Social Media Reacts to an Attempted Assassination + Tech Elites for Trump + TikTok's Jawmaxxing Trend

“The 2024 internet is just different than the internet we lived on four years ago.”

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 Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner, Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

• 0:34Kevin Roose?

  Oh, happy Prime Day.

• 0:36Casey Newton?

  Thank you. Happy Prime Day to you as well. I imagine you'll be getting together with your family later for the annual Prime Day feast.

• 0:43Kevin Roose?

  Yes.

• 0:44Casey Newton?

  What does your family cook on Prime Day?

• 0:47Kevin Roose?

  Deals.

• 0:48Casey Newton?

  Oh, deals.

• 0:49Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, so actually, you know, I am such a good company man, a good employee of the New York Times Company, that I bought some stuff on Prime Day this year because I am like a, you know,

• 1:00Casey Newton?

  You're always looking out for a deal.

• 1:01Kevin Roose?

  Shameless capitalist. Yeah, and I like a deal. And so I bought a robot vacuum because our old one is broken and it was time. And I placed the order and then I realized to my horror that I had not used the Wirecutter affiliate link to purchase said robot vacuum.

• 1:19Casey Newton?

  Starving the New York Times of revenue.

• 1:21Kevin Roose?

  And I actually canceled the order and went back and ordered it using the affiliate link. And that is why I'm a good company man.

• 1:29Casey Newton?

  That is amazing. Well, hopefully, they will take that into account during your performance review this year. I'll certainly be putting in a good word with your bosses.

• 1:38Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 1:38Casey Newton?

  Yeah. Now, tell me about this robot vacuum. Does it have any new features compared to your last robot vacuum? Does it have AI in it, Kevin?

• 1:44Kevin Roose?

  It sure does.

• 1:46Casey Newton?

  Does it talk? Can you talk to it?

• 1:47Kevin Roose?

  I hope so. I hope so. I've been saying for years. Well, so my old Roomba, which has to be retired, unfortunately, was named Bruce. Bruce Ruse. And so I would often get these little alerts on my phone that said like Bruce has gotten stuck. And I did develop, honestly, like a kind of empathy for this pathetic excuse for a house cleaning robot.

• 2:11Casey Newton?

  Well, certainly it did more to clean your house than you ever did.

• 2:14Kevin Roose?

  It's true. So I don't know what I'm going to name the new one, but it's probably just going to be Bruce 2.

• 2:21Casey Newton?

  If I ever get one of these, I want to have voice command so that whenever I need to clean the house, I can just say, "Robot, it's time to suck." And then it just immediately starts. That would just bring me happiness if I could make that happen.

• 2:31Kevin Roose?

  Wait, you don't have a robot vacuum?

• 2:33Casey Newton?

  I don't have a robot vacuum. I believe in cleaning the old fashioned way by asking a person to do it.

• 2:45Kevin Roose?

  I'm Kevin Roos, a tech columnist at The New York Times.

• 2:47Casey Newton?

  I'm Casey Noon from Platformer.

• 2:48Kevin Roose?

  And this is Hard For.

• 2:49Casey Newton?

  This week, an assassination attempt for the social media age. Then, The New York Times' Teddy Schleifer on the wave of Silicon Valley billionaires stepping up to back Trump. And finally, the TikTok trend that is inspiring teenage boys to work out their jaws.

• 3:12Kevin Roose?

  So Casey, obviously, the biggest news that happened while we were on break is the attempted assassination of former President Trump. The assassination attempt sort of dominated the news coverage over the weekend and into the early parts of this week. And you had an interesting take on this. You wrote a newsletter this week titled "An Assassination Attempt for the Social Media Age." And you basically tried to sort of connect the dots between what happened at this rally in Pennsylvania and the shifting role of social media in civic life, in news consumption. And I thought it was a really interesting take, and I wanted to just sort of ask you about it today and have us sort of unpack it a little bit.

• 3:56Kevin Roose?

  Because I think this was, you know, in some ways, it felt very new, right? Like, this was the first shooting of a US president or a former US president in the age of social media. But in a lot of ways, to me, it did feel sort of familiar, at least in the way that the world kind of tried to make sense of and digest the news. So talk me through your argument a little bit.

• 4:20Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, the first thing to say is this like was the grim and horrible event, like deeply unsettling, and it makes me worry for for our country for so many ways. As I sat down to think through, you know, what it meant for folks like me and you who who think about the world of tech and and new media in particular, I was struck by a couple of things. One was, it feels like the 2024 internet is just different than the internet we lived on four years ago during the last presidential campaign. And the biggest way is that platforms which once raced to prevent misinformation from

• 5:04Casey Newton?

  spreading and tried to make sure there was sort of a high quality news source and all the obvious places that their users would look, they took a much less aggressive approach and they essentially just let the theories fly on social media. And the place where this was most obvious, of course, was X, the former Twitter. You know, when Twitter existed, Twitter actually put a label on one of the former President Trump's tweets. This was back during the 2020 campaign, the president had tweeted something misleading about mail in ballots, and Twitter put a label on it and said, essentially, you know, you may be being misled here. Those are really big deal at the time. Now Twitter is no more, X exists, Elon Musk runs it, and people were sharing all manner of conspiracy theories, and we might want to talk about what some of those were.

• 5:48Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. Almost immediately, it seemed to me, there was sort of this mad dash for conspiracy theories. And on the right, you know, I saw people saying, basically, that this had been a democratic plot to sort of try to stop Trump from winning the election, that it was the FBI or the CIA or an inside job by the Secret Service, that President Biden was somehow behind it, which obviously there's no evidence of that. So that was one set of reactions that I saw primarily on X, where I think it's fair to say those voices have become more prominent following Elon Musk's transformation of that platform. But I also started

• 6:30Kevin Roose?

  Started to see plenty of conspiracy theories from the left as the sort of iconic now photo of former President Trump, you know, pumping his fist in defiance sort of went around. There were conspiracy theories. I saw that this had been a plot by the Trump campaign to make him, you know, more electable, to make him look brave, that this had been deliberately staged. Obviously, none of this has any evidence behind it either, but it just seemed like there was sort of this, this information vacuum and void that people of all partisan stripes were rushing in to fill. Is that how it seemed to you?

• 7:04Casey Newton?

  Yes, and I will say, you know, some of that does not actually strike me as new or novel. I think that basically, you know, for most of the, the lifetime of Twitter, whenever there would be some calamity in the world that had any kind of political valence to it at all, folks from all sides would leap in and try to get the advantage in setting the narrative, right? It's like, oh, how can we make this good for our side? That is just sort of an impulse now that I think is baked into basically every major social media platform.

• 7:35Kevin Roose?

  It's so true, and it's so depressing. Like, the, the sort of reaction to it felt in some ways very familiar, right? It was like, let's try to figure out who the shooter was, comb through all of his, like, social media pages to figure out whether he was a Democrat or a Republican, and then use that to sort of try to place him on a side of the political debate. You know, I, I was reminded of some of the mass shootings that I covered several years ago, where you had these, this sort of same kind of mad dash to, you know, comb through the shooter's social media profile, figure out which team he was on, and, and, you know, make sense of it that way.

• 8:13Casey Newton?

  Yeah. Where I think my take, you know, is a little spicier though, Kevin, is I think that the fact that there were so many theories flying in the immediate aftermath of the shooting is basically fine. And here's why. In so many of these previous calamities, much of what we have learned has come from citizen reports on social media, right? People who were on the ground, they see things. They're going on Twitter and maybe now a Threads or a Blue Sky or a YouTube, and they are just Saying what they saw and it takes time to figure out who's right, who's wrong. Some of those people will be lying. Some of those people will be telling the truth. But I think when you look back at the whole era that you and I, you know, spent so much time covering misinformation. What are we going to do about misinformation?

• 8:57Casey Newton?

  I think this was a moment where, at least for me, I thought there really is not much of a point in the platforms trying to intervene in real time to correct things because the truth was nobody knew what had happened, right? Even as we record this podcast right now, Kevin, there is still so much about this assassination attempt that we do not know. And when you have something that immediately became the biggest story in the world, you cannot ask people not to speculate what happened. That is what they are going to do. Like, that is just human nature. And so, you know, if I have one kind of big takeaway from this, it is that when you are trying to stop the spread of misinformation, while there can be good reasons to do it, and I think there are actually, you know, many cases where platforms should. This was one where you were truly just going against human nature and you're going to lose that fight every time.

