Goes Without Saying - chronically online, chronic misogyny: podmas #6

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

join the conversation every monday & thursday.shop our merch: sephyandwing.co.ukspeak your mind on the @sephyandwing instagram. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Here's a show that we recommend. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world.

The animal kingdom is queer and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple. Or wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Ho ho ho. Ho ho ho, what's in the little thing today? It's just a little bit of perspective from us to you. Oh, dreamy.

Yeah. We're talking about real world stuff today be quite nice to get outside for this one guys i hate to guilt you out of the house and out of bed but it might be nice i haven't walked my dog yet today and it's coming up to four he's been out he's been out but that's pretty late he usually has a walk at lunch disclaimer to give i i'm just this is real a side note and it kind of actually i guess it feeds into the chronically online to give i i'm just this is real a side note and it kind of actually i guess it feeds into the chronically online stuff but i i think a way that being online has shaped my brain has made me hyper aware of like potential criticism which i'm sure most

people can relate to yeah but the idea that um like something i see all the time or like pretty regularly is people really like monitoring and um just like policing i guess how people take care of their dogs and i think more often they're babies yeah yeah like there's so much commentary on like i almost think it's one of the first things that gets held at people is like they don't love their dog properly that's quite i yeah that is quite weird because it's almost like it's pretty self-explanatory how to look after a dog i think you know when you're being abusive abusive you would know are you feeding your dog are you loving your dog are you walking your dog i think just the awareness of like how fucking nuts people can be on the internet. Like the stakes are very high for lots of people.

Do you know what it tells me? It tells me that people think they know anything about someone. Oh, everything. Most people aren't also talking as much as we're talking on the internet. Most people are just posting some pictures, maybe vlogging a day in their life. Like really, you don't know much about most people. You actually don't know much. You've seen like a photo of them at a party you've seen a photo of them at an event you've seen some photos of whatever you've maybe seen some stories how would you know what they're

feeding their dog and also um it's their dog no but also don't abuse your dog like definitely don't abuse it but also most people aren't abusing't dogs it's a bit wild i think that is one of the this just completely off the cuff but yeah yeah it it is something that actually comes into my head a lot as two people who have dogs and we talk about them sometimes on the pod no otto and ozzy little otto and ozzy iconic duo iconic duo who have never met and never will they would not get on oh they wouldn't i think otto and ozzy iconic duo iconic joe who have never met and never will they would not get on oh they wouldn't i think otto would think ozzy was like a rat or something well he'd be right and he would start barking barking barking really what's otto like with other dogs i'm curious he's good with other dogs but he's quite um he's quite a countryside dog like he wouldn't cope in a city

sort of thing that he's very much he roams free off his lead like he's a dog does he like to play with other dogs his friends he does he's got certain friends oh sorry ozzy's not in the gang well he's like he's really hesitant with new dogs like he's really if we are on a walk he'll really hang back as soon as he sees another dog like his real tail between his legs scared scared scared but um he's better at meeting dogs off the lead because otherwise if he's on the lead he feels a bit trapped and starts trying to run away but he's good with his friends that makes me think that him and ozzy would be okay because ozzy's the kind of dog where he doesn't want to interact with another dog and i almost think if otto was kind of hanging back and like a bit scared or

like a bit apprehensive and not that interested i think ozzy would respond quite well to that because he's he thinks he's the only dog on the planet yeah i think that's also the thing every time ozzy meets another dog he's like are you joking there's another fucking is that what you're telling me i'm not the only one i'm not the only dog he's so cute he i know he's so cute they're a cute duo yeah they are not as cute as us no not as cute as us do you remember at one point we thought of doing merch i still want to do it i'm holding on to it i think we should that was like little friendship bracelets that were like aussie and otto that's why we need to talk about otto

otto needs to come on the pod oh well he's downstairs right now i can get him to do some but also it's weird because he goes by the name Lengie in my house so his official name it's a bit of a situation to be honest yeah he goes by the name Otto is his formal name his birth name um but we started calling him Lengie because if you are familiar with a chef called Otto Lengie he's a famous chef and we just started calling him Otto Lengie Otto Lengie and so we call him Lengie Lengie Lengie Lengie Lengie Lengie Lengie well I'm sure people have something to say about that otter lenggy otter lenggy and so we call him lenggy but we're like lenggy lenggy lenggy very cute lenggy very well i'm sure people have something to say about that but anyway abuse yes how dare you but i think that's one of the ways that the internet has actually like fumbled my brain up yeah is that and i specifically being aware of the ways that like mostly women are talked shit at on the internet

has like really affected my brain and the way that i censor myself and the way that i view myself and i can feel it yeah all the time so you know what is specifically nasty about that one just to bring it into that like just kind of go on about that tiny bit but it reminds me of the sophie turner joe jonas stuff of their divorce because i think there's something so horrific about critiquing a woman's caregiving responsibilities especially like mothering or like an owner of a pet or whatever the fuck people are critiquing it's the lowest of the low actually it really goes into like societal shit of like what a woman's worth is her ability to care for

another thing and it's like not about herself at all and also taps into like the primal like yeah thing of like that goes so deep your instinct is wrong your biology yeah you're you're sick almost like it's why kind of um women murderers are looked at so horrifically because we kind of see that as like in a man's nature but a woman that kills a child or whatever is like a monster sick like times a million obviously is so sick but let's look at the ways we talk about yeah yeah i just want to make that clear but like it reminds me of the sophie turner joe jonas stuff because when he when they divorced or whatever he obviously released those things or they were like PR statements, basically saying a lot of stuff about how she likes to party and how he's looking after the kids and basically insinuating that she's a bad mom, which just seemed to go so fucking deep for so many people of like, first of all, that's obviously not true. And like, there's so much in that that was just like evidence that was completely like

discounting that. And just obviously a man would say that, but just the way that that her motherhood, like her, yeah. Being a mom is like weaponized against her is so specifically horrific. It's really fucked up. So I love you.

I now speak directly to you. I hope you're okay. So much. Sansa. Sansa. Sansa. It's a crazy place to be i struggle with it for sure i think um okay so how are we framing this then i think we're talking about getting outside like living i think basically the thing i would want from an episode like this is kind of managing the boundaries between like being online and also having a real life and enjoying

your life and not letting that take over because i don't think i've tried many a time and i've had the conversation with myself many a time of like do i want to be on the internet do i want to do this should i do it and i think the answer for me right now is like yes i do want to be on the internet but i don't want that to be an overwhelming part of my life like i genuinely want it to be what 10 not even 10 5 of my identity really and i think the how social media was designed really is that it would be like a huge number of your identity like it would be 90 90 100 of your identity and it's the thing we've spoken about before of um when did it change from being um when did it change from being the primary sort of zone that you would go to a party like it would be it would be a thing that you would do in your house in your kind of private

moments but then it flipped so that you would kind of go to a party or go to an event or go to your friend's house so that you could post photos of that online when did it flip and i think that is the i'm always trying to restore the balance of like well and some of making my actual life way better than my instagram shows like way better than my social media can show and not every single all of the good moments really of my life are not shown on there yeah totally because it's not about that i think as well and i hate to bring it up and i know nobody wants to talk about it but i really want to talk about it so much like it's all i want to talk about a lot of the time or can we just acknowledge the fact that we all lived through a pandemic like i know you guys were there i saw you there like i saw you guys in that pandemic i know you lived it because i lived it too um and i think being in the pandemic and having literally

nothing else to do a lot of the time then people literally had nothing else to do other than scroll i think that formed a lot of habits for people in the sense of like you have no choice in lots of ways but to become really insular and live a really introspective life and it inflates the worth of that thing as well and then even when you're given the option to move beyond that it doesn't come as naturally now and it kind of i totally think it is that thing and i think it was zo Sugg who said that people used to go on the internet to escape their real life. And then, yeah, at some point it flipped of like, now you have to escape the internet and just switch off and just go and escape the internet and get back into the real world. And it's, there's no other, there's no way around it. Like it is alarming.

Yeah, it's really alarming. It's really, really, really alarming. But I think there are ways to do it. it like it is alarming yeah it's really alarming it's really really really alarming but i think there is there are ways to do it i think i've been in a whole thing like for the last few years of like that kind of escaping like fighting it resisting it sort of thing and at the moment i feel like i've got quite a good relationship with social media in the that's good i'm not trying to run from it but i know that i don't want it a part of certain bits of my life. So like I don't go on Instagram past 7pm.

