🆕 Never Post! The Cat and Mouse Game of Age Verification Online

Pals'n'friends! For you, miraculously, an episode! Hot on the heels of the Memberdrive Streamweek, at least some of which we hope you caught because it was a blast of a good time!

What happens now? I'll tell you: Mike talks with David Huerta about age verification laws, VPNs, and Bluesky being blocked in Mississippi; The team asks chat WHAT (?!) Is Going On Here (and finds out!); ALSO: Never Post Plays.

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• Call us at 651 615 5007 to leave a voicemail
• Drop us a voice memo via airtable
• Or email us at theneverpost at gmail dot com

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Intro Links

• TShirt Preorder!!!!!! - https://neverpost.bigcartel.com
  
• You've got mail no more: AOL to shutter dial-up internet service
• An Open Letter to Kickstarter Creators & Allies: Why We, Kickstarter United, Are Fighting for a Four-Day 32-Hour Workweek
• YouTube secretly used AI to edit people's videos. The results could bend reality
• MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing
• twitch.tv/theneverpost 

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Never Post Plays

• Date Everything
• Pancito Merge
• NBA Jam

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Agewalled Gardens

• David @ freedom.press
• An In-Depth Guide to Choosing a VPN

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WIGOH LIVE: Memberdrive Streamweek Ed.

• Kurt Cobain Will Have His Revenge on the Straights
• Most iconic thing in pop culture (warning: X link)

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our contributing producer for this episode is Toby Martin. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta.

Reader unmov’d and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc’d
and unterrified, through the long-loud and sweet-still
I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb.

I crawl, Reader, servile and cervine, through this blank
season, counting – I sleep and I sleep. I sleep,
Reader, toward you, loud as a cloud and deaf, Reader, deaf

as a leaf…

Except of Sweet Reader, Flanneled and Tulled
by Olena Kalytiak Davis

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure and is distributed by Radiotopia

Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. This intro was written on Tuesday, 08/26/2025 at 08:57AM eastern, and we have a nonstop show for you this week. First, I talked with David Huerta, senior digital security trainer at Freedom of the Press Foundation about Blue Sky being blocked in Mississippi and the usefulness of VPNs. Then hot on the heels of our member drive stream week, an edit of our what is going on here stream recorded live in front of a Twitch chat audience and also the gang games.

But right now, we're gonna take a quick break. You're gonna listen to some ads unless you're in the member feed. And when we return, we'll talk about a few of the things that have happened since the last time you heard from us. It's something unpredictable, but in the end, that's four stories for you this week. AOL is suspending dial up service, something you maybe thought it did twenty years ago.

The ISP will cease the max 56 k b p s connection on September 30. In 2021, when AOL sold to private equity firm Apollo Global Management, CNBC reported that quote, the number of dial up users is now in the low thousands. Kickstarter United, the union of Kickstarter workers organized under o p e I u local one fifty three, is currently collecting signatures on a petition asking management to include in their contract guarantees to maintain their preexisting standard of a four day work week. Since April 2022, the union writes, Kickstarter employees have worked under a four day, thirty two hour work week. It began as a commitment to building a healthier, more sustainable workplace.

During this time, Kickstarter experienced the most successful period in its sixteen year history, hosting some of the biggest, most groundbreaking projects ever launched on the platform, end quote. They later continue, as we entered contract negotiations with management, we asked them to make the four day thirty two hour work week permanent, not as a pilot or a promise, but as policy. They have refused and are determined to retain the ability to make us work 25% more hours for no additional compensation. They're asking for support in the form of petition signatures, so we've included a link to that in the show notes if you'd like to sign. YouTube has been using AI to upscale already uploaded videos without uploader permission.

On August 14, music YouTuber, Rhett Schull, uploaded a video titled YouTube is using AI to alter content and not telling us. Made after his friend and colleague Rick Beeto, another music YouTuber, noticed he looked sort of like an AI deepfake of himself in certain YouTube shorts. The BBC reports that complaints of AI upscaling by YouTube go back to June on social media, quote, with users posting close ups of odd looking body parts and questioning YouTube's intentions. Now, they continue, after months of rumors in comment sections, the company has finally confirmed it is altering a limited number of videos on YouTube shorts, the app's short form video feature. We're running an experiment on select YouTube shorts, a company representative says, that uses traditional machine learning technology to unblur, denoise, and improve clarity in videos during processing, similar to what a modern smartphone does when you record a video, end quote.

Improving clarity by making everyone look like cake. Yum. It's your birthday. And finally, research out of MIT shows that 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing. Fortune reports that, quote, the vast majority stall delivering little to no measurable impact on profits and losses, end quote.

Study authors tell Fortune that while executives may push for more AI use and blame regulation or model performance for lack of uptake, the problem actually lies in a misunderstanding of what these tools are suited for. Extremely narrow, often rote, data oriented tasks, what Fortune calls back office automation. Companies also suffer when they attempt to design and implement their own AI solutions with findings showing that nearly 70% of internal tools fail to have any business impact. In show news this week, folks, friends, listeners, the member drive stream week is over, but it lives on in our hearts, and the member drive itself continues. More on that in a moment.

First, let's do some numbers. Over the last week, we streamed thirty six hours and one minute. You all watched us for a combined total of eighty eight thousand eight hundred and twenty seven minutes. We had an average viewer count over those thirty six hours of forty one with a max concurrent viewer count of a 138. We reached 11,322 unique people and there were 156 of you in the chat.

That all adds up to 16,294 live views and 17,006 v o d views. And a bunch of those are still up if you wanna go watch. They're gonna expire soon, I think. 65% of our audience was in The US and 35% elsewhere. Switzerland, looking at you.

And we were rated once by the investigators pod while we were all quietly watching Virtuosity. We now have 218 Twitch followers and 31 subscribers, five of which were gifted. We have reached affiliate status. I only kind of know what that means, except that we'll probably keep streaming at least a little every once in a while. So if you wanna catch us when we go live, make sure to follow us at twitch.tv/theneverpost.

We also announced that the never post subreddit is the place to hang out with other listeners as well as the staff of the show, and we have got 62 new members over there, including at least one that is site wide shadow band. That's me, Mike Rugnetta. I will accept any tips on how to remedy that situation. Anyways, r forward slash never post. Come hang out on Ramit.

But okay. The big number, the important one, how many new members did we get? Our goal for August is to add 200 new members and we got a 154. Holy cow. Can we close that gap of 46 in, looks at calendar, five days?

That is up to you all listening. We did about that many in the first two days of the member drive. Maybe we can do it again to close it out. If you aren't already a member and have been thinking about becoming one for $4 a month, there's no better time than right now, I promise. Okay.

Two more things. Wow. Lots of show news this week. We've been very busy. If you've always wanted to be a member but aren't in a spot where you can part with $4 a month, we have a limited number of gift memberships still available from the stream week.

Your fellow listeners have donated a year of membership. That is how much they like being members, and we're gonna give them out first come, first served. So just email us at the neverpost@Gmail.com with the subject gift membership in all caps. If we still have some available, we'll reply with details. And finally, if you've always wanted merch, now's the time.

That's right. Never post has t shirts. You can head to neverpost.bigcartel.com to take a look at the two designs currently available. One by the incomparable casket map and the other by the inimitable Spence Nelson. These are shirt preorders.

Once preorders are closed on September 12, shirts will be handprinted and then shipped by the Neverpost staff. We are not printing them. We are hiring a professional who's very, good to print them, but we will be packing and shipping them. See the item page for more details about what preorder means and, what you can expect as far as timing and shipping and all that. Neverpost.bigcartel.com.

Okay. That is the news I have for you this week. First, blue sky is blocked in Mississippi. Then, what is going on here? But right now, at certain points throughout the stream week, myself, Jason, and Georgia played video games.

Maybe you've heard them. In our interstitials this week, clips from Never Post Plays.

Alright. Well, well. Alright. Chat,

you have decided this is the person that I look like. I don't super remember what Bobby Pin looks like.

This is about to be great.

So you're gonna find out. Well, don't look it up because then you'll see what she looks like.

Oh, let's find out together. Wow. Yep. Okay. Like a family.

Georgia, I'm excited for you. Before you Oh. Feel an overwhelming air of cool of

An overwhelming air of cool?

Leather and metal and the best hair and eyebrows you've ever seen. Bow is impartially cool. Are

you kidding me?

Oh.

Perfect. Perfect. Perfect.

This is the hugest compliment I've ever gotten in my life. Well, they say that in a lot of queer relationships, people look like twins. So let's go. Problem punk? Oh my god.

Should we be sassy? Our three options are what?

You would know. This is like you're fighting the mirror right now. I'm fighting

the mirror right now. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a. Okay.

She said, you got a problem, punk? No. But it sounds like you do.

What? Me? Nah.

I'm just messing with you. Me coded also.

My name's Bobby.

Bobby Pin.

Oh my god. I love you. We are the same.

Mississippi house bill one one two six, known otherwise as the Walker Montgomery protecting children online act, was passed on 04/20/2024 and signed by Mississippi governor Tate Reeves on April 30. The bill was established quote to protect minors from harmful content. How does it do this? Well, I'll let the bill speak for itself. It reads, one, digital service provider may not enter into an agreement with a person to create an account with a digital service unless the person has registered the person's age with the digital service provider.

And then later, a digital service provider shall not permit an account holder who is a known minor to be an account holder unless the known minor has expressed consent from a parent or guardian. It then lists ways in which consent can be given. A form which can be emailed or faxed, a toll free phone line that can be called, a video chat, an ID scan which then must be deleted it says, or any other quote commercially reasonable method. Once consent is given, the DSP then needs to make sure that it abides by further rules concerning what a minor can and cannot be shown. The bill reads, one, in relation to a known minor's use of a digital service, a digital service provider shall make commercially reasonable efforts to develop and implement a strategy to prevent or mitigate the known minors exposure to harmful material and other content that promotes or facilitates the following harms to minors.

A, consistent with evidence informed medical information, the following, self harm, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and suicidal behaviors. B, patterns of use that indicate or encourage substance abuse or use of illegal drugs. C, stalking, physical violence, online bullying, or harassment. D, grooming, trafficking, child pornography, or other sexual exploitation or abuse. E, incitement of violence or f, any other illegal activity.

