Sex, Lies & DM Slides - S1E11: Gizzi & Sydney | Jon Ronson

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Sydney and Gizzi invite their first male celebrity guest onto the show - the acclaimed writer and podcaster Jon Ronson. The lads are keen to discuss his (journalistic) forays into the world of porn and his precinct book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, which forewarned the dangers of social media outrage long before it was this bad. L Sex, Lies and DM Slides is a Spotify Original. This series was produced by Heydon Prowse Productions, edited by Podmonkey with music by Free Seed Films. For Spotify, the executive producers are Rachel Simpson and Alexandra Adey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my name's Gizzy Erskine. And I'm Sydney Lima, and this is Sex, Lies and DM Slides. Where we invite our celebrity friends to dive deep into their DM boxes to see what terrors lurk within. We'll be chatting about online trolls, online dating, perverted proposals and why everyone's so weird on social media. Sex and Lies and DM Slides. This podcast contains adult content, graphic details about sex lives, and the filthy contents of our inboxes.

You have been warned. Hi, I'm Gizzy Erskine. And I am Sydney Lima. And welcome to our Spotify original podcast. Sex. Lies. DM slides. Where we chat about sex and love in the age of social media.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. And today, we have John Ronson. Oh my God. John, the love of my life. John. Do you want to tell us a little bit about John Ronson in case you don't know who the legend is?

John Ronson is, well, he's a journalist, but he's also a writer. Did you write The Men Who Stare at Goats? He did. He did indeed. I first discovered him when he wrote The Psychopath Test, which was basically about

all of my ex-boyfriends. And then he went on to, I mean, he's just done so many brilliant observational pieces, documentary style pieces on so many things. Most relevant to us, he did The Butterfly Effect,

which was a podcast about porn. So that was about the death of a porn star called August Ames. And it was about her suicide that came after a lot of trolling and abuse online. Which is why he was one of the most perfect people. I mean, it was basically a segue into how the hell are we going to get Johnson & Ronson to talk on our show? And he said yes after sliding into his DMs. I messaged him after the interview, actually,

hoping he'd reply or follow me back, and he said yes after sliding into his DMs I messaged him after the interview actually like hoping he'd reply or follow me back and he hasn't no he hasn't me either but he does like a lot of my when I say I'm like fangirling him constantly

this poor I know I keep seeing your comments on his post and then I like screenshot it and say it's good and he's like just back off

back off he might to be honest Cindy was excited I was beside myself with excitement interviewing him. God, I don't really want to talk too much about this interview

because it's kind of special and it speaks for itself. But what I do want to talk to you about, something happened to me this week that was, whew, it made me stop in my tracks. So I heard this week a friend's child, she's 13, there's a girl in her school whose mum's taken her for her first Brazilian wax. Oh my god, fuck off.

13 years old. Fuck off. That freaks me out. That is so chilling to me. Oh my god, no, I actually feel a bit sick. And the reason I wanted to bring it up to you is because, and I'm really sorry to expose you quite like this, is because you to me were my absolute hero because you don't know i'm about to say where one of the first times that i hung out with

and saw her fanny she's got that wasn't one of the first times yeah she has pubes i'm sorry i'm saying no i mean i this is why i'm more like upset about this 13 year old having brazilian because like i mean i got like kind of shamed when i was growing up as a teenager because i didn't get the memo with regards to like lack of pubes and just kept on keeping on with my it was like a militant decision these are my pubes and i'm no it wasn't it was more of like i didn't like i mean i kind of was aware, like, maybe when I was like 16 from porn that, like, no one had any pubes. But then that creeped me.

It did creep me out even as a teenager. But how strong minded? Because I think your generation has been far more exposed to porn. I mean, listen, we all watch porn. And by the most part, I think almost you've started a trend. I'm certainly. I haven't got started the pubes trend. It's to sydney that you see pubes in porn no but when i started watching porn there were pubes then pubes vanished for a good 20 years i reckon and they're starting to make

a comeback yeah because also like it opens up the question like what is like kind of pubes maintenance who's it for is it for you or is it for your partner or whatever in this case it's for your mum no but like this is the thing it's like if you're 13 is that like is she kind of uh she's posing her own in her sexuality absolutely is that the right word yeah i mean the fact is i was told to shave my legs so let's rethink this yeah true i mean i shaved my legs from 13 yeah i was told to tidy up down there. I was certainly not told what shape to have. I didn't get that memo.

Literally, I had boyfriends being like, oh, she's really hairy. Oh, really? I'm such a product of the 90s. I've got a landing strip, which is very neat and slightly shaved underneath. And that's what I've always had. Every so often, I'll take it off and start again but that's just a habitual part and i think that there is something to be said about

pube eras well i had a boyfriend who was like a lot older than me he was about 30 and i was like 20 we were outside like having lunch once dinner maybe i don't know it doesn't matter it's not part of the story um having lunch and we were having a cigarette outside and he was like, I want you to look like a little girl down there. And then I think things like that, like growing up, has made me even more adamant that I don't want to look like a little girl down there. Well, I think this is what's relevant to the whole John thing is, I mean, his specialist subject in this podcast is about porn.

And, you know, I do think a lot of boys get their idea of what women should look like from porn I think it is so impressionable and

you know I remember what was the name of that porn star who actually came out with hairy armpits and no it's Sasha Gray

she had the bush she had the bush loved her I really want to get her on oh my god Sasha if you're listening please we want to talk to you about your pubes.

Yeah. But you know that, and actually as a female, porn starts to come out and be that empowering and actually maybe change the dynamic. It may have taken a few years, but it's happened.

And actually, do you know what? She was a fucking hit with men and women because she was real. I know. It's like a lot of women I know who like, well, I mean,

most everyone watches porn, but like they always reference Sasha Gray. Like my friend, she was like, yeah, this is my go-to. My go-to video is Sasha Gray. It's on Saved as Favourites. Saved as Favourites. She was also famous for massive bum sex.

Yeah, no, and gangbang. Which also kind of goes against. So this recording was in lockdown and he was in New York. So there was a little bit of a sound issue. And maybe a bit of a squealing issue towards the end. No, we did a lot of fun. Please, I apologise for me and Sydney within this because we were very excited.

But without further ado, John Ronson. Sex and lies and TM slides. Hi, John. Hey. John Ronson. This is very exciting. Thanks for joining us. It's all right.

I've got to say that I feel like you and I are kindred spirits. She's been banging on about this for a while now. I mean, I tried desperately to speak to you from afar in a slightly stalky way. And finally, I managed to lure you in through the joys of the internet, which is quite ironic because this is what our show is about. But listen, whether it was the crazy conspiracy theorist in your first book, Adventures with Extremists, to the psychopaths and my Bible into how to choose a boyfriend. You haven't done very well with that one. It's terrible. It's not serving me at all.

You found yourselves in fairly odd situations, siphoning out the weird and the wonderful in life's box of curiosities and oddities. Do you feel like you are the weirdo or that you're, like, into the weirdos? You know, the true answer to that is I consider myself a kind of egalitarian, so I consider myself on exactly the same level as most of the people I interview, be they weird or not.

I just, I don't know, when I started out, I felt, I suppose, a little bit superior to the people I was chronicling. But that's before you get older and you start to accumulate your own baggage and your own irrationalities. And, you know, God knows I've got enough of them. These days, I really never think of myself as being kind of I know you didn't ask this question but I've just gone off on a kind of tangent I've never sort of considered myself as better than

the people I'm chronicling and in fact you know what if I was thinking about chronicling somebody who I thought I was better than, I probably wouldn't do it. Because to me, trying to connect with the people that I'm writing about to sort of find common ground, even if, you know, there's abhorrent things about them, is for me sort of what it's about. For me, that sums up entirely. Because with The Psychopath Test,

I just sort of remember reading it and thinking, oh, this is how I'm going to be able to spot people. And then all of a sudden you're like, shit maybe I am people yes exactly in a psychopath test I sort of yeah I've become like drunk with the power of my psychopath spotting skills and then realized that that kind of turns you a little bit psychopathic when you start you know defining all of your enemies as psychopaths I should you know caveat that by saying that some of my enemies i think probably are psychopaths i sort of now introduce myself as possible sociopath but obviously that's not true because i wouldn't know when i wrote that book i never anticipated that lots of people would read the book and would sort of worriedly self-diagnose

themselves as psychopaths you have no idea it's been a help and a hindrance. So this podcast is about the strange ways in which the internet has changed, where you think of love and sex. And you've spoken a lot about the subject of porn. Where did that interest come from? It came from a non-googling porn place. I'll tell you where it came from. My first ever encounter with a porn performer was when I was writing my book about public shaming called So You've Been Publicly Shamed, and I met a porn star.

