Taylor Lorenz’s Power User - Diddy And The Death of #MeToo: How Diddy’s Trial Was Weaponized Online

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Earlier this month, Sean “Diddy” Combs was acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering after a high-profile federal trial. The acquittals show how high profile men accused of sexual abuse and wrongdoing still often escape justice. Already the outcome is being co-opted by the far right and manosphere spaces who are spinning it as proof that movements like #MeToo are overreaching. Today we're talking about why the Diddy case was a pivotal moment online and why celebrity trials like this do matter in the political sphere now. To break it all down I brought on Caroline Kwan, a prolific Twitch streamer who covers pop culture and political news, and Kat Tenbarge, a phenomenal independent journalist.***** Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!!!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co ***** Subscribe to my newsletter: ⁠⁠https://www.usermag.co⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenzhttps://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social

It was some misogynistic hate campaign against a big female streamer, and I was talking about it, and then I was swatted like 45 minutes later, basically sending a message of like, you know. Last week, the high-profile federal trial against Sean Diddy Combs ended with him being acquitted of two of the most serious charges against him, sex trafficking and racketeering. The acquittals showed how high-profile men accused of sexual abuse and wrongdoing can still escape justice. Already, the outcome is being co-opted by the far right and Manosphere's. faces are spinning it as proof that movements like me too have gone too far. I want to talk about why this case is so important and why celebrity trials like this do matter, especially given everything that's happening right now politically. So here to break the case down and talk about what all of this means are two of my favorite friends. Caroline Kwan is a prolific Twitch streamer who

covers pop culture and political news and Kat Tenbarge is a phenomenal independent journalist who writes about online culture and her newsletter Spitfire News. Hi guys. Welcome. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Okay, so we have been discussing this trial and text, and I really wanted to get you guys on here to talk about it because I think that it's so important people understand what is going on. So Caroline, I know you've been covering this for a while. Can you just give a very top level summary for people that haven't been following? Maybe they've seen Diddy's name in headlines, but they don't really know what's going on. What happened this week? Like, what was this trial about and how did it begin? Okay, so mostly it begins with Cassie Ventura, who was Sean Combs' ex-girlfriend for about 15. years. He had met her when she was 19 years old, signs her to his bad boy label, and then their relationship proceeded to be one that went beyond, you know, work. So she sues him in 2023 in a civil lawsuit alleging about a decade of very serious sexual and physical abuse. And that suit was settled in 24 hours, but that was like the kickoff to all of this, because after that, then there were a number of other civil suits that were filed in 2023 and 24 against Combs that had additional accusations of sexual misconduct.

This prompted a criminal trial against him because then the feds went in to investigate him, mostly based on this civil lawsuit that Cassie had filed. And then she ended up becoming the star witness at a criminal trial, which culminated this week, unfortunately, in him being acquitted of the most serious charges. But there were three felonies that he was charged with, racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Got it. So Cassie, by filing that civil lawsuit, sort of opened the floodgates. And I think that's when we all started to see headlines about this. And Kat, I want to bring you in because I know you've been following this too. But it seems like in 2023 and 24 is when we really start to see this discourse that like, hey, Sean Diddy Combs is actually a creep. Yes. And I feel like Caroline, this is something that you've talked about a lot. But as soon as these heads are, headlines started to come out about P. Diddy and these parties, the rhetoric around it just like immediately became more of a meme than like any serious discussion about this trial.

So basically, instead of taking this seriously and talking about it as what it really was, which was this serious investigation into violence and sexual abuse, people almost immediately turned it into this meme culture instead. I mean, the word freak off became really popularized. And Caroline, I'm curious your thoughts. on that too because like it seemed like it sort of almost was immediately treated as this joke or this like spectacle. Yeah, 1,000%. So the public first became aware of the term freak off in 23 when Cassie had filed that civil suit because the freakoffs were mentioned in the suit and they were marathon

sex events in very expensive hotel rooms with tons of baby oil. And so these things that really stuck out in the public's mind because it was like this bizarre thing and then people turned it into memes and jokes where it's like, oh, a thousand bottles of baby oil like, ooh, these freakoffs, you know, they sound kind of freaky, dumb stuff like that, which unfortunately distracted away from the very serious nature of these freakoffs, which were that Cassie was alleging that these were non-consensual sexual activities that she was being forced into, that he was drugging her, and forcing her to have sex with escorts and male sex workers while he watched and directed. Yeah, it's so horrifying. And I feel like it just immediately got kind of like commodified into drama

content. I mean, Kat, I know you've followed a lot of this world too, but I feel like it was like the T channels. They make the shade room look reputable. You know, it's like these gross, like kind of like Instagram, TikTok accounts that are deeply misogynistic. And then also, also just like the drama YouTubers kind of like shaping it all where it seemed like they made it seem a lot more like salacious than violent, which is what it was. And I feel like it's no accident that a lot of the coverage coverage in quotes that these people were doing, they would take claims that were not real and were not a part of the trial. And they would make that the biggest story. They would sensationalize this speculation that like Diddy had preyed on Justin Bieber, for example. This was a huge like kind of conspiracy pop culture moment that still has.

