Pod Insights Panic World Our favorite middle school conspiracies About this episode We’re joined by No Such Thing for a crossover episode to (try to) get to the bottom of some of the most infamous conspiracies we (aka millennials) heard in middle school. We’re talking about the false rumors that Ciara was intersex, Marilyn Manson removed his own rib, and the whole panic around “jenkem” — and explore how these wild rumors even spread without the aid of social media.
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Transcript 10,680 words · 8 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Ryan Broderick? So you might notice, video viewers, that things look a little different today. My name is Shane Gillis. Welcome to the Flagrant Podcast. Finally transitioning into a Manosphere podcast. This is great. My name is Ryan Broderick. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet works our minds, our culture, and eventually, reality. And joining me today are the guys from the No Such Thing Podcast. Welcome to the show, everybody. Hey.
0:21 Speaker 01 Hey. Thanks for having us.
0:23 Ryan Broderick? Are you excited to talk about our topic today?
0:26 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
0:26 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, our topic is, of course, middle school conspiracy theories.
0:47 Ryan Broderick? So the way it's gonna work is you guys are gonna take it first, and then we're gonna take it in the back half. There's a better way to phrase that, but I can't.
0:56 Speaker 01 You got a cock chair in your mind, and that's kinda...
0:59 Ryan Broderick? I just, I got... Anyways, yeah, okay.
1:01 Speaker 01 So, let's do this. Alright, fellas. We are gathered here today to try and get to the bottom of something that we've been trying to get to the bottom of for a very long time now. Noah, where did you go to middle school? Connecticut. In Connecticut. Devin, where did you go to middle school?
1:18 Speaker 02 New Jersey.
1:19 Speaker 01 Okay, I went to middle school in Ohio. How about you, Ryan?
1:23 Ryan Broderick? Massachusetts.
1:23 Speaker 01 Massachusetts, okay. We all went to... Grant?
1:26 Speaker 03 Oh, oh, I'm gonna be acknowledged.
1:28 Ryan Broderick? You can speak now, Grant.
1:32 Speaker 03 Pennsylvania? Is that an okay answer?
1:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, sure. Okay, and despite the fact that we all went to different high... middle schools or high schools in different states, I'm willing to bet that we've all heard the same celebrity rumor. And, you know, we all went to these schools in the early 2000s, and so... What was the biggest celebrity rumor at your school, Devin?
1:56 Speaker 02 Well, I'm cheating a little bit, because this is what the episode is about, but...
2:01 Speaker 01 It's not a, you know.
2:03 Speaker 02 True question.
2:03 Speaker 01 We know the answer, we're talking to the listener.
2:06 Speaker 02 It was that Ciara, um, the, the R and B singer.
2:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:11 Speaker 02 Was born, at the time, we were saying she was born a hermaphrodite. Which today, we would say intersex.
2:17 Speaker 01 Yes.
2:18 Speaker 02 And she apparently was on Oprah, uh, where she revealed this to the world.
2:22 Speaker 01 Does that sound familiar to you guys?
2:24 Ryan Broderick? I've heard different versions of different celebrities with that thing.
2:28 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
2:28 Ryan Broderick? Cause there was also one for Lady Gaga.
2:30 Speaker 02 Yes.
2:30 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
2:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, a couple of years later.
2:31 Ryan Broderick? We would've been like in high school or college, yeah.
2:33 Speaker 02 Yep.
2:33 Ryan Broderick? So, but it's come around a bunch, yeah.
2:35 Speaker 02 Well, Anderson Cooper did ask her about it, like, for sixty minutes. Cause he was asking her, basically, why didn't you just, like, come out and say this was fake? She was like, why does it matter if I have a dick?
2:45 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, she was like, why, why do you give a shit?
2:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:47 Ryan Broderick? I thought it was cool.
2:48 Speaker 01 That's a good answer, I think.
2:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:50 Speaker 01 Um, but yeah, basically, in middle school, the biggest celebrity rumor was that Ciara was either, what we were calling back then, a hermaphrodite, or just a man pretending to be a woman.
3:00 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
3:00 Speaker 01 And I've been personally fascinated by the fact that, no matter where you went to middle school in the United States, you heard of this rumor, or participated in the spreading of it. Um, and the reason why I'm fascinated is because it was so early in social media, kind of, trajectory, or before social media.
3:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:20 Speaker 01 I think, maybe I was on Zanga at the time, but we weren't really talking about, uh, you know, celebrity rumors. And I, and I really wanted to know where this rumor came from, and how it was able to spread across the country, despite the fact that we weren't really online in the sense that we were today.
3:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
3:38 Speaker 01 But, before we try to figure out where this rumor came from, it's important to, kind of, contextualize what was happening when the rumor started.
3:48 Speaker 02 Cool.
3:49 Speaker 01 So, I'll just give you a very brief recap of Ciara's career in music. She grew up in College Park, Atlanta, which, if you listen to, like, any amount of hip hop, will be a familiar neighborhood to you, because in the early 2000s, they were screaming the name of that neighborhood out in the actual songs. This is the same neighborhood as Ludacris, uh, same neighborhood as 2 Chainz, Young Joc. I don't know what happened to him, but he was great. Uh, and, and Jermaine Dupri.
4:18 Ryan Broderick? Oh sure.
4:19 Speaker 01 Jermaine Dupri, yes. Alright, but when Ciara was in high school, she created a girls group called Hearsay, with two friends, and it ended up becoming popular enough that she got a writing deal out of this girls group, and from that writing deal she met Jazzy Faye. He's not infamous. He's just famous, yeah.
4:42 Speaker 01 Jazzy Faye is important because he kinda created a bouncier sound in Atlanta at the time, and so Ciara's like singing talent combined with this kind of innovative sound that felt new and fresh is really what I think propelled the two of them into stardom. Together, they wrote a few demos, and one of the demos would become "One Two Step",
5:07 Ryan Broderick? Oh sure.
5:08 Speaker 01 Probably Ciara's most famous song.
5:10 Ryan Broderick? I think so.
5:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:11 Speaker 01 Which features Missy Elliott, who becomes a frequent collaborator of what Ciara, and also had her own, she also had rumors about her sexual life swirling at the time.
5:25 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:26 Speaker 01 "One Two Step" is on an album called "Goodies",
5:28 Ryan Broderick? Okay.
5:29 Speaker 01 "Goodies" debuted at number three on the Billboard charts, and it stayed on the Billboard Top 100 for over a year, just to give you a sense of how popular Ciara became.
5:40 Ryan Broderick? I mean, this was the soundtrack of every bar and bar mitzvah I went to. In the late 90s, early 2000s.
5:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
5:46 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
5:47 Speaker 01 It's really kind of music we shouldn't have been listening to at that age, I think. There's some stuff going on in those in those verses that's like, oh, is this for the kids or what?
5:56 Speaker 03 People are becoming men and women. This is the passing into adulthood.
6:01 Speaker 04 You need to understand.
6:03 Speaker 01 So, the album "Goodies", there's a song on the album also called "Goodies", also a very famous Ciara song. And the core of the song, it's about everyone who's surrounding Ciara being kind of criminally horny for Ciara.
6:22 Ryan Broderick? Who wouldn't be?
6:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. And maybe at the time, emphasis on the criminal part of criminal horny, but she's, I think the song came out with-
6:30 Ryan Broderick? I don't approve that.
6:32 Ryan Broderick? Wait, wait, wait, hold on to this more. I wanna make, I wanna say along with being respectfully horny of Sierra.
