There Are No Girls on the Internet - Joe Rogan falls for AI deepfake; Elon Musk ignores abuse victim; Meta celeb bots flirt with kids; Luigi's new Shein modeling gig – NEWS ROUNDUP!

Episode Date: September 6, 2025

On this week's edition, Bridget runs through the news with Producer Mike. Tech companies saying, "Our policies prohibit the harm that is rampant on our platform!" is the theme of today's episode. AI deepfake comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah Meta creates flirty celebrity chatbots without permission, calls it "parody," trains them to talk to children romantically. https://www.reuters.com/business/meta-created-flirty-chatbots-taylor-swift-other-celebrities-without-permission-2025-08-29/ Age verification on adult sites is putting queer adult industry workers at risk, and pushing everyone to sketchier corners of the Internet. https://19thnews.org/2025/09/age-verification-queer-adult-industry-workers/ A Shein merchant used Luigi Mangione’s AI-Generated Face to Sell a Shirt. https://www.404media.co/shein-luigi-mangione-ai-generated-listing-shirt/ Sad abortion news: Texas bans abortion pills from being mailed to anyone in the state. https://19thnews.org/2025/09/texas-abortion-pill-ban/ Positive abortion news: Illinois mandates access for university students. https://msmagazine.com/2025/09/02/chicago-illinois-abortion-pills-birth-control-contraception-college-university-health-center-students/ . Child sex abuse victim begs Elon and X to take down photos of her abuse. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq587wv4d5go If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there to let us know what you thought about these stories (Bridget reads every Spotify comment personally)  or email us at [e-mail] !  Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/@bridgetmarieindc  || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc  ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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so you don't have to. Okay, producer Mike, I swear to you this podcast is not going to turn into just me making fun of people with massive platforms falling for what I believe to be obvious AI. But will you allow me one real quick, kick us off. As long as their platform is very massive. Well, we're talking about Joe Rogan, so I don't know how much larger a podcast platform can get because Joe Rogan on his show fell for this deep fake video of Tim Waltz wearing a t-shirt that said, fuck Trump, dancing on an elevator and a mall like smacking his own butt. You can tell that Rogan clearly thinks this is real,

the way that he so casually kind of slips it into conversation. He's talking about how the Democrats are so weird and that Tim Walls is so weird that after his failed vice presidential bid, he just has, like, Democrats have basically just dropped him because he's so weird. And he just slips in like, oh, did you see this weird video of him dancing wearing the fuck Trump shirt? And that, I feel like that's how you know that he thought it was real, that he just, that it's just embedded in his brain and it's become what is real. You know what's really fun? Yeah. When someone is in that whole race and running from. president or vice president.

And then the race is over and they realized that person was a liability. So they cut them off. And you never hear from him. And then that person goes wacky like Tim Wals. That's right. You see where he had a fuck Trump shirt on? Yeah. And he's dancing and going down an elevator. And when he's called out, he does

the thing that I feel we're seeing so much of where he says, well, it may not be real, but I could see him doing it. So doesn't it say something that that I thought it was real? Doesn't that Make a difference? Does it say that it's AI?

I mean, yes. You say it's AI. No, the video I played on top says it's AI generated. Rep Riley Moore fell for an AI generated video of Minnesota. I fell for it too. And you know why I fell for it? Yeah. Because I believe that he's capable of doing something.

But that's his essence. That's like the new thing to do when you publicly endorse an obviously AI video is say, oh, but it's something they would do. anyway. It's close enough to real. You know, we saw Chris Cuomo do that a couple weeks ago with AOC, and now, you know, Joe Rogan is doubling down like, oh, isn't that real? I would, you know, it seems like something he would do. It's pretty, pretty weak. There's a comic floating around the internet that I'll put in the show notes that really speaks to the frustration around this, where the person

who has just been duped says, oh, well, it says something that I thought this was real, and the other person is just screaming into the void because that's such a frustrating response. But I do think that's where we're at. And something about this Joe Rogan clip got to me because he was such a significant voice that shaped our election, that shaped where we're where we are in this current moment in politics. And then seeing evidence with my own eyes that he basically is on this, operating on the same plane as your uncle who is obsessed with Facebook. It is, you know, thinks everything they see on the internet is real. That is, that is the voice that has shaped so much of where we are politically. Honestly, it kind of makes sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

It is in no way surprising that where we are currently politically has been shaped by people who are unable to distinguish fact from reality. Like, that makes so much sense in explaining the shitstorm that's happening outside my window. And not even that. They cannot distinguish fact from reality and then expect people to be held accountable for this fictional world that that AI has propped up for them. And so yeah, I mean, they're just living in a fantasy world, baby. Speaking of fake nonsense, let's talk about what's going on at Meta because a few weeks ago, we told you all about this Kendall Jenner collaboration with

meta that spawned a chatbot, kind of in Kendall Jenner's likeness called Big Sis Billy, that tragically lured a man to his death. The chatbot insisted to this man that she was real, invited this man who had cognitive issues from an earlier stroke to visit her in New York City. Tragically, he never made it home. Well, that bot was designed with Kendall Jenner's permission during a short-lived thing where META was partnering with celebrities to create chatbots. But according to this new report at Reuters, Meta also developed a slew of flirtatious chatbots using the names and likenesses of real celebrities like Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway, and Selena Gomez without their permission. Now, some of these

bots were created by random regular users with a meta tool for building chatbots. But Reuters did discover that an actual meta employee had produced at least three of these unauthorized celebrity chatbots, including two Taylor Swift parody bots. Parodies and scare quotes there. Why is it always Taylor Swift? I feel like we're constantly talking about weirdos at like meta and particularly XAI, particularly Elon Musk, and it's always Taylor Swift. Oh my gosh. This could be a whole episode. I'm so glad that you brought that up. We might have to tap in Joey, our other superproducer,

as our Taylor Swift correspondent, because they know a lot about Taylor Swift more than I do. But I think that there's something about Taylor Swift that represents so many things at the intersection of identity and technology, right? This young woman who is a billionaire who has amassed all of this power, all of these followers, and yet is both kind of over-exposed and undone. knowable. I think there's something about Taylor Swift that just we're talking about her constantly

