Panic World - Why "To Catch A Predator" videos feel so gross

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

To Catch A Predator launched in 2004 and was immediately a massive hit, but despite its long-lasting cultural impact — highlighted by last week’s release of Primetime — it only ran for one season and twenty episodes. The show ended after an assistant District Attorney in Texas died by suicide. Is it ethically worse? Is this justice? Why does it feel so gross? Today we’re joined by Free Country USA to look at the legacy of the show and the trend of content creators trying to bust predators on their own. Follow Free Country USA @freecountryusa on YouTube, Instagram, and everywhere else you listen and watch pods. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonuses & exclusives, and access to our members-only Discord? Sign up for a membership for just five bucks a month at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You have no doubt come across videos of gangs of guys jumping out of cars and harassing people that they're accusing of being pedophiles. Is this justice or is this just another way to exploit people for viral traffic and fame? It's a complicated question and it's what we're going to be talking about today. Fair warning, though, this is a pretty heavy episode. Yeah, you know, this is actually my childhood bedroom that I paid my friend to not just paint but also fix all of the destruction that I did to it. As an amends to my family for the destruction I caused in my home growing up. Wait, are you a wall puncher? I was, yeah, for sure.

I could feel it. I could just, I could feel it. You were a wall puncher too? Yeah, we were both. I mean, Kat was a, Kat destroyed her door one time out of, that was crazy out of pure. Yeah, no, I got really pissed at Jeff. And then, and then he left my room. And then I just started, like, beating my door down.

And I, like, I just, like, the whole thing out. And then. And it ended up being like a good thing because then I was able to use the pieces of that door as like a skateboard ramp on like the stairs outside. That's cool. That's really cool. And then he broke your ankle on that. Yeah. Yeah.

So. And then I got addicted to drugs. So really it was wow. That is the trajectory that I would have imagined. And now we have a podcast. Exactly. Yeah. No, this is all totally right to you.

This sounds totally right to me. I like that every time we have you on, there's a little bit more of lore, like familiar. lore that just like ink. Yeah, no, this is good. Let me set it up then before we jump back into this. I am Mariah Broderick and with me as always is my producer, Grant Irving. This is Panic World to show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture and eventually reality. And we are inducting these two lovely sickos into the three timers club. Kat and Jeff of Free Country USA. Welcome back, guys. How you doing? Good. How are you? Are we the, are we the, First triple timer.

So you're the third, third, three. So we're the third timers. What an honor. Wow, my angel numbers. Yeah. Yeah. And we are bringing you on the show today to talk about a topic. So we have like a bunch of topics you want to talk about.

And then we have a bunch of topics that I'm like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that episode. And this is one of those. We are talking about the sort of universe of to catch a predator content out there. I should say that we're recording this before. Grant and I have seen Primetime the To Catch a Predator movie that is coming out. But it obviously is on the minds of many people right now. I guess, you know, let's break the ice here.

If you two were doing a To Catch a Predator show, what would you say, you know, when you walk in the room? Like, you know, like have a seat. Like take a seat. Like, what would be your version of that? I mean, like, I sent these chats to your aunt. That's pretty good. I sent the shit to your friends and family and they all know. Actually, I did do that once when I was a, I was like really into Catch a Predator,

into, to Catch a Predator as a Young Teenager. When I was like 13, I would like troll people on like O'Meagle and then get them to sex me and then send it to their family members on Facebook. He was doing that, yeah? Yeah, I just did it a few times. We're going to have to talk about that in a minute. That's fascinating. I think my catchphrase would be, so tell me about your favorite episode of, has been hotel.

Nice. Got him. Got him. Because Chris Hanson had, why don't you take a seat, which is just Clyde's hard to beat that. Well, that one's really,

really good. It's really understated. Yeah. So I want to just say, like, I hate this whole universe of content. It makes me, like,

deeply nervous and freaked out. But let's, let's, like, slowly work our way into the darkness at the heart of this. So, I mean, Were you guys watching to catch a predator when it was on TV?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I message granted to something along the lines of I've seen hundreds of hours of vigilante pedophile content over the course of my lifetime. And it's crazy. That wasn't about this episode. You just messaged Grant. Yeah. You just see Jeff's other messages to me.

Yeah, exactly. That's true. This episode wasn't even planned yet. I just wanted to tell. I was just joking. That's so funny. No, actually, no. Jeff sent me the trailer and was like, was like, Grant, have you seen this trailer?

That's so funny. That's, that's unbelievable. I think it's like that message might have spawned the idea for the episode. But yeah, it was, you know, it's a, it was a really big part of my life. I just think of it as like, it's the most entertaining possible form of reality television. Because it's like, why I watch like The Bachelor when you could watch someone's life it absolutely turned upside down and destroyed on TV? See, I was coming out from a very opposite.

angle because I was like 14 when I was watching it and I was just thinking to myself like these poor guys like these could be my friends because I was being heavily groomed by adults on the internet right right and you know I thought it was chill at the time yeah yeah you're like dude they're just looking for love man like anybody else yeah like they don't they don't mean to hurt these kids like I'm fine like I I love my I love my adult friends on on Facebook and then but then what did we learn Um, that, that's bad. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. Yeah. I could, yeah.

Once I turned 18, I was like, oh, wait. Hold on. Ryan's face right there is going to be the thumbnail. That was the most uncomfortable face he's up for me. That's too bad. Everything you're saying is just too bad. It's just, uh, so, uh, you know, just to, just to kind of lay this out, because I didn't realize this.

The original run of to catch a predator was only 20 episodes. Yeah. Yeah. Which is wild. They ran from. Yeah, I mean, something really bad happened and they had to stop doing it. But I'm sure we'll get to that. I don't want to jump ahead.

We will get to that. Yeah, also spoilers for anyone who's going to watch Primetime. Yeah. These things are complicated to talk about. And I think they've only become more complicated to talk about in a post-Ebstein world. In fact, just before today's episode, I saw a user sharing on X sharing a conspiracy theory that primetime is being released by some sort of shadowy government figures to make the conversation around catching and, you know, punishing pedophiles more complicated.

