← There Are No Girls on the Internet
There Are No Girls on the Internet
Reese Witherspoon AI Gender Gap; Lauren Sanchez Cosplays Relevance; Online Assault Academy; Flock Spying; Nigerian WhatsApp Smut – NEWS ROUNDUP
01:04:26
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- [00:00]
Bridget Todd
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Sean Duffy
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- [02:43]
Bridget Todd
There are no Girls on the Internet. It's a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There are no Girls on the Intern. Welcome to There are no Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of technology, identity, and social media. And this is another installment of our weekly news roundup where we dig into the stories that you might have missed on the Internet so you don't have to. I gotta start with a little bit of heartbreak here because, Mike, I know you know this about me. I love me some Reese Witherspoon. She's my girl. I like her a lot.
- [03:19]
Mike
We all love Reese Witherspoon. She's just so nice.
- [03:24]
Bridget Todd
You know how you. I. I don't know if. If the white community is the same way, but I know the black community is this way where you might get. You might have, like, your handful of white actors and actresses and like, singers and celebrities that you really like. Reese is one of mine. She. She's. She is. I like her a lot. And so it breaks my heart to have to start with a little bit of less than flattering Reese Witherspoon discourse. Although I don't know if I would call it less than flattering. I'll just tell you what's going on because I'm sure you haven't seen it. So Reese Witherspoon is taking some heat for a video that she posted on social media, basically saying that she was in a book club and that she asked the women of the book club, how many of you ladies use AI? And of the 10 women, only three of them said they use it. And then of those three women, only one said that they felt confident using AI. So Reese Witherspoon made a video and said, women are being left behind because we're not using AI. And she said that technology is the kind of thing that if you don't at least get a little bit familiar with it early on, it advances so quickly that you won't really have time to catch up. What do you think the reaction to this video was online?
- [04:41]
Mike
You know, I have to suspect it might not have been as positive as she was hoping. I feel that the sentiment that everyone should stop what they're doing and rededicate their lives to learning AI is not universally held.
- [04:59]
Bridget Todd
Not universally held is definitely one way to put it. People really did not have a good response to this video. Some people were saying, she's right. This is great. This would not be the first time that she has made a statement like this around technology. Back in 2021, Reese Witherspoon tweeted, quote, crypto is here to stay. I'm committed to supporting creators who have pioneered the NFT space and encouraging more women to be part of the conversation. And she wasn't kidding around. She launched an effort to turn NFTs into movies and TV shows through her production company. It seemed like that didn't really come to fruition.
- [05:41]
Mike
Yeah, because, like, it doesn't make any sense. Like, what? How do you turn an NFT into a movie or a TV show? Am I missing something?
- [05:48]
Bridget Todd
Well, you know what? We forget. But Reese was right. You know, she. She was saying that back in 2021, and here we are five years later, and you know how you can't do anything without hearing about crypto or NFTs, and how women who didn't embrace cryptocurrency and NFTs five years ago, we're all lying dead in a ditch somewhere if we. Luckily, Reese Witherspoon was there to sound the alarm. Don't get left behind on the gravy train of possibility and promise that is NFTs and cryptocurrency. Ladies, aren't we so glad we listened to Rhys?
- [06:23]
Mike
For listeners who can't tell, Bridget's using sarcasm right now, because that is not what happened.
- [06:29]
Bridget Todd
It reminds me of that time we went to south by Southwest, and it was the only thing anybody was talking about was NFTs and crypto. It was everywhere. And then we went again the following year after that kind of petered out, and it was like, crypto who? NFT who? We don't know her. It was like it never happened.
- [06:46]
Mike
I will never forget my experience inside the Crypto Dome at South by Southwest. It was like a miniature Epcot center kind of thing. Like, it looked like it was a geodesic dome, like a giant golf ball that you went inside, and there were all these horrifying images of, like, weird monkey, rabbit, humanoids, like, all over the place that I guess you could buy as NFTs. And then a panel of the dumbest, like, early 20s something dudes opining about just the worst takes and opinions I've ever heard because they were billionaires.
- [07:27]
Bridget Todd
Nothing anybody said there made a lick of sense. Nobody made any sense. It was like they. It was like they were. Yeah, that was my experience too. I did sort of see another interesting conversation arise from all this. So Roxane Gay, the celebrated writer and thinker, replied to Reese's post saying, quote, oh, Reese, absolutely not. And then somebody replied to Roxane Gay. Now, mind you, Roxane Gay is a PhD. She has won like every important literary award there is. She is like a celebrated thinker. She is is celebrated for her ability to write and think and communicate. Somebody replies to Roxane Gay and says, girl, if you're not mastering AI, it'll leave you in the dust. Just like the Internet. It's not going away. Let's use it for good, shall we? Roxanne replies that I'm fitting to be dust. And that's on that.
- [08:27]
Mike
I love how on the Internet people will just like, comment to other people without knowing who they are. Like, I feel like if you knew who Roxane Gay was, you wouldn't say something like that to her.
- [08:40]
Bridget Todd
I thought, I felt like I was losing my mind. I was like, do you not know who you're. First of all, Roxane Gay does not need your career advice. She's Roxane Gay. Who are you? And that's my thing. Like, imagine publicly saying this to Roxane Gay. Imagine telling Roxane Gay that her fabulous, celebrated, decorated, super awarded career, she's going to be left behind in that career as a celebrated thinker if she does not embrace AI. Like, Roxane Gay is a Guggenheim Fellow. That is like the highest honor a person can get for creative work. And she got it by using her own brain. If anyone doesn't need to be getting a lecture about they need to use AI or they're going to get left behind, it's Roxanne fucking Gay. She posted on threads. I have a PhD in rhetoric and technical communication. I speak four languages and read to others. I write books powered by human intelligence. I am proud of that. I am curious and dedicated. I will always, always trust my ability to think and read and make mistakes and grow. I wish that for everyone, you're welcome to distrust your innate talent and use AI and tell yourself that you're cutting edge for it. Don't worry about me. If I'm irrelevant, I will survive. And I really loved that response. You know, it just reminds me of this idea that when people use AI it's like trying to circumvent the messy business, the messy human business of creating. And what Roxane Gay is affirming here is affirming that that is why she creates. She enjoys thinking and being curious and researching and being dedicated and making mistakes and growing. And that's how you put things out into the world. It reminds me, you and I saw the Werner Herzog documentary, what is it? The Cave of Forgotten Dreams. It's a beautiful, immersive documentary where they go into this, like, narrow cave in France to show, I guess, the oldest paintings ever done by a human thousands and thousands of years ago. Right?
