Reply All - #177 Gleeks and Gurgles

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Producer Anna Foley tries to answer a question that’s been bothering her for a long time: What makes the TikTok algorithm so good at knowing what she wants to watch? On her quest to find out, her sister asks another, more unexpected, question. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey folks, just a quick note before we start the show, you know, depending on where you are, we've been living this pandemic for more than 18 months at this point. I know you don't need me to tell you that. In some places, things are opening up and in others, they're just not. But here at the show, we're looking to hear from people right now who are living in both of these realities. We really want to talk to people who find themselves in a real moment of change more than 18 months into this pandemic. And we're the people that personally, I just, really want to hear from are people of color. And I especially want to hear from black people. Like black people, wherever you are around the world, I want to hear from you. Because, well,

I don't know, I love us. So tell me, how are you feeling about the past year and a half? If there's some big life change you've been waiting to make once the so-called end of this pandemic arrives, write to us, let us know at reply all at gimletmedia.com. Once again, that is reply all at gimletmedia.com. And please use the subject line 18 months in. Okay, let's start this show. From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. And I'm Alex Goldman.

Well, hello, Mr. Goldman. Thank you for calling me Mr. Goldman. Made me feel like I was in a fancy restaurant. I just want all our listeners to know that we're recording on... Which is Alex Goldman Day because it is your birthday. I feel like people are going to use this to try and get into my personal accounts. So I'd like you to just... If we could just bleep that when this goes to air, that'd be great.

I mean, if you use your birthday for your pass or we have bigger questions. But all right, yes, we are not here to talk about your birthday. We're here because we actually have a story from one of our producers, Anna Foley. Hi, Anna. Hi, Anna. Hey, hey, guys. Hi, producer Anna Foley. Happy birthday, Alex.

Thank you. So I'm here to tell you guys a story that I've been working on. It's about TikTok. Okay. Are you like a big TikTok user? Like what would you say the percentage of your internet diet is TikTok? Basically, like, TikTok is, it is replaced Twitter and Instagram as the thing I'm scrolling on when I'm laying in bed and like can't sleep or I'm trying to fall asleep. And I think part of the reason that's happened is because TikTok is just like really good at predicting what I want to see next.

So for people who like maybe haven't used TikTok. Talk, basically the way it works is you just open the app and it immediately shows you a video. You don't have to search for anything. You don't have to really necessarily even follow anybody. It just recommends you one video after another. It's like standing under a waterfall of short videos and just letting them wash over you. Yeah, I think it is kind of like that. As you're watching all these videos, with each swipe, basically, like, TikTok is able to like zero in on exactly.

what my interests are, sometimes creepily so. Wait, what do you mean? I mean, just like compared to other places on the internet, like Instagram and YouTube and Twitter, I guess, TikTok is able to serve me videos that are so specifically tailored to things about me that, like, I know about myself and like maybe you guys as my coworkers and friends know about me, but like TikTok has no right to know. In a way that I'm just like, how on earth is it doing this? Like, I guess I'm just going to fully say the most embarrassing one.

Now I just really want to know how whether, like, there are things we know about you that TikTok doesn't. Well, I mean, okay. So like, this is so embarrassing. Tommy, I don't like mocked me for it. It feels good not to be the person who has to embarrass himself on the show anymore. I mean Let's go, Anna. I was a theater kid in like the aughts in 2010s.

And so like a lot of theater kids in the odds in 2010s, I really liked Glee. I was expecting that you had killed someone after that pream. You liked Glee? Especially with like the theater kid intro. But one of like the very first. TikToks that TikTok served to me was about glee. It was for Gleeks, like former Gleeks or, and I was just like, oh, my God. Sorry, I want to rewrite.

I want to rewrite. If it was such an ease to which you were just like, yeah, it's for people like me, Gleeks. Gleeks. Yeah, that's embarrassing. That's embarrassing. Anyways, whatever. I haven't really interacted with anything Glee related in like almost a decade. and then suddenly I'm just like scrolling through TikTok and it presents me with like this

extremely niche glee joke. But like how did TikTok know that I would get this joke, you know? And it wasn't just that one embarrassing niche thing about me. TikTok started showing me other things and I was just like, how on earth do you know this? Like there was a period of time where I was getting TikToks that were being filmed from. my old high school. I noticed that cinder block, like I recognize that cinder block. I recognize that hallway is that Liesville Road High School. And then sure enough, it was my old high school. TikTok was serving me in like the mix of things that were very tailored to my interest, like fashion and food and like the outdoors. It was throwing in these little things where I was like,

this is so specific to me. And I just couldn't wrap my head around what TikTok was doing. Like, how was it so good, so much better than, like, anything else I'd used before? And I wanted to know if, like, I was the only one feeling this or, like, did anybody else feel the same way? Yeah. So I was asking everybody in my life about this, like friends, family. I put out a call to reply all listeners and got, like, hundreds of people agreeing with me saying they also had these weird, uncanny experiences on TikTok. Huh. But I was talking to my sister about it.

