It Could Happen Here - Goblin Mode

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Mia talks to Juniper about the rise of Goblin Mode, our media ecosystem, misinformation, and how journalists' twitter addiction leaves them prey to far right media operations.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba?

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's Goblin Mode! Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is today in Goblin Mode. You know what it's about, you've heard us say it like about 20 million times. But yeah, I'm your host Christopher Wong, and with me today we have Juniper, who is a really Twitter shitpost extraordinaire on to discuss language, media, culture, the nature of reality, and Goblin Mode. Juniper, welcome to the show. Hi, how's it going? It's going good. It's going much better since Goblin Mode has

ceased control of the world. We are now living in the age of Goblin Mode. It's the era of Goblin Mode, as drew barrymarshaw said this morning apparently it's been quite a time i didn't realize just posting would like just posting would influence so much around me i guess i don't know it's been an interesting time for sure yeah so so i wanted to talk to you about sort of the absurdity that is goblin mode. And I want to hold off on talking about what goblin mode like is or isn't for a bit, because I think that's actually weirdly the less interesting part. And I want to start with instead the story of how goblin mode became like a thing and why I am reading. I keep I keep like every every time I look for more goblin mode headlines, there's more goblin mode headlines. Like I think my favorite so far is from Bloomberg. It's a

diesel prices have gone goblin mode, forget crude oil. This could be the real energy emergency. Yeah. That is by far one of my favorites too. The full headline too, if you search for that one is it's what you said but then it adds on uh thanks to the ukraine war yeah i would see an official bloomberg headline with goblin mode and the ukraine war i gotta say that's just by far my favorite one for multiple reasons amazing the other part of me that's extremely funny is that i so the people who are doing these articles keep getting asked

someone is asking an intern to find a picture of a goblin and they keep posting pictures of orcs, which is like enormously funny to me. I'm not sure what they're searching to get those. Yeah, I don't know. It's really incredible. We should start from the beginning of this story which is yeah can you talk about your shit post and uh what you were thinking at the time when you made a shit post that randomly

like has has had months-long ripple effects on the world? Sure. I think you were right, though. The post itself, that's the least interesting part of all of Goblin Mode, in my opinion, as well. Just seeing the ripple effect is what's been super interesting and really funny to me.

Sure, yeah, the post... Basically, I think it was the day that Kanye what kanye west and julia fox which just a quick note i i've never heard of julia fox before any of this so i just like sometimes if like you know if twitter is all talking about one thing the most recent thing being like the will smith slap like everyone's talking about that so whenever like some like big event like that is happening and everyone's posting about that. So whenever like some like big event like that is happening, and everyone's posting about it, I try to like think of some creative different posts I can do, you know, just to get in on the discourse or whatever you want to call it.

So I just, I really don't know what compelled me to make a fake headline. But basically, I just, I just decided to search, I think I was driving home from work. And I just decided to search like Kanye West, Julia Fox. And I just found the first headline. And I just edited to search. I think I was driving home from work and I just decided to search like Kanye West, Julia Fox. And I just found the first headline and I just edited it to say, um, Kanye West doesn't like it when, uh, Julia Fox goes goblin mode basically. And that's why they broke up. That was, that was the whole essence of the, of the post itself.

Um, and I really didn't think too deeply about it beyond just making the post. And it just, it caught fire with like, I guess what we would probably call normie normie Twitter, like people that aren't even like necessarily leftists or anything like us. It just really caught a hold with the whole of Twitter. And pretty much like most of the people that saw it, you can, you can go back and check the replies. Most people think it's real at the time.

Like people replying about it people think it's real at the time. People posting it and replying about it all think it's real. And hardly anyone verified it. It was kind of insane to see. Yeah, I think it's funny because you could just Google this. You could just Google it and it would be like, oh, wait, hold on, this isn't real but like no one did that and it was like yeah like you could have just easily searched the main part of the headline like kanye west to julia fox it was literally the second or third headline yeah search you could have found the same website same author but seeing that it wasn't the the correct

headline although that does remind me when there was an initial article about my post, I forget who wrote it at this point. I think it was The Focus. Yes, that's right. It was The Focus. They, for some reason, made the assumption when they decided to talk about my tweet that the website, like the headline that i made made up the original website

like edited that part out so they thought that my headline was real but it was just edited and taken away and so that also affected what some people thought about it too like they thought a lot of people thought it was really real that's That's what's insane to me about this. Yeah. And Vogue picked this up. This was just a thing that everyone believed was real. Everyone was just reporting on it as news. And there's so much incredible stuff about this. Part of it... One of the articles that gets published about this like part of it you know so one of the articles uh that gets published about this

