Ola, I'm called.
Ramos and I'm Pas.
And this is the moment juntos.
George cheesy George.
Well, I live. Yeah, But it's interesting.
I mean, it's it's not only something that I always wanted to do, but it's something that we couldn't have done just a few years ago.
I think when when you think of this now, you and I were doing a video podcast in twenty twenty five. I think this moment does two things for me. No, it it's a reflection of the way in which the media landscape is completely completely transforming. And this is something that I would have never thought we would have been doing, say ten five years ago.
We were thinking in different terms. We were thinking, oh, let's do together a TV show, but not this.
Not this. And I want to tell you about two stats that I keep thinking about. I read them the other day. So here's the first one that really really sticks with me. I am and I'm quoting. Okay, So this is according to Oxford's Reuter's Institute for the Study of Journalism, for the first time ever, social media is overtaking television as American's top news source. I mean, what does that say to you?
Well, I mean I still read the newspaper. You're rever.
You're probably one of the only people that still does that.
Yeah, even when I'm on the planes and then I just bring my copy, people look at me and say who's who's this person or nobody's doing that.
But the transition is right there. You're absolutely right.
I mean twenty years ago, I remember very vividly, of course, like I grew up with so many Latinos across the country tuning into your newscast every single evening, watching you on television, and that was one of the main ways that the Spanish speaking Latino community in this country would be informed, not through social media, not through TikTok or x, but through cable television.
So remember people telling me, oh, I watched the news, and then people would come years later and say, a decade later, say well, my mom watches the news, and now it ended up being my grandma is watching.
So that's that's the difference.
Meanwhile, your generation, you were going somewhere else it is.
But I, you know, I keep thinking about this as you and I are doing this new project, like, how has that transition been for you know, going from you know, being this big voice and legacy media to now jumping into the video podcast.
It hasn't been easy, but either you do it or you perish. That's and if you want to continue being a journalist and being relevant, either you move with a new technology, this new shift, or you disappear. This is this is maybe my second wave. The first one when I first survived in the United States nineteen eighty three, there were only fifteen million latinos and I and I feel that I was writing that wave, the LATINX wave lao la latina. Right now weur sixty five million latinos.
So I started with that wave and we went all the way to the top. But then something changed. And this new wave has to do with technology in which we're putting a side traditional media, legacy media and going towards social media and being online and digital. And if I don't ride that wave, I'm going to disappear. So it hasn't been easy, but this is the only way to do independent journalism nowadays.
And it's not easy, you know, especially when you think about this idea, know that this digital wave that we're writing on also coincides within a larger socio political environment where you know, the top people in power question facts undermine history, and so this of course changes the way that we as journalists can can operate. And I think for me, when I think of you, like you were able to gain people's trust and credibility.
So they saw me every day, now they saw you every day.
But I think in the cable news olds school television environment, you were able to do something so important, right, which is gain people's trust. I think for us in the digital world, gaining credibility is such a hard thing today.
Yeah, yeah, I think I agree with you. But then how do you gain credibility. It's just a repetition, day after day, just coming to their house and then you tell them something, and then the next day then say, okay, he was right. He was right, and then happened year after year after year. But I think credibility has to do with, for me, with two things. One to report reality as it is, not as you wish it would be, so people would know that you're giving them the facts.
And then if you make a mistake, and I made tons of mistakes, you simply correct them. But the second, the second element, has to do with challenging those who are in power, questioning those who are in power. Many journalists don't do that anymore. And if you don't do that, then people don't trust you. And that's why I think there's a crisis of credibility many journalists nowadays.
And I think that's at the heart of today's episode now, not only what it means to navigate journalism in this digital era, but also what it means to question those in power as journalists.
No.
One of the things that I think we will be talking about is what doesn't mean to be a journalist? No, how has journalism involved and what does that look like today?
And how technology is changing absolutely everything, including yeah, I'm not reading the newspaper. Coming up after our break, our guest is a viral TikTok creator named by Time magazine as one of the top one hundred creators to look out for in twenty twenty five and considered to be one of the main news sources for millennials in gen Z in the US.