And like the nuanced portrayal the movie will have is to like muddy the water. Well, yeah, that's the argument that I will be making this episode. And that was probably me. But no, I think, well, it is a really nuanced and difficult. Yeah, because you're talking about like one of those shaken horrible crimes that like you could possibly imagine and the prosecution of therein. but it's good that you have a cat and I to help sort of navigate these sort of muddy waters

with our nuanced points of view and our hard-hitting experience with this kind of stuff. I think of you guys when I think about nuance. Yeah, for people who have no idea what we're talking about, I'm super, super sorry, but there is the show that runs in the 2000s to Catch a Predator, host by Chris Hansen.

And then there is this growing universe of YouTube and TikTok and Instagram, real, channels where they are, you know, trying to do the same format or similar formats. Do you have favorites? Like, what do you know of this landscape? Well, I'd say that everybody who does it is just a wannabe Chris Hansen and Chris Hansen is the goat. And, you know, you have your big guys.

You know, you have your, what's the guys like? Stanky or something or who's like the big one? Skater, Gene. Skeeter Gene. Yeah, he's, you know, I mean, all of these people are irreceivable scumbags. Chris Hansen's mother to all of these fools. You guys have a favorite? I think I'm losing internet connection right now.

Oh, you're coming through for us. What's really weird is I'm coming through. Nope. Oh, there it goes. All right. Well, now that Ryan's out of the way, thank God. Now we get to the real show. Let's start, well, Ryan's out here with a lay of the land of what these Chris Hansen copycats are like.

Because I will say, I know I should be more disturbed by To Catch a Predator, the original. It gives me out way less than its version on YouTube. And I don't think it's more ethical at all. I could not make an argument as to why. I think they're essentially the same. They're essentially the same thing. Like you're, you know, you're circumnavigating the criminal justice system to make shock content to lure the stupidest pedophiles on the planet. and using them to make content and money for your own.

Totally. And sometimes also beat them up. Yeah. Yeah. I don't disagree with any of that. What I'm hoping to have some insight to by the end of this episode is why I am made more uncomfortable by it via YouTube than it being on NBC. Okay. And I wonder if it's just production value.

So this is Skeeter, uh, uh, uh, busting a guy. at his like ance 90th birthday party yeah i've seen this heard there's a big 90th birthday party going on here there's just one thing here stanford you might need to sign here now stanford you did you did send a picture of your that wasn't that wasn't mine it was a friend's a friend's looks like the party shut down sorry for crashing your party we really didn't mean to and i was very insecure and i was i was over away where was uh we're gonna go on my call have good one there's a few reasons i think why it's more to

serving. Hey, Skeeter's episodes are a lot longer than Chris Hanson's. Usually Chris Hansen will have a guy in there for like, you know, 10 minutes tops and will be cut up. And I think these newer guys are a way more adept at getting them to reveal like bizarrely intimate personal information about themselves beyond like the crime. Like the guy like talking about like not being circumcised, being like insecure about his weight. Like you get some of that in the Chris Hanson episodes. But in the Gene and his, you know, the new heads doing it, they're really, really good at people telling them to get, tell them everything about their whole lives, which I think is just so, you learn so much about these people that it's really, really unsettling and grows. The Dateline NBC editing is trying to polish it so that you get less so you don't, you feel less exploitative of the, of the predator. You get, you get enough of a glimpse of the predator, and you get the joy of watching his life be ruined, but you don't learn too much for him to, like...

Right, without getting to know him too personally. It's a bit more dehumanizing on Dateline, probably. Yeah. They take out personal details and parts of the episode, and then on the Patreon, it's like, get the whole unfiltered thing. And they're going to the predator at, like, what was it, the grandma's 90th party?

So that makes it feel a little bit more human. And like, a predator coming to a place to prey on a child. Yeah. That is a huge difference. Part of the episode is you have to get the reaction of a 90-year-old woman who's like nephew or something is getting arrested for being a pathophile. And then he'll go up, like Skeeter Jean will go up to that lady.

And he'll do this in all kinds of different episodes and talk about what their, whatever child nephew did. It's so horrifying to watch. But yet, I, you know, I don't watch it so much anymore, but I used to watch this stuff all the time. I'll let Ryan dig in. into why you stopped watching it. See, I don't watch a lot of this stuff,

but I do find myself in the presence of pedophiles on VR chat, like constantly. And that is like, so like I see them like firsthand. And like I'm not hanging out with them, but you know, you just run into them like when you're meeting not many people in the online space. And, uh, The Illuminati got me.

Jeff said, uh, for you to pick up later, uh, that he, used to watch a lot of this content but has since stopped and I didn't ask him why so you could and also Kat said that she runs into a lot of predators on VR chat which I left for you to deal with all we did was we watched the Skeeter gene clip and talked about the differences between like

what they're doing today versus before okay so let's let's go in order of the upsetting things that you go ahead uh Jeff why do you not watch this stuff as much as you used to um you know I used to watch it a lot to like go to sleep. What? Is everything you say worse than the last thing you just said? Okay, hold on. You would watch, you would watch pedophile hunter YouTube videos to go to sleep. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why. I think, and I actually talked to my very good friend about this who actually did help stop me from getting raped one time. So he has really been looking out for me. because we could touch on that later. I think I might have like a special sensitivity to the shrine of stuff and was really on like the side of the hunters because of some of things that happened to me when I was a teenager. But, but I came to the conclusion that I was watching it because I feel a lot of like I have a lot of like guilt and remorse like maybe like I'm not diagnosed with like OCD or anything, but I'm thinking about maybe talk to somebody about that. But I have a lot of like, like I feel like I've done a lot of really bad things in my life. And I think that I used that as sort of like a crutch.

Are you Catholic? No, but we were raised in a religious household for sure. Very much so. And so I have a lot of guilt going on in my mind. But I've been better about it, especially lately. And I think that I use sort of those people on those shows as like a crutch to be like, well, at least I'm not that guy, you know, at least I'm not like sending pictures of my cock to like a 12 year old on Tinder or whatever.

it. Like, I think that I got a lot of comfort out of just putting people like below me. Interesting. Does that make sense? And I think it helped me, it helped lull me to sleep. Okay. And why do, why do you think you stopped watching it? I guess I just didn't need it anymore. It's not a medicine that I, it's not a medicine that I require any longer because I don't hate myself as much as I used to. Interesting. What do you watch now when you go to sleep? Art Bell. Coast to ghost ghost, coast to coast. That's probably better. Yeah. So, let's talk about the VR chat aspect of this because I do think one of the weirder kind of things about these channels is that they are so focused on like IRL predators and there's almost like

like the original tip contentia predator is very much like we're finding people online. You know, these guys are like hunting them down a lot of times. You know, obviously they're finding them on chat app sometimes. But like what was your experience with VR chat? Because it is sort of like the Wild West deal, I think, for a lot of this stuff. Yeah, I mean, I think things like, you know, VR chat. RoBlock's, et cetera, just like, you know, super unregulated. And so like it's a lot easier to get away with doing stuff like that.

