Everything Is Content - Concert etiquette, passport bros & the Skinny Influencer

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

This week it’s our beloved Oenone’s turn to be ill- she was very missed but the show went on with Ruchira and Beth getting stuck into the debate about modern concert etiquette after a viral call out after a Chappell Roan gig. Are we forgetting how to behave at events or are times simply changing?Next up is Jamali Maddix’s documentary on so-called ‘passport bros’ who encourage young men to travel to South America to find better lives and better wives. A sinister male MLM in the making or just a passing fad- we discuss. And lastly The New York Times investigated a ‘Skinny Influencer’ after she was banned from TikTok for videos that some believe encourage disordered eating. Is this a move in the right direction or social media censorship? And why can't we escape the cult of thinness? This final conversation contains potentially triggering mention of eating disorders and diet culture, so please listen with care. Run-don’t-walk to our Instagram @everythingiscontentpod to let us know what you thought about today’s topics- our DMs and comments are wide open and waiting. THE GUARDIAN - The Ministry of Time NETFLIX - His Three DaughtersVARIETY - Bebe Rexha Hit by PhoneSKY NEWS - Pink stunned by fan’s mothers ashes THE GUARDIAN - Brixton Academy CrushBILLBOARD - Astroworld DISTRACTIFY - beabadoobee Stresses Importance of Concert EtiquetteU&DAVE - Jamali Maddix: Follow the LeaderTHE GUARDIAN - Hustlers INDIE MAG- Conspiracy Culture THE GUARDIAN - Follow the Leader NYTIMES - Who Is the ‘Skinny Influencer?’ WSJ - Liv Schmidt  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Did I get that right? Last time I fudged the word latte so many times. It was latte. It was, do you remember that? I'm Beth. I'm Richira. And this is Everything Is Content. We're the podcast that dives into the week's biggest and best pop culture stories. But sadly, this is also autumn, which means it's sickness season and Anoni has been taken down this week. Don't worry, she's recharging so she can join us next week and she'll be here bigger and brighter than ever, I'm sure. In the meantime, we are like the pumpkin spice to your overpriced latte. On this week's episode, we're discussing concert etiquette, the problematic rise of passport bros, and internet villain of the week, the so-called skinny influencer. Just a warning, that chat's going to contain discussions around

eating disorders and body image, but we're going to give you a warning later on. So the first two segments will not have any discussions around that. Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at everythingiscontentpod and make sure you're subscribed so you never miss an episode. Beth, you're back, which means I hope you have some pop culture recommendations for us hopefully one from your sick bed oh my god I do actually and I have to say like it's so nice being back I thought last week I would feel okay about having a little week off but I genuinely just felt really left out it was like it was like missing school and then yeah it's like missing

school and then finding out something really exciting and like an astronaut I visited school just I just didn't like it at all so I'm so pleased um to be back I feel really sad that I know it's kind of had to tag out but yes pop culture recommendations I do have because I just lay in bed reading snacking and watching tv I have been watching lost on your recommendation and it's overtaken my life so I'm kind of an I'm half annoyed and half thrilled because it's so it's so so good um but like I eat sleep and repeat lost but I also have a book recommendation which I would love to share I've been loving and tell me if you've read this or heard of it it's a novel called the ministry of time by Callie-Anne Bradley so I I'm part of a book club and this one was recommended. And as far as I'm aware, the book club loved this book, but I couldn't make it. So that's literally on my list. I'm so

excited for your review. What is it? Oh my God, great. Okay, so it came out earlier this year, and it had a lot of hype around it, which at the time, I kind of avoided. I think I'm a bit of a contrarian like that. Loads of hype. I just want to avoid it until it's gone down think I'm a bit of a contrarian like that loads of hype I just want to avoid it until it's gone down I'm such an arsehole anyway the book is a it's kind of like a multi-genre speculative sci-fi slash romance novel um set in the 2020 so sometime this decade I don't think I'm not finished yet I don't think we know exactly when it's set. And it is about a civil servant who starts a new job at the Ministry of Time, working with expats, who in this context, that means people who have been taken from their point in history via time travel and brought to

the present day. So it's a time travel book. And they do it really cleverly in that the Ministry of Time takes people who we know from historical records have died in their time so that it doesn't kind of mess. It's not like the butterfly effect. Like they were done in their time. So just before they died, we yoink them out from their time into our time. And it's about this civil servant who goes into this new department

and as part of this kind of experiment on time travel lives with one of these expats who is this guy called graham who i think he was part of a victorian antarctic exhibition in like the mid 1800s and got lost and died so they pick this guy they bring him forward in time and they end up living together she monitors him in the present day just to see what time travel does to a human body and brain so that you know we can potentially use it in government activities and it's just such a fun interesting premise and the woman i don't think we even know her name yet unless i've just completely missed it on every single page but she is um of she's I'm sure she's a British Cambodian woman um and she's obviously

meeting this white Victorian guy from hundreds of years ago such a cultural clash it's really confronting like it's not a fluff book although it is very very sweet and charming and it's like you know they kind of have to confront their differences their points of view they're teaching each other things and I don't want to say more because I don't want to spoil it but it is very very sweet and charming and it's like you know they kind of have to confront their differences their points of view they're teaching each other things and I don't want to say more because I don't want to spoil it but it is so I'm absolutely loving it so far so there you go I think you should I think you should we could do a book club if you want to if you want to read alongside moi yes yeah that would be amazing that sounds like such a good book I I've been going through a bit of a dud with books I've not been enjoying I'm not going to name any names because books are all personal and yeah I don't want to shit on any books um so yeah I'm well excited to get a

recommendation from you thank you you are welcome uh Richard what have you been loving this week so I watched a film called his three daughters um it I saw I walked past a cousin last week and saw this poster of Natasha Lyonne Elizabeth Olsen and Carrie Coon and I was like what film could this be because three legends in a film that I've not heard of what is this but it's out on Netflix basically I think it's really worth a watch I really enjoyed the fact that those three women play sisters and they're grieving a father who is essentially working through the very last days of his life you know he he's really unwell he's not super responsive he's not very conscious So they're all just kind of tending to him whilst understanding that he could pass any time. And they're all in just like a really small New York apartment.

