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I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors.

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Hello, Lady Singular. Lady. I am Lady Stafford. Lady Stafford. I'm Lady Sanders. The two of us are gathered here in the midst today. Sans one Saeed Jones. But nevertheless, you are listening to Vibe Check. Vibe Check.

As you can already tell, listeners, our dear Saeed Jones is not with us for this taping. He is in transit to L.A., actually, for a special surprise that y'all will see later. But in the meantime, Zach and I are holding down the fort. What is on deck this week, Zach? Yeah, so today we have to, even though we don't want to, we have to talk about Donald Trump.

Because the man is being arrested today or something. And then we're going to talk about that. Here's the thing. He's not even going to be in cuffs. They're just like, come on in. Say hi. This is fake ass presidency and fake ass arrest. All of this is fake. He is fake. So anyway, we're going to talk about that finally in...

You should know that we're doing this Tuesday morning, midday, New York time. So Trump has not arrived to the courthouse yet, where he will arrive and go to the 14th floor, I believe, not on an escalator, but an elevator and be arraigned. And we will talk about all of that.

After that, Sam and I were talking yesterday, and we both feel like there has been a loss of the internet's front page, that news just doesn't feel accessible or even really present anymore. And that has to do with Twitter and some other things, so we're going to talk about that as well. But before we do all that, Sam Sanders, how are you doing today? I am, and we'll talk more about the Trump of it all in the first segment, but I'm going

But I'm just feeling some kind of deja vu on this Tuesday as we tape the show at 9.42 a.m. Pacific, waiting for Trump to do something. I spent years of my life waiting for Trump to do something. When I covered politics and covered that 16 campaign,

He was the first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning and the last thing I thought about when I went to bed at night. And being back in that space as we wait for whatever this arraignment indictment is going to be, it's like, oh, Lord. Yeah. And I keep wondering and I'm conflicted by how it feels like we're all still kind of taking the bait. Yeah. Like we don't know how to not give him all the attention we have when these moments happen. And I'm like, what will ever happen?

break us of this man. Yeah. What will ever, like, I heard a segment on the radio yesterday, not going to say where it came from or who it came from, but they had a whole long segment talking about how they're not going to cover Trump too much. A segment about that. People,

NPR did that today. They also were tweeting all their top correspondents today about like, you know, we're not only going to be covering everything, but we're not going to run his speech live and we're going to do all this other news. But remember, we're also doing Trump. It's like, bro, you can't do anything without talking about it. It's like when people talk about their ex and they're like, you know, I'm not thinking about him at all.

you brought him up, girl. Yeah. You brought him up. Yeah. They're like, I'm totally over him. And look, oh, that car's blue. You know, Sam drove a blue car once. It was on our first date. And you're like, bro, you're not over it. Like, you were truly over it. Yeah. So that's my vibe, I guess, this week and today, especially, like,

Like, will we ever be over this? Will we ever be over this? That's my vibe. I agree. I'm also having kind of like a trauma response to all of this. You know, I woke up today and typically, you know, I try to work out. I have a whole new routine in this post-Trump world in which I like take care of me first. I go and do my thing. There you go. Then I start working. There you go. No, no. This morning, I reverted back to old school Zach where I woke up and was like,

I need coffee. I'm going to go walk to coffee, which I never do. I usually make it myself so I can listen to every soundbite and every news about Donald Trump. So I am prepared today. And I was like, why does it feel like 2015 again? Where every day I woke up and I was like, what is happening? What's in my inbox?

how am I going to manage all this chaos and how do I find any like sense of myself in all of this mess outside of Donald Trump and his feelings. So it does feel like we're like back to an old place that I was hoping we'd get past, but we haven't, we haven't gotten over our ex Donald Trump. He's now back in our lives because he's going to jail. Maybe besides our ex and feeling some way about him. What is your vibe this week, Zach? Oh,

I'm feeling... I mean, LA, since we do talk a lot about weather, is beautiful. We sure do. But it's been a little windy and cold. So windy and cold. But this weekend is going to get warm. I'm ready for it. People can go back to the beach. They can be out in the world. So I'm feeling really hopeful about that. It does feel like spring has sprung. And when I was in D.C. last weekend, seeing the cherry blossoms bloom, it made me feel like seasons are real. See, cherry blossoms are triggering for me because of the histamine of it all. I know.

When I used to live in D.C., April was my death month.

Because all the pretty Blossomades just effed up my allergies. But it's cute. It's cute. I was glad I had a day, but when I got back, my allergies were rocked. Yeah. It's just, yeah, yeah. Listen, I'm like so ready to wear my short sleeve shirts again. I've been wearing sweats and shit for like six months now because it's been so cold. I want spring. I want summer. I think it's here. Yeah. Well, before we jump into the topics, I hear that Saeed Jones has left us a voice note. He did. Hey, girlies. It's Saeed. It's Saeed.

I am literally, I need to leave my apartment in like the next 10 minutes to go to the airport. I'm running around. I will be traveling all day, which means I won't be able to record with y'all this week, which makes me a little sad. But I thought I'd leave you a voice note. Nonetheless, with my vibe check, you know, aside from the general...

of me not packing last night as I should have. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling cute. You know, what can I say? I'm not being arraigned today. You know what I mean? I'm not having charges read to me in a New York State courthouse or whatever. So, you know, there's the bar and I'm jumping over it. And I guess I can say this. I am on my way to LA to see y'all for some vibe check work we're doing, which is a little weird. Like, I can't record with you because I'm on my way to see you.

And this is my prayer. Not to be spiteful. I don't want to be spiteful. But I have a lot of anxiety about Beyonce's visuals. And I just... It's a long flight to California. And airplane Wi-Fi is... You know, I don't trust it. I don't trust it. It's not consistent. And so my genuine prayer is that for whatever reason, I'm really anxious that Beyonce is going to decide to release her visuals while I'm in the air. And I just...

Please don't do that, Beyonce. You've waited this long? You've waited this long? It's been so long. The album came out in, what, July? July of last year? Surely, surely you can wait at least 24 more hours. So, yeah, that is my totally ridiculous anxiety is that I will not be immediately able to watch Beyonce's visuals because I'll be on a Southwest Airlines flight. I have no...

I have many things to respond in all of this. Also the whole not to be spiteful. That's so Saeed. Not to be spiteful. I love it. Okay. So do you know why he's stressed out about Beyonce? Because I think I have an idea. I don't have an idea. I've just made peace with the fact that I'll probably never see visuals for this album. That's my thinking at this point. Is there news? Same. So I think the deep internet rumor or fear is that today is April 4th.

4-4 Beyonce's favorite number is 4 she was born on September 4th but the reason why we're not focusing on September 4th this year and only April 4th is because the tour is already going to be happening in September so this is the only major 4 date where she could drop something a la Taylor Swift Taylor Swift loves this stuff

I've been hearing this dropping this month since last July. I don't think they exist anymore. Let me tell you two people I don't trust in this world. Donald Trump and Beyonce's video person. Don't trust them. Is that person needing to be arraigned too? Arraign whoever is in charge of Beyonce's visuals. Because Beyonce didn't give us those visuals, I had to watch everyone and their mother do those horrible cuff it

dances on TikTok for three months. We wouldn't have had to deal with that bullshit choreography if the videos were there. That's true. Before we close our vibes...

I guess we got to mention how the NCAA women's title for basketball turned into a conversation about race. Y'all know this story. We don't have to tell you all about it. But two young women playing top-notch basketball in the NCAA women's basketball finals got different treatment for doing the same thing. Two players. We know the LSU forward Angel Reese.

She made a you can't see me gesture when her team was doing well during the game this week. She got all kinds of blowback. But at the same time, another white player from Iowa who was playing her, Caitlin Clark, got no blowback. We thought about talking about this story for a bit on this episode. But what is there to say besides Iowans?

I'm not surprised. Sports are still racist. Yeah. Like, I mean, if Serena Williams is going to be booed and yelled at on the court as like at the height of her career, if we're also going to have high school students just what, a few months ago in Utah getting barked at and them using the N-word at that black girl, like it just feels like sports are constantly having this racist mentality.

moment, which has led us to be like, we will do the episode coming up on like the rise of women's basketball and how racism has intertwined in that and all that. Cause there's a lot going on with Brittany Griner now being released. You know, our big note here is of course the black woman who is about to win is about to be reprimanded. Have you seen black people in America? This is how it always works.

Yeah, I will say it is exciting. For the last few weeks or months, it's felt like in many regards, we're caring about and talking about women's basketball more than men's basketball, to which I say, good. Amazing. Good. But we'll leave it there for now. We got to talk about Donald Trump. Okay, Donald Trump, we can do this.

Before we do that, though, we want to acknowledge that we've heard your requests and have now included our recommendations and my own playlist in our show notes and description. Thanks to all of you who sent us fan mail and reached out to us on social media. We absolutely love reading your messages. Keep them coming at vibecheckatstitcher.com. Vibecheckatstitcher.com. With that, let's jump in, shall we? Let's do it. Let's do it.

I'm going to timestamp us again as we start this segment. We're going to talk about the Trump of it all. It is 9.54 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday morning. We're still waiting for Trump to get to this courthouse. He ain't there yet. But in the meantime, we can talk about what's been going on so far and how we feel about it.

Big picture, big story. Y'all know it. Donald Trump has been indicted on more than 30 felony counts. And this week, today, he's supposed to surrender himself to authorities in New York City. But do not get too excited just yet. From what we know at tape time, in spite of some 34 felony counts for falsification of business records, Trump will not be in handcuffs. He will not have to take a mugshot. He will not be placed in a jail cell.

