These Thems
Welcome to GTA Radio on the Geek Therapy Network. Here at Geek Therapy, we believe that the best way to understand each other and ourselves is through the media we care about. My name is Josué Cardona. I am joined by Marc Cuiriz. Hello.
Josué:Lara Taylor. Hey. And Link Keller.
Link:What's up?
Josué:You you tell me. It's your turn. What are we what are we doing?
Link:We are gonna talk about a, YouTube short series called These Thems. It is a queer show. There are seven episodes in the first season, which are all currently available for free on YouTube. And it's, it's queer as hell, and I watched it because Vico Ortiz, who is one of the creators and starring actor, is just so lovely and beautiful. And I can't keep my eyes off of them, and they talked about these thems.
Link:And I went, well, I'll give that a little look. And I went, oh, this is big GT stuff. Let's talk about it. And so with, a lot of available time, I let you guys know and made sure that all of you had lots of lots of time to really engage with it and think about it. And it wasn't literally yesterday afternoon.
Lara:Listen, I watched it between clients. It was great.
Link:They the the epis there are seven episodes and then altogether, it's like eighty minutes. So it's a little bit over ten minutes an episode averaging. Totally doable. It's easy to to just watch one. But yeah, I I really enjoyed it.
Link:I liked I liked seeing lots of different queer people just being queer and existing. That's beautiful. I love that. And then it was talking a lot about, like, queer educating and and straight whispering is the phrase that they use, which made me laugh. But yeah.
Link:So it it was it was very cool. It was sort of this in between thing where it is very much like intro queer education one zero one, a lot of very basic stuff. But because it is all queer people interacting with other queer people and talking about it from, you know, lived experiences, it is not the same kind of dry vibe that you get from a lot of queer education stuff that you can find out there in the Wild West of the internet.
Josué:Great.
Link:So yeah, would you would you would you guys think? So just a immediate emotional reaction to watching it, I guess. Then we'll get deeper into it. It's hilarious.
Josué:Laugh out loud laugh out loud funny.
Lara:Josué and I are the same person.
Josué:Yep. Yep. Yeah. Hilarious.
Marc:I I only the episodes that I watched, I was sitting in my car waiting for a client, and I was getting weird looks from people because I was laughing in my car. And people were like, what what is he doing?
Link:Okay. Well, I do wanna know why what was making you guys laugh out loud. That's fine. Wait. Wait.
Link:What goofs got are you giggling?
Lara:I'm trying to think
Link:of which one.
Josué:There's so many.
Link:There's many.
Lara:There are so many. I mean, the first episode in the gyno office, everything. Alone. Everything about that episode. I just can't I can't name a thing because it's also true.
Lara:It's also true.
Link:I don't think I have ever seen a depiction of a gynecologist at that level of butch. Yeah. Do know what I mean? Like Mhmm. You watch you watch a lot of, like, medical dramas.
Link:Like, I I can't think of
Lara:No. I've seen a There's there's some a butch nonbinary, like, cardiologist on a on a show.
Josué:But But not a gynecologist.
Lara:But not a gynecologist. No. The lesbian gynecologist in Grey's Anatomy is very femme. So yeah. Yeah.
Josué:I'm never examining that again. Nope.
Marc:We're done. I
Link:I really liked I can't remember. This is one of the middle episodes, so I don't remember which one it was because I blasted through them all. But when they go to a, gender reveal party, and this group of queers are all like, it's a gender identity party. And that that kind of like, oops, confusion misunderstanding, I thought was a very fun take on that. And in order to set up that conversation about like, why is it maybe kind of weird that we do gender reveal parties at all?
Link:Without getting, you know, finger waggy about it, which I appreciated.
Josué:Yeah. Yeah, I think you use the word educational at the beginning. And I think, know, anybody who's listening, like, there's a takeaway, it's that this show is pretty damn educational. And it's also, like, it's also a parody of everything.
Lara:Right. So for it's it's educational and, like, for the queer people who already know this stuff, it's hilarious. Like, watching when they throw the keys to get everyone to, like, figure out how they is a singular pronoun. Pure genius. Because I've seen that go around on the Internet, but just like, all of a sudden a bunch of of, like, cishet white women going, oh, now I get it.
Lara:And then Vico's smile just melts your face. It's great.
Josué:And and as a contrast, like, I I remember us having a conversation about an episode of Shameless. Blara, right, more like, oh, they had this conversation about pronouns at the table. And we're like, no. That was that was like a good example, right, in a and just like a drama. Right?
Josué:Like a drama that's not I don't know. Just like a mainstream popular drama. And, like, they they had a good conversation there. Right? And that and and we kind of praise it.
Josué:And this goes, like, way above and beyond, like, that one scene in in that episode of Shameless. Actually, and one thing that stood out in that episode of Shameless also was that oh, it's Cameron Monahan's character in that in that show.
