ICYMI - How April Fool’s Day Keeps the Internet Conspiracy Machine Alive
Slate Culture Feed
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2022
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
April Fool’s Day is every brand’s favorite holiday. Social media and PR teams get to make all the jokes their marketing department can come up with and face few repercussions. But it’s not all fun and games. On the show today, Rachelle and Madison talk about what nonsense the brands are up to this year, why we’re so easily taken in by internet hoaxes, and how skepticism can harden into something darker.
Podcast production by Daniel Schroeder.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | heard about Magpie, the vegan pie truck that needed a bit of help from GoDaddy. |
| 0:03.3 | One day the owners alike, this business hasn't reached this potential |
| 0:07.1 | and the other one goes, we need a bigger piece of the pie and then it hits her. |
| 0:11.1 | We need GoDaddy. Look, we can get a domain name and create an online store |
| 0:14.8 | so we can sell to more customers. |
| 0:16.8 | Now they've gone from serving a couple of pies to a vlogging nationwide |
| 0:20.9 | and now everyone's like, vegan pies are the new thing around here. |
| 0:25.1 | Wait, no me! Take the next step on your business journey with GoDaddy. |
| 0:31.2 | What I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I've acquired |
| 0:36.8 | are for a very long career. Skills that make me and might matter people like you. |
| 0:43.3 | Hi, I'm Rachel Hampton and I'm Madison Malone Culture. You're listening to |
| 0:47.1 | ICYMI in case you missed it. Slates podcast about internet culture. |
| 0:51.6 | And the girls, they're fighting. Not us, we're good. |
| 0:56.4 | No, I mean, are we? Wow, starting off on an interesting foot here. |
| 1:01.2 | The girls in question are not myself and Rachel. They are TikTok and Facebook. |
| 1:06.7 | I mean, meta. I mean Facebook. Early this week, the Washington Post reported that meta |
| 1:13.9 | has apparently been paying a Republican consulting firm called Targeted Victory. |
| 1:21.3 | It's a basically spread shit about TikTok. |
| 1:29.0 | If I was going to start a shady consulting firm, I might pick a more generic, the Smith group, |
| 1:35.6 | like Targeted Victory Group. |
| 1:40.1 | So according to reporting in the Washington Post this week, Targeted Victory was being paid |
| 1:44.8 | by Facebook to portray TikTok as, quote, a danger to American children and society. |
... |
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