The Computer Room: Recent Episodes
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I’m Katherine Dee. I read in an industry newsletter that I should re-introduce myself in every post. I’m an Internet ethnographer and reporter. This newsletter is filled with interviews, takes on current events, a sporadic advice column, Craigslist-style missed connections, Internet culture explainers, streams, a book club, predictions and forecasts… There’s a lot of stuff. I also spend maybe 20 hours a week talking to people about how they use the Internet. Consider chipping in $2 for my efforts:
Alright — I did NOT edit last night’s call-in show with Taylor McMahon and Alex Dobrenko`. I’m just biting the bullet and posting it for all to see, no paywall, rambling stories and all. I’ll get shows #5 and 6 out… at some point. This is part of why I had to wind down The Computer Room, I am so bad at staying on schedule with these things! As an aside, if anybody wants to help me edit clips for social, please drop me a line.
Last night’s theme was GHOST IN THE MACHINE. I like to pick themes that are open-ended— could veer paranormal but also has some relation to current events. With the recent spate of Internet ideology-inflected violence, Ghost in the Machine felt fitting.
You know what’s weird, too? Each episode, we have technical difficulties that align with our theme. Ghost in the machine indeed…
Something I wanted to talk more about—but didn’t get the opportunity to—is a trio of books: D. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless’s Phone Calls from the Dead, Jeffrey Sconce’s Haunted Media, and Laurent Kasprowicz’s Des coups de fil de l’au-delà?. Taken together, they trace a through-line in which each leap in communication technology—telegraph wires humming through Victorian séances, radio’s “etheric ocean” of unseen waves, telephones that supposedly ring after the caller has died, television snow, and early computer networks—is framed as a fresh conduit to “the other side.”
Phone Calls and Des coups de fil gather eerie testimonies of phones ringing post-mortem and Haunted Media zooms out to show how every new medium inherits a moment of spectral possibility before its quotidian uses drains the magic away. Which is why today’s spate of think pieces about a digitally-induced “reenchantment”—or claims that AI uniquely revives the paranormal—feel less like a revolution than the latest verse in an old song: the hardware changes, but the instinct to hear more than static on the line endures. (Full disclosure here: this was a claim I myself was making, until I thought a little more about it.)
iPad Kids? More Like iPhone Moms. Something that keeps unsettling me, again and again, is the sight of parents, grandparents, and nannies glued to their phones while the kids they’re supposed to be watching play. I’ll walk into a library or a park and see caregivers staring at screens; the children stay device-free, yet the adults can’t look away from theirs.
Never mind the obvious safety risks. What really gets under my skin—sorry, I know I sound preachy—is the quiet assumption that a playground isn’t time with your kid at all, but rather the environment itself acts as a babysitter that frees the grown-ups up to text or watch TikTok in public. It also erases the chance to meet other parents. Everyone keeps telling me, “Go out and you’ll make mom friends!” But the only places I’ve truly connected are explicitly phone-free “mommy-and-me” groups, some of which ban devices for spiritual reasons.
It’s not that I never dick around on my phone while I’m with my kid. I certainly do. I’m not always engaged. I’ll take long walks with my son while listening to Coast to Coast AM or an audiobook, sometimes I’ll even go on these walks for the sole purpose of listening to C2C. Still, it can be heartbreaking. Yesterday a boy who couldn’t have been more than nine or ten months old was crawling around the library and I had no idea whose child he was. I sat down with a board book and read to him and my son near the entrance until his mom finally wandered over.
On a shallower note, it’s just an eyesore. A line of adults hunched over their phones looks grotesque. And I do mean grotesque. It fs up your breathing, it gives you a double chin, a lot of people’s mouths are agape while they’re distracted and they probably don’t even know it. These days, I rarely see toddlers or young children tethered to devices—we know better, right?—but I do see whole oceans of checked-out moms and dads ignoring the world right in front of them.*The Body as Counterculture. I read this excellent piece by Emma Collins yesterday about embodiment returning as a sort of counterculture. I agree with her and there have been hints everywhere: in wellness culture, in the mainstreaming of bodybuilding, in certain TikTok trends, more tenuously, in certain expressions of disordered eating or self harm, and of course, everyone’s favorite, right-wing vitalists.
Some other stuff:
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Welcome new subscribers! I really appreciate you being here. This is an oddball blog and I do things a little differently than some of my peers in the space. It’s less a straight Internet culture newsletter, and more supposed to simulate the feeling of being in your computer room, late at night, jumping down rabbit hole after rabbit hole. It’s part scrapbook, part diary, part reporting. It’s a little of everything. I hope you stick around.
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Max Read mentioned my writing about efilism in his newsletter here! We make the same argument — there’s something strange brewing in the world of utilitarianism.
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Hi everyone! Tonight’s call-in show will be at 7:30 Central/8:30 Eastern. As usual, we’ll announce the number closer to showtime and it will also be in the title of the stream. The theme is spirits, cryptids, and Appalachian folklore.
Some housekeeping:
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I’m going to wind down audio-only episodes of The Computer Room. I have a bunch of episodes I need to edit and post. I might do it in a big batch behind a paywall. There are maybe a dozen of them. A big part of it is I just… don’t enjoy doing the show. I’ve never been much of a podcast person if we’re being honest. And now, the format feels kind of tired. As my time becomes more precious, it’s just not something I am interested in continuing. Livestreams will continue weekly, under the same name.
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It’s not too late to sign up for Internet Real Life! Last week, Molly Soda presented. (I love her work so much and I am so excited to share her talk.) This week, Gunseli Yalcinkaya will be our guest speaker. Sign up here.
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I am going to be on a panel at The Philosophical Research Society to talk about the intersection of MAGIC AND TECHNOLOGY. Get tickets here. Meme Analysis, Tara Isabella Burton, and Gary Lachman will all be there. I’ll be in Los Angeles until Tuesday if anyone wants to get a coffee.
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I’m now a contributing writer at The Dispatch! Yippee! Read my latest for them here.
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I’m back in Comment mag here. This piece is very near and dear to my heart, it’s about Internet Overexposure Syndrome, something long-time Deeheads are already familiar with.
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I’m back in Pirate Wires with even more about falling in love with chatbots, yumejoshi, and fictive others.
