How bin Laden killed TikTok (with Rachel Gilmore)

America is in a “will they or won’t they” situation with TikTok, but it’s not cute. As of last week, the app was finally set to get banned, but over the weekend Trump stayed its execution. Because we don’t really know if/when the app will get deleted, instead, let’s look back at how we got to this dark and dumb moment in the first place. Rachel Gilmore joins us to talk about where it all began: like so many other things, with Gen Z and Osama bin Laden. Our guest Rachel Gilmore is a journalist. You can read/watch her reporting and commentary on her newsletter Bubble Pop (https://rachelgilmore.substack.com), and follow her everywhere else at https://linktr.ee/rachel_gilmore. Catch the extended conversation and plenty of other great bonus content, plus ad-free episodes, by joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ryan Broderick?

  Before we start today's episode, just a reminder that we're running a super sale on our Patreon right now. 50 cents for the first month. Wow. I think my content is worth 50 cents. And hopefully by the time you hear this, we have enough on our Patreon. You can't listen to all of it before the month is over and you have to keep paying. If you want to check out our Patreon, you can go to patreon.com/panicworld, pay 50 cents and listen to our content.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  You have to put in PANIC, all caps, as the discount code.

• 0:29Ryan Broderick?

  That's right.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  That's what gets you 50 cents.

• 0:30Ryan Broderick?

  That's right. I wasn't gonna tell them, but I'm glad you told them.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  Panic. Like that. All caps.

• 0:35Ryan Broderick?

  You gotta shout it at the screen. Yeah. Let's, let's kick things off with a fun question, shall we? Rachel, what's your, what's your favorite, most ridiculous thing you've heard about TikTok's nefarious influence over the youth of North America?

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Honestly, anytime they talk about it covertly manipulating us, I just think about how the only thing it's made me covertly manipulated to do is use a lot of slang that isn't necessarily age appropriate for me.

• 1:05Ryan Broderick?

  What's your favorite TikTok slang?

• 1:07Speaker 02

  Oh, um, like maybe like dead ass?

• 1:11Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, dead ass is good. Yeah.

• 1:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13Ryan Broderick?

  For real.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  That's a really good one.

• 1:15Ryan Broderick?

  Dead ass is no cap. For real, for real. Absolutely.

• 1:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, you nailed it.

• 1:20Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Talking my language.

• 1:21Ryan Broderick?

  I love the Rizler. Although Riz isn't TikTok slang. I feel like that came from Twitch, right? But either way.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  I think so, yeah.

• 1:26Ryan Broderick?

  It's, it's all a soup these days.

• 1:44Ryan Broderick?

  My personal favorite TikTok moral panic is one we've covered on the show before, which is of course, the fear of Nyquil chicken. When TikTok was blamed for people boiling chicken in Nyquil. Which I did do a couple of weeks ago, actually.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:59Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I don't recommend it.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  How did it taste?

• 2:00Ryan Broderick?

  It smelled horrible. I didn't taste it. I didn't eat it. But it smelled awful. But, you know, I think we can both agree that teenagers have never done anything stupid on the internet before TikTok. And this is all some sort of conspiracy from the Chinese government, correct?

• 2:14Speaker 02

  Of course. Of course. It's brand new.

• 2:16Ryan Broderick?

  It's brand new. Teenagers were very well behaved until 2018.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21Ryan Broderick?

  So today's episode of Panic World is all about the impending TikTok ban. I'm Ryan Broderick. Welcome to Panic World, a show about the moral panics and witch hunts bubbling up out of the darkest corners of the internet. No doubt you've been following news stories for the past several weeks, months, almost a year now, about TikTok being banned in America. And there's a good chance that you don't actually understand why that's happening. And the reason you don't understand why that's happening is because no one can agree on why it's happening. But the very basis of this entire drama is a very stupid and fundamental misunderstanding about what TikTok is and how people use it.

• 3:02Ryan Broderick?

  Today's story is about how we got here, the moral panic that engulfed America, the "video games are turning people into mass shooters" sequel that we've been waiting for for a generation. This is how, for a brief moment, everyone became convinced that TikTok had made Osama bin Laden the icon of Gen Z and how that spun out of control and brought us to this very dark and dumb and confusing moment in American tech history. Joining me is a Canadian, luckily. We are sick of American guests on here, but I feel like this will be fine. The writer of the wonderful bubble pop newsletter, journalist Rachel Gilmore. Hello, Rachel, welcome.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Hey, thank you so much for having me.

• 3:43Ryan Broderick?

  Did you feel like in your heart that we could get to this point where TikTok was going to get banned? Like, did you ever seriously consider this?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  I was in deep denial, for sure. I didn't think that they would do something so stupid and so blatantly just hypocritical when you look at so many other parallels in the world of tech. But apparently, the stupidity and willingness to do dumb things of y'all down south, sometimes you guys really impress us, eh?

• 4:15Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, we like to go crazy over little tiny things. That's actually the basis of this entire podcast. It's a very American idea. I also was very skeptical that it would get this far because I just, I don't know, I preternaturally believe that some adults in the room will eventually step in and stop these things from happening, but that doesn't happen. And Now, I guess Trump is the adult in the room, which means that, you know,

• 4:47Speaker 02

  I know.

• 4:48Ryan Broderick?

  It's never gonna get sorted out.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Never. And it probably doesn't help that like so many of your lawmakers and stuff are of an age where they would need, they're the kind of people who would accidentally upload a selfie to TikTok and not realize until it's blown up and gotten a million likes, you know?

• 5:04Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. I also found myself like feeling like extreme cognitive dissonance over the summer. Well, I'm, you know, I'm watching the Biden administration be like, we're banning TikTok. It's happening. While Kamala Harris's team is like, we're so brat. This is great. Look at like Tim Walz playing Crazy Taxi on TikTok. Like it just, to me, it felt so ridiculous that I just couldn't take it seriously.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. I mean, you're watching lawmakers use it while promising to ban it. And if it's such a serious concern, like security concern, why are they using it? And using its trends? And it just really doesn't make sense.

• 5:45Ryan Broderick?

  I have spoken to people who were inside the White House as of last year, who were saying that there were some politicians that were using TikTok on burner phones, because you can't have it installed on a government device here. But then there's a whole bunch of other politicians that have never, literally, ever used it. And I feel like the environment where you have a bunch of people who can't admit they're using it and a bunch of people who truly don't, who can't admit they have never used it, all trying to argue about whether or not it should exist anymore is a bad starting ground for this.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  It's very bad. Yeah, especially when a bunch of American citizens are making their living on it. It's just wild.

• 6:25Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. So lucky for us, the Associated Press has put together a timeline of TikTok's rise and inevitable fall, and how the US government has been sort of dealing with it since it launched. And let's, let's, let's start all the way back. In February 2019.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:41Ryan Broderick?

  February 2019, a little song called Old Town Road blows up. Were you a fan, were you a fan of the Lil Nas X sort of launch into culture in 2019?

• 6:53Speaker 02

  Embarrassingly so. I definitely like sometimes got ready to it at like 8:30 in the morning. A weird time to listen to that song, but.

• 7:01Ryan Broderick?

  I saw him perform it live before he had like put out a real album. Yeah, I was like part of this event where he was a guest and he did like two songs and like it was very good. Like it was a very catchy. I don't ever want to hear it again, but it was very funny catchy song at the time, I think. But the security concerns about TikTok start almost immediately. About two months later, the Pentagon announces that they don't want US military to have TikTok on their phones. Now, have you ever explored what they used to call boot talk?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  No.

• 7:29Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so my favorite sort of era of TikTok is this weird moment when, so for people who don't know ByteDance, they buy Musically, which was like a lip syncing app and they combine it with a lot of the tech stack of Douyin, which is the Chinese version of TikTok and they create TikTok. And so the earliest people on there were Musically users, like people who are just like doing fun lip syncs. What many people did not realize at the time is that a majority of those people were bored soldiers on army bases who were just like doing lip sync videos. So like the earliest massive community other than furries on TikTok. Well, I shouldn't say other than furries because there's a lot of furries that serve in the military. But like, it was mainly like bored soldiers who were just like recording

• 8:14Ryan Broderick?

  their like army bases as they're doing lip sync videos.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Perfect. Amazing.

• 8:20Ryan Broderick?

  And it was like a big enough problem that like the Pentagon had to make a statement about it.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Why people in the military? It makes a lot of sense. They're bored. They're sitting around. But why furries, Ryan?

• 8:30Ryan Broderick?

  I just told you, they're bored at-

• 8:32Speaker 01

  No, no, I understand, but the non-military furries. Why?

