It was International Women's Day over the weekend and Robbie Katter had some interesting thoughts about the celebration. We unpack his feedback as well as discuss some new research about the split of domestic chores. Plus, we ask the question: what are the unusual things your partner does to 'help' when you're expecting guests?
Also, why after a weekend of digesting With Love, Meghan — and some quickles sprinkled with flowers — it’s clear that the royal family made a big mistake. We explain why.
And, can someone please explain what SNARF is? We hate to break it to you, but it’s all over your phone and might be the reason you're utterly exhausted.
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Hosts: Holly Wainwright, Jessie Stephens & Mia Freedman
Group Executive Producer: Ruth Devine
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Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
You're listening to a MoMA Mia podcast.
Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and warders that this podcast is recorded on I promise that it's only like two more days. I'm allowed to reference Meghan and everything if her TV show is a legitimate hit. Partly it's snaff bit because the people who hater will watch it and go back, But the actual show itself is so inoffensive and pleasant. Hello and welcome to MoMA Mia out loud. It's what women are actually talking about on Monday, the tenth of March. I'm Holly Wainwright, I'm.
Mea Friedman, and I'm Jesse Stevens.
And on the show today we all got exactly what we wanted for International Women's Day, Validation that yes, we do do absolutely everything, and some helpful feedback from Rob Catter. Also, why after a weekend of digesting with love Meghan and some wickles sprinkled with flowers, It's clear that the royal family made a big mistake and what is snuff? We hate to break it to you, but it's all over your phone. But first, I still love you, and I'm like.
This is exhausting, you know, like we're never getting that together like ever No.
It hps, you missed it.
Ben Afleck continues to be a lazy boy by dipping back into his bag of ex wives called Jennifer. The gossip over the weekend was that now his Jennifer Lopez divorce has been finalized, he is sniffing around the original Jennifer ex wife, Ghana. Page six published photos of Affleck and Jennifer Ghana sharing a laugh at their son's paintball party, and the next day a source told the outlet that Affleck would love another chance. The insider added that the actor would definitely be open to giving things another shot with Jen if the timing is ever right, but that he knows it's just not realistic time in their lives, which is a bit of a weird thing to say, because Jennifer Ghana has been dating a businessman called John Miller. He's like the heir to a big Hamburger franchise. She's been dating him since twenty eighteen, a little bit on and off, but they're currently on. My question is.
Why you missed the part about the body language expert who had some things to say about how when men and women hetero men and women usually hug They keep their pelviss apart to indicate space and not a romantic investment. But their pelvis is rubbed, which is.
But that's because they have rubbed before exactly, and so they have muscle memory of rubbing.
Well.
I think that Jennifer Ghana is way too smart to go anywhere in that.
Ever, Again, I agree with you one hundred percent, but it reminded me of a certain type of man and perhaps woman who exclusively only dates the same people. Again, I think because they're incapable of emotionally investing in a new person and learning about who they are. There's an ease to kind of fitting in two year old pair of jeans rather than having to go out and try on a new pair underpants. Yeah, and I have experienced this. I had partners in my twenties who we would break up and then they'd come back and I'd go, I knew it, I'm so desirable irresistible that finally he's back. But he was just back because he didn't want to bother getting to know a new one, and I was easy.
I think there are other Jennifers that Ben could move on to that he hasn't pollinated. Before, such as Jennifer Aniston.
That would be me. That would be Imagine how excited I would be if that happened.
We could gossip Jennie that one. Jennifer love Hewitt is an option. Yeah, I think she's married, but anyway, and also my request would be Jennifer Coolidge, Oh, that would be awesome.
Is she single? I believe she is fabulous?
Friends, Saturday was into National Women's Day. How did you celebrate, Holleen? What did you do on this Saturday?
Well, gosh, I was alone with my children. Brent's been away, so I did a lot of what I believe statistically is called women's work. Several loads of washing, cooked at least three meals, did some shopping, drove a daughter to work, organized a playdate in inverted commons, which just means trying to prize young boys off video games. That was it. That was my day. Yay me celebration, Maya.
How about you?
What did you do? I made myself a cake, Okay, not because I remembered that it was International Women's Day, just because I felt like a cake and no one else would make one. But I made it out of a cake mix, so it wasn't very elevated. Okay, I'm shamed to say, got my nails done and I had a nap. So I had a great day.
I forgot that it was Saturday. But on Sunday I went to hear you speak Maya on a panel which was lovely.
It was great. I'm going to tell you all about it later.
Holly and I went to another panel that my friend was on at all about women, and I realized that there's this tendency, I think for women on or around International Women's Day to spend a decent amount of money to go and hear other women speak about things they agree with and applaud, while men.
Just get to sit at home in their pajamas or eat.
Lunch and money.
Yeah, I had a full I had quite a full Sunday due to International Women's Day commitments, and no one made me a cake.
I'm sorry.
Is there any of your cake left?
Yep?
Okay, great.
I saw some headlines which I really wanted to discuss with you both. So when the clock ticked over to March eight, we were all restless.
I know we were.
We were impatient because we needed to know what Robbie Catter, the leader of Kata's Australian Party and MP son of Bobby Catter, had to say about this momentous occasion.
He delivered he always does.
In a Facebook post, Katter shared his thoughts on Internet Women's Day, which he describes as pushing a dangerous agenda by turning women into victims and demonizing men. He wrote that the official theme this year was Accelerate Action, and I'm going to stop him there, because that's not the thing. It's a long story, but this random organization purchased the domain name for International Women's Day and puts out their own theme every year creates what I'm going to call corporate confusion. We go by the UN Australia theme, which was actually March Forward.
Anyway, he got the theme wrong, But point.
Is we're much former than accelerate. The kind of similar yeah like ballpark?
Okay, well, reach for the Stars that's next to go You go girl.
According to Katta, he wrote that women are not oppressed. He said, my success has been built on the quiet, unwavering strength of the women behind me.
Does that do sound a little bit oppressive? Being behind and underneath? I'm mister Carter.
When men talk about the women behind them, My mother wife and daughters. They're not looking for praise, according to him, just getting on with the hard work, supporting and pushing boundaries. The women in my life don't get caught up in the victimhood off and pushed on this day. They live their strength every day, quietly and powerfully with that's convenient for him.
Credit, Yeah, I love that.
It's like when your partner says like, oh, I love how we don't do birthday presents, and it's like, I actually wanted a birthday. To be clear, I think his wife and daughters would have liked.
To I love how we don't get caught up in the patriarchy and stuff.
With this house exactly, and they're like, actually, we bitch about your time. He had a few things to say about toxic masculinity, and I agree with the sentiment that women hold value whether they're in the workplace, where they're at home, and that demonizing all forms of masculinity isn't helpful. But sir, five minutes ago, you were attempting to amend Queensland abortion laws, which the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists had to come out and oppose because they said it would cause emotional trauma for patients and healthcare providers.
So he ordered to bound abortion in Queensland.
He wanted to make some amendments that the expert said, what you're going to do is traumatize women who have babies that are like they're incompatible with life.
So he just was like, I want to make your life harder.
He'd like it on the agenda. He would definitely like it on the agenda.
MEA, were you disappointed that Kata didn't just bake you a cake and give us an encouraging tap on the head.
No, I think it's always a good day to hear from men like Bob Katter about what feminism should be. Sorry, Robbie Catter, Bobby Robbie Robbie is Bob Okay, son of the big Hat. I assume he also wears a.
Big cat does slightly smaller hat.
And because he has three daughters and a wife, he's eminently qualified to speak. And I think International Women's Day is the day that he should speak, because we need to hear more from men like him who have daughters. He also so behind them.
You can't see them.
They hit an He didn't say as well that International Women's Day started off as a day to really celebrate the strength of women. That's not what it started off as. It's a day of protest. So he got that fact wrong too.
About things like the gender pay gap.
Yeah, Holly, what did you make of our good friend Robbie.
