Goes Without Saying - social media clout: getting paid or getting paid attention?

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

stop scrolling! in this episode of Goes Without Saying, we (sephy & wing) are exploring social media, instagram, and influencing to question why we engage in internet culture when it's clearly making us all anxious and depressed. does instagram make us hate ourselves? are we really addicted to social media? join us to unpack whether we use the internet for human connection, or are we just in it for the clout? speak your mind on our instagram! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A-Cast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. stories about Dave and his family. We're excited to welcome you back to the warm and welcoming world of the Vinyl Cafe with our new podcast, Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Each week, we'll share two hilarious stories by Stuart, and for the first time ever, I'll tell you what it was like behind the scenes. Subscribe for free wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Hi guys, just quickly popping in at the beginning to tell you the big news that this is the last episode before our mid-season break.

We're going to have a little bit of a rest, a little bit of a recuperation. Get some beauty sleep and come back with bigger and better topics because now we've got 10k we need to really buck up our ideas so this is the last one before thank you guys so much for listening as always we hope you enjoy the episode and we will see you very shortly laters farewell au revoir. Hi guys I'm Erin. Welcome back to Higher Priestess. Welcome back guys I'm Persephone. And today we're going to be talking about social media shall we? I simply can't wait let's do it. Um so we asked you questions as usual on the story and I'm gonna fill you in on on what you said., let's go through them. Okay, the first thing I asked was,

well, I kind of did your all false statements. So my relationship with social media is 42% healthy and 58% of you said unhealthy. So surprise, surprise, the majority of people have an unhealthy relationship with social media. What would you have answered? Unhealthy. Yeah, me too.

I think we're kidding ourselves i think as we get further down the questions we'll see that i think it's pretty impossible to have an overarchingly healthy attitude or relationship with something that was designed to essentially torture you it's interesting because i would have said that i had a healthy relationship with social media before we started doing higher priestess uh really my relationship with um social media is definitely yes definitely I agree it's definitely got worse it's definitely got a lot worse but it was always bad well I was gonna say to you I this morning I this is the first time I've ever had to do this but I took the comments off

of one of our posts which is just doing the rounds within kind of rapist circles incel circles yeah kind of the ye olde rapers are having a whale of a time with my beautiful instagram post and it just had to go because it's like why am i why are you literally why am i getting a notification on my phone which is on my bedside table and i'm reading through it at 6 a.m from a stranger who actually doesn't like me and has bad bad vibes and he's going to say i'm gonna fucking rape you you ugly slut literally that i was just eating my fucking super noodles and now i've got that in my head it's like what are you outside my house i don't know if you saw it this morning but i one of them put up our post and on their story

they shared it to their story did you see it have you seen this no they shared our post their story so they said it was our beautiful post that essentially says rape is bad stand up for people who've been raped didn't think that was so controversial but it has proven to be extremely it was a simple statement and he said you must be fucking stupid at higher priestess. He added us. He mentioned us in his story. Like, didn't just repost it. He came for the ad.

So I was like, listen. Love the free promo. Most of the time, I just straight away block and delete. And I go through whoever's liked their comment. And I block and delete them as well. And like, really get thorough about it. Because you don't have access. But this guy was like, sometimes I say something funny back i'll i'll actually try and kind of help them out

but this time i was like right i actually want to i want to get in you know i want to pick your brains a bit so i basically said if your immediate reaction to rape is bad is saying well i'm not a racist rapist not all men um then you are part of the problem yeah and he kind of went back and forth went back and forth sent some laughing faces because it is hysterical it's so funny at first he was like um he did the whole kind of i mean i can't blame you you must just be surrounded by the wrong men that's what we've got a lot of oh well my friends you need to get new friends yeah and i was like no actually the men that i'm surrounded by are intelligent enough and aware enough and educated enough to completely agree with us so actually you are the problem not

me and the men that i'm surrounded by um and i went on this kind of little thing came back and forward i could tell i'd obviously upset him i struck a nerve i think because he was like you know none of my friends would do that blah blah blah um and then i said well myself and i think every woman that i know has in some way at least been sexually harassed in her lifetime many of those women have been violently sexually abused so where are the perpetrators of that violence then if they're not your mates if they're not the man well it's exactly the thing of every woman every woman knows someone that's been raped but no man knows a rapist sorry the math isn't fucking adding up darren it doesn't add up i'm not having it that's up make it make

sense and then at the end of it he said um shall we have makeup sex now oh it's like oh you oh i know it's like oh my god you're trying to rape me and i replied saying like i pity any woman who's been in the same room as you, let alone had sex with you. Yeah. And then sent him a beautiful link to an amazing post and was like, if you can read and understand words with more than six letters, you'll love this post. It will liberate you and get educated by and then blocked.

It's so fucking true. Also to say, should we have makeup sex now? It just shows. It's like, okay, so you've just proved the point. You literally view me as a fucking object. You twat. The thing that bothers me with getting these messages, along with all the things that bother me

about getting these messages, but it's kind of like, I didn't give fucking Barry my number. I didn't give him my number, but he's popping up on my phone. I don't know where this happened. You don't get access to me. I didn't fucking go on a date with you.

Why are you on my phone? I find it really bizarre. It's so strange. You suddenly have a fucking channel that you can access me through. No. The comments had to go. They had to go.

