Hannah Griff | Criminal Justice Reform, Cancel Culture, And What Portland Has Become | OAP #48
Chase Geiser is joined by Hannah Griff.
Hannah's Website Bio:
My name is Hannah Griff; preferred penname/nickname hhgriff, @yeahrightgirlhg on Twitter. I’m a writer in my mid-twenties, living in my beloved home state of Oregon after a short stint of living in Southern California. I work in law, tote guns, make a lot of jokes (and some insights) on Twitter, and never fail to offer my strong opinion. I have always been a writer, but I started taking a deeper interest in politics during the Obama administration. I started paying attention to the world around me and began writing my thoughts out on Facebook. The responses kept growing and thus, Yeahrightgirl was born in 2015 when I was eighteen.
Over the years I have fallen in love with politics/political science/political theory, and the 2016 election cemented my values and motivations to do this whole writing/politics thing. I have continued learning, researching, expanding and evolving my world views. I have been continuously inspired to share them because many find it hard to pigeonhole me into one political party – but I like it that way. I’m deeply patriotic, economically conservative, and socially left of center. I’m an independent thinker and try as you might, you won’t find that I check all of the boxes for one party or another; my beliefs all come from my personal life experiences and thorough research. I try to facilitate open dialogue about things that are hard to talk about because I believe that we all have something to learn from someone else, even across the aisle. I express what I believe and you will never see me apologize for it.
As I’ve navigated life into my mid-twenties I have learned a lot about myself, my upbringing, my mental health, my relationships, and how my life experiences have shaped not only my politics but my entire outlook on the world. Every person we encounter has their own unique story, their own intricate life full of joy and sorrow and challenges that most people will never know. Therefore in addition to my political pieces, you will find that I write a lot about my struggles with mental health, reflections on abuse I have suffered in the past, my personal spiritual journey, personal downfalls, reflections on things I have overcome in my life, and anything else happening in my life that strikes inspiration. Politics matter, but stories and humanity matter more.
I have a tattoo on my back of a closing line from an unpublished piece I wrote years ago: “For the ones that were never told.” I will always be reminded why I want to do this; the purpose of storytelling, the interconnectedness of the human experience, and my desire to share and connect through my writing. So many stories go untold, so many experiences fade into obscurity, so many meaningful thoughts and opinions go unheard. I want to do my part to tell as many stories as I can during my lifetime, for the ones that were never told
Feel free to read through, argue with me, agree with me, ask me questions, send me an email if you so wish at hannah@yeahrightgirl.com, and find me on Twitter @yeahrightgirlhg.
Thanks for stopping by, enjoy.
EPISODE LINKS:
Chase's Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/RealChaseGeiser
Hannah's Twitter: https://twitter.com/yeahrightgirlhg
It's One American Podcast and we are live with Hannah Griff.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
Thank you for coming on the show.
I appreciate you.
Who are you and what are you doing here?
That's a great question.
Um my name is Hannah Griff.
I just graduated from Portland State.
Umgratulations.
Thank you.
With a degree in urban and public affairs.
So I survived a political program there.
Um and now I'm just kind of figuring out what my next move is.
I'm super heavy into, you know, oh, I have a cat there.
I'm super heavy into political Twitter and um I write for the Rogue Review as well as for my own website, which is yeah, rightgirl.com.
Um lots of just political commentary stuff, and yeah, stuff like that.
It's fun.
Awesome.
So what'd you say your degree was in again?
Urban and public affairs.
So it's kind of like science, but it's like a little more well-rounded.
There's more criminal justice classes, um, more like public service classes, uh community-centered kind of things.
So it's just like more well-rounded politics rather than just political science.
So what was it like going through that curriculum in Portland?
I didn't find another student who outwardly shared the same views as me until literally my very last term, which was just summer term.
Um, so that just gives you a little hint into Portland State.
Um I mean, some of the teachers are really great and you know, teach objectively.
Uh I took a class from or four classes from the same professor because he was just awesome.
And I I knew he was kind of a liberal, but he didn't teach that way, and I appreciated that because so many teachers or and professors would just teach kind of their view into the curriculum as though it was fact.
And you know, people who aren't as politically tuned in as I am wouldn't necessarily realize that just because of how all the information was presented.
So it was a lot of like battling that.
I had teachers come after me because of my Twitter, and it w yeah, it was crazy.
So I finally found some friends in my last term.
So you weren't able to keep your views from your professors.
By nature, no.
I mean, it was a highly political program and opinion on this.
And so it was encouraged, but it was obvious what was encouraged, you know.
Right.
So do you think that like um any um any teachers were were vindictive in that they would, you know, kind of dock points from papers and exams because they they were familiar with your your your leaning?
Um I had that experience early, like in my lower classes.
I luckily the teachers grade, you know, pretty fairly.
I keep saying teachers, I should say professors, but they know I made that mistake too.
They grade pretty fairly.
