Ten Thousand Posts

The Curious Case Of The Cat In The Bin ft. Sirin Kale

This week, we're joined by Sirin Kale (@thedalstonyears), a writer for The Guardian, GQ and Vogue, to talk about Nextdoor - the billion dollar app that has taken over local neighbourhoods, and has its own wikipedia section entirely dedicated to 'racial controversies'. We discuss how this app has simulated the 'idea' of a neighbourhood as a surveillance project, that incentivises curtain twitching and snitching, while also eradicating the material functions required to actually build and sustain a local community. That means that Nextdoor ends up becoming a bizarre clone of Facebook, but with more hyper-specific forms of racism, even more minions memes, and endless flame wars between moderators and users that, crucially, seeps out into the real world too. 

We also talk about 'Salt Bae', why so many people are going to his restaurant in order to post their receipts, and whether 'Salt Bae' is the logical end point of the experience economy - one in which, rather than enjoying your time, you pursue things in order to make other people online as mad as possible.

Read the rest of this entry »

[PREVIEW] HK‘s Anime Club : Serial Experiments Lain (02-03) ft. Devon

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

-------

This week, Hussein & Devon watch episodes 2 and 3 of Serial Experiments Lain,  in which we learn more about "the Wired", its relationship to the 'real world' and all the weird things happening to Lain as she modifies her computer and does e-girl shit. Plus, who are the Knights? What is the Acella pill? What is up with Lain's weird digital voice? We also talk about Chiaki Konaka's descent into poster's plague, his infamous "Cancel culture" episode of Digimon, and what it suggests about how even the most insightful creators can't seem to keep up with internet discourse.

You can watch all the episodes of SEL for free here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8nbEGDR4Yg&list=PLvDJyBgCi8B_8kSSFS0ZFj4yn5KqqpKtg

Down and Out In The #Content Factory ft. Luke Bailey

On this week's episode we're joined by Luke Bailey (@imbadatlife) , co-host of The Content Mines podcast and someone who actually has a "day job". We talk about our experiences working in several #content factories, as we ask ourselves - what *is* content, actually? At a time when everything from news and art, to games and entertainment, are organised through platforms, is a better term needed to differentiate creative output in digital space? And, crucially, how is human communication affected by the abundance of content, optimised specifically to please Mark Zuckerberg?

On this episode, we also talk about Scottish Twitter, and the era of posting in 2010-15 where some poster's communities were still niche, fun and hard to replicate. Remember when Twitter was 'ard? Can't have it these days thanks to the Woke Left. 

--------
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). For bonus content every fortnight, sub to our patreon at www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast. 

The Poster‘s Cabinet ft. Will Kedjanyi

On this week's episode, we're joined once again by Will Kedjanyi (@KeejayOV3) to talk about why the British government - having decided to fully give up on governing- has been stocked to the brim with Posters. From Nadine Dorries falling for every Facebook conspiracy you can think of, to Liz Truss and her #love of #hashtags, the Conservative party have decided to simply cover all aspects of poster's brain - a strategy which, oddly enough, seems to be working.

We also revisit one of the original anti-Brexit tweets - in which British people form "genteel queues at the Pret a Manger" that set the tone for the online "FBPE" movement, and examine why the group has been struggling to find a sense of purpose or identity in a way its counterparts haven't. 
--------
Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. It is hosted by Phoebe (@PRHRoy), Hussein (@HKesvani) and produced by Devon (@Devon_OnEarth). For bonus content,  check out our Patreon at : www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast. 

*UNLOCKED* Last QAngle in Paris [Part 2] ft. Devon

This is an Unlocked episode from our Patreon. You can subscribe for fortnightly bonus content at : www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast. 

It is with great pleasure that we once again enter The Phrenology Zone on this week's bonus episode, after Hussein found someone with an even weirder theory of gender than friend of the show Bevvie.

We're once again joined by Devon (@Devon_OnEarth) to discuss "Son of Man", a disciple of Bevvie (and Lord Baphomet), who, after spending a long time in Flat Earth circles, has now decided to devote all his time and attention to measuring "eye gaps" and comparing human faces to bowling balls. While his system might be more mathematically coherent, underpinning it is the same paranoia; that all male celebrities are female, that all female celebrities are male, and you can discover all of this by comparing people's faces to triangles. If that sounds confusing - it's because it absolutely is! But, as we talk about in depth, while these theories might be bizarre and esoteric, they aren't as far removed from mainstream TERF discourse as you might expect.

Oh also, we talk about Fred Durst's new wig and the new, wholesome era he's embarking on. We're with you, Fred!

----

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).  

We would like to thank all subscribers to the podcast - your support means a lot to us, and the work we do to try understand posts, and crucially, pay our therapists on time.

Anglo Fishing ft. Nate Bethea

Look, a lot of things happened in England recently and, in order to understand them we once again consult the podcaster's Oracle, Nate Bethea (@inthesedeserts) to try explain it to us. In this episode, we talk to Nate about Nicki Minaj posting weird British voice notes to Boris Johnson, her cousin's big balls, and what this tells us about vaccine posting more broadly.

We then go on to discuss one of our favourite tweets of all time, Tim Stanley's infamous 2012 Bow Tie tweet, in which Stanley condemns the English, and in particular, early morning builders, who laughed at him for wearing a bow tie. BUT did this actually happen? Was Tim Stanley - in the most classic British tradition - simply inventing guys in his head to get mad at?

Ten Thousand Posts is a show about how everything is posting. You can subscribe to us for bonus content every two weeks at : www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast. 

[PREVIEW] HK‘s Anime Club: Serial Experiments Lain (Layer One)

This is a preview of a bonus episode. If you'd like to listen to the full episode, subscribe to our patreon at www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast
---- ---

On this week's bonus episode, Hussein once again forces Phoebe to watch Cartoons, despite her insistence that she is above them. We watch the first episode of Serial Experiments Lain, the 1998 cult anime series "Serial Experiments Lain", written and produced by Chiaki Konaka (who, it turns out, also wrote the first series of Digimon). We talk about the ideas of the series as it emerges in the first era of the internet - namely, how 'online' and the 'real' are not distinct, separated categories, and the themes about embodiment, virtual spirits and immortality that run throughout the series.

Plus, we discuss the subs vs dubs war, and try to figure out why Lain's dad has so many dang screens (says a lot about society!)

REBUILD OF 10KPOSTS: (NEVER) SMILE AT A GATOR

It has come to our attention that some of our early episodes were "difficult to listen to". Maybe it was because of bad audio and remote recording, or, more likely, that very few people in society have Chad Ears. In any case, we've decided to revisit some classic episodes, not only with clear eyes and USB mics, but also with greater knowledge of the Way of the Post. 

This week, we revisit the Alligator Tweet, in which a woman known only as Brienne of Snarth, describes how she didn't care about a child getting mauled by an alligator at a zoo because of white privilege ignoring signs. We talk about how this genre of posting became normalised in the mid 2010s, how platforms encouraged users to consolidate all their experiences into specific categories, and whether you can really be "empathetic" online. Plus, of course, why Alligators *are* actually comrades.

We also talk about a very special 9/11 tweet, in which the founder of Shutterstock tells the story about how watching two planes crash into the biggest towers on earth gave him the inspiration to create a stock photo service. 

Horse Oil Salesmen ft. Annie Kelly

This week were joined by national treasure Annie Kelly (@Annieknk), a writer, academic researcher and UK correspondent for the QAnon Anonymous podcast, to talk about how we should be talking about radical online subcultures like Incels. We discuss the limitations of mainstream media in being able to conceptualise the positions of these groups, why we need a language that can articulate the non-existent boundaries between 'online' and the real world, and why extra forms of surveillance and policing aren't the answer - not least because the radical elements derive from real world material conditions. In that vein, we also talk about vaccine posting, and the weird, demonic stories coming out of conspiratorial sections of Twitter which, while pushing anti-vaxxer narratives, might actually be an example of posters trying to outdo each other for the euphoric rush of retweets and online notoriety. It happens to the best of us!
--------
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). You can follow us at @10kpostspod on Twitter. If you would like to hear more 10kposts, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month at: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

[PREVIEW] Epistemic Trespassers ft. Jathan Sandowski

This is a preview of a bonus episode. To listen to the entire episode, subscribe for $5 a month at: www.patreon.com/10kpostspodcast.

---- ----
This week, we're joined by returning guest and friend, Jathan Sandowski (@jathansandwoski), from the very good podcast, This Machine Kills . We talk about Jameela Jamil's recent comments regarding Leftist strategy in preparation for socialism, which, in this case, means making #content and doing #posts for socialists. While people may have mocked her, we discuss whether Jameela's pure online brain was, in fact, able to identify a key issue in online discourse - namely, whether any meaningful and valuable left wing project can really be advanced through posting and creating content on platforms. You can probably guess what our answer is.

We then go on to talk about the Luddites - a term that tech companies love to use to describe people who maybe don't want to give more data to Elon Musk- but what we can learn from them in challenging the prevailing power of platforms over the entirety of our lives, and in doing so, the possibilities of building a better internet for the future.