I want to get to the nitty gritty, but first, Zach, does any of that surprise you? How nicely this man is going to be treated? No, he's a white man. He's rich. Of course he is. Even if he wasn't the ex-president, there would have been a way in which the state of New York would have, you know, coordinated with him because he is Donald Trump and he has some weird air of importance still in Manhattan, which I still don't understand. But no, I think this all makes sense. And, you know, he is the first president

ex-president to go through something like this. So we don't really have a rule book. He's kind of making it up on the fly. So is, you know, state and federal officials too. Um,

But part of me, I don't know. Actually, let's talk about this. Because people, at first, I wanted to see the mugshot, the handcuffs, all of that. Like, part of me really wanted that, like, visual aid. But now I'm kind of glad we're not getting it because he can't be treated like, you know, a political kind of… No campaign on it. Yeah, no campaign on it. It would just be this thing that he would use. And, yeah, so I don't know. How are you feeling with that? Because that's been, like, the big thing online is people want to see him handcuffed and dragged. But then a lot of us are like, oh, that could be used against us.

I feel so weird about the way we talk about a former president coming up on charges. Everyone's like, oh, this is so unprecedented. Other countries do this. Yes. Western Europe will prosecute former leaders. It's happened in Asian nations. It's not like it's unprecedented. You know, former leaders and current leaders of all kinds of countries can get brought up on charges if the charges are there. So I'm first a little gobsmacked by...

all the pearl clutching and hand wringing over the fact that this guy's brought up on charges. Of course he's brought up on charges. Look at all he's done. So I want us to get over that. But besides that, I have a lot of legal questions about this case and if this will be the one that actually does something to him. He's dealing with several things at the same time.

There's a Stormy Daniels case here in New York about hush money that was funneled through his campaign. But there's also an investigation into his involvement in the January 6th riots. And this might be the biggest one. Lots of officials in Georgia and in the federal courts are looking into what he did after the election when he basically called leaders in Georgia and said, can you find me more votes? Can you sway this election for me?

That feels like the big one, you know? And so we're seeing this happen, but I'm not sure this is the biggest or best case against him. You know, there are a lot of legal questions that we can't answer here, but that exist, you know, we have right now with New York and the hush money payments in this case, uh,

A New York state AG making what could have been misdemeanor offenses a felony offense, 34 of them. And then on top of that, there are big questions about whether this state AG can bring any kind of charges against Trump on federal campaign finance law. That's actually not quite in his purview. So there are some legal questions about whether this case can hold its snuff.

in a court of law, there's also a reality in which this trial might not start for a year, literally a year. And if Trump's team tries to drag things out with motions for whatever, it could take even longer. So I just, I don't think this is going to be as big of a deal as some people want it to be. I just think it's going to be a nothing burger. I don't think he goes to jail on this. And I think he drags it out to where we possibly don't even see a case where

until late next year. Yeah. What do you think people want right now from Trump? You know, I think like, we know every other show is doing the breakdown of the legal, what's happening in the court, et cetera. But we all have wanted him to be arrested for a long time. You know, it was the biggest conversation when he was elected. And then throughout his campaign, there was always the obsession. I mean, the man was impeached

twice, which is, you know, in my head, the version of an indictment, but for a president, like it's like, it's already been down this road before. But what do you think we are looking for out of all this? Because it does seem like we're throwing everything at the wall, but what do you think the outcome should be, I guess, spiritually for our country? And then also legally, what, what should it be? Because right now this current case is very small. Like you're not going to see him go to jail, even if found guilty. People want vengeance. Yeah.

And not to go Bible, but Bible says vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. It ain't gonna come from the court. I just feel like whatever feelings you have about this man, he's done something to where he'll never see as much justice as he needs to see. And I've just been trying to make peace with that since he's left office. This man is Teflon, whether you love him or hate him. And I really don't think this is the thing that takes him down. And I think that like, for me, what I hope happens to our politics is

because there's a need for vengeance on both sides. The right wants vengeance for how badly they feel Trump was treated. The left wants vengeance for how badly they think Trump treated the nation. But I kind of want at some point for our politics and our country to move on, to move on.

And I don't know how we get there with this foolishness. But that's what I want. What do you want? Yeah, I agree. I think I want us to move on and get past it. It does feel like our obsession, like he should be held accountable. And there's a world in which, you know, you allow these prosecutors to continue to do their jobs.

