Fryders and Alligator Alcatraz tours: When trolls get inventive

Ben and Amory share two stories about some out-of-the-box internet trolling. First, Amory tries to untangle a web of rumors surrounding an unusual dish from New Zealand. Then, Ben takes us aboard Terri's Tourz, an alleged Everglade tourist attraction claiming to offer the nation's first ever tours of the South Florida Detention Center known as Alligator Alcatraz. Show notes: 3 Facts About New Zealand I Didn’t Know Until I Moved Here https://alannairving.medium.com/3-facts-about-new-zealand-i-didnt-know-until-i-moved-here-28208ef8b700(Medium) Was this post a joke? https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/8u2xmy/was_this_post_a_joke/ (r/newzealand) Terri's Tourz https://www.terristourz.com/alligatoralcatraz

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:12Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.

• 1:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sorry, I can't hear you.

• 1:17Amory Sivertson?

  Shut up. Yes, you can.

• 1:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  What?

• 1:22Amory Sivertson?

  I'm not buying it, Johnson. You're trolling me.

• 1:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is some inventive trolling, isn't it? It's inventive.

• 1:28Amory Sivertson?

  I feel like working on this episode has made me question everything.

• 1:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow. What's today's question everything? Hit me.

• 1:38Amory Sivertson?

  I guess I'll start with a, um, a simple question, a humble question.

• 1:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mm-hmm. Peanut butter and jelly.

• 1:46Amory Sivertson?

  Wow, you're in the right headspace, I gotta say.

• 1:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 1:49Amory Sivertson?

  Wrong answer, but right headspace, which is, I was gonna ask you about something you've eaten.

• 1:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 1:54Amory Sivertson?

  Have you ever eaten a frieder?

• 1:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Frieder?

• 1:57Amory Sivertson?

  Yes.

• 1:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  Don't know what a frieder is.

• 2:00Amory Sivertson?

  It's a fried spider.

• 2:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  A what? No.

• 2:05Amory Sivertson?

  A fried spider.

• 2:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  Nope. No, I will not.

• 2:08Amory Sivertson?

  My story this week.

• 2:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 2:09Amory Sivertson?

  It's a tribute to you.

• 2:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Find someone else. Find someone else to co-host this episode with you. Immediately find someone else. No.

• 2:20Amory Sivertson?

  Today on Endless Thread from WBUR, we're talking trolling.

• 2:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Inventive trolling.

• 2:33Amory Sivertson?

  We are trying to answer a central question. Are fryers a thing in New Zealand? Can you read some of this AI overview summary for me for do they eat spiders in New Zealand?

• 2:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, the AI overview, which really is an interesting disruption to the way that we exist now.

• 2:55Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  And that includes the media. While not a mainstream dish, they're already hedging. Some people in New Zealand do eat spiders, particularly deep fried spiders known as fryers. This practice is not widely known or practiced. Okay. But it does exist within a certain cultural context.

• 3:19Amory Sivertson?

  And what's the link that they, the article that they cite over to the right side of the image that I sent you?

• 3:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Medium, which is the other thing that made me a little skeptical. It says, three facts about New Zealand I didn't know until I moved here. Unique kiwi cuisine. New Zealand is famous for wine and hobbits, but... Dot, dot, dot. And it's a Medium post by someone named Alana Irving.

• 3:41Amory Sivertson?

  Yes. The rest of that is, New Zealand is famous for wine and hobbits, but not so much its cuisine. Unless they've been here, most people probably can't name any unique kiwi dishes. But when I arrived, one really stood out. Fryers. In parentheses, fried spiders. When I told friends back home about fryers, they thought I was joking. I'm not. Just take it from dozens of kiwis. And she hyperlinks to something in her, just take it from dozens of kiwis, sentence. But we'll get there because I'm going to have you read the next little chunk of Alana Irving's Medium post.

• 4:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 4:16Amory Sivertson?

  For us.

• 4:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right. When I asked the guy behind the counter at my local Spidey and Chups, no, absolutely not.

• 4:28Amory Sivertson?

  Keep going.

• 4:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Spidey and Chups shop? Come on. In a touristy area, if you'd heard any anti-Arachnid sentiments, he rightly pointed out that it's hard to argue it's such a delectable snack. This is parody. People, he quote, "People from other cultures really are heavily biased against eating insects and the like." Then they have a white bait fritter.

• 4:51Amory Sivertson?

  That's a fish, yep.

• 4:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  A white bait fritter with a bit of tunnel web mixed in and they suddenly change their tune.