• 9:42Kevin Roose?

  Right. And I think especially when it comes to the topic of presidential assassinations, there is a long history of conspiracy theorizing about those. I mean, the Grassy Knoll theory of the JFK assassination. And so it's not surprising on one level that people immediately turned to conspiracy theories to try to make sense of this. I think, as you noted in your newsletter, like what felt different this time is just how reluctant the platforms were to sort of wade in at all to try to tamp down any sort of narratives or to sort of put a lid on any kind of conspiracy theorizing, no matter how seemingly crazy it was.

• 10:18Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I think they've just realized there is not a lot of upside for them here, particularly in the moment. If I'm taking a lesson away from this, I do think that it is just sort of in the immediate aftermath of these calamities. Like, maybe platforms actually should relax a little bit. We know that people are going to say crazy things. We know that people are going to be wrong. And that part of media literacy in 2024 is just accepting that. And that knowing that after something bad happens, if you're looking on social media, you're going to see a mix of truth and fiction and it's going to take a while for it to settle.

• 10:49Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. I think there's something to that. I guess I worry about the sort of laissez faire approach that the platforms, especially X, have taken, in part because like they are doing a kind of curation, whether it's through, you know, these trending topics that are, some of them are now being sort of fleshed out by AI, or whether it's just by sort of ranking feeds for people. Like, there is a kind of information hierarchy being presented to people. And I just found it incredibly, not that it was like dangerous, but it was just very confusing to try to make sense of what was happening on Saturday through social media. I ended up just like refreshing the New York Times app, the Wall Street Journal app, like local media sources that were present on the scene, just to try to

• 11:34Kevin Roose?

  figure out the basics of what had happened and when. It still feels like, you know, social media can be useful for for that kind of initial burst of fact finding. But then, you know, 10 minutes later, when everyone has sort of slotted things into their predetermined narratives, it just becomes much less useful as a tool for understanding what's happening.

• 11:55Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I think that's true. But, you know, again, this was just a case where you had an information vacuum and people were racing to fill it. And they were racing to fill it with a lot of stuff that was interesting. Even if we didn't know exactly what happened, people were offering commentary, people were offering analysis, you know, people with dark senses of humor were offering jokes. And it was clearly driving just a ton of attention to these platforms, because this has just sort of become the way that we make meaning during these moments. And so, you know, even though, yes, eventually, like the high quality information did show up in these outlets for journalism, there was a lot on those social networks for people to to look at while they were waiting.

• 12:31Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, I will just say, like, one thing that bothered me about what I saw this weekend in the aftermath of the attempted assassination was this sort of meme going around, especially among kind of right wing voices on X, that, you know, if you paid attention to the legacy media, the mainstream media, you were misinformed about what had happened. People were posting these screenshots of news stories that went up in sort of the minutes following the shooting. When it wasn't clear yet what had happened at all, and there were headlines about, you know, President Trump being rushed offstage following, you know, loud bangs or something like that.

• 13:11Kevin Roose?

  And this was sort of used by these partisans on the right, especially as evidence that the mainstream media was intentionally not telling you what had happened, was downplaying this, was trying to make it seem less like an attempted assassination and more like a kind of, you know, fluke accident. And that in order to sort of learn the truth, you had to not pay attention to the mainstream media and instead go on X to get all your news there. And a couple of things to say about that. One is, I think this is just an incredible misreading of what journalists do, which is that we try very hard to verify what we can as quickly as we can, but not to say that it was an attempted assassination before we know if it was or not, to be very cautious

• 13:56Kevin Roose?

  and careful. I think a lot of the media outlets I saw were actually quite responsible in how they covered this, especially in the early initial moments when it wasn't clear yet what was going on.

• 14:06Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I mean, look, if you believe that the media is not going to tell you when there has been an attempted assassination of the former president, get help.

• 14:16Kevin Roose?

  Right.

• 14:17Casey Newton?

  Like, what do you think the media is here to do? Like, that is the biggest story in the world, and they're going to tell you just as soon as they confirm it. So, you know, I think the flip side of what those folks are saying is essentially you need to just like mainline and unfiltered series of social media posts if you want to know the truth. And it's like, you may learn some things faster than if you like waited for it to show up at nytimes.com, but you might also be misinformed, and that's just a choice that you're going to have to make for yourself.

• 14:43Kevin Roose?

  Well, and the other thing to say about this is that so much of what was going around on X and other social networks, helping people make sense of this, were media artifacts from the mainstream media, right? It was clips from TV cameras that had been there at the rally capturing this. It was the photographs that were taken by photographers at the AP and the New York Times. My colleague Doug Mills took one of these sort of most iconic photographs that actually showed the bullet whizzing past. President Trump's head like these are things that would not have existed that would have not been captured in nearly as high fidelity away had the mainstream media not been in attendance at this rally with cameras pointed at the stage. So I just want to stick

• 15:26Kevin Roose?

  up for my colleagues in the legacy media here a little bit and say, yes, it was possible to figure out what was happening on social media, but it was also in large part because there were cameras and reporters and journalists capturing that event who were there to tell people what had happened.

• 15:42Casey Newton?

  All right. Well, I'm sure we've shocked readers with our spicy take that the mainstream media is good, but let me let me flip it around on you, Kevin, and ask, what do you think the role of social media should be in situations like this? What do you think the platforms can and should do to help people understand events like this in real time?

• 16:02Kevin Roose?

  I think one of the things that they should attempt to do is just kind of slow things down a little bit. I think that speed is often the enemy of fact finding, especially in breaking news situations like this. You know, a couple of years ago, I wrote a column about conspiracy theorists on YouTube. And basically, there was this genre of YouTube creator who became very popular years ago, basically because after every sort of major news event, every mass shooting, every, you know, horrible thing that happened in America, they would kind of rush to their studios, sit down in front of their cameras and just

• 16:44Kevin Roose?

  start talking. And usually, they would start sort of unspooling conspiracy theories about how the deep state or Antifa or whoever the sort of, you know, boogeyman at the time was of being behind whatever catastrophe had happened. And what I was writing about at the time was the speed imbalance that existed between those people who could basically immediately start recording and posting their videos and the more authoritative responsible media outlets who were actually trying to get to the bottom of what had happened, but who needed to wait for facts to come in, for the authorities to make their announcement. For perpetrators to be identified or victims to be identified. Those things took time.

• 17:26Kevin Roose?

  And so there was this window where you had basically the most visible commentators on a breaking news story were the least responsible ones. And so I think one thing that a platform could do in situations like that is just hold off on on sort of making any decisions about which voices to elevate until some facts have actually come in. What do you think the platform should do?

• 17:46Casey Newton?

  Well, two things. One, I think that in the immediate aftermath of these things, it is generally OK for platforms to not aggressively try to tamp down wild speculation. Like, I do think that it is just in the nature of people to want to speculate about events, to offer thoughts and theories. And I think that the moment you go and you try to crack down on that, you're almost certainly going to crack down on true theories, just as you are cracking it down on false ones, right? So if social platforms are going to exist, you're just going to have to let people run their mouths a bit. But then there's a kind of second phase, which is when we know what has actually happened. And if there is any particularly dangerous misinformation out there, if there are narratives

• 18:27Casey Newton?

  that are forming that could lead people to commit violence, that is when I think that the platforms have a stronger responsibility to act. And as they consider acting, they should also figure out, how can we highlight high-quality news sources, vetted information, direct people to resources that we know to be true to try to tilt things a little bit more in favor of the truth?

• 18:49Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. Can I just ask you? So there's this idea that you and I have both written about and spent time thinking about, that there's sort of two sides of the misinformation phenomenon, right? There's the supply side and the demand side. The supply side is sort of the, you know, the meme accounts, the sort of partisan, you know, activists, the people on social media who are there to sort of fill the void with whatever theory advances their pet causes. And then there's the demand side, which is the people who are desperate to figure out what has happened, who are going online, who are looking for things that may fit their pre-existing views. You know, if they're Republicans, maybe they're looking for evidence that this was Joe Biden's

• 19:34Kevin Roose?

  fault. If they're Democrats, maybe they're looking for evidence that this was some kind of, you know, false flag operation staged by the Trump campaign. So of the two sides, which have you been sort of thinking about more in the wake of this event?