Not only does this mean the DSP needs to keep track of who is and who is not a minor, some of these guidelines are also very broad. In today's political climate, labels like any other illegal activity are definitely moving targets. Net Choice, a trade association which represents tech clients like Meta, Airbnb, Amazon, Reddit, Snap, and thirty some others sued Mississippi over h b one one two six saying it likely violates free speech guaranteed by the first amendment and equal protection rights guaranteed by the fourteenth. Netchoice asked for an injunction, a pause on enforcement of the law while a court determines if those rights were being violated. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi granted that injunction saying Netchoice was probably right and that furthermore, they likely had standing to bring suit.

Mississippi's AG, Lynn Fitch, appealed saying that the district court didn't provide analysis as required by legal precedent. The United States Court of Appeals for the fifth circuit agreed and vacated the injunction, which meant that h b one one two six could go into effect over a year after it was originally signed. This back and forth made it to the Supreme Court who concurred with the Fifth Circuit. Earlier in August, writing for the court with no dissents included, justice Kavanaugh says, Netchoice has, in my view, demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on the merits. Namely, that enforcement of the Mississippi law would likely violate its members first amendment rights under this court's precedence.

However, he continued, because net choice has not sufficiently demonstrated that the balance of harms and equities favors it at this time, I concur in the court's denial of the application for interim relief. Basically, while the law is likely unconstitutional, net choice didn't convincingly show that the courts need to step in as soon as possible. So h b one one two six stands. The supreme court's decision made on August 14 further cemented the fact that perhaps eventually this law could be overturned, but in the interim Mississippi could continue to enforce it as written.

And many websites started creating these sort of like, not exactly pay walls, but age walls for verification.

This is David Huerta.

I'm David Huerta. I'm one of the senior digital security trainers over at Freedom of the Press Foundation.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation helps journalists safely do their work online. This means, among other things, knowing how to protect their identities in certain scenarios, something that this ruling has now made more complicated for many websites accessible within Mississippi.

This, of course, carries a certain amount of security and privacy concerns. Of course, there's the fact that you're trusting a third party website with something as sensitive as your ID, for example. There is also the concerns around, for example, securing that data once it arrives, that image of your driver's license once it arrives on their end, and how much trust do you have on these systems to actually protect your data. I feel like we've all had GDPR database notifications reach our inbox. These are not infrequent.

And sometimes the stakes are relatively low. It's like, oh, I guess I gotta change my password. But if we're gonna make the age verification the norm and we're gonna have our, you know, our driver's licenses or passports all over the place, it's a lot harder to change your driver's license number than it is to change a password on the website.

I wanted to talk with David to better understand how companies are responding to these risky new age wall requirements and also to better understand some of the technologies that people are suggesting for circumventing them. I started by asking about a blog post from Friday, August 22 that was written by the Blue Sky team entitled our response to Mississippi's age assurance law. It read, starting today, if you access Blue Sky from a Mississippi IP address, you'll see a message explaining why the app isn't available. This block will remain in place while the courts decide whether the law will stand. And this means that at the time of recording, while we're recording this, Blue Sky is no longer reachable in the state of Mississippi.

Yep. If I'm understanding correctly, it is not that Mississippi has blocked Blue Sky. It is that Blue Sky has made itself unavailable to people who are logging in or trying to access the website from a Mississippi IP address.

That is correct. In this case, Blue Sky is basically trying to figure out where exactly it fits into this law, how exactly is its content being interpreted, and how much does that actually affect them. So unfortunately, this creates a sort of, like, chilling effect where they maybe don't wanna take on that risk of getting sued or getting in trouble with the law. So rather than dealing with that and the interpretation of, like, where they fit into that law, they've decided, in this case, it seems to pull out entirely until that's figured out.

In their blog post, they write, we think this law creates challenges that go beyond its child safety goals and creates significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harms smaller platforms and emerging technologies. Do have a sense of what it is that they mean in that case? Like, what is it about this that they feel is disproportionately harming them as a small team or a new piece of technology?

Yeah. I feel like there's, you know, a lot of things that go into features being requested as part of this law that other companies have either already implemented or have the staffing, the resources, the money to basically implement it and have a lot of experience with that, including with things like content moderation as kind of an an addenda in addition to that. When it comes to Blue Sky and also other smaller platforms like Mastodon, which in in their cases, for example, are, like, small mini Blue Skies almost that may have, like, one or two people total running the show for their for their particular communities. Having to spin up all these new features and worry about the sort of, like, legal repercussions of what happens if they make a mistake is something that is much much more consequential to them than it would be for, like, a vastly wealthy company like Meta, for example.

Or, like, Facebook's got the infrastructure maybe preexisting or is able to get it up quickly to store and process scans of IDs, even if that is sort of, in a larger sense, something we should all be suspicious of, it is something that they can build quickly.

Yeah. They have the infrastructure. They have the security engineers. They have the lawyers. They have the resources, basically, to help them navigate that a lot more smoothly than, you know, a team that is made up of, like, you know, a dozen or or maybe in some types of less people when it comes to things like Mastodon.

Yeah. Yeah. Your point about Mastodon is interesting. I hadn't considered that. Are you seeing a similar thing happening in Mastodon instances?

Are are Mastodon instances also blocking access from Mississippi?