I don't go on any social media past 7pm. Because it's like I don't think that adds any worth or value to my evenings. But the evening I get back from it, of not having it there, is so much better. But also I'm not going to resist it. I don't have an Instagram anymore. That's not necessarily something I want. I do see there's value in having it. but it's not a big part of my life i think as well and i think something we've been speaking about recently and it ties to what you're saying

now and it kind of ties to what we were saying in the last episode about how we felt coming away from the spotify event and just something that we've been saying a lot recently and i think like over the past year even we've been saying a lot recently and i think like over the past year even we've been saying a lot well since last podmas i think we discussed yeah the idea of like leaning all the way yeah put that tampon in and it doesn't necessarily mean okay i'm leaning all the way and i'm gonna spend from dusk till dawn on my phone yeah but more so the idea of like i don't have to um over examine what this means for me I can establish a healthy routine with it and come and go as I please.

And when it starts to feel bad, I can distance myself. And when I'm enjoying it, I can enjoy it without guilt and those sorts of things. Wendy's Small Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy. It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th.

It's a treat for you and your wallet. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Nature. I've got a gay rooster named Francois. Is so gay. These rams are gay. I'm studying gay animals.

Does that mean I'm gay? So why don't more people know this? I'm Owen Ever. I'm Lane Kaplan-Levinson. And this is a field guide to gay animals. A podcast about queerness in the natural world. The animal kingdom is queer, and we are a part. Find a field guide to gay animals on Spotify, Apple.

Or wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts. Everywhere. ACAST.com because i think there's so much to fucking think about on this planet the last thing you need to do is like guilt yourself over the way that something is making you feel when it's pretty much by design that this place would make you feel yeah it's not bad at least quite disconnected from who you are at your core being and disconnected from everyone

else as well yeah your existence as a human in a body on a planet earth like that all feels very far when you're like 10 scrolls deep into like the instagram of the girl who your boyfriend used to be seeing before he met you when he used to live in ohio like it's all a bit much it's all a bit much um things you like to do in the real world in my real life yeah in a real life way can i actually just before we get into that because i think that's a nice way to close but i think actually something that i would want from this chronically online conversation touching grass conversation is even though we have kind of stressed it but just a nice reminder of like and i know we've just said this but like people have real lives beyond what you see on instagram people are thinking about things that you know nothing about people having conversations that

you will never hear people aren't necessarily who you understand them to be through what you see on the internet people don't need to hear your every inner working they don't necessarily deserve to hear your every inner working you don't have to justify yourself to people on the internet you don't have to over explain yourself to people on the internet like i promise you largely when it comes to things on social media the crux might be it's actually not that deep and it isn't always that serious and you can turn off your phone and surround yourself with people that you love and enjoy yourself because that's what you deserve on this planet and i think the constant reminders of um pain and comparison

and suffering online are really detrimental it's horrible it's actually um it's i think this has been one of my things with my like fighting of social media is that i know it is a negative space i know it is i don't see much positivity really there but actually there are a lot of this world a lot of the stuff that has been as we always say is by design and it is horrid a lot of it actually is quite horrid but i think it's about not necessarily fighting the um is the fight of the thing worse than the thing itself maybe you can't resist it because so much of our society is that thing it's just about maybe like not living in it like not um choosing to spend your time all your time

there i'm like you do actually have a choice like you actually do as much as it is an addiction and all of this stuff you don't have to bring it you don't have to bring your phone with you on a walk you don't have unless you're listening to sephian wing you don't you don't need to be lying in bed with your phone like you you don't need to have your phone with like you don't need to check your phone while you're in the cinema please don't that's the worst thing you can do you don't need to be texting whilst you're watching something you don't need to be texting at the table like you actually do have choices about this thing and life the only really good things that i experience are when the phone is like down like i'm not looking like when how often am i

actually how often have i laughed on instagram how often have i really felt something on instagram they're very small amounts i think as well i should really redo that but i can't be bothered just keep it going sorry i was just i don't know what just happened it was a real like verbal moment um i think as well this kind of leads us into like getting in the real world but i think the response to sometimes like social media just feels like you're screaming into a void and it's it's so kind of are and you are yeah yeah and you also i think it gets quite easy i think it also gets quite easy to forget that you can like really scream and like make some loud noise in your real life yeah like you can really um make a lot of impact actual impact yeah an actual connection what you want from social media is the feeling of someone

