The Top 10 Panics of 2024 (with Katie Notopoulos, Luke Bailey, & Adam Bumas)

It’s the end of the year episode, so we’re talking about some of the best — and worst — things on the internet for 2024. Joining us are friends of the pod Katie Notopoulos and Luke Bailey, plus our producer Grant Irving and the big on-air debut of our researcher, Adam Bumas. Happy holidays, panickers! Make sure to touch grass this holiday season. Follow our guests! (And researcher!) Luke Bailey @lukebailey.bsky.social Katie Notopoulos @katienotopoulos / @katienotopoulos.bsky.social Adam Bumas bumas.bsky.social Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: 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 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:29Ryan Broderick?

  Luke is not allowed to tell the embarrassing stories he knows about me because they're just, they're, they're, they're too embarrassing, I would say.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  There was, there was one time we were at a pub, right? With a French, like mutual friend of ours. And Ryan turned around to, to me and Ellie, my, my now wife, and was like, hey, you guys don't mind if I speak French for a bit? And then attempted to speak French.

• 0:52Ryan Broderick?

  I didn't do that.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  And in about a minute.

• 0:53Ryan Broderick?

  I don't even remember.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I had like 30 seconds. Cause, cause in America, Ryan's like foreign language skills are like really good because he's American and Americans don't speak any foreign languages. But like, we all did like French for like four or five years. So we have a basic, we have like basic French. And I was like, I can speak French. And then 30 seconds later, they were just like, we've come back to English. And that was very funny.

• 1:11Ryan Broderick?

  Guessing, I mean, judging by the fact that I don't remember that, it could also be that I was extra, I mean, I can't really speak French, but I was also, it seems like I was extraordinarily hammered, if I have to guess.

• 1:36Ryan Broderick?

  Welcome to the end of year episode of Panic World, a show about the darkest corners of the internet and all the viral witch hunts and freak gods that bubble up out of them. With us today is Katie Netoplis, my former co-host on the podcast Internet Explorer, Luke Bailey, my former co-host on the podcast, The Content Minds, Grant Irving, producer of this show, and for the first time ever appearing on Mike, garbage day and panic world researcher, Adam Bumas. Hello, all three of you. Welcome to the show.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  Thank you so much for having me. I feel a little Ryan, like this is your introducing, you know, your new person to all your exes.

• 2:12Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, that is what's happening. I'm doing a Scott Pilgrim. That's what this is. Before we get started, I want our guest to go around and say their favorite post of the year. Katie, how about you start us off and drop your link in the chat here. Let's all take a look.

• 2:28Speaker 03

  Hold on.

• 2:29Ryan Broderick?

  So this is Katie's pick. And this is the, okay, so Katie, you want to describe it for our listeners, what we're looking at here?

• 2:37Speaker 03

  Okay, so my post of the year was a YouTube video from Nikado Avocado. I think that's his name.

• 2:46Ryan Broderick?

  Nikocado Avocado.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  It was just like, the whole thing was so silly and so stupid. And I feel like I really was dropped into it because I was not really particularly familiar with this creator and his long backstory, although he is quite popular and people know about him. So basically, he had been a fairly overweight guy for the years that he had been a creator. And he, his whole deal was he was doing mukbangs, which is like when you eat a ton of food on camera. And for whatever reason, people enjoy watching this. That does not appeal to me, and I've never really understood that world. So he posts this video. That's like, surprise. I

• 3:30Speaker 03

  secretly have lost a significant amount of weight over the last 10 months, or possibly even two years or something. And I hid off camera while during this period where I'd lost all this weight. And then the way he talks about it, when he like comes out, he's not like, hey, everyone, I lost some weight. He's like, you idiots, you pawns, you rubes, I fooled you all. You're putty in my hands.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  I am always two steps ahead. So I am the villain. Because I've made myself one.

• 4:16Speaker 04

  And you will continue to consume these stories about me year after year after year. For as long as I tell the internet that I am the villain.

• 4:31Speaker 03

  And it's like, really like, what, what, what's going on, man? Well, I don't understand. It was, I mean, it was just, and people on the internet were freaking out. It was like huge news. And I found this so baffling, so weird. That's my post of the year.

• 4:46Ryan Broderick?

  I'd say it's very definitive of the vibe of 2024, actually.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  I mean, I think my favorite post of the, and again, the post of the year is like such an odd category. Is it favorite? Is it like the worst post? But I think the post of the year has to be Kamala is brat from Charli XCX. I mean, it's fascinating from a purely British point of view because Charli XCX to Americans is a very different thing.

• 5:09Ryan Broderick?

  Right.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  Well, what Americans don't necessarily understand about Charli XCX is that she is like basically an Essex girl who's lived in Dulston for 10 years and like hung out at Dulston Supers.

• 5:18Ryan Broderick?

  Let me translate, let me translate. It's like she is a New, a Long Island, uh, rich girl who moved to Bushwick. That's what he just said.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  That was gonna be my thing. That was, I was gonna, I was gonna say New Jersey and Bushwick. Yeah. It is, it is exactly that. Yeah, no, she's hung out at Dulston Supers, which I think, I'm pretty sure Ram was opposite your old flat. But like, her kind of tweet on that one day as, and if you've heard any of the kind of like Biden, the Harris team stuff afterwards where they're trying to figure out like, they were like, we had 107 days to define her. They got completely derailed for two weeks by this like one, like Essex girl saying, Essex girl, club kid being like, yeah, no, I think she's this indefinable thing that no one can be sure of because the entire point about it is that it's indefinable. And I found that incredibly funny.

• 6:05Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. Are you guys ready for my post of the, my personal post of the year? So Luke said it was the brat summer tweet. Katie says it's Nicado Avocados reveal that he's actually thin. My post of the year, and the very stupid reason why I wanted to start with this entire segment, is a post to our huffing community titled, "Every time 11 huffs, fine. 12 huffs, poop man come I." And it's a photo of what appears to be a redditor who's huffing spider killer. And every time he huffs it 12 times, he poops his bed.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  That's good stuff.

• 6:44Ryan Broderick?

  I've been laughing about this for weeks.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  I mean, I think that some of those posts are fake, right? Like, there are people who know it's a joke.

• 6:55Ryan Broderick?

  All I know is every ti- every ti- it's spelled so wrong. Every- and it's all like, every time 11 huffs fine, 12 huffs poop man come.

• 7:10Ryan Broderick?

  And it's a photo of like a bed covered in shit stains and spider killer. Um, so yeah, that was it. That's, that's the whole reason I wanted to know your favorite post, so I could show you this one.

• 7:23Ryan Broderick?

  All right, let's get started, shall we? Uh, today, we are doing a year end recap of all the biggest freakouts and viral meltdowns of the year. Our lovely researcher Adam has put together 10 that he believes are definitive. We will be going from 10 to the one, one being the most important. And it's up to me, Katie and Luke, who do not know what this list is, to decide if Adam is correct and if the order is correct. So we will be debating and discussing these. So to kick us off, Adam, what was the 10th most important viral freakout of 2024?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Sorry, can I just clarify?

• 7:57Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  The criteria is most important.

• 8:00Speaker 05

  I, I have my own criteria.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  What is your criteria?

• 8:03Ryan Broderick?

  I have my own criteria. We should have talked about this.

• 8:06Speaker 05

  So these are ranked by basically how much damage they did.

• 8:11Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 8:11Speaker 05

  And so my number 10 is one that basically didn't do anything for anyone involved or even like the people who were panicking. Uh, RFK Jr.'s many, many dead animals.

