Goblin Mode

It's going much better since Goblin Mode ceased control of the world. We are now living in the age of Goblin Mode. And Drew marsh said this morning, apparently it's quite a time. I didn't realize just posting with like just posting an influence so much around me. I guess it's been an interesting time for sure. Yeah. So, so I wanted to talk to you about sort of the

absurdity that is goblin Mode. Um. And I want to hold off on talking about what goblin Mode like is or isn't for a bit because I think that's actually, weirdly the less interesting part. And I want to start with instead the story of how goblin Mode became like a thing and why I am reading. I keep I keep like, every every time I look for more Goblin mode headlines, there's more Goblin mode headlines like the I think my favorite so far is from Bloomberg. It's a dieselent.

Diesel prices have gone goblin mode. Forget crude oil. This could be the real energy emergency. Yeah, that that is by far one of my favorites to uh. The full headline too, if you search for that one is it's what you said, but then it adds on thanks to the Ukraine War, an official Bloilberg headline with goblin mode and the Ukraine words. I gotta that's just part of

my favorite one. Amazing. The other part of three that's extremely funny is that so the people who are doing these articles keep getting asked someone, and someone's asking like an intern to find a picture of a goblin, and they keep posting pictures of orcs, which is like enormously funny to me. Okay, so I'm not sure what they're

searching to get those. Yeah, I don't know. It's really incredible. Okay, So yeah, I guess that should So we should start from the beginning of this story, which is, yeah, can you talk about your ship post and uh what you were thinking at the time when you made a ship post that randomly like has has had months long ripple

effects on the world. Sure, I think you're right though, like the post itself, and that's like the least interesting part of all of goblin mode in my opinion as well, Like just seeing the ripple effect is what's been super interesting and really funny to me. But um sure yeah, but the post um basically, I think it was like the day that um what Kanye West and Julia Fox, which there's a quick note, I've never heard of Julia

Fox before any of this. So I like sometimes if, like you know, Twitter is all talking about one thing, the most recent thing being like the Will Smith slap, like everyone's talking about that. So whenever like some like big event like that is happening and everyone's posting about it, I try to like think of some creative different posts I can do, you know, just to get in on

the the discourse or whatever you wanna call it. So I just I really don't know what compelled me to make a fake headline, but basically, I just I just decided to search. I think I was driving home from work, and I just decided to search like Kanye West Julia Fox, and I just found the first headline and I just edited it to say, um, Kanye West doesn't like it when Julia Fox goes gobline basically, and that's why they broke that was that was the whole lessence of the

of the post itself. Um, And I really didn't think too deeply about it beyond just making the post, and it just it caught fire with like I guess what we would probably call normal normal Twitter, like people that aren't even like necessarily leftists or anything like us. Um, it just really caught a hold with the whole of Twitter and pretty much like most of the people that saw it. You can you can go back and check

the replies. Most people think it's real at the time and replying about all things it's real, and no one, like hardly anyone verified it. It was like kind of insane to see, Yeah, yeah, I think it's funny because again, like you could very you could you could just google this right, like you can just google it and it would be like, oh wait, ho on, this isn't real, But like no one did that, and it was like, yeah, like you could have just easily searched the main part

of the headline, like Kanye West to Julia Fox. It was literally the second or third headline you could have found the same website, the same author, but seeing that it wasn't the correct headline. Although that does remind me when there was the initial article about my post um,

I forget who wrote it. At this point, I think, yes, that's right, it was the focus they they they for some reason, it made the assumption when they decided when they decided to talk about my tweet that the website, like the headline that I made made up the original website like edited that part out. So they thought that my headline was real, but it was just ed and taken away. And so that also affected what some people thought about it too, Like they thought a lot of

people thought it was really real. That's that's what's insane to me about this. Yeah, and like you and like like Vogue like picked this up. This was just like a thing that that like everyone has real. Everyone was just reporting on it as news and there's so much like there's so much like incredible stuff about this like

part of it. You know, So what if the articles that that gets published about this like after, so like there's this initial period where everyone is running around going like, oh my god, it was goblin mode, and then Julia Fox has to make a statement that's like no, there

was no goblin Mode. No one said this. Yeah, yeah, that's That's the interesting about like the evolution of goblin Mode, like stemming from my post specifically, is at first the coverage was talking about whether my post was real or fake and talking about that aspect of it. But as time has gone on, it's kind of evolved away from that, Like you you won't see any goblin Mode article talk about the original like Julia fox tweet that jump started

this whole thing anymore. It's kind of like shifted away from that initial, that initial post, which I found really interesting that that's what sustaining this. I feel like, yeah, wanted to read a uh, I wanted to read a passage from one of the art I don't know why I'm calling it a passage. It's just like a sentence, but read part of one of the articles that that came from up from the the initial search, which is from the streetwear company called high Snobby. Don't tell me

if I'm like pronouncing that wrong. Uh, well, okay, that's not not your Twitter. If I'm pronouncing that wrong, My Twitter is at I right, okay, yell there, Um yeah, but I want I want to read this quote because

