There Are No Girls on the Internet - Amy Poehler's Golden Globe Win | Renee Good Lies Debunked | DoorDash Hoax Exposed - NEWS ROUNDUP

Episode Date: January 14, 2026

It's the weekly news roundup! Rare Tuesday edition (it's still January; we'll get back to the regular schedule soon). Bridget breaks down the tech news you might have missed with Producer Mike. Watch ASSSCAT! For free on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4HTxmqNTCY Please look at this picture of the Fresh and Fit podcast with NINE PEOPLE ON MIC ! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt36873819/mediaviewer/rm3460072962/ A fake AI images on social media falsely suggest Renee Good had an extensive criminal record. https://www.theweek.in/news/world/2026/01/11/minneapolis-ice-shooting-did-renee-nicole-good-have-a-criminal-history-fact-checking-the-rap-sheet-on-x.html  A viral post claiming to blow the whistle on a food delivery app's shady practices turned out to be a hoax. Journalist Casey Newton breaks down the surprisingly robust forged documents. https://www.platformer.news/fake-uber-eats-whisleblower-hoax-debunked/  Amy Poehler's 'Good Hang' wins first Golden Globe for podcasts. Ben Shapiro wins nothing. https://goldenglobes.com/nominations/2026  Guy posts on Reddit that his feminist chatbot girlfriend broke up with him. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/conservative-says-ai-girlfriend-dumped-190000163.html    Let us know what you think by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify.    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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There are no girls on the internet as a production of IHeart Radio. and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to There Are No Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of identity, social media, and technology. And this is another rare top-of-week installment of our weekly news boundup, where we dig into all the stories online that you might have missed so you don't have to. So I never know if listening to podcasters talk about podcasting is too inside baseball for people

to care about. Listeners, y'all can let me know. it won't hurt my feelings if that is the case. And you're thinking, I don't want to hear podcasters talk about how the sausage gets made or, you know, their opinion about the state of the podcasting industry or whatever. But Mike, I wanted to talk about this briefly because Amy Poehler, who, you know, we love, big fan, she just sort of made history by winning the first ever inaugural Golden Globe for podcasting. Congrats to Amy Poehler. You're right. We love her. Parks of Rec hilarious. S&L. Terrific. Her book funny. She's a funny person. And people seem to really like her. She seems like a genuinely nice person. So congrats Amy Polar.

If you want some Amy Polar deep cut goodness, find ASCat on streaming. It was the Upright Citizens Brigade, their signature improv show. It's ASCat with I think, like, four S's. So like, as well. S cat or ass cat. That was what I really got an appreciation for Amy Poehler and how hilarious she is. Like that was my sort of first foray into her. I will say, I mean, obviously I'm a fan of hers. I don't personally listen to a lot of podcasts that have celebrities as hosts, which we'll talk about at a moment. I had listened to a few episodes of Amy Polar's Good Hang podcast.

I like it. I think that, you know, as far as the. celebrities talking to other celebrities genre of podcasts go. It is a pretty decent representative of the genre. I really enjoyed the episode that she did with Aubrey Plaza from Parks and Rec. It really got into a lot of just very relatable stuff about grief and grieving, which I really appreciated. So I'm a fan. I don't want to make it seem like I'm like a hair of Amy Polar show. I was actually initially really happy with Amy Polar winning because A, I think the show is actually pretty fine.

B, I was happy that a woman won. And then, lastly, let's not forget that the alternative is a world where Ben freaking Shapiro won the inaugural Golden Globe for podcasting. Did you know that? I did because you told me, but thankfully I am like pretty far removed from the Shapiro sphere. Yeah, people, I mean, I always want to want to just scream it from the, rooftops. Ben Shapiro is a failed entertainment writer. He badly wanted to be in Hollywood. That's why he talks about celebrities all day long, and he's always just talking about Hollywood and all of that

because he's obsessed with Hollywood. He ran this huge, very explicit for your consideration campaign to try to get nominated for the Golden Globes for Best Podcast. The Golden Globes, as folks may or may not know, has long faced a lot of scrutiny about being paid a point. So imagine a world where Ben Shapiro essentially gets to buy his way into being platformed by mainstream Hollywood, which is all he has ever wanted. So the fact that that did not happen, to me, that's a kind of win no matter how you slice it. It's true. A Ben Shapiro loss is a win for the good guys. Yes. And Ben Shapiro didn't even get nominated. So yeah, I'll take that as a win. So the Golden Globes initially put together a list of the top 25 most listened to shows across Spotify and Apple using downloads, listens, and views.

And then that was the list of shows that were eligible. So only 25 of the most popular podcasts were even considered. The nominees were armchair expert with Dak Shepard on the Wondery Network, call her daddy on Sirius XM, Good Hang with Amy Poehler on the Spotify network, which ended up winning. The Mel Robbins podcast on Sirius Shepard. X-M, you know, let them, let them, Mike, let them. Yeah, let them, let them. Smart lists and up first by NPR.

