Why Kids Can’t Handle Free Speech, Celeb Body Image Cope, and Clickbait Rage, with Bridget Phetasy

Summary

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After Party with Emily Jashinsky

Episode Summary: "Why Kids Can’t Handle Free Speech, Celeb Body Image Cope, and Clickbait Rage, with Bridget Phetasy"
Date: December 4, 2025 | Host: Emily Jashinsky | Guest: Bridget Phetasy

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Episode Overview

This episode features a sharp, entertaining dive into the intersections of media, digital culture, and generational psyche. Host Emily Jashinsky welcomes writer/comic Bridget Phetasy to unpack three big themes:

1. Why young people increasingly believe words are “violence,” and what that says about free speech and campus culture.
2. The ever-evolving conversation around body image, sex positivity, and the contradictions of pop stardom.
3. How the Internet and algorithms fuel outrage, performativity, and misinformation—plus the challenges of spotting what’s real or bot-made.

The episode blends timely polling, news analysis, and raucous pop culture breakdowns with biting humor, skepticism, and a dash of generational exasperation.

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1. Bridget Phetasy’s Media Origin Story

Timestamp: 06:08–11:03

• Bridget’s media journey: From aspiring writer, to Playboy columnist, to Federalist contributor, podcast host (Dumpster Fire, Walk-Ins Welcome), and commentator.
  • “In 2013, I quit drinking and smoking weed and pretty much all the great drugs. And then I got addicted to the best drug, which is Twitter... I found my way to editors.” (Bridget, 07:47)
• She discusses backlash early on, especially after crossing partisan lines with her writing. Sharing work for The Federalist soured her Playboy gig and clarified how intensely media tribes react to “wrong” outlets.
  • “I was just excited to get... paid for more writing... I posted it very excitedly in my Facebook and online. And people were like, I'm done with you. You wrote for the Federalist.” (Bridget, 08:42)
• She emphasizes the winding, independent, and financially unpredictable road of new media careers.

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2. The Double-Edged Sword of Online Culture

Timestamp: 11:03–19:20

The Ben Shapiro "Touch Grass" Clip on X/Twitter

12:58–13:25

• Shapiro argues: “The more online we are, the more polarized we are... the more time you're spending on X or TikTok, maybe the less informed you are and also the more polarized.”

• Emily and Bridget reflect on social media’s addictive qualities and the paradox of being “informed” via platforms trafficked by foreign bots, rage-baiters, and reward-driven creators.

• Bridget: Twitter “is influential, not necessarily representative... it behaves like a giant think tank,” but warns that everyone from “12-year-olds or like a Pakistani” can be shaping American discourse, often invisibly. (15:33)

• Bridget supports the “touch grass” refrain but is conflicted: “All my opportunities... Twitter gave me wings, truly... It is my favorite of all the social medias... but now you can’t know if someone is who they say they are and that’s a big problem... If it is going to be the kind of global town square you, you kind of knew people who you could somewhat trust that they were who they said they were.” (17:28)

• On TikTok, Bridget jokes that she “went on for 7 seconds… this will melt your brain.”

The “Dead Internet” and AI Takeover

23:49 — 26:14

• Bridget describes her essay on the “dead internet theory”: we’re approaching a tipping point where “there will be more bots and AI talking to one another than actual humans who are online.”
• Warns: Media literacy is crucial—otherwise, scammers and machine content will exploit everyone, especially older generations: “They're going to take all $84 trillion from the boomers.” (25:00)
• “We need to be teaching media literacy... Even someone like you and I should do some kind of fun show just as a public service...” (24:36)

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3. Generational Drift: “Words as Violence” and Campus Sensitivities

Timestamp: 41:41–55:03

FIRE Polling and the Violence of Speech

42:16–46:07

• Emily: The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression found nearly half of college students believe the phrase “words can be violence” describes their thinking.
• Bridget: “That’s crazy to me... I learned pretty young what violence was. I just don’t know if these, do these kids actually know what violence is?” (42:55)
• Discusses possible causes:
  • Kids spent more childhood socializing online than IRL, making digital slights feel more “real.”
  • They may have experienced online pile-ons and bullying—or they’re mimicking academic language divorced from working-class realities.
• “My bad faith interpretation is that they’re all pussies, and somebody needs to just punch them in the face, and then they’ll learn the difference between violence and speech.” (46:07, Bridget—tongue-in-cheek)

Atlantic Story: Disability Accommodations at Elite Schools

47:51–54:56

• Atlantic reports that at elite universities like Harvard and Brown, 20% of undergrads are now registered as disabled, mostly for “invisible” conditions like anxiety/ADHD—far higher than the actual prevalence.
• Bridget: “Elite children have learned how to work the system. News at 11... If you were going to allow cry closets and safe spaces... obviously kids are going to start going, ‘Well, I have test anxiety…’” (49:41)
• Both note that some students probably sincerely believe they have disabilities, not realizing how much their environment and coddling have shaped these perceptions.
• Emily: “I think a lot of them actually see themselves as disabled... because they have an anxiety disorder and therefore they should register at the school as disabled. They should be treated the same as kids in wheelchairs.” (51:49)

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4. Outrage Clickbait & Performativity: Recent Media Drama

Timestamp: 30:10–40:51

Olivia Nuzzi, Ryan Lizza, and “Revenge Porn” Journalism

• Olivia Nuzzi’s book about her time covering (and dating) power players has drawn condemnation—her ex, Ryan Lizza, has written about their breakup, which she calls “fan fiction and revenge porn.”
  • “He has presented his harassment of me… as some sort of crusade that’s in the public interest… some combination of like fan fiction and revenge porn.” (Nuzzi, 31:15)
• Bridget, exasperated with the whole media incest drama:
  • “I hate all these people, they all deserve each other... I find it rich that she’s talking about journalistic integrity in this clip. None of you have journalistic integrity.” (32:41)
• Emily: The wildness of the whole saga underlines the attention economy’s rewards for drama, not substance.
• Bridget: “If everyone in our media and journalists and all of our politicians are on drugs, all of America right now makes sense to me.” (33:13)

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5. The Feminine Body Image and Sexuality Whiplash

Timestamp: 60:20–71:03

Pop Stars, Sex Positivity, and the Body Image Contradictions

• Sabrina Carpenter, former child star, faces criticism for “unabashedly horny” lyrics and open sexuality. “But I also can’t really help that. It’s not my fault that I got a job when I was 12 and you won’t let me evolve now.” (Carpenter, quoting Variety)

• Bridget: “I was listening to Like a Prayer when I was 11 years old. Like, get, who cares?... Who’s getting mad at her, exactly? Her fans?” (61:34)

• Emily and Bridget discuss Gen Z’s confusion on sex and body norms. Billie Eilish goes modest; Sabrina and Sydney Sweeney lean sexual. Emily: “I think Gen Z is incredibly confused.”

• Body image whiplash: “We overcorrected completely to body positivity… Now, what’s interesting is you have somebody like Ariana Grande… weaponizing that (eating disorder history) and saying, you guys can’t body shame me. Which is, I mean, truly manipulative and also kind of brilliant…” (67:21)

• Bridget notes the proliferation of pro-anorexia subcultures online in the 2010s and how new trends like Ozempic undermine old “body positivity” rhetoric: “The whole time. It was cope. And it was understandable. Cope…” (70:13)

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6. Foreign Interference in US Media: Federalist Suppression Story

Timestamp: 74:54–80:34

• Emily breaks down a bombshell exposé revealing the UK Labour Party (via “Labour Together”) funded and directed efforts to demonetize/constrain US outlets like Breitbart and The Federalist by laundering “misinformation” allegations through the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
• NBC’s Ben Collins “uncritically laundered” a foreign political op’s report to Google, which almost got The Federalist deplatformed during a crucial coverage period (COVID, civil unrest, 2020 election).
• “A journalist was uncritically laundering a BS NGO’s report about other journalists to a big tech company to suppress those journalists.” (79:19)
• Emily: “The idea of journalists cheerleading corporations to punish other journalists is just so ridiculous. And I feel like we could snap back into it at any time.” (80:34)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “You can be a grumpy piece of shit on Twitter and People will be like cool, we get it. You can be depressed, you can be whatever.” (Bridget, 17:28)
• “You’re probably fighting with a 12 year old or like a Pakistani on Twitter. Don’t waste your time doing that.” (Bridget, 16:37)
• “If I had only been bullied online and had kids or friends who had wanted to take their life or maybe did... I’m trying to be, I’m trying to come up with, like, my best faith interpretation...” (Bridget, 45:09)
• “It comes very naturally to me... but now you can’t know if someone is who they say they are and that’s a big problem...” (Bridget, 17:28)
• “Elite children have learned how to work the system. News at 11… ‘I have test anxiety’… obviously kids are going to work the system.” (Bridget, 49:41)
• “Hyper-novelty” is how Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein describe humanity’s frantic struggle to adapt to the pace of technological change. (Referenced by Emily, 57:16)

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Segment Timestamps

• Bridget's Story & Media Career: 06:08–11:03
• On Social Media, Bots, and Algorithms: 11:03–19:20; 23:46–26:14
• Generational Drift, Free Speech & Youth: 41:41–55:03
• Olivia Nuzzi/Ryan Lizza/Lamenting Modern Journalism: 30:10–40:51
• Body Image, Pop Sexuality & Influence: 60:20–71:03
• Federalist Suppression by Foreign Op: 74:54–80:34

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Tone and Style

Emily and Bridget keep the conversation irreverent, highly skeptical of media dogma, and willing to call out performativity and hypocrisy on all sides. The dialogue is fast-paced, snarky, and deeply plugged into the media/information ecosystem—always returning to the question: How much of what we believe (about ourselves, our health, our politics) is shaped by attention-driven algorithms, online culture, and elite grift?

