This was you as a baby!! 🤱
➕ "Consensual doxxing," & more 'slap' discourse 🤪
Angels! It’s Friday!!! Hallelujah! Spotify wrapped day was yesterday and it kinda always feels like a bit of a holiday. Idk why, but it’s just SO fun and I loved scrolling through our substack chat all day and reading about the music that got you through the year (also y’all introduced me to COIN and Ethel Cain, who I’ve DEF been missing out on up until now.)
For everyone asking about a cat-finding update, we’re currently in the midst of big planning sesh - we realistically can’t get one until next year (we all go home for the holidays and that wouldn’t be fair at ALL) BUT thank you so much to everyone who sent me pics of their kittens, and who linked me to all the foster/ adoptions spots! Cats galore!! I’ll probs be in comms again at the start of the year eek!!
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and enjoy this pop culture-y edish of the newsy (plenty of hard news in The Shit Show today though!) xxxxx
New episode of The Shit Show!!
This TikToker is 'consensually doxxing' people to teach them about social media privacy
Speaking of TikTok, I’m obsessed with this weird as fuck trend
We have more Slap discourse
It’s Friday so you get horoscopes
Do you pay really obvious attention to the flight attendant during the safety briefing so they know you're a good student?
New episode of The Shit Show: Protests in China, & Gaslighting, Explained
First of all, SO MUCH LOVE to everyone who sent me their Spotify wrapped lists with either The Shit Show or Culture Vulture in them!! You’re the reason our stats from Spotify were THIS AMAZING:
And to thank you for all your dedication, we gave you a BANGER of an ep this week. It starts off with Squish trying to ensure that I don't talk about Matty Healy (he fails), and then we discuss the rare uprising happening in China at the moment, how a 3D printer could help our current housing crisis, and a LEGEND who ran across the pitch in Qatar. Listen wherever you get your pods!!!
This TikToker is 'consensually doxxing' people to teach them about social media privacy
The other night I was having dinner with a bestie, and we were talking about the pros, cons, and ‘uniques’ of TikTok (classic dinnertime chat) when she asked me if I’d seen the woman on TikTok who doxxes (which is when you search for and publish private or identifying information about someone on the internet, typically with malicious intent) people - but in a ✨meaningful way.✨ I hadn’t! But now I have! And I’m sharing her with you all. Meet Kristen Sotakoun - a 32-year old non-cybersecurity expert, who has a whole ass series devoted to ‘consensual doxxing’ where she teaches us that “any normie can do this.”
The idea came to Sotakoun after she saw a TikTok creator ask viewers to guess her real age. She responded with a stitched video — a video a TikTok creator combines another video on TikTok. Soon after, some of Sotakoun’s impressed viewers — believing themselves to be harder to find — challenged her to reveal their ages and birthdates.
Here’s an example of someone who was SURE he wouldn’t be found:
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She found him in 20 minutes, thanks to his friends and family (just because YOU’RE private, doesn’t mean your network is!)
“It doesn’t really matter what you’ve posted, because you have a proud mom somewhere or you have a friend who loves you or you have people who are not as careful about internet security as you, you know?” Sotakoun said. “And that is what I’ll find. … It’s crazy, because if you just interact with something, interact with somebody, not even have to write anything, then that is a way that someone can find you.”
What Kristen is doing is actually SO good for showing us how NOTHING WE REALLY DO ONLINE IS PRIVATE, and even if we’re doing our damnedest - there are cracks everywhere.
Speaking of TikTok, I’m obsessed with this weird as fuck trend
You think social media is private? Well look at this video of you as a baby!!
The trend that I’m annoyingly referring to without explaining it first is basically this odd lil thing flying around in a white robe and a green hat, and for SOME reason the internet has decided to collectively gaslight our siblings/ kids into thinking it was them ‘when they were a baby.’ Case in point:
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I’m so obsessed with this moment on the web that we actually talked about it on The Shit Show this week AND Matty Healy posted about it on Instagram:
I really can’t explain it any further, but if you’ve scrolled past it on your FYP then you know what I’m talking about!!
We have more Slap discourse
Yes, I’m talking about THAT slap again. Will Smith sat down with Trevor Noah on The Daily Show to chat about what went down at last years Academy Awards. Here’s how it went:
“That was a horrific night as you can imagine,” Smith began. “There’s many nuances and complexities to it but, at the end of the day, I just lost it. I guess what I would say—you just never know what somebody is going through.
I was going through something that night. Not that that justifies my behavior at all. I would just say, you’re asking what did I learn, and it’s that: we just gotta be nice to each other, man. It’s like, it’s hard. And I guess the thing that was most painful for me is I took my hard and made it hard for other people. And it’s like, I understood the idea where they say ‘hurt people, hurt people...’
It was a lot of things. It was the little boy that watched his father beat up his mother. All of that just bubbled up in that moment. That’s not who I wanna be. You’ve known me for a long time, so you know me personally, so you know. But y’all might not know. That’s not who I wanna be, man.”
He later added, “I understand how shocking it was for people, man. On that stage—I was gone, dude. I was gone, I was gone. That was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time. I understand the pain.”
The cynic in me must point out that Smith is currently on the press tour for his upcoming film Emancipation, but the SYSCA in me is thinking back to this piece, and this podcast episode.
Anyway, you can watch the full chat here if you want:
It’s Friday so you get horoscopes!
Today’s mundane poll:
Protests in China, & Gaslighting, Explained (The Shit Show Podcast)
What do we do with Chris Brown? (Culture Vulture Podcast)
Ngozi Fulani: Lady Susan Hussey's race comments were abuse, says charity boss (BBC)
Christine McVie, Fleetwood Mac singer-songwriter, dies aged 79 (BBC)
Elon Musk claims Neuralink is about ‘six months’ away from first human trial (The Verge)
Instagram Is Over (The Atlantic)
‘Wednesday’ Shatters Netflix Record, Making Season 2 A Sure Thing (Forbes)
i pay attention to the flight attendants bc i feel bad if no one watches them. like when you give a presentation in class and everyone is ignoring you.
Me after I pay close attention during the safety briefing: This is great. I'm going to get a good grade in plane, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.