Cool Zone media.
I wish I could tell you that frantically looking up incidents of fish falling from the sky cracks the top ten of the most demented internet wormholes I've ever gone down. But you know that's not true. Still, I am thrilled to report to you that there's not one, not two, but at least six stories about fish falling from the sky that I can talk about off the top of
my damn head. Australia twenty ten and a small town in Australia Northern Territory called Lajamanu, a councilor announced to the community that there was a huge storm coming, but did not announce that that storm would consist of both rain and live fish.
Oops.
The fish were pretty small, about the width of two fingers. But when fish are falling from the sky and they're landing on the ground still alive, there really is no sense in being a size queen about it, right, And residents in this area claims that this had happened two other times in the last fifty years and there's actually natural precedent for this, with the reasoning that tornadoes can pull water and fish from hundreds of miles away from
their point of origin. It's like the recent Glen Powell documentary Twisters. Next example, Texas, Arcana, Texas, twenty twenty one, on New Year's Eve, Eve, East Texas residents reported seeing fish falling from the sky dead ones this time, I fear scattered across pavement, and the city itself announced that quote unquote animal rain, which is a thing that quote unquote animal rain happens when quote small water animals like frogs, crabs, and small fish are swept up in water spouts or
drafts that occur on the surface of the earth. They are then rained down at the same time as the rain. While it's uncommon, it happens, as evidenced in several places in Texarkana today unquote Texas. Bless my text and listeners. You already have to deal with the brunt of the far hog population, and now this not even the dignity of live fish. And I could keep going. The list of raining fish locations goes on and on. And there's been an uptick of reports in the last fifteen years.
And this could be for a number of reasons. It could be a rise in interest in reporting such things.
It could be increased.
Access to personal technology, to share such incidents. It could very likely be a creepy side effect of global warming, or a combination of all three, but whatever the cause, there have been reported cases of either living or dead fish raining from the sky reported in Sri Lanka, India, Eviopia, Pennsylvania, Tempico, California, the Philippines and Honduras since twenty twelve and today on sixteenth minute, what if I was like today we're talking
about bean Dad. Note today we are talking to and with a very recent air of Internet characters of the day. One human one fish, either koy or gold depending on who you ask, was found on a sunny spring afternoon in Manchester, England. A cardiology resident named Ben Beska looked outside his bedroom window and saw a wriggling orange shape on his lawn. He went downstairs, and, as a man in his early thirties, he brought his phone with him on autopilot, prepared to update his friend group text in
the event that anything interesting happened. Listener, something interesting happened. What waited for Ben Beska on the lawn was a large goldfish in pretty rough shape, you could say due to the whole not being underwater thing, but also from the impact of what seemed to be a pretty significant fall. Ben pokes the fish gently and it moves.
She's alive.
She's having the worst day of her life, and he's a doctor. He's gonna try and save her. Ben scoops the fish into his hand and runs her into his kitchen, looking around to find tools to improvise a fish tank with. He's never had fish before. He's got cats, and that's more or less the opposite. Thinking quickly, he grabs an empty freezer drawer and fills it with water, popping the injured fish inside. She's not doing great. She's shedding scales,
but to Ben's surprise, she starts to swim again. Confident that he can now take a breath, he hits the group chat It's Alice. He fumbles into a text, not realizing the second word of his sentence has been auto corrected. He meant to write it's alive, but Ben's friends confirm his gut instinct. For the first time in recorded history,
autocorrect did something right. The fish's name would be Alice, and a guy who to that point had been a cardiology meme posting swifty on Twitter, couldn't wait to tell his followers all about it, he tweets on June first, twenty twenty four. But the real show here is the picture attached. It's Alice the Giant. I'm just gonna say, goldfish. It's better fish Twitter can come for me. In the photo, Alice the goldfish is plopped helplessly on a lush green lawn. Ben captions the photo.
So today I found a goldfish just on the grass in my back garden. It was alive, I think, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from. There's no ponds anywhere near, so I took it inside, and.
In one tweet a legend was born. Ben the Doctor and Alice the Goldfish that fell from the sky. Your sixteenth minute starts now. Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the show where we take a look at the main characters of the Internet and see what they show us about ourselves, and occasionally, the show where I covertly share more about
my personal life than is responsible. I've been working on this episode for almost two months now, and it's going to be our first in real time story of virality, A bit of a case study of a flash in the pan viral moment and how this attention can affect a main character in nearly real time and quick aside, for everyone who's sent along requests about the Hawktua girl, you're not getting that episode yet. It's way too soon. But the sensation is kind of an outlier on today's Internet.
For most people that get sucked into the algorithm these days, this kind of longevity is pretty fleeting.
The get so famous.
You spark a week's long culture war route of fame was not Ben Beska's destiny, in part because the story is really different, but also because Ben is a working professional. He's in his thirties, and this chance encounter with Alice and a subsequent online fame has to fit into his life.
Not the other way around.
