Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but rather in the eyes of 500 sl*ts who hold all society’s power and privileges. At least, according to incels. In this episode, Hannah and Maia revisit the loneliest, angriest corners of the internet to explore “looksmaxxing” - a hot wheels-style rebrand of the “glow up”, replete with internet jargon and pseudo-science and a brand new name to make it palatable for men. Birthed deep in the forums of PUAhate, Sluthate, and 4chan, looksmaxxing began as a w...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 7Ep. 3
Liv Schmidt is a 24-year-old “health and wellness” coach who puts a populist spin on pro-ana content! She’s loud, rude, and ready to take our feeds by storm one almond at a time. Schmidt’s “skinnytok” movement wasn’t built in a day - she is in fact only a messenger for the larger trend of online diet culture that has resurfaced in the past couple years. In a time where Ozempic ads line the subways, Lana Del Rey stans host parties celebrating her new waifish figure, and friends at the dinner tabl...
Jun 23, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 7Ep. 2
The faces of women in the Republican Party have changed drastically, and people have noticed. As the likes of Kristy Noem and Kimberly Guilfoyle become ever-pouchier, pouty-lipped, and blown out in the short time since Trump took office, the internet has been in a frenzy. Some, including plastic surgeons themselves, have suspected these women of getting cosmetic work done to get in Trump’s good graces. Others have suspected this botchedness to be intentional, that they’re deliberately “polluting...
Jun 16, 2025•58 min•Season 7Ep. 1
Ever since Seo Taiji and Boys broke onto the scene in their baggy overalls back in 1992, Korea has been working to cast as wide a cultural net as possible on the world stage. And, by placing young talent through rigorous game show incubators and pumping out dozens of attractive, talented, and universally appealing musical artists, they succeeded. With the meteoric rise of groups like BTS and Blackpink, K-Pop now had a hoard of die-hard fans in the West - a cross-cultural exchange to challenge Be...
Apr 03, 2025•6 min
Who said men can’t have hobbies? The world certainly did a few years ago, when hypebeasts seemed to dominate every sidewalk of every shopping district in just about every city around the world. When brands like BAPE and Supreme popularized the limited drop sales model in the 2010s, they inadvertently spawned a breed of man whose entire life seemed to depend on “copping” the latest and most overpriced streetwear. But jump to today, and the hypebeast is nowhere to be found. Did he shrink away out ...
Feb 24, 2025•5 min•Season 4Ep. 9
Nate Petroski is an off-the-grid recluse who has a girlfriend he met online, millions of fans all across the country, and a bespoke beard-oil brand. Something isn’t adding up here. In this finale episode, Hannah and Maia step into the wilderness of the internet’s very own homesteading community. These influencers make a living documenting their alternative, self-sufficient lifestyles. And, in an increasingly volatile political and economic climate that has many people wishing to go back to basic...
Jan 27, 2025•1 hr 12 min
You don’t know what seapunk is. We don’t know what seapunk is. Even seapunks don’t know what seapunk is. Well at least, most of them don’t. It all started with a guy named Lil’ Internet and his dream of a barnacle-adorned leather jacket. Quickly evolving (or devolving, depending on how you look at it) into a much-talked-about, less-practiced internet subculture helmed by two rather dogmatic blue-haired musicians. While even they couldn’t define seapunk, which shares elements from just about ever...
Jan 20, 2025•59 min•Season 6Ep. 7
Whip out your tie-dye t-shit and skull-patterned socks, because it’s time to talk about the Grateful Dead. Or, rather, their die-hard, multigenerational, technologically proficient fanbase, the Deadheads. Born from the jug bands and acid test shows of 1960s San Francisco, the Grateful Dead took the world by storm with their experimental, long-form jam sessions that, for over five decades, drew legions of young hippies from across the country to experience (with the help of some very strong psych...
Jan 13, 2025•1 hr 18 min•Season 6Ep. 6
Weebs… and the people who hate them. Japan has always had a distinctive relationship with the West. But ever since it broke out on the global stage with its “gross national cool” - distributing an array of films, shows, video games, and toys the world over, Westerners have taken on a particular fascination with the country. To the point that an entire Western subculture has formed around an interest… or rather obsession, with all things Japanese. In this episode, Hannah and Maia track how the we...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 5
Ever since Serial burst onto the scene back in 2015 , it birthed not only the world of podcasting itself, but an entire cottage industry of true crime podcasts, each one more ethically dubious than the last. But one such podcast may be, at least by title, the very worst: My Favorite Murder. This wildly popular series has been criticized over the years for its flippant water-cooler recounting of people’s real life traumas. And while My Favorite Murder made efforts to correct some of its wrongs, i...
