Marianna Spring

Yeah, they need BBC verify on that.

Get Marianna Spring on that.

BBC Verify have never got anything wrong you see they're the arbiters of truth oh no wait yeah they do get things wrong all the time yeah they do lie all the time and peddle misinformation actually yeah like quite literally the first thing they ever did on day one of BBC Verify was talk about Kyle Benjamin you know Kyle Benjamin don't you some people know him as Sargon of Akkad yeah they talked about him straight away one of the first things they did and it was wrong it was factually incorrect yeah they lied about him straight away BBC Verify

yeah

I'm wearing, like, a dress.

It's a picture that was taken at Christmas, and it says, "Marianna Spring OnlyFans leaks photos," and it's got, like, a hashtag number, and then it has in yellow with a fire emoji, "Undress AI." And if you click on that, it takes you to another website which you actually have to give ID in the UK and prove that you're of age to use it, e.g., it's treated like a, like a porn site.

But essentially it's a site that people can use to edit your photos so that you look like you're naked.

I, I really cannot think of a reason, a, like, a valid reason anyone would ever need to use that because it is not the same as, like, consensual pornographic content or consensual OnlyFans content or what have you.

[laughs]

So this is a, "devotional triptych for the digital age, which features three luminous photographs of Mariana Spring, the BBC's disinformation correspondent, framed with the reverence usually reserved for saints."

Well, the best thing about the product is that it's got two doors that you can shut so you don't-

[laughs]

... you don't actually have to look at Mariana Spring or see the words BBC Verify.

Yeah.

But she's looking very dark and satanic there, like, don't-

Now, Starship Troopers is a 1997 sci-fi film.

And I asked Marianna Spring why that might be a problem for some people.

The slight issue with it is that the director of Starship Troopers is this guy called Paul Verhoeven.

And he intentionally based the movie's authoritarian military aesthetic on Nazi SS uniforms.