And in these far more common cases, if something is even a little off, like maybe the person is too busy with their normal life to really commit to the new lifestyle that the algorithm is foisting upon them. Maybe their interest in other things dilutes and confuses a potential audience and they move on. Maybe the person who goes viral is burdened by the question do I even want to be this guy? And that's why Ben and Alice the Goldfish is such an interesting story to me. This
story the makings of a fable. So today we're going to talk to Ben about the profound weirdness that takes hold in someone's life when the Internet decides that you are this guy now actually, And then we're going to talk to a psychologist who's been studying how virality affects the brain and psyche for decades to give us a better idea of what Ben was really going through. So come with me, if you will to June twenty twenty four. Maybe you remember it, an American presidential debate asks the
question who is more dead? Furiosa is bombing at the box office and everyone's afraid to say that it was because it was a little mid And in Newcastle, England, a young doctor looked out his window to see that a fish named Alice had fallen from the sky. So where do we leave off with this story? Ben finds Alice and discovers her name via a typo in a friend group chat, but doesn't post about it to his Twitter account right away. He's a doctor, bibe, He's got
a life to save. So once Alice is safely in a freezer drawer and Ben's cats are locked in a separate room. He books it to the nearest pet store and grabs a small tank to tide Alice over until he figures out what to do next. And while she was in rough shape when he found her, Alice seems to be rallying a little bit. Within two hours, Ben has all but brought our orange fin girl back from the dead. And at at this point that he starts tweeting.
So let's hear the tweet that started it all one more time, captioned with a picture of a helpless Alice in the grass.
So today I found a goldfish just on the grass in my back garden. It was alive, I think, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from. There's no pawns anywhere near, so I took it inside.
Now, this is the tweet of a man who knows how a viral thread begins, and unlike many attempted viral threads, Ben's story has the narrative juice to trickle into today's Twitter algorithm. And while I could not explain to you what the endgame of Twitter's current iteration is, I do know that its algorithmically driven platform was absolutely the reason Alice the goldfish came into my life. I first saw Ben's tweets the day after this saga began. So Ben's
thread continues, accompanied by carefully documented pictures and videos. He tweets it was.
Alive, although not very happy in an old freezer draw much happier in an actual and hastily bought tank. Anyway, I have a fish now thumbs up emoji for me.
This last tweet is the money shot. Two posts after being found fallen from the sky on his lawn, there's a video of Alice the goldfish swimming along happily in a small aquarium.
It's a cartoon.
And before you ask, how did a fish fall from the sky, look, I can't guarantee an answer. I'm all out of answers. How Alice got there is between Alice and God. But of course this is the first question that a lot of Twitter users have, and we immediately have this class exploit in opinion. We have the likely explanation of how Alice fell from the sky, which Ben Beska, most media outlets and a couple of naturalists on Twitter have subscribed to. And there are the unhinged conspiracy theories.
Here is the likely reason quoted here from BBC News.
Doctor Besker suspected a bird had picked up the fish from a nearby pond and dropped it while carrying it away. However, he said there are no ponds close by, and he thought it must therefore have traveled a quote reasonable distance end quote.
Basca continued in the same piece.
It's been quite funny. Some of the comments are really quite funny, and about a thousand people said they thought a bird dropped it.
Look, I'm not too proud to admit that I first read this story and was like what And then I read that Ben Besco lived near a body of water and a bird almost certainly caught and then dropped alice, and I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense for me. This explanation made the whole story less mysterious and more of a Pixar movie I would watch. But remember, this
is Twitter. We're talking about a place where for every post there's an equal and opposite conspiracy post, and honestly a place where it's not completely unreasonable to doubt that a narrator is just doing something for attention. Patterns of lying for clout are super common on social media and have produced some of my favorite memes of all time. I'm talking Ruth Konda forever, I'm talking cinnamon toos shrimp. The list goes on. And with that in mind, here
are the conspiracy theories about Ben and Alice. People who, for what I can tell, assume that Ben bought a goldfish, threw it on his lawn, and took a picture of it in hopes that the Twitter algorithm would swallow it whole.
The tweet says, so this is fake and I'm contributing.
Sorry, but this is just really misguided to me. Ben Beska until this point has been a terminally online but pretty keeping in his own lane kind of poster. He would tweet frequently, but it was mainly memes and observations about the medical world, about Taylor Swift, and about boy genius communities he was already a part of, and from what I can tell, most of his interactions prior to Alice's arrival from either a bird Heaven or Besca's own evil plan, or people he'd already spoken with before. So
do I think this guy's a con artist? No, I don't. I think he's a very online guy in his thirties. But surprisingly, while there is this paranoia that Ben faked the Alice story at first. Those theories die out pretty quickly as the story gained mainstream media and the likely cause of the bird dropping Alice seemed to make sense to more people than not. No, the true controversy of this story has to do with, wait for it, the aquarium community. For fuck's sake, here's what they had to say.
You can remove the big bushy plant for more space. That guy will need at least a twenty gallon tank. That's the pond variety, so it's not going to be happy in a small space.
A tank needs time to cycle properly in order to process fish waste. You can buy bacteria to help speed up the process, but in the meantime, make sure you do very frequent water changes with properly treated water in order to keep it alive.
You, guys, I'm gonna hold my tongue here. I cannot get canceled by the aquarium community today.
No.
Part of what's interesting to me about this story is the raw speed that it moves with, in part because ben Beska is interacting with people about Alice on Twitter in basically real time and pushing the algorithm within hours, and ben Beska finds himself bending off criticisms from aquarium aficionados on the same day that he finds Alice. June first, he hastily continues this original, increasingly viral thread. At present,
it has over two hundred thousand likes. He continues this every general dread with defenses of this small fish tank you bought in haste, saying.
Repeat after me, a hastily bought temporary tank is better for a goldfish than laying dead in the grass.
Folks. You hate to see it, But the aquarium community clearly got to Ben, and he tweets later in the day as he continues to observe Alice the goldfish, and I can hear the aquarium community grumbling she's a coyfish, but she's a goldfish to me, Ben continues.
You happen to find a mostly dead goldfish on your lawn and tweet about saving its life, and your applies are filled with people saying you should have planned this better.