I think it's interesting. So the article, they have this whole thing that's like, Okay, they get to the denial, they post your tweet about like, oh my god, I can't believe Julia Fox had to respond to this, and then they say, I'm not saying Fox was lying, but wearing a borderline not suited for work dress, a purse trimmed and human DNA and d I y I make up to an Oscar's after party. Is goblin mode to

a t? And I think this brings up an interesting question, which is to what extent was goblin mode real in the first place before You're sort of mean to went went viral? So like the phrase itself, you mean, yeah, yeah, like what part of the phrase existed before my post? Yeah? And I think it was also like, what what were you thinking, Like did you have like a conception of what goblin mode like was before you made the post? So so the only thing I had in my mind

at that point. Um, it's it stems from specifically um, do you do you know the user on Twitter hottie pants? Do you happen to know that guy? I don't think so. Now he goes by I think his ad is like punished Pants or something like that. But anyways, he around that time, he was posting a lot about like goblins. He was He would post a lot about like goblin time and like it's oh, it's Goblin time, and he would just make like a bunch of just like posts

like that. So goblins were on my mind at that point. And then I forget his user name, but his um I think his user name is um uncontrolled. I forget his user I'll have to tell you afterwards or something. I don't remember off the top of my head, but he he made a post that went viral, uh, something to the effect of like um, your honor, UM. I was going goblin mode at that time, you know that format that's like you're in court excuses like, oh, I'm

going goblin mode. It really in my head, that's really the only reference I had, So I didn't make up the phrase. A lot of people think I made up the phrase goblin mode, which I definitely did not. UM, But I think just there was a lot of people posting about goblins around that time, like early in mid March, and I just in my mind, I was like, oh, you know, I'm just gonna say Goblin Mode on this this ship post on Fox. I don't I really don't know why. It's just the first thing that popped in

my head. And whenever something pops in my head, like a tweet idea, and I laughed myself, I'm like, okay, I should post it. I don't know, and it seemed to work. Did you end up? So one of the things one of the things I think is really interesting is that, right, So okay, so you have you have your first wave of like it's the Goblin Mode thing, and then you have your second wave articles that are trying to explain what goblin Mode is. And I was I was wondering if you'd see if you'd actually even

seen the post. I just liked link to the chat um. There was like, like the thing I'd seen from goblin Mode before this, like all started, was this like Reddit was someone on Twitter had a tweet that went viral about goblin Mode and it was about just like someone It was about this Reddit post of like someone creeping

around their house and pretending and acting like a goblin. Yes, yes, So I didn't see that until I made my post, like in my initial because I think someone linked it under my post and I was like, oh, Ship, this is just like a thing, Like this is actually like a thing. And then I started popping off more because people saw that reply. I'm real like, oh Ship, this is like actually a thing. And to my surprise, that likely worked out for me, Like everything kind of just

came together and a really insane fashion. Oh that's another tweet to the one that you linked. That's when I was going, That's when I was in goblin one that came before my tweet too. Yeah, had you had you seen that one before you made it? I follow her, I followed Telgore. I might have seen it. I don't remember. I remember the other one I was resferencing before. Um, I might have seen this one now, Yeah, like I

I think like that. That was what was interesting to me about this was that, like the moment it went viral, there was this whole sort of like attempt because there was an attempt to figure out what it is, and then there was an attempt to like back project a history on it, and so you get a lot of these articles and you get a lot of people like I don't know, like I would talk to people about this and they would like, you know, okay, so they do this thing where it's like okay, so they go

to know your meme, they look at the Google trends, and then like the people sort of like, you know, okay, Like there was an urban Dictionary thing from like two thousand nine that was like a completely like a weird sex thing. It was like completely unrelated to this, but it was interesting to me the way that people like, Okay, so you have this thing that goes viral, right, and like you're just sucking around like there's no act, like

it's just sounds cool. But then like yeah, there's an extent to which it becomes this like you know, it gets into the sort of like viralty machine. And so you have all these journalists who like have to cover it right because like, you know, the other way the journalism boddle works is okay, so you have this trend, right,

people can see it trending. You see something on Twitter, you do like four sets of Googles, and you write an article about it, and it's like, well, okay, because they're trying, you're trying to capitalize on on the clicks as fast as possible. So when someone googles what is goblin mode, it's like, Okay, your thing comes up. But it's interesting because it's like it's like they have to

