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The Issue of Harassment Against Female Content Creators
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DISCLAIMER: This episode discusses themes that some may find upsetting. This includes sexual harassment, exploitation and accounts from female content creators of the hardships they have faced. Listener discretion is advised.
In this episode, Satsu is joined by MaryAnne from the Cold Case Kansas podcast to discuss the world of harassment faced by female content creators. Have things gotten worse in 2025? What issues are currently faced? And how can we make content creation better for female creators?
Resources:
- StopNCII
- Samaritans
- Get Safe Online
- Police Scotland Internet Safety
- NSVRC
- Safetipin
- I’m Safe
- Free Press Unlimited
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Transcript
Introduction and Sensitive Themes Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everyone, Sadtsunami here. Before we begin this episode, I just want to warn all of the Pandalorians that today's episode will be discussing themes that some may find upsetting.
00:00:10
Speaker
This includes discussions of sexual harassment, exploitation, and accounts from female content creators of the hardships they have faced while putting their voice out there. Without any further ado, let's begin.
Guest Introduction: Marianne from Cold Case Kansas
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to Chadtsunami.
00:00:39
Speaker
Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Chatsunami. My name's Chatsunami and joining me today is none other than the true crime expert herself. It Marianne from the Cold Case Kansas podcast. Marianne, welcome back to Chatsunami. I am so glad to be back.
00:00:58
Speaker
I know. i was so glad when I said, do you want to collab on another episode? And you were like, yes, I'm coming back. I was going to say, the minute you ask for anything, i am always here. i am always available. I have so much fun doing anything that you ask for. So the last time you were on, of course, we were talking about your absolutely fantastic true crime investigative podcast, Cold Case Kansas, which, honestly, are absolutely fantastic. And if you haven't listened to that episode, please wait till the end of this episode. listen to...
00:01:33
Speaker
how amazing that podcast is. Honestly, you won't regret it. And yeah, today we're coming back with quite a serious topic.
Exploring Harassment Against Female Creators
00:01:41
Speaker
And you probably heard at the beginning with the very sombre disclaimer, but it's something that is definitely necessary because today you and I, of course, we are going to be diving into the world of harassment against female content creators. Before we jump into this, I want ask you a couple of questions just about your experience experience in and the content creation sphere. When you started your podcast and you thought, oh, I'm going to do this, I'm going to put myself out there.
00:02:09
Speaker
Did you notice that this was prevalent issue before you got into content creation? or is it something you've always been aware of? That's such an interesting question. And with my background, I worked in the criminalistics field for 20 years. And i was just having a conversation with a friend about this just the other day. My social media is almost non-existent for a very long period of time because we weren't allowed to have social media because that wasn't something they didn't encourage us to do. And it's so interesting to me that so many people in the law enforcement field now do have social media, which wasn't something we previously were allowed to have So I didn't even have a social media for the longest period of time. And then i started building a social media presence even when i had retired. So I had already seen some of the negative things that happened within a social media presence.
00:03:09
Speaker
But then when I started the podcast, I figured here I'm starting a podcast about my friend's cold case. How bad could social media get when I'm doing such a positive thing? And it really blew my mind how people could take such a positive thing you're trying to do and bring such negative perspectives to the table. so yeah, it's really hard. And I think it's definitely so much harder as a female creator when you're out there. and especially when you're in true crime with other podcasts, you can be faceless.
00:03:49
Speaker
You can go and you can build some sort of a presence without putting yourself out there. But in my case, I was having to be the face for my friends' case.
00:04:01
Speaker
I had to go out there and i had to speak for her. And so I had to go to a lot of things. I had to put my presence out there and just having my physical presence out there brought a lot of negativity from people in the comments, people bringing messages.
00:04:21
Speaker
And I couldn't believe that when we're talking about such a serious topic. Yeah, because it's interesting to think of how the internet as an entertainment medium has evolved over the years, because I'm going to be honest, I'm no spring chicken, right? I'm in my 30s. I grew up in the Wild West. time of the internet where when you had safety courses for the internet as a child in the 90s and 2000s it was always sketchy person on the other end trying to all lure you away. Basically like a digital child catcher. It was either really emphasised as this is such a dangerous thing, do not put your face on the internet, do not put your real name, that kind of thing. For the most part I think we did take heed on that because it would be terrifying to be in that situation and obviously that means that the lessons worked in
Identity Risks and Information Sharing
00:05:17
Speaker
that regard. But as the internet evolved into this place where people were using it as a medium to express themselves, they were saying, oh here's my interest, they wanted to connect with
00:05:29
Speaker
other like-minded people, the barrier between the real life and this digital persona started to blur in a way, and that of course has led to some absolutely horrific changes in behaviour with the way that we interact with one another. There's a lot of people that nowadays, they don't even hide who they are when they decide, oh, I'm going to be horrible to this person, that person. And this especially when it came to female creators, because even something as innocent as posting a photo would get negative attention. There would be cases of cyberbullying, cases of doxing, stalking. There was just so many small things that at least when the internet was kind of starting out at that period, you could at least think that there was some kind of safeguards there. But do you think that as well, that the further the internet has gone, the less and less likely people are willing to protect their identities, as it were? Absolutely. And I just want to take, let's use for an example, the recent when the United States was ready to ban TikTok.
00:06:41
Speaker
I want to talk about that for a minute. When that occurred and everybody decided to go to, what was it, Redbook? Red Note, I think. Red Note. And they were going to go to the Red Note app. And there were people to the point that they were using their social security number as their sign in for that because they said, I don't care what anybody knows about me. People can just have all of my information and my data. I don't care what people know they can have it. I don't care what anybody knows about me because they're banning TikTok.
00:07:18
Speaker
I'm so upset by it. Somebody can have all of my data and I don't care. And it was just astounding to me that it's not just your social security. I mean, it was like you're giving all of your information, not just because you're angry about TikTok. You are giving it to any person that wants to find you, any person that wants to track you. It's not just a government protest. You are now putting your identity out there for anyone. And you're saying, well, I have nothing to lose because I don't have credit. I don't have anything to lose. And I don't think people realize how much they do have to lose at that moment.
00:08:02
Speaker
that their identity is so much more than just their social security number that they were giving away online. And that's what just blew my mind was that I don't think people were aware of, and and I'm not just talking about their social security number, the fact that people were just so angry about one app being taken away that they were willing to sacrifice so much of their selves and their identity to anyone. Because we do live in a digital age where, let's face it, we used to joke about the secret services of Insert Any Country Here spying on you and looking at your IP address. And it was like, haha, imagine if you had your own FBI agent or something like that. And it's starting to become very real now that we know that companies track your data and things, even though in and Europe and the UK, we've got GDPR, which is supposed to protect against that. Whether or not it does, you know, that's a whole other discussion. And I feel as if there's that sense of utility with a lot of users of the internet that, as you were saying perfectly there, are that, oh, well, people have got my information anyway. What does it matter if I throw one more thing out there? And that is the scary thing, the attitude of alcoholism. apathy is one that is absolutely terrifying to me and especially for a younger audience that is going on to the internet that thinks oh my mum or dad said that the government tracks our data anyway and that might very well be true for whatever reason but at the same time that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be careful with the internet and of course that is something that you and i are going to talk about later on especially when it comes to the sphere of female content creators because just for anyone who doesn't know the reason that i really wanted to do this episode was the fact that there was a lot of female content creators who i've interviewed yourself included of course not just saying that because you're on it
00:10:05
Speaker
But there was lots of female content creators that I've had on to interview. And while I was talking to them about their different experiences as a content creator, how they have managed through different challenges and whatnot, there was a lot of very similar accounts that I kept hearing about. Things about trolling and talking about their looks and everything and just a very female-centred harassment The thing that really got me after I listened to these accounts was the way that a lot of these amazing creators, of course, just shrugged it off and said, oh, well, that's just being a woman on the internet kind of thing. And I thought, it is the truth. It is just absolutely horrible to realise that has become normalised.
00:10:53
Speaker
Because I'm not going to lie, as a guy on the internet, I have seen my fair share of people trolling Wonder Cells at me, you know, saying very sexist things to... yeah It doesn't even have to be a content creator, just women in general saying, go back to the kitchen. Oh, you should be playing, i don't know, Animal Crossing, not Call of Duty. You know, those kind of things. Trying to say, get back in your lane, which is just such a horrible and backwards attitude to have towards anybody. But when it comes to women on the internet, especially, it's just that idea that this mindset has been normalized by a very vocal group. It is scary how, as I said, when I was grown up, I'm hearing the same things that I heard on Xbox Live parroted word for word now in 2025. And it is baffling that that attitude hasn't changed.
00:11:47
Speaker
Even, and this is when I get the stats out. Are you ready for this, Marianne? Sorry. I'm ready. For anyone who's interested in reading these articles fully, I will leave a link to the statistics and the sources in the show notes below. But it is absolutely horrific, some of these statistics that I was reading. The first one I've got is from UN Women, who say that studies across the world show that 16-58% of women and girls have been targeted by violence online. There was also a 2021 Women's Study in and the Arab states region that found that 60% of women internet users had been exposed to online violence that year. A European study found that women are 27 times more likely to face harassment online than men.
00:12:38
Speaker
And another analysis found that 92% of women reported that online violence negatively influenced their well-being. There's also the case of a study on online violence against women journalists found that 73% of women journalists have experienced online violence. Young women, girls, LGBTIQ+, persons, women with disabilities, and radicalised minoritised migrant groups of women are more likely to experience more extreme and frequent forms of digital violence. It just, it goes on and on. End violence against women. They'd say the same thing, that women are 27 times more likely than men to be harassed online. One in five women have received online harassment or abuse. Black women are 84% more likely to receive abuse or problematic tweets than white women. We've got Amnesty International that polled a group of 500 women aged 18 to 55 in eight countries, that of course being the UK, USA, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, Poland, Sweden and Denmark.
00:13:44
Speaker
And again they said the same thing, that women suffered offline consequences of abuse with 55% saying that they've experienced anxiety, stress or panic attacks. as a result, and many others have faced psychological consequences such as loss of self-esteem and a sense of powerlessness and their ability to respond to the abuse, with low self-esteem slash confidence and apprehension of using social media being at the forefront of these psychological impacts.
Normalization of Harassment Online
00:14:16
Speaker
Before I go on further with this, what are your thoughts on that? Because that is just absolutely terrible. Well, as I'm listening to this, It's sad to say i don't find any of the numbers shocking. yeah And that's how sad society is. And the first thing that comes into my mind is, and this is why so many women are obsessed with true crime, because they listen to it. They're obsessed with it because it's such a part of their everyday life.
