Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI SCROLL: Teacher Bae outfits backlash, Chloe Barry-Hang's Afghanistan trip + Audra Winter BookTok update

Transcript

MINI SCROLL: Teacher Bae outfits backlash, Chloe Barry-Hang's Afghanistan trip + Audra Winter BookTok update · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  Hi everyone, welcome to Mini scroll, the daily Internet
• 0:04
  culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
• 0:07
  media, the creator economy and the digital space every Monday
• 0:10
  through Thursday and sometimes Fridays.
• 0:13
  I'm your host, Lauren Meisner, the founder of the youth digital
• 0:17
  media brand Centennial World. Welcome back to mini scroll,
• 0:21
  everyone. All right, before we get into
• 0:24
  today's episode, Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
• 0:27
  Please Spotify star rate US leave us an apple review
• 0:30
  subscribe to us on YouTube. All of those things.
• 0:33
  They all help us so much. Oh, buy us a coffee if you feel
• 0:36
  so inclined, you want to show your support and help keep us
• 0:39
  going. All of that helps us so much All
• 0:41
  right the first story that I have for you guys today is an
• 0:45
  account called teacher BAE is going viral for her school
• 0:50
  outfits. So a woman named miss Williams
• 0:53
  with the handle at that girl under score peachy is going
• 0:56
  viral on TikTok. She is apparently a teacher and
• 0:59
  she is wearing some inappropriate outfits to school.
• 1:02
  I'll put some photos. But for those of you who are
• 1:04
  just listening, she basically wears like body con dresses,
• 1:08
  strappy stiletto heels, high slits in her skirts.
• 1:12
  Some of her outfits I think are like relatively OK and others
• 1:15
  are like you look like you're going to the club.
• 1:18
  And she has a lot of pictures that she's posting on Instagram
• 1:21
  and TikTok as well of her like posing at the flagpole outside
• 1:25
  of school and posing in front of a school bus and all of these
• 1:28
  things that just feel kind of questionable.
• 1:32
  She apparently teaches 10 and 11 year olds.
• 1:34
  But I feel like regardless of what age she's teaching some of
• 1:38
  these outfits and these photos and this content is definitely
• 1:43
  questionable. So a lot of this content is
• 1:44
  going viral. And she has addressed the
• 1:47
  backlash. To be fair, what people are
• 1:50
  saying, some of the stuff is pretty horrific.
• 1:52
  So she made a video driving to work the other day in which she
• 1:54
  essentially told people to like mind their own business and said
• 1:57
  that her students don't care what she looks like and they're
• 1:59
  not looking at her in any type of way and everybody should just
• 2:03
  like, mind their own business. I think the thing that's the
• 2:05
  most interesting to me about Teacher Bay and just like in
• 2:09
  general, the world that we live in now with TikTok and social
• 2:13
  media, I cannot believe how many teachers are on TikTok showing
• 2:20
  like their students, their classroom, their school, like
• 2:23
  where they specifically teach. I think it would be so bizarre
• 2:27
  being a kid right now in school and having a teacher that had a
• 2:30
  really big social media presence and it hinges on them being a
• 2:34
  teacher. I mean, I understand like
• 2:36
  teachers need to be paid way more than they do get paid.
• 2:39
  So I understand wanting to have a social media side hustle.
• 2:42
  I'm not saying that they shouldn't be doing that, but I
• 2:44
  think it's a different if you're a student and you're at home
• 2:47
  after school scrolling on TikTok and then your teacher comes up
• 2:50
  and it's your classroom or you can hear your voice in the
• 2:53
  background of one of their videos and you didn't know or
• 2:56
  maybe you did know that they were recording.
• 2:58
  But regardless. And there's also all this
• 3:00
  content specifically I'm thinking of like teacher Bay,
• 3:02
  there's content of her like outfits of the day, right?
• 3:04
  So she's like in the hallway and you can like see students in the
• 3:07
  background. And these are like viral videos
• 3:09
  and people are not being very nice on them.
• 3:11
  And I just think it's such a bizarre, like dystopian reality
• 3:16
  that we live in. I can't imagine walking through
• 3:19
  the halls at school and seeing a teacher filming a tick tock.
• 3:21
  Like, I can't even picture that. I don't even think I ever saw my
• 3:24
  teachers on a cell phone. I don't know how there's not
• 3:26
  rules against recording social media content and posting it
• 3:30
  publicly to social media at school.
