111: Sex, Y2K & Videotapes

I'm elevating. Yes. Um. We got a great night email this week from a friend of the show, Brooke, a gossip girl. We wanted to kick things off with it because, uh, I feel like you guys might have a lot of thoughts about this one. So this is what Brooke, she says. Going off of the discussion of what counts as the decade, I considered the ohs to be the decade of the

birth of the Internet. As such, I think the oh sex tape craze starts with Pam Anderson in eight, followed shortly by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which was essentially lit erotica. That's how I learned that blow jobs were a normal part of adult sex lives. Onto Paris Hilton and Oh Three Girls Gone Wild, the Kim Kardashian tape in earlier seven, and pattering out with the Lauren Conrad sex tape rumors that never produced an actual tape, but did give us

a good season of the hills. It seems to me that sex tapes are a great manage point through which to examine the stages of the Internet. At first, it was kind of the wild West before social media. There was no way for celebrities to spend their own narratives, and they were subjected to outlets like TMZ and Perez with no recourse. The next wave, the post Keeping Up with the Kardashians era, celebrities had multiple ways to correct

the narrative. Now, people like Caroline Callaway proudly announced their only fans on their Twitter dairy and people to say something about it. A Perez couldn't find an audience now when you can just go directly to the source. When I think about that decade, my decade of high school and college, it's inextricably linked to the sex tapes. And reality shows birth from them. Do we get the Playboy reality show The Girl's Nex Door in two thousand and

five without Pam and paris Is sex tapes? If Pam's tape had come out a few years later, which she and Tommy have had a reality show. Would love to know your thoughts. XO XO Gossip Girl. What do you think, guys? This is interesting? I mean, I definitely think that she that Pam and Tommy would have been offered a reality show. The question Pam and Tommy I think of as a

different scenario. Um. I actually did an episode about some of the sex tapes Withnami Fry over at my Side Pot Molly Sleusy Friends, where I learned a lot of the details about the Pam and Tommy tape, which is that it was stolen. It was not you know, released by them. It was literally like stolen from a vault

in their house and released against their will. So that to me makes it a very different thing than the Paris and Kim tapes, which were at least the Paris one that was not released, that was released against her will. I think I don't know if that's true. I mean, I feel like she see this is. My theory is that Paris the tape was actually released against her will. Like I believe her on that, and she just did a good job of making lemonade out of lemons and

made a blueprint for it. That then Kim Kardashian, her friend of me, could actually mimic um and you know, possibly intentionally leak it hoping to follow in the same like perfect the model. Basically, I'm gonna say I'm not

sure a on either Paris. I mean, I am a percent sure on Kimp, but I don't think she's ever publicly admitted that her mom was the one who was like, you should make a sex tape and sell it even though that or does she ever need to public The thing about the Paris and Kim sex tapes is that they're terrible. You know, they're like the sex doesn't look fun and they're sort of just like depressing, especially the Paris Helton one because it's shot all in night vision.

Everybody looks like an alien. Um. The Pam and Tommy one, even though it was you know, stolen and leaked against their will, it's like it's different because it's so romantic. You know, they're so in love with each other. And that's what makes it feel really intimate, not just that you're like, we shouldn't be seeing this because like it's their private thing, but that they're on their honeymoon and they're super in love with each other, and it feels

like getting to see like JFK and Maryland together. You know, you're just like, oh, yeah, like these people have a private life, and it is interesting because like, obviously things have changed so much out that nobody would ever like make a sex tape. People would just be filming on their yachts and streaming it publicly, is what I mean. You might not see the sex, but you would see

all the other stuff. Well, I think also, I mean that she she so she brings up Caroline Callaway, who's been over the past month or so doing a lot of kind of you know, releasing her own nudes and stuff like that. I actually haven't totally caught up with my Callaway, but I the last I saw was that she had posted on Twitter like a picture of her

nipple or something. She's the point in quarantine where she was like, I'm just gonna post nudes, which is like a point everybody reaches in quarantine eventually, is it, Like what does it matter? You know, just only connect? How are you going to connect to people if you're by yourself and only have the Internet as a pipeline, Like that's a way to feel vulnerable and alive, don't you wonder? I mean, I guess it is. It's an income source and only fans, which I just learned about from you guys,

like no time ago. Because so she you know, people are mad at her only fans because they're like, your co opting sex work for like something else that's just sort of like Instagram plus and like male sex workers do stuff like this to make a living, and like you're not doing it the right way. And then Caroline is very like, who's you know? I just want to be part of this, like we're all the same. But she has charging a lot for her How much is she charging fifty a month? I think? But then I

was a lot. Who am I to like tell people not to use whatever they have to make money off the internet? Right now? That's true. Also, I think if Caroline Calloway thinks that people pay like fifty dollars a month for an occasional nip slip, like she'll learn, she'll it's better than that. It's better than that. Okay, she does more. She's doing cause play as I mean female characters of literate Sure, but like doesn't want to be doing that with its smart for it's like perfect. She's

doing like Elizabeth Bennett gets naked. She was doing Miss Honey from Matilda the other day. Is this really? Yeah?