So Ben does get some hate, but that is vastly outdone by the effusive love and praise at this pretty charming story. Most users are incredibly charmed and stoked about this, and it seems like Alice the goldfish is poised to become a modern classic Internet animal. She's got the potential of a grumpy cat, of a Marnie the dog, of
a yon cat. The list goes on because there is a sort of playbook to make these kinds of things happened once the public is excited about an animal that's either extremely adorable or has a really compelling story, and almost right away that seems where this story is headed. The story goes viral around the UK in the first three days of June. Mystery as Live Doctor finds goldfish in garden Junior Doctor goes viral after rescuing live fish from garden, lawn and Newcastle. I found a goldfish seconds
from death in my garden. Now I'm keeping it as my pet. And here's the singular point where Ben and Alice Besca and the Hawktua Girl converge. They're both very amenable to speak with the press, and they appear to respond to reporters very quickly. Ben gives interviews to a number of different places, and while most are just rehashing the story of discovering Alice, anyone hoping to find out how Alice was doing now could follow Ben on Twitter,
updates were coming fast and furious. In the next couple days, he provided updates on not just Alice, but on.
His aquarium journey.
Early on, he tweets back and forth with an aquarium company that offers him free advice and even better, a free aquarium. Next critical to the viral internet pet phenomenon, a separate account pops up for Alice the Goldfish. Her handle is at Alice Besca. She quote tweets a picture Ben posted of Alice the Goldfish in that small tank with this little zinger emergency.
Has it not so bad?
I guess?
But fuck me, this studio fat is kind of small.
Then she replies to Ben.
Got anything bigger love?
Immediately Ben starts interacting with the alis Basca account. So at the time I made assumptions, and even I ended up messing this up. I assumed that this was Ben talking to an account pretending to be Alice that he
had created himself. When it turns out that just a daily this account had been created by a fan of Alice, so free of charge, this fan was already performing the next step in creating an iconic Internet animal, creating a specific editorial voice which sounds super corny, but think of
an Internet animal you like. In most cases, there is a specific kind of caption that you'll read for a familiar animal, and Alice Besca's voice was lovingly antagonistic toward Ben's incompetence as a new fish owner, making in jokes that people who had been following the whole saga could appreciate. Then, another step on the journey to engage fans in making Alice a legitimate Internet pet, Ben launches a gofund me to help fund the aquarium equipment he needs.
Here's what he.
Posts now, apparently I need a bigg a tank and chemicals another random things that apparently a fish needs. At least that's what everyone on Twitter is saying. I would appreciate your help in helping me find a nice at home. My amazing story has also been covered in the news read more in The Evening Standard, The Guardian, or The Mirror.
Things chug along like this for a couple days, with Ben Beska's account providing updates on Alice as fan art and puff pieces continue to roll in paintings, memes. A high coup for Alice the Goldfish who Lived. Twitter was incredulous when Alice met Ben. The Alice Besca account is posting regularly, and by June fifth, just four days after this all began, Ben tweets.
Hey, Alis Besca, do you want a boyfriend or a sister slash brother?
Enter Barney, a blackfish who arrives. On June sixth, the Alice account quote tweets a picture of Barney and captions it goth BF. By this time, there's also merch. On June fifth, the Alice account, not Ben himself, launches a tentative merch store consisting of multiple Alice designs. At this point, it feels clear that Ben Besca wants to make this a thing. I first got in touch with Ben on
June fourth. I was on top of it, and we planned to speak on June sixth, but then he went quiet, and not just in our chat, but on social media all together. And I assume that was because he's still a junior doctor and said that he was going to be attending a conference pretty soon, and that was true, but that's not why he went quiet. What happened was Alice died. And Okay, maybe this is corny, but I saw this song referenced by many Alice fans when the
news originally broke. So we are going to get the karaoke track from Candle in the Wind Bumping in Alice's memory.
Full drama.
Hmm, beautiful.
It's the classic for a reason. Ben broke his silence on Twitter on June eighth.
Unfortunately, I have some very sad news to share. Alice has passed from her injuries and is now interentally swimming in the big fish tank in the sky rip. Alice is now the fish that lived for a.
Bit, and the cynical among us thought, well, this really fucks up the Pixar story. And I've thought about this
a ridiculous amount because it is really sad. But I also think it's kind of beautiful, right because if Ben hadn't found her, Alice would have died a week earlier, and through the combination of a strange twist of feet in a loose jawed predatory bird, Ben Besca was able to give Alice the goldfish another week of life that was spent in comfort, with adoration and good food and a new friend, Barney, and unbeknownst to Alice, worldwide notoriety.
I think it's really sweet and I'm weak. It didn't make me cry, but this is a show about social media, not our capacity to thighs with dead fish. So my curiosity was how did Ben, the Alisbasca account, and the press handle this tragic development. After the death announcement from Ben, Alice's story gets another small.
Bump in mainstream media.
Man who adopted fish he found in his garden shares sad update, and then Ben is left to figure out basically, does he try to keep this thing going in the wake of a pet he's slowly fallen in love with dying or does he just go back to who he
was a week ago. First, he amplifies the public mourning of Alice, the memorial drawings of her being welcomed into the Great Cooy Pond in the sky, a drawing of Steve Irwin's angel telling Alice you did great girl, her photo edited onto the cover of Elton John's Candle in the Wind. The Alis Besca account posts.
Do not fear death so much, but rather the you're not a good life.
It all feels fitting, and then the Alice Basca account keeps tweeting. June twelfth, Alice quote tweets Ben posting fan art of her saying.
Im g look at me slaying posthumously. June fourteenth, three days until the T shirt. Shit, I'm so excited for everyone to get their shirts.