But a lot of that happened without it becoming central to our sense of being in this country because right now we're shifting back. That's the thing. It's our sense of being. Yeah. Our sense of being, our sense of purpose now has come back and we're all excited. The news outlets are like, ooh, you know, viewership's going to come back, all this stuff. So we're getting too hyped on this, the entertainment of it all. But, you know, when you look past entertainment of it all and look at like just the reality that this is a man that did bad, what do we want for this man to go through? I'm like, I'd like this to happen in quiet. Like I don't need to experience it anymore.

and I want to be, I want to let it go because it's not as radical. I mean, to your point, you look globally, you know, Netanyahu was recently, you know, prosecuted or something. So it's like, France does it all the time. France does it all the time. Like this is an ongoing thing that's happened forever in healthy democracies too. There you go. What people are really stressed out about is that we're going through an existential moment of Russia's being really chaotic. China's becoming a,

really muscular globally. And we're feeling kind of like the fall of an empire. So to have a president go through this, we're making it this, this kind of like end of Rome thing, which like, you know, Rome was falling before Trump. Trump was just kind of like one part of this. Yeah. Yeah. It is so wild though, to see that this is the first thing that might get him in court.

It's so small. The actual charge here is that he made hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, this porn star who alleged that she had an affair with him. Trump funneled $130,000 to her through his attorney, Michael Cohen, to keep her from talking. And also...

And all of this, I think, blew up because Trump didn't pay Michael Cohen back or something. Literally. And so to see of all of the things that he's done over the course of his life, this is the thing that gets him caught up. It's kind of wild. Yeah.

It's kind of wild. But I really don't think that this is going to put this man in jail. I just don't see that. What do you think about the Stormy Daniels of it all? Because there is this moment when I look at Stormy Daniels who, you know, is a really, I find, I've met her once. I was there when Wes Hollywood gave her the keys to the city after she, you know, started fighting back against Trump. And you said she's nice, right? She's very nice. She's very nice.

Very nice. She has two gay dads, two men. She calls her dads that are gay. She's a lovely person. She is a bona fide porn star. Like she was famous before and that's kind of how she got in the sphere. She's not just a porn actor, but she was like someone of note in this world. And, you know, she's become a rallying cry for many on the left that are fighting for sex workers' rights.

And for women's rights. And they love that this, like, I think she even self-identifies as a blonde bimbo. That she's like kind of feeding on, like, of course I'm the one to take him down. But do we even think like the symbolism of a woman taking him down is going to work? Because there is even that other case, the E. Jean Carroll case, which is going to trial this month, which is the case in which the former vice columnist, you know, says that Trump did sexually assault her, you know,

Do we think that there's, by this focus on Trump, are we even allowing room for these women's historic moments to really be seen, I guess, and celebrated? Are we seeing real change from their stories coming forward? Because for me, I'm like, wow, this is kind of a good product of the Me Too era, that women are coming forward and holding men accountable. But I don't know. That's just like a lot to throw at you. Yeah, I get it. And I want everyone who was wronged

by Trump to get to make him answer in a court of law. But when I think about the me too of it all, my thesis is like the only man actually canceled from me too was Harvey Weinstein. The only man. Bill Cosby got out of jail. Donald Trump is running for president again after being president for four years.

I'm not sure that what America hoped for out of the Me Too movement has materialized. And we see evidence of that in seeing the groper-in-chief still out here, not having his mugshot taken or put in handcuffs, even as he faces 34 felony counts.

You know? These men are still untouchable for the most part. Sorry to take it down, but that's what I'm feeling. And I think that's kind of like where we have to end this because, you know, this is ongoing. When we look to this Trump case, we need to be a little sober and what we can expect out of it because I don't think even if he is found guilty, we're not going to see these big system changes we've been hoping for. We thought, like,

one thing is going to set it all right. One thing will make us feel better. But I think it's okay to be like, no, this shit sucks across the board. And it's bigger than him and it's smaller than him. It's everywhere. And it's not just one person that's going to make us feel good tomorrow. And I don't know what to do with that.

with that. Well, and honestly, to close on this, I don't think the left knows what to do with that either. I think for so long, for many years, the lifeblood of the left and the democratic party was standing in opposition to a villain like Donald Trump. And when he's not there, it feels like the left, at least right now, doesn't know their way. You know? And so my hope is that the democratic party and Joe Byron and them and, and all the left is

find some message that can stand on its own to represent what they speak to without Donald Trump. The left's entire politics cannot be just a reaction to Trump and Trumpism. It's got to be bigger than that and more than that and where is that? That's what I'm hoping for. This takes us back to the original point about a breakup. If we do use breakup framework to represent Trump and moving forward, we've all gone through a breakup and then you started dating too soon and all you can do is talk about that

And that makes that new person be like, oh God, why am I here? They don't want to be with you. And the only way in which you move forward is by fully letting go of that bad relationship that was behind you fully. And also not busying yourself with kind of that person's life. And I do think that Trump doesn't do well when he doesn't have the oxygen of public opinion around him. So, you know, maybe that is the way forward. We got to all just stop.

