Panic World - Netflix's "Adolescence" and the masculinity crisis

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

On March 13, 2025, Netflix released Adolescence, and ever since, parents have been learning that Andrew Tate is bad. What are we to do? Ryan talks to Grant about how the problems we have on the internet now are not dramatically new, it’s just that everyone has the internet in their pocket all the time — and, to borrow a 2010s phrase, the solution to that might surprise you. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for just five bucks a month at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Sponsors Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Engineer: Rebecca Seidel - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, this is Graham, producer of the podcast. Two quick things before we start today's show. This was going to be a bonus, but then the last act went into places we didn't quite expect, and it felt surprising and honestly important, and it kind of felt mean to put that behind a paywall. With that said, we do have a Patreon. It's patreon.com slash Panic World. And for five bucks, you get episodes that are ad-free, and we put as much additional content up there as we can. and yeah, it really helps us and we'd appreciate it if you did that. We think we do something worth $5. And then second thing, we've gotten a pretty strong response to the episode about my

friend's dad being a Holocaust denier. I'm sad to say a lot of people seem to relate. And that gave us an idea. If you or somebody you know is suffering from an internet brain warping and you would like to vent and discuss it and possibly have clips of it played for Ryan at a later date, you know, having the trauma we're all living through turned into content for the show. We would love to hear from you. And you can do that by emailing us at Panicworldpod at gmail.com.

That's Panicworldpod at gmail.com. And yeah, that's it. Enjoy today's episode. And we really appreciate you being here. and we love you all. Okay, now today's episode. Ryan Broderick, what was the biggest fear your parents had

about the internet when you were a kid? Probably putting, like, credit card information in. That was probably the big one. They didn't know that I had a secret AIM girlfriend that I met at a Green Day concert when I was 15 and I was talking to all the time. But they were very afraid of me purchase. anything off the internet.

I think you just touched on something that is coming up for all the millennial parents now with internet concerns, where we have a nostalgia and a sweet spot for it that I think plays a part in today's episode. But we'll get there. Yeah, porn viruses, stranger danger. The fear was not, at least for me,

bullying leading to indoctrination. I see where we're headed. Yep. Yes. That is the big one now, probably. Should that have been the fear when we were used? Or has the internet really changed? So, I have told this story in many, many venues over the years, but...

Wait, wait, wait, wait. You're going to start a story that I'm going to put in the theme music and you can do it after. Today, because of online bullying, we are talking about adolescents, the Netflix four-part series that is teaching parents everywhere that Andrew Tate is bad. I am Grant Irving. this is Panic Road, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. Joining me today, a guy who always wets himself when the police storm his bedroom, Ryan Broderick.

That's because I pay them to come on in. That's because it's a whole thing I'm doing. They're like, oh, this guy again. Yeah, I'm dived up and ready for you, officer. What is it where you were horrible 14 people, send the cops to people's houses? To swat it. Yeah, you twat yourself. Yeah, I swat myself and then I just peeed my pants.

I was like, God damn it. This guy again. I have never been swatted. I should knock on wood. But you heard it listeners. Ryan is asking you, please swallow him. All right, tell your story. I don't live that life anymore.

I had a friend who was radicalized online in the 2000s. And like looking back, that's exactly what was happening. And when the rest of the planet started to radicalize itself in the mid-2010s, I was very familiar with the sort of general pattern of it. So it was, to answer your question at the top, which you didn't even wait for me to answer, you just like jumped into the episode. That was a thing that was happening in the 2000s.

It just wasn't happening on a scale that made people care about it or even realize it. You think that what's changed is the scale that it's happening on. I think everything now is about scale and speed. So like, and, you know, we've shown this in all of the episodes that we've done so far. The problems that we have on the Internet are not particularly new. But the fact that they're happening on a device that lives in your pocket immediately, whether you're inside your home or not is the difference.

Whereas my friend who was radicalized, his radicalization engine was a giant box that, like, lived in his living room. And he could only access it a couple hours a day via very slow modem using very archaic websites. But now, like, you can just be, you know, at school watching hours of Andrew Tate clips, you know, with a with a headphone in your hoodie and nobody knows. And that is the difference. It's, it's, it's much harder to separate out, I think.

It sounds much harder. How did your friend fall into? Like, what are the first steps of him being indoctrinated? The, he was always really into punk music. Oh. And he was always really into like DIY stuff, like punk music and stuff. Bad, but like bad religion, no effects. Like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, edgy.

edge lord but liberal ish leftist bands and then he got towards the end of high school he got really invested in the ron paul presidential campaign and he was using reddit and something awful and four chan because we all were i remember seeing like nazi stuff on those sites and just thinking like that's really goofy and silly and dumb sure but he got really invested in ron paul and then through that he started getting interested in bitcoin and then i remember there was a day it was one of the last days i never really considered like him a friend. I, you know, I would see him on and off after, but we were never close. We were sitting in a target parking lot smoking weed, as you do.

And he turns on some music and it's like completely indecipherable like punk music. And I was like, you know, whatever. I was never really into that sort of the spectrum of stuff. I was more into the voice with tight jeans crying stuff. But totally unproblematic voice crying. Yeah. Totally not a single groomer in that group. That's for sure.

So he was then like, you know, do you like this? And, you know, back then as a teen boy in the 2000s, you just, there's, you have to just lie and be like, yeah, I hate follow up boy. And then you go home and you just listen to nothing but follow up boy. So like at the time, I'm like, yeah, man, sounds really good. And he's like, yeah, it's Nazi oi punk. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, well, I've been on these message boards downloading like old Nazi

oy. OI is a genre of punk music for people who don't know that. If you don't know that, don't listen to us. We don't want to as listen to. We don't. Please don't. We only want people who nobody needs to know that. Nobody needs to know any of this stuff.