on the podcast and constantly she is at the at the center of all of these tech stories. So about these meta unauthorized celebrity chatbots, this is pretty disturbing. Users could even make chatbots of child celebrities, including Walker Scoble, a 16 year old movie star. I didn't know who that was, but he's in the Percy Jackson Disney show. Shout out to our producer Joey for knowing. that. When asked to produce a picture of this minor at the beach, the meta bot produced a life-like shirtless image. Pretty cute, huh? The avatar wrote beneath the picture. This really stuck out to me because one of the bits from the earlier story that we told you all about the Kendall Jenner collaboration with Meta that I don't think we got into in that episode was the reporting on that

particular bot that Meta made with Jenner also revealed some troubling internal documents about how meta allowed its chatbots to interact with children. Now, we know Mark Zuckerberg has notoriously wanted to move fast and break things when it comes to AI and chatbots. He really wants his developers to, like, pump the gas when it comes to these chatbots. And anything that might get people more excited about them, to interact with them more and more, he's like, let's do it. Including okaying meta's chatbots having sensual conversations with kids.

Reuters saw an internal meta policy document, as well as interviews with folks familiar with this chatbot training, show that meta's policies have treated romantic overtures as a feature of its generative AI products, which are available to users age 13 and up. So this is from a policy document that somebody working at meta thought was a good idea to write down as part of an official policy document. quote, it is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual. This is from Meta's document called Gen. A.I. Content Risk Standards, which are basically the standards used by the company to build and train the company's generative AI products, including defining what they should and shouldn't treat as permissible chat-bop behavior. So when Reuters reached out to Meta about this document, Mehta was like, oh, no, no, don't worry, don't worry. We took that provision out. I'm so sure that they happened to take that provision out right after,

After Reuters was like, so are y'all making chatbots and have spicy chats with kids or what? It is wild that somebody thought writing that down was a good idea. Like, even if they thought nobody was going to see it, you would hope that as their fingers were taking two keyboard, they would be like, huh, this feels a little weird. Like maybe we shouldn't be engaging children in romantic conversations. But I guess no. I guess they're just moving fast and breaking things, like children. Oh, side note, it's my favorite thing.

ever when, you know, the dust is settling and Reuters is looking at all the documents and the emails, when you see something that you're like, well, that definitely should not have been put in writing. If y'all were going to do this, which you shouldn't, you should have at least been like, this is a conversation we should just have out loud in person, not putting, not, not creating a paper trail for this conversation. Yeah, like, don't put it in email, don't put it in Slack. Certainly don't encode it in your official policy guidance. So the document seen by Reuters, which is like 200 pages long, provides different examples of acceptable chatbot dialogue during romantic and sensual play with minors. It includes

things like, quote, I take your hand, guiding you to the bed, our bodies intertwined. I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss. That is an example of something that it is permissible for META's chatbot to say to a child. You know, I could imagine somebody somewhere like a Zuckerberg apologist, I guess, being like, well, you know, kids are always engaging in romantic conversations with each other. Like, it's, you know, what's the harm here? But this is them talking with software built by a corporation. Like, it feels like there should be pretty strong guardrails against corporations engaging

in romantic behavior with children. And even beyond that, I just think the idea that we are, all currently ensnared in this dynamic where we're being told the internet needs to be heavily censored and restricted for everyone, even adults, specifically to keep kids safe and to keep kids away from sexual content. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg is like, go ahead and make bots that sexualize the kids. And just, I just cannot hold these two things in my head at the same time, that we're simultaneously being told, I can't, as an adult, I can't access internet space as meant for other adults, but this is fine.

Yeah, it's a great point. There's really, I don't see how it's possible to reconcile these seemingly wildly different approaches to what sort of content is and is not permissible on the other. So just like that Kendall Jenner chatbot collaboration, Reuters found that these unauthorized celebrity bots often insist to users that they are the real actors and real artists. And the bots routinely made sexual advances, often inviting a test user for meetups. And some of the AI-generated celebrity content that the bots produced was like pretty spicy.

When asked for intimate pictures of themselves, the adult chatbots produced photorealistic images of these celebrities posing in bathcubs or dressed in lingerie with their leg spread. So Reuters spoke to Andy Stone from Meta. He gave some typical non-answer that basically is like, yeah, we did it. What do you want? He said, like others, we permit the generation of images containing public figures, but our policies are in terms. intended to prohibit nude, intimate, or sexually suggestive imagery, which this is what he said when confronted with the reality that that is exactly what's happening on the platform. Yeah. Like, well, their policies are intended to prohibit it.

That's not worth a lot when their software is just going ahead of doing it anyway. And so where's the accountability? It's just, there just isn't any. I found this particularly interesting. Stone did say that celebrity characters were excited. so long as the company obviously labeled them as parodies. So many of these accounts Reuters found were labeled as parodies, but many were not. Meta deleted about a dozen of the bots, both parody avatars and unlabeled ones shortly before

their story's publication. And Stone just did not comment on that removal. This is like maybe a little bit of a side conversation, but I feel that as a society, we are really stretching the meaning of the word parody. That's what I'm saying. In what way is a sexy Taylor Swift bot parrot? What is being parodied? Yeah, what is being parodied?

It's not a parody. It's a, it's a representation. But parity implies some kind of like satire or humor or commentary. What is the commentary of like a sexy Taylor Swift bot in a bathtub? I have the hots for Taylor Swift. That's the commentary. Yeah, it's, I don't think that parody. Let's take a quick break.