I have not seen that yet. I can't tell whether Blue Sky is sort of the exception to the rule or whether they are the canary in the coal mine, and this is just the beginning of what has to come for many other social media platforms, including a lot of platforms where a lot of journalistic work is being done, where a lot of you know, if if people remember, there was a lot of news that broke on Twitter. There was a lot of news that broke on social media. These platforms are basically a source of journalistic work and news for many people, and having them suddenly not be accessible is is an issue because now people don't have the same access or at least the same variety of places to get their news from.

One thing I've seen online in response to all of this is time to get a VPN. Yeah. Could you describe, just in broad terms, what a VPN is?

Sure. So VPN, in this case, is a virtual private network, a way for you to use someone else's Internet connection to connect to the website that you actually wanna access. And it is one of those things where, largely speaking, VPNs are still relatively effective at getting around a lot of blockage that exists, especially simple sort of like IP based blocks like this where if, you know, there's a sort of IP address that is associated with a specific jurisdiction like Mississippi, you can basically simply appear from an IP address that is not one of those.

IP address kinda acting like almost like an area code on your phone. Right? You can sort of tell roughly where someone is from based upon this marker and how they're communicating with you. And so that's how Blue Sky is able to say, no. Thank you to folks who try to sign on from Mississippi and how a VPN can say, like, oh, no.

No. Like, actually, I'm from New York or I'm from Vermont. And so, you know, sort of like changing your area code or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You could appear to the websites you're visiting as if you're in another place, like another state.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think VPN saturation is about to just, like, skyrocket, or or do you think this is a sort of limited trend?

I feel like I don't know what the outcome of this of this blue sky block is going to be. So it's interesting to see, like, whether the courts will interpret things in a way that makes it less of a necessity. Yeah. But if we do kinda start setting this precedence of just like, well, we have these kind of, like, broadly defined laws that make it incredibly difficult for a smaller website to operate, The only way to really access this is through a VPN. Then we may, in fact, reach this point where that does become sort of a normal thing people have.

Can you just tell us a little bit about the other states around the world where VPN use is really common?

Yeah. There is a lot of VPN usage in places like China where there is sort of, like, government facilitated infrastructure that blocks many foreign websites. There's sort of, like, mix of how it's used. In many cases, it's, you know, sometimes something that is deeply frowned upon. In other cases, it's sort of, like, allowing it just enough because it's sort of the cost of doing business with the outside world.

In other places like Russia, for example, there is some blockage of some VPNs, but it's not always easy for a government system to sort of, like, keep track of all that, and it varies. Sometimes governments will have, like, a very centralized way to control, like, access to the Internet. Other times, they'll have a mix of, like, well, we have this government censorship firewall for your home ISP and your office ISP, but the mobile providers are not haven't built it for them yet. So a VPN is kind of a workaround that can exist for any combination of these situations where if you're seeing blockage, you can use a VPN to use this. And maybe in places where a VPN is blocked, there may be other ways to connect and then use a VPN to access things.

It's kind of all over the place, honestly. But in regimes where there is a lot of, like, very sort of, like, explicit government blockage of online content, VPNs are pretty common.

Yeah. There's I I have seen some chatter recently too about The UK becoming maybe the next place where VPNs get heavily restricted or blocked because use of them skyrocketed after the implementation of the Online Safety Act.

Yeah. I could definitely see that being the sort of, like, the new norm for The UK, unfortunately. And I do think that that's probably going to follow suit in many US states as well if similar laws to these get passed and if the courts basically interpret sort of basic social networks and other kind of platforms as falling within this category.

Yeah. I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about any of the technical details of how a country or a state enforces a VPN ban.

Yeah. It's very much a cat and mouse game, and unfortunately, the VPNs are the mice.

So Of course.

Sometimes the mice are still clever. Like, you know, New York City is full of rats, and we humans, apex predators that have the technology of the of gods, basically, compared to rats still have not gotten rid of them. So it is sort of a, like, I guess, weirdly optimistic way to say that there are ways that censorship regimes will try to block VPNs, either through blocking the IP addresses associated with those VPN connections or by trying to look at sort of like Internet traffic, like your Internet connection to a VPN and seeing like, that looks like a VPN connection, and then blocking those types of connections, which is significantly more sophisticated. And some of the more sophisticated regimes out there do have that kind of blockage. It's a little bit, unfortunately, a little bit smarter.

That being said, though, there are ways that Tor, that VPN companies have both sort of found to mask that web traffic to make it look like just very normal web traffic and not like VPN or Tor traffic, for example.

In your estimation, aren't VPN companies ever targeted by the states who are trying to circumvent their technology?

Sometimes. Yeah. There are some countries which have laws specifically regarding VPNs and their usage. And in some places, it may be, like, completely illegal. In other countries, there's also a registration process.

Pakistan, for example, technically kind of can allow you to use a VPN, but you have to tell them exactly what that connection is

Uh-huh.

Which is, of course, a little bit invasive. Yeah. Let's just be real. So it's it's not an ideal situation, but you do see sort of the sort of targeting of VPN access and the sort of, you know, the understanding that, like, this is the way people are working around it, and this is what we're trying to do, either block it or regulate it or, you know, ban it.

Yeah. As a consumer, how do you go about choosing a VPN?

