Was the Tide Pod Challenge Ever Real? (With PJ Vogt)
01:05:59 Share

Hey there guys right in here before we get into today's episode, got a few nonsinse for you over on our picture on. We have a spooky halloween deemed bonus episode des, an interview between our produce, your grant and Kelly. Hernan is the lead of the six qual to the blawing project.

SHE gave us some great a additional bewitch law and talked all about living up to the viral legacy of the original one will also be dropping a recording of the garbage day live show at the bell house, which happened earlier this month, behind a payment on our patron. You can also find a video on there of me cooking nickle chicken. Add for episodes and much, much more.

All right, let's get into this weeks episode. I have a little question for you to tee up this week's episode. See, i'm a sending this link. Can you tell the audience which of these is your favorite forbidden snack?

Oh, okay, so on these forbidden stacks, there's a hameline salt lap. There's.

if you ever want to, to link himym salin. Yes.

I mean, I only a human. okay? There's there's dunes and drag and d nd die D D N D.

And then there's .

like the bath bombs look like giant gob stoppers. They do like delicious. What is the what is the thing that looks like a gusher, a blue gusher?

That's a tight pot OK. I OK. I see where we are. I'm situated, i'm situated, situated.

Yeah I would say, yeah.

right. So I would say in order of delicious ness, the tide pods look really good. I was said the bath bomb, like most delicious after that, the tide pod after that, a link of the salt because obviously want to make sweet and salty and then I I don't find the d nd. Cubes after that, but I get there like the multi colored in a way that looks a little .

bit lake like a jolie ranter yeah ah in an obviously you got like your you know your a racers and and in lava just straight up lava. I've never been a most of the time because grants outline does this thing .

where IT breaks .

my computer. Every day, every minute, the internet produces content that makes zero sense to most people. And for some reason, i've decided to make in my life work to make some of that stuff make sense to some people.

And one of the topics of this day that I get asked about the most is, what's the deal with tide pots? AmErica has two mainstay consumption and panic. And on the red glory occasion, those two things overlap.

What was the tide pod chAllenge? Was IT really worthy of our free out? And what should we learn from IT?

I'm ran brick and welcomed to panic world, a show about the various switch hunts, moral panics and final three cards bubbling up out of the weirdest, most confusing corners of the internet. And joining me today is is a guy who I think has a bright future in podcasting. Uh, his name is A P. J vote. Hello, P. J.

Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks.

So the reason i'm asking you about for britton Candy is because this is the origins of the tide pod chAllenge. But I would love to hear when you first became aware of the tide pod chAllenge.

So I used work for part color pia. And we sometimes we would do like we did a mix of a Normal ish podcasts, annalisa. And then we had a segment called the S.

S. nowhere. Our boss would bring in confusing tweet and ask for them to be explained to us, to hand and by us.

And I remember that he had a tweet that was like, the premise was, as the four horseman of the apocalypse, one of the things was tied pods. There's like three other, just like internet means of that moment that all I think pointed. Perhaps that is like a tending of human sensitivity towards spoliation ness. And so that was that I remember talking about them. I was probably aware of them a little bit before then, but that was like, that's when I remember thinking the hardest about hide podds in my life.

I see okay, well a little background here. The you might not know this type pods. Um they started, okay, so they were invented by product and gamble. They started development in two thousand and four and seventy five people worked on the project to come up with the tide pod.

Seventy four, seventy five, five, seven, five people.

yes. And there was four hundred and fifty sketches that went into designing the packaging.

And like how do we think that labor was allocated? Like because it's basic, just like you put tide, anything that melts safely is is that all IT is branding and marketing people. Well.

here's what we know. So there there was a fortune deep dive about this and the fortune correse. okay. As the final shape emerged, the development team was thrilled with the results.

Tide pods were fun to hold squshy yet firm their colors tied signature blue orange in the shape chAmbers at APP, a White backdrop stood out far more than a single color packets. On the market at that point. And here's here's a quote from tom Fisher, a former png executive for fabric c and home care sales, the division that made type POS OK. So he says, we knew we had a breakthrough product on our hands.

And just why is that? Like the breakfast is basically you don't like doing laundry. We've mitted exciting by giving you a new crap to buy like that the break, right? They don't like clean, Better or different, do they?

No, they just I mean, I think the major thing is like you throw them in the .

machine and they're like measured out for you. You're I think much.

Do you are you in over detergents?

Ah yeah yeah I often am I often like poor past the little line and like I think you actually could get over pouring under the line but not like i'm not i'm the kind of person who wed by the hippot exactly once but not twice. But maybe they only needed a nation of mees.

I use type podds to this day. Actually, I think really you throw in the I I throw in the bag with the laundry and then I just throw the whole thing in the machine and i'm done. It's great.

So you're demoting these the work of these seventy five people, but like they're probably made thousands of dollars off of you in the last few years.

I think you are really .

over rest hundreds, tens.

definitely twenty times is for sure. okay. So I want to show you this is an early commercial for type podds. Can you describe for our audience what you're seeing here? Yeah, let me put IT up.

Let me boot IT up. Let me click a link.

Yeah.

boot up that link. I am booting up the link. Okay, there's wim sal commercial library music playing a woman walks into an all weight launcher room, throws a type pod in the laundry machine.

And now we like travel music is playing. The room turns blue. A lady jumps out of the washing machine. For some, it's like cool, creative punk rock. Ask people in colour cloth, jumping out of sort of almost psychedelic watching short and then and all this says his aam for more in case you're like loving the song.

I so this was twelve years ago when shazam was like trying to like pivot, integral, real social network. I think so like you would like shazam ads, you're like, I need .

more more.