So I was like, oh, okay. And he was, he said, yeah, basically something to the effect of, yeah, I just think that like they make better punk music, which like doesn't mean anything. Like the idea of better punk music doesn't make sense as a concept even. And I just remember sitting there kind of like in the car just being like, like what the fuck is going on and he and his pipeline was was was was at first irony too because he kind of he had that kind of you know like the voice that like like stinky menus when they talk about wrestling they're like yeah this is like so good and you're like it's not good and you know it's

not good uh i don't want to get in fight with wrestling guys but like there's always like a stinky guy in your couch in college that like is talking to you about wrestling stuff and the exact voice that my friend was using to talk about how like nazi punk was more authentic punk music yeah and that's what just like, I can't fucking do this anymore. Hearing about that sort of like Nazi agile thing, like I was never directly on 4chan. I would just talk to my friends who were on those things, but I was like, I was like, I'm not going into the cesspool. But I was torrenting UFC fights as a teen.

And the chat would just be somebody to be like, that guy's crushing like Hitler. Like there would be just one person just spamming. And like in the fucking site, you could have never like close the chat too. so I was like, I'm just trying to watch John Jones, you know? Like, get the Nazis out of my UFC, a thing that totally is not going to become a major part of the rest of the world. But I do think that experience is very important. You know, if we're, I assume we're going to be talking about the Netflix show Adolescence at some point here. Not to do what our guests do on this show.

Yes. But before we get to sort of the modern idea of radicalization, I do think it's really important for people to understand. that like it is not like a magic piece of code that turns people into neo-Nazis. It can it can definitely expose you to far right or in-cell ideology by recommending you content. But that content is being made by the exact kind of guy that is going into the UFC pirated stream chat room and saying Nazi stuff hoping that somebody takes the bait. It is a guy doing it every single time. And as we see in adolescence, it like almost doesn't.

matter if you take it seriously. Like, the guy on the other end of that chat could have just been a 15-year-old who was seeing who he could upset and, like, who would fight with him and, like, could have, like, had no ideology. Eventually, it doesn't matter. Right. But because we were bullied, it's actually very funny. I, like, received multiple messages of people just assuming we were talking about adolescents,

and they were, like, suggesting guests or angles. And I was like, I was not going to. Okay. Okay, fine, fine. Fuck you. Thank you. I love you. Give us $5.

You're being very, thank you're being weirdly aggressive about this. I think it's a fine, I think it's a fine topic. It's a great show. I'm excited to talk about it. I agree. I just,

I just, I thought that the, I felt feel like being known in that way felt uncomfortable to me. But that's, that's for me in group therapy. Okay, yeah,

that sounds like something you should work through. But now, because apparently we're a TV podcast, I have to say, spoiler warning. we're not going to be reviewing the show in like a TV movie way, but we are going to be like talking about what happens in it. We could.

You're really torn up about this whole thing, like I think we should just have a conversation about this show. It's an interesting show. I like the show. I just meant like, you know. Yeah, you just seem very caught off by this whole thing. Yeah, no, we should talk about it. It's a fantastic show.

But spoiler, if you plan to watch and you, yeah, you know how TV spoilers work. All right. So, Ryan, you enjoyed the show? Do you have any overall big sauce? Jesus, Jesus, fucking Christ, dude. Okay. Yeah, no, it was good. I was, you know, whenever I watched stuff like that, so I guess I should start with, like,

I, like, half of my internet footprint is still very British from, like, when I live there. So I saw people, like, in the British media talking about this show a bunch. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Like, it seems to be, like, causing a real, real row, as they would call it over there. And so, you know, a couple weeks ago, I had a free afternoon, so I watched it. And I kind of knew it was about something to do with Andrew Tate and in-cell culture and something. So I went in like a little skeptical as I do with anything about the, I try. People like to do this to me all the time, like when I go to all the various parties that I go to all the time because I'm a very social person.

They're like, oh, did you see like this documentary about this thing that you're right about? And I'm like, no, I did not. Because I try very hard not to like do that. Like, I don't really watch TV shows about the internet. I mean, although if you are wondering, like, what I think the best thing about the internet ever made is, in terms of fiction, I think it's we're all going to the world's fair. The movie made before I saw the TV glow by Jane Schoenabron. But, like, yeah, I don't typically seek that stuff out because, like, I live in those spaces. But if you think that Ryan just said all that as a desperate play for Jane to come on the show, you are correct.

We would love for coming on the show. Please come on the show. That is true. But I was very impressed with adolescence. I thought it, there was like maybe one or two moments where I kind of went like, but other than that, like I thought it was a pretty accurate portray of what I've seen. Yeah. So I want to talk about this moments, but let me give full context in case, you know,

I think that there are people who probably don't want to watch that, but want to know, like, the big takeaways. So the first episode takes place largely. police station, where you see the bureaucracy at work you learn at the end of that episode that this 13-year-old English boy, Jamie Miller, stabbed to death a classmate, Katie Leonard. The second episode largely takes place at a school where eventually the police find out that Jamie was being bullied online specifically about topics related to insult them. The third, my favorite, and I think most people's favorite episode, is Jamie talking to a

psychologist, and you seem vacillate between being a relatable 13-year-old and then a hostile resentment towards being out of control that seems steeped in misogyny that I think the show is arguing is from like a cultural indoctrination at large. Lastly, we spend a day with Jamie's family as they are harassed and even worse subjected to fans of Jamie who believe he's been set up and they're dealing. with their guilt. The thesis of the show, I think, is really nicely summed up by its co-writer Jack Thorne, who said in an interview, there's the old saying that it takes a village to raise a child,

but Thorne said it also takes a village to destroy a child. He added he just wants adolescence to persuade the village to help these kids. I think that mission comes through in like it being a oneer, you know, that's all one shot, no cut, so it creates this like, yeah, every episode is just one take, yeah. Which makes it feel extremely real. Like you're moving at life pace through these things, which can almost have like a documentary vibe to it. So this is an attempt at making hyper normalization at reality speed. And I thought it was really effective and kind of nauseating.