• 8:25Ryan Broderick?

  This is, this feels right. I think you can't really have this list without RFK. Uh, Katie, what's your favorite dead animal that RFK has been accused of allegedly eating?

• 8:35Speaker 03

  So I gotta go with the bear on this one.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  I think it's the whale. I think that the whale on the car is just a very visceral image.

• 8:42Ryan Broderick?

  Luke, for the listeners who might not be familiar with the various dead animals that RFK has been connected to, describe the whale story, because I feel like that one's actually lesser known.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  The whale was, it wasn't, I'm trying to remember if it was him or like someone in his, his family. But the incident was that there was a dead whale and the dead whale ended up in the car and they had to drive someone with it. And then as they were in the car, the whale juice kept coming in through the car window into the people in the car.

• 9:09Ryan Broderick?

  I didn't know about the whale juice part.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  There was, it was a very visceral whale juice thing.

• 9:13Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. And Katie, for people who might not know about the bear story, give us the broad strokes of the bear story.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  So the story was that he revealed in some interview, I think, that he had accidentally run over or hit a black bear, a baby black bear somewhere driving upstate. And not knowing what to do with it, he put it in his trunk and drove it all the way to New York City, where he had to be there for a meeting or something, and just dumped the body of the black bear in Central Park. And this was actually kind of a news story at the time because the black bear's carcass was discovered in Central Park. And, you know, this is like kind of a big deal. They're like a protected species. You can't just kill a black bear and you're supposed to tell the like state authorities if that happens.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  So when a black bear body shows up in Central Park, it's like a big deal. It goes in the news. And then he comes out years later and is like, oh yeah, that was neat.

• 10:12Speaker 05

  I think just because he was telling that story so casually to Roseanne Barr, and she was looking at him like he was insane, like the whale juice story is the better story. But the, but I had to get to Peter Luger's of it all, like the casualness of how he told it.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 05

  So he dumped, so he's like, so we just dumped it because I didn't want it smelling bad. Like clearly I'm a very reasonable person and Roseanne is looking at him like he's fucking insane. Made that, I think that is a very strong number 10.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  It's also the recency of it. It was also very, very recent. It was like 10 years ago. It wasn't something that happened in the seventies. And it's like, well, that was the seventies. A lot of things happened in the seventies. It was like, no, this happened in like the era of Instagram. It's bizarre.

• 10:59Ryan Broderick?

  Can I throw a curveball here and possibly nominate for the micro story within the story? Is the dead dog he ate in Korea that allegedly gave him the brain worm?

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Well, the brain worm itself, really is.

• 11:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I have the brain worm listed as one of the dead animals.

• 11:15Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I would nominate the worm because it sort of feels like the beginning of the RFK story. Like, it seems like he was never like a totally normal person because like, you know, he recently said he tried to cure his ADHD by taking heroin for a long time. So like clearly like there's been some issues from the get go. But I do feel like, you know, if you really timestamp his story with getting the worm in his brain, like that kind of sets us down the path we're on now with him. So, all right, so I think that I think this feels right. I think kicking off this list with RFK and various dead animals that he's been involved with is correct. So let's lock that in at number 10. Adam, take us to number nine on the list.

• 11:50Speaker 05

  My number nine, I, I try to have a really succinct way to sum all these up, but this, I kind of have to cram everything in. And so what I have here is Elmo cares, Larry David doesn't.

• 12:04Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, the Larry David attacking Elmo thing? Is that what you're talking about?

• 12:09Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 12:09Ryan Broderick?

  Luke, are you familiar with this? Did this make it across the pond?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  This one came across. I agree with it being kind of low on the list because ultimately it didn't matter. Like, was it not just like a two day thing of people being like Larry David's being mean? And everyone be like, yeah, he's Larry David.

• 12:24Ryan Broderick?

  Katie, what do you think? Do you think, do you think that this is, this is worth putting on the list?

• 12:28Speaker 03

  I mean, I love the Sesame Street universe. I love Elmo, but I feel like the adult engagement with it, sometimes it's like, folks, come on. Well, we know what we're doing here.

• 12:40Ryan Broderick?

  Say more because I feel like some people might not know what you're talking about.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  Elmo has this like social media presence where he's like, you know, it's very clearly meant for adults because obviously three year olds aren't on Twitter. And he's doing this like playful, knowing like banter thing like where he's always mad at Rocco the Rock. You know, it's like, I get it and he's engaging and look like Sesame Street, we love it. But I find it a little. Grading personally.

• 13:09Ryan Broderick?

  It reminds me a lot of like when Steve from Blue's Clues during the pandemic would like make videos being like, "You're gonna be okay." And like everyone would be like, "Thank you, Steve from Blue's Clues."

• 13:18Speaker 02

  It feels like everyone's reaction to all of that stuff is fake. And I can't convince myself that there are people genuinely feeling this. Like, aside from a very tiny percentage of adults, but I can't believe that many people were like, "Yeah, no, Steve from Blue's Clues, that's who I need to solve my broken ego."

• 13:37Ryan Broderick?

  Adam, what's your argument? Yeah, what's your argument?

• 13:39Speaker 05

  My case is basically like, one thing we have had a graduating problem with all year, one that's gotten worse and worse, is what you've called a couple of times, "post-truth." And I think, basically, like, the kayfabe that surrounds adults who like the Muppets. Basically, like, the Santa thing, they're trying to keep it like it's real. I think that is one of the ways in which it's 100% socially acceptable to, like, ignore things that are true. And like, there were seriously, like, Will Wheaton was one of the early ones.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  Like, obviously, Will Wheaton's gonna feel sore about being mean to a TV kid. But Will Wheaton was genu- wrote how he was genuinely traumatized by seeing Larry David slap Elmo, because it reminds him of his abusive family.

• 14:40Ryan Broderick?

  I was trying to remember which celebrity went like completely nuts about this on Facebook. It was Will Wheaton, right? Like, he was the one that wrote the message. Okay. Okay. I think this, I think it stays on the list. I think we put it at 10. I think we move RFK to 9. How does everyone feel about this? RFK influenced the election, so yes. Okay. For now, we've got Elmo at 10, RFK at 9. So let's hit the next one on your list. What do you got?

• 15:05Speaker 05

  Okay, number 8 is Ray Gun at the Olympics.

• 15:09Ryan Broderick?

  I want to tap in Luke here, the resident person with the most amount of feelings about Australia, to kind of talk us through this one.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  I feel like she's let down what you would expect of, from a millennial Australian woman breakdancing at the Olympics. She was worse.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  I really enjoyed this one.

• 15:32Ryan Broderick?

  I guess the question here is like, was she worth the international freakout?

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Yes. Yes.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 15:41Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's right.

• 15:42Speaker 03

  This feels perfect. This feels perfectly placed to me.

• 15:45Ryan Broderick?

  This also, yeah, I think this is right. I think, so now we have, so this at number eight would be Raygun. I guess the, the major question with Raygun, is there sort of any long tail here? Like, will, like, will what hap? Well, I guess like there is that, right? Cause like the breakdancing isn't ever coming back, at least for like the, for, for the conceivable future for the Olympics. So that might be like the one and only attempt for a while, as I understand it.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  She all, she also professionally retired from breakdancing. She is, she hung up her pads, basically. She can't do it anymore because she embarrassed herself on the world stage to such a degree.

• 16:23Ryan Broderick?

