0:04

There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of My Heart

0:06

Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm

0:12

Bridget Todd and this is There Are No Girls on the

0:14

Internet. This

0:17

is Bridget Todd hosted There Are No Girls on

0:20

the Internet. It's been about a month since

0:22

we started this podcast, and it's already been such a challenging

0:24

and fun experience. To celebrate,

0:27

I sat down with our contributing producer Michael

0:29

to give you all more information about who I am and

0:32

why I make this show. Well, Hi,

0:34

Bridget, Hi Michael, thanks for making

0:36

time for me today. Thanks for being willing to sit

0:38

dad and talk. Sure, so,

0:41

Kandi critically acclaimed podcast.

0:45

Uh, you know, how do you feel about how

0:47

the launch is gone? It's been good,

0:50

you know. Um, for folks who listened

0:52

to my previous podcast stuff Mom ever

0:54

told you, you'll probably know. This has been a

0:56

long time coming. So I'm really happy that

0:59

it's finally in people's earbuds and the

1:01

response has been really great. It's been very

1:03

fun, it's been very challenging. It's been

1:06

really cool to tell the stories of people

1:08

that I think deserve more attention and just

1:11

to center marginalized folks,

1:13

you know, women people of color in conversations

1:16

about what it means to be on the internet. Why

1:18

was that important to you to tell these stories? Well,

1:20

you know, when I first got the idea

1:23

for Tank Godi, there was a lot

1:25

of different things going on. I remember

1:27

seeing these awful instances

1:29

of public acts of violence,

1:31

you know, like mass shootings and things like that. And

1:34

the thing that so many of them had in common was that

1:36

the perpetrator um in

1:38

most cases, you know, men, They

1:41

had a history of violent

1:43

rhetoric online, rhetoric about women.

1:46

And it seemed to me that anybody who was paying

1:48

attention would think, like, oh,

1:51

this is uh, you know,

1:53

a warning sign we should take seriously.

1:55

And I thought, Gee, if only somebody had

1:57

taken that seriously, if only

1:59

somebody had thought about what this person

2:01

was writing online about women and

2:04

looked into it, maybe this wouldn't have happened. Then

2:06

I remember hearing about um,

2:09

this woman, Shafika Hudson, who

2:11

had been making noise about

2:14

the fact that somebody on social

2:17

media was impersonating black women in

2:19

her online spaces. And then I

2:21

remember hearing that story and thinking, hum, okay, And

2:24

then flash forward a couple of years

2:26

to the election, seeing a State inquiry

2:28

that that confirm that those same

2:30

tactics had happened, and that they were an

2:33

attempt to shift our election. And I thought, Gee,

2:35

if only anybody had taken her

2:38

seriously when she talked about her experiences online,

2:41

maybe the election could have been different, Maybe things could

2:43

have been different. I saw those two big things happening.

2:45

But in my own life, even though I

2:47

was someone who had worked in tech spaces

2:50

fans a lot of her time online, I

2:52

still was sort of compartmentalizing

2:54

my own space at my own experiences

2:57

in tect I thought of myself as someone who know

3:00

wasn't really involved in the internet, wasn't

3:03

really involved in tech, despite the fact that I was worked

3:05

at tech companies and I

3:07

released all those things as as related the

3:09

fact that these experiences

3:12

that marginalized people have online

3:14

were so overlooked and so ignored, and that the

3:16

consequences for ignoring them were so huge. But

3:18

then in my own life I still was having trouble

3:20

sort of centering my experiences

3:23

online. I still thought like, oh, well, what

3:25

what right do I have to, you know, say

3:28

anything to a tech leader, or what right do

3:30

I have to make make an argument about

3:33

the online experience, and so one

3:36

of the reasons why I wanted to make Tangoti is that I want

3:38

people to stop doing that. You know, I

3:40

think that as marginalized

3:42

people, we it's so easy to believe,

3:46

it's so easy to internalize that our stories

3:49

don't really matter and that our experiences

3:52

don't really matter. And I just want to be part of

3:54

a cultural paradigm ship that says, no, we

3:56

are the experts of our own experiences. We you, if

3:58

you use the internet every day, if you're listening to this

4:00

podcast, you have a right to demand

4:03

accountability from tech leaders, from tech

4:05

platforms. You have a right to expect

4:07

that the experiences that we have,

4:09

and by we I mean other marginalized people, are

4:12

going to be told thoughtfully and centered,

4:14

because that's what makes being on the internet

4:16

right. The Internet is so much

4:18

richer because there are so many different identities

4:21

that make the experience that much more rich. I

4:23

love that. So these stories need

4:26

to be told to make us all richer by hearing them.