• 8:36Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think there's many, but I mean, most of the furries I've interviewed work in emergency services positions such as EMTs, law enforcement, or the military, fun fact. But, okay. And the reason furries were on there is because furries love lip sync videos. Because you, well, I shouldn't say lip sync, because you can't see their lips, but like, they do dances.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, that kind of feels like a cheat code for nailing the lip syncs.

• 8:57Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, but they do a lot of like, not lip sync battles, but like, I guess like dance battles, like furries love dance battles.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 9:04Ryan Broderick?

  So, around this same time, you start to get reports out that the Hong Kong democracy protests are not using TikTok at all. In fact, I was in Hong Kong in December for like, the last, what would be the last protest, and no one there had any ByteDance apps on their phones at all. Like, they were kind of the earliest political group to be like, we don't trust this stuff. But I wanted your thoughts about sort of like, what you remember about the earliest period, this like, pre-COVID TikTok period? Like, what kind of stands out for you, looking back?

• 9:39Speaker 02

  So, I joined TikTok during the pandemic. Like, that was when I really got into it. So, I didn't have a huge relationship with the app before then, but I would say, like, in 2020 at least, when I joined, which was pandemic, I don't know if I'm jumping too far ahead here.

• 9:55Ryan Broderick?

  No, no, no, go for it, go for it.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  It was just, it was still a lot of lip syncing and dancing, and a lot of like, teens lip syncing and dancing.

• 10:02Ryan Broderick?

  A lot of teens.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I felt super old, and they were doing these really exaggerated facial expressions with their lip syncing, like the Bella Porch kind of vibe.

• 10:11Ryan Broderick?

  I was about to say Bella Porch, right, yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's definitely like, how I categorize that period on TikTok.

• 10:18Ryan Broderick?

  And my understanding is that Musically was a kind of a life raft app for former Vine stars? So like, so basically, you know, Vine gets shut down on my birthday, um, in like 2017 or whatever, 2016. And then a lot of those users go over to Musically and they're just like cute teens doing lip syncs.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:39Ryan Broderick?

  And then they suddenly become like the earliest TikTok users. Yeah. So this is sort of the earliest phase of TikTok culture, which is like teens and furries and soldiers doing like weird dances. And there's like some memes on there, but like not ones that I think have really lasted the test of time. During the pandemic, when you join, that's also when we start to get things like, uh, you know, the gentle minions and you get like, uh, you remember like Adrian's kickback? Do you remember that?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 11:11Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So this was like the beginning of like the TikTok riots, which weren't really riots, but like basically like teenagers would organize like COVID parties on TikTok and it would like get so popular on the app that it would like spin out of control. And one of these was like a anti-lockdown hangout sesh on a beach in California that like turned into a riot where like they shot like beanbags at the kids and stuff.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 11:32Ryan Broderick?

  Cops had to show up and it was called like Adrian's kickback. Yeah.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 11:36Ryan Broderick?

  So the idea of a ban wouldn't really start until Trump, you know, starts to notice the app. But in 2020, in August of 2020, there was an executive order that focused on the data and info that China may have been collecting through TikTok. And they were mainly focused on federal employees. That was like, that was like the big concern. And what I wanted to kind of get from you is like, in your own reporting on TikTok, how much data do you think the Chinese government actually has access to through the app? You know, what's your most like skeptical take here?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  I do think they probably could theoretically access a decent amount of data. At the same time, they were caught surveilling some US journalists. So

• 12:23Ryan Broderick?

  Yep.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  that is a point that kind of you have to keep in the front of your mind. So I do think that they definitely have access to data, but I don't think it's anything necessarily. Beyond what other tech platforms collect and disseminate and salt to data brokers and put into the ad tech industry, which then lets it leak out everywhere. So like, to me, it's less that TikTok doesn't have your data, because I think they do, and that they could theoretically through ByteDance be compelled to share it with the Chinese government. But that's already happening through the leaky ad tech system and data brokers that are working with like Facebook and all of those

• 13:06Speaker 02

  other guys. So it's just kind of, to me, seems like we're not dealing with the actual issue by focusing on a single app, if that makes sense.

• 13:14Ryan Broderick?

  I think that makes total sense. The only other insight I have here is that I did speak to a ByteDance employee in 2019, working in Beijing. Do you remember like those stories about like ByteDance pulling down like LGBT content or content about Palestine later on? Or, you know, these moments were like the moderation seems to glitch out.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:34Ryan Broderick?

  One thing I did hear is that ByteDance employees, like at a certain level, do have or did have, at least in 2019, moderation access. Like, they could pull up the panel to be like, I'm deleting this. And one of the major problems that ByteDance had was that the majority of their employees grew up in China. So in the same way that an American moderator would be moderating content with American values, a Chinese moderator or a Chinese employee might see something on TikTok and be like, oh, that, we can't have that. That's, that's illegal here. And they would just delete it.

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:05Ryan Broderick?

  And one of the major issues as TikTok spread internationally was trying to find ways to deal with that, which I actually think is like kind of a fascinating glimpse of almost the reverse, I think, of what Washington believes, which is like TikTok is like, no, no, no, no, wait, we need like less Chinese employees because their, their, their trigger fingers too quick.

• 14:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and it also makes you, again, like, everything we talk about with TikTok, I just can't help but think about all the other social platforms. And it's just like, okay, so all of these US-owned social media companies, how are they influencing and making ridiculous decisions relative to other cultures? And it's just like, you know, as a Canadian here, it's such like a US-centric way of viewing the world.

• 14:47Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, it is. We, yeah, we do that. We definitely do that. What I think is like really interesting, and you've pointed this out already, is like, the things that are bad about TikTok, and there are things that are bad about it, are not unique to TikTok.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 15:02Ryan Broderick?

  What's like so maddening when you dig back through this, this like early moment of the banned discourse starting in 2020 is the executive order in August 2020, signed by the Trump administration, singles out TikTok for COVID conspiracies.

• 15:19Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 15:20Ryan Broderick?

  Like.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it only happened on TikTok. Definitely.

• 15:24Ryan Broderick?

  I, I, I was like covering COVID conspiracies in the beginning of the pandemic and like TikTok wasn't even on like the, like my priority list. Like I didn't even give a shit. Like it compared to what was happening on Twitter. Twitter was a madhouse.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  Yes. Literally, if you read like the, um, character limit book, you see that Jack was basically kind of a covert anti-vaxxer anyways. So like.

• 15:47Ryan Broderick?

  You know, I couldn't have told that. I could not have, uh, realized that from his gigantic beard.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 15:53Ryan Broderick?

  Burning man sensibility. Um, so Trump was asked about the executive order in September 2020 and he said, we'll see what happens. I'm not doing the voice. It'll either be closed up or they'll sell it. So we'll either close up TikTok in this country for security reasons or it'll be sold, which is funny because like he's doing that right now about the Panama Canal and Canada and green. Like that's his whole deal is like, I'm going to threaten you and you're either going to shut down or you're going to give it to us.

• 16:24Ryan Broderick?

  Which, you know, I don't, I don't support taking over Canada. I want you to know that.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  I appreciate the solidarity.

• 16:29Ryan Broderick?

  Although it would be extremely funny if Trump accidentally bullies candidate and like creating like the EU of North America. But that's just like a, that's just like a funny idea that I've been kicking around.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  I mean, do you guys really want to deal with our bloc québeca?

• 16:40Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, I do. I absolutely do.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  They're actually hilarious, I will say.

• 16:43Ryan Broderick?

  They're, they rule. They absolutely, like dude, Quebec separatists are fucking sick. And like a world where like Texas separatists and Quebec separatists can like fight each other. Like I'm in.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  I would love to watch that. I would watch that.

• 16:56Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. Let's jump back to our timeline here and stop fantasizing.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  That's the real Alex Garland.

• 17:01Ryan Broderick?

  Let's stop fantasizing about sectarian violence in the Canadian-American war, uh, and jump back to 2021. So in September 2021, TikTok hits a billion monthly active users. So this is the first app since Facebook to really do so. And I think this is actually the moment where at least in, in America and Canada, I mean, would, would you say this is fair? Like in 2021, TikTok kind of overtakes Instagram or Facebook as the most important app. Does that sound right?

• 17:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 17:30Ryan Broderick?

  Which I think we should stop here and talk about how weird that is for a second, because like, I don't think we've really reflected on how strange it is for a video-first app to be that big. Because people weren't really making like, video content primarily for Facebook. They were like, fighting with each other in Facebook groups.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 17:45Ryan Broderick?

