Panic World - Our favorite middle school conspiracies

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

We’re joined by No Such Thing for a crossover episode to (try to) get to the bottom of some of the most infamous conspiracies we (aka millennials) heard in middle school. We’re talking about the false rumors that Ciara was intersex, Marilyn Manson removed his own rib, and the whole panic around “jenkem” — and explore how these wild rumors even spread without the aid of social media. You can find No Such Thing at https://www.nosuchthing.show/ or anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is sponsored by Uncommon Goods. To get 15% off your next gift, go to https://www.uncommongoods.com/panicworld ! 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. And if you want to see this conversation on video, ⁠Panic World is now posting episodes to YouTube! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So you might notice video viewers that things look a little different today. My name is Shane Gillis. Welcome to the Flagrant Podcast. Finally transitioned into a Manosphere podcast. This is Ryan Broderick. This is Panicroll to show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And joining me today are the guys from the No Such Thing podcast. Welcome to the show, everybody.

Hey. Hey, hello. We're having us. Are you excited to talk about our topic today? Absolutely. Yeah. Our topic is, of course, middle school conspiracy. So the way it's going to work is you guys are going to take it first and then we're going to take it in the back half.

There's a better way to phrase that, but I can't. You got a cup chair in your mind. I just got anyways, yeah, yeah, okay. So let's do this. All right, fellas. We are gathered here today to try and get to the bottom of something that we've been trying to get to the bottom of for a very long time now. Noah, where did you go to middle school? Connecticut.

In Connecticut. Devin, where did you go to middle school? New Jersey. Okay, I went to middle school in Ohio. How about you, Ryan? Massachusetts. Massachusetts. Okay, we all went to Grant.

Oh, I'm going to be acknowledged. You can speak now, Grant. Pennsylvania. Is that an okay answer? Yeah, sure. Okay. And despite the fact that we all went to different middle schools or high schools in different states, I'm willing to bet that we've all heard the same celebrity rumor.

And, you know, we all went to these schools in the early 2000s. And so what was the biggest celebrity rumor at your school, Devin? Well, while you were in. I'm cheating a little bit because this is what the episode is about. It's not a, you know. True question. We know it's a good rumor. We're talking to the listener.

It was that Sierra, the R&B singer, was born at the time, we were saying she was born hermaphrodite, which today we would say intersex. Yes. And she apparently was on Oprah where she revealed this to the world. Does that sound familiar to you guys? I've heard different versions of different celebrities with that thing. Oh, okay.

There was also one for Lady Gaga. Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a couple years later. We would have been in like in high school or college. Yeah. But it's come around a bunch. Yeah. Well, Anderson Cooper did ask her about it like for 60 minutes. Because he was asking her basically, why didn't you just like come out and say this was fake? She was like, why does it matter

if I have a day. Yeah, she was like, why do you give a shit? Yeah. That was cool. It's a good answer, I think. Yeah. But yeah, basically in middle school, the biggest celebrity rumor was that Sierra was either what we were calling back then a hermaphrodite or just a man pretending to be a woman. And I've been personally fascinated by the fact that no matter where you went to middle school in the United States, you heard of this rumor or participated in the spreading of it. And the reason why I'm fascinated is because it was so early.

in social media kind of trajectory or before social media. I think maybe I was on Zanga at the time, but we weren't really talking about, you know, celebrity rumors. And I really wanted to know where this rumor came from and how it was able to spread across the country despite the fact that we weren't really online in the sense that we were today.

Yeah. But before we try to figure out where this rumor came from, it's important to kind of contextualize what was happening when the rumor started. Cool. So I'll just give a very brief recap of Sierra's career and music. She grew up in College Park Atlanta, which if you listen to like any amount of hip hop will be a familiar neighborhood to you because in the early 2000s, they were screaming the name of that neighborhood out in the actual songs.

This is the same neighborhood as ludicrous, same neighborhood as two chains. Young Jock. I don't know what happened to him, but he was great. And in Germain DePri. Oh, sure. Germain DePri, yes. All right, but when Sierra was in high school, she created a girls group called Hearsay with two friends.

And it ended up becoming popular enough that she got a writing deal out of this girls' group. And from that writing deal, she met Jazzy Faye. He's not infamous for him. He's just famous. Yeah. cancel. Jazzy Fay is important because he kind of created a bouncier sound in Atlanta at the time. And so Sierra's like singing talent combined with this kind of innovative sound that felt new and fresh is really what I think propelled the two of them into stardom.

Together they wrote a few demos and one of the demos would become one two step. Oh, sure. Probably Sierra's most famous song. I think so. Which features Missy Elliott, who becomes a frequent collaborator of with Sierra. And also had her own, she also had rumors about her sexual life swirling at the time.

One Two Step is on an album called Goodies. Goodies debuted at number three on the Billboard charts. And it stayed on the Billboard Top 100 for over a year. Just to give you a sense of how. popular Sierra became. I mean, this was the soundtrack of every bar and bat mitzvah I went to in the late 90s or the 2000s. Yeah. It's really kind of music we shouldn't have been listening to at that age, I think. There's some stuff going on in those and those verses that's like, oh, is this for the kids? People are becoming men and women. This is the pastoralism into adulthood.

You need understand. So the album goodies, there's a song on the album also called Goodies, also a very famous Sierra song. And the core of the song it's about everyone who's surrounding Sierra being kind of criminally horny for Sierra.