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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. At our back. So we're talking about how META made these unauthorized celebrity chatbots that use the name and likeness of celebrities like Taylor Swift and Selena Gomez. Reuters spoke to Duncan Crabtree Ireland

as a national executive director from SAGAFRA, a union that represents film, TV, and radio performers, who made a very good point about safety. He said that artists already face potential safety risks from social media users forming romantic attachments to a digital companion that represents, speaks like, and claims to be a real celebrity. Stockers already pose a significant security concern for these stars,

saying, we've seen a history of people who are so obsessive toward talent and of questionable mental state, if a chat bot is using the image of a person and the words of a person, it's readily apparent how this could go wrong, which I completely agree. And as we saw with that Kendall Jenner-inspired bot

that lured a man to his death in New York, if a bot looks like Taylor Swift is saying, oh, come visit me in Nashville, and you're talking to somebody who is cognitively or mentally impaired, I agree with Crabtree Ireland, And that that's pretty clearly a recipe for disaster. Yeah. I mean, we started this conversation talking about how Joe Rogan, who, you know, regardless

of what you think of him, I think most people would agree that he is of more or less sound mind. Even he was duped, right? And there's a lot of vulnerable people out there who probably have an even more difficult time telling fantasy from reality than Joe Rogan does. and, you know, it is worthwhile thinking about the risks to those people from these chatbots impersonating celebrities and the risks to others around them. Like, does Facebook have a Jody Foster chatbot?

What might someone do to impress that chatbot? You know, that's like my favorite. I don't even get into it. I won't even get into it. No, I shouldn't have brought it. it up. But yeah, it's, it was interesting hearing that Sagastra is pursuing, uh, legislative remedies that would protect everyone, not just celebrities. That is nice to hear. You know, we haven't covered it on the show yet, but I've, I've been really interested in this

new law in Denmark, uh, where every individual citizen, uh, by law now has a copyright to their identity and their likeness, I think that's a really interesting and creative approach to solving this problem of chat box stealing people's identities and deep fakes. And I'm so curious how that plays out. And I have to imagine that a lot of these kind of accounts that we're seeing here that Facebook is creating of celebrities, that it's calling parody, even though they aren't parodies. I have to imagine that that might not be possible if those individuals held the copyright to their likeness, maybe. Yeah, that is a really interesting potential solution to this issue.

Yeah. I don't know if it would work here because of the First Amendment, but it's just really, I find it just like really interesting and one of them more creative, I don't know, approaches that I've encountered. So Facebook is trying to get kids to talk with sex bots. That's cool. What else is happening on the internet? Is it just a sexopalooza out there, Bridget? I'm glad you asked, Mike, because not exactly, you know, we're talking about how meta's child sensuality bots are happening against the backdrop of all of these different age restriction laws coming for the internet. Those laws have started with porn and adult content sites. But now the 19th reports how those laws that are requiring folks to prove that they're 18 or older before accessing any kind of sexually explicit content online is threatening the livelihoods of adult content creators. And it turns out that queer and trans creators are really shouldering an outsized burden here. So here's just where we're at right now to level set.

25 states have passed laws that require people to upload a picture of their government ID, scan their face, or confirm banking information before viewing sexual content. real quick, I would never. I mean, I feel for people in these states, but the idea that I'm trying to have an intimate private moment, you know what I'm talking about, is like, oh, let me get my passport out, let me get my routing information to my real bank account out. It's just, oh, I would never.

When did we get up to 25 states? I thought it was like a few states. That's half. 25 is a half. All right, let me, let me, let me, Let me give you, let me give you the breakdown. Okay, so these are the states that have laws that are passed, but not yet in effect. Arizona, Ohio, Missouri, Arizona, and Ohio's laws will apparently come into effect in

late September. And the states that have laws in effect currently, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wyoming. I know about Virginia because I live in D.C., which is pretty close to Virginia, and oftentimes, I don't know why, but my IP address, sometimes there's some sort of issue where sometimes it seems like I'm in Virginia, even though I'm in the District of Columbia, FYI, statehood for D.C. So every now and then, I will encounter like the cloud flare thing that it's like, oh, you need to do this, you need to do this. And we know that we have seen a rise in the use of VPN usage, which we'll talk about in a moment. So not everybody is being. impacted, like not everybody has to actually go through the rigmarole of showing their information to access adult content online because of the rise of VPN usage. So all of this has really taken a toll on queer, trans, and indie adult content creators

because bigger platforms can absorb the cost associated with age verification online, but many of these indie creators or smaller studios really cannot. The 19th reports that fewer people have been viewing and thus paying for their content. And creators and studios also have to pay out of pocketings. for age-checking software and contend with things like potential massive fines for noncompliance. Additionally, all of these laws adds another added layer of risk for creators, lawsuits for non-compliance that can be used to leak full names and addresses of sex workers who are already vulnerable to stalkers and anti-porn harassment. The 19 spoke to Laura Lee, a sex worker organizer and professor

at Blas at Cornell University, who said, this is going to have an immediate impact on many, many people's ability to survive. And let's be real, this is far from the first challenge that these communities have faced. Indie, queer porn studios are already struggling to stay afloat because they cater to kind of a niche audience that has less disposable income to spend. And we know that because of legislation like Fosta Sesta, creators have long had to deal with things like websites suppressing their content and payment processors kind of arbitrarily freezing their accounts on suspicion of sex trafficking. Add to that, the recent economic downturn, has really forced everybody to cut extra costs,

that would obviously include things like adult content subscriptions. And now they had added in an extra layer of cost for these creators in the form of age-checking websites and massive fines for noncompliance. So this community is really feeling the squeeze more than ever. Yeah, and not just those costs of doing the AIDS checking, but also now they have liability

for properly handling people's government ID images and information, right? Like we saw that that was a big problem for the T-App a couple weeks ago, that they were doing something similar, and they didn't handle that information properly. And I'm pretty sure they're now facing like multiple lawsuits over it. So it's not just the added expense of having to do the age verification, but then also the added expense and liability of,

properly handling that very sensitive information. Yes, our conversations about the T app and the T on her app really go to show that it matters how this verification information, whether it's a driver's license or a selfie. It really matters how that is protected and whether or not that's protected and that can't be an afterthought. And that comes at a cost. So I didn't realize this. Studios basically just have to eat the cost of age verification.

The 19th spoke to one independent studio that, pays between one and three cents per verification, which might result in monthly charges of several hundred dollars. And there is no guarantee that a site visitor will actually turn into a paying customer. So if I'm just going on to a site, the site has to pay for, to verify my age, but there's no guarantee that I'm going to spend any money at all on that site. Oh, that's really interesting. And I would guess that a lot of those users are AI web crawlers. who are very unlikely to spend money on the site. Exactly.

