There Are No Girls on the Internet - Clavicular, looksmaxxing, and how extremists hijack the algorithm

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

This is the second part of a 2-part series, so if you haven’t listened to part 1 (published on April 21, 2026), please listen to that first. In part 1, we explain who Clavicular is, how the media elevated him to national prominence, and why his looksmaxxing ideology is just a new veneer on old tropes of self-harm and white supremacy.  What happens when a teenage boy spends his formative years on incel forums, starts injecting steroids at 14, hits himself in the face with a hammer in the name of self-improvement, injects his underage girlfriend with unlicensed substances on a live stream — and the response from mainstream media is a New York Times profile and a Fashion Week runway? This week we're digging into looksmaxxing: where it actually came from, what the TikTok version obscured, and why a movement rooted in white supremacist beauty standards got repackaged as self-help. Then we talk about Braden Peters, the influencer known as Clavicular, and make the case that the media didn't just cover his rise — it manufactured it.   Let us know what you think by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify.    Pre-order Bridget's forthcoming audiobook about AI and intimate relationships at LoveAtFirstPrompt.com !    Follow Bridget and TANGOTI on social media!  ||  instagram.com/bridgetmarieindc/ || tiktok.com/@bridgetmarieindc ||  youtube.com/@ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet || bsky.app/profile/tangoti.bsky.social   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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that today's episode mentions self-harm and disordered eating. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. This is part two of a two-part episode about Braden Peters, aka clavicular, the looks-maxing influencer who recently experienced an overdose on a live stream.

If you have not listened to Part 1, you should. In that part one, we walk through who Peters is and how he rose to prominence online. And in the second part, I want to talk about the role that I think the mainstream media played in that rise. And it didn't even really start with coverage of Peters. Let's take it back to how mainstream outlets were writing about the rise of the so-called alt-right a few years ago. So let's talk about the role that media plays in turning niche extremists like Brayden Peters, also known as clavicular online, into celebrity figures. I need to own that it's a little bit complicated because I also do feel that we spent far too much time doing that thing where

media says, oh, we're going to ignore these extremist figures and just allow them to amass more and more power and influence without any kind of mainstream scrutiny. And then by the time this figure is big and they're everywhere all over the internet, then mainstream media is talking about them, but by then it's way too late. They're very powerful. I saw that a lot, and I think it was a big mistake. But it's also not like the only two choices are either media ignores figures like Peters as they get bigger and bigger, or they have to cover them, but they have no choice but to do so in ways that essentially celebrate them or almost kind of sound like they're advocating for them or that they think that the audience should be sort of flattered or interested in them, where they're essentially

doing positive PR for these folks and helping them build their brands. Like, I think there has got to be a line between writing critically about these figures and essentially doing the work of building up their platforms on their behalf. And this is a conversation that really predates the rise of Peters. This is probably not the first example of this or the only example of this, but the one that sticks with me very personally is back in 2016 when Mother Jones wrote about Richard Spencer and the rise of the so-called alt-right. Now, to be clear, having read the whole piece, it is, like, critical of the alt-right

and critical of figures like Spencer, but the headline for the piece was, like, check out these dapper new Nazis strolling into town. It was actually a little bit hard to find the actual article because they did change the title on the piece that ran online eventually, but they didn't remove it from the Instagram, and we dug and we dug, and we were able to find it.

And again, I was having to do it. the piece is critical of the alt, right? But the first few sentences are like describing Richard Spencer in this beautiful hotel room, eating fancy sushi with chopsticks. And he almost sounds like a lifestyle influencer or a menswear influencer and not a hate monger. And so again, that the piece itself was critical, but the headline in the image of Spencer in this like dapper suit, also with a subhead that, right? again, calls him handsome and dapper and says that they're trying to make fascism cool again.

That's what people share on social media. It's the headline and the image. And so even if the piece goes on to be critical, which in this case it did, the conversation that's building up around the piece kind of sounds like, look at these cool, handsome Nazis, which, yuck. And to me, that kind of came to represent the pinnacle of the bad job media has done when it comes to how we talk about these folks' critics. in the same way that I think it was very irresponsible for the New York Times to call Peters a handsomeness influencer in that big profile of him that really helped build his platform.

