Reply All - #72 Dead is Paul

Episode Date: August 4, 2016

This week, a Yes Yes No about gorillas, conspiracy theories, and glitter. Further Reading See the original tweets on our Yes Yes No tumblr. Marina Joyce's YouTube Article on Marina Joyce Police tweeting about Marina Joyce Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Alex Goldman. And I'm PJ Vote. And this week, we're doing yes, yes, no, the segment on the show where we inflict the marginalia of the internet onto our boss. I don't think marginalia. That sounds like a stationary company. Sure. Marginalia?

Marginalia. Is it marginalia or marginalia? Do you call it a... I think of Saturnalia and marginalia. Wow, we're off to a great start. I'm right here. Are you guys done? No.

Can we get on it this thing? All right. The way it works is that Alex Bloomberg comes to us with a piece of internet ephemera that he doesn't understand, and we do our best to unspool it in a way that makes sense to him. What have you got this week? Okay, so I have a tweet. This tweet is from Jason. It reads as follows. I was just eating a banana, and this happened.

Dot, dot, dot. I couldn't go one second without crying harambe. We miss you. And then there's four crying emojis. And then underneath that. And then underneath that, there's a picture of some banana art. What can only be described is banana art. So imagine a banana.

I can do that. And then imagine the skin of the top half of the banana has been peeled away, but the skin at the bottom half is still there. And then imagine that in the part where the skin has been peeled away, somebody has nibbled a sculpture out of the banana that resembles a gorilla. It's very masterful. It looks like they whittled it. It's pretty amazing. And then they took two other pieces of banana and did the same thing

and where the exposed banana was they nibbled gorilla hands with knuckles. I can't imagine they nibbled those. I think they had to have actually sculpted them. I'm going to live in a world where they nibbled it. I like to imagine they nibbled them too. But probably you're right. They probably sculpted them.

All right. PJ, do you understand this tweet? Yeah. Alex Goldman, do you understand this tweet? I'm going to say no. Really? Yeah, I would say that I'm sort of, I would say that I'm at about 50%. Holy crap, this feels good.

Okay. Alex Bloomberg, do you understand this tweet? Don't ruin this for me? No. Yes. Okay. Yes, no, no. So what do you understand?

What do I understand? I understand that bananas are delicious fruit high in calcium. Is that really it? Is that all you get? Sounds like Senate testimony. No, I understand all the words. I just don't have. any idea why they make any sense.

Like, I understand that you're eating a banana. I understand what crying is. I don't know who Harambe is. I think you should just start at who Harambe is. Wait, I thought, how much do you know? I know who Harambe is and what became of him. Okay. Is Harambe the gorilla?

Yes. Yeah. Oh. That's a sad story. If you are not familiar with the story of Harambe, he was a gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. And in May, I'm pretty sure, a three-year-old fell into his enclosure. The gorilla was dragging the three-year-old around,

and the zoo decided to shoot and kill the gorilla. And somebody shot a video of it, and the video is circular on it. It's scary. No, it's really scary. Yeah, it's like a crazy video to watch. Right. It resulted in sort of like a crazy outpouring of opinions. People were mad that Harambe was killed.

People were mad at the parents of the child. It was... What I don't comprehend... hand is what has B, Harambe has taken on, Harambe lives. No. In the hearts of people on Twitter in a way that I totally don't understand. Yeah, so Harambe has become a meme. Yes.

Yes. You're grinning so widely. I enjoy this meme a lot. I enjoy understanding this meme a lot. Okay, because right now, if I could just chart my emotional trajectory of this YICS No, it was a little bit of a letdown to realize, oh, Harambe is the gorilla. Because I was just like, oh, that story. It just basically makes me sad.

It's also not, it doesn't seem like there's too many levels to it. It's just sort of like your classic internet outrage. So I'm hoping you can take us someplace weird. Blow our minds. I don't know how weird we're going to go, but I might be able to make you feel, it might be an emotional journey. Okay, so basically there's a thing that happens on the internet. Everybody knows that there are times where people like to make inappropriate jokes about horrible things that happen. There's like a whole school of humor that's like, if I can't say it, that's what I'm going to say.

Like, we know that. Right. So the best example I can come up with is after the tragedy in Benghazi when Americans were killed, there was a whole section of the internet that took this on. And the way they would express their grief about it was that they would do these acrostic poems. Like they would write Benghazi out and every letter would stand for a different thing. And it was always like them yelling about the cover up or whatever. And that went on for so long that people started making fun of the Benghazi acrostics. Like, there were jokes about that thing.

