Endless Thread - This Bonus Drop is Marked Seggsplicit

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

Is it just us, or has almost everything on the internet — even breaking news — become NSFW? In this bonus episode, Endless Thread host Ben Brock Johnson and producer Grace Tatter parse an eggplant emoji-filled chain text message about a breaking news event, the ubiquity of "Hawk Tuah" girl, and what it means that rated-R speak has gone mainstream. ***** Credits: This episode was produced and co-hosted by Grace Tatter and Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

Support for endless thread comes from Mathworks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in health care so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, homies, surprise. We've got a bonus drop for you. This is a conversation we just switched the mics on for earlier this week. So just FYI, some of the time references here might be a little bit off. What was once this week in our conversation is now last week. You know how time works, right? But we hope you enjoy it. B-U-R Podcasts, Boston. Grace Tatter.

Ben Brock Johnson. What kind of trigger a warning should we give for this? Definitely not safe for work, except for our work. Not safe for work unless you're doing this for journalism. Yeah. Who shall we discuss first? I feel like we should discuss the news first, because that's kind of what started this conversation for you and I, right? Depending on when you are listening to this and when this gets put into your feed,

In recent days, former president, current presidential candidate Donald Trump, has survived what appears to be an assassination attempt. We are learning more about this all the time. It happened on a Saturday evening in Pennsylvania at a rally. I will tell you, Grace, how I discovered this news. I believe via text, actually. So that makes me similar to you in some ways, although the content may be very different. Well, I was at a party. Someone exclaimed. Someone else got the New York Times alert. They exclaimed, I looked down at my phone. So I'm guessing that was around 630 to 640-ish. But then not long after that at all. I got a text message from my friend Jess that I'm sorry to say instantly made me laugh despite the gravity of the situation. Okay.

It was a genre of text that has existed for a while now. one of those viral chain texts that are laden with sexually suggestive emojis and sexually explicit puns. I often get them for holidays. Like I always get one for like Christmas or Halloween, but also for like around big political events. This was the quickest I'd ever gotten one, though. So I get this text from Jess at 808. She had gotten it just a few minutes before. The friends she got it from got it at 744. So within about an hour, we're already having this like meme viral text message. And that is how many of my friends found out about the shooting was from a very, very silly text message with a lot of eggplant and peach emojis. So I should say

I had no idea this kind of text existed. And I thought it was interesting in this world of like endless news sources and social media. It's text chains that are delivering breaking news. Are you going to read it to me? Okay. Again, trigger warning for anyone who hasn't left this episode yet for fear of explicit messages. Please go on, Grace. A dramatic reading. A dramatic reading.

Okay. It's the double red exclamation point. Then the little dancing and a red dress emoji. That's how it starts. Diva down. again, little dancing emoji. Convicted water emoji. Felon. I'm sorry, if that's not clear, C-U-M.

Convicted, felon. Donald Trump has had an assination attempt to peach emojis after the ass-ass syllables. Yeah. In Butler, another peach emoji, Pennsylvania. Eggplant, I don't know why. Multiple loads, little water. were shot at his head, but they did not sway. Send this to 50 of your cuntiest conservatives.

If you get 25 back, you dodge the bullet. If you get zero back, you're next. I skipped over some emojis, but I think you get the general idea. What's interesting to me about this is that it's like very familiar to anyone who, you know, was like doing email in the early 90s, right? email chains that were sort of like, you know, if you want good luck, you have to forward this to five people, right? Like, they would always end with that kind of language.

And they'd be full of jokes and humor and ridiculousness. But I don't remember any of those being so raunchy. And this is definitely much more raunchy. There's something happening that's been happening for a long time, but it just appears to be really at a fever pitch these days, which is that like virality happens so quickly and intensely now. And I mean like now like 20, summer 2024 as like actually markedly different than like even a year ago in some ways. That it is very bizarre to have something that is like dead serious happen. something that is actually like really scary for probably any thinking reasonable person.

But like we move past that so quickly and go immediately into like the raunchy jokes and memes so fast now. And I feel like that's like new. It feels newish to me. Yeah, no, absolutely. Like political violence is objectively bad for democracy. It's bad for all of us. but we just totally skipped the historical significance, and we just jumped straight to the jokes. And I don't know if that's a result of the fact.

