruined her day to be held public, right?

her day to be held public right to be made public for someone else's fucking lols and to generate revenue for a system she did not choose to engage in it absolutely the framing of that video did not in any way match what you saw but people watch it like oh it's so heartwarming and it's like no that shit's not heartwarming and you are credulous when you watch that when you consume that you think you saw something you don't you didn't see shit you didn't see fucking anything you have no idea what you saw yeah why are we why are we so dead set on credulously consuming these small tiny stories that are unvetted, that we don't have any idea. And then we're,

oh, I feel a feeling about it. I loved feeling that feeling. You're being lied to, not by actors. It's different than watching a fucking Marvel movie. Everybody knows that's fake. The actors involved.

It is. All got together and said, we don't believe this, but isn't it a fun story? And it's a start to finish product. And you, this is different than these fucking mini stories told with fucking straight. You have no idea who consented to be in this shit.

We should be worried about, we should be not worried about, we should be unwilling to consume it. So I do want to talk though about one of the people in this particular article, though, that I didn't have a lot of sympathy for. And there was a person in this article that was talking and they're like, they were like a fashion person who's like a fashion TikTok person. And someone saw them on the street walking, took a picture and said, this is a really cute outfit.

And then they found out about it and they were upset. And I was like, okay, you're putting yourself out in the world. You're able to see that that's a cute outfit. It was a person who was like saying you looked good. And then it was also attached to you. And I'm like, I don't know. I mean, I feel like a lot of people in this article have been wronged. I'm putting you on the maybe not so much line. Yeah, man.

Dude, yeah, same thing. And that goes to your prior point that when, because this person was a fashion influencer, which means that they are using social media in order to, in part at least, in order to make their living or enhance the brand that they're making their living based on. So like if that happens

and then somebody engages you in the fucking medium, they they're engaging you in the very medium that you are using to like make your livelihood. Like I have a very hard time being like, well, that's not my consent. Like, all right, look, if somebody clips me from this show, like if somebody clips me from this show and then puts it out in the world and said, you know, Tom made a good point about this. I can't be like, wow, wait a minute. No, wait a minute. Yeah. Like I, like I saw it, like I put it out there. I created this, I put it out in the world. So like, that's different to me than if I'm just like getting

in my car and going to fucking Denny's and somebody like takes a picture of me and is like, that's different to me than if I'm just like getting in my car and going to fucking Denny's and somebody like takes a picture of me and is like, my boyfriend was at Denny's hoeing it up with somebody. I'd be like, wait a minute. I ain't been at fucking Denny's with you, bro. Like, what are you talking about? That's different, man. Admittedly, when I was 18, I was at Denny's hoeing it up. I was at Denny's hoeing it up. I know.

Same, same. I want to say though, real quick though, real quick. My favorite line is of course a pun from this story. Panopticonent is a brilliant pun. Are you familiar with the panopticon? No, uh-uh. Okay, so Panopticon is a type of correctional facility thought up by a philosopher where everyone in the facility can be seen by a guard, but they have no idea that the guard is viewing them. And so that's what

the Panopticon is. It's like the way to build a prison so that everyone feels like the guard is constantly watching them, even though they can't actually confirm that the guard is watching them. And then the idea of Panopticon content, I was like, so good, so fucking good. So a really good pun in there for people who, and it's funny, I've only recently stumbled across this term panopticon because of a Star Wars show. One of the series had a version of this prison in one of their shows. And there was commentary about it after the fact. And somebody introduced me to it. And I was like, oh, I had never heard of that before.

And I looked at it. I was like, what a strange thing. And you're like, wow, that reminds me of social media. And then somebody connected the two. and I was like, oh, I had never heard of that before. And I looked at it, I was like, what a strange thing. And you're like, wow, that reminds me of social media. And then somebody connected the two and I was like, wow, brilliant. Well done.

So good. So that's going to wrap it up. We, of course, will be releasing a funny news segment next week, but that's only going to be for patrons. So remember, if you wanted to get Tom's audio,

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We love all our patrons. We want to thank all our patrons. On Monday's show, we promise we will read the new ones. We just haven't had an opportunity to do that in a while because we've been shuffling things around. We're going to catch you guys all Monday.

We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. you guys all Monday. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing, watered downward spiral brain deadpan sales pitch, late night info docutainment, Leo Pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage, death and towers tarot cards, psychic healing crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms,

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