There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. So this past weekend, my producer Mike and I headed out to the iHeart Music Festival in Las Vegas, where we recorded a live episode of There No Girls on the Internet
from the House of Music booths. Ironically, our conversation was all about why so many people are surveilling the behavior of strangers on social media platforms like TikTok, And we had that conversation from a recording booth right on the strip where passers by could stop and check out our recording. So we were talking about social surveillance while being very much surveilled ourselves. So you might hear a little bit of music and festival noise in the background of this episode.
Taping like this was a real first for me, but it was super fun and I hope you enjoy it. Hey, there, we're recording live from the iHeart podcast studio powered by Bose at the House of Music at the iHeart Music Festival. Okay, so a real quick fact about me is that I am a very nosy person by nature. And if somebody has gossip about a stranger, you can rest assured that I am interested in it. I want to know details, who said what, and then what did she say? Who
did what? Why did she say that, and then what happened? I want follow up. I want details. I'm very invested, and I don't think I'm alone. I actually kind of think this is just human nature. You know, people want to know what's going on in the world around them. But what happens when it goes too far and we start projecting entire worlds and motivations on the people we've never even met. Here's a great example of what I mean.
A few weeks ago, this TikTok of a woman relaying a conversation that she overheard at a cafe blew up. The woman said that she overheard a nearby table of women essentially talking major crap about a bride who is their friend, and they'd all been brides in her wedding. The women thought the bride didn't look good. The women thought the bride was rude by not letting them pick
their own hairstyles. The women thought that using rose instead of champagne for her toast was like tacki and cheap, and worst of all, these women said that they were not genuinely happy for this bride. All of their smiling, bright faces in the pictures and in the video they were faking all of that because in reality they thought that this bride looked terrible and that her wedding was tacky, cheap and awful. Like apparently it just went on and
on and on. So the woman who made this TikTok said that she just overheard this conversation and that she was relaying it to the entire internet because she wanted this woman to know that this is how her friends and her bridesmaids felt about her, and that perhaps they are not her real friends. And I think that might partly be true. This woman might have genuinely wanted to find the bride to let her know what her friends
really thought about her wedding. But this TikTok racked up over thirty thousand likes and was stitched into edit a bunch with people in the comments being like, Oh, we gotta find this bride. Where's this bride?
Like?
I want to follow up what happened, find the bride, but and I am fully aware that this might be a bit of an unpopular opinion. I think if we're being honest, obviously it's not nice, and I don't love the idea of friends talking crap about one another. But if we're being honest, I actually think that complaining about people that you love, sometimes behind their backs, is sometimes
just part of being in relationships with other people. You know, I am not too proud or too big to admit that I have done it a time or two, hopefully not with an earshot of somebody who was gonna live tweet the whole thing. But I think it's just part of being friends with people sometimes, is that you have conflict and that you know, you meet over drinks to complain about a friend and this event and get it out. So I can almost hear people listening saying, oh, that
is not true. You should never talk badly about a friend or a loved one, And in that I say, be so for real right now, Like, come on, I think that most everybody, all of us, at one time or another, has invented about a friend or a family member or a spouse or somebody that we love. And I don't necessarily think that a stranger transcribing everything that you might say during event session over drinks and then blasting it to the entire Internet in the hopes that
it might get back to the subject, is really that helpful? Like, I don't think that this TikToker really did a good thing for this bride. I actually think like if I had seen that, I would be mortified. I would be horrified that my friends were talking about this. I would be horrified that the details of my wedding were blasted to the internet, and the way that my friends felt about them were blasted to the Internet. I'd be horrified. And so I don't necessarily think it's like that helpful.
I also think it's possible that this stranger, maybe it doesn't have the co text of their particular relationship to know like the context of what's being said right There might be history there that she doesn't know. There might be more to the story. I think just eavesdropping for ten minutes into someone's vent session over drinks where they don't know that someone else is listening, might not tell
the entire full magnitude of what's going on. And certainly I don't think maybe gives you enough information to comfortably and reasonably blast this to the entire Internet. And here's another maybe unpopular opinion about all this. This TikToker maybe did just genuinely want to give this bride a heads up that her friends felt this way about her wedding
and maybe weren't her real friends. That might be true, But I also think that this TikToker probably maybe might have realized that she had a juicy story on her hands, one that people would naturally want to chime in on and she and that it would spread this video far and wide. Like I think that she knew people we're gonna have opinions about this, or we're gonna be leaving comments, and that this video would blow up like it did.
