Ephemera - short stories that could've only happened online.

[Shell Game]

I'm always sucked into these. They're strangely cozy considering the content.

Great work as always!

[chai tea latte]

I'm always sucked into these. They're strangely cozy considering the content.

Great work as always!

thank you! "cozy" is an almost perfect compliment.

What were your takeaways from this ep?

[Shell Game]

Women invent enduring things all the time and we super take it for granted.

Also the notion of living on display online has changed shape though i don't think people's opinions of it have matched step.

[chai tea latte]

I think this might be my best one yet! Check it out.
E17: The Other Nefertiti

Also:
-storiesfromtheinter.net has a new favicon
-I'm working on pitching ephemera to CBC podcasts as either an application to the Docs Project show for mentorship, or in my wildest dreams, as a genuine CBC Podcast, available through the government CBC Listen app. Insha'Allah!
-I mention it at the end but this was last month's proper episode - there'll be one about revenge porn and doxxing in a few weeks.
-I love this community and the early encouragement it gave me. Thank you.

[chai tea latte]

Here's my tentative six-episode pitch to the CBC, which I'm feeling pretty good about (I sent it to a CBC freelancer I admire and he had very nice things to say). I'm going to submit my official pitch once I hear back from one more trusted acquaintance, and I feel pretty good about the season I'm pitching (feminism, the internet, ephemera stories).
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Ephemera is a cool glass of lemonade on a summer day. Each episode tells a compelling human story and then segues into a meditation on art, culture, or society. I narrate each episode, accompanied by audio clips.

1)    the Kaycee Nicole hoax

In 1999, when we still trusted internet strangers, a mom with Munchausen's syndrome blogged as a teenager dying of cancer. The hunt for the truth involves a Canadian living in Hong Kong, a crew called the Scooby Doos, and an exploration of what makes people seek attention online.

2)    so u besically killed 100+ fangirls [sic]

Did over a hundred teenage girls really commit suicide over a made-for-TV documentary? How do rumours spread and morph online, and what difference did the internet make between Beatlemania and One Direction fandom?

3)    Jennicam, the first camgirl, and an intimate betrayal

In 1996, an American teenager invented "lifestreaming", the word "camgirl", cyber-exhibitionism, and betrayed her best friend, another camgirl, with astonishing cruelty.

4)    Women on the WELL

Could this have been the first online women's community? Parenting advice, sisterhood, and community stand in contrast to a site defined by two men who hated women.

5)    The invention and evolution of SWATting

Invented to terrorize a young woman, SWATing combines the Internet hate machine with America's militarized police. I'll trace its evolution and first attributable death.

6)    Non consensual porn distribution ('revenge porn', leaked/stolen nudes) and what victims can do about it.
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Of these, only #6 is wholly new; the others are retreads of episodes I've already released, which I would theoretically add to and re-style with regards to my new focus (internet herstory). Actually, #6 is also based on this month's upcoming Ephemera, but with a different focus, so I see this as being a way to reinterpret my earlier episodes as something that makes me $$$ (gotta love those government employee rates, eh bud). Anyway, let me know what you think! What did you learn from the #NefertitiHack episode???

[chai tea latte]

This is about as close as ephemera is gonna get to true crime, I think.
E18: ** Paid Modeling Gig. **

Also, while I'm talking about misogyny, I guested on a recent episode of the IMO very good Weird Web podcast Homo Vulgaris, talking about likeness rights, deepfaked VR pornography, and the growing trend of young women getting cosmetic surgery to look more like their selfies. It's a fun show with a good dynamic, and if you want to hear me talking about the Internet and misogyny in a conversational/unscripted setting, I recommend the new episode.
(if you REALLY liked homo vulgaris, I am a five-time returning guest and all of those episodes are pretty good imo.)

I hope to ALSO publish #19 this month to make up for my (COVID-related) delay in publishing. Thanks! As always, I really would love to hear from you about your reactions to this episode.

[chai tea latte]

E19: unfortunately, as you already know, people


More than ever, I want this episode to prompt a discussion among its listeners. I have an opinion, like I discuss at the end of the episode, but I'm far softer on whether or not my opinion is correct than usual. What do y'all think horse_ebooks was?

[GirlKisser420]

Horse ebooks was ultimately pretty disappointing, having a bot produce interesting stuff is more meaningful than someone trying to spice it up to make a vague point. It’s a weird microsm of the Internets desire to ruin itself.

