Why'd You Push That Button?

Anonymous accounts can be essential for creatives on the internet and also a tool for others to detach themselves from their work. This week, The Verge’s Ashley Carman and Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany talk to users who feel the need to keep their personal life out of their Instagram accounts; a reporter who was the victim of an anonymous Twitter parody account; and a media researcher who studies the reasons people want to be anonymous.

Promoting a tweet has been a tool for brands, influencers, and entrepreneurs to spread their message, but why do regular users promote their tweets? Ashley Carman of The Verge and Kaitlyn Tiffany of The Goods by Vox talk to Twitter users, an engagement editor, and an expert on personal branding to find answers. Kaitlyn also sacrifices her vanity and promotes her own tweet.

Do you scoff at people who appear in iMessage as a green bubble? Or are you the person with the green bubble that has been unaware of your friends secretly judging you? In the season premiere, Ashley Carman of The Verge and Kaitlyn Tiffany of The Goods by Vox talk to experts and users about how Apple's design and color choice in iMessage can cause rifts in relationships.

A new season of Why’d You Push That Button? is coming May 15th! Ashley Carman of The Verge and Kaitlyn Tiffany of The Goods by Vox will explore more of the tiny decisions that technology forces us to make, like why iPhone users judge people with green bubbles in iMessage; why people use anonymous online accounts; and why anyone would promote a tweet. Also, in a special three-part series, Ashley and Kaitlyn will explore the choices we have to make when it comes to death and the internet.

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Hosts Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany travel to Las Vegas for CES 2019 and chat about what it means to have smart speakers in our homes and as part of our families. Do we need to be kind to them? Director of Product Management for the Google Assistant Lillian Rincon and Editor of Voicebot.ai Bret Kinsella join Ashley and Kaitlyn to give their expert takes.

It’s the season finale of Why’d You Push That Button, and this week, hosts Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany discuss exclusive dating apps. Unlike Tinder, Facebook Dating, Hinge, or most other dating apps, these exclusive versions require users to apply and then only approve a select group. The most popular exclusive dating apps include Raya and The League. For this episode, Ashley and Kaitlyn want to know why people spend time applying to these services, and why these apps were created.

To find out, Ashley talks to her internet pal Lina about her experiences on Raya. Then Kaitlyn talks to her friend Paul about his Raya rejection and eventual success on The League. Finally, the two of them come back together to interview The League’s founder and CEO Amanda Bradford about why she made the app and why she thinks it’s essential.

My Instagram followers want to know whether I like veggie chips and how many push-ups I can do in a row. The answer is no and one. On this week’s Why’d You Push That Button, Vox.com’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and I (Ashley Carman) discuss anonymous question-and-answer apps — why do people use them, both to ask and receive questions?

First, I chat with my pal Vanessa about how they use Instagram’s question and answer feature to build community. Then, Kaitlyn chats with a minor Tumblr celebrity, Klaudia, about how she handles questions she’s asked and how she guides the youth of today through their lives. And finally, I interview Janis Grivins, the COO of Ask.fm, about why people ask anonymous questions and what purpose a masked identity can serve.

The Verge’s Why’d You Push That Button squad is in the holiday spirit, so in this week’s episode, hosts Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany discuss hashtag holidays. You might not know the term, but you definitely know the phenomenon. Maybe you’ve seen people participate in #NationalSiblingsDay, or #WorldNutellaDay, or maybe even #NationalBoyfriendDay. Why do people post, and why do they use those hashtags? Also, who invents these holidays?

Kaitlyn and Ashley chat with one of their producers, Bridget Armstrong, and her family to get their take on hashtag holidays and their Facebook posts about them. Then they talk with Lizz Kannenberg, the director of brand strategy at Sprout Social, about brands’ role in these holidays. Copywriters are infusing holidays into our lexicon with no one to stop them!

The people who love voice messages love voice messages. Vox.com’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and The Verge’s Ashley Carman aren’t those people. On this week’s Why’d You Push That Button, they discuss voice messages and why people send them. They also try to figure out why people like them in the first place.

Ashley talks to her best friend, Casey, about her habit of sending voice messages, and Kaitlyn interviews The Verge’s very own AI reporter James Vincent and his mom, Bridget, about their family texting dynamics. It’s heartwarming. Then, Ashley and Kaitlyn take all that they’ve learned to Djamel Agaoua, the CEO of messaging app Viber, to learn more about why people use voice messages and how they’ve become more popular around the world. Agaoua posits a few theories on why they’ve bloomed in popularity and previews how voice messages will evolve in the future.

How do you choose which emoji skin tone to use? This week on Why’d You Push That Button, Vox’s Kaitlyn Tiffany and The Verge's Ashley Carman discuss the five emoji skin tones (not counting the default gold option) and how people decide which color best represents them. The tones debuted in 2015, and now, three years later, people have studied how they’re used and how commonly people opt to change the default option. The choice isn’t as simple as you might think.

We also change the show up this week. Instead of relying on just two users, we wanted to hear about as many experiences with the emoji as possible, so we have lots of guests. Thank you to all of them for coming on the show, including Ben, J., Jordan, Joshua, Rosie, Soco, and Malachi. We also received lots of emails when looking for guests, so thank you for writing to us.

After we hear from everyone, we chat with two expert guests. The first, whose interview is transcribed below, is Alexander Robertson. He’s a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh who published a study — called “Self-representation on Twitter using emoji skin color modifiers” — about skin tone emoji and their usage across Twitter and around the world. Then we chat with Zara Rahman, a linguist and writer, who published a piece called, “The problem with emoji skin tones that no one talks about.” She walks us through her story and how her interviewees felt about the tones.