00:14:48
Speaker
And that is so sad. Again, it goes back to that idea of normalising, isn't it? This attitude that because these attitudes are so prevalent that women have to accept the wrong word. But you know what I mean? It's like they'll have to expect it. Don't get me wrong, and I'm going to get this out the way at the very beginning here, but as a guy, I've...
00:15:10
Speaker
encountered my fair share of getting harassed online by both men and women, trolls, abuse, that kind of thing. But nothing like this. I just want to draw the line there and say I have had my fair share of harassment. yeah But at the same time, online harassment doesn't just include women, but at the same time, women are disproportionately affected by online harassment compared to men. Yeah, I just wanted to point out at the very beginning because I don't want to do a back and forth of saying, well, men have it tough. And that's as a guy saying it. And going through the Amnesty International study as well, he also polled these women to say how do they rate the responses from particular institutions. So the five that they outlined was current laws, is government policies, Twitter, Facebook, and the police. Between current laws, government policies, Twitter and Facebook, the majority of women found that they were inadequate in terms of responding to these particular issues. The police, weirdly enough, seems to be on par. It kind of seems to be 50-50 on women who found it inadequate versus adequate. But I totally see what you mean. It's horrible to read, to but at the same time, i don't want to say expected to normalise it, but you know what I mean? And one thing that's interesting, I mean, if you think about the world as a whole and how different every country, every ethnicity, how we all are, the one thing, unfortunately, we all have in common is that every woman, you know, we do have disproportionate numbers when it comes to ethnicity, but no woman is truly safe online.
00:16:51
Speaker
No matter where you are at in the world, you're not safe online. And that is the one thing that we all have in common. And that is a sad thing for us all to have in common.
00:17:02
Speaker
Absolutely. And especially for content creators, No matter whether they're a streamer, whether they do wholesome content, even if they've just got an avatar or they don't show their face but they use their voice, they're still going to get harassed.
00:17:17
Speaker
Because i always remember reading a study, and I think it was related to, i want to say, 4chan or something, where it was someone who ended up unwillingly at the other end of the had a parasocial relationship with someone, to the extent that, and I think the person who was committing it was mentally unwell, but they had basically compiled a whole document, the whole bible as it were, of this person's posts even though they were completely anonymous and all they had was an identifier number. So even with the most minuscule of information, if you attract the wrong attention, and unfortunately that is not something that you're in control of with the internet, no matter who you are, there is no way to find out who's going to be part of your community that ultimately you don't i' people want to be a part of your community. Because one of the other examples, and this was an absolutely horrific one, I can't remember if I talked to you about it at the time, but there was a live stream recently in America, and I think it was in March, where three prolific female streamers, Valkyrie, Sina, and Emeru went to Santa Monica Pier and they did a in-person live stream. See, in all seriousness, even I wouldn't do something like that. The amount of people who have been stream sniped, who have been abused because of it, it's just, for me, it's a no-go to begin with. And again, that's not passing the blame on them to say they shouldn't have done it because the abuse that they got was from... It was a man who was stalking them through their stream and they had to cut the stream short because essentially the guy said he was going to kill them. He ran at them. Whether he was being an edgy troll, I don't know. But someone who runs at a group of women and yells, I'm going to kill you, is... let's face it not the most stable of people and has no business being out in public like that because jesus christ it was actually quite harrowing to watch because i remember seeing the clip online thinking all right is it just someone you know the usual is it something just throwing abuse at them you know is it gonna be oh just this it was no no no it was actually quite harrowing to watch did you see that at the time No, I didn't. hu I mean, you made a comment of, is this just the usual? And we've gotten to a point of saying, okay, is this the usual harasser? Or is this a more deadly harasser? And that's the thing. We've gotten into a point of we're categorizing what level of harassment
00:19:57
Speaker
a content creator is going to have. That's the world we're in now. And that's asinine that we do have to look at things that way.
00:20:08
Speaker
Oh, 100%. It's so demoralizing looking at it and just being like, is this going to be the normal trolling or is this going to be something more sinister? That just seems to be a consequence of online life nowadays. When you're putting yourself out there, you are practically wearing your heart on your sleeve to say, this is me, this is my content, this is who I am. People are going to judge you no matter what and I hate to say that. I wish we lived in a world where were all supportive of one another, where we're all promoting each other and just lifting each other up, but unfortunately it's just not the case anymore. And not that the old internet was any
Stereotypes and Controversies in Streaming
00:20:51
Speaker
better. and if anything it was probably a lot worse but I think nowadays that there's a lot of communities and obviously not naming names but you'll definitely know who I'm talking about the almost revel in this attitude towards women and especially female content creators because I don't know if you know much about the streaming side of it but on Twitch especially there's a lot of stereotypes I would say and it's something that I've talked about with other content creators were because there was a huge controversy years and years ago where there was a lot of women who were streaming from hot tub and getting a lot of attention for it. So of course there was a lot of debate about whether this is appropriate for the platform. There was other people saying just the usual things they shouldn't be doing this. And because of the volume of people copying the trend as it were, Twitch ended up putting in a hot tub category that essentially meant that a lot of women could put on bikinis and things and go into the hot tub and get that attention now obviously i'm not blaming those creators at all 100 no it's the fact that it got this negative attention and instead of blaming twitch for not being clear with their guidelines or anything they were putting the blame on these women but
00:22:10
Speaker
The funny thing about something existing is the fact that there has to be an audience for it. So all of these people complaining and moaning and saying, oh, that shouldn't be allowed, blah, blah, blah, they were still giving the attention to these people who, by all rights, according to Twitch, were doing nothing wrong. So there was almost a stereotype that all female streamers could just do exactly the same thing and suddenly get popular. Purely by being a woman on Twitch and YouTube, you could suddenly take the express lane to being successful, which is just not true, is it?
00:22:48
Speaker
No, definitely understand. And I tried to learn when we first started talking about this, I didn't have a lot of knowledge about Twitch. And so I was trying to open my education about that. So I'm not as versed about Twitch, but I take a little bit of that knowledge to the world. I do know. Now, a little bit of what I did in my previous life, little bit of Stephen King there, my prior life was I worked being as a forensic psychologist. A lot of what we would do is when they would do cyber crimes and you would have people working and trying to be 14 year old girl or doing what you needed to do on that technology as they're trying to talk to other people on the other side of the computer. I don't want to say, you know, they're not coercing them into having a conversation, but when these inappropriate conversations would happen, sometimes they would have us on board of trying to talk to them and say, okay, you know, these are things you can say, these are things you can do. Who would work on websites like
00:23:54
Speaker
kick Those type of sites where you would get a lot of older adults or even not as old, but some scary teenagers who would approach a lot of times and they would look for young females.
00:24:11
Speaker
And my job a lot of times was to help craft conversations because we would have certain volunteers, we'll call them, I have to phrase my words very carefully here. But we would have certain people and they would need help building a conversation.
00:24:30
Speaker
But you made the exact point of saying it started with these women in the hot tub. So these women started it. So where was Twitch's responsibility? If they didn't like it, they could have stopped it. But they didn't. They allowed it to continue on. Those women stayed in there. Twitch's. Twitch allowed it to stay. And if people didn't like it, were those people creating enough buzz in a conversation that they were driving more people to want to watch it? So as they're driving more people to want to watch it, but yet they're complaining about it. And they're creating this rage and this whole other conversation. So are they posting inappropriate stuff about it?
00:25:10
Speaker
Are they saying bad things about them when they're doing it? And is that causing counter conversation that's driving their views up? And so when that happens, then you're getting more people being driven to sites that they're deeming inappropriate so other people are seeing that they're then saying oh this is a great way to get more viewers and then you're creating an effect where then more people are replicating it because yeah I was thinking what we did is again like you said there has to be an audience already out there who is wanting to do that and is already looking for that type of fetishism
00:25:51
Speaker
They're already looking to create a problem. They're already looking to exploit a female platform. It was provided for them to do it in one way or another. so it's almost saying, well, what was the woman wearing when you attacked her? Kind of same thought process.
00:26:08
Speaker
That actually brings me on to another point that's very YouTube-centric, but it's not solely isolated to YouTube as a whole. Is that idea, just what you were saying about these predators targeting women especially, And that idea of trying to project their fetishes, their kinks, that kind of thing, onto what seems to be quite an innocent quote-unquote, and this is something that made my blood curl when I first heard about this whole rabbit hole, the idea of the challenge video, where one person will say, oh, wouldn't it be funny if you showed your feet for two minutes? haha, or wouldn't it be funny if you did the... And you know, it's always something stupid, some quote-unquote challenge. And then, of course, as soon as that female creator or whoever films that video, it is there. as on the internet. It's never going away. Even if they delete it, ah hate to say this, no doubt that will have been downloaded by somebody and, I don't know, uploaded into a compilation or something and... shared around the absolute rabbit hole that that goes down it is just is absolutely horrific to see the thing is especially for younger creators as well they don't know any better and even for the more naive creators and this is something we will talk about later on as well but they'll target something about the creator pretending to be their fan and it is the most
00:27:39
Speaker
parasite behaviour I think I've ever seen online where they pretend to be these people's friends and oh don't worry I'm a huge supporter of your channel blah blah blah and then as soon as the mask slips it's almost too late. to realise and to backtrack.
00:27:56
Speaker
Honestly, once again, it's heartbreaking, but with the rise in other things with TikTok and, as you were saying before, Kik, there are so many of these platforms nowadays. And don't get me wrong, there will be certain safeguards there. You know, I can't say 100%, oh, there's no safeguards whatsoever, but by the time that video hits the internet, it is far gone, it is too late. And that is the most scary thing to think that someone can't can get lured into that false sense of security. That's exactly it. And that's one thing that I continuously tell listeners. I've told my children everything. it doesn't matter if you delete it. If it's online, it will never be deleted. If it's online, it can be found. It will never go away if it's online. And I have tried. I think I've been very successful because
Exploitation and Parasocial Dangers
00:28:49
Speaker
my children have a very minimal footprint
00:28:52
Speaker
online, but I have definitely tried to get across to my listeners that they need to be very careful online because if it is online, it is forever. And you need to be very careful with what you put out there because it can fall into very nefarious hands.
00:29:09
Speaker
And one of the things you brought up is about the feet video. And I don't know if you heard about on TikTok, the creators that like to dress up like Disney princesses.
