[SPEAKER_02]: I guess we have to talk about Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: It kind of just makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, is there a really recent update?
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't heard...
[SPEAKER_01]: They've heard launch.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've heard launched.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, on Insta?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and for once, we're gonna be like somewhat on time with us because we're so delightly, we were so delighted and recording our early access Patreon episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't actually see this.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's just a photo of them kind of blankly smiling at us.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's behaving as if he's someone who's sort of just famous for being famous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he almost has the vibe of like a former bachelor contestant rather than the former prime minister of the United States.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the United States, I'm gonna get it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I was just about to be like Hannah, you know, have some pride and instead I called you Canada And that's just me like Canada.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's oozing through my vein.
[SPEAKER_02]: Always top of the mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hold this off the line.
[SPEAKER_02]: Crazy though.
[SPEAKER_02]: Crazy energy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It kind of fatigues me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It does.
[SPEAKER_02]: I find her really tedious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I find her extremely tiring.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think very few things will speak to the celebrity aspect of politics more than, you know, the hot prime minister dating, it kind of now pass a pop star.
[SPEAKER_01]: The fact that he would sort of even be in the running for that kind of a tablet relationship.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, his dad did it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's totally good for doing him control.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the weirder part of Post Prime Minister vibes Trudeau for me is him like really promoting his son's sound cloud musician career, okay, he's a support of father.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I know, but it's the way he's posting it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's again like he's a content creator and not a former politician.
[SPEAKER_02]: It really is how everyone balloons reality stars.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're so right when everyone's like, oh, and now all they can ever do is just be an influencer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, I guess that's the fate of prime ministers and presidents now too.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's also just quite young, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Most world leaders when they retire are fucking geriatric, but Justin should as little baby and he resigned prematurely.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, early retirement, I kind of feel like he in a sense is on the trajectory to be giving cameos in five years time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man, that'll be brutal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't, I'm sure you will.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, but, he is unfortunately, and I had this conversation with my Canadian ex-Pat friends the other day, my favorite thing to do in America is whip out my like Trudeau family facts.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really fun for me to pull up, you know, photos of Justin Trudeau and Phil Castro side by side, or like Margaret Trudeau's limo pick, or whatever that was, studio 54 picks.
[SPEAKER_02]: People love to hear that, or like the Kim Control, peer Trudeau T.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my friends, and I were also having a serious conversation about Justin Trudeau, and I was just kind of like, I just feel like he's a bit of a fame whore, and he always has been, totally.
[SPEAKER_02]: He just, he just wants to be famous, ultimately, and everything leading up to his, like, his stepping into office, kind of signaled that, but we just never fully cut on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think especially if you were in Canada like and you were aware of him more than media figure and present than any kind of political figure I guess until he got became the path that he'd taken.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: On a related note, my dad's friend, obviously Lewis is running for later of the NDP and he's dope and if you are in Canada and you're you're an NDP voter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Keep an eye on him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hannah's metric for voting is are they dope are they dope and he is he once picked up a tab for me at my dad's 60th I tried to buy everyone a round of tequila shots at the owl's club in Toronto if you know you know and my card didn't go through and Avie very subtly quietly and classily snuck in and paid for my tab.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought we decided to gatekeep the owl's club Hannah and now you just blew it up on this podcast
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm so sorry, politicians, me and my year, everyone who's everyone is at the Owl's Club.
[SPEAKER_02]: on the Katy Perry side of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what do we think about that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Good question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Katy Perry is someone who is just at one point was so unbelievably relevant that I think it was sort of like lightning striking.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she was just very lucky that her specific sticks just sort of really took off in the time that it did, but I think that she has like no grasp on contemporary audiences what they want.
[SPEAKER_01]: So she's like looking to all these other people to kind of mimic and to try and take cues from,
[SPEAKER_01]: really lacks a vision or an identity of her own.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so she's been flailing like since got the copycat Miley Cyrus blonde pixie thing and tried to do slow punishments.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some hip hop inspired music.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the thing about Katy Perry is that she just doesn't know when to...
[SPEAKER_01]: throw in the towel or to, you know, take a minute off and it's so it to me it's just I think her desperation for relevancy but then inability to really grasp what makes something or someone pop or like take off makes it harder like it makes it sadder and I think she's digging herself into a hole.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was not expecting such an eloquent response to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you for doing my work because I really did not want to have to think about her very hard and I think I really
[SPEAKER_01]: I've thought about Katy Perry because it's kind of insane and maybe like slightly younger people can't even grasp.
[SPEAKER_01]: how fucking famous she felt for like a period of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: She couldn't honestly pay per her and I tried.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was beating all like Michael Jackson's like records for sales.
[SPEAKER_01]: He needs dream was huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was such a moment, but it was like, it was all gimmick.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that you're like gather round young ones and listen to the tales Katy Perry.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I don't know because she just becomes such a joke and it just feels like it's crazy to watch someone try
[SPEAKER_01]: to like get something that they once had and like not know when to just accept that she's not hip with the kids anymore and that's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's certainly not going to space.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think dating Justin should maybe is the better, like I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're just both kind of cringe millennials and I don't like to dunk on millennials too much, but this cohort of like elder millennials really like embodies that that cringe identity in a way that I'm like, all right, you guys just
[SPEAKER_02]: Better than Justin should have trying and failing to kind of like run our country.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like ultimately, it is core he's just quite a himbo, and I think that he always was.
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe he just needs to go be that like be his true self.
