Speaker 1: What a Fucker's It's Christina Hutchinson and Karin Fisher. You
Speaker 1: are about to listen to a clip from Guys We Funck,
Speaker 1: the anti slut shaming podcast. This week we interview journalist
Speaker 1: documentary in and a New York Times best selling author
Speaker 1: Nancy Joe Sales about her new book Nothing Personal, My
Speaker 1: Secret Life in the Dating app Inferno. This is so interesting,
Speaker 1: whether you've been on dating apps, you're thinking of going
Speaker 1: on them, you you've never been on them, but you
Speaker 1: have kids who are on them. It really just dissects
Speaker 1: how much we have let basically corporations take over our
Speaker 1: love and sex lives and how we might be able
Speaker 1: to take take that power back. So listen to the clip,
Speaker 1: and if you want to hear more, you can visit
Speaker 1: Luminary Podcasts dot com slash gw F, where you can
Speaker 1: get a subscription for as low as to a month
Speaker 1: when you sign up for the annual plan. I wrote
Speaker 1: this article for Vanity Fair in two fifteen about Tender
Speaker 1: and it was one of the first. I think it
Speaker 1: was the first article to really criticize online dating culture,
Speaker 1: which had gotten this role the red carpet out response
Speaker 1: from big media like Wow, look what the kids are doing.
Speaker 1: And it's also great. And I talked to all these years.
Speaker 1: I thought it was really fucked up. And I talked
Speaker 1: to all these young women about it, and they were like, no,
Speaker 1: Tinder sucks. And I talked to all these young men
Speaker 1: about They're like, yeah, I'm like having a different girl
Speaker 1: every night. I mean, whether or not was true, That's
Speaker 1: what they wanted me to believe about them, because that
Speaker 1: was the culture of online dating via apps that created
Speaker 1: this like player mentality. And I think it was in
Speaker 1: one particular kid because his roommates were actually reminding him
Speaker 1: of who he who he had sex with, Like on
Speaker 1: Monday two, was it the Slovakian girl? Oh no, that
Speaker 1: was that? Was that? The publicist? And and he was like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, And so I did this thing. Tinder went nuts.
Speaker 1: They attacked me on Twitter one night. Let's get into that.
Speaker 1: What what So you criticized this company and then what
Speaker 1: did the how? How was their response? Like what did
Speaker 1: they say to you? Oh my god? So I mean
Speaker 1: it was like I was out, you know, I just
Speaker 1: stories for Fanny Fair. So my boss, Grandon Carter's My
Speaker 1: Wonderful was the wonderful editor of any fair for so
Speaker 1: many years. For my boss, for like twenty years, he
Speaker 1: was like, dous story on dating apps. And by this
Speaker 1: time it's two thousand fifteen, and I already think like, oh,
Speaker 1: all the dating app stories have been done. You know everybody,
Speaker 1: they've been talking about them obsessively for the last couple
Speaker 1: of years. I was like, really, okay, but I wanted
Speaker 1: to do something different, and I wanted to do something real,
Speaker 1: which is to talk to actual users. Like my idea
Speaker 1: was not to talk to the bosses of Tinder. Then
Speaker 1: you're doing an ad for Tinder. Then it's a sponsored
Speaker 1: and that's why we never have those people on our show.
