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Hentai and the Post-Platform Internet · Never Post

0:10
Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
0:14
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
0:16
Rugnetta. This intro was written on Monday, 05/19/2025 at 08:19PM
0:23
eastern, and we have a sensational show for you this
0:27
week. First, what can hentai teach us about platforms? What
0:33
can platforms teach us about hentai?
0:35
We look with Morgan Sung, host and writer of KQED's fabulous
0:40
Internet podcast, close all tabs at this racy genre and what it
0:45
reveals about the Internet of today. Then Georgia talks with
0:50
Wired staff writer Boone Ashworth about the tariffs
0:53
coming for your fashion micro trends. Office siren, mob wife,
0:59
bog chic. Can they survive? Should they survive?
1:03
And also ask an expert. But right now, we're gonna take a
1:07
quick break. You're gonna listen to some ads unless you're on the
1:09
member feed. And when we return, we're gonna talk about a few of
1:13
the things that have happened since the last time you heard
1:15
from us. Get hype.
1:17
I've got five stories for you this week. Scientists, those
1:22
freaks absolutely blasted human cells with five g signals to see
1:28
if there are any adverse effects and folks, this is gonna knock
1:32
your socks off. There are not. This according to a paper
1:35
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
1:39
of the United States of America's Nexus Journal. Gizmodo
1:43
reports that quote, researchers exposed two types of human skin
1:46
cells called fibroblasts and keratinocytes to five g
1:50
electromagnetic waves at twenty seven and forty point five
1:54
gigahertz frequencies with varying levels of intensity.
1:57
Ultimately, the report says their results show with great
2:00
clarity that in human skin cells even under worst case
2:04
conditions, no significant changes in gene expression or
2:08
methylation patterns are observed after exposure. So no
2:12
x-ray vision or lizard skin mutations. I'm sort of
2:16
disappointed, honestly. Leading up to the recent Canadian
2:21
election, the Toronto Metropolitan University's social
2:24
media lab discovered the existence of what they're
2:27
calling chameleon ads on Facebook, where scammers will
2:31
set up a fake Facebook page linking to a fake website and
2:35
submit seemingly anodyne ads for approval to the platform. Once
2:39
given the green light, scammers will then switch out the
2:41
entirety of the content, replacing harmless if fraudulent
2:46
advertisements with, you guessed it, crypto scams, which have
2:49
recently featured deepfakes involving Canadian politicians.
2:53
Scammers, the lab says, will often switch the content of the
2:56
ads back and forth multiple times, making them harder to
2:59
track down. When the scam ads are finally taken down, the lab
3:03
says, Facebook will delete them and their associated pages,
3:07
which makes research and therefore prevention more
3:11
difficult. The lab calls on Meta to better archive scam ads and
3:15
their associated pages after taking them down so that
3:18
researchers can work to prevent further fraud. Twenty three and
3:23
Me has sold to the multibillion dollar New York based
3:27
biotechnology company Regeneron for $256,000,000, 4 0 4 media
3:33
reports, which means the genetic data for the roughly 17,000,000
3:37
people who used the company's services is worth about $15 a
3:41
pop. No word yet on what exactly Regeneron plans to do with this
3:44
vast repository of genetic info, but they have said they expect
3:48
23 and me will, quote, continue all consumer genome services
3:52
uninterrupted.
3:53
In a statement on the sale, Regeneron writes, Regeneron
3:56
intends to ensure compliance with 23andMe's consumer privacy
3:59
policies and applicable laws with respect to the treatment of
4:02
customer data. As the successful bidder, Regeneron is prepared to
4:05
detail the intended use of customer data and the privacy
4:08
programs and security controls in place for review by a court
4:11
appointed independent customer privacy ombudsman and other
4:15
interested parties. And finally, COSA is back. We talked about
4:27
the kids online safety act in episode 22, don't panic, from
4:31
November of last year. It failed a house vote then, but co
4:34
sponsors Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Richard Blumenthal
4:37
of Connecticut have reintroduced it.
4:39
The bill nominally requires platforms to more effectively
4:43
behave in the interest of kids using their services, but in
4:46
fact could enable political targeting and the removal of
4:50
resources crucial to groups like transgender teens. This is a
4:54
complicated issue and a big story larger than we have time
4:58
for in the news, which is why in this episode, in our
5:02
interstitials, we're talking again with Avery Dame Griff, the
5:06
historian and lecturer from episode 22, about the return of
5:11
Xhosa and what you need to know about its reintroduction. That's
5:19
the news I have for you this week. First, how platforms ate
5:22
the Internet with the exception of hentai, apparently. Then,
5:26
will the tariffs come for your little treats?
5:28
Spoiler alert, they already have. But now in our
5:31
interstitials, Hans talks with Avery Dame Griff for our first
5:35
edition of Ask An Expert about the Kids Online Safety Act.
5:52
Hans Buetow: Avery Damegriff, thank you so much for joining us
5:56
for the first ever ask an expert. You truly are an expert.
6:00
You are a lecturer in women, gender, and sexuality studies at
6:04
Gonzaga University. You also founded and you serve as the
6:09
primary curator for Queer Digital History Project, which
6:11
is an independent community history project, and it catalogs
6:15
and archives pre twenty ten LGBTQ spaces online. You also
6:20
maintain the archival Internet video index, which indexes video
6:23
footage of pre Internet and early Internet communication
6:26
platforms.
6:27
Your award winning book, the two revolutions, a history of the
6:30
Transgender Internet from NYU Press in 2023, it tracks how the
6:34
Internet transformed gender political organizing from the
6:37
nineteen eighties to the contemporary moment. In 2022,
6:41
you were selected to be a public humanities fellow for the
6:44
Humanities Washington, developing a series of
6:47
interactive online exhibits, teaching guides, and workshops
6:50
about the history of LGBTQ plus communities in online spaces.
6:55
And last autumn, you and I both worked together on an episode,
7:00
that helped us, and I think our audience, understand the moral
7:03
panics that are driving the push for COSA, the Kids Online Safety
7:07
Act. Avery, COSA is back in the news, so we wanted to come to
7:11
you and ask you, our COSA expert, is this bill gonna make
7:16
kids safe online?
7:19
Avery Dame-Griff: Nope.
7:42
Mike Rugnetta: Asking what comes after platforms is a bit like
7:45
asking what comes after cities. They define our landscape so
7:50
much that I struggle to picture a horizon that doesn't feature
7:53
their hulking shape. If not platforms as they are now, per
7:57
se, then surely we'll continue on inside their hollowed out
8:01
shells, dystopic squatters in the ruins of the old Internet.
8:06
To misquote Frederic Jamison, it's a bit easier to imagine the
8:10
end of the Internet than the end of platforms. I ask this because
8:16
it feels, to run the risk of overstating it by putting it
8:19
very plainly, like the age of the platform is ending and has
8:24
maybe even ended.
8:25
Facebook, x, Instagram, Airbnb, Uber, etcetera, they all came in
8:30
a short amount of time to define my understanding at least of the
8:34
global network. Even from a critical perspective, realizing
8:39
that they and the Internet are not one in the same, it became
8:44
more difficult than it should have been for me to think of the
8:47
Internet outside of the totalizing infrastructural ideal
8:51
of the platform and platforms themselves. They began to feel a
8:57
bit like the AOL and the CompuServe of my youth, walled
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gardens enclosing much larger and freer territory. But what
9:07
once felt ubiquitous and frankly, untoppable is now the
9:12
subject of increasing, though insufficient regulation, and
9:16
more significantly, public suspicion. And rightfully so,
9:21
given that this sub era of the platform Internet has been
9:25
defined by social, economic, political, and emotional
9:29
turmoil, which if it can't be blamed on the platforms
9:33
themselves, portions of that blame can certainly be placed at
9:36
the feet of the people who run them.
9:40
Do these circumstances predict the demise of the platform? It
9:44
has been perhaps difficult to imagine an Internet without
9:47
them, but now can we? Must we? What could we stand to gain in
9:56
the demise of the platform is a question that may help answer if
10:02
there is some chance to the possibility of its
10:05
disappearance. Let's consider what we lost in the platform's
10:10
rise to prominence and what we value about it so that it was
10:15
allowed to become the organizing principle of the last two
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decades online.
10:21
Along the way, we're gonna talk to journalist Morgan Sung
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Morgan Sung: I I do love to cover the weird.
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Mike Rugnetta: And academic Aurelie Petit
10:28
Aurelie Petit: It's a it's a very European perspective on
10:30
media.
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Mike Rugnetta: About how things got this way and whether they
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think there's any chance they'll change.
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Aurelie Petit: Like, the platform is just a middleman,
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which would be a good definition of platform. It's like a
10:43
middleman for content between a producer and, you know, a
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consumer.
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Morgan Sung: I don't know if a world without platforms is
10:50
possible, and maybe that's just me being, you know, really
10:52
myopic because I've I've only known a world with platforms.
11:04
Mike Rugnetta: In a 2010 New Media and Society paper titled
11:07
The Politics of Platforms, researcher and communications
11:11
professor Tarlatan Gillespie helped solidify what exactly a
11:15
platform is. He lays out four senses of the word platform to
11:20
ask how each applies to the eponymous piece of Internet
11:23
infrastructure. The senses are computational, architectural,
11:28
figurative, and political. We'll take each of those in turn. X,
11:34
Flickr, eBay, etcetera are above all and first pieces of
11:38
software.
11:39
Quote, infrastructure that supports the design and use of
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particular applications, end quote. Like Macintosh and PC are
11:48
platforms so too are WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Weibo. They are
11:52
next, quote, human built structures. They're elevated, if
11:57
not actually, then conceptually such that one may be better
12:00
noticed, better reach an audience perhaps. Platforms are
12:05
then also a starting point for further building or growth or
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action on the part of developers and on the part of users.
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And finally, they are political. They define or comprise core
12:20
beliefs from which a whole constellation of positions or
12:23
assumptions follow. So what happens when we put all this
12:28
together? Tech companies form something between a product and
12:32
a place with an aim, a piece of software that masquerades as a
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public space where multiple disparate groups meet around
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some collective, though often asymmetric purpose that is
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usually economic. A platform is a place for people to connect
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and share and learn and entertain, but it is only those
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things unceasingly as long as it is also a place to connect
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brands, people, advertisers, data brokers, and increasingly
13:03
governments, their stooges, and agents.
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To render this as succinctly as we can, a platform is a mutable
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programmable interface which elevates some portion of users,
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though that may or may not be the most public facing group,
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thus allowing the formation or participation in a hierarchy
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which creates or recreates a political order. This takes us
13:29
back to the last of Gillespie's platform senses. They define
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some core set of political beliefs. What might those
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beliefs be for, say, Reddit, Pinterest, Threads, Discord,
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Tumblr? And having decided on those, what sorts of rules,
13:49
policies, actions, or inactions reflect those beliefs?
