A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Oli London & the Right Wing Grift (with Taylor Lorenz)

00:00:00.000 hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity i'm matt bernstein and i'm so happy that you're here

00:00:12.500 today we are going to be talking about someone and something that i have not been able to look

00:00:19.420 away from in like three years and i feel like if i don't get it out in podcast form then it's just

00:00:27.000 going to keep rotting through the insides of my brain. And we can't have that. To help us explain

00:00:32.000 the phenomenon of Ollie London, we are joined today by the one and only Taylor Lorenz. Taylor

00:00:39.480 is a tech reporter for the Washington Post. She is the host of a new podcast called Power User.

00:00:46.580 She is exceptionally smart. She's a historian of the internet. And I couldn't think of a better

00:00:52.380 person to spend today with. Taylor, welcome to A Bit Fruity. Thanks for having me. Just to kick

00:00:59.060 this off, what is a grift? How would you define a grift, a grifter? Because I feel like this is

00:01:04.800 a word that not everyone is super familiar with. I totally agree. And I actually use it all the 0.99

00:01:09.560 time. I think because there's so much grifting happening on the internet. I would say a grifter

00:01:14.960 is somebody that essentially exploits something, usually the attention economy online, to push

00:01:21.580 a message or to sell something or to make themselves famous. It's sort of like a disingenuous

00:01:27.860 person who they're running an operation, you know, like there's always something at play.

00:01:34.200 They're kind of dubious. You shouldn't trust them.

00:01:36.980 The way that I sometimes explain what a grifter is to people who are unfamiliar with it is like,

00:01:41.940 I think there's this idea that when you have a microphone, you are expressing your opinion to

00:01:46.760 an audience who can then choose to agree or disagree. And you're attracting an audience

00:01:51.340 based on, you know, people who are interested in what you have to say. What I think a grifter does

00:01:56.720 is they take kind of the temperature of the room of what do people want me to say? Or where is the

00:02:04.020 most money in what I can say? And then they say that thing. Exactly. It's actually like going in

00:02:10.640 the other direction where they're following their audience instead of their audience following them.

00:02:14.260 but the audience oftentimes doesn't realize that. Well, that's what I mean about that sort of like

00:02:18.540 disingenuous approach to things, right? It's, as you said, it's, it's, it's kind of shrewd. It's

00:02:24.620 like, this is going to feed a moral panic. This is going to get people incited. This is going to

00:02:30.500 get people outraged, whatever. I can then monetize that. So I'm going to say this stuff. It's leaning

00:02:36.160 into usually pretty bad beliefs. I mean, a key example of a grifter that I've talked about,

00:02:42.780 just just this kind of category of grifter that i've talked about a bunch on this podcast is like

00:02:46.900 there are a lot of lgbt conservatives online blair white ariel scarsella the tiktok twink i don't

00:02:54.380 remember his name there's a bunch and it's not to say that none of these people sincerely hold

00:02:59.240 their beliefs but they i do think are always susceptible to change based on what they think

00:03:04.320 their audience wants to hear yeah i mean fundamentally grifters crave attention and i

00:03:09.020 also crave attention who among us who among us but i won't sell my soul for it we wouldn't

00:03:14.520 sacrifice our morals to get it exactly exactly i'm just craving attention and trying to trying

00:03:21.800 to keep my soul uh throughout the process so ollie london ollie london is okay if you're

00:03:30.040 listening right now and you're like i have never once in my life heard the name of this person i

00:03:34.440 don't know what you're talking about first of all i want what you have second of all strap in because

00:03:40.440 this is kind of a wild one i know you and i are both very terminally online as the kids say i mean

00:03:47.700 your your podcast is called power user and i would say that you very much earned that title over being

00:03:52.880 extremely online which is the title of your book i am also extremely online and so i think if you've

00:03:59.040 been extremely online it's hard to have fully evaded ollie london but then i was telling my

00:04:06.100 not chronically online friend yesterday that i was gonna do this episode and he was like who's

00:04:11.640 ollie london and so i started to explain the story to him for the first time and i was watching like

00:04:16.040 his eyes and his jaw expressed to me like and remind me oh this is actually an insane story

00:04:21.740 do you remember your first time encountering ollie london well the first time i knew who he

00:04:28.480 was is i'm an avid daily mail and tabloid news reader and oh i'm so sorry it's an addiction

00:04:36.020 there's something about tabloid news that will i mean i worked in tabloid news i like there's

00:04:41.460 something about the way that they find and frame stories that is obviously really bad for society

00:04:46.200 in many ways but as a journalist i just keep tabs on all of it his sort of initial viral blow-up

00:04:53.380 was very well covered on the daily mail and so that's where i first heard the name yeah the daily

00:04:58.280 male loves like a, loves a plastic surgery scandal. I think millennials love, I think,

00:05:04.280 I think the world loves a plastic surgery scandal. Do you remember what the story was about and how

00:05:09.760 you reacted? Well, he was claiming that he wanted to be a Korean. Like he was claiming, I mean,

00:05:17.680 he's a white man, but he was claiming that he was sort of identified as Asian. And so he had

00:05:24.460 gotten an extensive amount of plastic surgery to fulfill that belief that you're it's not even a 0.96

00:05:30.820 belief you just got a lot of plastic surgery to look asian basically um and of course they were

00:05:35.620 covering in this way of like is he the first like trans or racial which is by the way not a thing

00:05:40.240 um you know person and i was just like this he looks insane he doesn't even i don't even think 0.88

00:05:47.500 he looks asian he just looks like he's had a shit ton of plastic surgery yeah yeah many many eye 0.51

00:05:53.640 lifts and i don't even think the outcome at its peak was what was what he was hoping for 0.68

00:05:58.660 i remember first coming across ollie london because he he was also like amidst the many

00:06:06.100 surgeries he posted some selfie on twitter where if you're watching the video version of this

00:06:10.480 episode i'll throw it up on the screen but he was like clearly like fresh out of a surgery like

00:06:16.000 very puffy very swollen and he was like i'm trans korean i'm korean now again if you are 0.75

00:06:22.580 not familiar with this person's story and you're like what the fuck is going on let's back up a bit 0.59

00:06:28.680 so ollie london oliver london was born in england in 1990 to a housewife mother and an interior 0.58

00:06:38.260 designer father he's white i do feel like that's an important part of the story he's very white

00:06:44.180 he in interviews has said that his dad growing up was like very aggressively masculine and dominant

00:06:50.820 and would project that onto Ollie in ways that could sometimes veer into abuse territory.

00:06:57.360 He put a lot of pressure on Ollie to be, you know, very masculine and, you know, heterosexual

00:07:02.200 presenting. Ollie London has described being bullied growing up in school for having gynecomastia

00:07:08.580 and bad acne. Gynecomastia is a condition where you, it's pretty common, like 30% of young boys

00:07:17.360 and men deal with it at some point. It's where you grow excess breast tissue, and it can make

00:07:22.800 it appear like you have breasts. And so that made him dysphoric, and he would end up getting

00:07:29.260 corrective surgery, which again, a lot of people do, but it's just ironically very much a gender

00:07:35.080 affirming procedure, whether you're, you know, cis or trans. In 2013, Ollie London goes to South

00:07:43.220 Korea for a year for a teaching job that he had. And he became very interested in South Korean

00:07:50.260 culture, which is kind of where the story goes south. Ollie London becomes really obsessed with

00:07:57.460 K-pop and specifically the group BTS, which I'm not a huge K-pop person, but you know, I know that

00:08:05.660 that is a world that sucks people in within a year of going to South Korea he starts to get these 0.90

00:08:14.460 cosmetic surgeries to resemble the BTS member Jimin by 2022 so less than a decade later he had

00:08:23.780 had 32 surgeries including let me check my notes six nose jobs an eye surgery a facelift a brow

00:08:32.020 lift, a temple lift and veneers totaling more than $200,000. A lot of this is like according

00:08:39.320 to the Daily Mail. So who knows how accurate that number is? You know, because a lot of people get

00:08:43.760 plastic surgery. And a lot of people get a lot of plastic surgery. And the thing that really got

00:08:49.240 the internet going was he began to pull this what I would call a stunt online where he was

00:08:57.400 identifying as trans korean that really drew the ire of the internet very quickly he angered

00:09:05.520 immediately both the online trans community and the online k-pop community there were you know

00:09:11.580 endless small media documentaries around like this white guy got 32 surgeries and identifies

00:09:18.300 as trans korean is there any meaningful difference between trans korean and transgender like you know

00:09:23.740 you had ben shapiro on twitter being like well if you don't think he's trans korean then you're a

00:09:28.420 bigot amongst the other people who like came to this person's defense there's one person in

00:09:34.040 particular who was like basically like leave ollie london alone can you guess who it was was it

00:09:39.800 higher right check oh my god no oh god did you imagine it was rachel dolezal oh my god yes i do

00:09:46.940 remember that and it was like yes the one other transracial person like i guess transracial

00:09:53.020 solidarity. I mean, the thing is, is if Rachel Dolezal had actually leaned in and started calling

00:09:59.600 herself transracial and done it just a few years after, I think she could have had the

00:10:05.140 Ali London trajectory. She could have totally been like a right wing grifter. Yeah. She was 1.00

00:10:10.480 just a little too early and she didn't, yeah, she didn't, she didn't take the bait. I also think

00:10:15.180 she was too earnest. Yes. I think Ali is like a deeply, I mean, we can get into this later,

00:10:19.660 confused man i think rachel like genuinely wanted to identify as a different race

00:10:25.040 i yeah i mean yeah we will get into this but i think ollie london is someone who

00:10:31.960 was very interested in shock value and at like any expense and i think rachel dolezal did not

00:10:39.100 want any shock value i think she wanted to fly under the radar as a as a black woman she just 0.96

00:10:44.600 wanted to live a quiet life as a black woman in america she wanted to live a quiet life in black

00:10:51.080 face in 2021 ollie london starts to identify as non-binary and uses they them pronouns and so if

00:10:58.260 you look at like there's like the vice articles and all the different things and so any of the

00:11:02.540 ones that come out during this time they start using they them pronouns for ollie london at this

00:11:07.620 point the key problem with ollie london is really just that it's like very racist to do this

00:11:11.880 obviously i i think that like goes without saying i don't need to explain it you're taking a

00:11:15.920 caricature of what you think a south korean person looks and acts like and getting a bunch of surgery

00:11:20.420 to look like that like you shouldn't do that but i do think a lot of the fixation at this point was

00:11:25.300 on just like the amount of plastic surgery because like there's a there's a long history of us like

00:11:30.460 loving to hate people who get a lot of plastic surgery it's like we do this to like i don't

00:11:35.540 like donatella versace i mean i think like most of this is against women usually but anytime

00:11:41.680 somebody looks kind of starts to look I mean when you get too much plastic surgery you start to look

00:11:45.880 kind of like unnatural and sometimes a little disturbing and I think that that ends up being

00:11:51.060 kind of a I mean I think people are just fixated it because people love to be like look at how

00:11:54.760 vain you are you know you try to you try to get surgery and make yourself look better and now you 0.71

00:11:59.280 look like shit you know there's something like kind of appealing like on a like visceral level 0.99

00:12:04.400 I think to like a lot of the average internet commenter about someone that looks strange because 1.00

00:12:09.320 of plastic surgery there's like a schadenfreude aspect you know look at this privileged person

00:12:14.260 with all this money because to get that much plastic surgery you have to have a lot of money 0.93

00:12:18.240 and i think it's like we're looking at the rich do what we think is like stupid yeah and that feels 0.84

00:12:23.460 good because like we'd like to think that if we were rich we would do something better with the 0.55

00:12:27.180 money which like i don't know for a lot of people that could be true yeah and so i mean it's again

00:12:31.000 it's just really racist i mean like shockingly racist in early 2022 he announced which i just

00:12:37.260 love that like ollie london is making announcements but he announces to the tabloids that he has 0.99

00:12:42.540 plans to get a penis reduction surgery because he wants to have a smaller penis because in his words 0.99

00:12:49.880 he wanted to be a hundred percent korean and then it takes a turn in i mean it continues to take 0.96

00:12:55.440 turns in mid 2022 ollie london begins identifying as gender fluid as a gender fluid trans korean

00:13:02.400 woman now he says that he's planning on undergoing more surgeries to look like rosé from blackpink

00:13:08.220 i think that's how you say it rosé i don't know we think and then in late 2022 so okay 2021 he's

00:13:16.740 non-binary 2022 he is a trans woman which if he wasn't identifying as korean throughout i support

00:13:22.560 that journey but uh by late 2022 he announces to e-news that he is detransitioning by august of

00:13:30.420 2023 less than a year later he not announces but publishes a book called gender madness

00:13:38.760 one man's devastating struggle with woke ideology and his battle to protect children

00:13:44.320 taylor you wrote a book how long does it take to put a book together well it took me two and a

00:13:48.500 half years but i actually wrote my own book and i think i i'm 100 sure based off nothing but my

00:13:56.300 own belief that he had a ghostwriter. His book, by the way, which I got a copy of because I don't

00:14:02.140 know why, but somebody sent it to me and I don't want to plague the local library by donating it.

00:14:08.380 But I just don't believe, I think he probably got a ghostwriter and turned it around so fast

00:14:12.460 because it's incoherent. Not only did he have a book deal, but it was like on the shelves less

00:14:17.260 than a year after he decided to detransition. Yeah. It's fascinating and we'll get into this,

00:14:22.840 but he would end up being taken seriously by the right

00:14:26.700 as the face of the detransitioner movement.

00:14:30.340 And that's what we're getting to.

00:14:31.920 But it's just like the most remarkable thing to me

00:14:34.000 is the lack of any due diligence

00:14:36.720 on the part of anyone in the right-wing establishment.

00:14:39.720 They don't want the due diligence.

00:14:41.200 This entire right-wing establishment

00:14:42.920 is set up to turn around these books super quick, right?

00:14:46.580 And capitalize on virality.

00:14:47.920 Like there's like an entire infrastructure

00:14:49.460 to feed this grift.

00:14:51.020 you know they're not like um not sure if he's an earnest detransitioner like they don't give a 0.96

00:14:56.060 shit it's just about is this a good person to push the narrative that i want to promote i was also

00:15:01.420 wondering like who the hell gave this man a book deal and so i looked into it it's it's a company 0.86

00:15:09.400 called sky horse publishing and i was like all right well what's sky horse publishing have you

00:15:14.640 heard of sky horse publishing yeah they published a bunch of other stuff isn't that one of those

00:15:19.220 right-wing yeah it is yeah they publish they publish such classics as un-woke how to defeat

00:15:26.280 cultural marxism in america by notable author ted cruz they actually have some high-profile people

00:15:34.500 um well ted cruz obviously but um they did the rfk book they published a lot of rfk books

00:15:41.640 their entire business model is just turning around books to feed right-wing outrage that is

00:15:47.860 quite literally what this publishing company is built on. Oh, they did Woody Allen's memoir.

00:15:52.920 I was just going to say they published Woody Allen's latest book, which it's like,

00:15:56.740 where do pedophiles go to die? The right-wing grift machine.

00:16:01.140 Actually, where do pedophiles go to thrive, really?

00:16:04.120 Yeah. The publishing world used to be this gate-kept world, and it was hard to get a book

00:16:08.820 deal. And that was a big accomplishment if you got a book deal from a major publishing house.

00:16:13.240 And now there's just so many of these kind of like smaller independent publishers built to support specific really right wing agendas.

00:16:23.280 And they turn around these books or they, you know, help people's right wingers self publish a lot of books to or like ebook type courses and things.

00:16:32.000 And, you know, I just I consider Skyhorse as part of that universe.

00:16:35.800 So upon publishing this book and detransitioning, which I'm going to say that with a huge asterisk, because I'm not in the business of saying who is queer and who's not and who's trans and who's not. 0.97

00:16:48.100 But I don't think this person ever transitioned in the first place. 0.75

00:16:51.920 I just think he got a lot of plastic surgery and tried to like shock the Internet and was trying to do that in multiple ways.

00:16:57.340 And quote unquote detransition was his latest effort.

00:17:01.400 But upon doing this, he immediately becomes like a conservative media circuit spokesperson for the anti-trans cause.

00:17:09.800 He has made, according to him, over 120 news media appearances, many of which I've watched, unfortunately, on Fox News.

00:17:19.280 He was a recurring contributor on Newsmax, OAN, Talk TV, GB News, Tucker Carlson Tonight, Piers Morgan Uncensored, Megyn Kelly.

00:17:29.180 and he's always framed by these journalists these like some of them i mean unfortunately like

00:17:35.640 legendary you know tucker carlson pierce morgan megan kelly these like iconic conservative

00:17:41.060 talk show hosts as like he's introduced by them uncritically as like the face of detransition

00:17:47.340 and like trans issues and that kind of brings us to where he is now he has successfully 0.77

00:17:55.380 transitioned no pun intended into like a moderately successful online right-wing influencer

00:18:04.060 he has over 400 000 twitter followers he tweets like 100 times a day relatable yeah you know what

00:18:12.780 maybe i was like that i put that in my outline but then i'm like hey some of us also tweet 100

00:18:16.780 times a day but he just tweets like right-wing outrage 100 times a day yeah his tweet his his

00:18:22.380 Twitter is so unhinged. It's bizarre. I would like to take a quick moment to thank our forever

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00:20:09.640 fruity now back to the show sorry i don't know why he did that back to the show

00:20:16.840 he was kind of starting to fade into history for me as a figure i was like wow that guy who like

00:20:26.420 got all those surgeries and then became an anti-trans grifter but i haven't been hearing

00:20:30.200 from him lately his latest pivot however is the pro-israel cause the zionist cause which if you

00:20:37.580 go on his twitter is basically what the entirety of it is now just as he was slipping my mind

00:20:43.440 finally finally as i was getting my brain cells to re to regenerate two things happened two things

00:20:48.920 happened one was that i was on facebook i know i know i know i know taylor don't give me that look

00:20:54.540 i was on facebook i was scrolling through like the facebook stories of people that i grew up with

00:20:59.860 because sometimes i do that sometimes i'm like hey what's that person from high school up to

00:21:03.040 And someone who I knew when I was younger, who has been railing pretty hard, you know, against the Palestinian protesters and stuff, and this is like a total normie, a total local who's like not terminally online in the way that we are, shared a tweet, a pro-Israel tweet from Ali London.

00:21:22.220 and i was like whoa ollie london is like reaching the normals back at home like this is how

00:21:29.080 successful his reinvention as a right-wing influencer has become that like these people 0.99

00:21:34.140 don't even know about the trans korean bullshit these people don't know about the k-pop shit 0.98

00:21:38.260 these people like think that he's just a source for media and these are people who identify by 0.99

00:21:43.380 the way as like liberals yeah oh i've seen liberals share his stuff before especially

00:21:48.660 since the pro-Israel i mean the unfortunate thing about the internet is that nobody most people

00:21:54.580 don't know the lore of many of the people that they're sharing or following and so you'll see

00:21:59.500 especially people like ali hop on you know whatever is the trending issue of the time

00:22:04.480 go really hard on it speak to usually a very you know extreme minority i mean ultimately most of

00:22:11.280 the public does not support what israel is doing right now but he knows that there's money to be

00:22:15.880 made in coming out and so you know these people these liberals they see someone posting you know

00:22:22.380 the ideology that they agree with on israel so then they follow him and then they're slowly fed

00:22:26.420 a diet of like more and more extreme content it's so interesting how he he jumps from thing to thing

00:22:33.740 from outrage concept to outrage concept but he like really he really goes full throttle for each

00:22:41.220 thing in a way that I think aids his reinvention, but is sometimes so pronounced that people who

00:22:46.700 have known about him for a while can't help but notice and he'll have a viral moment. And so

00:22:51.300 amidst his kind of like pivoting to Zionist activist, he changed his profile picture and

00:22:57.500 I want to send it to you and have you describe what you see. Oh, yeah. The IDF. Yeah. Describe

00:23:03.060 what you're looking at. It's Ollie London with his hair, you know, shaved very short,

00:23:08.320 wearing a black sweater and a big military looking vest with a giant patch on the front that says

00:23:15.140 Ministry of Foreign Affairs Israel and it looks to be like a bulletproof vest he's standing in 0.71

00:23:20.740 front of like a giant fence probably where they fence in the innocent Palestinians yeah yeah he's

00:23:26.700 just standing there basically in his little propaganda vest he must have been on some sort

00:23:32.440 of trip like a press trip yeah he's wearing yeah this is like I don't know I feel like similar

00:23:37.620 pictures have been taken of like deborah messing and like jerry seinfeld and these yeah well israel 0.51

00:23:42.800 has this whole massive pr industrial complex and they love to have people over especially 0.72

00:23:48.720 influencers um and dress them all up and i guarantee you he is in absolutely zero danger

00:23:54.480 in this picture and yet he's got the bulletproof vest because the whole thing that they do on these

00:23:58.420 trips is is sort of try to radicalize people and say you know like oh look at how dangerous it is

00:24:03.500 you know i'm over in israel and i've got to wear the vest because you know i could get

00:24:08.280 murdered at any minute meanwhile you know they're the ones doing the murdering the other thing that

00:24:13.440 i want to send you is ollie london's current twitter header like banner image and i want

00:24:19.880 to get your read on that too it is a red white and blue um banner that is it looks like it was

00:24:27.340 not made quite in the right specifications it looks like it was a screenshot that's been

00:24:32.420 uploaded which is hilarious um it says ollie london tv news politics analysis news politics

00:24:40.600 analysis and i just think it's like i don't know watching him consciously rebrand himself over and

00:24:46.160 over i think is really interesting i totally agree it's also just like it's interesting as

00:24:51.040 well his new profile picture which is a he's in a suit he's got a dog tag with the star of david

00:24:57.960 on it he's got the yellow you know remember the hot is hostages israel stuff like pin he looks

00:25:05.300 he's trying to basically look like a political influencer and i think that's what his that's

00:25:10.480 what this latest rebrand is all about is sort of like cementing him as an authoritative purse

00:25:15.800 person to go to about political issues meanwhile this man has absolutely zero political knowledge

00:25:20.820 of anything it's shocking to me how much it's working and it's again it's such an indictment

00:25:28.640 not only of what we would think of as the right but like ollie london once again came into view

00:25:34.020 for me a couple weeks ago so so ollie london tweeted about this kind of like misleading story

00:25:40.100 about a jewish professor at columbia not being led in on campus and who retweeted it andy cohen

00:25:47.080 oh andy andy come on what are you doing how are we letting this happen i mean unfortunately

00:25:56.440 i think celebrities and i consider andy a celebrity at this point they amplify these

00:26:02.140 people constantly like people like ollie and other right-wing grifters like they play very well

00:26:08.280 weirdly in i think hollywood where i think a lot of people don't have the media literacy i would

00:26:13.620 expect Andy to have a little bit more media literacy, although it sounds like he just

00:26:16.520 ideologically agrees with him. And that's enough to platform a grifter. And it's a shame.

00:26:22.680 I mean, again, I've been like watching Ollie London's interviews and stuff, which are always

00:26:26.540 very interesting. And we'll get to that in a second. But he this is where he levels out now.

00:26:30.980 And he's also said that he wants to be a policy advisor to Trump. And frankly, I would not put it

00:26:37.120 past anyone involved in picking who gets to be Trump's policy advisors to make Ollie London a

00:26:41.440 policy advisor to me he is doing everything right he's very milo yiannopoulos but you know the sad

00:26:48.760 fact is that even milo had more political experience than this man do you want to quickly

00:26:53.100 explain who milo yiannopoulos is or was because who hears from him anymore no one yeah he was

00:26:59.220 recently i think resigned from uzi he he was kind of one of the original like um effeminate

00:27:06.320 gay, conservative men to come up. He started as a blogger, a tech blogger, actually, and then

00:27:12.600 became radicalized and was like, I'm a flamboyant gay man, but I'm right wing. And I actually don't

00:27:19.220 know if gay people even deserve rights. And he was very pro-Trump very early and rode that Trump 1.00

00:27:25.580 train. He ultimately, I think, flew a little too close to the sun. And it turned out, I think he

00:27:35.260 was sort of canceled by the right ultimately, which is really the only way that these people

00:27:38.760 can be eradicated is like when the right itself deplatforms people. He had made a bunch of

00:27:43.880 comments about like young boys and it was sort of basically it was canceled for like being a

00:27:48.260 pedophile, but not, you know, who knows what that's a criminal allegation, but like, you know,

00:27:52.280 he, he had made comments that, that were enough to make the right wing media angry. Of course,

00:27:56.820 at that point he did therapy to, he basically went through a conversion therapy program,

00:28:02.880 came out as straight and catholic got a job as matt gates's press secretary or something at one

00:28:09.680 point he was working for matt gates and then was working as kanye west's chief of staff oh and

00:28:15.880 apparently was living with dove charney kanye west dove charney and milo yiannopoulos were all

00:28:21.180 living together at one point in this big house in la we have like every possible terrible cameo

00:28:26.540 in this one little story i remember milo yiannopoulos he was also like doing a lot of outrage

00:28:32.900 bait type of things like 10 years ago and i remember like and he would say these things

00:28:37.640 that i was just like oh my god like you i hate this idea that like gay people can set the gay

00:28:42.460 community back but i do reserve that for someone like milo yiannopoulos because he would say things 0.99

00:28:47.300 like how can i be racist when i suck black dick exactly that it was all stuff like that oh my god 1.00

00:28:52.940 he loved talking about sucking black dick like he and also it's like you know there's that other 1.00

00:28:58.840 guy um daniel ryan spaulding the pro-israel influencer where you know there's this specific 1.00

00:29:05.620 type of conservative gay male influencer that's also deeply misogynistic and um obviously anybody 0.54

00:29:14.040 can be misogynistic on any part of the political spectrum but i think that these very flamboyant 0.73

00:29:19.280 effeminate gay influencers like milo and daniel and i mean i even ollie like they lean into 0.64

00:29:27.120 misogyny and it's all about like the blue-haired feminists you know and and that kind of plays 0.98

00:29:32.580 really well on the right because they you know hate women because they hate women so a few days

00:29:37.960 ago i texted you and i was like could you do this episode with me because i was like scrambling and

00:29:41.400 i was like i need someone to talk about ollie london with me i can't talk about this alone

00:29:45.260 in a room i've spent too much time talking to myself about this i need to talk to someone else

00:29:49.000 about this and you were like yes and the first thing that you told me was that you had met ollie

00:29:55.100 london yes i spent an evening with him oh my god my evening with ollie london that sounds like a

00:30:00.720 short film that would like debut in can i it was in can we met at the can it was during the can

00:30:07.000 film festival last year uh what is ollie london doing at the can festival so we were at it was

00:30:14.180 there was the world influencers awards which is this big awards show in europe by the world

00:30:20.420 influencers and bloggers association it's very like international they had this rented out this

00:30:25.620 you know gorgeous ballroom um at the can film festival with all of these you know influencers

00:30:33.160 from around the world elon musk's mother may musk was there as well it was a wild cast of

00:30:38.440 characters i was awarded not to toot my own horn but i was there because i won tech and media 0.93

00:30:44.740 influencer of the year and also it was so funny because no one knew who the fuck i was there 0.67

00:30:48.160 i would have been there giving you a standing ovation people are like uh congrats like who 0.70

00:30:53.900 are you no followers um but you know whatever i was the token media influencer but ollie won he

00:31:01.560 won some sort of award um some sort of influencer award and they they put his book up on screen

00:31:07.840 so we're at shut up oh you're right yeah they put gender madness on the screen at the can film

00:31:13.260 festival no no not at the don't slander the camp film festival we're talking about the world

00:31:17.320 influencers awards wait so this was not part of the film no no no no no just taking place at the

00:31:23.420 same like hotel and whatever they just do it like in conjunction i guess because all the celebrities

00:31:27.480 are there no so um whatever it's this big lavish event ali is brought up on stage he's given his

00:31:33.440 award. They put his book up on screen. It's like a party. We're all in black tie. I of course am in

00:31:40.640 my N95 3M aura mask as I always am because COVID is not over and I'm extremely high risk. So I have

00:31:48.440 my like N95 mask on, but you know, if I go to like a party, I think you saw this at my book party.

00:31:53.900 Like I put this like little sparkly like cover over it. Yeah. You make it, you dress it up.

00:31:58.560 yeah i'm like at the party and ollie comes over and he just starts saying praising me

00:32:06.140 and saying you know i look beautiful uh oh my mask looks great or you know he made a comment 0.95

00:32:13.360 like i love your you know outfit and what you did i'm like this man has no fucking clue who i am 0.79

00:32:18.340 absolutely no idea like he clearly didn't put two and two together he knows who i am online he's 0.90

00:32:23.740 talked shit about me did you know who he was at that point obviously i know who okay i couldn't

00:32:28.260 believe he was there. I was like, I mean, I'm just looking around the room at all the influencers 0.99

00:32:31.840 and many of these people I've talked to for work or whatever. And I don't always agree with every

00:32:35.280 influencer I cover, but him specifically, I was like, how the hell did he find his way into this

00:32:38.980 room? So we're like waiting. We're actually waiting. There was like Getty Images was like

00:32:43.240 taking pictures and he was like waiting in line for the picture. That's when I got introduced to

00:32:46.460 him. So he's like so effusively nice to me. And by the way, he said nothing but nice things about

00:32:51.520 my mask. Like, you know, he's out there on fucking Twitter, like shit talking, like, 1.00

00:32:56.880 ah you know coveted it on it's like you don't have the fucking balls to say it to my face like 1.00

00:33:02.260 you won't none of these people will none of these people will when they're confronted with a mass 1.00

00:33:05.980 person irl they just cave well because then he went right back around and started talking shit 1.00

00:33:10.660 about you on twitter of course he i have the tweet i have the tweet he wrote he's such a dick 0.98

00:33:18.160 he wrote it's a picture of you and dylan mulvaney where you were having a dinner and he wrote why 0.83

00:33:23.920 isn't taylor lorenz the washington post journalist who pushes for permanent mask mandates and double

00:33:27.920 masking not wearing a mask and uh and you clapped back and you were like you complimented my mask a

00:33:33.360 couple months ago yeah i feel like part of why he posted that also is just because it included in

00:33:39.340 the photo was dylan mulvaney exactly that will get people angry anyway and by the way ollie and

00:33:44.360 i are pictured together on stage in can really when i'm wearing a mask yes and i cropped him

00:33:50.740 out of the Instagram photo when I posted it but does that photo exist somewhere it does it does

00:33:55.520 and Mae Musk is in it with us I'm gonna have to find it after I know I know they they like took

00:34:01.960 picture of all the award winners and we're up there and I I remember I remember in that photo

00:34:07.380 I think I'm crouching down in front because I was put almost right standing right next to him and I

00:34:12.640 didn't want to stand next to him so I was like let me just crouch down here in front because I was

00:34:16.360 Like, I don't want to be, I can't be too close to this man.

00:34:20.160 Yeah, you don't want to be, like, arm in arm with Ollie London.

00:34:23.280 But I think, I mean, I think that the fact that he was at something like that also just shows how normalized he's becoming and kind of how mainstream he's seen in certain circles.

00:34:34.340 And how, like, easy the grift is.

00:34:37.320 Yeah.

00:34:37.760 I mean, you know, I won't say getting 32 plastic surgeries is an effortless thing to do, but, you know, that wasn't the grift. The grift is the pivot. The grift is the I'm trans Korean for shock value. No, I'm not. I'm actually a woman. No, I'm detransitioning. No, actually, I'm against all this gender madness. What happened to me could happen to you.