And here's my point. This phenomenon that I'm seeing more and more of on social media where people take content about the behavior of strangers and people get very very invested in like finding them or getting a follow up, or getting a part two, or knowing what happened next, as if they are following celebrity gossip or watching a movie. But here's the thing, these people are not celebrities. They're
just regular people, strangers. Even in a really interesting piece for the Conversation, doctor Jenna Drenten, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Quinlan School of Business at Loyal University Chicago, who study social media behavior, dubs this the TikTok tabloid. She writes together these stories represent the emergence of what she calls TikTok tabloids, in which users collectively manufacture and
dramatize stories like an investigative gossip reel. Traditional tabloids place the lurid limelight on select berties and public figures, but the TikTok tabloid targets everyday people. So, according to doctor Drenten, this phenomenon is really This phenomenon is related closely to the dynamics of social surveillance, which is using digital technologies to keep a close watch on one another while producing
online content in anticipation of being watched. So this sounds very like draconian, like tech dystopian, but it's kind of nothing new. Obviously, tabloids have been around for kind of a long time. If you lived through the two thousands, which was the Golden Age or depending on who you ask, dark age of the online tabloid, you probably remember how tabloids like TMZ and Perez Hilton would publish the minutia of celebrities like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. It was ugly,
it was racist often, it was misogynistic. It was all kinds of like negative things. It just was not a good time in media. But I do think that back in the twenty's and the twenty tens, there was this I don't know, I think this feeling that because these were celebrities, because these were famous people and public figures, that they weren't real people like you or me as a real person, so it was fair game to photograph them and obsess and surveil them online whenever they went
in public. But doctor Drenten says, where tabloid culture used to be about the many watching the few, where a few people who are celebrities are surveilled by all of us and we get to pick apart their behavior. Today there's been a shift where that same dynamic has translated to everyone watching everyone all the time. We're both they're surveillers and they're surveilled.
That's kind of chilling, Yeah, I mean, it's.
Actual, especially funny in that we're in the iHeart podcast studio here at iHeart the iHeart Radio festival, So like we are post casting in a little bit of a fishball, I feel, I mean, are we are certainly the surveils right now.
Yeah, people keep stopping by, and I can't tell if they're looking into like watch us recording this episode or just marvel at the bow's headphones.
They are quite nice, you know that.
Like bridal party debriefing from the wedding, I think you absolutely nailed it about why the person would have blasted that on TikTok and like spread.
It far and wide.
It's all about her, the person who posted that, like trying to get some like trying to get some engagement, trying to be like part of this story. Clearly it's not about the bride, Like she doesn't know anything about the backstory of these women in the relationships.
And the thing that she doesn't like.
They you know, all the bridesmaids were not saying is how much they loved this person, which clearly they do because they went to her tax boring wedding and pretended to have a good time for probably like eight hours.
Okay, well, let's not further crap on this woman's wedding. But yes, here's my thing. Sometimes being in a friendship or having a loved one or being in a relationship means doing stuff that you don't want to do or don't enjoy, or don't like or don't agree with because this person is your friend and you love them, and so you're not gonna go to brunch after. And also,
let's be a real wedding. When you're in someone's wedding, oftentimes it is like event after event after event, like it's like a week long celebration of this person and their love. And listen, I have been part of weddings that I was not thrilled to be part of. I have gotten up early to go play corn hole people that I didn't like and had never met before. I have soldiered through while hungover and done activity after activity after acidine activity. I don't want to get to If
I go down this rabbit hole, I will. It'll listen, this whole episode will be me complaining about one particularly involved wedding that I went to. But here's my thing is that you do it, you do it out of love. And so when you go to the big brunch after the all the wedding stuff this is over, You're not gonna be sitting there talking about how much we love the bride. No, that is implied because you just did all this stuff that you didn't want to do out
out of the obligation of love. Like sometimes that's what relationships are like.
And that feels like a really good example to talk about this sort of broader phenomenon that you were talking about, like the many on many surveillance that that is happening with social media, with TikTok and everything that you know, there's so much that gets lost there and like what is what are the motivations of the surveillers exactly?
And so yeah, I think that the woman who brought this to TikTok, it's possible that maybe she just like wanted this bride to know what was what was going on. But I also just think that like in like realistically, she also knew she had a juicy story on her head and she wanted to blow it up. She wasn't like, probably wasn't unhappy that this video got almost half a
million people to like it. And I think that when we're bringing the stories of other people, strangers, people we have no connection to, onto the Internet to be surveilled in this way, whatever context or nuance or history might be present in our relationships. Because relationships are complicated, relationships do have nuance, all of that gets lost and instead is replaced by the projections of people who don't even
know these people. So today's culture of social today's culture of social surveillance, means that we're all always being watched and also watching not just celebrities, we're all tabloid fodder now baby. As media scholar Alice E. Merrick puts it, social surveillance is the ongoing eavesdropping, investigation, gossip, and inquiry that constitutes information gathering by people about their peers, made salient by the social digitization normalized by social media. Back
to doctor Dunton, because she puts it really well. She writes, in social surveillance, everyone online is both a guard and a prisoner, constantly consuming online content and producing content for others to see. This always on dynamic works to control behavior. Everyday people have the power to orchestrate what other users see, read, and believe, not only about traditional celebrities but also about
regular everyday people. So this is not always like a nefarious or negative thing, like you know, I think I happen to think that, like what this woman did vi a TikTok, Like like if the bride did see that TikTok, she would be devastated. But it's not always like a nefarious or negative thing, where like someone if they see what someone has said about them, is going to be devastated.
Barstool Sports, which is this huge social media platform on TikTok, I know, we don't really care for them over here in these parts.
They're not great actors.
Yeah, they're definitely not great actors. It's a good way to put it. Well, barstool Sports, they're huge on TikTok. They reposted a video that somebody took of an older woman leaving a movie theater. She's got a cane and she's walking pretty slow after seeing the movie Barbie by herself. The caption says wholesome moment, and it does. It's interesting because like when I saw that video, it is like sweet.
Like I definitely was like, oh this like old woman went to see Barbie, which was like the feminist like age unity movie for women of the summer, and like I understand what they are going for and what they are trying to say. However, it seems like a way to really project a story onto a stranger who was just living her life. Like being out and about and going to see a movie is just automatically cute or sad or wholesome just because an older woman and is
doing it? Right, Like, did the person who took that video and uploaded it to the internet and then gave Barstool Sports permission to use it? Did they check in with her to get her consent? Did they? Is that how she would have described that, outing that it was like sad or wholesome or something to be like pitied or projecting all these emotions onto.
Yeah, and like who knows what's true? Right, Like, we don't know this old woman. She could be a raging bitch.
She could be she could be.
Let's take a quick break at her back.
Something that you know about me is that I absolutely love to go to the movies by myself. It is my Nothing makes me happier than going to see a matinee, double feeture, sneaking snacks into the movies and then just like going by myself so I don't have to I don't have to worry. It's like, oh, do the person I brought like it or not? Are they enjoying it? Do they have to pee? Like, are they gonna be annoying? Are they gonna talk? They gonna be on their phone?
Blah blah blah. I find nothing more like pure than the joy of going to a movie alone. So I'm a woman. I am aging because that's the thing that humans do. How many more years do I have to go see movies by myself until someone's gonna get a video of me doing it? And then now it's like, look at this sad old woman trying to go to the.
Movies by herself hashtag inspiration.
I know, like maybe I'm just trying to go to a movie. Maybe I'm not trying to be someone's like inspiration porn or someone's like a wholesome moment, or someone's like like, wow, look at this old woman just like hasn't laid down and died and still go on to see movies. I'm real triumphs, right, Like, how how many years do I have?
And told that is the case, listeners write it, We'd love to hear your opinion.
Just yeah, what age will bridget be like? Just being like for I I do feel like for women like at a certain age, just like existing is you know, it's actually, like slight spoiler from the movie Barbie, they kind of play with it in the movie Barbie when Barbie sees that older woman and she's like, you're so beautiful, and the woman's like, yeah, I know you Like it kind of plays with this assumption that we are all.
I don't know, I think that this kind of content trains us to automatically project something onto people who are just existing, like, oh my god, you're so inspirational for daring to be an older woman out living your life and.
Never really being real about like, you know, the many surveilling, the many who gets surveiled.
It's out.
It's women.
It's women.
We're not looking at dudes.
It is yes, it is absolutely women like that. I completely agree. So a very similar thing to what I was just talking about the older woman going to see Barbie by herself happened with an Australian influencer who does these stunts where he kind of like does things in public with strangers that are meant to be kind or wholesome. Only in this case, we actually know what the subject, who was also an older woman, felt about it because she told us.
So.
This influencer goes up to this older woman who is eating alone in a food court and a hands her a bouquet of flowers, and it's clearly meant to be like a wholesome or heartwarming moment, like a young guy brightening the day of this lonely old woman eating by herself a random act of kindness, and all the comments are like, oh my god, like that is so sweet, Like she really deserves those flowers. He's really doing a
nice thing for this. He probably made that old woman's day, and she really probably like needed needed those flowers, needed that smile, needed this pickup. You know who didn't feel that way. The woman who was got the flowers, so she actually didn't like it at all. The woman told ABC Radio Melbourne that she had no idea that she was being filmed until she received messages from people telling
her the video had gone megaviral. She basically said that she was like eating at this cafe, minding her own business, when this influencer comes up to her and asks, can you hold these flowers for a minute, So she didn't even necessarily realize that like he was giving her flowers because he was like, can you hold these for a minute, And she was like, oh uh, sure, I guess, thinking
that like he needed somebody to hold these flowers. Then she sees this camera crew filming her, and she did She didn't know she was being filmed at first, and then she asked them, are you filming this guy giving me flowers? And they said no. They said no, they said no.
