Encore: Is BYU Virginity Club Real? An ICYMI Investigation.
Speaker 1: Hi. I’m Rachel Hampton and you’re listening to I see Why Am I in Case You Missed It Slate’s podcast about Internet Culture. I hope you all are getting ready to enjoy Labor Day. The I see why my team is still in the midst of our two week break. We’re planning some really exciting stuff for you all down the road and of course, still seeking a replacement for Madison Malone Karcher. While we’re busy doing now, we wanted to share some of mine Madison’s favorite episodes.
Speaker 1: Today we’re returning to a subject that somehow became one of our standards on the show. That’s right. We are talking all about Mormons. More specifically, we’re talking about the BYU Virginity Club, which is a viral Instagram account that to this day still claims to be a club encouraging abstinence on BYU’s campus. But those posts didn’t exactly strike us as the most genuine. So we got the alleged head of the club on the phone to tell us what’s up. And yes, he disguised his own voice on the call. We have done nothing to it.
Speaker 1: But before we got into the interview, we talked about the Internet marketing genius that is Lil Nas X and how he promoted his single industry baby. This episode originally aired on July 21st, 2021, and it means that, yes, you will get to hear Madison’s voice from beyond the ice. Why am I grave? Without further ado is BYU Virginity Club Real Estate investigation.
Speaker 2: So for the past couple of weeks, Lil Nas X has been teasing his upcoming legal battle with Nike over the Satan shoes, which you might remember from many episodes back. Lil Nas X produced a limited drop of Nike’s with a allegedly with a single drop of blood in them.
Speaker 1: Yes, these Satan shoes went viral. Conservatives hated them. Everyone else loved them. Everyone except for Nike, because these were not officially released with Nike’s permission. And so for the past week or so, little Nas X has been teasing that he’s going to be appearing in court with Nike to fight over these shoes.
Speaker 3: When you have court on Monday overstating shoes and might go to jail, but your label tells you to.
Speaker 2: Keep making Tiktoks Baby Bear.
Speaker 1: A cover essay. And so in this video, Lil Nas X has like a kind of scared expression on his face as the little robot voice is playing. And then right as the beat drops, he just starts dancing, but with the same kind of like held hostage expression. He’s also been tweeting, one said, trying really hard to decide what I should wear to court on Monday for the same shoes case.
Speaker 2: Hashtag free Lil Nas x.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. At the same time, he’s also teasing his new single Industry Baby. And so this is all building up to Monday. Theoretically, his day in court. And on this day that he is in court, he drops the video on the website free lil nas x dot com and it is iconic.
Speaker 4: My client little nasty had nothing to do with this. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. This is about much more than the shoes, Mr. Nozick’s. Are you gay? What does this have to do with the shoes? That’s the question.
Speaker 2: I mean, he did get his day in court. In the video, Lil Nas X is the judge, the jury himself on trial.
Speaker 1: His own lawyer, his own attorney. I think he’s also the prosecutor, just like he is everybody in this courtroom. And it is him on trial for these shoes.
Speaker 4: Lil Nas X I see me 3 to 5 years in Montero State Prison.
Speaker 4: Hey, come here. Say a couple of pennies.
Speaker 1: And so this beat drops. And it is a promo for Industry Baby, which is also the teaser that you’re hearing and telling when the new song is going to drop, which is July 23rd. The fact that it is with Jack Harlow and produced by Akon, you know.
Speaker 2: What, he’s so good.
Speaker 3: At this.
Speaker 2: He’s so good at that. I want to think. Is that also the audio in the TikTok?
Speaker 1: It is. Yeah. This song hasn’t even dropped and it’s already in my head.
Speaker 2: And here’s the thing. I as somebody who’s, like keyed in a little bit to Lil Nas X, I knew vaguely that Nike was pursuing legal action. Okay. I didn’t ever like research past that knowledge. There was a court case in April.