And let it be. And it doesn't mean he's getting away with it. These systems keep moving, but you just got to stop giving it attention. So anyway, that's it. We'll keep following. We'll see this. It's a very historic day. I still got this CNN camera up waiting. It's literally a shot of people just waiting. That's where we're at right now. What a metaphor. It's so... God, it is a metaphor. We got to go to break. I can't. We'll be back. One quick break.

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors.

at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, We Are Golden.

Here's an HIV pill dilemma for you. Picture the scene. There's a rooftop sunset with fairy lights and you're vibing with friends. You remember you've got to take your HIV pill. Important, yes, but the fun moment is gone. Did you know there's a long-acting treatment option available? So catch the sunset and keep the party going. Visit pillfreehiv.com today to learn more. Brought to you by Veve Healthcare.

All right, welcome back. And we're going to switch gears a bit and go backward at the time, I think, in the segment to pre-Trump, to an era of the internet that we kind of are missing this morning. So, you know, yesterday when we were having a conversation, we all came to this realization that it feels like the internet is entering a very new chapter. And we do have some, you know, just some examples to look at the show. So over the weekend, as you all probably saw,

Twitter verification was supposed to cease to exist. People like Sam and I were going to lose our badges. I think I still got it. I think I still got my check. You got yours. I got mine, bro. They were going to strip us of our celebrity status, whatever that means. And lo and behold, none of that happened because Elon Musk cannot do anything right at all. Yeah.

But the one thing he did do was that he focused in on one major Twitter account, which was the New York Times, and ripped them of their verification because they refused. He is so petty. So petty. Because they refused to pay a subscription for the verification badge, similar to the LA Times, to the White House, to you and I. This is wild because he needs...

He needs the Times. He needs them on Twitter. They give value to that platform by being there. Yes, and that is what brought us to this conversation because the New York Times, with all its complications, is seen as the front page of the world. Whatever's on the front page of the New York Times is supposed to matter and it sets the tone of news. We've worked for many news organizations and you did look to the Times to see, oh, did I hit the right beat here? Am I focused on the right story because they are such a leader in the space?

So to have them stripped of their badge felt like a symbolic moment of Twitter's gone to hell. Nothing matters. Nothing's real anymore. And everything where we go to find our source of news, our source of meaning in the world, to understand the world around us is no longer existing. So it led us to this conversation towards like,

The front page of the internet is gone. So Sam, how are you feeling and how are you existing in this new ecosystem? And we're like nothing. I feel like I'm in an eternal TikTok for you page where I'm just being thrown things at me all the time and I have no control anymore. Yeah. I feel like in general, especially the last several months of Twitter and the algorithm just getting screwy, there is no one place on the internet that feels like the front page of the internet.

For a while, it used to feel like BuzzFeed was that place. Not anymore. For a while, it felt like the trending topics page on Twitter could do that. Not anymore. The algorithm is so screwy now. When I go to trending topics on Twitter, it feels nonsensical. You know, I don't know what I'm seeing in my feed. I'm fed accounts and tweets that I don't actually want.

And there's also, in the same time period, a loss of reliance on homepages of sites like the New York Times or the LA Times or CNN. So in general, I feel like the Trump of it all with Twitter is just an icing on the cake in which we've seen the last few years create this internet hub.

where there is no one-stop shop to figure out what the hell is going on with the internet. And my experience of internet because of that just feels frazzled. It feels frazzled when a few years ago it felt cohesive, if that makes sense. Yeah. Can I ask, when was kind of your beginning or what's your origin story on the internet? You know, to give you an example, when I think about my beginnings on the internet, it very much begins at AOL chat, AOL.

AIM, it's in Messenger. Chat rooms, using that, et cetera. And then also AOL's homepage where you would go and see Yahoo News pop up, all the stuff. Where do you begin your own story with internet? I mean, I think I remember using Hotmail in college, or not high school, to mail my presentations. Oh my God, Hotmail, yeah. Hotmail. And then I remember Facebook coming to my campus when I was a sophomore in college. But I think I really kind of plugged into the internet

as an early adopter of Twitter. Like I got on Twitter in like 2009 and that was kind of it for me. And I was really big on Facebook for a while. But I remember early on the algorithms for both of those platforms was really responsive to just what people were actually doing. Kind of in order. And over time, Facebook and Twitter and now even TikTok

Their algorithm moves from showing you what's going on with you and your people to showing you what they want to show you. And so with TikTok, we've seen on that platform, what used to feel like an algorithm that was really attuned to you and what you liked, now it's an algorithm trying to make sure that you see this influencer, that you see this dance, that you see this thing. And so, I don't know, I didn't answer your question at all, but I do think what we see happen is that all of these platforms start out

looking out for the concerns of their customers because they need as many as possible. And then once they get you, their priority shifts to just kind of making more money. And that happens every time. Have you been following this? Okay, so listeners have probably picked up on this. I love looking at conspiracy theories on the internet as a journalist. I like to look at them. Some of them send me spiraling. But I really like to engage with them just to see what other people are talking about. Yeah.