4:28

Why are you the person to tell these stories?

4:31

That's a great question. I've spent most of

4:33

my life amplifying the

4:35

stories of marginalized people, specifically black

4:37

women, but also other marginalized identities.

4:40

Um, I think

4:42

that I'm the right person to tell these stories

4:44

because for so long I

4:47

yearned for them. Tony Morrison has this

4:49

quote that she became the writer that she needed

4:51

when she was younger. And for

4:54

all the experiences I've had online, I just wish

4:56

that there was someone who was compile

5:00

ailing them and archiving them and amplifying them.

5:02

And so why not me. You've

5:04

been making podcasts for a while

5:06

now, right, Oh, yes, I my

5:08

first job, so I've been a long time

5:11

podcast appreciator. Um,

5:13

but my first job in podcasting was like back in

5:17

unty eleven, uh

5:19

this, And so if you know anything about podcasts,

5:21

you know that like the big sort of shift

5:24

in podcasting that we thought about podcasting is

5:26

like a real medium was

5:28

when cerial came out. But my time in

5:30

podcasting predates that. So I have to pick of myself

5:32

as like the old guard, you know, the o g um.

5:35

Yeah, my first job in podcasting was working

5:38

as a producer on a show called The Flaming Sort

5:40

of Justice. Um. It was a

5:42

podcast about activism and organizing.

5:45

And yeah, I've just been it's it's I

5:48

loved it. I've loved it ever since then, I've I've been a

5:50

long time podcast appreciator. What

5:53

are some of

5:55

the foundational podcasts that you listen to? If

5:57

you had a name too? Maybe three?

5:59

Okay, well number one will always

6:01

be Um Starley Kind's Mystery

6:03

Show. Unfortunately

6:05

it was short lived. There's only a handful of

6:08

episodes. But if you're looking for

6:10

an episode to start with, the episode about Britney

6:12

Spears, I think is the

6:14

pinnacle of what the medium

6:16

can be. You know it Like when

6:19

I first heard it it, I

6:21

thought, like this, this podcasting is going to change

6:24

everything Like it was. I had never heard storytelling like

6:26

it. And so the the the

6:29

idea is that Starley Kind, the host

6:31

and producer, she gets a new mystery

6:33

every episode, a mystery that can't be

6:35

solved by just like googling it, and so she has to

6:38

go through these deep dives of solving these

6:40

mysteries and it really is just

6:42

something really special. It's and unfortunately they're

6:44

no longer making new episodes. But Starley

6:46

Kind is like the in

6:48

my mind, she's like the Beyonce of podcasting.

6:50

There's she's so good. You

6:53

said, you've never heard stories told like that?

6:56

What what is it about? Podcasts

6:58

that you think is differ from

7:00

other medium That's a great question. Um,

7:03

when I first got really into podcast. So this is gonna

7:05

sound kind of depressing, but and depressing

7:08

and also uh like

7:10

um extreme, but I mean

7:13

it the way I say it. When I first got really

7:15

into podcast, I had moved from the East

7:17

Coast to San Francisco, and I

7:19

moved there for work. And I moved there side on Sena I never

7:21

visited, I've never been before. And

7:23

I moved there for a job, a kind of tech adjacent

7:26

job at a mobile phone company, UM

7:28

called Credo Mobile and shout out to people

7:30

Credo Mobile. UM. And you

7:32

know, it was a hard It was

7:34

a tough time in my life.

7:37

I had a really hard time meeting

7:39

people. I had a really hard time making friends.

7:42

I you know, spent every day thinking

7:44

like did I make a mistake moving out here. Also,

7:48

this was you know, San Francisco,

7:50

This was like the heart like the beginning of San Francisco's

7:53

tech boom, really changing

7:56

the landscape of what San Francisco was.

