Life in Plastic, It's Fantastic
Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. This intro was written on Tuesday, July 16, 2024 at 8:50 AM and we have a stupendous show for you this week. I chat with the team at EX Research about their new report which goes deep on Roblox. The massively multiplayer online game played by half of all American teenagers that is pulling the levers of Internet culture behind its brightly colored plasticky curtain.
Mike Rugnetta:And Georgia takes a look at Love Island, UK, as many people have over the last few weeks, and asks why so much of that looking is preoccupied with plastic surgery. But before all that, let's talk about a few of the things that have happened since the last time you heard from us. I have 6. 123456 stories for you. We here at Never Post were considering doing a click baity round table called Twitter is good again, based largely on the shared experience of a couple producers here that somehow, the for you tab had gotten pretty good at surfacing interesting, relevant posts.
Mike Rugnetta:But then someone tried to shoot Donald Trump and looking at the timeline once again, feels like chewing on rocks. Oh, well. Be safe out there, pals. The internet weather, as they say, is bad. Just like the actual weather.
Mike Rugnetta:Reset the clock, the folks on the forums of the free to play combat game War Thunder have once again leaked classified documents. This time, portions of manuals for 3 Russian tanks, the t 90 m, the t 90 s, and the t 80 BVM, according to cyberdaily.au. Days before that, forum members shared classified documents on the f 15 and f 35 jet fighters first leaked on Telegram. All in all, classified documents have been leaked on the War Thunder forums over a dozen times, according to dotesports.com. Hey.
Mike Rugnetta:So if anyone from the War Thunder forums happens to be listening to this, we would love it if you dropped us a line. I would love to talk to you about this for a segment. For those of you not posting jet schematics, you can read more about this at the links in the show notes. The European Commission has informed x.com that it is likely in violation of its regulations concerning, quote, dark patterns advertising transparency and data access for researchers, end quote. The commission says, in summary, that paid verification is a scam, X's advertising tech is a black box and thus difficult to regulate, and finally, that X's terms of service prevent researchers from accessing data on and about the platform, which is in violation of the Commission's Digital Services Act, as it is a fundamental tool in building understanding of platforms and then holding them accountable.
Mike Rugnetta:The commission will seek to confirm their findings and x could be fined up to 6% of its total global revenue if found at fault. Elon Musk seems to think that this is retaliation for quote, a secret deal the European Commission offered to x to quote, quietly censor speech without telling anyone. The other platforms accepted that deal, Musk says, providing 0 additional information. I wonder why. Spotify is adding comments to podcasts.
Mike Rugnetta:No, thanks. Proof News is reporting that they have discovered which YouTube videos are included in The Pile, a massive collection of media used to train generative AI models over the last several years. They've even built a tool so that you can check to see if your favorite YouTuber was included. And guess what? He was.
Mike Rugnetta:17 Idea Channel videos seem to have made their way into the pile. I'm happy to report that whoever did the scraping, at the very least, had the good sense to include all of the videos that we made about artificial intelligence.
Robovoice:Here's an Idea
Mike Rugnetta:And finally, on July 1st, an Illinois law went into effect that requires parents to give 15% of their earnings to their children if those children appear in videos. If a child appears in 30% or more of an online video,
Mike Rugnetta:then 15% or more of the money made from that video must be
Mike Rugnetta:put into a 15% or more of the money made from that video must be put into a trust for that child, Tubefilter explains. When that child turns 18, kids can claim the money and they can also request that any of those videos be deleted. The law is aimed at providing the barest protection for so called kidfluencers who may be exploited by their parents for monetary gain. You can read more at tubefilter.com. Link in the show notes.
Mike Rugnetta:And in show news, we want your drafts. Read them to us. Call us. Send us a voice memo. Tell us about the posts in your drafts on Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress, TikTok, wherever that you haven't sent, and tell us why.
Mike Rugnetta:We may use your contributions in future interstitials. Don't worry, we can anonymize you if you want. Just let us know. That is the news I have for you today. In our first segment, you'll hear from me and the team at EX Research on Roblox.