• 19:47Casey Newton?

  I've been thinking a lot more about the demand side. You know, there was this post on X that went semi-viral from a comedian named Josh Gondalman. He wrote, "I know people are saying not to spread conspiracy theories right now, but I would like to read them." And he posted that on a Saturday afternoon, you know, after the wake of the attempted assassination. And I think that post resonated with people because, again, in this information vacuum, people want to believe something. And so it almost doesn't matter how bad the idea is, people just want to get a sense of like, the range of possibilities. So, you know, we as journalists and lawmakers and regulators do this, probably even more.

• 20:28Casey Newton?

  They put so much pressure on platforms to stop the spread of this sort of thing. But the question that almost nobody asks is, why is there so much demand for this? And I think there's a pretty good chance that demand for these theories is just kind of a naturally occurring phenomenon. And like, fighting against it is like trying to fight gravity. So I am just someone who's come to believe there are always going to be conspiracy theories about everything. There are ways to sort of manage it and try to, you know, improve people's media literacy, but you cannot talk about the spread of misinformation without talking about the demand side.

• 21:02Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, it's also why some of the most, you know, highly rated shows on TV are basically conspiracy theory shows, you know, things about ancient aliens. If you look at the Sci-Fi Channel, which I do every once in a while when I'm like staying at a hotel, it's basically just like a series of conspiracy theory documentaries.

• 21:21Casey Newton?

  What's the craziest conspiracy theory you believe?

• 21:23Kevin Roose?

  Oh, man. I have a good one.

• 21:25Casey Newton?

  What is it?

• 21:26Kevin Roose?

  This is the Phantom Time Hypothesis. Do you know about this one?

• 21:30Casey Newton?

  No, tell me.

• 21:31Kevin Roose?

  So I really like this one because it's very like, low stakes. And it's not related to anything, you know, current or new. But it's basically this theory that was advanced by some fringe historian that the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope conspired to change the calendar. And they did this, the conspiracy theory goes, because they both wanted to be in their respective leadership positions in the year 1000. That was important to them for some reason. And so they basically fast-forwarded the calendar by 300 years.

• 22:07Kevin Roose?

  So that they could say that they were the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope in the year 1000. And so as a result, the theory goes, we are not actually in the year 2024. We are actually in like the 1700s.

• 22:21Kevin Roose?

  And like, this has been thoroughly debunked, obviously. But I just think it's an example of something that people, you know, can argue about that is not life or death. And so I think that the solution to dangerous conspiracy theories is less dangerous conspiracy theories. And so instead of trying to convince people that QAnon didn't happen, or whatever, like, we should be trying to convince those people that we are actually in the 1700s. That would be a much, it's sort of the methadone approach to conspiracy theories.

• 22:50Casey Newton?

  I think that's beautiful. Can I offer another?

• 22:52Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 22:52Casey Newton?

  I think Ezra Klein is three different people. And here's why. How can one person read all those books? I'm just asking questions over here. I'm just asking questions.

• 23:00Kevin Roose?

  Wow. Yeah. Well, we should ask about that.

• 23:03Casey Newton?

  All right.

• 23:03Kevin Roose?

  We should ask them about.

• 23:05Casey Newton?

  Now you're talking.

• 23:06Kevin Roose?

  The Ezra's.

• 23:10Kevin Roose?

  When we come back, speaking of Donald Trump, we'll talk to Teddy Schleifer of the New York Times about why Silicon Valley elites are lining up behind him.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner. Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

• 24:10Speaker 03

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• 25:11Kevin Roose?

  Well, Casey, we talked about the assassination attempt on President Trump and the response to it online, but there is another big politics and tech story this week that I've been following and dying to talk to you about, which is the number of Silicon Valley and tech leaders who have come out in recent days in support of the Trump campaign.

• 25:29Casey Newton?

  Yeah, it has been notable. It seemed like in the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt, some folks who I would say have known to have been conservative, but who have so far not made full throated endorsements of President Trump, decided this was the moment to come forward and share their feelings.

• 25:45Kevin Roose?

  Right. And I think a lot of people, when they think about the tech industry, they think progressives and Democrats and California liberals. But there has been this sort of vanguard of influential tech leaders who have been quietly and now more loudly coming out in support of the Republican Party. And so I wanted to talk about this because I think there is a sense in the air in Silicon Valley that there is a vibe shift underway, that people who might have been more reluctant to come out in support of Donald Trump weeks or even months ago are now feeling like it is safe for them to say their piece. And so to talk about this, I wanted to bring in my colleague Teddy Schleifer. Teddy covers campaign finance for The New York Times, and he has been especially focused

• 26:29Kevin Roose?

  on the way that billionaires in the tech industry are using their influence to try to shape the 2024 election.

• 26:36Kevin Roose?

  Let's bring him in here.

• 26:46Kevin Roose?

  Teddy Schleifer, welcome to Hard Fork.

• 26:48Speaker 05

  Thanks for having me.

• 26:49Kevin Roose?

  So you are in Milwaukee now at the Republican National Convention. What's it like there? What's the vibe?

• 26:57Speaker 05

  The optimism is overwhelming even for a political convention, which is obviously attended by diehards and partisans. It almost reminds you of like a varsity sports team, right? Where everyone is raising money, they're all in the same email threads, and there's a lot of camaraderie. But even for a political presidential campaign, the bonhomie between all of these people is overwhelming. And, you know, they have a lot of reasons to be confident. You might even say cocky at times here. But obviously, the Democratic Convention next month will be very different.

• 27:30Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, so the biggest story that I've been following this week in Silicon Valley is what some people have called a realignment of the Valley's politics, especially some notable Silicon Valley elites who have decided to endorse or embrace Donald Trump. In this fall's election, we saw Elon Musk, who came out on Saturday right after the attempted assassination and said that he fully endorsed President Trump. We've also heard, it's been reported this week, that he plans to commit around $45 million a month to a new super PAC that is backing Trump's presidential run. And then just recently this week,

• 28:12Kevin Roose?

  we had an announcement from Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, the co-founders of the influential venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, who announced this week that they both plan to support Donald Trump as well. So you've been covering campaign finance and billionaires and rich people in Silicon Valley for years. You talk to many of these people frequently. How surprised have you been at this so-called realignment?

• 28:38Speaker 05

  I've been surprised by the by the speed over the last six weeks. Not been surprised by the last couple of years, but we had this conversation in mid-April, or even like a couple of weeks before the fundraiser that Trump held in San Francisco. I think the conversation would be a lot different. But over the last six weeks, you know, since Trump came to SF in early June, the realignment has come hard and fast. You know, I want to talk a little bit later on about ways in which it's overstated, but I do think that lots of tech leaders are correct where this is becoming a bit infectious. If you see another wealthy person come out and say something nice about Donald Trump and not really see any blowback, which it's not necessarily clear that they're at least

• 29:20Speaker 05

  receiving immediate blowback, you say to yourself like, hey, you know, this is not 2016.

• 29:25Casey Newton?

  So before we get into what some are calling a realignment, Teddy, I want you to just tell us what has actually happened here. There have been a handful of high-profile names who have declared for Trump. Many of those people have long been sympathetic to Republican politics. So when we say that there is maybe some sort of realignment happening here, what do we actually mean?

• 29:44Speaker 05

  You're correct. There are there are few people who like were supporting Joe Biden in 2020, who are now supporting Donald Trump loudly and proudly in 2024. I bet you a ton of the people that we're talking about privately voted for Trump in 2020. They just didn't talk about it. And, right, I do agree with you, Casey. There's lots of elements of this that are overstated. I think what people feel, or what they say they feel, is a sense that there is no reason to be just kind of politically mute or to feel that way privately. And also, you know, from what I cover, people can feel like they can act on those feelings, too, right? I mean, even if David Sacks thought that Donald Trump was a great president in 2020, which, you know, he says he didn't, but like, even if he did, like, it would have been shocking to do a Trump fundraiser.