  What's your read on like, how that has changed internet discourse since? Because I feel like that is a massive change.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  I think it's the result primarily of TikTok making it super accessible. Like, they also have, they make it really easy for individuals to upload and post their thoughts and stuff, and like, edit it and use even green screen effects and everything. But I think that having everything communicated through video definitely shifts conversations in the sense that it changes, like, I think the news media has taken a huge kind of, hit's not the right word, but like, it's a moment where they could have risen to meet the moment, but instead, they're just like, no, you're influencers. But like, you know, we see people's like, face, talking to us like they're on FaceTime, and people started to really enjoy that method of communication and feel like a trust build in a relationship,

• 18:37Speaker 02

  and like to have a relationship with the people communicating to them. So I think that kind of contributed to a lack of trust in media, and more of a trust in people getting their news from influencers. And I mean, a lot of it's really short-form, a lot of it's more casual. I think that it probably made our discourse more casual alongside Trump, just constantly changing the norms of what we can say publicly and professionally. We all know way too much about each other now.

• 19:02Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I think that's right. I know so much about people who I should not know exist. And I think the phenomenon you're talking about with like, the feeling of trust you get from someone's face or voice telling you something rather than reading it, it's not just conspiratorial thinking. I feel like it's this, it's this feeling that you see a video on TikTok and you suddenly assume that it's representative of a whole. You're like, oh, this must be a thing that everyone's doing. Everyone's saying rizzed up with the g yet. They must.

• 19:31Speaker 02

  They aren't.

• 19:32Ryan Broderick?

  I am. I am always saying that. Right after I have my double chunk chocolate cookie, I'm like, give me a risdub. Yeah, I'm gonna give three booms to this gi. I think that's how you pronounce. I've never actually tried to.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  I've never said it out loud and I'm not gonna try.

• 19:46Ryan Broderick?

  It's mortifying. I have to stop saying it. This is also the moment where not only is like TikTok beginning to sort of rot our brains as we now would say, it is where they're being scrutinized over their impact on teenagers. So like the Wall Street Journal puts out like a big expose on like how teens are reacting to TikTok, which, I mean, for you, like, do you feel like TikTok is doing all that different to a teenager's brain than say like Instagram or Snapchat? Do you feel like it's that different?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  No. Any visual platform definitely is gonna have the impact of, you know, having a whole discourse around bodies and the way that we look. And obviously, there's like some very powerful filters on TikTok, but there's filters on Snapchat, there's Facetune, there's like, you know, people have been having those issues for forever. Since we have had visual social media. So I don't really feel like it's a unique problem to TikTok. And I think that honestly, like the overarching critique I have of any discourse about TikTok is that all of these issues are more so societal issues and issues with our tech industry than they are TikTok specific.

• 20:49Ryan Broderick?

  I always like to play this game where it's like, is this thing new that we're all talking about the internet? Or like, did this happen during the MySpace era? For the most part, almost everything that we've ever been mad about on TikTok, like, did happen almost 20 years ago. But I do remember like, you know, memetic social diseases, like eating disorder content or like self harm content, you know, happening on the, in the MySpace era. Like, there was a whole, what was it? To write love on her arms, like that whole like anti cutting yourself organization that like had pop ups at Warp Tour and stuff. Like, this is not new. That like teenagers get online and they start like sharing their fucked up little teen thoughts with each other and make themselves sick. Like, it just happens.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  And adults get online and start sharing their fucked up little adult thoughts. And then January 6th happens, you know? So it's not like it's even just a teen issue.

• 21:34Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, but we also just did an episode about January 6th that.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  I was listening to it earlier.

• 21:39Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, everyone showed up to the Capitol, they had a good time. And as of this week, they all got to go home. So, you know, good party, everybody. Great job.

• 21:51Ryan Broderick?

  So the the pressure that the US government and sort of like the US media is putting on TikTok is beginning to actually pressure TikTok to do something. And so in June 2022, TikTok launches Project Texas, which is crazy that they came up with that name before Project 2025 could use it. Like, I feel like it's a very Trumpian name. So they decide to move all of their US data to Oracle, which is based in Texas, and essentially say, okay, Oracle is going to moderate the content. And that way, the Chinese government can't access any of our data.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Was the Project Texas move just a cosmetic change that wouldn't have actually done anything? Or was it actually a substantive offer from TikTok?

• 22:36Ryan Broderick?

  TikTok has been willing to move as much of their data outside of China as possible. And my understanding is they're kind of down to do whatever they needed to to stay in business.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  And so it actually, it actually could have alleviated the stated fears to like, no, that's what I was asking. It's like, was it, was it?

• 22:56Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think so.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Well, and also, I think that they did that. And then they spied on American journalists. So like, it just, that kind of, they kind of shot themselves in the foot with that move.

• 23:05Ryan Broderick?

  They were, they were asked by Brett Kavanaugh during the Supreme, the last Supreme Court hearing, if the Chinese government could spy on people still. And TikTok's legal team was like, we can't deny that they can. So.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  But also, they can do it through other platforms is the other thing. They can go through the data brokers, they can go through the ad tech industry and siphon away Americans' personal data anywhere. So again, if that's actually what this is about, they should deal with it properly and not just delete TikTok.

• 23:34Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  It was cosmetic because that wasn't actually the problem.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 23:40Ryan Broderick?

  But there's obviously like a, you know, a paranoia about Chinese overreach. And I sort of get it. I sort of, I'm like, okay, like, would we feel comfortable if TikTok was Russian? And I probably wouldn't. Like, I don't know if that makes me like, a fuddy duddy, but part of me is like, shouldn't adversarial government have all of our data behind their great firewall? And I feel like that's the other part of this is that like, it does make it slightly different, doesn't it?

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I mean, I will say. Any nation, I guess, that has traditionally not been besties with the nation that you're from is going to inherently make you a little uncomfy when you think about the fact that they have access to your citizens' data, can figure out weak points and people's vulnerabilities to then try to recruit them for spy activities or whatever, blackmail, or, you know, that's a lot of what they do with this kind of data, right? But again, like, this always brings me back to that argument, which is, yes, that is a concern that I think is legitimate to a degree. But if that is your concern, then do something about Google's monopoly on ad tech that allows so much data to, like, leak through and so much advertiser money

• 24:59Speaker 02

  to go to really sketchy places and fund sketchy things. Like, there's just so many ways in which the tech industry is set up that it's not a TikTok-specific issue, it's an industry issue where we don't really care about who is buying and selling our data or do anything to actually address the loopholes and many layers of opacity that make this such a big problem. So like, if you, if you deal with that, you deal with TikTok to a certain degree, right? So I, I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to target TikTok specifically when you've got Meta out here having scandal after scandal about data leaks.

• 25:31Ryan Broderick?

  I, I think in many ways TikTok, right around 2022, 2023, becomes kind of something of like a wicker man that we, like, all go after and burn because we can't fix everything else. You know, it's like this sacrifice that we've all decided we're gonna make.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  And a sacrifice that just so happens to be, like, I'm sure you saw the research from Pew that came out. It's the only platform where left-wing news influencers outpace those on the right.

• 25:59Ryan Broderick?

  So we gotta get rid of it. We gotta get rid of it.

• 26:01Speaker 02

  Well, exactly, right? Like, every single other platform, right-wing news influencers get more traction and, like, blow up on the platform more. It's only TikTok that has that sort of counterbalance. And it's also the only app where women news influencers come even close to existing in the same numbers as men. So it's just kind of annoying that the one that they choose to make an example of also happens to be the only one where, like, the little guy, the people who care About, you know, social programs and like, you know, the world being more fair and closing the wealth gap is the one that they target.

• 26:33Ryan Broderick?

  I think that is a really important dimension here, and we've addressed this in previous episodes of sort of moral panics always sort of have this like center nucleus of misogyny, particularly around like protecting young women. You know, this idea that like, it's not just that TikTok is like being used to spy on Americans by the Chinese government. It's that TikTok is being used to spy on young women in America by the Chinese government. Like, it's always got that edge to it. Like, one of our earliest episodes is about teens and using technology, and it wasn't young boys. It was always like, oh, it's doing bad things to young girls. And I do think-

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Well, because our little brains can't handle it, you know?

• 27:11Ryan Broderick?

  That's right. You're right.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  We need to be protected by strong men.

• 27:13Ryan Broderick?

  That's right. Donald Trump's gonna sign an executive order to protect you guys.

• 27:18Ryan Broderick?

  But yeah, 2023 is when the wheels fall off the bus here, and any sort of reasonable concession that TikTok's trying to make isn't gonna cut it. So that's when lawmakers in the US move to basically start removing the app from federal employees' devices. So this is they ban it there, the Biden campaign. God, what a fucking asshole. This is when he also makes a TikTok account and starts using it to campaign for 2024. I hate that guy, man, like-

• 27:45Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 27:46Ryan Broderick?

