Ten Thousand Posts

This week, we revisit a subject we last discussed two years ago: Tiktok Witches.
What factors have led to the rise of a magick subcommunity on Tiktok? Does every girl just have a witch phase, or is this a sign of something darker? Why does Tim Curry in the Worst Witch look like a sexy Tony Blair?

As an amuse-bouche, we take a look at Footballer Paul Pogba's admission to the police that he paid a witch doctor to cast a spell, but insists it was a hex to protect himself from injury, and that he has not cast a curse on rival Kylian Mbappé.

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This show is supported by Patreon. Sign up for as little as $5 a month to gain access to a new bonus episode every week, and our entire backlog of bonus episodes! Thats https://www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

This is a free preview of a bonus episode! Find the whole episode, as well as our entire backlog of bonus episodes, at https://www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast

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This week Annie Kelly of the Qanon anonymous podcast joins us to talk about how, even among all the shit in the news, it turns out basically every library in the country is about to be inundated with abuse and violence, as the ‘grooming/pedo’ panic sweeps the nation. A number of libraries across the country, including one in Norwich, where Annie is based, was protested by far-right and conspiratorial groups, after a number of them participated in ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ - in which drag queens read childrens stories to children while their parents sit there aimlessly scrolling on their phones.

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

This week, we take a look at Quinn Shepherd's recently-released social media black comedy, Not Okay. The film tells the tale of a young journalist who finds social media success after she uses photoshop to claim to have been present at a terrorist attack, and the travails of being a young woman thrust into massive mainstream popularity, and her attempts at leveraging this position for personal gain while trying to hide that the whole thing is a fabrication. 

It stars a lot of social media influencers you will be familiar with if you're about a decade and a half younger than any of us, and appears to have the moral: Not everyone's cut out to be an influencer. Cool!

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This show is supported by Patreon. Sign up for as little as $5 a month to gain access to a new bonus episode every week, and our entire backlog of bonus episodes! Thats https://www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

This is a Preview of a bonus episode. Listen to the entire episode on Patreon at: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

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This week, Phoebe is joined by Michael Hing (@hingers), a co-host of the excelled Free To A Good Home podcast. You can listen to their show, here: http://freetoagoodhomepodcast.com/

This is a preview of a bonus episode. Listen to the entire episode on: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week we're joined by author and journalist Hari Kunzru, author of The Impressionist, Transmission, and Gods Without Men, to discuss his latest novel, 'Red Pill'. 

The novel is an exploration of radicalisation, online culture, the alt-right, sanity, and history. A writer signs on for a three-month retreat in Berlin and finds himself extremely micro-managed, finding solace in watching a police show called Blue Lives. I'm underselling the novel here but I truly cannot recommend it enough.
But first, we take a look at an essay written by Hari for the NYRB that explores the same themes.

And even earlier still, we watch a tiktok of a woman meeting some nice happy men with snakes.

You can find Hari at https://twitter.com/harikunzru
find the essay we discuss at https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/03/26/trolls-4chan-gamergate-lulz/
and find his novels anywhere books are sold.

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

This is a preview of a bonus episode. Listen to the entire episode at: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast, where you can also listen to a bunch of other great episodes for as little as $5 a month.
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This week, we take a look at the final two candidates for Leader of the Conservative Party, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. In many ways this can be seen as a showdown between two extremely distinct posting schools, and we can learn a great deal by observing how these two relate to Online.

From Liz's suggestion to create a second internet for kids, to Rishi's increasingly desperate and poorly-thought-out pledges to close Mandarin language schools, this is one for the ages.

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

This week we are joined by Kyle Chaka, contributor to the New York Times and co-founder of Dirt, a newsletter about digital culture, to discuss how the algorithm on social media sites invisibly shapes the language, content, and even posting styles most prevalent. We use the example of Instagram's current insane attempt to become Tiktok 2 by pushing hard for a more video-based content economy, and how this is affecting the average user.

We also discuss Kyle's excellent article about 'Algorithmic Anxiety', the constant looming terror that one day the algorithm could just simply change, destroying an up-and-coming influencer's career unless they make drastic changes to their content to optimise it to an ever-shifting and never-explained standard. It's a great chat that actually ends on a hopeful note!

Kyle can be found at https://twitter.com/chaykak

Dirt can be found at https://twitter.com/dirtxyz

and the article discussed in this episode can be found at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/the-age-of-algorithmic-anxiety

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Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It's hosted by Hussein (@HKesvani), Phoebe (@PRHRoy) and produced by Devon (@Devon_onEarth).

This is a preview of a bonus episode. Listen to the whole episode at: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast

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Katie (@k80way) returns to the pod this week to discuss how the Thin Blue Line guys are handling the fall out of the recent Uvalde school shooting, and how some of them seem to be struggling to steal army valour as even their most ardent supporters begin to critique them. We talk about how this is changing the way cops engage with online, and whether police will be encouraged to post less and ignore the backlash. We also talk about Katie's recent article, in which she spends some time on BeReal, a new social media app that aims to be the 'anti-instagram', while also being funded by the same VC funds that prop up Facebook.
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Read Katie's article, here: https://www.vice.com/en/article/aked58/bereal-is-the-only-good-social-media-app

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Subscribe to Katie's newsletter, here: https://acap.substack.com/