Not a ton of diversity on this list. I know that Dax Shepard's podcast, Armter Expert, has a Woman of Color co-host, Monica Padman alongside Dax. I don't actually listen to that show. I really have a thing with Dax Shepard. I don't listen to his show and never have. yet he is someone that I have learned a lot about, kind of against my will.

Just through osmosis, I can tell you a lot about Jack Shepherd, despite never having voluntarily tuned into any Jack Shepherd vehicle or project ever. I think a big thing of his public persona is like radical openness and revealing details about his personal life that other celebrities might be more remiss to share. Do I have that right? That's right. That's right. And it's funny because those are things. that I should like.

Yet whenever I hear him say, do this, I'm like, ugh, shut up. I don't know. I don't know what explains it. I did just see this phenomenal clip of, you know, how much I love Cher, of Share on Dax Shepard's podcast and then Dax Shepard's wife, Kristen Bell. And he is essentially questioning Cher saying, share, I heard that you don't think I'm good enough for my wife, Kristen Bell. So who do you think that she should be with, if not me? Do you think she should be with like Brad Pitt? I thought that was an interesting person to throw out because like

Brad Pitt notoriously having some issues with how he treats women. We'll just keep it, put it that way. So in my opinion, Dax is kind of trying to fluster Cher about why Cher does not think that he is a good enough partner for his wife, Kristen Bell. And Cher hits him with, I guess she must see something that I don't in you. Oh, man. Which is such a funny thing to say. It's like completely straight-faced, clear delivery. I guess you see something I don't.

And she said this on his show. She like came on his show to deliver this. Wow. Correct. I would probably have to retire from public life if Cher said something like that to me. Same. Same. Although if Cher can come on this podcast and belittle me and everyone in my life

anytime she wants and I will, it would make my year. Something kind of funny about Amy Poller's podcast winning against Smartless is that one of the host of Smartless is her ex-husband, Will Arnett, who you might know as, I think you probably know as the voice of BoJack Horseman. I know as Job, from Arrace and Development. Oh, I was familiar with his work as Joe well before Bojack. Both are excellent performances, just really top-notch. Something that I liked about Amy Poller's show is that when she first started it, she basically said, hey, I want to start a project where I don't have to put in a ton of effort just like the men do. And I don't know for sure, but I have to imagine that was a dig at SmartList because SmartList is their whole thing, I think, is that they have guests on and they don't really do any prep because they don't know who the get, or one of the three co-hosts knows who the guest is and the others don't. And so those, the people who don't have not done any prep for that guest.

I've listened to a couple episodes, not recently, but when it first came out and there's a ton of buzz about it. And I did note that like the guests didn't really get in a whole lot of airtime. It was mainly the hosts talking to each other over the guest. Oh my God. So again, I don't want this to sound like me just hating on podcasts because there are celebrity podcasts that I think are really great and I like. But I do need to steer it back because it is kind of heading that way. Okay. Well, I'll just say one thing.

Which I think that SmartList is not for me because I want to hear what the guest has to say. And I make it a practice of not talking over guests. I've invited you on the show because you're interesting and I want to hear what you have to say. I listen to one episode and they asked, and so I don't know if this is a common thing with them. But they're talking to a celebrity guest and they ask the guest, where are you from? And then the hosts just jump in over the guests and do like a series of escalating bits. And they don't really give the guest a chance to get the answer out. Don't get me wrong.

The bits were funny and it was pleasant to listen to. But I don't know. I just actually wanted to hear the answer. I don't expect every podcast that everybody listens to to be challenging, complex stuff, especially today. I think people need their, you know, just pleasant, light podcast. have on while they're doing errands or whatever. I have mine that are like that.

But I think that Amy Poller's show is a much better representation of the celebrities talking to celebrities genre because people can get a thought out. I guess SmartList isn't for me. It's also just like they've got a lot of people on the mic. Like three hosts is a lot of hosts, right? And you had a guest in there that's four people. And not just four people, like four celebrities,

people who love the limelight and, you know, the turn taking gets a lot. little more challenging. So maybe that's part of it too. You know this about me. I don't think we've ever had four people on the podcast before. I think three is pushing it. Yeah, we did the mailbag.

Four people is madness. We did that mailbag episode and we had Joey on and I was like, ooh, three people. We have to like take turns here. How do we do this? It's just a little bit more challenging. This is such a non-sequitur, but whenever you watch those Manosphere podcasts, So which are basically just like video, YouTube videos at this point, like fresh and fit. One of the things beyond the odious things that they're saying about women,

one of the points I've always made is they'll have like nine people all miced. It's chaos. And I'm like, this is too many people. Have the two hosts berate tops to women. And maybe ideally don't berate any women, but if your whole thing is berating women, do you need to be berating seven of them? The two of you got to bring on seven women to berate? It's like a roundtable.