And so it's then becomes a bigger draw. Like I think VRChat and Roblox are unregulated in ways that allow pedophiles to get past moderation. 100%. Um, and it just makes it. Yeah, it's just a just a very easy place for them to get away with what they do. like I come across a lot of pedophiles in that game who are just open about like what they're looking for and like what they're doing or they'll just be straight up like flirting with a 14 16 year old and be like a 30 year old man and then all you can really do at that point is like tell moderation of that specific instance and like hopefully get that person banned from the instance but I so I I spent years sort of on a beat where I was tracking down like predators on Minecraft on YouTube like and I spent you know years at yeah. Basically, it all kicked off with the Sam Pepper YouTube controversy years ago. And then I sort of just followed that beat for a while.

And talking to the platform, this was always really difficult. Talking to law enforcement was really difficult. At one point, one of the victims who didn't realize he was a victim yet, like called the cops on me to protect the Minecraft streamer that was grooming her. Like, this world is just like, I think really complicated. And when I watch the pedophile hunter, like YouTube universe, all I can think is like none of these guys are doing any real due diligence. Like I think that's what makes me super nervous is like, you know, one story about one predator

took me two years. And I had to deal with like multiple law enforcement agencies across multiple countries. And I'm still not even totally clear if they got him. Right. Like, you know, that. And so when you use, I see these guys jump out of a van and tackle somebody or whatever. I just think like none of that's happening, I guess. No.

I mean, they're just luring the dump. Like, they're doing an opportunistic pathophiles who are like people who like, I'm going to say, I'm going to go out on a little bit of the limb here and say that the people that are getting caught up in these, in these stings are usually very, very stupid people who are opportunistic and are getting, you know, batched into like DMs on like dating apps and stuff of them telling like, hey, oh, I'm 14, 15, 16. I'm really, really horny. I want you really, really bad. please crumb cross state lines for me. These morons fall for it. And then that's all they need to have whatever excuse they want to go.

Like, yeah, like make someone drink Windex on camera. And then nobody's going to get mad at them because it's like, well, they're pedophiles. Like, they're not human beings. Right. I feel like that's a good intro into, you know, where we're going to start talking about this, like in a deeper way, which is with the Vitale incident. So are you guys familiar with Vitaly? He was getting people off, basically.

He, like, a couple of guys. Say that in a different way, Jeff. Yeah, what do you? He does have a bang bus episode, but what do you? Wait, does he actually? He does. Yeah, it's extremely embarrassing. But does he fuck on it?

Oh, this guy. Bangbus. You talked to him on VR show? Yeah, Vitaly bang bus. He did such a, he did such a pissport job that he helped dishonorate people. He couldn't complete the mission on Bingham. Are you serious? He went on BangBus.

He went on bang bus, fucked, and then couldn't bus? He couldn't. I don't think he could get it started at all. Wow. I'm not going to watch it right now. But yeah. Pull it up. Christ, you get the, you get every man's biggest dream, you know?

You get picked up by the bang bus. I'm still weird. Can you be? And then you can't. The majority of our audience, I hope. Can you explain the bang bus? Everybody knows what the bang bus. Everyone knows what the bang bus is.

It's a real bus. It's a van. It's kind of like a hometown trolley. that if you're lucky, if you're a very lucky guy, it will come and pick you up. You could be anywhere in the greater Long Beach area. And they'll swoop you. Or Miami. More Miami.

Sometimes even San Diego. Yeah. And then they'll swoop you. And then, you know, you get like a, you know, a Riley Reed or a Brianna Banks. Well, is this why you're always going on? He's trying to find the bang bus. Okay. So Vitali, real name or full name is Vital.

Vitaly Zedor a Vietzky he's 34 years old he is effectively now like a citizen of nowhere because Russia doesn't want him we don't really want him he served time in like a I think a Filipino

prison for a while because he was filming exploitative content in the Philippines and then he comes back to America in April of this year and he's doing like more of his to catch a predator style videos and he accuses a guy named Akash of talking to a 16-year-old girl. And we can show you the video here if you want to pull it up.

But according to the New York Times, this is what they wrote about what happened. Akash at first looked confused and then an expression of recognition crossed his face as he took in the camera crew. He knew what kind of video this was. He also knew they made a mistake. She never told me she was 16. protested immediately scrolling through the dating at messages on his phone for proof. Vitaly acted contrite for a beat. My dad, my bad bro, he said, but the decoy insisted she had the goods.

And so this is the video here. We'll play it for you. How are you? Chinga-linga-ringa-ringa-ringa-a-monga-monga-ching-a-a-ching-a-old. So, yeah, I mean, this video is racist from the jump. Word. It's just total. Oh, my God.

And it's like, this is, yeah. So Akash looked at the message on the decoy's phone and disbelief. That's not me, he said. That's not my account. Decoy's message as many men as possible, sometimes talking on the phone. So the decoy is like the woman there. They message as many men as possible, sometimes tie on the phone or video calling them to establish they are real. They're paid a bounty of a few hundred dollars per pred, quote, unquote, who actually shows up.

According to Rayma McClure, who worked as a producer with Vitaly, the cops end up arresting Akash. And they posed to take selfies with Vitali because they're fans. They realized very quickly that the team had completely fucked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the guy just did nothing wrong. And then he's blasted on the internet in front of tens of millions of people being like Europe had the file.

Yeah, we probably shouldn't do that. This is what happened. So Akash said he had managed to reach Vitaly the next day via private message on X and that he had spoken by phone with a Vitali who said his team had messed up and he was firing all of them. And then Akash said, you need to tell everyone I'm innocent. On the next Monday, Vitaly posted Amaya Kupa on X and asked his followers to stop contacting them. My team and I mistakenly portrayed Akash as a child predator, he wrote.