So in their bio you'll actually find that they describe themselves as both an independent journalist and an advocate, and so can both of those terms go together. That's one of the questions we'll have for our guests. We'll be talking to TikTok creator and influencer VS Spear, host of Under the Desk News Coming right up, gay V, Welcome to the moment.
Thanks for having me excited to be here.
Thank you so much for joining us. So I'll tell you one of the reasons why you're one of the first guests that we wanted to talk to. So, the last time I saw UV, you and I were in a television studio, right, we were both doing an MSNBC hit, and to give listeners a little bit of context, we were sitting in a round table with other journalists lights cameras.
But in that moment, I remember thinking that perhaps you, with your voice and your platform and as a single influencer, maybe you have more power than an entire news station. And I mean this sincerely, right, And so that made me think about where your journey starts now Under the Desk. Obviously, your program has been incredible. It's really, really, really grown. I mean, in the last couple even months, it significantly. You have almost four million TikTok four million, almost two
hundred and forty million likes on TikTok alone. I mean, people even consider be an Internet celebrity. I'm jealous.
That's why we invited you.
But truly, like when when you think of this journey, like how do you get started?
So at the time when the pandemic hit and I started making tiktoks, I was working for the James Beard Foundation, and I was doing a lot of our like director of impact work. So I was making cooking videos, talking about how to apply for the PPP loan, how to get the shuttered venue license.
Like how to do whatever.
And then it was January sixth and I was working with the Tennessee Veterans Association to talk about how we were going to get food to vets who were unhoused, and just above my computer, I remember perfectly, I saw them in the capital on January sixth, and having been a caterer in the Capitol, I was like, Oh, you're not supposed to be in those hallways, like that's that's not right. And that's when I started to realize something
was wrong that day. So I was dressed that day for the VA's appointment, So I had like a suit on from the top and I had on like Nike shorts.
On the bottom.
So I like dove under my desk just like out of nowhere and started explaining the twenty fifth Amendment and what it means, because Trump wasn't calling in the National Guard, and I was like, Michael Pence, you could be president for fourteen days. This could be your one chance to be president, and this is what it means. And it went super viral and then my friend Randy was like, you better get back under that desk and tell them what's happening now.
So we sort of had it go and it's like.
A bit just between me and my pals that night, and then the next day came, and the next day came, and then people started calling me under the desk news, which was not my name was like v Spear on the channel and they were like under the desk news, what's happening now?
And I was like okay.
So then I just kept doing it, and then it got to a point where I was explaining civics and like what was going on with the government. That went into Joe Biden's first hundred days, and then that was it. It even with like here's what it's Monday night and here's what happened. That's something that somebody said to me. They would write it in the comments. A lot of under the desks and came directly from the audience who was building it with me. One time, I didn't wear
my glasses and people are like, where's your glasses? And I was like, okay, I guess the glasses are a brand. And then they started sending me art of the glasses and like ceramics of the glasses, and I was like, okay, I guess this is who I am forever. I tried to change my hair one time. People did not like that absolutely all right, who this is what it is.
Something really interesting is that I've been a journalist for decades and I when I introduced myself b I always say, yeah, I'm an immigrant and I'm an independent journalist. But I can easily say I'm a journalist, even though sometimes now I'm giving my point of view, my opinion.
That's something different.
But I wonder if you think that what you're doing is journalism because I've been doing my homework and sometimes you do identify as a journalist and sometimes as an advocate. So is there something incomplete about saying that you are a journalist.
I think this is the difference between traditional media and new media.
Is traditional media.