6:40 Speaker 01 Well, I only say that because I think the song came out when she was 18, but when did, you know, who's to say when she wrote it, or the experiences she's talking about in the song, when did they take place? I don't know.
6:51 Speaker 02 Hopefully she was of age.
6:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, anyway, either way, we were younger than 18.
6:55 Ryan Broderick? What year is this again?
6:56 Speaker 01 Uh, 2004.
6:57 Ryan Broderick? Okay, so I would have been like 13.
6:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think we're in the clear, guys.
7:01 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, yeah, I would be the one being played on by being made horny of Sierra.
7:05 Speaker 04 I'm sorry that happened to you.
7:06 Ryan Broderick? Thank you.
7:07 Speaker 01 And it's after this song comes out about how, you know, I, I have these goodies and you're not allowed to have them and I'm not giving them up no matter what you do. It's around this context, I think, that this rumor starts. And I don't know, I just think the context there is interesting that all these people in the industry, she's singing about, I think, people in the industry who are trying to hook up with her, uh, and I don't know, all of a sudden this rumor comes out.
7:35 Ryan Broderick? So, we did an episode kind of about like the entertainment world rumor mill and like how it's evolved now, like the Justin Baldoni stuff. And I have to assume that like the new version where they're waging war with like troll accounts and stuff is just a digital version of what was already happening. So like, hearing this, which is the first time I've, I've sort of heard this all put together, it wouldn't surprise me if she's writing what is effectively like a shady track about like predatory men in the industry and all of a sudden a rumor appears that she is intersex or hermaphrodite. That, that feels totally linked to me.
8:09 Speaker 01 And as of right now, I have no evidence for this, but I think it's interesting when, like exactly what time this rumor started coming out.
8:18 Speaker 02 So, and we looked at, you know, went to a classic Google Trends, typed in Sierra Man to see when these rumors started. So, there's basically nothing until December of 2004, and then it starts to go up a little bit. January starts to go up a little bit more, and then by February of 2005, uh, it's when it hits its peak.
8:42 Ryan Broderick? Was there any kind of award buzz around goodies?
8:48 Speaker 01 She definitely was nominated for a bunch of the kind of classic awards, Grammys. I'm not sure if she won any. I should look that up.
8:55 Ryan Broderick? I'm, computer.
8:57 Speaker 01 Jamie?
8:57 Ryan Broderick? Uh, Jamie? Uh, cuz I'm wondering if like the peak is because of award season buzz. Or like I'm wondering, cuz when we've done sort of similar research, like there, there usually is like something uh, that you can kind of point to be like, eh, maybe that's what caused it. Like, that would be what my thought would be.
9:14 Speaker 01 Yeah, could be.
9:16 Speaker 02 So she was at a party in February of 2005, a Vibe magazine party. And this is the quote that everyone sort of keeps going back to. New York Daily News asked her about it. As far as I can tell, this is the first time.
9:27 Ryan Broderick? They asked her about it?
9:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
9:28 Ryan Broderick? That's fucked.
9:29 Speaker 02 Yeah, a lot of people asked her directly about this.
9:31 Speaker 01 We used to have to be shady in person, not in Reddit, yeah.
9:35 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah, yeah. This is face to face, though.
9:37 Speaker 01 And I guess we should mention that part of, a big part of the rumor we heard was that she had actually addressed the rumors on the Oprah show. There's a bit, there's a Mandela effect thing happening where all of us thought she had already addressed the rumors on Oprah, which never happened.
9:52 Speaker 02 Exactly. So Vibe asked her basically what happened. And Ciara's like, you know what's funny? The rumors that I used to be a man. And she said, the funny thing about it is that people are saying I said this on Oprah. I've never been on Oprah. It's gonna take me a while to get on Oprah, right? Like, I just started my career. Oprah's like a milestone. I'm not there yet. So I looked into this, you know, you can't just take Ciara's word for this. Has she ever been on Oprah?
10:18 Speaker 02 By this point, she had not, but she was on Regis and Kelly. Along with Yao Ming.
10:25 Speaker 01 Oh, nice.
10:25 Speaker 02 Uh, and John Goodman. Good episode.
10:27 Speaker 01 Wow, that's a good panel, yeah. I wanna see that. I gotta go watch that.
10:30 Speaker 02 Which did air, right? You got the TV guys back in the day. Did air before Oprah's voting party special. So I'm like, maybe people were seeing the ads for, you know, how they would be like, alright, you know? Yeah, exactly.
10:45 Speaker 01 I'm imagining Regis filming, introducing.
10:47 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, no goodies. Now my favorite song, goodies!
10:51 Speaker 01 At 8 a.m.
10:52 Ryan Broderick? So I, I actually just Googled this cuz I was curious if people were confusing it with another Oprah episode. And she did do an intersex episode in 2007.
11:01 Speaker 02 Well, she did actually in 2004.
11:03 Ryan Broderick? Oh.
11:05 Speaker 02 Do a segment in August about trans children.
11:09 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, okay.
11:10 Speaker 01 Whoa.
11:11 Speaker 02 None of the kids' names were Sierra.
11:14 Ryan Broderick? Okay.
11:14 Speaker 02 I did go through and to be like, alright, maybe is there some confusion here? But yeah, she did do it again in 2007. I don't know that in 2004, they were calling them trans, they were saying like gender identity issues.
11:27 Speaker 03 I'm sure that episode has aged great.
11:28 Ryan Broderick? I'm sure it's fine.
11:29 Speaker 03 I'm sure we would all think that.
11:31 Ryan Broderick? It's totally fine and there's no reason to think about it anymore.
11:34 Speaker 02 She did a great job.
11:35 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
11:36 Speaker 03 Just like when she interviewed Nazis.
11:38 Speaker 02 Exactly.
11:41 Speaker 02 I feel like Oprah is the classic, like if there's a rumor, you say that you heard it on Oprah. Growing up, there was another rumor that Tommy Hilfiger was on Oprah and he told Oprah, "I don't like black people wearing my clothes."
11:54 Ryan Broderick? I remember this, I remember this rumor.
11:56 Speaker 02 My mom, like I said, I was talking to my mom about this episode and she was like, "Oh yeah, I remember." I literally stopped buying Tommy Hilfiger for like a year or two.
12:04 Ryan Broderick? There was a boycott.
12:05 Speaker 02 Because yeah, because we all heard that he was like, "I don't like black people wearing my clothes."
12:09 Speaker 01 And it just never happened?
12:10 Speaker 02 No.
12:11 Ryan Broderick? What?
12:12 Speaker 04 He was never on the show at all.
12:13 Ryan Broderick? Okay, I'm so fascinated with this because like clearly there is some sort of way that these things are spreading. Cause I definitely vividly remember up until just a second ago, I thought that that happened.
12:24 Speaker 02 No.
12:25 Ryan Broderick? So like how? Cause it wouldn't have been the internet.
12:28 Speaker 02 No.
12:29 Ryan Broderick? I'm so fascinated with how that would have spread.
12:31 Speaker 02 How were we? Cause it wasn't like we saw something online and we were like, "Hey, I saw on a Reddit thread, you know, Tommy Hilfiger saying he doesn't like black people wearing his clothes."
12:39 Speaker 01 There's no reports of him ever saying that in any kind of context?
12:43 Speaker 02 No.
12:43 Speaker 04 It would be crazy if he said it on Oprah.
12:45 Speaker 01 That, right, yeah.
12:46 Speaker 04 Pretty amazing.
12:47 Speaker 01 To Oprah.
12:49 Speaker 02 Take off my clothes.
12:50 Ryan Broderick? The 90s were wild, but I don't know if that, yeah, how would that have happened?