fill the content in because there isn't any Yeah. Yeah, that's what it was interesting about the specific that first one, the focus article, it was just a lot of like filling in where there was really nothing. Yeah, that's what's

interesting about that. Yeah. And then and then like after that, like all the other articles are like you get to see this proliferation of how the media works where it's like, okay, so you have the initial article, the initial article google some stuff and it's basically just making it up because they're they're trying to like give coherence or like give

am meeting to an empty signifier. And then after that, it's like all of the other articles are just copying off of the first article, and you get this like Ora Boris of like everyone just is repeating the same thing over and over again, and none of them seem to understand that, like it was not that the thing that they originally talking about was just kind of like that's really all it was, and it's it is interesting to see how it is just able to proliferate off

of as you as you were saying, they just google search urban, they find an urban dictionary and it's like my article urban diction. There is a good source. Yeah, and like I think this this is I mean I think there's there's like a few interesting things here, one of which is about how yeah, like I had this before, Like I'm not sure if I actually talked about this

on the show. So the day of the Atlantis shooting, Garrison and I spent a lot of time trying to like track down the shooter and there was there was this like fake Facebook post that was going around and you know, Garrison I had spent like a lot of time looking for this guy and okay, well we realized that this guy just doesn't have a Facebook, right, and so we were like so like I was like look at this, Like I saw his fake Facebook post. I

was like, oh, this is fake. And then like a bunch of a bunch of like a bunch of like actual journalists like found you know people because journalists have been passing around the fake Facebook post as like this is a post alleged to be a thing. And then and then suddenly they were like, oh hey this is fake. Hey you can see all these things like oh look, it's like uh, you know, like there was like the

it was pretty clear of it. His face had been copied and pasted into like a thing that's it was supposed to look like a Facebook post because there was all these like minor details about that, which is wrong, and it was like, okay, so this isn't real. But the media cycle of it was like all of these people I saw my Twitter post that was like this is fake, and then they just wrote a story off of it and like never mentioned that that that they literally got it from like me fucking around on Twitter.

Like it's like and it's like and it's like you look at this stuff. And the extent to which these people are just like these people who are journalist, who are you know, supposed to people journalists are just like woefully unprepared. Even people even who people who are extremely online like winds up being woefully unprepared to deal with like anything like that. They're woefully unprepared to deal with anything of any complexity or deal or like figure out

that they're being like hoaxed. Yeah, yeah, no, you're you're you're really right about that. I mean, I mean I think this it's I don't know what I would call this phenomena, but there's definitely something there where it's like they we'll see something like I don't know, I don't know what it is about specifically Twitter that like I feel like that's where a lot of people get news just in general. But I feel like a lot of

journalists just assume anything that they see. Maybe I'm over generalizing, but if they see something on Twitter, even if it's like a joke, like they'll just assume it's real or something. I'm not. I'm not entirely sure. Like it's super easy to make a fake post. I do it all the time. I make all sorts of like fake fake things. Most of them are more obvious than Goblin But I guess, but I don't know that they're I don't want to

say journalists are too trusting. Yeah. Well, and I will say, like there are times where it's genuine, Like when when you first started posting the headlines of like the actual Twitter articles that were about Goblin mode, I like I didn't do about it. Looking too, because I just assume they were fake. Yeah, lot of people told me, like, I think specifically, the the one that like most of my followers realized that they weren't fake anymore was the one that was like, um as a disabled uh woman,

goblin mode. This goblin mode trend is really problematic, and people people decided to look that one up and we're like, oh, it's real. And then everyone was like, wait, we're all these other ones that you were posting real and I'm like they were all real, Julia Fox one real. It was different. Agencies have been all these news organizations have

been writing all this insane shit about nothing. Yeah, and there's there's you know, I mean, I think that this one is funny just because like yeah, I mean like it's goblin mode, right, like it's it's it's it's just funny,

like there's no like yeah. But but I mean I think that there's an interesting thing that happens with with the specifically the disabilities one, because the disabilities one isn't like it's basically about something completely different that the Goblin Mode things spawned, which is that like, like the the other thing that happened with Goblin Mode was that. Okay, so people saw a goblin mode and then physicularly on

like TikTok Um. I don't I don't know if they knew where it came from, but like people like people turns goblin mode into an actual thing, where like it became this thing about like I like, I think I think this is also influenced by like some of the like ship post answers that you gave the media people that were like goblin boe could be whatever you want.

It's when you aren't awake of the pedel or like you're not doing your makeup in the pandemic or whatever like yeah, but but but it's interesting field like that. I really don't know if the TikTok's thing came before or after. I really I think it's after. Yeah, from what I've seen, it's it seems like it actually became

a thing after. And that was really interesting to me too, because it was like it's this way in which, like you know, okay, so you start running into these sort of like fundamental problems about the nature of reality where it's like, okay, so we made this thing that is fake, right, but then it became real because enough enough people believed it was real that it turned into a thing that people actually use to describe stuff, and then you know that that's how you get to like you get a

bunch of people complaining about how like there was an article that was like the great resignation and going goblin mode or like the two great threats to employers is they try to force people back to work, Like yeah, it's it's like the goblin mode, like self manifested into reality. Like I feel like a lot of journalists are saying, like people being lazy and like, you know how the whole meme of like oh, no one wants to work anymore.

I feel like a lot of people are trying to like attributing like oh, not wanting to work and being lazy to goblin mode. And it's it's self manifested through the media or TikTok or whatever whatever it may be. I actually don't know, but it's it's become a thing

now and in a really strange way. Yeah. Yeah, And I think I think this is like this is an interesting way of looking like, you know, like this was the whole sort of like like in in terms of like okay, insofar as posting can actually affect reality, which it can, but not as much as people seem to think like there are there are there are people who like seem to think that like the three letter agencies care what they post on Twitter, which is like it's like no, no, no, hold on, hold on. If if

we post correctly interventions, it won't happen. It's like if you seen the c I A like like like there's there's this whole thing where it's like, you know, I mean this, it's okay, this this is gonna be the like someone's gonna pull this out of context and be like, hey, look at I do Chris is but like you know, like this is this is kind of what happened with Trump, which like this is this isn't like what the meme magic was like if you just mean something long enough,

you can kind of turn it into reality by just sort of convincing enough people that it's real that it and and you know and once you've done that, like

you you have effectively made the thing real. Right. It was interesting about this one is is just like it's like a lot of people like do that on purpose, right, Like this is how this is like there's a lot of propaganda stuff that works like this or like, you know, this is like what the meme like before Chan Trump bullshit was like you just just like completely like as a joke on accidents. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't attend this. I just mean I just wanted to make a one

off joke. Yeah I didn't think that would happen. But you're you're you're totally right about the whole Like I don't. I don't know how much like the Trump magic was really a self manifestation of him kind of just winning the election and becoming popular with a certain people. But it definitely feels like like that self manifestation of like posting to a certain extent really can become real if it's just like hits a certain site, guyst of some

sort and like they just didn't. I think a crucial part of it is it needs to get picked up by the media and taken seriously by journalists specifically, because the thing that really, uh, I feel like broke the camel's back for Goblin about specifically was the first journalist that reached out to me because she she wanted to interview me about the whole, the whole experience like and her coverage of it was about the whole fake main thing, and then how it became sort of a thing in

that aspect um, and then um from there, they all a lot of different journalists and websites referred back to that article, and now it seems to be the one that everyone's referring to now is the Guardian article about it that seems to be like a media's favorite piece about it, which is the one that talks more about it being like a lifestyle trend. And I think that's where it really went off, is when like some people took in the TikTok aspect of it and kind of

manifested it that way. I think it's a couple of interesting political consequences of this, one of which is that like, like Twitter as a platform isn't really I mean, since Trump got banned, it's kind of like it hasn't really been where most like stuff is happening, like TikTok is exploding. I mean, you still like the boomers on Facebook. Like it hasn't like it hasn't been the sort of like

driving force of politics that normally is. But the one thing that it has is that all of the journalists are still on there, and that means that like yeah, like there's all these weird political concequences. Were like, yeah, you can sort of like like you can just sort of will things into existence by convincing journalists that it's real.

And that's I think really scary in a lot of ways for because you know, like the people who are really really good at the sort of manipulation or right wingers and right wingers could have sort of like like I don't know, like I people are probably mad about me for this, but like one of the things that I remember from like God was just two dozen sixteen.

It was like there was this whole discourse about like, uh, like there's a bunch of like all a bunch of people are really mad about like there being a black storm Trooper and Star Wars, yeah, the whole Yeah that's interesting about it was like yeah, I think I think

that was just yeah, yeah, there there. There's the thing that was interesting about it was like so I know people who like who like looked into it beforehand, and it was like the only people who were talking about this it was like people who were confused because they thought that stormtroopers were all clones and we're like wait, why wait and then and the other thing there are other group of people who were mad about this was storm Front, and store Front was able to like turn

this into like like a discourse, like they able to they were ably convinced journalists like this was a real thing that like a significant number people are mad about, and then it like actually turned into a thing that

a significant number of people are mad about. Because you can sort of just like like you you can start these like panics and like this is one of the things we're talking about in our trans episodes were like, you know, a fairly small network of well funded people can cause like enormous swass of the US you just lose their ship and get extremely violent and get like you know, and and and the specific thing they're mad

about changes like pretty frequently. But you can just sort of like if if you're able to manipulate the media well enough and you you know that there's other ways to do is like you know, you could do it

by like weird memes. You can do it by you know, being the cops, or just like having press releases that you send out you can have you can do it through like these sort of like astro turf, Like I don't know, you have like an astro turf intellectual like what's his name, markat Ufo, But it's it's it's interesting to me that like they all seem to work, like the pathway through it all seems to be very similar.