June twenty first, when Ben posts a picture of the new massive gifted fish tank that Alice didn't live long enough to enjoy.
Wow, He's moved on quick.
Because by this time Ben Beska has chosen the direction he's going in. He's doubling down on fish. At the time of Alice's death, the free fish tank was already in the mail, and he'd already gotten her a goth BF in the form of Barney. So after taking some time to mourn Alice at a UK Taylor Swift aerostour that he'd had tickets to for months, he seems to decide to keep going. By mid June, Ben had to wonder Carrie Bradshaw voice, what does he do after Alice?
On June eighteenth, less than two weeks after Alice's premature death, I asked him just that our interview when we come back, welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm getting dangerously close to becoming a train guy, and today we're talking about junior doctor Ben Beska and Alice the goldfish who fell from the sky. And as much as I would like to interview Alice myself, I am at present unable to communicate
with fish, and also she's dead. Given these barriers to entry, I instead decided to reach out to the fish poster himself, Ben Vesca.
So.
I actually interviewed Ben Wewiss this episode once on June eighteenth, while this story was still developing, and then over a month later in late July. You don't need me to tell you that a month can be u Alexies apart when it comes to viral stories. Before we first talked over Zoom just a few days after Alice the Fish
passed away. Besco was both very receptive to talk to me and the press in general, but was kind of hard to pin down because it's not like becoming the goldfish guy meant that he quit his extremely demanding job working as a cardiology resident at an English hospital. But I kept bugging him because I'm really good at that, and when we found time to catch up, he was in good humor and understandably a little overwhelmed from the events of the week. Here is our chat from June.
Who are you then, Deska.
So I'm from England, from Newcast so I've been a doctor. I don't know a long time now. I can't remember being a doctor for a while. I studied in Newcastle, went to Medicol to Newcastle, stayed in Newcastle. My number one hobby is now keeping fish, but prior to last week that was not my main hobby. I mainly used Twitter. Actually, I mean, as you say, you look through it and there was a very minimal fish content on it.
Yeah, there's a huge pivot moment.
There's a pivot. There's a big pervot mainly used it for medicine stuff, basically stuff sprinkled with bits of you know, Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridges and artists like that, which I like. But it was a big, big pivot recently to fish. And I think now there's like twenty thousand extra people following me, all who care about fish. So I've had to change my you know, what I talk about significantly anything that isn't fish related. Effectively, I get
lots of abuse for not being fish related. Really already, I mean, Tom, I assume it's tongue in cheek abuse. Yeah, who knows. But I sent a tweet about some boring medicine stuff. People reply saying, oh, yes, but what's this got to do with the fish?
Okay, I want to talk about that in a bit of like how when you become notorious for one thing that all of a sudden that is like the yardstick, that it's.
Like your entire personality.
Now, well, before we.
Get there, you want to be taken through this biblical event of finding Alice.
It was June first.
So I was when was I think. I was upstairs initially in my house, and I heard mag eyes, you know, squawking, was like, what the hell is going on? And I saw this gold thing on the lawn. So I went downstairs, went outside, and there was a fish on the floor in the grass. I didn't really understand what was happening, no kidding, And she wasn't moving. She was just kind of like still on the floor. And I was like, oh, right,
the dead fish. Fine, don't ask him any questions. So I took a picture of the fish being because no, I knew no one would believe me, you know, when I said there was a fish on the on the floor, and I sent the photo to my friend and I said, there's a fish in the garden, and I was like, what are you talking about? But then the fish moved, it gills moved, but she was thin. They breathe, which she was suffocating, really, wasn't she?
So yeah?
And I was like, oh God, but what do I do in this situation? So when I ran inside and I just put the sink on, filled up the think and picked up by a tail, run inside and it started doing a classic fish thing, the fish fly. I was like bloody and it was gross because it was like slimy and it was a fish. It was alive, you know.
Yeah.
So threw threw her in the seak and I mean she was kind of still and not really moving. I mean, it was a fish. I fell on the lawn. I need some kind of container to put her in. I found a freezer draw which was a number, you know, I don't know. It was the only container I could think to put something so large and filled up with water. Put the fish in and it wasn't really moving still.
I kind of like tapped the box and then it started swimming around and amongst the water was you know, loads of scales that I think had probably fallen off a whatever trauma leader to you know, my back garden. You know, that's a story of how I found the fish and the first two minutes of her second life.
You've got Alice in the free search drawer. She's slowly coming to what is the distance To.
Clarify, because numerous people actually thought this, she wasn't actually in the freezer, the freezer draw side of the freezer.
I think that was clear in your video.
It was.
I think it was very clear. But people on Twitter, you know, you know how the internet is.
What is the amount of time between finding Alice, getting her into a receptacle and sharing it online?
Probably half an hour. So I put the fish in the drawer. I left the house to go to the neary shop to buy a fish tank or something better than the drawer, you know, because I know the fish need you know, chemicals or something. I know a lot more now about that, but I knew that basically that fish needed some kind of chemicals. I literally went to the closer shop, bought a tank, bought some chemicals, came home, put it in that tank. I think at that point
I tweeted about it. I mean, within the first half an hour or so. It's you know, my normal friends that you tweet, you know that the normal medical twitter people. Then it's sort of snowballs and snowballs and snowballs, and it goes mad maybe within half an hour an hour, so you can't track how large it gets because you know every second there's twenty notifications and you can't keep track of anything.
Had you ever been through anything like it?
No, I thought I'd achieved something like this with a Nobel prize or some kind of genuine achievement. But no, no, it's a fish.
