Did Tumblr turn kids trans? (With Vera Drew)
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I hear you have a very controversial ranking of the alien franchise. yeah. And I was hoping you .

could talk through a briefly I love aliens is like my my topic. But number two for me is definitely alien resurrection. interesting.

I think I think I think the people that like downright hate IT are just wrong. Like I wouldn't say that about most movies know cause like taste is subjective or whatever. But like if if you don't like alien resurrection, you're just you're incorrect. I saw as a kid.

I remember thinking IT was the coolest thing I had ever seen, particular the guy with the guns in his sleeves. Like IT looks like an enemy. Like IT looks like .

a live action enemy. I love like any like american movie that's like made by like a french dude, just because, like, I feel like you could really tell like he was like trying to make like a Normal action movie but it's just he's got he has .

the french brain disease so he didn't really come out right. Yes.

yeah yeah.

It's like how like the fifth element should be star wars but instead it's like a psychosexual .

nights for much.

We're going to talking about a very kind of passing conspiracy theory, which is this idea that tumblr turned an entire generation of people trans. And this idea has been weak ized by the right for years now. And the guy who won the election thought the issue would help his base poke on, go to the polls.

But how do this spread? And what did tumbler actually do to our brains? My name is ran broke, welcomed to panic world show about the various immoral panics after good bubble up of the west, confusing corner of internet.

And today we're going to explore how this conspiracy theory started and what the tumbler mind virus actually did. Joining us today is very drew, the director of the people's joker. An incredible movie I just finished, is so good. Thank you for coming on.

Oh, thanks. I am doing well. Thanks for having me I I definitely don't claim to be an expert on tumble but I I was on IT um I am up the generation and um yeah I do have some like most like most of mistakes. I'm a little bit out out of the norm. I'm a little edge.

I want to get this out of the way first. I'm a massive fan of the people's joker. It's an incredible film. And one of the things that I thought was like so great about IT was, and you can tell me if I sort of missed interpreted, but the way sort of I was viewing a lot of IT was this presentation of, you know, modern identity politics and also like the discovery of your own identity, sort of being intertwined with both like mass media and the internet, the cyber war, that is sort of reference throughout the movie, this idea that all of these Young people are like veterans of the cyber war.

And I thought I was very fitting for the theme of this episode, which is this idea of a social experiment of putting an interest generation to people online at once, coming of age, using these platforms. And to start you kind of taking her journey down this road. I would love to hear about sort of the earliest internet communities you were using as as a kid growing up as a teenager.

totally. yeah. I mean, for the reason why I got excited when you asked me to do this was just because like there actually were like a lot more um over tumbler jokes in in the people's joke are like in an earlier draft we literally had like like a tumbler like like a militarized tumblr army that was like a part of IT in some way. We took that out just because I was like maybe distracting from like the main story a little bit and it's just kind of something that like you kind of implicity understand what happened. So i'm glad like that you picked up on the like tumbler er and mass media and internet thing because IT IT means that we rote IT Better than our draft, I think but answer your question, sorry.

no that is that .

i'm thirty five. I don't lie about my age because I think that's for buses. Um I remember a time before the internet like I remember when we got IT in my house. So I was like really kind of at the ground floor of everything like I was on A O L message boards in the early days and then you know in aol instant messenger like that hay day of IT, like I was, was definitely there. A god would would like a dangerous place for like a child to be like that. Those early days of the internet, just like nothing was a yeah like you could just instant access to murder and pornography of authorities I was always drawn to, I was really in the live journal then uh, so for me, like when I found tumble IT kind of just was like this net this like extension of that I think like just this idea that I could kind of just like in print my personality in into like cyber space yeah.

So the way this conversation is framed usually is that queer people didn't exist online until tumbler, which is incredibly dumb. And we also have pages of proof that that's not true. So one of the things that we wanted to look up like in doing research for this episode, a researcher, adam, we sent him deep into the history of clear social networks because IT sort of like this lost history of the internet um and so if you ever heard of an a while chat room called the gazabo.

I don't think so.

He was started by a trans woman name, gindele and Smith and IT got IT launched in one thousand nine hundred and four. The gazelles getting twenty thousand visitors a month, which for them like the nineties, like that's pretty good. And I got big enough that they were able to put pressure on the ll Steve case ah to lift a ban that a well had on the word's transsexual, transvestite and cross dressing and the whole community like petitioned a well to change how ww, and so this a modern idea that, you know, Young people, or even just create people in general, have never using the internet for the first time is not correct. Like this has been going on for thirty, forty years at .

this point to that point. Two, like, I mean, it's just like it's the only place where like clearness could exist. I mean like for me, like I remember like prior to like having an internet connection, the only time I ever really saw transsexuals or anything like outside of like a false gender binary was like unlike Howard stern or things like Jerry springer itself, that was like kind of more in this like freak show aspect, where this is like IT finally, like a loud people to like sort of have a voice. I mean, not to inject like A A new conspiracy theory into the conversation, but like, I think that's like probably why like the internet is definitely like some sort of sip from like the CIA just because like from its inception, you were throwing all these like different nitch groups, groups that like are at odds with each other. I at odds with each other, like from marginalized communities and you just hateful troll and stuff like I just really you can really point to that is like when society he started falling apart is what we all just started to having instant access to each other, other's thoughts.

Well, it's funny to say that because, like we we were digging back through some of these older queer spaces that are sort of each either either now exists screen shots or like broken internet archive, you know, cashes. And I want to I wanted to have you describe one that we found we thought was pretty sick, actually. So here there's a chat on the right side of the screen.

and it'll say, studio chat. Oh my god. okay. So technical die. Head court I definitely visited. This is technical die had got, oh my god, there's like a shenac corner, like ad on the side. It's OK the gathering place for web savi dikes for the web savi dike technical dike headquarters. I just like miss this like color palet too, just like how a every single color is used in this error of the internet.

Yes, there are stretching HTML color capability all the way. Like this is this is all everything you could do with a screen in nineteen ninety.

whatever. There's an advice corner there, like book recommendations, like a chat room, like link, like this is just so much Better than the social media we have now. Like i'm sorry to be.

you're right. There's like an earnings ssz to this area of the web, particularly when we're talking about like sub cultural spaces where people are the way I sort of viewers like the excitement of being able to connect with people without sort of a mass media filter for the first time.

When you look at these websites from the late nineties like that, there's A A joy that you just don't see on the internet anymore like you just don't see gene being. I'm excited to meet fellow people like the chapel road. Tiktok comment sections are not like this. They're very different.

No, there's no external like ad forces that are at play here. Like there's there are like you know nato corner and like go girls like pop up ads attached to IT. But that definitely came from the webmaster. That's not like coming from some like Oliver who lives in dubai, that made the .

site if you spotted the poll at the bottom because I think that this is really cute. We're like it's clearly like a web one kind of click poll and it's would you say you're a jealous lover? Uh and then the options are that song i'll be watching you I wrote IT i'm a little possessive, but I think that's okay.

I have trust issues, but i'm getting over and now i'm pretty laid back. interesting. That's a good pole. That's like.

that's good. There's literally like a dating section, too tired of solitary. Find your girl. She's waiting. I love IT.

This websites was launched in like ninety eight, we want to say, by ninety nine l GPT spaces online, a well, chat rooms, websites, you know, web ringings were causing genuine real life controversies, which is kind of fun actually we found this one story of A U. S. Naval officer name timotheus c. Vay who is not that timeless mic vay but just like another guy with that name um and he was discharged in the navy for being gay because he was on a nuclear submarine posting in gay a while chat rooms which just goes so hard they just that that rules yeah .

I think that's what you should be using the internet on a nuclear sub for yeah .

and then a year later, A A well gets in trouble with the this massive community that they've built because um they ban a user for calling himself a submissive bottom and A I didn't like that. That's what someone was saying. The gaev o they meet with glad and plan IT out in a well.

Everyone comes together a well. So the grees that, like, they will host queer spaces and these chatt rooms, and i'll let people use them. And then grindin and smith, who launched as evo, ends up organizing the first ever trands day of remembrance.

Uh which like sort of speaks to like how big these spaces were getting by the late nineties. Were you using any kind of proto free social media spaces, specifically forquer people? Or I was in that era where you just sort like jump up around the internet. Was there any sort of anything like this that you're ever on?

I I mean, yeah like I definitely I definite remember at least seeing techno dig. I also like know for me I was so closeted. I grew up in the midwest, in the in the ninety.

So like I was just a it's why like I always bring up like Howard is turn and like Jerry banner because like I was obsessed those things too. Like I would watch them IT wasn't necessarily titillating IT was just like I felt represented just like a window into lake possibility. You know, it's such a unfortunate way that like long on with skies was like sort of outed before before SHE ever like came out.

But I remember like finding out about that in like an A L chat room and like IT IT basically being like, oh my god, like the director of my favorite like fucking movie is this. And then like you didn't hear anything about IT for years after that. Like IT was basically kind of like scrubbing from the internet. So like I was I was just dislike access point for me to like any any kind of queer identity. But I think IT was still something that was just so outside of me like I just didn't I didn't have like any sense that like I was that I was just like drawn to these things and because they know then there was also just like I remember freQuenting this amputation fetish message board .

and like i'm locked and tell me more .

okay you like I was weird because it's like it's not necessarily like oh like I I have a you know like as like a team had like a fetish for amputation or anything like I definitely remember seeing like very beautiful uh, people with missing limbs on their and stuff. But I was just dislike for me just this window into things that were not fucking like midwestern farmers and the like, annoying jokes that I was surrounded by. And I think IT created like a level of empathy in me too, that I was like, I I not only you like, you know, years later I was able to like, finally come out and start realizing that I was trans and stuff. But like, IT just showed me that there were other kinds of people out there besides, you know, like catholic.

right, right? Which is important. You, you have to meet people who aren't catholic. I've been trying to do that my entire life. I had a similar experience action but IT wasn't amb IT was like an artist on devenir that was drawing like bury oic comics of like women being eaten by giant frogs um and I feel like I I was like unfortunate yeah I feel like I was like on forcin as a teenager and I click the link and it's just like this guys like completely draining, very hyper specific fetish company that he'd been doing for years and I think, oh, the world's big place okay yeah there are lots of people in the world that's interesting.

Yeah I think this this is such a like i've enjoying this conversation so much just because like I think about how many times in the last couple years i've said the internet a like ruined the world um but like IT really IT does IT IT was a there is like a softening I think that sounds like like both of us experience there .

is a softening. I think that's true. And so I mean, to kind of jump back to the topic degore with tumbler and the garnet hazard that IT sort of unleashed on the internet time, little launches in two thousand and seven is very popular, like especially with teenagers.

I probably got in a twenty two thousand eight, I want to say. But this is really interesting. We found this PHD researcher, doctor Oliver hamson, teaches the university of michigan and in a paper in twenty, and he called tumbler.

And inherently trans technology. Can you do you have any guesses as as as to what that would mean or how that was defined? Because this is fascinating. But I curious like what your take is on that.

I guess, because there's a level of anonymity to IT. You know, like I remember I remember like my first my first tumblr was I I think I was like about sixteen or seventeen, so have been the early days like like two thousand seven, two thousand sex or whenever um like I I remember having an ovie that was like like Barbara a you know and like kind of just being like like I don't know why this is my movie but like I just like Barbara L A and I you know just the fact that you were kind of able to have this lake expression be the first thing that people see knows something like that. Does that makes that I articulate that at all?

No, you nailed like half this. So basically um hamson defined IT the reasons why I basically as rebu gg ing allowed users to share ideas with and without commentaries. So you could basically amplify different subcultures really easily.

This idea called for textual, which is you see a post on tumblr and makes you want to go to investigate, like where that came from? Who is that person? Where are they aligned with anonymity, but also to animals ity.

So the idea that you can change your identity, you can have multiple blogs, you can sort, you can experiment with your identity that way, and then a bunch of the sort of inflections of the sites. So like tagging a limited comment section so you kind of have to post to communicate. You can't like just like fill up a comment section and then IT also allowed not say for work content what at least I did .

for a while yeah back in the day.

So you know, you throw w that together and you end up getting this like very expressive social network at a time where, you know, this was the myspace area still, like this was not like a time where people were using sophisticated technology. So tim was kind of IT. You thirty and thirty four, you thirty five. So did you get IT like in college? Basically, was that kind of you when you got you .

know now that now that i'm realizing that the experience I described with the barber ella picture was zanana, I don't think I had tumbler until college because I saw the potential for like posting like video and like short form art content because like this was still, I mean, youtube had been around at this point but I was still like really enough to wear like IT didn't really function that well in my opinion is like a uh, social media experience uh, as much so I remember I think I think he probably would have been my fresh on year of college and kind of centers around just like, uh, curation.

And I always really loved just having the ability to. And I don't know why, because I would never do this now. I mean, like I journal every single day, like every morning I wake up in journal but like I liked having like kind of like public space where I could kind of just emotionally process what I was going through. So I think I was definitely using IT for that in those early days too.

Yeah, I was like a compulsive live blog like I would just watch a bad movie and then post like thirty times in a row about whatever movie was watching on tumblr to nobody and I just like, fell t good and I don't know why IT felt good, but I did you sort of talked about the internet as a window into sort of different paths in different identities um and IT IT links really well to this quote from a twenty eighteen piece we found on them up com by Serena DNA ri who wrote IT was ww IT was while scrolling through tumbler that I first said trans bodies actually being celebrated instead of being degraded conditions to your idea of sort of the mass media depiction on the Jerry spring stuff and so he writes, I was finally able to see women with penises, men with vagina and on binary people of all body types.

I realized that I wasn't alone. There were others like me out there, and we were all beautiful, unique and valid, a powerful epiphone y for a Young, transparent. The unfortunately reality is that out of the many communities affected by ther's porn ban, queer content creators, whether AR the brunt of the damage this was writing, like right after the ban, where, you know, it's a very complicated thing to, I think, articulate this idea that like to have this sort of not safe for work, fairly reneging social space does allow people to communicate way. They just can't on something like instagram, like you just can't tumblr post on instagram. It's not possible and .

look like this is kind of a mind field that i'm i'm walking through by saying this. But like I think that's what's sing now from the internet is the like dangerous aspects of IT. You know the fact that like as as a kid and a Young adult like I IT was very IT was a lot easier to like just be looking through like animal, like gifts in tumblr and then suddenly you'd be like staring at girlish and like that was.

I don't know that I would be here if if I didn't have like those kinds of experiences. I mean, like I guess like translate is more in in clearness in general and in clear bodies and stuff is more and Normalized now. So like you don't need that as much, but I do think there's like that's that's probably more so where this like the a lot of these bans came from you on tumblr and and like kind of just like how much uh, pornography is shadow and on on on on sites like twitter and stuff now as well like it's I think IT is to kind of like, uh, the trains, the youth of anything.

