← There Are No Girls on the Internet
There Are No Girls on the Internet
MrBeast Under Fire; Hailey Bieber Dogpile; “Emily Hart” and the AI MAGA scam – NEWS ROUNDUP
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Bridget Todd
This is an I heart podcast.
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Bridget Todd
There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this is There Are no Girls on the Intern, so producer Mike I hate it. Hate, hate, hate it when brands get involved on social media. I don't like it when brands are being cute or voicey. I can tolerate some of it, some of it's funny, but I specifically loathe it. This Sort of new thing I've been seeing in the last few years where brands, their social media accounts will join in on hating on a woman celebrity that everybody has decided that they hate for one reason or another. Have you ever seen that?
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Mike
Oh yeah, I think that's like a very popular genre of content hating on some celebrity women.
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Bridget Todd
Yeah, I mean I just saw on Reddit that Hailey Bieber, who is Justin Bieber's wife, big caveat that I'm a little too old to know all the details about any of these people. I vaguely am aware that they are people who exist in the zeitgeist, but. So Hailey Bieber I saw on Reddit had posted on Instagram that people were saying that she was owed an apology from a few years ago when all of these brands joined in on dog piling her. And even though I don't really follow these, these people that that closely, I do remember that a few years ago one day it was like I woke up and Duolingo and Sunny Delight and all of these other big brands were basically posting on social media. And actually since you asked, we hate Hailey Bieber. And it was related to this so called like feud or spat between Hailey Bieber and Selena Gomez. So like that them having some kind of perceived tension was in the zeitgeist. And I guess people were probably talking about it online. I don't begrudge normies like regular people talking about celebrity drama online, but I find it so off putting to see Duolingo or Sunny Delight joining in on dog piling and it's usually a woman. Like we saw the whole thing go down with Amber. Heard how many brands felt comfortable wading into what objectively was a, what you know, a pretty horrific story of abuse. I thought that was super weird. And yeah, I guess I feel like it's often misogyny. It's often these brands trafficking in the reliable chestnut that is online misogyny, joining a hate train on a woman for some reason and cashing in on the engagement that that comes. It's just such low hanging fruit. I hate it.
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Mike
And you're right, there does feel like there's something particularly unacceptable about it when it's a brand doing it, you know, as part of a strategy to sell more language instructions or packages of orange stuff or like whatever it is that they're trying to sell. For some reason that feels more objectionable than when it's just some individual content creator or regular person. It makes the misogyny of it feel even grosser.
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Bridget Todd
Yeah, imagine waking up and whataburger is tweeting about how much they hate you. I just find it very strange. And it's something. If I, if I could pick one super small, low level thing that we could kind of leave behind when it comes to our online landscape. If you're asking me for bigger things that we could leave behind, I would give you much more meaningful things. If a, if a genie was like, you can make one wish, but it has to be very low level, this would probably be it.
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Mike
It's probably a good one. You know, you've talked a lot about anti fandoms and your fascination with them, and it kind of feels like this kind of story is a little brief way for big parts of the Internet to all get together and share the camaraderie of an anti fandom, of hating on some particular woman.
- [06:27]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, it's exactly an anti fandom. And, and it's one of those things where, you know, the Hailey Bieber thing was a few years ago, and it sounds like now people are like, hey, maybe that shouldn't have been the standard. Maybe whataburger should not have been weighing in on this person and what they thought about this person. Maybe that didn't make sense from a brand perspective. And I just feel like it's one of those things where it's a lesson that we seem to have to collectively learn a lot. Like, I remember Amber Heard. Some of the ways that brands got involved in the Amber Heard conversation was despicable. And I feel like now we're all sort of like, ooh, maybe that wasn't so cool. It would be good if that lesson actually took and we didn't have to keep learning it over and over and over again.
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Mike
God, there's so many things like that. And, you know, for this, this one, I wonder if something about not having any strong feelings whatsoever about the people involved makes it easier to see the pattern. Because, like you, I couldn't tell you the first thing about Hailey Bieber. You, you probably know so much more about her than I do. I literally know that she's the wife of Justin Bieber. But does she. Did she deserve to be dogpiled by a bunch of brands? Probably not. Like, it doesn't seem that way. Like, I would you suggest that we might banter about this? I did a little reading about her and I didn't read anything of anybody accusing her of being, like, bad or anything. It doesn't seem like she did anything. It's just like one day the Internet woke up and decided they hated her
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Bridget Todd
and it's always so funny who that is reserved for because I don't know, I wouldn't mind seeing an actual abuser on there. Like everybody woke up one day and was like, actually this person who has done demonstrable harm and crimes, let's all decide that we hate this person instead of, I don't know, putting them in the White House. But that's another story. And actually, Mike, thank you for indulging me on that banter about people that I'm sure that you have no idea who they are. But speaking of abusers, I did want to kind of kick us off with a, I guess it's a little bit of a follow up conversation to one of the stories that we talked about in last week's roundup. And quick heads up for y' all that this story does involve conversations about sexual abuse. So do you remember our conversation about that CNN piece about the so called online rape academy where men were trading tips and tricks about how to drug and assault women?
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Mike
Of course, it was super disturbing for
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Bridget Todd
folks who didn't read that article or didn't hear that conversation. Basically, CNN put out this very deep dive examination that followed the trial of Dominique Pellico, who was that man in France who was using websites and communities to recruit men to sexually assault his wife, who while she was drugged and passed out. This story was very shocking. And this follow up piece, just as you were saying, Mike, about how kind of not fringe that scenario is and how online it's sort of happening in plain sight in some of these both fringe but also rather mainstream websites, was pretty horrifying. And I wanted to clear something up because I've seen the way that this story has made the rounds online. The CNN report described this website, motherless.com, which hosts this kind of content that shows these drugged women. On the website, men gather in the so called sleep community to trade tips and tricks for assaulting women. So this is how CNN put it. In these videos, men film themselves lifting the closed eyelids of women to show that they are sleeping or sedated with some eye check video surpassing 50,000 views. When this story first hit social media, people were saying that the report claimed that 62 million separate men had visited this website, motherless.com that teaches men how to engage in this kind of behavior on the Internet. That kind of turned into 62 million men attended an online rape academy. Now the majority of the visitors, according to cnn, to this website are American. So. So if that were true, that 62 million men attended an online rape Academy. That would be so deeply, deeply alarming, right? There's like, 162 million men in America. So if 62 million of those men were attending this online rape academy, and they're mostly all Americans, that would be like 40% of American men attending an online rape academy, which would be horrifying. However, what the report actually said was was that it was 62 million visits to this website in February alone, not that it was 62 million separate men.
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Mike
Bridget, I love that this is a segment where you are breaking down the definitions of analytic metrics.
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Bridget Todd
I had to have you check the math because I'm. I'm a tech person, but I am, like, deeply not a math person. And I was like, you'll be so proud of me. I came up with that 40% percentage on my own. And then I was like, I have to double check to make sure it's right. I've always said this. If somebody got hold of my phone, of all the things that I would be embarrassed for them to see, the last thing I put on my phone's calculator would be the most deeply embarrassing thing. It would be like she really needed a calculator to do 20 -6 the way that I would be. So I would rather you see anything else on my phone.
