Manisha Krishnan: I feel like I won the Pornhub Awards this year, because in talking to so many stars about censorship, I found out that one of them calls his thingy a meat missile in order to avoid social media censorship. So I feel like that was a good little one for my vocab.
Lauren Goode: A meat missile. Who is the actor who calls it that?
Manisha Krishnan: He is called the Girthmaster. He’s 6’6″ and he won Bestie. He actually tied for Bestie with a Spanish performer. And because they’re both not Americans, when he accepted, he was like, “I guess this is another reason immigrants are good.” And it was so funny.
Lauren Goode: That feels like the perfect place to take another break. When we come back, we’re going to do some recommendations and tell our listeners what else they should check out on WIRED.com this week. Welcome back to Uncanny Valley. I’m WIRED senior correspondent Lauren Goode. And I’m joined this week by WIRED senior culture editor, Manisha Krishnan. Before we take off, Manisha tell our listeners what they should absolutely read on WIRED.com this week in addition to your fantastic story about the Pornhub Awards.
Manisha Krishnan: Yeah, so I would encourage everyone to read Elana Klein’s piece on Gen Z’s crippling fear of being cringe on the dating apps. I think it’s just such a great slice into their mindset. And basically it’s like everything from just sharing that you want a long-term relationship to actually earnestly saying what your hobbies are is considered extremely cringe. Essentially, any type of vulnerability is a massive faux pas, and yet a lot of them are super lonely and struggling with connection. I feel like these two concepts are very related. They’re very judgmental in the piece, but also hilarious. And so I just love those types of stories and I think everyone should read it.
Lauren Goode: What’s an example of being super cringe on a dating app? I’m just asking for a friend.
Manisha Krishnan: Just, OK, the first one I thought of and I kind of agree with this one was the guys who post the giant fish.
Lauren Goode: Oh, they have the fish.
Manisha Krishnan: Yeah. That one was like a classic one. And what about you, Lauren? What are you recommending this week?
Lauren Goode: I really enjoyed Bobby Johnson’s feature story, we’re calling it The Big Story, on how a bunch of pretenders, as they’re called in the story, from North Korea are interviewing for US-based tech jobs, IT jobs, and basically perpetuating this whole scam and working with third parties in the US who are helping facilitate them, where they interview with these very sort of Anglo-sounding names and they seem to have great résumés and good coding abilities, and then when a recruiter goes to interview them, they present as Asian and they have accents and the recruiter’s kind of confused, but they end up getting a job and siphoning away money from the US and giving it to North Korea’s government. It’s a fantastic story by a freelancer named Bobby Johnson, and I recommend everyone check that out. In case you weren’t paranoid enough already about what’s going on online, this will make you more paranoid.
That is our show for today. We’re going to link to all of the stories we talked about in the show notes, so check those out. And be sure to check out Thursday’s episode of Uncanny Valley, which is all about what DOGE has accomplished, what it hasn’t, and what it’s all potentially going to look like after Elon Musk’s exit. If you liked what you heard today, be sure to follow our show and rate it on your podcast app of choice. And if you’d like to get in touch with any of us for questions, comments, show suggestions, write to us at uncannyvalley@WIRED.com. Jordan Bell, Kyana Moghadam, and Adriana Tapia produced this episode. Amar Lal at Macro Sound mixed this episode. Jordan Bell is our executive producer. Conde Nast’s head of global audio is Chris Bannon, and Katie Drummond is WIRED’s global editorial director.
