Transcript, Audio Recording, Arthur Quincey’s Phone

5:55 PM

A. Van Helsing

*in a whisper* Are you recording this?

Arthur Quincey

*in a whisper* yeah I don't trust this girl.

A. Van Helsing

*in a whisper* I hope your mistrust is unfounded, love.

Arthur Quincey

*in a whisper* I like when you call me that.

Lucy Westenra

Harker. Harker, I just…what the hell? What are you doing here? How do you know this woman? Have you been here this whole time? Why didn’t you answer my messages? I was so worried!

I mean, what the hell? Did you even think about how worried I would be? Or is this…this mastermind keeping you prisoner and you can’t tell us? *louder* Are you?!

Bram Stoker

Wait, are you talking to me? Or did you actually want your brother to answer any of those questions. Or, like, speak at all, ever?

Lucy Westenra

Spill it, Jonathan Harker!

Harker Westenra

I chose to be here; the app; yes; it’s not actually about you; and no.

Lucy Westenra

…wait, what? I forgot what I asked. You’ve been here the whole time and you didn’t even think to maybe call me and tell me so I wouldn’t be worried!?

Harker Westenra

Lucy…look, I don’t want to get into this right now, okay? Yeah, I’ve been here with Bram because I wanted to be. I’ve been working on my dissertation and spending time with her.

Lucy Westenra

Okay but…why?

Harker Westenra

Because we…like each other.

Lucy Westenra

Liiiiiike…enjoy discussing intellectual matters or like…like each other.

Bram Stoker

Harker and I are in a relationship.

Lucy Westenra

But…but you never date anyone!

Harker Westenra

That you know of, sis. Since you never met the personal detail you wouldn’t wring like a sponge, I never talked about it. Besides, there was never much to tell. Until now. And can we please stop talking about my personal life in front of the whole world.

Lucy Westenra

*starts to speak; is cut off*

Arthur Quincey

Hey, I’m happy for you, Lucy’s brother, and I respect your privacy, so instead, can we talk about why my phone is infested with malware I can't find?

Bram Stoker

Oh, there's no malware, I assure you.

Arthur Quincey

Guess how much your assurances count for? Zero. Because whatever you did gave you remote access to my phone or automatically overrode my passwords to download apps. And you know who does that? Absolute assholes who think their silly games justify trampling on people’s privacy, or absolute assholes who are trying to actually take control of people’s phones for nefarious purposes. So, which are you? An asshole with delusions of grandeur or a nefarious asshole?

Bram Stoker

Definitely an asshole with delusions of grandeur. Although, Harker, darling, would you describe my asshole as “grand” or—

Mina Murray

You get that we’ve been actually threatened by someone in reference to a real dead body that was killed the same way Jay Ingram was killed in your game, right? I know it must be super difficult to resist an asshole joke, but can we possibly focus?

Bram Stoker

That’s horrible. Did the threat come from an Allium player or Thrall user? If so, would you like me to drain his bank account as punishment?

Arthur Quincey

What the FUCK?!

A. Van Helsing

*in a whisper* Arthur, is that possible?

Arthur Quincey

Well I don't know because I have no idea what this goddamn asshole is capable of.

Bram Stoker

Bad joke; I apologize.

Well, Arthur—it is Arthur?—is partly right about the—well, I don't like the word "malware," but—

Arthur Quincey

Hah! Knew it. Confess!

Bram Stoker

I call them leeches, not malware. But they're not malicious, I assure you. They're there only to advance the game and then they erase themselves from your phone.

Arthur Quincey

Is that—fuck, really? God, I hate you and your evil Bond villain self but that's…really kind of impressive.

Mina Murray

Anything that can erase itself from a phone is either alive or terrifying

Bram Stoker

Thank you, I thought so, too

Mina Murray

That was not a compliment.

Lucy Westenra

So are you a hacker? Did you hack into Thrall, or into Allium? *in a whisper* Oh, man, Min, I totally wanna rewatch Hackers and you can be Angelina Jolie’s character and I’ll be—

Mina Murray

Ahem! Yeah, yup, good plan, let’s discuss later.

Bram Stoker

*chuckles* Neither. I created Allium for fun. I enjoy ARGs, and location-specific interactive technology is my particular interest. I just hid it in Thrall. A special little treat for certain users. Entirely optional, as you remember.

Arthur Quincey

*inarticulate mumble*

Bram Stoker

I was hired by Demeter Media to code back-end programming for Thrall. They're interested in the data that users input while using the app. It’s designed to encourage users to continually input data in order to advance the application and refine the users’ results.

Arthur Quincey

Ugh data mining, right?

Bram Stoker

Yes, their goal was data mining, with the intent to aggregate their data from Thrall with data they’ve gathered via other apps they own. Endgame to sell it, of course.

Mina Murray

So you’re the hand of evil, basically.

Lucy Westenra

Seriously. Hark, what the hell are you doing with this sleaze?