12:55 Speaker 03 I remember really solemnly, like I thought I was the wokest kid in the world going up to my friend in middle school and being like, "I'm really sorry about Tommy Hilfiger." I'm just like, "I know, I know you love that shirt." Yeah, and he's like, "I feel really seen right now."
13:09 Speaker 02 Can't believe I can't wear this anymore.
13:13 Speaker 02 So, Snopes actually debunked this in February of 2005. Ciara, the Ciara rumor. Their best guess as to why people think this is happening is because there's a random Irish woman named Ciara who had a blog about her transition.
13:29 Ryan Broderick? Oh.
13:30 Speaker 02 And they're saying if you Google Ciara at this time, this is one of the first things that pops up. So, people are saying maybe that's the case, right? So, that's February, but in March, it's still circulating. We got the Herald News, a New Jersey paper.
13:48 Ryan Broderick? Okay.
13:48 Speaker 02 There's an 18-year-old Charles. They're asking him, "Charles, what's the craziest news story you heard recently?" And he says that Ciara is a man. They printed this.
13:59 Ryan Broderick? That's a good column.
14:00 Speaker 02 It's one of those like get-to-know-your-neighbors segments. And that's Charles's fun, you know, news story. So, we get our first sort of inkling here of maybe where this is coming from. So, in March of 2005, there's this chain letter that's going around. Remember chain letters?
14:20 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, of course, they're very important. On email.
14:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, on email.
14:24 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
14:25 Speaker 02 And it's a fake article from All Hip Hop. And the gist of the article is that Ciara goes on, not Oprah, but 106 in Park.
14:35 Ryan Broderick? Okay.
14:36 Speaker 02 And she says, "I am gay." And then, I'll read what it just says, because it's just crazy. "Ciara's coming out as a lesbian would have been difficult on its own, but also having to admit that she is really a he on national television was cause for celebration amongst the gay and lesbian community. No major pop star singer has ever come out as a transvestite to viewers explicitly after already releasing an album."
15:05 Ryan Broderick? So, I'm gonna ignore like all of the terms that they're using there, because it's a mess. But it is fascinating to me that that is written as like an inspirational thing. It's basically what I...
15:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:18 Ryan Broderick? Someone made this up or misunderstood this.
15:22 Ryan Broderick? I'm imagining that this was probably shared like within like a black gay email community. Yeah. That would be my guess. Yeah. I got a treasure trove that somebody sent me of like old chain letters that I've been like looking at over the last few months. And it's really fascinating. They are very similar to what you would see on Facebook now. Like they are written specifically for a group, like either a listserv or like people who know each other. So it's interesting to me that like that rumor is being shared positively within some sort of in-group. That's cause for celebration. Yeah, like it's not like they're not being mean about, I mean, they're completely confused on what's happening in every possible way. But it is interesting that it's like inspirational as a framing.
16:03 Ryan Broderick? So then that's, you know, beginning of March, sort of mid-March, Ciara goes on one in Sixon Park. And this is the first time we have her. Yeah, for real this time.
16:13 Speaker 03 In 2005, right?
16:16 Ryan Broderick? That, this is sad to admit, if you missed a TV program airing. Yeah. You couldn't just go back and look at it. Grant, we have an entire episode about this. That is the entirety of our gadget episode.
16:31 Speaker 03 What was?
16:32 Ryan Broderick? The one you wrote the outline. That's the point that you put in there. We have an entire episode about how the fact that you couldn't re-watch Rescue Rangers made everyone insane.
16:41 Speaker 03 The only way that I can process the horrible nihilistic show we create is that I write the episode and then I completely.
16:48 Ryan Broderick? Erase it from the beginning. We have an entire episode about this.
16:51 Speaker 05 Yeah, we do a whole clear the air session.
16:53 Speaker 06 Yeah.
16:53 Speaker 05 So if there are any rumors, anything that's going on with Ciara, which there are on the internet and all that other mess, clear the air right now. Let the people know what's going on.
17:01 Speaker 06 Oh, my goodness. There's so many crazy, funny things. And you know, I gotta say, none of them bother me, but I just do it just to do it because whatever. Um, there's one thing about me being a man or something like that before I was, something when I was born, I got a change. Really? A mafadite or something like that. And they said that I went on Oprah and did it. And I'm like, okay, come on now. You know, if I was on Oprah, like, I mean, it takes a while before that happens for somebody going Oprah, you know what I mean? Like, that's really big, so.
17:27 Ryan Broderick? I just had a visceral memory of learning about this as a teenager. I, I just like, something about that just like triggered a moment where I'm like in my living room, watching her music video. There's no PC way to say this, like trying to see if I could tell.
17:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
17:43 Ryan Broderick? Like trying to clock her essentially, and I completely had forgotten that. Wow, that's wild.
17:49 Speaker 01 I remember being like 12 or 13 or whatever, watching one. I watched one of Six and Park religiously back then.
17:55 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
17:56 Speaker 01 And being like, damn, all my friends lied to me. I do think it's funny, the music they were playing underneath this segment, like, like court case music, we're not gonna figure this out once and for all.
18:08 Speaker 02 Put her on a stand. That wasn't the end of it, of course. July 2005, Entertainment Weekly is doing a write-up, and they kind of start the article talking about, hey, the singer, the story goes, was born, intersexual, and stay with us here, recently out of herself as a lesbian hermaphrodite on Oprah. And it's, you know, basically her giving the line of like, no, that's not true. Then, a year later, so November of 2006, in a Slam magazine article about Kingdom Come, the not great Jay-Z album.
18:43 Speaker 01 Oh, sure.
18:44 Speaker 02 Here's a review. And out of nowhere, the writer goes, and trust me, writing that last sentence hurt me just as much as when I heard that Ciara was allegedly a hermaphrodite. Thank God she isn't. This is, you know, November 2006, and then December 2006, AP is doing a profile of her and they're still talking about it.
19:05 Ryan Broderick? Associated Press.
19:06 Speaker 02 Yeah. The Associated Press in December of 2006.
19:10 Speaker 01 What'd they say?
19:11 Speaker 02 Yeah. Uh, she just wants to have fun, she said, and that includes ignoring wild rumors that began circulating when she first made a name for herself. People were saying that she was dating Missy Elliott, who rapped on Ciara's number one hit.
19:24 Ryan Broderick? That I remember. I remember rumors that like Missy Elliott was grooming Ciara. I remember that.
19:29 Speaker 02 Which was weird because they were saying, okay, Ciara's a man, Missy Elliott is a lesbian, but Missy Elliott is dating Ciara.
19:38 Speaker 04 Right.
19:38 Speaker 02 So things aren't adding up.
19:39 Ryan Broderick? Well, everyone's very confused.
19:41 Speaker 02 Yes.
19:42 Speaker 01 Isn't it the case that Missy Elliott, I think we all had our, like, we could kind of see it, but she didn't really come out until pretty recently.
19:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, similar to, well, I feel like it's her and Queen Latifah.
19:56 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
19:56 Speaker 02 Were similarly, like, people who knew them knew.
20:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:01 Speaker 02 But they publicly didn't talk about it.
20:02 Speaker 01 I don't think they were ever, yeah.
20:03 Speaker 03 Man, it'd be so much cooler to be dating Missy Elliott than Russell Wilson.
20:08 Speaker 02 True.
20:10 Speaker 01 He just got benched.
20:11 Speaker 02 Or Future, which is, so basically by 2006, like, search interest for this was pretty down, and it didn't really pick up until 2015.
20:21 Speaker 03 Oh.