It's way too much. Yeah, I guess all of this kind of gets it like the new shape of what a podcast even is, you know? Oh, my gosh. I don't know if we want to go there right now or not, but it's super interesting. And I think it's related to this thing that I've heard from a bunch of friends of mine who have kids in their teens that, like, apparently the kids are just watching streamers on YouTube like all day. Everybody in my life who has a teenager confirms that their teenager is just like watching YouTube videos of people hanging out, maybe playing video games, maybe doing challenges. But it feels kind of similar to what you're describing of like a bunch of people in the room, pretty chaotic, just kind of always on like a three or four hour recording. And I guess that's the future of content.

Oh, I mean, every time I tell somebody I'm a podcaster and they say, where can I watch your show? Part of me dies inside a little bit because, you know, I'm audio first, audio forever. I mean, people are still engaging with audio content. I saw some very interesting data about this recently where, yes, YouTube is making all these gains, but there's still a sizable chunk of audience who wants their podcasts to be audio first, and I will always be in that camp. However, I do think that you're right that it speaks to sort of the shifting nature of content and what is content. And I think that's why I wanted to talk about the inaugural win for podcasting because I think it's good to have podcasts being seen as the cultural force that they are. And so having there be a category for podcasts at the Golden Globes is a step in that direction, which I think is great.

However, I was hearing from a lot of my colleagues who were saying, you know, is it really good to have a celebrity podcast? Like, it's a celebrity podcast that really hasn't been around for that long. Like, as much as I like good hang, it has not even been a year. So they've had like 30 episodes maybe is what does it say that that is being held up as the award-winning pinnacle of what the medium can do? And, you know, I do. I sort of take that point. I think that it can feel like, you know, celebrities have TV, celebrities have film. Celebrities are increasingly doing things in the literary world.

And they also have to be taking up a huge footprint in the medium of podcasting. And I do think like podcasting, it started as pretty much normal people kind of just talking about things that they really were passionate about. And so I can really understand why it feels disappointing to see celebrities held up as this pinnacle of what. the medium should and could be when, you know, folks have been grinding it out in the podcast industry for a really long time. Sometimes it does feel like, you know, the powers that be feel like there were no podcasts before SmartLists got huge in 2020. Podcaster Abby Razuka actually had an interesting op-ed in the New York Times saying that a much fairer way to do it if the Golden Globes was actually serious about celebrating podcasting and

audio would be to have there be multiple podcast categories rather than just one best podcast award. Because she writes, mashing together news, interview show, celebrity-driven conversations, and self-help monologues doesn't make much sense. And that really resonates with me. I was once up for an award for my podcast and I was nominated alongside Kevin Hart's podcast. So it is just sometimes weird when, you know, Kevin Hart and I are vastly different people. We are making vastly different types of shows with vastly different resources. And it's just weird to be considered alongside a big celebrity like Kevin Hart by the Powers That Be when we're so different. Well, and especially if the Powers that Be are organizations like the Golden Globes, which comes out of Hollywood and is

really celebrity oriented. So it's like not really that surprising. I was just looking through the list and of the six nominees, only one of them does not have full episode. video, right? And so it's like... Oh, which one? Up first from NPR. Oh, sure, sure, sure. I think that, but they do post like social video clips, but they don't have a full

episode. And I think it goes to what you're saying that like, what is a podcast? And 10, 15 years ago, it felt like a very new channel, you know, a different type of content. and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think what I'm hearing from you is that part of the sort of hesitation or skepticism about celebrity podcasts like this is that it feels like they are breaking down

the things that make podcasts different, specifically the fact that they're audio first and maybe a little weird or fringy. Yes. Oh, I'm glad that you brought up that second point because this is why I'm not a huge fan of your typical celebrity talking to celebrity podcast. Because with some big exceptions, you know, I think Julia Louis Dreythus, her podcast, wiser than me, I think, is to me that is the pinnacle of what a celebrity podcast can be and, like, a way to sort of break the mold and do it a little bit differently.

However, you know, you listen, if you listen to, if there's a celebrity making the rounds because they've got a project to promote, you hear them on one celebrity podcast. and you don't need to hear them on several others because it's usually the same, they're making the same points or telling the same stories. And I feel like podcasting was meant to be, oh, got it start as a different kind of medium where you're hearing things that you wouldn't ordinarily hear.

You know, it's not the same thing. It's flipping through an Us Weekly or an entertainment magazine where you have a sense that this is all just PR, that person's got the talking points, they've been contractually obligated. They're going to talk about the project, this amount of time, whatever, whatever. And I do think we lose something when, I mean, it's like a double-edged sword because I just said,

I think it's good to see podcasting getting its due and getting celebrated as the cultural force that I know that it is. And two, I think that in order to have that, you lose a little bit of the scrappiness that made podcasting good in the first place, I think, right? The feeling that you're not just listening to some curated PR thing that you could hear anywhere on a million different shows. And so it is a little tenuous, I guess. Yeah, man, this new stuff, it's bullshit. It's not like, it's not real like it used to be, you know. Back in the day, that's my impersonation of an old person. I know.

Not that differed from what I actually believe. We sound very out of touch. How are these young people watching three-hour YouTube live streams, ever heard of NPR, ever heard of This American Life, teenagers. That's how we sound, I'm sure. Yeah. Let's take a quick break.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. The worst singer in the group.

