Latest / Mini Scroll / MINI SCROLL: AI vs. literary community, Mikayla Nogueira "divorce court" GRWM scrutiny + Jack Avery speaks out

Transcript

MINI SCROLL: AI vs. literary community, Mikayla Nogueira "divorce court" GRWM scrutiny + Jack Avery speaks out · Mini Scroll

• 0:00
  Coming up today on Mini Scroll, the AI scandal rocking book
• 0:04
  talk, Mikayla Nogueira's divorce court content and Jack Avery
• 0:09
  speaks out. Hi everyone.
• 0:12
  Welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet culture podcast
• 0:16
  bringing you the biggest stories from social media, the creator
• 0:19
  economy and the digital space. Every Monday through Thursday
• 0:22
  and sometimes Fridays. I'm your host, Lauren Meissner,
• 0:26
  the founder of the Australian youth digital media brand
• 0:29
  Centennial World. Welcome back to Mini Scroll,
• 0:32
  everyone. A Friday mini scroll.
• 0:35
  So you guys know what that means.
• 0:36
  Random ass stories and cozy vibes.
• 0:39
  I have my tea here. It is like a rainy, gloomy, cold
• 0:44
  day here in Sydney. It is coming into our winter
• 0:47
  actually. Is it already winter
• 0:49
  Australians? Let me know.
• 0:50
  I never understand the seasons. I've been here for a decade, 10
• 0:53
  years and I still don't really understand when the seasons
• 0:56
  start and end. Anyways, before I get into it,
• 0:57
  Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
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  the scenes parasocial content with us, then you can subscribe
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  to our Patreon. All right, let's get into it.
• 1:20
  So the first story that I have for you guys today is there is
• 1:22
  this major controversy that is shaking the literary world both
• 1:27
  on and offline. So this prize winning short
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  story that was just published this week in the prestigious
• 1:34
  British literary magazine Granta was accused of being generated
• 1:38
  by AI after it was published and users online started tearing it
• 1:43
  apart on X and TikTok. And this is of course feeding
• 1:46
  into the conversation that we are constantly having about AI
• 1:49
  and arts and writing and all of that, which is how can we
• 1:53
  actually tell if something is AI generated or not, especially
• 1:57
  when it comes to writing. The Serpent in the Grove is the
• 2:00
  short story in question. It's by Jamir Nazir, and it won
• 2:04
  the Caribbean category of the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story
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  Prize before being published by Granta.
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  Soon after its release, readers online began pointing out what
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  they described as AI, like writing patterns, including
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  strange metaphors, repetitive phrasing and an overly polished
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  tone. So, for example, the story opens
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  with these lines. Quote They say the Grove still
• 2:26
  hums at noon. Not the bees meat industry or
• 2:29
  the clean rasp of cutlass on vine, but a belly sound as if
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  the earth swallows a shout and holds it there.
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  So researchers are saying that the word hum is one of those
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  words that just happens to be like overly used by AI.
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  And it appears again in the following paragraph.
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  AI researcher Nabil Qureshi wrote this on X Quote Well, this
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  is a first. A ChatGPT generated story won a
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  prestigious literary prize, the Commonwealth Prize.
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  Quote. Not X, not Y, but Z sentences
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  everywhere, the hums trope, and plenty of other obvious markers
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  of AI writing. A major milestone for AI at any
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  rate. So once people started
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  dissecting the actual like sentence structure and words
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  used and the writing itself, then people started looking into
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  the author's body of work to see if this is his writing style.
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  And it turns out he doesn't really have much body of work.
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  So a user named David C Porter wrote, you look this guy up and
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  all you get is stuff about this story, a book of love poems self
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  published in 2018 with a blurry stock photo on the cover and a
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  bunch of random Facebook and LinkedIn posts.
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  Speaking of those LinkedIn posts, people who have been
• 3:40
  digging into his LinkedIn say that the author also has a quote
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  obsession with AI and apparently post on LinkedIn all the time
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  about how it is a force for good.
• 3:50
  All right, so of course, then users took a short story, put it
• 3:53
  through an AI detector. I do need to caveat here that AI
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  detectors are notoriously like not accurate.
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  There's so many instances of people putting like classic
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  literary works like Jane Austen into an AI detector and it
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  coming back and saying this was likely written with AI and stuff
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  like that. So they're not super accurate.
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  However, people are still using it.
