Everything Is Content - The Sexualisation of Former Child Stars

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

In the week that Jojo Siwa entered her bad gal era - here on Everything is Content we’re unpacking what it means for a former child star to graduate into adulthood. How does the media respond when child-stars reinvent themselves… and why is Jojo Siwa claiming to have invented gay pop? We also take a dive into a story that has lit up the timelines this week of a husband who ghosted his pregnant wife, and her crusade on Facebook to try and find him and serve him divorce papers. Do we have the right to disappear online, and does that go away if we do bad things? If you want to chat to us - please head to our Instagram @everythingiscontentpod. We’re also now on TikTok (I KNOW, look at us keeping up with the modern technology) it’s @everythingiscontentpod there too. Please join us!  —TIKTOK: Nick White - Dull Co-Worker SADLER’S WELLS: What’s On BBC SOUNDS: Miss Me? PEOPLE: JoJo Siwa Always Wanted to Have Her Miley Cyrus Bangerz Moment with New LookVULTURE: Is JoJo Siwa’s ‘Karma’ a Flop or a Flop?INQUIRER: She asked the internet to find husband who ‘ghosted’ her and their kids. He was tracked down within hoursLSE: Whatsapp VigilantesTHE WEEK: 'Are We Dating the Same Guy?': do Facebook groups harm or help?—Follow us on Instagram:@everythingiscontentpod @beth_mccoll @ruchira_sharma@oenone ---Everything Is Content is produced by Faye Lawrence for We Are GrapeExec Producer: James Norman-FyfeMusic: James RichardsonPhotography: Rebecca Need-Meenar Artwork: Joe Gardner  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm so sad you're not in Paris and we can't all go for a little meal at a little bistro after this oh that'd be such the night for it as well I'm Beth I'm Richera and I'm Anoni this is everything is content the pop culture podcast where we delve into the heart of the discourse literature films runways tiktoks it's all important and we have a lot to say about all of it we are the salty salty rim on the spicy margarita of content yum i would love one of those right now oh yeah this week we'll be discussing jojo siwa she was seen carrying a massive plushy penis and said that she invented gay pop there's a lot to unpack there and And we'll be discussing a

viral story of a man who ghosted his pregnant wife. Should people who behave badly be allowed to disappear? Okay, girlies, I want to know what have you been loving this week? I have been loving Dull Coworker. Dull Coworkeriktok character um created by the australian comedian um and content creator nick white she's like my comfort character um she's this kind of very homely sweet woman who wears this like dry brunette wig and she's just like very polite very earnest she's always eating a yogurt in these skits that he does. Has like a really nice partner met. And it's just this kind of complimentary, very comforting caricature

of like a real and very loved character in a lot of workplaces. She's like so unproblematic, kind of has this like rich social life, but like does very dull things. Like she makes a lot of pizzas. She calls dogs fur babies. She calls real babies skin babies, which is kind of adorable and bizarre. but like does very dull things like she makes a lot of pizzas um she calls dogs fur baby she calls

real babies skin babies which is kind of adorable and bizarre and yeah i've just been loving completely unproblematic easy watches um before bed i just scroll and i watch dull co-worker is she a hun slash fiat 500 vibes like how does she differ to that i wonder in like an australian context where she would fall I think she's on the spun that's sorry the hun spectrum the spun um but she's quite she's quite a home body she plays things quite safe I would say I think her name's Carly and she just makes me feel like a part of something as like a freelancer I just sort of log onto my phone and I feel like I'm in I'm at the water cooler with like my bestie at work.

So it's just been really nice thing for me this week. I love that. Richa, what have you been loving this week? Okay, so this is an uncharacteristically cultured recommendation I've got for you. Me and Beth actually saw Carmen at Sadler's Wells last week and it was incredible. It was sexy. It was so seductive. It was, it was just the music was so recognisable in a way that I wasn't expecting, especially as somebody who is not super cultured

when it comes to ballet or classical music. But watching it, it was like the most hyperbolic love story of jealousy and rage that I think I've seen in a while. It was amazing. It was sexy, wasn't it? Yes. It was really like kind of steamy in a way that I didn't know you're allowed or could possibly do with ballet. Anoni, I think you would have loved it. It was really, really gripping. I was clutching some pearls at various moments and feeling like a bit of a prude. So that should

give you an indication. Fanning yourself with yourself with the program yes getting very hot under the collar I was so jealous when you guys went to watch it and also my cousin who used to be a dancer the English National Ballet replied when I shared your post and was like oh my god English National Ballet and then it reminded me maybe like a decade ago or more I went and saw but I don't know what it was but it was like a modern take on ballet with the English National Ballet and that was amazing but I can't really remember I don't know if it was an actual story or just a bit of modern modern movement it's very funky we should all go once you're back in um in the country a thousand percent right and only what have you been loving this week I've been loving croissant and also I've been listening to