Mike Rugnetta:But first, the sound of literally touching grass. I visited a park near my house and recorded the wind in the trees, the cars on the highway, and the vibrations of the ground itself with an extremely sensitive contact microphone staked into the dirt. One of the things I love most about the Internet is how weird it is. How weird certain corners of it are. There is rarely something as exciting for me as finding a project someone has spent weeks, months on, that is just completely foreign to me in every way.
Mike Rugnetta:A game, a video series, music, deep research on esoteric pieces of technology or media, focused on something so far outside my frame of reference, it sometimes even takes me few moments to really understand what's going on. But, of course, by their nature, these things don't come to you. You gotta go out and find them. EX, the group which authors the newsletter EX Research, are world class delvers of the deep part of the web, spelunkers of the strange, self described Internet slime merchants. In the last year, they've covered the search for the back rooms, the bizarre world of bully breeding advertisement remix videos, the Sonic Underground animation fandom, VTuber identity theft, and more.
Mike Rugnetta:Today, they are joining us to talk about the subject of a new 30 page research report they published last week on what is, to many adults at least, one of the more vexing and mysterious corners of the Internet. Roblox. Joining us are Chris Bro. Hey. Clayton Purdum.
Mike Rugnetta:Hello. And, Pao Yumo. Hi. Now I get the sense that, like, having a relationship with a child who's really into it is kind of the only way that people over the age of 30, let's say, learn about the ins and outs of Roblox. So I wonder if for folks without that resource in their lives, Could you just give us a quick rundown of what Roblox is?
Clayton Purdom:Sure. Yeah. Roblox is massively multi player game. Right? So there's been both of Warcraft and Second Life and games like that that we sort of come across that people are fairly familiar with. There are
Clayton Purdom:a couple of sort of key differences with Roblox. One is the user base. Like you mentioned, it's really really young. People tend to sort of age out of playing Roblox when they're about 18 or so. They've people just kinda move into other games.
Clayton Purdom:I think the other big thing that's different about Roblox is that in World of Warcraft, you know, you're you're dropping into one big planet and you're navigating these sort of stories created by developers. With Roblox, when you actually open it up, it's kind of like opening up Netflix or something like that where there's an overwhelming surplus of different things that you can move into.
Chris Breault:When you open it up, you immediately see a lot of games that look familiar if you know about a lot of video games. Like, there are a ton of clones on their marketplace.
Clayton Purdom:There's first person shooters. There's all of these different types of games. That are all built out of this, one consistent Roblox engine. And some of them are games. Some of them are sort of social hubs.
Chris Breault:And then when you click through into these games, they are like a blocksified version of the game you're familiar with that is usually free.
Clayton Purdom:And pretty much all of them are created by actual Roblox users, which is to say children. A lot of them are like games designed by children and have the sort of level of professionalism that you would expect that.
Chris Breault:And, like, if you didn't already have somebody guiding you through that experience, like a friend who told you to play it or told you what was good about it, it is kind of baffling a lot of the time.
Clayton Purdom:So the sort of, like, onboarding and stuff like that for games, the UI, all the stuff that you're used to, you're used to playing big video games, that's all kind of gone and you guys are kind of dropping into all of these fairly low fi, fairly unpolished, interactive experiences.
Mike Rugnetta:Very kinda like plastic, almost. Primary colors, like big shapes, very, like it's like Lego inspired, sort of. Mhmm.
Pao Yumol:I mean, I think they used to, like, have studs on their shoulders and stuff and on on their heads. Like, they looked very, Lego like.
Chris Breault:It feels like yeah. You just started with Lego figurines and kept adding more and more over the years.
Mike Rugnetta:You say in the report, game ideas, memes, fashion and developers themselves flow freely from the Roblox verse into the wider web, making it essential background. I was wondering if you could tell us about some of the examples of those ideas, memes, and fashions that have become essential background for the Internet.
