Everything Is Content - Are We The Slop? The End of Reading & CougarTok

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Hello EICupcakes! We have a very special episode this week. Earlier this month we were blessed to do our very first live event at Cheltenham and this is everything we spoke about...First-up, are we the slop? A Substack essay piqued our interest as it argued outside of AI, our special moments – engagements, pregnancies, grief – have been reduced to someone else's low quality content. Secondly, are we heading for a post-literate society? Reading rates are down significantly. What do we lose if we lose reading?Finally, welcome to CougarTok – a new world for 30-somethings dating men in their 20s and *loving* it. TYSM for listening, love R, O, B xxxxxxIn collaboration with Cue Podcasts.Victoria Beckham docThe dawn of the post-literate society‘He has this crazy passion for me’: The millennial women of CougarTok on their 20-something boyfriendsWe Are The Slop Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pele in his yellow and green strip and Cameroon in their iconic onesie. What are you talking about? Football shirts! Okay, tell me why I should give a shit. I'm Jack. And I'm Kim. And in this Forever Better podcast by Puma, I'm taking Kim into my world so together we can uncover everything days to know

about football shirts, about the history, the fandom, the environmental impact. Don't forget the fashion. And the fashion. This is Who Gives a Shirt? Listen on your favourite podcast app or watch on Puma's YouTube. Hello. This is Ruchera from present day. I am just interrupting our normal broadcasting to say what you're about to hear is our first ever live event at Cheltenham Literary Festival from earlier this month. In it, we dive into an amazing substack arguing that our special moments on social media

are someone else's online slop, the terror of declining reading rates, and of course we had to do this, the amazing new Netflix, Victoria Beckham Dock. Firstly, thank you to everyone who came to see us, we had the absolute best, best time. And for new listeners, we apologize in advance. The audio might sound slightly different to usual, but we are confident that you will enjoy it nonetheless and enjoy the show. I'm Beth.

I'm Richara. And I'm anoni. And we are Everything is Content, your one-stop podcast shop for Everything Pop Culture. This is our first ever. Cheltenham Literary Festival event, the three of us. It's our first live event ever, and we are so excited to be here. So every week we release two episodes where we discuss some of the biggest recent stories.

Literary drama, celebrity, celeb news, TV shows, TikToks, political tomfoolery, and beyond. It was Nora Fron who said everything is copy, but in this digital age, we say everything and anything is content. Basically, if you can post about it online, we can, and we will, turn it into discourse. we're the buttery icing on your cinnamon bun of content a dropped acorn on the forest of discourse and hopefully your new favourite pop culture podcast follow us so today we're going to be talking about

how our biggest life events have become online slop the death of reading and the cougars taking over TikTok so this is the part of the show where we would normally each share a different recommendation of something that we've been loving this week but as we discovered upon arriving

we all have, and not for this first time, the same recommendation, which this week is the Victoria Beckham three-passer on Netflix, which we have all flown through. It is directed by, checking my notes, Nadia Hulgren, who was behind the Emmy-nominated feature Becoming, which was about Michelle Obama, also Popstar Academy, Katzai, which is also on Netflix, we have discussed this before. Incredible.

This doc looks at Victoria Beckham's transition from pop star sensation to serious fashion person. We haven't discussed this. I'm really worried I'm about to make two powerful enemies on this stage. And I will preface this by saying, I love Victoria Beckham. I love our Vic.

I thought this documentary was fine, maximum. But Richard, what did you think? Can you defend it? I mean, you're wrong. I love the documentary. I've been ill for the last three days. and when I say that there's been little joy in my life the last three days, but this documentary gave me joy.

That's my point of view. And it's a very different point of you from yours. What about you and only? So I was watching it and I was like, I actually feel so inspired right now. And it was making me want to be really entrepreneurial. But then I realized that I wasn't actually married to a multimillionaire ex-footballer. And that was kind of how she was paying for all of her entrepreneurial endeavors.

So I was inspired for a bit. I was like, this is really going to get me going. And then I thought, I actually have none of the fundings. I loved it, though. I really loved it. Why did you hate it? Right, I will say, watching it, I had loved the David Beckham four-parter

that had come out earlier this year, and I thought, all I want is this, but for Victoria Beckham. We grew up in the 90s. I'm a 1993 baby, so the year or two years before Spice Girls were Spice Girls. We grew up during that time when she was like lambasted in the media,

where her weight was talked about as if it was just like yesterday's dinner. There's so many interesting things that you could say, and they sprinkle them in. She talks about her eating disorder and then never mentions it again, fair enough, but it's mentioned. The way that she's talked about in the media is mentioned,

never touched on again. Her like wild financial mismanagement of her fashion company mentioned and then never mentioned again. It felt a little bit like just an advert for Victoria Beckham industries. I love her. I was like in the trough of her content.

I would eat anything she serves up. But with my analytical hat on, I just don't think it gave us very much beyond by Victoria Beckham, believe her in her as a brand. I hear that take, and I raise you something that I'm going to borrow from Bella Mackey, friend of the podcast, author, who we've had on as a guest, who did some stories about the Victoria Beckham documentary.

And she said, she agreed with you. She was like, it's a very light touch in terms of getting really personal with Victoria Buckham. But actually, in light of everything that she went through, the way that the press was so invasive, actually torturously bullying her, she says at one point in the documentary that she is her career, she is her work. And there are sometimes when I feel quite short change. actually more so weirdly with the Molly May documentary because her entry level into fame

was through sharing her relationship and her personal life to then make a documentary about her brand felt a bit in Congress. With Victoria Beckham, I feel like much as she's at pains to say throughout, I really aren't being this fashion designer. I think she's earned a documentary about her as a credible woman in business because she's spent so long just being torn apart.