Dec 30, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 6Ep. 4
If you never made your FB profile picture that “I made you a cookie, but I eated it :(“ meme in 2008, were you even living? In this episode, Hannah and Maia recall the long lost emo subculture - which took the world by storm in the mid aughts and fell quickly into obscurity thereafter. Emo emerged as a musical non-genre from the DIY hardcore punk scenes of San Fran and Detroit, and two decades later it would transform into completely unrecognizable pop punk radio hits resounding in every mall yo...
Dec 23, 2024•1 hr 8 min•Season 6Ep. 3
Ever heard of the Disney theme park for adults called “Pleasure Island”? No? Well now you have - sorry! Disney has always been understood as a company for children. But Pleasure Island closed in 2003, and people are having babies later and later (if ever at all), and so now the Disney theme parks have become a veritable playground for a whole new group of fans: grown ups. In this episode, Hannah and Maia talk about Disney adults - their malignment by the general public, their strange religiosity...
Dec 16, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 6Ep. 2
“Grandma, would you tell us that old adage again?” “Yes dears. A long time ago, your ancestors used to say: if all the computers in the world shut down, it’s because the furries logged off for a day.” In this season 6 premiere, Hannah and Maia chat about the most maligned subculture on the internet: furries - a group of people with an above-average interest in anthropomorphic creatures, who everyone seems to despise. Thanks to some unflattering depictions in popular media like CSI and the Tyra S...
Dec 09, 2024•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 1
"She knows what she's doing". In this special release of a 2023 bonus episode, Hannah and Maia discuss the elusive "e-Girl" and how, beyond the blushed nose, winged liner, choker, and multi-coloured hair - we have no clue what the e-Girl is all about. We do know one thing though - her online presence is a precarious one. From the ill-defined youth aesthetic, to Belle Delphine's bathwater, it seems the e-Girl exists online as a fantasy object for men, regardless of her age. And after the tragic m...
Nov 26, 2024•56 min
Once upon a time, there was a place you could go on the internet to buy all the strangest fruits that fashion’s best and brightest had to offer. Now, you’re more likely to hit it when you decide to become the billionth person in the world to own a pair of sambas. That place is SSENSE - the luxury e-commerce mega retailer based out of Montreal, which houses every fashion brand from Canada Goose to Issey Miyake, and employs just about the entire 20-something anglo population of Montreal. SSENSE ha...
Oct 22, 2024•5 min•Season 5Ep. 10
When “selfie” was deemed the word of the year in 2013, people freaked it. How had society become so vapid? Were we all narcissists? Did this mean young people would spend all the precious time they COULD be building a Forbes empire… taking pictures of themselves? But did selfies really make Narcissuses of us all, or have human beings always been fascinated by their own self-image? The selfie as we know it today may have been invented by a clumsy Australian man. But from its origins in the days o...
Sep 09, 2024•4 min•Season 5Ep. 9
If you’ve ever vacantly nodded along while someone rants to you about NFTs, then this finale episode is for you. Welcome to Blockchain for Bimbos. From a genuine effort to put agency over the sale of their work back into the hands of artists was born a Frankenstein’s monster: the NFT. It’s the internet version of owning a star… if you could resell that star for millions of dollars to a crypto millionaire. Even stranger, the successful marriage of NFTs and legacy art institutions made strange bed...
Aug 19, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Considering every broad and her mother owns a pair of ballet flats these days, it’s safe to say ballet has successfully re-infiltrated popular culture. But that might not be a good thing. In this episode, Hannah and Maia, along with movement artist Susanna Haight, trace the evolution of dance in the Western zeitgeist - from the days of George Balanchine, to the introduction of camera phones into the training space. If we’re living in a time of girlhood, and girlhood is all about ballet, and ball...
Aug 12, 2024•1 hr 20 min•Season 5Ep. 7
If you're enjoying the Parker Posey-aissance, then Party Girl is the film for you. This little freak of a movie, about a Manhattan club-goer who experiences an existential crisis after reading the Myth of Sisyphus (yes, that's the plot) was, believe it or not, the first feature film to premiere both in theatres and online. And thus it occupies a very odd space in popular culture. Predicting many things to come: the streaming era, Brat, downtown edgelords. And remaining an artifact of a time wher...
Aug 05, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Hamilton: the musical that launched a thousand lip-biting memes. Almost a decade ago, Lin Manuel Miranda’s race-bending rap-sical took broadway by storm and rose to unprecedented levels of success, amassing a dedicated, almost fanatical global fanbase. Yet with ticket prices starting at $400 a pop, the vast majority of these fans had never actually seen the show. Even stranger, in 2016 you could throw a rock and hit about three Hamilton fans, but today it seems like a title no one wants to claim...