I I think you're right. And this this is A A thing that I ve had trouble over the years articulating as well, which is that you know, to tie a thread going all the way from the gaza and and technology to tumble pretty porn ban. There was this sort of like we're often the corner.

We're doing our own thing like give us the space, give us the the tools and they will ever alive and we will communicate and they'll be fine. And then in the two thousand and tens, as the internet is becoming more corporate, zed and amErica is becoming more politically polarized, you see this thing where porn ban, sort of argument that filtering, it's all coming in. And as it's coming in, the right wing is becoming much louder.

And I think they are connected that I do think that when you sort of pay the wild west of IT, IT allows like really loud fashion psychos to become a lot more powerful because the subcultural spaces are going away. It's like the same idea of like notice in your punk bar. Like eventually.

like IT just becomes really hard. I I mean, for me, I got off the internet pretty much entirely right around like twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen that I stopped. I stopped using the internet because I feel like the thing you are describing kind of reached this boiling point um where I I just remember feeling a lot of fear about like being clear in any online space.

IT wasn't even necessarily motivated by just like getting hate from like all right people or anything like that. I was kind of like the reactionary aspects of of of the queer community in those spaces, like in kind of some of the self policing that was going on and around the time that I was starting to like come out in in, be more visibly clear. And I just didn't want that negativity and should to be a part of my brain like I just, and I didn't also didn't want whatever, like kind of gender identity and clear expression that I was sort of brewing to be sort of stuck in this echo chAmber.

That was that was rapidly shrinking too. But I did feel like there was a monolithic trends and clear culture like at that point to me, like at least just like coming into my own clearness that like I did, I was like I got to like figure out who I am separate from the internet because this is just going to make IT confusing. I don't know any that makes sense.

but I think that makes total sense. Um I mean, you even sort of touch on this in people's joker like you for a feeling of like identity anarchy that like was I think very, very present on the internet where you know you go into like A I mean still it's still as present if like you go into like a fury discord but like you know this idea that you can be whoever you want to be, do whatever you want to be. You know that that feeling was going away, especially in public social networks. And what replaced IT was, I mean authority, italian, depending on like how you wanted, define the politics of but he was he was inherently, I think, in authoritarian and we're going to talk about how that was quoted by the right in particular, and how they whipped up the right wing moral panic and were going to do all that right after the brink.

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He's pretty good to new epo des every thursday until they run out episodes and have to go make more subscribe to attach your resume in your podcast APP of choice now. When was the first time that you became aware of the idea that the internet was turning teenagers? trans? Like, when did you first hear this idea?

God, I mean, like it's so blurry for me because like I actually remember, even in the early day of tumblr, somebody I was dating and he was almost talking about IT in in a tone positive way, but IT was a very like flood, maybe like an ally, trying too hard description of what the internet could be as a safe with.

And like, I think that was that also like was the first time that I really that I probably ever heard transgender instead of like transsexual so yeah to say like like even before, like the kind of the sort of algorithm restriction stuff that you were talking about um like probably like two thousand eight and you know like I I think so much of my clear identity, I mean started to just keep bring up catholic but like I was just such a my shame. I I, I wanted to really process this when when we are making the people's joker like I had, like, a level of conservatism that I needed to overcome, a like to get to a place where I could express myself that was really just motivated by, like, shame and fear. And like, just, we are.

Like, my parents are, are, are liberal. Like they they're related, but like very liberal, like they love the police. Well, the best they're great.

I think .

like especially like when IT comes to internet culture and south, like I I probably even thought to some degree that like that like spaces like tumblr were not necessarily making people trains, but like the echo chAmber of IT was just kind of creating this like monolithic identity like I feel like that kept me in the closet for a very long type too.

You know that the reason uh the joker the harlequin is is like in the people's joker is like watching alex Jones all the time is because that's what I was doing like I wasn't watching IT because like I you I was watching IT because he he hated the police in those days and is very, you know he was the first person I think I ever remembered like hearing, talking about nine, eleven in an actually like a reasonable way where IT was like, why aren't we like asking questions about this? And I don't know. Like, I mean, that's just all to say. Like I think there's such a thin line between like toxic transformed c in cells and self hating trans women that like I I think all of this is for me of orbits around.

I I would say that's great. I mean, like, so I grow up a master's. I was like in I was part of like A D I Y punk and emo skull community bands and stuff. And I remember around two thousand and seven thousand and eight, some of the guys that I would be playing music with, like becoming curious about like republican candidate name on paul, who has some really interesting ideas about politics and kind of watching those guys read this like irony line that like, you know, a couple of our friendships ended because like they were like they were just full on nazi after a while but like a funny way like it's uni that's it's not right.

But that thin line, I think, is present for anyone who's like been in a subculture ban, in in a margin zed community ban, in a thing that is not inherently mainstone because it's very easy, very seductive. I think when we started doing research about how this sort of trans social contagion idea was putting online writer and activist Julia sono did an job piecing together at time line of how this all spread. So if you've ever heard of a website called the fourth wave now.

uh, no. So the fourth .

wave in the name refers to fourth wave feminism, which kind of alliance IT with a different waves of revolutionary feminist. Y, uh, and this one is a red from blog. So red FM sends a radical feminist is a whole set of sort of ideas about what feminism should accomplish.

