There Are No Girls on the Internet - Erika Kirk Druski Parody; Chappell Roan's Bot Army; Meta Loses in Court; & OpenAI Kills Sora – News Roundup

Episode Date: March 28, 2026

In this week's News Roundup, Bridget and Producer Mike are covering the tech news stories you might have missed. Chappell Roan bodyguard controversy fueled by bots online, research finds: https://www.the-independent.com/arts-entertainment/music/news/chappell-roan-bodyguard-backlash-bots-b2947029.html  An AI-generated woman in images with President Trump has been going viral on conservative social media: https://wapo.st/3NtfbUi  Meta and YouTube lose two landmark court cases about harm to users:  . . California woman sues Meta and YouTube https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/technology/social-media-trial-verdict.html .. New Mexico Attorney General sues Meta https://mashable.com/article/new-mexico-meta-court-case-meta-loses Comedian Druski published a hilarious short video titled "How Conservative Women in America act" and MAGA is real mad: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1s48bw5/druski_parodies_erika_kirk_in_a_new_skit_how/  ..Druski church parody: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/58hfPPHCRIU ..Druski NASCAR parody: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G32siPZXgx0 Barely six months after AI-video app Sora was released to much hype, OpenAI announced they are shutting it down:  https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/openai-shutting-down-sora-video-disney-1236698277/  . . Listen to Bridget predict Sora's demise back when it was announced, in our episode from Oct 10, 2025: https://app.omnystudio.com/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/programs/ad016d13-045e-48f3-9aa5-ae280172b27d/clips/66368931-ff00-467b-97fe-b3730017b21b/details . . Some of Sora's main use cases are filling the internet with racist and misogynistic slop: https://www.threads.com/@raisingself/post/DWP08hZmCOj?xmt=AQGzqaZ-H3abT0EW2lfRTONANK8dwciIx844aGm48QTIrQ ..Disney's Sora Disaster Shows AI Will Not Revolutionize Hollywood: https://www.404media.co/disneys-openai-sora-disaster-shows-ai-will-not-save-hollywood/ Black filmmaker Nina Lee asked audiences to watch an unrelated Black rom-com in theaters to help convince studios that Black films are viable. We support Black filmmakers, but in Bridget's opinion this way of thinking is a trap. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/you-me-tuscany-black-rom-coms_n_69c57cb8e4b0a6ee60c3dfa3/amp Judge dismisses lawsuit by Musk's X Corp accusing advertisers of illegal boycott: https://www.reuters.com/world/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-by-musks-x-corp-accusing-advertisers-illegal-boycott-2026-03-26/ Let us know what you think by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify. Pre-order Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com !  Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.socialSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 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. 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. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than adds supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined.

Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-I-Hart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano. It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was harmed.

You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow. Then after that game seven, Marquis come in to, he's like, you know I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out.

There was a large chunk of my 20s that I was just so wanting to be out of that phase out of my skin and I just really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. I've brought it up on the show before, but I feel like you and I, Mike, live in and occupy. very different social media internet spheres. Oftentimes I'll ask you, did you see so-and-so or did you see such-and-such online? And I'm asking rhetorically because I already know the answer is no, you definitely didn't see that.

But I will ask you this rhetorically, even though I feel I know the answer, have you seen the latest Drusky skit? I think this is more evidence that you're right. We occupy different internets because I have not seen this skit. familiar with Erica Kirk, famed widow and alleged girlfriend of J.D. Vance. But I can't say that I'm familiar with Druski

or his, her there. Skit with Erica Kirk. Okay. So Drusky is this comedian YouTuber. He's known for doing skits. He had this skit recently where he is a black megachurch pastor who comes down. from the sky in church.

And as somebody who grew up in the black church, it's, sometimes his stuff is like barely even parody because it's so spot on. He's also known for doing like extreme makeup to really dramatically become other people. So Drusky's a black dude and he went viral a while back

for doing what I can only describe as full body head to toe makeup to become a very sunbrose. white guy at a NASCAR race. And I know this is all very visual. We'll add links to the show notes because you obviously can't see what I'm describing. But when I say that Druski became a sunburnt white guy at a NASCAR, that he's, they even put makeup on his chest and he's wearing denim overalls with one of the straps down.

He, his mannerisms, like, he just really, he becomes the people that he is, that he is trying to become. via makeup. So his latest video, it's called How Conservative Women in America Act. He wears that extreme makeup to become a white woman with blonde, wavy hair, who wears a pink pantsuit, and dances around on stage with pyrotechnics going and has this very weird pointed way of speaking where everything she says is punctuated by intensely staring into the camera for some reason. I'm dancing around it, but it's obviously supposed to be Erica Kirk. I can't even really describe it because he really does look like her. Like, it's uncanny.

Even the hands, like, he's got makeup on his hands at a manicure and he's wearing, you know how she does the Super Bowl rings, Erica Kirk? Like, even down to the most minute detail, he has become her. So he's been studying Erica Kirk. This is what I'm saying. It is, I've never seen anybody commit to a bit more. It is like, you have really committed to the bit. That's great. That's what we need more of.

You know, there's, in a world where you can just have AI generate videos, we need creative humans really committing to the bit. You get what I'm saying when you're like, it's, it's so both uncanny and also, like, it's spot on, but so disturbing. He's done something to his face to make it look stretched in some way. It's very round and flex. It's very funny. It's like he's not just parodying her, but he's parodying the parodies of her. Yes.

He's parodying AI-generated Erica Kirk memes. And what's really funny is that nowhere in that video does Drusky say that it's supposed to be Erica Kirk specifically. He just says conservative white women in America. I mean, it's obviously supposed to be her, but I just find it funny that everybody saw this skit where you have somebody who looks grotesque and everybody agrees, oh, that's obviously Erica Kirk,

even though it was unsaid. That's a mark of, like, well done, I don't know, parody, mockery that he doesn't even need to say her name, but we all know. Well, what's even wilder is that when you, users on X showed Grock a picture of Druski in this getup. Grock was like, oh, baby, that's Erica Kirk. No. Yeah, Grock identified it as the real Erica Kirk saying, quote, the photo matches her

public appearances, including podcasts and event shots with the blonde hair, blue eyes, and makeup style. So even Grock was like, that's Erica Kirk. That's her. Grock, come on. She's on your side, buddy. That's what I'm saying. Also, funny enough, Google Gemini did get it right that it was not the real Erica Kirk, but it said that it was a face swap meme that it was Erica Kirk and Gruski had swapped faces. Everything else about it checked out. Like the dancing, the press conference, wow. Maybe this could be a new benchmark for AI systems, you know, that I have like different things that they test them, how well they can perform them.

the like recognizing Erica Kirk task. Yes, that's going to be the new Will Smith eating spaghetti. What's funny is like, so I said that his stuff is hard. It's like barely even parody. The parody that he has of black megachurch preachers is like true. Like people, if you're not, if you were not someone who has spent time in church, you might, it might, you might think it's parody, but it is hardly even parody. He's like coming down from the.

ceiling with like jet packs and like steam and shit. Like, are you sure you were just watching righteous gemstones? No, but that's the thing. Righteous gemstones is also barely parody because that really is how it is sometimes. So in that same vein, here is what Druski says as Erica Kirk at the end of the skit. We have to protect all men in America, especially all white men in America. Those are the boys that we care about in this country. America is built on their backs.