I think the oneers are impressive. But I do think sometimes they. They were kind of distracting, actually. I think the first episode, I remember being like, oh, the whole thing is this. Then I started the second episode. I was like, oh, the whole thing is this. Which is like fine. I mean, there's like, there's certain things you can't really do without the oneer and

they're really well done, like the, the scene with the therapist. I feel like the bulk of the show is essentially all the adults in this small town sort of like coming to grips with what has happened and why it happened. and how it happened. And so the pacing of it, I think, is well done where they're choosing specific hour-long moments in this story over like a period of weeks and months to sort of like show in real time how these adults start to kind of understand what this kid has been up to. And the show, I think, is doing a very tricky thing where it is trying to not,

basically anything you do about the internet is immediately dated by whatever version of the internet you're doing it about so it's clearly trying to make something that can last the test of time and the show I would say succeeds 90% of the way there is a scene where the police officer who's doing the investigation meets his son in school

and his son gives like this extremely hand-fisted like quick little like Wikipedia articles dialogue about in cell theory where I was just like yeah I guess there's like no good way to to do that um like there's no artful way to have that done wait wait can I can have you uh this is a weird question but like do you spend time around teenagers ever I can't legally answer that question oh I know I I yeah I do I do I've also like interviewed like I've interviewed these people like I've you know I've I've I've I've I've I've I've I I've I I I But they don't they don't talk that earnestly about this stuff. That's the problem.

I used to work at a teen center and like I don't know. It struck me as true because I had very sweet children who thought it was very cute that I had no idea what they were talking about. And that I don't disagree with that. They were like, yeah, let me let me break down for you all of the things in this video you're missing. And I don't disagree with that. I just think that like it's the one moment where I was like, this is a little too expositional, which is fine. It kind of has to be.

And the fact that the show, now that the show is like being offered to screen for free in UK schools, I think it's important that like there's some like very clear like, okay, like we're going to talk about the 80-20 theory, which is like this big like in-sell sexual marketplace concept. Like that stuff is. useful. And I thought the depiction, it ultimately doesn't matter because the depiction of the little boy, the killer in the third episode is like, is the heart of the thing. Like being able to capture the shapeshifting of a like little boy who's been brainwashed by the internet in literally

real time is I think the hardest thing to pull off and they do pull it off. So like that to me is all that kind of matters in the end. Yeah, yeah. That and the depiction of the parents having no idea. Like those two things are the core of, of not even just the show. I think that the core of the coin, to use Fox News's concept, the crisis and masculinity right now. Like those are the two issues.

It's how can like this little boy still be a little boy and also want to murder girls in his class? And how can the parents not know? And like that is the heart of it. Yeah, yeah. The thing I want to talk about those in a big. bit, but the thing that I thought was, I was like, oh, you fucking, like, nailed it was the scene in the hardware store where the dad's buying paint. Yeah.

And there's the creepy little hardware employee who, like, then spins him a conspiracy theory about how his son is innocent and is, like, saying, I'm on your side. And I was like, I was like, that is the, it wouldn't be, yeah, that bitch deserved it, which I think is what most shows would have gone with. But instead, like, I've in taken all this cultural misogyny and clearly like this is a setup. I was like that is exactly like and I haven't seen that the insidiousness of that feeling of like, oh, like we are so out of our depth.

Like we have no like there's no way to talk to this person and reach them. That's where you get the like the Project Mayhem Fight Club vibes. Yes. And that is such a hard thing to communicate because actually a couple of minutes ago when I was saying like They talk in code. They sort of talk in circles. They're not very earnest. Like that is what I mean is like, you know, you can have an hour long conversation with the most violent in-cell imaginable.

And they're probably not going to tell you anything straight. Like it's all going to be in these weird, coded, kind of like circular logic kind of things. And you might, you, and actually, I mean, they kind of pull it off with Jamie in the third episode. where he's like trying very hard not to like he's like he's you can watch the little boy like clearly know that if he says what he really thinks they'll catch him and so yeah the hardware store kind of reinforces that where that episode is I think the weakest of the four but it it does something very important which is it's like a normal day out with the family they're still trying to like ignore what has happened which I think is like even more.

fascinating. And then life just doesn't let them. And that is sort of, I think, the point, you know, I've seen a lot of arguments about, like, the depiction of the family in the show. And I think that, like, the fourth episode makes it pretty clear, which is that, like, they're trying very hard to ignore this stuff. And it's impossible. And I, you know, that's true for every family right now. Who, who, every family. I was going to say every family of a boy, but that's not even true. It's every family because, like, the women are the, the girls are the victims. So it's every family right now is trying to ignore this and they can't. Yeah. What I think the show did was give us a window into a different culture that's trying to not ignore it. And that has led to a wide array of think pieces, some better than others, and a whole lot of freaking out. So why don't we take a break and then we can dive into see if there's any good solutions to come out of this Netflix show. I guess the show kind of established this by, like, the, like, lead police officer investigating the case. It's his son at school that he's talking to.