13:55
And how does this help create or recreate a political order that
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exists in a much larger sense outside the bounds of the
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platform itself? The answers to these questions fall under a
14:08
distinct area of consideration known as platform governance. It
14:23
feels safe to say that the most well known tool in the belt of
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platform governance is moderation. Decisions made
14:30
concerning what is allowed to be posted and what is not,
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according sometimes to terms of service, to community
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guidelines, and so on. But in a lot of cases, according to
14:42
vibes, it is a perennial story online to have been deleted,
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suspended, banned, limited for posts which pass in some
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circumstances, but not others.
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There is the ban hammer, but there is also the vibe axe.
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Charting these vibes, looking carefully at things which should
15:04
trigger moderation but don't, or which do but it's unclear why,
15:08
can help us in the aim of figuring out what kind of world
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those designing and running platforms imagine, what sort of
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society they desire or feel for their own continued existence
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they must create. One content type that can help us look
15:24
deeply into this vibe abyss is hentai, which means something
15:30
more broad in Japanese than it does in English, but which for
15:34
most of our audience will indicate a genre of media at the
15:36
edges of both pornography and illustration or animation. I
15:43
talked with Morgan Tseng about this, about what we can learn
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about platforms through their treatment of hentai in the West
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and what we can learn about hentai through its treatment by
15:53
platforms. Morgan is a journalist and culture writer
15:56
who covers all things weird, wild, and Internet in many
16:00
places, including on her podcast with KQED called Close All Tabs
16:05
with whom we have collaborated for this segment.
16:09
The first thing I asked her just to get on the same page is what
16:13
is hentai exactly?
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Morgan Sung: Hentai is in Japan just under the umbrella of anime
16:22
and manga and video games, where it's just animated. Anything
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animated is anime, manga, video games. Hentai just means that
16:29
it's sexually explicit. And hentai occupies this weird space
16:33
in the content ecosystem because it's not considered porn. It's
16:38
very rarely prioritized on porn sites, but it's also too
16:42
explicit for mainstream streaming platforms.
16:45
So it's kind of shunned.
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Mike Rugnetta: Hentai doesn't really have a home on the
16:50
internet in the West. There's Pornhub, where it was the number
16:54
one search term for the past four years running, and yet
16:57
remains a second class content type in ways we'll discuss in a
17:01
moment. There's DeviantArt, sort of. There are a lot of pirate
17:06
sites, and there's FAKU, arguably the single platform
17:10
that made a go at being the western Internet's go to hentai
17:14
platform. But that proved really tough.
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Morgan Sung: You know, I was talking to Jacob Grady and he's
17:21
a CEO of Faku. Faku is a subscription platform for hentai
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manga. They tried to launch a hentai anime platform and
17:28
ultimately could not pull it off. Part of it was licensing
17:31
issues, like their licenses expired. It's it's very
17:34
complicated and expensive to license anime versus licensing
17:38
manga, but a lot of it was pirating.
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He was like, we just can't compete with pirates.
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Mike Rugnetta: Why? Why? If something is so popular, has it
17:46
proven so difficult to platform? At a moment that platforming
17:51
things is what we do on the Internet. It is the hammer of a
17:57
network lousy with nails.
18:01
We talked to Arly Petty about this. Arly is a researcher of
18:06
animation and technology and PhD candidate in the film studies
18:09
department at Concordia University Montreal. She wrote
18:13
the 2024 paper, the hentai streaming platform wars,
18:18
published in porn studies, and had this to say on the uphill
18:21
battle hentai has had finding its own platform and running
18:25
afoul of governance on more general use platforms.
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Aurelie Petit: You're taking a media and you're making it
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entered like a new ecology and and also a new infrastructure.
18:37
Like, for example, you make a film, like you're a filmmaker
18:40
and you're gonna make a film, and then you want your film to
18:44
go on YouTube. Well, suddenly there's a lot of restrictions
18:48
because YouTube in itself is not just a platform for you to go
18:52
and like scream at the town and scream at your fellow citizen.
18:56
It's actually like its own space that is its own policies, its
18:59
term of uses, its own like, you know, if it's a platform where
19:02
people can leave comments, it has its own sociability. So you
19:06
kind of have to make up for this.
19:13
Mike Rugnetta: Animation has many platforms, of course. But
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when the animation is pornographic, it doesn't fit
19:19
within the restrictions, policies, and rules of those
19:22
platforms. There's a governance mismatch. And pornography has a
19:27
Aurelie Petit: lot of
19:27
Mike Rugnetta: platforms, but when it's animated, it doesn't
19:31
fit within the restrictions, policies, and rules of those
19:35
platforms. There's a governance mismatch. Take, for instance,
19:39
something as base as identity verification, which is required
19:43
on Pornhub both to post content and to make the most money from
19:48
that content. Here's Morgan again.
19:51
Morgan Sung: Pornhub, to monetize your content on
19:53
Pornhub, if it's animated, you actually have to send, like,
19:57
videos of yourself, like, animating and drawing the
19:59
content to
20:00
Mike Rugnetta: prove
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Morgan Sung: that it's you. Yeah. To prove that it's you.
20:03
Mike Rugnetta: Like, like time lapse work in progress.
20:06
Morgan Sung: Pretty much. Yeah. You have to show that you're
20:08
actually, like, making the content to be able to, like,
20:11
verify it and monetize it. And if you're monetized, if you're
20:15
verified, you can like opt into this additional level of like
20:19
protection where if you're going to upload your content
20:22
exclusively to Pornhub, you get higher revenue shares and
20:25
they'll like send out copyright infringement notices on your
20:28
behalf. But animated content can't do that because they can't
20:32
verify that someone else is actually uploading the content,
20:35
not the original creator.
