Bridget Todd (00:03):

You're listening to Disinformed, a mini-series from There Are No Girls on the Internet. I'm Bridget Todd. I talk a lot about tech's failure to center and listen to people who are underrepresented, even though those same people's voices are critical to understand the internet, technology, and how it shapes our world. But the internet is also about possibility, so it's also important to carve out space to dream about what the future of the internet could look like and one of the most prolific people doing this work today is Sydette Harry.

Bridget Todd (00:37):

I kind of think of Sydette as the ombudsman for underrepresented voices in tech, interrogating how we're included or not included and its impact. In a recent piece for Wired called Listening to Black Women: The Innovation Tech Can't Figure Out, Sydette argues that tech creators and journalists have ignored the experiences of underrepresented voices like Black women and, in turn, ignore the harm that "innovation" can unleash on our communities.

Bridget Todd (01:01):

She writes, "Harmful behavior toward Black women isn't enough to inspire change until others are harmed." But the original harms are often lost by journalists tasked with covering tech. The power and rhetoric that went unchecked becomes common and tactics used against Black women for lols become weapons used in conspiracies, destabilizing the very nature of truth from the swarming of victims to posing as Black women to destabilizing communities or countries, to fighting systemic abuse becomes a frustrating exercise of describing an empty space that no one believes is there.

Bridget Todd (01:34):

Sydette pushes back on the idea of who is considered to be the assumed standard user online. Her journey with tech and the internet started with a truly hellish commute to her retail job at the Apple store.

Sydette Harry (01:47):

I had one of the longest commutes in New York, point blank, and I think that is very important because when we talk about the birth of the internet, we often focus on Twitter. I would say, I'm not a user of the internet in the way that people are excited about. I'm a user of Twitter, social media and certain platforms and some of my work diffuses out. But I had one of the longest commutes in New York.

Sydette Harry (02:11):

I'm from Far Rock, New York, it's the last stop on the A train. I had been blogging for a bit, but I was a graduate of University of Pennsylvania. My father was deported. I had been blogging for a little bit and I got a job as a specialist for Apple Fifth Avenue, so I came in through retail. Yes, I have other training but I was working retail, so not making even $20 an hour and I came in right after they started selling the first iPhone.

Sydette Harry (02:50):

So, we got a small discount or actually, I had the power and I think back then people were developing, we had internet and we were able to get things and I was interested in performance, so this was like, "Oh, I'm going to sell all my music," and I was getting to look at libraries and as those things developed, how do we use them? But I'm also on the Apple Store, the big cube, the iconic on 59th and 5th.

Sydette Harry (03:17):

I live in Far Rockaway, I've got to take the A train from Columbus Circle to the last stop. If you know New York, that is a journey. I was using it back when you weren't sure that you would have reception and everything, so I would have a book in one hand, my notebook in another hand and I would have the brand new, shiny iPhone. When you get above ground on the A train, you're getting above ground at 88th and then you're going to Rockaway Boulevard, and then from Rockaway Boulevard, you're crossing two bodies of water past the JFK stop, so I'm seeing a lot of humanity because I'm seeing every person who has to go to JFK Airport. That's what I grew up in, that's part of my life in the city, that's part of my life as a human.

Sydette Harry (04:12):

I'm above ground, so now I have WiFi [inaudible 00:04:15] cellular, I have the new device, and I've been writing a blog, so I'm taking to this literary form [inaudible 00:04:21] and I'm also bringing in some of the issues and things that we've had from blogging. For me, it's always been about conversation and building community. My job at the time involves my gift of gab, so hey, I am built, I am specifically in spaces and I think that's the thing we don't talk about is you have certain talents or certain inclinations to these things.

Sydette Harry (04:45):

I know people talk about, "Oh, Twitter is the voice of the world." I'm like, Twitter is getting better but for a long time, Twitter was not accessible to people [inaudible 00:04:53], literary form. That's already not accessible. People are talking about Clubhouse and all this and I'm just like, "Clubhouse doesn't work on Android, doesn't have really good translation, mostly in English, is ephemeral and has no closed captioning." No captions, so if you can't hear, [inaudible 00:05:09] it's very hard for you to use.

Sydette Harry (05:10):

You are saying because people we are used to thinking of as cultural creators are excited but for me, I fit that demographic, that kind of user, that early adopter that wasn't what they thought of was me. Yes, that's how I started using it and early adoption gets you a base, gets you people, [inaudible 00:05:31]. But there was a time where the actual joke of it for me is if I was to tell my story as a person with user research and my community background, I happen to be connected to more of the privileged aspects of accessing that base of tech while having an identity that would make me a novelty because that wasn't who they intended for.