20:22 Speaker 02 Which was when rumors started going around that Ciara and Future were expecting a kid.
20:26 Speaker 03 Okay.
20:27 Speaker 02 Which makes sense why people would be, like, searching it again.
20:29 Speaker 03 Wait a second, sure.
20:31 Speaker 01 There was a moment, I think in 2006 or '07, where she released a song called "Like a Boy."
20:37 Speaker 02 Yes.
20:38 Speaker 01 So I remember thinking, oh, she's kind of poking fun at, but it's really about, like, privilege, I think.
20:44 Speaker 03 I think so, yeah.
20:45 Speaker 02 This comes up in one of these articles where, you know, they're making all these innuendos about how people think she's a man.
20:52 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
20:54 Speaker 02 It's pretty crazy.
20:54 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
20:55 Speaker 02 Yeah, and that was it, that was it. That's kind of the trajectory of, is Ciara really a man? And like Ryan said before, like, this has come up with Lady Gaga.
21:04 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
21:05 Speaker 02 Megan Fox.
21:06 Ryan Broderick? Megan Fox, yeah.
21:07 Speaker 02 It's like any sort of, like, sex symbol.
21:08 Speaker 01 To Megan Fox, wow.
21:10 Speaker 02 Pop star, this, like, comes up.
21:12 Ryan Broderick? There seems to be some sort of connection between, like, a sex symbol who starts to figure out how to translate that into power and influence.
21:20 Speaker 02 Yes.
21:21 Ryan Broderick? Like Lady Gaga in particular, like, the, the claims that she was intersex or, or trans appeared like right as she is starting to kind of do whatever she wants. And that's why like I tend to think there's some sort of like industry rumor mill that that comes out to like knock them down a peg when they start to like break off. And that would sort of make sense here too. They're like, she's blowing up and now she's like writing songs about how like, you know, she's gonna do her own thing or whatever and she's having a successful album. And then those rumors appear. Like that, that doesn't seem like an accident to me.
21:55 Speaker 02 And it makes sense that they go to the, you know, the intersex or trans thing, right? Because it's that always like, oh, you were really into this person and now like something that like, you know, something is happening that you didn't know was happening. You've been fooled. You've been tricked. So like goes at this like insecurity that people have about like, oh no, I thought it was straight, but now I'm into this person who you're telling me is not.
22:16 Speaker 01 She's not into me. She must be trans.
22:18 Speaker 02 Exactly.
22:19 Ryan Broderick? I mean, it's also just super hard to prove. In fact, like, we should mention, like, literally right now, Candace Owens is being sued by the president and his wife of France. And the first lady of France has actually proving that she is not trans. Um, medically. So like, that's how pervasive these sort of things come up, I think.
22:40 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:41 Speaker 03 I, I do remember now, uh, the bullying that would ensue if you were like a middle schooler who said like, you thought Ciara was hot.
22:48 Speaker 02 Yes.
22:48 Speaker 03 And then there's a rumor. Like, it was like so tied into the homophobia of like being a middle school boy.
22:55 Ryan Broderick? For the record, trans or not, Ciara is hot. It doesn't matter.
23:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:01 Ryan Broderick? She is very, very hot. Even today.
23:04 Speaker 01 That fucking, uh, have you guys seen that stupid Andrew Tate clip where he's like talking about how he'd rather have sex with?
23:10 Ryan Broderick? Yes.
23:10 Speaker 01 Yeah. Like Megan Fox as a man versus like, wait.
23:14 Speaker 03 It was, I hate that.
23:16 Ryan Broderick? It's like accidentally woke.
23:17 Speaker 02 You watch Andrew Tate.
23:20 Speaker 02 Explain it for us.
23:20 Speaker 03 I remember Andrew Tate videos. I don't remember our show.
23:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
23:25 Speaker 03 It was like, would you rather sleep with a trans woman that's a 10? Or a biological woman that's a 1?
23:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:34 Speaker 03 And then it was, uh, this is so dumb. It is.
23:39 Speaker 03 Seared on my memory and then he's like, you're talking about some like Hulk Hogan looking woman. Or some Megan Fox looking.
23:48 Speaker 01 He's actually like ridiculing his followers for choosing the one that's a biological or you know born as. Really insane.
23:56 Ryan Broderick? Very normal stuff.
23:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
23:57 Ryan Broderick? Lots of normal stuff.
23:58 Speaker 01 Top G.
23:59 Speaker 03 That is, that is the most, uh, you are only talking to middle schoolers.
24:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:05 Speaker 03 Like, like the, that is, it, it, I think I remember that specifically because it was insightful into understanding that like, that is the bullying tactics you use at 13 and by 15, you're like, that's pretty stupid. Very stupid question. I will say that, um, not to bring this down, but we do a lot of opining in modern society about the state of journalism. But then you review old journalism and the AP asking questions like this and you're like, seems like we weren't very good at it.
24:35 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, journalism has always been bad and I, during the pandemic, I was actually curious. I was like, who was the first American journalist? And the best I could tell, it was a guy who used to write a newsletter libeling famous people in Europe. And he was kicked out of Europe and he went to the UK where he continued to libel famous people. So they kicked him out of there and he went to Boston and then he continued to just libel famous people. And he was considered to have like the first journalistic institution in America and I think that's beautiful. That's like a really beautiful tradition that we.
25:06 Speaker 01 We should get back to that.
25:07 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, like, we haven't stopped. And like in the mid 2000s also, there was this really weird, like, I want to call it like a post nine 11 horniness. They're just like, which is nasty. It was, if you, uh, a friend of mine's been like antagonizing me with Bloodhound Gang live footage that he keeps texting me. And it's the nastiest shit I've ever seen in my life. There was just like this.
25:28 Speaker 01 What's Bloodhound Gang?
25:29 Ryan Broderick? Uh, like, uh, the, the rap group, uh, you and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it.
25:35 Speaker 01 Oh, yes. Okay. I know that one.
25:37 Ryan Broderick? And like, he sends me live videos of them performing and it's disgusting.
25:39 Speaker 01 Hmm.
25:40 Ryan Broderick? There was just like this ugly horniness, uh, that happened for some reason. I don't know what it was.
25:45 Speaker 03 Americans, America's hero, Jimmy Kimmel with the man show sort of shit.
25:49 Ryan Broderick? The man show is insane to watch.
25:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:51 Speaker 03 And now women jumping on trampolines.
25:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
25:55 Speaker 02 It's like the toss the commercial sort of stuff.
25:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:59 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, that decade was nasty.
26:01 Speaker 02 All right, we're gonna take a little break and then we're gonna hear about Ryan's favorite middle school conspiracy.
26:11 Ryan Broderick? Okay, you guys remember like the first time you ever heard about like drugs? Like DARE programs?
26:17 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Still have my DARE shirt from, uh...
26:20 Speaker 01 I do too at my parents' house.
26:21 Speaker 02 Yeah. Oh, nice.
26:22 Ryan Broderick? Okay, I also remember sort of like watching like a DARE presentation being like, should you just be telling us like how drugs work and like where to get them? But it's around this time, I think, that I first heard of what I've considered like the funniest, stupidest, middle school rumor. I think it's endlessly funny. Have you guys ever heard of Jenkum?
26:43 Speaker 04 Yes.
26:44 Speaker 01 I don't think so.
26:44 Speaker 02 No, vaguely. The word sounds familiar, but I'm not placing it.
26:48 Speaker 01 Not the jeans.
26:49 Ryan Broderick? No, that's Jinko.
26:51 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, okay, sorry.