Yeah. So I get this question a lot. We have a guide at freedom.press that kinda goes through all the things that we like to talk about when shopping for a VPN, considerations around making sure that it's actually a paid VPN, because many times, free VPNs are fake. They're actually just, like, logging that information, selling it to third parties, and making their money that way. It's also important to look at things like modern security protocols.

Behind the scenes, kinda underneath the hood of, what runs a VPN, there's things like a WireGuard, pretty good protocol to use for many situations that you may need a VPN for. There's also a need for transparency with these tools just because you are entrusting them with your web traffic. So things like security audit reports, for example, detailed technical documentation of what exactly they're doing behind the scenes to guarantee your security. Because anybody can say, like, use our VPN. It's secure.

Here's a little sticker. Here's a little graphic says secure. Here's a little seal.

I've seen that circle with the check mark inside of it. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The check mark means nothing. In this case, having a third party audit, like, security firm audit a VPN's infrastructure to make sure that it's actually doing what it's supposed to be doing and doing so in a way that's secure is a massive sort of, like, green flag when it comes to transparency when choosing a VPN.

What would make you feel good to, you know, be able to give the thumbs up to ID scanning age verification online?

There's a lot that would have to be done there, starting with a national privacy law that I feel like lawmakers could maybe spend time on working on so that we can have some, like, legal guardrails to ensure that our data is protected when we upload an ID someplace and making sure that the right incentives are in place to help make that happen. The other thing too is, like, honestly, VPN companies offer a little blueprint of what that could look like in terms of things like having Yeah. Audits of what their infrastructure looks like. Are they just putting your ID photos on, like, an unprotected AWS s three bucket someplace? Because I have seen that hacked so many times.

It's it's been ten years since I first saw that. Like, the same mistakes keep getting repeated over and over again and it's it's very Wild West. But I would want to see sort of, like, more transparency from these companies, more legal protections, more guarantees, and at the national level, a privacy law that would sort of create that blood brain barrier between, like, access to that data and other parts of the state. For example, DHS and ICE, perhaps.

Which gets back to what you talked about earlier of, like, it's not it's not necessarily that this is always a no go. It's that it's a lot of infrastructure to build. That, like, if you're gonna do it, it has to be done it has to be done right, and that can be hard for especially smaller websites to deal with.

Yeah. Exactly.

David, thank you so much, for joining us to chat with us about Blue Sky and Mississippi and VPNs. We really appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule.

No problem. Thanks for having me.

If people wanna see your work online, where should they go?

Freedom.press. You can search for VPNs and see all kinds of stuff that we've written about that as well as other sort of online safety and security topics.

This is just dessert Tetris in a way.

Yeah. It's just dessert Tetris, but with luchadors.

With the Oh, interesting.

Yeah. So we're at an impasse here.

Okay.

Yeah. You are. We could we could give the porquito to the dog and then the porquito porquito is gone.

Yeah. I don't like

We could. So if you don't fulfill an order within a certain number of turns, the order changes.

Okay.

So we could do that but we are close to the top of the bag.

Yeah. This is a pivotal moment. I give the dog the treat.

I don't know what this game is.

Good. This this puppy baro. Yeah.

Herriot has posted is very convincing.

This is such a cute little game.

I think doggies do deserve treats.

But that's

You already have a little what I'm assuming is what you're talking about, the Porkito.

Oh, he did it. Oh, and it didn't He's gone. It didn't collapse.

Yeah. That's a whoops.

Yeah. I think you gotta nudge that. Oh, boy. Shit. He did not solve our problem.

Oh, no. Oh, no. This is gonna this is gonna be okay. We're gonna get there. Yep.

Oh. Uh-huh. What? Poor boy. We won't.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, baby. That was so satisfying. Wow.

It's wildly Probably problem game.

It's a new dawn. Friends, hello and welcome to what is going on here? A segment wherein members of the Never Post staff bring posts to the group about which they would like to know what is going on here. Could they have done some googling? Could they have gone further down thread?

Could they have cracked a book or gone to YouTube? Probably. But where is the fun in that? In the following segment, we share things that we found online that made us want to know more and about which we thought the process of finding out more would be more fun to do together. Joining us for this round of what is going on here in order of how well I assume they can whistle Oh.

Ascending Oh. Are

You're wrong.

Never post to producer Hans Buto?

I'm quite good at whistling.

I believe best.

We're gonna have to have a whistle off, aren't we? Yeah. Never post executive producer Jason Oberholzer.

So I can do two different kinds of regular whistling. Wow. I can do the through the lips and the tongue to the roof of the mouth. Woah. Okay.

I take it all back. You were right, Mike.

You did it. You Mike nailed it. Mike nailed it.

The bar is pretty high to have reached the top of the mountain here.

Wow.

I didn't even know that with what do you what's happening in there?

That's is that out of the side of the mouth? Because I got I have a gap in my front teeth, so I can do the

Oh, wow. Yeah. No. It's Bitch. Just the tongue compressing against the roof of the mouth.

Oh, no. I can't do that. Yeah.

What interesting audio this is going to be. Just

just all

the while you guys tuned in.

Right? I

think of myself as a pretty good whistler. Whistler. I

think was gonna say, where are you?

Yeah. Where are you in this?

Yeah.

I can whistle. I can do a little

bit of Yeah.

I can't do any of the

The big scary whistle.

No. Mike, how would you rate our audience?