I also did not think it was appropriate to frame the alt-right as almost like a dapper menswear club. I'm not saying that these folks should not be written about. I think they absolutely should be written about because they deserve mainstream scrutiny and we should know who they are. But writing about them like this is a choice. Writing about them in this way that builds their brands for them is a choice. Right. And in some of these cases, it almost seems like the media outlets themselves, like in that New York Times example,

want to be apolitical, right? Like, just reporting on this guy doing this thing, no deeper thought about it. And that's, in my opinion, a really disappointing, approach to journalism, right? Like, with Mother Jones writing about Richard Spencer, I think they got it wrong because I don't, my understanding is that Mother Jones is like pretty solidly anti-Nazi, right?

Like, it is a publication that is solidly anti-Nazi. And so they got that wrong. These more recent pieces about Peters, I don't have that same confidence that they view this stuff as harmful. It almost seems like they're flirting with it. as harmless or okay or worth it or somehow acceptable. Like it feels like some of them are almost actively trying to whitewash it and make it more acceptable. Yes, because this is somebody who objectively pushes white supremacist ideology.

This is somebody who is publicly engaged in self-harm and the harm of others. Choosing in the title or the subhead of your piece to describe him as just somebody who promotes handsomeness, come on, you know? And I think this gets back to my opinion, I guess my take, is that I think a lot of legacy media organizations, they're doing that because they understand that framing it that way gets more engagement. If you were to frame it as a critical piece about somebody who is unwell and engages in self-harm and the harm of others, I don't think that's as edgy as describing it as, oh, this handsome guy who has kind of an unusual worldview and an unusual pastime and practice around self-improvement,

I mean, it almost kind of feels like a certain type of access journalism, but the access that they're trying to get is access to somebody who was clearly unwell. It is definitely a tricky, fine line to walk of, like, how journalists should be covering people like this. But to your point, I think it seems clear that the coverage that Peters has gotten over the past week is not the way, right? Like, it seems like this is not the way and we all need to learn how to cover it better. Yes. And I'm glad that you put it that way because I'm not pretending like I have all the answers.

I certainly don't. Even the Louis-Thoreau Manosphere documentary that we mentioned got, I heard, I read and heard a lot of criticism saying, That documentary was a failure because it just ended up giving these guys exactly what they wanted, which is a bigger platform and another stage, right? I personally did not happen to agree with that take, but I understand that take. And I wanted to say that because it is complicated. It is a fine line to walk. It does become difficult to know when you have crossed over into giving somebody a platform

or amplifying them versus engaging in like important criticism or like critique or scrutiny with them. I absolutely own that that is. a tough line to walk, but I know it's not calling them a handsomeness influencer. I know it's not obscuring the fact that this is somebody who is engaging an act of self-harm and harming others on camera, right? Like, I know that it is complicated, but it's worth it needs to be done

and it's worth figuring out because we're going to just see more and more and more of these figures rising to prominence. And I know that this is not the right way to do it. Yeah, and I agree that it's going to become a even bigger problem because there's just so much reward to be had, right? If you're like a mid-tier influencer and you look at this enormous run of success that Peters has had over the past week

where he has shot to national attention and celebrity, emulating that probably looks like a pretty good idea, right? And I think people in traditional media really need to think carefully about making sure that they aren't setting themselves up to be gained by smart, savvy, young influencer types who are taking notes and behaving in ways specifically to get this kind of attention because it is so rewarding. Exactly.

So let's break that down because I want to be clear, it's not like Peters was a complete nobody. He has over a million followers across platforms. he is and was genuinely influential within the looks maxing community, but that context that you just met brought up really matters a lot. So if we compare him to other major Manosphere influencers, Andrew Tate has tens of millions of followers and clearly has mainstream political access. Jordan Peterson, he has a book empire, major interviewers, even folks that I would categorize as sort of mid-tier figures like fresh and fit,

they have much larger, more established fan bases than Peters ever had. Before December 2025, about the time when Peters was on my radar, he was very known within his subculture, but basically not really that known outside of it, unless you were somebody who was following online niche subcultures and that, like, unless you were someone like me who was like in the trenches, you probably didn't know who this guy was. And what happened to change that? I would argue press coverage, because let's look at this timeline. November 2025, Peters injects his underage girlfriend with peptides on stream. Mostly that controversy stays internal.