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Mike
This is great, though. You know, definitions do matter. So, Bridget, what is the difference then between. If there's 62 million visits that. How's that different from 62 million men?
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Bridget Todd
Well, the number of visits and the number of unique users are different, right? Because a single user can rack up many visits. So while we don't know about the precise number of unique visitors who did go to that site, and it is almost certainly considerably less than 162 million. However, we can do some math based on very, very conservative estimates. Like, if we assume that the average user had, let's say, 1,000 visits to this website over the month of February, that would be 35 visits on every single day in February, which to me would seem like a lot. Again, we're just. This is just me giving, like, a conservative estimate and doing some, you know, napkin math. But that would still mean 62,000 people engaging with this site, which, again, is far below, obviously, that 62 million number that people are putting on social media. But to me, that is still very bad and still deeply, deeply alarming like that. To me, there is no need to, you know, that stat. I think that stat speaks for itself in terms of the scope, which I would say is quite alarming and quite bad. So a Lot of the scrutiny was going to the site that is named in the CNN piece motherless.com and on TikTok people were asking why isn't there a site where people can list the names of men who are going to sites like this who are being accused of sexually assaulting women? And a tiktoker who calls himself a bearded leftist said that he was going to start it. So he announced that he was starting Name him IO, which is a website that is meant for people to submit the names of men who they say, you know who they are, making allegations that they have done something untoward. The bearded leftist says that he is a survivor of sexual violence himself and that the charges were dropped against his abuser. So I watched a bunch of his content on TikTok where he's talking about Name Him. Basically the initial website as the bearded leftist described it was, was a minimal viable product, which is just sort of like the version of something that you put that just to get it out into the world. That's a fair description of it, right?
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Mike
Yeah, that's what a minimum viable product is. Just like the absolute most bare bones version that you can ship to start collecting feedback about how people like it, what they like, they don't like. Data about how people use it and you know, what counts as a minimum viable product, of course, varies depending on what it is you're trying to do and what domain that you're working in.
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Bridget Todd
He said that within 24 hours of that minimum viable product being up online and live, a thousand names were added. He also added that the site wasn't collecting personal information from the people who were adding names to the site and if there were any legal issues with things like lawsuits or defamation, that he was trying to set it up so that he would be the legally liable entity personally, not the people submitting names. Because of that, he was asking people to only submit names like not addresses or titles or other information like that because it would make whatever legal ramifications harder for him to manage. If he said that if people did that, he was going to delete their entire entries. Just to be super clear, I was unable to see this website before it was taken down. So I have no idea if any of this is actually true or if any of this, like, if any, if any of the way that he was saying that he wanted to have it set up actually was the case. This is just what he. This is just how he described the setup. So I cannot confirm or deny because the site has now been taken down and I actually When I went to the site, when I put this on the list of stories that I wanted to talk with you about, it was still up, but then when I went to actually do the research, it was down, so I wasn't able to see it in time. The bearded leftist said that he was being added. He himself was being added to the site, and his friends and family members were being added as well. So people kind of understandably had the response of like, oh, you took it down because you and your buddies were being accused of wrongdoing. He later clarified that. No, no, what he meant was that the people in his life who were being added to the site were like his children and his wife, and they were being added out of spite by critics of what he was doing. Right. So that. So, like, that was his response to that. He does say the site is going to be going back up, and he promised that it's going to be run by women and that he says it's going to be run even better with some of the sort of critiques and issues that people pointed out. He wants to take care of all of them now. Again, I was not able to take a look at this website before it was taken down, but a big piece of the criticism about the way that the website worked was obviously cyber security issues. Spirited Leftist himself is a cybersecurity professional. So because I wasn't able to see the site for myself, I put out a call on social media for. For folks who did see the site and what they thought about it. And I actually got. So I got a couple of interesting responses that I'll read. One is from Jasper Ballo, who told me the fact that he had set up the site in a way that made the site a publisher and not a platform, made himself extremely vulnerable to bad actors, which had me questioning his credibility as a cybersecurity expert to start with. The site itself was a coding mess and which made zero effort to make sure that our report was accurate, leading to a potential defamation case so easy that even one of Trump's lawyers could win.
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Mike
Oh, man, I love that he got in a burn of Trump's lawyers.
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Bridget Todd
Same, same, same, same.
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Mike
But also, he makes some good points there.
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Bridget Todd
Yeah, I think he does, too. And, you know, I want to make it clear that I don't really know anything about the bearded leftist. So I am in no way trying to attack him. I saw videos where he was responding to some of the critiques people had put out about him and his work. One of the critiques is that he works for an Israeli cybersecurity firm, which in his video, he actually confirms that he's like, yeah, I do work for an Israeli cybersecurity firm. That is true. But I don't know enough about him to have any kind of take on him personally. So that's not what this is about. But I do know that we have been through this kind of thing a few times before. We actually have had sites and lists that are meant to be a repository of men's bad behavior before. Like, this is not a new idea at all. I don't know if it's one of those things where I'm just old and have been on the Internet for a really long time, or if it's one of those things where people don't necessarily remember the ephemera of the Internet from things that happened just like 10 years ago, where, you know, the Internet is one of those things where 10 years ago seems like forever ago. You know, we were just talking about how today's the 10 year anniversary of Beyonce's lemonade, and that seems like it happened forever ago. But back in 2017, a writer named Maura Donegan, an editor at the New Republic, started the Shitty Media Men list. And that was a massive Google spreadsheet where people collected stories about men and media who had been accused of bad behavior. And I think it was really an attempt to kind of operationalize the sort of whisper network that had been going around in media. So in 2017, when this was taking off, I was actually in the online community where it was taking off the Binders, which was like a writing community for women. I'm not sure if binders still exist, but the Binders was this network of online groups that was started after Mitt Romney. Do you remember Mitt Romney in the debate saying he was asked about the, you know, inclusion for women in his cabinet, and he was like, oh, I've got binders full of women. Kind of quaint that that was such a big political moment, don't you think?
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Mike
Oh, my God, yes. I mean, you compare that to anything Trump says every single day. Yeah, I missed that time. It was a better time.
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Bridget Todd
Oh, my gosh. Well, anyway, that comment started an entire online network of women in writing and media called the Binders that I was pretty active in at the time. And so I remember basically watching the Shitty Media Men list take off in the Binders community in real time. Like, I was there. The list itself was only up for about 2012 hours, but then I think Buzzfeed was like, threatening to write an article about it and the, the creator of the list took it down. So I remember like, I remember this like it was yesterday. The list had names of men in media and writing. A lot of them were like famous people names that you would recognize, names that are still around today and their alleged behavior. And this behavior ranged from things like, oh, he asked me to meet with him to discuss my work and my career and it ended up being a date at a bar. From like, things like that to actual legit sex crimes. I remember there was a guy who was named on the list that I personally had worked with and he was accused of taking new women staffers on suspicious hikes. I say that like, not like murder hikes, not like, oh, he would take these staffers on hikes and they would never be heard from again. But still like that. Like, I remember like, that was enough to be like, you know, it's like not appropriate to be taking women junior, like new women junior staff on hikes. It is like, I don't know, it doesn't sound nefarious, but it is the kind of thing that would be like, I'm thinking about it now and I'm like, that would be really weird. It's like, oh, first day in the office. Want to go for a hike?