Well, look, he is exhibiting the kind of confidence in hubris that is not surprising and is apparently statistically typical of the chaps at the moment, and I, rather than criticize them for it, I think we should all take a little dose of this. There was some statistics came out last week and not that many people reported on them because they were so expected. But every few years this big report comes out. It's called the Household Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia Report Hilda, which is a very good name, a very good female name, and basically it reports on the state of men and women in lots of different areas of equality. And what it said is that Australian men are not doing any more housework, domestic chores or caregiving tasks. Actually, although that's changed a little bit then they were twenty years ago, right, So that shows a certain amount of stubbornness and commitment on their part, I think to refusing to move. But what's particularly charming is that most of them, however, think they're doing a fair share. So math isn't really my strong suit. But apparently women do at least twenty percent more household work. They always have they continue to do so. But fifty eight percent of men believe they do very much their fair share, which reminded me of the way that men behave And this is very stereotypical. Let's say heterosexual men maybe in a traditional partnership, maybe when they are suddenly required to do some like say you've got mates coming round or people coming to stay, and they're like, i'll help, and then they empty the fish tank.
Perhaps, yes, so I was thinking about these. Sometimes they're put to work, like I see in my parents' dynamic. My mum will say we're hosting family Christmas this week, I need you to do some jobs, and dads like say, no more, I'm on it. I'm a helpful guy. Whipp a snipper out. Don't need the whipper snipper. Actually, we need you to wipe the bench, That is the case. And look, Luca is in terms of domestic labor. Like, you know, he is the exception. I accept the stats, but he does do a lot. But there is something where men are wired differently when it comes to hosting, right, Like when people are coming over, I think that I instinctively know I should vacuum, the house should smell good. Like there are just kind of a hierarchy of things. That's when Luca will be like, I think it's time to wage war on.
The ants, and it's like no, no, no, or reoil the deck.
Reoil the deck. Oh the wood is rotting. I don't give a shit, or like slug bait, I'm going to clean the dog's water bowl.
No, they are not top one hundred tasks of what we need to do right now. Yeah, I don't know.
I can't really get on board with this because I do nothing.
Yeah, you're really the exception.
Yeah, what do you mean when you say you do nothing? You mean ever? Or when people are coming round.
People are coming round? Both you've held, you've held Christmas before? What do you do you spill something in preparation?
Yeah, no, I'll go and buy things. I'll go and buy vessels to put things in. Like I'll go and buy bins and Jason will be like, why are you buying bins? I'm like, because I feel like we need them.
Yeah, right, that's your contribution.
Yeah, I think men often will. Again we're talking in such stereotypes, but maybe look at the exterior of the house.
Perhaps they go outside, they wage war with the possums.
Yeah. I just think that there are some people who are good entertainers, good hostesses I know we're going to be talking about Megan in a minute, and some who aren't, some who really think about the moments that their guests need to experience.
I accept that to a point. But even if you don't like hosting, there is a certain amount of hosting that in every life must fall, right, Like, you're not going to get away with never ever having family members or people coming round. So I totally agree with you. Some people love it and it's a way of them expressing their love, and that's great, But there's also just a certain amount of grudge hosting that has to oh yeah, and so when that occurs, who does it? That's kind of what this is about, right.
That's another argument that I have with my husband a lot, because I feel that if they're close enough to come to your house. You shouldn't really have to do anything. I have people in and out of my house all the time, and I'm like, do I need to clean up?
Not really in terms of being the change you need to see in the world, we should normalize you come to my house and it looks like it does on a random Tuesday night. But we can't because we've so internalized the idea.
Yes and maya your baseline of your house. And maybe it's because your kids are older and stuff is pretty good, right my mum growing up two sets of twins in two and a half years house. You could see the floor right, really really messy, and people are going to drop in, and I remember my mum has spoken about this moment and my mum is difficult to offend. But I think someone dropped in. You know, people used to do that, They used to drop in. And this friend went and whispered to other friends about the state of the house and how horrified she Oh my god. And that will always fall on women. That is never like, can you believe how Tony manages that house well?
Because men aren't judged by.
No that as a and as there were some great videos going around over the weekend to mark International Women's Day, and I just want to play you this clip by one of my favorite comedians. Her name is Sarah Pasco, and here's what she said about the gender divide.
Equality is a lie.
All there is is oh women, go on, have jobs, go on, have careers if you want one, go on. Be proud of yourself as long as when you come home you very quickly do all of the housework like it's your hobby. And if you're a straight man, now shout in at in your head being no. Actually, I put a ladder back in the shed on Saturday. I cleaned the bath when she was crying on her birthday.