[SPEAKER_01]: I desperately wish that we were back in the days of printed tabloid magazine kind of culture because I think that then if this would feel so much more like interesting and exciting.
[SPEAKER_01]: But right now I'm like...
[SPEAKER_01]: there's way too many things to think about in the fact that a pretty inadequate world leader is now dating a washed-up pop star is sort of just like, I didn't have that on May 2020, if I have been ghosty.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know the other day my friends really went around in a row just talking about nuclear war and I was like, I don't want to be that person that's like, I actually cannot, I just can't do this conversation but I was like, I really can't.
[SPEAKER_02]: They really did you know that, you know, we could probably get new to at any time, any minute, any second of the day, I was like, oh, so Katy Perry, nukes, and with that, we get to our episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: Baby, you're a firework.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Hannah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Dima.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is Rehash, a podcast about the internet phenomena that strike a nerve in our culture only to be quickly forgotten, but we think are due for a revisiting.
[SPEAKER_01]: This season is about communication on the internet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Online, we may have shot the shit, but have we also shot the messenger?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you like our show and you want to hear more from us, you can support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash rehash podcast, where we have bonus episodes and early access to our regular programming.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't want to join the Patreon, feel free to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple podcasts because that helps us out a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you spend any time on the website formerly known as Twitter, the odds are very likely that you've seen or posted a sub tweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I doubt we really have to explain what a sub tweet is, but my yeah for fun, do you want to give it a go?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me try and give it a go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, to be honest, I had heard this word a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I came to Twitter quite late and I feel like I was hearing this word a lot in the time that I was not on Twitter and I didn't understand what it meant.
[SPEAKER_02]: But essentially, it is when you attempt to kind of indirectly invoke someone in your content, usually a tweet.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you're tweeting about that person, but you're not going to name them by name, but you're basically kind of calling them out or talking shit about them publicly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's something I did on my wall a lot growing up, but not on Twitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, sub-tweets or tweets where the subjects are like not named, but they're alluded to.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that what's sub comes from, like, but that's it's sub-jet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, sub is actually short for a subliminal tweet, sub-tweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Apparently, which I, that had never occurred to me, but I guess that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people consider tweets that like name, but don't tag the subject as sub-tweets, but I don't, I'm not using that in this definition.
[SPEAKER_01]: For this, it's just the alluding to a person.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a famous example, actually, if we want to talk about Katy Perry, is back when she and Taylor Swift,
[SPEAKER_01]: Had their big food, she kind of infamously tweeted, watch out for the Regina George and Sheep's clothing, which was very much a reference to Taylor Swift being secretly shady.
[SPEAKER_01]: Although, I do think Regina George and Sheep's clothing isn't like a very well crafted.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like Regina George is already in Sheep's clothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think mixing the two references,
[SPEAKER_01]: didn't necessarily land, but it made a big impact.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I think of Subtweet, that's sort of like the first example I can think of because it was pretty blatant who she was speaking about in the tweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not actually clear when Subtweet first emerged as a term, because Mary and Webster claimed in a blog post that it was first used in 2006, which is when Twitter came about.
[SPEAKER_01]: However,
[SPEAKER_01]: under their actual dictionary entry for the word, they said it was first used in 2009.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I've seen it listed other places as like 2008 or even 2010.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the hard to place, there's no sort of instance that we can link to as
[SPEAKER_01]: the birth of that term and like no specific language.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think the fact that it's so hard to pinpoint when and where the term first emerged is actually very telling because substituting has just sort of been part of Twitter's wider culture from the early days.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, even you were hearing about it without even having to be on Twitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like this thing that really everyone ended up doing, like from the Kardashians, the politicians, to corporations.
[SPEAKER_01]: to like, everyday people and their mothers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It didn't really belong to anyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody was sort of sub-tweeting.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I know you came to Twitter late and I guess you just said you weren't really doing a lot of sub-tweeting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you, do you think there's any chance you've ever sub-tweeted someone in your history as a Twitter user?
[SPEAKER_02]: For sure, like I've definitely posted some shady shit a bit like maybe, yeah, no, I definitely have.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like when I was crashing it about a breakup, I was substituting on my Twitter that had three followers.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like my private Twitter, but I was really crashing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not someone who even asked me to be like, are you okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, maybe in your more public Twitter, like have you ever tweeted about something someone said?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we're like trying to expose someone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I'm not thinking of a specific incident, but I just mean...
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it likely that there has been a discourse or you saw a tweet and you tweeted something that was indirectly in response?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've definitely definitely did some shady shit on Twitter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sure I was invoking someone at some point Without referencing that my name.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, yeah, invoking an event, but usually with someone who had the large following or was like a celebrity It was not usually someone I am necessarily new personally.
