Latest / Blocked and Reported / Premium: Our Favorite Long-Covid Lesbian Bar Gets Famous

Transcript

Premium: Our Favorite Long-Covid Lesbian Bar Gets Famous · Blocked and Reported

0:00
SPEAKER_03: Hello, you're listening to a preview of a premium episode of Blocked and Reported.
0:03
SPEAKER_03: Today we've got a little more on Jason Arde, the academia story of the summer.
0:09
SPEAKER_03: There's an update there.
0:11
SPEAKER_03: Sort of depressing.
0:12
SPEAKER_03: Well, not that the whole story isn't depressing.
0:13
SPEAKER_03: We also go into We'll see you next time.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: It's been a crazy week on the internet and on this podcast.
0:35
SPEAKER_01: No thanks to us, really.
0:36
SPEAKER_01: We're kind of bystanders in all this, unfortunately.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: I think most people who listen to this show probably know what happens.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: But for anyone who doesn't know, why don't you sum up what went down?
0:49
SPEAKER_03: Right.
0:49
SPEAKER_03: So there was a lesbian bar that did masking
0:54
SPEAKER_03: last ditch in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
0:58
SPEAKER_03: And they wanted to have one night a week that would be masking optional.
1:01
SPEAKER_03: And this caused a crazy, very bar pod meltdown that we covered in multiple episodes.
1:05
SPEAKER_03: And you got audio of the Zoom accountability session.
1:08
SPEAKER_03: And there was a guy named Soiree?
1:11
SPEAKER_03: Sonor.
1:13
SPEAKER_03: Sonor?
1:14
SPEAKER_01: Sonor.
1:14
SPEAKER_03: Sonor.
1:16
SPEAKER_03: Who was sort of the star of it.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Just a crazy... We'll come back to him.
1:22
SPEAKER_03: But a crazy person.
1:23
SPEAKER_03: And do you want me to also say what happened during the aftermath?
1:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:27
SPEAKER_03: Well, the Boston Globe magazine wrote a story about this,
1:30
SPEAKER_03: and it went significantly more viral than our story went.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: To put it mildly, that Boston Globe magazine article was by a reporter named Annalisa Quinn.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: There have been some updates.
1:44
SPEAKER_01: There are some updates to the last-ditch story that we're going to get to later.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: But I want to tell people what this was like from my perspective.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:53
SPEAKER_01: I started getting DMs and texts as soon as- Including from my brother.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: Including from your brother.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: Like five minutes after I tweeted something like,
2:03
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to kill the next person who DMs me this story.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: Your brother texted me and he had no idea.
2:09
SPEAKER_03: I had just posted this.
2:10
SPEAKER_03: He's okay though, right?
2:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you just talked to him on the phone.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: I was just texting with him.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Right.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: Is he okay?
2:14
SPEAKER_01: Is he okay?
2:14
SPEAKER_01: Did I murder him?
2:15
SPEAKER_03: He sounds okay.
2:16
SPEAKER_01: So I immediately started getting messages,
2:18
SPEAKER_01: a lot of messages from people telling us that the globe ripped us off.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: Now that's not what happens.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: Annalisa Quinn didn't hear our story and say, great story, I'm going to steal this.
2:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I know people at the Boston Globe and the Boston Globe magazine.
2:32
SPEAKER_03: I did a long article or a very sort of reporting heavy article for them
2:37
SPEAKER_03: about his prison controversy late last year.
2:39
SPEAKER_03: So like I know folks there.
2:40
SPEAKER_03: And what I heard right after our article came out was...
2:44
SPEAKER_03: And you got this text before their article came out, to be clear.
3:08
SPEAKER_03: Oh, I got this text when we first covered it.
3:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
3:11
SPEAKER_03: So like weeks ago at this point.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: But I did not communicate that to you because it just didn't – in my brain.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't care.
3:17
SPEAKER_01: Also, it wouldn't have mattered to me.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, the Boston Globe is on this story.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: I really didn't.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: So I was annoyed when this story came out for a couple of reasons, which I'm going to get into.
3:28
SPEAKER_01: The one thing – I don't think that the Boston Globe – Like they did not steal
3:32
SPEAKER_01: the story from us.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: Annalisa Quinn probably got it the same way that I got it,
3:37
SPEAKER_01: which is I got a bunch of DMs about it.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was in the ether.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Like I didn't go hunting for the story.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: I didn't dig through their dumpsters.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: I didn't knock on doors.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: The story landed on my lap.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Probably the same thing happened to her.