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  I think there are probably some that are like more accurate than
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  others. So someone an expert, this story
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  gets flagged by Pangram Labs as completely AI generated an oddly
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  high score. Writing from South Asia,
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  etcetera, sometimes gets flagged as some degree of generated, but
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  almost never this high. OK, so it's not just Jamir Nazir
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  though that has been flagged. So after this controversy with
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  the grant of published short story, people started looking
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  into the other short stories that won the Commonwealth Prize,
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  and several other regional winners are now being accused of
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  using AI tools in their submissions.
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  Despite the growing backlash and question, both the Commonwealth
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  Foundation and Granta have not accused the writers outright.
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  So members of both organizations say the technology used to
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  detect AI writing is still unreliable and can produce false
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  positives, Which obviously I mentioned, particularly for
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  writers whose English styles fall outside of traditional
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  Western literary norms. Granta addressed the
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  allegations, claiming the magazine had, quote, no control
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  over the selection of the Commonwealth Prize stories and
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  played no role in the jury. So they just published it like
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  they didn't choose if this was the winning story.
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  They said Granta had shown the serpent in the Grove to Claude,
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  like Claude AI, which concluded that it was, quote, almost
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  certainly not produced unaided by a human.
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  But quote, if the story has a human core, it is concentrated
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  around specific passages. And quote, AI has been used to
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  elaborate around it, they continued.
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  It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an
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  instance of AI plagiarism. We don't know yet, and perhaps
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  we will never know which honestly is the right answer.
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  Like we will probably never know for sure if this was written by
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  AI or not, unless he actually like addresses it and comes
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  forward and admits that it was. But, you know, of course people
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  are going to deny if it ever was right.
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  So I don't think we'll ever know.
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  The Commonwealth Foundation released a statement saying it
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  had launched A thorough, transparent review of the
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  selection process. In this statement, the director
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  general said the organization was aware of the growing
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  discussion surrounding generative AI and the
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  Commonwealth Short Story Prizes quote.
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  We take these claims seriously and are committed to responding
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  to them with care and transparency.
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  They explained that the Foundation did not use AI
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  detection software during the judgment process because the
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  competition involves unpublished fiction submissions.
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  According to them, uploading original, unpublished work into
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  AI detection systems could create concerns around consent
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  and ownership of writers material, which is, yeah, valid.
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  They do claim that the shortlisted writers personally
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  denied using AI. So far, only one of the writers
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  being accused of using AI in the scandal, Sharon Aru Peril, has
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  publicly denied using AI, and she's argued that parts of this
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  evidence circulating online were misleading or manipulated.
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  All right, now, on the flip side of these accusations, there are
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  lots of people who feel like we collectively as a society are in
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  this phase of like AI paranoia. Whereas Internet users, we feel
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  the constant need to question if what we are looking at online,
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  whether that's, you know, music, writing, content, art was
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  actually created by a human or not.
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  And I do think this suspicion is necessary, but it is also
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  causing a lot of like massive professional consequences for
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  those being accused of using AI, especially if they are still
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  insisting that they did not. And again, there's going to be
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  no real way to know if they did or not.
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  And now this accusation is attached to their name. 1 user
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  on TikTok wrote this is actually a huge problem with the
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  proliferation of AI. Not just people using it, which
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  is obviously shitty, but people being suspicious of every piece
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  of art. Now I saw that an AI detector
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  said Frankenstein was written by AI.
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  It's insane and another comment reads it feels like seeing
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  people join a neighborhood watch and making online citizen
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  arrests over anxiety around their ability slash inability to
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  distinguish human generated content from AI, like all
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  content on the Internet now double s as those.
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  I am not a bot. Captcha tests.
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  We actually didn't cover this last.
• 8:13
  Was it this week or last week when that Monet painting saga
• 8:16
  went on on X? I was going to cover it.
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  I think it was earlier this week.
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  And then and of all was maybe going to cover it in mini tech.
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  And then I think we just didn't cover it.
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  But a similar thing happened except in the reverse.
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  So somebody on X posted a Monet painting and claimed that they
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  made it with AI. And then literally thousands and
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  thousands and thousands of comments of people being like
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  this is exactly why AI is so shit.
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  Because like the brush strokes don't look anything like Monet
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  paintings. And like, you know, just like
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  going in about how they could without a shadow of a doubt tell
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  that this was made with AI. And then the original poster
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  came out and was like, Psych, I got you all.