So it feels like a play and it feels really intense. And the spotlight is very much on their dynamics and their emotions and their frustrations with each other and years of resentment coming to their forefront in this like super intense emotional situation. That sounds amazing. Is it funny? Is it kind of like dark humour at all?

Or is it kind of more emotive? I would say it's more emotive. If there are funny moments, there probably are a few, they are rarer compared to the intensity of the situation and yeah, the drama that's involved and Natasha Leone I just fucking love I wish I could watch a film with her in it every year every not every year every month we I feel like we'd love sister or maybe there's just been a spate of like

sister focused sibling books tvs like we did it with Blue Sisters. We did it with Julia Armfield's most recent book. I'm really drawn to them and I love them. I love Carrie Coon. I don't think we see her very often. I'm going to go and watch this. Thank you, Ruchira. so last week a tweet thread went viral on twitter slash x after two teenagers claimed their experience watching chapel roan performing glasgow had been ruined in a now mostly deleted thread the fans said that they've been queuing since the early hours of the previous day for the concert since 4 a.m to get into the gig so they could be right at the barrier and have a great spot for their fave Chapel Roan's performance. They then claimed that two other women, a mother and a daughter I believe but I can't confirm, had ruined their

experience by, among other things, trying to get up to the barrier beside them, crowding their space, which caused both to have anxiety attacks and not be able to enjoy the performance. They also took photos of these women and attached them to the tweet, which was, at the time of this recording, still up for everyone to see. It had about 13 million impressions on X, which is quite a few. And it sparked at the time a big and quite widespread debate about the concept of concert etiquette and that is exactly what I want to talk to you about this week Ruchira what is concert etiquette who has it who lacks it and as a culture are we forgetting how to behave ourselves in public spaces like concerts festivals other you know the cinema things like

that my first question therefore would be what do you think of when you hear the term concert etiquette like what do you think that means yeah so I to me that means giving people next to you a polite amount of space under the circumstances I guess when you're standing up at a gig everyone's kind of you know like in each other's you're up in each other's grill let's be real but I think it's hard but there you can tell when people are being polite because if you're trying to get past if you're trying to like move to the side or something people let you have your way and there's a level of like respect to the person next to you as much as possible I think I've been in different scenarios where people

are really just like pushing to get to the front and it's very much like quite aggressive atmosphere and I would say that's the opposite of what is concert etiquette what do you think I agree completely and I think there's the most contentious issue always seems to be the right of movement in a crowd. And I agree completely. People are free to move forward, move back, get in, get out. They have to be, right? As long as they do it in a way that's like,

excuse me, sorry, step on a foot, you say sorry, you're kind of, it's all fine. People will move in and out and you can basically hold your space when everyone's kind of behaving themselves. I think concert etiquette is just the unspoken stuff it's like have fun don't be a dick uh look out for people if it's you know if you're in the pit look out for people uh don't throw piss i think it's really i think it has to be oh and be polite when the when the i know be polite when the opening act is on.

Apart from that, I think concert etiquette is like, you're in a crowd. It's going to get crowded. I think anything beyond that is like really being too controlling. That's my opinion as someone who's been going to gigs for, God, hold my, 16, 17 years. Wow. Oh my gosh. Oh God, that's giving me the fear oh god um don't do the

math and that's how I see it whereas I think a lot of Gen Z want a really prescriptive they want really in-depth rules they see it seems to be quite a long they want like a tangible list of things that like you can do you can't do you shouldn't you must never do and I think it's really it seems to be such a fun suck to be like you've got to get there early and cute if you're at the barrow you've got to stay at the barrow you're not allowed to push in front of it you're not allowed to leave all of this stuff it just seems really boring in my opinion yeah it's it's super intense I can't believe they got there for 4am that is really astounding to me I just I don't think I've ever done that no I know I haven't done that for a gig ever in my life is that a symptom of the fact that these gigs are so

intense that people have to change their behavior to operate around them and that's the only way to get to the front or is that just how fans are now what what comes first the chicken or the egg are gigs overcrowded and oversubscribed so people have to behave like that or is it a change in behavior where fans feel so intensely towards artists that they do this to ensure that they're at the front that's what I wonder I guess I think that's such an important point and I think we have talked on this podcast so many times about fan and stan culture and I think it is the obsessiveness I think that's such an important point. And I think we have talked on this podcast so many times about fan and stan culture. And I think it is the obsessiveness. I think that is why people lose their heads, because it's a chance to get close to their fave. It's not, I used to go to a gig just to have been there to dance for one thing, so it's just very fun to have, you know, seen someone play live that I really like. It's a kind of quite special experience. But was it it was not to get physically close to them it was not to have them see me it was not to get my content and I think we've seen it with stuff like performers getting stuff chucked at them that has been in the news in the last few years in a way it never was before um Cardi B

chucked a microphone at someone after someone swilled her with a drink. I think Harry Styles got hit with a few things. I saw that. Bebe Rexha, I'm sorry if I'm butchering her name, got big black eye and stitches because someone threw a mobile phone at her. And I was reading about this because I don't know Bebe Rexha's, again, I don't know that I'm saying that correctly. I don't know her music very well, but this this fan I think she pressed charges against him quite rightly because he'd really really injured her and he said look I was just I got caught up in the moment I wanted her to have

my phone so she could take selfies and then give it back to me that level of entitlement one it's like dangerous it's like you're physically you know assaulting the people you love and two it's like someone's on stage. Yeah, I'm sorry. I find that so bizarre that your thought process is, I will throw my phone on stage. So this mega superstar artist will pick up my phone, unlock my phone, and then take pictures of themselves,

throw it back to me, and then I'll take my phone and it will be this great thing that's happened whilst they're supposed to be performing to hundreds of thousands of people. it back to me and then I'll take my phone and it will be this great thing that's happened whilst they're supposed to be performing to hundreds of thousands of people I'm just where is the mental gymnastics going these days it's that's unhinged it's main character syndrome isn't it it's literally someone going I'm not in a communal event right now I'm here they're here this is very much about me it's the same when people scream things out it's the same when people hold those big ass signs um it's just put into my head though when