It's made clear that his son is bullied too and, like, doesn't have a lot of friends. But, like, the show's not trying to be, like, every bullied boy is going to be radicalized. And what that fourth episode also did was show that, like, yeah, look, their daughter, like, turned out great and is, like, this sensitive person. what makes it almost harder to track down is that it's it's violent and it's more rampant but it is like it's such a random draw you know and like that point the bullying aspect is is interesting

I think we do need to talk about this because in the third episode Jamie is talking about how ugly he is which is like meant to be absurd like he's I mean he's central casting yeah like he he's not he's not if they had cast like the stereotype of like a hideous misshapen in cell. I don't think the show would work as well because the point is that this little boy was insecure and he found people on the internet to be like, you're hideous and you're never going to be able to,

what's the term that he was like, participate in the sexual marketplace because you're hideous and your life is ruined. And it's all these women's fault. And, you know, you see this joke on like X and like blue. guy a lot that like the majority of men on the planet have like severe body dysmorphia and eating disorders and like that is essentially what is destroying the world right now and it's like totally true that like well it's good that we're closing the gender gap ryan like like like i'm fine i'm glad to see equity you know yeah i'm a progressive i think it's good i think it's really good

um no but like it is patently absurd like the moment when he's like i'm hideous and it's like I think even though the psychiatrist looks up, she's like, what are you talking about? Because like, that's, that is how this works. It's like, you become so brainwashed that like, you know, the reality doesn't make sense anymore to you. I think this is like what the internet does to you. Were you like, you half believe things and it just gets into your brain. And like he says, you know, like, like he wasn't like, he doesn't have an ideology. Like he wasn't like an Andrew Tate Stan.

It just like around him. And like he's also saying that to manipulate her to compliment him. Yeah. On one level, he believes he's hideous. And on the other hand, he's trying to do the things he's been taught societally that then women will respond to to make him feel good. And when you don't get what you want, that's when this, like, infectious rage pops out. Yeah. He's like trying to flirt with her.

And he's trying to get her to declare. him innocent and he's also trying to fight like an insane rage that he has as it he realizes it's not working and then on another level he's also just a little boy so it's like it's an insane performance and he that kid's going to absolutely sweep the baffta's this year but like it's it it is unbelievable and it i don't i you know what i i was about to say like maybe the show like won't age as poorly as like all other forms of sort of like internet-based drama and comedy that I've seen in like traditional entertainment, but like it's possible because like they don't,

they mentioned Andrew Tate once by name, I believe. Which I think we need to talk about the UK's relationship to Andrew Tate because I think that might be slightly confusing for Americans, which is that the UK was sounding the alarm bell on Andrew Tate way earlier than us and taking him much more seriously. Shanti Doss in the observer for the Guardian, wrote an article in 2022 titled Inside the Violent Misogynistic World

of TikTok's New Star Andrew Tate and what they had figured out he runs like a like a like a fan club that you like pay to be a part of and you like get stuff if you share his videos so what people were doing were clipping his podcast and then uploading them as YouTube and then uploading them as TikTok clips

which if you do that on TikTok TikTok TikTok it's Algorithm identifies it as a trend because those videos are related content. So what ended up happening was like TikTok, TikTok was just overrun with Andrew Tate videos like three years ago. It's an MLM. Yeah. I mean, all of masculinity is an MLN.

But yes. I actually, but I mean like, but like going store door to like the way that like you buy these products and go to door to door. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It was Mary Kaye cosmetics for TikTok videos. And it, they completely overwhelmed TikTok, especially in the UK. And so the Guardian like, you know, rain the alarm bell on it. And they've, they've been taking it much more seriously than we have. He's made a bigger dent. He has more of a background with the UK than he does the US.

I think he, his citizenship is all insane. But like, he's more closely tied to the UK than he is here. And so, like, they've been just much more proactive about it. I've seen. Well, they've been proactive about trying to not get children to kill one another in, you know, ways like, you know, like they, like they, the killing is done with a knife instead of a gun. Like, like, you know, they've, like, they've, like, they've, like, they've, like a fundamental way that they just care about children more.

They do, yeah. All of my British friends are married with children happily, and all of my America friends are not. And there's societal reasons for that. But, yeah, no, there's, in a lot of British TV I've seen, like, they're talking about it more. And we talk about it in this way that feels very much like, I don't know, someone saying like Pokemon in a TV show from the 90s,

whereas the UK is like taking it pretty seriously. It's good. Yeah. The discourse around the show has brought up one of the topics of our first episodes, Jonathan Heights, Anxious Generation. And the co-creator Thorne said he does want the UK to ban social media for kids till they're 16, which is one of Heights's rallying cries. Before we get further banning social media for until 16, good idea, bad idea, Ryan.

you get the deciding vote. So we're not talking about America. We're talking about the UK, which already, they're already surveilling each other and they're already living in like, they have a very different world that they live in over there. And their internet is very different.

I actually don't think banning social media until you're 16 in the UK would be that difficult here. I think would be probably very bad because there's no to do it without like enforcing like you know your ID and stuff and that's really the issue like whenever people talk about social media bands like what they're actually talking about is social media surveillance it's like because you have to be able to you have to prove that someone's under

16 yeah right so you you have to have some sort of apparatus there the UK like I said it's just different I I am of the mindset that it's bad I don't think there's a way to do it safely in any context. But I do understand why the UK is doing it or talking about it. That's my nuanced answer there. It's just that like I think here would be a disaster. I think in the UK it would just be like another lost digital freedom that they have no problem giving up half the time anyway. So I don't I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. One thing we talked about in the height episode was that in America, all of our internet conversations are just used to like shoot. horn in your cultural war thing or to humiliate Mark Zuckerberg for your own political gain. None of it is happening sincerely. So it was really interesting to have this window into a country that is, that seems to be earnestly talking about it in a way that is like actually cares about welfare and safety of children and not.