[SPEAKER_01]: That makes more sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's sort of an interesting subcategory of the sub tweet is people subdreading about people who will likely never actually see the tweet in question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whenever you look at sort of like a discourse of the day on Twitter, you do see a lot of instances of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you're like, when you're someone who's coming to it without the context, it's very funny because you can tell people are subdreading each other, but you don't actually know what they're tweeting about.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, yeah, in my May December Twitter mini drama, some like person in the Toronto film scene, who I kind of tendentially knew sub-tweeted me and I was like, bitch excuse me, bitch excuse me, like I know who you are and we run on the same scene and also we're both fucking Canadian, have a little bit of solidarity.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wonder if people maybe sometimes think on Twitter that they're tweeting into this void and they presume that people aren't doing the thing that they probably do themselves, which is where you're, if you're paranoid people are talking about you, you do be like looking in all these different avenues to like see if it's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, my favorite was when someone and this was probably like my little nail in the coffin for Twitter was when someone quote tweeted a video I posted no someone I had a who had like 20k followers and like a bunch of people.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know follow them and they quote tweeted my tweet That was just so innocuous and they were like probably gonna delete this but my my least favorite YouTube We're just posted a video and I know I'm gonna hate it or something all these people liked it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like you basically sent this directly to my notification
[SPEAKER_02]: Like she probably gonna delete so covert.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Jesus.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that one's done a little bit But I tried my best to laugh at all very good very much.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel I think I'm I was like I'm also my least favorite youtuber.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I Did most of my sub tweeting in high school when I very much did have Twitter and I was quite messy with it So funny because I was pretty I'm a pretty shy non-confrontational person, but I did you have a non-high school you were kind of
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I was like on the face year end, but I think I definitely also saved some things for the keyboard.
[SPEAKER_01]: One time, this kid from my high school was being in a brat and he was tweeting, like, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, and so I tweeted.
[SPEAKER_01]: We get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hate everything, which I thought was funny and then he blocked we on Twitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe like for context, this specific group of people I was in in high school, where everyone was doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were just like sub-tweeting and tweeting kind of like weird ass shit.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, yeah, yes, they didn't have traditional bullying.
[SPEAKER_02]: It had like malicious drug using really angsty teenagers who sub-tweeted instead.
[SPEAKER_01]: but yeah, so we all do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, it should come as no surprise that, like, despite its popularity, the subject we just pretty much always been universally reviled.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of want to try and understand why that is.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a major charge against the subject is this idea that it's, you know, basically just like passive aggressive.
[SPEAKER_01]: in 2013, which I guess is in the earlier days of the sub-tweet as like a more known term.
[SPEAKER_01]: The writer Edward Champion wrote an article for Salon about how sub-tweeting was ruining Twitter, and he wrote that the sub-tweet is Twitter's answer to passive aggression, which remains the great cancer of American discourse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to focus on this sort of accusation of passive aggression.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you consider the sub-tweet a form of passive aggression, first of all?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it is literally digital passive aggression, but it's the digital embodiment of it, but everything's the digital embodiment of something.
[SPEAKER_02]: Passive aggression needed to go somewhere on the internet.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a feeling you're gonna come in here with a really nuanced take.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, have you listened to this podcast before?
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I kind of, I get this take, but as I alluded to, do want to offer a like maybe more nuanced approach to thinking about the sub-tweet in this context.
[SPEAKER_01]: In a 2014 piece for the Guardian Hannah Jane Parkinson says that the best sub-tweets, ones which are, quote, witty and
[SPEAKER_01]: And I really loved this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she's spot on to illustrate this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here are some Oscar wild quotes that I got from a list of call from another man magazine of his shadiest reads.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the first is from the importance of being earnest.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, I never saw anybody take so long to dress and with such little result.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another from a house of pomegranate.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is really not so ugly after all.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this one from the Duchess of Padua, some cause happiness wherever they go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Others, whenever they go.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you close your eyes and maybe modernize some of the language, do you feel like these could maybe sound like some sort of a sub-tweet?
[SPEAKER_01]: Could you not see someone posting this on Twitter?
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally, I think that there is just going to inherent side eye to a sub-tweet.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you could really make the argument about anything that if it's done with a layer like intelligently, it works.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I mean, there is something just a bitchy and gay about a sub-tweet that Oscar Wilde's, you know, is embodying this does really feel like the whimp gossip is empowering argument.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's floating around, which I sometimes love and sometimes find kind of a reach, but yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna put a pin in bitchy and gay and come back to that actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're putting a pin in bitchy and gay, it's my lucky day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, one, I feel like if the person on the receiving end kind of deserves it, that's one aspect of it, I think anything that any sort of disc that's speaking to some sort of truth that can be acknowledged or like felt among the reader, like the spectator, is always good as well and make it short.
[SPEAKER_02]: Make it short and snappy, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Be concise with it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like it really is ultimately just a diss a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's an art to a good diss.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like wrapping.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like the ciphering.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I mean, is Oscar Wilde not akin to, you know, a drake or a Kendrick in the present age?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, like, yeah, Clarence parents have a real good marriage.
[SPEAKER_02]: Take Clarence out of the equation.
[SPEAKER_02]: You got your sub-tweet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Blank's parents.
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone's parents have a really good marriage.
[SPEAKER_01]: um so basically what you're saying is totally correct I completely agree um the Christine Fire wrote an article from Mel magazine about like what makes a good sub to it and she identified these three components which I'm I'm gonna kind of use as like a barometer for yeah quality they should have your specific experience obviously involved in that
[SPEAKER_01]: embodied situated, situated perspectives.