They lied to her.
They lied to this woman.
Deception is like, that's the red line for like most things.
Oh completely agree. So in this interview, this woman says, quote, I actually even said to them, look, do you want these flowers back? Because I really don't want them. I don't want to carry them home on the tram really, to be quite frank. Also side note, I love this woman.
This like old Australian woman who is not interested in these flowers.
Having been to Australia and this is like classic Australian lady. Like women in Australia. And I say this with like deep love and admiration. They have a bluntness that I think is really amazing and they really just like say how they feel. And I really dig it, like if you're if you were Australian, if I'm getting this like way off the mark right in and let me know but I've I've met a lot of Australians who are just like, very direct and to the point, and this
sounds like one of them. And I love that for her. I love that for her, of that for me, I love that for all of us.
Yeah, Like, she didn't go out to get lunch at the food court by herself so that some guy could give her flowers. She wasn't like, you know, hoping like today will be the day.
Yeah, And so she actually said that this was a little bit of an inconvenience for her because she thought that this guy was kind of intruding on her quiet, private time. She said, these artificial things are not random
acts of kindness. So she said that she was kind of offended that they were projecting this story under her, that she was like this sad, broken down, lonely old woman just because she was having a cup of coffee by herself, right, Like, I do think it's it's wild to me that just existing in public by yourself means that these strangers and someone filming that means that strangers can come up and project all kinds of stuff. Frankly, that is not super flattering. She was like, I'm not
a lonely, sad, old woman. I'm just getting a cup of coffee.
Yeah, that's like pretty reductionist of a person.
Yeah, it's reductionist is a good way to put it, you know. I just I just don't think it's cool to package content like this, to have folks project all of this onto other people that they don't even know.
Yeah, and connecting it back to that guy who filmed this video, clearly his motivation was not to like uplift and reaffirm this woman, right like, that might have been his facade motivation, but it had nothing to do with her.
It was all about him. He was using her as a prop.
Okay, first of all, if you want to reaffirm a woman in public, leave her the fuck alone, don't come like, give her a fly, don't do any of this. But the influencer, in his defense, he did apologize and he said that I want if she wants him to take this video down, he will. He didn't want to vend her, but he did double down on his random acts of
kindness content. And to your point, Mike, it is a little bit complicated because we know that TikTok is a platform that does reward positive content and So it would be nice to think that this influencer was just doing this to be altruistic or sweet, or he genuinely wanted to like affirm this woman and like make her day. But the reality is is that he is an influencer
who makes money from his social media platform. And if you want to build up your platform, making heartwarming, random acts of kindness content is a way to do it. It is a way to boost your individual profile. And especially if you're doing it without consent, that really tells me that you're not really genuinely interested in like reaffirming or making the day of this random woman. It's about you.
It is about building your platform and your profile. And she in her interview with ABC, she actually says, I have a sense that this influencer probably made money from this video of me that I actually found deeply offensive.
Yeah, that says a lot.
You know, he's making money off it, he's getting like, he's getting engagement. He probably didn't share that money with her, and he offered to take the video down, but that's not really what it's about. Like, I guess now I'm going to take a turn just projecting onto this woman based on nothing, But like I have to.
Imagine that the thing that made her uncomfortable was not like being seen by.
Millions of TikTokers that she doesn't know, but just the general vibe of the thing that she was made to participate in without her consent, and that they lied to her about during the thing.
Yeah, And I think that that's one of the things that I really want to push back against our in our sort of rapidly digitizing culture digital culture, is that anybody who goes out in public is just consenting to be a character in someone else's story about them, just by the your act of leaving their house, going out their front door. I think that people have a right
to privacy. I think that people have a right to like go have a sad coffee by themselves or something, or like go to a movie alone without someone being like, oh look at this, Look at this poor soul just really hanging on there, really inspirational to all of us, right, Like, sometimes people just want to live their lives. They don't want to go outside and accidentally become somebody else's inspiration porn just by living their life.
You know, this is making me thinking of and this is a bit of a like sharp left turn.
Oh left turn no signal.
Left turn, no signal.
But uh, those TikTok accounts that are being NPCs where they're just kind of like bopping around.
Ice cream so good, ice cream, so good? Yeah, Like, I know what you're talking about.
I think about the Spider Man guy pretty often because he's not just like.
The one where you do you see the one where he wrote character.
I did not see that.
Oh my god, I want to talk offline. I don't want to talk offline. It's amazing.