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I’m still conducting/posting case studies. I’m a little behind on everything. My whole family has been battling some kind of virus since late February. It’s really been cramping my style! Such is life as a mamma.
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Please read, comment on, and share my short story. It will make me happy.
Me getting creeped out by caller stories last livestream. Please enjoy our unmade bed.
Many bite my moves. There’s only one me. Support the genuine article 👇👇👇
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Thank you Indi, Arif, and many others for tuning into my live video with Noelle Perdue! Join me for my next live video in the app.
Pre-Internet Era: Speculation, Satire & Historical Fiction (Before 1990s)
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Longstanding impulse: Presidents and politicians have appeared in apocryphal stories, satire, and speculative fiction since the 19th century. Think: romanticized Founding Fathers, counterfactual novels (e.g., what if Lincoln lived?), and pulpy stories like The Amorous Adventures of Aaron Burr (1947).
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Not fanfic—but proto-RPF: These works fictionalized real political figures in ways not unlike modern RPF.
Early Online Era: Slash-Glasses & Quiet Experimentation (1990s–2001)
- 1993: A now-famous early example of political RPF occurred when a fan on a mailing list joked about “slash-colored glasses” after seeing Bill Clinton and Al Gore hug:
“I can’t believe I’m looking at the Leader of the Free World and the Vice-Leader of the Free World through slash-colored glasses!”Source: Fanlore
- Late '90s: Discussions around “real person slash” began in other fandoms—boyband fic (e.g. NSYNC, Backstreet Boys) paved the way. Political figures remained fringe subjects, occasionally fictionalized in humor zines or on forums like Usenet.
2002–2004: FanFiction.net Ban & The Rise of LiveJournal
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2002: FanFiction.net bans all Real Person Fiction, citing legal/ethical issues. This forced RPF writers to seek out more decentralized, semi-private platforms like LiveJournal (LJ).
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2004: A watershed moment—johnxjohn, a LiveJournal community devoted to shipping John Kerry and John Edwards, is created during the Democratic campaign:
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Grew to 800+ members within weeks.
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Split between crackfic and emotionally earnest stories.
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One member said it was a space for “processing stress from the election via fic.”
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A private offshoot was formed to protect more serious or NSFW stories from mockery.
“I didn't want anyone to mock our feelings… or the campaign.” – JohnxJohn memberSource: Fanlore – Political RPF
2008–2012: Obama Era & The Rahmbamarama Surge
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2008–09: With Obama’s historic election came new fandoms:
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Rahmbamarama: An all-caps, chaotic, meme-heavy LJ community devoted to Obama/Rahm Emanuel slash.
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Content ranged from soft romance to unhinged erotica, written in Rahm-style profanity.
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Featured crossovers (e.g., Obama meets Jon Stewart, Biden x Stephen Colbert slash).
“RAHM IS A HOT FCKING MOTHERFCKER. DEAL WITH IT.” – Rahmbamarama userSource: Jezebel
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Pundit RPF: Stephen Colbert/Jon Stewart fanfic becomes a whole genre on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth.
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Obama/Biden ‘bromance’ content surges: mostly memes and buddy-cop headcanons, with occasional slash.
2012: Romney/Ryan & RPF Hits the Mainstream
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Romney/Paul Ryan slash emerges—mostly satirical, but not exclusively.
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One e-book titled "Dressage: A Romney/Ryan Presidential Slash Fic" featured:
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Paul Ryan in ponyplay gear.
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Romney delivering the infamous line:
“Screw me like we’ll screw the poor.”
- The Atlantic published a shocked/excited feature titled:
“The Strange World of Mitt Romney–Paul Ryan Fan Fiction”Read it here
“Erotic fan fiction is having a moment. Slash fans are swooping in.” – The Atlantic
2015–2018: Hamilton & Founding Father RPF Renaissance
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2015: Hamilton becomes a Broadway sensation—and a fandom juggernaut.
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Tumblr teens write thousands of fics about Hamilton/Laurens, Jefferson/Madison, etc.
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RPF blends with canon from the musical.
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Often historically queer, irreverent, and educational.
“Tumblr is reimagining the Founding Fathers as soft gays and hot messes.” – NY Mag
- 2016 onward: Hamilton RPF becomes a major Archive of Our Own (AO3) tag, inspiring both original fic and crossover AUs.
2018–2019: Commercial Obama/Biden RPF Hits Bookshelves
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2018: Andrew Shaffer publishes Hope Never Dies, a mystery novel starring Obama and Biden as a crime-solving duo.
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2018: Tumblr and Twitter users started sharing clips of Beto O’Rourke skateboarding and using punk music in edits—early signs of Beto stan culture.
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2019: Follow-up, Hope Rides Again, is released.
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These books are lighthearted, nostalgic—and openly inspired by RPF memes and tropes. They brought political fanfic into airport bookstores.
2020: Pete/Chasten, AOC Stans & AO3 Fandomization
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Pete Buttigieg’s campaign triggers a mini-fandom:
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Dozens of AO3 fics written about Pete/Chasten.
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Stories described as “gentle, soft, and overwhelmingly vanilla.”
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Some featured love triangles with Beto O’Rourke.
“Pete would be winning the election if it were held on Archive of Our Own.” – JezebelFull article
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AOC stans create fancams, memes, and even a few crackfics (e.g., “AOC x Marjorie Taylor Greene enemies-to-lovers” as meme fic).
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Political RPF merges with TikTok and Stan Twitter aesthetics. Many teens engage through meme edits
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The rise of the Cuomosexual
2020–Present: Ethics, Escapism & Political Mythmaking
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Trump/Putin, Trump/Hillary, and even Trump/Biden fics appear—usually as satire or political horror/comedy.
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Ongoing debates inside fandom:
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Is it okay to write smut about real politicians?
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Are public figures “fair game” for fic, like celebrities?
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Should fan spaces draw a line at living figures?
“Fan fiction helps process real world frustrations. It lets us imagine alternative political realities.” – Psychology TodayRead article
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On today’s episode of The Computer Room, Katherine talks to Philip Rosedale, founder of Linden Lab, not just about Second Life, but about other synthetic lives.