3:48
SPEAKER_01: Like there was no.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: And it makes sense.
3:50
SPEAKER_03: It would find its way to the local paper.
3:52
SPEAKER_03: The nearest, the closest to a local paper.
3:54
SPEAKER_03: And besides that, yes.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: And besides that, we aggregate other people's reporting all the time.
4:00
SPEAKER_01: We just did a segment that cited the New York Times reporting.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely no issues with the Boston
4:07
SPEAKER_03: Globe doing this story.
4:08
SPEAKER_03: I'm curious whether if it's Greenfield, Mass, right?
4:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:12
SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's interesting.
4:13
SPEAKER_03: Because in like the old- They do have a local paper.
4:15
SPEAKER_03: Well, yeah, but probably.
4:17
SPEAKER_03: I'm just curious if Albany,
4:18
SPEAKER_03: because Boston used to have a- It's about equidistant between Boston and Albany.
4:23
SPEAKER_03: Well, we're lucky or Springfield, which also used to have a real paper.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: Albany, New York, or is there an Albany, Massachusetts?
4:27
SPEAKER_03: No, Albany, New York.
4:28
SPEAKER_03: And then the nearest like sort of big city is Springfield,
4:31
SPEAKER_03: which I'm sure used to have like a real paper too,
4:33
SPEAKER_03: but they're all been so hollowed out.
4:36
SPEAKER_03: But anyway, it made sense it would get to the Boston Globe.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, the local paper has covered,
4:39
SPEAKER_01: the local paper didn't cover this mask mandate fuck up,
4:42
SPEAKER_01: but they did cover like on our,
4:44
SPEAKER_01: I think our second episode about, about the last ditch bar.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: I refer to reporting from the local paper about the bar banning cops.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: So point being, we don't own stories.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: It's completely fine that the Boston Globe did this story.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: And the story was good.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: Annalisa got some details that I didn't get.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: For instance, Asa, one of the owners, pronouns, it's, it's, is in clown school.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: Great detail.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: That's gold.
5:15
SPEAKER_03: And Annalisa- Well,
5:17
SPEAKER_03: they left to join clown school because this was too stressful and humiliating,
5:20
SPEAKER_03: right?
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Right.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was partly, there was addiction issues, mental health issues, yeah.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: So- And Annalisa used a really light touch in this story.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't shitting all over the bar like we were.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: She wasn't pointing out how dumb it was.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: She let the facts do the work for her, and that worked really well.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: So props to her.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: That said,
5:37
SPEAKER_01: I was annoyed that Annalisa didn't include a line like,
5:40
SPEAKER_01: first reported by the podcast, Blocked and Reported.
5:42
SPEAKER_03: Or her editors, because having written for the same publication, they're old school about...
5:49
SPEAKER_03: The difference between what you file and what actually gets in is profound.
5:53
SPEAKER_03: And there's like a lot of it.
5:54
SPEAKER_03: It's like real old school magazine editing.
5:56
SPEAKER_03: I just want to say that.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: So it might not have been her.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: It might have been the editors.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: But I was still annoyed that they didn't cite our reporting because we did get to
6:03
SPEAKER_01: the story first.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: So Jesse, what's your take on that?
6:05
SPEAKER_01: Do you think that we were owed credit for this?
6:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
6:09
SPEAKER_03: I think ideally, yes.
6:12
SPEAKER_03: I don't know if this is exactly relevant,
6:14
SPEAKER_03: but when I wrote my story for the Boston Globe magazine,
6:17
SPEAKER_03: there was one of the sources in it.
6:21
SPEAKER_03: Her legal name was not the name she uses.
6:24
SPEAKER_03: She wasn't trying to hide anything.
6:26
SPEAKER_03: It was very important to the Boston Globe magazine that we get
6:30
SPEAKER_03: and know her legal name in a way that frankly would not have necessarily occurred
6:34
SPEAKER_03: to me.
6:35
SPEAKER_03: So I think there's certain norms that are just different in this older school type of reporting.
6:41
SPEAKER_03: I would have preferred they credit us,
6:43
SPEAKER_03: but there could be reasons we're not aware of as to why they did it.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's theoretically true.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: Everybody has done this story now.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: The Atlantic, Helen did a great piece about it.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: She cited us.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times, they cited us.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: The Washington Post cited us.
