Transcript

Bridget Todd (00:03):

You're listening to Disinformed, a miniseries from There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd.

Bridget Todd (00:13):

If you're anything like me and, sadly, like most Americans, you've probably encountered at least one meme on Facebook pushing disinformation about COVID, the election, or some other issue. This is not a coincidence. Bad actors use easily accessible content on social media, like memes, sometimes in spaces that are not explicitly political, to indoctrinate people into believing false information. And it's pretty effective because humor is naturally disarming.

Bridget Todd (00:38):

So if the battle of the internet is being waged in memes, currently the forces for good are losing. But what if there was engaging, funny content that pushed media literacy instead of bogus, dangerous claims? That's where 24-year-old Abbie Richards comes in. Abbie is a science communicator and a prolific TikToker who's gone viral for making content that debunks disinformation and promotes a much-needed skill, digital media literacy. Here's a taste.

Abbie Richards (01:04):

What's the difference between misinformation and disinformation? What an adorably naive question. Disinformation. Duh. So what are you? I'm false information that's spread deliberately to cause harm. My goal is to mislead the public. I'm pure evil, unlike misinformation.

Bridget Todd (01:24):

You can find Abbie's viral chart breaking down conspiracy theories in the show description, or a thousand other places across the internet because it went mega viral. Abbie's philosophy is that you don't need to be a researcher or an academic to see the ways platforms can spread dangerous, misleading content, and that we need resources that are accessible and engaging so that everybody can be involved in making the internet a safer, better place.

Abbie Richards (01:46):

Hi, I'm Abbie Richards. I am a science communicator who focuses on climate change, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. I'm also a student.

Bridget Todd (01:59):

How do you think disinformation played out in the riots that we saw in D.C. earlier this month?

Abbie Richards (02:03):

It's not a one-to-one. It's not like this person lied and now people are storming the Capitol. It's been building up like this for years. It's built into our algorithms. It's built into the way that we're communicating. It's built into our news ecosystems. It's so complex, and it's been coming like this for so long. People who study it have been saying that this was inevitable.

Abbie Richards (02:33):

I don't even professionally study it. I just talk to the experts and then communicate it. I was trying to shout about it the last few months, and people were like, "I don't know, seems bad, but we'll be all right." It's baked into our systems that we use to get information. We don't have the media literacy that we need. We don't have the digital literacy that we need. We don't have the scientific literacy that we need. All of those things together, compounding with bad actors who want chaos. They want power. They want chaos. They want to see polarization.

Bridget Todd (03:23):

Yeah, you put that so well. I do feel like so many researchers and activists and organizers have been sounding the alarm that something like this could happen for a really long time.

Abbie Richards (03:32):

Go watch my videos from November. Who could have seen it coming? The entire community that was shouting about it. Who do you think? It's infuriating.

Abbie Richards (03:45):

It's not just the disinformation people. It's also the extremism people, the people who study extremist ideologies and the people who study the far right and fascism. They've all been shouting for quite a long time. Then it really took a bunch of just angry people with false worldviews storming the Capitol with dangerous intent for, finally, people to be like, "Oh, maybe there's a problem."

Bridget Todd (04:19):

Abbie is all about being accessible. It's one of the reasons why her videos about disinformation and media literacy are so mega popular. Rather than publishing in academic journals, she puts her easy-to-understand educational content on TikTok, where her videos regularly get millions of views.

Abbie Richards (04:34):

I got TikTok when quarantine started. It was March, and I got addicted to it and started just kind of shit posting just whatever I felt like. But at that point I had figured out that you can communicate so much in such a short period of time in a TikTok if it's done well, the power it has to, maybe not teach an entire course's worth of information, but to plant a seed in the brain. That person now will remember this little fact or remember this concept, and then can go take that and look it up or just maybe think about it a little bit. It has so much power to do that. I really, really love the platform for that.

Bridget Todd (05:21):

How did you decide to use TikTok to make memes about media literacy and disinformation?

Abbie Richards (05:26):

Well, it originally happened by accident. It's just something that I always have cared about in the background. I did not know that much about disinformation. It was something I knew a little bit about, but not that much. Then having a platform, I just kept getting weird comments, weird stuff that now I know is QAnon, but at the time, they were just spamming my comments section and I didn't understand what was going on.

Abbie Richards (05:53):

Then I made the chart that people, they kind of liked it. They liked it a bit. At the time, I really would not have told you I had any interest in continuing into disinformation work, but I thought it would be fun to continue breaking down my chart. As I did that, I just got further and further into the world of disinformation and misinformation and conspiracy theories in general, and got linked with experts and realized that there weren't any major... I realized that I did not see very many people doing the sort of communication that I was looking for, so I just started doing that type of communication.

