Panic World - Did Tumblr turn kids trans? (With Vera Drew)

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Part of the reason Republicans ran away with the 2024 election is because they used misinformation to make millions of people think that the government was trying to forcibly transition their kids. So, this week we’re investigating some of the origins of that scaremongering by looking at the conspiracy theory that Tumblr turned an entire generation trans. How did this theory spread? And what did Tumblr actually do to our brains? Vera Drew joins us to speak to her experience navigating the internet as a trans person, and the impact online communities like Tumblr had and continue to have on young queer folks. Our guest Vera Drew is the director and star of The People’s Joker. You can look for screenings or purchase the film (plus merch!) at https://www.thepeoplesjoker.com/. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I hear you have a very controversial ranking of the alien franchise. Yeah. And I was hoping you could talk through it briefly. I love aliens is like my top pick. But number two for me is definitely alien resurrection. Interesting. I think the people that like downright hate it are just wrong. Like I wouldn't say that about most movies, you know, because like taste is subjective or whatever.

But like if you don't like alien resurrection, you're just, you're in. I saw it as a kid and I remember thinking it was the coolest thing I had ever seen, particularly the guy with the guns in his sleeves. Like it looks like an anime. Like it looks like a live action anime. I love like any like American movie that's like made by like a French dude just because like I feel like he you could really tell like he was like trying to make like a normal action movie. But it's just he's got the he has the French brain disease. So it didn't really come out right. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like how like the fifth element should be Star Wars, but instead it's like a psychosexual nightmare for much of it. Exactly. We're going to be talking about a very kind of pesky conspiracy theory, which is this idea that Tumblr turned an entire generation of people trans. And this idea has been weaponized by the right for years now. And the guy who won the election thought the issue would help his base, Pokemon, go to the polls.

But how did this spread? And what did Tumblr actually? due to our brains. My name is Ryan Broderick. Welcome to Panic World, a show about the various witch hunts, moral panics, and viral freak out that bubble up out of the weirdest, most confusing corners of the internet. And today we're going to explore how this conspiracy theory started and what the Tumblr mind virus actually did. Joining us today is Vera Drew, the director of the People's Joker, an incredible movie. I just finished it. It's so good. Thank you for coming on. Oh, thanks. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. I definitely don't claim to be an

expert on Tumblr, but I was on it. I am of the generation. And yeah, I do have some, like most, like most of my takes, I'm a little bit out of the norm. I'm a little edgy. You know, I want to get this out of the way first. I'm a massive fan of the People's Joker. It's an incredible film. And one of the things that I thought was like so great about it was, and you can tell me if I sort of misinterpreted it, but the way sort of I was viewing a lot of it was this presentation of, you know, modern identity politics and also like the discovery of your own identity sort of being intertwined with both like mass media and the internet, the cyber war that is sort of referenced throughout the movie, this idea that all these young people are like

veterans of the cyber war. And I thought it was very fitting for the theme of this episode, which is this idea of a social experiment of putting an entire generation of people online at once coming of age, you know, using these platforms. And to start, you know, kind of taking our journey down this road, I would love to hear about sort of the earliest internet communities you were using as a kid growing up as a teenager. Totally. Yeah. I mean, part of the reason why I got excited when you asked me to do this was just because, like, there actually were, like, a lot more overt Tumblr jokes in the people's Joker, like, in an earlier draft. we literally had like a tumbler, like a militarized Tumblr army that was like a part of it in some way. We took that out just because it was like maybe distracting from like the main story a little bit. And it's just kind of something that like you kind of implicitly understand what happened.

So I'm glad like that you picked up on the like Tumblr and mass media and internet thing because it means that we wrote it better. than our first draft, I think. But to answer your question, sorry. No, no, no, that's fine. I'm 35. I don't lie about my age because I think that's for pussies. I remember a time before the Internet. Like, I remember when we got it in my house.

So I was, like, really kind of at the ground floor of everything. Like, I was on AOL message boards in the early days. And then, you know, in AOL, instant messenger, like that heyday of it. Like, I was, I was definitely there. And God, would it, like, a dangerous place for, like, a child to be, like, in those early days of the internet. Just, like, nothing was, uh, yeah, like, you could just instant access to murder and

pornography of all varieties. Um, I was always drawn to, I was really into live journal and Zanga. So for me, like, when I found Tumblr, it kind of just was like this, net this like extension of that I think like just this idea that I could kind of just like imprint my personality in into like cyberspace yeah so the way this conversation is framed usually is that queer people didn't exist online until tumbler which is incredibly dumb and we also have pages of proof that that's not true so one of the things that we wanted to look up like in doing research for this episode our researcher Adam we sent him deep into the

of queer social networks, because it's sort of like this lost history of the internet. And so have you ever heard of an AOL chat room called The Gazebo? I don't think so. It was started by a trans woman named Gwendolyn Ann Smith. And it launched in 1994. The gazebo is getting 20,000 visitors a month, which, like, for then, like the 90s, like, that's pretty good. And it got big enough that they were able to put pressure on the AOL CEO Steve Case.