Bram Stoker

No comment.

Harker Westenra

Hang on a sec y’all. I need to talk to Bram.

[footsteps]

Arthur Quincey

Damn it, I would be so interested in this if I wasn't still mad at her for fucking with my phone. Why are the brilliant ones always evil?

Lucy Westenra

And why does my brother have to be dating one, ugh. Swear to god, I could find him another girlfriend.

[footsteps]

Harker Westenra

Luce. Everyone. You need to promise to keep secret what Bram’s about to tell you.

Arthur Quincey

Yes, of course, no problem, I’d be delighted to keep her secrets after she invaded my privacy with no hesitation whatsoever.

Bram Stoker

Arthur. I’m sorry about that. I embedded Allium inside Thrall because I liked the idea of a location-specific mystery being inside a location-specific dating app. I like mysteries. They’re neat and solvable, unlike life. Though I do love a good true crime story, as long as it’s solved. Big fan of your podcast, actually.

Lucy Westenra

Omigosh, thank you!

Mina Murray

I did wonder if talking about the game on the air would piss off whoever made it, if they knew. Since we were basically giving the clues away.

Lucy Westenra

Not our fault! We had to put it to good use since someone disappeared and made us think he might have been IRL murdered, Harker.

Bram Stoker

Yes, Mina, you ended up being a wonderfully unscripted part of the game, and I loved working around that element. Thank you, it was a very rewarding challenge.

Mina Murray

So is that the secret? That you snuck Allium into Thrall? Because if you’ve listened to our podcast then you know we already told that secret.

Bram Stoker

No. Let me be clear, I’m only telling you this because Harker requested it.

Harker Westenra

I don’t want my sister to hate you!

Bram Stoker

It’s fine. I’m…I have protections in place, should your sister and her friends tell our secret.

Lucy Westenra

“Our” secret? Harker, what’s going on?

Bram Stoker

How much do you know about Big Data?

Lucy Westenra

*simultaneous* What?

Mina Murray

*simultaneous* Some.

Arthur Quincey

*simultaneous* Omigod it’s monstrous!

Bram Stoker

Essentially, imagine what you know about companies data mining, like in Thrall, or like Facebook, or any online form you fill out. They take the information you input and…what do they do with it? Well some data brokers sell it. To the government, to the military, to other businesses. The ads you see pop up on your computer are determined by an algorithm that decides who you are based on what you search. That means the internet actually looks different to different people.

Harker Westenra

Not just to different individuals, but to individuals who are seen to belong to different groups. That’s where it all gets so horrifying. And why I’m interested in it with regard to mediation in my dissertation, August. It’s this whole new layer to everything, I’ve realized since being here with Bram.

A. Van Helsing

Oh?

Harker Westenra

Big Data essentially translates stereotypes into data, then erases the hand that did so by claiming that numbers are objective and therefore can’t lie. But as any anthropologist knows, the assumptions and limitations of the observer become encoded in the methodology, and thus bias is transmitted. Likewise, humans interpret the collected data through the lens of their own bias. There is no objectivity; just blind spots and the perpetuation of bias. Obviously, we as a culture are racist, sexist, classist, transphobic, fatphobic, queerphobic, etc., so any system that we construct will be as well. Especially a system that seeks to eliminate outliers, and make generalizations about groups.

Lucy Westenra

You tell it, bro. God, why is your research suddenly kind of interesting?

Mina Murray

Hush.

Bram Stoker

Yes. For example, if you’re a person of color or a person who routinely consumes media and products that have historically been marketed to people of color, you might suddenly find yourself ineligible to get a credit card. Because data collection companies have been proven to make decisions about loans, insurance, even the very prices of merchandise based on your perceived race, gender, and economic status.

Lucy Westenra

Jesus!

Harker Westenra

A few years ago, a professor named Latanya Sweeney found that searching for Black-identified names, including her own, often made her get google ads like “Latanya Sweeney, arrested?” but that searching for white-identified names didn’t. They didn’t even if the name of the white person actually is associated with a criminal record and the name of the Black person wasn’t. The prejudice is intrinsic to the algorithms that replicate it.

Lucy Westenra

That is so epically, epically fucked up! Harker! You have to write about this in your dissertation and expose it!

Bram Stoker

Glad you’re horrified, Lucy. This is how stereotypes become concretized as data. This is how systems of oppression are programmed to continue oppressing. Unfortunately, a dissertation—even one as brilliant as I’m sure yours will be, darling—isn’t going to stop it. The information about Big Data is out there, people just aren’t doing anything about it. Well…most people aren’t…

Mina Murray

Smug trail off to imply…

Bram Stoker

That some of us…are. This is the part you need to keep your mouths shut about unless you relish the notion of me hacking into all your shit and making your lives a living hell.

Harker Westenra

Babe, dial it down.