Lara:Ian.
Josué:Ian? Is it Ian? Yeah. Yeah. I think it's Ian.
Josué:Right? That in on the show, Ian is gay, and he's learning as well. Right? Like, that was a scene where he was learning. And I thought, you know, I'm I'm curious what your thoughts are as well, but it's like, just because you're queer doesn't mean that you know everything about about everything.
Josué:Right? So the show, I think, does a good job of doing that as well of, like, it's also, like, educating someone who's who's new and discovering themselves, but also for for other people on the show. So I I really appreciated that as well. I like that.
Link:Yeah. I thought that whole subplot was really important. Our main characters are Vero, our non binary straight whisperer, and oh, no. I'm forgetting her name.
Lara:Gretchen.
Link:Gretchen, who has recently discovered that she is not straight and coming to conversion.
Lara:Camp when she was a kid. Yeah.
Link:And that she had she had gone to Christian conversion camp as a kid, and that was big awakening moment. But Gretchen's roommate is a gay man and Vera's Vera's best friend is a trans man and they have a burgeoning romance that is so sweet to watch. But we get to see that, like like you were saying is like just being a part of the queer community doesn't necessarily mean you understand all of the nuances of gender and sexuality. And so we get to see, this gay guy be transphobic. And it hurts everybody.
Link:It hurts to watch, but you get to watch how he does the work to educate himself and understand like, why the things that he said and his emotional reactions were wrong and hurtful and makes amends for them. And I think that that was a really important aspect of it's not just like, oh, clueless straight people don't know anything. It's like, every aspect of the queer community is so much deeper and and often hard to define. And so we're always learning, even within community. And that's why these pieces of art are important because they help invite new people in and give a space for people who are already established within the community to still participate in and engage with like, oh, I didn't even think about that or I never even considered that or that's a word I've never heard before.
Link:Please explain. I think that that is so important.
Josué:Some kids was there any of that for for anyone here? Like, did you learn something in from the episodes that you watched?
Marc:I think one of the big things I learned and it it was I I the part of it that was that was going over it, I know it was like a gag of like, oh, five minutes later, ten minutes later, forty seven minutes later, and it's just all going over like the the the immense spectrum of, you know, how people can identify themselves and all the nuances of that. Like, I understand that that was a bit, but I also like, to me, was like really eye opening because I was like, wow, like, there really is like this huge thing, like, and like all these different nuances of the community that I have no idea about. And just some of the terminology that they were using of how someone will choose to identify themselves. I'm like, I've never heard of that before. I've never heard a combination of these words being used.
Marc:And that's really cool, it's really interesting. That's stuff that I've never had to experience or come across, so learning about that even just in short little bits was like, oh, like, that that's that's pretty neat. That's interesting. I I clearly need to do some more learning of my own.
Josué:Were any of those made up in that scene from what Vera was was showing? Because I'm sure they probably were. I'm sure they probably were. But, like, even the were last three None of were None of them were in Spanish. And I was like, what?
Josué:Like, I've never heard these. She was like, there's like, the or something at the end. And I was like, I don't I don't know if you're just making stuff up now or for for being Beatrice.
Lara:Someone who doesn't speak Spanish, I don't know about the Spanish ones, but everything else was accurate. Those are all real identities.
Link:I feel like it's important to put a big asterisk here. Queer people who identify themselves also have senses of humor. Yeah. Mhmm.
Lara:Yeah. It's I don't know. I don't think there's anything specifically I learned from the show that that's new for me. Although I think that this was put out somewhere not it's not like, it's on YouTube now for free, but and it looks like it was posted not that long ago, but it's been around for a while. And language has already evolved since the time it was made.
Lara:And it's something when I'm doing education with people and and even when talking with clients about shame about using the wrong words, I come across information is always gonna change. Identities change. The way we think about things change. And so I come from it as like, yeah, I know what I know, but any given thing that I know could always be wrong, especially in this ever evolving community. So you're gonna get things wrong regardless.
Lara:But, yeah, all those all those terms, all those identities are are real identities that people have.
Josué:So so we'll we'll definitely go to the to the straight whisperer piece further further in the episode. I'm curious because you're both 40 now. Like, Lara and Link, you're both 40 now. Right? You're you're
Link:My birthday's next week. I'm almost 40.
Josué:You're seasoned queers. Right? You understand. Right? You you you know all the things.
Josué:You didn't learn anything from this show. But were there do you have any stories about, like, as you were growing up, as you were, you know, questioning your own identity, and as you were learning things that are kinda like that the show resonates or that you think it would have been helpful as you were younger?
