The Bitches Get Riches Brand Promise: Social Media, Plagiarism, and AI in an Age of Exploitation

“You know how we joke about our ‘brand promise’?” I say to Jess in our weekly meeting.

“You mean our guaranteed minimum of dick jokes? Naturally! Why?”

“I’m thinking of finally writing a real one.”

“Oh, like a sentence or two in the sidebar?”

I make a face. My coblogger regards me with the abrupt suspicion of a dog owner whose faithful friend is chewing on an item of unknown provenance. “How long is it?”

“Kinda long…” I concede, a bad dog chewing faster.

She sighs. “I look forward to reading it.” This is what she says when she’s resigned to receiving an eleventy-thousand-word shitstorm that defies editing for clarity and brevity, delivered the morning we’re supposed to publish. And like X, I’m gon’ to give it to her.

Lately my brain has been leaking big, scary thoughts about the nature of the work we do here. Conversations about AI, plagiarism, social media, and the value of creative labor swirl through my head. I try keeping these thoughts where they belong: in the shower. But sometimes they escape and bully their way to my word processor.

Today, I want to spell out the real Bitches Get Riches promise. To make specific promises, and to explain why they’re so important. Because I want you to know me—and because I want you to know what you can (and cannot) expect from “content creators” in this time so fraught with artifice and greed.

It’s a little different from our usual. Indulge me, and I’ll strive to reward you for your patience.

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Ask the Bitches: "Social Media Fatigue is Stressing Me the Fuck Out—What Can I Do Besides Quit?"

Ask the Bitches: Social Media Fatigue Is Stressing Me the Fuck Out—What Can I Do Besides Quit?

I’ve spent a lot of time gazing into the abyss of social media fatigue over the past year. And I guess the abyss is finally gazing back, because we’ve gotten a few questions on this subject recently!

Patreon donor (and effulgent selkie maiden) Georgie puts it this way:

Hello eminent and awe-inspiring Bitches! I have a question that I hope you might have some insight on.

How can I kick ass in today’s activism, corporate, and social world without using social media? 

I am autistic, and have found through painful experience that usage of any media that is endlessly scrollable (think Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc) negatively impacts my mental health to the point of being actively dangerous. Most importantly, I have been active in social justice activism for a few years now and find it nigh on impossible to work well within the current BLM movement in my city without Facebook.

Along with this, I know that potential employers, dates, and roommates are searching for me online and finding someone who effectively disappeared last year. Any advice would be appreciated.

May your crackers be cheesy & your wallets be fat,

– Georgie

First, we must pause to admire Georgie’s sign off, which is a 10/10. Now, let’s see what we can do about her problem, which sounds like social media fatigue. Maybe with a splash of activism fatigue. And boy am I familiar with that!

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Why Are Influencers Using MLM To Sell Shady Financial Products on Instagram?

I’m used to pretty Instagram people hawking all sorts of things that will never, ever make my face more symmetrical—but what’s the deal with the recent trend of influencers selling shady financial products?

This week’s question comes from Patreon Donor Mara. Their question prompted a lot of deep thought about the aspirational nature of wealth and our complicity in that paradigm. It’s self-recriminatory af. You’re gonna love it. 

Mara writes…

I’m writing to ask if you guys had any thoughts on all these Personal Finance Flavored MLMs that are popping up like crazy on social media.

I work in the entertainment industry. Recently I’ve noticed that a lot of young actors are selling “classes” and the like on their Instagram pages. It seems like they really target young artists/musicians/models and tell them that selling Forex or Bitcoin is the key to intergenerational wealth and stability.

It seems super sketchy and predatory to me, but I would love y’alls thoughts.

– Patron Mara
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Season 2 Episode 12: "I work for everything while my peers lead carefree lives. How do I control the resentment?"

Season 2, Episode 12: “I Work for Everything While My Peers Lead Carefree Lives. How Do I Control My Raging Resentment?”

IT’S THE SEASON FINALE! And we’re ending it with a bang. Obviously by “bang” I mean a meditative quest to free oneself from the bitterness of resentment as we navigate this unjust and inequitable world. Because come on, it’s us!

The tl;dr of today’s episode is: comparison is the thief of joy.

If you’re constantly comparing yourself to your seemingly more successful, productive, and flush with cash peers, it can be majorly discouraging. We’ve talked before about why you shouldn’t hold yourself to the standard of the uber-successful, or why you shouldn’t long to splurge before you’re ready.

But one of the many, many horrible features of this global pandemic is that it’s becoming harder to avoid comparison. The internet—where we’ve all been forced to work and play while social distancing—is chock full of productivity porn and highly edited content specifically designed to make you feel like you’re not doing enough. Like you’ll never be enough.

So today on the podcast, we’re addressing how frustrating and hard it can be to stay motivated and encouraged when your peers seem to be crushing it… and you feel left behind in the dirt.

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You WILL Regret Accepting Your Coworker’s Social Media Friend Request

Facebook was born just as Piggy and I became seniors in high school. That made us the exact right age to experience the social media phenomenon as it was originally intended: a secret club made exclusively for college students to be extremely horny at each other.

Ummm yeah. It was buck-wild.

Scroll back far enough, and it’s like time traveling back to Studio 54 in 1978. Nothing but glitter and blow and Donna Summer rhapsodizing for seventeen minutes about a cake in the rain. Jokes so filthy I cover my mouth when I read them! Photos so embarrassing they can never see the light of day!

Is there a photo of Piggy and I clinking wine glasses while I’m giving her a lap dance while wearing nothing but a cowboy hat, a bra, leggings, and some fingerless leather biker gloves? Uh, YEAH, I’m pretty sure there is! (And before you ask, no—you shall never see them. Not even you, Patreon donors. I know we’ve shared some of our drunken karaoke with you in the past, but even we have limits!)

It was fun while it lasted. But alas, nothing gold can stay.

The times they are a’changin’

First came the high school students. Then the general public. Friend requests crept in from younger kids who’d looked up to us. Coworkers. Professors. Bosses! Parents?! GRANDPARENTS??! Meemaw, no! You don’t need to see old photos of Piggy and I humping a statue of Abigail Adams!

So much about social media has changed since Pigz and I were young. But even though its place in our daily lives is pretty damn cemented, there still isn’t a clear path to avoiding the intrusive, awkward encounters with bosses, coworkers, and companies. The OG horniness persists if the platform persists (do not check your filtered messages, for there be dragons). But it has expanded to includes bosses, coworkers, and companies who are horny for a peek into your private life. They’re thirsty as heck to leverage whatever they can learn about you for their own purposes.

Today we’re sharing some horrifying tales from the intersection of work and social media. Perhaps we can distill a little wisdom from the wreckage!

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What’s the Effect of Social Media on Your Finances?

What’s the Effect of Social Media on Your Finances?

“What’s the effect of social media on my finances?”

Our regular readers know that we ask our Patreon supporters to help us choose article topics. This month’s poll was a dead heat, so we decided to take on both! And this was the question posed.

It’s a tough one to answer comprehensively with data. Everyone uses different platforms, in different amounts, for different reasons. But some immediate commonalities jumped out at us. Some were good, and some were bad. In honor of my tepid* acknowledgment that Star Wars exists, I’ve categorized them into light and dark sides.

GUYS I’M JUST SO

HIP AND TOPICAL

YOU CAN’T EVEN HANDLE IT.

Go see a star war.
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