But the joke was not about the tragedy in Benghazi. The joke was about the reaction to the tragedy in Benghazi. Exactly. So, like, so that's what happened with Harambe. Like, the sad thing happened. People reacted in big and sometimes, like, insane ways. Right. And so there's now this countercultural response of people doing jokes that are, like,

about even more over the top, how sad they are about the death of Harambe. And like the first time you see the joke, you're like, okay, I don't think we need to make inappropriate jokes about the dead gorilla. That story's sad enough. And then like the fourth time you see the joke, if you're me at least, you are so completely on board with the joke. That's so funny. So this is this. This is like an example of this. And like another.

So wait, I was just eating a banana and this happened. I couldn't go one second without crying. Harambe we miss you. Harambe we miss you. So the joke of this is that. this person is so bereft that this gorilla at the zoo died that they accidentally nibbled

a harambe sculpture out of the banana they were eating just absent mindling and then they looked down and they're like, oh my God, I'm on me. I nibbled you. Like when you lose something in your life and you're sad and you're like eating a piece of toast and you look down and you realize you've like bitten the perfect outline

in their face. Like a human experience we've all had that definitely always happens. So it's like, do you, right, this is funny, this is an okay thing to find funny? Yes, I guess so. I guess for me the question is, I'm still not sure. Who, is somebody made fun of? What are we making fun of here? I don't think anyone, I think grief is being made fun of here.

Grief. I mean, I guess, okay, people who are really sad about a girl they never met having died to save a three-year-old are being made fun of. But at this point, they're not being made fun of. It's just like, the joke is like, wouldn't it be funny if the saddest thing in the world to me was the death of this one gorilla, I think. I just want to sit here for one second, though, and think about that for a minute. How you feel about it? Yeah.

Because I get, as somebody who cares a lot about animals in a certain way, like, yeah, I care a lot about animals. I get the tragedy of this poor animal who doesn't know is like just, animals are like sort of like a priori innocent. Right. And so I understand that when they are killed for like human fuckups, like it is sad. It just feels like wrong. Right.

And I don't mean to suggest that like I want people like kill guerrillas for my joy or anything like that. It's more like, okay. So like when you look at the momentum of. the like online Harambe morning system. It's weird. It's like there's a Facebook group called Justice for Harambe where they talk about like, we have to avenge his murder.

Yeah, but it's like that moment where it goes from I feel sad about this gorilla to somebody must pay for my sad feeling about this gorilla. We have to avenge the murder. Yeah. It's like that's the moment that I feel like I feel comfortable skewering. Right.

Right. And it's easier to actually just skewer I feel sad about this gorilla, unfortunately. Right. Which is why. Yeah. It's weird.

Now I feel like unsettled with how funny I find all this. Oh, the tables have been turned. I don't look at all. Usually you made me feel bad. I know. I feel like now, huh. Huh. I didn't want to learn anything.

Watching the rock tumblers in his brain figure out that maybe this is a sad thing. That's what the rock tumbler in his brain sounds like. Huh. Huh. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Ha.

Ha. Hmm. Hmm. I feel fine again. He's processed it. All right, so I'm going to explain the tweet. Yeah. I was, okay, to recap, Jason sent out a tweet.

I was just eating a banana, and this happened. I couldn't go one second without crying. Harambe, we miss you. And then there's a picture of banana sculpture where a gorilla has been sculpted out of a ripe banana. And what this tweet is referred to. referring to Harambe being mentioned in this tweet is the gorilla who was killed in the Cincinnati Zoo when the toddler fell into his enclosure. And the tweet is mocking the outpouring of emotion that happened in the wake of that where it seemed like half the Internet was in an uproar of grief and sadness and finger-pointing about the fact that this noble and innocent animal died. We're at yes, yes, yes. Good work, guys.

Very sad, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so that's great. But I'm just looking, there's this other Harambe tweet that I still actually don't understand. Okay. Here, I read it to you. It's from Keem. Keem. K-E-E-M. And the caption is simply, it's a photo, and the caption is

proof Harambe is alive. And then there's a picture of sort of a girl from the back with a pink dress on and there's a sort of a crudely drawn red circle, the way you draw those circles with like Photoshop or whatever, like a crudely drawn red circle around what seems to be a bruise on her upper arm. Yeah, that's it.