Who wouldn't be? Yeah, right. And maybe at the time emphasis on the criminal part of criminal horny. I think the song came out with that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, call through us more. I want to say I'm wrong with being

respectfully horny of Sierra. I only say that because I think the song came out when she was 18, but when did, you know, who's to say when she wrote it? Or the experiences she's talking about in the song, when did they take place? I don't know. Hopefully she was of age. Yeah. I mean, either way,

we were younger than 18. What year is this again? Okay, so it would have been like 13. Yeah, I think we're in the theater. If anything, I would be the one by being made horny of Sierra. I'm sorry that happened to you. Thank you. And it's after this song comes out about how, you know, I have these goodies and you're not allowed to have them and I'm not giving them up no matter what you do.

It's around this context, I think, that this rumor starts. And I don't know. I just think the context there is interesting that all these people in the industry, she's singing about, I think, people in the industry who are trying to hook up with her. And I don't know, all of a sudden this rumor comes out. So we did an episode kind of about like the entertainment world rumor mill and like how it's evolved now like the Justin Baldoni stuff and I have to assume that like the new version where they're waging war with like troll accounts and stuff is just a digital version of what was already happening. So like hearing this, which is the first time I've sort of heard this all put together, it wouldn't surprise me if she's writing what is effective like a shady track about like predatory men in the industry and all of a sudden a rumor appears. that she is intersect her hermaphrodite. That feels totally linked to me.

And as of right now, I have no evidence for this. I think it's interesting when, like, exactly what time this rumor started coming out. So, and we looked at, you know, went to classic Google Trends. Typed in Sierra Man to see when these rumors started. So there's basically nothing until December of 2004. And then it starts to go up a little bit. January starts to go up a little bit more, and then by February of 2005, it's when it hits its peak.

Was there any kind of award buzz around goodies? She definitely was nominated for a bunch of the kind of classic awards, Grammys. I'm not sure if she won any yet. I should look that up. Computer. Jamie? Jamie? Because I'm wondering if the peak is because of award season buzz.

Or like I'm wondering Because when we've done sort of similar research Like there usually is like something That you can kind of point to be like Maybe that's what caused it That would be what my thought would be Yeah could be So she was at a party in February of 2005

A Vibe Magazine party And this is the quote that everyone Sort of keeps going back to New York Daily News Ask her about it As far as I can tell this the first time They ask her about it Yeah

That's what Yeah a lot of people ask her directly about this We used to have to be shady in person, not in Reddit. Oh, yeah, yeah. This is face-to-face, though. And I guess we should mention that a big part of the rumor we heard was that she had actually addressed the rumors on the Oprah show. There's a bit, there's a Mandela effect thing happening where all of us thought she had already addressed the rumors on Oprah, which never happened. Exactly.

So Vibe asked her basically what happens. And Sierra's like, you know what's funny? The rumors that I used to be a man. and she said, the funny thing about it is that people are saying I said this on Oprah. I've never been on Oprah. It's going to take me a while to get on Oprah, right? Like I just started my career. Oprah's like a milestone.

I'm not there yet. So I looked into this. You know, you can't just take Sierra's word for this. Has she ever been on Oprah? By this point, she had not. But she was on Regis and Kelly, along with Yalming. Oh, no, wow. And John Goodman.

Good episode. Yeah. Anger episode. I gotta go watch that. Which did air, right? You got the TV guys back in the day. They did air before Oprah's voting party special. So I'm like maybe people were seeing the ads for, you know how they would be like, all right.

Yeah, coming up. Yeah, exactly. I'm imagining Greta's film and introducing. Now my favorite song, goodies. At 8 a.m. So I actually just Googled this because I was curious if people were confusing it with another Oprah episode. And she did do an intersex episode. in 2007.

Well, she did actually in 2004 do a segment in August about trans children. Yeah, okay. Whoa. None of the kids' names were Sierra. Okay. I did go through and be like, all right, maybe is there some confusion here. But yeah, she did do it again in 2007. I don't know that in 2004 they were calling them trans.

They were saying like gender identity issues. I'm sure that episode has aged great. I'm sure it's fine. We would all think that. It's totally fine and there's no reason to think about it anymore. She did a great job. Just like when she interviewed Nazis. Exactly.

I feel like Oprah is the classic. Like if there's a rumor, you say that you heard it on Oprah. Growing up, there was another rumor that Tommy Hilfiger was on Oprah. And he told Oprah, I don't like black people wearing my clothes. I remember this. I remember this. My mom, like I said, I was talking to my mom about this episode. And she was like, oh, yeah.

I remember I literally stopped buying Tommy Hill figure for like a year or two. There was a boycott. Yeah, because we all heard that he was like, I don't like black people wearing my clothes. And it just never happened? No. What? He was never on the show at all. Okay, I'm so fascinated because, like, clearly there is some sort of way that these things are spreading.

Because I definitely vividly remember up until just a second ago, I thought that that happened. No. So, like, how? Because it wouldn't have been the internet. No. I'm so fascinated with how that would spread. How were we, because it wasn't like we saw something online and we were like, hey, I saw on a

Reddit thread, you know, Tommy Hilfiger saying he doesn't like black and he's no. There's no reports of him ever saying that in any kind of context? No. I would be crazy he said it on op. Right, yeah, pretty amazing. To Oprah. Yeah, that would be, take off my clothes. The 90s were wild,

but I don't know if that, yeah. How would that have happened? I remember really solemnly, like I thought was the woken kid in the world going up to my friend in middle school and being like, I'm really sorry about Tommy Hill fiction. I'm just like, I know you love that shirt. Yeah, and he's like, I feel really seen right now. I can't believe I can't wear this anymore.

So Snopes actually debunk this in February of 2005, Sierra, the Sierra rumor. Their best guess as to why people think this is happening is because there's a random Irish woman named Sierra who had a blog about her transition. Oh. And they're saying if you Google Sierra at this time, this is one of the first things that pops up. So people are saying maybe that's the case, right? So that's February, but in March, it's still circulating.