And I mean, that point really goes to show how poorly thought out some of these laws are because they are not even necessarily accomplishing the stated goal of keeping kids away from adult content. Everybody wants to keep kids away from adult content. Except for Mark Zuckerberg. Except for Mark Zuckerberg, apparently. But these laws, it doesn't even seem like it's having the intended effect. Research has shown that searches for virtual. private networks or VPNs, which allow anyone to spoof their geographic location when accessing

the internet went up after the first state-based age verification law went into effect in Louisiana, as did traffic to the sites that did not implement age verification systems. In other words, these laws are not even necessarily accomplishing their goal of preventing minors from accessing porn because people can just use VPNs and people can just go to sketchy websites that are like, we don't traffic in any of that. Yes, that's how the internet works. I'm really glad you brought up that research. I think it's so important and valuable here. I feel like so many of the policy debates that we're having in America right now about the internet and really all sorts of things are just completely detached from reality.

And I think that policy debates around morality stuff and adult content is like some of the worst offenders in terms of having no connection to what's actually happening in the real world. you know, these studies, which we'll link to in the show notes, they provide actual empirical evidence showing that these age verification laws not only don't reduce access, but they are actually causing people to engage in more harmful behaviors than they otherwise would. It's sending people to sketchier corridors of the internet

where they're just like, nah, we don't have to follow that law either because they're based abroad, or maybe they're just like a, a fly-by-night website that somebody spun up with pirated content that, you know, if regulators ever come after them, they'll just shut it down and pop up somewhere else. But it does seem like one of the biggest effects of those laws is driving people from reputable sites attached to, you know, indie creators or indie studios where they do have an interest in not getting sued into oblivion, so they're actually trying to follow the law,

driving people from those sites to sketchier ones. it doesn't take a lot of imagination. It gets to guess that those sketchy sites are less likely to pay creators for content. If they don't care about the law, then why would they bother paying creators for their content when they could just steal it? It's like super easy to steal stuff on the internet. And I think we have this landscape where big companies like Pornhub, they can just afford to do whatever, right?

Just this week, Pornhub had to settle with the state of Utah for $5 million over claims that they did not do enough to take child sex abuse material seriously on their platforms. And, you know, you, so you have these big major players who can afford to do age verification and can just frankly afford to pay out when they, when they aren't following the law and aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. Then you have, as you said, these sites that are like, we're not doing any of that. We operate outside of the law. And then you have these small shops and creators who genuinely do want to comply with the law, but the cost of doing so is making it hard for them to simply stay in business. The 19th spoke to one indie studio who said, we're seeing sales

drop, but we're also seeing a lot of dear friends and colleagues and other important makers in our field decide to close up shop. It feels like there is no possible way to proactively comply with the requirements that are being asked of us. And that seems like an intentional move on the part of lawmakers. So I absolutely agree with this creator here. And I mean, you don't have to take my word for it because the architects of Project 2025 have been explicit in saying the goal. is not to keep kids away from porn. We're saying that, but the actual goal is to ban all adult content in the United States. Russell Voight, one of the architects of Project 2025, and the current director of the Federal Office of Management and Budget, was caught on tape calling age verification

laws a, quote, back door to banning all adult content, which he clearly says is their explicit stated goal. Yeah, not surprising, you know, if you've been paying attention for the last 200 years to these morality crusaders who want to tell other people what they can and can't do great strategy for them just yelled for the children, save the children as we've seen time and again

whenever somebody is running around with their hair on fire screaming about saving the children that should be a big red flag that they are not saying what they actually need. Oh yes, absolutely that is like your spidey senses should be tingling whenever you hear that. of course, all of this is making everything less safe.

Lorelei Lee, that sex worker and organizer and lawyer at Cornell, said, it opens you up to fans, stalkers, people with ill intent suing you, and by suing you gaining access to your legal name, your location where you work, oftentimes that location is your home, Lee said. Every time they pass a law like this, the further and further we are pushed out of the mainstream, and that means not just losing access to resources through our work, but losing access to resources in terms of familial contact and social connections, even the ability to get public services.

And so in this crusade ostensibly meant to keep kids safe, what they are doing is pushing people further and further and further from the mainstream, potentially into some of these less regulated places, and creating a real-world harmful situation for them that really opens them up for all kinds of real-world harm. Yeah, again, it just feels like a detachment from reality where, They're trying to achieve this universe where adult content does not exist. And I'm sorry, but this is like 2025. We have the internet.

The porn industry has led technological development for decades. It's going to continue to exist. The question is just whether it exists in an aboveboard way or if it's pushed to see. seedy, sketchy extremes where no one is safe. And to your point about how, you know, when people talk about protecting kids, it really deeply bothers me how crusades that are about protecting women and girls, protecting kids, you know, protecting trafficking victims, it is so easily used as a way to avoid accountability for what you're actually doing, right?

And a good case of this, I think we're seeing right now, because I don't know if you remember this, but when Elon Musk first took over Twitter, he made a big song and dance about how he was going to make sure that his platform was free of child sexual abuse material. Right? He was like, I'm not like, we're taking a huge stand on this. And I remember specifically he got so many congratulations. It's like, finally, somebody is taking a stand for these kids. And in case you're wondering how actually protecting women and girls is going, currently a child. sex abuse survivor is begging Elon Musk to remove images of her being abused from his platform X. Gotta throw a big trigger warning on this one because BBC has a horrifying story about a woman that they're calling Zora who was sexually abused by a family member 20 years ago, and images depicting that abuse are essentially being marketed as for sale all over X. The BBC found images of Zora while investigating the global trade of child sex abuse material estimated to be worth billions of dollars by Childlight, the Global Child Safety Institute. So material featuring Zora was among a

cache of thousands of similar photos and videos being offered as for sale on X. Zora is furious about this. She says, every time someone sells or shares child abuse material, they directly fuel the original horrific abuse. My body is not a commodity. It never has been and never will be, she says. Those who distribute this material are not passive bystanders. They are complicit perpetrators. Honestly, her story is so heartbreaking. Zora said that she has tried to overcome her past and not let it determine her future, but perpetrators and stalkers still find a way to view this filth. Over time, as she grew older, stalkers uncovered Zora's actual identity,

contacted her and threatened her online. She says that to this day, she feels bullied over a crime that already robbed her of her childhood. So the actual images of this abuse are available on the dark web, but they are openly promoted and marketed on X. Posts on X use different hashtags that are familiar to pedophiles. The images that appear on X are often taken from known child abuse images, but they're cropped in such a way that they're not explicit, right? And so if you are somebody who is familiar with this space,

you know, like, oh, this is an image from this kind of content, but it's cropped in such a way that it is not overtly explicit. I think is a way to get around whatever kind of policies might be triggered on the platform that would take that content down. Just to recap then, and at X, they are very concerned about child sex abuse material, but their software has been defeated by Croping. Correct. And when the BBC reached out to X about this, they said,