She's 23. She watches, you know, her fair share of TikToks. And she was the first person who just, like, completely shut me down. Basically, she said to me, like, Anna, I think you're kind of overthinking this. But then a few weeks later, my sister, very sheepishly, I might add, was like, so about that TikTok question. So I called her. Um, so, you want to introduce yourself? Hi.

Oh, my God. Sound like a human, please. What? I am sounding like a human. Hi. Let me talk. Hi, I'm Emily. I'm Anna's sister.

And she was like, I've been thinking about the TikTok thing. And, like, there is a TikTok that the algorithm served me that I just can't explain. Oh. Okay, so I sent Emmanuel the TikTok. All right. Oh, here we go. Okay, so I just pulled it up. In big letters, it says my weird medical story.

Yeah. So can you play it? Okay. Let me start it. Here we go. Put a finger down if for your entire life, you've been unable to burp. And instead of burping, you make these really awkward and embarrassing croaking noises. that kind of sound like this, for a period of a couple hours as the air slowly leaves her body.

And not to mention, it is super uncomfortable. So you go to a bunch of different doctors trying to figure out. Her entire life, she had never been able to burp like a normal person. And my jaw dropped to the floor. Why did your jaw drop to the floor? Because I am burdened with the same affliction. I have the same thing. I'm the same way.

So my sister is like the exact same way as the person in this TikTok. She's never been able to burp. Wait, just to back up. One, there are people who can't burp. Yeah. Listen, I mean. The urban legend is if you serve a, if you give a seagal alka-seltzer and they will, they will explode because they can't burp. Now, if your sister can't burp, you guys don't know about this?

This is for years. My entire life, people have been like, people have been like, give a bird alka-seltzer. Give a seagull alka-seltzer and a piece of bread and it'll fly away and then explode. Obviously not true. Why? And also, I would never try it because that's sadistic. But your sister would explode. It's impossible that she can't burp.

It's crazy. It's giving a bird alka-seltzer crazy. I mean, my sister is definitely not a seagull. She just can't burp. But back to TikTok, when this video popped up on her for you page, She just, like, needed to tell everybody in her life about it. I sent it to, like, four different group chats. Uh-huh.

I sent it to my best friends. I sent it, I believe, to you. And then I just watched it, like, four times. With every time where you just, like, noticing, like, what, what, were you learning something new every time? Or were you just, like, shocked? I was just sitting in the feeling. She just could not get over it. that TikTok had given her a video about the exact weird medical thing that she has.

So maybe this is a premature question, and I'm sorry to be uncouth, but like, where does the hot air go? Okay. Well, uh, I'm laughing both at the question because it's an obvious question and I'm sorry to be uncouth, which is like such a, such a sweet thing to say. Yes, it's very sweet, very proper. But to answer the question, basically all of that air, it just doesn't go anywhere. What does that feel like? It's like a buildup of air and you're gut and you feel bloated and it starts moving its way upward. Does it move? Like, is it quick?

Is it slow? It's very slow. It lands sort of in the middle of my chest. And then it just gets stuck there. The only way for her to release it is this sound. It's like the sound that you heard in that TikTok, like the sound that the woman described in that TikTok. Yeah, exactly.

Emily calls it her gurgles. And to me, the way that I've always thought about them is they kind of sound like a creaky door mixed with a bullfrog mixed with the girl from the grudge. Oh, the girl from the grudge. But I know exactly what you're talking about. That's very, you're painting a vivid picture. Thank you. You're welcome. I did that for you. The thing you need to understand about Emily's gargles is that they can happen anywhere at any time. And she actually doesn't really have a ton of control over when they're going to happen, you know? It's not like she can do them in private. She might be around a big group of people. Do people feel the need to tell you about their bodily functions?

No, what I get is people bragging about being able to burp. Like they tell you about their greatest hits of their burp. They're like, oh, I love burping. It feels so good. And I'm so bitter. Do you want to burp? I guess that's the question I have is like, do you want to be able to burp? Yes, of course I want to be able to burp.

Really? Who doesn't? I guess this is my burping privilege. I've just, because I've always done it, it doesn't feel. like aspirational, I guess. Oh my God, just to be able to have one of those little burps that just happens inside of your mouth. It's a dream. It's a dream.

Honestly, like, before I talk to my sister about this and before he started working on the story, like, the fact that my sister couldn't burp, it was just kind of like something I would sometimes talk about at parties. Yeah, it's like a piece of trivia. Exactly. Exactly. And everybody would always just be like, whoa, what? But talking to her now, it was actually one of the first times that, like, I wasn't only focusing on the fact that it was, like, funny or quirky, but I was starting to understand how hard it can actually be for her the inability to burp. Oh, like, it's actually like a difficult thing for it. It's not just that she can't do it.

It's actually a kind of shit time. Yeah. Like a minor grurgle actually feels kind of nice. Uh-huh. But a painful one, it's like a burning sensation in my chest. So in addition to having this insane bloated feeling like I'm going to explode in my gut, I have this burning sensation in my chest. And then I'm not very much fun anymore. It's especially hard because she's a singer.

And when she's up on stage, she's just like wondering and worrying like, am I going to gurgle in the middle of a song? And if I gurgle, am I going to lose control of my voice? Oh, man. Yeah, that's really, that would make me really anxious. Yeah. And she never actually met another person with this problem, with this no-bert problem. And so when she was like watching this video on TikTok, it was the first time in her life that she saw someone say like, hey, I have this too. It was like Emily had just stumbled across proof that like what she was suffering from was real. And so like when my sister, she like got this on TikTok of all places, she told me that it almost felt like, When she told me that, I have to say, I did not feel the same way. I think I'm like a little less faith-filled, I believe maybe a little bit less in the universe. And so I walked away from our conversation wanting to know, like, was there a reason that this happened?

From my experiences with the TikTok algorithm, it seemed really, really powerful. But I wanted to know, like, was that true? And was it actually powerful enough to have somehow figured out to serve my sister this video about something that was just so, so personal to her? Oh, like, what was it about the TikTok algorithm that, like, gave her such a personal, like, video? Right. So I went on a journey to find out. And that's after the break. Welcome back to the show. So, guys, the first thing I just, like, wanted to try to understand was if the TikTok algorithm was, if the TikTok algorithm was, even remotely powerful enough to have known to serve my sister who cannot burp a video about not being able to burp.

Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Yeah. Like, I had had this feeling that TikTok was uniquely good at recommending me stuff and other people had thought so too. But I just, like, wanted to know, like, is that feeling true? Like, was this, like, a new and different technology? And so I went out and I talked to a handful of experts.

And I want to introduce you to one. His name is Eugene Way. He's a former product executive. He's worked in the tech space for like decades at places like Amazon and Hulu. And he first got interested in an early version of TikTok back in 2015. I was at our friend's house and we were in the kitchen waiting for dinner. And I heard all this banging upstairs. And when dinner was ready, his daughter came down with her. high school friend. And I was like, what was going on upstairs? Right. Yeah. What were you doing? And they were like, oh, we're making this video. We'll show you. And they opened the phone to this little dance lip sync video they had made and started explaining the app to me. And it was fascinating to see this new app that they were really into. This was in the early days of TikTok, right? Like it was just millions of teens across the country just like sitting in their bedroom.

dancing and lip-sinking, you know? Mm-hmm. But quickly, Eugene says that, like, he starts to see TikTok just everywhere. He watched it just become so, so popular, become one of the most used apps in the world. And he was really interested in just, like, understanding how it worked and what made it so addictive, you know? Right. And TikTok is constantly, like, tweaking and changing their algorithm. they have said some stuff generally about the algorithm,

but we really don't know the specifics. Like not only about how it works, but also about how it might use data outside of the app. Right, because I feel like I view open TikTok sometimes and recently I feel like it's done a thing where it's like shown me like, oh, this person in your contacts is here. Like watch them and I'm like, wait, oh, right, I sign that over to you. Right, right, right, right.