Bridget Todd (06:47):

My background is a little bit similar to yours. In my nine-to-five day job, I work on issues like platform accountability and training folks to spot disinformation, trying to make social media platforms curb disinformation on their platforms. I didn't go to school for this. I am not an academic. I am not someone who has studied this at an academic setting whatsoever. When I saw your TikTok, I realized we have this great need for resources that are not just educational, but also engaging and fun and just easy to consume.

Abbie Richards (07:14):

I definitely saw that there was a big void as far as just some lighthearted communication discussing this. Plus, I'm getting my master's degree right now, but I will shit on academia all day. They gatekeep. They keep their gates up, and they will use language that nobody understands. They don't understand it. It's overly dense. It's very difficult to get a big picture a lot of the times. You can't read an article and just take away one big picture in the way that a TikTok can. Obviously, nuance is so important, I'm not trying to cancel academia, but there was no bridge from those complex articles and big Twitter AI investigations of word usage and the people who had to watch their family fall down the QAnon rabbit hole. There was no connection.

Bridget Todd (08:32):

Abbie was looking for funny, engaging content that debunked disinformation, but couldn't find any, so she decided to start making it herself. Working with a designer called Anti-Conspiracy MemeWars, Abbie created The Conspiracy Theory Chart, a really great breakdown of all different levels of conspiracy, which you can check out in the show description.

Bridget Todd (08:49):

At the bottom of the chart, it starts with things that sound like conspiracies but are actually grounded in events that actually happened, like the fact that the FBI spied on John Lennon or that big tobacco companies lied about cigarettes causing cancer. Then, moving up the chart, the topics become progressively less grounded in reality and veer into dangerous anti-Semitic white supremacist territory, like believing the furniture company Wayfair is sex trafficking children they sold in cabinets online, that Bill Gates is microchipping people with vaccines, or that Antifa started forest fires in California.

Bridget Todd (09:21):

Her chart went mega viral, and it was a really useful tool to demonstrate how easy it is to go from having some questions about something to believing something truly dangerous. People have even adapted it to explain other kinds of conspiracy thinking, like the one that breaks down unfounded Star Wars fandom speculations.

Bridget Todd (09:38):

Tell me about this chart. Where did it come from?

Abbie Richards (09:40):

Oh my God, I was talking to a boy on Tinder, and as all good origin stories start, yeah, we were talking on Tinder and I was carrying the conversation. No.

Bridget Todd (09:58):

Typical.

Abbie Richards (10:00):

I was like, "So which conspiracy theory, if you had to believe in one..."

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:10:04]

Abbie Richards (10:00):

I was like, "So which conspiracy theory, if you had to believe in one, would you believe in?" We were talking about all the different types of conspiracies and I was like, "This is ridiculous." It would be so fun to believe in lizard people and hollow earth, but I know that they're antisemitic. So I was like, "So I can't." And also, there needs to be levels. There needs to be an acceptable place at which you should stop. But there also needs to be just categorization. And I drew it and I sent it to my dad and I sent it to our couple friends and they liked it and I posted it on TikTok. I had a very small account at that point because I had just started a new one and it slowly kind of blew up there.

Bridget Todd (10:53):

Yeah. I saw it everywhere. Even this morning, somebody showed me a Star Wars adaptation of your chart.

Abbie Richards (10:57):

Someone, yes, they changed it to fit star Wars fandom beliefs, I think is what it is. And it's gorgeous.

Bridget Todd (11:07):

Yeah. They did a nice job. Something that I love about your chart is that it starts with these things that actually are grounded in reality, things that we know actually did happen, like big tobacco lying about cigarettes causing cancer or the NSA spying on American citizens or the Tuskegee experiments. These are situations where people with power actually did abuse that power and lie to us. So it's not like people, especially people who are already marginalized, don't have a reason to be skeptical. But just because powerful people lie and abuse that power does not give you license to just believe any conspiracy theory that's out there on the internet. Why was it important to you to include things that actually happened in your chart?

Abbie Richards (11:46):

First of all, they did happen. I'm not trying to say that all conspiracies as a whole are completely impossible. Conspiracies are a real type of crime. Conspiracy theories are usually preposterous. Nobody was looking at Tuskegee and thinking like, "I bet it's a secret group underground who were drinking blood." No, people with power abuse their power all the time. And that should be recognized. And those fears, those anxieties about that happening are super valid. And I think that that's a really good way to show of what it actually looks like when people lie and people abuse their power versus what it looks like when you imagine your worst enemy of a weird suspiciously evil super group of Jews. Those are very different images.