And it seems like there is a lawsuit on the horizon, or at least there's been threats of a lawsuit over the whole thing. You kind of kind of have the details right for such a sensitive operation. Right. And also, you know, when you have like a crime where we've decided that it's like so horrendous that it doesn't require, you know, due process that you can, if you don't like someone or maybe you're racist towards them, you can just put them online and make a stream and call them a pedophile and ruin their lives forever and have no recourse for doing that, which is bad. Yeah. There's like a, there's an element of vigilante justice here. And you know, the fact that this is like, the aesthetics of it are so ugly and like right wing and fascist to me also. It just feels like something out of like Robocop.

Like it just feels like I'm watching the end of the world when I watch these videos. Sure. I feel like when we say, and I'm not saying that any of us are doing this, but it's like very easy for someone to be like this is all just horrible and bad. But at the same time, there's like a huge population of people. in America, I guess, around the world who have been horribly sexually abused and will never have any like recourse or justice for it and watching stuff like this can be like really cathartic

for them. And it's very, it's attacking it is like really, really. So like when people say that like, oh, prime time is this shadowy thing to make it seem like we shouldn't be punishing pathophiles, I don't agree with that, but I see where it comes from when people who have been like, raped, they're molested, feel so powerless and helpless.

And I think it's no coincidence that this content is as popular as it is. Because there are, there's, you know, there's pedophiles fucking everywhere in our schools, in our churches, in robocs, in whatever game that you play. So it's, I think it's very easy to look at this stuff and be like, well, at least these guys are doing something about it with a lot of times they're really not a lot and very often making it worse. Well, I want to talk about the aesthetics of this and like sort of how it got to this point, but I want to do that after the jump. So let's go to a quick word from our sponsors.

And then I want to sort of talk about how, I mean, basically to catch a predator change the way we talk about any of this stuff. And sort of how it starts to muddy, I think what you're saying, Jeff, like the sort of drive for justice here. So we'll be right back. Hello. It's us. What are you promoting? Are you're going to be listening to an episode about internet to catch your predators? But he and I, we just finished recording a bonus about the movie primetime.

That's right, which is a movie about non-internet. No, wait, they are on the internet. Their predator, this is an episode about the internet shows. No, hold on, wait. You are currently listening to a podcast about the guys on the internet doing their own version of To Catch a Predator. And we just recorded a bonus episode about primetime, a movie about the TV show to Catch a Predator in which Chris Hansen and his team were hunting down men on the internet. Yeah. See that?

So if you come over to our Patreon. Patreon.com slash Panic World. You'll be able to listen to that bonus right now. No. It'll be out this week on the Patreon. So shortly after this episode airs, that will be waiting for you at patreon.com slash panic world for $6.66 a month or $69 a year for all of it, which keeps the lights on here. So it makes you get extra content and it keeps the content spewing out of our mouth holes. That's right.

Love you. All right. Now to the episode about internet to catch a predators. Okay. So before to catch a predator launched, there were people doing this sort of thing. In 1996, there was, do you guys know what IRC is? No. So IRC was sort of like a proto-AIM instant messaging service, internet relay chat.

Word. And they had a group called the Enforcers, which does go hard. And it was founded by a hacker name Analyzer, which also goes hard. Yeah. And his real name was Ehud Tenenbaum, and he was 17 at the time. That name also goes hard. The analyzer and his enforcers would basically carry out one of the worst hacks of a government in history, and they breached the Pentagon's internal network, as well as a bunch of other Department of Defense sites.

And they found a bunch of menociles in the government? No way. So, here we go. Well, here we go. So according to ZDNet at the time, in the past, we've basically seen kids doing sort of a cybercrime form of graffiti where they're going in and defacing low security websites. What we're seeing here is a group who sat down and planned and strategically went after a system with the sole goal of gathering files. Asked during the interview what they intended to do with the material, one of the hackers replied, release it or sell it.

I think international terrorist groups would be interested in the data we could gain access to, the hacker said. governments would bury it for intelligence purposes. They ended up getting arrested. And per the LA Times, they wrote, when Tenenbaum was arrested on suspicion of hacking his way into the Pentagon and other sensitive computer systems, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was openly admiring of the young Israeli, lauding his skills as damn good. Netanyahu is among what they wrote at the time.

Netanyahu is among many Israelis who have rewritten. reacted to the news of Tenenbaum's alleged exploits with a mixture of national pride and amused approbation. The teenager, known throughout Israel as the analyzer, his internet nickname, has received dozens of requests for media and interviews and book and movie deals, along with several job offers. This happened in Israel? Yeah, right. Per Wired, the enforcers protested Tenenbaum's arrest by hacking more websites and claiming that everything they've done was to catch pedophile. and other sellers of child sexual assault material online. Think about the pedophilia and racism on the internet. The government does nothing to stop, one of the hackers wrote.

But, oh, yes, they will take care of you, the hacker, and mark you a criminal. What do you do? You choose to strike out against these evils in your own fashion. Tenenbaum ended up serving six months in prison, and we didn't find any evidence that supported that this had anything to do with catching pedophiles. But they didn't catch any petapiles, actually. Just to put this all together, really nice and tight for you. A group of hackers led by an Israeli who had a personal fan in Benjamin Netanyahu hacked the Pentagon.

And then when he was arrested, his fellow hackers claimed that they were trying to expose pedophiles and then hacked a bunch of other sites. And there's no evidence to support that in any way. Oh, okay. Well, you know, I guess something new under the sun, I suppose. So that. Okay. So it was the packing into America to learn all of our secrets and then be like, guys, don't trip. It was actually to find pedophiles.

It was just for, we didn't find any, but we might have. Really? You guys are mad about this? Are you a pedophile? The analyzer is quoted on the record. saying he planned to release it or sell it and that foreign governments would want to buy this stuff for intelligence purposes. And then they spun around.

So they can find pedophiles too. You have to remember. It's 1996. So maybe these guys aren't totally clear that the internet is forever yet. But yeah, it's not the most like elegant way of going about this. But what I think is really interesting about that point, aside from all of the fascinating connections to Israel. I think the idea of catching predators and vigilante justice on pedophiles is a very easy way to cover other forms of vigilanteism or sometimes just straight up crime.