I think that's I mean honestly, like I'm not mad, like actually like only fans I feel like, I mean, I'm not positive on this, but it appeared to me, and I'm also like not feel free to correct me, but it seemed to me the only Fans was kind of invented, like in the way that, um, what was that original platform for celebrities to put their stuff on their photos that like lasted for maybe two years of early Twitter? What was I don't know, do you know

what I'm talking about? That was like all these celebrities had this place. It was like and it was just like Peter down because nobody really felt like keeping up this whole separate profile. But it's just like that like somebody decided like, oh, you can monetize like your premium content on so if you're like getting a lot of hits for free on social and then obviously it gets co opted by people in the adult sector and and

like very logically like that that makes sense. But I don't feel like Only Fans was set up as an adult site. It just very obviously lent itself to that. So I don't think it's a co opting anything. I mean,

I think it's known best as an adult site. I think that I don't know, the politics of the nude trade market are difficult, you know, I think, well, I think one thing that that's interesting is how, you know, Only Fans and kind of giving the content creator full creative control over who gets to see their nudes and who benefits from that, being the creator not someone who steals and leaks a tape or whatever? Is that? Now? Can we agree that that's like somewhat empowering and better.

I mean, on the one hand, I think that it's great to eliminate the market for like, you know, oh, look, we have a sex tape that we stole from a vault and we're going to release it. Like it kind

of negates the like blackmail aspect. And I know a lot of people recently have been getting the spammy messages of like, well, we saw what was on your laptop, what your laptop captured, which of course is a it's a great time to do horrible blackmail extortion like that to people because we're all just sitting here in front

of our laptops constantly. Um. I was telling my husband, I was like, wouldn't it be awful if they like hacked my my laptop and they found like all of the me setting up zoom meetings where I'm just like like fumbling with my headphones. It's like worse than any nude but it's I'm I'm happy that, like you know, people have now creative control and they're able to be like, Okay, I will totally benefit from releasing these only fans is like positive. It's like it's needed because all of the

other social platforms have more or less banned nudes. Um and Instagram will just sensor community or kick you off for nudity. So for a lot of people who if their job is in any way tied to like, yeah, selling pictures of themselves, um, only fansism is a better platform and like more of a direct way to get money for doing it for the people that are doing it themselves. So yeah, it's like you can put out the middleman of the sun and whatever. I mean, there's

still a middleman. I'm sure you're still like paying a you know, it's probably Patreon or whatever. Yeah, it is like Patreon, That's what I'm saying. It's like I think it's all content and like I really don't care if somebody is selling like you know, their body or their podcasts, Like it's all kind of the same thing to me, you know. Yeah, And it's like it's certainly it's like everything is more empowering than having a sex tape linked against your will and you know, having to respond to

that either defensively or progressively. Most Yeah, like a lot of sex workers can't make the living on just the nudes. Like they also ate podcasts and you know, other other jobs like yeah, everybody has five hustles and the idea that some people, I mean, there's definitely just been an

argument overall since the virus started. Were all these like I understand this, like a lot of just like regular NORMI people were like, guess I'm going to start an only fans to like make that sweet sweet only fans money. And because I'm a millionaire and I don't think you're going to become a millionaire. You're not sure, but like I think a lot of the other people that you know, we're already doing that. We're like, we don't need more

people doing this. And also like nobody has money, so it's not like everyone is going to become rich off only fans. So like leave it to the press question what would be your earnings floor for doing an only fans? Like if if if you set up an only fans, what would be the minimum amount of money it would take for you to be like post intend on how much? How much per picture? Like what it evens out to for Well, that's my question per photo? What would be

your minimum? You know, you can think of like a sex tape as like a great way to launch a reality career if that's what you want. And that's clearly been successful for a very small number of people, but still they're there. But with only fans, I'm like, I mean, especially this is coming we're recording on Friday, there were there were just you know, a huge, massive number of

layoffs in media. Again today it's obviously it's just going to keep going like this, So it is kind of something to ponder not that I'm particularly I am not pondering it, but I am a little just in terms of like what what I mean it's like with cameo, Like how much money could could and realistically make on cameo. It is just I don't think most people are making money on cameo or only fans to like actually support themselves.

It's supplemental. Yeah, Like like very few people on Patreon are actually making the bulk of their living on Patreon. It's like, and I've seen people treating about it that, Like people have this fantasy of like, oh, I could just like you know, post some feet picks and make make some money. Uh, And like that's probably not how it's gonna work for with these people haven't had a blog called Wipe your feet for many years, I know everything. I think Jamie Loft has got on some like uh

celeb feet you know website. That's the scarier thing actually is like even if you don't post pictures of yourself, people are looking for them. Yeah, Like definitely some semi famous people that I know I've seen. It's like people will take their photos from Instagram and Facebook and stuff and be like, look, their feet are showing in this photo. Here's a collection of all the like feet picks of

this person. The when you start realizing like the foot pick market this and then you just fall into that rabbit hole. It's astounding. It's like I would I don't care who looks at my if I could make five thousand dollars, Like you wouldn't believe the things I'd have my feet be doing. Maybe the greatest shift in in millennium era Internet is like the scales falling off our eyes in regards to fill in the blank feet as

a search. That's just it's just for everyone, you know. Um, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, some spooky quarantine times. Welcome back to night call. I was just thinking about one thing that I talked about a lot, is like the rubicon also of when you could see nudity on the Internet versus when you had to seek it out yourself, and how that is like the big generation gap and my mom mind is people who had to find sex scenes just watch sex

scenes in movies on like HBO. That was the best you were going to get. Um. So there's a big plotline on Real Houseves with Beverly Hills about Denise Richards being upset that somebody was talking about how they had a threesome at a party and she was worried or kids could hear. And I was like, that is so interesting because she is in one of the most famous screen threesomes of all time. Like, have their kids never looked up their mom and seen like wild things? Your