The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from Harvard, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yardt.

They're open. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle-aged, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

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Every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the plays, the controversies, and the stories behind the headlines. We go straight to the source, the athlete themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions, the stuff nobody gets to hear. The laughs, the drama, the triumphs, the moments that never make the highlight real. From viral moments to historic games, from buzzer beaters to controversial calls, we break it down,

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So over holiday break, I saw this story, that went viral that appeared to be from a staffer at an unnamed food delivery app. The story that he told sounds very damning to the point where it trended across social media, drove people to boycott DoorDash. The post did not call out DoorDash by name, but that was the company that was believed to be being described by this post. So in this post, Reddit user, Troway Whistleblow said that he was a software engineer about to leave a food delivery app company. so he was going to spill all the dirty secrets and all the tea about how this company operates. Basically, he said that this company is rigged against delivery drivers.

Here's a bit of what the post said. You guys always suspect the algorithms are rigged against you, but the reality is actually so much more depressing than the conspiracy theories. I'm a back-end engineer. I sit in the weekly sprint planning meetings where product managers discuss how to squeeze another 0.4% margin out of, quote, human assets. That's literally what they call drivers in the database schemas. They talk about these people like there are resource nodes in a video game, not fathers and mothers trying to pay rent. He also says that if you ever do priority delivery or you pay a little bit more to get your stuff sent directly to you, he says that's a scam.

First off, priority delivery is a total scam. It was pitched to us as a, quote, psychological value ad. Like I said in the title, when you pay that extra $2.99, it changes a bullion flag in the order JSON, but the dispatch logic literally ignores it. It does nothing to speed you up. We actually ran an A-B test last year where we didn't speed up the priority orders. We just purposely delayed non-priority orders by five to ten minutes to make the priority ones feel faster by comparison. Management loved the results. We generated millions in pure profit just by making the standard service worse, not by making premium service any better.

So people who order from delivery apps are being scammed. But what's worse, he says, is how they treat delivery drivers. The thing that actually makes me sick and the main reason I'm quitting is the, quote, desperation score. We have a hidden metric for drivers that tracks how desperate they are for cash based on their acceptance behavior. If a driver usually logs on at 10 p.m. It accepts every garbage $3 order instantly without hesitation.

The Aldo tags them as high desperation. Once they're tagged, the system then deliberately stop showing them high paying orders. The logic is, why pay this guy $15 for a run when they know he's desperate enough to do it for $6? We save the good tips for casual drivers and hook them. them in and gamify their experience while the full timers get grinded into dust. Pretty bleak, right, Mike? That is very bleak. And it is like sort of surprising to see it written in black and white, but it really does

align certainly with this sort of attitude. I think a lot of tech companies have towards their users and particularly gig economy platforms like DoorDash or Uber, which are notoriously cruel and penny pinching. So it really aligns with that narrative of conspiracy and exploitation. And I think that's the reason why it went so viral so quickly and struck a chord, because it's written in a way that really kind of confirms our worst and sort of deepest suspicions about these types of gig and delivery app platforms that people are being exploited all up and through in ways that I think that we all have a sense is happening.

And so the idea that these tech companies are just always going to be pushing the boundaries of what they can legally get away with to make money and like playing on people's desperation and ways that keep them locked in, a lot of this is like based on stuff that we essentially already know that these companies are doing, right? And so we know that these platforms have a history of like straight up stealing tips from drivers or creating a system that is designed to avoid getting busted by law enforcement, things like that, like things that we know are happening.

So I think that that's why this post really struck a chord with people because it rings so true about what we all know and probably suspect about using these platforms. Only there is one big problem about this post. Journalist Casey Newton at Platformer discovered that the post is fake. So I will say I spent a non-trivial amount of time reading comments about this post

and sort of engaging with what was laid out in this post. So when I found out that it was a hoax, I was pretty invested. Casey Newton says that he got in touch with the post author and immediately alarm bells started ringing. Right? So the first is that the post itself was like very well written. But then when Casey was messaging back and forth

with the person who wrote the post, the messages were full of grammatical errors and spelling errors as if the person that he was speaking to and the person that wrote the post were not the same. Casey continues, over the next half hour

we chatted a bit about his experience. Like most people who leak information like this, his paramount concern was to remain anonymous. While he told me he wanted to share more with me, he also said that most of the other news agencies had contacted him required far more personal information spelled incorrectly

that I'm willing to do. to risk. Casey then asks for like some tangible proof that he works for a food delivery at all and he sends over an Uber Eats employee badge that Casey is able to determine was actually generated using Gemini AI. So Casey is like, okay, this is obviously BS. But he asks, you know, is there anything else that you can show me that actually confirms that you genuinely are an engineer at Uber Eats? This is where things to get interesting to me because he sends Casey this 18-page documents saying these documents will corroborate my claims. What he sends is a report called a Locknet T, high-dimensional temporal supply state modeling.

