August 13, 2024 • 64 mins
This summer, a fish named Alice fell from the sky and directly into the lawn of junior doctor Ben Beska. And so, of course, he tweeted about it... only to lose his newly beloved fish just a week later. What followed was what it looks like to go viral in 2024. Jamie speaks with Ben Beska over the course of two months to track the journey; plus, we talk to Stanford psychiatrist Dr. Elia Aboujaoude to learn what going viral has the potential to do to your mind.
Follow Ben's fish adventures here: https://x.com/Beska
Buy Dr. Aboujaoude's new book, A Leader's Destiny, here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/elias-aboujaoude/a-leaders-destiny/9781541703018/?lens=publicaffairs
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I wish I could tell you that frantically looking up
incidents of fish falling from the sky cracks the top
ten of the most demented internet wormholes I've ever gone down.
But you know that's not true. Still, I am thrilled
to report to you that there's not one, not two,
but at least six stories about fish falling from the
sky that I can talk about off the top of
(00:26):
my damn head. Australia twenty ten and a small town
in Australia Northern Territory called Lajamanu, a councilor announced to
the community that there was a huge storm coming, but
did not announce that that storm would consist of both
rain and live fish.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Oops.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
The fish were pretty small, about the width of two fingers.
But when fish are falling from the sky and they're
landing on the ground still alive, there really is no
sense in being a size queen about it, right, And
residents in this area claims that this had happened two
other times in the last fifty years and there's actually
natural precedent for this, with the reasoning that tornadoes can
(01:05):
pull water and fish from hundreds of miles away from
their point of origin. It's like the recent Glen Powell
documentary Twisters. Next example, Texas, Arcana, Texas, twenty twenty one,
on New Year's Eve, Eve, East Texas residents reported seeing
fish falling from the sky dead ones this time, I
fear scattered across pavement, and the city itself announced that
(01:29):
quote unquote animal rain, which is a thing that quote
unquote animal rain happens when quote small water animals like frogs, crabs,
and small fish are swept up in water spouts or
drafts that occur on the surface of the earth. They
are then rained down at the same time as the rain.
While it's uncommon, it happens, as evidenced in several places
(01:51):
in Texarkana today unquote Texas. Bless my text and listeners.
You already have to deal with the brunt of the
far hog population, and now this not even the dignity
of live fish. And I could keep going. The list
of raining fish locations goes on and on. And there's
been an uptick of reports in the last fifteen years.
(02:13):
And this could be for a number of reasons. It
could be a rise in interest in reporting such things.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
It could be increased.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Access to personal technology, to share such incidents. It could
very likely be a creepy side effect of global warming,
or a combination of all three, but whatever the cause,
there have been reported cases of either living or dead
fish raining from the sky reported in Sri Lanka, India, Eviopia, Pennsylvania, Tempico, California,
(02:42):
the Philippines and Honduras since twenty twelve and today on
sixteenth minute, what if I was like today we're talking
about bean Dad. Note today we are talking to and
with a very recent air of Internet characters of the day.
One human one fish, either koy or gold depending on
(03:03):
who you ask, was found on a sunny spring afternoon
in Manchester, England. A cardiology resident named Ben Beska looked
outside his bedroom window and saw a wriggling orange shape
on his lawn. He went downstairs, and, as a man
in his early thirties, he brought his phone with him
on autopilot, prepared to update his friend group text in
the event that anything interesting happened. Listener, something interesting happened.
(03:27):
What waited for Ben Beska on the lawn was a
large goldfish in pretty rough shape, you could say due
to the whole not being underwater thing, but also from
the impact of what seemed to be a pretty significant fall.
Ben pokes the fish gently and it moves.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
She's alive.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
She's having the worst day of her life, and he's
a doctor. He's gonna try and save her. Ben scoops
the fish into his hand and runs her into his kitchen,
looking around to find tools to improvise a fish tank with.
He's never had fish before. He's got cats, and that's
more or less the opposite. Thinking quickly, he grabs an
(04:05):
empty freezer drawer and fills it with water, popping the
injured fish inside. She's not doing great. She's shedding scales,
but to Ben's surprise, she starts to swim again. Confident
that he can now take a breath, he hits the
group chat It's Alice. He fumbles into a text, not
realizing the second word of his sentence has been auto corrected.
(04:28):
He meant to write it's alive, but Ben's friends confirm
his gut instinct. For the first time in recorded history,
autocorrect did something right. The fish's name would be Alice,
and a guy who to that point had been a
cardiology meme posting swifty on Twitter, couldn't wait to tell
his followers all about it, he tweets on June first,
(04:51):
twenty twenty four. But the real show here is the
picture attached. It's Alice the Giant. I'm just gonna say, goldfish.
It's better fish Twitter can come for me. In the photo,
Alice the goldfish is plopped helplessly on a lush green lawn.
Ben captions the photo.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So today I found a goldfish just on the grass
in my back garden. It was alive, I think, and
I have absolutely no idea where it came from. There's
no ponds anywhere near, so I took it inside, and.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
In one tweet a legend was born. Ben the Doctor
and Alice the Goldfish that fell from the sky. Your
sixteenth minute starts now. Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the
(06:24):
show where we take a look at the main characters
of the Internet and see what they show us about ourselves,
and occasionally, the show where I covertly share more about
my personal life than is responsible. I've been working on
this episode for almost two months now, and it's going
to be our first in real time story of virality,
A bit of a case study of a flash in
the pan viral moment and how this attention can affect
(06:47):
a main character in nearly real time and quick aside,
for everyone who's sent along requests about the Hawktua girl,
you're not getting that episode yet. It's way too soon.
But the sensation is kind of an outlier on today's Internet.
For most people that get sucked into the algorithm these days,
this kind of longevity is pretty fleeting.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
The get so famous.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
You spark a week's long culture war route of fame
was not Ben Beska's destiny, in part because the story
is really different, but also because Ben is a working professional.
He's in his thirties, and this chance encounter with Alice
and a subsequent online fame has to fit into his life.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Not the other way around.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
And in these far more common cases, if something is
even a little off, like maybe the person is too
busy with their normal life to really commit to the
new lifestyle that the algorithm is foisting upon them. Maybe
their interest in other things dilutes and confuses a potential
audience and they move on. Maybe the person who goes
viral is burdened by the question do I even want
(07:52):
to be this guy? And that's why Ben and Alice
the Goldfish is such an interesting story to me. This
story the makings of a fable. So today we're going
to talk to Ben about the profound weirdness that takes
hold in someone's life when the Internet decides that you
are this guy now actually, And then we're going to
talk to a psychologist who's been studying how virality affects
(08:15):
the brain and psyche for decades to give us a
better idea of what Ben was really going through. So
come with me, if you will to June twenty twenty four.
Maybe you remember it, an American presidential debate asks the
question who is more dead? Furiosa is bombing at the
box office and everyone's afraid to say that it was
because it was a little mid And in Newcastle, England,
(08:39):
a young doctor looked out his window to see that
a fish named Alice had fallen from the sky. So
where do we leave off with this story? Ben finds
Alice and discovers her name via a typo in a
friend group chat, but doesn't post about it to his
Twitter account right away. He's a doctor, bibe, He's got
a life to save. So once Alice is safely in
(09:00):
a freezer drawer and Ben's cats are locked in a
separate room. He books it to the nearest pet store
and grabs a small tank to tide Alice over until
he figures out what to do next. And while she
was in rough shape when he found her, Alice seems
to be rallying a little bit. Within two hours, Ben
has all but brought our orange fin girl back from
the dead. And at at this point that he starts tweeting.
(09:23):
So let's hear the tweet that started it all one
more time, captioned with a picture of a helpless Alice
in the grass.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So today I found a goldfish just on the grass
in my back garden. It was alive, I think, and
I have absolutely no idea where it came from. There's
no pawns anywhere near, so I took it inside.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Now, this is the tweet of a man who knows
how a viral thread begins, and unlike many attempted viral threads,
Ben's story has the narrative juice to trickle into today's
Twitter algorithm. And while I could not explain to you
what the endgame of Twitter's current iteration is, I do
know that its algorithmically driven platform was absolutely the reason
(10:05):
Alice the goldfish came into my life. I first saw
Ben's tweets the day after this saga began. So Ben's
thread continues, accompanied by carefully documented pictures and videos. He
tweets it was.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Alive, although not very happy in an old freezer draw
much happier in an actual and hastily bought tank. Anyway,
I have a fish now thumbs up emoji for me.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
This last tweet is the money shot. Two posts after
being found fallen from the sky on his lawn, there's
a video of Alice the goldfish swimming along happily in
a small aquarium.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
It's a cartoon.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And before you ask, how did a fish fall from
the sky, look, I can't guarantee an answer. I'm all
out of answers. How Alice got there is between Alice
and God. But of course this is the first question
that a lot of Twitter users have, and we immediately
have this class exploit in opinion. We have the likely
explanation of how Alice fell from the sky, which Ben Beska,
(11:06):
most media outlets and a couple of naturalists on Twitter
have subscribed to. And there are the unhinged conspiracy theories.
Here is the likely reason quoted here from BBC News.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Doctor Besker suspected a bird had picked up the fish
from a nearby pond and dropped it while carrying it away. However,
he said there are no ponds close by, and he
thought it must therefore have traveled a quote reasonable distance
end quote.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Basca continued in the same piece.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
It's been quite funny. Some of the comments are really
quite funny, and about a thousand people said they thought
a bird dropped it.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Look, I'm not too proud to admit that I first
read this story and was like what And then I
read that Ben Besco lived near a body of water
and a bird almost certainly caught and then dropped alice,
and I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense for me.
This explanation made the whole story less mysterious and more
(12:04):
of a Pixar movie I would watch. But remember, this
is Twitter. We're talking about a place where for every
post there's an equal and opposite conspiracy post, and honestly
a place where it's not completely unreasonable to doubt that
a narrator is just doing something for attention. Patterns of
lying for clout are super common on social media and
(12:25):
have produced some of my favorite memes of all time.
I'm talking Ruth Konda forever, I'm talking cinnamon toos shrimp.
The list goes on. And with that in mind, here
are the conspiracy theories about Ben and Alice. People who,
for what I can tell, assume that Ben bought a goldfish,
threw it on his lawn, and took a picture of
(12:46):
it in hopes that the Twitter algorithm would swallow it whole.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
The tweet says, so this is fake and I'm contributing.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Sorry, but this is just really misguided to me. Ben
Beska until this point has been a terminally online but
pretty keeping in his own lane kind of poster. He
would tweet frequently, but it was mainly memes and observations
about the medical world, about Taylor Swift, and about boy
genius communities he was already a part of, and from
(13:13):
what I can tell, most of his interactions prior to
Alice's arrival from either a bird Heaven or Besca's own
evil plan, or people he'd already spoken with before. So
do I think this guy's a con artist? No, I don't.
I think he's a very online guy in his thirties.
But surprisingly, while there is this paranoia that Ben faked
the Alice story at first. Those theories die out pretty
(13:36):
quickly as the story gained mainstream media and the likely
cause of the bird dropping Alice seemed to make sense
to more people than not. No, the true controversy of
this story has to do with, wait for it, the
aquarium community. For fuck's sake, here's what they had to say.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You can remove the big bushy plant for more space.
That guy will need at least a twenty gallon tank.
That's the pond variety, so it's not going to be
happy in a small space.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
A tank needs time to cycle properly in order to
process fish waste. You can buy bacteria to help speed
up the process, but in the meantime, make sure you
do very frequent water changes with properly treated water in
order to keep it alive.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
You, guys, I'm gonna hold my tongue here. I cannot
get canceled by the aquarium community today.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
No.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Part of what's interesting to me about this story is
the raw speed that it moves with, in part because
ben Beska is interacting with people about Alice on Twitter
in basically real time and pushing the algorithm within hours,
and ben Beska finds himself bending off criticisms from aquarium
aficionados on the same day that he finds Alice. June first,
(14:51):
he hastily continues this original, increasingly viral thread. At present,
it has over two hundred thousand likes. He continues this
every general dread with defenses of this small fish tank
you bought in haste, saying.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Repeat after me, a hastily bought temporary tank is better
for a goldfish than laying dead in the grass.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Folks. You hate to see it, But the aquarium community
clearly got to Ben, and he tweets later in the
day as he continues to observe Alice the goldfish, and
I can hear the aquarium community grumbling she's a coyfish,
but she's a goldfish to me, Ben continues.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
You happen to find a mostly dead goldfish on your
lawn and tweet about saving its life, and your applies
are filled with people saying you should have planned this better.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
So Ben does get some hate, but that is vastly
outdone by the effusive love and praise at this pretty
charming story. Most users are incredibly charmed and stoked about this,
and it seems like Alice the goldfish is poised to
become a modern classic Internet animal. She's got the potential
(15:59):
of a grumpy cat, of a Marnie the dog, of
a yon cat. The list goes on because there is
a sort of playbook to make these kinds of things
happened once the public is excited about an animal that's
either extremely adorable or has a really compelling story, and
almost right away that seems where this story is headed.
