There Are No Girls on the Internet - DISINFORMED: This TikTok creator says you probably won’t be trafficked in a parking lot

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

TikTok is a hotbed of viral misinformation about trafficking. Jessica AKA BloodBathAndBeyond is trying to change that.You’re Wrong About’s Micheal Hobbes’ episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disinformed-were-wrong-about-trafficking-w-michael-hobbes/id1520715907?i=1000518893578Follow Jessica on TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeV4t1Hb/For more information about trafficking, check out the Polaris Project: https://polarisproject.org/ Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. And nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where SportsSlice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves, their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to SportsSlic on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. You're listening to This Informed, a mini-season. From there are no girls on the internet. I'm Bridget Todd. Last week, we talked to journalist Michael Hobbs from the podcast you're wrong about, about the origins of our current moral panic around trafficking. I will say just on these kinds of things, it's never strangers. It's never, like these kinds of monomiths, anything that looks like the sort of,

remember the flashing your high beams, gang initiation stuff, those are totally bunk. Anything involving like random targeting of civilians? it's that really never happens. Anything the strangers kidnapping you in broad daylight, I think there's like certain categories of anecdotes that are just like, these ones never turn out to be true. So we should just stop sharing them. Like don't feel like you have to warn people about anything involving a parking lot. If a parking lot is involved, people are safe. A lot of the conversations creating panic around trafficking and parking lots are happening on the platform TikTok. Women are using the platform to warn others about what they describe as narrative.

missing being kidnapped from a public place and almost trafficked. But that's not how trafficking works. It isn't affluent women being kidnapped from public places. So how did these women come to take up so much room in the conversations on TikTok around trafficking? And what's really going on? Hear me out. Were you almost sex trafficked at Target?

Or have you fallen victim to a false narrative pushed by social media for years now? It perpetuates a false stereotype about what sex trafficking actually looks like. Because if we actually wanted to talk about what sex trafficking actually looks like, require talking about how the kidnapping narrative is actually incredibly false because most victims of sex trafficking are actually groomed into it over a long period of time by somebody they know and trust. But people don't want to talk about that because it's much easier to be afraid of the boogeyman that it is to hold the people you know and trust accountable.

Which would then lead to a larger conversation about why the overwhelming majority of people who claim to have almost been sex trafficked are usually pretty affluent young white so straight women, despite the fact that every reputable anti-trafficking organization could tell you that the most vulnerable populations for sex trafficking are minority, queer, homeless youth. People do not want to talk about this because Republicans and evangelicals have been pushing this narrative for decades. Because when you have a population that does not know the difference between voluntary sex work and sex trafficking, you can push for legislation that not only hurts minorities but also hurts the sex workers they all fucking hate.

It's time to stop believing that every scary thing you've ever experienced is the work of a sex trafficker and start listening to sex workers who know what the signs actually look like. That's Jessica. She makes viral content that gives accurate information about trafficking and debunks viral misinformation about it on TikTok. And she says spreading myths around trafficking is doing real harm. So my name is Jessica, but online I go blood by blood, bath and beyond. How did you come to making TikTok specifically about debunking panics and myths around sex trafficking? So I originally downloaded TikTok because I heard there was this new app for young kids and everybody was on it and it was really cool. So I was like, oh, let's check

it out, see what all the young kids are doing. So I got on it. I was watching a lot of content. And then somehow I found this niche of like Dungeons and Dragons content. I was like, oh, I can make fun Dungeons and Dragons jokes. So I started making content like that. But then there was actually a lot of sexism involved in that community and a lot of gatekeeping of like, oh, women always play these stereotypical characters and they do all of these things because what's a really niche nerdy community without putting some sort of stereotype on women? And so I just, I fell out of that community and I started making just random things. It turned into like a personal blog for a short while. And then I started finding a lot of videos online of people asking just random questions. And I was

like, oh, I actually know the answer to that. And I found myself in a lot of science and math and technology sort of questions. And one of the first things that I started covering when it came to human trafficking and how I sort of fell into the niche I did was there was this one viral video going around that was talking about how if you receive a text message that talks about a failed delivery attempt, like think of if you get like text notifications from Amazon and you have to like sign for a package or something. And it says like, oh, we tried to deliver it, but it didn't. There was this thing going around online that if you click the link they provide in that text message, it's actually coming from sex traffickers and they're going to lowjack your location and you're going to become a victim of trafficking and they're going to kidnap you from your home. By clicking on that link, you are actually sending your precise location to sex traffickers in your local area. So they could swoop in and come pick your ass up.