26:52 Ryan Broderick? So Jenkum, I'm gonna describe it to you and hopefully you don't throw up. But there was a rumor in the late 90s, I wanna say mid to late 90s or the 2000s, that you could get high by pooping and peeing in a bottle.
27:04 Speaker 01 What?
27:05 Ryan Broderick? And then huffing it. And it became a massive moral panic for local news stations across the country. And it was called Jenkum. And I remember like one, I remember hearing about it, the idea of like, two kids were found getting high on Jenkum by the river or whatever. And so we're gonna be talking about the Jenkum panic of the late 90s and my producer Grant, who's over there in his little cuck chair, is gonna show you a news clip all about Jenkum.
27:30 Speaker 01 What are you guys laughing about? Ryan says that every episode. I'm immune now.
27:34 Speaker 07 One Florida sheriff's department warns there's a new way for your kids to get high. And as Fox News Jack Miller reports, they're using raw sewage.
27:42 Speaker 05 The bulletin describes Jenkum as gas produced by raw sewage that's allowed to ferment. When we mentioned this new concoction to people on the street here in Jacksonville, not only had they never heard of it before, but they said they didn't want to get anywhere near it. It sounds horrible. Yeah, I couldn't imagine doing something like that. Honestly? They need to find something better to do.
28:03 Ryan Broderick? To do with her life. Sounds pretty sick to me. Not anything you would ever consider? Never. Pause it. That guy looks like the exact kind of guy that was.
28:14 Ryan Broderick? He's like, I don't want to touch it. It means it's not real.
28:18 Ryan Broderick? Cause that guy is like. He sells Jankum. That guy looks like a bath salts guy. And he's like, I don't want to touch Jankum.
28:24 Speaker 03 There's a glint in his eye that makes you think he's like. Yeah, yeah, I would never do that.
28:30 Ryan Broderick? So what are your, what are your thoughts? What are your first reaction?
28:33 Speaker 01 Isn't Jankum essentially how the Ninja Turtles are created? In the sewage?
28:39 Speaker 01 The fumes from human waste? That's disgusting. I don't think I've ever heard of this.
28:44 Ryan Broderick? No. So you two haven't.
28:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, I've never hearing about it.
28:46 Ryan Broderick? What's the context you heard it in?
28:48 Speaker 04 I don't think it permeated to the news where I was. I, I think I just heard it from some other kid. It must've been something like that.
28:54 Speaker 01 What I'm curious about is, was it a thing happening? Is, are we talking about a trend here or like? It's a rumor of something that actually wasn't happening.
29:03 Ryan Broderick? Well, we're gonna get into that, but I, I would first sort of classify along with like all the other like get high on your own.
29:09 Speaker 01 Sure.
29:09 Ryan Broderick? Stories like smoking banana peels or uh.
29:14 Speaker 04 They have a highlighter.
29:15 Ryan Broderick? Highlighter, yeah, exactly. So, so let's, let's, let's run through it here. So I've got it right here. So. 1995, according to Snopes, uh, it's the first, uh, the first documentation of Jankum comes from an international news wire service in Lukasaka, Zambia. And it reads, human extra, extra excrement is scooped up from the edges of the sewer ponds in old cans and containers, which are covered with a polyurethane bag. And left to stew or ferment for a week. The contents are then inhaled and the result is a lung full of biogases and a powerful hit. Jankum huffers bury their entire face in the ghastly mass, gassing it all in.
29:52 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
29:54 Ryan Broderick? And so we had talked earlier in the first half about how like. One of the most interesting things about like the late 90s and the 2000s is the move to being able to see all of the news for the first time. Like, the news went from like a thing you saw on your TV, local affiliates, or local newspaper, and then maybe you have a national newspaper. But, online, all of a sudden, these articles are being uploaded. You saw the old screenshot of the Washington Post there.
30:17 Speaker 03 Is that really what it used to look like?
30:19 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, dude. Yeah, these things looked ugly as hell. And you were also seeing the rise of websites like The Drudge Report, which launches like in the mid to late 90s, who are now aggregating this stuff. Because it's like, no one kind of thought about it. It was an afterthought. So, do you guys know about arrowid.org? Okay, I love arrowid.org. It is a webs- it's essentially the Wikipedia of drugs. And it has a whole section called "Trip Reports" where people like take drugs and then write out like insane stories.
30:44 Speaker 03 Okay.
30:45 Ryan Broderick? It's a lot of people robo-tripping in the bathrooms of Taco Bells across the country. And so, they, uh, they like look into it, and they say, "It's not gonna get you high." They say, "We have no knowledge about the accuracy of these reports, but it's certainly possible the kids in Zambia thought it would be funny to make up a story for adult aid workers that they were inhaling sewer gas to get high." Which I think is like very possible. Uh, by the late 90s, the story has stuck around long enough to make it to the New York Times and the BBC. So the BBC writes, "Jenkem is cheap, potent, and very popular among the thousands of street children in Lutzaka." "When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to steal petrol, these youngsters turn to jenkem as a way of getting high. It lasts about an hour," says one user.
31:28 Ryan Broderick? "16-year-old Luke, who prefers jenkem to other substances with glue, I just hear voices in my head, but with jenkem, I see visions. I see my mother who is dead and I forget about the problems in my life." And, so...
31:41 Speaker 03 This was, this was the picture that the BBC thought was chill to put on this article.
31:48 Ryan Broderick? So, I think there's a couple things. One, I do believe that Arrowid users are absolute freaks enough to have tested it. Like, they, they will test anything. I also think it's possible that there were nine or 10 translation issues happening here.
32:04 Speaker 03 Okay.
32:04 Ryan Broderick? I also think that the BBC, especially in the late 90s, was looking for poverty porn. And there's like an entire genre of this. I think that there's also, like, a- A thread that takes this all the way to crocodile. Do you remember that?
32:20 Speaker 01 No.
32:20 Ryan Broderick? So crocodile was a drug that was purportedly being used by Russians in the late 2000s, where they would mix gasoline and heroin and their skin would fall off. Oh my god. And so we've talked about this on the episode that Grant doesn't remember about gadget, which is that like, not only in the late 90s and 2000s were people suddenly being able to see the news for the first time, they were creating blogs to write poorly about the rest of the world. Oh yeah. So you had like, Iloveafrica.com or whatever, and it's some white guy who has no idea what he's talking about, and he's like blogging about his time as an aid worker there. Or Iloverussia.com and it's weird crazy Russian stories. So that's sort of the environment that this is taking place in.
33:04 Ryan Broderick? Do you guys remember anything even similar to this in your early days on the internet? Like weird news stories that would sort of fly by or weird blogs like writing about this kind of thing?
33:14 Speaker 01 Well, I remember like the Marilyn Manson rumor that he like removed his
33:21 Ryan Broderick? Sure.
33:21 Speaker 01 his rib cage so that he could go down on himself.
33:25 Ryan Broderick? That was the big one in my mental. Yeah.
33:27 Speaker 01 But in terms of like these kind of like kind of fleeting, maybe drug related, not a whole ton. I guess like with Jankum, even though I'm sure it's made up to some degree, it does feel believable, I guess, because of the because of the cost effectiveness, I suppose. Like it is free, I suppose. You just need a bottle. Yeah. And if it's getting you, if it's supposedly getting you a better high, then
33:52 Ryan Broderick? You can see visions. You can see your dead mom in a vision. This one, but glue, you only hear stuff.
33:58 Speaker 03 You can just totally imagine the most pretentious, annoying American aid worker being like, please tell me your story. Some 19-year-old fucker who is like, it's like, I'm gonna write a book about you totally. And they're like, yeah. And like the mom's in the other room.