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If you're seeking a fun, wide-ranging, and critical listen about why “free speech” feels more fraught, what’s breaking young people’s brains, and why almost nothing in pop culture is as organic as it appears—this episode delivers.

Transcript

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[Ryan Reynolds]

Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to.

[Bridget Fedisy]

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Welcome to another edition of Afterparty. We're live here on the East coast because it's 10pm on Wednesday. Where else will would we be? And where else will we be of course, indefinitely? That is the question. Now Bridget Fedisy is our guest today. I'll bring her in in just one moment. I'm so excited to have Bridget here because I follow her work really closely and she has some of the most interesting perspectives on current events. So really excited to get to Bridget and we have a lot to talk about. New polling from the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression coming after the brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk still finds really unacceptable levels of college students who say that words can be violence and it's a this these numbers are well worth breaking, especially in light of an Atlantic article that came out about the this article has been buzzing all over the Internet. We're going to break it down, but it shows how elite schools, so Ivy League schools in particular, are being overwhelmed by students who are asking for disability accommodations to the point where the rooms with the disability accommodations are so full they're even more distracting than the normal classrooms that aren't, you know, just for people who are needing extra time on tests or areas where they can focus better. So there's so much to get to. There's more. Olivia Nuzzy we might as well just rename the show to the Tim Miller Clip show because we have more Tim Miller clips coming at everyone. Obviously. A little bit of Sabrina Carpenter, a little bit of Ellen. And I'm going to talk about a new report actually in drop site from my friend Ryan Grimm his website, a new report over there showing Sir Keir Starmer's government, well I shouldn't say his government, his political apparatus was actually behind a at the time it was a very high profile effort to suppress the Federalist where I worked then, but also places like Breitbart, new revelations. We're going to go through all of it before we get to Bridget. A Fresh Start is Possible Debt can feel like it's getting worse every month, but that only continues if nothing changes. PDS Debt has already helped hundreds of thousands of people rewrite their financial story and take back control in. Your turn can start right now if you're struggling with credit cards, personal loans or medical bills. PDS debt creates personalized options to help you get out of debt. They look beyond the numbers to understand your situation and build a plan that's designed specifically for you. There's no minimum credit score and their entire mission is to help you save more, pay off debt faster and finally put money back where it belongs in your pocket. They're a rated by the Better Business Bureau, have thousands of five star Google reviews and hold a five star rating on Trust Pilot because their approach works and the longer you wait the the more interest and fees pile up. The best time to start was yesterday so the next best time is right now. So if if I needed a product like this one, it is what I would use. Do not wait another month. Change your story in 30 seconds. Get your free personalized assessment and the best option for you@pds debt.com Emily that's pds.com Emily pds.com Emily hey, Ryan Reynolds.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Emily]

Taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com all right, as a reminder, everyone, make sure to subscribe. I'm so bad at plugging the subscribe option, but subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. It helps us so much. Can always send an email to me. Literally to [e-mail] because on Thursdays, I tape our Friday happy hour episodes, which hit the feed right around happy hour time on Friday when you should be socializing and not listening to podcasts. But best case scenario, you're listening to it on your commute. That's. That's what I'll tell myself. Or while you're cleaning the house or hanging out on Saturdays and Sundays. So make sure emily.com or send a message to at afterparty Emily on Instagram with. Without further ado, though, let's bring in Bridget Fetishy, who is host of Dumpster Fire. Her substack is beyond parody with Bridget Fedisy. Bridget, I'm so happy to have you. Thank you for being here.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Thank you for having me. I. I brought shades and my fume just in case I needed to match your vibe.

[Emily]

I still have it over here because I just.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I even brought, like, I can go.

[Emily]

I don't have my glasses.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Come on. I thought we were.

[Emily]

See, but we are because you have the glasses and I have the vape. So what we're really doing is.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I've got fum, too.

[Emily]

Oh, damn.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I don't smoke, but I was like, I'm going. I'm. I'm rocking with her tonight.

[Emily]

Damn, those glasses are way cooler. I wish I had used those. Those are like. Those are better.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I feel like it kind of has an Olivia Nuzzy vibe, actually, to these glasses.

[Emily]

That's what I was just gonna say. That's. You're.

[Bridget Fedisy]

You're nailing it before Vanity Fair profile.

[Emily]

I. I'm so excited to talk about Nazi with you because I've been trying to stop talking about the story because it literally does not have anything anybody's life other than Olivia Nuzzy's. Like it affects nobody. It is such an inside baseball media story. But. But it keeps on metastasizing and becoming even more and more interesting by the day, despite being less and less useful by the day. So, anyway, we're gonna get to that in a second, but one thing I wanted to start with, Bridget, is if you could talk a little bit about your own kind of personal story. I don't usually do this, but you have such, like, you're writing for the Spectator.

If you have to, you could easily could have done it the whole show, but you're writing for the Spectator. You have your substack, you're a podcaster. How did you end up in this place in your life? Like, what led you to having this media career?

[Bridget Fedisy]

I mean, I could take this whole entire hour to tell that story. I really should. It should be a book. I always wanted to be a writer. We'll start there. And then in 2013, I quit drinking and smoking weed and pretty much all the great drugs. And then I got addicted to the best drug, which is Twitter, slash X. And in that process, I found my way to editors. And then I was able to get my first freelance writing gig at Playboy. And that led to a weekly column there. And then I started pushing back against some of the craziness I was seeing on the left. And nobody, I was joking that I would write about the hypocrisy of left wing females, but nobody would publish it. And then Ben Dominance actually was like, oh, I would. For the Federalists. And then I wrote something for the Federalists. And I didn't mind you, Emily. I knew nothing about conservative media. I knew nothing about anything. I did not know anything about the Federalists. And so I was just excited to get. I was freelance, so I was excited to get paid for more writing. I was, you know, living very much paycheck to paycheck and posted it very excitedly in my Facebook and online. And people were like, I'm done with you. You wrote for the Federalist. And I had no idea. And that was kind of the beginning of the end at Playboy. And.

[Emily]

The idea of a Federalist column killing your Playboy career is so poetic, I can't even begin.

[Bridget Fedisy]

And then I started. Then I started doing. I started my podcast in 2018. Watkins, welcome. And this is an interview show, which I would love to have you on, actually. And then you're a very requested guest. And then I. I love that show. And then I started writing at.

Spectator, actually seven years ago.

And around the same time. And then in 2019. I started dumpster fire from my garage because I felt like people just to make fun of the dumpster fire news cycle that we were all living through. And one thing led to another. And then I continued doing standup comedy. I got married, I had a child. I moved to Austin and now I have, I guess, three or four shows and a column and I still do stand up comedy and a toddler. And it's. It's awesome. Like, I, it's, it's in the. My substack where I write. It's, it's. I. It's all kind of beyond my wildest dreams, to be honest. But it's been a long, winding, you know, a little bit financially insecure road because we are still completely independent. I don't have like.

You know, foreign money or in or investment money.

[Emily]

Right, right. I'm amazed how you compressed all of that because I think it gives people a flavor of why your commentary comes from such a different place. And actually, I wasn't planning on talking about this because, but because you mentioned getting addicted to Twitter. I wanted to play this clip that's just starting to go viral right now as we sit down of Ben Shapiro talking about how the Algorith on X are destroying America. And Bridget, I don't mean to set you up to explain why your addiction with X is destroying America, because I share your addiction. So let's take a listen here and I'll get your reaction.

[Ryan Reynolds]

This is my, this is my informed view.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Sounds like it should go ahead.

[Ryan Reynolds]

I mean, there we go. Don, look at us come down.

[Emily]

He's sitting next to Don Lev.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Why not? So the reason I say this is because the TikTok and X algorithms in particular program for virality. Yes. And so they are programming for what is the strongest response and the strongest way. Absolutely. Can be manipulated by outside actors. You've actually seen quite a bit of this on both TikTok as well as X. But people who are then in the real world use that as a substitute for polling, for example, to see politicians. And if they get a lot of retweets, they think what they're saying is popular and then they do more of it. And so you'll see it bleed over into the real world trends that you would never get if you just walked around and talked to normal humans suddenly start popping up when you talk around with normal humans, because they've been watching it online and it's been really, really pushed. And so, you know, when people say, how do we get back to normal? My first recommendation is to do something that actually is the opposite of what our industry should be saying, which is get offline, like actually turn off your phone and go to a place with actual human beings and have conversations with those people. And you know, for this is where I make my non religious religious pitch. Everybody needs a form of Sabbath. You should get off your phone on Friday night, you should get back on your phone on Saturday night and you just be completely disconnected from everything that's going on. And be in a place where everybody who, you know is, you know.

Bonding over values and over, over shared things that the more online we are, the more polarized we are. And I think that's been the opposite of the way that we've viewed politics for for decades in the country. The more informed you are, the better the, the electorate's going to be. And it turns out that because our informational ecosystem is so polluted and because it is actually programming to the ID inside all of us, what that means is that probably the more time you're spending on X or the more time you're spending on TikTok, maybe the less informed you are and also the more polarized.

[Emily]

All right, so I'll stop it there because it goes on and he makes a lot of the same points. And then Don Lemon, who I inadvertently refer to as Dan Lemon for some unknown reason.

Dan Lemon jumps in to talk about how wise he is and how much his fans love him. But I want to just pick up on that last point, Bridget, where Ben says this is programmed to our ids. It's kind of like the touch grass thing is kind of a cliche. Is that right or wrong? What is this getting right? What is this getting wrong from your perspective as somebody who's kind of gateway drug, was actually X?

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah. I have so many mixed feelings about this because I think that it is, I always say this about X. It is, it is influential. It's not necessarily representative. So it does behave like a giant think tank where we all in media and in and Hollywood, all these different fields get to battle it out in the Thunderdome. And it used to be a little bit better, I think, than it is now. I don't think that just allowing anybody to monetize was great for X because now you can easily get these foreign influences that are just rage baiting Americans. You know, we just set a dumpster fire on this, how fake Americans are destroying America. And there's just a lot of that going on. And if, and I said if you're just a, if you're somebody like you or me, who is observing the. The thing I love about X is you can observe the discourse from 30,000ft and see very quickly, like, all right, here's what the libertarians are saying on the right and the left somewhat. Here's what the far left is saying, here's what the far right saying. Here's what the centrists or the classical liberals like, all very quickly in one. If you have a good list or a couple of lists, you can get a pretty quick overview of where everybody's sitting on one topic or all topics. If you're not viewing it that way and you're just partaking in it as somebody who's using X, or maybe you just are new to it.

You can't notice necessarily, like a foreign body that's starting to influence the discourse. I think people, people who view it regularly are pretty attuned to like, oh, here's this mantra that we're suddenly hearing everywhere. Something we can kind of wreck. At least I like to think that a lot of the time people in media can recognize astroturfing as it's happening. We see it in mainstream media too. When you start seeing politicians and CNN talking heads and everybody has that like same weird buzz phrase that suddenly everyone's using that disinformation no one's ever heard before. Yeah, exactly. And then you see it too from like these foreign influences. Or you'll see the same version of like a tweet or a, or a comment everywhere. But I don't know that the average person is going to be able to recognize that. And I always try and tell people, I'm like, you're probably fighting with a 12 year old or like a Pakistani on Twitter. Don't waste your time doing that.

[Emily]

Why not?

[Bridget Fedisy]

Both or both. A 12 year old Pakistani probably more often than not. And I do think it is.

I hate the like pearl clutching about it though too, because I've, as I mentioned, all of my opportunities. I wouldn't be here without axed. Twitter gave me wings, truly. It led me to every single editor that I've had. It's given me more opportunities than I can count. It is my favorite of all the social medias. It comes very naturally to me. I like that you can be more of a writer on there than you know. Instagram is very visual and it feels very fake to me. And Twitter, you can just be a kind of grumpy piece of. Can you swear on here?

[Emily]

Yeah, of course.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Okay. You can be a grumpy piece of shit on Twitter and People will be like cool, we get it. You can be depressed, you can be whatever. And I do think that Elon again double edged sword Elon buying it. Great for free speech. Absolutely. People were getting shadow banned and there were things that were happening and now with monetizing I don't know that that's tip the scale into a place where it's like okay, well now we've got all these. I used to be able to also know if somebody was who they said they were and now I don't know that. And I feel like that is a big problem on a platform like X. If it is going to be the kind of global town square you, you kind of knew people who you could somewhat trust that they were who they said they were. And now you can just be anonymous and have a blue check and be like I'm America first and you're not at all from America. You might love America and be America first, but you are not. And that kind of stuff is dividing people. I have no expertise or interest in TikTok at all. I went on for 7 seconds just to see what it was like and I was like this will melt your brain. And I just never went on it again. I just don't. I know that it people but people will say the same thing. It's really like been great for them and that they've made communities and they learn a lot. But I also will say that that short form content is making normies and people who don't really read feel like they do know things because they saw you know.

Somebody do a five, a very, a five minute video about it. Not even five minutes, like a 50 second video about it. And I get a lot. I was joking about this especially around like when everyone was kind of losing their minds around like the Israel Palestine stuff and, and people would come to me and they'd be like Bridget, I hope you're on the right side of this. You know, Candace Owens said and like they, it's like the minute they open their mouth and say that I feel like I'm in a zombie apocalypse and someone's like pulling up their sleeve in my party and I'm like, oh no.

[Emily]

You got bit too.

[Bridget Fedisy]

We're gonna have to put you in a cage in the other room.

[Emily]

Well yeah, I was actually thinking about that recently in the context of why there's so many like constantly we're playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon from Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes with everyone. But it's not just anti right. Like that goes in the Other direction, too, where people on the left are being like, they're. They're getting demands to renounce their association with this person and this person. And honestly, it kind of makes me think that the algorithmic programming has. Has trained us to recognize that's a potent partisan attack. And so then it just became part of the normal discourse, which was, oh, this person is friends with somebody who's really close to this person. We have to constantly hound them about what that other person is saying. And it's weird because it's a super emotive thing that gets clicks, like, generates a lot of outrage and conversation. But is it natural? I mean, is that what we would naturally be talking about without the algorithm? I don't ever.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I. This is a weird thing, too, because I see this happening on the right where, look, I don't think anyone is owed a platform. Like, I just don't feel like you need that. Does that mean you don't platform somebody? I think it's, like, up to your discretion and talk to whoever you want. And it's weird to see the right kind of tone policing people on the right, because that clearly didn't work for the left.

[Emily]

Right.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Like, we just came out of 10 years of the left being like, you can't talk to that guy, and you can't talk to that guy. And it's like, okay, talk to them. But also, don't expect me to make. Not make judgments about your. I can now dis. In the same way that when someone was like, yeah, men can compete in women's sports. Okay, I would be like, all right, I can kind of dismiss most of what you have to say about everything. And I can make those same judgments about people on the right who decide to have conversations with people that are insane and ridiculous. So you also have to. You also, sorry, you're gonna suffer consequences for that stuff. I get to make my decision. You can talk to whoever you want. And I get to decide, you are an idiot. Like, this is how this works. This. I maintain the exact same position I maintained through all of the last decade, which is, sure, talk to whoever you want. Say whatever you want. And I get to say, you're an idiot, and I don't want to listen to you anymore. That's just how this works. But it is weird, too, to see the right kind of falling into the same identity, victimhood stuff that they've been, like, yelling about. They're like, oh, everyone's being mean to me. I'm being canceled. I'm like, you're not being canceled. People are just calling you out for people that you're talking to because, like, they don't. Like, they don't like them. It's not like they're. They're. They're saying, I'm not gonna listen to you anymore. They have that. That's their prerogative. Like, I don't think they're saying that you should be de. Platformed and you should be silenced and you should be canceled.

[Emily]

That.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I think there, there's a lot of people who try to, like, split that hair where they're saying, oh, they're saying that they don't like who I'm talking to. And so now I'm being silent. No, you're not. They're just criticizing you.

[Emily]

I just feel like the algorithms train a performativity into us.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Of course.

[Emily]

Almost. Yeah. It's unnatural. Actually, the. Your point about bots made me want to share this essay you wrote for the Spectator recently. This is on dead Internet, basically, but your headline is the Internet is dying, and so are we. This was from July, but you shared it again just in the last couple of days. And it's, I mean, always fresh and worth revisiting. But it gets to the point that you were just making about the bots, that some of this stuff is, like, undetectable, but in a weird way, you can sense it.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah.

[Emily]

Talk to us a little bit about what you wrote here.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah, that piece was basically about how they're finding that. I mean, it's, It's. Pretty soon it's just going to be bots talking to bots commenting on AI. Like, there's this theory that the. The Internet is going to be dead, meaning that there will be more bots and AI talking to one another than actual humans who are online. And now with AI, I think it's even harder because you. I mean, this. The, like the images that people can create and become.