happening. And the problem with that is like, Justin Beaver has not made any of these allegations himself. So people are just making these things up out of whole cloth, which is ironically what they accuse real victims of doing all the time. And they're choosing to hyper fixate on this idea that Diddy was doing this sort of like gay predation, which absolutely there are claims involved where it's like men have made allegations against Diddy, like the victims did not discriminate by gender. However, they're deflecting from these. really serious allegations that primarily women like Cassie are making and the public eye. And they're choosing to instead, like, hyper fixate on this salacious aspect of it that pushes a lot

of fake news and a lot of, like, really harmful biases. There was definitely a threat of homophobia, too, where people were more upset by Diddy having had sex with men than the coerced element of said sex. Additionally, you mentioned Justin Bieber, like, people were obsessing over the other big celebrities who were a part of it and like, Diddy's got all the secrets and blah, blah, blah, and it was just more of a like, ooh, what other celebrities are involved here rather than Cassie and Jane, another ex-girlfriend of his and then the multitude of non-famous victims of Diddy, who many of them have filed lawsuits against him. I remember like the Justin Bieber stuff,

but then also like Ashton Coocher. It was very much like, who was at these parties, what were they doing? And almost like kind of absolving them because the implication was like, wow, isn't this salacious that these other celebrities were at the parties? But it's like, yeah, but those were essentially like right parties. And I mean, it's disturbing that there were all these celebrities and it was so sort of like normalized. I just want to make a point to that the reason freakoffs are such a big part of the case is because they were a central part of the government's case because they were trying to prove that Combs had engaged in sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution. And so the freak-offs, the non-consensual sex marathons, which were a big part of Cassie's civil lawsuit, were also big part of the criminal trial. I mean, I think that's really important to know, Caroline. And also, I mean, I just want to get back to, like, the YouTube of it all because I feel like this case was so immediately packaged through the internet.

And we even had things like AI generated thumbnails where people sort of like almost imagine these situations and like put up sort of fake imagery of it. And it seems like all of that stuff, almost from the jump was affecting public opinion. I embarked on this really crazy story in early 2024 where this megachurch pastor, who I had never heard of, named TD Jakes, who is this really big figure in like black pop culture, he was being implicated in the Diddy case in all of these YouTube videos that were going super viral, but everything about them was AI generated. The thumbnails were AI generated. The titles were AI generated. The voices were AI generated. And TD Jakes is an extremely powerful, rich celebrity. but even he and his legal team couldn't get YouTube to take down most of this material. And it was having real life implications. And this like entire landscape and online news ecosystem around the ditty trial was like this.

I even talked to the CEO of the Shade Room. And she told me that their followers would ask them why they weren't reporting on elements of this story that were not real, but they were seeing them in like AI generated YouTube videos. Why was this random pastor being included in the discourse around this? I think one of the driving factors is that the YouTube algorithm performs better when there are more celebrity names included. So what these channels were doing to profit from this case is they were looking up celebrities that had similar SEO audiences to the PDDD case.

And they were just making up all of these narratives linking these celebrities together. And what's really unfortunate is people were watching this and engaging with this more than the actual case and the real facts of who was hurt and abused. I also think, though, there's the AI of it all. And then there's just the general, like, new guard of content creators who discuss cases like this, but their purpose is to create an entertaining narrative. The thing is, it's not just content creators, though. You had Mark Geragos, I think it was.

So he was an unofficial advisor to Combs' legal team. And he went on the podcast, two angry men. which is a podcast that he co-hosts alongside the founder of TMZ. And he was belittling the federal prosecutors. He was calling them a six-pack of white women. I mean, it was just really insane stuff. And this was somebody who was professionally connected to the case. So it's kind of this just like contentification of everything that is very alarming to witness with criminal trials.

Yes. I feel like this is a direct descendant of what we always talk about with like Depp Hurd and lively Baldoni. which is that the professional standards and like any sort of norms around covering these types of cases, they have fallen apart now that people are getting the vast majority of their news from places like podcasts and YouTube videos. And there's a reason for that. Part of it is that the mainstream media is not covering these cases with the intensity or as well as they should. And a lot of times they're just fueling abusive narratives and like Darvo narratives. But nonetheless, the internet has completely, like, latched onto this class of, like, legal experts and, like, pop culture sleuths who do not do, like, a rigorous or ethical job at covering any of this. Yeah, I think there's so many similarities to Deppard and the lively case. I mean, also just you see this in some of these headlines of P. Diddy using some of the same exact, like, language and legal tactics against Cassie as were used against those other women.

for instance, using this fake term mutual abuse, as if responding to abuse is somehow as as violent as the abuse itself. It's not a real thing. But that was a term that was actually popularized from Depp Heard and then used in subsequent cases. And I feel like, yeah, I feel like we're doomed to relive this like endless dynamic. And I think there are a lot of people who subconsciously have learned these things from the Depp Heard trial and don't even know it. Like I had a couple people come into stream yesterday and say, yeah, Diddy's a bad guy. I mean, they were bad on both sides. Like, it was toxic on both sides.

But obviously, like, I think he's worse. And that's the type of thing that they're subconsciously picking up from just being on the internet, from being inundated with this BS belief of mutual abuse of, like, seeing this both sides thing. Oh, yeah, they were both bad. But I guess this person was worse. And that is what's very alarming because just being online,

you're picking up these types of cultural beliefs. And it's like you see how these cultural beliefs directly impact how these juries are making their ultimate decisions because the reason why he got acquitted is the people on the jury came to the conclusion that there wasn't like there was too much reasonable doubt for them to say for sure that he had committed these crimes. And that logic and that belief system comes from this idea that both sides are bad, but one side is worse. You saw the exact same thing in the ultimate verdict for Depp Hurd. The jury gave Amber Hurd like a significantly smaller amount of damages in that case, but they were trying to do this like

two sides. Both sides are bad. Both sides did something wrong. But one side was worse. And this flies in the face of everything we know about abuse because we know that there's always one powerful perpetrator and one less powerful victim. And anything that the victim does to fight back or even retaliate against their abuser is not equitable. It does not equate to the abuse that they've suffered. And Cassie wasn't even the only victim either. I feel like it's, I mean, with so many of these cases, too, just the way that Baldoni was also accused of, you know, inappropriate behavior towards other women, I believe, or there was other allegations. No, there were other, there were other women on the set of, it ends with us who had also said that Heath had behaved inappropriately to them.

So Blake was using her power on that set, but to speak. for these other women as well when they called that like all hands on deck meeting. Yeah. And I feel like it's just similar here where I think there's this focus on calling Cassie a liar or an unreliable narrator. And it just ignores the fact that there were all of these other people who were also abused. I think the total of allegations is up to like 120. Now, obviously those were not all included in the criminal trial. the reason that Cassie was the star witness was because of one, her name recognition, her having been with Diddy for, you know, 15, 10, 15 years, but also because of the civil suit. And one thing that we haven't mentioned yet is the video. Do you guys remember when the video footage was released? That was the video that showed him abusing her in the hotel. It was a 15-minute-long video, I believe.

One of the witnesses that was called at the trial was somebody who worked at the hotel and Combs had tried to bribe him to get this footage. But this footage shows him assaulting Cassie in a hotel hallway. And this took place in 2016. And like, there is no denying that he is assaulting her and like abusing her. But what the defense did was they went, yeah, he's a domestic abuser. But being a domestic abuser is not the same thing as a sex trafficker. He never coerced her into any sexual activities, even though, yeah, he did beat her. And the jury could not make that connection.

They could not see how somebody who is in a violent domestic situation like this does not have consent in other aspects of the relationship. They went, okay, we can't deny that this video shows him abusing her, but we believe that when it came to these sexual activities, these sex marathons, that she did consent to it. which is wild because as you said, the power dynamic is clearly so warped. And when you're in an abusive situation, you're going to agree to a lot of things, right? Because there's that ever-present threat of violence. Absolutely. And I don't know if you guys saw Evan Rachel Wood's post. So Evan Rachel Wood wrote on Instagram and she, of course, had her own abusive relationship with Marilyn Manson, but she wrote, there is no consent in a domestic violence relationship, period. Once the threat of violence is there, you comply, you do not consent. It is self-preservation and survival. It is not

freely or willingly given. It is forced and coerced out of you. We clearly have a long way to go in our understanding of this. And I think that's true. People do not understand what coercive control is. And it's a relatively new concept in terms of like criminal justice and criminal psychology. There's been so much advancement in this field over the past few decades. And general societal understanding of abuse has not caught up, which is one of the reasons why these Me Too cases are so easily flipped against the victims in favor of the perpetrators, because people don't really understand how abuse functions. And one of the world's leading experts in coercive control is this woman named Dr. Laura Richards. She contributed to coercive control becoming illegal

in the UK. We don't have similar laws everywhere in the United States. And what coercive control means for those who don't know is that it is sort of the mechanism in which abusive relationships thrive. So it's not just an isolated incident in which abuse takes place. It's a long, mental, physical, and emotional process where the abuser subjugates the victim psychologically so that it's not as simple as just walking out the door. There are material consequences for victims when they try to leave their abusers or when they disobey or don't do what their abuser says. And that is what Cassie described in that relationship. And another thing that Dr. Richards said, similar to Evan Rachel Wood, is she said that

when fear is in the room, consent is not. So you cannot consent to sexual activity if you are afraid of the person of the perpetrator. Yeah, I saw a bunch of other people. I know Kesha also made a statement on Twitter in solidarity, but it seems like people that have been through abuse, these other women that have suffered abuse at the hands of high-powered men, like understand it. But then the public does not. I am so frustrated seeing how many people online, especially women, have come out and said, like, clearly Cassie was abused by him, that this was not a consensual relationship.

She was forcing these things. But then these same women who, like, made endless videos smearing Amber Heard. And some of them since then have apologized, but others have not. And my question is, like, do they not understand the connection here of how that defamation case was, played out in the court of public opinion, is having an effect today had an effect on the trial of Sean Combs. I saw some people, even just random Twitter users that were saying things in defensive Cassie and then people going back doing the search bar or like finding old clips, quote tweeting and being like, okay, but here's you making fun of Amber, right? Or here's you doing this.

And I think people don't realize these things are connected. And I'm glad that there's some modicum of support for Cassie in certain areas of the internet. But I don't think it's widespread. And I don't think a lot of these people, I think they're still viewing it too narrowly and they don't realize that like what they did with Amber Heard and the way that they participated in that or even the lively Baldoni or some of this Megan Nostali in some of these other cases. Like these are all connected and they all follow the same sort of pattern and playbook. Yeah, I've seen a lot of lawtubers too who were absolutely ruthless during the Hurd Depp trial who seemed to change their tune with Baldoni and lively. And it's like this is the same playbook. And a lot of them since then have not

retracted and apologized for what they said. And I think, I think a lot more people know that they participated in a horrible smear campaign and that they were wrong when it came to Amber Heard, but not all of them are publicly acknowledging that. I think that's a shame because I think without publicly acknowledging it, it allows a lot of their viewers to be like, oh, well, she was the real liar and this is not the lie. Right. And it's sort of like, it furthers this dichotomy when actually it's literally all the same. I see that. all the time, like, I believe Cassie, but Amber was a liar. I encounter this literally all the time.