Pink got she got one wheel of cheese on stage funny I think the next week she got someone's mum's ashes do you remember this no I've got I've got such a cachet of these like someone's mother's ashes they plopped them on the stage and she was like look I don't know how I feel about this I think she just left them alone but it's part of these like canon events of fans behaving in a way that is so unhinged and I need answers I need like some sociological experiment not experiment um a study to tell me exactly why we don't know how to behave anymore yeah that I mean that is bizarre like throwing your mum on stage the remains of her to paint like guys where are

we going I'm not loving the direction that's we need to get off this train like geez um I mean concerts have been really divisive and I feel this so I'm sure everyone has also felt a similar way when it comes to how difficult it is to get tickets so not only do you have to be a fan you have to be a mega fan because you're either paying the scalpers uh thousands of pounds which they were charging for chapel rowan tickets fyi I checked this past weekend because I really wanted to go couldn't manage to get tickets so they were charging literally like two grand or three grand for tickets jesus so i guess in a way i kind of understand fans behaving in a mad way because the intensity and the the stakes at play

to get a ticket to even be able to go to these gigs it's just mad now like you're competing with like people who will literally travel the country to come to that gig you're competing with professional bots like bulk buying tickets I don't know it's just I think concerts don't feel fun anymore they just feel like hunger games to get in and to get to the front yeah I agree completely I hadn't even thought about it from that economic angle like yeah, yeah, you're right. If you have spent the equivalent of like, secondhand Nissan Micra to for one night of your life, I don't know how long, you know, two to three hours max. Yeah, you are actually going to have some expectations of that being like mind blowing, you're going to want to get to the front, things like that. I think it does make some sense as to why people go mad, but it is such a specific madness. And

you're right, concerts don't feel fun anymore. And I think, I know it's quite early in the show for me to be a boomer, but I think everyone needs to put their phones down, stop going with the idea of getting content and like making some kind of viral moment and just enjoy it because I think that is what has been lost in the enjoyment of live music it's not that you can kind of get really up close and personal it's not so you can get seen it's not so that you can get you know TikTok real it genuinely is transcendent to watch live music and actually be present in it and I think that makes me sound like a boomer but I really stand by it and I wonder what you think about like whether we would behave better

if technology was less of a presence in like live music spaces yeah no I completely agree you speak your truth I'm there with you um with a megaphone just saying exactly. I also wonder about what you can expect from other people when you go to a gig like that. If you are pushing to the front, and then you're saying that, you know, people around you are acting aggressive, is it on them that you have an anxiety attack? Because these places are just as you say crowds fighting to get to the front that that breaks my heart that somebody had a response like that but then I don't agree that they took a picture of them and post it on social media I think that also contributes to this idea of we're all out for ourselves at a venue like this I think the

fact that they had an anxiety attack is really upsetting but I'm also just like oh why can't we all just look out for each other at these gigs rather than you do something which stresses or like deeply upsets me and I have a traumatic response so then I take a picture of you and post it on social media to shame you this all kind of feeds into the ecosystem I guess of people not acting in a communal way to each other yeah and also not having um kind of resolution conversations in person we are so conflict diverse in real life or even just like willing to go up and say to someone like maybe we can work this out maybe you can do a bit less of this and I can do this and we'll be fine we take it to the internet I think it's so frustrating and it's a real shame. In terms of the anxiety, I think as someone who has anxiety, as someone who can

get very overwhelmed in crowds, I have to do a kind of risk benefit analysis for something like this. And sometimes you just can't do the thing because there are too many potential triggers. I couldn't go to the front at a very, very crowded gig, because it would be too many people. And so I will make my accommodations for myself and I'll sit further back and I'll do all of those things. I think we have to be a bit sensible. It's a crowded environment. Unfortunately, the crowd is going to be there too um and i do just always disagree with the surveillance culture of posting people's faces online for what i see as quite minor sins being an arsehole is not enough reason to have your face kind of blasted across the internet to potentially millions of people

and it's another hill that i will die on no i mean, that I feel like we come back to that quite a lot, because it's such a, it's such a big theme of so many internet stories. And I completely agree with you, I, I would be hard pressed to find a reason why somebody should be publicly shamed and doxed online. And I can't think of a single one, honestly. But yeah, I think that was really helpful. I think it's really helpful point of view in terms of how you tackle events with your anxiety and and another important thing to think about with um being in a crowd is like it's safety it's been a couple of kind of quite large-scale tragedies I mean there was you know the was it the Brixton Academy really recently um there was the Astroworld tragedy. It was a potentially

very dangerous situation. And if you are in a room and you think everyone here is out for themselves, no one is thinking communally, no one is looking out for each other, a potentially dangerous situation can just escalate so quickly. And so I think gig etiquette is not just about how you can sort of behave yourself with the people directly around you it's thinking we are here in like one space and not to be too woo-woo but like music is the great kind of unifier it's this lovely thing and you know I think it really goes against the spirit of the whole thing to go into a space to be an arsehole to also upset potentially the artist I was reading I think it was I'm going to butcher this again B.B. Doobie yes I said that

