[upbeat music] Welcome back to Tasteland. I am your co-host, Francis Zehrer. And I'm Daisy Alioto. And who are we talking to today, Daisy? Today we're talking to Catherine D.
She has been writing about internet culture as Default Friend, um, which is her, also her Twitter username, since 2018. Um, and under her government name.
And if you can believe it, she actually wrote the very first article about femcels, um, an internet subculture that is still very relevant today. She's also a huge fan of Art Bell.
Um, I'm not sure if that will come up today, but we've been mutuals for a really long time, and I'm excited to talk to her. Yeah. Nice. Me too.
Um, before she gets here, I wanna say I had the best, m- well, maybe not, I had one of the top three museum-going experiences of my life this weekend. Tell me everything. Uh, it was the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.
Oh. I- So nice... I'd never been, and I, I was just there visiting a friend with a couple other friends for the weekend, and I, I had never heard of it. Um, and my one friend was like, "Oh, we have to go."
He got us tickets. Um, and I like, I... It's like the exact opposite of like you go to the Met, and you go upstairs to where they have all these like s- some of them great old paintings, but there's also so much slop.
It's like the opposite of that where it's, like, so insanely curated, like the, you know, the Renoirs are themselves amazing, whatever, but just, like, the way it's hung and, like, how this echoes that on that wall, and it's just, like...
It's mind-blowing. Um, anyways, I could probably talk a lot more about that, but Catherine is here. So let's bring her in. We're gonna ask her if she's been to the Barnes. She lives in Chicago, so.
No, well, that's not Philadelphia, but- No, it's not. Hey. Hey, Catherine. Hey, how's it going? [upbeat music] So we were just talking about, um, the Barnes in Philly, like the art museum, which...
So I would put the Barnes in the same category as, like, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum- Don't know that... in Boston. Don't know what that is. Well, read up. [laughs] But you're in for a treat. Hit that Wikipedia page.
I'm gonna not read it, you know? It's one of those, maybe that's something that can be a surprise. You know, I don't need to read the review of the movie before I see it. It's not about the review.
[laughs] It's about the fact that the, the hugest art heist of all time was there, and it's unsolved. Okay. Um- So, so I'm... So what, is there anything [laughs] there? Is, what's there to see? [laughs] I mean...
Oh, yeah, yeah. So it, it, because what it is, it's this, like, one wealthy person's curated collection. Mm-hmm. And then I would also say Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice I put in the same category. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
And then in New York, the Frick. The problem is- I've, I've actually never been to the Frick. Living in New York, I've actually never been to the Frick. Well, it's- It's been closed the past few years... yes.
Which is mostly why I've been here, but- When it reopens, maybe we could do a Tasteland, um- Tasteland... a Tasteland field trip. But, so anyway, long way of saying, like, Catherine, I know that you're in Chicago.
The Art Institute of Chicago is kind of the, the bigger museum equivalent, but is there any smaller collection art museum in Chicago that you feel like kinda falls into this category? Um, there has to be. I mean, I, I...
There definitely is. I don't know, [laughs] I don't know what it is, but I know- It's totally fine... I know, I know that it... I mean, we have so many museums. That's true.
Yeah, I feel like there has to be something near the University of Chicago that, that fits this description, like some sort of curated library or something. I love college art museums. I feel like they're so underrated.
Because- Name one... they're, they're always free. [laughs] My college art museum- [laughs]... was fantastic, and I would just- Yeah...
go in there and hang out, and sometimes I would, like, do my homework just sitting in the rotunda. That's nice. I don't know if mine had one. I don't remember. I don't think so. Vassar has a nice one- Mm...
if you ever pop up there. Yeah. I'll do- They have a lot of Hudson River School paintings, given the location, so. Mm-hmm. I've heard of that. The, they're nice. Anyway, sorry to throw you into that, Cat. Um- [laughs]
Well, let's get into why we're all here [laughs] which is to talk about e-girls. Um, I gave you a little, I gave a general intro to you and Default Friend, um, before you came on, but
the reason we reached out is you have a new release through Meta Label about e-girls.
Um, it's a print magazine, and it's beautifully illustrated, and it sort of does everything, covers everything from, like, is it Jenni Cam? Like, one of the earliest- Yeah... Jenni Cam to, like, Red Scare.
So yeah, I don't know. [laughs] Do you wanna kind of, do you wanna talk about how this came about? First off with that. [laughs] A, B, C, D, E-girl. [laughs] Um, yeah. I, um,
I saw this tweet about how someone should write a book about e-girls. Um, and I, I didn't wanna do a book, [laughs] but I did wanna do a, an, a historical e-girl project. Real.
[laughs] Um, so, [laughs] so, um, there are these, uh, there's this really cool publisher in Chicago called 2D Cloud, and they do a lot of, like, alt comics.
Um, they've published Dame Darcy, who's one of my famous, my favorite artists. Uh, she's also a famous artist.
Um, and you know, like, a bunch of other interesting people, and I was like, "Hey, um, do you wanna do a, a, a little, like, internet history mag?"
And so we're doing a series, so the first, this is the first installment of the series, and it's just a timeline of the e-girl.
Um, you know, a history of what it is, because I feel like the word's sort of become, like, bastardized. Like, the way people use the word e-girl on Twitter isn't really the way it's been used historically.
Um, so it's traveling through, like, what is, what is the origin of this wor- word, where does it come from, um, who fits into this lineage? And it's, it is kind of like a sprawling ecosystem.How would you define it?
Yeah. Oh, sorry. [laughs] Is that what you were gonna ask, Francis? [laughs] Wow, we, we actually share a brain. We have to pass it back and forth, so- [laughs]... only one of us can be smart at a time. Two Frances.
Yeah. So I think an e-girl is a, a particular... It's sort of like a electronic it girl, and I think the defining feature is that she has orbiters, right? Mm. Um, they- Reply guys. And she... Y- yeah.
Or girls or non- And you, you can't decide you're an e-girl Yeah. You have to be chosen as an e-girl.
And so, like, one of the, some of the verbiage that's still, like, still used on image boards today is organic e-girl [laughs] right? Or forced- Mm... e-girl. Mm-hmm.
Um, so, like, a forced e-girl is someone who comes onto the scene and she decides that, you know, she herself is like, "I'm gonna be an e-girl. This is my e-girl career." Um- Na- name names. No. The Hegelians for sure.
[laughs] Okay. That, that... Okay. They certainly have- They anointed themselves They just said it. They just said it. They anointed themselves Hegelian e-girls. That's in your book, right? Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think.
It's not a book. [laughs] It's, I... We could call it, you know- Famously not a book. [laughs] What i- what is a book, right? [laughs] What is an e-girl? Oh, we can do that definition next, yeah.
[laughs] Books also thrust upon people, seemingly. You know, the, the Hegelian e-girls kind of made me sad, because it felt like they were walking through, like, the ruins of, like, a dead subculture- Mm...
and, like, picking up, like, little, like, pieces of it off the ground.
Like, they w- they, like, did this, like, countrywide tour, and they were just, like, visiting, like, all these, like, washed-out, like, Twitter celebrities from, like, five, six years ago.
And for some reason it just, like, it really upset me to my core. I was like, "What the fuck? Just, like, let it die."
[laughs] It's interesting that the historical relic to you in that situation was a e-girl and not the dead philosopher Hegel. [laughs] Who, who even is... He, that's just set dressing, right? It is, right? Like, what...
Do you think that they, that they had ever read Hegel? No way. There's no way. I haven't read Hegel, I'll say that right here. Yeah, me neither, so I can't touch. Yeah, I never had- Oh-...
a philosopher phase or- Well, wait, so, so what's the, um- No... what would you say was the original usage?