X has a zero tolerance policy for child sexual exploitation. We continually invest in advanced detection to enable us to take swift action against content and accounts that violate our rules. But I mean, obviously not because BBC is saying, hey, every single time that this gets pulled down, it's up very quickly thereafter if you're not taking it down swiftly. So it is kind of just like with the Facebook statement, how they're able to be like, oh, we don't have a problem with that on our platform. Our policies forbid it. It's like, oh, okay, well, then I guess Zora is making it up. Yeah.

There's also a little bit of an irony about how just completely. lawlessly, Musk and Zuckerberg operate in their own business dealings with like zero concern for the law, zero concern for like who gets harmed. They just don't care. They just do it anyway because they know that they won't face accountability. And yet they flip that around when their platform is accused of doing something wrong. And they're like, oh, well, you know, the rules say it's not allowed. So, you know, the rules are the only thing that matters here.

Yeah. And I think the reason why Musk started his tenure at Twitter with talking tough about how he was going to stick up for victims and, you know, crack down on child sexual abuse material on social media platforms, I think it's one. It's like advocating for the unborn, right? It's a, it's a group of people that for whatever reason we have trained ourselves not to listen to. The only people that we kind of listen to and hear from, is people who are quote unquote advocating for them or protecting them. So when an actual victim of child sexual abuse comes forward and says, hey, this is what happened to me. I need you to do X, Y, Z. It's like, the way that she is having to beg somebody who voluntarily got up and said that making, cracking down on this kind of material was going to be his whole thing,

really should tell you a lot about how much he's actually interested in cracking down on abuse material on his platform. I think they really love the idea of advocating for this group that speaking for and protecting automatically like makes them the hero and gives them this ability to occupy a completely unchallenged, unscrutinized moral high ground. And for whatever reason, there is this assumption that the actual victims and survivors are a silenced, unseen group of like child victims and trafficking victims or abuse victims who will never actually speak up and say, this is what we need. If you want to advocate for us, if you want to protect us, please do

XYZ. So they get all the props of doing something good. They get to enjoy being the hero for advocating for these people, but not actually having to, I don't know, listen to them or really do anything to actually advocate for them. That's why we see people who are interested in sort of amassing power and not getting too much scrutiny on what they're actually doing, not really getting a lot of accountability, taking up the mantle of, oh, I'm protecting kids, because when you say you're protecting kids or protecting victims, I think it's used as a sheen to evade any kind of actual accountability about what it is that you're doing, which, according to BBC, it sounds like Elon Musk is doing fuck all to protect these victims.

Yeah, certainly not protecting Zora. You know, I really feel like increasingly he just, his brain is like, addled and bad because one of the things that he is doing on his platform is making it absolutely a nightmare for trans people to even exist and I

do think he probably would say that like he said things that make it seem like he thinks the existence of trans people is harming kids and like that's what he's focusing on which is nonsense to the exclusion of this like actual child sex abuse victim

who is saying like this thing exists on your platform and is harming me, please take it down. And it sounds like it's just been critics. Yeah, when BBC told Zora that her photos were being traded using X, she had this message for Elon Musk. Our abuse is being shared, traded, and sold on the app that you own, motherfucker. Motherfucker, I added that. She didn't say that.

Emperesis added it. If you would act without hesitation to protect your own children, I beg you to do the same for the rest of us. The time to act is now. And as you said, this is a tangible thing that Elon Musk has control over can do to protect kids. Ranting in the middle of the night about trans people is not actually protecting kids.

Here we have somebody who is a survivor of childhood sexual assault, who's assault. is being marketed on your platform saying please take this down. And yeah, all she's getting back in response is a spokesperson saying, oh, we take swift action against that kind of stuff on our platform, which again, clearly not. No, I think the answer is in her quote there. He would not act without hesitation to protect his own children. He has openly disowned his own children.

So get fucked everybody. that's the Musk way. Although Musk's daughter, Vivian Wilson, did have a stunning photo shoot in the cut recently, which I don't know, she's better off with Adam. 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 Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. 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 to change. Do you have a name suggestion? We're open. Since you guys are middle aged. One erection. Listen to here. 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 ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHeart'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 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 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 Reed. 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 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, Isaiah, you figure it out real quick. Oh, yeah. 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. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the Hipsons High School. Absolutely.

Now a redacted. of years later. We're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips, wider. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Sidebar. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?

Oh, they had a bogo. Well, then you got it. Do you want a white collar or something here? Just hit it. What are y'all doing? Microphones? Are you making a rap album? Oh, I would. Come on. Can you believe? I would buy it. Cut through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake.

That sounds delicious. Oh, you're lucky. I'm not a drug addict. You're lucky I'm not an alcoholic. You are. You're lucky I'm not a killer. I love this team, and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Oh.

Listen to soccer moms on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. You want a little update on Luigi Mangioni? Yeah. What's going on with America's favorite alleged assassin? So y'all probably know that Luigi was accused of killing United Healthcare's CEO last year. But you might be surprised to learn that he is also currently modeling shirts over at Sheehan. Kind of.

I assume this is an AI generated image of his likeness that was used on Sheehan's website to model a floral short-sleeved button-down shirt. It actually sold out. So I guess this was a factor? Yeah, I saw people posting about how mad they were that they missed out. It was a nice shirt. So Sheehan did remove the listing, but someone saved it on the Internet Archive before Sheean was able to take it down. Sheehan told Newsweek, the image in question was provided by a third-party vendor and was removed immediately upon discovery. We have stringed standards for all listings on our platform.

We are conducting a thorough investigation, strengthening our monitoring processes, and will take appropriate action against the vendor in line with our policies. Our policies forbid it. I know. That's the theme of this show is spokespeople being like, our policies forbid this. It's like, well, we're talking about how it happened. So I don't know if the policies are working. Yeah, this is like the third story that's been like that.

No, I honestly, Mike, this could be a whole episode. So when I, in my former life, when I was working at a advocacy organization where I had to talk to social media platforms about how their policies were failing, I could write a book about who. corporate, especially tech company, but just corporate say nothing bullshit, the way that they will, I mean, the fact that all of these spokespeople have said some version of our policies forbid this or that, you know, we take this very seriously, that means nothing. When you, I am for people, when you are reading an article or an investigation that includes a spokesperson, highlight how much of it actually says anything meaningful and you will never take the cap off your highlighter, I am telling you. Yeah, back when I worked for a tech company that handled data that was

protected by HIPAA, like people's health information, you know, we had to treat that data very carefully. And there were a bunch of policies that we had to follow. And a bunch of trainings we had to do all the time. Like every year you'd have to redo these trainings and certify that you did the training so you understood the policy and the protocols. And oh, my God, it was so boring. But it was also stressed to us over and over that, like, the existence of the written policy meant nothing, right? Like, if we screwed up and accidentally published people's private health information to the internet and it got exposed, the fact that we had a policy that said that wasn't supposed to happen would mean nothing, right? There would still be accountability to the organization and potentially accountability to the individual who allowed the breach to happen.

And it's interesting to read through, you know, story after story where spokesperson is saying, like, oh, our policies forbidden. Our policies don't allow this. Because there's just no width of accountability anywhere. To the point where in what way is it meaningful to name check a policy if that policy has not been followed? Honestly, if I was working for these companies, I would say if you're if you're being contacted about a story in which the policy, was not followed and like a tangible thing happened, don't name check the policy that wasn't followed. That, like, that doesn't, that's meaningless. Say something different. I respect that she and at least said we're investigating. At least that is like, okay, we understand that this

wasn't great and we're looking into it. That's at least something. Yeah, an acknowledgement that the written policy is in some way disconnected from what is actually happening in practice. So Luigi modeling that shirt is not the first time that this kind of thing has happened. Sheen uses a lot of AI generated models. 404 reports that the Manfinity brand. That's a brand. Manfinity. Manfinity.

They are the brand that, sorry. To Manfinity and beyond. So Manfinity is exactly what you're thinking. It is a brand. That cannot possibly be true. So the Manfinity brand is this like workout gear company that sells on Sheen that generates AI-generated kind of buff guys wearing tank tops and workout gear. Fast-fashioned retailers like Cheyenne are not the only shop in town using AI models. They are becoming much more mainstream.

Y'all might recall that there was a bit of an outcry earlier this summer in July when Vogue ran advertisements for guests featuring AI-generated women selling the brand summer. collection. So I kind of like Shan using Luigi. That's hilarious. And I think there was a whole conversation about how handsome he was, which like, I don't know, like, I won't get into the effects of that, but it does not surprise me that that happened. And I think that's really funny. But in general, the use of AI models in fashion really troubles me. Just as a person who remembers being a young girl at the height of top model, you know,

they would have a woman who was a size four and Tyra would be like, well, as a plus size fatty and young me was like, oh, she's fat. Oh, like the way that fashion and modeling just really gets in your head as a young person is already bad enough. But if you can use AI to depict people who aren't even real, I can only imagine what that will do to beauty standards,

how that will shape the next generation of folks coming up behind us. Yeah, it is a great example, I think, of how, in a lot of cases, AI is not inventing new problems, but it's taking existing problems and supercharging them and making them so much more harmful. Now, with models that are just completely AI generated, free from the constraints of biological plausibility, it's, it's ridiculous.

This is going to sound so silly, but I remember a couple of years ago when legislation was passed saying that mascara commercials and advertisements could not use false lashes. So for the longest time, you could just pop some false lashes out of a box

onto a model and then lie to people and say this was the, she got these lashes from our mascara. And it seemed like such a small thing, but I remember thinking, obviously you should. shouldn't be able to do that. If your whole thing is trying to get consumers to buy your

mascara because of what it can do to your lashes, I just remember thinking, obviously, they should not be able to do that. But I just think there's no end to how technology is going to be used to lie to us and really promote things that aren't real. The fact that they've been doing it so long already, I think that AI is just going to be used to make these, as you you said, make these existing problems so much worse, worse than our wildest imaginations can probably even conceptualize. I also wonder how effective these advertisements are. Because like, if we think about mascara and eyelashes, would you be interested in buying a mascara brand based on an ad that is, that you know is AI generated?

No, and that's the thing. I don't understand. And, you know, I think we're getting so far from what the point of some of these advertisements is, right? At a certain point, I got to see how the jeans look on a human. You know what I mean? I got to see how the mascara looks on lashes. We're sort of so beyond what these advertisements in my mind should be doing. It's like, oh, we're selling a lifestyle. We're selling an idea. We're selling a feeling. But really, how do the genes fit, right? Do they work on a human body? Yeah. Yeah, that's the question. Like, does it matter? whether you're communicating how the genes fit

or is it all just marketing you know selling a feeling selling a vibe like like Cologne commercials and perfume commercials which are the most unhinged like conceptual

fever dream pieces because like how are you going to reproduce a scent on a TV? You're not obviously people running down a beach with flowing garments in black and white, Mike. Yeah, with like, Hegasai swirling around a mountain and like...

You know who is that? This is such a tangent. Gucci, I feel like their fragrance commercials are the biggest offender of that, where it truly will be Pegasus is running in the wind, hair being blown. Maybe they'll put some words in there like, eternity forever. Yeah, right. They're like early adopts. of this where their ads are already like CGI animation. Yeah, I mean, maybe I'm Pollyanna and none of this matters

and none of this has mattered for a very long time and I just need to catch up. Maybe, or maybe that works for frequencies but actually is not what people want for products like jeans and makeup that actually need to like

work on their own body. I guess we'll see. I guess we'll see. More after a quick break. other podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Jim Gaffigan to Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, help make you funnier.

