Arielle Duhaime-Ross | Vox

It’s not just Twitch: The military has a history of using video games to reach young people

2020-08-14T11:48:29-04:00

The US military is using Twitch to reach young people. | Phil Barker/Future Publishing via Getty Images

The US military is trying to get people interested in enlisting with the help of Twitch, a highly popular video game streaming platform — so civilian gamers are now using government-moderated chat rooms as an opportunity to troll the military.

“They would ask about Eddie Gallagher, the Navy SEAL that was turned in by his fellow Navy SEALs for alleged war crimes, and that Trump later pardoned — just kind of asking really unpleasant questions about the military,” said Matthew Gault, a contributing editor at Vice’s Motherboard who has reported on the trolling and spoken about it on an episode of the Reset podcast.

In response, the military banned users from its chat rooms, a move that’s been called out as an act of government censorship. “That’s yet to be adjudicated in a court of law,” Gault said.

Others are taking note of these Twitch streams, too — and taking action. In July, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a known gamer, proposed an amendment to a House appropriations bill that would have permanently prevented the military from spending part of its budget on Twitch.

Through Twitch, “Children as young as 13 and oftentimes as young as 12 are targeted for recruitment forms that can be filled online,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a speech on the House floor. Despite failing in the House, the amendment garnered more votes than expected, Gault said.

But here’s the thing: This isn’t new for the military. The Army developed its own game, America’s Army, to improve the military’s image in the early 2000s. We cover that and more in the final episode of Reset, published today. Take a listen:

Will you become our 20,000th supporter? When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions, we weren’t sure how it would go. Today, we’re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in. The reason is both lovely and surprising: Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it, too. We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy. That’s never been more important than today, during a public health crisis, racial justice protests, a recession, and a presidential election. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive, and advertising alone won’t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will help keep Vox free for all. Contribute today from as little as $3.

Contraband cellphones have given us prison TikTok

2020-07-17T12:21:36-04:00

People who are incarcerated are turning to TikTok to express themselves and show what living conditions are like inside prison. | Sajjad Hussain/AFP via Getty Images

When Adnan Khan was sent to jail in 2003 at the age of 18, texting wasn’t all that popular. But by the time he was released from prison in January 2019, texting was the norm and social media was everywhere — even behind bars.

“I’ve seen the videos. I think they’re hilarious,” Khan, the executive director of Re:Store Justice, said on a recent episode of the Reset podcast.

What Khan is referring to is “prison TikTok,” a hashtag that lets TikTok users view videos shared on the app by people who are incarcerated. “TikTok is one way, and social media is one way, for incarcerated people to show the world who they really are and to humanize themselves,” Khan said.

The content depicted on prison TikTok varies; some videos show terrible living conditions inside US prisons, like overcrowding and flooding, whereas others depict people in prison uniforms doing renditions of trending TikTok dances.

But what’s surprising about prison TikTok isn’t that people who are incarcerated appreciate great choreography, just like anyone else. Rather, it’s that folks in prison have access to smartphones at all.

Cellphones are not allowed in American prisons. And people who are found with contraband in their possession can get hit with serious penalties.

“You can get charged with a misdemeanor or a felony depending on what jurisdiction you’re in,” said Nazgol Ghandnoosh, a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project. “And at the very least, you’re going to lose good time credits or harm your chances of parole.”

So why would anyone run the risk of posting on TikTok or calling a family member using a contraband cellphone?

For Khan, having a cellphone while in prison, even for a short time, was a way to mend his relationship with his mother. It allowed him to have real emotional conversations with his family without being monitored by corrections officers and without having to deal with a 15-minute time limit or the large fees that typically come with using a prison landline.

“It was through a cellphone where I started to really have these tough conversations of how I felt neglected by her,” he said. “What the cellphone did for me — and we keep using the word ‘cellphone’ like it was the phone itself — obviously, what I’m really talking about is a form of community, consistent communication, and a safe space to have that communication.”

To find out more about prison TikTok and the use of contraband cellphones in prison, listen to the latest episode of Reset below.

Subscribe to Reset on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Covid-19 “long-haulers” find a community online

2020-06-26T13:42:01-04:00

Some call themselves Covid-19 “long-haulers,” while others say they are “living with Covid-19.” Either way, more than 5,000 people have now found help and validation online, thanks to a support group that exists to get people through their symptoms — symptoms that, for reasons scientists have yet to establish, sometimes last months.

“I never imagined that it would grow this big,” Fiona Lowenstein, co-founder of the Body Politic Covid-19 support group who received a Covid-19 diagnosis in March, said during an interview for the Vox podcast Reset. “The first thing that became clear was that this experience of long recovery and lingering symptoms was very common, at least very common among the people joining our group.”

Initially started on Instagram, the support group now resides on Slack, the team communication service. One of the main benefits of the group is meeting others who’ve gone through similar experiences, Lowenstein said. Being able to have conversations with people who understand how hard recovery can be is especially important because a high proportion of members weren’t hospitalized and were told that their case was “mild.”

“While a low-grade fever may not seem like a severe symptom, if you have a low-grade fever for three or four weeks, that is a severe situation,” Lowenstein said. She started the group with her colleague Sabrina Bleich, who was also sick, after hearing from others like her who’d read an op-ed she wrote for the New York Times.

Now, in addition to offering patients the kind of support many need, these “long-haulers” have formed a research group that has been gathering information about members’ experiences with the disease, with the hope of informing the scientific community.

To find out more about the support group as well as potential reasons why some patients’ symptoms linger for so long, listen to the latest episode of Reset below.

Subscribe to Reset on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

K-pop fan activism for Black Lives Matter needs context

2020-06-22T15:19:22-04:00

K-pop fans attend KCon New York in July 2019. | Noam Galai/Getty Images

K-pop fans gained new attention this weekend, after they claimed to have registered thousands of tickets for President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, with the intention of not showing up. To the president’s dismay, the arena ended up appearing more than half empty during the rally, leading some K-pop fans to declare victory — although it’s not clear how much of that was due to the fans’ actions.

The stunt was viewed by many as a demonstration of allyship with Black Lives Matter-supporting protesters and Juneteenth celebrants. It followed Korean pop music fans’ sabotage earlier this month of a surveillance app used by the Dallas Police Department — an app that the police encouraged locals to use to send tips about illegal activity among protesters. K-pop fans also recently participated in the derailment of a “White Lives Matter” hashtag, which they flooded with pictures and videos of their favorite idols.

And although these actions have been celebrated by many on the left, including by politicians and protesters themselves, some music fans think it’s important to also remember that K-pop — including its fandom — has a history of cultural misappropriation and racism. In recent years, Korean pop idols have been called out for perpetuating stereotypes about black Americans and for misappropriating black culture by wearing, for example, cornrows and dreadlocks. Artists have also received some backlash for stating that they are skilled at “talking Black” and for racist acts like wearing blackface.

“It sounds sort of racist because it often is racist,” Miranda Ruth Larsen, a K-pop fan and cultural studies researcher at the University of Tokyo, whose work focuses on male Korean and Japanese idols and groups, said during an interview for the Vox podcast Reset.

That said, the cultural misappropriation (a term Larsen prefers to “cultural appropriation,” which she says typically refers to a more conscious process) within K-pop shouldn’t be blamed solely on the artists.

“So let’s say that a K-pop artist is wearing a controversial hairstyle — like they’re wearing dreads or they’re wearing cornrows — eight times out of 10, they did not pick that hairstyle,” Larsen said. “The decision for their hairstyle came from a company, came to a manager, came through an entire chain of command that is responsible and culpable for this bad decision.”

For Larsen, making sure fans and journalists understand this history and way the industry functions is crucial. Without it, it’s impossible to get a full picture of what these recent online activism campaigns coming from K-pop fandoms represent.

Listen to the episode of Reset below.

Subscribe to Reset on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

How The Bachelor became a launchpad for influencers

2020-02-24T15:53:30-05:00

Becca Kufrin, a former Bachelorette, showing off some Bachelor merchandise at a live, touring show she hosts. | Manny Carabel/Getty Images for Kendra Scott

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who watch ABC’s The Bachelor, then you know the peculiar obsession that the show has with “being there for the right reasons.”