Yes. Because they are the ones who mattered most. And it's funny because that is barely even parody because here's what Erica Kirk took a little bit of heat for saying earlier this month at an event

in Arkansas. Don't let anyone disenfranchise you because you're a young man, especially a young white male man. Don't ever let anyone talk down to you. We need strong men out there. Strong men who are convicted. That will be good leaders, good husbands, good fathers like mine.

What's also funny to me about this is the reaction. A lot of people are like, he's using white face. And white base is not a thing. I mean, there's not an analogous. It would be convenient for these critics if it was, but there's not an analogous kind of historical context and precedent for whiteface. in the United States. That's such a funny thing to say.

Like, they're doing white face. Because, yeah, white face is not a thing. Like, a person just putting on white makeup, not a thing. Like Ted Cruz tweeted that the skit was horrible, all the voices that you would expect to be speaking out about this or speaking out about it. What's funny is, are these not the same people who just spent all this time being like,

oh, it can't even make jokes anymore. Ooh, everything is a woke. Can't even make jokes? Can you take a joke? Druski, say what you want about Drusky, he is very clever because now I think the conversation has kind of become like, oh, well, this is really offensive. And tonight, as that conversation is really cresting about people who are upset by this, Drusky posted a picture of him as a child with his grandfather.

His grandfather is white. So I feel like he's like, oh, I hate white people. Explain this. Oh, wow. I feel like he really thought the reaction through with this one. He set them up. He anticipated the like stolen valor of being foe outraged by white face. Yes, yes.

When I sat down to do this next segment about SORA, I started, I wanted to start by saying, oh, I hardly ever say, I told you so. I'm not the kind of person who goes back and says, I can, so I can see the face that you just made on our recording software. Yeah. Why would you lie to our listeners like that? So you know me in a different context, IRL. So you might be able to say like, okay, well, Bridget is not somebody who holds back on it I told you so often. You live for it I told you so. Bridget, that's like your favorite thing. I do love it. I told you so.

The only thing you like better than I told you so is like acting above it as if you aren't secretly relishing in it. Sometimes the best I told you so is the I told you so that you don't even need to say. Whereas like they already know. They already know. Yeah. Oh, God, I do love being a mayor of I told you so town. But I often will say on the podcast like, oh, I'm not one to say I told you so. But I realize that I'm usually saying that before I put on my mayor of I told just so town and sash.

Just kind of like sweeping the podium a little bit. before you step up and claim your rightful I told you so. I kind of got that because if you listen to Kara Swisher's podcast, she loves what I told you so. And I was like, oh, it's so it's kind of obnoxious to catalog all the times that you were right about something. But I guess I do it too. So I need to stop saying, oh, I never say an I told you so.

But this is an I told you so because do you remember the conversation that you and I had six months ago when OpenAI released Sora and all these people from people that I respected even and trust. We're talking about how this was going to be the thing that turned the tides on AI, that SORA was a mark for the idea that AI was going to truly revolutionize film and television and creativity. Do you remember those conversations? I do. I do remember it came out and it made such a big splash. People were using it, posting silly little videos. there was a lot of buzz, all the media was talking about it. But not everyone was so impressed.

Yes. So Sora, if you don't remember the short-lived fanfare, was kind of like an AI TikTok. It was a vertical scroll video platform that you could use AI to make content. People genuinely acted like Sora was going to be the thing in AI content creation. I was not so sure.

here was our prediction when it first came out. And maybe I will eat my words, but I have seen people say this platform is so fun and it's such a joyful experience that it's going to rock social media. And I just don't see it. I really just don't see it. Again, maybe I'll eat my words.

I'm happy to take this back if it turns out that I'm incorrect. But it really reminds me of a few years ago when a lot of folks are posting those AI-generated, futuristic-looking selfies on Facebook a few years ago. I think the reason why people who are using it are saying it's so fun,

they're just excited to see themselves and their friends in AI-generated scenarios. Do you know what I mean? I don't think that that necessarily means that the kind of content that is coming out of these platforms are interesting, unique, the kind of thing that's actually going to hold someone's attention. I mean, it just sounds like exactly what I thought was going to happen.

the novelty wore off rather quickly. Sora's daily users dropped, and this week OpenAI announced that it was shutting down Sora after just six months. Hard to believe it was so fast. It seems like it was longer ago, but yeah, you really call it. There was so much buzz, and then after that initial splash, I don't know that I ever even heard about it again.

No, there were a couple of interesting pieces. I want to say in Business Insider or perhaps 404 about some of the ways that people were using SORA after that initial spike in interest. And it was all just creepy slop, like making AI generated video after AI generated video of women being strangled. Women videos where women look grotesquely pregnant. All of these just like very weird, gross, cheap AI generated. flop vaguely misogynistic content, that was really what it was used for. And you'll remember that during our episode about Sora's launch, we talked about how it was using the likeness of real dead people and real living public figures like Robin Williams and Martin Luther King Jr., both of whom

their families objected to them being used in this way, and because they did not explicitly opt in, and it was just like very easy to get around whatever gargrails that they had put in there. People were making SORA content, including copyrighted characters like Pikachu smoking a blunt or like Hitler SpongeBob, just like very weird stuff. And then we had our whole little segue with Disney because Disney, which we know was a company that is notorious for protecting their IP at all costs, took a very different approach this time. Instead of going to court, they ended up striking a deal, a billion dollar investment in OpenAI paired with a licensing agreement that would have let SORA users generate videos using characters from Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and Disney.

And that was really the moment that I felt like people were saying this is going to be a defining moment for AI and Hollywood. The fact that Disney, rather than what they usually do, which is protect their IP, was like, actually, we'll give you a billion dollars and y'all can use whatever IP you want. That to me, it seemed so strange to me. What did Open AI get in return for this, you know, giving a billion dollars of stock to Disney? TechCrunch reported that even after that deal, that deal died and that no money actually changed hands before that deal fell apart. When asked, Disney kept things very diplomatic.