But I love his because he's not just like reacting to the TikTok gifts that he receives, but he's he's saying, like Spider Man things like ooh, this city is really seeing some dark times, you know, like I.
Really miss my aunt. Yeah.
Like maybe that's a reaction to this like constant surveillance vibe of people, you know, wanting to put themselves out there and choosing how they how they show up.
I don't know.
Well, I do think that everybody deserves the right to choose how they show up. I think about this a lot because, like, I am someone who leaves my house looking pretty bummy a lot of the time, and if someone got a video of me when I was like out and about just trying to get a cup of coffee, not looking my best, which is often that would I would be horrified if somebody took a picture of me, like suggesting something about me that wasn't true, just based
on a glance of me. Like, I just think that it invites us to boil people, people who are complex beings into like flatten them into a character based on a ten second like observation of them out on the street, which I don't think. I think that should be should be resisting.
Yeah, and like you said, it's just going out in public should not mean an invitation to be recorded and made a character in somebody else's story or account, especially when there's an account that they are.
Monetizing as an influencer.
It's so easy to project onto people, and it's worth interrogating, like what are these stories that we.
Project onto them?
Like I remember I saw this thing a little bit ago online somebody posted a photo of a woman reading a book at a bar. She was sitting at the bar reading her book, and the caption was something with the effect of like, ooh, look at this pick me like trying to act all smart and like sit at
the bar and read her book. And the person who was in the photo responded and she was like, first of all, that photo was from like several years ago, So whoever took this, you know, without my consent, they've just been sitting on this photo for years chosen to
circulate it now. And I was waiting for my friend who was the bartender to get off her shift, like I would go there a lot, I would hang out, And so it just says so much that somebody like chose to post that photo and chose to be like, oh look at this, pick me this, you know, vapid pathetic woman.
Also, it's wild to me in that story that people assume automatically that this woman is pretending to read or is like performatively reading because she wants to look a certain way in public, projecting that. I feel like that can only come from someone who has done that. It is like deeply insecure about it. Some people are just genuinely enjoying reading, Like, yeah, you don't have to project
all kinds of weird stuff. And her just going to a bar and bringing a book does not like she's not consenting to being a character in this fan fiction that you've written about her, about how she's a pick me trying to look deep at the bar, when in reality she's like, I was just waiting for my friend. I can't read a book.
Damn. Yeah.
People love projecting stuff onto others.
Okay, so speaking of projection, we have we cannot have this conversation without talking about the pinnacle of internet projection and projecting things onto strangers. You might not you're not very online, Mike, so you might not have seen this. This is a story that I followed like relentlessly. You might not have seen it. Do the words West Elm Caleb mean anything to you?
Oh?
They do? Yeah, tell me what you know. No, you don't know this story. Now you're on the spot and you don't actually know. Tell me what you know.
Okay, well let me give it a shut. Now that I'm feeling surveilled.
You're double surveiled. You're surveiled in the fish bowl of this recording studio, and you're surveiled because I'm putting you on blust.
Okay.
So West Elm Caleb was a guy who lived in New York. He would like go out on dates, and he was not a good date. He was like disrespectful to the women that he was dating. I feel like he was not like abusive or violent or anything, but just like would like, you know, hook up and then not call them like that kind of thing.
Okay. I so I am genuinely surprised, Like I don't know who filled you in on West Elm Caleb, or if when I'm not around to like bet like bore you with internet stories, if you're actually like following TikTok and like you know all the drama. You're like, here's what the girls are up to. You actually know all of it in great detail.
I know something, you know somethings.
Okay, well that was more or less right. So West Elm Caleb. He was this guy in New York City. He worked as a furniture designer at the furniture store West Elm. He Yeah, basically just like you said he was on Hinge. He is like a stuck six ' four, he has a mustache, furniture designer. He basically his whole
thing was matching on Hinge. Yeah, just generally like not being a good date, telling women like, oh, you're the first guy, the first person i've dated from gone on a date with from hinge when like in reality, he was like Hinge dating at the fuck up. But another thing that they said is that he would make up he had a Spotify playlist that he would send and be like, hey, I made this playlist for you, and
really he was sending it to all the women. Basically, this guy, it sounds like he was like doing a number like a Hinge date numbers game where he was like, I'm trying to like get as many get with as many women as I can. So I'm just going to like like go on as many dates as I can.
And the main thing that I think caused the caused this to be like a story that we're talking about now, is that he they accused him of like love bombing, that he would text them lots of complimentary stuff, be like, oh, I like thank you so much, I'm so serious about this, I want to be serious with you, blah blah blah, and then ghost them, which isn't cool, Like, like, you know, is is it a good way to date?
No, it's a it's lying, right, it's saying things that aren't true to get what you want in a sexual way.
Like that's not cool, that's gross.