I mean, yeah, like, if you actually look at the privacy policy that TikTok has, it kind of just, like, leaves the door open for TikTok to get a lot of personal information like that, both from your phone and from third parties. The thing that, like, is weird is, like, they ask for so much of this information, but we still actually don't know whether they're, like, actually doing things with all that information. Oh. I reached out to TikTok for this story, and they didn't want to record. an interview. They pointed me to some of the information that they've already made public. And so what's left is like really just looking at the app, using it a ton, and then also comparing it to like all the other recommendation technology that's out there. So that's what it did. Got it. And when I was doing that, I actually did feel like I was getting one step closer to understanding like how my sister may have gotten this video about not being able to burp. So first, I kind of just like want to explain to you guys as best as we can tell. what the TikTok algorithm is doing.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So according to the experts that I talk to, when somebody uploads a video to TikTok, that video is going, it's going under a microscope, where the algorithm is looking at it and scanning for what's in the video. Some experts, including Eugene, call them attributes.

It's things like, is there a dog at 32 seconds in? You know, is somebody showing their face? What is the person saying? What are the subtitles saying? It's not as simple as that because every video can have dozens and dozens of features. Yeah. What music is used? What's the setting?

What are the tags that are applied to that video? All of these attributes. It seems like they come together to make a long dictionary definition of what exactly is in the video. The next thing that we 100% for sure know that it's doing is it's monitoring your attention. And like what that means is that it's watching how far you're making it into a video. It's watching to see if you comment on something, if you share it. All of those actions are signs that you're enjoying the video and that you want to keep seeing more like it. Got it.

So it doesn't actually, when I think I'm being cute on TikTok and like I'm like, okay, I'm not going to get sucked back into like weird white people. Why did you make this like unseasoned chicken breast TikTok? Like when that happens and I just watch. it, but I don't like it. Because I watched it all the way through, it's still getting, it's still going to give me that stuff. Yeah, TikTok is like, while you say you don't like it, you watched it all the way through, Emmanuel. Like, let's be honest here. You wanted to know if they were going to put salt on that chicken at some point. So you watched it. The thing about those videos that so frustrates to me is like, I know that they know that what they're doing is ridiculous.

Yes, like 100%. But like, you still watched it. Um, anyways. So that's the basics of how the TikTok recommendation algorithm seems to work. And like we interact with algorithms like this all the time. Like everywhere you go, you're going to run into an algorithm that's trying to recommend you stuff. So for Netflix, it's movies, YouTube, it's just like shorter videos. But like the thing is, all of those recommendations feel pretty bad to me, honestly. I never actually watch anything that Netflix recommends me.

but I enjoy most everything that TikTok serves me. It's just so much better at taking that next step that those other algorithms aren't doing. And so I wondered why? What is it doing differently, you know? And after talking to Eugene and the other experts, I think it boils down to two things that TikTok is just doing better than anybody else. The first thing. It's getting a really clear idea of what exactly we like and don't.

like. And the way it's doing that has everything to do with how the app itself is designed. Like I said, TikTok is an incredibly simple app. It just shows you one video at a time. That is pretty unique. Yeah. And the only other app that I think has something comparable is an app like Tinder. I was not expecting you to say Tinder. I was like, what is it? Oh my God. It kind of is. Yeah. Yeah. Tinder created the iconic swipe right, swipe left, user interface interaction. And that's important in that case because they do want to match you to people that you have clearly explicitly said you're interested in.

Yeah. And the same was the case for TikTok. TikTok is designed so that if you are enjoying a video, you just keep watching it. You do nothing. And then as soon as you see something in that video that you don't like or something that even mildly disinterest you, you swipe away. So TikTok figures out very quickly what you're not interested in. And Eugene says that is really, really rare.

A lot of our social media today is only positive sentiment oriented. There's no dislike button on Facebook. Yeah. There's no dislike button necessarily on Twitter. And when you only capture positive sentiment, the danger is you have a blind spot to things that mildly annoy or disturb people. In real life, humans are very attuned to this. You know, if you're with your friends or your family or your significant other and you do something that bothers them, they might not actively come out and say, oh, you're annoying me or something like that. But you pick up on their body language and you realize, you know, and you adjust based on that.

That's a really important feedback looping in just the social world generally. Yeah. And TikTok figured out an interface that allowed them to capture. positive and negative sentiment really cleanly in these short videos. Like body language. Yeah, it almost is a form of that. So the second reason that like TikTok is just like blowing everything else in like the recommendation world like out of the water is just like the amount of information that

it's collecting about the users. So like just to think about Netflix. You're going to Netflix.com. You're picking one movie and you're watching it for two hours. And so compare that to TikTok. Those videos are short. They're like one minute long. So you're giving TikTok feedback on like 40 or 50 videos

in the same amount of time that you would spend watching a movie. And what that means is that you're just shooting a fire hose of data into TikTok's algorithm. And Eugene says it's that fire hose that has pushed TikTok's algorithm into just like a league of its own. I think there was a period in the mid era of the internet where we thought that artificial intelligence wasn't that intelligent. Yeah. You know, I still get frustrated using my voice assistance sometimes, but it doesn't understand what I'm saying.

And I think what we saw was that what it took for artificial intelligence and machine learning to take that next step up in quality was a massive, massive amount of data. And what you see is a quantum leap. And that may be how we just experience artificial intelligence in the future. Uh-huh. It will look terrible to us until the moment that it's good. And that moment when it's good, it will become very good.

Yeah. And I feel like that's what I experience sometimes when I use TikTok. You're kind of getting a glimpse into the future a little bit. Is that exciting to you? I think it is exciting. It's also daunting at the same time. Yeah. What I learned about the TikTok algorithm from talking to Eugene and like all of these other experts is that it's uniquely good at quickly and accurately figuring people out.

Like understanding what we like and what we don't and then predicting what we'll enjoy next. But I should also just say this recommendation algorithm. It's not this perfect hermetically sealed lab where it's only just trying to figure you out. there are instances where pretty ugly stuff has happened on TikTok. Yeah, like I was going to say, like, I mean, I feel like that stuff's not even necessarily happened with the algorithm. Like, I just know TikTok has been like allegedly discriminatory even when it comes to stuff like how they moderate the app.

Yeah, like there's been a lot of reporting, really great reporting on how like certain content on the app has been really hard to find. Like there was a period last summer where it seemed like TikTok was, suppressing content about Black Lives Matter and George Floyd and people who were using those hashtags. TikTok later said that that was because of a, quote, technical glitch in the app. Also, back in 2019, there was a lot of reporting on how moderation standards at the time were basically burying the content from queer creators, fat creators, people with disabilities. Jesus. Wow. Yeah, all that to say, like, this record.

recommendation algorithm, TikToks, it's anything but perfect. And yet it is like, even though it seems to be doing some really heinous stuff, it does also at the same time seem to be doing like a good job of like really picking up on what you're looking for, even with all these filters and stuff on it. It's really, I mean, it's just really complicated. But the thing is I still had this question, right, which is what did it know about my? sister that it knew to serve her this video about not being able to burp. Right, right, right.

But the problem is, like, at this point in my reporting, I actually didn't know that much about, like, the actual inability to burp, like the condition itself. And so I went to someone I thought could help me. Hey, Brittany. Hi. How's it going? I just got out of the shower so my hair is drying. No worries.

No worries. This is Brittany Sangassiano. She made the original TikTok video that my sister saw. She likes to make YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram TV videos as a hobby. But she'd actually never made a video about not being able to burp until December 2020 when she decided to post about it. Do you kind of feel like you're kind of the leader of the no burpers on TikTok? Oh, my God. Honestly, possibly.

it was funny because someone commented on one of my YouTube videos and was like, oh my God, I watch your videos. I can't believe that you're no burp girl. Or like someone else. There was some other comment that was like, oh my gosh, did everyone say the burping girl video this week? And I was like, oh my God, I cannot believe this. Like is that, it's just my legacy on the internet. Like I am burping girl. Brittany told me that when she posted the burping video, my sister wasn't the only no burper who found it. Right away, people started commenting like, oh my God, I have this too. And so somehow right away, TikTok was able to show it to people, show it to people who had this issue somehow. And right now it has over 7,000 comments, the vast majority of them being, oh my God, I have this. So that was kind of mind blowing to me. And that's

part of the reason that I think it blew up. Like, I really do think that most of the people who watched and liked the video did have the no-burp issue. Brittany had not expected this response at all. But when I was talking to her about it, it actually made me think of something I learned when I was reporting on the algorithm itself. One of the most important ways that TikTok works is like, yeah, it figures out what you like and it serves you more things like that. But then also, on top of that, it shows you things that people like you like. It basically just sorts you into a bunch of these little groups. And that's why on TikTok, you get all these, like, like highly specific subcultures like book talk and IBS talk and thrifting talk. So I wondered, did no burpers have something in common that TikTok had managed to figure out and put them into one of these little highly specific groups?