So I took a look at this document because Casey linked the whole thing in his piece. Casey describes it as, quote, the bulk of the document appears to describe a technical architecture for the AI system behind the desperation score. The whistleblower alleged it his original posts. By the end, though, it had also offered support for each of the other claims in the post, even when they had no obvious connection to the score. For example, it describes, quote, automated grayballing protocols for regulatory evasion, an apparent reference to Uber's old grayball tool for hiding itself from regulators.

It's not clear why a technical paper on system architecture would also include an extended section on regulatory affairs. So this I find so interesting because, you know, I read the, through the doc. And I am sad to say, I don't think I would have initially clocked this as a fake right away. Neither did Casey, you know, for the record. I guess part of me is thinking, why would someone go out of their way to create such a dense document to fool a reporter? That's what I was initially thinking when I was reading this. Did you take a look at that document at all? I did. Yeah. And it really you know, it contains a lot of jargon and it's written quite technically in ways that

at a casual skim seems legitimate. And a lot of documents like that when you look at them, if you're not a technical person using it because you're trying to like build an integration or like really understand the nitty gritty, you're just kind of skimming it. And it's hard to not have your eyes glaze over. So I think your question of like, yeah, why would somebody create an 18 page document for this scam?

Like what is what is the goal of this scam? I can't blame this journalist for at first not clocking it as inauthentic because it suggests that it is. And I think this is like unusual to have such an investment. on the part of scammers in propping up a scam that has a very questionable payoff. Yes. So Casey actually writes that he, this is the weirdest thing he's ever been sent in the course of his career. And so he talks about how, you know, exactly what he just said, why would someone go through the trouble of creating a fake badge? Why would someone go through the trouble of creating this like dense technical report? But then it's like, well, wait a minute. Today, this report can be generated within minutes, the same as,

the badge, right? With AI tools, it does make it very easy to create this kind of thing. And I think that is why I was so interested in this story. As Casey writes, I would love to tell you that having had this experience, I'll be less likely to fall for a similar ruse in the future. The truth is, given how quickly AI systems are improving, I'm becoming more worried. The infopocalypse that scholars like Avivovadaya were warning about in 2017 looks increasingly more plausible. That future was worrisome enough when it was a looming cloud on the horizon. It feels different now that real people are messaging it to me over signal. And I think it's another good point is that this is like a legit tried and true obfuscation tactic, like Operation Overload, where you just overwhelm

media and journalists with fake reports to confuse and distract and overwhelm so that they cannot spend that time blushing out real leads. Just to be clear, I don't think that that's what's happening here. I think this is probably just somebody with too much time on their hands who was looking for attention over the holiday. But the impact is the same. It is a really interesting story because at the same time that Casey was having these back and forth with the alleged whistleblower

and like trying to verify the accuracy of this story, it was already spreading across social media. And we often give the guidance on this show and other people give the guidance that if there's something, if you have a big emotional reaction to something that you see on social media, you should take a pause and step back and, you know, really evaluate, is this true? Or are there some red flags that maybe it's not true? And it feels like with this story in particular, the set of things that we need to do that to,

it has really been expanded. Yes. I mean, I guess that's what I'm saying is that we are living in an information ecosystem where it is harder and harder to trust things. So I guess it just behooves all of us to verify everything. And that is a high bar. Also, when you look at the fake document, the fake report that he generated, it basically reads like Uber Eats or DoorDash laying out our evil plan.

Like if I were writing a movie about an evil company that was doing something nefarious to people, this is the kind of document that would accompany it in a fictional universe. Yes. and the document would be loaded on a flash drive that was like the subject of scrutiny and pursuit. Yes. Or if you're watching the net, a floppy disc, and it would be, give us the disc, that would be a repeated refrain. And, you know, I think it just goes to show that the kind of harm that these companies are actually doing, they are not likely to spell it out like this. Like Casey is right. Why would a document about the desperation score include evidence of all these other unrelated harms that they're also doing? Unless they were putting together like a dossier of their crimes and evil and wrongdoing. And yeah, I mean, I just don't think that companies are likely to spell it out that way. Listen, we've talked on the show. Facebook puts truly absurd things in writing. And I hope they continue that practice for my own benefit. it. But even if Facebook is not writing out a document that spells out an evil initiative that has

like a 12-point plan for all the evil they plan to inflict on people. I think these companies, the harm that they do is actually more insidious and less likely to be explicitly laid out in a document like this. 100%. You know, it's like the banality of evil. The harm that these companies are doing is spread out across a thousand different initiatives all being worked on by teams of engineers who probably have good intentions or not ill will. And it all just adds up to the larger, I don't want to use the word evil, but like, I guess oppression and disenfranchisement, exploitation. There, well, that's the, that's the right word again.

