Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a
podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike
Rugnetta, and we have a lullzy episode for you this week. Jason
chats with doctor Jess Rosberg, assistant professor in the
department of communication, media, and the arts at Seton
Hall University about so called lull cows, about digital
freakery, and how social media platforms repeat and recreate
strains of ableism present in society since the middle ages.
But first, we're gonna take a quick break. You're gonna listen
to some ads unless you're on the member feed.
And when we return, Jason and doctor Roschberg.
Jason Oberholtzer: For a while now, I've been looking for a way
to cover the phenomenon known as Lolcows, that's l o l cows on
Never Post. I find it to be a particularly complicated corner
of the internet that illustrates a lot of complicated parts of
human behavior. We will shortly get into a more nuanced
description of what a Lolcow is, but in short, it's a streamer
whose audience is there largely to gawk at their behavior and
interact with them in ways that might be spurring the streamer
on to increasingly bizarre or dangerous behavior. Towards the
end of last year, there was some news from the world of Lolcows
vaguely speaking that got some traction in outlets that
normally wouldn't cover such things. Unfortunately, the event
that precipitated that news was the death at the young age of 34
of Joshua Saunders, also known as Gothic King Cobra.
Now I was most familiar with King Cobra through clips that
would find their way occasionally to my feed. He was
a self proclaimed goth, like you might imagine. He sort of had an
Ozzy Osbourne affect to him. He would wear this black crumpled
up cowboy hat, and he liked black leather, and studs and
spikes, and wearing eye makeup, and had a long beard, and
shredded on the guitar, and he would spend his time on stream
seemingly mostly drinking and smoking and chatting with his
audience, and occasionally cooking truly bizarre meals
often involving Doritos. And one feature that seemed to be
present across all of these videos was this ambivalent
relationship that his audience seems to have with him, where
they were both pushing him in the way typical of Lolcows to do
more outrageous and extreme things, drink more, smoke more,
cook weirder things.
But also this affection that they seem to have for him,
because he would say truly phenomenal one liners. He would
have really astute observations about himself in the world. I
found myself drawn to a lot of the clips I would see of him.
But there was also a darkness to these interactions. People would
send him prank gifts, like the can that you open up and the
little snake like things fly out at you, and would try to
convince him on stream that this time in fact, like Lucy putting
the football down, it was actually Pringles, and he would
let himself be talked into opening it and then be
disappointed and surprised that once again he was tricked.
They would swat him sending police to his house. And these
are all typical interactions between Lolcows and their fandom
or whatever you can call it. But I always found there to be a bit
of warmth and protectiveness in his fan base as well. And I
certainly found a lot of moments where I was empathizing with
him. Now this isn't to say he's without his controversies.
I don't know exactly what they are, but I know they're there.
This is a complicated figure with a complicated relationship
to the Internet. But I genuinely liked when his clips would show
up, and found myself liking him in many ways. So I was pretty
sad when I heard the news. And I thought about if then was a good
time to do a story on Lolcows, but I didn't really know what I
wanted to do, and I didn't really know if I wanted to do
anything.
Especially because the next thought that would come to me
was usually along the lines of, I wonder who is gonna die next.
And the first name that often would come to me was Joshua
Block or World of T shirts as he's known on TikTok where he
first established his notoriety. And then a couple months ago, I
came across a paper, Lolcows and the Mediation of Digital
Freakshow by Jess Rosberg, an assistant professor at Seton
Hall University. And the paper was covering not only Lolcows,
but specifically Joshua Block, World of T shirts. And so I'm
particularly grateful to Jess for wading into this territory
and for agreeing to come on the show and talk to me a bit about
her paper.
So Jess, thank you so much for joining us.
Jess Rauchberg: Thank you so much for having me, Jason.
Jason Oberholtzer: So first off, I am interested. Let's help set
some stakes here in what exactly a Lolcow is, and how that term
has evolved over the years. But first, would you be able to
describe the quintessential Lolcow video?