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Mike
Yeah. Probably not advised.
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Bridget Todd
Yeah, don't take the new junior female staff on hikes. Like, just go for coffee if you want to, like, talk about her career or whatever. Or do a one on one. Just go for a walk around the city. Like a hike is. I sort of get why they included that.
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Mike
Yeah. I mean, if you're taking people on hikes, make sure you're taking everybody on hikes.
- [22:38]
Bridget Todd
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- [25:22]
Bridget Todd
And we're back. So we're talking about people's calls to build an online list of men who have been accused of bad behavior. And in the wake of that CNN investigation around that so called online rape academy. And I was talking about how we actually did have this almost 10 years ago with the shitty Media Men list, which does kind of provide a template for what it was actually like when women start naming names on a list. I remember something else about the list is that not all of the behavior that was described by the men who were on the list was sexual. I remember there was a very prominent gay male culture writer, a writer who's writing like I at the time like really enjoyed. And the accusation was that he was just like really disrespectful and snaky to the junior women staffers and was going out of his way to sort of undermine their career trajectories, but not in a sexual way. And so not all of the bad Behavior is like sexual harassment. Some of it is just, you know, this person disrespects women and has a pattern of disrespecting women in ways that are not overtly sexualized. So what ended up happening with this list was that this writer, Stephen Elliott, who folks might remember, he's the founder of that site, the rumpus, was included in this Shitty Media men list. So Elliot had faced some public allegations in the past. In 2015, a writer wrote a piece in Tin House about what she described as this uncomfortable experience with Elliot during his visit to her writing program. She said that he kept asking her to share her bed and that afterward sent out a newsletter about the situation that made her feel like she was being blamed for what he had done. And so Elliot was included in that Shitty Media men list. His entry included, quote, rape accusations, sexual harassment, and coercion. So how all of this ends is that Elliot sued Donegan, the creator of the list. Now, to be clear, Donegan wasn't adding all of the entries herself. It was like a massive spreadsheet where people could add entries, but she had just, like, created that doc. And so the lawsuit was settled in 2023, with Elliot receiving a six figure settlement from Donegan. But that Shitty media men list also sparked investigations into the behavior of some men who were named on that list. And those men were found to have violated the standards of their workplaces, including places like the Atlantic, the Paris Review, and buzzfeed. And so a handful of men, because they were included in that list, were actually investigated by these outlets, found to have done something wrong and were either fired or resigned. So that's a little bit of history of when people say, why don't we have lists like this? We have had lists like this. Also, there's the T app, which is a little bit different. We talked about it on the podcast. We'll put the episode in the show notes. But the T app was this app for women to share information about men. The T app did collect a lot of information about users which name him IO says that they're trying to do the opposite. The information that the TAPP collected included driver's licenses that were unredacted. So it had people's addresses on them. It was also built in a very insecure way where the information was just accessible. Essentially. It's not even. It was accessible to the point where it's not even really accurate to say that the site was hacked. It was more like just a very insecure site that essentially left this information accessible. So, like, hacked isn't even really the right word. So again, name him says that it doesn't want it to be the kind of thing where you have to put personal information to post. Again, I can't confirm any of that, but my big beef with the TAPP was that I sensed that it was an attempt on the part of the creators to capitalize on gendered harm. And again, I don't know the bearded leftist. I cannot speak to his motivations, but I can speak in general terms that I don't think rushing to create a tool to help women is always such a good dynamic. It definitely sounds good. And I like that men are trying to offer solutions because, frankly, they should be. However, and this is just my opinion, y' all can feel free to disagree, but given the sensitive nature of what namehim IO is about, I think that women deserve something better than a minimum viable product. Right? A minimum viable product does not say to me cybersecurity is being treated very seriously from the start and is baked in as a consideration. Maybe it is. I have no way of knowing. But what it says to me is everybody online right now is talking about this online rape academy, and I need to get something out immediately that speaks to this moment, to capture this moment that everybody is talking about, to capitalize on it. That's. That is my sense of what's going on here.
- [30:36]
Mike
I felt the same way. And just like you, I immediately started thinking about the T app as soon as we started talking about this, because it does seem so similar in terms of being a rush job that maybe does have good intentions of trying to help people, but it's just too much of a rush job, you know, and it just, in this particular domain of trying to deal with the very serious problem of sexual assault and abuse, it just feels irresponsible to put a product out there that exposes so many people to so much risk. Right? Like, not just the people being named who, like, maybe they could be falsely accused. Maybe it's a real accusation. Who knows? But not just them, but also the people doing the naming themselves, who, you know, could be legally responsible for defamation or other forms of retaliation. So I feel like good intentions are nice. And of course, I understand that, you know, you want to get early feedback on your app. You want to put an MVP version of, you know, your new game or your productivity app or whatever it is you have. That makes a lot of sense. But for a situation like this where the stakes are so serious, it just feels really reckless to put something out there with minimum viable protections and safeguards.
- [32:06]
Bridget Todd
So I asked a cybersecurity researcher who goes by semicolon expected on social media about the site and like, what if, what some of the problems that they saw with it were. And again, I, I presented, I thought, you know, it's the, the idea of like a minimum viable product. I feel like when we're talking about something as, as sensitive and delicate as sexual assault, I don't think that that kind of cuts it. And they said, I'd argue it's not the MVP that's the problem, but rather he can call it an MVP only because he didn't actually specify any functionality aside from ad entry and I guess login registration to qualify as minimally viable. The bar for minimal viable product was in hell. If I sent out a Google form, it would have exceeded his requirement to be considered minimally viable. A qualtric survey, which is like a survey tool with the settings to toss IPs once it filters out spam and bots turned on, would have been a better implementation. You can quote that. So that again, that really helped me understand sort of like what we're dealing with that, you know, back in 2017 when people were like, let's come up with a list of men that are accused of wrongdoing. It was just a Google Doc. And so this cyber security researcher is saying like, even that might have been more secure than the, than the, than the product that he put out into the world and told women to use to, you know, put the names of people that they were accusing of wrongdoing.
- [33:35]
Mike
Yeah, it just feels like a really insufficient amount of forethought and care and consideration to wade into something that is so serious.