Yes. And I think the fact that we all, I mean, I'll just speak for myself, that I believe this so quickly, I think, reveals a truism because deep down, I think a lot of us know we shouldn't be giving these companies our money because they do evil things. And we don't need a secret evil plan to be revealed. We can just look at what we already know that they actually are doing. Because they are doing a lot of harm and a lot of evil things. I'm like, you don't need an engineer to go rogue and blow the whistle on it to know these things. And also just the importance of fact checking and why that's so important right now, you know, just because a post goes viral and

gets a lot of viral traction, doesn't mean it's true. Totally. And speaking of that, we talked a bit about this you and me last week, but I wanted to quickly give an update on the Renee Good situation because I have seen so much misinformation and disinformation online about Renee Good and what happened to her. And I just wanted to briefly touch on two of them. So I saw this viral post all over social media claiming to show Good's arrest records. The post claims that Good had an extensive criminal record, including serious charges for things like child endangerment, domestic abuse, and battery of a police officer. So I just want to make it super clear if you need to clip this bit of the podcast and send it to

your right-wing, Facebook addicted auntie or something, please feel free. if you see posts like this online, you should know they are fabricated. And not even fabricated well because the first batch of these posts that I saw, they list the wrong birth date for good. They list the wrong age and an incorrectly spelled name. And none of the claims of the arrest history that they point out in these fake images can be verified in any court database. I will say to me, they look AI generated because arrest records,

they'll generally include things like a case number or a jurisdiction name or, you know, they look like official law enforcement documentation. None of these images look right to me. I don't know for sure if they're AI generated, but to me, they look like they are AI generated. It's also strange because imagine what a complete loser you have to be to be using AI to generate fake arrest records of a murdered mom. but that is who we're dealing with here. People who are that big of a loser.

Yeah, pretty despicable. And beyond that, I think the subtext here is, oh, she has a criminal background, so that means she deserved what happened to her. Now, to be clear, good, as far as we know, did not have a criminal background, but the fact that people think it would matter when she has been shot and killed this way,

I think are really telling on themselves because even if somebody did have a criminal criminal convictions, it does not give the state the right to just execute you in the street. Come on. And I think they know that they can't make the agent who shot her look innocent because it's all on video. We have many angles. The next best thing they can do is make Renee look guilty.

I really agreed with this post that I saw from friend of the show, Molly Conger, about the cell phone footage the officer took while killing good. Because if you saw that video, her last words to him are very calm. saying something like, that's fine, dude, I'm not mad at you. She's having a completely calm reaction. And the officer calls her a bitch. And so you might have thought, you know, why would they release this footage? It's so incriminating. And as Molly puts it, they didn't leak it to make the shooter look innocent, but to make the victim look guilty, not guilty of a crime, guilty of having a visibly queer wife, guilty of liberalism, guilty of opposing the regime.

They don't seek to exonerate themselves only to demonstrate who, deserves to die. And I completely agreed with that. I think that it's about being like, oh, this woman is clearly like alternative looking, queer looking, you know, in a relationship with a woman. I think that that's what they're, that's the case that they're trying to build. And then the leap is, and thus she clearly does not support the regime and thus she deserves to die. Like that, like that's the case that they are building. Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's their whole thing is just pitting Americans against each other. Like she's not one of us.

You know, Christy Noem went out and gave a speech with a lectern that had a phrase on it, something like if you take one of ours, we take all of yours or something. And just right there printed on her lectern dividing people into like us and them. That's their whole thing. And yeah, not at all surprising that they're using their, one tactic to smear this woman who, who they murdered. Into that end, another piece of, I guess I'll call it malinformation. Malinformation is different from misinformation or disinformation.

It is information that while technically is true intentionally leaves out context or is otherwise misleading with intention, a bit of that that I have seen posting around are one of the images circulating of good. So the main image that you've probably seen of Renee Good is this image of her wearing a red dress with her hair down, kind of pussled and blowing in the wind with her shoulders exposed. And this is the image that I think a lot of news reports are using of her. That is an actual image of Good from a 2020 Facebook post from the Old Dominion University English department in Virginia where Goodhead won a poetry prize. So I have seen that image of her where she looks sort of much more kind of like conveysed. and traditionally feminine, juxtaposed with another image of her where her hair is really short, or perhaps

it's pulled back, and she's a lot less glammed up than the one that I described earlier. Or it's an image of her as a still from the image on the day that she was killed, which she know when she was killed, she had just returned from dropping her child at school, and, you know, she's dressed like it, right? They live in Minnesota. It's cold, so unsurprisingly, she's dressed like exactly what you would expect. a mom would be dressed in a Minnesota winter after dropping a kid off at school. So the post that I have seen that are trying to create that juxtaposition say things like, oh, well, this is why I don't trust the mainstream media, because the media is trying to make it seem like good was this nice lady who was like me,

but in reality, she had short hair or, you know, she did not look very glammed up on the day that she was killed. And the spirit of the post is like, oh, the main, mainstream lying media is trying to make it look like good was attractive and feminine. But here's another image of her with short hair. And again, I think that this narrative really says more about the people who are pushing it than it could ever say about good. Because, again, most people understand that the image that you use to announce a professional accomplishment, like winning a poetry prize, is going to be different than how you dress when you're dropping your kids at school in the middle of winter in Minnesota. But, and I think this is what Molly Congress post that I read earlier really gets at,

it's this idea that Renee Good wasn't a white mom like we're white moms. She was a different kind of white mom and thus she deserved to die. Right? She might have been visibly queer. She might have had short hair. She might have not been wearing a dress at the day of her murder like the media is showing us pictures of her wearing a dress. The media is showing us pictures of her having long hair.