Audience, you tag yourself. Where are you in the whistle world? Okay. We got we got some we got some whistlers in the chat. Chat whistles.

So for the folks listening at home, this segment, this WIGO segment, is being recorded live on Twitch as part of the never post member drive stream week. Not quite a ham horn, but good but nice, but good. Should we find out what's going on here?

Yeah. Let's do it.

Okay. Let's find out what's going on here.

Welcome to today's game.

Hans, who should go first?

An audience submission that I'm quite excited about. I have not looked I'm not excited because I've looked. I'm just excited because audience heck yeah. Thank you for being here. This one is by someone named Toby.

Never heard of him. Don't even know. Who who could that be? This is taking a moment because I have to log in to Tumblr.

Oh, yes, Toby.

Yes. Here we are.

Kurt Cobain will have his revenge on the straights.

Yes. Yes.

Had a video call with my brother Chuck the other day. Things got heavy. Okay. I'm gonna be Kate. Georgia, you be Chuck.

Okay.

Jason, you be Kurt Cobain. Okay. Was Kurt Cobain a trans woman? What? Kurt Cobain, rock musician.

He was in a band called Nirvana.

I'm familiar with him.

Yes. Was he a trans woman? No. Okay. Why not?

I mean, he wasn't. It's like asking why he wasn't an astronaut.

He wasn't an astronaut because he never went to space. Why wasn't he a trans woman?

Because he didn't transition. I mean, he didn't ever say he was a woman, didn't ever say he was trans. So no. Kurt Cobain wasn't a trans woman.

So someone is trans if they say they're trans. Self determination.

That's what you've told me. Is that wrong?

No. That's right. We know ourselves better than anybody else can know us. If we say we're trans, nobody can say we aren't.

And Kurt Cobain never said he was trans.

So was I trans in 1994?

I don't know. Were you?

Yes. But if you'd asked me in 1994, I would have told you no.

So if I tell you I'm trans, I'm trans. Right. But if I tell you I'm cis, I might still be trans?

If you tell me you're cis, I believe you.

That's not the same thing as I'm cis.

That's a really good point. This is sort of what some queer people are getting at when they say gender is a construct.

Come again?

Well, you're cisgender. Right?

As far as I know, yes. You

hedged. As far as I know, isn't the same thing as yes. As far as I know, opens up the possibility that you could be trans and not know it.

It doesn't seem terribly likely.

That's an interesting statement. I feel like this is a little bit of like Phoenix. Right? This

is wow.

Early on in transition, one of the biggest problems I had was dealing with the sheer unlikelihood of my being trans. I mean, I knew trans people existed. I knew somebody had to be trans. I just couldn't wrap my head around the idea that it would be me.

Do you think this is why you're on this whole Kurt Cobain was a trans woman kick?

Hey, now. I'm just asking questions.

You know?

You know? Like JK Rowling is just asking questions. Oh my.

Kate, you are literally wearing a T shirt that says Kurt Cobain was a trans woman on it right now.

Am I? Oh, shit. I thought I was wearing my skip school take hormones kill god T shirt. To your question though, yeah, I do think that's part of it. Honestly, the hardest thing about growing up trans was believing that nobody in the world had ever experienced what I was experiencing.

I didn't have any role models. I didn't wonder if I was the only one. I was convinced of it.

So being able to say that this incredibly gifted songwriter, the voice of a generation was a trans woman like you.

I need someone like that. I need to not be the first of my kind.

Of course, you're not the first trans woman.

No. But before a couple of years ago, almost every trans woman would tell you that they always knew unquestionably and innately that they were women.

So it's not just about him being trans, but specifically his being a trans woman who didn't know he was a trans woman.

An egg. Right.

Why Kurt Cobain anyway? What's so special about him that you're trying to induct him into the egg hall of fame?

He knew things. Things cis guys don't know. Things I didn't know until after I started transition. He understood women, what we're like, what we experience. Penroyalty, rape me, I just have a hard time thinking of a cis man who could write songs like that.

It wouldn't be the only way in which he was exceptional.

True. I don't know. I mean, I know. I can give you all the reasons, but there's something in his eyes.

Something in his eyes.

All the pictures of him. No matter what he's doing, if he's grinning or sad, whatever he's doing, you can see something trapped in there. Trapped and in pain, wanting to get out, but not quite knowing how.

You know that what you're doing is pretty much the textbook definition of projection. Right? Maybe.

Chuck, do you think I'm happier?

Since you transitioned? Yeah. Of course. Absolutely. Night and day.

Everyone says that. And honestly, I see it. Even in pictures. You know? I see it.

You've seen some of my transition timelines. Right?

You do look really different.

It's not just me. Hans, how much longer is this?

Oh, this is we're theoretically quarter the way through.

No way. Okay. We can.

Okay. So let's let's let's pause it. You look different and scroll. Oh my god. Okay.

Me.

Yep. What is going on here?

Let's read the last Are you okay? Yeah. Let's read from there. Let's let's having a great time.

I think that we should finish this after Wiggo and release this as a member clip of the whole script.

I love this so much.

I can score it in everything.

We gotta know. We gotta know.

Yeah.

So let's let's jump to you jump to the end here just so Kate, are

you okay? Kate, are you okay?

I'm fine.