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  This is actually a Monet. This is not made by AII think
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  there's a few things going on here.
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  It's like exactly what this one commenter said.
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  It's like people feeling like they're joining a neighborhood
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  watch, like making online citizen arrests around this kind
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  of like fear of AI and this confusion in this very like
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  weird place that we're at. But then it's also incredibly
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  valid that we are feeling this anxiety and confusion and
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  disdain and anger and this overreaction because literally
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  within, I don't know, 18 months, it feels like our entire worlds
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  have changed because of this technology.
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  And as you guys know, we have our own personal drama, our own
• 9:34
  personal story anecdote when it comes to people accusing us of
• 9:38
  writing our deep dives with a I've told the story like 1000
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  times because it was so diabolically untrue.
• 9:44
  And to get that accusation directly into our inbox from
• 9:47
  somebody who had stolen our script and the basic used it
• 9:51
  word for word. And then she was saying that the
• 9:53
  reason why she was allowed to do that was because she put it
• 9:56
  through an AI detector and it said it was highly likely that
• 9:59
  it was used. AI was used to write it.
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  And therefore it was just free game.
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  And I was, I've never been more shook in my life.
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  I'm like, first of all, you have no idea if AI was used to write
• 10:09
  the script. It wasn't.
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  By the way, we are slaving over here doing so much shit manually
• 10:13
  at Centennial World. For real.
• 10:15
  And second of all, what an insanely like, out of touch,
• 10:20
  entitled thing to claim that you can just take people's work
• 10:23
  because you think maybe that AI was used to create it.
• 10:29
  OK, the next story that I have for you guys today is Mikayla
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  Nogueira is facing scrutiny over how she's handled her divorce
• 10:34
  proceedings with her estranged husband, Cody.
• 10:37
  OK, let me give you a quick rundown on their relationship
• 10:39
  timeline. As we know, Michaela is like the
• 10:42
  biggest beauty tik toker, I would say in probably America.
• 10:46
  She's huge. She's incredibly famous.
• 10:49
  And Cody was her husband. So in December 2020, Michaela
• 10:53
  and Cody matched on Tinder. In January 2021, they met in
• 10:57
  person for the first time at Michaela's apartment.
• 11:00
  In November 2021, they got engaged.
• 11:03
  So just under a year after first matching, in July 2023, they got
• 11:08
  married in a very public ceremony.
• 11:11
  They had AI think it was like a People magazine shoot and they
• 11:16
  had like sponsored stuff at their wedding and people were
• 11:18
  really upset about that. And then throughout the
• 11:20
  relationship, Michaela has spoken publicly on and off about
• 11:23
  how Cody struggles with addiction.
• 11:24
  So in April 2025, Michaela shared that Cody had entered a
• 11:28
  rehab facility. And then late 2025, they
• 11:31
  mutually decided to end their marriage, although they did not
• 11:35
  publicly announce this until till February 2026, so just a
• 11:39
  couple months ago. And then in March 2026, Michaela
• 11:43
  confirmed that she started dating someone new, her high
• 11:47
  school sweetheart. And ever since then, it has been
• 11:50
  a couple months now of just a lot of content, a lot of couples
• 11:54
  content and content that is pretty shady towards Cody.
• 11:59
  And people are starting to be like, OK, what happened in that
• 12:02
  marriage? And then people are digging up
• 12:04
  Cody's social media presence. He doesn't have very much, but
• 12:07
  he does or did have an X account.
• 12:09
  And so people are digging up his tweets and his repost and stuff
• 12:12
  like that. And it seems like he is like
• 12:14
  super right wing, super mega. And that kind of aligns with
• 12:17
  some of the things that Michaela has said in terms of their
• 12:20
  divorce. She said that she was looking
• 12:22
  forward. This is very much paraphrasing,
• 12:24
  but she said at one point she was, like, looking forward to
• 12:26
  being with somebody who's, like, values aligned with her more.
• 12:30
  And yeah, so now maybe she's with that person, maybe her new
• 12:33
  boyfriend is that person for her, but they're making a lot of
• 12:36
  couples content and she's making a lot of content that's like
• 12:38
  kind of shading Cody about how like now she's finally happy.
• 12:42
  It's giving, you know what it's giving guys?