This does not mean I'm a QAnon person. I don't touch that. But there's an interesting, very like, kind of like the beginnings of Egypt. Like where do the pyramids come from? I'm very interested in these things. And have you been following an ongoing conversation over the past few years called the internet is dead? Do you know what I'm talking about? No, tell me. So there's this idea that with everything you're talking about, with this shift from like the internet being about people, communities coming together, from you actually using it to talk to real people,

that all the celebrities on the internet are actually dead but not real and they're all AI generated because they have enough information that they can just create things and like you don't really need a person to make them anymore it's really insane now is this part of the Avril Lavigne conspiracy theory in which people say she's dead and someone else is Avril Lavigne yes it ties into all these like some celebrities are dead and we're replacing them it ties into all of this stuff but

But what it's getting at, at its core, is that due to the over-monetization of the internet, that every influencer you see is not making content just because they love this oatmeal that they've made, but it's because the oatmeal brand has paid for them to do it that we no longer know what's real.

because we don't know what people actually want or what they're actually expressing in the world, which makes the entire internet feel very dead. And this theory was happening before Elon Musk took over Twitter and now he's just really put the final nail in the coffin. And I think what we're getting at is, you know, there was a time, for those that are old enough to know, that the internet felt like a place where there were real people on the other end. They may not have been like their actual username or whatever. It was like people that you could work with or talk to and now that feels to be gone.

Well, and it felt like we would like all find moments to talk about the same thing together. Yeah. Do you remember what color is the dress, Twitter? Yes. Do you remember llama, Twitter? Like there were these moments where it felt like the entire internet would come together in nonsense, but would come together. And now it's hard to even find what those moments might be.

The algorithm on Twitter has gotten so bad, you know, there's even discussion about how the public service that Twitter used to provide in cases of public emergency, that's over. You know, in some breaking news events with catastrophic weather or shootings or whatever, the first place journalists would go to for verifiable real information was Twitter. That's no longer, right? It's no longer. And I've

very clear memories of, you know, the San Bernardino shootings years ago, being a journalist and using Twitter. I was out there. Yeah, you were out there. I was in Chicago covering it. And you could use Twitter to be geolocative. You could zoom into an area, look at tweets. And we just understood that those were real people using their phones, tweeting, and we used that to kind of

engage with them, see what the news on the ground was like. But now, whenever we tweet anything, you and I were talking about this yesterday. It goes into the abyss. I don't know what happens to it. Or you get a response and your hidden response is, and it's porn. It's porn. I have so many porn replies in my, it's crazy. And like, this is a thing. It's like, Twitter's a private company, but in many ways it provided a public service. And Elon has forgotten all about that. On top of just like losing that,

The site's just gotten shittier. I was reading up on this last night. CNN says that the service now appears to be breaking more frequently than any time since like a decade ago. It's broken six times this year already, and it's only early April. Since Elon has taken over, the company's gone from 7,500 employees to just 2,000.

And it's like, I don't care what kind of company you're dealing with. You do that that quickly, it's going to kind of suck. It's going to kind of suck. Some other data I saw overnight was just the user rates. I have some stats in front of me that shows that, and this is according to Insider Intelligence, which is a firm, they're predicting that end of next year, 32 million users will split.

from the platform. 32 million people. Oh, yeah. And there's already data that says that since he's taken over, 9% of users here in America have left already. That's almost 1 in 10 American users that said, no, we're out. Already. He's been in charge of Twitter for just a few months. You know, there was an article from Mashable that I was reading last night that kind of summed it up for me.

And kind of goes counter to the idea that we had when he first took over that Twitter would die in a week. Not so much. This Mashable article says, quote, a giant platform like Twitter doesn't die in one fell swoop, barring a complete meltdown of the actual inner workings and servers because it's so short-staffed of engineers. If anything, Twitter will transform in drips and drabs.

becoming less fun, less usable, and more annoying. Like the social media sites of yore, it will die a slow, agonizing death. And this is the thing. It's like, that's sad enough?

But if that is one more nail in the coffin of any semblance of positive internet monoculture, I am sad about that. I'm sad about the loss of internet monoculture. That's what we're talking about. It's going away. And so I guess to end, where should people be going? Outside, touch grass. Go.

Go outside, girl. The internet's not good for us anymore. Go outside. Plant a garden. Walk a dog. When you say touch grass, what I'm also hearing from a news consumption standpoint is, you know, go out, buy news locally. Be a part of the world. Be a part of the world. Get engaged. You know, I was listening again to call back to Glennon Doyle and Michelle Obama. Yeah.

Glennon and Michelle, come on the show. This is my way of getting them to come on the show. Michelle does, you know, Mrs. Obama does say, and she does ask us to call her Michelle Obama, which is so wild to me. But anyway, she does talk about how an issue we face in this country is that we don't go out to meet our neighbors because we don't know our neighbors. And we don't want to get to know our neighbors. And thus, when someone tells us something about our neighbors, we believe them because we don't know them.