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Join Katherine and producer Taylor McMahon as they discuss Meta’s plans for AI-generated users. Gio returns next week for his regular hosting duties.
Read Katherine’s article on the same topic here.
00:00 Introduction and Greetings
00:39 Meta’s AI Generated Users
02:47 Implications of AI in Social Media
04:56 Human Element in Social Media
08:17 AI's Impact on Culture and Taste
21:39 Fictosexuality and Imaginary Relationships
24:27 The Influence of Environment on Human Behavior
26:01 The Future of AI and Human Intimacy
27:55 Emotional Attachment to Technology
31:50 The Intersection of Technology and Religion
36:29 The Era of Magic and AI
43:21 Human Connections and Missed Connections
Housekeeping:
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Remember to submit Missed Connections, advice questions, and everything else to defaultefriend@gmail.com or by voice here. I’m also always looking for written submissions — send me stories, articles about Internet culture, and more.
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For paid subscribers, our next book club pick is Read Write Own by Chris Dixon for February and our next movie club pick is All About Lilly Chou Chou for January. Dates for both TBD this week.
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Also for paid subscribers, we’re rolling out Internet Studies classes! We’re running a second session of Internet Real Life and a course about everyone’s favorite fantasy series, The Gorean Saga.
Help me become the best known blog of this genre, lest I live out a sort of digital Sunset Boulevard. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
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Leah Prime from our fantastic Art Bell episode and of the blog We Own the Night and I talked about my initial reaction to friend.com’s chatbot launch… and why I might be wrong about it after all.
This is an experimental format I’m releasing to paid subscribers only right now. Please share your feedback! It’s very likely that a more polished version will be un-paywalled later in the week… But I wanted to get a temperature check first. Do you guys like it? Should I do more?
Articles referenced:
Avi Schiffmann’s Tab AI necklace has raised $1.9 million to replace God
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Katherine talks to Sam L. Barker about the enduring legacy of pop-punk and emo, and crucially, about how it all coalesced online. You can also listen to this on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.Read Katherine’s article about blink-182’s unique brand of humor here.Subscribe to Sam’s Substack here.
A note from Sam:
Be My Escape is an essay and podcast project where I look over some of the most enduring emo (I use the term culturally and loosely) and pop-punk albums of the 00s. I want to give this selection of albums the same level of attention and analysis which more established and accepted alternative, indie, hip-hop, and electronic albums are granted. What makes them important, their cultural and personal background, and what lateral topics they uncover, be that gender, mental illness, terrorism, or sexuality.
This project can be seen as a response to what might be termed the great “Emo Revival.”
Since the reformation of My Chemical Romance in 2019 the genre has received a welcome critical and popular re-examination. The explosion of pure enthusiasm at the news led to an outpouring of emotions, articles and memes. Critically ignored in the 00s, and mostly forgotten in the 2010s broadsheet newspapers like The New York Times were now writing sympathetic pieces on albums like The Black Parade. Pitchfork, once happy awarding A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out a 1.5 got busy writing a series of revisionist reviews from young writers redressing the delta.
The When We Were Young festival has become a major yearly draw, pitched directly at Millennial nostalgia. Warped Tour’s coming back. Everyone can admit they like Emo now, it’s fine. But this isn’t intended to be a victory lap. Nostalgia can be fun, but it can also be a sugar rush. Some albums are bad, some albums have aged poorly, some deserve to be forgotten. The genre deserves critical analysis, but it can withstand it too. I’m not interested in MySpace photos of you with shitty straightened hair and a bootleg Senses Fail shirt. I want to know about the Fall Out Boy B-side you cried to. The Dashboard Confessional lyrics of your first tattoo. How a musical album about a goth Bonnie and Clyde got you through the worst times of your life, when everything else abandoned you.
You were embarrassed of it, now you’re not. Let’s talk about it.
Discounts are available for students, the elderly, military, people who work at the mall, service workers, fans and friends of Ron Paul, and true believers in Default Friend. Just email me and I’ll set you up (real btw). You can also just give me the $5:
And a final note from Katherine:
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Paid subscribers are receiving this a little bit earlier than free subscribers.
Katherine reads her Tablet article, “Adam Lanza Fan Art,” a deep dive into the elusive True Crime Community (TCC), a small fandom of mostly adolescents and young adults who treat school shooters and serial killers in the same way other fans might treat boyband members. After …
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In this episode of The Computer Room, Katherine and friends talk about Art Bell's legacy. We meet Leah Prime, who's writing a book about Art Bell, John Steiger who on a mission to hand transcribe every single episode of Coast to Coast AM, and Joseph Matheny, the mind behind Ong's Hat.
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Katherine: Let me know if you enjoyed this, and especially drop me a line if you’d like to submit a video yourself.
In the summer of 2017 I began working on an ambitious video project to reveal the history of the microcomputer revolution through the lens of Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan. All I had was this basic concept and the title which had burst into my head one evening and, for reasons beyond my understanding, demanded to be interpreted through the work. I decided to scour the internet to discover its meaning.
I spent four unemployed months—thousands of hours—of researching books and documentaries and gathering rearranging hundreds of clips and timestamps. I arranged and rearranged the short clips on a video timeline over and over, searching through the combinations like they were tarot cards. Finally it all assembled for me, and I spent 48 manic hours awake until finally uploading the final render of Silicon & Charybdis I on November 26th, 2017. This video, albeit rather technical, tells the story of the Intel 8080 microprocessor, Gary Kildall and his DOS operating system, the MITS Altair and Microsoft BASIC.
I’ve written more about the behind-the-scenes development of episode one over on Less Wrong, my blog about the psychosis I was experiencing during this period.
On March 12, 2018, Silicon & Charybdis II was released. Thanks to a much better understanding of editing and production, this installment is probably the best entry-point into the series. Here we get an understanding of computer programming, the pedagogical techniques of Seymour Papert and his LOGO language, the “killer apps” of Word Processing and Spreadsheets, and the nature of human-machine interaction.
On November 12, 2018, I proudly released Silicon & Charybdis III, which focuses on the evolution of computer simulation from American Air Defense training in the 1960 using punch cards and analogue media, straight through to the merging of object oriented programming and the cathode ray tube into the modern desktop paradigm. If you’ve only time to watch one, this is the one!