And that's, I think, why it makes it so complicated to talk about it because what Jeff said is true. Like there's obviously a reason for these shows being as popular as they are. And there's obviously an emotional reaction that like the many, you know, I grew up in the Boston area. area in the 90s, I have people, you know, in my family's orbit, you know, people I've known for many years who are victims of the Catholic Church from the New England area. And they are now in their 60s and 70s and they are having a very tough time because they still know how to talk about this stuff. But at the same time, because this is such an emotional thing, a lot of bad actors, you know, have quickly understood that this is a really easy way to kind of cover up

less savory activities. That would be the point of that little opening story. Yeah. It's a great propaganda tool to use is just to, you know, because everybody has, you know, everybody wants to be like, oh, kill your local petapophile. But it's like, that doesn't help, you know,

that sort of attitude doesn't create less pedophiles. I actually think it creates more because you just get people deeper into the shadows and helping them get like the help and counseling they need to like not offend. I mean, it's the reason why every fascist movement, likes to trot out the queer people are child predators idea every single time they want to

you know make people yeah that's a hood classic yeah I was kind of trying to figure out a way to like phrase that concept like even today you see it all the time like on fucking Twitter of you know right wing guys love to be like oh well like

the main thing that Hitler did was get rid of all of the Jewish child brothels it's like even if he did do that that's not the main thing that he did yeah I don't You know, I think that's one we just like, I think that's a road. I think that's a real interesting. I have to go down trying to figure out.

Yeah. Yeah, no problem, guys. But, yeah, no, Kat, say more because I'm sort of curious, like, what you were trying to. Well, yeah, I mean, a lot. I get a lot of conservatives like that, you know, think all trans people are horrible because they just have been tripped by the government into thinking that we're all pedophiles trying to groom children into our way of life. And that's their justification for trying to erase us from.

social life is that we're all, you know, dangerous predators, and that's their justification. And I think that the extremely livenant evidence they have of any trans people really trying to do anything like that is enough to get people who are kind of in the center to start hating trans people because that's how they view us. I think that's exactly right. And we tasked our researcher Adam with trying to find examples of like what he calls what he calls white hat anti-preditor stings run by civilians. So like ones run for good purposes. He found one in 2002.

The LA Times wrote about it. They wrote, by day, Julie Pauze is a 37-year-old homemaker tidying the family's trailer at the foot of the Rocky Mountains and homeschooling her daughter. but at night Posey logs on to the internet as Kendra, a gum snapping 14-year-old looking for trouble. You don't have to write it that way. Journalism in the 2000s just wasn't very good. Like it just really every time, every time we read anything before like 2012, I'm just like, ugh. And it wasn't like that in the 90s either. It's like a weird post-9-11 psychosis that the media went through.

I really do think so. anyways she ended up helping with the uh she she led uh the arrest of over 20 people across five years and um she is not the norm in this space we should say so the l a times wrote some like posey work solo others belong to larger volunteer bands with bellicose names such as predator hunter socom and cyber army pedophilia fighters which is a really good a hardcore band name actually that would be a really good, that would be sick. Law enforcement, for the most part, views the internet activists as attention-seeking busy buddies. FBI agents in Los Angeles turn away about a dozen people a year who offer help with online sextings, suspicious that some might be closeted pedophiles themselves.

You talk to them for a bit and you get a gut feeling that something's not quite right. Supervisory Special Agent Randy are at-in-said. It's like being overly performative to be like, I'm not this because I'm fighting against it actually yeah i think that it's like there could be good ways to do this like citizen volunteers or whatever like volunteer firefighters for pedophiles but it's like it seems like you'd probably want to do this like focus on things that are like more like on an institutional level rather than just like drag netting like just random there's like what they're doing like where you're talking about vitality was doing where he's just messaging as many men as possible on dating apps and

just trying to find the pawns come at the bottom like i think you got to go for the people who are like embedded into like schools and churches and stuff like you got to get the guys and the girls who have like a system going on I will be the Larry Nassers of the world I will give teachers at my old high schools of the world I'll give it to Chris Hansen for catching the the BB Yahoo's fucking body well that was funny did you guys see that where there's a guy who got busted on to catch a predator and he's like I'm a bodyguard for Benjamin Net and Yahoo you can't do this to me it's just another one of those fast references to that administration that we, you know, might sometimes make in this episode.

And really, I don't know why that keeps happening. Yeah. Yeah. It's a total mystery. What I think is like most fascinating about this stuff is that I thought to catch a predator started this wave. But actually like per the research, Adam, our researcher found, it's the opposite, which is it was it was a lot of groups on the internet already doing this sort of thing and the media already writing about it and then to catch a predator launches a couple years later and and ruined it well like all things like it blew it up and then made it completely impossible to sort of keep in a box you know right so to catch a predator launches in 2004 and it's like a it's a ratings you know hit immediately um it was also like heavily criticized we have one quote

from someone interesting here. So I'm going to read this quote. And then I'm going to ask you who you think said it. Because they, I will just give you a hint. They've gone on to make TV themselves. Okay. So this person wrote of To Catch a Predator at the time.

Presumably someone at To Catch a Predator HQ sat down with a bunch of audition tapes and spooled through it trying to find a sexy 18 year old who could pass for 13. They'll have stared at girl after girl, uming and awing over their chest sizes until they found just the right one. When a TV show makes you feel sorry for potential child rapists, you know it's doing something wrong. Who do you think? What famous showrunner?

Sean Hannity. That's a good guess. So that was from Charlie Brooker, the inventor of Black Mirror. Oh. Who was a TV critic at the time. I mean, yeah. I mean, it is a very Blackmere style TV show. It is absolutely.

Also, if you guys haven't seen Charlie Brooker's zombie TV show before Black Mirror. dead set. It's very good. It's about the cast of Big Brother who don't realize a zombie apocalypse has started outside and no one's telling them about it. It's really good. So to catch a predator, unlike the YouTubers that would follow and even the hackers before were fairly buttoned up about who they were going after. They sort of did their research. They were obviously exploitative in certain ways and they got a lot of criticism for it. But they kind of topped everybody in terms of how bad things got. Jeff, you hinted at this at the top of the show.

It would eventually end in a suicide. A assistant district attorney in Texas shot himself while police tried to serve him a warrant while the show had been filming. And they ran that episode and then the show was canceled. And once that happened, a million to catch a predators

basically spawned immediately after. Can we just talk about that they ran the episode? I mean, it's, do they talk about the suicide on the episode or? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They do. Yeah.