Bridget Todd (05:50):

Sydette is all about how we build community and reach people online, which can sometimes be a bit fraught. When Facebook announced that video, not comments or written articles, was the wave of the future, newsrooms, my own included, laid off thousands of media workers in an effort to pivot to video. But it turned out, Facebook was actually inflating the metrics of video reach. Rather than getting distracted by the shiny new thing, whether it's pivots to video or fleets, Sydette worked to make sure that systems that are already in use actually serve the people who use them.

Bridget Todd (06:18):

She worked with the Coral Project, a project to increase public trust in media and journalism and make online dialog in comment sections better through open source software.

Sydette Harry (06:28):

I moved into user community research lead for Coral Project which developed comment systems which are now used in multiple newspapers, back when everybody was like, "Oh, get rid of comments," and we were just like, "No, don't do that. People need to talk, we need to access." What are you doing? Everybody got rid of comments, everybody went to Facebook comments, everybody pivoted to video and then, they're lying about all the metrics. All your stuff is on Facebook. But it was the newest shiniest thing and it's like, that's a bad idea. It's not about the newest, shiniest thing. It's about who you serve, what you want to do.

Sydette Harry (07:04):

How do you make sure that those are the people [inaudible 00:07:08]? I think that right now, we're living in the fall out of that. We're living in that idea of we've created this [inaudible 00:07:15] esoteric. When people ask me to tell my involvement with tech, I always start with, "It's because I was poor, it was because I'm Black. It was because I was working in retail but I had that specific entry and specific examination and I have an education and all of these experiences." But the only way I can describe it is having those meld.

Sydette Harry (07:35):

You have to be all those things and every user, not just the ones with the high profile, not just the verified ones, every single user will have this kind of story.

Bridget Todd (07:45):

Think of a universe that exists on screen or on stage. How is that universe fleshed out? Who's the main character and who are the side characters whose inner worlds aren't really fleshed out? Who is given a point of view? Sydette's background in performance has shaped her perspective on the internet, namely asked her to interrogate who is the assumed main character of online experiences.

Sydette Harry (08:07):

The problem is that we have an internet and platforms of lots of casts of characters, but who we make point of view characters and that's a very big thing for me. I know from people who watch me and they're like, "What are you talking about?", I'm like, "We have to start thinking about who we make a point of view character." Because we have everybody on the internet, this wealth of gorgeous humanity but you still think that the point of view character is a white man between the ages of 25 to 60 of a certain socioeconomic background and everybody else can only be a point of view character for a very short period of time or one viral moment.

Sydette Harry (08:39):

That is going to affect what we think the internet is. It affects what our art is because we are watching real time in the world about how we can't abandon each other and how we cannot pretend we are the only people that make our realities and things like that, because we are doing really badly because we thought that was the way. We need a new way.

Bridget Todd (08:58):

Yeah, I mean that's a good question I have. Something that I read in one of your pieces was that we've designed an internet that does not look like the real world. Right? There are not sex workers there. There are not working class people there. There are not people who have disabilities there. We've designed this internet as if these people do not exist but we know those people exist in the real world. So, I guess one of my questions for you is what are some ways that you see different experiences and identities just be completely marginalized or suppressed on the internet that exist in the real world?

Sydette Harry (09:39):

I am [inaudible 00:09:40] because I think we don't see them in the kind of focused point of [inaudible 00:09:47]. They are always the underpinning, they are the foundation of content, their aesthetics have informed so much. Anybody who tells you how Instagram developed does not involve sex workers is a liar and a fraud. That person said that and I'm just like, "Ooh, you're lying on the internet." But the other thing about that is that I am not a sex worker and the first thing that I firmly believe is that if the thing I'm saying is that we need to see those people. I'm not the person you're supposed to be asking.

Sydette Harry (10:20):

The thing we need to work on and I want to work on is how do we have better spaces for those people who are often already doing the work and developing the thing to cover themselves and speak for themselves, as well as how can we be ethical about it? How can we protect their security? And what does it mean for that to happen? This is a thing where we often go... When people talk about content, it's like, we have all the content. Who gets [inaudible 00:10:49] our relationship with it, our desire to protect it is different and we do not honor how people want to speak about it from its creation to its access to its sustainability to its permanence.

Sydette Harry (11:06):

People often go, "Oh, that's so meta. Blah blah blah." Sometimes it's just as granular as does it have closed caption, does it have... Can you delete it? Can you be forgotten? They're made meta when they need to be singular and that's the thing that I like to poke and that's the representation. Subcultures change, trends change, virality changes, people live. How do we give people the ability to access and meld and create for where they are now? How does our media that we've created work for that?

Bridget Todd (11:41):

I think that because of all the things you've said, the sort of ephemeral nature of a lot of the things that are online, I feel strongly that our work, our contributions in terms of how people have seen them as worthy of protection, it pains me to think that so many of the things that marginalized people have created online will not be preserved unless we preserve it, right?

