Alien Reply

[Johanne]

ALEXGOLDMAN: Welcome once again to "Yes, Yes, No" the segment on the show where our boss Alex Blumberg comes to us with something from the internet that he doesn't understand in the hopes that we explain it to him.

ALEX BLUMBERG: Hello. So I have, what I have is a tweet, and it is a tweet from a Twitter user named Casey Johnston. And her tweet says this: it says, "Area 51 but for going to Bret Stephens' house and calling him a bedbug."

PJ: Um, He thinks climate change is overhyped, he thinks that the epidemic of campus sexual assaults is an imaginary problem. Um, he's like, "yeah, if this were really happening, women would just not go to co-ed colleges," which is a belief that somebody can have. Um, yeah.

PJ: And people found it funny because bedbugs are super gross, and the New York Times is super fancy, and the idea of like you know these dignified, elegant journalists like scratching at their like three piece suits to get the bedbugs out, like people just enjoyed it for a day.

PJ: So, the New York Times got bedbugs, and then, this professor named Dave Karpf, who's just like associate professor, George Washington University, not somebody with like a big following online or whatever--

PJ: Associate Professor Dave Karpf wanders onto Twitter, he sees everybody making jokes, he knows that bedbugs are funny and that people don't like Bret Stephens, and he tweets "The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens."

PJ: So, so when you mention someone on Twitter, (ALEX BLUMBERG: Uh huh) you can @ them, and then they see it, and it's like a weird thing to do if you're going to insult them, and if you want to be polite you just say their name and you don't @ them, there's no reason for them to see it.

PJ: The problem is if somebody says something to you and you name search, (ALEX BLUMBERG: Mhm) if you're gonna start a fight over it, the thing has to be really bad because the first thing you're doing is admitting that you name search.

PJ: And then he sends an email to Professor Karpf and Professor Karpf's boss, the Provost of George Washington University, and says, um: "Dear Dr. Karpf, Someone just pointed out a tweet you wrote about me calling me a bedbug. I'm often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people--people they've never met--on Twitter. I think you've set a new standard."

PJ: So then Bret Stephens has like a very emotional announcement that he's leaving Twitter forever because the discourse is too toxic. (ALEX BLUMBERG: Mhm) And then he pops up the next morning on television, like he goes on MSNBC to talk about this Twitter fight.

DAVID KARPF: The key here, again, is him deciding to cc my provost, which he discussed on MSNBC and he said that he wasn't trying to get me in trouble. He just wanted my bosses to know what I was saying. Cc'ing the provost means that he's not actually inviting me over to his house. He's not actually calling for civility. He is trying to use his station in life to make clear to me at a lower station in life that I'm not supposed to make jokes about him.

PJ: The next thing that happens in this story is my favorite part of the story. So three days later, pretend you're just a normal New York Times reader. You open the op-ed section and you see that New York Times op-ed columnist Bret Stephens has written a huge piece just about the Holocaust. And there's this massive picture of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

ALEX BLUMBERG: Yeah! So wait, right. There's a whole second part to this tweet. So, so that's the Bret Stephens part. So "Area 51 but for going to Bret Stephens' house and calling him a bedbug." So, yeah, what does that mean?

TRAILER: This story is extraordinary. Especially if it's true. And it all started in the desert. Just north of Las Vegas. A local scientist who's worked at Groom Lakes/said to be where top secret weapons systems have been tested over the years.

ALEX GOLDMAN: And Joe Rogan is like really into flying saucer stuff. And I think Joe Rogan actually can sometimes be a pretty tough interviewer, (ALEX BLUMBERG: Uh huh) but like he really softballs this. He like loves UFOs so much--

ALEX GOLDMAN: And pretty cool. Um, but basically, like, UFOs were in the public consciousness this summer because of all this stuff. And so like that is what is the sort of set up for the tweet that you need to know about.

ALEX GOLDMAN: Here's another one that says, "Tomorrow's the day. Godspeed, you majestic warriors." (ALEX BLUMBERG: Mhm) And it's like a computer rendered image (PJ laughs) of a giant alien that's shackled and there's like all these people Naruto running in front of it.

ALEX GOLDMAN: So, so this video, it opens, uh, with like a, like a panning shot of the front gate of Area 51 and it's flying an American flag with an alien instead of stars and there's like a sleeping guard and it pans to his cell phone and it's a text from Lil Naz X that says, "We comin for you, bruh."

ALEX GOLDMAN: So, uh, by the time that the Lil Naz X video is released, this like Facebook page that Matty Roberts made as a joke for himself has millions of people on it saying, "Yes, we're going to go to Area 51, and we're going to storm it and find the alien technology."

ALEX GOLDMAN: So he decided he was going to do like a, a music festival that would try and move the crowd away from Area 51 toward this like music festival (ALEX BLUMBERG: Mhm) which he was calling Alienstock.

SRUTHI: Yeah, so everybody on the show knows this about me. I'm always trying to sneak like dance music into Reply All episodes. Um, if you ever hear like crazy techno that just before the break, know that was me.

TRICK: when Duvalier was trying to take over Haiti and mistreating the Zoes, they worked their way to Miami as well. And the Jamaicans had their sections, it was like, we all went to school together.

When Throw the D started to pop off, the 2 Live Crew were a duo. There was Mr Mixx on the decks, crafting the beats, and producing the records. And there was Fresh Kid Ice on the mic, spitting rhymes. But Mr Mixx figured that the band could be even better if they added an additional MC. And he knew just the right person.

Shortly after moving to Miami, the group started to work on a song called Move Something. It would take all of the things they were seeing and hearing and doing in Miami and stir them into a thumping bass track.

So Mixx had the beat, he had the hook, now the song needed some lyrics. That was where Marquis and Ice came in. As soon as they heard the song they knew their rhymes had to be dirty ... and they swung for the fences.

3a8082e126