20:39
Mike Rugnetta: Orly summarizes an aspect of this difficulty.
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Animated pornography, she says
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Aurelie Petit: Doesn't answer to this logic of live action
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governance. It's not about real people. You cannot ask for
20:49
biometrics data for a a cartoon character. You cannot ask for
20:55
consent. So, like, that's where struggle is attention.
21:00
Not everything can be platformed or not everything can be
21:04
platform everywhere.
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Mike Rugnetta: And in fact, this unwillingness to answer to the
21:09
logic of live action governance is part of Hentai's deep
21:13
history.
21:14
Morgan Sung: I mean, even hentai itself, like Mhmm. A lot of it
21:17
is so weird because it was to get around Japan's censorship
21:20
laws. Like, the OG tentacle porn, the creator fully
21:24
admitted, like, no, they're tentacles because you can't show
21:27
penetration with, like, genitalia without getting
21:30
censored in Japan. But if you're using tentacles like or
21:34
monstrous appendages, what's stopping you?
21:39
Mike Rugnetta: The difficulty that animated pornography has in
21:42
finding its own platform is the result multiple compounding
21:46
issues. There are cultural forces like the conflict that
21:49
surrounds explicit media generally and conservative
21:52
groups working to ban, restrict access to, make it difficult to
21:55
make a living from any kind of pornography, They do this by
21:59
pressuring both Internet platforms and payment processors
22:02
used by those platforms like OnlyFans and Patreon. Then there
22:07
are legal and compliance and regulatory challenges. It forced
22:11
at the state and federal levels with half measure laws like
22:14
SESTA FAFSA, as well as, again, by the businesses and industries
22:18
required to make and sustain a living in The United States.
22:22
Think like banks and stuff, sometimes who have their own
22:25
ideas of governance and many of whom are themselves attempting
22:29
to remain compliant with unclear, unevenly enforced
22:32
regulation.
22:34
This, of course, creates an environment where an army of
22:37
pirates flourish. And we haven't even gotten to the further
22:42
ambivalence that surrounds hentai specifically, a largely
22:46
foreign media type that struggles to find a legitimate
22:50
place of its own online in the West in the age of platforms
22:54
because there's no governance structure into which it neatly
22:58
fits. How do we chart these vibes? Unsurprisingly, it seems
23:06
media which exists or is pushed towards the edges will be kept
23:10
there and won't be proactively furnished with accommodation
23:13
regardless even if the audience for that media is sizable. It's
23:18
hard to know in which direction even to be cynical.
23:21
The promise of profitability, which is great, is not enough to
23:24
overcome the subalternity, the suppressedness, the
23:28
undergroundedness of this media. As predicted, the political
23:33
order of the world at large is in some ways created by, but in
23:37
other ways reinforced by platforms. So why keep trying?
23:46
Why even attempt to platform this work? Why not forego this
23:50
hassle altogether?
23:52
Not everything can be platformed everywhere, Aurelie says. Maybe
23:55
not everything can be platformed, period. The answer
24:00
to this is what one gets with a platform.
24:05
Morgan Sung: I think people will always use these platforms to
24:08
drive audiences to places where their work is safe, whether
24:13
that's physical media, whether that's, you know, these kind of
24:16
paywalled walled gardens for their content. I don't think a
24:20
lot of people have the the opportunity to opt out of these
24:23
platforms. Or I don't think that they have that kind of safety
24:25
net to totally opt out. But I think that a lot of artists are
24:29
just making it work by, you know, trying to have as many
24:34
avenues for attention for their work as possible, and then
24:37
having like a safe place for their work to actually exist.
24:41
Mike Rugnetta: The platform here becomes an island, not something
24:45
which infinitely extends, not a place from which to build and
24:49
expand, but a place with an undefeatable limit, a bounded
24:55
territory that is nonetheless connected as all things are
24:59
online. What platforms offer is convenience above all else.
25:05
Everything under one earl, an audience, communication,
25:09
community, and sometimes if you're lucky, a paycheck. That
25:13
is until your own politics or those of your work challenge or
25:16
transgress the political order the platform attempts to uphold.
25:19
Media at the edges may push to the center, but only so far
25:24
until the winds of governance, the tides of vibe push them back
25:28
to the periphery.
25:29
This is the constant dance of moderation that I think we all
25:35
feel online even if we are not fans of or creators of this kind
25:41
of media.
25:44
Aurelie Petit: How can you be as normative as you can be so
25:47
nobody is gonna look too close into you? I was talking to this
25:50
content creator who suddenly, yeah, Patreon decided that his
25:55
content was too problematic. One step too far, but instead of
25:59
having a conversation with him, they just cancel his accounts
26:03
and it's his entire income that disappear. As long as we don't
26:06
have like official platform that are actually have a model to pay
26:11
content creators who do animation, you know, or like
26:13
partnership with studios. It's it's always gonna like Paris,
26:17
Paris is always gonna be a very attractive form of it.
26:24
Mike Rugnetta: So what comes after the platform? It could
26:27
always be more platforms iterating on the design until
26:30
asymmetrical aims and the economic incentives balance out
26:33
to form a governance paradigm that doesn't or doesn't
26:36
unilaterally, recreate existing political hierarchies. Or maybe
26:42
after platforms, we'll find what was here before, the rest of the
26:48
Internet, reached via a breadcrumb trail of links and
26:51
hints and suggestions wherever people congregate, platforms and
26:56
not. I think here about the idea that post modernism names not an
27:03
end to modernism, but a confrontation with the problems
27:07
of modernism. Post meaning crisis of, not after.