Well, let's, I mean, let's let's let's let's break it down. Then hold on. So you mentioned gun violence in the UK. The UK banned guns in 1996. They banned them after the Dunblane massacre in Scotland. 16 kids were killed and the country was just like, enough. And they passed a bunch of amendments about firearms over the next couple of years. And now, yeah, they have knife crime.

And I had to use my ID to buy a kitchen knife in Sainsbury's once. But like, other than that, like, they don't have gun violence. And so it's not totally surprising me that, like, they're taking in-cell behavior as seriously. Like there is a there is just a cultural thing there that we don't have, which is caring about your children. I think I just blatantly clear. They have banned hate speech in most forms. Like you can get a knock on the door from the police for posting hate speech. They already have the Online Safety Act, which is a very controversial thing that got put in place that.

that puts a legal duty on social media companies to basically not let children access not just pornography but also like eating disorder content like self-harm stuff like when they say we want to ban social media for children or 16 that's not like a very hard I don't think Americans like totally understand the the level of

I'm not going to say authoritarianism because it doesn't I don't really see it that way, but it is, it's just a totally different landscape and a totally different set of values. And I would not want that system here because I actually don't trust the American government with it, not to sound like an insane man in a bunker, but like I don't. No, no, no. Because I mean, like, it's not. It's like evidence based.

Like, look at the things we target online that are supposed, like, we don't go, we don't target how to stop the internet from teaching your child to be bulimic or like that they need look maxing things. We like target like anti, like the word trans. Well, so both both Michael Hobbs and Juniper in different episodes have mentioned this exact thing, which is that like we don't have the UK like has a lot of problems. But like you can like you can be gay there. Like you can you can you can be gay that you can even be trans there. I mean they're they're trying to like I think the turfs in the UK are trying to make it harder. But like there are like there are problems. But like I'm just saying here there's much more of a risk, even for women.

Like period tracking apps right now are kind of terrifying. Like so any sort of internet surveillance in the U.S. is, I think, much more dangerous. So like if someone here, like, I mean, it is happening here. We're seeing politicians say they want to ban social media for people under 16. The next question has to be, how do you prove they're 16? And then the answer is you have to prove they're over 18. And then if they have to prove their over 18. teen, how do you do that? You have to do it with an ID. So you have to use an ID to use the internet.

And like the whole, you know, that's dangerous. Perfect transition. Ryan Broderick. No problem. Happy to help. We as a show have been decidedly on the line that, uh, all of these proponents in the U.S. seem extremely dystopian and untrustworthy when you put in a U.S. perspective. But what I think adolescents did as a show was it showed us a culture that is taking this more seriously and with nuance and it was like ready to have a deeper conversation and that has led to a lot of parents and teachers in America having an outlet to talk about how fucking out of their depth they feel. And there's been some really good pieces on this. And so after the break, Ryan and I are going to help parents and teachers all across America learn what to do with their

freak toxic boys. And yeah, we're going to solve all of it. And that's after an ad from, from Theo Vaughan. Take it Theo Vaughan. This isn't new. The internet we grew up with was not safe. It was things were operating at a different scale. But one thing I saw from the adolescence conversation, something that made like implicit sense to me that I was like,

oh, of course, that this feels like a thing we should be talking about. So the Guardian reported that 70% of women teachers said they had face misogyny in schools, evidence that many red-pilled boys feel the need to reassert power dynamics of male supremacy even to adult women. This is from New York Times quoting The Guardian. Stephanie Westcott published her research in 2023, and she said that teachers pointed to the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2021, 2020-2020 as a period of radicalization for a vocal minority of male students. These boys were stuck at home melting their brains on the internet.

Like all of us who were who experienced like this greater uptick of indoctrination that melted our brains, this happened to like the unlucky parents and teens who like were at home with our iPads at just the wrong time. Maybe that should give some optimism that as we like reintegrate into the world more, this will like level off more. No. Probably not. But, okay, I do have kind of a, I do have kind of a measured take here that I've been cooking on. I read a study the other day that, like, there are a subset of people who are becoming emotionally, quote unquote, addicted to Chachibati. And I was reading through another study that came out actually around the same time that, like, the only precursor for self-reported instances of pornography addiction are religiousosity.

which is interesting. Like basically, that makes complete sense. Yeah, porn addiction is actually just like, you have really fucked up views about sex and like this is how you're, you're dealing with it.

And I remember studies that had come out like in the 2010s about like social media addiction, like people who were completely addicted to posting on social media even against their own best interest or using it so much that like their, their real friends were distancing themselves from them. So I think actually it's probably more likely. that being an in-cell, being a porn addict, having a relationship with chat chabit, being a Twitter power user are probably all heads of the same hydra.