Speaker 1: No. I also knew that Nike was pursuing legal action, and so I was just like, Oh, okay. When I saw the Free Lil Nas X and when I saw a little Nas being like, Oh, I’m going to be in court on Monday, I legitimately, being the journalist that I am doing my research was like, I’m going to take this kid at his word and say that he is in court with Nike on Monday. It is so effective. It is incredible how good he is at this.
Speaker 2: So speaking of Lil Nas X, have you seen this going? I look, we were literally speaking of him. I can make this transition.
Speaker 1: I’m away. I’m gonna let you continue.
Speaker 2: Have you seen this post from the Brigham Young Virginity Club Instagram account?
Speaker 1: Did not. That transition was not where I expected us to be going.
Speaker 2: All right. It’s a post from at BYU Virgin on Instagram. Our take on the recent Lil Nas x y z montero video. No. Shall I continue.
Speaker 1: My Madison.
Speaker 2: Recently? Cowboy rapper Lil Nas x y z cowboy rap.
Speaker 1: I mean they’re.
Speaker 2: Performing lap dances outside of marriage is wrong. And GROSS, says the Brigham Young Virginity Club.
Speaker 1: We’ve really come around to a different direction than we started. I don’t know where we are.
Speaker 2: I know, but I can tell you where we’re going.
Speaker 1: And I’m so excited. I have not seen this excited talking about the Olympics.
Speaker 2: So last week, the last time you saw it.
Speaker 1: It’s been a long time.
Speaker 2: Okay. So the Brigham Young Virginity Club is an Instagram account that is having a moment, was founded in September of 2020 and at BYU Virgin posts exactly the kind of content I just described. Exactly what you might imagine from a virginity club at a mormon university. Actually, you might not imagine it, which is the whole point.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was like, I don’t know if I’ve ever imagined a virginity club from a mormon university having an Instagram page, but little Nas x, y, z is is. That makes sense to me. Okay.
Speaker 2: So slideshows like the aforementioned Lil Nas, X, Y, z, one to another that begins with the title card. What does the Bible say about Hot Girl Summer?
Speaker 1: What does the Bible say about Hot Girl Song?
Speaker 2: Oh, you bet your sweet baby. I’m going to tell you.
Speaker 1: My sweet what, baby?
Speaker 2: I think it’s from an old television show that. You know what? Don’t worry about it. Look that up in your funk and wiggles. But the question on my mind and a lot of people’s minds as this Instagram account is having its blow up moment, is it too good to be true?
Speaker 1: Today on the show, we’re going to get to the bottom of the BYU Virginity Club account once and for all. I see why my peers on the case.
Speaker 2: We’re here to give you the answers you desire. Is this some better trolling, harnessing the power of the Internet to push an anti premarital sex narrative? I’ve got my trenchcoat on, my magnifying glass is out. And we have tried everything from Instagram investigations that some would say are borderline illegal, except not really a check with legal or fine to having a conversation with the myth, the legend himself, Brigham Young Virginity Club. We are getting to the bottom of this and we’re taking you with us.
Speaker 2: So at BYU Virgin has been posting since early September of 2020, but the post that brought it into, let’s say, mainstream social media circles is where you saw it is where I saw it is probably where a number of people listening to this podcast who wondered, is that a real thing? Saw it was the hot girl summer bible post. It’s sinful per Galatians. Jesus Christ and BYU Virginity Club recommends instead of a hot girl summer trip practicing pious girl summer a summer full of scriptures, sun and self-improvement through religious piety. Remember, modest is hottest.
Speaker 1: Shouldn’t a virginity club not want to be hot? Isn’t that kind of the point?
Speaker 2: So that’s the thing. At first blush, this account has to be satirical write posts about the quote unquote pupil loophole.
Speaker 1: The what?
Speaker 2: Anal sex.
Speaker 1: Are they in.
Speaker 2: Favor I we’re moving on.
Speaker 1: Do they agree with the.
Speaker 2: Post about how to come out as a virgin to your friends post a post about how you should treat your virginity like you treat investing in the stock market the more you read the posts. And given that the account, I should say Brigham Young University is not affiliated with the account, but the account is aligning itself with a school rooted in the Church of the Latter day Saints, where abstaining from premarital sex is literally part of the honor code and violating it is grounds for expulsion. So it becomes easy to make that mental jump into. But what if this is actually real and it’s just like brilliant next level meta trolling.