[SPEAKER_01]: They should have, you know, your followers, sitting on the sidelines, trying to figure out who you're talking about, and then they should contain some greater truth about being alive, which I think, yeah, totally right, a good subject we should have, and entertainment value, and some degree of relatability or minimability, basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to apply this to an excellent subject leader, Rihanna.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rihanna used to have an amazing Twitter presence.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to pull up a couple of
[SPEAKER_01]: that sort of, I think, exemplify a, quote, like, good sub-tweep.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the first is during a few Jews having with Sierra, when Sierra tweeted that Rihanna didn't want to run into her on or off stage, and then Rihanna tweeted, good luck booking that stage, you speak of.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, okay, the context is dark and maybe we have to not think about that, because I just want to talk about the quality of the tweet itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when Amanda Bynes was like really going through it in 2013, she tweeted a bunch of horrible stuff about Rihanna and Chris Brown.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then Rihanna simply tweeted, you see what happens when they cancel intervention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh no, again, context of it, very dark, as a tweet, pretty great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Reonuts, weeding with personality, those are bike on days.
[SPEAKER_01]: like truly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, I think like you were saying with the shortness aspect, like in very few characters, both of these tweets like really managed to clearly reference a specific situation in Rihanna's life, but there's this vagueness to them that you could repurpose them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they could just be soundbites, which I think is like if we're talking about sub-tweets in like the form of an insult, I think that that's what makes them iconic essentially.
[SPEAKER_01]: like that's what makes them really sick.
[SPEAKER_01]: To place the sub-tweet in a more modern context and to bring us back to the bitchy and gay of it all, you could think of the sub-tweet as a form of shade.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in her article, the subtle art of shade, the writer Anna Holmes wrote, at its most refined shade should have an element of plausible deniability, so that the shade's lower can pretend
[SPEAKER_01]: with insibility, making it all the more delicious.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which I also think is like a very similar way to how you might describe a good sub-tweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want what you're saying to be like a pointed critique of something or someone, you want to kind of say something that could just be like a non-sequitor.
[SPEAKER_01]: But once you've like, have the context, you know that it's actually very, very biting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it has to kind of stand on its own.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and so in the article, Holmes argues that shade has always been subversive, and she decides it's cultural significance within marginalized communities, particularly gay men and black women, to argue that shade is essentially a way to covertly communicate something in a way that is like only detectable to a select audience.
[SPEAKER_01]: this idea of where in the company of people that it might be better dangerous for me to be critical of publicly, but maybe in this coded language I can communicate to you, someone from this same community, what we're probably both thinking.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like if you know, you know, kind of situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Holmes calls it basically an art form.
[SPEAKER_01]: She cites the world of drag balls and calls shade a, quote, more developed iteration of reading.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, when you read someone, it's more direct and specific.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd be like, my listing off a bunch of things I don't like about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas with shade, like a sub-tweet, there is this more psychological element because as the recipient, you're meant to be left kind of guessing if you've been shaded or like sub-tweeted about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's clear, but it's not clear enough that you could really call someone out without looking like you're a little bit paranoid.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like gaslighting.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so many characters.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's psychological warfare in the most creative sense, when done right, which is an important aspect to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, if you think about like when Mariah Carey said, I don't know her about Jelo.
[SPEAKER_01]: where it's like, she's not actually saying anything mean about J-Lo.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's more just denying J-Lo's relevancy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Would it be an effective or a bad subject if I was like talking about this five, three bit, she might used to be best friends with, like what I would.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's just because girls who take too long to figure out their mics are so annoying No, let's see that's a shit sub tweet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Did I just obliterate you with my witnesses?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, absolutely on the floor red to filth my dreams being a freestyle rapper were really crushed early on
[SPEAKER_01]: Was this really like slam poetry phase?
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't really like to eat my old.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Holmes continues on the internet, a complex grammar has developed around shade, retaining much of the pleasure in humor of its older iterations, but with wider reaching effects.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take the sub-tweet, a tweet objecting to something someone has said or done without actually using that person's name.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the digital equivalent of talking trash about someone at a dinner table without ever acknowledging the person's presence.
[SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like there's a lot of good stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Austin, Pulse toy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm reading Anna Karenina right now And I feel like people are pretty good at substituting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: It will exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I thought the Oscar Wilde comparison was so perfect Also like if you're reading Shakespeare like there's a lot of fucking shady lines that people are saying to one another And they have the snappiness and like eloquence of a good view on it to Shakespeare was also a bitchy okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like yes
[SPEAKER_01]: but also a woman and also 20 years old and also, um, like five people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So both Jaden's substituting requires stealth and wit, as we've established, which don't necessarily count easy to a lot of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Myself included like my subtoots or ass, they're ass.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, I want to compare Rihanna's Twitter skills to another prolific subtooter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Demi Lovato.
[SPEAKER_01]: In 2018, Demi tweeted the other night I got to sing SNS, which is her song, sorry not sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Directly to one of the USA's most notorious bullies.
[SPEAKER_01]: It felt so fucking great.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the song is about, three exclamation points.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry not sorry that you were in the audience watching me kill it.
[SPEAKER_01]: and then followed it up with, and BTW, he's remaining nameless based he doesn't deserve the relevance, he doesn't have any more.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was about... No, not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, oh no.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, when people try to get like Perez Hilton, famous, not job, quite, just kind of a bottom feeder, but withy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Withy, but also though, it's just the fact that you are tweeting about someone as irrelevant as Perez Hilton.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you're bothered, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then... Do I mean the bottles are also a famous cringe lord, unfortunately?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is someone who is a motion first, with second.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas, I'd say, we all know as the opposite.
[SPEAKER_01]: In 2016, she also tweeted, and regards to Taylor Swift like donated money to Kesha's legal funds, timey love auto is hated Taylor Swift, since they were on Disney.