And I thought Brittany might understand the most about the DNA of this little no burp subculture on TikTok because she had kind of started it, you know? And it turned out that like she'd been thinking about it as well. And she had some theories, and they were theories that I was curious to try out on my sister. So I called Emily. She was at home watching my parents' dogs. Should I start recording? Yes, start recording. Do you want me to go tell the ladies that I'm busy being a podcaster?

No, I'm sure they'll stop eventually. Will they, though? I told my sister about Brittany's first theory, and it had to do with how Brittany, had become a no-burper in the first place. Basically, as a kid, she'd had a really bad stomach bug, and because of that, she developed a metaphobia, which is severe vomiting. Basically, like, the way that it, like, no-burp manifested through that is, like, her body basically decided that things can go down our throats, but not up.

And so Brittany theorized that, like, maybe this origin story is just a lot more common. and she'd actually talked about ametophobia in like some follow-up TikToks. And so she thought maybe the algorithm had served this video to people who are watching other ametophobia content on TikTok. And so I asked my sister about that, like if she thought that that held any water. Right. Do you think that's, do you have a fear of vomiting? No. I don't, I can't think of any really like traumatic vomit events that I,

I might have had that would have caused that. So that doesn't explain why you got it. No. A metaphobia, like, might be the reason other people got this TikTok, but it wasn't true for Emily. So the next theory, Brittany's next theory, it had to do with her TikTok account. So originally, Brittany's account, like, had nothing to do with no verb, right? It was actually all about curly hair. Brittany has this, like, voluminous, beautiful, healthy, like mop of curls. Is your curly hair limp, frizzy, or just not looking right? I'm here to tell you what you might be doing wrong. Nine times out of 10 when people reach out to me.

And so, like, all of her videos are, like, very fun. Like, use these products. This is how you should wet and dry your hair. Like, this is how many times you should be washing your hair per week, you know, like to get the best curls. Mm-hmm. And that content was primarily consumed by women. And when she was looking at the response to her one no-burp video,

she noticed it was like mostly women who were saying they couldn't burp, which made her wonder if women were more likely to be no burpers. Is there any good information on that? It's just like kind of hard to tell because like there's a bunch of different like outside factors that could be like muddying the data on this theory, right? Like it could be that like more women are commenting because more women are actually no burpers or maybe it's just like women are more. likely to be served Brittany's content because she is a beauty TikToker whose content is interesting to women, you know? Right, right, right, right, right. And so, like, the beauty idea, the beauty theory, I thought that, like, maybe seemed, like,

a possible answer to why my sister could have gotten this video. My sister does not have curly hair, but she loves makeup and skincare and, like, beauty. Maybe. it is a possibility that I searched how to see if your hair is really secretly curly on TikTok. We can look at your searches. I don't know if you guys know this, but in the course of reporting the story,

I found out that you can actually download all of the data that TikTok has on you. My question is, can you actually ever do anything of that data? I feel like I once downloaded a bunch of Google data and then couldn't open it. Yeah, I just remember doing that with other sites too, I'm being like,

none of this is that interesting, but like TikToks, it's nuts, you guys. They have like a list of every video you have ever watched, every video you've ever liked, every search you've ever made. Oh, wow. Can I redo your searches, Emily? Yeah. You've searched. No, no, no. Okay, okay, okay.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to. Okay. I'm not going to. Use your best. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to read people's names. You've searched a lot of people's names. So you searched burn for you, sing Daphne. I like that one.

Which is the, the musical that Bridgeton. Yeah. Yeah. Then you searched baking, nail talk, dip powder, Michael, you poor sweet thing. Olive in June. Olive in June is a nail polish company. Olive in June. Folding lady.

Olive in June. B's bead. Olive in June. The A system. Husky Piano Man. Olive and June. Emily obviously searches for a lot of olive in June. Like a lot of nail polish.

I was completely surprised. I did not realize that. And to me, when I saw that, It kind of supports the theory that TikTok could have sent this video to my sister, not because it knew that she was a no-burper, but because she likes beauty products and beauty videos, which is what Brittany made before she ever did any of that no-burp stuff. Oh, so it was just sort of like a coincidence where it's like, TikTok's like, okay, Brittany, this person is a big beauty person, Emily likes beauty stuff. And it just so happened that the video like it sent her because Britney, instead of making like a makeup video, chose to make a no-burt video. like was about no burp. That's the theory.