It's not cool. So I want to be clear that I'm not saying that west Elm Caleb's dating behavior is great. And I can tell you one thing. If he ghosted a friend of mine, you can bet your ass that you would hear me overhear me talking so much craft about him at brunch. If he did this to a friend of mine, absolutely, But the Internet came for Caleb in this completely over the top way. They made him the He was like the Internet villain for a week. They published his full first and last name, and his
workplace the dating app Kepler, even may or Keepler. The dating app Keepler even made a billboard that reads red flags six ' four mustache furniture designer, in an obvious reference to Caleb's dating profile. So I think people got very invested in the West Elm Caleb sate saga because it was like a live action, in real time movie plot, like if you've ever seen that movie John Tucker Must Die.
It kind of seemed like that movie where you know three or four girls from like different walks of life, like that athlete girl, the cool girl, this the nerd girl, all come together when they realize that they're dating the same guy. And John Tucker is playing all of them, and they they overcome their differences to like come together and you know, get revenge on him. I love that movie.
I love that plot. I love that as a trope. However, and I get how what feeling like you're using the internet to watch this play out in real time is like very satisfying. But here's the thing. We shouldn't be treating real people navigating their real lives characters in a movie playing out for us, because that's not what's happening.
These are strangers, people that we don't know, and projecting them and casting them into this like movie plot that that we've cooked up with them as the main characters isn't really that healthy.
Dad, It's definitely not. You know, people didn't sign up for that.
And even if it feels good, like an act of justice in the case of west elm Caleb, if you're someone who finds his behavior like particularly egregious and feels that women in Manhattan like needed to be warned, that's it's still, like you said, like taking ordinary people and making their lives like characters in a movie and projecting onto it in a way that is like part of a pattern that's not serving all of us.
More. After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
I found this really interesting. All of the different instances that we've talked about in this episode have all taken place on the platform TikTok, not Facebook, not Instagram, TikTok,
and I think that is not by accident. And a piece for Wired, Mark Hill argues that TikTok is actually the platform that lends itself most to this kind of thing, because the platform relies on a kind of digital world building and digital collaborative play, and that you know, when we were all young, we had dolls to act out dramas on when we were kids. You know, projecting these like made up dramas and motivations onto like dolls is
what we was how we play it as kids. As adult we basically do the same thing, but instead of dolls, we have real people via TikTok. In the twenty twenty paper, TikTok and the Algorithmized Cell, researchers argue the platform is different from other social networking sites because it's less about connecting with a network of friends and more a site for public performance heavily built on intra personal engagement. While
creating content for a trending algorithm. While similarly egocentric and concern with the performance and management of self identity, TikTok rewrites the mechanisms of this process through a design that guides users in a different direction than other social media sites. They write, essentially, it's a digital sandbox that invites make believe. The unplanned back and forth motion between creators makes the app an incredible social media playground. TikTok users play and
perform in simulated characters and settings. This video creation app is an escape from reality. So this really goes back to what you were saying about the non player characters and sort of how people are looking for this escape from reality and like performing that TikTok is a specifically good place for that kind of performance. And I think that's why we see TikTok becoming this platform where it's so easy to project entire worlds or attitudes or motivations
or whatever onto strangers. Hey, oh my god, we are the surveilled right.
Now, but we love it.
For those of you listening at home, Bridget is connecting with the fans outside the booth might be strong.
I'm sure she's just heard of this podcast list like Passerby might be more accurate, but I'll take it. I'll take what I can get.
But you know, we signed up for this.
No, I love it. This is this is I love it. I'm loving it. Taking a little pick right now, we're cutting all of this out in the real episode. Don't worry. No, You've no one I'll ever hear this. It'll just be you. Mike the producer on the other end, I'm sure is like, please stop people. But yeah, so, I mean it actually is like it's fitting for the episode about what it feels like to be hyper surveilled. I'm actually kind of enjoying this. But I signed up for this. I knew.
I knew coming here I was gonna be like surveilled and looked at by people while I was podcasting. I knew that was what I was gonna be getting into. That'd be totally different if I was just waking up, going walking to get a coffee or trying to online date and doing it badly and doing it, you know, like a little bit of a louse. Uh, That would like, I don't think that you're necessarily should be signing up to have the way that you behave in these situations
be blasted to the entire internet. I'll tell you another example that I saw. I saw this example where a woman had matched with somebody on a dating site and they sent her this I I thought it was like charming. I would have like texted this guy back, but he sent her this voice note that basically made him sound if I'm being honest, it made him sound like kind
of my type, like kind of maybe a little bit. Uh. He sounded like a human equivalent of a Golden retriever, kind of like eager and dumb, which is definitely my type.
It's a type.