Used to go in clock in do your job and go home, and then everything you did when you weren't on television or writing your column was considered your personal time. For me, as a public figure, and in this world of new media, I am content for people twenty four
hours a day. Whether I'm doing straight journalism like let's say what we do on the subject with original investigative stuff, or whether I'm doing the news at seven o'clock saying hey, here's what happened today, or whether I'm showing up to a no Kings protest, all of that is considered under the desk news. There is no separation. There's no clocking in or clocking out for a new media figure the way that there was for media figures in the past, and so I think that can be a little blurring
of the lines and confusing to people. And it's why I've been so upfront about the fact that, like you are getting my whole self every night. When I do the news, you're just getting the news. But when I'm doing something in the daytime, or I'm doing something in my personal life, those are all just showing you the completeness of me as a whole person.
Yeah, Because I think maybe the discussion that Devid has to do all and be with the fact if we have to be objective, and the difference between being objective and being neutral, do you do you feel the need to be neutral or quite the contrary, there are times since which you absolutely have to take a stand.
So the thing about me is I've always presented myself as American first, like that is who I am first, and I'm very proud to be American in recognizing a lot of the flaws that this country has, but also recognizing that Americans, the people that I care so much about, are in a different situation than we've been in the past. So as far as objectivity or neutrality go, that is not something that I prioritize because I think in this particular political environment there are people who are trying to
make facts not facts. They are trying to negotiate with you, should trans people exist, not what does the actual law say. So I think in trying to maintain objectivity or neutrality, it tends to favor the oppressor. And at a point where the wealth gap is where it is, where the opportunity gap is where it is, and where the people in authoritative power right now are creating alternative facts and narratives.
It's very difficult to try and say well and on the other side, because there's a lot of bad faith people coming into these conversations in ways that don't allow me to be objected or neutral.
We have all these these questions about naturality, so at the end, just just to be.
To be correct. Are you a journalist?
I think I am now, And I honestly really struggled with this for a long time. So originally I used to call myself content creator right when I first started, and then I called myself a news communicator. And then when I started, my line for me was do I create original from the ground up journalism, like capital j journalism.
And in the last year and a half we have done that, and that's when I started to consider myself a true journalist, sort of like I didn't consider my chef myself chef until I ran expo.
It's like you're a cook until you're a chef.
You know, but then somebody says to you, you're not chef, and you're like, I am JEF. And I think that came when I started doing original journalism. But I think that's my line for me. I don't know that that's the line for everybody to consider themselves a journalist or not.
I also publish my funding and I also have a code of ethics that's published, and I think those things are all important to calling yourself a journalist if you want to pull in that historic trust and seriousness that that industry represents.
And that was actually just going to flip the question back to my dad, right, because I think no, Because I think, I mean, I think many people also have the question for you. I would even say for me, I think particularly when it comes to certain issues and we'll get to this in just a second, that are personal. Know that you can't really detach yourself from in your case in immigrants now you like you said, you're an
immigrant first, vas an American first. We two are queer people, and this leads me v to I think something that is personal for both of us as journalists, as people in LGBTQ community, which is Gaymary. Now, obviously you posted a video that was very important on your socios about gay marriage, and just for context for our listeners, if you don't know, by now, the Supreme Court is expected to consider whether or not no. They will consider a case this fall where they are being asked to explicitly
overturn gay marriage. And so I want to hear this video that you posted really quickly, and then i'll take your You're taken just a second.
Let's hear it.
Yes, the Supreme Court has been officially asked to reconsider the legality of Obergefel v. Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court decision that made gay marriage federally legal. You knew this was going to happen, and that's why a couple months ago I partnered with a lawyer named Angela Giampolo, and she goes by at your gay lawyer on TikTok and Instagram,
and she put together a plan. It's basically the nine documents that gay couples need to file to help recreate all of the rights inherent to marriage in a partnership document.
So v this is where I thing no, we as journalists inevitably have to blur the lines sometimes, is I'm curious, First of all, how did your followers take this information? What's their reaction to this?