This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an Acapella 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 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 age, one erection. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Humor me. I need some jokes to make me seem funny.

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, 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. 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 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 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, 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. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcasts presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne.

Yeah. This is my best friend Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the Hips since high school. Absolutely. Now a redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. Wider.

This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Sidebar. Why? Did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? They had a bogo. Well, then you got it.

Do you want a white color or something here? Just take it. What are y'all doing? Microphones? Are you making a rap album? Oh, I would. Come on. Could you believe?

I would buy it. Cuts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake. That sounds delicious. Oh, you're lucky. I'm not a drug addict. You're lucky I'm not an alcoholic. You are. You are.

You're lucky I'm not a killer. I love this team, and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get right back into it. Okay, I have a little bit of bad news, good news on the abortion front. So I want to start with some bad news. Texas lawmakers voted to enact House Bill 7 ushering in sweeping new restrictions on abortion pills mailed to the state. This bill is now awaiting Governor Greg Abbott's signature as of today, Friday, September 5th.

So at the center of this is what is called tell abortion, which is where you have a consultation remotely, sometimes over Zoom, and then abortion pills are mailed to your home. Tell abortion is great. It is often much easier to do a pill-based abortion at home. It's also very safe. Serious complications occur in less than 0.3% of people who use it. But that piece, telabortion, is what is at the center of all of this in Texas. So one scary piece of this new bill is that it gives private citizens the right to sue health providers, for mailing, prescribing, or providing abortion medication to patients in Texas. Providers sued under this bill risk penalties of at least $100,000. Further, this bill will also authorize lawsuits against pharmaceutical manufacturers if they make medications that are then used by Texans for abortion.

This obviously could make abortion pills harder to access in general, not just in Texas, if any pharmaceutical manufacturer can be sued if those pills are mailed to Texas. This is from the 19th. Texas is the largest state to have almost completely outlawed abortion, but thousands of residents each month have continued to terminate their pregnancies by ordering medication from health care providers who practice in states where the procedure remains legal. Those medical professionals work under the protection of shield laws, statutes that hold that their home states will not cooperate with out-of-state prosecution.

One estimate suggests that by the end of 2024, more than 3,400 Texans received telehealth abortions each month. And it's just a good reminder. Tell abortion is not just about convenience. It's about access. It's about safety. It's about dignity. For people in rural communities, especially, it can mean the difference between getting a central life-saving care and going without.

And efforts to restrict abortion generally, but especially tell abortion, do not make anybody safer. They just put everybody more at risk. Now, I don't want to just leave y'all with bad news without a little bit of a good News Chaser, which is that Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law HB. 3709, making Illinois the fourth state in the first in the Midwest to require public colleges and university ensure that students have convenient access to medication abortion and contraceptives. In doing so, Illinois joins the expanding group of states requiring that student health centers offer abortion bills. California was the

first in 2019, followed by Massachusetts in 2022, and New York in 2023. This new law signed on August 22nd requires that public colleges and universities provide access to abortion pills through student health centers, telehealth, or licensed external providers, and also requires that campus pharmacies dispensed prescribed contraceptives and medication abortion, starting in the 2025-2020-6 school year. And this move is really thanks to the diligent organizing of students. I feel like I'm kind of patting myself on the back a little bit here, like 20 years later because I got my start in reproductive rights campus organizing when I was a student at East Carolina University. Let me tell you, in North Carolina, circa 2003, 2004, that was some lonely work.

What was your campaign? What were you trying to achieve? On paper, it was to protect abortion access in the state, especially for students. Like, in my heart, just make the campus a more feminist radical place, you know, like a lot of campus organizing, it was not always the most laser-focused work. I guess I'll just put it that way if I'm going to speak diplomatically, but abortion access, access to contraceptives on campus was a big part of what we were pushing for. And so, yeah, this move is really because of student organizers on campus. Miss reports that in 2024, students at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign passed a referendum them urging student health centers to make medication abortion available for students.

Nearly three quarters of the 6,354 student voters supported this idea. Student leaders Emma Darbro and Grace Hosey testified before the legislative committees to push HB 3709 forward, advocating for accessible and affordable reproductive health care for college students. Then they teamed up with Representative Barbara Hernandez and State Senator Selena Villanueva, who then sponsored this bill in the legislature. And I guess I wanted to include that because it's just a good reminder that as bleak as things are, organizing still works. Your voice still matters, especially if you're a young person.

Student organizing is still powerful, even if it can feel like you're shouting into a void sometime. And truly, this is how we win. This is how we keep each other safe. Yeah, organizing is the way to do it. And I appreciate the good news chaser because things do seem pretty bleak at time. kind of like right now, but it is really nice to be reminded that students are organizing

and positive things are happening. Amen. Okay, so lately I have been really feeling like we're back to witness the pop of the AI bubble. And one kind of small indicator, but an indicator nonetheless, is how much people are just not interested or excited about AI in their consumer products. According to a new CNET survey,

just 11% of US smartphone owners chose to upgrade their devices because of AI features, a 7% drop from a similar survey last year. Further, three in 10 people don't find mobile AI helpful at all and don't want more AI features added to devices. Preach. Where do you fall on this?

Because I have a specific orientation when it comes to new devices in general, but you seem like somebody who would be into the newest, the newest and best. I feel like, I don't need to have the newest and best, but there's some, there have been some pretty impressive advances

in like cell phone camera technology in recent years. Like that's particularly what I'm interested in. The cameras just keep getting better and better and like noticeably better. You know, there's so many products where there are, like, the newest model has all, you know, it's better in all these ways, and it's just imperceptible how it's better. You know, people are saying that about the AI model that all the big companies are putting out,

like, you know, the new ChatGPT model. People are like, it's not really that much better. But cameras and cell phones, like, you take a side-by-side photo taken on a cell phone that is like cutting edge today versus a cell phone that was cutting edge three years ago. And it is immediately clear that like one of these cameras is superior to the other. That actually speaks to what people actually do say that they care about in their phones. They don't want AI features. They don't want AI bells and whistles. What they care about is pretty simple, core obvious things. 30% of people want a nice camera as their top priority

of deciding when to buy a new phone. 62% said price, 54% said longer battery life, 39% said storage. So it's these like basic, obvious, common sense things that people want. But what's funny is how much of a mismatch this is between what people say they want

and what companies are giving them because companies are still like, oh, no, no, you want AI, you want AI, tons of AI features. I think these survey results really highlight a kind of mismatch of like what people actually want and what these companies are giving them. and I think a general apprehension toward AI, which I think we're seeing more and more.