So the story blows up.
Something I noticed early on there was a lot of or not a lot of, but at least some doubt cast onto the story.
What was the nature of that, and like, how did you handle it?
Yeah? So I think the first doubt there was people suggesting that I went out bought a fish, a large goldfish, and I don't know if you can buy them when they're big, put it on the lawn, like, battered around a bit, ripped a few of its, you know, took somewhere the scales off, and then posted on the internet, which makes no sense at all, is completely illogical. I mean, I believe they probably think the Earth is flat as well.
My internet brain says like, there's just enough evidence, not in this story, but that people will do wild shit for a story that gets absurd levels of engagement.
The thing about the Internet is that anyone that has grown up on the Internet knows you have to approach anything with a load of skepticism, because nothing is true on the internet, is it. But this story I think is so obscene that it's almost not scriptable. It's just so bunkers. Why would I make that up? Why would anyone make that up? But then everyone else actually pivoted. I mean everyone's an expert on the internet, as you know. I was then told that the tank was too small.
So the fish that was dead, well, I don't know, semi dead, was put into a tank of water, and apparently that tank was not good enough, and I was actually told by someone that the fish would have been better on the lawn.
Oh my god, wherey.
Normal people are on the internet, doesn't it.
People were saying, you know, you needed a thirty forty to fifty gallon tank, and I was like, why would I have that much water stored in a receptor just just in case a fish appeared?
If I was prepared, like very good evidence, I would have put the fish on the lawn.
That's true. Yes, it would be like, oh and he just happened to happen.
What was your relationship to the internet, you know, before this incident.
Well, I kind of grew up on the internet, you know, typical many or chronically online, and I understand the nuances of the Internet.
What is the next step?
At what point are you like, we got to start out as an account, like where do you go from there?
So I actually didn't start that account really really, it's one of the people on med Twitter isn't me started it as a joke, obviously as a joke. It's truly, it is truly brilliant. It's a very good idea. I think it's even more funny that I didn't set the accoun The tweets coming from that account have been actually very funny. You read they are very good.
It's only the other person who's run the account. Yeah, yeah, she has her own social media teape.
That's wild.
Yeah, because it felt like growing up online as well. You know you see famous Internet animals and how there's like a like a voice curated for them.
Yeah, and so he's not me, not me.
So in the meantime, as she is becoming a main character unbeknownst to her. What are the next steps with Alice? You've got her in the smaller tank. People are giving you shit what happens next?
But put all the chemicals in and remove the chemicals you're not meant to have. I don't want to talk too much about that because then it becomes like a fish care podcast, which I.
Think, yeah, that might be all good.
Set up a tank and make sure the tank was okay, and then I had to go to a conference with you. There. It was very anxious time leaving this newly found half dead fish in a tank.
He had a camera right brilliant to keep an eye on.
To keep an eye what it was. It was like a camera from like just a normal you know, like a security camera thing. I moved Pep and I on the level of anxiety that leads to that.
But we no, I mean, it's I'd be interested to hear.
It's just law, isn't it. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that's the term, you know, like it's just I don't know. I mean, I don't know how to define. It is a weird circumstance that I found this fish lived, But then I had to leave the house and I didn't like that. I'd rather care for the fish in a weird way make sure she doesn't die. She didn't at that time.
You did get to see her again, Yes.
Yeah, yes, I came home and fine.
So while you're at this conference, do people know that you're the guy or is it like you're being normal Ben at this conference and secretly, you know, checking your fish camera.
I mean I was being normal Ben, but everyone knew. And it was very embarrassing really because at this point it hit like the national media and the media actually and people had seen it and people have said, oh, I saw this in the Guardian. It's almost surreal the situation. It's difficult to explain how you get to the point of people you've not met reading about you in an actual newspaper about a fish you've had on the floor.
It's a weird story.
But I So there's a series of things that happen. It seems like Alice moves into a bigger tank, she gets a boyfriend, there's a merch store, there's a GoFundMe take me through this series of days. It's so much happened.
So the first thing that happened was a go fund me, and that was because I had maybe one thousand people tell me the tank was too small, and I was like, all right, fine, I'll buy a new tank in because that's what the Internet tells me to do. But then looking at fish tanks, they're so expensive and I was like, well, I can't justify spending you know, two three hundred quid.
So I made this go for me. Mainly, it was mainly aimed at the people who will giving me shit saying you should get a bigger tank if you care about animals. I was like, well, thank you very much, you do it. But that actually got a lot of traction. I got a lot of a lot of money donated to that. But then a company called Fluvial, well known fish company, but I didn't I don't know this. I didn't know this at the time messaged me and said, oh, we can give you a tank for Alice. And I
was like, oh, that's nice, that's good. So I didn't need the money on the go for me after all. So I rough unded all that back and they gat And you know, you're on the internet and you asked for advice about stuff, and people give you loads of ship whereas this email. There was this bloke at this company that I was emailing and you know, stupid questions about fish I didn't know the answer to, but which
were patently stupid. I would email and ask him and held answered me and you know, give me actual advice rather than telling me I'm an idiot for not having a tank set up the MERRG. I actually bought all of those T shirts. I think it's shipping soon. That was that wasn't set up by me. That was set up by Alice the fish aunt Alice mainly as a tongue in cheek thing because people get asking for it, but then people including me, bought stuff from it.
Yes, I emerged from your own fish.
That's great, but I think that ships soon. So I've got a T shirt with a picture of half dead fish on.
And then Barney came into the mix. How did Barney come into the mix?