When it started off, I got a DM from a guy called Conor Habib, and he said he was a porn star, and if I wanted to know more about his work, I should Google him. So I Googled him and immediately saw, like, many photographs of his anus. And he'd said to me that, you know, if I was writing a book about public shaming,

then had I thought about looking at how porn performers deal with their shame by enacting it in scenes. So, like, if there's something particularly humiliating, something that haunts them, the way they deal with it is to own it by making a porn scene out of it. So it's almost like you become it. Yeah.

I know, my arsehole, I'm going to become my arsehole. Exactly. It's just knowing yourself inside out, really, isn't it? To be honest, it's more sort of... Well, rather than me postulating, I'll tell you. So Connor introduced me to a porn performer called Princess Donna. And she invited me to a shoot called Public Disgrace. And it was a porn star called Jodie Taylor.

And the scenario was that she was pulled into a bar against her will. And we were all supposed to act surprised and then somebody like has sex with Jodie Taylor and we all were supposed to stand around shouting abusive things. Like what? Yeah come on what was yours? What did you say? Well no I didn't say oh come on do you think I said nothing. I'm not gonna yell. Arguably when you say nothing that could be more abusive I'm just putting that out there well I suppose so because it wasn't like weird eerie you know pointed silence

it was you know introversion but there was this guy in a beanie hat standing next to me the people they'd co-opted were all sort of pretty sweet LA hipsters and they all felt a little bit uncomfortable about shouting out abusive things and the guy in the beanie hat next to me yelled out put ice on her tooth honestly it was so like I was still on New York time and it was in LA it was fulfilling all of my prejudices about porn shoots because you know it was flaky and they couldn't get the camera to work properly. My first porn shoot was, in a way, it was the flakiest by far. And it was still going on, like, at midnight. They'd barely shot anything, which was 3am in New York.

So I was exhausted. So, you know, I found myself thinking, you know, please ejaculate so I can go to sleep. God, I thought that so many times. Right? So anyway, when I met Princess Donna, either that night or the night after, I can't remember, it was in the lobby of Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles.

That's where I arranged to meet her. And as I walked towards her, the receptionist, who I presume, you know, it was kind of obvious that she worked in porn in some capacity because she was dressed very pornily. Not like, she was dressed like in a sort of tight dress and big high heels, whereas everybody else at the Chateau Marmont was wearing like, you know, hoodies and greys and, you know, the sort of the burkas of the hipsters, hoodies with hoods.

The Hollywood baseball cap. Yeah, yeah, totally, which is, by the way, exactly what I wear all the time. And I noticed the receptionist looking at Princess Donna and the look on his face was one of contempt. He was obviously thinking, what is this porn person doing in my vicinity? And that look really stayed with me. It sort of felt like a hypocritical look. So I thought,

I'm always interested in seeing a moment of hypocrisy. For some reason, hypocrisy lights my fire. So it was that look that made me want to investigate the porn community. That was the kind of origin moment. Was this, okay, so i was researching this earlier the butterfly effect tells the story of how the explosion of the internet starts like how porn helped disempowered porn performers by sacking out all the money from the industry and sending it directly to silicon valley yes is this specific to porn or is this just a story of our age oh no after the hypocritical look on the face of the receptionist at the Chateau Marmont, I started researching the industry, just thought, you know, is there any stories here I can tell? And, yeah, the story I discovered was that everybody in the porn community

hated a man called Fabian. And Fabian was the man who gave the world Pornhub. And, yeah, because of Fabian's... It wasn't his invention, but it was him who made Pornhub, the monolith it is today. And because of Pornhub, you know, thousands of people in the San Fernando Valley got much poorer and Fabian got much richer to the extent that he ended up having 18 cars and an aquarium that was so big it needed a diver to come and clean the coral reef. Whereas the porn people in the valley, you know,

had to start escorting and finding other ways to make money. So I thought, OK, that's my story. Because, as you say, it's not just porn, it's everything, right? It's music, it's taxis. You know, you see sort of A-model tech bros coming into every industry and getting rich at other people's expense. I mean, this is it. We're all unpaid content slaves of the Silicon Valley.