Bridget Todd (12:10):

I wonder how has that shaped our understanding of the experience of being online, that we are the only... We cannot trust anyone but ourselves to lovingly preserve our impact when our impact has been so great.

Sydette Harry (12:26):

I think that number one, this is an experience that we've had in history and I think that's why the power of librarians and power of archives are most important because we're picking and choosing what to preserve.

Bridget Todd (12:39):

Let's take a quick break. And we're back. For Black folks, there's an urgency in preservation. We die earlier and our entire country was built on washing away our voices and legacies. We have to be intentional to make sure our stories our told, let alone remembered or preserved.

Sydette Harry (13:08):

Black people specifically coming from the Atlantic Slave Trade and those things. We've had an experience of having to create cultural lines and cultural lineage when they did not exist and when they have been designed to be failed because that was the project of [inaudible 00:13:26] was getting us to build it without honoring our contributions.

Sydette Harry (13:32):

I think for right now is there has to be, I think, very material in some things and the other thing is that even as I do other work, I start to get the itch of wanting to go back and do library sciences and just the basic, how do you curate and how do you teach people to do this and how do you hold things and not necessarily interpret everything but leave people the space to be able to make their own interpretations? Because we have to confront our mortality and we have to confront death and people [crosstalk 00:14:07].

Bridget Todd (14:06):

Yes. It's scary! It's heavy and-

Sydette Harry (14:09):

We're in it, but it's like what would you want to hand someone when you're done? And can you do it in this current space? I still have a Bible, I have earrings or there are earrings for me. I can't touch them, from people I loved. We go through and we see the books and the architecture and all of that and these are things for what we wanted to be left behind but we also hear that in music and blues and how are they compatible and not compatible with the ways that are accepted to leave things behind? And for us, that is a heavy question but it's a question we have to ask more and more now and especially when we are also being confronted with the reality of we die early.

Sydette Harry (14:59):

We lost two years as Black people of our life expectancy during this. What I often get upset with when we're talking about data tech, everybody's like, "We'll get to it, we'll get to it, we'll get to it," and I'm like, "We're dying early, we have less money, things are more... Stress is more likely to kill us. How much time do you assume that Black people have for you to be wasting and [inaudible 00:15:21]?" But also, we have created bridges across time despite that.

Sydette Harry (15:26):

We exist in those multiplicities because [inaudible 00:15:30] in history where time is thought of to be in generations, not just me, you, right now. We're all playing with those ideas of time, but we're trying to pick what are the things we want to hand, what are again the relationships that we want to have and those are not just momentary in terms of the tweet I just sent, but they're also across time. What are these things and interventions [inaudible 00:15:50] and I think for marginalized people, specifically Black women because that's how I walk this Earth, I am literally a living embodiment of a moment in time, from a line that I'm going to try and transport through the people who I will touch who live different realities and different spaces and that's simultaneous asynchronous [inaudible 00:16:12].

Sydette Harry (16:12):

But right now, we are very concerned with the are we going to do enough in the time that we have to make sure there is a place to give and send because the world's one fire? Everybody's like, "We'll have time, we'll have time," because they're used to telling certain people, people who look a lot like me and you and who are the people who helped made us that we can always wait. Now that the fact that no, it can't wait when they said that, that is now circling up towards them.

Bridget Todd (16:40):

How do we light a fire under people's asses to say, "Where do you think we're getting all this time?", how do we create more urgency?

Sydette Harry (16:48):

We don't. Me and you specifically, how we live in this world? No. I think that... That was glib, but I think most importantly, we have mutual aid, we have [inaudible 00:17:07] but we are literally trying to stay alive and everything we do that tries to ensure our own survival tangentially helps everyone else because we have yet to figure out how to truly save ourselves without saving everybody else, specifically as Black women. I promise you, if we ever as a collective, Black women and femmes, Black people larger in general, if we all got together and ever figured out how to, "We can do this," without everybody else, I promise you we would've chucked our deuces and left a long time ago.

Sydette Harry (17:38):

Everything we do that is designed to keep us alive tangentially helps everyone else because in a lot of ways, getting a Black woman to be valued in the way just humanely that other people are involves a complete destruction or reassessment of the system. It does. It just does. I change back and forth because we're dealing with extraordinary times, but everything turns into, what more can we do, what more can be done? And I'm just like, "Make what I'm doing right now sustainable enough that I can actually have the space to think forward." Until I have that space, I've stopped responding to the, "What can we do?"

Bridget Todd (18:20):

This is something I struggle with so much in my own work and my own life. What does it mean to truly have space and to have time? I feel that so often, even if I'm having a good experience, I am filtering that through, I should be putting this on Instagram so that people know that I'm doing this or I should be marketing this. What does it look like to actually have time? I think that particularly for Black women and femmes, it's just a struggle. I guess I'll put it that way.