I want more ad. So I think it's fair to say that this commercial has like .

a party rockers and them A C D R IT, a lot of bright colors in a way that's kind of clashes, but supposed be kind of fun and exciting.

So would you say that this looks delicious? Is this activating the picker in in you?

I would say IT doesn't like delicious enough that IT makes me want to eat something that i'm not supposed to eat. But if the exact same color scheme and color saturation were applied to Candy, I would eat that do not I mean like a kind of looks like you're in it's a very like starburst a fruit roll up pilot of texture and color and those are Candy that I find your assistance .

yeah I feel the same way. There is sort of like a ice cream, like like the way ice cream looks in cartoons. Yeah, this kind of how type as, look to me, a very studio gibi, very studio gibi.

And what's really funny, as when we started doing research for this episode, we discovered that proper and gambell new almost immediately that this was going to be a problem. Um really yes. So according to this this fantastic fortune deep dive um IT reads, immediately after they launched, the company enlisted the sincerity drug and poison information center to collect data on exposures.

Richard dark, head of the rocking mound poison and drug center at denver health, describes this as highly unusual with prescription drugs. If the fda has concerns, they will require monitoring right for the minute IT enters, the marketing says. But for consumer products especially, I don't think i've ever heard of one that did this.

So they knew they were doing something incredibly risky by making something you're not so much to eat that looks like something you would .

want to eat exactly. And so right from the beginning, you know, this thing burst out of the party rockers and the world. It's hating shelves. And there's a problem because IT looks too delicious. But before we sort of start to go through the ticking clock here, taipower mania, I was hoping, you know, as a fellow traveller of internet law, if you could kind of describe for our audience the difference between how the internet Operated, let's say, between two thousand and fifty and two thousand and eight to the way to Operates. Now, how would you describe the divide back then?

Oh, man, I mean, two thousand thousand and two thousand, eighteen falls across trump. So sort of A A black chapter, but I would say those were in those were maybe the one last the last time. I mean, here's little thing you've made this point, which i've find very insightful, which is that part of the reason people participate in this information is because IT can be really fun.

IT can be fun to spread a room or without Carrying the true. And I would say when I think back to that chapter of internet, a lot of misinformation was often being spread that did not feel like I was changing important things like IT felt like silly rumors, like sort of proliferated on A A still functioning social media internet. But IT wasn't like, oh, sorry, one sex one is talking loudly outside the studio. One like IT felt like you could document the the cardcast professional .

l let's take you from the top OK felt like, okay.

So I would say in that chapter of internet IT felt like, sorry, this is still happy.

He's just sneaking out to eat tide pods. That's all that's happening. He's just goblin, those bad boys up in the laundry room.

Okay, I think I want. Okay, I would say that in that chapter of the net, silliness and misinformation are bounded, but I didn't feel as consequences. And I didn't feel like IT IT still felt like you could enjoy watching something dumb happen without worrying about what I was doing to the country. Do you know, I mean.

yeah, I was like between two and fifteen and twenty and eight. There is this moment where we were sort of transitioning. We were obviously, at this point, post justice in sao, you know, case.

Anyone listening to remember her? He was the woman who tweed, a really bad age joke, and then got on a plane in her entire life, unraveled as the entire world watched. Um you kids can look at up IT was a big deal.

So we know that the internet can like reach insane levels of scale and impact, but we don't totally, we can really totally predict what will matter. So we're like still in this this like p trump world. And I think that's what IT is like.

I remember when I would try to describe the internet, then what I would often say is that IT takes already existing human impulses, desires, reflex, says, and puts them through a fun house. And and I puts them in front of a fun house here. But I felt like the people who were badly affected, or interestingly affected by the fun house, miro, were still on the margins. There weren't that many.

just like a we sacrifice one person year, the internet, and then we all go about our business.

And IT feels like what happened after that was both not it's not that there was like a million justice in sacco's, but there was this a bigger feeling that like, more people were becoming internet poison. IT wasn't just people who are online a lot like thanksgiving was getting weird like trump selection obviously is a big moment but also like, you know, it's not just what trump does the country. It's like you have like a garland time for some game theory like everyone was gonna a get a lot crazy instead of like this feeling that I had in that moment, which was like I was making some people crazy. But most of us are having fun, right?

So let's go over the chAllenges that set the stage for type pods. No one remembers now because our brains are destroyed. But this goes back away before tiktok, there wasn't an APP feeding them to us each time one popped up and thought exciting and not immediately exhAusting.

Yeah this is like we're not that far out of like ice bucket chAllenge .

internet ah we're going to get to that. And the first but first I want to go back a little further in time. Ah this is the earliest example we could find of the cinnamon chAllenge. And I would love for you to give us a play by play, a of what's going on in this clip from two thousand and six.

Okay, i've never seen this by way. okay? So this p pipe, which is I think this person's name.

they have long hair and pipe .

the same and .

chAllenge which which is a perfect name for the way .

that this person looks yeah like sort of like sort of metal head, long hair but it's like card.

restful vibes.

backyard reston as much Better described. Okay, so there are, what are they doing? They just .

cough OK. They they .

ate something out of a spon.

You know what? The Simon chAllenges? No.

this is no o okay. So the cinema .

chAllenge is where you take a spoonful cinnamon and you try to eat IT. That's what this is.

So it's so like calling IT. I mean, I guess this is sure a lot of a lot of these things, but like calling them a chAllenge somehow makes them seem more intellectually or something. I mean or like more like like d or like it's like sticker working and outlet chAllenge, like eating as we involved in a very bad idea that will make you ill right away. I'm assuming.

yeah, I watched the guy deal IT at a party once, got really sick and kind of ruin the party for everybody because .

he threw up all over the kitchen yeah, that I was OK. So pipe is attempting chAllenges back yard person in their backyards near a porch. They have a spoon laden with citizen and they're about at the.

