INFLUENCE

An entire generation has grown up in a world where uploading hours of 4K video to the Internet is not only common, but expected. But, what if the legal and technological barriers that killed Napster and other file-sharing sites had also crushed YouTube? In 2006, despite its growing popularity, YouTube could easily have been wiped off the map by copyright battles and the skyrocketing cost of hosting humanity's video.So, what would the Internet, its culture, and the world look like today if YouTube had failed? Adi Robertson, senior reporter at The Verge, has imagined just that in her alternate history of the Web. While mostly an entertaining thought experiment, Robertson's theories are rooted in "Web 1.5's" corporate landscape, and what was technologically possible at a time when putting video onto the Internet was no easy task.Alli and Jen talk to Robertson about the inspiration for her piece, why education and politics would be different, the miracle that YouTube exists at all, and WTF a "mesh net" is.Read Robertson's full piece: https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/28/21145506/youtube-without-internet-fiction-alternate-historySupport 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're proud to share this encore episode of #2G1P featuring Gary Kremen, the inventor of online dating. Learn how a fateful purchase order in the '90s lead to the creation of Match.com, and ultimately all the swiping you enjoy today. We'll be back next week with a fresh one!Originally published: September 24, 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sid Meier’s Civilization is a storied video game franchise built on an epic premise: Build a civilization to stand the test of time.Typically, a player will control a historic civ — like China, France, India, or Rome — and manage every aspect of its culture, beginning in 4,000 BCE. Food, trade, technology, government civics, religion, population growth, colonial expansion, and of course the military, all become granular decisions with far-reaching effects on history. The game is played like a turn-based tabletop experience, often against AI-controlled opponents.But what if the game was played only by AI? Years ago, members of the Civ community set up that exact experiment. 60 AI civilizations on a world map shaped like Earth, with one goal: to destroy each other at all costs.What would play out with no human intervention? Which civ would win, and why? These questions kept fans glued to the game as it slowly unfolded across Reddit, Twitch, and YouTube.Today, Civ Battle Royale has become a strategy game institution, and evolved into a seasonal “TV show” of sorts.This week on 2 GIRLS 1 PODCAST, Alli and Jen speak with Steve Yanosky, who runs the current iteration of the Civ Battle Royale game on his home computer, and captures hours of video, screenshots, and data to update the community on what has unfolded in this epic, war-torn world of battling AI.Yanosky explains the evolution of CBR across its three seasons, the community of fans and modders who make the experiment technically possible, and the fan art and data analysis that keep thousands of people rooting for their favorite historical leader.Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Porn on Reddit should come as no surprise. But nearly 400,000 listeners subscribe to r/GoneWildAudio, a community for high quality, audio-only erotic vignettes. Creators there use high-end microphones to create specific, explicit, and often elaborate fantasies for listeners. The visuals are left entirely to the imagination, and the intimacy level is off the charts.This week, Alli and Jen speak with Belle_in_the_woods, one of the most popular and prolific erotic audio creators on the subreddit. She explains how she comes up with her sexy scenarios, how creators and listeners collaborate, what a "ramblefap" is, and how she's turned her talents into a thriving side hustle of both erotic, and SFW audio production.Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Caleb Rixon was a 24-year-old musical theater actor in his prime, who had just landed a major role in a production of Chicago.He hit the gym to prepare for a long tour of song and dance, when he felt something explode behind his eye during a workout class. He remembers being taken away in an ambulance and not much else. He woke up a month later, unable to walk, talk, or swallow. But he was alive.A rare brain abnormality had caused a massive stroke, and Rixon was on a slow road to recovery. He wanted to meet other young stroke survivors like himself, but all the support groups were rife with medical jargon. So Rixon created his own support space on the internet — Genyus Network — where survivors could share their stories, not their symptoms.This week on <em>2 GIRLS 1 PODCAST</em>, Alli and Jen talk with Rixon about this life-altering condition, recovery, and how he turned his experience into a global network of powerful stories.The Genyus Network: https://genyusnetwork.comSupport 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Quantitative futurist Amy Webb was fed up with online dating in 2005. The questionnaires and algorithms on sites like Match and OKcupid that were supposed to connect like-minded people and form lasting relationships yielded nothing but duds and disastrous dates.Despite advice from family and friends to cast a wider net, Webb did the opposite: she became even more picky. She created a long list of dating criteria and narrowed the pool of singles down using a complex scoring system. Then, she used competitive data sets from other female profiles to optimize her own.Through this “market research,” she inadvertently became the site’s most popular dating profile. Now, highly desirable and extremely picky, her data zeroed in on a single man from Baltimore.Spoiler Alert: They are happily married