But I would also like to have had more about her only because I'm nosy. but I actually think fair play and I wish I had the money to buy the clothes so one day if she both sponsor us Oh my God, Victoria Beckham if you're in the audience please. I'm going to say hi after I don't disagree with anything you've said

I think we've said this on the podcast before Celebrity created documentaries they are puff pieces they're not going to be you know critical interrogations of who they are what they've done in their life I knew that walking into this and I just really enjoyed it like sometimes you just enjoy something

and I did think about the Molly May Dock the whole time and I was thinking there's something missing in the Molly May Dock that I got from this and it was like an inflection of personality I feel like I got who Victoria Beckham was from this she's funny she's really funny she's so funny she's so ryan so dry in her whip but I wanted more of that I think yeah I get that and the Guardian said the same thing Lucy Mangon said that it was a disappointment that you get a tiny bit of her personality but you don't get the whole picture and it's almost like

your tease that she's this funny person but you don't get the whole thing but I've got to say I really enjoyed it I will watch anything she puts out and actually I wrote down a quote from Lucy Mangon and she calls it a three-hour advert for Brand Beckham

with no higher purpose than to fulfill the 16 maybe 20 million deal they signed with Netflix I think that's slightly too harsh and she had all the same critiques we did which was like more, more more I wanted to see them intimately

because I've realized watching this Victoria Beckham is very important to me as a person I would not watch a piece of, you know, Reese Witherspoon's business or even Beyonce's business. I would watch something I'd be for the super much. Do you not watch that? Also, she's got her reduction company.

Hello, sunshine. She's doing her book club. I'd be asleep, I think. Whereas I would watch Victoria Beckham make a cheese toasty, which she jokes in the documentary. She would not make a very good one. I would watch it and I would love it. I would still love her.

But I don't know. The absences are what's most glaring. Like Brooklyn Beckham is not in it. The biggest absence by far. And they obviously don't mention this. Why would they? She's polished. A part of the thing is she is so polished. The product is what she gives us,

but the fact all the kids are in it, and then there's no Brooklyn Beckham, it just makes you think about what's not being mentioned. I do want to get to the bottom of that, but I don't think we'll ever find out what has happened. Because it was Megxit, and then it's... No, Brexit, it's the same thing. This country has suffered, so...

Yeah. Okay, so... Okay, so next up, we're going to be... we talking about slop. So if you don't know what slop is, it's defined as content on the internet that is of a very low quality, especially when it's created by artificial intelligence. This is like kind of a new term that's being bandied around. But the slop that we're talking about today is maybe not what you'd expect. We recently read an incredible piece by Freya India for her substack Babel, which was titled, We Are the Slop. Your life is my background noise.

So she writes, they say my generation is wasting our lives watching mind. entertainment, but I think what things are worse than that. We're now turning our own lives into mindless entertainment, not just consuming slop, but being the meaningless content, swiped past and scrolled through. Experiences, relationships, even our own children, are cheapened, packaged, churned out for others to consume. For some of us, growing older, has become a series of episodes to release. First the proposal, then the wedding, followed by the house tours, pregnancy reveals, every milestones, and upstate, on and on and forever. We exist to end entertain each other. This is the subject that I find doubly fascinating, not least because it reveals

that everything literally is content, but also because it formed the basis of my memoir, which is called Bad Influence, which is all about how I kind of accently, became an influence there, and then started to kind of begrudge the deal with the devil that you make, which is the more of your life your share, the more that you're rewarded, but to what end. And it also comes back to something that Gia Tolentino wrote in Trick Mirror, which is capitalism has no land left to cultivate but the self. And this phenomenon used to be something that was unique to content creators to people that were making their worth through sharing their lives online.

But as time has gone on, it seems that this is bleeding out more into the lay public, maybe into your own lives, maybe into your friends' lives. And Freya writes, your trauma becomes my background noise. Your life-shattering divorce, my slop. Your children, my characters, your pain, my distraction. your feelings my filler episodes I will swipe past your birth video when I get bored

I will downvote your divorce if it isn't entertaining enough your life is what I clean my kitchen to what I kill time with and of course everything is punctuated with adverts and so to go back to my favourite Tolentino as she predicted

the next step is complete identification with the online marketplace physical and spiritual inseparability from the internet a nightmare that is already banging down the door So I am an influencer as part of my long number of things that I do as a millennial woman. So I probably have the worst relationship with social media out of us here

because I feel like you both have fairly healthy arms-length relationships with what you share online about your own lives. But the piece was pretty damning. I really enjoyed it. And I would love to know how much you recognised in the content that you see online in this piece and what it made you feel when you read it. I felt really seen by it. And I think I really enjoyed reading this piece.

This is an in-person exclusive. I got engaged a few months ago. Thanks. I don't have the ring. It's getting resized. But part of the reason I haven't shared it online is exactly what this piece speaks about. I started seeing this huge milestone in my life as, oh, I wonder who's going to like this. I wonder what that post is going to do. I wonder how I'm going to feel when people engage with this. And that made me feel sick. I just thought, why am I even thinking about this? That should not be a part of this huge thing. So I just didn't post. And I still haven't posted. reading this piece that's really made me reflect on,

do I ever need to share my life moments online? Probably not. To my career sort of did start online, but it was a very different online than the online of now. It was not short-form video content. It was tweets. I was tweeting up my mental health, and it was very personal, but there was a full stop at the end of it.

It never felt that it took more from me. Whereas I think now, if I was to try and launch myself as a mental health creator, I would have to make the video content. I would have to show myself crying. I would have to show myself doing X, Y, Z in a sort of belabored way to demonstrate that I was struggling, that I was depressed, that I was anxious. It feels that it takes a lot more to now be a person of content creation

than it did when I decided this was a way in. And I similarly have stepped back from what I share on the internet because it doesn't pay me, it doesn't serve me. And I realized, I was thinking about the big moments of my life through the metrics, whether they were really as good as I thought they were because it was reflected in how many likes I got, how many shares, how many people engaged with it, I was twisting, and for no personal gain, I was twisting the really big moments in my life, and I'm still ahead of what I hope will be a book deal or I'm currently living

my parents, and it's wonderful, but if I get my own place, that's a big moment, if I get engaged, if I have children, if I decide not to have children, if I filter that through the lens of like, I need to make a packaged video about this and then there will be a number attached to that video. Who will I be in that moment? So I feel like at this point, I've stepped back just at the point where this is ramping up and ramping up. And I've had a few people actually say to me,

