Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of The Manosphere

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Have you been an unlucky ear victim of the phrase, “male loneliness epidemic”? Have you had the misfortune of interacting with a black-pilled, looksmaxxing sigma at the peak grindset mentality? Does all of this sound like terrible, confusing babble, that reels your attention in the way a car crash makes you rubberneck? Put your hazmat suits on, culties. It’s about to get scary. This week, Amanda and Reese are daring to visit one of the slimiest, murkiest, cultiest cults we’ve covered to date. The festering societal wound that is the Manosphere is a cult that has heretofore creeped us out enough to keep us at bay, but where and when cultish duty calls, we simply must answer and get the 411 for ourselves. Luckily, we aren’t alone; joining Amanda and Reese in this treacherous trek are the sensational congressional candidate for IL-9, Kat Abughazaleh (@kabughazaleh), and the effervescent author of “For the Love of Men” and host of Boy Problems, Liz Plank (@feministabulous). Come along as we try to figure out wtf and why tf the manosphere is, who’s at the helm of it, and what we stand to lose by engaging with this rapidly growing force of cultish nature. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia.  Come see Sounds Like A Cult LIVE at The Bell House in New York on April 21st! Tickets at amandamontell.com/events  Thank you to our sponsors! To save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.squarespace.com/CULT⁠⁠⁠ Shop plans at https://MINTMOBILE.com/cult To learn more about how to support Minnesota’s immigrant communities, check out this MSP Mag article, which shares several ways to offer help or find support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform to help entrepreneurs, creatives, podcasters, stand out and succeed online. I am a longtime Squarespace user. I encourage you to check out Sounds Like a Cult.com. All pretty thanks to Squarespace's beautiful features, like their design intelligence. Squarespace also offers integrated SEO tools. And obviously, you can set up an online store on Squarespace if you're running like an

e-commerce situation, or you can set up a fundraiser if you're feeling charitable. Check out Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to Squarespace.com slash cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Before we get into the rest of this episode, I did want to provide a trigger warning. that this conversation does cover topics of sexual assault and suicide. So if those are topics

that you find triggering, absolutely no worries. We will catch you next week or just listen with a careful ear. The worst case scenario is happening right now. All these fucking ICE agents are absolutely in these forums. It's why I've been beaten or gassed or thrown by ice at least half a dozen times now. And every single time they can put their hands on me, they grab me by my chest. They don't do that to my male friends. Oh my God. I have a half. hadn't thought about these ICE agents, extracurricular activities. I remember one time there was like a guy on a roof, and I was like, do you feel really big and strong in your army surplus geared?

And he nodded at me. And then he shot my feet with pepper balls from a roof. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your host Amanda Montel, author of books including cultish and The Age of Magical O overthinking. And I am Reese Oliver. Sounds Like a Colts resident rhetoric scholar. Every week on this show, we discuss a different fanatic. radical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist from raves to romance novels to try and answer the big question.

This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our three cult categories does it fall into? A live your life, a watch your back, or get the fuck out. After all, cultish influence appears in many, many forms nowadays, and sometimes, the most destructive cults don't look how we think they should. This show is all about both seriously analyzing and bringing a wee bit of humor to the absurd ways in which we attempt to find meaning and community in 21st century America, which is a scary, scary place people filled with terrible, horrible groups like today's unfortunate subject, the Manusphere. Yes, I certainly hope we all fell that collective shudder.

This episode today is kind of a companion piece to our episode on Incells, which was our most, listen to episode of 2025. We recorded that with the iconic boys from last podcast on the left. But this time we're here to dig a little bit deeper into the figureheads that influence this. I don't think it's a stretch to say sickening corner of the internet and the content that's shared there. No. Okay. So if you're like a manosphere, what the heck is that? The manosphere, which is the cutified new name for the pool at the end of the all right pipeline. Oh, so it's like a nasty ass water slide. That's how I see it. Yeah. That's how I see it full of just like acid. It's a cesspool of bio-essentialist nonsense, patriarchal garbage, and arbitrary rules for the very large and somehow

somewhat coherent group of men that claim to be bitter, self-obsessed, and emotionless because they don't have opportunity to form community. We're going to sit with that irony for just a second there. I just love how lately on sounds like a cult. We're done being measured. We're letting our judgments free. No, we're really uncensoring ourselves lately. I noticed it with Chelsea the other day, and I was like, yeah, gloves are half, baby. No, I love that.

So, the origin of this term, it was believed to have first appeared on Ye old Blogspot in 2009, as a play on the word blogosphere. The minosphere is defined by Urban Dictionary in several ways, which to me really signals the polarization of this cult. I can't believe what you took your ass. to urban dictionary. It's an urban word.

Fair. One person described the Manosphere as a network or group of blogs and related websites that are run by and for men offering primarily with... Love the Grammar. Offering primarily with misogynistic topics and content. Our next Manosphere definition, a group of websites made for men to discuss men's interests and issues without women nagging them. Oh!

Those, of course, are the men who are going to reject the label entirely as anti-men's rights movement propaganda. Ah, of course. Like how anti-vaxers prefer vaccine-aware. Yes, it's just all framing. There's pro-life, there's anti-choice, there's a lot. So here's the tea. According to Rutledge, the Manusphere can be defined as a varied collection of websites,

blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Okay, that sounds fair and technical. But the Manosphere is older than Urban Dictionary. the Manosphere has a storied past. And in order to diagnose this cult, we're going to need to excavate that. So I'm like going to choke on this phrase as I say it. But the men's liberation movement, as it's called, has its roots in the 1970s and 80s as a response to what?

The feminist movement. The F-F-WR. The F-WR. Women. women being like we want rights. But then, of course, the manosphere, as we know it today, more so took shape with the creation of the worldwide stinking web throughout the 90s and the 2000s.

The manosphere, much like an insidious mold, has slowly grown from the fringes of society into the mainstream in several waves throughout the 2000s, all of which have been marked by violence against women, various shapes of tragedy. But the Manosphere has experienced no win quite like the re-election of Donald Trump. Not to spoil anything, but the Manasphere's ultimate cult leader is literally sitting in the most powerful office in the world. So that's unfortunate, but really emboldening for them.