Jess Rauchberg: So first and foremost, a Lolcow is an
Internet persona who is perceived to be highly
exploitable and someone who can be instigated or antagonized for
another Internet user's entertainment. And so this is a
portmanteau of the phrase lols and cows. So you're milking them
for your entertainment. I think for me, and I've most closely
looked at the live streamer and content creator, Josh Bloch,
also known as World of T shirts, is a moment where he's on a live
stream sitting at a cafe in New York City and somebody passerby
screams, put the fries in the bag. And that's a phrase that's
often used to insinuate that he's not capable of doing
anything more than minimum wage labor and Josh is shown on the
livestream biting himself, hitting himself, and threatening
to attack this this young woman who's who has yelled at him.
And at the same time, she's said that because she knows it'll get
a rise and maybe even a viral moment.
Jason Oberholtzer: Let's go, Josh. Let's How dare you? And
clearly, what is terrifying at this moment is that it has
escaped the containment of The Forum, and this is now affecting
his real life. And one assumes the viewers of this stream are
having a great time.
Jess Rauchberg: Yeah. I think the form is a great analogy.
It's more like an an arena, and we are all at in the front row
seat.
Jason Oberholtzer: And what is the general response to this
interaction? What do the comments look like?
Jess Rauchberg: This is a very common interaction with this
particular creator. The comments repeat, put the fries in the
bag, bro. Maybe they'll make comments on what they speculate
Josh's mental capacity or his mental abilities to be or not
be. And in these types of videos, because they've happened
so often, we'll see a smirk from the fry buyer who's who's
screamed at Josh. Sometimes if he's hit them, there's another
video where a woman at a club says that to him, she fry bites
him and he smacks her on the head and she's stunned.
And it's almost this belief that, oh, Josh has agency. He
can do things back. Not things that are nice and things that
are pleasant, but he can create a reaction and yet people still
do it because there's that promise of entertainment and
amusement.
Jason Oberholtzer: Okay. So let's take a moment to do a bit
of the biography of Josh Block here, who is someone we've
referenced a bunch already and probably will reference more.
You reference a lot in your paper.
Jess Rauchberg: Yeah. So Josh is a pretty young creator. He's in
his mid twenties now, and he gained notoriety on TikTok as a
teenager. And so Josh has a socially awkward affect, but,
really use the platform to try to connect with other people. So
he would create dancing videos, he would go out into public and
shout things.
He was living in Long Island with his grandparents at the
time, and so he would take the train into Manhattan and record
himself singing in Times Square.
Jason Oberholtzer: Jungle wet dreams are made of
Jess Rauchberg: Some of those mentalities that his audience
has now that he's reached full Lolcows status, they were there,
but it was a little bit more endearing. Like, oh, Josh, he's
so cute and innocent and awkward. It is perceived that
Josh is autistic or has some kind of developmental
disability. It is not clarified. He has never come out and said
that, but his following sees him as a disabled person.
And so in my research, I use the language of apparency that he
appears to be or he's perceived to be because that's something
that shapes how people interact with him.
Jason Oberholtzer: Mhmm.
Jess Rauchberg: When Josh turned 21, he started drinking
excessively and during this time, he began working with his
first handler and these when by handlers, I'm referring to a
term that's used in Josh's fandom or community or anti
fandom if we can call it that. Usually older men and now
usually streamers who act as a manager for Josh, but it's a
little bit more because Josh becomes really much attached to
this person. And I think the term handler is used to almost
dehumanize him, that he could not do these things on his own.
And it's not the same as, you know, a neurotypical creator
having a manager or an agent, but rather this is someone who
provides not only a professional, but an emotional
and personal caretaker role for Josh. Josh has had a very
interesting climb to notoriety and the ways that he uses
digital platforms has changed, especially as he moved away from
short form content to live streaming.
But I think what has become more pronounced is his fans, whether
on a live stream or in person, try to instigate him or even so
his handlers try to instigate him, especially when he is most
of the time very heavily under the influence of alcohol.
Jason Oberholtzer: And so you in your paper sort of liken this to
a legacy of behavior that this is maybe made more accessible
now because we can follow this person on their livestream as
they walk around New York City, but that in fact, this is core
human nature behavior and has been for a very long time.