So the tricky part about the attack on gay marriage is that they've been trying to do this since it got passed. I mean, this has been going on since twenty fifteen, and as a gay person and as an advocate for gay rights, I have been involved in this so deeply from the behind the scenes level of what are we going to do if they overturn Obergafell for
literally ten years. So when something comes up that the news is reporting, like, oh, the Supreme Court may hear Kim Davis's case that seeks to overturn Obergafell, I know in my heart and soul that's probably not going to be the one that does it. But I also know that there have been movements behind the scenes to try and requalify what even qualifies as marriage and sort of discount gay marriages in that way. And that's the language that we hear from the right of marriages only between
one man and one woman meeting. Marriages between two men or two women would no longer meet the burden of proof required to be CLASSI marriage and then to have those rights. So when this started coming around again, I thought to myself, we have to have something for people to do. We can't just bring our hands and be afraid that it's going to happen.
What can we do to one.
Ensure that gay marriage doesn't get overturned, but if it does protect people's inherent rights during the gap, because we know that we'll win the right back a different way maybe, But what do we do during the gap? And that's when I worked with this lawyer to come up with this thing called the Nine Documents, which has been very helpful to people, because at the end of the day, what is marriage. It's a spiritual connection. Sure, you could
always still have that it's representing love. You will always have that. It is a civil contract between partners that is filed with the state. And so I was like, okay, that's the part that we could not have. Again, what are those rights? And it really comes down to a state planning child's care and property ownership and stuff. And so I was like, all right, can we recreate those documents?
And she did, Have you taken those steps? Have you and your partner?
We were actually the test case for it, so we were one of the first people to go through it and make sure that there was enough of it to be able to publish this. So I've been working with Angela for probably a year and a half now on this and that's why we publish it back in June before the Supreme Court. Thing with Kim Davis even came up. I've gone through the process. We've gone back and forth with this lawyer saying there's not enough here, there's not enough there.
You can do.
The nine documents is what we put out at sort of phase one, which is just between two people. Once you start to involve children, well then you get into sort of like adoption rights and different things. But there are two non married adults that can adopt a child, so that's not necessarily a marriage right. And it really made me feel better. But we have done the documents.
You're so outspoken, obviously, you're unapologetically yourself, and you are literally all over TikTok. I'm thinking of libs of taktok. Now, this anti LGBTQ, a extreme right account, and I'm wondering, have you ever been threatened by them or anyone? Oh?
Sure, I've been on it a couple of times. And the thing that is interesting is she doesn't get juice from me being on her account the way that certain other people that she has tried to take out have. And I think partly it's because even though I align with leftist politics, Let's say there are a lot of libertarians that sort of go into the other side of the horseshoe her world, who when she will post about me, they'll be like, eh.
I kind of like the I learn a lot.
Oh.
I mean, so, I think every time I've been over there, it's been you know, the typical slurs, but people sort of pass it along because I also don't engage back, and I think that's what they want, is that fight back and forth.
So I've been over there a couple of times.
She threatened to sue me for defamation one time because I said that right wing you know, lunatics like her were responsible for some of the depression that trans and LGBTQ youth feel because they're attacking their teachers and it just makes the world feel unsafe and whatnot.
And she's like, I care so much about children.
I was like, Okay, I would love to go to Discovery with you if you really want to take this about all the different ways that you've tried to, you know, be a stochastic terrorist against the mental health of queer people in children. And it went nowhere. But that's that's sort of my thing with her. I don't engage, and so I think they don't get the juice that they want.
But I wonder if you're afraid for your life, and also.
I have been, you are sure, Oh, of course.
I think everybody in this country is afraid for their life, one because of gun violence, two because of the dehumanization that the president has put forth when it comes to queer and trans people. He's called us on the left even demoncrats and evil and the enemy within. So I think it goes beyond even like just being a journalist and being afraid, and goes right into the fact that we are being dehumanized at such a level that people are becoming more comfortable with not seeing us as human.
But as as I do understand, if you're afraid, there are different routes that you can actually take. You can just say I'm sorry, I'm not going to engage. This is way too risky. The other is just to confront it. I'm guessing you decided just to go ahead and confront everyone who's threatening you.
So yes and no.