  Alexander Webb, for all the kingdoms, you know, that needed to be conquered, like she kind of did what she needed to do.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  Cause there were no more worlds to conquer.

• 16:30Ryan Broderick?

  You got it. You, you know, you, yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Uh, there's no more kingdoms for Raygun to dance in. Luke, what do you think this says about Australian culture? I think that's like an important, an important piece here.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Honestly, I think it says, it says, it says nothing about Australian culture because it was so, it was so like, the most, the perfect thing about it was that she kept insisting that, no, actually you just don't understand breakdancing. And everyone else is like, we've never watched breakdancing before, but that's not it.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  You, you kept seeing other clips, people doing their stuff and spinning on their heads and doing all the, all the like, things that I'm looking at, they're like, yeah, I can't do that. I don't know if it's good or not. Can't do that. And she's doing things that I actually could do. I could do that. And I don't want to.

• 17:12Ryan Broderick?

  I think you could, I think you could, I think all of us probably could dance like.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  I'm sure you could do that. My nine-month-old baby can do that and regularly does.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  I will say, just one note in Raygun's time, that I think she handled this very well, very mature, very adult, right? Like she was facing a lot of scrutiny, a lot of online ridicule. And she only very briefly, I think, gave an interview to some Australian media, saying something like, pretty, you know, banal or whatever. Like she didn't, you know, she didn't, she didn't crash out.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, cause she was, she was asleep when most of the abuse happened, so it's fine.

• 17:55Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so I think we're all in agreement here. Ray Gun at the Olympics is a good number eight. Let's do one last one before we go to break here. Adam, what is number seven on your list?

• 18:08Speaker 05

  I'm trying to restrict myself mostly to things that haven't been talked about on the show this year, but I think this had to make the list. Mr. Beast's unprofessionalism.

• 18:20Ryan Broderick?

  Do you feel like there is actual genuine outrage about Mr. Beast?

• 18:24Speaker 03

  I don't think the fans care.

• 18:27Ryan Broderick?

  That's my thought as well.

• 18:29Speaker 05

  And that's why I put it here.

• 18:32Ryan Broderick?

  What do you mean?

• 18:33Speaker 05

  Because it isn't really hurting Mr. Beast or his efforts. It's definitely affecting them and it's definitely like affecting people involved in his empire. It certainly affected Ava Tyson.

• 18:48Ryan Broderick?

  True.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  But there are lots of other panics that have had a lot more of an effect. But because Mr. Beast is so huge, like it's gotta go on there somewhere.

• 19:00Ryan Broderick?

  That seems right to me. I mean, do you, do you guys think that there will be any consequences for like anything that he does bad in the future? Like, do you feel like he's too big to actually feel those consequences?

• 19:12Speaker 03

  No, I don't. But I do think that these particular scandals were not big enough to significantly hurt him. So the one about his employee, it's not him, it's his employee, right?

• 19:24Speaker 02

  He's grown a really big organization of very young people very quickly and it turns out some of them are awful people.

• 19:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  I don't know if anyone here has worked in an organization like that before, but...

• 19:33Ryan Broderick?

  Definitely not us.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, the moldy one.

• 19:36Ryan Broderick?

  Definitely not the three of us.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  No.

• 19:39Ryan Broderick?

  Definitely not us.

• 19:41Speaker 03

  You know, I think the thing that comes the closest is that he was sort of fostering unsafe work conditions on this TV show, which was the big, exciting new thing. You know, unsafe conditions on the filming of a reality show is like both a big deal. Cause like, hey, people don't want unsafe things. But also like, we've seen that too with like Love is Blind. And other reality shows and it doesn't really affect them.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  They did it with Squid Games in the UK because they they gave it to one of the UK shows that did film their version of Squid Games. And it went horribly wrong and people were like standing in the sun for 24 hours and all this like mad stuff awful stuff happened. And he was a lot safer than like the version that the big production company in the UK did. I think they only just showed. So it happens a lot.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  I think that the I think the big task will be when the show actually airs and how that show performs with a broader audience than just his YouTube fans. I think that will be the big test. And I do I do think he's not untouchable. It's just that these scandals weren't quite enough. OSHA violations isn't gonna touch the most popular YouTube creator. You know, you think back on things that like really did, like the Logan Paul suicide forest thing. That really hurt him and that was like, he did it. That was him and people were like, nope. And the same with some of the PewDiePie stuff where he was caught on, you know, on YouTube saying really terrible stuff.

• 21:09Speaker 03

  Audience has turned on him for that. He faced consequences for that. So I I think that like it can happen. It's just not yet, not these things.

• 21:19Ryan Broderick?

  We have to wait to see if Beast Games is successful because like if it's not successful, it could be like a blood in the water situation where a lot of people are like, fuck this guy. He's not important enough to like. That's when you start to maybe get like bigger leaks in his organization or whatever it is, or or people lose interest because like the bubble has kind of burst. I feel like we're sort of in an in between moment with.

• 21:37Speaker 03

  I agree. I think that it's actually a sort of weird test because the truth is, I don't think an Amazon show is necessarily the pinnacle of the entertainment business. In fact.

• 21:50Ryan Broderick?

  Hey, Reacher season three is coming out soon and that guy's so big. He's the biggest guy.

• 21:55Speaker 03

  That's true. He's huge.

• 21:57Ryan Broderick?

  He's huge.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  And the fact that Mr. Beast is much bigger on YouTube. He doesn't need an Amazon show. The only thing that it's giving him is this sense of sort of or like some legitimacy in the in the broader ecosystem and I think it will be a task for future creators.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the thing that'll kill him, it will be the point where it goes, oh, he has no crossover.

• 22:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  It's just a YouTube audience. Because there's been, I don't, I mean, we had YouTube going on 20 years now, and still, no one has really crossed over from YouTube into the mainstream.

• 22:31Ryan Broderick?

  Quinta Brunson's probably the closest in the US.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe. Yeah, I mean, it depends if you consider her a pure YouTube, which she probably wasn't. And that she was in a kind of a, yeah, maybe, maybe.

• 22:44Ryan Broderick?

  But you're right. Like, they're few and far between, and the ones that do crossover...

• 22:48Speaker 03

  And like Issa Rae, her show was originally developed out of a YouTube series.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 22:52Ryan Broderick?

  But like Bo Burnham, same deal. Like, these people sort of, they tend to disappear and then come, they, like, you have to have like a reinvention period. Like, very, I don't think anyone has done what Mr. Beast is trying to do, which is stay a YouTuber while also transitioning beyond YouTube. I've never seen that work before. And we will be finding out if Adam can continue up his end-of-year list Mr. Beast experiment on us right after the break.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Should we just go into a Feastables bit?

• 23:20Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, I have yet to try Feastables.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Well, no, you just go, we listen to this out for Feastables.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Um.

• 23:26Speaker 02

  While we go out for a house.

• 23:27Ryan Broderick?

  Actually, all of you should go outside and check your mailbox, because you have a little present from Panic World. It's very moldy Feastables.

• 23:43Speaker 00

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• 24:13Speaker 06

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• 24:45Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, Adam, we are now at number six on your list of the most important viral freakouts of 2024. Hit us with your nominee for number six.

• 24:55Speaker 05

  This one is Marcus Brownlee versus Humane.

• 25:01Ryan Broderick?

  Interesting, interesting. So for the folks at home who might not have followed this, give us the broad strokes of this story, Adam.