And then you kind of laughs and spit IT out how he hasn't swallow yet. Oh no, oh no, oh no. He looks like he's gone to throw up.

When this goes down, he is being swallowed by that timing person. This first is being some horrible phases. They will look like they're transforming from a person into something else.

Yes, type does IT pipe gets the cinema down, I think.

And he's not is not going to feel so that so one hundred and seventy four thousand people watched by eat citizen and was the .

in the comments, are people being like still checking seventeen years later, which is you to this sort of thing, like I said, had been going on forever on the internet, you had planking, a variation of planking called owling. What was on? No, you like.

sit like an hour. Okay, anybody is difficult, difficult.

Yeah, you know, you kind of plinking. You like lay down flat on stuff. Oh yeah.

Everything, it's weird. I feeling everything people were doing in this moment felt a little bit like trends that would have happened in like one thousand ten or something like in a small town like they're all like it's like these goody kids are trying to pack into a telephone booth. But I was just happening internet.

yes, so that I think I think a lot of I had to do with like the spread of digital cameras, right? So it's like people experimenting with what they could capture in good camera and put IT online. So planking is like, perfect for that. Yeah, there's not a one could like ducting or you'd like pretend .

to be like a street fire character and then people put like visual .

effects on you just do the hodur I was actually brought on japanese TV wants to do an interview about to do is like a hot new meme. Very strange time, yes, but there's a whole bunch of these. And we found a bunched early funny. And we found three different chAllenges involving bananas. Do you .

know any of ana banana?

okay. So there's one from one hundred ninety eight called the banana blowout, which involves like cutting the legs off, like panty hose, and then you like pulled over your head and then you try to like push a banana through the panny hose into your mouth.

It's not even why is everybody everybody hold you cry, go.

You know, that was prety cool. Then there's also the bananas bright chAllenge, where you, like, eat two bananas and then you try to drink a leader of sprite without throwing up.

Okay, sure.

And then the last one obviously is like you try to obviously himself, obviously you like put a banana peel on the ground and then you tried to slip on IT like a cartoon.

Oh, that's great. That what I believe up yeah, it's just like whatever i've going to sound so marginally if I keep doing this. But I feel like now the things people are doing because of tiktok are like breaking or deforming their jaws like I .

just does feel .

like look .

like yeah yeah ah I i'm sure .

dark things were happening than to i'm sure documented some of these dark things but like IT does feel like a simpler time well.

it's thank you thank you for for teen is up because we we're actually going to talk about exactly when that changed OK, which was in two thousand fourteen. So have you ever heard of the neck nomination chAllenge?

No, no. Your ability to simple, just pure internet felt is so inspiring to me. The things you.

the I need, I need something to do with all of these things that I know, and I don't know what else I can do with them.

So this OK. So in twenty fourteen.

but by twenty fifteen, facebook had really supercharged its news feed. Mobile traffic had a full on replaced desktop traffic. And so everyone had a smart phone with a facebook feed inside of IT. And they are sharing content and they're sharing content with each other.

And users quickly figure out that you can you can essentially tag someone in a post and then everyone sees IT, and you can kind of publicly talk to each other on facebook, which is kind of bizarre to think that that at one point was new, but he was right. And so a bunch of like australian and british lads figure out that you can use this feature to chAllenge each other to do dumb stuff. And so this was called the neck nomination chAllenge.

In what you do is you neck or finish a bottle of alcohol, and you would chAllenge someone else to do IT. And IT IT basically caused like a cast ative death across the U. K.

From house housing. Yes, because they were neco inc. Each other to drink more and more alcohol. But what's crazy about the neck nomination chAllenge is a couple months later, IT inspires the ice bucket chAllenge. Oh.

it's like the same social behavior that just causing, like Young people to drink themselves to have, then gets turned into a slightly, I mean, not silly, like a much safer and more socially valuable. So the neck, the neck that was called .

the neck chAllenges.

What was the god? So N E K, A nomination nation inspires the iceberg ker chAllenge.

It's like a prety cursor. It's people figuring out this as you describe social behavior. And then when summer rolls around, like facebook, users have figured out that they can they can publicly communicate through content.

And now there's like video uploads on the news feed as well. So you can you can communicate through video content, which is now the entirety of tiktok. But ten years ago, this was a brand new behavior that .

had never existed before. That is fascinating fascine. And it's the rare example on the internet of something being imitated and becoming more socially wholesome instead of more socially damaging.

Well, you're wrong. Immediately, immediately a bunch of other chAllenges appear, such as the fire chAllenge, where you rob alcohol on your body and .

let yourself for OK OK OK. The last nature rearing themselves.

we were, people really lighting .

themselves on fire. What was IT like a little Better? People were.

of course, people were lying themselves on fire.

right? Of course. Okay, okay.

And then what else? okay. So they're doing all kinds. You know, this is when you get like space monkey. You know what's space month?

I don't know anything. I feel like a ni. What was space note monkey?

Space monk wasn't older on the night, heard when I was middle school. But like made surgeons and facebook air, which is where you would like choya to get high.

Oh yeah, people I knew did that. People I knew did everything to get high. IT wasn't a chAllenge, was just a problem.

right? And so during this error though, you're seeing like you're seeing the the idea of like a chain letter combining with social media and creating this new idea. And it's based on a lot of older behavior.

Planking is like prior, the best example. Yeah, but now it's it's evolving really quickly. okay. So we have covered all the chAllenges that set the stage for tide pods. But after the break, we're going to get into how eating laundry urgent took over the world.