like, you have a platform, you have 20,000 followers here. If you just start sharing every single day, you could make something here. To me, that sounds terrible. To other people, that sounds like an absolute, like, gold rush. I feel like I'm poised between two points. I don't know which way to go. it's interesting because I guess there's so many studies now to say that a lot of young people in schools are saying like my dream career is to become an influencer and that's quite scary to hear as someone that kind of got into it and now almost you can't get out because it's really good when it works you can make quite a lot of money and then it's too hard to turn it down but actually the reality is that your life does start to feel like it doesn't belong to you anymore and that if something happens you've got to kind of update everyone I remember I went through a big breakup about five years ago now and I had to really think about when I was going to announce to my audience that me and my boyfriend

no longer together. I was thinking about that as I was crying about the breakup. I was like, and then I guess I'll boast about it. And it's like, that's not normal. I don't think that's a good way to process your life. But coming back to Victoria Beckham, because this is what I was thinking is so interesting. The way that fame used to operate before was I guess someone would get famous

that I'd get famous through talent or something they did or through notoriety. And then eventually maybe as time went on we'd find out more about who they were authentically as a person, maybe 30 years into their career they would write an autobiography. Maybe they would start to come forward and do like big opinion pieces in press.

We've kind of reversed that now and it's like you get famous by exposing every single part of yourself so that people can consume you and your life as if you are in a 24-7 big brother house that someone can just open their phone and you're like live streaming everything. And it feels like we've democratized media and she talks about this in the substack. It feels like we've got more control. But all that we've done is actually made ourselves kind of a slave to this algorithm when none of us are getting out. And I do think that it is really impacting the way that we experience things. Even on a micro level, I think that since like the advent of smartphones, like the ability

to upload pictures to Instagram, I feel this way. If I didn't get a nice picture in my outfit before I go out for dinner with the girls, I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to have fun because I haven't got a picture yet. And I think a lot of people feel that way and it feels really icky to say it out loud, but it has really changed the way that we experience things. If you go to any event now, I mean, none of you have your phones out, which is very kind. Thank you. But you can take pictures. But if you go to any concert, anything, everyone's just holding their phone. And you think, like, are you ever going to look back at that video? Like, we experience everything not through our eyes.

We experience, like, through a phone. There's always something between us. And I just thought that this piece, I found it really scary. And I think what's so weird is when you read it, it's so plain and we'll link the substack in the show notes of our podcast. It's so obvious that this is what is happening. But it's happened at such, like, slow, incremental level that I don't even think we've recognized just how much instead of being in and of the world. we're actually experiencing everything through our phones and through our devices. Sorry, that wasn't a question.

My question is, how do you think this is impacting real world events and the way that we operate within society? So, for example, the more extravagant, the content the better it does, the bigger your wedding, the more TikToks you've got from your engagement, the more things like come to my first baby scan, my gender reveal, whatever it might be. How much is that bleeding out into society? How much is that changing the way that we celebrate these events? How do you think this is playing out on the real world, not just on our phone stage?

It's not a thing. It should be a thing. I think, I mean, my head is very much in weddings at the moment, so weddings is the angle that I will take with this, but just seeing how much is designed to be photographed and how much is designed to be consumed. And even with influencers' weddings, just seeing the kind of five angles of content of the camera people taking different shots. And the way it's almost filmed like Paul Thomas Anderson film, it is crazy.

It is ginormous. And I was also thinking about with this piece how we cannibalize grief as well. I mean, people do these posts that are super vulnerable online. They share that they're going through, you know, the darkest moments of their life. It is on a platform that is designed to be ephemeral. We just see it, we like, we scroll. And it's just, it makes us treat all of these things that should have levity with such lack of care and consideration. And that's really made me reconsider just not even just the good moments, the bad moments as well. Sometimes, you know, when you're going through maybe the memory of something that's been quite dark, you think, oh, I want to share that because I want people to engage with me. But also, I feel quite protective of my space having read this piece.

I don't want my moment to be something somebody scrolls past, likes, and then thinks about for a second, and then moves on. That really hurts me. That feels really painful. I don't know. That's not really a point, but what do you think? No, I actually think the grief point is really salient because this is where it feels, there's two elements. I think it's when it involves content that involves children and content that involves grief that I find it most apparent that we have sort of crossed the Rubicon a little bit.

And with the grief, I think content about grief, whether it's podcast books, it's so necessary, especially in a lot of Western cultures where we are very stiff up a lip, we don't know how to grieve, we don't have to talk to people that are grieving. It is guaranteed for us all. It's sort of very instructive. But then there's content that does feel like it's kind of straight from the gut where someone will take to TikTok and say, my partner died yesterday. or I'm going through a loss right now

and whether it's them sharing the intimate details or people in the comments saying, how did he die? No moment of condolence. How did he die? What happened? It feels very much like we have lost the run of ourselves. We are so used to consuming content as mindless entertainment,

the same way we do if it was a fiction. We treat the people in it as characters. We treat the real events of someone's lives as storylines. and I think seeing that, I think this is not the way that we should be interacting with one another. I think it's very much the good moments and the bad if someone has a wedding and someone is their follower

and says, what about the bridemaid dresses? Or I didn't see an angle of you cutting the cake. Like that's annoying and it's sort of, it's demanding and I think it's out of line. But it's one thing. When someone's child dies or when someone loses a partner, a spouse, a parent, even a pet and someone says,

I want to know exactly what happened here. That is when I realized, like, we are all consuming it as, change the channel if you don't tell me. Instagram was a place that people shared the big moments of their lives to their immediate friends and family. So was Facebook. Now it is audience participation. Now we have forgotten how to be tender and kind and just decent to each other. And I think grief content is a great place to locate that because that is where people need the most grace and where I think they're getting the least at the moment online. It's so interesting to think about how

Instagram has changed in the last five or so year, maybe longer, because it used to be a platform where it would be quite embarrassing if you posted a picture of yourself. You would mostly post pictures of your friends, maybe like a grainy picture of you or in the background, and it was kind of goat or embarrassing to post a selfie, basically. That was like, oh my God, she's really showing off. Now, if you don't post a picture of yourself, it's not really going to get engagement. I hate it when my feed is just pitched with me and my agent's like,

we need more of you on there. I'm like, what about a book? They're like, no, you. And so everyone just has these, what, essentially kind of like digital TVs with like the pictures of you looking the best, the things we're interested in. For who, for what? Like, why do we need to walk around this?

like advertisement like everyone is a brand doesn't matter if you're selling anything you are you're selling you and your attention to other people i find it really really strange when you actually think about it it's like if someone has a picture themselves as their screens davis so if anyone does i know that is quite a dad thing to do but it's really really strange and to come back to children because this is some of the things she comments on and this is really strange as someone who is who is a content creator and kind of knows how this well worked a bit but there are people who do start strategizing their lives so like the wedding's coming up so we'll plan this promotional event around the engagement and then when we have the wedding, we'll do this content.

