Nobody wants to be a stick waving old man, but what happens when it’s that stick waving old man who’s telling young people to loosen up? After a series of studies from 2021 reported that teenagers are having less sex than the generations before them, a strange phenomenon has unfolded on the internet. Younger people are being morally conservative, older people are responding by calling younger people “puriteens” (puritanical teens), and then other older people are calling those older people...

Full episode available on Patreon: Kristen and Bethany Baird make Christian life advice content on Youtube for their modest audience of 100k followers. But when Cody Ko reacted to one of their videos on his channel, spawning an entire industry of Girl Defined commentary, they became overnight sensations… for all the wrong reasons. Girl Defined certainly spreads harmful fundamentalist views to impressionable young women but, in this bonus episode, Hannah and Maia question whether Kristen and...

If you thought women’s beauty standards were unrealistic before, just wait until you find out about AI porn. Not only do these girlies have cartoonish curves, the faces of young teens, and impossibly long hair… they also have eight fingers on each hand! In this finale episode, Hannah and Maia discuss AI porn, the ways it infringes on bodily autonomy, and its commitment to rendering women’s oldest profession obsolete. You’d think we’d have flying cars by this point, but instead we’re jerking...

…We’re about to go off. Since what feels like the beginning of time (the 60s) dating companies have promised us that our soulmates are out there waiting for us, and they know just who it is. But in this current late stage hellscape, it’s safe to say these companies aren’t as altruistic as they seem. Yes, in this episode, Hannah and Maia talk about everyone’s least favourite drug: dating apps. It comes down to one question: if dating apps could really find us our soulmate, why is it that we’re...

What do Uber and OnlyFans have in common? Did  camgirilng really originate from a 24 hour live stream of a Trojan coffee pot? And fellas, is it cheating to have an OnlyFans subscription AND a wife? These burning questions (and more) will be answered in this episode, where Hannah and Maia discuss the multivalent world of OnlyFans and the ways it transformed sex work, for better or for worse. It may have been a saving grace for out-of-work people during the pandemic, but is OF a hero of the gig...

If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many annoying people on Twitter, you’ve got Tumblr to thank for that. Tumblr, the microblogging site that reigned supreme in the 2010s, was like Facebook’s cool cousin who has blue hair and goes to art school. It was the cradle of identity formation for lonely teens and adults, and it was also a happy home to lots and lots of porn. Tumblr’s NSFW content made it a search-engine-friendly way to consume porn without your mom finding out. But its...

Why is it that whenever someone “thinks of the children”, a sex worker is harmed in the process? In this episode, Hannah and Maia tell the story of Backpage - the classifieds website that came crashing down when instances of child sex trafficking was discovered in its seedy underbelly. But while the crusade against the site and its free-wheeling founders seemed well intentioned, the act that was used to take them down (FOSTA-SESTA) has had massive consequences for the freedom of the web, and...

Sure, the computer gave us war. But sex gave us the iCloud email alert. Ever since Marilyn Monroe was on the cover of Playboy, men have been profiting off of women’s bodies without their consent. Yet if revenge porn has been around since God was a small child, why did it seem to peak in the 2010s? In this episode, Hannah and Maia go back to a time when Hunter Moore, the Gavin McInnes of cybersex terrorism, reigned supreme on the internet with his wildly popular revenge porn website, Is Anyone...

Before “co-authored, interactive erotica” (otherwise known as sexting), we had chatrooms. Virtual spaces where anyone of any race, gender, class, or creed could come together to fornicate with their words. The MUD and MOO chatrooms of yore belonged to a time when Dungeons and Dragons nerds governed the internet - a utopia of beautiful, unadulterated cybersex. But one fateful day in 1993, this would all change. In this episode, Hannah and Maia discuss the origins of online chatrooms, their...

If you were a teenage boy in 2008 and you didn’t have a “God Bless Sasha Grey t-shirt”, did you even exist? Ever since indie sleaze darling, Sasha Grey, burst onto the porn scene in the mid aughts, its become a bit cooler to say hey, “I watch this.” But while Sasha represented a feminist shift in the industry, her fringe sexuality may have played into a dangerous trend in internet porn. In this episode, Hannah and Maia ask the important question: should Sasha be The Pied Piper of Porn™, or...

Before Paris or Kim, there was Pamela. Original martyrs of the sex tape leak, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee are only now receiving their apology (via Hulu miniseries). But who knew that this “voyeuristic dive into the guileless intimacy of two tabloid darlings” would change the way we consume p*rn forever? In this episode, Hannah and Maia track the decline of p*rn, from its high culture “p*rno chic” days, to its low culture era on VHS, and the way Pamela’s sex tape kicked off two decades of...

When Vine died, the angels cried. No but seriously, in this era of late-stage internet, when it feels like politics, groupthink, and all around bad vibes are all exploding at once, it makes sense that we’re yearning for a simpler time. Who wouldn’t miss the innocence of silly, 6 second videos made for no reason other than to make us laugh? But was Vine as awesome as we remember, or are our memories a bit rose-tinted? In this season 3 finale, Hannah and Maia are joined by Izzy from Be Kind...