I imagine I know nothing about fish, but I imagine it's lonely to be a fish in a tank on your own without a mate. So I went to shop and bought a new fish to go along with Alice. I picked Barney. I'm not sure why I picked the name Barney, but I think he kind of suited him. And I realized I'm accidentally naming these fish tropical iphoons in terms of like the age.
Yeah, that's true.
The next fish, I think, all sudden done.
You had Alice for about a week, right, a week? Yeah, tell me about her, tell me about like this weird experience.
It's kind of the odd thing about it is that it's given me a really like a new hobby out of nowhere. And I've got a weird connection to this stupid fish now Barney, I mean, because of the relationship that I then found on the law. Right, But you'd think that fish didn't have personalities, but you kind of notice things about them. It's me projecting my own you know, like my own care about these fish, you know, onto the fish arm. So I'm going to keep Barney, obviously,
I'm not going to kill him. Alice's memory in this bigger tank, and then get you know, get him some mates to keep him company. So it's the start of a beautiful hobby. Can you say, a beautiful hobby?
When Alice passed away, did you just did you find her?
One morning? What happened?
Yeah? So I found her. She was just in the tank in the morning, like in a typical fishy way, like floating in the tank. It actually upset me, to be fair, because I was like, why you only know this fish for a week? And I think I think it's a concept that it was nearly dead or maybe dead, and I saved her and then she died. I just died. Despite that, it's a bit like, oh, you know, like you tried and failed, and it's a bit sad.
But you didn't fail though I don't know.
I mean, that's like part of what I was a random person online that was very moved by this because it was just like you, you gave this creature a lovely last week of their life.
That's so it was really kind.
And I suppose it's nicer to again I don't know, but I suppose it's nicer to die in a tank than it is on the lawn.
I think within minutes when you when you posted that she'd passed away and there is a huge outpouring.
What was what was that like?
It was nice? Actually, it seems like I mean, there's a lot of funny responses because it's the best way to deal with sadness is to take the piss, which is good. I enjoyed it. But the fact that the story is like resonated a bit and it's made people happy. You know, it's a wholesome story, isn't it. It's a bit of a sad end, it's still a wholesome.
Story, it is.
Yeah, the fan art was there's so much of it, first of all, and it was very sweet.
And then you went to a Taylor Swift concert and I went to a.
Taylor Swift concert, the traditional way to send off a fish.
Yeah.
On the internet side, I want to go back to what you were talking about at the beginning, where now it's like, how big did your online audience grow in.
The space of this very chaotic week with Alice?
I think maybe ten to fifteen thousand. I mean I only had I think, like five thousand to start with. But yeah, so I've gained fifteen thousand people that care only about fish.
Now where do you go from here?
I'm opening a branded set of pet shops. No, No, I don't know. I mean I'm gonna I mean, Barney's obviously still here. I imagine people still want to hear some updates about that fish that's salad fish, his new friends called CD except well when they finally get there. But still every tweet I make that isn't about fish gets a lot of fish for bliind. So you know, it's a bit like you've got to give the audience what they.
Want, more fish content to come.
Yeah, it's more fish content to come. Yeah. The path of polase resistance wasn't it? Just continue on that and it's easier than writing it.
Thank you so much to Ben. We'll be hearing more from him soon. And when we come back, I consult an expert to ask the follow up question. Most of you were too cowardly too. What does becoming the fish guy do to your brain? Welcome back to sixteenth minute. When I was in fifth grade, my class inexplicably did a production of Hamlet, and I got to play Hamlet, but only acts one through three. So I got to do Hamlet up until I killed Polonius, and then Katya
Andrad just did the rest of it. We were both really good, And today we are talking about a fish that fell from the sky and derailed the life of a junior doctor. So after I spoke with Ben Baska, I kept an eye on his posts, and sure enough, by fish empire has continued to grow. Less than two months after Alice. The man has over fifteen fish, a whole ass ecosystem, and the tank has a golden decal on the side that reads the Alice Memorial Tank and is flanked by fan art from her Brief, Beautiful Week
with Ben. Ben's story felt like a great opportunity to ask something that I've been wondering about since this show began. What does going viral do to you psychologically? There's no definitive answer, but psychologists have been studying this for decades at this point, and I consulted one of Internet Psychology's go to guys, doctor Elias Ambujade, clinical professor, researcher and writer at Stanford where he is the chief of the Anxiety Disorder Section and director of the OCD Clinic and
the Impulse Controlled Disorders Clinic. Instead of asking him, as a lifelong OCD sufferer, how to personally improve my life, I asked him about the fish guy. Abujade is also the author of the new book A Leader's Destiny as well as the twenty twelve book Virtually You The Dangerous Powers of the E Personality. Talking about these isolated examples
like Ben Besca and Alice. The goldfish is what doctor Abujade does best in my opinion, and he gave me some insight into what Ben was going through and what you can do if the algorithm tries to kill you like an English bird of prey wood to a large goldfish.
Here's our talk, Elias Abusheti. I'm a clinical professor at Stanford University. I also run the program and Internet Health and Society at SEARS, and I am medical center. I study the intersection of technology and psychology and have done so almost twenty years now, hard to believe, and have addressed my work both to the general audience of Internet choosers but also scientists researchers.
So interested in your work, especially because I mean a very eventful twenty years for life online in your study and observation, what does receiving a ton of unexpected attention online due to you.
Well, online attention has in a way become a proxy for self worth. We value ourselves to the extent that we get likes, retweets, and all manner of online attention. It is a very valuable currency and that in that sense, and going viral represents sort of the extreme version of this, you know, something that everyone online is supposed to aspire to because it represents popularity, it represents cloud, and it represents self esteem.