Jul 29, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Season 5Ep. 5
When The Beatles came out with Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, it seemed like music had changed forever. Out with the days of 78s and random singles compiled into LPs. Now the act of listening to music was an art in itself! Until it wasn’t. In this episode, Hannah and Maia look past their musical differences to take you on a journey through music history as it collides with technology. As major innovations in music - disco, punk, MTV, pirating, the predetermination of music streaming ...
Jul 22, 2024•55 min•Season 5Ep. 4
It’s hard to tell what killed photography… whether it was the advent of the camera phone, the “pocket gallery” that is social media, or the thousands of men taking softcore images of hot women in lingerie and calling it art. These horsemen of the photography apocalypse were all put to trial when Emily Ratajkowski went up against acclaimed artist and professional troll, Richard Prince, after he featured one of her Instagram photos in an art exhibition in New York. An image she went on to purchase...
Jul 15, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Wattpad: a literary oasis of the Web 2.0, or a cash cow monopolizing on the infernal musings of a thousand Club Chalamets? In this episode, Hannah and Maia are joined by Youtube superstar Princess Weekes, to ponder the eponymous literary platform; from its gaming origins, to its heyday as a fertile space for burgeoning writers, to what it is now which is… bizarre. Is Wattpad f-cking up our relationship to literature, or should we just be happy that we’re literate at all? How do we critique an in...
Jul 08, 2024•1 hr 15 min•Season 5Ep. 2
Oscar Wilde once said, “ All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic .” But if that's the case, how do we explain Rupi Kaur? Ever since she came on the scene a decade ago, Rupi has seen equal measures of praise and scrutiny. And, youth and gender considered, it’s hard not to feel that the backlash to her work is yet another instance of people hating anything that’s popular. However, in this episode, Hannah and Maia are joined...
Jul 01, 2024•1 hr 30 min•Season 5Ep. 1
Nobody wants to be a stick waving old man, but what happens when it’s that stick waving old man who’s telling young people to loosen up? After a series of studies from 2021 reported that teenagers are having less sex than the generations before them, a strange phenomenon has unfolded on the internet. Younger people are being morally conservative, older people are responding by calling younger people “puriteens” (puritanical teens), and then other older people are calling those older people “stic...
May 13, 2024•5 min•Season 4Ep. 11
Full episode available on Patreon: Kristen and Bethany Baird make Christian life advice content on Youtube for their modest audience of 100k followers. But when Cody Ko reacted to one of their videos on his channel, spawning an entire industry of Girl Defined commentary, they became overnight sensations… for all the wrong reasons. Girl Defined certainly spreads harmful fundamentalist views to impressionable young women but, in this bonus episode, Hannah and Maia question whether Kristen and Beth...
Apr 22, 2024•6 min•Season 4Ep. 10
If you thought women’s beauty standards were unrealistic before, just wait until you find out about AI porn. Not only do these girlies have cartoonish curves, the faces of young teens, and impossibly long hair… they also have eight fingers on each hand! In this finale episode, Hannah and Maia discuss AI porn, the ways it infringes on bodily autonomy, and its commitment to rendering women’s oldest profession obsolete. You’d think we’d have flying cars by this point, but instead we’re jerking off ...
Apr 15, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Season 4Ep. 9
…We’re about to go off. Since what feels like the beginning of time (the 60s) dating companies have promised us that our soulmates are out there waiting for us, and they know just who it is. But in this current late stage hellscape, it’s safe to say these companies aren’t as altruistic as they seem. Yes, in this episode, Hannah and Maia talk about everyone’s least favourite drug: dating apps. It comes down to one question: if dating apps could really find us our soulmate, why is it that we’re le...
Apr 08, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Season 4Ep. 8
What do Uber and OnlyFans have in common? Did camgirilng really originate from a 24 hour live stream of a Trojan coffee pot? And fellas, is it cheating to have an OnlyFans subscription AND a wife? These burning questions (and more) will be answered in this episode, where Hannah and Maia discuss the multivalent world of OnlyFans and the ways it transformed sex work, for better or for worse. It may have been a saving grace for out-of-work people during the pandemic, but is OF a hero of the gig eco...
Apr 01, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Season 4Ep. 7
If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many annoying people on Twitter, you’ve got Tumblr to thank for that. Tumblr, the microblogging site that reigned supreme in the 2010s, was like Facebook’s cool cousin who has blue hair and goes to art school. It was the cradle of identity formation for lonely teens and adults, and it was also a happy home to lots and lots of porn. Tumblr’s NSFW content made it a search-engine-friendly way to consume porn without your mom finding out. But its alternative ...
Mar 25, 2024•56 min•Season 4Ep. 6
