Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) - dismantling the manosphere with fd signifier & robert evans

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

You win, I'll talk to men -- and for part three of our manosphere series, it's two brilliant men who are experts in this space. After taking a wide look at the manosphere, Jamie speaks with FD Signifier and Robert Evans about their experience studying the manosphere, and what to expect in the near future. Our final part airs next week! Follow FD Signifier's work: https://www.youtube.com/@FDSignifire Follow Robert Evans' work: https://bsky.app/profile/iwriteok.bsky.socialSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The U.S. Open is here and on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain. I'm breaking down the players, the predictions, the pressure, and of course the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very wonderfully experiential sporting event. To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports Network.

Hey, I'm Kurt Brown-Oler. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the podcast where we share the weirdest, funniest, real news stories from all around the world. And sometimes from our guest personal lives, too. Like when Whitney Cummings recently revealed her origin story on the show. There's no way I don't already have rabies. This is probably just why my personality is like this. I've been surviving rabies for the past 20 years.

New episodes of bananas drop every Tuesday in the exactly right network. Listen to bananas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney, and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people. around you. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Your entire identity has been fabricated. Your beloved brother goes missing without a trace. You discover the depths of your mother's illness. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these

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let's see a minute of fame 60 minute of fame 60 minute of fame 16 minute of face one more minute of fame

Welcome back to Welcome back to 16th minute The podcast where we talk to the Internet's characters of the day to see how their moment affected them and what that says about us and the Internet. However, we are not doing that this week. This is a bonus episode in our Into the Manosphere series. In our last episode, we took a look at how the Manosphere has developed in the last decade,

beginning with Gamergate and the Isla Vista Killings in 2014, all the way through now, where Joe Rogan is getting name-checked at a fascist acceptance event. It's a journey, and today I wanted to share two conversations I've had with two really wonderful people who have been studying this area for quite some time. Which brings me to just a little bit of housekeeping at the top, an apology from me. Ian, if you could put on some like YouTuber apology music. As I mentioned in my last episode, I've been getting some kickback on this series for not including the voices of men enough. And so to start, to all the men listening, I just wanted to apologize if you felt silenced or, quite frankly, attacked by my bitchy little voice.

You are valid. You are heard. You are kings. And obviously you didn't listen to the end of the last episode because I said that today I would be speaking with two men who I admire very much. But still, I'm sorry. I get it. You guys are like super, super busy. So let's get into it, shall we? Both of my guest today are talented and prolific writers, and in a very weird coincidence, both just released very thorough analyses of Diddy. First, I was really thrilled to get the chance to speak with FD Signifier, a YouTuber I really admire who has been analyzing the Manosphere on his channel for years,

and does something I've seen others consistently struggled to do, which is hold empathy for men sucked into that space, while always prioritizing those most deeply affected by it. Beginning with a closer look at the black manosphere specifically, FD has gone on to look at the world of in-cells, speak to former members of the manosphere, take a look at how popular media reinforces these narratives, and has taken a look at how the manosphere preys on the neurodivergent.

Truly, if you take in anyone else's work on this subject, let it be his. Here's my talk with FD Signifier. I am FD Signifier. I am a YouTube video essayist. For those who don't know what that is, we're kind of a mix between a, think of like the classic newspaper editor, like journalists, investigative journalists, slash documentarian slash big old nerd theater kid type energy. A lot of that, like mixed into one. I tend to focus on a cross section of gender and masculinity, race, specifically black issues. issues and politics. And you also have an academic background in talking. I mean, obviously not the Manosphere explicitly, but that sort of expanded universe because, and I know you've said this in your work too, it's really hard to define what we're actually talking about. Yeah, yeah. My master thesis was on spreeshooters. And as a product of studying that population, you end up in the same place as a lot of the Manusphere, red pill, alt-right stuff, because they're all kind of, as you

alluded to, they're all kind of in the same house, just in different rooms. Once you've kind of broken down the function of one group, you've 60 to 75 percent broken down the function of all of them. So, yeah, there's a lot there. And a lot of it has to do explicitly with masculinity. So there's a lot of there, there. So when you started tackling this topic explicitly more on your channel, what led you to like, okay, it's time for me to dissect this topic? What were you not seeing in those discussions at the beginning of this work that you wanted to bring to the table? I'm older than much of my audience and all of my peers, which creates a lot of distance, but also a lot of perspective. And so me as a married man, a father of two, it was hard for me to kind of fathom that