It's like, it shouldn't be that easy for you to... Just on this one post. And also, I'm sorry that that means that we've wiped your amazing comments. Well, they're still there. I can bring them back at any moment. Totally. But I'm sorry that for the time being, they're not there, your amazing comments back at any moment totally but i'm sorry that for

the time being they're not there your amazing comments because they were so amazing we had so much support we had hundreds of amazing comments on that but i think there was about 600 comments this morning when i deleted it but it's just not worth being sitting in bed chatting with people and then also having fucking darren show up on your phone chat chatting with i can't remember what his name was gorilla or something well anyway so unhealthy relationship with social media well it's almost like is my relationship with social media unhealthy or is my relationship with incels unhealthy but but the social media you wouldn't have to associate with incels but you do because of social media because social media is facilitating the combo. And also social media gives them, it's like so democratic that it gives them,

they feel that their voice is valid on a feminist post. Oh, they're so entitled. So entitled. So anyway, 62% of you said that social media makes you unhappy. Makes sense, yeah. Makes sense. This one was good. I am conscious of likes and then i put

are you aware of how many likes you typically get you notice how many likes other people get noticed when a post of yours does badly for example 67 of them said they're conscious of likes i just find it hard to believe that 33 of you don't you couldn't give me a figure how many likes you roughly get you couldn't tell me no i find it a bit hard to believe that what you couldn't give me a rough estimate of how many roughly you get yeah of course people can give you a rough estimate there we go you know what you're getting you're tracking who's liked it not only can you tell me how many likes you've got you can tell me you can name who's liking it who shows up for you you know the you

can tell me the post that you've posted that the boy that you fancied at the time liked or especially the one that he didn't like so without social media 85 of you would be more relaxed but yet 40 of you said that social media makes you happy and your relationship with social media is healthy we clearly don't like being relaxed we live for the stress but 90 of you nearly are more stressed because of it why are we trying to live stressful lives it's strange right is that what we want we want to be permanently stressed but we have an instagram there we go well i think that feeds into then later on you guys came up and said um you keep social media because it keeps you up to date with things

whether it be current affairs or like friends and family people that you're interested in etc and i just think it comes down to the fact that really i don't think human beings were built to consume the capacity of data that we currently do with social media also i think with the communication thing should we get into it we've got a good point we have got a good point we say it all the time i don't buy you know the fucking tiktok right okay i don't first of all i don't buy anyone that's saying that they use instagram to stay in contact with people for communication and i was gonna say you know the fucking tiktok that's like it's a scam yes honestly is that it's a scam it's a scam it's not a fucking you're not doing this to stay in contact with people don't fucking lie to yourselves you're doing it for nothing you're

doing it just because you're bored you're doing it because you want to see some fucking pretty girls in bikinis you're doing it because you want to see some fucking influencers you like you want to see some brands that you like and you kind of are just doing it because it's a habit and you've been doing it for 10 years already and it would feel like a statement to not do it exactly i was gonna say i think at the moment we're currently in a climate where social media feels like an opt-out process you the default is you have it and it's it's the standard to have it out of the normal to not have social media, to not participate. It seems political.

It is 100% like a politically charged move. Almost pretentious. When I was once seeing this guy that didn't have Instagram, I thought, get out of your fucking ass. Get out of your fucking ass. You think you're too good to like a post? You're too good to scroll, are you? You're too good for this post.

I just don't like it. It's toxic. You're fucking toxic, mate. To be honest, you're too good for this girl i just don't like it as toxic uh you're fucking toxic to be honest you're so fucking right but you're fucking fuck you but you're on facebook but you're on fucking facebook no no no how dare you how dare you like break the addiction while we all sit here miserable and suffer endlessly scrolling got carpal tunnel even though i know better i still compare myself to things i see on social media 90 of you said yup said yes sorry otherwise yup oh my god do you remember that um advert uh oh it had a cow and it was like milk and it was like some sort of milk make milk milk tastes great or something.

Do you know what you're thinking of? It's not a cow, it's a cat. And he goes, oh, lovely Crusher. Yes. Oh, lovely Crusher. Is it a cat? It tastes milkshake. Yes.

Yeah. It always plays in the cinema. And I think it was me and Lizzie, but me and my sister, but it could have been me and you. I always said the most unattractive, I was trying to think, what's the worst thing you could do on a date or a job interview or anything like that and I said the

worst thing you could do is think I've got some crusher oh my god maybe it was me yeah that sounds familiar oh lovely crusher the way they say it did it not have cows in the background though and they were kind of bouncing about yeah and they were they were um lifting weights and there was a cat it was kind of a cartoon cat um and it was going oh lovely crusher right so i have to ask how on earth are you managing to remember that and yet you can't remember a conversation that we had literally yesterday please someone help me out with you sticks in my mind that's important info oh lovely crusher lovely crusher tastes so great enough to milk a milkshake milk that's important info great like it tastes so great and kind of

it was and then it goes a milkshake and I always think that's the most unattractive thing someone could do oh god and i'm doing that podcast here we go okay the next thing i have a bone to pick with all of you we always we have many bones that we're constantly picking with people we need to stop these people are good listeners we're psychotic oh fuck i wish i never laid eyes on you i was thinking okay i i present only a small portion of myself online okay i i present only a small portion of myself online 90 so yeah yeah so 90 of you present a small portion of yourself online that should that should be the case you that should even like that's always obviously the case but it should always feel like the case if you feel like you're presenting your whole personality god are you living a minute in the day without it that's true

well because i put in the bottom because i thought people are gonna try and get out of that and i'm not having it so i put at the bottom i.e the majority of the pictures from your camera roll do not make it onto your instagram feed which i think sums it up yeah that's a good way of putting it i saw that you said that and thought no one's getting out of that no one's saying they're posting a picture the pictures on their camera roll 10 of them still do it's like show me your fucking camera roll then let me show let's see when you're taking a picture of like the back of your hair just to be like is that looking good or like the shit on my fucking camera roll literally kind of your nose hairs me and my friend once did this thing where she always used to get