A completely different person, or they can generate a whole AI chatbot that isn't even real, that's working full time for them at only fans, you. You're. You won't even know if somebody's a human or not. And that is kind of the idea behind the Dead Internet theory is that once it's the. And I think we're kind of already approaching this, where I saw some statistic the other day where it just keeps going up where it's like 60% of the content is AI generated and 40% is just human, and they're just scraping everything and making more content. That's AI generated and bot generated. And it's not. It is it. It is gonna. And it's unfortunate that there is not enough media literacy for people to be able to recognize this. And I think one of the biggest problems we have in America in general right now is that we need to be teaching media literacy. Even someone like you and I should do some kind of fun show just as a public service that teaches media literacy and how to recognize these things so that normies, and not to mention just normies, we had to call all of our boomer relatives and explain to them like they automatically cannot trust anything. If someone calls them and says it's us, that we're in distress. They can't trust any email. We have had to sit all of them down and say, automatically assume anything you hear is fake and call us directly and confirm because they don't know they're going to. They're going to take all 84.8.4 trillion. What is it? What are the boomers have. It was like $84 trillion worth of asset. They're going to. They're going to take all of it from the boomers. All these scam artists and bots.

[Emily]

This is the wealth redistribution.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Oh yeah, it's going to go back to Pakistan.

[Emily]

Well, okay. So there's a lot more to talk about. And on that point, I mean, the rate of change is just so rapid now that we are becoming the boomers. Like by next year, you 100 boomers, right? Like in terms of understanding what's AI, what's not, and people will natively be speaking this language of AI and all of that. That's, you know, unless we work really hard, going to be foreign.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I'm. I'm Gen X and they're already calling me a boomer. I'm already a boomer and I've just accepted it. I actually don't care. Here's the thing about. I don't want the younger audience guys. I don't care about you. I truly don't. Good luck to you. I hope you enjoy your lobotomy from AI. I will be over here with my garden. I'm not like chasing. I don't need so much of media now is sad older people trying to sound based for young people. And I'm sorry, but that is embarrassing. You are in your 60s trying to be cool. Calm down. You're trying to be like, oh, look at me. These like based young kids like me. I'm like, you guys. These young base kids. They're going to be boomers soon too.

[Emily]

And we don't know how much they actually really like you. Okay, lots more to get to. Olivia Nezzi is going to come up right after this break, I promise. So stick around. But first, over the years, I've been clear about this. I'm not just pro birth. I am pro life. And being pro life means standing with mothers not only before their baby is born, but long after. And that is exactly why I partner very proudly with preborn. Preborn doesn't just save babies, they make motherhood abundantly possible. They free ultrasounds and share the truth of the gospel with women in crisis. And then they stay with real practical help, including financial support for up to two years after the baby is born. This is what true Christ centered compassion looks like. Not just for the baby, but for the mother too. And here's where you can make a difference. Just $28 just $28 provides a free life saving ultrasound. One chance for a mother to see her baby. And when she does, she's twice as likely to choose Life Life Preborn is trying to save. Get this, 70,000 babies this year. So don't just say you're pro life. Live it. Help save babies and support mothers today. Go to preborn.com emily or call 855-601-2229. That's preborn.com emily did you know?

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[Emily]

We're back with Bridget Fedisy, host of Dumpster Fire and author of the substack Beyond Parody. With Bridget Bridget, we teased an Olivia Nezzi block and at this point we have to deliver on the Olivia Nuzzi block. So Olivia Nazi is getting panned. All of the like quote, mainstream publications are trashing her book, which of course makes me kind of curious if I might like it as much as load as I have to consider that possibility. But she went on with Tim Miller of the Bulwark and talked a little bit about her ex fiance, Ryan Lizza, who writing I think, you know what is the least masculine act of journalism I've seen ever the series dishing on their relationship in ways that are borderline pornographic, emotionally pornographic, and he thinks newsworthy. But it's also so hard to verify because he's so close to the story and who knows who's editing and fact checking, whatever. So let's go ahead and roll this. This clip of Olivia Nezzi talking about Ryan Lizza to Tim Miller of the Bull.

[Bridget Fedisy]

He has presented his harassment of me, right, in this humiliation campaign as some sort of crusade that's in the public interest.

[Ad Read Announcer]

Right.

[Bridget Fedisy]

That somehow the country will be saved by him writing some combination of like.

[Emily]

Fan fiction and revenge porn. Right.

[Bridget Fedisy]

And he alluded to or claimed that he was in possession of some explosive information somehow from me, unclear, that related to, to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump and. Right. And I was just thinking, let's say if that were true. It's not true, by the way.

[Emily]

But if that were true, the only.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Responsible way for him to handle that information as a journalist, he would know this would be to quietly pass it off to an organization that does not have his conflict.

[Emily]

Now also in the interview, Tim is pushing Nazi to explain why if before the election she had knowledge of RFK Jr. For example, not being sober, doing ketamine, possibly other drugs. Why did she not go public with it as a journalist? Why did she stay quiet? She breaks into tears and asks to stop the interview at that point. But Bridget, let's first pause on that allegation of fan fiction slash revenge porn. Do you think Lizza is veering into revenge porn territory? Is that code?

[Bridget Fedisy]

I haven't talked about any of these people. I hate all these people, they all deserve each other. I've, I've managed to abstain from talking about it because the more I learn, the more I realize I don't have what it takes to make it in this industry. I find it rich that she's talking about journalistic integrity in this clip. Like, what? I, I'm sorry, none of you have journalistic integrity. None of you should ever work again. There are good people who are out there chasing down stories, getting pennies in local news and trying to be good journalists with ethics. And they will never have a fraction of the attention actually chasing down stories where there's, you know, trying to like, speak truth to power. And these people are the ones that rise to the top. And this is where I'm like, like Ben's probably right because it's an, it's truly just an attention economy now. It doesn't matter. You can just like sound like you're on six different drugs and be like, actually, it all makes a lot of sense too. If everyone in our media and journalists and all of our politicians are on drugs, this actually, all of America right now makes sense to me when I consider that everyone's just on drugs.

[Emily]

It's the drugs. It's the drugs.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Everyone's on ketamine that's the problem.

[Emily]

Do you, do you think Bobby Kennedy's on ketamine? Is that like, to me, that actually doesn't seem, I don't know, it doesn't seem totally far fetched, but it's a serious allegation about the sitting Health and Human Services secretary. But he also has a hugely demanding job in front of him.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Dude. But that's the thing too, that everybody is, they're like you said, kind of, oh, this is like inside baseball. And it doesn't really have that much bearing on anything. But yes and no, she did do. She is supposed to be running profiles for some of the most literally powerful policy informing people in our government. So the way that these things are presented to, you know, normal people matters in things like elections. It matters to the policies that are getting made right now.

It does matter. I mean, I would like to think that it matters. Otherwise, journalism is dead, which I think it actually is. And we can all just, you know, wrap it up and become like, I guess I need to, like, send some pictures of my butthole to somebody. And hopefully.

[Emily]

I just don't know if that was real. I don't know if that was real. This is.

[Bridget Fedisy]

She has the confidence of someone who would send a picture of rebuttal to somebody, I need just a fraction of her kind of confidence. I will say that that should actually.

[Emily]

Be the measure that confidence is rated on. Like, on a scale of how confident are you in a scale of zero to butthole self.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Sending a butthole selfie to someone.

[Emily]

Yeah, that's the new. That's the new scale. No, you're right. I mean, I think that's. It's helpful because on the one hand, it is all so trivial and silly and people are paying too much attention to it. But on the other hand, the fundamental question here is a really important one, which is, is why was all of this happening? Why was. You know what, why now is Ryan Lizza doing this? Why is Olivia Nuzzy doing this? What does it tell us about the man who is like, actually leading a. As he would probably describe it, revolution of American health is an enormous job with enormous structural disruptions happening at this moment. I don't think the character questions like the. He's a Kennedy. I think everybody probably assumes, based on his history and his family's history that, you know, he was getting a little, maybe side action in all likelihood. But other than that, I mean, is there something more, I mean, to your point, is there something that we should be. Should reporters be asking Bobby Kennedy questions about what's. What's raised by Olivia Nuzzy?

[Bridget Fedisy]

I mean, they should probably be asking him if he's on ketamine. Seems, seems like a good question and mushrooms or whatever. I mean, the, the Ryan stuff too, is bothersome because once again, and I've seen this so much with journalists in the past five years or so, where they'll come out with a tell all book about stuff that people were saying, normies often were saying and then gaslit into believing wasn't true. And then they'll come out with a book and they'll be like, what? What we knew about Biden.

[Emily]

Yes.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Well, shouldn't you have reported on this stuff when you knew it? Isn't that the whole thing about journalism, that you report these things when you learn them, you don't save them for your sub stack you're gonna drop to get back at your. Because the revenge porn thing is weird because she's also writing about this.

[Emily]

Great point. That's a great point.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Like, what are you talking about? You are. You wrote a book about this so he doesn't get to tell his side of the story. By the way, the way that his quotes read clearly, he was recording these conversations.

[Emily]

I mean, Lizza.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah, it sounds like it when you read them. I Mean, as someone who's, like, done reporting it doesn't it read like transcription? Nothing is. No one is that clean at quotes. Unless you're. It has a very, like, transcription cadence to it.

[Emily]

Right. Or he's polishing it afterwards in a way that takes away from what was actually said. But it sounds to me like he's really going off audio recordings. You're right. Yeah.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Which is weird. And she was. I mean, can we talk about how it sounds like what she had this. Was it a makeup artist? Who is the person who is doing the recording at Mar A Lago? Is that even legal? Like, how is this.

[Emily]

I know of the president. That seems illegal, right? Yeah.

[Bridget Fedisy]

So, like, it should be a big deal.

[Emily]

What Bridget is referring to here is an allegation from Lizza that Nezzi's friend was recording Trump and that Trump alluded to something in the Butler story. And neither of them are really saying what it is, but alluding to something in the Butler story being off. And here we just have two narcissists battling it out through. It's like the battle of the pretentious essay going back and forth about what's like in the Vegas terms. Her novel, I don't think even ever names or novel. Her memoir, I don't think ever names Bobby Kennedy. It just refers to him as the politician. And I have to put this up on the screen. Bridget, you're gonna like this one. I saw this. This post on X. Olivia Nezzi is literally why everyone thinks we journalists are failed theater games. So perfect. And then you go down. So some newsletter asked her just about her week. And Nazi sent the the following bullet points. Your agent texts you unprompted and with no elaboration. I love you. Monica Lewinsky reaches out to check on your mental health. Frank Rich encourages you to send your book to Fran Lebowitz because, quote, she is not online.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Is this the list too that also included Mitchell Jackson tells told you to go to rehab?

[Emily]

Oh, my gosh. Was it? Yes. Yeah, I think it was. I think it was.

[Bridget Fedisy]

She should have listened to him.

[Emily]

Should have listened.

[Bridget Fedisy]

She should have listened to him. I'm telling you, a man knows his stuff. That the. The weird thing too is. And this is what also bothers me is that that also the senator, Mark or whatever his name was, who is the other guy? The first one.

[Emily]

Mark Sanford.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Right, Sanford. No one's talking to him.

[Emily]

Yep. Yep.

[Bridget Fedisy]

And also then Ryan Lizza had his. I really hate that I'm talking about this, but clearly I've been following it. He had the. He had the. He was like, oh, that. Redacted and redacted. And I think it was the third. Just say who it is. Don't bring it up if you're not going to say who it is who's.

[Emily]

Allegedly sleeping with Bobby Kennedy. Right? That's what you're referring to. Yeah, right, right. Other mistresses allegedly.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Don't. Why are you even bringing it up if you're gonna redact it? Everything. All of these people deserve each other. I cannot stand any of them. I've been making fun of RFK forever. My audience hates it. They always get mad at me. I've lost followers for it.

That stupid poem that he wrote her was forced upon me.

[Emily]

Allegedly wrote her. But, yeah, it does sound like something he would do.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I mean, to squeeze your cheeks. Divorce. Open your mouth.

[Emily]

And I will not sleep tonight, Bridget. That will be haunting me.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I am a river, you are my canyon.

[Emily]

These are actually the alleged lines in the poem.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I'm sorry for everyone who didn't know about this.

[Emily]

I don't think you are sorry, but I also do. I do think we should leave it there. I feel like we have. We've gone too far. We've crossed the line. On a more serious note, the foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released new poll results today that are not perfect.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Segue guys.

[Emily]

Well, no, it is. It is perfect in the respect that it shows how fried all of our brains are because we're just. I mean, it's hard to say it or it's hard not to say it. We're just cooked, feels like right now. Are we so chat that.

So fire found among students nationwide. Nearly half say that the phrase, quote, words can be violence. Either quote, completely or mostly describes their thoughts. Now, this survey was also really interesting because it looked at results from Utah Valley University, where Charlie Kirk was tragically assassinated in September before and after the event, and found. We can just start putting some of the results up on the screen. Found some really interesting, interesting stuff. But I want to just start on that first bullet point. Bridget. About 48% of students nationwide saying words can be violence is either completely or mostly a description of their own thoughts.

[Bridget Fedisy]

That's crazy to me, right? I have. These are just kids who. I don't know how. I'm. I'm 47 years old now, and I was bullied in real life and pushed around in. And a girl threw me into a locker, and I got slapped in a bathroom. In junior high, I learned pretty young what violence was. I just don't know if these, do these kids actually know what violence is? Did they define what violence is for them? Why do they think words are violence? And especially after there's been so. These kids have been exposed to so much actual violence.

[Emily]

Violence.

[Bridget Fedisy]

It's strange to me, like, I don't, I don't understand how you would, would be able to hold that in your mind and also be the kind of generation of kids that grew up with all the political violence we've seen and school shootings and all the actual literal violence around us and online all, all the time. What's your, what's your theory for why these kids think this? How old are the kids, by the way? They're like college kids.

[Emily]

Yeah. Enrolled.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Are they Gen Z or Gen Alpha?

[Emily]

They should still be Gen Z. Okay. Yeah, I think for now they're still Gen Z, like the youngest cohort of Gen Z. When I think about why now this esoteric concept of speech as violence is getting traction with some 48 of college students. The only thing I can really explain it in my mind is that everything feels, feels so much more abstract and fake. If you're Gen Z and things, things are just less tangible because your social life is on a screen and it's, it's less in person, in the flesh and blood. It's more pictures. So the pictures that you see of your friends more are. You're seeing those more often. You're seeing a FaceTime image more often than you're seeing a face. And it just gets easier to go from point A to point B and to say that words can be real, tangible, kinetic violence when everything is kind of reduced to screens. I don't know. I don't know what you make.

[Bridget Fedisy]

That's interesting that. I mean, a lot of these kids too, I wonder if they've been, you know, bullied, if they've known people who have like taken their own lives because they were bullied online. You know, they've, they've grown up online and they've experienced a lot of real bully. Most of the kids I know went through some period or another where they were bullied online or ganged up online or they had. And I'm sure that, you know, even I don't. I'm sure you've experienced a pile on online and I know I have and it can feel very overwhelming. I wouldn't go so far as to say that it feels violent, but I, I also didn't grow up online and I was bullied in real life. So if I had only been bullied online and Had. Had kids or friends who had wanted to take their life or maybe did. I don't know. I'm trying to. I'm trying to be. I'm trying to.

Come up with, like, my best faith interpretation for. I'm trying to understand, because I don't. I. My bad faith interpretation is that they're all pussies, and somebody needs to just punch them in the face, and then they'll learn the difference between violence and speech. And maybe like that. And also another bad faith is that that erosion of speech and actual violence and the line between them has been intentional, and it's particularly been intentional in academia because I don't even know where all this, like, lame rhetoric came from. Like, where did all. It's all so academic, you know, like, speech is violence. It's. It's not something that comes from, like, your buddy who works on a construction site. This is. This is academic language, right?

[Emily]

Yeah, it's definitely not coming from your buddy on the construction site, that is for sure. And of course, there's a pool of college students, so probably missing a lot of, like, blue collagen. See? But it's still obviously really important. I think maybe both of your explanations are correct, that they're pussies, and they are. They've seen, like, a lot of. Of awful things happen on the Internet, and then they connect speech to violence, maybe partially because of that, but this. Something has to explain the rise. And because, like, this stuff has been going around academia for, you know, the 20th century, these esoteric concepts about words becoming actual violence, not becoming fuel for violence, but violence itself, that's been around in academia. So why is it where it is? Why is it at this high water? Mark and I want to bring in this Atlantic story.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Story.

[Emily]

This Atlantic story.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Because they're all special needs.

