Everything Is Content - Septum arms, AI journalists and Kamala Harris’ brat summer

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Wake up babe, new nonsense body insecurity just dropped! This week on Everything Is Content, we’re discussing the term ‘septum arms’ which was generated by the TikTok algorithm... what does this tell us about the speed of the trend cycle, and should we be concerned about the gen pop’s level of internet literacy? And, of course - we’re discussing the Kamala Harris x brat meme cycle… should we be pleased that politicians are trying to engage younger voters or is this distracting us from talking about actual policies? We also talk about Reem - Sheerluxe’s new ‘AI-enhanced’ team member… we have THOUGHTS. A lot of them. Give us a lil follow on Instagram or drop us a message if you have something you need to hear us chat about, or if you have opinions on anything you’ve heard us talk about today. Brat memes also welcomed. —PODCRUSHED: Ariana Grande (Apple link)PODCRUSHED: Ariana Grande (Spotify link)VOGUE: Daisy Edgar-Jones Has Entered The It-Girl ArenaPATRIC GAGNE: SociopathJON RONSON: The Psychopath TestLATE TO THE PARTY WITH GRACE CAMPBELL: Apple LinkLATE TO THE PARTY WITH GRACE CAMPBELL: Spotify LinkELLEN ATLANTA: Pixel FleshTHE GUARDIAN: ‘Kamala IS brat’ - Harris campaign goes lime-green to embrace the meme of the summerFORBES: ‘Septum Arms’ On TikTok - Behind The Meme That’s Baffled And Upset Users SHEERLUXE: Meet Our New AI-Enhanced Editor ReemRUTGER BREGMAN: Utopia For Realists —Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, okay, sorry, I don't know why I was doing that. Do you want to flirt? I'm Beth. I'm Richera. I'm Anoni. And this is your favourite pop culture podcast, Everything is Content. We're back, we're healthy, we're ready to do our favourite thing which is dissecting the most interesting pop culture stories of the week. We are the flake on the ice cream of content. If you haven't followed us on Instagram and TikTok yet, get over there right now. We are at Everything Is Content pod and tell someone you love about the podcast. Recommendations are the best way to spread the word. Today on the podcast we'll be debating the big topic of the moment, is Kamala Bratt. We'll also be talking about our new

nemesis, the algorithm. What have you been loving this week my girls? I need to pass this off to Ruchira because I need to think of one because I've been moving house and nothing pop culture has entered my brain. Okay so I have two this week which is kind of cheeky but I'll make them really quick. The first one is the podcast Podcrushed which is done by Penn Badgley of Gossip Girl fame and you and Nara Kaplan and Sophie Ansari and the episode that I listened to this week was with Ariana Grande. It's not new, it's like, I want to say like a month old or something. But it was just really sweet. And she talks about kind of, you know, coming into her 30s. And this sense of homecoming and kind of feeling like she's come back to the person she was when she was younger, and she was kind of her

pure self. And going through, you know, a period of her 20 was younger and she was kind of her purer self and going through you know a period of her 20s which was like kind of losing that core sense of who she was and I don't know I just feel like a lot of themes resonating for myself with turning 30 this year can I ask what is the format is it like just a straight interview format because actually I think I've only ever seen clips of this is it like supposed to be a deep dive really personal or do they have like like a format like off menu or whatever so they do have a format and essentially it literally is just going from middle school so I guess I don't I don't even know what that is like maybe 13 14 onwards and kind of tracking various moments of their life and it's all kind of like

based around like what kind of person were you at age 12 or 13 what were the things that you know you were worried about what was an embarrassing moment that you had and kind of like picking up on the big the big chapters and themes and then ending with like the person they are now so it gets quite it gets quite personal and it gets quite sweet and emotional and it's not like it's not like a paxman interview you're not going to get any kind of like challenging subjects coming up in terms of like why did you support this party at one point in your life? But it is quite like, it's quite interesting in getting to the core of who somebody is emotionally, I guess. Why did she lick that donut? Does she answer that question?