Bridget Todd (18:55):

It feels like a struggle to actually feel like I have the space and time to even just rest. Yeah, to even just rest on my laurels, to be like, "Oh, I'm doing this and having this conversation, I'm doing this work because I want to," not because it feels like it's so urgent, I need to. I need to be moving to the next thing. Does that make sense?

Sydette Harry (19:15):

Yes. There's the [inaudible 00:19:18] Ministry who I believe is doing God's work.

Bridget Todd (19:20):

Oh, yes.

Sydette Harry (19:21):

It's a hard thing. Again, I very much loathe the idea of being the lone expert in anything except what I'm actually an expert in and that's the thing you're often not allowed. There are times when... Because I think that we also have to confront the idea of the hustle, struggle, grind culture is bad for us in terms of how it focuses on us in production of capitalistic values but it's also bad on us because it doesn't allow us to get a real extent of expertise because there's a lot of...

Sydette Harry (19:52):

When people talk about imposter syndrome, there's imposter syndrome but there's also a system that has told you over and over again that you are not valuable, you will not be compensated for your value and then there is also just healthy self-assessment and avoidance of Dunning-Kruger syndrome. I'm not the best person for this does not necessarily mean that I am holding myself back or whatever. That just sometimes means that I have a good idea about the skills required for this and the humility to know I don't have them.

Bridget Todd (20:28):

That's a gift.

Sydette Harry (20:35):

Oh, this is going to involve a lot of math? I joined a high IQ society because I couldn't pass math. I am wonderful and great and smart and intelligent, but if people's lives develop on me getting the math right, know what I can do in the best [inaudible 00:20:52] of my humanity is tell you immediately to hire someone else who will get the math right that's not me.

Sydette Harry (21:04):

I think often for me, the focus on imposter syndrome and often a lot of literature becomes this how we are in comparison to mediocre white men and blah blah. I'm just like, I have no desire to compare myself to the mediocre. I have a stronger desire to create the fantastic.

Bridget Todd (21:24):

I love that.

Sydette Harry (21:24):

This is mediocre. These people are so mediocre but they get so far ahead. [inaudible 00:21:30] continue being mediocre. How do I make what's great? That could be from a really good apple pie, that could be a really amazing piece of software, that could be a stunning visual. That is where I think often I'm like, "Okay." I think it's bad because for our society, Black women, for a lot of us it's like we're constantly trying to create and the stress we feel is because we don't have that space.

Sydette Harry (21:55):

It's this thing of have I done everything I can to get on? Have I done everything I can to make what needs to be happening? You feel that because you don't feel secure with what you have because you're not able... You're making a [inaudible 00:22:08] but I feel like they don't go away. I don't know if I'm making an income this week and it's like, if you have those other things taken care of, you would have a better assessment of that.

Bridget Todd (22:18):

Right.

Sydette Harry (22:19):

There's also the reality that I don't know what... I wouldn't ask anyone to make deep assessments of what we're doing right now. We're all stressed and traumatized.

Bridget Todd (22:29):

After the Capitol insurrection, I feel like we had an afternoon where people seemed to be reflecting and then the next day, it was back to the normal shittiness. You know? I'm so sick of moments where yeah, for that day, people seemed to be really reflecting and then the next day, they all woke up and were the same if not worse.

Sydette Harry (22:55):

Well, [inaudible 00:22:56] I looked at every single person they trotted out as an expert and things like that and I was just like, "Everybody's white."

Bridget Todd (23:05):

Yes.

Sydette Harry (23:08):

Everybody's from the same four schools and people are like, "Do you want to be there?", and I'm like, "I don't know." In some cases, yes, because I have feelings and thoughts that I want to get out because I've been talking about this for years and I have moments but then there are also [inaudible 00:23:24] that it goes back to the other things like if you want to talk about it in online communities, the things I actually have expertise in, yeah. If you want to talk about it in the mechanics of it, I'm not talking about heavy duty legal. There's no reason to have me there.

Sydette Harry (23:38):

My problem is that you have a wealth of people who should be there who are not there. There are times when it's like I am not the person you need to be talking to but you're not going to lie in my face and tell me you can't find a single Black woman to talk to.

Bridget Todd (23:59):

More after a quick break. Let's get right back into it. Black women are rarely cited or centered in conversations about the internet, even about their own experiences, things like online harassment or the kinds of racialized disinformation campaigns that kick started the Capitol insurrection. These things overwhelmingly target Black women, yet we're rarely given the space to talk about its impacts.

Bridget Todd (24:32):

Sydette says that tech media let themselves off the hook by writing Black women like her off as problems or not likable or professional enough, thus giving themselves license to exclude our voices from the narrative, essentially blaming us for our own erasure.