If we're going to have a baby in the next few years, you know, that's going to be really great. It's planned. And whether or not it's like that conscious, there's a lot of money to be made from brands. If you are pregnant, if you're willing to talk about it, you're trying to conceive journey. If you're willing to share your birth,

there's so many things in that. It does become a thing where once you're on that road, it's like, oh, well, I guess I'm already sharing it. On the one hand, it's like, as an influencer, if you're like, well, they've got to support their family, I guess they're comfortable doing it. The shoot off of that is that if people are having babies for content and then they've got like an impressional audience following them

and they're making having babies sounding like a really good thing. You suddenly end up with like a subset of younger women who are all going, actually, the thing I really want to do actually is have a baby because all of my like people that I follow are having babies. And that sounds really simplified, but there are like real world consequences to the kind of content that is shared. And because we gravitate so much towards things that used to be very private, like talking about your relationship breakdown

or like trying to conceive or all of those things. They're the things that perform really well. And so you have this weird curve of like how very odd things happening on the internet start to bleed out into people's realities. Was that a point? That was a point. Okay. On that topic I will say also when you're branded and when you're being sponsored by something,

like you cannot be very authentic about it. If you're connected with the audience about the realities of conceiving birth, these things, and pamphers is sponsoring it. I think there is a line that you have to tow and it just separates even just in like one or two words, like authenticity. I just think something is lost there. And I make no money from doing this. I know a lot of people who make no money from doing social media will still post many of their days. Maybe it's aspirational and I have no criticism towards that. But sometimes I think we all just post because someone else is posting and it's worth remembering, is this putting food on

your table? Is this bringing you peace? Is this bringing you happiness? Or is it just, well, I saw someone else doing it and I thought I might make my life into the Truman Show. So up next, and I think quite apt for a literary festival, the question, are we headed towards a post-literate society? In a recent piece for his weekly newsletter, Cultural Capital, Journalist James Marriette muses on a crisis of comprehension, a collapse of reading for pleasure, a possible end of civilization, and what, if anything, can be done about it, which is quite cheery. In the piece, he charts the history of reading and mass literacy, the inventive. of the printing press, the expansion of education, and the explosion of cheap books, all leading to a diffusion of reading downwards through the middle and working classes. He calls this the reading revolution and argues that right now, hundreds of years later,

we are experiencing its counter-revolution. He writes, quote, books are dying, numerous studies show that reading is in freefall, end quote. For this, he cites an overwhelming villain, the smartphone. He writes, again, quote, Never before has there been a technology like the smartphone, where previous entertainment technologies like cinema or television were intended to capture their audiences' attention for a period,

the smartphone demands your entire life. The average person now spends seven hours a day staring at a screen. For Gen Z, the figure is nine hours. A recent article in the Times found, on average, modern students are destined to spend 25 years of their waking lives scrolling on screens. that honestly makes me feel nauseous. I feel sick. If the reading revolution represented the greatest transfer of knowledge

to ordinary men and women in history, the Screen Revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history. Quite bleak now I'm reading this out. I wish we'd just chosen a Kardashian, but anyway. The three of us born, I mean, I think 32, 31, 30, not to expose us, but we grew up in this era where some technology, maybe a brick phone,

Palm pilot, BlackBrick, family computer, what a concept, a laptop maybe in teenage years. So very much like straddled that technological revolution. I'm just going to stick with that. Do you think that having grown up in this sort of

before and then after has saved your ability to read and locate enough value in literacy, or do you think that all this time since with smartphones has actually just done the damage? such good question. I used to read so much when I was little to the point where my mum would confiscate

torches because I would be under the pillow with a torch but also we didn't have phones, there was actually nothing else to do. I think I did start playing Snake on a Nokia 3010 at some point but I think what has happened is I do find it so much harder to pick up and get into a book than I used to prior to having phones but because I know I have like the muscle

memory of knowing book is good for me I enjoy book I go back there I think had I not grown up with books had not found the escapism of especially like fantasy in books when I was younger. I up kind of in the middle of nowhere. We'd live like in the middle of the mendets and there is literally nothing there like our next door neighbor doesn't have any electricity. That's how high up it is. So there was nothing for me to do except read. And so it's such an important component

of my source of entertainment and joy. I always wanted to be a writer from being very little. That being said, I really have to go get off the phone. We're going to read a book now. Then when I'm in, I'm loving it. But I do find it much harder. And I do wonder about those children that immediately were on phones, immediately on iPads that have that easy access. There's like no barriers to entertainment with a book you might have to work for 2200 pages before you're enjoying it an iPad you're straight in and it's like intravenous serotonin. I think that I have profited from being on this straddling generation and I'm really really glad that I am but the phones have been absolutely detrimental both to my intelligence I got dumber basically I think for sure what about

you Richard? You definitely don't sound it I promise you I was the same as you as a kid I would read all the time and it was my favorite thing to do to the point that I did English lit at uni as soon as I finished that, I just stopped reading for five years. The amount of reading, it almost overflex that muscle that I just could not touch a book. And I really had to relearn to read a pleasure. And I know that sounds really silly. But I would just pick up a book. I would get to five pages and just think, this isn't a good book or I just can't read this. And now I've learned 100 pages is a fair chance, in my opinion. That really has been a skill to kind of build up back again like a new muscle. I think same. And I'm just very grateful that I had this base that I

I think I was saved from, I mean, I feel like an iPad baby a lot of the time, just an adult iPad baby, because the minute you put something in front of me, and I don't feel like it's a moral failing, if this is a dopamine machine, if this is a machine that areas light up, I can't then stop them from lighting up. It's not a moral failing to be like, ooh, shiny. Whereas I do think having the squashy parts of my brain that knows, I loved reading, this brought me pleasure. This does bring me anxiety.