I think sometimes I've written back to people who have threatened me, like in my DMS, and I've been like, I'm really sorry you feel that way, Like what made you feel that way? And they're like, Oh, I didn't even know you were going to see this. I was just kind of like blowing off steam, and I was like, oh, this is like when I yell at the TV Josh Allen, I.
Wish you were dead. You're killing me with these plays. He doesn't.
I don't actually mean that I'd be or if I'd embarrassed if he ever heard me say that. And so I think sometimes it's that. Other times, when it's been more dangerous, we have had to contact like local police department, or I use this program called delete me that monitors my online activity. I'm also a spokesperson for them. I'm not doing an ad for them right now. I was a customer before I got asked to be a spokesperson, but there are things that I try to do to
keep me and my family's information safe. I also think it's safe that I don't live in a major city. I intentionally live in Rochester, New York, and my friends and neighbors are extremely protective of me in general, and I think it makes it less likely that someone is going to go so far out of their way to bother me, the way that they could just catch me on the streets of New York or DC. I always feel a little less safe as a public figure in a public city, if that makes sense.
I just want to ask you if you think that the country is changing way too fast. I mean, you were talking about the nine steps that you're taking about being afraid. Is this has to do with politics itself or have you noticed a change in the last few years.
Is it something happening right now?
I think that the Trump administration and the MAGA movement has certainly escalated and made a permission structure for being just as cruel as you possibly can, both online and in person. But overall, I think it more has to do with society in the American experience we're in right now. The wealth gap, the lack of affordable housing, the ways that people feel threatened that their jobs are going to be taken by AI or they can't get the promotions that they used to, or going to college isn't enough
to have a good life. I think all of those things, which are you know, systematic of the politics and the laws that people have written. Gay people and trans people are being scapegoaded as the reason why your life sucks. But I think your life sucks because my life sucks
because of the billionaire class. And so I think in many ways, trying to find camaraderie in class consciousness between people is what's going to help break down these political silos that folks are putting themselves in, and I do think that we're getting closer to that than further away. I think the last ten years of trump Ism is sort of in its death rattle right now. It's in like its peak kind of place. There isn't an air apparent to this. I think it comes down from here,
certainly as Trump continues to weaken. I think the movement weekends because there's not an air apparent to a cult. It's a cult of personality, and there's no one else whose personality has created this type of like showman entertainer, cult leader thing.
So we've been discussing about the possibility that democracy might just disappear in this country. He's been threatened that Trump is accumulating a lot of power, and then suddenly you just said Trump continues to weaken. That seems to be exactly the other way. Could you explain that a little bit more.
So, I think over the last ten years, we've seen a rise, certainly in these attacks on our core freedoms and what America is, who is an American? What should we expect? But we're at a point now where he is back in power for the second time, and people's lives didn't get better. Grocery prices didn't go down, they didn't get a better job, they didn't get a better life. And now they're starting to see things like, you know, the support staff in hospitals and agriculture workers and hotel workers.
Why isn't my room ready at noon anymore? Well, because there's no one to clean rooms. Why is it my food more expensive because you deported the fruit pickers. Why isn't construction available? Well, because you got rid of the skilled tradesmen. You deported them to Venezuela or prisons in
El Salvador. And so I think people are now starting to sea leg They are the establishment, you are the mainstream, You are the norm, You are the total power, this right wing counterculture thing that was building up.
And I think Trump is older now.
I think he's not able to swing the power dynamics internationally the way that he once was either. And I think that his you know, maybe dementia, maybe congestive heart failure, whatever's going on with him is certainly physically weakening him, if not socially weakening him. There was a time when he was hugging the rainbow flag and saying he loves gay people and saying once he was president, he be
a president for all, and he's not anymore. So you've got a split country now and he's made half the country their enemy.
That's going to weaken you anyway. So that's where I say he's weakening.
I wonder V like, do Democrats have anything to learn from your online strategy? Like what is there to learn from you?