Speaker 1: You can’t be the only one who has the question. I mean, you were telling me this and I have quite honestly, I just would like to say to the issue I why my listeners that Madison texted me on a weekend we have to talk about the Brigham Young Virginity Club and I was out enjoying my life and I was like, What the fuck is happening here? So I still I don’t think you’re alone. You did bring this to my attention, but you can’t be alone.
Speaker 2: And I am not. And I have found tweets and TikTok spanning months from people wondering the same thing. Here’s here’s a little snippet.
Speaker 3: So I was just chilling in bed planning content. And I was brought to this lovely Instagram here via Twitter, and I’m all for virginity, abstinence, whatever floats your boat. I really don’t judge people, but Birmingham Young University’s virginity clubs approach is old. So this is what caught my attention on Twitter. It says was.
Speaker 2: So I’m not alone.
Speaker 1: Clearly.
Speaker 2: And I wanted us to be able to provide an answer to my community.
Speaker 1: I feel like you’re framing this as a general service the world, when I really feel like you would have gone on this investigation if you weren’t getting paid for it anyway.
Speaker 2: I went on this whole investigation, essentially lying in my bed on a Saturday night. Yes, that is true. But if we pretend it’s for work, it was panic.
Speaker 2: So the first thing we did and here’s where I’d divulge trade secrets is someplace I often start in Internet reporting. When you want to find out who runs, say, an Instagram account is to try and log in as that Instagram account and then say You forgot your password. Because when you do that, it’ll show you a censored version of a cell phone number or an email associated with the account.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a security issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is. This is not on us. And I see. Why am I issue? This is on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Instagram, Twitter, every single website that when you say I forgot my password, it gives out the last four digits of your phone number and or the first and last letter of your email address. We are just taking advantage of the security with.
Speaker 2: If we can exploit this privacy loophole, imagine what someone with skill could do. And we use this method to look into a whole bunch of accounts. When we discovered that there’s not only the BYU Virginity Club Instagram account, but that the BYU Virginity Club Instagram account was following a network of Virginity clubs at universities all over the place.
Speaker 1: Honestly, I’m going to when we started doing this, I really was just like, Madison’s really. She’s going for nail polish on this. I really think we’re going to find anything. But this was wild.
Speaker 2: Okay, Rachel, I. I think I have a way that we can prove that this is fake, but I need some help because I need some help. This accounts almost like a network of Virginity clubs. Okay, next on the list is National Virginity Club. Will you try that one?
Speaker 1: Yes, National Virginity.
Speaker 2: Club. That’s the handle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got B and the last thing is B.
Speaker 2: Wait, really? Yes. Rachel.
Speaker 3: Rachel. That’s the BYU email. Where is it? Really?
Speaker 5: Okay. Next.
Speaker 2: Okay. So that’s at least two that we.
Speaker 3: Consciously can connect to one another.
Speaker 2: Okay. Do you want to do Virginia Tech?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Me Team Virgin. Okay. I got a B and the last number of the email is nine at gmail.com.
Speaker 2: Wait, V virgin’s gave you the nine? Yeah. When I did it earlier, I got the Astros asterisk. Asterisk B at gmail.com. So the downside of this little hack is that the account owner in question might actually end up changing their email address. So when you go back to double verify things, they’ll have changed their email and you’ll be back to the drawing board. But we found one other account and a second email which has since been changed. That all appear to be associated with the same email address as the Brigham Young Virginity Club account. The other thing we looked into is when these accounts started cropping up, the Brigham Young One comes first, but many of the rest of them all seem to have cropped up in the same two week ish period in December 2020. Frankly, a bunch of them on the exact same date which that suspicious.
Speaker 1: Incredibly suspicious. Possibly organic. Honestly, still not only.
Speaker 2: Is there a group chat or a Reddit thread? A Discord server?