It's an anxiety-laden pleasure, whereas books, it's very much like a pure, pleasure. I know that it is an accident of birth, the fact that my parents decided to have a baby in 1993 versus a little bit later, the fact that I do know to love reading, that I rely on reading and that I don't just turn to the screen. It's quite chilling to me to think that had I been born later, I wouldn't have found this because I think reading has made me and saved me and instructed me and guided me again and again. It has changed the course of my life. Wanting to be a writer, definitely did that. Also, just reading a great book. I think it's made me smarter.

I do think I take for granted that I will always be a reader. I think I've noticed in this last year. I have not picked up the book as much during periods of stress. I've picked up my phone. Every time I pick up my phone before bed, instead of reading a book, I feel shame. Every time I pick up my phone at the dinner table, especially when there are older people there who...

They're all picking their phones up down as well. They should get across about it, but they're all there. They're worse for it. They're on the slope. The glasses are on the end of the nose. The phone's here, but it's being looked at. But I do think that I should be sure. shot out of a canon, or at least we all should be.

It's so tired, sorry. I know, I'm sorry, I feel like I have targeted some people. No one specifically. But it's tough, it is, it's complete accident, and I do feel very nervous for one parents, raising children, who are already getting it in the neck for daring to give their children's screens. I don't want to be part of a moral panic that says,

screens bad, books good. That's not the case. It's a 5,000 word piece. I was reading it going, oh, my God, this is going on a 5,000 words. I know, sorry. Can I, I was wondering, actually, can I get a slightly small? a screen out to read you a bit of the piece because I don't have it on this medium-sized screen

I can't believe we're double screening on this like don't go on your phone everyone so let me just quickly get this up because it's in our group chat so this is from the piece because I think this is really like bringing it more broadly something I find absolutely fascinating although I'm going to have no single I feel like it's such a boomer right now one second so I actually can't I haven't got my glasses on right one's one set galiwali let me find this I can see you're going through all of our messages is this it okay so it's been observed that pre-literate oral societies often strike visitors from literate countries as remarkably mystical, emotional and antagonistic in their discourse and thinking.

And as books die, we seem to be returning to these oral habits of thoughts. Our discourse is collapsing into panic, hatred and tribal warfare. Anti-scientific thought thrives at the highest level of the American government, promoters of irrationality and conspiracy theories such as Candace Owens and Russell Brand, find vast and credulous audiences online. Laid out on the page, their arguments would seem absurd. On the screen, they're persuasive to so many people. Rosserbrand has this comedy background

he has earned the favour of a lot of people people will believe what he says because he says it in a little twisty-wisty way versus... I do like how he says I hate what he says but I like how...

It is it hypnotises us versus when you read something if someone says well I would like you to read this and I know it's a bit dense it's 5,000 words and I go crying out loud can I not watch a TikTok about this it's much easier and we are at this time crucially

which James Merritt talks about in the piece where this inequality is rife we are of this wealth gap that makes 18th century France look like Disneyland and what we need is for people to be really wise to this what we need is to people to be to be understanding this in a very salient way here's what we need to do and you do get that best as delivered by theory

as delivered by thinkers who may not be personalities they may not have the rasmataz of a candace Owens or a Russell brand but they have the juice and they have the benevolence what we have instead is Joe Rogan And that's dangerous. I'm just going to put it out there. I don't think the best speakers of our time can also necessarily be the best at TikTok.

Agreed. But it feels like the best thinkers of our time are being presented as the best TikTok is. And I think this piece is a really good way into that. It's a hard line to balance because I also felt like the writer was being very anti-smart phone, very anti-internet culture,

and I'll always come to defend the internet. He said something about highly educated students, not being able to read Austin or Canon in English. That was one thing I wanted to come on to. But then also the fact that he talks about the internet being trivial and pointless, breeding this ground of a lack of curiosity. And I think that just goes a bit too far, because you can't authentically say that the internet is not curious, is trivial and pointless, especially with a lot of the world events

that are going on right now. A lot of information is being spread very authentically, very democratically via platforms like TikTok, I think there's so much in this piece that is amazing, but I've really felt that kind of like anti-internet rhetoric and I really wanted to like come in defence of it because it's not black and white, it's not. It's not our specific. We're very lovelitish about AI, but when it comes to the general internet, we're quite okay with it, I think. And I've said this a few times, the open internet, which, e.g., everything that's outside of meta, everything that is open source, free to use, that internet I will defend until the death, but that internet is narrowing and it is dying.

We are witnessing the dying of the open web and what we're getting is a long corridor of commerce. We are getting meta, putting the walls up, we are getting, not multiple forums we are getting, you need to go to this one place. And it is headed by a tech billionaire that just wants another yacht, that just wants global dominion.

I believe the internet absolutely is and could be and was a source of democratic intellect. It was a place where people could not only find more, they could do university courses from, their home in the middle of nowhere. They could reach way more resources than they could have done with just a library. They could reach a community. We are seeing the death of that. I think the internet that we have been on, a lot of these people in the room have been on, is not the same internet that our children, grandchildren will be on because of this narrowing to a single point.

And it is because of sites like TikTok or at least like the CEOs that would see those things done away with because they're not profitable. So I do think I'm very pro-internet as this sort of free space. I've just recognised this internet is not that internet and I think we have to be very clear on

what we have access to now. It's so everything is content but also everything is shop online by shop that's all it is and TikTok is that and I was actually reading