• 4:58Amory Sivertson?

  Yep.

• 4:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 5:00Amory Sivertson?

  Then Alana includes a recipe for the perfect fryder.

• 5:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 5:06Amory Sivertson?

  So I'm going to send you that recipe and I would-

• 5:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Not interested.

• 5:09Amory Sivertson?

  I would love for you to read some of the ingredients and the, and the steps for us, if you please.

• 5:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  This makes me mad because I love deep fried things and I just, this is a bridge too far. It's a web too far. Six tunnel web spiders, 500 grams. Ugh, ugh. Oil for deep frying, two eggs, two tablespoons water, two tablespoons cornflour. I assume it's tablespoons, or maybe it's teaspoons. One cup flour, baking powder, vinegar, milk, chopped thyme, mint, sage, flour. Milk fangs until all the deadly, no, no. Milk fangs until all the deadly toxin is out of the spiders before, before preparing? No, I would have heard of this if it was real. I reject this.

• 5:58Amory Sivertson?

  You reject this. Okay. So she also writes in this post, quote, "I find incredulity about fryders to be culturally myopic. Spider is eaten in many parts of the world, such as inland China, the Central Asian Plateau, and on several Pacific islands, including New Zealand." Quote unquote, "Normal food is relative. After all, there are many people in India horrified at the idea of eating cows."

• 6:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Here's the thing.

• 6:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sure. I'm, I'm like, cultural blind spots, fully accept. I'm saying in the age of the internet, I would have heard about this. I definitely would have heard about it. And people in India might be like, very, you know, I mean, that's a huge population. They might be, as she suggests, skeptical of the idea of eating cows. But it's not like they've never heard of people eating cows. You know what I mean? So.

• 6:54Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. Okay, that's a good point.

• 6:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm calling this fake.

• 6:58Amory Sivertson?

  Calling this fake.

• 6:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is all fake. Until you milk a spider's fangs in front of me, deep fry it and drop it into my mouth, I reject it.

• 7:08Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so we're gonna break this down together. If we go back to the original Google search that led us to the Medium post, you'll see in the little preview version of the Medium post that there's a picture of a fryder.

• 7:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Golden brown and crispy looking.

• 7:24Amory Sivertson?

  Right, and very spider shaped.

• 7:28Amory Sivertson?

  This picture comes from an epicurious recipe. This recipe calls for two frozen adult Texas brown tarantulas, or two Chilean rose tarantulas.

• 7:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Neither of those places are New Zealand.

• 7:40Amory Sivertson?

  Correct, so at the very least, our Medium poster, Alana Irving, chose us, it's a sus fryder photo for her piece.

• 7:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Amory Sivertson?

  Especially given that she allegedly quotes a guy from her local Spidey and Chup shop. Why can't you just take a picture there?

• 7:57Amory Sivertson?

  We have a suspicious photo appropriated as being fryders. And then we have the hyperlink higher up when the writer, Alana Irving, says that all of her friends think she's joking about fryders, but she's not. Just take it from dozens of kiwis. The hyperlink on that sentence goes to a Reddit post from eight years ago in the New Zealand subreddit.

• 8:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, these guys are trolling.

• 8:19Amory Sivertson?

  The title is, Was This Post A Joke? And it links to the post in question and says, I was reading through this post as a Brit, and I am so confused. This has to be a joke, right? I find it hard to believe that so many people would have joined in on a troll, yet I can't find anything about it on Google. So I'm gonna link you to that post, Ben, and I want you to start by reading the title for us.

• 8:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Are there a lot of spiders in New Zealand compared to the US? That's the title of the post.

• 8:51Amory Sivertson?

  Yes. So can you read just some of the top comments on this post for us?

• 8:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  There are quite a few, but during the summer months when they're breeding, you're allowed to catch the adults if they're more than 12 centimeters or five inches wide. In my experience, it's best to warn tourists before they eat a dish with them in it, because some people can be fussy when it comes to what they're used to eating. To be honest, it's mainly older people who have them. Younger people would rather have McDonald's or something.

• 9:17Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 9:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 9:19Amory Sivertson?

  What's the, what's the very next one?

• 9:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's a, it's a, it is a recipe for deep red spiders.

• 9:25Amory Sivertson?

  It's not just a recipe.

• 9:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's the same recipe?

• 9:29Amory Sivertson?

  It's the exact recipe that Alana first included in her Medium post. 500 grams of tunnel web spiders, corn flour, the whole thing.

