Panic World - Investigating a cult inspired by a cartoon mouse (w/ PJ Vogt)

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

If a fandom exists long enough in isolation, does it inevitably become toxic or at least, very strange? This is the main question we’ll be exploring today, through a story that begins in 1989. That���s the year that Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers premiered. More importantly, it’s when the world was introduced to a sweet little mouse girl, Gadget Hackwrench. Gadget became quite popular on a certain part of the internet, and PJ Vogt joins us once again to learn about the Cult of Gadget, and the weird wild world of “Rangerphiles.” Our guest PJ Vogt is the host of Search Engine. He has previously come on Panic World to talk about whether teens were really gorging themselves on Tide Pods, and you can listen to that episode here. Check out Search Engine here or wherever you get your podcasts! Notes Interested in seeing how Ryan & PJ react to Gadget "art"? Or perhaps what Grant's producer cage looks like? Panic World is now posting video episodes to YouTube! Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to our Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You and I, PJ, we've known each other for a while now. So I feel like I can comfortably ask you this question to start off today's episode, which is, did you have a cartoon character that was responsible for any kind of romantic or sexual awakening for you growing up? This is where we're going to start today? Yeah. I thought that'd be like a good ice. I'm really having a moment where I'm like, do I want to be honest? I guess I think you, I think by saying that now you have.

I had a crush on April O'Neil from the Ninja Turtles. I had like an actual real crush on April O'Neill from the Ninja Turtles. Like, I think that was one of my first crushes. I was thinking about this recent thing as well. And I think my very first one was Fern Gully from Fern Gulley. Oh, she was like the spirit that protected the rainforest. She had like a black pixie cut and was like very into the environment. And that really put me on a journey that I feel like I'm still on to this day.

But when you said that, do you mean like, because it's a little, I guess there's something for me a little bit embarrassing. for myself where I'm like, yes, I had a crush on a series of lines and colors. But I think what's also in your question is sort of did this route your sort of sexual ginks or preferences? Like, do you find yourself like thinking like, oh, when I'm really attracted to someone, if I imagine them in a rainforest, like that I'm more attracted to them or it's just like you had a crush on a sort of? I don't know, PJ. Have you ever dated a female journalist before? Oh, my God.

Oh, God. I surrender. My name is Ryan Broderick. Joining me throughout the episode, we'll be our producer, Grant Irving, who will pop in from time to time to talk about the cartoon characters that he's in love with. This is Panic World to show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality.

with us today is PJ Vote, the host of Search Engine. Welcome back to Panic World. This is your second time on the show. How are you feeling about it? I feel great. Thank you for having me. It is such a fun world to get to visit. And we've picked a really fun one for you.

Based on how much phone we had last year doing the Tide Pods episode, we wanted to unearth something even further back in the timeline that you might not know about. And I'm very excited to tell you all about it. It's a story that's funny. It's sad. And I actually think kind of important for understanding. in the world we live in now. But I want to start by asking you a couple questions.

So would you say that the Internet of the 90s and early 2000s was like more idealistic or more innocent than the Internet of today? Do you really believe that it is fundamentally different than it was, let's say, 20, 30 years ago? I do. I mean, I don't know. Yeah, idealistic. I think there was a moment where there was, at least for me as a young, young person, and a feeling of excitement about connection and a feeling that while dark things might come

through the door, that fundamentally connection would be a good thing and a lack of sort of understanding that the internet might shape us in ways we might not like or it might even like shape the physical world in ways I couldn't imagine. Okay, so one last question is set up today's episode. Do you subscribe to the idea that like if a fandom or an online community is like left alone and isolated long enough, they like inadvertently turn toxic or weird. Like, do you feel like that's like a natural, like is that a natural human thing, a natural internet thing?

Is it overstated? I don't think it's inevitable, but I think it often happens. And I think it has a lot to do with the structure of the platforms. Like I think micro blogging sites fundamentally derange people. But I think that there are, I think there exists the possibility that an online community need not turn toxic, even though. often it does. I would agree with that. I don't think it is totally inevitable. I've definitely come across like old communities that still exist that are just doing their thing. But that's not

what we'll see in today's story. Today we're going to look at how the internet fandom as a concept went from something idealistic to something ridiculous to something genuinely upsetting. So really this is kind of the story of the entire internet encapsulated in one very weird story from the 2000s, focusing on one very strange internet community. We're all set up now, so it's time to start our story, and we're going to go all the way back to 1989, the year I was born along with Taylor Swift, and it was also the premiere of Chippendale Rescue Rangers. Oh, wow.

Okay. Do you remember the rescue range? I do. I'm not sure I ever directly watched the films, but they were such a kind of, I probably got a McDonald's Happy Mail with their toys. So for people who aren't familiar, they're chipmunks, and they're also detectives, and they solve mysteries and they have a bunch of animal friends and part of their group is one particular animal friend that we're going to be talking a lot about today and her name is gadget hack wrench do you

know gadget are you familiar with gadget from rescue i'm not but based off the first question you asked me today i imagine that gadget is someone who was provoked and intentionally or not erotic fantasies and places on the internet grant can we pull up a photo gadget uh i want pggy to be able to see gadget um So Gadget is a mouse. It's a mouse girl and an inventor. And she is a very popular character. And the Internet Gadget Archive is a website that contains a lot of images of gadget. This is Gadget being held by a large cat.

That's gadget right there. And this all comes from the Internet Gadget Archive. And this one was just was just. captioned as very cute. Yeah. I assume it's a vore thing because the cat looks like it's going to eat. Yeah, the cat's tongue is sticking outside of its closed mouth the way that cartoons that are hungry do. The way that you are right now looking at my God.

I will say gadget is cute. She's like an anthropomorphized or whatever big-eyed, big-eared, cute, piloty hamster woman. She's like a cute mouse girl. Yeah, here's another one. That is a bunch of the other characters on top of gadget. It's called PioLon Gadget, and it was very popular in the form. Oh, boy. All right.

Let me give you some more show background. So there were 65 episodes of Rescue Rangers. Then the show ended in September of 1993. And from the fan lore wiki, it reads, only a few select episodes were released on home video over the years. The show itself was out of reach for everyone who didn't have cable or pay TV. Therefore, the meta-fick, the Ranger Leon, as in, like the Similurion, I guess.

Oh, like Tolkien's kind of just lore book of, this isn't even story, this is just every piece of made up information about Middle Earth. They, someone created this for Rescue Rangers. Yes. And it, uh, and, and in that lore book, they refer to this era, uh, as the dark age. And Ranger files, as they call themselves, uh, could not access the show. They basically could only remember the show. draw fan art, and of course, write fan fiction.

And these Ranger files, I guess they're probably, like I was born in 1985, so this was just something I slightly missed. They're probably a little bit older than me that they would have watched on television and in the pre-internet era when it was gone. It only lived in their minds. Yeah, in fact, like I kind of went through a period of this as well where, you know, it wasn't really until I was in college, had access to high-speed internet that the school didn't understand how to block bit torrent on,

that I was able to like remember shows that I had watched as a kid and then find them online. Yeah, I remember that miraculous feeling. Yeah, it is like, it is sort of like remembering a dream. I remember like finding like an entire ripped DVD set of like Malcolm in the middle and watching it like in order for the first time and realizing like, oh like this like these episodes like have a coherent plot. You know, like TV was just this thing that came on and then disappeared. And I think for like really niche fandoms like, the Rescue Rangers' fandoms, the ranger files, that, you know, was very frustrating. But the fact that they couldn't access the media that they cared about allowed for a lot of

sort of strange energy to permeate across the web. So in 1996, there's a Usenet group called alt.fanatfri, which is a major hub of furry activity, which are people who like to dress an animal costume, sometimes for sexual reasons, sometimes for not. Are furries both into costumed creature, to being in costumes and cartoons? Is it a separate, like, they're both under the same umbrella, but are the people in costumes also into the cartoons, or is it a separate thing? I think you're looking at it backwards.

So it's basically like, if you are a furry and you identify as a furry, you're drawn to cartoon characters, particularly cartoon anthropomorphic animals. And you have an interest in that early. So it might be Sonic the Hedgehog, it might be Looney Tunes. Something activates that for you. And then you go online and you discover the community and a lot of them use like an avatar or a persona, a persona for furries. And you create one.

So you say like, I'm a silver fox and I wear a lab coat. And then you kind of like role play as that in different spaces like Discord or Twitter or whatever. And then you, if you have the money, you might create a costume. there's an entire class hierarchy of furries where like the most expensive ones have like air conditioning units inside of their suits and stuff. On the signature, I was seeing furries talking about their fur suits that were like $20,000. I was really surprised and impressed.

Obviously, there's conventions, you know, and you can you can see them setting up the foundations of how we all use the internet. The biggest furry con started in 1999, and it's still a regular event to this day in Pennsylvania. Of course it's in Pennsylvania, obviously. Aaron, PA was Anthrocon. It's in Pittsburgh. Okay, that's the other side of state from May. Right.

And this reminds me of like the theory. So Anthrocon is Fourth of July weekend every summer. And the next season of the pit takes place in Pittsburgh during Fourth of July weekend. And people are wondering if Anthropon's going to make an appearance. We should be so lucky. It would be awesome. So, I mean, you've been down a lot of the similar internet roads that I have over the years. Obviously, you've probably had to deal with the furry community before.

Like, what is your kind of like overall? background in this world. I don't, I'm not like, I don't deeply understand sort of the origins of furries. My view is for people who chronicle the internet and try to figure out how to feel about it and how to process it, furries can be a challenge because the simultaneous realities we're trying to hold in our head are that. I think most of us are, feel that what adults want to do consensually with other adults is okay and people shouldn't be judged.

And it's a little, there's something like a little funny about, sort of people wearing animal costumes. And so on the one hand, you don't want to be a jerk or a bully. And at the other hand, you don't want to be so right thinking that you're not like, this is kind of silly. And so I try to hold the idea of furries in my own mind with the right amount of respectful gentleness. And like, this is kind of funny.

Like for a while, the algorithm was serving me just like furries. It was a, it was a someone's TikTok or Instagram Reels where it was someone just interviewing furries about the cost of their very expensive fur suits at a convention. Yeah. And they were very expensive. And I just found myself being like, oh, it's nice to just get information about these people who I'm never entirely sure how I'm supposed to feel about other than don't be too mean. I did a big project interviewing them years ago.

And like the thing that was really apparent in talking to them is that like many of them work in like very stressful, sometimes like traumatic jobs. Like it's a lot of like, EMTs, soldiers, police officers, nurses. Really? It's a lot of people, through the interviews that I've done over the years, it's a lot of people who use the fur suit

as a way to kind of like separate themselves from themselves, which I think is why they're such a good fit for the internet. Like in a lot of ways, the core furry experience of like putting on an avatar is what we all sort of do now online. And whenever I sort of talk about furries, I always just say like, yeah, they're really, yeah, they can be very weird,

but they're also like hardcore early adopters. And in fact, our researcher, Adam, came across a document that I have been pouring over for the last few days because I think it's ungoddam believable. And I'm going to show it to you right now. So you just, you have to see this. So what you're looking at right now is a page that furries created after 9-11 to check themselves in as safe. Wow. Furry status quo. Whoa.

And, like, they have, like, statuses, like, escaped WTC back home finally. And they also have, like, a run-through of, like, who was in the World Trade Center, like, from the early furry communities. Wow. So this was, this would have been. It's wild. September 2001. Online furry community. Just like any community checking out on themselves.

But there were furries in New York City and some who even died in the towers. And this is just, like, a community touching base. From what we could see, there was at least one, a furry name. Lisa who who who was confirmed to have died in the 9-11 attacks and like it is such a fastened this is such a fascinating document because it is now just like a core feature of most social platforms like an ability to check in like i mean facebook launched this 20 years later you know like and furries had at home brewed a way to do it within i mean i think if you look at this like they've they figured it out within like two days like some of these check-ins are like the 13

It's also a really just nicely put together spreadsheet. Like, it's just very readable and well-organized, something that as I get older, I appreciate more. Yeah, it's a, so whenever I sort of talk about phrase, I always just have to make the point that, like, most of the things that we do on the Internet every day now and, like, the core experience of being online, they were very early. Yeah, I would just, the other thing I just want to say I appreciate about furries, it's like, I think most people, or at least most people that I love, have a part of themselves that doesn't conform and that is strange or like orthogonal to society. And most people keep that in their private life. And I like that furries are like, I mean, there's such a basic thing to say, but I like that they're publicly weird. Because I think when you see people being publicly weird, it gives you permission to know that it's okay that in whatever way you're strange that is. human and in a weird way universal.

Right. So that's furries. They're organized. They're early adopters. They have like a very specific thing that they do. And I just want to establish that to make it clear that like we're not talking about furries. Like there's obviously some overlap here, but this is a very different separate thing. So in 1998, there's a fan campaign to get the rescue rangers on VHS. And Disney was resistant because they did not typically put animated TV shows on VHS. This was the late 90s and that was still kind of like a weird idea. The campaign lasted seven years and finally in 2005, Disney relented and put the rescue Rangers on VHS.