The story goes viral around the UK in the first
(16:21):
three days of June. Mystery as Live Doctor finds goldfish
in garden Junior Doctor goes viral after rescuing live fish
from garden, lawn and Newcastle. I found a goldfish seconds
from death in my garden. Now I'm keeping it as
my pet. And here's the singular point where Ben and
Alice Besca and the Hawktua Girl converge. They're both very
(16:42):
amenable to speak with the press, and they appear to
respond to reporters very quickly. Ben gives interviews to a
number of different places, and while most are just rehashing
the story of discovering Alice, anyone hoping to find out
how Alice was doing now could follow Ben on Twitter,
updates were coming fast and furious. In the next couple days,
(17:03):
he provided updates on not just Alice, but on.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
His aquarium journey.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Early on, he tweets back and forth with an aquarium
company that offers him free advice and even better, a
free aquarium. Next critical to the viral internet pet phenomenon,
a separate account pops up for Alice the Goldfish. Her
handle is at Alice Besca. She quote tweets a picture
Ben posted of Alice the Goldfish in that small tank
(17:31):
with this little zinger emergency.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Has it not so bad?
Speaker 6 (17:35):
I guess?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
But fuck me, this studio fat is kind of small.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Then she replies to Ben.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Got anything bigger love?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Immediately Ben starts interacting with the alis Basca account. So
at the time I made assumptions, and even I ended
up messing this up. I assumed that this was Ben
talking to an account pretending to be Alice that he
had created himself. When it turns out that just a
daily this account had been created by a fan of Alice,
(18:04):
so free of charge, this fan was already performing the
next step in creating an iconic Internet animal, creating a
specific editorial voice which sounds super corny, but think of
an Internet animal you like. In most cases, there is
a specific kind of caption that you'll read for a
familiar animal, and Alice Besca's voice was lovingly antagonistic toward
(18:29):
Ben's incompetence as a new fish owner, making in jokes
that people who had been following the whole saga could appreciate. Then,
another step on the journey to engage fans in making
Alice a legitimate Internet pet, Ben launches a gofund me
to help fund the aquarium equipment he needs.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Here's what he.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Posts now, apparently I need a bigg a tank and
chemicals another random things that apparently a fish needs. At
least that's what everyone on Twitter is saying. I would
appreciate your help in helping me find a nice at home.
My amazing story has also been covered in the news
read more in The Evening Standard, The Guardian, or The Mirror.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Things chug along like this for a couple days, with
Ben Beska's account providing updates on Alice as fan art
and puff pieces continue to roll in paintings, memes. A
high coup for Alice the Goldfish who Lived. Twitter was
incredulous when Alice met Ben. The Alice Besca account is
(19:28):
posting regularly, and by June fifth, just four days after
this all began, Ben tweets.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Hey, Alis Besca, do you want a boyfriend or a
sister slash brother?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Enter Barney, a blackfish who arrives. On June sixth, the
Alice account quote tweets a picture of Barney and captions
it goth BF. By this time, there's also merch. On
June fifth, the Alice account, not Ben himself, launches a
tentative merch store consisting of multiple Alice designs. At this point,
(20:00):
it feels clear that Ben Besca wants to make this
a thing. I first got in touch with Ben on
June fourth. I was on top of it, and we
planned to speak on June sixth, but then he went quiet,
and not just in our chat, but on social media
all together. And I assume that was because he's still
a junior doctor and said that he was going to
(20:22):
be attending a conference pretty soon, and that was true,
but that's not why he went quiet. What happened was
Alice died. And Okay, maybe this is corny, but I
saw this song referenced by many Alice fans when the
news originally broke. So we are going to get the
karaoke track from Candle in the Wind Bumping in Alice's memory.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Full drama.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Hmm, beautiful.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
It's the classic for a reason. Ben broke his silence
on Twitter on June eighth.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Unfortunately, I have some very sad news to share. Alice
has passed from her injuries and is now interentally swimming
in the big fish tank in the sky rip. Alice
is now the fish that lived for a.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Bit, and the cynical among us thought, well, this really
fucks up the Pixar story. And I've thought about this
a ridiculous amount because it is really sad. But I
also think it's kind of beautiful, right because if Ben
hadn't found her, Alice would have died a week earlier,
and through the combination of a strange twist of feet
(21:32):
in a loose jawed predatory bird, Ben Besca was able
to give Alice the goldfish another week of life that
was spent in comfort, with adoration and good food and
a new friend, Barney, and unbeknownst to Alice, worldwide notoriety.
I think it's really sweet and I'm weak. It didn't
(21:54):
make me cry, but this is a show about social media,
not our capacity to thighs with dead fish. So my
curiosity was how did Ben, the Alisbasca account, and the
press handle this tragic development. After the death announcement from Ben,
Alice's story gets another small.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Bump in mainstream media.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Man who adopted fish he found in his garden shares
sad update, and then Ben is left to figure out basically,
does he try to keep this thing going in the
wake of a pet he's slowly fallen in love with
dying or does he just go back to who he
was a week ago. First, he amplifies the public mourning
of Alice, the memorial drawings of her being welcomed into
(22:40):
the Great Cooy Pond in the sky, a drawing of
Steve Irwin's angel telling Alice you did great girl, her
photo edited onto the cover of Elton John's Candle in
the Wind. The Alis Besca account posts.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Do not fear death so much, but rather the you're
not a good life.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It all feels fitting, and then the Alice Basca account
keeps tweeting. June twelfth, Alice quote tweets Ben posting fan
art of her saying.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Im g look at me slaying posthumously. June fourteenth, three
days until the T shirt. Shit, I'm so excited for
everyone to get their shirts.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
June twenty first, when Ben posts a picture of the
new massive gifted fish tank that Alice didn't live long
enough to enjoy.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Wow, He's moved on quick.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Because by this time Ben Beska has chosen the direction
he's going in. He's doubling down on fish. At the
time of Alice's death, the free fish tank was already
in the mail, and he'd already gotten her a goth
BF in the form of Barney. So after taking some
time to mourn Alice at a UK Taylor Swift aerostour
that he'd had tickets to for months, he seems to
(23:49):
decide to keep going. By mid June, Ben had to
wonder Carrie Bradshaw voice, what does he do after Alice?
On June eighteenth, less than two weeks after Alice's premature death,
I asked him just that our interview when we come back,
(24:21):
welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm getting dangerously close to
becoming a train guy, and today we're talking about junior
doctor Ben Beska and Alice the goldfish who fell from
the sky. And as much as I would like to
interview Alice myself, I am at present unable to communicate
with fish, and also she's dead. Given these barriers to entry,
(24:41):
I instead decided to reach out to the fish poster himself,
Ben Vesca.
Speaker 7 (24:46):
So.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I actually interviewed Ben Wewiss this episode once on June eighteenth,
while this story was still developing, and then over a
month later in late July. You don't need me to
tell you that a month can be u Alexies apart
when it comes to viral stories. Before we first talked
over Zoom just a few days after Alice the Fish
(25:06):
passed away. Besco was both very receptive to talk to
me and the press in general, but was kind of
hard to pin down because it's not like becoming the
goldfish guy meant that he quit his extremely demanding job
working as a cardiology resident at an English hospital. But
I kept bugging him because I'm really good at that,
and when we found time to catch up, he was
in good humor and understandably a little overwhelmed from the
(25:29):
events of the week. Here is our chat from June.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Who are you then, Deska.
Speaker 7 (25:36):
So I'm from England, from Newcast so I've been a doctor.
I don't know a long time now. I can't remember
being a doctor for a while. I studied in Newcastle,
went to Medicol to Newcastle, stayed in Newcastle. My number
one hobby is now keeping fish, but prior to last
week that was not my main hobby. I mainly used Twitter. Actually,
(25:56):
I mean, as you say, you look through it and
there was a very minimal fish content on it.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Yeah, there's a huge pivot moment.
Speaker 7 (26:02):
There's a pivot. There's a big pervot mainly used it
for medicine stuff, basically stuff sprinkled with bits of you know,
Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridges and artists like that, which
I like. But it was a big, big pivot recently
to fish. And I think now there's like twenty thousand
(26:26):
extra people following me, all who care about fish. So
I've had to change my you know, what I talk
about significantly anything that isn't fish related. Effectively, I get
lots of abuse for not being fish related. Really already,
I mean, Tom, I assume it's tongue in cheek abuse. Yeah,
(26:47):
who knows. But I sent a tweet about some boring
medicine stuff. People reply saying, oh, yes, but what's this
got to do with the fish?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Okay, I want to talk about that in a bit
of like how when you become notorious for one thing
that all of a sudden that is like the yardstick,
that it's.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
Like your entire personality.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Now, well, before we.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Get there, you want to be taken through this biblical
event of finding Alice.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
It was June first.
Speaker 7 (27:14):
So I was when was I think. I was upstairs
initially in my house, and I heard mag eyes, you know, squawking,
was like, what the hell is going on? And I
saw this gold thing on the lawn. So I went downstairs,
went outside, and there was a fish on the floor
in the grass. I didn't really understand what was happening,
(27:37):
no kidding, And she wasn't moving. She was just kind
of like still on the floor. And I was like, oh, right,
the dead fish. Fine, don't ask him any questions. So
I took a picture of the fish being because no,
I knew no one would believe me, you know, when
I said there was a fish on the on the floor,
and I sent the photo to my friend and I said,
there's a fish in the garden, and I was like,
what are you talking about? But then the fish moved,
(27:58):
it gills moved, but she was thin. They breathe, which
she was suffocating, really, wasn't she?
Speaker 2 (28:03):
So yeah?
Speaker 7 (28:06):
And I was like, oh God, but what do I
do in this situation? So when I ran inside and
I just put the sink on, filled up the think
and picked up by a tail, run inside and it
started doing a classic fish thing, the fish fly. I
was like bloody and it was gross because it was
like slimy and it was a fish. It was alive,
you know.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (28:24):
So threw threw her in the seak and I mean
she was kind of still and not really moving. I mean,
it was a fish. I fell on the lawn. I
need some kind of container to put her in. I
found a freezer draw which was a number, you know,
I don't know. It was the only container I could
think to put something so large and filled up with water.
Put the fish in and it wasn't really moving still.
(28:46):
I kind of like tapped the box and then it
started swimming around and amongst the water was you know,
loads of scales that I think had probably fallen off
a whatever trauma leader to you know, my back garden.
You know, that's a story of how I found the
fish and the first two minutes of her second life.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
You've got Alice in the free search drawer. She's slowly
coming to what is the distance To.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
Clarify, because numerous people actually thought this, she wasn't actually
in the freezer, the freezer draw side of the freezer.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
I think that was clear in your video.
Speaker 8 (29:24):
It was.
Speaker 7 (29:25):
I think it was very clear. But people on Twitter,
you know, you know how the internet is.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
What is the amount of time between finding Alice, getting
her into a receptacle and sharing it online?
Speaker 7 (29:38):
Probably half an hour. So I put the fish in
the drawer. I left the house to go to the
neary shop to buy a fish tank or something better
than the drawer, you know, because I know the fish
need you know, chemicals or something. I know a lot
more now about that, but I knew that basically that
fish needed some kind of chemicals. I literally went to
the closer shop, bought a tank, bought some chemicals, came home,
(30:00):
put it in that tank. I think at that point
I tweeted about it. I mean, within the first half
an hour or so. It's you know, my normal friends
that you tweet, you know that the normal medical twitter people.
Then it's sort of snowballs and snowballs and snowballs, and
it goes mad maybe within half an hour an hour,
so you can't track how large it gets because you
know every second there's twenty notifications and you can't keep
(30:23):
track of anything.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Had you ever been through anything like it?
Speaker 7 (30:26):
No, I thought I'd achieved something like this with a
Nobel prize or some kind of genuine achievement. But no, no,
it's a fish.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
So the story blows up.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Something I noticed early on there was a lot of
or not a lot of, but at least some doubt
cast onto the story.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
What was the nature of that, and like, how did
you handle it?
Speaker 7 (30:47):
Yeah? So I think the first doubt there was people
suggesting that I went out bought a fish, a large goldfish,
and I don't know if you can buy them when
they're big, put it on the lawn, like, battered around
a bit, ripped a few of its, you know, took
somewhere the scales off, and then posted on the internet,
which makes no sense at all, is completely illogical. I mean,
(31:09):
I believe they probably think the Earth is flat as well.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
My internet brain says like, there's just enough evidence, not
in this story, but that people will do wild shit
for a story that gets absurd levels of engagement.