• 30:29Speaker 05

  I mean, Peter Thiel didn't do a Trump fundraiser in 2016 for Donald Trump. I mean, like, there weren't that many people acting on these beliefs at the time. And now we're seeing a lot of these people actually do things, right? David Sacks spoke at the RNC last night. He sort of has put himself in the inner circle. Elon Musk, you know, could give tens of millions of dollars to a Trump super PAC. So that's what I think the core realignment is. We're talking about, or what I think what people would argue the realignment is, is that a small number of people who do have a lot of cultural power and do define the industry, and whether that's fair or not is another conversation, like, those people are...

• 31:04Speaker 05

  It feels like, at least, at least driving the narrative, right? At least driving the conversation. Also, at the exact same time this is happening, which is unrelated, we've seen sort of the wilting of Joe Biden's support among Democrats.

• 31:18Casey Newton?

  Yeah. Well, then, do we want to talk about, are there, what some of the frustrations have been with the Biden administration? Is there a sense in the tech industry that Biden didn't deliver something he was supposed to? That he betrayed the industry some way? Or what are folks so mad about?

• 31:34Speaker 05

  You mentioned that this week Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen said they were endorsing Trump. And to take them at face value, what their explanation was, was that they're defending, quote unquote, "little tech" against "big tech." And they really talk about the Biden administration as almost if it's the Lena Khan administration. That like, this is all, you know, that she is like the real president and that Biden is ultimately not really in charge, which is a kind of a broader right-wing talking point. But also that like Khan specifically comes up in literally every conversation you have with Silicon Valley conservatives. And it makes you wonder, you know, if he had a different FTC chair, would they be fine with the other Biden stuff? I doubt it. But, you know, they talk about, Marc and Ben talk about her a lot.

• 32:19Speaker 05

  You know, there's this broader sense of aggrievement, I guess you can put it, that I think is rooted partially in COVID, which, you know, was sort of, I think, the beginning of this era of red pilling of Silicon Valley was, you know, the sense that, well, you know, still, even 2024, you know, June 2024, July 2024, we're still talking about, you know, why did Gavin Newsom do those lockdowns? You know, did, you know, the DEI initiatives after George Floyd go too far? I feel like that stuff still comes up a lot. Maybe not explicitly, but that, when you, when you listen to someone like Marc Andreessen, you know, he talks about COVID as an event that catalyzed him to get more involved in politics and more involved in civic life because he sort of feels like the quote unquote "experts" were wrong, right?

• 33:04Speaker 05

  That's not really the answer, Casey, though, like a specific policy. That's like the, I feel like that's the mindset they bring to everything. And then it's not that hard to go from there to, you know, something that Robert F. Kennedy says about. You know, maybe, maybe the scientists are wrong on vaccines, or Tucker Carlson says about maybe the media, you know, really is corrupt. Once you're sort of in that sort of paradigm, it's easy to end up speaking at the Republican National Convention.

• 33:28Casey Newton?

  Yeah. At the same time, like, I feel like I do not want to overcomplicate this because everything that this one particular cohort has, has said, and by the cohort, I'm talking about Andreessen, Horowitz, Elon Musk, David Sacks, all of these guys are entrepreneurs and investors, and they are trying to achieve the highest returns that they can get for their portfolio. And because Lina Khan is in the FTC and she's trying to block a lot of mergers, that is bad for their portfolio. Because the Biden administration has declared war on crypto and says that, no, actually, you can't have a separate money system that operates outside of all regulation, that is bad for their portfolio. Because the Biden

• 34:09Casey Newton?

  administration has said, we want to potentially tax unrealized capital gains, that is bad for their personal wealth. So every time I look at this and try to find some really novel, surprising way that this, you know, so-called realignment has been triggered, I just see a lot of very rich people acting in their self-interest.

• 34:30Speaker 05

  I guess their response would be, of course, like, you know, when, when, in Ben Harwitz and Mark Andreessen's podcast this week, when they were defending their decision, you know, they sort of were talking about their political engagement in much more like traditional corporate lobbying terms, where you are a company, you know, you produce microphones, and someone's trying to put a tax on microphones, and you are fighting that tax on microphones because you are, it's your job, you're in charge of the microphone industry. I don't think they would really disagree with a lot of what you said, Casey, that their job is to defend startups, and their job is to defend crypto, or, you know, AI is obviously a huge part of the Andreessen portfolio, and they also think Biden's waging war with artificial intelligence regulation. I think what you're getting at, though, that's, you think it's not just...

• 35:16Speaker 05

  Defending the firm and defending Silicon Valley, you also think there's an element of like, personal attack on rich people that is behind this too?

• 35:23Casey Newton?

  Well, and they talked about this this week. So Andreessen and Horowitz put out a podcast where they defended their views. And one of the things that Andreessen brings up is he was really upset when Mark Zuckerberg donated a lot of his personal wealth to the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which does a lot of work in healthcare and other science. And Zuckerberg took a ton of criticism for that. And what Andreessen said about the criticism was essentially that the bargain had been broken, that the old bargain was, hey, you let us go and do our business and get rich and we will sort of do our philanthropy and then that is kind of the society we will have. But now Democrats have come along and broken that and say, no, we don't want you to get rich, period. Like, we don't accept

• 36:08Casey Newton?

  philanthropy as a substitute for, you know, funding government programs. And, you know, I'm sure he really did get his feelings hurt by that. But again, to me, the much larger issue just seems to be that Biden has, you know, threatened Andreessen Horowitz's economic prospects and that they believe that if they get Trump in there, they will be able to get the economic results they want.

• 36:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, though, why was that not true in like 2016 or 2012, right? Or 2008? Like, was there something like, like, like Democrats were calling for higher taxes then too? And like, you know, Mark Andreessen? Well, I guess Andreessen actually, frankly, Andreessen was like, you know, a supporter of Romney in 12, for instance. Like, is there something about Trump that sort of like changed, made people think less self-interestedly, at least for like four years or eight years?

• 36:55Casey Newton?

  Yeah, I mean, the other thing about the Andreessen Horowitz in particular is they have long flirted with these fringe ideas on the right that maybe what America needs is less of an elected president and more of a monarch, right? Someone who can come in, smash the system, and in the chaos that is wrought by the breaking of the system, they think they will be able to scramble up that ladder and claim what they want. And I just see a lot of that in the way that they're acting with Trump.

• 37:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:29Kevin Roose?

  One other factor that we haven't mentioned yet is Donald Trump's pick of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential candidate. J.D. Vance, obviously, is the author of Hillbilly Elegy, the senator from Ohio, but he's also spent time in the tech industry. He worked for Peter Thiel early in his career. He's also been an investor in various startups. And I think it's fair to say that the tech elites that are coming out in support of Trump were thrilled by the pick of J.D. Vance for VP. Teddy, you and our colleague Ryan Mack had a great story this week about the tech elites who actually pushed Donald Trump to make J.D. Vance his vice presidential pick. So I'm curious if you could just tell us what the reaction has been to the news this

• 38:12Kevin Roose?

  week that J.D. Vance will actually be on the ticket.

• 38:15Speaker 05

  Sure. You know, I think part of this was personal experience, though not a lot. I think J.D.'s years in Silicon Valley have been overstated. I mean, he was here for five minutes, five years, but for some people, it felt like five minutes. You know, he had a couple of junior jobs, and a lot of his Silicon Valley experience, what the term of Silicon Valley even really means, I don't know. But a lot of his time in, quote unquote, Silicon Valley was not actually even in the Bay Area. So part of it is personal experience. Part of it is vibes and the sense that, oh, this guy's not even 40 years old, you know, he went to Yale Law School. I mean, you all know how those facts on a page can, you know, make a Series A appear. J.D. was able to kind of, I think, position himself during the Veep Sticks as like the

• 38:58Speaker 05

  tech whisperer, fairly or not. I mean, the event he did with David Sacks in San Francisco, I think, cultivated this image for himself and for the party that, like, we can be more pro-tech. This is a place we can play offense, especially with donors. And, you know, I think to just normal Republican operatives out there, they are fascinated, I'll tell you, fascinated by this trend because they think that, you know, for competitive reasons, like, we have a chance to win over the richest people in the world, and they see dollar signs, and they see even someone like Elon, who doesn't only have dollar signs, but clearly has, like, you know, cultural influence with, you know, lots of young men. And across the country, especially they're captivated by this trend.

