00:00:53.240and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:00:58.760I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.
00:01:02.380Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:09.920These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:13.740Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:21.360If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:01:27.100Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:35.740Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:03:50.940At the same time that Tate is joining Threads, a platform owned by Meta, he's also suing Meta for $50 million over his 2022 ban.
00:04:00.020But according to Deadline, Andrew Tate's attorneys filed the suit in the wrong city.
00:04:05.380Because Facebook is famously headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and Tate's attorneys filed the suit in Los Angeles County for some reason.
00:04:14.400We know birds of a feather flock together, so it should come as no surprise that Andrew Tate is a Trump ally.
00:04:20.620When Trump was re-elected, Tate cheered, saying that Trump's win meant that he would not have to face accountability on his sex trafficking charges,
00:04:28.680tweeting, the Tates will be free. Trump is the president. The good old days are back.
00:04:32.620And it kind of seems like he was sort of right.
00:04:35.900Because this week, ProPublica uncovered that the White House actually did try to intervene with the Department of Homeland Security investigation.
00:04:43.660Once Tate was in custody, a White House official who coincidentally once served as Andrew Tate's attorney pressured the Department of Homeland Security to return Andrew Tate's electronic devices back to him after those devices were seized as part of the investigation into Tate.
00:04:59.260Even though those devices potentially contained evidence, DHS officials reportedly felt that this was an attempt by the White House to interfere with the federal investigation into Tate.
00:05:10.100And ProPublica argues this is part of a pattern in the Trump White House, you know, inserting itself into how the government deals with investigations when criminal charges involve their allies.
00:05:22.540Andrew Tate has been grifting a generation of young men and boys into making him rich by stoking their anxieties, anger and fears.
00:05:31.080His content is dangerous, but it's not just Tate.
00:05:34.820An entire ecosystem of extremist content creators in what's commonly known as the Manosphere
00:05:40.020are gamifying the Internet to line their pockets and putting all of us at risk in the process.
00:05:46.480So the Manosphere is this umbrella term that a lot of different misogynistic activists,
00:05:56.500Whether that be someone like a men's rights activist, a pickup artist, a blogger, a podcaster, pretty much anyone whose main deal is misogyny, that falls under the manosphere.
00:06:11.440Justin Horowitz has been researching viral extremist influencers with Media Matters since 2020.
00:06:17.440So a lot of this content really seems to prey on the fears and vulnerabilities of young men.
00:06:23.440Like, you're not working out as hard as all the other men around you, or you're never going to get a date, or you spend a lot of time alone at home instead of being out. Why is that?
00:06:32.620um i think that that is a great gateway to get to talk about misogyny and hate and to push
00:06:41.920extremism so something like fitness content or something like whether that be gambling or even
00:06:47.800gaming some of these manosphere influencers are involved in it is just a way to get people to log
00:06:54.260on to subscribe to their content so that they can push further extremism and further misogyny down
00:07:00.720the road. And kind of going off of what you just said, a lot of these manosphere influencers do
00:07:06.680talk about sort of the real fears that men are experiencing. So things like financial instability
00:07:13.600or rejection, dating advice. There's not a lot of influencers that speak to these real fears of
00:07:22.280young men that are outside the manosphere. So I think that young men are particularly interested
00:07:28.080in these influencers because there's not that many to choose from and when these are the ones
00:07:33.100that are available that's who they'll that's who they'll spend their time listening to unfortunately
00:07:37.200that's such a bummer because there are men and women and all kinds of folks who make
00:07:43.900content about like for young people right but the the content that we get that we see amplified on
00:07:50.600social media is never the person who's making a podcast digging into the like doing a thoughtful
00:07:55.340people dig in about like the nuances of dating in 2023 for young men or the realities of economic
00:08:01.480stability like that would be content that people would be looking for i think there's like a like
00:08:06.020a thirst for it and there are people making thoughtful content about that but they certainly
00:08:11.360do not enjoy the exposure or the reach or the or the platforms like people making manosphere content
00:08:17.560why is that i think that a lot of the manosphere content oftentimes the first and like the the
00:08:24.860first thing people are seeing are these very viral moments. So what they're seeing are these TikTok
00:08:30.880clips of someone saying something that is extremely misogynist, but maybe they'll have someone that
00:08:36.680is there to give a rhetoric. But that's just one way to get people sort of involved or get their
00:08:41.740eyes on it. So these manosphere influencers, they just have a, they're honestly very, they're very
00:08:49.500good at the internet. And it's the same way that Andrew Tate was able to make sure that everybody
00:08:55.760on the internet knew who he was. He was the most Googled person last year. They're just very good
00:09:01.740at being able to play the internet game, play the virality game. These creators are gamifying our
00:09:08.860internet landscape by cranking out moments designed for social media virality and incentivizing their
00:09:14.620followers to share them online. As part of Andrew Tate's real-world app, Tate promises that
00:09:20.220subscribers who pay $50 a month for the app can make millions by reposting his clips on social
00:09:25.800media sites. That's why platforms like TikTok are flooded with his toxic, harmful messages.