Bridget Todd (12:46):

In 2018, while California was being ravaged by wildfires, Marjorie Taylor Green, now a Georgia congressional representative, said in a now deleted Facebook post that the cause could have been laser beams from space controlled by the Rothschild International Banking Firm. Now this is obviously not true and it's so ridiculous, but it's also really messed up. It's an antisemitic lie. People have been telling about Jewish people since the 19th century that they're somehow controlling the banks and the weather and not to be trusted. And it's also a key plank of disinformation. Disinformation relies on the worst stereotypes and biases about marginalized people, and we need to recognize how often these same marginalized people become the scapegoat who's to blame for all life's ills. Saying Jewish people control the banks or blaming wildfires on Black Lives Matter activists, these things aren't just dangerous because they're untrue, antisemitic and racist. They're also dangerous because they distract us from the real problems.

Abbie Richards (13:43):

Yeah. That's their currency. It's their currency. They're like, "Oh, do you feel nervous? Do you feel anxious? Do you feel out of control like there's something you can't answer? Man. wouldn't it be so great if you had a scapegoat right now? Maybe our group, they didn't understand." They're there to answer a question. They're the most simple answer to a question. So yes, they very much will consistently find the group that is the other, that is to blame.

Bridget Todd (14:21):

Let's take a quick break. And we're back.

Bridget Todd (14:34):

So before I worked on these kinds of issues, I might've called myself a casual appreciator of conspiracy theories. I enjoyed a late night Wikipedia rabbit hole. I liked reading about how maybe Jon Benet Ramsey wasn't actually dead, that she grew up to be Katy Perry. I could get behind all of that. And I think I thought of myself as kind of appreciating conspiracy theories kind of ironically. With your work and conspiracy theory, you seem like someone who is actually sort of interested in conspiracy theories, how they spread, why people get involved in them. And I wonder, do you think people get indoctrinated by conspiracy theory by just sort of being interested in them and before they know it they're actually true believers?

Abbie Richards (15:15):

Oh yeah. I think in a lot of ways, it's very similar to the way we see these alt-right boys on 4Chan experimenting, testing, using hateful language and then they'll be like, "I'm joking." And I think there's a couple of things going on there. One would be you're testing ... When they do it, when they say something racist or sexist or anti-Semitic or hateful in general, and then they say that they're joking, what they're really doing in a lot of ways is seeing what it sounds like to say it. It's a test. They can do it in a space where let's see how the reaction is, let's gauge what this feels like for me to say this.

Abbie Richards (16:09):

I would think conspiracy kind of just like, "Ha ha, it's ironic," depending on the person. For some people, it might truly just be ironic and they can sit there. For other people, it might not be. I certainly cannot make that call. But the other thing to take into account, and this is especially important with misinformation disinformation is something called the illusory truth effect, which is essentially that the more you see something, the more your brain thinks it's true. And that is not avoidable with any amount of education. That is your brain, because what you see and what information you take in constructs your reality. So if you continue to see false information and you continue to read conspiracies, that could certainly have an effect on how you interpret the world.

Bridget Todd (17:04):

Priming people to understand the kind of disinformation they might encounter is one of the best ways to inoculate them from its impact. So it's critical that people understand media literacy and take responsibility for understanding the kind of content they consume online. But we can't discount that tech leaders have allowed dangerous falsehoods, extremist content, and radicalization to spread on their platforms. And because of the nature of algorithms forever prioritizing content that gets lots of clicks and impressions, inflammatory or misleading content thrives on social media if companies don't enforce moderation policies.

Abbie Richards (17:36):

Oh my God, social media companies have so much work to do. They have so much work to do. I could show up here with just a list of like, "I need you to do this and this and this." Oh God, they're a mess. And I really hope that collectively people are holding them accountable for the position that we're in right now as a country, because they are very much a large part of the problem.

Bridget Todd (18:03):

What other steps would you like to see platforms do to crack down on misinformation and disinformation?

Abbie Richards (18:08):

I want to see people in accounts that are spreading disinformation. We have disinformation super spreaders, the people who are spreading the most of it. Take them down, de platform mem, which they've started doing after the insurrection. But I want to stress, it took an insurrection. But they could be doing a lot more to make sure that they are pushing good information first and prioritizing the quality of that information over the watch time of the user. And they currently are not because they're incentivized by how much money they can make on ad revenue. But that would be huge. They need to be pushing accounts that are promoting media literacy, talking about disinformation, educating. They should be pushing all of those. And then for more, you're going to have to go to people who are much smarter than me.