this was so serious. As I sat on, as I got more and more online, I was like, oh, this is actually way more serious than I thought. I started seeing it boomerang back to my real life where I would have parents of other children say, my son brought home this and started saying this stuff about femoids and all kinds of weird crap about women. And I'm like, oh, I actually know that guy. Oh, yeah. Let me, let me, maybe this is a real thing that I should get into. And then I also recognize, as I alluded to earlier, that no disrespect to a lot of my contemporaries, none of them were really putting in useful analysis as to the like true causes and underlying elements. Nobody had really broken down. My first video was understanding the manosphere. It doesn't take much,

especially amongst, you know, my audience to say, yeah, this is dumb, these people are dumb, don't be like them. It's more valuable, I think, long term for more people to have a developed analysis of how this world functions so that we can have a better tools for how to make it not function anymore and more explicitly for parents for like people who have these types of guys in their lives to know what it is that is bringing them like the first thing you'll see as a friend or a peer or a parent is really like the fifth step of the problem right when they start repeating these talking points to you in real life they've already been deep in for a while where they get comfortable to they're they're comfortable bringing it up

at school like right they're evangelizing at that point they're true believers if they've gotten to that point and so you know what things did you miss up into that point and like if you are educated enough to see those things how do you address them then better yet what type of energy and relationships can you be building in the home to make this less likely with with children and teenagers and peers and friends. And we didn't really have much for that. And so that's kind of one of the things I hope to contribute to. One of the things that is often a failure on our part to understand is that these are actually very complex communities with very intelligent, nuanced contributors. It requires like that level of respect to understand what's going on. Otherwise, you just,

you just won't know they've built their communities for the sole purpose of keeping normal people out by being repulsive or cryptic in the way they engage with each other. For you, in terms of like what the Manosphere is and what its influence is, where does the story start? I've gotten a lot of different answers to this question. So, white supremacy. I mean, yeah. I mean, it's a big part of it.

It starts with patriarchy. Here in the States, it starts with American exceptionalism to an extent. It starts with Western ideology and thought. The impetus for how a lot of this stuff becomes appealing to the young men that get into it is they're outsiders. They're socially ineffective for a variety of reasons. It might be because they're just not that attractive or not as attractive as some of their peers. They may be late social bloomers, late physical bloomers. They may have genuine behavioral or mental health issues that make it hard for them to socialize.

They may have a physical disability. They may be poor. They may be a minority of some sort. All these things could contribute to a sense of otherness and then the targeting of ostracism. And that contributes to the desire to find places where you can feel belonging community and power. Not all cases, not all cases, but in some of these cases, these young men become targeted by these different communities, different grifters, looking to get a quick buck. out of mode. You're not feeling good about society. Well, take this class and I'll teach you how to be a big baller or whatever Andrew Tate was selling. Aside from offering them a false like solution to

their problem, the biggest thing that people don't get is that it offers them belonging. People that stay the longest and fall in the deepest is because that is where they found community. If it's community built around misogyny or racism or something else, fine. But it's more than the community they had, you know, away from their keyboard. Michael Kimmel, who has some good stuff on this, I have to obligatory point out that Michael Kimmel has a Me Too, several Me Too cases out there. Michael Kimmel calls it aggrieved entitlement, which is connected to a lot of this stuff. And it's, you know, especially for white, young white men who, while this is a very diverse community, people don't give it enough credit for how diverse it is. But for white men in particular,

these young white boys are told that they're the, you know, the protagonist, the heroes of their own story. It's in all of our media. It's in our mythology. And then they grow up and find out, no, you're just a peon at best you're a worker, you know, and the people that, you know, have the power over you. Their parents also had the power over your parents. And their grandparents had the power over your grandparents. And there's nothing you can do about it. It just lends itself to a unfortunate cocktail of toxic elements that for a handful of these, young men makes a edge lord creator talking about how women shouldn't be able to vote and that'll fix all our problems. It makes that appealing. So I, as a young man, did not have a lot of