6:59
SPEAKER_03: But also, for what it's worth, the Times did give us a link.
7:02
SPEAKER_03: They didn't mention us by name.
7:03
SPEAKER_03: That's true.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: But still, a link would have.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was no acknowledgement that we had.
7:08
SPEAKER_03: A land acknowledgement?
7:09
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: There was no acknowledgement that we broke this story.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: And I wish that they had,
7:14
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:14
SPEAKER_01: honestly,
7:14
SPEAKER_01: like if there's that story hadn't gone viral, I wouldn't have given a fuck.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: The reason I cared was because this was getting so much attention.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: And had they included that one line,
7:23
SPEAKER_01: first reported by Blocked and Reported,
7:24
SPEAKER_01: specifically Katie Herzog,
7:25
SPEAKER_01: Jesse had nothing to do with it, I would have nothing to bitch about.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: So I guess I should thank them for that because it gives me something to complain about.
7:33
SPEAKER_01: So one thing that,
7:35
SPEAKER_01: and so for people who haven't been following this,
7:38
SPEAKER_01: I can't even describe how viral this story was.
7:40
SPEAKER_01: This was covered.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: This became international news.
7:43
SPEAKER_03: It was like a twice a year type of thing on my Twitter timeline
7:46
SPEAKER_03: that everyone is talking about one thing this much.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: The Boston Globe got apparently thousands of subscriptions out of this.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: So just a massive, massive story.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: And for a pretty minor, minor event.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: And one thing that...
8:03
SPEAKER_01: So Boston Globe reporting aside, the only thing I think they did wrong was not cite us.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: One thing that does bother me is that a lot
8:11
SPEAKER_01: of people are crediting slash blaming you for this story.
8:15
SPEAKER_03: It was not me.
8:16
SPEAKER_03: It was Katie.
8:17
SPEAKER_03: I just sat late.
8:18
SPEAKER_03: I just lay there.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of chatter online right now.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: We have co-custody.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: So, Jesse...
8:51
SPEAKER_01: I want to play you an example of this.
8:52
SPEAKER_01: And before I do, you should know that the person you're about to see is my personal lolcow.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: This is a soft butch who goes by the name lesbianlifts on TikTok and on Instagram.
9:03
SPEAKER_03: Lesbianlifts?
9:04
SPEAKER_01: She's a weightlifter.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: So this is my personal lolcow, and here she is, Jessie, talking about you.
9:32
SPEAKER_02: Something that I'm not seeing a lot of people talk about is who was the first person
9:36
SPEAKER_02: to circulate the Western Massachusetts lesbian bar story?
9:39
SPEAKER_02: And it was this guy, Jessie Single?
9:41
SPEAKER_02: Single?
9:41
SPEAKER_02: Why does that matter?
9:42
SPEAKER_02: Jesse has a long track record of writing pieces specifically targeting the trans community.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: He has written so poorly about the trans community that he is highlighted
9:51
SPEAKER_02: on Glad's Accountability Project page.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: Here's just a few examples of how Jesse has targeted trans people.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: But again,
9:57
SPEAKER_02: I really suggest that you go to Glad's Accountability Project page to see more
10:01
SPEAKER_02: for yourself.
10:02
SPEAKER_02: God, this person's so dumb.
10:04
SPEAKER_03: Like, just fact check it.
10:05
SPEAKER_03: Like, if you're going to be an idiot, just fact check it.
10:07
SPEAKER_03: This is my fucking locale crediting you.
10:11
SPEAKER_03: Wait, hold on.
10:11
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to comment right now.
10:13
SPEAKER_03: This is really dumb.
10:16
SPEAKER_03: I didn't...
10:17
SPEAKER_03: I co-host the podcast, but...
10:19
SPEAKER_01: Look who on Instagram... Look who liked this.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: I put a screenshot in our show notes.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: Taylor Loren.
10:25
SPEAKER_03: This is Taylor Loren.
10:26
SPEAKER_03: Taylor Loren's like me.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: Now...
10:28
SPEAKER_01: Now, Lesbian Lifts does mention me later, but I am a bit player in her universe.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: You are the star.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: And this happens all the time, not just with you.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: It used to happen all the time with Dan Savage.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: This was like on Blue Sky last week when I checked Blue Sky
10:42
SPEAKER_01: to see what people were saying about Last Ditch.
10:45
SPEAKER_01: And people were blaming Dan for my existence.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: And when I worked at The Stranger, what happened...
10:52
SPEAKER_01: More often,
10:52
SPEAKER_01: there was a former stranger staffer,
10:54
SPEAKER_01: a guy who worked there, not when I did, but he'd been there before me.
10:57
SPEAKER_01: His name was Paul Constant.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: That's Paul Constant,
11:03
SPEAKER_01: P-A-U-L-C-O-N-S-T-A-N-T. And he would publicly post that Dan was my puppet master.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: No, Dan is a daddy.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: He's not my daddy.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: That wasn't a Jesse Singles story.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: And this isn't your fault or Dan's fault at all that this happens.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: And I realize part of this is simply because you guys are more well known than me
11:23
SPEAKER_01: and because people already understand.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: And so if you're responsible for my work, that's just more proof that you're bad.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: But there's a word for crediting a man with a woman's work.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: And if I wanted to get into the muck,
11:36
SPEAKER_01: I would get on TikTok like you're doing right now and I would publicly post
11:40
SPEAKER_01: that lesbian lifts and everyone else doing this is sexist, but I'm too old for that.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: So I'm just going to do it here instead.
11:46
SPEAKER_03: I'm not actually posting anything.
11:47
SPEAKER_03: It's not even worth it.
11:48
SPEAKER_03: I didn't even know this was a thing.
11:50
SPEAKER_03: It's so dumb.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: It's a fucking thing.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: So that's my number one annoyance.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: And then way, way under that is the Boston Globe for not citing us.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm also mad at myself because this whole incident shows how terrible I am at marketing.
12:05
SPEAKER_01: I honestly didn't even see the potential for this story to go viral when we did it.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: I thought this is a pretty good Blocked and Reported story.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: Not our best, not our worst.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: We've done a dozen stories that fit this basic theme.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: The only reason this was exceptional for us was because we got the audio recording
12:20
SPEAKER_01: of the struggle session, but I really didn't see the potential here.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: And even if I had, we just don't chase virality on this show.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: If we did,
12:28
SPEAKER_01: we wouldn't paywall our best stuff,
12:30
SPEAKER_01: but my feeling is that the people who pay for this show should get the best version
12:34
SPEAKER_01: of it,
12:35
SPEAKER_01: and the people who don't get the B-tier shit,
12:37
SPEAKER_01: which doesn't lend itself to virality in the first place,
12:40
SPEAKER_01: and neither does audio as a genre.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: Podcasts themselves don't go viral.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while,
12:46
SPEAKER_01: you'll get a show or a series that does really well and gets a ton of attention,
12:49
SPEAKER_01: but the things that go viral on X tend to be text-based.
12:52
SPEAKER_01: The things that go viral on Instagram and TikTok are short video clips, neither of which we do.
12:58
SPEAKER_01: We don't even tweet our own shows.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: That's the most frustrating part of all of this for me.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: Not that the Globe did this story, which was great.
13:04
SPEAKER_01: It's that we're going to fucking have to start doing clips.
13:07
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, look,
13:08
SPEAKER_03: it's hard to know what will go viral,
13:09
SPEAKER_03: and we should acknowledge we don't do clips or video,
13:12
SPEAKER_03: and we don't have an active social media presence, so...
13:17
SPEAKER_03: It is what it is.
13:18
SPEAKER_03: And hopefully when we unlock this stuff that that brought more people to our podcast.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: What made this particular meme exceptional was that it started on the left
13:35
SPEAKER_01: and it spread on the left.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: Like this was a story about like wokeness run amok and it was really spreading on the left.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: I think patient zero in this case was McMansion Hell,
13:45
SPEAKER_01: a left or lib account, saw the globe thing, posted it.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: I think if we had posted a lot of people who felt fine sharing it because it was
13:51
SPEAKER_01: the globe wouldn't have done the same if we were attached to it.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: And if someone influential had posted it, you know, unaware that we're the baddies here.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: And I don't mean that in a sexy way.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: There'd be a million replies scolding them for platforming turfs.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: And then they'd have to do a three-hour Zoom struggle session.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: But then we could have done a show about it.
14:08
SPEAKER_03: You know,
14:09
SPEAKER_03: I think it's been true for a while that at least outlets like The Atlantic
14:12
SPEAKER_03: and sometimes The New York Times will cover these blowups.
