There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of My Heart Radio and Unboss Creative, I'm bridget tout and this is there are No Girls on the Internet. So today is another week where everything feels heavy and awful and just too much. So in response, I am trying at a new thing that we are tentatively calling something on the Internet that doesn't suck, where I talk about something related to or on the Internet that doesn't suck or once to distract myself from how depressing the
new cycle has been. And today that thing is celebrating Klanni. So this is one of those amazing times where something I love from music, our culture intersects with some larger trend happening on the Internet. Klanni is a musician, an icon, a songwriter, and now we can add a master of combating Internet grifters to that list of accomplishments because they went viral for shutting down right being internet quasi celebrity Christian Walker in a way that was just chef's kiss.
So let's talk about it. So here's what went down. Kalani was in their car at a Starbucks drive through in California, one that they say they go to regularly. Now Colonni is a person of color and identifies as queer. And they said that this particular Starbucks, it's decked out in pride and trans flags and happens to have a lot of young queer people of color working there. While they're in the drive through, Klani spots none other than Christian Walker in the drive through in his car behind them.
Now you don't know who Christian Walker is, honestly, consider yourself kind of lucky. He's a black, twenty two year old. I guess we'll call him a right wing internet personality. He led a Gaze for Trump rally back in twenty in California. Even though technically he's not gay, he says that he is attracted to men. He is a man, but he doesn't identify as gay, which whatever, you can kind of think of him kind of like Candice Owens times a thousand. He will just say whatever awful, hateful
thing gets in an audience. Being obnoxious and over the top is the entire point with him. He also loves Starbucks. Going to Starbucks is his thing. If you don't know Christian Walker, you probably know his dad, Herschel Walker, who is currently running for Senate in Georgia Herschel. Walker himself is a real piece of work. Like, for instance, here's what he had to say about how air quality works to a bunch of thunders just last week. You know,
control the air. I'll go there to China. So with China there got to move, so it moves over to and now. So Christian Walker is kind of a right wing internet influencer of sorts, but I guess he could read more accurately be described as a right wing grifter. His entire stick is going on social media drumming up lots of outrage about wokeness by making super over the top Instagram and TikTok videos about the latest perceived threat
or grievance posed by the blue haired radical left. He has amassed hundreds of thousands of social media followers doing this, and I actually bet it's pretty effective because we already know that social media platforms love outrageous content and definitely prioritize content that is outrageous or inflammatory or over the top, which he is. Christian Walker is also a podcaster. His
podcast is called Uncancellable. Now. I've never actually listened to it, but here are a few of the recent episode titles just to give you a sense of what we're working with. Here. An episode about the tragic school shooting and uvald Texas called quote they were innocent unlike George Floyd, one about the recent Supreme Court ruling on row called oh Saw, sorry, you can't slaughter your kid, and another on Elon Musk's deal to buy Twitter called if you oppose Elon Musk,
You're a racist. Also, I should just say all of the titles to the podcast episodes are in all caps, which I'm not totally sure why I'm including that information. It just feels kind of relevant to note, like even his podcast titled or just constantly yelling grievances at the listener.