Well, yeah, that's the challenging topic that was not on topic, I'm afraid. I do want to know as well. I really want to listen because I'm obsessed with Penn Badgley. And how did how did this pass me by yeah it's like it's really it's really big now as well and they've just been signed up to Lemonata so I think it's like it's like getting astronomically big at the moment so definitely definitely listen they've got Elizabeth Moss on it they've got Maya Hawke they've got like massive names at the moment on the new series wow okay well I'll be listening to that what is your second one second one was um Daisy Edgar Jones's fashion for Twister during the last like two weeks has just been like at the forefront of my mind and

I'm just obsessed but yeah that's it same absolutely obsessed and I just keep thinking god if I was rich I'd be so fashionable and secondly gwen powell's dog glenn gwen powell glenn glenn powell's dog oh yeah i saw that that really made me laugh that someone was like yeah glenn powell is short for glenneth paltrow that's really funny but his little dog is it is it just his pet what's happening there because it's a bit like um demi more's just going around with this tiny chihuahua at the minute brisket brisket is the name of the dog isn't it is it not in the film someone said they went and saw the film and the dog is not in the film oh I I don't have a clue so as someone who doesn't know what these looks are

like what is so good about her twister looks oh so my take on it is that her stylist could have taken her down like an Emma Watson route which is where I think they kind of really tried to desexualize Emma Watson for a time. And they like put her in lots of like really kind of grown up outfits for a while. I don't know if you remember what happened to her. And I think Daisy Ecker-Jones has a bit of like an Emma Watson about her. And they could have tried to make her this very British English rose, demure. Not that that's a bad thing, but it was like just I could see that happening. And instead they've given her this like Daisy Jones and the Six Chloe from like the Sienna Miller Boho era

really interesting fashion and she looks sensational and it's made her like a movie star in a way that is um I don't know just I wasn't expecting I don't know did that make any sense that Emma Watson comparison that could just be me I'm not familiar with the Emma Watson era. I don't think I was, like, closely following her. But I completely agree on the references of why Daisy's, like, nailing fashion at the moment. And it feels like they've, like, just gone from, yeah, you know, she's in a film to being, like, this is a leading lady. It kind of feels like she's fact she's in this blockbuster to make her kind of viewed now as like an equal to like I don't know like a Margot Robbie type

they're like really pushing that forward with being like she's on everyone's minds right now she's having all of these fashion moments she's like she's it she is the moment. Beth what have you been loving this week? I've been moving and so I have tried to just avoid everything that is remotely stimulating I've just plugged myself into like white and brown noise every night but then today having successfully moved I started reading a book on my lunch break called sociopath by Patrick Gagne who is a writer and former therapist wife mum also identifies as a sociopath which reading the memoir I'm gathering is a really outdated term not a formal diagnosis but I think she self-identifies as that and it is so fascinating I think because that sort of antisocial personality disorder is not

something I know anything about and probably have all kinds of stigma and misapprehensions about. Reading a book by someone talking in really plain terms about being a sociopath as a child, about having kind of little to no empathy but loads of love, not really caring about consequences as long as they can get away with things, not feeling compassion for people, it's really fascinating. I did just start this but it's got so much high praise I think she might have gone on um Pandora Sykes's podcast to talk about the book months ago so it's got good it's got goodbye lines that is so up my alley I went to a phase of being really obsessed with yeah I don't know what the right term is like sociopaths or psychopaths and I remember reading John Ronson's book The Psychopath Test and then there was

another book by this man who was investigating sociopathy and he had like a brain scan done and found out that he was a sociopath when he went to investigate it they were like you actually have because I guess you can see I don't know how it works you obviously just aren't engaged in that like empathetic part of your brain and I find that really interesting as well, because we just think of sociopathy as evilness. Whereas like there is a scenario where if someone who doesn't have tendencies towards empathy is nourished and brought up in an environment that teaches you those things, it's like nature versus the nurture. You can be a good person. It's just not innate or as easy. I think that's, I desperately want to read that. I think that's exactly desperately want to read that I think that's exactly it she's

describing like a nothingness in herself and so she's reaching for something that will make her feel something which is often stealing or when she's a child it's acts of violence or kind of hurting other people and it's just to feel something reading it described like that something clicked and Noni what have you been loving this week okay i have two things as well first one is late to the party the new podcast by friend of the podcast grace campbell it's just started and it's basically her talking to i know the guest list and i don't even want to tell you who's going on it i am just like damn and the first episode is katherine ryan it's basically just about like the parties you've been to how you are at parties but it's also just like a very loose format for a broad chat so that's really

good and I'm excited to listen to more of the episodes and the second one is a book called Pixel Flesh by Ellen Atlanta which I actually got something to proof of ages ago and forgot about it came out in May 2024 but one of my followers brought it up when we were talking about body image um the blurb reads to exist as a young woman today is to struggle in a sea of paradoxes beauty is both a blessing and a curse and then they say a rallying cry for a brand new voice in non-fiction i've just started it but for those of you that enjoyed our episodes on aging and on beauty this is such a forensic examination of our obsessions with those things and Ellen actually worked for an app um where

people can basically edit their features and like when she's working there she suddenly decides to leave so I'm right at the start the bit I'm at it's just kind of stuff that I know but I feel like you almost have to be constantly absorbing yourself in these conversations because otherwise I I did get kind of like sidetracked for a couple years where I forgot there are other ways to live and that you can kind of like emancipate yourself from certain pressures it's something that I can just get so fascinated by even though I like know so much of it to be true when you read it you're like god we live in such a weird world is it depressing to read you keep having to take breaks or is it kind of offering a better way I don't know it's kind of it's just that whole conflicting thing

where I have that within myself on the one hand I feel so like I've really intellectualized and understand beauty and on the other hand I'm like should get another flip flip flip that sounds good keep us posted with it though okay we're gonna wade into a topic that's been a little bit controversial here at EIC headquarters, politicians and social media. I mean, I think everyone can probably guess the topic we're going to talk about. It's green, it's neon, we've mentioned it before. Everything is moving super quickly in the US election. And so for context, we're recording this on a Wednesday evening. And on Sunday, Joe Biden withdrew from the US presidential election race. He then endorsed current Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate. charlie xex tweeted kamala is brat and understandably harris's campaign team have wet themselves and run with that they've essentially changed her twitter banner to say kamala hq and it's all in brat lime green style and they're really they're really eating it up to be honest the campaign have also

been using music from other gen z icons of the moment my absolute fave has been dragged into this mess this clusterfuck chapel veron is on the official tiktok page for the campaign and they're calling it a camilla non-anon in reference to feminine on and on and i want to shoot myself anyway i digress anyway what do you girls think of the bratt harris campaign collaboration? Personally, I'm cross because I freaking love this album. Like I actually can't stop listening to it. It's just given me so much joy. And I think that the thing that I think

is so incongruous and irritating is like, has any of them listened to the lyrics in any of the songs? Like, do they know what it's about? And I think if we're in a place where Kamala Harris and her team were talking about, I don if we're in a place where Kamala Harris and her team were talking about I don't know decriminalizing drugs and cracking down on like I don't know really liberal policies and somehow this album related to something I don't know it just feels like

no one's listened as much as I do understand that politicians have to kind of find a way to get younger people engaged with their policy. This kind of makes me think it's just lazy, I think. I don't know. I agree. My primary emotion was confusion because the ethos of brat and what we understand to be brat as girls just trying to have a brat summer really feels antithetical to the politics of it all it's also american politics like what i don't know the whole thing just felt a little bit like two worlds colliding that never between shall meet okay actually i'm going to say something which might get us cancelled but i think of the candidates is trump not a little bit more brat

so true spicy spicy spicy as charlie xx says brat summer essentials were pack of cigs bit lighter strappy white top with no bra i can see that for trump oh my god oh my god spicy sean faye put on her instagram story brat summer was supposed to be for twinks with a catamon problem what's going on i'm like i don't identify as as either of those things but I am also the other arm of rat which is a single woman in her 30s trying to decide if I want to stay up till 4am or maybe try and have a baby um like I don't know which one I am yet it's definitely the former seems more likely but yeah it just feels so incongruous I mean it is I wish I found it funny I don't know if I'm just jaded I don't know if i've aged out maybe if i was like a teenager i would really find this

like oh my god it's so cool but i think because we've seen this done so many times it's just not as innovative or interesting or funny as it could be and like the fact that they've literally turned everything green like no one has listened to this album i think the fun part of like everything being brat is where you find it organically like and only when you're walking around you see a lime and you go brat summer things like that it's funny when you're doing it all intentionally um i wonder when you just said we've seen it all before in that 2016 hillary clinton in like broad city the whole like pokemon go to the polls all of that this feels like fundamentally different and i can't tell why it feels as exhausting as trite and as like try hard but i can't work out

whether i hate this more or less so i think the reason why it feels a bit different is with that time that was all kind of orchestrated by the democrats and that was kind of like pushed by them with this kamala harris and her team have been almost like piggybacking off Charlie starting it. And like Kamala Harris has been a meme for like years. You know, the fact that she had that really funny quote about falling out of a coconut tree, the fact that she dances really weirdly, she makes these funny expressions.

Like a certain part of Twitter has memed her for years. So this hasn't come out of nowhere. It kind of feels quite organic but the fact that they're now kind of jumping on it and they're trying to utilize it is the thing that feels kind of annoying and I also feel like the fact that we're kind of flattening her into a meme bothers me a bit it kind of irritates me because we're not I feel like I'm not seeing any discourse about any of her policies or kind of like talking about her like a person she's just this like really hilarious joke online to actually just go back to the beginning where I said that I'm really cross about this I've

actually decided I've changed my mind Ruchira you're so right about her being memed that we did it joe is one of my favorite phrases a really funny tweet that I saw was a guy being like my wife's only just found out that we did it joe isn't a private joke between me and her because she'd never seen the original thing so she just thought it was something he was saying to her but you just reminded me that everyone's now saying because you know how commoner said she was like you think you just fell out of coconut too you're like the product of everything in the world that you live in and everyone keeps saying that it's like the apple lyric from charlie xcx i think the apple's rotten right to the core from all the things that passed down from all the

apples before and everyone's like that is the same thing as so she is brat i get it okay i take it back did do did you see the the venn diagram i think like nbc news did oh i did and one of them was um i think it was like fruit they both have fruit as metaphor so coconut and apple um both i think it was um maternal indian heritage and the final one was both vehicle enthusiasts which I think it's the bus meme with Kamala and would Charlie accept the car crash can we also just briefly I just want to talk about how all the noise around it is so wild because it's like all these people be like well she's never had a kid and it's like all these other presidents that have never had a kid and then like such I just mean the it's almost like too difficult to engage with how redundant

and lowbrow some of the criticism being thrown at her is yeah I mean it's also like misogynoir as well isn't it like yeah we knew that as soon as she would be there that there would just be like some of the worst kind of insults like lugged at her which is why I think it makes like all of the brat stuff more difficult to talk about because you i think it makes like all of the brat stuff more difficult to talk about because you already know there's a part of the internet that's like really horrid to her so it feels like hard to critique her in a way that like is normal without like going into fanishness or going into like or like just like shitting on her in the way that she's already probably getting from like a lot of the far right yeah so true we lived through that 2016 election with hillary clinton and that was revolting hillary clinton is still a posh i guess

posh isn't an american term but like a white woman who's always been like very closely associated with power so like it could be we've not seen anything yet so it does sort of fill me with that sense of dread like how low can they go much lower even than they went before I do I do definitely think it is interesting seeing how like much fanishness and like this whole approach to her has gone like crazy online whereas like with our election there was like no inkling no like semblance of like any kind of fun about it it was so just like dire and drab whereas with this one it's become like this like real fun moment and I just wonder what would have happened if Charlie hadn't tweeted whether like

anyone would have been like I don't know just like going mental in this way we do sort of make people into reality tv stars and cartoon characters and I've read tweets from people saying I didn't really think much about her and now because of all all of these fan edits I've seen, I actually really like her. And that kind of being swayed by silly little memes, that does fill me with dread about the future and just made me quite angry. Well, that's the thing that's so weird.

It's like, I actually saw a tweet from a guy that was like, my dad always votes Trump, but then he thought Kamala was hot, so he's going to vote for her. And like, there's this level of like, well, that's good. Like she does, she's very likable well that's good like she does she's very likable she's very smiley she's very funny she's obviously like very game for kind of like having a laugh she's young but it does it does worry me that like that's the metric of like honestly how

we vote now is like we're voting on love island or like a personality show rather than policy it's like that has actually become the main metric of how we're voting for like individual politicians rather than like policies and parties and I mean it's been going that way for a while but it does seem like the wrong I don't know how much we should be traveling down that road how much we should keep going down that road I don't know how useful it's going to be even if it feels a bit fun yeah I think it's difficult because with America, it's like even more extreme. There is literally a two party system. So it almost feels like you either have to get on board or you're voting Republican.

So I feel like that's what we're seeing where it's like nobody's nobody's going to have like a proper conversation about it online because it's like, well, we're all going to get on board with like the lesser of two evils. And obviously we're going to vote Democrat and just like call her a brat can i ask where both of you were when you found out that joe biden had um like released a statement stepping down because mine was seeing that tweet or it was a tweet of a conversation posted where someone had texted their friend going joe biden out and they were like as gay and i was like this is how i'm finding out about huge political news i think that just speaks to what we've been saying this is where we're at it's all a circus I think the one I saw was like a video of Kylie Jenner or someone being like me quitting my job to focus on summer and then someone being like Joe Biden shut up that's not how you found

out that's so funny we are so in the in the circus so the thing is it's I'm so deep in that I do find it funny and I also am so online that I know every single thing so I'll like read one of those like copy pasta things that's been edited and then like it's retweeted like the the 11 years worth of like twitter brain rot that I've absorbed so I find it so funny because some of it it's like if you read it out to someone they'd be like what does this even mean so it's like it is funny but it's just also so silly. So the phrase septum arms has been doing the rounds on tiktok this week on the face of it it seems like it's just another case of us naming parts of women's bodies to make them sound like a problem we saw this with the term strawberry arms strawberry legs for example however the phrase

septum arms is actually a nonsense term that was created by the TikTok algorithm so let me break it down a little bit further because I am still quite confused by this what happened was a user called at Orlando specialty posted a video where he criticizes people who make fun of women's arms another user commented what if it's someone with a septum, referring to a person with a septum piercing. This made the TikTok AI mash the phrase septum arms together and promote it as a blue comment, which led to more comments asking what the term means and why it's recommended to them underneath the video. Amongst this confusion, the phrase septum arms was interpreted to mean several different things such as having larger arms or arms with scars. It then went one step further

with women speaking out on the platform in an attempt to reclaim the phrase for body positivity. Is everyone keeping up with that? I barely am, but I sort of know what's happened. Same. Any questions in the room? No, I'm ready I feel like this is just the end but I can't even articulate what I'm trying to say but it's literally like we've come so far that like the content is creating itself and we are existing because it used to be that like something would happen something relatable emotional we'd all talk about

it that would become a thing and blah blah and it's like we've come so far that that i don't even know i don't even know how i don't even know how to explain it we fell out the coconut tree and hit every branch on the way down yeah the whole thing is just so stupid and it's like this proves more than anything that like trends are absolute bollocks and bullshit now like people are doing in defense of septum arms when they don't even fucking know what it means and there's no definition for it it's a made-up term like if this isn't like a perfect encapsulation of how ridiculous the like trend cycle on tiktok is to the point that nonsensical terms are generating like proactive reactive like reactive commentary from the reactions it's just like i don't know what to say there's nothing more to say yeah the speed of it was insane from like nonsense term

created to women suddenly feeling bad about their bodies to going do you know what i'm going to stop feeling bad like 24 hours when i first started to realize that the it was doing this was when related search terms came up and after a while you started to realize that the it was doing this was when related search terms came up and after a while you started to realize that I don't think that people are searching this so for instance like if you put something on TikTok or even on Google and like I would look up like an influencer or look up something that was happening and you could tell that the algorithm had like just mashed their name with like something else really popular going on I was starting to become aware that that was happening it wasn't what people had searched it was what they thought people might search and

that was creating like gossip I'm trying to think of like an example but they would put like I don't know someone's name and then break up because that was getting big traction with someone else and it would then make people search for it but now it's this is really funny because it's such nonsense like what do you imagine when you imagine a septum arm I imagine quite like a croissanty arm I think an arm with a like it goes in like smaller than like goes in at the top because it's my septum at first I was like I forgot what a septum was I was like arm shaped like ears and then I was like no no it's this bit it's like a bit of connective tissue so I was like oh it must be really like concave arms so completely the opposite of what other people took it to mean oh god it's like build your own

insecurity basically you're completely right anoni i remember it was like i can't even remember what example it was but search terms were generating a new kind of misinformation because people would search insert celebrity name here and then i don't know pedophile or something and because enough people had searched that it would come up for some people looking insert celebrity name here and then they would start being like why does this keep saying this and then it would generate all of these like think videos and reactionary videos of people like suggesting that it was a thing when there was no reason to think that in the first place yeah exactly it's like confirmation bias of something that doesn't even exist and it's kind of like the thing that we saw it's it's another iteration of sort of like deep fakes fake news it's just this problem that we're seeing occurring

and it feels quite funny because so far it's been quite silly but it's like it's actually quite scary when you think about it like how much like you said especially if those search terms are coming up it could ruin someone's lives someone's life and like i don't know it's just a lot scarier than it is as funny as it is i'm scared surely some there have been multiple people that have said please make sure this doesn't happen because tech literacy reading it like it's not very high it's maybe an all-time low at this moment people will read that not look into it and go that person's an abuser that person is a pedophile that person is you know fighting with this person surely that tech is not more valuable than the prospective lawsuits or something like something's got to give that

surely yeah i think women now are so primed because of you especially women in our age group are so primed to believe that there is something wrong with us. Like we grew up with like heat circle of shame. We grew up in like the era of everything being wrong with us. Like if a celebrity's toe was a little bit longer, it would be on the front page of heat magazine. And so I think when someone says something which should clearly be read, we're all intelligent women of, you know, septum arms, you should go, these two words do not belong together. And yet I think after years of conditioning we still go oh my god I might have it oh my god yeah I've got it I've got it I can see what it is in my mind I've got it I've got to get rid of it I do think part of it is our not gullibility there is a better word for this but like our susceptibility to these things after

years of being just beaten down by the media just for like having normal human bodies i have a controversial response to that i wonder if because this was so fast people even had the time to actually feel insecure about it and it wasn't just people jumping on a trend of a term that was buzzy online creating content and just thinking okay this thing is going viral what's the next best thing to continue the trend aka doing it in a in a defense of septum arms and I think I'm just quite cynical about it and I wonder if it's just more a case of like trend continuation and like an attempt at virality online that is possibly I think closer to what I think maybe happened I think both of those things are true I

think there'll be people who are like that and then people who are like Beth and actually it was making me think about that book that I recommend right at the top pixel flash where she talks about this ever-growing they would see like this ever-growing change in insecurities that would just get more and more and more that had never really existed before and so as you were talking about that made so much sense then you spoke Richard and that made so much sense so I picked richa and that made so much sense so i picked both love that oh my god it's basically a horrible marriage between those like kind of base instincts in us that like for that attention on the internet and also to hate ourselves we have created a monster this is what i think social media always is and i tried to write about that in my book bad influence where like content creation is a content creator's job so

sometimes there'll be things that they talk about which because they're talking about it makes it become such a bigger thing it could be anything not even like a problem just any kind of content and it's so warped and that's why sometimes you do need to go outside and touch grass and like delete some apps off your phone because if you let yourself get too sunk in to all of the noise it just you do I can understand why if you've been on TikTok all day and then you see this and you absorb too much why that could make like septum arms sure why not hip dips you know it's all like it's just another iteration and then when you like turn your phone off and you go out into the real world you're like oh no this is all okay actually we're all fine not me I see grass and I go that is so brat coded so I wanted to talk about something baffling that started last week and the lifestyle website

sheer luxe which by the way I'm a really big fan of I've actually been on one of their podcasts um they announced that they had a new fashion and lifestyle editor called Reem. And they posted a carousel of her day in the life of the office. But Reem is what they described as an AI enhanced team member. So she looked very real, but she wasn't real. And I don't know if you guys remember a few years ago, there was this like influence got really big in the pandemic that was actually just AI. Made me think of that.

And so loads of people were like quite quick to get in the comments because the ream it was a woman of color well an ai pass i don't even know how you talk about ai in this way but anyway and one instagram user said am i tripping or did you create an ai woman of color as a staff member instead of hiring one and then she looks did respond with a statement and said she's an ai generated image only and is not able to create content or articles no jobs are compromised in any way as a result of her creation and we would never publish any content that hasn't had human involvement so I guess my question to you is how does this make you feel and and and why did they do it I really really had like quite like a strong reaction to it and I I really disliked it. I

didn't. It made me feel really bad. And, you know, with the context of the year that we've all had in the media, it just feels like so shit to see actively, you know, companies pursuing AI and kind of finding ways to make it seem like it's this fun new development when really I don't think there is a way to incorporate AI and promise that you're not affecting jobs or people because you are effectively proving that AI could do the job of a person and yeah I just I don't know it makes me feel really bad because that is essentially to me equating to the loss of like real people and like real voices in the industry in the future agree completely I think even though she isn't replacing like isn't intending to kind of replace a real person it feels quite shit to be like look who we've hired guess what nobody

and like as a journalist nobody is getting hired it's sort of like being a journalist right now is just synonymous for being like precariously or unemployed or precariously employed and unemployed. Like, and they're kind of like, we made an AI, one of you, and we love her. It just felt very like, just no one asked you to do this. No jobs for you, but like, here's a joke one. Maybe that is a very specific subset of people

that would be like dagger to the chest, but they're all online and they're really angry. What I wonder is, is it them testing the waters? For all we know, like these companies are trying it out and, you know, waiting to see the response. And if people have been like, that's really cool, maybe they would have been like, I mean, what could she, I don't really understand AI. So I don't really know what she could have done. I don't want to, I don't want to get to know her. I could have done i don't want to i don't want to get to know her i'm fine like stay over there i don't want to get to know did you guys read the comments no what were the comments because there was one pose where they left the comments open and i think they're about on sorry this is on reimbot's own account which they've created for her i think there are about about 1,200 comments, 1,200 if you're from England.

They were mostly mimicking and parroting what we've been saying here. Some really interesting ones. A lot of them were kind of saying, this is egregious. This is a woman of colour. She's got an Arabic name. What are you doing? One that I thought was really interesting was a comment by Sarah Jagger, who is a makeup artist.

And she wrote, this is so disturbing. Pictures of what this pretend person eats normalizing the humanizing of ai with unobtainable beauty standards and lifestyle habits is unethical and will have a disastrous impact on everyone's mental health so maybe not even taking it from like a kind of industry standard but on a personal standard this is a horrible thing to do to people's eyeballs watching this people censor themselves the thing i find really twisted and bizarre is just when ai is utilized and you know a person is made from this and like shoved down our throats they often go down the route of making them a person of color and it's just like very it's very just like i don't know it horrifies

me to be honest like Lil Miquela was a Latina woman you know the AI influencer that's the one I was thinking of yes yeah and um yeah very very weird and then this woman Reem like why why are you why are you choosing to make them women of color it's just very I it's I don't understand the reasoning behind it and I'm sure somebody would say surely it's better that they're going for a diverse AI than white AI but I don't I don't think that's the argument I think it's fucking weird it just feels kind of bizarre to me that this company has decided to do this especially when I know this is kind of outdated but there was this like prolific 2016 British journalism survey that found that 94% of UK media is white.

So that is obviously a fair few years out of date. But it is just like, I don't know, it's like using technology to propel the image that diversity is natural and a part of all of us in our ecosystem when that isn't the fucking case. This is kind of a changing track, but just about algorithms and what you're saying about reimbots instagram there's a new shop that's popping up everywhere that keep noticing i've never seen it before it's like a clothing brand but has bits and bobs and it's like really modern and glass-fronted and when i look at it it's literally like every single ad i got on instagram and i think people are genuinely building businesses based on like algorithms and like to an extent where we are going to become devoid of personality it's a bit like going back to the

