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Emu content (Image: Tina Tiller)
Emu content (Image: Tina Tiller)

InternetNovember 1, 2022

Is Emmanuel the emu good or bad? The whole EmuTok controversy, explained

Emu content (Image: Tina Tiller)
Emu content (Image: Tina Tiller)

A seemingly innocuous corner of TikTok where people post videos of emus is the epicentre of the latest niche internet drama. Here’s everything you need to know.

This story was first published on the author’s newsletter, Emily Writes Weekly.

While I’m not a fan of emus, I am a fan of niche internet drama. So with that in mind, after requests following my last post, here’s my breakdown of the emu content controversy.

OK wait, what is EmuTok?

EmuTok is basically the emu realm of TikTok. Endless videos of emus in hobby and rescue farms – mostly charging at their owners, because that’s what female emus do.

Just who are these famous emus?

Emmanuel is the “main” emu at Knuckle Bump Farms in south Florida. Emmanuel’s owner is Taylor. Together they have 2.4 million followers. Other featured emus from the farm are Ellen, Eliza, Elliot, and Emily.

Karen is an emu at Useless Farm in Kingston, Ontario. Karen’s owner is Amanda. Together they have five million followers. Less popular is Stanley, another emu who lacks the blinding charisma of Karen. He also lives on Useless Farm.

Why are people talking about this?

Because, basically, there’s been an outbreak of avian influenza, aka bird flu, at Knuckle Bump Farms and Emmanuel got sick. According to owner Taylor Blake, more than 50 birds on her farm died in three days. These included other emus – namely, Emily, Eliza and Elliot.

Taylor posted videos of herself lying next to Emmanuel and kissing him on the beak. If you immediately thought “why on God’s green Earth would anyone kiss an emu with fucking bird flu” well, you’re not alone my friend. Science Twitter, particularly virologists and veterinarians, really lost their shit on this one and who could blame them.

A virologist and research scientist from the Vaccine and Infection Disease Organization in Canada said what everyone was thinking: “If your emu (or any bird) has avian influenza, do not kiss it. Do not cuddle with it. Do not touch it. Bird flu is extremely dangerous to humans and other animals.”

Like others, this scientist said Emmanuel should be euthanised.

So did Emmanuel get euthanised?

No. Taylor responded to the backlash by saying she cuddled him with no protection because Emmanuel “freaks” when he sees a mask. It turns out that not only does Emmanuel not know that he’s a viral star on TikTok, he also doesn’t know the importance of masking up.

So she kept on snuggling that emu. And then oh, how the tables turn, in that it turns out Emmanuel didn’t ever even have bird flu.

On October 23 Taylor tweeted: “Emmanuel Todd Lopez tested negative for Avian Influenza at two separate labs, swab, fecal, and blood. He does not have the virus, and is not actively shedding the virus”.

So wait, why was the emu so sick then?

Good question. Despite saying “God is Good” and that’s why Emmanuel is not bird flu positive… It turns out maybe he was just anxious the whole time?

“We believe this all stemmed from stress. Emus are highly susceptible to stress. He was incredibly overwhelmed by the state coming in and euthanising our flock.” Taylor tweeted.

Is it possible Emmanuel the emu was stressed because his owner was Milkshake Ducked?

So, just to make sure we’re at the same place here: being Milkshake Ducked is when a person who is beloved on social media is quickly revealed to be racist or a Nazi or just plain problematic. The phenomenon takes its name from this all-time great tweet:

Had you been mixing up Taylor from Knuckle Bump Farms with Amanda from Useless Farms? Don’t worry, now you can remember that one is “the Racist Emu Lady” and one… isn’t.

As is the way of the internet, it was recently revealed that Taylor had a bunch of racist tweets out in the world before her rebrand as an emu enthusiast on TikTok. She also did that “pretending to be racist to satirise racism” thing, playing a woman named Karen (of course), which rarely works out in the way white TikTok comedians think it will. This all inevitably led to an online discussion (including this long thread) about Taylor, white lesbians and racism.

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OK but what about the other Karen – the emu from Canada?

That emu is fine. And is only mentioned as an antidote to “the Racist Emu Lady” as, incredibly, her owner has no skeletons in her closet as of publication time.

I just wish beloved wild life enthusiast and eternal-teen Bindi Irwin had something to do with this.

Well, it’s your lucky day, because she does. When it was thought Emmanuel had bird flu, Taylor and her followers bombarded Bindi with requests to help. Even though Bindi lives in a country called Australia which is not in the United States.

Taylor tweeted Bindi: “I have been a fan of your family for as long as I can remember, I am reaching out to you in total desperation right now. I need help saving my emu, Emmanuel.”

Bindi replied that though the Irwin/Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital has treated over 100,000 animals including emus, they have never treated an emu “with this particular disease”.

She rather sensibly added: “We will need to rely on our fellow animal experts with more experience with this avian flu”. But it was too late. Emmanuel’s fans were pissed that she wouldn’t help.