Please subscribe to my YouTube channel!
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Katherine and Gio discuss “Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke,” a novella by Eric LaRocca about a complex BDSM relationship between two women that unfolds through emails, forum posts, and instant messages in 2000. They talk about what it meant to “log on” in 2000, lesbian media, and whether online relationships are uniquely suited to BDSM dynamics. Gio also reveals that, somehow, he didn’t know Katie Herzog of BARPod is a lesbian.
Help make “number go up” by subscribing:
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Katherine talks to a brony Zoomer about being online, mediated friendships, the fantastical world of My Little Pony, and the revival that the fandom is experiencing right now.
Buy your Mare Fair tickets here, read the infamous MLP fan fic “The Lunar Rebellion” here, and watch the first four seasons of MLP here.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe
Kickstarter and Metalabel cofounder Yancey Strickler walks in on Gio and Katherine gossiping. Together, they talk about the meaning of gossip, the Internet as a source of power, and what happens when everything moves from main to the group chat.
Check out Metalabel.
Read Yancey's writing:The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet The Post-Individual
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Lauren and Grady are Chicago’s hottest couple. Katherine and Grady talk about playing a role that’s not yourself but based on yourself, their appearance on Help! I'm In a Secret Relationship, where all the weirdos have gone on the Internet, if those chamoy pickles were worth it, and his relationship with Lauren.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe
Lauren and Grady are Chicago’s hottest couple. Katherine and Grady talk about playing a role that’s not yourself but based on yourself, their appearance on Help! I'm In a Secret Relationship, where all the weirdos have gone on the Internet, if those chamoy pickles were worth it, and his relationship with Lauren.
This week, Gio and I are joined by Benjamin Studebaker, a writer, political theorist, leftist, and former co-host of the infamous podcast “What’s Left?” to discuss the Millennial Left.
One question I wish we had asked, and I invite our audience to leave their thoughts about, is whether there is/was a meaningful difference between the Millennial Left and the Tumblr Left. Was the latter a subset of the former, or did it have its own unique character?
From Benjamin’s blog post, “The Millennial Left as a Moment in Internet History,” which you can read in full here:
To find a new politics, we have to abandon our old politics. But we cannot abandon our old politics if our old politics still pays our bills. The millennial left is a declining business model rather than a political movement. It was a fluke of a particular moment in the political economy of the internet. That moment has ended. No one in their right mind would try to start a new left media enterprise in 2024. But those that still exist will carry on until they run out of money. This zombie millennial left will be with us for years to come, compelled by the business model to pretend it is still engaged in political activity. But it has been years since this activity could even plausibly appear meaningfully political. The appearance died with the form of internet that generated it.
All told, the millennial left existed in a plausibly political form for just five years. It began in 2015 and it ended in 2020. It peaked the year it was born, and it declined continuously throughout its lifespan, becoming less and less plausible every year. Death finally came for it over the span of four months, in the form of Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat in December of 2019 and Bernie Sanders’ defeat on Super Tuesday in March of 2020. Consign it to the abyss.
What exactly was the alt-right? A digital subculture? A political movement? What did the press get wrong? Katherine and Gio sit down with Scott Greer to attempt to demystify What Happened an incredible eight years ago…
Katherine sat down with cyberethnographer and artist Ruby Justice Thelot and discussed the role of imagination in computer-mediated communication, paracosms, building durable relationships with AI, and more.
- Ruby's book: https://www.irrelevantpress.com/store/pre-sale-a-cyberarchaeology-of-checkpoints-ruby-thelot
- Ruby's Twitter: https://twitter.com/being_on_line
- Ruby's blog: https://asterisques.com/
Katherine speaks to 23-year-old reality shifter Maddie about her experiences traveling to other timelines. Learn more about Maddie here: https://maddieshifts.carrd.co/
Katherine and Gio discuss the Cut's Andrew Huberman profile, what does and doesn't count as "being political," emo kids, and which up-and-coming public intellectuals they want to model themselves after.
Ross Jeffries, the author of How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed, The Secrets of Speed Seduction Mastery and webmaster of seduction.com and speedseduction.ai, is considered the Godfather of the Red Pill. In his own words, he "doesn’t know shit about relationships, but he can teach you how to get laid."
Gio and Katherine sit down and talk to him about the first PUA newsgroup, alt.seduction.fast, seduction.com, and how the PUA community evolved and the Manosphere developed into what it is today.
Katherine and Gio review the wonderfully weird film Rukus (2018), which is one part of coming of age story and one part mockumentary about furries.
Katherine sits down with Tal from the Tally Mark System to discuss the much misunderstood Dissociative Identity Disorder and its complementary TikTok community. Find Tal here: https://tallymarksystem.carrd.co/.
In today’s mini-sode, I talked to Tobyn Jacobs about cut-out art, waifus, and whether or not it’s all just a bit.
Follow Tobyn on Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube.
In our first episode of 2024 (naturally recorded in September), we interview pretty intense early Japanese language YouTuber AppleMilk1988 about Stickam, Encyclopedia Dramatica, proto-e-girls, and living in Japan.
- That McDonald's ad from forever ago
- applemilk1988's YouTube channel
- applemilk1988's Twitch
Gio and Kat discuss Agamben's book The Open: Man and Animal and what it has to do with otherkins. They read some of it out loud and may or may have not butchered some of the pronunciations. If you need to fast-forward through those parts, peep the PDF of the book here: http://ewa.home.amu.edu.pl/Agamben,%20The%20Open.pdf
Episodes with Gio coming THIS WEEK. We talk so much I haven't been able to edit them down to manageable episodes. I promise!!
I spoke to fictophile/fictosexual Cait Calder about what it’s like to have a fictional crush.
When I first talked about fictosexuality over at UnHerd, I got a lot of pushback: Why does this need to be labeled? Don’t all women do this?
To some extent, sure. The success of Twilight and Fifty Shades is illustrative. Before that, Stephen King wrote an entire book about women's tendency to fall in love not only with fictional characters but with fiction itself—Misery. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth both labeling and exploring. I’m not of the school of thought that the exercise of labeling these more fringe expressions of sexuality is excessive or decadent. If I’ve learned anything from being Terminally Online, it’s that most of these things aren’t “fake.” They’re unconventional and our language hasn’t caught up the way even television has impacted people’s emotional landscapes.