PJ Vote, do you understand the tweet? I know what it's referencing, and I've had conversations about the thing that's referencing, and I've not saved the data in my brain It's like when someone explains how a science thing works. I'm just like, okay, do I have to floss or not have to floss? Like, I've lost all of the explanation. So no.

Okay. Alex Goldman, do you understand this tweet? I'd like to think that I do. But, kind of, half? I want to say yes. Maybe I'm not confident enough to say yes. Alex Bloomberg, do you understand this tweet? No.

Okay. So let me explain what I do understand. The basics of this is that. there is a beauty blogger. And there were, like, stories on the internet that started about a week ago about how her large online fan community believes that she is sending distress signals,

coded distress signals through her videos. Can I see what she, like, who is this now? Her name's Marina. Her name. Let me ask a more basic question. What's a beauty blogger? Oh, we're back on comfortable playing. A beauty player is someone who like tells you how to apply makeup basically.

Like here's the way to do. Oh my God, I'm going to sound like such a jackass. It's good that there's now a part of your brain that knows when you don't know what you're talking about. Because I feel like that is like a late development. Shut, awesome. So just show me, show me, show me what. So her name is Marina Joyce. She's 19 years old.

She lives in England. And this is sort of like what her videos are like. It's just her in the camera. Hold on, I'm getting an ad. It's just her standing in front of the camera talking to you. That's basically it. Hold on. Wait till this ad's over.

Are there two ads? No, it's just a one 15 second ad. Did you click the thing where you can skip it? You can't skip it. Glitter makeup tutorial. Oh. Hi, guys. I'm here for you guys because I think people like to look at my glittery eyes.

And I really want to show you guys how I do my glycer eyes. I think it looks awesome because every time I go out, people are like, whoa, your eyes look amazing. And I can share this with the world. So yeah, I just like love glitter so much that I started to put it on my eyes. So I think that you guys will appreciate it too. I'm going to move to my bathroom so I can show you guys because it's got better lighting in there. And like I'm filming quite late. So it's going to get darker and darker.

So yeah. This is nine minutes long, by the way. Oh, she made a look on it's called glittery eyes by me. Okay, we get the idea, right? This is the finished look that I'm going to be showing you guys today. Wow. Wow. And yeah, it's a very fun thing to do.

To be honest, I just really love glitter, and I love glitter so much. Like, I always put, like, glitter over my face when I go to parties. So, yeah. Alex Bloomberg is losing his mind. It's a crazy look. Like, her eyes are completely outlined in glitter. Oh, my God. It's not like you really need a tutorial to do that.

You just, like, put a lot of glitter right under your eyes. I meant you that you would do that. I know, it's true. You would think that, but that has 450,000 views, so obviously you need a tutorial to do it. But she's very charming, and she's... So that's her. That's her. And as of last week, people started to believe, or at least, like, last week, a rumor circulated

that videos like that are secretly being filmed from, like, I guess, within a ISIS studio that she's not allowed to leave and that she's a prisoner. And that in very, very subtle ways, she's trying to, like, blink out a Morse code saying, set me free. What? That's actually a theory that I read that she was trying to blink out. One of the many theories that she was trying to blink out Morse code. that says that she's in trouble.

I saw somewhere that there was a moment where some of her fans actually thought to choose the victim of domestic abuse, and fortunately it seems pretty clear now that that's not true, but there are all these other theories about what's going on that are just totally bonkers.

So there's a million other questions I feel like you are going to have that I don't know the answer to, and I know this is not orthodox. Would it be okay if... Can I bring in outside counsel? Sure. Is that okay?

Yeah, are you kidding? Okay, let's just like, let me get them on the phone. We will meet back in the studio. There will be people who can actually answer this for us. Okay, I found people who can explain this to us. My friend Haley is an editor at MTV's website, and she oversees all these writers. She calls them teens.

I don't think they're actually teenagers, but they're younger than us. And basically, like, they are, when I hear about something that to me is, like, weird and confusing about the internet, they're like already very bored of it. Like they make me feel like I'm in the wrong part of a yes, yes, no. So I figure like they will probably know everything there is to know about this and be like surprised that we still find it interesting.

This is very exciting. I know. Hello. Hello? Hi. Hi. So can you guys just identify yourself? Just say who you are.