success with women. You know, I did not have any, I'd never had a girlfriend in high school. I had plenty of girls I liked and I crushed on. No success. It wasn't until halfway through college that I started to kind of figure things out. And it was only after I had done some traditionally masculine things to make myself just surface level more appealing to women. And there was a bitterness there around that. There was a frustration. There was some animosity and some misogyny involved in that experience. My general theory is that most boys that end up in this space, even today, grow out of it just by necessity of continuing going with life that grow out of it. They may have some residual effects. I'm not saying everybody just completely perfectly

grows out of it but you grow out of the like danger zone so to speak um but today it's just you don't have to as much like i had to grow out of that to get on with my life to go get a job to continue to try to find partners partners in love etc etc to learn how to talk to women face to face because there was no swiping left or right so like there's so much of our society has been atomized i think young men who have those challenges are never put in positions to overcome them in productive ways. And then you have this entire ecosystem of grifters who are collecting money off of their pain, you know? And so that just kind of makes it stronger, makes it hold longer.

And we're sitting here trying to figure out what to do about it now. The U.S. Open is here. And on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars to legends chasing history, the predictions, well, we see a first time winner, and the pressure. Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court and, of course, the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, their whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive. For all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not?

Tennis is full of compelling stories of late. Have you heard about Icon Venus Williams' recent wild card bids? Or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself? How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form? To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart Women's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.

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of the profound and powerful stories I'll be mining on our 12th season of Family Secrets. With over 37 million downloads, we continue to be moved and inspired by our guests and their courageously told stories. I can't wait to share 10 powerful new episodes with you, stories of tangled up identities, concealed truths, and the way in which family secrets almost always need to be told. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What is the bait to draw people into this space and has it changed over time?

It hasn't changed over time. It's panacea. It's I can, I can, I can, solve the problem. It's a classic. It's what salespeople have done since the beginning of time. You have a problem. I have a solution. The solution is insert awful thing here. The problem is that the problems are becoming maybe bigger and more difficult to address in any form of fashion. You know, one of the pre-minute conversations in the Manistphere, Red Pill, whatever spaces, is, you know, income and being a high value man and making money because you need money to attract the mate. And that's just true. That's just reality. If you have less money, you will have less options in the dating market. That is more of a problem in 2024 in our modern economy, in our modern work world,

where making more money is difficult. Women have gotten to a point where they can make their own money. And we're not going back to the 60s and 50s when a woman needed a man to survive. And so you have a lot of dudes that never develop personalities because they thought they would just have a good job. There's so much to that. The dregs and scourge of late capitalism. But these young men who grew up watching, you know, all these images of masculinity, who grew up being taught all these things about masculinity, they do not care. They want their trad wife and their factory job back. They will literally tear everything down trying to get it back. tear everything except for the thing that needs to be torn down, trying to get it back. Even though I feel like sometimes the way that the Manosphere is sort of almost like scapegoated, it is like, well, it was that. That was that. And so, and there was nothing. And that's what I'm alluding to. So there's something to the fact that he went on Aidan Ross and Joe Rogan's

podcast that I think a lot of left-leaning people really under appreciate, like did not appreciate how significant that was. There's something to that. But at the end of the day, we're mostly just talking about racism and misogyny and xenophobic. Like, it's not that, it's not that deep. There's an angle there to discuss, but let's not, I think a lot of people are trying on purpose to miss the forest from the trees, that that would require them to do some self-reflection on their own politics. We want to stick to the atmosphere. People famously hate to do that. Yeah. The truth of the matter is, the media is informed by the culture. It's not the other way around. And I think a lot of times because that's something we can really respond to a control and it also again alleviates responsibility on our part, we want to make it seem like, well, my son started watching these manosphere type people and then suddenly he became a misogynist.

And I'm like, and I just want to be like, I just want to let you know, if your son gets in the manosphere, that's your fault. You have created an environment where that seemed like a reasonable response to his own pain. and concerns and issues. And that is not just the individual's fault. That's a cultural standard. The norm is misogyny. The norm is racism. The norm is xenophobia.