They told Hollywood reporter like, oh, we plan to continue exploring partnerships with AI platforms going forward. But this particular partnership, we're not doing that anymore. To your point, there was a really good piece in 404 that we'll put in the show notes that basically tried to answer my big question, which is like why a company like Disney that has been so protective of their copyright on IP in Hollywood would suddenly open the doors to what Run Rider called Sam Altman's plagiarism machine. And in the piece, they talk about how the only real explanation that makes sense is that the studio executives just really, really hate paying for human labor. they hate it so much that they maybe convince themselves that audiences would accept AI content if it was packaged the right way.

But I think to your point, when the use cases on SORA are mostly low effort, porny, kind of weird, gross stuff, when you strip that away, there just really isn't a lot there. As they note in the piece for 404,

that's just not something anybody really wants to pay for. Yeah, just the lowest, common denominator slop that is the easiest, cheapest to mass produce. Why would anybody pay for that? Why would anybody even really want to look at it? Yeah, there's been a lot of people on social media complaining about this and saying, I built up my SORA presence from zero. I have made hours and hours and hours of AI generated content there. And then SORA just makes this decision and it wipes out my entire portfolio, for lack of a better word, overnight. And then they would show some

of the stuff that they would make. And it's stuff, yeah, it's stuff like, it's a lot of trademarked characters from different universes interacting in some way, right? So it's Spider-Man hanging out with SpongeBob Squarepants or something like that. And I saw this interesting conversation on threads

where somebody explained that it was essentially playing with action figures. Remember playing with action figures? And that the quote, storylines that they come up with it's always like, what if Ross from friends hung out with the fresh friends of Bel Air?

Like they're all the most trite ideas imaginable that really are not cinematic and not really good stories. And truly, my bedroom production of two Barbies and a G.I. Joe Kiss was on the same level as what they're

coming up with. It just happens to be AI generated. Yeah, I think that's a great analogy for that slop. Because that's, it really gets it why people like characters in the first place, right? Like, Ross from Friends and the Fresh Prince of Beller, they had

good storytelling around them and like relationships with other characters. If you take that away, it's just trash. Exactly. Let's take a quick break. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guide, not

quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smy 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 headwriter, 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 group. The yarn herds. right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. 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. Huber me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming.

music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business.

Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com. That's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? This Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's Point Game is about defying the odds.

like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series

because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us every. everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nash would get that thing.

That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, I said, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone.

I'm Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside.

We're coming into this world, fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it.

Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a paramedipausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast. How hard can it be with Deanna Maria Riva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS.

All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that Ness was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive. Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How hard can it be getting naked at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard, you know?

Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter, and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of My Cultura Podcast Network available on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Speaking of trash, let's check in on my favorite trash platform, Facebook. Mike, I know you have been following some pretty big news from Facebook this week.

Yeah, there were two, not just one, but two big lawsuits against social media platforms this week. one was against meta and YouTube, which is owned by Google. The other one was just against meta. The New York Times and The Guardian and a bunch of other outlets covered in both and we'll put some links in the show notes. Both of these, I think, are pretty landmark cases

that will be cited a lot as similar cases continue to pop up and be heard by juries. So just real quick, what they actually were. Two different cases. One was in California brought by a young woman named Kaylee who won her suit, claiming the design choices by MEDA and YouTube

contributed to her poor mental health. TikTok and Snap had also been originally named as plaintiffs when she filed her lawsuit, but they settled out of court so they weren't part of this jury's decision. And now that we know which way the jury went, that was probably a wise move. on their part. The other case was in New Mexico

and like quite different. So instead of being brought by a single individual who was harmed, in the New Mexico case, it was brought by the state attorney general on behalf of young people across the state, specifically claiming that design choices that meta had made

facilitated the sexual exploitation of children. So we can break down both of them. But first, I think it's important to set up the context that these aren't just two random court cases. There are literally thousands of similar lawsuits filed across America and these

are the first two. And of course I am not a lawyer, but this is something that I'm pretty interested in just because you know that I have a history working in tobacco control and so there's a lot of parallels between

what's these types of lawsuits being brought against social media companies and lawsuits that people were bringing against the big tobacco companies in the 1990s. I've seen so many people kind of compare this to the moment that led us to the master settlement agreement with big tobacco that are we hitting the watershed moment of people speaking out against tech harms. Yeah.

And I think that's a very reasonable question, right? Because these are the first two cases. There are thousands more across the country. These are the first two. And in both of them, the social media companies lost, right? So certainly not any sort of guarantee about how those other cases are going to go, but it certainly does demonstrate that they're not just a bunch of nonsense that's going to be thrown out of court immediately. In both cases, jurors agree that there is enough evidence to reasonably conclude that these companies were aware of their products were harming young people,

but allowed the harm to continue because it was profitable. Right. So let's talk about these two cases. In the interest of time, I'm just going to briefly go through Cayley's case against Mellie's case, against meta and Facebook, and then spend a little bit more time on the other case. But so Kaylee, she originally filed her lawsuit in California in 2023. Today, she's 20 years old, but she says she started using social media back when she was six. During the trial, she testified about using social media back then and how as a child she treated it as a creative outlet and escape from bullying at school.

It was a really big part of her life. She posted very often. for example, she posted hundreds of photos on Instagram, and she used a lot of beauty filters that the platform provided, which she said magnified her insecurities and led to body dysmorphia, which is something that we've talked about before on this show, right? It's not the first time anybody is hearing these ideas. And so the jury believed her.

The prosecution presented a lot of evidence. The court ordered MEDA to pay her $4.2 million in damages, and ordered YouTube to pay $1.8 million. That is not a lot of money for these companies. That is pocket change for these companies. Yes, that is complete pocket change for these companies, just like a drop in the bucket for them. In the, during the trial,

Kaylee's lawyer held up a jarful of M&Ms to talk to the jury about what the damages should be awarded, and he compared the jarful of M&M's, He was like each of these M&Ms is a million dollars. You could take a handful out and it's not even going to make any difference trying to make that same point. So it's right there are just a drop in the bucket for these companies.

But it does set precedent for the thousands of other cases that are pending. And so we'll just have to wait and see what happens with all of them. Okay, so what about the case in New Mexico? So the New Mexico case was filed against META specifically just META by the state's Attorney General in May of 2023, who accused it of misleading its users about safety. The evidence that they submitted included both private and public statements by staff and executives at META.

It also included evidence that state investigators had collected by posing as underage kids online, documenting cases where they were sexually solicited on the platform. The lawsuit also cited a two-year investigation of meta that the Guardian had published in April of 2023, which found that Facebook and Instagram had both become marketplaces for child sex trafficking. So it was just a lot of evidence that the prosecutors had been accumulating and working on for a very long time. Former Facebook engineering director Arturo Behar, who designed social media safety features for the platform before leaving in 2021. He testified as part of the trial. When we were first covering this trial early on,

we've actually played his testimony to Congress on the podcast before. I would recommend people listen to what he has to say. He's just a very, he just makes, I thought, I thought his testimony was very compelling. Yes, he's a very compelling speaker, and he, like, clearly cares a lot about this issue after working at Meta for many years and then becoming a whistleblower.