And here we have travellers in the natural habitat enjoy four P M, checked at fine hotels. Resorts, book through IMAX travel and they don't have and .

see what's coming at them. We're in we got the table with rey priority.

notify they were loaded when how to get reservations, open up, reservation, say the best for last, thanks to, and explain them. The lost day vacation brings yet another experience that's a powerful backing of america. I M.

hey guys, I A T new park. Check out at that your resume, a brand you show for multitude to interviews online creators, but how their jobs work and how they got there. Here, the personal stories behind seismic events in digital media and learn what concrete steps we can take to build a sustainable media landscape.

Who's to buy longer pod casters and business owners eric and AManda attached your resume proves that the best credential for deciding the future of media is actually making stuff. Guess on the first season include David roth, a prolific poster and the corner of defector media. A Q, A huge best known for her work on panic world, a fantastic podcast, and josh gonna man, a man who shares my love for docker one's and he's also a comedian. He's pretty good to new episodes every thursday until they run out of episodes and have to go make more subsequent to attach your resume in your podcast APP of choice.

Now this episode is brought you by united airlines. When you went to make the most of your vacation book with the united, there are an airline that cares about your travels as much as you do. United is transforming the flying experience with bluetooth connectivity screens, power at every seat and bigger overhead bins to help fit everyone's bag. And with their APP, you can skip the bag checks, get live updates and more, change the way you fly, book your next trip today, and united dark com.

Now we're slowly getting into how the tide pod chAllenge ge existed. So I opened the show by asking you, you know, what kind of forbidden food you would like to eat? And a the reason we did that is because in two thousand and seventeen, a tuber use your name, cyber crime made a post.

It's been deleted now, a called forbidden snacks. And IT was the super balls, the salt lamp in the tide pods. yeah.

And he goes viral on tumblr. And people started adding more forbidden friends. So you get like aquarium gravel and senate candle, and they're not .

really saying these are food I want to eat. What they are saying is what they're commenting on is that not to get to high, bro here, but like in a consumer society, a lot of things that one way to make someone want to purchase something is to make IT look delicious even if it's not something you would eat, they're just putting out all the things you're .

not be that look like they're good. I think that's part of IT. And I also think that like most people had a moment as a child where they saw something that wasn't edible that looked like IT would be .

good if you added, yeah I think there's this one specific toy whistle that was like blue weight and IT IT looked like I was made out of like, you know like the counties you would read about in the Willy wk, a book. And I remember like, even though I knew that was plastic, I remember writing down because I just like on the very off chance that this is Candy. It's gonna the best thing I ever eat.

Anything did you do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I took a big, I took a big jump. But if he was not.

so i'm hoping you, I can tag you. And once again here, to kind of build a connective tissue. Because I do think people Younger than us and bow also older than us actually don't understand how tumblr interacted with with the rest of the internet in like twenty sixteen, thousand and seventeen. But how would you sort of define its relationship to the wider world of internet culture? Ten years ago.

my memory, and I think you were deeper in time than me, but my memory is that IT was kind of lake. I'm trying to use the word in san as a prejan ative. But like, I was a stranger.

Fine, we're not doing PC stuff on this show. K fuzhou. Rogan.

I do have himself events to sell you. IT was like IT. IT was a place where there was both more in jokes and more densely layered funny and jokes, but also where people had gotten deeper into stranger ideas faster than the rest of the internet.

And so IT was a very strange place to visit, because you never knew if you were walking in on a conversion where two people were pretending to be honor crazy, or actually being really crazy, or if they were just like not crazy, but had arrived at a new idea faster than, say, like twitter, whatever. And often times when, like, I spent more time on twitter, but I would when twitter and tuber interacted, IT was like two countries that were not totally equipped to understand each other, interacting like the jokes did not entirely translate. And some of the funnier or weirder moments of missing icon happened at that intersection. Does that seem fair?

I think that's exactly right where because of tumblr blog feature that essentially allowed you to like chain a bunch of post together, the communication was just very different than what you would see on to a error or facebook.

And so like a lot of time is like in the two thousand and tens, you know you'd have something happening over here on tumblr and then you d have something happening over here on facebook and on youtube, twitter and they're all sort of informing each other, but not literally in its like it's a phenomenon that we don't really see much anymore. actually. I think this sort of like internet wide culture shift around something at the same time.

Yeah, time was also the verse place that taught me. Like, I don't know if you could learn how to mostly read tumble correctly. Your internet literacy was gonna pretty good like he was just like IT was a very IT was IT was just a difficult text, you know. I mean, like if you could survive there.

if you are right? Yeah, if you, if you could survive the on seller do. If you could survive the ones ler, you could .

oner r the ones ler.

Uh, the ones ler is like the little boy with the top at from that lurks movie wrote like tons of gay fanthorpe boy.

The internet raced us, right?

So as I was saying, like you have these different areas, right, and all lighting up, this is happening around taipower. So you have forbidden snacks on some. You have youtube ers beginning to make videos where they're trying to eat tide pods.

A college humor makes the video about how delicious they look. Uh, you have editors talking about IT. This is here.

This is a, this is a recent redit post. Actually a on drop out. You can with drop .

out dropout is like the of the college humor follow up, but it's to paid for service, right?

right? And take a look. Tell us, tell us what brought the people to read.

IT, oh my god. That's so funny. So when trying to find the recipe for the fake tide, budd s, they were eating an economy sketch from zack on discord.

The types were made out of icing and plastic grab. So I would have been dangerous actually, chewing so well. I was okay for me to chew them up and make a grows. No, do not try at home.

It's so much because it's also just like one of the tensions of the internet that I feel like just runs electorally through the tide pod thing, which is that people like to make stupid jokes. And then there's always this question of lake, how global is the rest of the audience for this thing? You know.

they mean like exactly. Yep, yep. Now, if you know, do you remember any specific means from this, this sort of era of the tide pod channel? Only the really sticks all not.

almost not.