And I even see it flipped where I've, just today, I was talking to a content creator who was like, I was never pro Johnny Depp, but I don't believe Blake lively. I think that she's lying. And it's like, people want to silo all of these cases and treat them all individually because they don't want to have to do the hard work, which is acknowledging that the rhetoric in these cases is the same, the mechanism in which these women aren't believed in the same. And most crucially, people do not want to take responsibility. responsibility for not actually advocating for survivors in all situations.

People want to be able to take the popular, profitable stance of hating a woman when it is like most convenient for them to do so. I think the profit part is such an important like aspect of all of this. I was just looking on Perez Hilton's YouTube channel. He's framed himself as the number one source for Diddy Drama. Ah, I hate him. And Kat, I know you talked to him. Like, what did he say?

because I feel like he's fed into this machine so aggressively. Yes, I'm working on a longer article about this, but I talked to Perez serendipitously. I talked to him today about this very topic. And one thing he said to me that was really interesting is like, he's the creator who said, like, I was never pro-Dony Depp. So he was not a pro-Johnny Depp creator. He is extremely anti-Blake lively, but he also said, like,

I was never anti-Cassie. I was never anti any of the women in this case. So he's one of those creators who, like kind of picks and shoes is. But another thing that I found so interesting is he told me that his Diddy content would over time, he would get less views. Like people were losing interest in the case as it progressed, but people's interest in the Blake Lively case has only grown and grown and grown and grown. And I would posit that one of the major reasons for that is because it is easier to hate Blake Lively and therefore more popular and profitable than it is to hate

Cassie, especially in Perez's audience. I was going to say, I agree. agree with that. I noticed that just overall content graders covered this case less. I think, namely that had to do with this not being a televised trial, but also because of the video that everybody saw. I mean, it is so damning that you have to be an extra shh-y person to be like, oh, yeah, I stand with Diddy. Because there is no denying that he abused her. And they had to admit to that as part of their defense in the trial. Although I didn't Depp also admit to abuse? He did over the course of like the entire legal back and forth with Amber heard.

Like he, he acknowledged, I think less so than Diddy because with depth, there wasn't as dramatic of footage. But with both of those cases, you see the same rhetoric in Floyd, which we've already talked about, but it's like, yeah, like Diddy was abusive. A lot of people will say Johnny Depp was abusive, but they were both abusive to each other. And so people blur the lines of like, who's more abusive in this relationship? And it helps them undermine having to support the accuser. And I will say, too, with Amber and Johnny, it was the things like, shing the bad, Amber turd, those things that really stuck out in the public's mind that became memes, that became like the centerpiece of it in the way that Freakoffs and Baby Oil did.

But that was not something that was like directly smearing Cassie per se. Basically, people would go, okay, you know, Diddy is an abuser, but Cassie went along with this. stuff versus like look at these crazy things that Cassie did in the way that they talked about what Amber did to Johnny. Which I think I really do think that that video is so damning and without it. I think that the narrative would have been even more extreme in Indies favor. There's a lot of aspects to it. Also like the racial aspect, like the same reason Megan the Stallion didn't get as much

coverage as some of these other things where it's like some of these when I think when black women are subject to these hateful smear campaigns and these like misogynistic hate campaigns, it just like it isn't as widely covered generally. But it also, there's this idea and this is what we're talking about on text too of like, this isn't news. And there was this guy, Aaron Rupar, who's like a liberal commentator who has almost a million followers on Twitter and he posted this across multiple platforms said, the interesting thing about the Diddy verdict is that House Republicans are about to vote to take away health care from tens of millions of Americans. The implication there being like, why are you guys talking about this? Like millions of Americans are

losing health care. Trump is doing all of these terrible, horrible things. Why are you guys concerned with, quote unquote, like, celebrity news? And you saw this even like anytime that you tried to post about it and call attention to it online, I feel like there were these like reply guys that are like, this isn't real news. Oh, I mean, I get told that live when I'm on stream. Why should you care? Because sexual violence is endemic in our society. Because sexual violence is a part of politics, because the Democrats supported a sex pest because God forbid you have a progressive as New York mayor. And because we have a sitting in the White House that like, sexual violence is so normalized that it is a part of our everyday life. And to dismiss the seriousness

of a trial like Sean Combs and the effect that this will have on victims coming forward on legislation, I mean, it's very far-reaching consequences. And to dismiss that as like not important to use that as some like cutesy little segue into here's the real news was appalling to me. It's so appalling how victims of sexual violence, how women are just dismissed every single day. And it's like we were even being blamed for like caring about this, even though we care about multiple things. Like, of course I care about the budget reconciliation bill. Duh. But I also care about victims of sexual violence.

And I care about like how our culture is, has shifted away from the progress of the Me Too movement to like this very serious backlash towards it. Yeah. I really liked also Kat what you tweeted where you said powerful men getting away with violence isn't a distraction from Trump and his administration. It's the same thing powered by the same rhetoric and the same logic of abuse. A hundred percent. And like everything you said, Caroline, is 100 percent true. And even from this like idea that it is a political strategy like mistake to talk about the ditty trial, none of that is true. A couple of reasons why. One, because like my post said the mechanisms of Darvo, the mechanisms of blaming the victim, of denying and enabling abuse. These are the exact same rhetorical, discursive methods that Donald Trump used to get

reelected, that he used to put all of these abusers in his cabinet, and it's one of the main underpinnings of the entire conservative project today. So that's one reason why we should be talking about it. The other reason is from simply a political and rhetorical strategy standpoint, point, when we don't talk about this stuff on the left, we lose everyone who cares about this to the right. This is an issue that, yes, a lot of women care about. Yes, a lot of queer people care about. But it's also an issue that has widespread popular appeal in the same way that the Amber

Heard trial did, that the Blake lively trial does. This issue in particular, you'll find a lot of people in the black community talking about this issue. And they are getting their news from conservative right-wing news sources who will tell you to your face, Taylor, Candace Owens told you this, that she uses this type of case as a pipeline to take liberal-minded people and turn them into conservatives who vote for Donald Trump. So when we don't talk about this stuff, we just cede all that ground to the right and we lose out on an amazing opportunity.