00:09:31.880More and more of these creators, like the Fresh and Fit podcast and the Whatever podcast,
00:09:36.140are doing similar things. It's like an ecosystem of toxicity.
00:09:40.440Honestly, it's really impressive, and it's kind of scary as well.
00:09:43.300It is scary, especially with Andrew Tate. I mean, what like something that I see a lot with when it comes to these podcasts, I use that in quotes because as a podcaster, I have some like issues with how they're pod.
00:09:58.620Well, that's either here or there. But, you know, it'll be these viral moments where they'll get, you know, like Fresh and Fit does this a lot where they'll have a black woman on the show seemingly just to degrade and humiliate her.
00:10:11.860And maybe this woman will shrink and sit silently while they do this.0.95
00:10:16.300Maybe she will say something back.1.00
00:16:28.420He's definitely he kind of started as like a man on the street interview type of TikToker, doing kind of YouTube videos when he was younger and then made his way into the manosphere.
00:16:38.660Another person that I've been writing about recently who I've actually noticed has gotten a lot of pickup recently was H. Pearl Davis.
00:16:45.760She goes by Just Pearly Things Online.
00:16:48.300She's a men's rights influencer, or I guess she would just call herself a manosphere influencer of some sort.
00:16:54.740And she's been getting a lot of attention recently as the female Andrew Cate.
00:17:01.000Let's see, Aiden Ross, who was one of the biggest Twitch streamers.
00:17:04.280He recently has moved over to Kik, which is kind of a Twitch knockoff that's owned by State, which is a crypto gambling organization.
00:17:13.920And then there's the Whatever podcast, as I talked about before, which is kind of like Fresh and Fit.
00:17:19.500Jonathan Hogwood, who's another men's rights activist.
00:17:22.320Honestly, there are so many Andrew Tate knockoffs that they are almost hard to map out at this point.
00:17:29.300I feel like every time I jump online, I'm finding someone else that is saying the same thing to their followers, and it is just full-blown misogyny.
00:17:38.440And, you know, I'll check one week, and they'll have a significant amount of followers, and then I'll check their follower count the next week, and they've just blown up.
00:17:47.080These people are just gaining followers at, like, very rapid speeds.
00:17:50.800Let me ask you this. So I've noticed the same thing that a lot of these influencers, they'll start by doing funny pranks or man on the street or video game live streaming and then kind of dovetail into misogyny. And then some of them will like explode. How much of that do you think is just kind of playing to what works?
00:18:11.960Like being like, oh, when I was just doing X, I wasn't really getting traction. When I started dipping into misogyny, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories, women and Jewish people are the root of your problems. Women don't deserve rights. I got a lot more traction. I'm going to keep working what works. How much of it do you think is just like a marketing tactic?
00:18:31.640I think you hit the nail on the head. I really think that misogyny gets clicks. I think that hating women gets clicks. I think being an anti-Semite, unfortunately, gets clicks as well. I think that these are definitely strategies that people can turn to when they've run out of options.
00:18:50.460You know, doing a prank video, being a TikToker, depending on your content, will only get you so far. And this is definitely a road that people see. And not only that, but it's also profitable. So the manosphere in general, there's oftentimes a monetary aspect.
00:19:07.040So what are these people selling? They're always selling something, whether that's masculinity lessons or dating advice, advice on how to go viral, anything like that.
00:19:20.200You know, the people that are in it, they are in it for themselves.
00:19:23.900They are not really trying to help these men become high value men or whatever they say that they're trying to help them become.
00:19:29.880They are trying to make money, get followers and market themselves.
00:19:33.120I mean, it's a grift. It's a scam. Like, that's the thing that really, it troubles me. Like, this is what I was having this long, long ass debate with my family member last week, this past weekend about Andrew Tate.
00:19:47.040I was surprised that he was not able to see what a clear and obvious grift this person is running.
00:19:53.220This person is telling, is stoking on the fears and vulnerabilities, which may be very real, of a community of young men who legitimately feel like forgotten, unseen.
00:20:05.880He is stoking those things to enrich himself personally.
00:20:08.940And I guess, like, how do people not see it for the grift that it is?
00:20:13.920How is it so effective when it's like clearly he is trying to take your money? He doesn't actually care about you being a high value man or actually like seeing you and the vulnerabilities that you have. He's interested in fattening his pockets.