mom in a hot three kids? They're like young teens and she's very protective of that because their dad is Charlie Sheen and she's like, we don't want them to know all the things their dad has done. Um. She's married to this guy now who explained his job on an episode last week and it was just like truly sublime television because he talked for a full minute about what he does for a living and nobody could understand what it was because he was like everything science has

told you is a lie. They're vibrations in the universe. Our bodies can heal themselves with sound. Um. And he was sitting next to a very stoned person who kept being like wow, yes, um. And the craziest part was then Lisa Rinna jumped in to be like, wait, what are you talking about? My husband, Harry Hamlin actually works in the field of nuclear fusion, which it turns out he does. What Um, She was like, nothing you're saying

makes any real scientific sense. And then Denny Churches and her husband, we're like, we can't talk about it too much. Sometimes we are followed for talking about it. So I looked into what he does. Obviously, it is a healing center in Malibu. Um it's called I think three sixty Wellness and basically it's sound baths. It's like play vibrational tones at you and sometimes do lights. Uh Yolanda Hadid Foster is a famous visitor to This is the one that Jane Marie went to on the last season of

the same same idea. It's healing, it's positive healing, vibrations stuff. So Denise Richards was showing the other day in a magazine for a whistle that she owns that is called the love whistle that only blows at I believe it is five hundred and forty eight hurts hurts, which is the loving calm vibration. What does five h hurts sound like? Well? I went to YouTube to find out and there's a clip there's like, yeah, play play a little of the vibration.

It's just that just whistle foot. It's just like a no. But when I looked it up on YouTube, there were all these like five hour Hurts videos and they just kind of are like new age music, and then every once in a while it goes like that's higher pitch than I would have thought. Um, But I got an ad on the YouTube video from a super weird ad that was super Nightcall that was something called the EPOC Times. Oh I think I know about this? Is this like

a somewhat like religious or new age. Well, it was an ad that was like two white people in a kitchen being like, hey, what do you know about the coronavirus? Oh? Well, I actually just read in this newspaper that it was created by the Chinese Communist Party. And then they opened this newspaper and they're like, check out this spread about the CCP virus um and it was like it was

made in a lab by the CCP. So I like looked into this and it turns out EPOC Times is the media arm of uh Foulon Gong, which also puts on chan Yon uh Um so Foulon Goong hate the CCP because they were expelled from practicing in China because they were getting too big, and also because they are a cult sort of UM, so they hate so they're just funding all this right wing propaganda, this anti anti Chinese propaganda. UM. And then I treated about it and everybody was like, oh, I got that in my in

my mailbox and I didn't know what it was. UM, that's my story. That's very that's more nightcall than I would have thought based on I was like Denise Richard's love Well. I was like, I was like, am I only getting this on? I was like, first of all, YouTube is clearly just showing propaganda, like far right wing propaganda and you know, misinformation, conspiracy theories that say the lab was made in the virus is made in a

lab in China. Um. But then people who were saying people told me they got it just on all kinds of YouTube content. They were like, no, it wasn't just because you looked at something new. AG. It came up when I like looked up a recipe or something. They're just buying all the ad time on YouTube because they

got banned from Facebook. I mean it seems like that like that Epic Times and UM and Uh Shenyan are both like for whatever reason, people are happy to like let them advertise as much as their money can can carry them. So I don't know what's up with that. But there's still like shen Yan banners everywhere, because I think there was supposed to be a show before in the before times, and now there's still shen Yan posters. Yeah,

it's only for two thousand and six. Also, like chen Yan hasn't been around that it hasn't been around for a thousand years. Well, the ancient tradition of dance has been around for a thing. But obviously they're doing a kind of propaganda of like let's go back to ancient times. Um. But also you know they're they're the belief by people in Fouanong that their organs for being harvested is also possibly true. I don't know for sure about that part.

I'm like not willing to pick a horse in this race between the CCP and found gun to kind of going to be honest, like I don't have I don't have a horse in this time. Well, I mean my horse is like not spreading misinformation about how the virus was made, you know, a big, big public platform. It's sucked up because a lot of dumb people are going to see that and be like, oh, in a newspaper speaking of that, an article about ghosts in the New York Times. Oh God, okay, guys, So I'm forcing everyone

to talk about haunted houses this week. I found the flimsiest connection to Y two K that I'm totally going to exploit just to be able to talk about these things. Um. So this started off because I saw that Chris Maloney Um from Lawn Order Spew is selling his haunted house. Uh. He bought it a few years ago. It originally belonged to Ozzie and Harriet Nelson Um and also was used as Ari Gold's house in Entourage. It's a very beautiful house, so I was immediately quite taken by the taste of

the ghost who lives inside. Yes, yes, super trad It's it's in the Hollywood Else kind of like Hollywood Hells West um, and it it has like, yeah, like kind of the nineteen forties or whatever, cape Coddish exterior. But every person who's lived there since Azzie and Harriet have

claimed it's been haunted. And I think the same realtor has handled every sale of this house and he's kind of capitalizing on the reputation, which I honestly can't understand because right now, at this moment in time, seems like a time when even adventurous buyers who might think like, oh, I'm you know, I don't mind a haunted house, Like I'll just prove how brave I am. It's like, I don't really see that happening now. Um, But it is

for sale. But apparently the people who have lived there have complained that there's a model train that was Aussie's train in what's called I think the pub room, which I and I don't really know what that means. I guess there's like a bar in this house with a model train, which is creepy enough. But the model train will run in the middle of the night and you'll

hear it your sheets fly off in the night. Um. I think I read in one article, because I read like about a thousand on this that Auzzy his greatest vice was eating a ton of ice cream. And so one one of the residents who lived there and moved on said that there would be like open like as if he were looking for ice cream in the middle