mouth ulcers and i would always take a picture of her mouth ulcer oh ouch whenever she got them and we created a bit of a series in her camera world called photos of my ulcer and it was and it was just sort of like you're not posting that on instagram absolutely not there's no fucking way well here we go 90% I present only a small portion of myself online okay next question it's important to me that i follow authentic people yeah 90 said yeah it's really important to me that i follow authentic people amazing here we go here's where the lie kicks in no one's authentic online here's where we all seem to struggle pulling up to struggle town most of the social media accounts i see are altered or curated or unrealistic and 50 said no it was a hung jury you're joking i can't believe well it's 51 and 49

it's brexit times i can't believe that it's brexit that's crazy so 90 of you can say for yourselves that you present only a small portion of yourself and yet 50 then still think for some absurd reason that most of the social media accounts you follow are you think they're in no way curated but you know that yours is too make it make sense it's not adding up that is so crazy I completely agree but I also think I genuinely think okay so from having a podcast and having listeners and people that come through in our dms and say and say like oh my god you're so this and you're so this and like make not assumptions but things we have told them but they actually are such small proportions of my personality that they point out and I think

it's funny that people feel as if they know us and I feel that sometimes the I mean they're largely completely right but a few things I think that's not really us and that makes me think the people that I think I know, the celebrities that I think, God, I fucking know you inside out. I actually don't have a fucking clue. I actually have no idea. No.

It's funny when you people start making assumptions about you and it's not it. It's not accurate. And you think, fuck, well, I, everything I think I know about all the people I follow and I feel close to, it's completely wrong. Okay, I'm going to get quite existential here. I think that's so interesting because in the same way that we look at celebrities

for example you'd be like yeah Jonathan from Queer Eye like no I'm inside out exactly who I was thinking know him like the back of my hand I did and yet I reckon not even I reckon I fucking know that lots of people in Jonathan's little life look at him and he thinks you lot don't know anything about me yeah in the same way that you and I will operate in our lives and think yeah people online like probably know a certain facet of us in the way that I know you I'm gonna say pretty intimately why do we always say that the Shane Dawson thing you know the cats on your street in the way that you and I know each other really well, but we know a certain representation of each other really well, because you will have a vision in your head of who you are that doesn't align with what I think.

So what bugs me or confuses me, or what I think is interesting at least, is what version of you is the real one? So that's the thing that is it the version of you in your mind that you know your life likes and dislikes and your hopes and dreams and fears totally yeah is it what other people perceive of you strangers yeah your family there isn't one yeah is it what my mother thinks of me yeah my mum who knew me at from birth and raised me and knows everything from her perspective and sees me as a daughter or is it the perception of my own child yet to be born who thinks um of me as mummy like what's the real thing a romantic interest that thinks they know you inside out who thinks of

me as the desirable goddess that i am can do no wrong it my cat who thinks of me as some sort of almighty god that gives food down I also don't have a chiodide but that's actually quite a traumatic point rip R.A.P. Quentin and Kirby um but do you know what I mean it's like well whose perspective is right is right yeah there is not one there isn't one the perspective of um me walking into the fucking x-factor audition simon cowell views me as potential money maker literally that i mean it's like you're to someone you're a product someone you're a vagina someone you're a fucking genius someone you're a fucking piece of shit piece of fucking human shit bizarre so okay let me take it back i'm gonna get personal now how do you think people perceive you

for example the people who listen and are here with hire how do they perceive you versus who are you who are you actually then what assumptions are they making that's wrong or right well this is interesting because i i actually wanted to ask them this because i not saw some things but i do think it's interesting when i was thinking about other podcasts i listened to and i'm like god I know you guys like you guys are my gang and I feel that they are I feel that and I know people feel like that about us and I feel like you're in the gang too yes you are in an hour an hour of conversation you can only put out so much a small amount of yourself for example I think I talk about dates quite a lot or like I'm quite sort of we talk about like

funny things like right now cheery mood but on the phone earlier to you i was crying that's true do you know what i mean that is true like things are just so different like it's an hour of conversation an hour from your day we literally sound like fucking zoella what does she say she says here's my advent calendar it costs 50 quid it's only an hour of our day and you don't know us and blah blah blah do you know what i mean but it's so fucking true that's why influencers get upset yeah but i do sound like a fucking i sound like i'm going on loads of dates i'm literally going on a date tonight but i'm like i don't go on dates guys it's like i mean why i have to go tonight but it's also because we talk about boys so much, as in we talk about the patriarchy so much.

And dates are kind of the battlefield of that. Yeah, I think we talk about sex because that's one of the arenas that women are most oppressed in. But it's almost like, I think there might be a perception of me on the podcast that I'm like a big dater, which is actually so inaccurate. Like, I actually am so, so reserved. You don't really date often no I'm I'm incredibly reserved or it takes quite um in particular reasons for me to go on a date or particular people yeah I need to be in the mood to go on a date I don't just I'm not going on dates every every week you're not I'm not going on dates every month no you're not well it's so true

that when you right so say um your perception of somebody could be a blank canvas, i.e. I'm listening to the podcast, I'm listening to you talk on the podcast and I don't know you, we've never met, et cetera, et cetera. So the only info that I have on Persephone is whatever she tells me. So if you tell me you've been on a date

and then I listen to an episode and we chit chat chat and then I listen to another episode and you say, oh, I was on this date, you could literally be referring to that exact same date and yet in my mind now I have the only info I have is that you go on dates and the rest is blank so I'll just fill in the blanks with more dates or just whatever I please and that is also why especially women influencers get held to such ridiculous i'm not saying we're

influencers by the way but get um held to such ridiculous standards because you either don't talk and you allow people to fill in the blanks of oh well she's you know she probably never uses plastic straws anyway it's fine rather than you show them one time and then it's like oh she never she doesn't give a fuck about turtles it's like that was, she never, she doesn't give a fuck about turtles. That was one instance. Like, you really don't know. We don't know anything about anyone, really. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.

Hello, I'm Jess Milton. For 15 years, I produced The Vinyl Café with the late, great Stuart McLean. Every week, more than 2 million people tuned in to hear funny, fictional, feel-good stories about Dave and his family. We're excited to welcome you back to the warm and welcoming world of The Vinyl Café with our new podcast, Backstage at The Vinyl Café. Each week, we'll share two hilarious stories by Stuart, and for the first time ever, I'll tell you what it was like behind the scenes. Subscribe for free wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. ACAST.com I reckon the only assumptions that I've had, kind of sussing out the vibe of what you lot say i

agree you agree with the projection that they've put on there collectively you agree with the projection that has been projected of you by us on the podcast and how that's perceived yeah i'm happy with it currently same i'm happy no i'm i'm more than happy with it it's just funny that we think we know people when you think you know someone they're really not but it's kind of like I do go on dates but it's just not it's not like that I'm kind of like shit I'm gonna I might go on a date and it's like I don't want to go even tonight I don't want to go already yeah but can you tell us a bit about it then so we can really build up the persona that you're a big dater I was was supposed to be going yesterday, but I rescheduled to today.

I was like, fuck, I can't be arsed. So I'm going today instead. Well, it's a social... I assume it's social distance. I don't know the etiquette of this at all. I've said, let's just go and clap in common with some drinks. What's his vibe? What's his vibe?

Have I shown you pictures? You can't show them pictures unless you're going to put him on the story. No, I'm talking to you. Harry, I now speak directly to you you have one hour one hour one hour well basically i'm confused because i've shown um every single one of my housemates because i was like right here's this picture go like do your work go now give me your opinions ratings please and every single person has a completely different thing what's funny there's one picture of him where everyone i've shown which is three people my housemates says oh that looks like thingy that looks like thingy that not anyone specific everyone thinks he looks like someone else in their life so he's just clearly got a versatile face and when i

saw it i thought he looked like someone else i know which is just an interesting kind of face i don't think i've seen him but i think you sent me a screenshot of the chat, but I can't remember what it said. God knows. Probably like, go listen to my podcast. I can't remember. As if I tell people about the podcast. I've now got a dating rule.

Dating rule, because I'm a dating fanatic. Well, you learn the hard way. After one pretty bad date, I would say I wasn't there, but... I do not tell people what we do. But when people say, what's your job? I say, quickly think of something. I don't know what I'm going to say.

I haven't had a date since. I don't know what I'm going to say. Because the problem is they listen to the podcast the last time I said I have a podcast. And then I went into the second date. They knew way too much about me. They were like, oh, so what... Well, they already had a kind of perceived projection of you. So I asked you why you have

social media, and I put you in capitals so you would think extra hard. Why do you have social media? Can I ask you that first? Why do you have social media, Sefi? Well, it's obviously changed dramatically in the sense the inception of Hire, but why do I have my own personal social media that I'm not monetizing? Yeah, take it back before Hire Plus does. Why did you have social media? I think you purely have social media out of habit and FOMO. I think that is the, if we're honest with ourselves, that is why we have social media that we're not monetizing. If you are not getting paid for your Instagram, I don't think you have it for connection. I don't think you have it for self-expression

if it's a basic fucking Insta. I think you have it because the fear of not being in this sphere and opting out seems so dramatic. Completely agree with you. It seems so political and- Absurd. You're actively rejecting something. So we're kind of scared to do it i completely completely agree with you i also think it is so out of habit because for a lot of

us we had social media when we were young yeah i just got facebook and never deleted it and then it's like when instagram came out get instagram never deleted it literally that before you know it you're in knee deep in all of them yeah it's so true it's like you don't often sign up to a new social media and and ditch it unless it phases out and all of your friends aren't on it unless it's a dramatic end like kind of bibo myspace yeah which we just haven't got there yet with instagram it will come oh it's a coming it's a coming do you think yeah they all die they all die the world's gonna end so instagram's gonna end yeah um sorry to bring it to you and bring it up again but yeah i think they all die but we're just not there yet so when they die we'll go on to the new thing well i think that proves that we do it out of habit and fomo because no one had any issue with not going on bibo and myspace

anymore because they're not being used anymore so why would you want to be there you might be expressing yourself perfectly exactly if you were actually expressing yourself you would still want to be expressing yourself but you're not because you don't no because you're performing instagram is pure consumption and performance you're consuming other people's performances and then you are performing yourself for other people's consumption. It's a really weird kind of like give and take. You position yourself as peripheral that you're looking in at all these famous people and all these amazing people's lives. Yet at the same time, you're like, let me in the club, let me in the club, please. And then you're sad when you get like 40 likes.

What do you think harms us more? Observing the performance or participating in the performance? What part of it do you think is more stressful or more unhealthy? Observing. No, performing. Now that we're performing, performing is more stressful. That's so true.

Now we're on the stage. I was in the audience thinking, I want to be on the stage. Now on the stage, I'm thinking, I want to be in the back row. So fucking true. So fucking true. Oh my God my god yeah i mean completely but you get privileges from it like it's amazing like i really do want to make it really clear that we're not trying to like obviously we're not fucking um kylie jenner

obviously no i'm not saying we're on the west end stage i'm saying we're in the in the back back back of a sort of cafe that we've put a cardboard box and we're standing on it. Yeah, it's so true. I think that's it. The stage doesn't have to be the global stage. It's just like we've made a little space where now we are essentially, I mean, this is completely authentic, quote unquote. So why is it more stressful to perform? But it's also performance because it is more stressful because you're centering yourself and i don't even think performance necessarily has to mean falseness this is an authentic performance like we're talking as friends as we do but it is curated and we are monetizing our dynamic our friendship which is really strange really strange because also we have these conversations all the time

anyway but now i mean if i was just having a conversation with you i wouldn't be addressing 10 000 people but i do on this podcast because i talk directly to you um harry with your earphones i hope our harry potter references land with every So do I. I would like to think at this point they would. I hope so. If not. We just throw them in like, yeah, everyone's seen that, right? Cool. Yeah.

I mean, if not, we're not going to be kind of the 50th people to tell you to go and start Harry Potter from beginning to end. Oh my, I'm not even going, I'm not going to engage. You can find your own way to that path. But I do think observing is stressful stressful too is kind of horrific as well because as you say you're you're made to feel like you're on the peripheries of life constantly looking in at dresses you'll never be able to afford parties you'll never be invited to um campaigns you'll never be a part of a job you'll never get and kind of a body that you

will never be in true true that the exact image that you're seeing over and over and over again repeated is not you there's something particular about instagram's algorithm in as well in the way that i clicked on one taylor swift picture weeks ago and now who's all over my explore page taylor fucking taylor t swizzle i can't escape her because instagram knows that i found it interesting that one time. Yeah. It's like, oh, you want more of it? You want more of it?

And so now you click on one Instagram model. It's like, oh, you wanted more of that? You wanted more of that thing that you'll never look like? Oh my God, we should keep looking at it. You should keep looking at all of these diet pages. Yeah. Yeah, totally that. It's TikTok.

I think you can tell a lot about someone from their Instagram explore page though. You 100% can. And I think you can even tell even more from their tiktok tiktok is bizarre tiktok is fucking strange i am a bit annoyed with the tiktok because they've removed my tiktok oh well we've yeah we started tiktok but um also erin did a tiktok we sound fucking like we hate social media we actually love it love it so much like obsessed but um we did a tiktok and erin's one got removed because tiktok hate feminism they hate women shakes head i'm shaking my head big time but you know it's all good we move we're moving we're moving on we move we stay we stay on track kind of it did piss me off or whatever so everyone if you don't follow

us on instagram and haven't seen our constant promo of our TikTok, go get on our TikTok because if you want video content to go along with the amazing audio content, I mean, jump on. I love that we took episode on social media to mean promote your social media. Also, don't go on TikTok. Yeah, to be honest, don't.

Don't go there. But if you're already on Instagram, you're already on fucking Spotify and Apple Podcasts, maybe just add TikTok to it too. But that also feeds into why social media is so addictive because you were fed something once and you set the endorphins on fire. All that dopamine went crazy.

Your fight or flight kicks in when you stop kind of eating breakfast because you want to prolong your morning tummy, which I didn't know was a thing. Morning tummy? Yeah. Yeah, I call it Saturday morning feeling. Oh no, as in, oh God, because you want to prolong your morning tummy which I didn't know is a thing morning tummy yeah yeah I call it Saturday morning feeling oh no as in oh god we're doing my different things as in I mean the feeling that you know the feeling that you get in your tummy when you haven't eaten kind of like you're downstairs and you're watching cartoons and you're waiting for your mum to get up

don't don't even I could me and my sister call it Saturday morning feeling and sometimes we text each other like I've got Saturday morning feeling. I love that. It's kind of you haven't eaten yet and you feel sick. It's pure Saturday morning feeling. We've always said it. But what's morning tummy? Morning tummy I've seen is people who wake up

and your stomach is flat. Oh, you're thin in the morning. Yeah, your stomach is flatter in the morning. Yeah, it's completely miserable. Let's just look at the way we've appropriated our physical biology to kind of in how far it does or does not align with patriarchal standards. To look like a child, I want to have a flat stomach. What?

Yeah. Like a prepubescent child. It's like, but actually like your womb is supposed to be there. Yeah. And it's also like, well, there's literally a fucking amazing breakfast. There's like beans on toast in the kitchen. you not want it you know what fucking happens when you get a flat stomach nothing you'll still be fucking miserable because i have a flat stomach and i'll still be fucking miserable about a million and one things because it doesn't make you happy because

it's not fucking real it can only get you so much you can take a good few pictures and you can get a good few compliments and then what your life is still shit you're back to the endless scroll guys you're back to scrolling it's true like it doesn't it's the same thing you can't place happiness on um a kind of an end goal because it doesn't exist the limit does not exist and don't torture yourself don't put your body through this shit like it's insane yeah also the majority of people's bodies just are the way they are and also interesting enough a lot of the instagram models that you see their bodies are not the way that they are because that is what they look like after kind of an hour sat making sure that that picture looks okay i bet if you walked into their room right now when they're editing that picture that's not how they look

is it yeah totally and also i think it's funny because we all know this every single person every single person listening to this right now knows social media is not real it's a highlight reel we know it we know this fact it's a fact why are we still so fucking thick but is it just the thing that we said a few episodes back that you know a horror movie is fake or a horror maze is fake but you're still screaming and your brain can't tell the difference still scared is it that yeah it's like i know that that film about the nun is the shittest film ever but i still don't want to go to the toilet at night on my own the film about the nun isn't it just called the nun yeah and i was literally begging jack saying please come with me to the toilet and he wouldn't come he was laughing

his little head off i thought fuck you that film is bleakly bad it's so shit did i speak about this on the podcast before no i was gonna say the only thing that i remember from that film is bleakly bad it's so shit did i speak about this on the podcast before no i was gonna say the only thing that i remember from that film apart from not wanting to go to the toilet on my own was the fact that at the beginning this guy has essentially just witnessed a dead body like hanging from this building it's like really horrific outside like a graveyard sort of thing yeah kind of old church or something like that a man and a woman turn up at his house after he's just had like a sweat ridden nightmare about it he gets the door opens the door man woman standing there and he's like hey i want to fuck you to this woman he's essentially

coming onto this woman it's like you were just covered in sweat reliving this horrific moment you see a literal dead body and yet a fucking poor little actress can't be on screen for more than five minutes without being fucking perved on how crazy is that that was more petrifying than the whole thing put together that's the scariest thing that's the scariest thing in that movie that's why i don't want to go to the toilet i'm like that fucking man's gonna be there i've watched a fucking horror movie and it's called The Landlord. I also think it's called... I mean, landlords are fucking scary, aren't they?

Yeah, yeah. And it's also, I think, called 13 Cameras. It's got two names. Yeah, it's really weird. And I watched it with my brother like a few days ago. And it's one of the most horrific things I've ever seen. It's about this landlord that sets up hidden cameras in a house. It's got this pregnant woman living in the house.

I've heard about this. He is the creepiest fucking looking thing I've ever seen in my life and i've heard about this and i've now moved back into london into my rented house and i'm fucking checking everywhere for hidden cameras imagine yeah imagine he's watching you say that right now he's like fuck she's on to me oh no that she just scared me also why do i presume that your landlord is a man gender norms i'm not even joking that's freaked me out oh sorry it's i mean you're literally on it's fine yeah i'm also under a duvet right now trying to soundproof this oh it's a long story guys he can't see a thing basically okay shall we get into your amazing personal experiences? Yes, love it.

Okay, this one in particular I really wanted to talk about because I just think it's so fucking interesting. So this person said a few things. They said they were nine when they started to post on Facebook, which is mad, isn't it? Nine. Nine. That's crazy.

You see a nine-year-old, that's a child. Yeah. Nine when they started to use Facebook and then they said it hurts to see other people's perfect bodies not just kylie jenner people i know that's so true not that's so true but that's so that's so it with social media that's so raven that's so fucking raven motherfucker um they said this is the bit that i found particularly interesting oh here we go okay so they said let's just go down the rabbit hole let's go down yeah I didn't see the second part of the question

the second part of the it's not a question but the second part of their message has just thrown me oh I love it so it says it also feels weird and hurts if I see my boyfriend has liked a pic of a perfect quote-unquote perfect body yeah that fucking shit. And then the second part of the message is, all in all, my relationship is healthier, quote unquote, healthier, because I almost never post and then put brackets, not even stories. Yeah. I mean, I can't see you under that little quilt you've got,

but I'm a bit shook. What about you? Yeah, I'm shook. Yeah, what are your thoughts? Well, okay, so shall we take it from the top? First of all, nine is a crazy age, but same here to be honest i think most of us here were really young um yeah not facebook though i remember the

move to facebook felt quite like an adult jump oh i was in primary school when we were on facebook i think i was like year seven eight like it was kind of right it was very much bibo msn sort of things what about myspace did you ever have myspace i had i remember people's older sisters had myspace but i never had it ah i had myspace i think probably because um i was in london and you were in more of the countryside kind of like you and your friends were kind of reading latin and i was dancing to soldier boy we were kind of in the shire from the from the fucking lord of the rings yeah exactly yeah we're kind of hanging out with like bilbo baggage yeah okay so i mean yeah most of us were really young but i think you and i and people roughly our age who are like kind of i would say kind of early 20s

are just at the cutoff where you had a childhood that wasn't saturated by social media well there was no social media but our generation and above there was no concept of daily performance no it was just there's people on the tv you can aspire to be them but on the day on the day-to-day the people in your life is who you know you don't know these actresses in this way that we feel that we do now definitely and i think we forget how different times were something i always fucking talk about and it's like one of my favorite things that i've ever seen was this like really old footage from like a spice girls behind the scenes thing nice so this is probably recorded in like 1998 which

i know sounds like a long time ago but so much has changed since but it's actually not all that long ago and kind of within the 10 year span of that time we had a consciousness of what life was like so anyway in this little clip who is it what's her name emma bunton i don't know the spice girls really baby spice they're great i'm obsessed with the spice girls i don't really know them i know victoria beckham and i know if you want to be my lover that's all i know yeah yeah that's all i know um emma bunton i think it's emma one of them it might be jerry halliwell i can't remember which is awful because i'm really kind of seeing them as just interchangeable women yeah it was one of the spies Girls whatever they are all individuals in their own right but not in my mind apparently um but it was one of them was saying so they're on camera it's kind of a bit of a piece to camera and the camera the person holding the camera I don't even want to say

cameraman because I think it was a really informal recording 100% filmed on like a little handheld camcorder and the guy behind the camera says so how did you get into the spice girls and whoever it is i think it is emma bunton is like well i was just in like dance college and i just like didn't really know what to do and i saw that they'd had an argument with one of the other girls who was in spice girls and someone said to me that i'd probably be all right at it so i came and i took that girl's place it's so informal isn't it now it's there's a desperation to i have to be at i have to be that it's um x factor well also it's like you could never you would never even say well the other girls had an argument with her could you imagine even fucking youtubers don't admit when they've had drama because the discourse goes wild well it's

then they all hate each other literally what just happened you just did a really excited face not that excited it's really not a big deal jack just came in and he my dad was saying the other day that he wanted nuts and my my dad and jack's got him this big thing of nuts like i shouldn't be that excited my dad's saying he really wants nuts nondescript nuts won't say the kind of nuts nut just nuts just like salted peanuts just guess what kind of nuts i want just don't give that is really funny so what you're gonna go give him the nuts so we're gonna hand over the nuts at some point yeah it just it was just so, at the time she, everyone would have thought,

wow, that's so, such a performance. Oh my God, you're like a fucking superstar. You're on the TV, your hair and makeup's getting done and it took you like 45 minutes. And oh my God, you've got an outfit from X, Y and Z and the whole thing's a big show. And yet now you do the whole thing's a big show every day of your fucking life when you're posting a story and scrolling through what your mates are doing on instagram and now it's not acceptable for the average person average especially maybe the