Speaker 7 (31:25):
The thing about the Internet is that anyone that has
grown up on the Internet knows you have to approach
anything with a load of skepticism, because nothing is true
on the internet, is it. But this story I think
is so obscene that it's almost not scriptable. It's just
so bunkers. Why would I make that up? Why would
anyone make that up? But then everyone else actually pivoted.
(31:46):
I mean everyone's an expert on the internet, as you know.
I was then told that the tank was too small.
So the fish that was dead, well, I don't know,
semi dead, was put into a tank of water, and
apparently that tank was not good enough, and I was
actually told by someone that the fish would have been
better on the lawn.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Oh my god, wherey.
Speaker 7 (32:04):
Normal people are on the internet, doesn't it.
Speaker 9 (32:06):
People were saying, you know, you needed a thirty forty
to fifty gallon tank, and I was like, why would
I have that much water stored in a receptor just
just in case a fish appeared?
Speaker 7 (32:18):
If I was prepared, like very good evidence, I would
have put the fish on the lawn.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
That's true. Yes, it would be like, oh and he
just happened to happen.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
What was your relationship to the internet, you know, before
this incident.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
Well, I kind of grew up on the internet, you know,
typical many or chronically online, and I understand the nuances
of the Internet.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
What is the next step?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
At what point are you like, we got to start
out as an account, like where do you go from there?
Speaker 7 (32:46):
So I actually didn't start that account really really, it's
one of the people on med Twitter isn't me started
it as a joke, obviously as a joke. It's truly,
it is truly brilliant. It's a very good idea. I
think it's even more funny that I didn't set the
accoun The tweets coming from that account have been actually
very funny. You read they are very good.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It's only the other person who's run the account. Yeah, yeah,
she has her own social media teape.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
That's wild.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yeah, because it felt like growing up online as well.
You know you see famous Internet animals and how there's
like a like a voice curated for them.
Speaker 7 (33:20):
Yeah, and so he's not me, not me.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So in the meantime, as she is becoming a main
character unbeknownst to her. What are the next steps with Alice?
You've got her in the smaller tank. People are giving
you shit what happens next?
Speaker 7 (33:33):
But put all the chemicals in and remove the chemicals
you're not meant to have. I don't want to talk
too much about that because then it becomes like a
fish care podcast, which I.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Think, yeah, that might be all good.
Speaker 7 (33:44):
Set up a tank and make sure the tank was okay,
and then I had to go to a conference with you. There.
It was very anxious time leaving this newly found half
dead fish in a tank.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
He had a camera right brilliant to keep an eye on.
Speaker 7 (33:56):
To keep an eye what it was. It was like
a camera from like just a normal you know, like
a security camera thing. I moved Pep and I on
the level of anxiety that leads to that.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
But we no, I mean, it's I'd be interested to hear.
Speaker 7 (34:10):
It's just law, isn't it. I'm not sure. I'm not
sure that's the term, you know, like it's just I
don't know. I mean, I don't know how to define.
It is a weird circumstance that I found this fish lived,
But then I had to leave the house and I
didn't like that. I'd rather care for the fish in
a weird way make sure she doesn't die. She didn't
(34:30):
at that time.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
You did get to see her again, Yes.
Speaker 7 (34:34):
Yeah, yes, I came home and fine.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
So while you're at this conference, do people know that
you're the guy or is it like you're being normal
Ben at this conference and secretly, you know, checking your
fish camera.
Speaker 7 (34:47):
I mean I was being normal Ben, but everyone knew.
And it was very embarrassing really because at this point
it hit like the national media and the media actually
and people had seen it and people have said, oh,
I saw this in the Guardian. It's almost surreal the situation.
It's difficult to explain how you get to the point
(35:10):
of people you've not met reading about you in an
actual newspaper about a fish you've had on the floor.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
It's a weird story.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
But I So there's a series of things that happen.
It seems like Alice moves into a bigger tank, she
gets a boyfriend, there's a merch store, there's a GoFundMe
take me through this series of days. It's so much happened.
Speaker 7 (35:33):
So the first thing that happened was a go fund me,
and that was because I had maybe one thousand people
tell me the tank was too small, and I was like,
all right, fine, I'll buy a new tank in because
that's what the Internet tells me to do. But then
looking at fish tanks, they're so expensive and I was like, well,
I can't justify spending you know, two three hundred quid.
So I made this go for me. Mainly, it was
(35:53):
mainly aimed at the people who will giving me shit
saying you should get a bigger tank if you care
about animals. I was like, well, thank you very much,
you do it. But that actually got a lot of traction.
I got a lot of a lot of money donated
to that. But then a company called Fluvial, well known
fish company, but I didn't I don't know this. I
didn't know this at the time messaged me and said, oh,
(36:14):
we can give you a tank for Alice. And I
was like, oh, that's nice, that's good. So I didn't
need the money on the go for me after all.
So I rough unded all that back and they gat
And you know, you're on the internet and you asked
for advice about stuff, and people give you loads of
ship whereas this email. There was this bloke at this
company that I was emailing and you know, stupid questions
about fish I didn't know the answer to, but which
were patently stupid. I would email and ask him and
(36:36):
held answered me and you know, give me actual advice
rather than telling me I'm an idiot for not having
a tank set up the MERRG. I actually bought all
of those T shirts. I think it's shipping soon. That
was that wasn't set up by me. That was set
up by Alice the fish aunt Alice mainly as a
tongue in cheek thing because people get asking for it,
but then people including me, bought stuff from it.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Yes, I emerged from your own fish.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
That's great, but I think that ships soon. So I've
got a T shirt with a picture of half dead
fish on.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
And then Barney came into the mix. How did Barney
come into the mix?
Speaker 7 (37:13):
I imagine I know nothing about fish, but I imagine it's
lonely to be a fish in a tank on your
own without a mate. So I went to shop and
bought a new fish to go along with Alice. I
picked Barney. I'm not sure why I picked the name Barney,
but I think he kind of suited him. And I
realized I'm accidentally naming these fish tropical iphoons in terms
of like the age.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 8 (37:36):
The next fish, I think, all sudden done.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
You had Alice for about a week, right, a week? Yeah,
tell me about her, tell me about like this weird experience.
Speaker 7 (37:47):
It's kind of the odd thing about it is that
it's given me a really like a new hobby out
of nowhere. And I've got a weird connection to this
stupid fish now Barney, I mean, because of the relationship
that I then found on the law. Right, But you'd
think that fish didn't have personalities, but you kind of
notice things about them. It's me projecting my own you know,
(38:10):
like my own care about these fish, you know, onto
the fish arm. So I'm going to keep Barney, obviously,
I'm not going to kill him. Alice's memory in this
bigger tank, and then get you know, get him some
mates to keep him company. So it's the start of
a beautiful hobby. Can you say, a beautiful hobby?
Speaker 2 (38:28):
When Alice passed away, did you just did you find her?
Speaker 4 (38:32):
One morning? What happened?
Speaker 7 (38:33):
Yeah? So I found her. She was just in the
tank in the morning, like in a typical fishy way,
like floating in the tank. It actually upset me, to
be fair, because I was like, why you only know
this fish for a week? And I think I think
it's a concept that it was nearly dead or maybe dead,
and I saved her and then she died. I just died.
Despite that, it's a bit like, oh, you know, like
(38:53):
you tried and failed, and it's a bit sad.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
But you didn't fail though I don't know.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
I mean, that's like part of what I was a
random person online that was very moved by this because
it was just like you, you gave this creature a
lovely last week of their life.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
That's so it was really kind.
Speaker 7 (39:12):
And I suppose it's nicer to again I don't know,
but I suppose it's nicer to die in a tank
than it is on the lawn.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
I think within minutes when you when you posted that
she'd passed away and there is a huge outpouring.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
What was what was that like?
Speaker 7 (39:27):
It was nice? Actually, it seems like I mean, there's
a lot of funny responses because it's the best way
to deal with sadness is to take the piss, which
is good. I enjoyed it. But the fact that the
story is like resonated a bit and it's made people happy.
You know, it's a wholesome story, isn't it. It's a
bit of a sad end, it's still a wholesome.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Story, it is.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yeah, the fan art was there's so much of it,
first of all, and it was very sweet.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
And then you went to a Taylor Swift concert and
I went to a.
Speaker 7 (39:57):
Taylor Swift concert, the traditional way to send off a fish.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
On the internet side, I want to go back to
what you were talking about at the beginning, where now
it's like, how big did your online audience grow in.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
The space of this very chaotic week with Alice?
Speaker 7 (40:12):
I think maybe ten to fifteen thousand. I mean I
only had I think, like five thousand to start with.
But yeah, so I've gained fifteen thousand people that care
only about fish.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Now where do you go from here?
Speaker 7 (40:25):
I'm opening a branded set of pet shops. No, No,
I don't know. I mean I'm gonna I mean, Barney's
obviously still here. I imagine people still want to hear
some updates about that fish that's salad fish, his new
friends called CD except well when they finally get there.
But still every tweet I make that isn't about fish
(40:48):
gets a lot of fish for bliind. So you know,
it's a bit like you've got to give the audience
what they.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Want, more fish content to come.
Speaker 7 (40:56):
Yeah, it's more fish content to come. Yeah. The path
of polase resistance wasn't it? Just continue on that and
it's easier than writing it.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Thank you so much to Ben. We'll be hearing more
from him soon. And when we come back, I consult
an expert to ask the follow up question. Most of
you were too cowardly too. What does becoming the fish
guy do to your brain? Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
(41:32):
When I was in fifth grade, my class inexplicably did
a production of Hamlet, and I got to play Hamlet,
but only acts one through three. So I got to
do Hamlet up until I killed Polonius, and then Katya
Andrad just did the rest of it. We were both
really good, And today we are talking about a fish
that fell from the sky and derailed the life of
(41:53):
a junior doctor. So after I spoke with Ben Baska,
I kept an eye on his posts, and sure enough,
by fish empire has continued to grow. Less than two
months after Alice. The man has over fifteen fish, a
whole ass ecosystem, and the tank has a golden decal
on the side that reads the Alice Memorial Tank and
(42:16):
is flanked by fan art from her Brief, Beautiful Week
with Ben. Ben's story felt like a great opportunity to
ask something that I've been wondering about since this show began.
What does going viral do to you psychologically? There's no
definitive answer, but psychologists have been studying this for decades
at this point, and I consulted one of Internet Psychology's
(42:39):
go to guys, doctor Elias Ambujade, clinical professor, researcher and
writer at Stanford where he is the chief of the
Anxiety Disorder Section and director of the OCD Clinic and
the Impulse Controlled Disorders Clinic. Instead of asking him, as
a lifelong OCD sufferer, how to personally improve my life,
(42:59):
I asked him about the fish guy. Abujade is also
the author of the new book A Leader's Destiny as
well as the twenty twelve book Virtually You The Dangerous
Powers of the E Personality. Talking about these isolated examples
like Ben Besca and Alice. The goldfish is what doctor
Abujade does best in my opinion, and he gave me
(43:20):
some insight into what Ben was going through and what
you can do if the algorithm tries to kill you
like an English bird of prey wood to a large goldfish.
Speaker 5 (43:29):
Here's our talk, Elias Abusheti. I'm a clinical professor at
Stanford University. I also run the program and Internet Health
and Society at SEARS, and I am medical center. I
study the intersection of technology and psychology and have done
so almost twenty years now, hard to believe, and have
(43:50):
addressed my work both to the general audience of Internet
choosers but also scientists researchers.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
So interested in your work, especially because I mean a
very eventful twenty years for life online in your study
and observation, what does receiving a ton of unexpected attention
online due to you.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
Well, online attention has in a way become a proxy
for self worth. We value ourselves to the extent that
we get likes, retweets, and all manner of online attention.
It is a very valuable currency and that in that sense,
(44:39):
and going viral represents sort of the extreme version of this,
you know, something that everyone online is supposed to aspire
to because it represents popularity, it represents cloud, and it
represents self esteem.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
I mean, at this point of like, it's fairly common
knowledge the internet is addictive, But in your estimation, has
it evolved in the ways it's become addictive? What are
the changes you've noticed in the way that we're sort
of kept tethered to social media and to the Internet.
Speaker 6 (45:15):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I mean, I think a lot of the obvious problems
that most people recognize today, we're already there, you know,
a couple of decades ago, and what we've seen is
just this kind of intensification and.
Speaker 6 (45:36):
Gradual worstening.