to lift a ban that AOL had on the words transsexual, transvestite, and cross-dressing. And the whole community petitioned AOL to change how it worked. Oh, wow. And so this modern idea that, you know, young people or even just queer people in general have never, you know, are using the internet for the first time is not correct. Like, this has been going on for 30, 40 years at this point. To that point, too, like, I mean, it's just like it's the only place where like queerness could exist. I mean, like, for me, like, I remember, like, prior to, like, having an internet connection,

the only times I ever really saw transsexuals or anything, like, outside of, like, a false gender binary was, like, unlike Howard Stern or things like Jerry Springer and stuff, that was, like, kind of more in this, like, freak show aspect, whereas this is, like, it finally, like, allowed people to, like, sort of have a voice. I mean, not to inject, like, a new conspiracy theory into the conversation, but like, I think that's, like, probably why, like, the internet is definitely, like, some sort of sci-op from, like, the CIA just because, like, from its inception, you were throwing all these, like, different niche groups, groups that, like, are at odds at each other, at odds with each other, like, from marginalized communities and,

um, you just hateful trolls and stuff. Like, it just really, uh, you can really point to that as, like, when society started falling apart is when we all just started having instant access to each other's thoughts. Well, it's funny you say that because like we were we were digging back through some of these older queer spaces that are sort of either they either now exist as screenshots or like broken internet archive uh, you know, caches. And I wanted to I wanted to have you describe one that we found that we thought was pretty sick actually. Um, so here. Here, there's a chat on the right side of the screen. It'll say studio chat.

Oh, my God. Okay, so it's Techno Dyke Headquarters. I definitely visited this. Really? That's amazing. Techno Dyke Headquarters. Oh, my God. And there's like a Chenate O'Connor, like, ad on the side.

It's so good. The Gathering Place for Web Savvy Dykes, for the Web Savvy Dyke, TechnoDike headquarters. I just, like, miss this, like, color palette, too. Just like how every single color. is used in this era of the internet. Yes. They're stretching HTML's color capability all the way. Like, this is all, everything you could do with a screen in 1994 or whatever.

Yeah. There's an advice corner. There's, like, book recommendations, like a chat room, like links. Like, it's, this is just so much better than the social media we have now. Like, I'm sorry to be old. No, you're right. There's like an earnest. to this era of the web, particularly when we're talking about like subcultural spaces where people are, I, the way I sort of view it is like the excitement of being able to connect with people without sort of a mass media filter for the first time.

When you look at these websites from the late 90s, like that's, there's like a joy that you just don't see on the internet anymore. Like you just don't see Gen Z being like, I'm excited to meet fellow people. Like the chapel row and TikTok comment sections are not like this. They're very different. No, there's no, uh, external, like, ad forces that are at play here. Like, there's, there are, like, you know, there's, Shnade O'Connor and, like, Indigo girls, uh, like pop-up ads attached to it, but that definitely, like, came from the webmaster. That's not, like, coming from some, like, oligarch who lives in Dubai that made the site.

Have you spotted the, the pole at the bottom? Because I think that, like, this is really cute where, like, it's clearly, like, a web one kind of click poll and it's would you say you're a jealous lover and then the options are that song I'll be watching you I wrote it I'm a little possessive but I think that's okay I have trust issues but I'm getting over it and nah I'm pretty laid back and trusting that's a good poll that's like that's good there's literally like a dating section too tired of solitaire find your girl she's waiting I love it this website was launched in like 98 we want to say, by 99, LGBT spaces online, AOL chat rooms, websites, you know, web rings were causing

genuine real-life controversies, which is kind of fun, actually. We found this one story of a U.S. naval officer named Timothy McVeigh, who was not that Timothy McVeigh, but just like another guy with that name. And he was discharged from the Navy for being gay because he was on a nuclear submarine, posting in gay AOL chat rooms, which just goes so hard. It just, that's, that rules. Yeah, I mean, that's what you should be using the internet on a nuclear sub for. Yeah.

And then a year later, AOL gets in trouble with, like, this massive community that they've built because they banned a user for calling himself a submissive bottom. And AOL, like, didn't like that that's what someone was saying. The gazebo, they meet with Glad and Planet Out and AOL. Everyone comes together. AOL sort of agrees that they will host queer spaces in these chat rooms and they'll let people use them. And then Gwendolyn Ann Smith, who launched the gazebo, ends up organizing the first ever trans day of remembrance. Which sort of speaks to like how big these spaces were getting by the late 90s.

Um, were you using any kind of proto pre social media spaces specifically for queer people? Or was in that era where you just sort of like jumping around the internet? Was there any sort of anything like this that you were ever on? I would, I mean, yeah, like, I definitely, I definitely remember at least seeing techno dyke. I also like, you know, for me, I was so closeted. I grew up in the Midwest in the, in the 90s. So, like, I was just, uh, it's why like, like, Like I always bring up like Howard Stern and like Jerry Springer because like I was obsessed with those things too.