• 39:41Speaker 05

  And JD can be the emissary from Trump world to this community. And I don't know, like you could, you could, I'll be very interested if Trump Vance were to win. Like, do any of these people want to get senior jobs in government? Like these, I think everything's on the table. So, you know, they have access and they're, they're excited about them.

• 39:59Kevin Roose?

  Well, that, that raises my next question, Teddy, which is about how much this so-called realignment feels like just picking winners. Right. If, if President Trump were down 10 points in the polls and it appeared that he was headed for a drubbing. Do you think these tech elites would still be lining up to donate to his campaign and to support him? Or is this really just kind of a bet by some of these people that he is going to win the election? And that they and their companies and their portfolio companies will be better positioned if they cozy up to him now?

• 40:36Speaker 05

  That is a great point. And you got to ask yourself, why didn't Mark and Ben do this now? Right. Uh, why did Elon Musk, who, you know, I've reported in the past, was been thinking about doing a Trump endorsement for, you know, months. Why did he choose at like 6:45 PM on Saturday to do this? It's not just, you know, Trump getting support from other tech people. But, you know, I do think the Biden age questions, which I think have been often advanced by, you know, the leading Silicon Valley people. Those came up at the exact same time.

• 41:06Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. And another theory that I've heard floated around in the past few days is that part of this emergence of support for Trump, at least among tech elites, is about Trump's willingness to be flexible in some of his positions about tech. He has not only flip flopped on the TikTok ban, which he used to promote and support, and has now signaled that he is against banning TikTok. He's also flip flopped on crypto. He used to think Bitcoin was a scam and now he's much more open to the idea of crypto. Are there other issues on which Trump may have softened his position or even changed it completely

• 41:48Kevin Roose?

  in response to maybe pressure or feedback from people in the tech community?

• 41:54Speaker 05

  Those are the main ones, as I think of, if someone, if either of you guys think of another one, holler. But I mean, I feel like on a couple of those, I'm thinking about crypto and TikTok, you didn't get the sense that Trump strongly felt the way he did. You know, on TikTok, even during the administration, you know, when they tried to ban it the first time, like, it was wheeling and dealing, like, ah, Larry Ellison wants to do this. On crypto, you know, Trump wasn't really talking about the issue, at least during the primary, ever. And really Vivek Ramaswamy is the guy who kind of got him to start talking about it a lot more. I guess I'm not necessarily convinced that it's like a total flip-flop, or if it is, it's mostly on paper. But, you know, some of the tech people clearly have some influence over him.

• 42:36Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, I do think there is an element here that goes beyond just naked economic self-interest. And Teddy, I'm curious to compare notes with you on this, because you talk to more of these people than I do. But when I talk to people who are influential in the tech industry, who may be, you know, more centrist or more skeptical of Democrats or even pro-Trump, they'll talk about some of the issues we've raised, the regulation piece, the Lena Kahn piece, the tax stuff on which these candidates differ greatly. But there's also just an element of, well, I like the people who are nice to me. And I think a lot of tech elites feel fairly or unfairly like they have come under attack from the left.

• 43:16Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 43:17Kevin Roose?

  You know, they feel like they are job creators, they are innovators, they are building important companies and institutions and funding the growth of American innovation. And I think a lot of them feel like the thanks they've gotten for that is to be vilified, to be called fat cats. I mean, there's sort of echoes of what you heard about Obama in 2008, which is from Wall Street people, which was, you know, we feel like we're the good guys, but all of a sudden, we're being made out to be the villain. So when you talk to these people in the highest ranks of Silicon Valley, do they talk more about the economic pieces, or do they talk about this sense that they feel hurt emotionally by the kind of way that they've been portrayed by the left?

• 43:59Speaker 05

  The latter only comes out, you know, after a couple of drinks, so to speak. But, um, you know, like, take, take, let's take Elon Musk, for instance, right? You know, in, in doing some reporting with, with Ryan Mack, I mean, it's, it's very clear that part of why Elon got to where he is today has to do with Biden not, like, inviting him to a White House meeting, the White House did, with, uh, electric car manufacturers. Now, is like, take that, take that example, is that, Kevin, like, the first thing or the second thing? Like, is it, is that an economic argument or is that like a feeling of, of hurt? You know, for a lot of these founders, I guess this is a sympathetic view or sympathetic rejoinder to what you're saying, Kevin, like, the company is them. If you're Mark Zuckerberg, you know, when someone is mean to Facebook, like, you feel

• 44:44Speaker 05

  it personally, like, I'm sure, I'm sure, you know, they genuinely, at least the founders, you know, feel that that's a thin line between going after big tech and like, you know, being bullied on a playground. So I find it hard to distinguish between those two things.

• 45:01Casey Newton?

  Also, like, we have to say that the right has demonized big tech just as much. Like, go look and see how tech is covered-

• 45:08Speaker 05

  J.D. Vance, J.D. Vance.

• 45:09Casey Newton?

  Yeah, go, go look and see how tech is covered on Fox News, right? I mean, it's daily stories about the evils of Google and of Meta and of Mark Zuckerberg, right? So, you know, there's been this idea that's been floated by some more right-leaning commentators in tech this week, that none of this would have happened if Democrats hadn't started being mean to big tech. But it's so important to remember, the right started being mean to big tech at the exact same time, often in much more apocalyptic terms. So that story just does not hold water with me.

• 45:36Speaker 05

  Yeah. So you, you feel like if Elon Musk was upset about Tesla not being invited to the White House meeting, he should also be upset that some Republicans think, you know, the climate change and the need for electric vehicles is a big hoax and, you know, yada, yada, yada?

• 45:52Casey Newton?

  Well, I mean, just look at the rest of the, like, Republican platform for tech, which involves things like, you know, making content moderation illegal, which I think would create enormous challenges in Elon Musk's ex-business, for example. So, you know, I think people are sort of being very selective in which arguments they choose to defend their, their positions here.

• 46:10Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. Teddy, I'm curious how much the tech elites that you're talking to have thought about what it would actually be like to do business during a second Trump administration. Like, I remember very clearly during the first Trump administration, a lot of tech leaders saying that Trump was bad in part because he was violating all these kinds of democratic norms that were making it very hard to predict what the economy, the country, the law would look like a year or two down the road, made it very hard for them to plan. They also objected to his sort of strong stance on immigration restriction because a lot of them employ a lot of immigrants at their companies and want it to be easier for people

• 46:53Kevin Roose?

  to come over, say, as engineers and work at their companies. So how much of this are they thinking about in terms of what it would be like to actually run or invest in tech businesses during a second Trump administration?

• 47:07Speaker 05

  You could easily argue that things could be worse in a second administration than the first time, at least sorry, regards to like ways that the rule of law is carried out from a business standpoint. Look, I mean, that's the argument that Rudolph has been making. You know, the co-founder of LinkedIn, one of the Democratic Party's biggest single biggest donors, he's argued that, look, Trump might be better on crypto or on AI or, you know, is he gonna tax billionaires to smithereens or yada, yada, yada. But his argument is that you basically need rules of the road that allow for capitalism to work.

• 47:45Casey Newton?

  So Teddy, we have some big names declared for Trump and maybe fewer for Biden this time around. I'm curious, what are you looking for next? Are there any names out there that are undeclared? Or is there anything that could happen in the next few weeks that would make you feel like momentum was really building here for one candidate or the other?

• 48:07Speaker 05

  So the unknown here, I still think, at least as of this recording, is whether Joe Biden remains Democratic nominee, which has sort of been a parlor game or a pipe dream, depending on your perspective, for much of this year, much of the cycle. Like I reported in my last gig at Sam Altman in 2022, was like trying to inquire about a way to force Biden out even back then. But, you know, that is no longer a billionaire passion project. It is obviously a very real conversation that Democrats are having, and we'll know more at the Democratic Convention next month in Chicago. I think the task for tech's Democrats, not that they need my advice, is, you know, they're really going to try to re-center everything that people don't like about Donald Trump.

• 48:53Kevin Roose?