And there were a bunch of campaigns like this at the time that were not successful. One person tried to start a rage. It was called rage. And it was called Curtis Yarden. Well, similar kind of mentality here. So this was a campaign directed at the more problematic section of the Rescue Rangers fandom stands for Ranger Files. They have to stop. I feel like except for Bibliophiles, files just kind of, you can't use it as a suffix anymore.

I've heard a couple movie podcasts recently referring to themselves as cinefiles. And I'm like, guys, can't even leave you a little bit film. Yeah, come on. So this day, so Rage, the name of this campaign stands for Ranger Files against Gadget erotica. Right. And so this is this is the main issue here, which is that like this fandom has been left alone. They've been completely forgotten by the Disney Corporation until like at least 2005. They can't even access the media that they all remember seeing.

So they're like trying to like conjure this like collective dream. But many of them do remember being very turned on by gadget. And their only access to gadget is the fan art and fanfic that they're able to access in these early internet. But then the community of people and it's. It's very sort of silly to refer to them this way, but like they're in a very narrow way kind of activists, like pop culture activists. They are trying to leverage a corporation to do something they want to do. And they're having the problem that activists can sometimes have, which is to say, like, we need to do some gatekeeping within our movement because we're all on this in one way. And there's some people in our group who are going to kind of make us look bad if they become the voices that speak.

Like, we want Disney to put Rescue Rangers and VHS, but not in an erotic way. Yes, see, we cannot be horny freaks and have Disney take us seriously. And this was the idea from Julie Bin. And actually, Grant spoke to Julie. She says she barely remembers being involved. And the community's vibes were so weird that she eventually stepped away. But she said that she does occasionally splurge on gadget merchandise. and I assume it's non-erotic gadget.

Yes. So before we get to the break, where we'll be talking about another group of people across the planet, actually, that start to get involved with the Rescue Rangers Phantom, I wanted to check in and just like see if this rings any bells for your own reporting. Like, do you feel like you've stumbled across like a rabbit hole like this before of just like a forgotten patch of the internet that is like kind of devolved into chaos. Yes, that particular condor is one.

The feeling of like we are, fall our way in the hinterlands where a group of people have communally become very strange. It is a feel like that is both, weirdly, it's recognizable to me and also every time I encounter it, I kind of savor it. Yeah, do you remember any specific ones? A friend of mine, I mean, this isn't as honestly like deep as what you're talking about, But a friend of mine recently, we were talking about the question you asked the beginning of, like, do online communities necessarily devolve into chaos? And a friend of mine had pointed out that the Reddit forum for Zen Buddhism is highly contentious.

And there's a big fight about sort of which form of Zen Buddhism is the correct form. And just what's funny about it is that if you think about the mind you imagine that a precept of Zen Buddhism would have, or the average red form and like which flavor would win in the pile. Reddit form is very much apparently won on those. It was important. I recently had this experience because like obviously like I follow a bunch of subredits around like pop punk and post-hardcore and different kinds of like alternative music genres. And so I got like recommended via algorithm the subreddit for the band say anything.

When I watch from Scrubs. And I did not realize that. that the entire fan base for Say Anything hates the lead singer of Say Anything and has been obsessively chronicling his Instagram and had like calling CPS on his children and have like created a private subreddit to stalk him and like hate him dearly and it felt like lifting up the rock and being like what the hell are you bugs under there doing like it was a wild I have to say that is a specific feature of 2025 internet that I have encountered a lot and don't understand. which is like not always, but more often than 50-50,

it seems like fandoms end up being more about hating the thing they're organizing around than liking it. And I don't know if that's sort of the way it's hard to show up every week and be like, I still like say anything. Like it's kind of like the more interesting opinion always wins. And the more interesting opinion is I hate this or maybe the guy's horrible. But I've seen it a lot. Apparently he vapes a lot on stage.

I don't think that that's. crime. Among other. He's the most hateable man, though. Like, like, I disagree. Yeah, he is. We don't have time. We don't have time to talk about.

Yeah, we don't have time to talk about say anything right now. But I know what you're saying, and I've seen this too. And I don't totally understand it. Like, I don't understand the people who use snark subreddit. Yeah. Like, I don't, I don't get it. And I don't think I'm, like, particularly mentally healthy myself. But the idea of like spending all day long obsessing over something like that I don't totally understand.

Which is where the story ultimately goes. Heroic job hosting. I have to say it, Ryan. But before then, people are going to take this cartoon mouse very seriously. Some could even argue they're going to start treating it very religiously. We're going to be talking about that in Act 2 of today's episode. But first, a word from our sponsors, Disney Plus. If you had to imagine a country that would like march on the street to demand like their favorite cartoon be like put on the air, sort of like mobilized physically around the love of a children's cartoon, adults obviously.

What country do you think that that would be happening in? The one that we both live in. You are wrong. You were incorrect there. Oh, really? In 1996, Chippendale begins airing in Russia for the first time, along with other Disney shows like Winnie the Pooh and Duck Tales. Oh my gosh. This is an ad spot announcing that they finally have American cartoons in Russia. Gosh.

It is like kind of easy to forget the Burlund Wall had fallen like seven years ago. So this is like kind of a big deal. So a Russian Chippendale fandom forms quickly. It ends up growing and coalescing online the same way the English language one had. And of course, just like, you know, this is like a real testament to like how silly the Cold War was. Because our Russian Ranger Filed brothers immediately got horny for Gadget. And I think that's really beautiful. I think that's really beautiful.

In 2001, we find the earliest mention of people talking about Gadget beyond just like the regular perverted way they talk about Gadget. The Russians get a little more involved with Gadget than the American. Americans do. And they come across and they create a web page, which they describe something called gadgetism by a user who went by Sergey Gris. And I believe Grant's going to pull it up for us. And we're going to have you read the English translation here. I mean, I got a regret reading. Probably. Okay. The purpose of this work is to attempt to analyze gadgetism from the inside. What is it about the little painted mouse that attracts us? She doesn't boast about her beauty at all. could very well. She doesn't play the fool and always does everything in her power to help her friends.

She's a good and very loyal friend. And finally, Gadget is a brilliant inventor capable of inventing anything out of nothing. And the main thing is that despite all her self-sufficiency, Gadget still really needs friendly support, really meaning she doesn't pretend to be helpless in order to play on feelings and thus manipulate her friends. Personally, it seems to me that this alone is enough to consider Gadget an ideal creature. And then there's like a bunch of winky faces. All right, pull out so the PJ can't see where we're going. I don't want him to see what we have planned today. I would never look.