Which is what you do is you convince a bunch of media people or something is real, and then once once they start taking it seriously, it sort of manifests itself into reality. Yeah, I know that, that is what I realized what was happening, Like I one of my initial points that I was trying to make after um

the whole goblin thing. After the first article came out, I was like, it really made me realized, like how potent fake I hate saying this phrase just because it's become such like a nothing sort of phrase, but like fake news, how how easy it is to just like

what if instead of goblin mode? I decided like, let's say I'm like a crazy right winger and I had this weird sgeist moments causing a panic about like trans people, and I made like a fake tweet like that you would we see that happened all the time, like trans people pee. A lot of people hate us um, and it would be super easy. Put it in the right community. Um, make this fake tweet or a fake headline, and people right wing or specifically will go wild and it'll really

influence the discourse. I mean, look at the current I mean it's it's kind of over now. But the last it was last week the swimmer, the trans swimmer, that was the women's competition. I mean, the amount of vitriol that was able to be created over that, just like imagine what like as you had like a well funded, tight network of um but I don't know, but for lack of a better phrase, like fake news creators just all they need to do is put something out on Facebook,

the boomers see it, and then it's over. What One of the things I learned about, like well, I was doing research for Weirdly an episode about Reverend Moon, was that like people figured so this is sort of like this is like how the Republicans came to power, Like that they figured out you could do shoot like this and like rubber Fugieri like in like in like the sixties figured out that like if you just if you sent like you could just send letters to like they work.

I guess there were't even boomers up if you just send letters to old people that would say stuff like a planned parenthood is harvesting baby fetuses. You could just get the really mad and it's like and it's funny because you know in the cities, like he's he's doing this like by mail, right, like he is mailing you a chain letter. It's just stuff. Yeah, it became just

like a product amount. Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like it's it's weird because you can watch them invent this and then it's like, oh, yeah, this guy was funded by like a weird cult guy who was trying to take over the world, who was being backed by the Korean CIA, and it's like, I don't know, it gets into this, Yeah, it all sort of comes back into this weird thing where yeah, I mean I like one of one of the the sort political transformations I've had

since I started working here was like I didn't take like it's sort of a similar to what you were saying, Like I didn't take the like weaponized unreality like fake

new stuff like that seriously. And then it was like you cover it every day and it's like, oh my god, like the like the weird like like watching like four Chan, like invents the I A shouly don't know if it's Portune was one of watching like just weird right wing like message boards invents like the Ukrainian bio lab thing, which like Grant Meanwall Now tweets about and like like like like the official state media of Russia and China are like talking about these bio labs and it's like

it's turned into this weird like like thing where like yeah, like actual countries with like nuclear weapons are like basically using ship posters as like as like a way to do propaganda. Is it's just like really weird. I don't know, it's it's this really weird and incredibly disturbing media space

to live in. Yeah, it's it's like a it's a weird synthesis of ship posters just posting online to like whatever audience and I guess like media of some sort and not maybe not like um in the in the case with the biolab, I don't know too much about that, especially cause I'm black by Gun Greenwald, so I don't see a lot of stuff. Yeah, but yeah, no, it's it's interesting how how kind of interlocked there and and to your point about the earlier about the whole Trump

made magic thing. Like I I didn't take that too seriously at the time, Like inten I was like, oh, all these silly right wingers making these means like this isn't gonna do anything. Like I I don't, I truly don't know if it really had an effect, but I mean it's we can't really ignore the power of that. Just simply manifesting something, even if it's artificial, can actually have a hole on certain people. Um as you were

saying with the mailing letters. I mean, if you just say enough, if you say something enough to the right type of person, they'll just believe it. I mean, it's it's not hard to lie to people as horrible as those to say. It's really not that hard to lie to people. Yeah, Like, I mean that's the whole sort of like everyone yelling groomer like constantly about trans people. It's like, yeah, they just lied over and over again.

And like half the people who were like saying this stuff are actually pedophiles And it doesn't matter because you know, if you just like do this ship over and over again, you get these you get just get these like hate bobs, and it's yeah, no, the right wing right wing or specifically are phenomenal creating hate mobs. Yeah, it's kind of incredible to witness. It's it's really scary, but it's it's

an incredible thing to see. There's not really an equivalent, i would say, on the left in the way that um even maybe in liberals there's an equivalent, but like on the on the left, there's not really like an

equivalent to like some like a mob in that way. Yeah, I mean I think that's you know, like, Okay, there's always an extent to which like these stuff, the stuff has like material constraints, Like you know, I thought to talk about like constantly on this show, the fact that like this is like this is the stuff that the de cons believed and then they ran into the material constraints of the Iraq War and the entire project imploded.