And since then, phrases, rituals, and behaviors that were once relegated to the Internet's underworld are now broadly recognized and discussed. Phrases like, get back to the kitchen and repeal the 19th, receiving millions of views on the app formerly known as Twitter, along with sentiments like, your body, my choice. Being used against women, that one was coined by Nick Fuentes, who is, I would say, like, a leader or at least a disciple in the C-suite of this cult. He's a far-right pundit, I guess. He's a far-right activist.

He's a live streamer. He's the worst. Google him if you want your nightmares haunted. The Associated Press has reported that these phrases have moved offline. Quote, with boys chanting your body my choice in middle schools, or men directing it at women on college campuses, they highlighted a case where a man held a sign that read Women Are Property at Texas State University.

So before we get into our interview, we do want to touch on how the Manosphere makes its way off of our screens and into our very real lives. The Manosphere received significant media coverage following the 2014 Ila Vista killings in California, the 2015 UMQA Community College Shooting in Oregon, and the 2018 Toronto Van Attack, as well as the online harassment campaign against women in the video game industry known as Gamergate, all of which had perpetrators who had ties to Manosphere content. We are here to continue digging into exactly how this abyss where your sex life goes to die formed,

who stewards it, how to get out of it. All with the expert help of two iconic guests, Liz Plank, a feminist journalist, podcaster, and the author of the book for The Love of Men, and Kat Abu Ghazale, a grassroots congressional candidate for Illinois's 9th District, who has carefully studied the manosphere to her own mental health detriment. Stick around for after the break, because you do not want to miss this conversation. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform to help entrepreneurs. creators, creatives, podcasters, stand out and succeed online. So whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it super easy to create a beautiful website,

to connect with your audience, and to sell absolutely anything from products to content to even your valuable time. I am a longtime Squarespace user. I encourage you to check out Sounds Like a Cult.com. All purdy thanks to Squarespace's beautiful features, like their design intelligence, which combines two decades of industry-leading design expertise. with cutting edge AI technology

to help you build the website of your dreams that represents your brand. Squarespace also offers integrated SEO tools. The website is optimized with indexed meta descriptions and auto-generated site map and more so that you show up more often to more people in global search engine results. And obviously you can set up an online store on Squarespace if you're running like an e-commerce situation

or you can set up a fundraiser if you're feeling charitable. Squarespace is just a household name for, a reason. It is just the service to use for website creation. Check out Squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Kat, Liz, welcome to Sounds Like a Colt. Thank you both for being here. We just thought we needed like a coven today to discuss the manosphere. I think we need a coven in general all the time. So yeah, a coven could heal us. Could you individually introduce yourselves and explain your hopefully lack of relation to the cult of the Manosphere? Okay, my name is Liz Plank. My relationship to the Manosphere is that I'm afraid of it, concerned, and I don't have anything funny.

Enough said. No, there's objectively nothing funny about it. I mean, it is funny. It's just now when it has like real life consequences, I think is when it becomes harder to sort of laugh off. Yeah, maybe it used to be funny. I wish we could go back to a time where the manosphere was funny. This sort of contained weird space and not in the way that it is now, which it has sort of melded with our real life. Maybe that was like the 2016 trend that we all just lived through. What everybody was actually really longing for was a time when the manosphere was in there. You know, in Hercules, when those evil gods were in their subterranean cage. That's how I think of the manosphere. That's a good point. And Kat, introduce yourself to the list. listeners. I'm Kat Abugazale. I'm running for Congress in the 9th District of Illinois, which goes from like uptown Chicago, up to Evanston, West Descoki, all the way to Algonquin and Crystal Lake. I give so much detail because early voting starts in a week. Election Day is on March 17th. I am tied for first against one person who is fully funded by APAC, another person who submitted a

position paper to APAC, and I don't do that. I'm under federal indictment. We were talking about this earlier. I'm going to court tomorrow for my federal indictment for protesting ICE, blah, blah, blah, blah, The reason I ran is because of shit like the Manosphere. I covered the far right for outlets like Media Matters, Mother Jones, Tateau News. The Manosphere is very, very, very intimately tied with all of that. And now essentially runs our country. And I have been consistently attacked by far right chuds for my entire career. I'm really good at triggering them.

They hate me. It's part of the reason that they're going after me. And I can't wait to talk about the Manosphere with you, ladies. Fuck yeah, dude. What do you do for like, self-care? Yeah. Are you like raw dogging? Are you on? What are you? Like what? Drugs do you do? Yeah. I mean like, look, we're all on an SSRI right now. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, people would be like, how do you watch Fox News? Specifically, Tucker Carlson every single night. And like the answer truly was built different. But like it is the best training for running for Congress because you've already had people like docks and swat you and be really fucking awful. So when someone says like a petty comment, you're like, okay, well, at least you didn't send me a rape threat. So that's cool. Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. The bar is below hell. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Okay, so as we will get into, the Manosphere has many, many different leaders depending on which corner you are lurking in. Kat, who in your opinion are the overall cult leaders pulling the strings behind the whole operation? I mean, you have a lot of characters now. You have people like Andrew Tate, but really the basis of the Manosphere kind of started with Steve Bannon. And it's part of the reason the right has been able to collect so much power, especially online. Because men overall, we told them your only value, especially in our culture, is what you. you can produce and how you can create things. And then we took away all of that and punishing them for vulnerability. And instead of creating third spaces and fostering community, we didn't do any of that.