- [33:50]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, again, I just think the stakes are very high and any kind of conversation about sexual assault and mis misconduct needs to be grounded in compassion and care. Anything less is very reckless and it risks actually doing more harm to the people that you say that you're trying to help. Like, I would argue the T app probably did more harm because it exposed the addresses of women at a time when, you know, bad actors online were looking to get revenge on women for daring to speak up about their experiences with men. I would say that, like, the TAPP is an example of an organization that I think actually did more harm than good for the community. They were ostensibly saying that they wanted to help. The stakes are just very high for safety to be like an afterthought or a placeholder in a product roadmap. And I will say in bearded leftists comments, there are tons of folks who totally disagree with what I am saying. There are so many people like I went to see like what the conversation was in on TikTok about this and there are people saying like we should be lifting him up because he's doing something. Like there was one comment that stuck with me that was like somebody was critiquing the the site and then somebody else was like, well what are you doing to protect women? What are you doing to, to shield women from sexual assault? And it just so, it's just so interesting to me because it almost kind of becomes a parasocial thing where, you know, people like this creator and they like his vibe, they like what he's doing, they like what he stands for generally. So then they are advocating for this specific intervention, whether or not that specific intervention is actually a meaningfully good thing. And I'm not trying to like crap on this guy, although I'm, I'm sure it sounds that way. But I don't think that something as serious as sexual violence needs men rushing in with a solution that is not thought out. Well, that could potentially cause more harm like that Tapp and let's say this site was really not secure or had big problems. People saying, well, we'll support you either way because we like you and you're doing something I just don't think is really it like parasocial Stan culture where folks will support whatever a creator is doing and be in their comments like, yes, thank you so much. Regardless of what that thing is, regardless of whether that thing helps or hurts or meaningfully makes a difference or whatever is not going to get us to a place where we can have the meaningful solutions to sexual violence that we all deserve. Let's take a quick break.
- [36:39]
Mike
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- [39:11]
Bridget Todd
And we're back. And speaking of less than cool vibes around gender based and sexualized violence and harassment, do you know much about Mr. Beast?
- [39:27]
Mike
I know quite little about him. Especially considering how just intensely fascinated I am by him and his Internet empire.
- [39:39]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, so I also don't know that much about him so I should just like admit that. So Mr. Beast, if you have never encountered him, I'm sure you've seen his like weird smile all over the Internet because he has a, he really has a particular kind of like smile that he does online, which I feel like I see now in YouTube thumbnails. Like I think, I think that he really pioneered a certain kind of like YouTube thumbnail. Like he kind of started that. So Mr. Beast, his real name is Jimmy Donaldson. He is 26 years old. He's from North Carolina. I believe he's from. Let me, let me fact check this. I think, I think he's from where I went to college. Because I know somebody from Greenville who was like, if anybody ever says anything mean about Mr. Beast, he's like, how dare you? He put this. He's put this city on the map.
- [40:24]
Mike
Really?
- [40:26]
Bridget Todd
Oh, yeah.
- [40:27]
Mike
He was born in university. That's there.
- [40:28]
Bridget Todd
I know he's always. He's raised in Greenville, North Carolina, where I went to college.
- [40:34]
Mike
So the college, whatever. Mr. Beast put the city on the map.
- [40:38]
Bridget Todd
He put Pitt County, North Carolina, on the map. Not the massive university that is there that I went to. It's Mr. Beast. Although I would actually want to know, like, I would love to see who employs more people. Greenville, East Carolina University, my alma mater, or Mr. Beast. I actually. This sounds crazy. I actually don't know the answer to that question. I would actually love to see.
- [40:59]
Mike
I mean, and also, like, who gets more views? Come on.
- [41:04]
Bridget Todd
Definitely. I bet ECU doesn't get hardly any views.
- [41:09]
Mike
You know, they probably. They probably have like one person working in the communications office who is like the social media manager.
- [41:16]
Bridget Todd
Yeah.
- [41:17]
Mike
And every day she's just like, oh, it's just me against Mr. Beast.
- [41:21]
Bridget Todd
It's like a big public university. It's not kind of. I mean, I went there, so I can say this. It's not kind of known for. It's like academic robustness, I guess I'll say. But it is a. It's like. It's like a regional college that is also big. That's the only way I can put it. I loved my time there. I have nothing but, like, positive things to say about East Carolina. I would not be where I am today making a podcast in my kitchen if not for the robust education I received there. I'll actually be. You can leave this in just a little bit like in episode banter. I'll actually be there because I'm going to see our. Probably the most famous person from. To come out of East Carmonta University, other than me, of course, is the band Future Islands. They went to my college. They're like a. I think they're awesome. They're doing a reunion tour in Greenville, North Carolina. Greenville, North Carolina is a very small town. I cannot express to you how much it is a small town. So, like, them coming back to do like the hometown show in Greenville is a big deal. So I'm actually have tickets. I'm going to Greenville, North Carolina for the first time in a very long time since graduating and I'm excited. I hope maybe I'll see Mr. Beast there. Who knows?
- [42:37]
Mike
Maybe. Didn't you tell Me that future islands are like the rock gods of Scandinavia.
- [42:43]
Bridget Todd
They are. They are. They're huge there and they kind of have a little bit of a like Scandinavian sound.
- [42:50]
Mike
Okay. I mean, we also have listeners in Iceland and Sweden. Oh, we couple in Norway.
- [42:57]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, we're. For whatever reason, the podcast is very big in the Scandinavian countries.
- [43:01]
Mike
So I'm just saying that you're like, you're keeping up.
- [43:04]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, yeah, we're. We're this. They've been on Letterman. We're the same amount of famous. Sure.
- [43:09]
Mike
You have received letters.
- [43:10]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I've received letters, man. Okay. Anyway, back to Mr. Beast. So Mr. Beast, as you said, he is, I would say, probably the most famous person on YouTube and maybe even the Internet right now. He has over 370 million subscribers on YouTube.
- [43:27]
Mike
His subscriber total is basically the same as the population of the United States.
- [43:32]
Bridget Todd
Wow. So basically every person in the USA is like watching globally. It's like, you know what I'm trying to say, don't make me do math. But it's a lot.
- [43:42]
Mike
It's a lot of goddamn people.
- [43:44]
Bridget Todd
A lot of subscribers is what I'm saying. So he has more subscribers than any individual creator in YouTube history. His content is sort of around, like viral stunts and these elaborate challenge videos and what I would call sort of large scale philanthropy content. He gives away tons of money and cars and stuff like that, but in this way where it just feels like a big stunt to me. He did like a Squid game stunt, which I thought was kind. If you've seen Squid Games, I thought it was like kind of in poor taste where I don't think the takeaway from Squid Games was like, wouldn't it be cool if we did this for real? I mean, he didn't murder people. I shouldn't say that. People maybe haven't seen Squid Games. People have seen it by now.
- [44:30]
Mike
I mean, I don't think it's a spoiler to say this Squid Games involves
- [44:33]
Bridget Todd
murder fair, but now Mr. Beast has moved into candy bars and reality competition shows and burger chains. He's everywhere. I don't get the appeal personally, but in short, he's a very big deal and his company employs a ton of people. He is one of those people who I would say, like, has just sort of always rubbed me the wrong way. But the kind of person where I needed to do more research to sort out why it is that he rubs me the wrong way. But, you know, there is a reason, like, there are people that I that are famous or whatever, where I'm like, that person rubs me the wrong way. I don't know why, but I know. I know that I'm not wrong about it. I just get a sense about people. He's one of those people. So I always knew there was some reason as to why I didn't like him. Have you ever felt this way where you. You're just sort of waiting to have your dislike about somebody validated, but, you know, there's a. There. There. Have you ever felt. Does that, as I. Does that ring a bell to you?
- [45:32]
Mike
Oh, definitely. I guess for me, it's an impulse that I try to check because
- [45:40]
Bridget Todd
I just.
- [45:40]
Mike
I. I'm just, like, skeptical by nature, I guess.
- [45:43]
Bridget Todd
I agree. I can confirm, and.
