Mikki Kendall: When Your Voice Becomes a Weapon (And That Changes Everything)

In this episode, you'll hear from Mikki Kendall, author of Hood Feminism, about what happens when being online stops being casual and starts being work. Mikki shares how public visibility changed her relationship with social media—from casual check-ins with friends to weighing every word for potential backlash, death threats, and AI companies stealing her work. You'll hear about the real costs of parasocial relationships, why she had to stop playing a phone game she loved, and how her kids' lives changed when strangers started showing up at their school. This is a raw, urgent conversation about the collapse of privacy, the weaponization of AI, and why slowing down—and sometimes logging off—is an act of self-preservation.Topics Covered:How becoming a public figure transforms your relationship with social media—from personal expression to calculated risk assessmentThe hidden labor of managing parasocial relationships: when strangers think they know you well enough to comment on your food, your health, and your bodyWhy Mikki stopped playing the location-based game Ingress after a stranger tracked her to her child's school playgroundHow AI companies like Grammarly and Anthropic used Mikki's name and work without consent—and what it's like to sue over plagiarism by machineThe emotional and practical toll of death threats, online harassment, and having to renegotiate friendships around safety protocolsWhy Mikki believes we'll see the death of social media before we see it fixed—and what that means for how we engage nowThe dangerous mythology of "tech bros know best" and why AI is replicating—not solving—systemic racism and misogynyHow speculative fiction and Afrofuturism (Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin) help us see the futures we're building—and the ones we can still refuseWhy white women (and all people with privilege) need to stop trusting the right, the center, and even the left without accountabilityThe apocalypse has already happened—to Indigenous people, to survivors of the Transatlantic slave trade—and what that teaches us about collapse, resistance, and survivalResources Mentioned:Hood Feminism by Mikki KendallPositive Obsession by Susanna MorrisConnect with Mikki Kendall:WebsiteThreads🎤 JOIN US IN THE FEMINIST PODCASTERS COLLECTIVE