In a now deleted tweet, one member of the Church of Emmanuel and Parasocial Relationships with Emus said: “What a pathetic, useless reply. Zero effort to help when you’re in a supposedly unique position to use your influence and contacts to actually help her. Thoughts and prayers are cheap. You are unimpressive and that’s being polite.”

I am so tired. I am so very tired of this world.

Absolutely fair but not a question.

So what now?

I imagine this whole brouhaha will ignite a debate on whether people should keep emus as pets and use wild animals as ways to gain popularity on social media. Or maybe it will highlight the dangers of avian flu.

Or maybe there will be no further debate and people will choose which emu side they’re on and one day there will be a new emu influencer, and we will follow her and then she will be Milkshake Ducked and it will continue on in an endless cycle until the planet dies.

What does Emmanuel say about that?

Nothing. He’s an emu.

This story was first published on the author’s newsletter, Emily Writes Weekly.


Keep going!
Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

InternetOctober 26, 2022

Making a good website great: a progress report from the nerds at The Spinoff

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

The Spinoff CTO Ben Gracewood emerges from the mainframe with a run-down of the dozens of small and large improvements being made to this very website.

About a year ago the crew at Daylight built us a shiny new website. It’s really, really good. The only problem is that I’m both a Spinoff Tragic and a user experience obsessive, so I’m never satisfied with just really good. I want your experience to be bloody great.

Over the last year, we’ve also seen a heckload of changes outside of our control. Mark and Elon are battling TikTok to make sure you stay trapped on their websites and only ever see vertical videos; there’s no more 1pm press conference traffic spikes and we’re all a year closer to death.

What I’m getting at is that clicks are harder to come by these days. We love clicks and page views, not just because that’s literally how we get validation as humans who create content (damn it’s a good buzz when a story goes big!), but because without traffic it’s harder to find members and sponsorships to pay our bills. Maybe it’s yuck to be so up front about it, but that’s the biz we’re in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

This is why we need to make sure our first-party experience is the best way to engage with The Spinoff. As web development nerds, our mission is to make you want to install our app or type thespinoff.co.nz into your address bar with delight because of the excellent experience you get when you do. We want people who stumble across The Spinoff to be hooked not just by our content but the experience of interacting with it.

Getting from really good to kinda great

Our large and talented technology division (I’m large, Sacha Laird is talented), in partnership with our designers Tina Tiller and Toby Morris, have spent a bunch of time over the past few months making some big steps towards great. We’re not there yet, but it’s a good time to give you a run-down on what’s different from just a few months ago.

Firstly, if you’re not using our apps, you really should be. We’ve just released an update to the iOS app with a better menu bar, easier content sharing, swipe-navigation, richer notifications, and a whole-screen experience that really makes it the best platform to view The Spinoff. With the app installed you’ll get notifications – but only a couple of times a day, and only for big news and great reads.

Animated gif of an app scrolling, with menubars hiding on scroll.
It’s hard to show a vertical app screenshot but hopefully you get the idea

All of these updates will come to our Android app really soon – once we work out how to reset the password on our Play Store account. I wish I was kidding. Install it now and you’ll get the update automatically as soon as it’s available.

Outside of the app, we’ve been doing a spring clean of the site that I reckon you’ll love. The new main menu is more simple and makes navigating our content a bit more logical. You’ll find a brand new author search under the “Read” menu too.

Our index pages for the primary categories (like Business and Politics for example) have been zhuzhed up, and include links to related podcasts and newsletters. We’re tidying up the way podcasts are displayed and Sacha is working on an inline pod-player that will let you listen to pods while you browse.

If you’re browsing on a mobile device, you’ll notice fewer issues with oversized content, and the menu and share buttons get out of the way as you scroll. It’s even better on the app, where you get the entire screen to just read. It’s even better still if you’re a member – there are no inline ads at all. Seriously, check it out: just your battery icon and glorious Spinoff content. Very Zen.

We’ve added infinite scroll on our articles, which means you can just keep on scrolling to read the next story in the same category. We’re planning to tweak that so that our loyal readers don’t see repeated content, but instead get fresh stuff that you might not have read.

We’ve added the ReoAko app to provide translations of reo Māori kupu

in our content, so that you can brush up on your reo and even check pronunciation while reading (click or tap the word kupu to see it in action).

If you’re a member, we’ve made it a bit easier to log in. Rather than having to remember yet another password, you can log in with Google, Facebook, or Apple. We also recently introduced The Firehose, which is a simple chronological view of all our content exclusively for Members.

Getting Greater

What next? MORE.

Animated gif of Kylo Ren from starwars screaming "more"
Live footage of Ben Gracewood writing javascript code

We’ll keep tweaking the rough edges to make things smooth and lovely to use. We want to make videos easier to watch, we want it to be easier to manage all your newsletter subscriptions, and it’d be nice if you didn’t have to login twice when you click through to the Members site. We think it’d be great if anyone could register so that they can mark stories as read and get better recommendations. Search sucks, we know. All the small things.

Do you want to comment on stories? Should we launch Spinoff’s version of Wordle, whatever that might be? What do you wish was better about The Spinoff? Hit me up with your thoughts.

But wait there's more!