Lara:I, in some ways, identified with it was Asher who had the, oh, you came out as bi here and you came out as a lesbian here. And, like, I don't necessarily I don't identify as a trans man, but there's gender stuff going on. And it's like, you identify as this and then this and then this years later. And I think that's actually pretty common for a lot of people. Maybe less so now because a lot of families are more open about letting their kids explore things when they're younger.
Lara:But, yeah, that was one thing that was like, oh, I did that.
Link:I definitely think that this would have been a useful piece of media for me when I was younger. If only for examples of all of the beautiful ways that queer people are and just how, like, happy that makes me feel to see that on screen. I do I do like that a major theme of the series is talking about coming out. We have Gretchen who is coming out for the first time and we have Asher who has come out many times and is facing down a very daunting one of having to come out at work. I think that that's, you know, some something I have engaged with conceptually and and in a few levels in my own life.
Link:But seeing that portrayed is really important to me, especially with Asher because a lot of trans stories about coming out are focused on trans women, which is important and valuable, but I do like to see trans men too.
Lara:And they also portrayed Vero having to come out several, several times, especially with pronouns and correcting pronouns, which is a everyday thing for people. Mhmm. I did some research. The Spanish words are accurate.
Josué:Thanks for double checking. Yeah.
Link:Mhmm. Doing the legwork. What about you, Josue? Did you does anything surprise you or teach you something new or you wish you had when you were younger?
Josué:Well, so it reminds me of when so a few a few thoughts. One is having friends or family or or even clients who are in that, you know, that are, like, questioning their their their gender identity, their sexual orientation. Like, I think this is a good show, like you said, to show, like, a full spectrum and just, like, everybody's figuring it out and and it can be and it's it's complicated, but it's also fun. Right? Like, it's it's really about, like, how you feel.
Josué:Like, at the end, you didn't see the last episode, Mark, but, like, people are identifying as cyborgs and all sorts of other stuff. Right? It's like it was in this huge coming out party. And so I I like to have something like this to be able to to to point people toward. I like that the show showed like, Gretchen is, like, 30, right, when she when she has this experience at the gynecologist.
Josué:It's just so funny. And then and she starts figuring some stuff out. But it reminds me when I was when I was an intern therapist, much like Mark is now. I had my first trans client. And I was that idiot who didn't know anything.
Josué:And I asked about operations and all that shit, like, didn't know what I was doing. And I felt so terrible after that first client that I was in New York City, so I was able to go to the to a queer community center in in Manhattan. And I went and I, like, I took classes. I was like, I'm not gonna do this shit again. And and it was great.
Josué:Like, I felt much more I felt like an idiot before. Right? But but, again, like, had I watched a show like this, I wouldn't have before then, I wouldn't have felt so ignorant. Right? Like, even just the exposure is good.
Josué:Like, I feel I feel very different now. That's why I was asking you all, like, do you remember when you didn't, like, as you were learning this? Because it's different, you know, when you're on the other side of it. And I remember being in those situations, I'm like, oh, shit. Like, I was the people in in the in the show at the at the gender reveal party.
Josué:Right? Like, I was those moms. Like, again, like, that's the way I was brought up. Even even Gretchen in the show. Right?
Josué:Like, she was brought up in a Christian household, and there's that joke about how she was sent to a conversion camp, and she didn't know it. Like, her family suspected it. She didn't realize it.
Link:I do think that that that part is really funny. I know. She's like, they knew?
Josué:I thought it was funny too. I lost my train of thought. What was I? Where was I?
Link:That you related to being ignorant and and not knowing any better. And
Josué:Yeah.
Link:Looking back on that and being like, oof, psychic damage. Yeah.
Josué:Yeah. And and and like Lara, I feel also like even even when, you know, when Vera is saying the ones in Spanish, I was like, I should look those up because I've never I've never heard those. I I speak I speak Spanish. I've I've never heard those.
Marc:I don't speak Spanish, so I I was like, okay. I those are terms, and I
Josué:You don't know it was Spanish. Not you know now that it was Spanish.
Marc:Exactly. And I was like, okay. Well, I just kinda took it all at face value. I was like, alright. Yep.
Marc:That that sounds accurate. That sounds right. Like, alright. I'm a roll with it. But I think, like, since I'm an intern now, like, I don't have a story kinda like that, Jose, of, like, kinda feeling that way.
Marc:But I just remember going through, like, high school and stuff where I look back on it now, and I was like and then I I totally remember thinking, like, back then. Was like, yeah. I'm I'm open minded. Like, I I understand that people are like that, and and, you know, like, whatever people do them. But I look back on it, I'm like, no.
Marc:Like, yeah. Okay. I was accepting and, like, I was like, okay. Whatever. But I I remember still having, like, a lot of those, like, prejudice thoughts and things like that just based on how I grew up and how my family kind of viewed those sorts of things.