And I think what you're getting at, what I want us to get at is that we need to go and be out in the world now that the internet is no longer this reliable place where you can go and engage and find people in communities that you can trust or find reliable because that thing is shifting and we don't know what's going. But what I do know is that like, I got a neighbor down the hall I could talk to. I got people in the world I can be with. And I think that's where people who are feeling really overwhelmed by everything in the world, they feel like the algorithm is trying to send them

to like, I don't know, a mental institute because it gives them only nuclear war information like my TikTok. You got to log off and go outside. And, you know, I do think something will emerge that we can all rally around. But, you know, this is part of this grief cycle that we've been talking about with the internet. And this is kind of, I think, similar to Trump, both things, we may need to all just take a break from. Let's move on. Listen,

Don't tweet. Talk. To real people. Don't tweet. Talk. Or throw like Sam's throwing a backyard party this week. I had people over to watch Drag Race on Friday. I do think like this coming back offline is good for us. It's a good thing. Most definitely. Anyway, well with that, we're going to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with our recommendations. So stay tuned. We'll be right back.

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This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

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at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, We Are Golden. Listeners, we are back. And before we end the show, as we always do, we're going to share something that's helping us keep our vibes right or throwing us off this week. Let's start with a message from our dear friend, Saeed, who is in transit right now. Saeed Saeed

My recommendation for the week is a poetry collection titled Against Heaven by poet Kimi Alabi. I will be reading this. I'm continuing to read this on my flight. It's a great poetry collection. I started reading it last week, and I thought I would read a little bit of one of the title poems. I guess what I can tell you about this collection is to me it feels like a black queer.

queer rejection of heaven, of the afterlife, of the idea that we are supposed to suffer here on earth and suffer through this mortal life in the hopes of something better. And it's like, no, we deserve better now. And I just think, you know, hey, it's a whole vibe. So just here's a couple of lines from Kimmy's poem, Against Heaven.

If all father tells it, first you slave and shiver and shuck and die and die for heaven's around back gate to budge loose at the bent speck of you. Lies. No doors. No lines. Look right. Me and mine kissed alive, greening. Ooh!

I love that. So good. So good. I would have read the whole poem, but I don't want to be greedy. Y'all got to go out there and get the book. Anyway, that's my recommendation. Poetry serves a lot of functions, and one of the most important of them is reminding us why we're here and what we have to live for. And I think Against Heaven does that beautifully. All right. See y'all next week.

that was beautiful i love it you know i love that saeed shared that work that is not by him but i would be not me without mentioning that sy jones has been named a major award winner this morning that we can now finally talk about um for his own so he today if you google this and read an abc news breaking news actually uh sy jones won the annis field wolf prize which henry lewis gates the very famous academic personally called him and saeed missed the call just

We heard about this last week, but he missed the call from Henry Louis Gates, who then emailed him asking to talk. So we were very proud of her. So yes, read Saeed's recommendation, but also remember to buy all of Saeed Jones's books. They're just wonderful works. Saeed tweeted that when Henry Louis Gates called him, he said, hi, Saeed. It's me, Skip.

What a phone call. I love it. Congratulations to our sister. So well-deserved. So well-deserved. All right, Zach, what are you going to recommend this week? So I'm going to recommend something that I dragged my feet to see and I'm now mad I did. And it is a movie called A Thousand and One.

The movie is by A.V. Rockwell, a first-time writer, a director of a feature. She's a black woman. It's produced by Lena Waithe, who is a dear friend, and I always want to support her. But when I was at Sundance and this premiered, I just saw so many other things, and I was like, I'll see it maybe another time. And then when I went to the theater last night to see it, because it stars Teyana Taylor, who is an amazing singer, reality TV star, but I never think of her as a serious actor. I had very low expectations of

Just to be very honest for everyone. I was like, okay, I don't know. Maybe this will be good. But let me tell you, I was so emotional at the end of this movie, which is about a black mother whose child is in foster care and she does take this child out of foster care without any legal leeway to do so and raises him in a different part of New York with her own husband,

and lover. It is a really intimate portrait of a black woman and a black man growing up together in New York in the 90s as New York shifts through all its changes under Giuliani and Bloomberg and gentrification and all this stuff. So, it's a very complicated story told very simply about systems that impact black people. And I just think

It is similar to how Everything Everywhere All at Once opened early last year and became a darling later in the Oscar cycle. I think this one has the potential to be that too. I don't know if I would say it's going to win Best Picture, but I think it's a similar indie darling that deserves everyone's attention. It's really amazing. And Tiana Taylor is a force, so you should definitely check it out. I have been a fan of Tiana Taylor since the very start. I remember one of her first singles, Google Me Baby. Yes. Remember that? Oh my God, yes.