[SPEAKER_01]: The she tweeted, take something to Capitol Hill or actually speak about something, and then I'll be impressed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like again, I don't know how would you compare her tweets three on us.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just not funny is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, I mean, yeah, Demi Laval, it was not really known for her elaborate word play.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's known for kind of like crashing out publicly often and that's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's okay, but you know she's had a hard time of it, but oh I'm not gonna go to her to be like looking cool and collected, you know
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it goes to show that maybe like this instinct just comes naturally to some more than others.
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you going to talk about Fadre from real?
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it's not a sub-tweet.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just thinking about the really important moment of shade and pop culture history.
[SPEAKER_02]: When Fadre from real has always of Atlanta, I can't remember who the other woman was, but she told them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you, I believe.
[SPEAKER_02]: She basically just destroys her like just eviscerates her verbally by saying that her child was like the product of some man jerking off into a cup so he could buy himself a slice of pizza that night.
[SPEAKER_02]: Something like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, we can actually just well insert it here.
[SPEAKER_00]: She needs a story line so she keeps re-bringing it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: This happened in 2012.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's 2014 now.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's still trying to use it because she has nothing else going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while she's sitting around running around talking about my husband and my father, my children, and she spends her weekends peddling through sperm banks, looking through cats' logs, to try to find a donor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Honey, you don't know if your baby dad will be an expert or a chameleister, because what you will know is that he needed $10 to give him a medium-sized piece, so he ejaculated in a cup, so you could have key it, check that.
[SPEAKER_01]: An incredible moment of shade, definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think real-a-housewives are a really good example to look to for sub-tweeting because they do it shamelessly and politically, especially whilst a season is playing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the best part is, is they will sub-tweet each other for the months that their show is airing, and then they all have to meet the reunion, and then they all have to try and defend their sub-tweet and participate.
[SPEAKER_01]: They weren't sub-tweeting this other person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, they're like, I wasn't about you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, you know, the part of Rihanna's tweets is that she manages to be petty without looking petty and she just comes off as we said as unbothered.
[SPEAKER_01]: Demilivato seems very bothered.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's clear that the subjects of her tweets have been on her mind for a while, which is fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think most of the time before sub-tweeting about someone, that is the case.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because somebody is on our mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I would also say like maybe from a writing standpoint, Demi's tweets are long and specific.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're too wordy, they're clearly more like personal expressions of feelings than a quip.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a diary entry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the types of subduits that I imagine Edward Champion was writing about in his article about passive aggression.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the article he writes, once you peel away the derice of snub, the subduit ultimately reveals that the person not being explicitly referred to really matters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead of empowering the subduiter, the subduit gives power to the unnamed.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, yeah, like you kind of look cool because you're like damn I'm really on your mind when you know you have someone bothered like that it it ultimately does work better in your favor But it's also very difficult to control your emotions, but we'll talk about that later She's so me well, she's living with me for fucking three years.
[SPEAKER_02]: She knows drama queen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, yeah, we've both had our tantrums
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wanted your actor attention away from the sub tweet for a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maya, have you ever heard of vague booking literally never in my life?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I hadn't until I started researching, but every article about the sub tweet would bring up this idea of vague booking as if it were like the older cousin of the sub tweet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like first we had vague booking, then we had sub tweeting.
[SPEAKER_01]: basically vague booking refers to these ambiguous Facebook posts that are written with the intention of getting attention from friends, peers, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like either to have people try and guess like what are they talking about or to try and like get some kind of sympathy or concern.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really not okay today, don't ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: The amount of tweets I posted that were like, I'm sad,
[SPEAKER_01]: I pulled up some examples from my early Facebook days, once that is said, is sad, why would you be such a jerk?
[SPEAKER_01]: I posted a lot of song lyrics.
[SPEAKER_01]: Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes, you just need a little help from your friends, hard emoji.
[SPEAKER_01]: chickens he he heart you're so mean what the hell can you need to get me on some of these next time i want to i wish i could find mine fuck maybe you can insert them i said it's all someone's fault fault and someone are spelt wrong we have i said it's all someone's fault that's so good why they hell am i so tired that's not really a vague book i just thought it was really funny
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so basically the terms fake booking and sub-tweeting can refer to activity outside of the platforms they originated on, I've seen people describe, you know, in real life behavior as a sub-tweet even, but basically like
[SPEAKER_01]: Sub-tweeting is usually about a specific person or institution Whereas the subject of a vague book can be anything Wait, like you can still read an institution like I'm talking about shit about Wendy's but I want to say like the cut published a stupid fucking article Someone might like make a tweet about the article without being like the cut article is stupid But they might be referring to the fact that the cut
[SPEAKER_01]: publishes a lot of stupid articles.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_02]: The cut really has mastered the art of clickbait though, like there's absolutely coming up and I'm, I mean, them right up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like high-routed clickbait.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, they also look a sexy illustration to go along with a clickbait for like semi-intellectuals.
[SPEAKER_01]: So semi-intellectuals set to ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, yeah, like a vague book doesn't have to be about someone or something, or it doesn't have to be about a noun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the subject doesn't have to be a person or like a body of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: The subject can be like something that happened to today, but you're not going to give any detail about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna elude to it so it might be you know like me being like why you such a jerk
[SPEAKER_01]: but it could be a bit more creative, and it could be like wine at 5 p.m. a bunch of ellipses.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we might also insinuate that something's going on with this person, but they're cloaking it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm lyrics are pretty popular choice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wine at 5 p.m. something's wrong with this person.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, like, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: But you're like, I'm gonna let people know I had a bad day, but I'm not gonna say I had a bad day.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, I think he had a topic of bed.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got the soda.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if someone's ant posted, you know, like it's one o'clock somewhere, is it too early to start drinking?