14:16
SPEAKER_03: And they tend to do well.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, every publication has a staffer who will cover these things.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: The Atlantic has Helen and some other people.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: And Michael Powell now.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: Michael Powell was at the New York Times.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: Megan McArdle at the Washington Post.
14:29
SPEAKER_03: He did the Williams one at the Washington Post.
14:32
SPEAKER_03: But none of those stories
14:37
SPEAKER_01: went viral like this story.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: And all of those stories were in an environment where there would be discussion
14:43
SPEAKER_01: about them,
14:44
SPEAKER_01: but they were more likely to go viral on the right as stories of wokeness gone amok.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: And that, to me, is different about this one, is that now it feels like all of a sudden it is...
14:55
SPEAKER_01: The vibe has shifted so much.
14:58
SPEAKER_03: I disagree.
14:59
SPEAKER_03: I disagree.
15:18
SPEAKER_03: I remember the Smith College story doing that in 2021.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: People weigh in on the comments.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: Tell us who's right here.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Here's a way of checking.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: We can just see how many outlets covered
15:41
SPEAKER_01: the Smith janitor story versus how many outlets,
15:45
SPEAKER_01: after Michael Powell's reporting, versus how many outlets covered this story.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: So why don't you take a, you know.
15:52
SPEAKER_03: I think you're probably right that in terms of the raw number of outlets.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: You want to run the experiment?
15:56
SPEAKER_03: No, I'm saying I think you're probably right that if you just count up the number
15:58
SPEAKER_03: of like,
15:59
SPEAKER_03: Like this was such an easy write up for like the New York Post and
16:03
SPEAKER_03: then they did further reporting on it and all these other outlets.
16:05
SPEAKER_03: I think in that sense, you're probably right.
16:06
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
16:07
SPEAKER_03: I just I don't I think the vibe shift happened a while ago, to be honest.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is it's a continuation of this ongoing vibe shift,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: but it was exceptional to me that the people I saw tweeting this were people who
16:20
SPEAKER_01: a lot of them were people who like Taylor Lorenz was the only person on the Internet
16:24
SPEAKER_01: for the most part defending this bar.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: Almost everybody else was making fun of this bar.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that would have happened a few years ago.
16:31
SPEAKER_03: Okay, yeah, we're probably not even disagreeing that much.
16:35
SPEAKER_03: People like, I've seen a lot of lefties more openly criticizing it in a way they wouldn't have.
16:40
SPEAKER_03: But I think most people for a while have been...
16:44
SPEAKER_03: I'm fascinated by these communities and how weird they are.
16:48
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, it's interesting the way this one caught on
16:53
SPEAKER_03: and I wish I better understood why it was this one or like a lot of others didn't in
16:58
SPEAKER_03: the same way, but I'm not sure we'll ever know.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: The other thing is I have some genuine moral ambivalence about some of the shows that we do.
17:06
SPEAKER_01: Our audience is great.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: We recently eliminated our last remaining asshole.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm never worried about our listeners personally harassing people.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: But when something goes viral, you lose control over it.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And when we do episodes about small businesses or people who aren't famous,
17:21
SPEAKER_01: not always,
17:22
SPEAKER_01: but we tend to paywall them because it keeps the potential damage contained.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: And I realize this may be incoherent.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: Like if we're going to report on something, we need to be comfortable with the consequences.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: And I think ignoring a story because you're afraid of the consequences is unethical
17:35
SPEAKER_01: in its own way.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: But one of the recurring themes on this show is cancel culture.
17:39
SPEAKER_01: And if we do an episode about a small business or a minor influencer and
17:44
SPEAKER_01: that person gets harassed online or worse,
17:47
SPEAKER_01: fired from a job or whatever, I'm going to feel bad about it.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: And this isn't a good quality in a reporter.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: I know that.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: But paywalls make a story less likely to break containment so that we have
17:57
SPEAKER_01: a bit more control over the consequences.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: We got an email recently.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: Today from someone,
18:03
SPEAKER_01: let me just read you this quote,
18:05
SPEAKER_01: the widespread ridicule you've brought on the last ditch sure looks a lot like
18:09
SPEAKER_01: the kind of online harassment you both have been railing against for so long.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's a ridiculous situation with some ridiculous people,
18:15
SPEAKER_01: but dragging them into the spotlight so they can be hassled and laughed
18:19
SPEAKER_01: at makes you no better than the woke mobs you hate.
18:22
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Jesse, what do you think?
18:23
SPEAKER_01: Are we no better than the woke mobs we hate?