00:34:57.840 all within the period of like 18 months exactly and like that's the thing that i'm saying is so

00:35:02.320 easy like again i know from like my history of like spending so much time and and kind of like

00:35:08.220 digging around lgbt conservative circles and really just like minority identity communities

00:35:13.460 in general like all you have to do is be like i'm gonna be the twink conservative on tiktok now 0.84

00:35:20.240 i'm gonna be the the anti-black black person i'm gonna it's like you can tokenize yourself

00:35:26.580 so quickly and that's just you know as it pertains to like minority group conservatives but then you 0.94

00:35:32.020 can like also do this thing where you're like i got a bunch of plastic surgeries i don't think i

00:35:37.860 ever earnestly identified as trans but i know that if i just start calling myself detrans then

00:35:42.620 they'll take me seriously for that cause and i'll get invited to everything and i'll get a book deal

00:35:45.940 from the conservative book and it's like it's an indictment of the whole system i'm afraid it's an

00:35:50.900 indictment of those who uncritically consume the media too? Well, that's most people uncritically

00:35:57.200 consume the media. I mean, most people just see this guy who has a semi-professional looking

00:36:03.500 Twitter account, 400 something thousand followers, calls himself a political analyst,

00:36:09.820 tweeting about Israel. They agree with his, you know, genocidal takes. And so they start boosting 0.97

00:36:16.500 him and that's all it takes and that's how these people do audience capture is sort of by riding

00:36:24.000 whatever the current outrage cycle is you know and feeding into that i was reading his uh book

00:36:32.680 reviews on amazon oh gosh and they're like all positive aha um so i'm gonna read one powerful

00:36:42.440 and brave story this is a review from maddie five stars august 2023 i don't know what i was

00:36:48.360 expecting but i bought this book after listening to ollie's interview with megan kelly he is

00:36:53.260 fascinating and has a profound message i found him to be so brave to tell this story and stand

00:36:58.520 up to those who want to silence alternative viewpoints you know interlude you know that

00:37:04.820 clip that's like conservative voices are being silenced i said it on tucker carlson yeah i said

00:37:10.000 it on tucker carlson's podcast i said it in my new best-selling book i said it on this show and

00:37:15.080 that show conservative voices are being silenced this reminds me of that i have been blown away

00:37:19.480 by ollie's transparency and insightfulness in telling his truth very well written book that

00:37:25.660 takes a deep dive into the research some people don't want to acknowledge from someone who has

00:37:30.780 walked in the shoes and has been brave enough to say what others don't want to hear thank you for

00:37:35.960 sharing yourself in such an open and significant way 32 people found this helpful oh they all get

00:37:43.200 help i mean he's just not a voice for trans people i'm sorry he's just not like he shouldn't be

00:37:48.380 his experience of you know identity and gender is not the norm among trans people and to take it

00:37:56.160 and then represent not not only sort of represent it as the norm among trans people but then you

00:38:01.520 use that sort of politically to legislate around trans issues as if he is the norm is so dangerous

00:38:08.780 yeah and that's i mean that's the underbelly here that's like the thing that carries the entire 0.67

00:38:14.740 story and that makes it terrible ultimately is like yes there's this like kooky crazy guy and

00:38:19.040 he's like clearly unhinged and clearly willing to do anything for fame and like by the way those

00:38:24.660 are things that i don't really have an issue with like i think those are accusations that are often

00:38:29.360 levied against like women who do really extreme things for fame but like you can get a ton of 0.77

00:38:34.880 plastic surgery you can be like you know sophie anderson or amanda lapore or any of these people 0.99

00:38:39.400 without being offensive and without without doing it in a way that like ultimately is in service of

00:38:44.700 a movement that's trying to like hurt an already extremely suffering minority of people absolutely

00:38:50.680 and not making it part of some political agenda right the problem isn't that he's had all these

00:38:56.760 surgeries and, you know, whatever he wants to do to his own body. The problem is that he's trying to

00:39:01.800 make his experience representative of this larger oppressed group and then tying it to this really

00:39:09.900 regressive political movement. I read that book review and I was like, well, now I have to see

00:39:14.140 Ollie London on Megyn Kelly. And so I did. And there are two short clips from it that I want us

00:39:22.140 to talk about, I do think they're revealing of exactly how he maneuvers his grift. So here is

00:39:30.660 the first one. And right before they were about to do these dramatic, irreversible procedures on

00:39:38.340 you, surgeries on you to make you, quote, appear more female, you stopped. I mean, you did the

00:39:45.040 thing nobody does. You stopped. You went into a church and everything changed. So that's just

00:39:50.860 broad brush overview of what brought you here today. Thank you for being so honest about all

00:39:57.340 this because that's got to be very traumatic just to hear me listing it all like that.

00:40:01.440 It is, but you know, I think it's important to speak about it because, you know, I have been

00:40:05.300 for a crazy time and I recognize that and, you know, I acknowledge what I've been through. But

00:40:10.180 no, I think it's more of a microcosm to what's going on in the world right now with so many

00:40:15.060 people questioning their identity and struggling and never feeling good enough. And I always had

00:40:19.180 that feeling of never feeling good enough, never feeling that I looked good. Tell me, tell me your

00:40:24.280 thoughts. The truth is, is that he just didn't want that surgery. It sounds like he just didn't

00:40:28.400 want surgery, you know, and he just decided to stop getting a specific type of surgery.

00:40:33.040 He'd already had so many surgeries that doesn't necessarily have any broader meaning. But the way

00:40:39.160 that Megan is trying to tie it to, oh, you know, you did something that nobody else does as if,

00:40:43.980 all these trans people are going through this experience. It's just so disingenuous. It's

00:40:49.640 false. The thing that is really interesting to me from that clip is how, and as you watch more

00:40:56.240 of his interviews, they all start to sound the same, which is that he'll be like, yeah, isn't

00:41:02.000 it crazy that I went through this? And also this is happening to everyone in the country. And

00:41:06.140 what Mike, he says explicitly, he's like, my experience is the experience of so many right

00:41:11.480 now it's like the universalizing of every single thing that he says because it's just it's clear

00:41:17.480 that his explicit goal in all this is to like frame himself as a martyr and frame himself as

00:41:23.740 a symbol of the movement because like that's how you become more famous okay wait and then there's

00:41:28.420 one other clip that i want to play for you they just were fast tracking you into it and what

00:41:33.060 happened with the church and the robert frost poem well so i've been going through all this

00:41:39.360 surgery I had facial feminization surgery last year which involved 11 procedures in one day so

00:41:44.800 that was an eye surgery jaw neck literally every single part of my face even had my forehead bones

00:41:50.500 shaved down to make it look more feminine so that had happened and then about six months down the

00:41:55.420 line after all that surgery I was considering more surgery Megan so I was actually considering

00:41:59.720 going to Thailand I consulted with doctors about having a breast augmentation so that would be 0.98

00:42:04.780 putting silicone implants. I wasn't quite ready for the vaginoplasty, but I was ready for the

00:42:10.400 breast surgery. And thankfully, I got to a point where I was like, this is a really big step. Do I

00:42:16.120 want to do this? And I started to question it. And that's when the Robert Frost poem, which I

00:42:20.920 remember reading at university when I studied English. And I remember you have two roads in

00:42:26.140 the wood and you can choose different parts. You can choose the path that you're already going on

00:42:30.620 it's easy you know what's at the end of the path or you can take a risk go down a different path

00:42:35.760 and you know i was at that point where i was so unhappy with myself and i thought you know it's

00:42:39.800 now or never either change now or it's never gonna happen so you know i took the path and

00:42:44.540 the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference i took the road less traveled

00:42:49.580 and that made all the difference just absurd it's absurd he's an adult that got a lot of plastic

00:42:57.400 surgery. I mean, I think if anything, he struggles with probably some like body dysmorphia and deep

00:43:04.240 psychological issues. And, you know, clearly he's unhappy with himself. And, you know, he's,

00:43:11.060 it sounds like chased, you know, and received dozens of surgeries to kind of

00:43:14.920 fill something in himself. None of that has anything to do with the broader LGBTQ political

00:43:20.220 movement, which he's sort of blaming it on. I mean, I live in LA. Like if you, anybody could go

00:43:26.380 and get 40 plastic surgeries you'll probably be able to find some dubious doctor that will do that 1.00

00:43:31.580 for you but that's not because some gender industrial complex is pushing it on you

00:43:37.560 they're just these are the people that he's seeing are just doctors trying to make a buck you know

00:43:42.500 especially when he's talking about going abroad i mean to me it was just like the the like i read

00:43:47.420 this jack frost poem like that killed me because it's obvious that he wants to like create this

00:43:52.900 like folklore around himself yes like he wants his wikipedia page to read london later went and

00:43:58.580 read the jack frost poem the road not take it you know and it's like he probably ran out of money

00:44:03.860 yeah yeah are you aware of every subscription service you're paying for every month

00:44:11.120 are you sure have you checked i thought i was and i was not you know that one tv show you signed up

00:44:18.380 for a streaming service to watch did you cancel it when you finished watching that show

00:44:22.360 have you checked i hadn't and i was still subscribed that was until i'm so annoying

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00:45:21.880 fruity that's rocketmoney.com slash fruity huge thanks to rocket money for sponsoring the show

00:45:28.160 today and now let's get back to it you mentioned that you think a lot of this is a result of

00:45:36.380 ollie london just like regretting a bunch of surgeries that he had and i think that that

00:45:40.500 and obviously that's an oversimplification but like i think that's true on some level

00:45:44.540 I also think that he has been a grifter the entire time.