[SPEAKER_01]: And like we know that maybe like she's just had a divorce.
[SPEAKER_01]: but did she do okay okay so she knows that she's posting that with the intentions that like she doesn't know she's down bad a vague book is your way of signaling like give me attention give me some concern but like no fucking way am I gonna write a Facebook status like my ex husband is being really annoying about this custody agreement and he wants to take the girls like for two weeks even though we had plans to go swimming or something you know what I mean
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, get people to message asking are you okay or comment asking you okay signaling without saying it explicitly Did you ever vague book like I've just obviously shared a couple examples of my past Do I ever heard now?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, are you presently vague-looking my- Yeah, I have a current page book and a book is a posting a photo of me crying or like close friends, you know, that's my vague-looking now But, um, well, it's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, my hair was wrong, or like me saying gonna kill myself, you know, with cry face on close friends Um, I certainly have, of course, I was really doing the like, don't ask me what's wrong dot dot dot
[SPEAKER_02]: If you think really mad today about something, but I won't tell you why.
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone's like, what's wrong in the new respond?
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you just PM me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, message me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you would see other people do this kind of behavior, like, what was your reaction?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like back in the day?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it was my friend.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd be like, oh my gosh, like, what's wrong?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh no, if it was someone I didn't know, I'd be like, what's going on?
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd be curious.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'd really wasn't rolling my eyes back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what about in high school?
[SPEAKER_02]: Which I feel like I'd stopped vague booking by the time I was in high school.
[SPEAKER_02]: For sure, I became a little more sentient.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, it's hard for me to know how I felt about the internet back then because I would like to think at this point that I felt a certain way about it but then I'll go back to my Facebook status and like 12th grade and be like, what the fuck?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I didn't know I was up to that, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just a completely different culture and language back then.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now when I see someone sobbed tweeting,
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I'm still nervous here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's interesting, like, I feel like I have a pretty neutral opinion about vague booking to, but the general consensus from what I was picking up in my research is that people found it incredibly annoying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess we have to think about like, we were middle schoolers doing this, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, we didn't have fun to lobes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whole chunk of my brain was missing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there was like no standard for behavior that we were adhering to.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was Lord of the flies out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you think about this in the context of like grown adults who have each other in Facebook who were the ones who were doing this behavior and who all of these think pieces are actually referencing, not like 12-year-olds, I can see why it would be incredibly fucking annoying sometimes to maybe come across or like pathetic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it is weird to think about really social media, not just being dominated by children.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like when you're a kid you have no understanding of anyone who's of an age that is between your age and your parents age.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you're like, what's that?
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have a concept of like 20 something year olds at that age, but they were really on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also sometimes really wonder like the adult I did have found Facebook, like family friends or were relatives.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I didn't have a lot of them, but surely they must have found my Facebook presence.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're like, what do they think when they see the teens posting the shit that we were posting on Facebook?
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have them on there because I technically wasn't allowed to have Facebook.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was on there illicitly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, going back to all of that, like I, I'd say fake books are
[SPEAKER_01]: did like the original equivalent of sying really loudly until some of the last few what's wrong which I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're just like, uh, or if someone like tries to talk to you in the kitchen and you give like really short one word quips.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why the kitchen?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's like a common area or maybe I'm like, that's where people, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm just having a very vis- like, you feel bothered by your mom and your kitchen or something?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that what that is?
[SPEAKER_01]: It just feels like the brube and the house that I associate with passive aggression, I don't know, certainly, maybe I'll unpack that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a passing room, it's a room for passing, each other, and for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: I found an article from the Journal social media plus society that looked at the different ways people look for emotional support on Facebook and one of the tactics that they offered up was vague booking.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the article, they write, like, basically Facebook and really most social media is this confusing place where you're likely being connected with both your closest friends and family and then random acquaintances.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this like merging of audiences takes place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's called context collapse, basically like the context of who you're writing to, kind of gets enveloped into one.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's say you wanted to write a post that was directed to people you were very close to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you were having a bad day, you wanted to seek some kind of emotional support from your friends who are on Facebook.
[SPEAKER_01]: you're also keeping in mind that like your co-workers' wife is also on there and maybe you've got to keep things disagree.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're looking for the right way and the right I guess like the most socially acceptable balance.
[SPEAKER_01]: of offering up your emotional state, but also keeping it discreet enough that it's either not flagging to people as like especially worrisome if they're not someone who has to worry about you or also keeping it like kind of specific and coded so that only people in your in circle will actually know what you're referencing to.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like one of my examples I pulled up, I actually don't remember the context of this is, but I made a Facebook status that was
[SPEAKER_01]: He he.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a cry for help, but it's like you'd have to have been there with me in that instance.
[SPEAKER_01]: to know what that saddest was about.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was very much being written for a target audience, but it was like being sent out to this greater network.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I gave that, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: My friends and I in high school had, and I won't say what it was, but we had a code word for one of us lost our virginity.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we would literally post that code word like on our Facebook status, and then all of us would be like, oh, freaking out in the comments or the replies.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was weird, it was like a performative thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it felt like taboo because it was like the little inside joke of that sex, but yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No exactly, it's kind of, and I think maybe like we are more adapted it because we were on social media in a time where there were definitely these like stronger barriers between those different audiences.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you had your friends and you had your parents and those are two very different groups of people that like shift your behavior I suppose.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe we became even better at like coded messaging.
