There Are No Girls on the Internet

Not gonna lie - it's been a rough week. The Trump administration has used Charlie Kirk's murder to crack down on dissent, shocking even their allies with their willingness to threaten critics and trample First Amendment values. But these authoritarians will fail. Bridget is joined by L. Joy Williams, president of the New York NAACP and host Sunday Civics on Sirius XM and wherever you get your podc...

Welcome to our weekly news round up, where we dig into some of the tech stories you might have missed. This week, Bridget is joined by guest co-host Ashley Ray, host of Courier's smart podcast "TV I Say."   CBS just keeps caving harder and harder to appease the Trump administration. https://newrepublic.com/article/199889/kristi-noem-attack-cbs-kilmar-garcia-trump-scam     Creator of...

Charlie Kirk built his career by debating students and spreading rhetoric that was too often dismissed as “spirited debate.”  Now, in the wake of his death, politicians and media outlets are rushing to rewrite his legacy. In this episode, Bridget digs into what Kirk really stood for, why his words mattered, and why violence doesn’t erase bigotry. See omnystudio.com/listener...

Last week in Wired, Taylor Lorenz published an exposé on Chorus, a new force in Democratic politics that is funding Democratic influencers. Her piece has sparked major controversy among political influencers and their observers online.   In this episode, Bridget breaks down what the article reveals (and what it leaves out), and explores what this fight says about money, power, and...

On this week's edition, Bridget runs through the news with Producer Mike. Tech companies saying, "Our policies prohibit the harm that is rampant on our platform!" is the theme of today's episode. AI deepfake comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah Meta creates flirty celebrity chatbots without permission, calls it "parody," trains them to talk to children romantically.  https://www.reu...

Rightwing media often spread the myth that trans people are violent or dangerous — a false narrative with zero evidence. These “trans terror” stories persist online and in the news, fueling real-world harm against the trans community. In this episode, Bridget and producer Joey Patt unpack the origins of these myths, explain why they stick, and show how the false idea of “tr...

For this week's News Roundup, Bridget is joined by her longtime friend and colleague Nima Shirazi, co-host of the OG podcast "Citations Needed" about how media shapes power. TikTok Shop Sells Viral GPS Trackers Marketed to Stalkers:  https://www.404media.co/tiktok-shop-sells-viral-gps-trackers-marketed-to-stalkers/ ICE Is Using Taylor Swift’s Loophole To Hide Deportation Flights: https:...

Why does it feel like the main voices dominating tech today are basically super villains? Billionaires who don’t care if the world gets worse, just as long as they get a little richer. We hear them everywhere— their bad ideas, their grievances are all amplified.  Anil Dash, one of the internet’s earliest voices, says it didn’t used to be this way. He's been a highly vi...

Bridget is joined in this week's news roundup by tech journalist Dexter Thomas, prolific writer, videographer, and host of the excellent podcast "Kill Switch". Dex recently wrote a piece in Wired about anime girl VTubers selling out concerts, and how the question of whether they're "real" depends on kayfabe and who you ask:  https://www.wired.com/story/anime-girl-vtubers-are-selling-out-conce...

Bridget and Producer Mike are taking a break from the dystopian surveillance nightmare unfolding in their city of Washington, DC, to review Amazon's new War of the Worlds movie. It stars Ice Cube and is about a dystopian surveillance nightmare that unfolds in Washington, DC. Art imitates life!  This movie is terrible, but it does raise questions like, "Is this even a movie?" It's also 90 minu...

We're excited to share the first episode of Peabody Award-nominated podcast Long Shadow ’s new season, Breaking the Internet.   Hosted by Pulitzer Prize finalist and historian Garrett Graff, Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet charts the evolution of the internet – from the optimistic days of the dot-com boom to our present moment. Produced by Long Lead and distributed by PRX, this...

This week, President Trump seized control of Washington DC's police. It's national news, but it's also deeply personal for Bridget, who was born in DC and has lived here most of her life. The situation is still unfolding, but Bridget breaks down what's happening, what decades of DC history say about how we got here, and why people on both the right and the left are talking about it wrong. If you&r...