of the night. The ghost of Azzi. Um, and also there was a family who lived there, and they would hear like voices of other children from outside being like come play, come play, But they were ghost children, so they weren't real. Um. Separately, though, the New York Times had reported that there were people who were quarantining in houses, and then after quarantining in these houses either rental properties or vacation homes or whatever, uh, they were complaining that

they were newly haunted. So one man said that his window shades kept fluttering even though the window was closed and there were no critters around. A couple in Massachusetts described seeing a kitchen apparition, I quote, a white man in his fifty is wearing a well worn World War two era military uniform and caps, sitting at the table. So the New York Times got ahold of a paranormal researcher who said that the jump in haunting reports UM

and also I guess some UFO reports. He said, Oh I I remember I saw this in during Y two K and it's a reflection of you know, just like the heightened anxiety. But I mean it makes sense that it would be even more prevalent now because we're all trapped in our houses that our houses our entire world. So it's like any kind of anxiety you have about the outside world kind of creeps in and manifests with these visions and fascinating. It's like, I know, were they

all rental houses in the New York Times article? Or I think one of them may have belonged to the person It was just a house upstate. And then the couple who saw the World War two guy, I think that was an airbnb because I was just I was just thinking, like, I feel like I've experienced this a little bit, even though I moved the very beginning of lockdown. Just the amount of time you spend at home makes you so much more tuned to I feel like every

single vibration and creek and sound in your house. I've definitely had nights where I'm trying to get to sleep and I hear something in in out in the living room, and I suddenly start to go into panic, like home invasion mode, and it's just like it's like it's like you've been in a in like a sealed environment, and

so you're you're so much more sensitized to everything. It's like it feels like that kind of effect where that's absolutely and and the the kind of ambient sounds have changed so much because there's less traffic, there's less air traffic, so everything is is heightened, like the quiet noises that were drowned out before seemed louder. But yeah, also just I think, you know, inhabiting your house as if it were a whole universe. At this point, talk about why

the Aussie and Harriet house might be haunted. Generally though, it's because he died Aussie died in the house. No, it's because Ricky Nelson died in a plane crash tragically, their son. But he wasn't they it's the ghost of Azzie is the one that they claim as what I'm learning is that apparently Azzie was a dictatorial personality who robbed his sons of their childhood by making them go into show business. Well, I mean, the whole family was

I cannot imagine. They were like basically the first reality TV family, right because it wasn't really reality TV, but well there was a whole inviting them into our living room. And Ricky Nelson also had a kid and then had to have a shotgun wedding because he knocked up a girlfriend and they were like, let's pretend they've already gotten

married and the babies being born prematurely. Now, well, I don't know if it was the same grandchild, but one of Ozzie and Harriett's grandchildren comments on articles about the house um, and she says that when she would play there as a child, that she felt that it was haunted, and that like everyone in their family knows that house is haunted and has witnessed it haunted by show business.

It is the ghosts of show Um. There's one less scary thing related to quarantine but not ghosts, that I wanted to make you guys talk about, which is um the robotic dog Spot, who is known for being terrifying, looking like he looks like he's from Black Mirror. He has no head but robotic legs like why not put out? Yes, we've talked about Spot before. It's the exact same one. So he's being used in Singapore now to enforce social distancing.

So Um, he's remote controlled, but they want him to be fully automated at some point and he roams around he or she. I guess she had a female voice in the Al Jazeera video that I watched, but I think of him as a boy dog. They okay, so Spot they wanders around parks and and admonishes people like he's like a narc. He's like stern more. You know, you need to leave six feet and stuff. There's something about Spot that on They can't knock you over, or

can they? I don't think. I don't think Spot is currently allowed to knock you over, But I'm saying the capability like stalking people in the park though it's I I find I find the slow creep so much more unsettling than a full on chase. It's like, I mean, I know that's why like twenty eight Days Later felt different because the zombies ran, but the zombies who walk, so it's still scary and and this has a very slow zombie feel to it. It's just sort of like

trotting along after people in the park. Very and the fact that doesn't have a head. Why don't you have a head? It just seems like so stupid to me. It's like you go to all this trouble to make like, you know, to anthropomorphize your your narc robot, but you forget to put eyes or a head or a face on it. Like I think they're not really trying to

entropomorphize it. I think that the way that the legs are are just like a way to make it the most stable, Like it's just kind of taking it's from the engineering of It looks like a coffee table that can run. To me, it looks like like Linda Hamilton and The Exorcist and she's like going down the stairs. What about a fight club where we just take baseball

bats to those things? Well, no, no, This is the thing that's the most upsetting is have you seen the videos of people beating up and kicking those busts and robotics robots. It's really scary because it makes you just think, oh, when they get smart enough, they're going to fucking murder us. It's so awful to them. I would like to just have a fight club against the scooters because I know we are no man, they're back. As of a few days ago. They're fucking back, Mom, Yes they are. Uh huh.