We just made things worse. And then Steve Bannon saw that and was like, oh, I can capitalize on this and essentially encourage these spaces where fear is the easiest human emotion to manipulate. And he said, hey, all of the problems in your life are actually due to women or minorities or insert X group. So I would say Steve Bannon is like the grandfather of it. Gross. He looks so gross. They all look so gross. They all need a shower. I was re-watching this episode of Sexen City last night where Samantha talks about Nixon because he couldn't get fucked. He fucked us all, you know? And that's the vibe I get from the guys at the helm of this. I'm curious, Liz, like, how have you seen figures like

granddaddy Steve Bannon, but also the Andrew Tates, the Jordan Peterson's? Not every man we know is worshipping at their altars, but how have you seen these figures? influence bleed into even quote unquote good guys everyday behavior these days. Yeah, I mean, I think in the way that any cult functions, no one robs an empty house. People are sort of really colonizing men's brains and to Katz Point have built a really powerful movement out of it. Steve Bannon not only saw these online spaces, but have replaced third spaces, which have been defunded and literally like national parks are shutting down and being like privatized. But Steve Bannon talked about this group of isolated, basically sad men, right, who were playing video games. And he went,

oh, this would be great to build a movement around. And I think they've been very successful at creating a really powerful story that is very appealing to a lot of young men who, again, to Kat's point, don't have the same access to social mobility. I mean, if you think about what being a man means, it's being a protector, it's being a provider. He can't really do either of those things. If you can't find a job or if you have, you need three jobs in order to just feed yourself or your family. And so here comes the Manosphere being like, you know what, you've never done anything wrong in your entire life. You are perfect. And this sort of fantasy of what it means to be a man that you see in movies and that your grandfather had access to, the sort of James Dean, you know, tough masculinity,

you can access that if you buy my whatever the fuck they're selling. But, you know, when you're most likely to end up in a cult is when you're just unhappy, you know? And so if you have a big group of unhappy man. Yeah, the manosphere becomes a really enviable place to be that makes you feel good, despite actually, as a lot of people have said, it's treating a wound that's real with the wrong medicine. I just want to say before we clown on a bunch of people, which I love to do. I say this a lot. I think that there is a cult for everyone. And if you insist that there isn't a cult for you, that like you could never, ever fall into that, you're probably in one. I don't know what mine is. I think it's probably that one from a wild, wild country, that Netflix documentary,

not like the five people who tried to poison a water supply, but the ones that were like making renewable energy and dancing and shit. That sounds fun. Oh, like something Luddite and fun. Yeah, yeah, 100%. And I can tell because of the chair behind you that you would look gorge in orange. Thank you. Orange is my favorite color. It's why it's our campaign colors. But I just really want to stress that it's easy to be like, oh, I could never, ever do that. No, you could. And Trump, I don't understand his appeal. Like, his appeal does not appeal to me, but it does for a lot of people. No, I would say unhappiness definitely can be like a vulnerability that orients someone toward a cult. But also I would say it's privilege.

Like you're probably not going to lend your life to an organization that's promising you transcendence and community and all of these things if you don't have time and money and other resources to spare. A cult doesn't want truly, truly the most down and out people. It wants people who have something that's useful to it. And Manosphere-type men have, I was going to say they have a lot to offer, but... Out of context, that's a tough way. There's potential. They do. They have so much potential.

Yeah. It's like the male loneliness epidemic. Like any time a guy has complains me at the male loneliness epidemic, I'm like, what are you doing in your life with your friends? Yeah. Literally, actually, I am. married to a man weirdly enough. He's a lesbian man, if that makes sense. And to some people, it really does. And to other people, it would be like, what is that? It doesn't say it. Oh, love. Yeah. No, he's my lesbian husband. And he gives me so much hope, problematically enough,

because I eavesdrop on him talking about his feelings with his bros so much. They're, like, playing pool. They do so many sweet little things together. And that could be the manosphere. I think it should be. People are like, how do you have so many young men in your campaign? I'm like, I don't know. We just don't treat them like shit. Like our campaign offices is. a third space. I remember one time we asked volunteers, we were like, who wants to help us build some shelves? And then eight dudes just came all like under 30 and didn't even talk to me. They like said high and then just built shelves for two hours. Yeah, something love that. Building things is really important. Hymbo's for good. So Kat, where exactly is the manosphere? If I were to for some

ludicrous reason, seek it out. There are pockets on the regular internet that I unfortunately stumble upon on the reg. But like, where are the hardcore dudes congregating in lieu of lieu of like a beautiful Manson-esque compound, IRO. Places that have really fuzzy human trafficking laws, places that allow a lot of freedom in various bullshit supplements that you create, like if they don't have a lot of regulation over, say, steroids or shit you put in a smoothie. They love being there. I'd also say Miami.

What about online spaces? You have a whole range of places. First off, obviously X, formerly known as Twitter. the child porn site. If you're still on there, I'd recommend getting off. You also have a lot of forums. There are lots of in-cell forums that get taken down and then pop back up. There used to be a lot more in-cell-focused subreddits. Actually, this is sad. I was looking at one for work and one of the mods put out a suicide note. And I DM'd him and was like, hey, let's talk. And we talked for a while. And then he just stopped responding. And then I DM'd the mods of the in-cell subreddit. And they were like,

you're a woman. We don't give a fuck what you say. Horrible, horrible shit. And then like two weeks later, there was all this controversy because they were like, how did we not know he killed himself? Because like they don't give a fuck about anything except hate. They're motivated by hate. Okay. Like when we were talking about potential, like I think that's what it is of like it doesn't have to be this way. But yeah, I mean like social media is a cesspool.

YouTube algorithms are made to radicalize you. I've looked up like hair braiding tutorials and then like within two clicks you end up on some white nationalist Celtic ancestry hair tutorial. You know the Wikipedia game where you try to find some random thing in as few clicks as possible through like hyperlinks on other Wikipedia pages. You like give someone a really innocent place on YouTube and it's like how fast can you find your way to white supremacist content? And I know the pipeline. If you start with hair braiding tutorials, it's a hop, skip and a jump because right there is Mormon stuff. I just have thick hair. Yeah, I just have like Irish curls. It's just, it's just flat at the top and wavy on the bottom and I need help.