7:58

And so you know, I grew up thinking San

8:00

Francisco was this like hippie wonderland, and

8:02

I was excited for that. But when I got there, it was

8:04

something very different and truly

8:07

the sounds like

8:09

like very over the top, and maybe

8:11

it is, but it was podcasts that

8:14

really kind of saved my life. Like if it

8:16

wasn't for podcasts, I

8:19

don't know how I would have how I would have gotten

8:21

through that time. What podcasts are you listening

8:23

to? Then? So at that point in my life, the podcast

8:25

I was listening to the most was one called A Yeah

8:27

dude, um, full disclosure,

8:30

it is not it is a it

8:32

is purely a comedy podcast. It's

8:35

it's not I mean, there's more than that. It's you

8:38

know, they're they're documenting

8:40

their own American American

8:42

experience exactly exactly. So I don't

8:44

I don't want to make it seem like this is like when you asked

8:46

somebody like, oh, what's your favorite movie and they

8:49

feel pressure to be like Citizen Kane but really

8:51

but really it's like clueless, you know. So

8:54

it was just it was it's not it's not like it

8:57

was not like a very

8:59

like highbrow show, but there, but like

9:02

something about it made me feel like I was talking to

9:04

friends and I would I would like go

9:06

to sleep while listening to this podcast and headphones.

9:09

You know, when I was after work, I would like rush

9:11

home to my empty apartment to listen to this podcast,

9:13

right like it was the thing that made me

9:15

feel connected to the world and made me feel like

9:17

I wasn't so alone. Why what is

9:19

it about podcasting that makes that connection? There's

9:23

there's a lot, you know. I think it's a very

9:25

intimate medium. I think for

9:27

me, there's something about hearing people's

9:30

voices, hearing hearing

9:32

someone grappling with

9:34

a new concept for the first time, and hearing all

9:36

the ums and likes and you

9:39

know, weird sounds that come with that.

9:41

I really really like that. Not everybody

9:43

likes it. I try to, I try to edit.

9:46

Luckily, we have, as you know, we have you

9:49

know, a superstar products

9:52

me of Tari shout out to Tari, who's Nabe here

9:54

in the credits. Luckily we have a

9:56

genius editor who makes everybody on the show

9:58

sound like they're just brilliant and just like rolled out

10:00

of bed brilliant and everything they say comes

10:03

out brilliant and perfect. But and

10:05

I I appreciate white people

10:07

like that for me is the exact opposite,

10:09

right. I love the awkward

10:13

pauses and the noise,

10:15

the like throat clearing, because I feel like

10:17

those are the signals that you're like hearing someone

10:19

really have a have

10:22

a like real

10:24

conversation. UM.

10:27

I also think I like podcasts a lot

10:29

because I've been a fan of them for a very

10:31

long time. And I feel like when I first

10:33

fell in love with the medium, it was

10:35

so new and so different. Even when I was working

10:37

as a podcaster, you know, we didn't

10:39

know what the funk we were doing. It was like we were like a ragtag

10:43

group of people who really

10:45

just were making it up as we went along. I'll never forget

10:47

sort of like fibbing on my

10:49

resume about knowing how to edit audio and

10:51

then being like, oh fuck, they're gonna expect

10:53

me to know how to do this, and having to learn to

10:56

do it. There was something about the

10:58

there was something about the pot has a landscape

11:00

when I first got involved in it back and like you

11:02

know, the two

11:05

thousands or early two thousands, Um,

11:08

that was just it just felt

11:10

like the wild West, and it just felt like you

11:12

were hearing conversations that you would

11:14

never hear any place else. Um. And even though

11:16

that's changed, you know, as the medium

11:19

has gotten more slick and more professionalized.

11:21

Um, I still I still feel like

11:24

I still feel that, you know, I think at the end of the day,

11:26

it will always be a medium for weirdos, and I

11:28

think of myself as a weirdo, So it

11:30

feels like home. Yeah, your

11:32

interviews, you do a good

11:34

job connecting with people

11:37

and getting them to

11:39

not just open up, but express

11:42

themselves and say things that they

11:44

uh want to say about their own

11:46

experience but maybe don't always get the chance

11:48

to just like sit down and talk about it. Um,

11:52

how how do you approach

11:54

that? You know, the episodes, the interviews that

11:56

you've done for this season, what's

11:59

your strate Well, first

12:01

and foremost, as

12:04

women, as people of color,

12:07

as people who are marginalized,

12:10

we don't often it's not a given that someone's

12:12

going to thoughtfully deal with

12:14

our stories, right, And so if someone is down

12:16

to sit down with me for the podcast or for an interview,

12:18

the first thing that's most important to me is making sure that I

12:21

treat their story with care and intention, because

12:24

unfortunately we can't always.

12:26

That's not always a given that that someone that we're

12:28

talking to is going to treat our story with

12:30

that kind of care. And I

12:34

take it very seriously. I take it

12:37

very seriously. You know, it

12:39

is someone

12:42

listening to someone tell their story. For me

12:44

is a real privilege. And the fact that people

12:47

trust me to put their stories

12:49

into the world to new audiences, to like

12:51

package the ideas that they're that they're

12:54

that they're spitting and the you know, the things

12:56

that they're saying that package them are folks to consume.

12:58

That's a lot of trust that it's I don't I don't

13:01

take it. I take it very serious. It's a lot of trust.

13:03

So really it's about

13:06

um, it's about

13:08

that. I think. I've also been very lucky

13:10

that all the people on the show so far, all

13:12

the guests we've had this season, are

13:14

brilliant and so interesting and

13:17

just have such an interesting perspective, and they

13:19

introduced me to new concepts that I didn't know. They helped

13:21

me understand myself better, and so I'm

13:24

very lucky that everybody is so smartest it's

13:26

hard to not make people sound interesting and smart

13:28

when they are legitimately interesting and smart. Treating

13:31

people stories with respect and care and listening

13:33

to them. It reminds me of something Claire Evans

13:35

talked about in the first episode of the season

13:37

about a culture

13:39

of care and if you want to look for a place on

13:42

the internet where there's care, look where

13:44

women are or something. Yeah, she says

13:46

you should look for for the women. And I think that's

13:48

true, right, I think, no

13:50

offense to the men out there listening. But

13:53

the stories that I love the

13:55

most are the ones that are told by marginalized people

13:57

because I can just tell that they're told

14:00

of one perspective where you aren't sure if

14:02

you're going to get that care, the kind of care that

14:04

Claire Evans talks about in our our first episode,

14:06

and so people who share their stories

14:10

even when they're not so sure how the reception

14:12

is going to be. I see such a bravery in that.

14:16

Yeah, And that's kind of a common theme across

14:18

a bunch of the episodes this season. Oh, definitely

14:21

the people that we've talked to this season, you

14:23

know, people like Ottawa Emboia, who

14:25

in our second episode spoke up when

14:27

she was just a grad student at m I T against

14:30

the director of m I t S Media Lab. You know,

14:33

that takes bravery, and that kind of takes

14:35

knowing that people are going to, you

14:39

know, hate you for speaking

14:41

up speaking your truth. People are going to malign you.