Like I would watch them. It wasn't necessarily titillating. It was just like I felt represented just like a window into like possibility. You know, it's such a unfortunate way that like Lana Wachowski's was like sort of outed before before she ever like came out. but I remember like finding out about that in like an AOL chat room and like it basically being like oh my god like the director of my favorite like fucking movie is this and then like you didn't hear anything about it for years after that like it was basically kind of like scrubbed from the internet so like it was just it was just this like access point for me to like any any kind of queer identity but I think it was still. something that was just so outside of me like I just didn't I didn't have like any sense that like I was that I was just like drawn to these things and uh because they know then there was also just like I remember frequenting this amputee fetish message board and like I'm locked in tell me more

okay like and it was it was it was weird because it's like it's not necessarily like oh like I have a, I, you know, like, as like a teen had like a fetish for, for amputees or anything. Like, I definitely remember seeing, like, very beautiful, uh, people with missing limbs on there and stuff. But it was just this, like, for me, just this window into things that were not fucking, like, Midwestern farmers and, and the, like, annoying jocks that I was surrounded by. And I think it created like a level of empathy in me too that it was like I I not only like You know years later was able to like finally come out and start realizing that I was trans and stuff But like it just showed me that there were other kinds of people out there besides you know

Like Catholics right right which is important you have you have to meet people who aren't Catholic I I've been trying to do that my entire life um I had a similar experience, actually, but it wasn't amputees. It was like an artist on deviant art that was drawing like very erotic comics of like women being eaten by giant frogs. And I feel like I was like on 4chan as a teenager and like clicked a link. And it's just like this guy's like completely deranged, very hyper specific fetish comic that he'd been doing for years. And I was like, oh, the world's a big place. Okay.

Yeah. There are lots of people in the world. That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is such a, like, I'm enjoying this conversation so much just because, like, I think about how many times in the last couple years I've said that the internet, like, ruined the world. But, like, it really, it does, it was a, there's like a softening, I think, that it sounds like,

like both of us experience. There is a softening. I think that's true. And so, I mean, to kind of jump back to the topic, with Tumblr and the cognito hazard that it sort of unleashed on the internet, Tumblr launches in 2007. It's very popular, like, especially with teenagers. I probably got an account like 2008, I want to say.

But this is really interesting. We found this PhD researcher, Dr. Oliver Hameson, teaches at University of Michigan, and in a paper in 2019, he called Tumblr an inherently trans technology. Can you, do you have any guesses as to what that would mean or how that was defined? this is fascinating but i'm curious like what what you what your take is on that i guess because there's there's a level of um anonymity to it uh you know like i remember i remember like my first uh my first tumbler was i i think i was like about 16 or 17 so this would have been the early days like 2007 2006 or whatever um

Like, I remember having an Avi that was like, like, Barbarella, you know, and like, kind of just being like, like, I don't know why this is my Avi, but like I just like Barbarella and I, you know, just the fact that you were kind of able to have this like expression be the first thing that people see. I don't know. Is something like that? Does that make, did I articulate that at all? No, you nailed like half of this. So basically, Hameson defined it the reasons why, basically as re-blogging allowed users to share ideas with and without commentary. So you could basically amplify different subcultures really easily. This idea called vortexuality, which is you see a post on Tumblr and it makes you want to go to investigate like where that came from.

Who is that person? What are they aligned with? Anonymity, but also pseudonymity. So the idea that you can change your identity, you can have multiple blogs, you can sort of, you can experiment with your identity that way. And then a bunch of the sort of infrastructure of the site. So like tagging a limited comment section. So you kind of have to post to communicate. You can't like just like fill up a comment section.

And then it also allowed not safe for work content. Well, at least it did for a while. Yeah. Back in the day. So, you know, you throw all that together and you end up getting this like very expressive social network at a time where. you know, this was the MySpace era still. Like this was not like a time where people were using sophisticated technology. So Tumblr was kind of it.

You're 30, I'm 34, you're 35. So did you get it like in college, basically? Was that kind of when you got an account? You know, now that I'm now that I'm realizing that the experience I described with the Barbarrella picture was Zanga, I don't think I had Tumblr until college because I saw its potential for like posting like video and like short form art content because like this was still i mean youtube had been around at this point but it was still like early enough to where like it didn't really function that well in my opinion as like a uh

social media experience uh as much so i remember i think i think it probably would have been my freshman year of of college um and kind of centered around just like uh curation and i always really loved just having the ability to, and I don't know why, because I would never do this now. I mean, like, I journal every single day, like, every morning I wake up in journal, but like, I liked having, like, kind of like public space where I could kind of just emotionally process what I was going through. So I think I was definitely using it for that in those early days, too. Yeah, I was like a compulsive live blogger.

Like, I would just watch a bad movie and then post like 30 times in a row about whatever movie I was watching on Tumblr to nobody. And it just like felt good. I don't know why it felt good, but it did. You sort of talked about the internet as a window into sort of different paths and different identities. And it links really well to this quote from a 2018 piece we found on them.com by Serena Danyari, who wrote,

it was while scrolling through Tumblr that I first saw trans bodies actually being celebrated instead of being degraded. Kind of ties to your idea of sort of this, the, the, the mass media depiction on the Jerry Springer stuff. And so she writes, I was finally able to see women with penises, men with vaginas, and non-binary people of all body types. I realized that I wasn't alone. There were others like me out there and we were all beautiful, unique, and valid, a powerful

epiphany for a young trans person. The unfortunate reality is that out of the many communities affected by Tumblr's porn ban, queer content creators will bear the brunt of the damage. This was written like right after the band where you know it's a very complicated thing to I think articulate this idea that like to have this sort of not safe for work fairly renegated social space does allow people to communicate in a way that they just can't on something like Instagram like you just can't Tumblr post on Instagram it's not possible and look like this is kind of a minefield that I'm I'm walking through by saying this but like I think that's what's missing now from the internet is the like dangerous after. aspects of it, you know, the fact that like as a kid and a young adult, like, I, it was very, it was a lot easier to like just be looking through like anime like gifts in Tumblr and then suddenly you'd be like staring at Girl Dick. And like that was, uh, I don't know that I would be here if I didn't have like those kinds of experience. experiences. I mean, like, I guess, like, transness is more, and queerness in general and queer bodies and stuff. It's more normalized now. So, like, you don't need that as much.

