Devious Licks and Manufactured Danger

the Devious Licks? Vaguely? Yeah, so all of all of I'm sure all of the I'm sure all of the Lick fans are gonna be really excited about today's episode because the first half will be we'll be talking about all of the all of the Licks. So for for

those unfamiliar the Devious Licks meme challenge. Things started with this video by a kid who had stolen quote unquote stolen a bunch of like COVID masks from his school and then was showing off his uh his harvest on TikTok played over you know, played over a song or something as as you do on the tiktoks. So they posted the video with this caption. A month into school absolutely devious lick and lick. I think lick just means like stealing, like like you like stole something and like

that's like that is a lick. I was so sad when I first heard about this. I heard I heard someone say devious licks, and I was like, they're like, oh, the TikTok challenge, and I was like, oh shit, people are like walking up to like like they're gonna like lick the under side of a bridge or something. And then it was not that unfortunately, unfortunately not. Yeah, it is, it is. It is a real loss. So this this video went very very viral on TikTok very very quickly

among kids whom's like they're in person. School had just

had just started. This was this thing in like late August, early September of last year, uh, you know, first with you know, the initial video then subsequently inspired a bunch of copycat school related heists that then posted into TikTok's first People just stealing like small, mostly low stakes things, usually inside the bathrooms, you know, stuff like toilet paper rolls, paper tower rolls, soap from soap dispensers, light bulbs, you know,

like like floor tiles, just like just like small things. But after a while the small fry wasn't was not enough anymore. People started to get more brazen, uh more, more more devious, you might say, Yeah, they were. They moved on to like full on toilet heists and you know, electric hand tryers. They stole a teacher's entire desk and a whole bathroom sink. So yeah, and eventually they kind of dropped all pretense of this being hoisting and just

started just like destroying the bathrooms, not even stealing things anymore. Yeah, Garrison, you and I have a friend who works at a school where this has been We got accused of like pushing disinformation when we talked about this on Worst Year, but it's like, no, we know people who work at a school that has not had functional student bathrooms. Happened, and it's very funny, as just just just to clarify my opinion on it, very funny. Yes, it's yes, they

but yeah, just just it started. It started with stealing and then just Scott turned into let's just destroy the bathrooms, which is pretty funny. Kids rock, Kids rock. So obviously, schools, teachers and principles were scrambling their confusion only upseeded, uh by their being upset because obviously they shouldn't have allowed children to be born into a world where TikTok could exist.

Really is on them, And you know, all of the upsettedness by teachers and schools only like contributed to the meme with like kids posting their principles reactions to it. You know, like like people like like announcing over the intercom, like like new rules about how to prevent the bathroom destruction. Schools are having to like station staff members outside of bathrooms to like like check and hopefully like ward off any possible destructive shenanigans. It was, it was this, It

was it was this entire thing. Uh. And it got to the point where TikTok actually had to step in to kind of curb this meme. They banned the hashtag dvos slick. They took down any content that had anything to do with the trend, and this seemed to work. After a few weeks, the meme kind of reached the end of its virality cycle. Teachers got to breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe there would be no more smashed bathrooms or stolen desks, you fools, But their calumn did

not last long. By the end of September, there were rumors perculating around that Devious Slicks did. Yeah, I got perculating percolating. Come on, I don't know, but it was. It was, It was, it was. It was said that the Davious Slicks may not have a wooden stick through its heart, and we may have only witnessed the first wave.