Sydette Harry (24:45):

You complain about my tone and I'm just like, "My tone is very specific." I chose a screen name that is kind of confrontational. I got a collection of cat tattoos and aesthetic that maybe looking back now I might have turned down the dial on or maybe I might have turned the dial up. Who knows? But [inaudible 00:25:03] say something and I'm aware of that visual era and we're aware of that in the packaging [inaudible 00:25:09]. You are not going to lie in my very librarian inclined face and tell me you can't find a Black woman who does not have these signals, who does not have this attitude, who does not have this tone but who is more than qualified and considered and thoughtful to tell you similar things. You don't like me? Yeah, there are days I don't like me but if you actually [inaudible 00:25:31] the work, you'd find somebody.

Sydette Harry (25:33):

You keep asking and pointing at me because it prevents you from actually doing the work of finding somebody else.

Bridget Todd (25:38):

That's so interesting.

Sydette Harry (25:39):

I think that's an experience a lot of Black women have is, "Oh, she's a problem. She's a problem." I'm like, yes. I probably am or she is or maybe even I don't like her, but if you care about what the work is, you have a two prong thing. If you care about the work and that is the expert, that is the person you should be talking to, stop trying to get around talking to the person. It's not about your liking because you never seem to have that problem when it's a white man.

Sydette Harry (26:06):

Some of these dudes are running around being demons on Earth and actual fascists and racists, but we can't go around them. Weird, because you always manage to go around the Black woman or the Asian woman or the Latinx nonbinary person that you all admit is an expert but you could find a way around them because they're difficult. But you never feel the same disposition to that when it's a terrible white man.

Bridget Todd (26:36):

Right.

Sydette Harry (26:37):

The flip side of that being, oh, you don't like that person, they're awful, they're problematic. Yes, they are. You know what? There are some people, I don't like them working with other people, they're not nice, they're not kind but do you keep involving them because it allows you to discredit the work? Or you are completely right. There's seven other people, all different orientations, shapes, sizes and flavors who are wonderful and competent. Go ask one of them. Go ask them because they're ready to work.

Sydette Harry (27:12):

You create a roadblock where there isn't and you create a roadblock that's urgent. You create it because it serves you, but what we're asking you to do right now is serve everyone else.

Bridget Todd (27:27):

Something that you said that really sticks with me is this idea of just who we hear from and who we don't hear from, particularly as it pertains to talking about online communities in the aftermath of the insurrection. How many different experts from the same four schools did we need to hear from? How many different outlets rushed to interview a Proud Boys member or a Qanon believer and just how little they center the people who are directly impacted? We didn't hear about the Black women who have been talking about online harassment since forever, who if someone had listened to them, someone with power, this whole thing might've gone differently. We just didn't even have that conversation.

Sydette Harry (28:10):

This is where my [inaudible 00:28:12] steps in. People love when I challenge them on that to be like, "It's just been starting since 2016." I was like, "I had my first run in with some of these people in 2012 and 2014. Tell me you don't care and keep it moving, but do not waste my time." "Well, we were going to reach out..." You told me in a tweet. The other thing about it is because the work I tend to do tends to be designed [inaudible 00:28:33] news or research and archival and this is a little quirk that I've had for awhile.

Sydette Harry (28:40):

Sometimes it's awful things about people who are hiding from ghetto names and things like that in HR and how hiring works is I have a very kind of... My name is distinct and it's hard to find and because SEO, Black women, they shut me down visually for now. If you Google me and you don't see a picture of my name, a lot of people think I'm white. Because of my name, if you don't see a photo and it doesn't surface a photo, people think I'm white.

Sydette Harry (29:18):

My family was West Indian and my mother had a very [inaudible 00:29:24] obsession with speaking properly, to the point that up until I was a certain age, I actually had a vaguely British accent and it's something I would default to. We all code switch in your professional voice.

Bridget Todd (29:35):

Right.

Sydette Harry (29:36):

You sometimes will hear me doing it in this but it's like, my professional voice is, "Good afternoon, my name is Sydette Harry. I will be your [inaudible 00:29:45] for the day," and if you're not looking directly at my gorgeous Black face, people think I'm white. I've often experienced this where folks will say and talk to me face-to-face when they're looking at me or about things or when they see [inaudible 00:30:02] and they will... They're just like, "You don't understand. You don't comprehend," and all of this and I'm just like, "Mm-hmm (affirmative). Who are you citing?" And they'll cite an article I wrote for [inaudible 00:30:20] Culture.

Sydette Harry (30:20):

It's happened to me once or twice with Wired now and I was like, "You just cited... What's that? Sydette Harry." It happens to other women too but there is a specific racial [inaudible 00:30:35] for it sometimes or someone will call me on the phone and then meet me in person after I've done some [inaudible 00:30:39] and they're like, "Yeah, I spoke to this woman on the phone, Sydette." That's happened to me more than once or twice and I'm not saying when to protect people but they were just like, "Yeah, she had these really great thoughts and she was really connecting it to manuscripts and other things," and I was just like, "Mm-hmm (affirmative)."