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Marcus Brownlee, very big, very popular tech YouTuber. He reviewed a very buzzy new product called the Humane AI pin, which was like, it was supposed to be a tiny little thing that like attached to your shirt and it was supposed to be able to replace your phone because you could like talk to it and ask for whatever you wanted. And it had like a screen, there wasn't a screen, it was like a broadcast light thing. But anyway, he called it "the worst product I've ever reviewed so far." And there was this sentiment that basically he shouldn't be allowed to call a product

• 25:54Speaker 05

  so execrably bad because he would be single-handedly responsible for tanking it.

• 26:01Ryan Broderick?

  Katie, you're a tech journalist sometimes. Talk to us about your thoughts on this whole little, this whole little drama. Like, do you feel like this was worth the level of sort of like meltdown in Silicon Valley over like their favorite YouTuber like going scorched earth on this like AI startup?

• 26:19Speaker 03

  So I am a huge fan of Marcus Brownlee.

• 26:23Ryan Broderick?

  As am I.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  He's really, really good at it. I think he has a lot of integrity. I think he has deep knowledge about these gadgets. And when he says, "This product freaking stinks", he's right. It's an incredibly well-informed opinion. And he was right. The product was horrible. And as soon as other people tried it too, they discovered the exact same thing. This thing was a complete lemon. It broke. It was garbage. It sucked, right? You can't tell him not to tell the truth, right? Like, he's doing journalism, right?

• 26:57Ryan Broderick?

  Do you feel like it sort of changed the way people think about his channel, like particularly like in Silicon Valley? Like, because it sort of felt like up until this point, he was kind of like everyone's favorite cheerleader. And that image has sort of disappeared a bit.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  I think so. But I think that's like, good, right? Like, you can't... It builds trust with your audience when you're able to call out, like, "This thing stinks." Like, it would be weird if he was like, "I only give good reviews," or whatever. Is it like, "Oh, well, you're so big that you'll just crush this tiny new company"? Like, I mean, I don't think he did it do it carefully. That's the other thing. I don't think he was flippantly saying, "Eh, this company stinks." And I don't think it was an unfair review.

• 27:46Ryan Broderick?

  Luke, what do you think?

• 27:47Speaker 02

  I agree with all of that, but I do think this should be lower because he subsequently torched his own credibility with the appalling wallpaper app.

• 27:55Ryan Broderick?

  I was really hoping that this would come up. Okay, so to tell, for the audience, talk us through this part. Because this is really funny. I think it's really funny.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  This was a few months ago, and he launched an app that gave you different wallpapers for your phone for a subscription fee. And it was a really expensive subscription fee, which I can't remember off the top of my head. But it was like $40 or something. It was some crazy number to change the wallpaper on your phone. And again, in fairness, because he does have a decent amount of credibility, he did a video afterwards saying, like, "Hey, here's a list of all the things I got wrong. I shouldn't have... I should make clear that this app is not for everyone, and it's only a select group of people who care enough about their wallpapers to pay for the wallpaper app. But also, it helps us credit the artists." And there was a lot of other stuff in there. But he did at least say, like, "Hey, I did a bunch of stuff wrong," which, you know, credit for that. It was such a... One of those things where it's just like...

• 28:47Speaker 02

  If you have to look at that and you can't immediately see the problem with it, then like, yeah, you've already got a credibility challenge there.

• 28:54Ryan Broderick?

  I do think it speaks to sort of like the weirdness of trying to do journalism inside of the YouTube ecosystem, inside of the creator ecosystem, where it's like, you're sort of always gonna shit your own bed. The poop man will come.

• 29:12Ryan Broderick?

  Like, if you're not careful, because like, you're in this world where you're trying to make a lot of money, you're trying to like, deliver product, you're, you're more of a business than you are like a media outlet. And I do think, I think this story is a good example of that, actually, that if you, if you include the wallpaper coda to it, I think this, I think this works. I think this is.

• 29:31Speaker 03

  So it's kind of 11, 11 huffs, fine, 12 poop man come.

• 29:37Speaker 05

  Oh, boy.

• 29:38Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, 12 huffs, you get a, you get a wallpaper app. That's right. Uh, all right. Yeah, I'm comfortable locking this one in at number six. If we add the wallpaper app coda to it, I feel like that's a really good summation of like YouTube, of like indie media in 2024. So let's do it. All right. So at number five, we're halfway through here. Number five, Adam, what, what do we got?

• 30:00Speaker 05

  It's a really, really good segue off of everything you just said. It is Watcher.

• 30:07Ryan Broderick?

  The former BuzzFeed employees who tried to launch a subscription service on the back of their YouTube channel and everyone had a meltdown.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I only recently sort of caught wind of this.

• 30:19Speaker 02

  Missed this entirely.

• 30:21Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, this is your bread and butter, buddy. Okay. So are you familiar with Watcher?

• 30:25Speaker 02

  I'm familiar with the, the channel that it appears to be based on, which is the Ghost guys, right?

• 30:29Speaker 03

  It was originally BuzzFeed Unsolved, right?

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. BuzzFeed Unsolved.

• 30:33Ryan Broderick?

  BuzzFeed Unsolved. And they're also, I think they were the, what's the like, is it Worth It? I think was the food one?

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Shane and Ryan are the guys from BuzzFeed Unsolved.

• 30:44Ryan Broderick?

  Yes.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Steven Lim is the guy from, um, Worth It, yeah.

• 30:48Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. And they're all together in Watcher. So they decided this year that they were, they were not making enough money to make like high quality content that they wanted to make. Uh,

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Oh, so this is supposed to be a Nebula thing?

• 31:01Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, yeah. Same idea. They got completely trashed in the comments because all of their viewers are like, 13 or 14 or whatever and they're like, we can't, don't have any money for you. And then they actually had to backtrack. Is that, does that feel like a good way to describe it, Adam? Did I miss anything there?

• 31:16Speaker 05

  They did have to do a very, very classic YouTuber apology video. And I wanted to get one of those in there.

• 31:24Ryan Broderick?

  To me, I look at that story like with Watcher and I go, oh, these guys thought that they were sort of this massive fuel product that like everyone on YouTube was experiencing because their numbers are really high. And then they launched this subscription product and like immediately realized that like the demo that watches their videos is just like not able to pay or does not want to pay for content. And I feel like it's sort of part of this like larger sort of nichefication of the internet, like no one is really talking to everyone anymore. And like these guys may have thought they were like talking to adults, but they're not. They're talking like dropout has no problem employing all kinds of people and like supporting a paywall nebula can even kind of do it, I think. But like these guys clearly just don't have the audience for it.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  This strikes me as it should be way lower on the list. I was always surprised by how popular that show was when it was at BuzzFeed and I guess those guys continued to be in a way that like surprises me because this is not what I watch or it's not in my bubble at all. And so it only sort of permeated it somewhat recently when I saw another YouTuber talking about it. I feel like it's a controversy that only existed on YouTube and the people who are really into YouTube shows cared about. Outside of that, people didn't care about it.

• 32:36Ryan Broderick?

  I feel like that's right to me. I think it deserves to be on the list because it's like an interesting sort of cultural story of 2024 and there was a genuine freak out about it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna say we put this between Raygun and Mr. Beast. I think it's north of Raygun, south of Mr. Beast. It is now at number seven and Mr. Beast is number six. Marquise, Brownlee versus Humane. Okay, Adam, at number four. Uh, what do we got?

• 33:03Speaker 05

  My number four is lead in Stanley cups.

• 33:07Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, this is a good one. I don't think it needs to be this high, but I love this one. Uh, Katie, do you own a Stanley cup?

