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...

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.

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: https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2023/09/22/japanese-mcdonalds-ad-with-anime-family-is-the-cutest-thing-ever/ applemilk1988's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@applemilk1988 applemilk1988's Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/sadappletea

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...

Cross-posting this mini-sode from default.blog to this feed. Katherine sat down with nabby, 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' bedroom, 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 (https://www.youtube.com/@versandlukas) 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: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/we-met-online/episodes/CATFISH-e21os99/a-a9k7oeo 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 journalists are. Katherine has also, once again, f****d with the theme. Someone help her. Pieces cited: https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/perry-abbasi-fop-tweets/ https://unherd.com/2023/02/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...

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