Thank you, thank.
You, you're one of the good ones. I'm actually not attacking you. I'm not saying that men don't do anything you do, but it's just that there is too much to do and our input isn't parity. And I do have proof men if they want to, I have so much spare time about being dads that they can have secret second families.
Just jump in the car half.
An hour down the road, another bit of dinner.
Night kids.
There is no woman who after twenty four hours of drudgery and then I go to Chelmsford and I scrub somebody else's kitchen.
I love that, And I thought that there were that you referred to, Holly. There was a great line in it that said, the report also shows men are more satisfied than women with the division of the unpaid.
And I'm like, yeah, I bet, I bet they are going. I think things are actually fine.
I've got an extra six hours a week. In a moment, has Loved Meghan showed how the royal family made a big mistake in letting their gold star princess go. Meg Sussex is celebrating today. Her show with Love Meghan is in Netflix's top ten worldwide and has officially been greenlit for a second season, which has already been filmed. So we don't imagine that was very much of a surprise to Megs. But anyway, it's good if you like me. Spent the weekend watching Meg's perfect manicure doing lovely things to Lettice, You've been thinking a lot about this new act of Duchess Meghan. She's on the cover of People, she's on the Drew Barrymore Show, she's out of hiding, and what's on full display her perfect credentials as a princess. Now the story goes according to both the royal family at the time and Harry in his book, which we won't discuss the title of because we all know that it's me or what is it Wow that when everything went down and Harry and Meghan exited the royal family, what the Sussexes wanted at the time and what they tried to negotiate to get was a different model of royal life, right. They wanted one where maybe they could live overseas, be allowed to make their own money, and do good for causes that they cared about on their terms. And those negotiations famously failed. But actually it's exactly what's ended up happening because Harry and Meghan are living their royal light life. They live overseas, they make their own money, and as last year's tours to Nigeria and Columbia showed, as well as the Invictus Games and their Archroal Foundation projects, they're doing royal esque charity and ambassadorship roles on their own terms. But most of all, Meg proves herself, I think through this show to be the perfect princess Mia. Do you think that the proper royals are kicking themselves this week.
Yeah, I do in a way, although obviously she I mean she could have had this show as a royal. She really could have, because well, everything that people complain about about the show is what makes a royal woman good at her job. She looks beautiful, she's very thin, she's very perfect. She is utterly inoffensive, bordering on bland. She's very careful to be inclusive, to not do anything controversial. When she cooks Mexican food, she has a Mexican chef there. When she cooks Korean food, she has a Korean chef there. There's nothing sort of to grab hold of, and people are acting as though that is a flaw, but it's actually the feature. It's the feature of It was the feature of Instagram influencers in you know, twenty fifteen or so, before things became more extreme and they needed to find more dramatic ways to get attention. And it was the model for the Tig, which was her lifestyle blog that she had back then. And it's essentially also what Kate Middleton does, Like that's what she has to do as a princess. You have to be ornamental, you have to be decorative. You have to be kind and supportive and caring of other people, or at least perform that, and that's exactly what she's doing.
She's very good at it, and I agree with everything you've said, But Kate could never make that show because if you think about the criticism that's come for Megan about unrelatability, the money, the time, all that stuff. If that was a proper Royal, that would also come with a side of we're paying for those flowers, We're paying for that house. Obviously, the actual literal logistics of that are complicated, but that's why royals have to look aspirationally wealthy and glamorous, but not ostentatiously glamorous, because that is a bit like, well, you're paying for those jewels, you know what I mean. So Megan's got the freedom to be able to show the lifestyle that she obviously really likes and she obviously really wanted and certainly is on par with what the Royals are living without that level of criticism. But I think it's true. I think that she is very skilled at the kind of royal show just enough without saying too much, seem relatable, while also never messy, say a lot of words without any of them really saying any think that's what royals do. You're so right, Mia, And it's like, in a way, I think she would have been great at it in the family.
Yeah, but what undermines that royal performance is her biological family and she has no control over this. I've done a lot of soul searching between I think last week and today. This show isn't for me, and that's totally fine. But to sit down and create anything is a feat and it's brave. And I think whenever Thomas Markle rears his head, I go into a position of just feeling such empathy for Meghan. And he has come out just I think in the last day or so and said that his mother would be turning in her grave at Meghan's decision to change her name from Markel to Sussex.
