Sleuth wars, incels in STEM, and just want Harambe back

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. We're going to begin this episode of Top Comment with a moment of silence, Matt. For Harambe. Ten years since... You look like you're going to cry. While I'm doing a moment of silence. Or, sorry, are you just going to edit in the moment of silence? We can just sit and reflect for a moment on Harambe. It's ten years since Harambe died. And the reason we're talking about this is because the White House decided to commemorate the loss of an internet legend. Harambe was 17 years old and he got shot because he was dragging a kid around an enclosure.

0:40But then he just became the most memeable gorilla. Like kind of the OG meme, Harambe. Dicks out for Harambe? You didn't know that one. Hey, dicks out for Harambe. Dicks out for Harambe. Dicks out for Harambe. Again.

0:58We've all got our dicks out in the studio here for Harambe right now. I hope all the listeners are doing the same. Especially Mariana. Right, so Mariana, what did the White House say about this? So the White House put out this tweet, and in it they said, Today we remember a legend. On this day in history, Harambe would have celebrated another birthday, an icon that became part of internet history, American culture, an entire generation's timeline. I mean, they're clearly Team Harambe, the White House. He became a symbol of loyalty, strength, chaos, unity. You know, this is very rich coming from the White House because Trump defended the zookeepers who shot Harambo.

1:35In 2016. It was amazing because there were moments with the gorilla, the way he held that child, it was almost like a mother holding a baby. Looked so beautiful and calm. And there were moments where it looked pretty dangerous. I don't think they had a choice. I mean, probably they didn't have a choice. So this is a U-turn. Yeah. Might be his greatest. This is a U-turn on Harambe, a very sharp U-turn. But obviously this is, you know, the White House doing what it does best, which is capitalizing social media trends. Playing to internet culture, et cetera, et cetera. And by the way, this isn't the only Trump animal crossover story on social media today because it's just come out that an albino buffalo that looks exactly like Trump, it was nicknamed Donald Trump, has the exact same hair, look this up.

2:22was going to be sacrificed in Bangladesh and the government has stepped in and prevented that. So you win one, you lose one. The internet giveth and the internet taketh away. What are we going to talk about today? We're going to be talking about this story involving a retired Navy SEAL, Robert Horwood. He appeared on Fox News and sparked this massive conspiracy theory that he was wearing a mask. So we're going to be chatting about that. We're also going to be talking about the rise of AI girlfriends, friends, especially around a recent viral post in which an AI company was looking for a guided masturbation consultant.

2:56And we're also going to be going into a very sad story that happened in Brighton the other week and how there's been a lot of fallout on the internet from it. Yes, three women who drowned in the sea in Brighton. There's been this whole range of conspiracy theories, sleuth wars, and loads of posts online, including an AI-generated image of them. So we're going to get into that as well.

3:22OK, Matt, when this story first made the news, three women's bodies being found in the sea in Brighton, it was one that, I mean, obviously incredibly sad and that immediately caught my attention because I thought, because there were lots of unanswered questions about what happened, it was kind of, well, very fertile territory for a whole range of conspiracy theories and all the usual stuff we see, particularly at the moment when young women are found dead. But actually, this whole story has kind of unfolded in a way that I wouldn't have necessarily predicted but with all the same sleuthing and conspiracy theories and everything else and so we're going to take top commenters through what's happened and what we know and what we don't know and why everyone's arguing about it on the internet so it was three sisters young women Jane Adetoro who was 36 Christina Walters who was 32 and Rebecca Walters who's 31 and they're from the Uxbridge area of London so it took a couple of days for their names to be released and at that point people were like oh okay maybe they got into some difficulty after a night owl or maybe they got in the sea in the early hours of the morning and something went wrong and they died and Sussex Police says there's this ongoing investigation that they're doing into how they actually came to be in the water but what really sort of sparked a whole range of conspiracy theory content was when these images got released of the women so it took quite a while for an image to be released there was a picture of them as kids with their dad but then there was this other image showing them as adults that looks like a really sort of professional photo shoot these three young black women they look beautiful they're sitting next to each other and that was distributed by the police but then it turned out that was an ai generated picture of all three of the women because i saw this post saying this image looks like ai and this was a racist account saying oh so you're telling me that these three women were found dead in brighton coincidentally had a professional photo shoot done together this looks fake i'm not buying it and then there's kind of racist terminology underneath.

5:15So you're telling me that this is a fake photo. Yeah, so it actually is AI generated and media outlets ran it. Like the BBC ran this picture in their story because it was distributed by the police. Like that's the usual process when someone's killed or people die, the family are able to provide images, photos, and then those will be shared. The girl's aunt has since come out to say this was generated by some relatives basically because they didn't have an up-to-date photo of all three of the women together. but because it's AI generated it just means that so many people are using it to either say like these women didn't exist or this didn't happen in this way or there's something really fishy and suspicious going on beyond the legit questions you might have.

5:54So the faces of these women in that photo are real but the AI just put them together into one photo? Essentially yeah so what we know from the family member who's spoken about it is that they say a relative generated it using images of the girls, but just trying to sort of put them all together. Then this whole wave of stuff sort of followed that with people saying, well, therefore there must be something fishy here because that is quite an unusual thing to do or quite an unusual thing to happen for this AI generated image of these women to be shared. Like, you know, these are young women in their 30s.

6:25Why isn't there a photo of them together? Or why aren't there photos of them that are up to date? And then everyone starts to spiral. And it's when, as ever, the sort of sleuth disease comes to the fore. What are the conspiracies? So, one of the main ones, which actually has been kind of unfolding even pre the AI generated image, but certainly the AI generated image sort of exacerbated it, was unverified claims that they were targeted by a serial killer of some description, that there was an attacker, and that the police are sort of lying. Listen, there's definitely some kind of criminal activity going on here, man.

6:58Trust me, man. To me, it looks like there's some serial killer going around and he's attacking these black women, believe me. At the moment, Sussex Police say there's just not evidence of third-party involvement or criminality and they've got specialist detectives working on the case to try and establish the details of what's gone on. Obviously, all of this stuff can change and evolve, but at the moment there is just no evidence that this was some kind of serial killer type thing. But quite a lot of, interestingly, black influences have been posting saying, making legitimate points about how often black women's deaths are not reported in the same way and in their view people care less about them being killed or dying and then kind of extrapolating that to a completely new point by saying right therefore it means that there are actually loads of black women who are drowning and this is really improbable and I think that they've been killed in some way.

7:47The police are there saying oh there was nothing suspicious about it. You want to tell me that three black women in this weather in the UK at night time decided to get into the water. I'm not trying to start any quote-unquote conspiracy theories, but I'm just asking you to work with me here. There was one TikTok influencer I saw saying, you know, as a black woman, I wouldn't go in the sea at this time because it would like mess up my hair, basically. And I don't understand why these women would have done that unless they did it with like a specific purpose or because someone had done it to them.

8:18Like this woman does not know these women. You're applying your own hair caretie into an entire race. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think what's difficult as well is that lots of influencers are then using it to take the story to places that are just really sort of distinct from the evidence. And that can be really offensive and distressing for the family. Like the aunt who's come out and spoken has said, you know, please can speculation stop because this is really distressing. And obviously there's still an investigation ongoing as to what exactly happened. One of the things that has further exacerbated the conspiracy theory content has also been a revelation that was made by a family member.

8:53So this was a relative speaking to the Daily Mail and they revealed this fact that their mum, the mum of these three women, also died by drowning 16 years ago. And so therefore a lot of people are then saying, oh, hang on a second, was there some kind of pact or was this, you know, deliberate? A suicide pact? I think they made a pact to follow their mum. There's no way they can just all die at the same time. No, no, that doesn't make sense. Because a family member also came out to say they were commemorating their mum, then people were kind of like, oh, well, maybe they decided to take their own life.

9:34I mean, again, that's not to say that none of these theories will end up being true. Some of them might. But at the moment, we just don't have that information available. Like we don't actually know anything other than the facts that are these women were in Brighton, they were on the beach, they drowned and they took a while to identify. It does seem the most expected explanation for this is that they simply drowned. They got in trouble in the water. But of course, that the more kind of prosaic and boring story is often not popular enough or exciting enough for the Internet. So it fills the void with the more exciting theories.

10:06and also by the way that reflects on a personal level when an unexpected death happens people often do come up with more exciting explanations um that's like a way or like manageable explanations as well i i think this about kind of conspiracy theories in general like we hate uncertainty it's one of the reasons why like the pandemic triggered huge amounts of conspiracy theory content and we kind of want to almost come up with theories because we don't want to think that this could happen to us and that's also where the algorithmic impact comes in because whenever anything like this happens whether it's before the women have been identified as we saw people posting on x or after they've been identified and we've seen creators posting on tiktok people know that this story because it's intriguing will grip people's attention they'll get the views and the likes and so the two things almost become like intertwined it's like it's like the way that algorithms exploit that bit of human nature like the bit that slows down past the car crash the bit that it's like that kind of like morbid fascination with a story like this and But what's been going on here, and a few times now I've seen it within the sort of sleuth community, particularly on TikTok, is that someone will have a take and then someone will have a completely different take.

11:09And then they end up in a bit of a ding dong back and forth. So there's two creators, one called Stephanie and one called Kimberley Online. And essentially, Kimberley Online started to post some content alluding to some of the kind of like slightly more unfounded conspiracy theories about the women. She's a black woman and was coming at it from that perspective. You need to know about the three women who were just found deceased here in the UK on Brighton seafront. Because what the news are forgetting to highlight is just how young these girls were. And it's making me genuinely concerned. The police are not viewing this as suspicious in any way.

11:46And then another creator called Steph came out and said, actually, it's really possible that these women just decided they wanted to have a swim in the sea after they'd been out or whatever. and they drowned and that really wouldn't be that surprising. And kind of what you were saying, like maybe the most simple explanation here is the real one. I normally love Kim's videos and all of her takes on things, but this one is not hitting right for me. Police articles were already saying they were potentially ruling out foul play. Why are we taking it upon ourselves to come online after three girls have passed away to make their death into a conspiracy?

12:16As you said yourself, you're not a detective, you're not a forensic scientist. Let the police do their jobs. She then got loads of like threats and abuse from the fans and supporters, which is so interesting, by the way, that these are like micro-influencers, but who have like a whole kind of horde of like devoted followers who are gripped by these kinds of cases. And so Kimberley Online's followers then started sending abuse to Stefani and then vice versa. Kimberley Online was getting abuse and then there were allegations that Stef was being racist and it all kind of like got really quite out of control.

12:44The photos I'm about to show on screen are just some of the over 500 messages I have received from Kim's fan base in the past 12 hours. And that's not even including the people who are currently emailing me telling me to off myself. You guys know I'm not wanting to get emotional on the internet and I don't want to make this video of me crying, but I don't even think I'm going to keep this video up. I just don't know what you guys want from me at this point. I don't know what you guys want from me. You see these tensions within these kind of social media communities now, particularly when people want to sort of like stamp their authority on a case, even though these are just people like in their bedrooms coming up with their hot takes about stuff.

13:18Like you find sometimes sleuths work together and they kind of will like build up a narrative in conjunction with one another. And then you see things like this where they properly, properly fall out. And I think that the racial element here has been quite important for understanding like why the conspiracy content has spread in the way it has. And these arguments occurring between influencers like a white influencer versus a black influencer because they've got different lived experiences and therefore they are more inclined to believe one theory or another.

13:52I think everyone's now seen this viral Twitter post. The company Joy AI, they tweeted, we're hiring 10 masturbation consultants,$2 ,000 a month to test our new daily guided masturbation feature and document the effects on stress, sleep and mood. Yes, it's real. Yes, you get paid. 23 million views. Apparently the website broke and they've had 100 ,000 applications. Oh my gosh. As well as me. The amount of people who have sent this to me and made that joke is really mind-blowing. I can say that no one has sent me that. Sorry, I feel like masturbation is one of the things I don't need an AI guide for.

14:27You know, like what is the purpose of that? Are we just attaching AI agents to everything? Like businesses are now AI plus another thing. AI plus accounting. AI plus, you know, whatever. And what does Joy mean? They are an AI girlfriend company. Our producers just informed me that JOI stands for jerk-off instruction, which is apparently a specific kink where people like to be instructed while jerking off. So let's just go to the AI girlfriend website. Can you get a boyfriend as well? You can, but not on this website. Okay, so this is only for men? Well. Or women who want a girlfriend? Yeah, but like the most surprise surprise of the AI companion market is heterosexual men wanting a girlfriend.

15:10Let's make one together. Have you got your actual girlfriend's permission to make an AI girlfriend? We're in an AI open relationship, so I'm allowed to cheat on her with AI only. In fact, she would prefer that. All right. Would you like realistic or anime? Maybe realistic. All right. Age, 18 plus, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. Sorry, our editor has asked for cougar, so we will do 50 plus. Ethnic background, slim, athletic, average. So that's the size of their physique. Oh my God, you can decide the size of their boobs. And by the way, you can further refine your AI girlfriend as your relationship develops.

15:47You can be like, I don't like the freckles. Remove those. Maybe add some more freckles. It's crazy. This could be such a dangerous precedent for how people think is normal to interact towards actual partners they're with. That's the concern, right? Because these AI girlfriend companies are talking about a kind of arms race to develop the best AI girlfriend product. And of course, most of the demand, which by the way, most of the demand comes from 18 to 24 year old boys, which is quite sad. Most of the demand is for like obedient, tells you what you want to hear kind of thing. So this kind of submissive girlfriend, it develops like a very unhealthy stereotype about women.

16:20And also that you can kind of express your opinion about your partner's appearance and then they will just change it for you. I mean, it's just not realistic, is it? In all ways. Okay, so sexual orientation, we'll go with straight. They've come up with the name Loretta Soroka. chat style deep role play creative or realistic just good default um occupation what occupation what are the jobs massage therapist secretary flight attendant sorry this is ridiculous isn't it what what like why are all these jobs these jobs as well well oh you're gonna say like yeah hang on hang on hang on you can also make her a scientist i just love the idea of the market for the kind of incel who's getting an ai girlfriend but also like believes like in women in stem roles it's like the smallest bit of a venn diagram that's my air well my air girlfriend is a scientist all right sorry this is her sorry loretta does not look she does not look 50 does she bio loretta soroka is an average 50 year old white straight female scientist with average shapes athletic butt and average size breasts would you like to create loretta soroka and then of course you to sign up which we're not gonna do athletic butt i skipped over that that bit so once you've made loretta what can we like do we hang out with loretta like what's going on most ai girlfriend companies have like x-rated stuff um some people are even starting to put them into augmented reality glasses so your ai girlfriend can like accompany you shopping or whatever also some of the companies like lovescape for example they practically beg you to turn your ai girlfriend into a like influencer they turn them into a brand and other people can follow them and interact with them yeah so it becomes a kind of you create the character they become a kind of brand that other people can follow if that doesn't make you jealous the issue here i think that some people pointed out is you can say anything you can behave badly without consequences to a girlfriend right but when you get a real girlfriend and you say the same things to her and she's not like Like, of course, like, I'll do that for you.

18:27Yeah, yeah. You know, then you're going to be in for a shock. Would the counter argument be that these are people who otherwise are, for example, quite lonely? And like, maybe they'll never have a real girlfriend. And so is this like kind of like having like a Tamagotchi? But it's kind of the same problem. But that's the problem, right? Is that like, is that a lot of like conservative people are worried about this because with declining fertility rates. So like, oh, well, men aren't going to learn how to like interact with real women. China is actually legislating against, they're very worried about this.

18:53They're legislating against AI companions through the interim measures for the administration of anthropomorphic AI interaction services. You know, when people are in relationships with chatbots as well, like someone repeatedly affirming what you think can have a really detrimental impact on the person, particularly if you're saying like quite worrying things to this AI character and they're kind of reaffirming what you think. You know, we've seen really extreme cases where people have like taken their own lives because of conversations with chatbots. I mean, you worry about how something like this could evolve if someone genuinely believes they have a relationship with this person.

19:23Like, what does that actually mean? But all of this feels too culturally complex to ever legislate against, for example. I think a lot of the AI girlfriend companies have been saying, look, webcam models are often exploited, trafficked. These are not real people. So no one's being exploited here. So would you like they would you rather it be weird? that you need to know that there's a real human being sexually exploited or shamed in the porn and like webcam stuff that you interact with for you to like it that's what they're saying obviously they're just trying to promote their own business i guess it is maybe not as bad as some webcam model stuff i don't know it's a really weird moral maze but like we do live in a world now where if everyone had ai girlfriends instead of webcam companions the effect for example in the environment wouldn't be good so we're kind of diffusing the like moral negativity of that to the entire planet rather than to one individual who's being exploited and for a company like joy or whoever like what is the point of this like well money exactly shit loads of money but also could they use the intel that they get from the ai girlfriends to further training i like do we know if that's the case well that definitely is the case that definitely is the case and training ai on specifically how to deal with horny, lonely young men.

20:41And that's one of the reasons why they've done this viral post. I just feel so bad for the like Gen Z women who are having to date guys who are used to having AI girlfriends, you know. Oh, it's hard enough, Ding. My AI girlfriend would never say that. That's what I'm going to start saying to my girlfriend. Obviously, we're talking about like quite a small group of people. It's down the sharp end, but it's the normalization of certain attitudes and ideas, which you kind of felt like society had moved on from a bit. And a lot of social media and AI has kind of like brought it back, particularly in terms of like misogyny or submissive women or this kind of vibe.

21:16Yeah, totally. It's the sharp end. It also becomes a kind of lightning rod for all of our concern about this increasingly artificial future where, you know, are we all going to one day wake up and everyone is like, you know, instead of a girlfriend, they've just got like a flashlight hooked up to augmented reality metaglasses and like some kind of hentai AI girlfriend, that they're talking to, like attached to the flashlight. No, people are going to want like real girlfriends, right? Because that's like innate in us. But we're all concerned that in general, we are becoming disconnected from the real world, from real human relationships.

21:47And stuff like this basically, it feeds into that fear we all have about the future.

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23:21Visit Midas now at 1812 Sycamore Road and get a synthetic blend oil change with tire rotation for just$29.99. Let's quickly talk about this viral theory. Some people have emailed us asking us to cover this. Yeah, Emma and Reese both got in touch. Of a man wearing a prosthetic mask on Fox News. The guy they're talking about is Robert Harward. He's a guest on Fox News. It looks like he's wearing a prosthetic mask of himself. Because there's this kind of like flap on his kind of... It looks like there's a flap of silicone. Skin, yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, mask on his neck. Okay, so I feel like I shouldn't have to say that this is obviously not true.

24:00This is an optical illusion probably caused by the uplighting and downlighting. Yes, it looks like that. And the connection and stuff. But what, like, some of the theories I've heard, it's like, okay, some people are saying it's probably nothing more sinister than they couldn't get him that day, so they just had someone to wear a prosthetic mask instead. It's like the levels of insanity are hard to comprehend, right? Also, this guy is a Navy SEAL, So he pops up on telly, a retired Novi Sil, to talk about, you know, like the war with Iran. Like the idea that someone would put a mask on and like make the kind of themselves and or someone else has put his mask on and is making the same kind of expert comments that he regularly makes on Fox News is kind of unbelievable anyways.

24:39This is the issue with these conspiracy theories, right? Is it's like, do people ever think about them to more than one single degree, right? Because, yes, why would someone who's a regular guest on Fox News wear a prosthetic mask of themselves? But then quite a lot of people think that he's basically being the real him is being sort of kept away and silenced. And they've got this new sort of proxy in who's wearing a mask and saying things that are convenient or suit the administration. This is what bothers me. It's the sort of intellectual arrogance of thinking that you're right because you've seen a picture on the internet versus the massive complexity of factors that would have to occur for this theory to be true.

25:17For example, his family, would they be in on it? Would everyone at Fox News be in on it? We're talking hundreds of people at this stage. Would they know about the prosthetic mask? Would they have been fooled by the prosthetic mask? To what end is he doing it? You know, there's such a multitude of factors that all collapse under their own weight when you consider what it would take for that conspiracy theory to be true. On the other hand, only one thing needs to be true for it not to be a conspiracy theory, which is it was an optical illusion based on the lighting and your eyes are playing tricks on you.

25:44Right. But people trust their own eyes and brains too much. Do you not think, though, that this is the product of that distrust we've been discussing that I think AI in particular has sort of further entrenched, which is people are so suspicious of everything they see because they think it won't be like there'll be something wrong with it. Like it's either AI generated or it's not as it seems or it's out of context or whatever. That actually, in some ways, it's like the post social media literacy era. It's like the things that you use to be like, oh, I'm going to check whether this is real or not.

26:13Actually start then being a problem for you. A bit like when that video of Netanyahu had six fingers and people were like, it's AI generated. It was actually, again, like a glitching, you know, an issue with the stream, it seems. And take it a step back. People mistrust Fox News to the extent that they think they could be putting a guest on with a prosthetic mask. and that is an issue for Fox News, right? And I've seen some left-wing people as well on the internet say, oh, of course Fox News would do this, right? It's like, well, whatever you think about them, no, they wouldn't. They wouldn't put someone with a prosthetic mask on live television.