• 33:14Speaker 03

  Oh, I do. I own multiple Stanley cups.

• 33:18Ryan Broderick?

  I don't, I've never tried one. Are they nice?

• 33:20Speaker 03

  No, um.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  I actually have very specific complaints about them. Are you ready to hear them?

• 33:28Ryan Broderick?

  I, please, go along on Stanley cups. I've actually never held one.

• 33:31Speaker 03

  In general, I, I understand the initial appeal because it had a series of factors that together no other cup had. It had a handle, it could fit in a car cup holder, so it was thin at the bottom, and it had a straw. And believe it or not, like, no other things had that combination, really. And so for those reasons, I think it's great, or whatever. Like, that's what you like. My complaint is, in general, I don't like a straw. I like, I would rather tilt back the bottle to, to drink when-

• 34:07Ryan Broderick?

  You're a tilter, you're not a-

• 34:08Speaker 03

  I'm a tilter. I don't like the straw. You know what you get? You get a lot of air.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Of the three unique things it has, you don't like one of them?

• 34:14Speaker 03

  Luke, that is correct. But that is just, that is my personal preference.

• 34:19Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  And then my eight-year-old son, because he had seen, he saw other kids at school had them, and he was like, "Mom", like, he, he was like, "Mom, can I use your Stanley?", like, because it was-

• 34:32Speaker 02

  That's wild.

• 34:33Speaker 03

  And he was really excited by that. And then he really, he needed a new water bottle, like, for summer camp. And he was like, "Can I please, please, please, please get a Stanley cup?" So we got him one. And then he kind of immediately realized, he was so excited about it, and then immediately realized that it actually leaks a lot. Like, it's not good for a kid because if it knocks over, like, you can't just, like, toss it in your bag and it's watertight. It basically has to stay upright all the time. So it's not good for, like, a little kid. So it actually is not good for a kid. It's not good for a guzzler.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  This seems, sorry, this seems like a terrible product.

• 35:09Speaker 03

  I think for a lot of people, it's exactly what they want.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  A, a plastic water bowl that you can't, like, one you bought from a shop that you constantly reuse because you, environment, but like, does the thing of fitting in car holder. It doesn't have a handle, admittedly, but it doesn't leak, so it's better.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  That's true.

• 35:24Ryan Broderick?

  Are you worried about, like, your children being exposed to lead via Stanley cup?

• 35:29Speaker 03

  Me? No, because it was only if they were like dented or broken that they would leak.

• 35:34Ryan Broderick?

  I ate a bunch of lead paint as a kid and like, you don't want your kid to be like me when they're an adult. Like, I got all kinds of fucked up problems.

• 35:42Speaker 03

  You were gnawing on those, like, the paint chips on the windowsills?

• 35:45Ryan Broderick?

  I'm not even kidding. It was like, you know, like in older houses, like in New England, there's like, like the threshold between like the, like the, the room where you put your shoes and then like the living room. There was some green lead paint on that little threshold and I'd just sit there and I'd just eat that shit like Doritos all day.

• 36:04Ryan Broderick?

  And now I'm all kinds of screwed up. So yeah, you gotta, you know, but yeah, I, I think you're right that like, the, the lead exposure, from what I understand, was very minimal, if, if not even almost impossible.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  I mean, for legal reasons, you should probably say it's, it's entirely safe. It's like how these vacuum bottles are made. There is, there is technically lead in the product. It is not lead that arrives in the, the water that people drink. I think this should be higher on the list because it's such a, like a perfect example of a panic in that there's absolutely nothing to it.

• 36:31Ryan Broderick?

  You've been doing this all episode. When you say higher and lower, what does that mean?

• 36:36Speaker 02

  Higher should be, oh, no, no, this is a better panic.

• 36:40Ryan Broderick?

  I've been doing north and south.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  This is a good panic.

• 36:42Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  And it should be higher up the list. I don't know what's coming next, so.

• 36:46Ryan Broderick?

  So you think this should be, okay, yes, I understand. Uh, okay.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  It's a better panic because, because it's, it's just, yeah, it's a classic. It's, it's what you expect to see on the front of a tabloid newspaper. It's really good.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  It was fake, like the, the danger was fake.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, but everyone can panic. Everyone can throw away a Stanley Cup that they've spent like six hours and queuing up for. And everyone gets really mad about the thing that doesn't exist and destroys a company's business that they didn't even mean to build in the first place, which is my favorite part about the whole thing.

• 37:13Ryan Broderick?

  We're gonna put this one in limbo right now and see if it goes higher or lower than Adam's next one, which will be our last one before our next breaks, okay? That was a lot of nonsense I just said. So Adam, hit us with one last one before we go to break. What's next?

• 37:27Speaker 05

  Our number three, Kate Middleton cover up.

• 37:32Ryan Broderick?

  That's a good one.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  We also covered this one on the show with the very good Ellie Hall.

• 37:37Ryan Broderick?

  Fun, fun fact for Panic World fans, that was the first episode Grant and I ever tried to record, and we recorded with Ellie Hall, who decided to feed her dog a bone directly next to the microphone, and that dog just chomped on that bone the entire recording. Had to get a specialized software in there to pull out like individual frequencies of her dog just going to town on that bone, as she described extremely complex royal family drama. So, thank you Ellie. Thank you for a wonderful year Ellie. Luke, I'm gonna kick this one to you. You're familiar with the royal family, yeah?

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, this, if you want the, the, the specific stuff from my end, this is the last news story. This was the news story that we were consuming as we're waiting for our baby to be born. Like, it was right around that time, and this was the one that was like, it was happening and it was great fun. It is a really good panic in that it ended up being the exact opposite of what everyone thought it was, and got very grim very quickly, which I thought was, was, which is always fun.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  But I think, the most fun thing about this one, for me personally, was watching, because we do have this very complicated situation where the UK press can say things, but are legally prohibited from doing certain things, like, they can't print certain photographs. But the, the, the assumption of the number of people, of the level of coordination that happens in tabloid, UK tabloid newsrooms, is incredible to me. Like, the number of people who are insistent that the tabloids coordinated this with the press, I'm like, they didn't. They, they can't coordinate themselves. They can't coordinate across a desk.

• 39:06Ryan Broderick?

  That's interesting.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  They're doing, oh, they're doing this cunning thing where they're not doing this, it's like, it's not, it's an SEO play, because someone's trying to figure something out because they're hungry for traffic. It's absolutely fascinating to me. That's what, my favorite thing about the whole thing.

• 39:18Ryan Broderick?

  Katie, do you think Kate, Kate Milton is still alive?

• 39:23Speaker 03

  I believe that she has been dead for not only the last year, but potentially the last eight years.

• 39:32Speaker 03

  And has been replaced.

• 39:34Ryan Broderick?

  I don't think she ever existed.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  I'm not sure she ever did.

• 39:38Ryan Broderick?

  I've never seen any proof of it.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  You know, it's funny because I think this year, a thing that, you know, to some degree was a panic. And I don't know if this is something that's coming up on the list later was the idea of, you know, that deep fakes and AI-generated images were going to have a big effect on the US elections this year and on, you know, the news and politics and misinformation in general. And that part didn't totally really come to fruition. And the funny thing is that the doctored image that had the biggest effect this year was something that like she basically did with like, you know, the Facetune app herself.

• 40:15Ryan Broderick?