average jenny the average girl the average joanne to not look like she's had a fucking hour and a half in her hair and makeup yeah on instagram the standard is so much higher for how the fucking um checkout girl should look well i don't even think the standard is higher i think the standard is more um specific because yes it's you have to look the same as everybody else yeah you have to look like an instagram girl an instagram model yeah you can either be you can either be like a curvy quote unquote curvy kind of um black fishing um huge lip fillers look or you can be kind of frolicking in a field with a really titch waist um and a bucket of strawberries oh give me that that sounds quite nice frolicking in the field with the strawberries do you know what i mean and like kind of no makeup but you're just so

kind of ethereal and you're a goddess and you're kind of sun-kissed babe i just thought it was so fascinating that literally one of the spice girls was saying to a fucking camera that anyone could see i didn't really want to be here didn't really want to be here and the other girl was like a bit argumentative so i just took her spot it's like what could you imagine you could never you could never could you fucking imagine that's insane the next part of this person's message shall we get into it what was it again yeah yeah yeah let's get into it you don't want to hear it they said it also feels weird and hurts if i see my boyfriend has liked a pic of a perfect body all in all my relationship is healthier because i almost never post not even stories i mean there's two separate things there first of all should we talk about the boyfriend boyfriend liking pictures

of bodies bodies of dead bodies um first of all speak to him then dump him if he will not change that behavior is actually unacceptable unacceptable i hate how that's normalized i fucking hate how that's normalized that's what i was gonna say i think we kind of touched on this in our porn episode but it's like men will get away with a lot because we've normalized it's boys will be boys boys are gonna like a naked body being so chilled just so relaxed and it's like god you can't be so controlling all the time yeah don't be a fucking psycho stop being so naggy it's like uh actually can't be so controlling all the time yeah don't be a fucking psycho stop being so naggy it's like uh actually i just don't want you to treat me like shit

yeah you're out there liking pictures of somebody of a girl that you fancy of essentially a naked body yeah no thank you i don't back it at all i also but just because i know if i post a bikini picture and a boy likes it i know exactly what's happening yeah between me him and i i know if i post a bikini picture and a boy likes it i know exactly what's happening yeah between me him and i i know exactly what's happening totally and so i would know exactly what's happening if jack was to go around doing the same thing it's not subtle and you want your name to be there loud and proud absolutely freaking not no not on my stinking relationship watch no way and it's not fucking naggy it's just having some fucking self-esteem. It's not okay for your partner, your boyfriend, to be out there publicly,

privately is fucking awful, but publicly claiming his attraction to almost like prepping her for when he breaks up with you. Just prepping her, just keeping her like loosely around. Yeah, just keeping her around. Just keeping yourself in her consciousness

for when his relationship's over fuck that shit no i also think it's kind of i mean it's everyone anyone in their own right can post what they want on social media then people will do what they want with it whatever but i almost think it is such a i think it's a patriarchally charged move from the boy's perspective to double tap another girl's naked body and everyone else will see it do you get what I mean it almost feels a bit like publicly you don't like anything about her other than her boobs you don't like her you only like her when you're objectifying her we had actually an amazing message and I'm sure she'll be listening now from a girl saying we just today got the, I replied like late,

but she was basically saying that she wanted to post something because of our episode, I think it was maybe body image, wanted to post a picture of her plants from her room. Because every single picture is just, is a selfie. Oh my God, yes. And just of her, herself. And she was saying, I want to post a picture of my plants because I'm into my plants and I want to post them. why would I not because I know they won't get many likes because

that's self-expression on the internet so we said yeah post plants she posed the plants um and she said I'm sure you won't be so we gave our seal of approval yeah yeah she had probably posed the plants before we said post the plants she has agency and autonomy um dominion over her own instagram yes um so she and then she messaged back saying hey i'm sure you'll be unsurprised to know that the post didn't get likes it just flopped compared to my other ones and it's like isn't it fucking crazy that men don't care about women's hobbies interests skills talents lives insights but as soon as you post a picture of your bum of your face of your butt of your outfit where you can see your little boobs anything oh we'll like that but i showed you what my brain is doing my brain is thinking oh these plants are cool

and you literally went in you weren't interested you scrolled past so fast faster than you can say quidditch as we said in the body image thing, women aren't seen as whole. They're seen as empty fucking vessels. Yeah. Okay, well, it gets worse then, doesn't it? Because then this person goes on to say, all in all, my relationship is healthier because I almost never post, not even stories. I mean, we have little to no context here,

but our message for all relationships is communicate and communicate your worth yes and almost communicate with yourself because i think a lot of the stuff is self-denial of oh no no but my boyfriend likes pictures of other people but we've spoken about it it's fine it's fine it's fine it's like is that fine with you is that fine with you that he wants to do that because he you might have had the convo and in that convo you came out with yeah no no he still finds me attractive it's just something he does is it fine with you it's almost like you previously agreed that you weren't going to get annoyed when that happens but it's bugging you so someone's going to have to confront it and it's not fine that he does that because how would he react if you just give it a fucking test i honestly just give it a test if you say no no

my boyfriend just does that if you were liking a load of dick pics imagine just like a picture of like um a boy that was kind of in the year above you at school was like little six-pack a boy that he knows and he doesn't know that you know him yeah just like that and make sure he fucking see just right next to him just double tap that see what happens he's gonna fucking lose his nut he's gonna go mad obviously like remain safe at all times it's just see what happens if you think he's so boys are we boys boys we boys what happens when girls will be fucking girls what happens when girls will be boys literally you go mad you go mad you actually cannot cope so fuck off i don't really know what to say about that apart from please dump him but also like do

what you want but like i just want you to be happy communicate then dump his ass shakes okay so there was another one that i wanted to talk about because to be honest it was everyone said it they said i got facebook when i was 13 i'm 23 now and i have crippling anxiety about instagram likes you know what it made me think there was an old kind of a bit of a meme going about probably like seven or eight years ago now and it was along the lines of instagram likes won't put food on the table yeah i remember this and look what happened well well well now they do yeah how the cookie crumbles how the cookie crumble crumble crumbles how the app crumbles honestly crumble town crumble pie crumble pie sounds quite nice i might cook that for dinner crumble pie i was more thinking like humble pie shane dawson served me a slice of crumble pie oh you're thinking of an apple