Jess Rauchberg: Yes. I've been conducting some research on the
history of freakery and freakery as a form of entertainment. And
so to understand the contemporary locale, we have to
go all the way back to medieval Europe and thinking about the
image of the the natural fool, Somebody who's what we would now
call disability or neurodivergence in medieval
Europe, their purpose divinely ordained is to entertain what we
would now call probably neurotypical people. And this
was a way to be part of communities. They were often,
you know, accepted by patrons, nobles, kings, kind of like
pets.
And they were taken care of, but are they on the same page, or
are they in on it? And oftentimes, I think that depends
on each individual locale creator in a contemporary sense,
but oftentimes, no. They are not. And sometimes that is
interpersonal, and many times that's structural. You are kept
out of being part of the social structure.
You don't really have a say in how you're exploited even if
that's what it appears to be. And so a thousand years later or
so, we still have these same issues where these creators are
gaining notoriety. Some of them have millions of followers.
Josh, for example, has 4,000,000 over 4,000,000 TikTok followers.
He had a exclusive contract with Party, which is a web three
point o streaming platform that aims to be a competitor with
Twitch.
But it's uncertain about how much power he actually has in
his role as a digital worker and as a creator that has a pretty
prominent following. And really, what is speculated is that his
handlers or the streamers that kind of steer him around the
country from event to event are the ones that have the power.
Jason Oberholtzer: It seems like the image that is emerging here
is of, like, an infrastructure needed to both, like, support
the popularity of and the logistics of being a content
creator at the scale of a Josh Block, as well as I think
murkier areas of guiding and possibly enabling and I think
even taking your original analogy here of the medieval
court. The characters that have to appear to assemble that court
and fill it and give it the resources it needs to support
merriment, I suppose. I suspect this is sort of contested
territory or at the very least unclear, but what is the general
sense about the network of handlers and hangers on in the
life of, I suppose, Josh Bloch most specifically, but also in
this ecosystem? Are they helping? Are they enabling?
Are they mooching? What what what is it?
Jess Rauchberg: Yeah. This is a common discourse. There's some
really interesting conversations about what purpose do they
serve. What I can speak to is his relationships with them. As
I mentioned,
you know, a couple
moments ago, he is working with these people very closely in
ways that I think are very distinct from a traditional
celebrity or or influencer who has an agent or has a management
team. Mhmm. These people step in for Josh in in so many other
capacities. And I think we use the term handler be almost like
Josh is an animal, that he cannot handle himself when he
does not have intervention from Tony or, he was previously
recording a lot of his content with Jason Itzler. People may
know him as mister Baste who has a very notorious background.
And they would put Josh in hotels or take him to the
doctor. I know when he was making content with mister
Baste, Josh had a monkeypox scare, so they made a lot of
content of him going to the doctor and testing out some
growths on his body. Other than that, if they these handlers are
not around, Josh is often seen, you know, sleeping on a public
transit system or just roaming around the city. Some of his
fans claim to really miss those days and others have have
different speculations on the handlers. Mhmm.
I think also what's important here is that the handlers act as
liaisons to his followers. So for example, Josh was just in
ten days of court ordered rehab, and so even some of his former
handlers continued to talk with each other, and they helped
shape some of the speculation that might emerge platforms
where people talk and write about Josh, and they help create
again the lore, the myth about about who Josh is and how he
needs to be controlled. They will try to intervene. Some of
those interventions do not work. So we can see in in Josh's
current status, he's navigating a legal case after assaulting a
woman in Newport Beach, California on July 4, where he
was placed under arrest and he's, you know, navigating that
court case.
He probably could not do that without Tony and the other
handlers. While Josh does have a relationship, I I don't know how
strained it is with his grandparents. His his parents
are also not in the picture. His mom unfortunately passed away
from ovarian cancer when he was a teenager. This is something
that Josh has spoken about on his platforms and I think
something that does elicit a lot of sympathy from his his
followers and and watchers that an audience that they feel for
this this person who has been very wounded by by the loss
tragic loss of a parent.
And I believe Josh's dad has had his own battles with substance
abuse and is is not in the picture. So Josh doesn't really
have a family life. The handlers act in as a family. And in some
ways, some may see the handlers as a plus, whereas others
believe he is being exploited. But at the same time, I I'm
curious about what that means because are you frustrated that
he's being exploited on the platform itself and that you're
upset that he's a Lolcow or are you upset that you think he's
boring now because of who he's who's handling him and so
therefore, the content is less amusing.
And so when people have approached Josh and his content
or other locals as as these moral issues in Internet
culture, I often think, you know, is this the issue with the
locale or are you not being entertained enough? Which again,
goes back to this analogy of the court jesters or even the rise
of asylums in, you know, enlightenment era Britain where
you could go visit inmates on Sundays and pay, and they'd put
on a show for you. Josh provides that for viewers, but you don't
have to go physically to the asylum where there are set hours
for when you could visit. Now in 2026, you log on party, you log
on to the streaming platform of choice, and Josh is there for
your exploitation and pleasures.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Let's talk about these platforms for a
little bit. I guess Yeah. The court in which this is all
happening. There's a line from your paper I particularly liked
here.
Platform economies and affordances reconfigure the
reach of freakery. Here, Lolcows are positioned as media objects
that can now be mocked, belittled, antagonized, trolled,
or stereotyped from anywhere, anytime. You say platform
economies and affordances here. So it's not just that they are
providing the arena in which this happens, but they are also
providing some of the tools that makes the behavior what it is.
What are those?
Jess Rauchberg: Before I go there, any media object is
designed to solve the time and space issues. So how do we share
information or connect across time and space? And a digital
platform does that very well. It accelerates that time space
collapse. If we think of a platform as a digital public
square or a digital environment, when we do things in our
physical environments, there's some kind of reaction or some
kind of change and then that impacts all of us.
And I think that's something that we see a lot in in platform
economies and and live streaming, particularly in the
Lolcows space. So one feature of of live streaming platforms that
are often used to instigate what we would call the meltdowns, the
crash outs if you will, are is a feature called text to speech or
TTS. And so this is a freemium feature on most platforms, at
least it is on party where there's a chat alongside the
stream where different viewers can interact with each other and
interact with Josh. But if you pay a little bit more to the
account yours or creator you're subscribing to, you can have
your comment read aloud on the stream to everyone. Sometimes
that's a couple thousand to 30,000 people depending on the
stream.
Jason Oberholtzer: You steal your phone, Josh. You will not
be able to stop me or find me. Yes, I will.
Jess Rauchberg: I'll beat your ass. I'll your I'll beat your
ass. Ass. That's read aloud for him and everyone else. So that
not only instigates other people to act that way, but it also
means you get a rise out of Josh where he will appear to bite
himself, hit himself, scream, start those crash outs that are
really what people are watching.
And so Mhmm. The platforms can really exacerbate things that
we've always been doing, but they become intensified and and
and how we can exploit these people.
Jason Oberholtzer: Is part of that intensification the direct
transactional relationship of the views, the emotions involved
in those directly tied to those views on these platforms?
Jess Rauchberg: I think that's a that's a fair assessment. And
particularly when he was working with Jason Itzler or mister
Baste, we saw a lot more of those crashouts and they would
make quite a bit of money per stream on Josh having reactions
and having crash outs. And Josh was making a profit. So he would
often say that he had this huge contract, he was making all this
money with party and that is uncertain about, you know, how
truthful that is, and it's a little bit difficult to
empirically prove it. But what we can ascertain is that he is
in some way benefiting from this exploitation.
And more so, the handlers are also benefiting it too. Because
he has some kind of again, we don't know the details of the
contracts, but we know that they have a working relationship.
Jason Oberholtzer: I think this certainly makes more complicated
counter criticism you hear frequently when people are
wringing their hands about Lolcows. That if they didn't
like it, if they weren't benefiting from it, if this was
indeed triggering them so hard, they could just log off. But it
is certainly more complicated than that when there are
presumably contracts on the line with this series of handlers or
network of people, and they're making a living.