  Like StitchPix or something.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like she did it. And when she, I mean, you know, who knows? She, her, her thing, right, was like, I'm an amateur photographer and I like to play with editing tools. And it's like, really? Okay. I mean, whether it was her or someone working for the royal family or whatever that edited these pictures. Like, it was such a stupid minor thing, using really rudimentary old tools and not very well done. It just kind of was like when you want, you know, hey, my kid wasn't smiling in the photo. Can you switch in the picture of, it was sort of like almost the exact thing that they advertise on like

• 40:58Speaker 03

  a Samsung phone, right? Or a Google Pixel that again, like, fix these easy things. It was interesting in that this was the biggest photo doctoring, you know, image deep fake kind of scandal, but it was done in such a relatively low-tech way comparatively. A non-AI way.

• 41:18Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it is funny that like AI really, I mean, we'll see, we'll see what, we'll see what Adam has nominated for our last two items on our list, but AI, I don't really feel like had much of an impact on at least the US, the US politics this year. But just a woman's terrible Photoshop, like set the world on fire, which I think is kind of an amazing testament to AI, actually, in a lot of ways. And we're going to learn what two last insane things Adam has in store for us right after the break.

• 41:58Speaker 00

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• 43:00Ryan Broderick?

  All right, Adam. Hit us with your number two pick. This is, we've got two more left here.

• 43:08Speaker 05

  My number two is the reaction to the pro-Palestine college campus protests.

• 43:16Ryan Broderick?

  The sort of like schools arresting students, sending in the cops.

• 43:20Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 43:20Ryan Broderick?

  Shutting campuses down.

• 43:23Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I mean, it felt like a thing that outside of America is actually not that strange to have sort of like these like huge political protests on campuses. And in America, kind of took it in a very strange. We kind of freaked out about it, I think, more so. Did the same thing happen in the UK? I mean.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, but it kind of always happens because students are dumb. And they're starting to say the things they're protesting about.

• 43:51Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I want to be really clear. We don't think that they're dumb for supporting Palestine. Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  But like, it's where like people have a bunch of time on their hands and a bunch of opinions. And therefore, like, a lot of stuff happens and none of it matters. And it's like incredibly, like, we have this an awful lot in the UK. And obviously, because everyone in the UK and the media went to one of two universities. Then what happens is things at those universities are given like undue attention. So there's an awful lot of stuff where it's like, yeah, no, the student union at Oxford has elected someone who said ex controversial thing on Twitter. And it's like, it's not a thing. It doesn't matter because it's a student union ultimately. And the same thing kind of happens in the US as well. You see this thing where the things that happen on campus are given undue importance

• 44:39Speaker 02

  because people say a lot of dumb stuff when they're 21.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  And it's very, very... Sorry?

• 44:46Ryan Broderick?

  I was not, I was not like that. I was smart.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  That's true. The stuff you've said has not gotten any less dumb.

• 44:50Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that's true. It's the same amount. No, I think you're right. I think you're totally right.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's the whole thing. It's like, it's just really over, it's overrated in the UK because of... Because it's easy, it's easy to find a story there and it's overrated in the US as well. I think for slightly, slightly different reasons in that I think it's more that there are more influencers who have figured out that they can go to campuses and make people say daft things. But then as a result, like, you get over like concerned authorities who are like, well, our campus is going to look bad because the funding of universities, again, more so in the US and the UK, but in both of them is messed up. So they're trying to like protect various endowments and various like financial issues. And so you get these contentious things which happen, which ultimately you're just like, it's fine, people can protest. Like, that's the whole point.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  And so the panic over both the protests and the reaction to the protests are just way over, over egged because both groups have too much time on their hands.

• 45:47Ryan Broderick?

  Katie, do you feel like...

• 45:51Ryan Broderick?

  Do you feel like the student campus protests meant anything in the broader political sense in America like going in and out of this year's election? Like, that's the thing that I've sort of struggled with and it's sort of like to what Luke's point is. It's like they're so overrated in terms of how we think about them, we talk about them and they sort of dominate. But I am still like now here in December going like, what did they do? And that's not to like diminish it. I just, I'm curious like what your thoughts are of like how those protests have fit into the broader political story in America this year?

• 46:27Speaker 03

  Um, I think it did, definitely. I mean, I think it sets forward a world where certain, you know, I don't think this is like what the cause of the, the, the election outcome, but I think there became people who were like, look at these radical young idiots. Like the left has gone too far, they're wrong. Like they, they felt really, I think it, I think it actually radicalized people who were anti protest.

• 46:59Ryan Broderick?

  That's interesting.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  And it pushed them further to the right and it pushed them. I mean, I, I think of something that was, I think reported in the New York Times that Mark Zuckerberg was really like, like traumatized and upset by what was he was seeing on the Harvard and college campuses, the protests. And that that sort of nudged his political alignment.

• 47:22Ryan Broderick?

  That nerd.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  You know, and you know, this is an issue or that was the purchase around a topic where people have, you know, there's feelings all, it's not a, you know, Northwest, uh, you know, the political alignment is

• 47:37Ryan Broderick?

  Are you describing a compass? Are you, are you describing a compass? Okay, you're describing a political compass as Northwest, Eastern.

• 47:43Speaker 03

  Right, it's not purely a left, right issue, right? But, um, but I think, I think it did, I think it made certain people feel so passionately that it did maybe push them away from the left if they didn't, if they thought, you know, these kids are being distasteful. And, um, I don't care for it. I think it's, that's complicated. I don't think that's obviously the only thing that, that mattered. But I do, I do think that that, I think there were some people who really like were. This this affected them politically, I think.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  To build on that, there is a thing that this is maybe the biggest foreign policy moment that has actually influenced elections in quite a long time because foreign policy historically doesn't influence elections. But in the UK, there were four to five seats, depending on how you classify Jeremy Corbyn, that were surprisingly lost to basically pro Gaza independence, which has not really happened before. And that's sort of 650, that's like a number. Same thing kind of happened in Michigan where like Jill Stein once run a bunch of seats, run a bunch of counties in.

• 48:52Ryan Broderick?

  We don't have seats. We have seats here, but not in the same way. It's not the same.

• 48:55Speaker 05

  It was the uncommitted movement.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 48:58Speaker 05

  And it started in Michigan. Yeah.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  It is a kind of interesting thing that there is like, you can simultaneously say, I think the stuff that happens on campuses is like way over egged, but also that there's an increased salience of specifically the Israel Gaza issue. But you can kind of say the same thing about Ukraine as well, where it actually has an impact on people in both the US and the UK and other Western countries in a way that kind of foreign affairs hasn't had for a long time. You could maybe say the Iraq war, but you could equally say like the Afghanistan withdrawal was like a very significant moment. And it was kind of the moment that Biden's race things went underwater and never really recovered. And I don't think you have seen that in the same way in the last, for a very long time. And there's maybe an argument that the way that social media makes this much stuff much more urgent and much more present in people's like lives and people's feeds, that means that actually

• 49:43Speaker 02

  people respond to it with protest, but also with their votes.

• 49:46Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, the Palestine stuff this year, I think the Iraq war is the closest I could compare it to for something in my lifetime, but it honestly looks more similar to like the stuff I've seen in documentaries about the Vietnam War. Like it feels to that level. What I'm sort of curious about, before we hit number one on our list, Adam, is like you, you were fairly close with some of the student reporters involved in these protests. Like, how do they see the legacy of, of what they did? Like, do they feel like?

• 50:15Ryan Broderick?

  It mattered? Do they feel like it moved the needle? Do they know which way the needle was moved? Like, how are they thinking about it?