I mean, it's a cliche at this point, but like everyone's like, remember precedented times? Like, it was nice to live in precedented times. There's just been this onslaught of really historic things for basically the past five years. And so I don't know if that's just made us numb to the gravity of situations and, like, our coping mechanism is just to kind of revert to like middle school humor. I also would say, like, there is something notable about the raunchiness of this to me. Yeah, it does feel like increasingly, internet content just is sexually suggestive, like, the things that are trending. It's just hard to... Forget suggestive.

Yeah, forget suggestive. I think we're beyond subjective. Yeah. It seems like every time you go on Reddit or TikTok, like, it is just going to be about sex. And that also feels different than even a year ago. Yeah. Maybe it's just hot America summer, but I agree with you that it feels different. Yeah, which is kind of interesting for Americans because I feel like historically we're known as kind of like a puritanical, prudish culture.

So maybe this is something of maturation. But yeah. We are officially not rolling like that anymore. I was talking to you about this viral dirty tech. that I had gotten, but then we were also talking about before the big news this weekend, it seems like... Oh my God, we're coming off of months of stuff. I mean, it's also very hard to not make all the jokes, so I'm really...

I hope you can appreciate my restraint, Grace. We're leaving a lot on the table here. All right. When we come back, a brief discussion. of you know who. I think they do. I think they do too. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you.

the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, Adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, we're back to talk about Haley Welch. Quak to a girl? Yeah, we're talking about Haktua girl. So this is something that happened in mid to late June.

It was an immediately viral video of a woman, two women actually being interviewed outside of a bar or a club. What's one move in bed that makes a man go crazy every time? Oh, you got to give him that hook to and spit all that thing. I feel like I don't need to explain this further. I feel like people can understand. I think with context, yeah. You know, I think, yeah. And I guess, like, number one, we haven't talked about this on endless thread.

And it is extremely internety and has been, like, basically inescapable for three weeks or more. Although I will say, Grace, I was shocked to learn that several of our colleagues had no idea, what I was talking about when I said hot to a girl. I guess I said earlier that America's collective innocence has ended, but maybe, maybe not for everyone yet. That's nice. There's still some people whose minds are pure and safe. So, I mean, what can we say?

She became extremely famous, extremely quickly for this comment. I saw her a week later sitting at a bar with shack inexplicably. she just was immediately like pulled into the sort of internet fame mill that we're all pretty familiar with at this point. But also like it moved very, very quickly. Very quickly after this video went viral. She was being like quoted about which presidential candidate to connect it back to the beginning of this conversation she would support supposedly.

But then when you actually look at the context of the conference. It's actually asking her, she's being asked, which presidential candidate she would hactua, which is, you know, I guess after a month of very public court proceedings in New York involving Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels, we might not be shocked that she would get asked about this. And at the same time, it's like, do we really have to, are we really doing this? Oh, yeah. I don't, I don't like it. No, I also don't love it. It feels unnecessary. I don't think that it's adding that much to the discourse or enriching our lives. It's adding a little spit, I would say. And look, endless thread I feel like is a sex positive show.

We support, but also like, I don't know, something about watching all this happen. You know, immediately she inked a deal with a company in Tennessee that was. going to turn this phrase into official merch, but then people were selling unofficial merch. And of course, Haley Welch was like admonishing the people who are buying the unofficial merch and she was signing the official merch. Immediately, again, sort of like the internet coalesced around this raunchy thing, rewarded it and commodified it, I guess, if that makes sense. Yeah. And I feel like even like this like bro-y sex corner of the internet, to me, the audience for this very obviously was straight men. Like, she's a woman and it's sex positive, but there was...

Yeah. I mean, it was focused on male pleasure. Nothing about this felt like particularly feminist or empowering to me. And that corner of the internet, I feel like has existed like my entire existence on the internet. Like, I don't know when Dr. Max existed, but a long time ago. Yeah. But again, It was always kind of fringe. Like, I feel like I was aware of it, but it wasn't in my face like it is now. The jokes, they're hard to avoid. They are hard to avoid. I'm going to offer some deep thoughts on this, and then I'm going to crack in a little bit of light, maybe.