- [45:46]
Mike
And many times I will feel that way. And then one year, two years, five years down the road, I'd be like, actually, that person's all right. I like them. So I try not to give too much credence to that when it's just, like, a general. I don't like this person if it's something specific. There are some people who are like, oh, I'm clocking you immediately, and you're not for me, because you're bad. I will listen to that. Like, immediately. And that's usually correct.
- [46:19]
Bridget Todd
You once told me that two of your lifelong best friends, when you met them, you were like, I don't like this person. And now. And then time went by, and you were like, actually, not only are they fine, we're, like, close and good friends now.
- [46:31]
Mike
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Two of my good friends. I'm not gonna say their names, because I don't think they know that this is how it happened. But when we first got to know each other, it took, like, like, one of my friends, who I love, the first, like, three or four years that I knew him, I was like, I don't know about this guy. He seems like kind of a drip. But then I don't know what it was. One day I was like, oh, actually, I love him. He's, like, one of my favorite people. So, you know, the good ones are sleepers, and they keep their cards close to their chest. That's my takeaway.
- [47:06]
Bridget Todd
Well, maybe that'll be that way with me and Mr. Beast. But that day is not today, because now we have news that maybe confirms why I felt this way about Mr. Beast. A former staffer at Mr. Beast's company has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that she was wrongfully fired shortly after returning from maternity leave and that the workplace culture fostered at Mr. Beast's company that led to her firing was deeply hostile to women. So this woman, Lorraine Mavramatis, who describes herself in the filing as a, quote, rising star at Mr. Beast Co. Says that she was sexually harassed by the company's leadership and, and demoted after she complained internally, and that she was expected to continue working through her parental leave, which is a violation of federal law, according to the complaint, she says that somebody even pressured her to join a work call from the labor and delivery room when she was giving birth. Which is pretty. I mean, it's the kind of thing that a certain kind of person would brag about on a LinkedIn post. Like, I no days off, I joined a work call from my delivery room. Here's what it taught me about B2B sales.
- [48:19]
Mike
If this was 2017, I could totally see that blog post.
- [48:24]
Bridget Todd
I've been, I have been threatening to do. I. I'm full of tangents today. I'm so sorry, listeners. I've been threatening to do a LinkedIn episode for the longest time because LinkedIn is full of shit like that. It's just like psychopaths who. It's full. I never know if it's like a joke or some sort of performance or what, but like, it is full of shit like that. The most eyebrow raising allegation in her suit to me involves the company's former CEO, James Warren. So in the complaint, she says that Warren made her meet him alone at his home and would comment on her appearance. When she reported that a male client was hitting on her, Warren allegedly told her that she should just be flattered. And then when she asked why Donaldson, Mr. Beast wouldn't work with her on certain projects, Warren, she said, told her, and this is a direct quote from the filing, quote, yeah, Jimmy gets really awkward around beautiful women. Let's just say that when you're around and he goes to the restroom, he's not actually using the restroom. Yup. Beast Industries responded to that specific allegation by calling it fabricated purely to generate headlines, and added that the claim exploits Mr. Beast's eye condition and Crohn's disease, both of which he has, like, publicly discussed. So, more broadly, Mr. Beast's company is pushing back on the entire lawsuit, calling it clout chasing and built on deliberate misrepresentations. They also released a screenshot showing that the staffer signed an employee handbook in March of 2025 that they said laid out the FMLA and parental leave policies, which they say contradicts her claim that she was kept in the dark about the company's expectations around maternity and parental leave. They say that it was this staffer herself who in fact asked to be able to work during her maternity leave, that it was not a demand the company made, which I have no idea. You know, we'll see how that shakes out. I have a hard time believing that, but I don't know.
- [50:26]
Mike
You know, even if that is true, that's not how it works. Like, if you've ever worked at a legitimate company that is interested in like, doing things by the book and not getting sued for things like this, they take parental leave extremely seriously. Like, I remember at my former job, one of my co workers had to go out on parental leave and it was made clear to her and everyone else on the team that when she was on leave, no one was to contact her. And if she reached out, we were not to respond.
- [51:01]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I mean, sometimes you have to say like, I mean, good companies that care about this and take it seriously, they put provisions in place where it's like, if she reaches out, do not reply, she is on leave. And it is, it's not just like out of the goodness of their heart. There is a legal requirement that is set by the government for how this is, is mandated. It's not up to the individual, you know, staffer. So the complaint also takes aim at the company's internal handbook, which is called the Beast Bible, which includes lines like, quote, it's okay for the boys to be childish. And guidance suggested that talents should be able to draw explicit images on whiteboards during videos. I really feel like that says a lot about the culture. Like that's, that's like, that's a direct line from this handbook. So I feel like that says a lot about the culture cultivated at this organization. And it's also worth noting that this is not Mr. Beast's only legal headache right now. He's also fighting a separate class action lawsuit over Beast Game Season 1, which alleges that contestants were subjected to unsafe working conditions, instances of sexual harassment, and that production attempted to fraudulently claim tax credits from the state of Nevada. So this is my kind of my thing about Mr. Beast. To me, his entire brand is sort of built on this image of a generous, goofy, harmless guy who just loves giving stuff away. Just a good guy. And if the allegations that we've just talked about in this lawsuit are true, it kind of sounds like he has built this company in the same way that a lot of kind of fast growing companies run by young men who, with a lot of unchecked power, do tend to operate where women are expected to perform and tolerate and stay quiet and sort of be the adults in the room and tolerate a lot of stuff that they really shouldn't have to tolerate. So that some of which is like against the law. And then when this woman didn't, she was basically shown the door after having a baby. That's not, that's not a, like, that's a, that's a very familiar story to me, I guess is what I'm saying. You know, having it be written in the handbook that it's okay for the boys to be childish I think really kind of provides written clarity about who this workplace was built for and around. And so I almost wonder if like, that's one of the reasons why I just like never click with this particular creator is because I do think his content is just built on this fantasy of consequence free excess. Right? Money is just a space spectacle be to be doled out. Generosity or philanthropy is just entertainment. And I think that these lawsuits are starting to sort of reveal, well, who pays. Like, like nothing is consequence free. So who is paying that consequence? Who is paying for the less visible costs of producing this fantasy? And you know, we, we don't know how this lawsuit will shake out. We will definitely keep you updated if we hear more. But I do think that the disconnect between his public Persona and what I imagine to be the sort of machinations that keep that Persona going and that empire going is why I have found him personally kind of off putting more after a quick break.