[Emily]

It is very vindicating to the Bridget fantasy theory of the case, to say the least. So I'm gonna read from it a little bit here. Accommodations in higher education were supposed to help disabled Americans enjoy the same opportunities as everyone else. No one should be kept from taking a class because they are physically unable to enter the building where it's taught, for example. Over the past decade and a half, however, the share of students at selective universities who qualify for accommodations, often extra time on tests, has grown at a breathtaking pace. So listen to these numbers. At the University of Chicago, the number has more than tripled over the past eight years. At UC Berkeley, it has nearly quintupled over the past 15 years. The increase is driven by more young People getting diagnosed with. With conditions such as adhd, anxiety and depression, and by universities making the process of getting accommodation easier. The change, and this is a very interesting point as well, has occurred disproportionately at the most prestigious and expensive institutions. At Brown and Harvard, more than 20% of undergraduates are registered as disabled. It's hard not to laugh at that because we damn well know that 15% of them are not disabled in the literal sense. They have. Yeah, okay, I'll just keep reading so we get the rest of this here. The most academically successful students, the Atlantic says, also have the largest share of students with a disability that could prevent them from succeeding academically. Make that make sense, Bridget. I mean, Greg Luckianoff and John Height. Jonathan Haidt wrote the Coddling of the American Mind. I think that was 10 years ago. I think that book came out in 2015. Ish and predicted where this was going and that we were seeing so much of this at elite schools. Same things with gender identity. A lot of this was happening at elite schools. I think this is vindicating to your theory of the case.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I also don't think it's that surprising that elite kids have shortcuts and workarounds to getting extra time and getting their way into Harvard or Brown. Oh, my gosh. Elite children have learned how to work the system. News at 11. Like, what? Yeah, they've been doing this forever, and it's not. What's surprising is that it got so bad that they had to write an Atlantic article about it reporting on the numbers. And these. You. This was. This was bound to happen. Because if you were going to allow cry closets and safe spaces in these colleges where you started excusing people from school a decade ago when Trump got elected, because they emotionally couldn't handle it, obviously kids are going to start going. Well, I have test anxiety and I can't. And the pressure makes me nervous. And I am depressed because we live in a Donald Trump administration. And so that distracts me. I need more time on my test. Like, obviously, kids are going to work the system.

This is also just what, like, teenagers and kids.

[Emily]

Kids do.

And this is where, again, I'm torn. Look, because I think a lot of them actually see themselves as disabled. And they don't see, like, they're not in on the joke. Like, they're not in on the grift. The Operation Varsity Blues stuff obviously had some of this in it. And there were like, efforts to just, like, buy these kinds of privileges. But I actually also, I don't know, am I wrong? I genuinely think some of them really see themselves as disabled because they have an anxiety disorder and therefore they should register at the school as disable. They should be treated the same as kids in wheelchairs. Just on that point, this is a, A professor talking to the Atlantic who, quote, requested anonymity because he doesn't have tenure, who said, you hear students with disabilities and it's not kids in wheelchairs, it's just not. It's rich kids getting extra time on tests.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Even as you're not disabled, you're retarded.

[Emily]

Are you gonna sell merch that says.

[Bridget Fedisy]

That.

At college campuses?

[Emily]

Send it over to Tim Walls from Donald Trump. Okay. But I think some of them really believe it. I don't think it's just rich kids being like, hey, mom and dad, buy me this fake thing. I think some of them genuinely, I think many of them just actually see themselves as, like, special and disabled.

[Bridget Fedisy]

No, you're right. I, I actually do think that they've been. This, this, this is something actually I've been saying for a long time because I worked with, like, they weren't, they weren't autistic. They were just like. The only way to explain it in LA was I worked with a population of kids that were spoiled and they, and they were like, they were like completely dis. They were, Their parents did them this disservice. They were just so spoiled and coddled and that they were just. They, like, couldn't, they were helpless, basically. They didn't have any problem solving skills. They didn't need executive functioning. And so I do think you're right. And they did identify deeply with their whatever, like, long list of, you know.

Diagnoses that they received from every hot shot. They all, like, they were all in like six or seven different meds. I mean, yeah, I think, think especially this population in particular comes from. They, they probably are like online bragging about how many different disorders they have.

[Emily]

And this where it also gets me because I don't love any. Like, I understand people's skepticism about the panic over big tech and that sort of thing. I do, though, think we are more sedentary. We are like, there are all these big changes to, you know, human life that have happened over the last, you know, 100 years, let alone the last 10 years that are making all of us mentally ill now. Like, so some of these kids, I think are really suffering. It doesn't mean that they're disabled. I do think they're really suffering. So I'm still trying to like split that hair too. Here.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah. And that's where I do try to have, you know, my, my, if I, my good faith interpretation of the U.S. i don't know. It's tough with that, it's tough with that population because you, you had all those scandals, remember, not too long ago, even in California with the, the famous people who are like buying their kids into the elite universities. So the elite will do anything to make sure that their progeny go. If they went to Harvard, they're going to make sure their kid goes to Harvard. Even if I feel like a lot of the time they're in on it together. You know, it seems like a lot of the time they're like, hey, you have adhd, wink, wink. Because I know you're not actually smart enough to get into Harvard, but you are a Harvard kid.

[Emily]

Like, you couldn't Finish Harry Potter 5. We all know this is ADHD. Take the pill, accept your fate.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Take the pill, accept your fate and tell Harvard that so that you can get extra time on your test and get through it or get into it. But I also do think the kids are suffering. Yes. And the adults are suffering too.

Because it is true. Do you know John Popola from dad Saves America?

He had this woman on his most recent episode and she was talking about why our brains are not wired to handle like the modern social media, like, essentially what's going on. And, and I was joking about this recently just because I changed where the silverware drawer in my kitchen is and I had it in one place for two years. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense. It's not, it shouldn't be here. So I switched it. And the number of times that I just automatically went to where the old drawer was, I was like, why do we, we think that we're going to be able to like outsmart millions of years of evolution in like a decade with all this new technology? I just, it's not a good combination. And now you have. And there. And it is actually crazy to me that they just.

[Emily]

Open.

[Bridget Fedisy]

They just launched AI with no guardrail into the whole population. It's crazy to me. Nothing. It's actually crazy. And, and we're all like, well, I guess that's gotta happen now. And it's like people are literally getting psychosis. Everyone I know is having arguments with their chat gbt. They're telling me about this. I'm like, don't tell me about this. I'm. I don't want to know that you do this with your chat GPT.

[Emily]

Yes. And Peter Thiel's like, if you regulate it, you are the Antichrist. Yeah, well, maybe. Question mark. No, I, I think that's all a good point. By the way, though, I think we would both agree on this. Brett Weinstein and Heather Hying have called this hyper novelty. I think that's a good description of what's happening. Life being hard and new and unfair also is not an excuse to be a baby.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah, no, get over it. I mean, this is, this is another thing I constantly say in Dumpster Fire where I, I, I, I have a lot of compassion for the young people. I understand their suffering. When they talk about things like, oh, we can't get a house. I'm also like, yeah, but nobody owes you. Like, I didn't grow up thinking America owed me a house, you know?

[Emily]

Well, that's where you went wrong, Bridget.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Clearly that and not showing a politician a picture of my butthole.

[Emily]

You've made so many mistakes. Speaking of people who have made. Made mistakes. I'm speaking of buttholes. Let's Talk about Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen DeGeneres is moving back to the United States. She is returning triumphantly. Well, actually, not triumphantly. The Daily Mail has the story that Ellen and Portia are putting their UK home up for sale after making a very big deal about leaving the United States. Here's a quote from a source to the Mail Mail about Ellen. She's been telling friends they're coming home soon because they miss them and can't take the winters over there. And Portia wants to act again. They will be here for the holidays and longer, by the sound of it. They lived in frickin Montecito. Why did they ever go to the United Kingdom and think that was permanent?

[Bridget Fedisy]

This is also my favorite thing ever. And that quote, I'm glad you read that quote, because I was like, this is your, your, your values are like, they stop your, oh, fascism. We're leaving because of this fascist dictator. And they're like, we miss our friends and it's cold here. Never mind.

We'll put up with the fascism.

[Emily]

This is Ellen saying, quote, we got here to the UK the day before the election and woke up to lots of texts from our friends with crying emojis. And I was like, he got in. And we're like, we're staying here. No, you're not. No, you're not. You want the beats.

[Bridget Fedisy]

You want that sweet. Have, has anyone been to Montecito? It is paradise there. It is the best I, I could have. I, I actually Am kind of surprised they lasted as long as they did. And I'm sure it's only because they knew they'd get so much crap for going back. No, they're like, it's a fascist word. We can't handle this. This oppressive regime. And then they have one winter in the uk and they're like, but Portia needs. I love the quote, Sue. They sound so insufferable. Portia needs her horses.

[Emily]

It's like Downton Abbey outtakes.

Well, that's the other funny thing. Portia needs to work. So they have to go back to Montecito. Because, Bridget, as we know, nobody ever succeeds at acting in the United Kingdom. You cannot work there. There's. There. There's no jobs.

[Bridget Fedisy]

No, there's no jobs. There's not going to be any jobs for anyone soon. But true. Probably within like two to five years.

[Emily]

I'm going to force you to talk about Sabrina Carpenter because you're such a great writer on the topic of sex. And Sabrina Carpenter has a new interview out with Variety that is getting some attention. Here's the quote that caught my eye from Variety. While much of Carpenter's lyricism is unabashedly horny, it's also clever. And she's far from being the only celebrity making jokes about sex. Yeah, no kidding. So the backlash initially came as a surprise quote. I think it wouldn't matter so much if I wasn't a childhood figure for some people, carpenter says now, a dozen years past her breakout role on Disney Channel's Girl Meets World. But I also can't really help that. It's not my fault that I got a job when I was 12 and you won't let me evolve now. This goes on to say she also knows from her own childhood, which wasn't so long ago, that her young fans have the capacity to glean from her lyrics what makes sense for them and figure out the rest later. She remembers looking up to female artists who happened to sing about sex when she was younger, who happened to sing about sex and doesn't feel that they influenced her to grow up any faster than she should have. I always thought when I grow up, then I'd get to embrace my sexuality more. I don't even know what that means yet. I don't think they do. I wish it had more conversations about all of it while I was younger, but people think. People feel too scared to talk about it. This is a. This is a similar story, Bridget, to what we were just talking about, what we've been talking about all show in that I kind of see what she's saying and then I absolutely don't see what she's saying.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I was listening to like a prayer when I was 11 years old. Like, get. Who cares?