A woman named Kendra went viral on TikTok with a series of videos about her relationship with her human psychiatrist, but the videos took a surprising turn when she introduced her ChatGPT “therapist” she calls Henry.    More people than you might think are forming social relationships with chatbots, some of them romantic and even sexual. When OpenAI released their new ChatGPT...

This week, Bridget is joined by Producer Mike to break down the tech stories you might have missed. Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve had some eloquent, powerful things to say about the sexist crypto bros who threw dildos at WNBA players as a publicity stunt for their new meme coin. It's less than a minute and worth a listen:  https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1mkdusa/lynx_coach_cheryl_reeve_li...

Everyone is asking questions about Trump’s connections to Jefferey Epstein, but the president isn’t the only powerful person or institution linked to him. You might know that connections to convicted sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein led to the resignation of the director of the MIT Media Lab, Joi Ito, after a Ronan Farrow exposé.  But fewer people know that Arwa Mboya, an MIT s...

This week Bridget recaps the tech stories you might have missed with longtime friend of the show indispensable Internet advocate Abbie Richards. She is the Steve Martin of TANGOTI. If you're not following Abbie on TikTok you're missing out! www.tiktok.com/@tofology US labor hero and friend of the show Chris Smalls, co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union, was beaten and choked by IDF soldiers while t...

The Tea App promised a safe, anonymous space for women to share personal experiences with men they dated. Instead, it leaked their private data.    There’s tons of inaccurate, fear mongering information about the leak out there. So in this episode, we’ll break down what happened with the Tea App leak, why it matters, and what it reveals about tech’s ongoing failure to t...

Bridget runs through this week's tech news you might have missed with the brilliant Dr. Titi Shodiya, co-host of the excellent podcast Dope Labs. LISTEN TO DOPE LABS! https://www.dopelabspodcast.com/ FOLLOW DR. TITI SHODIYA:  https://www.instagram.com/dr_tsho/ Debate-style video roils internet after participant openly identifies as fascist: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/jubilee-debate...

Remember the 2010s? Ubers were cheap, Obama was president, and you could get legitimately famous just by having a lot of Twitter followers. Claire Parker and Ashley Hamilton, hilarious and insightful hosts of Bridget's favorite podcast Celebrity Memoir Book Club , take us back to the era when viral tweets led to real book deals — and what those memoirs reveal about Internet fame, publishing,...

The Epstein story won’t die and in MAGA circles, it’s becoming a problem. This episode breaks down why the conspiracy has such staying power, who’s running with it now, and what it reveals about the fractures inside the far right.   Jeffrery Epstein, MIT and the Grad Student Who Spoke Up: https://omny.fm/shows/there-are-no-girls-on-the-internet/jeffrery-epstein-mit-and-the-g...

In 2020, Target pledged to support Black creators and communities. Target spotlighted their products, and made headlines with its public commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. But now, those promises look like little more than PR spin. Black creators and vendors who once collaborated with the brand say they weren’t just abandoned — they were exploited. From one-sided partners...

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: Capturing The New York Times  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/capturing-the-new-york-times/id1570901784?i=1000620995068 Listen and subscribe to the new season of Afterlives spotlighting Marsha P Johnson: https://www.afterlivespod.com/ Listen to Outlaws:  https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-outlaws-with-ts-madison-273947965/ Joe Rogan is SHOCKED that Don...

What is behind Candace Owens’ rebrand? Bridget explains Owens’ new playbook to Anney and Sam over at the podcast Stuff Mom Never Told You.   If you’re listening on Spotify, you can leave a comment there or email us at hello@tangoti.com !    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media! Many vids each week.   instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/   &nbsp...

TikTok’s “Princess Treatment”   trend has gone viral, and so has Bridget's response. It started with creator  Courtney Joelle , whose videos depict how she sits silently at restaurants while her husband orders for her, speaks for her, and calls it “being a princess.” Millions of views later, Bridget wonders: is this soft girl femininity… or something...

  Welcome to #SkinnyTok — a corner of TikTok where extreme thinness is framed as “discipline,” wellness becomes control, and disordered eating is dressed up as aesthetic. Even though TikTok banned the hashtag and popular creators like Liv Schmidt , the content hasn’t disappeared,  it’s just gotten harder to spot. In this episode, journalist Kat Tenbarge join...