I can't quote this I can't remember who wrote it but on X formerly known as Twitter someone was tweeting about how like I'm a poet and I'm a writer but I'm never actually going to pursue that anymore because in order to do that you have to be able to advertise yourself

online you have to have a really good social media presence there's kind of really no way to break through unless you happen to have some amazing nepotistic connections which if you do please you email me I would love to get in touch so that's a really interesting idea and a thought experiment like famously writers are often very introverted people who like to keep themselves and they express themselves through their art and that's put out into the world and they don't really want to interact with their readers or the people

and now that has kind of really changed so you get what we're presented as these great thinkers no offense to anyone that's a fan what's he called stephen what's his bit bartlett yeah he's sort of presented as this like incredibly intelligent young man I'm sure he is some ways but he is not the brightest of minds that we have to present to you but he's kind of the best that we're afforded online and that is because these spaces are so flattening and because they have one ideal achievement which is fundamentally like mass amounts of advertisements so that you can start a big empire and have a massive company to make more money to burn down the world so that you can go and live in like an island of Hawaii somewhere whilst we all die in the floods

very sad but it's true anyway so this I think I don't know how to bring that back to you I thought this would be funer I wouldn't know this day it would be fun no we've got a fun one coming up. God. Is it time to move on to that one? Do you have any more thoughts? No. Well, I'm trying to land this somewhere hopeful, which I mean, there is, there is something hopeful in this. It is not that civilization is ending. If you read James Mara's piece, yes, but there are a lot of fools of thought around this, which someone like Finland, for example, has high quality education and in the trend of literacy, which everywhere else is sort of going down, that is going up, it is holding steady. It is valuing education,

giving children especially things to read and just stay. off that damn phone. I've got nothing else, but I think we can be hopeful in that. We can be hopeful, because there's a water tones over that. Everyone just go by a book and we're absolutely fine. Yeah, it's fine. Everyone, you're all fine.

Yeah, no one hears the problem. We're not the problem. In a natural pivot, is my absolute joy to hopefully introduce you guys to Cougatoc. Last week, Beth shared with us the Cosmo article by Jade Biggs titled, he has this crazy passion for me, the millennial women of Cougatoc on their 20-something boyfriends.

The piece details a new wave of women in their 30s, unexpectedly falling for 20-something men and sharing their relationships on TikTok. Under the hashtag Cougatoc, there are 113,000 videos and more than double for the hashtag Cougar. So my big question with this segment is, have Cougars been destigmatized? The writer makes the point that in recent years,

films like Baby Girl starring Nicole Kidman as a woman who engages in a woman, a BDSM relationship with her intern and the idea of you with Anne Hathaway who dates basically we can say it is basically Harry Stiles in that film have reframed older women younger men relationships as aspirational rather than scandalous she also points to Prianka and Nick Jonas and also very hot and heavy Zoe Kravitz and Harry Styles who have five years between them well the biggest scale with the Sienna Miller and whatever he he's what's how old is he she's like late 40s early 20s I might have been that he could be late 20s

I think she might be mid-40s, late 20s. That's still quite sizable for a woman. They look good, though. They look good. It's a new thing. It's basically the trend is often, we spoke about this recently, but when it was announced that Nicole Kidman is getting divorced.

My first thought was, oh, great. In a really positive way, she's going to get a 20-year-old boyfriend. It seems to be the thing that's happening now. Yeah. Do you think it's a golden era for Cougars? I hope so. I mean, when this piece came across our desk, as a millennial woman, we're dating someone in their 20s,

I thought, okay, I'm thinking about this. My time. It was very interesting to read a piece that wasn't really about Cougars proper because I think actual Cougars would be quite cross with me if I said, hey, I'm a Cougar too. They would go, this is stolen valor. He's three years younger, get a lie. What this is, and what the piece talks about is millennial women.

So women, I think it's younger millennial women, women in their early 30s, mid-30s, dating men in their 20s, maybe 10 years younger and max. So basically, if you're a man, that's just a Tuesday, It's just very normal behaviour of a man. If you're a woman as a cosmo piece, that said, I really do hope. Even just, I just know it's hell and horror to date

30-year-old men when you are 30 or mid-thirties. I feel like every woman in the piece, I know that she has done her best. If she's dating a 21-year-old man, I know that she deserves it. I feel a bit weird if they're 20-20, I know that's always debunked, the frontal cortex thing or the frontal loat. Is it very bonks?

I don't know if that was just something. someone spread that before you're 25 your frontal lobe hasn't fully developed, which became like every woman's reason as to why men shouldn't date women under 25. I treat that like gossip. Yes, me too, but then I think it is, it might be being. If anyone knows, we don't have. Should we ask them many of those? Do you have a frontal lobex? So if they were in their 30s dating a 21-year-old, I would think that was a bit it, because I would think that was it either way. But if I can pop on a pop psychology hat, and none of this is based on any evidence that I know, it's just what I'm kind of gaining from the vibes. I think maybe it's because

some younger men, not all, because we're seeing a massive gender divide in terms of ideological understanding and voting and stuff. But I think that some younger men potentially are slightly more emotionally intelligent than their 30-something-year-old counterparts because they've been brought up with a different language and lexicon and access to feeling like they can be in touch with their emotions and ability to speak in a way that some men can't. Also, maybe they're just weaponising therapy speech. It's another topic that we've covered quite a lot.

But yeah, so I wonder if it's actually more a matching of minds that these women and their 30s generally find a man in his mid to late 20s is somewhat more with their programs. It's interesting because in the piece she does talk about that and there's also one woman Abigail who dates her best friend's younger brother who's eight years her junior and she talks about the fact that younger men have less baggage and also claims that they're more open to love because they've had less heartbreaks. One thing I found quite interesting is this idea of baggage being a bad thing and also this blanket term of like men in their 30s they all have baggage, they're unworkable.

Don't we all have baggage? Like, I am not a perfect person. I may look it, but I'm not a perfect person. I have my own stuff, you know. It's in the suitcase, buried deep, but it's there. I don't know, this blanket kind of approach to dating. I get why it happens. I feel it from my sister who's eight years younger,

and she says, you know, boys her age are consuming in-cell content, all that kind of stuff. It just feels like you can't get a break either way. Women our age are saying that men are age have their own problems and they, you know, struggle with challenging gender roles. then you have women in their 20s saying that men in their 20s are consuming in-cell content and then like everyone's going either way. I also wonder, and again this is like a massive generalisation

but I do think that we are in a time of like just total avoidance and this is the first wave of this Cougar talk thing and we're joking about it but it is a massive thing where you see these videos of women around our age that are like I was looking for a guy to settle down like in their mid-30s to 40s and then along came this guy and it's this 24 year old that looks 12 and they're like and he's so emotionally intelligent and I'm obsessed with him but this has literally been

like we've only been seeing this the last few months. So we interested to see whether these relationships play out or with all of us, and we have spoken about dating apps, I think before, but dating apps really have confused the minds of every person using them to make it really hard to recognize what it takes to settle down with someone to really work through hardship and not just think, actually this isn't working, I'll just get back and date again.