I have clocked to scooters on my street. The other day, I was driving around just to drive around, not to go anywhere, say for at home, but I was driving around and I saw like lines and lines of scooters and I was like I d bring them. Yeah, they've never gone away from you. Were talking on the bonus episode about which of the Batman Row Gallery villains the three of us are, and Emily said that I was Harley Quinn, which I was like, no, no, because I

have red hair, must be poison ivy. But then thinking about how much I want to use a baseball bat to hit whever. You're truly and I mean that is a great compliment. I think you fixate sometimes too much on your ginger nous as you're defining trait, but you have so much more to offer, Molly. You can sing your baseball bat and destroy all sorts of things, right, chaotic good um. But also Emily felt strongly test that you were poison ivy because I grow a lot of

growing like crazy you guys I've been. I didn't argue with that. For my husband's birthday, I like kind of did like a mine trick to get him to agree to have me buy him trees. I was like, what you want trees? So he's getting trees that poison it is. But I also was like, we have at this point, we have like too many because I also go to these like tree adoption events. Um. That they have like once or twice a year in my neighborhood, and I

just adopt. What if you can like train train some vines to curl around the scooters so they can't be used to real quick poison ivy thing. Did you guys know you're supposed to shake You're supposed to gently shake your trees. No, I don't know what anything about trees. I want to know everything. If you gently shake a tree, it doesn't have to be your tree, but it makes the trunk stronger because it thinks that it's wind, so it adopts by making a stronger trunk. But that well,

if you have trees inside, it wouldn't. And also we're now having some breezy times. But you can you can do it as long as you kind of condition them. You can use some force like mine seems stressed. I've been shaking them a lot. I definitely think that just being around trees. And maybe this is also because I've been playing Final Fantasy seven, as our bonus up was about, but I do feel like I need the life force

of plants in order to like sustain myself. A horrible mood yesterday and I was just like super pent up and yeah, my boyfriend was like, why don't you just go for a walk like down the street, And just like as soon as I went outside and saw like one plant, I was like, oh life, it is a live I forced myself to take like an hour long walk every day, even when I really don't want to, because there are some wonderful flowers and trees and stuff in my neighborhood and if I just like immerse myself

in them for a while, it does need a lot of good. Do you guys know about forest bathing? Oh? Yeah, we talked about We've talked about it. Yeah. I feel like forest bathing and self grandparenting have become one in the same. That's true. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, let me get back

into Y two K. Welcome back tonight call. So we're in the middle of Y to May, and we still haven't really talked that much about why two K itself, or the year two thousand problem as it is I think properly known, and I kind of spent the last couple of weeks digging into it and trying to learn

things that I did not know. I didn't know about Y two K because as as we've discussed, we're all like teens and not really in charge of things, and maybe not the person in the house or at the school who needs to worry about things being hy two K compliant. But this was like a big thing for several years. It was a big marketing thing. It was kind of many feel, a big con that was pulled on the public to make a buck. So, yeah, I wanted to talk about the Y two K not bug

because it wasn't a bug. It turns out it was just a piece of engineering that was not a mistake. Uh, because I guess that's what a bug is technically. Um yeah, I learned there's another one coming up apparently one. Yeah, there's a problem as well in computing like this is where our background and being hot and catch fire enthusiasts

really comes to serve thing. It's a similar thing. It's like computers, like older computers just weren't aren't prepared to handle the number because of Roman numerals or something very simple seeming. I couldn't follow why thirty eight was it like I I can, I can grasp why that your two thousand was a trouble spot, But don't either it's like some something. Yeah, it's just the highest number you

could program two or something. If you are a computer expert who understands this, please give us a night call. If you're a computer experiencing, if you're a watchdog robot, um, please give us a call, give us a text. Um. So I spent the last week or so doing a little bit of a speedlessen of Surviving Y two K, which was a mini series podcast by damp To Birski, who was the guy who did the Richard Simmons podcast, which I didn't listen to, and I know a lot

of people said it was very exploititive. I didn't. I didn't get into it because it didn't sound like my my my bag necessarily. But he did this one as a follow up with topic, and I really dug it. I thought it was really lovely. But and it's kind of most of it doesn't have that much to do with the Y two K problem itself, but um, it's sort of book ended by him talking to these programmers who were sort of there and started to recognize that

there was there was an issue. And the thing about Y two K is that and I think this makes it feel very relevant to talk about now is that it was a problem, and it was something that was recognized kind of in the mid eighties, mid to late

eighties UM. First with people's mortgages and stuff. UM. Some some like I think some expiration dates on canned meats started getting rejected because people thought that the meat was like eighty eight years old or something UM, or the expiration date was like an eighty eight years or something UM. And it did kind of get resolved by about there's an article we can link to in the Guardian UM.

But by the New York Stock Exchange had completed a seven year project to correct all its system at a cost of thirty million dollars, and a lot a lot of them hadn't yet, but like the big ones that we're going to cause problems with people's credits and loans and stuff in the banking system and stuff like that, which you know, we've we've talked at length on this podcast about whether all that work was necessarily worth it.

But that was largely already figured out by the time the greater public knew about Y two K. By the time the idea of why two K had entered popular discourse,

and so the people who were kind of sounding. The warning bell ended up looking kind of silly in hindsight, but it is this sort of um as, as Diversity points out on the podcast, is sort of this idea of the profits dilemma, where it's like, if you say that there's a problem and you get people to fix it, then the problem doesn't happen, and then you look like somebody who was you know, running around like it's a chicken with your head cut off because nothing ended up happening, Like,

as we know, nothing really went haywire on Y two K. So I just thought like that, thinking about that it was super interesting and learning that it actually was potentially a big problem, like it could have been the thing that everybody was afraid of. It was just by the time we heard about it, it was fixed for the

most part. I mean, I I feel as though living being in a time when we're having an actually like extremely horrible disaster play out that was totally not predicted at all has kind of shaped my my perception of Y two K a little bit, because, I mean, this is all fascinating and it's weird how you can have a memory of how Y two K played out and

a vague recollection of what the fear was. But because nothing actually because it was fixed in advance of playing out, it's so vague now, and like you were scared, Like I was really scared, as I mentioned about my emails, but my you know, instant messenger, like that was kind of the extent of it for me because I was