We'll definitely link to that episode so people can listen to his testimony that he gave to Congress back in 2023. But his story is that he said he was in charge of building safety features and then he felt that safety was just not being taken seriously at META

that the company often prioritized safety theater over actually making the product safe. He says that he initially realized there was a problem when his young daughter showed him the deluge of sexual solicitations and content on her Facebook account.

And she told him that it was the same for all of her friends and that they didn't even bother reporting it because they knew that nothing would be done. So from the stand during this trial, part of his testimony was that he gave the statement that, quote, we don't need to live in a world where an unsolicited penis picture is something that you just dismiss because it happens, end quote. Yeah, like pretty powerful stuff, right? he's a compelling speaker and after he was done met his lawyers didn't even bother cross-examining him the jury found Facebook liable

and find the company $375 million in damages for violating New Mexico consumer protection laws so that's you know two orders of magnitude more than Kaylee got already right there in New Mexico

but it's still a drop in the bucket for a company like Facebook it's still a drop in the bucket I mean it's a bigger drop but It's a bigger, yeah. But that's right. They probably make that amount of revenue in like a couple hours. It's going to be a long process.

We are going to be hearing about great cases like this for a long time with increasing frequency, I think. One notable thing about this case is that the company wasn't able to hide behind Section 230. So as you know, Section 230 is a controversial law that shields social law. media companies from liability for content posted by their users. We've had people on the show who have argued that it needs to be reformed. We've had other people on the show who have argued that it needs to be left alone because it is an essential pillar of a free and open internet. In my opinion, very reasonable people disagree sharply on it.

Yeah, I am in a lot of coalitions and working groups for internet safety. And for the most part, we all sort of agree on, you know, We all have a similar orientation. For whatever reason, when it comes to Section 230, I have been surprised how much disagreement there is among people who, like, broadly advocate for the same thing. And that's a whole other show, right? Like, we've had shows on it.

We probably will have shows in the future about Section 230. But notably, in this lawsuit, the prosecutors stepped around it completely, right? Because in this case, it wasn't. wasn't the content that was on trial. It was the way META had designed their apps to be addictive and the fact that they knew that they were harmful and deliberately tried to mislead the public about that harm. That is what was on trial here. Yes. And Mike, you and I were out for a drink the other night and I won't think we got into an argument. We had a discussion about this.

I take issue sometimes with the framing of social media as addictive. I guess per this case, it has set a legal precedent that legally speaking, a jury has found that these design choices were addictive. And I know that you, this is something that you have a background in, is like working with addiction, studying addiction. That's right. I've spent more than a decade working in tobacco and nicotine addiction, you know, doing, building apps to help people with treatment, doing research on policies, research on addiction. So it is something that I know a bit about.

And one of the things that had really struck me as I got into this field is that there is not a single accepted definition of addiction or what it means to be addicted. There just isn't. And I think personally, one of the best definitions of addiction that I've found is framing it as a learning problem where a person keeps doing something despite being harmed by it. And for whatever reason, just keeps doing it because that's different from most behaviors, right? Like, humans are really good at learning. If a little baby touches a hot stove, it quickly learns. stoves are hot and it hurts and hopefully the baby's going to be okay, but it's almost certainly not going to touch a stove again, right?

Like that's a very sharp learning signal that doing this behavior leads to bad consequences. And so in addiction, the same sort of thing is going on. There's this behavior that leaves the bad consequences, and yet the person just keeps doing it and fails to learn that actually it would be better to not do it. And, you know, of course, it's very complicated, and addiction is used to describe a whole range of things. And some addictions are obviously so much stronger and also so much more devastating than others. And thinking about behaviors that are addictive, I think is often more useful than questions of like, well, is someone addicted or not? and trying to put things in categories of like,

this is something to which one can be addicted and this is something to which it's not possible to be addicted. I don't think that latter framing is very helpful. That's a really good distinction. So it's not even really necessarily a question of, can someone be addicted to social media? The question really is, did this company create platforms

knowing that they might present in addiction-like behavior in their users. So it's not really, it's a, it's a small distinction, but I see what you mean. Yeah. Did they design their product,

Facebook and Instagram, to make users, in particular kids, just want to keep using them more and more, even though it was harmful to those kids? And did they go out of their way to hide that harm? A lot of the internal documents

that were submitted as evidence from like memos and emails that Facebook folks had sent to each other within the company as well as some public statements. A lot of them made the case that Facebook was indeed designing its products to maximize engagement. Even when people on the team pushed back in some cases, the directives from up top were to keep pushing to maximize engagement,

get children to be using it more and more. In some cases, using tactics that were similar to tactics that casino is used to keep people gambling, except in this case, they were using them on kids, designing products to keep the kids more and more engaged, holding their attention in the apps so that it could sell more ads. That's one of the big connections between this case and the case against the big tobacco companies, the idea that the executives at the company were intentionally designing their product to be addictive, to keep the user using it over and over again. Another similarity is that prosecutors didn't just claim that meta had harmed people,

but also claimed that the company had taken steps to hide that harm from the public. Evidence for that included some internal meta documents about the results of an internal study the company conducted to measure the mental health effects of disconnecting from Facebook. The study found that, quote, people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and social comparison. End quote. according to internal metadata documents. So they knew that. This was their own study that found that harm.

But they never published that study. They buried it. And period the end, you know. Yeah, I guess I'm not surprised by the fact that Facebook did not put that study out about their own products. Yeah, me neither. It's not surprising. And the fact that it's not surprising kind of reminds me of Behar's daughter and her friends who were like, oh yeah, of course people are showing us penises.

Like we've normalized the idea that a company like Facebook could have this direct line to children, to teens, to adults, to elderly people, and have so much potential to influence the information that they see and what they're exposed to and the people that they're exposed to. And they could just do this study and it could show harm and they could just bury it. Like, that's bananas, right?

But that's unfortunately the world we increasingly live in as companies like meta have shut down researcher access and made it harder and harder for outside sources to measure what's going on with them, just making more challenging and protecting themselves and their ability to design products however they want more and more. It's a little bit of a digression, but I just wanted to get that in there too.

Yes. So I don't think anybody listening thinks that I am pro big tech, pro Facebook. I think that if Facebook wanted to make safer products, they would shut down. They would stop existing. I am no friend to Mark Zuckerberg. However, I am very cautious about some of the press. that I think this is setting. Facebook hurts people, they hurt kids,

they profit from harming people. That is not in dispute that is a fact. And I think that anybody who has been harmed by them should get paid for it because that harm is real and should have a monetary cost. Because Facebook certainly made a monetary profit from that harm and trafficking in that harm. However, I believe that a lot of these cases

are so easily turned into more fodder for the way that elected officials are really chomping at the bit to age gate and restrict an open, free internet. I do not think that Facebook and big tech company should be allowed to get away with harm without any kind of accountability. Absolutely not.