00:29:21
Speaker
Oh, Elsa Gap. Yep. Yeah. ah There's just some very, very gross people that when they have followers, and like I said, it's something as demure and as innocent as loving to dress up like Disney princesses and someone will have a fetish and want to expose that.
00:29:44
Speaker
And it may sound like they are asking you to do the most innocent thing. but it can be the most perverse thing in their mind. So if someone is reaching out to you and asking you specific specifically to do something, you always ignore them, delete, block. That's the safest thing to do. Nothing that a single person, if they're asking you to do a specific thing for them, it's generally some sort of gross fetish thing that they're asking you to do. And that is just the heartbreaking thing that it always seems so innocent and a lot of creators would not think twice about doing it to go, oh, sure, I'll do this again. That word challenge or whatever, just to clarify for anyone who doesn't know what ElsaGate was, that was when there was a lot of prolific YouTubers in these weird channels dressing up as these popular characters like Elsa from Frozen, Spider-Man, that kind of thing. They were just basically softcore fetish videos, let's face it, with characters being put in peril, tied up, pregnant characters, oh, they're in pain. And that is a whole rabbit hole for another day, don't get me wrong. Yeah, it's this idea that essentially they are targeting a community. And let's face it, they always target, as terrible as this sounds, they always target smaller creators as well. Yes.
00:31:12
Speaker
Because usually when you're starting out, you're desperate to try and get those views. You're desperate to try and say, right, okay, what am I going to do here? What am i'm going to do there to boost my visibility? And then, of course, you have to filter out the bots, the spammers, the weirdos, e etc. But for female creators especially, you've got a lot of very nefarious characters out there who are going to be part of your content creation journey, whether for better or for worse. I mean, best case scenario, you can make content out of that experience and, you know, actively call them out. But on the negative side, of course, if you're desperate for views and someone says, oh, do this for me and oh, I'll give you money for that either on Twitch or because it's one thing for someone to come up to you on the street and say, I'll give you £50 to do XYZ. And you know, obviously you'd be like, what the hell? That is so weird. But when you frame it in the lens of, oh, I'm a Twitch subscriber, I'm going to give you money for this particular challenge. And they'll say, oh, I'm going to do that. And then they do it and...
00:32:18
Speaker
Again, parasites, that's the only word I can really describe them They worm their way in and it's just something that you have to look out for. And I know this sounds so obvious saying it just now, but genuinely if there's any younger listeners out there listening to this or people starting out, these are genuinely things you have to look out for because everybody thinks that, oh, it will never happen to me. I'm too smart to get duped. So in this way, it can happen. Honestly, it can happen to anybody. And that is the thing that I just have to stress. You made such a good point of saying if somebody came up to you on the street and offered you money, you'd look at them and say, what the hell? But if they say it online, that removes that your inhibition. And I think that is such a perfect point. If somebody is offering you money, stop and think. If this person offered me this same thing while we were out on the street, would I do it?
00:33:14
Speaker
And if you wouldn't do it face to face, should you be doing it online? And I think that is such a wonderful point. I think that was the best safety point I ever heard. Thank you. ah Thank you. I'm here every Friday.
00:33:28
Speaker
I love that. i'm going to use that from now on. I mean, it's true though, because the amount of weirdos I've seen in my time go by and do something weird on the streets and you're like, as you said perfectly, what the hell? Why would you do that? But it's almost as if you're separating the humanity from the person and then turning them into an object of entertainment. Again, you know, it can apply to men and women, but it's especially for female content creators. And I've seen it countless times. is horrible where they just reduce them to objects of entertainment and say, oh, I'll give you money to do X. I'll give you money to do Y. And again, I want to emphasize this here. I am not blaming any of these female content creators or content creators in general for doing it. I am not saying that it's their fault. It is not. their fault for doing these things.
00:34:25
Speaker
It is just something obviously to be aware of when you put yourself out there. But when you've got this, and again, this isn't just exclusive to content creators nowadays. I mean, this has been going on since celebrities became a thing where you've got this idea of parasocial relationships where you watch someone's content for long enough and then suddenly you think oh I'm their friend and that is a scary thing as well that you could be at convention or something sitting there and then some random stranger comes up to you and says oh I'm your fan 62 or something like that and you're like
00:35:03
Speaker
by what you have no idea who they are or what's going on in their lives i mean obviously there are exceptions where content creators and myself included have reached out to other people and you know you get to know them that way but for anybody who's just coming in and throwing all this money at creators and whatnot and not really building a relationship and by relationship i mean more a dialogue together. So it's very one-sided, it's very transactional, and this has been explored in a number of films, TV dramas, that kind of thing. The one that comes to mind, and I'm not just saying this because we did an episode on it, but Perfect Blue is the one that comes to mind, where it's the story of a Japanese idol who quits her singing group and she becomes an actor and does her own thing, but she gets stalked by a couple of very horrid people, and I'm underselling that massively, who they want to control her. They want her to be the same woman that she's always been to, make sure that she never goes outside the bubble of what she was. So they're basically stripping her autonomy from her, they are stripping her mental well-being from her.
00:36:18
Speaker
is just, it's a harrowing watch. It is a fantastic film, but it is a harrowing harrowing watch and as I said we've done an episode on it where we go into it in depth but it feels as if nowadays with the internet that barrier between communication has gotten narrower over time and what isn't acceptable in real life has somehow become acceptable online. I do feel as if we are losing that sense of treating other people with basic dignity and especially with these content creators to suddenly assume that because you're a woman on the internet oh you must be showing your chest oh you've got an only fans that kind of thing it's just such a backwards way of thinking but with a lot of again not to name groups but you know who i'm talking about With these certain groups and certain figures online who belittle women, who say just the most backwards things, that they shouldn't be doing
Harassment Across Genders
00:37:13
Speaker
what they're doing and things, it's just as weird to think that we study history and we study, especially for myself, I studied the women's suffragette movement in high school and you look at the stuff that they went through in the 1800s into the 1900s and you think, oh, that was a terrible mentality, but at least we've evolved from from that I'm still holding out for that Star Trek utopia oh yeah it's getting further and further away not gonna lie but at the same time there used to be that hope that by opening up the internet we're opening up communication and goodwill and everything and I'm gonna be honest I don't know how you feel about this Marianne but it's never been a worse place for toxicity and just this kind of feeling of hostility Oh, most definitely.
00:38:04
Speaker
And I don't know, when you started talking about Perfect Blue, and we do talk about it on a non-major celebrity level, but it got me thinking, and I don't know if you've ever watched the show Supernatural. Mm-hmm. It's got rabid female fans. And we talked a lot about women, but I want to take a moment and talk about male creators just for a moment, because I've been to quite a few of the supernatural cons.
00:38:34
Speaker
And, you know, you've got Jensen Ackles, you've got Jared Padalecki, you've got Misha Collins, and they will go to these in the women episode.
00:38:44
Speaker
at these things and some men are paying the money for these tickets. And when you're talking about the parasocial relationships, they have built up these relationships with these celebrities in their head because they go, they followed them to all of these supernatural cons all over the United States. So they think they have these deep relationships with them. And I have seen people lose their flipping minds. They've paid for a picture, so they think they should be able to kiss these celebrities. They think they should be able to touch them inappropriately. They really cross lines because they paid for a ticket.
00:39:26
Speaker
And then you go online and you will see them spew such toxicity if their energy level didn't meet this fan's expectation at this event compared to that event.
00:39:42
Speaker
And it again, it's just like they're not here to cater to you because you paid for a ticket. And so it just brings into mind that, yeah, male creators from that space of seeing them go through the things that kind of what we're talking about here with female creators as well. It's almost just insanity every time I watch them to the point I can't go to them anymore because I see so many fans crossing such a horrific line with the actors.
00:40:15
Speaker
Oh, 100%. The one that actually comes to mind for me is, have you ever seen Outlander? Yes. That's the one that always comes to mind for me because of the very prolific female fan base and yeah, thinking we all look like that. And i know I don't show my face on the internet, but trust me, I don't look like the guy from Outlander.
00:40:37
Speaker
like yeah I mean, I've worn a kilt, but even in a kilt, I do not look like that. Sorry to dash the hopes of all five Pandalorians holding out hope they are being like, oh no. That is actually a very, very good point, though, that when it comes to getting harassed online, and especially when it comes to these parasocial relationships, although with female creators it is mainly men that are perpetrating this women can still harass and abuse and dox other people as well because the other celebrity instance i remember as well was think it was and this is like a random video i stumbled across at three in the morning or something and it was tom hiddleston talking to a fan who i think had been to all the cons and things and she turned around and said something like oh because of you and loki i became a stripper or something like that very inappropriate because she was in a public setting getting autographs and i think he handled it rather well i think he just kind of signed and nodded and moved on and that is the thing that i think you'd have to do if you're the centre of attention in that regard. But it is a very important thing to note that, and again, I don't want to create this sense of fear on the internet that you can't trust anybody, but in a way it is better going on the internet not trusting everyone, rather than going on completely naive, saying, oh, the internet is a wonderful place, and then you end up in a very compromising position. That's what blows my mind is there are so many people who still believe everybody is who they say they are on the internet, where I generally will go in and say nobody is who they say they are until I get into a conversation with somebody. And then I'm like, okay, they are who they say they are.
00:42:29
Speaker
Until then, I don't believe anybody is who they say they are. but You mean you don't believe I'm a red panda? Come on. No, I've seen you. You are a red panda. so Exactly. So, audience, he is a red panda. To anybody who doesn't believe it. And this audio-only medium trusts us.
00:42:48
Speaker
That's right. After saying don't trust anyone. You can trust us, of course. You can trust us. We're the only ones you can trust. Yeah. but I'm looking at my Red Panda lawyer for legal reasons. That is a joke.
00:43:01
Speaker
it' Just saying it's a joke. Yeah, sorry. Nudge, nudge. It's a joke. Yeah. But yeah, that's just when we're talking about parasocial relationships, that's the main thing to remember is it's definitely it can go to that severity, crazy line. And just as a reference point of looking at celebrities, and then we bring it back to the regular people who are just trying to start out and make a career. See, that's the thing. The idea that the term celebrity nowadays has completely been flipped on its head. Because, you know, before when you thought of celebrity, you thought, oh, a famous actor, a famous, you know, just as someone who had got famous because of their talent or because they had been in something or they sang your favorite song but or whatever nowadays anybody can put on a camera and if you hit the right audience you will be viral you will launch into the stars and whether you like it or not there are so many people nowadays that even during the late 2000s early 2010s when we got the birth of meme culture well, mainstream meme culture, you know, like Success Kids, Bad Luck Brian.