Pao Yumol:Well, one really prominent example is a genre of music called Roblox core. This genre of music that was being created mostly by really young Roblox players and being shared like in platform. It was pretty aesthetically similar to a lot of what we associate with like hyper pop or digi core. If you logged
Pao Yumol:on to Roblox on any given game,
Pao Yumol:you'd often hear the sound If you logged on to Roblox
Pao Yumol:on any given game, you'd
Pao Yumol:often hear the sound of Roblox core, like, you know, hyper pop, digi core beats, emitting from people's boom box items, like, as you walk through these massive social experiences.
Chris Breault:If you want another example, if you've seen that omega nugget meme in the last couple months, I feel somewhat ridiculous explaining this.
Mike Rugnetta:The dancing nugget forward to what you're gonna say. It's gonna be so good. Yeah.
Chris Breault:It is a a dancing nugget with a smirking expression singing a distorted version of Cotton Eye Joe that's taken from another TikTok. And the face of that nugget is a smirking man face that was added to Roblox in, like, 2012. And that's, like, just a katamari of different Internet things that became one meme. But if you want to unpack it, Roblox is a part of that.
Clayton Purdom:Yeah. Yeah. The kids and teenagers have a lot more time online. Sure. And so these things move really quickly, you know.
Clayton Purdom:And so it just goes really, really quickly. And so it starts at, you know, on this platform that people aren't looking at. And by the time it's already in the visible Internet to any of us, it's already been, like, it's already been there and spread into a 1,000,000,000 different sort of ways and sort of germinated.
Pao Yumol:I feel like there's another, like, phenomenon we've been noticing a lot recently. It's, like, if you look at TikTok or YouTube shorts or something, there are a lot of animators who will recreate memes or videos within Roblox, like, that were originally taken IRL, like, it's like it's become a lens through which people retell stories, basically, emulating things that they're seeing on the Internet within Roblox and vice versa.
Chris Breault:Didn't you have an example of, like, a Zoom meeting that was recreated in Roblox?
Pao Yumol:Oh, yeah. It was like a Zoom classroom with, like, there was, like, a teacher and then, like, several grids with, like, students' faces. But it was, like, completely, like, recreated within Roblox, which was really interesting. Like, the audio was, like, completely unaltered.
Chris Breault:Yeah. I think stuff moves really fast, like, out of Roblox into those, like, shorts video ecosystems where it gets tumbled around and, like, it's like an archaeological project to try to get back to the source of, like, where this actually came from in Roblox or from these Roblox creators.
Mike Rugnetta:One of the the things that you guys write in the report is, what is it you mentioned in New York Times in 2020, the New York Times called Roblox. This generation's version of going to the mall, but it's a mall where half the stores are run by kids. Is that legal? Sales people pounce on you at the entrance of every shop and some shady vendor around the corner claims to be selling Kim Kardashian sex tape. Many of the businesses are jokes.
Mike Rugnetta:Others claim to do everything at once, like a 3 in one men's hair product. Their obstacle courses, role playing games, and pet simulators all in one. And I think like this sort of this like squares really well with my impression and, fleeting direct experience with Roblox, which is like it being nominally for kids excuses and explains the level of chaos that I think you are subject to in Roblox. But there's a kind of chaos that also feels distinct from spaces that are normally designed for and populated by children. And, like, it feels like there is a level of, like, permissiveness maybe, or, like, lack of of guardrails in Roblox that is surprising for something where there are so many people who are so young.
Pao Yumol:There is a sort of, like, rebellious culture within Roblox. Like, I think, like, its users have been sort of pushing against the boundaries, that Roblox Corp has imposed for its entire existence. It's just that, like, since it's scaled so much so recently, I feel like only now only now are Roblox Corp, like, contending with some of the problems that come with, like, having such a massive platform that is populated mostly by children. And some of that comes in the form of like, you know, attempting to like identify and like censor like lewd or NSFW material. And a lot of that is like trying to find ways to enforce copyright.
Pao Yumol:And so as a result, I feel like it leads to this very chaotic landscape where it feels like everyone is trying to get away with as much as they possibly can before they, like, end up, like, tipping off some, like, TOS monitor or something like that. I don't know.
Mike Rugnetta:I mean, what you are describing is making the mall metaphor feel only more accurate. Like this shit. It feels like a very, essential teen experience.