Those are American principles that we don't like to admit are there. And so, of course, individuals weaned in that culture, in that environment, are going to respond without anyone to kind of like, hey, nope, not here, not in this house, not in this community, not in this family. If there's nothing to curtail that, it's going to be very easy for those types of messages to resonate, for those type of messengers to pull them into those spaces. And so we have to do two things. One, we have to be responsible with the culture and community we're producing so that it's less likely to produce those types of things. But the other big thing is we also have to, as, you know, as creators, spend a little more

time celebrating and contributing to the creation of media that's just, I talk about Star Trek. I wish I've talked about like One Piece, which is an anime, and so many other types of media that are about a world that is more virtuous and kind of more gets to like the type of world we're trying to create through our politics as opposed to we're going to comment on how bad the world is through this dark white guy who does edgy things and is really cool and has a jacket and guns. But, you know, you're not supposed to want to be like them. But look at how cool it is. But the scorpion jacket. The scorpion jacket. Yeah. I also, I wanted to go into your work on the Black Manosphere. You're one of the few creators I've seen who has really got into this

and early. So could you tell me a little bit about this space? When did it crop up? And how does it, does it function any differently than other Manosphere spaces? Yeah. So the Black Manosphere, they would say that they, as a formal, like, online space predate the Manosphere, which I would agree with. The Black Manosphere comes out of like a history of gender conflict within Black America between Black men and women, which is a byproduct of, you know, history of racism, the dregs and results of slavery and Jim Crowe, segregation, etc. And just the

genuine fact that black men and women were never supposed to operate in America as men and women the same way white people were. And so that creates a just stew of issues and conflicts as men, black men, are trying to pursue manhood and masculinity in a way similar to white men do. And as black women try to pursue femininity in a way similar to white women do. And this just creates all these different venues for conflict that has historically made the talk show with, you know, why are all men dogs? You know, Why don't black women let a black man lead? That's literally going back to the 70s.

That's been a thing in our media. And so the Manosphere starts to become a thing in the 2000s with the onset of YouTube and internet communities because now these men who feel these things about black women, much like the normal Manosphere, can come together and start to voice their issues, yada, yada, yada. Beyond that unique, like, origin point, how that kind of vacillates through that throughout the culture, it's not that different. It's still misogyny and masculine conflict.

It's still men and boys trying to claim a sense of power in their masculinity through the denigration of women. It's a little less racist most of the time. It's a little less xenophobic. Most of the time. It's just as misogynistic. There's a couple of differences. is like a lot of the black mannisphere people, some of them try to present themselves as pro-black and pro-black people.

And so they can kind of sneak things in in ways that if you're not alert to it, you don't hear it. So they're massaginity can be very sublimated into like these just classical images of masculinity and gender because there's a feeling, well, black people's problem is that the black family isn't in order, which is true to an extent. There is validity to that statement. So that's why black women need to stop worrying so much about their education and stop telling black men what to do that it is.

So like it's... Oh, there it is. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. For me, talking about it was almost more difficult because there's a thing that happens when you kind of know your enemy. You cut deeper, you know? That, I mean, but I think even what you're describing, like, is a critical part of the work, right?

It's like processing your own feelings towards these spaces. and then figuring out what is a constructive way to talk about it because I feel like, like you're saying, like even creators I enjoy, a lot of people blow through the like, let's just give the raw emotion to it as opposed to like really thinking about it. Because your work is so thorough and so thoughtful and you're also thinking, you know, coming from the perspective of a parent, my sort of worry is that this is going to turn into some kind of moral panic that will be deeply unproductive and send people. further, like send, you know, young men further into this and feel more ostracized? I don't think it'll get that real moral panic energy. But I want you to finish your question, but I disagree that it'll ever be the true moral panic, and I'll tell you why. Oh, please, yes. My question was just if someone's listening who is a parent or has someone in their life who is clearly internalizing this stuff, where do you start to address it?