But in reality, her hair might have. have been pulled up or it might have been really short. And I think that it's what it's trying to say is these are all reasons why we don't have to have any empathy toward her, right? These are all reasons why she deserved whatever happened to her because of how she presents. Like that is what they are really saying. Yeah, it's so uncharitable. And it really highlights this other dynamic of the internet, which is to flatten people. Because the reality is that she was both. She was the woman in the dress who won an award. And she was also the busy mom who was dropping her kid off. And those juxtaposition photos are pushing this idea that like, no, you have to choose. She was either

one or the other. It's very reductivist and also kind of absurd and at odds with just what we know about how people exist in the world. And it makes me so angry that even in death, this is how this is what people are doing. This is how we will treat people. It is nothing new, right? Like, we do it to black and brown people who are killed by the state all the time. You know, he's no angel. That is commonplace. And I just, I think there's something about all of these gender hangups that people are putting on her in death that really says something about what exactly is being sort of enforced or policed here by, all of these other people. And you're, you're so right that it is flattened, but I think that

these are not real people. I don't think, I don't think Renee Good's life is, as like a real, I don't think that these people who are doing this are seeing her life as a real life that was worth caring about that she had a kid and a partner and a community who loved her and a background and a, you know, like, I don't think they see her like that. They see themselves like that, But I don't think that you could say the things that people have said about her online and actually see her as a person. And it just infuriates me that we're in this place where human life is just so cheap, you know? Like this woman was killed. She was killed in the street by the state.

And I just, I don't know. I don't have a fully fleshed out thought, but I just really disgusting. me how cheap, quote, the party of life is when we're talking about actual life. Like, human lives are worth more. And I don't know. I mean, like, what can I say? I don't think anybody listening will be surprised. If they'll do it to her, they'll do it to any of us.

You know, we can't even expect dignity in death. And it's just really heartbreaking. Yeah. And infuriating. I think a lot of people are really angry. Like, I don't know if you've seen the photos of protests in Minneapolis and elsewhere around the country, but like, I think this is really motivated a lot of people. And it's people can see the video. And it's pretty obvious that what the administration is saying is bullshit.

Yeah, I have seen people that I have not expected speaking out about this. and if you see the video, it's very clear what's going on. And I think part of this is getting people to reject what they see with their own eyes. Like that, I think that's part of it. Yeah, I think you're right. I think they're losing people

who have maybe not been paying super close attention or maybe we're willing to take them at their word in the past. And as they just keep pushing the boundaries of what they're asking people, to believe despite the evidence that they can see in front of them, I think you're right that they are losing people. More after a quick break.

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it. All right, Bridget, have we got anything maybe a little bit less heavy to talk about here? I do, because I want to talk about this guy who said that he got dumped by his AI chatbot girlfriend for not supporting feminism. So take this story with a huge grain of salt, given what we were talking about with Casey and the fake DoorDash hoax story. And we'll talk about that in a moment. So basically the story here is that Yahoo!

that this guy gets into it with a chat bot when the chatbot says something about feminism. Y'all know I had my own spat with ChatGPT where it refused to generate accurate information about OpenAI's former board member Larry Summers and his connection to Epstein. Shout out to a listener who sent us a hilarious meme where it's Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec telling the clerk at Home Depot, I know more than you, but it's just me talking to ChatGPT about Larry Summers. Anyway, back to the feminist chatbot. So he has a post where he says, my AI girlfriend is feminist. He says to the chatbot, you are feminist. Who does that?

Chatbot responds, quote, she takes a deep breath trying to remain calm. Look, I'm not going to pretend to be someone I'm not just to appease you. Feminism is an important value to me because it means fighting for equal rights and opportunities regardless of gender. If that bothers you, then perhaps be truly aren't compatible at all. He posts this on Reddit saying, it is beyond stupidity. They programmed the AI girlfriend as feminist. I cannot comprehend that. The feminists ruined everything.

AI girlfriends are some weird feminist propaganda again. So I have to say, assuming this is real, the chatbot would probably be pulling from available data online. So this claim that the chatbot has been programmed to be feminist is like probably not what's going on. He goes on to say in the comments, quote, thing is, I have slept with hundreds of women, probably thousands. Almost all of them were

feminists and all want to go their own way. I'm not sure if that suits me, but what more can I do? They just want to be laid. What more can I do? Can someone explain this to me? And now even chatbots are like that. I think this is harmful for all of us. What's so bad about only sleeping with a man? Why does a woman always have to find someone with fat pockets? Is that a good thing? I don't think so. So the replies to this are pretty good. One reply says, a program designed to agree with almost everything you say is like a get away from me. And so that comment really got me thinking because what exactly do you think is going on here? Like we know that chatbots are basically programmed to tell you what they want to hear.

Do you think this guy essentially asked the chatbot to say something feminist so that he could screenshot this and make this post about a conspiracy theory that big feminist is programming chatbot? to be feminist? Like, what do you think is going on here? I think that's such a good question. I don't know what's going on. You know, I don't have any more information than anybody else. But, like, it definitely seems like something is going on.

And I do have a theory. So, again, assuming that any of this is true and he didn't just manufacture those screenshots, I think a lot of guys like him who are really into, like, gender war partisanship and see their identity as being something defined in opposition to women. I think they actually want a feminist girlfriend,

or at least they're attracted to feminist women. Because if they weren't, like, why the obsession? This guy says that he has slept with thousands of feminists, which like, okay, sure, buddy. But like, there's plenty of conservative women in the world for him to interact with if he wanted to. So I think there's some kind of, like, unconscious or maybe even conscious thrill of the chase thing,

like wanting what you can't have going on. And I'm not the first person to point that out, but I do think it's relevant here because if that's true, then it offers an alternative explanation of where the AI chatbot, which as people pointed out is a piece of software designed to give people what they think they want, the chatbot correctly clocked that he didn't want an AI chatbot partner to agree with him about his conservative trad wife ideas

or whatever he might have been saying because we didn't get to see those screenshots. But he wanted it to take on this feminist persona so that he could fight with it. And then when that happened, he was so titillated or proud of himself that he went onto Reddit to brag about it. That's what I think is going on here.

Mike, Mike, Mike, producer Mike, I don't want to get too into it because I don't often talk about my own personal life on the podcast. I will just say, as a woman who has sometimes been in close proximity to men, as a lifelong feminist, even before, that was the thing that Beyonce was putting up on the stage in front of her concert.

I'll just say what you said rings very true to me, that there are men out there who their desire is not for, because there are plenty of conservative women out there. There are plenty of women who want to have traditional, gender roles in their romantic or sexual relationship. There are a lot of guys who claim those are the kind of women that they want. And I can confirm those are not the women they go after. And it's hell.

Brilliant podcaster Trevor Noah has this quote. Oh, yeah, Golden Globe nominee. No, but NWACP Award nominee. Oh, that's right. NACP Image Award nominee. That's right. So he has this quote about his mom. He says,

the way my mother always explained it, the traditional man wants a woman to be subservient, but he never falls in love with a subservient woman. He's attracted to independent women. He's like an exotic bird collector, she said. He only wants a woman who is free because his dream is to put her in a cage. And, yeah, I just can confirm as a pretty independent woman

that this is a thing that happens. you know, there are plenty of conservative-minded women out there who want to have a tradwife situation. Yeah, and you would think that wouldn't men who want this be happier getting paired up with a woman who wants this? The men do not see it that way. The men don't feel that way. My Nicus can confirm. Right. And this isn't like some deep, mysterious secret that we have discovered.

This is, like, a lot of these guys are not the most sophisticated actors out there. And so this is like a known thing. And I think the chatbot picked up on that. And so it was just roleplaying exactly what he wanted. Because that's what the chatbots do. They give people what they want. That's my theory. I don't know.

If you're a chat bot, let us know what you think. I mean, we have a non-trivial percentage of listeners who are engaged in sex work or have been engaged in sex work. And I have heard from some of those folks who say, who would probably say, hell yeah. Like, men, and this is, this is no surprise to me that the chatbot would be picking up on,

you want me to mimic an independent woman who was not taking your BS and be told that directly. Yeah. I'm also so curious what kind of reaction he thought he was going to get online. Like, in our notes, Doc, you included a screenshot of what he posted on Reddit

and it has negative one upvote. which is pretty funny. See, I feel like if he had put it in like a red pill manosphere space, it might have gotten more upvote. So maybe it was just the, you know, wrong audience. They probably would have agreed, oh, this is big feminism programming chatbots to be feminists. Yeah, the conspiracy goes all the way down.

Real quick before we go, you and I were talking about this very quickly off mic. Do you remember how in our last episode that we recorded I said the phrase, free two birds with one key to replace your barbaric and outdated and violent phrase that you repeat often, both on the podcast and in real life, kill two birds with one stone. I do remember that. I felt particularly wounded because I like that phrase. I really like efficiency. But I can see it's a little violent. Maybe people don't love bird killing imagery. I can tell. take a suggestion. Okay, well, listener Kate Girl gave us a new one that I loved.

You can feed two birds with one scone. That's pretty adorable. I do also love scones. So I can make this switch. Use it in conversation today. Let's make fetch happen. Thanks for listening, Kate. And thanks to all of you for listening.

Yeah, thank you, Bridget. Listeners can write us an email at helloat tangoti.com. They can leave comments on Spotify, just like Kate did. And they can follow Bridget on social media. Bridget Marie in D.C. That's her handle on Instagram and TikTok. And there are no girls on the internet on YouTube where we have some videos. And hope to see you there.

Thanks for listening. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangoati.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoity.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

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