Which is bizar thing to say.
It's a bizarre thing to say given that most women still upon getting married do change their name.
He's really grasping, He is really graping to stay in the conversation.
And it also made me look at Meghan in a different way because I went, no, wonder she doesn't want to be known as Meghan Markle like, I wonder if there's an element of really wanting to separate herself, not only from Thomas but from her brother, who every time she takes a breath, they're asked by the male in the UK if they'll comment. They both admitted to not actually watching any of it, but Thomas Markle was like, well, cooking shows are usually spontaneous and blah and.
Just it's grows how imbittered he is. I also watched a lot more of it over the weekend, and our own newsletter about how I was a bit sick over the weekend and I couldn't really focus on anything, so I just wanted that sort of background TV that would wash over me. And it really did the trick. It was almost quite soothing, and I came away The first episode I found quite frustrating because I think we were graining it on a curve that is not the same as other lifestyle shows or other cooking shows or crafty shows. I think we brought all the baggage of our opinions about Megan and the money she was paid and everything that's happened. But when I just kind of watched more of it, it made me feel sorry for her in the sense that she felt very timid, unsure of herself, really needing validation and praise for everybody. All the people that were in her house didn't seem to know her very well or at all. Some of them had never met her before, and she really needed their approval, and she really needed them to say things like, you've always been the hostess with the most and you've always nurtured with food, and food is really a love language. It was very saying the quiet part out loud. She was doing a lot of trying to put forward this other version of herself, which I understand. Since she became famous by hooking up with Harry, the media has written her story for her and her family have and then they did that Netflix show where they had to be very negative and angsty about their whole experience, which I understand to be true from their point of view. But she's never been able to just be kind of ordinary.
And there's an irony to and a lot of the reviews are like Megan, it's desperate for us to like her. It's like, imagine how traumatizing it would be to be the most hated woman in the world for the very worst crime she could maybe be guilty of is not managing staff well Maybey. Yeah, being someone who some people don't like, which is a.
Very also to say about a person of color. Yeah, you know that they're uppity. That's very coded.
And in the same way.
I mean, I know a lot of people who have watched it and they don't warm to Megan, right. They they don't relate to it to whether it's a sense of humor or her She doesn't.
Have a sense of humor. And it's all very perfect, and that isn't how you connect, no matter how many times she says, Oh, it doesn't have to be perfect, and I'm just ordinary and has her bare feet. It's so unrelatable that she's desperately wanting to be liked and seen for who she is. But there's this massive barrier because when you take a crew of eighty people to make a show about how easy it is to make breakfast, there's massive disconnect.
I don't know about that because I think again, she is very deliberately made a show that isn't really about her, you know what I mean. It's supposed to be about the things so Mike dms and everything and Instagram over the weekend. We're just full of people sharing themselves, making things that Megan's making, some of them badly, some of them well. But people are into it. She's given us other things to talk about other than just her. But the other thing is I think, because I agree with you Mia that while I was watching it, one of the things I wrote down, especially that first time, is why does she so desperate for everybody to like her so much? And as you've just said, Jesse, I think that definitely everybody hating you for however long would do that to you. And this bumps into something that was obviously always a problem with the Royals.
Right.
Megan is, and this has been said before, it's non original thought, a creature of American aspiration.
Right.
She obviously gets an enormous amount of pleasure from the fact that she now has a lovely life with lovely stuff in it, and she gets to meet people who are very high for lutin and interesting, and she gets just In Trudeau's family to come over for summer and whatever, and she's hanging out with it like she obviously likes all that, And in America that is in no way shamed. Being ambitious and socially ambitious I'm talking about too, is not shamed in Britain, and particularly if you're royal. You're born at the top, right, there's nowhere to aspire to, which is why they're often very busy making their houses look a bit crumbly, and they don't have all the flushing toilets and they don't have all that stuff. I think that's another reason why it was always going to be hard for her, who's obviously a striver, obviously tries very hard. Obviously she says it out loud a couple of times. I love to get a gold star. I love it when I get approvals and someone tells me I've done a great job. That is very unroyal. And so even though it makes her the perfect princess because she's, you know, performing at this level all the time, that's not what being a princess is supposed to be. It's supposed to be effortless.