Online dating, objectum sexuality (when you fall in love with an object, like a robot or a rollercoaster), the limerence of writers like Dante Alighieri, fandom, divine devotion, and fictophilia all exist on a spectrum.
What are the contours of that spectrum, though? “Loneliness” isn’t a good enough answer. I’m still figuring it out.
Cross-posting this mini-sode from default.blog to this feed. Katherine sat down with a former otherkin to discuss life with a human body and anime soul.
Check out nabby's art here: https://linktr.ee/inviteonlycomic
Gio and Katherine discuss the 2005 film Hard Candy, To Catch A Predator, Lucas' room, and the moral panic around and reality of chatroom pedophiles.
Katherine is DONE with Zoomers re-writing Internet history and being smug to her about it. It is NOT a girl's world, ladies -- at least online. Gio has some other ideas. She and Gio discuss WIRED's "Everyone Is A Girl Online," miladys, Biggie Slonk, pregnant Megumins, and the myth of the "Girl Internet." They collectively mispronounce Tiqqun at least a dozen times.
Vers and Lukas drop by and talk about e-dating, e-girls, e-ating disorders, and secret political Facebook groups.
Steff and Katherine discuss Lauren Oyler's Fake Accounts and Patricia Lockwood's No One Is Talking About This. Warning, Katherine struggles through a Harper's review. She got a little too big for her britches with the whole "reading quotes out loud" thing.
we met online. is a new show from Katherine Dee and Naama Kates. In this cross-posted episode, Naama and Katherine discuss cam girls: the history, business model, cultural context, and psychology of these digital entertainers. Listen here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/we-met-online
Regularly scheduled episodes of The Computer Room will resume next week.
we met online. is a new show from Katherine Dee and Naama Kates. On episode one, Katherine and Naama discuss 2011’s seminal documentary, Catfish: the movie that started a show, a phenomenon, and a prolific career for its star, Nev Schulman.
Listen here.
Follow on Twitter: @wemetonline
Is Chat-GPT sentient? What does it think about when you log off? Steff and Katherine explore new developments in AI, as only non-technical people can.
Katherine and Steff are joined by Perry Abbasi, a Chicago-based lawyer whose Twitter presence recently "made headlines" -- in other words, revealed just how reliant on Twitter modern-day journalists are. Katherine has also, once again, fucked with the theme. Someone help her.
Pieces cited:
Police district candidate’s social media full of racist and misogynist posts
How the Online Right gave up on reality
A little stroll through the history of the Internet's favorite gossip sites: Pretty Ugly Little Liars, KiwiFarms, The Dirty, lolcow.farm, Perez Hilton, and Lipstick Alley. And of course...honorable mention, the Encyclopedia Dramatica.
This was recorded weeks before Katherine had her moment of enlightenment about random Internet strangers.
Theme: Computer Love, covered by Envelope Generator
Two of two in a series about Adam Lanza’s digital footprint. This has some overlap with episode one, and they don’t need to be listened to in order. Follow Gio on Twitter here and on YouTube here.
Theme: Beehive Days by Locust Toybox
André Brock, professor and author of Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures, popped by the show to talk about the origins of Black Twitter, the importance of writing about digital subcultures as they’re developing, digital whiteflight, and the first Black social networking site, BlackPlanet.com.
Find André’s work here and on Twitter here.
Articles referenced:
How Black people use Twitter, Farhad Manjoo
You Can Tweet Like This, Or You Can Tweet Like That, Or You Can Tweet Like Us, Post Bourgie
What Were Black People Talking About on Twitter Last Night?,Choire Sicha
Micah’s “Black people on Twitter” theory, Nick Douglas
From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultural Conversation, André Brock
…and the research on Black Twitter conducted by Deen Freelon, Meredith Clark, and Charleton McIlwain
Author and prolific #WitchToker Chaweon Koo stopped by the pod to talk about technomancy, eco-philosophy, quantum leaping, the demons of TikTok, and some spicy, now six month old drama.
Themes:
No Escape from Dreamland by Son of Perdition
It’s Out There and It’s Gonna Get You by Paper Chase
Overworked, overpaid, and probably undertaxed: today, we dive into the world of /r/overemployed.
Happy New Year! Steff and Katherine the wonderful world of Internet fad diets: keto, paleo, carnivore, frugivore, Bulletproof Diet, Ana Boot Camp, Ray Peatism, Raw Egg Nationalism, and Whole30.
Correction: At some point, Katherine incorrectly states Susun Weed was pro-raw veganism! Susun Weed merely debated raw vegans. Stuff gets fuzzy that far back.
Link:
Salo Forum Archive
Theme: Computer Love, covered by Envelope Generator (This is the final, static theme. I promise.)
While Kat is in Colombia having a mental health episode, Steff interviews Alex Perez, "the Iowa Pariah," whose controversial interview with editor and writer Elizabeth Ellen inspired the entire staff of Hobart Magazine to resign.
Read the interview here.
Outro: "Guantanamera" by The Sandpipers
Default Friend is joined by a new cohost, Poetry Grifter, to talk about two digitally native pieces of literature, Finally, Some Good News and Bronze Age Mindset.
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
Default Friend is joined by a new cohost, Poetry Grifter, to talk about two digitally native pieces of literature, Finally, Some Good News and Bronze Age Mindset.
The Rise and Fall of the Alt Right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n887xDKppmE&ab_channel=BlitheringGenius
Finally, Some Good News:
https://www.amazon.com/Finally-Some-Good-Delicious-Tacos/dp/1790356229
Bronze Age Mindset:
https://www.amazon.com/Bronze-Age-Mindset-Pervert-ebook/dp/B07DJQ89TD
You’ll have to forgive me for being half-asleep on this one. Oliver Bateman of What’s Left fame and I discuss sex negativity, dating apps, my dating history (here’s where my fatigue becomes obvious), and female muscle morphs. We return to our regularly scheduled programming next week. 😌
Subscribe to What’s Left? here.
In this episode, I talk to the YouTube personality and fellow Fan Studies guy, Peter Coffin about YouTube, politics, and the mob.
This was a wide-ranging conversation.