• 50:21Speaker 05

  That's an interesting question. After it happened, I haven't sort of gone back and recapitulated about that time with them. At the time, like, I was talking to them about, like, how enormous it all felt and how they felt sort of thrown into the fire, you could say. And I would say that contributed to me putting it at number two. But the main, simple reason is just like, thousands upon thousands of students across the country were arrested. Trump and Biden both publicly said, "This is good that they were arrested." And I think that the underlying reason for that is a moral panic.

• 51:04Speaker 05

  The protesters wanted specific things from their schools, like divestments or like, meeting with the student union. And there were many schools where like, the administration just met with the protesters and they worked it out, and the protests stopped. And you didn't hear about that, partially for like, "Man bites dog, dog bites man" reasons, but also because it didn't fit into that narrative.

• 51:30Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I think the role of bad actors is important to point out here with a lot of these stories, which is like, if they can be weaponized politically, I feel like they take on a life of their own and they sort of continue down the path. And that's why, yeah, I think you're right that this one deserves to be number two. Before we hit your last one, here's a quick recap for people who are doing the dishes right now while listening to this. At number 10, we have Elmo and Larry David and the post-truth era of that, and like, Elmo clapback accounts. Then we have RFK and various dead animals that he's encountered over the last few years. Then we have Raygun, the best breakdancer in Australia. Then we have the Watcher YouTube channel's subscription meltdown. Then we have Mr. Beast and his various controversies.

• 52:15Ryan Broderick?

  Then we have Marcus Brown Lee and the humane pin and his wallpaper app. Worth pointing out, three of those are YouTube based, right in the middle there. That's really interesting. Then we've got lead in Stanley Cups, Kate Middleton, may or may not be alive, and the student Palestine protests. What a ton of whiplash. Luke, Katie, before we hit number one, how are you guys feeling?

• 52:37Speaker 03

  I'm feeling panicked.

• 52:39Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, you seem to feel freaked out?

• 52:40Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm. This is an anxiety roller coaster for me. What's number one gonna be?

• 52:49Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the big question. I really hope it's something incredibly trivial, because I think that'd be the funniest option.

• 52:53Ryan Broderick?

  I think it'd be really funny if it was just completely stupid. Adam, what have we got? What's number one?

• 53:03Speaker 05

  My number one is Congress banning TikTok. I think it is a moral panic under every definition we have for it.

• 53:12Speaker 03

  I think that sounds like a pretty good one.

• 53:16Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's pretty... I think I'm agreed on that one.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. Obviously, we are all pro the Chinese Communist Party on this. So I think it's important. No, I'd agree, actually. I think it is absolutely a moral panic. Like, I can't... It's very hard to see a version of it that is not weaponized to serve whoever is proposing the ban, which is why Trump was pro it, then anti it, then pro it, then anti it. I can't remember where he is right now, but yeah, agree.

• 53:45Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, right now, we're recording this in early December. They have just said, they have just reiterated that the deadline is staying, January 19th, and TikTok will be banned if they don't divest. And TikTok is now saying that they're not gonna divest, blah, blah, blah, blah. So it looks like, as of right now, it's recording this, it's gonna happen. So like, do you guys think it will happen?

• 54:02Speaker 03

  I'm like a deny, I'm a TikTok ban denier. I'm willing to be proven wrong. In fact, I partially expect to be, but like, it just seems so crazy and inconceivable to me that I really struggle to accept that this could be a reality. And I do think there's a version where like, there's, you know, Trump comes to office and there's, you know, a hail mary lifeline thrown to it where they can maybe kick it up to the Supreme Court, right? And it's maybe a little friendlier there or something because hey, now Trump wants it back. You know, not like, I mean, there's confusing things going on there, right? But I, I think it's got another chance.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  I think the US government, the US government suddenly banning an app, I think would be a, such a precedent set.

• 54:50Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  That I think you'd never be able to take it back. And it would get very, very interesting, very, very fast in a lot of other ways. Because then every single app, everything that goes wrong is like, the government needs to ban this.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe like Europe.

• 55:03Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Well, he's not part of Europe anymore.

• 55:06Speaker 03

  I know.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  No, we left, we left.

• 55:07Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, they left. So they can have better, straighter bananas or whatever.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  This, this, we just didn't want universal option of USB C chargers.

• 55:15Ryan Broderick?

  Oh dude, it's so sick. I got USB C charger on my phone now. It's so cool. Um, I guess the thing that I've run into is, what is the political benefit of reversing the ban? Like, like to put myself very cynically in, like, let's say Trump's shoes, like, no one remembers that Trump is the reason this all started in the first place. Everyone associates the ban with Biden. So it's like, what is the political benefit of, of, of stopping it?

• 55:42Speaker 05

  I think that the TikTok ban is a complete breakdown of the idea that the job of politicians is to represent their constituents. And I think if Trump says, like, Biden was going to ban TikTok, I'm making it so that isn't happening, a lot of people who like TikTok will think, oh, that is good that that happened.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, he'll see, he'll seem like the hero who saved TikTok.

• 56:14Speaker 05

  Well, like, he can say that and like, he will be factually correct. And yeah, that's why I put it at number one, because it's such a sweeping.

• 56:28Speaker 05

  Failure of like state power, basically, like the very idea of a nation-state that has relationships with other ones and handles business and trade between them. That is how systemic this failure is.

• 56:45Ryan Broderick?

  I think to like, sort of like, put a button on this whole episode is like, you know, Adam has done an incredible job of picking like 10 stories from pop culture and politics and tech that like can sort of define this year, but the TikTok ban as this thing that has loomed over all of 2024 and has been weaponized politically in every single direction you can think of, and yet is also the platform that Kamala Harris's team over-indexed during the election and put all their like weight behind with Brad Summer. Like, in many ways, the TikTok question is the question that has hung over this whole year, in my minds.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  You know, I honestly had sort of forgotten about it until it like, no, I mean, not until today, but like whenever there was, well, because it sort of had come, you know, the law was passed and then it was in the courts for months and months and months. The election happened. I just kept thinking, eh, it's not gonna, you know, I kept thinking that they were gonna win the appeal. I was almost caught off-guard that like, oh, this could actually happen. I had literally just kind of been, I had filed it under like, not gonna happen. So I was, I had almost forgot about it.

• 57:54Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, to sort of wrap things up here, uh, first, big round of applause, everybody, for Adam. This was, this was great. Adam, thank you very much. I feel like we really, we really defined the year. Um.

• 58:07Speaker 05

  Thank you for, thank you for letting me be on mic. Thank you for giving me like the holiday treat.

• 58:12Ryan Broderick?

  It won't be happening again, but yeah, well, this was it, but you know, I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. Uh, this is your Christmas present.

• 58:20Speaker 05

  Back down into the content mines. Luke isn't in them anymore.

• 58:23Ryan Broderick?

  Back to the content mines. Um, Luke, Katie.

• 58:29Ryan Broderick?

  To wrap things up, like, how's your general feel about 2024? You know, did you guys have a good 2024?

• 58:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  I had a great 2024.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  Great year.

• 58:38Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. Yeah, me too.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  You're getting off the internet, man.

• 58:45Ryan Broderick?

  I had a great one. Yeah, I forgot that you guys have families instead.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, okay. Well, Grant, did you have a good 2024?

• 58:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, I spent it with you in Riverside. It's been awesome.

• 58:57Ryan Broderick?

  It's true. Yeah, it has been.