Um the teacher that I had like a lot of problems with, she came after me because of my Twitter, tried to like report me to the dean.
I think she did report me to the dean.
Um, but I ended up What'd she want the dean to do?
Just expel you.
They wanted me to delete certain tweets off of my Twitter.
And so I wasn't having that, and I told them that, and it was a big thing for a minute, but they ended up backing down because I was not gonna be quiet about it.
Um but I you know, I worked hard in her class, I did all the work and I earned an A and she gave me an A. So I would say my grades weren't affected, it was more just like my experience.
So um with with a degree in urban and public affairs, is there like an emphasis on city planning or the politics of in in in metropolitan areas specifically or yeah, there is, and that's the thing, you could it was very much I took a lot of community-based classes, um, doing community work and community projects, um researching, you know, local organizations, that kind of thing.
It's very grassroots.
Um, and it is had does have like an urban slash city vibe just because Portland State is in the city, but I didn't have to take classes that necessarily were tail tailored to that.
The course you know, options for that degree were vast, so you could kind of like choose and pick what you liked to take.
So I took a lot of criminal justice classes, for example.
So uh what was it like to be in Portland during uh 2020?
So I actually worked in downtown Portland.
Um I never went to class on campus.
I did my almost yeah, my entire last two years online um because I worked full-time, but I did work downtown.
I stopped working downtown right around whenever the lockdown started, so it must have been end of March 2020.
And I've worked from home since then, so I luckily don't have to be around the city much anymore.
Um, but the couple times I've gone, you know, recently, it's just sad.
It's not the same thing.
So was the city really burning, like you know, kind of how it was depicted by the writer.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, people on Twitter were I remember getting very, you know, irritated with people on Twitter who were like, oh, it's just propaganda, they want you to make they want you to believe that it's worse than it is, and it's not really reality, but it was.
I mean, certain parts of downtown were fine, but there was a lot of parts, especially when you come in like from the freeways, so kind of like the main part of downtown that you hit first was the worst part.
Um yeah, it was as bad as the pictures and the videos made it out to be.
It that was real.
So you have in your Twitter bio that you're a gun gun toter.
Uh did you did you were you just carrying or just keeping your car?
I don't know how the laws are on Oregon for that.
I imagine it's probably pretty uh tumultuous.
Yeah, with a concealed you can carry.
Um like in a bag that you carry.
Um I think it's actually illegal to keep it in your car if you don't have a license.
But luckily, Oregon's gun laws are pretty conservative considering how liberal our other politics are.
Right.
Well, there's a lot of there's a lot of uh gun people in Oregon, generally, just like in the rural areas, right?
Because just there's a hunt, there's like a lot of hunting and sort of outdoor recreation type.
Yeah, absolutely.
Outside of like Portland and Eugene are really like the liberal hotspots, which are the highly you know densely populated spots.
Eugene is where University of Oregon is.
Um, and those are really what swing the whole state blue.
Every almost every other county, I think, in Oregon in any of eastern Oregon or even you know, just east of the city, and I think along the coast, that's pretty all all conservative.
Southern Oregon is very conservative, so it's just those two little spots that kind of ruin it for everyone else.
Yeah, I grew up in Illinois and that was kind of the way it was uh when I was growing up, is that it was Cook County basically just determined that the state was blue, even though everywhere else in Illinois, you know, super a lot of farmers and very rural, and it was just it's just one of those things the cities seem to really outweigh the the rest of the states.
What's that?
I was saying it's just one of those things where cities seem to really outweigh the politics of the rest of the state.
Just generally.
And it's not it's unfair really because where I live, I don't live in Portland.
Um I live out kind of in the farmlands, and really so much of farmlands and you know, ranchers and people who tend to be very, very much conservative.
And I know that you know, there is this.
I've been seeing a big push um on social media of just kind of red slash right wing conservatives in Oregon who are just sick of Portland dictating Portland and Eugene and Salem dictating everything for us.
Um so I'm hopeful that there can be kind of you know a resurgence.
But did you ever get the chance to meet the mayor?
Fortunately and unfortunately, no.
That guy is that guy's such a quack.
I remember that the that video of him getting approached that he was like on a date or something and he was getting approached and people he was just getting slammed and he he acted like such a such a tool about it.
Yeah, I mean he's a child and like he's when he ran for re-election his the person he was running against was a literal communist like that's not a joke she was literally a communist so it's like he was the lesser of two evils but he is completely incompetent as it is so it was there was no winning that so when you first moved to Portland was it awesome because I I live in Austin,
Texas now and I lived in Nashville, Tennessee for seven years and you know Nashville's a blue city and a red state, but you know I'm when I lived there in Nashville it was 2010 and it you know it's fairly apolitical and it was just awesome you know you got you could kind of experience the city without um being dragged down by the the the sort of political weight of it.
Uh what was it like when you first moved to Portland?