- [10:49]
Mike
That's right. They go into, not just a cave in France, the Chauvet Cave, which, as you said, contains the oldest paintings made by humans anywhere in the world. They're, like 32,000 years old. Like, back when the world was covered in ice, sea levels were 300ft lower than they are today. Some human was crawling around in that cave, painting animal figurines on the walls.
- [11:17]
Bridget Todd
And here we are thousands of years later, watching Werner Herzog undertake this incredibly laborious task of going into this narrow cave to film. Like, they're only able to go in an hour at a time, and it's so small, and they can't have any lights, and human breath causes mold to grow. So they have to be, like, very, very delicate. And the movie itself is beautiful if you get a chance to see it. We saw it in IMAX 3D, and it was breathtaking. But when we got out of the movie, the first thing that I could think was about AI, about how the whole point of taking on this laborious process of checking out these cave paintings was that because they were made by people, because they were the earliest versions of humans using art to tell a story and express something to other humans and, like, leave leave a message about what they were seeing and experiencing as one human to another. And here we are, thousands and thousands and thousands of years later, doing all of this work just to check it out. Like, that is the point of expression. And I guess that film really. I just thought that film really affirmed in the power of human creativity and expression and, like, the humanness being the thing that makes it worth a damn and worth anybody wanting to check out. Like, nobody would be undertaking that laborious process to check out some AI Nick 5000 years in the future. I don't think people are going to be doing that, to check out somebody's AI renderings or something. And, yeah, I think. I think that's what Roxane Gay is affirming here, too.
- [12:49]
Mike
Totally.
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Sean Duffy
Yeah.
- [12:50]
Mike
I loved that framing of it, of thinking about that movie in terms of what it tells us about AI and the fact that, like you said, we were so intensely interested about what these people did tens of thousands of years ago, not because of some intrinsic property of the way they drew a cave bear or a horse, but because of what it could tell us about these people and what learning about them could help us understand about ourselves. Like, that's the point of art and literature and creativity.
- [13:25]
Bridget Todd
Exactly. And I guess I'm just a little surprised to see Reese Witherspoon, someone who is a creative herself, someone who has now, you know, gone from TV and film to producing to the literary space. I am, as a creative. Most creatives I know are really keen about creative expression being something that is for humans, by humans. And so it's always surprising to me when I hear another creative, like, Diplo was saying something very similar, which, like, who would expect much different from Diplo? But he basically was saying, oh, I don't even need human singers anymore. I have AI. And if you're a creative that's not embracing AI, you're going to get left behind the same kind of rhetoric. And I just. I can't understand, like, that's such a
- [14:11]
Mike
shocking thing to say. Like, it's not even. Like, he can't afford human singers, right?
- [14:17]
Bridget Todd
He's.
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Mike
He's gotta be rich. He's been making music for decades. Like, why wouldn't he want human singers? That's what I don't see in all of this.
- [14:25]
Bridget Todd
Humans are humans. Sometimes humans have throat problems. Sometimes humans have a bad session. Like, but that's the point of working with humans. Like, you don't get to pick the parts of expression that you like and then discard the rest. And I guess I say that to say something I. Diplo aside, something that I have seen a little bit more of an uptick of lately that I just want to name because I kind of sense we're going to this space AI as a. Getting. Particularly getting women invested and involved in AI as almost like a feminist issue. The way that Reese Witherspoon was talking about this was I'm trying to get women invested in AI because women are being left behind. And it's like a feminist issue. I'm not even necessarily saying that people shouldn't use AI or like, you know, I'm not even. I'm not even trying to make this into like an anti AI screed or something. But you don't have to tell me that it's a, it's a feminist calling to use AI. If you're going to use AI, I guess use AI. But I don't, I don't, I don't need the rhetoric of it being wrapped up in the veneer of feminism. That's what I don't like. And I've just seen a little bit more of an uptick in this. I mean, the same way that she talked about cryptocurrency and NFTs. I think if those are domains that are of value to you, sure. But don't tell me that you're Angela Davis here or something by trying to get women to use AI, you don't need to do that. Just use AI. If you're going to use AI, trying
- [16:00]
Mike
to sell it as a moral good starts to make it feel more like marketing for the product than some kind of beneficent tool.
- [16:10]
Bridget Todd
Do you remember back during the crypto and NFT craze when so many celebrities were essentially making what I suspected were undisclosed ads for cryptocurrency and NFTs? I want to bring this up because I'm getting a little bit of a whiff of that now. I could be wrong. I don't have any kind of inside information. This is just my sense. Something about this has the width of an undisclosed ad to me that maybe money has changed hands, maybe an investment has been made somewhere or in a portfolio and now some celebrities have gotten the message or the memo that I need to get women specifically involved in AI. I'm just sensing this coordinated push to sell AI to women.
- [16:57]
Mike
It does feel a little bit like a, like a setup for a one, two punch of like, oh, here's this problem. We have to give AI to women. Wouldn't it be surprising if down the road there was some kind of program or funding opportunity or yeah, products to be sold to meet that need? Wouldn't that just be surprising?