I mean, at this point of like, it's fairly common knowledge the internet is addictive, But in your estimation, has it evolved in the ways it's become addictive? What are the changes you've noticed in the way that we're sort of kept tethered to social media and to the Internet.
Yeah, that's really interesting.
I mean, I think a lot of the obvious problems that most people recognize today, we're already there, you know, a couple of decades ago, and what we've seen is just this kind of intensification and.
Gradual worstening.
One personality trait I've I've worked on and talked about is narcissism. And and you can see how if you have any sort of vulnerability to that, or any kind of kernel of that and your personality structure, the Internet can and intensify it, you know, by giving you a stage, by giving you quote unquote followers, by by increasing your sense of how how popular and effective you are. It's hard for anyone to be totally immune to that. But if you already have those tendencies, and then they can
become quite magnified. That's what we see, I think, repeatedly and an online That's just one of the many personality traits that the Internet and Internet related technologies act on. And they've all as the Internet has evolved, they've all been kind of further intensified.
And and and again it feels like there's a common consensus that I agree with that this is clearly bad for me, But I can also directly point to so many positive in my life, whether it was community building or relationships or whatever it was, that wouldn't have been possible without the Internet. Because you've observed this and studied this for so long. For people that do have a
healthier relationship to the Internet, what is the balance? You know, you always get sort of the classic go touch grasp, but in so many ways, you know, jobs or communication, it's now there's not many alternatives. How have you seen people successfully manage relationships with this technology?
Well, it is.
It is a very fricky balance, I think, and it's gotten almost impossible to pull off because, as you pointed out, you know, you can't be a professional today and not have.
A strong online presence.
You can't be you know, a quote unquote normal teenager and not have a social media presence. So these things have become very ingrained. And I think sort of how culture has evolved is by the time we recognize that the dangers we had already become addicted, and the culture has moved so sort of deep into embracing these technologies that we can't turn looklock. So it's not about kind
of going back to nineteen ninety seven or whatever. It's more about trying to maintain some grounding in real life, whatever that means anymore. And I think there's some, you know, there's some encouraging signals in that direction, Like I teach undergrads at Tanford and Berkeley, and there seems to be sort of a newfound respect and a new kind of coolness attached to going off of the of the online
a grid that least temporarily. We see people souring on online dating, for example, thinking the greatest decision not to look for a partner or romantic interests on dating apps. So there are attempts, I think, overall their healthy ones. But again, our goal should not be, you know, believe the last twenty years of our lives.
Right going back to the subject of this interview, he's this really nice guy named Ben who found a live goldfish that had fallen out of a bird's beak. It fell into his lawn and he rescued it while it was still alive, and this was he tweeted about it. He was, you know, an active Twitter user. It was interesting as we were talking just listening to him be like, this is really exciting, but it's also really weird, and it comes with kind of this very specific pressure to
feel like, you know, this is you now. And I know you've written a book called Virtually You, The Internet and the Fracturing of the Self.
Could you tell me a.
Little bit about that as we are constructing our Internet selves. This feels like a very kind of like extreme specific example, but I could feel sort of the nucleus of listening to someone kind of shifting the way they've constructed themselves online because of this random thing that happened to them and went viral.
And my book Virtually You, I talked about how we have an e personality that I can be quite distinct from how we from normal life. So we tend to be more aggressive on to be more impulsive. We tend to show more narcissism, less patients, et cetera, and that version of ourselves can be can feel more sort of attractive, more liberated to us, and we end up buying into it, sometimes excessively and sometimes at the expense of who we
really are and what our real personality structure is about. Now, in this example you shared, it does seem like you know a nice individual who had some sort of strange thing happened to him practically overnight. Has his life became about that, And I see parallels with what I've written about. But what I what I like about how you described
him is that he recognized that it's weird. He recognized that it doesn't doesn't quite make make sense, and sometimes online we stopped like we lose that ability to distinguish between what's like weird and what's real, what's fake and what's around it. You also say that he recognizes that the pressure of kind of embracing this persona keeping it going, And I also appreciate that about the story, because most of us or many of us, don't see it as
as pressure. We end up somehow again liking it more than we should without acknowledging the pressure person that's not really who we are.
It felt like he was saying and I would feel the same way in the same position, Like you've been given this strange gift, you know, of all of these.
Eyes and in the gifts of virality, Yes.
The gift and the curse. I mean, I think of all of these other people who are turned into these Internet main characters, and how some people you know know I reject this, I don't want anything to do with this, and others. You can see the wheels turning a little bit of like, how like is it possible to make this moment a part of who I am?
Does it even make I think?
I mean, I think there is a way to have fun with it, embrace it temporarily without allowing it to get to your head too much. I mean, the thing about virality is that it doesn't last, right, Like we we get tired of people who go viral and stories that go viral pretty quickly. I mean, online we're constantly on the about you know, the next big thing or
the next story. I think acknowledging this aspect of virality is important if you don't want to end up being, you know, the victim of it, right because if you embrace it and assume that you can keep it up, then you're going against all the lessons that internet history has taught us.
But if you can, you.
Know, play with it, have fun with it, but you know, remember how long that it's not going to be superlasting, then I think that's that's a healthy or more realistic approach.
If I came to you and said, hey, I just completely randomly became an Internet main character, I don't really want this attention, I'm overwhelmed by it.
How would you advise me?