Speaker 1: Did someone perhaps post a viral tik tok that we just never found?
Speaker 2: They are in cahoots. In cahoots? I say.
Speaker 1: Hanukkah. Who’s drilling your fucking mustache over there?
Speaker 2: I am. The language they all use is very, very similar to in a way that makes me think these people are either cribbing off of one another or are all organically coming out from a single source.
Speaker 2: In an interview with the Daily Dot, the person behind the Brigham Young Virginity Club account said that there had been a lot of speculation, but at a certain point there was only so many times they could say the account wasn’t satire, and the Daily Diet piece points out a post where the account says that asking just the very nature of asking whether or not this kind of satire quote proves the premise, which is virgins are unfairly stigmatized in modern society.
Speaker 1: You might be thinking, You know what? Maybe this club has a point, which they do. I feel like we should say at one point, virginity is a social construct. It’s fake. Virgins aren’t family, a stigmatized society. Not having sex means literally fucking nothing.
Speaker 2: We have to do our podcast.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Eisley. Why am I? We felt that then needed to be said at some point. However, I immediately went to go look for my college’s virginity club page because there’s. There are so many. Almost every single school has one. Like a school. Pick a school. I pick Northwestern. And in the very first post from the club, someone commented on Northwestern Virginity Club’s very first post and said, This is too funny. Northwestern Virginity Club responded. This is a common misconception, but the fact that this account is perceived as a joke just goes to show the extent to which virginity is stigmatized in society. We are 100% serious. Have a great day. Does that sound familiar?
Speaker 2: Again, suspicious. Another thing that we found, suspect, is that the visual language of many of these accounts is identical. And I know that’s sort of a byproduct of how text posts on Instagram are created and spread these days. Everything looks the same.
Speaker 1: Canva.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the post canva, instagram economy. But the posting language, the visual language really is identical. So then why do it? That becomes the question we now seek to answer.
Speaker 2: Enter less Sanni Ragan, the brand ambassador, the first ever brand ambassador for the Brigham Young Virginity Club, who recently posted this ad of himself sporting some Brigham Young Virginity Club merch. Or rather, I shouldn’t say he posted it. The Brigham Young Virginity Club posted this video of him sporting the club merch and selling it to the public.
Speaker 4: Oh, I didn’t see you there. Me? My name is Lace honoring you. You have now been invited to have the best sex of your life. BYU Virgin, the largest community of virgins and born again virgins. Studies show 96% of people engage in premarital sex. Now, that’s what I call a sticky situation.
Speaker 2: So, listen, Reagan is is peddling merch, and I headed over to the Brigham Young Virginity Club Etsy store, where they’re selling Purity Power Virgin of the Week sweatshirts. 30 bucks a pop. Each one comes with a complimentary Virginity card with a stamped expiration date. My wedding night.
Speaker 1: Whoever is running this is just so good. Like, so good at this.
Speaker 2: So the sweatshirts are 30 bucks. T-shirts are a little cheaper. The Etsy store has 2100 recorded sales.
Speaker 1: Oh, my God.
Speaker 2: At present.
Speaker 1: Again. So good at this.
Speaker 2: As you scroll down through the description on Etsy, it’s, you know, the stuff about the free V card information at the bottom reads model ley, sunny Reagan, and then it links to his Instagram account where he’s promoting his music.
Speaker 1: Are you telling me this is all a SoundCloud rapper scheme? Are you telling me the Brigham Young Virginity Club is all just a way to get me to listen to some man’s music? They used to just hand out seeds on the street. Now they got whole clubs. They got whole groups.
Speaker 2: And you thought we weren’t speaking of little.
Speaker 1: Snoop because speaking a little concept.
Speaker 2: Spiritually we are. You might have noticed that we still haven’t totally answered the question of whether Brigham Young Virginity Club is an elaborate bit of performance art or entirely earnest. You know who also doesn’t know the Brigham Young University official comes office? I called them to ask them questions.