They do. Because the whole episode is like, they're outside of their house, like, waiting to go in and then they know that the guy has a gun and they know they can't go inside. And they're like, well. Yeah. I remember the edit. Like, they really sensationalized the edit. It was, it was like framed on the show as like a big moment.

I think they were so high on their own supply that they probably just weren't able to comprehend that that would be too much for American audiences. Did To Catch a Predator go off air because it was too much for the American public that somebody committed suicide in an episode? Or is it like that NBC Universal was like, this is becoming a liability in a way that we do not want to manage? Conrad's estate sued NBC for $105 million. And one? It was settled out of court. And the production costs were becoming extremely expensive.

the investigations were becoming more expensive and Chris Hansen has always said that the show ran its course but it's almost entirely because the show was just a legal and financial rats nest to deal with that makes more sense yeah I wish all of America got together and we're like this is fucking gross I don't like watching this but that's not true

and it should be mentioned that Chris Hansen is doing a version of this on a on like a true TV channel now and uh yeah true blue tv everybody subscribe to his patron those are called fast channels in a more recent episode they busted an 18 year old who was in high school who went on a date with a who was trying to go on a date with a 15 year old which was a legal which was legal in some states romeo and juliet la's baby they did the same thing they did the same thing to a gay 18 year old they literally did the same thing to on to catch a predator there was like an 18 year old gay kid meeting up with, I believe, a 15-year-old gay kid on the show.

That happened on the show. That's fun. On Dateline. And this kid's life was completely destroyed and turns upside down when it was like, yeah, like two-teen, like an 18- or 15-year-old, sorry, I have no problem with that. I have no problem with that. I think most people would agree. Let's pause here for a second.

Give the audience a second to digest all of this. This is all pretty heavy stuff. And we're going to go to a word from our sponsor and come back. And when we do come back, we're going to talk about how the legacy of to catch a predator has evolved since. the show and off the air. One of the earliest channels doing to catch a predator content was in 2013 or so, and it was two guys from the UK, which is an island full of pedophiles.

Like, there were like two high-profile pedophiles outed like the day I landed there when I moved there in 2016. Their Mr. Rogers was a necrophiliac pedophile. It's a nightmare place, full of nonses. So it kind of makes sense that, like, they would pick up that mantle pretty quickly. and they immediately run into another situation where a target kills themselves. The BBC reports the leader of the group Scumbuster has told the BBC, we were not there to hurt anybody, we are there to get an explanation.

They have denied being to blame for the recent suicide of a man. Gary Cleary was found hanged in his Leicestershire home on the 13th of May, four days after he was arrested by police and released on bail out without being charged. The group claimed it had gathered everything. evidence after contacting him online and posing as a 14-year-old girl. And then the BBC interviewed a crimeologist who wrote a crimeologist who said, there's a growing frustration among the public among online pedophiles are at epidemic levels. Police forces have seized about 300 million child abuse images over the past few years, which shows the scale of it. The feeling that the issue is

not being properly tackled by authorities leads to people trying to get involved themselves. And then basically from there, a million YouTube channel. finals bloom and it's just kind of been a part of the content ecosystem ever since i i mean i think it's like the the fixation on it i mean i just i think that the obsession with like fucking young people is like a deep deep sickness we'll just like look at like the front page of like any porn site right every porn side is like the minimum wage like if they could go lower they would what's every porn it's barely legal teen like fucks her stepdad and it's it's And, you know, it's like when that's what everyone is watching and what everyone is inundated with,

and I'm not like trying to blame porn. I know we fucking did a whole episode about this. I'm just saying that's like that's a symptom of, I don't know, this sort of sick desire for power or status or pleasure at no matter what costs. And then that sort of is like the other side of that. And like the guilt that creates in the mind is probably sort of the reflection of that is this obsession with like hunting down and killing. anyone you suspect to be like a petophile. That's kind of how I feel about it. So I don't disagree with you, but I do want to share a theory that maybe I've

sat on the show before, which is that I believe that the incest porn thing is actually a symptom of the housing crisis. Wait. No, that's interesting. Back in the day when people could afford to, you know, move away from home, you know, you might be out at your job, which wasn't remote, and you might get picked up by the bang bus. Or you'd call a plumber to come visit your house.

and fix your pipes and then fix your pipes, you know? You were interacting with other adults in the world. You'd go to your office. You'd have a handyman come over, whatever. Pizza delivery guy. Young people now, you know, they live at home. So you've got to create porn scenarios that feel believable and relatable. And it's like, well, we can't do full incest.

Everybody's stuck as soon. So they just want to fuck whatever's in front of them. Because it has to be relatable. It feels more familiar. It has to be aspirational. Before people were more familiar with like plumbers and pizza guys coming to their home or like y'all being picked up at the bang bus because they're like out and about. And then I was like, I wonder if I'm sure that there's probably, is there data to correlate this? I've been straight up trying to find data about this for a couple years.

Now, if someone listening has any way to help me prove this theory, I truly believe that the incest porn thing is just straight up what could be possible in a situation where you're 25 years old and you're living at home and you don't have any real sort of connection to the outside world. like, well, I just got a hot step sister. So like that makes sense. That's like the least gross way to do it. To me like the way that that, you know, because like I go on born websites occasionally. And it's like I see what I don't have like an account or a profile. You know, it's always like on a cashless browser like incognito. So it's just showing me like the fresh what the world is watching.

And like feed. Yeah. Yeah. The raw feed. Exactly. That's a, that's a nice term. I like that. The raw feed.

Um, is whatever is like most popular in the world. And to me like those advertisements. It's always felt like the candy cigarette advertisements that are illegal now. It's like it to me, it's like it seems like those are like designed to appeal to like the lizard brain of children. Yeah. It's like audio visual stimulus that just you stare at and you goon to. But it has to be believable. It has to be connected to your life in some way so you could kind of fantasize about it.