a kid. But my dad was super freaked out. And I mean, I think it was also the kind of thing where when people started started to really conjecture, and when those pieces started to gain steam, where people were saying, like, oh, well, here's a worst case scenario, someone could come up with a new worst case scenario, and eventually you could probably find people who actually believe that our country's entire infrastructure

was going to crumble because of this computer. But especially now, if you think about what conspiracy five G Twitter, what I've done with something like why two k oh, yeah, well, I mean it was it was already out there. I mean, this is the environment in which Alex Jones started his radio show. Like that's that's a kind of a through

line of the podcast. It's just that that alternative radio was really starting to become a big thing around the turn of the millennium and and you know, panic about this and then prepping and all that really started to become it's not a mainstream concerned at least something that more people have thought about and encountered, because there was all this millennialism of like, you know, the new World, but then that stuff didn't happen on two thousand, but

that it did happen like a little bit after that. Yeah, but I've been hearing a lot about how actually preppers are really unhappy now and a lot of the people leading the like let us go back to the hairdresser, the right wing, let us go back to work protests or being not leading because they're actually like funded by corporation. But the people participating in them are the people you would have thought would have been like stoked for the

prepper moment to come. But in their prepper fantasy, basically they thought it was going to be just like a lawless that it was gonna be mad Max. Talk to me about at Max, and they were going to get to shoot and kill a lot people and they would be in charge. And the fact that it's like an invisible enemy that they can't shoot a gun at is like they're like Okay, enough of eating beans. They actually

want to do this. There's like a couple of characters in the podcasts that are um are this couple in San Diego, These like total hippie you know, libertarian hippie types who are preppers completely from a like a left leftist side of things, and this is Prepper podcast. Yeah, and they're very adorable and uh and and they are

you know, in ways we've talked about. I think a lot on this podcast, like the idea of being a prepper is sort of wrapped up in there somewhere is the idea that you're looking forward to the end, whatever the end is, because there's some kind of opportunity in there, whether it's just to be able to like live out the purge and do whatever you want. But like for them, it's like, oh, we can start over. We can have like a world where we're not on this grid in

a part of this credit system and everything. You know, I'll fight club type ship. Like they're they're just like really stoked for that. And she seemed really sweet and like started a whole survivalist school that like Navy seals were going to and stuff. I mean, I think a lot of us also do have that fantasy on the commune side, which is like you know, twin to not test us to shaking her head, no she doesn't like.

But I mean you live and you live with a family, You live in an environment where like everyone has to work together and like do things together as a unit, and you like tell kids that, Molly. But yeah, I think that is like the to me, the positive inverse of preppers, which are very into like just me against the world and my family and maybe my neighbors who

have more guns. Yeah, there's something I think that It was very It's it's very unusual to hear prepper types talking about this idea of it's not it's self sufficience and that like yes, I can like now they still teach from survival schools and it's sort of it's a nonprofit and it's it's kind of as a form of therapy to help people, um, you know, like troubled youths and stuff, be able to feel like the sense of self sufficience if they can they feel like they can

survive in the wild, like they're they're still doing this stuff. Um, but it's not this thing of like I'm a lone wolf fuck everybody else. I'm out for myself. It's this idea of like, no, I want to be like a part of the world. I want to be in tune with the world and what's going on with it and UM, which just feels like a very different direction to come at it from UM on on the on the kind

of relevant to today's side of things too. It's really funny if you go through if you go to Cora, there is a page on Cora for who who solved Y two K And it's really fascinating because like the answer is that all these people, just every I T person at every company and in you know, in every school system and stuff, had to just go in and buy a hand and stall patches onto everything. It wasn't a big deal. I was just laborious, but everybody had

to do it. And like thinking about that kind of global cooperation to stave off an oncoming problem and how little fanfare there is about that. Now nobody knows about that, but all these people did that. UM is like kind it's both inspiring and totally depressing. Oh absolutely. I know it's weird though too, because I I think I was just reading an article about a college student who was

working on UM like security patches for website. Like I mean, it's still it's amazing how many people are always kind of working for the greater good and like coding capacities or I T capacities, And it's just I think maybe because that kind of stuff can be so dense, or there's like an element of that kind of work that's so hard for the average person to wrap their mind, Like I certainly can't understand half and when it starts to go real deep into like the coding and the

patching and the work it takes, I'm like, I don't know what it is, Like I can't really conceptualize it UM. And so maybe that's why it's just like not a glamorous thing to talk about how important that work is and how important that work was that it saved us from whatever would happened if Y two K had played out. Yeah,

because it's from this era. Also, I feel like it's very tied up with this era where nobody knew how to like show computer business on screen and movies, so we didn't know how to valorize it or like how to even make a narrative out of it UM until the Matrix basically even then, did nerds have all the money yet no, they pre nerds takeover and this was I remember like we I mean in a self deprecating way,

like being people. Well, I think I assume all of us were on the internet more than like we had admitted to our friends back in the whatever like nineties and early odds. But it's funny because like we Molly and I would call it like we'd be like, oh, we should get on the nerd phone. But like I truly believed that there was nothing less cool than the amount of time I spent on the computer, which was probably like one one thousand of the time I currently

spend on the computer. That I'm like, well, that's normal, That's that's life, right, you know. I think being forced into uh quarantine has made a lot of people be like, oh, I'll just like turn it on. There's no if there's no limitations in place for your screen time of activities or things you have to go do, then yeah, well it's also that everything else is off the table. Everything

