Black Pilled

Endless Thread

WBUR

Reddit, Technology

4.2 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 October 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When reporter Elle Reeve is recognized at the airport, it's often by members of the alt-right: the online white-nationalists who organized the violent Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in 2017, and who originated much of today's political rhetoric. How did a bunch of 4chan users feeding Microsoft's Tay chatbot hateful language become such a potent political force?

Elle Reeve joins Endless Thread to discuss her book Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics.

Show notes:

Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics. (Amazon)
Charlottesville: Race and Terror (Vice)

Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson.

Transcript

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0:51.3	Boston. My name is
0:55.0	My name is Ellie Reeve.
1:01.0	I'm a correspondent for CNN. I live in New York and I travel around the country talking to people about politics.
1:10.0	We've talked to a lot of people who have become memes before, but I feel like you have become a meme for a very specific group of people. Can you tell us about that?
1:21.0	Yeah, I am the most famous to the worst people. If I go through the
1:27.7	airport, maybe occasionally someone will recognize me, but if I'm in a white nationalist rally, they all do.
1:35.7	It's almost 100% ID.
1:41.0	It's calmed down a little bit now, but there's a long time where if a white male like 18 to 35
1:48.0	approached me I'd have to sort of be on high alert like is this guy Nazi like they usually couldn't help
1:55.3	themselves and would make a little joke that was a tell about who they really were.
1:59.2	I mean it's uncomfortable because it's so close right it's a lot easier to observe a
	...

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