• 59:00Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 59:01Speaker 07

  Right. You, you, 2024, you know?

• 59:05Ryan Broderick?

  Did I have a good one?

• 59:05Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 59:06Ryan Broderick?

  Honestly, yeah, I actually had a really good one. I actually think 2024 was, from a journalistic perspective, pretty good, but also from a personal perspective, it was fine. I like to keep those worlds separate now because I'm, you know, trying to sustain myself, but yeah.

• 59:19Speaker 07

  Adam, I want to know how your 2024 was too.

• 59:21Speaker 05

  It was probably the best year of my life. I got to meet Brewster, Kaylee, I got my own bathroom for the first time in my entire life.

• 59:31Ryan Broderick?

  Hey, buddy.

• 59:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, those are the highlights.

• 59:33Ryan Broderick?

  I don't know who the first guy is, and I'm excited about your bathroom.

• 59:36Speaker 05

  He runs the Internet Archive. You ought to know.

• 59:38Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, right. I did meet him. I met him with you. He looks like a wizard and he was great.

• 59:41Speaker 05

  I organized the meeting.

• 59:43Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I forgot about that, yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 07

  Now that we've... The show is impossible without Adam, in all seriousness, even though you'll never hear from him again. And his name is coming out of the credits, but do we think he missed anything? Was there anything you guys expected to be on this list that wasn't here? Because I've won, and it involves one of you, so...

• 1:00:08Ryan Broderick?

  So he didn't have the poop man. Other than that...

• 1:00:13Speaker 05

  Which direction is the poop man moral panic in? Is it pro poop man, anti poop man?

• 1:00:18Ryan Broderick?

  I just think it's worth including.

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  I was shocked that he didn't include the allegations of unwanted flirtation from the Muppet History account.

• 1:00:29Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, yeah. Okay, actually, Katie, now that you're on the show, I want to vent real quick. You know that thing that happens where everyone's like, oh, my God, this is like the craziest internet story ever. You've got to cover this crazy internet story. And then you like dig in and it's like three sentences long to describe what happened. That's how I feel about Muppet History, where it's like, it's really funny, but if you're gonna sit down and talk about it, you sound ridiculous and it, there's only a couple of things to say. He's a polyamorous guy who runs a Muppet History account and he was like using, he was using polyamory like prey on his followers. Like, that's the, that's what happened there.

• 1:01:01Speaker 07

  It is very funny to hear you try to summarize this.

• 1:01:04Ryan Broderick?

  This is why I've been so pissed back, because people do this to me all the time, like, oh, Ryan, you gotta cover this crazy thing. And it's like, but there's nothing to say about it. It's like a Muppet, anyways, okay. Luke, what do you, what do you feel like Adam may have missed? Give Adam notes.

• 1:01:15Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, there's, there's, I feel like there was an AI, a general AI story, but I don't know exactly what that panic is. I don't know if it is a panic. I don't know who's panicked about what. It just feels like there's, there's, there's an AI thing that's missing.

• 1:01:28Speaker 07

  It's pizza glue, which I cannot believe that Katie.

• 1:01:31Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, yeah. Katie, whoa. So for our listeners, Katie tried the glue on pizza that was recommended by Google's AI, the Gemini model. Katie, what was that? What did that, did you eat it? Did you put it in your mouth?

• 1:01:46Speaker 03

  I sure did. Yeah. So when Google launched, it started putting AI results in searches. People were looking up funny things for it to give, you know, terrible AI answers for. And someone had searched, like, how do I stop the pizza from, the cheese from sliding off my pizza? And it suggested you could put glue in the sauce. And everyone thought this was very funny. And it was sort of an example of how Google AI was so bad and it was gonna fail and all this stuff. And I went ahead and I made homemade pizza. I mean, it was like the pre-bought crust and, you know, I used jarred sauce. But I put, I put

• 1:02:28Speaker 03

  a, as, as the recipe called for, an eighth, an eighth tables, or like two tablespoons of glue in the sauce, of Elmer's white glue.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Did the cheese slide off?

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  And the cheese did seem to stay in place, to be honest. I ate it. It tasted mostly fine.

• 1:02:46Ryan Broderick?

  Were you okay after?

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  I was okay, but I, as I was eating it, I started getting scared, um, because like, like mid chew, I started thinking, you know, and the glue is like, it's the Elmer's glue. It says non-toxic and I had Googled ahead of time, like, is it safe to eat a little bit of glue? And everything was like, it's fine. But then I started thinking, you know, the whole thing though, is that like, when you heat up a chemical like that, which, you know, it's some sort of polymer or plastic, you're significantly changing the chemical composition and maybe it's no longer okay to be eating. Um, but I, I'm still here. We'll see. I, I only ate like a slice.

• 1:03:26Ryan Broderick?

  You ate a whole slice? What are you talking about? You could've just taken a bite of it. Why'd you eat the whole slice?

• 1:03:33Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't eat the, I guess I should've gone for the crust.

• 1:03:36Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, um, hey, thank you guys for coming on this episode. This was great. Uh, Katie, if people want to follow you on the internet, where can they do that?

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  Um, they can follow me, um, at Business Insider, uh, and they can follow me on Blue Sky, at Katie Notopoulos, or Threads, at Katie Notopoulos.

• 1:03:58Ryan Broderick?

  Luke, uh, are you on Blue Sky? Cause, uh, you were, you were big on, last time we talked, you were saying Threads was gonna come out on top.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Clearly Threads is awful. Uh, Blue Sky is also awful, but in a way that does not make me feel like my brain is leaking out my ears. So that is an improvement on every other social platform. So yeah, Blue Sky.

• 1:04:17Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, where could be, what's your, what's your, what's your long string of nonsense?

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Luke Bailey, dot B Sky dot social.

• 1:04:23Ryan Broderick?

  Dot B Sky social, okay. Uh, I like Blue Sky. It's useful to me now. It's like become genuinely useful in the way Twitter used to be. Adam, if people want to follow you, where can they do that?

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  Uh, I'm on Blue Sky, Bumas dot B Sky dot social. I am not closing my X account because I still gotta go on there to like, see what's what. Not really gonna post on there, but if you want to follow me, like, you can find me there.

• 1:04:48Ryan Broderick?

  I, I use X just because I'm, I'm sub to all these girls' accounts and my card information is in there and it's just easier to.

• 1:04:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a bank now, isn't it?

• 1:04:56Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it has my, it has my medical data and it's a bank. I'm using it for everything. It's great. Um.

• 1:05:04Ryan Broderick?

  Thank you, guys. This was really fun. Oh, and hey, I don't want to do this, but Grant, you did a great job with the show this year. Unfortunately, begrudgingly, you did a really good job, and you're a good producer, and I'm sorry that I yell at you a lot, and I'm mad at you all the time.

• 1:05:21Speaker 07

  You guys have no idea what he's about to say to me as soon as the mics are off.

• 1:05:25Ryan Broderick?

  But the minute...

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no. What are you talking about? We both made podcasts with it. We know exactly what's going on.

• 1:05:30Ryan Broderick?

  The minute you're gone, I'm gonna... The minute these people are gone, I'm gonna beat you with a shoe. But, no, thank you, Grant. You're very good at your job at putting up with me. Thank you very much. All right, that was enough of that. I'm uncomfortable.

• 1:05:43Speaker 07

  We'll see you all next year. Please tell everyone at your holiday parties to... that you like the show.

• 1:05:50Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. Thank you. I love you. Bye-bye.

• 1:05:54Ryan 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 ads. 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.