But there's something kind of unsatisfying about that. And it's what's unsatisfying about any theory about why my sister got this one video actually. Because like TikTok is like this black box and it gathers so much information about you. And what that means is it's actually really hard to disentangle why it's giving you any one video in particular, you know? Yeah. Yeah, totally. I feel like unless you work at the company, and probably even if you do work at the company,

you're not going to be able to follow the breadcrumb trail of recommendation to figure out exactly how someone gets something. It's incredibly annoying. Yeah, yeah. I felt like I had just the tiniest little window into TikTok, and I actually needed like a really, I needed to see the entire sky, and instead I was seeing just a tiny little part of a constellation.

But my sister, she was still full of questions. Mm-hmm. And they were like pretty big questions about like her life and her body. I care about why. The why. The eternal why. The eternal why. Why is I really never going to ever defer?

So like why am I this way? And how would that make you feel if you were able to know that? Empowered. People try and like tell me it's not real. a lot. Like who? Like people at work and people at college were like, have you tried swallowing air? And I feel like being confident and like knowing, knowing that this is a thing that's not, that I'm not just one day going to burp. Like one day it's just not going to come out or like maybe I'm like psychologically choosing not to burp. Like knowing that there's a solid and concrete reason

and knowing what that reason is, I think would make me less fluster when people try to tell me it's not real. When I was talking to my sister about this, I realized that the question about the algorithm, that was my question. Like, in my hunt, in my voracious hunt for trying to figure out why my sister got this video, I'd actually been a little bit selfish because, like, she didn't really care about the algorithm. What my sister actually wanted was she wanted somebody to take her seriously. Like, her questions seriously, too. Like, why is she this way? What does being a no-burber actually mean, like, for her body? I think that's also what a lot of these no-burpers who were online also wanted. Like, that's part of the reason why Britney's video,

Britney's TikTok, was so striking is because it was one of the few places online where, these people could like hear about their condition and share about their condition and not be laughed at or judged or brushed off or kind of just like left alone to doubt themselves and what was happening in their bodies. And when I started spending a lot of time in this little no-burp corner of TikTok, I kept noticing that all of these no-burperes, they were talking about this one person who was doing what they wanted, who was taking them seriously. It was a doctor. It was a who kind of wrote the book on No Burp. Well, maybe not a book, but the first peer-reviewed studies on it. So, like I said, I have so many questions for you.

Okay. This is Dr. Robert Vastian. He lives just outside Chicago, and he looks exactly like he sounds, down to the white hair and wire-framed glasses. Can you tell me what type of doctor you are? Sure. I am trained ear-nose and throat physician, but for all my career, basically, I've been just a throat physician. So I'm subspecialized in laryngology. Did you know that's where you wanted to end up? You were like, I want to study the throat.

Well, I did. I was originally an English and French major, and then I got very interested in music and singing. And so actually, it was that love of singing and music and voice that kind of led me into E&T. Like my sister, Dr. Bastion is a singer. He sings at church. He actually made his name as a doctor doing these extremely complicated and precise microsurgeries on people's vocal cords. And that's kind of like what establishes him in the E&T world. And his practice, it just takes off from there. He actually starts a website called Loringopedia, which sounds super scientific, but it's actually just a very nerdy mashup of the type of doctor he is. And the word encyclopedia. And he starts blogging about all of these obscure issues that are coming into his practice about the throat. And so it's actually on that website that he gets a message in 2015. One day, a young fellow wrote to me from Texas, and he described his symptoms. And he said he wanted to be a skydiver. And that when he would go up in an airplane, he had incredible discomfort and that he couldn't burp.

And so I just simply thought about it. I'd never heard of it, but I just simply did the thought process about what would explain all of these symptoms that he had. Dr. Bastian started thinking about how burping actually works, which somehow in the course of reporting the story, I had not thought about until this moment. But basically, just to explain how it works, there's a gate at the top of your throat, and it's called the upper esophageal swinkter. And to him, what it sounded like was that for some reason,

this gate was letting things in, but not out, it wasn't opening for the burps to escape. And so he has an idea. He thinks of something that might stop the throat from closing. So he messages the man in Texas back. And I said to him, you need to get somebody to put Botox into your upper esophageal sphincter. Wait, Botox. Botox. Isn't Botox that like a, does it, okay, maybe I don't understand what Botox does. Does it relax muscles? Is that the deal?