And I off the bat knew that that wasn't true. That didn't make any sense. That's logistically not how something would work. And if you really think about it, it just wouldn't work that way. So I ended up making a video about that. And that video did very well. And a lot of people just saw me in association with sex trafficking and misinformation. And so at that point, I think it had around 100,000 followers.

And so many of my followers would start tagging me in other videos talking about sex trafficking. And they would be like, oh, is this a sex trafficking thing? Is this a sex trafficking thing? So I had this tiny army of people that started tagging me in all. of these different videos that just talk about sex trafficking. Some of them were legitimate and some of them were more on that hoaxy or misinformation side. So I've just been constantly bombarded by my followers tagging me in these videos. And that one thing about like Amazon packages kind of started at all.

On TikTok, you'll find mostly white women making videos that sometimes go viral, racking up thousands and thousands and thousands of views about how they were nearly trafficked. If you search any hashtag related to trafficking awareness, and it's mostly videos of women saying that someone got too close to them while they were shopping, or finding something weird on their car. Just this morning, Jessica sent me a TikTok of a woman who found pieces of cheese smeared on her car and said this was a new tactic that traffickers were using to find their victims. Why do you think so many people on social media, and it's offline as well,

why do you think people get so up in arms about these different things where it's like, oh, someone put flowers on my car or a zip tie, like these things that people are. then say like, oh, I was an attempted victim of sex trafficking because I found honey on my car or I got this kind of text messages. Why do you think, like, what's going on with this phenomena, you think? I think a lot of it has to do with the othering and a lack of education on what sex trafficking truly looks like because even though it happens in our neighborhoods, it happens all around us. So many people distance themselves from that crime and the people who commit those crimes. So if it's easier to say that it's dark, scary strangers kidnapping you.

from parking lots than it is to acknowledge that it's high school coaches, its parents, it's boyfriends, it's people you know and people you've grown to trust or see as good people. So we try to other and we try to distance ourselves from the people committing those acts that we see as such terrible crimes. So I think it's just a lot easier to just pin it on this dark, shadowy figure and then just combining that with not really understanding who are the most susceptible victims to sex trafficking is, I think, what really built up this phenomenon online. So you might be thinking,

so what if people want to make videos about trafficking? Who is it hurting? Well, the answer is that it's actually hurting survivors of sex trafficking because it adds to the idea that the victims of trafficking are white ladies taken by strangers, when in reality it's marginalized people like black folks, queer folks, trans folks, and people dealing with homelessness. And when organizations get involved to try to combat trafficking,

they can sometimes conflate trafficking with consensual sex. work. Further criminalizing already marginalized communities. Here's Jessica on TikTok explaining what I mean. Hello, this is just your daily reminder that most anti-trafficking organizations here in the United States aren't actually helping trafficking victims. Most of these organizations focus on sex trafficking despite labor trafficking making up by some estimate 65% of trafficking victims. Many of these multimillion dollar organizations have puritanical Christian values. And the reason that they focus on sex trafficking instead of labor trafficking is because it is incredibly easy to disguise anti-sex work legislation as anti-trafficking legislation because most people do not

know the difference. The number one victim of sex trafficking in the United States is statistically black women, but these organizations love to push for legislation that makes it infinitely easier to label them as prostitutes and throw them in jail instead of providing resources they need to escape their situation. They instead push the narrative that the majority of victims are kidnapped and held against their will so that they can raise millions of dollars for these rescue missions. And the reason they don't talk about labor trafficking is because most victims of labor trafficking are undocumented immigrants. And that would require talking about how the U.S. loves to capitalize on undocumented immigrant labor without actually providing them basic human