When you think of “hard news”, a company that once published an article called “13 Potatoes That Look Like Channing Tatum” probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Yes, in this episode Hannah and Maia are tackling Buzzfeed - the millennial fluff aggregator that managed to be on the cutting edge of digital journalism for a bit there. And in the process, changed the way we consume news, and maybe even the societal flow of information altogether. Journalism is in crisis… and is...

For one brief, beautiful moment in history, the social media sleuths were right. When Britney Spears’ fans began to decode strange messaging in her quirky Instagram posts, it became clear that the formerly maligned popstar was living under the control of her abusive father by way of a particularly oppressive conservatorship. This resulted in a nation-wide movement to liberate Britney from her family and, by extension, the predatory industry that has exploited her for over two decades. But,...

Cover this podcast in prayers, because in this highly-requested episode, Hannah and Maia discuss the most political event on the internet to date: Tati Westbrook’s public disowning of James Charles. In this clashing of beauty guru titans, 38-year-old Tati Westbrook disavowed her 19-year old friend and mentee, James Charles… over a bunch of hair vitamins. But hindsight reveals that Tati may not have been working alone, and that Bye Sister may never have been about vitamins all along. Tea and...

Has the sun set on the Me Too era? If you were following along with the Depp v. Heard defamation trial last April, it seems like it did. When Johnny Depp took Amber Heard to court for three vague quotes suggesting she had been abused by him, the world was in a frenzy. Has this hot, blonde, bisexual woman really been abused… or was it the easier answer? That she was an evil psychopath who pulled a Gone Girl on everyone’s favourite fictional pirate. In this episode, Hannah and Maia are finally...

Remember when everyone freaked the f*** out about that French movie on Netflix? No? Well everybody, let us introduce you to: Cuties. In this episode, Hannah and Maia discuss Maïmouna Doucouré’s quaint 2020 coming-of-age film and the all out moral panic that it spawned on the internet - which culminated in a real life obscenity lawsuit against Netflix. Discussions include: the thin line between depiction and endorsement, America’s many moral triggers and paradoxical attitude towards sex, the...

Remember when Kim Kardashian invented butts? Paper Magazine sure would like us to. When they released their scintillating cover issue of Kim K in a sequinned dress, balancing a champagne glass on her formidable silicone buttocks, Paper Mag declared: “Break the Internet Kim Kardashian” And break it she did. In this episode, Hannah and Maia trace Kim Kardashian’s transformation from trashy reality star to fashionista de jour. Since the Paper cover, and with the help of Kanye West, Kim’s body...

Men used to go to war. Today they are keyboard militias, defending the sanctity of video games and the Gamer™ identity from hysterical women and their evil feminine wiles. ... If you didn't know about Gamergate before today, we're jealous. In this episode, Hannah and Maia provide an excruciatingly detailed breakdown of the 2014 mass harassment campaign which led to the abuse, threatening, and doxxing of countless figures in the game development, journalism, and academic industries. Was there...

Exciting, but not surprising. Caroline Calloway, self-proclaimed “scammer” and queen of name-searching, reached out to promote her book on the pod. In this special interview, Hannah and Maia discuss the long-awaited memoir, Scammer, with the author herself (who characteristically conducted the interview from her luxurious Floridian bed). Discussions include: the ethics of writing about other people’s traumas, undervaluing art made on social media, and the Dimes Square Image Rehabilitation...

Do androids dream of writing Succession? In the second part of this two-part special, Hannah and Maia discuss the 2023 Writers Strike - a hotly debated labour dispute between the Writer's Guild of America (WGA) and The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Robots may not want to turn you into a paperclip (yet), but they do want to turn you into a gig worker. Creative industries were the last place we thought this would happen... until generative AI came about. Although,...

What the hell is ChatGPT, and why are these pasty nerds telling us it's going to save the world? Hannah and Maia bring you a special, pre-season episode with a discussion of this new AI technology and what it means for the future of our world. The democratization of this smooth-talking chatbot means even YOU can bully a robot into doing your homework. But does democracy really mean that everyone has a grubby finger in the proverbial tech pie, or has humanity begun to miss the point a bit?...

Welcome to the season 2 finale! This season has been all about words entering a dark tunnel and coming out on the other end looking completely different. And nothing better encapsulates that than "groomer". As a word that defines a process rather than an outcome, this one is notoriously hard to pin down. It occupies a legal and colloquial grey area which leaves it dangerously vulnerable to misuse. "Groomer" was invented to protect children from abuse but, as so often the case with misused...

She's rude. She's got a bad haircut. And she will, indeed, be speaking to your manager. We've finally arrived at everyone's favourite pejorative, "Karen". The most contemptible lady in America today, Karen has had a bit of a reverse trajectory in popular culture. Hannah and Maia discuss the dual role that Karen occupies on our feeds, from the "can I speak to your manager" meme to her more insidious form as a 'Miss Ann', and the throughline of entitlement that runs between them. To what degree...