correctly and she was she's 24 years old she is really popular and she was talking about how when she performs she has had to she gets really frustrated because people will shout things to be funny when she's singing serious songs and she's like there's a time and a place and other artists one of my favorites of all time Mitskiki who was very lucky to see a few times before she really blew up and is now like she's talked a few times about how people will meow people will scream people will shout mummy mummy at her and she you know she's this incredible artist who does these like beautiful visual performances and she's just getting pissed off because people in the crowd are trying to make it about them so I think it's there's so many letters to this it's

like don't be a dick to the person next to you at the gig but also don't be a dick to the person that you claim to love yeah yeah yeah yeah I didn't even think about the fact that with gig etiquette people are just being assholes to the person performing. Why are people yelling at the person performing? That's so nuts. Do you not want to see them perform? Are you trying to disrupt them? That really does seem like the antithesis to claiming that you love this person. It's nasty, isn't it? If you have anything to say on this, please do send us a message on Instagram at everythingiscontentpod. Are people behaving worse now at gigs or is this just a new generation of concert goers

rewriting the rule book for their generation? Please do let us know. Comedian Jamali Maddox has a new documentary out called Follow the Leader, which sees him spend time with fringe communities to understand why they idolize their leaders. The new four-part series is on you and Dave, which I believe was just formerly of Dave branding, and now is just you and Dave. But anyway, and one episode in particular infuriated me, so I just had to bring it here because this is not

only my place of pop culture analysis, apparently it's my place to vent. In the doc there's one episode on passport bros which is a viral TikTok movement of western men turning away from western women. The ethos behind passport bros is that men can live this sort of soft life by being a digital nomad uprooting to countries with a lower cost of living like Colombia and there they can allegedly live like a king by finding more quote-unquote respectful women who value them. In the doc you'll see a lot of men claiming that they're looking for the mother of their kids and they'll say that American or European women are too difficult and expect too much. Passport bro influencers I would say are the modern kind of iteration of pickup artists.

They're selling men a dream that if they find a traditional woman to cook and clean for them, they'll be much happier. And the doc beautifully points out that this is far from the reality. Dating apps in Colombia can be really dangerous with men who travel from different countries into Colombia being targeted. And some people have been drugged, robbed by local women after matching with them on Tinder. Jamali Maddox confronts one of these kind of influencers who's encouraging people to live the soft life by doing this. And he admits that he knows of at least one man, Paul Nugent, who followed his advice and was murdered. Beth, I'm absolutely fascinated by this and I would love to hear what you think. So I love this document. I'm so glad that you recommended this because it just was not

on my radar at all. One, just Jamali Maddox, what a man. I fancy that man so deeply. Not relevant to this, but just had to say it. I see it. I'd only seen him in the context of like his stand-up and on like something like Taskmaster or panel shows or stuff like that so it's really interesting to see him in this context I think he's really good at it and I think he's put together so this is the only one of the series that I have watched so far I think he's put together like a really interesting really balanced documentary that did make me both furious and really uncomfortably pitying, I think, of the men. It's a really interesting... So I've watched a lot of documentaries about incels and men who hate women in that way. But to watch men who believe that they're quite worshipful of the

right type of woman, but actually have this thread of misogyny I think it's really quite scary to see and I think I this one I think will stay with me for a while yeah yeah I I completely agree it I feel like he did a really good job of allowing the various people to just talk. And he didn't pry too much. He pried just enough. He asked, I would say, the right kind of questions. Allow these men to reveal what they actually think of certain types of women and also what their expectations of women are, which is they want to be able to fuck around and potentially have multiple girlfriends. Some of them were monogamous, many claimed not to be. And they just really want a trad wife, essentially. And the way they see that is by just moving away from the concept of dating in their own countries.

And I felt like there was a, I felt like there was this bizarre racism that goes along with it, too, because there's this assumption that by leaving Western women and going to different countries, they could find women who weren't feminist, who have traditional values and could just slot into their lifestyle. And I hated that. That's it as well. And there's that aspect that it's talked it's kind of tacitly explored but not explicitly like it is a kind of neo-colonialist approach it is exactly it is men going to the global south to have a better chance of sex love success and dating feeling like you said earlier like a king and i think that's a really uncomfortable thing to grapple with um kind of many were wealthy medium wealthy

going knowing that their money is a draw and then using that um to either get laid to find a girlfriend that they deem and this is where they use all the time um compliant which just turned my stomach really because and in that case they're not even trying to hide the fact that they want a diminutive woman who will do as she's told um and it's just this idea that these guys hate western women because we are we've kind of been spoiled by feminism that we are no longer looking after our um appearances that we aren't attractive to them and that they go to the global south and they find women who they can love and it's just like surely they're not that stupid as to imagine it's that kind of transaction but anyway the whole thing is really sinister because none of them explicitly

say you know like i hate western women it's just western women don't work for me whereas these women will do as i say and i think it's really nasty work about Colombian women who they claim to love but also will talk about in these terms that are just revolting yeah yeah yeah yeah totally and oh it was just so icky and there was a young guy I can't remember his name now but he um essentially was on holiday in Medellin in the area where a lot of these passport bro influencers were operating. And he just is like walking past and they like catch him on camera, just do a vox pop. And turns out he has traveled in part to Colombia to have a holiday where he just hooks up with a bunch of women. And Jamali says,

you should be really careful out here, bro. Tinder, you know, is a really dangerous game, especially for tourists, male tourists. And the boy's just like, yeah, I don't care. You know, there's a bit of risk involved with everything and who doesn't love a bit of risk? And it's just like, it's astounding. And it's so, it's so fucked up it's so it's so fucked up like this guy's just been sold this dream I imagine from TikTok and all of these no offense but like losers on TikTok that you could just go out here and like you're you're just a king you just like act in any way possible and it's all good because you're I don't know I guess that you have a level of immunity here and even to the point of like dangering yourself I just it's all madness and he looks he looks so young he looks so fucking young and it just if that imagine if that was your brother or your son you'd be like why would you endanger your life for this what is going on here you'd be