miss me with Lily Allen and Makita Oliver which I kept meaning to listen to and actually I've been loving it because they have been best friends for ages and basically it's just the premises they just like catch up and it's so funny because it's so nostalgic they obviously both like there's a bit where they're talking about how neither of them have a GCSE between them they went to like 11 different schools like Lily ran away from school to go to Glastonbury Festival and they were just running a riot like the whole time obviously Lily is sober now and she talks about her sobriety but it's just it's they're obviously such good friends it's so nice to listen into because you really feel like you're it like you've managed to hack into someone's phone and you're like listening to their private conversation so that's really fun and they do actually talk about some serious issues as well

but they're both so smart and I found it really interesting them talking about how like they would have loved to have gone to university but also looking at how much they've achieved I know they're obviously both meppo babies of a sort but they've still like carved their own space so that's a fun easy listening podcast and they're both just a bit of a laugh. Oh, nice. Who is Nikki? I obviously know Lily Allen, but I recognised her face, but I can't place her.

Am I being really stupid? So Makita Oliver used to do, I can't remember what the show was with Simon Amstel on Channel 44. Yeah, was Jamila Jamil on it? Was it that kind of era of? Yeah, she did quite a few different like tv things but her mum is andy oliver who now does um great british menu and

quite famous chef and but it's mad because they're both like almost 40 now and i still see them as being like quite young she was like makita oliver started doing tv when she was like 15 16 i apologize i called her Nikki. I mean Makita. I know. I just was going to let that go. I apologise to her if she's listening. We'll dub you in later.

Okay, so, girlies, everyone on the internet has been talking about jojo siwa this week for those who don't know jojo siwa is an american internet personality who is part of the cast of dance mums from 2015 to 2016 after that she began releasing music and now 20 years old she started her quote-unquote adult music career with her new single Karma. She's shed the colourful ponytails and bows that kind of became her trademark in favour of a kiss-inspired aesthetic, and said in an interview at the iHeartMusic Awards that she wants this to be her bangers moment, which is a reference to when fellow former child star Miley Cyrus

broke out of the kid-pop genre. I think one picture has kind of summed all of this up, which was Jojo Siwa pictured leaving a sex shop with a giant penis and wearing a t-shirt that said, karma's a bitch. The giant penis is a plushie. So it's kind of like a giant penis, but it's essentially a cuddly toy,

which is such a strange convergence of like grown up, mature, and also like very babyish. I don't know, it really creeps me out yeah it is quite creepy I think what's interesting is we have seen this before like I think Miley Cyrus did a very similar thing go quite extreme on a smaller much smaller British scale Emma Watson did like the pixie crop I think there is something about like kind of when you leave that childhood stardom where you feel like you need to do a big sort of like image revival or change to feel like you're getting unstuck from this image people have of you. But it's just quite interesting the way Jojo is doing it because it is on the extreme end of things, I'd say. It's very engineered, I think.

It seems very kind of manufactured. And I would say, I mean, I maybe wasn't a savvy back then, but I remember the Miley Cyrus kind of like breakout era heading into like bangers. It didn't feel, obviously there was a lot of like PR work there, but it just didn't feel as coordinated as this, as deliberate as like, I've got to appear older. Like she was straining against that good girl Disney image for essentially her like entire tweens and teens so this feels different yeah I feel like with the Miley thing it almost felt like it was quite off the rails as if no one could kind of control the image that she was like I'm gonna do this I am just gonna

grind on Robin Thicke uh was it the Grammys was it the Grammys oh yeah or the VMAs it might have been the VMAs it just all felt like no right-minded music PR is advising this whereas I think with the Jojo Siwa stuff because it's come after you know a list of child stars resorting to that it does feel way more orchestrated I think also to go back to your point Beth about the plushie thing there's an ickiness to it in that it's not like she's becoming super adult and she's kind of sexualizing herself which is what we're saying as well in in like the way that we saw with Miley Cyrus like wearing certain outfits and kind of really stepping into womanhood I guess there's this level of like infantilization mixed in with this like hypersexualization exactly perfectly embodied by the plushy penis, which is very odd.