- [17:21]
Bridget Todd
Let's keep our heads on a swivel on this one. And I will say that the research about women in AI Reese isn't totally wrong. It is true that women are using AI less than men in workplaces. We did an entire episode digging into the research on why this is that we'll put in the show notes. But the too long, didn't read version is that I don't think that women are embracing AI less because we're too timid or we don't know how or we're too stupid to figure it out. I think that we are being skeptical and cautious and judicious. And I don't necessarily get down with kind of automatically framing that as a bad thing. So we'll put that episode in the show notes. But yeah, let us know what you think. Let's take a quick break.
- [18:15]
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- [20:31]
Bridget Todd
And we're back. We have talked about Flock a handful of times on the podcast. Never anything good. According to the research that I did for this segment, people are like, oh, well, there's been crimes that Flock has helped solve, like violent crimes that Flock has helped solve. I'm not doubting that. But the stories that I have heard about Flock being used for some absolutely gnarly surveillance stuff is very upsetting. And that's another one of these stories. And so just imagine for a moment, if you will, a security camera being put outside of your kid's gymnastics class or inside the pool where your kid swims. Now imagine that a sales employee at a private tech company, somebody that you've never heard of, a stranger in a city that you don't live in, is watching a live feed of that camera for hours and then coming back later to watch the pool. That is not a hypothetical situation. That is something that is going on in Dunwoody, Georgia, where a parent named Jason Hunyar says that he found buried in audit logs after filing a public records request with Dunwoody, his city.
- [21:48]
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And.
- [21:48]
Bridget Todd
And now all of this is at the center of a fight that is playing out in city council meetings across the country over Flock. So if that name Flock sounds familiar, we talked about it in a story about a woman who was falsely accused of stealing Amazon packages from someone's doorstep because a Flock camera essentially just caught her driving into the city. Another story where Flock cameras were used to track down a woman who police suspected of having had an abortion, and they used Flock cameras to track down her license plate. So Flock basically is this company that sells automated license plate readers, which is basically just code for surveillance cameras, to local police departments. They have over 80,000 cameras in their network across the country. And what makes them particularly attractive to police is that all of those cameras are connected. A police department in Dunwoody, Georgia, can search plates that were spotted all the way in Chicago or Toledo or any other place that Flock has a presence. So it sounds like Dunwoody, Georgia was an early adopter of Flock. Like, they're a city that really sort of bills itself as tech enabled. They're kind of kind of amenable to new technology. The city built an entire real time crime center around Flocks technology. They spent $360,000 on this flock facility itself and close to half a million dollars a year on Flock's network. So in Dunwoody, it's not just police cameras, but cameras that are owned by local businesses as well, that are on this network. Which brings us to that parent that I mentioned, Jason Hunyar. So he's a Dunwoody resident and a parent who basically just doesn't want Flock in his community. So he started filing open records requests after the city's contract with Flock came up for renewal. And he got back these audit logs, which were records of who had been able to access the city's camera network, when they were able to access it, and what exactly they looked at. And what he found is, let's just call it alarming. For starters, the city had been telling residents that only two neighboring police departments in Brookhaven and Shambley could view these live cameras. But the logs that he found suggested otherwise. According to his analysis, over 1200 external agencies have been granted permission to view the live streams from Dunwoody cameras since the start of 2025 alone. Now, one thing that I should note is that he was careful to say that the logs that he found represented changes logged in the system, so not necessarily confirmed viewings. The audit logs that he got were a record of access permissions that were granted to outside agencies, so not necessarily when those agencies actually logged in and actually watched footage. So that 1271 number reflects agencies that were given the ability to view live streams, not agencies that definitely did sit down and view those streams. Does that make sense?
- [24:52]
Mike
It does make sense, and it's important distinction. But, you know, once somebody has access and it sounds like they didn't have great record keeping of who wasn't watching, so, you know, once people have access, it's. Who knows what they might do with it.
- [25:11]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. So it's not even necessarily the question of whether or not people were actually sitting down and looking at this footage. It said it was the access was granted at that scale without any kind of public knowledge. It gets even worse because there's this jcc, a Jewish community center, the Marcus Jewish Community Center. I don't know if Every city has JCCS. We have them here in D.C. but they're basically like a rec center and a gym. Folks can go there and work out. They usually have, like, pickleball courts or tennis courts. Sometimes they have, you know, pools for kids and, like, daycares and things like that. And basically a community center. So the Marcus JCC had cameras on Flock's network. And critically, these cameras were labeled do not share. Hunyar says that he found that those feeds were shared with outside agencies anyway, even though they were labeled do not share. So when he raised it with the chief of police, that sharing appeared to be removed. But he couldn't figure out who made that change. And the user who made the change does not appear anywhere in the system's own user log. So that's pretty, pretty curious. And probably one of the biggest deals to me here is that Flock's own employees, so not police, not city staff, but unelected salespeople and business development managers at Flock, had owner level access to Dunwoody's entire camera network. And you better believe they were using that access. He says that he identified a business development manager in Raleigh who, according to the logs, clicked through five traffic cameras before landing on the Dudwoody library camera. And then he didn't look at anything else for two hours. Two days later, that same employee pulled up cameras at that Jewish community center. He browsed through cameras showing a baseball field, a gym, and then settled on the main pool camera. 3 1/2 hours then passed before his next login. Then there's a VP at Flock, someone in strategic relations and business development who he says accessed the camera system 185 times in just over a year on one occasion. His single view that day was the gymnastics room at the jcc. So again, I just want to be clear that I'm not saying, and I don't think that this parent is saying that, you know, anything, I don't think that he's making any kind of allegations, but that is. But this, but according to these logs, this is what happened.
- [27:42]
Mike
And so like, I mean, I'll make allegations. Explain yourself. Like, what possible reason could there be for a sales executive to be viewing a gymnastics room at effect, you know, at a community center where kids hang out? Like, I feel that's a pretty reasonable question to like put to them. Like, what possible reason could there be?
- [28:07]
Bridget Todd
Well, I can answer that for you because Hunyar shared all of this with the city council. And Flock's public position is that their employees only access customer systems for technical support. But he points out that the audit logs don't capture how long someone watches, only when they started watching. So there's really no way to say what they saw and how for how long they saw it. So yeah, their position is like, oh, we're watching the girls gymnastics studio for technical support to provide you a better service.