18:26
SPEAKER_03: I mean, in this case,
18:26
SPEAKER_03: we did unlock it when it was going viral,
18:28
SPEAKER_03: and we sent it to everyone, bringing them...
18:30
SPEAKER_03: I have some...
18:34
SPEAKER_03: I think I either suggested or quickly agreed with unlocking it,
18:37
SPEAKER_03: just because I wanted to... You told me to unlock it.
18:40
SPEAKER_03: I was in the car on the way to the Helm thing.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: It didn't even occur to me.
18:46
SPEAKER_03: I feel a little bit weird about it.
18:48
SPEAKER_03: I don't think us...
18:51
SPEAKER_03: We were trying to use the attention this was getting elsewhere
18:54
SPEAKER_03: to introduce more people to our podcast, which I think is a normal thing to do.
18:57
SPEAKER_03: And I think sometimes there'll be trade-offs.
18:59
SPEAKER_03: I think in this case...
19:02
SPEAKER_03: You know, we were we were far from the straw on the Campbell's back.
19:07
SPEAKER_03: I heard the bar was getting death threats, which is so fucking insane on every level.
19:12
SPEAKER_03: But I really don't.
19:13
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
19:14
SPEAKER_03: I can't imagine any member of our community doing that just because I'm in the comment section.
19:17
SPEAKER_03: And like you said, we killed the one asshole and he was an asshole the other direction.
19:21
SPEAKER_03: He would have been defending the mass.
19:22
SPEAKER_03: It was a she.
19:23
SPEAKER_03: It was a she.
19:24
SPEAKER_03: We might be thinking of different ones.
19:25
SPEAKER_03: Maybe there's another one.
19:26
SPEAKER_03: I'm a little bit ambivalent about it just because like we we did.
19:31
SPEAKER_03: This was random stuff and we held them up for ridicule, but I don't know.
19:35
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
19:37
SPEAKER_03: You might end up being the character of the day on the internet.
19:40
SPEAKER_03: It happens sometimes.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: I did a story in 2021 for the Free Press,
19:43
SPEAKER_01: although I think it was called Common Sense Now or back then.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: It was about a psychiatrist who gave a lecture at Yale that was extremely bigoted.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: The lecture itself is called The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Here's just one of many choice quotes.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: She said,
20:00
SPEAKER_01: I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got
20:04
SPEAKER_01: in my way,
20:05
SPEAKER_01: burying their body and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless
20:09
SPEAKER_01: with a bounce in my step like I did the world of fucking paper.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: So she did this lecture at,
20:14
SPEAKER_01: this was grand round,
20:15
SPEAKER_01: so she was lecturing medical students and She said that white people have five holes
20:19
SPEAKER_01: in their brains.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what that means.
20:21
SPEAKER_03: It's like five holes in your face.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: One, two, three, four.
20:24
SPEAKER_01: She said brains.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: How many holes do you have in your face?
20:27
SPEAKER_01: One, two, three, four, five.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: Twelve.
20:28
SPEAKER_03: It's broken.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Do eye holes count?
20:30
SPEAKER_03: If eye holes count- This was different, though.
20:34
SPEAKER_03: What do you mean?
20:35
SPEAKER_03: Which was different?
20:36
SPEAKER_03: What we did?
20:37
SPEAKER_03: What you did is totally fine.
20:38
SPEAKER_03: She's giving a talk at Yale.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: Right.
20:41
SPEAKER_03: I mean, how does that- Someone giving a talk at Yale deserves scrutiny.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: What I felt bad about was that-
20:48
SPEAKER_01: So it went very viral.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: The New York Times picked it up.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: The Washington Post picked it up.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: The New York Post picked it up.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: Fox News, Network TV.
20:55
SPEAKER_03: See, this proves my theory that the Viveship was a while ago.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: No, but it was right-wingers sharing it.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't lefties.
21:02
SPEAKER_03: But you just said the Times picked it up.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: They did a report on it,
21:04
SPEAKER_01: but this wasn't being shared by lefties on Twitter or on Blue Sky,
21:09
SPEAKER_01: which I don't think existed then.