Bram Stoker

Allow me to rephrase. Please keep your mouths shut and do whatever you wish with the knowledge that if I download an app onto your phone I can surely punish you for—

Harker Westenra

That is not dialing it down!

Bram Stoker

Fine, snitches get stitches, that’s all I’m saying.

Arthur Quincey

Wow, my feelings about you are really a roller-coaster ride.

Bram Stoker

So. Demeter is far from the only company that has hired me to shepherd data from their app to legible spreadsheets that enable it to be granularized. The truth is…I don’t give Demeter the data they mine from Thrall. In fact, I pursue jobs like this with any company I can. Jobs were they depend on me passing on data from apps. Thrall is the seventeenth I’ve worked on in the last three years.

Lucy Westenra

What…do you do?

Bram Stoker

Well the goal, eventually, is to tear down the systems that perpetuate inequality and inequity, of course.

Mina Murray

She said like it was so easy.

Bram Stoker

It’s certainly not easy. But it’s necessary. I take every opportunity to scuttle the ship. I randomize the data. What I pass on to these companies is not only useless in its own right, but it doesn’t conform to trends in any data they’ve collected so far. The more they sell to larger companies, the more the infection of insignificant data spreads, interrupting the profiling they are attempting with it.

Arthur Quincey

Holy shit. That’s… Does that really do anything?

Bram Stoker

Well, it’s a start. And I’m far from the only one spreading this misinformation.

Lucy Westenra

Omigod please tell me there’s an underground network of hackers or like…what do you call this? Data piracy? Please tell me there is a whole secret network of data pirates trying to bring down Big Data!

Bram Stoker

Yo ho ho and a bottle of non-demographically targeted spirits of your choice, my dear.

Mina Murray

So you’re serious. This is your mission?

Bram Stoker

I’m very serious. The aggregation of data is a tool of surveillance and commerce. Two strong systems that have a very real interest in propping each other up, and both of which have a lot to gain from drawing conclusions about segments of the population. Technology has so infiltrated our daily lives that there’s no way to stop the flow of information. And this is a system that cares only about algorithms trending toward profit, and nothing about those they profit from. All I—and others like me—can do at the moment is attempt to scramble the signal. Give misinformation. And decode and make public the ways the information that’s gathered is being used.

Lucy Westenra

I’m so impressed and I take back the mean stuff I said about you.

Harker Westenra

Right? She’s amazing.

Bram Stoker

So glad Robin Hood-ing information does it for you, darling.

Harker Westenra

Y’all won’t tell, will you? Bram uses fake names for stuff, but still. You don’t actually want to help these assholes, do you?

Lucy Westenra

No, of course I won’t tell. I’m a Black woman—you seriously think I would ever support using data to make huge generalizations about populations? Fuck no!

Mina Murray

My lips are sealed. Also I want to go home and delete all my social media and never use a computer again, Jesus Christ.

Bram Stoker

It wouldn’t matter, unfortunately. There are so many people whose data is gathered that any one individual gets lumped with their predetermined demographic even if they don’t participate in the data being gathered.

Arthur Quincey

So even you aren’t safe, love.

A. Van Helsing

This is extremely disturbing. I did wonder why I began to receive advertisements for Viagra after you and I chatted about— Ahem.

Arthur Quincey

Well there ya go. Those algorithms don’t know that you definitely don’t need Viagra. Plus we gotta get you some adblocker software.

Bram Stoker

Even if you use adblocker software, it doesn’t—

Harker Westenra

Maybe let’s just let the new info settle a little.

Bram Stoker

Yes, fine. You know, you did win the game. The prize was supposed to be that you can flip the kill switch that officially ends the game.

A. Van Helsing

Kill switch?

Bram Stoker

The server that's running the game. It's called Carfax. When the game is over, part of the prize is that the winner gets to be the killer, if you will. It will shut down the server, sending a message to all the players that the killer has been apprehended.

Lucy Westenra

*simultaneous* Ummm that’s the most disappointing prize I’ve ever heard.

Arthur Quincey

*simultaneous* Yes, I want to do that!

Mina Murray

*simultaneous* Woooow, you named your server. That’s…something.

Bram Stoker

Well if you find that—and the fact that you’ve found Harker and he’s alive and well—unsatisfactory, then I have another prize to offer. I have this month’s Thrall data on the computer. You could push the button to catalyze the equation I use to randomize it. Put

the proverbial stake in Big Data? This data, anyway. I promise, it’s very satisfying.

Lucy Westenra

Yeah, that’s way better.

Bram Stoker

All right then, Lucy, Mina, why don’t you randomize the data. Arthur, you can flip the kill switch. Professor, I get the feeling you don’t need to engage in any ritualistic technoslaying?

A. Van Helsing

You are correct, thank you.

[Sound of a snick and a click]

Bram Stoker

Game over times two.

[muffled voices and the slap of a high five]

Lucy Westenra

Well, now that we saved the world for like five seconds…didn’t someone say something about pizza?