horrified and I think that that was the sinister part because they are really young men a lot of them i mean it is it's all on tiktok it's all on youtube it's streamers who can access the minds of really young boys and really young adult men who you know they're saying well they've not had much luck in in dating and sex and and and that's kind of stuff that radicalizes them it's like well they're young men that stuff is earned and it's learned and it's exactly the same for women. I found it, I know exactly the bit you're talking about. I found it so sinister the way that they talk about Western women and they don't know Western women. It's men saying things like, well, the women here respect men. The women in America don't. And Jumaane's like, oh, well, have you dated Western women? And this man goes, no, I've never even been to America. I don't know what I'm talking about. It's almost like

a pyramid scheme for men, because it's convincing them to drop money on these courses, to fly to this country, to do all of this, and actually risk their lives and their safety. And very rarely does it kind of come off does you know i don't know the statistics but they're not all getting married en masse they're not all having like the wild sex and the kind of um endless partying i think that they thought they would so it's it's it's classic um pyramid scheming so bleak and so depressing because this general trend of the manosphere growing and you know figures like andrew tate and all of the kind of right wing red pilled influencers gaining traction

this feels on the surface to be a softer version of it but i think that's almost worse it's not um explicitly homophobic misogynistic in the same ways you could point out. It's just this like very covert, very subtle disregard for feminism. And it has a similar DNA to all of those kind of wider movements of, you know, the incel red pill, but it's just these men claiming to be looking for love whilst also similarly kind of parroting really backwards, very misogynisticistic views at the same time i think that's such an interesting point because on the one hand you could also see this as a pipeline because they're looking for what they claim like love and a great wife if they don't get that if this stream which i believe it will crumbles and can't offer them that where do you go from that do you kind of reevaluate and become a good and

decent man or do you follow the pipeline further you kind of reevaluate and become a good and decent man or do you follow the pipeline further to those spaces that we know exist and thrive in the manosphere the yeah the real andrew tay red pillar bed i think that's the concern that this is a slippery slope somewhere rather than a natural end point and i think jamali makes a great point in the documentary where he says, this is not a new culture that these passport bros have created. They are feeding into a culture that exists, you know, misogyny, neocolonialism. It's just taking this new form because the men that do this, you know, and sex tourism isn't new and, you know, kind of going to the global

south looking for partners isn't new. But because of TikTok, because of the reach that that has, it just attaches a whole new kind of ability to monetize it, to spread your message further. You know, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to go looking for it. It can just appear on your For You page. You don't have to go to the depths of Reddit and 4chan. It will just be fed to you and i think that is what is quite scary these men are just tapping into something that has existed as long as modern tourism and the whole thing just left me feeling quite cold and quite worried for everyone involved yeah yeah i mean the reach of it is just, it is so scary. And influencers are selling a lifestyle, regardless of what branch of influencing you are in. We are all to a degree micro-influencers at

this point, and we're all kind of selling, you know, a romanticized version of our lives. I think I get really worried about the strands of it, especially when it's things that typical male audiences gravitate towards. So something like crypto, something like this, where they're just designed to fail, but in kind of presenting the romanticized version of, you can get what I have if you just copy these steps, and then disregarding what happens after that point. It really is is in this example leading to people potentially dying like the fact that that influencer right at the end knew that there was one name that he could say of somebody who just followed him copied his steps moved to columbia and then had been murdered um

through a tinder date gone wrong i think that's just like i i'm just like what kind of world are we building that the disparity between what you can just say and claim online and what is the reality can lead to death, but it just is like another day on the internet. That is like, that's wild to me. That's so wild. Yeah. And the fact that they can then completely, and we'll talk about this in a segment coming up, then they can kind of hold their hands and go like, well, it's nothing to do with me. I was just telling you about my life. You know, it's not my responsibility.

Whereas actually with big followings and when you are selling a lifestyle, it is absolutely your responsibility. And Jamali goes to meet two women who sell, and I completely forgotten the name of this drug, who sell this drug that the women will give the men to knock them out before they rob them. And he goes to meet two, is it manufacturers and distributors?

And they are sort of disguised. They're talking quite candidly about men that have died because of the drugs that they've supplied and how it all works and the money they've gotten away with. And it's quite alarming. Like it's on the one hand, you're like, oh, are they just taking advantage of people are trying to take advantage of them? But actually, it's it's quite alarming like it's on the one hand you're like oh are they just taking advantage of people are trying to take advantage of them but actually it's very evil that bit I think was one of the harder bits for me to watch even though it's these kind of like if it was in a film you'd be like wow look at these badass women but because it's the reality these women

are responsible for uh the deaths of men and the kind of you you know, mass robberies, you're like, oh, fudge. That's pretty, pretty hardcore. Yeah, I, oh my gosh. And the kind of like cavalier way they talk about, yeah, the deaths that have occurred at their hands. It's just, yeah, it was absolutely crazy. I don't think I've ever seen real life people talk about murder or death or manslaughter or whatever in those kind of terms and just being so so casual about it it was absolutely terrifying honestly and it is really interesting because that is essentially the storyline behind Hustlers and when we watch Hustlers the film with J-Lo and Constance Wu. I remember just being like, oh yeah, death to the Wall Street bankers. Like this is feminism. Like, you know, just drug the shit out of them and steal their

stuff. Obviously I don't think that about this situation. This is fucking dark. But I think there is a level of like, when it's fictionalized, it just felt really easy to root for the villain. Seeing it happen and seeing it be like a real story where people are doing that, it felt so terrifying. Yeah, it was definitely the the underbelly and i think something which what they don't really talk about in the documentary is the sex work and prostitution scene in colombia maybe you know when they're talking about dating with these men it's like it's implied um but sex work is by and large legal in colombia um as long as it involves two consenting adults and i'm not going to get into the kind of nitty gritty of,

I'm not spoiling for a fight about, you know, sex work, at least not in this episode. But there's been crackdowns because a lot of, you know, a lot of American men go there with very sinister intents. There's been like awful string of horrible cases involving American men and very young women or children. And I think it's just something that these men are going, they're going, it's like, it's the eternal party.