34:17 Speaker 02 What were you doing out there?
34:19 Ryan Broderick? So, I looked into this for the first time a couple of years ago, 2015. I was on a podcast I used to run with my friend Katie called Internet Explorer. We looked into it and we basically found that it was completely fake. And largely a way to troll local police and local media. And Grant is gonna show you an image that looks gross.
34:46 Speaker 02 Oh my god.
34:48 Ryan Broderick? It looks like a little boy sticking a straw into a bottle full of poop and pee.
34:54 Speaker 02 Which, aren't you supposed to huff it? Why is he, why is there a straw?
34:58 Speaker 03 But if you didn't know that, and you just saw this image, you'd be like, was there a glass bottle of you? Who?
35:02 Ryan Broderick? Yes. Now, okay, so this is a young man who went by Pickwick on the message board totesy.com. And he posted these photos of what appeared to be him huffing balloons full of poop and pee and bottles. It was straws and stuff. And he wrote, "Okay, today I set it up and put the bottle in the hot sun. My friend took pictures of all the steps. First I shit in the bottle, then I pissed in it. I took a balloon and I stretched it over the top to catch all the gases. Now wait a few days and hope the balloon fills up." Then he posted again, "Well, today I finally did it. I probably became the first person in America to huff his own shit gas."
35:43 Ryan Broderick? He then continues, "After breathing in, I immediately felt that I was passing out. I did not even have time to spit before I became unconscious. When I woke up, my spittle had oozed out of my mouth, down my chin. I asked my friend how long I was out for. He said about a minute and that he had repeatedly tried to wake me up, but I would not wake up. After I was fully into the dreamlike state, visual hallucinations began to start. I had fleeting visions of people who seemed completely random, like my second grade teacher. At the peak of my trip, I saw things like pillars in my lung that disappeared into shapes." And, like, obviously, he's making this up to see if he can get people to huff their own shit. Yeah. Like, I think that is the way to think about this.
36:23 Ryan Broderick? What do you think happens next in this story? After, now we have message board users trying to convince each other to do this. What do you think happens next?
36:30 Speaker 01 Oh, man. I imagine like a sizable amount of people try it and don't get high and realize they've been had.
36:38 Speaker 04 Someone has to get sick from actually trying it.
36:40 Ryan Broderick? So we don't have a ton of data on that, but what we do have is how it spreads to 4chan next. And the idea is to send letters to your principal to get your principal to hire a dare officer to then tell the kids at your school about Jenkum.
37:00 Speaker 01 Oh, my god.
37:01 Speaker 04 That's great.
37:01 Ryan Broderick? And so we have a massive wall of text here. I'm gonna read some of it here. So you're supposed to email this to your school principal, okay? So you're supposed to, it says, "Step one, email this to your principal. Step two, question mark, question mark, question mark. Step three, profit." And what you're supposed to write is, "I am writing anonymously because I do not want my child to get in any trouble, but I need to alert you to something your students are doing that is potentially very dangerous. Yesterday afternoon, I came home early to find my son and his friends getting high on something called Jenkum, which they had met, which they say they heard about at school. This Jenkum is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard of." And then I'm not gonna describe how they describe how to do it. And can you guess what happens once people start doing this?
37:41 Speaker 02 Oh, the schools definitely took the bait.
37:43 Ryan Broderick? Computer? Yes. This is from the Collier County Sheriff's Office Criminal Intelligence Bureau. And it is a drug bulletin about a new drug called Jenkum.
37:54 Speaker 01 Oh, and they've got the image of the kid and it's got, that's right.
37:58 Speaker 04 Good for him.
37:59 Ryan Broderick? And this is actually very similar to a couple bulletins we found passing around Mexico. Do you remember the Momo challenge?
38:06 Speaker 01 Momo challenge?
38:06 Ryan Broderick? It was like a disgusting statue that if you looked at it, it would like curse you on the internet. So it became like a huge mass panic that like children were committing suicide after seeing this statue of this like evil chicken woman. And Mexican police were creating bulletins like that and passing them around as well. So like this is, this is how far back this idea goes. And then, of course, uh, the Washington Post, they write about it, they fall for it, they take down the Post.
38:30 Speaker 01 Oh.
38:31 Ryan Broderick? Fox News falls for it. And they write, "We wouldn't classify it as a drug so much because it's feces and urine."
38:40 Ryan Broderick? Says Garrison County, a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration in Washington. You've pretty much.
38:48 Ryan Broderick? You're pretty much at the bottom of the barrel.
38:54 Speaker 02 Which, fair.
38:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:56 Ryan Broderick? Yeah. And eventually, Pickwick, the guy who does the pictures of him huffing the bottle, he admits that it's all fake and that what you've been looking at, don't worry, is a mixture of Nutella, water, flour, and beer. And he wrote, "I never inhaled any poop gas and got high off it. I have deleted the pictures. Hopefully no weirdo saved them on his computer."
39:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:16 Ryan Broderick? We did.
39:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:17 Ryan Broderick? "I just don't want people to ever recognize me as the kid who have poop gas." Well, sorry bud.
39:24 Speaker 01 So is this him feeling like some level of guilt that all of these places picked it up? I thought that was kind of the goal.
39:29 Ryan Broderick? I think, I think it's a couple of things. One, I think we are at a really pivotal moment in the late 90s, 2000s, where the internet is just getting big and no one really understands how big it's getting. And you have early message boards that are beginning to network with larger message boards. 4chan comes around in like 2003, 2004. So, all of that stuff is starting. The media is probably doing a thing, and I'm trying to like think back to my time in that period, like in J-School when I'm learning about it. And I believe what it was, was like, you had a newsroom, they'd write their stories, and then they would just upload them online and forget about it. So they're all of a sudden getting viral traffic for the first time. And they're like, the first big viral New York Times piece, I forget what it was,
40:11 Ryan Broderick? I looked it up years ago, I think it happens like 2009, where like they're like, whoa, this is like a big thing of traffic. So, all of these stories are being passed around, no one's really paying attention, and these worlds are colliding. And I think, if I had to imagine, this Pickwick kid was like, uh-oh. You know, if his picture is showing up in like a bulletin for like local law enforcement, who's like a whole other thing here? Like, local law enforcement have been using the internet in weird ways for 20, 30 years that no one really, still to this day, pays attention to. I think all these horses are just combining in ways where like people just weren't prepared for how viral it could go.
40:46 Speaker 04 I think that the kid had a moment of being like, if I have to...
40:50 Ryan Broderick? Be like meeting for like the college interviews.
40:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
40:52 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, they're like, so how do you explain this moment? Clicked in?
40:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
40:57 Ryan Broderick? And I honestly think that like, he was just ahead of his time because if he's like, yeah, I went viral. Well, I am, you are lucky to have me as part of your like media studies.
41:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's a way he could have spun it.
41:08 Ryan Broderick? I mean, he'd be a YouTube star today.
41:10 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
41:10 Speaker 04 Oh, for sure.
41:11 Speaker 01 It's interesting too, how the sheriff's department handled this. I mean, I, on one hand, I wonder what is their responsibility? But on the other hand, it's like they didn't seem to do any kind of an investigation to see whether it was real or not before they put out this.
41:25 Speaker 04 They're trying to get ahead of it.
41:26 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
41:26 Speaker 02 I feel like that's all the sort of like kid panic stuff is they just react first and then try to, I guess they, I don't know, I don't even know if they ever tried to like figure out if it's real.
41:36 Speaker 04 Well, like Ryan, have you looked into like, did you ever cover the Tide Pods thing?