Do you wanna hug?

Fuck you, Chuck.

Okay. Well, I'm gonna go to the other room. You should drink some water. Stay hydrated. Love you, Kate.

Love you too, Chuck. Sorry.

It's okay, Kate. It's okay.

Just dying my work, everybody.

Wow. Wow.

I that's unbelievable. Way to

go. Oh my god.

Way to go, actors. Way to go I was immersed.

Writer. Wait. Okay. What is this? This is like

it's like a philosophical, like, thought experiment, I feel.

Hans, can you scroll all the way back up to the beginning again? Was Kurt Trans is the account

Is the account. Okay. So let's take a look at comments because that's often pretty inspiring.

Gonna say, yeah. What is in the comments?

So we're at 11,233 replies, which

is Sure. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm guessing that we just started to scratch the surface of what this is actually feel like we

need to dig all the way through.

Yeah. Wait, Hans. Go more slowly through some of these. I just wanna

read Yeah.

I mean, I guess not not being privy to maybe the types of conversations that this conversation is meant to like, I guess that's a question. Like, is this a parody? Is this like some Poe's Law kind of thing? Is it ironic? Is it making extreme a more innocuous type of conversation that happens in order to point out, like, the edges of it and what's weird about it?

I mean, yeah.

I read pretty earnest. I think this is an honest Socratic dialogue somebody is having who really believes this point, perhaps. I don't know.

Okay. Alright.

I I think it's less about the point and more about the kind of dialogue, which is

Mhmm.

Being mirrored here.

Yeah. Lisby one one two one says, I was gonna say this is pretty standard Tumblr discourse, but actually, this is long even for a long form Tumblr. Oh, was Kirk O'Bain Gin Fizzes says, was Kirk O'Bain trans is like a big debate. He wore dresses and makeup and was supportive of LGBTQ stuff. Had no I had no clue.

This is fantastic. Can you just scroll, like, to the middle? Like, the middle of the section that we didn't read just to I would just love to get a sense of like We're

getting paragraphs.

We are, like, where does

this Let's do this one.

Yeah. Azerad spent weeks talking to Cobain. He was Cobain's biographer, but also his friend, and he had his own interpretation of the lyrics. For instance, Azerad talks about all the lyrics about guns. And to me, now, I look at that, and I think of how he died.

But Azerad, when Kurt was alive, he looked at it another way. He thought it was about dicks. To paraphrase doctor Freud, he says, sometimes a gun is just a gun, but not this time. He talks about come as you are, where Kurt keeps singing, I swear I don't have a gun. That's not my interpretation.

That's never been my interpretation. That's what this cis man says. More than one cis man. Kurt says, Dave Grohl's dad, he said the same thing. Yeah.

There are all kinds of ways to interpret lyrics. Okay. Alright. So this is like doing queer exegesis on both Nirvana and the text of Kurt Cobain's life Yeah. Together at the same time.

And then we're going into, like, Ed Wood, Pete Burns, Prince Nelson, Richard Wright, Dave Carter, Quentin Crisp, like like, talking through the the re parsing the real details of of identity.

Daniel Jenna Grauss has something really interesting to say. Adds a great bit of insight to this. It comes down to discussing whether we get to claim those who came before us, but didn't have access to the same theoretical framework and social support, the trans siblings who fell through the pavement because they didn't have the opportunity to find themselves in a world in which we were less visible and constrained to being more one dimensional in everyone's imagination. I mean, I wanna read the whole thing.

Absolutely.

Right? Yeah. I wanna read the whole thing. Then and then I wanna have an informed reaction to this. But woah.

Yeah. This is wild. Yeah. Thank you, Toby.

Toby says, oh, yes. Kurt trans woman lore. Yeah.

Yes.

Turns out that's what's going on here. Just those four words.

Yep. Yep. Case closed.

Yeah. Toby, thank you for sending this in.

Alright. So the next one that we have is from May. This is a submission from May, one of our audience members. Thank you, May. And I'm so sorry to do this, but May is saying it's May's fault.

May is sending us to Twitter. Well, I hope you all enjoyed having fun.

Yeah. I'm gonna turn on both of my

VPNs I'll take it from here.

Oh, let's do it. Jarta. Alright.

We got a couple of bathing suited gentlemen What

am I

sharing a delicate kiss in the ocean.

What am I looking at here?

And it said the tweet says, Sabrina Carpenter's twink and Olivia Rodrigo's twink dating each other is low key the most iconic thing in pop culture with two sobbing faces.

You know what I've always wanted to really ask? Chad, is this real?

This is real?

Chad, is this real?

So it's got 17,800,000 views for whatever that means on Twitter. Robots robots have

viewed this.

Robots can't.

Georgia. Google. Yes. Does this mean anything to you?

No. It does not. I was gonna Google Sabrina Carpenter twink.

Everyone's Make sure you have a safe search on.

Yeah. Let me turn on

Just gonna lay on the

ground first. An incognito window real quick. Hold on, everybody. Oh, Conan Gray. One of these people is Conan Gray.

Say more.

I don't know what that is.

I don't know this person, but they look sort of familiar. They're 26 years old.

Sort of familiar. I'll give them that.

Jin physicist May in saying I'm pretty online and reasonably plugged into pop music, and I have no idea what this post is about.

That is the spirit of the Wiggo. God, you nailed it. You nailed it.

I have another AA overview. I'm so sorry.

Do it. Do it.

Do it.

Did Olivia Rodrigo date Conan Gray? No. They are close friends who met through their shared producer, Dan I don't know. Their shared producer and bonded over their love for Taylor Swift. Their friendship has been documented through various social media posts, award show appearances, and shared experiences.

I'm googling Conan Gray kissing. More kisses? There's more kisses. Just taken up pictures of people kissing. People kissing.

No. We've been over this before, Jason. I will never keep stop.

It's my news.

I need to see it. I need to know that it's happening.

Okay. So that is Corey Foglemanis.

Excuse me?

I don't know. I'm just so who's the guy grabbing Conan? Is one of the replies. Oh. And then the response is Corey Foglemanis, which I'm sure I'm saying wrong.

Confer, I'm looking at more kissing photos.

Boy. It's kinda

true. Okay.

Do it. Do it. Do it. Yeah.

Are those Corey Fogelmanis and Conan Gray. I Google image searched them, like, those two names. Lots of kissing photos.

More important, are those bathing jorts?

Also, this the waves look beautiful.

They look I was just thinking, Georgia. They look beautiful.

This has to be fake.

Right? I no. That's what I mean is, like, the water looks so, like, airbrushed sort of.

Yeah.

One of the replies way down thread is there are sentences being created that have never been created before.

Think that's so kissing photos.

George George, we're at work.

They're they're kissing all over the place.

There is as as it will surprise nobody, there is no information to be gleaned from the reply thread on x.com, the everything website. Yeah. This has this I'm I'm gonna say my best guess is that this is AI. This is it possible? Hold on.

I I might I might have an answer.

There's probably

some guess that this is a frame from a music video. Really?

Or a show. I think they're on a show together.

Yeah. Here. I'm not I haven't watched it yet, but I'm gonna drop it in the chat. Uh-oh.

Always good. Oh, no. They're I see. He's in jorts.

Baca Cranberry.

Woah. Desire is kissing pants.

This is the song. I have heard of this song.

So here is the link that I found it through. Pinknews.com. Fans left quote devastated after Conan Gray drops part two of his queer music video romance.

Devastating. Come on.

Has two videos where he kisses a boy in the water.

Good. There should be

more of them. Stay, dude.

I need at least a dozen. Oh.

That's what's going on here.

Woah. That's what's going on here. Wow. Okay. So

Gonna close

a bunch of because I still do not know who these people are.

And you don't get to.

Which one of them so what I am to understand is that one of them did they date these other pop stars? One of them dated Sabrina Carpenter, and one of them dated Olivia Rodrigo.

And They might no. I think they're both friends with those respected pop divas.

Pop series. Look like them?

No. Or that they're pals and they're gay?

They're just they're friends and they're gay and they're twinks and they're in love.

Okay. Okay.

Tale as old as time.

Tale as old as time.

Well, mate, I we hope that's satisfying because that's what we know.

And if if you would like hours of tape of Georgia making typing sounds and saying, I'm finding more kissing,

do you need ring tones

because maybe we got them?

Listen. I will risk it all for journalism

always. I will get to the bottom of it Yeah. One way or another. I will

get in for of the kissing on the end

of kissing.

Georgia will reach the end of it.

I will I will shut it down.

Wow. I feel like I know what's going on here. Hey, friends. It's Mike here on my way to the studio letting you know that if you wanna hear the rest of this WIGO, we are gonna be putting it up for members at neverpoe.st. A bunch of us on the staff also had WIGOs to share.

They're very funny, very strange. One picture that just looks disconcertingly like a thumb. So if you wanna see that, just head on over to neverpo.st. Become a member, and it will be waiting for you in the member feed soon.

Yes. Yes. This is what I wanted. Yes. This is everything that I wanted.

Yes. Yes. Never stop. Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Why did we stop doing this? I know you're supposed to think this about things that were good when you were a kid, but like This slaps. Yeah. This is so This objectively slaps. Right?

That is the show we have for you this week. We're gonna be back here in the main feed on Wednesday, September 10. For $4 on the TikTok shop, you can get silicon suction phone holder nonslip magnetic pad stand grip for selfies and videos compatible with mobile phones nonslip design. WiLoc buy one get one free 6.6 inch universal four in one multi USB charging cable with USB a type c, lightning max 240 watt, fast charging and data sync, aluminum compatible with iPhone, Samsung laptops provides high speed fast charging and data sync. Thumbstick grips for p s four, p s five, Xbox professional thumb grips, joystick cap, analog stick cover, two thumbsticks, one high rise, one mid rise grips player controller controller player.

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Neverpoast's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton, and the mysterious doctor first name, last name. Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer, and the show's host, that's me, is Mike Rugnetta. Reader unmoved and reader unshaken, reader unseduced and unterrified, through the long, loud, and sweet still, I creep toward you. Towards you, I thistle and I climb.

I crawl, reader, servile and servine through this blank season counting. I sleep and I sleep. I sleep reader toward you loud as a cloud and deaf reader deaf as a leaf. Excerpt of sweet reader flanneled and told by Olena Kalitiak Davis. Never Post is a production of Charts and Leisure and is distributed by Radiotopia.