With something much darker lurking around the corner. On Facebook, various parent, teacher and law enforcement groups started circulating some purported sorry started circulating some purported Shenanigan plans from the kids. On TikTok, there was this month by month calendar detailing two kids what sick pranks they should play on their school for the for the entire rest of the year, and a few versions of this calendar were spread around, but they all shared the same basic overall structure and

prank ideas, just some like wording and phrasing changed. And the first upcoming challenge for the month of October was slap a teacher Sorry. This spread beyond Facebook and including to local news. Now another TikTok challenge getting a lot of attention tonight, and it's a violent one. Targeting teachers. That Nevada Joint Union superintendent asking parents now to tell their kids not to participate in this challenge. It encourages

students to actually slap their teachers. So although the smack a teacher line was what really got this thing to go viral on Facebook, the main screenshotted calendar that was being circulated, the actual October challenge was listed as a smack of staff member on the backside. That was that was the actual phrasing, which is a little, a little bizarre smack of staffer on the backside. Uh. November is kiss your friend's girlfriend at school, So again weird, weird phrasing.

December is deck the halls and show your balls in school halls, which that one was probably written by a child. But then we get other stuff like January is jab abreast, uh so more more sexual assault jokes. February we have a mess up school signs. March is make a mess in the courtyarder cafeteria. April this one's weird. April is a grab some eggs, but eggs is in quotation marks with his z at the end. May is ditch day. That's fine. June is flip off the front office, Okay,

who cares? And July is spray and April's fence wow graffiti scary. So yeah, that is that is that is the calendar of challenges. Some of these seem more I mean, we talked about this a couple of months ago, and my feeling was that this started as something real, just like m yeah and and this this ship was where it was. It became nonsense. Was just like people sharing things that were going to anger boomers. This and we

will we will get into this. So yeah. As as news about the TikTok challenges spread on Facebook, media, orgs picked up on the trend and started showting out headlines like TikTok's shocking school Challenges list twenty twenty one revealed and devious licks asks students via TikTok to smack a staff member that nation's teachers are feeling burnt out. So great, great headlines there. So all of that sounds so obviously

very scary. If if if teens around the country are all united in this, in this, in this planned destruction of our entire civilization, that that you know, we could all be brought onto the brink of via teens destroying their schools was so that would be that would be kind of fun. But if you stop and think about the wording of that list for a sec, you might notice some things that just seem off, Like no Gen Z kids are saying uh smack a staff member on

the backside. That is not like you are the first member of Generation Z to say backside, backside. And like the challenge for April is grab some eggs and eggs in quotation arcs with a Z at the end, because yeah, all of all of the cool kids today uses Z at the end of words to make themselves. Again, it's some like fucking gen X or maybe elder millennial piece of shit trying to make people angry on the internet. And he's just like April, what goes with April? April eggs? Eggs? Yeah,

I don't know. Something like all of the language feels like what's what someone would write if they were trying to imitate what a cool nineties kid would talk like on TV. Yeah, it's a lot of people trying to write John Hughes movies. Yeah, but so, but all this was very viral for like it was the end of September. This was this was all massive and we we will. Don't worry. I will explain why we're talking about this now because this does this, this will circle back to

actually current events. I'm not not just talking about a September twenty twenty one trend. This, this does, this does relate to stuff happening currently. But yeah, like suspicious language aside. The idea that the youths are purposely plotting on the tiktoks to assault teachers and we havoc all year long frightened many an adult, especially those that work in the education sector, who might have to face the possibility of

a coordinated zoom er wrath. And you know, the past two years had already been kind of a ship show for schools, with switching to remote learning then back to in person. Well, there's all all debate, all the debate around masks and vaccinations and the risk of being inside around densely packed you know, groups of filthy, germ written children.

Plus there's all these kids that got used to being home alone for so long learning half to like having to learn now how to like socialize in the class environment, all while dealing with the same mental trauma that we've

all been dealing with around around the plague. So so, just having faced the actual, very real September devious licks, the promise of a year lowing TikTok wave of destruction obviously frightened many parents and teachers, with educators on Facebook, you know, starting to take this list as a very real threat, with school districts you know, issuing warnings and parents were you know informed, like in mass about this very very real, very real threat. Educators be aware. That's

the warning from the California Teachers Association. The group sent this message to educators letting them know about a potential TikTok trend calling for students to slap a staff member. Seminole County Schools just sent this letter to principles warning them of TikTok's October challenge, saying, quote, in the latest TikTok trend, students are asked to calmly walk up to their teachers, slap them, and then run off, making sure they capture the whole thing on camera. Okay, and we