And so basically he leaves this like voice note that is very nice, but it's like, hey, uh so, uh, I just want to leave you a voice note. I yeah, I just like liked your vibe. But you had a cool vibe. I would love to take you out maybe being good to macha. Yeah, if you're into that. I just got back from an art show. You're like art, Let's go see some art and get some maya. All right, peace? And basically this guy sounded stupid.
You would date that?
Oh my god, you have no idea? What my We've not really talked about it. You have no idea what my dating history is like that I would have called him back with the quickness. I would have gone to see art and gotten macha with him. For sure.
The art would have been so bad.
It would have been so bad, and his opinions about it would have been bad. I'm not saying this guy was goddamn or Albert Einstein or anything. I'm just saying like he sent an earnest, sweet voice note, and her and her friends basically they made a TikTok where they were kind of re enacting the voice notes. They were playing his voice note and they were lip syncing to it while like doing a little like funny bit, And
that was their TikTok. And I get that that's funny, and I get that, like dating is hard, but I also think that if somebody is genuinely trying to connect with you, even if you're not interested, blasting him on the internet for his genuine, non creepy, non scummy, non abusive voice note to you, I don't think it's very cool.
Yeah, it feels mean, but I guess it does kind of highlight that there's kind of a gray area. I guess there's I follow this instrog macout Tinder, date disasters or something oh like that. Uh, and it's bad and it's like it's mainly men sending like really offensive, bad messages and it's.
Funny to see them dunked on.
But there's you know, this story makes me think that there's I don't know, a continuum from like really bad worthy of being blasted to the internet to like just kind of silly and maybe dopey and like we could have some fun making fun of it.
But maybe that is mean.
Well I so, God, that's it's complicated. I agree with you, right. I think that dating, particularly online dating, is a healthscape. I think that people will say growth messed up things to you. I don't really have a problem with those people being aired out. Like if you send some like untoward stuff to somebody, I think that like you get
what you get. But if someone is just sending you like a like an earnest message of trying to connect with you, I think that online dating, you were automatically in a little bit of a vulnerable place. And if you're coming to try to connect with somebody in a real way, even if you're not interested, I think it's one thing to make fun of the message with your friends, the group chat if another thing to make a public TikTok, Like I don't know anybody in this TikTok and I
saw this, It's like, why was that necessary? But I do think that your point highlights how complicated online connection and online dating is in this day and age. I think that, like people have to put up with a lot of behavior that maybe doesn't rise to like being abusive, but doesn't feel good. Like it doesn't feel good to be ghosted. I got ghosted once and I hated it right, Like, it doesn't.
Feel good once.
I mean, how has they even ghosted?
Oh?
It was just like not a thing that I would count that was just like par.
For the course with online dating. Oh I maybe it's me, Oh don't I don't think it's me.
So I I mean, I've heard different ghost philosophies that, like some people say, you know, if we just like match on Tinder, I don't know you. I don't owe you being like hey, I don't want to meet up. This is like I don't owe you that message. I don't know how I feel. I haven't online dated enough to like have a real opinion about this. I believe
that like if you. I don't know. I don't. I don't even want to say, like, I've only been ghosted once and it's stuck with me, and I it was, it was it stuck with me enough that I was like you you it's it's a five minute text. It's like, hey, it's not working out, good luck, you know.
Yeah, I guess you know.
So I haven't been online dating in years, but back when I was, it kind of was a numbers game, and like I didn't want some sort of long drawn out explanation of like why it wasn't gonna go on.
Just yeah, like don't right back, I get the message.
But you're fine with being ghosted?
Yeah, I mean with like a casual it would be different if it was like we've gone out several times and then all of a sudden you disappeared, that would be a different thing. But like, you know, we go out once, or maybe like don't even go out once, right because like on you know, you match with somebody on tender, you exchange some text messages and uh and then they just like stop replying, right, like message received.
Well, I guess if that's your definition of ghosting, maybe I have ghosts.
In some people. Yeah, maybe it's just a difference of definition.
I think that's true. But I guess my point is that, like.
What was the one that stuck with you?
Uh, the time that I had concrete plans to meet at a specific place at a specific time and I went there and not only did this person not show up, they didn't have the courtesy of texting me to tell me that they weren't gonna show up. That was a ghosting that sticks with me because I was like, couldn't you couldn't you could have texted that you're not gonna come and get this. This motherfucker had the nerve to text me a couple of weeks later like Hey, what
are you up to? Guess who didn't reply me. Anyway, My point is is that I think that navigating online dating especially is really complex, and it's like full of feelings that don't feel good, vulnerability putting yourself out there, and I think that that can lead to this feeling where people feel like it's okay to make public what is said to them in the in the context of
online dating. I think it's if somebody is being abusive or awful or be on the pale, absolutely, but someone just being like a bit dopey, Like whatever happened to just talking shit with your friends, you know, whatever happened to like just like making fun of somebody in the group text you gotta make a TikTok You got to bring me into this. A stranger who doesn't even know anybody is involved in this.