• 12:44
  It's giving Sheena. Shay, when she started dating
• 12:47
  Rob from Vanderpump Rolls, OK. When she started dating Rob
• 12:50
  after she had ended her marriage to Shay and she was like that
• 12:54
  whole time that I was with Shay, I was just thinking of Rob.
• 12:57
  I've been in love with Rob for seven years.
• 12:59
  And it's like, you were married for like 5 of those years.
• 13:02
  What are you talking about? It's giving that that's the
• 13:05
  energy it's giving. So people haven't been loving
• 13:08
  her new content with this new man and how she's been talking
• 13:10
  about her breakup and stuff. But like, I don't really
• 13:12
  subscribe to that. OK.
• 13:14
  We have no idea what went on behind the scenes.
• 13:17
  I imagine Michaela and how explosive her career became
• 13:21
  while they were married or like together.
• 13:23
  I imagine that would have been very hard on Cody.
• 13:25
  And I imagine that elements of Cody's personality and what was
• 13:29
  going on with Cody and his personal life was also very hard
• 13:32
  for Michaela. Like I think they honestly
• 13:34
  entered into a relationship at the most insane time for
• 13:39
  probably both of them and it was going to be really hard for any
• 13:43
  couple to come out of that unscathed.
• 13:46
  But yesterday she posted multiple videos getting ready
• 13:49
  for what she called divorce court, saying that she was
• 13:51
  trying to live out a fantasy of walking into divorce court and
• 13:56
  basically slang. She said this was going to be
• 13:58
  the first time she saw Cody in a long time and she wanted to look
• 14:01
  really good. A lot of lawyers on TikTok are
• 14:02
  like, OK, this is not like divorce court.
• 14:04
  This is clearly like a settlement meeting or conference
• 14:07
  or whatever. Because she said she has an
• 14:10
  actual date, like a trial date. Is that what it's called, a
• 14:13
  court date, a trial date in July?
• 14:15
  Why have it become like a legal podcast?
• 14:17
  I'm literally the last person who should ever be talking about
• 14:19
  legal things. And I feel like I've talked
• 14:21
  about it so much in the past couple of weeks.
• 14:23
  OK, so she is under fire for these videos.
• 14:25
  People are calling them disrespectful, saying that she's
• 14:28
  capitalizing off this like, really sad moment in her life
• 14:32
  when it involves another person who we know, like we very
• 14:35
  clearly know what she's talking about and who she's talking
• 14:38
  about. Get.
• 14:39
  Ready with me for divorce court. Frankly, I could throw up.
• 14:45
  I would not wish divorce on anybody.
• 14:48
  This has been the hardest thing I have ever gone through in my
• 14:51
  life. So that people made a big joke
• 14:53
  out of my divorce. But behind the scenes I have
• 14:56
  gone through hell and back. Get dressed with me for divorce
• 15:01
  court now. Quite frankly I need to be
• 15:03
  serving cunt. OK I I need the Kim cat Ash.
• 15:07
  Him at all. I think what Mckilla is quote UN
• 15:08
  quote fantasizing about is not unusual.
• 15:11
  I think a lot of women would want to look super hot seeing
• 15:15
  their acts for the first time in a long time.
• 15:18
  And I think we can disagree with how she's going about this.
• 15:22
  And we can think that it's, you know, out of touch and tacky and
• 15:26
  disrespectful while also understanding that this is like
• 15:29
  the smallest fraction of what we probably see from this
• 15:33
  experience. And what we know of their past
• 15:35
  relationship was also the smallest fraction.
• 15:38
  I am no Michaela fan but I truly believe in my heart of hearts
• 15:42
  that if another woman was posting about like getting ready
• 15:47
  to go look super hot to divorce court and posting all of these
• 15:51
  like sleigh Batty tik toks. This wealthy woman, this
• 15:55
  self-made woman. I know we can argue that the way
• 15:58
  she's made her money is from being like untrustworthy and
• 16:00
  stuff. But regardless, like if any
• 16:02
  other woman was posting this type of content, we would be
• 16:05
  like, yes, Queen, get him, get him.
• 16:08
  On that note, though, I will say the video I think the last time
• 16:11
  I reported on Michaela, aside from her divorce is like she
• 16:14
  made that video in January, I think it was where she was
• 16:17
  talking about how she's changed so much since becoming an
• 16:20
  influencer and she wants to become like more down to earth
• 16:22
  again and she wants to find herself again.