We talked about mIRC WWE roleplays, the impossibility of creating a genealogy of bodybuilding forums, how trolling evolved from Usenet to Twitter, the implicit similarities between Aimee Terese and Zyzz, why the digital invites body modification, male-to-male transsexuals, and the lasting impact of what the New York Times’ once dubbed “the male fitness internet.”
Read Oliver’s EXCELLENT reporting here:
The Unheard History of Bodybuilding Forums
Steroid Solidarity
Muscle, Smoke, Mirrors
The Life of a Jacked Guy in 2019
How Selfies and Social Media Shaped Modern Bodybuilding
What Could Have Triggered Elliot Rodger?
Books referenced:
Muscle, Smoke, and Mirrors by Randy Roach
Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder by Sam Fussell
Theme: I Should Have Walked Away by KAAZE
As a paying subscriber, you receive this episode a week early. Last week’s episode with Rayne Fisher-Quann is now available for free. Listen here:
Subscribe and receive early podcast releases, a link to my Discord community, movie nights, the advice column, and a whole lot about Internet culture.
This was a wide-ranging conversation.
We talked about mIRC WWE roleplays, the impossibility of creating a genealogy of bodybuilding forums, how trolling evolved from Usenet to Twitter, the implicit similarities between Aimee Terese and Zyzz, why the digital invites body modification, male-to-male transsexuals, and the lasting impact of what the New York Times’ once dubbed “the male fitness internet.”
Read Oliver’s EXCELLENT reporting here:
The Unheard History of Bodybuilding Forums
Steroid Solidarity
Muscle, Smoke, Mirrors
The Life of a Jacked Guy in 2019
How Selfies and Social Media Shaped Modern Bodybuilding
What Could Have Triggered Elliot Rodger?
Books referenced:
Muscle, Smoke, and Mirrors by Randy Roach
Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder by Sam Fussell
I would love to do a follow-up episode dedicated just on Zyzz. If anyone has any guest recommendations, feel free to let me know below.
I needed to add something below the line to create the paywall. Here’s more Zyzz. Your dollars will go to me getting a fake tan today.
And for the heterosexual gentlemen, of which there are maybe two, here’s Paris Hilton in a bikini:
This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
One of my favorite TikTokers, Rayne Fisher-Quann, joined me to talk about TikTok, cancel culture, the futility of the culture wars, how people talk about casual sex, and a shared favorite topic, the Internet.
You can find Rayne’s reading recs, advice column, and internet culture observations here (and you can follow her on TikTok here).
Theme: You’re Standing On My Neck by Splendora
In episode one, I speak with the author of the essay, “The Ghost of Adam Lanza,” BlitheringGenius.
I’d also like to add a content warning. We don’t discuss the tragedy at Sandy Hook, but the nature of our discussion may upset some listeners.
Theme: Beehive Days by Locust Toybox
Meta-Nomad, the host of another one of my favorite podcasts, Hermitix, and I talk about cyclical backlashes, the frontiersmen of the Metaverse, walking the walk, and the importance of starting a garden.
I cut this one a little short because towards the end, it got a little inside baseball and we went on a long tangent about a specific book. Initially, I was planning on this being released in written format, but was pleasantly surprised that the audio quality wasn't too too bad.
Theme: Telekon by Gary Numan
Listen to Hermitix here.
Years ago I was an angry young man And I'd pretend That I was a billboard Standing tall By the side of the roadI fell in love With a beautiful highway This used to be real estate Now it's only fields and trees
— [Nothing But] Flowers, The Talking Heads
Please excuse the static!
This is an interview with the anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan.
What to say about John. He’s a really nice guy. He’s anti-civilization, but not an accelerationist (as far as I know). He’s an icon. There’s also a chance you don’t know who he is.
John Zerzan was one of the first philosophers I ever read. I’ve been a fan of his work since I was very young. I remember a long, long time ago, it must have been the mid-2000s, anarcho-primitivism was having a real moment online. I was old enough to grok it, young enough to still be enchanted by it. As I’ve grown older, there’s lots about his work that I can’t totally get behind or relate to (for example, one thing I’m learning about my politics, whatever they are, is that I don’t believe you can eliminate hierarchy), but I still think it’s well worth checking out. His commentary on symbolic thought, time, and computers are both especially interesting and prescient.
You can read more of his work here. I also highly, highly recommend his two appearances on one of my favorite podcasts, Hermitix, The Death of Civilization, and Time and Primitivism.
On this episode, I talk to the hostesses my favorite podcast, Nymphet Alumni. We talk about the lolcowification of TikTok, Marshall McLuhan, what would happen if Tavi Gevinson met Curtis Yarvin, incel ascension, digital game, and a hell of a lot more. One of my favorite episodes yet.
Also, I quote a hypothetical Russian person at some point. I'm not Russian. The person I made up for my example is!
Listen to Nymphet Alumni here.
Other relevant links:
https://sherbert.biz/selected-work
https://www.reddit.com/r/aliceandfernsnark/
https://defaultfriend.substack.com/p/incels-incel-ascension-incel-chasers?s=w
https://defaultfriend.substack.com/p/the-inverse-of-the-fuck-boy/comments?s=w
Theme: Lolita Ya-Ya by Nelson Riddle
I have a backlog of episodes! This is a conversation I did with Atoosa Rubenstein, former Editor-in-Chief of Seventeen and founder of Cosmogirl, in January (😅) about her career, the importance of content curation, and her wonderful Substack, Atoosa Unedited.
P.S. I was sick once again while recording and there are a lot of "I'm sick" noises in this episode. I'm sorry.
I spoke with the writer and technological theorist L.M. Sacasas about his work, grounding your perception of digital technology in philosophy, and moving towards a more coherent understanding of what the Internet is. Subscribe to his Substack here.
Theme: Computer Love by Kraftwerk
Today, Emmet Penney, host of ex.haust, and I discussed PKD's sprawling 1972 speech from the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention, "The Android and the Human."
I encourage everyone read the whole piece here, but it's perhaps best summed up by the following quote:
Our environment — and I mean our man-made world of machines, artificial constructs, computers, electronic systems, interlinking homeostatic components — all of this is in fact beginning more and more to possess what the earnest psychologists fear the primitive sees in his environment: animation. In a very real sense our environment is becoming alive, or at least quasi-alive, and in ways specifically and fundamentally analogous to ourselves...Rather than learning about ourselves by studying our constructs, perhaps we should make the attempt to comprehend what our constructs are up to by looking into what we ourselves are up to.