Don't look at all of the questions that I have to be reminded to ask you. So, do you find this moving? Do you feel like this is an accurate description of this mouse girl that you were introduced to the existence of about 20 minutes ago? I will say that what I find myself feeling a little bit of relief is that it's not like it's a person trying to understand their desire. which is a very normal human thing. And they're not like gadgets sort of like chipmunk body is so like whatever. They're like there's something about the character or spirit being represented here that moves me. I don't know why it moves them erotically.

But I do find it a little bit moving that someone's like there's something that my, there's something I'm looking for and it's being represented in this story. And I'm trying to understand why it articulate it to a community. I'm really glad you said that. So let me read you the next part of that. So it reads, I think that Gadget is the embodiment of a dream for guys who want a girl that is not just an object for satisfying their sexual needs, but a faithful and devoted friend,

equally able to give support in difficult moments or stand by them shoulder to shoulder. Therefore, it is quite natural that a character like this can stir something in our soul and not just touch us, but inspire us to strive for something better, pure, brighter, higher. So Gadgetism is not about a love for a little... For a for for Gadgetism is not just a love for a little cartoon mouse, but a desire for higher harmony and to become at least a little better than we are.

Okay. So I want to ask you as an anthropologist of the internet, do you think that what's going on here is in fact that somewhat kind of feminist ideals are being expressed through the adoration of this kind of chipmunk totem and or do you think that this is just like people trying to make their horniness virtuous um okay um what i what i would say is like this to me reads exactly like any guy i knew in high school doubling down on a joke okay so this is just people messing around i don't so this is the This is actually halfway into the second act of today's episode, kind of the question. And we're going to be circling around this whole episode.

But my initial understanding, when I learned about gadgetism in the early 2010s, was that this was an elaborate prank. But we did some research. So we've got some facts for you. So in 2002, there's the founding of a Russian Rescue Rangers, like hub online. It's called CDRRHQ.RU. Okay. That is Gadget right there.

That's Gadget Hack Wrench. Yep. In her little jumpsuit. You just say something about Gadget? Sure. I think that the animator who animated Gadget made, I'm not going to say a profoundly sexualized creature, but like a slightly sexualized creature.

Like I don't think these people are just like aroused by a brick wall. Like, Gadget is a little bit womanly. I'm not saying that I practice gadgetism, but just, like, to defend these strange people. Like, you know what I mean? I might, should I not be saying this? But do you know what I mean? Not to victim blame Gadget. One of my longstanding beliefs is that, like, what we think of as absurd or insane internet

behavior is almost never illogical. Like even the most outrageous hate campaigns have ever come across, there has to be a kernel of reality there. It doesn't come from nothing. I mean, they, they fizzle out if, you know, without something there. So yes, I would say that, that gadget is an attractive mouse girl. Yes. Okay.

And I'm like literally that's all I mean. I'm not defending anything. I'm just like, there's like, I'm not going to say more. I'm just not going to say more. I've said enough. So this website used to also hold a contest called the Golden Nut Award. Oh, no. And if this is a joke, people put a lot of time into it.

There's like an exhaustive amount of fan fiction out there. Fan generated images of gadget. This is active for about 10 years. And in 2002, gadgetism really takes off. And just to zoom out one more. time. This is pretty separate from the rest of the furry community. In 2005 is when Fur Affinity launches? You're familiar with Fur Affinity. I'm not familiar with Fur Affinity. It is the largest website for furry art and furry discourse. It is still going. It is very active. In 2010,

furries migrate to Reddit and they start to communicate there and obviously on Tumblr. And then all over social media. Okay. Kind of around the same time as us. And meanwhile, over in Russia, the gadgetism community starts to spread as well. So in 2009, there is the launch of the V-Contact, is Russia's version of Facebook. Yes, I'm familiar. And that is when the main gadgetism project kind of breaks through.

And that is called Radiant Gadget. And here's the group's description, which has been translated into English. who hasn't watched the cartoon Chippendale Rescue Rangers? Who hasn't been captivated by this red-haired mouse? I thought she was blonde, but okay, whatever. A small mouse in a lilac jumpsuit, a graceful figure, unique blue eyes. Hair is sometimes red. Okay, yeah, sometimes light golden, sometimes almost chestnut.

An exceptionally hardy creature. And at the same time, gentle and fragile, a sensitive soul that has experienced both the despair of loneliness and the joy that its existence on earth brings concrete and considerable benefit. Who among us hasn't felt that way? Yeah. And the group is still active. It's been going since 2009. And it does list CDRR, Chivendale Rescue Rangers, HQ, the Russian site that we just showed you, as its official website.

So it seems like that's where this all starts. Just to put it all together for people who are listening, Chippendale Rescue Rangers launches in Russia, a website launches to talk about the show. They get really horny for gadget. They start developing that into kind of like a religion. And then it spreads to V-Contact, which is Russia's Facebook. That's the order of Eni. And their view, at least as they stated, is that like the erotic feelings they have for a cartoon mouse are about the sort of quality she represents more than anything else.

Okay. So this group gets real horned up in Russia, right? And they join like the larger social media world, which leads to a lot more activity and engagement in the physical world, which leads to a lot of attention. And Grant, just play the video. What am I watching? So you were watching Russian guys holding Tiki torches, marching at night holding kind of like an or. Orthodox Christian style cutout of gadget hack wrench. This really feels like either a really good bit or a very strange religious ceremony.

Like it's nighttime. There's something monkish. Welcome to the question that we have been wrestling with putting this episode together for you. Whatever. Maybe it's both. Like maybe for some people to joke and maybe for some people it's not. And maybe the joke gives some people a place to exist. Congrats, PJ.

you just unlocked maybe the most coherent description of how culture online works. It is also why I have come back to gadgetism over and over throughout the years, because I think it is in many ways kind of like the original, is this a bit, do people believe this? It's a fascinating, fascinating conundrum. And just to read a couple of the comments underneath that video, one user writes, at least one normal religion has happened not like all the orthodoxy

and Islam oh boy uh I hope they're just kidding it already seems like everyone in this world has gone crazy and I'm 10 years old and then finally such disturbing music I want to shit myself I've never had that feeling when music disturbed me

I've never uh well one time I sat on a bass amplifier and I tuned it to drop C and I played it and I did all my shit myself but that's a different thing Wow. So, yeah, I wanted to hit the brown note. In February 2010, the gadget, the cult of the radiant gadget breaks into English. It finally gets picked up by English blogs. And this is like that moment where there's a bunch of kind of like early travel and culture writers who were just like, weird thing in Japan, weird thing in Russia.