[SPEAKER_01]: As an outsider, would you say it's pretty easy to spot when someone's fake booking?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, on Facebook, specific.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like, when you're on there, like, you're like, I know what you're trying to do here with this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you just learn the language of these mediums really quickly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, like, social media, like we talked about the creeping episode, but it really does like encourage nosiness.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think you're always going to be like approaching the stuff you see with a degree of like, maybe curiosity, and like intrigue and so I think if you see something relatively vague by some like popular girl at your high school, you're going to be like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Which what is it?
[SPEAKER_02]: And then you go ask your friends, you know, you're like, what do you think she's talking about?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's such a clear language in how people post them and like the characters six of it to the point that like in high school we used to do this thing where we'd go back through each other's Facebook timelines and find statuses we wrote in middle school and then we'd like them or we'd post them to bring them back into everyone's timelines.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so my friend Alexa did that.
[SPEAKER_01]: to one that I had written, but our friend Claire had then gone and commented, message me underneath in high school, because she like spotted exactly like what the situation was.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, she knew.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a magic.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that the thing that people maybe hate the most about vague booking is this sort of trade of pretending that you don't want attention, even though we all know that everybody else knows the language of vague booking and what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like when people are fishing for compliments.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some like really pretty girl will just be like, my day in the life is a five.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the comments could just kind of sniff that fish, really.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like similar here, it's like you're fishing for sympathy or you're fishing for just like people asking you what's wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when you don't tell them it's extra annoying because you're like, well, then why did you post this?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's sort of like, we know that you know that we know thing, so like, yeah, there's a whole charade going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like the thing that people really hated about vague booking in particular is yes, this idea that it's like a cry for attention, whether negative or positive, and I think there's something interesting about specifically early social media before we figured out how to commodify attention to the extent that we have.
[SPEAKER_01]: that wanting it in any form felt really stigmatized.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: This weird era where I think we were trying to retain a sense of dignity in the face of like early social media where it was clear that like these were just attention machines but because we couldn't capitalize off of it yet, we look down on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was more for like social attention rather than like monetary I guess like now it's like more of a combined thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think now that like you can monetize off of attention, we have like more respect for people's ability to garner it, but back on the day it was like if you did anything that was too obviously,
[SPEAKER_01]: asking for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was immediately sort of found upon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, do you think Justin Trudeau would have vague books back then since we even now decided he's a famous horror?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I would love to be on his private Facebook account.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to find his secret Twitter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, as we've established we're both like lifelong drama queens and I kind of want to defend the right to be a little annoying about your feelings online because I think that vague booking is actually just a form of self-expression and so I want to return to our discussions about the artistic merits of a sub tweet because you know earlier we were grading them on
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, we talked about how basically the power of a Rihanna sub-tweet lies in her ability to be both direct and universal, I think alternatively an artfully written vague book should be both indirect and specific.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, enough people need to have an idea for what you're talking about, but the person can be found guilty, you know, of sub tweeting in a way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the appeal of a sub tweet is that it's, yeah, it's not being necessarily pointed at someone, but there's enough context there, whereas I think a vague book,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not clear who you're talking about, but what you're writing is very specific.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like a metaphor.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you're pulling up some very evocative things sometimes, like you're coding your language, but it's just, the subject is just like, not desirable.
[SPEAKER_01]: that to me it's um i'd say like if a good sub tweet is like you know a quip from an Oscar wild play then maybe a good vague book should read like poetry or a song lyric you know what i mean that's beautiful yeah you're coding your meaning you're using metaphor using all these like literary devices sometimes you're literally just quoting a song or a poem uh i had a phase of just like
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely made my Facebook status firework for sure, definitely a lot of Taylor Swift quotes up in there, some Christina Perry, all the hits, yeah, they're evocative, they're expressing an emotion, but they're not spelling anything out.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's Christina Perry, the jar one, what's it called?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, jar of hearts, jar of hearts, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that was like the deepest song I'd ever heard in 2010.
[SPEAKER_02]: I quoted this like really obscure Michael Jackson song once on my profile picture and I was like recently and looked back at it and I was like, what the fuck was I trying to say?
[SPEAKER_02]: She's not like other girls.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a lyric that had no context or meaning in any way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it was, it wasn't really poetic either.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was just kind of a rap.
[SPEAKER_02]: What was it?
[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, this is it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here I stand.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the light of the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: But this is it, is that's the, he was touring that, when he died.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here I stand.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it was like, it was just nine.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it was like sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I feel like there's a lot of kids that became really obsessed with the matter he died, such as myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, my, my family was already kind of into him, but then when he passed away, it was like, me, my little cousin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I feel like half of it was on TV following that was just like Michael Jackson tributes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you kind of got across course education also in his like cultural importance for kids who were not alive during the peak of his success.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, thank you for validating my profile picture caption.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, don't worry.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think all song lyric hosts on Facebook are valid as someone who did it politically and way less.
[SPEAKER_01]: There were less deep cuts I suppose on on my Facebook.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't really a deep cut.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's literally Michael Jackson.