We got the Herald News, New Jersey paper. Okay. There's an 18-year-old Charles. They're asking him, Charles, what's the craziest news story you heard recently? says that Sierra is a man. They printed this. That's a good column. It's when it was like,

get to know your neighbor's segments. And that's Charles's fun, you know, news story. So we get our first sort of inkling here of maybe where this is coming from.

So in March of 2005, there's this chain letter that's going around. Remember chain letters? Yeah, of course. They're very important. On email. Yeah, on email. Yeah. And it's a fake article from all hip hop.

And the gist of the article is that Sierra goes on not Oprah, but 106 in Park. Okay. And she says, I am gay. And then I'll read what it just says because it's just crazy. Sierra's coming out as a lesbian would have been difficult on its own. But also having to admit that she is really a he on national television was caused for celebration amongst the gay. and lesbian community. No major pop star singer has ever come out as a transvestite to viewers

explicitly after already releasing an album. So I'm going to ignore like all of the terms that they're using there because it's a mess. But it is fascinating to me that that is written as like an inspirational thing. Yeah. It's basically what I could. Yeah. Someone made this up or misunderstood this. I'm imagining that this was probably shared like within.

like a black gay email community. Yeah. That would be my guess. Yeah. I got a treasure trove that somebody sent me of like old chain letters that I've been looking at over the last few months. And it's really fascinating. They are very similar to what you would see on Facebook now. Like they are written specifically for a group, like either a list serve or like people who

know each other. So it's interesting to me that like that rumor is being shared positively within some sort of in group. That's cause for celebration. Yeah. Like it's not like they're not being mean about. I mean, they're completely confused on what's happening in every possible way. But it is interesting that it's like inspirational as a framing.

So then that's, you know, beginning of March, sort of mid-March, Sierra goes on one and six in Park. And this is the first time we have her. Yeah, for real this time. Yeah, for real this time. In 2005, right? That, this is sad to admit. If you missed a TV program airing, you couldn't just go back and look at it. Grant, we have an entire episode about this.

Can we? That is the entirety of our gadget episode. What was? The one you wrote the outline. That's the point that you put in there. We have an entire episode about how the fact that you couldn't rewatch rescue rangers made everyone insane. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The only way that I can process the horrible nihilistic show we create is that I write the episode and then I completely erase it from it. Well, yeah, we have an entire episode about this. We do a whole clear-to-air session. Yeah. So if there are any rumors, anything, anything, going on with Sierra which there are all on the internet and all that are the mess clear the air right now let the people know what's going oh my goodness there's so many

crazy you know I gotta say none of them bother me but I'll just do it just to do it because whatever there's one thing about me being a man or something like that before I was something when I was born I got a change right amaphrodite or something like that they said that I went on over and did and I'm like okay come on now you know if I was on over like I mean it takes a while before that happens so somebody going to You know what I mean? Like, that's really big.

I just had a visceral memory of learning about this as a teenager. I just like something about that just like triggered a moment where I'm like in my living room watching her music video. There's no PC way to say this. Like trying to see if I could tell. Yeah, yeah. Like trying to clock her essentially. And I completely had forgotten that.

Wow, that's wild. I remember being like 12 or 13 or whatever watching one. I watched one at Sixth and Park religiously. back then. Yeah. And being like, damn, all my friends lied to me. I do think it's funny, the music they were playing underneath this segment, like court case.

Yeah, we're going to figure this out once and for all. Put her on a stand. That wasn't the end of it, of course. July 2005, Entertainment Weekly is doing a write-up. And they kind of start the article talking about, hey, the singer, the story goes, was born, intersexual, and stay with us here, recently out of herself as a lesbian. hermathodyte on Oprah.

And it's, you know, basically her giving the line of like, no, that's not true. Then a year later, so November of 2006, and a slam magazine article about Kingdom Come, the not great JZ album. Oh, sure. There's a review. And out of nowhere, the writer goes, and trust me, writing that last sentence hurt me just as much as when I heard that Sierra was allegedly a hermathodite. Thank God she is.

This is, you know, November of 2006, and then December 2006 AP is doing a profile of her and they're still talking about it. Associated Press. Yeah. The Associated Press in December of 2006. What they said. Yeah. She just wants to have fun, she said, and that includes ignoring wild rumors that began circulating when she first made a name for herself. People were saying that she was dating Missy Elliott, who wrapped on Sierra's number one hit.

That I remember. I remember rumors that, like, Missy Elliott was grooming Sierra. Yes. I remember that. Which was weird because they were saying, okay, Sierra is a man. Missy Elliott is a lesbian, but Missy Elliott is dating Sierra. Right. So things aren't adding up one way.

Everyone's very confused. Yes. Isn't it the case that Missy Elliott, I think we all had our, like we could kind of see it, but she didn't really come out until pretty recently. Yeah, similar to the, well, I feel like it's her and, Queen Latifah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Were similarly, like, people who knew them knew. Yeah. But they public. I don't think they were ever, yeah. Man, it would be so much cooler to be dating Missy Elliott than Russell Wilson. True. Yeah. He just got benched for.

Or future, which is, so basically, by 2006, like, social interest for us was pretty down. And it didn't really pick up until 2015. Oh. Which was when rumors started going around that Sierra. in future we're expecting a kid. Which makes sense why people would be like searching it. Wait a second, sure. There was a moment, I think in 2006 or seven, where she released a song called Like a Boy.