Jess Rauchberg: Yeah. This is something that is not just a
criticism of locals, but and again, not every locale is
disabled or neurodivergent, but I do study disability and
content creation. And so when I'm looking at other facets of
disability and creative work, this is a common reaction that I
get to. Well, if disabled people are being harassed on the
platform, if they are being suppressed, can't they just make
their own platform? Can't they just log off?
And I don't think that's fair because one, I think you're
right. Contracts are contracts. And if you wanna keep your
contract, you gotta keep making money and and vice versa. I also
think that physical working spaces, particularly during the
COVID nineteen pandemic and onward, which are that's still a
reality for for most disabled people. The pandemic never
ended.
It just, you know, most people forgot about it. Physical
working environments are not always accessible. And the
creator economy with its flexible hours, it's, you know,
certainly with the advent of short form content and in app
editing features that go on with it, it it becomes a lot more
easy to enter. There's no huge gatekeeping that's happening
anymore. Lookout creators who may or may not be
neurodivergent, disabled, yes, they're being exploited, but at
the same time, it may not be easy to leave.
It's also, these are often individuals who may not have
support systems outside of their handlers and their their
community. And I think it's a lot more easy to to make that
suggestion than to consider, well, this is imbued in a larger
structure and it can be very difficult for particularly for
disabled locale creators to find work outside of content creation
because those working environments may not be
accessible to them in in various ways, or they lose all sense of
support and connection and community. And I think we also
may not think of disabled creators as workers in that way
too. Because if we are saying, well, can just log off, then how
are they supposed to support themselves and how are they
supposed to contribute to our world? I think about throughout
the nineteenth and twentieth century, most US cities had
these unsightly beggar ordinances, which are
colloquially known as ugly laws.
I'm being very facetious here, but it made it very difficult to
be a visibly disabled person in public, whether you're
physically disabled or you appear to be neurodivergent. And
we don't have those laws anymore, but I think the the
sentiments still stay and remain. And I often think of
that when I hear that, that counter critique. So like, yes,
it would be great if Josh and Daniel Larson and these other
creators who, you know, appear to be disabled and occupy the
Lolcows status. It would be great if they couldn't be
exploited, but also, do we have other infrastructure for them?
And the answer is no. Mhmm. Daniel Larson's incarcerated. So
that that was the infrastructure for him.
Jason Oberholtzer: I think it's really interesting that you
bring up the shift in accessibility here around COVID
nineteen and after that. Because in many ways, I'm thinking that
this mirrors other sorts of online behavior and indeed like
online mindsets and politics that mainstream themselves after
COVID. In particular, I'm thinking of another quote from
your paper here. It says, Bloch's popularity is not
related to inclusion, diversity, or agency. His disability is a
resource which platforms and other creators can extract from
in a political moment where disabled people are openly
dehumanized.
Engaging both theoretical analysis and close readings of
sample livestream recordings and other social media artifacts, I
suggest that authoritarian politics and eugenics shape
platform economies, ultimately rendering Lolcows creators into
digital freak shows. I would love to know more of the detail
you found on some of those close readings, and and in particular,
where you think this political energy comes from in the
discourse around these creators.
Jess Rauchberg: Yeah. Absolutely. So this is this
research is part of a book I'm working on about algorithmic
ableism and creator culture. And so I to understand algorithmic
ableism as ableist attitudes, values, and politics that shape
our on offline working culture and public life and cultural
life. And what happens when they those ideas now begin to shape
how we work on platforms?
Jason Oberholtzer: Mhmm.
Jess Rauchberg: And it's not just disabled creators are
censored, but also how do we treat each other? And I think
about some of our reactions to COVID nineteen that that
centered anti mask politics or also thinking about some of the
intersections between the Black Lives Matter resurgence in 2020
in The United States and elsewhere alongside COVID
nineteen, we had this moment where it seemed like, wow, we're
having a cultural shift. We are starting to think about race and
structural violences or or or political oppression in way
where maybe we can change something, where maybe the world
can be more accessible across, you know, political
demographics. And I I don't mean necessarily how you vote, but
how you move through the role Sure. Race, gender, sexuality,
class, disability, etcetera.
And then that did not happen. And I I think about TikTok, for
example, which was accused of in in 2019 and 2020 of of asking
their content moderators to train the For You recommendation
infrastructure to censor disabled creators and their
response was, well, we're trying to prevent cyber bullying, we
don't do that. And then they had all these events to support
diversity, equity, and inclusion. But then, that's not
really what's reflected on the platform. And, you know, we see
this this rhetoric, this mouthpiece of, well, we look at
all these things that we're doing, but then it doesn't
actually change.
In terms of of disability, that has has become, I think, more
and more pronounced. And it's also platforms reflect and and
are shaped by, and media more generally is shaped by the
political environment we're in. Mhmm. And I promise I'm I'm
coming full circle here. I also think the ways that we not
having in person communities and relying on the digital for so
long during lockdowns and and during the majority of the COVID
nineteen pandemic, I think that changed how we interacted with
each other where we think of our interactions as more
transactional, more exploitable.
And my argument in in this book project is not that it's just
disabled creators. The way we treat disabled creators can
actually teach us a lot about how we're treating each other
online. And Mhmm. I think in environments where there's
little room for context or nuance, it becomes really easy
to respond with hate or to respond with animosity or to
think of people as I think of this idea that now we all
consider each other NPCs.
Jason Oberholtzer: Mhmm.
Jess Rauchberg: And that's not a good thing if we are not
thinking about that's a human on the other side. So we the the
TLDR of algorithmic ableism and this idea about how does
disability shape the creator economy, it shows us how ableism
is pretty pervasive in creator culture because now we don't see
people on the other side of the screen as human.
Jason Oberholtzer: You know, speaking from my own experience,
I find these videos difficult to engage with. I have never really
gone to the livestream itself and taken it in raw. They feel
cruel to me, but also it's it feels more complicated than
that. Like, can't just sit on, oh, this is cruel and bad. It is
like interactive and human, and to me at least complicated in
who is gaining what, where, and why this is happening.
And so perhaps, like, it's not, to me, at least, simple enough
to just say, this is an exhibition of cruelty.
Jess Rauchberg: For sure. There's an inhumanity to it, and
I think it begs us to ask, do we see and again, not every locale
is disabled, but many of them are perceived to be or are. Do
we see disabled people as humans?
Jason Oberholtzer: It's striking me that maybe that
dehumanization cuts both ways though. Don't these people have
the agency to engage in the marketplace of content creation
and be subjugated to an audience's reaction? And it
would be cruel to, like, assume that they don't have the agency
or sufficient agency to participate like that?
Jess Rauchberg: This is why I'm a little bit reticent to say,
it's just cool. And, yes, there are many ways that we interact
with Lolcows creators that are really cruel and really
horrible. But at the same time, as shitty as that might be, it
also is wrong to deny that these creators have agency. That even
if that agency might be different than a, you know, a
different type of creator or maybe more neurotypical or less
exploitable creator, we're still all getting exploited by the
creator economy and the platforms where
Jason Oberholtzer: we work.
Jess Rauchberg: The platforms encourage us to post a certain
way, behave a certain way with how we interact with other
people. And and I see this all the time, not just with disabled
content creators or locale creators. And so I think to say
that it's okay to treat locals like this is cruel, but it's
also another type of cruelty to then believe that they don't
have any agency or they're not making choices Right. Because
they are. They just may not be choices we ourselves would make.
Jason Oberholtzer: And the cruelty is within the machine
somewhat. This is not like, you know, an a non cruel platform
wielded or weaponized in a very specific way towards somebody.
Jess Rauchberg: Yeah. It becomes part of what we would call in
social media research platforms, logics, meaning that, you know,
when we post on Instagram, we're gonna post a certain way. And
sometimes that's at our own expense. And to do that is to
also be part of this community and to connect with other
people. But that means we're gonna style ourselves in a way
that might not feel right or might feel icky.