Her image is so kind of kitsch and bubble or it was until this point it was so infantilized. It was it's like night and day, whereas there was like every other child star who who did transition into that kind of more grown, sexy. It was like the kind of gradual transforming, whereas this is like one day, it's like all bubble gum and sequins. And now it does feel like the mood board has just been like completely flipped around. Yeah, and she said that there was an interview I saw a clip going around on X,

where she said, no star has ever had a switch in the grandest way that i have i've switched like the most overnight and it was this kind of yeah it was almost like pride and slightly arrogant way of talking about the fact that she's like yeah i have done the biggest like slap to your face aesthetically i suppose she is the child of like she's from that world where she was on dance mounds and so that's a show where you're constantly kind of being bigged up and buoyed on to be the biggest and the best and

the loudest and it's very kind of camp and cheerleader and um self-belief and I am brilliant and she's kind of carried that through into adulthood which is quite funny because that kind of contradicts the other idea which is like coming away from being a child star you maybe start to become a bit more introspective and a bit more self-aware and a bit more adult whereas this still feels like a child's kind of grasping at ideas of what this new version of her is but it also is just like someone throwing paint poo colorful poo at a wall I think it sticks I I want to be careful how I say this because I think it's quite a sticky thing. But I think the child stars of the past were sexualized by the media way before, obviously, it was appropriate, way before they wanted to be sexualized and way before they were adults. like Jojo who was this kind of very like bubble gummy made for kids very sweet figure and also kind of a queer teenager turned you know now she's an adult she wasn't sexualized by the media

which is obviously a fantastic thing but it does mean when she's an adult perhaps the media aren't playing ball or aren't as willing to kind of co-sign it and take it seriously because they weren't the ones who had a hand in it the way that they did with the Olsen twins or Britney or certainly Miley. I don't know whether I'm making a point there. You're really making a point. That was a really good bloody point. Have you seen the TikTok by Hannah Borelli 2? they were saying that because Jojo C was a queer woman, it's one uncanny valley because the type of sexualization she's doing to herself doesn't fit the template we have for heterosexual over-sexualization of women, which we've seen with Miley, which we've

seen, as you say, with the Olsen twins, with honestly like any woman who exists for longer than 10 years in the media with Jojo she's sexualizing herself but there's no template for queer women to do that and to age themselves up but potentially Jojo Siwa to you know be marketable and still keep a straight fan base in check is just going for something completely left field and going for a kiss aesthetic but whilst also really leaning into queer identity. And the two of those things together, and what she's putting out there with the plushie penis,

it's all just like mishmash and not working. But when Miley Cyrus kind of came out with her wrecking ball and stuff, Miley Cyrus is a queer woman, and I'm fairly certain that she opened up about her bisexuality at a similar point in that. Did she not? I can't remember, but i think perhaps it is yeah if you are as a young woman men or kind of male gaze gets a hold of you that even i think your bisexuality at that point will get co-opted they can find a way to make it sexy i do think joe jc was perceived childhood went on for such a long time even though

ironically she was probably you know in this industry that was kind of making her grow up very quickly because she was in the public eye her childhood as kind of perceived by us the viewer went on i guess until like just before this so another bone of contention online was that jojo siwa did an interview on the red carpet and she said that she really wants to create gay pop as a genre. I saw a few kind of salty reposts of this. I saw one person say, does RuPaul not exist anymore? Question mark. And also, I think we can agree that pop is inherently gay. Pop is gay by nature, I would say. I saw Tegan and Sarah, I think it was just like the TikTok account, just like silently kind of respond to it. So I do think like the kind of, I don't want to say,

like the older pop girlies, especially who are like, the older gay pop girlies are noticing it and kind of playfully um inserting themselves there's a piece in vulture titled is jojo siwa's karma a flop or a flop with rebecca alter and jason p frank and they're talking to each other and rebecca alter says to jason what you're saying is she's fed up of being perceived as a sexist clown for children so she's rebranding as a clown for grown-ups who fucks bad and he responds objectively yes oh ouch yes that's what i was going to say so like as much as i think her like she needs a better stylist if she's got one and that maybe her team around her could be helping with her branding and saying like she's creating a

new genre and it's gay pop it It seems all quite misguided. She is only 20. Like how much are people chomping at the bit to kind of get in and sort of like analyze? I mean, it is ridiculous. But what do you think? Is she fair game? Or do you think that she's maybe not got great management around her? I think she doesn't have great advice or great management potentially

have you seen the video for karma it is just like it's just a bit bizarre like tonally and it's her you know like getting with loads of women which is like I don't know like a fun rump of a video but just something about it just feels a bit like it just feels a bit bizarre and it sounds a bit bizarre it doesn't sound right um and i think i saw somebody else say on tiktok that instead of kind of leaning into making a song about um sapphic desire or whatever she's just kind of done a bop song and then like replaced him for her and like her pronouns which is fine because i don't know the more i think about it she is really young and she's probably not really sure how to express desire and sexuality.

And this is probably potentially a new thing. So it is fair game, but there is also like legitimate criticism and saying, oh, we don't claim this as like, I don't know, a sapphic pop song because of this. It's like a bit of both where I think we should give her a bit of a break because she is really young. She probably does need a stylist and this isn't the right way to kind of market herself into the queer scene I think you know in a good way but at the same time I don't know I don't think it's maybe fair to hold her up as like failing the cause or like not doing her self-justice if that makes any sense and like she said a few times like we're it's our heads, we're talking about it. It is a bit of a pantomime. And I do think it's a bit of a kind of clumsy effort, provocativeness. But there is some effectiveness here in that everyone is kind of memeing her in the glittery kind of like kiss ice skater outfit. The song has been in my head against my will for the last two days um the thing with not to I'm gonna do it Miley Cyrus again with the bangers era as like the first adult album I know

we've not heard the record not heard the whole record but bangers was very good I don't feel like karma is you know the song of the summer but it is like it's her breakout tune and you know I don't want to be kind of a curmudgeonly millennial being like well the kids these days they don't know how to be you know young fun and slutty um maybe this is her kind of own she's kind of owning sexuality in a way that she's comfortable with and maybe that is a very kind of gothy sexy wrestling as she does in the video I mean it is super camp just the the rhinestones and the outfits and the Elton Donification meets Marilyn Manson meets god knows what and maybe she is using that history of

sort of like dance competitions where it's like be the sparkliest loudest brightest and just attention grab and I mean it's clearly working for her she's got all eyes on her everyone's talking about her I've been aware of her in my consciousness ever since she's been around just because she's kind of weirdly inescapable and I think there was a time when I started watching and as someone that never watches YouTube I watched like a few of her YouTubes because I just found her quite fascinating so whether or not for all we know she's doing this as like a massive stunt and then what's to come could be really great. I feel like there is a marketing intention with all of this because the word on the street is that Karma is allegedly

a Miley Cyrus demo from 2011. And the fact that she's brought up Miley Cyrus as essentially being like, oh yeah, I want to copy what she did with the bangers era. There is a template in mind here. I think she has got, you know, Pinterest boards of Miley Cyrus during that era and is trying to do something with that what has been the like Gen Z because we're millennials

older women looking at this maybe feeling it's a bit hack or a bit overdone I don't know she's got a huge fan base hasn't she are they the fan base of kind of days gone by because I think when you commit to a rebrand when you commit to that transition from child star to like a more mature sound or just a more mature image you have to be okay with kind of leaving a lot of your fan base behind and for the last however many years she's been making these tiktoks these youtubes of her in like full sparkly garb I think you have to expect that there will be a drop off

in terms of who is listening and who is tuning in. Like I can imagine parents being like, well, you can't follow this creator on social media anymore because they use the F word. Or, you know, you like this kind of when she was on Dance Moms

and when she was on like Dancing with the Stars, but now she's doing this. I just don't know what her fan base how they'll react and what her like following will look like in like two months time three months time let us know what you think about Jojo Siwa's rebrand drop us a message on Instagram at everything is content pod this section contains a brief reference of sexual assault so this week on x a screen grab of a facebook post has gone viral the original facebook post was from a woman in the us called ashley and it started with the line i'm really about to test the power of Facebook with this one for those of you who haven't seen it congratulations for not

going online so basically in the post she tells the story of how her husband left her without a trace while she was pregnant with her second child and she wrote divorcing someone who's completely unreachable is really tough and drawn out so I'm trying to track him down to get his signature on a few papers so I can finally close this chapter and move on with my life she goes on to say all the girls girls out there feel free to share a friend of a friend of a friend has got to know where he is and within 24 hours the man in question had been found in a different state I mean there's so many layers to this in terms of what a wild world that we live in, that we've spoken about it in last week's episode about you kind of oversharing on the internet and

crowdsourcing the internet using it as like your personal kind of Google private investigator, whatever. But the capabilities of strangers on the internet to find people to be sleuths to unearth stories conspiracies or real is is fascinating to me what do you think the line where where do you think the line is between internet sleuthing and doxing so like in this case the woman was really glad that people found her husband he obviously doesn't seem like a great guy but do you think it's okay that we can kind of track people down who are actively trying to disappear, no matter how cruel they may be? It's so difficult not to take like a moral stance on this and to kind of, I think my mind is so coloured by the fact that I think he's done like just the worst kind of emotional terrorism on this woman. But it's also, you know, kind of leaving your wife is not illegal um it is just a kind of sad reality

