In the late nineties Leah Reich was working for the video game website IGN, which was the most popular website on the internet for 13 to 18 year old boys at the time. She started reading and responding to the site's mailbag, and before she knew it she had become the trusted advisor for thousands of lonely teenaged boys. This week PJ (who was one of those boys) talks to Leah about the trials and rewards of being a counselor to confused, budding nerds.
TLDR - #37 – Every City Gets the Hero it Deserves
On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Police released a video of some unidentified suspects in a brutal attack on a gay couple. Within a few hours, a Philly sports fan and his online friends had identified some of the people in the video without the blizzard of false accusations that usually accompany an online investigation. Alex speaks to "Fan Since 09" about how he managed to corral a online mob into potentially solving a crime.
TLDR - #36 – The Mystery of Childish Gambino
Rapper Childish Gambino (A.K.A actor Donald Glover) famously claims to have received his rap pseudonym, "Childish Gambino," from an online Wu-Tang Name generator. But investigating whether this story is true or not led TLDR host Alex Goldman on an odyssey of discovery.
TLDR - #35 – Stolen Pictures
This week, hackers stole and published naked photos of female celebrities. Forbes reporter Kashmir Hill has covered stories like this before, but she says that this latest example has completely changed her mind about who to blame for these thefts and how to prevent them.
TLDR - #34 – The Accidental Outing of Rwanda’s Most Powerful Troll
Steve Terrill is a journalist who works in Rwanda. Or at least he worked in Rwanda, until he accidentally got the office of Rwanda's president Paul Kagame to implicate itself in a long-running online harassment campaign. Alex talks to Steve about inadvertently exposing the Rwandan government's most prolific troll, and being banned from the country as a result.
TLDR - #33 – Unfollow A Man
A few weeks ago, writer Katie Notopoulos created a holiday called Unfollow a Man Day, wherein everyone (women and men) was encouraged to Unfollow a Man on social media. Men's rights activists were enraged, cable news was intrigued, and a lot of people felt quiet relief. This week PJ talks to Katie about her mission and her manifesto.
TLDR - #32 – An Imperfect Match
This week, dating site OK Cupid put up a blog post describing experiments it conducted on its users. In one experiment, the site told users who were bad matches for one another that they were actually good matches, and vice versa. Alex and PJ talk to OK Cupid President and co-founder Christian Rudder about the ubiquity of online user experimentation and his defense of potentially sending OK Cupid's users on bad dates.
TLDR - #31 – Race Swap
Whether you think the internet is a great or terrible place is partly a reflection of which parts of the internet you choose to visit. It's also a reflection of who you are, and how people online react to you. Mikki Kendall is a writer who deals with an extraordinary amount of trolling and vitriol online. Mikki is a black woman in real life, and she created an experiment to see how her online life would change if she were a white man.
the memory palace - Episode 62 (We’ve Forgotten James Powell)
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Thank you kindly.
The music pulled from "Blue Sands" by the Chico Hamilton Trio.
TLDR - #30 – The Russian Troll Army
Last month, documents surfaced that showed a company called the Internet Research Agency was paying people in Russia to go to an office and post pro-Kremlin comments all day. Alex talks to Buzzfeed's Max Seddon about why they do it, and how successful they actually are at swaying public opinion.