So I think it also could be a result of one of the reasons why often men in their 30s might date women in their 20s because they know that women in that 20s probably are looking for anything serious. So is it just, again, avoidance culture is actually just the main culprit for this? I think very possibly having dated at every single age that's been like...

I've been dating every single one of my own ages, I have not dated every single one of the other ages. I've gone quite high up, as my mum will tell you, that I have resisted. To be fair, I have not spent any time around a 21-year-old since I was 21, and it was awful. Yeah.

And if one of my age mates, one of you two, for example, ever came to me and said, I've met a man, he's 22. I would have questions for you. I would try to be open-minded, but I, like, it's hell and horror to spend time

with the 21-year-old when you are 21. But I... Worry if anyone's 21, by the way, no, yes. It's good age. I love him. I actually think 21 was quite fun.

Sure, but would you have married that man? No, I think he was awful, but I can't actually which one it was, but one of the ones around that time. It were both bad, actually. I can't remember. But interacting with young men, okay, approaching 30, so I'm 32 now.

As I approached 30, a curious thing happened. As you approached 30? As I did approach 30 in the recent past, I found the men that wanted to date me, they were not approaching 30. I could not see those men for dust. Oh, yeah, yeah. They were all 23 to 25.

Yes. They could not get enough. They were approaching me in public. At the minute they found out that I was almost 30, they enjoyed it. I was getting milf memes as a child-free 29-year-old woman. Oh, God. It was so bizarre.

And I do think there's something in that. If you are dating men your own age and you are getting nothing, if you're just getting like, oh, you're looking for, oh, right, then, okay, yeah, I don't know about that. You will turn to an age group that is enthusiastic about going out with you. And for whatever reason, for me, it was 23 to 25-year-olds. Do you want another one of my made-up theories? Yes, go on.

Okay. So I think when men are in the early 20s and see all, woman who's in her 30s who's successful, a bit more grown, has a lot more confident. They find that very attractive and they're excited about that and interested. And as a man gets older and gets into his 30s, he perceives his value to be inflated. And so women of his age group are no longer valuable to him anymore. He has to go younger because that's where value exists in women, the younger they look. Also, the less experience they are, and the more malleable, they are perhaps that makes

them more valuable, they're more like arm candy. So it does this like inverse flip thing where the minute you kind of, I think people can meet in their 20s and go out, and the minute you kind of both get to that 30s age, men tend to be perceived as more attractive as they start hitting that age group, whereas they might perceive their age mates in that age group to be less attractive because they look older. So you get this kind of like flip reverse thing, and there's like a really small pocket of time where you can meet someone your own age and be together, and otherwise you just got to go higher or lower. Do you think this is real, or is it? I have to make this up, but I think it's true.

Two dumb bitches telling each other exactly. You know what, I'm with you, I'm saying yes. Okay, so my final question on this is, could you see yourself being a cougar? Do we have to be quite strict with when a cougar is a cougar? What's the gap? When could I do this? Because I'm obviously in a relationship right now. He will listen to this. I think five years plus.

Babe, I'm having a great time, but just let me answer this question. I think if you brought me a 22-year-old, I'd be like, oh, are you adopting? Do I mean? I don't think I'd be like, this is a boyfriend. Oh, if someone told me that the love of my life was born in 2004, I would go... 2000? I go, it's not for me, babe, I'm retiring, the vagina. Forever.

I just wouldn't do it. I just don't think I could do it. I don't think we're cougars. What about you? I'm a no, I'm a no. Okay, well that's good. I'm glad you've got that piece of information. I'd love to do a hands up.

I'm not going to expose the audience like this, but we've got a lot of women with the audience. I'd love to. Okay, everyone close your eyes and put your hands up if you'd be a cougar. I like to know. Just blink at me a certain way of you. So we have a tiny bit of time left, unless there's any more to say.

If the question is. If anyone has a question, whether it's about a topic, whether it's about us, whether it's about us as authors, podcasters, pop culture, mavens, there are some floating mics. This is a British audience, so we are actually going to have to wait sometime,

but someone will crack. No, they will. We have a question. No, dad. I know. He's simply going. He told him not to say that. This is a good one.

Children reading. Right. Oh, it's the serious one. I'll put the mind down. What was the question? Oh, it's good. Children reading? Yes.

Was that, that's not a question? That's what leads to reading. You're reading when they live. Oh, leads to reading when you're older. Right, but that's not a question, so. In my opinion? Yes. Children should read.

Yes. That's not a very good. She's done it again. I don't know. Yeah, I agree. I think children reading is how they get into reading, but I don't, do I remember what? No, I agree. That's the kind of question I ask you two on the podcast. I just go like, and yeah, anyone else now that we've... I'm incredibly proof. Look, we've warmed up the crowd. Oh, yeah. That is anything that's going to be better than that. Sorry, Dad.

Okay. Thank you for warming up the crowd. Yeah, thank you. That was great. Hello. Yeah, so the question I have is I was really, really interested about the discussion about social media being a problem and sort of how it's devaluing us all. So the question I'd have for you is, would you pay for Instagram if it's, It meant the algorithm changed and was designed to make you happier. Let's say, theoretically, the algorithm says, get in touch with your friend and go on a coffee date. Or after 15 minutes, it says, you've had enough flop for today. Let's go read a book. We're going to shut the app down. And it actually is designed for making you happier.