41:40 Ryan Broderick? We did.
41:41 Speaker 04 That seems like the more modern corollary and I'm curious how that.
41:44 Ryan Broderick? What we found was that the majority of Tide Pods being smoked or huffed or eaten or whatever were either from trolls. Or darker, like there was a string of old people with dementia thinking they were candy.
42:01 Speaker 01 Oh, God.
42:01 Ryan Broderick? And it was one of those things where it like bubbled up out of consumer reports and sort of took on a life of its own. And no one really knew how to deal with it. A similar trajectory would be NyQuil chicken, like the idea that TikTok users were boiling chicken in NyQuil, which I did do eventually, by the way. Um, it smells horrible. Don't do it. But.
42:22 Speaker 01 You can find that on our Patreon.
42:23 Ryan Broderick? You can find that on our Patreon. It's like the institutions don't know how to address the rumor.
42:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:29 Ryan Broderick? Without amplifying it.
42:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
42:31 Ryan Broderick? And so like one, uh, cause the, cause you know, with journalists, like if local law enforcement have a press conference and like teenagers are huffing their own shit. The journalist is like, well, police today, so the teenagers are huffing their own shit.
42:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:41 Ryan Broderick? And nowhere in that, in that interaction is anyone going, well, are they huffing their own shit?
42:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:47 Ryan Broderick? And like, that is kind of the story of almost all of American media.
42:50 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:50 Ryan Broderick? Like we're at, you know, kind of more serious twist on this, like this is playing out right now with like ICE raids and stuff.
42:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:57 Ryan Broderick? Like local law enforcement will say something or, or a law enforcement agency or a government agency will say something and journalists will just write down that they said it.
43:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
43:04 Ryan Broderick? And by the time that that travels, there might be another journalist in the background going, well, is this real? Is this right? And people have already moved on and like it can happen for silly stuff and it can happen for serious stuff.
43:15 Speaker 01 I was listening to your guys' uh, uh, bonus episode about weapons and Eddington and you're talking a little bit about this kind of phenomenon where in weapons, the police department doesn't know how to investigate um, Julia's character.
43:30 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, the teacher.
43:31 Speaker 01 Without riling up the whole town because that's what they want the police department to do. And so, yeah, like you were saying, there's kind of no way to do it without just spreading the thing even further.
43:40 Speaker 03 Well, in this case, it would be to go, I received an anonymous letter.
43:45 Ryan Broderick? Right.
43:45 Speaker 03 Of a, uh, I remember being a teenager and thinking poop and pee is funny.
43:49 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
43:50 Speaker 03 Maybe this is bullshit.
43:51 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
43:51 Speaker 03 Would be a vital first now.
43:54 Ryan Broderick? But it's also kind of like a new, it's a uniquely American problem. Like I, there, there are obviously like all kinds of mass panics and moral panics in different countries, but the, the, the, you, the sort of unique way our free press interacts with our fairly open law enforcement investigations. Like in a lot of countries, like I, I was reporting in the UK for a while and like there's a rule where like the minute charges get dropped down, you cannot report on it or you'll go to jail until like the trial starts. And they have very strict rules because you, you would be considered like tampering with a jury or something, or the judging or whatever. And here, we kind of have this like legal media circus that just exists.
44:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:32 Ryan Broderick? And it can happen for really silly stuff and really serious stuff. And, and it's existed for decades, if not, you know, a century now. And so, yeah, it makes it very hard, as you said, for any institution to like investigate something without it creating a larger media circus.
44:49 Speaker 02 Yeah. I thought about this with the ICE rate stuff where they're making now these like crazy social media, like videos that are like,
44:56 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
44:56 Speaker 02 It's like a movie.
44:57 Ryan Broderick? Oh, yeah.
44:57 Speaker 02 And they're showing people's faces. And I'm like, okay, we don't know what these people have done at all.
45:02 Ryan Broderick? No.
45:02 Speaker 02 And now you're in some like hype reel for, for ICE.
45:05 Ryan Broderick? Right.
45:05 Speaker 02 And it's like, you just took me out of my home. It's like, what if there are no charges on this person? It's like, it's already too far gone. Yeah. You're already.
45:12 Ryan Broderick? Well, I, I think that's the evolution of a story like Jenkin, which is like. Like now, the institutions have direct access to information channels. So like before, it would be your sheriff comes out and he's like, "Children are huffing poop and pee." And then the journalist writes it down and it goes in the newspaper and people read it. But as we looked into moral panics in the 2010s, Tide Pods for instance, you'll just start to see local, fentanyl is a great example of this, where the law enforcement just have a Facebook page.
45:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:43 Ryan Broderick? And they just post in the Facebook page, like, "People are dying from like touching fentanyl."
45:47 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:47 Ryan Broderick? And there's no journalist involved there. And the final evolution of that would be the DHS doing like sizzle reels for ICE raids.
45:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:53 Ryan Broderick? Where they don't need any media coverage. They can just transmit it directly. And that is a really weird world to live in. Because it wasn't that this one was good. I mean, the old world produced Jenkin, but the new world,
46:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:06 Ryan Broderick? God knows what's happening.
46:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:07 Ryan Broderick? You know? But after the break, we're going to be talking about something that's already popped up today, which is Marilyn Manson trying to suck his own dick.
46:16 Speaker 01 I can't win.
46:16 Ryan Broderick? Which was the big rumor, probably the biggest rumor of my middle school. But we're going to talk about that right after a word from our sponsors, who are probably furious. Our sponsors, an empty Poland Spring bottle. Fill it with whatever you like.
46:36 Ryan Broderick? So, you guys had been wondering about the Marilyn Manson rumor. And we did a little digging into where this came from. And according to Hysteria Mag, the rumor began on the 27th of November, 1994, which is actually kind of wild that like it has an exact date.
46:53 Speaker 01 Wow.
46:53 Ryan Broderick? Yeah. Marilyn Manson was arrested after a show for violating the adult entertainment code. And police arrested him after being under the impression that Manson had performed oral sex on a man while performing on stage, but as it turns out, he wasn't. Rather, it was jackoff Jill vocalist Jessica, who was apparently wearing a prosthetic penis at the gig, with Manson simulating oral sex on the appendage. He was held for 16 hours and then released without charge. I think the double confusion of that spread and turned into him sucking himself off. And then it was, "How would he suck himself off?" And it was, "He got two ribs of it."
47:28 Speaker 01 Yeah. So people were trying to rationalize what they heard.
47:31 Speaker 02 What they saw.
47:32 Ryan Broderick? Exactly. But you guys had asked us if there was anything similar. And so we have a TikTok of a much more modern rumor, one that I want to be on the record saying I believe, wholeheartedly.
47:47 Speaker 06 My new favorite stupid conspiracy theory is that Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister of the UK, is secretly a collared submissive. Basically, Truss wears the same necklace in a lot of, if not most of, her public appearances. And that design, the ring attached to a chain, is very similar to the design of a lot of day collars.
48:14 Ryan Broderick? Okay, so just to sort of combine everything we've talked about today. I do think, so we live in a time of like peak rumors, peak conspiracies, there's so many, it's hard to like pay attention. But I do think the Liz Truss one is very similar to the Marilyn Manson one, similar even to the Jenkin one, and the Ciara one, which is that they all, the really pernicious ones, all seem to kind of touch on the idea of revealing someone being part of a subculture. Something that we, a part of society that we don't pay attention to, whether it's drug users, or it's S and M people, or it's trans people, or gay people, it's people who are considered like outside of the mainstream.