are back. So yeah, sure enough. News of teachers getting slapped began to circulate from local media into the national sphere, alongside headlines like TikTok inspired slap a Teacher challenge assault reported at Braintree's East Middle School and Covington police say

disabled teacher injured and suspected TikTok challenge assault by student. Uh. Yeah, so there was there was, There was a There was a few slapping incidents reported onto mainstream onto mainstream news was all all tied to the to the TikTok assault. A teacher things as student in Louisiana was arrested and faced felony charges, with police saying the assault was prompted by a quote prompted by a viral social media application known as TikTok. Sorry we've done the notorious hacker for

chat again. Everything circles back application known as TikTok. So yeah, in October, there were definitely incidents of students hitting teachers, But it's like that that in and of itself is

not up for debate. This, yes, uh, but the actual scale of content spreading this list and the subsequent slapping videos on the TikTok platform is something to question because writing writing off of the September Davious licks trend, almost all media, police, parents, educators were super quick to link this list and these few teachers kings to the social media platform used by gen Z, the application known as TikTok. And so we we have we have all this talk

on the news and on Facebook. But the thing is, if you check TikTok or at like if if if, if you're actually on TikTok around this time, you wouldn't find any viral videos. So teachers getting slapped or anything about this TikTok list of challenges at all. It wasn't actually there, like, it wasn't actually on TikTok. This this

wasn't actually a thing. H So you know, then you know, you might be thinking, well, maybe TikTok's doing what they did previously just to shut down the original organic deviously challenge. What if they're just doing this like preemptively to taking down any content related to the list, any like corresponding hashtags, etcetera, etcetera. But when journalists asked TikTok if this was the case, they denied this, saying that we have not seen anything

of this nature on our app. They said the first time they TikTok said, the first time they saw the list was of screenshot of it on other websites. It was not it was not from TikTok. It wasn't actually there.

So as more and more news circulated and Blaine was continuing to be put on TikTok for propagating this list of challenges and you know, encouraging teacher assaults, the social media platform made a public statement addressing the issue, saying, quote, the rumored slap a teacher dare is an insult to educators everywhere, and while this is not a trend on TikTok, if at any point it shows up, content will be removed.

So as as much as you would search online on TikTok or you know, wherever, you wouldn't find any evidence of this list actually being spread through TikTok at all. The only thing that you would find about this on TikTok is either kids reacting to news clips talking about this, or teachers on TikTok complain anywo this as well. It

wasn't actually a trend. The list was being shared online a lot like it was very viral, but almost exclusively in Facebook groups for boomers or adults or teachers or police. But people seemed real scared of all those groups. Boomers Garrison, Okay, that good not died. Yeah, it's it's it's it's like a mental ethnicity. Now people, people seem really scared. You know, schools were scared. News media loves turning this list into

like a looming looming Bilgeeman. But it wasn't. It wasn't kids actually spreading it or turning into a challenge, which leads you to wonder where did this even come from and how did it actually get so viral. So multiple and multiple fully separate investigative kind of ordeals into the alleged TikTok list of challenges placed its original point of virality in the hands of of wait, wait for it,

wait for it, I'm waiting a police officer. So Officer David Gometz, a school resource cause up who runs a popular Facebook page under the banner of quote the Truth about Youth, which is oh boy, pretty cool. So Gomez works at a school in Idaho, Big shocker, and back in September, his Facebook page had over thirty three thousand followers. Now it has over sixty six thousand, and he uses it as a sort of information hub for parents, educators, and concerned citizens to talk about the dangers of kids

on the Internet and all of that jazz. You know, Gomez basically tries to be like a kind of like influencer for this whole like concerned adult corner of the Internet. He writes these long, long posts about like school life and digital safety, touching on many topics from like how your kids are secretly buying weed and vape pens, or like how to tell if your kid is looking at pornographic materials, you know, stuff of this nature like here, here's, here's here's a few posts from him from from just