It might feel wrong. And yet, if we don't do it, are we really
part of something? So it is beyond these particular
interactions. It impacts all of us.
Jason Oberholtzer: Do you think that there's things that the
platforms could be doing, or does this ultimately boil down
to human nature apparently, you know, millennia of human nature,
where just this is an impulse that a lot of people have?
Jess Rauchberg: Yeah. I I think this is a great question, Jason.
I think this is a larger issue with the creator economy. Mhmm.
You know, we have about a 162,000,000 Americans who
identify as creators working in some capacity, whether they're
streamers, bloggers, influencers, or or making other
kinds of of digitally shared content.
This is a late type of labor and work where there's no union.
There's no protections. And thinking as well of the 1996
Telecommunications Act in section, I think it's section
two thirty, which, you know, the 30 something words that change
the Internet, where basically the platform is just hosting
your content. They're not responsible for you. So they can
wipe their hands.
I don't know if that needs to change because if we do sunset
this section of the law, that can create some pretty dangerous
things for creators. But I do think that having ways to
protect and ways to regulate content creators is helpful
because it's not just these local creators that are getting
exploited or even visibly marginalized creators who are
getting exploited. We all get exploited by the creator
economy, even those who are at the top. And creative labor is
interesting because it is sold to you with the promise of
optimization and advancement and aspirational labor. If I work
really hard now to do this, I can go viral.
I can make it big and I can make a living out of this. And you
know, some people do make a lot of money and they're able to
segue that into more substantial forms of work. But many of
specifically Josh's audience, speculate that in a couple
years, he might be homeless and on the street Mhmm. When when
all of this dries up. I don't think the creator economy is
going away.
It's such a powerful media industry at this point that it
it will change and it will go through shifts. But I do think
that that it's here to stay and in order for it to be successful
and for people to thrive as much as they can in it, they are
going to need protections. We're gonna need unions. We're going
to need a creator bill of rights. And I wonder if we had
those kinds of infrastructures in place, Josh and other
creators like him might have a really different experience.
Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. I would speculate that a fair amount of
the intrigue, the draw of the Lolcows as a set of streamers is
a certain sense of there but for the grace of God go I. And I
think that is especially true when you narrow it down to the
creator economy. With all these stresses, all the reward
structures put in place, all the enabling features of the creator
economy, truly, this is an outcome that seems like
predictable and almost undeniable if you get too close
to the center of that economy.
Jess Rauchberg: I I think that's spot on and at the end of the
day, platform these platform companies, because again, their
domains are are legally, at least in The United States, only
really entitled to host our work and they profit off of our
attention. So the more time we spend looking at Josh or looking
at any creator, at the end of yes, we might be lining those
creators pockets, but we're really lining that that
platform's pockets because they profit off of our attention.
Jason Oberholtzer: Let's endeavor to have you, Jess
Rosberg, profit off of some attention as well. Where can
people find you assuming you wanna be found on the Internet?
Jess Rauchberg: I am very much on the Internet. I am on
Instagram and blue sky under Jess Rauschberg, full name, all
one word, and always happy to connect with listeners and and
those who are interested in these things that occupy our
minds on the Internet.
Jason Oberholtzer: Well, thank you so much for coming in, Jess.
Jess Rauchberg: Thank you so much for having me.
Mike Rugnetta: That is the show we have for you this week. We
are gonna be back here on the main feed on or around Thursday,
April 2. Hey, can I borrow $4 every month indefinitely? Head
to neverpo.st to become a member. Never Post's producers
are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious
doctor first name, last name.
Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is
Jason Oberholzer and the show's host, that's me, is Mike
Rugnetta. The world is between tips. We say so to know. We go
look over or out to its pivot, to its wobble and drift.
Terrible. We are leaving. Excerpt of 39, The Polar Circle
by Lynn Hajianian. Never Post is a production of Charts and
Leisure and is distributed by Radiotopia.