So we have that on tape. I'm Maeve Kieran. I'm a writer for MTV News. and yeah I'm Erica Harwood I am also a writer for MTV News Right so I wanted to talk to you guys Because we've been talking about Marina Joyce

Yes And we don't understand We are familiar How familiar When you say we are familiar How familiar How much of this is the top story Of all the news that you've been reading lately

Last week it was like 40% of our day I would say Yeah, maybe more. Last week, like, when the Democratic Convention was happening. Oh, yeah, we didn't even pay attention to that. You're all. All in on Marina Joyce. Okay, so bring us into Marina Joyce World.

Okay, I'll kick things off. So she's a British YouTuber who had like a sizable-ish following 600,000 subscribers, which is more than I have, but I've heard isn't like that impressive. What's impressive in YouTube world? Like 2 million? Is like, sure, you did a good job. We'll pay attention. Yeah.

Okay. So she had had videos, and then in the past few months, some people were realizing that she had begun acting somewhat erratic in videos. I'd say that if you want to comment in the comment section, if you want to meet up with me one day, if you want to make a meetup with me, comment in the comment section discussing with me meetups. Like she would just be up. repeat it, but in different ways. Like, if she were saying, I want to go hang out with my friends

right now, she would be like, I want to go hang out with my friends. It's my friends that I would love to hang out with right now to hang out with my friends, like just over and over. That's weird. That is weird. So weird. It's so weird. But it also, it's funny because it could just be, like, we make our podcast and we'll be like reading a line and you'll read it a bunch of times and not edit it right so it could also just be somebody screwing up editing yeah no it could be but then other things happened yeah so that's we'll get to her editing style later yeah it's a key detail yeah Erica do you want to jump in and sure I'll take it from here so after that happened it was the other YouTuber right um what was his name like

Carmi Saletto Touched light Has met Marina in the past Said she was like a nice girl But kind of like a little strange But nothing to bat an eye at really And so he was saying In the recent weeks he's kind of noticed

Like very dramatic shifts In her behavior on her videos And he sort of took it upon himself To post his own video Being like something's going on We need to help this girl. She's out of control. We don't know what's happening, but people need to be aware.

Which is a weird way if you're concerned about somebody to express it to them. Yeah, I mean, it's very efficient. You can reach a big audience. The police will get in, you know. Yeah. I mean, aside from blinking a lot and repeating herself, what were the science of her trouble? Well, she had posted, well, was clearly a sponsored video, which is something that if you have a certain number of followers,

you get to do to make that cash. And so she posted one for like this dress company that I've never heard of. And in it, she is essentially a robot with flesh. Like she has no emotion. She repeats herself over and over. So today I'm advertising style you and I'm advertising their clothes. So this is me just advertising her clothes And yeah, I love you guys so much

It's the clothing company that I'm advertising And this is the dress that I'm wearing This is weird She's not fully in the frame And she keeps like curtseying into the frame And spinning around She suddenly looks like she's forgotten How to do her job

Like she doesn't look sad or upset or crazy She looks like she's impersonating The person who used to do this Right And she like starts to She'll always look off camera like she's looking for approval. Like, this is right, right?

And like... Right. And then there were also other things in the video, like you could see someone's hand coming out that is supposedly a script. People on Twitter were convinced that that was like a script that her boyfriend who was holding her hostage had written for her so that he could take all the money.

And allegedly, like, I can't hear this, but the rest of the internet can apparently. If you like slow it down in this one part, she whispers, help me, which I think is just like maybe a breeze or something. It's a breath. Yeah. Was there ever somebody early on said something about, was ISIS involved in this sort of story ever?

I think it was like part of the rumor that she may have been kidnapped by. Isis. Sometimes it was ISIS. Sometimes it was just like severe drug use. Sometimes it was mental illness. There was like a whole range of guesses as to what was causing this. I mean, has Marina Joyce commented on this at all? Like has she, what was her response to the internet losing its mind over the fact that they thought that she was being held hostage? She's responded a few times. Initially, she just tweeted. back at people being like, I'm okay, I'm fine, thanks for the concern. But then it kind of kept growing and other outlets were picking it up like something's wrong with this beauty blogger. We don't know what it is. Because that's exactly what somebody would make her say.

Right. So then what happened? So then at some point the police went to their house because the tweets had grown so voluminous, which I guess is held. the police work there. And they confirmed on their police Twitter that everything was fine. Wait, the police had to go on Twitter and tell everybody everything was fine. Yes. Now let me ask you this.