You know, we're so rich here. Look at all these gorgeous women. There is, you know, this is a country that has a massively rapidly developing tourism sector. It's, you know, the face of Colombia has changed so rapidly in the last few decades from being like, well, that's a very dangerous place to being like, actually, it's safer for travellers to come here. And that is in part because of this kind of like mass adoption of let's all go to the global south, let's go where, you know, a local culture. And there's just no mention of like one sex work and how that plays into it. No mention of kind of how they disrupt an existing ecosystem by like

infiltrating it en masse and trying to set up their businesses while working, while making their money out of it. I just think, I love the documentary. I just think that was maybe an area I would have liked him to probe a little bit more. Yeah, I think that's such a good point. And yeah, you've just made me think, well, obviously, if a bunch of digital nomads are flocking to a particular city, there is a level of disruption to, you know, renting and inflation and cost. And there is an economic price of that TikTok trend that is encouraging a bunch of people to uproot to a specific area. And yeah, I mean, having that economic impact, it does feel like a slight domino effect of local people feeling the brunt of that.

And then what is that response in turn? And how does that affect this whole issue? That is a really good point. And I think you're right right that would have been a really solid addition to exploring the issue definitely i think it's just not maybe not a long enough document like i would watch two hours that i think it's under an hour which is obviously such a tight turnaround and he does such a good job i just think there's so much more to explore because these men are not they're sort of selling themselves as local experts when all they are experts in is how to manipulate women. They're kind of going like, we understand the culture, they take that guy on like, a shopping trip, you know, and they like get in the leather jackets, it's just absolutely revolting. It's like evil queer eye. And you

just think you have no local expertise, you are a tourist here, to kind of position yourself as an expert and to kind of sell your services is just egregious. And I think that was one of the things I found so uncomfortable. They sort of treated this country as their sexual playground. And it is, you know, talk to any Colombian, you know, it's a very like rich kind of culturally and ecologically. It's kind of this beautiful place with a fascinating history and they're just going where we're gonna fuck i just really came away just absolutely hating these men while at the same time thinking you are some of the saddest guys i've ever seen

on screen yeah i think that's totally it that's completely it they it felt very west world in the they were treating this country and its people and its culture almost like their playground where they were just like coming in like the cowboys and just like doing whatever the fuck they wanted yeah i think i think that's a nail on the head the last thing i was going to say as well just to touch on something you said before i can't remember if this came from an interview that I did with an expert on online radicalization, or whether I'd seen this in a different doc. They described pickup artistry. And I'm going to kind of use this same quote to explain this. They're almost like diets, they're designed to fail, but they're designed to pin the onus on you for having not done a good

enough job. So like you said, these so-called experts are not experts. Most of them are probably not in long-term relationships themselves. They're just posting these beautiful women. And what that does is just, yeah, sell you the dream. Like you said, an MLM of you're not doing good enough. You need to work harder at the scheme. And then once that scheme fails, you move on to the next one, which might be the red pill or the black pill. That's how that progression works through all of these ideologies. So they are so interconnected. And there is no way for this to exist without kind of communicating with those much darker ideologies as well. One thing I thought was really interesting as well, and it makes so much sense is Jamali is

kind of taking on the reins, I would argue. And I know Joel Goldby suggested this in his review for The Guardian of Louis Theroux in that kind of vein of, you know, weird weekends and those documentaries of immersing yourself with these bizarre subcultures. So the doc is done in under Mindhouse Productions, which is Louis Theroux's own doc production company. So yeah, I thought it was really interesting. And I wonder, what do you think about him potentially being the Louis Theroux's own doc production company. So yeah, I thought it was really interesting. And I wonder, what do you think about him potentially being the Louis Theroux of our generation

or the 2.0, if you will? I think he, I was really surprised at how different he was, but how he kind of achieved the same thing that Louis Theroux does, which is infiltrate and enter a kind of fringe group, not agreeing with all they're saying not kind of being sycophantic but pushing back just to the right degree and i think he does it in a different way i think he's so charming i think louis roux has that ability to endure discomfort and like hold

the awkward like he can just face it down i think in the episode that i watched this jamali malik's just like he puts his head in his hands at some points and he's like that's so fucked up what you just said bro like he pushes back but again to this like really gentle i think it's an art form actually to go into these spaces not piss these people off to the point where they withdraw uh your access to them but also not to be like agreeing I think they're very different but I do think it's I think it's exactly the same I think Jamali Maddox um I can see him not that Louis Theroux is anywhere near done kind of slipping into that space and when ready taking on the reins I agree I yeah I thought he did a great job um I mean as you can tell I think we're both

highly highly recommending this series I think I have feelings for jamali maddox yeah i think maybe you're in maybe you're in love well how about um everyone listening to this goes watch the documentary on you and dave and then let us know if you're in love with jamali as well so the new york times published an article last week called who is the skinny influencer who was barred from tiktok and the subtitle was liv schmidt has inspired debates with videos that some believe encourage disordered eating one social media tried to remove her now i'm going to say at the top of this uh this conversation will include some references to eating disorders