Pao Yumol:Yeah. Totally.
Clayton Purdom:One thing I'll say, and we mentioned the Kim Kardashian sex tape up at the top of this thing, which is like a reference to a subplot on a recent season of Keeping Up With the Kardashians where she saw an advertisement for her sex tape on Roblox, and it was briefly like, you know, a sort of flash point of concern around the game. But I don't really get the sense that it's like a totally unmonitored, like, cesspool of, like, of, like, really terrible content. It some of it's kind of, like, scrappy and fun, like, Chris was talking about has a thing in there about, when somebody was role playing as a cop, they would just type sirens in the chat over and over because they didn't have the ability to do sirens. And so I just I think that there's, like, a sense of people, like, trying to break the rules, but it coming out in, like, fairly, innocuous and kind of sweet ways, I think.
Mike Rugnetta:It's got this good natured sort of like, troublemaker sense to it.
Clayton Purdom:Yeah. Like you're saying, I mean, I think there's an essential part of being sort of a teenager and, like, that might have been at the mall, and right now it might be at Roblox. And I think that some of that is that is gonna happen no matter what somewhere.
Mike Rugnetta:I wonder if this also do you feel like this explains the presence of all of the spooky scary stuff that's on Roblox?
Pao Yumol:It's definitely, like, a really big part of the landscape. I feel like a lot of the characters that you'll see people wearing are like monsters from analog horror games or something. And some avatars like even come with like, they'll have, like, a, like, a speech bubble, like, like, above them that will say, like, boo or something. I don't know. Probably something more creative than that.
Pao Yumol:If it just said boo, I don't think I'd be
Pao Yumol:very scared.
Clayton Purdom:That's the thing that lends it I mean, it's fun being scared with other people. Right? We've seen this with a lot of horror games that, like, coop horror games are really fun or watching people play single player horror games are really fun. And so that it kinda lends itself to the, the social aspects of Roblox that, like, yeah, jumping into this thing, getting scared of your friends or claiming that you're not scared by it. It it just plays to the element of Roblox that really is based on, like, you and a bunch of your friends and people pop in and out having these sort of, like, fun one off experiences together.
Mike Rugnetta:It makes sense. It's I mean, it's where let's play is started. Right? I think the first thing that PewDiePie ever played as a Let's Play before they were even called that was a horror game because it's something that's just really easy to have big, funny, fun reactions to.
Clayton Purdom:Totally. And for kids that are watching a lot of, watching a lot of streaming content or whatever, they're seeing tons of people playing these horror games. Like single player horror games that might be that are not being made in Roblox, but then they can pop into the these sort of, like, free Yeah. You know, kids safe sort of ones on their own as well.
Mike Rugnetta:I love the the theme of bootlegging the entire world into Roblox is just incredible to me. It's so good.
Clayton Purdom:Yeah. Yeah. Eventually, we'll all be in there.
Pao Yumol:I feel like another reason why, like, horror games are so popular in Roblox is because from a technical standpoint, I think, like, obby's and, obby's, which are short for obstacle courses, it is not like a cute little thing that I just made up right now.
Mike Rugnetta:It's like a Roblox's version of the platformer, basically.
Pao Yumol:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's like every Roblox obby looks like one of the like secret levels that you play in like Super Mario Sunshine, where they're just like a bunch of rope tilting like toy blocks, like out in abstract space. Either that or it's these, what we've been calling, like, Nextbot horror games.
Pao Yumol:Like, Nextbot is like this. It's a device that developers use basically to design an AI antagonist that just, like, chases you around the room. And it's, like, it's a really easy sort of template to use, to make games like that. So, like, you'll play, like, 5 minute Roblox game that is just Shrek chasing you down a hallway or something like that. And swapping Shrek out for whichever character you want is actually pretty easy.
Pao Yumol:So, like, you know, it's, like, easy to, like, generate a ton of games like that, and it makes up, like, a really big part of the ecosystem.
Chris Breault:Yeah. They're like it's like a flat PNG of the character coming at you and playing a repeating noise or song. So it is very easy just to swap them out for whatever's popular at the moment.
Mike Rugnetta:You know, honestly, I'm not I have never played it, but even the idea of it is just so refreshing in a entertainment landscape saturated by, like, massive games that take years to finish that, like, look really polished and, like, still don't really contain much heart or, like, story. I would almost rather a flat Shrek chasing me around the hallway at this point.
Chris Breault:Yeah. There there is something weirdly refreshing, like, obby's and chase games in particular, where you just jump in, the game starts almost immediately, you know, you might die almost immediately, and you just keep going. You just get stuck in the in a classic game loop that they've given a new shell, sort of.
Mike Rugnetta:Yeah. So it really feels to me like though it is nominally a, like, gaming hub, it feels like it functions as a social network that has just done away with the post as the main method of interaction or it has elevated the posts to the level of like environment. Right? Like the posts really maybe are like the games, but those don't behave in a way that a post normally does. And that is fundamentally the thing that maybe contributes to the strong amount of social cohesion that it sounds like occurs with, the communities in the game.
Mike Rugnetta:There are these environments where people have these, strong social interactions. Some of them are more successful than others, but maybe like sort of recognizes that fundamentally what like a social network does is it allows people to play. And in getting rid of the post, you actually like are a little bit more successful at that than other places.
Clayton Purdom:I think the social networks that I've had the most fun with are ones that are specialized. So, like, I enjoy spending time on Letterboxd. I'm still one of the people that likes Goodreads. I still go on Goodreads and stuff. LinkedIn, I'm a LinkedIn sicko.
Clayton Purdom:Like, all of these all of these social networks that are very specific in what they do, I think are really good. And I think that your point about Roblox replacing the post with, like, these experiences is a really interesting one. The only other comparison I could think of is something like SoundCloud, which replaces that with music. Right? But I also think that's part of what makes Roblox distinct from other quote, unquote metaverse things is that it does have that sort of, like, ground up culture.
Clayton Purdom:Like, as opposed to sort of Fortnite where it has these sort of, like, maker tools and things like that. That isn't like the vast majority of what people do in there. The vast majority of what people do in there are sort of the things designed by Epic or other, you know, sort of top down things. And And I think that's part of what gives it that sort of like lively feeling that makes it feel more like a a living breathing community as opposed to a game with these sort of social elements tagged onto it.
Pao Yumol:Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, I feel like one of like the common, like, failures of like current social media platforms is that like, the way that they encourage discourse or interaction between people is often through posting and threads, which possesses like a sort of natural capacity for creating, like, hostile and antagonistic conversation.
Mike Rugnetta:And hierarchy and
Pao Yumol:Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, I think, like, one genuine thing about, like, all of the, like, metaverse hype is that, like, I think people were, like, correctly identifying that there were, like, new ways to experience some kind of, like, embodied presence with other people, like through the internet. And that that was like a missing element of like communication that just like other platforms don't really offer.
Pao Yumol:And so like on Roblox, it's like, you can like sort of shift really quickly from having like a massive social experience to having like a very like, intimate conversation with a single person or just with your friends or something. You can always, like, load up games and, like, private servers rather than public ones. But the default is, like, being launched into this, like, massive social environment. And so, like, you learn a little bit more how to, like, self select for what kind of social experience you want and like how to create the appropriate distance between yourself and this larger community, because it doesn't hinge on like posts, like it doesn't hinge on you, like putting yourself out there and making this grand declarative statement, hoping like people you'll attract the right attention. Like, I had plenty of instances where I like non verbally like, I was playing Brookhaven, like a Spongebob just jumped on my shoulders.
Pao Yumol:And then I just carried a Spongebob all the way to the barbershop, you know, because what else am I gonna do?
Mike Rugnetta:That's just
Chris Breault:what happens. Yeah.
Pao Yumol:The fact that, like, these are games that, like, can actually, like, encourage those kinds of interactions, I think makes it feel like unique versus other social platforms.
Mike Rugnetta:Chris, Clayton, Powell, thank you so much for joining us. This has been fascinating and again, like, I really really enjoyed the report. It's so insightful. There's so much good stuff in there. It really shows, that you put a lot of work into it.