Speaker 3: This is Becky. Hi, Becky. My name is Madison Malone. Preacher. I’m a journalist from Slate magazine calling from the podcast. I see. Why am I? I’m looking to talk to somebody about a Instagram account associated with BYU and which one of them, the Brigham Young Virginity Club Instagram account. I don’t know if you’re familiar. Not probably. There won’t be a comment because we don’t manage that. And and if anybody can say anything on any account that has a BYU connection. So I’ll. But it could be I’ll just pass along to those. Thank you. Thank you. Center time. Okay, thanks. Bye bye.
Speaker 2: At this point, there was only one person left to talk to Brigham Young Virginity Club himself. After the break, we’re taking him to the interrogation room.
Speaker 1: Hi. I hope you’re enjoying today’s show. This is your first time listening to. I see why I might have been welcome. I am so happy to have you here. In case you missed it. We make that joke almost every single week. Also, our show comes out twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays. You are currently listening to the Saturday episode. This past Wednesday episode was all about Bennifer and featuring none other than the host of Who Weekly, Bobby Finger and Lindsay Weber. You don’t want to miss it.
Speaker 2: We are back and about to go straight to the source. All of my detective and sleuthing skills were truly no match for simply sending an email to Brigham Young Virginity Club and saying, Hey, could we talk? And sure enough, he agreed to talk.
Speaker 1: Who knew? Sending an email would would be the final the final lead on this case. You may notice in this interview that BYU version sounds like you’ve calling us from underwater, and that’s because we’re pretty sure he’s using a voice modulator. His anonymity was very important to him.
Speaker 5: How’s it going?
Speaker 2: Pretty. Pretty good. Nice to hear from you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, great. It’s great to be on the show.
Speaker 2: So you’ve said that you’re a student at BYU. Is that correct?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that’s right. I’m a junior.
Speaker 2: Are you a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints?
Speaker 5: Yes, I am.
Speaker 2: And the big question on everyone’s mind.
Speaker 1: Are you a virgin?
Speaker 5: Well, I am.
Speaker 2: Born again virgin. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I just I’m really curious why the anonymity?
Speaker 5: Yes. I am. Returns to BYU. I’m a little bit worried that they don’t like the cowboys. And so just in case, I want to make sure that my my status after the school is injured. Also, I haven’t come out to some of my friends as a virgin yet, so I kind of got off on that.
Speaker 2: Did you say come out as a virgin?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we have a couple of posts about that. Just because of the stigma that comes with it, sometimes it can be a little hard to let people know.
Speaker 1: So tell me, take me through what started this account. It’s sometime around September 2020. We’re in a pandemic.
Speaker 2: None of us are feeling very horny. I’m not going to lie. So what? What inspires the Brigham Young Virginity Club Instagram account?
Speaker 5: Yeah. So, I mean, you’re on social media. I’m sure you see like all the different jokes about versions like the first step forward. And that’s a meme that’s been going around for a long time. I think in general, there’s just a lot of very casual stigma and prejudice against people who are virgins. If someone does, it seems as cool as popularity. My joke, they’re virgin. And so we wanted to create a safe space where people are going to be restrained so they can kind of get together and discuss, try to stay strong, to stay informed.
Speaker 2: I noticed you guys have your first brand ambassador with Sony Reagan. What is your relationship to to him?
Speaker 5: Yeah. So we are engaged by he was already a cow. Obviously, it wasn’t going to be with you, but we really liked his music. We thought he was a really cool guy and we’re like, wow, like, we can’t believe this. This cool musician is following your account and you should go check out his music, by the way. And so we’re just massive sharing. We’re like, Hey, if you’re following us, this is clearly something that you care about. Would you like to be our brand ambassador? And he was all for us. And we we said, take some merch and he’s been featured on a few videos, but it really hasn’t been. It’s not like a partnership or anything. It’s just a work of love.
Speaker 2: We noticed your account follows a bunch of other college Virginity clubs, most of which were started after yours. Are you in communications with any of these other Virginity clubs? Is there a group chat?
Speaker 5: There actually is a group chat. It’s funny you mention that. I was actually just messaging some of them today with a group chat. It’s called Convergence.