I thought it does the opposite. I thought it actually tightens muscles. What it does is it basically just like paralyzes muscles. So like it was purely a hypothesis. But he thought that the Botox might temporarily relax that gate at the top of the throat. Keep it open and allow this no burper to just like let air out. And he thought that maybe after the Botox wears off that gate, it might just learn to start opening and closing on its own. So he came to Chicago.

We did the procedure. He was the first one. And it was dramatic. The word he used was life-changing. It also resolved all of his symptoms to a remarkable degree. And these five, six years later, he continues to burp. He does. I mean, it's crazy because he had not burped his entire life.

Basically, Dr. Bashan cured this guy. Wow. Yeah, it's a big deal. And Dr. Bastion says, ever since that, procedure, people have been flocking to his office. And when they show up, he says that they're in pretty serious pain. Like, he asked them to rank it on a scale of one to seven. And he says that the majority of them rank their pain as a six or a seven. Oh, wow. So, like, really, really, really going for it. And now, by this point, Dr. Bashan has performed this same surgery hundreds of times.

So if he is doing this no-burp Botox injection, does no-burp actually have a science? scientific name besides no burp? That is true. Yeah, it does. It does. I should have looked up how to pronounce it. So I'm going to butcher it. So he's the one who came up with the name for this.

And it's called retrograde crycorengular dysfunction. R-C-P-D for short. I got to say it like aesthetically, it's like a lot more pleasant than no-burp. I mean, I kind of like no-verb. But anyways, Dr. Bastian, he's only been studying this since 2015. So all the research on it is, like, relatively new.

There's still a lot about RCP that we don't understand. Just to say, from his experience, though, he doesn't think that women are more likely to get RCPD. He says it seems pretty evenly spread across sex, race, and geography. But Dr. Bastian, he told me that he actually had a theory that could answer my sister's question. Like, why can't she burp? Here is my speculation, and of course, take this with a big grain of salt. My speculation is that there is a subset of human beings who, as infants, feel that sensation of air coming up and needing to be burped, and they kind of do the wrong thing. Now, they clamp or they tighten or they do something that isn't quite the right thing.

What Dr. Bashan is saying is that when these babies feel the air that should be a brink. burp coming up, they just don't do the natural thing of letting that gate open in their throat and like letting that air out. That moment, it's called a learned response. And it kind of sticks with these babies their whole lives. Their bodies, they just never learn how to burp. And that made sense for my sister. She's never burped. And so this is the most likely explanation for why this happened to her. You guys have been such a journeyer about this? Like, is, do you know, like, is Emily going to get this treatment?

I think she's considering it. I think she still has a lot of questions. She's also a little nervous. Like, the only kind of major medical procedure she's ever had in her life is getting stitches. But I was talking about this with her the other day, and she mentioned that she asked her voice teacher about it. Like, she wants to know how getting the Botox would affect her vocal training. And that, to me, feels like the first step in this becoming a reality.

Like, she's kind of building it into her life and imagining what her life could be. If she does end up getting the procedure, I am definitely going to be there. Like, I want to be holding her hand when she has her first real verb. Love it. It'll be such a proud moment for you and your family. We'll drink champagne. That's what we'll do. You can drink champagne. And then after she drinks it, she won't be able to stop. burping because that's how the Botox works. It just opens the floodgates.

Love it. This episode of Replyall was produced by Lisa Wang, Fia Benin, me, Anna Foley, and Hannah Chin. It was edited by Damiano Marquetti, with additional editing help from Tim Howard and Emmanuel Jochi. As always, this episode would not have happened without the rest of the Reply All team, Jessica Young, Alex Goldman, and Norgil. The show is hosted by Emmanuel Jochi and Alex Goldman. This episode was mixed by Rick Kwan with fact-checking by Isabel Christo. Music in this episode by Breakmaster Cylinder, Mariano Romano, Luke Williams, and Tim Howard.

Special thanks to Julian McCulley and Shelley Banjo. Shelly has an awesome podcast that's all about TikTok. It's called Foundering. Definitely check it out. Also, thanks to Saba Kanesjad, Jillian Ripmeister, Tom Deluga, Ian Jones, Lauren Cooley, Corinne Jones, Claire Cox, Matt Schultz, Gabriella Bulgarelli, and all of the listeners that wrote to me about their TikTok experiences. Thank you all so, so much for listening.

I think that something that we've all been feeling on the show right now is just a lot of appreciation for everybody who's tuned in during these last eight weeks as we try a bunch of new stuff on our show. We're going to take a short break to keep working on our next batch of episodes. So until then, take care. We'll see you in four weeks.