rights. One of your videos that I watched that really breaks this down well is this idea that so many organizations that purport to be around combating trafficking are actually, one, just like very shady. And then two, they're doing this thing where they conflate trafficking with sex work. and then they, you know, they aren't kind of going after some of the biggest culprits of actual trafficking, like labor, you know, labor trafficking and things like that. And they're sort of selling this narrative of little white kids getting snatched off the street or white ladies getting like taken in parking lots. And, you know, do you think that's sort of part of it that it's, that it's easier to raise a panic around the issue when it look, when you're telling people that

it looks like this as opposed to like, no, it might be like the coach and you're, at your kid's school or something. Yeah, definitely. I think a lot of those organizations, and it's hard to look at an organization that is objectively trying to do something good and just say, like, hey, you're doing it wrong. Like, you hate to do that. So I always try to be really careful when I speak of these organizations as much as they sometimes frustrate me. But yeah, there are a lot of, I call them just rescue organizations where they paint this picture. they really tend to focus on this idea that sex trafficking is, I think the word trafficking is what does it, is they associate trafficking with being carried across a border.

And that is so often not the case. Jessica studied mathematics, which turns out it's actually a pretty useful thing to understand when you're responding to viral misinformation around sexualized violence and trafficking. So how is studying math and statistics impacted your work on TikTok? So I would love to say like, oh, I use my degree all. all the time is so valuable, like totally, like the $50,000 I haven't debt, it's totally worth it. But in all reality, so I have a master's degree in mathematics and I focused on theoretical mathematics. So statistics wasn't necessarily my thing, but I definitely had to take multiple courses on it in college.

And then for my master's thesis, I had to do a lot of statistical analysis and research. So a lot of this is seeing people throw out stats online, like 40 million people are in trafficking, which is, a large, horrifying number, but when you really break down exactly where that's coming from, and you see that analysis of exactly, okay, but out of those 40 million people, how many is this, what is your definition, what is your sample size, exactly how are you collecting this data? It definitely helps to have a background in mathematics and understand, okay, like, what is the importance of sample sizes and how are they collecting this and how are they going out and doing all of these things? It definitely helps to see what happens when that isn't done properly.

And unfortunately, it's, that's not as commonly taught in schools I wish it was, is understanding how these statistics come about and what are the flaws and what can go wrong and how credible is this information and where they're getting it from. So that definitely comes in hand quite a bit. In response to the death of Sarah Everd, a South London woman who was found dead this year, the United Nations entity for gender equity and empowerment of women, released a report that showed that 97% of women in the United Kingdom from ages 18 to 24 have been victims of sexual harassment in public places.

That factoid sparked a viral movement on TikTok where women cite the 97% number to make really moving videos calling out the sexual harassment that we face in public constantly. But a lot of men also really latched on to that 97% number. Some said that since the study included things like catcalling or staring as sexual harassment, that 97% figure must be overblown. And it gave a lot of them a really easy excuse to just disengage from the conversation altogether because that one stat had become kind of a rallying cry

for talking about sexual harassment in public on TikTok. Yeah, that 97% number, all that kept me up for multiple days. That is, that's a really tough one because the data science in me and the person with the math degree in me wants to go, hold up, that's a really, really big number. that's a very large assumption to be making. You better have a lot behind it to prove that. But also at the same time, like, being a woman just existing in the world, it's hard not to believe it. Like the amount of times I've been cat-called or sexually harassed. Like, oh, yeah, no, 97% seems about right. So your assumption is to just go with it and be like, yeah, that's accurate. That reflects what I've personally seen in my life. So when I come in, and I think that's why I'm in a unique position to be talking about. it is because I've seen men or at least male presenting individuals come online and talk about that and they are immediately shot down. They're like, you're not allowed to be talking about this. You are the problem. How dare you try to tell us or try to speak over our experiences? So as a woman who has a little bit more technical understanding of how these studies work, I think it's valuable for me to come in and say, hey, I'm sure 97 is pretty close to what it actually is. It wasn't meant to be this all-encompassing perfect study that was going to get thrown. around by the entire world and turned to a massive movement. It was a self-selected study,