so i've grappled with this i think one important thing is that she was very clear she didn't want help with doxing what she got out of this the information she got which she said in the updated post she she's really grateful for because she has the information now that she can hopefully serve this man divorce papers and kind of move on with like a with her life and kind of complete uh like formal process of divorce so it was kind of it was useful it was useful in a way that like when the kind of courts are useless it was like community sort of like retribution before the point obviously that his name and like address were potentially leaked yeah i think i think what you've said is right and the main thing is just

like i don't think you can see a story like this and not just feel a bit of fear it's just the power that this reveals about the internet there is a niggling part of my brain that you know it does say we don't know anything about this story i i don't know who this woman is i don't know who the guy is it seems like yeah justice has been served on this occasion but i couldn't i wouldn't put money on it i wouldn't put my life on it because i don't i don't know anything about this story all i know is that facebook post so it is just really scary how quickly the internet acts with how much power and how many people get involved into something as well she did do a i think i heart radio interview with and the host was a friend of hers so i think

the veracity of it has sort of been i'm not going to take this as gospel but i think i'm quite confident it's not a a kind of hoax or a a kind of weird attempt at like going viral don't know whether that would change your opinion to kind of for it to be co-signed by like a public figure but I think at the very least this did happen even if we don't have all the details okay okay that's actually really helpful to know can I pitch a hypothetical question uh and scenario and this isn't to say that I distrust the woman at all or what she's saying but I wonder say there had been a man who was like my wife said she just disappeared and left me with the kids do you think people's reaction would be like well what have you done to her then like why why has she run away because it'd be so much more strange precisely

I guess for a woman to leave her children don't think this is kind of related to the story but I worry that what if he'd had like a massive mental breakdown or like what if something had happened with her and her family again not saying any of this has happened but it's just interesting that there's so little context provided if it was roles reversed and it was a man saying his wife had left him I almost wonder if people would be like well right she's obviously fled to safety or do you know what i mean yeah i think you know what it really reminds me of you know the groups that popped up are we dating the same guy this was what it was on wasn't it oh was it i think she posted on one of those sites so these sites which are used to for people you know to find men on hinge who are being like a bit caddish she was

like i'm gonna use it for the ultimate act of cadre i think so anyway well that would make complete sense um i was just gonna say that it reminds me that there are these like new modes of like justice and communities that are being built up to kind of crack down on bad men in the eyes of women so i feel like there is more of a like model of community justice to make that happen whereas I don't think that there is an equivalent for doing the same to women and I think women who leave families and leave men are shamed in a way that's like not the same as how men are doing it because it's more normalized but I think in response to that

we're creating all of these like modes of justice online if that makes any sense i mean there is some world where it's kind of scary and that you have these communities that stand up get together rally create this communion of of feeling and whatever and then solve issues whether it's like when we saw with the taylor swift ai porn issue and all of her fans kind of coming together and actually changing the law which is incredible i worry that on the fringes of the internet where these people are getting and we've spoken about this before they're getting some sense of community of purpose of use by being able to fulfill these sort of um civilian crime do you know i don't know how to explain it and what what if there's a future where i don't

know it ends up being like what's that film the purge where people literally get together and they're like right we're gonna like honor kill this person we're gonna we're gonna find justice and it's like there is a sense of lawlessness to it a bit because it feels like should we have this much power the channels that especially in the uk I guess are at hand to help us with certain things maybe they're falling apart and so people don't have um ways of accessing help in the way that we used to so maybe it is easier to crowdsource some strangers but I do just wonder how much people are thriving from this kind of hero complex of helping a stranger online if that could end up being something a bit more scary and that also is just the reality of like whatsapp groups in india where um many people can mobilize over misinformation

and you know violence has been enacted on the back of something that is not real or people perceive as an honor killing because it's protecting people in the community so it is it is so legit and it is really really scary what sort What sort of things are happening in the WhatsApp groups in India? So I think it's people accusing somebody of having committed trigger warning, a sexual assault or something to that degree. The event happened, but often, you know, the misinformation around who has done the act can spark off all of this stuff and then villagers will yeah basically descend on a person based on a series of claims that haven't even been fact-checked or might not even be true it feels like in a way just generally like a societal regression worldwide and maybe that is because everyone's so disenfranchised from like

governments and stuff that we really are taking matters into our own hands. And there's no kind of sense of like, not decorum, there's no sense of like proportion with this because she, you know, from her point of view, she used the internet as a tool for like, to kind of, you know, this man has like basically reneged on a contract. She needs the legalities taken care of

