INFLUENCE

r/Place is a blank canvas on Reddit. Every five minutes, you can add one pixel of any color. The result is thousands of Redditors working together (or against each other!) to carve out a visual space for their community, country, sports team, favorite video game, or a co-operative pixelated Mona Lisa. This fascinating social experiment has been conducted twice on Reddit, but also has roots in a si...

Alli reports in from a Furry convention and Lindsey caught a bad case of "Ass Pee" from Mexico, so all-told a pretty average episode of 2G1P. Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P Join the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1p Join the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/ Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com Call the show and leave a message! (347...

When Stephen Wilhite, the creator of the .GIF image, died last month at the age of 74, millions on the Internet shared their favorite (and earliest-known) looping animations in honor of the influential computer scientist. But how did this highly compressed CompuServe image format from 1987 become the ubiquitous communication method bursting from all of our smartphone keyboards? Nearly all the cove...

This week we learn more about Alli's TikTok strategy, dissect the Oscars' "Slap Heard 'Round the World," and the civilian Ukrainian hackers fighting back from Cyberspace. Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P Join the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1p Join the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/ Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com Call the s...

Secret spy messages are "hiding" in the airwaves all around us. It may sound like another Internet conspiracy theory, but this one is the real deal. Shortwave radio transmissions are among the most reliable ways for military, government, and intelligence agencies to exchange information. And every day for the last 40 years, one shortwave radio station called UVB-76 has been broadcasting static, be...

Hey, remember Tumblr? It was the most popular blogging platform on the Internet...until it wasn't. But the communities that formed there have had a lasting impact on social media, notably the passionate fandoms that exploded in the mid-2010s Alli and Lindsey speak with Elena Cavender, culture fellow at Mashable, who recently wrote the piece "Remembering Tumblr's strangest, most formative communiti...

This is one of our favorite 2G1Ps of all time! We'll be back next week with some very cool new episodes. --Original Show Notes: March 15, 2021-- The cult steampunk adventure book series "Ships of the Northern Fleet" has inspired a TV show, graphic novels, and even a breakfast cereal. But the influential show has fallen off the pop culture radar in recent years. That is until a TikToker named Miste...

When Ellen DeGeneres came out of the closet publicly on her hit TV show in 1997, it rocked the media. Her popular sitcom received parental warnings and ratings declined until it was cancelled the following year. Many wondered if Ellen, who was at the peak of her comedy game, would ever work again. We all know how that story played out. But for the LGBTQ+ community at the time, Ellen's "I'm gay" mo...

Alli and "Lil' Santa" attempt to record a podcast without Matt and it quickly goes off the rails. Also, why TikTok is like a toxic relationship, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEN! Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P Join the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1p Join the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/ Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com Call the sh...

Making a living on the Internet is hard enough. But when you finally make something popular (a YouTube video, a TikTok) it's almost certain that someone will steal it and re-upload it somewhere else. It's not always malicious, but it can harm content creators' bottom line. Some platforms have the tools to find pirated content automatically, but it can be difficult to reclaim lost revenue. That's w...

Alli and Matt chat about why TikTok is so amazing and terrifying, and that time Alli went to the "Reptile Super Show" in LA, because why not? Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P Join the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1p Join the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/ Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com Call the show and leave a message! (347...

When life-saving medication costs more than rent, you know there's a problem with the system. The cost of insulin — the blood sugar regulator relied on by diabetic patients around the world — has skyrocketed in recent years. Pharmaceutical patents and the lack of competition are usually the culprit. But one group of volunteers from around the world has been working to reverse-engineer insulin and...

We already know that Disney theme parks aren't just for kids, and there are communities of grown-ups who take having fun a Disney Land very seriously! Disney Bounders are all about dressing up as their favorite characters without looking exactly like them, which would be a violation of park rules. To avoid confusing other guests (and getting kicked out of the park), Disney Bounders use regular clo...

Studying, writing, and remote work can be a lonely time. Add in a dose of global pandemic, and the endless isolation can be overwhelming. It's no surprise to see the growth of streaming communities focused on mundane things: Eating, writing, and today's topic: Studying. Alli and Linsey talk with Giulia Mazza, a study streamer who spends hours a day studying for her Master's degree while hundreds o...

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 share...

It should come as no surprise that LEGO is big on the Internet, but one LEGO filmmaking community has been thriving online since 2000, long before YouTube was even a thing. This week, Alli and Lindsey talk with Sean Willis and Chris Wynn, two admins from Bricks in Motion, a forum and Discord community that emerged from the ashes of Brickfilms, which was instrumental in bringing amateur stop-motion...

The Internet and the World Wide Web began as an open, inter-operable commons with limitless potential and creativity. So how did everything get so corporate? Author and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff believes the next chapter(s) of the Internet could take a cue from Wikipedia or the communal kibbutz, rather than a for-profit metaverse ... if we want it. Alli and Lindsey talk with Rushkoff about t...

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all who celebrate! We're taking some time off this week for travel and family fun, but looking forward to sharing new episodes soon. For now, a watershed moment for our community: The Macrophilia episode, #93 from July 22, 2019. Enjoy! -Original Show Notes- Macrophilia is a surprisingly popular fetish involving sexual fantasies about giants — specifically, gia...

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 in...

The Internet is a place for everyone to have a voice, but we often take the tools and apps we use to access it for granted. Software engineer Ather Sharif became acutely aware of this about 8 years ago when a car accident left him with a spinal cord injury. Even basic things like typing on a keyboard are now an enormous challenge for him and thousands of others with various disabilities. Lindsey a...

The only thing bigger than "Bachelor Nation" is "Bachelor Instagram." That's usually where the contestants, stars, villains, and conversations around the Bachelor and Bachelorette franchises go during each season. But educator Suzana Somers had a fresh idea. When she had to start learning Excel for her job, she got bored crunching pivot tables, so she inserted data from The Bachelor instead: How m...

We hope you're having a fantastic Thanksgiving! We are thankful for YOU, our listeners. Lots of great interviews to come, but for now, please enjoy this hilarious conversation with the genius creator of We Rate Dogs, from June 2020. -Original Show Notes- With more than 14 million followers across Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, WeRateDogs is on a mission that everyone on planet Earth can get behi...

National Novel Writing Month has been operating online since 1999! Alli and Lindsey talk with program director Tim Kim about NaNoWriMo's non-profit mission to help writers collaborate and overcome the enormous challenge of getting 50,000 words on the page in a single month. Goal setting and online social accountability are a huge part of it, and the community flourishes across Twitter, Reddit, and...

Today we learned that Lindsey went to summer camp with Lando Calrissian. Also, Alli went to Panama to take anal photos and swim in trash water. How are you? Support 2G1P on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/2G1P Join the 2G1P Discord community: http://discord.gg/2g1p Join the 2G1P Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2girls1podcast/ Email us: 2G1Podcast@gmail.com Call the show and leave...

The finance world can seem buttoned-up, even intimidating. But journalist Omar Gallaga found an unlikely (but entirely logical) place for armchair stock market tycoons to share tips and make big plays: Discord. But this community dispenses with the "finance bro" trappings of other day trading services. Xtrades is about learning, teaching, and dare we say it: having fun with the stock market. In th...