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- [57:03]
Bridget Todd
Let's get right back into it. So Wired just put out this very long but very interesting worth reading piece about what happened to a trans woman who just wanted to watch a basketball game at Madison Square Garden. What happened to her will probably make you rethink if you have Knicks tickets coming up. So it is no surprise or secret that just showing up at Madison Square Garden or really any kind of a big event like that involves a lot of surveillance and privacy violations. You expect this now, but Madison Square Garden was kind of an early adopter of these kinds of draconian policies. But it turns out that Madison Square Garden's policies are not just invasive, they are also super personal. And if the guy who owns Madison Square Garden, James Dolan, has it out for you personally, just say you're going to have a bad time at Madison Square Garden. So as Wired reports, New Yorkers have known for a long time that going to a game or concert at the Garden meant surrendering some privacy. That as you watch the show, the Garden, in a real sense, watched you. Since 2018, there have been reports of the venue deploying facial recognition technology in what critics believe are increasingly intrusive ways. Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan has a watch list of basketball fans who have dared criticize his management. He keeps a close eye on the other venues too, including Radio City Music hall and the Sphere. In Las Vegas last March, Dolan security team blocked a graphic designer from seeing a concert. The designer years earlier had printed and sold half a dozen T shirts reading Band Dolan. He has locked out whole firms worth of lawyers, even keeping out a mom who was trying to take her nine year old girl scout to a Christmas show at Radio City Music hall because the mom's co worker had pissed him off. So this is nothing new, but this new Wired investigation found that Madison Square Garden security team obsessively tracked Nina Richards, who was a trans woman over a two year period monitoring her movements at Madison Square Garden down to the second. Yeah, so importantly, it does not just begin in end when you show up at Madison Square Garden and then leave. The head of corporate security at Dolan's company kind of thinks of his role so broadly that they effectively act as a private police force. They patrol the surrounding streets, which is, if you ever been to Madison Square Garden, it's in the same sort of complex as Penn Station. It's not, it's, it's kind of a, like, it's kind of a, like a mixed bag of an area. And so like taking it upon yourself to act as a private police force on the streets which like has lots of transient folks. I'm like, it's just, it's just a. How could I put this? You know, it's a, it's a part of Manhattan where the protesters happen to be a lot. And the article makes very clear that you don't even need to set foot in one of his venues to basically be surveilled and patrolled by this guy's essentially private police force. Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, sounds like a real piece of work. I am probably setting myself up to be surveilled if I ever go to Madison Square Garden again, but I don't care. Wired said that even players for the Knicks live in fear of things like locker rooms being bugged because of the climate that this guy has fostered. Like, the staff know that if they walk by Dolan that they're not even supposed to look at him. And a big takeaway from this piece is that this is part of a worrying trend where the owners of entertainment companies are gathering more and more information and data and surveillance on their customers. So not in the normal way which you maybe are thinking like obviously none of this should be normal. But like, I don't mean in the I used clear and they scanned my biometrics and it wasn't good kind of way, which also is not. Should not be normal, but it is. I'm talking about former government agents spying on people after they have left Madison Square Garden, after they have traveled hundreds of miles back to their house or wherever they're from. Former government agents being tasked with spying on those people simply because they showed up at an event at Madison Square Garden. I just want to add that the Wired piece also kind of makes clear that Dolan has this kind of reputation as a sensitive, thin skinned fail son who kind of got daddy's sports teams and monies and then tanked them, and also wears an embarrassing fedora that everybody talks shit about, which I really liked. That little detail that he's. He's always wearing this fedora that everybody makes fun of him for. It's like Tim Robinson. Like, there's going to be like, depositions where they're talking about his fedora. He also was in a really embarrassing Americana band where one of the songs that they play is about his former friend Harvey Weinstein called I Should have Known.
- [62:10]
Mike
Okay, so he sounds like a pretty, I don't know, paranoid, petty, I don't know, choose your p adjective kind of guy. But. So how about this trans woman? What is the story with what happened to her?
- [62:28]
Bridget Todd
Yes. So back to this trans woman, Nina. So Nina just wanted to watch the Knicks game at the Garden in 2021. So Nina was regularly going to the Knicks games. According to one former Madison Square Gardens security staffer, she became a fixation for this guy Eversole, who was the head of Madison Square Garden security. Eversole, he's a former senior director of global investigations at Oracle, instructed his deputies to compile workups or open source intelligent dossiers on Nina, this trans woman who just wanted to go to a basketball game. He made sure that Nina was in the Garden's face recognition system and ordered the Garden security apparatus to focus specifically on her. This is from a lawsuit filed by former MSG security staffer Donnie Ingrassalino. Not because this trans woman Nina was any kind of a threat or a danger to anything, but because she was a trans woman. Eversole, that head of MSG security, allegedly wanted to, quote, keep her away from the players because she is trans. According to the lawsuit, Eversole targeted Nina because of her gender identity. And it does sound like it's a kind of situation where the staff who were forced to conduct this kind of surveillance on Nina were really uncomfortable with being told to do this because they was. They believed it to be a clear act of profiling. According to one former staffer, Nina posed no threat. So the staffers make it super clear Nina wasn't doing anything that she wasn't meant to be doing. She wasn't taking pictures in restricted areas or, like being a nuisance. She was just a trans woman walking around the Garden at a. At a basketball game. But eversole, that head of security, his orders were explicit. Keep watching. According to the lawsuit, he showed Nina's picture in several weekly meetings, misgendering her and telling employees to watch out for, quote, him or whatever it is. Oh, that is horrible. According to that, former MSG security staffer Donnie Ingresalino, who filed a lawsuit over all of this, he contends in his court filing that the head of security did not similarly limit access to others who socialized with athletes, including individuals who had extensive criminal histories and had the potential of posing a legitimate threat to Madison Square Garden. So all manner of creeps and criminals are totally free to socialize with the players and the staff. However, they were given explicit instructions to keep Nina away from the players because she was trans.
- [65:07]
Mike
I mean, this sounds like a worst case scenario of exactly why we should all be concerned about the rise of these private surveillance companies, Private security companies that act like private armies, just enforcing whatever arbitrary preferences or prejudices that their owners have.
- [65:33]
Bridget Todd
Exactly. That's such a good point of, like, when people say things like, oh, well, what do I care about surveillance? And the creeping rise of sort of the normalization of this kind of deep, deep, intense, unreasonable surveillance. This is why the kinds of things the article says get people on Dolan's personal shit list are things like tweeting about the Knicks or tweeting unfavorably about his ownership and, you know, things like that, like, things that anybody might do. So Nina, that trans woman, went to a pride night at the Garden, and they have a dossier of her literal every movement, from scanning her ticket, grabbing a beer, chatting with the worker, hugging one of the ushers, complete with images, like screenshots of her doing this. Again, the report gave no insight into why this level of scrutiny was warranted. And every staffer that Wired spoke to about it agreed it was excessive, which to me is like the understatement of the century. So one night, Nina moves to what they call the celebrity seats, right? They're the seats where if someone is sitting there, they're probably going to be photographed or included in a televised broadcast of the game. And it was very clear that the fact that Nina, this trans woman, was sitting in those seats was not okay. According to that lawsuit from the former MSG security staffer in Grossellino, the security company claimed that if an, quote, openly trans woman was noticed, it could, quote, damage MSG's reputation. The first former employee adds that they were told that the very same sight of Nina would make the top brass at the Garden uncomfortable.
- [67:13]
Mike
I mean, this sounds like the sort of thing that we would expect from like, an arena in the middle of Kansas or something. But, like, this is New York City. Like, is this really the first trans woman they've ever seen? Like, the idea that one trans woman on the video feed would somehow damage the Garden's reputation. An institution in the middle of New York City that seats, like, I don't know, however many tens of thousands of people.
- [67:46]
Bridget Todd
It's.
