What Is Fictosexuality?

0:00Welcome to Post Games, a podcast about how and why we love video games. I am your host, Chris Plant, and I am so happy to have you here as we discuss the most powerful force in the world. Not nihilism, not hatred. I am talking about love. And wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, don't turn off the episode. Please, this won't be sappy. I promise. Let's all start with a deep breath, a sincere question, and an honest answer. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? I believe the answer is universally, yes, that having the hots for a character in a cartoon, a book or a video game is something that we've all experienced, at least once, but rarely said aloud. Names like Jessica Rabbit and Lola Bunny, Flynn Rider and Prince Zuko might send a tingle up the back of your neck, and that my friends is OK.

1:05The flutter of the heart and the raising of the pulse might end with the credits roll, or it might continue the character appearing in people's social media avatars, or their bumper stickers, or throughout their favorite fanfiction. And on a dark and lonely night, they might even have switched on in Cognito mode, and search for a certain character's name, plus Rule 34, their computer screen filling with Yogi Bear performing the most taboo of X on a delighted snagopus. And that, too, is OK, even if it's less common. For most people, these crushes, from the sweet to the not safer work, go no further than attraction, because after all fictional characters by definition are fiction. But for a small group of people who identify as Ficto Files, the feeling is flourishing to love. Video games have been associated with Ficto Filia before it even really had a name,

2:06but especially since 2018, when a man symbolically married Hatsune Miku, a fictional pop star who appears in gobs of video games, where players not only help her sing hit songs, but select her clothes, style her looks, and decorate her deeper room, a sort of adorable green room space where you can hang out with this teal-haired icon. And, away from video games, they have the freedom to create songs for the character to sing, using specialized Bokaloid software, which used to say, fans can make Hatsune Miku into whatever they'd like. We have come a long way since Miku. Since 2018, the biggest and wealthiest tech companies have sunk billions into artificial intelligence to create machines that don't just sing and dance and wear your favorite clothes, but perform menial tasks and shower the user in flirtatious praise, chopped often from copyright-protected text, and then collaged by predictive algorithm.

3:13Many tech CEOs have been open about their desire to hook customers with chatbot tools designed to mimic human behavior. Cautious brands have paid celebrities, millions of dollars to appear in Super Bowl ads where they talk to their smart home speaker like it's their best friend, while Elon Musk has proudly loaded his AI with an army of sex spots, a glorified mechanical parrot that will say all of your favorite naughty words. Which is why I felt so strongly about doing this episode. I believe that in the coming years, we will need to be collectively prepared to have some tough, sensitive, and often contradictory conversations about what it means to fall in love with fictional characters. So, this week on Post Games, I am talking with one of the leading researchers of Fiktofelia and Fiktosexuality, Tanya Balisano. I spoke with my guest because

4:14Fiktosexuality is broadly misunderstood in various between people, regions, and experiences. So I wanted to chat with someone who has spent time reading, analyzing, and contextualizing the words and feelings of people from across the community. That said, I want you to have the chance to hear directly from people who identify as Fiktophilic or Fiktosexual, too. So I've included a variety of links in the show and it's ranging from interviews with the man who symbolically married Hatsune Miku to lesser-covered everyday experiences of people in places like the Fiktosexual subreddit, where experiences range from Fiktosexuality to semi-fiktosexuality to having characters that provide a sense of stability and comfort. I do ask, though, that if you choose to visit these sites especially community spaces like Reddit, that you engage with them sincerely, we don't want to be tourist

5:15in these communities. We want to learn about the wide breadth of human experience and see where it overlaps with our own, especially if you listen to this episode and hear yourself in it, which is my long-winded way of saying, I want to handle this topic with as much respect as possible because we all deserve as much. So for this week, act one, what is Fiktophilia, act two, fandoms, parasocial relationships, and big tech? A special Patreon bonus, I have it. A big milestone, this is a rare peak behind the curtain. I know it's a little inside baseball, but I think you will be excited to hear about where the show is going and I can't wait to tell you. And act three, as always, the news of the week. Plus, we have a new song from the upcoming game, Tears of Metal. All of that, and more, right after this break.