But I'm just incredibly touchy about the... This just to me seems like It fits so neatly into the hands of a right-wing elected official who wants to restrict the internet from young people and will use that to say, and we need to make sure that they don't see any content about queerness or transness or anything that we deem a harm to kids. And so while I'm certainly not crying any tears for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg and meta and YouTube and Google here, I just wanted to say that because I think a lot of the plaintiffs in these cases are very sympathetic, like rightly so, understandably so. And I just don't want people to see these cases and get on board with the growing chorus of voices

that are trying to restrict an open Internet, especially for young people, because the Internet is a lifeline for young people, particularly marginalized young people. And so I don't want to make, I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying Facebook is good, and kids need to have unrestricted access to these platforms that we know are harmful. Like, it's not in dispute. But I just wanted to say that context because I think it, I just can sort of see the writing on the wall of how easily this would play into the way that a lot of people who are trying to restrict the Internet right now and successfully so in a lot of cases are thinking about it and thinking

about how they can publicly message around that. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And I think that's absolutely a concern. right? I think what these, what are the effects of these cases is that it increases pressure on the tech companies to do something

about this problem. And it also, I think, increases pressure on regulators and legislators to do something about the problem. And also, to your point, gives them more fodder and momentum behind policies that might be misguided and maybe are more interested in, you know, staging the safety theater for themselves or using this as like a Trojan horse to crack down on content for morality reasons or because it's too queer or too trans or just like content that they don't like.

I think that's an absolutely valid concern. And right now you have meta really angling to be the one to set what these policies look like. Meta is really playing a very effective PR trick on a lot of us right now by being like, oh, we are so interested in, like, please regulate us. You want to come to the table with some guidelines and regulations. And I actually don't think that meta should be able to design and set the rulebook for how they will behave. They obviously can't be trusted.

And right now I think that, like, we're all sort of watching as these very tidy ways of big tech continuing to harm our kids for profit, while advocating for the companies to be the foxes watching the henhouse. Absolutely. And I'm glad you brought that up because that absolutely is another parallel to big tobacco, right? Like, once it was clear,

of the big tobacco companies that they were going to lose and that regulation was going to be the new order of the day, they pivoted and they weaponized the regulation to effectively cement their monopolies and prevent other competitors from breaking in. So that's absolutely a risk. And they're definitely going to try to do that. Like you say, Facebook is already trying to do that with its big push and lobbying effort for its age-gating. that is doomed to fail, right? And so there are people in Congress who have introduced alternative approaches

that, in my opinion, are much more reasonable, much more workable, and do not, and importantly, do not put the power to be making these decisions in the hands of the companies who are supposed to be policing themselves, which is like a joke. So yeah, I hear you that these cases,

I think will be fodder for people who want to pass bad laws and create bad policies. But I don't think that's the fault of the cases. I think that's just like a natural thing that is going to happen as these companies continue to become more and more powerful. And members of the public demand something to be done, right? And so hopefully we can collectively do something smart and not something stupid or harmful. Yes. So we know these companies are going to appeal. So we will keep you posted on the latest when we get it.

More after 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 headwriters, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's that 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 group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard Yard. But they're open.

Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to humor me. Robert Smygel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hulmer me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again.

More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHart's twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartadvertising.com.

That's iHeartadvertising.com. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast's point game is about defying the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level they would.

we've never seen before. And he knows. Without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs. I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too. Steve Nass would get that thing. That's That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers why he got the ball.

Like, after you go through a training camp with that, I said, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball. So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a paramedipausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast.

How hard can it be with the Adam Maria Riva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate Midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, sex drive.

Wait, what sex? Dating at 45. How high can it be? Getting naked at 50 with the new guy. That one's kind of hard, no. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs, tears, or tears of laughter,

and dive into it, unfiltered and unbothered and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain.

In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? pull out what you already have inside. We're coming into this world, fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside.

We're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it. Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's get right back into it. Okay, so there is this romantic comedy movie coming to theaters called You, Me, and Tuscany. It stars Hallie Bailey, and it's about a black woman who impulsively jets off to Tuscany to find love. It actually has Nea Vardo's from that movie, my big, that Greek wedding in it, too, who I love. It does not have a black director, but it has two black leads. I am not a big rom-com person. Like, I will watch them if I am hungover on the couch and How to Lose a Girl, guy and 10 days is on TBS. I'll watch it, but I'm not a big rom-com person. But even I thought,

oh, this could be a cute movie. So Nina Lee is a black woman filmmaker who has no connection whatsoever to that movie that I just described, Yumi and Tuscany. But she is posting on social media begging people to go see this movie that she has nothing to do with. Why? Because Nina says that two of her film projects are currently stuck in limbo because she has been told by film studio executives that they're holding to see whether that movie, you, me, and Tuscany is going to be successful. If that rom-com does well at the box office,

they said that they can move forward with her movie. If it doesn't, it might not go forward. So that filmmaker Nina Lee tweeted, please go see this film about you, me in Tuscany. I met with a studio about my already shot rom-com and they won't buy it until they see how you, me, and Tuscany does. Met with an executive about a romance script I have. They won't buy it until they see how you, me, and Tuscany does. A film that has nothing to do with me could quite literally change my life. Plus, I've heard it's really great, so I'm looking forward to supporting.

She also cited the Rapp's coverage of the 2025 reframe report, which is basically a report showing how inclusive the film industry is and the news is not good. The report showed the backsliding and the hiring of women for key roles among Hollywood's top films last year. Notably, women directed films dropped to just 11 out of the top 100, the lowest number since 2019, and a sharp fall from 20 in 2023. Female central roles fell from 51 in 2024 to 39 in 2025. Only seven of those roles went to women of color, the lowest count in that category since 2018. So, yes, it just seems like whatever gains marginalized folks we're making in Hollywood, and we have made serious gains, we are really backsliding.

And thus, Nina Lee is like, please see this movie because studio executives are saying that they're waiting to see how this one rom-com does before they greenlight other movies with diverse casts. And I've talked about this in the podcast before. I hate this for so many reasons. One, I just feel that when an audience is sort of guilted into seeing a movie, that they're made to feel like they have to support a movie because you want it to be successful to convince studios to give women or black folks or Asian folks or other marginalized people more shots to make movies, that is not compelling to me. That is not, that's not a reasonable reason to go see a movie. You should go see a movie because you like it, because you're curious,

because you want to, you want to support it. I, you know, I don't know if you remember the movie Bros, which was kind of billed as, oh, the first gay, the first rom-com with the first major rom-com with a gay man at the heart of the love story. I found the marketing for that movie to be very heavy on the like, you have to support this movie. It's very historic. It's very important. And I just don't think that's a compelling reason to see a movie. Going to see a movie should not be activism. And so also I hate this because movies with mostly white casts or white directors flop all the time. And then it's not turned around and used as a way for executives to say, oh, we shouldn't make more movies like this.

