Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay, and you're listening to I-C-Y-M-I-M-I, or in case you missed it,

Slate's podcast about internet culture.

And joining me today is Slate contributing writer Imogen West Nights.

Hi Imogen.

Hi, Kate.

Imogen is also the author of the novel Deep Down, but we are here today to talk about a different novel,

one that was actually pulled from publication after the internet alleged it was written by AI.

But before we talk about that,

Imogen, it is your first time when I see why am I. I've already had this tease to me that you

have a really good answer to this question. So we have to ask, what is your first internet memory?

I'm not sure it's a really good answer so much as quite a strange answer.

And I was thinking about it.

I was like, wow, that is...

That's perfect.

So my dad was like a really early internet guy.

So he was kind of plugged into it all before other people were.

And so I used to go to his office where he had like the internet and make him let me play this game called tamale loco which was like a browser game

and you played it was probably quite racist now i'm thinking it was like a Mexican mouse oh of course

yeah and you had to like collect the ingredients to make various different kinds of burritos and you would

like jump around and he would scream the names of the ingredients. And I just thought this was the best thing in the universe. And I insisted on playing it all of the time. So it was on the internet. It was like. Yeah, it wasn't a downloaded game. You had to like find it on the internet and play it. And it would be laggy and i couldn't save it anywhere so i'd

have to start the game from the beginning every time i played it yeah but it was just it was

captivating to me also mexican food i'd never seen or heard of mexican food at the time it was

...