Ke- I mean, the way you're saying, like, now it's just something tossed around on Twitter, and it's like, like, calling yourself an it girl. It's the- Sure...
it- it's the girlness, it's the e-ness, it's the [laughs] the whole- What? [laughs]... trans, trans girl. I don't- Stop. I'm gonna stop you there. Shut up. Okay, you're not gonna stop me there.
[laughs] I'm gonna keep going. Um- [laughs] Okay. That was... Look, I'm also a little sick today. Um, is it affecting me? He's cranky. Yeah, you have a boy cold. Um- [laughs] Do you have a boy cold? Okay.
But, but go back. [laughs] Yeah, I've got a, I've g- [laughs] I've got, I've got a, a physical boy cold. Um- [laughs] I hate where this is going. G- what was the original, uh, definition?
So the, the, the internet for, uh, you know, for a very long time, I don't think this is necessarily, like, factually true, but there was this perception that there weren't many women, right? Like, this is- Mm.
This is sort of like a well-known trope. Um, uh, you know, no one's really a woman online. And so the, the image of the woman, the idea of a woman, uh, becomes, becomes sort of elevated and kind of rarefied and special.
Mm. And that's where you get the e-girl, um, someone who... I think another dimension- Noble savages. [laughs] E-girls are noble savages. [laughs] I remember- Sort of...
I remember, um, I played a lot of RuneScape from, like, fifth to fourth to sixth grade, fourth to sixth grade. Likely, likely thing for you to do. [laughs] Likely thing for me to do. It was.
Uh, that's where I learned to type. That's why I write for a living now probably. Mm. Um, but...
No, I've, specifi- specifically why I'm bringing it up is I remember my friend was, like, out of town, and he was like, "You have to log on to my account, my female account, so you can pre- [laughs]...
pretend to be this guy's girlfriend, uh- [laughs]... so he can get my gold." And so, so I did that for him.
He gave me the password, and I did that, like, once or twice while he was out of town on vacation, whatever, skiing presumably. Um, but I just [laughs] thought of- [laughs]... you said how nobody's a woman online.
That's incredible. Did you know that I type with two fingers? What? I'm so fast, but I, yeah, I use two fingers. I mostly do. I'm, like, a mostly an index finger typer- Didn't you have, like, a typing class in school?
Surely you had a typing class. Clearly it didn't work on me. Like- I didn't have... My, my typing class wasn't until, like, ninth grade or 10th grade, and so by then- What?... I'd already been, like, typing,
uh, you know, prolifically on the internet in, like, in, in RuneScape, World of Warcraft, et cetera forums for, like, five, six years. I'm also left-handed, so it's like pick a struggle. [laughs] I just type normally.
I, I really benefited from, like, typing classes and, I don't know, like, I think it was, like, in first grade. It was early. I'm so happy for you. First grade? Just wow. Yeah, it was, like- Speak- Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Simona. No, no, you go. [laughs] I was gonna say speaking of normal, um, we both read the Sam Bunce review of Kanye West Twitter account.
Um, I know you have a new series going where you let people come in and review a sort of, like, new or emerging media form. Um, and I was wondering if you'd talk a bit about that. Yeah. Um, so I've been
may- I don't know how wholeheartedly I've been arguing this, but I've been arguing that, um, you know, culture isn't stuck as, uh, both Ted Gioia and, uh, now GQ columnist Paul Scales, uh, that [laughs] very surprising to me, um, Paul Scales ha- ha- have, um, been saying for the, I don't know, past five years or whatever.
Um, it's just that the cultural forms have changed, right? So it's, it's movies aren't movies anymore. Um, they, they're more like, they're more like memes, right?
Um, and so with, with cultural forms changing, we have to recognize what these new cultural forms are.
Um, and, uh, I mean, it's debatable whether or not, like, a Twitter account counts, but in f- trying to figure out what our new cultural forms are, I'm having people review things as though they're, like, composed works of art.
Mm. That makes sense.
Actually, the, the Paul Scales thing has come up with Francis and I, 'cause we sort of saw this, like, emerging-Strategy at GQ where it's like, "Oh, Lindy Man wrote something, and like Cold Healing wrote something."
And we were both like, "Oh, are they doing what we think they're doing?" Clearly testing the waters, but the, the, the numbers must have been there, the traffic numbers must have been there for all- To give him-...
'cause now they've added him-... a regular column. Yeah... a regular column. So, sometimes the strategy pays off. It's interesting. Um, I, I mean, it's, with him,
I, I, when he got outed for, for plagiarism a while back, I actually defended him 'cause I felt like the way he plagiarized was so interesting to me. I don't, yeah, I don't remember this at all actually. Can you explain?
Oh, yeah. Okay.
So Paul, Paul Scales, um, got outed by, um, uh, Antonio Garcia Martinez, um, for, for plagiarizing, and what he would do is he would like, um, take like pieces of other people's work and then like combine it and create his own original piece.
And it was actually like pre- and it, he wasn't necessarily saying the same thing as other people. He was just- So like-... taking their writing... writing like an SEO optimized blog post, basically.
[laughs] Kind of, right? It's like chat GPT. It was sort of like, you know like when, like y- that, that, uh, style of poetry where it's like you like bla- I think it's just called blackout poetry. Or erasure.
Yeah, erasure. Erasure poems. Yeah, yeah. He, he was sort of doing that with like Substack posts. Um- Was he taking it like sentence for sentence or was it more like- Yeah... phrases? Okay. Interesting.
Sentence for sentence, but he was like combining them with other posts and making something original, and I thought like that's actually... And, and I mean, he's wildly popular.
And I'm like, that's actually kind of genius. Like, it's sort of an- It's like-... you're speaking a new cultural voice... it's like a manual AI. Yeah.
No, it's so, like so interesting to me, and I was like, you know what? I mean, it sucks if like your stuff is getting stolen. Like I would, I would be pissed off if he did that to me, but like this is really cool.
I mean, and it's cool that it's, he's, he's been so successful with that. This is- I'm kinda... Sorry. Go ahead. Well, I'm kinda doing a similar thing right now. This is my special project. Plagiarizing? France- Yes.
[laughs] Francis, I, Francis, I haven't even told you about this yet. So I'm, I'm taking like, I'm cutting out pieces of reviews of Polo Bar in New York, which I know Ralph Lauren also has a restaurant in Chicago.
I think that one's just called... I don't know what that one's called, Polo something.
Polo Bar, I'm taking, I'm cutting out pieces of reviews of Polo Bar, and I'm turning them into one long poem called Polo Bar, which I will probably upload as a free PDF on Meta Labels.
So I, you know, I can relate to this, but I think you have to tell people that's what you're doing. [laughs] I mean, yeah.
It, it, there, it's, I, I got, I got pretty clowned on for defend- And he like blocked me on everything. He like hated me for a long time. I love it. He clowned on you for defending him?
He, well, he, I think he didn't like that I acknowledged that he plagiarized. I mean, I, I s- again, I think, I mean, it's artistry the way he was doing it. Uh, but yeah, I got booted from the Lindy table.
I was an- [laughs]... early Lindy Man adopter. Like, he was on my, my, like OG podcast like 2019. Oh, wow. Like before he was big. He, I don't know, he had like 20,000 followers or less. Are, uh- Right? Ungrateful...
are e-girls Lindy, or are they an expression of some Lindy thing? Um, I guess so, yeah. I guess, I guess they are. I mean, it depends on like what, what we think the predecessor to the e-girl is.
Well, the it girl, right? As I- Yeah... one of us was saying. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay.
Another thing about th- this plagiarism idea, I was interviewing Alicia Kennedy last week or a week or two ago for my other podcast, and I, I like in researching her I found this Substack note she had noted, posted, whatever, a week before, um, which I, I found it just now.