- [28:39]
Mike
I'd love to see like the ticket that was put in that prompted this support call. Unless their technicians are just like, have so much time on their hands that they're just randomly Spot checking every camera in the system. If they're doing technical support, like what. What are they supporting in a technical way?
- [28:58]
Bridget Todd
Your daughter at the pool. That's what they're supporting in a technical way.
- [29:03]
Mike
Yeah. I mean, it sounds pretty creepy, I guess. I don't know who was doing what, but the portrait that's painted by these logs is a pretty creepy one.
- [29:12]
Bridget Todd
So this is actually pretty interesting. Flock, their defenders, and the company itself, they argue that they are being singled out partly because they are more transparent than their competitors. And that is kind of true. Like, they have a public transparency portal. They do cooperate somewhat with security researchers up to a point. Other companies like Motorola or Axon run similar networks, and they've mostly avoided this kind of scrutiny because they're harder to audit and, like, a little bit less transparent. But Hunyar's records really do suggest that Flock's own auditing process has pretty big gaps. So they have issues like users not appearing in the official logs, or the fact that an account called Auto Approved that shared Dunwoody's data with outside agencies nearly 2,000 times with no kind of human review or oversight, or the fact that Multi Factor Authentication was disabled for users by Flock employees. Then there's also the question of immigration, because reporting from 404 Media found that local police around the country have used Flock's network to assist in federal immigration enforcement. Even in cities that have policies against cooperating with ice, Dunwoody's own police chief acknowledged that an agency connected to ICE could potentially search their database. So I guess to your point earlier, it makes me sad that there are people who believe that this level of surveillance would be, let alone would be effective, but would be a reasonable price to pay if it. If it made you feel safer if it happened, you know, like, I can only speak for myself. Even if this kind of surveillance did solve a crime or two, to me, this is not. This is not a reasonable exchange. Having it be like any stranger can access the cameras outside of the pool, outside of the gym, and all of that, where your kids go. That is not a reasonable exchange. Even if it did happen to solve a crime or two, which, to be honest, I'm not even. I haven't even really seen compelling evidence towards that.
- [31:20]
Mike
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
- [31:22]
Sean Duffy
I.
- [31:23]
Mike
It just feels like privacy is valued not at all in these kinds of discussions. And that's just crazy because I feel like if you actually talked with most people, like, hey, do you think it's cool for some creep at a tech company thousand miles Away to just like creep on your kid anytime they want. They would say no. Right? Like, they would probably be willing to pay money to prevent that exact thing because they value their privacy and the privacy of their loved ones. And yet somehow Flock has been able to convince police departments and communities around the country that actually it's fine and privacy is worthless.
- [32:10]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I completely agree. And I also think there's something going on where I think there's a dynamic where your kids being creeped on by Flock staff is not bad. But somebody from out of town coming and committing a crime, that's the only thing you need to be worried about. I think it's like a. Like a mental dynamic about what is or is not crime or what is or is not bad. I think it's like, yeah, if these grown man strangers have unprecedented access to intimate spaces where you and your kids are every single day and you have no public insight or knowledge or transparency into it, that's actually fine. What you got to be worried about is creeps from out of town coming in and bad guys. You know what I mean?
- [33:01]
Mike
Yeah, bad guys. It's fine for the good guys to have this kind of access. They're good guys. But we got to keep a close eye on those bad guys.
- [33:11]
Bridget Todd
So Dunwoody has now postponed renewing its Flock contract twice. At the last city council meeting. Honey, are the parent who underwent this open records request to get all of these logs showed up in person and. And personally offered to help pay for an independent security and ethics audit before the city signs anything new. And his argument, I think, is pretty simple. You cannot open a barber shop or a restaurant in town without a safety inspection. Why should Flock, a company with cameras who are watching your kids gymnastics class, be any different than somebody trying to open a restaurant or a barber shop? He provided meticulous copies of all of these logs that he got from this audit in his substack. And we'll put the link to that in the show notes. It's a. It's a pretty in depth read.
- [33:57]
Mike
Yeah. It sounds like he really put a lot of time and effort into this. I really respect the commitment to going after these guys.