00:20:27.120I think that it goes back to what I was saying before, where there are really just so few influencers that are speaking to these fears of young men that it is like it is completely like the idea that people are doing it for the money.
00:20:41.060It's just overshadowed. I think people are people become extremely cuddly.
00:20:45.600They become such committed followers to these influencers that, you know, they look past the bad.
00:20:51.940They look past the money that they're giving. They look past the horrible misogyny. And some people, when they are fans, they know that what these people are saying is wrong and dangerous and putting like the real lives of women in particular, like they're making women's lives more dangerous because they think that they're helping them in some way.
00:21:13.120they're trying to like improve their lives and for people when if they haven't had someone to
00:21:17.300talk to or they haven't had someone that felt like there was really like speaking to their soul
00:21:22.660like they're willing to look past those things and it really makes me sad because what they're
00:21:28.780selling them is so shitty like somebody who made good content about women and men and gender and
00:21:37.600sexuality and dating in 2023, someone who was actually meaningfully seeing these people and0.79
00:21:43.880speaking to their concerns, I think would be great. I think what makes me upset is that they
00:21:47.680flood the space with such garbage. So people who actually are making that content really can't get
00:21:53.140a foothold because who's going to listen to somebody who is making a nuanced point about1.00
00:21:56.300gender and dating when you can watch this very exciting video of a Black woman being degraded0.84
00:22:02.960than storming off of a podcast set. Right. And, you know, I think it really creates this false1.00
00:22:09.180world where in heterosexual relationships, men and women are constantly at odds that like people
00:22:16.860don't have relationships that are based on mutual respect, seeing each other, wanting to support
00:22:21.620each other. The only kind of relationship that exists between a man and a woman is one that is0.99
00:22:25.840built on, you know, breaking the woman, her being submissive, you being dominant. When in reality,0.86
00:22:30.920people who have healthy relationships are not obsessed with the particulars in this way like
00:22:35.800this is not like i don't know anybody who has a relationship like that and that is certainly not
00:22:39.480a relationship to strive for yet they are presenting to a whole generation of young
00:22:44.120people that this is the only kind of relationship that you can have and it's just not true i mean
00:22:50.020traditional gender roles i mean that just kind of oftentimes will take out the whole part of like
00:22:55.240important communication um you know if you if your job is to do this my job is to do that and like
00:23:00.660that's how it's going to be oftentimes it's just not going to work that way um it'll just
00:23:06.020it's so outdated the gender roles that they're pushing that it just it like you said it doesn't
00:23:13.660really make sense and it doesn't work i wish that i could like point to more like influencers that
00:23:19.060are creating content about dating and that are kind of creating content that would be kind of
00:23:24.440the opposite of manosphere content um but like off the top of my head i can't think of any
00:23:28.900Obviously, I work in the space, but it's it's it's it's just sad to see that it feels like when men are looking for a role model or someone to look up to, it just feels like there's just one type of role model online that they can find.
00:25:19.660Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:25:24.080I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:25:28.540I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:25:35.620They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:25:40.060But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:25:43.500They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:25:47.140Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:25:55.580If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:26:01.540This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:26:14.000I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:26:21.100I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:26:24.240From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:26:31.040It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:26:38.140Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:26:47.720Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:30:57.340You know, it's like, well, they're getting all this media pickup just because they're queer people attacking other queer people.0.74
00:31:04.120I feel like it kind of falls in kind of the same formula there.0.89
00:31:08.380Another hallmark of this kind of content, the grind set mentality.
00:31:12.900The grind set is kind of a catchall for all of the traits and interests supposedly embodied by the high value alpha male.
00:31:19.520So when creators like Andrew Tate or Fresh and Fit offer their followers paid coaching to become these high value men,
00:31:26.760It runs the gamut from content about fitness or real estate, stocks, and cryptocurrency.
00:31:32.100It might seem kind of all over the place to an outsider, but they're selling the shortcut to an entire lifestyle.
00:31:38.080Something that I've noticed about the content of folks like Fresh and Fit and Andrew Tate especially is that so much of the topics are all over the place.
00:31:46.620Like, they talk a lot about crypto, which I always found so interesting.
00:31:50.420Is it just that crypto is sort of synonymous with young people who are very much online and they're just trying to, like, give them what they want?
00:31:58.600Or is there something else going on there?
00:32:01.160You know, I think crypto trading is like part of the grind set, right?
00:32:05.340So it's like, what are we doing to make money?
00:32:07.980How can we make money the fastest way possible?
00:32:10.360And how can we do it efficiently and be alpha males while doing it?
00:32:14.140So I just feel like cryptocurrency kind of falls into the world of the manosphere, because it's all about doing something quickly and doing something big. I think those are just two aspects of the manosphere that are just like, you know, you can kind of apply that to like anything, making money, meeting girls, dating. And I think cryptocurrency, you know, I think it's just hot and trendy. And I think that's just kind of like where it's fallen recently.
00:32:39.680Oh, my God. I love how you put that, that it's just doing something. It's the grind set of doing something quick and big. I think that that's something that all of this content kind of has in common. This idea that there is a cheat code to life, that there's a cheat code that's going to get you rich. There's a cheat code that's going to get you fit. There's a cheat code that's going to get you beloved by women, sexual prowess, social, like social power.
00:33:05.300you can just gamify it and if you if you have not figured it out you just don't have the right
00:33:11.040cheat code like i think that it's all kind of wrapped up in that i really like that term cheat
00:33:15.760code that's not something i've used in this but i think that you know the whole idea of the red0.99
00:33:20.200pill so being like women are the root of all evil you know understanding that women are the reason
00:33:26.380i'm not financially stable women are the reason i'm not dating the women are the reason of so0.95
00:33:30.700and so and so and so for whatever, you know, poor man's problems he has. I think that that is also
00:33:36.520sort of a mental cheat code to be like, these are the reasons I'm not happy. You know, it's because
00:33:42.120of women. And I think that that's just kind of another way to sort of understand the framing
00:33:47.420when it comes to just like the mentality of it. Yeah. And, you know, I think back to when I was
00:33:52.920a young person going through my first breakup. I just like all most young people do. I had like
00:33:59.480one bad breakup that sort of defined part of my life. And what I turned to was like the cure
00:34:07.420records and really bad poetry. What makes me sad now is that there is this entire well-oiled
00:34:16.400digital machine that will, when they find a vulnerable young person who is in that moment
00:34:22.500of like, oh, you're heartbroken, they will find that young person and be like, oh, the reason
00:34:27.160why you feel this way. Think about how bad you feel. It's because of women. And you can build
00:34:31.900an entire identity and ethos around the fact that women are the source for your pain, for why you're0.88
00:34:36.900not feeling good, why you're not succeeding, why you don't have money, whatever the thing is.
00:34:41.700And I don't think this kind of content is new. But what I think is new is that young people all
00:34:48.820have a device in their hands that connect it to them so instantly. And that content is not just
00:34:53.440there it's also amplified by social media platforms who are getting rich off of it it's
00:34:57.780algorithmically you know surfaced for them and it kind of makes me feel like they don't necessarily
00:35:02.460have a lot of tools when they're young to steer away from that content because it's it's such a
00:35:10.780pull i bet yeah i really think that like if you're you know putting giving the example that you gave
00:35:16.860if you're heartbroken and you're a man and you just went through a devastating heartbreak and
00:35:21.240it pops up on your TikTok feed, Sneeko or Fresh and Fit, talking about like why women break men's
00:35:27.480hearts. And it's like the next five TikToks that are coming up. You're on the manosphere tag or
00:35:32.000whatever you're looking at. You know, that is really going to draw people in. And I think that
00:35:36.480is constant stimulation and people are being assured over and over again that women are the
00:35:41.560problem, I think is what it is, especially if you're looking for that kind of content or like
00:35:45.560your algorithm has picked up that you're interested in that kind of content. You're just going to get
00:35:49.460the same talking points and the same misogyny over and over again. And it's just going to draw
00:35:53.700you further into it. And I just, I mean, what responsibility do you think that social media
00:35:59.020platforms have to keep that from happening, especially to young people? I think they need
00:36:04.880to have more terms of service when it comes to extreme misogyny. Honestly, I feel like a lot of
00:36:10.860times they are pretty lax, places like TikTok or obviously Twitter or, you know, any sort of social
00:36:18.640media they they just don't have the kind of specificity that they really need to have to
00:36:25.440keep women safe on the internet do you feel it's getting worse on some platforms yeah i mean i feel
00:36:33.560like maybe well maybe it's not getting worse but the bad actors are getting better at it i'll say
00:36:40.520that i feel like sometimes they're able to really um talk around things i think that some of the bad
00:36:46.680actors are able to know what gets viral to sort of draw people in. And I think that the social
00:36:53.780media platforms, they still want to make money and they don't want to see some of their biggest
00:36:59.700actors taken off. I think that's an unfortunate reality is that if you have someone that's
00:37:06.580bringing in a lot of attention and a lot of clicks, they don't want to ban them.