Refresh me. So people are realizing their content with typos. Ds would do really well to get a little taste of what was popular. I'm going to send you something.

I want you to go into extreme detail and explain what you're seeing here. Yeah sure. OK.

That is disgusting。 So it's it's from a user named ice queen and it's just as tide pods are the best thing to ever go on p za salivating smile face. And the first picture is an on cook pizza. It's just like a cheese pizza pan with one twelve typhoons on top hyperon I the Green, blue, White and the next features they cooked IT and IT looks like so disgusting IT looks like if an AI on acid tried to make like a Vincent mango painting like it's all like blue and White and mary in with the cheese, it's like, really like, I know they're joking. But IT is nasty also because IT turns out when hypotheses cook, the colors go from like wimco to leg, really bad acid trip colors.

Now, are you ready to see more photos from this image set?

Yes, please check. I just crawl down.

No, no. I was said you where these images came from.

Okay, this is another tweet from someone called dashall. Hey, at the real ice wolf, once some forbidden fruit. Zz, a and eighteen pine apple.

Oh my god. It's a furry. It's like a full fur is there is like a giant. They're putting time for teacher in the four hundred degrees. Then there there are Operated to the camera like, oh my god, what a culture we made that instead.

So this this is like, I feel like this that actually doesn't happen as much anymore, which is that, like in the two thousand tens, if a thing went viral enough the far he was weird enough, the ferries would show up. Yeah, that's exactly what happened with tide pods where you're starting to see, oh my god.

these ferries show .

up and get involved. And so this far, by the way, made a full youtube video. Okay.

six and a half .

minutes long, I just send you the link um and IT is too for info suits uh making what they called the forbidden fu pizza and IT is a video of them cooking tie puts on a pizza.

It's weird like i'm as a person who likes subscribes to a deep commitment of tolerance and non judgment. Sometimes the way that makes me slightly insane. I have no problem with furies.

They should try to be happy to themselves. They there's something about a fr offering me a tide pod pizza to camera that makes me feel like i'm watching something for the perspective of a person who is being held. A capital like IT feels really good .

like here and like like this is your version of like the saw danger. yes. Hello, pj.

we're going to play really feels that I think because it's the combination to take like furies are both like sexual and you know disney which is never which is always a little like whatever, but then they're like it's this sort like, hey, kids eat the boys and pizz like IT really, really feels quite bad to watch. I I don't like this .

at all in this video particular there there there's something like uncanny about the fact that they're in these like extremely or nate pursue, yes, but they're in like a Normal house. Yes, like a human lives in this house. And so IT looks like an alien races and invaded your home and is making you eat detergent that that sort.

I want you to know that at the end of the video, they say that they are going to compare recipes where they are not just going use type podds. They're going to use the cascades end and see my. No, no, that's a that's horrible.

yeah. So obviously, we're all having fun with this. It's two thousand and seventeen. You know, the internet is still an exciting weird place, but people started to freak out because everyone around the internet is talking about eating tight pots. And you know, could be a problem if you do that. Yes, and we're going to figure out how real this whole thing was, but we're going to do that after the break.

Hey, panicle listeners, this is ryan broader. I know you love stories that can 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 you cooked and serve his own leg to his friends and talk S I saw those photos once, and they have never left my mind. Never sense, because he looked kind of good. Or the woman, you've found out that the person he was sharing erotic fancy with online was her dad.

Uh, H, I wish I had that kind relationship with my dad. Where the couple who discovered the best way they could show their love for each other involved well, well, activities we Normally save for the toilet. Hey, whenever keeps the marriage life, if you think you've ard at all, just wait to the hear risk available now on the odessa APP. Whatever you get your podcasts want to a shop one mark t like friday deals first .

one mart plus members get early access to our hottest deals, join now and get fifty percent off a one year annual membership shop like friday deals first with warm r plus c terms at walmer plus give the remarkable with mark Jacobs frequently this holiday season from the iconic Daisy and perfect to the all new daily wild, mark Jacobs perfume gift sets include everything he needs to feel special from her favorite fragment ant plus the matching travel spray. Holiday gifts don't get much more perfect than this, so if you're looking for a gift inspiration, these holidays gift the remarkable with mark Jacobs S.

Know as we've been talking with this, IT is a little blurry as to who started IT. And we know that, that kind of launched off around twenty fifteen, IT really hit stride around twenty seventeen. And different platforms are all kind of making the same joke, which is one the proper in gamble knew was going to be a problem almost from the beginning. Uh.

yes.

so what we what we found is that, know your meme credits this guy with the original tide pod chAllenge, which is debated, but he seems to be one of the first people to actually make IT into a chAllenge beyond just, i'm going to eat this thing is OK.

So watching this guy.

who is he? Iron swan?

yes. OK watching.

Hey guys, the r one six six nine back in with another video. This time i'm doing the tide pod chAllenge.

okay. So the one thing he advances, he says i'm doing the high chAllenge is just getting but like it's the idea that will take this like chAllenge mechanics that we've used for all these other kinds of like socially risky behaviors and now applying to tide pots. And he's joking. But literally the word chAllenge maybe showing up for the first time here.

that's that's the the innovation here is that he has figured out. And what I do think is funny is that like in and I think like a lot of good internet content follow this road, which is that he's just sort of assuming we know he's talking about, yes, like he's just like i'm doing the type pod chAllenge. You like what to help you, what is this? yes.

And then things get really at a control and we're gonna make you do a play by play again for us, because this is the moment where the story hits the news. Oh my god, which is always good. So this is, this is A C, B.