Are you ready? Yes. Okay. So number one, I want to hat tip somebody who has been talking about this, and this is where at least some of my perspective has come on this. That is Ryan Broderick, who writes the pretty great garbage day newsletter about the internet. It's kind of like a digestif of the internet and all things that go viral on the internet. It's just an excellent newsletter and you should check it out.

He did a bit of a deep dive on the, what we could say maybe is the pornification of our internet conversation. And Ryan sort of connects hot to a girl's family. fame to, quote, the newly lucrative online gutter culture that certain creators find themselves at the center of. Ryan describes this as a, quote, flattening of digital media, internet drama, and sex work, where all of it just ends up as more content in our timelines. And I kind of agree with that. What do you think about that, Grace? When it comes to the sex work component of that, what exactly he's talking about, like jokes, about sex work or the fact that a lot of this content is related to sex and then people are

profiting off of it. Yeah. I mean, I'll just describe a experience that I have as a Redditor, right? Like, I discover things that are in the safe for work area of Reddit all the time, conversations in, you know, specific subreddits that are around people or seem to be around people that are honestly, like, even things like Peter explains the joke or like, um, roast me, like, like areas that I have not previously experienced as particularly porny, so to speak, they are literally advertisements for only fan accounts and users, if that makes sense. I've like tried to understand a conversation that's happening. And people in the comments are basically saying, this person has posted a roast me.

request, but really they're an only fans user and they want you to discover their only fans offering. Oh, interesting. Okay. It's very easy to get hoodwinked, I would say, in that way, because that's a more and more common thing. It's not brand new in the last year. It's been happening for a long time, but it's just more and more like in the feed that I would have previously experienced as quote unquote normal. Yeah. And did Ryan's essay speculate as to why that is? So he sort of blames us, all of us. Okay. He points out that, quote,

this is all happening at a fascinating moment where self-sensorious behavior online has led to TikTok filter-friendly slang like SEGS, as in SEGGS, and unalive, to spread far beyond the platform. He's talking about TikTok there. The algorithms keep telling us what we make and share must. be brand safe, but we are clearly interested in the nastier stuff. That makes sense. There is an organic component to the internet right now. Maybe it used to be slightly more curated, but now because it just so much is algorithms that are capitalizing on our desire on what we actually want to see, it's going to show.

Supposedly, if you believe that the algorithms are just reflecting back our needs and on wants, yes. I think that's the idea. another thing that Ryan said in his newsletter about this was all content feels like porn and also nothing does. I just feel like that's an interesting statement, right? And so this is where I would offer like a crack of light in terms of like how I predict the future, which, you know, I don't know anything about anything.

But like I think the history of culture is like a history of action and reaction, right? It's like very cyclical. It goes around and round and round. you know, the Puritans were reacting to something, right? And then there was something that reacted to the Puritans. And it sort of goes on and on and on, right? So I feel like we're at the nadir of all of this. Like maybe, you know, or like fast approaching it.

And so I guess I think it's possible that we're going to see it swing back, so to speak. and we're going to enter some future state where everything isn't all like porny. That sounds good. I want to live in a future that isn't all porny. And maybe there's also, though, like maybe another little bit of light here is there is a lot between totally repressed culture and porny. And maybe we can end up somewhere in the middle where talking about. about sex doesn't feel like, I don't know, life and death, like a lightning bolt is going to strike you down, but it's also not being like commodified and I don't know.

Shuffed in our face, I think, is the term you used before. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. As much as it is right now. But that, right, and like, and to me, like, that seems like a better version, right? Like what you're describing, which is like nobody is shame. for being, like, if you want to be nasty, be nasty. No problem. Whatever, right? But, like, maybe we don't all need to be nasty in order to, like, coexist.

I don't know. Does that make any sense? Yeah. Yeah. Like, there can be a spectrum and, you know, like, maybe America needs to be more naughty and less nasty. There we go. I like that. Put it on a bumper sticker.

Oh, yeah. But you have to buy the official one that I have signed. Thanks for listening to this explicit bonus drop of Endless Thread. Feel free to send us emoji-laden emails about it, if you must, for science. Endless Thread at WBUR.org. And check out Ryan Broderick's newsletter, Garbage Day.