Bridget Todd (19:21):

The problem goes further than individual platforms. We need a radical re-imagining of how we think about what platforms can be. What would it look like to have a social media platform that didn't just measure success by scale or clicks or how much time we all spent with our faces in a screen? What would it look like to center actual people or care or empathy?

Abbie Richards (19:41):

I would absolutely love to see a people first, ethical social media company come up, but I am a little bit too pessimistic at the moment. It's not looking great. I want someone to come forward with tons of money to create this platform that'll be like our perfect socialist platform-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:20:04]

Abbie Richards (20:00):

... create this platform, that'll be like our perfect socialist platform.

Bridget Todd (20:04):

That's another question I have for you. And it's a kind of a tough one for me. I live in DC. So when the attacks on the Capitol happened, they were not as attacks on democracy, they were attacks on my community, my town, my city. And I really kind of struggled with this duality of one, wanting the people that stormed the Capitol to face all the repercussions that they deserve and they have coming to them. And two, really seeing the way that they have been misled, a lot of times for profit. Moneyed social media platforms made even more money by misleading them. So I really struggled with finding a balance between wanting these people to be fully held accountable and acknowledging the powerful, wealthy money forces at play that lied to them and got us here. How can we hold these two realities at the same time?

Abbie Richards (20:50):

Ooh, it's tough. That's a tough one. I'm glad that you're definitely there with doing both, because I've seen a lot of people who aren't ready to have the discussion at all, that these people have been manipulated. And it's difficult because it's a hard discussion to have, we're angry. For me, I think a lot of them are victims of this misinformation. They're essentially ponds in a much bigger game. That does not excuse their actions. If you break the law, you still have to pay those consequences. But as a society, I think focusing on the narrative of these specific people are bad, is a waste of time. Because it's a distraction. It's not focusing on the problem. Do I want to hang out with them? No, absolutely not. If they're arrested, that's probably for the best, that's good. But I think that we have a much bigger problem to be discussing, more so than just individuals here.

Bridget Todd (22:14):

More after a quick break. Let's get right back into it. It can be really tough in the aftermath of everything that happened at the Capitol to really remember that it is not just about these individual people that stormed the Capitol, but it is really about larger systems and larger forces at play. And having those conversations is really critical. If every person who physically stormed the Capitol got locked up, we would still have these problems to contend with in our society about how we got there in the first place.

Abbie Richards (22:52):

Yeah. Your information constructs your reality. If you're getting false information, your reality is false. When you add in QAnon specifically, now we have an apocalyptic internet religion who believes when they storm that Capitol, that the storm will happen and it's apocalyptic. They did not necessarily think about what would happen. Again, not an excuse for their actions, but something that makes it a little bit easier, I think, to try and think about the big picture.

Bridget Todd (23:30):

So, I know somebody who is involved in QAnon. Her flavor of Qanon is definitely the kind of, "Save the children." Heavy scare quotes around that vibe, where she genuinely believes that this kind of thinking is in opposition to this network of evil people who are exploiting and abusing children. Obviously that is untrue, but that is what she clearly believes. And so I think for her, there's not really a way to say this where I don't sound like an asshole, but she's not someone who I would describe as having a lot in her life to make her life feel meaningfully full. And thinking of it from her perspective, I can imagine that when she posts these things about not believing the media and not being a sheep and not just believing what they say on CNN, she's probably being validated.

Bridget Todd (24:17):

She probably feels like people are agreeing with her. When people don't agree with her, that probably makes her feel even more validated. And so I feel like one aspect of this that we don't often talk about is that for a lot of these people, I almost feel like it offers a kind of community where there was not community for them before. And for her, I do feel like it's given her life a new kind of meaning that it didn't have before. Unfortunately, that cause and that meaning just happens to be disgusting and abhorrently and dangerous.

Abbie Richards (24:50):

Yeah. Not the best choice. Could have been better. Yeah. No, you've just nailed it. That is essentially how most people get into this. It's if you don't necessarily have a strong sense of self or especially, if you're in the middle of a crisis. A lot of people who fall into conspiracy thinking in general and go down the rabbit hole, that'll happen when they're at a crisis point or when there's been a dramatic shift in their life. I don't know, maybe a global pandemic. I don't know, just naming some.