  So in summary, do you think what we've seen so far is most of the realignment already happening, or is there more to come? Are we closer to the beginning or the end of a Trump boom in Silicon Valley?

• 49:08Speaker 05

  Great question. I think we're closer to the end. I'm going to eat these words. Someone should play these back. I mean, I do not, I do not think this is going to be a phenomenon that we will be discussing in 2026 or 27. You know, I do think if Trump were elected, lots of people in Silicon Valley would remember what they did not like about him in 2017, 18, and 19. That's, that's my prediction.

• 49:31Kevin Roose?

  Well, we'll keep following the story and checking in with you about the state of politics in Silicon Valley. I think a lot of people in tech were hoping to not pay much attention to the election this time around. And I think in the past couple of weeks, they have started to realize that they cannot sit on the sidelines, whether or not they want to. It seems like politics is coming for Silicon Valley.

• 49:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:54Kevin Roose?

  Teddy, thanks so much for catching us up on this story. Appreciate you making time.

• 49:58Speaker 05

  Thanks, Teddy.

• 49:59Kevin Roose?

  That's fun.

• 50:02Kevin Roose?

  When we cut back, can we podcast and chew gum at the same time?

• 50:06Speaker 05

  We'll find out.

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• 52:04Casey Newton?

  Kevin, you were a teenage boy once. What's the most effort you ever put into your personal appearance back then?

• 52:08Kevin Roose?

  Well, I was, I went to a school where for a brief period in high school, it was considered cool to pop the collars of your polo shirts. And so regrettably, for several months late in my high school career, there are photos of me with popped collars.

• 52:25Casey Newton?

  With one polo or two?

• 52:28Kevin Roose?

  I never did the double pop. That was a bridge too far for me. But I did, I did pop the collars of my shirts for a couple regrettable months. What about you?

• 52:35Casey Newton?

  That's very wild. Well, you know, for me, look, I don't know. I went to Nordstrom a couple of times, I would say. I got braces. Like, that was about the extent of it for me. And, you know, I paid the consequences. But Kevin, would you believe it that there are some teenage boys now, who, thanks to the power of social media, are finding ever more inventive ways to make themselves look better?

• 52:55Kevin Roose?

  I would, because the insecurity of teenagers knows no bounds. Teenagers always want to look better than they do, and they're always insecure and looking for ways to fit in.

• 53:05Casey Newton?

  It really does. And, you know, this came to our attention this week because Callie Holzerman, who is a style reporter for your newspaper and who covers a lot of niche internet trends, has a story this week about why so many teen and tween boys are becoming interested in a product called Facial Fitness Gum.

• 53:24Kevin Roose?

  Or FFG. No one's calling it that.

• 53:26Casey Newton?

  No, it is, but they could. I had never heard of Facial Fitness Gum, had you?

• 53:30Kevin Roose?

  I had not devoted any time to trying to understand the phenomenon. So I was very glad for Callie's story.

• 53:35Casey Newton?

  Yeah, so, once we heard about this, we thought, we've got to get Callie in here, because we need to know what this trend is and if we need to protect our families from it.

• 53:42Kevin Roose?

  I also feel like this is part of a trend of just us becoming older and sort of understanding less and less of what's going on on the internet. Like, I do feel like every year, I just like lose the thread a little bit more. And so, as a desperate attempt to cling to our youth and to relevance, let's bring in Callie to educate us about what teenage boys are doing online.

• 54:03Casey Newton?

  Let's bring her in.

• 54:13Casey Newton?

  Callie Holtermann, welcome to Hard Fork.

• 54:15Speaker 07

  Thank you for having me.

• 54:16Casey Newton?

  Now, Callie, do you identify as Generation Z yourself?

• 54:19Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of the upper end of Gen Z. I think I'm a geriatric Gen Z-er, if that's a thing.

• 54:26Casey Newton?

  And is there anything that you feel like is stereotypically Gen Z about you?

• 54:30Speaker 07

  Okay, I didn't think that this was stereotypically Gen Z, but I was, I said recently that I had never seen Titanic, and someone was like, "That's so Gen Z."

• 54:41Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, that, that was a very millennial-coded movie. Most of us saw it at least once in theaters.

• 54:47Casey Newton?

  And it holds up, and we recommend you check it out.

• 54:49Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 54:50Casey Newton?

  All right, Callie, what the heck is Facial Fitness Gum?

• 54:54Speaker 07

  I'm so sorry to have to tell you guys about this, but Facial Fitness Gum, or hard gum, is a ultra-hard and kind of tacky chewing gum that a lot of young men, Gen Z men, in their teens and 20s, are chewing for hours on end in hopes of building up their jaw muscles and sharpening their jawlines.

• 55:14Kevin Roose?

  Okay, I have, I have so many questions about this. So how did this start? Like, who came up with the idea that chewing hard gum could improve your jawline?

• 55:26Speaker 07

  It's interesting. It's actually been floating around online for quite a while, since like 2021. But in the past year, I would say, it has kind of achieved escape velocity from these sort of tighter looks-maxing circles online of young men trying to kind of amp up their appearances and into kind of the broader TikTok mainstream, where influencers are sort of starting to do it and starting to do it in videos that have really convenient affiliate links at the bottom so that their followers can, can go buy those products too. And more and more companies are sort of selling those products as well.

• 56:01Casey Newton?

  Now, let's talk a little bit about what looks-maxing is. I don't know much about it. I could only guess that just Kevin isn't doing it, I guess, is the main thing, but I feel like I know about it.

• 56:12Kevin Roose?

  How dare you.

• 56:12Casey Newton?

  But what would you say looks-maxing is, Callie?

• 56:15Speaker 07

  Looks-maxing is trying to be hotter. And I think it is, uh, it's, it's sort of this term that... Gen Z is using, and Gen Z boys especially are using, that kind of put this like video game-y spin, maxing is that video game suffix, on the age-old process of trying to look better when you feel like an awkward adolescent.

• 56:36Casey Newton?

  Got it. And the latest way to looks max is to chew hard gum, strengthen those jaw muscles, and harden your jawline.

• 56:45Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 56:45Kevin Roose?

  I mean, I'm curious how hard the hard gum actually is. We, in transparency, we tried to get some of this gum sent to us at the studio so that we could try it ourselves, but it did not arrive in time.

• 56:57Casey Newton?

  You can't even get it. That's how popular it is.

• 56:58Kevin Roose?

  Neither of us have tried the hard gum. But Callie, I understand that you actually have. So tell us what it feels like to chew.

• 57:06Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, I put my body on the line for this story.

• 57:11Speaker 07

  I ordered some of the gum from a couple of brands, and it's really tough. Like, one, one young man I talked to compared it to cement. It does have like a little bit of give. There's another, there's a popular video by an influencer, Dylan Latham, where he chews into the gum, and it makes this loud, like, this sort of like chomping sound, and it sounds like he's chewing on a potato chip. But it really like makes your jaw sore after doing it for just like a little bit of time. And the gums have some flavors.

• 57:41Casey Newton?

  Oh, yeah. What flavors of hard gum are there?

• 57:44Speaker 07

  Flavors of hard gum include chiseled cinnamon, mussel mango, and jacked watermelon.

• 57:50Kevin Roose?

  Come on.

• 57:51Casey Newton?

  Chiseled cinnamon is what I call my boyfriend.

• 57:56Casey Newton?

  Now I'm gonna have to give him a new nickname.

• 57:59Kevin Roose?

  So, okay, it's the consistency of cement with a little more give. It comes in these flavors. Is there anything pleasant about chewing it? Or does it just feel terrible?

• 58:11Speaker 07

  It felt a little terrible for me, but, you know, I'm like a woman in my 20s, and I'm not actually being served 10, 15, 20 videos a day about how in order to be handsome and successful and attractive, I need to have this really broad jawline.

• 58:23Kevin Roose?

  Right. So, Callie, we've talked about this gum, but I still feel like I'm missing kind of the vibe of the people who are promoting this. Could we take a look at one of these videos together?

• 58:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, you're totally in luck. This guy Brett Maverick, who has way over a million subscribers on YouTube, posts-

• 58:41Casey Newton?

  And an incredible name.

• 58:42Speaker 07

  And an incredible name. Posts sort of these workout videos that he says are jaw workout videos with jawliner gum.

• 58:49Kevin Roose?

  All right, let's watch it.

• 58:51Speaker 08

  Today I'm showing you a quick five-minute jaw workout with gum. So the gum that I will be using is of course my own gum product, Brett's Jawline Chewing Gum. This is a gum that I created in partnership with Jawliner. It is a tablet chewing gum that is 10 to 15 times harder than normal chewing gum. This stuff is really tough, so it's definitely going to work that jaw muscle, this masseter muscle right here. Now, if you haven't ordered this yet, you don't have it, you can just pick up some normal chewing gum, but you will need to use like four or five pieces at a time to achieve the same level of toughness as something like my chewing gum. Now, if you do have my chewing gum, what you're gonna do is first you're gonna chew it as hard and fast as you can

• 59:34Speaker 08

  on your right side for a minute straight. Then immediately chew it on the left side hard and fast for a minute straight. Then, third thing you're gonna do is you're gonna put it at the front of your teeth and chew it as fast as you can for another minute. I'll show you one round. This is what it looks like, starting in three, two, one, go.

• 59:55Casey Newton?

  We're literally watching a video of someone chewing gum while holding up a stopwatch. This is, I feel like I've fallen into an abyss.

• 1:00:05Kevin Roose?

  Okay, so this is the sort of sphere of jawline influencers who are making these videos promoting this gum. I would assume they have some kind of ad deal with the gum companies. But is this pretty typical, Callie, of the sort of content that you were seeing while you were reporting the story?

• 1:00:25Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, influencers are making videos either sort of like going through their jaw workouts. They're doing sort of transformation videos like, this was me 30 days ago and this is me now. Sometimes it looks different, sometimes they're just like sucking in their cheeks really hard. And then there's also these videos where an influencer, like Dylan Latham, the one that I mentioned earlier, tried a bunch of different jawline chewing gums and talked about what they all sounded like and felt like on camera.

• 1:00:50Casey Newton?

  My next question about this is, is it even true that if you have stronger jaw muscles, it makes a visual difference in how your face looks?

• 1:01:00Speaker 07

  There's mixed slash not a ton of evidence for this. I asked some of the companies that sell this gum, like, you know, send me what you got. Let me see it, the studies and stuff. And I got studies in mice, which it's not really clear applied to the jaws of humans. There was one study-

• 1:01:16Casey Newton?

  They gave the hard gum to mice?

• 1:01:18Kevin Roose?

  There are just these mice walking around-

• 1:01:20Casey Newton?

  Blowing bubble gum?

• 1:01:21Kevin Roose?

  With like incredible jawlines. These really hot mice.

• 1:01:26Casey Newton?

  Oh, I want to see a mouse blowing bubbles.

• 1:01:29Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Casey Newton?

  Okay, so the evidence is not great, but at least some people think that this has some sort of effect.

• 1:01:35Speaker 07

  Yeah, and you know, dentists did tell me like, yes, theoretically, if you were to chew on this stuff for hours upon hours upon hours, you could sort of like temporarily inflate those masseter jaw muscles. However, doing that kind of comes at a gigantic downside. Anyone who has ever clenched their teeth for any amount of time knows.

• 1:01:54Casey Newton?

  Wait, what's the downside?

• 1:01:56Speaker 07

  The downside is it can really exacerbate TMJ and any tightness in your jaw joint. You know, if you guys are hearing me say all of this and thinking, you know, I'd really like to sharpen my jawline, I will pass along what these, these poor, sweet dentists who I bothered told to me, which is, it's not an awesome idea. They really tell young men not to do it, in part because their jawlines like aren't totally developed yet. And chewing on this gum for a really long time, especially as long as you would need to, to see any effect at all. They told me they've seen like cracked fillings, or dislodged crowns, or headaches, or tightness. I ended up reaching out to the ADA, the American Dental Association, and they sent me several paragraphs of thoughtful text on, on why they think young people especially should, should not be chewing this gum.

• 1:02:41Casey Newton?

  Is this, is this like one of those old commercials where four out of five dentists agree, you should not chew the looks maxing gum?

• 1:02:47Speaker 07

  Yeah, maybe more than that.

• 1:02:49Casey Newton?

  Maybe more than that, maybe more than that.

• 1:02:50Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. I mean, Kelly, how popular is this? Is this an isolated trend that a few people on social media have managed to make look bigger than it is? Or did you find evidence that like, large numbers of teenage boys are going out there and chewing this hard gum?

• 1:03:06Speaker 07

  This was like, my big question when I heard about this. Because I was like, oh, man, it's one of those things that seems so sensational. Like, could this actually be true? Or is it just like, a couple trolly influencers? I was pretty surprised by what I found, actually. Jawliner, one company that sells this gum, they told me they'd sold over a million orders. And that the majority of their customers were between 18 and 25. But some are definitely even younger. Like, I talked to one 17-year-old who had ordered the gum. His mom made him throw it out. A 15-year-old said a lot of his classmates chewed it. One parent even told me that her sort of 12-year-old son had said that he wanted to try the gum, too. And then there were all those dentists who actually said, you know, multiple young men per month are coming into our offices with TMJ issues or jaw pain.

• 1:03:49Speaker 07

  And saying that they are also chewing this gum or asking questions about this gum.

• 1:03:55Kevin Roose?

  I'm curious if there's any relationship between this sort of looks-maxing community of young men on social media. And what I think of is sort of an earlier era of kind of the manosphere, like, right? Right? Like, several years ago, maybe five or six years ago, there was this sort of menanist community of people on the internet who were reacting to, I think, what they saw as like, a more feminized ideal of masculinity that was popular among people in their age cohort. They would call these people things like soyboys. And they would sort of try to themselves get very jacked in order to sort of embody the masculine ideal.

• 1:04:38Kevin Roose?

  There was this meme of the kind of Giga Chad, which was like, a guy with a very sharp jawline. So is this connected to that at all?

• 1:04:47Speaker 07

  It's a really good question, and I think it is like in some way a watered down and aged down version that is traveling closer into the mainstream, especially on platforms like TikTok, also Reddit, also Discord. I think another sort of avenue along which it has traveled is mewing, which is this thing that I don't know if you've heard of, but-

• 1:05:08Casey Newton?

  Mewing? Like, like what cats do?

• 1:05:11Speaker 07

  It is something that young men do, often positioning their tongue on the roofs of their mouths, also with the idea of sharpening their jawlines. It was started by a British orthodontist who lost his license. It became very popular and in self communities online, and then it traveled a little bit into the mainstream.

• 1:05:28Casey Newton?

  Wait, I have a question about this mewing. Do you, do you do anything more than just touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth, or is it that simple?

• 1:05:36Speaker 07

  No, it's like really that simple, and there's, there's not a lot of-

• 1:05:39Casey Newton?

  And you do it, you do it like in sets? Like, is this like working out? It's like an endurance challenge? You do like 10 and then rest and then do another 10?

• 1:05:47Speaker 07

  It's really funny that you say that, because one of the things that has been the most interesting to me as I've reported this story, looking at mewing stuff and also looking at this gum, is like how much the language of fitness is being sort of applied to this gum that's being sold. I mentioned like Chiseled Cinnamon, they're talking about it as like hitting the gym for your jawline. One, one company is called Stronger Gum, and when you open its website, it has like an embedded audio player and it plays the song from Rocky IV, the like Hearts on Fire, Strong Desire ones. It's kind of awesome. And I watched the music video and it's, it's Sylvester Stallone, he's like picking up rocks and then he's like running up a mountain. But it is this really sort of bro-y, hyper masculine

• 1:06:30Speaker 07

  fitness language that companies are swaddling their chewing gum product in.

• 1:06:37Casey Newton?

  Right. Chewing gum is like throwing rocks with your face, is kind of the message that's being sold to these, these teenagers. Let me ask, you know, maybe a slightly more serious question here. Are we worried that this, while this is like a sort of fun, lighthearted thing, that it speaks to a risk that maybe more teenage boys are at risk of body dysmorphia or, or their self-esteem issues?