• 9:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  This, I think we're in copy pasta zone here. You know, as in, you copy a post from the internet and you paste it somewhere else on the internet. And for some reason, we call these copy pastas. This feels like a copy pasta, right?

• 9:54Amory Sivertson?

  You're, you're picking up what, what's going down here.

• 10:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  One of the sort of confusing things about Reddit can be that like, in a lot of instances, you can actually trust the comment section, which is one of the reasons why I love Reddit, is because you can basically like, you can kind of get a sense from the, the sort of like overall group's responses of whether something is real, the collective wisdom that happens is, is real. But also, Redditors love a joke. They love a comment thread joke. And if you basically like tickle them with your original post by saying, is this a troll? You're really like flipping a coin, because most of the people who are gonna respond to that,

• 10:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  you're basically forcing them to choose between like actually giving you real information and being like, oh, let's, let's go, let's keep it going, baby. You know what I mean?

• 10:55Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. I've just sent you another comment that I'd like you to read.

• 10:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, boy.

• 10:59Amory Sivertson?

  From a Redditor whose username is Proceed2Party.

• 11:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  As an American who had no knowledge that eating spiders is a normal thing there, this is horrifying. Having said that, I'll try anything once. And when I finally make it to your beautiful country, I'm putting this on my list.

• 11:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Edit, reading the rest of this thread has me so effing confused right now. Is this real or not? Please, dot, someone, dot.

• 11:27Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, I've sent you one more thing that I would just love for you to read. The response that Proceed to Party got.

• 11:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, what I see is mention it to your hotel receptionist. They always know the best places to get fritters. And then Proceed to Party says no to thanks bud. Okay, here's another sort of like cultural blind spot comment. I know it's hard to get perspective from cultures outside your own, but people do things differently all around the world. Yes, of course. Spider is eaten in many other parts of the world, such as inland China and the Central Asian Plateau, not to mention on several Pacific Islands. Yes, this includes New Zealand. Many Indians are as horrified by the eating of cows as Westerners are by the eating of dogs. These things are all relative.

• 12:08Amory Sivertson?

  What's, what jumped out at me about that is this mention of inland China, the Central Asian Plateau, the idea of people in India being horrified at the idea of eating cows, that exact language. This is when I'm like, oh, we are definitely in copy pasta territory.

• 12:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:27Amory Sivertson?

  Because Alana Irving mentions this exactly in her Medium post because she did indeed copy it from Reddit. And she also copied the Reddit comment that included that quote from her local Spidey and Chups shop about how people change their tune about eating spiders once they try a fritter with some tunnel web mixed in, direct copy paste. So at this point, I'm like, okay, I think we've officially, we've got a troll here. And indeed, the other two facts about New Zealand from her Medium post that Alana didn't know until she moved there supposedly are. One, that it's illegal to have a garden in New Zealand. Were you familiar with this idea?

• 13:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 13:10Amory Sivertson?

  This was another hoax that New Zealanders helped perpetuate online in recent years. And two, it's important to be aware of giant birds, specifically the moa. I sent you a picture.

• 13:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:24Amory Sivertson?

  So this was...

• 13:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 13:27Amory Sivertson?

  What's the caption? Describe the picture.

• 13:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  A rare moa attack caught on camera. And then it's what looks like a slowest camper, like running away along a riverbed next to what looks like a, like a big bird kind of creature with giant floppy feet and a hair suit.

• 13:50Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, it looks like a person in a bird suit.

• 13:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Looks like a person in a bird suit, 100%.

• 13:55Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, the moa was a giant bird ostrich-like, but bigger. That it was native to New Zealand, but it went extinct thousands of years ago.

• 14:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Of course, of course.

• 14:07Amory Sivertson?

  So, this is when I tell you how my journey down the rabbit hole on Fridays began. It started with this post.

• 14:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  All of New Zealand teams up to troll an unsuspecting American who wanted to know about the local spider population. Another unsuspecting American is caught in their convincing web of deceit.

• 14:28Amory Sivertson?

  Hmm, and that other unsuspecting American is the commenter we mentioned earlier, Proceed to party, who also has the top comment on this best of post, because that's where I found this. Can you read that top comment?

• 14:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's not fair. They're really convincing, kiwi bastards. They're funny [BLEEP] though, I'll give them that. Thank goodness, one of them took pity on me and messaged me to let me know that my hotel receptionist would probably think I'm out of my mind if I asked where to get fried spiders. Edit, I've never gotten gold before. Thanks, friend.