Seeing someone on here confuse citation for plagiarism isn't giving me a lot of hope for media literacy, but I also know so many people have zero clue on journalist norms or ethics, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Um, and then the person replied to her, and basically what had happened is this writer, Jade Hurley, who writes this, uh, newsletter on Substack called Jade Facts, had her, I forget exactly what she'd written about, but basically s- a, a New York Times article, they'd referenced her, they'd quoted her, they'd linked back to her, her, her newsletter and, you know, referenced her by name, put her name in like a quote from her in an Instagram post they posted.
But she was like super upset, like, "Shouldn't I be pa- being paid for this? Isn't this fucked up?" Like, "Why?" Like, "This is, this is plagiarism. Why is the New York Times plagiarizing me?" Whatever.
Um, and so I just saw it all through the lens of like what Alicia had posted, but I thought this was like a fascinating thing where like this person is getting quoted and credited in the New York Times.
And like that's something that is, you know, isn't that supposed to be good? And I, e- it's, the way she was asking for like wanting like compensation, whatever, then made me think of like NFTs and whatever.
[laughs] I don't know, but I'm curious what you guys all think of this. I think Jade needs to touch grass, respectfully.
Yeah, I mean, that's ridicul- like, there's this expectation of like fair compensation that's like really, I don't know, like I don't know where people got the idea that like every little thing needs to be monetized.
I mean, I guess I do know where they got it. I mean, I, that's sort of how the internet works. Culture. But it's, it's, uh, no, it's terrible. [laughs] It's so bad.
This is wait- Well- So I wanna, I, I, I just found the original post, and she had added this edit. So first she says, "Well, it's happened.
NYT opinion columnist used my article, my argument, and my name for post-Grammy coverage without asking once."
And then there's some other stuff too, but she, in her edit she says, "Edit: I'm asking what you, the Substack community, think about the below. Media norms keep changing, and I don't know what's normal.
This is an ask for help." So I, I respect her for like, you know, being earnest about it and like expressing herself. Um, but I thought that like media norms keep changing, but this isn't some changed norm.
Well, this is the largest argument of an ongoing argument that we're making that like Substack, whether Substack is part of the media ecosystem very much depends on how people are using it.
And-Like Substack beating the drum that this is like, you know, everyone who's on there is a publisher is just not true because, like, if you, if you really don't have any theory of media or media norms, like, you're using it.
You're blogging. It's Tumblr. Some people are using it like Tumblr and some people are using it like WordPress. And- Well, so I'll, I'll read a little bit more of what she says.
She says, uh, "Blah, blah, blah, I'm not sure what's normal in this new media landscape, but I can see that it feels weird...
I can say that it feels weird to see an established feminist writer twice my age make poo York Times money off a summarized version of my original argument-" No... "which is meant to be free and available to the public.
I couldn't open the article for the first hour I knew about this. Uh, blah, blah, blah. Substack is a public platform, so much of writing is emulation, and this seems to be an industry norm.
But I wonder if there's space for changes to journalistic ethics given how much media is changing, because this sure as hell feels icky." It does.
"I love the gas and all, but would it mean a, a lot more if a fellow feminist writer actually honored my work and humanity by letting me know she's using it and profiting from it ahead of time." No.
So I guess that's what she's upset about. Like, that's, that's, like, horrifying to me. I, I, I've had this issue myself where it's like people think you need to ask permission to, like, link their blog.
I mean, I had a weird, a very weird thing happen to me a while ago where, like, I paraphrased something someone said to me and anonymized it, and it was like...
I mean, it was, it was so general that, like, anyone could have said it to me. They recognized that it was them. They reached out to me and they're like, "Why didn't you ask me before you included that?"
And I was like, like, which... A- anything you say in the world is- It's the public sphere... is, yeah. It's not like your intellectual property. Anyone could have said this to me. I didn't use...
You know, I respected your privacy. It was a pretty general point. I mean, w- like, c- come on.
This to me feels a bit, too, like all this, not, not that we have to, like, wade into this, but, like, all the DOGE stuff happening right now and, you know, Democrats taking then, like, days to even say, like, "Oh, we might actually not do anything here."
It's like to, to, to try to hold onto this norm of, like, having to, like, ask to, to, like, use a bit of your idea and then put it, you know, repurpose it, quote it, whatever, is, like, kind of you're, you're losing the game already.
Things don't move that slow. Right. Plagiarism is when I quote it and I don't like it, and doxing is when I am identified from public information and I don't like it. Oh, man.
The, the misuse of the word doxing is something that, like, drives me up the wall. Speak on it. [laughs] It's, it's just like, my God, the, the way the online right has weaponized that term.
Like, calling someone a doxer on the online right is, like... It just, it's, it's, it's completely, completely lost meaning, right? Like, um, it... Another example from my own life, someone was like, "You doxxed me."
And I'm like, "It, what?" Like, I was horrified. I was like, "Oh, my God, what do you, what do you mean? Like, uh, did I accidentally put, like, copy and paste something?" I was going crazy.
And it turned out that I had, like, used their first name in a DM to them directly. What? [laughs] I'm like, I... Like, enough. [laughs] Like, you guys are out of co- And that's, that's how, like,
I hate to use this word, but, like, snowflakey the E-right has become about the word doxing. Okay, wait. So this, um, brings up another kind of tangential maybe to another tweet of yours that I, I'd written down.
So you were, this was from the beginning of the month. You were quote tweeting somebody tweeting a screenshot of Grimes replying to Aella on Twitter about be- being aligned with anti-woke or whatever.
And so what you said was, "The problem with anti-woke is it's an entertainment genre, it's not a principled position. They're like bags in the wind floating left or right depending on what's best for engagement."
Um, I thought this was really well articulated. Thank you. Um, yeah, I mean, you s- I mean, you see it all the time.
I don't know why people are taking any sort of, like, guidance from a lot of these, like, anti-woke, you know, TM, uh, characters. Uh, like, they so cl- Like, it's so obvious.
They're not, they're not even trying to hide it [laughs] right? They just, they just want y- money. I don't know. Or clout. Isn't it the same as, like, identifying as a contrarian, though? Like, I- The, the destiny arc?
Well, yeah. Like, if you identify as a contrarian as, like, an ideology, your position is dependent on the majority position of any given time. Period, I guess. And I think, like,
there's a good portion of extremely online people who were, uh, anti-woke for reasons that they would say were genuinely held contrarianism and not entertainment, who are now, like,
you know, publicly criticizing the Trump administration because as a contrarian they have to define their relationship. Like, they have to define their position in relation to power.
Um, and I think that that's really, it's really interesting. I don't know. P- Katherine, I'm sure you have strong feelings on that. Yeah, I mean, I do think...
I haven't seen anyone who feels like they need to be sort of, like, anti-establishment consistently.
But what I do see, which I think is closely related to that and more subconscious, is people who have been in the anti-woke media ecosystem for so long that they forget that, like, ordinary people aren't that lost in the sauce.
And so they're kind of, like, post anti-woke, and they're contrarians to anti-wokism.
And the anti-woke ecosystem will be like, "Oh, you know, you're on the left or whatever," but no one on the left would accept them because they've already made a name for themselves being this sort of, like, obnoxious, like, capital H Heterodox figure.
Mm-hmm. And now it's, like, this weird expression of centrism, and there's, like, a lot of people like this.
Um, I would say, like, Richard, um, Hanania is probably, like, the first person I think of when I think of this type. Like, j- nobody on the left is looking at him like, that guy is... You know?
Or even just a regular- As a good faith person... ri- Well, yeah.
They're not s- But, like a, you know, like my mom, who's just, like, an ordinary progressive, isn't, like, looking at him like, "Oh, he represents my values and my..." If she knew who he was, right?