00:44:20
Speaker
My God, I'm aging so many people up on the audience right now. But as I said, nowadays, if you get successful on Twitch or TikTok or whatever, there's definitely a lot of people who can test that definition to say, oh, they're not real celebrities. But at the end of the day, if they're rich and famous, they are fighters. definition celebrities even with the younger people and I have to say the amount of times I've switched on TV and they get some tiktoker youtuber on and I'm like I have no idea who this person is exactly but that's the thing though it doesn't make their achievements any a lesser just because I don't know who they are they don't know who I am either so that's But the entitlement that that produces, the worst thing is with celebrities and even the bigger streamers and whatnot, you get a lot of streamers nowadays that have a production team, they've got a crew, even for YouTubers as well, they've got a massive team to filter out these nasty people. Even on Twitch, you've got moderators, you've got admins, that kind of thing that are going to protect
00:45:31
Speaker
the creator. But see for smaller creators, they're not going to have that safety net. They are only going to have the support of their hopefully friends or family. And if that relationship breaks down, then of course you have to ask yourself, well, where are they going to turn to?
00:45:48
Speaker
And these people will start popping up saying that they're friends because they're part of the same community. And I've seen this, this is a tale as old as time. I've seen this countless times of people who have been in the same community they'll spout the right words they'll spout the right talking points and then that's when they strike and nowadays you'll get a four-hour video essay or a netflix documentary as it were indie creators don't have that they don't have those safeguards i mean obviously they can report people and everything but especially with the way that twitter has gone nowadays and you know why orange you know why it's gone downhill yeah
00:46:28
Speaker
But even with the block function where if somebody blocks you, you can still read their tweets. You can't interact with them, but you can still read them and basically see what this person's doing. So it makes it useless, essentially. It's a scary thing that you've got people who want to be successful. They want to be the next X or Y. And I've got my own thoughts on that, I think.
00:46:51
Speaker
that if you are going to be a creator, obviously be yourself, because as cliche and Disney Channel sounding as that sounds, it's better than trying to live up to another person when you're just as good as yourself. But at the same time, they're going to try and see what shortcuts they can take and how they can build a community quickly. And that leads to desperation and of course, bad choices and I mean you've probably seen it as well on the internet, the amount of people who have gone through and then they've burned out and just decided to quit altogether.
00:47:23
Speaker
is just absolutely terrible. And that of course leads me on to some testimonials that we received from the absolutely fantastic people that I've met during this journey as a podcaster. And I reached out to a few female content creators that I have talked to myself. And they were absolutely way more than happy to share their stories. So, Marianne, before I go on, are you alright with me reading out these accounts? Absolutely. There are some that really hit home with me and I'd love to hear it. So, for the most part, I am going to be reading most of these word for word because i don't want to skimp over any the details.
00:48:02
Speaker
So our first testimonial comes from Onur's Diary, who is an absolutely fantastic YouTuber and content creator. She has also been on the podcast before. She sent in the following testimony. So she sent in two particular stories. For the first one, she says, When I created my fashion content, I have to be a bit careful because I attract a lot of male attention.
00:48:28
Speaker
I remember when my first fashion video was doing so well and I was very excited by this. I looked at my analytics so I could see how I could replicate this. I looked at the videos that recommended my content and it was videos like 4K, See-Through Night Dress, Try On With No Bra See-Through Try On Hall. And I kid you not, there were around 50 softcore porn videos that recommended my video.
00:48:55
Speaker
I then got comments of men asking my brass eyes, asking if I would sell my clothes to them, telling me my figure was beautiful. I know it's not harassment, but I wanted to create wholesome and cosy fashion content for the girlies to enjoy.
00:49:10
Speaker
But because of the male viewers who watch the original videos, I have somehow fallen into the soft porn algorithm on YouTube and get men commenting on them saying some stuff that makes me uncomfortable. I've even had comments saying that there are pervs in my comment section and she sent through some screenshots to show just how these videos are being recommended and of course titles like LARP to Undressed Fan Request, Sheen High Cut Body and Transparency. parent haul, things like that. And the second story, she says, what i find it insane is that the harassment I receive as a female content creator has decreased since I am overage and an adult.
00:49:57
Speaker
When I was 13, a naive teenager who wanted to create content like her favourite influencers and YouTubers, in brackets, I do feel that I was too young, I would post outfits on Instagram. I was reached out to by an Instagram account who told me that they believed that feet were an underappreciated body part and wanted to raise awareness and appreciation
Experiences of Harassment and Sexism
00:50:19
Speaker
on this. They asked me if I could take a photo of the bottom of my feet for them to post on their Instagram to help raise awareness. Now me who was very sheltered, had no realisation on what a foot fetish was, did this because I saw other influencers do awareness posts for stuff, obviously not feet.
00:50:37
Speaker
I did it, they posted it. The amount of men who messaged me sexually and were asking me to play a game and roleplay for me to call them daddy, it was disgusting. Luckily, I didn't do any of it. They would comment hearts on my photos and I ended up blocking. so many accounts until I deleted that account as I was creeped out. But right up until I was 16 on social media, I would always be approached by men through my content being sexual. I still get it now, but it's calmed down. That was just absolutely horrifying to me. I don't know what your thoughts are. There's so many thoughts.
00:51:14
Speaker
And one of the things that got me was the first story where she was doing something as innocent as just trying to show outfits she was wearing. And the fact that her videos then got grouped into some softcore porn recommendations.
00:51:35
Speaker
That had to have so traumatizing, realizing, you know, here I am just trying to do something cute. I want to build my platform as a get ready with me, see my outfits. here it is, your clothing and something that you see as innocent amazing. turning into fans requesting you to get undressed and look at transparent clothing.
00:52:03
Speaker
I mean, that had to just feel so violated at that moment. Had to be so horrific. And then the second story, to be a child and have something like that happen and have no idea that something like that is going on. It just shows that the internet, there is no protections in place.
00:52:24
Speaker
And that's terrifying. Especially back then with YouTube, because when there was reading it, it actually brought back a memory of, I don't know if you've ever heard of this YouTuber, Ray William Johnson. He used to do recap videos on, oh, the most viral videos of the time. TV Until guy? He goes, until? I think so.
00:52:45
Speaker
like area Maybe yeah spiked up? Yeah, that's the one. yeah I remember he used to review the most viral videos of the time, but there was a lot of videos that he would include that were on hindsight when you look back and go, oh my god, that was a fetish video.
00:53:03
Speaker
Why was he reviewing that and going, oh, that's weird. And obviously I don't think there was anything nefarious from his end. I think he was just reviewing weird videos but to think that those videos were being put out there and nobody thought much of it they thought oh that's just a weird guy no oh my god that is somebody's fetish that should not be getting broadcasted like that if you know what i mean in the main oh yeah Again, that can only agree 100% with what you're saying there, to prey on people who are younger and then be like, oh yeah, let's do this, let's do that. And again, I'm going to use this word plenty in this episode, but parasites is the right word, that they just latch on to people who are unaware, unsuspecting, who just want to make innocent content. When this creator had shared the story of her being 13 years old and then some guys had asked her to take pictures of her feet, it reminded me of another little girl. She was 13 years old and she was making innocent content. I think she was doing artwork on her YouTube and she was just doing, i think it was she was making artwork
00:54:15
Speaker
And she was just doing YouTube videos of artwork and stuff like that. And a 41-year-old guy named Stanley Dotson became obsessed. And he started commenting and everything on her YouTube videos and trying to get her to do stuff.
00:54:31
Speaker
And her parents had called the police. They had contacted YouTube saying, this guy is saying inappropriate things to her. They were moderating, luckily, her YouTube. They noticed he was saying odd things, asking her to do weird things. He ended up doxing her and finding her home and actually tried to kidnap her from her home. Jesus. yeah. And it was, again, just an innocent girl just wanting to share her art and doing something fun. And i believe there is actually a ring camera. They had a ring camera on their home. And she was outside and he came walking up to the house and recognized her from... he had gotten like a basic idea of where she lived and he had just been cruising the neighborhood until she had actually come out and she was doing something out front. Realized it was her from the YouTube video and ended up grabbing her arm and was trying to pull her with him. And luckily her dad found out and...
00:55:31
Speaker
came out and was able to circumvent what was going on and got the police called and they knew it was the same guy and he had drove all the way up from texas to god i'm trying to remember mean he drove hundreds of miles to find this little girl she was saying 13 it made me think of that case and it was just crazy i mean i think this happened about a year ago you know that does ring a bell Yeah, it was crazy. I could not believe. And luckily, her parents were keeping an eye as to what was going on. And unfortunately, a lot of parents don't want to monitor their children's things as closely. So for parents, watch your kids online. Absolutely. So the second story we've got, and this is quite interesting because I've got a lot of accounts from female content creators who both put their face out there and who also don't show their face, but they still get a similar level of harassment. So the next one comes from a VTuber called Melfina, absolutely fantastic VTuber by the way, who says, Admittedly, my story slash stories are not very unique in this sphere. Primary harassment I usually faced
00:56:43
Speaker
was that because I am a woman, obviously this totally makes content creation super easy for me. Despite my very small views, I've usually been on the end of, you're a woman, so just flash a titty and that's all you need. It's so easy for you. While also apparently being too ugly to stream because I'm a VTuber, and therefore I'm not worthy to watch at the same time either, like Schrodinger's streamer or something.
00:57:10
Speaker
is actually one of the main reasons I chose being a VTuber, for a bit more anonymity and safety for myself versus using a facecam. Almost everything I did or would try to do was always basically dismissed because woman.
00:57:26
Speaker
If I succeed, it's cause of my looks. or that I'm using my gender to take advantage of things somehow. It gets doubly worse if you dare have the audacity to use your Twitch TV or TTV as your handle in a PvP game like Rivals or Overwatch 2. Dead by Daylight is also pretty nasty, but that community is more of an equal opportunity to hatred and harassment.
00:57:49
Speaker
Like Lord help you if you're a woman streamer and the enemy team finds out. Then come the usual s sexism jokes about sandwiches and dishwashers. ah Well, of course, as a woman, that's going to make me pretty dang ticked off. ah um I haven't really gotten into the gaming community quite yet. But yeah, it sounds like sexism and misogyny are quite the thing for women that they can't play the macho male video games.
00:58:22
Speaker
And then also, of course, hearing the misogyny that, you know, a woman has to bare her breasts and appeal a certain way in order to be successful. I mean, and what's really sad is her saying, this isn't new. It's not. That's unfortunate. I mean, if you even go back to shows like Mad Men or any of the older shows, I mean, they always go back to the sexism of where in order for women to get ahead, we're supposed to be a certain way or we have to do certain things in order for us to be successful. We can to push and bend what society is trying to tell us we have to do. And of course, as we do that, you know, as she's doing that, and she's playing those games, she's having to buck up against the system. And, you know, it sounds like she's hearing, well, then you need to go to the kitchen, you have to go make sandwiches, you have to go do this stuff. And it's just the constant
00:59:25
Speaker
barrage of sexism and misogyny and it honestly just pisses me off because it just reminds me of being a woman in a male-dominated field that you hear things of if you're playing these things or if you're working in this field, well, then you have to be gay or you have to be a certain way. You get typecast that if you like certain things, it all comes back to rather than everything about being a woman is questioned and you get stereotype that your job is only to be taking care of men and cleaning the house and you shouldn't be doing the same things that men enjoy and you can only be doing that if you're half naked and sitting in front of a camera and that's ridiculous because I always remember in the late 2000s when online gaming started to to really take off and there was a lot of very questionable things that a lot of people hurled at one another it was a very different place but
01:00:28
Speaker
in terms of the sexism and things in gaming I remember that vividly that whenever a woman would pop up in a FPS game for example like Call of Duty that they would be ridiculed to go back to the kitchen etc disappoints me that that still is used as an insult but one thing that I always find quite interesting was that whenever you would have a female character in tv show or a web series or things like that who was a gamer that also played with the boys she would be less feminine if that makes sense that oh she's not like the other girls she hates and makeup and pink and she wears all black and oh she only plays FPS games she doesn't play I don't know Animal Crossing or yeah things like that and obviously that kind of attitude was very typical for the 2000s and early 2010s but it feels as if it's almost come full circle for a lot of people who think that just because a woman is playing this game that, oh, they shouldn't be. They should be playing more feminine games and things, which is absolutely ridiculous because I'll give you a real world example today. Today I was playing a game where you raise these cute blob creatures on a farm and you raise your crops and you battle them and things. That's as far from stereotypical masculine, I think, as you can get. And that's the love the hell out of that game. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
01:01:59
Speaker
It's from a certain demographic, isn't it, that it's, oh, these particular players should act the way that they think they should act, which is absolutely, as you said, it's absolutely ridiculous to think that, especially in this day and the male-dominated game should be dictating who's playing the game, because if you start gatekeeping in that stupid way, you're going to get less players, and the company isn't going to look at that and go, oh, thank God there's more men playing this game.
01:02:28
Speaker
No, no, they're going to pull funding for it because all they care about is a sales figure. So nobody wins. That's what i'm trying to say. Right. Exactly. That reminds me. I mean, go to my hairstylist and i was sitting there one day and I was telling her, I was actually talking to her about a conversation you and I were having about video games and how I was wanting to learn and and try to get into that more as something to learn to pass my time. And she She immediately and this is somebody who is a very petite blonde. She does hair, very adorable young woman. and she was like, oh, you need to play Call of Duty. She became so animated and talking to me about it. I mean, just so against the typical stereotypes. Yeah, I mean, she loves playing it. She was so happy about it. It's something she does with her husband. So yeah, it should be something that anybody can enjoy. They should be able to play and feel safe doing it.
01:03:26
Speaker
Because games like Call of Duty have tried to implement punishments and more safeguarding in that regard. Whether it works or not, personally, I'm a bit sceptical because the people who are actually saying these things are obviously going to be taking it outside of Call of Duty. They're not just going to be keeping it within the game.
01:03:45
Speaker
But I'm going to be honest, before I go to the next one, some of the best Call of Duty players that I've seen have been women. That I've seen them and I'll be like, oh, what games do you like to play? And they're like, oh, Call of Duty. And they'll show me clips of their streaming things. And they kick absolute ass.
01:04:01
Speaker
So much so that I'm looking at my own console going, I should probably just give up now, you know? We've got that female rage. As soon as you see them going over the hill, you're like, oh, this is where I die. Great.
01:04:13
Speaker
but So our next one comes from another Twitch streamer, Zelfia Moth, and she says, My experience as an AFAB, assigned female at birth, content creator has been overall positive, but there's been some instances where the fact that I and my fellow colleagues have been harassed.
01:04:32
Speaker
I am a Twitch streamer who streams via Xbox. I don't have a camera. I mostly use PNG g avatars I make or my friends make for me. I'm overall taken as one of the team, equal in my community. Even then, it seems i'm not taken seriously by a couple of bad eggs.
01:04:50
Speaker
My story here is the beginning of my streaming career. I started my career as part of a community right away, and it was a very fast-paced, growing community during a hyped game that became very community-based.
01:05:03
Speaker
I was co-streaming with someone in my community, not knowing he was drinking. Within an hour of streaming together, he became very unprofessional, kept saying racist and sexist things to chat, and even started going on rants about how everyone needs to respect my pronouns. I am she, they, even though I said I'm good with any pronouns but male, and it wasn't a big deal to me, and outing me to people that I really didn't know. Even with me out, it was very difficult to express my feelings towards that.
01:05:34
Speaker
Then he started going on rants about every single female community member around at that time in detail about what he loved about them, including me. Making all of us uncomfortable and just ruining my stream for the evening, so much so that I just turned off my stream and deleted the VOD. Through Twitch, this hasn't been my only experience via streaming myself or modding for fellow femme streamers. I've seen very much just straight up sexist things asking for bra sizes, if they're single, just calling them a woman in the first time chat, calling them bad gamers just cause they're women, kitchen jokes, fat jokes, you name it. But this story is my own, so I felt comfortable to share.
01:06:16
Speaker
Even though we have come so far in the streaming slash gaming world being more taken seriously as women, we still face many challenges of humankind on the daily basis and have to do more proactive procedures than the regular male streamers. I hope soon enough people won't see just our gender base and just see us as who we are. People who have passion of creating, people that just want to have fun, make friends, and share our laughter with the world.
01:06:44
Speaker
I like the way that that was ended, and I really hope listeners and the internet community can take that to heart, because that's exactly how it should be. Yeah, it kind of links on to the last one, doesn't it? That similar mentality of trolls and people who don't really understand what they're saying is incorrect, you know, but not in the sense of, oh, I just made a slip up, like being actively horrid and creating a hostile atmosphere.
01:07:14
Speaker
Yeah, I understand that they're making excuses for the person drinking. But again, if it's something that you wouldn't do on the street, you shouldn't be doing it online.
01:07:25
Speaker
And who knows, maybe this person would talk to a woman face to face that way or anyone face to face that way. But that's disgusting and they shouldn't be doing that. Definitely. Our next one comes from fellow podcaster, Rena Friedman-Motz.
01:07:41
Speaker
She sent in a screenshot of someone talking to her in her DMs and she'd reached out to this person and said, thank you so much for emailing. I'm going to pick a few times. Excited to check out your show. That is a very nice opening, I would say, personally. Normal, nothing out of line about it. Just a regular, yeah And then the next two comments, the first one's not so bad, i have to say. They replied saying, i would love to have you on as a guest on my podcast as well. Absolutely fine. Great. Come back. 10 out of 10. Then they said, you're truly beautiful with beautiful eyes and very beautiful long hair.
01:08:21
Speaker
Don't do this. It takes me back to Bob Newhart when he was trying to coach a patient. And he said, I'm going to give you just a couple of words of how to handle it, how to handle bad things.
01:08:32
Speaker
And she said, should I write it down? And he goes, no, you don't need to write down. Just remember these words. Stop it. Just stop it. And that's what I want to tell this person. Just stop it. And then she followed up and said that she had another guy telling me that I'm the most beautiful Jewish woman he's ever seen. That made me uncomfortable too. I had other mention nice eyebrows that I worked with at the radio. I'm like, what the hell? I totally agree with that.
01:09:01
Speaker
That is weird. There's being socially awkward and not understanding, you know, social nuances. And obviously my words may vary, but There's that, and then there's clearly this that the is 110% inappropriate. This is the kind of thing that when jobs put you through anti-harassment training, this is literally the first thing that probably pops up. It's like, don't say these things. Oh, yeah. The next one comes from another VTuber called Zuzu and she said, one of my challenges is that i wanted to be a wholesome streamer because there were people of certain ages watching my stream it eventually led there
01:09:40
Speaker
because i streamed full guys custom games which had an age group of supervised kids to teenagers But when I first started streaming on Twitch and Facebook as a small streamer, I didn't appreciate how people would take advantage of slash request for an uwu redeem.
01:09:58
Speaker
I'll explain that in a minute, by the way. Which I ended up putting there since someone who donated a lot of money to me requested repeatedly i put up. Eventually when I'd have learn a different language days, some guys wouldn't want me to repeat things that weren't appropriate either. But when you start small and you understand where the trend is, that's the struggle. But I mean, I think that's the price to pay as a person who is in the industry. You have to know the trends and be part of it to grow. But of course, you need to be able to set your limits. And if someone doesn't respect you, just block slash ban them. In the beginning on Facebook, since I tried streaming there for a bit, it was so funny because I got so many dick pics from guys. So I asked my guy assistant to handle the DMs on my Facebook.
01:10:47
Speaker
Oh, boy. Oh, wow. yeah I was reading along if you couldn't tell. The minute it came to that one, it was like, oh my god. but Yeah. Oh, full body shiver. Oh.
01:10:59
Speaker
So for anyone who doesn't know what an uwu redeem is, I don't even know where it came from, but it's a kind of cutesy way to be like, oh, look at me, I'm so cute and things. And they would say that.
01:11:13
Speaker
I'm not going to say it again because I'm going to give you all nightmares. You hear me say it, but it's that kind of idea that they want to hear female streamers say it. Same with, I think it was Ara Ara as well, which was ah another, i think it was like a Japanese term that people were saying to be cutesy. and You know, if female shooters are deciding to say it in their own volition, obviously pop off, for Okay, I'm definitely not going to Google it. Yeah, you can Google it if you want, but I'm not going to be held liable for it. Nope, not going to it.
01:11:45
Speaker
Moving on to the next one. We have... but We have ah another Twitch streamer who has chosen to be anonymous for the sake of anonymity. going to go through this and basically summarise what this person said to me in confidentiality.