• 15:00Amory Sivertson?

  So the funny thing is, even though I went into this knowing that this was all allegedly a hoax, I too found some of the Kiwi Redditors in the original post really convincing. And I was afraid to write off frieders as not a thing because our cultural traditions and cuisines are so different from country to country and region to region.

• 15:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 15:23Amory Sivertson?

  And it wasn't until I read the rest of Alana's Medium post that I finally felt for sure comfortable going like, okay, no, not a thing.

• 15:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, here's like, the amazing thing about the internet is it's sort of like widens your aperture in this like incredible way, but it also is guaranteed to slowly degrade truth.

• 15:46Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which is, which can have like hilarious consequences and very not hilarious consequences, but I love to, I love to go down the rabbit hole on a hilarious consequence.

• 15:56Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. And the hoax continues. I found a post on Threads from just last year of someone saying like, can someone from New Zealand tell me what a frieder is? Is it, is it rude to refuse them? And people are still trolling and only a few kind souls in there said like, no, no, mate, they're pulling your leg.

• 16:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, mate.

• 16:17Amory Sivertson?

  And I should say, well, frieders, that term, that does not appear to be a thing. Fried spiders is.

• 16:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 16:24Amory Sivertson?

  You find them, I think, most commonly in Cambodia and some other Southeast Asian countries. So people do eat fried spiders.

• 16:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Note to self, no need to travel to Cambodia for culinary exploration.

• 16:39Amory Sivertson?

  There you go. Yes, yes, yes. But frieders, Spidey and Chups, not a thing, even though I emailed Alana Irving as I was looking into this, and I believe that she continues to troll me because she emailed me back.

• 16:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  She did?

• 16:52Amory Sivertson?

  She did. She emailed me back. She said, thanks for reaching out. I'm glad to hear of your interest in New Zealand, but I have to say I'm disappointed that you assume it's all a joke.

• 16:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, my God. Okay, just to be clear, though, I do love Cambodian food that does not include spiders. I have eaten bugs at various restaurants. Emery, you might take exception to that, but in a world where a large format protein is very destructive to the world, I don't mind and I personally support eating bugs, just not spiders. Even if they're deep fried, I will try a handful of chups, though.

• 17:30Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, yeah. Sign me up for chups.

• 17:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, we could get a basket. We could share a basket of chups.

• 17:36Amory Sivertson?

  Never met a potato I didn't like.

• 17:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, when we come back, another story about inventive trolling.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 18:15Speaker 06

  Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 19:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Amory.

• 19:12Amory Sivertson?

  Ben.

• 19:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do you know what Alligator Alcatraz is?

• 19:16Amory Sivertson?

  It's a detention center that Trump has built in the Florida Everglades. He opened it this past summer and its purpose is to detain people that the Trump administration thinks are here illegally.

• 19:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, about 5,000 detainees caught up in ISIS immigration sweeps. So, do you know the significance of the number 4547?

• 19:45Amory Sivertson?

  Nope.

• 19:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  So, to a lot of MAGA supporters, this refers to President Trump.

• 19:50Amory Sivertson?

  Because he was the 45th president and then he was the 47th president.

• 19:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Exactly.

• 19:55Amory Sivertson?

  Yes.

• 19:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  This has kind of become a rallying cry number for the president. Interestingly, it also refers to, I think it's HR Bill 4547, Strengthening Protections for Social Security Beneficiaries Act of 2018, which was signed by Trump. I think there's some debate about whether this bill helped or hurt our ability to collect and protect Social Security, but I digress. Do you know what Terry's Tours is?

• 20:27Amory Sivertson?

  Terry's Tours? No, I have a guess.

• 20:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, what is it?

• 20:34Amory Sivertson?

  It's a guy named Terry with a boat who takes people on tours through the Everglades.

• 20:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, you're not completely wrong, but let me send you a TikTok.

• 20:48Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 20:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  For you to watch.

• 20:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  And you can either describe it during or after.

• 20:56Speaker 07

  It's Terry from Terry's Tours of Lake Lanier, and we brought our fantastic endeavor down to the Everglades for the first official Alligator Alcatraz swamp tours.

• 21:05Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so Terry is a woman. A blonde, white, middle-aged woman wearing a Hawaiian shirt who is advertising Alligator Alcatraz tours, specifically boat tours of Alligator Alcatraz.

• 21:26Amory Sivertson?

  She said something about like, you can, you can name an alligator-

• 21:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, you can adopt alligators.

• 21:34Amory Sivertson?

  $4,547.