Speaker 1: Great, great name.
Speaker 3: Great name.
Speaker 5: There’s probably maybe close to two dozen different accounts in the group chat. And we kind of just talk about like what kind of things we should post or how we can gain followers to spread our message of abstinence to more people. And that’s kind of what we do.
Speaker 2: We were doing a little a little research, and we noticed that a couple of the accounts appeared to be associated with the same email address as yours. Do you run any other Virginity club accounts?
Speaker 5: So are you control the National Virginity Council account? And that’s the only other account that I have ownership over, but I don’t really post on it much. I thought maybe an idea to centralize our message, but it didn’t really take off. And so I kind of just focused on the main one.
Speaker 2: So the other question we have, the thing we noticed is that a lot of these clubs were made on in the same two week period in December, if not on the exact same day. And that includes the National Virginity Council that you run. Was this a coordinated campaign effort in the hot tub?
Speaker 5: Not coordinated, all organic, because like you said, we started our account back in September, but it really wasn’t until November, beginning of December. And so on. That time as Eric, I was blowing up, all of these other college campuses started to form their own campus affiliates related to idea really.
Speaker 2: So everybody on December 16th just said, you know what, today’s the day. Account.
Speaker 5: Yes. So, I mean, virginity was trending on different social media platforms and there were TikTok videos that had millions of views. And so I think everyone in the college age group was exposed to our account at once, and it was getting so much positive feedback that they were inspired to make their own. And we tried to encourage them as well by giving them tips.
Speaker 1: Let’s be real here. A lot of these other accounts are, in fact, mostly jokes. There is one thing why panga needs to be brought back for virginity. And the thing about these, it’s really good satire. They’re so they’re impeccable means. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you said at least once on the record that this account is not satire.
Speaker 5: Not satire.
Speaker 2: How can you expect somebody to believe that when you’re talking about the Pew poll loophole?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don’t know. That is obviously some of the other accounts take a more lighthearted approach to it. Honestly, I think they’re more even genuine. It’s just it’s hard to tell which ones are showing and which aren’t.
Speaker 2: So what would you say to someone who is just dead set? Believes that this is a really good, well-executed satire account.
Speaker 5: At a certain point, there’s nothing I can say. We’ve told we’ve said multiple times that it’s not satire. If they want to stay around because they think it’s a joke, honestly, that’s preferred because we’d rather that they continue to digest and consume our positive and radical message and Virginity and stigmatization.
Speaker 2: Pretty good for selling merch too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we’ve done a couple of shorts now, which helps.
Speaker 1: So kind of going back to the group chat the hot tub of virgins, I guess. I’m just curious if you’re in these group chats with these other pages that are clearly satirical. How are you kind of coordinating content with them?
Speaker 5: I don’t know. I think I’ve definitely been a victim a little bit in the sense that maybe I’ve allowed these satirical talents to come in and might convince you that they’re real and they’re really not, and they’re just trying to piggyback on our momentum. But at the same time, I think there are genuine call ups in that account. And so my hope is that the genuine accounts will gain some good insight and bring our message to more people.
Speaker 2: So the BYU student body and campuses have faced a number of reckonings over the honor code, the way that LGBTQ students are treated on campus. You know, rules and strictures that really impact the way that kids receive educations. What would you say to a fellow BYU student who feels like this? This account detracts from from those very real movements.
Speaker 5: I hadn’t thought about it that way. We haven’t had many people reached out to us. My hope is that that’s not the case. We’ve tried to be very inclusive of LGBTQ students and virgins at BYU and other campuses. We have similar things affirming our commitment to the LGBTQ community. Would you support LGBTQ individuals? Several of our version of what we saw features on our story identify that way. And so our hope is that we’re not detracting from them in any way because we are we advocate for them and we honestly think they’re getting the short end of the stick.
Speaker 2: In a post from December of 2020, you talked about how you haven’t been able to get BYU Virginity Club approved by BYU. And the Post reads that you’re facing institutional prejudice that the administrators and student leadership department are biased against virgins and the very idea of a virginity club at BYU. Can you expand on that a little?