Marc:And I think, like, having a show like, having something like this back then, I think it would have been I think it would have been probably, like, the one piece of media that I feel like everybody should have should have seen and should be able to watch and be like, oh, like, this all makes sense. Like, this it's just like it it's a huge learning thing, and I'm upset that I didn't get to watch all of it yet. So, like, as soon as we're done
Josué:with this,
Marc:I am going to finish it before I go to bed. Because I I do wanna see more about the story, and I wanna see more about, like and then I I just I just think it's really cool. I think it's really fun. It's funny, and it's teaching me it's teaching me a lot more than I probably would have learned anywhere else, honestly.
Lara:Mark, you're gonna be sad because it's gonna leave you wanting more.
Marc:It's okay. It'll just be the next thing I'll just absentmindedly wait on for for years.
Link:Mhmm.
Josué:Yep. My example of the of the trans client, it's not like I was, like, at that point, I think I just didn't know. I never met a trans person in my life that that I knew of. Right? So that
Lara:was well like meaning trans that well meaning gynecologist in the beginning. Right? Mhmm.
Josué:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. It's like I yes.
Josué:Right. Like, that was that was a good time. She just being she just went to school. She's like, no, teach me. Right?
Josué:So it was very much that I was like, oh, like a trans person. Like, I've never met a trans person before. And it was very much a, like, it's it's a continuous educational process. Right? I think that's what I had left off before.
Josué:It's like, I had gay friends. I knew gay people. But I like, we didn't have conversations about about the, like, broader, you know, and and there is actually, like, I I went to like, I grew up and and went to school in Puerto Rico, a large part of my life. So, like, even the language that I have about that is in Spanish. So when I when I was doing that internship, or something that was very new to me.
Josué:And so, like, those classes, I really appreciated. Then I had a trans professor and my master's program who was super helpful, and she did additional courses and stuff and, like, workshops to help people out. But then, like, I'm all about that media. Right? So so much that I've learned as well is just through YouTube.
Josué:And and so, like, I really appreciate the the show as, like, a good it's like a funny comedy, but also, like, I was gonna make a joke like, like, this should have been on PBS or something. Right? Like, it should be I guess, it's that edge it feels that educational.
Link:If it had slightly fewer sex scenes, it would be on PBS.
Josué:The censored version. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Lara:Actually, but the but the sex scenes were
Link:Great. Most Love them. Not complaining.
Lara:The well but they didn't they they were great. They didn't show much. It was the the sex choice that that I think would get them kicked off BDS.
Link:I do. I do. I'm I'm reflecting on the kinds of educational queer media that was available and being created when we were young. I'm sorry. Definitely not like this.
Link:My brain's like time to think about the killers. No.
Josué:The killers? What what what about it?
Link:What's Oh,
Josué:the song. Think they're the killer to a documentary. To. Oh my god. Yes.
Link:Know. But I just I think, like, you know, in the in the nineties, a lot of the content I remember was very much focused on this idea of tolerance. That was the thing that was being pushed is like, tolerance. You don't have to understand it. You just have to be tolerant of people different than you existing.
Link:And I love that there has been this shift more into it's not just we don't tolerance is not enough. We need acceptance. And there is a distinction between those two. And I think that comes back to what you were saying, Mark, where it's like, when you're younger, you're like, I'm so open minded. I'm, I'm so accepting.
Link:It's like, no, you're tolerant, you still got to work on the accepting, because you haven't unpacked all of the things that you just accepted as normal, that you learned as a child because that's how brains work. But the rules are made up. So you gotta you gotta unpack it at some point. So I think I think that that's another fun aspect is sort of putting it in context of other queer education from the 90s, early 2000s, the teens, that sort of thing. It's, it's exciting to see how it has changed and how not just in like, the language that we use, but also like in the way that we can talk about it and engage with it in not just PBS ways.
Link:We can include a big old strap on and that is educational too.
Lara:I do and I do appreciate the use of comedy to help educate too. It makes it a little more accessible. It reminds me of how on Max, there's the book of queer, which teaches about gay history, queer history, and, like, talking about different gender identities that and sexual orientations that, like, didn't have language in the same way back in the day, but, like, learning about Egyptian pharaohs that were probably gender fluid and and things like that. I think I learned more on that show than I did on this one. Did you know that the high five was invented by a gay black athlete baseball player, Major League Baseball player.
Link:I did not know that. But if you had asked me to guess, that would have been my guess. I don't know what to tell you. Mhmm. Mhmm.
Lara:Yeah. So yeah. The like, I like the use of comedy and the way that this show, These Thems, and Book of Queer use queer identity and, like, culture to just, like, have fun with it. Because I think that's I mean, there's so much struggle in the world and in our lives that, like, let's have fun with things, you know?
Josué:So I don't feel that the show is preachy. No. I I do think that it leaned into parody a lot. And I'm curious if you if you see it that way too. Right?
Josué:Because, like, even Vero's character of the straight whisperer is, an exaggerated, right, teacher. Right? That's that's on a mission. And it's like, oh, this is my life purpose. This is what I'm gonna do.
Josué:And it's like that scene you mentioned, Margaret. It's like forty seven minutes to describe, like, classification system. And they forgot to mention bi. And the whole thing.
Link:That's a great joke. That's a great
Josué:Yep. Yep. Forgot them.
Lara:So typical.
Josué:So, again, I think I think I think this one goes into the the the toolbox. Right? Like, I'm I'm glad to have this one to be able to to point to for a number of different experiences. But also, if you enjoyed our our flag means death episodes and you're a fan of Jim, then you you gotta watch this. Gotta watch it.
Link:I love Jim so much.
Lara:Because just a little cinnamon roll.
Marc:I think when Link, when you were talking about, like, the the how back in the day, they had the they had
Josué:Late nineteen hundreds?
Marc:Yeah. The late nineteen hundreds that they were talking about this idea of of tolerance and and everything. That that really got me kinda thinking a little bit because, you know, I can even think, like, how of just how, like, that perpetuated a lot of or, like yeah. A lot of, like, how I viewed people. Like, like, Josue, like, I mean, I had I had friends that were gay and, you know, I knew people like that.
Marc:And, like, Josue, I never really bothered trying to have a conversation about those types of things or, like, kind of understanding more about it. Just like, hey, cool. Alright. You do you. That's it.
Marc:And I even think about even going into my undergrad and starting in community college. I ended up having a friend in my German class, and, like, we went through the rest of our program together. And when, you know, when I learned that they were that they were trans, like, I, you know, I never bothered, like, wanting to, like, have that conversation to see if that was something that they'd be open to to talking about or even anything like that. I just kinda was like, alright. Cool.
Marc:And then just kinda left it at that. I think for me, I didn't really get introduced to a lot of these types of media that serves as an educational purpose or kind of helps led me to start leaning more towards that open acceptance and wanting to have those types of conversations really until I started listening to GT and listening to all the episodes and things like that. Think that was the turning point for me to start wanting to educate myself in it. Because other than that, I think I probably would have stayed in that tolerance stage for a little while longer until eventually, I'm sure at some point, maybe something would have came along. But even then, I can't guarantee that.
Marc:So just just a little little nugget of, like, oh, like, I never really thought about, like, just how much, like, that really, like, guided how I view things and how I went through life like that. And now I'm, like, I look back and I'm like, how did I do that? How how did I go that long without, like, not bothering to, like, wanna learn about it or or, you know, try to get more information and and try to be more understanding and more accepting of it instead of just tolerating it, I guess.
Josué:Part of being 40 is reflecting on on your back
Link:and on your life.
Marc:It's it's that midlife crisis, I tell you.
Josué:No. No.
Lara:We all
Josué:What else think? What's on your mind about the show? Any other questions or discussion points or or, you know, other media?
Link:I mean, I can I can lead us in a different direction that is tangentially related, but I don't I don't know? Have you guys heard of H bomber man?
Lara:Because of my clients? Yes.
Link:Oh, shit. Okay, H bomb. H bomber man is a YouTube video essayist whose work I have been following for many years. He does very funny work. He does some reviews of video games, and he does some more general topics, but he released one video a couple of weeks ago, the only one he's released this year, and it was an almost four hour video.
Link:My friend played for us
Lara:about this video and would not shut up about it. I love this.
Link:It's it is very interesting. He was broadly talking about plagiarism on YouTube, where video essayists will take pieces from other writings and books and just repeat it without giving proper credit. It is a big issue on the platform, that the platform itself does not benefit from if they address it in any way and so they tend to not do so. The back half of h bomb's video was talking about a specific YouTuber, James Somerton, who is a gay man who got, I guess, very popular on YouTube making video essays about like queer media and talking about like, queer horror movies and and all this stuff and turns out was plagiarizing almost everything he ever made.
Josué:Then he plagiarize the queer comics podcast?
Link:I mean, I mean, they are still finding like, like, it is an ongoing thing. They put H bomb put this video out. And as part of it, he's like, honestly, it feels kind of yucky to be making this video that, you know, I will get paid for for making. So they are taking all of the proceeds from that video and they are splitting it up between all of the people that they have proof that James Somerton stole from, which I think is like, hell yeah, very cool.
Lara:Mhmm.
Link:But it is an ongoing project because they're like, oh, I found another one today. Oops. It's like, out of the list. But it is a, you know, a broader conversation about YouTube plagiarism, but it's also this idea of a gay man using the words of other queer people, some of whom are dead and therefore cannot defend themselves. But it became this broader conversation about like the queer community and the way that it is so easy for queer media to disappear and be lost and, to lose the context and who made it, especially when you're talking about stuff from the eighties and nineties and you have the AIDS epidemic and how that impacted queer media and queer art.