like after so like there's this initial period where everyone is running around going like oh my god it was goblin mode and then julia fox has to make a statement that's like no there was no goblin mode no one said this yeah yeah that's that's the interesting about like the evolution of goblin mode like stemming from my posts specifically is at first the coverage was talking about whether my post was real or fake and talking about that aspect of it but as time has gone on it's kind of evolved away from that like you you won't see any goblin mode article talk about the original like julia fox tweet that jump-started this whole thing anymore it's kind of like shifted away from that initial uh that initial post which i found really interesting that that's

what's sustaining this i feel like yeah i wanted to read a uh i wanted to read a passage from one of the i don't know why i'm calling it a passage. It's just like a sentence. But read part of one of the articles that came from the initial search, which is from the streetwear company called High Snobbity. Don't tell me if I'm pronouncing that wrong. Well, okay, that's not true.

Twitter, if I'm pronouncing that wrong, my Twitter is at I write okay. Yell there. Yeah, but I want to read this quote because i think it's interesting so the article they have this whole thing that's like okay they get to the denial they post your tweet about like oh my god i can't believe julia fox had to respond to this and then they say i'm not saying fox was lying but wearing a borderline not suited for work dress a purse trimmed in human dna and diy eye makeup to an oscars after party is goblin mode to a t and and i think this brings up an

interesting question which is to what extent was goblin mode real in the first place before your sort of meme to went went viral so like the phrase itself you mean like yeah yeah like what part of the the phrase existed before my post yeah and i think it was also like what what were you thinking like did you have like a conception of what goblin mode like was before you made the post so so the only thing i had in my mind at that point um it stems from specifically um do you know the the user on twitter uh hottie pants do you happen to know that guy uh i don't think so no he goes by i think his ad is like punish pants or something like that but anyways uh he around that time he was posting a lot about like goblins

he was he would post a lot about like goblin time and like it oh it's goblin time and he would just make like a bunch of just like posts like that so goblins were on my mind at that point and then i forget his username but his um i think his username is um uncontrolled i i forget his username i'll have to tell you afterwards or something. I don't remember off the top of my head, but he made a post that went viral, something to the effect of like, your honor, I was going goblin mode at the time. You know, that format that's like you're in court, but the excuse is like, oh, I'm going goblin mode. Really in my head, that's really the only reference I had so i didn't make up the phrase a lot of people think i i made up the phrase goblin mode which i i definitely did not

um but i i think just there was a lot of people posting about about goblins around that time like early mid-march yeah and i i just in my mind i was like oh you know i'm just gonna say goblin mode on this this shit post about julia fox i don't i really don't know why it'm just going to say goblin mode on this shit post about Julia Fox. I really don't know why. It's just the first thing that popped in my head. And whenever something pops in my head, like a tweet idea, and I laughed at myself, I'm like, okay, I should post it. I don't know. And it seemed to work. Did you end up, so one of the things I think is really interesting is that, right? So, okay. So you have your first first wave of like it's the goblin mode thing and then you have your second wave of articles that are trying to explain what goblin mode is and

i was wondering if you'd see if you'd actually even seen uh the post i just linked to the chat um there was like like the the the thing i'd seen from goblin mode before this like all started was this like reddit it was someone on twitter had a tweet that went viral about goblin mode and it was about just like someone it was about this reddit post of like someone creeping around their house and pretending and acting like a goblin yes yes so i didn't see that until i made my post like in my initial uh because i think someone linked it under my post and i was like, Oh shit, is this like a thing?

Like this is actually like a thing. And then it started popping off more because people saw that reply. I really, Oh shit, this is like actually a thing. And to my surprise, it like totally worked out for me. Like everything kind of just came together and it really insane fashion.

Oh, that's another tweet to the one that you linked. The, the, that's when I was going, that's when I was in goblin boy that came before my tweet too. The one that you linked, that's when I was going, that's when I was in Goblin Boy. That came before my tweet too. Yeah. Had you seen that one before you made it? I follow her. I follow Talgore. I might've seen it. I don't remember. I remember the

other one I was referencing before. I might've seen this one though. Yeah. I think that was what was interesting to me about this was that the moment it went viral, there was this whole sort of attempt to figure out what it is. And then there was an attempt to back project a history on it. And so you get a lot of these articles and you get a lot of people, I don't know, I would talk to people about this and they would like you know okay so they do this thing where it's like okay so they they go to know your meme they look at the google trends and then like the people sort of like you know okay like there was an urban dictionary thing from like 2009 that was like a complete it's like a weird sex thing it's like completely unrelated to this but it was interesting to me the way that people like, okay. So you have this thing that goes viral, right. And like, you're just fucking around.