Speaker 5 (45:38):
One personality trait I've I've worked on and talked about
is narcissism. And and you can see how if you
have any sort of vulnerability to that, or any kind
of kernel of that and your personality structure, the Internet
(45:59):
can and intensify it, you know, by giving you a stage,
by giving you quote unquote followers, by by increasing your
sense of how how popular and effective you are. It's
hard for anyone to be totally immune to that. But
if you already have those tendencies, and then they can
(46:23):
become quite magnified. That's what we see, I think, repeatedly
and an online That's just one of the many personality
traits that the Internet and Internet related technologies act on.
And they've all as the Internet has evolved, they've all
(46:43):
been kind of further intensified.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
And and and again it feels like there's a common
consensus that I agree with that this is clearly bad
for me, But I can also directly point to so
many positive in my life, whether it was community building
or relationships or whatever it was, that wouldn't have been
possible without the Internet. Because you've observed this and studied
(47:10):
this for so long. For people that do have a
healthier relationship to the Internet, what is the balance? You know,
you always get sort of the classic go touch grasp,
but in so many ways, you know, jobs or communication,
it's now there's not many alternatives. How have you seen
people successfully manage relationships with this technology?
Speaker 6 (47:30):
Well, it is.
Speaker 5 (47:31):
It is a very fricky balance, I think, and it's
gotten almost impossible to pull off because, as you pointed out,
you know, you can't be a professional today and not have.
Speaker 6 (47:46):
A strong online presence.
Speaker 5 (47:48):
You can't be you know, a quote unquote normal teenager
and not have a social media presence. So these things
have become very ingrained. And I think sort of how
culture has evolved is by the time we recognize that
the dangers we had already become addicted, and the culture
(48:11):
has moved so sort of deep into embracing these technologies
that we can't turn looklock. So it's not about kind
of going back to nineteen ninety seven or whatever. It's
more about trying to maintain some grounding in real life,
(48:34):
whatever that means anymore. And I think there's some, you know,
there's some encouraging signals in that direction, Like I teach
undergrads at Tanford and Berkeley, and there seems to be
sort of a newfound respect and a new kind of
coolness attached to going off of the of the online
(48:59):
a grid that least temporarily. We see people souring on
online dating, for example, thinking the greatest decision not to
look for a partner or romantic interests on dating apps.
So there are attempts, I think, overall their healthy ones.
But again, our goal should not be, you know, believe
(49:23):
the last twenty years of our lives.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Right going back to the subject of this interview, he's
this really nice guy named Ben who found a live
goldfish that had fallen out of a bird's beak. It
fell into his lawn and he rescued it while it
was still alive, and this was he tweeted about it.
He was, you know, an active Twitter user. It was
(49:47):
interesting as we were talking just listening to him be like,
this is really exciting, but it's also really weird, and
it comes with kind of this very specific pressure to
feel like, you know, this is you now. And I
know you've written a book called Virtually You, The Internet
and the Fracturing of the Self.
Speaker 6 (50:05):
Could you tell me a.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Little bit about that as we are constructing our Internet selves.
This feels like a very kind of like extreme specific example,
but I could feel sort of the nucleus of listening
to someone kind of shifting the way they've constructed themselves
online because of this random thing that happened to them
and went viral.
Speaker 5 (50:25):
And my book Virtually You, I talked about how we
have an e personality that I can be quite distinct
from how we from normal life. So we tend to
be more aggressive on to be more impulsive. We tend
to show more narcissism, less patients, et cetera, and that
(50:49):
version of ourselves can be can feel more sort of attractive,
more liberated to us, and we end up buying into it,
sometimes excessively and sometimes at the expense of who we
really are and what our real personality structure is about. Now,
(51:10):
in this example you shared, it does seem like you
know a nice individual who had some sort of strange
thing happened to him practically overnight. Has his life became
about that, And I see parallels with what I've written about.
(51:31):
But what I what I like about how you described
him is that he recognized that it's weird. He recognized
that it doesn't doesn't quite make make sense, and sometimes
online we stopped like we lose that ability to distinguish
between what's like weird and what's real, what's fake and
(51:52):
what's around it. You also say that he recognizes that
the pressure of kind of embracing this persona keeping it going,
And I also appreciate that about the story, because most
of us or many of us, don't see it as
as pressure. We end up somehow again liking it more
(52:17):
than we should without acknowledging the pressure person that's not
really who we are.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
It felt like he was saying and I would feel
the same way in the same position, Like you've been
given this strange gift, you know, of all of these.
Speaker 5 (52:35):
Eyes and in the gifts of virality, Yes.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
The gift and the curse. I mean, I think of
all of these other people who are turned into these
Internet main characters, and how some people you know know
I reject this, I don't want anything to do with this,
and others. You can see the wheels turning a little
bit of like, how like is it possible to make
this moment a part of who I am?
Speaker 4 (52:58):
Does it even make I think?
Speaker 5 (53:01):
I mean, I think there is a way to have
fun with it, embrace it temporarily without allowing it to
get to your head too much. I mean, the thing
about virality is that it doesn't last, right, Like we
we get tired of people who go viral and stories
that go viral pretty quickly. I mean, online we're constantly
(53:22):
on the about you know, the next big thing or
the next story. I think acknowledging this aspect of virality
is important if you don't want to end up being,
you know, the victim of it, right because if you
embrace it and assume that you can keep it up,
then you're going against all the lessons that internet history
(53:47):
has taught us.
Speaker 6 (53:48):
But if you can, you.
Speaker 5 (53:49):
Know, play with it, have fun with it, but you know,
remember how long that it's not going to be superlasting,
then I think that's that's a healthy or more realistic approach.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
If I came to you and said, hey, I just
completely randomly became an Internet main character, I don't really
want this attention, I'm overwhelmed by it.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
How would you advise me?
Speaker 5 (54:17):
I guess one thing I would I would tell you
is to reassure you that internet memes have a finite
lifespan that as heavy and overwhelming as this feels, as
everlastings as it feels, it has a beginning and middle, end,
(54:37):
an end, and it will be shorter living than you
probably assume it is. I would I would caution you
against responding, you know, impulsively to whatever the situation is,
because that's another thing that people under pressure will do
(54:58):
online and they end up up often regretting their reaction.
I think through how you react, don't do anything that
might sort of compound the problem. Lastly, I've done a
lot of work on privacy.
Speaker 6 (55:15):
Online privacy.
Speaker 5 (55:16):
Yes, you know, one of the biggest sort of victims
of online culture, the fact that we now live in
a privacy age, and privacy and healthy psychology go hand
in hand. So I would urge you, despite this sort
of viral state that you're in, I would urge you
(55:37):
to be protective of your privacy to the extent that
you can, despite the Internet attention.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
And then the flip side of that, the flip side
of that question is I approach you and I say
I want to go viral, I want to become famous online.
I think I can handle it, and I don't think
it'll affect me.
Speaker 4 (56:03):
How would you advise me?
Speaker 5 (56:06):
What I would do in this case is, you know,
put my therapist's hat on and ask what it is
about you know, your your current life, your offline life,
even your online life that feels so empty and hollow
(56:27):
that you would be desperately seeking online fame. I would
recommend that you not look for online fame for the
sake of online fame.
Speaker 6 (56:40):
But but do what you want.
Speaker 5 (56:43):
To do and go for the goals you always wanted
to go for. And if internet fame happens, it will
be for the right reasons and not for the sake of.
Speaker 4 (56:55):
I love that answer.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
Yes, it's like sometimes it happens, but hopefully God, I
mean for the few that it happens on their terms.
Speaker 10 (57:02):
I think just the idea of wanting Internet frame at
all costs, I mean, that's the track that a lot
of culture falls into, right Like I want to be
an influence or whatever whatever it takes, and that's just
not healthy.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
And then my last question is I don't know if
this is a hard question in or not, so I
apologize in advance. Is there anything about the state of
today's Internet how we're consuming to feel positive about.
Speaker 5 (57:34):
I think there's a new found awareness that we may
have embraced some technologies, we may have embraced some platforms
blindly without sort of thinking through our behavior. There's I
think broad recognition around that, and I think that's the
(57:55):
necessary first step toward being able to correct things. You know,
like awareness, education are absolutely essential, and I think there's
a lot more of that today compared to even a
couple of years ago. That's the silver lining I see.
Whether it's sufficient is a different story altogether, but at
(58:20):
least it's necessary that we have a healthier dose of
that now compared to the recent past.
Speaker 2 (58:30):
Thank you so much to doctor Abujade, and you can
find his new book, A Leader's Destiny by Psychology, Personality
and character make all the difference at the link in
the description. A little over a month after Ben Baskett
and I first talked, I checked in again to see
how he was doing and tell him a little bit
about my chat with doctor Abujade.
Speaker 4 (58:50):
Who are his updates?
Speaker 8 (58:52):
Hi?
Speaker 4 (58:52):
Ben, how are you good?
Speaker 7 (58:54):
Thank you? How are you?
Speaker 2 (58:55):
So we haven't spoken since about this time the last month.
Tell me what has changed in your in your fish life?
Speaker 7 (59:06):
So I now have three fish name name. So Barney
is the original companion to Alice. He's still around. He
did have some kind of weird fungal infection for a while,
which I think is new. But he's better and I
think actually it's salt that cured him. Apparently salt is
(59:29):
like a cure all for goldfish. We've got Daphne, looks
a little bit like Alice, but it is a bit stockier.
And then we've got Edgar, who is a bit like
a bruiser kind of bloke who's got like a little mustache.
I imagine him like a American prohibition kind of guy
with a with a mini gun.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Okay, I like that. There is also, yeah, the applied
personality is that is critical a pet ownership.
Speaker 7 (59:54):
It's very important. And then obviously we've got Charlie's Angels,
which I think I had last time. I can't remember.
Loads of mini fish. There's how there's thirteen of them,
loads of mini little fish.
Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Wow, Okay, that's this is wonderful news. Is this like
a lifelong thing, have you? Because that was my question
going in, I was like, is he going to commit
to being the fish guy?
Speaker 7 (01:00:20):
I think I think it's probably yes, given everything has
gone well with the you know, no fish has died.
I mean, Barney tried his best, but you know, no
fish has died. So it may be that I'm not
terrible at keeping fish. And I'm sure I said this
last time, but every time that I post anything on
Twitter that isn't directly fish related, I almost get abuse
(01:00:42):
for not posting about the fish. How there you have
other hobbies or other things to talk about. People have
said things like, oh, yes, you know, we followed you
for the fish and now we're learning about you know,
the intricacies of the UK medical system.
Speaker 4 (01:00:55):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
I have a theory that, Yeah, people that casually follow
any one online get really upset if they learn more
than like three things about you, Like you just cannot
be too multifaceted or people kind of freak out. It
seems like you're posting whatever the fuck you want. Anyways,
Do you do you.
Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Feel pressure to fish post a certain amount?
Speaker 7 (01:01:16):
No? Not really. I mean I like posting about the
fish because they are quite funny and the amount of
you know, stupid ship any animal does, let alone a
load of fish, you know, Sharing that on Twitter is
actually quite it's quite entertaining. It's also it's a good
way to sort of like document as well, you know,
things that have changed over the past month or so.
Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
You know, we'll keep doing this. I'll check in with
you in a year and see how life has changed.
Any fish goals, anything that you like, want to do
that you haven't done. Are you going to expand? Are
you going to maintain? What's what's the plan?
Speaker 7 (01:01:51):
So apparently someone warmed me about this before. It's called
multi tank syndrome, and essentially you start with one fish
or one tank and it's never enough. It's sort of
like an addiction, and then you keep buying more tanks
until your house is more tanks than house. I want
a marine tank for saltwater time.
Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
Oh wow, that's good.
Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
That's serious, right, it's a serious Well, that's I'm so
glad that Alice has brought this new facet of your life.
Speaker 7 (01:02:22):
It's going to be I'm quite excited to see what
my electric bill is going to do. I imagine it's
going to go up significantly, such as.
Speaker 4 (01:02:29):
The life of a fish father. Well, well, thank you
for catching.
Speaker 7 (01:02:34):
Up with me, then no problem.
Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Thanks so much to Ben Beska for being gained to
this unhinged case study.
Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
And you can.
Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Follow his ongoing fish adventure on Twitter at besca. And
with that, Alice, our dearly departed goldfish and Ben Basca
your sixteenth minute end now and for our moment of
fun this week. This is a pet episode. Here is
(01:03:02):
my perfect eldest boy Flee singing you a beautiful song.
Speaker 8 (01:03:06):
My boy soprano, See you next week.
Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 4 (01:03:46):
The amazing Ian.
Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme
song is by Sad thirteen and Pet shout outs to
our dog producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper, and my
pet Rockbird will outlive us on bye
Speaker 5 (01:04:06):
Mm hmm
Cool Zone media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I wish I could tell you that frantically looking up
incidents of fish falling from the sky cracks the top
ten of the most demented internet wormholes I've ever gone down.