so she can essentially like live her life. But when you outsource that to people who don't know who are in this mindset of like i need justice there is no real end point and that does make me nervous i think it also speaks to maybe just like a broader societal failure in to like kind of you know live up to our promises people are kind of disenfranchised with relationships we're kind of abandoning each other on like big and small levels we feel abandoned kind of en masse by the the structures that were meant to protect us i do see things like this happening more and more where you know real life is not living up to its promise people are letting each other down and there's no recourse for that um in the real world apart from to move on but when you take it

to a digital space you can kind of just say like i want the ultimate revenge i want to ruin this person you can't kind of put the cat back on the toothpaste with this unless there's like a kind of total broad reversal of online decorum how do we change that tide that does seem to be drifting towards this extreme mob mentality also thinking about sleuths and doxing you have all these like gossip websites like tattle life where people kind of do get carried away in their own fantasy of dragging people down and will actually kind of create their own law around people and as much as I find that quite worrying and I sometimes look at some people's threads and I think oh my god you guys are actually you've lost the plot but what's the other end of that is completely kind of policing the internet and and we don't want to live in like

a totalitarian state where I think there's sanctions like so what's really scary is the way we're going now is feels worrying but the resolution the only true resolution to that is even more scary i think in terms of having complete um the like government having complete control over internet access and usage would be way more scary so there needs to be i guess some kind of cultural societal like not rule book but kind of like a moral conduct or code that we all live by and I guess I wonder if like with the lack of religion as being like a normal cultural thing not that I'm a believer in religion but you kind of would have these pillars or beliefs or like a societal contract that everyone was under and would be like, I wouldn't do this. I wouldn't do that with, with that kind of gone.

I just wonder if, yeah, it's all a bit lawless. I wonder what you guys think then about these groups that are we dating the same guy group? Because as someone who was single a lot in my, in the last few years, I've been on these groups.

I've had friends save themselves potentially like months of pain. I've had friends stop dating abusers. I've had friends kind of know to get tested for things or like friends of friends rather. So I have been quite in favor of them. But then looking at them through this lens and hearing what you both had to say, I wonder, are these spaces to make women safe? Or is it kind of inappropriate um kind of sharing of of private information i think it's a bit of all of the above i think they have a good purpose they achieve a lot of good but i also feel like at times they can lose their purpose

and with the you know sharing of information and i feel like the last time i went on some of the groups some of some of the posts weren't really even centered around, is this person, has anyone else dated this person? Are they dating multiple people at the same time? Some of them fact that in the same way that Demois is like anonymous tips about celebrities are we just kind of normalizing that behavior with everything in life and you know removing the right to privacy removing the the humanity of dating and getting to know somebody through the guise of trying to be safe I think you need to be really clear about purpose and purpose is prevention of danger oh god I couldn't have said it any better this hyper surveillance while we live in is something that actually kind of keeps me up at night sometimes I just feel really and I know that I like put

myself out there on a public platform but I do have this real sense of like oh my god we're constantly being surveilled and when I was single first of all I was would date multiple people at once and I didn't know actually Beth that people had used it in the way that you said like finding out about abusers or finding out about um you know needing to get checked for an STI all I'd heard was people being like oh my god this guy's dating someone else but they've been texting for like a day so it's like well my personal belief is that you know you can date multiple people at once so I didn't really understand the benefit of the group and like Ruchira said if someone says do you think they're a nice person or is this guy a good guy like I've gone on a date with someone before where I didn't like them so I kind of had to snub them and they could go on to that group and be like no she was horrible blah blah

it's so difficult though because obviously it is great to be forewarned of someone that's really awful but I do think it's this puritanical, moralistic view that we're putting on people where it's like, actually, someone could do something on a really small scale, which feels bad, but doesn't make them like bad person TM. aren't aren't good but they're not illegal shouldn't be prohibited or surveilled upon such as getting a ghost or being ghosted sorry is not great it's horrible have i ghosted somebody before yeah probably should i be on one of these groups no like i don't know i i should have learned from that which i did and i stopped doing that once i realized that communication should happen i think there are lines, but people are kind of like conflating it all into bad behavior. One thing I think of is, and this cycles constantly on Twitter, is people saying that cheating is a form of abuse. And I think in this

case, so we've got this Facebook post blowing up, she finds this guy for what he did, abandoning her while she was pregnant. If you scale that back, could someone kind of put out a similar digital hit for someone who cheated on them and ghosted them? Like at what point is the crime, the emotional crime so severe that this is warranted? Is it case by case? I mean, I think in this case, there's a great case to be made for why she needed to track him down. But in other cases, it could be be i feel really wronged by him um i deserve to you know have my say this is kind of emotional terrorism and at a certain point we can't police other people's awful cowardly destructive behavior just because it hurts us i wonder if it's literally