Like, there's no way, like, it's just, it sounds cool. But then like, yeah, there's an extent to which it becomes this, like, you know, it gets into the sort of like virality machine. And so you have all these journalists who like have to cover it. Right. Because like, you know, the way the journalism model works is okay so you you have this trend right people can see it trending you see something on twitter uh you do like four sets of googles and you write an article about it and it's like well okay because they're trying you're trying to like

capitalize on on the clicks as fast as possible so when someone googles what is goblin mode it's like okay your thing comes up. But it's interesting because it's like, they have to fill the content in because there isn't any? Yeah, yeah. That's what was interesting about the specific, that first one, the focus article. It was just a lot of like filling in where there was really nothing.

Yeah. That's what's interesting about that. Yeah. And then like after that, like all the other articles are like, you get to see this proliferation of sort of how the media works, where it's like, okay, so you have the initial article. The initial article Googles some stuff and is basically just making it up because they're off of the first article. And you get this like, or Boris of like,

everyone just is repeating the same thing over and over again. And none of them seem to understand that. Like it was not the thing that they originally talking about was just kind of, I mean, I can say it was just a funny phrase. Yeah. That's really all it was.

And it's, it is interesting to see how it is just able to proliferate off of as you as you were saying they just google search urban they find an urban dictionary it's like i'm putting that in my article urban dictionary is a good source yeah and like i i think this this is like i mean i think there's there's like a few interesting things here one of which is about how... Yeah, I had this before. I'm not sure if I actually talked about this on the show. So the day of the Atlanta shooting, Garrison and I spent a lot of time trying to track down the shooter.

And there was this fake Facebook post that was going around. And Garrison and I had spent a lot of time looking for this guy. And we realized this guy just doesn't have a Facebook. Right. And so we were like, it's like I was like, look at this. Like I saw this fake Facebook post. I was like, oh, this is fake. And then like a bunch of a bunch of like a bunch of like actual journalists like found, you know, people like journalists have been passing around the fake Facebook post as like, oh, this is a post alleged to be a thing.

And then and then suddenly they were like, oh, hey, this is fake. Hey, you can see all these things like oh look it's like uh you know like there was like the the it was pretty clear of it like his face had been copied and pasted into like a thing that's it was supposed to look like a facebook post there was all these like minor details about that were just wrong it was like okay so this isn't real but the the media cycle of it was like all of these people saw my twitter post that was like this is fake and then they just wrote a story off of it and like never mentioned that that they literally got it from like me fucking around on twitter like it was like and it's like and it's like, and it's like, you look at this stuff and, and the, the extent to which these people are just like these people who are

journalists who are, you know, supposed to be real journalists are just like woefully unprepared. Even people, even people who are extremely online, like wind up being woefully unprepared to deal with like anything. Like they're woefully unprepared to deal with anything of any complexity or deal or like figure out that they're being like hoaxed yeah no you're you're you're really

right about that i mean i mean i think this it's i don't know what i would call this phenomenon but it there's definitely something there where it's like they will see something like i don't know i don't know what it is about specifically twitter that like i feel like that's where a lot of people get news just in general but i feel like a lot of journalists just assume anything that they see maybe i'm over generalizing but if they see something on twitter even if it's like a joke like they'll just assume it's real or something i'm not i'm not entirely sure like it's super easy to make a fake post. I do it all the time.

I make all sorts of like fake, fake things. Most of them are more obvious than goblin mode, I guess. But I don't know that there's, I don't want to say journalists are too trusting. Yeah. Well,

I will say like, there are times when it's genuine. Like when you first started posting the headlines of like the actual twitter articles that were about goblin mode i like i didn't even bother looking them up because i just assumed they were fake yeah a lot of people told me like i think specifically the the one that like most of my followers realized that they weren't fake anymore was the one that was like, as a disabled woman, goblin mode, this goblin mode trend is really problematic. And people decided to look that one up and were like, oh, it's real. And then everyone was like, wait, were all these other ones that you were posting real?

And I'm like, yes, they were all real. The only thing was the Julia Fox one. All of them have been real. All these different agencies have been, or all these news organizations have been writing all this insane shit about nothing. Yeah, and there's, you know, I mean, I think this one is funny just because like, yeah,