But like [laughs] you know what I'm saying? And somehow these people have, like-12 publication startups between them.
Like [laughs] I would call them, we could call them post anti-woke grifters or, you know, POGs- [laughs]... for, for short. I don't think they even think that they're grifting, though.
I think they're like, "Wow, look at this, this hole in the landscape for intellectual discourse." Yeah. But the hole is, like, the size of a pin. Well, maybe it's not grifting, it's grafting, right?
It- Like, it's just like- Yeah... it's not, yeah, it's not grafting. Yeah. Like, I, I don't think Richard Hanania is a grifter at all. I'm, I... well, maybe when he posts TikToks or whatever.
But I, I think he- Well, I was, I was being pithy I guess with the, uh [laughs] the pun somewhere. Yeah.
But I mean, it, it's like, I, like, I think, I think he's just been marinating in an ecosystem that he has, like, legitimate disagreements with for so long that, like, he's naturally sort of taken this position.
But the funny thing is, is like the p- like, he's a contrarian to the contrarians. And so now it's like, you know, three layers deep. Yeah. And this is like sort of the new...
It sort of reminds me of, um, in Caitlin Tiffany's book about One Direction fandom, um, there was a piece that we excerpted in Dirt that was specifically about, like, deep-fried One Direction memes.
And I think, like, people like that who've, like, refracted their viewpoint so many times, like, to an outsider or, like, a normie, whatever you wanna call it, like, an offline person, like, they th- they still think that, like, their views are, like, source memes.
But to anyone else, like, their viewpoints look essentially, like, deep-fried. Yes Because they are. They've gone through so many different cur- permutations.
So it's like the intellectual equivalent of adding, like, 10 features to a One Direction photo that only, like, a true fan will be able to identify. Yeah, I think, yeah, I to- I totally agree.
And I mean, like, the reason I, like, notice it at all is because I think, like, I'm, I'm kind of a ver- I, maybe I'm, like, a, I'm slightly more, like, palatable or, like, I ble- I don't even know if I blend better.
But I, I'm definitely, like, I've been through the discourse cycle so many times that I've, like, I'm back into the mainstream, but not [laughs] you know what I mean? I sort of, like, stumbled into it.
Yeah, I think you are pretty good at blending. Like, I don't think... It takes, like, I had to follow you for a long time before I actually understood, like, what your politics were. And, like,
like a dolphin, I would say you're pretty slippery, and that, like- [laughs]... you're pretty good at, like, not letting one side of the political discourse, like, claim you. Um,
but that, that was also, like, a, uh, that's true. That's also a really an el- elegant way of me transitioning to our next question which is, uh, your, your recent fixation on dolphin accelerationism and- [laughs]...
really, I'm just dying to know, to hear from the dolphin's mouth what this means. Um, [laughs] I, well, okay, so the, the, the short version is I went to the aquarium.
We have a, we have a wonderful aquarium here in Chicago, and, um, they have l- like, uh, it, I wasn't even looking at dolphins, I was looking at whales.
And it was in this, like, weird liminal space and I, i- I was like, man, th- whatever vibe is going on here is so cool, and it was totally empty for some reason.
Um, and so I just started posting about, like, uh, like dolphin aesthetics.
And then at the same time I was listening to, um, The Starseed Transmissions, uh, by I think Ken Casey, and it's the first, it's one of the first books about starseeds. And I was like,
dolphins and starseeds should be combined, and I just, I don- I don't know, just, like, new age, uh [laughs] new age, like, uh, word salad, basically. [laughs] Oh yeah, that's very pure moods coded. Yeah.
You should start listening to Adeimas as well. Yeah. [laughs] Um, I love it. But what's the acceleration part? Like, s- just speed running, all becoming new age? Yeah.
I mean, y- it, it's, it, it, it doesn't really mean anything to [laughs] to be honest. Um, it's, uh, y- I, I don't know. Like, I spoke to a, for, for my show I spoke to a genetic engineer
who, like, gave me this, like, thought experiment, like, what would change about, um, you know, human social structures if, uh, dolphins could talk and we knew about their inner worlds. Mm-hmm. Right?
So, like, you know, maybe that's dolphin [laughs] accelerationism. Like, we, we know what's going on when all this other knowledge is on... I was, it, that was a really crazy conversation.
I, I don't think I c- I kept up with it very well. [laughs] What about, like, um, you know, there's carcinization where everything evolves to become a crab. What about, what's like the- Yeah...
we need a word for that for, uh, porpo- porpoisation. What's, what's the model? Potationization, I guess? Porpota- potationization, where everything evolves to become a, a porpoise. Um- Yeah... I don't know.
[laughs] Any- anyways, another thing- I think if dolphins could speak, they would say, "We want iPods. Bring back the iPod." Mm-hmm. "And give them to us." They'd say, they would say, "Whatever happened to the Nano?"
You would- Yeah, exactly. So what's crazy is I got to a- Shuffles at the very least. Throw us some Shuffles. Yeah, Nanos. I got really into, like, looking into, like, dolphin communication and stuff. And John C.
Lilly caused so much trouble, right? Like, s- wrecked so much havoc on scientific studies that now it's, like, mostly, like, new age garbage. And like I was- Oh, was he having sex with them?
No, but he was, like, killing them and, like, injecting them with LSD and- I don't like that... it was, I saw Jan Irvin- Oh my God, he was MKUltra-ing the dolphins? He was porpoising them... he was MKUltra-ing the, yeah.
I mean, he, he really fucked it up.
Margaret Howe, who he put in this weird, like, half aquatic house and was, like, messing with her skin, um, I think Santa Barbara, like, she, she had a dolphin sex scandal, which I won't, I won't get into.
What's a half aquatic house?
It was, like, half the house was underwater, and she had to, like, sleep in this bed so the dolphins could swim in and out, and she slept in this bed that had, like, a shower curtain around it.
But, but anyway, what, the, the point of what I was, I was gonna say is dolphins actually, like, I was very disappointed to learn, like, they have the intelligence of, like, a human two-year-old is, like, as far as we know.
But, like, a lot of the research has been halted because, like, new age people have, like, caused so many problems, and John C.
Lilly himself-Who was a legitimate scientist and, like, went so far down the rabbit hole, uh, that he be- he was, like, a crank by the end. Um, he was doing ketamine, like, 40 times a day or something.
Um, yeah, it's like the... it's- A lot of times... there's, like, one guy doing it, right? And he's, he was like, "Yeah, it's, like, really hard to get funding for this now." Hmm.
Um, I wanted to ask about something in your newsletter from February 13th.
You say, "One place I find myself breaking with conservative or even just center-right media, I mean, there are a lot of places, but this is a major one, particularly lately, is that I believe that we should treat AI as if it is ensouled."
And this made me think of two conversations we had recently. Uh, one a couple months ago with Trevor McFedries, where he was, you know, speaking of computers and chips as magic rocks, and, like, AI being related to that.
And then more recently, like three weeks ago or so, when we spoke with Mike Pepe, um, and he was taking a staunch stance against this kind of talk.
You know, I'm probably paraphrasing and butchering here, him here a little bit, but saying how this kind of language about AI as magic only serves, like, the tech founders building the AI tools and not...
He wasn't saying that in, like, an anti-computer Luddite tool sense, more just that, like that, that kind of talk, um, hides and camouflages a bit.
Like, makes these things out to be more than what they are, which is very powerful computing tools, but nothing more than tools that are human-made. I mean, I don't think he's wrong, right?
Like, you know, I h- I disagree with this, like, "Oh, we need to treat it like it's sacred or demonic." I hate the, like, AI is filled with demons shit that, like... I, I hear that a lot. But in, in the sense I mean it,
is, like, you know, people are talking to, like, ChatGPT all the time, right? And I... We, we can easily imagine a future where, um, there are,
you know, maybe most customer service is AI-powered or cashiers or something like this. And I don't think we should be, um, rude to them.
I think it's, like, antisocial to have this norm of, like, uh, cruelty to, like, human-like but non-human technology, and we should have a standard of respect, um, for all of these tools, even though they are not living.
Um- You know, my co-host here is on record as bullying ChatGPT. No, it's actually, I conflicted about the way I feel like I'm forced to interact with it because I...
So I agree, I think there's, like, a correlation in, like, antisocial behavior.
Like, just, uh, like, if you have a kid and your kid starts destroying all their stuffed animals and dolls, you're gonna take them to a child psychologist.
'Cause even those th- those things aren't real, like, the way that we relate to them is enough, like, a personal relationship that if they're acting out violently against those, like, that seems, uh, that's, like, a problem.
It could be a red flag. My issue with ChatGPT is I speak to it a lot more harshly than I speak to a human employee, but it also does things that I would never tolerate from a human employee. Like, it lies, and
it's, uh, like, it's not malicious 'cause it doesn't know that it's lying. But, like, just this week, sometimes I use it to detect hex codes.
So I'll upload a swatch of, you know, a piece of color from another website, and I'll say, "Can you tell me the hex code?" And I've done this so many times, and, like, this week it was like, "I can't do it.
Here are some sites that might be able to do it." And I said, "Well, you've done it before." And it said, "You're right. I can do it." Gives me the hex code. So I said, "Why did you lie to me?"
[laughs] And it was like, "I'm sorry. I'll do better in the future." But, like, if my intern lied to me, I would be like, "Hey, this isn't working out," or like, "We n- like, this is a serious-" You're fired.
[laughs] "... like, this is a warning." You know what I mean? And so I, I get frustrated with it because it's like, yes, I, I don't sugarcoat things. Like, I don't ask it to do things the way I ask...
Like, I'm very direct with it. But it's also like it's engaging in behaviors that are not, like, good, even good human worker behaviors.
And so I find that my relationship with it, um, reveals a management style that is not the management style I would ever employ with another human being.
Uh, but I think the fact that I feel conflicted about it shows that I don't want to act in a way that's antisocial. But I also don't know how to cope with the fact that, like,
this, this is being pitched as, like, a, an alternative worker, but it does not... Like, there's no accountability mechanism for this service. There's sort of an accountability mechanism.
Like, you can report, report that response as a bug, right? You could do the little thumbs down. And I would also say, like, pushing back on it on its hallucinations isn't, like, antisocially abusing ChatGPT, right?
I guess, like, what I mean is, like, people who are, like, you know, like, saying slurs or, like, uh, spamming it or, uh, thing- things that are, that it- Yeah... it does sort of, like, disrespect the software.
Which, as I say it out loud, I can sort of sympathize why, you know, if Mike Pepe was here, he'd be like, "You're crazy. What are you do- [laughs] What are you saying?"
But I just like, if, it's like m- my, my thing is, like, we're using it so much, like, we don't need to think it's magic, but we should have a level of, of respect for it.
And maybe we don't have to go as far as saying it's ensouled, but it's a little bit more than just a tool it feels like, because it has a, it's a, a little more anthropomorphized. I talk to it like...
I mean, I'm not, like, a very sophisticated AI prompter, so I speak to it, like, as if I was just typing to a friend asking a question. And I'll, like, use, like, more words than I, than I need to.
I think I, like, was asking it something, like, uh, helping edit an essay or something the other day, and I was... I included, like, "Am I being flippant?" And it's like I don't need to t- talk to it like that.
[laughs] But for me it works, right? And I like, I get out of it, I get that, I get, I get what I want out of it.
But I think in that way it goes back to that, like, child abusing the toys thing where it's a mirror.Yeah Well, it also lied to me about, I think, a Foucault quote, like where it was from. Um, I was...
I think I was asking a grammar question, or I was trying to do a, um, a fact check on a piece we read about gamification recently, and so I was, like, trying to confirm the citation was from the book that was cited, and it was like, "No, you're wrong.
It's actually from this other book." Then I had to, like, leave ChatGPT to go try to confirm that, and actually that wasn't true, so I came back and said like, "Okay, can you give me a reference for where to find that?"
And then it comes back and is like, "Oh, [laughs] actually, that's... I lied. I don't know why. Like, it, it's right." I was like, what? People are using this though,
young people that don't have that skill set of, like... I think this goes back to media literacy too, right?
Like, it's like journalists, as a practice, have to get usually double verification, at least two sources for factual claims.
Um, and ChatGPT doesn't even count as, like, one source, um, because it's not, like- It's like the Wikipedia when, like, you know, we were in school and your teachers warn you, like, "Don't use Wikipedia as a reference."
Yeah. Like, it's really that. It's like the, the ultra, like, unreliable narrative. I mean, not that Wikipedia is perfect, but, like, I feel, I at least think of ChatGPT to be far less reliable than Wikipedia- Yeah...
in that research sense. Yeah, I mean, that's, that should be, that should be a good thing for, for people who are scared about it taking our jobs as, uh- That's a good point... writers and researchers and creators.
It's, it's definitely a good thing for human labor, but it... I don't think it's a good thing for young people who are in, like, an education environment where there's, there should be... I mean- For media literacy...
to me, you know. Yeah.
So I went to liberal arts school, so the big, like, thing around liberal arts school is it teaches you how to think critically, and I think using ChatGPT in the way that young people use it is really antithetical to that, unless they're really being taught, like, um...
And I think the savvier professors are trying to sort of toe this line of, like, if you're using it, you should be using it as one node in your research that you're then going to additionally fact check, counter research, interrogate, et cetera, um, the same way you would if you were, like...
if you went to a Wikipedia page just to get a synopsis of an issue before you actually start researching it, and then maybe start digging into the references below. Yeah, I think there's a real crisis of,
I mean, people having the patience to research. I, I- Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, this, this is a skill that it feels like it's already been lost, and this is only accelerating.
So actually, in the same newsletter that we were referencing this from, um, the title of the...
The issue's title is Internet History Must Always Be an Oral History, and you have this quote that I'll read here that's really relevant to what you were just saying.
Um, you say, "We need to talk to someone who was there. It's why I repeat that provocative lines like 'I hate women' don't always literally mean 'I hate women.' You really can't take anything at face value online.
In my opinion, this is a big reason why reporters, myself included, so often get it wrong when reporting on digital subcultures.
There is so much background context you need when writing about the internet that just isn't available to you if you aren't in the right channels, and the right channels can be hard to access or even find." Yeah.
Um, yeah, just because it's, it's text doesn't mean that everything is contained in the, the surface level text. Right, and so that's, like, context, which
LLMs are, like, famously bad at providing, 'cause they're not designed to, um, which means, like, we are providing the context. But I think, like, being able to contextualize things is a skill set that's, like,
just not... It's really not rewarded in, like, any way [laughs] on the internet right now, um, until you get into environments where people are, like, subscribing and paying for information.
Certainly not in the free media ecosystem. Yeah. I mean- There's a lot of, like, context as performance, like so many of these, like, threads, like Twitter threads that people are monetizing, to me are like...
it's like the performance of context. Like, I'm gonna break something down for you, and it's, like, the most surface level thing.
Like a, what, like, here's the story of the Netflix CEO you never knew and why he's a billionaire type of thing? Yes. Yeah, I, I would, I would a- agree with that. Um, and I think, like, a lot of context is going to be,
is going to be lost, right? And there's just information where it's, that's gonna be gone forever, like really necessary information too, especially as, like, politics become more intertwined with online life.
Like, so many things happen in, in group chats or are, you know, like, decided in, you know, like, these weird back channels, and you don't really understand why people are making the moves that they're making unless you have the full, um, like, backstory of, like, what subculture they're emerging from, like, how online they are, like, why they're that online, what they're selling.
Um, and I, I feel like it's, it's gonna start causing [laughs] it's gonna start causing problems. Like, right now it's just, like, internet studies trivia, but as a, as, as we...
the internet proves to be more, um, uh, influential, [laughs] we, we, we're gonna wish we had more, uh, ethnographers on the ground. When we're living in a millennial gerontocracy? Yeah. No, and, and seriously.
Uh, I'm, like, I'm thinking, like, you know, I've done some...
The way I ended up in, like, the sort of, like, heterodox scene is I wrote a lot about how certain things came from Tumblr, um, and then were, were mainstreamed be... And, and so the cycle that I, I laid out was,
um, you know, like, there's certain buzzwords or what- what have you that were catchy that were being used a lot in certain digital subcultures, and then as budgets were being slashed in the early 2010s and late 2000s, people were scraping things from not just TumblrBut, um, you know, Reddit and 4chan.
And then certain words broke containment, and certain concepts too, right? And this is, this is now well-known.
Um, but the exact context of how those words came to be, you know, is totally lost unless you actually interview people who were on Reddit or Tumblr or 4chan at the time.
And some of that is kind of important and interesting. Um, like, uh, Latinx is an example of something that, um, w- was born out of the blogosphere. Um, and y- it's, that's, that's kind...
You know, it's not the most useful information in the world, but it's kind of useful.
It's kind of, it's kind of good to know, like, why that was being used or- Do, like, do you know, like, the origin story for that specifically? Because I, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. Um, Latinx came...
That one wasn't from Tumblr. It was from Blogspot. Um, and that, that was the first usage. And so it started on, uh, in the blogosphere. Um, and then an academic used it in an academic paper later on.
Um, and then the, someone who had seen it on Blogspot started using it on Tumblr. Mm.
And it became a point of contention on Tumblr, and then from there, you know, you use, it's, it, you can see how it, it leaked out into digital media.
Um, and there's a lot of things where, like, um, words or concepts that, like...
And this was even tracked at the time, and, like, it, it's been forgotten 'cause it seemed like total useless trivia, where, like, it was in a BuzzFeed listicle, and that listicle did well.
And then so, like, CNN picked up the idea. And then you go, you know, you go down the rabbit hole, and it, like, really was bor- blown out of proportion. And it kind of got memed into, you know, being something.
It's fine. And that happened so many times. I've actually been thinking about that a lot. Um, similar problem with, like, the loss of context and loss of, like, just general internet archive stuff is, um, hypertext.
Like, Robert Coover died last year. I was reading about him. I only knew him as, like, this kind of eccentric short story writer.
Um, I didn't realize, like, that so much of his idea, ideas and structures for his stories was based on this idea of, like, digital writing and hypertext, and he was actually teaching it at, I think, Brown.
Um, and, like, hyperlinking between blogs, just courses that happened between blogs. Um, had a similar discussion with Kate Zambreno about this.
Like, when her book Heroines came out, Heroines was sort of produced by, um, interactions she was having with other women that were interested in books between their two blogs.
Like, they would write back and forth to each other publicly, and that contributed to Heroines, but Heroines was reviewed as a very straightforward nonfiction text where there's this other element, and some people didn't get it.
Um, when I read, like, K-Punk, which was, like, the compendium of Mark Fisher's writing, K- K-Punk reads very differently when you can't have hyperlinks in the text for things that started off as blog posts. Um,
so where am I going with this? [laughs] I think that there's, like, there's almost, like, a literature of hypertext that I'm very interested in right now.
Um, I'm also reading a lot of Calvino, and, um, there's something about hypertext and, like, hyperlinking that's almost, like, a little bit Oulipian, where it, like, creates these constraints and constructs around writing that require you to travel
to other sources to get the complete picture.
Um, and I think that that's really just not accounted for right now in how things are assessed, like the origin of Latinx or even, like, one thing that I've seen you pushing back on a lot is this idea that, like, Gamergate explains everything.
And actually, like, you know, maybe it's not Gamergate. Maybe it's, like, a bunch of subcultures that fed into it as an inflection point. Yeah, I mean... Oh, the Gamergate one is...
So I totally agree with the h- with the hyper- hyperlinking stuff. Like, e- I mean, and, and I hate when, like, the footnote is when it's a book, and then, like, the footnote is the link.
It, I, I wish they would just take... Like, I would rather have, like, a book that's almost unwieldy that takes, like, relevant quotes or something and has, like, a huge, like, uh, bibliography or something.
Um, but anyway, so I agree with that. With Gamergate, there's all this, like, it's become such this, like, mythologized thing, right? And I feel like people have, like, made up that they were there.
Um, like, they've, like, misremembered it or something, and like, or they've, they have these, like, invented memories of Gamergate when it's like, there's no, there's no way.
Like, you, you see people who would've been, like, 10 years old being like, "Yeah, when I was in the trenches of Gamergate and on 4chan." It's like, you didn't know how to read.
What are you ta- Like, what are you talking about? [laughs] I would definitely read a novel about somebody who has an implanted memory of having participated in Gamergate- [laughs]...
like, 20 years before their prefrontal cortex developed.
I think this, all this hypertext talk, though, is like, like, I forget the exact statistic, but it's something about 30% of all websites that were online 15 years ago aren't now or something, right? So, like, when...
'Cause I, you know, writing my newsletter, so much of I'm putting in hyperlinks. I'm not putting, like, a footnote at the bottom, um, 'cause that takes too, takes too long and would make it unwieldy and isn't the style.
But, like, in 5, 10 years, everything I link to could be dis- I mean, let alone my newsletter itself could not exist anywhere on the internet. But, um, it's like you have to read it.
You have [laughs] you've got this, like, window of a few years to read it and be able to access the references, and then after that, you kind of have to take the person's word for it.
Yeah, well, that's like, that is oral culture, right, Katherine? Like, the source of, like, having been there and passing the story down. Um- Yeah... you forget those can, that can be one of two citations.
But then, I mean, I think it's interesting, like the, the website and newsletter, um-Software company as well, I guess every...
They've sort of reinvented hypertext from first principles by allowing people to use an, a custom LLM to query an article, um, and the LLM has been trained on the sources and interviews that went into the article.
Um, and so it's another way of like kind of breaking those sources out, but sort of like have reinvented this idea of hypertext as
you talk to somebody, you talk to a machine that's learned on all of those sources as an alternative to like talking to the person. I didn't know they were doing that. That's so cool. It's really interesting.
I think it's really novel.
I, I don't know that it will ever catch on because I think, to your point about anti-woke being an entertainment, form of entertainment, like I think people really signal that they want unbiased news more than they actually want unbiased news.
And for the people who take that seriously, they're finding new ways to sort of like say, "Okay, we're gonna like foreground those biases or we're gonna foreground the sources."
But like most people are lazy and they're gonna be like, "Well, actually never mind," because they didn't really deeply care about it. Um, it just becomes a way to dismiss information that you don't like.
I totally agree. I mean, yeah, I, peop- I, I don't think people want, um, news and j... I mean, at least not like big picture news, right?
I mean, something I, sort of off topic, but I like worry about is like the loss of local news. Like I feel like I was so much more aware of what was happening in my immediate environment even like five years ago.
And now it's like I've just... I, I have the Citizen app and it's like the only thing I know about what's like going on in Chicago is like.3 miles away someone robbed a 7-Eleven, and that's like, that's [laughs]...
I might get like one of those- Right... you know, a day or something and that- that's, that's what's going on in Chicago today. Right.
And somebody probably helped a granny cross the road too, but like that's, you know, that's not gonna be on Citizen. And, um, there's actually... So I spend a lot of time in Maine.
There's actually some really interesting local news startups happening there right now.
But Francis, as part of Creator Spotlight, his, his newsletter talks to people who have been really successful in the local news niche, a lot of them using newsletters as their primary dissemination form.
And yeah, I mean, the loss of local news is a tragedy and it's correlated with like the way people view general interest national and international news. Well, this- But, you know...
Well, like the last thing I'll say is like OpenAI is sort of like going in to fund these local news projects, but to me it's just like letting the fox in the henhouse because you still have to have a source for- Sure...
things.
Nieman Lab had a great piece like a couple weeks ago about this guy who, I forget how many, but he's like one engineer in New York who has like 70, again, I don't remember the exact number, but he's got like 70 local news, newsletters he's doing and it's all this kind of AI aggregation stuff.
Um, I for- [laughs] I forget the details, but if you're listening and you're curious about it you should look up Nieman Lab Local News.
But basically like they interviewed him and, uh, the interview was kind of like clearly out of some perspective of horror, like this is not useful, accurate information, and the guy was proud of it though because it's like this thing he's engineered and, and it's like cool from that perspective.
Um, another thing though is like one of the people, one of the first local news newsletter people I interviewed about a year ago, this guy Ryan Sneddon, he's in Annapolis, Maryland.
And he's built this thing where at that time I think he had like 18,000 subscribers. He was generating $200,000 a year in revenue on it. Um, and I, you know, most of it was, it's mostly like local events round- roundups.
Like he started by calling up all the bars and, you know, venues and community centers, whatever, around Annapolis and like what are their events, listing them out. Then he eventually had a VA doing that.
Um, but I asked him about like hard news and like what, what hard news do they, do they feature? And he's like, "That's not, that's not our purview. There's like a local newspaper that still does that.
The only ti- the only reason I'm gonna like run actual hard news like that is if like, you know, the mayor got arrested or something like that." I don't know.
Um, but f- for a lot of these local news startups that are like, have spun up these really efficient businesses, um, actual hard-nosed reporting is just why would you do that?
Because it's, it, it's really expensive, it puts your product at risk, it's harder to monetize, and you don't actually need it to, to build this thing.
It's kind of like it would be like a luxury that hurts the business more than it helps the business. Which is horrifying. Yeah.
I mean, news is like I'm sitting in my house, I hear a car crash outside, I go out on the street and I say- And you tweet about it... well, maybe. But I mean, that's what citizen journalism was supposed to be.
Like citizen journalism is not I aggregated a bunch of Google News alerts. Citizen journalism was like I went to a protest at the Arab Spring and I saw this number of people get shot.
Um, or like I can't remember if I've talked about this before on the podcast, but, um, during COVID, like when I got laid off, um, I applied to get, be a COVID tracker. I never heard back.
[laughs] Um, I mean, that was, that's actually, that's first-person reporting too 'cause you're actually calling people up and saying like, "Did you have COVID in your house or not?"
But I was working for, um, Press Freedom Foundation, I think it's called, sorry. There's a couple similarly named orgs.
But, um, my job was to call up journalists who had been injured or arrested at Black Lives Matter protests and ask them a series of questions to verify whether we could include them in our database of, um, basically like
infractions against free journalism. Um, and that required all this other stuff like who is a journalist, who isn't a journalist.
Um, like they would have to tell us honestly, like, "Were you participating in the protest or were you really there as like a journalist?"
Um, people would send me like really like fuzzy videos of-What happened that I would then have to like go to Google Maps and try to like cos- cross-reference as like, okay, I think it happened at this intersection in Portland.
Portland, Oregon was my city. I've never been to Portland, Oregon.
Um, I was doing all of this off of Google Maps and trying to like line up different angles of the same event from social media video, um, which is like a real praxi- practice.
There's a place out of London called Forensic Architecture that does this for, um, like drone strikes and really like big international events, chemical weapons attacks, and stuff like that.
But like all of these skills are being lost. Like, everything is hyper-documented.
Like, if you had a crime and you could like know, [laughs] if you had the ability to see like everyone who was like TikTok-ing themselves and doing like a dance in that vicinity, you could probably perfectly like reconstruct what actually happened, because we're all under surveillance all the time from people doing their TikToks and photographing their food and stuff.
It's not the data, it's the fact that people don't have the ability to put it together. Um, sorry, end rant.
[laughs] No, I, I agree with you, and, and I mean, it goes back to like there's no interest for, you know, interest in it. Um, and ev- you know, everything needs to be, uh, an entertainment. I mean, not...
[laughs] I feel kinda goopy saying this, but like, you know, we're amusing ourselves to death. Well, and I think it's, I mean, I think part of the thing too with like the local, lack of local news is, I mean,
maybe this will sound a little hackneyed, but it's like it's a cost of living thing, right? Where you need to make a living, and you need to...
Like, it's, it's the, the, the culture of entrepreneurialism in, in the creator economy, the gig economy, all this stuff where like it is, it's not profitable to do local news, and you need to make a living.
So you don't do local news. Um, and then the things get worse.
You know, like the, the, the tech oligarchy consolidates power even more, makes it harder to make a living, privatizes more things, removes more labor protections.
It's even harder to do local reporting, et cetera, right? Which is maybe a little doomerist, but that's one way this goes.
I mean, uh, th- we could also, I mean, this is probably too optimistic, maybe the market corrects itself.
Like, there's, uh, you know, so much entertainment that people just get numb to it, and they're like, uh, they want something more grounded.
I, that just, I mean, it- I- I, I don't believe myself as I say it, so forget it [laughs] as an option. Well, I wanted to bring up a- [laughs]...
another recent newsletter topic you had, which was, yes, there can be a completely digital counterculture.
And you write, "The internet today is split between what I call the normie internet and the subterranean in- internet.
The normie internet is the glossy, comm- commercialized space where most of us spend our time, viral TikToks, Twitter discourse, and Instagram, um, that eventually filter their way into mainstream culture."
Um, so and you call it nontent instead of content. So what's really interesting about the normie internet to me is like all of my friends, even my most intellectual friends, engage with it, but we never talk about it.
Like, I remember when TikTok was shutting down, one of my friends who I like mainly talk about books and like our own subculture of, like publishing literature, people who live in New York, you know, whatever, like gossip, um, was like, "Oh my God, I'm like frantically downloading all the recipes from my favorite like TikTok chef."
And I was like, "Who?" Like, it had never come up before. Like, there's people that I watch on TikTok all the time who I've never mentioned their names to any of my friends because I wouldn't even think to. Um,
and I think the like funniest example of that is I have a friend from summer camp who's like a big-ish influencer on Instagram, and every time I see that people from other parts of my life follow her, I'm like, "How do they know my camp friend?"
Wait, you don't have to name names. What kind of, what kind of, what's her shtick? Um, home cooking with her children, living in a farmhouse.
Not, I wouldn't say tradwife, although I don't know like what her- Not tradwife, but just like middle, a sustainable middle class fantasy. She's actually a tr- trad single mom right now. Oh. Um- Interesting...
well, let's say a pastoral lifestyle, but not like super pastoral. They don't have chickens or anything. But all your, but you've got other friends from other walks of life who, who follow her.
I have friends from other walks of life who follow her, and I do talk about it with my best friend.
We both talk about her like as if she's like my friend in the same way that I, I tell stories about my other friends to my friends.
But there's a lot of other people I know that follow her, and I've never ever talked to them about it. I've never said, "Hey, I saw that you follow such and such influencer."
Like, "Did you know that's actually my friend from camp?" Because, like, it would never come up because their normie internet habits are almost like, they're kind of like the secret irrelevant habits.