Yeah, maybe maybe, like the existential question there is, like what do we owe strangers? Is a stranger fair game for you know, talking about in public because we're just strangers, Like I'm essentially a member of the public to them. But then again, if we have an interaction, we're no longer strangers, and maybe we do owe them something.
You're listening to there Are No Girls on the Internet live at the iHeart Podcast Studio powered by Both at the House of Music at iHeart Music Festival, and we were just talking about what we owe strangers and why. So many times it seems like these traumas and situations involving people we don't even know get served to us
on platforms like TikTok. And one thing that is interesting is that I do think that TikTok has some unique features as a platform that make this kind of everyday people tabloid content that we're talking about really take off the language that is used on the platform and has really been normalized on the platform. I'm talking about things like story time or if you are so and so and you live in such and such, listen up, because
I just heard your friends da da da dah. Like there's a certain kind of language or you know, way of speaking that I on TikTok that I think triggers our brain into thinking that we have a kind of faux intimacy, and that it gets your brains like wanting to hear that like juicy gossip, Like it gets your like Gossip Center and your brain kind of tingling.
Yeah, faux intimacy. That that feels right.
I feel like there's something there.
I can't tell you how many times I've been up late really invested in a story about people that I've never met, that I will never met, in a place and a part of the world that I don't live in that I've never been visited, that I'm like, I gotta find out what happened. I need to know, And it's like, yeah, it's like a faux intimacy. Why why do I feel like I should be this and why Like, why should I be this invested in the in the
dramas of people that I don't know? So, as doctor Dentin points out, TikTok's storytelling practices mimic exclusive reports, hot takes, and cliffhanger media, Tiktoker's dangle tantalizing bit of Tiktoker's dangle tantalizing bits of stories in front of viewers with caveats like like for part two or by serializing their content, these stories then take on lives of their own, becoming
culturally embedded memes. And I'm sure if you've if folks listening are on TikTok, when somebody says is telling a story and you're invested in it, and then they're like, oh, I'm running out of time, I'm gonna do a part two, and you're like, oh, well that was a leftdown, Like you you don't get that whatever that brain you know thing is that happens when you get a story completed, you don't get And I think that TikTokers on the
platform specifically are like using that, keep serializing stories and keeping us invested in That's one way that TikTok is specifically well poised to get us all invested in the dramas of strangers. And of course, the more of this content that we consume, the more we're training algorithms that that is the kind of content that we want to see and engage with. It's this cycle where we are the never ended surveiller and also surveiled, And that is my big point that most of the content relies on
projecting these stories onto strangers. The more that we consume that kind of content, engage with that kind of content, and normalize that kind of content, the more we are going to train be trained to like see the world in this way when we're out and about, right, the more we're going to see, like when we see an older woman out enjoying a movie, we're gonna think.
Oh, not only is it normal, but it might be sweet and wholesome to like whip out my phone and get a video of her without her content and blast it to the whole internet.
Right. I think that the more that we consume this content, the more we normalize this cycle, the cycle of us being both the surveiled and the surveiler. It invites us to see strangers as characters in worlds that we have built in our heads and putting that on the Internet for thousands to feet into as well. But people don't exist to the unwitting characters and the fictionalized dramas that people cook up for them. That is not how the world works. We are all just trying to get through
the fucking day. Speaking of getting through the day, you know, that's something that has helped me get through this uh complicated podcast taping in the iHeart Podcast studio here at the iHeart Music Festival.
I could think of a couple things. Are you talking about these amazing Bose headphones that we're wearing.
Why don't think you're gonna be like, is it the Gin and Tonic that you had before the taping? Yeah, I'm talking about the Bow's headphones. These things that are nice. These are definitely a step up from what I usually use, uh and they I was a little bit skeptical of their noise canceling qualities, but these really canceled the noise. Like we are at a music festival, the bass is pumpin', but I can only really hear myself clear and loud.
They are great chin up shoulders, back music, blasting, press play and take charge of the music. With bow quiet comfort, noise canceling headphones with customizable high fidelity audio and the ability to shut out the outside noise as you please. These over the ear headphones come in an iconic design with colors that are as bold as you. So strut and stride along with the beat to the sound that puts you on top of the world. Let me tell
you something, talk about shutting out the world. We are shutting out a loud music festival to focus on this podcast, and Bose has given us the ability to do that. So thank you. Bos got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can reach us at Hello at tengodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tengodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative.
Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts for more podcasts from iHeartRadio check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.