So this is someone who makes money, makes a living off of really engineering stunts to have a big outrageous reaction to to get tons of clicks and engagement on social media listeners to his podcast, boost his platform, rints, washed repeat. It's actually a pretty good scam, I bet, And he's the kind of right wing scammer that I feel like we're seeing more and more of these days, people who just live to exploit and inflame tensions and
existing divisions for their own personal gain. It doesn't matter if it makes us more divided or more angry or less trusting. If it gets him eyeballs and clicks and listeners, He'll do it. People Christian Walker make money doing this. This is their job. They're able to spin the attention and notoriety and engagement they get into building bigger and more lucrative platforms. And it's clear that this kind of
tactic really relies on attention. Like That's how scammers like Christian have been able to gamify social media platforms, just by doing the most and doing whatever it takes to make a huge, big scene to get lots of attention. That is until Klanni saw Christian Walker getting ready to do his thing in the Starbucks drive through and foiled his plans. Let's say a quick break out her back, Okay,
so Klanni says. They notice Christian Walker behind them at the drive through, about to take a video of the Starbucks barista on his phone. Killani noted that this paricular Starbucks was still all decked out and Pride flags and trans flags for a Pride last month. I see behind me that kid, Christian Walker visibly losing his ship in the car via my two mirrors screen work. I'm not screen recording, but doing this on his screen to zoom in and film the Starbucks workers and film all the
flags that are in the Starbucks windows. This Starbucks is covered in gay flags, trans flags like American remixed gay flags. I see him losing his ship the whole time. Mind you, it's going slow as ship because there's so many people in the line. He proceeds to get to the little order box thing, and it's clearly harassing whoever is behind the order box thing, and like going back to his phone, like and and I'm like, oh, I feel like this man is gonna come up to the window and harass
all these workers. Now, I go to this Starbucks often, and I also know and can bysibly see that everybody that works there is like a color and a lot of them. I can't assume these things but seemed queer to me. Notably, shin Walker himself celebrated Pride Month by posting a picture of himself giving the finger to some Pride flags that he encountered out in public on Instagram with the caption stop expecting people to respect you if you shut down traffic to walk around the streets barely
clothed now. Colonne says that they are familiar with Christian Walker's whole thing and saw him getting ready to take this video of the burst them and all the Pride flags, so they decided to warn the staff to let them know that, hey, this is a person who is a known provocateur who engineers little stunts for social media. They
also called him an asshole. So it gets to the one doow and I'm like, Yo, just letting you'll know that guy behind me that's not like Republican Trump supporter kid who is has a habit of like harassing you know, this community, even though he's a part of it. Don't fucking blows my mind. I'm like, watch out because he's coming up here with his sucking his his phone ready to record. They're like, yeah, I know that kid. I'm like, yeah, like he's a fucking asshole, like because I've just watched
him being an asshole for the last ten minutes. Right. So Christian must have heard this exchange because he got out of his car while still filming on his phone and had this verbal interaction with Colonne. Ma'am, ma'am, you don't need to tell Barista's that I'm an asshole for because I have an opinion. Get your drink and go and go away. I I can have an opinion like everybody else. Why are you entitled to an opinion and not me. You want to tell Garissa's I'm an asshole,
Well guess what you're You're the asshole. You are an asshole, Get your drink and go. Okay, So this is what I love about how all this went down. Colony says that they happened to be in the middle of a phone therapy session when this all started, and the session was all about the dangers of taking your anger out
on other people. They had kind of an aha moment where they realized that they had ruined Christian Walker's plans to get some outrageous video at the expense of the Starbucks staffers, and that he was probably looking to film a big outrageous blow out with them instead. And I'm just having this AHA moment with my therapist and I'm
going I know what you want to do. You want to get a reaction out of me so that you can go viral and then you can pose this as some kind of take on people with my political stance or assume political stance and people from from my community, people like me, etcetera, etcetera. So Klanni did not take the bait. They denied Christians ability to have this big blow up that he needs to get attention and engagement on social media for his whole thing to work. And
dude was pissed. And I think Klanni also just shares a really great workable template for how we should be dealing with Internet grifters like Christian Walker. But we don't give them the big reaction that they want, all the attention that they want, all the engagement that they want. It takes away their power. And now for the cherry
on top. Christian tweeted out a video of his altercation with Klanni, calling them quote a mediocre singer that everyone has forgotten about, but you know who never forget the internet and Twitter user Nakisha r G had their receipts because in Christian Walker wasn't saying that Kalani was a
mediocre singer. In fact, he tweeted, I love Klanni so much, so I guess he's no longer a fan then, So in these dark times, I am really clinging to any little thing I can get to bring myself a little bit of joy, a little bit of a laugh, a little bit of spark when it feels like everything is on fire, and I really want to celebrate these little internet joys together. So, listeners, what is bringing you joy online? I don't care how small, or how petty, or how
civilly it is. I want to hear about it. I want to make episodes about it. Please get in touch with me. Let's find ways to cling to joy together in a dark world. Let's bring the light to fight the darkness. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great week. If you're looking for ways to support the show, check out our mark store at tangodi dot com slash store. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi, You can reach us at
Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Toad. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss Creative, edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amata was our contributing producer, I'm your host, Bridgetad. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on our
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