Yes. I remember thinking, oh, she's kind of poking fun at, but it's really about like privilege, I think. I think so. This comes up in one of these articles where, you know, they're making all these innuendos about how people think she's a man. It's pretty crazy. you. Yeah, that was it. That was it. That's kind of the trajectory of is Sierra really a man. And like Ryan said before, like this has come up with Lady Gaga. Megan Fox. Megan Fox. Yeah. It's like any sort

of like sex symbol. The Megan Fox one. Wow. Pop star. This like comes up. There seems to be some sort of connection between like a sex symbol who starts to figure how to translate that into power and influence. Yes. Like Lady Gaga in particular like the claims that she was intersect. or trans appeared like right as she is starting to kind of do whatever she wants. And that's why like I tend to think there's some sort of like industry rumor mill that that comes out to like knock them down a peg when they start to like break off. And that would sort of make sense here too. Like she's blowing up and now she's like writing songs about how like, you know, she's going

to do her own thing or whatever and she's having a successful album and then those rumors appear. Like that doesn't seem like an accident to me. And it makes sense that they go to the, you know, the intersex or trans thing, right? Because it's that always like, oh, you were really into this person. And now, like, something that, like, you know, something is happening that you didn't know what's happening. You've been fooled. You've been tricked. So, like, goes at this, like, insecurity that people have about, like, oh, no, I thought it was straight.

But now I'm into this person who you're telling me is not. She's not into me. She must be trans. Exactly. I mean, it's also just super hard to prove. In fact, like, we should mention, like, literally right now, Candace Owens is being sued by the president and his wife of France. And the First Lady of France has actually proving that she is not trans medically.

So, like, that's how pervasive these sort of things come up, I think. Yeah. I do remember now the bullying that would ensue if you were, like, a middle schooler who said, like, you thought Sierra was hot? Yes. And then there's, remember. It was, like, so tied into. the homophobia of like being a middle school boy.

For the record, trans or not, Ciari is hot. It doesn't matter. Yeah. She is very, very hot. Even today. Have you guys seen that stupid Andrew Tate clip where he's like talking about how he'd rather have sex with, like, Megan Fox as a man versus like, wait.

It was, it's like accidentally. You watch Andrew Tate. Yeah. Explain it for it. I remember Andrew Tave. videos, I don't remember our show. Yeah, yeah. It was like, would you rather sleep with a trans woman that's a 10 or a biological woman

that's a one? Yeah. And then it was, this is so dumb that it is seared on my memory. And then he's like, you're talking about some like Hulk Hogan looking woman or some Megan Fox looking. He's actually like ridiculing his followers for choosing. The one that's a biological word, you know, really insane.

Very normal stuff. Yeah. Lots of normal stuff. That is that that is the most, uh, you are only talking to middle schoolers. Yeah. Oh yeah. Like the, that is,

it, I think I remember that specifically because it was insightful into understanding that, like, that is the bullying tactics you use at 13. And by 15, you're like, that's pretty stupid. Yeah. I will say that, um,

Not to bring this down, but we do a lot of opining in modern society about the state of journalism. Mm-hmm. But then you review old journalism and the AP asking questions like this. You're like, seems like we weren't very good at it. Yeah. Journalism has always been bad. And during the pandemic, I was actually curious. I was like, who was the first American journalist?

And the best I could tell, it was a guy who used to write a newsletter libeling famous people in Europe. And he was kicked out of Europe and he went to the UK. where he continued to libel famous people. So they kicked him out of there and he went to Boston. And then he continued to just libel famous people. And he was considered to have like the first journalistic institution in America. And I think that's beautiful. It's like a really beautiful tradition that we should get back to that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean like we haven't stopped. And like in the mid 2000s also there was this really weird like I want to call it like a post 9-11 horniness that just like was just nasty. A friend of mine's been antagonizing me with Bloodhound gang, live footage that he keeps texting me and it's the nastiest shit I've ever seen in my life. There's just like this dark gang.

Like the rap group, You and me, baby, ain't nothing but ma'am, so let's do it. Oh, yes. I know that one. And he sends me live videos and they're performing and it's disgusting. There's just like this ugly horniness that happened for some reason.

I don't know what it was. American's hero, Jimmy Kimmel with The Man Show, sort of shit. The man show is insane to watch. Yeah. And now women jumping on trampolines. It's like the toss to commercial sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that decade was nasty. All right, we're going to take a little break, and then we're going to hear about Ryan's favorite middle school conspiracy. Okay. You guys remember the first time you ever heard about, like, drugs, like, dare programs? Oh, yeah. I still have my dear shirt from. I do too at my parents' house.

Yeah. Oh, nice. Okay. I also remember sort of like watching like a dare presentation being like, should you just be telling us like how drugs were to get them? But it's around this time, I think, that I first heard of what I've considered like the funniest, stupidest middle school rumor. I think it's endlessly funny. Have you guys ever heard of Jencom? Yes. I don't think so.

No, vaguely. The word sounds familiar, but I'm not placing it. Not the jeans. No. That's Jinkgo. So, Jencom, I'm going to describe it to you, and hopefully you don't throw up. But there was a rumor in the late 90s, I want to say, mid to late 90s or the 2000s, that you could get high by pooping and peeing in a bottle and then huffing it. And it became a massive moral panic for local news stations across the country. And it was called Jenkham. And I remember hearing about it, the idea of like two kids were found getting high on Jenkim by the river or whatever.

And so we're going to be talking about the Jencom panic of the late 90s. And my producer Grant, who's over there in his little cuck chair, is going to show you a news clip all about Jencom. What are you guys laughing about Ryan says that every episode? I'm immune now. One Florida Sheriff's Department warns there's a new way for your kids to get high. And as Fox City's Jack Miller reports, they're using raw sewage. The bulletin describes Jankum as gas produced by raw sewage that's allowed to ferment.