• 3:32
  Like how is it legal for a teacher, whether the students
• 3:36
  are the subject of the video or not to like legally be recording
• 3:40
  minors? They could be in the background
• 3:42
  like I said, but like regardless, recording minors and
• 3:44
  posting that publicly to the Internet for possibly millions
• 3:47
  of people to see. I just think that's so bizarre.
• 3:50
  OK, the next story that I have for you guys.
• 3:52
  This is a pretty niche Australian story, but I feel
• 3:55
  like if you are on Australian in TikTok, especially if you're a
• 3:59
  woman around my age, you probably are already across
• 4:02
  this. So Australian influencer Chloe
• 4:04
  Berry Hang is being accused by several Australian podcasters of
• 4:08
  taking a sponsored trip by the Taliban to Afghanistan.
• 4:13
  So Chloe Berry Hang, who goes by Chloe Baradinski on TikTok, is
• 4:16
  an Australian travel and lifestyle creator, and she's
• 4:19
  also the owner of the Robeware brand K Juliet.
• 4:22
  She recently did a trip around South Asia, which included
• 4:25
  Afghanistan and kind of off the beaten trail.
• 4:27
  Travel is a big part of Chloe's life and thus has been a big
• 4:31
  part of her online brand for a very long time.
• 4:33
  I follow Chloe. I saw a lot of this content go
• 4:36
  up in real time. And she did include a lot in
• 4:39
  this content about what it was like to interact with the
• 4:42
  Taliban. And she didn't shy away from a
• 4:44
  lot of the more complex criticisms around traveling to
• 4:48
  Afghanistan and publicly posting about her experiences there
• 4:53
  while it is under the Taliban. So Chloe has since come to
• 4:56
  TikTok to talk about about how a variety of Australian podcasters
• 5:00
  are essentially accusing her of being sponsored by the Taliban,
• 5:04
  either directly or indirectly. She posted a couple of videos
• 5:08
  addressing the situation, including clips from various
• 5:10
  podcasts that were talking about her.
• 5:12
  So we need a talk. Who the fuck started the rumor
• 5:15
  that my trip to Afghanistan was sponsored by the Taliban?
• 5:18
  You can just get behind a microphone now and talk shit out
• 5:21
  of your fucking ass. Because they didn't do any DD.
• 5:24
  They would have taken all of about two seconds for them to
• 5:28
  e-mail me or DM. You want Adm fine asking was my
• 5:33
  trip to Afghanistan sponsored or gifted?
• 5:35
  I would have said are you out of your fucking mind?
• 5:39
  No. And to be honest, I get a lot of
• 5:40
  hate. There's articles, there's
• 5:42
  podcasts about me, videos I ignore myself that it doesn't
• 5:46
  really impact me. I'm not going to lie, this
• 5:47
  impacted me because it felt malicious and it felt like they
• 5:50
  would try to paint a really negative picture about me
• 5:53
  without doing any research. That they verbatim said we
• 5:56
  haven't watched any of her videos yet.
• 5:58
  Continued to go on this rampage about my character and it felt
• 6:02
  like an attack on my character. They said I was not political.
• 6:06
  I'm sorry. What the fuck do you call my
• 6:08
  budget wrap up each year? Federal budgets, my favorite
• 6:10
  night of the year. What do you call my ranting?
• 6:13
  Telling people to go vote? Next point.
• 6:15
  They're like, what are you doing over there to help?
• 6:17
  You're making these videos and that's all you're doing.
• 6:20
  I'm sorry I forgot I got to shove the camera in the kids
• 6:24
  faces as I was giving out books and crayons to kids in a remote
• 6:28
  school where the teachers have to fucking work for free because
• 6:31
  another podcast has accused me of being paid or sponsored by
• 6:36
  the Taliban to go to my trip to Afghanistan.
• 6:39
  I'm going to say if you have a trigger warning for bullying,
• 6:42
  it's a very malicious podcast. It's a really hard.
• 6:46
  Lesson in these clips, even if the podcasters didn't directly
• 6:49
  say like Chloe must be paid by the Taliban, they essentially
• 6:54
  used her as the example of influencers who have been paid
• 6:59
  by governments or groups to spread like positive messaging
• 7:02
  about a country or a situation. And that is a valid conversation
• 7:06
  to be had. However, the problem in Chloe's
• 7:09
  case specifically is that it's not true.
• 7:11
  And now these people with big platforms and these media brands
• 7:14
  with big platforms have gone out and said to possibly hundreds of
• 7:18
  thousands of people that this one creator is doing paid
• 7:23
  propaganda for the Taliban. And that is incredibly
• 7:27
  irresponsible messaging. Even if they did not directly
• 7:30
  say those words, the context in which they are using Chloe as
• 7:34
  the example and the messaging around those segments absolutely
• 7:38
  implies it from my opinion. In Chloe's videos, she maintains
• 7:43
  that these podcasters didn't actually reach out to Fact Check
• 7:47
  their claims and ask her like, hey, are you part of this cohort
• 7:51
  that is allegedly being paid or sponsored by the Taliban?
• 7:55
  Now there are obviously a lot of moving parts to this story and
• 7:58
  there are valid questions around I mean first of all, if how, why
• 8:02
  influencers are possibly being paid by groups like the Taliban.
• 8:06
  There are other valid questions around if it is like ethical to
• 8:10
  be traveling to these places and posting about that on social
• 8:13
  media. Whether you think Chloe should
• 8:15
  or should not have gone to Afghanistan and posted it, the
• 8:19
  reality is that she is being used essentially as like the
• 8:22
  face of this conversation as if she did it.
• 8:25
  What is also really interesting to me about this story is that
• 8:28
  both new media and traditional media were involved in producing
• 8:34
  episodes that implied these things.
• 8:37
  So kind of the usual conversation that we have around
• 8:40
  the quality of like TikTok or modern journalism doesn't really
• 8:45
  apply to this story because it happened across the board.
• 8:48
  And I think another interesting part here is how the industry's
• 8:53
  move toward conversational journalism and reporting on,
• 8:57
  like, podcasts and TikTok sometimes can veer into that,
• 9:02
  like, unprofessional territory. And I'm absolutely certain I've
• 9:05
  been guilty of this many times. But I do think there is a
• 9:08
  conversation to be had around, yeah, like, these kind of
• 9:11
  conversational pieces when a lot of times it is somebody, like,
• 9:15
  delivering the news to another person on the podcast.
• 9:19
  And then it's like a reactionary segment when you're feeding off
• 9:23
  someone. It's so easy.
• 9:24
  I'm sure you guys have all experiences.
• 9:25
  And especially it happens, like, when you're performing in front
• 9:28
  of a camera or on a microphone for something like a podcast
• 9:31
  where it just kind of like, gets away from you and you end up
• 9:33
  saying things that you would have not said if you were in any
• 9:37
  other circumstance. But you're almost putting on a
• 9:39
  bit of a performance, and you're like, feeding off of each other.
• 9:42
  And it just kind of snowballs. But unfortunately, now what has
• 9:45
  happened, aside from Chloe's name being dragged through the
• 9:48
  mud. And I can't even imagine what
• 9:50
  this feels like for her. You know, know, people accusing
• 9:53
  her, whether like I said, directly or indirectly heavily
• 9:56
  implying or making the association that she is or is
• 9:59
  possibly being paid doing paid propaganda, undisclosed paid
• 10:05
  propaganda for the Taliban. A lot of the valid discussion
• 10:08
  around this topic and that it is happening on YouTube and with
• 10:13
  other creators has been undermined because the
• 10:16
  association with Chloe was inaccurate.
• 10:19
  And if there are other examples that are known, it's bizarre
• 10:22
  that Chloe was brought into this at all then, because there was
• 10:26
  no evidence of that regardless in her content.
• 10:28
  So if there are known examples, why would we not just be using
• 10:32
  those? And in the case of Afghanistan
• 10:34
  specifically, The New York Times did publish a piece in 2024
• 10:38
  explaining how, quote, the Taliban fosters Youtubers to
• 10:42
  promote its image. So there is evidence out there
• 10:45
  that this is happening with names attached to it.
• 10:47
  So that's what I wanted to cover with this story.
• 10:49
  We did reach out to Chloe, and we reached out to two of the
• 10:52
  podcasts for comment on the story.
• 10:55
  No one got back to us in time for this episode, except for one
• 10:58
  of the podcasts, which mentioned that they will be issuing an
• 11:00
  address later today, and that was essentially their statement.
• 11:03
  So that's the story. It's not something I ever
• 11:07
  thought I would be covering on mini scroll, but I thought it
• 11:09
  was important. OK.
• 11:11
  And the last story that I have for you guys is I have an update
• 11:14
  on the Book Talk saga with Age of Scorpius.