I guess one thing I would I would tell you is to reassure you that internet memes have a finite lifespan that as heavy and overwhelming as this feels, as everlastings as it feels, it has a beginning and middle, end, an end, and it will be shorter living than you
probably assume it is. I would I would caution you against responding, you know, impulsively to whatever the situation is, because that's another thing that people under pressure will do online and they end up up often regretting their reaction. I think through how you react, don't do anything that might sort of compound the problem. Lastly, I've done a lot of work on privacy.
Online privacy.
Yes, you know, one of the biggest sort of victims of online culture, the fact that we now live in a privacy age, and privacy and healthy psychology go hand in hand. So I would urge you, despite this sort of viral state that you're in, I would urge you to be protective of your privacy to the extent that you can, despite the Internet attention.
And then the flip side of that, the flip side of that question is I approach you and I say I want to go viral, I want to become famous online. I think I can handle it, and I don't think it'll affect me.
How would you advise me?
What I would do in this case is, you know, put my therapist's hat on and ask what it is about you know, your your current life, your offline life, even your online life that feels so empty and hollow that you would be desperately seeking online fame. I would recommend that you not look for online fame for the sake of online fame.
But but do what you want.
To do and go for the goals you always wanted to go for. And if internet fame happens, it will be for the right reasons and not for the sake of.
I love that answer.
Yes, it's like sometimes it happens, but hopefully God, I mean for the few that it happens on their terms.
I think just the idea of wanting Internet frame at all costs, I mean, that's the track that a lot of culture falls into, right Like I want to be an influence or whatever whatever it takes, and that's just not healthy.
And then my last question is I don't know if this is a hard question in or not, so I apologize in advance. Is there anything about the state of today's Internet how we're consuming to feel positive about.
I think there's a new found awareness that we may have embraced some technologies, we may have embraced some platforms blindly without sort of thinking through our behavior. There's I think broad recognition around that, and I think that's the necessary first step toward being able to correct things. You know, like awareness, education are absolutely essential, and I think there's a lot more of that today compared to even a couple of years ago. That's the silver lining I see.
Whether it's sufficient is a different story altogether, but at least it's necessary that we have a healthier dose of that now compared to the recent past.
Thank you so much to doctor Abujade, and you can find his new book, A Leader's Destiny by Psychology, Personality and character make all the difference at the link in the description. A little over a month after Ben Baskett and I first talked, I checked in again to see how he was doing and tell him a little bit about my chat with doctor Abujade.
Who are his updates?
Hi?
Ben, how are you good?
Thank you? How are you?
So we haven't spoken since about this time the last month. Tell me what has changed in your in your fish life?
So I now have three fish name name. So Barney is the original companion to Alice. He's still around. He did have some kind of weird fungal infection for a while, which I think is new. But he's better and I think actually it's salt that cured him. Apparently salt is like a cure all for goldfish. We've got Daphne, looks a little bit like Alice, but it is a bit stockier. And then we've got Edgar, who is a bit like a bruiser kind of bloke who's got like a little mustache.
I imagine him like a American prohibition kind of guy with a with a mini gun.
Okay, I like that. There is also, yeah, the applied personality is that is critical a pet ownership.
It's very important. And then obviously we've got Charlie's Angels, which I think I had last time. I can't remember. Loads of mini fish. There's how there's thirteen of them, loads of mini little fish.
Wow, Okay, that's this is wonderful news. Is this like a lifelong thing, have you? Because that was my question going in, I was like, is he going to commit to being the fish guy?
I think I think it's probably yes, given everything has gone well with the you know, no fish has died. I mean, Barney tried his best, but you know, no fish has died. So it may be that I'm not terrible at keeping fish. And I'm sure I said this last time, but every time that I post anything on Twitter that isn't directly fish related, I almost get abuse for not posting about the fish. How there you have
other hobbies or other things to talk about. People have said things like, oh, yes, you know, we followed you for the fish and now we're learning about you know, the intricacies of the UK medical system.
That's fascinating.
I have a theory that, Yeah, people that casually follow any one online get really upset if they learn more than like three things about you, Like you just cannot be too multifaceted or people kind of freak out. It seems like you're posting whatever the fuck you want. Anyways, Do you do you.
Feel pressure to fish post a certain amount?
No? Not really. I mean I like posting about the fish because they are quite funny and the amount of you know, stupid ship any animal does, let alone a load of fish, you know, Sharing that on Twitter is actually quite it's quite entertaining. It's also it's a good way to sort of like document as well, you know, things that have changed over the past month or so.
You know, we'll keep doing this. I'll check in with you in a year and see how life has changed. Any fish goals, anything that you like, want to do that you haven't done. Are you going to expand? Are you going to maintain? What's what's the plan?
So apparently someone warmed me about this before. It's called multi tank syndrome, and essentially you start with one fish or one tank and it's never enough. It's sort of like an addiction, and then you keep buying more tanks until your house is more tanks than house. I want a marine tank for saltwater time.
Oh wow, that's good.
That's serious, right, it's a serious Well, that's I'm so glad that Alice has brought this new facet of your life.
It's going to be I'm quite excited to see what my electric bill is going to do. I imagine it's going to go up significantly, such as.
The life of a fish father. Well, well, thank you for catching.
Up with me, then no problem.
Thanks so much to Ben Beska for being gained to this unhinged case study.
And you can.
Follow his ongoing fish adventure on Twitter at besca. And with that, Alice, our dearly departed goldfish and Ben Basca your sixteenth minute end now and for our moment of fun this week. This is a pet episode. Here is my perfect eldest boy Flee singing you a beautiful song.
My boy soprano, See you next week.
Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans.
The amazing Ian.
Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad thirteen and Pet shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper, and my pet Rockbird will outlive us on bye
Mm hmm