December 24th, 2025, Peters is live streaming himself, driving a cyber truck in Miami. He seemingly hits someone on the live stream goes viral. Late December through January of this year, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times simultaneously all begin working on major profiles of him. By January 26, Thomas Chatterton Williams of the Atlantic, who I fucking hate, calls Peters the newest star and most recognizable member of the looks maxing movement. But recognizable to whom? I would argue that he became recognizable because these publications said that he was recognizable,

said that he was somebody that you needed to know about. February, 26th, the New York Times publishes its major profile. by Joseph Bernstein, Peters is now earning $100,000 a month. Also in February, Peters walks New York Fashion Week for designer Elena Veles. This is just days after his arrest in Arizona. By late March of 26, the New York Times devotes a full episode of the daily to Peters and looks maxing. And then that leads us to just last week, April 14th, 2026. Peters is hospitalized for a suspected drug overdose while lives.

streaming. So to me, that paints a very clear timeline of the fact that, you know, this guy's increasingly extreme behavior plus mainstream media attention is what led to his celebrity really growing. Sophia Tespe wrote a really sharp piece of media criticism for Salon on April 6, 2026, where she compared the coverage of Peters to this infamous 2017 New York Times profile of Tony Hoveter, who is a neo-Nazi welder in Ohio. The profile talked about how much this guy loved Seinfeld and how much he liked the store target, and the Times got into trouble

for basically normalizing white nationalism. At Salon, Tesfay writes, quote, if Charlottesville taught journalists to be wary of amplifying ideology, the current moment demands an understanding that in an attention economy, amplification itself is the ideology. And I completely agree with that.

Again, I am not saying that these people should not be scrutinized, should not be written them out, but it is a choice to write about them in a kind of way that just amplifies and does the work of what they're trying to do for them that helps them launder their ideologies for audiences and make those ideologies seem cool or handsome or sexy or whatever. That's such a good comparison to that 2017 profile. I remember that, you know, this was shortly after Trump had been elected. to his first term, and there was like this national movement seemingly to like normalize extremists and make people with neo-Nazi beliefs seem as if they were mainstream. And that was about 10 years ago.

And so it's interesting to think about that example and compare it with Peters, what's happening today, because there are so many similarities to the underlying ideology, as you've described, but like the face of it has evolved, possibly because it's been struck by a hammer, possibly for other reasons, most likely because people have gotten wise and that sort of stuff just doesn't play so well anymore, maybe, hopefully. I think you're right. And I guess that's why I keep bringing it back to this gender. lens because I really do think that if you took a woman, an influencer whose claim to fame was

disordered eating and promoting disordered eating for others, I don't think we would see these outlets covering it the same way. We have women influencers, people like Liv Schmidt, who we've talked about on the podcast before, who their whole thing is being super thin and promoting disordered eating to others. And you don't see the New York Times calling them, you know, beauty influencers or influencers who promote beauty. They would, they're, they're talked about in ways that I think make clear that they are promoting self-harm and self-harm tactics. And so just as somebody who came of internet age in the Tumblr days, I remember so clearly these they used to call pro-ana accounts, Tumblr accounts that glorified and promoted

disordered eating. It was a real cesspool. It's kind of coming back in the form of skinny talk, But we did not also have a mainstream media that was amplifying this and laundering this as a cool or sexy or reasonable thing to do like we do now. And so I think if you looked at Peter's documented behavior from that lens and not from an entertainment lens, it becomes so clear how irresponsible it is to divorce what Peters actually promotes and stands for from all of the harmful behaviors that it actually is. you know, self-administering steroid injections starting at age 14, using methamphetamines to suppress appetites for appearance goals, bone smashing, hitting himself in the face with a hammer to change his bone structure. Obviously, doctors have said, don't do that because it causes fractures that it heal properly, can cause permanent nerve damage and disfigurement. And on top of that, there is no scientific basis for it even working to make you look a certain way. Injecting

unregulated substances into his own body and the body of others, including minors without medical training, and looking at the circumstances regarding his recent overdose. When that happened, Peters posted to X with blood on his face, writing, quote, the worst part of tonight was my face descending from the life support mask. Let's take a quick break. My SUV's worth more than ever. Time to upgrade? There's never been a better time.