- [34:07]
Bridget Todd
Speaking of going after guys, this is a little bit of a tough one. Huge, big trigger warning up top. This is a very upsetting story involving sexual assault. And I. It's not a new story. It's a story that I think I had put it in the outline to talk about a few weeks ago. I'll just be honest and say it was a story that I had a lot of trouble with. And I think we didn't discuss it because it was so rough. And it's kind of been making the rounds again. And so I thought, like, well, this is a story that we have to talk about. But yeah. So I just want to own up top that this is not a new story. When it was new, I didn't really feel up to covering it. But now that it's back again, we can get into it. So by now, most of y' all have heard of the story of Giselle Pellico. She was a woman in France who had been being drugged by her husband for nearly a decade and assaulted by dozens of men that he would recruit online. Her husband also abused his daughter, Caroline. It was one of the most shocking trials and recent memory. And when it ended, I think a lot of people just assumed that story was over. The website where her husband had been recruiting men was shut down. And I think a lot of people just were like, okay, case closed, justice served. Moved on. But this new investigation from CNN called Exposing a Global Rape army really exposes the sort of ongoing online infrastructure that allows men to encourage one another to drug and assault the women in their lives and to swap tips on how they can get away with it. And this CNN investigation, it's a. It's a very, very deep dive. I'll put it in the show notes, but, like, again, huge trigger warning. You have to actually click through a few times to get to the story because it's so upsetting. This CNN investigation really suggest that we moved on too quickly and really saw this as an isolated case, when in reality, it is a much broader problem than perhaps we would like to admit. So the CNN team, as equals, spent months investigating what they describe as this hidden online ecosystem where men are giving advice to each other about drugging and assaulting their partners, and they coach each other about how they can avoid getting caught. They found that it is not really a small fringe phenomenon like on a. On the deep, dark web. Some of it is, but a lot of it is on mainstream platforms in basically plain sight, racking up hundreds and thousands of views. So their investigation centered around this site called motherless.com, which describes itself as, quote, a moral free file host where anything legal is hosted forever. Motherless gets around 62 million visits a month, and its core audience is here in the U.S. cNN found more than 20,000 videos in a specific category on the site, organized with tags that signal a woman is unconscious or asleep. And some of those individual videos of women who These tags suggest are unconscious or asleep have over 50,000 views. So inside the communities that are sort of built to spring up around this kind of content, people are not just passively watching it. They're also talking and communicating and kind of like building a brotherhood with each other. They share methods, they talk about dosages of how to knock women out. One user even claimed to be running a business shipping so called, what he called, quote, sleeping liquids to addresses around the world. CNN even found evidence of men live streaming assaults to paying viewers with cryptocurrency being used to keep those transactions anonymous. So the piece really centers around the stories of three different survivors who, you know, the details of what they went through with their partners are different, but they all have, like, very similar broad strokes. So there's one woman in Devon, England, who found out in 2018 that her husband of 16 years had been giving her a cup of tea every night that was drugged and assaulting her while she was sleeping for years. Her husband, she says that one day they were getting ready for church and her husband just sat her down and admitted this. This little detail I found to be so heartbreaking, which was that after this, she was really left questioning all of her in all of the, like, intimate, little quiet moments that she had with her husband. She says, quote, at the end of a very busy day, I was just grateful I had a cup of tea before I went to bed because I was so tired and I didn't have to make it. You don't expect anything other than innocence to come from your partner. And it just made me so sad that she was like, thought that this was like a nice, intimate nightly gesture. And why. Why would you question it? Because this is someone that you're married to and that you are. Have. You have, like, trained yourself to not question the sweet, intimate moments that happen in your relationship in your own home?
- [39:33]
Mike
That's very dark. I mean, that's the sort of thing that you might imagine in a movie or something, you know, just the betrayal of it.
- [39:45]
Bridget Todd
That's exactly what she said. That for her, the hardest part was not the abuse itself. It was rebuilding that sense of reality afterward after going through somebody, something like that and being betrayed in that way. She said you don't worry about who it is that you lie next to. Right? Like this idea that, I mean, kind of like what we were saying before, like, you as women, we often are thinking about, you know, or at least told to be thinking about external threats, like bad guys in dark alleys. But, like, the reality is sometimes the threat is lying next to you in bed. Sometimes the threat is the person that you marry. Sometimes the threat is in your same house, like giving you a cup of tea every night. Another woman they spoke to in Wigan in northwest England said that she spent years waking up disoriented with no memory of how she had fallen asleep, but with physical signs that something had happened to her. When she confronted her partner, he basically just gaslighted her. He told her that she was imagining it, that she was on too much medication and hallucinating it, that she was, in her words, mental or crazy. She actually credits Gisele Pellico's story and public testimony with giving her the courage to speak out. And now she's basically become this like, advocate to raise awareness, to encourage other women to just trust their instincts, like when something doesn't feel right or something feels wrong, to trust that instinct. They spoke to a third survivor in northern Italy who only discovered what had happened to her when she said that she found videos that her husband had made. Her husband was actually sentenced to eight years in prison and years later she told cnn, no matter how much you brush it off, it's always right there beside you. So just the piece includes like a video breakout of each survivor. We'll put it in the show notes, but again, it's very dark. The whole piece is worth reading for sure. Let's take a quick break.
- [41:54]
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- [44:37]
Bridget Todd
And we're back. So we're talking about the CNN piece about these so called online rape academies where men swap tips on how they can assault their sleeping or drugged partners and what a pervasive problem it actually is.
- [44:53]
Mike
So why does this keep happening?
- [44:55]
Bridget Todd
So in the piece, CNN spoke to experts who sort of pointed to a few different reasons why this is such a pervasive problem. The first is that the drugs being used have really changed. Perpetrators are increasingly using common medications that really act fast and then don't leave a lot of traces of them in the body. So it makes it harder to prosecute cases like this than it would if they were using what we used to call like quote, date rape drugs of the past. Like they're like, that's not what is being used here, that the drugs being used have really changed. Second is just that reporting rates are understandably extremely low Because a lot of the victims that this happens to don't even necessarily remember that it happens. And so even if they might sense that something is wrong, they might face disbelief, including in a lot of these cases, disbelief from the police who are meant to be helping them. One of the victims that they spoke to told CNN that she actually brought video evidence of her passed out or asleep being assaulted by her partner and that the police told her that that was not going to be usable as evidence because it looked like in the video that she was just pretending to be asleep. And we really did see that a lot in the Pellico case, that the men who participated in this, they, they, I mean in their testimony they talked about like, I, I assume that she had to be playing some sort of a game, that she was in on it or wanted it in some way. And it, it sounds like that is like a pervasive attitude of like, oh, well, even though I'm being