But you know that's not true. Still, I am thrilled
to report to you that there's not one, not two,
but at least six stories about fish falling from the
sky that I can talk about off the top of
(00:26):
my damn head. Australia twenty ten and a small town
in Australia Northern Territory called Lajamanu, a councilor announced to
the community that there was a huge storm coming, but
did not announce that that storm would consist of both
rain and live fish.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Oops.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
The fish were pretty small, about the width of two fingers.
But when fish are falling from the sky and they're
landing on the ground still alive, there really is no
sense in being a size queen about it, right, And
residents in this area claims that this had happened two
other times in the last fifty years and there's actually
natural precedent for this, with the reasoning that tornadoes can
(01:05):
pull water and fish from hundreds of miles away from
their point of origin. It's like the recent Glen Powell
documentary Twisters. Next example, Texas, Arcana, Texas, twenty twenty one,
on New Year's Eve, Eve, East Texas residents reported seeing
fish falling from the sky dead ones this time, I
fear scattered across pavement, and the city itself announced that
(01:29):
quote unquote animal rain, which is a thing that quote
unquote animal rain happens when quote small water animals like frogs, crabs,
and small fish are swept up in water spouts or
drafts that occur on the surface of the earth. They
are then rained down at the same time as the rain.
While it's uncommon, it happens, as evidenced in several places
(01:51):
in Texarkana today unquote Texas. Bless my text and listeners.
You already have to deal with the brunt of the
far hog population, and now this not even the dignity
of live fish. And I could keep going. The list
of raining fish locations goes on and on. And there's
been an uptick of reports in the last fifteen years.
(02:13):
And this could be for a number of reasons. It
could be a rise in interest in reporting such things.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
It could be increased.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Access to personal technology, to share such incidents. It could
very likely be a creepy side effect of global warming,
or a combination of all three, but whatever the cause,
there have been reported cases of either living or dead
fish raining from the sky reported in Sri Lanka, India, Eviopia, Pennsylvania, Tempico, California,
(02:42):
the Philippines and Honduras since twenty twelve and today on
sixteenth minute, what if I was like today we're talking
about bean Dad. Note today we are talking to and
with a very recent air of Internet characters of the day.
One human one fish, either koy or gold depending on
(03:03):
who you ask, was found on a sunny spring afternoon
in Manchester, England. A cardiology resident named Ben Beska looked
outside his bedroom window and saw a wriggling orange shape
on his lawn. He went downstairs, and, as a man
in his early thirties, he brought his phone with him
on autopilot, prepared to update his friend group text in
the event that anything interesting happened. Listener, something interesting happened.
(03:27):
What waited for Ben Beska on the lawn was a
large goldfish in pretty rough shape, you could say due
to the whole not being underwater thing, but also from
the impact of what seemed to be a pretty significant fall.
Ben pokes the fish gently and it moves.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
She's alive.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
She's having the worst day of her life, and he's
a doctor. He's gonna try and save her. Ben scoops
the fish into his hand and runs her into his kitchen,
looking around to find tools to improvise a fish tank with.
He's never had fish before. He's got cats, and that's
more or less the opposite. Thinking quickly, he grabs an
(04:05):
empty freezer drawer and fills it with water, popping the
injured fish inside. She's not doing great. She's shedding scales,
but to Ben's surprise, she starts to swim again. Confident
that he can now take a breath, he hits the
group chat It's Alice. He fumbles into a text, not
realizing the second word of his sentence has been auto corrected.
(04:28):
He meant to write it's alive, but Ben's friends confirm
his gut instinct. For the first time in recorded history,
autocorrect did something right. The fish's name would be Alice,
and a guy who to that point had been a
cardiology meme posting swifty on Twitter, couldn't wait to tell
his followers all about it, he tweets on June first,
(04:51):
twenty twenty four. But the real show here is the
picture attached. It's Alice the Giant. I'm just gonna say, goldfish.
It's better fish Twitter can come for me. In the photo,
Alice the goldfish is plopped helplessly on a lush green lawn.
Ben captions the photo.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
So today I found a goldfish just on the grass
in my back garden. It was alive, I think, and
I have absolutely no idea where it came from. There's
no ponds anywhere near, so I took it inside, and.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
In one tweet a legend was born. Ben the Doctor
and Alice the Goldfish that fell from the sky. Your
sixteenth minute starts now. Welcome back to sixteenth minute, the
(06:24):
show where we take a look at the main characters
of the Internet and see what they show us about ourselves,
and occasionally, the show where I covertly share more about
my personal life than is responsible. I've been working on
this episode for almost two months now, and it's going
to be our first in real time story of virality,
A bit of a case study of a flash in
the pan viral moment and how this attention can affect
(06:47):
a main character in nearly real time and quick aside,
for everyone who's sent along requests about the Hawktua girl,
you're not getting that episode yet. It's way too soon.
But the sensation is kind of an outlier on today's Internet.
For most people that get sucked into the algorithm these days,
this kind of longevity is pretty fleeting.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
The get so famous.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
You spark a week's long culture war route of fame
was not Ben Beska's destiny, in part because the story
is really different, but also because Ben is a working professional.
He's in his thirties, and this chance encounter with Alice
and a subsequent online fame has to fit into his life.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
Not the other way around.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
And in these far more common cases, if something is
even a little off, like maybe the person is too
busy with their normal life to really commit to the
new lifestyle that the algorithm is foisting upon them. Maybe
their interest in other things dilutes and confuses a potential
audience and they move on. Maybe the person who goes
viral is burdened by the question do I even want
(07:52):
to be this guy? And that's why Ben and Alice
the Goldfish is such an interesting story to me. This
story the makings of a fable. So today we're going
to talk to Ben about the profound weirdness that takes
hold in someone's life when the Internet decides that you
are this guy now actually, And then we're going to
talk to a psychologist who's been studying how virality affects
(08:15):
the brain and psyche for decades to give us a
better idea of what Ben was really going through. So
come with me, if you will to June twenty twenty four.
Maybe you remember it, an American presidential debate asks the
question who is more dead? Furiosa is bombing at the
box office and everyone's afraid to say that it was
because it was a little mid And in Newcastle, England,
(08:39):
a young doctor looked out his window to see that
a fish named Alice had fallen from the sky. So
where do we leave off with this story? Ben finds
Alice and discovers her name via a typo in a
friend group chat, but doesn't post about it to his
Twitter account right away. He's a doctor, bibe, He's got
a life to save. So once Alice is safely in
(09:00):
a freezer drawer and Ben's cats are locked in a
separate room. He books it to the nearest pet store
and grabs a small tank to tide Alice over until
he figures out what to do next. And while she
was in rough shape when he found her, Alice seems
to be rallying a little bit. Within two hours, Ben
has all but brought our orange fin girl back from
the dead. And at at this point that he starts tweeting.
(09:23):
So let's hear the tweet that started it all one
more time, captioned with a picture of a helpless Alice
in the grass.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
So today I found a goldfish just on the grass
in my back garden. It was alive, I think, and
I have absolutely no idea where it came from. There's
no pawns anywhere near, so I took it inside.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Now, this is the tweet of a man who knows
how a viral thread begins, and unlike many attempted viral threads,
Ben's story has the narrative juice to trickle into today's
Twitter algorithm. And while I could not explain to you
what the endgame of Twitter's current iteration is, I do
know that its algorithmically driven platform was absolutely the reason
(10:05):
Alice the goldfish came into my life. I first saw
Ben's tweets the day after this saga began. So Ben's
thread continues, accompanied by carefully documented pictures and videos. He
tweets it was.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
Alive, although not very happy in an old freezer draw
much happier in an actual and hastily bought tank. Anyway,
I have a fish now thumbs up emoji for me.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
This last tweet is the money shot. Two posts after
being found fallen from the sky on his lawn, there's
a video of Alice the goldfish swimming along happily in
a small aquarium.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
It's a cartoon.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And before you ask, how did a fish fall from
the sky, look, I can't guarantee an answer. I'm all
out of answers. How Alice got there is between Alice
and God. But of course this is the first question
that a lot of Twitter users have, and we immediately
have this class exploit in opinion. We have the likely
explanation of how Alice fell from the sky, which Ben Beska,
(11:06):
most media outlets and a couple of naturalists on Twitter
have subscribed to. And there are the unhinged conspiracy theories.
Here is the likely reason quoted here from BBC News.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Doctor Besker suspected a bird had picked up the fish
from a nearby pond and dropped it while carrying it away. However,
he said there are no ponds close by, and he
thought it must therefore have traveled a quote reasonable distance
end quote.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Basca continued in the same piece.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
It's been quite funny. Some of the comments are really
quite funny, and about a thousand people said they thought
a bird dropped it.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Look, I'm not too proud to admit that I first
read this story and was like what And then I
read that Ben Besco lived near a body of water
and a bird almost certainly caught and then dropped alice,
and I was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense for me.
This explanation made the whole story less mysterious and more
(12:04):
of a Pixar movie I would watch. But remember, this
is Twitter. We're talking about a place where for every
post there's an equal and opposite conspiracy post, and honestly
a place where it's not completely unreasonable to doubt that
a narrator is just doing something for attention. Patterns of
lying for clout are super common on social media and
(12:25):
have produced some of my favorite memes of all time.
I'm talking Ruth Konda forever, I'm talking cinnamon toos shrimp.
The list goes on. And with that in mind, here
are the conspiracy theories about Ben and Alice. People who,
for what I can tell, assume that Ben bought a goldfish,
threw it on his lawn, and took a picture of
(12:46):
it in hopes that the Twitter algorithm would swallow it whole.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
The tweet says, so this is fake and I'm contributing.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Sorry, but this is just really misguided to me. Ben
Beska until this point has been a terminally online but
pretty keeping in his own lane kind of poster. He
would tweet frequently, but it was mainly memes and observations
about the medical world, about Taylor Swift, and about boy
genius communities he was already a part of, and from
(13:13):
what I can tell, most of his interactions prior to
Alice's arrival from either a bird Heaven or Besca's own
evil plan, or people he'd already spoken with before. So
do I think this guy's a con artist? No, I don't.
I think he's a very online guy in his thirties.
But surprisingly, while there is this paranoia that Ben faked
the Alice story at first. Those theories die out pretty
(13:36):
quickly as the story gained mainstream media and the likely
cause of the bird dropping Alice seemed to make sense
to more people than not. No, the true controversy of
this story has to do with, wait for it, the
aquarium community. For fuck's sake, here's what they had to say.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
You can remove the big bushy plant for more space.
That guy will need at least a twenty gallon tank.
That's the pond variety, so it's not going to be
happy in a small space.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
A tank needs time to cycle properly in order to
process fish waste. You can buy bacteria to help speed
up the process, but in the meantime, make sure you
do very frequent water changes with properly treated water in
order to keep it alive.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
You, guys, I'm gonna hold my tongue here. I cannot
get canceled by the aquarium community today.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
No.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
Part of what's interesting to me about this story is
the raw speed that it moves with, in part because
ben Beska is interacting with people about Alice on Twitter
in basically real time and pushing the algorithm within hours,
and ben Beska finds himself bending off criticisms from aquarium
aficionados on the same day that he finds Alice. June first,
(14:51):
he hastily continues this original, increasingly viral thread. At present,
it has over two hundred thousand likes. He continues this
every general dread with defenses of this small fish tank
you bought in haste, saying.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Repeat after me, a hastily bought temporary tank is better
for a goldfish than laying dead in the grass.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Folks. You hate to see it, But the aquarium community
clearly got to Ben, and he tweets later in the
day as he continues to observe Alice the goldfish, and
I can hear the aquarium community grumbling she's a coyfish,
but she's a goldfish to me, Ben continues.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
You happen to find a mostly dead goldfish on your
lawn and tweet about saving its life, and your applies
are filled with people saying you should have planned this better.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
So Ben does get some hate, but that is vastly
outdone by the effusive love and praise at this pretty
charming story. Most users are incredibly charmed and stoked about this,
and it seems like Alice the goldfish is poised to
become a modern classic Internet animal. She's got the potential
(15:59):
of a grumpy cat, of a Marnie the dog, of
a yon cat. The list goes on because there is
a sort of playbook to make these kinds of things
happened once the public is excited about an animal that's
either extremely adorable or has a really compelling story, and
almost right away that seems where this story is headed.
The story goes viral around the UK in the first
(16:21):
three days of June. Mystery as Live Doctor finds goldfish
in garden Junior Doctor goes viral after rescuing live fish
from garden, lawn and Newcastle. I found a goldfish seconds
from death in my garden. Now I'm keeping it as
my pet. And here's the singular point where Ben and
Alice Besca and the Hawktua Girl converge. They're both very
(16:42):
amenable to speak with the press, and they appear to
respond to reporters very quickly. Ben gives interviews to a
number of different places, and while most are just rehashing
the story of discovering Alice, anyone hoping to find out
how Alice was doing now could follow Ben on Twitter,
updates were coming fast and furious. In the next couple days,
(17:03):
he provided updates on not just Alice, but on.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
His aquarium journey.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
Early on, he tweets back and forth with an aquarium
company that offers him free advice and even better, a
free aquarium. Next critical to the viral internet pet phenomenon,
a separate account pops up for Alice the Goldfish. Her
handle is at Alice Besca. She quote tweets a picture
Ben posted of Alice the Goldfish in that small tank
(17:31):
with this little zinger emergency.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Has it not so bad?
Speaker 6 (17:35):
I guess?
Speaker 3 (17:35):
But fuck me, this studio fat is kind of small.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Then she replies to Ben.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Got anything bigger love?
Speaker 2 (17:41):
Immediately Ben starts interacting with the alis Basca account. So
at the time I made assumptions, and even I ended
up messing this up. I assumed that this was Ben
talking to an account pretending to be Alice that he
had created himself. When it turns out that just a
daily this account had been created by a fan of Alice,
(18:04):
so free of charge, this fan was already performing the
next step in creating an iconic Internet animal, creating a
specific editorial voice which sounds super corny, but think of
an Internet animal you like. In most cases, there is
a specific kind of caption that you'll read for a
familiar animal, and Alice Besca's voice was lovingly antagonistic toward
(18:29):
Ben's incompetence as a new fish owner, making in jokes
that people who had been following the whole saga could appreciate. Then,
another step on the journey to engage fans in making
Alice a legitimate Internet pet, Ben launches a gofund me
to help fund the aquarium equipment he needs.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
Here's what he.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Posts now, apparently I need a bigg a tank and
chemicals another random things that apparently a fish needs. At
least that's what everyone on Twitter is saying. I would
appreciate your help in helping me find a nice at home.
My amazing story has also been covered in the news
read more in The Evening Standard, The Guardian, or The Mirror.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Things chug along like this for a couple days, with
Ben Beska's account providing updates on Alice as fan art
and puff pieces continue to roll in paintings, memes. A
high coup for Alice the Goldfish who Lived. Twitter was
incredulous when Alice met Ben. The Alice Besca account is
(19:28):
posting regularly, and by June fifth, just four days after
this all began, Ben tweets.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Hey, Alis Besca, do you want a boyfriend or a
sister slash brother?
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Enter Barney, a blackfish who arrives. On June sixth, the
Alice account quote tweets a picture of Barney and captions
it goth BF. By this time, there's also merch. On
June fifth, the Alice account, not Ben himself, launches a
tentative merch store consisting of multiple Alice designs. At this point,
(20:00):
it feels clear that Ben Besca wants to make this
a thing. I first got in touch with Ben on
June fourth. I was on top of it, and we
planned to speak on June sixth, but then he went quiet,
and not just in our chat, but on social media
all together. And I assume that was because he's still
a junior doctor and said that he was going to
(20:22):
be attending a conference pretty soon, and that was true,
but that's not why he went quiet. What happened was
Alice died. And Okay, maybe this is corny, but I
saw this song referenced by many Alice fans when the
news originally broke. So we are going to get the
karaoke track from Candle in the Wind Bumping in Alice's memory.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Full drama.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Hmm, beautiful.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
It's the classic for a reason. Ben broke his silence
on Twitter on June eighth.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Unfortunately, I have some very sad news to share. Alice
has passed from her injuries and is now interentally swimming
in the big fish tank in the sky rip. Alice
is now the fish that lived for a.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Bit, and the cynical among us thought, well, this really
fucks up the Pixar story. And I've thought about this
a ridiculous amount because it is really sad. But I
also think it's kind of beautiful, right because if Ben
hadn't found her, Alice would have died a week earlier,
and through the combination of a strange twist of feet
(21:32):
in a loose jawed predatory bird, Ben Besca was able
to give Alice the goldfish another week of life that
was spent in comfort, with adoration and good food and
a new friend, Barney, and unbeknownst to Alice, worldwide notoriety.
I think it's really sweet and I'm weak. It didn't
(21:54):
make me cry, but this is a show about social media,
not our capacity to thighs with dead fish. So my
curiosity was how did Ben, the Alisbasca account, and the
press handle this tragic development. After the death announcement from Ben,
Alice's story gets another small.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
Bump in mainstream media.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Man who adopted fish he found in his garden shares
sad update, and then Ben is left to figure out basically,
does he try to keep this thing going in the
wake of a pet he's slowly fallen in love with
dying or does he just go back to who he
was a week ago. First, he amplifies the public mourning
of Alice, the memorial drawings of her being welcomed into
(22:40):
the Great Cooy Pond in the sky, a drawing of
Steve Irwin's angel telling Alice you did great girl, her
photo edited onto the cover of Elton John's Candle in
the Wind. The Alis Besca account posts.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Do not fear death so much, but rather the you're
not a good life.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
It all feels fitting, and then the Alice Basca account
keeps tweeting. June twelfth, Alice quote tweets Ben posting fan
art of her saying.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Im g look at me slaying posthumously. June fourteenth, three
days until the T shirt. Shit, I'm so excited for
everyone to get their shirts.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
June twenty first, when Ben posts a picture of the
new massive gifted fish tank that Alice didn't live long
enough to enjoy.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Wow, He's moved on quick.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Because by this time Ben Beska has chosen the direction
he's going in. He's doubling down on fish. At the
time of Alice's death, the free fish tank was already
in the mail, and he'd already gotten her a goth
BF in the form of Barney. So after taking some
time to mourn Alice at a UK Taylor Swift aerostour
that he'd had tickets to for months, he seems to
(23:49):
decide to keep going. By mid June, Ben had to
wonder Carrie Bradshaw voice, what does he do after Alice?
On June eighteenth, less than two weeks after Alice's premature death,
I asked him just that our interview when we come back,
(24:21):
welcome back to sixteenth minute. I'm getting dangerously close to
becoming a train guy, and today we're talking about junior
doctor Ben Beska and Alice the goldfish who fell from
the sky. And as much as I would like to
interview Alice myself, I am at present unable to communicate
with fish, and also she's dead. Given these barriers to entry,
(24:41):
I instead decided to reach out to the fish poster himself,
Ben Vesca.
Speaker 7 (24:46):
So.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I actually interviewed Ben Wewiss this episode once on June eighteenth,
while this story was still developing, and then over a
month later in late July. You don't need me to
tell you that a month can be u Alexies apart
when it comes to viral stories. Before we first talked
over Zoom just a few days after Alice the Fish
(25:06):
passed away. Besco was both very receptive to talk to
me and the press in general, but was kind of
hard to pin down because it's not like becoming the
goldfish guy meant that he quit his extremely demanding job
working as a cardiology resident at an English hospital. But
I kept bugging him because I'm really good at that,
and when we found time to catch up, he was
in good humor and understandably a little overwhelmed from the
(25:29):
events of the week. Here is our chat from June.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
Who are you then, Deska.
Speaker 7 (25:36):
So I'm from England, from Newcast so I've been a doctor.
I don't know a long time now. I can't remember
being a doctor for a while. I studied in Newcastle,
went to Medicol to Newcastle, stayed in Newcastle. My number
one hobby is now keeping fish, but prior to last
week that was not my main hobby. I mainly used Twitter. Actually,
(25:56):
I mean, as you say, you look through it and
there was a very minimal fish content on it.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Yeah, there's a huge pivot moment.
Speaker 7 (26:02):
There's a pivot. There's a big pervot mainly used it
for medicine stuff, basically stuff sprinkled with bits of you know,
Taylor Swift and Phoebe Bridges and artists like that, which
I like. But it was a big, big pivot recently
to fish. And I think now there's like twenty thousand
(26:26):
extra people following me, all who care about fish. So
I've had to change my you know, what I talk
about significantly anything that isn't fish related. Effectively, I get
lots of abuse for not being fish related. Really already,
I mean, Tom, I assume it's tongue in cheek abuse. Yeah,
(26:47):
who knows. But I sent a tweet about some boring
medicine stuff. People reply saying, oh, yes, but what's this
got to do with the fish?
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Okay, I want to talk about that in a bit
of like how when you become notorious for one thing
that all of a sudden that is like the yardstick,
that it's.
Speaker 7 (27:04):
Like your entire personality.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Now, well, before we.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Get there, you want to be taken through this biblical
event of finding Alice.
Speaker 4 (27:11):
It was June first.
Speaker 7 (27:14):
So I was when was I think. I was upstairs
initially in my house, and I heard mag eyes, you know, squawking,
was like, what the hell is going on? And I
saw this gold thing on the lawn. So I went downstairs,
went outside, and there was a fish on the floor
in the grass. I didn't really understand what was happening,
(27:37):
no kidding, And she wasn't moving. She was just kind
of like still on the floor. And I was like, oh, right,
the dead fish. Fine, don't ask him any questions. So
I took a picture of the fish being because no,
I knew no one would believe me, you know, when
I said there was a fish on the on the floor,
and I sent the photo to my friend and I said,
there's a fish in the garden, and I was like,
what are you talking about? But then the fish moved,
(27:58):
it gills moved, but she was thin. They breathe, which
she was suffocating, really, wasn't she?
Speaker 2 (28:03):
So yeah?
Speaker 7 (28:06):
And I was like, oh God, but what do I
do in this situation? So when I ran inside and
I just put the sink on, filled up the think
and picked up by a tail, run inside and it
started doing a classic fish thing, the fish fly. I
was like bloody and it was gross because it was
like slimy and it was a fish. It was alive,
you know.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (28:24):
So threw threw her in the seak and I mean
she was kind of still and not really moving. I mean,
it was a fish. I fell on the lawn. I
need some kind of container to put her in. I
found a freezer draw which was a number, you know,
I don't know. It was the only container I could
think to put something so large and filled up with water.
Put the fish in and it wasn't really moving still.
(28:46):
I kind of like tapped the box and then it
started swimming around and amongst the water was you know,
loads of scales that I think had probably fallen off
a whatever trauma leader to you know, my back garden.
You know, that's a story of how I found the
fish and the first two minutes of her second life.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
You've got Alice in the free search drawer. She's slowly
coming to what is the distance To.
Speaker 7 (29:12):
Clarify, because numerous people actually thought this, she wasn't actually
in the freezer, the freezer draw side of the freezer.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
I think that was clear in your video.
Speaker 8 (29:24):
It was.
Speaker 7 (29:25):
I think it was very clear. But people on Twitter,
you know, you know how the internet is.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
What is the amount of time between finding Alice, getting
her into a receptacle and sharing it online?
Speaker 7 (29:38):
Probably half an hour. So I put the fish in
the drawer. I left the house to go to the
neary shop to buy a fish tank or something better
than the drawer, you know, because I know the fish
need you know, chemicals or something. I know a lot
more now about that, but I knew that basically that
fish needed some kind of chemicals. I literally went to
the closer shop, bought a tank, bought some chemicals, came home,
(30:00):
put it in that tank. I think at that point
I tweeted about it. I mean, within the first half
an hour or so. It's you know, my normal friends
that you tweet, you know that the normal medical twitter people.
Then it's sort of snowballs and snowballs and snowballs, and
it goes mad maybe within half an hour an hour,
so you can't track how large it gets because you
know every second there's twenty notifications and you can't keep
(30:23):
track of anything.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Had you ever been through anything like it?
Speaker 7 (30:26):
No, I thought I'd achieved something like this with a
Nobel prize or some kind of genuine achievement. But no, no,
it's a fish.
Speaker 4 (30:36):
So the story blows up.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Something I noticed early on there was a lot of
or not a lot of, but at least some doubt
cast onto the story.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
What was the nature of that, and like, how did
you handle it?
Speaker 7 (30:47):
Yeah? So I think the first doubt there was people
suggesting that I went out bought a fish, a large goldfish,
and I don't know if you can buy them when
they're big, put it on the lawn, like, battered around
a bit, ripped a few of its, you know, took
somewhere the scales off, and then posted on the internet,
which makes no sense at all, is completely illogical. I mean,
(31:09):
I believe they probably think the Earth is flat as well.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
My internet brain says like, there's just enough evidence, not
in this story, but that people will do wild shit
for a story that gets absurd levels of engagement.
Speaker 7 (31:25):
The thing about the Internet is that anyone that has
grown up on the Internet knows you have to approach
anything with a load of skepticism, because nothing is true
on the internet, is it. But this story I think
is so obscene that it's almost not scriptable. It's just
so bunkers. Why would I make that up? Why would
anyone make that up? But then everyone else actually pivoted.
(31:46):
I mean everyone's an expert on the internet, as you know.