Speaker 1: Like those kind of people have been presented some I
Speaker 1: can't believe anything you say. I was interested in the
Speaker 1: apps and learning about them, but through someone like you
Speaker 1: who has done unbiased research, not someone who has a
Speaker 1: stake in the Yeah, I talked to a shareholder. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: That is exactly my point. And what I thought. I
Speaker 1: just did what I always do, which is I've covered
Speaker 1: youth culture for decades and I just like went to
Speaker 1: bars and places where young people congregated, said what's up
Speaker 1: with this and what do you think of that, and
Speaker 1: uniformly the response was like I hate it. I hate it,
Speaker 1: but I use it because there's like nothing else. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what people were saying almost immediately after it
Speaker 1: came out. It was adopted so so powerfully and overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: and immediately, and it was just became the quote unquote
Speaker 1: only way to date, which has only gotten worse since
Speaker 1: that pandemic. And it was weird, and I saw it
Speaker 1: as a corporate takeover, and I wanted to talk to
Speaker 1: the to the users, but Tender was very, very upset
Speaker 1: because they had been used to, like I said, this
Speaker 1: positive red car like blow jobs, like so they pulled
Speaker 1: like a scientology basically and had anybody who talks bad
Speaker 1: about Tinder will pay for it, I mean, in a
Speaker 1: lower grade form of like to harassing on Twitter. Their
Speaker 1: their Twitter account tweeted at me over thirty times. I
Speaker 1: was out to dinner with some friends at um this
Speaker 1: wonderful Sacco bar in my neighborhood owned by my best
Speaker 1: friend Stotsk, which will read about in the book and
Speaker 1: shout out it's yeah, no, she's the best and her
Speaker 1: daughter own it and run it, and there are best
Speaker 1: friends and like our family and it's like the most
Speaker 1: fun place. And um, the reason I mentioned and connection
Speaker 1: with the book because there's a lot of conversations that
Speaker 1: happened in sac by Stsk about online dating because I
Speaker 1: would come home from a day and just be like,
Speaker 1: what the hell just happened to me? And I would
Speaker 1: go in there to talk to people about it, and
Speaker 1: I had all these interesting conversations with young women, men, straight, gay, whatever,
Speaker 1: because everyone was just talking about this, like this is
Speaker 1: so odd that we're doing this. I mean, it's become
Speaker 1: so normalized now, but so um, yeah, So I was
Speaker 1: in I was in Saltsko's and I was with my
Speaker 1: friends and one of them was somebody who was on
Speaker 1: their phone all the time, and she said, um, you're
Speaker 1: trending on Twitter and I was like why never. I
Speaker 1: was like why why? And she said, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Tender's really mad at you. And then they were like,
Speaker 1: how dare you not talk to us? And how dare you?
Speaker 1: I mean that is so stupid because it's like, how
Speaker 1: do you not know that it would be a corporate
Speaker 1: sponsored ad if we did talk to you? Why when
Speaker 1: we talk to you? They were really mad? But what
Speaker 1: was also really disappointing was that at that point two fifteen,
Speaker 1: like they created this kind of backlash to that story,
Speaker 1: even though so many people, so many young women men,
Speaker 1: sent me emails and d M saying, you're right, you're right,
Speaker 1: you're right, this is exactly how I feel about it.
Speaker 1: But they created this sort of with all of this
Speaker 1: tweeting and stuff, they created this sort of backlash to
Speaker 1: my story. Like I don't remember. They were big, big
Speaker 1: publications like Washington Post, Salon, Slate just also attacked me.
Speaker 1: And really one of them said it was like an
Speaker 1: old person's version of Tinder, like my story, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: these these these these wow. No, a journalist, I think
Speaker 1: it was a female journalist said that my story about
Speaker 1: Tinder was like an old person's version of Tinder. And
Speaker 1: and they called they said it was a moral panic
Speaker 1: and all this stuff. And what disturbed me about this
Speaker 1: really and disturbed me to this day is to this day,
Speaker 1: is that we still do not have um really accurate
Speaker 1: reporting about what really goes on with online dating and
Speaker 1: how it particularly affects women. And because of that, it's
Speaker 1: been left out of this whole conversation about how big
Speaker 1: tech in general is tearing a powder tearing a part
Speaker 1: of our society and our civilization and like making people
Speaker 1: really unhappy. And in the case of online dating, it's
Speaker 1: getting people raped and sexually assaulted. And there is data
Speaker 1: on that now, and yet it still hasn't become part
Speaker 1: of the bigger conversation about why we're using this, Why
Speaker 1: are these companies getting away with this in the meto era?