idea of like everyone wanted the same face trends are becoming so homogenized because of algorithms and everything I know that I'm kind of zooming out but I just think like kind of everything we've spoken about today whether it's about like politics becoming memes septum arms or brands hiring ai i am already seeing this bleeding out into our reality and it just makes me quite scared and worried because it feels like it's infiltrating a very slow parasitic rate i don't know if you guys feel this maybe we should do a deep dive on ai i mean we're all absolutely not experts but we could we could get an expert and we could chat that could be good if you are an expert listening could you write in because we would love to have you

imagine if it was like a bot that wrote it oh my god oh my god should we do uh we interview chat gbt no i'm joking no one wants that i refuse to use it also my dad when chat gbt came out was like asking it he didn't understand the function of how it worked and didn't realize it wasn't like Google. So he was just asking it like direct questions, not realizing that it's like pulling lots of information and kind of like, it's like a creative resource almost. It's not like factual.

And he'd be like, look at this. And I was like, dad, no, it's just not, you're not using this interface right. So it's dangerous in that sense as well. We've got to keep the boomers safe. Yeah, every single part of like my sister's a teacher and talks about this i see people talking about this in every single sector there is an ai panic there's also like an ai uptake so people are like adopting these technologies really rapidly to help their business at the same time as being like oh shit how do we protect against all the harms how do we make sure that people

aren't using this for ill basically it's all happening at the same time as being like oh shit how do we protect against all the harms how do we make sure that people aren't using this for ill basically it's all happening at the same time and i think it is really terrifying as a riser and as a person it's coming quite quickly for media as well i've seen both on job sites that they're hiring for ai managers um at newspapers and then also i can't remember what site i was on. And I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna slander anyone just as a stray shot. But I was on a site and it said AI assisted reporting and it had a person and it was just like, I think a local newspaper, which isn't surprising, because I feel like this technology is going to seep into the places with the least funding that needs to get, you know, the most amount of content out for the least amount of buck and it's just like really fucking bleak i don't want to manage ai i don't

want to i don't want to talk to it i don't want any shit going on with it what was that thing people were like we what we need ai is to do the shit jobs and like the kind of like so we can do the creative stuff but at the moment ai is just doing all the creative stuff so we can like program it because because there's that book that i always talk about by rutger breckman called utopia for realists and in it he talks about this concept of bullshit jobs which is basically about how as we started to funnel money towards kind of like finances and banking in the city and all of those kind of things all of these creative minds that could have been like genius musicians or whatever ended up going where the money was so we lost like this huge there's became like and also then you've also got the other problem of privilege of just like people that

are very creative and clever not even getting access to doing anything but it was about how all of those jobs really are just fundamentally moving money around they're the bullshit jobs and the only jobs that really matter for a society are like carers teachers and the arts because they're the things that like look after people keep people alive and also give people like purpose so basically we because no one knows what consultants in the city do even though pretty much every single ex ever had was one no idea what is a hedge fund what is a hedge fund i don't understand i don't know it sounds cute though yeah like they just cut a hedge yeah exactly so we should try and work out a way to get the ai to do that and then imagine we'd all be creative be beautiful and then we should get like, yeah.

Well, isn't that like Karl Marx's theory as well? That original thing of like getting robots to do, is that not Marxist? Getting robots to do like the washing and everything so that we have more free time. More leisure time. But actually we ended up doing more work. Is that Marx?

It sounds like Marx. I think I had Ash Sarkar once on adulting and I said this whole thing to her and she went you've just explained car marks is serious and i was like oh that's really embarrassing i think their apology or their explanation for reem she loves it was not reassuring at all and i want to see no more apologies like this or no more explanations because they wrote no jobs were compromised anyway as a result of her creation and we would never publish any content that hasn't had human involvement and that kind of vague language i want lifestyle publications to say we aren't going to have a writers not we'll always have human involvement i want like

unequivocal we stand behind human creatives i want people to go yes we are facing the future we are really what's the word they use innovative but we are going to protect human jobs and don't equivocate with all of that in like such an uncertain world especially when like your consumer is human don't forget that say put something out that says we were having a bit of fun but we are not going to do the thing that every journalist is dreading which is like hand over a portion or a big portion of creative control to a generative model with AI that's what I want and that's not what they put out they might have meant that but they didn't put out and I don't feel reassured. Retweet. Thanks so much for listening to us this week

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