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More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started.

That's 844-E-Hart. I love the sounds. from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place, soccer, football, it's home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom. I like watching it with my dad.

It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football, a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture. I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull.

It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, listen to American Football as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby.

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Dr. Justin Nepa, who is a board certified psychiatrist in Florida, wrote a clinical analysis of looks maxing in March. And he said, what often begins as an innocent forway into better grooming or fitness can quickly spiral into a severe cycle of body dysmorphic disorder, depression, substance abuse, and self-harm. He also said that he has seen young men spend three to four hours. daily analyzing their facial features, measuring jaw lines with calipers, and comparing themselves to digitally altered images. This creates masculine demoralization. And again, if you were a young woman who came of age when I did at a time when magazine covers were all making it very clear that the most important thing that you could be was like super skinny to be hot, this behavior, it doesn't seem that foreign to me.

But then you have mainstream platforms trying to make it seem like this is reasonable or even safe or healthy behavior, that it's just, you know, regular grooming or regular self-improvement when it isn't. Body dysmorphic disorder affects about 2% of the general population. In heavy social media users, that figure more than doubles to 4.2%. 40% of BDD sufferers are men. Studies consistently show that individuals with untreated BDD who undergo cosmetic, procedures experience no improvement or worsening of symptoms. Peters has had multiple of these procedures. So again, it's not like something where you can get the procedure, get the jaw line,

get the thing that you've been holding out for, and then a switch flips and you're fine. In fact, the data seems to be pretty clear that that's actually not what happens. It's a consistent hamster wheel where the point is trying to achieve this status of perfection, but perfection does not really exist. So it's going to continue to be increasing, increasing things with a never-ending cycle. A 2025 peer-reviewed paper called looks maxing, colon, straddling the inflection between self-enhancement and self-harm directly associates this content with body dissatisfaction, body dysmorphia, and suicidal ideation in young men.

So when you look at all of those behaviors together, the mess, the testosterone at 14, the hammer, I think it's pretty clear that we're talking about self-harm behavior. Yeah, those are harmful behaviors, right? That one is doing himself by definition. Self-harm. Exactly. And I just, again, I just really think that we would be responding differently to Peters if he were a woman. Going back to those early 2010s, Tumblr, pro-anorexia communities,

those communities were mostly teenage girls and young women. They were Thinspo photos, died. Tets for evading parents and doctors, mantras like skip dinner, end up thinner. Again, if you listen to our Skinny Talk episode, you know that it's still very much a thing. It's very similar to, I think, what Peters is pushing, a tight-knit online community with its own vocabulary, hierarchies, and in-group culture. Check. An ideology that frames dangerous self-harm behaviors as an aspirational lifestyle choice, check.

Pseudoscience justifications for those behaviors. Check. practical tips on how to harm yourself more effectively, check. Tips on evading medical scrutiny and parental scrutiny, check. Monetization through memberships and affiliate products, check. Algorithmic amplification, pushing vulnerable young people deeper and deeper in. Check. In February 2012, after pressure from the National Eating Disorder Association,

Tumblr announced that it would ban blogs that actively promote or glorified self-harm, including eating disorders. and those communities were not celebrated as like a fascinating cultural provocateur, right? For the most part, they were treated as a public health crisis. Like platforms were pressured into getting rid of the content. Research was published into it. Journalists covered it as a kind of harm, not an interesting cultural spectacle like what I think that we're seeing with Peters. Those comparisons are so strong when you lay them out like that,

that after running through that long list, it's like, well, how could anyone not take a gender lens to see the different way that Peters and looks maxing is being treated than it would if he were a woman or not even hypothetically how the pro-anorexia movement was treated several years ago. And I know you and I talked about this a little bit before the show, I just think it's so interesting to think about why that different treatment exists for looks maxing,

which seems geared at young men versus the pro-anorexia movement, which was primarily aimed at young women. And we came up with a couple hypotheses, but no, like, really clear answer. You know, I would be interested to hear from listeners if they have any thoughts about why this difference exists. I don't know if you want to opine a little bit on it right now. Yeah, I mean, this is just my opinion. This is for people who are much smarter than me to figure out. I don't have any kind of inside knowledge into this. I just want to own this is just my opinion.

I think that because it is associated with men and masculinity, it automatically is given a different lens or a different framing. I think that when men do something, it is seen as like a serious thing that has serious societal consequences or impact or that we need to be looking at it and treating it in a much more serious lens, I think it's easier to see young women and girls doing a similar, not entirely identical,

but a similar thing and saying, oh, that's unwell behavior, that self-harm behavior. I think that when it's coming from young men and boys, when it's coming from and targeted at young men and boys, I think it's easier for some people to apply a different lens to it. it. I guess I don't really know why. And I think you can really see it in how Peters was dealt with, or not dealt with, depending on how you look at it, after he filmed himself injecting peptides into his body into his then underage girlfriend's face. He was temporarily banned from KIC and then came back.

He got that New York Times profile. And then he walked in Fashion Week. And so I just think that if there had been a woman who had done something analogous, I don't think that. that she would get all of this, like, positive stuff out of it. And I also wonder if part of it is that we just are aware of the pressure around this kind of thing when it comes to girls, but we're less aware of it when it comes to young men and boys, that we have a framework in our mind for what it looks like when a young woman or a girl is coming into contact with this kind of content and this kind of behavior, that I almost wonder if we don't, if we have not really identified a similar kind of language around what it looks

like and how it should be treated when it's happening to a young man or a boy. I agree. I think that's a big piece of this, that we just have like a background cultural familiarity with the fact that these things are threats to young women, the ideas of body dysmorphia, body image issues, disorder to eating. A lot of people are very familiar with those problems in the context of young women. And it does feel more new to be applying those same concerns to young men. And there's surely a whole bunch of cultural reasons for that. But it does seem like perhaps we all need to update our mental models and realize that young men are being really affected and targeted by these harmful things.

Yeah, a UC San Francisco study by Dr. Jason, found a 400% increase in eating disorder hospitalizations among boys since 2002. So boys are not immune to body image pathology and issues, but I think perhaps they are less seen in the frameworks that we have built around addressing it. Like I just don't, I don't think that we are like, we have not updated our information about what and who gets impacted by eating disorders and body dysmorphia and self-harm around it. And just another thing that I wanted to say while we're making these comparisons to the pro-ana,

pro-eating disorder mostly content for and by women and girls, largely those communities were girls harming themselves. Again, we do have figures like Liv Schmidt, who ran an online group where you could pay to get access to her tips and tricks for disordered eating. So it's not entirely, but mostly it is like self-harm. But Peters has demonstrable. harmed other people. You know, the girlfriend that he injected with the peptides, the women that he provoked a fight with to post online to get engagement, the person he hit with that cyber truck, he docks the reporter who was trying to interview him, he openly advocates for teenage boys to inject themselves with unregulated hormones, and he earns 100K a month in doing it. So

that financial incentive to continue this behavior and for other people to continue behavior like this is obviously enormous. And that takes me back to my question about the role in media amplifying him. Right. The incentives for him, but also the incentives for media who might want to cover him. Yes. So that's a piece of this I want to really dig into because I do think it is incentivized to write about him.

You know, in the six weeks following him, reportedly hitting a guy with a cyber truck while live streaming, Peters went from this well-known subcultural figure to essentially a mainstream internet celebrity. And here's a rundown of all the places in the aftermath of that that wrote pieces on him. There was a piece in Wired in September 2025. It was his first major outlet profile that called him one of looksmaxing's most popular influencers, that Atlantic piece, which called him the newest star of the movement, that January 2026 Rolling Stone piece that called him a premier figure in looks maxing. That piece did also note that Peters's is, fixation on optimization is inseparable from aggressive sexism.

There was a piece in The Guardian in January, calling him one of the most prominent influencers in the looks maxing community, a full profile at GQ in February, that New York Times piece in February, which was a major, major profile, and then later devoted an entire episode of the Daily to him in March, and then walking in a looks maxing-themed runway for designer Elena Viles just days after he was arrested.

And so I think the outlets and the institutions, institutions clearly get some sort of benefit from the association with him. Not necessarily like critical association, but association that traffics in the sort of cultural cachet or perceived cultural relevance of what he is doing. And I think each one of those is a signal that made the next one that followed more and more justified, right? Each one raised his income, raised his platform, built out this cultural cachet and legitimacy, which we know. know is exactly what these guys are after. And so I do think it's like they're kind of working in tandem here where, you know,

the outlet that writes about him in this particular kind of way gets a raised profile. And so does he. So it's like, you know, one hand washes the other kind of thing, I think. Again, I know this is a tough line to walk, but that's just my, that's just like my take on what's happening here. It seems fair. It seems warranted. I mean, you go through that timeline.

And that's so many major profiles from major. publications within like a month of each other. You know, national politicians would be thrilled to have that kind of attention. Yes. There are tons of A-list celebrities who did not receive that much attention in January and February of this year. Exactly. And this is somebody who does not even really have that big of a footprint. He certainly didn't have that big of a footprint to warrant this much ink at the time.

More after a quick break. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting, think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ads supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, IHearts twice as large as the next two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only IHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business. Think IHeart.

Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Call 844-844-I-Hart to get started. I love the sounds. The buzzing from the stadium, the chanting from the fans, the announcers calling the place soccer, football, it's home. Why do I watch the World Cup? That's like asking me, why do I breed? I inherited that fandom from my mom.

I like watching it with my dad. It's a connecting force. From Futuro Studios, I'm Fernanda Chavari, and this is American Football. a show about soccer culture in the U.S. and its underdog roots. We go beyond the game to the people and the stories that make it great. A soccer game is a festival. It's not just a game. It's your culture.

I took an elbow to my head, which cracked my skull. It is an American game. The Brazilians don't like hearing that, though. Are they the only ones that don't like that? Nobody likes that. As we get ready for the Men's World Cup this summer, Listen to American Football as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people, like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartum depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And there's a ton of excitement because their new star is Javier Titorito Hernandez. Everyone sees me as a football player, but before anything else, I'm human. Every single day, I'm still learning how to live with problems, mistakes, relationships, emotions, ever since I was born. And I still have so many questions. Where do we come from? What happens after death? How do you deal with cancellation? Cristiano or Messi?

Do aliens exist? What is love? Real Madrid or Barcelona? From every day and ordinary to the deep and extraordinary. This isn't a normal podcast. Everything here is spontaneous, real and genuine. This podcast is like a deep talk with your closest friends. Where vulnerability comes out.

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Listen to learning to be human on IHard Radio, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. Let's get right back into it. Media scholar Whitney Phillips has coined this phrase, the oxygen of amplification. And that's the idea that the coverage of extremist figures, even sometimes critical coverage provides them the attention that sustains them. A 2025 peer-reviewed paper found that, quote, despite the best intentions of journalists, news media has unwittingly played into the hands of the contemporary far right.

And so that's kind of what I think is going on here, that in some instances, perhaps they're sort of being played. But with the New York Times, I don't know. I'm not comfortable saying that the New York Times is being played. And a certain point, like, if you want to be played, Are you still played, you know? Yeah. It's a great question.

If you're just like happy to go along with being played, is it being played? Great question. Tespe, in that salon piece that I mentioned earlier, really put it well. She writes, journalists covering figures like clavicular are being pulled into a system where their own professional criteria, novelty, conflict, and visibility are being gamed by subjects who understand the attention economy better than most of the reporters covering them.