S. Story title. Teams are eating laundry urgent for the tide pod chAllenge from january twenty eighteen.

I've one rouser that that doesn't any ad block on IT. Here we go. Okay, well, first showing me an ad for continuous glucose monitor with one of the journalist brothers.

I think it's nick that has diabetes. Oh.

i've gotten know, i've got to know. Yeah, a dangerous there. Oh, and the kids do actually seem to be really doing IT. They're not chewing and swelling, but they are biting, making a great face and spitting out.

IT is a three minute news package from cbs. And I would estimate like a good forty percent of IT are just clips from youtube of teenagers eating typos, inner spurs, with a couple like talking heads being like.

don't eat type pots. God, this IT is, as soon as you see someone actually eat a type pot, IT becomes much as appetite. I will say.

I mean, I wanted to try the pizza and then I saw the kids eating IT, and now I don't want to try the ferries pizza. One of the funny year things about when an internet trend hits like a morning show in america, is that all the affiliate start to pick up the story. And so I just, i'm going to send you another link here.

This is from twenty three A B C news K E R O, uh, and it's a biggers field facebook mom warning others about the dangers of tide pod chAllenges if the E M, A column gene clone is a Baker field mom and creator of the facebook pages, Baker field moms and mom's helping moms now clone is warning other parents and Bakers field IT is out there that they're doing this chAllenge. And this is what IT looks like. And to be aware, and IT can potentially kill your child if they're not careful. Now the trend is goten so big that I was released to this.

I know I am wrong. They are hiring for players and tickets time. So the best .

part of this, the best part of this is that there is a video put out with rob ground kosky begging children not to judge. And that video comes out on january twelve. And the same day that they put that video up, a facebook user does the chAllenge and IT gets three million views.

So and it's funny because it's not as if it's nice if people generally think that it's Candy. It's like the more you warn people not to do IT are not saying like tones of people to do IT but like you're creating you're creating the attention market for someone to do IT you you like telling teenagers not to do something because it's dangerous or else lots of people pay attention to them is not like A A strategy that perfectly understands a teenager's mind.

And at the top of the show, you kind of talk about this idea of like misinformation being fun. And in a lot of the cases that we found when we are researching for this episode, we're fake. Like the the super viral facebook video.

They ve got three million views in january two thousand and eighteen was most likely fake, right? Because people are interested in this thing. And now there's a whole like content economy incentivizing people to make content about this.

And it's not just people faking IT. This is also like the peak time for digital media garbage. So you've got outlets like me that's writing a stories called the tide pod chAllenge, proof that humanity is doomed. And you have the new statesmen writing a story about how you know it's the it's proof that the world is ending, right? And then of course, you get the police involved.

Oh no, do everybody. And welcome to the dev episode of what to eat. Jeff, why don't you get this ball rolling, give the people at home something that they can safely eat? Well.

how? What is Carry .

when man loves again? R jeff, give the people at home something that they shouldn't need. Have a superintendent game system. You tell me, me, I shall need that. What is this?

This is, this is the sanity police department, which is a police department in a canada.

But even these cops, I just have to say they're like everyone's doing the same thing like like everyone is participating in the same thing, which is like the tone of this is so manic and crazy.

You I mean not I don't know these cops and I wasn't there and I don't want to make guesses about other people's motivations, but as a student of internet content, what IT sure looks like is like, this is going to be be fun to post because we're jumping on to an ongoing conversation. We're jumping in in a very playful over the top way, like everyone's participating the same thing, like everyone is getting basically content out of the same stupid idea. Well, am today for here, talk, vote tie pots type pods. Tell me more, jeff.

Well, people put in these their mouth.

but jeff, don't those go in the washing machine? There's for school in the washing machine. But people are putting them in their mouth, putting in on social media and using the hashtag type pod chAllenge, taypot chAllenge, that's ridiculous. Remember, kids retweet, aren't worse your life DJ.

Could you read for the audience, uh, the hashtag that the centage police department, the end of their post about not eating tight budget hashtag.

no pod in your board, that is that is not what IT happens when you are genuinely, when you, a canadian police officers, are genuinely worried about the fate of canada's tide pod munching children. That's what IT happens when you're lake. This is kind of funny. Lets do our thing.

do you know? I mean, yes, I know exactly what you mean. And I have this problem a lot when we we talk about these kinds of stories because, yes, there probably should be a way to tell children not to eat tai pods. Although you could also argue that, like maybe making a tide pod look like a gusher was a bad idea to begin with. Yes, there it's like once the train starts moving on these kinds of things, there is no way to engage with without furthering IT along .

yeah if you it's a giant rolling ball of stupidity and whatever you slap on that ball, whether it's a warning or condition or joke, the ball gets bigger and picks a momenta yes, it's almost like the way you would have killed the tide pod chAllenge, as you would have found the cringe as most like a corporate associated branded in america. And you would have had them make a bunch of jokes about IT and IT would feel to people the way lucky Martin doing pride parade stuff feels a bit like the way to actually have killed the joke would have been, I think. And I wouldn't revise this because one of a vented time pods, but to have like accelerated IT to the point in the cycle where was considered crane faster yeah I mean.

I used to call the heron bay cycle, which is the cycle in which a brand engages with a mean and then kills IT, which I think is actually good for the the ecosystem of means. yes. And I call the aroma ay cycle because harm bay was such a dark that no brain could monodist IT. So we just sort of cuddled and still exists. You should have .

been killed because in a Normal room, what happens is makes a joke and everybody laughs and somebody else ribs on the joke. And that happens until someone ribs on the joke and nobody laughs. Then, you know, to move on on the internet.