to like it or to be like comment yeah sure i agree i want to be seen queen yeah talk if you actually talk to people you'll get 10 times that amount of connection then you can get through a screen well i was actually thinking this kind of in like i always say like i feel like i see every day the version of me that didn't have this podcast and i'm living a different life like that is very much like that girl lives in me every day i feel her sadness she's tethered to me and one day she's gonna come up from the dirt and like slip my throat and switch places with me like i feel that presence of the person who doesn't have a platform to speak i feel it all the time yeah which i think informs why we so deeply feel like we don't want to take this for granted and i was actually thinking about and i think we could speak about this more in depth at another point just the idea of like what starting a podcast meant and like how you could do that and

like oh is it possible for people to do things and like oh you start a podcast and then people start listening question mark like i didn't know that really i don't think i really believed that was an option i was kind of waiting around for someone to like, decide and like, give it to me rather than having to commit and whatever. And I think something that I would have needed to hear, and I'm sure I've said this in a different way before, but almost like talking to this version of me, before I had the podcast and before we met and before we did all of this stuff, I think I to hear that like yes there's this thing that you want and you want to be seen and you want to like give people some degree of connection you want to like be dumb and show people that it's okay to be dumb and like all of the all of these things you want to have like a nice human interaction with mostly

young women that's my demographic that i'm looking for guys if you know any young women send them my way um i felt so restricted in the sense that i didn't have guys if you know any young women send them my way um i felt so restricted in the sense that i didn't have a platform before i felt really like voiceless i'm really um unimportant and like i'm useless like i can't do anything i can't say anything no one i'm not no one cares like how do i i'm literally like an insignificant dot on this planet and i felt like if i have some sort of space or like if i could speak to people on a wider space that would be so empowering and it is without a doubt so empowering but i think the podcast isn't necessarily the end goal for that I think I could have simulated I think I could have

like feigned that experience through other means I don't think it had to be directly through the podcast I think I could have given myself that feeling of connection through other routes and through different experiences rather than needing to do it in this way i sometimes think that what people really want and i don't necessarily think that a platform solves anything i actually don't i think what most people are seeking is the person you really want to talk to is yourself like that's often the thing that people feel disconnected on and yeah i don't know i i don't necessarily feel like what you need to do is like share the thoughts it's almost just like connect with the thoughts yourself and like journaling is a great way like i feel like most

people for example what we're talking about the beginning with people getting angry at someone for saying they were abusing their dog or whatever it is sometimes you just need to do you really need to leave a comment and use your voice to say you're abusing your dog or do you need to write a blog post on um this person is abusing their dog or do you really need to like maybe write to your like yourself a journal piece or go to a therapy session and use your voice or whatever write down about how much you love your dog and how important how much you miss your dog that died or whatever it was is that actually what you need to do i don't think maybe you need an audience of people to listen to you talk about that it's maybe just like i don't feel like i'm

actually honoring the thought that i'm actually having that was a thought it's important to me we didn't need to hear that yeah it's really like this was a meeting that could have been an email but it's like that was a public comment or like a message for everyone on social media that really could have just been between you and your therapist or your diary it wasn't it wasn't that you hate zoella because she doesn't look after her baby it's that you i don't know maybe i don't know maybe you want a baby and you can't can't have there's probably something you don't feel like your mum looks after you enough i feel like obviously there's valid criticism on the internet i am not saying that in any way but often when i have felt that i want to use my voice it's not necessary that i want to talk to someone and feel the yes yes yes

i affirm it back it's that i have something that i haven't expressed to myself that i need to work out in writing or in some way and i think that is actually the feeling that's the crap people crave or that i crave anyway that was so so so divine yeah that's actually brought a merry spirit to my soul good i feel very grateful for this thing that we do yeah me too so grateful and i'm so grateful for you listening i hope that you've been like what i hope for you is right now you're kind of like in the woods like you're just like in the actual real world you're just walking down or maybe you've got like a little coach i don't know you're just doing your thing you're on the tube whatever you are the real sphere of the world with you like i really hope you feel like okay we've got your back like i i if nothing else you've got two random losers who are really really hoping you're okay

yeah we're really really with you take us with you anywhere you need us we'll be there oh my god just say the word you know where to find us you know where to find us we're just should we end this in the way this should always be ended with the word that the word that we all know is coming that is the perfect perfect catchphrase, really. I hope it's not offensive. Maybe it is. To be honest, I don't believe in anything about this. I'm just here for the presents and the food.

I just like the vibe of it. Three, two, one. Bethlehem. Bethlehem. Assume we slayed too hard. Assume we slayed too hard. If you don't hear from us. You know how it goes.