Speaker 1: How are they able to get away with such lack
Speaker 1: of accountability. Sometimes they don't even answer emails, reports of
Speaker 1: incidents that happens, harassment or rate or like everything you
Speaker 1: know I've interviewed so much because they're owned by young
Speaker 1: little like these dudes in Silicon Valley, I don't give
Speaker 1: a funk about anything except being millionaires. Well, if you
Speaker 1: look at really who they are, most of the people
Speaker 1: who started these ones who can't get a date, well
Speaker 1: not me. It's also it's that, but it's also it's
Speaker 1: tech bros. It's guys who were in frat houses. And
Speaker 1: but it's also lot of rape culture guys, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: and that's how they first marketed tender and frat houses.
Speaker 1: But and that's but also it's guys who went to
Speaker 1: business school, it's young guys who went to business school
Speaker 1: and are just looking. Not a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are used as hearing the word no, I imagine right,
Speaker 1: and they're just just it's a business. It's all about engagement.
Speaker 1: It's all about the engagement of the user with the app.
Speaker 1: It's not really about getting us a person who a
Speaker 1: great person to love or have sex with or anything.
Speaker 1: They don't care if we have most dating app sex
Speaker 1: that I've ever had is terrible. It's to keep you engaged.
Speaker 1: And they talk about that a lot in the Social Dilemma,
Speaker 1: which on Netflix we've talked about on the show before. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's just to keep you know. It's that addictive quality
Speaker 1: that these apps have. And these apps were were interviewed
Speaker 1: on the social dilemma the engineers and they're like, I
Speaker 1: would never let my kid use Instagram on Facebook. That
Speaker 1: is a trap that I coded and I regret coding.
Speaker 1: They're doing the same exact thing, of course, which I
Speaker 1: talked about out in my film. I did actually a documentary.
Speaker 1: I don't want to think like my whole life is
Speaker 1: dating apps, but it isn't. In fact, I did do
Speaker 1: a documentary film for as fascinating concept you as well
Speaker 1: it's I think it's so underdiscussed. And that's why, even
Speaker 1: after doing the documentary where I do talk about the
Speaker 1: whole addiction thing, I did the book because I had
Speaker 1: more to say and I had never really talked about
Speaker 1: the fact that I was on these things too. And
Speaker 1: you can't really um imagine, you know, what it's like
Speaker 1: unless you've done it, you know. And like a lot
Speaker 1: of my friends, older friends of my age, who have
Speaker 1: never never done any of this, you know. Sometimes and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying all of them, you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: but sometimes I have older women. I mean, I'm fifty
Speaker 1: six now. I have women friends who are you know, married,
Speaker 1: been married for years whatever. They have kids in college,
Speaker 1: high school who never really tell them really what they're
Speaker 1: doing because they they don't to shock them or upset
Speaker 1: them or let them know about their private life. So
Speaker 1: when I tell them like, this is a lot of like,
Speaker 1: it's not like some great like fun date with Timothay
Speaker 1: Shalow May. It's like, it's like, you're not like clinking
Speaker 1: glasses of rose with um, you know, some sweet guys
Speaker 1: going to write you love poems or something. I mean,
Speaker 1: and again not to not to, not to glamorize the past.
Speaker 1: I mean you'll if you read the book, you'll see
Speaker 1: like terrible things. Basically, it's you're a woman passed by
Speaker 1: the future. You could you could, maybe you could maybe
Speaker 1: count on like the guy at least showing up number one,
Speaker 1: being on time. Um maybe not like punching you in
Speaker 1: the face in bed, just without like you know, because
Speaker 1: I've actually someone that happened too. We hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: that excerpt from our interview with author, journalist, and filmmaker
Speaker 1: Nancy Joel's Sales and if you want to hear the
Speaker 1: tire interview and more of Guys We Fucked and more
Speaker 1: of other podcasts by people like Trevor Noah, Roxian, Gay
Speaker 1: Ranko Rappaport, go on over to Luminary Podcasts dot com.
Speaker 1: You can get a subscription for as little as two
Speaker 1: dollars a month when you sign up for their annual plan.