Animal Crossing: New Horizons has taken over the world in self-isolation, and become a virtual place of normalcy, even for non-gamers. But what if you’re single and dating, but can’t leave the house due to lockdowns? Tom Nook, in his infinite wisdom, has a solution for that. Alli and Jen talk with Lady Brittany, a Twitch streamer who has converted her entire Animal Crossing domain into a Love Island, optimized for romance and photo ops around every corner. There, she hosts real dates and even we...
May 11, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 131
College classes and graduations around the world are being canceled or administered remotely, but many enterprising students have taken to the virtual spaces of Minecraft to painstakingly recreate their campuses in amazing detail. While you can't walk down the main streets of Boston University and UPenn in real life, you can visit them virtually inside the blocky servers built by their students and faculty. Alli and Jen talk with students and volunteer builders Pearse Anderson, Nick Marchuk, and...
May 04, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 130
More than 600,000 people (mostly college students) are using a Facebook group to come together and bond over how bad taking classes on Zoom is. This week, Alli and Jen talk to Zana Rashid, a moderator from Zoom Memes for Self Quaranteens, a place for humor in a time of isolation. Rashid shares how disruptive COVID-19 has been for university students, the power of funny memes during this difficult time, and the Boomer vs. Zoomer wars that constantly erupt within this growing community. https://ww...
Apr 27, 2020•59 min•Ep. 129
Amid worldwide shortages of personal protective equipment (medical PPE), someone at the UK's National Health Service reached out to the medical fetish retailer MedFetUK, hoping to find a stock of masks or scrubs. MedFetUK immediately delivered, donating their entire supply (usually sold for sex play) to a hospital. While Justin, the co-founder of the company, says it was obviously "the right thing to do," thousands on Twitter quickly gathered round to cheer the small fetish company, and also col...
Apr 20, 2020•57 min•Ep. 128
In 1995, at the height of cultural mania around 90210, Melrose Place, and MTV's The Real World, the Internet as we know it today was just getting started. But if you had a connection and thirsted for more beautiful people trapped in a house with drama, there was The Spot. Created by producer Scott Zakarin, it was a first-of-its kind interactive webseries that imagined a cast of young, attractive characters writing journal entries about their lives inside a shared beach house in California. Diari...
Apr 13, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 127
So...how's everybody holding up? Please call us: (347) 871-6548 Follow Alli on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/alligold Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P Join us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p Email us: [email protected] Talk to Alli and Jen: https://twitter.com/alligold https://twitter.com/joonbugger Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Apr 06, 2020•37 min•Ep. 126
In 2008, database engineer Chris Dancy weighed 320 pounds, smoked two packs and drank 36 cans of Diet Coke every day. He was being paid a lot of money to be — in his words — “a real pile of shit.” But as modern social media began taking shape, Dancy noticed how the things he posted online correlated with how he felt — and therefore, how he acted. He began to track everything he did: foods he ate, shows he binge-watched, and people he interacted with online. He wrote programs that automatically u...
Mar 30, 2020•1 hr 18 min•Ep. 125
There are two types of "biohackers" in this world: People who are optimizing their bodies for peak performance, and...cyborgs. The cyborgs are putting microchips, magnets, and even full, working computers inside their bodies. Why? Because it's the future. And these brave pioneers are willing to cut themselves open to see where humanity is headed. Alli and Jen talk to Quinn Mooney, a biohacker with NFC chips in his hands and plans to install a Raspberry Pi in his leg. Mooney moderates the forums ...
Mar 23, 2020•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 124
An entire generation has grown up in a world where uploading hours of 4K video to the Internet is not only common, but expected. But, what if the legal and technological barriers that killed Napster and other file-sharing sites had also crushed YouTube? In 2006, despite its growing popularity, YouTube could easily have been wiped off the map by copyright battles and the skyrocketing cost of hosting humanity's video. So, what would the Internet, its culture, and the world look like today if YouTu...