from just a few days ago. Lots of inappropriate behaviors pushed on Snapchat desensitize kids to reality. Nude photos, drugs, parties, crimes, et cetera. Kids can order almost any illegal drug and have it delivered to them on most any place on Snapchat. If only only so, He's like, he's like one of these types of guys, like you know, you know who, Yeah, yeah, yeah, God, if we only lived in that world, I would be

on Snapchat so hard I would be. I love I love idea that Snapchat desensitizes kids to reality by telling them about parties and well, I mean any time I look, I have a profound negative mental health reaction whenever someone tells me about a party. So I would why wouldn't children? So so the original devious licks challenge was dying down near the end of September. On September twenty second, Officer Gomez posted this list of challenges to his thousands of followers.

In the next few days, the challenge list from his page circulated around the web, prompting many nervous school emails, terrified newscasts, and ending up actually making the list of challenges go completely viral. When asked about the origin of the list, he said the first place that he had seen it is in a smaller private Facebook group for people working in drug and alcohol enforcement and education. He

called it a drug recognition group. It's like a group of like cops and stuff, where like, I found this bag of leaves, what is it? Can I can I arrest this person? It's like it's it's it's these people who like, yeah, post random stuff to figure out what drugs they're looking at. So he claims he first saw it in this Facebook group, but admitted that he was unsure if it'd actually alternated from kids or not let

let alone on TikTok. He just posted it because he thought, you know, better safe than sorry, But you know, it's it's funny because Officer Gomez's intention may just have been to spread the word about this because he thought it was an actual threat, but it turns out that he was just the one that gave it online life in the first place. So so yeah, But for like the actual origin of it, like like for it actually came up, as best as we can tell, it seems to. It

seems to have stem from a school in California. A principal claims that a student sent them this list, albeit a slightly more a vulgar version, more in line with how kids kind of talk now. The teacher then uploaded

it to a teacher Facebook group. It was then shared to this drug recognition group of Officer Gomez, and then Gomez or someone along this process rewrote it to add the weird like boomer Jen's like like like a nineties cool kid language, and then go has posted it, and then that results in like the cool kid's attitude, and

then he posts it, it goes viral. But there's no evidence that it was ever on TikTok like at all, Like this, we just don't I think it's not actually ever on TikTok until the cop posts it So the other funny thing is that all of these slapping incidents reported on the news, including the one that resulted in an arrest, also turns out to have nothing to do

with the challenge list or TikTok. It was just a regular like interpersonal conflict between a student and a teacher, because like that happens, like that happens just like every once in a while like that. But it had nothing to do with TikTok. According to the school and according to the police, we had an investigation. A substitute teacher choke slam one of the kids in my class, and we didn't even have a TikTok. We barely had the internet back then. It was a pretty good day at school.

The principle had to come in and apologize. It was very fun. That sounds great. It was yeah, so uh so yeah, Like in the end, we're gonna the full arc of this right starts in September with the actual real devious licks that that that that did, that did exist. It was on TikTok, but it was just you know, stealing stuff from bathrooms. Uh. It breaks off and and and then eventually kind of just like making bathrooms into a mess. So but this this, this takes off. It's

it goes, it goes, it goes pretty pretty viral. Then TikTok starts to crack down on it, and after like three to four weeks, the meme dies. It's it's you know, people, people are bored. There's too much enforcement. It's not fun. It's not fun anymore. And then we have this calendar list of challenges, right, possibly trying to spin off of like the devious licks thing and Gloman from the previous trend, or it was perhaps just written as like, uh, like a non serious joke. But the thing is like, it's

not actually found on TikTok. Right, So, even if this list was originally made by a kid, uh, it's it was not known by other kids on a national level, either online or in person. But where it does get a visibility is through adults, and not on TikTok, but on Facebook. Initially being passed around by teachers and school administrators and other adults, ran on the Facebook platform and