Right. Well, I got paid for my last Instagram post, so I don't know about you. Actually, so did I. I recently had a friend post on her Instagram story a picture of her arse, firstly, but then a link to an OnlyFans account. Do you know about OnlyFans, John?

Yeah, a bit. So you can directly give pictures to, John? Yeah, a bit. So you can directly like give pictures to a group of fans, I guess. It's a bit like what you were exploring with custom porn thing, you know? Exactly. And in fact, the reason why I didn't go far down the online fans nor the sort of chatterbait route in my story was because I discovered customs and customs was so amazing I just thought well okay that tells the story oh customs is incredible it's like only fans well so let's say you have a desire to watch a porn film that's so niche nobody would ever think to make it how niche are we talking oh that as niche as you can possibly

imagine stamp niche yes stamp niche not like incest or defecation I don't know if that's called niche John I think that's just fucking weird exactly the customs producers who I spent time with were ethical and wouldn't touch stuff like that yeah When I discovered customs, I was beguiled because it was such a sweet-natured little corner of the porn industry. Because what it is, is, you know, let's say, you know, you've got a desire to watch a porn film that's so weird nobody would ever think to make it. You can now commission porn producers to make it just for you. So professional teams of professional porn makers are staying afloat

because of you know Fabian and Pornhub and that business model by making entire porn films for just one viewer. Oh. Yeah, so it's things like you mentioned Stamps. This was a guy in Norway. Explain what Stamps is. This is Stamps man. Stamps man is one of the most mysterious purchasers of customs in the valley like the porn people in the valley

talk about stamps man in hushed tones because they're so intrigued by him stamps man he's commissioned 10 videos in all and in each of them he mails porn stars his expensive stamp collection oh yes yeah and then they destroy it oh and. And that's his custom. What about if they're collector edition stamps? I mean, they are. Oh, yeah, they are. Some of them are valuable stamps. But I wonder if the value of the stamps now goes up because someone's had a shit on it.

No, no, no, because they're completely destroyed. They're burned and destroyed. They end up just ash, nothing. Well, it's a bit like that time when, what's Malcolm McLaren's son, went out and burnt all the Sex Pistols memorabilia. And it was done for art. Yeah, but the KLF burned a million pounds.

Oh, God. Remember that. I kind of don't believe it. Do you believe that that actually happened? Someone told me it was like 25 grand. And then someone else said there was actually something positive about it. And I can't quite figure that out. Yeah, which was? I don't know, something to do with tax. And I don't know something to do with tax and I don't know I don't understand I mean for me it's

bad I mean it's as bad as that fucking woman throwing that massive diamond off the ship that's looking for the titanic at the end I mean what the fuck anyway back to sex so like with the stamping obviously it's a fetish it's a fetish in that apparently there is quite a big market for people destroying valuable things that is a fetish well i've got i had a guy approach me asking if i wanted a financial slave what so like an accountant yes oh he was just going to give you money yeah yeah no he messaged me asking if I want a financial slave I did end up meeting up with him oh and he kissed my boots and has it over a few hundred quid it's a bit weird I mean like that is kind of prostitution isn't it I guess to a degree but my

point being is there's the financial kind of fetish thing of like handing over money and like valuables yeah is a thing it's real it's obviously a kind of i mean i presume it's like a kind of submissive thing right yeah if you're giving somebody something that matters a lot to you and then you watch them destroy it the only thing that i was reading in your research though john going back to what you were talking about with the stamp going and actually referring to the that whole side of the industry we get to make these unique pieces of porn didn't someone have their mum in it or like somebody pretending to be their mum? That was Gremlin's Man.

So Gremlin's Man, the film that he wanted was Wonder Woman. So a porn performer dressed as Wonder Woman. She wants to leave the house, but every time she tries to leave the house, a tiny gremlin pops up from behind the sofa and hits her on the head with like a baseball bat, but not in a violent way, in a sort of Tom and Jerry type way, you know, slapstick. And so like stunned, she stays put. So we contacted Gremlin's man to find out, you know, the backstory, like,

why did he want this video made? And he said it's because the only memory he has of his mother is when he was like three years old. And he was sitting on her suitcase trying to stop her from leaving the house. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. And she left. And so now he recreates that moment. As a gremlin. As a gremlin and Wonder Woman. Wow. I mean, it's so sad.

It's kind of surrealist. I'm pretty impressed. This is a good sell. I feel like this should be an infomercial. Well, the thing that I loved so much about the custom world was that it was people finding, you know, the internet, it's, as you know, like in some ways such a terrible place, but this was people finding each other and helping each other. And it really felt like therapy for both parties, for the porn people and for the

clients somebody said to me when I was making the butterfly effect that the thing they hate about journalists who come in and do something about porn is that someone has to be like bad but in the bespoke porn world in the customs world no one's bad it's just people helping each other that's quite so sweet I definitely I'm very pro this industry. Yeah, well, I'm certainly pro. I mean, you know, porn has, you know, some very dark areas to it. Yeah, that's just the truth. So what is the ethical cost then of free porn? Well, I mean, everybody who watches Pornhub is exploiting people. I mean, as you said, you know, people are now finding ways to make that work for them. Like you said you know only fans and people have their own pages you know porn stars have their own pages on Pornhub but that's not so great you know one time I was on a porn set and a porn performer called Janice Griffith

came in who's like very even though she doesn't have a very porny name, she has a sort of Welsh villager name. Janice! Yeah, she's apparently like a very, very successful porn star. And she came in and she was wearing a Pornhub T-shirt and she did it to annoy the director, Mike Quasar, who, you know, despises Pornhub because it's like ruined his livelihood. So to sort of make fun of Mike, she was wearing a Pornhub T-shirt and she said, I make money out of Pornhub. I've got my own page and I make money. And Mike said, well, how much money did you make last month?

And she said, I can't, I'm going to invent these figures because I can't remember. She said like, you know, $8,000. And Mike said, and how many views did you have? And she went like, oh, 300 million. Mike was around in the DVD days and he said you know I can't tell you how much money you would have made with that many views before Pornhub. Do you think Pornhub's become more extreme like since it's arrived so you know? It's not as simple as blaming Pornhub because because that's what I thought and I asked Mike, Mike Quasar, and he said, actually, the most violent porn that he knows of happened before Pornhub. There were these two directors, Max Hardcore,

I think one of them was called, and then there was another one, his name, I can't remember. And they were, like, really horrible. I mean, to the extent that at least one of the two of them, and I think possibly both of them, ended up going to prison. I mean, that's how, you know, disgusting their porn was. But they were really popular. And as a result, more ethical directors started to feel pressure to be more abusive themselves. I mean, you get this with psychopaths. I mean, I've noticed this when I was writing my book about psychopaths. Like, if you've got a psychopath at the head of the company that you work for it's like everybody has to be a little

bit more psychopathic to keep up it's like the malevolence spreads and this was happening in in the 90s in the porn world I'm assumably it was full of psychopaths as well so that probably makes sense yes yeah yeah yeah in fact I've got a funny porn psychopath story, if you'd like to hear it. Yes, I would. Okay. So there was one particular producer who I met. He was such a sweetie. He was like kind of nebbishy and just, you know, kind of adorable.

And later on, I said to somebody, oh, that guy, let's call him Dave. I said, oh, Dave, he's like, he's so adorable. And the guy said, oh, no, no, no, Dave's a psychopath. He was mirroring you. Oh, yeah. Meaning, you know, he was copying me to make me like him so he could potentially manipulate me if he wanted to. And this was post the psychopath test. It's so interesting that you should say that psychopaths and narcissists are so good at it that even if you've written a fucking book on the subject you can still be suckered yeah that's fascinating to me like

I've been suckered more than once by psychopaths and that's after I wrote that book so me and Gizzy I think it's safe to say we've dated our first share of psychopaths what is the difference then between a psychopath and a narcissist because they seem pretty similar psychopaths. What is the difference then between a psychopath and a narcissist? Because they seem pretty similar. Psychopaths and narcissists, like extreme malevolent narcissists, what they do is really, really similar. Both types of people will manipulate you, they'll mirror you, they don't have empathy.