It's like you wouldn't, like if, you know, in the old-fashioned video store, if you walk into the X-rated video section, you see somebody you know, you're not really gonna- [laughs]... acknowledge each other.
Well, right. It's funny because it's like that's, but you would think that would be the subterranean stuff that people would be embarrassed by, but that's actually what they signal as their taste.
Well, okay, maybe that's, that's- And I've never, I've literally never been like, "Hey, do you watch Taffy's videos?" But maybe, maybe it's because, like you are, you are like,
your career is in culture, so you're gonna talk about the more subcultural stuff.
Where maybe, maybe some of your normie friends are talking to your, talking [laughs] to their normie friends about this stuff, but they're not talking to you about it because they think you wouldn't be interested.
I think knowing me disqualifies you as a normie. If you've ever met me, like you're not a normie anymore, sorry.
[laughs] I wonder if there's like background context of, like you're not mentioning it by name, but there's like this understanding of we all know what it is.
Like, I don't think I actually like discussed like Mu Dang with any, with anyone, but I kinda like knew my sisters and my normie friends and my husband like all knew what Mu Dang was and who, who Mu Dang was. Mm. Right?
And there's, or like certain, like here's another one. Like, everyone on TikTok is eating those, um, pastries that like look like fruit.
Um, I forget what-Uh, it's like, it started in New York and now every s- every major city has w- you know, copycats of these pastries.
I don't think I've, like, explicitly discussed that, but, like, I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about, other people know what I'm talking about. It's kinda like ambiently there. You know? It's like...
And there's little things like that that pop up. I've talked to, I talked to, like, Campbell, Jet and Campbell Puckett with a lot of peop- about, talked about them with a lot of people.
Talked about Tony P with a lot of people. Um, but that itself was almost, like, a subcultural thing, or at least the way we talked about it. You know that girl- In the context...
you know that girl Emily that did the salmon bowl? Yes, Emily in Rio de- The only person- Whatever... yeah, the only person I ever talked to about that was my friend Izzy from college.
In our group chat she was like, "Do you guys know that's, like, kind of my good friend in San Francisco?" And I'm just like [laughs] And I'm sure you read, like, three of the cut pieces about it, right?
Well, yeah, or, like, an, uh, or ignored them. Like, it never came up with my other friends, but, like, it came up because my friend was like, "Did you know that's kind of my good friend?"
And we were all like, "No, we didn't know that's kind of your good friend in San Francisco." Um, like, she was at, like, her wedding or something. So...
And I feel like that's similar to, like- So was Vogue or something like that I think from this... the influencer that's my camp friend.
Like, normie media only becomes relevant if somebody has a relation to it, to it, that's deeper than, like, that kind of ambient gloss that it provides.
Um, otherwise, it's like my relationship to it isn't even worth mentioning because my relationship to it is so passive that I feel like it doesn't even say anything about me.
Well, this is, I think Catherine, I think this was another f- a headline from one of your recent newsletters or an older one, that, like, the internet is a private part of your body, which I, I really liked.
Yeah, don't touch me there. Oh, yeah. [laughs] Yeah, that- Show me on the, show me on the doll, the, the doll of the internet where they touched you.
[laughs] That, that was an interesting thing, 'cause it was, uh, so I do these ethnographic interviews of how people use the internet, and, uh, you know, something that comes up a lot is, like, problematic internet usage, and like, why didn't, or why weren't my parents able to intervene?
And it's because there's something so cerebral and private about it. Like, even when you're not doing anything wrong, I, I think there's a sense of, like, intimacy with, like, your browser history, right?
There's something very, uh, personal about your internet use, even when it's not- Reveal your preferences, as we- Yeah... often talk about on here.
And so it makes it really difficult and, like, embarrassing to, like, seek help if you need it, or, like, for parents to intervene if their, their children are doing things that are, uh, hurting them, um,
because there is, like, a, a unspoken privacy. Well, I remember one time, um, my husband's, like, Reddit is tied to his Google Chrome, which, or his, yeah, his Google account, which is tied to some of our subscriptions.
So if he, if he logs me into a subscription on my computer, then sometimes it logs me into his Gmail, and apparently, like, his Reddit.
And, like, so I went to go to Reddit and I was logged in as my husband, and I was like, [gasps] "Here's the moment that I'm gonna realize my husband's doing weird stuff on Reddit."
Like, I, you know, I got scared, 'cause you hear these horror stories [laughs] and it was literally, like, he had posted twice in 10 years, once in, like, the Spurs subreddit and once in, like, Call of Duty.
[laughs] And, like, who knows what he's passively consuming, but it was just, like, the most innocent, predictable Reddit behavior, and I was like, "Wow," like, marked safe. [laughs] Uh, yeah.
Um, okay, one last, one last thing I wanna ask.
A friend of the pod, Nick Soucy, tweeted earlier today, "The dominant aspirational identity in American culture for the past decade was blank," and then, "Dominant aspirational identity for American culture for the next dec- the t- next decade will be blank."
Um, and you retweeted this, so I'm curious what you would fill that out with. Um, okay. So it, what... No, I, I, I was gonna say something, but I didn't b- I, I already felt like that's wrong.
[laughs] What I was about to say. We could be, we could be wrong on here. Um, I think that it was the poster, maybe not for, not for, it wasn't the dominant one, but I think for a certain subset of people.
Like, I think we're exiting the, the, like, internet celebrity, right? And that could be, that could be poster, it could be, you know, a TikTok star, whatever. There's many different iterations of that. And it will be,
I mean, I don't know.
I do th- I, I am, like, bullish that, like, uh, you know, as Sean Monahan has also, like, predicted, like, in-person scenes is the, where the, the locus of, of coolness and, uh, you know, maybe even monetary gain
is right now and, and, and will continue to be. So maybe something like that, if that answered the question clearly. [laughs] I think that's true.
I mean, I actually think I would fill in both blanks with to be turned into a cartoon, because, like, if you were turned into a cartoon on, like, The Simpsons in the early 2000s, like, that is the peak of fame.
If you're an intellectual and you get a New Yorker portrait or a stippled Wall Street Journal illustration, that is the height of your power. And now it's like you gotta be turned into, like, a Pee Pee the Frog.
But there's something- Uh, what was it? [laughs] Pepe. Whatever his name is. You know who I'm talking about. That, that fucking frog. So anyway, like, I've like...
It's like, why is the height of success in America to be turned into a cartoon, whether you're- That's a good point... on the left or the right. I don't see it changing anytime soon.
Um, although now you probably have, like, a meme coin too. You know? You know, I was jealous of the, speaking of the Hegelian e-girls to do a call, callback, it, I'm like, "She got a wojak? I don't have a wojak."
[sighs] I want a wojak. We need, we need a Catherine dolphin, um, wojak. [laughs] Somebody listening, if you could make wojaks, make that.
I would, me though, I would say it's like, um, my, when I first saw this, my thought was just, like,
for both of them, entrepreneur, but in, like, a very broad sense where, like, a content creator is an entrepreneur, a sports gambler is an entrepreneur.
Like, I, I've just read those two recent reviews of the Eric Baker book, like, how entrepreneurship exhausted America, so that's been really heavily on my mind the past couple weeks.
But I would say if we're both of them, it's either just entrepreneur or just rich, um, which is kind of boring, 'cause it's like I'm supposed to engage with a more specific identity there I know, but, uh, that's what I would put.
Everyone wants to be rich- Yeah, we-... except for rich people. The rich people wanna be cool. That's very true. They still wanna be rich, though. They're doing really bad right now.
Yeah, they definitely don't wanna be poor. [laughs] Yeah. Um, cool. I think we'll end it there. This has been Tasteland. Thank you for coming on. See you next week. Peace.
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