else is off the table. It just feels like you you reach a wall so fast in screens you know where it's like the thing of like, oh I can eat all this candy for dinner and then you're like, now I feel sick and bad. It's like not candy, it's like it's like sugar free, uh, like sweet tarts

or something. It's like tab. It's drinking tab. Yeah, getting a naspar team headache, like I gotta go out and just guzzled at Chlorophyll've going outside a lot, but it's since the mandatory mass anytime you're outside your house thing, which I which I feel is a response to people who were just really irresponsible about it. I mean, I went for a walk a couple like maybe a week ago, and there were so many people without MASS, which I was fine with because they were just walking or running,

but they just wouldn't stay away from other people. And I was like, all right, it's over. You know, we're going to have to wear a mask. And I think it's it's just it's it's hard because I can do it and it's fine, but I cannot. I physically cannot make my children wear MASS. And I know I have a lot of friends who are neurodivergent or their kids are nerro divergent. It's really difficult to wear a mask

if you have sensory problems or whatever. So it's just for so many people, even going outside is now like a very fraud process. And and I I'm so over the screens. I've really reached my limit. But at the same time, it's like, I just you know, everything is so fraught when you invent Calvinball. Yeah. Um. One other thing I linked to you guys to on the on our show notes, uh, was this website created by At first it was an anonymous creator who was later later

revealed himself to be Robert blah Blah. Yes, I can't deal this is Bob blah Blah had a y t K blog. Uh. He was like, he's also in this podcast, but he was this um. He was sort of like an anti scare monk. Heer about why two K He was like trying to get because because Canada, I guess, was spending gobs and gobs of money on there, like Y two K operations. He was a programmer for the Canadian government and soon his entire like job had been completely circumvented into Y two K prep and he thought

it was really silly. So he was like, he had this anonymous blog on angel Fire, which is still up. Um. An archived. It's not even archives. It's just there. It's not you don't have to go to to uh the Internet archives. But and it's incredible because it has all these emails, both from people who agree with them and people who are like furious at him for trying to say that why two K isn't happening, And it's just

this incredible time capsule. But I think like there's basically this whole thing where he's really reacting to this guy, Um, Dave Eddie, who was sort of the main one of these main people who came out claiming there's this problem, this this y t K problem and then offering the solution like the classic con And so they were kind of in this like battle against each other via the Internet. It was like a very early angel fire fueled Internet

battle between these two nerds. Whether um yeah, but I would really recommend going to this website and just sorting through all the emails, um they I think they go from nine seven to nine um, and just seeing what people say like uh like such. I'm just like on the January, Um, you are not God. You do not know what's going to happen. But I appreciate your opinions. Yeah,

it just fed into people's millennialism so much. It was like there were a lot of people who thought something was going to happen in the year two thousand and then the fact that there was something that might happen was something to latch onto as a sign that, you know, Beau Jesus would come back or something. Maybe that's what why two K was the idea. You know, it's all these made up numbers because at one point we decided to just started counting revolutions around the sun. But still

people just kind of put so much. It's it's really interesting how much humans even now in a time it feels so unmistical because it's just like two thousand years after the apocryphal birth of Christ, right or death after the death? Isn't it funny? Sometimes I say things authoritatively like I'm like, I know that, and then I'm like, that's what a podcast is for. It is the birth, though I will I will correct you and say it's the birth. But but isn't it it doesn't ad a

D not stand for after death. You know, it's on a dominate by the way, we're gonna put this obviously in the in the show notes. But if you want to look at this why two K blog, it is amazing. It's angel fired dot com. Forward slash, oh h forward slash just a number just so that you can just do it right now, because I know you're sitting at your device. It's just a number, but it is. It's

I find this aesthetic so beautiful, the angel Fire. Yeah, that's why we talked about Molly Soda before being a yea artist who works with the angel Fire aesthetics sometimes. But I love it. It really feels like the Internet where still anything could happen, which I guess is why everybody thought that the Internet could just like melt down the whole world because it felt new and magical. On

bob blah blaws blog, it does say that. It says PostScript, this website was frozen on December as a permanent document on how all of us acted and reacted to the Y two K myth from But Emily, you're you're right when you point out it was not a myth, like it was something real that was going It was pre emptive. He's saying. The myth was that it yeah, and then that date that it was still like nothing had been resolved, and that like nobody knew it was going to happen

like that. Shocking that they only reported on the disaster mongering mongering part and not the quietly responsibly fixing things. Um, Emily, you asked us to go find like a t K artifact to watch, so I obviously just typed y t K into YouTube to see what would happen. And I found out that it was really hard to find actual stuff. Because there is a rapper named Y two K. Is he or she good? I didn't listen to their music.

They looked kind of in the post malon category. I'm gonna say the name is K not the postmlon's rapper, but you hear what I'm saying. Maybe a white guy with face tattoos, I think. Um. But I also found a video that was like how to do the Y two K aesthetic that was like this girl had made that was just um copying art basically like art in bubble frames of like here's how you dress, here's what you listen to. And it was a lot of like we were talking about, sort of like shiny, sparkly vinyl fabrics,

things like that. Um, which is what I think zoomers think of the Y two K aesthetic as being there's also like a good Y two K filter on Instagram

that is very that. But I I just a search for Y t K on the Instagram filters and one came up, and it's like, I'll post it so you guys can post it to it gives you a couple of options, but they're they're both very like j Lo Year two thousand style, like sparkly ear rings and like shiny sunglasses, glower shots or something or just like very like like Total Request Live, just like like glossy pop

video aesthetic. UM. And I also watched a Sports Center commercial that was apparently very famous UM that I did not really remember except maybe in some ancient way. UM. But it was a commercial for Sports Center about Y two K that's like Y t K happens like they're they're running test runs for Y two K at the