If you get people talking about these cases from a liberal progressive standpoint, their entire information diet is now going to be switched over to the left. And just from a platform level, from a rhetorical level, and from like a moral imperative level, the left when they dismiss this stuff, it's just the most massive disservice to everyone. Yeah, I feel like it just ignores how completely intertwined culture and society is. Yes, people get their politics, form their politics through pop culture. Yes. Yeah. Like Steve Bannon understands this.

That's why he was able to get Donald Trump elected. He said politics is downstream of culture. And that is true. And that is why conservatives keep winning because they have. captured the culture. I think it's like a specific type of person and it's often a man as well that kind of says this stuff. And it's like because there are quote unquote celebrities involved, like therefore it's not very serious. And it really bothers me because as you mentioned Kat too, like the right understands that actually like making a spectacle of these celebrity trials or

using sort of specific celebrity moments to push low key conservative messaging or reactionary narratives, like, is the most effective way to radicalize people. And I think just look at the pop culture landscape or some of these big YouTubers that have gotten radicalized in recent years. Like, they're talking about pop culture. They're talking about news of the day. And so I think it's really toxic for these people to be like, not only should you not care about this, but you talking, you know, you just very talking about the Diddy Trial Online is taking attention away from, you know, this bill. You know what I think it is too with like a lot of liberal and leftist men who have this attitude. It's like, because those are women's things, because celebrity gossip and pop, like,

these things, they're women's things. But what I don't understand is how do they get it when it comes to the manosphere? When it's like, look at all these bros who talk about like culture, right, who are appealing to young men by bonding with them over working out over, you know, video games, etc. Why do you get that when it comes to men appealing to other men this way? But not when it's women's interests. They can never miss an opportunity to reveal their, like, deeply ingrained sexism that fuels their entire worldview. Because you see it, like, working in the mainstream media where a lot of these takes come from,

but also you see it in the new media where these takes are coming from. And it's like, when men are at the top of these fields, they have tunnel vision. They totally, ultimately, at their core, do not view women as, like, equal human beings whose voting interests matter. even when we've seen time and time again that women's votes can sway elections for conservatives. We saw white women come out in droves to vote for Trump. And people are like, why do white women not support their own best interests? And it's because they are getting bombarded with misogynistic propaganda that reshapes them in the image of how do I do my best job to support the patriarchy.

I also think that it's like, it's so frustrating for these politicians and like these political strategists or whatever. Democrats to recognize correctly that like misogyny is driving people into radicalization and think that the solution to fixing misogyny is to cater more solely towards men's spaces. All of the money and all of the like development that they're going into is like fixing young men, capturing young men, speaking to young men. And it's like if you want to dismantle the patriarch and you want to dismantle misogyny, you have to do it from both like sexes. Like it's not just men that are upholding misogyny. It's also women. It's everyone. And it's a lot of women. You know, especially in the past few years, I think that have been radicalized through pop culture and through

alternative, like, lifestyle news and Instagram accounts and things like that. And there does not seem to be a similar effort to de-radicalize in that way. And I think you have to de-radicalize women as well if you want to de-radicalize the men. A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is not just men demonstrating misogyny and sexism. It's a lot of women as well. And that always feels particularly painful, but you look back on Amber and John. and like how many women sees that opportunity to just humiliate

and engage in the smears against Amber Hurd because it was what was popular. So this is something that frequently frustrates me because I am a pop culture and political commentator on Twitch and I do things like break down the Sean Combs trial in a non-sensational way and I get called like TMZ. I've had people call me

Perez Hilton on Twitch. I'm like, that is so insulting. It is so insulting to equate me to somebody whose entire M.O. is drama because I despise that. I despise like very serious issues, you know, that are taking place in the world of celebrities as like drama and entertainment content. When a woman or a gay man covers this type of topic, it is feminized. And so it's treated as less serious. It's treated as just drama. It's shown as frivolous. But when men input on these topics and when men cover these topics, it's given a veneer of seriousness and credibility that is not afforded to women. And a lot of times, these men who claim that this stuff isn't important, nonetheless, will share a diddy meme. Nonetheless, they will make fun of Amber Hurd on

stream for views and money and clicks. Nonetheless, they will weigh in because of the cultural currency that weighing in on this type of stuff affords you. But they do. delegitimize it in a way to not only, you know, push women to the side, but also to not have to take responsibility for the harmful consequences of how they talk about these issues. That's such a good way to put it, Kat, because you're right. They're fine with the jokes about these things and they're fine with the memes about them sort of inherently, but they won't do the critical work of like unpacking what's happening. No, they won't. And that, I feel so often that emotional labor falls on people like us. And we have to deal with like attacks from the right,

from the center, from the left, and it's exhausting out here. It's exhausting to be doing this work and coming up against a lot of obstacles. It also just seems like we're kind of inundated with these cases lately, like whether it's the Hallie Bailey versus DDG stuff or just examples of sexism and misogyny and hatred of women online. I mean, I'm even just thinking of like multiple high-profile content creators that are dealing with misogynistic hate campaigns against them right now. Like, I feel like we are at this level that I haven't seen. since even GamerGate. I think it's actually gone further than Gamergate because it's not, not only do we have like GamerGate 2.0 against people like Alyssa Mercante and some people on