I don't think it's a fair precedent that marginalized people and people of color and women. We have to wait and see how this movie that has nothing to do with us pans out. out until we can actually make the project that we want to make. And furthermore, even when movies with black casts or black directors are successful, it's talked about like it's some kind of a fluke. Black Panther is a great example of this and sinners is a great example of this. So like diverse and inclusive casts and diverse directors are putting butts in seats, but it's like it doesn't matter. It's like when that happens, it's going to be another goalpost move. It's going to be like, oh, well, you know,

Hallie Bailey was in this movie and maybe it did well because she's a big star. So if she's not in the next movie, we're not going to green light it. It's like it's always going to be another goal post or another benchmark for folks to just not want to tell our stories and I'm sick of it. The film critic Carolyn Lins put it really well on Twitter.

She wrote, at the end of the day, the same racist studios and executives win. Either they save money on a film they never wanted to make or make money from a film they never wanted to make. All that happens is the cycle. of manipulation and exploitation is spun and culture goes nowhere. It is beyond time we stop demanding loyalty from racialized audiences just because we're black, indigenous, or Asian, because it's proven time and time again that when it comes to Hollywood, that representation

is a tool they get to use way more against us than we against them. I think this critic is absolutely right. And I'm just sick of this. I really respect that I see a lot of black movie people and critics and appreciators saying, like, well, obviously we're going to support this. Obviously, we're going to support this. Like, I saw somebody tweet, you know, we understand the assignment. Hell, I don't even like rom-coms.

I'll probably go see this because I do want to set a precedent that black films have merit, that our stories have merit in telling. But I just don't like this. I don't like, it just feels very manipulative and I don't like being manipulated this way as an audience member. We deserve so much better.

Our stories and our storytellers deserve so much better. I have another little update for you all about something happening on X. So we told you all about this when it first happened. But Elon Musk, remember his big strategy to woo advertisers back to X? It was extortion. Extortion? Oh, that's pretty good. So back in 2024, X sued the World Federation of Advertis.

and a string of big name companies and brands, including CBS Health, Colgate, Mars, claiming that these companies illegally conspired to withhold billions of dollars in ad revenue that he was entitled to from the platform by choosing not to advertise with him. So there are so many companies that don't advertise on my podcast. Are they illegally colluding against me? Could I sue them? I think they are. You could sue them.

I mean, they should be spending millions of dollars on this podcast every week, and they're not. Otherwise, it's illegal. Yeah, it's illegal not to give us millions of dollars. That's essentially what he is saying. So X argued that the advertisers coordinated through an initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media to effectively boycott X. Back in 2024, this actually did work on some pretty big brands, low-key extortion, Verizon, had not advertised on X since 2022, pledged to spend at least $10 million in 2024 on X after X threatened to sue them if they didn't. The same thing for the luxury fashion brand Ralph Lauren.

But the company also agreed to resume buying ads on X after receiving a threat of a lawsuit. We talked about this in an episode of the podcast, but I think that these companies were just like, Musk is very litigious. He has a billion dollars. It's cheaper just to throw in a little little bit of advertising money, which if I'm Elon Musk, I don't want people advertising on my platform because I have extorted them into doing it, but whatever. I mean, I think if you're Elon Musk, you want exactly that. You just want them giving you money. I don't know about Ralph Lauren, but I know Verizon spends a ton of money on political contributions to candidates from both parties. And I have to assume that they just like wrote this off as another drop out of that bucket to just keep Musk who is politically connected to the Trump administration happy.

Just easier to write a $10 million check than stand up for themselves. Well, it turns out they maybe didn't even have to do that because this week, a judge in Dallas dismissed X's lawsuit. And this judge did not mince words. she wrote that the very nature of this alleged conspiracy does not hold up as an antitrust claim and dismissed it with prejudice. So that means that X cannot refile this lawsuit. It's over. The advertiser's defense was like very straightforward.

They basically said that they each made an independent business decision about where to put their ad money. And they were largely driven by brand safety concerns following Musk's takeover of Twitter back in 2022. They talked about how that was a time of layoffs and chaos. and it just, in their words, a less brand friendly environment, which is one way to put it when there's Nazi stuff on your platform, AI generated child sexual abuse material

on your platforms, less brand friendly is one way to put that. Yeah, and once again, that shit is just like normal now. Like, that's just what you get with X. Don't even try to pretend that it's something else. Yes. So the court agreed, and this is a pretty big loss for Elon Musk.

He's been super vocal about what he sees as this politically motivated advertiser pullback since taking over the platform. And at least for right now, the courts are like, yeah, that's not what's going on. More after 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 Mike. Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. There's the worst singer in the group. The worst? Yeah. Me. Is there anything to the idea that because you're from

Harvard, uh, you only got in because your parents made a huge donation. The group. The yard birds, right? That's the name. The Harvard yard, but they're open to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged.

Uh, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad-supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message.

Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. That's 844-844-I-Hart. What's up, fam? It's Isaiah Thomas.

And I'm C.J. Toledano, and our podcast Point Game is about defining the odds. Like LeBron heading into the playoffs without Luca and Austin Reed. And finding ways to win no matter what. He's the smartest player to ever play the game. His IQ is at a level that we've never seen before. And he knows without Luca and Austin Reeves, I got to manipulate the game. We get a player's perspective on the challenges of the playoffs.

I think Joker's going to be exhausted this series because when they don't have Rudy in the lineup, he has to really guard guys like Nas Reid. He has to guard Julius Randall. And then he has to give us everything he gives us on the night-to-night basis on offense. And when IT's friends stop by, like Quentin Richardson, we dive into some playoff history too.

But get that thing. That man, hell get the flying. He running up the court, licking his fingers while he got the ball. Like, after you go through a training camp with that, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Get your ass up and down the court, and you're going to get the ball.

So listen to Point Game on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. I'm Cheryl Stray, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. I'm excited to share that I have a new podcast called Mind Over Mountain. In each episode, I interview athletes, adventurers, and adrenaline seekers to discuss the inner landscapes and life experiences that informed and inspired their extraordinary feats. I also bring a bit of advice into the mix so we too can better understand how to face our own seemingly insurmountable challenges. Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to pull out what you already have inside.

We're coming into this world fighting for our lives. All I'm going to do is pull out what you already got inside. we're there to support and celebrate each other. And that's not like your story versus my story. You're going to walk up and over that dang mountain. You're not just going to put your mind over it. Yep, yep, exactly. And if I can't walk up and over it, I'm going to go through it.