Sports Center office. And it was just one of those ads about like how fun it is to work at Sports Center, like all the Sports Center ads, but this one is like chaos just rains in the Sports Center office. It's like they start breaking down and they show like two of the broadcasters doing like the the Sports Center by Candle Light, and then there's a guy who you're supposed to recognize from ESPN who's like, come with me

if you want to live. At the end, I I admire your your relentless pursuit and making the sports Call segment happened. Regardless of the topics that were, it reminded me of all those Sports Center ads that I had totally just forgotten about them all, Like they were normally just about how zeny the Sports Center office was, and then this one was like it's zany and also like

the apocalypse is happening here. I've never seen any of those ads until I worked in Grantland and then like when people were asking about like what's the office, Like I didn't realize that's where people got the idea it's really super fun. End. But um, now we are running the Y two K drill, so we will we do? We are doing this podcast by candle Light in a way,

you know, like it is pioneer time. Yeah, but I was like, how you know you you do work around a catastrophe to try and keep keep some of the the pod trains coming. M H. The thing that I found when I was looking into Y two k artifacts is something I talked about all the time on this podcast, which is Siphil and Ali, which ran from UM. But as I was just I watched just all the clips that were on YouTube because nothing brings me more joy honestly than than watching the socks um. But it also

made me think. I was like, somebody needs to just start doing basically simple and Ali right now, like all of the content that's kind of being creating. I mean, look, a lot of people aren't able to create content right now. I every night I'm like I should write something. It's

like I just don't because I'm stressed. But I was like, man, somebody should really maybe not do like an exact civil and Ali thing, But that's like kind of the best quarantine art would be either puppetry actually yeah, because I'm like, animating is hard. I've seen late forever. I mean, I think TikTok is the frontier at this point for things like that, and I've seen it. I just don't watch. I mean, it's like you see them, you see them aggregated.

Back on Twitter, there was a girl who went by for doing like a fake Wes Anderson movie this week. But stuff like that where that stuff is she's great. Yeah, like guest stars, she's done show Girls. There's this girl Marris Jones. I'm obsessed to I who did this thing that was like the history of the Beatles where she did all of the Beatles and like just perfectly got all of their mannerisms in different years. That's amazing. Yeah, made me wish I had my twee videos I made

in college. But also people doing like even less production anyones that are just really incredibly edited where they play all the characters. That to me has been like the art form of that. These people doing those videos where it's like one guy doing everything, which people were doing before this, but now it's just like sort of how much how much people can get out of just like very few props and like no setup. Is really impressive to me. But don't you sometimes get sick of seeing

like the human face on the computer screen? You know what I like, isn't there? I have been I'm trying to look up her name. You want to put like you want to real sock. I know if I need a sock puppet, I need the ability for someone to convince me that there's like multiple people in a room when in fact, there's one. I promise we'll do a live stream sometime where you can be a sock the whole time. No. Look, but actually, now that you're talking

about this, we've come full circle. We were talking about like monetizing feet, and now we're talking about monetizing socks, and maybe this is like a zeitgeistie thing right now. Look down, you have looked down. That was my one thought that I had on one particularly theater nerdy day or it was like, what if I could do all of lightness by myself? Emily, you should, That's what I'm saying. Become the TikTok teens we want to see in the world. I know. I was just like, how does any how

does any young person have the sort of confidence? Because I started and then I was just like, oh no, I can't look at my face for this long. Well performing as someone who has not really performed into a computer screen, but who may or may not be married to someone who had you like act into the zoom uh, it was like an out of horrible, out of body experience. I mean, when we're podcasting, we're like staring at it.

We're just basically frescasting a conversation. But like when you have to like commit to a role, maybe a dramatic one, and you're staring at the light and you're you're acting into the I mean I could. It's so different than a camera regular camera's In this Roger Rabbit special I watched, it had all this footage I had never seen before

of Bob Hoskins just acting against nothing. But also he acted against the guy who does the voice of Roger Rabbit because that guy insisted on being on set every time, um to do the voice live, which is not traditional Zodiac. He's very good at being scary um. But just yeah, all this stuff of like people acting against nothing, which is how so many movies are made now. It is

a skill. It is a skill, but it's like at least I don't know, at least if there's someone else in the room whom you could just be taught, like you're looking at a face, like you could look at the director or whatever. Again, this is like our only fans will just be a continental you know, just like welcome, Oh, why won't you come sit down if you would like a nightcall only fans that's just start not even say

those words together, just kidding. If you have thoughts about why two K as we continuere like, you're the one who asked how much? I mean, let's see what the market is saying. You know, I think I asked how much. I'm just I'm just need a spitball and I'm not committed to anything. Um. If you have thoughts on y t K, please give us a night call it one to four or four six night where you can also

email us at Nightcall Podcast at gmail dot com. We've really enjoyed taking your calls and emails and we have a couple lined up from for next week and we want more, so send them. We're also on Patreon at patreon dot com slash night Call. We just put up a new bonus episode about Final Fantasy seven. Molly and I are big time gamers just talking shop, so check that out. You can subscribe at multiple different levels commodus episodes or newsletter and merch and yeah, check us on

the social media. We're on Twitter at Nightcall Pod, Facebook and Instagram and I called podcast and only fans at t b D. Seriously, guys, think about it, think about it, or you could watch this play like n B A K. We will see everybody next week I'm good month back,