[Emily]

Who.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Why? Where is this backlash coming from? I don't understand. Is it. I don't understand, like, who. Who's getting mad at her? Exactly. Her fans?

[Emily]

Fans.

Presumably? Not her fans. Presumably random people that would be upset with her. Anyway, this is the algorithm. It all comes back to the Ben Shapiro clip we played.

[Bridget Fedisy]

It's not real, but this is like, what did 10 people on Twitter say? Oh, you're. Your lyrics are too horny for a child star. Like, I don't understand what her, her, her. Like, what's the bat? What is this backlash that she's experiencing? Is it even real? And also young. So young people are mad that she's talking about sex. I mean, do you know that stuff that I. The raps that I knew by heart when I was 14, 15 years old, doggy style came out when I was 15 years old and I knew every.

[Emily]

Word on that album that just happened to be about sex. That wasn't intentional. It just. The sexual theme just happened into the. The poetry of the lyrics.

[Bridget Fedisy]

And did it make me a slut? Maybe.

[Emily]

Well, see, this is one of your most viral takes. This is. Is. Should you have connected the dots initially between that song? Yes. If people haven't followed Bridget. That really was one of your all time. That has to be one of your all time most viral pieces.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Oh, which one, though? I regret being a slut.

[Emily]

Yeah, that's gotta be up there.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, Definitely.

[Emily]

No regrets, though.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Scotty P. I mean, maybe it was ODB all along.

[Emily]

No, I mean. But see, what's funny about this, it's not what Sabrina Carpenter is saying. Sabrina Carpenter is like doing this thing, which I find very interesting from like a dark Gen Z pop star. Billie Eilish just talked about dressing kind of androgynously because she grew up with a lot of exposure to porn and like Instagram models. And it made her so self conscious that she went in the opposite direction, covered her body, and tried to make it so that nobody would even think about or talk about how she looked. Then you have Sabrina Carpenter, I guess Sydney Sweeney too, who are like completely opposite and still really popular. So I just don't know. I don't. I think Gen Z is incredibly confused.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Pop star shows off her body for attention. News that a lot. I mean, these are not new things. We grew up with Britney Spears and she turned out great.

[Emily]

Things are going well. Things have, things have never been better. Yeah, this stuff I think maybe does really, this is actually serious. Like now that you said that, I think it actually does get to the ways that the normalization and conditioning can mess people up whether you're famous or not. I remember this buzzfeed article that I think about a lot because it was from, it was a Gen Z girl in like 2019 or 2020. And the Buzzfeed headline was like, gen Z is souring on sex. Sex positivity. And the girl in the story, she was a rape victim and she said HBO did a number on me and she was talking about sex in the city and girls. And so to some extent it's of amusing to hear Sabrina Carpenter act like she's the first female pop star who came out of the Disney World who's ever dealt with this quote unquote controversy about just being too sexual, quote, unabashedly horny, according to Variety. But on the other hand, it's like, well, maybe the reason the, your generation is messed up and confused is actually because you're just continuing what's happened all along.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Well, good thing that person who wrote that article never got to euphoria.

[Emily]

Really messed dropped out.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I, I, it's interesting because another thing that you had kind of on your docket was like the Ariana Grande. And I've been thinking a lot about what I grew up with in terms of the models. And I definitely grew up with like the hair. Well, first the supermodels, which I just felt like they were powerful goddesses who could do anything. And it was actually inspiring to me, me. And then they all turn kind of heroin chic. And that got weird. And there was, there are those clips from like my generation where it's someone who's like size four and, and it's the America's like top model or whatever.

[Emily]

America's Next Top Model. And Tyra.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah, yeah, she's like shaming her for being obese. She's like, what's it like to be morbidly obese? She like a size four. There was. And I remember that you're saying Brittany was very fat. So we grew up with a lot of that. I'm sure I internalized a lot of it. I look at though, even my grandmother, she, she's, she was obsessed with stain. She was like marvelous Mrs. Maisel, you know, taking her measurements and, and I come from a long line of I think pretty healthy fat shaming and, and it's not something that's unique to my generation. It's not something that's unique to even my grandmother's generation. Although I think we made some progress and being able to openly talk about it, address it. We overcorrected completely to body positivity. Being like, oh, now we're being morbidly obese is. That's healthy. That's where we went with that.

[Emily]

Yeah, it's just the picture of health.

[Bridget Fedisy]

And then we went. Now, what's interesting is you have somebody like Ariana Grande who has kind of a history of eating disorders, and she is weaponizing that and saying, you guys can't body shame me. Which is, I mean, truly manipulative and also kind of brilliant, because she's taking this. She knows the language and she knows how to use it to deflect the criticism that she's now wasting away publicly. And we're all just supposed to be like, oh, that's cool. You're just dying in front of us, I guess. All right, Right.

[Emily]

And if we say anything, it's body shaming.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah, we're body shaming. You know, we're. We're. And actually acting like it's the same thing as what people do to people who are obese is not. Is not really fair of her either. Like, she knows there's a difference between what people are saying about her and what people say to people who are overweight online. I would hope she knows the difference. And then if you go down these rabbit holes like I do at 2 o' clock in the morning when I can't sleep, you find out that there's like a whole cohort of women who grew up with Ariana Grande, and they all were on this kind of like, anorexia eating disorder Tumblr phase where all these women were. And they were kind of in very coded language, competing with each other. And so her getting extremely skinny is really triggering a lot of women who developed eating disorders from a lot of these young women back in the day on Tumblrs. Again, we're not making a great case for social media on this podcast.

[Emily]

We are not. We are not. But you know what? As. As evil as. And what. As much of a scourge Tumblr was on the human psyche. I think it might be better than Tick tock.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Although they're also over there kind of worrying about Ariana and her. Yeah, it's weird, like, the whole, like, competitive anorexia relationship thing that you. That when you, like, start researching that stuff and if, you know about it or, you know, it personally, It's. I can see why people are observing this and they're like, hey, this is messed up what's going on here. And I don't want a whole other generation of women to have to, like, see all these Ozemic Ozempic stars who tossed out body positivity in the trash immediately. The minute Ozempic came on the scene. Mean, like, all the ones who were for it, it just. Yeah.

[Emily]

Amy Schumer up on the screen, perfect example. That was a good one. Yep.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah, it was all cope.

[Emily]

It was.

[Bridget Fedisy]

I was just gonna say that.

[Emily]

You took the words right out of my mouth. It was. The whole time. It was cope. And it was understandable. Cope, by the way, because.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Understandable.

[Emily]

Yeah. The same reason that we were talking about social media and Gen Z. I mean, I feel for, like, all of us, we are swimming in, like, a toxic environment, like a toxic nutritional environment. Yeah, we were swimming in a toxic information environment environment. But, yeah, it's. It's. They. Their moral credibility is slightly diminished.

[Bridget Fedisy]

But I don't want the. I don't want the, like, girls to have to feel like they. They need to look like that either. Just look.

[Emily]

It's.

[Bridget Fedisy]

It's.

But, man, that even, like, body dysmorphia, I can't. I still struggle with it. I. It's not.

I luckily somehow escaped eating disorders, and it's probably just because I did a lot of cocaine.

[Emily]

It's the la. Like, the people who don't have eating disorders in LA have cocaine problems, but.

[Bridget Fedisy]

They can't even do that anymore because it's always for the Fentanyl. Now I'm. Now I'm turning on myself. Now I am like, you know what, Gen Z, you do. You do have it worse.

[Emily]

Yes. Maybe it's. Everything is bad. There you go. Just land on that.

[Bridget Fedisy]

But. And yeah, yet. And yet things have never been better because I had to go to a weed dealer who would play his guitar and flirt with me and make me listen to his dumb songs for hours before James Go.

[Emily]

And Pineapple Express. Yeah. They will never know. You couldn't make that movie today because it would be like a Snapchat dealer.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Yeah, exactly. Or just be delivered.

[Emily]

Yeah.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Or you just go to a store.

[Emily]

Right? Yeah. Well, that's another tragedy we'll have to address another time. Bridget Fantasy. This has been so much fun.

[Bridget Fedisy]

We've covered a lot of ground.

[Emily]

Arguably too much ground. Bridget is host of Dumpster Fire. You can find her on subsec at Beyond Parody with Bridget Fetishy and hopefully you'll be able to find her back on the show if we can convince her to spend another hour talking about covering too much coverage ground all of that good stuff.

