If I Speak - 106: When does the mask become the face?

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

Moya and Ash react to Louis Theroux’s documentary on the manosphere. The antics of YouTubers like HS and Sneako seem designed to amuse teenage boys and offend the normies – but when does the mask become the face? And who are the women who flock to these influencers? Plus: advice for a man who doesn’t want […]

Hello and welcome to if I speak a podcast with an ever-evolving tagline. So at the moment, I'm saying it's for hotheads and neurotics. But that can change. It's also for my wonderful co-host who has turned up looking like another person yet again. I don't understand this feedback. I think it's just because I'm racially ambiguous. And right now. Oh!

And right now. Oh, don't make it a race thing. It's because you're wearing burgundy. No, no, no, because it is a, I am racially ambiguous. So the skin color I am right now is the palest I get. So I am looking quite white. And my hair is what I like to call Caucasian mode. It is a little.

Because I brushed it this morning. So the, the curls that give me away as a woman of funny tinge, have the real fte have been flattened out so i do and i am wearing like work clothes so i do look like a different lady this morning yeah but that's fine i just look the same i never changed that much i'm like if you saw a fight with me as a baby you'd be like same face but i do have the same face as my baby face ash however recent you got you got layers you got bangs i got i got layers how are you I'm loving the bang life. I'm really, I'm into the bang life.

What happened was that I was experiencing a sense of emotional crisis. So I walked into hairdressers and told a very basque, a very gay man to cut me a fringe, which is the classic move of a woman in distress. And he was great. He was like, a sleigh. It's a sleigh. It's a sleigh. It's a very racial from friends.

He really, he really. wanted to cut off all of my head. Like he was like, let's go pixie. Let's just get rid of all of it. And I was like, calm down. Hairdresses love a drastic change. I remember when I told my hairdresser, just cut it all off.

They were fucking gagging. And since someone you sit in the chair, they're like, different hairdressers are like, what do you, do you want to go drastic? Would you like? And I'll show them my pixie and they're like, would you want to go back to that? And I'm like, no, but you look so good with the pixie.

You just want to cough the hair. You just want to carve the hair. And that's okay. And I get it. But not today. But that's not what I want. I also here has to give a shout out to my fabulous hairdressers. Jazz at Barnett Fair.

This is not an, I guess it is an ad, but it's not an ad I'm getting paid for. Like, I pay her and Trixie because they are always looking for more customers. And jazz does the best, you can't see what I'm doing right now, but jazz does the best color. Trixie does amazing cuts. It's very, very reasonable pricing. And I used to come back from Glasgow to go to Barnet Fair. So I recommend them to any ladies in the London area. You would be pleased though.

I thought of doing a really drastic change and I didn't. And the drastic change was I was like, what if icy blonde all over? That could, to be honest, Ash, that could work. I think it would look fucking banging. But the problem is that my hair is like the blackest of black. This is the void at the heart of the universe. And so the risk you're taking with lightening,

lighting it that much is that you just fry your hair. Oh, you'd fry it. The other thing is you'd have to keep getting root touchups, which that's like every four to six weeks, probably more. I mean, your roots would look good with icy, like it would look cool, so you could actually let them grow out a bit. But what I would say to you is try a wig first. Yeah, and the thing is, I'm not going to be a wig person. I know this about myself. Because also, I don't like when my head gets too hot. Yeah, so true. But like for one party, have a nice wig. Go storm for something.

Yeah, but then the thing, okay, like maybe, but then. like this is now completely derailed the entire episode. I had thoughts about the manosphere and, you know, the limits of the cultivated self, but instead I want to talk about my hair. And is that if I show, like, it's too out of character. If it's like, is Ash wearing a wig, right? There are some people for whom a wearing of a wig is like, they're wearing a wig. Whereas I sort of think if I start wearing a wig, people are going to interpret that as a cry

for help from me because it's so out of character. But dying platinum would be a cry for. help so what's the problem? You may as well enjoy it. And that's why I'm not doing it. I'm not crying for any help. You might as well enjoy the cry for help. I weren't pixie and blonde. Oh yeah, you did. Yeah. Like I was crying for help but I'd... Your queer baiting era was fantastic. People always... People always... Remember when people started they theming me just because I had short hair? I've got a friend. I've got a friend who I had to ask to gender me because because he kept calling me

birthday person on my birthday I was like, you can say birthday girl. Something interesting about Glasgow, I always mentioned Glasgow, they use they, just normally, they're 10 years ahead of us in the genderless race. So to refer to anyone,

they're like, oh, they were doing this, they were doing that. So everyone's non-binary to like your ordinary street level pint man, Glasgow. Turns out the gene LGBT stood for Glasgow. It stood for Glasgow this whole time. Anyway, I've got some questions.

hit me with your best shot wig or no it no I'm joking VINU VAVIRVIGS That is essentially the chat we just did Okay Number one Full caffeine or decaf Decaf

Decaf Decaf I used to be like caffeine addicted And I think this is the thing When you're in your late teens, early 20s is that your tolerance for substances of all kinds

is just Herculean. So I could get through, like, a massive cafeteria of coffee that's brewed to the thickness of sludge and sort of be fine. Whereas now, if I have, like, teeny tiny espresso, I'm like, is this what a heart attack feels like? It's crazy. I swear, I was drinking like five cups a day

just to have something to do. Now if I have a second cup of coffee. Bad time. It's like the worst come down in the world. Or the bit before, actually it's before the come down. It's the bit where you're trying to sleep. Yeah, it's the bit where you're sort of like, you know, holding on to your genitals feeling scared.

Yeah, it's that. Okay, so decaf. Love to know that. Okay, this is a manosphere-themed question. If you were a man, what type of man would you be? Oh, I'd be fucking awful. I'd be so bad. Because I think that like the qualities that I have in myself,

which I think have defined my career, are a simultaneous kamikaze level of self-confidence and the pit of self-loathing that I take everywhere. And what that adds up to in woman is like left-wing journalist. What that adds up to in a man is criminal. But what, give me a, give me an archetype, would you be a streamer? I'm scared I'd be

Myron Gaines. I'm really scared that that's what would happen to me. I don't, I feel like you wouldn't be Myron Gaines. I'm trying to think who you would be if based on the... I think you'd probably just be a left wing like the

communist guy we talked about this. I think you'd probably be like political left wing but then you'd be hiding this pit of self-loathing. So when people got close to you, it'd probably be quite a difficult situation. Hassan Piker Oh my god, you'd be Hassan Piker

I don't know I don't know I don't know I He's fit as hell I have to stop TikTok showing me him My fear of myself

is that I would just be a dreadful person What about you What about you Fuck boy 100% fuck boy No Yeah

I'm not even a fuck girl No But you're avoiding And when we translate that into male socialisation Um What would I be as a I'd probably be a history guy.

I probably would be a fuck boy. But I think I think I'd be like, I think I think I'm communicating really well and like saying to these women, you know, I'm just not ready. I can't do this just so you know this up front. And I'd be some annoying, I would be an annoying history academic guy with a little earring for sure. Oh yeah.

And I'd be doing some sort of like research into how incarceration intersects with race you know I'd be doing something and I'd be all the while forgetting about gender in your own life

yeah exactly I would I think that's what I'd be doing and or I'd be working at somewhere like Reuters Institute in I think I'd be in academia I think my level of like arrogance would take me to act sorry to the all the academics but I think my man level of arrogance

would take me into academia rather than journalism because I think journalism wouldn't give me what I wanted. I think that this is really revealing about our respective senses of self because I clearly think that I'm a box of frogs, wasp sandwich level of mad, so that if you translate that into a man, I'm like, I'd be in prison,

I'd be a neo-Nazi streamer, I'd be... I don't think you would be a neo-Nazi streamer. I think you'd be a... I think you'd be like... maybe I don't know if you'd be gay or straight, but you'd be like Owen or Aaron

I just don't think you'd be a Nazi streamer no I just but what this reflects is is self-loathing at the wheel sort of reflects right final question final question is do boycotts work do boycotts work

on their own no as part of a wider political struggle that employed different sets of tactics, yes. Great. That was enjoyable. This was based on the latest boycott of ChachyPT that's going on.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, we're going to move on to the Manosphere. I have a question, and the question is, when does the mask become the face? Can you ever truly replace the face with the mask? mask, et cetera, et cetera, because I watched Louis Theroux's Manosphere documentary. And I'm sure that we are going to talk about the issues it raises about masculinity and misogyny and anti-Semitism, etc. But the thing that it made me think about, and also I think the thing which hasn't necessarily

been discussed head on in all of the commentary and analysis that the documentary generated is that really what you're seeing is the struggle between a highly cultivated persona and who the person is underneath. And whenever one of the documentary subjects is pressed on whether or not there is a gap between these two things or whether all the parts of their identity and personal life are reconcilable, they respond with suspicion, hostility, anger, lashing out, trying to play mind. games, etc., etc. So to give some examples, HS Tiki Tokey,

which is a set of syllables, which can make you lose brain functionality just by saying them. After this point, I'm going to be calling him Harrison Sullivan, because that's his name. He says something really revealing in the early bit of the documentary. He says, well, I'm a salesman.

Everything is sales. We live in an attention economy. And so I think that that's something which whether it's Sneiko or Myron Gaines or whether the one whose name I can't remember but who comes from... Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, from Baton Rouge. The Ginger from Louisiana.

Yeah, like all of them have identified that the internet is a way to make money from Marx, basically, by painting a picture of who you are and saying, I really live like this. You can live like this too. And what's so fascinating about all of these men is that they've lost all contact with authenticity. So everything they do is so insanely, exaggeratedly affected. And how they speak sounds like a 12-year-old's idea of how adult men conduct themselves. So there is this one bit where Harrison Sullivan, who's obviously uncomfortable and trying to get out of his filming commitments with Louis Theroux, walks up to him in Marbeyer and says something like, I've just had a very important call. I have to be in Dubai for business.

He is 24. And it sort of reminds me of when a child has a banana and is like, I'm very busy and important. I have to go now. Space needs me. Ring, ring, it's the business phone. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, it was so that.