They should learn from me to join the Working Families Party because the Democratic establishment brand is completely gone right now. I mean if you're looking at it in terms of brands or sports teams or franchises, right which is what they've treated themselves like. They are no longer platforms of values and political like, what will the laws we make? Like they are brands and the Democratic brand right now
is in complete shambles. And I think some of that has to do with the gerontocracy people not passing the baton, It has to do with not recognizing progressive values, It has to do with continuing to try to court the center, which has only moved them more right. It continues to be an issue of like gentlemanly politics and trying to take the high road and be the bigger person. We
are in the streets trying to fight this now. And so what I think is interesting is not necessarily trying to improve the capital d democratic establishment, but looking to a group like the Working Families Party, which I am a registered member of, which operates in twenty eight states.
It prioritizes progressive candidates in the primaries. Now, once the big election comes around, they're going to endorse who's on the blue line, because they're certainly not going to endorse a third party which continues to split the left vote.
So what are they scared of? What are democrats scared of? In your opinion?
So sometimes I think they're afraid of facing their own mortality and that it's over, that it's not the nineties, and that of this the legacy that they built for themselves they've lost by holding on to it for too long. It's sort of like again, sports players, if you'll get Aaron Rodgers, right, incredible quarterback and he just maybe stayed a little too long and he got hired and now your legacy has tainted a little bit.
Okay. I think it's a little bit of that going on.
I think some of it is the Democrats are have built themselves on this we are better than everyone, We are so righteous and moral, and they're afraid when somebody new comes in, maybe they'll be caught out for some of that. We've called out their stock trading, We've called out the fact that they haven't held the Epstein files accountable. The reason why we're seeing the Epstein files get held accountable now is because the folks on the oversight committee
are millennials. None of us are our donors or our friends were connected any way to Epstein. So now is the only time where they're starting to push a little harder to get it out there. And I'm not saying the Democrats were connected to him, but we won't know right because they were so unwilling to expose that. So I think some of it's holding on too long. And I think their idea of joining social media as having Chuck Schumer right around in Jack Schwassberg's band, which I
love Jack. Jack's funny to me, but Jackson Kennedy, Okay, and we don't think political dynasties if you're going.
To be a true progressive.
You know, I've been having this conversation with Paola for a long time that in just a few years from now, someone is going to ask you what did you do during the Trump era? And then there's a moral responsibility to answer that question. And it clearly feels that you have no trust on politicians. So it is people like you who are taking the lead on this. In other words, politicians they don't have an answer, Democrats don't have an answer.
We have to look for something completely different.
Not completely different. I think we've got to get back to our roots, back to the basics here. I think politics has become an elite class. It's become a celebrity class. I would blame the Tea Party in twenty twelve for making it a celebrity thing. But I think it just gets back to we just want to see our friends and neighbors in these positions of power, from school board
to president. We do want to feel like it's actual people who have a stake in this country, not folks who are willing to enter the machine and be that cog that keeps the machine going. And I think of to come out of New York politics for a minute, dre for Iowa.
This woman was a mom, She was a mom activist.
She ran for a seat in Iowa that had been held by a Republican for thirteen years. They told her there was no chance she could win, and she just blew them out of the water with her win for the special election seat. I think folks, even in my own neighborhood, we had conversations during the election about what was the neighborhood going to put up signs? Are you gonna put Kamala, You're gonna put Trump on your lawn?
What are you going to do?
And a lot of people decided they just weren't going to because regardless of who people were going to vote for, we had lost our neighborhood personality and we did this, it was going to become even more divisive. So there was a couple people who put up Trump signs. We have this one trans kid who lives on our street, and my thing to them was like, can you at least not face the sign at their house so when they come out their house they don't have to see it.
Can you put it sideways and like instead of facing the house and they're like, oh yeah, you know, okay, I love that kid. That kid's a great kid. I'm like, all the kids are great kids, you just don't know them.
So my neighborhood I look at because it's a very divided Republican and Democrat suburban New York, and I think what folks want to feel is community, and what they're getting is tribalism, whether that's tribalism for Trump or for Kamala at that time, and now we're kind of looking at each other like, hey, maybe federal politics has screwing us all, and we really got to look at who's running for superintendent. We really got to look at who's our mayor right now.
I don't know if it has happened to you, but if you go into YouTube or TikTok or many others, you can actually see AI generated TikTok accounts hijacking my name, my voice, my image, and you know.
They're pretty good.
Yeah, I mean I've had it done to me. It's extremely good.
Just a few months ago, sometimes what I was saying didn't match with my lips, so you might say, okay, that's fake.
But lately it's been incredible and it's not.
I'm not talking about just one, I mean dozens of them in which I'm just presenting these incredible medicines for diabetes and then asking for people's bank accounts. I mean, it's really it's really crazy.
Can I can I tell you that. I've had some of my friends that are like, wait, is your dad really selling this like medicine on TikTok? And I had to think twice. I was like, I don't think it, but yeah, but I know.
Miracle medicine for diabetes.
You and then they were saying that I left to be because I had diabetes. Fortunately I have no diabetes anyway, So what has happened to you? And is there any I mean, I'm really worried because in just a few months, I'm completely sure, in just a few months, it's going to be so perfect that it's going to be impossible for me to say to you, no, it's not me, because people are going to say, no, I saw it, I saw the video with you saying that it.
Goes both ways.
The danger of this is that there are things and what happened to you happen to me exactly. I was selling like face masks or something I was like, no, I'm certainly on diet pills things I would never never do, and folks are like, that's not the But if you don't know THEE and they're copying my cadence and my voice and the way that I do things, like other people could potentially be influenced and targeted by that. I
think the problem with AI it goes two ways. One these obvious fake, horrible things, and two the ability to say that wasn't me, it's a deep fake when it actually was you.
It's you know.
And I think we've seen that with like elon different times saying oh, no, I never said that, that's a fake.
And it's like, no, it's not you. You did that thing.
So the way that I see us solving this is there are some states and other countries that are considering the idea that you at birth right will be copyrighted. Your name, your face, your voice will all be IP and be protected so that if you were to file hey, this this IP is being stolen of mine and you're just a regular person even or whatever it is, it
could be taken down. The problem I have is TikTok promises me that they could do that now right and if I say, impersonating me and whatever, even with my blue check mark, even with all my relationships inside TikTok, I still get denied, no violation found. And I'm like, okay, well, you have to trust me when I tell you that somebody's doing.
A fake of me.
But the moderation tools are not there yet. They're not getting there as quickly as these fakes are. I think that is a huge issue, so good luck.
Yeah.
I think it's something we need to be focused on more than a lot of the other stuff that we focus on. I mean, we talk about like data privacy and like should kids not be able to have social media till sixteen? To me, that's a parental decision. I believe you're born with all of your civil rights and your parents can kind of like control you a little bit. But to say that you don't get freedom of speech
until you're sixteen is a little dangerous to me. I'd rather that we were focusing on allowing people to protect their ip as, their face, likeness, voice, all of that.
Before we wrap up, one of the things I keep thinking about is is the way that the language that you use when you are informing no, particularly when we're talking about LGBTQ folks, trans folks that have been so dehumanized. And yet I think every time you inform your public, you're very careful with your language. No, because I think journalists have this incredible power which is to really condition an audience to care or to not care, not to
humanize or dehumanize. So see immigrants as criminals are not and so in this moment in time, talk to me about the importance of language right now and what we can learn from that.
Sometimes it's just for sticking up for the whole community and not allowing yourself to be the token good one. Right Like even my parents live in Florida, Okay, and I visit them and I love them, And my dad goes golfing with a couple guys that I don't like their politics, but they love me. They watch under the desk. They tell my dad they're so proud of me when they saw me at the White House with Biden and all these things. What an incredible thing, Paul, That's amazing.
So I use that palatable likability that I have as a queer person, and I try to remind people you just don't know all the other queer people are just like me. You just don't know them yet. You love me. You don't actually hate the gays. You love me, and there's so many more of me you just don't know them. I'm actually normal, I'm the regular gaze, and we're all regular gay everybody.
This is very normal.
I try to make people use the way they feel about me and apply it more broadly to folks they don't even know, and to try and create this this brand.
I guess we would call it that.
We default think of gay and trans people as people we like, people, we trust, people we think are fun and entertaining, as opposed to people who are others that we are afraid of. And so that is what I try to do all the time, is not be like, oh yeah, I'm different from them. I'm like no, no, no, I'm like, I'm middle of the pack gaze. You like me, You're gonna like all of us. We're great. You know, I'm straight, middle of the pack. And I think that
that can help an awful lot. And in addition, I also try I don't try to push it in certain ways, which has been seen as controversial. You know, if I'm if I'm talking to a broad audience. Like I was talking about IVF the other day, I'm going to say when a woman is going through IVF. I don't say when a person trying to achieve pregnancy is going through IVF because people stop listening.
They're not there yet. I could get them there, but we're not quite there yet.
Now, when I'm at a conference for the trans in queer community talking about, you know, like rainbow families, how do we build families that, I'm going to use that language because they understand it. But if you alarm someone, you know, as a journalist, if you alarm somebody, or you make somebody feel not smart, they feel tricked and
they can't listen to anything else you say. So I've taken some heat for not using the most appropriate, up to date language, but I try to strike that middle ground in terms of, like, what's the most important thing people here right now? And that might be a very visibly gay and queer person using the language that they understand at least right now, so we can sneak in a couple months.
So interesting, and like how you slowly push public opinion, Yeah.
I instead of pushing, I'm just gently carrying you a lot.
Like a little angel, I'm just going to bring you over here. So that and that's education.
That's what the education world is, you know, allowing people to make mistakes and carrying them through and challenging their ideas without confronting their ideas, and getting them to feel to get there.
They'll get there.
And you've said in the past that your brand safe. No, yeah, that company feels pretty safe with you.
Yes.
So when I and this comes back to the chef life, right, like when you make a dish or you make a restaurant, you make it anything. You think about what you want the experience of the guest tody and not necessarily just what you want the food to taste, like the whole thing from when you walk in the door, is it warm? What's the sound play? Like, what's the bathroom dishe You think of everything. So in journalism, I think of everything.
How do I want people? What's the full experience they're going to have for that one minute that they sit with me. It's under a desk. We've created a small space for us to be in. The vocal tone is slow and consistent, and at the end of the day, my promise, my mission to the audience with this was to create a space to talk about the day's news and events that centers your emotional safety and security and makes you feel smart. And so every single day when
I'm doing that, that is like what's driving me. And that means we don't talk about certain things, and it means we talk about other things. But the stuff I don't talk about, I always try to give you a different expert. I don't want to be your everything. I want to be one of many things that make up your media diet. And I think that's different too. I think a lot of the big organizations, they're like, well, if you subscribe to the New York Times, you don't
need anything else. We'll just watch them as ABC all day. Right, we got you, we got everything, And I'm not everything. And I think that that's important too, to raise up the voices of other people in the community who are better at talking about different options.
Before we're finished, I just wanted to tell you and when I was growing up, my mom told me that if I were to read the editorials in the newspapers, that I would know everything in the world. And I wonder that's a very similar experience with what happened with your mom. You were informing her oh yeah about news events, and then eventually we ended up being a journalist.
My mom is the original citizen journalist to me.
She used to sit home.
I was very lucky my mom got to stay at home with us when we were kids grow up, and she would sit around with her girlfriends, drink coffee and listen to the police scanner. And the second I would get home from school or my dad get home from work, she'd be like, Okay, what happens. And that really informs the enthusiasm I have for storytelling the news and events of our community.
Me.
Thank you so much.
Thanks you really really appreciate it.
Great conversation.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
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