this very call and like, and also these other like female Twitch streamers and stuff. But we're seeing all these high profile cases. Like me too seems to have been so dismantled. Like it just feels like we're in a really dark place for women right now. Yeah. I think that there is such a clear algorithmic formula for success in taking a case like this or manufacturing a case like this and just making the woman the enemy. So like during Deffi heard, the way that I thought of it was like, you had all of this content and it was like Johnny Good, Amber Bad. That was like the dichotomy that all the content had to ultimately express, but you could do your own spin on it in whatever way you wanted to. And now that formula has just simply become man, good, woman, bad. And you can do

whatever kind of spin on it you want. You can even do it from seemingly like a pseudo-feminist standpoint where it's like every time you open up Twitter, there's a new, moral panic over someone's album cover or the outfit that somebody wore. And it's framed as like, this is anti-feminist. But all it is is just nonstop, endless shaming and smearing of women in the public eye. And we are living through like a golden era of monetized anti-feminism. I think that's such a good way to put it too, Kat, because I feel like the anti-Sabrina backlash or the Lord stuff of like thoughts on her album insert and like her, the way she looks now and just like the broader policing that we're seeing of all.

women in all walks of life in the public eye. It's just, it's at such a fever pitch. I mean, can we talk about all of the support for Chris Brown that's coming from not just fans, but celebrities, like fans who are paying $1,200 to take really sexually explicit photos with him? He's in Glasgow right now, I think, doing, he's on tour. And there were thousands of fans. And they were interviewing something. They're like, yeah, I don't really care what he's done.

He's my bad boy. Like, I love his music. And I just, I don't know how to change. that cultural mentality that people, especially around, you know, when it when it comes to celebrities, when it comes to, you know, oh, I like this person's music. I like this person's art, whatever, that they do not care even when that person is a known abuser. Like, there is no doubt about Chris Brown being a prolific abuser. Like, he has been an abuser for two decades at this point. Yes. I keep thinking about that viral clip that you were just

talking about Caroline, because it's like, it really distills how much you see female fans of these male celebrities enable and excuse and normalize this behavior. And it is so unfortunate to see because obviously it is internalized misogyny, but it becomes such a powerful weapon for these men. Because when a woman enables you, it provides a type of cover that is so sought after for these men. That is why the Johnny Debt propaganda movement targeted women so much because if Johnny Depp had come out of the courtroom into a screaming crowd of male men's rights activists, that would have gotten a very different response than Johnny Depp coming out of that courtroom every day into throngs of screaming women. It softens their image.

It rehabilitates their image when women in particular are their fans. So not only are they harming and abusing us, but they are also using us and weaponizing our support in their advantage. And it is really tough to dismantle that like celebrity love and like all those building blocks that go into the reasons why women do this. I think what's so interesting too is this sort of crossover between Kiwi farms, a virulently sort of misogynistic, it's like a website that sort of like will not die. It's like a cockroach, but it's sort of like always cropping up again. But it's basically like a forum for fomenting hate often against women and queer people. The way that the communities on there have merged into snark subreddits and vice versa, like because snark subreddits,

Reddits have always been misogynistic. And I think this is something that people don't know, and I reported on a lot in my book, extremely online. Just right there. But yeah, keep it with me. The first influencers were women. They were mommy bloggers and they were shamed for, you know, their bodies, their lives, like everything. But this hate towards the influencer industry was always very misogynistic. And get off my internets, which was this early forum that ended up sort of birthing the snark communities on Reddit, like they've always been deeply misogynistic women hating on other women and stalking and tearing down other women. And I think now a lot of those communities, and I'm not saying every snark community before they all come for me, but most of them have sort of actually

sort of found camaraderie with these people on like Kiwi farms that are also dedicated to stalking and harassing and attacking women. And I'm just noticing a lot more things where it's like, I'll see something surfaced on a snark subreddit. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. That was from a men's rights for him or that, the reason that was framed as controversy was because it was Kiwi farms that framed it as a controversy. And now it's being laundered through this other newer group. And so I just think that we were seeing this sort of like convergence of a lot of hateful, misogynistic groups online. And ironically, these like men's rights people finding alliances with like female like celebrity snark fans who are just deeply misogynistic. I wanted to

make a point on what you were talking about Kat with this being identity politics of like using the identity of, oh, you're a woman. And so this woman saying this about this other woman, oh, then that gives it more credence because she's a woman, right? Same with like, oh, a black person saying things that are anti-black. But while they're black, aren't we supposed to listen to black people? Same with a queer person, which is why they tokenize like, you know, you go to any Donald Trump rally. They're going to have the one gay for Trump guy at front and center at the rally. And one thing that I see a lot with women is like, well, I'm a woman and I'll say that this woman is a almost like now my opinion holds more wait what are you going to say that i'm a misogynist i'm a

woman but that's what i mean of like these like hateful male spaces finding such value in these female driven communities that will work and basically do the misogy on their behalf like i do think that the amber trial was a blueprint for that where they realized oh we don't just have to have our men's rights spaces we can actually use these like female and and so much of the amber heard stuff like was from these reddit communities right like we can tap into these like female forums that are dedicated to hating women online, too, and leverage them and let them be our voice and sort of launder our hate through them. Yeah. And it legitimizes it. Exactly. Right. I think a lot about when Andrea Dworkin, who is controversial, but her book, Right Wing Women,

which predates the internet, is a really interesting thing to reexamine in this time period. Because what Andrew Dworkin wrote is essentially that when women choose to be right wing, they are making whether they know it or not, a decision about what is the safer pathway in a world that hates women. And they correctly estimate that when you choose to side with the patriarchy, that affords you some benefits, at least in the short run. And that's what these women are doing online when they join these hate campaigns. It protects you in the immediate from the title wave of harassment and hate that is directed toward anyone who defends Blake lively or Amber Heard or Cassie. It protects you in the immediate because you're joining like the winning team.