Ever since then, I was like, this girl's got the gift. She can sing. She can dance. She's very charismatic. So charismatic. Wow, she's gorgeous. She's got it. So I don't know. I wish her moment in the sun would have happened like five years ago. But if this is it, I'll accept it. She's a gift. She's been trying. I mean, she was in my sweet 16 on MTV. Do you remember this? Oh, yes. She has an episode of her turn to 16. I think it's out.

Atlanta and it's her like her big birthday party so she has been knocking on fame's door for a long time and I do think this is her breakout moment I hope it is because it did this movie got a theatrical release which I would have never expected for something like this okay Tiana I love you yeah we love you and listen her music is amazing her last album was incredible that was really good yeah well Sam what are you uh vibing with this week this is a new Netflix show coming out this week

It's called Beef. It stars Ali Wong and Steven Yeun. And it's an A24 release on Netflix, which is, it seems like a new thing. But the premise of this whole show is pretty exciting for me. And I like watching Ali Wong kind of go dramatic. So in this movie, Ali Wong and Steven Yeun play two characters who get into like,

a little confrontation in a parking lot that turns into a road rage incident where they're following each other and trying to like get each other. And then when you think that it's not going to go anywhere, one of them gets the other person's license plate info and begins to like try to exact revenge. It's not bloody and gory revenge. It's a different kind of comedic revenge, but,

But these two people who just met through road rage end up having their lives intertwined in some really interesting ways. I like this show. I like Ali. I like Steven. It is all Asian everything, like Asian excellence throughout the show. It's beautifully shot. It's A24. And I actually do think as a Los Angeles resident that we should have a national conversation about road rage because it's out of control. It's out of control.

I see it constantly. I saw it the other day leaving the theater. I think I talked about it on the show where I saw someone just ram their car into someone because they cut them off. People are upset. People are a real thing. Just to give you an example of how bad it's gotten here in LA, every few days that this will happen to me, I'll be at a stop sign, a four-way stop sign, where usually everyone stops and waits to go. A car behind me or behind some other car will just skip around and ram itself through. I've seen this happen. All the time. Yes, it is. And it's just like,

I would never like go to the movie theater and cut everyone in line for popcorn. I don't know why people think this is okay at a stop sign or whatever. People just, I don't know. I think America has a lot of unprocessed,

and grief from the pandemic years that we haven't processed and that we're letting out through the way we drive. So just for that alone, watch Beef. And Beef also sounds like it's a meditation on vengeance, which was our Donald Trump conversation. So people maybe turn off the Donald Trump rolling coverage. Watch Beef. We love it. So before we let y'all go, though, we do have breaking news. We have some news. I guess he's apparently arrested now with no handcuffs. No handcuffs. Fuck!

Must be nice. And the footage is just him shutting like tons of suburbans flying into this courthouse. So yeah. I mean, the one thing that I'm seeing that is really just eye rolling is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was interviewed by 60 Minutes this week. She out there? I think she is out there. It looks like she's somewhere, but she's being interviewed in a suburban. Nope, she is in New York, New York. She's there for him. And she was just asked about the arrest. And she says, quote, President Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history and being arrested today.

Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus was arrested and murdered. Are you kidding me? These girls are fucking insane. Oh,

Oh, buddy. See, this is why I don't want this to happen. This is what we're about to be dealing with. So turn it off. Turn it off. Go outside. Touch grass. And then watch beef on Netflix. Or go to the movies and watch 1001. Do something other than whatever the hell Marjorie Taylor Greene is telling you to do. Yeah.

On that note, let us know how you're dealing with everything. The Trump of it all. The Twitter of it all. You can always reach out via email. We're at vibecheckatstitcher.com. Vibecheckatstitcher.com. Nelson Mandela. Nelson Mandela. Jesus Christ. We got to go.

Thank you for taking time and listening to Vibe Check in this week's episode. If you love the show, which we hope you do, and you want to support us, please make sure you follow the show on your favorite podcast listening platform and tell a friend, tell another friend. Actually, bring up Vibe Check if someone asks you, what do you think about Donald Trump? Did you listen to Vibe Check? Use that as a pitch to get you out of the conversation. Huge thank you to our producer, Chantel Holder, engineer Brendan Burns, and Marcus Hom for our theme music and sound design.

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at Stitcher.com. VibeCheck at Stitcher.com. Also find us on Insta at Sam Sanders, at Zach Staff, and at The Ferocity. If you share about us on socials, use the hashtag VibeCheckPod. All right, stay tuned for another episode next Wednesday. Avoid Marjorie Taylor Greene. Please. Avoid the road rage. And turn the internet off just for a little bit. Save yourself. Touch grass. That's the same thing. Touch grass! On that note, bye! Bye. Bye.

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Every day, our world gets a little more connected, but a little further apart. But then, there are moments that remind us to be more human.

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