confronted with video, even though I'm a police officer and I'm being confronted with video evidence of you being assaulted, certainly you're just pretending to be asleep and actually are not being assaulted at all. It's consensual. There's also an algorithmic component to why this is such a pervasive problem as well. You know, I don't think anybody listening is any stranger to the idea that some forms of pornography have sort of normalized violence against women as entertainment. And then we know that algorithms favor increasingly extreme content and, and push that exploitative material into the mainstream. That's just like a thing that we know about how online content works. And so that's another kind of like pervasive part of it is it's like people are seeing more of it and that content and it kind of becomes like what is normalized. And then I think another bit here is the, is the sort of brotherhood angle that I talked about earlier. Uh, CNN spoke to Sandrine Josso, who was a French lawmaker who after being drugged by a former French senator, has again become an advocate and campaign to raise awareness about drug facilitated sexual abuse. She basically says these, she calls these schools of violence, saying quote, I would even call them an online rape academy where every subject is taught. There are all the subjects and disciplines needed to become a good rapist or sexual predator. And so it seems like from the piece that the, there's a dynamic around this that links the men together in a kind of dark brotherhood. They have like a shared secret. And that, that also is one of the reasons why this can be so pervasive is that like it's not just men committing crimes solo, it's men creating the world's most fucked up community around committing such horrible acts. And like that can be a kind of self sustaining issue as well. And then lastly, and this is the bit that I think CNN really drills into the hardest, is that the platforms hosting the content have largely avoided accountability. The piece reads, Motherless.com has avoided being targeted for the type of content posted on its site due to US safe harbor protections that largely shield platform owners from direct liability for their users uploads. This creates spaces where men like Pellico can operate behind a veil of anonymity. Their abuse is too often invisible, despite being plotted in plain sight. In the UK, the regulator Ofcom investigated motherless.com not because of its content, but for a paperwork issue. And that investigation was closed after the company just filed the correct forms. During the trial against her husband, Giselle Pellico said that something that really stuck with me, which is that the shame must change sides. It's a little bit complicated because as I said earlier, her daughter was also a victim of their, her father's abuse. And that's something that her mother does not acknowledge. And so like I just want to own that Giselle is saying this to me, like incredibly powerful statement about shame needing to change sides while her daughter says like, well, I continue to be stigmatized for speaking up about what I experienced also. But I think that is is is right on its face, right? Like the women who spoke to CNN for this investigation, they all said the same thing, that this is just not being taken seriously. Whether it's not being taken seriously by the platforms, by the laws, by the lawmakers, by police that like this thing is happening, it's happening in dark corners of the Internet, but also essentially in plain sight and nothing is being done. And so we'll again, we'll link to the entire piece in the show notes. It is a rough read, but these women coming forward are so brave and so powerful that I think we should be honoring their stories. Well, after that, I think maybe you could use a little bit of good news.
- [50:38]
Mike
Yeah, I could definitely use a little bit of a pick me up. Did something good happen?
- [50:41]
Bridget Todd
All right, so I read this piece in the New York Times that I can't, I'm like, I was, I'm like smiling from ear to ear as I think about it. So women in Nigeria are loving steamy romance novels. And the New York Times has this great piece about how the women who write These novels disseminate their steamy writing to get around the country's censors. The piece reads, quote, for decades, northern Nigeria has been home to a booming industry of romance novels written in Hausa by and for women. But in a region that operates under a dual legal system where Sharia law exists alongside secular courts to strictly regulate public morality, steamier stories are deemed immoral. Some books have been publicly burned by zealous officials. So against this backdrop, what are these women who want to write steamy romance stories doing? Well, a new wave of writers is putting out much more explicit and graphic content and releasing it in installments on WhatsApp, where religious authorities and government censors basically can't do anything about it because it's a closed network. And since those regulators and censors are really zeroed in on print writing, and so they're like, hey, I'm not publishing a book. I'm just publishing my stuff on WhatsApp. They basically are untouchable. A lot of these women writers have to hide their identities to avoid getting in trouble with the morality of police. But the Times spoke to one woman romance writer who goes by the name Om Hyran, who is proud to be a writer of erotica, and she says that it sounds like her smut writing has basically turned her into a celebrity in her small village in Nigeria. That, like, she's like, oh, women and girls come up to me and they're like, I want to be like you. I want to write just like you. And she's, she's like a celeb in her village. So the Times spoke to this writer and she says, they say that we're helping spoil culture and religion in society. But I see erotic writing as vital in society. That's what's happening. So through writing, people learn about it. SIS has built up a whole financial and tech infrastructure built around WhatsApp. So the Times writes that writers like her hook readers with free chapters in huge WhatsApp groups, dropping a paywall at cliffhangers to read on. Fans must use mobile money to buy temporary book specific groups which are shut down once the serialization is complete, paying more guarantees, faster updates, while an expensive special woman tier delivers chapters via private message for ultimate Privacy, vendors pay 6,500 naira or $4.70 a week to advertise their wares, including lingerie, aphrodisiacs and kitchenware in the groups. This is exactly what you were just talking about, this idea that people are going to find a way. You know, we have this attitude that, oh, everybody's going along with the program. No, people want. Women want to read their romance and like, sell their lingerie and, you know, I don't know, like, leave it to a woman who wants to sell or read smut to figure out some sort of a tech workaround that the government can't touch.
- [53:57]
Mike
Yeah, and not just a workaround, but like you said, it sounds like she's built a whole infrastructure of like, a financial ecosystem within just WhatsApp. It's, it's pretty impressive.
- [54:08]
Bridget Todd
So her biggest hit book is called Gidan uncle, which came out in 2019. More than 55,000 people read it on Wattpad, which is like a fan fiction storytelling site. And then likely an additional 20,000 plus people on WhatsApp. So unfortunately, she did have to go before the morality police, who told her that she needed to make her writing less erotic. But then she was like, aha, you've outed yourself. She says, they told me I was committing a very big sin. She said, laughing. She shot back, how could they know that unless they were also reading her books? Got em. So it really sounds like a climate that it's all about control and, like, cracking down on things. The Times spoke about how this one children's book was banned. And the guy who heads up the censorship board impounded 55,000 copies of this children's book, which is like a rhyming book for kids called Queen Premier ii. So this is the verse that got this children's book banned. Ben and Tom may jump in the hay. Is this the way? Yes. Let us be gay. The New York Times notes the book was published in the late 19th century when the word gay was meant to use to be to say happy. But that passage got the book banned. And so this guy who runs the censorship board made it pretty clear that the whole thing is about control. That, like, he, he understands that he cannot control what these women are doing and reading and exchanging on WhatsApp. So what the hell, we're going to impound these very benign kids books that include these, like, not controversial at all rhymes? Because you got, you got to ban something, right?
- [55:54]
Mike
Yeah, you gotta ban something. Otherwise you just look weak. Weak on books.