I'm of two minds that are, I think, probably need to work together. I'm from a relatively traditional household where things like child autonomy and privacy were not greatly respected by my parents. Sure. And I think you have to be open to that idea when it comes to monitoring what your child is consuming on the internet. Maybe you don't want to have like outright spyware. You don't want to be a full on police officer in your own home to your child because that just

creates them being sneakier. But you definitely don't want to be complete, like stop handing the tablet to your kids. in saying go nuts. These companies, these organizations, the AI, the algorithms, all these machines are trained to addit your child to the screen. And they do not care how they do that. And one of the most fundamentally predictable ways they know they can do that, and you probably got this from one of the videos, is through making them upset, making them angry, making them outrage. And one of the easiest way to piss people off is to show them a woman doing a thing, a woman's not supposed to do. being sexy but not but in public or you know wanting more money then she's willing to work for some

other oh she cheated on her boyfriend and then rolled her eyes like whatever like so many of the video start with girl does thing and then gets put in place by alpha male like that's 60% of the video titles yeah and so when your 12 year old watches that like stop letting them watch that um is what I'm getting to the other thing is you have to be willing to to dismantle, and this is why I don't think it'll become a true moral panic. Moral panics tend to be truly transgressive. Misogyny isn't transgressive. Masagony is reinforcing the social norm. Transgressive is feminism. Transgressive is queer. Transgressive is black. So those things create moral panics. Heavy metal created the moral panic because it was it was counterculture and

subversive and anti-authoritarian and all those things. This stuff is just a little too, it's embarrassing. Little Timmy said something really misogynistic to his sister and now I have to deal with this at home. And because it would shine such a ugly eye on the true nature of some people's households and some communities, I don't think it'll ever reach the true moral panic because according to certain people, this is what won the election for Donald Trump. But to fully go back to answering that question, you have to dismantle the utility of this ideology in your own home. And that doesn't mean you have to become like a hardcore feminist and read Judith Butler and Audrey Lord. Just make it so it's not so easy for misogyny to pass in your home. Tell your

brother-in-law to shut the fuck up when he says something sexist and says it's a joke. Build into goodness with your child, not based on their ability to perform masculinity, but in their innate goodness. Let them feel comfortable being emotional. Let them feel comfortable about crying. Explain to them how coercion is. When they like a girl, let them know you can like this girl. She may not like you and that's okay. And that doesn't mean anything about you and it definitely doesn't mean anything about them. And challenge this stuff when you see it. That along with a slow of other things that I don't have time to get into is going to be way more useful than even just sending them one of my videos. One of my videos is more for you to understand it so that you can address it

in reality. One of my mentors talked about the fact that this isn't an issue of misinformation. this is an issue of disinformation. The knowledge is out there. We just have to get it in the right places and get it into people's systems for real. FD Signifier, thank you so much for your time. This is like, this is so wonderful. Thank you so much to FD Signifier.

I cannot recommend his channel enough. And when we come back, the King of Boston, Robert Evans. The U.S. Open is here. Here. And on my podcast, Good Game with Sarah Spain, I'm breaking down the players from rising stars to legends chasing history. The predictions will we see a first time winner and the pressure? Billy Jean King says pressure is a privilege, you know. Plus, the stories and events off the court and of course the honey deuses, the signature cocktail of the U.S. Open. The U.S. Open has gotten to be a very fancy, wonderfully experiential sporting event. I mean, listen, their whole aim is to be accessible and inclusive. for all tennis fans, whether you play tennis or not.

Tennis is full of compelling stories of late. Have you heard about Icon Venus Williams' recent wild card bids? Or the young Canadian, Victoria Mboko, making a name for herself? How about Naomi Osaka getting back to form? To hear this and more, listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain, an IHeart Women's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's

sports. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebeney, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebeney and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that would challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental, mental health struggles, and more, and found the shrimp to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer.

Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it.

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I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Family Secrets. Listen to Family Secrets Season 12 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm speaking with one of the producers of this very show, Robert Evans, who's been both reporting and commentating on Manusphere spaces, specifically extreme alt-right spaces for years, and famously connected a series of mass shootings we discussed earlier to in-cell forums. In this house, we love Robert, and so here's our chat.

Because we've talked about this before, and we've both spent the better part of our lives on the internet, When did you start seeing communities like this cropping up? You know, I started to see inklings of this in like late 2013 and like the comments on cracked articles, right? Where we would do pieces that were talking about like rape survivors or the trans experience. And there would be these like, you know, we would get a great response. They got a lot of people reading them. But we would get these like really weirdly hostile posts.