And like, I mean, I think one of the reasons why this is easier for the right is that like there's the there there's a there's a there's there's a there's always a political base for them that is there that they can access fairly easily, which is okay, they may they have access to like you know, that they have access to like a vast swath of petit bars wall. They have access to a bunch of white business owners.

They have access to like this sort of like this like white professional class, they have access to the sort of like white gentry e class, and like those people can very easily be sort of like whipped into a frothing rage, and like part of it is because like that that's essentially that's just what they' that's what their class interest is. That's what they're sort of like like their status of the racial hierarchy like brings them to

do already. And you could sort of like you know, if you just shovel a bit of coal on it, you can you can make the fire go absolutely. And I mean it's talked about a lot, I'm sure, but like the one thing that is really powerful is Fox News. Yeah. Fox News will pick up literally anything like I saw I saw post on Twitter just the other day, screenshot or just just a picture of Fox News and they cited the libs of TikTok Twitter account talking about school classrooms.

It's like, what is that like not like the right wingers will just take the source of a random Twitter user that has a take takes messages from random people that message them and then that's their news like that just to to to to to be fair to Fox News, which is not a thing I will ever say again, Uh,

it wouldn't. It wouldn't surprise me if that whole thing, like because so the I don't know if you saw this the Lives of TikTok person is like, is that that thing is run by an old Bush administration person? Really I did not know that. Yeah, so it wouldn't. I mean, Okay, like there there there's probably a three and four chance that they just saw someone who's like

trying to own the libs on TikTok. But there's like a one in four chance that like all the old like Bush network people like know each other and that's why they're promoting it. That's that's a good point. That's a good point. I mean they have to know that. Well maybe I don't know, Like it's it's one of those things where it's like it becomes I don't know, it becomes really difficult to to know the extent to which the beliefs. Yeah, well how organized they are into

the extent to which they believe what they're saying. Because part of that like that becomes like you know, if if, if you know who's behind that, it becomes easier to sort of be like, oh yeah, we're just sort of playing a game. But it could also just be like, now, this is this is content that we like, uh, we were all too lazy to go or just message the person to see who they are, Like I mean they had the specifically in this case, the lives of TikTok Lady.

They had her like on TALX news ones talking oh yeah yeah, referenced her multiple times, so they have to know her. Yea, yeah, yeah, that that's that. That's another technique that they do a lot, which that they take someone who is like you know, like a like an old part, like who's literally a Republican operative, right, and

just laundered them as an actress. Actually, the funny part is you see, like like the New York Times and Ship like all the main street outlets do the same thing to you where it's like, yeah, well, well, like any time you see an article that is like I was a Democratic voter, but I'm going to vote for the Republicans, nine times out of ten, that person is a Republican operative. And if you google their name and look hard enough, you can just find it. And it's

like and that's the only thing. Yeah, That's another thing, was like I don't know whether they whether they're just lazy and don't check, or whether they're just sort of like doing this kind of like I don't know that

what what what? Whether whether they're doing this on purpose, because I mean that, you know, that's that's the thing with journalism, Like it's it's difficult to like, when someone screws something up, it's it's difficult to determine a lot of times whether it's malice or whether it's they're just

the only research they did was they googled something. Yeah, I feel like in the realblem that we're talking about right now, it's like right wingers, I think a lot of it Obviously it's pretty malicious a lot of the time at least, But in terms of like the whole goblin mode situation where that that stemmed off just from like random like Guardian whatever articles, I think I think that was just more of like, oh, let's kind of trying to explain this thing that is apparently now a

trend and we're manifesting it in real time. Yeah, I do think there's like a distinction between that ex I feel there's no like like with the goblin mode, there's there's no nefarious aspect of it, but that like technique can be used in a very nefarious way, and I think that manifests in the most easy to waste, easiest

to see ways in right wing media. Yeah, I do want to also mention that, like, yeah, I I think I said briefly, like the people who do this the most often are cops, Like the cops, and if if you see a story about the police in the mainstap of newspaper and you see the same story in another paper,

it's because they're basically printing a press release. And you know, I mean this this gets used to like launder just straight up police lies about shootings they manufactured, like the entire crime wave thing, like the whole thing about people

taking boxes off of trains. It's like, yeah, you look into it and it's like, yeah, there's these like there's sort of like shadowy police networks of people who are basically running I mean, they have enormous budgets to do this too, Like they have these enormous um like departmental like public outreach budgets and those public outreach budgets are basically them running information ops on us, which is incredibly fun. You know that that is absolutely like a real phenomena.