It was so that. And I found it kind of hilarious because they sounded like children pretending to be adults. And I think that's got something to do with the fact that they have cultivated an audience of children, right? You know, so like 13 to 18 year olds. Like, you know, that's who their audience really is. And there's this deeply revealing part when Myron Gaines and his then-girlfriend Angie are questioned about his so-called one-way monogamy

and his stated intention to Louis that he wants to have multiple wives one day. And it's this really interesting thing because when Myron is talking about it when it's just Louis, there's bravado, it's braggadocious, it's unapologetic, but then when he's forced to talk about it in front of the presence of his girlfriend, who don't forget, he's supposed to be dominating her and what he says goes, he just shrinks. And you can see this moment where he becomes aware of how he appears on camera and that the alpha mask has slipped. And he's holding like this little Bichon-freeze dog and he's taking anxious sit. of his drink and he's anxious fundamentally about how he's justifying himself to a woman.

And you can see the moment of him going, oh God, oh God, how does this look? So he hands the dog back to her. He sends her out of the room and he tries to recover by being like, clean up that room. But he can't even say it as assertively as he did when it was just Lou. I was like, she's going to clean up my room. He was like, can you help me out with that? Like he just, he just couldn't make this thing stick. And so, yeah, as much as the documentary is about the manosphere, it's also about old versus new media, and it's about the way in which streaming is leveraged to project a 24-7 persona. And I think what's sort of specific about the manosphere element of it is that it is rooted in what Robert Connell,

who's a sociologist, calls protest masculinity, which is defined as a marginalised form of masculinity, where men adopt elements of hegemonic masculinity, but reshape them within contexts of poverty and limited resources. So that's why you can't separate this exaggerated contempt for women from the get-rich-quick stuff, or escape from the Matrix, you know, everyone's just trying to undermine you, the education system, conventional life, you know, all of that is a sham. You can't separate that from what are actually really conformist ideas

about what success and status looks like. So yeah, it was fascinating to me that in this documentary these men haven't been able to fully eliminate the gap between who they are and who they're trying to be and that's where the discomfort with Louis Theroux comes from. But I do wonder about the much younger audience

that they're aiming their content at because when you're a teenager, you are trying to mimic ideas of adulthood that you've picked up from culture and you're trying to understand yourself through various sort of postures and gestures that you quite artificially construct for yourself, right? That's what it means to be a teenager.

So what happens if you're learning to be a grown-up from these knuckleheads? And at what point does the mask, the affected persona, become the face, right? So it's become essentially who you are. Well, I mean, I think that's a very, interesting question because I think it's like most things that teenagers are fed, which is that you either absorb it and run with it and it leads you into a place where

you become HS Tiki Tiki, who I imagine was probably absorbing a lot of this content when he was a teenager. He's only 24. There was Manospheres, you know, Sneiko started in 2015. So I think Tashis Tiki Tiki Tiki is the generation down that we are actually seeing the product of the teenagers who ran with it. But the manosphere itself is still a fringe. It's just so many of their ideas have dripped into the mainstream and melded with a general right-wing politic. So there was, The Guardian had a today and focus episode the other day about two teenagers who were talking about being exposed to certain types of content online and what it boiled down to ultimately was the manosphere, which was quite interesting, like that that is the main thing they are seeing in

terms of extreme content. And yeah, there's right wing stuff mixed in with that, but the manosphere is the main, I guess, entry point for teenagers into this world of right wing politics. And it was for these guys too. Like you, throughout the documentary, it's obviously edited. So we follow that journey from them entering via misogyny into this general right wing politics all the way to the end where they make this point of like they have very virulent anti-Semitism that is now underpinning their worldview, which is the way that right-wing politics in America has certainly gone and that they've really clung on to like anti-semitism. It all comes, I don't know why it always comes back to anti-semitism.

It is one of their favorite things. Underpinning it all is always this mad anti-Semitism. But I think misogyny is an entry point to get to further right-wing politics. And some people will peel off before them and some people will stay. I think that is the obvious answer. The Guardian podcast was interesting because it was two people. one was a teenage girl. And she was, she was so articulate,

she was so smart, she was probably not your average teenage girl. She was one of, like, there's a reason she's writing columns in The Guardian. She's been picked out. But she was, the word she was using, like, you know, whore and because she was repeating language

that she's seen online and the ease she had with this lexicon. I don't remember having that at 15. I remember, like, being very precocious, but I don't remember having this familiarity with such extreme language that had been fed to me. That wasn't something I was exposed to. And the young guy who was her counterpart had denounced this well, but he'd been very into it at one point. And it was manifest stuff. It was all manosphere.

It was like Andrew Tate, etc. And so I think the answer is quite simple, which is you either leave it behind as you grow up because you see these are people who are posturing at something that's actually not going to bring them happiness. and you find other ideologies or other ways to structure your life, or you stick with it for however long you stick with it, you know, into adulthood. And I think the difference perhaps, I don't know if it's even that different to the past. I think the difference is that it's come in this, as you say, like, it's a new form of media. Whereas in the past, yes, obviously there was very prevalent misogynistic sentiments.