[chai tea latte]

oh man somehow I didn't even update the thread last episode so now I have two episodes to share!!

E20: America Is The Dark Souls of Things You Can Walk Across
and the new-as-of-today, surprisingly personal and intimate (but hopefully not preachy),
E21: An Outward Expression of an Inward Faith

E20 examines another infamous goon story, of the goon 'Muerte', who tried to walk across America to raise awareness for mental health, and made it a pathetically short fraction of that distance.
E21 discusses and examines the concept of a 'virtually-mediated religious space', 'virtually-mediated religious congregation', and the symbolic nature of certain Christian sacraments (particularly baptism).

Find them wherever you find podcasts. Thank you!

[Salubrious Rex]

So after adding it to my podcast list a whole gosh dang while ago I finally listened to Ephemera. I started with The Other Nefertiti and listened to every episode that came after that, then jumped back to the beginning and have been listening from there. I'm currently poised to listen to E14: i felt i should just go to japan and die there when I get the chance.

I gotta say, I love the podcast. It's exactly the kind of web documentary stuff about the kind of things I like to hear about but with an appropriate amount of humour and personal touch thrown in. The whole format works really well and the topics are great.

I'm not sure what my favourite episode so far is but I'd say it's pretty close between Swatting and The Well.
I don't know what it was about the swatting episode but it really gripped me. Maybe because its subject matter was so grim and senseless, and I'd never really thought about it until now. It's all kind of chilling.

The Well on the other hand was really interesting to see the fossilised bones of internet communities. I think the bit that really struck me was the one woman (I think speaking on the Women of the Well meet) who explained just how much this thing had impacted her life and meant to her. She found that sense of belonging in an internet community that is pretty common nowadays, we've all felt that and it's nothing out of the ordinary, but it wasn't to her. It wasn't something that had really existed before then. That really struck a chord with me, but the whole episode was fascinating.

Honourable mention 2nd/3rd place goes to An Outward Expression of Inward Faith. I found it really fascinating, the way that religion is having to adapt to a socially distanced world. I found it especially interesting as I am not religious and there has never really been any people who were in my life. The closest there's really been is my best friend who was Catholic and had moved to Australia from Northern Ireland in highschool. By the time I met him he was on his way out of Catholicism though and on his way to becoming a radical teenage atheist for a bit before becoming just a regular atheist. Despite this lack of religion in my life, my parents always signed me up to attend scripture at school, my mother once saying, when signing up for a new school "Obviously we're not Christian, but I think the kids who don't go to scripture always end up pretty dumb" (she's a school teacher!)  so Christianity at least has always been this thing that is kind of there but I don't interact with or learn anything about the people within it, just its beliefs, and I've never really had much of an understanding of what belief in this context is, or what it and the practises of faith really mean to people. This was a really nice window into that world as well as how it's changed.

Also, Splinternet is good. Not to give it any more gravitas than it deserves, but it's important. I feel people need to be aware of the things you cover on it.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. Great podcast, keep it up! 10/10! Featuring Dante from the Devil May Cry Series!

[chai tea latte]

Thank you so much for the kind words. I was quite nervous about doing the VR baptism episode, and kept kicking it down the road and focusing on other stories, but the reactions I've received, largely from secular people, have been extremely validating and heartwarming to hear. Like I mention, the story came to my attention before COVID, but everyone's reaction to it has been coloured by the pandemic, and I think that speaks to the validity of the VR religious space and experience.

I've thought about a fourth SPLINTERNET ep but I don't have the clarity of topic yet I don't think. My closest idea is to look at the US and basically just turbo-quote Yasha Levine's book Surveillance Valley and talk about the military-industrial complex. It's worth investigating but it lacks a connection to a recent current event that I think would ground the episode as timely.

PS: I'm aiming to put out this month's episode between Christmas and NYE. I don't want to give too much of it away, but it's about high frequency trading and also kind of about time travel. I'm excited about it!

[chai tea latte]

📉

E22: Basically, no-one knows if HFT is good or bad.

[chai tea latte]

Any feedback? Was this one too dense? My mom said she listened to it in the car and couldn't follow it. Bless her heart, aww, but.......how'd you find the ep?

[GirlKisser420]

It's a good episode, its pretty dense but it's just a very complex subject. Not much more you can really do to simplify it

[chai tea latte]

🦠
E23: viral

I'm back, bitch