I don't know too much about it specifically in cops, but I know, I know the White House does that all the time, where it's like, oh, there's a White House leap and it's like, oh, no, they wanted people to see this. This is entirely intentional. Yeah, they try a balloon stuff a lot, and that's I don't know, and like that this is this is goblin mode, is like the fun version of looking at how all this

stuff works. But this stuff happens with stuff that is extremely deadly and has real world consequences, and yeah, it's it's it's something we need to be thinking about and trying to I don't know if used for good is the right thing, but like it's something that we need to be really conscious of as we're dealing with, you know,

a bunch of fascists trying to murder everyone. Absolutely, I mean that that's been the most interesting thing about this to me is watching Like I hate calling it this, but just for lack of a better word, kind of like goblin mode is like being manufactured, like manufacturing consent in real time, like from the genesis of my post, watching it in real time, seeing all these articles come out and kind of all time to each other and

refer back to each other. It's been it's been kind of eye opening about this topic that I think a lot of leftists kind of know a lot about, Like in terms of like media manipulation. You're it's you're right when you said it's like the fun version of that. Yeah,

and it has been the fun version of it. But deep down it's like, oh, this is kind of like how they did like they this might be dramatic, but like how they did the Iraq War in real time, Like this is on some level, it's very similar strategy, like media strategy. And I think, I mean, I think

I think there's specifically goblamode. I think there's because because like the Iraq War, there's a lot of just malice there and but but in this one, it's like, yeah, like that, you know, not all of the media, like all of them, Like Okay, in order for something that's completely fake to get traction, it doesn't require everyone involved

being malicious. What it requires is one person saying a thing, and then a bunch of journalists being too lazy to actually look into something and then just you know, basically reprinting the article but like rewriting a few things, which happens constantly, and yeah, and and that, like, you know, the thing I think that's scary about that is it reduces the number of actors who actually have to be involved in a thing for it to just sort of like take off like this, which yeah, like and I

think like there's there's an extent to which okay, like it rocks, Like something on that scale is pretty rare because it requires, like in an enormous amount of buying from a lot of people. But there's lots of small examples of this stuff that just happens sort of constantly and that stuff like yeah, I mean, you know, as we've been talking about, like that, that that kind of thing with small numbers of actors and then people just

sort of lazily reprinting articles like that stuff, right. I mean, I think the best example of this is currently, at least just in my mind because I am trans the the whole trans planic that's happening right now. I think that's a really good example of it. It's just where like some website will print this certain thing and then

it becomes a hysterical panic. Yeah, there's talking about it. Yeah, Like I think that's the most recent example that was that spa where it was like some person claimed like made it made a bunch of claims where they were like they might have seen a trans person maybe, and it turned into just like literally mobs showing up at this spa, like anti transbobs, just like a bunch of fascists showing up a bunch of like like yeah, and that kind of stuff. Yeah. That that affects reality. Yeah, people,

that really affects people. Yeah. And and like the the the other one, the other one that that we've talked about in the trans episodes is people to people are starting to do this kind of stuff with gender clinics, and it's you know, yeah, and it's like yeah, like that that's only a matter of time before they start killing people. Like yeah, that is that is the same. Yeah. The media can easily whip someone into frenzy to do that.

I mean we've seen that in the past with I think, as you referenced before, like the whole like abortion whole, like in the nineties and the early two thousands, the whole abortion panic. Yeah, I mean we saw we saw people die over stuff like that. Yeah, the bombings, like and you know, and the other thing is that like they're winning, like they are on the verge of after this like half a century long battle, like they are on the verge of our turning ro he weighed. Yeah, yeah,

like you know that. And that's I think a really grim thing for the left where it's like, like, what one of the asymmetries here is that like if a leftist like assassinated the head of Ice right like they were, like I would be in prison in like a day and a half. There'd be like fifteen people who be shot in police raids, like yeah, be you know, but like when when the right wing just like it do terrorism,

like just murders abortional writers, it works. And that's a really grim asymmetry, but it's sort of the reality of the situation that brand right. And Yeah, that reminds me of the This is a while ago. This was during the Black Lives Matter protests. I don't even remember why he was on the um fed's radar, but there was the dude I think in Portland's and there was like a there was like a raid and they just shot the dude in the remember that, Yeah, yeah, I mean

it happened again in Uh Yeah, they murdered him. And then like it happened again with Winston Smith in uh in Minneapolis where like the like the cops were mad at him because he was like he was one of the leaders of that's happening in Minneapolis and they just walked up and shot him. Yeah and yeah, and it's it's it is a really bleak look at you know, how this country actually works, which is not really what

I expected this episode to be. I just like, we'll do a fun episode about Goblin Bode and now it's like, yeah, he was the state just assassinating people and they're gonna keep doing it. And also they're gonna like to start bombing abortion well, I mean to keep bombing abortion clinics and start bombing gender clinics, and it's like that doesn't actually happen, but but yeah, I think it was. Our point was that it was like we've seen that happen

in the past. Yeah, of the reactionary media fueling the hysteria through it doesn't even matter if it's real or fake stories. That's that's the main issue, is it can be totally fake and it'll it'll just fuel hysterics against anyone, any any target. Yeah, that's just like yeah, like what

the we should probably close out. But like the one that's been fun for me, and by fun, I mean dear God, has been the fucking the Hunt biolab ship, which was like literally like like literally this this was this like literally this whole thing was a sie up by Steve Bannett who was like, this is how we can have Trump win the election by by by uniting everyone in like anti Asian hate, and like it worked, Like well, I mean, okay, he lost the election, but

like you know, all like eventually this is this just like completely crank, like absolutely batship. All the people who are advocating for it are like like they like they're like mushroom scientists or they're like people who like you know, like like they're they're like weird. I ever met In Truthers. Like all these people, you know, like were were legitimized by the media and like that had that had an enormous impact on the last sort of two years of

anti Asian violence. Like that's like that that's the thing that to get as bad as it did. And again, it is just completely fake. There's nothing it's it's that they're just they're just you know, like a bunch of fascists made up a lie about a plague so that they could try to win an election by like murdering Asian people. And yeah, and it's it's That's interesting thing is that if you look at um, like was about like, oh,

how do you feel about China? Like you go back even just four years ago, most people were like, I don't have exact numbers on my head, um, but most people it was like maybe split like oh, like China is kind of scary, or like China's okay, but like most Americans at this point, even like a lot of liberals do not like China. Like it's like even the

rest like China. It's like it was just manifested through the whole maybe not all through the whole Buhanu lab but just the last few years and years of both Biden's government and Trump's government ratcheting hard against um China, and just like anti China or even anti Chinese like

people sentiments. Yeah, there's there's an interesting thing there too, where it's like, okay, so for the first about so that this pivot starts when which when Trump starts a trade war, right, and there's this interesting thing where it's like for the first about two years of it, it was like the views about China were changing, but the

actual level of anti Asian violence wasn't doing much. But then when COVID hit, it was like you know, it was it was it was kind of like an abstract thing, right, it was like, okay, well we don't like China, but like there was nothing that there wasn't like a super strong like the thing you could point to to directly

tie it to Asian people. And then the moment the moment the pandemic started, and then the moment that like Wuhan ship started, it was like suddenly there was like a concrete thing that you could point to, and it was that was like, hey, look it's the Chinese people. The they're they're they're they're spreading the plague, they benefactured the plague. The lab is because they're dirty, and like the moment became that was when everything just like all

the attack skyrocketed like that. That's that's that's when like everything just sort of like really like kicked off and that was hysterics. That was like the target and hysteria of I would say, yeah, yeah, and it's you know, the fun thing I'm bracing for is like, yeah, this looks like it's gonna be the Democrat strategy two as well Republican strategy, and it's like, oh, hey, more of us are gonna die. This is gonna be fun. So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's kind of scary. Yeah, this just started out as

a fun episode. But yeah, it's how God was fun, so I guess it was still a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have anything else that you want to say or do you want to tell people where to find you? Um? I don't really have anything to say necessarily. All I really do on the internet, at least, like my my whole interimnet in a private presence right now is just on Twitter. Um. If you want to follow me, it's um at mell mell meu. UM. I don't know if

you'll have like that linked or anything. It's kind of hard to spell with the last the whole MEU it's i'm eu w. But that's really all I have is just my Twitter. Yeah, that's all that's all I really do online. I mean, it is extremely funny, and every once in a while you create Goblin Mode as an actual thing, which is Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I have a good time on Twitter people. People complain about that website a lot, but yeah, since I joined it, like

twenty nineteen or whatever, I haven't looked back. It's it's a lot of fun. I've got a lot of cool people. Yeah, I've known of you for a while, but it's nice to actually talk to you. You too, Yeah, yeah, it was. It was a good time. Yeah, So go Goblin Mode. Don't let the fascist murder trans people. Uh yeah, this this is maybe it could happen here. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram at happen here pot Uh yeah, have fun, find cool trinkets suppressed the turfs gotta you

gotta have the trinkets. You gotta find the That's what goblin modes all about, getting trinkets. That's right, all right, the bio folks. It could happen here. As a production of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for it could happen here. Updated monthly at cool Zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.