• 16:25
  And I really feel like all of the content that we've seen over
• 16:29
  the past few months with her new boyfriend, all this stuff about
• 16:33
  divorcing her husband and the way she's handled that divorce,
• 16:35
  like, I mean, her original divorce video, people were
• 16:37
  losing their minds when she's like, you're going to need to
• 16:40
  sit down. That was a crazy video.
• 16:45
  Like I'm going to say all of this has proven she was probably
• 16:51
  not super honest in that January video where she was like, I, I
• 16:55
  know I have changed too. Influencing has changed me.
• 16:58
  And I want to get back to the original down to earth Michaela.
• 17:01
  Like I haven't seen that Michaela in years and years and
• 17:05
  years. And I don't see her in this new
• 17:07
  content. All right.
• 17:08
  And the last story that I have for you guys today is an update
• 17:10
  on the Gabby Gonzalez Jack Avery story that I talked about
• 17:14
  yesterday. Gabby Gonzalez for like a very
• 17:17
  quick recap, is a TikTok star who was dating this artist, Jack
• 17:21
  Avery years ago. They were both teenagers.
• 17:24
  They got pregnant. And in 2021, Gabby, her father,
• 17:29
  and her then boyfriend started trying to hire a hitman to kill
• 17:34
  Jack over custody issues with their child.
• 17:37
  So now they've been arrested. And today Jack has made a
• 17:39
  statement he wrote on Instagram. A few days ago, 3 individuals
• 17:43
  were arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill me.
• 17:46
  One of those individuals is the mother of my daughter.
• 17:48
  For years, my family and I have endured intense public scrutiny,
• 17:52
  false accusations, and deeply painful attacks on our character
• 17:55
  and reputation. Throughout that time, I chose to
• 17:57
  remain silent out of respect for the legal process and most
• 18:00
  importantly, for my daughter. Right now, my focus is on being
• 18:03
  the best father I can be. I'm thankful to have sole
• 18:06
  custody of my daughter, Lavender, who is safe, healthy
• 18:08
  and deeply loved. I look forward to continuing to
• 18:11
  build a peaceful and stable life for her.
• 18:13
  I also want to express my sincere gratitude to my family,
• 18:16
  friends, law enforcement and the Los Angeles County District
• 18:19
  Attorney's Office for their support throughout this process.
• 18:21
  And finally, to everyone who has supported me and withheld
• 18:24
  judgement while the truth unfolded, thank you.
• 18:26
  Always seek the truth. I got so many messages yesterday
• 18:29
  from people being like, you didn't need to caveat that,
• 18:32
  like, you don't know anyone who's tried to hire a hitman
• 18:34
  before. And I was like, actually, yeah,
• 18:37
  true. This is such a sad story.
• 18:40
  It was a really sweet post because when you slide across,
• 18:42
  like when you swipe across, the second photo that he had on this
• 18:45
  Instagram story was a picture of him and his daughter.
• 18:48
  But yeah, so horrifying. I was trying to find on Reddit
• 18:53
  what he meant by his family going through, like, painful
• 18:59
  attacks on their character and reputation, and I couldn't find
• 19:03
  anything. So if you guys know, like
• 19:05
  comment down below so everybody can see.
• 19:08
  I could not find anything, understandably.
• 19:11
  Now Reddit is literally just flooded with all of this content
• 19:15
  about, you know, stuff that's come out this week.
• 19:18
  So it was hard to find older posts about this.
• 19:20
  Although he did do a Zack saying interview a couple years ago, I
• 19:23
  think it was 2022 where he talked about this.
• 19:25
  He talked about how he found out the FBI came to his house and
• 19:28
  told him that somebody was trying to have him killed, like
• 19:32
  hire a hitman to have him killed.
• 19:34
  But in that interview, he talks about the mother of his child,
• 19:37
  like as a target of that attack as well.
• 19:40
  So I don't know if at that point he didn't know that Gabby was
• 19:45
  behind it or partially behind it or if he was trying to protect
• 19:49
  her in that moment. I'm not sure.
• 19:51
  Anyways, guys, that's it for mini scroll today.
• 19:53
  Thank you so much for listening. I love you guys.
• 19:55
  Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
• 19:57
  Please Spotify star rate US and I will talk to you on Monday.
• 20:01
  Bye. Centennial World podcast network
• 20:03
  operates on Gadigal land. We would like to acknowledge the
• 20:06
  Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of this
• 20:09
  land, and pay our respects to elders both past and present.