We needed an emergency episode about
Nicki Minaj using her massive platforms to irresponsibly spread fictions about the COVID vaccine.
Nicki Minaj and Husband Sued, Accused
of Harassing Sexual Assault Victim: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/arts/music/nicki-minaj-kenneth-petty-lawsuit.html
Myths and Facts about COVID-19 Vaccines
from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/facts.html
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Hey, y'all, just a quick heads up. This episode contains mentions of rape. There Are No Girls on the Internet as a production of My Heart Radio and Unbust Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. So we spent the last year having conversations about the harm that myths and disinformation can cause in our communities. And I always like to keep those conversations really centered around institutions because as no, the spread of false claims online is systemic. It isn't usually about one person. It's usually about a system that empowers that person to spread dangerouslies and amplify them. But sometimes one person really does need to be called out. Can you guess who it is? Let's talk about Nicki Minaj. So here's what's going on this week. Fans asked Nicki Minaj why she wasn't going to the metallup, and she tweeted that she wasn't going because the MECALA required vaccinations from COVID. She tweeted, if I get vaccinated, it won't be for the met It'll be once I feel I've done enough research. I'm working on that now. In the meantime, my loves be safe, wear a mask with two strings that gripped your head and face. Now, when folks on Twitter started pushing back, she tweeted my cousin and Trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent, his testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, and now the girl called up the wedding. So just prey on it and make sure that you're comfortable with your decision, not bullied. This is when all hell broke loose. Trinidad Health minister even had to step in and say that this is not true and that there were no reports of impotence or swollen testicles after having had the COVID nineteen vaccine. It isn't even a known side effect. And his response really reveals a big part about why this information is actually so dangerous at a time when COVID is impacting this community hard. Their Health minister had to take time from his research and work to respawn to completely untrue claims that Nicki minaj irresponsibly spread to her over twenty million followers. Here's what he had to say in a press conference. There has been no such reported either side effect or adverse event. It wasted over time yesterday trying to track down because we take all these claims seriously. Now he's articulating one of the real costs of misinformation. It takes up so much oxygen in the room. It means that time spent that should be focusing on real threats that exist during a global pandemic has to be wasted and diverted to debunking lies and false claims. Dr Fauci even weighed in saying, I'm not blaming her for anything, but she should be thinking twice about propagating information that really has no basis except as a one off anecdote, and that's not what science is all about. So basically, as pretty much everybody learned in middle school, if somebody tells you a story that starts with my cousin's friend, whatever you're about to hear is probably bullshit. Nikki later went to Instagram to say that she was locked out of her Twitter account, implying that it was because she was just asking questions about the vaccine. But let's be real, she was not just asking questions, and really pay attention to how expertly she obscured what she actually did on Twitter, and it makes it seem like the powers that be are trying to silence her for just asking innocent questions about the vaccine. But that's not what she was doing at all. She was repeating a false claim about the vaccine leading to swollen testicles and impotence to twenty million people. Repeating false claims and just asking questions are two completely different things. So we know that there are two big groups who are eligible for the COVID nineteen vaccine but haven't yet gotten it. You've got your die hard anti vactors who are pretty much unlikely to ever be vaccinated no matter what, and people who are not necessarily traditionally anti vax but maybe have questions or just hesitant about the vaccine. And that second group is who experts agreed that we should be focusing on right now to encourage them to get vaccinated, because they're actually movable. So Nikki's tweets are really endangering that second group because they're gonna hear her completely untrue, now viral claim based on a one off anecdote about the vaccine side effects and think, hmm, maybe I shouldn't get this vaccine after all if it's causing swollen balls and impotence. And this is also where I think fan culture can really play a part in propping up and spreading misinformation. Some of you all may or may not know Nicki Minaj has a very intense fan base called the Barbs and for every black woman scientist and public health professional who was responding to her COVID nineteen tweets offering to walk her through the vaccine research, and there were actually quite a few. You know, our community really showed up to call this sister in. There were plenty of fans cheering Nikki on, thanking her for quote going against the establishment. Her tweets even one Nikki praise from known bad actors and disinformation super spreaders like Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens. And you know, when people like Hannis Owens are on your side, something is up, like it's time to rethink. And Nikki, for her part, was really fanning the flame of all this on social media. She tweeted a jokey little poll that asked people to rank which vaccine they liked better, and offered to connect late night TV show host Jimmy Kimmel with her cousin's friend for the right price, and this is almost well. I didn't want to talk about this at all. No, not just because I'm afraid of the barbs, but because it turns into a spectacle, and that initial untrue claim gets more and more powerful because it just gets more and more engagement. But I actually suspect this is kind of what Nicky wants because just a few days before Nikki made these tweets about the COVID vaccine, Nicki Minaj's husband, Kenneth Petty, pled guilty to failure to register as a sex offender after he moved from New York to California as a result of being convicted a first degree attempted rape in New York in April of n In this case, he put guilty to the first degree attempt at rape charge and served four years in a New York state prison. His victim said that in Petty raped her at knife point when they were both sixteen. Now, last month, his victims sued both Nicki Minaj and her husband, saying that she'd had to move multiple times because both Nikki and her husband have been harassing her, trying to force her to recant her account of the incident. So this actually gets pretty dark. The New York Times has a really in depth piece about what happened that you can read in the show description. But the allegations in the suit are troubling and really damning, not just for her husband, who was convicted of attempted rape, but also for Nikki, who the victim says offered her half a million dollars if she recanted. She also says that Nikki offered to send a happy birthday video to her teenage daughter quote as a bonus. She also accuses Nikki up lying to her millions of followers about the incident. The whole thing just sounds really awful. So it's pretty interesting that in a week where big news is breaking about Nikki's husband's guilty plea in connection to his rape conviction, that we're all talking about her tweets about COVID misinformation. And that's really the power of misinformation, how it can be weaponized so easily and so effectively, It spread so quickly and can become so powerful that it's all anyone is talking about, and what we should be talking about. It's all the people who will be harm because they were misled by dangerous and irresponsible false claims, got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You can be us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangdi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from I heeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.