Abbie Richards (25:36):

And which also means that yes, they go in there for the sense of community. Yes, they're going in there because they feel smart. It's a flattering experience to believe that you're in on something that nobody else knows about, especially with something like Save the Children, it just gave all the moms, just all of them, something do, something to care about, something to focus on. Especially with COVID going on. The world's scary and now, here's something very specific that you can do to fix the world. Nevermind the fact that it's making it worse and everybody is begging you to stop. Everybody in the in the trafficking world is begging you to stop. But yeah, it gives you that sense of purpose, which is why, if you're trying to help somebody get out, one of the best things you can do is try and help them refind their purpose outside of that narrative.

Bridget Todd (26:41):

Yeah. Another good point there is that people who do anti-sex trafficking work universally, they talk about how QAnon and Save the Children all that stuff is making their jobs that much harder. So if you actually genuinely cared about protecting children, getting involved in QAnon and this kind of stuff is actually doing the opposite of that, because you're making the jobs that people who actually prevent that kind of thing, that much harder. There are ways to be active in that work, but shooting to do so in a way where you're suggesting that it's more likely that there's this huge global network of people drinking blood and shipping babies overseas through websites and all of that, as opposed to the fact that children are more likely to be exploited by someone they know, a family member, it just denies reality in service of focusing on this horrible fantasy they've created.

Abbie Richards (27:27):

Yeah. Because it's a story, it's a game. It's so much more fun to be like, "Oh yeah, no, they're sending the children around in cabinets." Than it is to be like, "Yeah, you're statistically more likely to be abused in your house than anywhere else." That's a way better evil to try and cope with or a way easier evil is like, "Oh, it's not the people I know and years of trauma and abuse cycles carrying out and oppressive heteronormative society and a church that also heteronormative and oppressive and all of these things." Or it could be them.

Bridget Todd (28:22):

Yeah. Who wants to read a bunch of boring ass books about unpacking your trauma or go to therapy when you can just blame the Jews or the blacks or the gays?

Abbie Richards (28:31):

Oh, it's easier. Why would you look at the intersectional complex narrative of reality when it could be a nightmare?

Bridget Todd (28:44):

So what are some other ways to help folks off board off of this kind of ideology?

Abbie Richards (28:48):

Oh boy. Right now, there's a lot of people asking that. And there's certain things that we do know. There's ways to talk to them. Definitely as best as you possibly can, stay compassionate and stay respectful. You can be honest and tell them whether or not you believe in something. You don't have to like pretend to believe in something. But insulting them, mocking them is not going to help. And it'll just push them further into their belief and into their community who will then just heighten their beliefs. So figure out what they believe in, figure out what your common ground is when you're talking to them. Be like, "All right. So, do we agree that COVID exists? Let's start there and work our way either backwards or forwards." And if they're really gone, help them find their way back by helping them figure out who they are, outside of this religion that they've been scooped into. Do they have hobbies? Do they have kids that they-

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:30:04]

Abbie Richards (30:00):

Do they have hobbies? Do they have kids that they care about? What are they passionate about? Who are they at their core? What are their goals? What are their desires? Those sorts of things, that's the kind of thinking that helps someone get out of that constant panic of conspiracies.

Bridget Todd (30:25):

That's really useful. Another thing I love about your work is that you talk about the need to start media literacy early, like with children. When do you think it's too early to start talking to kids about media literacy?

Abbie Richards (30:35):

Kids today completely understand how to navigate the internet, and what they don't understand necessarily to go along with that is what a good source is. I think media literacy should be taught throughout school as you age, at the age-appropriate level. You don't have to be to a five year old like, "So Russian intelligence..."

Bridget Todd (30:59):

Yeah, you're talking to a five year old about a Senate inquiry.

Abbie Richards (31:02):

You're like, "So this is a troll." You're like, "Here, have you seen 4chan? Here, dude, look at that." No, I'm not trying to traumatize children, but I think media literacy in general should just be a mandatory skill for people in this world, moreso than memorizing something ever for a test. It's so much more important that we're teaching kids how to navigate the internet safely and get genuine, helpful information than it is that we're wasting their time having them memorize things that they will never need to know.

Bridget Todd (31:46):

Yeah, listen. I remember being in school and doing a whole unit on square dancing. I kind of feel like if I could go back in time, I would like to learn something that would actually stick with me and be applicable for my actual life, like media literacy, maybe save the square dancing.

Abbie Richards (32:00):

What about a better dance than square dancing? I just want to throw that out there. Anything else. Teach me to foxtrot.