And IT came up with this idea of tumbler, specifically turning people trans in a blog post called IT in a liberation movement, which they published in twenty fifteen and in twenty sixteen. Forth wave, now at com, does another post titled tumbler snakes, another girl, but her therapies. Mom knows a thing or two about social contagion. And this is when you start to see the sort of like d transition weirdos who are like, my daughter went on tumblr and now he thinks she's a boy but we got us but now she's the she's SHE feels Better now it's .

it's all good .

um yeah and you know IT is so fascine to me though that like you, i'm sure many of the people who are reading this fourth way ve got to quote feminist blog, like see themselves as political revolutionary on the left, on the, on the liberal side and they don't deserve understand that like they are. They are pursuing an inherently conservative, inherent authoritarian idea, at least as far as I .

believe oh sure for my the energy point IT IT comes from and I mean there's nothing more internet than just not having a context for like history a and like the the history of like queer liberation and and feminism and stuff it's like transmits a in gender clear ress was inherent to uh a clear revolution and and like suffered you know before that too like I mean you could go even further back to just um the fucking you know eighteen hundreds and you know so called husband wives on the on the western frontier and like women who really were men for all intensive purposes getting jobs in coal mines and on the railroads and self lake that is like I am not like one of those trains people it's like where god's gift to humanity but like there are these very clear lines where like radical politics and uh especially like of like you know like that lead to other marginalized groups getting more rights whether it's gay man.

Lesbians or just this women being able to have the same jobs or vote, you know, like men do. Uh, transactions always kind of a at the forefront of that. In some way, the thing you're describing could only exist in on the internet in a space where you can completely remove any historical context and somehow paint this picture that transits or clearness is somehow the thing that we need to to be getting radical against its so, uh IT IT breaks my brain. But I understand why IT it's allowed to function in a space where, you know, you can really create information in in this sort of completely false way.

Yeah I wanted to read the of an expert from this post um about tumbler snagging a girl because IT is IT is fascinating and because IT almost so that you have a scene in the people's joker that is shockingly similar actually but from a this is from the mom s point of view so so here's here's also the first line this is is so just like telling and so like perfectly internet brain so reads there's an episode of star track, the next generation where the crew is introduced to a mysterious alien video game IT slowly inflates the minds of the crew.

As we suspected, the game is really an insidious mind controlling apparatus that will allow an alien race to gain control of the ship. That is what this trans madness feels like to me. Alien mind control device meet its way into my home about two years ago when my then eleven year old daughter beg me for a tumbler account sensor.

Friends all had one. Foolishly, I consented. Without looking into IT further, I wish I had, and I have decided that the cult inductor, or have had free access to her beautiful thirteen year old brain for two years now, and that IT is time that I intervene and fight for my daughter.

Lady, it's tumbler like she's looking a doctor first. So after he is looking a doctor who gives that's what's going on right now. He's watching supernatural like.

come yeah I am almost sympathetic to IT because it's so like it's naive like that kind of transformer a is just like do you hear yourself like and that that that parents specifically it's like do you remember how your parents like talked about fucking Elvis and like just moving his hips on the ed Sullivan show?

Like it's you're basically doing that like you're doing that on this even doma level and like that sounds like a fucking size I thing like it's so and I know IT completely I think what makes what makes me sad about IT is ah IT completely removes the the the idea that like your child is now comfortable expLoring these things that were always there, they were created by the thing. And to me it's like, you know, because when you you ask me to do this, I I I think I came back and I was like, well, you know, I kind of do think tumbler made some of us trains, but like IT is kind of coming in that places. It's like if, like if I hadn't been of the generation that like, you know grew up with the internet, like in that specific, like I would have just been like fucking andy warhol or something like I would I wouldn't like that type of gay eye because I had no representation at all. I could only possibly find IT in that kind of like beautiful, safe space. It's so tragic.

IT is, and like watching, watching this giant, sort of like a media and academic apparate. Tis spring up in the late two thousand and tens around this idea of the social contagion, and specifically like trying to find these d transition stories to prove that IT exists.

And all of this, all of this stuff, we wanted, we wanted to try to figure, like, when did IT flip? Like when did? When did IT become this thing that wasn't just for weirdos to obsessive about online? Do you remember the two dozen seventeen piece in the stranger about d transition's? Did you ever hear about .

this that's weekly drinking about .

so that that was sort of the big cross over point because once the stranger which is like this you know is this bastion of progressive thought, says like hey, maybe this trans things like a little wai um everyone falls in line immediately because like the next year you get this massive piece in atlantic called when a child says she's trans um you get right after that you have a the rapid onset gender dzhin a stuff coming out academic journals uh you have this entire panic and if you dig into any of these things you find faut data and often times you just find like animal stories about parents being I don't know what my child is doing on the internet, and I think that's like what's happening here. I think the internet has made .

my child different somehow I remember I think this was around the same time I believe I was jez about I had an article about sophie and how he was um appropriating yeah that the music producer a uh was was like a culturally appropriating feminity. Because I feel like that also coincided with this this kind of conversation when I was like transients is basically woman face .

or whatever .

um right in that like I pretty sure that was was jezail like that was a specifically feminists the court on court feminists take on IT yeah.