21:10
SPEAKER_03: But this probably brought a lot of scrutiny and harassment to the crazy lady.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: She closed.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, Yale got targeted.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: I felt really conflicted about it because it's hard to watch anyone in the middle of
21:19
SPEAKER_01: a storm, even if they kind of deserve it.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: And because we have spent so much to like this,
21:24
SPEAKER_01: this letter writer said, we've spent so much time talking about cancel culture.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: And I felt like I did a cancel culture,
21:30
SPEAKER_01: even if this woman said she like when I interviewed her,
21:33
SPEAKER_01: she said that white people don't eat bread because of white guilt because
21:38
SPEAKER_01: of what our call our ancestors did.
21:41
SPEAKER_03: If you're that terrible at your job, I'm sorry, man.
21:46
SPEAKER_03: I don't want anyone to get death threats, but I don't know.
21:52
SPEAKER_03: It's not a problem to me that this woman lost her job.
21:54
SPEAKER_03: She's giving talks at Yale about how white people are basically subhuman and are psychopaths.
22:01
SPEAKER_03: This strikes me as really different from what we did, where it was crazy.
22:06
SPEAKER_03: Are there stories that you won't report because you're like the consequences of this?
22:08
SPEAKER_03: I mean, especially now that you killed Jason Arde.
22:10
SPEAKER_03: Especially since I killed Jason Arde.
22:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I will sometimes get emails from...
22:27
SPEAKER_03: Disturbed people, like colorfully, sometimes floridly psychotic people.
22:32
SPEAKER_03: And if I wanted the maximum amount of attention on me...
22:37
SPEAKER_03: You could do a hit piece on it.
22:38
SPEAKER_03: There's also people who have already become fairly famous who have had a slide into craziness.
22:45
SPEAKER_03: I don't mean – Brett Weinstein is just a conspiracy theorist.
22:48
SPEAKER_03: I don't think he's mentally ill.
22:49
SPEAKER_03: I think it's fine to make fun of him.
22:51
SPEAKER_03: In other cases,
22:51
SPEAKER_03: people – including people who I don't like – have become clearly unhinged
22:56
SPEAKER_03: and mentally ill.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: And if I just wanted to – I'm not saying I'm the greatest guy ever.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: I told you I'm morally ambivalent about The Last Ditch.
23:02
SPEAKER_03: I'm definitely not.
23:03
SPEAKER_03: But no, yeah,
23:03
SPEAKER_03: there's a lot of stuff I don't do because I just don't –
23:06
SPEAKER_03: The cost benefit analysis is not in favor of covering this stuff.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Why do you think this story went so viral?
23:12
SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
23:13
SPEAKER_03: I wish I know.
23:13
SPEAKER_03: I think because there are probably some.
23:17
SPEAKER_03: I had a general trend from 2020 on where friends who I was still friends with,
23:25
SPEAKER_03: but I was worried they were like,
23:27
SPEAKER_03: Super woke or like really hated my work or something like people I hadn't seen for a
23:31
SPEAKER_03: while, especially during the pandemic.
23:33
SPEAKER_03: So many of them would eventually come to me and tell me something
23:36
SPEAKER_03: from their workplace or something from some shit they'd gotten into
23:39
SPEAKER_03: that really surprised them and suggested that this stuff is extremely unpopular
23:43
SPEAKER_03: among people, among normal people.
23:45
SPEAKER_03: And in this case,
23:47
SPEAKER_03: it really showed the way that certain communities embrace norms
23:50
SPEAKER_03: that give huge amounts of power to people who are I cannot diagnose.
23:57
SPEAKER_03: What's your name?
23:58
SPEAKER_03: Soire?
23:58
SPEAKER_03: Noire?
23:59
SPEAKER_01: Sonor.
24:00
SPEAKER_03: Sonor.
24:01
SPEAKER_03: Sonar.
24:03
SPEAKER_03: In the clips we have, they come across as someone with a personality disorder.
24:06
SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry.
24:06
SPEAKER_03: There's no other like just the lack of empathy for others.
24:10
SPEAKER_03: They're like not caring that you've made other people cry.
24:12
SPEAKER_03: I've I've had people like this in my life.
24:15
SPEAKER_03: They're impossible to deal with.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: So I think people recognize how unpleasant it is.
24:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I love Massachusetts, but let's be honest, I think that adds to it too.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do think that very online leftists,
24:45
SPEAKER_01: due to the vibe shift,
24:46
SPEAKER_01: now feel like they have permission to laugh at the stuff that we've been laughing at
24:50
SPEAKER_01: for years.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: So like the it-its pronouns,
24:52
SPEAKER_01: the weaponization of mental health,
24:54
SPEAKER_01: the struggle sessions,
24:55
SPEAKER_01: the deference to the most marginalized identities, the wacky gender stuff.