It's like this infinite chAmber of people briefing on the joke. You know, it's over. It's funny. It's like IT is a nice way to think about IT, which is that the corporation jumping in lets us start a new cycle. IT tells everybody is over and like forces the internet to stop briefing.

which you kind of need. You do need IT, and that did happen in this case. So you do have like a bunch of people trying to jump on this to monodist IT. There's like a pizza shop and brooklin that makes like a donate that looks like a type pod.

Was this the pizza shop on on bed? Thirty million rug?

I believe .

I was they're at this.

And then like vice went and like ate the tide pod pizza a yeah and then you also you get whisky pods, which are like tide pods for the whisky that you can eat. Sure OK. So these unfortunately weren't widely available.

You know, I would love to eat a big gusher follow wiki. But is everyone's having fun and also freaking out. You also have proper in gamble going having like the full on last half of open heima realized they have an unleash this evil across the world.

We do have a tweet from them, which is very funny. And IT reads, our product is absolutely not to be consumed. Please, if you have, drink a glass of water or milk and contact poisons. A contact the poison control center and .

did anyone ever actually like like, I know that people bid into them back out. Did anyone get actually ill from eating tight, deterred from a pod?

I'm so glad you because that's next on my outline for the today's episode that's great. Um who was affected? Let's let's let stick into this.

So from what we can see, laundry pods did lead to thousands of calls to various poison control center. But here's was interesting. The majority of those calls happened before the .

tide pod chAllenge. So wait before. But was that people eating tide box?

So in like the beginning of the two thousand and tens, you're seeing like several thousand calls to poison control centers about exposure to logger detergent across the board OK. And by twenty thirteen, that figure is now up around twenty thousand. And uh basically every year since then um there has been several thousand people a year that have to go to the hospital or poison control center because of exposure to laundry. urgent. The majority of the cases that we found um involve either people under the either involved children under the age of six.

which is what you would expect. It's just like kids just are little off to start the machines yeah .

they wanted eat that for band snack, which you know makes sense to write uh you also very dark. Ky, a lot of these cases involved people with dementia or alzheimer. Be confused and and i'm going to I mean, I am not a consumer health uh expert but i'm onna guess like that is not unique to launch like there is probably a lot of things around the house that are dangerous for people with dementia or some sort of mental experiment and they consume IT, they ve got to .

go to the hospital. But if the numbers are relatively steady, those people, the fear was not about those groups. The fear was about teenagers. And like perhaps like a few adults, like it's not as .

if which is always the fear.

right? It's always teenage. It's always the most impression of all attending king executive function, lacking citizens we have in our democracy.

right? And so what we what we found is that by two thousand and nineteen, nine people, seven adults and two children died due to exposure to laundry surging in the U. S.

Wow, which is a lot, but it's not a lot. And we also, from what we can see, uh you know didn't have much connection to anything that was happening on the internet. IT was just that there was this staying in your house that was kind of confusing, and people who either too Young or too old to understand what what's going on consumed .

to by accident. So this was a genuine moral panic. IT was a lot of fear and warning and conversation devoted to something that was not a threat.

So what we found is, according to u. Pen, there were about one hundred and thirty teens exposed at the height of the tide pod hysteria, a yeah january twenty teen, about twenty five to fifty cases, maybe on purpose, but I was not really IT was not a national crisis of any kind to kind of summer all up. Basically they were like maybe several. There's a little over one hundred teenagers who did this, but the majority of people who go to a poison control center, a hospital, due to exposure to laundry surgeon are either children or old people. With demo of the broad take .

you and put i'm a mess of these numbers lately, but forty thousand americans died in cars last year. Seventy thousand died from oppoi. Overdoses like this is a statistically questionable use of national thought and resources.

Looking back on this, know, ten years later, almost ten years later, most of the videos about the tide potch chAllenge have been taken down. A huge chunk of the videos that were viral, or almost certainly fake, IT was probably about hundred teens across amErica that bit into a tide pod and got sick enough to go to the hospital. The majority of people who do get sick from laundry urgent are not doing IT because of a viral chAllenge.

Pj, what would I want to talk with the legacy of the type bug chAllenge? And what I want to start with this, we tend to focus on what teams are doing and amp the volume up to eleven. And when IT starts to get crazy, there's really no way to turn back. And I why do you think we keep doing that? Like why do you think that this very old style of freaking out about children has just been uploaded .

onto the internet? And we do IT all the time defend the moral and unusual part of this teenagers decision making skills. If he would spend time as an adult around teenagers can be really troubling. And what's confusing about teenagers is that they are a mix of often times behaving like a function adult, and twenty percent of time or forty percent time being on the kid, behaving like a person who suddenly become drunk, like it's really, really confusing knowing which bad ideas a teenager says they are describing with irony, even in real life in which they are describing with false sensory.

So I do want to give, like the local news, moms and dads, a little bit of understanding or Grace, but I think the real thing is that the internet is putting adults in the room where the kids are joking with each other. And that's the problem. Like the problem is there's no ability online to really like it's hard to tell when someone is debuting irony.

It's hard to tell when something is the playing irony. If the audience watching that irony is going to receive IT. Ironically, it's just like all these people are in conversations that never should be in conversations.

Parents should not know that their kids are making tight pod jokes. Local news should not know about tumble or probably even youtube. It's all these people who do not have the context, understand each other, getting push together. And the more freak out the grown ups get, obviously the funny IT is. And the more jokes the kids make, the more scared the grown he had.

And what the grown up are correct about is that at some point, if the joke is made often enough, loudly enough, yes, on the margins, some kids somewhere is going to jump into a tight pot like they are. They are right about that. It's just the best thing they could .

do to stop talking about IT. Right in amErica does not have even before the internet, like amErica doesn't really have an off switch for discourse. No, i've lived in a couple different countries over of my life, and a lot of other countries do like like, particularly in europe, in the U.