I mean, like it's goblin mode, right? Like it's just funny. Like there's no like, you know, but I mean, I think that there's an interesting thing that happens with with the specifically the disabilities one because the disabilities one isn't like it's basically about something completely different that the goblin mode thing spawned which is that like like the other thing that happened with goblin mode was that okay so people saw goblin mode and then particularly on like tiktok um i i don't know if they knew where it came from

but like people like people turned goblin mode into an actual thing where like it became this thing about like uh i like i i think i think this is also influenced by like some of the like shit post answers that you gave the media people that were like goblin mode could be whatever you want uh it's when you aren't awake at the pandemic like you're not doing your makeup in the pandemic or whatever and like yeah but but it's interesting i'm not sure how much that like fueled like that i really don't know if the tiktok thing came before or after i think it's after yeah was it after okay from what i've seen it it's it seems like it actually became a thing after and that was really interesting to me too because it was like it's this way in which like you know okay so

you start running into these sort of like fundamental problems about the nature of reality where it's like okay so we made this thing that is fake, right? But then it became real because enough, enough people believed it was real that it turned into a thing that people actually use to describe stuff. And then, you know, that, that's how you get to like, you get a bunch of people complaining about how, like there, there was an article that was like the great resignation and go in goblin mode or like the two great threats to employers as they try to force people back to work. Goblin mode or like the two great threats to employers as they try to force people back to work.

Yeah. It's, it's like the goblin mode, like self manifested into reality. Like I feel like a lot of journalists are saying like people being lazy and like, you know how the whole meme of like, Oh, no one wants to work anymore. I feel like a lot of people are trying to like attributing like, Oh, not wanting to work and being lazy to goblin mode and it's it's self-manifested through the media or tiktok or whatever whatever it might be i actually don't know but it's it's become a thing now

in in a really strange way yeah yeah and i think i think this is like this is an interesting way of looking like you know like this was the whole sort of like like in in in terms of like okay in insofar as posting can actually affect reality which it can but not as much as people seem to think like there are there are there are people who like seem to think that like the three letter agencies care what they post on twitter which is like it's like no no hold on hold on if we post correctly interventions won't happen it's like no no hold on hold on if if we post correctly interventions won't happen it's like if you seen the cia like but like like there's there's this whole thing where it's like you know i mean this it it okay this this is gonna be the like someone's gonna

pull this out of context and be like ah hey look at how dumb chris is but like you know like this is this is kind of what happened with trump which like this is this isn't like what the meme magic was like if you just meme something long enough you can kind of turn it into reality by just sort of convincing enough people that it's real that it and and you know and once you've done that like you you have effectively made the thing real right and what's interesting about this one is is this like because like a lot of people like do that on purpose right like this is how like this is like there's a lot of propaganda stuff that works like this or like you know this because like a lot of people like do that on purpose right like this is how like this is like there's a lot of propaganda stuff that works like this or like you

know this is like what the the meme like 4chan trump bullshit was like you did this like completely like as a joke on accident yeah i didn't i didn't intend this i just mean i just wanted to make a one-off joke yeah i didn't think that would happen but you're you're you're totally right about the whole like i don't know how much like the trump meme magic was really a self-manifestation of him kind of just winning the election and becoming popular with a certain group of people but it definitely feels like uh like that self-manifestation of like posting to a certain extent really can become real if it just like hits a certain zeitgeist of some sort and like i think a crucial part of it is it needs to get picked up by the media and taken seriously by journalists specifically because the the thing

that really uh i feel like broke the camel's back for goblin mode specifically was the first journalist that reached out to me because she she wanted to interview me about the whole the whole experience like and her coverage of it was about the whole fake meme thing and then how it became sort of a thing in that aspect. And then from there, a lot of different journalists and websites referred back to that article. And now it seems to be the one that everyone's referring to now

is the Guardian article about it. That seems to be the media's favorite piece about it, which is the one that talks more about it that seems to be like a media's favorite piece about it which is the one that talks more about it being like a lifestyle trend and i i think that's where it really went off is when like some people took in the tiktok aspect of it and kind of manifested it that way Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

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On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

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trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I think there's a couple of interesting political consequences of this, one of which is that, like, like, Twitter as a platform isn't really, I mean, since Trump got banned, it's kind of like, it hasn't really been where most like stuff is happening. Like TikTok is exploding. I mean, you still have like the boomers on Facebook. Like it hasn't, like it hasn't been the sort of like driving force of politics that it normally is. But the one thing that it has is that all of the journalists are still on there and right that means that like yeah like there's

all these weird political consequences we're like yeah you can sort of like like you can just sort of will things into existence by convincing journalists that it's real and that's i think really scary in a lot of ways for because you know like the people who are really really good at the sort of manipulation or right wingers and right wingers have sort of like, like, I, I don't know.