It's just that we run in cycles. don't actually see much departure between previous right wing cycles. It's just the way it's packaged that it runs through. Like if you went back to, I don't know, the 1930s, I'm not sure there's like, it scratched the surface. There's like this huge difference in rhetoric and attitude between the far right now and the far right then. Like there was specific flavors in Germany, you had Nazism, which was so, so focused on anti-Semitism. But it was also this weird mix of like occult stuff that we'd now call wellness. And also the reimposition of traditional gender roles.

Following the sort of, you know, relative permissiveness of Vyma, Germany and the 1920s. And another thing about that is it was the reimposition of traditional gender roles without actually these people practicing them. They were all fucking around. They were all doing different things. than it. It was a, it's a politics of domination. We have a politics of domination now that's coming back to the fall. And that happens when the economy fails. That is, that is my basic explanation of this. I'm sure there's people who are writing and say, well, this is slightly different and this is like different. You don't need to compare it. As far as I can see it, this is

a reproduction of very similar cycles and we haven't really changed that. And that's also not a coincidence because the far right of now, we're looking to the past because we've, it's part of like the retromania, the pulling from the past that we have. that I think means, you know, the same reason, I actually think the same reason that you have celebrities turning up on red carpets wearing outfits that would literally warn 20 years ago and they're making this reference and they're pulling

is the same reason you have, you know, Kanye West releasing a song called Heil Hittner and you have a bus full of men in ill-fitting suits called things like Sneako and Sneako and Clavicular singing along to that. And I've watched a video where they're singing along and Myron Gaines does a Heil Hitler salute.

And it's this pastiche that is exactly what you're talking about. It's when does that prestige become real? Is there even a difference? Does it even matter if they're posturing to this degree that it becomes reality and that people are internalizing it and following it? And you saw this with the young men. I thought one of the most interesting things was the young men who Louis Theroux talked to about their fandom.

I wonder what you make of those guys. because I've got thoughts but I've been talking too long. Oh, okay. I mean, so there's so much to say. I think the first thing

is that my interpretation of Mourin Games and, you know, that sort of like minibus full of streamers singing along to Hauer

is that there is the sort of extended adolescence element of... Yeah. Because look, when I was a teenager, we would try and shock and outrage by saying really,

really offensive things because you're testing at where are the limits and how strong are they and how much can they curtail me. And there is, you know, going back to this idea of protest masculinity, right? There is the sort of protest facet of being a teenager where you're trying to go, how can I assert my agency when I feel a sense of grownness and adulthood and the world doesn't like to me express it, right? Like that's the fundamental frustration of being a teenager. And the thing about these management,

severe streamers is that they're saying that that is what the world is like as an adult, right? And so how you break through it is by refusing to accept any limitation of norms or mores or, you know, ideas of what is a good way to behave or not, right? It's the refusal of of the good for themselves, not for women, right? Not for women, very, very strong ideas of what is the good for women, but absolutely not for men. And so it's a really weird product of what happens when you're an adult who's catering to teenage boys, right? Like what is it that you're projecting back to them, right? It is a forever state of teenagedom.

In terms of the two fans, so what Moore is talking about for anyone who hasn't seen the documentary is that there are these fans of, I can't remember the guy's name. There's one, okay, so there's two of Hayt Harrison who are like, I want a competition to film him. I want a competition to do Rangeover. And then there's two of Justin Waller who come up and tell their stories to Louis. Yeah. And so the two who came up to tell their stories,

one of them was saying that he'd been homeless, he'd been living in his car and that his brother had taken his own life. And it was this whiplash of, we don't believe in depression to, my brother killed himself, but don't worry that's in the past. And you can sort of see that there are, you know, obviously no human being on this planet is fully coherent. So like, I don't want to, I don't want to like rag on them from that perspective. And there is certainly a sense to which being told you have agency and it's within your power to remake your own life was clearly an important message to hear, right?

And so I think that sometimes part of where the left and the side of things that we're on is that you can get so, into providing a structural analysis for things is that it makes people feel that their lives are not really their own, which is a really immobilizing, depressive way to think. But the other side of it, which is I cannot in any way engage with my own grief for the loss of my brother. And I don't know if you saw this or if this is sort of me projecting, but I just saw like the child in his eyes. Do you know what I mean? Like I just saw the child that lives in the, this man. And I also felt that about the like 20, 21 year olds who Myron Gaines brings on to his podcast to berate, you know, which is that there are these kids basically who've been like

completely failed by the system, not just in terms of employment opportunities, but also like education, right? Like they're coming from like a low level of education. And, and they either willingly have traded in dignity for clout, which I think is what's going on with these women. They go, well, this is my best shot. And so I'll sit here and let someone tell me that, like, I'm a fat slut and I don't deserve anything or that I'm stupid or whatever. Or this sort of sincerity that I felt from,

especially the guy whose brother killed himself, right? is that like he's looking for, he's looking for a big brother. You know, he's looking for someone to be like, you can do this as how you should be. I'm going to model it for you. But yeah, like definitely just saw the failures of like, not just the social safety net,

but also the education system writ large. I think also with that, what you hit on there about the teenagedom, it's not just that they're appealing to teenagedom, something that was within all these men was, as you say, the child in their eyes. And it wasn't just the fans, it's the guys themselves. And I think this whole documentary for me was about the lengths that people will go

and that they're encouraged to go under a patriarchal system, especially if they're, you know, been brought up as men, socialized as men, to avoid pain and to avoid ever feeling vulnerable again, especially if in their childhoods there's been instability. And something Louis III points out is that all of these men that he talks to had unstable childhoods. and they come from single-parent families, and that doesn't necessarily mean your child is unstable,

but they clearly felt a golf. Like, I grew up in a single-parent family, and there is a mistrust that you often can grow up with in a single-parent family, whether that's of the caregiver that you do have or the caregiver that you don't have. Now, I don't know if it's because that they're socialised as men. They turned perhaps some of their disappointment and anger

onto their mothers. Justin Waller talks about his mother being very violent, very unstable, never saying sorry in her life. He claims that she tried to set fire to their house on several occasions. The portrait he paints is of somebody who was not a consistent loving caregiver. And that would explain to me why he looks for like this rigid sense of control and security and this idea of invulnerability. And that, you know, he's telling these lies about, well, actually I can't say lies.

He's telling these, he's making these statements that seem untrue. you know I'm worth 30 million he pauses before that his eyes like go everywhere he's renting his place why have you not bought it if you're worth 30 million if it's 20k a month you know like what what's the maths here h s tiki toky talks about how much his mother would be disappointed in him if she knew what he was saying yet she turns up later and defends him um so there's a there's something odd going on there with this this you know these these family dynamics and often our childhoods are what shape well our child's always shapers they always shapers to what we are now if you you know you're an avoidant person, you can look to child if you're anxious person.

It's the primary caregiver relationship that you have that shapes the way you relate to the rest of the world, first and foremost. And then it's reinforced usually by interactions you have along the way. And all of these men, I saw there this like pain and their bravado as a cover for that and this mask of inauthenticity. It's really interesting because now Sneko and Andrew Tate were like locked in this war of words about one of them potentially being gay. And it's all because I, this, I don't know how it's.

started. They've been beefing for a while, but I don't even want to get into the nuts and bolts, but it's because I think Sneiko said that Andrew Tate was nervous about playing the Hull Hitler song. And that idea of like someone was a bit nervous or someone was a bit trepidous is such a chink in the armour. Yeah. It's like you can't be nervous. You can't feel anything that like gives people pause. And yet at the same time, it was interesting watching, you know, Harrison Sullivan saying like, I haven't seen my dad in age. And like I don't know how I'm going to feel about that to his followers. So it's such like an incoherent thing,

but there's just all this attempt to protect themselves in pain. And the more that they feel threatened or like they might be unsure of things in some way, like they're unsure of Louis, the more they're unsure of Louis, the more they double down like, get out of him, man, like, who do you think you are kind of vibes? No, you can't come through here. But they also, like, Myron Gaines is a particularly interesting example because he... That's not his real name. It's a real name. It's not his real name. But none of them, I don't think any of them are real name. Like, HS Tiki-Toki isn't his real name. No, no, no. But I'm saying that like, Myron Gaines is so interesting in that like, on the one hand, similar with Andrew Tate, right? Like there's the sort of like, I'm Muslim, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sneakow as well, right. Like there's a way in which I think they are getting ahead of the curve, which is, I think they've spotted the like increasing religiosity amongst like parts of the youth. And they're like, all right, wait.

We're getting on to that. But Myron Gaines, like, can't use his real name. He's westernized it big time. His name is like what? Like, let me find it. Let me find it. Beautiful name. Beautiful real name.

Amru, there you go. Yeah. His name's Amruh. That's a beautiful name. Gorgeous name. But he was a particularly interesting example to me because he was so worried about Louis seeing his chinks, basically. And that was everything from the relationship he had with his girlfriend,

which, you know, it is one-sided. It is the dynamic, the power dynamic was skewed. And even that wasn't enough for him. That felt, like, Louis even watching them interact was too vulnerable. Louis talking to his producer was too vulnerable. Like, Louis being around him, he had to be convinced the second time. And Lou hadn't even said anything particularly penitative the first time to be let back in. But he wouldn't ever directly confront Louis because that again would show vulnerability.

He did it through emails. he did it through texting as producer. Like he never directly said to Louis, you know, this is a problem. I didn't like that. Louis even said, was that awkward with Angie? Are you okay with that? And Mara's like, no, it's fine, it's fine.

You know, like he would never directly have an honest conversation with Louis because that would be to actually reveal how he felt. And that to him is too vulnerable. I mean, so this goes back to something which we talk about loads, which is what happens when you have an increasingly screen media, relationship with the world around you, right? So if you're streaming basically 24-7, right? And that's the means by which you project this persona.

There is an extreme discomfort for forms of conflict, which aren't mediated by a screen in some way. So you can do it over the phone or like, sort of like staging a confrontation for the stream or via email, but you can't be like, actually, no, I found that quite awkward and I don't like you asking my girlfriend about our lives together. I want to be private about that. Like he can't do it.

And so, you know, I think going back to something that you said about the comparisons between now and the 1930s, I think that's really important for thinking about how once you eliminate economic opportunity from the labour market, basically, like what's going to happen next? people are going to seek out status in ways which are like more violent right like just more based in domination um the appeal of the get rich quick scheme is going to come screaming back but there is also this element which is unique to the present day which is the ubiquity of screens the permeation of screens into every aspect of our lives and the flip side to that you know and I sort of see these as like mirror images of each other.

I don't think of them as sort of incurring the same psychological damage, right? Like, but I think only fans is the sort of flip to it, which is if everything is mediated by a screen, if you're expected to share every aspect, or not or not every aspect of, increasingly intrusive, like levels of access to yourself for women that becomes sexual availability.

I would have loved a community. companion documentary, which was someone talking to the women who are around Harrison Sullivan or Myron Gaines, like, just them. So not sort of like, you know, squeezed in around these like central interviews with the men, but like just them. Like, how do you feel when someone is berating you for an audience of thousands of people and you're just sitting there quietly? Like, what's going on in your head? It was particularly interesting the presence of like Only fans, models, creators there because Harrison is disgusted by only fans.

He's repulsed by it and I think it's because it reminds him so much of what he's doing. You know, like it's a mirror image of... Oh, he hated being compared to Bonnie Blue. He hated it, even though who's interviewing her and the whole point of him interviewing her is they exist in the same universe. Like, there's a reason he's not talking to one of us.

He would never even dream of that. That's not, you know, that's not the thing. Obviously, Bonnie Boo has a bigger, profile for various reasons than me. But like, he's not reaching out to you to talk to you about stuff. We don't exist in the same universe. He exists in a universe of only fans, creators, and, like, manosphere, right-wing politics.

That's his world. And I think deep down, there's so much, there is, I think there is a shame about that because he wouldn't be so defensive. You're not defensive about things that you're not shamed about. There's a real, there's a real wound there when it comes to, like, who he's interacting with and how he, I think. it does go against like maybe the values who's raised with and obviously it is so different to the person who was underneath. I don't know what the person is now because coming back to that question

at the start which is when does the mask become the face? I'm not even sure if it's like the mask becomes the face but what happens is both things are changed and you get something in the middle which is so mixed up and so confused and so at war with each other. It's very hard to untangle. and that's what makes me really worried. For those men and also for like the few who will be following their footsteps, but I do think the, so there's a fly buzzing around me, I do think that the biggest issue here is that misogyny is like the acceptable face of right-wing politics, it is the gateway.

You start with as like misogyny and domination rhetoric and then you move to the next thing. Why is misogyny the gateway? Why is it seen as the soft thing? that's the thing. The hatred of women is so easy and so ingrained and embedded. It's just like, yeah, he's got points. And women hate women too.

Because, I mean, we're primed for it our whole lives in ways which are sort of soft, even little things, like even really little things. So I went to an all-girl school. I went to an all-girl school. And the thing that everyone said to me, including adults when I was a kid, And when I was like, yeah, I go to North Girl's School.

So it's like, oh, it must be so bitchy. Right? Just this assumption of like, and actually it was less bitchy than the mixed school that I then went to in six form. Because then there was competition for male attention. That wasn't competition for male attention when it was just, when it was just us. Like, it was fascinating the way in which I was being prepared to understand what other women are like. You know, like, oh, you know, it must be so bitchy. It was actually, I experienced like a lot of loyalty.

Like, sure, there was, like, drama and shit because you're a teenager. Everyone has friendship drama, but it was sort of like, no, no, no, this is because it's other girls. You know, I do think that becoming a porn-saturated society changes things big time, right? Like, you know, how does that shape what do you think sex with a woman is and what women want from sex? like you know it it really does reinforce a sort of like madonna whore dichotomy which is like they're either like come crazed sluts on the one hand who like always want it and are always lying and always deceptive um or it's like the women who like cannot be touched right and that's the one that you respect and respect and sexual desire are incompatible right and like living in a unsaturated society like reinforces that big time. And I also think the other part of, of how we're primed for misogyny in particular, is that I do also think that we're kind of primed for misandry. The thing is that that doesn't have a relationship to power in the

same way. So every single person on this earth who participates in romantic and sexual relationships will experience hurt, woundedness, feeling oneself to have been deceived in some way, like even if you weren't, right? Everyone feels that way. Everyone thinks, I was misled by this person. Like, you know, everyone has an experience of coming out the other end of a relationship lesser than when they went in, right? A part of life. And we explain that not through, that's just part of the mess, isn't it? Like, that's just a part of the mess, isn't it? Like, that's just part of the mess. We have to make sense of it through blame. Yeah. Right. We have to like pass the parcel of shame from ourselves to like the other party. And because of like living under a

patriarchy, what that means for men. I think that it results in like the sort of like heterophatelism for women. But like what it does to men in terms of how they perceive women is like, woof. I think my final thoughts on this as well is reflections for women from the manor sphere. documentary, which is that these men really mistrust, and they mistrust women, and that made me reflect also, as I do regularly now, on mistrust for men, and where is that actually going to get me? Which is nowhere, frankly.

It's good to be wary, it's not good to be constantly omni-mistrustful. It's fascinating to me that these men also are putting themselves in a situation which reinforce their worst thoughts about women. So because they're surrounding themselves with only fans' content creators who only want to be around these men because they have big social media followings of their own, that reinforces this idea of sex is transactional and women are out to secure something for themselves and gate keep access to sex for that.

Yeah. Right. Like they're putting themselves in a situation which replays the story again and again and again. And sort of like obviously it's not as spectacular. can think of so many times where like I've played out the same story again and again and again in my choice of men, right? Like everyone can think of the way in which they, um, repeat and reinforce their worst, um, instincts and assumptions about the gender that they are, you know,

date and are sexually attracted to through their choice of who they surround themselves with and who they're pursuing. Yeah. And if you're bored of that guys, the thing is you have to just change it yourself. Yeah. That's my advice. We should give more. now. We should... We should give more advice. We should give more advice. This is, I'm in big trouble. Our regular dilemma segment.

And if you're in big trouble, you should know what to do by now. You email us at if I speak at navaramedia.com. That's if I speak at navaramedia.com. We also understand that sometimes people want to retract their dilemmas. You have a 24-hour grace period in which to do it. but more than 24 hours, it's fair game. Oh, can I ask us, you know, we've got a lot of lovely special ones

who come up in real life and tell us how much they love the podcast and, which is one of my favorite things ever. I met a special one recently in Glasgow. It was Javier. I need to double check, but you were lovely. But can I ask a little,

can I ask a favour? Special ones, if you love the podcast, can you give us a rating on Apple or Spotify or leave us a review if you love the podcast, not if you hate me. which people have done. Be nice.

To be fair, this is a public podcast so you can also do that. But it would really, we'd really appreciate it because every now and there it's just nice to boost, get a wider audience, share it with people you know,

but if you rate and review, we'd greatly appreciate. Okay. On with the dilemma. Let's go. I'm going to read it because I actually want you to give the advice first.

Blum and heck. Let's go. Blum in heck. Dear if I speak, I'm writing to express the difficulties I face being socialised as a 30-year-old, slightly neurodivergent, straight man. The simple truth I've learned is that life is best when it's shared, and social skills are a more useful competency than anything that can be taught. I have an idea of the kind of life I'd like to be living.

Cosmopolitan, two children, culturally rich and living abroad. I've found a way to make that materially possible, The only issue is that I don't think I should do this until I've managed to make successful, satisfying friendships that allow me to find and marry a partner who I don't offload all my emotional energy onto. All my life, I have found it very difficult to make bonds with men that last outside a specific shared context, such as work or travel.

I went to a boy school and got bullied for being too sincere, and so a lot of typically male activities, like sports, are quite traumatic for me. I see the role that football plays and giving other men the excuse to stay in touch but I worry the only way I could make it interesting would be to form a gambling habit. One solution is to make friends with women with whom I can quickly form emotionally rich relationships

but these relationships will quickly mastastatize into physical desire or become awkward and unwanted as my female friends find boyfriends who don't feel comfortable with them talking to me. I live by maintaining a rostasis, of different dates who I share my life with, but who do not know about each other. I value having different perspectives, but I know deep down these women would be able to make

more meaningful connections with other women, and the reason they're talking to me has to do with latent desire. I also know that I'm specifically targeting ESL women, so that's English as a second or other language, with whom my intentions are muddied by cultural difference. I know what I'm doing is wrong, and I can see how even lesser men would deal with the cognitive dissonance with misogyny, but I know that would just degrade my humanity. I know what I'm doing is shitty, but without human connection I'd face severe mental health consequences. I know you may not be able to necessarily get me out of this rut, because you're not male, but could you at least shed light on exactly what's happening and how it feels to be on the receiving end? yours are not particularly special one. Why does you want me to answer this first?

I don't know what the fuck's going on. Because I need more thinking time, is why. Special. Okay, I'm going to Occam's razor this, right? Yeah, get the razor. The Occam's razor, if I try and follow your logic, I end up in a confused puddle. And so Occam's razor says that that means that what's going on

isn't actually rational, doesn't make sense, and that you are yourself in a confused puddle, but you have couched it in this very frank, rationalising, objective language. So it sounds like what you're saying, you know, it's very fixed, it's very straightforward, I'm like this and therefore this, and I'm doing this. I think what you're doing is you're intellectualising

to cover the feeling, which ultimately is, I'm lonely, I don't feel like I'm worth having real, I don't think like, I don't have self-worth and the friendships I make are all fake in some manner. That's what I'm getting from this. Every time you're talking about bond, you're saying I'm unwanted or you're saying I'm using someone. So either people are just putting up with you until they find someone else or they have an ulterior motive like latent desire. Or you say, if you think that they aren't doing that, you're saying I'm using them. There is something here where you think all.

all of your relationships are fraudulent in some way. And I presume deep down it's because you don't think you're worthy of having human connection. That's what I think is happening. You think you have to trick people into it or that they are doing it for a motive that you can't, you can't fulfill what they actually want. There's something here where you are not of value if you're not doing X, Y, Z. So you have to trick people into connecting with you. Obviously, the solution here is therapy.

Deep, and being really honest with yourself. And I don't know what sort of like podcasts or content you're consuming, but there is inflections here of this idea of, you know, lesser male. I am a sort of evolved person you can see above this. There's a bit of pathology, I would say, this idea of slightly neurodivergent. What does that mean? What does it mean to be slightly neurodivergent? You either neurodivergent or you're neurotypical.

Full fat or nothing. Like, what's going on here? I think you're pathologizing a lot. and I think it's making you feel like you're a uniquely bad person who might be and you might be holding onto that status to make you feel a bit special in some ways, even if you're not aware of it. And the truth of the matter is a lot of people struggle with loneliness

and not feeling worthy and if you want that to change, you have to just believe that these relationships are good and healthy and think about what you'd want a relationship that is healthy to look like and try and do that. that is the simple advice if you want a relationship to be healthy it doesn't matter if the other person fancies you you go in with like this is the relationship

these are the boundaries this is the friendship this is what I want to have with you this is what I'm going to try and mirror to them if they can't meet that they can't meet that you find someone else but that doesn't mean that like everyone's out to trick you or a fraudulent or you're letting people down in some way if you don't want to sleep with them if you go in with a shark like understanding

and a gamified understanding of this is what you put out this is what you get in you know this is transactional I'm tricking them. That's what the relationship will be and what it will feel like. And you won't be there authentically and you won't be vulnerable. There is a fear of vulnerability in this. There's a big fear of vulnerability.

That's my take. Three words, special one. Self-limiting beliefs. You got them. You got them. You got them. You got them. This whole thing is like, well, I would do this, but I'm hemmed in by this.

And like, oh, it could be like that, but actually this. Like you create these huge obstacles like mountain walls all around you that tell you why something can't be a certain way. And you kind of have to understand that that is a product of your perception, right? That's not necessarily real. So for instance, not liking football, it's fine not to like football, right? It's also fine to sort of have like a passing interest in football just so you've got something to talk to. we're blokes, right? But you don't have to do that. Like, not all men like football. You know, when I think about the things that my male friends have in common without me, sure, there's sports,

but there's also like chess, films, cycling, politics. A friend of mine is really into virtual air traffic control simulation, right? Like, there are all these things which bring men I know into contact with other men, which are a product of their hobbies and interest. and they just seek out other guys who are into it. Like, there's also, like, I'm not saying that this has to be you, but I've certainly got a lot of friends where it's just drinking. Like, it's just, do you want to do some drinking? Yes, I do.

Let's go do some drinking. You know, you don't have to pathologize everything. Like, not liking football is fine. It doesn't have to become about your trauma from all-boy school, you know? And I think that there is something here, which is that I think that you, you've mistaken intimacy and connection for trauma dumping. And so that's why you seek out women to, in your words, share your life with. But I think that rather than sharing your life, you're sort of sharing your sense of like your

origin story and your pathologies. You know, these women don't know about each other. Like you say that what you want is like connections and friendships. but you keep hermetically sealing off people from one another. Like, you can introduce female friends to each other and then you can all become friends together. But I think the reason why you don't is because, you know, it's sort of this ambiguous date-like space

where they're at once a sort of substitute girlfriend and an unpaid therapist. And that's what you've sort of trapped yourself into thinking intimacy is. It was actually the intimacy of friends is often banter. You know, sure there's like candor and confidences being made, but there's also just like being idiots together, having a laugh, shared interest, just experiencing life alongside one another, all of these things. And you're creating circumstances where you're not going to experience that because you're keeping people separate. So I know that you said that we can't advise you because we're not male, but actually we can. Yeah, there you go. And also use of male. What's going on there? I stop calling everyone females and males. I mean, look, I'm not hung up on that.

It's sort of like best male singer. It's weird. It's like when you say the word, all the males were out tonight, all the females out tonight, it is a sure sign that you've been listening to do many podcasts. Although we're a podcast, so what can we say? He does say women, though. So, yeah, because he's so tied up in his super woke knots to cover up what isn't very super woke thinking. I think that an easy way to get around this is like these like kind of ambiguous friendships.

What about people? What about birthday person? The human race. We all came from Africa. Introduce these women to each other and hang out. Your harem. Anyway, sorry, let's go. Let's go. We have to go. Special one, let's know if you figure it out. Human connection is there for you. And you can find men who don't need to talk about football with just go do something you actually care about. Like, start a book club if you want to see a man. Do it. Men love reading marks.

But I fear that it might just be sincerity and that puts you off, I think, as we've pointed out, you want other people to be vulnerable with you. I think he thinks sincerity is trauma dumping. I think that's what he thinks it is. Yeah, I think you're ashamed of the way that your own sincerity was punished as a kid. Inferiority complex and superior to complex at the same time.

Two cheeks of the same ass. And on that note, this has been, if I speak, we'll be speaking next week. Hope your lives aren't peak. Peace out. Catch me in the Peck and Pelican. Doing more spoken word. Bye.

Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.