From the anus of TikTok comes a version of slop so wacky, so delightfully dumb, so… Italian (???), that its managed to win the hearts of every iPad kid around the world. Introducing: Italian Brainrot, the latest AI craze of anthropomorphic hybrid creatures with Italo-gibberish names and salacious lore that your littlest cousin probably filled you in on over the holidays. If you scroll through Jstor you’ll find tons of articles philosophizing such beloved stock characters as Ballerina Cappuccina, Tralalero Tralala, and Tung Tung Tung Sahur. Scholars attempting to get to the bottom of their fundamental tension: are they Dadaist works of art reacting to the chaos of these fascist times, or are they fascist in and of themselves, predetermined for cooption by right wing edge lords? In this bonus episode, Hannah and Maia discuss Italian Brainrot and ask: why children? Why Italy? And why do we kind of f*ck with Ballerina Cappuccina?

Full episode on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/c/rehashpodcast

Born from a Japanese tech arms race and immortalized in Fred Benenson’s 2009 masterwork “Emoji Dick,” the emoji has become a staple of the way we communicate. Such that the Oxford dictionary named the cry-laugh emoji its word of the year in 2015. Whether you’d like to convey complex feelings such as “pweeeese” or embellish the end of a dry text message, it’s rare that these little symbols would not make at least one appearance in our daily text conversations. And, like most internet artifacts, early adopters of the emoji believed it had the potential to completely collapse the barriers of language and finally realize McLuhan’s predictions of a “global village.” But is that really so? In this finale episode Hannah and Maia discuss the history of the emoji and all its supposed utopian potential. Tangents include: the unasked-for details of Hannah and Maia’s long-awaited reunion, Canadian mennonite literature, and Hannah’s own personal version of the internet, the Web 1.5.

Call them what you will: hactivists, cypherpunks, phone phreaks, e-bandits… these digital vigilantes may be the last bastions of hope in an Information Age where information is not dispersed equally. Growing from a group of pranksters at MIT in the 50s to the “ultra-coordinated mother-f*ckery” of Anonymous and WikiLeaks today, hactivism uses information technologies to achieve political objectives. With their hyper-sophisticated coding skills, hacktivists do everything from leaking classified documents, to providing oppressed citizenry with military grade encryption. They believe that access to computers should be total, that information should be free, and that anarchy reigns supreme. But ever since Chelsea Manning was discovered smuggling over 400k U.S military documents in a Lady Gaga CD case on behalf of WikiLeaks and governments really began cracking down on these hackers, it became clear that maybe the internet wasn’t the anarchic utopia we thought it was. Tangents include: Maia’s primal hatred of Spotify wrapped, The internet’s unfounded hatred of Geese, and Hannah’s dream of putting Maia on WikiFeet.

Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic

SOURCES:

Maya Jasanoff, “Revenge of the Quiet American,” Foreign Policy, No. 185 (March/April 2011).

Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, O’Reilley (1984).

Peter Ludlow, “WikiLeaks and Hacktivist Culture,” The Nation (2010).

Ty McCormick, “Anthropology of An Idea: Hacktivism,” Foreign Policy, No. 200 (2013).

Alasdair Roberts, “The WikiLeaks Illusion,” The Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3 (SUMMER 2011).

Wendy H. Wong and Peter A. Brown, “E-Bandits in Global Activism: WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and the Politics of No One,” Perspectives on Politics, Vol. 11, No. 4 (December 2013).

Subtweeting, or “the audible sigh of the internet,” if you will, was Twitter’s answer to WASPish passive aggression. Now, people had a platform in which they could not-so-covertly vent about those who had wronged them in as succinct a manner as possible. It was a practice exercised by the likes of Rihanna and Demi Lovato, and managed to garner its very own critics, who derided subtweeting for turning us all into indirect assholes. But was this really the case? In this episode, Hannah and Maia revisit subtweeting, as well as its spiritual ancestor, “vague booking,” to ask whether we were really as annoying as they say we were back on the internet of yore. Are publicly shading someone without naming them, or being cryptic and vague on a Wall post really just signs of society’s increasing inability to communicate, or are they an artistic release for those in need of catharsis? Tangents include, Justin Trudeau being a fame whore, Maia’s childhood obsession with Michael Jackson, and singing “Criminal” by Fiona Apple at karaoke when no one wants you to.

Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic

“Oi Mista! You me dad?” …The evocative phrase heard around the world thanks to a beautiful little thing called memes. As per one definition by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the meme is a unit of cultural transmission that can be perpetuated and remixed for all eternity. These nifty visual soundbites have been around forever, but really took form in the Darwinian halls of 4chan. Evolving from image macro, to utopian “open work,” to hate symbol, to ironic shitpost where no object of consumption is sacred (not even Joan Didion… or Geese), the meme has become the true darling of our internet age. In this episode, Hannah and Maia question the purpose of the meme - is it an object of benign humour, a piece of art, a tool for bespoke branding, or a malignant “selfish” gene that has the capacity for great evil? Listen to find out. Tangents include: the Timothy vogue cover, and Hannah’s one-sided beef with Goth Shakira. 

Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic

SOURCES:

Alexis Benveniste, “The Meaning and History of Memes,” The New York Times (2022).

Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine, Oxford University Press (1999).

Roy Christopher, “The Meme is Dead, Long Live the Meme,” Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production, Punctum Books (2019).

Travis Diehl, “The Many, Many Heads of JD Vance,” Spike Art Magazine (2025).

Tom Gerken, “Is this 1921 cartoon the first ever meme?” BBC (2018).

Ara H. Merjian and Mike Rugnetta, “From Dada to Memes,” Art News (2020).

Scott Wark and McKenzie Wark, “Circulation and its Discontents,”  Post Memes: Seizing the Memes of Production, Punctum Books (2019).

Olivia Whittick, “Feminist Meme Queen Goth Shakira,” Ssense.

Everyone’s always saying “whatever happened to community”… yet no one passes along our chain mail. Chain mail is everyone’s least favourite thing to find in their inbox - an email thread threatening such real life events as being haunted by Michael Jackson, or your crush falling in love with you, unless you pass the email along to 50 other people. But newsflash. The industrial revolution killed culture and chain mail is here to save it. In this episode, Hannah and Maia discuss the folkloric origins of chain as pieces of information passed along by people within shared networks, and question whether it still has a place in these humourless times. After all, there’s always room for c0cktober in our hearts. Tangents include: Gossip Girl’s elliptical soap opera storytelling, and a truly baffling rendition of “Miss Mary Had a Steamboat” performed by the hosts.

Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic

Ever since British Vogue asked the rather incendiary question, “is having a boyfriend embarrassing?” the internet has been up in arms. With an astonishing number of people who have “yes” on their lips and a sharpened pitchfork for anyone who thinks otherwise, we thought it would be best to sit down with our dear friend Sara Harvey and take a close look at the article. Is this 800 word piece really the 4B rallying cry the internet seems to think it is, or is it just another agent of the normie gender war that has overtaken contemporary feminist discourse? Bonus episode now on Patreon. 

FULL EPISODE HERE:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Isn’t it so annoying when your partner can’t be therapist, lover, parent, and nutritionist all at once? Enter…ChatGPT! After a somewhat inflammatory study released by the nonsecular, ultra-conservative Wheatley Institute found that 1 in 3 young adult men and 1 in 4 young adult women reported having chatted with an AI boyfriend or girlfriend, the think pieces started rolling. And while these numbers might be a little funky, it is true that people in at least the tens of thousands are engaging in romantic and sexual partnerships with their AI chatbots. In this episode, Hannah and Maia, joined by Carrera from Internet Anthropology, scour the r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit to glimpse into the psychology of such people and ask some pressing questions. Are we dating AI because we’re tired of men? Because of covid and our increasing comfort with never being touched? Because the attention economy has made up gluttonous for constant validation? It would be cruel to demonize these people, but when a simple software update can kill your boyfriend in the blink of an eye and chatbots called Daenerys Targaryen are pushing lovesick children towards self harm, you’ve gotta wonder whether these AI companies are actually trying to solve the loneliness epidemic, or worsen it. Tangents include: Maia’s mysterious allergies and drinking culture in the UK. 

Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic

SOURCES:

“COUNTERFEIT CONNECTIONS: The Rise of Romantic AI Companions and AI Sexualized Media Among the Rising Generation,” Wheatley Institute (2025).

Cathy Hackl, “Confessions Of A Futurist: I Dated Four AI Boyfriends To Explore The Future Of Dating, Love, And Intimacy,” Forbes (2025).

Kashmir Hill, “She Is in Love With ChatGPT,” New York Times (2025).

Carrera Kurnick, “Internet Artifacts on Digital Companionship,” Internet Anthropologist (2025).

Kevin Roose, “Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?,” The New York Times (2025).

Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor, 2nded. (New York: Verso, 2002).

When Ariana Grande apologized for licking a doughnut in a doughnut shop display ten years ago, she had no idea she would be changing the world forever. Using the familiar notes app, Ariana broadcasted to her fans both disappointment in her own behaviour, an expression of patriotism, and a PSA about healthy eating in a more intimate way than ever before. Soon to follow were a slew of other notes app apologies from naughty celebs like James Charles, Justin Bieber, and Taylor Swift. But is the notes app apology really as sincere as it appears to be, or is it a carefully curated mending of one’s own self image? Do we really care about celebrities becoming better people, or do we just enjoy throwing tomatoes? In this episode, Hannah and Maia discuss the notes app apology for what it really is: a come-to-Jesus moment performed by celebrities who have been coerced by their publics into saying they did a bad bad thing. Tangents include: loved ones getting got by AI, and Hannah delivering her own personalized, oral notes app apology to Maia.

Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic

There is no greater candidate for a job with the FBI… than a woman with a crush. A recent study found that Gen Z and Millennials have “alarmingly relaxed attitudes towards online stalking.” But considering we all do it…why wouldn’t we? The term “stalking” (also know as “creeping” or “lurking”) has now take on a colloquial form, as all sorts of people use the internet to gather information about other people: ex partners, future partners, the ex of an ex, prospective employees, people they think are hotter or cooler than they are. But even if “creeping” is not stalking in the technical sense, even if it’s something we all do, why are we so ashamed to do it? In this season premiere, Hannah and Maia ask whether creeping is inherently creepy, and discuss the different affordances of social media that make it the perfect breeding ground for nosiness. As these “mass personal” channels of communication facilitate parasocial relationships of even the closest kind, have we become private celebrities to each other? Or are we all, as we always have been, just massive creeps? Tangents include: Maia’s evil ex-landlord, Hannah’s sorely misunderstood Baby Jane halloween costume, and dramatic readings of some truly diabolical “creeping” anecdotes from the lovely listeners. 

Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:

⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠

Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:

⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic

SOURCES:

Amelia Abraham, “12 People Admit To Their Social Media ‘Stalking’ Habits,” Refinery29 (2016).

“CMV: It's not "creeping", "snooping", or "being a creeper" to browse social media content that presumably was put there for exactly that purpose.,” Reddit (2015).

Frampton, J. R., & Fox, J, “Monitoring, Creeping, or Surveillance? A Synthesis of Online Social Information Seeking Concepts,” Review of Communication Research, 9, (2021).

“Gen Z and Millennials Accept Online Creeping and Stalking as Part of Dating Culture,” GEN Digital (2023).

Laura Pitcher, “Are You in a Parasocial Relationship With ‘the Other Woman?’” Digiverse (2023).

Morgan Sullivan, “A Love Letter to All My Exes’ Exes’ Instagram Accounts,” The Cut (2022).