• 21:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Amory Sivertson?

  She said a bunch of really offensive stuff. She said that they'll give kids on the tour a bubble gun so that they can blow bubbles at people being detained there and say, get out of my country. They have a version of like Hungry Hungry Hippos, except it's alligators eating, as she says, brown people.

• 22:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  What do you think?

• 22:04Amory Sivertson?

  I think it's bad, Ben. I think it's pretty upsetting.

• 22:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well,

• 22:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'd like to tell you about comedian Lysandra Vasquez.

• 22:17Amory Sivertson?

  Excellent.

• 22:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Who created this video?

• 22:21Amory Sivertson?

  Thank God.

• 22:24Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, I was hoping so because at the end, the laugh being slowed down, the like,

• 22:35Amory Sivertson?

  that makes me feel so much better.

• 22:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Lysandra, comedian, very big on TikTok, 900,000 followers, just about regularly skewers politicians. The Terry's Tours, spelled T-O-U-R-Z, of course, promotion, leads to a website. And if people try to book a tour of alligator Alcatraz or adopt an alligator, rename the alligator, it instead funnels visitors towards organizations that offer legal and financial assistance to migrants. These organizations include the National Day of Labor Organizing Network and also Border Kindness. This was all reported in the publication Latin Times.

• 23:21Amory Sivertson?

  We had a little overlap in our two stories. Did you see the fried alligator bites?

• 23:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 23:26Amory Sivertson?

  In, in her video?

• 23:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes. Deep fried. We, we got that deep fried crossover, baby.

• 23:32Amory Sivertson?

  Dip and sauce, yep.

• 23:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  So, um, you know, what does this remind you of? Does this remind you of anything?

• 23:41Amory Sivertson?

  Hmm. The first thing that comes to mind for me was when the KKK tried to sponsor a chunk of highway so that it would say like, this portion of the highway is sponsored by the KKK. And so the highway administrator, wherever, I forget where this took place, renamed it the Rosa Parks Highway. So that it was like, this segment of the Rosa Parks Highway is sponsored by the KKK. It's like maintained and kept beautiful by the KKK.

• 24:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  The Ku Klux Klan. Wow. Okay.

• 24:11Amory Sivertson?

  But what are you thinking of?

• 24:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, that's a really good example. This, you know, and it is part of this kind of like history of similarly politically motivated trolling and also like-

• 24:23Amory Sivertson?

  Were you talking about Gen Z buying up the tickets to the Trump rally?

• 24:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 24:27Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 24:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes. Back in 2022, there was this Trump rally where a bunch of TikTokers reserved tickets or spaces or like showed interest to the tune of maybe a million people. And then they never showed up. To the rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, only 6,000 people showed up. A lot of people felt like it was a big embarrassment to the Trump campaign. Another example is this trolling of the Kellogg Company that was created by this TikToker. And the sort of troll was Sean, this TikToker, designed these bots to troll the website created by Kellogg and flood it with fake job applications after Kellogg, the company,

• 25:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  sort of employed anti-union practices or practices deemed unfriendly to labor unions as some of its employees were trying to get organized for collective bargaining. We interviewed that guy. I don't know if you remember, Gen Z for Change, that episode of Endless Thread. Highly recommend you go back and check out that episode about Gen Z for Change. But back to Terry's tours. Lysandra Vasquez posted an update a few days ago, at least a few days ago on the day that we are taping this. And I will send you that.

• 25:52Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so she posts this update where she mentions that people were saying you should be collecting email addresses for the people who want to buy a tour. And so she updated the page so that it is much easier to collect their email addresses. She kind of updated the Google search so that it looks even more official when you search Terry's Tours on Google. She's showing some data about the number of visits she's had to the site. And she tells people who are in on the joke not to put their contact information in, that this is just to kind of socially entrap the people who might actually be genuinely interested in something like Terry's Tours.

• 26:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  What do you think? What do you think about all this?

• 26:37Amory Sivertson?

  It's actually making me think of our SRA episode, the Socialist Rifle Association, and the people from the Massachusetts chapter that we spoke to, who were kind of saying like, "Well, you know, the right is going to take up arms, and so we should also know how to use these weapons." And it kind of feels like in a similar territory of like, the internet is going to be used for, you know, we don't even necessarily need to call it like, good or evil. It's going to be used for certain outcomes.

• 27:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 27:14Amory Sivertson?

  And if you are not also using it to try to reach people in this day and age, like you could quickly get outmatched.