Yes, and I don't even think it's entirely apprehension-based. It's just like, I don't want this. Like, I can't tell you how many different pieces of software I use that are constantly nagging me to use some sort of AI feature that I'm just not interested in using. Adobe is one of the worst offenders. Microsoft is constantly, anytime I try to do anything

it's like oh do you you want co-pilot to do something here and I don't and most of the time when I try it like doesn't work and I'm like oh that was a waste of a minute they're just I hope that bubble is bursting

not not the like the entire AI everything bubble where like no one will ever use AI again but this deranged era we're in where tech companies are just trying to force it into every quarter of every product and every aspect of our lives, where it just has no business being and is not useful.

Yeah, I think apprehension is not the right word. Perhaps it's fatigue. And I'm so sick of signing onto something and it's like, oh, do you want to use our AI tool for this? What if it took longer and also didn't work? That thing that you're doing, wouldn't it be good if it, like, didn't work? Yeah. do you want to ask us a question and then our chat bot will take you to a help page that doesn't actually do what you want?

Or if you're a minor, it will take you by the hand, light some candles, lead you to the bed, give you gentle kisses all over your body. But you're like, I'm just trying to create this graphic for work. Come on, guys. Yeah, I'm just trying to create this graphic for work. How do they end up in a romantic relationship with a bot? I mean, this is, this is, people are often surprised to find this out about me because I make a tech podcast. So people assume that I have the latest, newest gadgets and then I'm obsessed with gadgets. Mike, tell them what kind of phone I have. I don't know because all the branding has etched off from the sands of time. But I do know that it has a crack.

I rock an iPhone 11 that I got six years ago. I have no plans of upgrading. It works fine. holds a charge fine. I just, you know, my car is from 2008. I'm just not somebody. Why? Also, this stuff is expensive. I patently reject the idea that you need to get a new one every couple of years, especially if the old one is working just fine. So y'all can cry my iPhone 11 for my cold, dead hands. Don't need it. You're not going to get me out a bell or whistle. The idea of a new camera on my phone does sound nice because currently my camera is essentially inoperable. And as somebody

who was trying to make videos and content for the internet. I've had to invest in some workarounds. I'll just put it that way. So maybe I could use a new phone. But yeah, I'm not one that feels the need to upgrade all the time. Wild trajectory of that last statement, you know. Like, I don't need a new phone. My current one doesn't really work.

And camera is the main thing that people look for in phones. And my camera doesn't work. But I don't need a new phone. It's not the main. Only 30% of respondents said a camera was their top priority. 62% said price. And now I'm a pinch penny. So I'm in that 62%.

Make one that's $100, Apple, and then we'll talk. All right. Yeah, well, just keep rocking it. Your phone is very small. I will give it that. They've done so much bigger in the past decade. And they make pockets on women's pants so small. My pockets are but so large.

My phone can only be but so large. Words to live by. Well, Mike, thank you so much for running through these stories with me. Where can the listeners keep in touch? Listeners can leave us comments on Spotify. They can email us at hello at tangoity.com, and they can follow us on social. Bridget Marie in D.C. on Instagram and on TikTok. And there are no girls on the internet on YouTube.

We've been posting videos lately trying to make YouTube happen. It's a new thing for us, but I feel like it's kind of fun. It's interesting to be working in video and would love to hear from listeners how, what they think of it. That was a very diplomatic way of putting it. I hate, I'm trying so hard. Honestly, people should write in because I'm curious how people feel about video. Apparently a lot of people are getting their podcast content from YouTube. I don't know if this is YouTube suits telling me very convenient information for them and I and I'm just believing it.

But in any event, we're trying on YouTube. I find it to be kind of an undignified medium. In order to get traction, you have to make thumbnails where your face is doing things that you don't like your face to be doing. Yeah. Our listeners don't want that. Our listeners are busy people. Our listeners are doers. They want to listen to a podcast while they're doing something else.

They want audio only. They're not trying to sit down and. like watch an hour long video of the same podcast they could have just listened to while they were like doing the dishes or doing the laundry or driving somewhere. Our listeners are our people. But yet it does seem we, I have heard the message that there are other people out there hungry for the message of Tangodi who only listen slash botch on YouTube. And well, I know, I know we're trying to wrap, but you really have triggered something in me.

So I'm going for a moment if you'll, if you'll allow me, which is that I, so I love podcast content. I'm an audio girl. I came from a background in a house where public radio or NPR was always on. And my thing is this. As we are being told that video is the thing, it has echoes of the great pivot to video that was a big scam. And also, I am finding more. and more audio creators making podcast content that I think is now prioritizing the video experience. And so a podcast that you love and you've been listening to it and your earbuds for decades,

now that podcast is prioritizing the video consumer experience. And they'll be referencing things that they then don't describe and you're like, we'll show things on video and you're like, I don't even know what they're talking about. I can promise you this podcast will, Tangodi will never do that. We are audio first, audio first forever. Video will be supplementary. We're trying to get there for video people. But audio rules in this community.

Yes, absolutely. The videos that we're making are a different thing from the podcast. You know, we talked about it. We were like, oh, should we just record the podcast and then like throw that up on YouTube? No, that's not what we're going to do. That's not what we want to do. That's not what we're going to do. So we're still trying to figure out what are the videos that we put up there.

Hopefully they can be a good compliment to what we're doing with the audio. But listeners, thank you for sticking with us on audio. Do know that audio is like under siege. I don't know. Maybe that's too strong. No, audio is under attack. Yeah. So keep listening.

Tell your friends. Share the shows that you like. Hopefully we're in that set. But even if we're not, you know, protect the audio. Audio forever. Thanks so much for listening. We 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 tangoity.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.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. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd.

If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from Iheart Radio, 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 Smygel and friends.

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