Sydette Harry (30:55):

The person actually started going into, "I know you're more social," because they read social media, in some ways, especially for Black women, they read social media adeptness as a fad and not a skill.

Bridget Todd (31:05):

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I hate that.

Sydette Harry (31:05):

There are a lot of white male journalists who are doing exactly what I was doing in 2016 now and they're paid for it. They barely write articles, they just tweet. For me, it was a problem. For them, it's a job and they'll be like, "Yeah, she talks about these things," and I'm like, "Very interesting." I'm like, "Sydette Harry?" "Yeah." And they're just like, "I'd like to follow you on Twitter," and I was like, "Okay, this is my screen name, Black Amazon." And they're like, "Wait, you're Sydette Harry?" "Yes, I am, darling."

Bridget Todd (31:43):

God. What is that like? What a mind fuck.

Sydette Harry (31:45):

It's a mind fuck we Black women [inaudible 00:31:47]. It's interesting. That's my version of it but I believe there are Black women all over the States that have [inaudible 00:31:55]. For me, the experience is that I talk about... I got my tattoos later in life, all of them [inaudible 00:31:59] under 30 and if you haven't gotten it yet, be careful because I got mine after 30 and it's an addiction. [inaudible 00:32:05]. But I haven't had a tattoo in a year and a half. [inaudible 00:32:12] a needle. I need it.

Sydette Harry (32:17):

But I was talking to someone who was probably a very well minded [inaudible 00:32:20] and they were like, "What if they are just the internet?" And I was like, "Let's talk about putting culture in mass communications and that's my thing." They're like, "Well, it's strange." The person was very much [inaudible 00:32:30] and I was like... Because I had tattoos on my right forearm and my right forearm is specifically designed to be the typescript for the first mass produced slave sheets which was also oddly enough typescript for the first serif fonts that printed the first folio of Shakespeare.

Bridget Todd (32:54):

Really?

Sydette Harry (32:56):

We nerd hard in these streets. But also it's a telling part of our culture that the mass production of the identity of western literature was also the same mass production that was used to retain Black enslaved peoples to create nations and create identities. These are people who were just like, "Well, it's not professional, it's unprofessional," and I was like, "Wait, it's not professional. That doesn't mean that I don't understand the historical significance."

Bridget Todd (33:26):

Right.

Sydette Harry (33:27):

But that is a thing that for me I experience sometimes visually, tattoos. But I think sometimes Black women experience it with your speaking choices, your names. "Are you really an engineer?" I think all Black female engineers I've heard experience that. You have to put out more, you might do some performances or you're performing the cues are read differently but you have to do more work and the mind fuck of that is just like I don't know what it's like to not have to do that.

Sydette Harry (33:59):

You [inaudible 00:34:00] of your life don't know what it's like to not do that. But there is a world or there is an identity and experience that at some point, people just believed what was true about you without you having to do more than that. That's the screw up. I'm at this point where I'm like, "Okay, we're going to go. We're going to go around. You're going to get it and then I'm going to have to [inaudible 00:34:24] you up a bit."

Sydette Harry (34:25):

Whatever that is, that I can or whether I can or cannot do it, that's the thing but I think the mind screw is that there is someone whose entire life, they've never had to do that. That's the thing because I'm just like, "Oh, this happens." I've had men try and just [inaudible 00:34:44] me about... And especially within tech media, tech journalism, as [inaudible 00:34:48] somebody who's [inaudible 00:34:49] disinformation and online harassment, I'm just like, "You are [inaudible 00:34:52]." I was like... There are two books that were New York Times bestsellers and this is also for me, I've talked about this before. [inaudible 00:35:03] jackass [inaudible 00:35:04]. You cited two books about New York Times bestsellers. Please go to the acknowledgements or the dedications.

Bridget Todd (35:15):

That's got to feel-

Sydette Harry (35:16):

What's my name?

Bridget Todd (35:17):

That's got to feel good. That's got to feel good in a kind of way.

Sydette Harry (35:20):

That feels good because I'm an egotist and I got to [crosstalk 00:35:26] and it feels good because no matter what, I'm a New York shorty, always have been and sometimes you got to let these people know. That feels good on that level because you better ask somebody, but it also feels terrible because these are experiences that were difficult and these are relationships and moments and rather than just believe towards the goal of no, we're trying to stop the abuse, we're trying to stop these experiences, we get, I've got to spend 20, 30 minutes or 10 minutes on really uncomfortable situations of me looking at you like this, "Tell me more," rather than us actually doing the work of improving the thing.

Sydette Harry (36:11):

What would've happened if I didn't have to go through that, if I didn't have to pull out all the... What happens? We talk about receipts but the stress [inaudible 00:36:18], what would happen if instead of a day, a week, a month, a couple years of us having to pull receipts, having to pull what happened, you just did the work? We just got to do the work. That's the thing that is very like ugh. You want that moment. That, to me, is the actual mind fuck. In those moments and with time, you realize how much energy you have wasted, necessary and unnecessary because sometimes you need to do it to get it done and sometimes you do it out of [inaudible 00:36:52].

Sydette Harry (36:51):

How much of that time is taken from the thing you want to do? It goes [inaudible 00:36:57] because for some people, there's some people who when you dress them down, they're like, "Ooh, that was beautiful. That was a piece of art. Go, girl. Tell them." You get that. There's some people who are skilled at that and it's beautiful to watch them work and they enjoy it and I love that they enjoy it because they are good at it.

Sydette Harry (37:19):

I might have some facility, I'm not as good as they are but for me, I'm usually just tired. I'm like, "Okay, so we did that. Now, we're done? [inaudible 00:37:29]. You good? You good? You good, let's get to work."

Bridget Todd (37:34):

I have to ask, this is kind of a random question not related to... I guess it is sort of related. You are so yourself. Even looking at you right now, you've got the Prince shirt, these bold glasses. How did you find the freedom and space to show up like this as yourself in this way? How did you walk in this confidence as who you are in some of these spaces that you walk in?

Sydette Harry (38:00):

Musical performance training. I am [inaudible 00:38:03]. I've done theater, I studied opera for nine years, I am very good at the fake it until you make it or ask for confidence and confidence should be given to you. When you're good at performance, and it's one of the things I talk about, it's just like I'm often nervous. The last big speech I gave, I spent a lot of time on the [inaudible 00:38:27] with the person I was talking to like, "Oh my god, [inaudible 00:38:31] people." It's a performance. You get up, you get ready. I was trained in that.

Sydette Harry (38:35):

You get up, get ready, sell it out and then the minute you step off stage, you kind of curl in a ball and rock back and forth. Also, I've talked about it before but I like theory. I like wonky stuff. I like the combination of looking at the things and making them happen. That allows me to have a lot of interior time or time in stacks and time in books to just be myself. Some of it is just the way I was born precluded me having another options. We are not seeing people in full body in the pandemic [inaudible 00:39:12], lose weight, gain weight but my general right now, I'm about 5'11, 150 pounds. So, there's not a lot of I can hide in my person.

Sydette Harry (39:29):

I'm a tall human and it seems like a strange thing to be so formative but for me, personally, there's not a lot of option of camouflage. There is not a lot of, "Hey, I'm going to walk into certain rooms unnoticed", especially as a Black woman and I'm from Far Rock. This is an under resourced neighborhood, we have [inaudible 00:39:52] that we don't. I was [inaudible 00:39:56]. I couldn't hide in a room. I would be purposefully ignored, but I'm going to have to be this person and the way I am built both physically and emotionally was like I want to win this challenge or I want to at least get good at faking it.

Sydette Harry (40:14):

People were like, "I have such anxiety sometimes about large groups of people." I know how to make that anxiety look like I'm working the room but quick tip, if you really don't like talking to large groups of people and you're in a large group of people, if you [inaudible 00:40:29] personally find every single person and talk to them for two to three minutes, it looks like you're working through the room. You're actually working to run away.

Bridget Todd (40:37):

People are like, "She's the life of the party!"

Sydette Harry (40:40):

That is a specific thing for me. It was important for me to develop a skill. I felt it necessary to develop a skill that I was going to be very solidly myself, I was going to be strong about it, I was going to be clear about it because I didn't have the option for other things. One of the things in some of my online things, people are like, "Oh, you're being mean and this person is so nervous and anxious," and I'm like, "What makes you think I'm not?" Why have you decided that I'm not anxious? Why have you decided that I'm not scared? Or have you decided that it's okay for me to be scared based on what you think I'm allowed to be?

Sydette Harry (41:16):

Because there have been a lot of times, "You're the big, mean monster," and I'm like, "Okay, no I'm not because while I'm talking to you, I'm on the phone with somebody else and I'm crying." I am heaving sobs. A lot of times with Black women it's like anybody who defends you, "Oh, you're just sticking to your people or your followers." What would happen if you thought of them as my friend? What would happen if you thought of some of the people who are saying, "Back up," or, "Leave me alone" are saying that because they know me as a human and they know that this affects me?

Sydette Harry (41:49):

What happens if my distress wasn't funny to you or a topic to you? I think that goes back to what we were talking about for the subject and a lot of this is that people say Black women but they don't name them. It's back to the citations of Black women. We become a concept, we become... Say Black women the way you would say pineapple or fruit. Oh, fruits have this composition but it's not a sentient being. With the engagement and what is happening to us, it's along the same line. It's very much we are a thing to be discussed but we are not people with which these things have effects on. They mean things and often, being like, "No, this hurts. No, this is scary," people often say...

Sydette Harry (42:38):

Sometimes, "I told you so" is not an admission, it's not a dunk, it's a cry for help. Sometimes "I told you so" is a question. There are lots of times like, "We told you," or, "I told you so." I am not trying to be the smartest person in the room. I really want to understand what was it about what I said that didn't register for you, that didn't make you act. What would it take for it to be something you acted upon?

Bridget Todd (43:06):

So, that brings me to my big question. What could the internet look like if we listened to Black women and recognized our humanity and centered us? What could the internet be like?

Sydette Harry (43:21):

The internet would look like the world. The internet would look like a world we actually live in. I would love to know what an internet that could honestly describe the feeling of having a really good piece of pineapple with loved ones at the edge of a beach. Exactly. That moment of-

Bridget Todd (43:45):

I had a moment.

Sydette Harry (43:49):

Oh, when you bite into a pineapple and it is exactly what you want in a space you want. Or when you have ever read or heard something and it struck something in you in that moment of just, "Oh, wow. What would happen?" Or what would happen if the places where you bought your clothes showed people who looked like you? Or what would happen if when you looked at descriptions of your neighborhood, it wasn't just the same things or those spaces, that time? What would happen when something said all access, it was actually all access? You could sign into something and it wasn't about worrying whether or not you had anything.

Sydette Harry (44:43):

When movies and cinema are a big thing and it's rough because those are some of the largest pieces of mass communication and the largest places we get culture and the most resistance to talking about it in any way that does not involve gate keeping. But it's just like what would happen if I walked in a movie theater, you knew you could watch the movie? For people who are visually and auditorially abled and mobility abled, we never have to think about that. There are so many people who do not, who have to think about that.

Sydette Harry (45:15):

Does it have hearing capabilities? Does it have visual descriptions? Or is that at only one showing? That is a huge part of if you're from the world and you're actually from the world, you went into something that talked about the city you lived in and the story actually looked like the people you encountered in your life or that if you went to... I like movie theaters because they're both visual and media [inaudible 00:45:42] but if you were looking at the showings and you're looking at the showings in a big city that had multiple languages and had people of multiple languages when you looked at this cinema, you knew that someone could come in and hear what they needed to hear or that at least one of those stories reflected them and they didn't have to worry about that.

Sydette Harry (46:02):

Those kind of tease out some changes and I think for me, the way I would close it is that what would the world look like if they listened to us. Another question is what would listening look like? There would be a constant conversation of making everything to do that, to do something new and to do something fun, not just profit off of it. That space which [inaudible 00:46:30] answer, would be magical and I think that would lead to more conversations.

Sydette Harry (46:36):

But I think of pineapple by the ocean, surrounded by people and way to actually convey that in all of these mediums. That's what happens. People will tell you how to sell that [inaudible 00:46:50] talk about how to sell it, how to influence [inaudible 00:46:52] but to actually convey to a person point to point, heart to heart this is what it feels like for me and for you, that is both... For me and you, pineapple by the ocean sounds great but what if we had somebody who liked apples and the hills. That is a completely different thing.

Sydette Harry (47:09):

They would be like... I want to know what that feeling is like. I want to know what they think of that. I don't necessarily need to make them feel the same thing that I do, but that to me is the crux of it. What would we get if we actually moved towards having those discussions and not about these [inaudible 00:47:30]? That's the question for me. I don't know if that actually answers the...

Bridget Todd (47:34):

It answers it beautifully. Now I want pineapple on the beach. It answers it beautifully. Sydette, I cannot thank you enough for takin the time to speak. I have chills. I don't know. Something about the way you show up in the world is such a gift and yeah, I am so grateful that you are a human who exists.

Sydette Harry (47:58):

Thank you and I'm grateful for you.

Bridget Todd (47:59):

Oh, please.

Sydette Harry (48:00):

No, but I am. No, no, don't you dare. Don't you dare. This is a real thing. Everyday, we look at Black women and we are often feeling alone, we feel unseen, we feel misunderstood and everyday, I get to look at you and I get to look at others and we're here and we're building so I am grateful for you and please understand that is honest and true and meant from the heart. You are amazing both for being Bridget but also for being human. No one else like you exists in this moment. I am thankful for that.

Bridget Todd (48:30):

Ugh.

Sydette Harry (48:33):

You cannot cry. You cannot cry or I'll cry. No. Bad. No, stop.

Bridget Todd (48:40):

I appreciate you so much. 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 iHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tara Harrison is our supervising producer and engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

Bridget Todd (49:16):

For more great podcasts, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.