crumble but i'm kind of thinking of the apple crumble crumble in a pie oh crumble pie yeah all right i'll do it i might bake it i might do it i thought it was interesting that they said a crippling anxiety about instagram likes it's like oh that doesn't feel good that doesn't sound nice but we won't leave yeah it's weird right it's kind of toxic relationship i think it's kind of we need to get out of the space i wonder what is in us that it gives us crippling anxiety i.e it's making us cripplingly ill it's making us ill it's making us sick and we stay we stay there we not only do we stay there we if you look on your screen time you're there for hours a day all day

you may think that you only popped in for 20 minutes in your day no no no look at your screen time you were there for three hours i wonder why we we say that. I think you're right. It is a toxic relationship. I think we're kidding ourselves if we think it's like, yeah, oh, it's just this thing that I do. No, no, it's a huge, it's an addiction. It's a huge part of your day and it's designed to be addictive and it makes us all feel sick. Whether we know it or not, it makes us feel numb and ill. Definitely. Don't get me wrong. There was loads of messages and we completely agree with all of them saying like, I found feminism online. I found this that helped me online. Totally. I think body positivity has only been allowed to come up through Instagram. People having control over a form of media.

Exactly. Because the TV weren't showing you this it's democratic it allows um it allows so much and it doesn't need the male stamp of approval before a girl gets famous if a load of girls like her then she gets famous and she may not fit the norm and i think that's amazing although can't show your nipples on instagram and yet that fucking little cunt dan brazil whatever his name is will post pictures of literally a girl's bum hole all over him yeah and he's roaring and raging and killing instagram like has like millions of followers or whatever because it's patriarchal anything anything that exists under capitalism is inherently a patriarchal

institution and white supremacist institution would you want your kids to have social media? I think this all the time. Because here we are where so much of our job lies on social media and so we've chosen it for ourselves. Would I want my kid to have a podcast on the internet? Would I want to have my kid having messages from 40 year old men and 14 year old boys saying you're a slut? No I wouldn't. I wouldn't want that for my kid but then why is it enough for us it's confusing I would want it for my child in the way that I wanted it for myself because it means a lot to me to have done this for myself like I didn't it's one of those things that I am quite impressed with myself that I allowed myself to find a new space for myself myself

myself myself yeah um It's true. And I love it. I love it more than anything. My favourite job I've ever had, but allowed myself to go and do something. Yeah. But kind of slightly more out of the ordinary. So in that way, I would highly recommend it to my child.

But also it's such a fucking dangerous place, dangerous game to play. It's kind of, it's's not that it's less than even my child because we don't have one because she doesn't exist but um well the my my white son yeah go on it yeah that that space is for you you're safe as anything yeah sure but you're being fucking good on it my little daughter this is what i said to people a long time ago a long time ago kind of i'm 100 years old many moons ago i remember saying to people someone in particular was like um everyone is equal now so there's really no you know racism doesn't happen in the uk how can you how can you say that of your fucking mouth sexism doesn't

happen in the uk how can you fucking say that and i was like okay would you want to be black then you want to be black yeah they said no no obviously wouldn't want to be black obviously not i said okay would you want to be a woman then they said absolutely not why would i know it's like well there you fucking go you little cunt would you want to be trans then would you want to be fucking trans then i don't fucking understand how that can come out of your mouth i think people really actually in this country as well, especially, pride themselves on their ignorance because they see it as a stamp of strength. I think they think that they're kind of Winston Churchill

and that they just have, you know, hard, you know, tough skin, thick skin, you know, strong shoulders. You can take on the weight of the world. I'm just not bothered about things. You can't just, just because you're offended doesn't mean that, you know, it's not a fact or whatever. It's the snowflake thing. Like, oh, don't be a snowflake.

It's like, you're so upset. You're the one that's so offended. Seeing my nipples through a t-shirt under your guys because you would still walk into a supermarket and pay money to see a topless girl in page three or on an old magazine and yet when a woman is owning her own literally just living her own fucking life and you can see her nipples through her top you think she's unacceptable so why are women only valid when they fit into what you want and i can and i think that comes for

women as well who i have seen and have tried to tell me that women are only valid when they do something that rejects femininity, or women are only valid when they act a certain way, et cetera, et cetera. We've internalized misogyny, racism, homophobia, et cetera, in so many different ways, and we're just all too blind to see it. And I think that concludes my thoughts on the podcast.

What about you? Concluded. It's completely true. It's outrageous. It's absolutely completely true it's outrageous it's absolutely outrageous it's outrageous and we're not here for it actually importantly we're not here at all this is the last episode you'll get from us for a week my heart skipped a beat i thought don't say that we're not going back you said it like it's the last episode full stop you'll never hear from me again you will hear from us again in a week's time we're basically we're gonna have a week off we're doing a season break flood us with love flood us with love so

we're dying to come back we are already dying to come back um we just need a week off we're just gonna have a break we've got there's work there's much work to be done in prep for our mid-season break so we're really looking forward to coming back with strong old topics and amazing amazing conversation if you've enjoyed this season please leave us a review on apple podcast some of you have and we we scream can't cope we scream at everyone how much we fucking love you but thank you so much for listening as always and we can't wait to come back can't wait haven't even left can't wait to come back leave the door open leave the car running need to still edit and upload this and i'm like can't wait to come back it's like you're not even gone so just absolutely just throw gifts to us and love and kind kind words of admiration yeah and validation

and we'll hopefully we'll see you soon we'll speak to you soon okay cool bye