And it became clear I would get some emails too. So it became clear there was somewhere communities of people who were like, getting really angry because I was you know I I was more or less just a libertarian at that point a libertarian who had like voted for Obama because Bush was a fucking disaster right but I didn't really think about I didn't think about like writing you know doing articles with like trans people about the realities of transitioning as like a political act I was just like oh I don't know much about what it's like to be trans this is interesting you know but it was pissing some people off a ton and so I was like well this is odd and it all kind of crystallized in 2014

When back at Cracked, we did a sketch comedy video, the premise of which was, what if all of like the main websites on the internet today were kids in a high school, right? Okay, 2014, baby. 2014, I think it was, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, among the things in that

is we had 8chan as a kid, 8chan, which had just come about Gamerie. I was aware of Gamergate as it was happening. I did not take it super seriously in its early stages. Like I got her, we all got some harassment, but it was like, these freaks on the internet are like angry about girls. We've always known some of these people were there. It was not clear to me at that immediate point that this was like going to redefine how politics worked in the country, right? Sure.

When it became clear to me, because those kids get kicked off a 4chan, 8chan is started, and 8chan becomes their home. They develop a board on 8chan called Baphomet, which is where like harassment campaigns are architected. And this video comes out, and whoever wrote it, I forget which of our writers, like, actually did the script, but they envisioned 8chan as like this little nerdy kid who was just constantly sexually harassing the, like, popular girl who was the stand-in for Facebook, right? And like, it was not a super deep thing here. Like, that was the joke, right? Is that like 8chan is the creepy kid harassing the popular girl, right?

God, I mean, it is wild that there was a time where Facebook was a hot girl. Yes, I mean, this is a wildly different time, right? The blob from the end of the substance is how I think of Facebook now. Yeah, yeah. No, this was a very different period of time. Yeah. But yeah, so we do that, and these kids on 8chan find it, and they don't go after the writer of the sketch who was a man. They don't go after the director, I think it might have been Adam Ganser, but who was a guy.

They go after the girl playing Facebook, and they're, like, mailing dead animals to her parents' house. They're sending her, like, pizzas and death threats, and, like, and they're chronicling it all live on Baphomet in like this thread that I the day it starts I find the thread and I'm like archiving and clicking I wanted to report on it my colleague David Bell wanted to start filming a documentary right then and then and there like his premise which I think in retrospect maybe we should have done would have been like what is the internet done to us right uh we didn't in part because it would have directed more harassment to this young woman right like that that's why

ultimately it was like no one said anything about it. But that is why, you know, in 2019, my career like really was ignited in a large way because of my reporting on 8chan during the Christchurch shooting. Well, I was, I had been stalking

eight, I had about once or twice, once every month or two, I had been going by 8chan and keeping an eye on how things were developing there ever since 2014 as a result of this, right? Like that's when I really got into looking at a lot of this stuff. Okay. And as you were watching over there, I mean, like over the course of that, like half decade, you know, during which obviously a lot changes in that half decade, I feel like my

into this was showing my college boyfriend in Anita Sarkisian video and him being like, you're a fucking idiot. You're like, oh, oh, our edge lord comedy is a joke to me, but you might actually mean what we're saying, you know, that kind of shit. When does it really feel like these communities get empowered and start to escalate. I mean, it started fairly rapidly after that point, which we know Bannon recognized the promise that these networks had. When I started looking at them, they reminded me a lot of, you know,

about 20 degrees darker than where my friends and I had been in high school, right? Near the end of high school, my friends and I, I think like most kids, I think honestly, like Superbad is one of the movies that gets the way we talked back then best. But, like, you know, the F slur was, like, every third word out of my mouth and out of the mouth of, like, every kid I knew, right? Like, that is, was just incredibly common, right? It's like most millennials are, like, recovering edge lords to some extent.

Right, right. I remember on 9-11, on something awful, when one of the first things someone did was, like, set the footage of the towers going down to yakety sacks, right? Like, we were, so I saw, I, I recognize. I saw familiarity in the way kids on 8chan were talking, and what just kept happening every month is like the Nazi stuff is like less and less absurdist nihilist humor and more and more just Nazi stuff.

And it happened very quickly. Perhaps I think it always was more serious than I had initially recognized. I think maybe initially I saw it as a little less serious than it was because it was so familiar. And, you know, I think it says a lot about how social media traps us at certain ages by trapping us in social circles and trapping us in patterns of talk and patterns of like in memetic patterns that can lock us at periods of development. Because, you know, my friends and I stopped talking that way very quickly after high school because we got out into the world and we made more friends who like wouldn't stand for that shit and realize like oh you actually

don't talk like that that's actually fucked up you know um and i think it's harder for that to happen to not everyone but a lot of people it is easier to fall into a loop and some of this is very intentional some of this is just some of these different right wing you know nazi organizations realized the promise that social media held for locking people into these loops but you know however you want to look at it, the loops exist. I think a lot about how the role of ironic humor in the 2010s kind of plays into this. But again, it feels like at every stage of this, or at least the way I see it, let me know if you feel differently. Every time there's an escalation, some people leave and then other people double down and get even more involved in the community and pull more people in.

You've written really cogently about how this escalation of it starts as a joke and becomes real. continued. And at this point, I mean, is there any spaces where it's still being treated as a joke at this point? I don't know that it ever really was. I think that what you do see is a calving off where the extremists get more extreme and less welcome elsewhere, right? And you also see, you see folks who had been using some of that language who had been

edge lords get like kind of adopting more like, you know, quote unquote woke language in part to differentiate themselves from like the bigotry online, right? That's part of the, that's part of the story of partisanship. I'm not, I'm not saying that as a way to say like, and the, so the wokes are just as responsible for everything getting so divided. I'm saying it's like a natural reaction. You see this one group of people who used to play games with and like bullshit with online become Nazis.

You don't, you want to make it very clear I'm not one of them. I guess around Trump's first election, there was this way, of deplatforming of a lot of right wing, and I guess you could classify them as Manosphere to some extent influencers, and that, I mean, at least I remember being posited as like, well, we've de-platformed them, problem solved, or a lot of the, you know, like rhetoric I was engaging with during the Me Too movement was like, we just have to get these guys away from us and like out of these spaces, which was effective. to some point, but also they did not disappear into dust, and a lot of them sort of doubled

down. I guess I'm curious of your feeling of that period of time, of the time where there was this de-platforming movement. What did this space learn from that? I mean, for one thing, de-platforming never happened on a significant cogent scale, right? Like, it's a little bit off, I think, to say that, like, de-platforming failed because, like, well, we didn't do it, right? But, like, was it ever even possible? It did. Individuals had their reach decreased for a while, right? Now, also, you know, one of the things is that, like, these are live conflicts.

Alex Jones saw his reach collapse. He lost a lot of money. And a lot of people on the right re-adopted him and brought him closer than he had been to folks who had power and more kind of mainstream appeal, guys like Tucker Carlson, because that, like, that was what they saw as the smart direction in the fight, right? So it's not good enough. You can never, you can never just deploy a tool, like de-platforming, once, and say, well, we did it, Joe, you know, we're done, right?

Like, there's going to be a counter move, and the counter moves against guys like Jones, number one, they all came too late, right? Part of it is that could, by the time Alex Jones started getting de-platformed, he was so embedded in the culture. and so influential, you know, I don't know that, like, any of the kind of Aresat's deplatforming, you know, strategies that were adopted could have really stopped him from being someone whose voice mattered, right? Like, that's just a reality of the situation. Some of it is that, like, if you just kind of let this shit go on for a while, it metastasizes until the point that it's terminal.

And ironically, I think there's a chance that, like, Alex and a lot of these guys who have been more on the, we are going to wind up fighting the left in the street side of things, have some trouble in the coming years, as there's a lot less impetus for Trump supporters to believe that's happening. But I don't really know what's going to go down there. If you're looking back like what could have been done to have stopped this, there's only one very clear answer to me. And it is you need to put in legal consequences for algorithms working the way they work.