really accelerating from there. Right, we have we have, we have Gomez and then it's all over Facebook, It's all over Instagram, it's all over news articles, TV stations, and eventually does go. It eventually does get to TikTok, but not with kids talking about it instead of with teachers talking about it. But at this point, the story of the TikTok slap a teacher challenge was just tuned like enticing right. It had like enough of a grain of

truth by piggybacking off of the real devious licks. But it was able to grow into this like entire false reality because there were enough ingredients for a good story. And that's where like perceptions of truth really flourishing, is good stories. And then we found out a few weeks ago there was there was this article by Taylor Lawrence Uh in the Washington Post that there there actually may have been some kind of behind the scenes fuckory making

this trend to go as viral as it did. And we will we will get into that after after this, after this ad break. So have fun listening to these ads, and then we will talk about the behind the seams of making these these false online trends. Hello, we are back. So turns out lots of lots of there's lots of lots of fuckory happening. H to make to make, to make, to make narratives to make stories right. It's a all you know, turns out that not everything you read on

the internet is true. Uh, pretty pretty shocking revelation here. So it came out a few weeks ago that Facebook was actually paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a national campaign to turn

the public opinion negatively towards TikTok. The campaign was it was placing it include placing like op eds and letters, two editors of like, you know, major major news outlets, promoting of false, false stories about about like the growth of alleged TikTok trends that actually had started on Facebook, and then you know, trying to push reporters and politicians into helping them, you know, damage the perception of TikTok

on like a nationwide level. Eventually. You know, Facebook was obviously funding this because it you know, TikTok is their biggest competitor at the moment. So it's a it's actually pretty interesting. It's so it's it's it's it's with this Republican digital uh consulting firm called Targeted Victory. So this was the thing that Facebook was actually paying for to to to prompt these false stories. Uh targeted Victory has

been routinely working for Facebook for over the years. You know, they were they were involved in the twenty sixteen congressional hearings around Facebook doing stuff like with like election Medley stuff, you know, all the stuff related to like Cambridge Analytica. They were, they were had a small part to play in that kind of thing as well. So they also

receive a lot of Republican funding. They got a thing over over a two hundred and thirty seven million dollars in twenty twenty, according to data compiled by open Secrets, which is uh yeah, it's uh that biggest biggest payments came from a national GOP Congressional Committee and America First Action, which is of a superPAC ran by pro Trump folks.

So that this is this is the group that was that was doing a lot of the behind this and stuff to specifically tie tiktokoto making it look bad, to specifically make Facebook look good and push people more onto Facebook.

When this article first dropped, I know, Robert you said that, hey, this is a interesting, interesting little thing that is probably worth talking about in terms of how it affects politics and social media and like the intersection thereof yeah, maybe a little bit, so a lot of a lot of the news dropped about this because of employees with the firm. We're tasked to undermine TikTok through nationwide media and while being campaign and then lots of their internal emails for

this effort were shared with Washington Post. So this is this is how we kind of fed out about this. More recently, their task was to quote get the message out that while meta Facebook is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat, especially as a four non app that is number one and sharing data that young teens are using, according to the director of the firm.

So this is that's the type of stuff they're talking about behind the scenes in terms of how they're trying to push push stuff to get people stopped talking about how bad Facebook is. Because this was also right after all of like the Facebook Bright part stuff was happening in terms of how much Facebook pushes extremist content to

you know, boomers and stuff. And then the other thing that they were doing was specifically trying to craft messaging to get bills past and try to get attorneys general to focus on to focus on this to launch investigations into how like TikTok harms children and teens, and that part actually was successful, so you can you can look at the emails talking about this plan, and then soon after there was actually a coalition of a state attorneys general to launch a probe into whether TikTok is harmful

to children and teens, So you can actually look at the behind the scenes stuff that they were trying to do and then see how fast they were successful in doing this stuff. And all this also comes at the point that Facebook was for the first time actually losing users, and as soon as TikTok was launched and got so much more popular, it also took down a whole bunch of users from from Instagram, which was also owned by