You're like, I'm just trying to keep my hair off my neck. Stop trying to make me a Nazi. Actually, I'm not trying to shave. Actually, I'm not trying to shave. it all off. Liz, where have you seen specifically these dudes gathering or heard of them gathering? Yeah. I mean, X for sure. Good old Reddit, Borechan, Discord, you know, these more like dark social media channels. There's a bunch of ones on the right, truth social. I can't keep up with which ones are sort of out there. But it's multiplied. You know, and it's really interesting. Your point about X and what's happening with TikTok and its purchase and changes to people's data and them tracking your immigration status and just being owned by MAGA people essentially or MAGA sympathizers

is driving people away from the platform. So my dream is that we all eventually leave. They all become cesspools and then maybe we all just go outside and talk to each other. Do you think that the Manosphere dudes should have some kind of like, this is a terrible suggestion. You were going to suggest some kind of Colty retreat boot camp work and become better. Should they have a meetup? Yeah. I'm like, should they have a meetup? If only they were in more of an echo change. chamber. If they could perceive the twinkle in one another's eyes and like the quiver of one another's lips, maybe they would kiss each other and maybe everything would be okay. They could do a craft. There was a clip going sort of around from an interview of a CEO where the guest was saying,

you know, we need an intervention with this male loneliness crisis because bad things are going to start happening. And literally, if you don't go hug a man right now, shit is going to be bad. And it's like, who needs to hug men? Men need to hug men. Right. Right? Yeah, men are kind of already hugging you and it's clearly not working. Often, even when I think there's well-intentioned people who are talking about the manosphere and talking about the male loneliness crisis and just talking about men in general, there's a lot of we need to do this and we need to do that. And it's kind of, you know, I think we need to be specific. It's not actually women's responsibility to sleep with men that they don't want to sleep with, to reproduce with men that aren't safe to reproduce with in order to sort of fix men. I think that actually perpetuates not finding a solution when you think the solution is outside yourself. And the dismantling of the patriarchy, again, women have tried. We are tried. And it's very hard to sort of destroy a system that isn't yours and that you're not upholding. So I think men need to be told how much responsibility they have and how much purpose they have in this moment. I think it's actually a positive thing. It's not saying, you know, oh, fuck you. And like, you got to pick yourself

up by the bootstraps. It's like you have a really big effect to your point. You have privilege. And here's what you can do with it. Yeah, I know. It's like how kids need. like a really constructive after-school activity to keep them from getting into trouble because it gives them like purpose and it fills their time. And like you could also fill your time by joining a cold and doing weird shit. And that is what they're doing. Or you could, you know, build sets for the school play. So I want all these manasphere men to go to your local elementary or middle school and ask if you can help build sets for the school play. My advice is so bad. But to Liz's point, I don't know how to fix a system that isn't mine. All I know is how to pot. about it. And with that, I have another question. So the Manosphere, we've been mentioning that their primary mission surrounds like feelings of hate and whatever, but they have constructed a culture around that center of hate. And part of that culture involves a good old culty symbol. They love their culty symbols, including, say, Pepe the Frog and the Wojack and the Red pill. And so I was wondering, Liz and Kat, if you could each pick a Manosphere culty symbol and try to make

sense of it. Okay. This is exactly like what I've spent my career looking at and talking about. Here's my whole thing about all this shit, like the Wojacks, Pepe, all of that. Fascists don't understand art. And like the Manosphere is inherently tied to fascism. The feeling that you're weak, so you try so hard to feel like you're strong or to project to people that you're strong. And so you have these like viscerally unappealing designs that are like, oh, when you look at them, like some of those like Wojacks that are like literally, you'll have entire photo galleries in these guys' phones so they can just post them all the time. They're so repulsive. And I think a lot of this is kind of how AI artists, I use that term very, very generously get mad when people are like, real artists don't understand that this is the next wave. not being tied to the culture, to like general culture, or to the people around you and then also to art and not being able to understand art because it inherently requires an understanding of empathy means that you have this shit. And that's their entire culture. It's why they love AI generated art, which once again, I am using that term very generously. And why they loved NFTs, why they loved NFTs, why they loved when Elon Musk just put that like kind of gritty filter over the X logo. And they were like, this is so man.

Just shortcuts to like approximating humanity. Yeah, this explains so much. Okay, I swear this is like semi-relevant, but this also explains by like men's houses are so ugly. Yes, yes. And also because that punishing of vulnerability also includes art and like artistic endeavors. And this isn't the case all over the world. Of course, patriarchy is in every society. But, you know, I'm Arab and there's a lot of intimacy between Arab men in terms of like this is, you know, someone in

your life that like you kiss on the cheek, you know, that you go out and hang out with, like, go get tea, smoke hook hookah, whatever it may be. And I just think that not understanding art and being trained from a young age that your worth is in your physicality is really bad. Again, I'm coming back to like school plays. Like everybody just needs to do theater. Everybody needs to do theater. The death of homo social culture and creation of the heterosexual marriage has destroyed everything. We just need to go back. We make all the boys, girls, all the girls' boys, and then we'll figure out what happens after that. Trans everybody is what I'm saying.

Everybody needs to go read women with moustaches, men without beards. Okay. Okay, period. Okay. Sounds like a cool reading list. Liz, do you have a favorite Manosphere symbol? I mean, there's like the looks maxing. I guess it's the latest one that I've really been mesmerized by with particularly this really big streamer called clavicular who uses a hammer to hammer

his jaw to get it to be more defined and look like a Chad, another term from the manosphere. And I just find that really sort of fascinating. You know, in coming back to your point about men's houses are ugly, I was also having this conversation with a man on my podcast recently about just the way that men kind of don't take care of themselves. And often will start taking care of themselves when they're dating a woman. That's when maybe they'll get a pillow. You know, maybe they'll get a bed frame.

Maybe they will own conditioner, you know, there's just like things that start happening. And someone was telling you that women kind of have more experience nurturing themselves and taking care of themselves. Because society is not going to do it for us. Sure. And also, we just go to the doctor more. We wear more sunscreen. We get into less riskier accidents. We just are sort of different. Nurture and nature are probably both at hand here. And so there's this sort of expectation then that women are, again, men to take care of men in conversations. around sexuality that women are these guardrails, right? And I was talking to a friend of mine, Keith Edwards, on my podcast, and he was talking about Grindr and just gay guys and how much hooking up happens. And he was like, you know, when it's two guys, there's just no one to kind of be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, so it's just sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, like, it's just kind of like a free for all. And it sort of reminds me of the way that women have this sort of unspoken responsibility, I mean, unspoken, invisible, I guess, invisible labor that they're sort of expected to do in their relationships with men and in society at large, you know, coming back to the way that

people talk about the male loneliness crisis or talk about, you know, you all need to go hug a, hug a man. Implied in that is it's somehow women's job. I also think it's the reason that like men are like, every woman's pretending to be bisexual now because like women are more comfortable openly saying they're bisexual. And I think it's because we have a lot of intimacy with our friends and like we have less judgment. It's the same reason that like lesbians have been able to avoid homophobic crusades for centuries because I mean, sexism, but also just because like I think there are a lot more bisexual men, but they get punished because it's seen as like gay or feminine. And I think that it's not fake for women to say that I say as one of them.