01:12:03
Speaker
This person had said that they had had a guy who used to drop a lot of donations, gifted subs, bits, all of that stuff on Twitch. They had actually gamed with this person and they had started off as a really nice guy and They had gamed with them and their partner. Really good gamer, really good friend. Again, building up that relationship. And she said, oh my gosh, he was the most compulsive liar that I think I've ever met. He piled it on for the longest time. That he would say he was a pro golfer at one point. He was an e-celebrity. But if you looked up his name, nothing would pop up. It was just lie after lie.
01:12:45
Speaker
This person also said that he was going in for her... heart surgery, even though he was quite young, in his 20s. And she said, what I think he was trying to do was make me worry about him as a bit of a manipulation tactic, because we became friends for a while. And even though we had shared music,
01:13:04
Speaker
and game together he got really manipulative and wanted attention for the majority of the time because in his words oh I'd subscribe to you i support you I do this and that for you so it was like manipulation through money or other support for the channel I even had this early when I started YouTube and someone had subscribed to my Patreon because they paid to subscribe to the Patreon, they had automatically assumed that they would get personal time with me and that they could message me every day and I could send them personal photos, to which of course she had replied to say that it's crossing boundaries. And when I told him that, he got so mad that he left my Discord server, which good riddance, but then he started bullying me on YouTube for a while. And that's happened a couple of times.
01:13:53
Speaker
She makes a good point here as well, saying that it's quite common and usually happens when people support a stream financially, and they think that that gives them access to that person, that I can talk to that person, and I can harass them if I want to because I pay them.
01:14:11
Speaker
And as for the compulsive a liar person, it got so bad that at one point even told her that he had got cancer. Long story short, it turned out that all of his friends who knew him in real life reached out to her and said that no, he doesn't have cancer. It just goes to show how far some people will go to keep you invested. If you're an empathetic person, like she is of course you'd be worried and you know you'd sympathize and say sorry you're going through this the amount of stuff he told me and the amount of health problems he quote-unquote had he would not even be alive so you know he was using that as a means to stay close to her and then using that money aspect as a means to manipulate her that is quite
01:14:57
Speaker
common thing that i have noticed myself in terms of whether it's Patreon, whether it's Twitch, or whether it's a subscriber, where you'll have rewards and things and you'll encourage participation from your community.
Ethical Boundaries in True Crime Podcasts
01:15:12
Speaker
But when it gets to that stage, that is just absolutely horrific. I wish in a way I could say I was surprised that someone would do this, but it's unfortunately the case that if someone with this mentality thinks they can get away with it, they will most certainly try their best to get away with it.
01:15:29
Speaker
And again, tethering it onto the monetary aspect. it's just absolutely horrible because, saying all honesty, myself included, I appreciate everyone who has ever supported me financially and I'm sure everybody else who gets supported financially, they appreciate it as well. But just because you pay someone, that doesn't mean you're their friend. It doesn't mean that they're going to bend over back Oh, that somebody who has terrible thing. Sorry. Shouldn't quite.
01:15:58
Speaker
and pulllling and that is something that really made my blood boil or pulllling the oh i have a terminally a disease oh that makes me fury yeah as somebody who has
01:16:12
Speaker
ah sorry no No, you're completely right, though. I mean, I don't know, obviously, when this happened. It must have happened years ago. But, you know, after watching that apple cider vinegar... Oh my gosh. Yeah, that just renewed my hatred of any kind of person like this who would use something as tragic to manipulate other people. Absolutely ridiculous of them. And one thing I want to point out and reinforce just a little bit about our podcast True Crime Creators and a little bit different than the creators we're talking about and what you guys do just to educate your listeners in case they do follow True Crime Creators.
01:16:55
Speaker
I always caution listeners. If it's a true crime creator, to be very, very careful of true crime creators. There are some amazing ones. Serial Napper is one I trust. Their ethics are above par. They are amazing. But there are some who will put up paywalls and ask for money and those type of things in an unethical way. And that is why we do not request.
01:17:23
Speaker
And we are very careful that we have absolutely, we never ask for any funding or any money. Because once you do that and you're working with victims' families, it crosses a very, very big line with working with families and being an investigative podcast.
01:17:42
Speaker
So if you have somebody who's saying they are an investigative podcast that works with law enforcement and families and they're asking for money, that's a red flag.
01:17:53
Speaker
And whether or not you're a indie podcaster or not or indie creator, you still have to have a baseline of morality there. You're completely right. You can't really cross that because if you are going to take advantage, then what's the point of being there? Yeah. So, I mean, if they're a creator who is just creating and writing content and that's what they do and they're true crime creator, that's great. And they do their paywalls and that type of thing. That's great. And they need to be protected. Those who have their different Patreons and that, those are great. And nobody should take their time and think that because they're donating or buy a coffee or anything that they deserve that creator. time. But if it's a creator who is saying that they are offering services to a victim's family and they're asking for funds, that's a red flag of a creator. So just want to differentiate between those two. So the next one that we've got is from a another fellow podcaster, Marie from the Two Girls One Reusable Cup podcast, who has said, and I can believe this when she sent it through, she said, well, I did have a stalker about one week of launching the pod, and it went from zero to a hundred real quick.
01:19:15
Speaker
The thing is, according to the profile picture, it was a girl, but it was really strange. First they said me and my co-host made a cute couple and that they were jealous of our relationship. Then they were actively hitting on me in the comment and kept talking to me in LGBTQIA meetups around Lisbon. And I wasn't openly out at the time. In the end, we just blocked her. Yeah, that's somebody who could have escalated really quickly. So I'm glad they blocked her or whoever that person was.
01:19:46
Speaker
Again, not to wave my finger and say the whole, oh, be careful of everyone on the internet, but again, it just shows that whether it's a man or a woman on the internet that you're talking to, you have to at least get to know them first before you give them any semblance of trust. or confidence in them because it's amazing how quickly it can escalate. So the next one that we've got is from That Florida Feeling podcast. And the host says, my podcast is That Florida Feeling. And it was always going to be about Florida.
01:20:20
Speaker
My original idea was each episode was going to be about a mini trip I took each week in Florida to a new destination and tell people about it. I was uploading content with my face in it and everything. The first episode I got so many comments that ranged from sexual, mean, rude, nice, to Unalive Yourself that I decided never to show my face on my podcast again and make it not personal. I had to b block so many people and only got rid of one person to stop harassing me when they were finally banned from two social media platforms.
01:20:55
Speaker
The first episode alone almost made me never want to be a podcaster or creator after that. I changed my entire podcast. and deleted anything to do with the first day episode. People can be mean or weird when they sit behind keyboards. They feel as if they've got some kind of power and it's not okay.
01:21:12
Speaker
That's rough. I absolutely understand that. When I made my very first podcast, it was six months before I could make another one. I come completely understand where they are coming from. it is so hard because you put yourself out there and it is so much raw emotion and you're investing yourself and people are cruel terrible.
01:21:36
Speaker
and terrible With mine, what was so bad too was, you know, I'm sharing the story of my friend and getting some people telling me that she deserved to be raped. She deserved to be killed. It's just evil how some people can be. So yeah, i definitely understand how it can make you just want to give up.
01:21:55
Speaker
Because there's no accountability when they're hiding behind their keyboards. Yeah. I know it's a stereotype to say, oh, look at these trolls hunched over the keyboards. But to be honest, in this day and age, people can create any accounts that they want and just spread such...
01:22:12
Speaker
hatred towards people. And the thing is, a lot of people always say, oh, if you didn't do this or you didn't present yourself as that, like especially for women on the internet, oh, if you didn't show your chest so much or oh, if you didn't wear these clothes and things. At the end of the day, these people are so hate-filled and disgusting that they would pick on any attribute to bully someone over. And I mean, that's high school behaviour where they reckon anything different I totally agree. It's absolutely horrible. And for this person to have received that, you know, they had such an innocent, fun, loving thing they wanted to do about something that they enjoyed. And with their first episode to have so much hate and disgusting stuff just thrown at them, I feel so bad for them that they had to endure that and almost give up. And I'm so glad that they didn't give up, though, but they couldn't do it the way they wanted And the final written entry that we got in was from one of our mutual friends in the podcast sphere, Petals of Support, yeah who said, I love this topic and I am so glad you're bringing light to harassment of women content creators that also just jerk and unnecessary behaviour in general. The crazy thing is that I have not, so far at least, experienced anything whatsoever. No nasty messages or unpleasant interactions, unless you count the normal let me promote your podcast crap on a daily basis. Maybe because i rarely venture out of my comfort zone of friends, or maybe I'm just not wide enough known one to be targeted, or maybe my content doesn't bring anything controversial enough. to result in big exposure. I don't know. I'm obviously not complaining about that, but I'm not sure what more I could add to that. But she then finishes of course and says, love the topic though and both know that you will do it and the victims justice and getting their stories told. Thank you for that. This is one thing that I do want to point out and I'm curious to hear your thoughts about this as well. Just the fact that although we've gone through some really horrific examples here, There are still female content creators out there who haven't been exposed to this.
01:24:27
Speaker
I just want to say, just because you're not getting exposed to it it doesn't make the bad experiences you have any less valid. But what are your thoughts on that, see, for female content creators who don't maybe receive as much backlash? Because obviously that a great thing to begin with. But yeah, what are your thoughts on that one? Yeah, when I discussed with other creators and my other fellow female creators that I was going to be doing this and whether or not to hear their interest, I did have some saying, well, you know, gosh, I don't really get anything. Is that bad? Does that say something about me? And I said,
01:25:04
Speaker
No, absolutely not. This doesn't say anything about you. It's a good thing that you haven't had to put up with this. There is nothing positive or negative about that. It just means that nobody has done that.
01:25:19
Speaker
And it could mean accountability of how much time you spend online. It could mean that the algorithm, the nastiness... hasn't found you. i mean, there are some creators who may just not be online as much.
01:25:35
Speaker
And that means the algorithm just doesn't find them. I've had people say that, well, does that mean I'm doing something right? Or does that mean other people are doing something wrong? Nobody is doing anything wrong. And I don't think that the people who it hasn't found are doing anything specifically right, because I have asked them, well, what are you doing? And honestly, it just sounds like they're not online as much.
01:26:01
Speaker
They're just not as visible. They're honestly just not online as much. They have fewer followers and they just don't make the effort. They aren't liking a lot of other fellow posts. They're not trying to engage with any followers except for the followers they know, like Petals of Support says. So if you're not engaging with anybody except for the people you know, odds are you're not going to really see negative or nefarious stuff.