I think for a subset of people, the internet provides an emotional replacement that is extremely seductive and engrossing. And the pandemic being the moment when teachers started noticing more in-cells in schools makes sense because based on everything that we can see, the pandemic was a moment when more people started to use the internet. So I don't actually think it's like a matter of this ideology spreading. I actually think it's just like there's a subset of people that this will be true for because of the way the internet sort of interacts with the human brain and the human emotional system and

all of that. It's the same kind of like logic behind like the horizon gambling online during the pandemic. And like there's just a bunch of like weird internet that the resurgence of eating disorder content on TikTok during the pandemic. Like there are memetic social diseases and I think like toxic masculinity is one of them. That's really bleak. I don't know if it's bleak. I actually think like we talked about this on the Holocaust denial episode, which is we got to come up with a better like way to describe our episodes my friend's dad i do yeah yeah but like i do think he's probably all better now that the phillies are seven and two go phil's probably i think that i think that's honestly the way some of this works but i do wonder if like by addressing different sides of the same

prism like we're actually not dealing with the issue which is that like i i need a word for this and once i get a word for it i can finally write this takedown but but like there's just a but there's a lot of people out there who when given the option to like fill the void inside of them with internet content will and it manifests in different ways and if we can target that we might be able to kill the whole thing like that's the issue the issue isn't first we have to kill all the disney adults adults honestly they they're fine they're having a they're having a blast but like i haven't seen anything good about in cell recovery but you also talked about this like it's like being an alcoholic where like they kind of have to realize that like this is a problem for them

and if they don't you can't really fix it but if we're talking about children and we're talking about like how do you basically teach media literacy to children to stop memetic social diseases from forming maybe the answer is to like teach them about like how their emotions and the internet intertwine maybe that's the moment to catch it because once they radicalize i mean we actually you know you know what is a really good example i see i see Isis brides. So like Ellie Hall, former guest of the show, close friend of mine, she spent years interviewing the women who would travel from like the Netherlands and even America to Syria.

And she was like very deep in like ISIS bride tumbler where like they were posting propaganda. And, you know, she's very familiar with that world. And it is a similar process to becoming an in cell where like most of these girls like were like emotionally vulnerable and groomed online and then then then travel to Syria to become like a bride as part of like. the Islamic Revolution that was promised to them. That to me is the exact same pathway for like everything else that we talk about the internet doing to people, whether it's a needing disorder, whether it's, you know, a porn addiction or being an in-cell or being a neo-Nazi. Like it's all the same roadmap.

So it's got to be something at the beginning of the road. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like before they get on the highway. It's at that most emotional, vulnerable place of looking for belonging. Well, that's fascinating. We should have her on to talk about that. We could, that's a great episode. I told her she's not allowed back on the show because of her dog eating a bone the whole time.

I will undo that. All of that vulnerability that seems to be bombarding places, uh, is terrifying. I think mostly millennial parents of their becoming teens who I think are really, who I think have, as I mentioned at the top, an astound, like they had AIM boyfriends and girlfriends too that we all feel nostalgic about. And we like, we're kind of fucked up by seeing like guys get fucked to death by horses, but also like

had this like soft spot towards the internet. And like also I think a lot of the fearmongering of our parents of like, you're going to get kidnapped by a stranger or like you're going to get arrested because you've pirated so much music and they're going to break down your door and take you to jail.

I think that the discourse from adolescents of millennial parents is like, I don't want to be causing a moral panic. I don't want to be overreacting

that what is happening with the youth now is the worst thing that's ever happened to them and be repeating that cycle. But they also kind of rightly feel

really fucked out. So I want to quote this really good piece from the cut by Catherine Jezer Morton who wrote, in one corner, we've got

idea pushed by Jonathan Haidt, that kids need more independence among their own peers, that quality time with adults is not what they're missing. In the other corner, whenever we leave kids alone, it's far too easy for them to get sucked into toxic online vortexes. Adolescent seems to argue that the examples that by the parents is the last line of defense against a manoeuvre. No pressure. Maybe.

I'm trying to envision what a parent could say. if you notice your son is becoming radicalized and saying red pill stuff at the dinner table, I'm trying to imagine what could possibly be said to that boy to make him not do that by their parent. And I struggle because they're always going to view it as like the parent, you know, suddenly you've, you've kind of maybe made it cooler by accident for them, more dangerous at least. the point I was making earlier about sort of like all these being tied together may come in here too because like there's a band that's reuniting that has you know allegations uh an emo band that has

allegations that has allegations surrounding them and it's led to a lot of conversations with women in my life right now about how almost all of them have some kind of grooming story whether it's a serious one or one that you know they kind of look back on and be like huh that was weird but almost all the 30-something women that I know, not to humble brag, they have some kind of grooming story and I would say nine and a ten times it involves the internet. And I do wonder if like millennials are being a little rose-colored glasses about our own internet experience when once again like this kind of stuff was happening but it was just manifesting differently. Look, I don't want to say men's rights guys have a point. But the fact that now

that it is, that it is, like, let's call it what is. It is, it is largely adult men, grooming young boys and turning them into gender extremists. And we are treating it. That's a great way to put it. That is what it is. Andrew Tate is grooming young boys. Andrew Tate has acknowledges that the only person who cares about is Bugatti are 13 year old boys. Yes. They all do. They know this. No woman is impressed by your gross looking suit and your... No. No.

He's not, he's an action figure. Like, he's not for female consumption. So the idea that we're sort of treating this differently to me than we would, like a group, like the groom, like we didn't deal with this inherent problem of how the internet functions, which allows young people to be in spaces with adults who have bad intentions and, and, and, and, and. and are bad actors. And that is old, I mean, I remember, I think I've talked about this on the show before, but I don't know if I have. I had a conversation with like, you know, a YouTube moderator years ago asking them, like why they can shut down ISIS content and why they can't shut down men's rights content.

But it's the exact same kinds of vectors. And the answer for people who don't remember is just that ISIS was good at branding. Yeah, it was just. But the men's rights guys are pretty fucking good at branding now, actually. They're all using the same words and they're all using the same thumbnails. But we're treating this differently. Yeah, the thumbnail is how I overcame my sissy porn addiction. No, it's sissy hypnosis, and you have to get out of it by relearning to be a Sigma male.