Speaker 5: I saw I’ll be honest, I was on the scene when I made that post. I think to some extent there is some bias where they don’t totally take us seriously or they aren’t comfortable talking about these ideas with the level of candor that we hope to.
Speaker 1: I just want to read one line and just I want you to confirm this is 100% serious from a virginal lens. The Olympic villages are filled with perfectly chiseled athletes and thousands of condoms. Boycotting the Olympics will reduce premarital sex at the Olympic Village. This is not satire.
Speaker 5: No more fringe sport. We figured we had the same kind of content for so long. And why not? Five years that we’ve been talking to through contemporary issues that are at the forefront of the news, that are at the forefront of this course. And that was one of our attempts to do so.
Speaker 2: So once and for all. For the record, you were an anonymous BYU Jr. And this account is not satire.
Speaker 5: No, not satire. Very serious.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your time today. We’ve really enjoyed asking questions. We’ll continue asking questions.
Speaker 5: Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much. So that is all the questions you got for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. You’re really? Really. It’s satire.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: By. So. I mean, Madison, this was your case. How do you how are you feeling? Disappointed.
Speaker 2: Baffled. I think my opponent is playing four dimensional chess. We are looking in each other’s eyes squarely. And I am saying this is satire. And he is saying, no, it’s not. And I’m going to get even more famous by continuing to say, no, it’s not. Case closed.
Speaker 2: The thing about the Brigham Young Virginity Club is if it does turn out to be a musician harnessing viral shed posts to then promote music, this truly is a lil nas x play in two acts.
Speaker 1: You were indeed speaking of Lil Nas X. I regret to say that this connection was not as far afield as I expected. But no, I mean, this is legitimately how Little Miles X got his start. He was a Nicki Minaj Stan Page, which Nicki Minaj is not Virginity, but they’re standing something.
Speaker 2: Right? And it’s about standing something that is very popular in the moment.
Speaker 3: Virginity Well, no.
Speaker 2: Virginity No, but hear me out. There’s this whole trend on TikTok about how Gen Z is prudish, about how they’re anti sex. They’re not having sex. They don’t want to because they’ve figured out that sex is inherently like weird and gross, which true. But the the prudishness of it all is very trumped up. It became an Internet bit. And so these accounts cropping up around the end of 2020, in tandem with that bit makes perfect sense to me. Now, anthropologically, I wish I’d thought of it. I’d be selling sweatshirts.
Speaker 1: We can still sell sweatshirts.
Speaker 2: I’m probably going to buy a sweatshirt.
Speaker 1: Well, on that note, Madison’s going to go buy a sweatshirt. I’m going to go contemplate how virginity is a social construct, but also brings people together.
Speaker 2: And we’re going to declare this case officially.
Speaker 3: Closed.
Speaker 1: Like our works.
Speaker 2: Okay. That’s the show. We will be back in your feed on Saturday. Please subscribe. It is the best way to make sure you never miss. I see. Why am I pie a bit. We’re definitely bringing back. Please consider leaving us a rating and review an Apple podcast if you liked this episode. If you feel you finally can know peace when it comes to the Brigham Young Virginity Club. Also, feel free to follow us. Feel free to. What a polite invitation. Follow us on Twitter. It’s at. I see. Why am I underscore pod and you can also always email us at ABC. Why am I at Slate.com? Who knows? We might just have you on the show and then I’ll stock that ever living shit out of you on the internet.
Speaker 1: I see. Miles produced by Daniel Schrader. Supervising Producer. Thank, John. Our editors are Force Berkman and Alegria Frank. Gabe Brothers, editorial director of Audio.
Speaker 2: See online or at the next meeting of the Virginity Club. I don’t know. What does this mean for, like, fossil fuels? Should I? Should I. Should I be investing it? I shouldn’t be. But what? Oh, no.
Speaker 3: Fossil fuels. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Like the decision to invest ethically or not?
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. We’re basing everything.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Professor Mitchell has just gone head down on the desk.