- [55:58]
Bridget Todd
Weak on books. Just like the Pope is soft on crime. This guy doesn't want to look weak on books. So he told the Times that when it came to social media and online content, like the erotic writers, he understands the board has very little power. Quote, there are things that you just have to overlook, but at least you can control the little you have which I feel like is so telling.
- [56:22]
Mike
It sounds like a very self aware morality police head of censorship which is such a strange concept.
- [56:33]
Bridget Todd
Yes. Yeah, shout out to these Nigerian smut queens.
- [56:38]
Mike
Yeah, write it. We'll we'll promote your smut right here on the show.
- [56:43]
Bridget Todd
Oh I'm I am like a voracious reader of smut. I will like drop a what let me in the WhatsApp group. I will like star your I will give you a starred review. More after a quick break.
- [57:04]
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- [59:29]
Bridget Todd
Let's get right back into it. Okay, Mike, can we close out with me being a little bit bitchy?
- [59:42]
Mike
I believe that we can. I've seen it before.
- [59:45]
Bridget Todd
You're like, I believe in your ability to be a little bitchy. I've seen it in action.
- [59:49]
Mike
Who has you wanting to be a little bitchy tonight?
- [59:55]
Bridget Todd
It's Lauren Sanchez. Did you read the piece in the New York Times?
- [60:00]
Mike
I did read that piece in the New York Times. What a strange world we live in. That. That very long piece was written in the New York Times.
- [60:10]
Bridget Todd
So the Times has this piece called Someone has to be happy. Why not Lauren Sanchez Bezos? As half of the unfathomably powerful couple, Ms. Sanchez Bezos seems to have influenced the uber rich to stop apologizing and to start enjoying themselves. Side note, when were the rich not enjoying themselves? Like we had, like, what is this reality where like the rich have just been like really downtrodden and like pretending not to have a good time? What are they talking about?
- [60:44]
Mike
You know what it reminded me of? Do you remember when Occupy Wall street was happening, which I believe was like 2012, so I guess it was a while ago, but there were all these stories that kept coming out about how the very wealthy, like couldn't drive around in limousines anymore and if they were gonna step out of their limousine, they might be yelled at. And this was so cruel and unfair to the extremely wealthy. Do you remember those stories?
- [61:17]
Bridget Todd
I do remember it. I also, I mean, I was a participant of Occupy Wall street and I remember images of wealthy people from penthouse balconies. I'll see if I can find some and put em in the show notes. You could google this. But like the optics could not have been more like a man draped in furs drinking champagne as he looks down on the peons below, marching in the
- [61:44]
Mike
streets, standing next to Mr. Peanut up on that balcony with his monocle like base.
- [61:50]
Bridget Todd
Basically that. Basically that. So this piece, it's. First of all, it's very long. Second of all, it says nothing like the. I looked up the. I was like, who even was tasked with writing this? It's Amy Czek. She seems to be the writer when. It's like when you gotta humanize a rich lady, you go with Amy. She's the best. She wrote the Very splashy profile of Elizabeth Holmes from Serenos when remember the, like rebrand.
- [62:25]
Mike
Elizabeth Holmes is.
- [62:26]
Bridget Todd
Sorry, like that rebrand. They put Amy on it. They had to go for the best. It's Amy.
- [62:32]
Mike
Okay, so she's got a beat.
- [62:34]
Bridget Todd
Yes, it is. This rich lady isn't so bad.
- [62:39]
Mike
Yeah. Here are some reasons that she's just like us.
- [62:42]
Bridget Todd
I don't believe a goddamn word of this. Okay, let me. Let me just read this to you. There is no way this is true. She and Mr. Bezos do everything together. On a typical day, the newlyweds wake up around six and their new roughly $230 million compound on Indian Lake, an exclusive private island in Miami often called the billionaire bunker. That part is true. No trouble believing that. They do not touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they're grateful for. And they can't repeat what they named the day before. Bogus. Not true. Just does that. That's like when you ask when someone is like, what is your morning routine? And I'm like, well, I wake up. I don't touch my phone for a full hour. I do some light, sweet stretching. I have some lemon water. I do my morning pages as I reflect. And when as soon as you hear someone say that, you're like, I think this person's lying.
- [63:33]
Mike
Yeah, like maybe some of those things happened once. Yeah, this is not what you do every day.
- [63:39]
Bridget Todd
I. My. As I read, my eyes rolled so far back in my head, I worried they were going to get stuck. The article goes on to describe the ways that Jeff Bezos has changed. Changed since meeting Lauren Sanchez. You might remember that when they were first engaging with each other, we got copies of their text messages while they were married, by the way. And Bezos to Lauren Sanchez was like, you alive, girl? You. You. You like. Basically, it's, like, clear that Lauren Sanchez was sort of his, like, you know, lively thing compared to his boring old wife who just supported him through starting a company and gives money to philanthropy. Philanthropic causes.
- [64:29]
Mike
Boo.
- [64:30]
Bridget Todd
Boring. So they're definitely seeding the like. Jeff Bezos is stylish and youthful and happy now that he's married to Lauren Sanchez. The article describes Bezos 2.0 as, quote, a man who has discovered joy, love and cosmetic dermatology.
- [64:49]
Mike
I do like that they got in like that little dig and a couple others here and there.
- [64:54]
Bridget Todd
So this is again, I think this is one of those articles where if you read between the lines, the cracks are showing. The article claims that they both rely on each other for Advice on everything. Lauren gives an example of how Jeff suggested that she changed the COVID of the illustration of her children's book about a dyslexic fly that goes on an adventure. No examples are provided of her providing counsel on the way that he runs Amazon or the Washington Post. Later in the article, when she's asked about widespread layoffs at the Post, which her husband owns and micromanages to his, like, political and economic benefit, she said, I don't make those business decisions, so I can't really answer them. I thought you guys rely on advice with each other. Side note, there is a very interesting lawsuit about whether or not Lauren Sanchez said stole that book idea from her best friend. And the only outlet that has it is Daily Mail. So, like, take it with like a zillion grains of salt. The falling out with her best friend began at a party wherein the best Lawrence, everyone knew that Lauren Sanchez's thing was doing a specific dance to that Black Eyed Peace song. Boom Boom Pow. Like that. Like, she, like, she was like that. Everybody knew that was my thing. And. And that she got into an argument with her best friend over who danced better to Black Eyed Peas's Boom Boom Pow at a party. And that began the falling out between these two women that ended in a lawsuit over whether or not Lauren Sanchez stole her children's book about a dyslexic fly from this friend who tried to show her up dancing a Black Eyed Peas. I'm not making this up. I don't know if it's true or not because I only read it in Daily Mail, but, like, there you go. The article goes on about all of these deep, profound impacts that Lauren Sanchez has made on culture. So writes, quote, she hasn't just changed Mr. Bezos into a man who hosts Kris Jenner's James Bond themed 70th birthday party at his LA home. Sometimes it seems she's taken the entire culture with her. Now, this is where I'm like, this is PR dark arts. Somebody has paid somebody to make Lauren Sanchez is the culture now happen. You know, like, like, I don't. I'm not buying it.
- [67:15]
Mike
No. You know, I know that sometimes we talk about how we live in different Internets and, like, don't see the same stuff in our feeds. But when I open up my phone, nobody is talking about how Lauren Sanchez Bezos is making the culture, like, leading culture. This tour de force that is redefining what it means to be a wealthy American. Like, she's just the new wife of Bezos.
- [67:45]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. And I Don't care how many times he sends her, tries to send her to space. I don't care if he tries to buy her Vogue magazine. I don't care that he's using his obscene wealth to buy the Met Ball. By the way, I saw this. These videos of people putting up Subway advertisements in the New York Subways. Basically being like, jeff Bezos, Met Ball brought to you by the Met and human suffering. Also, like, if these people are the culture, the culture has not been informed, I guess, is what I'm saying. And also, I mean, I could talk all day. They're also tacky as shit. Like, that's my biggest thing is like, she's now being dressed by Law Roach, who dresses Zendaya. And like, you know, I love Law Roach. Do what you got to do, you know, get your money, I guess. But like, she look back, like, she can't even. She has all this money and she still look bad. Like, her. Like, it's like all the money in the world and it's like, you still look tacky. The clothes don't. The clothes aren't closing. And like, so. And I just can really see the machinations of trying to make Lauren Sanchez happen, sort of. I think the article is really an attempt to co brand Lauren Sanchez with joy. Like, that's like. If there was a thesis of the article, it is that Lauren Sanchez is actually not so bad and really happy. And is that so bad? It's what's so wrong with being happy anymore? Can't anybody be wealthy and happy anymore?
- [69:16]
Mike
Yeah, I think that's pretty much the main message of the article that it just tries to force on us over and over.
- [69:25]
Bridget Todd
Yes. And that it's not just about happiness in her household and in her marriage. It's also that she's transforming American culture and expectations that now rich people are allowed to ride around in their limousine and furs again, finally. And I just think the larger conversation about who is this for? Because I read the whole article and I left being like, why did they even greenlight this? You know, I think it's incredibly out of step with what people are actually thinking about and feeling right now. I don't know a single person who was like, is Lawrence Sanchez happy? I need to read an article and find out.
- [70:05]
Mike
No one is asking that. No one wants to hear it. No one is curious about it. It's a great question. Who is this for? Maybe it's a very small audience.
- [70:18]
Bridget Todd
I have a little bit of tea for you, which I can tell you who is not Interested in this article and that is Lauren Sanchez's brother. He posted on Medium. I will just read you a little snippet of it. You know how Medium tells you how long it'll take to read something?
- [70:39]
Mike
Yeah.
- [70:39]
Bridget Todd
This is a 101 minute read. So it's a, it's a, it's a pretty, it's a pretty, it's a pretty, a pretty in depth piece.
- [70:46]
Mike
It's also a very precise estimate for such a long piece.
- [70:49]
Bridget Todd
Yeah, it is. The title is Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez bought New York Times fraud journalist Amy Czic. There's a little bit more to the title, but that's all I'll read for that for this portion of it. He is really not happy with Amy Czek. He says that in 2019, after boasting about her unique ability as a special features writer to dedicate lots of time to get a story right, this narcissistic fraud journalist in quotes told me she was writing an in depth Expo expose on my sociopathic sister, Lauren Sanchez and her then fiance, mega billionaire Jeff Bezos. Admitted liars, cheaters and unindicted criminals. He goes on to make an entire slew of allegations both against Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos, Amy Chozik. Safe to say Lauren's brother didn't like the piece.
- [71:51]
Mike
Yeah, I looked at that too and he really had some pretty strong accusations there. He was not a fan and his view of Lauren is pretty different from the view that is put forward in this piece by a lot. He was not focused on joy in his piece.
- [72:14]
Bridget Todd
Yeah. In fact, the image that he chooses has Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez with devil horns. So just to give you a sense of where he falls on the Lauren Sanchez is a joyous person spectrum that should provide it.
- [72:30]
Mike
Well, thanks for going through these stories, Bridget. If listeners want to let us know their thoughts on any of these stories, they can email us@hellotangodi.com can leave us comments on Spotify. You can follow Bridget on TikTok or Instagram @bridgetmarieandc. Or you can follow the show on YouTube or Blue Sky. It's just the name of the show. There are no girls on the Internet. And don't forget to pre order Bridget's and my audiobook coming out this July called Love at First Prompt. You can get it at loveirstprompt AI and if you take a screenshot and send us your pre order, we will happily send you a little card with a sticker and just really appreciate you helping make this first book successful.
- [73:17]
Bridget Todd
That is right. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Thanks to all of you for listening and I will see you on the Internet. Internet. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us@helloangodi.com you can also find transcripts for today's episode@tangodi.com there are no girls 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 creator. 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 podcasts.
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Bridget Todd
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