Mike Rugnetta:So thank you for doing it and thank you for coming on the show. Thank you so much.
Pao Yumol:Yeah. Thanks so much.
Mike Rugnetta:Next time you guys do a big report or even a small report, maybe we can get you back on the show. We would love that. Absolutely. Chris looks like he's not sure. Where can people find you all online?
Clayton Purdom:We're at exresearch.co.
Mike Rugnetta:We'll put links to that in the show notes. I highly recommend anybody that listens soon and enjoys never post go and subscribe to the ex research newsletter. Thanks again to Chris, Clayton, and Pal for joining us. Do you play Roblox, dear listener? Or do you know a teenager who does?
Mike Rugnetta:Tell us about what you've seen, what weird games you've seen, what strange bootlegs you've encountered, what parts of it you have seen escape containment. Tell us about your impression of how and why it impacts broader Internet culture, if there even is such a thing. Call us at 651-615-50007. Email us at the never post atgmail.com, or leave a voice memo on our Airtable. Link in the show notes.
Mike Rugnetta:We might use your response in a future Mailbag episode.
Clip:The summer is fast approaching, which means one thing. We are back.
Georgia Hampton:The 11th season of the dating reality show Love Island UK premiered on June 3rd of this year. A group of hot, sexy singles spend 8 weeks together in a villa playing games and coupling up with each other in the hopes of making it to the end of the season as the winning couple, and thus earn the show's prize of £50,000. They followed their hearts, and they're ready for a summer of love. But beyond the premise of the show, pretty much everyone who goes on Love Island knows that it offers an incredible opportunity to become famous online. If you play the game well, get a lot of screen time, and become popular or even unpopular over the course of those 8 weeks, you could leave the show with a nice stack of Instagram followers.
Georgia Hampton:And for the female islanders in particular, you do that, at least in part, by looking hot in a certain way.
Clip:As I said, I'm a sucker for a pretty face. Blonde girls with massive boobs. Birds in bikinis, it's like my heaven. Sweet heaven.
Georgia Hampton:On Love Island, UK, the women have always shared the same look. They're skinny with perfect white teeth and long hair that's either straight or wavy. They always wear a full face of makeup. They often have acrylic nails. These women are also usually from the same social strata.
Georgia Hampton:They go to the same bars, the same parties. They exist in this specific culture within the UK club going scene where their aesthetic is the standard. And this is certainly the expected look for women on the show. Like, you're not going to have a Love Island contestant who shows up in full Traggoth makeup tromping into the villa in platform demonias. And in a way, the viewers of Love Island have been led to expect this specific vibe.
Georgia Hampton:I mean, it's been like this forever. But this season, there's been some pushback online about the way a certain few contestants look. Oh, my god. I'm on Love Island. I'm talking about Nicole.
Clip:My name's Nicole Samuel. I'm 24, and I'm from Aberdeen, The Valley.
Georgia Hampton:Jess.
Clip:My name's Jess. I'm 25. I work as a retail manager for Marks and Spencer. Harriet. I'm Harriet.
Clip:I'm 24, and I'm a dance teacher from Brighton.
Georgia Hampton:And Samantha.
Clip:Hi. I'm Samantha. I'm 26, and I'm a makeup artist from Liverpool.
Georgia Hampton:All 4 of these ladies have very similar features. They have round cheekbones, full lips, a tiny button nose, and lifted eyebrows. And viewers started commenting on how to them it seemed like these girls had gotten a lot of work done. That is what I wanna talk about in this segment, how the Internet, reality TV, and the world may tell women, you should look this way, but then when they do, people get mad. Why would people get mad?
Georgia Hampton:And plastic surgery isn't a new thing for Love Island. But this season, for whatever reason, it is the topic du jour of the show's online fan base. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about it, and the loudest opinions were largely negative.
Clip:So these Love Island ladies are, apparently all
Clip:in their twenties, but they're looking older. They they don't
Clip:necessarily look like they're in their twenties. Right?