Like this is very early 2010's internet. I think a lot of this has sort of been forgotten. But this is like right around when people are like, the Russians are doing crocodile, which is like heroin combined with gasoline, which by the way, Grant, we should definitely do an episode on it. That would be disturbing to look back on. But it's a moment where the early social media, international cultures are encountering each other, trying to make sense of each other and things that are happening maybe at the fringe in one culture that are either a joke or very like marginal are being encountered by like, say, Americans encountering Russians being like, this is what Russians do. and maybe some Russia do, maybe some don't, but like, it's a, it's a moment of novelty and some misunderstanding. Yeah, and I think most importantly, it's being done by amateurs. It's like being done by like an American expat in Russia.

It's being done by like an American expat in Japan. And then it's happening vice versa. Like it's people who have websites, have early blog rules, and they're just like, maybe my readers back home might find this interesting. And I don't have all the context, but I've got some photos and I've got some descriptions that people told me. So from this article on EnglishRussia.com, it reads, She, meaning gadget, is the divine being, the most untouched and perfect sibling of the great God on Earth, says one of the participants. Why do I love her? It's a stupid question.

How can't I love the goddess? She is strict, cute, optimistic, and her level of technical knowledge is unachievable for a mortal being. Those are just a few of the testimonies of the sex followers. Okay. So this is a photo of one of the followers who has made Gadget out of a circuit board. Oh, wow. And I guess sometimes she does have red hair. Interesting.

I wonder canonically what the reason is for that. For the changing hair. Yeah, why is she constantly changing her hair? Sometimes you like blonde, sometimes you like redhead, Ryan? What's, I mean, they're covering their bases. Well, in Catholicism, you know, like God can be anything and everything. so maybe like gadget can have all hairstyles. This assumes a world in which gadget was created

surgistically as a religious icon by like Disney Corporation. No, no. Well, I'm saying when gadget created herself. Oh, my God. Within the show. Yeah. The Immaculate Gagic conception. The imaginary.

I'm not Googling that one. So, yeah. So obviously, this article goes really viral in terms of like whatever viral was back then and one user who's sharing it writes i'm russian and my english isn't very well i found one pick with gadget in the web a couple days ago on a popular entertainment site with a little article of who she is and her story from that moment i just fell in love with her i look on her and think what would i like to be changed in her i think he means like i don't know okay and understand nothing Oh, what would I want to change? Oh, what would I change in her? I would change her. In nothing.

She's perfect. In our dirty world, in our dirty world, she's the only angel. I absolutely understand the man who started the cult because Gadgett gives us all hope that there is the endless beauty in our world, the ideal girl, which will never meet in reality. I love you, Gadget. And assuming this is not a bit. Yeah. And like, that is hard to do. And it's a question, I think, like, anyone who writes about the internet just has to wrestle with all the time.

There is some interesting similarities here to like what would eventually become like in cell speak. Uh, in a lot of this stuff. And, and I do think that like when we talk about kind of like the radicalization of men online, it's all very serious because like it has to, you have to sort of take it seriously. But because you have to take it so seriously, a lot of the weirder stuff like young men were doing online in the 2000s gets memory hold or not talked about as much. where like they're obsessing over cartoon women that they like and they're like fighting about niche media. Like it is a stepping stone to what becomes later like a massive global social problem. Right. It's like, but you both want to be able to, I don't know, to understand the problem.

Maybe sometimes you have to hold it lightly. And it's funny. Like I hear what you're saying, which is like assuming this person isn't joking, which we'll never know. There is something, some dark foreshadowing in that they're like, everything. is shit, except for this one idealized woman form who doesn't exist. Everything else is shit. You can hear dark and ugly stuff in there. And also, you're like, this person's eroticizing a rodent.

That is funny. Yes. This has like been my major problem with like mainstream coverage of the internet for decades now, which is that like to get a full picture of what's going on, you have to be able to talk about how silly it can be. But like someone, like an extremism researcher on CNN can't be like, well, it all started when a bunch of Russian men got really horny for a cartoon mouse girl. Like you just can't do that. You can't. And yet. And yet you should.

So after the March, which, you know, was kind of like a weird religious ceremony in 2010, you get the holy texts, of course. Like with the start of very many religions, there are two competing doctrines of gadgets. But let's do a little Bible study. So first we're going to read from the book of enlightenment, and then we're going to read from the basics of gadget, the two texts we're discussing. Of course. I'm going to read one passage here for you, which is from book one, chapter three, negative energy flow.

Essentially, a deity is a disembodied consciousness possessing a mind of its own. Moreover, this mind is equal to the sum of the minds of believers, since it is their collective energy that creates and nourishes this structure. If believers wish for war, then the deity will be belittal. In our case, we love Gadget with all of our heart and soul. We believe that she is kind, smart, beautiful, sympathetic, and thus our goddess absorbing all these qualities through our energy appears so. It's funny. It also makes a thing I have another friend who sometimes points out to me.

He's like, you know, maybe there are some downsides to mostly getting rid of organized religion that we did not consider at the time. Where it's like people seem to have a need to worship things. and, you know, obviously, like, the abuses of large or as religions are documented, but then you delete it, the urge to worship remains, and then you have this, which, like, honestly, like, I don't know how many people reading or writing this are joking or not joking, or if the people who aren't joking are getting some kind of spiritual fulfillment. But I guess at the very least you could say it's very strange. Just to summarize, the points you've made today are that Gadgett's hot.

Gadgett was hot and asking for this. Oh, my God. And that you don't like how secular are our society. It's interesting. I sound like the most like strange like cartoon conservative. Like a Disney fundamentalist. Yeah, it's interesting. If you put it all together like that, that's interesting.

