The Computer Room

“The most un-American thing you can do is reject fame.”In a recorded phone call, Katherine and Laura Albert, the writer best known for JT Leroy, explore the fuzzy boundaries of truth and fiction in our digital era. They discuss the telephone as a medium, catfishing, imagination, and lying as a form of storytelling. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

Katherine talks to a brony Zoomer about being online, mediated friendships, the fantastical world of My Little Pony, and the revival that the fandom is experiencing right now. Buy your Mare Fair tickets here, read the infamous MLP fan fic “The Lunar Rebellion” here, and watch the first four seasons of MLP here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

Yancey Strickler, the cofounder of Kickstarter and Metalabel, joins in for a dynamic chat. They dive into the dual nature of gossip, exploring its role in truth-telling and emotional expression. The conversation reveals how the internet serves as both a creative platform and a social tool that can deepen divides in access to information. Yancey introduces the Metalabel initiative, emphasizing collaborative creativity and authenticity. Finally, they discuss the nuances of lurking in online communities, shedding light on modern social dynamics.

Lauren and Grady are Chicago’s hottest couple. Katherine and Grady talk about playing a role that’s not yourself but based on yourself, their appearance on Help! I'm In a Secret Relationship, where all the weirdos have gone on the Internet, if those chamoy pickles were worth it, and his relationship with Lauren. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

This week, Gio and I are joined by Benjamin Studebaker, a writer, political theorist, leftist, and former co-host of the infamous podcast “What’s Left?” to discuss the Millennial Left.One question I wish we had asked, and I invite our audience to leave their thoughts about, is whether there is/was a meaningful difference between the Millennial Left and the Tumblr Left. Was the latter a subset of the former, or did it have its own unique character?In the future, I’d like to explore the contours of the political communities on SomethingAwful, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook Groups. How were they different? Where was there overlap? As always, if you’d like to share your experience from the Left or Right, please drop us a line.From Benjamin’s blog post, “The Millennial Left as a Moment in Internet History,” which you can read in full here: To find a new politics, we have to abandon our old politics. But we cannot abandon our old politics if our old politics still pays our bills. The millennial left is a declining business model rather than a political movement. It was a fluke of a particular moment in the political economy of the internet. That moment has ended. No one in their right mind would try to start a new left media enterprise in 2024. But those that still exist will carry on until they run out of money. This zombie millennial left will be with us for years to come, compelled by the business model to pretend it is still engaged in political activity. But it has been years since this activity could even plausibly appear meaningfully political. The appearance died with the form of internet that generated it.All told, the millennial left existed in a plausibly political form for just five years. It began in 2015 and it ended in 2020. It peaked the year it was born, and it declined continuously throughout its lifespan, becoming less and less plausible every year. Death finally came for it over the span of four months, in the form of Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat in December of 2019 and Bernie Sanders’ defeat on Super Tuesday in March of 2020. Consign it to the abyss. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

What exactly was the alt-right? A digital subculture? A political movement? An umbrella term encompassing several contradictory movements? What did the press get wrong? Katherine and Gio sit down with Scott Greer and attempt to demystify What Happened eight years ago… BTW, if you’re reading this, and you know who you are, YOU WILL come on this show and talk to us about the #GamerGate/imageboard component of the history of fringe right-wing politics. This is a threat…I will stop at nothing until you come on this podcast…you promised… in 2022… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

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, A Cyberarcheology of Checkpoints * Ruby's Twitter* Ruby's blog * A really cool video Ruby made, Why Aliens Love America This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

I spoke to 23-year-old reality shifter Maddie about her experiences traveling to other timelines. You may have heard of reality shifting before—probably through the lens of the now-familiar genre of ”this dangerous TikTok trend is endangering your kids” clickbait. ‘Reality shifting’ is, simply put, when people shift their consciousness to another timeline—an alternate reality—including ones with fictional elements. My friend Esmé Partridge has written about reality shifting extensively through the lens of occult studies, and contributor Clinton has touched on it (though unintentionally) through the lens of media studies in some of his articles on this very website. The more I talk to people with these types of unconventional experiences, the more I believe that we’re experiencing a fundamental shift in our perception. It’s one that the scholar Patrick Galbraith has documented extensively in Japan—I highly recommend his work, too, for people who want to gain a deeper understanding of how one might experience the shifts in their consciousness or fall in love with a fictional character like I’ve been documenting here. This shift in perception is something that I think too many people write off as “mental illness,” a “fake” mental illness people use to differentiate themselves or get attention, or a pernicious, TikTok-specific form of brainwashing. Recently, I have seen it pop up in the culture war, too… often with the note that “nobody is talking about this.” Hopefully, if you read this blog, you know none of that is true. I recommend you listen to these two other interviews and read this mailbag note, if you haven’t already, as companion pieces to this one:Watch Maddie’s videos on TikTok here, and check out her shifting resources here. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe

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 s**t 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 today.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe