The Demise of Backpage

Full episode available on Patreon: Kristen and Bethany Baird make Christian life advice content on Youtube for their modest audience of 100k followers. But when Cody Ko reacted to one of their videos on his channel, spawning an entire industry of Girl Defined commentary, they became overnight sensations… for all the wrong reasons. Girl Defined certainly spreads harmful fundamentalist views to impressionable young women but, in this bonus episode, Hannah and Maia question whether Kristen and Bethany are always deserving of vitriol. For women coming into their sexualities alongside their audience, it’s important to consider if their advice is hypocritical, or just confused. Tangents include: Nara Smith and the TikTok trad wives, the “Who said I can’t wear my purity era with my converse” era of Disney, and the political theatre of Republican Christianity and its weaponization of Sydney Sweeney’s boobs. Oh - and MANY “69” jokes. 

If you thought women’s beauty standards were unrealistic before, just wait until you find out about AI porn. Not only do these girlies have cartoonish curves, the faces of young teens, and impossibly long hair… they also have eight fingers on each hand! In this finale episode, Hannah and Maia discuss AI porn, the ways it infringes on bodily autonomy, and its commitment to rendering women’s oldest profession obsolete. You’d think we’d have flying cars by this point, but instead we’re jerking off to the face of Minnie Mouse algorithmically stitched onto Lana Rhoades. Perhaps humanity is more simple that we thought. Tangents include: Maia’s “reply guy” voice, r/doppelbangher, and Hannah fumbling about 15 different analogies. CORRECTION: Text-to-image generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney do not use GANS. Get a whole month of great cinema FREE: mubi.com/rehash Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠ Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills: ⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic SOURCES: Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: A History, Workman Publishing Company (2022). Samantha Cole, “Pornhub Is Banning AI-Generated Fake Porn Videos, Says They're Nonconsensual” Vice (2018). Brit Dawson, “Inside the booming AI-generated porn industry” Dazed (2023). Falon Fatemi, “Look What You Made Me Do: Why Deepfake Taylor Swift Matters” Forbes (2024). Carl Öhman, “Introducing the pervert’s dilemma: a contribution to the critique of Deepfake Pornography” Ethics and Information Technology (2020). Emine Saner, “Inside the Taylor Swift deepfake scandal: ‘It’s men telling a powerful woman to get back in her box’” The Guardian (2024). Kat Tenbarge, “Found through Google, bought with Visa and Mastercard: Inside the deepfake porn economy” NBC (2023). Jess Weatherbed, “Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes” The Verge (2024). James Vincent, “Stable Diffusion made copying artists and generating porn harder and users are mad” The Verge (2022).

…We’re about to go off. Since what feels like the beginning of time (the 60s) dating companies have promised us that our soulmates are out there waiting for us, and they know just who it is. But in this current late stage hellscape, it’s safe to say these companies aren’t as altruistic as they seem. Yes, in this episode, Hannah and Maia talk about everyone’s least favourite drug: dating apps. It comes down to one question: if dating apps could really find us our soulmate, why is it that we’re less horny, and less committal than ever before? Rather than being happily partnered, its appears we’ve all become rizzless, attention deficit, scaredy-cat sex nerds. Are we in crisis? Tangents include: Vanessa Hudgens' monopoly on the “Disney R&B” market, the “bottle night” guy, and Hannah putting yet another nickel in the Don’t Talk About Taylor Swift jar.  Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠ Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills: ⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic SOURCES: Samatha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex, Workman Publishing Company (2022). Ann Friedman, “Overwhelmed and Creeped Out” The New Yorker (2013). Dakota Hanson, Swipe, F*ck, Ghost, Repeat: How Dating Apps Changed the Way We Form Relationships and View Intimacy, Debating Communities and Networks XIII (2022). Hobbes et al, “Liquid love? Dating apps, sex, relationships and the digital transformation of intimacy” Journal of Sociology (2017). Tom Roach, “Becoming Fungible: Queer Intimacies in Social Media” Qui Parle, vol.23 (2) (2015). Christine Rosen, “Electronic Intimacy” The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 36 (2) (2012). Alexandra Sims, “Sex, love and swiping: How 10 years of Tinder changed us forever” Cosmopolitan (2022). Amy Wallace, “Love God From Hell : The Man Who Brought You Videodating Hates to Date, Loves to Taunt and Has Himself Been Unlucky in Love. Would You Buy a Relationship From Jeffrey Ullman?” LA Times (1994). Emily Witt, “A Hookup App for the Emotionally Mature” The New Yorker (2022). Jamie Woo, Meet Grindr: How One App Changed the Way We Connect, Jamie Woo (2013).

What do Uber and OnlyFans have in common? Did  camgirilng really originate from a 24 hour live stream of a Trojan coffee pot? And fellas, is it cheating to have an OnlyFans subscription AND a wife? These burning questions (and more) will be answered in this episode, where Hannah and Maia discuss the multivalent world of OnlyFans and the ways it transformed sex work, for better or for worse. It may have been a saving grace for out-of-work people during the pandemic, but is OF a hero of the gig economy, or an agent of it? Tangents include: Twitch’s great grandfather, Justin.tv; the high culture-ification of fast food; and Maia using the term “-ification” till she gets woman’d right off the internet.  Get a whole month of great cinema FREE: mubi.com/rehash Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠ Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills: ⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic SOURCES: Feona Attwood, “Through the Looking Glass? Sexual Agency and Subjectification Online” in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity (2011). Steve Baldwin, “Forgotten Web Celebrities: Jennicam.org's Jennifer Ringley” Ghost Sites of the Web (2004). Marta Biino and Madeline Berg, “The secret of OnlyFans: It's much more than porn” Business Insider (2024). Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: A History, Workman Publishing Company (2022). Charlotte Colombo, “The history of OnlyFans: how the controversial platform found success and changed online sex work” Business Insider (2021). Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith, “Onlyfans as Gig-Economy Work: A nexus of precarity and stigma” Porn Studies, Taylor & Francis (2023). Stacey Diane Arañez Litam, Megan Speciale and Richard S. Balkin, “Sexual Attitudes and Characteristics of OnlyFans Users” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2022). Sophie Sanchez, “The World’s Oldest Profession Gets a Makeover: Sex Work, OnlyFans, and Celebrity Participation”, Women Leading Change, vol 6 (1) (2022).

If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many annoying people on Twitter, you’ve got Tumblr to thank for that. Tumblr, the microblogging site that reigned supreme in the 2010s, was like Facebook’s cool cousin who has blue hair and goes to art school. It was the cradle of identity formation for lonely teens and adults, and it was also a happy home to lots and lots of porn. Tumblr’s NSFW content made it a search-engine-friendly way to consume porn without your mom finding out. But its alternative edge made it an easy victim to much more powerful companies - which is why, in this episode, Hannah and Maia discuss the Tumblr porn ban and its consequences on society. Tangents including but not limited to: the “free nipples for sale” movement, Hannah’s Addison Rae addiction, and Maia’s misanthropic middle school blog: “Who the Poo Cares”.  Hannah's Tumblr: https://acidrain-e.tumblr.com/ Maia's Tumblr: https://takemybadge.tumblr.com/ Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠ Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills: ⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic Leah Collins, “How Tumblr went from a $1 billion Yahoo payday to a $3 million fire sale.” CNBC (2022). https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/15/how-tumblr-went-from-1-billion-yahoo-payday-to-3-million-fire-sale.html Josh Holiday “David Karp, founder of Tumblr, on realizing his dream” The Guardian (2012). https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jan/29/tumblr-david-karp-interview Michael J. de la Merced, Nick Bilton and Nicole Perlroth “Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1 Billion.” The New York Times (2013) .https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/technology/yahoo-to-buy-tumblr-for-1-1-billion.html Allison McCrcken, Alexander Cho, Louisa Stein, Indira Neill Hoch “You Must Be New Here: An Introduction” a tumblr book: platform and culture, Chapter 1, (2020). Chris Isidore, “Yahoo buys Tumblr, promises to not ‘screw it up’”, (20/05/13), CNN Buisness. https://money.cnn.com/2013/05/20/technology/yahoo-buys-tumblr/?iid=EL Sarah Perez, “Tumblr’s Adult Fare Accounts for 11.4% Of Site’s Top 200K Domains, Adult Sites Are Leading Category of Referrals” (20/05/2013), Tech Crunch https://techcrunch.com/2013/05/20/tumblrs-adult-fare-accounts-for-11-4-of-sites-top-200k-domains-tumblrs-adult-fare-accounts-for-11-4-of-sites-top-200k-domains-adults-sites-are-leading-category-of-referrals/ Shannon Liao, “Tumblr will ban all adult content on December 17th” (03/12/2018), The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/3/18123752/tumblr-adult-content-porn-ban-date-explicit-changes-why-safe-mode Shannon Liao, “Tumblr’s adult content ban means the death of unique blogs that explore sexuality” (06/12/2018), The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18124260/tumblr-porn-ban-sexuality-blogs-unique  Community Guidelines, Tumblr. https://www.tumblr.com/policy/en/community Jason Koelber and Samantha Cole, “Apple Sucked Tumblr Into Its Walled Garden, Where Sex Is Bad” (03/12/2018), Motherboard. https://www.vice.com/en/article/a3mjxg/apple-tumblr-porn-nsfw-adult-content-banned Kyle Chayka, “How Tumblr became popular for being obsolete” The New Yorker (2022). https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-tumblr-became-popular-for-being-obsolete  Ned Hepburn, “I’ll Tumblr For Ya” Vice (2009) https://www.vice.com/en/article/aeem3a/tumblr-david-karp-interview Allison McCracken, “Tumblr Youth Subcultures and Media Engagement” Cinema Journal, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Fall 2017) https://www.jstor.org/stable/44867867 Danah Boyd, “Am I a Blogger?” Biography, Vol. 38, No. 2, ONLINE LIVES 2.0 (Spring 2015) https://www.jstor.org/stable/24570362 Photomatt (tumblr’s CEO), “Why ‘Go Nuts, Show Nuts’ Doesn’t Work in 2022”, Tumblr (2022) https://www.tumblr.com/photomatt/696629352701493248/why-go-nuts-show-nuts-doesnt-work-in-2022

Why is it that whenever someone “thinks of the children”, a sex worker is harmed in the process? In this episode, Hannah and Maia tell the story of Backpage - the classifieds website that came crashing down when instances of child sex trafficking was discovered in its seedy underbelly. But while the crusade against the site and its free-wheeling founders seemed well intentioned, the act that was used to take them down (FOSTA-SESTA) has had massive consequences for the freedom of the web, and most importantly, for sex workers. You can never be too altruistic if John McCain is in your corner. Listen for targets such as: Timothée Chalamet’s galaxy print leggings and Hannah being a wittle baby, and Taken (2008)'s continued gorilla grip on our culture.  Get a whole month of great cinema FREE: mubi.com/rehash Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠ Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills: ⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic SOURCES Sofia Barrett-Ibarria, “Sex Workers Pioneered The Early Internet - Now It’s Screwing Them Over” (03/10/2018), Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvazy7/sex-workers-pioneered-the-early-internet Samantha Cole, “Trump Just Signed SESTA/FOSTA, a Law Sex Workers Say Will Literally Kill Them” (11/04/2018), Vice https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvxeyq/trump-signed-fosta-sesta-into-law-sex-work  Daniel Oberhaus, “The FBI Just Seized Backage.com” (06/05/2018), Motherboard. https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5avp3/fbi-seized-backpage-sex-trafficking Samantha Cole, “‘Sex Trafficking’ Bill Will take Away Online Spaces Sex Workers Need to Survive” Vice (2018) https://www.vice.com/en/article/neqxaw/sex-trafficking-bill-sesta-fosta-vote Margaret Renkl, “The Alt-Weekly Crisis Hits Nashville. And Democracy.” The New York Times (2018). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/opinion/nashville-scene-weekly-democracy.html  Ryan Singel, “‘Adult Services’ Shutdown Is Permanent, Craigslist Tells Congress” Wired (2010)  https://www.wired.com/2010/09/adult-services-shutdown-is-permanent-craigslist-tells-congress/   Christine Biederman, “Inside Backpage.com’s Vicious Battle With The Feds” Wired (2019) https://web.archive.org/web/20190618114540/https://www.wired.com/story/inside-backpage-vicious-battle-feds/ Megan McKnelly, “Untangling SESTA/FOSTA: How The Internet’s ‘Knowledge’ Threatens Anti-sex Traffivking Law” Berkeley Technology Law Journal, Vol. 34, No. 4 (2019) https://www.jstor.org/stable/26954413  Maia Hibbett, “Who Keeps Us Safe?: Mainstream feminism’s long alliance with the punitive state” The Baffler, No. 53 (SEPT-OCT 2020) https://www.jstor.org/stable/26975643  Andrew O'Hehir “The Backpage.com sex-trafficking scandal, the death of the ‘alt-weekly’ and me” Salon (2018) https://www.salon.com/2018/04/14/the-backpage-com-sex-trafficking-scandal-the-death-of-the-alt-weekly-and-me/  Sara Morrison, “Section 230, the internet law that’s under threat, explained” Vox (2023) https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-explained-supreme-court-social-media  Danielle Blunt and Ariel Wolk, “Erased: The impact of FOSTA-SESTA and the removal of Backpage on sex workers”, Anti Trafficking Review (2020) https://www.antitraffickingreview.org/index.php/atrjournal/article/view/448/363 Cunningham et al “Did Craigslist’s Erotic Services Reduce Female Homicide and Rapes?” Journal of Human Resources. (2017) Liara Roux, “Post-SESTA/FOSTA Self-Censoring for Twitter, Reddit, and other Social Media” Tits and Sass (2018) http://titsandsass.com/post-sesta-fosta-self-censoring-for-twitter-reddit-and-other-social-media/ 

Sure, the computer gave us war. But sex gave us the iCloud email alert. Ever since Marilyn Monroe was on the cover of Playboy, men have been profiting off of women’s bodies without their consent. Yet if revenge porn has been around since God was a small child, why did it seem to peak in the 2010s? In this episode, Hannah and Maia go back to a time when Hunter Moore, the Gavin McInnes of cybersex terrorism, reigned supreme on the internet with his wildly popular revenge porn website, Is Anyone Up? A website which changed our understanding of revenge porn forever. Join along on this odyssey of legal loopholes, internet vigilantes, and a man named Gary Jones asking for your nudes - to uncover the rise and fall of “the most hated man on the internet”. Tangent includes: Kyle MacLachlan’s feet.  SOURCES: Russell Brandom, Apple just added another layer of iCloud security, a day before iPhone 6 event” The Verge (2014). Danielle Keats Citron and Mary Anne Franks, “Criminalizing Revenge Porn” University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 24 (2014). Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex, Workman Publishing Group (2022). Camille Dodero, ““Gary Jones” Wants Your Nudes” The Village Voice (2012). Erin Durkin, “Hacker sentenced to prison for role in Jennifer Lawrence nude photo theft” The Guardian (2018). Kashmir Hill, “Revenge porn (Or: Another reason not to take nude photos)” Forbes (2009). Kimberly Lawson, One in 25 Americans Say They’ve Been a Victim of Revenge Porn” Vice (2016). Amanda Marcotte, “‘The Fappening’ and Revenge Porn Culture: Jennifer Lawrence and the Creepshot Epidemic” The Daily best (2014). “Love, Relationships, and #SextRegret: It’s Time to Take Back the Web” McAfee (2013). Sam Kashner, “Both Huntress and Prey” Vanity Fair (2014). Roni Rosenberg and Hadar Dancig-Rosenberg, “Revenge Porn in the Shadow of the First Amendment” (2022).

Before “co-authored, interactive erotica” (otherwise known as sexting), we had chatrooms. Virtual spaces where anyone of any race, gender, class, or creed could come together to fornicate with their words. The MUD and MOO chatrooms of yore belonged to a time when Dungeons and Dragons nerds governed the internet - a utopia of beautiful, unadulterated cybersex. But one fateful day in 1993, this would all change. In this episode, Hannah and Maia discuss the origins of online chatrooms, their dark corners, and eventual evolution into child-oriented platforms (like Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin). Digressions include: beautiful house theory, “meat puppets”, Richard Nixon’s brief stint on IMVU, and Maia repeatedly confusing AOL for AIM.  SOURCES Rachel Seifert, “Striptease and cyber sex: my stay at Habbo Hotel” Channel 4 News, (2012) https://www.channel4.com/news/striptease-and-cyber-sex-my-stay-at-habbo-hotel  Paraic O’Brien, “Should you let your child play in Habbo Hotel?” Channel 4 News, (2012)https://www.channel4.com/news/should-you-let-your-child-play-in-habbo-hotel William J. Shefski, Interactive Internet: the insider’s guide to MUDs, MOOs and IRC, (1995) https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781559587488/page/n16/mode/1up Habbo, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habbo  Sara Morais dos Santo Bruss, “CHAPTER 1: The Internet Imaginary and Digital Modernity” Feminist Solidarities after Modulation (2023)  https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.10782316.4  Steve Downey, “History of the (Virtual) Worlds”, The Journal of Technology Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Fall 2014) https://www.jstor.org/stable/43604309  Sherry Turkle, “Tinysex and Gender Trouble” Sex/Machine: Readings in Culture, Gender, and Technology (1998) Dennis Waskul, Mark Douglass, Charles Edgley, “Cybersex: Outercourse and the Enselfment of the Body” Symbolic Interactions, Vol. 23, No. 4 (2000) https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.2000.23.4.375  Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex, Workman Publishing (2022) Julian Dibbell, “A Rape in Cyberspace (or TINYSOCIETY and How to Make One)” My tiny life: crime and passion in a virtual world, Henry Holt (1998)

If you were a teenage boy in 2008 and you didn’t have a “God Bless Sasha Grey t-shirt”, did you even exist? Ever since indie sleaze darling, Sasha Grey, burst onto the porn scene in the mid aughts, its become a bit cooler to say hey, “I watch this.” But while Sasha represented a feminist shift in the industry, her fringe sexuality may have played into a dangerous trend in internet porn. In this episode, Hannah and Maia ask the important question: should Sasha be The Pied Piper of Porn™, or can we find a Sasha grey area? Listen for tangents such as: the Tina Fey-aissance, and Stanley Kubrick’s lost film: “Squirt Gangb@ng”.  Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠ Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills: ⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic SOURCES: Dave Gardetta, “The Teenager & the Porn Star” Los Angeles Magazine (2006). Stephen Heymen, “Grey Matter” New York Times (2011). PopMatters Staff, “The New Breed: Sasha Grey, Atelecine, and the New Morality” PopMatters (2010). Rebecca Saunders, “Grey, gonzo and the grotesque: the legacy of porn star Sasha Grey”, Porn Studies, vol. 5 (4) (2018). Karley Sciortino, “Going Deep with Sasha Grey” Slutever (2014). Eran Shor & Kimberly Seida, ““Harder and Harder”? Is Mainstream Pornography Becoming Increasingly Violent and Do Viewers Prefer Violent Content?” The Journal of Sex Research (2018). Brandon Stosuy, “Sasha Grey: Dawn of the Porn Star” The Fanzine (2006).

Before Paris or Kim, there was Pamela. Original martyrs of the sex tape leak, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee are only now receiving their apology (via Hulu miniseries). But who knew that this “voyeuristic dive into the guileless intimacy of two tabloid darlings” would change the way we consume p*rn forever? In this episode, Hannah and Maia track the decline of p*rn, from its high culture “p*rno chic” days, to its low culture era on VHS, and the way Pamela’s sex tape kicked off two decades of peeping Tom culture on the internet. With the rise of vlogging today, the question arises: can a life be p*rnographic? Or better yet, without Pamela, would we have Emma Chamberlain? Special tangent includes: Maia getting excited about “Bob Marley: One Love”.  Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content: ⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠ Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills: ⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic SOURCES: Pamela, a love story (2023), Netflix Amanda Chicago Lewis, “Pam and Tommy: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Infamous Sex Tape” (2014), Rolling Stone https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/pam-and-tommy-the-untold-story-of-the-worlds-most-infamous-sex-tape-194776/  Hillyer, Minette “Sex in the Suburban: Porn, Home Movies, and the Live Action Performance of Love in Pam and Tommy Lee: Hardcore and Uncensored.” (2004), Porn Studies Chuck Kleinhans, “Pamela Anderson on the Slippery Slope” (2001), The End of Cinema As We Know It . Mark Gimen, “Sex Sells, Doesn’t It?”, Salon (1999) https://www.salon.com/1999/12/01/ieg/  Frank Rose, “Sex Sells”, Wired (1997) https://www.wired.com/1997/12/sex-3/  Susie Bright, “Pammy and Tommy’s Honeymoon Video”, Salon (1997) https://www.salon.com/1997/12/05/pamela_2/  Erica Gonzales, “Pamela Anderson Writes a Plea Against Porn”, Harper's Bazaar (2016) https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/news/a17495/pamela-anderson-porn-op-ed/