K, like their discourse cycles don't really spend out of control the way hours do. And there's something very uniquely american, I think, about get becoming hysterically. There is a real national hysteria, a that we'd like to engage in.

I grew up next to sail. M massachusets is a living landmark to american hha storia. yeah. And I when I think about the tight bg chAllenge, I think about the sale White trials to me, I think of the same mechanics, which is like these teams s are doing something and it's going to make everybody crazy for a while.

And why do you think amErica is like a country without a discourse of switch?

I think that we I I think we're sort of addicted to the. I think I think he does go back to the first a moment in this idea that like americans believe that everything can be solved with discourse yeah and if you have a an idea that is loud enough and popular enough, you can change your life and you can change reality. And that is something very american.

And I think when american companies created the first social networks, that kind of physics was encoded into these platforms like facebook, like youtube, where, you know, they launch in the early thousand tens saying we're going to democratize voices yeah and like hilariously like one of the first things people do with them is chAllenging to other to eat weird stuff, like there is a and unpredictably that you know I think is exciting and can be very dangerous and very strange. And we don't have the best resources for dealing with IT like still to this day. Um now that we have a new chAllenge every week, thin the tiktok .

yeah I don't think our immune system for contextualized jokes or understanding how to evaluate something has got a much Better like i'd see more people literally familiar with the phrase moral panic, like you see more people say at more of the time, but our ability as a mass media using democracy to know what to pay attention to and in what amount, i'm not sure, has gotten much more sophisticated. I think the power could happen again.

I I hope so is on ously .

like you. I feel .

bad for those teens that ate the tie, I got said. But IT was pretty funny.

Is worth for the content.

I agree. And speaking of that, I want to show you one last video OK talking about worthy for the content. Um Walkers through, Walkers through this. Just want this .

last video here. Okay, alright, i'm loading IT up. Really though drama puts tide pod how I guess the full title really though dma put type t in mouths, i'm assuming is the end of that title.

It's a okay, let me say, hold don. Let me stretched this window out into his, oh no. Really though, dump puts tide pots into his body. Is the world's yeah, brother?

Oh my, it's the world yeah. Got the world's star watermark. So you know, it's good.

Oh my god. Me dad, this guy is using a fork to to put a tie pod into. He's smoking a tie pod out of a boy. Really though dema, I didn't like more from you. Wow.

you. I want to hang out with pipe of and just like eat cinnamon and smoke type pods, you know.

that is terrible. And and also what I love about this stupid country, we will do anything for attention.

Yeah there's because like there's a kid in every time in amErica that if you like, given five bucks, held a type pot. yes. And like there's nothing wrong with that. Actually, I think that's fine.

There's a lot wrong.

Agree to take him to the hospital, you know, when he's done, but you know if you wants .

to eat the tie party at the tie? Pa.

so, okay, the last thing, the last thing. yeah. What I think is most fascinating with the legacy of the type I chAllenge is how IT is essentially what runs tiktok.

Now, this idea, like iterated viral behavior, and the idea that, like one of the biggest conversations in congress right now, is like the dangers of a chinese run APP. Like pumping random chAllenges into teens in america. Yeah do you think there is a danger here like a large scale danger here for viral chAllenges and the chinese government?

I will tell you honestly, I find the tiktok debate deeply confusing. We're like i've seen people make the analogy that you know we wouldn't give a broadcast license to, like russia during the height of the cold war and china controlling a social media network that that was broadcast to americans and also spies on them in the way that every social media that works by and everybody is something that we should think long and hard about.

But i've also seen the argument that basically all the anxiety and skepticism that american legislators should be applying to every internet company, they are specially only applying to take talk. And that teams silent best. The uniformed c possibly IT worse, like two arguments, like, so by myself, bouncing.

But the idea that the way china will further weaken american eei is through a series of stupid chAllenges that y'll push to our youth. I do not buy, if for no other reason, then like, we need no help deserving ourselves. We will do that. Like two americans worked in a room will chAllenge each other to eat cinnamon, given a long enough times again.

right? Like if you dig into like the dark corners of tiktok, you're going to find like the drink bleach chAllenge and the like yourself on fire chAllenge and the smoke at tide pod in your ball chAllenge. And like china doesn't need to do that. Like we invented.

we will do IT america. We invented america's s video. Like that's all that ever was. Like we we love doing stupid ship for attention and then getting upset about IT and then .

continuing to do IT. If you had to eat a typo, like what color .

typo one of the orange ones.

the is in the orange orange, the the orange purple yeah I would do a the orange weight kind of looks like like server or cream suburb IT .

doesn't yeah yeah. P. J, I want to thank .

you for coming on the show. I want to thank you for describing in viv detail some of the worst videos we could find to show in your face today. If people want to follow you on the internet, where can they do that?

I have a pocket called the search engine where we were about human beings who run the engine. We answer questions from people on the internet and people to go check out the show. And if they have questions, send them to me and i'll try to answer them.

Thank you very much for doing this.

Thank you for having me is really fun to be you know.

you should do more part. You're pretty good. I'm .

trying right things, right?

Ana court is a garbage production. You can submit with the news letter at garbage day dot banana d is writing produce by grand ervin house by me, right? And our amazing researcher is an ambuLance video editing by cat ray sec.

And our incredible strange logo was drawn by gav cash to give us five dollars a month, do that at each around the com flash pan world, that in return will give you more content to consume. You want to buying out on the show or sponsor in any way. You can contact the fine folks and multitude at multitude dut production, slash ads. And if you want to get involved in in the way you know any other crazy scheme you want to rope us, you can contact our fixer and bag man, josh feels that, and you can reach him at panic world pod A G 点 com。 Lastly, here's my own advice for you, chill out and touch grass, please.

Still again.