  Like, just ridiculous. Like, just cutting off your nose to spite your face, his entire administration. And this is when, in March of 2023, Shou Zhihui, the TikTok CEO, goes in front of Congress and has to explain that TikTok is not convincing teenagers to cook chicken in Nyquell, which we will try to-

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Just frying.

• 28:06Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, we're just me. Just me. It smells like fried dough combined with rotting fish. Don't do it. Here, let's listen to Representative Buddy Carter explain the dangers of TikTok.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  And I don't speak for everyone, but there are those on this committee, including myself, who believe that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in psychological warfare.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Through TikTok to deliberately influence US children. You see some of the challenges that we've seen on TikTok. You know about them. You know about the milk crate. You know about the blackout challenge. You know about the NyQuil chicken challenge, the Benadryl challenge, the dragon's breath liquid nitrogen trend. I want to ask you, as I understand it, there's a sister app in China. Duykin, I'm sorry if I'm butchering the pronunciation. Do they have these kind of challenges in China?

• 29:03Ryan Broderick?

  Chinese users are as goofy and silly as American users. They troll the way we do. They have their own version of shitposts. Their emoji game is out of control. They love all that stuff. But they're also not doing nearly as stupid and dangerous things as Americans do on their corner of the internet, as far as I can tell. Which, to me, is evidence that Americans are our own kind of unhinged, and we don't really need a foreign government to convince us to, I don't know, boil chicken in NyQuil or dress up in suits to go see the premiere of the new Minions movie. That's just not something I think that a foreign government needs to ask us to do. There's no brainwashing required. And I think that's what really scares people about TikTok,

• 29:48Ryan Broderick?

  is that it's connecting teenagers and increasingly normal people across borders, and they don't look or act or sound or dance or vote the way we assumed they always had. And that is a very powerful and frightening idea for people who, you know, have banked their entire careers or political chances on an assumption about that kind of thing. It's a very destabilizing thing to open up TikTok and discover, like, people want to fuck Venom from the Venom movies.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  It's like endearing, you know? And it makes us, not to get too deep about it, but it makes us see each other as human beings when we can otherwise be dehumanized.

• 30:28Ryan Broderick?

  Totally.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  So having these moments where you see people being silly and being goofy with their friends and see them as multi-dimensional human beings that are just as goofy. Weird as we are, it helps you to remember that people are human beings. I think that's why there was the outpouring of support for Palestinians in Gaza, you know, you're like seeing visually, and I'm sure we're probably going to get to that, too.

• 30:47Ryan Broderick?

  You just

• 30:47Speaker 02

  These people.

• 30:48Ryan Broderick?

  You just did the thing I love most when a guest does it on this show, which is you took me right to the next point.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Oh, amazing.

• 30:55Ryan Broderick?

  Which I wanted to make right before we go to break, which is my theory about all of this is something you've already kind of alluded to. So the government has complained about TikTok on and off for at least five years now. And most of the problems that they were complaining about have never really been unique to TikTok. But I do think what you're hitting on is unique about it. TikTok opened the floodgates for young people in America to have not unfiltered conversations, but certainly very different conversations than what they were having before. And this effect is being seen in countries across the world. Young people get online, they download TikTok, and they start communicating without traditional arbiters of culture. It's not a thing where you're replacing journalists

• 31:35Ryan Broderick?

  with bloggers like we did in the 2000s. You're replacing almost all media that exists with just other teenagers. And that is a very frightening concept, especially if you work in the government or the news media. And that has sent people into an absolute tailspin. They're freaking out, and they're like, we got to get rid of this thing. And we're going to talk about how they're going to do that, and how it's manifesting in the in the media, including a little letter written by Osama bin Laden. All of that right after the break.

• 32:11Ryan Broderick?

  What were you up to on TikTok in November 2023?

• 32:13Speaker 02

  I was watching a lot of videos from Gaza. I've always been someone who's had a combo of makeup, fashion, lifestyle, and hard news on world events and atrocities and neo-Nazis and stuff. So it's a good mix.

• 32:29Ryan Broderick?

  The 20th century media diet is fucking crazy.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  It is a trip. But yeah, so I definitely like I was horrified watching this happen. And, you know, like something. Somewhat related, but I like, I lived in Tunisia for two and a half months and worked there with journalists for human rights a couple of years ago. And I had the opportunity to meet some Palestinian journalists and like, speak to them and interview them actually about Shereen Abu Akhla being killed by the IDF and murdered by the IDF in the West Bank. She's a Palestinian American Al Jazeera journalist. So it's something that I, I was aware of the occupation and apartheid-like conditions or apartheid conditions.

• 33:10Ryan Broderick?

  Apartheid, yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, apartheid. God, it's that old legacy media, like coming from that space. I'm like, oh, am I allowed to say this?

• 33:17Ryan Broderick?

  Sorry, folks. Sorry, folks. You're listening to a podcast. We can do whatever we want.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  We can tell you the truth about Palestine.

• 33:26Ryan Broderick?

  It was not a bullet-involved murder. It was a cop shot someone. Yeah.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'm still like shaking off because you know, my newsroom at the time, I wrote a story about Shereen with that interview I did. And my newsroom at the time killed it. They said I didn't have enough sources when I interviewed four people, including the cameraman who filmed her death, her murder.

• 33:45Ryan Broderick?

  Classic old media newsroom. Yep. Gotta, gotta hold this one up a bit more. Yeah.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  It shouldn't take this kind of moment for us to have empathy. But you know, it was just really incredible to see all these people caring about what was happening to Palestinians and learning about what was happening to Palestinians. So I was just inhaling that on TikTok.

• 34:04Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. And there was definitely a brief moment where TikTok was leading the charge on sort of being able to see stuff from Palestine before they put in some of their filters, which we'll get to. But in November 2023, you have this initial sort of burst of, I'm going to say discourse to kind of cover the whole thing, but it's, it's sort of discourse about the conflict in Israel and Palestine. And amid this discourse, all of a sudden, people start freaking out that Osama bin Laden's letter is going viral on TikTok. Are you familiar with this? Do you remember this?

• 34:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do remember that. Yeah.

• 34:38Ryan Broderick?

  And this very dumb thing will be weaponized in very predictable ways. So we did some digging. We wanted to figure out exactly how this happened. And it's funny, you talked about what you're seeing on your feed because patient zero for this entire story comes from a lifestyle influencer named Lynette Atkins. Here, let's take a listen.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  Let go of your attachment of the future outcome and start just living in the present. That is literally the best spirit. Like, I know that there is a million and one videos out there about how to improve yourself and how to level up, on how to glow up, whatever. But I'm telling you, the only advice that you need to come back to every single day is to be present and to love yourself unconditionally.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  She's iconic. I mean, her hair is amazing. She's got beautiful, perfect curls, which is, that takes skill to be able to style your hair like that. She is like going to the gym, talking about her favorite books, showing off her winter fits. Yeah, she's very, seems like fashion lifestyle kind of vibes to me.

• 35:44Ryan Broderick?

  From what I understand, this is like her second account. I think she may have kind of lost her first account because of all this stuff. But what I think is like important to point out here is that she is a essentially a normal person. Like, her videos are doing like a couple thousand views, which for TikTok is very small.

• 36:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:02Ryan Broderick?

  She's not a brand. She's just like using TikTok the way you would have used Instagram 10 years ago, the way you would have used Facebook 15 years ago.

• 36:11Ryan Broderick?

  But in 2023, she moves to LA and she starts making content about how she moved to LA, which, you know, any New Yorker that moves to LA becomes mentally ill. Like, that's just a fact. So, you know, they can be, they go hiking, they become California sober, they are deeply lonely and they post too much. So, you know, that's, that seems to be what happened here.

• 36:32Speaker 02

  God, that sounds horrifying.

• 36:34Ryan Broderick?

  It's just, it's very normal, just very normal. And so in November, she stumbles across a letter to America, which is a antisemitic, anti-American, misogynistic, homophobic, hateful letter that Osama bin Laden wrote about America. Unfortunately, like, he makes some good points about America, aside from all the other hateful stuff. But like, it's not a good, it's not a good document. It's not, he's not like a... Uh, he's not serving, you know? Like, it's not great.

• 37:03Speaker 02

  Totally fair. Bin Laden was not serving.

• 37:06Ryan Broderick?

  Are you familiar with the letter? Have you seen it? Have you read it or anything?