00:37:10.560And if you're Elon Musk, maybe you'll give them $20,000 and thus incentivize the next
00:37:15.680misogynistic hate monger to to get big on the platform and say hey i could do that i can say
00:37:21.120misogynistic things into a microphone money please exactly if it's getting clicks then there you go
00:37:26.520so you talked about how some of these bad actors are pretty good about
00:37:30.420like coding things so that they stay on the right side of these terms of service
00:37:35.380i saw a something in a social media feed it was um nick fuentes on the fresh and fit podcast
00:37:41.260and they were talking about jq and i was like what the fuck is jq then i read your piece i was like0.69
00:37:48.280the jewish question then i saw the host of fresh and fit saying he basically bragged saying that0.94
00:37:55.120you know we're the biggest platform that's talking about the jq no one else will do it0.98
00:37:59.740what is what's going on here like what is that this is straight up nazi shit and i am being1.00
00:38:07.840dead serious when you bring nick fuentes and into it you know he is a neo-nazi he's a white0.99
00:38:13.120supremacist and a holocaust denier um they have been talking nick fuentes and fresh and fit for
00:38:18.540months about getting together and doing this collaboration so this was kind of the precipice
00:38:23.000of them making of working together to make sure that they can do this like hours and hours long
00:38:29.060stream um there was even a video that was going around of nick doing a nazi pile um in the fresh
00:38:36.000fit studio and they're talking about the jewish question this is you know the same thing that
00:38:40.520adolf hitler was talking about when he was like what do we do about the jews and like you said
00:38:45.240the hosts were saying we're the only podcast that's talking about the jewish question it's
00:38:50.960extremely extremely scary stuff to see um and something that you know is extremely well-coded
00:38:58.460you know a clip like that where they're just talking about the jq something like that could
00:39:03.860probably go on to TikTok because their algorithms might not pick it up. Maybe they would pick up if
00:39:09.080someone did like a hashtag Nick Cuentes or something like that. But it'll just direct
00:39:14.180people. They'll direct people back to Rumble, which is where you can see these hour-long
00:39:18.520streams. I'm glad that you put it that way. Back when Kanye West and Nick Cuentes went to visit
00:39:25.040Trump, I did an interview with Robert Evans, who makes the podcast Behind the Bastards, who's all0.83
00:39:29.640about all of these shitheads and that was the point that he made too which is that Nick Fuentes0.99
00:39:34.840is a Nazi like some of these other characters they kind of dance around it they you know you0.98
00:39:40.920could sort of be like oh they're trolling maybe but he's not in that camp and so that like when
00:39:46.660you are platforming him you're doing a very different thing and you're sending a very
00:39:51.300different clear signal about what you're about I completely agree I think that when you make the
00:39:57.180decision to platform Nick Fuentes, you are drawing a line in the sand. You are saying, I am willing
00:40:01.680to put a Nazi onto my show, and I'm listening, and I will hear him out. So someone like Pearl,0.99
00:40:08.260just pearly things as we talked about, a couple months ago, she had him on her show.
00:40:12.920Nick Fuentes actually inspired Pearl so much that she made an entire anti-Semitic song about it.
00:40:18.540When Piers Morgan confronted Pearl about it on his television show, here's how she responded.
00:40:23.600I mean, the point was more about cancel culture and people getting kicked off of social media.
00:40:29.880If you finish the song, it was more about like you can't talk about this topic without being canceled by the left and the right.
00:40:37.160I don't really have a strong opinion either way.
00:40:39.700And she obviously got a lot of backlash.0.95
00:40:53.600It's just ridiculous. And I think that it is so, so dangerous, the manosphere in general,0.80
00:40:59.320but then to bring Nazism and neo-Nazism into it. I mean, it is just like two very scary,0.82
00:41:06.680dangerous worlds colliding. What are some of the real world impacts of this? Because
00:41:10.720I'm certainly sure somebody listening is like, it's just young people saying naughty words on
00:41:15.800the internet. It doesn't really mean anything. What is the real world impact?
00:41:18.680Well, you know, the manosphere in general does not live in a vacuum. So major misogyny and extreme misogyny has led to real world violence. People like Elliot Rogers, who was an incel mass shooter, obviously many attacks against women, Gamergate in 2015, when female members of the video game community were attacked, sent death threats and rape threats.
00:41:46.400These are all just examples of ways that the manosphere has, you know, come into the real world and has become a serious danger to people and has affected real people's lives.
00:41:59.020Yeah, I mean, just this week, I was reading on Twitter about a man who had posted a picture of him and his wife and said, I think it was a tweet that was like, oh, I went to Columbia and I married, I came back with a wife.
00:42:11.800And that person is now being accused of murdering his wife.
00:42:15.640And you go to his Twitter page and it's all Andrew Tate stuff.
00:42:18.880And I'm not saying that there's a deep connection because we don't know.
00:42:24.240It's still something that they're investigating. But I have to imagine that somebody who is absorbing content from an influencer who is saying all of these things about how women don't deserve rights, how if a woman is raped, she bears some responsibility, like all of this stuff.
00:42:38.680I can't imagine how that is not creating a less safe world for everybody, women especially, but also for the men who absorb this content.
00:42:46.260Yeah, I do think that it is making men think that, you know, violence is sometimes an answer. When Nick was on Pearl's show, he downplayed domestic abuse. You know, so if you're someone who is easily influenced by like, bad actors or figures or the kind of content you're taking in, you know, these are people who are quick to violence and quick to like, you know, call up arms.
00:43:14.440You know, these are very scary people who are associated with people that have, you know, been convicted of violent acts.
00:43:25.000Pretty much people that are gripers that have followed Nick Fuentes.
00:43:29.380There have been like multiple instances of these people being charged for, you know, dangerous and violent acts.
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00:46:07.540the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:46:10.960I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:49:49.820And it's young kids, and it's very impressionable, susceptible, young people.
00:49:57.480And I have this theory, and I would love to know your thoughts, that even if you are not somebody who likes Andrew Tate, would ever subscribe to Refresh and Fit, would ever be watching Nick Fuentes, the way that these clips of these people speaking have taken over social media, whether or not you follow them.
00:50:17.080Like, I see them, and I obviously don't like these people.
00:50:20.680I think that that is trickling down into wider society.
00:50:24.520So even people who don't think of themselves as, like, men's rights types, they might be absorbing, casually absorbing some of these attitudes without even really realizing it because they are so ubiquitous on our platforms.
00:50:41.500I think that if it's showing up in your TikTok feed enough, you know, it's just getting into your subconscious.
00:50:46.040I mean, maybe that sounds a little conspiracy theory of me, but I do feel like it's coming into, you know, the Overton window for what we think is like misogyny feels to be shifting a little bit.
00:50:59.900You know, it's just something that you feel in the air.
00:51:02.040Obviously, it's not something that I can like point to exactly, but it's sometimes you just you just feel it.
00:51:07.660And I think that's kind of what you were describing as well.
00:51:09.780it's just something that you know you can just tell in the way that people talk yes in the last
00:51:17.920like couple of years and it's it's it's kind of what got me interested in the manosphere too I
00:51:23.580mean it was just like it's something I felt in my own life and it's something that I was seeing
00:51:29.500online and I think as a gay man I see it in my community a lot a lot of misogyny and it's like
00:51:36.580honestly within the last year or two it's like it's what some gay men might think is funny
00:51:42.120honestly honestly just ends up being like hurtful to women or like could end up just being dangerous
00:51:48.000and i just think that's part of it as well how did you get into caring about and researching
00:51:52.940and following this kind of content so first i was just doing extremism so i was really mostly
00:51:58.340just following um obviously normal right-wing media i was following steve bannon a lot when
00:52:04.040I first started at Media Matters. And then I got particularly interested in Aquentis. And then
00:52:08.840I think that as my TikTok algorithm started to change and shift a little bit, I started to get
00:52:15.160Manosphere content. And I think I just kind of fell into it too. I was like, who are these people?
00:52:21.180And how do they, why do they keep showing up on my feed? And why do they have so many likes and
00:52:27.380follows? And I feel like that's kind of what first like initially kind of threw me into it.
00:52:32.220And I also started to follow Aiden Ross, as I was talking about the streamer, and him and Andrew Tate have like this serious, very strange romance. And that's honestly what brought me over to kind of like the Tate's hate speech world of it all as well.
00:52:49.900okay so what is it like following this because i mean i have a separate tiktok account that i use
00:52:58.060for like following nonsense just so that my personal tiktok account will not be all nonsense
00:53:03.460when i'm just trying to watch tiktoks what has it been like for you personally to have to like
00:53:06.920be mired in all this all the time you know it can be really hard some days um i feel like for me
00:53:13.740after working in media matters for nearly three years i've like really found a good way to pace
00:53:18.020myself kind of taking in this content um i think that honestly as a gay jewish man um seeing a lot
00:53:25.600of the anti-semitism and a lot of the homophobia and anti-pride month stuff has really been the
00:53:31.520hardest for me um i do think that it's really about pacing yourself when it comes to how i can
00:53:37.960kind of handle all of it um i also just think that the manosphere in particular i feel like is very
00:53:44.260reactionary to the moment, which means it's just like very fast paced. There's always something
00:53:48.960new happening. The world of kind of extremism feels a little bit slower. So I feel like also
00:53:54.340just making sure that, you know, I have people on my team that if I can't handle something or
00:54:01.240things are just happening too quickly, there are other like colleagues of mine that I feel like I
00:54:06.780can really hand it off to and I can really trust them with the content and the research as well.
00:54:11.340I'm glad you feel like you have that support. I'm interested. Do you see all of this stuff as kind of connected, like the anti-pride stuff? Is that sort of connected to the manosphere stuff? Like, is this all linked in some way in your mind?
00:54:24.600absolutely i really think that especially in this last year the manosphere like they they
00:54:32.220dove head first into the anti-lgbtq rhetoric and the anti-trans rhetoric there was a day in june
00:54:40.540where andrew tate thought it would be so hilarious to be like i'm a trans woman and then just started
00:54:46.340tweeting constantly all day about being trans it was really disgusting and something that i think
00:54:53.100you would really only find on elon musk's twitter um and another horrible example sneko who we were
00:54:59.880talking about before um he wrote the words pride month on a um shooting target and then went
00:55:08.360outside with automatic rifles and they were shooting at it um him and a couple of his buddies
00:55:14.300so it is just it is just really extreme the anti-lgbtq rhetoric it is it is honestly from
00:55:22.180the manosphere some of the some of the more scary stuff that i've seen it is it is really hard to0.99
00:55:28.180see shit is so fucked up and you know i don't know how you feel about this the way that i have0.98
00:55:34.960what i've been sort of saying is that even for people who have a problem with trans people or0.99
00:55:41.180queer people most people aren't doing this like like this like this is such a different thing
00:55:46.760taking the time out of your day to write pride month on a target and then go film yourself
00:55:51.760shooting at it or film yourself demolishing a target pride section that is not normal and I
00:55:58.200think that the thing that worries me is that it's signaling to people that oh this is normal0.76
00:56:04.280behavior like this is if you if you have a problem with queer people or trans people
00:56:09.340this is an appropriate way to to to deal with that and I think that there are plenty of people
00:56:16.440who probably do have problems with trans people and queer people but this is such a different
00:56:20.700thing. I feel like they're telling these people that this is an appropriate way to express whatever0.81
00:56:26.520bigotries that you have. And that's what really scares me. I do think that people like Sneeko
00:56:32.420when they do a stunt like that, it is to get clicks. But I also think it's normalizing it as
00:56:36.840well. I think it's exactly what you described. I think that they're thinking like, oh, if this is
00:56:41.780funny and Sneeko can do it, then it's cool if I do it as well. Or if someone wants to pretend to be
00:56:48.880a trans person online just to mock them and if your Kate is getting a bunch of clicks then like
00:56:53.840yeah sure well I can do that as well um and also Pearl just pearly things as well has been uh she0.71
00:57:01.320plays professional semi-professional volleyball I think over in England um that I think that's
00:57:06.860her like full-time job outside of being a commentator um and she's been like fighting
00:57:10.960with them about her anti-trans rhetoric and it has really only made her anti-LGBT rhetoric like
00:57:17.360so much worse um i think that people like her they are just like so so angry she has so much
00:57:27.360anger and people like andrew tay they are they have so much anger and like you just wonder where
00:57:32.280it comes from and like sometimes it's just so obvious that it's not actually towards the lgbt0.71
00:57:36.920community but that's where they're putting it and it's it's ridiculous and it's dangerous and scary1.00
00:57:42.480as i've said a couple times oh my god that's i've noticed the same thing is like
00:57:45.920there are plenty of things that i don't like in society i don't dedicate my time to like
00:57:52.720obsessing over the it in this way and also like like some of the andrew tate and fresh and fit
00:57:59.240like there's two clips that stick in my mind of them like ranting like andrew tate ranting about
00:58:05.280how like he doesn't eat breakfast because he starts his day with caffeine and nicotine and
00:58:10.040hate running through his veins. And like, there's this clip of, I think it's, I'm blanking the host's
00:58:15.660name, but like screaming into the microphone about how when he was playing too many video games,
00:58:23.560women didn't give him the time of day and how that was so horrible. It's like, they have such
00:58:28.580deep, clear reservoirs of hate and anger. And also they're telling people, don't you want to be like
00:58:35.480me? Not really. I want to wake up and have a nice breakfast. I don't want to start my day with hate
00:58:40.920and pain and caffeine and nicotine. I actually would love to have a nice breakfast. That actually
00:58:44.360sounds nice. Do I want to be foaming into a microphone, spewing hate and anger about all
00:58:50.560the women who've done me wrong? Not really. It actually doesn't seem appealing. And so it's
00:58:54.480very interesting how so much of their ethos, like you said, is based around be like me,
00:58:59.480but they don't actually seem very happy. And that's quite the opposite.
00:59:02.300it i'm like aren't you guys exhausted like like watching you guys i'm exhausted like being that
00:59:09.920angry all the time and like i don't know i don't know what it's what it's getting for you guys but
00:59:14.660like i just it shocks me it really does and i just think it it it's shocking and it presents like
00:59:24.200for for young men like they can have a different kind of life they can have different kinds of
00:59:29.240relationships. They can have meaningful, fulfilling relationships based on communication,
00:59:34.300trust, honesty, openness, respect, and all of that. That is possible for everybody.
00:59:38.580And I just think it presents such an empty worldview that in the end traps them as well.0.98
00:59:44.080We talk a lot, rightly, about the ways that this kind of content is a danger for women,
00:59:48.000which it is, but it's also such a danger to these men who are being sold a lie that this is all
00:59:53.160they can have, when in reality they can have so much more. The world is so much more open and
00:59:57.860available to them having a different kind of experience. But this content and this dynamic
01:00:02.920just keeps them trapped, probably miserable, and ultimately lacking an agency. And I just...
01:02:45.160let's listen to what he's got to say right if he has a if he has a microphone in front of him
01:02:50.920then i should maybe be taking him seriously i think is the thought that these people have
01:02:55.960like if i if i have a big fancy yeti mic or whatever i have and i got my big expensive
01:03:01.800um over the head earphones on then like this person might mean something this person
01:03:07.540you know has the ability to put a podcast out and maybe that also carries some weight to it
01:03:13.140I feel like sometimes when I'm watching these smaller, like right wing media figures that are doing podcasts for my job, I'm like, are they uploading this anywhere? Or do they just like click start on Photo Booth and like sit in front of their microphone and just kind of like run with it? I actually don't know. I would love to, sometimes I would love to see people set up.
01:03:37.640No, I have definitely 100% seen TikTok clips where it's like, I know that mic is not on.
01:03:51.220So Justin, let's say that somebody listening has somebody in their life, kind of asking
01:03:56.360for selfish reasons because I apparently do have somebody in my life who is watching this
01:04:01.500kind of content and you're worried about them.
01:04:03.140Do you have any tips for how we might approach that?
01:04:07.640Um, I think that finding good content to replace the bad content is a great place to start when it comes to like talking about masculinity. I also think that being able to show people the worst parts of these influencers is a really important aspect. So kind of like your family member, where they're like, Oh, well, I see the I see the grind set of it all I see him like smoking his cigars.
01:04:28.960It's like, okay, but do you see him talking about, you know, hitting women or talking bad about the LGBTQ community?
01:04:39.560I think that what is important is kind of talking to the values of the people that are watching these influencers that maybe you can hit on in a different way.
01:04:51.800So if your family member cares about LGBTQ rights, if your family member cares about, you know, violence against women, it's, you know, directing the attention towards different aspects of these influencers that maybe they don't see on TikTok or they don't see directly online, but are definitely there if you sit and listen and do a little bit of research.
01:05:12.540That's really good advice. And I think the point about, like, replacing the content that they're currently consuming with something else is such a good one. And I think it really speaks to, like, bad actors and their ability to seize gaps in information and content.
01:05:29.780Because, you know, I'm probably like you, I'm part of like coalitions and panels about how we speak to different groups. And one that comes up time and time again is like this entire generation of disaffected young people, a lot of whom are men, that we're just not speaking to, right?
01:05:49.820Nobody is actually, in a meaningful way, seeing them, speaking to their issues.
01:05:54.680At least they don't feel that way.0.86
01:05:56.340And the people who are getting their ears and eyes are these charlatans with a dangerous0.86
01:06:17.800It really comes down to the messaging.
01:06:19.500Like, who is the messaging for? And I feel like a lot of that when it comes to like political messaging is like we're really aiming towards this one demographic, whether that be young people or like older voters or someone like that.
01:06:32.540But I feel like when it comes down to it, when we're creating content and we're being, you know, influencers, these influencers, I don't think that there are a lot of people out there that their initial thought is I want to do I want to do good things for young men.
01:06:49.420I don't think that people really, I don't think that's something that people really think of right off the bat. And maybe that just needs to be, you know, looked at from a different lens. I'm not totally sure how to get people there, I guess. I don't know how to get the message across and get the message out.
01:07:06.760It feels like an important fight and something we can talk about in circles and circles, but I'm not sure what the next step would always be to get people to create better content that can replace the bad content.
01:07:20.240When you think about the future of where we are with this kind of content and our discourse more generally online, are you hopeful?