Facebook obviously, so there's there's a Facebook. Researchers said that teens were spending about three times there's more time on TikTok than Instagram, and this is this was all part of the same kind of overall effort to both like do stuff to influence elections and politics, but also just do stuff to make kids think Facebook is cool, which good good luck with that one. Then, in terms of like the devious licks stuff. Uh. In other emails that that were that that were leaked, Uh, we got we

got a targeted victory. People urging their partners to push false stories to look or you know, stories that are sometimes tied in truth, but amplifying them, tying TikTok to various like dangerous, dangerous trends, you know, in terms of like save the children and rhetoric. Right, this idea that face that that TikTok is harmful to the well being of kids. One of the emails has has a line here saying that the dream would be to get stories with headlines like from dances to danger how TikTok has

become the most harmful social media's face for kids. So that's the type of headlines they're like trying to push. Yeah, it's one of the things that they do is trying

to amplify negative TikTok coverage. They have the Scoogle document titled bad TikTok Clips, which was shared internally and included links to dubious news stories setting TikTok as the original point of various like dangerous teen trends, and they were they were trying to like take these stories and push them out through other means, you know, so on Facebook and stuff. Right to take any instance of this and boost it like inorganically. Right, it's people's jobs to use

social media to affect public opinion. So one trend that target Victory specifically was enhancing was the devious licks challenge, including the initial one to vandalize the school property. Through the bad TikTok Clips document, the firm was pushing stories about the devious les challenge across in local media across Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,

Rhode Island, and Washington DC. I do find it interesting that they have a lot of these ones closer to Washington, DC to specifically affect politicians, Like they're doing stuff to amplify stuff to convince politicians specifically to start making political changes.

And this actually led Senator Richard Bluementhal, a Democrat from Connecticut, to write a letter in September calling on TikTok executives to testify in front of a Senate committee, saying that the app has been repeatedly misused and abused to promote

behavior and actions that encourage harmful and destructive acts. So yeah, like it worked, like they're specifically targeting the type of news that politicians will see in areas that politicians live, to get them to start trying to affect change around social media, specifically the social media that kids use, and amplifying the social media that boomers use. Facebook, which is

already is like a cesspool of spreading conservative disinformation. That's like the entire that's the entire bit that they're trying to do here, And so they were working on the original September challenge. Also in October, Targeted Victory was working to spread the rumors of the slap a teacher TikTok challenge, which as we know, was not actually a TikTok challenge,

but they they were doing. They were also contributing to inflating this this this trend, which is funny because obviously they were being paid by Facebook, they were being paid by the GOP and you know, Facebook is the place where this actually started. Yeah, so you know, but like again with every if you can tie anything to like a little bit of truth, it makes whatever story you're

trying to make so much more impactful. Right, The firm was careful to you both like genuine concerns and then just amplify them or exaggerate them into like unfounded anxieties to to you know, get people to start questioning the safety of these of these applications. So it's a it's a it's actually it's actually it's like a it's a pretty clever setup that they have they have going here,

and they've been really successful. Like it's it's like, you know, the the the October Davious lex trend with like this with slap teacher was extremely extremely, extremely success successful in terms of how they affect what is seen as truth and how and how how much news stories and how much news coverage was just kind of unconsciously and just

mindlessly repeating the stuff that they've heard. The other funny thing that that target Targeted Victory does is, uh, they they help write letters that are from concerned parents quote unquote that gets sent out to newspapers to be published in their like letters to the editor section. Yeah there we go. Yeah, So they specifically try to write off eds targeting TikTok and then place them in around the country,

especially in key congressional districts. On March twelfth, a letter to the editor that targeted Victory officials helped write ran in the in the Denver Post The letter said it was from a concerned new Parrot, and it claimed that TikTok was harmful to children's mental health, raising concerns over it's like, you know, data privacy, and that many people suspect that China is deliberately collecting behavioral data on our kids.

They're trying to hack our children's brains. The letter also issued support for Colorado Attorney General Phil Wiser weight Wheezers. I'm gonna say Weezer Yep, yep, yep, yep, Phil Weezer's famed founder of the band Weezer. They were, yeah, but the letter issued support for him, including his is to join a coalition of attorney general investigating TikTok's impact on

American youths. So yeah. There was a very similar letter, uh, drafted by Targeted Victory again that ran in in other other kind of smaller local papers throughout the country trying to link negative news stories about TikTok that Targeted Victory had specifically sought to amplify. Some of the letters that were getting circulated were signed by like members at the

Democratic Party. They were they were They were signed by various politicians in terms of like no trying to create this thing that looks grassroots to this prenator out and be like, hey, we have these concerns. Do you want to do you endorse our concerns so then they can then make it seem way more legit than just like a concerned parent. Uh, it's it's pretty good, you know. An email sent a few weeks ago targeted Victory asked their teams to be prepared to share the opense that

you're working on right now. Uh, Colorado and Iowa, can you talk? Can you talk about the TikTok opens you got you you you both but you both got. So they're specifically targeting districts where the Senate Senate like challenges are actually more of a more more of a toss up. So specifically trying to do this whole TikTok is dangerous to the kids thing in these in these places, it's uh yeah, it's a it's it's it's pretty it's pretty fun.

Because none of these letters, none of these op eds, if you read them, there's no indication that Facebook is funding them. There's no indication that the GOP is funding them. Right, It's that is the it is the whole like astro AstroTurf thing, right, that is, that is the entire idea

is that they look they look totally legit. So anyway, that was that was my my, my, those those were right notes in terms of the what the DV slicks and the SABA teacher thing actually was, and then how there was all this behind the scenes fuckery trying to inflate it, and how it's specifically getting inflated to tie

into like local elections that are happening in the mid terms. Yeah, what what thoughts, what thoughts do y'all have on on these on these fun, fun little disinformation rackets they have they have going on. We might do like another full episode on this at some point. But there's there's an interesting angle here where Facebook's one sort of taking the China angle on this a lot, and it's like, yeah, it comes at less in this, but yeah, you in this.

They they founded this, uh, they founded this advocacy group called I think it's American Edge, where they have all these things that are like, uh, that's like them in a bunch of weapons manufacturers, like, founded this lobbying group and they keep saying things like, oh, China's threatening our competitive edge. So we can't do anti trust legislation. If we do anti trust legislation, the Russia China alliance will

like defeat the US. And so it's interesting. That's like they're I don't know if Facebook seems to have like well okay, so so they have this problem where like the metaphorse stuff just flops and they're like, oh no, we need to make money. And it's like, well, okay, so you know there's the the two ways to make money, or you create something that people want to use, and that's hard. That's hard. They did that once and then they accidentally turned it into an engine that breaks democracy

and accelerates ethnic cleansings. So yeah, you don't want them. You don't want them trying to make another new thing. Yeah. Well, the other thing Targeted Victory was doing was specifically amplifying pro Facebook content. Yeah, but like how Facebook is supporting local black owned businesses and like all all all that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, so you know you have that on the one hand, or it's like yeah, they're

not they're not doing anything else. And the second way they that you do this stuff is by strategic sabotage of your competition. And this is what Facebook is doing right now is and they've launched basically full on in strategic sabotage angle. They've launched into this this sort of like preemptive defense stuff about anti trust being like, ah, hey, look at China. If we yeah, if we don't have tech monopolies doing genocides, China will have tech monopolies doing genocides.