48:57 Ryan Broderick? And like the really successful rumors seem to work when you claim that someone well-known is actually part of that. And I think the kind of fear of the other required there. That said, I do believe that Liz Truss is wearing an S and M chain, and I do believe that she wore it in her last meeting with the Queen right before the Queen died. I will believe that till I die.
49:17 Speaker 03 She had a high-powered job, you know, you gotta find some way to relieve stress.
49:21 Speaker 04 I think it's true of most politicians.
49:22 Ryan Broderick? Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But yeah, I do think that like really successful rumors, particularly about public figures, all involve the like, this person is secretly a communist, or they're secretly gay, or secretly a lesbian, you know, secretly trans, secretly an S and M freak. Like, there's always that, because there's something like tantalizing, and it's hard to prove, and it's hard to prove, and it's hard to disprove on the other person. They can't, they can say no, and you just don't believe them.
49:49 Speaker 01 It's funny you should mention, we actually spoke to an expert, or Noah spoke to an expert about rumors and why we attach to rumors, especially celebrity rumors, what we get out of them. And I mean, that makes a ton of sense, but...
50:04 Speaker 04 Yeah, that aligned a lot. Her name's Charlotte DeBacher. She's in Belgium. And she was saying, yeah, a lot of the, basically the point of a lot of rumors or why we gravitate is like, there's like reputational stuff. So this is like a way to take people down a peg, basically. And a lot of it's like survival. So it's like, you learn like, okay, do this, like, don't do this drug. It's gonna kill you, or do this thing. And this is kind of how you can survive. And then you build a community just based on talking about these other people.
50:31 Ryan Broderick? Interesting.
50:32 Speaker 04 But yeah, a lot of it is kind of this othering sort of thing where it's like reputational, you're figuring it out. And then there's just like the parasocial element, which has only gotten more increased with time, where it's like, we become so attached to these people and it's all, we're talking about, you know, Britney Spears or Ciara or whoever, and it's obviously one-sided. And then it's, then of course, just the way they spread, it's like, Ciara even answering, dignifying these questions, with like a, well, no, of course, not only just feeds the fire. And that, that I think has even gotten worse in more recent times, you know?
51:02 Ryan Broderick? It's interesting to me how like, if you look at it on a timeline, like the 90s are really bad for this stuff. And the 2000s, still pretty bad, but like, it's changing. And then it does kind of feel like between, like 2010 and like, August 2014, the start of Gamergate, there's a kind of a moment where it actually feels like things are getting better. Like, information is kind of flowing at a speed where we can like, say, that's fake, that's not fake. Like, media organizations are interested in debunking stuff. Debunking doesn't feel tied to a culture war thing yet.
51:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
51:38 Ryan Broderick? And then it flips, and it gets progressively worse. And then after COVID, it feels like we are basically back in the 90s again. And I think a lot of it has to do with like, ephemerality. Like TikTok feels as ephemeral as 90s TV to me, where you will see a TikTok and it'll pass you by and you won't think about it. And then you'll just like be repeating some insane... Anything you heard?
52:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:00 Ryan Broderick? And you won't be able to find it.
52:02 Speaker 04 Yeah, you're not referencing it directly, so it's like you're changing little things.
52:05 Ryan Broderick? It's, yeah, like I even find myself, because I use X still, Twitter, because it's like you can see all the bad people on there, and so it's great for my job. But I have found myself like accidentally absorbing through osmosis, random stuff I'm seeing, and then like saying it out loud to someone, they're being like, what are you talking about?
52:21 Speaker 03 I was about to say the, the being able to buy a checkmark, I think also was a major contributor.
52:27 Ryan Broderick? Hundred two.
52:28 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
52:28 Ryan Broderick? Yeah.
52:29 Speaker 03 A bunch of random information being legitimized.
52:31 Ryan Broderick? Ian Rappaport's, you know, always, yeah.
52:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
52:34 Ryan Broderick? Yeah. It's, there's definitely something about like not being able to like catch stuff passing you by like, because like a rumor is effectively like someone just told you this thing, and then it's in your head, and you repeat it without really thinking. And like the internet has sort of become that now. Like it is just this rumor factory, which I do think to tie it back to the thing at the top, like is being weaponized by, you know, people in the entertainment industry who know that they can make Reddit accounts, and they can make Instagram accounts, and, you know, flood the zone that way.
53:04 Speaker 03 I guess in conclusion, everything's awesome.
53:06 Ryan Broderick? Um, everything's fine.
53:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, it seems like we're on a good track.
53:09 Ryan Broderick? Well, okay, let's, let's, let's, so, Ciara was not a man, although even if she was born man, still beautiful. Jenkham.
53:19 Speaker 03 She can do better than Russell Wilson.
53:21 Ryan Broderick? She can do better than Russell Wilson. Jenkham, not real, don't do it. Marilyn Manson is a freak and a bad person, but did not have his ribs removed to suck his own dick.
53:31 Speaker 04 That's okay if he, that's, you know.
53:32 Ryan Broderick? And that's, that's actually the least bad thing he could do.
53:36 Speaker 03 Honestly, that would make him less of a, that might solve the problem further.
53:40 Ryan Broderick? He should just be abusing himself. Yeah, exactly. And then lastly, jury's still out on Liz Truss being an S and M person. I want to believe, and I always say on Panic World, you should find like a really harmless conspiracy theory that you believe in, and just like have fun with that.
53:53 Speaker 02 Yeah.
53:53 Ryan Broderick? You know, just a little break.
53:54 Speaker 04 Kind of a low stakes one.
53:55 Ryan Broderick? A low stakes one. You want to believe in aliens, believe in aliens, but don't give anyone any money.
54:00 Speaker 03 Honestly, I think kind of question everything. If you want to try Jenkham, send us an email, let us know.
54:05 Ryan Broderick? If you email me about Jenkham, I will call the police.
54:10 Ryan Broderick? I will, I will dock you, and I will call the police.
54:14 Ryan Broderick? Thank you guys for having me on the show.
54:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, thanks for joining us.
54:18 Ryan Broderick? If, uh, this is going on both feeds, so if you want to follow me, you can find me as Ryan Hates This on Blue Sky, or Broderick on X, or Ryan Hates This on Instagram. Panic World is Panic World everywhere. You'll find it. Just search, type in the little AI. Say Panic World. It'll pop up. Uh, if people want to find you guys, where can they find you guys?
54:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, we're, uh, nosuchthing.show on, I think, every social media app and
54:43 Speaker 04 and on the podcast apps.
54:45 Speaker 01 And on everywhere you listen to podcasts.
54:47 Speaker 04 Nosuchthing. Maybe type Manny Noah Duvan as one word. That might help.
54:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
54:53 Ryan Broderick? Panic World is a production of Courier. It is written and produced by Grant Irving and hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Josh Fialsted is our production coordinator and our amazing researcher is Adam Bumis. From Courier is Shane Verkest, who edits our video episodes, along with our producer, Devin Maroney, and National Managing Director and Executive Producer, Kevin Dreyfus. R.C. DeMezzo is their VP of Brand and Social. Charlotte Robinson is their Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Mary Ann Kuga is their Director of Marketing. YouTube and Podcast Growth Marketer, Samantha Hollis. And Tracy Kaplan is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution. If you want to sponsor the show or give us products to sell, she's the one to talk to. You can email her at [email protected] . Be sure to
55:38 Ryan Broderick? check out the Panic World YouTube channel, which you can find at youtube.com slash at Panic World Pod. And please, give us some nice ratings on podcast apps and leave a funny review. Lastly, here's my advice for you. Chill out and touch grass while you still can.
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