Clip:All of these women are under 26 years old. What is going on? Is this all Botox and fill it? What is Why?
Georgia Hampton:One of the most popular videos involves a plastic surgeon trying to guess the ages of these islanders and to guess what kind of work they've had done.
Clip:Okay. So the first one is Jess.
Clip:She's 38, lips, nose. Yeah. So obviously she had some work done, in my opinion. But this
Georgia Hampton:is Harriet.
Clip:42. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Georgia Hampton:Yes. Yes. The surgeon gets their ages wrong every time by at least 10 years, sometimes almost 20. And that's the punch line that these women look old, they look exaggerated, and in his opinion, that the work they've had done looks bad. There's a cruelty here that feels familiar, of course.
Georgia Hampton:Pointing and laughing at the way a woman looks isn't anything new. But when I look at Nicole, Jess, Harriet, and Samantha, I don't see something shocking and surprising. I see a face I have seen a 1000000000 times before on a TikTok filter.
Clip:This is called bold glamour, and I feel like I should talk in some kind of a sultry voice or something when
Georgia Hampton:I'm using it. Bold glamour is a beauty filter on TikTok that remakes your face into exactly, exactly what these women on Love Island look like. Thicker eyebrows, a smaller nose, a full face of makeup that accentuates your cheekbones, and a million other tiny little changes that make your face more angular and sculpted. The result is this uncanny, handsome, squidward version of you. And when women try this filter on, the general reaction is this mixture of shock This filter is actually insane.
Georgia Hampton:And bitterness. I mean, how do they do this? You wanna see a catfish? Here's a catfish. She takes the filter off showing how she really looks.
Georgia Hampton:And, I mean, she's beautiful. She just looks different. She's not bold glamor anymore. -I have never felt uglier. -At this point, the idea of creating yet another unrealistic beauty standard for women has become more of a meme than anything else.
Georgia Hampton:But bold glamour turns things up to 11. What's happening here isn't an unrealistic beauty standard. It's a completely unachievable beauty standard. It's impossible. It's not real.
Georgia Hampton:The beauty ideal presented by a filter like bold glamour is like this sexy ghost that's haunting everyone, this ghoul with a sickening highlight and snatched eyebrows. You can try to reach out and grab her, but she'll just disappear once you turn the filter off.
Mike Rugnetta:Previously on Love Island.
Georgia Hampton:But the women of Love Island, I mean, I do see bold glamour. It's there in real life having cheeky bands with the oiled up dudes in the villa. And I can imagine the reasons for feeling like you need to look like this on Love Island. The show casts women who look like this, and women who look like this tend to be the ones who get brand deals, who become beauty and lifestyle influencers for an audience of other women who are interested in this aesthetic. So if you want to get on the show and by extension, get the influencer career you want, you'd be forgiven for thinking you have to look like this.
Georgia Hampton:And on this corner of the Internet, there's a preexisting culture in which this digitally enhanced, real but not real, flavor of beauty reigns supreme. And it all starts with 1 woman in particular.
Speaker 9:Hey, guys. It's Kim, and we are here in my bathroom, and we are gonna do my makeup routine. I'm gonna do a holiday look for you guys and show you all my tips And
Georgia Hampton:in 2019 And in 2019, the writer Gia Tolentino cites her as the inspiration for a beauty trend called Instagram face. Instagram face is quite literally a simulacrum of Kim Kardashian's face and the faces of other famously beautiful women like Bella Hadid or Emily Ratajkowski. Poreless, smooth skin, thick arched eyebrows, lush lips, a button nose, prominent cheekbones. It's a face that is achieved partly through expensive plastic surgery, but perfected through digital tools of enhancement. Even after a brow lift and cheek filler, your face is only truly ready for prime time on social media when you also plug it in to Facetune and tweak it in countless tiny little ways.
Georgia Hampton:In her piece, Gia speculates that the addition of these digital changes become, for some women, a standard part of the posting process. She writes, you get the feeling that these women or their assistants alter photos out of a simple defensive reflex as if face tuning your jawline were the Instagram equivalent of checking your eyeliner in the bathroom at the bar. Instagram face, with its big, bold features, make it a smooth canvas for makeup and, therefore, perfect for social media. It's the facial equivalent of a high contrast picture of a leaf. It's just striking on a screen.