- [67:46]
Mike
It's not just prejudice and discriminatory. It's absurd.
- [67:51]
Bridget Todd
It's absolutely, like, I don't know if I sound Pollyanna, ish, I cannot. And then we have all kinds of examples of tech companies using shady tactics to get ahead, right? Like TikTok, back when it, under its previous ownership, was spying on journalists. Terrible, like, should not happen. But I understood, like, what it was they were looking for. I under, like, it's like a very specific in scope thing. They were doing a bad thing, to be sure. But I understand it. I cannot understand why it makes sense to spend the money and the energy to have this level of surveillance on, like, one trans person. I simply does not make any sense to me. I cannot understand why this is a good use of anyone's time or money.
- [68:38]
Mike
I'm so curious at what point she discovered that this was happening, because it sounds like she would go to the Garden a lot. And so I like to imagine she's just like hanging out, you know, drinking a beer, eating a hot dog. And there's. Meanwhile, there's like dozens of security people, like, whispering into radios, tracking her every move.
- [69:00]
Bridget Todd
That's literally what's going on. So unfortunately, Nina was eventually banned from the Garden for what that former security staffer's lawsuit said was a faked stalking allegation. Mr. Eversole fabricated a stalking allegation to justify banning her from the Garden. That's from his lawsuit. Meanwhile, every Madison Square Garden security source that Wired spoke to said that that charge was not true, that it was a smear, but it worked. And that's what I'm saying. This could happen to any of us. You don't have to have done anything wrong. They could, in fact, be the one stalking you for no reason and then turn around and say, oh, she's stalking us, and then ban you. And not for nothing, this is terrible time. If Nina is this big. Knicks fans, the Knicks is finally having a good season for once, and they ban her. When she would post on Instagram, she had, like, a pretty good little Instagram following. She would get lots of engagement on her post. If anything, they ought to be thanking her that she was, like, showing love to their. To their terrible team that has had loss after loss after loss previously. So beyond the stuff with Nina, that trans woman, the former staff that they talk to about the head of Madison Square Garden's head of security just paints a very damning portrait. They say that he's always waving his gun around like he's in that show Miami Vice. I want to be clear that I'm not saying that this guy is on cocaine, but I do really know cocaine behavior, and this sounds like cocaine behavior to me. I'm not making any kind of allegations. I'm not saying he's on cocaine. I'm just saying this sounds like cocaine behavior to me.
- [70:34]
Mike
I mean, former staffers saying that he is always waving his gun around.
- [70:39]
Bridget Todd
What does that sound like to you?
- [70:41]
Mike
That's a pretty weird workplace vibe.
- [70:45]
Bridget Todd
So this is really wild. So the piece spoke to Knicks legend, and honestly, the one person who it sounds like is not afraid of Dolan, Charles Oakley, who used to be a play for the Knicks. They spoke to him on the record. He said that he went to a basketball game and that according to another Madison Square Garden security source that Wired spoke to, there were discussions about tracking Oakley even as he left Madison Square Garden and traveled hundreds of miles away after the game. The source said, quote, they wanted to have us doing covert surveillance operations on him just to see where he was at and what he was doing at the time to try to dig up something to use,
- [71:24]
Mike
just to see.
- [71:25]
Bridget Todd
Just to see what that's like. Hundreds of that. Like, what's. What's. Hundreds of miles away from New York City. That's like, I went to the game in New York City. I drove back to D.C. and they're still fucking following me. Like, that's. I'm sorry, I cannot understand why it makes sense to run a business this way. But. But a series of court cases would later allege that this is just how they did business, that surveillance of perceived enemies like this was just a normal part of doing business. And I don't know. Like, again, this could be just me being naive. I don't understand how it makes sense to run a business this way. Again, I am not alleging anything, but somebody once told me, when you hear something that doesn't make sense, add money or drugs and see if that fills the gap. All I am saying is that adding cocaine works here. That's all I'm saying.
- [72:14]
Mike
It's. It's hard to make a good business case. Why this is helping the bottom line.
- [72:19]
Bridget Todd
They also talk about how this intense reliance on facial recognition technology at the Garden, not only is it like really invasive and scary, but importantly, it is not making the Garden any safer. If anything, it's making it less safe because they are fully relying on this facial recognition technology. People, they're basically like, this technology is all we need. Which is obviously not true. At a big supporting event where everybody is like heated and drinking and not every person who poses an actual threat is it going to be in their database. One staffer was quoted as saying, if there's a fight, no one knows what to do. It's just scary. They can't even have bomb sniffing dogs at the Garden when the Madison Square Garden owner, Dolan or the head of security Eversole is around. Because Dolan doesn't like dogs, man, it
- [73:07]
Mike
seems like a lot of power for one weird dude to have.
- [73:10]
Bridget Todd
He also takes it upon himself to reach out to local police departments in the cities where people that he doesn't like are from and then encourage those police departments to get involved just with people that he doesn't like. They described a situation where one teenager posted a Twitter tweet and that Madison Square Garden security asked local enforcement to look into that teenager and visit him. They scared the crap out of some 14 year old kid in Colorado. One Garden security staffer texted in a message that Wired reviews cops would sometimes ignore these demands, but he and his deputies would then quote, freak the out when a PD somewhere would not play ball.
- [73:55]
Mike
We got to shake down this 14 year old. He tweeted something mean.
- [73:59]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, like genuinely, you might shout like, sell the team at a game and then find yourself in real legal trouble because it hurt this one guy's feelings. And I guess it really goes back to exactly what you were saying that, you know, Dolan is not an outlier. As Wired reports. This is not. He's not an outlier. This is a model. Right. Like, Dolan might be going further than most executives by unleashing these increasingly sophisticated technologies and increasingly common private enforcers on enemy on anyone deemed as an enemy of the day. But that does not make him some uniquely vindictive paranoiac. It puts him on trend. Like the security executive says, we're in a time of private armies now and it's just really scary. Can I tell you about the latest AI generated magababe?
- [74:51]
Mike
Yes, please.
- [74:53]
Bridget Todd
So we told y' all about how these AI generated Trump loving women were taking off on Instagram and how my whole thing is like, how horny and stupid are the men that this works on, that it works on them? Well, this new Wired piece has kind of answered that question for me. Like, just how stupid are the men that this works on? So they talked to a med student in India who was looking to make extra cash. So he used Nana Banana Pro to create an AI generated hot woman. It wasn't really standing out. So he then asked Gemini what he could do to make this AI generated hot woman online Pop. And Gemini was like, make her maga. He says that this guy Sam said that Gemini said that targeting conservative MAGA audiences was a shortcut to success when making like an AI generated hot woman. Gemini noted that older conservative men in the US tend to have more spending power and brand loyalty. So he says, what the hell, I'll try it. And it worked. Sam created Emily Hart, a registered nurse and Jennifer Lawrence lookalike. The stuff that he posts as Emily Hart is so bad and cringy. The on the Instagram account for Emily, EmilyHart, that Nurse Sam posted photos of her ice fishing, drinking Coors Light, and shooting off a few rounds at the rifle range with captions like, if you want a reason to unfollow Christ is king, abortion is murder and all illegals must be deported and things like pov. You were assigned intelligent at birth, but you identify as liberal Clown emoji. Mind you, Sam has never lived in the United States, but he says that he's basically a student of MAGA ideology.