Mar 16, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 123
We're proud to share this encore episode of #2G1P featuring Gary Kremen, the inventor of online dating. Learn how a fateful purchase order in the '90s lead to the creation of Match.com, and ultimately all the swiping you enjoy today. We'll be back next week with a fresh one! Originally published: September 24, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 09, 2020•1 hr 13 min
Sid Meier’s Civilization is a storied video game franchise built on an epic premise: Build a civilization to stand the test of time. Typically, a player will control a historic civ — like China, France, India, or Rome — and manage every aspect of its culture, beginning in 4,000 BCE. Food, trade, technology, government civics, religion, population growth, colonial expansion, and of course the military, all become granular decisions with far-reaching effects on history. The game is played like a t...
Mar 02, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 122
Porn on Reddit should come as no surprise. But nearly 400,000 listeners subscribe to r/GoneWildAudio, a community for high quality, audio-only erotic vignettes. Creators there use high-end microphones to create specific, explicit, and often elaborate fantasies for listeners. The visuals are left entirely to the imagination, and the intimacy level is off the charts. This week, Alli and Jen speak with Belle_in_the_woods, one of the most popular and prolific erotic audio creators on the subreddit. ...
Feb 24, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 121
Caleb Rixon was a 24-year-old musical theater actor in his prime, who had just landed a major role in a production of Chicago. He hit the gym to prepare for a long tour of song and dance, when he felt something explode behind his eye during a workout class. He remembers being taken away in an ambulance and not much else. He woke up a month later, unable to walk, talk, or swallow. But he was alive. A rare brain abnormality had caused a massive stroke, and Rixon was on a slow road to recovery. He ...
Feb 17, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 120
Quantitative futurist Amy Webb was fed up with online dating in 2005. The questionnaires and algorithms on sites like Match and OKcupid that were supposed to connect like-minded people and form lasting relationships yielded nothing but duds and disastrous dates. Despite advice from family and friends to cast a wider net, Webb did the opposite: she became even more picky. She created a long list of dating criteria and narrowed the pool of singles down using a complex scoring system. Then, she use...
Feb 10, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 119
Deaf users of immersive social platforms like VRchat can face a tough time communicating. Unlike other social media, VR spaces rely on verbal and physical communication rather than text. And sign language with current-gen VR controllers is limiting and clunky at best. But groups of volunteer interpreters inside VR worlds are hard at work making sure these spaces are more welcoming and accessible for deaf users. The result is an empowering community of "Helping Hands." This week, Alli and Jen spe...
Feb 03, 2020•53 min•Ep. 118
Sneaking into abandoned buildings and filming urban decay may not be the newest trend, but obsession with so-called “urban exploring” and “abandon porn” has skyrocketed alongside the widespread accessibility of social media. Today, millions of viewers eagerly await the videos of intrepid explorers like Bob Thissen, who travel the world in search of abandoned power plants, coal mines, theme parks, hotels, and shopping malls. Thissen’s mission is archaeological: to document places where no one has...
Jan 27, 2020•57 min
In 2008, Mike Merrill divided himself into 100,000 shares and offered them to the Internet for $1 a pop. After the initial wave of friends and family bought in, online strangers began to acquire shares of Mike — a regular person, not a company. With those shares come voting rights. Shareholders were allowed to decide Merrill's diet, his romantic decisions, even whether or not to get a vasectomy. Any personal life decision for which Merrill would seek advice from a friend, he instead posed to sh...
Jan 20, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 116
In 1997, an 11-year-old girl set up a website with HTML tutorials and guides for Neopets. Within a few years, "Lissa Explains it All" was serving 500,000 monthly visitors, its forums hosted 75.,000 users, and Google was sending her big fat ad revenue checks. Alyssa Daniels, a kid from Orlando, was teaching the world how to make websites long before YouTube tutorials and Squarespace — and making legit money in the process. Alli and Jen talk to Daniels about her childhood entrepreneurial spirit, e...
Jan 13, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 115
Romance novels get a bad rap, probably due to a history of stereotypical characters, plots, gender roles, and an all-around "trashy" look on supermarket and drug store shelves. But the genre has changed radically, and romance fiction now spans a wide variety of sub genres and writing styles. If you love romance, but not sure where to find the best authors and titles, start with Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, a community co-founded by Sarah Wendell nearly 15 years ago. The site (and podcast) is a s...