But I do think there's, like, that's, that's probably more so where this, like, the, a lot of these bands came from, you know, on Tumblr and, like, kind of just, like, how much pornography is shadow banned on, on, on, on sites like Twitter and stuff now as well. well. Like it's, I think it is to kind of like, uh, de-trans the youth, if anything. I think you're right. And this is, this is a, uh, a thing that I've had trouble over the years articulating as well, which is that, you know, to tie a thread going all the way from the gazebo and, and techno dyke to Tumblr, free porn ban, there was this sort of like, we're off in the corner, we're doing our own thing. Like, give us the space, give us the tools. And like,

We'll live our lives and we'll communicate and it'll be fine. And then in the 2010s, as the internet is becoming more corporatized and America is becoming more politically polarized, you see this thing where porn bands sort of algorithmic filtering, it's all coming in. And as it's coming in, the right wing is becoming much louder. And I think they are connected. Like I do think that when you sort of pave the Wild West a bit, it allows like really loud fascist psychos. to become a lot more powerful because the subcultural spaces are going away. It's like the same idea of like Nazis in your punk bar. Like eventually like it just becomes really hard to communicate, I think.

Yeah. And I mean, for me, I got off of the internet pretty much entirely right around like 2016 to 2018 that I stopped. I stopped using the internet because I feel like the thing you were describing kind of reached this boiling point. where I just remember feeling a lot of fear about, like, being queer in any online space. It wasn't even necessarily motivated by just, like, getting hate from, like, all right people or anything like that. It was kind of like the reactionary aspects of the queer community in those spaces, too. and kind of some of the self-policing

that was going on and around the time that I was starting to like come out and be more visibly queer and I just didn't want that negativity and shit to be a part of my brain. And I just, and I also didn't want

whatever like kind of gender identity and queer expression that I was sort of brewing to be sort of stuck in this echo chain that was that was rapidly shrinking too. But it did feel like there was a monolithic trans and queer culture, like at that point to me, like, at least just like coming into my own queerness that like I did, I was like, like, I got to like figure out who I am separate from the internet because this is just going to make

it confusing. I don't know if any of that makes sense, but. I think it makes total sense. I mean, you even sort of touch on this in People's Joker, this sort of like euphoric feeling of like identity anarchy that like was I think very very present on the internet where you know you go into like I mean it still it still is present if like you go into like a furry discord but like you know this idea that you can be whoever you want to be do whatever you want to be you know that that feeling was going away especially in public social networks and what replaced

it was I mean authoritarian depending on like how you want to define the politics of it but it was it was inherently, I think, authoritarian. And we're going to talk about how that was co-opted by the right in particular and how they whipped up a right-wing moral panic. And we're going to do all that right after the break. When was the first time that you became aware of the idea that the internet was turning teenagers trans? Like, when did you first hear this idea?

God, I mean, like, it's so blurry for me because, like, I actually remember. remember even in the early days of Tumblr, somebody I was dating. And she was almost talking about it in a tone positive way, but it was a very, uh, like flawed, uh, maybe like an ally trying too hard, uh, description of what the internet could be as a safe. And like, I think that was also, that also like was the first time that I really, that I had probably ever heard, transgender instead of like transsexual so yeah i'd say like like even before like the kind of the sort of algorithmic restriction stuff that you were talking about um like probably like 2008 and you know like i i think so much of my queer identity i mean sorry to just keep bringing up Catholicism but like

it was just such a my shame i and i wanted to really uh process this when when we were making the people's joker like i had like a level of conservatism that i needed to to overcome uh like to to get to a place where i could express myself that was really just motivated by like shame and fear and like just weird like my parents are are liberal like they they're they're relative but like very liberal you know like they love the police Well, the place are great. They're great. Yeah.

They're great. I think, like, especially, like, when it comes to internet culture and stuff, like, I probably even thought to some degree that, like, that, like, spaces like Tumblr were not necessarily making people trans, but, like, the echo chamber of it was just kind of creating this, like, monolithic identity. Like, I feel like that kept me. me in the closet for a very long time too. And, you know, that the reason the Joker, the Harlequin is, is like, in the People's

Joker is like watching Alex Jones all the time is because that's what I was doing. Like, I wasn't watching it because, like, I, you know, I was watching it because he, he hated the police in those days and was very, you know, he was the first person I think I ever remembered like hearing talking about 9-11 in an actually like reasonable way where it was like why aren't we like asking questions about this and uh i don't know like i mean that's just all to say like i think there's such a thin line between uh like toxic transphobic incels and self-hating trans women that like i think all of this is for me kind of kind of kind of orbits around.

I would say that's correct. I mean, like, so I, growing up in Massachusetts, I was like in a, I was part of like a DIY punk and emo, ska community of bands and stuff. And I remember around 2007, 2008, some of the guys that I would be playing music with, like becoming curious about like a Republican candidate named Ron Paul, who had some real interesting ideas about politics. And kind of watching those guys. tread this like irony line that like you know a couple of our friendships ended because like

they were like just they were just full on Nazis after a while but like in a funny way guy like it's funny like don't worry it's like but it's not right but that thin line I think is present for anyone who's like been in a subculture been in a in a in a marginalized community been in a thing that is not inherently mainstream because it's very easy very seductive I think When we started doing research about how this sort of trans social contagion idea was spreading online, writer and activist Julia Serrano did an incredible job piecing together a timeline of how this all spread. So have you ever heard of a website called The Fourth Wave Now? No. So the Fourth Wave in the name refers to fourth wave feminism, which kind of aligns it with the different waves of revolutionary feminist theory.

And this one is a Radfem blog. so Radfem stands for radical feminist. It's a whole set of sort of ideas about what feminism should accomplish. And it came up with this idea of Tumblr specifically turning people trans. In a blog post called It Ain't a Liberation Movement, which they published in 2015. And in 2016, Fourth Wave Now.com does another post titled Tumblr Snags Another Girl, but her therapist mom knows a thing or two about social contagion. And this is when you start to see the sort of like detransition weirdos who are like,

my daughter went on Tumblr and now she thinks she's a boy, but we got to stop. But now she's she feels better now. It's all good. Yeah. And, you know, it is so fascinating to me, though, that like, you know, I'm sure many of the people who are reading this fourth wave, quote unquote feminist blog, like see themselves as political revolutionaries on the left, on the, on the liberal side. And they don't really sort of understand that like,

they are pursuing an inherently conservative, inherently authoritarian idea, at least as far as I believe. Oh, sure. From my vantage point, it comes from, and I mean, there's nothing more internet than just not having a context for like history. And like the history of like queer liberation and and feminism and stuff, it's like transness. and gender queerness was inherent to queer revolution and like

suffrage you know before that too like I mean you could go even further back to just the fucking you know 1800s

and you know so called husband wives on the Western frontier and like women who really were men for all intents and purposes, getting jobs in coal mines and on the railroads and stuff. Like, that is like, I'm not, I'm not like one of those trans people that's like weird God's gift to humanity. But like there are these very clear lines where like radical politics and especially like of like the, you know, like that lead to other marginalized groups getting more rights, whether it's gay men or lesbians or just cis women being able to have the same jobs or vote, you know, like men do.

Transness is always kind of at the forefront of that in some way. Sure. The thing you're describing could only exist on the internet in a space where you can, completely remove any historical context and somehow paint this picture that transness or queerness is somehow the thing that we need to be getting radical against. It's so, it breaks my brain, but I understand why it's allowed to function in a space where, you know, you can really curate information in this sort of completely false way. Yeah, I wanted to read you this, uh, an excerpt from this post about Tumblr snagging a girl because it is it is fascinating

because it almost so that you have a scene in the people's joker that is shockingly similar actually but from this is from the mom's point of view um so so here's here's and also also the first line of this is so just like telling and so like perfectly internet brained so it reads there's an episode of Star Trek the next generation where the crew is introduced to a mysterious alien video game. It slowly infiltrates the minds of the crew. As we suspected, the game is really an insidious mind-controlling apparatus that will allow an alien race to gain control of the ship. That is what this trans madness feels like to me. The alien mind-control device made its way into my home about two years ago when my then 11-year-old

daughter begged me for a Tumblr account, since her friends all had one. Foolishly, I consented without looking into it further. I wish I hadn't. I have decided that the cult indoctrinators have had free access to her beautiful 13-year-old brain for two years now, and that it is time that I intervene and fight for my daughter. Lady, it's Tumblr. Like, she's looking at doctor, like, first of all, I'm sorry, he is looking at Doctor Who Gifts. That's what's going on right now. He's watching supernatural.

Like, come on. Yeah. I'm almost sympathetic to it because it's so, like, it's naive. like that kind of transphobia is just like do you hear yourself like and that that that that parent specifically it's like do you remember how your parents like talked about fucking Elvis and like just moving his hips on the ed sullivan show like it's you're basically doing that like you're doing that on this even dumber level and like it sounds like a fucking sci-fi thing like it's so uh and i don't know it completely, it's, it's, I think what makes, what makes me sad about it as, uh, it's, it completely

removes the, the, the idea that like, your child is now comfortable exploring these things that were always there. Right. They weren't created by the thing. And to me, it's like, you know, because when you, you, you asked me to do this, I, I, I, I think I came back and I was like, well, you know, I kind of do think Tumblr made some of us trans, but like it is kind of coming from that place. It's like, if like,

if I hadn't been of the generation that like, you know, grew up with the internet like in that specific like, I would have just been like fucking Andy Warhol or something like, I would have been like that type of gay guy

because I had no representation at all. I could only possibly possibly find it in that kind of like beautiful safe space. It's so tragic. It is. And like watching watching this giant sort of like media and academic apparatus spring up in the late 2010s around this idea of the social contagion and specifically like trying to find these like detransition stories to prove that it exists and all of this stuff. we wanted to try to figure out like when did it flip like when did it become this thing that wasn't just for weirdos to obsess about online do you remember the 2017 piece in the stranger about detransitioners did you ever hear about this that's vaguely rinking a bell so that that was sort of the big crossover point because once the stranger which is like this you know this bastion of progressive thought says like hey maybe this trans things like a little wacky, huh?

Everyone falls in line immediately. Because like the next year you get this massive piece in the Atlantic called When a Child says she's trans. You get it right after that. You have the rapid onset gender dysphoria stuff coming out in academic journals. You have this entire panic. And if you dig into any of these things, you find faulty data. And oftentimes you just find like anecdotal stories about parents being like, I don't

know what my child is doing on the internet and I think that's like what's happening here. I think the internet has made my child different somehow. I remember, I think this was around the same time. I believe it was Jezebel, uh, had an article about Sophie and how she was, um, the producer appropriating. Yeah, the, the music producer, uh, was was like a culturally appropriating, femininity because I feel like that also coincided with this this kind of conversation where it was like transness is basically woman face or whatever um right right and that like I I pretty sure that was was Jezebel and like that was a specifically feminist quote unquote feminist take on it like it's yeah during this time period I was working in London turf island and it was it was it was

Are you ever heard of the forum Mumsnet? Do you know about Mumsnet? If not, I'm very excited to tell you about Mumsnet. Yes, but please talk about it. Okay, so for our listeners who might not know what Mumsnet is, it is essentially Reddit for British Mums. I use it often to help me navigate British appliances, which are kind of confusing.

And during this period of time, Mumsnet was being infiltrated by these people. So it was all of these sort of British stay-at-home moms online, all day talking about different washer and dryers and how to use them and also complaining about their children becoming trans because of the internet. And it was it was kind of strange, though, to be working in British media at the time because it was like this weird thing where the line was just sort of coming down from the ether to be like a little more skeptical than we used to be about this whole trans thing. And it did sort of feel like it felt like that was the social contagion.

Like it felt like your boss would all of a sudden walk in one day and just be like, I think we got to shine a light on this whole thing that, you know, this is kind of crazy, huh? And it just, it started building over time in a way that actually creeped me out. I was deeply unsettled by how quickly the tide shifted over there during this exact period of time. Yeah. And, you know, I got to say, like, pretty unfortunate, like on a personal level, pretty unfortunate for me because it was like right when I was starting to come out to my family and stuff. and it really kind of, like, I remember when I came out to my dad as trans, he said something.

He was like, yeah, like, I don't think that was a thing until, like, this past year. Like, right? Like, that's, I never heard of this before. Like, this is, like, a trend that's going on, right? And, like, that was, and it was, like, crazy. hearing him say that too because I remember growing up again like a good Clinton liberal he was like how often he'd talk about the conspiracy theory that Anne Coulter was a transsexual woman and like I forgot about that that was a big thing.

It really became yeah for me it's why I like brought up the Sophie thing because I think that's like maybe part of where it spread like wildfire. Hey, this is Grant, producer of the podcast. So we wanted to make sure we got this right. So I think Vera was actually referencing a controversial fader piece from 2014, not a Jezebel story. That's it. Back to the episode.

Again, another minefield I'm probably like sort of walking through here, but whatever. Let's get into it. When people realized that the distinctions between transsexuals and transgender people and non-binary identities, there was this almost like thing where it was like, oh, well, I know what people who have like a quote-unquote sex change operation is. Okay, I understand that. But this whole Tumblr thing, that's different. And it's fake. It's just a trend.

Like that was the kind of shift and to becoming. out and to have, I have so many friends that were also, you know, around this same era, to be coming out during that era as, as a, you know, I was in my late 20s, did not pass on any level and had really no interest or ability to either. It made transition very hard, especially like, you know, and the reason it's like I qualify all that with like, this is a minefield I'm walking through is like there is a conversation. when you start having that conversation, it can go down this path where it's like,

I don't think there needs to be any distinction between all those identities. Like I think anybody who has like a marginalized gender identity, whether they choose to medically transition or not, or like they're changing their presentation, or they're just changing their fucking pronouns. Like we all deserve rights and we all deserve love and shouldn't be killed or bullied or whatever.

but I think that's what a lot of this comes down to too, too, is like, it's thought of, uh, it's when people realize that like, that, that, that, the, that, that, the, that, the, that, the, that, the, that, the, that, the, that, and, uh, that it's expression and it's not just, you know, medically changing our bodies. And for like, a lot of trans people, too, it's like, there's not, um, you know, I, for myself, per, uh, personally, like I don't think of my experience as a woman as as as identical to cis women you know like I'm having my own gender experience so like I think like that that was all nuance that they were not prepared for especially on in the UK I mean like I just don't think that was I also think boomers are like obsessed with the idea of like things you do as a kid being trends or fad I think it's like shared guilt for electing Ronald Reagan and like being hippies and then going from hippies to that.

And so now they just sort of project being like whatever you do before 30. Like it does like that's not real. Like that doesn't matter because we sold out. So like of course you're going to. And it's like, but we can't because the internet has given us a very different world to live in. And we're going to talk about the realities of that six ad world right after the break. You sort of touched on this idea that you took a break from the internet. internet during a fairly boring couple years in American politics. Like not much happened between

2016 and 2018. Yeah. Um, so, you know, you didn't miss much, but what, what was it like coming back online? You're, you're now, I assume, out of the closet at this point, you sort of have this new full identity. The internet is different. The country's different. Like, what was that moment like? Because I think that's a really fascinating idea to sort of miss those two specific were gears. Well, I came back because I had made, I had made all this content, uh, with Tim and Eric, uh, that like we, we'd, we'd done for adult swim.com. Like, I, I'd made a couple, uh, like, web series for them. Uh, there was like a, a doctor advice type show called Our Bodies that we had done. And then a talk show with David Lebehart, a game show.

and then this kind of like Liquid Television style remix show called Scum. And we were like they were, you know, we were starting to launch all that stuff and it just was not getting any clicks. Partially because, you know, Adult Swim never promotes anything.