Was it kind of like that?
You just do all the cool stuff.
Yeah so I was actually born and raised um near Portland in a suburb outside of Portland.
Um I moved to California for a little while after high school for a few years but I ended up coming home because I missed it so much.
Like I, you know, I did the California thing and that was fun, but I was over it and I was ready to come home because I did I truly loved the city.
I worked in the city for four years I think before um coronavirus shut everything down.
So I mean yeah it was an amazing spot and I remember even like in high school it was always the fun thing like everyone would go downtown and like go out for dinner and it was just that's what everyone did because we were from you know a small little town with nothing to do and so everyone going into Portland that was the fun thing.
And even you know up until right before COVID it was fun to go s stay in a hotel for a night and just you know do the Portland thing but I wouldn't even consider doing that now.
Like I wouldn't I avoid Portland at all costs.
So it's just crazy how much it's changed.
It's really sad.
What part of California were you in San Francisco?
Huntington Beach.
Oh no you're in Huntington Beach okay I lived in Laguna Nigel for a while okay or the one little like red dot down there.
Yeah I know.
Yeah yeah I lived there for three years until uh about a year ago and then we moved to Austin.
Oh nice okay yeah I moved home I think five years ago now but it was fun I liked my time there you know it was fun being at the beach all the time.
Yeah that's kind of what I I you know I I have a small business so I loved California in terms of the the weather and the beach but when you have to work 20 hours a day in order to pay the bills, you know you don't really get to enjoy that stuff.
Yeah exactly it's not fun uh I I remember my I was living two blocks from the beach in Huntington and going to school and working and I was getting up at like 445 to do a nanny job and then I would go to class and then I would have another nanny job after class and then I would go work another job in the evening.
So it was like yeah I'm living two blocks from the beach but what good is it because I'm working my ass off.
I can't even go to the beach.
Yeah I know it's such a grind.
But man if you if you're if you have infinite money California's a pretty cool place to be yeah no kidding so um so I I noticed I mentioned or I I noticed that you mentioned having taken or as a sort of electively a lot of criminal justice stuff.
Are are you like passionate about criminal justice reform or what are your thoughts on that?
Because um you know obviously there's a lot of very uh scary things going on in terms of who's getting arrested for what and due process being violated.
So I'm interested to hear what you have to think about that.
Yeah definitely I mean I was definitely inspired by all the happenings in the world um and my I was raised by a police officer my dad's a cop and so I do have a sympathetic side to it but I also do believe that reform can and does need to happen.
And I think that there's ways that we can go about that that are make so much more sense than defund the police and, oh, let's do community building programs.
But what does that even really mean?
Because, you know, we saw that in the awful case of Officer Ella French, she was on one of those community building service teams and she still died getting shot.
So obviously that wasn't effective.
Their messaging wasn't right.
I just think that there's a lot that can be explored in terms of more conservative slash liberty minded reform that would benefit everybody that people just you know maybe aren't thinking of yet or taking seriously.
So I was really inspired by that because I'm so annoyed by the defund the police and the extreme and the back the blue no matter who and the extreme on both sides, because that's not reality.
Everything is gray.
So that needs to be acknowledged and addressed in that manner, I think.
Yeah, and well, and maybe maybe this is my white privilege, but um, you know, my concern isn't really so much with the police as it is with the experience of everything that happens from the time of arrest and being charged to like the end of a trial.
Like I'm I'm just really worried about the due process and whether or not there's actually enough evidence for charges, and then and then if you get convicted of something, it becomes an incredibly simple slippery slope because you know, there's so many more rules that you have to follow in terms of probation and and things like that.
So it's it's much it becomes much easier to get in trouble again.
And so it seems like a lot of people just get stuck in this cycle of just repeatedly getting in trouble.
Yeah, definitely.
That was something that I studied a lot um in my classes was just the you know, cycle of why people reoffend and end up back in jail again and again and again because you see these patterns all over the country, it's not just in certain places, it's happening everywhere.
So obviously this is an institutional problem.
This is not a criminal problem.
Um, and I think that when it comes to things like that, you know, when I speak of police reform, I think more of like training protocols that are different and and those along those lines.
But I think that when what you're speaking of, like the legal side of it, there's definitely opportunity and need for reform there in a liberty sense, completely.
Um I think conservatives have a tendency to kind of throw the book at people.
Um and I completely uh disagree with that.
I'm not I'm anti-death penalty, like um, so yeah, I think you're right in that a lot of reform needs to come to the legal side, and I would definitely be introduced or you know, interested in being introduced to that side of legal.
I've worked as a paralegal for five years until I put myself through school.
Um, not in criminal work, but you know, it's never more than a stone's throw away when you're already in it.
Um, and I would totally be interested in exploring that.
Did you learn anything about um because like my knowledge of incarceration is just extends as far as Wikipedia?
So did you learn anything sophisticated or more substantial as to like what percentage of incarcerated people are innocent?
Because that's a concern of mine.
I remember reading I do, I have like a stack of criminal justice textbooks and I'm not trying to like throw you on the spot.
I'm just curious to know if you if you have any experience with that.
I do remember there being like a unit on it.
Um, and while I don't remember specific numbers, so I'm not gonna cite anything.
Um I it's higher than we would like to think.
Um and you know, it's hard to discern the difference in those types of cases because the police have so much power, the police are in bed with the prosecutors, they both have the same job, and that's putting someone in jail.
They don't care necessarily what the evidence is, as long as they have the person that they think did it, sometimes they'll kind of build the evidence around that, you know.
And that happens a lot more than we'd like to believe, and that take to fix that problem would take you know, extreme amounts of reform on that level of the police and the prosecution and the judges kind of all being in cahoots, and then you have the defense lawyer and the criminal on this side.
What chance does someone like that really have, especially if it's a public defender, you know?
I've read studies, um, or I haven't read the studies, but I've read of studies showing that um, you know, like a lot of the abuse that occurs in the in the prison system is is more is more frequently guard on prisoner than it is prisoner on prisoner.
Is that something that you're familiar with?
Is that true?
Oh, yeah.
A lot lots of um assaults and you know, sexual assaults in women's prisons happens a lot.
Um lots of like I don't want to use the word abuse, but very you know, corporal punishment in male prisons, especially.
Um yeah, it's pretty it's something we kind of all I think just we're doing we don't see it, so we don't think about it, right?
We're not in those experiences, so it's not really something we have to consider.
But when you look up the statistics of actually how much it happens and how many cases there are that get reported and how much doesn't happen to advocate for those victims in the prison because they're criminals.
Um, you know, that's all an institutional problem too.
I have a friend who was sentenced to three years in prison, uh year many years ago, back in the 90s, and um, you know, he was guilty and everything, but he said that the worst part of his experience was actually the time that you spend in jail before you're convicted.
He said the treatment from the guards was like way more intense.
Like they just kind of talk down to you, they they say you're so fucked, you know, and they just like try to make it as they try to terrorize you as much as possible.
And then that he said that once he actually was convicted and went to the went to the like the real prison that it was it cooled off a little bit, but I don't know if that's still true today.
It was you know, 30 years ago.
I think that there's definitely an understanding on pretty much all like a general understanding that county jails are worse than like the federal penitentiaries.
There's like a joke, you know, within the community where it's like if you get arrested, do a federal crime because you want to go to the federal pen.
You don't want to go to the county jail or you know, the state state jail.
And I don't know why that is, but I know that um, you know, it probably has to do with there's more regulations, you know, in federal prisons.
I know that there's still for profit prisons and there's much less regulation in those.
Um there's a lot more ability to hide things that happen.
Um so yeah, I mean, I think that it has probably just a lot to do with the federal level being involved.
There's more standards that they have to meet.
Right.
That makes sense.
Well, and you know, I've heard of instances too where, you know, prisoners are um, you know, this I think this kind of came about.
I don't know if it came about with like the mob or with um trying to prevent gang violence, but it seems very peculiar to me that you know it's sort of just up to the prison as to who can visit you.
Um it seems like uh, you know, if you're sentenced to a long stretch and you're not allowed to say, you know, have your wife visit, you know, every month or whatever, just you know, for you to have some sort of a relationship with somebody on the outside, uh, that would seem to me like it would kind of cross into the bounds of cruel and unusual punishment that you know uh it's one thing to isolate someone in prison, but to totally isolate them from the relationships in the outside world seems like recidivism rate would go higher uh in that way too.
But I have you it's it do you know anything about like the laws or the rules behind that?
I mean, can the prison just basically say no you can't see this person?
I don't know.
Yeah, I'm not I'm honestly not sure how that stuff works.
I don't know if that's individually by the prison or if it's you know decided at a higher level.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
Did you um did you ever watch that TED talk?
Um I think the guys from the UK that did it, but it was about um addiction and um what they did.
I don't think I don't know if it was Amsterdam, I can't remember what country it was, but he talks about um how um this country totally revamped the way that it dealt with addiction and then rather than like criminalizing people for drug use, they invested all the resources into making sure that people get as integrated back in the community as quickly as possible, uh you know, as soon as they're out of rehab.
Is there is there any like research or or or reform that um you've looked into as far as getting people integrated back?
Because like if you're convicted of a serious crime, you're really only shot to be successful in terms of like a real career is if you like start your own business when you get out because you're not gonna get hired at any Fortune 500 company.
Um, you know, you might be able to get some sort of uh, you know, like uh lower level job at um, you know, minimum wage or whatever, but what what's sort of the thinking that you that you picked up on uh how to get people integrated back into society?
Yeah, I mean that's a that's interesting that you mentioned the decriminalization of the drugs and you know, getting people help because that is like a central focus of a lot of what I studied was what are the best ways that we can actually put this into effect and you know what does it look like in our society and unfortunately I still think that we haven't figured that out yet Portland or Oregon I don't I don't can't remember I think it was statewide
um, on our last or in the last election, we decriminalized heroin, meth, cocaine, um, you know, like hard, hard street drugs.
Um, and I think that the thinking behind it was like, okay, let's help these people rather than put them in jail, but they fell short in that they decriminalized this and then they haven't done anything to help these people.
So you'll see in Portland.
If you look up the, um, Instagram account, I think it's literally just named Portland looks like shit.
Um, it, it'll, it shows like neat, just people taking videos of needles that are just strewn about the ground, people just passing out.
And it's so sad because you feel awful for these people that are obviously suffering from addiction, but no one's doing anything to help them except feeding them needles and allowing them to do drugs with no consequences.
Yeah.
It's more of like an enabling than it is an intervention type system.
Exactly so that you know that I was gonna say that uh TED talk that I watched the guy cites this study that was done on mice and basically what they did was they take these mice and they would put them in like a boring cage and they would give them water that was laced with cocaine versus regular water and he said in that instance the mice would always choose the cocaine water.
He's like but they take they would take the mice then and they would put them in like what I think they called it like mice heaven or something.
It was basically like all sorts of like mazes and you know tubes for him to run through like just total fun stuff that they love and like allow them to like have as much sex as they wanted with other mice.
And um they found that when the mice were in that environment they would choose the regular water over the cocaine water even when it was offered to them.
And so like that's sort of like extrapolating that on people it's like you know maybe the and and he he also cited Vietnam like an overwhelming number of Vietnam soldiers used heroin while they were in Vietnam but like 95% of them never did it again when they came back.
So it's like all right so if if if addiction is you know really this super physical thing then how did you know how did 95% of veterans you know just kick it as soon as they you know got back on on on on the uh in the United States and so uh the argument that that he made was that the reason people abuse substances is not because they have physical addictions but because they have like a psychological isolation like they don't feel connected to their family they're not enjoying their life I don't know is it it's like external factors.
And so if you want to solve the addiction problem you know decriminalization is probably part of it but you have to juxtaf you have to juxtapose that with like massive investment in you know programs that can reintegrate these people into into communities, right?
So take the money that you're saving but you know busting them but then you know have these programs in place.
And we saw the same thing and that you that you're describing in Portland we saw the same thing in Austin where you know for a while they allowed all the homeless people in Austin to um camp in the city on any public ground and they've they've recently fixed that and uh you know I don't really have so much a problem with that policy if you also have like these programs in place to get these people off the streets as soon as possible but they had no solution to homelessness and so it just consolidated the problem downtown for like a year and a half.
So I don't know.
I just I I'm I'm very interested in in how we can solve this problem so that we can get people reintegrated because I really do think that that the crime thing is is a product of environment and not character in most cases you know like the white crawler crime stuff like those guys are just shit bags.
But if you're you know if you if you got a drug problem it's usually because something happened you know or or you're not connected so I don't know I'm not an expert but I don't know I'm just interested in how we can solve that problem.
Yeah I actually just watched something I can't remember what it was it must have been some crime documentary I was watching.
But this guy got arrested and charged and convicted of something that was like it was something you know silly and stupid it was a drug charge or something like that.
Um and it was his first offense and he got convicted like I mean, they threw the book at him pretty hard.
I can't remember the exact details.
And he was explaining after he got out of jail.
He's like, I couldn't get a job anywhere.
And I had fees and fines to pay from my conviction.
And I had to commit 20 more crimes to pay that off because no one would give me a job.
So it's like we have to I think that re-entering them into the community.
A gro big big part of that has to do with creating jobs for them and like getting them into programs that can educate them and give them vocational training.
Um because a lot of them commit crimes because they need money and they can't get jobs elsewhere, and you know, people won't hire them because they're criminals.
So I think the job aspect is really kind of like as long as they're mentally, you know, good and and everything, that's a big, big step into fixing the process of getting people rehabilitated.
Well, a lot of people have criticized um you know, Reagan for the war on drugs in that you know, it caused a lot of people in minority communities to um become incarcerated and then sort of made a lot like a whole generation of people fatherless in a lot of instances.
And you know, I'm not sure where I land in terms of interpreting what happened or how it happened, but what are your thoughts in terms of like what happened to the minority communities in the United States?
Because you know, if you look at pictures of like MLK and back during the civil rights movement, you see you know, people minorities in in suits protesting, they're very there's like the nuclear family, there's a lot of sort of trad values in those communities, and it seems like something happened in the 70s that sort of totally flipped the switch in in those communities that just made them sort of infested with crime in a lot of instances.
What what are your thoughts on on why that happened?
I mean, I think that unfortunately the war on drugs brought a lot of addiction with it, right?
Like people that wouldn't have necessarily been exposed to or done those drugs did because they were suddenly being, you know, this is constantly talked about.
Yeah, and like it's I mean, I think that has a lot to do with it.
If you focus on something so much, people are gonna naturally be drawn to it or inclined to know more about it or whatever.
And I think that that's a very powerful thing, and people don't realize that.
Um, it's it's a weird it is a weird phenomenon, and I would like to maybe do more research into it because I don't have a great understanding of it either, but I think that has a lot to do with it of just be it brought being brought to the forefront, and um, you know,
suddenly we're treating addicts like criminals, and it is taking fathers away from families, and it is sort of like what I just mentioned, they're being taken away from their families, charged, thrown in jail, have fines to pay, they can't get a job, how are they supposed to pay them, commit more crimes?
And it kind of just starts the whole process that we see today over and over and over again.
Yeah, and I I think that inflation probably had something to do with it too, because just imagine these these sort of lower middle class communities that were sort of just barely making ends meet and getting by in the 70s, and then all of a sudden we kind of go off the gold standard and the value of the dollar is you know plummeting because the inflation of the 70s is well documented and famous, infamous rather.
And it seems like that might have tipped a lot of these communities over into having to lean on crime, whereas you know, 10 years prior, the job was actually enough to cut it.
Right.
Yeah, I think that that's the case.
That could be the case in a lot of places, that makes sense.
So, how'd you get so many followers on Twitter?
How'd you uh how'd you blow up?
I don't know, honestly.
Um I've always kind of done the political writing thing.
I've been in some form or another, um, writing about politics on social media since I was like 16 or 17.
Um, I started my blog slash site uh when I was like 18, and then just like a year and a half ago or a couple years ago, I started just kind of really focusing on Twitter.
I was trying to figure out what my kind of brand was and where I could promote my work.
Um, and I was doing it on Facebook for a while, but that was just like a lot of old people.
Uh, and then they started thinking that I was liberal because I was too non-conservative for them.
Yeah, it's crazy how people put you in one of two boxes.
Like whenever somebody tweets, you know, you're just you're just a racist Republican to me.
I always just say, Don't you dare call me a Republican.
It's so offensive.
It's just like I mean, Twitter's a great place to kind of take.
I I I think that my sense of humor has kind of helped my popularity.
I've just very dry sense of humor.
Oh my god, that's that's Southwest tweet you did this afternoon.
I was dying.
It's so subtle, you know, but it just like it says so much.
A picture says a thousand words, right?
Yeah, so just I don't know.
I think I'm pretty funny.
I like to think I'm pretty funny.
Um and I just like I have a good time.
I mean, I bitch about stuff, but at the end of the day, like I'm just there to stay informed because it I think like Twitter is a great resource for staying caught up on politics.
It's about the best one I've ever found.
Um so I'm there to, you know, do that and and bullshit and talk and have fun.
And I make a lot of jokes and people like it, apparently.
Have you ever had your account suspended?
I I did like really, really early on when I was kind of blowing up like faster in my early thousands.
Um but I've kind of figured out what I can and can't say.
Uh and while it's annoying to have to, you know, tiptoe around that stuff.
I think that I still get my message across pretty well without breaking terms of service.
So yeah, yeah, you can you can definitely do it.
It just it just scares me that they're able to just totally remove people.
Like um, you know, like the election fraud stuff.
I have mixed feelings about it.
I don't really know where I land.
I go back and forth all the time on what I think on that.
But the fact that they just removed every account that was sort of adamant one way or the other, or not one way or the other, but one way.
Um is like really really alarming to me.
Um, so I don't know, I worry about that, and like put I spend so much time trying to build my Twitter just because I'm trying to build this podcast, and I'm scared that like what if one day they just take it away, you know, was this all from it.
That's what I worry about too.
I mean, that's definitely a valid concern.
Um my friend Gretchen, who lives down the street, actually, her she had a pretty big account.
I think she was I mean, well, over 40 or 45,000.
Um her at was Babola B-U-B-O-L-A, and she was really big um on our side of Twitter, and they nuked her for some reason, and she literally doesn't know why.
Like, I'm uh she lives close to me, so we're still you know friends, but she's like, I don't I can't think of what I did that would lead to that.
And they totally took her account down, like she appealed it as much as she could, and they wouldn't give it back to her, and she has no idea what she did.
Oh man, you almost have to like know somebody at Twitter in order to get that kind of thing fixed.
Like I was fortunate enough, I have one or two friends that went to work at Facebook, and I've had a couple of instances where my um Facebook account has been taken down.
Um not because of anything that I said, but I'm uh I run ads for a client, so I'm I'm an admin on like over 200 different Facebook ads manager accounts.
And so whenever any of those ads managers, like whenever any of my clients, you know, sometimes they're former clients, and whenever they break the terms of service of Facebook, it shows me as an admin still on the ads manager.
And so you if you get enough of those, they like restrict your account, and but it's like a nightmare because it's like I gotta manage ads for all these other clients that I have, and I didn't I wasn't the one that made the ad from the ex-client.
I'm just still an admin on the account.
And so I had to call people that actually work there and be like, dude, can you pull some strings?
Because this appeal process is a nightmare.
But I feel like if you don't know somebody, these companies, you're you're basically at the whim of whoever is conducting the review.
Yeah, I mean, pretty much, and it sucks.
And like first I mean, I hope that it's not anybody's livelihood because things can happen like that, but I would be, you know, really sad.
People, oh, it's Twitter, whatever.
But like, no, I would I have a community here.
I have I've made friends through Twitter.
Like I have there's been opportunities for me.
I've met people, like I've made political connections.
I would be absolutely devastated if they just nuked my account for no reason.
Um, but that's why I think it's important to kind of like branch out and like, you know, I try to promote my work elsewhere, but it's kind of hard because Twitter is just like the best place to do it.
And yeah, you just kind of have to live with the fact that someday it you could wake up and it you won't have It anymore, and that's gotta be fine because it can happen.
I blocked somebody on Instagram the other day, and I noticed that they changed the blocking feature so that you can not only block them but block any other accounts that they make in the future.
Did you notice that?
Yeah, so they can't like they can't make like a fake page, you know, and then and then you know follow you again.
Oh my god, it's like it's like creepy, but it's a good feature, I guess, you know, from a user standpoint.
But it's like wow, you you can you can like perma block somebody in a way that because if they're using the same device, I guess is how they track it or IP, I don't know.
That's crazy.
Yeah, because like I I would imagine like you obviously can't make another account with the same email, so they've gotta track it like that's so hard to push it.
I know it's creepy stuff, and I'm creeped out about this, like um uh the new Apple scanning your images stuff is is freaking me out.
Not because I don't have any CP on my phone, but it's like Jesus Christ, like you know how much how much how much can they read?
Like, I don't know, it's just it's it's scary stuff, but I don't know.
We'll see what happens.
It's crazy too that that can happen, and like that's just what it is.
Like I mean, obviously I know it's Apple, so they can do that if they want, but like they have so much power these days that they can like just do that and nobody gets a say.
So have you do you use other platforms too, like uh Instagram or TikTok?
Um I'm smaller on Instagram, I don't have TikTok.
Um, but I do Instagram is probably like my secondary platform.
I just got um I just I've just been kind of tooling around with TikTok for the first time, and I you know, I was reluctant to do it for a long time because the commies, you know, own it.
Yeah, but then I then I realized that the commies pretty much run all the social media platforms, so I figured it was just moot.
And so uh but the crazy thing about TikTok is even if you have no followers, you can have like the virality potential is so high.
So I I did like I don't know, it was maybe my tenth video ever.
I've got like 500 follow I had at the time like 300 followers, it's just a few days ago on on TikTok.
I did a video and it got 320,000 views.
Wow.
And it's just and I guess I guess the way the algorithm works is depend like you can make three different lengths of videos.
You can make up to 15 second videos, you can make up to one minute videos, and you can make up to three minute videos.
And depending on the size of your video, there's an algorithm that requires a minimum like average watch time to determine how many feeds to put it in.
So for example, if you have like a 10 second video, and it it you you need to get like a hundred, you need to get people to watch it all the way through in order for it to like consider it viral.
But if you have a three-minute one, it's like 50%, right?
And so I had like this nine-second video, and um, I guess you know, a great enough number of people who saw it watched it all the way through that TikTok put it in like you know, more more feeds, and then that worked, and then more feeds and more feeds, and all of a sudden it's like I'm this 300, you know, subscriber.
I have 300 subscribers on TikTok and I got 320,000 views, and I gained 500 followers off of it, you know.
So that's what's exciting to me about TikTok is just the virality potential seems high.
Totally.
And I I think that that I should branch into TikTok.
My sister is 18, 18, yeah, 19, yeah.
Something like that.
But she's loves TikTok, and she's been telling me for like a year, you need to get on TikTok, you need to do TikToks.
And I'm like, I'm like a little bit too old that I'm like intimidated by it.
Like, I don't know how to make the videos and do the filters and like the editing and shit.
Just just do it and make some bad content first, you know.
Yeah, you'll figure it out.
Like, I was really bad at Twitter when I started doing Twitter.
I'm like, what the hell is this?
What what's this this this gadget here?
You know, I'm 30, so I was like, you know, I was like a MySpace guy, you know, like you know, 15 years ago.
So I don't know, but you you just get that it's just like anything else, there's a learning curve, and then you get the hang of it.
I still haven't gotten the hang of TikTok, but I am gonna start experimenting based on that.
You know, and it's like funny on Twitter too, you learn what what tweets resonate.
I I like I I you know I test stuff all the time.
I'll do like five tweets at the same time, and then I'll delete the four that don't perform.
But you start to get a knack for it.
Totally.
You learn what like people respond to and what people engage with, and you know it's like a subconscious thing at this point.
Like, I feel like I've been doing it for so long that I kind of I'll think I'm just like thinking of tweets all day long.
My head is just like a writing factory all the time.
And so I'll think of you know a hundred tweets, but I'm like eh, 90 of those are funny, but they're not I can't figure out how to word it right, or like I can't figure out the right like grammar to use, so it's like not gonna pop off.
So then you can just figure it out and and narrow it down, and yeah, I think I've gotten pretty good at it.
But you have certain do you have certain times of the day that you prefer to tweet or do you just tweet whenever you feel like it?
No, I tweet whenever I feel like it.
I know that there's better times, you know, where more people are on.
Um, but I sleep at such weird hours and like work at weird hours, so I pretty much just tweet whenever I want.
Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of the same way.
I've just noticed that like Sundays are really slow, and maybe it's because I have like this boomer Christian crowd that follows me.
Because like the first thing that went viral for me is I had like uh I did a podcast with Tony Schaefer, and he like said some he had like a badass one minute rant about how attorney general Bill Barr called him and told him to stop investigating election fraud.
And that went viral, but it went viral like on Citizens Free Press, and so I had like all these sort of like over 60 people that followed me in short order.
And so now it's like I have like really like we'll be back soon.
Oh, are you there?
Um I'm there.
You were frozen for a while.
Yeah, you froze you froze too for a while.
So I was just saying that it's just funny because it's like 5 a.m. is a real hot time for my crowd, you know, and like pretty much it's like pretty much after seven o'clock, it's uh uh uh everybody's asleep, so I don't know.
Don't tweet at that four o'clock dinner time either.
Yeah, I know, right?
People get mad.
What why are you why are you tweeting me at why I'm trying to eat dinner with my favorite thing is when old people think that certain posts, like a post that you just post is directed like directly at them and they think that it's like a message to them.
That's my favorite.
Or like when you get a text from an old person and they sign their name at the end.
Yeah, my grandma does that all the time.
My grandma, I know it's you.
I have your name in my phone.
That's the funniest stuff.
So what are like what's like the next step for you?
What are your goals?
Um, because like obviously you're really active on social media, you're writing, and you're sort of you're very intentional about what you're doing.
Do you have like a vision like for where you want to be?
I mean, are you like if I could just get 100,000 followers and I could do XYZ or what do you are you just playing it by ear?
Yeah, I mean, I want to be as heavily involved as I can.
My ultimate goal, I would love to write a book um or multiple books.
Writing is really kind of always been my central love, and I've built politics around that because I can write about politics.
Um, but at the end of the day, just writing is really what I want to do.
So if that comes with writing with politics and I uh have a career that way, then great.
Um and if not, you know, I'll write a book about something else.
But um what do you have in mind for a book that you want to write?
Have you thought of anything?
I have like a million and a half ideas.
I mean, I have probably ten half-written novels on my computer, and just like I mean, now that I have graduated, I have sort of given myself permission to write more academically about politics because I have the piece of paper to back it up.
Um so I'd like to explore politics as much as I can.
That is really ideally what I would like to do and just kind of go down this commentary path.
Um but you know, one of my biggest inspirations uh from the very beginning has always been Tommy Laren, and you know, we don't agree on everything politically by any means, but just the way that she's kind of made this career for herself and really forged a path for herself as a she's super young.
Her and I I think are the exact same age, or she's a couple years older than me.
Um so just seeing her do what she's done, I'm like, yeah, I could do that.
Like I want to do that.
Um so yeah, I guess that's sort of my ultimate goal.
Awesome.
Well, I'll keep you in mind if uh if I know anybody in the if I run into anybody that's looking for a writer, because like I could see you totally writing for like a human events or something.
You know, I had Will Chamberlain on the on the podcast uh a couple of days ago.
He's he's got I mean I'm not saying that I I don't know him well enough to like plug you, but it just seems to me that you'd be a really good fit at uh um an outlet like that, you know, sort of like a uh uh versioning um sort of independent critical thinking type platform.
I think it would be really cool for you.
I'd love to work where can people read your writing?
Um I know you mentioned in the beginning that you write for rogue review.
I do.
So in all of my social media, I have a link tree in my bio that links kind of to everything.
Um, because I have my column on rogue review, and then I have my own website.
Um, and then I have like guest-written, you know, what's your Twitter handle?
It's yeah, right girl, Y-E-A-H, Yeah, right girl h-g.
Um, and my website is the same.
It's yawrightgirl.com.
Um, and uh the biggest chunk of my writing is on my on my own website.
Very cool.
Well, I'm gonna make sure to to tune in and play pay closer attention.
I've really enjoyed having this conversation with you, and thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