00:45:51.140 And my personal belief is that if he had found a way to better monetize the outrage from 0.99

00:45:56.400 all of his surgeries without doing the detransition grift, like I think he would have done that.

00:46:00.720 I totally agree.

00:46:01.780 I feel like you can kind of see him trying multiple things.

00:46:05.980 And I feel like you see this a lot with these types of influencers where they sort of evolve

00:46:11.280 themselves to fit the whims of the audience and just kind of like you know you can see him kind

00:46:17.040 of like moving through these different types trying to glom on to different communities right

00:46:21.920 first it's the k-pop community he's trying to integrate himself into that and then it becomes

00:46:26.780 you know the the trans lgbtq you know community more so and then it's like now it's anti-trans

00:46:33.460 conservatives now it's the pro-israel community it's just kind of like where can he capture

00:46:39.240 audience's best. Yeah, I don't really think he's playing like 40 chess. I think he's just playing

00:46:45.200 it by year. I don't think any of it is coherent at all. I think it's just desperation. It's like,

00:46:51.600 I mean, fundamentally, I think he's somebody that doesn't fit in and is clearly struggling

00:46:57.600 with his own identity, right? And it's sad. I mean, from the little that we know about his

00:47:04.220 sort of childhood, it sounds traumatic and not to excuse his behavior, but I think that there's

00:47:09.460 people that are broken and sort of trying to find themselves and they end up just getting

00:47:13.880 sucked into this conservative outrage machine because it ultimately provides a lot of validation.

00:47:20.660 And a lot of these people, when you look at the conservative influencer landscape, so many of

00:47:25.180 them, like they tried to make it in traditional industries or they tried to make it in different

00:47:29.140 worlds and they kind of flamed out or failed. And then they're ushered into the conservative

00:47:34.020 pipeline where they're praised and told they're amazing and brilliant. And, you know, they get

00:47:40.340 all this affirmation and community and money. And so it just, it's very easy to be captivated by

00:47:47.360 that. Yeah. I think opportunism, you know, because that's what grifting is. It's a specific

00:47:53.400 type of opportunism. I think it can and does exist across the political spectrum.

00:47:59.520 Sure, sure. But there's not the infrastructure on the liberal side as much. Maybe on the centrist

00:48:08.400 liberal side slightly, but they don't have their own media. At that point, that's just the

00:48:13.340 mainstream media. The conservative media really has an entire media ecosystem built to elevate

00:48:20.420 these people and enrich them. What do you think about right wing politics that makes it so

00:48:25.520 susceptible to this kind of grift that makes it so seamless for someone like Ali London to ascend

00:48:32.280 or I mean, other people like, I don't know, I think George Santos is very much right here. I

00:48:37.440 think Donald Trump, I mean, Donald Trump is like the king of the grift. And I don't just mean like

00:48:42.360 the crimes and like, he just got convicted for 34 felonies like we love. But I think to me,

00:48:48.040 the most interesting grift about Donald Trump was how he convinced hundreds of millions of people

00:48:52.940 that he was like a man of the people, that he was like of the working class, even though this is 0.99

00:48:57.740 someone who grew up shitting in golden toilets. Well, I mean, I think it's just when you look at 0.99

00:49:03.340 the rise of these figures, you have to look at the rise of the attention economy and the media

00:49:07.920 climate and look at how Trump leveraged the media and exploited the media. I mean, often unintentionally

00:49:14.620 to kind of boost himself to power. I mean, I remember when I was a, I'm still a reporter,

00:49:20.140 but back in 2016, when I was covering politics and I was covering on the Trump campaign events,

00:49:24.900 and I mean, I was at the Hilton the night that he was elected with him and everyone.

00:49:28.980 Who was around? YouTubers, content creators, alternative media personalities, podcasters.

00:49:35.700 Look at who was at Hillary Clinton's event, just the mainstream media people. The divide in these

00:49:41.320 media ecosystems, it's been bifurcating for a long time. But what they've done is just build

00:49:47.500 this sort of entire media universe, which is integrated with e-commerce and everything,

00:49:53.680 the publishing companies, right? Like the right-wing ones that are built to facilitate this

00:49:58.740 exact grift and enrich these people. And we don't have anything like that. I mean, sort of like

00:50:05.680 corporate, you know, the corporate Democrat people have it to some extent in the sense that like

00:50:10.460 they can get corporate money, but they don't have like a pipeline where they're going to be

00:50:14.840 like the equivalent of like the Megyn Kelly and the Daily Wire people and just this entire sort

00:50:20.240 of like media ecosystem built to prop up these figures. And let's not forget the conservative

00:50:25.420 and the right wing movement has always been personality driven. It's always been sort of

00:50:30.220 grievance based personality driven content, even back to the days of like Rush Limbaugh talk radio

00:50:34.300 in the 90s like yeah i was gonna mention rush limbaugh because rest in hell but he in trump's 0.97

00:50:41.520 first campaign in like 2015 2016 rush initially was like fuck this guy like he did not like trump 0.77

00:50:49.480 and then he felt his audience tilting that way and then he you know became one of the biggest 0.97

00:50:57.800 right-wing media Trump apologists. And in 2020, he was awarded by Trump the Presidential Medal

00:51:04.520 of Freedom. Yeah. I mean, I think it just shows. It's such a full circle moment in a lot of ways

00:51:10.320 because I think it just shows how here's what this has become. I mean, I think so much of the

00:51:15.460 internet now is that spiritual succession to the Rush Limbaugh world. And obviously, he was from

00:51:21.960 decades past, but you just don't see that as much. And also, I mean, let's not forget just

00:51:27.040 fundamental differences between sort of more progressives and conservatives is like progressives

00:51:32.760 care more about if you know people are lying in certain ways like it's a more it's fact but you

00:51:39.280 know i'm not trying to be hyperbolic like there are tons of studies that show sort of like the

00:51:44.040 differences in different parts of the internet right and that's not to say that you know oh on

00:51:49.480 the right they don't believe in facts but they you know with certain issues they're completely skewed

00:51:53.880 And they have a regressive political agenda that they're pushing. And the progressive agenda is

00:51:59.360 not, it's very different, right? It's based more around like inclusivity, intersectionality. It's

00:52:04.500 just a different beast that doesn't play as well on the internet, the way that the current internet

00:52:08.360 is structured. Yeah. And that's not to say that like everybody on the left like fact checks

00:52:12.660 everything. No, but it's more that like leftist misinformation doesn't go viral in the same way

00:52:18.980 because there's not that like pipeline and also it's like inherently challenging power whereas

00:52:25.520 often misinformation on the right is is boosting it's it's upholding traditional power structures

00:52:32.020 and so it just gets boosted in a way that like more progressive misinformation doesn't and again

00:52:37.160 there is tons of misinformation all over the internet all over the political spectrum but

00:52:40.780 the rights in the far right specifically it's built around it you know yeah there's there's

00:52:46.400 no left-wing equivalent to like q anon or pizzagate or any of those things no i mean you see leftist

00:52:52.720 people buying increasingly into right-wing conspiracies they're actually leftist people

00:52:58.320 but they've fallen so far down the rabbit hole that they've come back and now are promoting

00:53:02.600 right-wing conspiracies about journalists and about other people and i think that that is that

00:53:07.400 is the path this is the pathway that we see all the time to radicalization i want to talk for a

00:53:12.320 second about candace owens because the argument that i kind of was hoping to make by the end of

00:53:18.060 this episode that i kind of wanted to state up front but i didn't want to scare people away

00:53:21.600 is that like i don't think that there is a huge difference between ollie london and candace owens

00:53:28.980 or like any of these people really and so i think a lot of people don't know candace owens's origin

00:53:34.960 story oh yes candace owens was was running a like small marketing agency which had a blog 1.00

00:53:42.700 that she would publish on kind of a lot and she was like super liberal she published blogs about 0.65

00:53:49.940 what she called quote the batshit crazy antics of the republican tea party and she once wrote quote

00:53:55.920 the good news is they will eventually die off peacefully in their sleep we hope and then we

00:54:01.120 can get right on with the obvious social change that needs to happen immediately. So she was like

00:54:05.840 a real lib. In 2016, she launched a Kickstarter campaign for a website that she wanted to build

00:54:13.280 with some of her co-workers at the marketing agency. The website was going to be called

00:54:16.760 Social Autopsy. And it was intended to be like an anti-bullying website, like a tool to combat

00:54:23.400 bullying. But in practice, it was just going to be a database to compile people's digital footprint

00:54:29.700 and personal information this seemed to a lot of people like on the left and the right as like a

00:54:35.660 pretty obvious invasion of privacy and so she immediately got a bunch of pushback for this

00:54:40.300 social autopsy website concept and she was doxed by her critics and she blamed this doxing on

00:54:48.000 progressives and she began online to reach out to conservative media people including milo

00:54:54.500 Yiannopoulos and a guy named Mike Cernovich who when she tells this story now she's like the

00:55:00.240 conservatives embraced me and she in 2017 a year later would say I became a conservative overnight

00:55:07.100 then she started a YouTube channel where she branded herself as like the black woman conservative

00:55:11.800 and the rest is history and so I don't know I just think it's like a grift all the way across 0.63

00:55:17.620 like I become conservative overnight like that's not something that happens to people with principles

00:55:22.100 I think you're 100% right that there's a lot of similarities in this path between Candice and

00:55:27.060 Ali. You know, what's interesting is like Candice was, I would say, one of the first of this more

00:55:32.880 recent generation of content creators. I mean, she was kind of born out of, you know, Gamergate,

00:55:37.620 basically. Do you want to explain that for someone who doesn't know what Gamergate is?

00:55:41.500 Yeah, Gamergate was this online harassment movement against women, specifically in like 0.88

00:55:47.180 gaming and journalism um in 2014 it was you know ostensibly they were like it's about ethics and

00:55:54.340 gaming and you know we just want to hold journalism accountable and what they really

00:55:58.800 wanted is to attack progressive women and progressive women in the video game world

00:56:03.020 for you know making games woke as uh it was kind of like the the early woke panic it was it was it 0.88

00:56:10.440 was like why you know doesn't my video game character have double d breasts anymore and

00:56:16.120 right you know grand theft auto has gone whoa yeah there's almost so many of these outrage

00:56:22.380 campaigns now that we've become really desensitized like gamer gate was one of the first like massive

00:56:28.260 ones where it really took over the media and i think they exploited the media's inability to

00:56:33.120 understand these cycles now i would say the media slightly understand you know they're slightly

00:56:38.420 better about covering them not the new york times you know who just platforms chris rufo all the

00:56:42.300 time. But Candace really came out of that. And she kind of came from that era of the internet and

00:56:47.900 her kind of anti-harassment campaign and site was built from that. And then she took this

00:56:54.640 conservative slant. And I think it's just been so lucrative. I mean, look at what she's been

00:57:00.480 able to build. I think she has a level of talent and charisma that I think Ollie London does not

00:57:07.000 have i will say that so i don't know if he'll be the next candace owens but he's certainly

00:57:13.280 in the mix yeah i think he definitely wants to be but yeah i agree i don't think he has like the

00:57:19.500 on-camera abilities that candace owens does or even like ben shapiro like all of these people

00:57:24.820 who are uniquely insufferable as i'm sure their viewers think someone like i am uniquely insufferable

00:57:29.440 but you have to find the uniquely insufferable audience that like clicks with you and then you

00:57:36.020 can you know i don't know if that made sense we all just have to be our own unique version of

00:57:40.960 insufferable but right they i would say are i mean what they're doing though is a grift i would

00:57:47.900 right right call it you know and that's the thing and it's like i was thinking about making this

00:57:52.220 episode and i was like wait a minute but like i give my opinion on what's going on in the world

00:57:55.820 for a living but i don't know i think anyone who follows me or like you i would hope that

00:58:02.140 people can understand that i believe what i'm saying like deep to my core i don't know i i you

00:58:08.360 subject yourself to so much harassment to be like a minoritized person online a minoritized person

00:58:13.100 with political beliefs online with progressive political beliefs online like i i don't know

00:58:17.280 what to say you guys i mean what i say but also i it's about challenging power like you're

00:58:23.820 challenging power structures they are not and that is why they can make this money and get

00:58:30.260 these opportunities, right, is because they're saying things that powerful people, powerful

00:58:34.860 governments like Israel and the United States, you know, want to hear. Powerful conservative

00:58:40.340 politicians want to hear. You know, they want to use people like Ali London as like props, you know,

00:58:45.480 in their sort of regressive campaigns to strip people of their rights and say things like, look, 0.98

00:58:50.160 you know, the trans world has gone too far. Just look at Ali London. 0.99

00:58:53.900 And it's interesting, too, with Ali London, because every now and then, like I said, like,

00:58:58.360 he'll pop up and have a viral moment where people are like wait aren't you that like 0.85

00:59:03.340 ex-trans korean like lunatic basically i've made tweets about him and those tweets will get like 0.79

00:59:09.220 you know thousands and thousands of likes in the moment from people who are there and who are like 0.69

00:59:13.820 oh yeah that's ollie london what the hell but then ollie london and people like him are really good

00:59:19.460 and they know something that i think now is pretty widely understood which is that if you just

00:59:24.060 keep going. This is what Kat Tenbar said to me when I was talking to her the other day,

00:59:28.260 but there's no bottom. You can just keep going and literally just do the digital version of

00:59:35.100 plowing through the controversy. Just tweet a hundred more times about Israel. And three of

00:59:39.820 those tweets will go viral enough that they'll reach my friends from high school who have no

00:59:44.380 idea who Ali London was five years ago, 10 years ago. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, there's no shame

00:59:50.960 or accountability or introspection or anything. It's pure opportunism and a really sort of

00:59:57.600 self-centered worldview too. I mean, it's about how can I get ahead, not what am I doing for the

01:00:03.500 world? What is ultimately my impact? Why does this conservative publisher want to hook me up

01:00:07.360 with a ghostwriter and turn a book around based off this experience that I had for the past year?

01:00:12.820 There's no questioning of it. And that's sad. And in zero ways, should we look to this man

01:00:17.780 who has zero political experience or understanding or background in anything academic or political

01:00:23.680 or journalism adjacent, you know, to be some sort of expert, especially on the Middle East.

01:00:28.740 And yet here he is, you know, just the way that he's positioned as an expert on LGBTQ issues and

01:00:35.320 all these other things like this, this man, nobody should be listening to his opinions.

01:00:40.920 Nobody, nobody. And I really maintain that if he had found a way to successfully monetize his

01:00:47.160 position in the k-pop space then he would have stayed there and i wish he would have stayed there 0.72

01:00:50.740 i wish he would have stayed but that's i mean look at you can say this about every single right-wing

01:00:55.980 influencer same if tim pool had you know just been able to monetize his his sort of left-wing stuff

01:01:02.640 as well as his right way i mean let's not forget he started as a vice journalist and occupy wall

01:01:07.120 street person you know you constantly see these people where it's like god if you had just been

01:01:11.380 successful and whatever you wanted to originally do we wouldn't have to deal with you but the

01:01:15.040 problem is they're failures and they have failed into this grift. And in some ways they fail up

01:01:22.000 into this system that rewards them. And that's another thing. I mean, I'm sure you've gotten

01:01:27.140 this a million times because you've reported on controversial things from a left-leaning angle.

01:01:32.180 I always get accused of being paid by some amorphous entity to first saying the things

01:01:40.700 that i say and it's so funny that people think that there is money in being like on the left

01:01:46.400 side of things when the money is on the right like the money is in like you said like there's an

01:01:50.680 entire system to prop up these people there's money against progressive i mean yeah i was just

01:01:57.020 with a very well-known ceo um tech ceo a couple weeks ago who's you know was just he was talking

01:02:03.500 about his sort of interactions with different governments and the u.s government and just

01:02:06.660 also just the amount of money that they spend trying to, how 100% of those resources countering,

01:02:14.460 especially, you know, certain political movements in the US, it's against, it's countering progressive

01:02:19.600 politics. There is no, that is what the money is, you know, that is what the centrists are doing.

01:02:25.500 And that is what, which is all the corporate power, all the centrists. And then that is also

01:02:28.940 what the right is doing. And then you also have to think about the progressive influencer and

01:02:33.260 internet space generally is like anti-capitalists like these are not rich people they're marginalized

01:02:38.000 people trying to fight for basic human rights that's why we're all on patreon you guys because

01:02:43.520 we don't have which by the way if you want more of the show patreon link is in the bio of this 0.85

01:02:47.980 episode but that's why we're on fucking patreon because we're not getting shows on the daily 0.89

01:02:52.260 wire like we don't have the daily wire there is no there is nothing i mean i covered this 0.92

01:02:57.960 creators for palestine event yesterday with all these content creators and no there's not i mean

01:03:02.400 there's no media company on the left because there's no funding. You have to recognize that

01:03:09.320 the right-wing media ecosystem is built around the content creator industry and has been

01:03:13.100 for decades now, so that they prop up these people like Barry Weiss, the Daily Wire people,

01:03:19.840 as quote-unquote independent journalism. When they are funded, they are all completely funded

01:03:25.060 up to their gills by far-right billionaires and corporate interests. They are just shills. They

01:03:29.860 are a repackaged version of traditional corporate media taken to the extreme and yet they position

01:03:36.360 themselves online as these like independent journalists it's like you're not independent

01:03:39.400 independent journalists can barely eat independent journalists are on sub stack they don't have

01:03:44.000 multi-million dollar contracts with ben shapiro's media company and that's the thing so ben shapiro's

01:03:48.680 media company the daily wire there was just this report that came out that last year it did like

01:03:53.320 two or three hundred million dollars in revenue. Like there's just simply no left wing equivalent

01:03:59.720 to that. They're all shutting down because they have no money. Oh, they're all shutting down

01:04:03.620 if they haven't been driven out of business by Peter Thiel. I mean, look at Media Matters having

01:04:07.320 to lay off, you know, dozens of employees because Elon Musk decided to file a completely frivolous

01:04:12.980 lawsuit that will eventually he will lose that lawsuit. But in the meantime, they have to pay

01:04:16.580 for legal costs. I mean, I've been sued. God, you know, I've been sued multiple times, several

01:04:21.580 times for millions of dollars over articles that are nonsense. And of course, they always lose

01:04:27.700 because thank God for the First Amendment. But if I didn't work for an employer that could cover

01:04:32.720 those costs, I'd be out of business. Not only that, but the e-commerce element, there's a whole

01:04:39.360 right-wing version of Amazon. I forgot what the market's called. All of these anti-woke products.

01:04:45.240 like ultra right beer the money in the right wing space is there there are no like left wing

01:04:51.540 products i mean there's like kind of rainbow capitalism centrist stuff but there's not

01:04:56.520 the left doesn't have anything like what the right has in terms of this operation totally oh my god

01:05:01.460 it's funny that you mentioned creators for palestine because that's another thing that i

01:05:05.980 will get accusations levied against me of like being paid for and it's like yeah yeah guys i'm

01:05:11.660 getting paid by big Palestine. Yeah, exactly. The people that are trying to crowdfund $4,000

01:05:18.680 so they don't get beheaded by a bomb. Exactly. Meanwhile, the state of Israel, as we know,

01:05:24.780 as I have reported in the Washington Post, actively pays content creators, pays right-leaning

01:05:31.140 content creators huge amounts of money. I mean, I heard one influencer got $200,000 just to fly

01:05:36.460 to Israel on a PR trip recently. And they've been doing that for decades. Of course. And before

01:05:41.260 influencers they were doing it with regular celebrities and athletes with brand israel which

01:05:45.340 i talked about in my uh pink washing episode like this is yeah always been a thing and so

01:05:49.740 yeah i get accused of being uh paid for by by big palestine which exists apparently no i mean the

01:05:56.280 truth is is that it's the right-wing media and it's the right-wing ecosystem that has the money

01:06:00.540 to to pay for these people and these influencers people need to understand that they are not

01:06:04.780 independent influencers speaking truth to power they are backed by corporate interests they're

01:06:09.100 backed by powerful right-wing interests. They exist to prop that system up. And Ollie London

01:06:13.440 is a pawn in that system. A willing pawn. He absolutely is. And everything we're saying

01:06:19.240 are things that Ollie London figured out several years ago and things that he sought to exploit

01:06:24.280 pretty smartly, in my opinion. But everyone else is the loser in this. Yeah.

01:06:30.460 Trans people aren't winning. People who even de-trans people aren't winning. No one wins in

01:06:36.100 this except Ollie London. Ultimately, it's a loss for humanity and for people. I mean, this man

01:06:42.640 should not be platformed as some expert on these issues. He's simply not. There are people that do

01:06:48.020 detransition. And when you actually talk to them, which I have for stories, they have incredibly

01:06:53.560 nuanced and empathetic thoughts generally around this. And it's, by the way, a fraction of people,

01:06:58.760 such a small fraction. I mean, they're so overstated in the media already. But yeah,

01:07:02.260 of course. It's hard, you know, when you have failed, right? When you failed at whatever you

01:07:07.040 wanted to do. I mean, Ben Shapiro famously failed out of Hollywood. Like, you know, these people,

01:07:10.980 a lot of these people had bigger ambitions when you failed to do that. And then you have this

01:07:14.340 whole ecosystem telling you how great you are, giving you money, praise, power. It's irresistible

01:07:20.720 to most people, especially for broken people. And I think that don't have the moral fortitude

01:07:26.040 to just be like, no, I'm not going to participate in that. There was this great article that I was

01:07:30.640 reading called The Consolation of the Grift by Nick Catojio in The Dispatch, and I just want to

01:07:36.280 read a quick quote from that. The reason there are so many suppliers of conspiratorial insanity on

01:07:40.960 the right is because the demand for conspiratorial insanity seems insatiable. Even if we could cut

01:07:46.440 off one supplier, another would quickly replace him to cater to that demand. That's why Fox News

01:07:51.900 opted to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in defamation damages rather than let Newsmax

01:07:56.480 outcompeted in telling lies about the election. And so I guess just the question that I want to

01:08:01.740 close on, Taylor, is in this social media information age where like everyone can be

01:08:07.400 their own news source, including you and I, like who is responsible for curtailing the power of

01:08:13.860 Ollie London, of the Ollie Londons of the world? And like, will there always be a version of him

01:08:19.380 if there are people who want to hear what he has to say? You know, I think I think what we need to

01:08:23.840 do is just really critique the system, understand how it works, and recognize what we're doing and

01:08:29.260 not boost these people. We need more media literacy in this country. We need people to

01:08:33.560 understand how this right-wing internet machine operates, and we need to not buy into it.

01:08:38.280 Taylor Lorenz, thank you so much for joining me today. And thank you for

01:08:42.700 not making me talk about this alone because I have spent too much time with Ali London rattling

01:08:49.960 around my own brain and I needed to get it out so thank you for being here and thank you the

01:08:55.380 listener for being here for uh for bearing witness thank you so much for having me Matt this was so

01:09:00.180 fun and listen to my podcast power user you can follow me on YouTube Instagram TikTok as long as

01:09:06.020 we still have it and everywhere else just at Taylor Lorenz if you liked today's episode feel

01:09:10.980 free to I don't know share it with your friend from your hometown who's sharing Ollie London

01:09:15.500 shit on facebook stories you can also rate the show on whatever app you're listening to this on

01:09:20.480 uh if you would like more of the show like i mentioned earlier i'm on patreon because i'm

01:09:26.320 not being paid by the big left whatever big left is and um i love you thank you for being here

01:09:33.940 and until next time stay

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - June 05, 2024

Oli London & the Right Wing Grift (with Taylor Lorenz)

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Transcript