Link:And so it was just a really great four hours to watch that h bomb video. It is a time investment. I admit that. I think it's worth it. It has chapter breaks if you only want to do a little bit at a time.
Link:But I do think it is worth the time investment to just sort of understand how this happens on on YouTube and how plagiarism is is becoming a major issue in the way that our Internet systems work. And so as is often true, whatever groups of people do not have the support of the oppressive system, their stuff gets lost and co opted and stolen and refinished to be more commercially viable. And it's something we have to work against because that art is really important. Art like these thems is really important. And so knowing that it is actually created by the queer people who say that they created it is really important.
Link:Mhmm.
Josué:So regarding, like, the the disappearance of older queer media, like, are there do you have examples of, like like, did he bring up any examples? Or are you familiar with any examples of
Link:I do not have like, they're h bomb. Another reason why he's so fantastic is he is meticulous about, like, labeling everything where he got it from, where it comes from and everything. I don't have that video pulled up in front of me to reference. But there there was, I guess, a a fairly well known writer in the nineties, a gay man who died and James Summerton, like, took wholesale full paragraphs from his writing and just stuck it in between other stolen paragraphs of writing and just said it as though he was the only gay man who's ever had this thought. That I mean, that's the other thing is he was very James Somerton was very much pushing this idea.
Link:He's like, I'm the only person making this kind of content. The queer community should support me. Here's my Patreon. And then doing, you know, like, oh, if if we don't get more Patreon, like, subscribers, we're gonna have to shut down everything and and really, like, hamming up how terrible it was. And he made, like, a $160,000 last year off of this stuff.
Link:And it's like, oh, well, what did you spend it on? It's a really, really expensive camera for himself. But yeah. Yeah. Just basically taking I mean, plagiarism we can't all agree that plagiarism is just bad.
Link:That is that's a blank statement there. Plagiarism is bad. But stealing from members of your own community who are dead, who cannot defend themselves, and taking that language and that sentiment as your own and then profiting off of it is some real dark shit.
Josué:I haven't watched the h bomberman video. I've I've heard of it because I use the Internet. Mhmm. I could watch these dems three times in the same time it'll take me to watch that one h bomberman video. So I don't know if this was covered, but just how I think YouTube in general is just, like, built on well, I mean, even, like, TikTok.
Josué:Right? Like, TikTok as a platform, it's, people using other people's stuff Mhmm. To I mean, I think it's less so now. Right? But but, like, literally, you were just, like, using other people's audio or other people's video and repurposing it.
Josué:And so much it's like and and, like, I see this all the time. Right? Like, somebody makes a video about something, and they're and they're telling you right off the bat, like, I got all of this information out of the subreddit for this topic. Or, I got this from these three sources. Right?
Josué:Like, everything not everything, but so much is just a regurgitation of somebody else's work.
Lara:My, like, suggested for you on Facebook and Instagram now are like a whole lot of just re audio readings of Reddit threads. And then
Josué:Oh, yeah.
Lara:The comments. People make comments on Facebook thinking it's gonna get back to the person who was the original poster. Not so. Not so. Because somebody else found something they thought was funny and just put a bot audio track over it and maybe put it in front of a Minecraft, like
Josué:Usually, play Minecraft. Yeah. That one pops up a lot.
Marc:Yeah. I I see those all the time.
Lara:Yeah. Yeah. But then I get sucked in, and I copy and paste the headline. So and then I searched for that and read it so that I get the actual thread to see if there's an update because sometimes I wanna know what happened. Just like on TikTok, I need the part threes, the part fours, the part fives so I know what happens in these stories.
Josué:Yeah. I mean, it's just it's just, like, fucked up in general. Right? That and then, like, where I don't know if I ever told this story here, but I once had an employee when I led a I was a a supervisor at a mental health agency. And so I had a team of behavioral specialists.
Josué:And there was one who started plagiarizing his notes. And like, so I was like, that's weird that he wrote this. I would just like copy it, put it online, you know, put it in Google, and I would find the entire blog article that it was from. Right? And and stuff like that.
Josué:And then once I called him out on it, he stopped doing that and started plagiarizing his notes off of my notes. So I started recognizing that I what I had written down, and he was just copying and using it. And and I I don't know where the line is, right, of of, like, I'm just doing research or, like, I heard something or, like and also, like, this game of telephone or, like, I don't know. I saw it on TikTok. What did you see it from?
Josué:It was from somebody talking about one of those bot videos that they saw off of Reddit. Maybe the Reddit thread was, like, a link to another article that was referencing another like, how often do you go to a website like a like a like a big name website and they're just saying like, oh, but according to Variety, right, it's like, oh, like, can like, someone else got the exclusive and then everybody's reporting off of that.
Link:How many, like, modern, like, game journalism's are articles are just like half post is postings of other people's tweets as like, this is Yeah. Anyways, this is what I'm talking about is like the the way the systems of social media of these different platforms and the way that they interact with each other, like benefit from plagiarism benefit from this, this cross posting. The, the way that they are made is like that is engagement and therefore positive. And it's like, oh, maybe we as people and users of these pieces of technology need to be more specific about how we want to use them. Because with this kind of cross cross posting and and referencing something from another site that's referencing something from another site that's mess talking about comment section in a completely different area, like, all of those threads make everything so complex that it makes having conversations about stuff really difficult.
Link:And I we got we got a we I I think we we need more specificity in the kinds of things that we wanna see on these social media platforms. I don't I don't wanna watch Minecraft videos and listen to Reddit threads.
Josué:But but kind of like bringing bringing it all together, I think, one, I don't know if there's a queer media preservation society, right, like to help with with what we're talking about at the beginning, you know, the beginning of the segment. I would be concerned, like, within this pattern that we're talking about that because These Dems is a small budget YouTube web series that somebody watches it, and then it's like, coming to show time from the creators of Queers Folk. Right? And it's a show that's just like a copy of that. Right?
Josué:And they're like super inspired by it. Think goes back to that to that point of the people who are benefiting from like, when I'm watching YouTube, I don't think about how much money a video is making. Depends. If I really hate the the the person who is who like the host or the or the voice. I'm like, oh, this thing has a million views.
Josué:Ugh. You're gonna make so much money off this video. But usually, most of the time, I'm not I'm not thinking about that. I'm not thinking about, like, how much the creator is getting. And not everybody's stuff is monetized.
Josué:A lot of the stuff on TikTok, like, especially that bot stuff, like, of that isn't they're not they're not getting enough views to to make money. But some people some people are making money, a lot of money off the backs of of other people. Yeah. Did we did we I wanna make sure we didn't lose the thread of what you why you were bringing up the h bomber man video.
Link:Oh, I think I think we're doing great. I think I think they they're not they're not perfect conversations to smush together. But there's YouTube and queer media is enough that I went for it, I guess. I did not intend on bringing H bomb up here, but I can't. I'm still thinking about it.
Link:Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Josué:Yeah, I don't know how else to tie it. Else to tie it?
Link:Well, you
Josué:know, it's the best I could.
Link:Yeah, I think just asking our listeners to, you know, obviously, the process of thinking about where every piece of information you are receiving where it comes from and the thread that you have to pull to find out where that original thought came from, if it did. Like, that's so complex. But spending time occasionally thinking about that kind of stuff, I think is really important. Like, one of the things that we do on this show is that when I am publishing an episode, I am going through and I am tagging like the the therapy and psychology topics that we are discussing. And I am listing all of the various media that we reference so that it is easier for people to follow those threads and check out things that we are talking about.
Link:And it takes time and effort to do that. But I think that it is important that we have another way for people to find that information as to like what we are discussing within it in an episode, and what media we are referring to. It makes it clear that like, obviously, we didn't make all these shows and video games and books and comics that we talk about on here, clearly, but it makes it easier for people to figure out like, where where did it come from? How did how did we interact with that? And I think that, you know, adding more transparency to that stuff is important.
Josué:Big part of that is just media literacy. Right? Period. And and like asking those questions. And so now, with the increasing integration of AI in the form of language, a large language learning models, like that gets like, most people won't will never, right, like, check the references.
Josué:But with with with these AI systems, there are no references, really. Like, the system itself doesn't know where it got the information from. Right. Because it's so much data that it it doesn't even know. It just it just scraped through kinda learned it, and then it informs part of their of their answers and their general knowledge and then got rid of it.
Josué:Like, they can't possibly reference every single thing because an answer could be put together like, it could be the culmination of 5,000 different articles and books and videos that it scraped to be able to come up with with, like, a paragraph answer or a sentence answer. So it becomes even, even harder. And there's this I don't know. There's this I get torn about this, like, the democratization piece of it, of, like, open source and making everything available and contributing to a greater collection of knowledge. But then, like, that is also exploited on the other hand from other things.
Josué:So, yeah, it's like it's not I don't I don't know. I don't know. It's complicated. It's very complicated.
Lara:And it's only getting
Link:more complicated with the rise of AI stuff. That was one of the things briefly touched because that would be a whole four hour episode itself for H bomb. But AI definitely makes plagiarism a lot easier. And worse.
Josué:Well, like, it complicates it though because it takes it to the extreme. Right? Like, if like if h bomber man makes a four hour video about that he spent a hundred hours on, and now a whole bunch of YouTubers have made videos about his four hour video, and those range anywhere from, like, five minutes to an hour. Right? Like, you've got a condensed version of the same information, and some people will not remember, like, where this all started.
Josué:Right? Like, they won't know everybody who he referenced. But, basically, I think what the the way that the large language models work, it's just that to to the extreme. Right? Like, what if all in what if we just condense that?
Josué:Right? Like, if you exponentially did that faster and and more, that's what it looks like. So I think that's, like, it's, an an inevitability. I don't know what the outcome of that is. I don't know how people like, how you can ever get back to the original reference of the original source.
Josué:Yeah. I think that that part is
Lara:I don't know. Thinking about the I mean, I've seen ads for AI because that's why you brought up the, like, plagiarism of notes. There are AI, like, therapy note programs. And I'm like, like, there's no way they could just be stealing from other people. They can't be going into, like, whatever private practices system and stealing their notes.
Lara:But could they? I don't know. You know?
Josué:The the thing is that it's not is like, I'm
Lara:not that's the thing where I'm like, are they training it off of people who have given permission
Link:for people to, like Almost assuredly know.
Josué:Mhmm. I think the the answer is it doesn't matter. Yeah. Because I mean, not and I don't mean in, like, an unethical or or a normals. Right?
Josué:Right? Because Yeah. Because of the way it's been
Lara:ethics for a long time. Yeah. Mhmm.
Josué:Yeah. It's just that, like, mechanically, like, it just it's so many of them that it's just informed, like
Link:The door's already open.
Josué:Okay. Now yeah. Yeah. So it's like, oh, I know how to write notes because I studied enough notes. That's that's it.
Josué:Right? Like, it's not copying exact notes, which is which is why this goes back to the like, what is is it plagiarism? I'm sure that a lot of people would argue that they're not plagiarizing something while other people would definitely think that it's plagiarism. I don't know. So yeah.
Link:If you're not citing your sources as plagiarism. Mhmm.
Lara:That's what I was taught in school.
Josué:Mhmm. You just made it up. That's the thing. That's like
Lara:I made
Link:it up. Made it up.
Lara:And then found a source that backed up
Josué:what I was saying. That's the way the world works. Yes.
Link:That's Yeah.
Josué:That's the way the
Lara:world still cited a source.
Josué:Actually, that's like a chat should be to you. Like, I've had that happen where it's like, oh, okay. Provide your sources for that. And then it literally makes up sources that aren't sure.
Lara:Oh, I was trying to have it. I put in a set of, like, books that I had written in trying to get it to write me a bibliography. Was garbage. Yeah.
Josué:I definitely feel we're off topic now. But but but, I mean, you started talking about this in in terms of, like, queer media disappearing and and not being preserved. That idea of, like, a queer media preservation society, I think
Lara:There are there are several
Josué:us Yeah.
Lara:Out there. Yeah.
Josué:Because even even in the advent of of of AI, how do we store the the originals, right, in any in any way, shape, or form? Or, like, literally, you can ask AI to write a book for you. Right? And it's based on a whole bunch of that. It'll be good.
Josué:Probably not good. Not yet, anyway. But what about the real ones? What about the real ones? Where are those?
Josué:These dams is one of the real ones.
Lara:And it's good.
Link:Yeah. Please And funny. Please watch it, so they get lots of views so that they can make a second season where I hope, fingers crossed, that, Vero will be hired as a straight whisperer at Asher's job. That's my hope. That's where I hope we're going.
Lara:I that's what I I thought it
Josué:was corporate America? No. Alright. Final thoughts about, These Them's Not AI and plagiarism. Laura.
Lara:I loved it. It's wonderful. Go watch it. And, yeah, just appreciate the different varieties of queers you get to see in the show. Have a chuckle.
Lara:I
Marc:mean, pretty much same. Like, I'm really looking forward to it. I wanna hurry up and finish it.
Lara:Yeah. Mark doesn't even know what happens.
Marc:I don't know. I don't. And you guys are talking about all these things, and, like, I'm I'm the FOMO is just increasing exponentially right now. Like, I just I I need to know.
Josué:Watch it. Link?
Link:You know, YouTube is a hellhole, but there are some real gems on there if you're willing to go look in.
Josué:Okay. Alright. Do I have I don't think I have any final thoughts. I think I I think I spoke enough. Where where are there straight whisperers, by the way?
Josué:Like, how do I look one up for parties and stuff? No? I'll DM Vico. See. Or should they know?
Link:They probably know.
Josué:Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for joining us for this episode of GT about these Dems and AI and plagiarism. For more, or if you wanna join the conversation about any of these topics, check out our community spaces, which are in the show notes. And for more Geek Therapy, visit geektherapy.org.
Josué:Thank you so much for listening. Remember to Geek Out and Do Good. We'll be back next week.
Lara:Bye.
Josué:Geek Therapy is a five zero one C three nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world a better place through geek culture. To learn more about our mission and become a supporter, geektherapy.org.