We're not punished for vulnerability. That must suck. Yeah, homosexual behavior amongst women is not punished. I do think in part because it is attractive to men. Yes, also that, also that for sure. The male gaze looms large, like, sower on. We're failing the Bechdale test every single minute of those. Oh, should we go back to talking about braids?

Yeah. Yeah. You know what? I will say this podcast almost always passes the Bechdel test because I'm not really interested in men. Nice. No, it's like by Spotify wrapped every year. There is never a man on that list. That's a flex. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. I just can't stop thinking about the relationship between patriarchy and masculinity and taste in art. And I'm just thinking like probably people in the manosphere think it's gay to have a rug. Yeah. Oh, undoubtedly. Yeah. It's gay to be trying to attract women. Right.

Again, looks maxing. You know, it's weirdly for the male gays. Yeah, yeah. No, it's actually trying to look like Timothy Chalmay, you know. Whose jaw is ultimately the most snatched. Yeah. No, it absolutely is. Adults, there's so many words in our vernacular that come from, like, in cell culture,

like chas and stacies and things like that. You're speaking my language right now. I mean, the WoJack is used in, like, neoliberal spaces as, like, a doomer. symbol. But like all of this is based on like the male gaze, like in terms of what they think that women that like men want when in reality we just want like a dude that makes us laugh really hard and then like also we'll go down on us. He'll go down on us. And won't kill us. And also doesn't turn on the big light or can be trained into not turning on the big light. Oh right. Like is it gay to have a little side lamp? That is gay. Ladies get with a lighting designer. He will always want very many tiny lamps.

everywhere. He will want too many lights. He will try to light smacks your life. And that will be your new problem. Also, I love the idea of looks maxing when it's like just trying to seem attractive, which like women look smacks every day so that way we could like get a job. They're just inventing things. It's my favorite thing when men, well, men are famously bad at inventing language. It's not their thing. You can trust that the manosphere is not innovating effectively with language, but they do come up with words. Well, they come up with words that don't stick because they're just synonyms for things that we already have words for, like looks maxing is, you know, we already have like getting dressed, I don't know, or, you know, biohacking. It's just like

taking a vitamin. And to bring it back to cultishness, all of this is an attempt at building what I think is an ultimately pretty unsatisfying culture. But I'm fascinated by the ways in which the Manifere's language creates an us versus them dichotomy and discourages critical thinking and puts their cognitive dissonance that I'm sure they're feeling. scores of to bed. Could you each talk about some of the most insidious pieces of Manosphere lingo you've come across and how they contribute to this cult? The men who are at the helm of the Manosphere telling men that they're going to get them laid with women are men who don't like women. It's really that simple that Nick Fuentes is a virgin. Who said that sleeping with women

is gay, by the way? Yes, sleeping with women is gay. So that's the end point and that's who you are, you want to be. So it's really, I think, confusing and it's really dumb. And Andrew Tate similarly dislikes women. I mean, I interviewed Bree Stern, the women who dated him and who is assuming him for battery and assault and just judging by her experience and the experience of so many other women. I mean, this is a guy who just really doesn't like women. And I think we're used to saying, like, oh, they hate women, they hate women. But like, you don't like us. That's the gayest thing I've ever heard. So the Manistere is gay. That's just my take. And I think, a lot of guys should just be gay. Like, it's fine. And that's okay. It's actually great. Just be gay.

Just be gay. Don't make it our problem that you don't want to be gay or you're afraid to be gay. So yeah, I think a lot of our problems come down to men just not being gay. And I think they just should live their best gay life and leave us the fuck alone. Yeah. And they're doing a lot of linguistic gymnastics to avoid that fact. And emotional gymnastics. I mean, I've had my fair share of men who will really manipulate and gaslight their way to just never look at the mirror. And it's pretty astounding. Kat, you got some culty lingo from the manosphere you want to roast for a sec? Yeah. I mean, I think in terms of what's insidious, I think two of the most insidious things, or first off the idea of black pill of like everything is bad and it will never be better and just

feeding off of this hopelessness. I don't recommend this, but if you've ever gone into like online, in cell communities, they're extremely, extremely depressing. And it's, it keeps this vicious cycle where you're just like, oh, yeah, everything is bad. It's never going to get better. And I'm never going to get my dick wet. And it's like with any type of bigotry, you like meet someone of that group and you take two seconds outside of this echo chamber and you're like, oh, like there are so many things that get downvoted to shit on in cell forums being like, I don't know, girl, my class

was really nice. She was my project partner. And we've been talking and we might go see a movie. And I don't know if we're going to date. I just, I'm really excited to have like a friend. And then everyone being like, you're a disgrace. It's really dark, but also this has gone farther than the manosphere and in-cell communities, but describing women as females.

Oh my God. Don't get me started. The biggest fucking red flag. Yeah, please. I think it is either a subconscious or conscious attempt to reduce women to their physiology, their bodies. Yes. Because, for example, when you think about the language choices that we use to describe sex

versus gender. Mammals and birds and fish and reptiles and all the other. May more animals. Do it Amanda. Non-human animals, okay? Non-human animals is what I'm trying to say quite precisely. In the Animal Dam Kingdom that don't have gender because gender is a construct. We don't refer to them as women because we're not acknowledging. Right, we're not like that woman flamingo. That is iconic. And ironically, my nickname for my female cat is woman. because I think it's funny and people do, I think, gender their animals in a human way and

in a sort of anthropomorphizing way to because we want to feel closer to them and it's like funny. But you can just see that scientists are not out here calling like an insect a woman. But like we also say girl when people are like men and girls. That is also a red flag because it's the infantilization. It's the diminishment. I've been watching the vow this week weirdly and there's a lot of that of like referring to women as girls and men as men. And when guys say female, especially when it just comes out, like I always correct them because that's an adjective, first off. Second, you don't say male. Like if you say male and female, I'm okay with it, but it has to be on both sides. And they never do. Can you imagine saying like I was talking to this

male earlier and them? Yeah. I mean, we say boy all the time. And I'm cool. Like, there needs to be like an equal footing here. If we're like, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, whatever. But when you are purposely only referring to one in diminished capacity, it's misogyny. Period. Point blank. Okay, we've got a couple more questions for you, and then we want to play a game. Could each of you tell us from your perspectives about some of the different sub-sects, denominations, if you will, within the manosphere and how they're organized?

I'm wondering if there's like maybe a pecking order, for example, when you think about like men's rights activists. versus the pickup artists versus like the no-fap guys. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of different denominations in subgroups and, like, ethnicities of the manosphere. So you've got things that are way more severe and scary like the in-cell or involuntary celibate community. But you also have guys that watch Jordan Peterson and for some reason we're amazed when he was

like, you should make your bed. And they were like, whoa, fuck, I didn't think of that. You've got like Joe Rogan bros that are a lot more like Normie, which is also from in-cell vocabulary. but now has come into like our lexicon. You have guys that their entire thing is guns. You have the pickup artist community, which has like diminished a lot. I think it's making like a minor resurgence, but like it's not like 2010 anymore, you know.

There's a lot of it, I think that comes from self-help. I remember I used to date this guy who was just like so into self-help books and spent all of his time reading these self-help books so then not actually doing anything from them because it was like the action of doing the self-help book. And I think that that's a big gateway to the manosphere in this idea of like making yourself better because there are a lot of guys that want to improve themselves, that see that their life is not satisfying in one way or another. A lot of it's because of capitalism. And our entire society has been engineered to not make you question that. And so, yeah, I think that it ranges. And a lot of it,

like, a lot of guys are subtly in the manosphere, whether or not they realize it. And then there are ones who, like, that's their whole thing. That's all they think about. That's all they do. They're like Elon Musk. They just want to, like, breathe their coworkers or whatever. Or they think it's gay to fuck women or they fall into a right wing rabbit hole. A lot of these are just gateways between either the Manosphere or far right fascism. Well, all fashion is far right, but you know what I mean. I don't have anything to add. That was a really good explanation. I think at this point, you almost have to actively try not to get sucked into the Manosphere. If you're a man and you're consuming videos or you're on a social media platform, I mean, I think Laura Bates talks about this. It takes

sort of seven seconds for a guy to be shown softcore porn or some sort of violence. against women or some sort of AI slop of a woman. Like it's almost a sort of current. And if you don't want to get dragged into that, I think you actively have to train your algorithm, right? And I think that makes me sort of feel better in a way that a lot of these men didn't start off that way, right? I truly do see these men, yes, in many cases as like perpetrators, but like ultimately the victims. You know, if you go back to Bell Hooks, it's like the first victims of the patriarchy are men. And then they weaponize it and it turns into something else. And then women get victimized by them. right? And that's where I get really angry too because all of those platforms are run by men. And so again,

we have to make changes. We need better algorithm. Who is in charge? It's not a woman. There's not a woman pulling the strings who's making these decisions. It's actually a very small number of men. And I think about this a lot with coming back to Kat's point about the things that are no longer or less and less available to men because of capitalism and those five guys who are hoarding all of the money, I think a lot about feminism. I read about it. I read a lot about it. And there's a lot of talk about the gender gap, right? The difference between sort of men and women and inequality there. There's a growing conversation about the gap between white women and women of color generally or immigrant women and that more granular conversation. But there's actually a bigger gap between

men than there is between women. There's a lot of inequality between women, right? And we need to talk about it more. But between the most rich guy and the least rich guy, like there's a big, big difference. And I think that that is actually powering so much of this. And it comes back to magical thinking, right? I can be Elon Musk, even though you're not. And you should be glad about that. You should be happy about that. But meaning you can be a billionaire. But it's a lottery. And that's kind of what that is. You know, it's like, well, maybe. And so I'll just stick around in case it happens to me. Yeah. I mean, there are so many cult parallels to be made about the analysis that you too too have just very coherently expressed. And I think what you're both getting at with the self-help comments and the magical thinking of like, you're at the bottom now, but you could be Elon Musk. I mean, it truly is no wonder that the manosphere is really unfolding in such a culty way in the United States, which is like, I mean, our entire culture was set up for this. Like the self-help industry is based on American dream philosophy, the Protestant ethic, Calvinism. We've done episodes on the self-help industry and so many different offshoots.

of it. And I'd never thought about the manosphere as like a sort of subsect of self-help in a way, this sort of like dark underbelly of self-help, but it is. Well, that's what's scary about it to me is that it's like no matter what kind of content you consume as a man, you'll find your way to it. My boyfriend is as left as they come and he shows me stuff he gets on his algorithms all the time, mostly just so we can laugh at it. But even I tell him, like, you have to be careful with the extent to which you're ironically engaging with this content because you're training the algorithm to feed you more of it. And Lord knows it's already difficult enough to get it to show you anything else. I just trust that to my dad because he watches a lot of YouTube and he like downloaded TikTok to

watch my videos, which is very sweet. But I was like, you have to be careful because like these algorithms, especially because anger, you're a lot more likely to interact with something if it makes you angry, whether it's leaving a comment, whether it's sharing it with someone. Algorithms reward that. So what are some of the entry and exit costs that you've seen with regards to Manosphere membership? I don't know if this is a good parallel, but I wrote a book called for the love of men. That was basically what I've been talking about, which is, you know, the patriarchy hurts men and men have a stake in the gender revolution. And I interviewed this ex-gang member. He ended up in a maximum security prison.

I mean, just like a through and through, you know, quote unquote criminal. And he described sort of the way that he fell into a gang, which I think, I mean, the minister is a cult. It's also kind of a gang, too, right? But the way he described falling into a gang was the way that someone would describe falling in love. It was not the way that I thought it would be, right? That this person had a really abusive childhood, didn't have traditional means to income and, again, protecting or providing. And the gang offered the sense of community, as we all know.

And it comes back to that, that these spaces really sort of provide that. And I think a lot about it as sort of anything, which is sometimes the thing you want is going to feel good in the short term. The thing you need is going to be maybe harder in the long term, but at the end of the day, you know, has higher long term benefits. And what I see with the Manosphere is like, yeah, what you benefit from is like you immediately get everything's fine. You're great. Everything that's wrong in your life is because of women or because of immigrants, right? Or because of insert. So, wow, that feels good.

If I'm depressed, isolated, sad white guy living with my parents in a basement, wow, that feels good. But eventually, what you lose is everything. Because that's actually so disempowering that the locus to your happiness and what's wrong with your life is outside of yourself. So there's nothing you can do about it. And so I think you definitely gain a lot in the short term. It feels good just like a drug, right? Like, oh, I'm high. This feels great.

But then the high gets, you know, I think increasingly a little less high. And then eventually you're just still depressed. And that's why these men are still in these, you know, they're not gaining enlightenment at the end of that journey. Yeah. I think that's really, really insightful. I also think like there's this idea of like sunk costs. You know, you don't have this community. And then you're going in, you're like, well, these are my only friends because I've probably alienated a lot of people in my life for this.

Or because I've spent a shit ton on like these shitty supplements and books. And if they don't work, then why did I do it the first place? And like, I grew up Republican. I talk about this a lot. It's not fun to admit that you're wrong about things. No human being likes doing it. I'm so impressed with my parents. Like especially my mom who grew up in a family that her mom is literally a GOP operative.

And at like 55 was like, oh, I believed a lot of actively like incorrect things and also some kind of shitty things and then changed her mind. And that is way harder to do than a lot of people think. So I think like the benefits that you get are those short term highs. And then leaving ultimately improves your life. And I think gives you a lot of empathy and a lot of perspective. But also there's shame. I talk a lot about the reason that I started to wonder if Ronald Reagan wasn't right about everything. It's because in high school, we moved to Tucson. Arizona, which is much less segregated by income than where I grew up in Dallas. And I had a friend who was like much smarter than me who couldn't afford to go to college. She wanted to be a doctor more than anything. But she couldn't afford it even with like a better GPA than me, even though she was like much more talented than me. And that just didn't make sense. And I was like, well, poor people should just save. Like why aren't they just saving more? Because that's how you pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And there was a lot of shame realizing that like, oh, that's not the reality. And even though I wasn't the one that like came up with that idea, it doesn't feel good.

And so I think there's also that fear of like, well, I'm here and I'm believing things that I realize are shitty. But how could I possibly get out? I think what's so important to note about this particular cult is that like some of the online cults that we've analyzed on the show in the past, but with higher stakes, I think, the entry and exit costs are all totally abstract. Like, you don't have to pay any money. You don't have to move your house. And to leave, it's not like leaving Scientology. You're not going to have to like say goodbye to your doctor and everybody.

Like this whole like actual material. I like how your first instinct was like your doctor. Well, I mean, if you're a high up Scientologist, like even your doctor is a Scientologist. Like it just takes over your life. In the Manifference, we forget you can literally just log off. You can go outside. You don't have to see it. Yeah.

You don't have to see it. And when you're deep in that kind of like addiction spiral like Liz was describing, it's really, really hard to see that. Our last question before our game is, what do you think is the worst case scenario here? Because Reese and I are going to have to come up with a verdict to determine whether the manosphere is a live your life, a watcherback, or get the fuck out.

I wonder what it'll be. And in order to truly make that decision, we want to know, like, what have you seen as, like, the worst that this can really get? We're in it. The worst case scenario is happening right now. Like, all these fucking ICE agents are absolutely in these forums.

That's why I've been beaten or like gassed or thrown by ice at least half a dozen times now. And every single time they can put their hands on me, they grab my chest. They grab me by my chest every time. They don't do that to my male friends. Oh my God. The root of so much of fascism, so much of bigotry, so much of inequality is always and will always be misogyny. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I hadn't thought about these ICE agents.

I hadn't thought about their extracurricular activities. But yeah, they're definitely like on the... I remember one time there was like a guy on a roof and I was like, do you feel really big and strong in your army surplus gear? Do you feel like really cool and masculine? And he like nodded at me. And I was like, no woman's going to fuck you. And then he shot my feet with pepper balls from a roof. Like that's just the definition.

It's like that saying is like men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. And I think it's the Chapo guys who describe them as like it's an unemployable force going after employed people. I mean, right? Like, these ice agents are the guys who don't have a job, right? Who don't have the skills to sort of do well in life and who end up having this power against people who do have fucking jobs and who aren't blaming other people for their fucking problems and actually picking themselves up by the bootstraps, right?

Like, you know, I often think as the worst case scenario is like, what's not the worst case scenario? To me, it's the ultimate consequence of the patriarchy. If you take the patriarchy to its full extent, it's bad for men, right? Like bad for women, again, is the first stage, right? It's the obvious stage. It's the one we've been in for a really long time. And when I see what's going on, this is bad for men. Men aren't doing well.

Duh. And I don't want to, again, harp on this. But like when we say, we aren't taking care of men, we really aren't. You know, it's like, who's the we? You know, yeah, patriarchy sucks for men. Thinking that men don't need anything and that they must produce or else they're not worth anything, like not having any kind of redistribution of wealth, not having funding. sorry, but like last thing, but even if you think about the male loneliness crisis is ultimately,

you know, people say, people don't care about men's mental health and we need to invest in men's mental health. Women vote for those things. Female politicians, right? Are you actually going to go to therapy? Yeah. Like, tell me. Like, it really is infuriating. And I really believe this. And it's backed up by data, you know, men being exposed to women is a net positive. I'm not saying all women are great and not any women has been problematic or cause problems for men. But men who marry women live longer or healthier, go more to the doctor. Like, we know, there's data. You're literally going to live longer. But also part of it is because we've been forced to like, it's like when people are like, girls are so mature. I don't want to have to take care of someone like their mother.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, men for sure need to take care of each other. I mean, the deaths of despair are highest among middle age, unemployed, undereducated white men. And that's the patriarch's fault. And on that note, we really, really want to play a game. Let's do it. Yay. This is culty quotes. So we are going to give you a quote, and you are going to guess if it is from a leader of today's cult or a leader of a different cult. And you get bonus points if you guess who it is. Number one. Mr. President, you are one of the greatest Americans that has ever lived.