Listen to Mind Over Mountain every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Deanna Maria Riva, actress, mother, lover, and a Gen X woman walking through life one hot flash and hormonal crying jag at a time. You ladies know what I mean. I'll bet you a paramedipausal chin here you do. So let's talk about it. Join me on my new podcast.

How hard can it be with the Anamanea Arriva, where I call on my Gen X squads from Ohio to Hollywood as we navigate midlife's most fantastic BS. All of a sudden, I'd had hanginess happening on my own. I was like, what the hell is that? I was married when I had her, so I didn't even consider how empty that nest was going to be. Mood swings, night sweats, fupas, fupas, sex. drive, wait, what sex? Dating at 45, how high can it be getting naked

at 50 with the new guy? That one's kind of hard, no. Well, that's lighting. They say we can't polish a turd, but we're sure going to try. So let's get blunt with laughs tears or tears of laughter and dive into it unfiltered and unbothered and ask, how hard can it be? I cannot believe I'm about to say this

out loud in public. Listen to How Hard Can It Be with Diana Maria Riva as part of my Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Okay, so you flagged this story for me. During the first few days of the military strike on Iran, Trump was photographed walking alongside Jessica Foster, who was this beautiful, blonde, fit soldier. They were strutting down the tarmac together. After this

photograph with Trump, her Instagram page exploded with a million followers. Only one problem. She is fake. The Washington Post report, Foster is an illusion. A fake woman who experts say was probably created by an artificial image, by an artificial intelligence image generator. There's no public record of Foster's military service and the account, despite not being labeled as AI, is packed with indicators that she is fake. Between many of her pro-Trump post, Foster also prominently displays her feet. Foster's viral takeoff highlights an increasingly prevalent strategy for winning attention online, a slew of right-wing accounts peddling patriotism mixed with soft-core pornography,

use fake women and convincing imagery to grab viewers across a distracted internet, monetize their interest, and score political points. Boy, we've, like, had some pretty tough words for the Washington Post over the past couple of years and, like, all of them deserved. But that sentence is really a thing of glory, I think. I am with you on that one. So this whole thing is basically this. a way to capitalize on political content as a marketing strategy for more AI-generated content.

So, like, by ramping these fake personas in politics and current events, they're basically just gaming the algorithm by making the content feel timely and shareable, right? So, like, then they build in this audience, and then the grift kicks in. Followers get nudged toward a paid platform where whoever is running this AI-generated account can make some real cash. some of her content is just so funny to me because it's just hard for me to imagine the person who doesn't understand that it's fake.

Her first picture was an image of her in a really tight kind of skimpy shirt asking for comments from, quote, every straight guy that likes an American Army girl. You know, it's like who would post that on Instagram? The dream girl for some guys, I guess. That's what I'm saying. It seems so obviously fake to me that I have a hard time picturing who is like, oh, yeah, this is a real woman.

And it's a good thing that Foster is not real because if she was real, she would be super fucking busy because more than 50 photos and videos have followed in the last few months, revealing that this person met with First Lady Melania Trump with Ukrainian president Zelensky, with Russian president Putin, soccer star Lionel Messi. When she's not doing that, she also finds time to give speeches, have sexy pillow fights with her fellow comrades. And also, she had a picture of herself holding Maduro captive. She's been busy. One of the things that comes up on this show all the time is how fan fiction explains, like, 60% of the Internet at this point. And I feel this fits that, too. It's like fan fiction. What did the Washington Post say?

like patriotism mixed with soft core pornography. This was some really interesting reporting from the post. They did include one little bit. I was like, dang, y'all really blowing up this guy's spot. So so many of the comments on this Instagram are from people who think this person is real. They're like, oh, you're so beautiful. You're so beautiful. The post writes, the verified Instagram account of a Brazilian transportation official

liked most of her photos and told Foster that she was Linda. or beautiful. Another user asked, why do you never reply? Part of me is like, damn, you got to call, y'all got to like put this Brazilian transportation

official on blast. Guess who liked all her post? I left pathetic emoji comments on all of them. This Brazilian transportation official. You think he did that while he was at work? And he did it on his verified account.

I almost feel a little bad for this guy that the post is calling out his like, questionable likes on Instagram. I do wonder how many of the people who are liking her, following her, are from countries outside the United States. And so maybe that's why the like, what seems to you as straightforward, like so obviously fake content, they're like,

oh, that's just how Americans talk. You know how they are. I mean, reminds me of the guy who made that AI-generated girlfriend who was on Esther Perel's podcast. It was like, that's just, she sounds like a nine-year-old shitmunk. That's just how women in America sound to me. They all sound like that to me. Yeah.

I think the way the rest of the world sees us is often different than how we see ourselves, I think. So this AI-generated account of this sexy soldier, the account was being used to link to Onlythans, but because that violates Onlythans rules, like you have to be like a verified person on Onlythans. It was deleted. So now it links to FanView, which is like a smaller only fans competitor with looser rules. The caption of her account there reads, Public servant by day, troublemaker by night. BT-dubs, I respond to every message, but be patient since I'm not a robot.

You sure about that? Are you sure about that? So the Post actually spoke to friend of the show, Dr. Joan Donovan, an assistant professor at Boston University who studies media manipulation who we've had on the show before. Dr. Donovan said that AI has really helped account multiply because they're easy to just endlessly create

and customize and offer creators a clear path to making money. The account's kind of political sheen also helps ensure that these images appear in people's news feeds. Because if you were just making sexy AI-generated content, you might not be prioritized in an algorithm, but if you're making content that has this current events vibe, you might be getting shown to more people

who otherwise you probably would not be in their feeds. Dr. Donovan said, the danger of this is that we're moving toward a society of the unreal. It's one way to get political messaging across, and it's effective. We don't even, and this is my favorite part of the quote, we don't even know of selling feet picks is Jessica Foster's final form.

No. Like, as far as we know, we don't know anything about Jessica Foster's political beliefs, but I would venture that I probably don't like a lot of them. And that we might start hearing about them as we get closer to November.

Yeah. I will say when I was thinking about this, I'd be like men really ought to be insulted by this kind of content because whoever is making this, they think that men are so stupid and horny that they will rah-rah a war if the fake AI-generated woman behind it is hot. You know what I mean?

When I was like looking at the content, I was like, how stupid and horny does whoever made this AI-generated profile think men are? But then again, this profile is a million followers. So maybe this person is not wrong about just how stupid and horny these folks are. Yeah, I wish I could say that you were wrong, but yeah, she's got a million followers. Somebody wants it. Okay, so really quickly, I feel like I've really bookended this episode with things that I know that the internet is all talking about and you, I'm sure you have no idea. So this super famous Brazilian soccer player, Georgino, said that his 11-year-old daughter was very aggressively confronted by a security guard at a hotel.

where Chapel Rhone was staying. Basically, him and his wife both said on social media that their daughter was eating breakfast at this hotel. The daughter is a huge Chapelrohn fan. She'd even made a cute little sign that was like, what does that song go? Like, H-O-T-O-G-O, I am seeing Chapel Rone. Very cute for a kid, I thought.