we're just all we don't have community in the same anymore so we don't know how to trust our instincts when it comes to people like it seems quite weird I'm sure our parents generation would think it was really odd that we're logging onto website to be like should I go on a date with this person but because we're not constantly around people meeting people in pubs like going on dates on it's all online there's this like barrier between us and that human because the way we meet them it's with, this digital interference, it's not like a real life interaction. So then we're going online, I don't know, there's something about that there's a disconnect there, I think it doesn't make sense. But it's us trying to adjust to this completely

connect interconnected digital world, but completely disconnected in reality. And also the internet has allowed us to live like five lives at the same time if we want to so cheating is like so so scarily easy for multiple people I'm not talking about you know like dating a few people in the early stages of dating because I agree with you and only that's how I used to operate too but um I'm talking about you know having you know long-term girlfriends and having multiple partners when you're like three or four or five years into dating them it is so much easier now that you have a phone that can like hold multiple worlds in it it's just like for hundreds of years you just didn't have the technology to do this and then we have phones and laptops and everyone goes i'm going to pretend to be someone else or i'm going

to get up to like the most like horrible deceptive behavior it's really depressing all that was missing was the right technology like back in the day everyone knew each other in town like you couldn't really vanish or if you vanished you'd go like one town over and like you know the men in horse and carts could just go and get you back and like force you to kind of reunite with your wife no i think you could be way easier i always think this i get really upset about the fact that i can't vanish i often think like i don't know what film it was but sometimes I'm like I'd love to just get on a train and disappear and just no one girl no one be able to find me but you can't do that anymore because the minute you leave the house there's a cctv

camera if you tap your car like there's actually no way whereas back in the day horse and carriage lads they would be off shave their beard they'd be like oh i'm barry and they'd be like all right barry and actually it's larry so true i mean it definitely let's let's be real it would have been absolutely terrible for women and people of color by then so we shouldn't be being like whoa this is such a great time to go back to but but they like you said there'd be like 150 people everyone would know each other if lucy from the butchers tried to pretend she was Louisa from the apothecary they'd be like babe come on we watched you be born I breastfed you I'm your mum's best friend is no one else curious why Anoni really wants to disappear I want to know why you want to

disappear I do feel this like surveillance world I feel it's so noisy in my brain and there's something about like where I feel that I can't just be a human because I'm always being perceived and it used to be like that was because I'm an influencer and now it's just all the time it's like you're in the back of someone's video you're constantly being watched and I don't know there's something about it where I'm like how fun would it be to be free I find it quite suffocating this idea that if i wanted to it would be literally impossible like how would you do it you could you just would be found you couldn't i do wonder whether way off in the future or maybe just like gen z's children will sort of rear and like kind

of buck against the way that we've been living in like basically self-surveilling for our entire lives and you know they would have grown up with it whether they will sort of decide they want to be like digital ghosts whether they want to live in the real world i sort of hope they will as a kind of protest against all the wrong that is wrought this is what i think there'll be like massive communities of luddites that just move out and live off grid and like i'm kind of up for it kind of want to live in a commune but again yeah as we've seen with the Kool-Aid and stuff it's not always grass isn't always greener so in response to last Friday's episode we received some truly amazing DMs from you guys over on our Instagram at everything is content pod.

We spoke in depth about age gap relationships last week in response to the Cut article that went viral. And I suppose how we as women in our late 20s and early 30s feel about age gaps, where our discomfort and judgment maybe comes from. And with permission, I wanted to read one of the messages that we got. When I was in my late 20s, I distinctly remember being told women were a depreciating asset between 25 and 30. And in some ways, it made me live my life to the fullest, usually involving having as much fun as possible with men that were drawn to me, probably by virtue of my age. I didn't marry and did struggle financially, but genuinely loved my life in spite of lack of wealth that men can bring. Now single at 41, I have cultivated a successful career and have more money than I ever thought I would. One surprise is I miss the days

of having no money. Money aside, I think the author doesn't realize, why would she, that having built your future for yourself and being successful brings so much joy. Look at all the wonderful, successful older women out there. As one myself, I am so grateful for my life, my achievements and what I made myself. End message. Oh, my heart is like so full hearing you read that message so nice it makes me think of that philosophical idea of like the obstacle is the way the the getting through the thing is is the part that matters and I think she's really highlighting there where this this girl has kind of the sorry the author of that cut piece thought she'd like bypassed all of the struggle and it's

like actually I completely agree with this woman when you look back at like how long it took you to get to whatever it was a career moment or something and you're like god thank god I stuck with it it makes it all worth it I know everyone goes on about soft life but actually maybe it's it's not all it's cracked up to be is that the phrase yeah yeah Yeah. I think it's just a very valuable perspective. One, it's always lovely to hear from people whose success is different than the kind of traditional markers of success, you know, monogamous marriage, healthy marriage, children.

As wonderful as that is, sometimes it either doesn't happen for someone or they don't want it. So it's all, I was kind of really thrilled to read this as someone who like is maybe eyeing up a similar life and again really valuable perspective about the value of the struggle years like I'm still very much in my struggle years I think but less so than in my 20s and I wouldn't most of it I would not hand back for all you know all the money in the world all the kind of hashtag soft life in the world so yeah i thought

this was a gorgeous message i agree such gorgeous message we also had this message from another listener on sort of a similar uh wavelength i 25 broke up with my boyfriend 41 literally last night for so many of the reasons you guys discussed and that I just felt I wasn't getting to experience my 20s properly. Tough decision, but for the best. I thought the podcast would be a really triggering lesson and nearly didn't listen, but I found your approach really chimed with my reality. End message. Oh my God. How do you feel about that, Ruchira?

On a personal level, that's the best feedback anyone could ever give us for that discussion. Because I know for me, and I'm sure it was the same for you too, you wanted to do the topic justice. I didn't want to shame people. I didn't want to patronize people. I didn't want to moralize the issue either. So it was really, yeah, it was a constant balancing act of getting into that topic, topic putting our opinions across but also dissecting some of the prejudices and biases that we have I don't know if everyone thought that we did a good job but it makes it means a lot feeling like one person who was involved in an age gap relationship thought that we

we did a good job and like we're not that much older than this listener who's 25 but one thing I will tell you is that any decision you make whether it's ending something starting something doing something at 25 you can make any choice and nothing is like irreversible really so you're never stuck and you're not now in our 30s we're not either but I think in your 20s things can feel like oh my god actually there's so many things that you can try out throw stuff at a wall stuff can fail and it's all just part of being in your 20s really i'd say throw the glittery poo at the wall although that bit earlier gets if that gets cut then that's gonna be really confusing um i really i really like this message because i think like to send that like so fresh in this really difficult thing really

painful thing is just like it's just very bold it's very courageous and i feel like that's kind of the listeners that we've interacted with so far have been of a similar ilk and and I think it's so easy especially when you're 25 to just kind of stick with the with the thing and kind of stick with the status quo for months or even years so to have done to realize you need to do something and then do it I found it just I found it really inspiring it's okay to to kind of feel excited when you do something like that it's not really like a portrayal to yourself or like you know to do that and be like wow I've got the rest of my 20s to kind of continue to try stuff out make mistakes um you know have like a glorious mess I think it's okay to just be

really excited about that and and I hope that they are obviously it's very painful to go through a breakup but there's when you do it and it's the right thing that is that glimmer and like just what wonderful position to be in I've said this before but I'll say again every time I've broken up with a boyfriend I have become the best version of myself and sometimes I really am I'm really big fan of the boyfriend I have at the minute but if I'm in a bit of a rut I do sometimes think to myself well if I break up with him because you just get this get up and go you get this joy de vivre you're like fuck yeah the world's my oyster I'm gonna take the bull by the horns you always look fab you just start glowing your loins are on fire it really is a great time to be alive as much as it's painful it does do something to you it's like really invigorating I recommend a breakup at least you

know every three to five years much like a smear test like get that break yeah yeah schedule it in honeys um I was gonna say my my admission is I never willingly broke up with somebody in my 20s I think apart from once I was always dumped but the same thing applies where I wish I'd made the choice myself because it literally like you said Anoni the most growth happens in a breakup you just learn everything about what kind of person you want to be what you know what you want for yourself your life what kind of partner you maybe want in the future you live for yourself and it's so good anyone who does break up with somebody in their 20s don't do what I do which is wait for the other person to do it first just

just do it if that's what you're thinking yeah amazing messages we love to hear from you guys and if you want to send us a message start a conversation give us a little no you can at everything is content pod on instagram please subscribe and if you haven't yet leave us a review it's one of the best things you can do to help people find the podcast. We'll see you next week. Bye. Everything is content is a great original podcast. And we are part of the ACAST Creator Network.

This podcast was created, devised and presented by us. Beth McColl, Ruchira Sharma and Danone. The producer is Faye Lawrence and the executive producer is James Norman Fyfe.