eating disorder spaces online and eating disorder. So please do listen with care. For anyone who doesn't know, Liv Schmidt is a 22-year-old woman who lives in New York. She works a corporate job and on the side of that creates content really focused on weight loss and eating and being thin and staying thin. So this New York Times piece is a reaction to another piece, which went up in the Wall Street Journal, where Liv Schmidt was profiled directly. And the New York Times says that they reached out to Liv for comment, but didn't hear back. And I wanted to talk about both of these articles, but also Liv herself and her content directly. So the New Yorker piece is far more analytical about the content and the effect of the content, whereas the Wall Street Journal kind of gets to know Liv as a person and what she claims all of this is for and what her aims are and what she stands for. So I don't know about you, Ruchira, but I hadn't actually seen Liv Schmidt's content directly, despite I'm very on TikTok, I'd be scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, but I had only, it's a problem, I had only come across responses

from people, all of them negative, all of them critical, but never had her content been served up directly, which I guess sort of speaks to how good the algorithm on TikTok is. It knows I don't want to see weight loss content, but it does also know that I would like to see criticisms and feminist analysis. So I don't know, had you come across her? Is she a new face for you? No, she's a completely new face to me. I hadn't come across her either. To be honest, I'd only seen her through the media spin after the so-called scandal, I guess, of her existing. So I'm so late to the boat. So you're definitely gonna have to take the charge with telling me why she's so problematic specifically compared to you

know your average influencer purporting all of this shit online so i think one it's scale um she's or she had before her uh banning or her removal on tiktok 670 000 plus followers which is you know it's a huge amount even on on even on TikTok. And I think that happened quite quickly. And it's also that she is very candid. She's not cloaking her language about thinness and skinniness. She will use words like thinness and skinniness. She will talk about sort of being anti-obesity. She will be quite, she kind of really prods the bear on the internet, and she is unapologetic about it. I'd heard of, you know, like I say, I'd come across her via criticism of her, people saying that she was promoting eating disorders and a culture of

thinness, and kind of skinniness by talking about calorie deficits, things like that. So kind of using the language of a lot of eating disorder areas, but then presenting in a way that she says, look, this is just how I live. I'm healthy. I'm just thin. I want to stay thin. This is how I stay thin. So I think it's just she's just doing it in a slightly more confrontational way than other creators like her videos will be things like skinny girl essentials or what i eat in a day in the office to stay skinny i have to say maybe i didn't mention she's 22 years old and i think that is important because she is a young woman with a young woman's body and i don't really want to focus too much on her body because i think that's part of the problem but she is very slim she looks

to be kind of tall and have that kind of 90s supermodel look which is a very particular body type it is very very slender and she's sort of to those 670,000 plus people saying here's a how-to guide of what I do she's selling a lifestyle that involves thinness at its heart and I think that's why people are really disgusted and fascinated by her content specifically yes yeah that's really interesting the branding of skinny and really leaning into that after what we've experienced in the last 10 years it feels as if she's the first person to kind of go there and although it's been quite subtle in terms of people already talking about this stuff I think yeah I completely see the issue with having that signage on every single video because it does feel really

controversial and like very very stark I think yeah and because they're so normal it's so normal to see a what I eat in the day and things like that her argument is other people are allowed to do this why have I been banned for it and I found that really interesting so I went to TikTok's own guidelines about it I'm like what do they allow and what's not allowed because people will talk about food and stuff all the time and she says she restricts her content to 18s and over which is another point she makes she's like I make content for adults adults who are able to you know hit on follow ban that you know block me or whatever but also at 18 years old you're a tiny

baby with a baby's brain so i see what she's saying but i also disagree with it um and it was really interesting to see what tiktok allows what they don't allow at all is showing describing promoting or offering or requesting coaching for disordered eating or dangerous weight loss behaviors including extremely calorie diets binging and intentional vomiting, exercising through serious injuries or illness. Also, you're not allowed to do body checking, which is a behavior associated with eating disorders and things like that. And that's not allowed at all. But for 18 year olds and over, I believe you can show things like intermittent fasting, low calorie restrictive diets, exercises designed for rapid weight loss, such as cardio routines that promise to help you lose a

waist size in a week. So it feels like they've been quite clear, not that it actually works, because I see awful content all the time. But I think they've been quite clear about what they're not allowing. And I'm assuming she's just fallen foul of it, because perhaps the calories in her whitey in a day are too low. Perhaps when she says things like you should eat less, that does boldly say, you know, perhaps that is just like crosses the line. So I think I'm not shocked that she's been banned. But I'm not convinced that she is the kind of key of the problem. I think it's just bigger. And I wonder whether this will help or make her more famous.

Yeah, it's an interesting one, isn't it? I feel like having grown up with the kind of forums and the really dark spaces of tips and tricks for engaging in really disordered eating behaviors. And having had an experience of going on those sites, you know, as a precursor to my own eating disorder, I think, you know, initiating the ban and falling on the right side of protective and preserving is definitely the right way to go. And I think even if somebody could argue, well, she's saying the same stuff I did. It's just that she has a bigger audience and she's marketing it in a way that's like really like directly kind of like going straight to the people who have potentially issues around eating and body image, all that kind of stuff by the language of like skinny, skinny, skinny. I think that is the right decision. I think you'll never regret limiting the reach of people like that over potentially having them reach 670,000 people.