27:14
And so perhaps a post platform internet names an epoch where
27:18
there is a wide scale recognition of the shortcomings
27:22
of platforms while they continue to persist. In a way, the
27:30
difficulty of hentai finding its own platform provides a kind of
27:34
hope to any and every other artist, writer, media maker,
27:39
person, people everywhere whose work and lives run afoul of only
27:44
ever increasingly skittish platforms, kowtowing to brands,
27:49
advertisers, and governments.
27:54
Morgan Sung: So I went into this hentai episode thinking that I
27:57
would be telling the story about like some weird curvy dudes and
28:01
their tentacle porn. What I actually found on talking to
28:04
people involved in the industry and also fans is that there is
28:07
actually, like, a real love for experimentation in hentai. And a
28:11
lot of that is because a lot of people felt very othered. A lot
28:14
of people are queer and didn't fit into the mold anyway.
28:17
Mike Rugnetta: Yeah.
28:17
Morgan Sung: I was really surprised, finding out how queer
28:20
and how provocative hentai really is, which makes sense. I
28:25
mean, queer art is always going to be provocative. This industry
28:28
is more than just some dudes trying to get off to cartoon
28:32
girls. It's really it it really is a space to experiment and
28:36
explore like your relationship to the world around you.
28:52
Mike Rugnetta: To hear more about this side of the story,
28:54
please go listen to the 05/21/2025 episode of close all
28:59
tabs, which you can find at npr.org, k q e d Org, and
29:04
wherever you get your podcasts, just search for close all tabs.
29:09
I talked to Morgan in more detail about the regulatory
29:12
environment which keeps explicit media suppressed and she talks
29:16
at length about hentai's cultural position. It's a great
29:20
episode. Please go listen. Thanks to Morgan Sung,
29:23
Christopher Agusa, Maya Cueva, and Jen Chen for co producing
29:27
this segment with us and inviting me to talk with them on
29:30
close all tabs.
29:30
It was a huge pleasure and thanks also to Arly Petit for
29:35
chatting with us. We'll put links to her work in the show
29:38
notes. There were easily a dozen or more ideas that didn't make
29:52
its way into this segment. I feel like we've just barely
29:56
sketched an outline of what's possible to be said here. Like,
30:00
didn't get to, how does the position of being a hentai
30:03
artist online right now possibly predict the position of all
30:07
digital creators in a post platform Internet?
30:10
How do the governance structures of platforms inform or shape
30:15
wider culture, if they are in fact the powerful arbiters of
30:19
popularity that so many of them claim to be and that so many of
30:23
us, I think, give them credit as being. What does creative
30:27
community look like on an internet defined by separate but
30:30
connected websites versus platforms where, you know, if
30:35
not everybody, then big communities of people gather. I
30:39
would love to hear your thoughts on the post platform Internet
30:43
and what explicit media might predict of its arrival. Related
30:48
to these ideas or not, you can email us, leave us a voice memo,
30:51
all the ways you can get ahold of us are in the show notes.
31:30
Hans Buetow: So Avery Dame Griff, is this new version of
31:34
the bill meaningfully different from the one that died last fall
31:37
in which supporters said it would protect children by
31:40
forcing platforms to deal with, quote, unquote, harms that they
31:43
faced? But critics were saying of it that it would have given
31:47
overly broad license for politically motivated targeting
31:51
of marginalized groups. Have the authors addressed those
31:55
criticisms at all in this new bill?
31:58
Avery Dame-Griff: Not really.
32:17
Georgia Hampton: What do you think is the oldest piece of
32:18
clothing you have?
32:21
Boone Ashworth: Oh my god. That's such a good question. I
32:25
have a pair of pants. I have a pair of pants that I inherited
32:29
from my grandfather when he passed away. And they're a pair
32:33
of perfectly good jeans and I wore them a whole bunch.
32:37
And then they got a tear in them And I have sewn them back up and
32:42
patched them. And it's a little unsightly, but I still wear them
32:46
when I'm not, like, going to work or anything because it's a
32:50
it there is sentimental value in that pair of pants. So I and I
32:55
don't know how long he had them before I started wearing them,
32:59
but it they're they're they're pretty old.
33:02
Georgia Hampton: That's Boone Ashworth. He's a staff writer at
33:06
Wired's Gear Desk. A lot of his reporting covers sustainability
33:10
and repairability, and it's those two things that made me
33:14
want to talk to him for this segment. I've been curious how
33:18
the ongoing tariff situation in The United States is going to
33:22
affect the way we buy clothing online. And by that, I really
33:27
mean on specific Chinese based sites like Shein.
33:30
Tiktok Clip: This Black Friday, shop crazy low prices on Shein
33:34
and see why Shein is America's top fashion destination.
33:42
Georgia Hampton: From the jump, the Trump administration has
33:45
been constantly moving the goalposts on its tariff plans on
33:49
Chinese goods entering The US. Back in February, the goal was a
33:53
10% tariff across the board. In March, it changed to 20%. On
33:59
what Trump ridiculously called Liberation Day on April 2, his
34:04
administration tacked on an additional 34% tax on Chinese
34:09
products. Then, a few weeks later, the administration
34:13
announced that it will actually impose a 125% tariff on Chinese
34:19
products effective immediately.