with children to this day.Alli and Jen talk with Webb about how she hacked dating algorithms to find the man of her dreams, the TED Talk and book about her experience that divided the internet, and the adorable (and nerve-wracking!) story of her final first date.Follow Amy Webb: https://twitter.com/amywebbDATA: A Love Story: https://amzn.to/386hXVCHow I Hacked Online Dating (TED Talk): https://youtu.be/d6wG_sAdP0U...If you're in Los Angeles on February 13th, come see Alli perform live in HOW TO BREAK UP BY TEXT. You can also submit screenshots of your own text breakups to be included in the show!Go here for tickets and submission info: https://www.howtobreakupbytext.com, or text your break-ups to: 818-392-4759...This week on 2 GIRLS 1 PODCAST, Alli and Jen talk with Webb about how she hacked dating algorithms to find the man of her dreams, the TED Talk and book about her experience that divided the internet, and the adorable (and nerve-wracking!) story of her final first date.Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Deaf users of immersive social platforms like VRchat can face a tough time communicating. Unlike other social media, VR spaces rely on verbal and physical communication rather than text. And sign language with current-gen VR controllers is limiting and clunky at best.But groups of volunteer interpreters inside VR worlds are hard at work making sure these spaces are more welcoming and accessible for deaf users. The result is an empowering community of "Helping Hands."This week, Alli and Jen speak with Quentin, a 19-year-old volunteer translator and VR enthusiast, who is bridging the communications gap between deaf and hearing people in VRchat. Quentin (a hearing person) shares how and why he learned American Sign Language, the tech limitations of signing in VR, and how sign language is evolving in VR to accommodate differences between headsets and motion tracking.A transcript of this episode was provided by @Zazzy_chan! You can read it here: http://bit.ly/2UJ1Qcz....If you're in Los Angeles on February 13th, come see Alli perform live in HOW TO BREAK UP BY TEXT. You can also submit screenshots of your own text breakups to be included in the show!Go here for tickets and submission info: https://www.howtobreakupbytext.com, or text your break-ups to: 818-392-4759Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sneaking into abandoned buildings and filming urban decay may not be the newest trend, but obsession with so-called “urban exploring” and “abandon porn” has skyrocketed alongside the widespread accessibility of social media.Today, millions of viewers eagerly await the videos of intrepid explorers like Bob Thissen, who travel the world in search of abandoned power plants, coal mines, theme parks, hotels, and shopping malls. Thissen’s mission is archaeological: to document places where no one has set foot in years (or decades), and tell the story of their abandonment through found objects.Often, Thissen’s videos show meals half-eaten, clothes hanging in closets, and machinery in working order, left to rot for a variety of reasons: business failures, safety concerns, and even political revolutions.Visit Bob's site: https://www.bobthissen.com/YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC73dVtWf9mpjiWYkXyIlm7AAnd check out his beautiful books: https://www.mijnwebwinkel.nl/winkel/exploringtheunbeatenpath********If you're in Los Angeles on February 13th, come see Alli perform live in HOW TO BREAK UP BY TEXT. You can also submit screenshots of your own text breakups to be included in the show!Go here for tickets and submission info: https://www.howtobreakupbytext.com, or text your break-ups to: 818-392-4759Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2008, Mike Merrill divided himself into 100,000 shares and offered them to the Internet for $1 a pop. After the initial wave of friends and family bought in, online strangers began to acquire shares of Mike⁠ — a regular person, not a company.With those shares come voting rights. Shareholders were allowed to decide Merrill's diet, his romantic decisions, even whether or not to get a vasectomy. Any personal life decision for which Merrill would seek advice from a friend, he instead posed to shareholders, who would vote on legally binding decisions.The experiment led him to global news coverage and an appearance on the Today Show, which raised the price of his shares significantly. These days, shares of Mike trade at around $5.Alli and Jen talk to Merrill about the origins of the experiment, how crowdsourced decision making has shaped his life, and what he might do differently in the wake of newer online commodity trading models like Bitcoin.Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1997, an 11-year-old girl set up a website with HTML tutorials and guides for Neopets. Within a few years, "Lissa Explains it All" was serving 500,000 monthly visitors, its forums hosted 75.,000 users, and Google was sending her big fat ad revenue checks. Alyssa Daniels, a kid from Orlando, was teaching the world how to make websites long before YouTube tutorials and Squarespace — and making legit money in the process.Alli and Jen talk to Daniels about her childhood entrepreneurial spirit, early Web culture, what her parents and friends thought of her startup business, '90s Nickelodeon shows, and what she's up to these days.Lissa Explains it All still exists: http://www.lissaexplains.comAnd Daniels now streams on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/LyssateeSupport 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1PJoin us on Discord: discord.gg/2g1pEmail us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.comTalk to Alli and Jen:https://twitter.com/alligoldhttps://twitter.com/joonbuggerCall the show and leave a message! (347) 871-6548 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices