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00:02:13.660This is part two of a two-part episode about Brayden Peters, a.k.a. Clavicular,
00:02:20.300the looks-maxing influencer who recently experienced an overdose on a live stream.
00:02:25.900If you have not listened to part one, you should.
00:02:29.380In that part one, we walk through who Peters is and how he rose to prominence online.
00:02:34.820And in this second part, I want to talk about the role that I think the mainstream media played in that rise.
00:02:40.920And it didn't even really start with coverage of Peters.
00:02:44.300Let's take it back to how mainstream outlets were writing about the rise of the so-called alt-right a few years ago.
00:02:50.200So let's talk about the role that media plays in turning niche extremists like Brayden Peters, also known as Clavicular Online, into celebrity figures.
00:03:04.540I need to own that it's a little bit complicated because I also do feel that we spent far too much time doing that thing where media says, oh, we're going to ignore these extremist figures and just allow them to amass more and more power and influence without any kind of mainstream scrutiny.
00:03:22.720And then by the time this figure is big and they're everywhere all over the Internet, then mainstream media is talking about them.
00:03:31.400I saw that a lot, and I think it was a big mistake. But it's also not like the only two choices are either media ignores figures like Peter's as they get bigger and bigger, or they have to cover them, but they have no choice but to do so in ways that essentially celebrate them or almost kind of sound like they're advocating for them or that they think that the audience should be sort of flattered or interested in them.
00:03:57.200where they're essentially doing positive PR for these folks and helping them build their brands.
00:04:02.920Like, I think there has got to be a line between writing critically about these figures
00:04:06.660and essentially doing the work of building up their platforms on their behalf.
00:04:11.160And this is a conversation that really predates the rise of Peters.
00:04:15.500This is probably not the first example of this or the only example of this,
00:04:19.360but the one that sticks with me very personally is back in 2016
00:04:23.020when Mother Jones wrote about Richard Spencer and the rise of the so-called alt-right.
00:04:29.860Now, to be clear, having read the whole piece, it is like critical of the alt-right and critical
00:04:34.840of figures like Spencer. But the headline for the piece was like, check out these dapper new
00:04:40.920Nazis strolling into town. It was actually a little bit hard to find the actual article because
00:04:46.540they did change the title on the piece that ran online eventually, but they didn't remove it from
00:04:51.060the Instagram and we dug and we dug and we were able to find it. And again, I would say the piece
00:04:56.840is critical of the alt-right, but the first few sentences are like describing Richard Spencer
00:05:03.860in this beautiful hotel room, eating fancy sushi with chopsticks. And he almost sounds like a
00:05:11.500lifestyle influencer or a menswear influencer and not a hate monger. And so again, the piece itself
00:05:19.640was critical, but the headline in the image of Spencer in this like dapper suit, also with a
00:05:25.640subhead that again, calls him handsome and dapper and says that they're trying to make fascism cool
00:05:30.600again. That's what people share on social media. It's the headline and the image. And so even if
00:05:36.740the piece goes on to be critical, which in this case it did, the conversation that's building up0.71
00:05:41.180around the piece kind of sounds like, look at these cool, handsome Nazis, which yuck. And to me,0.80
00:05:49.060that kind of came to represent the pinnacle of the bad job media has done when it comes to how
00:05:55.240we talk about these folks critically. In the same way that I think it was very irresponsible for the
00:06:00.260New York Times to call Peters a handsomeness influencer in that big profile of him that
00:06:06.520really helped build his platform, I also did not think it was appropriate to frame the alt-right
00:06:12.000as almost like a dapper menswear club. I'm not saying that these folks should not be written
00:06:17.700about. I think they absolutely should be written about because they deserve mainstream scrutiny
00:06:22.400and we should know who they are. But writing about them like this is a choice. Writing about
00:06:27.840them in this way that builds their brands for them is a choice. Right. And in some of these
00:06:32.940cases, it almost seems like the media outlets themselves, like in that New York Times example,
00:07:35.740Yes, because this is somebody who objectively pushes white supremacist ideology. This is somebody who is publicly engaged in self-harm and the harm of others. Choosing in the title or the subhead of your piece to describe him as just somebody who promotes handsomeness? Come on, you know?
00:07:54.840And I think this gets back to my opinion, I guess my take, is that I think a lot of legacy media organizations, they're doing that because they understand that framing it that way gets more engagement.
00:08:07.820If you were to frame it as a critical piece about somebody who is unwell and engages in self-harm and the harm of others, I don't think that's as edgy as describing it as, oh, this handsome guy who has kind of an unusual worldview and an unusual pastime and practice around self-improvement.
00:08:28.000I mean, it almost kind of feels like a certain type of access journalism, but the access that they're trying to get is access to somebody who was clearly unwell.
00:08:36.680It is definitely a tricky, fine line to walk of like how journalists should be covering people like this. But to your point, I think it seems clear that the coverage that Peters has gotten over the past week is not the way, right? Like it seems like this is not the way and we all need to learn how to cover it better.
00:09:01.820Yes, and I'm glad that you put it that way
00:09:03.660because I'm not pretending like I have all the answers.
00:09:56.760Like, I know that it is complicated, but it's work that needs to be done and it's worth figuring out because we're going to just see more and more and more of these figures rising to prominence.
00:10:07.240And I know that this is not the right way to do it.
00:10:10.460Yeah. And I agree that it's going to become an even bigger problem because there's just so much reward to be had.
00:10:18.380If you're like a mid-tier influencer and you look at this enormous run of success that Peters has had over the past week where he has shot to national attention and celebrity, emulating that probably looks like a pretty good idea, right?
00:10:36.420And I think people in traditional media really need to think carefully about making sure that they aren't setting themselves up to be gamed by smart, savvy, young influencer types who are taking notes and behaving in ways specifically to get this kind of attention because it is so rewarding.
00:11:02.320Exactly. So let's break that down because I want to be clear. It's not like Peters was a complete nobody. He has over a million followers across platforms. He is and was genuinely influential within the looks-maxing community. But that context that you just brought up really matters a lot.
00:11:23.240So if we compare him to other major manosphere influencers, Andrew Tate has tens of millions of followers and clearly has mainstream political access.
00:11:33.720Jordan Peterson, he has a book empire, major interviewers, even folks that I would categorize as sort of mid-tier figures like Fresh and Fit.
00:11:42.000They have much larger, more established fan bases than Peters ever had.
00:11:47.720Before December 2025, about the time when Peters was on my radar, he was very known within his subculture, but basically not really that known outside of it.
00:11:59.440Unless you were somebody who was following online niche subcultures and that, like unless you were someone like me who was like in the trenches, you probably didn't know who this guy was.
00:12:59.320I would argue that he became recognizable because these publications said that he was recognizable,
00:13:04.740said that he was somebody that you needed to know about.
00:13:07.260February 2026, The New York Times publishes its major profile by Joseph Bernstein.
00:13:13.320Peters is now earning $100,000 a month.
00:13:16.560Also in February, Peters walks New York Fashion Week for designer Elena Velez.
00:13:21.320This is just days after his arrest in Arizona.
00:13:23.720By late March of 2026, The New York Times devotes a full episode of The Daily to Peters and Looksmaxing.
00:13:31.760And then that leads us to just last week, April 14th, 2026, Peters is hospitalized for a suspected drug overdose while live streaming.
00:13:41.980So to me, that paints a very clear timeline of the fact that, you know, this guy's increasingly extreme behavior plus mainstream media attention is what led to his celebrity really growing.
00:13:58.520Sophia Tespe wrote a really sharp piece of media criticism for Salon on April 6,
00:14:03.4202026, where she compared the coverage of Peters to this infamous 2017 New York Times profile
00:14:09.560of Tony Hovater, who is a neo-Nazi welder in Ohio. The profile talked about how much this
00:14:16.000guy loved Seinfeld and how much he liked the store Target. And the Times got into trouble
00:14:21.660for basically normalizing white nationalism. At Salon, Tespe writes, quote,
00:14:27.480if Charlottesville taught journalists to be wary of amplifying ideology, the current moment demands
00:14:33.180an understanding that in an attention economy, amplification itself is the ideology. And I
00:14:39.360completely agree with that. Again, I am not saying that these people should not be scrutinized,
00:14:45.000should not be written about, but it is a choice to write about them in a kind of way that just
00:14:49.880amplifies and does the work of what they're trying to do for them, that helps them launder
00:14:54.480their ideologies for audiences and make those ideologies seem cool or handsome or sexy or
00:15:02.000whatever. That's such a good comparison to that 2017 profile. I remember that, you know, this was
00:15:08.360shortly after Trump had been elected to his first term. And there was like this national
00:15:15.940movement seemingly to like normalize extremists and make people with neo-Nazi beliefs seem as if
00:15:29.380they were mainstream. And that was about 10 years ago. And so it's interesting to think about that
00:15:35.600example and compare it with Peter's, what's happening today, because there are so many
00:15:41.460similarities to the underlying ideology as you've described but like the face of it has evolved
00:15:48.860possibly because it's been struck by a hammer possibly for other reasons most likely because
00:15:54.960people have gotten wise and that sort of stuff just doesn't play so well anymore maybe hopefully
00:16:04.360I think you're right and I guess that's why I keep bringing it back to this gender lens because0.90
00:16:09.980I really do think that if you took a woman, an influencer whose claim to fame was disordered0.72
00:16:15.500eating and promoting disordered eating for others, I don't think we would see these outlets
00:16:20.520covering it the same way. We have women influencers, people like Liv Schmidt, who we've talked about
00:16:25.360on the podcast before, who their whole thing is being super thin and promoting disordered1.00
00:16:31.220eating to others. And you don't see the New York Times calling them, you know, beauty influencers
00:17:03.780It's kind of coming back in the form of skinny talk.
00:17:06.560But we did not also have a mainstream media that was amplifying this and laundering this as a cool or sexy or reasonable thing to do like we do now.
00:17:18.820And so I think if you looked at Peter's documented behavior from that lens and not from an entertainment lens, it becomes so clear how irresponsible it is to divorce what Peter's actually promotes and stands for from all of the harmful behaviors that it actually is.
00:17:36.360So, you know, self-administering steroid injections starting at age 14, using methamphetamines to suppress appetites for appearance goals, bone smashing, hitting himself in the face with a hammer to change his bone structure.
00:17:49.300Obviously, doctors have said don't do that because it causes fractures that can heal properly, can cause permanent nerve damage and disfigurement.
00:17:58.380And on top of that, there is no scientific basis for it even working to make you look a certain way.
00:18:05.080injecting unregulated substances into his own body
00:18:08.580and the body of others, including minors, without medical training,
00:18:12.240and looking at the circumstances regarding his recent overdose.
00:18:15.920When that happened, Peters posted to X with blood on his face,
00:21:45.460Dr. Justin Nepa, who is a board-certified psychiatrist in Florida,
00:21:49.380wrote a clinical analysis of Luxmaxing in March, and he said,
00:21:52.600What often begins as an innocent foray into better grooming or fitness can quickly spiral into a severe cycle of body dysmorphic disorder, depression, substance abuse, and self-harm.
00:22:03.900He also said that he has seen young men spend three to four hours daily analyzing their facial features, measuring jawlines with calipers, and comparing themselves to digitally altered images.
00:22:17.940And again, if you were a young woman who came of age when I did at a time when magazine covers were all making it very clear that the most important thing that you could be was like super skinny to be hot, this behavior, it doesn't seem that foreign to me.
00:22:36.880But then you have mainstream platforms trying to make it seem like this is reasonable or even safe or healthy behavior, that it's just, you know, regular grooming or regular self-improvement when it isn't.
00:22:49.960Body dysmorphic disorder affects about 2% of the general population.
00:22:53.920In heavy social media users, that figure more than doubles to 4.2%.
00:23:02.240Studies consistently show that individuals with untreated BDD who undergo cosmetic procedures experience no improvement or worsening of symptoms.
00:23:12.080Peters has had multiple of these procedures.
00:23:13.980So, again, it's not like something where you can get the procedure, get the jawline, get the thing that you've been holding out for, and then a switch flips and you're fine.
00:23:25.440In fact, the data seems to be pretty clear that that's actually not what happens.
00:23:28.480It's a consistent hamster wheel where the point is trying to achieve the status of perfection, but perfection does not really exist.
00:23:38.000So it's going to continue to be increasing, increasing things with a never-ending cycle.
00:23:43.580A 2025 peer-reviewed paper called Looks Maxing, colon, straddling the inflection between self-enhancement and self-harm,
00:23:50.400directly associates this content with body dissatisfaction, body dysmorphia, and suicidal ideation in young men.
00:23:57.420So when you look at all of those behaviors together, the meth, the testosterone at 14, the hammer, I think it's pretty clear that we're talking about self-harm behavior.
00:24:09.540Yeah, those are harmful behaviors, right?
00:24:12.020That one is doing himself by definition, self-harm.
00:24:17.240And I just, again, I just really think that we would be responding differently to Peters if he were a woman.
00:24:22.700Going back to those early 2010s, Tumblr, pro-anorexia communities, those communities were mostly teenage girls and young women.
00:24:32.520They were thinspo photos, diet tips, tips for evading parents and doctors, mantras like skip dinner, end up thinner.
00:24:40.020Again, if you listen to our Skinny Talk episode, you know that it's still very much a thing.
00:24:43.620It's very similar to, I think, what Peters is pushing. A tight-knit online community with its own vocabulary, hierarchies, and in-group culture. Check. An ideology that frames dangerous self-harm behaviors as an aspirational lifestyle choice. Check. Pseudoscience justifications for those behaviors. Check. Practical tips on how to harm yourself more effectively. Check. Tips on evading medical scrutiny and parental scrutiny. Check.
00:25:11.900Monetization through memberships and affiliate products.
00:25:21.680In February 2012, after pressure from the National Eating Disorder Association,
00:25:26.260Tumblr announced that it would ban blogs that actively promote or glorify self-harm, including eating disorders.
00:25:32.300And those communities were not celebrated as, like, a fascinating cultural provocateur, right?
00:25:38.380For the most part, they were treated as a public health crisis. Like platforms were pressured into getting rid of the content. Research was published into it. Journalists covered it as a kind of harm, not an interesting cultural spectacle like what I think that we're seeing with Peters.
00:25:54.340Those comparisons are so strong when you lay them out like that, that, you know, after running through that long list, it's like, how could anyone not take a gender lens to see the different way that Peters and looks maxing is being treated than it would if he were a woman?
00:26:17.020or not even hypothetically, how the pro-anorexia movement was treated several years ago.
00:26:26.640And I know you and I talked about this a little bit before the show.
00:26:30.180I just think it's so interesting to think about why that different treatment exists
00:26:35.320for looks-maxing, which seems geared at young men,
00:26:39.020versus the pro-anorexia movement, which was primarily aimed at young women.
00:26:45.960And we came up with a couple of hypotheses, but no, like, really clear answer.
00:26:53.780You know, I would be interested to hear from listeners if they have any thoughts about why this difference exists.
00:27:01.100I don't know if you want to opine a little bit on it right now.
00:27:04.080Yeah, I mean, this is just my opinion.
00:27:05.920This is for people who are much smarter than me to figure out.
00:27:08.960I don't have any kind of inside knowledge into this.
00:27:11.060I just want to own this is just my opinion.
00:27:12.680I think that because it is associated with men and masculinity, it automatically is given a different lens or a different framing.
00:27:22.600I think that when men do something, it is seen as like a serious thing that has serious societal consequences or impact or that we need to be looking at it and treating it in a much more serious lens.
00:27:34.580I think it's easier to see young women and girls doing a similar, not entirely identical, but a similar thing and saying, oh, those that's unwell behavior, that self-harm behavior.
00:27:47.700I think that when I'm when it's coming from young men and boys, when it's coming from and targeted at young men and boys, I think it's easier for some people to apply a different lens to it.
00:27:56.900I guess I don't really know why. And I think you can really see it in how Peters was dealt with
00:28:03.720or not dealt with, depending on how you look at it, after he filmed himself injecting peptides
00:28:08.460into his body, into his then underage girlfriend's face. He was temporarily banned from kick and then
00:28:15.480came back. He got that New York Times profile and then he walked in fashion week. And so I just
00:28:21.680think that if there had been a woman who had done something analogous I don't think that she would
00:28:27.180get all of the all of this like positive stuff out of it and I also wonder if part of it is that we
00:28:33.600just are aware of the pressure around this kind of thing when it comes to girls but we're less aware
00:28:41.480of it when it comes to young men and boys that we have a framework in our mind for what it looks
00:28:46.860like when a young woman or a girl is coming into contact with this kind of content and this kind of
00:28:53.100behavior that I almost wonder if we don't if we if we have not really identified a similar kind
00:28:57.200of language around what it looks like and how it should be treated when it's happening to a young
00:29:01.040man or a boy I agree I think that's a big piece of this that we just have like a background cultural
00:29:09.020familiarity with the fact that these things are threats to young women the ideas of body dysmorphia
00:29:15.320body image issues, disordered eating. A lot of people are very familiar with those problems in
00:29:20.720the context of young women. And it does feel more new to be applying those same concerns to
00:29:28.120young men. And there's surely a whole bunch of cultural reasons for that. But it does seem like
00:29:37.520perhaps we all need to update our mental models and realize that young men are being
00:29:44.540really affected and targeted by these harmful things.
00:29:49.220Yeah, a UC San Francisco study by Dr. Jason Nagata found a 400 percent increase in eating
00:29:55.160disorder hospitalizations among boys since 2002.
00:29:58.920So boys are not immune to body image pathology and issues, but I think perhaps they are less
00:30:05.480seen in the frameworks that we have built around addressing it.
00:30:10.100I don't think that we are like, we have not updated our information about what and who gets impacted by eating disorders and body dysmorphia and self-harm around it.
00:30:20.140And just another thing that I wanted to say while we're making these comparisons to the pro-Anna, pro-eating disorder, mostly content for and by women and girls, largely those communities were girls harming themselves.
00:30:34.780Again, we do have figures like Liv Schmidt, who ran an online group where you could pay to get access to her tips and tricks for disordered eating. So it's not entirely, but mostly it is like self-harm. But Peters has demonstrably harmed other people. You know, that girlfriend that he injected with the peptides, the women that he provoked a fight with to post online to get engagement, the person he hit with that cyber truck.
00:31:00.920He doxxed a reporter who was trying to interview him.
00:31:04.500He openly advocates for teenage boys to inject themselves with unregulated hormones.
00:31:09.700And he earns $100K a month in doing it.
00:31:12.780So that financial incentive to continue this behavior and for other people to continue behavior like this is obviously enormous.
00:31:19.720And that takes me back to my question about the role in media amplifying him.
00:31:25.840Right. The incentives for him, but also the incentives for media who might want to cover him.
00:31:32.840Yes. So that's a piece of this I want to really dig into, because I do think it is incentivized to write about him.
00:31:40.920You know, in the six weeks following him reportedly hitting a guy with a cyber truck while live streaming, Peters went from this well-known subcultural figure to essentially a mainstream Internet celebrity.
00:31:55.180And here's a rundown of all the places in the aftermath of that that wrote pieces on him.
00:31:59.500There was a piece in Wired in September 2025.
00:32:01.980It was his first major outlet profile that called him one of looks-maxing's most popular influencers.
00:32:07.540That Atlantic piece, which called him the newest star of the movement.
00:32:09.900That January 2026 Rolling Stone piece that called him a premier figure in looks-maxing.
00:32:14.920That piece did also note that Peters' fixation on optimization is inseparable from aggressive sexism.
00:32:20.580There was a piece in The Guardian in January calling him one of the most prominent influencers in the looks-maxing community, a full profile at GQ in February, that New York Times piece in February, which was a major, major profile, and then later devoted an entire episode of The Daily to him in March, and then walking in a looks-maxing-themed runway for designer Elena Velez just days after he was arrested.
00:32:44.760And so I think the outlets and the institutions clearly get some sort of benefit from the association with him, not necessarily like critical association, but association that traffics in the sort of cultural cachet or perceived cultural relevance of what he is doing.
00:33:03.360And I think each one of those is a signal that made the next one that followed more and more justified, right? Each one raised his income, raised his platform, built out this cultural cachet and legitimacy, which we know is exactly what these guys are after.
00:33:19.660And so I do think it's like they're kind of working in tandem here where, you know, the outlet that writes about him in this particular kind of way gets a raised profile.
00:33:30.900And so does he. So it's like, you know, one hand washes the other kind of thing, I think.
00:33:35.420Again, I know this is a tough line to walk, but that's just that's just my take on what's happening here.
00:33:40.880It seems fair. It seems warranted. I mean, you go through that timeline and that's so many major profiles from major publications within like a month of each other. You know, national politicians would be thrilled to have that kind of attention.
00:33:57.040There are tons of A-list celebrities who did not receive that much attention in January and February of this year.
00:34:04.320Exactly. And this is somebody who does not even really have that big of a footprint. He certainly didn't have that big of a footprint to warrant this much ink at the time.
00:38:42.020She also noted that that New York Times profile, which I completely agree with, never quite grapples with the women that Peters has harmed, the teenage boys injecting steroids into themselves at his instruction, or the reporter on whom he sicked an anti-Semitic mob, and that ultimately the form of coverage these figures get really does matter.
00:39:03.320Ezra Marcus, writing at The Intelligentsia, described Peters as, quote, something of an edgelord folk hero whose profit strategy fuses shock jock tactics with straightforward marketing.
00:39:14.420That like shock jock folk hero profit strategy framing, I think, is exactly the heart of the problem here because it treats what I think is objectively self-destructive behavior as a kind of brand strategy, not as symptoms of a mental illness or some larger issue.
00:39:35.260And I think it's worth kind of like saying plainly that this is not just a body image stories. Peters has also been described by the forward as a right wing extremist to watch in 2026.
00:39:47.820Charlie Wurzel of The Atlantic writes about how Peters revels in anti-Semitism.
00:39:53.220He's well known for using racist slurs in his live stream.
00:39:57.220And as we already discussed, we know that looks-maxing ideology and the broader white nationalist movement it represents are not adjacent.
00:40:05.720They are like the same. That Venn diagram is like essentially a circle.
00:40:08.740And so the choice to cover him as a just a cultural phenomenon, I think it is a choice that has wildly dangerous, harmful impacts, not just for Peters, for all of us.
00:40:26.440But as we talked about, it is hard to know, like, what is the line? What is the right way to cover these kinds of figures? What do you think? You know, for journalists who might be listening and asking, like, well, what is the right way to cover somebody like Peters? What do you wish would have been different in some of this coverage he's gotten over the past month?
00:40:50.700Yeah, something that I think needs to happen is you have to give a full accounting of what it is this person has done. And I'm not even talking about, you know, I'm talking about like his own words, things that he has said.
00:41:05.360I think that they're really making some editorial choices about what is and is not part of his story or an important part of his story.
00:41:14.120I think a lot of the stuff that he does with like slurs and his anti-Semitism, I think somewhere along the line, they've made an editorial choice that that stuff is like just kidding or just joking and is not really important to the story of who he is.
00:41:28.980And I'd like to know why, you know, and if you're trying to be of service to your audience or your readers, why have you made, how have you come to the conclusion that some of this stuff is not important to include for folks to understand who this person is?
00:41:43.280And if it's not important, then why are you telling me about him?
00:41:45.940Like, that's another question I would ask.
00:41:47.800When he didn't have that many followers and was still a pretty niche person in this niche subculture, why was it important that I know about him?
00:41:55.460I'm not saying that it's not important, but I think that, like, you've got to make a case for why it is that you're telling me about him. Why are the New York Times dedicating an entire episode of The Daily to him? And I think it's important to sort of end with where Peters is now, where we are in all of this.
00:42:10.860So as I said, last week, April 14th, Peters was streaming from a bar in Miami and his friends noticed that something was wrong.
00:42:19.060He became unresponsive. The stream cut out.
00:42:21.240The Miami Fire Department responded to the report of a 20-year-old having a possible OD.
00:42:26.980That was Peters. He was hospitalized in stable condition.
00:42:30.400And then the next morning, he posted that photo of himself with blood on his face and he wrote,
00:42:37.460All of the substances are just a cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public.
00:42:42.340But that obviously isn't a real solution.
00:42:44.940And again, he goes on to talk about how the worst part of the night was his face descending from the life support mask.
00:42:51.240And that's the thing that he, you know, chose to tell his followers about that was like weighing on him after a hospitalization for an OD that happened on a live stream.
00:43:03.140He's worried about what it did to his face, what his face looks like.
00:43:07.320And it reads to me like a 20-year-old who has been told by both like the community online that he came of age in, by other influencers, by mainstream outlets like the New York Times who are calling him somebody who promotes handsomeness, that his worth is his appearance.
00:43:25.420And I just don't think that we would do that with someone who was struggling with a more, quote, feminized version of body dysmorphia and self-harm.
00:43:34.140And so since his OD, he has indicated publicly that he might not be streaming that much anymore, not because he's taking a mental health break, but because, according to him, he can't stream sober.
00:43:48.060He said in a video, I ain't going to be doing any more substances for a little while, hopefully for forever.
00:43:53.460But that means I can't really IRL stream anymore.
00:43:57.500I can't really IRL stream because, as you guys know, I'm quite brutal without that.
00:44:01.920So I think I have to figure something else out.
00:44:04.940And I think that's really what it comes down to, that this is obviously somebody who is not well,
00:44:11.580who is using substances and self-harm by his own words to cope.
00:44:17.560And I think that not just for him, I think that for all of us,
00:44:21.960it would behoove us if media and journalists could figure out a way to cover this person
00:44:28.520in a way that is a little more responsible and a little more ethical
00:44:31.440and that really makes clear what it is that we're actually talking about.
00:44:36.000Because I tell you, it ain't just like some interesting cultural online phenomenon.
00:44:40.840at the heart of it is clearly an unwell person, and I don't think that media should be obscuring
00:44:46.980that just to get engagement. So I know that this episode has been quite a lot about Peters,
00:44:53.140but it's not even really about this one guy. It's really about what happens next, because
00:44:58.280Peters is not going to be the last person to push harmful ideology or to try to package
00:45:03.620self-destructive ideas as just self-improvement. We already know that this pattern is so much
00:45:09.640bigger than any one individual. So the real question that I would ask is, what role do major
00:45:15.320outlets want to play in that cycle? When institutions like the New York Times or others
00:45:20.820choose to frame these extremist figures, do they interrupt that pipeline or do they just smooth it
00:45:26.900out? Do they help contextualize harm and help their audience really understand what's at stake
00:45:32.480and who these people are? Or do they repackage it into something that feels safe or even
00:45:38.280aspirational or cool until it doesn't. To me, it's about whether or not this attention is
00:45:44.220becoming a form of platform building. And then you have these same systems later going on to
00:45:49.500critique these figures when it's like, wait a minute, you helped them become this big influential
00:45:54.460figure in the first place. And I want to be clear, Peters is responsible for his own actions and his
00:46:00.180own bad behavior. But shouldn't the institutions that decide what becomes visible, what gets
00:46:05.920amplified and what gets turned into a story rather than a warning sign, like they also share some of
00:46:11.480the responsibility here. So it really isn't about this one guy. It is whether or not we've built
00:46:17.180media and digital systems that can recognize the difference between reporting on harm and just
00:46:22.540helping to repackage it and make it palatable for more and more people at scale. So I know that was
00:46:27.560a lot. I've clearly been holding in a lot of thoughts about this person and the phenomena
00:46:32.600around them. Again, this is one of those episodes where this is just my opinion. I really want to
00:46:38.100hear what folks think. Like, has this person come across your feed? What has your engagement with
00:46:43.780them looked like? And if you have any thoughts on how folks can do a better job, myself very much
00:46:48.080included, talking about people like this and extremist figures like this, we would love to
00:46:53.300hear it. If you're on Spotify, you can leave us a comment in our Spotify comments or shoot us an
00:46:57.620email. Maybe we'll do a follow-up episode about how people feel. But yeah, that's all I got.
00:47:02.600Well, thank you, Bridget, for the rundown, and listeners can leave us Spotify comments, shoot us an email, hello at Tangody, follow Bridget or the show on social, Bridget Marie in D.C., and just the name of the show, There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:47:17.880Thanks, Bridget, and I'll talk to you soon.