[Bridget Fedisy]

Emily, it has been an absolute pleasure. I love you. Please come on walk ins welcome and we can laugh and joke again. And thank you and your audience for having me. This has been so much fun.

[Emily]

Of course. Thank you Bridget. I hope to see you back here soon. Appreciate it. Now we do have a little bit of show left, so don't go anywhere. First, I have to talk about my favorite chips. Have you ever taken a look at the nutrition label? We were just talking about this on the show. We're swimming in a toxic nutritional environment and if you look at those labels, you'll find a chemical cocktail, seed oils, msg, artificial dyes, vague natural flavors and ingredients that sound more like a science experiment than a snack. Vandy Crisps are part of the growing movement to bring back real food. Vandy Crisps contain just three ingredients. 100% pestified, pesticide free potatoes, sea salt, and 100% grass fed beef tallow. That's it. And they taste incredible. I love them. My favorite flavor of Vandy is Smokehouse Barbecue. I really love them all, but I especially love Smokehouse barbecue. If you love Vandy, then you'll also love Masa chips. My favorite flavor of Masa. I always am going back and forth on this. I love churro. I love lime. I also love all of them. So if you're ready to give Vandy or Masa a try, use code AFTERPARTY for 25 off your first order at vanitycrisps.com or masachips.com or simply click the link in the video description or scan the QR code code to claim this delicious offer. Don't feel like ordering online? Vandy and Masa are now available nationwide. At your local Sprout supermarket, stop by and pick up a couple of bags before they're gone.

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[Emily]

All right, before we leave tonight, I have to bring you this story from dropsite. This is F20. We can put it up on the screen. This is a new post that reveals more about a story that mattered a lot to me personally back in 2020 because one of the groups implicated in this new drop site report was.

Targeting the Federalist when I worked at the Federalist. And we've, we've come to find out thanks to drop sites reporting. And it's, it's actually an excerpt from a book by author Paul Holden. Paul Holden reports in the Fraud Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy that Starmer's chief of staff, and I'll just read the first, the lead paragraph here, Starmer's chief of staff is named Morgan McSweeney. So keep that in mind. Paul Holden writes, as Keir Starmer rose to power in Britain, the political machine responsible for his rise ran a behind the scenes campaign to demonetize the US news outlet Breitbart. The attacks on Breitbart were part of a targeted campaign against media outlets on both the left and right right considered hostile to the centrist faction of the Labor Party, according to a trove of documents that expose the operation. So where Holden goes with this is basically that McSweeney started a group, it was run, it was resourced by a think tank called Labor Together, so obviously related to the Labor Party. And as Paul writes, quote, under the guise of fighting misinformation and fake news between 2018 and 2020, according to Holden, the anodyne seeming think tank received about 740,000 pounds in donations that it failed to report. That's another fun part of the story to the UK Electoral Commission and then Labor Together was found guilty and fined back in September 2021 for the offense. Morgan McSweeney is now again PM Keir Starmer's chief of staff. Staff very powerful position right now, Managing Director of labor together at that time. And so Paul Holden writes, the prominent UK journalist in 2024 commented that Morgan McSqueeny held the position, quote, of unparalleled power in Labor Party history. So Ryan was telling me about this story. Ryan Graham obviously oversees a lot of drop site and he's telling me about this story and I, I'm like, wait a second.

Are you going to say that this had something to do with the center for Countering Digital Hate? Because as he was describing the reporting. We were about to talk about it on Breaking Points this morning. He was describing the reporting to me and I was like, I stopped him before he said the center for Countering. The center for Countering Digital Hate. He was like, yes, I think that is part of the story. So I'm looking into this and I'm like, the ccdh, funny enough, I'm very familiar with with the ccdh. Take a look at this. This is a report in The Federalist in 2020, a recap of NBC's failed attempt to deplatform the Federalist on Google. If you go through the story, it's, you can find on the Internet, but it will get you up to speed. This is again from 2020, NBC reported. The story says that Google took action based on its work within with the United Kingdom's quote, Center for Canada countering Digital Hate. That alleged Federalist reporting, which exposed Legacy Media's deceptive coverage of recent civil unrest, violated company guidelines. How? Hours after NBC's initial dispatch, however, Google released a statement contradicting NBC's claims and claiming that the tech giant had threatened sanctions on the Federals not for his journalism, but for content in its comment sections, which the website has temporarily disabled but has promised will be back. All right, let's just stop right there. You just heard the craziest, biggest cocktail of things happening. In one story, a journalist was uncritically laundering a BS NGOs report about other journalists to a big tech company to suppress those journalists. So this was Ben Collins who was like the misinformation at NBC News at the time. He, like, is the boyfriend of Kat Abu Gazali and in Chicago, like, throwing herself in front of ICE vehicles in protest. But Ben Collins.

Went and took this report from what we now know was a Keir Starmer labor op, a foreign operation that was trying to change the boundaries of free speech in the United States of America, where we are by no means perfect, but we have a way superior system to what goes on in the United Kingdom. No if, ands or buts about it. They are trying to come in. And Ben Collins, a journalist, a journalist does their work for them so very eagerly, gladly launders their little white paper, takes it to a big tech company again, as a reminder, journalists are supposed to be skeptical, hostile to concentrated power, whether that's our government, a foreign, foreign government, or a big tech company. And here's Ben Collins saying, google.

I have information.

And you must take action. Now, of course, he didn't put it that way, but he knew damn well what he was doing. He was threatening to report that Google was just going to allow the disinformation machine of the Federalists to keep running rampant, just keep spewing disinformation out into the universe.

If it didn't take action. And so he was going to blast them on NBC News. That's exactly what was happening. We all know it. And come to find out, that report Collins uncritically laundered about Google taking action against someone else's comment section, which is hilarious because of the YouTube comment section that Google itself oversees to demonetize the Federalists at the time could have easily put us out of business. Business could have easily wiped out all of the coverage that the Federalists then did when you go back and look at it. And I was an editor there at the time, so I'm intimately familiar with a lot of that reporting on Covid, a lot of that reporting on Biden, a lot of that reporting on many things that we were told nobody could talk about during the pandemic that have since been completely vindicated over and over again. Again, all of that could have gone away if, you know, the. It was like Jim Jordan and some others who rallied and said, google, what are you doing? And it, you know, had a resolution. The Federalist comment section came back and all of that. But this story now shows that basically NBC News was doing the work of a foreign government. And, you know, maybe could have dug a little deeper at who was funding this group. By the way, I maybe asked around, been like, huh, this, this seems a little iffy, like a labor op, and figured out that it was irresponsible. It's irresponsible either way to demand that other journalists be suppressed and to demand massive technology companies censor journalists. As a journalist, I mean, it's such a disgusting thing to do. That is completely anathema to the profession. And it was this. I remember people cheerleading this in the, quote, mainstream media at the time that it happened. And now drops site reporting from Paul Holden here is showing that they were Going after this is a foreign political party secretly at the time, going after trying to narrow the boundaries of acceptable discourse in the United States. How dare they? And how dare a reporter help them do that without asking enough questions at the time? I get that they were trying to hide their funding. Seems like, like it would have been. You just don't write that story. It seems pretty obvious that if your reporter comes to you with this story, you just don't write the story. Or maybe you actually dig deeper and you find the story is that labor is running an op to silence people in the United States and narrow the boundaries of acceptable speech in the United States. Maybe you would have stumbled on to that pearl of a story before drop site ran it in 2025. Maybe you could have had that in 2020. That would have been fun, wouldn't it? I'm waiting to see, honestly, if Donald Trump comments on this story because again, we're talking about powerful, powerful person in the United Kingdom directly implicated in this. Not just the Prime Minister, but the Prime Minister's chief of staff. So I think there's more to see, there's more to come on this particular story. But I had to talk about it because that instance, you know, 2020 was a crazy year. But journalists after 2016 were steadily building up to that fever pitch by demanding, for example, corporations boycott Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson and boycott Fox News. What's the implication of that? It's a corporation saying, or it's a, it's a journalist saying, I want the corporation to act to limit these other media figures speech. I want them, you know, it's whether or not you like the speech, the fact of the matter is you had journalists being like, pfizer is boycotting Laura Ingraham's program because she was mean to LeBron James names. Whatever you think of what's being said, the idea of journalists cheerleading corporations to punish other journalists is just so ridiculous. And I feel like we've sort of come out of that moment, but I also feel like we could snap back into it at any time. So great reporting here from Dropsite. Had to talk about it on today's show. It is a memory that is indelible in my hippocampus. All right, that does it for us tonight. We have had a lot of fun. Send an email to emilymaycaremedia.com and make sure to subscribe so that you get happy hour in your podcast feed. Subscribe on YouTube to catch all of our videos and we will be back here next Monday with more after party. See you then, everyone.

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[Emily]

Or sneakers that feel like pure joy.

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