During this time period I was working in london turf island and was, are you ever heard of the forum? Mum's net? Do you know about mum's net? If not, i'm very excited to tell you about mm net.

Yes, but please talk about IT. Okay.

so far our listeners, you might not know what mom's and is IT is essentially read IT for british mums. Um I use IT often to help me navigate british planes, which are kind of confusing. And during this period of time, mum net was being inflated by these people.

So IT was all of these sort of british state home moms online. All they talked about different washer and dryers and how to use them, and also complaining whether children becoming trains because of the internet and IT. IT was kinds strange, though, to be working in bridge media at the time, because IT was like this weird thing. The line was just sort of coming down from the either, or to be like a little more skeptical than we used to be about this whole trans thing.

And in indeed sort of to feel like IT felt like that was the social condition and like IT felt like your boss would always sun walk in one day and you would be like, I think got to shine late on this whole thing that know this kind crazy, huh? And I just you started building over time in a way that actually creeped me out. I was deeply unsubtle by how quickly the tide shifted over there during this exact period time .

yeah and you know I got to say like pretty unlike a personal level, pretty unfortunate for me because I was like right when I was starting to come out to to my family and stuff and I had really kind of like I I remember when I came out to my dad is trans. He said something he was like, yeah like I don't I don't think that was a thing until like this past year, like great like that i've ever heard of this before.

Like this is like I trying to that's going on right? And like that was and IT was like crazy hearing him say that too because I remember growing up again like a like a good clinton liberal. He was like how often he talk about, uh, the conspiracy theory, the and culture was a transsexual woman and like.

got about that that was a big wing to live in like, yeah for me it's .

why I like brought up the sophie thing because I think that's like maybe part of where IT spread like wild fire. This is great produce .

for the podcast. So we wanted to make sure we got this right. So I think there was actually referencing a controversial father piece from twenty 40， not a jez ble story that's IT back to the .

episode again. Another mind field i'm probably like, sort of walking through here, but whatever like, I think like when when people realized the distinctions between transsexuals and transgender people and non binary identities, there was this almost like thing. Where was like, oh, I know what people who have like a coton quote, sex change Operation is okay, I understand that. But this whole tumbler thing that's different and it's fake. It's just a trend like that was the kind of shift and to be coming out and to have I have so many friends that were also, you know around the same era, uh, to be coming out during that era as as you know, I was in my late twenty years, did not pass on any level and had really no interest or ability to either IT made transition very hard, especially like you know and the reason it's like I qualify all that would like this is a minefield i'm walking through us like there is a conversation.

When you start having that conversation, you can go down this path where it's like I don't think there needs to be any distinction between all those identities like I think anybody who has like a marginalized gender identity, whether they choose to medical transition or not or like they're changing their presentation or they are just changing their fucking pronounce like we all deserve rights and we all deserve love and uh shouldn't be killed, their bullied or whatever um but I think that's what a lot of this comes down to two is like it's it's thought of it's when people realized that like that the the the clearness also involves aesthetics and and that is expression and it's not just you know medically changing our bodies and feel like a lot of trains people to it's like there's not. You know I for myself personally, like I don't think of my experience as a woman as as identical to size women. You know like i'm having my own gender experience.

So like I think like that that was all nuance that they were not prepared for. Especially I know in the U. K. I been like, I just don't think that was.

I also think bombers are like obsessed with the idea of like, things you do as a kid. Being trans are fat. I think it's like shared guilt for electing rail reagan and like like being hippies and going from hippies to that.

And so now they just sort of project being like whatever you do before thirty. Like I like that's not real. Like that doesn't matter because we sold out out. So like of course you're going to and it's like but we can cause the internet has given us a very different world to live in and we're going to talk about the realities of that second world right after the break.

Hey, panicky listeners, this is ryan broader. I know you love stories that could be growth unhinged, and I know a perfect place to do that risk. It's the show where people tell true stories they've never thought they dare to share.

Listeners say the show makes them burst out laughing and crying, good crying, surprising honesty, and the most job dropping moments that are stranger in fiction, like the one about the guy who cooked and serve his own leg to his friends as talk S I saw those photos once, said they have never left my mind, never sets, because IT looked kind of good. Or the woman who have found out that the person he was sharing erotic fancy with online was her dad. Oh, I wish I had that kind of relationship with my dad.

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You are attached on this idea that you you took a break from the internet during um i've really, really boring couple years in american politics like not much happened between two thousand and sixteen and twenty eighteen um so no you didn't miss much but what what was IT like coming back online? You're now, I assume, out of close at this point you sort of have this new full identity. The internet is different.

The countries different. Like what was that moment like? Because I think that's a really fascinating idea. Sort of miss those two different gears.

Well, I came back because I had made, I had made all this content a with timeout ic, uh, that like we d done for, uh dog swim dot com. Like i'd made a couple like web series for them. Uh, there was like A A doctor advice type show called our bodies that we had done and then talk show with David eberhard, a game show, and then this like kind of like a liquid television style remic show called scum.

And we were like, you know, we were starting to launch all that stuff and I just was not getting any clicks uh partially because you know adult swim never uh promotes anything and I think tim eric, they're both creatures, the internet, but definitely more from this like gene x perspective. They were kind of like what how do we get this stuff out out there in like a kind of occurred to meet IT was the first moment I remember thinking, like, oh, I have no, I am invisible as an artist because I don't have any kind of internet footprints. So that was what I got me back out out there.

And I was about a year into my transition. And I think like IT was a real gift that I given myself because I I wouldn't say that my my personality was fully formed. I think my identity was definitely very fractured. But I had this nice solid foundation that wasn't of of what my trains and this look like looked like and what my um artistical expression look like without the um echo chAmber that a lot of other trains people my age had had kind of come up. And so I was a little bit more naive. I think I think I think IT allowed me to be a little bit more fearless and putting myself out there like I really um you know i'd never heard the the phrase ringe uh content before but apparently that's like that's the kind of stuff I was making.

Was was this kind of tender queer crich content but to me I was just like i'm being sincere because I came back on the internet and nobody since ere anymore it's just all irony poising and like anger and like that's kind of what i'm moving out of because I finally have fucking extradition in my body um so like IT was this real IT was this real gift and I remember also just like I also feeling a little bit like left behind at the same time like I think IT was like very hard for me to meet other trains people my age coming back into like online spaces like I remember a you know called on, quote, discovering black dresses that the band but I I like and like I I was so funny because I thought I had stumbled onto this like nitch band is like I can't believe that they're like talking about like just for a like abuse and trauma. This like very hyper specific way I don't know theyd like that character zone, but whatever a like to me that was like how I was listening to their music and then I like, would go out there and like tweet about IT everybody be like yet. We've been listening to them for like three fucking years.

You just haven't been online. So there was this like whole just era that I D really missed. But that allowed me to kind of return to to this like authenticity that I think I had really kind of ran away from my I was, I was before coming out I was total irony poison.

No, there still was some rain, some remaining like kind of fear and shame that I think especially once I started making the people's joker. Um you know there's like a sequence forty five minutes into the movie that um this like love scene that's like animated. It's like really cute. It's really like beautiful cute animation .

for people who haven't. It's between two jokers. I should point out it's is a beautiful love.

Seen two jokers. Yeah two different kinds of jokers. Yeah.

I was. So I always forget that it's a joker movie. It's before .

we you lose that. I didn't want to point out that like the people's joker is a surprisingly and I don't mean this in in a bad way I just I was really taken by house sincere IT is as a filming and how IT has all of this sort of like cultural A A fema of the irony poison world that we live in. But you're you're dealing with IT deeply, sincerely and very earnest.

Sly and IT made me I was very happy. I was like, that is how IT is. That's good. That's that's how the world is.

IT feels like you're bombarded with all this sort of like mass media nonsense, but like you're having real feelings and real real lives inside of IT. And I feel like a lot of people to lose that when they try to make that kind. So I I was very taken by that. I thought those precooked.

thank you. yeah. No, I mean, I think I think when people hear about the movie often times like they assume it's just gonna kind of be um just like a ninety minute ship post. And I mean there's even some people that I think watch IT and kind of feel that way just because they don't really resonate with the the experience that i'm describing in IT because this is a pretty specific experience.

IT is like a you know i'm a millennial but I I have noticed that the people who like are usually um the trans people that are identifying with the movie more usually are like a little bit Younger. Like more is summer and stuff which i've always thought vaccinating just seem like I don't do. I have no idea with their experiences, but there's something about IT that I guess presented to them and maybe there's something that um other millennial trans people don't always want to look at in the movie.

And and I think part of that is the like the the sincere in the fact that we can can kind of bridge these like the ship posting irony thing with like sincere and kind of sweetness and softness and stuff and like I mean that specific scene, the like love scene between the two jokers is one that, like, I was afraid to put in the movie specifically because IT was animated. And because I was like, kind of like a kid friendly, like a love scene, a kid friendly tea for tea love scene in a movie. And like, I remember having this fear that people would watch IT in and criticize IT is like, I don't know, like grooming or like because I think so I think people forget how much of like those kind of conversations around art, specifically as its potential agrees or like social condition, IT did really come from like other cure people a lot of time.

And I think IT did kind of come up and needs like tumbler spaces in on forti and self. So I was like, really nervous to, like, fully lean into that. But that was why I did IT. I was like, I need to do the thing i'm afraid of.

We've spent the whole episode out of talking about the wonders of these spaces, which i'm not onna. I'm not going to go back on now like I think they were wonderful. But one of the sort of downsides of that kind of openness and anarchy was a lot of blurred boundaries and a lot of sort of like misunderstanding of like what how people should behave online.