• 37:09Speaker 02

  I, I remember seeing it at the time and like trying to find, because I kept seeing people saying that it was spreading on TikTok, but I was not seeing any of the videos. So I like actively sought it out because I think I saw it in the news first that this letter was spreading on TikTok. So I was like, is that actually happening? Or is this another moral panic in the media? And yeah, but I don't remember exactly what it said.

• 37:31Ryan Broderick?

  The major reason Lynette was sharing it and why it would eventually kind of go viral at this exact moment is a paragraph towards the end, which I'll read a piece of. I am not promoting Osama bin Laden. Uh, I am not promoting terrorism. I'm, this is journalism, blah, blah, blah, blah. Dear FBI agent listening to this, I am not supporting Osama bin Laden. Okay, so he, he writes, Palestine has been under occupation for decades and none of your presidents talked about it until after September 11th, when Bush realized that your oppression and the tyranny against us were part of the reason for the attack. Then he talked about the necessity for two states. Obama is trying to address the issue with the same solution suggested by his predecessor. They're quilting fruitless solutions, not of concern to us.

• 38:13Ryan Broderick?

  If you want a real sediment that guarantees your security in your country and safeguards your economy from being depleted in a manner similar to our war of attrition against the Soviet Union. Oh, I just went through that season of the Americans recently, actually. Then you have to implement a roadmap that returns the Palestine land to us. All of it, from the sea to the river. It is an Islamic land not subject to being traded or granted to any party. And then he kind of wraps up the letter basically saying like, there will be more violence and more killing until, you know, Palestine is returned. That is the, the chunk of why this is happening in 2023 at this exact moment. And I do not blame a normal person kind of scanning this, being like, oh, that's interesting.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:58Ryan Broderick?

  Because it's not her job to be a journalist. It's like she's just a person on TikTok.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Like, they might not know what, I don't know. Yeah. They might not listen too closely to every line of that and might just hear the fact that he's acknowledging something that Western media has totally screwed the pooch on. So, you know, and like, that's the problem with media screwing these important stories up.

• 39:19Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  Like, is that then the people who are talking about it, even if the messenger is literally Osama bin Laden, get shared and spread and they often have poison pills amongst the legitimate points, right?

• 39:34Ryan Broderick?

  I think that is a fantastic point here, which is that like, the Palestinian conflict is so tightly wound up in old media bullshit that I think the average person, when getting any kind of glimpse of unfederated discourse about it, they have no context. It's just like soup, right? So if, you know, if someone says like, hey, Osama bin Laden's like kind of cooking right now, you're like, oh, I don't know anything about this. Let me read. And that is what happens here because from Lynette Atkins, the letter gets picked up by another, another lifestyle user.

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. What were the girlies doing? We have to protect our women from, you know, running into scary letters on.

• 40:16Ryan Broderick?

  This is why women can't have TikTok is because they start sharing Osama bin Laden's letter. It's just, so I'm going to play this game again. So this is the next user that picks this up. Her username is Cana Blissful, which rules and is great. But yeah, can you describe sort of Cana Blissful's overall aesthetic and vibes here?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, she's also a pretty small creator. She's got like 11, almost 12K followers. Oh, her pinned video is about how vampires are real.

• 40:48Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, yes.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  So, you know, definitely like a. We got a quirky type here. Oh, oh my God. She mentioned Coney 2012 and that just unlocked shameful.

• 40:57Ryan Broderick?

  We gotta get him. We gotta get him.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 41:00Ryan Broderick?

  Coney 2025. Let's do it.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's like her getting super high, her talking about vampires, her, she's just like a normal person.

• 41:11Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. I want to smoke weed and talk about vampires with her. If she tries to bring up Osama Bin Laden, I'll probably be like, hey, let's not talk about that. But like, let's go back to the vampire stuff.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:20Ryan Broderick?

  And then we have one more user to mention here. Another, I guess you could say lifestyle influencer, more so kind of like, I mean, you'll get this immediately. You can describe this. So this is the user Fairy King B. And yeah, walk us through his general aesthetic and vibes because I do think it's slightly different than the other two, but equally small. Here, let's take a listen.

• 41:44Speaker 05

  It's apparently the case that Pepsi and Coca-Cola are gonna start their prebiotic, probiotic, I don't fucking know, gut healthy lineup products. And what's interesting to me is that these motherfuckers didn't give about health before. These motherfuckers did not give about health before when they were putting corn syrup in your fucking sodas, bitch.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's giving like one of those, you know, holistic health, probably thinks they know more, like doesn't necessarily believe science first. But, and plants, okay.

• 42:14Ryan Broderick?

  Lot of plants.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Also, this is, yeah, yeah, a lot of plants, but still like fairly normal. But, you know, and sharing, I'm seeing a lot of posts about helping families in Gaza.

• 42:24Ryan Broderick?

  So these three accounts were the lead spreaders of this, according to what we could tell. And look, I think Lynette Atkins and Kana Blissful and Fairy King B. Fantastic blunt rotation. Would love to hang out in a backyard garden with them. But I don't, I don't really want to use them to like learn about the world, but like, I would love to hang out with the three of them.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:45Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think that they should be sort of deciding what everyone in the world talks about, which is fine. I think they might agree. And I think another important dimension here is that a lot of these people are young. Either they don't remember nine 11 or they weren't alive for nine 11. It's like, it is also like, Grant, we gotta eventually talk about how often this podcast circles around nine 11 because it might be time to do a nine 11.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's coming up a lot.

• 43:07Ryan Broderick?

  Dude, we talk about it like every time we record now. It's like, I don't know. Anyways.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  I thought that was just what Americans did though, right?

• 43:13Ryan Broderick?

  Nine 11 is so hot right now.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  At least once a week.

• 43:15Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, I, yeah. We, we all get together once a week and just talk about nine 11 now in America.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  We just, we just touch each other's shoulder and go, do you remember? And then we solemnly nod.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  Where were you?

• 43:26Ryan Broderick?

  I say never forget.

• 43:28Speaker 02

  To be fair, that's one of those things that we copy from you guys because I'm definitely in Canada.

• 43:32Ryan Broderick?

  You guys talk about nine 11?

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Oh, we talk about nine 11. Yeah.

• 43:35Ryan Broderick?

  Wow.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Like, I definitely had conversations with people like, where were you?

• 43:39Ryan Broderick?

  You guys all go to the Tim Hortons and talk about nine 11 together?

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's actually where we do it. That's where the official meeting is.

• 43:45Ryan Broderick?

  That's great. Yeah, I know.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:47Ryan Broderick?

  So, one of the biggest Osama bin Laden letter videos before it gets pulled down has around half a million views. Would you say that's a lot for TikTok?

• 43:55Speaker 02

  Not for TikTok. No. No. There's videos getting like, I don't know, even hundreds of millions, I would say. Like, I gotta see what the most viewed one is, but definitely at least like tens of millions.

• 44:05Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, I would say that that is right. Also, a large chunk of the people creating content about Osama bin Laden's letter, and this was something we noticed with Nyquil Chicken as well, were people duetting the videos, being mad about it. Which I think is like not something that possibly journalists or politicians kind of understand is that like, you can share a video inside of your video and be like, this sucks. Like, they don't count, they just count the shares as one thing.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  This is my pet peeve. That is really a pet peeve. It's like a major source of fury for me is the way in which like legacy media and a lot of journalists and stuff have issued wanting to understand social media for so long. And then they totally like absolutely screw up when they actually are supposed to report on something that involves social media because they always had so much disdain for it. They never took the time to understand it.

• 45:00Ryan Broderick?

  Right. This is exactly how I feel as well is that like, they are, they've made themselves useful idiots in a way. Once again, like to gut check with you here, one of the most shared videos we found about Osama bin Laden's letter had 3,000 shares.

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 45:14Ryan Broderick?

  Like.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  I just Googled, right? Because I wanted to check. There are videos out there that have had billions of views.

• 45:20Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Billions.

• 45:21Ryan Broderick?

  Most of mine, most of my videos have about a billion.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, all of your videos about Osama bin Laden.

• 45:27Ryan Broderick?

  How Osama bin Laden was right.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:29Ryan Broderick?

  Are, yeah, have billions of views. You're right. But just, just to like, really nail home how ridiculous all of this was. On the night of November 14th, 2023, according to Google Trends Worldwide, the most popular Osama bin Laden video was worth about 11% of one video about Travis Kelsey at the time. That was how not popular this was.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  And those are two equally dangerous men.

• 45:55Ryan Broderick?