I was then told that the tank was too small.
So the fish that was dead, well, I don't know,
semi dead, was put into a tank of water, and
apparently that tank was not good enough, and I was
actually told by someone that the fish would have been
better on the lawn.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Oh my god, wherey.
Speaker 7 (32:04):
Normal people are on the internet, doesn't it.
Speaker 9 (32:06):
People were saying, you know, you needed a thirty forty
to fifty gallon tank, and I was like, why would
I have that much water stored in a receptor just
just in case a fish appeared?
Speaker 7 (32:18):
If I was prepared, like very good evidence, I would
have put the fish on the lawn.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
That's true. Yes, it would be like, oh and he
just happened to happen.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
What was your relationship to the internet, you know, before
this incident.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
Well, I kind of grew up on the internet, you know,
typical many or chronically online, and I understand the nuances
of the Internet.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
What is the next step?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
At what point are you like, we got to start
out as an account, like where do you go from there?
Speaker 7 (32:46):
So I actually didn't start that account really really, it's
one of the people on med Twitter isn't me started
it as a joke, obviously as a joke. It's truly,
it is truly brilliant. It's a very good idea. I
think it's even more funny that I didn't set the
accoun The tweets coming from that account have been actually
very funny. You read they are very good.
Speaker 2 (33:05):
It's only the other person who's run the account. Yeah, yeah,
she has her own social media teape.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
That's wild.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yeah, because it felt like growing up online as well.
You know you see famous Internet animals and how there's
like a like a voice curated for them.
Speaker 7 (33:20):
Yeah, and so he's not me, not me.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
So in the meantime, as she is becoming a main
character unbeknownst to her. What are the next steps with Alice?
You've got her in the smaller tank. People are giving
you shit what happens next?
Speaker 7 (33:33):
But put all the chemicals in and remove the chemicals
you're not meant to have. I don't want to talk
too much about that because then it becomes like a
fish care podcast, which I.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Think, yeah, that might be all good.
Speaker 7 (33:44):
Set up a tank and make sure the tank was okay,
and then I had to go to a conference with you. There.
It was very anxious time leaving this newly found half
dead fish in a tank.
Speaker 4 (33:53):
He had a camera right brilliant to keep an eye on.
Speaker 7 (33:56):
To keep an eye what it was. It was like
a camera from like just a normal you know, like
a security camera thing. I moved Pep and I on
the level of anxiety that leads to that.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
But we no, I mean, it's I'd be interested to hear.
Speaker 7 (34:10):
It's just law, isn't it. I'm not sure. I'm not
sure that's the term, you know, like it's just I
don't know. I mean, I don't know how to define.
It is a weird circumstance that I found this fish lived,
But then I had to leave the house and I
didn't like that. I'd rather care for the fish in
a weird way make sure she doesn't die. She didn't
(34:30):
at that time.
Speaker 4 (34:32):
You did get to see her again, Yes.
Speaker 7 (34:34):
Yeah, yes, I came home and fine.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
So while you're at this conference, do people know that
you're the guy or is it like you're being normal
Ben at this conference and secretly, you know, checking your
fish camera.
Speaker 7 (34:47):
I mean I was being normal Ben, but everyone knew.
And it was very embarrassing really because at this point
it hit like the national media and the media actually
and people had seen it and people have said, oh,
I saw this in the Guardian. It's almost surreal the situation.
It's difficult to explain how you get to the point
(35:10):
of people you've not met reading about you in an
actual newspaper about a fish you've had on the floor.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
It's a weird story.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
But I So there's a series of things that happen.
It seems like Alice moves into a bigger tank, she
gets a boyfriend, there's a merch store, there's a GoFundMe
take me through this series of days. It's so much happened.
Speaker 7 (35:33):
So the first thing that happened was a go fund me,
and that was because I had maybe one thousand people
tell me the tank was too small, and I was like,
all right, fine, I'll buy a new tank in because
that's what the Internet tells me to do. But then
looking at fish tanks, they're so expensive and I was like, well,
I can't justify spending you know, two three hundred quid.
So I made this go for me. Mainly, it was
(35:53):
mainly aimed at the people who will giving me shit
saying you should get a bigger tank if you care
about animals. I was like, well, thank you very much,
you do it. But that actually got a lot of traction.
I got a lot of a lot of money donated
to that. But then a company called Fluvial, well known
fish company, but I didn't I don't know this. I
didn't know this at the time messaged me and said, oh,
(36:14):
we can give you a tank for Alice. And I
was like, oh, that's nice, that's good. So I didn't
need the money on the go for me after all.
So I rough unded all that back and they gat
And you know, you're on the internet and you asked
for advice about stuff, and people give you loads of
ship whereas this email. There was this bloke at this
company that I was emailing and you know, stupid questions
about fish I didn't know the answer to, but which
were patently stupid. I would email and ask him and
(36:36):
held answered me and you know, give me actual advice
rather than telling me I'm an idiot for not having
a tank set up the MERRG. I actually bought all
of those T shirts. I think it's shipping soon. That
was that wasn't set up by me. That was set
up by Alice the fish aunt Alice mainly as a
tongue in cheek thing because people get asking for it,
but then people including me, bought stuff from it.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
Yes, I emerged from your own fish.
Speaker 7 (37:01):
That's great, but I think that ships soon. So I've
got a T shirt with a picture of half dead
fish on.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
And then Barney came into the mix. How did Barney
come into the mix?
Speaker 7 (37:13):
I imagine I know nothing about fish, but I imagine it's
lonely to be a fish in a tank on your
own without a mate. So I went to shop and
bought a new fish to go along with Alice. I
picked Barney. I'm not sure why I picked the name Barney,
but I think he kind of suited him. And I
realized I'm accidentally naming these fish tropical iphoons in terms
of like the age.
Speaker 4 (37:35):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 8 (37:36):
The next fish, I think, all sudden done.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
You had Alice for about a week, right, a week? Yeah,
tell me about her, tell me about like this weird experience.
Speaker 7 (37:47):
It's kind of the odd thing about it is that
it's given me a really like a new hobby out
of nowhere. And I've got a weird connection to this
stupid fish now Barney, I mean, because of the relationship
that I then found on the law. Right, But you'd
think that fish didn't have personalities, but you kind of
notice things about them. It's me projecting my own you know,
(38:10):
like my own care about these fish, you know, onto
the fish arm. So I'm going to keep Barney, obviously,
I'm not going to kill him. Alice's memory in this
bigger tank, and then get you know, get him some
mates to keep him company. So it's the start of
a beautiful hobby. Can you say, a beautiful hobby?
Speaker 2 (38:28):
When Alice passed away, did you just did you find her?
Speaker 4 (38:32):
One morning? What happened?
Speaker 7 (38:33):
Yeah? So I found her. She was just in the
tank in the morning, like in a typical fishy way,
like floating in the tank. It actually upset me, to
be fair, because I was like, why you only know
this fish for a week? And I think I think
it's a concept that it was nearly dead or maybe dead,
and I saved her and then she died. I just died.
Despite that, it's a bit like, oh, you know, like
(38:53):
you tried and failed, and it's a bit sad.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
But you didn't fail though I don't know.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
I mean, that's like part of what I was a
random person online that was very moved by this because
it was just like you, you gave this creature a
lovely last week of their life.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
That's so it was really kind.
Speaker 7 (39:12):
And I suppose it's nicer to again I don't know,
but I suppose it's nicer to die in a tank
than it is on the lawn.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
I think within minutes when you when you posted that
she'd passed away and there is a huge outpouring.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
What was what was that like?
Speaker 7 (39:27):
It was nice? Actually, it seems like I mean, there's
a lot of funny responses because it's the best way
to deal with sadness is to take the piss, which
is good. I enjoyed it. But the fact that the
story is like resonated a bit and it's made people happy.
You know, it's a wholesome story, isn't it. It's a
bit of a sad end, it's still a wholesome.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Story, it is.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
Yeah, the fan art was there's so much of it,
first of all, and it was very sweet.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
And then you went to a Taylor Swift concert and
I went to a.
Speaker 7 (39:57):
Taylor Swift concert, the traditional way to send off a fish.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:02):
On the internet side, I want to go back to
what you were talking about at the beginning, where now
it's like, how big did your online audience grow in.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
The space of this very chaotic week with Alice?
Speaker 7 (40:12):
I think maybe ten to fifteen thousand. I mean I
only had I think, like five thousand to start with.
But yeah, so I've gained fifteen thousand people that care
only about fish.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Now where do you go from here?
Speaker 7 (40:25):
I'm opening a branded set of pet shops. No, No,
I don't know. I mean I'm gonna I mean, Barney's
obviously still here. I imagine people still want to hear
some updates about that fish that's salad fish, his new
friends called CD except well when they finally get there.
But still every tweet I make that isn't about fish
(40:48):
gets a lot of fish for bliind. So you know,
it's a bit like you've got to give the audience
what they.
Speaker 4 (40:53):
Want, more fish content to come.
Speaker 7 (40:56):
Yeah, it's more fish content to come. Yeah. The path
of polase resistance wasn't it? Just continue on that and
it's easier than writing it.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Thank you so much to Ben. We'll be hearing more
from him soon. And when we come back, I consult
an expert to ask the follow up question. Most of
you were too cowardly too. What does becoming the fish
guy do to your brain? Welcome back to sixteenth minute.
(41:32):
When I was in fifth grade, my class inexplicably did
a production of Hamlet, and I got to play Hamlet,
but only acts one through three. So I got to
do Hamlet up until I killed Polonius, and then Katya
Andrad just did the rest of it. We were both
really good, And today we are talking about a fish
that fell from the sky and derailed the life of
(41:53):
a junior doctor. So after I spoke with Ben Baska,
I kept an eye on his posts, and sure enough,
by fish empire has continued to grow. Less than two
months after Alice. The man has over fifteen fish, a
whole ass ecosystem, and the tank has a golden decal
on the side that reads the Alice Memorial Tank and
(42:16):
is flanked by fan art from her Brief, Beautiful Week
with Ben. Ben's story felt like a great opportunity to
ask something that I've been wondering about since this show began.
What does going viral do to you psychologically? There's no
definitive answer, but psychologists have been studying this for decades
at this point, and I consulted one of Internet Psychology's
(42:39):
go to guys, doctor Elias Ambujade, clinical professor, researcher and
writer at Stanford where he is the chief of the
Anxiety Disorder Section and director of the OCD Clinic and
the Impulse Controlled Disorders Clinic. Instead of asking him, as
a lifelong OCD sufferer, how to personally improve my life,
(42:59):
I asked him about the fish guy. Abujade is also
the author of the new book A Leader's Destiny as
well as the twenty twelve book Virtually You The Dangerous
Powers of the E Personality. Talking about these isolated examples
like Ben Besca and Alice. The goldfish is what doctor
Abujade does best in my opinion, and he gave me
(43:20):
some insight into what Ben was going through and what
you can do if the algorithm tries to kill you
like an English bird of prey wood to a large goldfish.
Speaker 5 (43:29):
Here's our talk, Elias Abusheti. I'm a clinical professor at
Stanford University. I also run the program and Internet Health
and Society at SEARS, and I am medical center. I
study the intersection of technology and psychology and have done
so almost twenty years now, hard to believe, and have
(43:50):
addressed my work both to the general audience of Internet
choosers but also scientists researchers.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
So interested in your work, especially because I mean a
very eventful twenty years for life online in your study
and observation, what does receiving a ton of unexpected attention
online due to you.
Speaker 5 (44:18):
Well, online attention has in a way become a proxy
for self worth. We value ourselves to the extent that
we get likes, retweets, and all manner of online attention.
It is a very valuable currency and that in that sense,
(44:39):
and going viral represents sort of the extreme version of this,
you know, something that everyone online is supposed to aspire
to because it represents popularity, it represents cloud, and it
represents self esteem.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
I mean, at this point of like, it's fairly common
knowledge the internet is addictive, But in your estimation, has
it evolved in the ways it's become addictive? What are
the changes you've noticed in the way that we're sort
of kept tethered to social media and to the Internet.
Speaker 6 (45:15):
Yeah, that's really interesting.
Speaker 5 (45:17):
I mean, I think a lot of the obvious problems
that most people recognize today, we're already there, you know,
a couple of decades ago, and what we've seen is
just this kind of intensification and.
Speaker 6 (45:36):
Gradual worstening.
Speaker 5 (45:38):
One personality trait I've I've worked on and talked about
is narcissism. And and you can see how if you
have any sort of vulnerability to that, or any kind
of kernel of that and your personality structure, the Internet
(45:59):
can and intensify it, you know, by giving you a stage,
by giving you quote unquote followers, by by increasing your
sense of how how popular and effective you are. It's
hard for anyone to be totally immune to that. But
if you already have those tendencies, and then they can
(46:23):
become quite magnified. That's what we see, I think, repeatedly
and an online That's just one of the many personality
traits that the Internet and Internet related technologies act on.
And they've all as the Internet has evolved, they've all
(46:43):
been kind of further intensified.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
And and and again it feels like there's a common
consensus that I agree with that this is clearly bad
for me, But I can also directly point to so
many positive in my life, whether it was community building
or relationships or whatever it was, that wouldn't have been
possible without the Internet. Because you've observed this and studied
(47:10):
this for so long. For people that do have a
healthier relationship to the Internet, what is the balance? You know,
you always get sort of the classic go touch grasp,
but in so many ways, you know, jobs or communication,
it's now there's not many alternatives. How have you seen
people successfully manage relationships with this technology?
Speaker 6 (47:30):
Well, it is.
Speaker 5 (47:31):
It is a very fricky balance, I think, and it's
gotten almost impossible to pull off because, as you pointed out,
you know, you can't be a professional today and not have.
Speaker 6 (47:46):
A strong online presence.
Speaker 5 (47:48):
You can't be you know, a quote unquote normal teenager
and not have a social media presence. So these things
have become very ingrained. And I think sort of how
culture has evolved is by the time we recognize that
the dangers we had already become addicted, and the culture
(48:11):
has moved so sort of deep into embracing these technologies
that we can't turn looklock. So it's not about kind
of going back to nineteen ninety seven or whatever. It's
more about trying to maintain some grounding in real life,
(48:34):
whatever that means anymore. And I think there's some, you know,
there's some encouraging signals in that direction, Like I teach
undergrads at Tanford and Berkeley, and there seems to be
sort of a newfound respect and a new kind of
coolness attached to going off of the of the online
(48:59):
a grid that least temporarily. We see people souring on
online dating, for example, thinking the greatest decision not to
look for a partner or romantic interests on dating apps.
So there are attempts, I think, overall their healthy ones.
But again, our goal should not be, you know, believe
(49:23):
the last twenty years of our lives.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Right going back to the subject of this interview, he's
this really nice guy named Ben who found a live
goldfish that had fallen out of a bird's beak. It
fell into his lawn and he rescued it while it
was still alive, and this was he tweeted about it.
He was, you know, an active Twitter user. It was
(49:47):
interesting as we were talking just listening to him be like,
this is really exciting, but it's also really weird, and
it comes with kind of this very specific pressure to
feel like, you know, this is you now. And I
know you've written a book called Virtually You, The Internet
and the Fracturing of the Self.
Speaker 6 (50:05):
Could you tell me a.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
Little bit about that as we are constructing our Internet selves.
This feels like a very kind of like extreme specific example,
but I could feel sort of the nucleus of listening
to someone kind of shifting the way they've constructed themselves
online because of this random thing that happened to them
and went viral.
Speaker 5 (50:25):
And my book Virtually You, I talked about how we
have an e personality that I can be quite distinct
from how we from normal life. So we tend to
be more aggressive on to be more impulsive. We tend
to show more narcissism, less patients, et cetera, and that
(50:49):
version of ourselves can be can feel more sort of attractive,
more liberated to us, and we end up buying into it,
sometimes excessively and sometimes at the expense of who we
really are and what our real personality structure is about. Now,
(51:10):
in this example you shared, it does seem like you
know a nice individual who had some sort of strange
thing happened to him practically overnight. Has his life became
about that, And I see parallels with what I've written about.
(51:31):
But what I what I like about how you described
him is that he recognized that it's weird. He recognized
that it doesn't doesn't quite make make sense, and sometimes
online we stopped like we lose that ability to distinguish
between what's like weird and what's real, what's fake and
(51:52):
what's around it. You also say that he recognizes that
the pressure of kind of embracing this persona keeping it going,
And I also appreciate that about the story, because most
of us or many of us, don't see it as
as pressure. We end up somehow again liking it more
(52:17):
than we should without acknowledging the pressure person that's not
really who we are.
Speaker 2 (52:24):
It felt like he was saying and I would feel
the same way in the same position, Like you've been
given this strange gift, you know, of all of these.
Speaker 5 (52:35):
Eyes and in the gifts of virality, Yes.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
The gift and the curse. I mean, I think of
all of these other people who are turned into these
Internet main characters, and how some people you know know
I reject this, I don't want anything to do with this,
and others. You can see the wheels turning a little
bit of like, how like is it possible to make
this moment a part of who I am?
Speaker 4 (52:58):
Does it even make I think?
Speaker 5 (53:01):
I mean, I think there is a way to have
fun with it, embrace it temporarily without allowing it to
get to your head too much. I mean, the thing
about virality is that it doesn't last, right, Like we
we get tired of people who go viral and stories
that go viral pretty quickly. I mean, online we're constantly
(53:22):
on the about you know, the next big thing or
the next story. I think acknowledging this aspect of virality
is important if you don't want to end up being,
you know, the victim of it, right because if you
embrace it and assume that you can keep it up,
then you're going against all the lessons that internet history
(53:47):
has taught us.
Speaker 6 (53:48):
But if you can, you.
Speaker 5 (53:49):
Know, play with it, have fun with it, but you know,
remember how long that it's not going to be superlasting,
then I think that's that's a healthy or more realistic approach.
Speaker 2 (54:02):
If I came to you and said, hey, I just
completely randomly became an Internet main character, I don't really
want this attention, I'm overwhelmed by it.
Speaker 4 (54:15):
How would you advise me?
Speaker 5 (54:17):
I guess one thing I would I would tell you
is to reassure you that internet memes have a finite
lifespan that as heavy and overwhelming as this feels, as
everlastings as it feels, it has a beginning and middle, end,
(54:37):
an end, and it will be shorter living than you
probably assume it is. I would I would caution you
against responding, you know, impulsively to whatever the situation is,
because that's another thing that people under pressure will do
(54:58):
online and they end up up often regretting their reaction.
I think through how you react, don't do anything that
might sort of compound the problem. Lastly, I've done a
lot of work on privacy.
Speaker 6 (55:15):
Online privacy.
Speaker 5 (55:16):
Yes, you know, one of the biggest sort of victims
of online culture, the fact that we now live in
a privacy age, and privacy and healthy psychology go hand
in hand. So I would urge you, despite this sort
of viral state that you're in, I would urge you
(55:37):
to be protective of your privacy to the extent that
you can, despite the Internet attention.
Speaker 2 (55:46):
And then the flip side of that, the flip side
of that question is I approach you and I say
I want to go viral, I want to become famous online.
I think I can handle it, and I don't think
it'll affect me.
Speaker 4 (56:03):
How would you advise me?
Speaker 5 (56:06):
What I would do in this case is, you know,
put my therapist's hat on and ask what it is
about you know, your your current life, your offline life,
even your online life that feels so empty and hollow
(56:27):
that you would be desperately seeking online fame. I would
recommend that you not look for online fame for the
sake of online fame.
Speaker 6 (56:40):
But but do what you want.
Speaker 5 (56:43):
To do and go for the goals you always wanted
to go for. And if internet fame happens, it will
be for the right reasons and not for the sake of.
Speaker 4 (56:55):
I love that answer.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
Yes, it's like sometimes it happens, but hopefully God, I
mean for the few that it happens on their terms.
Speaker 10 (57:02):
I think just the idea of wanting Internet frame at
all costs, I mean, that's the track that a lot
of culture falls into, right Like I want to be
an influence or whatever whatever it takes, and that's just
not healthy.
Speaker 2 (57:18):
And then my last question is I don't know if
this is a hard question in or not, so I
apologize in advance. Is there anything about the state of
today's Internet how we're consuming to feel positive about.
Speaker 5 (57:34):
I think there's a new found awareness that we may
have embraced some technologies, we may have embraced some platforms
blindly without sort of thinking through our behavior. There's I
think broad recognition around that, and I think that's the
(57:55):
necessary first step toward being able to correct things. You know,
like awareness, education are absolutely essential, and I think there's
a lot more of that today compared to even a
couple of years ago. That's the silver lining I see.
Whether it's sufficient is a different story altogether, but at
(58:20):
least it's necessary that we have a healthier dose of
that now compared to the recent past.
Speaker 2 (58:30):
Thank you so much to doctor Abujade, and you can
find his new book, A Leader's Destiny by Psychology, Personality
and character make all the difference at the link in
the description. A little over a month after Ben Baskett
and I first talked, I checked in again to see
how he was doing and tell him a little bit
about my chat with doctor Abujade.
Speaker 4 (58:50):
Who are his updates?
Speaker 8 (58:52):
Hi?
Speaker 4 (58:52):
Ben, how are you good?
Speaker 7 (58:54):
Thank you? How are you?
Speaker 2 (58:55):
So we haven't spoken since about this time the last month.
Tell me what has changed in your in your fish life?
Speaker 7 (59:06):
So I now have three fish name name. So Barney
is the original companion to Alice. He's still around. He
did have some kind of weird fungal infection for a while,
which I think is new. But he's better and I
think actually it's salt that cured him. Apparently salt is
(59:29):
like a cure all for goldfish. We've got Daphne, looks
a little bit like Alice, but it is a bit stockier.
And then we've got Edgar, who is a bit like
a bruiser kind of bloke who's got like a little mustache.
I imagine him like a American prohibition kind of guy
with a with a mini gun.
Speaker 2 (59:47):
Okay, I like that. There is also, yeah, the applied
personality is that is critical a pet ownership.
Speaker 7 (59:54):
It's very important. And then obviously we've got Charlie's Angels,
which I think I had last time. I can't remember.
Loads of mini fish. There's how there's thirteen of them,
loads of mini little fish.
Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Wow, Okay, that's this is wonderful news. Is this like
a lifelong thing, have you? Because that was my question
going in, I was like, is he going to commit
to being the fish guy?
Speaker 7 (01:00:20):
I think I think it's probably yes, given everything has
gone well with the you know, no fish has died.
I mean, Barney tried his best, but you know, no
fish has died. So it may be that I'm not
terrible at keeping fish. And I'm sure I said this
last time, but every time that I post anything on
Twitter that isn't directly fish related, I almost get abuse
(01:00:42):
for not posting about the fish. How there you have
other hobbies or other things to talk about. People have
said things like, oh, yes, you know, we followed you
for the fish and now we're learning about you know,
the intricacies of the UK medical system.
Speaker 4 (01:00:55):
That's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
I have a theory that, Yeah, people that casually follow
any one online get really upset if they learn more
than like three things about you, Like you just cannot
be too multifaceted or people kind of freak out. It
seems like you're posting whatever the fuck you want. Anyways,
Do you do you.
Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Feel pressure to fish post a certain amount?
Speaker 7 (01:01:16):
No? Not really. I mean I like posting about the
fish because they are quite funny and the amount of
you know, stupid ship any animal does, let alone a
load of fish, you know, Sharing that on Twitter is
actually quite it's quite entertaining. It's also it's a good
way to sort of like document as well, you know,
things that have changed over the past month or so.
Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
You know, we'll keep doing this. I'll check in with
you in a year and see how life has changed.
Any fish goals, anything that you like, want to do
that you haven't done. Are you going to expand? Are
you going to maintain? What's what's the plan?
Speaker 7 (01:01:51):
So apparently someone warmed me about this before. It's called
multi tank syndrome, and essentially you start with one fish
or one tank and it's never enough. It's sort of
like an addiction, and then you keep buying more tanks
until your house is more tanks than house. I want
a marine tank for saltwater time.
Speaker 4 (01:02:11):
Oh wow, that's good.
Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
That's serious, right, it's a serious Well, that's I'm so
glad that Alice has brought this new facet of your life.
Speaker 7 (01:02:22):
It's going to be I'm quite excited to see what
my electric bill is going to do. I imagine it's
going to go up significantly, such as.
Speaker 4 (01:02:29):
The life of a fish father. Well, well, thank you
for catching.
Speaker 7 (01:02:34):
Up with me, then no problem.
Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Thanks so much to Ben Beska for being gained to
this unhinged case study.
Speaker 4 (01:02:41):
And you can.
Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
Follow his ongoing fish adventure on Twitter at besca. And
with that, Alice, our dearly departed goldfish and Ben Basca
your sixteenth minute end now and for our moment of
fun this week. This is a pet episode. Here is
(01:03:02):
my perfect eldest boy Flee singing you a beautiful song.
Speaker 8 (01:03:06):
My boy soprano, See you next week.
Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 4 (01:03:46):
The amazing Ian.
Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme
song is by Sad thirteen and Pet shout outs to
our dog producer Anderson, my cat's fleeing Casper, and my
pet Rockbird will outlive us on bye
Speaker 5 (01:04:06):
Mm hmm
Host
Jamie Loftus
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