And also service to others. I think the thing that rankles me most is this exhaustion with all these women, whether it's Nara Smith who makes you know, rice bubbles from scratch with a grain of rice when her children want breakfast to Megan they're women who are performing the act of leisure and domesticity, and yet they're being paid for it, and there's a whole business behind what they're doing.
Constraints.
Yeah, the woman who is making her children breakfast does so with fifty five constraints of the modern world on her.
Such time doesn't want to pop like rice bubbles from scratch, as well as not being able.
To fetishizing the stuff that most women have to just do every day. And yes, it would be lovely to decant a packet of crackers and put them into a lovely cellophane thing and make a calligraphy, but most of us don't have a crew of eighty people and millions of dollars from Netflix to make that happen. And the disingenuine usiness from me is twofold.
First of all, it's.
The being a duchess and cosplaying royalty, but also trying to come across as one of the people, and also cose playing leisure and domesticity when it's hard work and it takes a lot of money and a lot of time. And this is something that women are taught to have our value from our abilities as homemakers. And yet now we're also expected to go out and work and earn a living and often support our families.
But some women do love to aspire to that, like not necessarily doing it all the time. But the three of us have all obviously given ourselves away when talking about hosting that it's not our jam literally, But you know, I know plenty of people who get an enormous amount of pleasure out of baking a beautiful cake. I don't think that just because Megan, and she's not the only one. There's a whole industry of this, of literally lifestyle content. It's not all about us and making us feel bad, and lots of women love plugging into it, so what's wrong with that?
And on the other hand, I think that seeing through the Thomas mirkl lens is that this is a woman who is estranged from her father and her brother, who is raising children with a man who lost his mother very very young. And I just think that there's something in trying to create a childhood that was either different from your own or can be. You know, people who who have a strange family members raising little children can be really confronting because bring back a lot of memories. And Harry grew up in a circus like I can understand trying to make that a little bit more perfect.
And for her too, because she talks about growing up as a latchkey kid. She had a single mum and.
Which Thomas Michael completely denies.
Yeah, but her parents were divorced and she lived either with her dad or her mum. But she had a single mum or a single dad, and her parents worked. And so it's not the aspiration of it's not nice to make a cake or make people feel welcome, or do it little, you know, arrange some flowers.
It's not that.
It's the making it seem really easy and effortless and hiding all the work and the effort and the money and the time that it takes, as if anyone can do it. We know that's not true.
We'd have some feedback for the Constitution. If you thought we were having a federal election any minute now, You're not alone. But ex cyclone Alfred paid to that this weekend, as it should, and instead we're back in election limbo and Instagram reel by Charlotte Mortlock, friend of the pod and who's worked in politics for years, articulated why this is a problem and what should happen to solve it, and it's an opinion it has to be said that shared by the Prime Minister sometimes Peter Dutton and plenty of people in politics. They haven't made a reel about it yet and they should because here's what Charlotte said.
The Prime Minister was set to call the election tomorrow and that would mean an April twelve election that is no longer happening and I have no critique of that. The government needs to be focused on the emergency efforts and the recovery efforts. However, it does mean that Australia is going to be in this quasi campaign limbo for yet another month because we have Easter Anzac Day, so now we're not having the election tool may That means we've been in kind of this campaign mode for around six to eight months and very little effective democracy has done in that time because everyone is hyper, you know, part of the hyper focused on political point scoring.
That is just the reality.
We need to change to a four year term and it needs to be a fixed term because you're also trying to always gain the system, hold the election on a date that suits you when you've got momentum for your party, again, no critique.
That is a reality, but that's not always.
In the country's interests. And so I do think that we really need to have a really good look at our democracy and why we can't change that and why it's taken us so long to get to that point. And I don't think it was being controversial. I think we make our politicians look a lot longer into the future, or at least a little, which is only a good thing.
So for a bit of context for us to change, Australia to change to a four year fixed term, which is what America has, It's what Britain has, it's what lots of places happen.
Does a fixed term mean they don't get to decide?