and this organization just wanted to get a rough idea. They weren't trying to make it this monolith of an idea. So just to criticize it, but to still put it in the frame of, yes, this is an absolutely massive problem. But like, if we're going to be throwing around numbers like this that have such a large impact, we should make sure that these are solid numbers that have the science behind it to back it up. Because otherwise you will run into an instance where a whole ton of men are going to come back at you and say, no, that study was BS. That doesn't make any sense. No, I'm not going to engage in this conversation because the math was bad. And that is their immediate go-to. So if we're going to engage in these conversations, we need to have rock solid numbers.

That's such a good point. Because I can see, I used to, an earlier iteration of me used to spend a lot of time, like, arguing with guys in Reddit and things like that. And so it's like, as soon as are like, oh, well, I think your numbers are not accurate. Like, it really is a way for them to just sort of shut the conversation down. Yeah, part of the one of the videos I made talking about the 97%. I think I ended the video on something like bad math isn't an excuse to leave the conversation. And that chunk of my video got stitched like two, 300 times of women being like, she gets it. And I think that was really what helped engage in the conversation is, yeah, the math was flawed.

We should talk about that because we want to make sure that we're getting accurate information. but also this is a societal phenomenon. And getting a perfect number is never going to be easy because you can do sample sizing, but there's going to be so many individual experiences or different cultures and communities that behave differently around women, that's not an easy number to get.

So yeah, we're probably going to be going off of a couple of assumptions here and there. But just because the study's flawed doesn't mean that the amount of women who resonated with that statistic should speak for itself. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy,

not quite on Humor Me with Robert Smygel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter.

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844-I-heart. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind. Highlights are trending, opinions are flying, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. Every episode, we're cutting through the noise. Breaking down the plays, the controversies,

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Listen to SportsSlice on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Sliced Life 12 in the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On hurdle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WNBA standout Kate Martin and rising hockey star Layla Edwards.

If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't. Like, I've never understood that. Like, it didn't make sense in my brain. It's hard to be in spaces that no one looks like you, but don't ever feel like you don't feel like. Don't let that be the reason you don't do it. An Olympic champs Gabby Thomas and Katie Ladecki. The ability to show a gold medal to someone and have their face light up and smile, that means the world to me.

And that's what motivates me to win more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast. For wherever you get your podcasts.

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. It's not hard for me to believe that almost all women have been sexually harassed in public, because I'm a woman. The reality is that we put up with so much creepy, sexist, gross stuff at our everyday lives. And it isn't okay. When women's stories about being almost trafficked, go viral on TikTok, people tag Jessica in the comments. Like she's supposed to rush in and call them. woman out for making it up for attention. What Jessica says, even if the women who make these videos are probably not about to be

trafficked from a target, they are probably very genuinely in situations that feel creepy or unsafe, because the experiences of being a woman in public often feel creepy and unsafe. That dude who gets way too close to you while you're shopping might not be a trafficker, but that doesn't mean women are wrong for feeling skeved out when that kind of thing happens. And Jessica is not interested in invalidating women's experiences. experiences. More often than not the videos where, and I hate to say calling them out, but offering criticism or offering insight, 99% of the time in videos I'm getting tagged in, it is a woman sharing an experience that she believes she was almost trafficked. And whether or not I even respond to those

videos, I'm tagged in them hundreds of times. Whenever one, whenever a video goes viral, I'm, I have to turn off TikTok for a little while because my notifications get so bad. I can't focus on my engagement with comments I get because people tagging me in that video. video is so overwhelming. And more often than not, it's a young woman, and I hate to generalize, but this is usually what it is, it's a young white woman who was experiencing something in a grocery store, maybe Target, maybe Home Depot, some sort of store where they walked out to their car, and something suspicious was on their car. And objectively, it is weird when you walk out to your car and there's like a zip tie on your handle, or there's like a weird pamphlet under your windshield.

Like that's kind of odd, but they, sometimes they jump to the car. conclusion and sometimes the comment section jumps to the conclusion that they were a near miss for a sex trafficking incident and that they were almost kidnapped and that they were almost to be never seen again. And those are so difficult to talk about because it's so hard to come into that offering any sort of spotlight onto what sex trafficking actually looks like without coming off like you're invalidating their experience. So often the criticism I receive is how dare you invalidate their experience? How dare you tell them what they should be feeling? How dare you tell them that they shouldn't be afraid.

And I never want to tell somebody you shouldn't be afraid in that instance. It's more so let's talk about what the fear, like what, let's rationalize the fear here. Kidnappings, they're incredibly rare, but they do happen. Sexual assaults, just random violence on the streets. Those things do happen. And we've seen that, especially with what happened to the UK recently. But sex trafficking is an incredibly specific crime with incredibly, it has an incredibly specific definition that people have really run wild with. It is the new stranger danger to me.

What is it like for you to have to walk that incredibly, I guess, specific line of wanting to give actual fact-based content out there, but also not wanting to sound like you're invalidating someone's experience or not making it. I guess I feel like when we're talking about women on the internet, it is so easy to be like, oh, these two women are going at it. This woman says she was almost traffic. This other woman says that she's a liar. They're having a cat fight. I feel like this, when women have discourse online, it is so easy for that discourse to be distorted into some kind of a cat fight. And I feel that you probably have to walk a real specific line. What's that like for you? It is difficult to say the least. And I've definitely screwed like to say I got it

perfect the first time is an absolute lie. I've definitely screwed it up before. I've walked into those conversations with an attitude that was not appropriate. And it took me a long time to learn that. And I deleted many videos and apologized to many individuals and said, hey, I'm so sorry. My tone was inappropriate. How I came across was inappropriate. I did not mean to present myself in the way that I did. An intent over impact is such an important phrase when you're talking about content online, particularly because TikTok is such a pervasive beast. A woman can describe an instance that happened to her and people can jump to the conclusion of sex trafficking. and you can put that in a 60 second video so easily.

And it goes viral so quickly. That is catnip. People love it. But when somebody comes in and says, let's have this extremely nuanced, complicated conversation about what sex trafficking actually looks like and why this misinformation is actually really harmful and why we're still allowed to be afraid,

but we need to contextualize that fear in a really important way. That is really hard to fit into 60 seconds. So the reason I've asked people to stop tagging me, and people still do, it's not the end of the world. But so many times I'll experience a situation where my followers will tag me in a video, and you can tag somebody in a video and then leave a comment on that same tag. And they'll be like, hey, at Bloodbath and Beyond, this is complete bullshit, right? Or this is, she's lying, right? And those are such terrible things to say.

And to an extent, a creator can only control how their audience, interacts with their content so much, I can, I can't stop people from doing that, but I can still outwardly put my face on it and say, that's not an appropriate way to engage in this conversation. Is it going to stop people from doing it? Not at all. But it's at least going to try to help. And at least somebody out there will see the importance of having this conversation in a very delicate, nuanced way. There's just so many women who make these videos genuinely scared. And I understand that they are genuinely fearful. And I know where that fear is coming from, because I am also a woman in America who goes to Target and finds weird things in parking lots.

But because I also do so much debunking, even just putting my name in the comments and tagging at Bloodbath and Beyond, so many women see that as you don't believe me. And that's become so incredibly difficult to try to walk. And I still think about it now of how can I adjust my content in a way that people don't see me as like the, aha, you're wrong. No, you're not allowed to say those things that's inappropriate or, You're lying. You're making stuff up. You're looking for attention.

I never want that air around my content and around my presence on the internet. But I'm still trying to figure out that nice little balance. And I'm getting better at it, but it's still, it's difficult. Yeah. I really appreciate the honest response that you just gave because I feel, you know, especially online, it can be so hard to be like, yeah, I get it wrong sometimes. Yeah, a lot of my work involves, like, thinking through my own behavior and apologizing for it where appropriate. Like, I think admitting that is, like, rare online, I guess, and admitting that it's kind of a journey that you, that you are trying to sort out how you become an ethic, like, how you model ethical and responsible content and making sure that you're not, like, invalidating the experiences of other women.

I just really appreciate that you, that you're bringing that nuance to the conversation because a, especially on these platforms where you only get 60 seconds, that nuance is so able to get lost. And I think people, a lot of people online are looking for a fight. They're looking for that conflict. They're looking for, like, they want to see two people in conflict and not two people in dialogue or in discussion or in community. When people tag you in videos and kind of give the perception of like,

oh, you're shutting this person down or you're calling them out and like blah, blah, blah. Something that I think kind of gets lost in this is when we talk about bad actors, how local reporting and police narratives were, like, I read these articles, your shitty hometown local news website, you know, and it'll be like, oh, someone found zip ties on their car at the parking lot. This police officer corroborates that it happened, and they do the whole story. And one might read the story and say, oh, well, this is, clearly this is correct. You know, they quote a police officer who confirms it happened.

And then when you actually think about it, you're like, well, this article said nothing. There was no evidence in anything, you know, untoward happened. And I guess it's so easy to point the finger at women, many of whom are probably, you know, going through the experience of being a woman in America, which can be very scary, who maybe are genuinely worried for their life or their safety. And then we don't focus on, like, the reporter who decided this was newsworthy or the police officer who didn't clearly say there was no evidence. This person thought they were being sex trafficked.

But, like, you know, here's what really happened. or whatever, I guess I wonder, it feels like it's easier to point the finger at women as the bad actors and not sort of larger institutional bad actors, like reporters who write sloppy rush stories or like police, you know, law enforcement who don't tell the full story. Absolutely. That is one of the most difficult things I have to deal with as far as when I do get pushback online. I receive so many, like an instance will be, I'll make a video talking about how this zip tie phenomenon of finding a zip tie on the handle of your car is not indicative of being marked for sex trafficking. And my entire comment section, hundreds of comments of people saying,

no, it happened to my small town. The police said it was a thing. It happened to me. The police confirmed it is a thing. And police confirming that it is an act of sex trafficking is not the same as them releasing something saying, we're investigating it. And that is so critical. And I really wish that the journalistic standard with those smaller towns that record on that kind of stuff was just a tiny bit higher because it could alleviate so much confusion because if there's like there was there was one online I had seen where it was an individual it was this was a viral TikTok and it drove me absolutely insane it was a woman who was in the car in her car I think it was a Walmart and she was looking around at the cars nearby her and she saw one car had a like a string tied to its

handle and she was like, oh, they're sex traffickers. It's them. I know it's them. And it went absolutely viral. It overnight explosion, millions of views. And the woman who actually drove that car recognized it and responded in a video saying, that's my car. Here's proof. This is my car. That was just the string from a birthday balloon I had tied to my car. I completely forgot about it. It's been there for weeks. But that didn't go nearly as viral. And the police in the area ended up putting out a piece talking about how like, oh, we're investigating this. We're going to look into it. But people see that as validation of, oh, the police confirmed it. And like, no, they're just acknowledging that this occurred online. Right. That is very different because when we

start seeing all these things online, people are going to be looking for these signs and they're immediately going to start calling the police. So please get inundated with this misinformation constantly. But the press releases they put out saying, we're getting so many reports of this and we can't find any evidence that it's actual sex trafficking isn't nearly as fun to share online. Oh, man, I think so much of it comes down to what's fun or what's wild or what's exciting to share online. You know, recently I was in the car and I flipped to some kind of conspiracy theory radio station just for a second. And in the 30 seconds that I was listening, they were talking about how Bill Gates is going to microship us all with the COVID-19 vaccine and how he's going to force us all to eat cockroaches.

And I thought, wow, anybody that's really pushing accurate or reasonable or measured information, how could we compete with that? You know, that is compelling content. And I do think that so much of what it comes down to when it comes to sharing conspiracy theories or misinformation comes down to what is fun to share online or, you know, what is exciting or wild to believe. Absolutely. I think I shouldn't say my favorite example, but the example that's ringing all the alarm

bells in my head is Wayfair. So for those who don't know back in June of, it was last year, June last year, there was this conspiracy theory going around that there were all these high ticket, high priced items on Wayfair with absolutely outrageous unreasonable prices. Like this industrial shelving unit was going for like $20,000 online. And somebody had noticed that the names they gave of these products, kind of like how when you go into IKEA, they all have unique names. Some of the names matched that of women who at some point in the last decade or so had gone missing. And they were like, oh, obviously this means that Wayfair is selling these women online because that's a completely reasonable conclusion to jump to.

What else could it be? What else could it be? Exactly. More after a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk. to David Letterman help make you funnier.

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That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo. 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, give you context, and ask the questions everybody wants. answer. Sports Slice brings you closer to the action with stories told by the people who live them. Listen to Sports Slice on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more, follow Timbo Slic Life 12 and the TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Life throws hurdles big and small. The question is, how do you conquer them? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness, professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions to talk about the challenges that shaped them and the mindset that keeps them going. From the WMBA standout, Kate Martin and rising hockey star, Layla Edwards. If a boy can do it, I don't see why a girl can't.

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that means the world to me. And that's what motivates me to win. more gold medals. At our level, at this scale, like being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can, like, I can do anything. Because resilience isn't just about winning. It's about showing up, even when it's hard. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports. Let's get right back into it. We feel I had to actually put out a statement saying they were not involved in human trafficking.

There is, of course, no truth to these claims. The products sold in question are industrial-grade cabinets that are accurately priced, they told USA Today. And the whole incident had really obvious ties to the Q&N conspiracy theory. And so actually, Michael Hobbes, from your wrong about, did an amazing piece talking about breaking all of that down, but that's not nearly as exciting because everybody wants this, there was a grand conspiracy, and it was this evil person all along. It was George Soros. It was Amazon. It was all these bad actors. They just, there are reasons to not like certain large corporations. We don't need to come up with these outrageous conspiracies not to like Wayfair. A lot of people don't like Wayfair because they provided furniture for the holding cells at the border for children. That's a reason to not like them. We don't have to tell everybody that they're secretly trafficking children. The reasons to not like them are right there.

So how can people be better involved in conversations around trafficking? All the time I'm getting comments from people asking, okay, you've taught me what it isn't. Now, what can I do to help trafficking victims? I would like to write the wrong idea of spreading misinformation. What can I do to help the victims? And the number one thing I think that everyday people can do is just when conversations of sex trafficking come up, research, look into it. A lot of these larger organizations, like the Polaris Project is one of my favorite because they have such an intense and thorough myths and facts page breaking down. exactly the popular ones you see online, like, are they doing this? No, are they doing this? Well,

yes, that is a thing. They give so much nuance to it. Even a simple Google search or just knowing some more reliable organizations that provide better information on this and running it by them first before you're sharing it. Because what a lot of people don't know is that so much of this is fueled by this idea of, I don't know if it's true, but I'm going to share it just in case. That sentence keeps me up at night. It is so frustrating. because so many people just see it as, I don't want to take or I don't want to or I don't know how to engage in checking if this is accurate. I'm just going to share it just in case. And that's why TikTok is so frustrating because the barrier for entry of sharing this information is so low. It takes two seconds to comment. It takes two seconds to duet a video, which is another way of sharing it onto your own platform. And it is so frustrating because when we share this information online, we're drowning out actually reliable, good information talking about the signs of it. sex trafficking. And even aside from that, like, we can have an incredibly nuanced conversation talking about how statistically the most likely victims of trafficking are black women, homeless

individuals, LGBT youth, kids in the foster system, people who are down on their luck or don't have a steady, reliable network of resources around them to help them if they need, if they need assistance. But when we start drowning out that conversation, we're not only are we not letting that at the spotlight where it really needs to be the forefront of this conversation. We are also hurting the actual victims directly themselves because we're creating this idea and this culture around what trafficking looks like and what the average victim looks like. So when a victim comes forward and says, I think I was sex trafficked or I need help, people are less inclined to believe them because we've created this narrative that most trafficking victims are innocent, upper middle

class of white women getting kidnapped from Target and it was against their will, which is one of the biggest things is people have this idea that the majority of trafficking victims, it started some sort of violent, aggressive crime like being kidnapped, when in reality, most victims of trafficking were groomed into it and they did it to a degree willingly to start or they were coerced into it by somebody they know and trust. And when we're not educating people on that, they're less likely to look out for those in their community that are likely to fall victim to that sort of activity. And we're actively harming the victims that we're we think we're helping when we share that information. Yeah, I think that's so true. And I also think, kind of going back to that

nuance, I think the idea that someone could be, I mean, I don't want to say willingly, but like, willingly with like heavy scare quotes, willingly, like, got involved in sex trafficking. I think there's something about that that makes it hard for people to stay along for the conversation, because we've created this idea that, like, oh, sex trafficking victims were white women who were snatched from Target against their will. And it's so much more difficult to have that conversation of like, well, if you were down on your luck and already marginalized or disadvantaged in some way and somebody that you trust came along and kind of groomed you into it.

So you went along with it, heavy scare quotes. Exactly. Willingly. Like that is such a more complex conversation to have. And if you've been primed to think of sex trafficking can only be the white woman snatched from a target, I'm not interested in having the conversation about how it actually goes down more often in reality. Exactly. It's, it's so rarely affluent women getting snatched. And it's, that's the people who take the spotlight in these conversations. We're not

going to pay attention to the queer trans black kid who got kicked out of their house because their parents didn't agree with that situation. And now they're desperate for money and they're willing to perform sex work. And now that they're in that and they're becoming adjusted to it, somebody's taking advantage of them and grooming them into a situation where they cannot escape. and it becomes a forced situation. And it's so incredibly frustrating that time and time again, white women are taking the spotlight

away from marginalized communities, which is why, personally, I feel so, it feels so important as a white woman to talk about this. Because I often feel like when white women have, and this is generalizing a lot, but when white women have built this idea in their head of what their reality looks like,

a marginalized individual coming in and saying, hey, you're actually really taking the spotlight, or you're really consuming this conversation and holding it away from people that are more likely to be involved in what you're so afraid of. When that's coming from marginalized voices, I feel like white women are less inclined to listen, which is unfortunate and terrible. But if I can start to help bridge that gap at all and be like, hey, fellow white women here, I used to think like you, and that's actually really toxic. Let's talk about it if I can help bridge that gap. I wish we lived in a world where marginalized people were supported when we spoke up about somebody in a position of trust abusing their power. That person is so much more likely to be

a trafficking perpetrator than a stranger in a target parking lot in broad daylight. And when women speak up about dudes being creepy in public, we should believe them. It shouldn't have to be described as a mere trafficking attempt for women to be heard and supported. If you enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. We'd love to hear from you at hello at tangoity.com. Disinformed is brought to you by there are no girls on the internet. It's a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative.

Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our supervising producer and engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. For more great podcasts, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and Friends. Me and hilarious guests from 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. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Life is full of hurdles. So how do you keep going? On Hurtle with Emily Abadi, we're talking with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness from professional athletes, coaches, and Olympic champions about the challenges that shape them and the mindset that keeps them moving forward. At our level, at this scale, being able to fail in front of the entire world. Like, I can do anything. I can do anything. Listen to Hurtle with Emily Abadi on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHart Women's Sports. Last night, a blown call changed a game. This morning, the internet lost its mind, and nobody's telling you exactly what happened. That's where Sports Slice comes in. I'm Timbo, and every episode, we're cutting through the noise, breaking down the biggest moments in sports and giving you the real story behind the headline. And we're going straight to the source, the athletes themselves. Their locker room stories, their reactions in the moment, and the stuff nobody gets to hear. Listen to SportsSlic.

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