• 27:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mm-hmm. Outtrolled. Yeah, yeah.

• 27:28Amory Sivertson?

  Outtrolled. And so, yeah, it feels like there's, it feels like we're only going to be seeing a lot more of this.

• 27:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think we're seeing a really interesting exercise, which is basically separating Trump supporters from their money. And what's interesting about that to me is that a lot of people would also say that Trump is actually taking advantage of his supporters, whether it's Trump coin, or, you know, all kinds of different sort of MAGA-related merch. They would argue that Trump's supporters are being taken advantage of financially.

• 28:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Um, as well as, you know, intellectually and emotionally, or whatever you might say. So what's interesting about this is this is kind of like an effort to, I guess, play the same game in a way, maybe, from Lissandra. I have not spoken with Lissandra. Um, but like, you know, I feel like, uh, she's playing with this idea of like, all right, if you're going to be stupid enough to vote for Trump, then like, I'm gonna see if I can separate you from some of your money as well. Um, because you're also doing that. Again, I am not calling Trump supporters stupid. I'm just saying that seems to be the sort of part of the motivation here. But I think it's kind of interesting.

• 28:48Amory Sivertson?

  But I guess I wonder, like, you know, it's a, it's, it is certainly an inventive troll as we, as we established as the theme. But I, right now, I guess this is kind of where, where I am kind of emotionally. It's like, I want real change in the world. And if her goal is to maybe change hearts and minds, like, that only works if you can see the ridiculousness, if you can actually process the ridiculousness of some of the things that she is trying to make seem ridiculous.

• 29:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, right.

• 29:28Amory Sivertson?

  And so will, will being redirected to these other things that feel totally contrary to what people who might genuinely be interested in a territory believe is directing them towards those resources actually going to, going to change hearts and minds?

• 29:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 29:43Amory Sivertson?

  Like, I don't know. That doesn't mean that I like disapprove of it by any means, that, that approach, no matter what, what you're making a video about. It's just,

• 29:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 29:54Amory Sivertson?

  I do wonder if we are, are we, are we creating more division?

• 29:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  Maybe it just allows people who are feeling crazy right now, looking at all the things that are happening. Um, maybe it allows those people to feel less crazy and maybe that's enough. But I, I take your point that it's sort of like inventive trolling, you know, lesser than sign than, um, you know, than like real.

• 30:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Discourse and discussion and kind of like open-hearted, direct conversation about the things that are dividing us.

• 30:33Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. Yeah, and it comes, it comes at a time when we are, whatever you are fighting for, people are genuinely curious about like, what is going to work? What is actually effective? And this came up in the Jeffrey Noe episode too, is that he's talking, you know, Jeffrey Noe was talking about marching in the streets with hundreds of thousands of people. And, you know, I don't even remember if it was in the episode or if it was like more in our discussions while we were making the episode of like, God, does that work anymore? Like hundreds of thousands of people marching in streets? Does that actually do anything anymore? So we're all just kind of like, what works? What, what can we try next?

• 31:17Amory Sivertson?

  And, um, or maybe it's less about the strategy and more about just like, we have these tools and hopefully we can keep laughing in the process. But I don't know, man. It's tricky, tricky, tricky.

• 31:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  So we first talked about Alligator Alcatraz and Vasquez's inventive trolling months ago. And it seems important to note that ICE raids have only continued and intensified since then. And Alligator Alcatraz is caught up in several court battles and lawsuits. Everything from the private contractors being paid to build out and run the place to issues of access to lawyers for detainees and attorney-client legal rights.

• 32:10Amory Sivertson?

  No official tally from Vasquez on how much she's raised by redirecting people to support immigration protections with their dollars. But you don't have to visit her TikTok to find those links. They're in our show notes.

• 32:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was co-hosted by myself, Ben Brock Johnson, and Amory Sivertson. It was produced by Franny Monahan. Our editor is Meg Kramer. Mix and sound design by production manager Paul Vikas. The rest of our team is Grace Tatter, Dean Russell, managing producer Sumit Tajoshi, and Emily Jankowski.

• 32:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  Also, by the way, last week, we erroneously said that Despicable Me is a Disney film. Despicable Us, it is, in fact, produced by Illumination and was animated by a French animation studio, McGuff. Nous sommes désolés pour les rues. Or something. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, get in touch, [email protected]. Merci.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, executive director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 34:01Speaker 08

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 34:06Speaker 02

  And just to explain why you're excited about it.

• 34:08Speaker 08

  Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization, and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 34:58Speaker 02

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