The question, I suppose, is like, would you pay for that? Or should we keep this model as it is? It's a really good question. Actually, like, five years ago, I was asked almost like exactly this question about algorithms. and I was brought on to talk at the Royal College of Psychiatrists as like a lived experience of personal and social media

and five years ago I said the issue isn't social media the issue is the algorithms it's the fact that they reflect all of the worst parts of society they're homophobic, transphobic fatphobic, they encourage kind of really extreme beliefs

and that's why they're bad and they've been coded by a really specific set of men in Silicon Valley who have very specific beliefs and so we're all being ushered into using these platforms in a certain way. As time has gone on, I actually think the problem is the whole thing. I think that the fact that you need your phone to tell you to text

a friend or to go on a walk or to do something is because you're in a phone. I think we're losing our natural intuition when it comes to how to have common courtesy with someone in the street, how to talk to a friend, how to remember to engage with your community. And I think all of that comes from being on our phone so much, having this really quick rush of dopamine. It's like the left barriers we have to feeling good. That's what we're going to seek. And that isn't always the best way to get there. That being said, we are all on these. tap thumbs now and I actually don't know how you put that back in. I don't know how we would then stop using it. I think there are subsets of people who are trying to limit their time online. But even

when you do that, you know, it's complicated because like we said, for work you have to do it. So there's lots of reason why we have to be on it. I understand what you're saying about paying for like a different type of platform and maybe that could work, but I feel reticent to want to make people spend for something which now has become something you kind of have to have. Like people need to have Instagram to socialise, teenagers feel like they're being left out or bullied if they're not included on these sites. It gets really, really complicated, actually,

when you take something away that has become what feels like our right to use. I actually have become so cynical about it, even though it's such a big part of my work. And I do think that social media platforms are incredibly useful. One of my big arguments was always especially for marginalized communities or people that don't have the space to be themselves in real life or the communities

that they need now they're getting them online. Obviously, with all these conversations around ID cars, and the way that we're going to be accessing the internet, that's not even going to exist anymore. So the platforms won't even be useful for people that perhaps don't have the right to me in this country or for whatever reason they might need them for organising. So my opinion is really bleak. I actually don't know how we can make it better.

I think it needs legislation. I think that access to these platforms for younger people needs to be, like you shouldn't be able to access them. I think the fact that they work on algorithms rather than just showing you the people that you follow is the problem. I think if there was no algorithms and it's just like, I follow these people. so that's what I see, that could work, but that's not very profitable for many people.

Do you have an answer? I agree with everything you said, because at first when you were saying the algorithms were the problem for the talk that you did a few years ago, I was just mentally shaking my head because that's not the problem, in my opinion. I think all of the social media platforms

that we have are privately run, and there is no transparency with what is going down on those platforms. We learned that Facebook is incentivised on Instagram to target 13-year-old girls who have engaged with certain types of, eating disorder content and then it pushes them further and further and further we only find that out through rigorous reporting we don't find that out from Mark Zuckerberg so the alternative

to that is do we have a government run social media platform I don't think that's the answer either because independency you know liberty freedom the important things we access through being online would then kind of get revoked at the same time we can't go back we can't create new platforms we've tried blue sky seems amazing but it hasn't really presented an alternative to Twitter in the way that people hoped. So I think the answer is legislation, like you said, completely agree. I think we just need to make all of these tech billionaires tell us what is going down and just be accountable for what is going down on their platforms. All I can say to that is, I think you both spoke to the good part of my brain. The bad part of my brain was like,

great, make it cost money. I will finally get off it. I remember when they made like the mental cigarette illegal. I stopped smoking that day. From a selfish point of view, I'm like, yeah, make it but you know what people would pay and then it's just further money in the pocket what I do really like about this question is it does expose that people are now thinking laterally and thinking like no we actually do need a solution to this and it is not

this is not a foregone conclusion that we are all hopelessly online hopelessly enslaved to our algorithms people are thinking no we want out and I think this kind of thinking is exactly what will liberate us maybe in the long term but I think we're all in it for the long term it's such good and I feel bad because I don't want to people what you're saying but I read a really good

thing from Elizabeth Gilbert but I think it was in the New York Times substack where she said social media is like a party drug that we all started taking recreationally 10 to 15 years ago and we're having loads of fun getting high off it and now no one's getting high anymore but it's like a maintenance and we have to keep taking it and we don't know how to get off.

And that is really what I feel like it is. And I think the antidote to that is annoyingly because it was given to us and they are designed, like the way that social media works and I'm sure you don't know this, but it is literally designed to be like you're in a gambling. Like you pull down the thing twists, you don't know if you're going to get a result.

It is designed to feel addictive. So we've all been made to be asked, addicts against her own will. We didn't subscribe to that. And now we've all got to individually learn how to wean ourselves off them. And the way to do that is, unfortunately, going outside for a walk, seeing a friends of real life, reading a book, going to the gym, going on the ground, downloading a different app, paying for a different app, anything that's kind of like, it's just moving the problem around and making it shape ever so differently. Maybe it would help in some ways, and I'm sure for some people it would be really good, but really genuine.

And I feel this even, and we've gone around the houses, but in the reading step, we could have spoken about this, but you would have experienced this that when you do get really into a book, you genuinely, I can feel my cortisol levels start to relax, my brain starts to get slow and when I get really into it. I haven't been on my phone for a few hours and I'm like, oh, actually, I feel like I can breathe and like it's not good for us to be constantly so highly strong. I'm sure that is an alternative option. I would love to delete everything and not have anything, but I can't because that, you can't do that unless you're a billionaire, which we hate, billionaires. We hate them. Don't forget that, yeah. I think we might

We are out of time. We should have left two minutes ago, but we're sorry. Thank you so much for having us and thank you for listening to us and thank you to Cheltenham Literary Festival. Just as an FYI for anyone who might want to listen to us, we put out two episodes a week

on Wednesdays and Fridays and you can find them everywhere. You can delve into our archive. We are, everything is content on all of your podcast player apps. So you can listen back. We've done over 100 episodes and make sure to follow and then you won't miss any upcoming episodes in the future. I think that's it.

Oh, and please follow us. us on Instagram. You know, social media, social media. Social Instagram and TikTok. Social media is really bad, but also give us a follow. Please do on both. I'm not on someone if you want, thank you. Thanks for having us. So please see that. in his yellow and green strip and Cameroon in their iconic onesie. What are you talking about? Football shirts.

Okay, tell me why I should give a shit. I'm Jack. And I'm Kim. And in this Forever Better podcast by Puma, I'm taking Kim into my world so together we can uncover everything there is to know about football shirts, about the history, the fandom, the environmental impact. Don't forget the fashion. And the fashion.

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