34:22
As of me writing this segment, there's tariffs ranging from
34:26
that 125% to 145%, or a package fee of a hundred dollars. But
34:34
that's also going to change on June 1 when the package fee is
34:38
set to double to $200.
34:41
Boone Ashworth: We've done a lot of reporting here on Wired about
34:43
how just it's going to be, you know, months later is when these
34:47
effects are really going to start kicking in. I mean, you're
34:49
you're seeing price increases now across the board. But it
34:53
will be a bit before, you know, shelves are empty if we get to
34:56
that point. But we are rapidly approaching it.
35:00
Georgia Hampton: And as these changes happen, a lot of Chinese
35:03
companies have tried to swerve the worst of these tariffs in a
35:07
few ways, such as shipping products like iPhones to India
35:11
in order to get a more favorable rate, or relying on what's
35:15
already stored in US based facilities.
35:18
Boone Ashworth: All of these retailers have large stockpiles,
35:21
like months worth of stockpiles of whatever products they're
35:24
trying to sell that they're probably gonna be able to go
35:28
through for a little bit of time. I think as we get closer
35:31
to the end of the year is when we're gonna start really seeing
35:34
things not be able to be produced in quite the same way
35:39
if tariffs are still at the levels they are.
35:44
Georgia Hampton: For consumers, the vibe in response to the
35:47
tariffs, at least on my feeds, has been buy now before it's too
35:52
late. And a lot of the panic I've been interested in centers
35:57
specifically around fast fashion brands.
36:01
Tiktok Clip: I'm not typically one to crash out on TikTok, but
36:04
what do you mean I have to pay $277.90 in duties on an outfit
36:11
that's a hundred and $70.
36:13
Boone Ashworth: The tariffs are shaking and I'm really not
36:15
kidding.
36:15
Tiktok Clip: I get it that we're not supposed to shop at Sheen
36:17
anymore. I get it. But where am I supposed to go for cheap
36:20
clothes now? Where am I gonna go? Amazon?
36:22
Is that much better? I can't shop at Zara. I can't shop at
36:26
Revolve all the time. It is too expensive. So where do I go just
36:30
for some cheap cute clothes?
36:31
Make it make sense.
36:37
Georgia Hampton: Shein and other budget sites like it, such as
36:40
TEMU, have previously benefited from the de minimis exception, a
36:44
tariff loophole that allows goods that cost less than $800
36:48
to come into The US duty free. And that's great for a brand
36:53
like Shein, where you can basically buy anything for a
36:57
price that is unbelievably low. Like, unnervingly, I am begging
37:03
you to think about why this is so cheap in the first place low.
37:07
The cheapness of Sheehan's clothing has also made it
37:10
virtually essential to the online trend cycle, especially
37:14
during the peak of micro trends. With prices so cheap, you can
37:20
really try on whatever style is in right now without worrying
37:24
about investing in clothing that might be out of fashion in a
37:27
matter of weeks.
37:29
Want to put together a mob wife aesthetic fit? Great. Because
37:33
you can buy a floor length bodycon dress in cheetah print
37:37
on Shein with a purse to match for the low, low price of
37:40
$18.99. If I type in office siren into the Shein search bar,
37:46
one of the top results is a $15.23 2 piece set titled,
37:53
Cosmina two Pieces Elegant Outfit for Business Casual Women
37:57
Office Siren Style Similar to Influencer Design, coquette old
38:02
money style sexy. There is no presumption that the clothes you
38:07
order from Shein will be high quality or even necessarily look
38:12
like the pictures online.
38:14
The point is the price. Regardless of the trend du jour,
38:18
Shein has something for you at a price so unimaginably affordable
38:23
that it almost feels ridiculous not to buy it. And if something
38:28
falls apart, you can just buy another pair of $9 Palazzo pants
38:32
and call it a day. It encourages a shopping experience that is
38:36
all about buying new, buying cheap, and buying a lot.
38:41
Boone Ashworth: The whole promise of these sites was, you
38:43
know, buying something so incredibly cheap and feeling
38:46
like you, you know, shopping like a billionaire. You're
38:49
you're getting these incredible deals. I think if that goes away
38:53
a little bit, then just that sentiment, that feeling of, oh,
38:56
I'm getting this crazy deal for all of these clothes will go
39:00
away. And then I think that kind of just like takes away a little
39:02
bit of the value prop for sites like this. So I don't I I I
39:07
think that prices might not skyrocket all that much quite
39:11
yet, But I don't know if they need to get all that much higher
39:15
before people start to feel the pinch a little bit more.
39:18
Georgia Hampton: And if that happens, where will people go?
39:22
Boone Ashworth: You know, back Amazon. I mean, maybe we maybe
39:25
we all pull a Macklemore and go to the thrift shop. Sorry.
39:34
Georgia Hampton: But I mean, yeah, that is kind of what's
39:37
happening on some corners of the Internet. Beyond your brick and
39:40
mortar vintage stores, resale apps like Depop and Poshmark
39:44
have been exploding in popularity. Last year, Depop
39:49
grossed $85,000,000 in revenue. And you can actually buy a lot
39:55
of Sheehan clothing on Depop. And it's still, like, single
39:59
digits price point cheap.
40:01
So sure. Yeah. We should all be buying secondhand more in
40:05
general. It's usually more economical. It's a nice way to
40:09
avoid contributing to the overproduction of new clothing.