you're joining the status quo, you're aligning yourself with the bigger person. But the sad reality is that unfortunately you, it does not protect you in the long run. There have been so many cases of women who I've reported on who join these pro-Johnny Depp justice movements and then are preyed on within those communities because they have shown themselves to be vulnerable to men who seek to take advantage of women. And so it is like watching self-harm in a way when people join these types of rhetoric campaigns and harassment campaigns. ultimately put them in more danger and they don't even always realize it. I can't remember who

talked about like white women voting for Trump, you know, white women voting Republican, which has been a trend for a long time now where internally they recognize that they're in a cage, but they would rather be in like a bigger cage or they'd rather be in a cage that's higher up than, you know, everyone else's cage. So it is this understanding, okay, yeah, I'm going to be a second tier citizen. Like I'm going to be a second class citizen, but at least I won't, be third, fourth, or fifth. Yeah. And I think it's interesting, like, so much of the misogyny comes from white women. I mean, I know, like, with the Diddy case and Hallie Bailey and, like, some others, like, or Megan the Stallion, like, these are high-profile black women that are

subject to their own sort of brand of misogyny because they're black women or mixed race women. But I just think of, like, a lot of these hate communities online that are honestly, a lot of them on Reddit, that they are this, like, very specific archetype of women. A lot of them are self-identified liberals, but they're reactionary liberals, and they will happily side with men. But they consider themselves kind of like liberal. Some of them even consider themselves feminist, but then they go online every single day

and hate on women and cap for the patriarchy. It's bizarre. My perception, and maybe this is just my narrow perception, but with Blake and Amber, I saw a lot of the smears and the hate from women, particularly white women. But with Meg and. And Hallie and Cassie and these, you know, high-profile black women, I saw a lot of that being driven from men, especially like Hallie Bailey, because of this being about her previous relationship with DDG, who's the content creator. Although I will say a lot of women hate Megan Markle.

Yes. I would say Megan Markle is also a person. I mean, she's hated by everyone. She gets a lot of. But you're right. I mean, I think like the DDG also just like the DDG fandom is so powerful. and some of these men have cultivated very toxic, like, male fandom. And I think it's specifically the misogy noir of it as well. And I see, I saw a lot of black women like highlighting the misogy noir of Meg versus Tory and how a lot of the celebrities who were circulating the free Tory petition.

A lot of them were men. Justin Bieber was one of them, Chris Brown, of course, you know. I feel like the texture of some of these campaigns also relates to the industry that these women are in. So, like, with the Meg, these women are in. Stalyan versus Torrey Lane's case, to me, a lot of the subtext of that case is you had really powerful prominent men in the rap industry, taking Tori's side because he was a man and because Megan in particular was doing so well in the industry that she was threatening these men. And something really interesting about that too is like you saw Nikki Minaj go against

Megan the Stallion really hard. And it's like some of the reasons why women turn against each other is because a lot of times there's only space for one token woman, or like, there's very limited space for women in these male-dominated industries. And so women who go on the attack against other women make the conscious choice, like, I can't change the fabric of my industry single-handedly. So I'm just going to try to be the one token woman who is successful.

And like, that calculus really plays into the way that you see, like, public figures in particular join these. Oh, and I see this within the streamer world of like, streaming is very male dominated, especially like the power streaming groups on the platform are very young, very male. Often you hear a lot of homophobia, a lot of misogyny that's just like in the form of jokes, right? Oh, no, we're all just, you know, joking around. We're not actually like making serious statements. It's like, okay, what you're doing is normalizing these things.

But it's pretty clear that it's like, oh, these are, this is a boys club. So if you're a woman who is able to get in, like, you sure as hell aren't going to be doing something like standing up against these misogynistic attitudes or these homophobic attitudes. I mean, women know what happens when you advocate against these things. I was literally swatted on stream one time when I was talking about misogyny. It was some misogynistic hate campaign against a big female streamer and I was talking about it. And then I was swatted like 45 minutes later, basically something. sending a message of like, you know. It's also, it's just like, I think so much online now is around like power and clout

and adjacency. And everyone kind of has to have this like public posturing an image in a way that I don't even think they had like 20 years ago, you know, like so much is about perception. And the influencer world is so male dominated in so many ways. Like you have the female influencer world and there are actually more women making living as creators than men. But if you look at the top earners and the most followed accounts, it's almost all men.

Like if you look at who's actually making money, who actually has the power on YouTube, especially, or Twitch, even more so. It's all men. And so you have to cater to men, whether it's a male audience or your male peers in some way just to get in the room. Yeah.

And if you're a woman, like, you cannot open your mouth and talk about anything political. You cannot even talk about your experience as a woman because they'll call that political. Like, ah, you're doing politics. Whereas for guys, you know, doesn't matter what they're.

they say or do. It's also like one of the only pathways to like extreme success as a woman online is to either like do something that is antagonistic toward other women. Like you look at how Candace Owens and Brett Cooper were able to rise in the ranks of YouTube very quickly by embarking on these massages decay campaigns. And you also see that like the spaces where women are allowed to succeed oftentimes like in a more subtle way perpetuate misogyny and perpetuate gender roles because it's like in the beauty space, in the motherhood space, wellness, domestic labor. Like, these are the places where you can get advertisers. These are the places where, like, your content will be algorithmically allowed to succeed.