Yeah, so fixed term. What they're talking about there is that you go right, so the election is always on November get whatever, or it always has to be before this date, and that instead of three year terms, which is what Australia has, you have four year terms. Now the US do that, the UK do that. Actually, our states and territories also do it. Our state and territory elections I've never noticed, to be honest, always fall at the same time and a fixed term. But for this to happen at a federal level, that has to be a referendum because it would be changing the constitution. So when I was saying before that the Prime Minister's voice support and both sides of politics have voiced support for this. Over time, there is not very much appetite for a referendum because we know how they go.
After the break snaff and why it's all over your phone.
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If you're wondering why being online seems so relentlessly exhausting lately and why you're so often left with an anxiety, hangover, or just a feeling of yuckiness as you scroll, it could be because of snaff. The founder of BuzzFeed, Jonah pretty recently wrote a think piece that explained the concept of snaff and how it has come to dominate social media. He says that social media has become overrun with snaff, and snaff stands for s is for stakes, exaggerating the stakes to make the content urgent and existential. N is for novelty, manufacturing novelty, and spinning content as being this has never happened before. A is for anger, manipulating people's anger to drive engagement via outrage. R is for retention. Retention hacks include like withholding info like wait till the end, watch till the end, or clickbaiting. And F is for fear, so really taking advantage of fear to make people focus with urgency on the content. So he argues that the social media overlords at Meta and TikTok don't care about actual content. They care about keeping people addicted to scrolling so that they can monetize our eyeballs for longer. I think we all by this stage know that to be true. And the result of that is this proliferation of a particular type of content that the algorithm rewards aka snaff. So it means that the type of content that gets created and recommended isn't the best content, but the content that elicits the most compulsive and predictable response from the human brain. Is this ringing a little bit true for you, Jesson?
My goodness, it explains literally everything from publishers to politicians, to individual commentators.
Influencers TV shows.
Yeah, yeah, I think I saw it over the weekend. Sometimes there are attempts at snaff. There's a story that people are like, this is rich with potential snaff. Let's try and find it.
What's the snaff angle?
Where's the snaff in this?
And I was watching it unfold over the weekend with the another Simple Favor premiere because it's Blake Lively, right, and the Blake Lively She's got it.
It's a second movie sequel.
It's a sequel with the it was the Anna Kendrick movie and Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni was sort of the ultimate snaff story. There was enormous novelty. The stakes were so high. Either a woman was sexually assaulted or she lied about it, which you know was anger fear, and the retention was the receipts. It was like it was perfect because you could do a fifteen minute TikTok video on it with all the information and people were just stuck to it. And so I saw attempts to kind of find the snaff in this story over the weekend, and there was a headline that I read this morning. That was like Anna Kendrick's three word reply to a quest about working with Blake Lively. And here's what she actually said, What.
Does it mean to be working with Blake again? Does that it? To be clear? All she said was oh, you know, and then it feels like she got interrupted. Yeah, like that was the entire story.
So if you feel as though you go onto the internet and everything feels existential, everything feels like life or death, that the biggest commentators in Australia right now look as though, I'm going to be completely honest about how I feel about it. Look as though they are unwell because they are stuck in this cycle.
Of everything's in emergency and.
Almost like mania of just you see them get on, they're breathless. I don't actually think that's put on. I think that you become so invested in the algorithm and the reward. We're like mice with little every time we press a button, we get a reward, and we're addicted to this drug. And you see people radical themselves in their ideas because they get like almost taken away by the scale of the thing they're talking about.
Also, this is because all content is so examined now, So to pull the curtain back a little bit, like ever since I've worked at digital media, we know everything about why people click on things, right, We've known that for a very long time, and so in the old days we used to call it clickbait, very similar to snaff really like, make it seem really dramatic, hold back something of novelty, make sure there's a reason to retain them by clicking. You know all of those things, right, And so we are all hyper data driven, and the people who are constantly snaffing, I'm just trying to find different ways to use the word because I love it so much. Constantly snaffing on the Internet, obviously are doing it for monetary reasons, engagement reasons, validation reasons.
Attention reasons.
Literally there's a job, yeah.
Because they know it works. So you'll notice that with any of the socials you follow, including ours, there'll be a while where the headlines look like this, and then they'll change and now they'll look like that, and then there'll be a time when the pictures look like this, and then they look like that. Isn't this just playing people where they are? You know what I mean? Like if it didn't work, we wouldn't.
Do it well in a way, yes, because in order to stay relevant and get views so that they can make money, creators a force to make snaff content or at least market the content that they make from a snaff point of view. And what Jonah Pardi argues in this piece is that snaff content is reshaping politics and culture and society, and it's often producing hateful and misleading or really destructive content. Because the one word that isn't in there that I think ends should be more more than for novelty. It should be for negativity because feel good, positive content does not elicit that fight or flight or fury response in you.
Right, I've had to I think we've probably all had this as an editor. You have people come in or even brands and they say, why don't we do some good news And I've had to say, no, one gives a shit about good news.
And so it doesn't feel like an emergency exactly right.
It doesn't kind of inspire any feeling in you. And we've all played this game. I've had to play this game and have felt myself do it online. There was a great quote in this article about how the internet used to serve beer and wine at a communal dinner party, and now there's fentanyl and crack, and to try and make people pay for wine when they can get crack for free is very difficult.
The whole Internet is running on crack and fentanyl.
Yes, But I did think, as I agorithm as I was reading this, I'm someone who probably turns towards criticism of institutions, that monopoly that the tech industries have over algorithms and all of that. I agree that this is an algorithmic issue. I do think that individuals and publishers need to take some responsibility, which is what BuzzFeed is doing. But I think it's a cop out to go, well, I'm just playing the algorithm. As someone who exists as a person on the Internet and as a person in the media, I have felt myself get sucked into the vortex of snuff and I have felt myself have to literally sit down and go what are your values?
What are your boundaries?
On the internet? What do you want to do? If you are chasing an algorithm, you're going to end up as a person you don't like. Because often you'll see a piece of content and it might be funny, and it's got novelty, and it's gone absolutely viral, and you go, that is ultimately hateful. You've just spurted hate into the world. You've not made the world better or anyone's day better. And to resist that as someone who creates content is really hard.
I think that's why a lot of us are looking. A lot of content creators are looking to have a smaller audience because the way to ride the algorithm is with snuff. And in terms of it changing culture, you can see it in so many ways. So in politics, the obvious example is Trump. Trump is the ultimate snaff political candidate versus someone like Joe Biden had his own issues. But Kamala Harris is just like was fairly neutral. She wasn't going to get the same amount of attention. Look at in TV shows The Bachelor, there was not that high stakes drama and it faded away only to re replaced by maths, which is constant snaff, constant drama, outrage, scandal, high stakes. So that's how you can see that it's shaping the culture.
I think people are wise to snaff and have been for a while, even if they didn't know what it was called. Because if you look at news refusal. We've talked about that a lot, people turning away from news. I promise that it's only like two more days. I'm allowed to resference Megan and everything. If a TV show is a legitimate hit, it is for this reason in lots of ways, well in two different ways. Partly it's snaff bait because the people who hater will watch it and go back. But the actual show itself, as you've already said today, Maya is so inoffensive and pleasant. And I know that I'm often looking for, particularly in audio, like books or podcasts or things when I've been swimming in the news cycle for days that do the opposite and that will suit me enhich me, make me think about things in a different way, but also just soothe me and not freak me out. And I think that we definitely have gotten wise to it.
I think it's taken over news. There was a great example in that story about the LA fires. How you can get a week into a news event, no none of the facts, but know the debates about DEI you've seen fake images you to.
Be mad about today yelling it out us.
We even said it last week with cyclone Alfred when we were talking about that, it was a bizarre moment because there was nobody to be angry at. Like the news cycle relies on going, who can we yell at? Because that's a story that.
The beginning of COVID was like that. Remember when no one had an one to be angry at and it was just felt strange and people were singing opera on their balconies and sharing Kumbaya memes and then we're snaffed. Then it got snaffed.
We devolved into snuff. Our hands got sticky.
With the snuff.
That's all we've got time for today. Friends, A massive thank you to all of you out louders for listening to today's show and to our fabulous team for putting it together. As always, we're going to be back in your ears tomorrow.
Goodbye bye.
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