And I think Tim and Eric, they're both creatures of the internet, but definitely more from this like Gen X perspective. They were kind of like, what, how do we get this stuff out, out there? And like, it kind of occurred to me. It was the first moment I remember thinking, like, oh, I have no, I am invisible as an artist because I don't have any kind of internet footprint. So that was what, like, got me back out, out there.

And I was about a year into my transition. And I think, like, it was a real gift that I had given myself because, I wouldn't say that my personality was fully formed. I think my identity was definitely very fractured, but I had this nice solid foundation that wasn't of what my transness looked like and what my artistic expression looked like without the echo chamber that a lot of other trans people my age had kind of come up in. So I was a little bit more naive, I think.

I think it allowed me to be a little bit more fearless and putting myself out there. Like, I really, you know, I'd never heard the phrase cringe content before. But apparently that's like the kind of stuff I was making was this kind of tender queer cringe content. But to me, it was just like, I'm being sincere because I came back on the internet and nobody's sincere anymore. It's just all irony poisoning and like anger and like that's kind of what I'm moving out of because I finally have fucking estrogen in my body. So like it was this real, it was this real gift. And I remember also just like also feeling a little bit like left behind at the same time. Like I think it was like very hard for me to meet other trans people my age coming

back into like online spaces. Like I remember, you know, quote unquote discovering black dresses, the band. But I like, and like it was, it was so funny because I thought I had stumbled on to this like niche band. It's like, I can't believe it. They're like talking about like dysphoria and like abuse and trauma and this like very hyper specific way. I don't know if they'd like that characterization, but whatever.

Like to me, that was like how I was listening. to their music. And then I, like, would go out there and, like, tweet about it and everybody be like, yeah, we've been listening to them for, like, three fucking years. You just haven't been online. So there was this, like, whole just era that I had really missed. But it allowed me to kind of return to this, like, authenticity that I think I had really kind of ran away from. Like, I was, I was, before coming out, I was totally irony poisoned. There, you know, there still was some remaining like kind of fear and shame

that I think especially like once I started making the people's Joker you know there's like a sequence 45 minutes into the movie that's this like love scene that's like animated

and it's like really cute it's really like beautiful cute animation for people who haven't seen it's between two jokers I should point out it's a beautiful love scene Oh, yes. Two different kinds of jokers.

Yeah. I was so, I always forget that it's a Joker movie. It's, I, uh, before you, before, before we lose it, I did want to point out that like, the people's Joker is, is a surprisingly, and I don't mean this in, in a bad way. I just, I was really taken by how sincere it is as a film and how it has all of this sort of like cultural, uh, ephemera of the irony, poisoned world that we live in. but you're dealing with it deeply, sincerely, and very earnestly. And it made me very, I was very happy.

I was like, that's, that is how it is. That's, like, that's good. Like, that's how the world is. It feels like you're bombarded with all this sort of, like, mass media nonsense. But, like, you're having real feelings and real, real lives inside of it. And, like, I feel like a lot of people kind of lose that when they try to make that kind of stuff. So I was, I was very taken by that. I thought that was pretty cool.

Thank you. Yeah. I think when people hear about the movie oftentimes, like they assume it's just going to kind of be just like a 90-minute shitpost. And I mean, there's even some people that I think watch it and kind of feel that way just because they don't really resonate with the experience that I'm describing in it. Because it is a pretty specific experience. It's it is like a, you know, I'm a millennial, but I have noticed. the people who like are usually um the trans people that are identifying with the movie more usually are like a little bit younger like more zoomers and stuff which i always thought was fascinating just

I'm like I don't have no idea what their experiences but there's something about it that I guess resonates to them and maybe there's something that other millennial trans people don't always want to look at in the movie um and and I think part of that is the like the the the sincere and the fact that we can kind of bridge these like the shit posting irony thing with like sincerity and kind of sweetness and softness and stuff and like I mean that specific scene the like love scene between two jokers is one that like I was afraid to put in the movie specifically because it was animated and because it was like kind of like a kid friendly like love scene, a kid-friendly T-for-T love scene in a movie. And like, I remember having this fear that people would watch it and, and, and criticize it as like, I don't know, like, grooming or like, because I think so, I think people forget how much of like those kind of conversations around art specifically as its potential to groom or like socially conditioned. It did really come from like other queer people a lot of times. And I think it did kind of come up in these like Tumblr spaces and on 4chan and stuff.

So I was like really nervous to like fully lean into that. But but that was why I did it. I was like, I need to do the thing I'm afraid of. You know, we've spent the whole episode sort of talking about the wonders of these spaces, which I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to go back on now. Like I think they were wonderful. But one of the sort of downsides of that. kind of openness and anarchy was a lot of blurred boundaries and a lot of sort of like

misunderstanding of like what how people should behave online. I think a lot of online queer spaces now are having these conversations where they're saying that the way they used to do things was very out of control. You know, this is where you're going to see a lot of arguments about like the proper way to create fan art or write fan fiction or how to be gay at prize. a lot of these sort of arguments happening from very young queer internet users that might not have the full context to understand that those conversations are helping a very reactionary right-wing movement that wants to shut down the entirety of queer discourse. The sort of idea of the queer Gen Z Puritin is very much a useful idiot for a larger, very, very scary and very, very, very now powerful anti-LGB. movement in America. For me, it's just like, it is so clear.