• 11:17
  So in early August, we reported on this Book Talk saga with
• 11:20
  author Audra Winter, who built a following on TikTok documenting
• 11:24
  her experience writing her first book, Age of Scorpius.
• 11:27
  She'd spent 10 years writing it and was self-publishing it.
• 11:30
  She put it on presale. She got over like 6000 orders,
• 11:34
  which I guess is unprecedented for a new author.
• 11:37
  Everyone was so excited. It was going really well.
• 11:39
  And then the book launched and it was immediately slammed.
• 11:43
  Reader said it was poorly written and it had so many
• 11:46
  errors. The backlash actually got so bad
• 11:48
  she announced that she would be rewriting it.
• 11:52
  So now the update she has released the first revised
• 11:55
  chapter. And people have taken a lot of
• 11:58
  issue with the messaging around this re release because they say
• 12:01
  it feels like Audra and her new editor Caitlin are trying to put
• 12:04
  like all the blame for the initial book flopping on its
• 12:08
  previous editors. So how this happened is Audra
• 12:11
  essentially returned from social media after a bit of a break
• 12:15
  with AQ and a of text slides on TikTok that were apparently
• 12:21
  answered by her new editor, Caitlin.
• 12:23
  So this post was apparently not by Audra.
• 12:27
  It was like AQ and A that Caitlin was doing in text format
• 12:31
  on Audra's TikTok. I'll read some of the slides.
• 12:34
  Question, how does it feel knowing she prioritized as an
• 12:37
  Audra hiring 8 to 10 artists before an editor when the
• 12:40
  criticism was entirely about her writing?
• 12:42
  So Audra's project was like a mix of visual and written work.
• 12:47
  OK, so they're saying, I guess, like she hired a bunch of
• 12:49
  artists to focus on the visual of it and the graphics and the
• 12:53
  design and the illustrations over editors.
• 12:56
  This is allegedly what Caitlin said after speaking with Audra
• 12:59
  and clarifying her goal for this project.
• 13:01
  It doesn't really bother me. She's taking a multimedia,
• 13:04
  interdisciplinary approach, which is unusual, but the art
• 13:07
  and the text are two separate elements.
• 13:09
  She had both developmental and copy editors in addition to
• 13:12
  several artists. Both editors were hired before
• 13:14
  any of the artists were brought on board, but the editing was
• 13:17
  not sufficient. The art has since been largely
• 13:19
  put on hold while we focus on the text since that's what
• 13:22
  customers were concerned about. Another question, what steps is
• 13:25
  this editor taking to avoid the previous editors mistakes?
• 13:29
  If two former editors signed off on the previous edition and let
• 13:32
  it go to print despite its rough condition, what is this editor
• 13:36
  doing to make sure she doesn't make the same mistake?
• 13:38
  OK so again, this is literally saying like it was the editors
• 13:41
  the two previous editors fault for Audra's writing Quote.
• 13:45
  I have looked over the edits from both editors.
• 13:47
  While both editors comments were correct, both the developmental
• 13:50
  and copy editor provided that were acceptable into the
• 13:53
  manuscript. Neither of them were nearly as
• 13:55
  thorough as they needed to be. Developmental and copy editing
• 13:58
  aside, there should have been a line at it.
• 14:01
  These issues were obvious given readers and my own confusion
• 14:04
  while reading the book. I've read the manuscript in full
• 14:06
  and provided both inline comments as well as thorough
• 14:09
  feedback on my thoughts of the manuscript.
• 14:11
  I was shocked by how many elements of the world building
• 14:13
  were dropped in without an explanation.
• 14:15
  That's something the previous developmental editor should have
• 14:18
  picked up on. So yes, this Q&A is just filled
• 14:21
  with jabs at her other editors and people feel like whether it
• 14:26
  was actually Caitlin that wrote this or Audra, there's clearly a
• 14:30
  lack of accountability going on here.
• 14:32
  Unfortunately, a lot of people have said the 1st chapter is
• 14:35
  still not very good, and it just seems like in general, Audra
• 14:39
  seems like the kind of person that probably can't take
• 14:42
  feedback on board. So that's the update for now.
• 14:45
  Anyways guys, that's it for Mini Scroll today.
• 14:47
  Thank you so much for listening. I love you guys.
• 14:49
  Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
• 14:52
  Annabelle will talk to you tomorrow and then I will talk to
• 14:54
  you on Thursday. Bye.