People want a tab. People create a taboo that feels safe but also as familiar as possible. Yes, exactly. That's so interesting. So I can't I work in porn and I never thought about. this that's that's so interesting right I appreciate that perspective dude honestly you could probably use this knowledge to make more money oh our parents just got married I know live with you imagine like the most like the bleakest Gen Z neat life

like any E E T life and then just like figure out how to goonify the edges of it and like I think you'll make a lot of money that's why see that's why I'm saying that's why the E-girl stuff is like so yeah it's like all of those you e-girls are designed to look like like what it was like what is like the goth batty like let's let's examine that for a second isn't that like just the girl like in girl in store

the girl in your school like in your class so you like weren't supposed to like but you kind of did were like weirdly horny for her and now like the quote unquote goth batty is now just like a caricature of that archetype like is it just come in waves where it's like every like sort of sexual icon of the generation is like

the girl that you didn't fuck but you wanted to like when you were like you know in high school i have a lot to say about this but i do feel like we have to stay unfortunately on the topic right but i do want to put for the record that i i agree with the conspiracy theory that the goth batty that's currently possibly dating drake is wearing a chess plate i think i believe that oh yeah absolutely i'm glad we're all i'm glad we're aligned here so okay just to just to wrap up this like very kind of bleak and complicated world we've been in for the last hour. So, Jeff, I want to come back to sort of your, the tension, I think, here, which I think is interesting. And I want to thank you for sort of sharing your perspective

on it and your personal perspective on it, because like it is really complicated where it's like, if you are someone who has been preyed on, if you are a victim of sexual violence anyway, and you watch one of these videos, I bet you it's going to be totally invigorating and validating and like feel good. But it is also like, I think very true that these videos are masking like darker societal impulses and the aesthetics of them are very scary. I think the the sort of unpredictable nature of how these things can go, whether it is accusing someone wrongly or just contributing to like someone committing suicide on live television or live stream.

I think we can all agree that like that's not good for the world to do. Yeah, a lot of people are just using like the accusatoryness of like, calling someone a pedophile for their own game. Yes, and we didn't talk about this because I was like, let's not make this any grimmer, but I feel like I should mention it, which is like, you know, we did an episode about Chris Chan a few months ago,

now, maybe a year ago almost. Solitude. Yeah, a big dimension of the Christine Chan story is that she is autistic and possibly developmentally disabled. And I've seen videos with that kind of person being picked up by a pedophile hunter on YouTube. And they have clearly no idea what's going on. as they are being chased around or forced to drink Windex or whatever.

And I just think that, like, that is bad. Like, I just think that's really bad. I'd say most pedophiles I've run into on, like, VR chat, et cetera. They are very developmentally, like, stunted. And, like, these types of mental disorders aren't an excuse to abuse people, but it is an interesting correlation. And I feel like, you know, if mental health was treated more serious, Seriously, like, maybe these people wouldn't be doing such war.

That's also, it's like, it also contributes to a culture where we drive people further into darkness and make the idea that like, because like what's the problem? What's a huge problem we have right now, right? Is people, there's like this really interesting data about people who are actually pedophiles and people who commit sex crimes against children. And there's lots of like what you hear these, these stories of people who I actually think that are really brave of, uh, non-offending pedophiles who, um, advocate for, we need. need better mental health and counseling opportunities. So we can go, even if we have these urges, we can go to places where we know we're not going to get arrested for just saying how we feel because there are people who are very, very unlikely to offend, even though they have these like dark, sinister urges inside of them, probably a lot of people who are molested themselves.

And then they go and they tell a counselor about this, even though they're maybe they don't even feel very close to offending, but they're scared that they might do something or maybe they have like OCD or something like that and then they go to these places and then they're reported to the police and then so instead of since there's this idea out there that if they talk about it to anybody or it's like they'll be killed or beat up on the spot if they even talk about this they don't get the counseling that they need and then maybe they do become more likely to actually commit a sex crime against children and it's very unpopular because people just want to be like oh if anybody even has these thoughts we just string up up and kill them I'm more interested in how do we create as little

sex crimes against children as possible yeah and that's the number one one thing that I'm concerned about. And the solution to that doesn't seem to be just like trolling as many people as possible. And I do think that most of the people who are picked up by these operations are probably not super highly likely offenders. They just acted very stupidly and selfishly when the opportunity was like presented in their lap and they're stupid enough to take it. Whereas someone who's like more likely to offend like especially multiple times is probably somebody who's actually like more intelligent and like wouldn't just like meet up with some fucking kid that like hit them up on a dating app.

probably would like insert themselves into a position where they're around a lot of children and they have privacy around them and they have the ability to then pray. Yeah, they would get a job at Bear Stearns in the 80s and then slowly work their way into the KGB, the MI6, Massad, and the CIA, build out sort of a network of vacation homes and have rich men come over for dinner and then offer up, you know, sex trafficking victims as party favors. Or become a flu teacher at my school. Or that, yeah. You know, like we haven't even really touched on the sort of adjacent story in the news, you know, as you record this, which is the Wheel of Fortune guy who is on a plane using a tour browser, which I don't know if you guys have ever used a tour browser, but the fact that you could get a tour browser to work on airplane Wi-Fi is absolutely outrageous. It like should have been his first maybe thought to not be doing this.

But he was on a dark web. Which guy? So it's the announcer from Wheel of Fortune. He was on a pedophile support group on the dark web. I didn't know it was a support group. On his laptop. And the messages on the laptop are from users being like, hey, man, don't log into this in public. People are going to see.

And he's like, no one's going to see. And then someone took a photo and tweeted it and he got fired. It wasn't like he was on the dark web trading, you know, CSAM images. It was a support group for these guys. So it's not to support them being to support them to not. Yeah, it's, it was like, yeah, one of those. I did not. I did not know that part.

Based on my understanding of the story. I will double check it and we can cut that if it's not true. But like, based on what I've read, that's what was happening. That is a whole complicated thing. You know, it ties into what you were saying, Jeff. It's like, you know, how do you create a space for the people who want to be rehabilitated and need to be rehabilitated can be? How do you create that environment? Yeah, you are right.

Like, according to most statistics on, you know, that world, it is not like the creepy guy down the street. It is like the head of your softball league or it is someone who's like found their way into a position of power or some gray space in society where they can operate without, you know, any oversight. Like and that's every billion. It's every single billionaire. Yeah. We probably also haven't said this, but like YouTube and its algorithm don't make this any better. Like the fact that you can monetize this stuff and be rewarded for it is probably bad no matter what, I would say. Yeah, I think they should probably just go ahead and just feel like you can't do this on YouTube.