6:17This episode is brought to you in part by Incogni, as a video game journalist who has been doxed. I am constantly preaching the message of personal data hygiene. Every person, not just journalists, should be aware of just how much of their personal information, I'm talking phone numbers, addresses, health information, and more is available on the internet. And those private details, they are being sold without your consent by data brokers. The problem, it is so big and so widespread, you could lose entire days finding who has your info requesting that they remove it and keeping these bad actors accountable. That is why I recommend Incogni. The moment you subscribe and authorize removal. Incogni begins searching data brokers, online directories, people databases, and commercial databases. And you get to watch it happen in real time on your dashboard. When I

7:19signed up, over 200 removal requests were sent instantly within 30 minutes, 60 requests had been completed. And that's not just a number. I can see the list of data brokers that have been contacted and begun the data removal process because trust is good. But when it comes to safety, I might friends want to see the results. But Incogni's work doesn't end there, it keeps checking back in with data brokers because with new hacks of personal data, your info can begin to crop up in some of those old, gnarly places. After going independent as a journalist, I began searching for the right data personal removal service for me. Incogni is exactly what I was looking for. And has already brought me tremendous peace of mind. To get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan, go to incogni.com forward slash post games. Post games all on words right there.

8:25Or click the link in the episode description box or click the link in the show notes and the newsletter at post.games. Today's episode is brought to you in part by Quince, a thoughtfully built wardrobe comes down to pieces that mix well and last. That is where Quince shines. Premium fabrics consider design in everyday essentials that feel effortless to wear and dependable, even as the seasons change. In the seasons, my friends, they just keep changing. Quince has everyday essentials that I love with quality that last. Lightweight, cashmere sweaters, short sleeve, mingolian, cashmere polo, linen bottoms and shorts, tees in 100% pima cotton, and European jersey linen. These are the personal pieces that make wardrobe actually work season to season. Quince works directly with top factories and cuts out the middlemen. They're not pan for brand markup or fancy retail stores. Just quality, clothing

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10:32love it and you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash post games, all one word for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash post games. Act 1. What is Fictifilia? Today's guest is Dr. Tanya Valesalo, a teacher, researcher and project coordinator at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies at the University of Yavaskala in Finland. Her research focuses on game and fandom studies beyond today's topic her work ranges from research on esports and streaming to sexual violence and popular media like Game of Thrones. In the first half she'll introduce us to the history and communities of

11:33Fictifilia and Fictosexuality and in the second half we'll talk about Fictifilia in relation to fandoms, parasocial relationships and the mega companies that seek to exploit relationships with fictional characters in order to convert massive audiences into AI true believers. The study states that the quote, present intention is not to propose Fictifilia as a problem or a disorder. What was the intention of the study? To understand what this phenomenon is, how people themselves understand it, what kind of experiences and emotions are related to it, and to kind of understand how they position themselves as parts of a larger communities or in relation to different identities. So that was kind of the focus because there was some really no existing research on this particular phenomenon or there was very little of it

12:40or it was older so we wanted to get into the heart of what is happening right now to understand. It's picking up understanding. I'm sure there are plenty of people listening who have felt an attraction to a cartoon character before. How is Fictifilia different from people watching a film like let's say Roger Rabbit and being attracted to Jessica Rabbit or Roger Rabbit? How is Fictifilia different than those feelings? The main difference is that people who identify as Fictor Romantic, it's a huge part of their identity and they often are either only attracted to fictional characters or at least it is a major part of their romantic or sexual identity. So I think that's the biggest difference because for all of us it's very normal and natural to feel attraction to a fictional character because fictional characters are built like that. We are

13:40kind of responding to them as if they were real people. That's kind of the essence of a fictional character but then when it comes to this Fictophilic experience, fictional characters are forming kind of the focus of these persons romantic and sexual feelings. How new is this as a feeling? Or I guess another way to put it is what are the earliest examples you could find of Fictophilic feelings? Oh gosh, I'm sure you could find really old examples. Of course we don't have access to the earliest or it's difficult to say what would be like the earliest case but I would expect that it's as old as mass media at least because mass media is something that has allowed us to connect with these different fictional characters, representations of

14:42fictional characters in many different media forums. Of course there are certainly, I'm sure we can find examples from even before but mass media has allowed us to have a variety of fictional characters we can encounter every day. So it's easy to find an ideal person from that variety. I will avoid stepping on the third rail here of modern religion. So I'll just say let's say Greek gods but I couldn't help but find a similarity here between the relationship with people and gods and again for using Greek gods for a safety net. Is there a difference between that kind of intense passionate relationship and something like this? Well, I'm more than expert in religious experiences. I'm sure there can be a kind of a religious connection with a deity that comes close to Fictophilia. I have originally studied history and my background is

15:49in history research. So I of course have to say that it's always kind of dangerous to draw two direct parallels between earlier phenomena and current phenomena because we can never completely get into the kind of the cultural context and mindset that people used to have in ancient days. So I would actually think of Fictophilia more like a phenomenon that can have similar similar previous examples in the past but still I would think that Fictophilia is strongly a modern phenomenon when we define it as Fictophilia per se because it's the word that the people use who have found each other through internet. I think that's one of the major things that allows this kind of phenomenon to arise is that there have probably been people

16:50for ages who have had these kinds of private experiences, experiences of not being able to find anyone in this plane of existence in real life who would be as interesting or as attractive as a particular fictional character but they were very alone experiences certainly because these people were not just able to connect with each other. Now with the online groups, different kinds of online communities, forums, it's possible to find others who have these fairly rare experiences at least a lot of the much of the population of the world then it's easier to form communities. So if we look at for example English speaking forums and online websites you can have as we found in our research that there are loads of these forums and discussions where people

17:50discuss these experiences so they have been able to find each other and find this peer support and find through others through discussing with others find an understanding or what is this that I'm feeling and experiencing and to give a name to that experience. I think you have to have the peer support, you have to have the community to be able to find a name. Let's take into the communities because there is this tension. So your study notes that one of the most common topics in these online forums is stigma and shame and yet they are choosing to speak about it. So they're breaking past some layer of that stigma and shame. What gets them over that hump? I think certainly the main kind of takeaway from this that this is clearly so important to them. These are not emotions that come one week and are gone the next but they are clearly something

18:56that has stayed with them for a while. It doesn't mean that the situation isn't different a year or two years or five years later but in a point where they come and discuss these emotions in an online forum in these online settings they have already been feeling this way for quite a while. So it clearly takes precedence in their life and of course we presume that lots of these people are young people. We don't know their age exactly but we expect and can cause true from some of their writings that many of them are quite young. So of course it is possible that these experiences are something that are part of their development for example. So it doesn't mean that they necessarily have had these emotions for a decade even though these kinds of cases

19:56exist as well but in general it's clearly something that they're a pondry. They are trying to understand themselves. Why are these emotions with me? Why am I different than my friends or family members or other people around me? Because others seem to be able to form relationships with other people and I don't. So it's clearly for them it's something that it's kind of a riddle they want to understand themselves and I think that's why they also start talking about it. Even though there's hesitation there can be fear how will others feel about me and in this study we actually noticed when people write about this stigma. For some it's stopping them from sharing with their friends or families. They experience them because of themselves as fictophilic or fictor romantic or fictosexual. So many of them don't share it anywhere else

21:01except on this online forums. You have a great term for the feelings that are going through the minds of someone who is experiencing fictophilic emotions and it's the fictophilic paradox. Can you explain what that is? So fictophilia can be problematic for the people experiencing it because at the same time they have found this love or attraction to this wonderful person but this person is a fictional character. It's not someone they can actually interact with in their daily lives and we know that love and attraction are usually considered as positive feelings even though they can also bring off course different kinds of sorrows and pain with them. But at the same time these people experiencing fictophilia they are very much aware that this

22:07is not a real person so they can never truly be with them. So happiness and attraction and love may be on the other hand but then again there's always the distance. There's always the distance with the fictional love. They can never really really be together. They can never really truly interact and that brings the pain or the sorrow in these. I think it's something that's very familiar to many of us. We look at an amazing film or TV series that deeply affects us or play a game where we interact with characters who are really important to us but when the story ends or when the game is over or you are done with the book it doesn't continue and the sadness you feel when you have to kind of leave it. Of course you can go back and rewatch or replay

23:10or reread but still there's an ending. Yeah. I don't know. Have you experienced that when you have played a really great game or a really wonderful movie or you're sad that it ends? Yeah. It's the sadness that it ends. Oddly I feel like a lot of modern media is keen to this so it doesn't end. It wants to create the sense that it's just a part of our world. Star Wars as much as part of our world as anything else it will never end. You can go visit Disneyland. It's trying to create a sense of this fictional thing being real and we'll get into this more in the second half of the way that people close that distance. Before we get to that though I did want to pick it other ways. This feels similar to I guess I would say typical experiences. In the study you talk about fictophilic super normal stimuli. It sounds like a fancy term but

24:16it's actually quite easy to explain. It is where the superior capacities and features associated with fictional characters evoke this feeling especially when compared to quote real people. You have fictional characters who can constantly succeed. They can do all sorts of things that are impossible in the real world and they also have physical appearances that are defy physics. I would say all of that said how is this different from say photoshopped images of models that are on our magazines or the tweaking that is done with light even in a film. Are we more accustomed to these super normal stimuli than we might assume? I think we certainly are and I think you're hitting a really interesting point there because I find that fictophilic has a lot

25:17in common with the so-called parasocial relationships we might have with different celebrities so for the longest time in fan studies, audience studies, psychology. There's been research on how people relate to celebrities, movie stars, TV hosts and so forth and there are lots of similarities to these really intense fan relationships with these real people, these performers in comparison to emotions and connections people experiencing fictophilia have with these fictional characters. So I think there's a lot of similarities but the biggest difference currently in the H or social media is that you have the possibility it might be very small but you have the potential

26:19of actually reaching the celebrity you are admiring. You might be even able to meet them but despite the way you live, where you are in the world, you might be able to get a response from that celebrity through a social media account. That's the difference so I think that's why certainly how celebrities they have the kind of public images that are of course polished and and you mentioned like photoshopping and these kinds of enhancements to the represent physical representations as well. But I still think that they are very similar but there is the difference in a sense of possibility of actually being together or touching the person here or in law. We of course know this on Instagram you don't necessarily know if it's a real person that's

27:20really in effect. We're absolutely going to be getting back into that in just a moment but before that just on the super normal stimuli I in my head when I think about this as someone who has not experienced this by definition I assume it is almost entirely physical attraction which I guess makes me a cliche of a man in some ways but what I enjoyed in this study and it makes so much sense is super normal stimuli can be all sorts of things and you I believe even point to like what a 40-year-old man with kids would actually find to be super normal stimuli and it's not just appearance can you explain what the other versions of that are? I think it's just any personality traits or activities or practices connected to that character that you consider that are ideal so it

28:20could be that the fictional character could appear as the ideal mate who well these are clichés but brings breakfast to bed or is always in a good mood or you know any of these traits that real people just or not you know we all have bad days and none of us are perfect so with the fictional character you can always at least imagine that they are the perfect partner so that they are the answer to all of your wishes, dreams, expectations before we wrap this section I do want to go back to that parasocial and celebrity comparison because that for the person experience it might sound like a negative that you can't close that distance but you also describe that as in some ways a positive because the fictional character is not being real also makes

29:21them quote in your words safe what does safe mean in this scenario? In some games fictional characters can respond to you can reciprocate your feelings for example in some ways so technically that is possible but still you are always aware that it is the way they are coded to do it's the algorithm really working there so in general fictional characters are safe because you don't get anything unexpected you know what they are you know what's coming you are not in any way surprised necessarily you can always just close the window or or TV or the book or the game and you can turn it off so in many ways you have the control you are in control of the fictional characters

30:27their representations so there's none of the danger that comes with human relationships where you don't necessarily have the full control you never do you don't know what the other person is going to say or do and of course the very real possibility that the real person might leave you the fictional character never does well I think that's a nice sour sweet place to take a quick break and then we'll come right back this episode is brought to you in part by a factor you got the cold days going right now you've got big things to accomplish this year you have no time to cook well don't worry factor mix eating healthy easy with fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by chefs so you can eat that tasty food you can feel good and you don't

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32:36now and you know just not having to be stressed that could be a lot the fact that these are delicious meals that's the cherry on top my friends that's the good stuff so head to factor meals dot com slash post games 5 0 off and use code post games 5 0 off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year eat like a pro this month with factor new subscribers only varies by plan one free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active act to fandoms parasocial relationships and big tech so here we're going to talk about both how the tepilia ties into games and really the experience of it I want to start with the gaming this is a gaming podcast what characters from gaming have you seen inspire thick to feel like feelings for

33:39fictophilia there is no specific one character that we have found that would arouse these emotions so rather I would say the japanese role playing games that might be the like ashan ray that comes up often but I think the diversity of characters that ficto sexual fictor romantic fictophilic people are attracted to I think it just goes to show that these fictophilic emotions are more about the person experiencing them rather than the character the fictional character that awakens them so it's more about coming across a certain character in a right time and right place who somehow responds or answers to the needs the person has at that moment perhaps the most

34:40famous example of ficto sexuality is akiko kondo a middle aged japanese man who famously symbolically emphasis on symbolic here because it's often misreported married hot scene miko a character that is a vocaloid basically a pop star and akihiko kondo has since become something of an outspoken advocate for cultural acceptance of fictosexuality why do you think this particular person's fictosexual relationship has attracted so much public and media attention for nearly a decade I think that's really just down to the novelty of the phenomenon for many people it's as we discussed many people experience the stigma related to fictophilia and it makes them scared telling about their experiences even to their friends or families so I think this case is different

35:44because this person has come out publicly to discuss fictophilia so I think it's just because it's so new for so many people reading the new stories finding out about this now I must say I haven't really followed closely this kondo's case I'm not familiar with them I would also be hesitant in a way to to give you know analysis or judgments on you know someone I I don't really know I think what research can do is we can give a deeper understanding on the phenomenon based on the kinds of stories of multiple different people we're talking the first half about this distance that people feel during this kind of paradox in what ways did you see people trying to close that gap to carry the character with them in some way to recreate the character that they love in the real world well the fictophilic paradox it's something that many of the people we

36:53studied they or the experiences we we studied they depicted how the paradox became real for them or felt especially cruel or hard on those moments when they were disengaging from media so those moments when people were actually engaged in engaged with the character somehow watching a tv series episode or playing the game those were the moments when they felt really close to the character but then the shift from doing that to something else is one of those places where people often really felt the distance and where it felt really painful but on the other hand also everyday life situations so situations where other people go out with their partners talk about their partners are able to do everyday things with their partners

37:59these experiences of fictophilia also described these moments as potentially painful places where these people had to were faced with the different realities they and their friends or family members had because they were able to go go go grocery shopping with their partner and the person who felt they were attracted to or even in a relationship with a fictional character they couldn't really do that that difference also from others make the distance feel further and more there is another term that you used in some ways as a counter to the parasocial relationships that we were talking about in the past and that is love objects which is I think a bit more positive sounding than parasocial relationships in service a different purpose can you describe how these two perspectives are different the parasocial perspective versus the love

39:02love object perspective I'm not actually quite sure that there is such a different huge difference because there are also some researchers feel that fictophilia is kind of just one expression of parasocial relationships now being a really academic guest for you and saying that I think these definitions like finding out if these are different or similar would need a bit more research on that level before I would dare to re-respond to that I'll pivot to a game related thing which is we briefly touched on that games are unique in these situations and that games can at least create the illusion of interactivity and I am very curious about how the way that technology is evolving is going to impact these sorts of experiences I think it was something like the

40:06tubers which came from a mix of game development tools and Folkaloids like Hatsune Miku they are now popular enough to fill conventions in baseball stadiums how do you see fictophilia in expressions of it evolving as fictional characters become quite responsive in real time settings that's a really interesting question as a researcher I'm really excited to see where the future will take us on this because certainly with different AI solutions becoming more and more prevalent and cheaper and easier to access I think there is true potential when we did our study this kind of avalanche of large language models and technology based on them had multi-attabend it was maybe emerging slowly so I think doing this research now or maybe five years from now

41:12might bring new really interesting possibilities I find it completely possible that people experiencing fictor-amantographic to sexual emotions or just fans in general would more and more find these new technological solutions to use to interact with the characters that they love and need it by her so I think it's not something that's necessarily only about fictophilia it's something that might change ways that fandom works in a sense that ways that fan activities take place yeah I feel like we're just feeling to see that with the generative AI chatbot so especially on platforms like x which are promoting these sorts of experiences it is a feature of the platform sorry I was just going to add that technically it's now very possible for a person with with

42:15fairly like medium technical skills to be able to create a chatbot based on the fictional character that they really really love if they have enough data to so so certainly it's possible already beyond this rigid scope of fictophilia we do have the broader culture of sexualized or romanticized characters across entertainment the fandom of them how have corporations fed this culture or subculture fans having at some level romantic or lustful feelings whether it is fictophilic or something a little more common for fictional characters how are people or companies converting that into money that is actually really interesting because often it seems that large media companies media producers they are using or finding the techniques from fandom so

43:21we have seen for example with this launch of transmedia production in the last 10-15 years with these large transmedia products where the same fictional universe is dispersed to many different products and and mediums how many of these practices are directly coming from fandom the things that fans have been doing for decades and ages these strategies that they have created now companies are using those strategies to create revenue they are directly using the kinds of tools of narrative expansion for example so I think probably in the future we we will again see commercial entities taking notes or what fans are doing yeah and then capitalizing on that

44:22because we have seen that happen so many times a last thing friend you study fandoms as a larger tent not just this what did your research into fictophilia help you better understand about fandom in general in the fan experience I think the study of fictophilia really showed the diversity of fan experiences and also what I found very interesting was the connection or the engagement with the title of fan so the identity of fan many of these people described that they do not find a place for themselves in fandom that they do not identify as fans so fictophilia was something different from fandom it's really interesting that fandom has become in the last decades such a prevalent phenomenon that we see more and more of these different identities

45:33being defined through not being a fan and I think that actually tells us something about how fandom here has really become mainstream and they need to be more it sounds like in some way fandom used to meant intense almost fanatical relationship and you're right now everyone is a fan of something fans used to be the ones bearing the stigma so fandom was something that was considered unhealthy childish not fitting for adults certainly for example and we have seen the change in that in the last decades now I think we can just see these new cultures new identities emerging for whom fandom is now the mainstream fan cultures are in many many places now the mainstream I think this is also something that is partially perhaps a generational question I think that

46:37myself for example I have identified as a fan of different things from very early from my teenage years so I think these kinds of phenomena just show that these identities are also tied to certain times places and generations that is a perfect place to end it thank you so much where where should people look if they want to follow your work or they want to know more about what you do oh I'm kind of boring in a sense that I don't I don't have a cool website at the moment and I'm actually spending a lot of the time off social media nowadays but I think blue sky is probably the place that can be found that's perfect thank you so much thank you a patreon bonus a big update on post games here is where we split for patreon subscribers something

47:43a little bit different I try not to get to inside baseball the show isn't about me but post games hit a big subscriber milestone this week so I would like to share what that means for the future the publication how much further I still need to go before I will feel stable-ish and also what is coming in the editorial calendar I would like to you know like wet your appetite a little for some truly incredible conversations with people I never thought I would have the chance to speak with for everybody else though no worries we still have the news of the week and a new song from the upcoming game cheers of metal as the title suggests it is a heavy metal anthem so let's split so act three the news of the week okay so for this episode's news I wanted to catch y'all up on the

48:44growing concern about child safety on roadblocks my friend and former colleague Nicole Carpenter recently spoke with the roadblocks head of parental advocacy about the company's efforts around child safety and it stands on the hundred plus active lawsuits against the company we don't discuss it here because it would have become the entire conversation but at one point in Carpenter's interview and it's available on vulture.com I'll link it in the show notes you should go read it the head of parental advocacy at roadblocks makes an unusual comparison to quote true young british schoolgirls who went off to fight ISIS you're gonna need to read that part on your own anyway Nicole Carpenter is a reporter whose work has appeared across a variety of publications from 404 media to aftermath game file to game spot and she previously worked with me

49:49at polygon her interview with dr. Elizabeth Lovatov is available on vulture in the story roadblocks head of parental advocacy says we're all responsible for kids's online safety let's hop into it but you spoke with dr. Elizabeth Lovatov who is the head of parental advocacy at roadblocks a relatively new role created to address the let's say mounting concerns from both parents and politicians that child predators will use a platform to groom abduct and abuse children but before we get into that I'd like to set the table because I think there are many older people who aren't parents and they still don't know much about roadblocks so first just how big is roadblocks roadblocks is massive people who don't know a ton about roadblocks itself see roadblocks as a game but roadblocks is actually a platform that has thousands of games on it and

50:50so many of those games at any given time have tens of thousands of people playing it and when you add all of that up you get millions and millions of people playing per day you have long been an advocate such fans such critic of neopets yeah and I am talking with the uh CEO of neopets cited today for a future episode and I'm realizing everyone who played neopets was better prepared for roadblocks than everybody else because the like superstructure it was there like that it's an entire different side of video games that has just grown and grown and grown to be bigger than arguably all of video games yeah I actually think about that a lot my relationship to neopets as a child and that place for me as a child and when I'm thinking about what roadblocks is now for children and I you know I was a child when I was playing neopets I wasn't thinking about safety

51:50concerns and I looking back I don't even really know what neopets was doing to be safe-ish but I don't remember hearing a ton about like safety issues on the platform the moderation was pretty good you could talk to other people but it was um through neo-male or on forums which were heavily moderated I don't remember looking to connect with people off the platform either I mostly stayed contained within neopets and I think that might be because there weren't other you know well you could go to AOL you could go to instant messenger and so but yes anyways I think a lot about neopets and its role in my life as a child compared to roadblocks and what children are you know that space for children now these sorts of spaces for children are important but the safety is also a major concern there are a few things that you said there one about like how moderation works

52:53into being on or off platform we're gonna get to all of that in just a second first I know it's like very tough because users can register under false ages but what percentage of the user bases estimated to be children okay so roadblocks actually has some improved data ads of recently the February shareholders report because of their new age of verification tools which is like an AI face scan that determines your age based off your face it's probably not perfect and there probably are ways around it again this data is like you know who it maybe it's a little wrong but it's probably mostly right and they said that their user bases younger than they actually thought based off self reported data so 45% of daily active players have verified their age 35% of that is under 13 38% are between 13 and 17 and 27% of people who have you know done

53:59the age verification are over 18 so that's a significant amount of people who are under 18 you mentioned with neopets like being able to communicate via neomail or unmoderated forums how does roadblocks allow players to communicate with one another roadblocks let's players communicate through chat functionality that is embedded into the games is there moderation yes there is moderation there are filters and you know the roadblocks says it's a mixture of human and AI moderation and the thing now is that with this age verification the AI assist the AI tool to like verify ages that is designed specifically to turn off the ability for people to chat you know unilaterally people who are in the under 13 bracket with the age verification can only talk to people on roadblocks who are also within that like under 13 bracket and so the hope there is

55:08an under 13 person no longer can talk to someone who's over the age of 18 and that nobody in either direction is exploiting that system yes so like people who are age verified as over 18 aren't going to be able to use the communication tools to even contact people who are under 13 there are still ways you know it's not like a perfect system I certainly have worries about it we've seen this before with people using I can't remember which app this was for people using like cartoon characters or like photos of video game characters I think Death Stranding's Norman Reedus was used as like a face that could get past it I don't know if it's just a quarter sum system yeah yeah and roadblocks is the way that the AI age verification works is that it's through video and so put the circle on your face and you just turn your face back and forth it's not just like judging by a photo but you know there's if there's a will there's a way how long has child predation been an issue on the platform I would say that likely

56:14always been an issue but around 2020 like all other platforms and video games like it blew up and it blew up at such an explosive rate where you know you saw a very what seemed to be a big increase in the amount of people who were being arrested for this or lawsuits that were happening started to go from like 2020 after that huge boom and what a lot of the you know roadblocks those critics are saying is that roadblocks expanded at such a rate that its moderation could not keep up with you know the explosive growth that like the growth was the priority and not keeping people who use roadblocks safe I want to come back to that idea at the very end but first you mentioned the lawsuits you reported that roadblocks is currently facing over 100 lawsuits from parents and caregivers who believe their kids have been harmed from the time with the game there

57:16are also lawsuits from government institutions roadblocks itself it's we're saying disputes these claims you mentioned the AI moderation you mentioned the age getting what else is roadblocks done to improve safety since these lawsuits started to bubble up the other part of that beyond the age verification is sort of like building up its tools for parents and allowing parents the ability to block certain games or to limit chat or you know just just to have like more control over what their children are doing on roadblocks and so that's like what that sort of like suite of tools is what this whole push has it's been built around the age verification is like the big thing that a lot of it is centered around so the two problems from me and I'm not I'm not speaking even really as journalist here so much as like parent who doesn't allow their child to

58:17use roadblocks anymore is the question of passing the buck and then scaling and at first passing the buck you you asked dr. Molovedov about a specific case I might believe his two curls were abducted and she told you quote look at what the articles say the fact is they may have spoken to this person or met them on roadblocks but then they were a course to they went off to a different platform that's the end of the quote what does she mean by different platform here and why there's like a different I guess measurement of responsibility yeah this has been roadblocks lined for a long time and kind of downplaying roadblocks as role in these sorts of incidents because what happens in a lot of these cases is that children will meet someone on roadblocks through that chat functionality and this a lot of these cases did happen before the age verification started

59:20limiting that who you can chat with so that said so two people will meet on roadblocks and they will exchange information maybe they'll go to discord maybe they'll go to Instagram maybe they'll go to Snapchat and then they will continue their relationship their you know whatever that may be on another platform they may still use roadblocks as a place to like interact but what roadblocks is saying is that like yeah a lot of this bad stuff's happening like somewhere else and kind of downplaying the role that like well these people are meeting on roadblocks this is where they're finding people and so discord is has also been named discord and Snapchat have both been named in some of these lawsuits you know trying to hold them accountable for this as well yeah I personally think it's fucking insane to say like oh I met your kid at the school playground but

1:00:20all the bad stuff happened in my car right I know it's not one for one legally I'm not in the interest of getting sued but I guess the bigger question that I have for you both as a reporter and somebody you know analyzing all of this the bigger picture is it feels like this is it is bigger than roadblocks to give them I guess credit that every tech company is trying to scale quickly and that there is no effort to match moderation at the scale so there might be an effort to moderate but not to match the scale is that I'm asking you the impossible question what do parents do with that I know because like because yeah it is bigger than roadblocks but you can't deny the role roadblocks has in this because it's where people meet and that's such a crucial part of these these incidents these relationships is like it's such a core piece

1:01:26of this predator problem however I don't know like it the thing it's so confusing it's so hard because I am at a loss too for what parents do do you fully say no you can't be on roadblocks do you try to use these parental tools it's very confusing and I'm speaking as someone who's not a parent I can't imagine what it looks like to have to navigate this as a parent and to see these stories but to also see what your children want what your child wants to get you know it is a social platform like a lot of people are you know just talking with their friends on there they're like just you know doing that sort of thing but like the risk is so real that yeah I think it would be hard for me to overlook that risk there there was a part at the end of the interview where she actually asks you what would you do and I find it so interesting because that's

1:02:34a recurring thing again that I see in tech and you are a great interviewer and you did your job and I I will say what my feeling is on that yeah is I am very tired of people asking that question when the answer is actually very easy which is slow down yeah it's actually unbelievably easy but the really what I think is often being asked is what do we do without having to do the thing that works yeah yeah because roadblocks is at this scale now like more people are playing Roblox's top games and they are playing seems top games you can't go back from there and I think that's the problem is that you can't scale down now like it's already out of the box and that is such a really real problem that Roblox scaled at this rate and didn't have the moderation to keep up with that and that's what makes this problem so hard is like you can't undo that you can't go you can't just go back and try to slap a safety bandaid on it the only thing that brings me

1:03:39joy because I want to end on positive note is that you know we should have learned this lesson from social media and now like I'm gotten a second shot at it and we didn't learn it from Roblox but you know we won't be fooled a third time and like you know like build a whole bunch of data centers that cost like a lot of money and then like do this again that that won't happen that won't happen cool got it and yeah you said it out loud so I've got you on the record in Nicole Carpenter great thank you so much for doing this and thank you so much for reporting on things that are existentially crushing you're welcome no but thank you for having me I am always happy to talk to you and talk to you about Roblox where should people find you do you hear her she's trying to speak for me what do you say she said you can find my mommy Nicole Carpenter at on blue sky at wow yeah incredible I'll ask her to write it down for the show notes yeah if she could write it down for the show notes being a dog is rough I'll see you later

1:04:44but yeah yeah yeah yes whoop I just got fit it just a little just a little on the hand and that is a wrap on fictifilia this was a challenging topic for me to parse I hope listeners that you walk away not with judgment of individuals but as I said from the very beginning skepticism of platforms governments and companies that seek to exploit how we feel for their gain and if there's no gain to be had then prepare for them to squash those feelings and the people who have them also just hope that you learned about one of the many ways that we see and experience the world in the unique ways each of us loves people and art next week you might not know that yes but you would not be playing video games today without them the ESA protected games from the U.S.

1:05:47government in the 1990s in the 2000s leading to the monumental supreme court decision that gave games the same protections as other art forms now with growing concerns around gambling and child safety inside of video games and tariffs and artificial intelligence outside of video games the ESA must once again guide the medium through a period of existential peril I talk with the ESA president Stanley Pierre-Louis about everything from artificial intelligence to calls for unionization and he provides a history of the ESA from its origins in the wake of early 1990s mortal combat hysteria to its heyday overseeing e3 to its current form during the trump administration until then though a reminder post game supporters get the show and the newsletter early on Friday is at 5 p.m. eastern at the lightest usually way earlier than that they get extra acts and

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1:07:51subscribe to the patreon at patreon.com forward slash post games for only five dollars subscribe to the newsletter for free at post.games and get full show notes post games logo by James Baram theme by Mark Sparling and a special thank you to this week's guest Kanye Valley Solo like the show leave a review on apple or Spotify or share the show with a friend all of those are a colossal help and now to take us out an original song from the upcoming game tears of metal the character selection theme by vibe avenue i'll see you next week

1:10:48you