And maybe I just have better boundaries than most people online. Like, I know what's appropriate and inappropriate to, like, subject a child to. You know, like, I'm not, like, I, like, I, for me, especially, like, I, I, I spend half of this episode talking about how, like, at 13, I was, like, on amputee. message boards, like fetish message boards. That's normal 13 year old stuff. That's normal though. That's totally fine.

Yeah. And like I don't, I don't know. I don't know. It's not. It's not. Yeah. Like I just don't, uh, I, I don't want to say like we should ever go back to the way things were.

Because like I saw things on the internet that I wish I had never seen. Like I really, I can fully say that that were things that like I would just stumble upon from like having lime wire or whatever like you know try to download team america world police and then it would like accidentally be this like disgusting gang bang you know like it would be stuff like that like i'm not saying we should go back to those days at all but like there's a there's a week where i tried to download end of evangeliangeline on casa and i tried it like five times and every time i downloaded it i ended up with the same hentai clip of like a little Batgirl having sex with somebody?

And I was like, how are all of you doing, like, that's multiple users doing the same stupid thing. Yeah, the internet was not that fun back then. It was really annoying, actually. No, it wasn't. And that's, that's not what I think we need to go back to. But it's just, I remember, like, like, when we were making the people's Joker, or specifically when we were writing it, my co-writer Breedlerose and I were talking a lot about, like,

What were the things we watched in that, like, hour and a half after school before our parents came home? And it was, like, kids in the hall, like, SNL reruns. Kids in the hall on Comedy Central every day. Oh, change my sense of humor for the rest of my life. Yeah, unbelievable. And completely, I mean, theoretically, completely inappropriate for a child, but, like, harmless at the same time. Totally. Children should not be exposed to Dave Foley.

That's not fair to do to a time. They should not know the Canadian alt humor exists. That's not fair. Exactly. They need that edge, though. Like, it's, to me, it's like, that's if, I mean, that's like the thing I'm almost kind of like, maybe like, like an old lady about. I'm just like, we're, we're softening these kids by sheltering them too much and making, like, queer art that's like so sanitized. that there can't be

like I made the People's Joker for 13 year olds like first and foremost. Like it is it is a movie that is supposed to be like a rude movie for like a teenager to like early 20s person who's like just starting to discover these things about themselves.

And to me it's like that can only really be accessed in an authentic way if there's an edginess in a little bit a danger there, which is scary to do as like an artist, but it's, it's, it's what, um, it's, I think it's the kind of art that we need. It's, you shouldn't, we shouldn't be sanitizing ourselves. Because it's not, as you said, it, it is actually emboldening fascists by doing that. And, uh, it's, it's, it's just, it's, it's just prolonging, like, how hard it is to be, um, queer in the Western world.

Tumblr might not be turning teens, trans, but the People's Joker will absolutely do it. And I think that's beautiful. Yes. I want to thank you for coming on. This was such a good conversation. Do you have anything coming up? You want to plug anything?

Because are you making anything else that you want to talk about? Because I'm such a fan of the People's Joker. Anyone listening to this, please go watch it. It's on YouTube. You can buy it on it. every streaming platform, it's great. But yeah, what do you got coming down the pipeline? Well, right now, the People's Joker, as you think, thanks for plugging it.

It's out there on VOD. You could watch it. You could pay Jeff Bezos to watch the People's Joker if you really wanted to. We also have Blu-Rays and DVDs and VHSs available at the People'sjoker.com. Oh, that's sick. That's so sick. Yeah. People can, we've got so, there's so many special features on, on, on the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, I'm, I'm, another thing that really makes me sound 35 is I, I, I really miss director's commentary tracks and, and, and, and, in special features.

So, so we did a lot of that for, for, for the people's joker. So, so check that out. Um, and I'm out there on the internet, uh, Viro Drew 22 on Twitter, uh, Instagram and, uh, TikTok. I think I have a Tumblr, but I don't really use it that much anymore. And yeah, I don't know. I'm trying to make another movie. We'll see when it comes out. But I'm trying to make a horror movie right now. And I just got a really sick production company on board. So hopefully we'll be getting going on that soon and I can talk more about it soon. but yeah.

Well, that sounds awesome. Thank you for coming on again. This was great. Panic World is a garbage day production. It's written and produced by Grant Irving, hosted by myself with research from the always fantastic Adam Bumus. A huge thanks to Gabby Cash for designing the incredibly deranged art for this show. And a huge thank you to Kat Rajesk, our lovely video editor.

And if you'd like to sponsor an episode, you can reach out to Multitude, our wonderful partners, multitude. dot productions slash ads. We have a Patreon which you can find at patreon.com slash panic world. And I'd like to end this episode with an important reminder. Log off and touch grass while you still can. I really appreciated the people's joker joke about say anything. That micro-targeted me in a way that was almost aggressive, actually.

I really enjoyed thinking about singing along to a song about the Holocaust for many years. Yeah. No, thanks. When they catch you. So crazy to think that you could put that on the radio. It was in a Scrubs episode. Hey, this is Grant, producer, the podcast. Just want to give a special thanks to Julia Serrano, Allegro Rosenberg, Zoe Cable, and Oliver

Hampson. All right. we will talk to you very soon. Thank you all so much.