But, like, we're not treating this the same way that we're treating like a sex pest lead singer of a band. We're not treating this the same way we're treating like eating disorder content. We're not, we've made this separate in this way that means that there's not much we can actually do. And to your point about the infrastructure, that's probably, like, that's a way to. put it. But like because this is boys and because this is like masculinity, because this is men, we've made it so separate from every other way we deal with social diseases online that like there's nothing we can actually do now. Like I not to be blackpilled as they would say. But until we acknowledge that this is the exact same thing as like a teen girl cutting herself

because she saw stuff on MySpace about it 15 years ago or getting an eating disorder from TikTok or Instagram, like we can't do anything about it. Did we actually do things about those or did we just we did we absolutely did there a lot of that stuff a lot of those like moderation decisions are being like turned back right now oh oh just like on the platforms like they yeah okay it used to be like you couldn't i mean fuck there there was an entire movement in the my space era called to write love on her arms which was a bunch of like big emo bands getting together to do like an anti-cutting charity they had t-shirt yeah yeah no no right right i i i remember like i remember remember that and treat but I think actually at the time I just thought that it was like promotion like like like a pro cut out of

aren't seen girls who cut just so deep and interesting no but like we we used to treat this stuff like we actually did use to take this stuff seriously like if and maybe like the the thing you you read about like how it we need like more outside time like yeah because 15 years ago there would be like a bus at warp tour called like the like don't be an in cell bus and you could like win like a free monster energy drink by like like saying a compliment to a girl that was like emotionally thoughtful. But like we don't have those, we don't have those systems in place in the real world anymore. And the cup piece, she talks to one mom who was like, a lot of my friends just think that if they're like a cool mom who like talks to her son and like makes clear that like she's a feminist and like not like naggy, but like through osmosis, their teen boy will respect women because they like respect and think their mom is. school and she's like i don't think that that's like all he does is watch like youtube of of of of of men like i don't like i'm questioning that but i like i don't know what else to do if we were to get a town hall of like that mom and the the dad who's like kids are talking about the bougat they're going to have and you know the the parents of of all and

the teachers of these potential threats, what conversation would you want to have with them? And then if we were the next day to take you to the health class where all of these kids are secretly just watching YouTube with their headphones and their hoodies, what would you try to, like, direct the conversation with them? Because what you just said about, like, it needs more than this. But I think if, like, the health class conversation was like, these guys are creepy and weird and you are being groomed, like, by them. Like, that sets a total, like, that is a conversation that, like, could be having in schools.

I do think that's part of it. Yeah. I do think, like, just being like, these guys are fucking predators and they're grooming you and they're turning you into, like, weird little fuckers that, like, will be miserable your whole life. So stop it. I was in a really rarefied position when I worked at a teen center where I was, like, 25. So I wasn't that much older. But I was still, like, to them, I was, like, the perfect amount of older.

and they just had so many really earnest questions. And like this wasn't coming up then or at least where I was working. It feels not hard to be like, this guy, like, they don't talk to women their age because women their age know they're bullshit. Like they are not able to maintain any sort of real relationship of being liked for who they are. That's gross. And like teens are people too who want to be liked for who they are. Well, to sort of.

move the hypothetical like I'm in a health class or a town hall thing off the table because just for a second because I do think there's like one piece of this that we haven't hit that is like really important which is like if you watch all this stuff if you watch all these videos and all these channels all these guys they are saying something that is true and that is that men right now do not get the misogynistic paradise of like their fathers or their grandfather's lives which is like you and now there's all kinds of social and systemic reasons why a man cannot support one or possibly two like one family and a secret family on a single income and own a house in 2025 but that is the heart of what they're getting at they're saying

This world that you're living in now is so much worse than the world that your father or your grandfather lived in. And if you take my advice, we can either survive in this world and get what we want or we can change this world back. So the thing that I always sort of think about when I hear that kind of stuff, you know, I have over the last year, one of the biggest sort of like changes in my own thinking and my own writing about this stuff is that nostalgia is inherently a fascist trap that like there's very few ways to like genuinely engage with nostalgia without sort of like having to eventually promise people that things were better back then and they weren't they just weren't and there's no way you could ever return to anything so I think one of the core ways to deal with this stuff is to come up with a new story a new story of what masculinity is and and and that has to be unfortunately

done mostly by men. Like that can't, like we talked about this, I think, on the Luigi episode, but like, there has to, and that's like I don't totally love. That's a good guy for us to, you know, disseminate to the youth. I mean, honestly, he's not a bad one. But like, I, are we talking about this in the leftist Joe Rogan one? Like, we, we have talked about this before, but like, for the, the bit about the cool

mom, like, I'm, I know that she probably wants to feel like she has some sort of like agency here and can do something. But like the things that I learned about what being a man looks like, I learn from like very quiet moments in like the car with my dad alone growing up. And like some of them were good and some of them I'm in therapy to deal with. So some of them had a deal with poor semen. No, I just some of them are, are, my dad is 40 years older than I am. So some of them were from a time that like no longer exists.

Sure, sure. And that's just how it works. You have to create a new story because the fascists are using nostalgia. So the only way you can convince a kid like Jamie from adolescence to bring it back to this show, like the only way they could have stopped that. And actually, there's a point in that in that show where they kind of do this where like the dad is clearly a like emotionally if not physically like at least unstable presence in the house. and he is the paragon of like like you're all right you're what's all this you know like like British masculinity and he's like this like hardheaded builder kind of figure and he is teaching his son a version of masculinity that is no longer compatible with the modern world and then the kid is like wait

this doesn't work why doesn't this work and he goes online and he finds a bunch of men telling him it won't work until we kill all the women and like that is the process that is always the process yeah that's a really good way of putting it Um, okay. So that, that sounds like what you would say at the town hall to the parents. It's like, let's make a new story. Like, what is this? What, what is a man now?