• 1:07:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's a great question and like something that I think a lot of us have paid attention to this year is this sort of mass freak out over the Sephora tween, the idea that there is this teen or tween girl rushing to Sephora because she really wants a cream, perhaps an anti-aging cream that will smooth her skin, something intended for adults. There's been a ton of coverage of that and I had been curious for months, like, is there a male equivalent of this? And if companies are really successfully reaching 13-year-old and 12-year-old girls on these platforms, I would be pretty surprised if they were missing out on an opportunity to reach young boys too. And they definitely are finding them. I wrote a story a couple of months ago, I hope this isn't off-topic.

• 1:07:45Casey Newton?

  No.

• 1:07:45Speaker 07

  About smell-maxing, or these sort of really expensive colognes that were taking off among really young men because, again, they were getting messaging on social media about how if they wanted to get girls, if they wanted to sort of be attractive at their middle school, it was critical that they wear a $400 Yves Saint Laurent cologne. And so I do worry, some of the boys that I talk to worry, some of their parents worry that they're being exposed to sort of an endless scroll of these algorithmically perfected men and that especially teens and tweens who just aren't naturally going to look like that yet are going to feel that that is what they need to conform to and are going to be motivated to spend money to try to be that way.

• 1:08:29Casey Newton?

  Right. Well, now I'm worried Kevin's gonna start smell-maxing. This is a very small studio we're in.

• 1:08:34Kevin Roose?

  I probably do have some leftover cologne from middle school when I did briefly experiment with what I guess now is being called smell-maxing.

• 1:08:42Casey Newton?

  I thought I detected some Axe Body Spray on you the other day.

• 1:08:44Speaker 07

  Axe Body Spray is like way too cheap for middle schoolers now.

• 1:08:48Casey Newton?

  Oh, really?

• 1:08:49Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Casey Newton?

  Oh, great. How expensive is a hard gum?

• 1:08:51Speaker 07

  Expensive. Jawliner, a package of 60 pieces is around $26.

• 1:08:59Casey Newton?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 1:08:59Speaker 07

  Some others are more. They're way more than regular gum.

• 1:09:01Casey Newton?

  Wow.

• 1:09:02Kevin Roose?

  Wow.

• 1:09:02Casey Newton?

  Used to be you could get five pieces of candy for a nickel. Back in Kevin's day.

• 1:09:07Kevin Roose?

  I love that the premise of this segment is just, we are old and we want to feel less out of touch.

• 1:09:12Casey Newton?

  That's not, the premise of this segment is we're trying to save teenage boys, Kevin.

• 1:09:16Kevin Roose?

  Yes.

• 1:09:16Casey Newton?

  They're at, they're at risk of damaging their jaws.

• 1:09:18Speaker 07

  You're processing it differently, though. Like Casey's taking it out on Kevin. Kevin's maybe sort of like turning it internally.

• 1:09:23Kevin Roose?

  Well, Casey's, Casey's externalizing his shame over his own jawline onto me.

• 1:09:29Casey Newton?

  Actually, a true story about me is, if you're looking at me right now, you may see I have a beard. The entire reason I grew a beard is it gives me the illusion of a jawline, which I otherwise do not have. I'm just all face and neck.

• 1:09:40Kevin Roose?

  All right. Well, I know what I'm getting you for, for your, for your birthday.

• 1:09:43Casey Newton?

  I'm getting some chiseled cinnamon?

• 1:09:44Kevin Roose?

  You're getting some chiseled cinnamon, my friend.

• 1:09:46Casey Newton?

  That's what I like to hear.

• 1:09:46Kevin Roose?

  So, Callie, in transparency, we did try to acquire some facial fitness gum here in the studio to try it as part of interviewing you. Unfortunately, the Amazon package was delayed. So, the best I could do is a pack of Orbit white gum. But I did see in that video that we watched together that if you want to replicate the feeling of chewing fitness gum, you can just chew four or five pieces of regular gum at the same time. So Casey, I want to suggest that we, we do that right now and each chew five pieces of regular gum.

• 1:10:19Casey Newton?

  You're telling me any piece of soft gum can become hard gum if you simply put enough of it into your mouth?

• 1:10:23Kevin Roose?

  Exactly.

• 1:10:24Casey Newton?

  Wonderful.

• 1:10:25Kevin Roose?

  So I'm gonna pour you five pieces. I'm gonna attempt to pour you five pieces of gum. Is that five?

• 1:10:30Casey Newton?

  That's, that's six. But you know what? I'll do it. I'm that crazy.

• 1:10:34Kevin Roose?

  You're so brave. Okay, I'm gonna do five. So you're gonna have a stronger jawline than me. And we're gonna make poor Callie watch as we try to look smacks here.

• 1:10:45Casey Newton?

  Okay, are we really doing this?

• 1:10:46Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 1:10:46Casey Newton?

  Okay.

• 1:10:47Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Casey Newton?

  All right, here we go.

• 1:10:51Casey Newton?

  There's just so much gum. There's so much gum. Did you ever play the game Chubby Bunny? I feel like I'm playing Chubby Bunny. We're having a major Chubby Bunny moment right now. My jaw's already tired.

• 1:11:04Kevin Roose?

  It's, it's extremely minty.

• 1:11:06Casey Newton?

  So minty. Oh my gosh.

• 1:11:10Kevin Roose?

  How are you feeling? Are you feeling any changes to your self-esteem?

• 1:11:14Casey Newton?

  I feel like this is taking 20 years off my life. I feel like a new man. How do you feel?

• 1:11:20Kevin Roose?

  Not great.

• 1:11:21Casey Newton?

  Not great.

• 1:11:22Kevin Roose?

  Yeah. But I, this is my first jawline looks maxing attempt. So maybe I just need to get over the hump. Okay, let's switch sides. Left side.

• 1:11:31Casey Newton?

  Let's left side. I think, um, I think I'm comfortable with the sort of like looks, looks minimizing, looks mini. What is, what's the opposite of look maxing? Looks declining? Looks opting out?

• 1:11:43Kevin Roose?

  You know, what do they say when you're working out? Uh, pain is weakness leaving the body. Maybe this pain that I'm feeling is just weakness leaving my jaw.

• 1:11:49Casey Newton?

  I have, the best part of this whole segment so far has just been watching an instructional video about how to chew gum. Like I've, it's not easy to insult my intelligence, but I actually feel like that man got there.

• 1:12:00Kevin Roose?

  That probably got way more views than our latest YouTube video.

• 1:12:03Casey Newton?

  For sure.

• 1:12:03Kevin Roose?

  How do you feel about that?

• 1:12:05Casey Newton?

  Well, I mean, he does have the advantage of being a really hot guy.

• 1:12:10Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Casey Newton?

  You know?

• 1:12:11Kevin Roose?

  Very handsome.

• 1:12:11Casey Newton?

  And unfortunately, that's what today's shallow consumers are looking for, Kevin.

• 1:12:15Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Casey Newton?

  Not the sort of, you know, intellectual gravitas that we bring to our conversations.

• 1:12:19Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, we need justice for, for uggos.

• 1:12:23Casey Newton?

  Normal faces?

• 1:12:26Casey Newton?

  We, we really do proudly serve the normal face community.

• 1:12:28Kevin Roose?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:30Casey Newton?

  Okay, I'm gonna spit this out. Hmm.

• 1:12:32Kevin Roose?

  Will you spit out your gum, please?

• 1:12:33Casey Newton?

  Fine. It tastes really good.

• 1:12:36Kevin Roose?

  Well, that was, that was a lot for my mouth.

• 1:12:39Casey Newton?

  Well, Callie, you've really given us a lot to chew on today.

• 1:12:41Kevin Roose?

  Yeah, thanks for gumming on.

• 1:12:45Speaker 07

  Um, thank, thank you so much for having me.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

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• 1:14:59Casey Newton?

  Hard Fork is produced by Whitney Jones and Rachel Cohn. We're edited by Jen Poyant. This week's episode was fact-checked by Ina Alvarado. Today's show was engineered by Chris Wood. Original music by Marian Lozano, Rowan Nemestow, and Dan Powell. Our audience editor is Nell Gulobli. Video production by Ryan Manning and Dylan Burgason. You can watch this full episode on YouTube at youtube.com/hardfork. Special thanks to Paula Schuman, Quiwing Tam, Kayla Presti, and Jeffrey Miranda. You can email us at [email protected].

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