- [76:40]
Mike
Now those are such funny captions. Like, they're horrible, but the fact that they were written by an Indian guy just trying to rip off MAGA people, I gotta admit, I find it funny.
- [76:56]
Bridget Todd
Same. So he says that he didn't really expect this grip to work, but because it was, it seemed too obvious. What? The things that he was writing seemed too on the nose. But to his surprise, it worked and the account grew up. He told Wired every reel I posted was getting 3 million views. 5 million views, 10 million views. Views. The algorithm loved it. Within a month, Emily Hart had more than 10,000 Instagram followers, many of whom Also subscribed to her soft core AI generated content on the only fans competitor, FanView. And between FanView subscriptions and selling MAGA themed T shirts, one sample message reads, ptsd. Pretty tired of stupid Democrats.
- [77:34]
Mike
Oh shit, they got us.
- [77:36]
Bridget Todd
Sam estimates he was making a few thousand dollars a month. He says, I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day and I was making good money for a medical student in India. Even in professional jobs, you can't make this amount of money. I haven't seen an easier way to make money online. And so a big part of this strategy is just kind of taking advantage of the fact that the algorithm prioritizes inflammatory content. So, like, that's why all the captions aren't just like, hey, I'm a conservative. It's hey, you stupid liberals, I'm a conservative. And doesn't that make you mad? Like, you can kind of hear it in the, in the captions. And so he would essentially post rage bait. And while MAGA dudes are like, leaving positive comments and like, I guess checking out the fan view erotic AI generated content, people on the left would be leaving angry comments. And either way, it's all money back in Sam's pocket, baby.
- [78:31]
Mike
I should hate everything about this so much, but I just, maybe I'm just like numb, but I'm just like, good for you, buddy. You figured it out.
- [78:41]
Bridget Todd
So him kind of like realizing that it's inflammatory content that performs very well goes so far as to include Nazi content. The piece reads, Lately he's noticed that pro Nazi, pro Hitler content has been getting especially high engagement on platforms like Reels, speculating that an AI hot Nazi influencer would blow up. It would just break all records. When Wired asked about this claim, a Meta spokesperson said, we prohibit content that glorifies, supports, or represents Nazism and we remove it when we find it.
- [79:10]
Mike
I mean, it's just so funny how he has. His analysis here is detached from any ideological concerns whatsoever. He's just purely gamifying how he can make money on Meta's platforms. And then it's also funny that their response is like, oh, and we remove it when we find it, making it seem like they're doing their best. They're just like a plucky little mom and pop outfit. How could they possibly know what's going on on their platform, what's being recommended to people and what isn't? But, like, the reality is that they have some of the most sophisticated AI in the world and every single video that anyone uploads is getting tagged in a thousand different dimensions to determine what gets shown and what doesn't. They could absolutely do so much more to prevent Nazi content from being on their platform than just saying like, oh, we remove it when we find it all shucks.
- [80:15]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, absolutely agree. So Sam is also posting AI generated erotic and nude content of this AI generated Emily that he's created. He said at first he did not actively promote Emily's fan view account for fear of alienating her conservative MAGA fan base. But then he started using GROK to generate nude images and uploaded them to the platform. And then Emily's fans started sending payments from for that content and exchanging messages. He says I was doing basically nothing and I was just. And it was just flooded with money. He said he made a few thousand dollars off the account in just a few days. Though he did not enjoy the interactive aspects. He said that one guy sent me a video with Emily's nude on a tablet on a pillow, and he was basically recording himself having sex with the pillow. It was incredibly weird. But then he sent me a $50 tip. So I was like, okay, do what you want. Now this is kind of funny and I am pro scamming stupid conservative men out of their money, but this is misogyny, right? Like becoming a sexy woman online to cash in only really works if you see women as a commodity to sort of just be digitally emulated. We sort of get into this in our audiobook Love at First Prompt, which folks can pre order at loverstprompt AI. But an actual human woman doing sex work on the Internet is a lot more likely to be moderated and censored online than an AI generated fake woman being run by a man. Like Instagram only deleted this account after Wired reached out for comment. Like they like it wasn't like Instagram proactively deleted it like they do with so many accounts run by actual human women who are involved in anything even remotely considered related to like erotic content. Right? And so it does create a landscape where actual human women are being erased in this and sort of being replaced by AI that is easily just run by men. Well, interestingly, you might be wondering, would this work if you made a like leftist AI generated babe? No, there seems to be no parallel on the left. Sam learned this when he created a short lived liberal counterpart for Emily on Instagram. He says Democrats just know that it's AI slop, so they don't engage much. Sam's explanation for why MAGA influencer accounts work is blunt. Quote, the MAGA crowd is made up of Dumb people. Like, super dumb people, and they just fall for it. Before we go, you know this about me. If you let me talk about movie and TV recommendations, it would be a whole separate episode. And so I try to, like, rein it in.
- [83:07]
Mike
You do, and you do a pretty good job. But do you have a recommendation that you would like to share with our listeners?
- [83:15]
Bridget Todd
I do, and it is the Comeback on hbo. It's a show that I love. When it first came out, it's got Lisa Kudrow from Friends, and she plays Valerie Cherish, this sitcom star who is trying to, like, relaunch her career. And she's on a show right now that is being written by AI it doesn't have human writers. It is probably the best examination of AI on television right now. It's hilarious. It's super well written, super well acted. And I think it is making the best case for the importance of valuing human creativity and then also, just, like, what it would be like if you truly were working on a show that was entirely AI generated and the problems therein. So for your consideration, the Comeback. You're watching it too, Mike?
- [84:08]
Mike
I am. It's good. It's real funny. So you watched it the first time around because it was on in, like, the early 2000s or something and then was off the air for, like, 15 years, 20 years. And it's funny that it's back. It's funny that it's called the Comeback, and Lisa Kudrow is just, like, so funny in it. Her character. Her character is just so, like, anxious and relentlessly positive and smiling and optimistic. Not optimistic, even, but just like, she has an intense, anxious energy that I feel all of us can relate to, feeling pressure to bring that energy to our professional interactions. And she just does it. It's so funny watching her do it.
- [84:58]
Bridget Todd
I feel like she is a fun. Like, she is me. Like, that's. That's how I see myself. How Valerie Cherish interacts in professional settings. This how I see myself. And now she's engaging with AI And I, for one, want to see what this AI business is all about. That's a quote from the show. So if you're not watching the Comeback, please watch the Comeback. If you are watching, let me know, because I feel like no one's talking about it, and they should. And I hope this was a good show. Thank you all for listening. Mike, thank you for being here. I will see you on the Internet. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. You can reach us@helloangodi.com youm can also find transcripts for today's episode@tangodi.com There are no girls on on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unboss Creative Jonathan Strickland is our Executive producer, Tari Harrison is our producer and Sound Engineer Michael Amato is our contributing producer. Edited by Joey Pat I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [86:19]
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Bridget Todd
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Mike
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Bridget Todd
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Bridget Todd
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Bridget Todd
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