Jan 06, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 114
Happy New Year from 2G1P! We're taking a break this week, but wanted to re-share another one of our favorite episodes: Bronies! Enjoy and we'll see you in 2020. Original publish date: July 23, 2018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 30, 2019•1 hr 18 min
Portraying Santa Claus in the modern era takes a village. What's the best way to whiten your eyebrows? Growing a beard, or applying one? How jolly is too jolly? That's where ClausNet comes in. It's a social network, online forum, marketplace, and community where Santa performers can trade tips, tell stories, and learn the best ways to communicate with excited kids. Michael Rielly has been portraying Santa Claus since he was 12 years old, and founded ClausNet in 2007 after identifying a strong ne...
Dec 23, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 113
The rise of powerful, free 3D modeling software has emboldened a cottage industry of VR enthusiasts to create custom sex avatars for virtual porn. But what happens when members of this community start requesting models that look like celebrities, ex-girlfriends, classmates, and co-workers? Samantha Cole covers VR and online sex for Vice, and her recent piece titled "They Can't Stop Us," chronicles the sometimes well-meaning but often seedy underbelly of a marketplace that trades in virtual belly...
Dec 16, 2019•1 hr•Ep. 112
The Instagram account turned multi-million dollar media company @FuckJerry is notorious for stealing funny tweets, memes, and other content from creators, and posting them — without credit or compensation — to their own social accounts. Fuck Jerry's following has exploded in recent years (14.5 million Instagram followers at the time of publication), but so has the backlash. The #FuckFuckJerry movement became an anti-piracy rallying cry across the Internet. Two comedians (Davram Stiefler and Jaso...
Dec 09, 2019•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 111
We're taking the week off for the Thanksgiving holiday, but we hope you enjoy one of our favorite episodes. Sit back, relax, and enjoy a conversation with a very popular social media influencer: God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dec 02, 2019•49 min
This week, we prank Jen, when her boyfriend Adam pretends to be an adult baby who knows a little too much about her personal life. Get ready for some epic 2G1P hi-jinks. Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P Join us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1p Email us: [email protected] Talk to Alli and Jen: https://twitter.com/alligold https://twitter.com/joonbugger Call the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Nov 25, 2019•56 min•Ep. 110
TikTok came on the social media scene relatively recently (2016), and teens have flocked to it. The Chinese-made lip-syncing video app boasts 500 million users, most of them young. TikTok has developed its own culture and communities within, and Rolling Stone writer EJ Dickson has been observing and reporting on them in detail. As a non-teen herself, she's fascinated by the empowerment and deep social awareness that appears baked-in to Gen-Z, thanks to their constant connectivity. Alli and Jen t...
Nov 18, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 109
The anonymity of the Internet has long made it a place for confessions and bonding with strangers you'll never meet IRL. Virtual reality kicks it up a notch. Social spaces like VRchat allow strangers to inhabit the same "room" and communicate vocally and with body language, two aspects that differentiate it from the chat rooms of yore. One VRchat user, Syrmor, has found the platform to be an extremely compelling place for soul-baring, therapeutic conversations. So much so, that people around the...
Nov 11, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 108
When World of Warcraft came on the scene in 2004, it redefined the potential for massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. Players not only spent daily hours grinding for loot and gear, but socializing in a deep and organic way. Lifelong friendships and IRL marriages were forged in the flames of Azeroth. As WoW and MMOs evolved, some players yearned for that simpler time. And with the recent release of World of Warcraft Classic, guild-mates and raiding parties who haven't played together in a de...
Nov 04, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 107
Deep fakes, a process that uses AI and machine learning to place someone’s face on another’s body with Hollywood-level results, have been entertaining and terrifying the Internet for the last few years. And the technology is advancing exponentially, according to Sham00k, a programmer and popular deep fake artist who recently transformed impressionist Jim Meskimen into the 20 different celebrities he’s impersonating. But with this great power comes great responsibility. What do deep fakes mean fo...
Oct 28, 2019•57 min•Ep. 106
We're taking the week off due to unforeseen scheduling mishaps, but wanted to share one of our favorite classic episodes that longtime listeners and new fans may not have heard. It's our very first published episode about the Furry community, which came to define the mission of the show, and set the tone for future episodes. We hope you enjoy, and we'll talk at you next week! Original Description: Alli and Jen speak with Dominic Rodriguez, director of the documentary Fursonas, about life (and se...
Oct 21, 2019•1 hr 2 min