And it's like That's the other funny thing is that whenever Zuckerberg gets accused of trying to create monopolies around social media, he's always like, but TikTok exists, But no, it's great because yeah, like they they like specifically say this. They their quote is, we need to get that message out that while Facebook is the current punching bag, TikTok is the real threat, especially as a foreign owned app like that. That is that is the actual quote. That's like, yeah,

they're specifically doing that exact thing. Yeah, they're the leading youth is nfobiaing institution because you can watch them sort of pushing all of the like the political buttons of the last few years. It's like they're they're they're they're basically replaying like the Trump like the Trump right stuff, right, Like they figure out that rhetoric works. So they're doing Okay, they're doing this sort of like uh like they're doing

sort of anti China's cenophobia. They're doing save the children. Yep, they're doing like they're doing all of this like your kids are unsafe stuff and yeah it's it's working great for them. So this is this is fun U. Yeah, yeah, no, it's yeah, they're they're they're definitely trying yep. I mean, and the specific things that targeted Victory tries to do the place that's funded by both Facebook and the GOP is that they specialize in Uh. Well, they they say

they do. They do crisis practice and corporate affairs offerings, uh for for their clients growing need for the issues of management and executive positioning, saying that it wants to focus on efforts to move toward authentic storytelling with a hyperlocal approach. So that is that's all the words they used to talk about how they do grassroots disinformation authentic storytelling with a hyperlocal approach. Yeah, faking letters from parents to local news sites who are hungry for content in

order to cause a moral panic about TikTok. Yeah, I mean, on average people trust their local news way more than they trust their national news. So they shouldn't because they should not because it's all read by like two companies. Yeah uh so yeah, I mean, but like they have they have a lot of money. They've they have a lot of money. It's there. It's the they're they're one of the biggest recipients of Republican campaigns spending. Now they're

receiving money from Facebook. They happen for a while, but they're spending, They're they're spending more money now. Uh yeah, And I think this is a it's really important to be skeptical of online trends because turns out online trends can be pretty astroturfed. I mean, we can look right now at all of the all of like the groomer stuff. Right.

Online trends do not need to be organic. Uh they're like I always say, the next time you feel like you see something on Facebook or Twitter and you feel like you want to share it because it's outrageous, instead just go set off a bomb at a power substation. Okay, just simple ethical behavior. That'll that that won't play into these people's hands. And in terms of all of the stuff that like with Facebook, trying to specifically demonize kids

demonized TikTok to influence elections. Like, if you're interested in what trends kids are actually into, just just like ask them, like you could talk to them like with like words and like with your mouth and use your like human ears. Uh, because it turns out they will actually explain it. Because yeah, and if just if anyone asked a kid about this list of challenges in like October, they would say, No, that's that's not a thing. That's that's not that seems

something like adults are really interested in. But nope, that's not actually a thing. Just assume they're basically the same that kids always are, but with different like technology and shit. Like when I was a kid and our senior class, a bunch of kids conspired to crash a car into the little pond that was on campus because it was destructive and funny. Kids like to do destructive funny things. Kids don't like to do whatever April egg bullshit or

grip takes. That's all of the challenges that are just like sexual assaults. You're like, that's actually not something that a lot of kids are into. It turns out just like kind of things back to being in like like tenth grade and would you have giggled at this If so, it's probably a thing some kids have done. Like it's

as simple as that. So anyway, with this is the episode we wanted to do specifically on how just like social media disacformation is trying to affect elections, leading to leading to leading into the midterms, and then tomorrow we will discuss more midterm related stuff with all of this kind of stuff with with all of this like disafformation stuff, TikTok and Facebook stuff, all kind of just like floating in the back of our minds as we move on to talking about the mid terms and why and how

they might you know, affect politics going forward, and you know how they might affect you know stuff or unclimate change stuff around different you know, mini collapses, all of that, all that good stuff. So but I think as it looks like we have we have reached the time that

we need to do today. So I believe that doesn't for us this week if you want to if you want to do the social media is because hey, after we talked about social media for like fifty minutes, Yeah, let's let's let's let's plug our social media Twitter and Instagram, Instagram and by Facebook at cool Zone Media and Happened Here pod Yeah anyway, Uh, listen to the kids and don't believe trends. Bye. It could Happen here as a

production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could Happen Here, Updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.