Right. Because also women's advertisers generally are beauty, makeup, fashion companies, whereas men get lifestyle, energy drink brands, like also brands that are less risk-averse and they're more comfortable working with controversial creators. When you look at who sponsors a lot of males, streamers, whether they're on Twitch or YouTube or whatever, or just content creators generally, like they have these brands that don't mind being a little bit controversial. But when you look at the women's advertising space on the internet, or when you look at which brands will partner with big, like female actresses and stuff, it's all these very risk-averse fashion brands,

beauty brands where you cannot speak up about things. You can't be talking about domestic violence. You can't be weighing in on anything, quote-unquote, political, despite the fact that, you know, women's lives are politicized, our bodies are politicized. And so I think it like, it shuts women out. It's so ironic, like, talking about this when you think about how the inception for the Blake Lively hate train is that she was promoting, like, hair care and like beverage lines. And also, it just like this whole conversation, it drives me so crazy to think about how people say the reason Blake Lively is hated is because she didn't talk about domestic violence in a way that was respectful enough.

And I'm like, I always knew from the very beginning that that was inorganic to some degree, or at least that people were lying to themselves to some degree, because the way that these exact same people and platforms talk about domestic violence in the ditty case, in the Depp Herd trial. Like, these are the people who do not take it seriously. But Blake Lively was limited in what she couldn't, couldn't say while promoting this movie to a mainstream audience. And that was used against her too. And to go back to like when you are a content creator with a platform and you have taken a stance on something, said something that turned out to be harmful, you need to correct yourself.

Like, I had to correct myself on how I initially covered a lot of the stuff that was happening with it ends with. us where it did look gross that, you know, she was not doing PR for the film in a way that felt serious that was like talking about the domestic violence at the center of the film. And then Justin Baldoni, it's like you would see clips of him. And, you know, I admitted, like, I fell for it. I did. Once I saw, you know, of course, the New York Times piece and everything that came out

afterwards and I realized like, oh, God, well, okay. Yeah, I fell for it. And so I had to like make sure to correct myself. on that. Like I did so on my podcast, on my stream. And then was very clear going forward, like, how this already was a smear campaign in effect. Which is fine. Like, we can correct ourselves and, like, move on. Do you know what I mean? But I think, I think it's hard for even people that are, like, really attuned to notice it. Yeah. I mean, look, we can all fall for this stuff. I think we always have to be questioning things that we see, especially when it's engaging in something

that is tried and true, like smearing a woman via the internet. We now know that they use this playbook and they add on to it and that it works. And so that's why it continues to be utilized. And so you just have to like, I think stop and go, okay, hold on a second. Let me see what's going on here rather than just believing something that I've seen on the internet that's smearing a woman as a villain in the story. It's sad. As you were saying Kat earlier, too, just the downstream effects of this verse.

It's a bummer. I feel like now that Diddy, I think there are some charges pending, but just the fact that he's gotten off on some, like you're already seeing people celebrating and being like. He was acquitted of the most serious charges, which was sex trafficking and racketeering. And I'm not a lawyer. And yet I think it's pretty clear that adding on the racketeering charge was a bad move by the prosecution because it is just so legally complex. It contributed to mudding the waters. We're then. because they just, the jury could not believe that this was a criminal enterprise, that there was any, you know, conspiracy here whatsoever, that then they also did not believe that what happened to Cassie was sex trafficking. And I also think, you know, I don't know if we touched on this at all, but like the cultural baggage around terms like racketeering and trafficking, a lot of people only understand them from how they have seen it depicted in popular media.

A lot of people probably only know sex trafficking in the form of like the film taken, where they go, oh, yeah, it's, you know, a young girl goes and is traveling abroad and then is kidnapped and sold into this very shadowy organization. And that's what sex trafficking is versus, you know, in Cassie's situation where sex trafficking is forcing an individual to perform commercial sex acts against their will, like coercing them into that. And that's what was, that's what had happened. And that's what she had, why she filed that. civil suit. Why did he settled within 24 hours? And then why that was a big part of her testimony? I feel like the cultural depiction of sex trafficking over the past few years with everything

that happened with Jeffrey Epstein and also this massive push from the right to like undermine what sex trafficking actually is so that they can paint it as like the fault of their political enemies. Like that has done so much damage to the way that justice does not function in this country. And I feel like a lot of these prosecution teams, unfortunately, are almost unequipped, but also unaware of just how dire, like, media literacy and popular culture and, like, the understanding of these things is broadly. Yeah, I think there's been such an effort to mislead people about sex trafficking very intentionally by the right that I don't know if people would recognize it, you know, even if it was right in their face. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. this is so great to get to chat.

Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us. It's always a pleasure to chat with two of my favorite journalists who write about these things that I frequently will reference your work on stream. So thank you. Thank you both for the work that you do. All right. That's it for the show.

You can watch full episodes of Power User on my YouTube channel at Taylor Lorenz. Don't forget to subscribe to my tech and online culture newsletter, usermag.com. That's usermag.com where I write about all of this stuff and more. If you like this show, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Also, my bestselling book, extremely online, is finally out on paperback. It has an awesome new cover. Pick it up wherever books are sold. And I'll see you next week.