When we mentioned this new concoction to people on the street here in Jackson, not only had they never heard of it before, but they said they didn't want to get anywhere near it. It sounds horrible. Yeah, I couldn't imagine doing something like that. Honestly, they need to find something better to do with their life. Sounds pretty sick to me. Not anything you would ever consider?

Never. Pause it. That guy looks like the exact kind of guy that was going to do. And the fact that he's like, I don't want to touch it means it's not real. That's how you know. Because that guy is like... He sells general. That guy looks like a bath salt.

guy and he's like I don't want to touch jenka there's a glen in his eye that makes you think he's like yeah yeah I would never do that yeah that's awesome so what are your what are your thoughts well your first reaction isn't jenkem essentially how the ninja turtles are created in the suet like the fumes from human from place that's disgusting I don't think I've ever heard of this no so you two haven't you yeah what's the context you heard it in I don't think it permeated to the news where I was. I think I just heard it from some other kid. It must have been something like that. What I'm curious about is, was it a thing happening? Are we talking about a trend here? Or like, it's a rumor of something that actually wasn't happening. Well, we're going to get into that.

But I would first sort of classify along with like all the other like get high on your own stories, like smoking banana peels or they have a highlighter. Highlighter. Yeah, exactly. So let's let's run through it here. So I got it right here. So 1995, according to Snopes, it's the first documentation of Jenkham comes from an international newswire service in Luxaca, Zambia. And it reads, human excrement is scooped up from the edges of the sewer ponds in old cans and containers, which are covered with a polyurethane bag and left to stew or ferment for a week. The contents are then inhaled, and the result is a lung full of biogasses and a powerful hit. Jencom Huffers bury their entire face in the ghastly mask gasping it all in. Oh my God.

And so we had talked earlier in the first half about how like one of the most interesting things about like the late 90s and the 2000s is the move to being able to see all of the news for the first time. Like the news went from like a thing you saw on your TV local affiliates or local newspaper. And then maybe you'd have a national newspaper. But online all of a sudden these articles are being uploaded. You saw the old screenshot of the Washington Post there. Is that really what it used to look like? Yeah, dude. Yeah, these things looked ugly as hell.

And you were also seeing the rise of websites like the Drudge Report, which launches like in the mid to late 90s, who are now aggregating this stuff. Because it's like no one kind of thought about it. It was an afterthought. So do you guys know about Arawid.org? No. I love Aeroid.org. It's essentially the Wikipedia of drugs. And it has a whole section called Trip Reports where people like take drugs and then write out like insane stories.

Okay. It's a lot of people robo-tripping in the bathrooms of Taco Bells across the country. And so they look into it and they say it's not going to get you high. They say, we have no knowledge about the accuracy of these reports, but it's certainly possible the kids in Zambia thought it would be funny to make up a story for adult aid workers that they were inhaling sewer gas to get high, which I think is very possible. By the late 90s, the story is stuck around long enough to make it to the New York Times and the BBC.

So the BBC writes, Jencom is cheap, potent, and very popular among the thousands of street children in Lutsaka. When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to steal petrol, these youngsters turn to Jenkim as a way of getting high. It lasts about an hour, says one user, 16-year-old Luke, who prefers Jencom to other substances with glue. I just hear voices in my head. But with Jenkim, I see visions. I see my mother who is dead, and I forget about the problems in my life. And so this was the picture that the BBC.

thought was chill to put on this article. So I think there's a couple things. One, I do believe that Arrowwood users are absolute freaks enough to have tested it. Like, they will test anything. I also think it's possible that there were nine or ten translation issues happening here. Okay. I also think that the BBC, especially in the late 90s, was looking for poverty porn. And there's like an entire genre of this.

I think that there's also, like, like a thread that takes this all the way to Crocodile. Do you remember that? No. Oh, yeah. So Crocodile was a drug that was purportedly being used by Russians in the late 2000s where they would mix gasoline and heroin and their skin would fall off. Oh, my God.

And so we've talked about this on the episode that Grant doesn't remember about gadget, which is that like not only in the late 90s and 2000s where people suddenly being able to see the news for the first time, they. were creating blogs to write poorly about the rest of the world. Oh, yeah. So you had like, I loveafrica.com or whatever, and it's some white guy who has no idea he's talking about and he's like blogging about his time as an aid worker there. Or I love Russia.com and it's weird crazy Russian stories.

So that's sort of the environment that this is taking place in. Do you guys remember anything even similar to this in your early days on the internet? Like weird news stories that would sort of fly by or weird blogs like writing about this kind of thing? Well, I remember, like, the Marilyn Manson rumor that he, like, removed his rib cage so that he could go down on himself. That was the big one in my middle school. Yeah, that was huge. But in terms of, like, these kind of, like, kind of fleeting, maybe drug-related, not a whole ton. I guess, like, with Jankham, even though I'm sure it's made up to some degree, it does feel believable, I guess, because of the cost-effectiveness.

I suppose. Like, it is free, I suppose. You just need a model. Yeah. And if it's getting you, if it's supposedly getting you a better high, then... You can see visions.

Yeah. You can see your dead mom in a vision at this one, but glue you only hear stuff. You can just totally imagine the most pretentious, annoying American aid worker being like, please tell me your story. Some 19 year old fucker who is like,

it's like, I'm going to write a book about you totally. And they're like, yeah. And like the mom's in the other room. room. Yeah, yeah. What were you doing out there? So I looked into this for the first time a couple years ago, 2015.

I was on a podcast. I used to run with my friend Katie called Internet Explorer. We looked into it. And we basically found that it was completely fake. And largely a way to troll local police and local media. And Grant is going to show you an image. that looks gross. Oh my God.