[SPEAKER_01]: that's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think generally speaking like maybe a sub tweet is like an expression of anger, discontent and a vague book is a way of expressing maybe some kind of sadness or pain and if you think about it these are all considered negative emotions and so
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, sometimes I write seven that I'm reading your back a week later, and I'm like short, so true queen.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I'm just like, damn, we're all really negative on here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I liked it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, no, I was laughing because we were just all so negative, anyways, go on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I'm just curious, like, do you think that the fact that these were ways of expressing negative emotions, do you think that maybe lent to the stigma towards them?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my god, this is a stupid question.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not stupid.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like it.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no, it's funny.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just, I don't know why it's funny to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't keep going.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's my question.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I like it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this, I just wanted to talk about this
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're too much, how are you doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: You're too much, how are you doing?
[UNKNOWN]: You're too much, how are you doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're too much, how are you doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: You're too much, how are you doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: You're too much,
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think it's more of a smells like attention, like it's almost too transparent.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's why people kind of roll their eyes.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's a little bit less, like, oh, so much negativity.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like when we get annoyed when someone posts too much on social media, it's like, do you actually care, like your mad that you've to flip through 20 of someone's stories when it's like, you could easily just leave the story and go to someone else's.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you feel like a negative emotion.
[SPEAKER_02]: You feel like anger towards it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think maybe it's because it makes it all to a parent that we're all on social media.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's a bit of like staring into the mirror.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the void gazing back and V. And being like, oh no.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I'm on here too, when this person's being annoying, does this mean I'm annoying?
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think it's just the transparent like crap for attention that pisses people off most.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's also like a scarier prospect to people back in the day when again, like I think we were really trying to maintain this idea that social media is the separate fake other world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now everyone's like, social media is real life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, also people really value honesty and there's something quite dishonest.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also about like a sub tweet, or like the fuels dishonest about a sub tweet or a fake book because it's like, we'll just say what you mean.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're being deliberately, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: evasive and like opaque when you could just come out and say it like if you're going to go through the effort of typing all this out why don't you just say what you mean obviously there are reasons why people don't say what they mean but that that's like maybe what also stirs something in people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think for sure I think it's funny because a lot of the criticisms that I've read towards these things you know they were about their indirectness or like the passive aggression side of them but to me it's like it suggests that there's this like alternative
[SPEAKER_01]: If we weren't on social media, then we'd all just be saying what we meant all the time and how we felt all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just don't think that that's true for most people, but at least not in like the West, at least not like in these more wospy kind of kind of...
[SPEAKER_01]: Hulchers where passive aggression is sort of like a pretty relied upon tool of communication.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well again, I like I said it had to go somewhere.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a little thing where I hate when I'm like angry at someone or I'm I don't like someone and I am half to see them.
[SPEAKER_02]: in person because I will ultimately be very nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, you could have been asking the people's, I am good at masking, but then it makes me feel like false and like it all that took to who I am or makes me feel like I'm lying and that feels worse.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll say what I mean to my friends, but generally now I have trouble like painting mean to people who are like rude to people.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a Canadian part of me I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I mean, I, I'm kind of the opposite, whereas I'm like, I can't mask if I don't like someone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm so bad at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I've never seen you be like, I'm not good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just like, I'm like vacant, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: Hannah does have a bit of a dissociative stare pouch as rain fish or corn would call it.
[SPEAKER_01]: that's a need.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also kind of think that social media in this way like actually hasn't like empowers people perhaps to be more expressive.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think whatever like the protection of hiding behind a screen or whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: is not great in many ways, but in this sense of thinking about someone's like depressed and on Facebook who's going through a divorce, who might not really express herself in any other way, like maybe she doesn't journal, she doesn't like have
[SPEAKER_01]: some kind of artistic outlet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe what she just really needs is to sort of signal to somebody that she's not feeling great and like that this is hard for her and I think that she should feel free to do that and I think that like vague booking in its way is like a safe,
[SPEAKER_01]: way to accomplish that and I think same with sub tweeting like let's say you're me and you are someone who's like I'm never gonna like I'm not very likely to call someone out for something in the minute unless it's like really hit a nerve.
[SPEAKER_01]: So maybe you just like you need an outlet and like I have other outlets to express my dissatisfaction but if you don't, you know, is substituting the healthiest of that outlet?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you guys that I lit as me first of all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, just like you don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's like there's a catharsis there that people might get from it and I'm like, I just don't like this idea that like we're acting like these platforms are making people more passive aggressive, more indirect because I actually think
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the opposite I think our behavior online is like mirroring our social values and our social values and our our norms have facilitated this more passive aggressive or indirect mode of communication.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's a cultural thing, not necessarily native to social media at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: What if you think about a sub-tui or something?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, have you ever had a fantasy about singing a karaoke song in front of somebody?
[SPEAKER_01]: Me with Fiona Abel's criminal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, you have a specific person in mind you want to sing this too?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it also leads between who, you know, I'm interested in, but yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like ultimately no one wants to see me seeing you now, let's criminal for like what the entire seven in the duration of that song.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I have some Fiona Apple's criminal and I forgot about the crazy musical interlude and it was boring.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's definitely boring.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're just like strip as well or something, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Also like none of our friends really knew the song and so I was like, well this isn't hitting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, clearly we need new friends.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, I do think it really comes down to like what the purpose of like a sub tweeter of vague book is and you know I guess part of it is like wanting attention, but also part of it is like I don't think you think about this thing for days Like I think you post it in the moment in the heat of fear feelings like miss Demi Lavato for example and That's ultimately what the motive is is is to vent a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think Demi Lavato is not a good sub tweeter But she's an honest one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry, not sorry.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you.