And so she sees Chapalron and she says, oh, this Chapel Roan. According to her parents, she did not ask Chapel Roan for anything. She just, like, got up, walked near Chapel Roan to confirm that it was her, saw that it was her, smiled and went back to her table, and was like, that was Chapal Roan and was very happy about it. Then this security guard, according to her parents, came over and screamed at her and threatened to have them, like, removed from the hotel. It was the whole thing. I'm not big into the sports world, but, like, this soccer player is hugely famous. He's, like, very, very, very, very famous in Brazil.

So, Giorgino is this kid's stepfather, and the kid's biological father is actually actor Jude Law. So this kid has very famous parents, is what I am saying. And so it turned into this big controversy. So the mayor of Rio de Janeiro banned chapel rhone from performing at this major city-sponsored event in Rio Dio, Janeiro over this event, which depending on who you asked, might be a bit of an overreaction. So she put out a statement that she was like, oh, I don't really know what happened.

I don't hate kids. I wouldn't have done that. And I thought like, oh, that's a pretty good statement. And then immediately there was a video of her walking through an airport with security where she's like visibly pointing to security being like, tell him to stop photographing me, tell him to get away from me. So I was sort of like, well, I don't know what to think now. And I'm still not 100% sure what the truth is here.

So Chapel Rhone clarified that it was not a member of her security team. And then the guard himself put out a statement saying that he was not acting on her behalf, that he was there bodyguarding someone else and that he made a judgment call just based on the vibe of the breakfast and decided on his own to go like scream at this child, which to me is even weirder. Side note, do you ever hearing a story about how Kim Kardashian was like violently robbed in a hotel in Paris? Yeah.

He was her bodyguard when that happened. Wow. So this bodyguard, he's like the forest gulp of celebrities. Whenever there's like a celebrity scandal, he just happens to be there somehow. Also, why do I feel like this hotel was not the, La Quinta of Rita de Janeiro. Like, everyone's staying there is an A-list celebrity.

Yes, yes. So the reason I want to bring this up, not because I have any big take about Chapel Rhone or anything like that, but because this conversation got very heated online, and it turns out that a substantial amount of the conversation was amplified by bots.

We know that from the research firm Gudea, who we heard from the head of Gudea in our episode about Taylor Swift, well Gouda analyzed over 100,000 posts across seven platforms in the days following the incident and found that while only about 4% of users were likely bots, those accounts were responsible for more than 23% of the posts, meaning that a small number of bot accounts

were driving a hugely outsized chunk of the backlash, including misinformation and calls for boycotts. And I say that to say that I spent a non-trivial amount of time reading Chapel Rhone takes. And I can admit that the ones that were like, Chapel Rhone, she needs to learn how to be respectful to her fans. I was like, yeah, you tell them. And then it was like, Chapel Rone, she didn't do anything wrong. And I was like, yeah, that's probably right too. Like the way that I was so easily swayed in this conference, in a conversation that I have

no real stake in. I like Chapel Roan. I'm not a huge fan. So it was not even like, I did not feel strongly about it. Yet I threw away half an afternoon reading Chapel Rhone Brazil takes. And, you know, I have but one life to live. And I spent half of a day of it following takes of a story I don't even really care about.

They were probably amplified my bots. And you still don't know what happened. I still don't know. I still don't know. Anyway, I just wanted to end there. Just as a reminder, not to let online conversation sway you too much, right? Like, don't get to invested. Nine times out of ten, bots are very, very effective at amplifying and swaying the conversations.

So just tread carefully in these internet streets. If folks want to let us know what they thought about any of these stories, we would love to hear about it. Send us an email at helloat tangoity.com. You can leave comments in Spotify. we've had a lot over there. We love to see them. Please keep them coming. And you can follow Bridget on social media

at Bridget Marie in D.C on Instagram. And you can follow the show. There are no girls on the internet on TikTok and YouTube. And don't forget to pre-order our book. You can reserve your copy at love at first prompt.aI. I recently learned that leero.fm is a really cool way

to listen to audiobooks. I don't know if other people have been more into audiobooks than I am already knew this, but the thing that makes Lero.fm different is that whenever you reserve an audio book or buy an audiobook, they make a donation to your local

break-and-mortar bookstore, helping support small bookstores stay in business. So I was really excited to learn that and have started telling everyone that that's where they should get their audiobook love at first prompt, but you should get it wherever you prefer. And when it comes out on July 14th, I hope you let us know what you think about it. And as you know, if you send us a screenshot or tag us in your pre-order,

we have a sticker and a hand-a-written card coming your way. We've got the first batch about to go out. So Melanie is getting a card. Elizabeth G. is getting a card. Robin's getting a card. Jan is getting a card. Hannah's getting a card. Some of these places are far away

and I love to see how many different listeners we have all over the world. So cards are, the first batch is going out and if you want a handwritten card as a thank you and a sticker, go ahead and pre-order. Yeah, we've been getting requests from like

all over the world. We had one from New Zealand, one from Australia, a bunch of Europe, and when people from other countries ask for stickers. They're always like, you don't have to send it

if the shipping is too much. We don't mind. We will ship it. And we're also going to send you extra stickers and we hope that you put them up in your little corner of the world to help spread the show. Thank you so much for all the support. Thank you, Mike, for being here.

I will see you on the internet. 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. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. Edited by Joey Pat. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, 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 Smil.

Myel 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 acapella 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. What's up, fam, it's Isaiah Thomas. And I'm C.J. Toledano.

It's our favorite time of the year on our podcast. point game, the playoffs. We're digging into the biggest surprises of the season. And I'm looking back on some of my greatest playoff moments. If we didn't talk ever again, I was crying. You just understood. That's how personal it got. Wow.

Then after that game seven, Marquis come into it. He's like, you know, I love you, dog. You know, it's all love. This was just playoffs. This was just basketball. So listen to Point Game on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your 20s can be so exciting, but they can also be really overwhelming,

confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks, and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I, like,

was just so wanting to, like, be out of that phase out of my skin, and I just, like, really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand your, yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.

I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Edwin Castro, also known as Castro 1021. And I'm Conkie, his best friend and business manager.

And we've got a new show called The 1021 Podcast. I'm taking you behind the scenes on how I became. one of Twitch's most popular streamers. We also love sports. And with the World Cup right around the corner, we'll be breaking down the biggest storylines ahead of the big tournament here in the USA. Listen to the 1021 podcast on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.