Bridget Todd (32:10):

Now, debunking disinformation is not the only thing Abbie uses her TikTok for. She's also studied climate and the environment, which led her to initially going viral on the platform for her videos about how much she hates golf, kind of by accident. Here she is talking about her deep hatred for golf while cooking.

Abbie Richards (32:28):

I'm running for president. I'm going to be a single- issue candidate. When I become president, I will make golf illegal. All golf courses will become public parks. All country clubs will become low-income housing. We take all the water that we would have used to water the golf courses, and we drink it. Now we're like the best-hydrated country on the planet. We all have gorgeous skin, and anyone caught golfing gets eaten. Are you still here? Just making a salad. Nothing crazy, just a Caesar. I'm just going to put the rich on top.

Bridget Todd (33:04):

So you came to prominence on TikTok for your videos about how much you hate golf. How did these videos come to be?

Abbie Richards (33:10):

I just hate it, dude. I hate golf. Okay. It was quarantine still, pretty early days. You know when it smells like nostalgia and you're like, "Oh, early quarantine?" Like then. And I was on a run, because I was still convinced I could do that. I was running through a golf course, and I was not supposed to. It was no trespassing up everywhere, and I was like, "This is so stupid. I hate golf." I did my undergrad in environmental science, and I hated golf then too. And I was like, "This is just such a waste of everything, and just symbolizes everything that's wrong with the world." And I had no following at the time, and I went home and I was like, "I don't know. I'll just post this video of me chopping lettuce talking about how I'm going to run for president to make golf illegal, and that anyone who plays golf gets eaten." I think that that is a fair punishment.

Bridget Todd (34:14):

I've never really thought about the environmental impact of golf. Can you tell me more about this?

Abbie Richards (34:18):

Yeah, definitely. I mean, they are wasteful in their space. We've all thought about how it could be housing, it could be farmland, it could just be a park. But they're also using tremendous amounts of water, especially in desert states. The amount of water in California or Arizona or Nevada that is being used to water golf courses is ridiculous. There's a common misconception that to golf is to be in nature, and that's very much not true. It's very manufactured. It's just like a giant board game that you drive across, and it's all perfectly turfed, and everything has to match their rich-person aesthetic. And to do that, not only are you dumping tons of water on there and constantly irrigating it, but you're dumping tons of pesticides and fertilizers on, things that are very much required for growing food, but also have consequences environmentally.

Abbie Richards (35:28):

So they're going to runoff, they're not going to stay on that grass. They're going to runoff into water sources, they're going to runoff into other ecosystems. The fertilizers in particular will runoff into bodies of water and cause [inaudible 00:35:44], which is what leads to ocean dead zones and what can lead... Well basically, you get a big algae bloom, and then you get a dead zone. And I just think that I really hate them.

Bridget Todd (36:01):

Okay, well let me ask you this. You've got a magic wand. You can get rid of one thing, disinformation or golf. Which one are you going with?

Abbie Richards (36:08):

I'm not a sociopath. Obviously, I'm going with disinformation. Oh my God. This girl had the opportunity to fix the world, but she was like, no, get rid of this fake sport.

Bridget Todd (36:29):

I was just curious. That's what I thought you were going to say. I had a feeling.

Abbie Richards (36:32):

I'm glad you think so highly of me.

Bridget Todd (36:37):

So what are you working on debunking next?

Abbie Richards (36:39):

I'm still breaking down QAnon. So if people are interested in that, I am doing a several-part series that is explaining QAnon to the common person, to the normie if you will, that is informed by experts in the field. So if that's something that they're interested in, that is on all of my platforms. My TikTok is tofology. My Instagram is abbiesr, A-B-B-I-E-S-R, and my Twitter is abbieasr, A-B-B-I-E-A-S-R.

Bridget Todd (37:14):

Thank you so much for being here today, Abbie. I spend so much time talking about pretty dark shit, conspiracy cults and disinformation, and all of this dark, heavy stuff on the internet, but you bring such a lightness and accessibility and humor to this work. So really, thank you for what you're doing.

Abbie Richards (37:30):

Thanks. I'm trying, but yeah, it definitely gets dark sometimes. So it's better to just say it with a big grin on your face, and people are like, "All righty, then."

Bridget Todd (37:49):

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please help us grow by subscribing. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? We'd love to hear from you at hello@tangoti.com. Disinformed is brought to you by There Are No Girls On The Internet. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our supervising producer and engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. For more great podcasts, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.