Like I, people are probably mad about me for this, but like one of the things that I remember from like, Oh God, was this 2016 was like, there was this whole discourse about like, like there's a bunch of like all a bunch of people are really mad about like there being a black stormtrooper in star wars and oh god yeah the whole the whole last yeah yeah the thing that

was interesting about it was like uh yeah i think i think that was yeah yeah there's the thing was interesting about it was like so i know people who like who like looked into it beforehand and it was like the only people who were talking about this it was like people who were confused because they thought that stormtroopers were all clones and were like wait why and then and the other thing the other group of people who were mad about this was stormfront

right and stormfront was able to like turn this into like like a discourse like they able to convince journalists like this was a real thing that like a significant number of people are mad about and then it like actually turned into a thing that a significant number of people were mad about because you can sort of just like like you you can start these like panics and like this is one of the things we were talking about in in our trans episodes were like you know a a fairly small network of well-funded people can cause like enormous swaths of the u.s to just lose their

shit and get extremely violent and get like you know and and the specific thing they're mad about changes like pretty frequently but you can just sort of like if if you're able to manipulate the media well enough and you you know there's other ways to do this. You could do it by weird memes. You could do it by being the cops or just having press releases that you send out. You could do it through these sort of astroturf-like, I don't know, you have an astroturf intellectual, what's his name, Mark Rufo. But it's interesting to me that they all seem to work. The pathway through it all seems to be very similar, which is what you do is you convince a bunch of media people that something is real. And then once they start taking it seriously, it sort of manifests itself into reality.

Yeah, no, that is what I realized what was happening. One of my initial points that I was trying to make after the whole goblin mode thing after the first article came out i was like it really made me realize like how potent fake i hate saying this phrase just because it's become such like a nothing sort of phrase but like fake news how easy it is to just yeah like what if instead of goblin mode i decided like maybe let's say i'm like a crazy rightwinger and I had this weird zeitgeist moment causing a panic about trans people and I made a fake tweet. We see that happen all the time, trans people.

A lot of people hate us. And it would be super easy, put it in the right community, make this fake tweet or a fake headline and people right-wingers specifically will go wild and it'll really influence the discourse i mean look at the the current i mean it's it's kind of over now but the the last thing was last week the swimmer the the trans swimmer that won the women's competition i mean the amount of vitriol that was able to be created over that just like imagine what like as you said, a well-funded, tight network of, I don't know, for lack of a better phrase, fake news creators. All they need to do is put something out on Facebook. The boomers see it, and then it's over.

It becomes real to them. one of the things i learned about like while i was doing research for weirdly an episode about reverend moon was that like people figured so this is sort of like this is like how the republicans came to power like they figured out you could do shit like this and like uh robert viguerre like in in like in like the 60s figured out that like if you just if you sent like you you could just send letters to like like they weren't i guess they weren't even boomers that way if you sent like you you could just send letters to like like they weren't i guess they weren't even boomers at that point if you just send letters to old people that would say stuff like uh planned parenthood is uh harvesting baby fetuses you could just get them really mad and it's like and it's funny because you know in the 60s like he's doing this like by mail

right like he he is mailing you a chain letter it's just stuff yeah it became just like yeah yeah it's like it's like it's weird because you can watch them invent this and then it's like oh yeah this guy was funded by like a weird cult guy who was trying to take over the world who was being backed by the korean cia and it's

like i don't know it gets into this yeah it all sort of comes back into this weird thing where yeah i mean i i like one of the sort of political transformations i've had since i started working here was like i didn't take like it's sort of similar to what you were saying like i didn't take the like weaponized unreality like fake new stuff like that seriously and then it was like you cover it every day and it's like oh my god like the like the the weird like like watching like 4chan like invents the actually i don't know if it's fortunate it was i one of watching like just weird right-wing like message boards invent uh like the whole

ukrainian bio lab thing which like grand glenn greenwald now tweets about and like like like the official state media of russia and china are like talking about these bio labs and it's like it's turned into this weird like like thing where like yeah like like actual countries with like nuclear weapons are like basically using shit posters as like as like a way to do propaganda and it's just like really weird i don't know it's just really weird and incredibly disturbing media space to live in yeah it's like it's a weird synthesis of uh shit posters just posting online to like whatever audience and i guess like media of some sort maybe not like um in the in the case with the the bio lab i don't know too much about that

especially because i'm blocked by glenn greenwald so i don't see a lot of his stuff yeah but yeah no it's it's interesting how how kind of interlocked there and and to your point about earlier about the the whole trump Trump meme magic thing, like I, I didn't take that too seriously at the time. Um, like in 2016, I was like, Oh, all these silly right-wingers making these memes, like this isn't going to do anything. I don't, I truly don't know if it really had an effect, but I mean, it's, we can't really ignore the power of that. Just simply manifesting something,

even if it's artificial can actually have a hold on certain people um as you were saying with the the mailing letters i mean if you just say enough if you say something enough to the right type of person they'll just believe it i mean it's it's not hard to lie to people as horrible as that is to say it's really not that hard to lie to people yeah like i mean that's the the whole sort of like everyone yelling groomer like constantly about trans people it's like yeah they just lied over and over again and like half the people who were like saying this stuff are actually pedophiles and it doesn't matter because you know if you just like do this shit over and over again you get these you get you just get these like hate mobs and it's yeah no the right wing