It’s been a clear mandate for the 18 years of the show’s existence: Contestants must be willing to enter into a polygamous relationship where they share one man (or woman) with 20-30 other women (or men). They must be willing to wrestle in mud, bungee jump naked, and reveal their tragic pasts. And as they do these things, they must be clear that they are doing them purely for the love of a person they have just met (who, in all likelihood, will dump them on national television).

For almost two decades, contestants have been accusing each other of having ulterior motives for appearing on the show. In the past, the accusation was usually something like, “(S)he just wants to be on TV.”

But now, there’s a new “wrong reason” for appearing on the show: becoming an online influencer.

“She’s trying to create hashtags for her brand,” one woman said of her fellow contestant on a recent episode.

And she may be right. Former Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants have successfully spun their time on the show into various flavors of internet fame — lucrative podcasts, large Instagram followings, a show on CNBC.

In recent seasons of The Bachelor, however, the show has started to let contestants discuss that reality on screen. Which got the team of Reset, Vox’s tech podcast, thinking: How has the online Bachelor ecosystem reshaped the show itself?

Host Arielle Duhaime-Ross brought on Emma Gray, the host of the popular Here to Make Friends Bachelor analysis podcast, to break down the history of The Bachelor’s relationship with social media, and all the ways that the show has been changed by technology.

Below, we’ve shared a lightly edited transcript of Gray’s conversation with Duhaime-Ross.

Listen and subscribe to Reset on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Spotify.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

I’ve been interested in the crossover between what happens on social media and what happens on the show.

You’ve been watching the show for longer than I have. Was it always like this? Take me back to the beginning of The Bachelor.

Emma Gray

The first season is like going into an alien planet if you’re someone who has watched a lot of the current ones. They spend a lot of the first season kind of trying to convince the audience that the guy who has agreed to be the Bachelor is not completely desperate and crazy, that these women aren’t complete and utter nut jobs. And you can sense that they are assuming that most viewers will mostly just spend the entire time wondering why anyone would do this to themselves.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

And what about in between seasons?

Emma Gray

In the early years the media and information around the show was really heavily controlled by the tabloids. When the first couple broke up, I believe that they did some sort of live television special follow up that, of course, ABC was able to produce and control.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

When do things start to change? When does The Bachelor go super online?

Emma Gray

So the show started to dip in ratings, and then, once Twitter came on the scene, the ratings started to increase again, because this whole community of people who were watching the show live and making fun of it and chatting with each other about it started to crop up.

Sean Lowe’s season was the first season I really remember seeing the lead of the show live tweeting the show and making fun of himself. I remember him being very self-deprecating in a way that was incredibly charming and made me like his onscreen persona more.

For future reference: When someone says "I love you" don't respond with "I love hearing you say that".
— Sean Lowe (@SeanLowe09) February 26, 2013

As Twitter gained in popularity, the show began to realize that if they loosened the reins on the contestants, it could be a mutually beneficial relationship.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

My question, though, is … at this point, Sean Lowe is not making any money from his tweets.

Emma Gray

No one was making money from this. It was just a way for them to kind of be in conversation with the highly edited version of themselves that you see on the show. I think that was really appealing to a lot of people who were going on reality TV and then seeing a version of themselves reflected back that didn’t feel complete.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Okay, so when do people start making money?

Emma Gray

Once Instagram becomes a platform for brands to be selling things. It’s like the funny Twitter bachelor personalities walked so that the Instagram influencers could run.

These reality TV stars now are able to gain very large followings, especially if they make it to a certain point in the show, and especially if they are white and if they are women and brands will then approach them and say, I would like to pay you to post a sponsored ad.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jade Roper Tolbert (@jadelizroper)

And I think some people are discerning about what they shill for, but others honestly just shill for lots of products that they would never use themselves.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Do we know if they’re making a lot of money from this?

Emma Gray

They are making a lot of money for this. And I know that, for example, there is a couple, their names are Tanner and Jade.

They got married. They have two children together now. And this has just opened up this massive world of marketing. The first year that the two of them were really going all in on Instagram marketing, they made more than a million dollars.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

There are also whole narrative worlds that former contestants create.

Emma Gray

Ashley Laconetti is one of the women that kind of rose to prominence before this Instagram marketing phenomenon had completely taken off. She appeared on two seasons of Bachelor in Paradise, and had a crush bordering on obsession with one of The Bachelorette rejects whose name is Jared.

They had this kind of tumultuous friendship relationship, unrequited love story that happened onscreen, was picked up onscreen and then was on social media and in the press in between this time.

And then off screen Jared, in this very sort of cinematic way said, I’ve realized that I love you, basically. They got together and released this lengthy video …

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

It is 44 minutes long.

Emma Gray

It’s very long.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

It’s on YouTube and it has 2.5 million views.

Emma Gray

But this again, made them incredibly marketable outside of the world of the show. She and Jared got married and it was not televised, but it was sponsored the hell out of, let’s put it that way. You know, every vendor is listed. It was heavily covered and I have to assume heavily, heavily discounted because they were promoting various brands.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

These storylines also feed back into the show.

Emma Gray

A bunch of the former Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants ended up at Stagecoach last last year and there were a series of hookups that occurred. Now, almost all of those people ended up then being cast on the next season of Bachelor in Paradise … and instead of papering over [the fact that] these things that happened, the show really leaned into it and actually used the fact that this one guy, Blake, had hooked up with several women in very quick succession, against Blake on the show. It brought those women back in a very calculated way, encouraged them to have conversations about what had happened between them.

It really just merged the world of Instagram or the way that they are documenting their lives on Instagram with the actual plot of the show. And suddenly you realize that this monstrous cycle has been created where The Bachelor actually never ends.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

So really, like all of a sudden with that season, with this whole Stagecoach drama, like the jig is up … we are faced with the fact that there is a world beyond the show where these contestants are meeting, interacting with each other. And the show is faced with a decision where they have to showcase that or you’re missing a major plot point.

Emma Gray

Right. Exactly. And I think that ABC and Warner Brothers … who produces the show, tend to be traditionally averse to this because they are still operating kind of in the mold of these old school networks and old school production companies. And I think that they struggle to figure out how to engage with the fact that the people they are casting on these shows are all involved with each other and their audience is engaging with all of this content that they’re not controlling.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

So on the one hand, you have this … And then on the other hand, you have a contestant talking about the idea of using the show to build a brand as something that’s akin to a sin. That feels weird, right?

Emma Gray

Yes. And that you’re really getting at the fundamental tension that exists between the way that this show was initially structured and the way that it existed for many years and the reality of the ecosystem now. And I think what I find so silly is these arguments that the contestants end up having over who’s there for the right reasons, who’s only there for hashtags.

None of these women are stupid. They know also that only one in 30 of them is going to end up being in a relationship with the lead. You know, you’re probably going to go on a TV show and get dumped on national television.

Arielle Duhaime-Ross

You’ve got to get something out of that.

Emma Gray

It is not that crazy to me to be like, well, there’s this other thing that I would still get even if I don’t find love.

I think that the show is struggling with this because they have thrived off of this kind of illusion, that the only reason you would ever go on The Bachelor is because you just want to find love and you believe in the process. And you know what? That hasn’t existed ever. There’s always been an incentive to for a fun adventure to go on reality television to see what comes from it.

And so I think trying to pretend that there isn’t a general awareness of both the viewers and the people participating in the show, that these opportunities exists just feels very silly. It feels like they are fighting a battle that they will lose.

To listen to the full conversation, subscribe to Reset on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts.

Study: Theranos Isn’t as Reliable as Conventional Labs

2019-03-06T05:16:32-05:00

Theranos is more likely than conventional labs to return blood work with unusual numbers, according to the first comparison study between the Silicon Valley startup and two well-known commercial labs. The results suggest that doctors who use blood tests from Theranos may decide to treat patients for conditions they don’t have — or fail to treat patients who need their help.

Theranos’ results were compared to those from LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics in the report from Mount Sinai, which was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigations. For multiple tests, Theranos’ results were more likely to fall outside the range that’s considered normal for a healthy adult compared with results from the other companies.

In addition, Theranos’ results from certain tests often didn’t match up to those from Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »