124: A Tale of Two Birders and Other Niche Tea
This is a lighthearted episode–because we all can use a break from all the heaviness around us. I’m welcoming Caroline, “The Niche Tea Lady,” to the show. Join us!
Show Highlights:
Understanding “niche tea”
Caroline’s favorite story of niche tea: the amazing tale of two birders
The biggest plot twist in a niche tea deep dive
Memorable niche tea surprise endings
Pyramids, video games, and the nuances of content creation
Everyone loves an underdog story!
“Discords” and weirdo behavior
The funniest niche tea in Caroline’s experience: a published back-and-forth between two high-level academics
The most viral niche tea stories in Caroline’s experience: birding and beekeeping
Resources and Links:
Connect with Caroline: TikTok, X, Instagram, and YouTube
Connect with KC: Website, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
Get KC’s book, How to Keep House While Drowning
We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website: www.strugglecare.com/promo-codes.
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KC Davis 0:00
Casey, hello, you sentient balls of stardust. Welcome to Struggle. Care. I'm your host, KC Davis, and today we're gonna have a little bit of a light hearted episode. I feel like we all deserve a little break from the heaviness, and so I'm here with a very special guest, the niche tea lady Caroline, thank you for being here.
Caroline 0:21
Thank you for having me.
KC Davis 0:24
Okay, so you run a Tiktok account where you post about niche tea. Can you explain what that is to those of us above 35
Caroline 0:33
got it? Yes. Niche tea is think of it as like if you hyper focus on drama, and you jump from story to story. It's that but each story is based around a different hobby or online community or niche, basically anything you could call it a niche. So something that I found myself doing a lot on my own was just usually on YouTube. I'll find some hole of content to fall into, where it's relating to something, right, something that I probably haven't engaged with before, but I'm very interested in kind of just getting people's opinions about it. And when that happens with drama, I found myself with no one to talk to about it, because it was always so specific, and there's all this background on it. And so I made niche tea as a way to just talk about those things as I hyper focus on them and jump from thing to thing. Yeah,
KC Davis 1:25
this is like, I'll find myself in like, a YouTube rabbit hole, and then my husband will come home, and I'll be like, there is so much drama between people that like to quilt in quilting circles and people that feel like quilting should be an A one, you know, a solo hobby. And I'll just, like, force him to listen to it. He'll be like, I don't care about quilting drama at all, exactly,
Caroline 1:44
and neither do I necessarily, or at least, I don't care about quilting, but I care about this,
KC Davis 1:51
but when the tea is hot, yeah, the tea is hot. Okay, so, Caroline, I just, I invited you here today because I genuinely just wanted you to regale, regale us with, like your top favorite stories of niche tea. Got it paint us a word picture.
Caroline 2:08
Oh, my God, that's a tricky one. I think one easy one that I could choose actually would be the episode about bird watching, from the bird watching community, from that one so many people were interested in. That one I love. A big part of what I love is what loving the response I get from people about these things. But that particular one involved, it was basically a story of two men who reached the world record for bird sighting. I believe it was specifically sightings, because sometimes they count. I've learned bird calls as count as like. That's like the difference between birding and bird watching. Birding includes if you hear them, apparently, right? And so basically, there's one guy in the field in the hobby who's been big into the hobby. He's well known throughout the community, and he was going to break the world record for the most, let's say, seen birds in the world, different species. And then he was planning it out, like a year in advance. He was He knew what his plans were going to be and which birds he was going to hit and what the plan was. And then a couple months before, it out of nowhere, this challenger shows up. Who when you watch birds. When you do bird watching, it's not something like, everybody knows everybody, because you're only not that many people are like, routinely logging their bird sightings and talking about it and doing all that. So first of
KC Davis 3:32
all, where are they logging their bird sightings? Like, do they have to take a picture of it? There
Caroline 3:35
are, there's no like, Review Board of whether or not,
KC Davis 3:39
is this the honor system. Caroline, is this the honor system? Yes, there are
Caroline 3:43
a number of different websites that are neutral, kind of third party, you know, places where people can come log their sightings, and then also discussion boards and things along those lines. So this guy comes out of nowhere and just logs like nearly 10,000 birds in like a couple days or something, and claims that he's just been he claimed he was just, he's been doing this his life, too. He just hadn't put it anywhere online. And no one has ever heard of him, and it's very hard to find any record of him. I looked into it. And so the original guy who was building toward this, the one the community knew. He said, You know what? Instead of debating whether or not this new guy, I believe his name is Jason, and whether or not Jason was is real or not, you know, I'm just gonna assume he is, and I'm gonna adjust my timetable accordingly, like he even openly said that he's like, so now I'm going to, you know, I'm gonna treat this as though it is real, because I can, you know, like, and I can adjust things if I need to. So
KC Davis 4:45
is Jason's claim that he's been, like, analog tracking his birds, and that he just uploaded them all, like, logged them all into the website at once.
Caroline 4:55
Yes, that he's been doing this for years and years and years, just like. Uh, just like the main guy, who was a diplomat, and I'm trying to remember his name, but so the primary guy decides to move up a bunch of his travel and he starts, he's a diplomat, actually, so that helps him get to different places across the world. But he ends up meeting the getting that 10,000th watch like he as he moved his timetable up, Jason did too. So he kept seeing, you know, he would originally go, I cannot remember his name. I'm gonna call him Michael. He would originally go to a location, and then he'd find out Jason had just gone to a different location, or a similar thing, you know. And it was, ended up being this neck and neck thing, and about six months, at least earlier than when the primary guy was going to finalize his, you know, actually do the whole thing, have his friends and family there, you know, and see his 10,000 stop.
KC Davis 5:53
He had, like, a, he had, like, a little award ceremony, like he was gonna, like, see his 10,000th bird, with his, like, family and friends around, yeah,
Caroline 6:01
because it's like, a, it's like, a lifetime achievement, like, it's a big deal. Like, people were all like, very, you know, it was a thing that he'd worked toward for such a long time.
KC Davis 6:09
And is the diplomat showing his work? Like, is he taking pictures, or he's also on the honor system, also
Caroline 6:14
on the honor system, but he's well, but we believe him. We yes, there's nobody's doubted him that I seen is my understanding of reputation, yes, and he's also been
KC Davis 6:25
mainstay of the Birding community. Exactly, he's a pillar, so pillar of the Birding community. We can trust
Caroline 6:33
one person. We can trust him. There's no reason to question him. He's somebody who would have people with him. You know, while he's going on these hunts for a particular bird, he's somebody who travels very frequently for his job, and there's enough evidence to corroborate that he's telling the truth. I'm sure there's potentially one or two that maybe people couldn't like, weren't physically there for. But generally, he's trusted. We're not worried about him. But for the Jason guy, we don't know anything about him. Nobody knows him. Nobody knows anything about you know what his theoretical fines were. And so there are people though, the diplomat is moving forward, and he's like, I'm just going to assume you know. And like I said, he ended up getting there about six months earlier than he had originally planned, and he wasn't able to make it kind of a celebration of this lifetime achievement the way he wanted, because he had to change his plans, and where he ended up finding his last bird was not anywhere local, so it was something that he had to do last minute, and wouldn't have been able to organize other people for. But even so, Jason claimed to have beat him by like eight hours.
KC Davis 7:40
So he's just dogging his steps. Yes, really
Caroline 7:44
hard. And even so, again, the diplomat is very diplomatic. Shocking. He posts, you know, a statement about, you know, reaping his 10,000th and that regardless of whatever else is going on, this is a big achievement for him. He is very proud. He said, thank you to a bunch of people like his wife and like people in the community who've been very supportive and whom he's built relationships with over the years. Meanwhile, there was a single article on a website for a traveling like guide tour company in South America, and it said congratulations to Jason for for beating the world record
and seeing 10,000 being the first person in the world to hit 10,000 and do the whole thing. And it was written by him, if you look at the up,
and people are like, what is this? So by the time I get into this, people are going through, you know, people have been going through for the last several months his bird list in addition to this. And so by the time I jump into this, that article is gone from that website, I can find traces of it. You know, like Google will hold caches of things. So something hip, if people ask me a lot like, how I find some of my information, especially for stuff that's gone the way, that machine is obviously a really good tool to use. If people aren't familiar with what that is, it's a website where you can put in a URL for a page, and then it'll archive the state of that page as many times as you want to do it. So if you want to archive something for the future because you think it might change, you can go there and have a manual archive done of it, and then if anything changes on that web page, you can go back to this website, the Wayback Machine, find the URL, pick the date, and you'll see a living state of what it was at that time. But another easy one for stuff that gets deleted real fast is simply that Google search engine doesn't live look up everything on every website all the time. It's storing it everyone smiles. Think of it, the same as Google Maps when you do street view. That's not your house yesterday, that's. Your house the last time the Google car came through and took a picture of your house, right? So it's the same thing on the search engine. And so when things have changed like, oh, they 404, that page last night, if you need to see something on that page, you can still search it, and you won't be able to click the link when it comes up, but it will still come up with some details. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So the preview, if there's a Featured Snippet, anything along those, like those standard things that help you from SEO, those things get cashed. So I've had situations where people are like, Oh, I can't see, you know, I can't tell what the name of this he was associated with this person, and I can't find like he took it down? Well, I've searched people's websites and found like, for example, like their PR page that still had details on it, because it's the cache of it. So I could find, if I look up somebody's name, and potentially, like their web, like this person, whatever PR this you can get to a point where the preview will show you what you searched for. So you can see in the preview that name might be listed under a bunch of lists of names. And now you can say, so for your website, you had this page. Now when I click on it, it goes to a 404, or it's changed. But at the time, you can see that it was here that you've changed that it's kind of a neat thing. So by the time I go to do that, the article is gone, but I could still see the 404, of it, basically, and confirm that he did write that. And then right at the same time, I'm also seeing that the bird community's kind of investigators, the people who've chosen to go through the 10,000 bird list, found a whole host of different birds that were improbable, like very improbable, and then a whole other host that it would be shocking if they were not wrong or false some way, like birds that were have been assumed to have gone extinct, birds that would have it would have been a newsworthy event for a confirmed sighting, that type of stuff, like last seen in the 30s. You know, that type of stuff. So, in combination with so there's that coming out about Jason, also this only, the only place this gets reported on is this one travel website. People are like, What do you mean? What's happening? Who are these people? What's happening? Apparently, the travel website just got company, just got inundated, and they ended up putting out a separate statement that was like, We did work with this man. He came to us, we do bird tours. He did one with us, and then later he wrote that article, and he gave it to us, and said, Would you publish this on your website? And we were like, yeah, he's worked with us before, so yeah, but we're not trying to say anything. I can't tell whether or not to feel bad for them. I kind of do, though, because I think they were just like a client wanted this fine, you know. So I felt a little bad for them. They had to put out a separate statement, Jason still didn't. He posted like, one or two direct responses to people on birding websites, but for the most part, he does not have an active social presence in any way that you can figure out. So he's just gone silent. He's been silent. That's what I'm saying, is like, didn't exist. Like he when I say he came out of nowhere. I don't mean like, oh, we just weren't paying attention. And look, this guy's got pictures of birds all over his Instagram. And it turns out he's been logging like, he doesn't have social profiles that I was able to find, or anything that where he talks about any of this, or if, like, they're very locked down. If so, so he's not someone who's out there, like on his Twitter talking about his side of it. He literally, like, doesn't he's not part of the conversation, except in these very controlled, weird little areas where it's like, I'm gonna put my birds here and then leave them, and then I'm not seeing back and forth with him talking with anyone, and then him say, like, releasing an article on a website, but not posting anything on social media, or like, doing, Like, just the vehicles he's using to talk about these things, every move is bizarre, is the point. I still only vaguely believe he's a real person. Supposedly, though he emails the diplomat and concedes because of some of the questions relating to, again, newsworthy, extinct birds, and he kind of throws out, like a yeah, maybe, you know, I he's like, he kind of throws some wishy washy I'm gonna let this go because, you know, I'm taking the high road. And yeah, I, you know, he said I'm gonna be the bigger man, right? That that was the tone of the email to the diplomat. And the diplomat was like, he just posted. He's very, again, very communicative with, like, his friends, family, fans, whatever, community. And so he posts on his Facebook like, you know, I got this, you know, this is a nice email from Jason. It's very kind of him, whatever. And everybody's like, you're being nice. Just it was very funny. He is very much a diplomat, but
KC Davis 14:56
that is a wild I feel really bad for the diplomat. Can you imagine, just like, being some guy that, like, that's just your life? Is you just a birder, and some dude comes out of nowhere and just totally like, yucks your yum and rains on your parade? I mean, the man wanted his friends and family there when he saw his last bird. Yeah,
Caroline 15:15
I know. And that was a big sentiment that a lot of people had coming off of this story, that comment I got a lot like, man, that's rough, you know, and he was still so gracious about it, given everything. And as loathe as I am to support government entities in specific situations, I'm gonna give him this because, yeah, he just seemed like a guy who just likes birds. And why would you do this, even if this was real, even if you take everything he says at face value, even if that was me, I feel like I would still hesitate, because, man, that's rough. Let the
KC Davis 15:49
man have his win. So okay, here's so that makes me think of this question, what's like the biggest plot twist you've ever had in a niche T deep dive, the
Caroline 15:58
one that I think had a good twist to it. Was the, I guess the whole story was kind of the twist, but it was, I like the academic ones, and there's one those are some of the really fun ones, because usually people don't hear those unless they're close to it, right? Like, it's not a thing that you necessarily hear a lot about, is what's happening in academia. But there was one about it turned out there was this, like, big discovery or claim that had come out about the oldest pyramid in the world being in it, think it was in the Philippines, and the paper behind it, and it was a whole discussion about that. And that had been something, there was this big paper that had come out, and had been something that had been very highly regarded in the archeology field. It had been peer reviewed. It had, like, all of this stuff. And then basically it turned out way later that all of these different things, that this initial group of people, led by this one particular guy, the researcher, had claimed everything they had discovered could be explained by other reasons. And then it also came out that the peer reviewers weren't archeologists, they were all different, or weren't geologists, like they weren't correct in the field that they were in. And that was such a weird one, because it was just like 20 years later, like it was a significant amount of time, and that was just crazy, honestly, like that whole situation, like the idea that it could go through, because there's so much rigor around academic papers, that one was just such a weird it was bonkers to hear every single thing that was in this particular piece of research that took so long, took so much manpower, took all of these different things, and all of it falling kind of apart, was just a little a little bonkers to be able to hear about from the people who actually were in this area. And it throws off so much about what people thought of, what archeology was like, it changes some of the developmental pieces of what we think humanity went through, like, what our actual timeline looks like. That's like a big deal, right? So like, because we thought that, like, in order for it to be a man made pyramid where it was, it implies a level of technological like ability of humans, right? Like that just would not have made sense at that time. And it implies a lot about the area and the what people would have lived, and whether or not it would have been something like we were at a point where we were able to do that there, and how that would impact everything in that area. So it's the difference between it being, like, I think it was some massive, like, 20,000 years old to like, Oh no, actually, the oldest pyramid is like 5000 years old, maybe somewhere in that range. Okay,
KC Davis 18:51
so my next question is, like, Tell me some niche tea that had, like, the best twist to it, or, like, the best, like, surprise ending. Yeah,
Caroline 19:00
something about niche tea. That is, I think people get frustrated about but something that is that I is something that's kind of inherent to it, is that there's almost never part two. I moved I've moved on. I try and wait until there's something really interesting to talk about, or I lead people to other places where they can continue to dive into it. But, you know, it's an ADHD rabbit hole. I have now expelled that energy and I'm leaving one of the few times that I've done a follow up was because there was a twist when entirely against what the original video was, and I was, I felt lied to and irritated. And that was one that was, it was about genshin impact, which is this, it's a gotcha game. It's like, I think they're, I can't tell if they're mostly mobile or not, but it's a video game. Doesn't matter. People play it online. People make content around it. And so the original story was, there are a lot of YouTubers who make content around genshin, and they are people who work with the company that owns this game. And. So the company will give you know, contracts to certain people to talk about it, which is obviously very helpful if you are a full time content creator, if you're somebody who and especially if you're specific to this video game for the most part, then yeah, you want to get in with the company, because that's going to help promote your ability to continue making money doing this thing. The original conversation was, and the original video was about the company released something for the game. People in the community who make content about the game had mixed opinions on like, like, some people thought it was, we're saying, Oh yeah, we love this. Some people, a lot of people, were saying, We've been not only is this bad, it's been bad, and they keep doing things that are bad, and we're getting frustrated. Somebody just casually made a joke about that, like said, it was a tweet that it said the duality of man, and it was, it showed two screenshots from YouTube, of one saying, this is the best update ever. I love it. And the next one like, this is the worst update ever, I hate and so it's just a really funny like, Look at this. But this tweet, this tweet started an absolute Apocalypse within the community, because everybody started jumping in and saying, Yeah, everybody who are posting positive content about this update are shills. They've been paid off. They're not people you can rely on. They're not people who you can actually like. They're not going to give real criticism because they're paid to do this, and very likely they have a non disparagement, or at the very least, they're not going to get they know. They're more likely to get more contracts with the company if they say good things about about the so it
KC Davis 21:37
wasn't like so people didn't think that it was genuinely a split opinion, like, Oh, it's just a polarizing game feature. Like, people kind of immediately went to, like, oh, the people who are giving positive reviews are because they're on comp. Now, do we know did we know that? Did we know that only the Okay, so that was just our assumption. Yeah.
Caroline 21:55
So that was the assumption. And the stupid thing about that is, like, this is a jumping off point to the actual thing. So like, this is, we're not even there. We're not even there yet. This was such a hard one to do because, like, I had to go down, like, real into the into the weeds on this one to figure it out. Yes, oh my god. So this is
KC Davis 22:11
like me explaining, like, sometimes I come across a tick tock video that is so funny, like
Caroline 22:16
a ninth tier meme, yes, and
KC Davis 22:18
I really want to show my husband, and he's not even on tick tock. He doesn't even have a Facebook so, like, I literally, I will sometimes go and, like, save other videos, and there'll be, like, six videos before I get to the video I actually wanted to laugh at. So be like, Okay, so there's this trend. Here's what it looks like, but then, like, there was this iteration of the trend that looked like this. Now there's this person that nobody likes, but, and it's like, I have to explain all nine layers, and it's never funny by the time I get to, like, that point, but I insist on doing it anyways. I feel justified.
Caroline 22:50
And like, No, trust me. Like, next time, next time, you'll get it. Share this joy with me, damn it, right? I always think about, when I think about that, not to stay on the tangent, but like, I always think about the memes, like in April, where it's like, you know, like, it's like, right now and it shows rain, but soon, and it's ramen, and it's just an uncooked block of ramen. Gonna be May, it's gonna be May. So, like, you either get it or you don't get and, like, how do I explain that? Would that be still being funny? Like, it's funny inherently, but you have to get there on your own, yeah? So we've got people now going back and forth, saying, yeah, and there's actually two full camps. So a little bit to what you said. They're the people who were aligning to the guy who was complaining about the things that they didn't like about this was a patch to this game, because it's an online games. It was a series of updates things the guy who was saying, you know, and the people who aligned with the guy who was negative were like, you all are shills. Nobody's legitimately criticizing this game. These are bad things. Like, even if you want to be positive, even if you want to, you know, make positive content, like, we should get better from these companies. And they keep getting away with it because people like this keep making this type of content, reviewing it when you're not giving a good faith assessment of what's going on. And then people on the other side are like, I just want to play the game that I enjoy and see people talk about it in a joyful way. I don't want to be this is my escape. This is whatever. Like, yeah, not everything's perfect, but like, I don't want it to be a hateful space. It's a gotcha game, you know. Like, I just want to let me have fun with this and not worry about these things. And, yeah, if we can't change the frustration, then let's just keep a positive spin on it. I enjoy the content more that way. So that's what it originally started as. And the people who made those videos that were excited have no issue with each other, not really like they were, pretty much. One of them was known to be a guy who does positive spins on things, and I don't know, he wasn't considered necessarily to be a shill, but he was considered be somebody who was positive in nature. But because of this, people started taking sides. People were also still mad at the company for different reasons. This is a community of, like, a ton of people. People go back and forth. It just keeps escalating. And then people start getting mad at the content creators and start trying to out them for different stuff and all. All of that ends up coming to two completely different people. One of them comes out and says, so you've got atsu, and then you've got braxophone. Is the name of the other guy. Brax the phone atsu is well known within the community. He's one of the leading content creators, and he is well known to have connections within the company, like his roommate worked there, or, like, that type of stuff. No one in his family, but he's friends with these people, so that's also, it's not really contested that he gets benefits from that, right? He comes out and he's like, Hey guys, can we all, like, calm this down? And he's talking to the guy who's very negative, who's kind of riling people up and calling everybody shills. And he's like, Hey, look, I know you don't like me. I know you know we don't get along whatever. I think we can bring this all down. I'd love to talk to you because I think I know why you don't like me. Because this other person has told, I think someone's told you some negative things about me. I'd love to have a conversation with you because, like, I promise you a lot of that's not true. In response to that Brax, the phone comes out and like, Hey, I'm that guy that you're referring to. Here's an eight page Google document about how I think you have been specifically sabotaging my entire career in this space as a content creator because of you don't like me and you have connections. He basically says they had a series of interactions as he got bigger in the space as a content creator, he met this guy at SU, so braxophone was up and coming at SU is already very well established and has good connections. Brax the phone basically says, like, I was trying to get to know you, and like we had these misunderstandings at these parties, like I was trying to do XYZ thing, it didn't come off well. Basically, they just kind of didn't vibe. Braxton really wanted to be closer to atsu, and basically said, atsu decided he didn't like me. He had a click. He's been actively sabotaging my career, and he's blacklisted me. He's gotten me blacklisted with the company so that I can't get contracts. This was, like, a big deal to me, because I'm like, oh, like, that's okay. That's like a thing that's actually right. Like, Okay, now we're not just complaining because, like, we're YouTubers yelling at each other, like, guys spend time in commentary YouTube spheres like I'm used to, that that's normal. This is, that's, this is, this is another level of
KC Davis 27:06
whatever. This is, IRL
Caroline 27:08
in real life, exactly. This is bottom line type of stuff, you know. So atsu responds to this, but by the time he does, atsu is pretty well not like it seems like, by a lot of other content creators, and so a lot of people came like, had come forward and were like, at manipulative. Like, atsu is really Clicky. He does have his group of people that he hangs out with, and he was really exclusionary to this guy. And this does suck. And it just kind of kept going. And atsu basically got kind of nuked by this, like, he just kind of stepped back and he tried to defend himself. People didn't really pay attention. Everybody kind of was like, out to was one of a bunch of people who all kind of got negative feedback, because everyone's like, all of you suck. Like, all of this comes together to suck for all of for everyone involved. So, like, we're just over it, come to find out. So like, three months later, Azu had, okay, that's the original. That's kind of how it ended. And it was just like, okay, like nobody, like people were kind of basically on Brax the phone side, like, this is, what an awful thing to do. Like, you're, you're hurting someone's career because you don't like them. And, you know, Brax, the phones document outlined, like the times they met, and the reasons things were awkward, and you talked about being, I believe, I believe you talked about being autistic and having struggling with the social cues and that type of thing. So, you know, it looked bad, as far as otse was concerned. That's pretty much where it kind of just fizzled out from there. But I was just like, this was a lot that came out of something very small, like, literally, a patch, update on a game. Got it so good? Atsu, this major player kind of like, disappears. He's just like, okay, yeah, he just steps back and kind of falls into the background, while the other guys kind of just keep on trucking right. Several months later, atsu comes forward and is like, I'm quitting. This whole thing destroyed my life. My wife of 10 years had been cheating on me. I am now getting divorced, like unrelated, like these things. Just he drops this bomb and is like, this all sucked, and he talked in it was literally like a 40 some page Google that there are just so many Google Docs and they're all so long. But in this next one, in this, I
KC Davis 29:20
mean, that's so dorky. I love it so much. People like battling online with Google Docs. It's
Caroline 29:25
so common. The joke, Mr. President, another Google doc has hit the tower is, like, actually, super common.
KC Davis 29:33
That is a fun I feel
Caroline 29:34
like a horrible person, but I actually, like, find anything where it turns into like, oh, it's the Pentagon. Like, no, they have the Pentagon.
KC Davis 29:39
Like, no, listen, the rule about 911 jokes is that if you were sitting in a classroom, like, if you were in school when you had to hear that news, and it like, rocked your child, you now get to make the 911 jokes.
Caroline 29:54
That's what I thought. I was like my dad worked, like, right near the Pentagon, and I had to, like, go make sure he was alive. And. Come home and, like, I remember,
KC Davis 30:01
yeah, like, if you were pulled out of freshman English with that were under a terrorist attack and had to hide in the locker room, you get to just make the funny joke about Mr. President. Another google doc has hit,
Caroline 30:14
okay, it's just so funny. So in this new one, I'm kind of going through it, he's talking about his wife. I feel bad, you know, and he's going back through and explaining stuff. He goes back to talk to Brax the phone again, and he's like, here's the thing, though, you and I, there's one section in this doc where he says, You and I both understand that you currently have a contract with the company, and you have and you and I both know that, and I didn't come forward and out you as having this, because I kept thinking you were gonna make the right decision and do this and say that this is the case. And like to me that I feel like that hit me harder than everyone else. Like, what do you mean? He has a contract with them right now. Dude, does do words not have meaning anymore? Like black ball has a very specific meaning, and because I was coming from the position looking back on it, you are just upset that he doesn't like you and doesn't want to invite you to parties with him. You're upset about that. And you then tried to add in this idea, like, because then he came back again and said, Sorry after Aussies document, Brax, the phone came back again and said there was, like, one of his first sentences was, I'm not going to pretend everything I said in my first document was true with no clarification.
KC Davis 31:38
He just dropped that line. And was like, listen, he just
Caroline 31:40
dropped it and kept it pushing. And I was like, hello. And then also he says, you know, talking to atzu, you know that I had an NDA, and that part of the NBA was that I wasn't allowed to talk about the fact that I had a contract or an NDA, which my husband and I get into fights about this all the time, about the legality of whether that would hold up in court, because there are situations where you have to be able to acknowledge, wait,
KC Davis 32:04
it's hilarious that he that, like, it has accidentally gone full circle to, like, proving the original people's point that, like, yes, people aren't disclosing that they have these contracts when they're giving these reviews and pretending to be, like, neutral about it. Oh my god. And you know what? It really does make so much sense, because everyone loves like, that story of like, I'm the underdog, the up and comer and like this person who's already made it that has all these privileges, you know, is like, secretly a really shitty person like that. I feel like that narrative, we eat it up like we love to hear some celebrity is secretly, like, shitty and like, now we really like this underdog, and for some reason, I find it such a delicious twist to find out, like the underdog sucks,
Caroline 32:47
right? And that's the thing. Like, this was an easy one to do, too, because again, atsu had always been fairly polarizing and had been seen to be fairly Clicky. The way he describes it in his follow up that happened later is the second one that I'm talking about in this same document. He's like, Look, I've had people who have clung on to me because they knew that my friends, like I have connections there that I had before I got into this content space. Like, I didn't make these like friends, at least not all of them, like a lot of them, are just people I was already friends with, and this is just how things played out. And I've had people use me for this and cling to me for that, and I really have a distaste for it. So when I see people listen,
KC Davis 33:26
no new friends. You know what I mean? I know a lot of YouTubers, or
Caroline 33:29
I hear a lot of YouTubers saying, No, I don't have a discord. No. And personally, oh my God, never I think that's the worst decision, complete tangent. But don't make a discord. It's going to be, there will be minors in it, terrible things will happen in it. It will be your fault, and I need you don't make a discord. But
KC Davis 33:46
that's such a weird choice to me. Like, the only time I've ever participated in a discord was like, when, so when my book launched, I did like a book club, like my publisher set up a little book club, and we, like, had people sign up, and so we did it through like discord, because that was just the easy was just the easiest way to do it. But I mean, it lasted like, six weeks where we would, like, read the book and come together and, like, talk about the chapter whatever, like, whatever. But outside of that, like, I know of content creators that have discords with their fans, and it's such weirdo behavior to me. I
Caroline 34:19
agree, like I've never had I think about all these, you know, because a lot of the stuff I consume is heavier stuff that I don't, you know, utilize for niche key, because it's not tea. And so every time you hear about another YouTuber has been exposed for XYZ, inappropriate slash, criminally implicating behavior. I always think, like, how do you fall into these traps? Like, I get DM requests. I get all this stuff you can easily, like, I just don't hold back and forth conversations with people who I am not able to physically like, look at you and verify. Like, I know that you are not a child. I know you. Know what I mean? Like, I don't know, yeah. So I that whole thing. That's a pretty good twist, pretty weird, yeah. So that twist threw me off a lot because, oh, so he's literally correct, because you went out of your way to use the word black ball. You went out of your way that words have meaning. Can we not do this? Because now I feel manipulated. Is what I said. Like, do I believe that atsu is like, based on this whole thing and the way he talked to people? Because then, of course, when his document came out, some of his friends were coming out and sharing screenshots from discord about him, saying, like, he doesn't like Brax a phone, but literally, even in that same thing, he's like, I'm not a big fan of the guy, but please don't not hang out with him because of me. Like, I'm not telling anyone else to not hang out with him. I'm just not interested. He's, you know, whatever, he doesn't owe you like friendships, simply because he doesn't have to like you. He doesn't have to give you extra opportunities, just because he has the ability to do so like but I do believe that all of these people are very like emotionally immature, and I hope that I know Otzi said he's stepping away, but I'm more on his side. I hope he just goes to therapy and, you know, is able to kind of maybe find something else that's less intense to get into. But yeah, I was just, I was so mad, like, What do you mean? What do you mean? Because I don't care if he didn't invite you to parties, I What, what do you mean?
KC Davis 36:20
Yeah, okay, that's a good one. Let me ask you this, what tell us about, like, the funniest tea that you've ever had.
Caroline 36:27
I had to think about this a bit, and it's not so much any it's a class, a class of tea That's the funniest. And the class is academic. Academic is so funny because usually you're talking about PhD level, just nerd people and, like, you know, as a math person, these are my people. I understand. I'm fully in support, but they are just the way they engage in drama with each other, especially because a lot of times we're talking about, like, if it's big enough that it makes it into niche tea, it always ends up being like you're talking about, like front of their field, PhD, publishing, research level stuff. Two stories come to mind. One I had mentioned to you previously, that was the one about the a guy made an entire he was a geologist, and it was in Indonesia, and he found there was a basically, he was claiming that this structure on a mountain was a pyramid. And then he was, he wrote up, he did a whole series of, you know, over almost a year, you know, worth of research, where he went on site and with teams and did digging and did all the stuff and wrote up a whole thing. And his conclusions, though, were that this was definitely a pyramid, and that based on the dating he did of the stuff around it, like the soil, the raw you know, all the context is what they call it. It was like 20, 30,000 years old. That is insane. Before that, we would have thought the oldest pyramid was that we've confirmed the man made pyramid is like five to 10,000 years old. So, like, that's a significant difference. And also in Indonesia, like, that's a totally different place, yeah,
KC Davis 38:04
that's like a rewriting history, kind of like, Babe thing. It was
Caroline 38:07
huge. It was huge, huge, huge. And about a year after that paper, when that paper got released, eventually, a bunch of people and it was peer reviewed, is the thing. It was published through Wiley. This is not one of those quick turn places. Like, there's another place called archive, where you can kind of just put up whatever you want. And it turns out that, you know, a lot of people were really challenging it, to the point where Wiley got involved, and, like, a year later, came back to them and said, Hey guys, a lot of questions. How do you respond to these things? And then this email back and forth is one of the funniest things I've seen like this, watching this descend, because they end up retracting the paper. And so this guy, it starts this email chain that starts in like, November of like, 2023, and like, goes into January, just back and forth between the main representative at the publishing company, Wiley, and the main researcher on this thing. And by the end, it's basically like, Hello, I hope you're having a great day. Go fuck yourself. Like they are so mad, like they're just, they're like, I really don't understand. And I would love to, you know, like in the mass per our last email, you piece of shit, yeah, yeah. Like, and it's just watching the anger, like, but they have to stay professional, because this is what we're doing, you know, go back and forth. So, like, similarly, we had one. It's like the
KC Davis 39:21
definition of white on white crime Exactly. Although neither of these people are white, I think, like, because this guy, but just like the clinging to, like, politeness, yes, as they descend into just like, full on loathing of each other. And
Caroline 39:35
because the guy who's in charge of this too, the researcher, he, his name is Dr nataway dia and he then also started posting these massive rant on like Facebook. He eventually, once it got retracted, he started claiming that he was being suppressed, and basically that there was, like a archeology mafia that is like, not allowing him to bring
KC Davis 39:55
out the truth. Oh, like the archeology Illuminati, sure, sure, sure, exactly would.
Caroline 39:59
Is some serious coke that was really, really funny to watch. And meanwhile, the rest of the academic community is like, hey, so I we're more worried about the fact that when this paper came out, this was a really big deal, because obviously, it literally changes so much about human history and this retraction. Can we be that loud? Can we be that loud on the retraction? Because, like, not people aren't really understanding this, because we
KC Davis 40:20
need to change it back now. Yeah, we need people to stop quoting. We need to change history back now.
Caroline 40:24
And you can't just quietly retract the thing. You've gotta, we've gotta, like, get this circulating too, you know, but the way that they descend, like they're, I think, to your point, like the facade of kindness, while you're just like, I hate you so much. And there was another one that was for physics, and it was basically these two groups of people who theoretical physics. We're talking like, literally, conceptual level stuff, nowhere near the point of even being taught, like in any kind of school. It's just PhD level people writing papers at each other. And these papers are different. They're not peer reviewed, so they can just kind of upload it and go back and forth if they need to. And that ended up happening in this case, since guy came forward and was like, I have this new idea for how gravity might work. I won't it doesn't matter, and doesn't
KC Davis 41:10
matter, I wouldn't understand it, even if you explained it
Caroline 41:13
doesn't matter and not proven very theoretical, still, still. And he put out a couple different papers, and he where he was exploring different aspects of what might support this idea that he has around gravity. And then these other guys came forward and started writing, like counter papers to his paper and basically saying, like, this doesn't make any sense. This doesn't explain the things you say. It does like, kind of just coming out and saying that. And the thing that I this is when I first realized, like, oh, where normally most people will go to Twitter and start, like, going back and forth on Twitter. These guys don't do that. They literally just keep publishing at each they're publishing at each other, but it's a paper. So then the first guy comes back is like, actually, like, and there's so much passive, aggressive sassiness that sounds like a teenager, like a 14 year old girl writing a note to her friend that she knows another friend is gonna read, you know, like, that kind of thing. Like it
KC Davis 42:07
starts. It's like, despite the erroneous conclusions by Alfred at all, no,
Caroline 42:13
literally. It's like, we can see here why this might have been this is the reason we think this was incorrectly assumed and then utilized incorrectly. It's like you would under the phrasing that was in there, like you would notice this if you worked with these on any regularity, like, if you understood that, like this, we understand how these mistakes can be made, like that type of stuff. Like here, why don't we break this down? Like there was one part where it's like, we understand how you got to this point, and they're both doing it back and forth. I don't remember who said this to who, but it was like, to who, but it was like, you know, we understand. You know how? You know, this was confusing, so we're gonna go into it in in more depth, which is like, why don't I say it again for you, but slower? Would that help? It
KC Davis 42:53
reminds me of like posh Lords fighting by like slapping each other with their gloves,
Caroline 42:58
like getting not even just that. It's the it's the posturing, it's the stand up in a huff. You walk over, you raise your hand, you finger by finger, take off your glove, slap across the face like, you know, it's a 20 minute lead up type of thing, like the pomp and circumstance of it. And I remember I got one of my favorite comments ever in that video, because so the guy who came up with the new thing. It was this idea he's calling cotton gravity, again, doesn't matter. And then one of the responses from the other guys, the title of the paper was farewell to cotton gravity. And someone who icons is like, farewell to cotton gravity is fighting words. Actually, people get so they have no idea. These are people. This is like, that's a 14 year old girl who knows, you know what I mean. Like, that perfectly encapsulated. Like, oh, excuse me, do we need to have a talk? Like, I didn't know anything about this before today, but now I'm invested. Like, it's because it's a sort of thing where I describe it as, like, if these guys, like, yeah, they're not on social media for the most part, and when they are, you can see that they're just as insane. Like, same thing with the geologist who was climbing the pyramid. Like, when he's on given a platform on Facebook or any other anywhere else, he just rambles. And you were like, Oh, this guy might be crazy, you know, but for the most part, we don't see that. And so to see it in these really, like, academic places and have it highlighted, and to know that, like, if these guys met in a bar, they made spike. Like, that's so funny. You picture these old men who just, like, teach in a paper, and then they see a guy and then,
KC Davis 44:26
like, it's on site, academic conference. I
Caroline 44:29
love that. I love that stuff that makes me laugh so much. Okay, so
KC Davis 44:33
I want to end by having you tell us, like, what the most viral niche tea has been.
Caroline 44:39
That definitely was bird watching one. It was definitely that I went, I went back and triple checked, and that one, it's got like, three some million views. Any honorable mentions? Oh, honorable mention would be Flow Hive, another one that I put the bird watching one, and the Flow Hive in kind of the same, in the same genre, in. The sense that it's a niche that people have a lot of interest in, but there's also a lot of neat information. So it's like a fairly people really, like, find it to be interesting in a way that I wasn't prepared for. Like, people love beekeeping. Nobody's a beekeeper, but people love beekeeping. You know what I mean? Like, like, nobody. Like, think of the woman who saves another day, saving the bees. Like, I don't know there's something about bee content. Or
KC Davis 45:26
the woman that, like, scoops the bees with her bare hands. Yeah,
Caroline 45:29
that's the same woman I was, Oh yeah, yeah, getting the bees her. I do think there's
KC Davis 45:34
something sort of like, as someone who reads a lot of fantasy books, there is something like primal about watching someone interact with bees, where you're like, This is magic. There's no other explanation. The
Caroline 45:44
same thing with the bird watching, where it's like, I feel like the sea glass video I did was similar where it's like, just about people who collect sea glass from beaches. That's it. You know, it's because it's such innocuous outdoor It sounds very peaceful type of stuff. And because, I think again, same thing with the bird watching. You picture like, this man that's like, in his 60s or 70s, right? And you just, you're like, Oh, I bet he wanted to fight that guy. That's
KC Davis 46:12
how I feel when there's, like, tea about, like, knitting patterns. There's
Caroline 46:15
another one. I is always good knitting drama. I just never, I haven't found one that's like, really, really juicy. But knitting is one of those ones that I never people constantly say they're like, the knitting community goes wild. The stuff that people get upset about in the knitting community, the drama there goes insane, like with patterns, and certainly, AI has created, I'm waiting for a really good knitting story. It's I like to check off niches. And if it's a new a net new one, I'm way more interested, you know, and knitting is one of those ones I really meant to but yeah, I'd say the beekeeping one, that one had to do with a beekeeper on tick tock, who was he was testing a new hive from a company called flow, and basically explaining his concerns with some of the back and forths he had with them and their customer service because of some recommendations they made to him, that he's like, Hey, if I did this, my bees would die, and that's not good. And he was theorizing that the reason for that would be because flow is based in Australia, and he is in the Midwest of the US. And so, you know, winter is a real thing. It's the Midwest, in a really serious way, that it's not the same in Australia. And he's like, here's the thing. I know enough to know that that recommendation, those recommendations they made, wouldn't make sense, and all he was doing was a product review. He wasn't coming out to, you know, come after them, or anything like he said, from beginning, I'm gonna try this hive, because I keep hearing about it, and I'm gonna take you guys on this journey with me. He has a whole series that he goes through. I think part of the reason people like those, beyond just the topic, is that people are really interested in learning about that. Because part of what I try and do is lay a groundwork so that as you come away from it, you have an understanding of, like, what is this thing? What's the basic history behind it? How do things work? So, like, I was explaining the difference between traditional beehives and the Flow Hive and how it works, and like, what it and people love, love that, like the kind of the history of and again, with bird watching, like, What do you mean, where? Where do people love birds? Is there a committee? Is there oversight? Is there? Are there? They're famous birders. Like, I mean, I
KC Davis 48:18
truly feel like you do, like a humanitarian service, because, especially right now, everything post election is so stressful and like, things really matter that, like, there's kind of and like, Yes, I do want spaces where, you know, it's like, oh, it's, you know, you don't have to think about anything, but like, there's some kind of, like, weird need that niche T fills, where it's like, I want to feel something about something that doesn't matter.
Caroline 48:42
Yeah, it's fun because it's just, it's like, an indulgence. It's like, it's the same reason I love reality TV. Well, yes, like, there's
KC Davis 48:50
things that matter that you feel about, and then there's things that don't matter that you don't feel anything about. And it's like, sometimes you need that, like things I can feel about that don't matter. Probably why I like books exactly
Caroline 48:59
like, yeah, you want to hear about how the, you know, princesses are, the princess community is beefing over the way they wear dresses, you know, whatever.
KC Davis 49:08
Oh, that happens. There's some real tea in the like Disney community about the changes they made to the Disney princesses. Exactly. Well, Caroline tell us where we can look you up, where people can follow niche tea. I
Caroline 49:19
am predominantly on Tiktok, but I'm also I try to have a presence pretty much everywhere. I'm on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, I repost to Instagram and YouTube. You can find me any of those places, just trying to make it easy for people to follow me. I'm Arith girl, A, E, R, i, t, h, g, I R, L, everywhere. So I should be easy enough to find. And I use the same profile
KC Davis 49:41
photo, so I'm making it as easy as I can. Awesome. Well, Caroline, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. It was great talking to you. You.