Probably a pretty easy fix right there that seems like you, yeah. Did you guys see the the giant really dark documentary that was released on YouTube a month ago? It's well made, I could say, by the documentary in Mike Clum. It's called The Sick Mind of EDP. 445 and it's a it's a lull cow documentary it's the same guy who did the boogie documentary and right isn't christine chan cameo in that christian chans in it chris chans in it it's sort of the nexus for everything we've been talking about where you have this sort of like complete breakdown between pedophile hunting and lull cows and online exploitation i i didn't feel good watching it like i i

And I kind of walked away feeling like everyone was exploiting everyone else. It just felt it felt very dark. Yeah. You walk away from the EDP-145 documentary just being like, wow, you know, I think I think. But what did you give it on Leder? I was like, wow, life sure is beautiful. Yeah. It feels like a lot of people use this as like a guise to just be ablest and racist and shit.

To wrap, I want to just, I want to circle back to Kat one last time here because like I I want to hear a bit more sort of about your thoughts on sort of the vulnerable that gets swept up in this stuff. Because we've heard Jeff a lot. He's a talker. And I want to give it to you for a second. It's become a very easy way for people to target anyone who they view as a pedophile. Like just the outcasts of society who are pedophiles rather than putting that energy towards the people in power who are a lot more successful at being pedophiles. and do a lot more of it.

It seems like they don't really want to spend their energy on those people nearly as much as on people they feel like are vulnerable. Like people they can just, you know, make a quick buck off of and, like, feel a lot morally superior to because that's easier, and they can monetize it and also be racist to and make fun of them for various reasons. Yeah. There's a real punching down element to this stuff, I think. Do you think that's equally true for Catcher Predator, the show, versus what we see online today?

I mean, who's like the most high profile guys that got on Catcher Predator probably, like, because the guy like was like a kind of a high ranking cop, the guy that killed himself, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, he was a DA. And then it's like, most people are just complete like, you know, like. They also got the Benjamin, that. Well, here, Grant, I went to the To Catch a Predator, Wicked. which has a list of offenders on it, which is a very dark place to be. They picked up a lot of people, actually, like a shocking amount of people. I don't know.

I feel like if that show had like a bit more integrity rather than just like trying to do easy like fishing grabs on like random people, they would have tried to go after people higher and power. But that was probably in their eyes too dangerous or they just like wouldn't have been able to accomplish that for whatever reason. They say in the trailer of Fur Primetime, there's a scene where Robert Patton's like, I'm sick of these bottom feeders. Like, I want to wail. I just came across an article that is so fucking insane that I think I'm just going to show it because I can't really do justice to how insane this looks.

No. No. That's not a real website that exists. For audio listeners, this is a what? I love Mojo. This is a Watch Mojo article titled, Where Are They Now? Titled 10 Chris Hansen Predator Criminals, where are they now?

Luckily, I have to log in to continue reading and I don't have an account, but that is fucking deranged. I'm sorry. That is so crazy. They're all on a list, so that is a really easy 10 things. Where are they now to put together? Yeah, where are they now? Well, go to Megan's Law.com.

You can find their address. Anyways, in terms of high-profile offenders, there was a. rabbi there were two doctors one was a cancer researcher another was an emergency room doctor there was a active duty New York City firefighter and then there was a

reserve officer with like a local police department another police officer in Florida and then there was Bill Conrad and Conrad, the assistant district attorney for Kaufman County, Texas. Then there were a bunch of guys who went viral because of the show because of the way they reacted, which is- Yeah, like the pizza guy. The guy who's eating pizza.

There's people doing like high investigative, like deep dives into the activities of billionaires and the Epstein files, et cetera. And that stuff just does not pull as many as big of an audience as. Yeah, they're subjecting themselves to like horrible harassment and lawsuits. And it's like what they do is actually like really, really brave and like really, really dangerous. It's way more high stakes. And it's like what you were talking about, right, about how you spent years tracking this like one guy. Like that's where the actual work is. The actual work is it just like, you know, what those viral is, which is just, you know, beating up old guys.

baiting the autistic person down the street into committing his first time. Yeah, like getting like boo Radley to like. I think that's, I think, no, I think that's a fantastic comparison, actually. I just, I think whenever we start to get into the territory of like vigilante justice, things can get really unpredictable, really fast. This was a really fun, uplifting episode. I want to thank you both for coming on the show. I feel rejuvenated.

I feel good about the world. Do you guys have anything to plug? We do anything going on? How's the how's the pod? How's things on your your side of the screen? So we have a Patreon. We have a show, Free Country USA, YouTube. Any podcasts are available.

Jeff is going to start doing tarot readings on the Patreon for a new Patreon to you. Yeah. So if you guys ever, yeah, we're going to create a special high Patreon tier. So instead of like suggestions for episodes or everything, I'll just give you a monthly, magical, very powerful terror reading. He's very good at terror readings. Yeah. That's cool. So we're doing.

hair or reading. So I'll plug that. That's the plug. It does. It feels wrong to plug my only fans on this particular episode. Okay. Yeah. I don't really have anything else.

Normally, I would say go for it. But I think you're right. I think tonally that would be off today. If they're motivated through these two links, they can find it. They can find it. Yeah. And yeah, as we always ask, if people want to follow you on the internet, where can they do that? Free Country USA on Instagram and YouTube.

Awesome. That's the main one. Also, kitty cams everywhere. Awesome. Well, thank you guys. so much. This was great. Dude, thank you guys. Hello, my name is

Ryan Broderick. You know that because you're already listening to the show. We are doing a live show in New York City on October 27th with just so happens to be my birthday. It has nothing to do with that, though. It's a Halloween show. You are encouraged to wear costumes. There will be a costume

competition. You should come up with something internet themed, I suppose. But like, look, if you have like a really good costume and you wear it, maybe we'll give you an award anyway. because like sure why not um but you should come there'll be special guests it'll be fun there's comedy there's music there's some journalism uh that's uh October 27th at babies all right in Williamsburg and we will see you there seven o'clock uh you can hit a ticket link uh probably in the body of this podcast episode yeah sure we can make that happen yeah

panic world garbage day media my name is Cia and I live in the most beautiful place on earth. Seven months ago, I blew up my life, and a lot has shifted since then. Everyone is moving forward. I'm still working on that. And that's me. Welcome to Ice Cove.

Where are the penguins? That's Antarctica. We're the other one. North of North. Stream all episodes, available on CBC Gem.