I think a lot of online queer spaces now are having these conversations where they're saying that the way they used to do things was very out of control. This is where you're going to see a lot of arguments about like the proper way to create fan art or right fan fiction or how to uh, be gay at pride. A lot of these sort of arguments happening from very Young, quare internet users that might not have the full context to understand that those conversations are helping a very reactionary right wing movement that wants to shut down the entirety of quietist. Of course, the sort of idea of the the queer gensec purteen is very much a useful idiot for a larger, very, very scary, very, very now powerful A N L G B T movement in america.

For me, it's just like IT is so clear and maybe I just have Better boundaries than most people online. Like I know what's appropriate and inappropriate to like subject a child to you know, like I, like I, like I for me especially like I I spent out of this episode talking about how like at thirteen .

I was like on a beauty message boards like that .

and .

women get frogs.

Like, it's fine. It's not yeah like I just don't I don't want to say like we should ever go back to the way things work because like I saw things on the internet that I wish I had never seen like I really I can fully say that that were things that like I would just stumble upon from like having lime wire or whatever. Like try to download team america, world police and then I would like accidentally be this like disgusting ganging ing you know like IT would be stuff like that like i'm not saying we should go back to those days at all.

There was a week where I tried to download and vivan gan on cosa, and I tried to like five times. And every time I downloaded at IT, I end up the same hani clip of like a little bad girl having sex with somebody. And I was like how all of you doing like that's multiple users doing the same stupid thing yeah the internet was not that fun back that he was really annoying actually no.

IT wasn't. And that that's not what I think we need to go back to. But it's just I remember like like when when we were making the people's joke specifically when we were writing IT, my co writer, breeze eros and I were talking a lot about like what are the things we watched in that like hour and a half after school, before parents came home and IT was like kids in the hall, like s do kids .

in the hall on on country central everyday. Oh, change. Thanks a humor for the rest of my life. Yeah, unbelievable.

And completely, I mean, theoretically completely inappropriate for a child, but like harmless at the same time.

Like children not be exposed folly. That's not fair to canadian all humor exists. That's not fair.

exactly. They need that edge though. Like it's to me, it's like that if I mean, that's like the thing I almost kind of like. Maybe like like an old lady about i'm just like we're softening these kids by sheltering them are too much and in making like clear art that's like so sanities that there can be like I made the people's joker for thirteen years old like first and foremost like IT IT is a movie that is supposed to be like a rude movie for like A A teenager to like early twenties person who's like just starting to discover these things about themselves.

And to me it's like that can only really be access in an authentic way if there is an evenness and a little bit of danger there um which is scary to do is like an artist. But what um I think it's the kind of art that we need. Shouldn't we shouldn't be santis ing ourselves because it's not as you said, IT IT is actually in modern fascists by doing that. And um it's it's just it's prolonging it's just prolonging like how hard IT is to be um queer in the western world.

Tumblr might not be turning teens trans but the people's joker will absolutely do IT and I think that's beautiful. Yes, I want I want to thank you for coming on just such a conversation. Um do you everything coming up, you want to a plug? Anything I I are are you making anything else that you wanted talk about? Because like I am such a fan of the people's rover, anyone listen to this? Please go watch IT.

It's on youtube. You can buy IT on every string platform is great. But yeah, do you got come down the pipeline?

Well right now the people's joker, as he thinks, thinks for pluggin IT, it's out pair on vod, you watch IT you pay jeff bezos to watch the people's joker if you really wanted. Um we also have uh blue rays and dvds and n vhs uh available. The people's joke.

that outcome. sick. So sick.

Yeah people can. We've got to sort. There are so many special features on the the blue ray in the DVD like another thing that really makes me sound thirty five is I I really miss directors commentary tracks in special features so we did a lot of that for the people's joker so check that out um and I mt.

There on the internet view drew twenty two on twitter, instagram and tiktok. I think I have a tumbler, but I don't really use IT that much anymore and yeah I don't know. I'm trying to trying to make another movie will see see IT when IT comes out but i'm trying to make a horse vie right now and I just got really sick production company on boards so hopefully will be get going on that soon and I can talk more about IT soon but yeah well.

that sounds awesome. Ah thank you for coming on again. This was great panick world is garbage day production. It's written and produced by grand urban, hosted by myself with research from the always fantastic and ambience.

A huge thanks to gabby cash for designing the incredibly draining art for this show and a huge thank you to cat reject our lovely video at. And if you like to sponsor epo de, you can reach out to multitude our wonderful partners, multitude to productions slash ads we patro on which you can find a patron of comm slash panic world. And i'd like to end this episode with an important minder, log off and touch grass.

But you still can. I really appreciated, uh, the people's joker joke about, say, anything that, uh, micro targeted me in a way that was almost aggressive. Actually, I really, really enjoyed thinking about singing along to a song about the holocaust for many years.

Yeah, no thanks.

That's so. yeah.

So so crazy. A to think that you could a that you could put that on the radio.

IT was in a scrub .

episode. Hey, this create produced with podcast.

I just want to give a special things to Julia surono a like rosenberg. So we cable and Oliver hampson, we'll talk you very soon. Thank you all so much.