01:26:29
Speaker
So it's not that anybody else is doing anything wrong. They're just trying to grow their accounts. They're going to interact with people they don't know. And so the odds of somebody they don't know being a horrific person is way higher.
01:26:43
Speaker
I mean, that is true. i have to say there were a couple of people who commented under the post that I put up saying that we were going to be talking about this specific issue. And they said exactly the same thing, that even though they show their face and everything and they don't hide it, that they weren't getting as much abuse from people.
01:27:02
Speaker
And first of all, you know, it is great that they aren't getting as much harassment and whatnot, but you're completely right. It's a good thing with It's not like they're doing anything wrong. They're absolutely not. And all I could say is I hope that that continues, to be honest. To wrap up these testimonials, we have two audio testimonials from a YouTuber called MerkKK and another content creator called Ebony. They both discussed basically their thoughts about the issue. Without any further ado, I'm just going to let both of these play back to back. I'll just let them take it away. I think the majority of harassers are casual, like they'll see you in nice clothes and make sexual comments about you. I used to get those, but just changed the way I dress.
01:27:47
Speaker
Like, I dress pretty rough on videos and on streams, you might notice big baggy tops and frumpy jumpers, and it specifically because I just hate getting comments on my body. I will still get flyby comments, I got asked if talking about the human centipede 2 made me wet, for example. It will be reactionary stuff intended to make me uncomfortable.
01:28:06
Speaker
There's no intent to compliment or even pander to me. They're not trying to get things out of me. I've been called a waste of a hole before because I talked about men who prey on teenage girls, When I talk negatively about anime, I tend to get called a hag and get told that I'm used up.
01:28:19
Speaker
So in my case, my harassment boils down to you have a body and you should be deeply ashamed of it. You should be aware of it and how it's changed and how it's used and you should feel bad about that. the majority of people my age and younger tend to be fairly chill, but most of my harassment comes from people who lack the self-awareness to understand they're in a parasocial dynamic. People who I block, but they still continue to message on other accounts wanting to know why I fell out with them. People who won't take no for an answer. Within my quote community, it's not so much harassment as it is just creepiness, asking to help me move house, literally wanting to pick me up in their car and drive me to my next address, asking to meet up for drinks when they're in the area. There's an entitlement that comes from a perceived feeling of familiarity. Like, why wouldn't I give you my phone number? We know each other. Their intentions might be good, but often when I politely decline, the reaction will be a massive tantrum, especially in older men, which is weird. i think most of my parasocial tantrums have been from men aged 40,
01:29:16
Speaker
40 plus. There was a few weeks back where I mentioned that I spiraled down bad because of stuff that people were saying.
Impact of Defamation and Community Drama
01:29:24
Speaker
Specifically what was said about me and who it was said to made it very obvious that these people are within the podcast community because it brought up the podcast. It brought up stuff I'd only said to certain people. It had made rumors about me to other podcasters.
01:29:39
Speaker
Who does that? What grown-ass adult sits there and makes multiple social media accounts? Multiple. I'm not talking one. I'm talking one account would get blocked, another one would pop up.
01:29:50
Speaker
First of all, who has time to do that? And second of all, why? Multiple accounts just to DM people to say how bad of a person I am or the kind of person I supposedly am. You get out of your way. To slander someone you've never met in person and destroy their reputation.
01:30:06
Speaker
And for what? And the worst thing is i allowed this to happen. Well, not to happen, but I allowed myself to get affected by it because I spiraled so far down. And I've mentioned this on that episode. I spiraled so far down that I wanted to kill myself because I felt so hurt and so betrayed by a community that I thought I had support from, that I thought I fell in love with.
01:30:31
Speaker
And I've got multiple people who can back this up. I support everyone. i have retweeted and commented and shared and tried to get people to follow and try to get people to listen to every podcast and every group chat that I go to. Do I have people I don't like? Sure. But they' know what the funny thing is?
01:30:50
Speaker
I still promoted their content. And not for myself because a lot of them didn't do it back and I don't care. do it because I feel that's what a community should do That's the thing. it is not a community. But I feel like we could all as a group be a lot better. And that just comes down to being a better human being.
01:31:05
Speaker
And I'm not here to name names. But there is so much drama and toxicity that happens online through the podcast community and it is disgusting. What are your thoughts on those ones, Marianne? To actually hear their testimonials, hearing them talk about it is so incredibly moving and just absolutely horrific of what they endured and what they continuously go through. But again, on the same thing, it's The fact that you hear the women just continue to talk about that this just happens.
01:31:40
Speaker
It's a commonplace thing. And again, I know we just spoke about other people are saying, well, this doesn't happen to them. And I honestly think the cross section of people it doesn't happen to is so much smaller than the people it does happen to.
01:31:56
Speaker
I think it definitely happens to far more people than it doesn't. Yeah, it's just some of the terminology that was used there, just absolutely horrible. Yeah.
01:32:07
Speaker
Honestly, it sounds so terrible to say it bears not repeating, but again, it's just, you try and think of why these people act the way they do, and especially towards women on the internet, you know, there is just something so terribly horrible, and it's something in that first audio there, Merck KK said there, that there's this idea of entitlement. Again, going back to some of the testimonials that we've had before, that because they're part of the community, they're like, oh, we're best buddies, and it's like, but whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone here. yeah I mean, you are part of the community and everything, that is, of course, true, but as soon as you challenge them on that and say, no, no, no, hold on, you're part of this community, but you're not my friend. You know, you probably don't even know the first thing about me that hasn't already day to been publicly said. So you get people saying, why aren't you giving me your phone number? oh I can come to your house and give you a lift. It's like, why And especially the fact that a lot of these parasocial tantrums seem to be coming from men over the age of 40.
01:33:08
Speaker
Disappointing in so many ways that it's just such a spectrum of people who are harassing these content creators. And again, something that Ebony had said in her testimonial there was there's loads of people on the internet who almost make it their identity to campaign against somebody yeah If they think that they've been slighted in any way, and I mean, I've seen it firsthand as well, it is a horrible position to be in. It is horrible to see people who are like, oh, I don't like you, therefore I'm going to commit my whole personality to saying, oh, let's harass them here, let's harass them there. You've got new followers? Oh, I'm going to tell them all about you. I'm going to be threatening you and things. And I think that is just...
01:33:54
Speaker
such a disgusting ah attitude to have. Because on the one hand, these types of people think that they're holding certain creators accountable. And I cannot emphasize this enough, I do feel as if if there's a creator out there that does something heinous and wrong. They should be held to account and you should make a noise about it. I totally agree with that. But when you're making it your life's mission to just harass one person purely under the guise of I don't like what they said or I think that they are a horrible person just cause, then that is where I draw the line as well. And obviously, hundreds of other people I'm sure listening will agree with me on that, that you cannot do that. You cannot just say, oh, I'm going to do this campaign against this one person. Because this is how witch hunts start.
01:34:44
Speaker
And I don't mean i let a literal witch hunt, of course, but this is how a lot of people get harassed off the internet, how you get a lot of people... Again, going back to that study that I brought up at the very beginning, how when women get harassed on the internet, and obviously men as well, but in the case of this argument, and that study when women were get harassed, it doesn't stop and the end at the computer. It actually a reminds me of a semi-comedic tweet where... Somebody said something along the lines of, and I'm paraphrasing here, but they said something like, oh, how does cyberbullying exist? Just turn off your computer. Ha ha. Therefore, no more cyberbullying. Ha ha. I'm a genius. They're not, by the way. But that's the thing as well. Ever since the beginning of the internet, you have had cyberbullies, whether it's at school level, whether it's at university.
Cyberbullying and Online Harassment Trends
01:35:35
Speaker
You've had these chat rooms, these groups and things hounding particular people, all for the sake of comedy, because they think either this is hilarious or it's their God-given duty to harass this person. This is something that I think a lot of people don't understand, especially for content creation and especially for women in the content creation field. If you call them ugly or horrible or, oh, I don't like your voice, that kind of thing... What do you expect that they're going to take from that? Some people do it on purpose. You know, they'll say, I'm doing it because I want a reaction out of them. I want to see them cry. I want to see them do this and that. And that is vile in its own right.
01:36:16
Speaker
But this idea that they think that what they say online is just going to be kept online is just, at best, childish and utterly naive. And at worst, abominable. It is something that I do think a lot of people kind of misunderstand.
01:36:32
Speaker
Do you think that as well, that when people talk about cyberbullying and targeting people, that they underestimate it as oh, it's nothing more than silly words, and oh, I can get in trouble for writing a funny joke, and obviously it's not? Oh, absolutely. And we can look at so many cases. And how I always started is the intent. When somebody writes something or when somebody posts something on somebody's page, what is their intent?
01:37:04
Speaker
Okay, okay. So they're thinking, okay, this is just funny. I am just writing this to be humorous or I'm making a dig at them. That's your intent. But here's the thing. Are you causing distress on that person? Are you causing a reasonable amount of distress?
01:37:25
Speaker
Are you causing a reasonable amount of making that person now feel fear? If you are, you have now transitioned yourself into stalking. And yes, you are no longer a follower. You are no longer commenting. You are now stalking. And that is breaking the law.
01:37:45
Speaker
And so people need to look at what they're commenting or when they do it or how many time they do it because charges can be brought against them. And if they're doing it from these accounts, their IP addresses can eventually be traced.
01:38:02
Speaker
And I always try to remind people that as they're doing this, you need to realize that eventually you're going to have to answer for what you're doing. And I also want to remind people who are having this done to them, You are defenseless.
01:38:17
Speaker
If somebody is doing this to you and you are being put into a place where you are now in reasonable fear of this person and you've talked to a moderator, you've tried doing what you can, there is legal recourse.
01:38:33
Speaker
you can take, you may not be doing more than just putting information at a police department and letting them know it's not being too aggressive. What you're doing is cataloging information and letting this person know, hey, you have stepped over the line and we're not putting up with it anymore.
01:38:54
Speaker
And I think more people need to do that because if we did, I think we would start to curb people from taking these things too far. Because as a closing point, I do think that while certain parts of the internet have gotten better, there has also been a rise in a lot of groups that seem to think that they can talk any way they like to someone without any recourse, without any consequence, that kind of thing. and when they find communities of like-minded people who of course are coming in and saying, oh I'm gonna harass this person, oh I don't like this person, oh wouldn't it be funny if we made them cry on stream? Because, and obviously I've not done it myself, but the amount of videos that i have seen of female creators who have said that they've cried on stream because, you know, it's just been too much, because they're just getting so much abuse and things. which is exactly what these people want. It goes beyond, oh, we are just a bunch of silly people giving these just absolutely brain-dead takes.