That's what should have been illegal from the beginning. was algorithmically pushing people towards shit like fucking the boogaloo boys and militias and towards like neo-Nazi, you know, race-realist organizations, exposing children to that at scale in order to get engagement hours and bring in ad revenue. If that had been illegal from the beginning, if there had been immediate severe penalties that hurt the bottom line of these social media companies, I think we'd be in a different situation now, right? Now, would that ever have been that certainly didn't happen?

so would it ever have been politically viable? I don't know. Especially with just how it's still not, you know, every algorithm is still extremely opaque. There is no incentive to indicate how your algorithm works at all. This previous mid-2010s emphasis on we have to de-radicalize people before it's too late. I don't really see that conversation happening now. Is it because it's just kind of too late to do that?

Do you think that that is still like a viable route in it? any way? Shit, I don't know. Yeah. Me either. I wish I had like a clear answer to what the solution was here. The best advice I can give people, don't listen to anyone who is telling you, number one, I have a really clear and obvious solution.

And number two, it happens to comport with what this organization I am in has been saying we should do all along, just give us some money, right? Be very, very, not that there aren't, like, for example, I think a lot of the getting out of this, I think is going to, I think unions are going to be a very important part of that story, but I also think like unions are also part of the problem, right? You can look at where the teamsters voted, you know, in this last election, right? I just be very hesitant of people who come to you peddling solutions and asking for your money, right?

One thing we should take out of this is that if the first thing out of anyone's mouth, who comes to you with a solution is, so I need a donation. Well, Harris raised three times as much as Trump, and look where that got her. Don't do that. Be very careful with who you listen to if they're coming to you and saying, I have a solution for you. And it's buy a gun. It's donate money to the Democratic Party. It's this very simple thing, because what takes us out of this is not going to be simple

and be hesitant to embrace people who come to you with simple solutions. Do you see this space continuing to grow? Where do you see this sort of evolving into? Well, that's interesting because I, you know, some of these people right now have evolved into the like repeal the 19th Amendment, you know, freaks, right? Women shouldn't be voting. And Trump just made a woman who's clearly one of the only people he respects into his, his White House chief of staff. Yeah. And also, I don't think, I don't see, not that he's not going to put through a bunch of policies that are bad for women, but like a lot of women voted for him. So I don't necessarily see him as being like, well, repealing the 19th Amendment is my number one priority, right? He likes winning elections. And I do think that a lot of what he does, once the own the libs high comes down and they see that they're not going to get a lot of what they wanted because it's stupid and because it doesn't benefit Trump to give it to them, and he had no problem lying to any of them.

Trump is not particularly interested in giving you all of these crazy things that you want because, like, that's never been his politics. right? Is Trump going to make us a Catholic fascist state? I don't think Donald Trump gives a shit about that. I don't think he's really that into Catholicism, you know? I don't know if that's the threat model, right? I think that's more freaks online. I think that's more Nick Fuentes' weirdness. And I think those guys, you know, there's a chance they get really angry as a result of, you know, as it becomes clear what they're going to get and what they're not going to get. I mean, I think in terms of explaining the manosphere to people, you say it's a group of content creators who are generally aligned by a financial alliance on selling supplements

to make people huge, selling advice on how to pick up women. Their audience is largely frustrated young men who think that they are not having all the sex that they should have. And a lot of them have gotten into kind of Nazi-adjacent racial politics as part of their general frustration at the things the world hasn't given them. And they see that their alliance with the right wing is because the right wing will make things harder for women and make them more necessary again, you know? Like, I don't, I think that's important. Like, these guys are very influential. Millions and millions of people listen to him.

It's a, it had an impact on the election, right? Yeah. Thank you so much to Robert. I'm pretty sure he has a podcast, but I don't remember what it's called. Check back with me. All right, I know that was a lot of information. I hope you're well. And next week, we're going to close this series out by talking to those affected by it, young men who got out of the mannosphere and the people who are targeted by the manosphere. And what, if anything, we can do to turn this around? We'll see you then.

And for your moment of fun, let's hold some space for defying gravity. Thank you. 16th Minute is a production of Pool Zone Media and Eyeheartedly. No. It is written, hosted, and produced by me, Jamie Loftus. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichten and Robert Evans. The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor. Our theme song is by Sad 13. Voice acting is from Grant Crater. And pet shoutouts to our dog producer

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