Georgia Hampton:And if you're an aspiring influencer or someone who wants to be on a reality show on a streaming service, that's what you want. So this compounding effect happened. As Instagram face became the default beauty standard, more people sought it out. The celebrity plastic surgeons Gia interviewed commented on how there's been this uptick in clients who bring pictures of Kim Kardashian to their consultations. And then, more digital tools pop up that give you this look quicker, more seamlessly, more convincingly.
Speaker 10:You can't tell it's a filter. Usually, if you're kinda going like this with a filter, it'll glitch out, and you can't tell that it's real. But this looks so real, fake, obviously, airbrushed, but looks so real.
Georgia Hampton:That's another clip of someone using bold glamour. The woman in this video is swiping her hand over her face, rubbing her cheek, stretching and pinching her skin, and the filter stays put. When Gia coined the term Instagram face 5 years ago, she wondered what exactly would be the quote unquote end to this back and forth between digital and cosmetic enhancement. And I think watching Love Island has helped me find an answer. There is no end.
Georgia Hampton:Nothing is as smooth and perfect as a digitally version of yourself. No cosmetic surgery can change your appearance as instantly as a filter. Those tools can be tweaked and improved for the rest of linear time. They don't have to abide by the rules of physics or anatomy or anything because these filters don't exist in the tangible world. But to wanna be influencers, to the Love Island Girl Somehow, some way, you have to catch this intangible thing and make it real.
Georgia Hampton:Maybe especially if you're going on a TV show where they take your phone away. You have to trap the ghost. Sure. The producers choose women with the specific look who come from the same social circles and go to the same clubs. But in the villa, these contestants are plucked from the world where this look is the standard.
Georgia Hampton:People watching the show probably aren't thinking, oh, she looks like this because she wants to be an influencer. They're looking at a 23 year old with plastic surgery and reacting in the way people do online.
Clip:I'm not anti plastic surgery. I just think it's really messed up that you guys are getting ugly plastic surgery. Like, I just think that there has to be some sort of, like, come to Jesus moment with, like, it's one thing to get uglier for free, but paying to get uglier in this economy is crazy.
Georgia Hampton:Women who want to be a certain kind of famous online are told that they need to court a kind of beauty that might be sort of possible through cosmetic surgery, but it's only really possible through digital means. Over time, the digital tools become so unclockable, so smooth, so perfect that there is virtually no hope of ever clearing that bar unless you happen to know who Kim K's plastic surgeon is. It's a task you're going to fail every time, and you will be punished for that failure every time. This example of Love Island face is just one of countless things worth talking about when it comes to beauty and the way that digital tools can complicate things, and I'd be curious to hear from you about this. Where else do you see this tension between IRL and online beauty standards?
Georgia Hampton:Send us an email. Leave us a voicemail. The different ways you can contact us are in the show notes.
Mike Rugnetta:That is the show we have for you this week. We will be back in the main feed on July 31st with our next episode. Members, keep an eye out for an extended cut of our segment with EX among other fun goodies in the works. If you are interested in helping us continue to make the show and listening to any of our side shows like Posts from the Field, Slow Post and Never watch, alongside extended segments, bonus segments, and an ad free version of the show, you can head on over to neverpo.st to become a member. What can I tell you?
Mike Rugnetta:It was a summer that seemed to be making history. Their personal history. Almost before it began, they stood back slightly, still in it, but observing it. Saying, the summer this, the summer that, all while it was going on. They became obsessed with a fountain, for example.
Mike Rugnetta:One they walked past each day. How abundantly it would reach upwards and yet be pouring back down itself the whole time. All winter this fountain had been dry, not saying a word. What more can I tell you? Oh.
Mike Rugnetta:Everything. Excerpt of no name by Emily Berry. Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious doctor first name last name. Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer and the show's host, that's me, is Mike Cregneta.
Mike Rugnetta:Never post is a production that charts in leisure.
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