01:39:59
Speaker
Oh, it's just a joke, or it's not our fault because, oh, a woman said something bad to us in the past or something, therefore we are vindicated to do this and everything. And it's just absolutely baffling watching this unfold, especially nowadays. And I'm not going to get into the specifics of, I mean, you'll probably garner what I'm talking about here, but there are definitely parts of the world, to let's say, that are just absolutely bursting into flames right now. There is a lot of, and it's all over the world, but there is a lot more hatred going on on the internet, there is a lot more vitriol if somebody doesn't like you. I honestly don't know if this is just a symptom of a post-COVID society, because while all of this obviously happened well before the lockdowns, well before COVID hit, I still remember people wanting to at least be civil, but nowadays you get the sense that a lot of people are just absolutely fed up with the world and I can understand why but when you take something like that, that apathy, that hatred, that anger, that injustice and things like that and then you're turning it on people especially these female creators and being so abusive to the extent that this has become the new norm that if you have a female content creator online that they are going to have to keep one eye open in case they get a oh you're so beautiful or oh do this dodgy challenge for me or oh do this and that and we shouldn't be normalizing that sorry i know as a guy that sounds like the most milquetoast oh we shouldn't be harassing people like that's the bare minimum but for a lot of people i get the feeling that they don't agree with that that they think oh let's just say anything on the internet that's absolutely fine that's no problem at all but it's a huge problem when we are normalizing the fact that we know that people are going to get abuse online and obviously on a base like men and women are going to get abuse but more so for female content creators who just want to be themselves who just want to do these particular videos or streams or podcasts or whatever Yeah, and that's the thing. They're wanting to find a way, just like everyone else, to make money, find a way to look for ways to make side money, to stay at home and make money. You know, that's what I think happened with COVID is people were finding ways of connecting through our computers.
01:42:31
Speaker
And we all started to connect. But then if you don't look people in the eye, i think we kind of lose a little bit of our humanity. I think that's what started to happen is when people only started seeing each other through words on a screen, we lost a little bit of our humanity.
01:42:48
Speaker
We started seeing the darker side of each
Safety Advice for Female Creators
01:42:51
Speaker
other. So, I mean, they should still be able to monetize their content. They should still be able to chase virality, but they need to avoid the dangerous challenge videos. The biggest thing I guess I want to come across with is if you are a female creator, to remember that clicks are never worth compromising your well-being.
01:43:12
Speaker
Whatever you're trying to monetize your content and you're trying to become viral or anything, everyone thinks they're safe because they're online. But when you're online, you're also accessible. And stalkers have all of that information at their fingertips.
01:43:29
Speaker
So if you're a female creator, just remember every one of those clicks you're trying to get, every one of those likes you're trying to get, not a single one of them are worth compromising your safety. So I just want them to remember that.
01:43:44
Speaker
Honestly, I cannot agree with that more. I think that is such an important takeaway from this episode and the perfect place to wrap it up. that your value as a creator, for anybody listening to this, your value as a creator is not linked to these views, it is not linked to the validation of some stranger who is going to compromise who you are as a person. If you want to do your content, do it because you want to do it. Do it because is the thing that you want to put out there. And obviously, as a guy, and I just want to point that out at one last time, but as a guy, it's easy enough for me to say that because while I've had harassment, etc, it nowhere near as severe and horrid as what these other people who have stepped forward to talk to us about have gone through.
01:44:33
Speaker
But at the end of the day, honestly, between them, between all the other female creators, and especially you, Marianne, I could not be more proud of all of you, because every single female creator I've had on have been absolutely fantastic. And as I said, the inspiration behind this episode was just purely because they kept saying, oh, this happened to me, but you know, it's part of being a woman online. and Obviously, that is the case, but we should really be trying to challenge that mentality.
01:45:02
Speaker
And obviously, this podcast probably isn't going to flip that on its head. You know, I doubt this episode is going to go viral when everyone's going to go, oh, that's an army and maybe I have a point. I hope that's the case. We're the magic duo. What are you talking about? Very true. Got that red panda magic just waiting.
01:45:21
Speaker
Okay, there's a few things I want to talk to the female creators about. Just a few little nuggets of wisdom. Just a reminder, female creators often have to work twice as hard to monetize your comment. Remember, it's not just the algorithm. It's also because of safety constraints.
01:45:38
Speaker
So remember that as you're trying to monetize your comment, focus on building a community when you're focusing on monetization. What Work with things like we talked about Patreon. Substack is an amazing community that is working with a lot less negative commentary. Also work on making your content exclusive behind paywalls to help protect you so you're not quite as out there in front of everyone else.
01:46:08
Speaker
So you can control your environment. Also, look at partnering with brands that offer and support diversity and inclusion. And here's the main thing. Please look at everything thing that you are doing your social media on. Make sure you are protecting the rights to your image. image A lot of these things can take your image, especially with AI now, and they can do things with your image that you may not consent to and your voice and your story. And so you need to be careful because you don't want to see your image ending up distorted, changed, or viewed somewhere else in something horrific.
01:46:52
Speaker
So please go through all of these social media sites and look and see what they might be able to do with your image, ah especially as a woman. Here are some apps as a woman I want to talk to you about. Life's 360. I know a lot of people have it on.
01:47:10
Speaker
I do want to give you some caution on that. A lot of women keep it on and sometimes it's an easily helpful. hackable app. It's really easy for your fans. It's a lot of easy for creators to be able to hack it. People forget they have it on and that anybody close by can actually find out where you're at.
01:47:30
Speaker
The same is with your iPhones. Watch and see who can share onto your Bluetooth or your AirDrop because some of your fans might be able to find you through your AirDrop. So be very careful with that. There are two new apps that are coming out. One is called Safety Pen and the other one is called I'm Safe.
01:47:50
Speaker
Safety Pen is able to provide information factors as to where you live. If where you live has low lights, lights burnt out, anything like that, it will put you in contact with the city to get those things fixed.
01:48:05
Speaker
to put better cabs, better buses, and those types of things in your area for female safety. Another app you can download is called I'm Safe. It has SOS signaling with the touch of a button to call for help. It also has location sharing with a defined group of just your friends.
01:48:24
Speaker
And it has SOS with a Bluetooth tag. So if somebody is coming at you and you don't feel safe, you just have to say through your Bluetooth help and it will immediately call 911 for you. And it will get the police to your area. It also has immediate access to any domestic violence or rape hotlines for you.
01:48:45
Speaker
Another place that Satsu you mentioned was journalists and the way that they get attacked online. Free Press Unlimited is a website for female journalists and it has help information, contacts and references for women who are being stalked, harassed or cyberbullied online. That's it. No, thank you so much for sharing those. Don't worry, we'll probably list them in the show notes as well.
01:49:11
Speaker
Because yeah, when you mentioned journalists, journalists especially are so harassed these days. And I have so many friends who are journalists and reporters, and they have really been getting some horrific things said to them. And they wanted to make sure i did talk about Free Press Unlimited online and how it helps them and helps them stay safe and give some tips.
01:49:36
Speaker
So absolutely thank you so much for sharing that of course we will be putting links to places where you can get help from both the us and the yeah uk definitely go check out the show notes after the episode or during go check those out one thing i want to touch on just before we end there something you mentioned about sponsorships there and that is such an important thing to raise awareness to not naming names but There was a content creator that I follow on Twitter and she put out a thing advocating for creators to be safe because of a sponsorship scam. I don't know if you saw this at the time, but long story short, she had been reached out to by, think it was a cosmetic company or something. And it looked very official, it looked very real. And then they were asking things like, oh, what's your address so we can send you stuff? Oh, we would love to be partners with you. Because it was a relatively small company, she emailed the company to say, can you just confirm this is a legit email? Ha ha. etc. And the company got back to her and said, no, this isn't us.
01:50:43
Speaker
This is not from our company. God knows who this person was or how they got that particular email to pretend to be speaking on behalf of them. That is just another thing to be aware of and be very, very careful. It's the old adage of if it's too good to be true, probably is. Definitely just take it with a grain of salt. Just do your due diligence. Contact anybody you have to to make sure it's real and legit. As you were saying there, just stay safe out there. The internet is a wide and scary place for a lot of people, but in terms of of female content creators, it's not a pleasant place. But all I can say is I'm proud of every one of you who are listening right now. Honestly, you're doing fantastic. Keep it up. But you don't have to take my validation or, of course, yourselves, Marianne, but... You know, you don't need me to say that. But yeah, honestly, keep doing what you're doing. And of course, do it in a safe and responsible way. And yeah, just be careful. But on that note, Marianne, thank you so much for joining me in this really important episode of Chat Tsunami. Well, thank you. And I wanted to thank all the women out there who made their voices heard. i want to tell them to keep going, keep doing what you're doing. You don't have to shrink to stay safe, but you do deserve to be protected while you shine. So keep doing you. And thank you for doing this show. Honestly, it's such an important topic that needs to be addressed.
01:52:11
Speaker
As I said, I doubt this same episode is going to go viral or anything, but I still think it's an important thing to talk about. Whether five people or 50 people listen to it, and the main thing is, is getting out there. So once again, thank you so much for coming on to discuss this. But before we wrap up, and speaking of awesome female content creators, where can the lovely Pandalurians at home find your content?
Conclusion and Podcast Promotions
01:52:37
Speaker
but You can find us at Cold Case Kansas. We are on TikTok, Instagram, threads, Twitter. I'm still going to call it Twitter. I don't care what anyone says. Facebook. And you can stream us wherever you stream podcasts.
01:52:53
Speaker
And if you would like to listen to more episodes of Chatsunami, also featuring the amazing Mary-Anne from Cold Case Kansas podcast, then of course you can check us out on our website, Chatsunami.com, as well as all good podcast apps. I also want to thank our amazing Pandalorian patrons, Robotic Battle Toaster, Sonia, Ghostie, and Cryptic1991. Thank you so, so much for supporting the show. And if you was like early access, exclusive content and the like, then you can check us out at our Patreon, patreon.com forward slash Chatsunami.
01:53:25
Speaker
This podcast is of course a member of the Podpack Collective. For more information, then check us out on our Twitter page at Podpack Collect. But once again, thank you all Pandalorians for listening to this episode. As always, stay safe, stay awesome, and most importantly, stay hydrated.