I love you. Manosphere. Yeah, that's like Tucker Carlson. I think it's J.D. Vance. Manosphere, that's Nick Fuentes. Oh, that checks out. Because he's gay. Because he's gay.

Because he's gay. And that's fine. I love him. You want to have sex with Donald. That's not. Just to admit it. Sick. Next quote.

Knowing what to do is useless without the emotional strength to do what you know. I'm going to guess Manusphere Jordan Peterson. So close. It was a cult leader and it was Keith Reneery. Oh, I was just watching the vow. The vow. Yeah, you know, I am close. You are close.

My act is so completely and totally uncensored that the only way I could really pull it off as if I treat the audience like they're my best friends. That sounds almost too earnest for the minosphere, but that sounds like the minosphere. That sounds like... It sounds like Joe Rogan? Yeah, like a flagrant podcast. That's correct. Oh, that's Joe Rogan.

Oh, my God. Spot on. Okay, next quote. We're in this period of time now, aren't we? But any day, it could be cut short in righteousness. No one knows when it'll be. It could be today. It could be tomorrow, you see. It could be next week.

El Ron Hubbard. Yeah, that sounds like a question. Yeah, that's the cult leader and that was very specifically David Presh, the leader of the branch Davidians of the Waco tragedy. Ooh, deep cuts. Oh, my God. The next quote is, my unmatched perspicacity, coupled with my sheer indefinitability combined to make me a feared opponent in any realm of human endeavor.

Andrew Tate. Yeah, I was going to say Andrew Tate and he like used like synonym.com wrong for those words. Correct. Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah. If anyone wants to know what either of those words mean, perspicacity just means like insightfulness and indebitigability.

Well, the word fatigue is in that. It means tire. Inability to get tired. Yeah, tartlessness. I take this as bigotry because I'm narcoleptic and I think that it's discrimination. Yeah. Ooh. It's ableism.

It's abelism, actually. The word indefatigability is ableism. It's abelous because no one with a human mouth can pronounce that. Yeah. The mind is endless. You'll put me in a dark solitary cell, and to you, that's the end. To me, it's the beginning. It's the universe in there.

There's a world in there, and I'm free. It's that boxer guy, one of the brothers. Take ball? Yeah. Those are both such good guesses, and I'm so am so amused. That is Charles Manson. Oh, my God. Same thing.

Same but different, you know? That's why this game never gets old. Okay, last quote. I don't tell people you're okay the way that you are. That's not the right story. The right story is you're way less than you could be. Jordan Peterson. Yeah, that does feel like it could be Jordan.

Wait, you're so good at this. That's right. This was my job, Amanda. Holy shit. Cat, Liz, Liz, Kat. We can't thank you enough for joining this Coven conversation. if people want to keep up with you and what you're doing, can you please tell us how? Yeah, so I'm running for Congress. You can find out more at catforillinois.com. You know,

if you can chip in, that's great. If you can volunteer on our Discord, discord.orgia slash Cap for Illinois, phone banking, door knocking, phone bank from anywhere, that'd be awesome. But most of all, if you know anyone that lives in the Chicago area, especially uptown, up to Evanston, West Descoki, all the way to Algonquin and Crystal Lake, please let them know about our campaign. I'm tied for first. I'm against two candidates who have met. with and submitted position papers to APEC. Apex's about to drop a shit ton of attack ads against me. I'm under federal indictment because I have consistently been on the front lines protesting

ice. I am just sick of how our politics is and I want a people-led movement. I'm a grassroots candidate. Please text like five friends you know that live in Chicago about this and remind them that early voting starts February 5th and election days March 17th. Cat for Illinois.com, cat with a K. Fuck yeah. Voting.

Thanks for letting me to, yeah. Yeah, I'm Liz Plank. I'm feminist tabulous on what social media platforms I'll still be on by the time this comes out. Who knows? I'm on Instagram now. I'm still on TikTok, but I don't know if I'll be there much longer. I have a substack called Airplane Mode, which was just featured in Des Mois, which was a pretty big deal to me. I still don't know how that ended up there, but it was very sweet. And it's like a way to get the news without being totally depressed. That's sort of the pitch for that. I have a book called For the Love of men right behind me and I'm working on another one which will be available in a little bit about what do we do about men. I have a documentary called Not So Special about disability rights coming out in a couple months. Oh, I have a podcast called Boy Problems. Sorry. My real job is podcasting Boy Problems, which you can listen to wherever you get your podcast. Gorge. All right, Reese, out of our three cult categories, live your life, watch your back, and get the fuck out. Which do you think the cold

of the manosphere might fall into. This is truly one of those break the scale episodes where I wish there was a category worse than get the fuck out. We need like a banish it. Banish it or something, like all of the above. It is the get the fuck outiest get the fuck out. Up there with anti-vaxxers, in cells, flat earthers, probably worse. I couldn't hate it more. I couldn't love it less. I was really grateful for Liz and Kat. They came guns ablaze into this combo, and conversations like the one that we had with them make me feel like there's hope. Is that delusional? Like, yeah.

Although this mirage is big and powerful, it is still a mirage that we all can see. Totally. Oh, God. Well, that's the show. Thank you so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay. culty but not too culty sounds like a cult was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of

the pod cabin this episode was hosted by Amanda Montel and Reese Oliver this episode was produced by rice Oliver our managing producer is katy epperson our theme music is by Casey Cole if you enjoyed the show we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts it really helps the show a lot and if you like this podcast feel free to check out my book cultish the language of fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, The Age of Magical Oversthinking, notes on modern irrationality, and words slut, a feminist guide to taking back the English language.

Thanks as well to our network studio 71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a Cult pod or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad-free at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. I just want y'all to know that my mom is like y'all's biggest fan. I please shout her out during the pod. I covered the far right.

So like I'd always talk about Colts and shit like that. And she fucking loves this podcast. Stop. It is her favorite podcast. Wait, Jordan, include that. Yeah. If y'all want to say shout out to Susie, like if y'all want to give Susie a shout out, my mom's the best.

Susie! We would follow you into the woods wherever Pied Piper us, Susie.