So there's like loads of similarities. I think the very big difference between them. It's a new day. How can you make the most of it with your membership rewards points? Earn points on everyday purchases. Use them for that long awaited vacation. You can earn points almost anywhere and they never expire. Treat your friends or spoil your family. Earn them on your adventure and use them how you want, when you want. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Learn more at amex.ca slash yamxtermsapply. Hey you. Yeah, you. Scrolling TikTok and avoiding your chem homework. Chegg here. Hot take. You've seen enough Bama Rush, ASMR keyboard, and viral dance videos for one day.

Let's lock in and start that assignment. If you need a little help, lean on Chegg's expert-supported learning tools. I say this with love. Put on some lo-fi beats and get going with our step-by-step study support. Your weekend will thank you. Small steps today means big wins tomorrow. With Chegg. Subscribe today. You got this. Is what's going on under the surface. So with psychopaths, I mean, I'm going by the literature here, but also from personal experience.

So psychopaths behave the way that they do because it's a brain anomaly. There's nothing going on under the surface. There's no emotions under there. They see the world in terms of predators and prey and think it would be foolish not to exploit weaknesses in other people. Right. But the reason why they have no empathy is because they've got no empathy, like the part of the brain that registers empathy and so on

just underperforms. And so they have to like fake emotions because they don't have emotions it's like this is why in the psychopath checklist you've got this thing called shallow affect which means an inability to experience a range of emotions so they mirror you because they don't really know how to behave they mirror you both to manipulate you but also to pretend to be a fully rounded emotional person they're trying to replicate what they see as emotional yeah yeah exactly whereas narcissists they do all of that stuff but it's not because there's nothing going on under the surface a lot of narcissists are vulnerable

and have anxiety and depression but they can't deal with it. So they lash out. So I'll lash out at myself, like, you know, as an anxious person. Like if I make a mistake or something, I'll beat myself up. But narcissists, for some reason, they can't do it. They can't look inward. So if something like that happens, they lash out at other people. They beat up other people because they can't, they can't look inward. So the outward manifestations are the same between psychopaths and narcissists but the reason for them doing it is completely different have you ever been like at any point like kind of become concerned with your own traits within those diagnosis uh I was probably more narcissistic when I was younger than I am now I was certainly kind of when I was probably more narcissistic when I was younger than I am now.

I was certainly kind of, when I was starting out in my career, I was certainly more willing, like, to sort of have some fun at the expense of the people I was writing about, you know, sort of highlighting their absurd character traits and so on. But as I got older, I really can't do that anymore because I understand that being a journalist is kind of like being a mugger. You want to do the right thing. You know, you want to be a good, responsible journalist

and it's totally cool as a journalist to, you know, hold powerful people to account. That's what we should be doing. But now ethics and empathy and curiosity just matter so much more to me, which just made me wonder whether younger people are sort of inherently more narcissistic or psychopathic even. I think it's a combination. I think the fact that people are so public-facing,

even not everyone has a reason to be public-facing now, and actually, naturally that's going to create sort of mediocre versions of narcissistic tendencies within everyone. And I think that, you know, when you look at the young, going to create sort of mediocre versions of narcissistic tendencies within everyone yeah and I think that you know when you look at the young I think that there's so much to understand and having to be publicly faced and then understand the kindness movement the the me too that it's almost naturally you're so god sort of what's the word where you're bombarded by everything that it's impossible

not to be narcissistic well you know social media is a it's still a new experiment you know i mean it's it's only been well social media has only been a thing for you know what 10 15 years and then the the kind of age of the self you know people starting to to be more sort of self-interested has only been going for, what, about 30, 40 years? It's still relatively new. So, yeah, I agree with you that young people are in a whole new world that nobody's ever had to live in before. I didn't have to think about, you know, my brand, you know, when I was at school. Maybe I should have thought about it a little bit more. I wouldn't be beaten up quite so much but you know the fact is I didn't have to worry about how I came over

on the internet when I was a kid thank god it's very you know it's highly stressful and it is enough to warp somebody's thought process and when you fuck up online you you're like a corporation that's committed a PR disaster and you have to do like kind of um sort of reputation management and you know these are really stressful things for kids to have to think about and if it does turn some of them more narcissistic I mean I'm talking literally the clinical definition of narcissism it's kind of understandable because you know Silicon Valley is putting kids through really stressful changes well i i had a i had a friend well someone i knew who um posted a picture on instagram of

the two builders and the caption was uh they look like they've got two gcses between them and it went viral i think i remember that yeah and she she basically like as a result she was hated on for fucking ages because it was like like a white female saying something about the working class who everyone assumed was from an upper class background at the time. And that also gave more gravitas to their shaming of her. Exactly, because the worst thing you can do, you know, is misuse your privilege. Which I think itself is really troublesome because it means that do you know is is misuse your privilege which I think itself is really troublesome because it means that you know the phrase misuse of privilege has pretty much become

a free pass to tear whoever we like apart because you know pretty much everyone is privileged and you know or can be defined as being privileged if you wanted to find them that way for nefarious intent you know I can't help but find this quite personal because I was very good friends with Caroline Flack. And, you know, undoubtedly the two things which contributed to her very sad death were, well, the attack on her from the media and then also through social media, actually, definitely attributed to her death.

Sure. But it also attributed to the Be Kind movement. Right. But the Be kind thing i feel is carried by the people who were also the knobs in the first place right sort of don't feel like it's uh yes it's important and yes some people are picking up on it and yes people are trying to be more courteous and kind and compassionate sure they are but it can be like posturing and and just if you hashtag be kind then you can feel okay about just taking someone to shreds exactly that feeds into this constant barrage of things we're meant to learn from the internet but it's still it almost allows the behavior that should be disallowed because i've hashtagged be kind yes oh yeah i agree i mean and in fact you know social scientists say that

people behave more violently when they believe that they're doing it in a moral cause and you see that on social media all the time yeah that it's morality it's true like just because something comes from compassion doesn't mean that you're not being a dick within the process of how you deliver that yes oh I couldn't agree more and the other thing that really bugs me is how um this is like the other side of the same coin that when you really are saying something heartfelt that you believe in you then get accused of virtue signaling and so either way both sides of it are bad in their way that um some people do virtue signal and it's not just on the left i think it's on the right as well but then you know the phrase virtual signaling is also used

as a weapon to stop people from behaving in pathetic ways see that's what i feel like we are currently with the internet and social media is that everything's weaponized we've both of us have received our well i say fair share but i actually haven't got as many as i'd like to think i have but dick pics what's your like stance on the psychology behind sending a dick pic have you sent a dick pic i've never sent a dick pic uh nor have i ever done any research on dick pic um senders so so it remains a mystery to me why dick pics are such a big thing. Well, often they're not that big. Right.

Anonymous dick pic, that's kind of weird when you get it from a stranger on Instagram DM. That's the majority of them. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I've never received like a genuine dick pic. I've just only received

the other inbox dick pic. They're quite aggressive. Yeah, no, a friend of mine, my only ever experience with a dick pic is a friend of mine showed me a dick pic that she'd been sent. Like, she's a well-known person and she showed me a dick pic that she'd been sent.

And yeah, it was this tiny little, you know... Yeah, it's like, why would you? Was it flustered or was it... It was flustered. I mean, look, I looked at it for about half a flaccid? It was flaccid. I mean, look, I looked at it for about half a second. And so this may be a false memory. A fantasy. But in my memory, it was very small and flaccid and really unattractive.

You weren't aroused. I was not aroused. And I don't know why some men do that. I mean, it's obviously to do with a chasm in somebody's psychology. But do you have fans that kind of slide into your DMs and are inappropriate or like... Or is it just me? I mean, I've never been sent anything like a dick pic or...

A clit pic? No, that's never, ever happened. I get the odd strange DM, but it's never sexual. What kind of messages? Well, what I get a lot of, especially since the Manistead goats, is people saying to me, you know, I've got a story. It's a really, really important story. Please contact me.