It looks like a little boy sticking a straw into a bottle full of poop and pee. Which, aren't you supposed to huff it? Why is he... Why is there a straw? But if you didn't know that, and you just saw this image,

you'd be like, was there a glass bottle of you? Who? Yes. Now, okay, so this is a young man who went by Pickwick on the message board, totesy.com. And he posted these photos

of what appeared to be him huffing balloons full of poop and pee and bottles it was straws and stuff and he wrote okay today I set it up and put the bottle in the hot sun my friend took pictures of all the steps first I shit in the bottle

then I pissed in it I took a balloon and I stretched it over the top to catch all the gases now I'll wait a few days and hope the balloon fills up then he posts again well today I finally did it I probably became the first person in America

to huff his own shit gas you think continues. After breathing in, I immediately felt that I was passing out. I did not even have time to spit before I became unconscious. When I woke up, my spittle had oozed out of my mouth down my chin. I asked my friend how long I was out for. He said about a minute and that he had repeatedly tried to wake me up, but I would not wake up. After I was fully into the dreamlike state, visual hallucinations began to start. I had fleeting visions of people who seemed completely random like my second grade teacher. At the peak of my trip, I saw things like pillars of my lung that disappeared into shapes. And, Like, obviously he's making this up to see if you can get people to huff their own shit. Yeah. Like, I think that is the way to think about this. What do you think happens next in this story? After, now we have message board users trying to convince each other to do this.

What do you think happens next? Oh, man. I imagine, like, a sizable amount of people try it and don't get high and realize they've been had. Someone has to get sick from actually trying it. So we don't have a ton of data on that. But what we do have is how it spreads to 4chan next. And the idea is to send letters to your principal, to get your principal to hire a dare officer to then tell the kids at your school about Jenks. Oh, my God.

And so we have a massive wall of text here. I'm going to read some of it here. So you're supposed to email this to your school principal. Okay. So you're supposed to email it says step one, email this to your principal. Step two, question mark, question mark, question mark. Step three, profit. And what you're supposed to write is,

I am writing anonymously because I do not want my child to get in any trouble, but I need to alert you to something your students are doing that is potentially very dangerous. Yesterday afternoon, I came home early to find my son and his friends getting high on something called Jenkim, which they say they heard about at school. This Jenkim is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard of, and then I'm not going to describe how they describe how to do it. And can you guess what happens once people start doing this? Oh, the school is definitely.

took debate. Computer? Yes. This is from the Collier County Sheriff's Office Criminal Intelligence Bureau. And it is a drug bulletin about a new drug called Jencom. Oh, they've got the image of the kid. That's right. Good for him.

And this is actually very similar to a couple bulletins we found passing around Mexico. Do you remember the Momo Challenge? Momo Challenge. It was like a disgusting statue that if you looked at it, it would like curse you on the internet. So it became like a huge. mass panic that children were committing suicide after seeing this statue of this evil chicken woman. And Mexican police were creating bulletins like that and passing them around as well.

So like this is how far back this idea goes. And then of course, the Washington Post, they write about it, they fall for it, they take down the post. Oh. Fox News falls for it. And they write, we wouldn't classify it as a drug so much because it's feces and urine. Says Garrison County as spokesman for the drug enforcement. enforcement administration in Washington, you pretty much at the bottom of the barrel in your

experience of the face. Which fair. Yeah. And eventually Pickwick, the guy who does the pictures of him huffing the bottle, he admits that it's all fake and that what you've been looking at, don't worry, is a mixture of Nutella, water, flour, and beer. And he wrote, I never inhaled any poop gas and got high off it. I have deleted the pictures.

Hopefully no weirdos saved them on his computer. Yeah. We did. Yeah. I just don't want people to ever recognize me as the kid who have poop gas. Well, sorry, bud. Yeah. So is this him feeling like some level of guilt that all of these places picked it up?

I thought that was kind of the goal. I think it's a couple things. One, I think we are at a really pivotal moment in the late 90s 2000s where the internet is just getting big and no one really understands how big it's getting. And you have early message boards that are beginning to network with larger. message boards. 4chan comes around in like 2003, 2004. So all of that stuff is starting. The media is probably doing a thing.

I'm trying to think back to my time in that period, like in J-School and I'm learning about it. And I believe what it was was like, you had a newsroom. They'd write their stories and then they would just upload them online and forget about it. So they're all of a sudden getting viral traffic for the first time. And they're like the first big viral New York Times piece. I forget it what it was.

I looked it up years ago. I think happens in like 2009 when like they're like, whoa, this is like a big thing of traffic. So all of these stories are being passed around, no one's really paying attention. And these worlds are colliding. And I think if I had to imagine, this pickwick kid was like, uh-oh. You know, if his picture is showing up in like a bulletin for like local law enforcement. Who's like a whole other thing here? Like local law enforcement have been using the internet in weird ways for 20, 30 years that no one really still to this day pays attention to.

I think all these horses are just combining in ways where, like, people just weren't prepared for how viral it could go. I think that the kid had a moment of being like, if I have to be, like, meeting for, like, the college interviews. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you explain this moment? Like, that thought clicked in. Yeah. And I honestly think that, like, he was just ahead of his time because if he was like, yeah, I went viral, well, I am, you are lucky to have me as part of your, like, media studies program now.

Yeah, there's a way he could have spot it. I mean, he'd be a YouTube star today. Oh, yeah. for sure. It's interesting too how the Sheriff's Department handled this I mean I on one hand I wonder what is their responsibility but on the other hand it's like they didn't seem to

do any kind of an investigation to see whether it was real or not before they put out this they're trying to get ahead of it. Yeah I think that's all the sort of like kid panics stuff like they just react first and then try to I guess they know I don't even know if they ever try to like figure out if it's real

well like Ryan have you looked into like did you ever cover the Tidepods thing we did That seems like the more modern corollary, and I'm curious how that compares. What we found was that the majority of tied pods being smoked or huffed or eaten or whatever were either from trolls or darker. Like there was a string of old people with dementia thinking they were candy. And it was one of those things where it bubbled up out of consumer reports and sort of took on a life of its own. and no one really knew how to deal with it. A similar trajectory would be NyQuil chicken,

like the idea of the TikTok users are boiling chicken and NyQuil, which I did do eventually, by the way. It smells horrible, don't do it. You can find that on our Patreon. You can find that on our Patreon. It's like the institutions don't know how to address the rumor without amplifying it.

Yeah, yeah. And so, like, one, because, you know, with journalists, like, if local law enforcement have a press conference and, like, teenagers are huffing their own shit, the journalist is like, well, police today, or the teenager huffing their own shit. And nowhere in that in that interaction is anyone going, well, are they huffing their own shit? Yeah.

And like that is kind of the story of almost all of American media. Yeah. Like we're in a kind of more serious twist on this. Like this is playing out right now with like ice raids and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Like local law enforcement will say something or law enforcement agency or a government agency will say something. And journalists will just write down that they said it.

Yeah. And by the time that travels, there might be another journalist in the background going, well, is this real? Is this right? And people have already moved on. And like it can happen for silly stuff and it can happen for serious stuff. I was listening to your guys' bonus episode about weapons and Eddington. And you were talking a little bit about this kind of phenomenon where in weapons, the police department doesn't know how to investigate Julia's character without riling up the whole town

because that's what they want the police department to do. And so, yeah, like you were saying, there's kind of no way to do it without just spreading the thing. even further. Well, in this case, it would be to go, I received an anonymous letter. Right. Of a, I remember being a teenager and thinking poop and pee is funny. Yeah. Maybe this is bullshit.

Yeah. Would be a vital first step. But it's also kind of like a new, it's a uniquely American problem. Like, there are obviously like all kinds of mass panics and moral panics in different countries, but the, the sort of unique way our free press interacts with our fairly open law enforcement investigations. Like in a lot of countries, like, I was reported in the UK for a while, and, like, there's a rule where, like, the minute charges get dropped down, you cannot report on it

or you'll go to jail until, like, the trial starts. And they have very strict rules because they would be considered, like, tampering with a jury or something or the judging or whatever. And here, we kind of have this, like, legal media circus that just exists. Yeah. And it can happen for really silly stuff and really serious stuff. And it's existed for decades, if not, you know, a century now. And so, yeah, it makes it very hard, as you said, for any institution to, like, investigate something without it creating a larger media circus.

Yeah. I thought about this with the ice rate stuff where they're making now these, like, crazy social media, like videos that are like, it's like a movie. Oh, yeah. And they're showing people's faces. And I'm like, okay, we don't know what these people have done at all. And now you're in some, like, hype real for ice. Right. And it's like, you just took me out of my home.

It's like, what if there are no. charges on this person. It's like it's already too far gone. Yeah, you're already. Well, I think that's the evolution of a story like Jankham, which is like, like now the institutions have direct access to information channels. So like before it would be your sheriff comes out and he's like, children are huffing poop and pee. And then the journalist writes it down and it goes in the newspaper and people read it. But as we looked into more panics in the 2010's, Tidepods, for instance, you'll just start to see. local fentanyl is a great example of this where the law enforcement just have a Facebook page.

Yeah. And they just post on the Facebook page, like, people are dying from, like, touching fentanyl. Yeah. And there's no journalist involved there. And the final evolution of that would be the DHS doing like sizzle reels for ice raids where they don't need any media coverage. They can just transmit it directly. And that is a really weird world to live in. Because it wasn't that this one was good.

I mean, the old world produced Jencom, but the new world, God knows what's happening. Yeah. You know, but after the break, we're going to be talking about something that's already popped up today, which is Marilyn Manson trying to suck his own dick. I can't wait. Which was the big rumor, probably the biggest rumor of my Millsville. But we're going to talk about that right after a word from our sponsors who are probably furious. Our sponsors, an empty Poland spring bottle. Fill it with whatever you like.

So you guys had been wondering about the Maryland Manson rumor. And we did a little digging into where this came from. And according to Hysteria Mag, the rumor began on the 27th of November in 1994, which is actually kind of wild that like it has an exact date. Yeah. Marilyn Manson was arrested after a show for violating the adult entertainment code. And police arrested him after being under the impression that Manzan had performed oral sex on a man while performing on stage. But as it turns out, he wasn't.

Rather, it was jack off Jill vocalist Jessica, who was apparently wearing a prosthetic penis at the gig with Manson simulating oral sex on the appendage. He was held for 16 hours and then released without charge. I think the double confusion of that spread and turned into him sucking himself off. And then it was how would he suck himself off? It was he got two ribs. Yeah. Fair enough.

So people were trying to rationalize what they heard. Exactly. But you guys had asked us if there was anything similar. And so we have a TikTok of a. of a much more modern rumor, one that I want to be on the record saying, I believe, wholeheartedly. My new favorite stupid conspiracy theory

is that Liz Truss, the new prime minister of the UK, is secretly a collared submissive. Basically, Truss wears the same necklace in a lot of, if not most of, her public appearances. And that design, the ring attached to a chain, is very similar to the design of a lot of day collars.

Okay. So just to sort of combine everything we've talked about today, I do think, so we live in a time of, like, peak rumors, peak conspiracies. There's so many, it's hard to, like, pay attention. But I do think the Liz Trust one is very similar to the Marilyn Manson one, similar even to the Jencom one and the Sierra one, which is that they all, the really pernicious ones all seem to kind of touch on the idea, of revealing someone being part of a subculture, something that we, a part of society that we don't pay attention to, whether it's drug users or it's S&M people or it's trans people or gay people.

It's people who are considered like outside of the mainstream. And like the really successful rumors seem to work when you claim that someone well known is actually part of that. And I think the kind of fear of the other required there, that said, I do believe that Liz Trust is where, wearing an S&M chain. And I do believe that she wore it in her last meeting with the queen right before the queen died. I will believe that till I die. She had a high power job.

You know, you gotta find some way to relieve stress. I think it's the truth of most politicians. Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But yeah, I do think that like really successful rumors, particularly about public figures all involved that like, this person is secretly a communist or they're secretly a gay, or secretly a lesbian, you know, secretly trans,

and they're secretly an S&M freak. Like there's always that because there's something like tantalizing and it's hard to prove. It's hard to prove and it's hard to disprove on the other person. They can't they can say no and you just don't believe them. It's funny you should mention we actually spoke to an expert or Noah spoke to an expert about rumors and why we attached to rumors, especially celebrity rumors, what we get out of them. And I mean that makes a ton of sense. Yeah, that aligned a lot.

Her name's Charlotte DeBalker. She's in Belgium. And she's saying, yeah, a lot of the, basically the point of a lot of rumors or why we gravitate is like, there's like reputational stuff. So this is like a way to take people down a peg, basically. And a lot of it's like survival.

So it's like, you learn like, okay, do this. Like don't do this drug. It's going to kill you or do this thing. And this is kind of how you can survive. And then you build a community just based on talking about these other people. Interesting.

But yeah, a lot of it is kind of this othering sort of thing where it's like reputational. You're figuring it out. And then there's just like the parisocial element, which has only gotten more increased with time where it's like we become so attached to these people and it's all we're talking about you know Britney Spears

or Sierra or whoever and it's obviously one-sided and then it's then of course just the way they spread it's like Sierra even answering dignifying these questions with like a well no of course not only just feeds the fire and that that I think has even gotten worse in more recent times you know it's interesting to me how like if you look at it on a timeline like the 90s are really bad for this stuff.

And the 2000s still pretty bad, but like it's changing. And then it does kind of feel like between like 2010 and like August 2014, start of Gamer Gate, there's a kind of a moment where it actually feels like things are getting better. Like information is kind of flowing at a speed where we can like say that's fake. That's not fake. Like media organizations are interested in debunking stuff. Debunking doesn't feel tied to a culture war thing yet. Yeah.

And then it flips and it gets progressively worse. And then after COVID, it feels like we are basically back in the 90s again. Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with like ephemorality. Like TikTok feels as ephemeral as 90s TV to me where you will see a TikTok and you'll pass you by and you won't think about it. And then you'll just like be repeating some insane thing you heard. Yeah. And you won't be able to find it.

Yeah. You're not referencing it directly. So it's like you're changing little things. It's yeah. Like I even find myself because I use X still. Twitter because it's like you can see all the bad people on there and so it's great for my job. But I have found myself like accidentally absorbing through osmosis, random stuff I'm seeing and then like saying it out loud to someone, they're being like, what are you talking about?

I was about to say the being able to buy a checkmark. I think also was a major contributor to. Oh yeah. Yeah. A bunch of random information being legit in line. Fake Ian rap reports. You know, always. Yeah.

Yeah. There's definitely something about like not being able to. like catch stuff passing you by. Like, because like a rumor is effectively like someone just told you this thing and then it's in your head and you repeat it without really thinking. And like the internet has sort of become that now. Like it is just this rumor factory. Which I do think to tie back to the thing at the top, like is being weaponized by, you know,

people in the entertainment industry who know that they can make Reddit accounts and they can make Instagram accounts and, you know, flood the zone that way. I guess in conclusion everything is awesome. I mean, fine. She seems like we're on a good track. She's love and believe your neighbor. Siara was not a man, although even if she was born man, still beautiful. Jankham.

She can do better than Russell Wilson. She can do better than Russell Wilson. Jankham, not real. Don't do it. Marilyn Manson is a freak and a bad person but did not have his ribs removed to suck his own dick. That's okay if he did. That's, you know. That's actually the least that thing he could do.

Honestly, that would make him less of a prep. That might solve the problem for the people. You should just be abusing himself. Yeah, exactly. And then lastly, jury stole out on Liz Trust being an S&M person. I want to believe. And I always say on Panic World, you should find like a really harmless conspiracy theory that you believe in and just like have fun with that. Yeah.

You know, just a little break. Kind of a low stakes one. A low stakes. You want to believe in aliens? Believe in aliens. But don't give anyone any money. Honestly, I think kind of question everything. If you want to try Jankham, send us an email.

Let us know. If you email me about Jankham, I will call. the police. I will talk to you and I will call the police. Thank you guys for having me on the show. Yeah, thanks for joining us. This is going on both feeds. So if you want to follow me, you can find me as Ryan Hates this on Blue Sky or Broderick

on X or Ryan hates this on Instagram. Panic World is Panic World everywhere. You'll find it. Just search. Type in the little AI. It's a panic world. If people want to find you guys, where can they find you guys? Yeah, we're a no such thing.

Show on, I think, every social media app and... And on a podcast apps. And on everywhere you listen to podcasts. No such thing. Maybe type Mani Noah Devin as one word. Yeah, we hope. 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 Verkest, who edits our video episode. along with our producer, Kevin Maroney, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their deputy director of brand and social. Marianne Couga is their director of marketing, YouTube, and podcast growth marketer,

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