INFLUENCE

Take a trip down memory lane with this encore 2G1P episode, and we'll be back with you next week!

-- Original Show Notes From February 1, 2021 --

Since 1999, the website Something Awful has been an Internet culture tastemaker, and this closed community is still going strong two decades later — a rarity for online platforms. Many modern memes and web culture references have their roots on Something Awful's humor forums.

For a one time fee of $10, you get full access to the site's vibrant discussion and community. That nominal barrier-to-entry is the secret to keeping the discourse quality high and shitpost ratios low, according to the site's current owner, who goes by the pseudonym Jeffrey of Yospos.

Paying for high-quality content and meaningful online community has recently come back into fashion amid the chaos of free platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, which make money at incredible scale by selling user data to advertisers. It begs the question: Did we build the Internet wrong?

Alli and Jen talk with Jeffrey about the early days of Something Awful, a place where you're "free to be an Internet weirdo." We also learn the origins of "Let's Play" video game culture, and ways the SA community fought hate speech long before most platforms took it seriously.

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If a robot can analyze mountains of caselaw in seconds, couldn't it also make the best legal arguments for a client? After all, AI already predicts markets, creates art, and writes music all the time. That's the premise put forth by the website DoNotPay, which typically uses its bots to fight traffic tickets and cancel unwanted subscriptions. But their latest marketing stunt is offering $1 million to anyone who would let their AI argue a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

To help us understand if that's even possible, Paul Singer returns to 2G1P to discuss the ethics of bringing an AI into a courtroom. He's a partner at the firm Kelley Drye & Warren LLP and a former Texas deputy attorney general, and has spent much of his career focused on consumer protection with regard to emerging technologies. Paul, Alli and Lindsey discuss the philosophical implications of employing AI tools in the practice of law, and whether lawyers are at risk of losing work to bots in the foreseeable future.

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This week, we hear about the new things you're trying in 2023, updates on Alli and Lindsey's projects, and ask the question on everyone's mind: What Renaissance painter would you most like to bone?

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We'll be back next week with some more weird Internet, but for now, enjoy this 2G1P Classic!

-- Original Show Notes // January 17, 2022 --

There's an aisle at your local ALDI supermarket that contains random stuff that rotates on a weekly basis, often without rhyme or reason. So naturally, there's a Facebook group with 1 million people who are obsessed with it.

This week, Alli and Lindsey talk with Stefanie Riley and Leigh Caldwell Dunning, friends who've worked in the blogging/journalism space for years until they discovered a shared love for Aldi's "Aisle of Shame." It prompted the blog and group of the same name, where they highlight and discuss the products (and people!) that pop up in the mysterious aisle, where you "go to the store for milk, and leave with a chainsaw." They share the secret bird call of fellow group members, the ALDI executives who lurk in their midst, and the surprising way this community has rallied to help members in need.

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Wikipedia is your one-stop shop for high level info on public figures, geography, and academic concepts. But the volunteer editors of the free and open digital reference also make copious entries about "low quality images of cats," "Blobjects," "National Moth Week," Osama bin Laden's porn stash, and that time the Dave Matthews Band tour bus dropped poop on people in Chicago.

Alli and Lindsey talk with Annie Rauwerda, a writer, longtime Wikipedia editor, and creator of "Depths of Wikipedia," which has more than 1.1 million followers on Instagram alone. Annie discusses how the culture of Wikipedia generates obtuse and often hilarious articles, concepts, and photos taken out of context. She shares the funniest things she's found on the site, and how a beef with a sketchy influencer propelled her to fame.

Follow Depths of Wikipedia: https://www.instagram.com/depthsofwikipedia/

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Much like history books and media coverage, Wikipedia reflects the bias of our society. The difference is that anyone can edit Wikipedia to change that. By day, Jess Wade is a materials scientist at Imperial College in London. But in her spare time, she noticed that many extremely accomplished female scientists (and scientists of color) did not have Wikipedia articles devoted to them. Thus she began the rigorous work of proving their notability, even when traditional media coverage is lacking.

1,800 articles later, some of the scientists she's put in the spotlight have gone on to win prestigious awards and media attention. Alli and Lindsey talk with Jess about the community of Wikipedia editors who work tirelessly to keep the free online encyclopedia diverse when it comes to STEM.

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We're afk for the holidays this week, and re-sharing a very wholesome episode about Santa's Little Helpers from last year. Enjoy!

-- Original Show Notes from December 20, 2021 --

r/SantasLittleHelpers is the subreddit that fulfills the holiday wishes of kids in need. Alli and Lindsey talk with BackpackWayne, the creator/moderator of Santa's Little Helpers, which has been connecting generous redditors with families that have fallen on hard times for the last 10 years. Wayne recounts heartwarming stories of the kindness of Internet strangers, and shares how the charitable initiative — inspired by his mother — has turned into a yearly juggernaut of generosity.

Here's a sampling of the joy from last year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFcpAHxDt8M

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Lindsey has one simple task: To meet and fall in love with an astrophysicist who is also very funny. We don't think that's too much to ask!

Happy holidays from 2G1P. Let us know your festive plans via voicemail (347-871-6548), email, or Discord.

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We often think of content uploaded to the Internet as "forever," but companies go out of business, media becomes obsolete, and servers are shut off. But for the first time in human history, we have the ability to preserve granular cultural memory. We just need the will to do it...and the server space.

That's why The Internet Archive (casually known as the "Wayback Machine") is saving 75 terabytes of information ... a day. This includes website images, tweets, podcasts, old timey radio broadcasts, phonebooks, VHS tapes, concert recordings, Twitch streams, software and much more. Most of this seems ephemeral, and a general waste of disk space. But the importance of a single tweet, video or long-forgotten blog post may not make itself known for years (or centuries?) to come.

This week, Alli and Lindsey speak with the free range archivist Jason Scott, who has become an ambassador for the Internet Archive. They discuss the importance of preserving memory, the Herculean task of categorizing it, ongoing efforts to improve archive diversity, the new software archive Discmaster, and the philosophical challenges of preservation when people disagree on what's important or historical.

Follow Jason and his work: https://twitter.com/textfiles

Check out the Discmaster archive here: http://discmaster.textfiles.com/

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Twitter's recent chaos spiral, mass firings, and obliteration of safety standards under Elon Musk's new ownership has many extremely online people wondering if they should jump ship. But to where?

Mastodon is a non-profit, open source, decentralized social platform with Twitter-like follower structures, combined with Discord-like instances around shared interests, like "Infosec" and "Climate Justice." It was launched in 2016, but has surged in popularity in the wake of Twitter's uncertainty. But how does Mastodon actually work, and could it ever supplant Twitter as a viable network for public figures, journalists, and other online communities?

Alli and Lindsey speak with Amanda Silberling, senior culture writer at TechCrunch, who covers Mastodon culture and has written a beginner's guide to the platform. They discuss the pros and cons of the platform, its unique "instance" structure, its culture and politics, and whether or not Twitter even needs to be "replaced."

Follow Amanda: https://twitter.com/asilbwrites

Check out her Mastodon beginner's guide on TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/08/what-is-mastodon/

And her podcast, Wow If True: https://wowiftrue.com/

Plug! If you're a Harry Potter fan, check out Matt and his daughter Amelia's magical and epic recap video: https://youtu.be/6TOMz0v1ElE

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