14:43

You know, you don't even know if you like are physically

14:46

safe, you know, let alone, people are going

14:48

to be mean to you on the internet or whatever. Her

14:50

physical safety, she was taking great

14:52

risks. And yet you know, as grateful

14:55

as we all are for rod to ronan Pharaoh

14:57

for bringing that story to light,

15:00

I don't like the fact that he

15:02

wasn't risking anything to do that, any

15:04

kind of comfort, and that he is the one that's

15:07

remembered as sort of like breaking that story as

15:09

opposed to Ottawa, who was making was taking

15:11

great risks, great personal risks, Um,

15:14

and did it first. So I just want to I

15:16

think it really is for me about about culture shift,

15:18

about just remembering that

15:21

there for every big story you hear,

15:24

there's probably someone who

15:26

who's part in that is

15:28

going overlooked or unheard, and we should hear

15:30

them. What's something that you think we're not talking

15:33

about enough today? Oh, I'm

15:35

so glad you asked. I have a I have a very

15:37

clear answer. Um. We are

15:39

recording this right after Biden

15:42

named his running mate Harris, and

15:44

I would say, especially

15:47

in light of that, but also just in general, even before

15:49

that, we need to be talking about disinformation

15:52

on online and

15:54

how it impacts marginalized communities. We

15:56

did a whole episode about Shafika

15:59

Hudson, how she tried to

16:01

blow the whistle on bad actors,

16:03

you know, using classic disinformation

16:06

tactics to so chaos online. Um,

16:08

a Senate inquiry now confirms that those kinds

16:10

of bad actors from

16:13

you know, Russia, we're trying to do the same

16:15

thing to influence the election. Uh,

16:17

we see it in Latin next communities. You

16:20

know, we already know that with when black

16:22

women running for public office, they

16:25

deal with a disproportionate amount of disinformation

16:28

and harassment online. And I think that

16:30

because we don't really talk about race,

16:33

we don't really talk about the internet or technology

16:35

in a in a way that centers marginalized

16:37

voices, it's just going overlooked.

16:40

And you know, one of the reasons why

16:42

the show was called there Are No Girls on the Internet

16:45

is the kind of I mean, it's sort of an

16:47

inside joke with myself a little bit to like,

16:49

I'm the only person who likes is cracking

16:52

up about it. But the phrase there

16:54

are no Girls on the Internet has a lot of different meanings. But one

16:56

of the meetings that it has is this idea that

16:58

you know, on the internet,

17:01

there is no such thing as gender. Everybody everybody, everybody's

17:03

genderless, and it would be great if

17:05

that was true, but it's not true. Right. It's the same thing people

17:08

try to say that, like people are color blind. It would

17:10

be great if that was true, but it's not true. And

17:12

when we obscure the ways that

17:15

our identities show up online

17:17

or we're like, oh, there's no such thing as identity

17:19

on the internet, we're all the same we that

17:23

just erases what we know is what

17:25

you already know is true, that that people's

17:27

identities make their online experience

17:29

different. And I think that because we don't

17:32

talk about we're not comfortable talking about

17:34

race, we're not coffertable talking about gender, sometimes we

17:37

are allowing for these

17:39

very these very targeted

17:41

attacks on marginalized groups

17:44

online to just go sort of like unscrutinized.

17:48

And we should be talking about the role

17:50

that people's identities, race, gender, all of

17:52

that, haven't. That's what we're just really not. Within

17:55

hours of Kamala Harris being declared

17:57

the VP, there are you know, attacks

18:00

that were race based about her character

18:02

as a woman, and like, you

18:05

know, I'm sure they had of

18:08

sock pile of heckles

18:11

to release against whoever

18:13

the nominee was. But the fact that she was,

18:15

you know, uh, not just

18:17

black and not just a woman, build a black woman, there's

18:20

so many more opportunity

18:22

for them to use those

18:24

sort of uh,

18:27

stereotype based attacks.

18:29

Absolutely, she's a black woman, she

18:32

is the child of immigrants. You know,

18:34

there are so many aspects of her identity that

18:36

people are going that we already know, you know,

18:38

people study this, we already know we're going to be used

18:40

disproportionately to attack her online.

18:43

Yeah, and so Biden isn't

18:45

getting the same level of attacks. Trump is getting the same

18:47

level of attacks, and so we need to be talking about what that

18:49

means. Um. In my in one of my day jobs,

18:52

aside from hosting this podcast, it I'm

18:54

a I work for a women's group called

18:56

Ultra Violet, where I lead up our work

18:59

in the disinformation space. And you

19:01

know, I think, in

19:04

absence of the leadership of

19:07

tech companies and tech platforms to take this seriously,

19:09

it's really up to just everyday folks like me too

19:13

create resources and create tools to make

19:15

sure that we're talking about this kind

19:17

of misinformation and disinformation and that we can

19:20

curb it. Because we can't wait for

19:22

these tech leaders to do the right thing. We're gonna have

19:24

to step up and and do it ourselves. It's

19:26

a serious thing. It's a serious thing. Well,

19:29

thanks for doing that work, and thanks

19:31

for making the show, and let me be part of

19:33

it and help amplify these stories.

19:38

Got a story about an interesting thing in tech? I just

19:41

want to say hi. You can be just at hello

19:43

at tangodi dot com. You can also find

19:45

transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com.

19:47

There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Brigittad.

19:50

It's a production of My Heart Radio and Unboss creative

19:53

Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Tara

19:55

Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michaelmato

19:58

is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget

20:00

Dodd. If you want to help us grow,

20:03

rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For

20:05

more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the I heart

20:08

Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.