40:12
It's also a much more intentional way of shopping. On
40:17
Shein, using their website is like scrolling TikTok, an
40:21
endless list of garments that you can just page through
40:24
forever, add to cart, and purchase without really thinking
40:28
about what you're even buying. It creates this online shopping
40:32
landscape that overvalues the performance of having stuff at
40:37
the cost of any individual piece of clothing. A single pair of
40:41
pants isn't special in this ecosystem. Having the ability to
40:46
buy 12 pairs of pants is the thrill you get here.
40:50
Volume is the name of the game. The people I saw worrying about
40:55
the possible price hikes on Shein were overwhelmingly people
40:59
who make haul content. And the emotional payoff of making those
41:04
videos doesn't come from finding that one dress you love. It's
41:08
about having this huge bag of stuff that's trendy right now
41:14
because that's also crucial to this performance based shopping
41:17
experience. On Shein, you can buy an entire closet's worth of
41:23
office siren inspired clothing at the drop of a hat, instantly
41:27
cementing you as an authority on that trend or whatever trend is
41:32
hot right now.
41:33
And trendy in this context just means single use clothing
41:38
destined to go out of style and be doomed for the donation pile.
41:42
More clothes for the trash island in the Pacific Ocean. So
41:50
what happens is this feedback loop of trends and content
41:54
around shopping that is built on this foundation where clothing
41:58
is just as important to you as how much of it you're able to
42:01
get. But with the incoming tariffs threatening to disrupt
42:05
this ecosystem of mass purchasing, I think something's
42:09
gotta give. I wanna answer the question I asked Boone at the
42:16
top of this segment.
42:18
What's the oldest piece of clothing you own? I do have some
42:21
hand me downs that are older than I am, but the oldest item
42:24
that I bought are a pair of plain black Doc Marten leather
42:29
boots. I got them when I was 19, and they're perfect. They've
42:35
traveled around the world with me. They've been waterlogged and
42:38
caked with mud and dust and left scarred and nicked by who even
42:43
knows what.
42:43
I've replaced the laces multiple times. And honestly, I should
42:48
probably do that again soon. This winter, I finally resoled
42:51
them. They're my favorite shoes. They carry a lot of sentimental
42:56
weight for me.
42:57
And with the deal's forward mentality of mass ordering from
43:01
Shein, you just won't get that. There's no sentimentality there.
43:08
And I just wonder if in the midst of these conversations
43:12
about tariffs and the changing costs of everything, if what
43:15
might be worth looking at is how we emotionally relate to the
43:19
clothing we buy. Or frankly, the clothes we already have in the
43:25
first place. So this dovetails quite nicely into something
43:35
you've written about before, which is the right to repair.
43:40
Could you give me a sense of what that factors in to dealing
43:46
with the ongoing tariff situation?
43:49
Boone Ashworth: Yeah. So so the right to repair is sort of the
43:53
broad term for a general movement of people who want it
43:57
to be easier to fix the stuff that you already own. Cars are a
44:01
great example of this. If your windshield breaks, you don't
44:03
replace the whole car. You get to replace just the windshield.
44:06
And, yes, that costs money, but it's cheaper than buying a brand
44:10
new vehicle. So the idea is kind of having that, for all the
44:15
devices that we own, whether it's computers, smartphones, you
44:18
know, smart watches, heck, even clothes.
44:21
Georgia Hampton: When I resold my Docs, it wasn't cheap, but it
44:24
was definitely cheaper than buying a new pair of boots and
44:28
breaking them in. Plus, I could never replace them because, I
44:34
mean, I did spend a lot of time breaking them in, but also
44:36
because they're special. I don't want to replace them. Following
44:41
the conversation around the tariffs and clothing in
44:44
particular, I've been wondering if repairing instead of buying
44:49
could become, I mean, the trend du jour. Or better yet, break us
44:55
out of the trend dominated shopping cycle entirely.
44:59
But that also goes completely against the kind of shopping
45:03
that Sheehan and its cohort of sites have built their entire
45:07
empires upon.
45:08
Boone Ashworth: You know, I guess what value you find in the
45:11
clothes that you are wearing will will change based on, you
45:16
know, how much new stuff you're able to buy, what the options
45:19
are. And I also think it's gonna depend on the product too.
45:23
Right? It's gonna depend on if it's something that is easily
45:26
repairable. Something that you already got cheap might not be
45:31
the best quality and so it might just not last longer.
45:33
And that's that's the problem with something like that.
45:36
Georgia Hampton: That's the thing. Right? Like, is it even
45:39
worth it to try to mend your paper thin miniskirt you got for
45:43
$3 when you could just buy another one, even for a slightly
45:48
more expensive price. And that's the lure of Shein. Right?
45:52
It's so easy. It's so cheap. It's like breathing. You don't
45:57
have to think about it. But I do think there's merit here in
46:02
thinking beyond what a site can sell us.
46:06
And instead, consider how we interact with what we buy in a
46:10
way that isn't about the promise of volume, but instead the
46:14
promise of longevity. Where value is not determined by how
46:19
much you buy, it's about having an active relationship with the
46:23
clothing that you have. Whether you buy it or got it in a
46:27
clothing swap or had it handed down to you by a parent, looking
46:31
at clothing through a lens of longevity encourages you to
46:34
think about what garments you actually want to come along with
46:38
you as you live your life. It's about what clothing has real
46:43
emotional value to you. Now, if I bought that Cosmina two pieces
46:49
elegant outfits for business casual women suit set from Shein
46:53
and the stitching fell apart, I wouldn't care about it because I
46:58
know I never cared that much about it anyway.