Here at the end of my career, I'm having so much fun. I was just about to ask if you're happy. You've come on. Yeah. I always enjoyed my time in panic world. This is a section from the basics book. So it reads, the internet cult gave fans an opportunity to make their feelings for a gadget,

not just an individual fixation, but a directed action with the support of the entire gadgetism. Or in Russian, I guess it's called Geishkoslav Brotherhood. Brotherhood, I think, is really a crucial term there. amidst an atmosphere of brotherly love and understanding. After all, if Gadgett loves her fans, then the fans can spread that love between each other. The foundation for the whole endeavor is love for Gadget,

and the highest form of love, without a doubt, is worship. We're very serious, surgery. My, like, ability to try to thoughtfully process is being tested at this point. I'm just like, this is just very strange. It is strange, yeah. It's strange, but I, after thinking about this for way, way too long,

it's like a deeply logical story where it's like, you start off with like with horniness, then you get fan culture. And that that fan culture convinces itself to become cultish. Yes. This is just the logical conclusion. And because it was like, because it was early internet that people like actually left their houses sometimes,

they try to codify it into actually making it a like a thing with text. I mean, maybe. If we're assuming that this is legit, sure. But I think it is very likely that there's a like PJs sort of had mentioned like that mix of like for some people, they might be taking it super seriously. For a lot of people that might just be doubling and tripling down on irony because it's funny. Like especially like in this time period, that was such a thing to like never break. K-Fab. I would almost say like the biggest difference between the internet of then and the internet of now

is that like back then you didn't ever break character online. That's very interesting, but I'm like, it's so, so many words. Maybe people were way more bored, but they, I could show you some 4chan threads that, yeah, no, I, I'm not going to read from these books because like, There's just no point, but all you know is that there are two different types of gadgetism and they're fighting with each other. It's your typical fandom drama. But don't worry about it. But before we go to our next ad break, PJ, how are you feeling about all of this?

Unsettled? Unsettled. Yeah? Yeah. But not profoundly unsettled. I'm feeling like as a connoisseur of all the strange places the human mind can go. I'm enjoying being in, I would say like it, especially a strange rabbit hole. Our next act is a little darker.

Oh, no. This has been fun. You know, this has been like a fun little rump. Things are going to get a little darker here, yeah. But before we do that, we're going to hear a word from our sponsors. Who do you think the hottest Disney character is right now, PJ? Do you mean hottest most popular or hottest most eroticized? Eroticized.

And not in my view, which Disney character? In your personal view, yeah. I have no view. Uh, another word from Disney plays. Okay, so you've done a bunch of these internet shaggy dog stories before. How do you, how do you think this is going to go bad? How do you think this is all going to go bad? God, I like, I mean, my big, my fear and I almost don't even want to speak it out loud because it's so dark, is that if for you, this is a parable about kind of,

the fun house one of everyone right now not everyone but many people who think about the internet right now are thinking about sort of the problem of men online or like the way I think of it is more

there's not a lot of great models for how to be a man in a socially constructive way on the internet like the people that want to sort of tell you anything often want to steer you in a direction I think is not so good and the worst version of that

is violence. And so there's a, there's a fear of my head. I literally don't want to say out loud that, like, somehow this goes to violence. I'm hoping that when you say dark, you mean something else. Like the Rescue Rangers riots of like St. Petersburg 2009 or something? I'm honestly picturing something worse, but let's say that that's what I'm picturing. Okay. Oh, like a branchedavidian kind of like everyone drink the Kool-Aid kind of heaven's gate thing. Something like that. Yeah. Okay. Well, it doesn't go there, but it's still gross. Well, First, we're going to do a little detour. So in the 2020s, furries love gadget, obviously. Yeah. Everyone loves gadget, but they're not gadgetologists, gadgettists.

So furry's love of gadget is more like either perhaps it's sexualized or just like, we're furies. This is a furry like creature. We're not worshiping gadget, but gadget is a legible kind of figure that would appear in our universe. Yeah. And also like some context is like the early furry communities were very based on existing characters and like drawing characters. and drawing characters to look like existing characters, like people who would dress up like Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny or whatever. I think modern furry culture has moved far beyond that.

I found like a photo album of like a furry meetup from like the 70s and they're just wearing like knockoff like Looney Tunes like suits. I didn't know furries went back to the 70s. That's really surprising to me. It started with like trading comics because like modern comic con culture starts with like comic trade meetups in the 70s and 80s. And that's when you start to see the first early, I mean,

most fandom culture kind of starts that. Is this an offshoot of cosplay? I think they're just like parallel evolutions. Like they're both kind of happening around the same time. I haven't seen anything to say that like one inspired the other. It's just like people are, they're meeting and they're talking in the 70s and age around pop culture. So Gadget has inspired softer furries to this day.

Like it's not all bad. Dean Doddrell is a character we're going to talk about right now. Big Chippendale Rescue Rangers fan, obviously super into gadget. And his main focus, though, Dean's main focus was Foxglove, which was a bat character that appeared in Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers. Okay. And was this sort of like a sexy lady back character? Not my type, but...

Some people... Kind of like a pink voluptuous bat. Okay. I guess you could say. further than the yeah here's a photo of foxglove exactly as described a pink fulptuous bat so this is from the wiki fur entry on foxglove wiki fur being the wikipedia for furies many thought she would be a perfect addition to the rescue rangers even though after the end of the episode she simply disappeared never to be mentioned again on the show entire websites were created they were dedicated to foxglove based on this single appearance much porn is made of her according to wikifur.com can i say a theory about uh the arrasnizabeth of Chippendale's Rescue Rangers. Sure.

I can't prove this, but I suspect that had Chippendale's Rescue Rangers been published just a little bit later in an era where it never disappeared from culture, where it was just like, there's a new show on Disney Plus. It's an animated show. You can watch as a kid. The fervor of the erasization would not have been the same. That some of what seems to be going on here is that people are being offered something. you know, imaginary characters they have a relationship to. And then those characters are disappearing. And it's like the pulling away, the disappearance itself is doing something.

I really like the fact that they're like, this bat was only in one episode, then the bat was gone. Like I think something's going on there. So what you're saying is that at the center of love is longing. I think at the center of desire is longing. I think that if you take something you have an attraction to and you put an obstacle there, it's an amplifier. And I think that when those cold-hearted Disney corporate executives were refusing to syndicate to VHS, they did not understand what fire they were stoking. I think we did not totally understand what it meant to beam images and sort of stories into people's homes and not really think about it. There was no, this bat character, like, appears in one episode.

And the people who made that show have no ability to find out. that people liked it. Yeah. Yeah. What complicated reactions people were having to it. Exactly. Like it's unheard of now to create media and have no feedback from the audience. But back then, there was no way to do that.

Which in some way seems like a blessing. I would almost say yes. Definitely a blessing. So Dean Dodrell gets really obsessed with Foxglove gets really obsessed with Rescue Rangers. And he creates a mouse girl character that looks like gadget, but like with bigger boobs basically. Kind of also looks like a Sonic the Hedgehog character. Kind of like in that world, you can imagine it.

He also works as an animator on the Jazz Jack Rabbit games, which are... Oh, I loved those games, not in a sexual way, in a normal way. Yeah. So this is a selection of Dean Dodgerl's work right here, so you can look at it. It's very sonic. It's very... But also very, like, I find these a little uncomfortable. Like, they feel like, yeah, I find this uncomfortable.

It's like too... It's a little too much. It feels like the... A painting. of like a bodacious woman that a motorcycle guy would have in the 80s on his motorcycle mixed with an animal

that you would see in a Disney thing. Like there's something in my brain that just like goes like, no, no, no for me. Yeah. So he's working on Jazz Jack Rabbit. You've played these games? Yeah, yeah.

They were sort of like Sonic style. I think you played them on a computer, but it was like Sonic or Mario, but it was Jazz Jack Rabbit. It was shareware. So you play the first level for free. I played them a lot, actually. They were epic or Apogee.

But you didn't pay for them? No, no, I was a shareware guy. So you think that we should have a less secular society. You think that women should dress more conservatively unless they're going to get attention from the internet and you don't pay for video games. No, I don't pay creators. That's, you don't pay creators.

Oh, man, okay. I think we've successfully ended your career. So it's time to close out the episode. This guy is going to create another game. where another furry creature is inspired by gadget, we think, which is all to say that some gadget lovers do go on to make fun games that PJ can play at home for free, which is super cool. And honestly, it's just kind of neat to see, like,

how this culture just reverberates across the internet. Like, this is still ongoing. But now we've got to talk about the dark side of this. So in 2022, Chippendale finally goes on Disney Plus, and they also released kind of like that Roger Rabbit-style live-action hybrid movie with Chippendale. Do you remember this? No, no. It's like a Lonely Island movie, essentially.

Oh, wow. With Chippendale. Yeah, here. Here's the trailer. Just want to remind you guys, I'll be at Fancom this afternoon. Hey, watch out. I'm keeping myself fit and, you know, my updated modern look. Don't you think you'd have more fans here if Chip did these events with you?

I hadn't thought about them in a while. I should give them a call. See how life's treating him. Life is the worst. That's so strange. So that is Andy Sandberg. Oh, this is like relatively modern. And John Mullaney.

So this is 2022. So Andy Sandberg and John Mullaney are voicing the Chippendale Rescue Rangers. And it's all about like how they're washed up. And it's like a hybrid live actiony animated movie. Interesting. How did the sort of desire-filled quasi-perotic, humor, religion people, take this. See, that you don't read garbage day.

That's fascinating. I do read Garbage Day. Well, you don't remember an article in Garbage Day from 2022 all about this, titled 4chan CEO is in a spiral, which is great because I didn't remember this either, which I found it. So, as I apparently wrote at the time and have literally no memory of because I was in a gas leak from 2020 until 2024. Same.

Here is the deal. 4chan has a board called CO, which is for comics and cartoons. It's one of the older communities on the site, and I'd estimate about 60% of the content there is about being horny for various cartoon characters, and they go berserk over this movie.

They get so angry. Here is one post. Let me explain. Gadget was a character that represented the sexual awakening of an entire generation, and having her explicitly, portrayed as in right right i remember all this now um so this is uh so okay gadget in the movie is portrayed as being pregnant oh that's complicated well it gets more complicated because they're in this whole thing of like madonna horror with her and there's no way you can guess

specifically though why her being pregnant is so well i mean their whole thing is like the world is a fallen place women will betray you gadget is perfect and the the thing that is kind of messed up i think sometimes in all masculinity internet masculinity some masculinity is this idea that like men should desire women but if women like have desires to come to those desires they are defiled like it's a that's a very old idea and so is that the thing that she's like She's like, for Gadget to be pregnant, Gadget must have had sex, which I don't like thinking about, but not in the way

they might be mad about it. How are they doing? They're great. 42 kids and counting. You see, the movie shows that Gadget was impregnated by the bug character zipper. Okay. Here's one screenshot from a 4-Chance post about this.

He fucked her. He infected her womb with his shit orbiting, hand-rubbing insect seed. And you know what? She loved it. She begged for more. I'm not reading anymore. This is so fucking gross. Did they consider for a second how this would affect her hordes of loyal fans?

Of course not. They have no shame. They pulled the rug out from under us. This is so nuts. Let me explain. Gadget was a character that represented the sexual awakening of an entire generation. And having her explicitly portrayed as being impregnated by a filthy insect that feeds off excrement with its maggot, vermin, abomination offspring is the equivalent of a very racist term in there, spam posting on this website. It is, in fact, Disney's way of imprinting demoralization, cuckoldry porn on an already disenfranchised millennials, and it is truly a nakedly evil.

I will not give a single penny to them and I refuse to watch this learned helplessness conditioning propaganda, shame on Disney. So they're, they have like racist sort of no mixed race couple rage about a cartoon bug having impregnated a cartoon chipmunk? Yeah. Okay. That sounds like the internet. Yeah. That sounds like part of the internet. That is.

And. And. Crazy. Like, sorry. That's like, it's like, it's like, it's like I draw a square on the wall. And I leave you alone in the room long enough that you see you get horny for the square. You start to work at the square. And then 20 years later, I walk in the room and draw a circle.

And you're like, no. Yeah. That's exactly it. I just want to get this on the record. Ryan didn't even read the worst of the internet comments. There's one that I've just been pulling up to people at parties just to watch their face melt from reading it. And I have to live with that forever. because of us.

I hope you get hazard pay. If listeners want to do this to themselves, they can email me and I will send it to them, but we will not be repeating it. PJ, I'll send it to your way. Okay. But wait, but wait, because there's one more piece here. So one user on 4chan rights, it's a green text. So like every line is like a different part of the story here.

So it says Russia is losing the Ukraine border in the last few days because the army is too busy preparing for the Rescue Rangers movie. Ukraine celebrates thinking they've won. Think again. Rescue Rangers movie sucks. Putin blames the Western powers for ruining the wifu of his generals. Russia crashes into the west like a tsunami wave.

WW3 is caused by literal rodent wifus and Disney being hacks. This is so... I want to put this all together. Yeah. Rescue Rangers debuts in the 80s. Yeah. People can't get access to it. They all kind of collectively realize.

that they're horny for this mouse girl. They start talking about her, and they get really obsessed with her. Then the show debuts in Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and they also start getting really horny for her. And suddenly we have an East-West religion manifesting around this cartoon mouse girl. It then continues to grow and spread and kind of evolve and darken in the way that everything on the internet has like evolved and darkened over the last 20 years or so. a corporation which for years, decades, resisted ever leaning into this,

now realizes the power of fandom, but they don't understand it. So they, like, create, like, a postmodern twist on the original IP, thinking that, like, everyone's going to love it. And part of that postmodern twist made by people who have no context for how weird and dark the online community has grown in the years of negligence and isolation, then start effectively a race war. Someone in a room somewhere in California who was doing a script writing job that they were probably mid-level enthusiasm on. I was like, what do we make out you pregnant?

Having no idea the level of toxic rage, they were detonating in a world that has landed in a very strange place. Yeah, and it's like, if you come back to the central question, which is like, is this a bit? Is this not a bit? I would say 70% of it is probably not a bit. That rage did not feel like a bit to me. No, no, no. These guys are having the guy full on racist meltdown, like about a cartoon mouse girl and her bug husband.

Like there's something in the human psyche here that I can't quite articulate, which is that they are having a racist meltdown. And chipmunk's not a race. Like, bug is not a race. It's like so pure that they're just like there's an us and an, other and this feeling of sort of neurotic rage at the it's really like this should be in a laboratory like this should be studied there is something to learn here that is uh deep and strange the the voice actor for zipper is black but i don't think that that i would sort of i would

sort of hesitate to say like i think it is largely like the idea i am sure that part of the way to understand this is like anti-black racism absolutely and now i'm trying to like imagine like what's the right chad that could impregnate gadget without pissing everybody off which is like a horrible train of thought that i'm having in my head like i'm trying to go through the who is the sort of like they wanted it to be chip they they all thought that chip was the only one who deserved her not even dale because i know dale's a beta that dale's like dale is a beta but but yeah i mean that kind of makes sense to me like this idea that they all see themselves as

Chip, they all see themselves like getting gadget and then like a bug gets with her because they've made like this like postmodern update to the show where Chip and Dale are washouts. So like to them it's like the attack on like the Western man. You know, there's days where my mind does not feel like the easiest place to live and there's minds that are much worse places to live. I would agree with that. Yeah. I'm trying to put myself

Like I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a person Who would be having a racist meltdown About two cartoon characters having sex And not even So difficult Like it's not even like The car You would be fine if it was humans

That would be bad as well And I'd be like Okay that's like I've encountered normal racism in the world It exists Sure No people are racist to human cartoon characters all the time That's true

But this is like you're even like it's so crazy it's so like man this world i think it's exactly what you said which is like if you leave someone alone in a room and they just start to like get horny and then worship the thing that's making them horny and then like time goes by and the world catches up and then they like freak out and there's an intergenerational moment right now where like large corporations are realizing the internet's really powerful and they kind of half understand that people on there are talking about things that they own and they're trying to capitalize on it, but they have no context for it. And half the time they don't understand what they're stepping in.

And I'm not sure that like a racist 4chan meltdown about the Rescue Rangers remake is like going to affect their bottom line. But I guarantee you like the actors in it are probably going to get dogpiled. We see this with like Star Wars stuff and things like that all the time. Like so it's not, it is really silly and it's really goofy. And to understand the context takes like an hour of talking it through and it's still kind of confusing, but like there is some utility in understanding this stuff, I think. Yeah, and like I don't know what the answers are. And I think those are things we're investigating.

But, you know, pop culture is like a common dream we have. But it's a dream that we all walk away from with different feelings. Some of them strange. Some of them hateful. Some of them find, some of them funny. And I think it's just a very weird moment where these properties, which have been common dreams for so many years, are now the dream machine is being turned back. on and people are discovering that what they thought it meant might not be what, you know, this guy thinks it meant, but also that the meaning these people have taken away from it is so dark and strange. You know, at some point in the 1980s, somebody decided that the chipmunk lady character

would have a kind of mature female body and maybe they knew what they were doing and maybe they didn't. Oh, she's mature. She looks like an adult. She looks like she's been through puberty. This is what I will say. Like, I think we can recognize. You think girls that go through puberty are mature.

God, I'm never getting out of this live. So according to this, according to this, canonically, Gadget Hack Wrench in the original run is 17 years old. Okay. So below the age of consent also. Yeah, I would say so. So I don't know. It's just like you never, no one who generated this culture could ever have imagined that this is what would happen. And like, I don't know, we can't unplug or reboot the internet, but I wish we could just pause it for a second.

I also think it's really important to point out here that none of this that we've talked about, the levels of insanity that we've gone through today involved an algorithm at any point. No, no one did this. Like human beings did this to themselves and each other. It's not that like TikTok or Twitter or anything like made this happen. This is message versus the internet that's supposed to be that I have to feel nostalgic for. It's an impulse that I've been trying to kill in myself actually for the last year. This idea that like it was one time better if you're in the business we're in,

which is, you know, getting people to subscribe to media. It's very easy to be like, we got to return to the better times. Pay me and I'll tell you about the better times, which were before. And it's like, I don't think they were better. Like, maybe algorithms have accelerated some of this stuff or like opened it up to more mainstream audiences. But if you dig back into any of these stories, like they're, they all end up weird like this. I can't prove it. I still think it was better.

I think that these things existed on the margins and what's happened is like the worst things could amplify. But to your point, I do agree. it wasn't some time where strange or ugly things didn't happen or where some of the ways, like, I think it's totally good that if you're a furry and this is the thing that you enjoy, you can find another furry somewhere else and feel less alone. And it's a bummer that also if you're like, if you're into chipmunk race war, instead of being the only person who has those ideas, you can also connect with like-minded

lunatics and make each other crazier. And I agree that predates the algorithm. And like, we built something that changed society without understanding we were doing it. And now we're here and we have to figure it out. I think that is as coherent of an ending as we could ask for with something like this. I want to thank you for sitting through this and dealing with this. What is your sort of how are you feeling right now? What's your general sort of emotional level?

Where are you at? I've really enjoyed myself. I like learning about things, even things that are dark. And for the, I mean, most of this wasn't that dark until it got racist, which I think is like a real good summation of the internet actually in the last 30 years. The third act of many internet stories. Exactly. And then it got racist. Yeah.

If people want to follow you on the internet, PJ, where can they do that? I would love if people would check out my podcast, which is called search engine. I make it with a team of wonderful, brilliant people. And we try to answer all sorts of questions, including questions for our listeners. So if people have questions that are bothering them, they can. send them to us and we might track it down for them. Thank you very much for coming on the show. This was a blast.

Thank you for having me. It was really fun. Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fielstead is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkes, who edits our video episodes, along with our producer, Devin Moroni, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. de Mezzo is their VP of Brand and Social, Charlotte Robinson,

is their deputy director of brand and social. Marianne Couga is their director of marketing, and Tracy Kaplan is the senior vice president of sales and distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at Tracy at currier newsroom.com. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can.