right wingers specifically are phenomenal at creating hate mobs yeah it's kind of incredible to witness it's it's really scary but it's it's an incredible thing to see there's not really an equivalent i would say on the left in the way that um even maybe in liberals there's an equivalent but like on the left there's not really like an equivalent to like some like a mob in that way yeah i've noticed yeah i mean i i think that's you know like okay there's always an extent to which like these stuff the stuff has like material constraints like you know i talk about like constantly on this show the fact that like this is like this is the fact that like this is like this

is the stuff that the neocons believed and then they ran into the material constraints of the iraq war and their entire project imploded and like i mean i think one of the reasons why this is easier for the right is that like there's there there's a there's a there's there's always a political base for them that is there that they can access fairly easily which is okay they they have access to like you know that they have access to like a vast swath of petit bourgeois they have access to a bunch of white business owners they have access to like this sort of like this like white professional class they have access to this sort of like white gentry class. And like those people can very easily be sort of like whipped into a frothing rage.

And like, part of it is because like that, that's essentially, that's just what their, that's what their class interest is. That's what the sort of like, like their status, the racial hierarchy,

like brings them to do already. And you could sort of like, you know, if you just shuffle a bit of coal on it you can you could make the fire go absolutely and i mean it's talked about a lot i'm sure but like the the one thing that is really powerful is fox news yeah yeah fox news will pick up literally anything like i saw i saw a post on twitter just the other day a screenshot or just a just a picture of uh fox news and they they cited the the libs of tiktok twitter account yeah talking about school classrooms it's like what is that like

no like right wingers will just take the source of a random twitter user that has a tiktok that takes messages from random people that message them and then that's their news like that is just insane to to to to be fair to fox news which is not a thing i will ever say again uh it wouldn't it wouldn't surprise me if that whole thing like well because so the the i don't know if you saw this the the lives of tiktok person is like is is that that thing is run by an old bush administration person really i did not know that yeah so it wouldn't i mean okay like there there's probably a three and four chance that they just saw someone who's like trying to own the libs on tiktok but there's

like a one in four chance that like all the the old like bush network people like know each other and that's why they're promoting it i know that's that's a good point that's a good point i mean they have to know that they brought it well maybe i i don't know like it's it's one of those things where it's like it becomes i don't know. It's one of those things where it's like, it becomes... I don't know. It becomes really difficult to... to know the extent to which the world believes... Yeah, well, how organized they are and to the extent to which they believe what they're saying.

Because part of that, like, that becomes... Like, you know, if you know who's behind that, it becomes easier to sort of be like, oh, yeah, we're just sort of playing a game. But it could also just be like no this is this is content that we like uh we were all too lazy to go or just message the person to see who they are like i mean they had the specifically in this case the the lives of tiktok lady they had her like on fox news once talking oh yeah yeah i referenced her multiple times so they they have to know her yeah they probably do yeah they have yeah that that's that that's another technique

that they do a lot which is that they they take someone who is like it you know like an like an old part like an who's literally a republican operative right and just launder them as an actually the funny part is you you see like like the new york times and shit like all the main street outlets do the same thing too where it's like oh right yeah well well like anytime you see an article that is like i was a democratic voter but i'm gonna vote for the republicans nine times out of ten that person is a republican operative and if you google their name and look hard enough you can just find it and it's like and that's everything you're sorry yeah that's everything was like i i don't know whether they whether they're just lazy and don't check or

whether they're just sort of like doing this kind of like i don't know that what what whether they're doing this on purpose because i mean that you know that's that's the thing with journalism like it's it's difficult to like when someone screws something up it's it's difficult to determine a lot of times whether it's malice or whether it's they're just the only research they did was they googled something yeah i feel like i feel like in the the realm that we're talking about right now with like right- right-wingers, I think a lot of it, obviously, is pretty malicious a lot of the time. Yeah. At least with, like, the main outlets.

But in terms of, like, the whole goblin mode situation where that stemmed off just from, like, random, like, Guardian, whatever articles, I think that was just more of, like, oh, let's kind of try to explain this thing that is apparently now a trend and we're manifesting it in real time. Yeah. I do think there's a distinct like a distinction between that except i feel there's no like uh like with the gobbling mode there's there's no nefarious aspect of it but that like technique

can be used in a very nefarious way and i i think that manifests in in the most easy to waste uh easiest to see ways in right-wing media. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

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Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud

enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura

podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I do want to also mention that, like, yeah, I think I said briefly, like, the people who do this the most often are cops. Like, the cops.