24:59
SPEAKER_03: But that's been a thing.
25:00
SPEAKER_03: There's been factional stuff there with like Freddie DeBoer and Matt Brunig.
25:09
SPEAKER_03: Those dividing lines were always there.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: Of course they were, but you weren't seeing...
25:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you even realized how viral this is because you're not on TikTok and Instagram.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: This broke containment so far out of...
25:22
SPEAKER_01: The normal people.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: No, on my walk at the beach today, some of them knew about it.
25:29
SPEAKER_03: I thought you were going to say sonar showed up.
25:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I might not understand.
25:33
SPEAKER_03: Yes, okay, sorry.
25:34
SPEAKER_03: I have seen...
25:36
SPEAKER_03: People who I would have considered woke, for lack of a better word, making fun of this.
25:40
SPEAKER_03: So, yes.
25:41
SPEAKER_03: You're right.
25:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm just being contrary.
25:43
SPEAKER_01: You are.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: I wish you would stop it.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: No.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: Like, normal people always think that's funny.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: This shit is toxic, and it's damaging to our cause, and people should stop doing.
26:26
SPEAKER_01: I find that aggravating.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: It's hard for me to take any pleasure in the circus at the moment because so many people...
26:49
SPEAKER_01: Paid a penalty for saying that the Emperor's girl dick was showing.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: And I want at least one of these fuckers to be like, yes, you were right.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: It's like AOC saying Woke One was crazy.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was crazy.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: But maybe take off your mayor of crazy town sash before you start talking about was.
27:06
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't know.
27:08
SPEAKER_03: I'm not trying to.
27:11
SPEAKER_03: Of course they're not.
27:12
SPEAKER_03: No one's going to admit they're wrong.
27:15
SPEAKER_03: Of course not.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Did you see Hasan Piker using this as an excuse to try to teach his community to be normal?
27:21
SPEAKER_03: No, but that's very funny to me that Hasan Piker has any instruction to others
27:25
SPEAKER_03: about being normal, the Mao guy.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, then he got so much shit from his followers who were convinced that
27:31
SPEAKER_01: by saying be normal,
27:32
SPEAKER_01: he meant like stop being trans or stop being a spoonie that he later.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: And I think Hassan Piker fans, the Hassan Piker fans be normal challenges going to fail.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad about this because I would miss my lolcals.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: And also because I don't want to live under communism.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: Like if those fuckers were actually normal, they might win some political power.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: But one one theory that why this went so viral,
27:56
SPEAKER_01: not just in right wing spaces,
27:57
SPEAKER_01: but in left wing spaces, you know, I saw this on on X a lot.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: It's catharsis because all these lefties have had similar experience
28:05
SPEAKER_01: with what they call wreckers.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Did you see that the Western Massachusetts communists put out a statement?
28:10
SPEAKER_03: I did.
28:10
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, people are passing that around.
28:12
SPEAKER_03: They they're mad.
28:13
SPEAKER_03: They're mad about the coverage.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: Can you read this?
28:15
SPEAKER_01: This is I put a screenshot or show it's there.
28:18
SPEAKER_03: The Western Massachusetts Club of the Communist Party USA strongly condemns
28:21
SPEAKER_03: the Boston Globe for its September 22nd publication of
28:25
SPEAKER_03: an article targeting Last Ditch,
28:26
SPEAKER_03: a lesbian bar in Greenfield,
28:27
SPEAKER_03: and calls for solidarity with the queer and transgender people
28:30
SPEAKER_03: of our region facing heightened national scrutiny.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: So Last Ditch, of course, reposted this statement, as did Sonor.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: So Jesse,
28:40
SPEAKER_01: do you want to hear a clip of Sonor from the struggle session that I didn't play on
28:44
SPEAKER_01: the last episode, just to give people a flavor of who this fellow is?
28:48
SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day,
28:48
SPEAKER_00: the main reason why I came here was to
28:55
SPEAKER_00: request for an acknowledgement of harm
28:57
SPEAKER_00: and express my concern.
29:00
SPEAKER_03: That's it.
29:00
SPEAKER_03: That's all you get.
29:01
SPEAKER_03: If you want to hear the whole thing,
29:02
SPEAKER_03: go to blockedandreported.org and become a premium subscriber.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: Bye.