And nowadays I tend not to because I know where it's going. But on the occasions in the past where I have done it, it's almost always people who have you know who have psychosis who think that they're being like you know watched by the government and if I ever respond to them there's a couple of people two people who I responded to and years later they still email me constantly and they're really troubled like come on, how troubled? I know this is inappropriate. No one needs to know their names. Well, the giveaway is how the sentence ends

in a completely different place to where it starts. It's like they've lost their track of what they're trying to say mid-sentence. I'll tell you what, though, I called the police on one of them. Here's a story I've never told. This is when I still lived in London. I mean, there's two in particular and they both got threatening.

Like they both started like talking about killing me. So I went to the police for the first one. And they took me into the police station. And I like made a statement. And there were these two police officers. And one of them was like really gung ho for me to prosecute. And the other one was like really against me wanting to prosecute. And they started like arguing with each other these two cops because the cop who didn't want me to prosecute

was basically saying why prod a hornet's nest you know this person who's emailing you these death threats is most likely to be harmless unless you prod at them and then they might get more aggressive. Yeah, no, I sort of get that. Yeah, it was really memorable. You know, I've never told anyone this before. Oh, darling, I feel that must be an absolute hell zone. No, no, no, it was interesting. I mean, it was worrying because, you know, at the time I had like a young kid.

But yeah, so I sat there and watched these two police officers arguing with each other about whether or not I should, you know, lodge an official complaint. And then the person with psychosis wrote me another email to say that his therapist had told him that I'd gone to the police about him. Whoa. Yeah. How did you feel about the whole thing? Well, after that, it just sort of ended. This is all like 10 years ago. And my lasting memory is agreeing with the police officer

who said I shouldn't do anything. And that did prove right because it did all just vanish. And being really pissed off with the therapist for fucking blabbing on me to his client with psychosis who'd been sending me violent emails. What I feel like is so often these threats are people hidden behind their telephone so I was in a cinema and two hours later left looked at my phone looked at twitter and somebody has said I'm right behind you one false move I'm gonna slit

your throat oh but I didn't get it until like two hours after I left and actually you're like what the fuck like if I'd seen that in the cinema, I would have shat my pants. Yeah. But the fact was, I didn't, and I didn't till it was two hours late. And somebody's obviously just being a prick. So what is, what do you think the psychology is

with people hanging behind their telephones and being able to utilise the abuse? Well, I mean, you know, there's all sorts of different things going on with different individuals. I mean, some are doing it because they think they're doing, you know, the right thing, the moral thing. And that side of it always interests me. It interests me more than just trolls who just enjoy, you know, anarchically sowing chaos, you know, which is presumably their

own sort of self-hating reasons. But what interests I think more than the kind of you know grinning trolls who just want to sow chaos are the people who are doing bad thinking that they're doing good they really interest me and I think the majority you know you could argue that the majority of shamings and you know pylons and so on are not orchestrated by you know insane people they're orchestrated by moral people who are just being swept away with their morality. It's true. Yeah, and I think that's really...

I mean, for me, that's super interesting. John, thank you so much. This is exactly why we're doing this. It's a very enlightening way of looking at someone who's intellectual, funny, got a lot to say about the weird world of social media. I feel like I could keep talking and talking with you. Well, this is all over, innit?

When you're next in London, please come and have a drink with us. Can you come and hang out? She'll cook for you. Definitely. I'll cook. That's what I do. John, you've been incredible.

You've made all my dreams come true. Thank you. All the weird dreams. Yeah. I'm going to be calling up your porn mate to make a special video about this. Anyway, really good to speak to you it was lovely talking to you both take care love do you do customs i do not

thank you for listening to our spotify original podcast sex lies and dm slides please follow us on spotify and tell all your mates about it if you enjoyed it and if you have any weird and wonderful sex lies and DM Slides stories of your own, do slide into our DMs at Sydney Lima and at Gizzy Erskine. No dick pics please. Also follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Sex Lies DM Slides.

This Spotify original podcast is a Hayden Prowse production edited by Matt and Scott at Podmonkey. With music by Free Seed Films, our executive producers at Spotify are Rachel Simpson and Alexandra Aidey.