And if you see a story about the police in a mainstream newspaper, and you see the same story in another paper, it's because they're basically printing a press release. And, you know, I mean, this gets used to like launder just straight up police lies about shootings uh they manufactured like the entire crime wave thing like the whole thing about people taking boxes off of trains it's like yeah you look into it and it's like yeah there's these like there's these sort of like shadowy police networks of people who are basically running. I mean, they have enormous budgets to do this too.

Like they have these enormous like departmental like public outreach budgets and those public outreach budgets are basically them running information ops on us, which is incredibly fun. You know, that is, that is absolutely like a real phenomena i i don't know too much about it specifically in cops but i know i know the white house does that all the time they've done that forever too where it's like oh there's a white house leak and it's like oh no they wanted people to see this this is entirely intentional yeah they try a balloon stuff a lot and that's i don't know and like this is this is

Yeah, they try to balloon stuff a lot, and that's, I don't know. And, like, this is... Goblin mode is, like, the fun version of looking at how all of this stuff works, but this stuff happens with stuff that is extremely deadly and has real-world consequences, and, yeah, it's something we need to be thinking about

and trying to... I don't know if use for good is the right thing, but, like, it's something that we need to be thinking about and trying to... I don't know if use for good is the right thing, but it's something that we need to be really conscious of as we're dealing with a bunch of fascists trying to murder everyone. Absolutely. I mean, that's been the most interesting thing about this to me, is watching, I hate calling it this, but just for lack of a better word

kind of like uh goblin mode is like being manufactured like manufacturing consent in real time like from the genesis of my post watching it in real time seeing all these articles come out and kind of all tie into each other and refer back to each other it's been it's been kind of eye-opening about this topic that i i think a lot of leftists kind of know a lot about like in terms of like media manipulation and you're it's you're right when you said it's like the fun version of that yeah and it has been the fun version of it but deep down it's like oh this is kind of like this might be dramatic but like how they did the Iraq war in real time. This is, on some level, a very similar strategy,

media strategy. I think there's, specifically Goblin Mode, I think there's, because the Iraq war, there's a lot of malice there. But in this one, it's like, yeah, not all of the media, all of them, in order for something that's completely fake to get traction, it doesn't require everyone involved being malicious. What it requires is one person saying a thing and then a bunch of journalists being too lazy to actually look into something and then just, you know, basically reprinting the article, but like rewording a few things, which happens constantly. like rewritting a few things which happens constantly right and yeah and and that like you know it the the thing i think that's scary about that is it reduces the number of actors who actually have to be involved in a thing for it to just sort of like take off like this which yeah like and i think like there's there's an extent to which – okay, like, it rocks. Like, something on that scale is pretty rare because it requires, like, an enormous amount of buy-in from a lot of people.

But there's lots of small examples of this stuff that just happens sort of constantly. And that stuff, like – yeah, I mean, as we've been talking about like that that that kind of thing with small numbers of actors and then people just sort of lazily reprinting articles like that stuff right i mean i think the best example of this currently at least just in my mind because i am trans the the whole trans panic that's happening right now i think that's a really good example of it was just where like some website will print this certain thing and then it becomes a hysterical panic yeah talking about it yeah like i think the best or the most recent example that was that spa where

it was like some person claimed like made it made a bunch of claims where they were like they might have seen a trans person maybe and it turned into just like literally mobs showing up at this spa like anti-trans mobs just like a bunch of fascists showing up a bunch of like like yeah and that kind of stuff yeah that affects reality yeah that really affects people yeah and and like the the other one the other one that we've talked about in the trans episodes is people to people are starting to uh do this kind of stuff with gender clinics and it's you know yeah it's like yeah like that that's only a matter of time before they start killing people like yeah as sad as that is to say yeah the media can easily whip someone into frenzy to do that i mean we've seen that in the past with i think as

you referenced before like the whole like abortion yeah the whole like it was in the 90s and the early 2000s the whole abortion panic yeah i mean we saw we saw people die over stuff like that it's it's insane yeah they did bombings like yeah and you know and everything is that like they're winning like they are on the verge of, after this half a century long battle, they are on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade. They are, yeah. One of the asymmetries here is that if a leftist assassinated the head of ICE, I would be in prison in a day and a half. There'd be 15 people who'd be shot in police raids. just murders abortion claim writers it works and that's a really grim asymmetry but it's sort of the reality of of the situation that we're in right and yeah that reminds me of the this is a while ago this was during the black lives matter protests i don't even remember why he was on the feds radar but there was the dude i think in portland and there was like a there was like a

raid and they just shot the dude in the street do you happen to remember that yeah yeah i mean it happened again uh yeah they just murdered him and then like it happened again with uh winston smith in uh uh in minneapolis where like the like the cops were mad at him because he was like he was one of the leaders of this was happening in minneapolis and they just walked up and shot him yeah and that's insane yeah and it's it's it is a really bleak look at you know how this country actually works which is not really what i expected this episode to be ending up i was like we'll do a fun episode about goblin mode and now it's like yeah here's the state just assassinating people and uh they're gonna keep doing it and also they're gonna like to start

bombing abortion well i mean just keep bombing abortion clinics and start bombing gender clinics and it's like yeah let's hope that doesn't actually happen but but yeah i think i think it was our point was that it was like we've seen that happen in the past yeah yeah by the arm of the the reactionary media fueling this hysteria through, it doesn't even matter if it's real or fake stories. That's the main issue is it can be totally fake and it'll just fuel hysterics against anyone, any target.

And it's just that easy. Like, yeah, like what the, we should probably close out, but like the one that's been fun for me and by fun, I mean, dear God has the the fucking the wuhan biolab shit which was like literally like like literally this this like literally this whole thing was a psyop by steve bannon who was like this is how we can have trump win the election by by by uniting everyone in like anti-asian hate and like it worked like well i mean okay he he lost the election but like you know

all like eventually this is this just like completely crank like absolutely bat shit all the people who are advocating for it are like like they like they're like mushroom scientists or they're like people who like you know like like they're like weird ivermectin truthers like all these people you know like we're legitimized by the media and like that had that had an enormous impact on the last sort of two years of anti-asian violence like that's like that that's the thing that made it get as bad as it did and again it's just completely fake there's nothing it's it's they're just they're just you know like a bunch of fascists made up a lie about a plague so that they could try to win an election by like

murdering asian people and yeah yeah and it's it's that's the interesting thing is that if you look at um like polls about like oh how do you feel about china like you go back even just four years ago most people were like i don't have exact numbers on my head. Um, but most people, it was like maybe split like, Oh, like China's kind of scary or like China, China's okay. But like most Americans at this point, even like a lot of liberals do not like China. Like it's like, even the red do not like China. It's like, it was just manifested through the whole,

maybe not all through the whole Wuhan lab, but just the last few years few years of both Biden's government and Trump's government ratcheting hard against China and just anti-China or even anti-Chinese people sentiments. Yeah, there's an interesting thing there too where it's like, okay, so this pivot starts in 2018 when Trump starts a trade war, right? And there's this interesting thing where it's like okay so for the first about so this pivot starts in like 2018 when that's when trump starts a trade war right and there's this interesting thing where it's like for the first about two years of it it was like the views about china were changing but the actual level of anti-asian violence wasn't doing much but then when covet hit it was like because you

know it was it was kind of like an abstract thing right it was like okay well we don't like china but like there was nothing there wasn't like a super strong like thing you could point to to directly tie it to asian people and then the moment the moment the pandemic started and then the moment the like wuhan shit started it was like suddenly there was like a concrete thing that you could point to and it was that was like hey look it's the chinese people the they're they're they're spreading the plague they manufacture the plague in a lab it's because they're dirty and like the the moment became that was when everything just like all the attacks skyrocketed like that that's that's that's when like everything just sort of like really like kicked off and right that was like hysterics that was like the targeted hysteria of 2020 and most of 2021 i would say yeah yeah and it's well you know the the the the fun thing i'm bracing

for is like yeah this looks like it's gonna be the democrat strategy in 2022 as well as republican strategy and it's like oh hey uh more of us are gonna die this. This is going to be fun. So yeah. Yeah. No, yeah. It's kind of scary. Yeah. This, this started out as a fun episode,

but yeah, it's now gotten less fun. So I guess it was still a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have anything else that you want to say, or do you want to tell people where to find you? I don't really have anything to say necessarily.

All I really do on the internet, at least like my whole internet presence right now is just on Twitter. If you want to follow me, it's at meow, meow, mew. I don't know if you'll have like that linked or anything. It's kind of hard to spell with the last, the whole mew, it's M-E-U-W.

But that's really all I have is just my Twitter. Yeah. That's all I have is just my Twitter. Yeah. That's all I really do online. I mean, it is extremely funny. And every once in a while, you'd create goblin mode as an actual thing, which is, yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I have a good time on Twitter. People complain about that website a lot. But since I joined in 2019 or whatever, I haven't looked back it's it's it's a lot of fun

i've met a lot of cool people i yeah i've known of you for a while but it's nice to actually talk to you yeah you too yeah uh yeah it was a good time i yeah so uh go goblin mode i don't let the fascist murder trans people uh yeah uh this this has been it could happen here uh you can find us on twitter and instagram at happen here pod uh yeah have fun find cool trinkets, suppress the turfs? You gotta have the trinkets. That's what Goblin Mode's all about. Getting trinkets. That's right. Alright. Bye-bye, folks.

It Could Happen Here is a production of CoolZone Media. For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th.

Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking música, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world

and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba?

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.