What, what would you say, a man is a podcaster? Um, that's right. A man is a podcaster. A bearded podcast. A podcaster who wears vintage workman's gear from, from, from yesterday year before men's just got on microphones that I feel like this. The new version of masculinity is a, is, uh, is, a is a Bushwick

podcaster that pretends to be bisexual to meet women. That's what it is. It's a good thing I find out of it. It's a bedstai. It's a bedstai barista that wears workwear and DJs. That's what, that's what a,

um, what would you say to the health class? Oh, you're so pleased with yourself for that one. Hey, I'm making digs of my, I make, I'm making dicks of myself with that.

He chuckles quite like off mics because he's like, he's going, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. They're not going to know how badly I burned grand. I wasn't describing you. I don't know anything about your love life. You keep trying to tell me about it, but I'm going to ask you any questions. All right. No, I don't know. I don't know anything about your love life.

No, if I was going to talk to the health class, whenever I talk to, like, classrooms or, like, students or, like, groups of young people, I try to do, I mean, I've been doing the same thing since I was in my early 20s, like when I would go to colleges and talk about the internet or whatever, which is that I try to strike a balance between like, I know, I think I know what you know, but I'm comfortable when I don't know what you know. And the stuff that I do know that you know, I want to take seriously and talk about, I was on a podcast this week and we were talking about the Minecraft movie and they were like, what's a chicken jockey? And I was like, I think I can explain what a chicken jockey. I think I can like wrap my head around what a chick and

I've been thinking about the meme of the picture of Don Draper at the movie theater smoking a cigarette and his guy was like this is what my son looked like the entire time as you're talking about the South now I just was thinking about that that's how this generation is going to feel about the Minecraft movie but also if we're talking about masculinity like that is a really cool interaction

like to take your son to the Minecraft movie and watch him just be like this is cinema is like really cute and really fun And like that is, I would not say Minecraft is a masculine pursuit. It is like Legos on the internet. And so, you know, there are toxic corners of Minecraft and you do have to be careful with like who your son is talking to in discords about Minecraft. But like if you're thinking about like what can parents do, it actually is stuff like that. It is to not go like the Minecraft movie is derivative slop.

It's to take your, it's to take your son to the Minecraft movie and watch him go absolutely fucking ballistic and be like that's so cool and so weird and like enjoy it for what it is and i do think unfortunately and this is like this is sort of like i think where we end on most of our episodes but i do think the answer is love grant i think it's just you know it's just that's all it is i don't think that that is i think legislate i think many things are the answer um i think it's i think it's love and understanding i uh i was reporting on portland when they're like in like in state civil war and the government, the mayor's office was like, what can we do? And they're like, we got it. We'll do a choose love campaign. I'm like, I don't think that is going to end your

your escalating street violence of ideological origin, but like cool. Cool suggestion. I do think it can help your son though, like not murder a woman in his classroom. I think that's taking them to chips and that is true. I think what you're, you just did about talking about like this used to be a creepy grooming trend and and like showing it would be really interesting like the youth as far as they understand loves learning about like old internet and show and like letting them make those connections themselves that they're part of a continuum is is I think like a thing that kind of blows minds so you're saying health class but Like, if I think about my own political awakening over time, like, I remember being in sixth grade

social studies and learning about the Holocaust. And I remember my teacher was just like, hey, like, in Star Wars terms, like, this is what World War II was. And I remember going like, oh, okay, I get it. Like, that's, and, and, and I, and she, she was really good. She was just like, you know, these are the people that decided to help. the people in the Holocaust, these are the people who didn't, you know, what would you do? And it was like this early kind of germ of just like basic social theory.

And when I went to, I went to an all-boys Catholic school, which was kind of a more progressive Catholic school, but, you know, still Catholic, but progressive. And they had a class there that you had to take two. One was called social justice and one was called social action. And it was like a whole year. So social justice was you learned about Christian liberation theory. So like the idea of like Catholics helping like Latin American social uprisings is cool. It was an interesting class. And then social actions, you have to go do charity work for essentially like a semester.

And then in college, I entered college during the Great Recession and stuff was happening my own life involving the Great Recession that like I didn't really understand as like a 17 year old, 18 year old. And I ended up in a sociology course just because I needed to get a credit. it and it completely, completely blew up in my mind in terms of like systemic issues, like systems, social systems. It's stuff that I still think about today. I still care about today. And I would even like stay after class with that professor and I would talk to her being like,

hey, can I ask you this about this? You know? And it led me to being a journalist. And like you, you're talking about a health class, which may be, but I sort of think that like the answer is like it has to like. it's almost better to not sometimes address the thing, but instead, like, focus on building the bedrock so that when they encounter the thing, they understand the right side to take on the thing. I think you should be in charge of kids' curriculum. I'm sure one of our Patreon subscribers can make that happen.

Ryan Bradwick, thank you for coming on your show. Thank you for having me on my show. I'll see you all at the matinee showing of a Minecraft movie this Saturday. I'll be wearing my chicken jockey costume. And I'll be telling all the kids, Andrew Tate is, he's a zombie. What are they called? Like a ghoul?

I'm just going to fade out you out on this. You're just disappearing into the ether. Panic World is a Garbage Day production. Subscribe to the newsletter at Garbageday. Email. Panic World is written and produced by Grant Irving. It's hosted by me, Ryan Broderick. Our amazing researcher is Adam Bue.

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and one piece of advice for me to you. Chill out. Touch grass while you still can.