And however many of those people finding that content and then initiating really disordered eating their lives. I'm really glad that they did this. And I'm glad that we're in a space where people can make those moves compared to the environments we grew up in. I agree. And I remember being on, I think it was like Fitspo Tumblr, which at the time, I remember thinking, oh, this is a really healthy place. I'll learn so much um because it was so kind of health language focused i missed completely the it that it was just um repackaged eating disorders because i was 20ish years old and had grown up in the 90s i didn't know that what i was doing what i was trying to follow was designed to kind of starve me and make me hit my body all all of that stuff. So I believe, I agree completely that it will be young people watching her. And when she says, I'm promoting a healthy lifestyle,

whether that's true or not, they will believe that entirely, because it's like an internet big sister. That's how it works. One thing that I did see, not in defense of her, but kind of on the other side of the debate, was that at least she is being honest about what it takes to be, to maintain a very small body. And we've seen this a lot. And I think people are quite frustrated with it now. When celebrities of, you know, a very similar build will say, will be asked, how do you look like that? And they'll say, oh my God, I just eat pizza every day. I do this do this this and the other and i think that was also harmful in a completely different way i

think people are very fed up with it um and what she's doing is she's saying you have to be in a calorie deficit you have to say no to a lot of things you have to restrict you have to do this yes i believe i want that content scrubbed from the internet but it is very interesting to see someone actually tell the truth about it is very interesting to see someone actually tell the truth about it we had we didn't have that yeah I completely agree with you I I think a few months ago I had beef with this exact thing where unnamed model very popular model has made eating fast food a big part of her image and she's you know you're very classic like model-esque physique and I remember when I when I was younger really kind of falling into the hatred of like my body and my metabolism

all that kind of stuff because the maths just wouldn't work out for me I just could not make it make sense I was like okay so beautiful thin woman is eating triple what I eat but how come I can't do the same thing and then I felt like a freak in the same way that we're talking about you know pickup artistry is designed to make you blame yourself rather than the wider forces at play I think that was so true of that movement and women kind of selling you the idea that they can have it all it's just you who can't have it all because there's something wrong with you. I don't think they were deliberately trying to hurt us. I think it just was all part of the wider ecosystem of not wanting to be honest about these things because no one really wanted

to know the truth because it's a horrible truth. I think it is important that we don't operate under illusions that people can have it all and, you know, eat a fuck ton of food and look like model-esque builds. But at the same time, I think we need to talk about that rather than having women showing us the realities of what they're doing and almost giving us a how-to guide. I think that is the line for me, for sure. Yeah, that's it. It is. I don't want a tutorial. I want honest conversations. I want us, the alarm bell should be ringing because we are sliding rapidly. It has been happening for a while, sliding rapidly back into that really skinny, noughties, like waif look that is really unobtainable for most people without doing harm to your bodies because we're all built differently.

And, you know know it takes an incredible amount of restriction which is not good a body doesn't want restriction etc etc um what this reminded me of is bethany frankel's whole thing when she was first on and she's a real housewife of new york and i don't know rich area whether that was one of your seasons that you one of the whether those are the housewives that you've watched okay great so you know bethany frankel she was one of the real housewives um i guess i'm guessing like 15 years ago um she's still kind of in that space and she created like she had the skinny girl margaritas she wrote a book called like how to be thin she was the last person i can think of and that she

was so indicative of that time where it was it was actually perfectly fine to be like this is how you get skinny this is how you get thin then the culture repackaged it and we went, oh my God, we don't want to be thin. We want to be healthy. We want to be balanced. We want to eat clean. It was still in my mind, just like a repackaged way of telling women, stay pretty small though. And this really reminded me of that absolutely insane time where she could just basically talk about eating hardly anything and restricting and all of these things. And it just feels like the most sinister deja vu to have another kind of face for that. Liv Schmidt in the New Yorker piece talks about how she sells access to a private chat or a kind of, I don't know what it is. I think it's about $9.99 a month to be part of this. She

says she's got hundreds of people in there. So she's making money. And in the chat, they kind of send motivational quotes about weight loss, talk about their progress, talk about what they're buying from the grocery store. I think that's a whole other aspect. She has monetized successfully how to be skinny. And that just tells me that time is a flat circle and we have arrived right back in 1999 right back in 2008 right back in every era where skinny cells and women are the people it's sold to oh it's so shit why are we here again i yeah the thing that really stands out as you're, as you were talking is why are we, why are people putting their trust in this young woman who isn't a dietitian, isn't a

nutritionist, isn't a trainer. It is just somebody capitalizing on people wanting to look like her. And that's, that is the bread and butter of it, essentially. That is the reason why she's able to gain this massive audience because she's a beautiful woman and she has a body that people seem to be wanting to copy or possess as their own. And I think we just have to be really, really, really careful in just who we're trusting and paying. There's so many TikTok coaches and so many people capitalizing on people's insecurities. It's not a crime to want to lose weight. It's not a crime to want to have a different kind of body. What we're trying to talk about is people building audiences designed to make you feel bad and then earn their money off the back of it and i think that's what's happening here i don't i don't like this at all it's it's

horrid yeah i think we have to watch out for each other we have to watch out for especially younger female relatives in terms of who they're following kind of you know follow fat activists follow people that are you know body neutral follow people that really know what they're following kind of you know follow fat activists follow people that are you know body neutral follow people that really know what they're talking about and don't ever encourage you to eat less be smaller take up less room um but to a certain extent it has to be up to social media giants to take action like this and to make it stick because liv schmidt has started another account she you know what's that mythical beast? We cut one head off and then two more heads grow.

It's sort of like that. It feels like one, we need social media heads to do something about it. We also need the culture to shift. We all need to do something because I can't go back there. I can't go back. I mean, I'm 31 years old now. I feel like I'm less in the clutches, but I will never be free of that voice. But there are young women now who have it coming at them from every single angle. And it does fill me with a lot of dread for the future. And I do

wonder, and maybe listeners can kind of help out, if there is great literature we can be reading, if there are people that you follow online that you think are really powerful voices in um kind of fat activism body positivity anti-diet culture spaces please do send them our way and we can you know spread that as far as we we can but yeah i'm not feeling super hopeful i wish i was feeling a little bit you know less terrified by this all thanks so much for listening to us this week if you've enjoyed the podcast and we really hope that you have please do share us on your story tell a friend or two and if you do have the time to leave us a rating or a review on your podcast app then we would love that it is so incredibly helpful for three podcasters who are putting this whole show together ourselves um i think that'll be worth five stars personally yeah weird i think

it would be worth five stars too um and remember to follow us on instagram and tiktok at everything is content pod see you next week bye you Thank you.