47:01
But if my beloved pair of Docs needed new laces, I wouldn't
47:05
think twice about replacing them. If the leather started to
47:08
crack, I would learn what kind of wax I needed to condition it,
47:12
and I would do that because they're important to me. They're
47:16
worth mending. And listen, I genuinely don't know if I really
47:26
believe that the tariffs are somehow going to magic away
47:30
these fast fashion heavy hitters that openly use sweatshop labor
47:34
and produce clothing that is destined for a landfill. That
47:37
just doesn't seem realistic.
47:40
But I do think that right now, we have a chance to look more
47:44
closely at our online shopping ecosystem and ask ourselves if
47:48
it's even working for us. Buying more and more clothing chains
47:55
you to a trend cycle that is always moving faster than you.
47:59
In that kind of system, more is just never going to be enough.
48:04
You are never going to catch up. And maybe it's time to just stop
48:11
chasing.
48:12
Boone Ashworth: There's a lot about our society that makes you
48:14
feel like you are not good enough because you don't have
48:17
the newest thing. Right? I mean, that's just that's just
48:20
capitalism. That's just how the the system works. And, you know,
48:25
sometimes they're right.
48:26
Sometimes you do need a newer thing. It's okay. But also, I
48:30
think this gets us into a space where if we have to deal with
48:36
these increases in prices and all these tariffs as nuts as
48:39
this whole thing is, if we can kind of take control of it in a
48:45
way by keeping control of fixing our own stuff, I think that's a
48:51
more positive way to look at it than just kind of wallowing in
48:54
the anxiety as I was doing earlier, you know.
49:06
Georgia Hampton: Boone, thank you so much for chatting with
49:07
me. Where else can people find more of your work?
49:11
Boone Ashworth: You can find my work on wired.com. If you got a
49:14
tip for me, hit me up at boon dot ten on signal.
49:23
Georgia Hampton: Before I go, I'd love to ask you the question
49:27
that started segment. What's the oldest piece of clothing you
49:31
own? What's worth keeping around? The links for how to
49:35
reach us are in the show notes.
50:12
Mike Rugnetta: Avery,
50:13
Hans Buetow: what does the reintroduction of COSA, the kids
50:16
online safety act, what does it mean?
50:18
Avery Dame-Griff: Well, COSA is basically just as bad a bill as
50:22
the last time it was introduced, and it still likely won't
50:27
effectively solve any of the problems it claims to address.
50:30
These are things that are complicated. They're
50:33
infrastructural and social issues, and they require a lot
50:35
more than government regulation, but especially not regulation
50:39
that looks like COSA. Because even with some of the changes
50:42
that the sponsor co sponsors have added, other political
50:46
actors like the Heritage Foundation have already made it
50:48
clear that they aim to use this regulation as a way and quoting
50:53
from them to guard kids against, again, quoting, from the harms
50:59
of transgender content. And this is an argument made by Evan
51:03
Greer of of fight from the future, and I agree with it.
51:06
As she's pointed out, this focus on kind of content neutral
51:09
elements we see in COSA, things like algorithmic
51:12
recommendations, they can still be used to because the bill
51:17
focuses on it to restrict access to a variety of content,
51:21
including LGBTQ content on the grounds that this content makes
51:26
youth depressed or anxious. I'm also sort of concerned about the
51:29
possibilities that platforms will just engage in anticipatory
51:32
compliance again by making it harder for youth to encounter
51:36
anything that could fall under this duty of care provision or
51:40
sort of, like, trigger any of the elements of it. And we see
51:44
this, like, with recent rollbacks of protections related
51:47
to sexuality and gender identity by YouTube and meta platforms
51:52
suggests that they're willing to shift their policies and
51:55
practices in ways that are demonstrably worse for their
52:00
queer and trans users, but will appease those in power.
52:04
Ultimately, COSA doesn't solve the problems it claims to. It's
52:08
likely just gonna become a weapon to push LGBTQ folks
52:13
further out of public life.
52:15
Hans Buetow: Even if it fails though
52:17
Avery Dame-Griff: Mhmm. Do you
52:18
Hans Buetow: think this is the last time that we see
52:20
legislation like this proposed?
52:22
Avery Dame-Griff: Oh, absolutely not.
52:43
Mike Rugnetta: That is the show we have for you this week. We're
52:46
gonna be back here in the main feed on Wednesday, June 4. I'm
52:49
gonna keep it simple. $4 a month, you can become a
52:52
Neverpost member and that helps us continue to make the show. Do
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we give you things for that $4?
52:57
Yes. To be honest, the media that you get in return pales in
53:01
comparison to the fact that you are just helping us make the
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show. We're very small and have managed to make this show what
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it is with almost no money, so imagine what we could do with
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Support your local audio first independent media and technology
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criticism collective. Are we a collective? Can we call
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ourselves a collective? I'm doing it. Collective.
53:30
Neverpost's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the
53:33
mysterious doctor first name, last name. Our senior producer
53:36
is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer.
53:39
And the show's host, that's me, is Mike Grignetta. Luminary of
53:52
the systems of pleasure, toddlers' tea time in the Noah's
53:55
Ark.
53:56
Fog, frost, and thaw for clothes of velvet, for horses.
54:02
Petrarch's inkstand ozonated sun lounges. Hail then, purveyor of
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shrimps. Almost indecency united in a joint and individual
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purpose, forth to fresh fields and pastures new. Excerpt of A
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54:24
Neverpost is a production of charts and leisure and is
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