Read it here.
From the “glow up” to main character syndrome, the internet loves a hero (or an anti-hero, as it were). I sat down with my dear friend Meme Analysis to talk about what this has to do with the persistent popularity of MGMT’s “Little Dark Age” on TikTok.
Theme: Little Dark Age by MGMT
Paul Town makes a return to my Substack for a conversation about writing books, moving to Southeast Asia, and killing time.
Produced by: Will Kraus
Joshua Citarella is an artist and researcher whose work focuses on the fringe political groups developing in cyberspace. I love his work, partially because it’s a reminder to me that there’s more to Internet politics than the Dissident Right. In fact, talking to Joshua was good reminder in general of the vastness of cyberspace. For me, I always think of it through the lenses of Twitter, Tumblr, and TikTok. Certain podcasts. Journalists.
But there’s a whole other ecosystem on YouTube, Twitch, and Instagram.
It got me thinking about two things: Fans don’t always mean influence, and influence doesn’t always mean fans. Influence and fans don’t always mean you’ll be familiar with either group.
We talked about a lot, more than just the terrain of online life. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much I did.
Theme: The Robots by Kraftwork
Produced by Will Kraus
Here’s a theory I’ve been kicking around with today’s guest: Tumblr was an extension of MK Ultra. I’ve never been more serious.
Subscribe to Limpida’s Substack here.
Theme: Autobahn by Kraftwerk
Produced by: Will Kraus
Jack makes a return and we discuss Tumblr fake stories, from Oppa Homeless Style to my personal favorite, Aceggots. What’s the difference between a fake story and just lying online? Is there a meaningful difference? Is there a taxonomy of fake posts? Beyond that, are there discrete genres?
Theme: Are You Satisfied? by Marina
Produced by: Will Kraus
Listen now (62 min) | ft. Emmet Penney
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
In this special crossover episode, Emmet returns to discuss Carmen Hermosillo's/humdog's iconic essay about self-commodification on the WELL (Whole Earth 'Letronic Link), "pandora's vox."
Read it here:
https://gist.github.com/kolber/2131643
Listen now (79 min) | ft. Jack Crum of 404Tales
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
Jack Crum of 404Tales joins me for a conversation about internet ethnographies, the history of Tumblr, and what nobody had the balls to say about #GamerGate.
Theme: The Great Fairy Fountain Etude
Happy Wednesday folks.
Audio posts are back, with more of my voice than anyone could realistically ever want to listen to.
But first, I’m promoting this episode of ex.haust. Emmet Penney and I talk about one of my favorite pieces of tech writing of all time, Julian Dibbell's essay, "A Rape in Cyberspace."
There’s just so much to say about “A Rape in Cyberspace.” I think it’s one of those rare pieces I could talk about for hours. In fact, I think this is the third piece of content I’m releasing on it in just a few short months. It was so prescient.
I mean, today, The New York Post ran this headline: Mother opens up about being ‘virtually gang raped’ in metaverse. But this piece is so much more than just the question of, “What is digital rape?”
It poses some very important questions about the nature of the body, how identity is shaped in cyberspace, the myopia-inducing effect of the Internet, how play helps us construct who we are, how we should govern non-physical places, and what the Internet even is.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes:
Where virtual reality and its conventions would have us believe that exu and Moondreamer were brutally raped in their own living room, here was the victim exu scolding Mr. Bungle for a breach of “civility.”
[…]
MUD-made world is neither exactly real nor exactly make-believe, but nonetheless profoundly, compellingly, and emotionally true.
[…]
And then there were what I’ll call the techno-libertarians. For them, MUD rapists were of course a**s, but the presence of a*s on the system was a technical inevitability, like noise on a phone line, and best dealt with not through repressive social disciplinary mechanisms but through the timely deployment of defensive software tools. Some ae blasting violent, graphic language at you? Don’t whine to the authorities about it — hit the @gag command and said a***e’s statements will be blocked from your screen (and only yours). It’s simple, it’s effective, and it censors no one.
[…]
Toading, they insisted (almost convincingly), was much more closely analogous to banishment; it was a kind of turning of the communal back on the offending party, a collective action which, if carried out properly, was entirely consistent with anarchist models of community. And carrying it out properly meant first and foremost building a consensus around it — a messy process for which there were no easy technocratic substitutes. It was going to take plenty of good old-fashioned, jawbone-intensive grassroots organizing.
[…]
“Where does the body end and the mind begin?” young Quastro asked, amid recurring attempts to fine-tune the differences between real and virtual violence. “Is not the mind a part of the body?” “In MOO, the body IS the mind.”
[…]
I have come to hear in them an announcement of the final stages of our decades-long passage into the Information Age, a paradigm shift that the classic liberal firewall between word and deed (itself a product of an earlier paradigm shift commonly known as the Enlightenment) is not likely to survive intact.
If you’ve been following my work for a while, then you might notice that the groundwork Dibbell laid in “A Rape” has also profoundly informed my thinking about Tumblr: the body IS the mind.
I feel compelled to add, though maybe this is misguided, that it’s been bittersweet to see how some of these conversations have picked up in recent months. Particularly the ones around Tumblr and fandom’s role in shaping the Internet.
But all that’s another conversation for another post.
Like this episode? Subscribe to ex.haust here.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
WARNING: This episode's audio quality is exceptionally, exceptionally bad. Special thanks to Will Kraus for cleaning it up. In future episodes, I’ll be using a better mic.
Is a journalist who reports on virtual events that happen in a virtual world still a journalist? If you choose to present yourself as a rabbit online, does that say anything meaningful about who you really are? I spoke with Peter Ludlow, founder of The Alphaville Herald about living your life—fully online.
Referenced articles:
Raking muck in "The Sims Online" by Farhad Manjoo (Salon, 2003)
Evangeline: Interview with a Child cyber-Prostitute in TSO by Peter Ludlow (2003)
A Real-Life Debate On Free Expression In a Cyberspace City by Amy Harmon (2004)
While ATO is on hiatus, from DF's The Computer Room:
I talked about Usenet (and, incredibly, mispronounced it), elitism, and the lost civilizations of the Internet with the most famous blogger in the world.