  I would say politically the same. I would say they have, they definitely have the exact same games on their Nintendo DS, which, by the way, if people are listening, do not know about this, you can download an emulator that is all the games on Osama bin Laden's like DS library, and it is fascinating.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 46:10Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Yeah, Grant, we have to do an Osama bin Laden episode. So, and in the US, the Osama bin Laden video was even less popular. Like, it was just not very popular. The hashtag #LetterToAmerica was viewed, duets included, 2 million times. The most popular hashtag for seven days at that time was hashtag TikTokShopBlackFriday, which had 380 million views.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 46:33Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, so.

• 46:34Speaker 02

  And so, sorry, the Osama one had 2 million views?

• 46:39Ryan Broderick?

  Views, not even videos.

• 46:41Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 46:42Ryan Broderick?

  Views. Like, that's the combined views of all the videos using that hashtag.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  And literally, I did a breakdown of Jordan Peterson interviewing the guy who's running, like, against Trudeau, or I guess not against Trudeau anymore, but against this party. And I got 1.2 million views, just like on Friday. And you guys aren't writing tons of articles about that, so.

• 47:02Ryan Broderick?

  We could freak out.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  I would appreciate it if you did write about my video specifically.

• 47:05Ryan Broderick?

  We could start a moral panic about your TikTok account.

• 47:07Speaker 02

  I would love that.

• 47:08Ryan Broderick?

  You are a woman on the internet. It's quite easy to freak out about, so.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 47:13Ryan Broderick?

  I sort of imagine, like, a journalist sitting down to TikTok, possibly for the first time, with like a very casual understanding of it, and going like, well, um, a million's big on YouTube and Facebook, so I bet a million's big on TikTok too. And I like, to me, this, this is a story largely about like mainstream media not understanding the scale of a TikTok view.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  I mean, people will literally comment on videos and be like, congrats, I landed on your video while I was wiping on the toilet. So enjoy the extra views, you know?

• 47:41Ryan Broderick?

  Always. I mean, and just to be totally clear, on YouTube, a view is, uh, one view is someone who makes it 30 seconds into the video. On Facebook, one view is someone who makes it three seconds into the video. And on TikTok, it's less than a second. And it doesn't even seem to be across the board, less than a second. It's like a combination of like, unique opens and auto plays and also one second retention. It's like not a, it's not a consistent metric of one thing either. To say that 2 million people opened their app and saw a video with that hashtag on it is like ridiculous. That's a ridiculous

• 48:16Speaker 02

  thing. And like watched the whole thing and became indoctrinated.

• 48:20Ryan Broderick?

  They, yeah, they were like, yeah, 9/11 was good. I'm gonna do one now. Cause I, cause the Chinese government told me to do it on TikTok. And I did some of the math here to sort of point out how silly this all is. If we were to take one of the most viral videos about Bin Laden's letter in 2023, which had around 2 million views and we apply it to Facebook's, you know, if we converted those views to Facebook views, we'd have around half a million views on Facebook. And no one in their right mind would ever write a whole article about a video on Facebook that did half a million views. Like, it's just not important.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no.

• 48:52Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, yeah. And on YouTube, it would have 65,000 views.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm so glad that, you know, we're doing responsible journalism about things that are actually happening. And, you know, that's shaping national decisions about what exists in this country and what doesn't, or your country.

• 49:10Ryan Broderick?

  So this is extremely small, but it would be weaponized for political convenience. And here are some of the first consequences. So The Guardian, like the UK newspaper, had Bin Laden's letter up on their site as just like a matter of historical record in their archives. And it was getting so much traffic from quote unquote, social media that according to 404 Media, they had to delete it.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 49:29Ryan Broderick?

  And then things get really insane.

• 49:33Ryan Broderick?

  On the evening of November 15th, 2023, when, are you familiar with Yashar?

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 49:40Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. So Yashar Ali, a, let's, let's call him a well-known news influencer,

• 49:48Ryan Broderick?

  makes a supercut that's five minutes long of TikTok users talking about Bin Laden's letter. And Yashar writes, "Over the past 24 hours, thousands of TikToks, at least, have been posted where people share how they just read Bin Laden's infamous letter to America, in which he explained why he attacked the United States." And then all hell breaks loose. And that's how we end up with the whole, everyone is standing Osama Bin Laden on TikTok.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  I wonder how many of the panics that have happened in the US can be traced back to a Yashar tweet.

• 50:21Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I can't say I know for sure about Yashar's involvement, but I do think that there is a massive content economy of people on Twitter telling other adults, "Isn't it crazy what kids on TikTok are doing?" And then everyone freaks out and it goes viral there without ever going viral on TikTok.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:38Ryan Broderick?

  And that's basically what happened here, too. The trend becomes real because we've made it real. Then, obviously, like, it becomes like a, a political football that can be weaponized. I've messed up this metaphor on this show several times. I don't know how else to say it. But the Republicans, they start screaming about how TikTok is woke and how they're turning everyone into Bin Laden communists or some crazy thing. And this entire fiasco was weaponized by Israel itself. Israel News Networks picked it up. The New York Times starts writing like, big pieces about it. Local news picks it up. Everyone realizes that, like, this is the moment where they can use all the anti-TikTok fervor, all of the anti-Israel discourse, they can scoop it all up in a bucket and say, like, "No, this is my, this is what we're gonna do politically about it."

• 51:23Ryan Broderick?

  Here, Grant created a little highlight reel for us. Here's the greatest hits.

• 51:26Speaker 06

  Kili, thanks for being with us. What is wrong with young people today?

• 51:30Speaker 07

  The question I, I find myself as a young person trying to grapple with, so.

• 51:34Speaker 06

  Chabna, there was a call, and maybe you can tell everybody about it, with Sacha Baron Cohen and a whole number of other people with TikTok.

• 51:40Speaker 04

  Actually, last week, a pretty big group of creators who are Jewish, including some celebrities, Debra Messing and Amy Schumer.

• 51:49Speaker 06

  They all wrote an open letter telling TikTok that the company just wasn't doing enough. The White House denouncing the trend, the trend's reigniting criticism of TikTok, as well as debate over what Congress should do, if anything, to regulate it.

• 52:02Ryan Broderick?

  Going back to the wicker man metaphor, it's like everyone has decided that they're all gonna actively choose to interpret this wrong for their own political benefit. Democrats go along with it, same as Republicans. This comes up in a vote package for a funding bill for Israel and Ukraine, for some reason, and 155 Democrats in the House and 46 in the Senate voted for it. And I think Democrats' view TikTok is a really useful reason for why they were losing the youth vote, and they were happy to blame it on some nefarious Chinese app.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Wow. Anything but take personal accountability for your like ways that you're not actually reaching Americans, eh?

• 52:37Ryan Broderick?

  It's definitely not-

• 52:38Speaker 02

  It's gonna be the anti-Israel-China propaganda, you know?

• 52:42Ryan Broderick?

  It's definitely not that an entirely new generation of Americans saw the most horrific violence ever inflicted on essentially normal people and was bombarded by it everywhere on the internet for weeks, and they were like, "I don't think this is good."

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then kept tuning into the news, being like, "Well, it's complicated." Like, it's just, how do you hear that and not get angry and frustrated and start mistrusting institutions?

• 53:11Ryan Broderick?

  Right. And to me, that is the story of TikTok over the last, you know, let's say, five or six years, which is a bunch of very powerful people in America purposely misunderstanding it and using it as an excuse for why they suck so bad.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Totally. And also by, you know, looking like you're doing something about an issue, whether it be protecting our girls or dealing with data leaks and all of the privacy issues of tech, by dealing with it just by attacking TikTok, you can be seen to be doing something while not actually tackling the real issues at all.

• 53:43Ryan Broderick?

  That's exactly right. So the conflict in Israel and Palestine, the letter going viral, this quote unquote, this was the event that all of these politicians were waiting for, the smoking gun that America's youth had been brainwashed. On November 4th, Representative Mike Gallagher, speaking to the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party's Twitter account, says, "How are so many young people in America siding with Hamas terrorists? Where are they getting their news?" The real answer increasingly is TikTok, an app under the de facto control of the Chinese party. And then Josh Hawley, who we've talked about many times on this show, because he is just a horrible little boy in a man's suit, screeching about things he doesn't understand all the time, he says, "While

• 54:28Ryan Broderick?

  data security issues are paramount, less often discussed is TikTok's power to radically distort the world picture that America's young people encounter. Israel's unfolding war with Hamas is a crucial test case." And then, "You can't have anti-Chinese stuff happening in DC without my man Marco Rubio," who then jumps in and says, "TikTok had become cesspools of pro-Hamas misinformation and indoctrination that were brainwashing American youth."

• 54:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. Videos posted by Israeli soldiers themselves, definitely Hamas propaganda.

• 55:01Ryan Broderick?

  To TikTok.

• 55:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, 100%.

• 55:03Ryan Broderick?

  Like, I'm sorry, like, if, like, the Israeli soldiers posting war crime footage to TikTok were not, like, winning the PR battle that, like, conservatives in America wanted.

• 55:15Speaker 02

  The videos of normal people and soldiers documenting a genocide are really making people worried about this genocide.

• 55:22Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, exactly. It's, it's just, it's such a ridiculous thing to put at the feet of TikTok.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Is it oversimplifying to think that if not for Israel's war in Gaza, that this would have just continued to be kicked around as a hypothetical in legislation for forever? Because it was talked, I mean, like, Trump started talking about it, Biden talked about it, but it was not, lots of things are talked about in US government for years. Do we think that this was the thing that really made it be packaged and pushed through pretty quickly for US government?

• 55:59Ryan Broderick?

  Rachel, what do you think there?

• 56:02Speaker 02

  It wouldn't surprise me, but I mean, I think that there was already a lot of anti-China kind of sentiment that had this, it was just waiting for a spark, I think. And it could have been anything and it probably would have eventually gotten us to the same place. But I think that this was a really easy one to especially get the Democrats super on side with as well, because there's a lot of like pro-Israel sentiment in the Democratic Party. So, you know, that definitely, seeing that shift where people are acknowledging that Palestinians are human beings is a bridge too far. And so that was a really clear, easy spark for a lot of, you know, for bipartisan kind of flame to erupt from.

• 56:43Ryan Broderick?

  I think, yeah, if it wasn't this, it would have been something else. Like there, there's now plenty of wedge issues between like young leftists and like establishment Democrats. And if it wasn't Israel, it would have been something else.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Was there another moment where you thought, oh, I think they're going to use this to Trojan horse TikTok as a TikTok ban?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  I mean, there's a lot of little moments that, it's like, it's like the flint, you know, there's like a little spark comes off, but it doesn't quite catch. And, and it's, I mean, I guess, no, this doesn't really work because it's after the fact. But I was just thinking of that concern about the Romanian election. There's, you know, there's always these little moments where different jurisdictions teeter closer towards banning TikTok. And it's whenever, you know, it's whenever something happens in the news that can be blamed on TikTok. And you see that with, these kinds of things happen all the time with other social media platforms, but you don't see the same discussion or outrage or, you know, blow up around it. It takes a lot more.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  But you have these little bubbling moments all the time with TikTok because they're so primed and ready to act. But I'd have to think about clear examples.

• 57:50Ryan Broderick?

  I got one, I got one.

• 57:51Speaker 02

  You got one?

• 57:51Ryan Broderick?

  Let's say the conflict in Palestine never happens and the timeline stays largely the same. I think trans rights would have been the next big internecine Democrat fight to spell out on TikTok. And we have not seen the Democrats be that enthusiastic about protecting the trans community. And so I could easily see a situation where they're like Tik Tok, the Chinese government's turning all of our children into pro having the pronouns now, you know, it'll be one of those. I would say.

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it just it needed to be something that the right already did it hates and that the establishment Democrats go, this is why we're losing. So whatever falls into that umbrella.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  Luigi.

• 58:37Ryan Broderick?

  Luigi could have been another one.

• 58:39Speaker 02

  Would have been another one.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yes.

• 58:42Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, there's like, and there's more now because of Tik Tok, you know, destroying the Democratic Party, obviously. But no, there's just a lot of these wedge issues that politicians were just waiting for.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:52Ryan Broderick?

  And that's how we ended up on the brink of a ban, an idea first kicked around by Trump, reconfigured by Biden, then saved by Trump again, at least for the moment, because the majority of the establishment do want to shutter this app, or they want to control it. Because to them, it represents all of their fever dreams about what's wrong with the world. And it's a very, very important and politically powerful way to say, could I be wrong? No, it is the youth of America who are wrong, etc. And after the break, we're going to talk about what can be lost if Trump changes his mind again.

• 59:31Ryan Broderick?

  Tik Tok ban, what are you gonna do?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  I have been.

• 59:37Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I should, I should say, wait, it won't affect you, right?

• 59:41Speaker 02

  No. Well, so here's the thing. It won't affect me immediately. I do like, I don't know what's going to happen to any American followers I have, like if a bunch of my engagement and views will tank. But Canada, if the US does something for national security reasons, there's going to be an immediate push in Canada to follow suit. Like, we tend to move in lockstep with the States when it comes to a lot of this stuff. I actually interviewed a national security expert, like a Canadian one, about this. And she said that especially with the EU also looking into it after. You know, the freak out with the Romanian election about Russia,

• 1:00:20Speaker 02

  maybe artificially boosting a candidate in Romania via TikTok as if they don't also do tons of stuff on Twitter and everywhere else. But the EU is also looking into TikTok. So if all of these jurisdictions that we have so many security partnerships with end up banning TikTok, we probably will too. So it's like, if it happens to you guys, it's just a matter of time.

• 1:00:43Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's, I was asked today, actually, like, you know, like, will TikTok just shut down? Which I think is like such a funny American like, like reaction. It's like, yeah, they can't have us. So they got to shut the whole thing down. And just to be clear, as of 2024, there were 150 million TikTok users based in the US. There are a billion monthly active users. So yes, we make up a significant chunk, but it's not the biggest. I've seen estimates that like, if you remove America from TikTok, it, it becomes like an overwhelmingly Indonesian app, which is kind of interesting.

• 1:01:17Speaker 02

  Interesting.

• 1:01:17Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, there are like TikTok pockets around the world. And we also have seen examples of what happens when countries get removed from TikTok. So are you familiar with like, the Indian TikTok ban?

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:26Ryan Broderick?

  I'm very still upset about it because it got rid of my favorite TikTok trend, which was Indian boys crying on TikTok. There's a Facebook page, if you want to check it out, where they would record themselves like, with like demon eyes and dramatic music. They would also like film themselves going to like their ex-girlfriend's weddings and like doing like dramatic poses and stuff. Indian TikTok was so good. Like, it was so fucking good.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:01:48Ryan Broderick?

  And then Russian TikTok got banned, although they're still using it. According to like research that our researcher Adam and I have done over the last couple of years, there's like Cyrillic hashtags around like Russian soap operas trending on TikTok like every month. So they're still on there in some capacity.

• 1:02:03Speaker 02

  Well, and I wonder like, how many people are going to just use VPNs in the States? Like, is that, do you think that's going to be a thing?

• 1:02:09Ryan Broderick?

  Half the country now has to use one to go to Pornhub. So yeah, I mean, that does seem to be happening. I

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  What is going on down there?

• 1:02:16Ryan Broderick?

  Dude, we're, we're losing it. Like, things are bad here. Yeah, it's a mess.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Ryan Broderick?

  I, I, yeah, there will probably be some VPN usage, but I do think that like the magic of the peak TikTok era was, I mean, it's very much similar to the story of Twitter, which was like, it was this imperfect, fairly ugly and kind of psychotic public square that we were all on. And then like, we couldn't handle it anymore.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Ryan Broderick?

  And we have to like go break up and like there'll be, there'll be like a million TikTok competitors too, I bet.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I don't think any of them will get, I feel like they won't have the juice, you know, like, because one thing that TikTok did, I listened to, um, Taylor Lorenz did a podcast episode about this and, and she was speaking, I think it was either in Vox or Wired Journalist, I'd have to look again, but, but either way, they were talking about this and they were saying that one of the things that's so unique to TikTok is how it didn't necessarily put all its weight behind big creators. It like, anybody could have their day of going viral and anybody could have their life changed overnight. There's people who have paid off medical debt, paid off student loans, like, you know, just go on there and have one video go viral and it pays their rent or whatever, you know, and it's, I, I think that that is

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  something that Meta products and stuff really don't prioritize. Like they prioritize brands, Twitter prioritizes psychos. Um, you know, it's, it, there is no platform that is as like little guy focused as TikTok that I've encountered anyways. I mean, Blue Sky is like the only normal platform that I've encountered recently, but like, yeah, it's so to me, that's something really special that I just really, I can't see, you know, people are talking about like, oh, why another competitor will show up. So why does it matter? It matters because the American corporate giants who run Meta and all those things, they don't really know the magic of giving a shit about the little guy and letting them be the ones

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  that are driving the platform and going viral and feel like they have a shot of being heard.

• 1:04:21Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's exactly right. TikTok is not YouTube. It's not like something you would sit and watch on your television and it's not Facebook where it's something where you're. You might see like updates from your neighbors, but like for the most part, you're seeing like magicians eat out of toilets or like a picture of Jesus made of crabs, like stuff that everybody loves. And so like TikTok was like a unique experience where something insane would come out of there once a month and it was not usually being made by professionals. It was just made by people.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:04:53Ryan Broderick?

  One thing that I've sort of come back to is this conversation I had with someone who worked in sort of like Chinese digital media. They worked on like China's version of like Mashable or, you know, one of those viral sites or whatever. We were able to have like a fairly open conversation, you know, even though we were in Beijing about censorship and, and they, they were making jokes about how like, well, you know, I hope you like your free speech. Trump's president, you know, this was, this was a couple of years ago and they were like ragging on me for like, that's the, that's what happens when you like have free speech. And I was like, look, just like Osama bin Laden, you're making some great points. But, uh, but the, the way they sort of described Julian was,

• 1:05:33Ryan Broderick?

  you know, the fear was that if you gave China, a country that, you know, is now still pulling itself out of poverty and is like creating a real middle class, but you're dealing with a lot of people who like, don't have the same kind of literacy rates or media literacy rates or sort of cultural norms. And you're putting them all in line that like the, the way you would silo them algorithmically is exactly what TikTok does to us where you're seeing your own little bubble. And that's to make sure that like being eclipsed by the loudest dumbest people, you're sort of, you're allowed to have your little bubble.

• 1:06:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:04Ryan Broderick?

  And I think in the West, we talk about filter bubbles as this bad thing, but like TikTok, it's not that simple. Like a filter bubble can also be very protective. And I think you see this with minorities, with, with, with queer people, with, with young people. They, they feel like they're in this safe space on TikTok to express themselves. It's a, it's not as simple as I think we've made it out to be over here.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  No, no, I don't think so. There's like any major social tool, there's going to be pros and cons, and there's going to be things that are really special about it and things that are a little more toxic about it. And, and it, it has the same issues, in some ways less.

• 1:06:46Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Relative to other platforms. I mean, like, you go on Twitter and the kinds of accounts that are prioritized and that you're going to see and that will interact with you the most are not usually the best people. And then you go on TikTok and maybe you're getting a more siloed view, but you know, I also not going to be called the C word nonstop. And, you know, it's just like each platform has its differences because there are, there's people involved.

• 1:07:15Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  The algorithm shapes which people see you and which people you see. But let's not kid ourselves and act like the ones run by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are inherently healthier or more pro-social than the ones run by China.

• 1:07:31Ryan Broderick?

  And, I mean, for what it's worth, like, I can rattle off close to a dozen instances where Facebook has been proven to have created mob violence.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%.

• 1:07:40Ryan Broderick?

  There has, just now in the US, been like a story about like some TikTok-led mob violence, but that was in like a college campus in Boston. And like those kids, yeah, they did a bad, they, they did like a fake to catch a predator thing. And like, it wasn't a predator and then like beat the hell out of this guy.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:07:58Ryan Broderick?

  But like, I don't have a ton of other examples of like TikTok misinformation spinning out of control and like villages being burned down in Bangladesh or something. It's not to me, it has always felt like a more moderated, less insane place than I think it gets a lot of credit for. Whereas Facebook is like a mess. Like Instagram is a mess. Twitter is horrifying. None of these things are, are like TikTok, which

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Ryan Broderick?

  feels very anodyne to me.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I don't know, I like, I feel like, you know, there's pros and cons to the heavier moderation that you encounter on TikTok, but like,

• 1:08:31Ryan Broderick?

  Sure, of course.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  And but honestly, like, I don't even think humans cause mob violence. And when you give us more abilities to connect with one another, which the internet does, which social media writ large does, the, you know, the village idiot's gonna find all the other village idiots and they're gonna storm the Capitol, you know, like, there's, this is the reality that we live in right now. And again, I feel like I'm such a broken record with it, but it's not a TikTok specific issue. And, you know, I guess you could even make the argument that maybe it's less of an issue on TikTok. I haven't researched it enough to know for sure whether that's the case, but like, I just think that banning one platform is not the solution, especially when it further consolidates the power of like, a few Trump bootlicking tech bros to control conversations happening

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  in the US.

• 1:09:18Ryan Broderick?

  Plus, there's no time for mob violence if you have a filter that makes your body look like string cheese.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:09:23Ryan Broderick?

  Have you seen the people who are sort of coming out of the woodwork now and being like, yeah, TikTok should be taken away from you people, you're all brain rotted?

• 1:09:32Ryan Broderick?

  It's funny, and I do sort of agree that people are brain rotted, but I don't think it's TikTok's fault. I think that there's, there's this knee jerk reaction that a lot of people have to seeing normal, average people express their like, messy and oftentimes ugly thoughts online. And like, the history of the internet is just people seeing how normal people communicate and going insane. And now that we can hear them talk and see them move, like, we're going doubly insane. We're being like, I can't believe that this random woman from New York would share a letter from Osama bin Laden. And it's like, I can? She's a normal weird person. Like, everyone's weird. I don't know.

• 1:10:07Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:10:08Ryan Broderick?

  It's a bummer, because I do feel like we're losing a connection online that is not gonna be easy to recreate.

• 1:10:14Speaker 02

  No, it's not gonna be. It's, it's a huge loss. It's, I, I think it's really sad. It's gonna hurt a lot of people. There's a lot of people whose livelihoods depend on it and who have quit jobs. Like, there's, you know, I see that one guy who's always like, you know, talking about, he's ranking like, beans and stuff.

• 1:10:31Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, yeah, the bean ranker.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he was like, I'm gonna have to go back to working at McDonald's and I'm like, damn.

• 1:10:37Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  It's just like, it's such bullshit that that's being lost and that all of these like interesting, creative, you know, just people who have all kinds of things that the world should, or maybe shouldn't listen to, you know? We're losing conversation and we're losing perspectives that maybe other apps wouldn't necessarily amplify or show us. And I think that that's a really ultimately sad thing to have to say goodbye to.

• 1:11:02Ryan Broderick?

  My favorite TikToker is B Dylan Thomas. He's the guy who makes like old recipes from like old cookbooks.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Oh, I've seen those. Yeah.

• 1:11:10Ryan Broderick?

  I love him. He's the best.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  There's so much Jell-O.

• 1:11:13Ryan Broderick?

  So much Jell-O. Yeah.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, they love it.

• 1:11:15Ryan Broderick?

  I think he made like a ham Jell-O the other day that was absolutely disgusting, but I couldn't stop watching.

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  The lady eating the ham Jell-O would have probably also read an Osama Bin Laden letter, you know, just she didn't have the internet.

• 1:11:26Ryan Broderick?

  There's nothing, you know, there's nothing wrong with accidentally amplifying a terrorist's letter because it has some interesting thoughts. Because normal people don't have to be journalists. If they don't want to, they can just be dumb online and that's okay. And I feel like that's really the, the point of today's episode is that it's no matter what happens, no matter what replaces TikTok, people should be equally dumb there and be totally fine with that. Rachel, if people want to follow you online, where can they do that?

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm, I'm really bad at consolidating my stuff. I have a link tree in any bio, so if you find me on one place, you can find me anywhere I'm on. My name's Rachel Gilmore. I have Bubble Pop with Rachel Gilmore as my Substack, that same naming kind of, uh, the Bubble Pop is my brand name, I guess, that I'm working on, but I'm on Patreon, I'm on Twitch, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok.

• 1:12:14Ryan Broderick?

  And if you want to follow her on TikTok, you can download Express VPN and then you can set your server to Toronto, Canada, and then you can access her TikTok.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  And actually you'll probably see more of my stuff because you'll be in Canada. Like when I lived in Tunisia, I saw so much Tunisian content. It was so fun. Like it's so location specific.

• 1:12:34Ryan Broderick?

  I used to get Brazilian TikTok when I was living in Brazil and it was wild. It was great. Lot of twerking and like this really good video about a shark, which they call Tubarão. It's Portuguese, it's like, it was like a great song.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  And see, this is the beautiful stuff that we're gonna lose.

• 1:12:51Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  You'll lose at least.

• 1:12:53Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I will lose. Yeah.

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:55Ryan Broderick?

  But yeah, thanks for coming on. This was great.

• 1:12:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

• 1:13:00Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a Garbage Day production. It's written and produced by Grant Irving, hosted by myself, with research from the always fantastic Adam Bumis. A huge thanks to Gabby Cash for designing the incredibly deranged art for this show. And a huge thank you to Kat Rijesk, our lovely video editor. And if you'd like to sponsor an episode, you can reach out to Multitude, our wonderful partners, multitude-productions/ad. We have a Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com/panicworld. And I'd like to end this episode with an important reminder: Log off and touch grass while you still can.