So you guys have like done, you've been like deep in the story for a long time. What do you think the truth is? What is the truth? I think that the guy, the male British, who began the hashtag was trolling and underestimated how far Twitter and Tumblr users can run with, like, very unfounded evidence. And it kind of just spiraled out of control. And I don't doubt that there's something extremely strange happening with her, but what it is doesn't seem to be what his conclusion was. But then the thing that is still weird to me is it's like that happens.

And then she like keeps telling everybody everything's okay. But she's continuing to do all the behaviors that people have pointed out are specifically really weird and like adding new ones. Right. Which I think that is why right now I don't want to be the one to say it. But she did get, you know, a million and a half new subscribers from this. You're being careful because you don't want to say because you can't know. be the one to say like she's doing this for publicity and followers because I mean she does seem a little off. So if she is struggling with some mental health thing, like I don't want to be the one that's super cynical.

And like, no, she's just doing it for followers. So can I see if you guys understand a tweet that we're talking about? I'm going to describe this tweet to you. And will you tell me if you understand it? Yeah. So it's a it's a tweet from a guy named Keem. And it's a still, I now realize, from the promotional dress video. Sure.

And it's a shot of, what's their name again? Marina Joyce. Yeah, it's a shot of Marina Joyce. Sorry. We've learned nothing. Yeah. It's a shot of Marina Joyce from behind. You see her upper arm and there's like a very slight discoloration and then there's like sort of a red circle around it. And then the caption of the picture is proof Harambe is alive. Erica, you can take this one. I'm going to go ahead and say that she sort of became a meme. Yeah. How do you say the gorilla's name?

Harambe. Yeah. He's like kind of become a meme like himself. Yeah, it was like the blending of two very popular memes from last week. The joke is that he's like using this as evidence to prove the wrong conspiracy. Oh. Yeah. Right.

Sure. Oh. I get it. It's just too many memes at once. Oh. It's pretty. Oh, I see. It's very deep.

It's working on many levels. So this may be more Harambe than Marina Joyce. Correct. Thank you so much for explaining this to us. Thank you. No problem. So, Alex, we're at yes, yes, yes. And we're also kind of through the looking glass.

Whoa. You always say that, and I never know what you mean when you say through the looking glass. It's it. It means that we're in Wonderland. Huh. What happens in Wonderland? It's like all of the rules of reality are turned upside down. Dead gorillas are alive.

Yeah. Conspiracies are in every hand. gesture. I was probably having a thought about when we were in the middle of the story that I would bet that nobody else was having a thought. And it was especially when it was at the part where she was talking about like there was this one part of the video that if you slowed it down, it sounded like she was saying, help me. Can I take a guess? Yes. Was it Paul the dead? Yes. What? There was a conspiracy theory in the 60s that around 1964, 65, Paul McCartney died in a car crash and was replaced by a fake Paul. And there was a

a ton of coded messages and album covers. And there was one particularly famous Beatles song, which I've now forgotten. I used to know which one it was, but if you played it backwards, it said, Paul is dead. Oh,

the song, dead is Paul. And it occurred to me that, like, people like to find patterns where there are none, which is a part of our nature, right? Like, we find, that's why we like conspiracy.

We sort of assemble things into a pattern even when there isn't one. But in the old days, you used to have to work a little bit. It's like, You have access to more random data points now than ever before. And so you can just assemble them any way you want into a conspiracy story. And it took months to assemble all those theories.

Oh, years my day. When we made up rumors, we had to do it walking uphill. Exactly. You guys are the worst. Kids these days. They've got conspiracy theories dripping from their fingertips. You proud of yourself? Yes.

All right. Okay, cool. Did you just whisper, help me? No. Thanks to Erica Harwood and Dave Kieran's. You can read them over at MTV. They are bloggers in the style section. Also, MTV has a ton of podcasts now, and they're good.

Go listen to them. All right. That's it for the show this week. Reply all is hosted by me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. The show is produced by Shruthy Pinnamini, Fia Bannon, and Chloe Prasinos. Our executive producer is Tim Howard, and our editor is Peter Clowney. production assistance by Tom Cody. We were mixed by Rick Kwan.

Special thanks this week to Jacqueline Halbert and Haley Melodic. Matt Lieber is a plate of very fancy cold cuts. Our theme song is by the mysterious breakmaster cylinder. Our ad music is by Build Buildings. You can listen to the show on iTunes or in whatever podcast app you prefer. We're on Spotify. We're in the Google Music Store. Thank you for listening.

We'll see you next week.