I’m not one of his readers, but I feel like I understand him a lot better after hearing him talk about the Internet. After this conversation, I’m left wondering… do we need to govern the Internet, as though it were a physical place?
(I also wish I asked him about his galaxy of other projects.)
Theme: Computer Love by Kraftwerk
Audio edited by: Will Kraus
In an episode that may or may not be part of After the Orgy, Default Friend and friend of the pod and artist Gio Pennacchietti discuss internet-based creoles, the Internet's obsession with the body, the trad thots of yore, 'found footage' e-girls and self-posters, Girl Bosses as a sexual orientation, and why Default Friend wasn't bat mitzvahed.
Theme: Sara perché ti amo by Ricche e Poveri
Find Gio around the web:
https://twitter.com/giantgio
https://gioscontentcorner.wordpress.com/author/giopennacchietti/
Get your Default Friend fix:
defaultfriend.substack.com
As for TPG, she has requested for me to amend to "you know where to find her."
In an episode that may or may not be part of After the Orgy, Default Friend and friend of the pod and artist Gio Pennacchietti discuss internet-based creoles, the Internet's obsession with the body, the trad thots of yore, 'found footage' e-girls and self-posters, Girl Bosses as a sexual orientation, and why Default Friend wasn't bat mitzvahed.
(If anyone can help me edit audio… I’ll take it… This was my first attempt.)
Theme: Sara perché ti amo by Ricche e Poveri
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
On a very special episode of After the Orgy, Default Friend and The Personality Girl talk to the one and only Marc Andreessen about the pilot of HBO's Silicon Valley. Default Friend may or may not be painfully starstruck this episode.
You can also listen to this episode on Patreon, Spotify, Simplecast, and Apple Podcasts.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
Fresh off going viral with their own respective Twitter mishaps, DF and TPG discuss Alice Munro's "An Ounce of Cure," a short story about a teenage girl who accidentally humiliates herself during a drunken, angst-ridden babysitting gig.
Theme: Friday I'm In Love by The Cure
Default Friend and the Personality Girl discuss the 2013 Elizabeth Wurtzel essay "Elizabeth Wurtzel Confronts Her One Night Stand of a Life" and Dan Sallitt's 2019 film Fourteen. What does it mean for a woman not to grow up? What does it mean for anyone to accept responsibility for their lives, as an adult?
Theme: Good Advice by The Growlers
In a rare completely unedited episode, DF and TPG discuss Smooth Talk (1985), The Follower (2019), and the story that inspired both, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates (1966).
In their first in-person episode, Default and TPG talk about Larry Clark's 2004 casting-couch film "Impaled," porn, casual sex, and when anal becomes sacred.
Theme: More, More, More by Andrea True Connection
In 2012, Tao Lin’s literature website, Muumuu House published a short story called “Adrien Brody.” Written by the pseudonymous Marie Calloway, it recounted a tryst between a 21-year-old woman and a much older writer (with a girlfriend) in the Brooklyn leftist/literary scene. As people began to speculate about the real identity behind the titular character, a fiery debate started: Was this art, or was this an over-glorified Tumblr entry? Even critics who sided with Calloway, who enjoyed her writing, didn’t evaluate the story for what it was: a piece of short fiction.
If you Google “Marie Calloway + Adrien Brody,” it’s easier to find critiques of the piece than the story itself. To this day, it seems as though Marie’s writing is fated to be overshadowed by the conversation around it.
On today’s episode we finally give “Adrien Brody” the credit it’s long deserved. Not as a political statement, not as a feminist act, not as an attempt at micro-fame, but as a work of confessional art that poignantly captured what it meant to sexually awaken in the early 2010s.
(We love you, Marie.)
Stories and articles referenced:
Adrien Brody by Marie Calloway
The New Bad Kids of Fiction by Stephen Marche
Microfamed by Hamilton Nolan
The Oversharers Win by Hamilton Nolan
The Personal-Essay Boom is Over by Jia Tolentino
Inefficient Intimacy by Rob Horning
Marie Calloway on Her New Novel and Being Called Jailbait by Lisa Carver
You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Simplecast, and Apple Podcasts.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
You follow him on Twitter. You've read his books. You've subscribed to his Substack. And now, you’ve seen him in the Thursday Styles section of The New York Times. Default Friend and the Personality Girl are stoked to welcome the inimitable Paul Skallas, aka the LindyMan, to After the Orgy, where they have a wide-ranging conversation about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, tech, strivers, Adderall, young adult literature, parenting, and everyone's favorite topic: women under 25.
You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Simplecast, and Apple Podcasts.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
Default Friend and the Personality Girl are joined by infamous playwright, director, screenwriter, and BYU alum Neil LaBute. Together they unpack the question, "What should you do if your boyfriend doesn't think you're a 10?"
You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Simplecast, and Apple Podcasts.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
Theme: Johnny Angel by Shelley Fabares
Stories and films discussed:
- The Feels of Love
https://www.guernicamag.com/the-feels-of-love/ - It Felt Like Love
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2328922/ - Forever's Gonna Start Tonight
https://vimeo.com/115435198
Do Kristen Roupenian's "Cat Person" and Tony Tulathimutte's "The Feminist" read the same in 2021? Default Friend and The Personality Girl have a wide ranging discussion on Kristen Roupenian's "Cat Person," her short story collection featuring "The Bad Boy," Tony Tulathimutte's "The Feminist,"and the inverse of the f**k boy.
Short stories and articles referenced:
Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian
The Bad Boy by Kristen Roupenian is not available outside of You Know You Want This; read an analysis of it here.
The Feminist by Tony Tulathimutte
The Inverse of the F**k Boy by Default Friend
Discussion time stamps:
Cat Person: 10:34
The Bad Boy: 59:37
Summary of Kristen Roupenian's work: 1:19:13
The Feminist: 1:12:18
Spoiler for Full Moon Over Paris (Rohmer): 1:21:20-1:22:03
You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, Simplecast, and Apple Podcasts.
This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at defaultfriend.substack.com/subscribe