She also noted that that New York Times profile, which I completely agree with, never quite grapples with the women that Peters has harmed, the teenage boys injecting steroids into themselves at his instruction, or the reporter on whom he sicked an anti-Semitic mob, and that ultimately the form of coverage these figures get really does matter. Ezra Marcus, writing at the intelligentsier, described Peters as, quote, something of an edge lord folk hero whose profit strategy views his shock, tactics with straightforward marketing. That like shock jock folk hero profit strategy framing, I think is exactly the heart of the problem here because it treats what I think is objectively self-destructive behavior as a kind of brand strategy, not as symptoms of a mental illness or some larger issue. And I think it's worth kind of like saying plainly that this is not just a body image stories. Peters has also been described by the forward as a right-wing extremists to watch in

26. Charlie Worsall of the Atlantic writes about how Peters revels in anti-Semitism. He's well known for using racist slurs in his live stream. And as we already discussed, we know that looks maxing ideology and the broader white nationalist movement it represents are not adjacent. They are like the same. That then diagram is like essentially a circle. And so the choice to cover him as a, just a cultural phenomenon, I think it is a choice that has wildly dangerous, harmful impacts, not just for Peters, for all of us. But as we talked about it, it is hard to know, like, what is the line? What is the right way to cover these kinds of figures?

What do you think, you know, for journalists who might be listening and, and asking like, well, what is the right way to cover somebody like Peters? What do you wish would have been different in some of this coverage he's gotten over the past month? Yeah, something that I think needs to happen is you have to give a full accounting of what it is this person has done. And I'm not even talking about, you know, I'm talking about like his own words, things that he has said. I think that they're really making some editorial choices about what is and is not part. of his story or an important part of his story. I think a lot of the stuff that he does with like slurs and his anti-Semitism, I think somewhere

along the line, they've made an editorial choice that that stuff is like just kidding or just joking and is not really important to the story of who he is. And I'd like to know why. You know, and if you're trying to be of service to your audience or your readers, why have you made, how have you come to the conclusion that some of this stuff is not important to include for folks to understand who this person is. And if it's not important, then why are you telling me about him? Like, that's another question I would ask.

When he didn't have that many followers and was still a pretty niche person in this niche subculture, why was it important that I know about him? I'm not saying that it's not important, but I think that, like, you've got to make a case for why it is that you're telling me about him. Why are the New York Times dedicating an entire episode of the daily to him? And I think it's important to sort of end

with where Peters is now, where we are on all of this. So as I said, last week, April 14th, Peters was streaming from a bar in Miami, and his friends noticed that something was wrong. He became unresponsive. The stream cut out. The Miami Fire Department responded to the report at a 20-year-old having a possible OD. That was Peters. He was hospitalized in stable condition. And then the next morning, he posted that photo of himself with blood on his face. And he wrote, just got home. That was brutal. All of the substances are just a cope trying to feel neurotypical while being in public, but that obviously isn't a real solution. And again, he goes on to talk about how the worst part of the night was his face descending from

the life support mask. And that's the thing that he, you know, chose to tell his followers about that was like weighing on him after a hospitalization for an OD that happened on a live stream. He's worried about what it did to his face, what his face looks like. And it reads to me, like a 20-year who has been told by both like the community online that he came of age in, by other influencers, by mainstream outlets like the New York Times who were calling him somebody who promotes handsomeness, that his worth is his appearance. And I just don't think that we would do that with someone who was struggling with a more, quote, feminized version of body dysmorphia and self-harm.

And so since his OD, he has indicated publicly that he might, not be streaming that much anymore, not because he's taking a mental health break, but because, according to him, he can't stream sober. He said in a video, I ain't going to be doing any more substances for a little while, hopefully for forever, but that means I can't really IRL stream anymore. So that's the thing. I can't really IRL stream because, as you guys know, I'm quite brutal without that. So I think I have to figure something else out. And I think that's really what it comes down to that this is obviously somebody who is not well, who is using substances and self-harm by his own words to cope. And I think that not just for him, I think that for all of us,

it would be who of us if media and journalists could figure out a way to cover this person in a way that is a little more responsible and a little more ethical. And that really makes clear what it is that we're actually talking about. Because I tell you, it ain't just like some interesting cultural online phenomenon, at the heart of it is clearly an unwell person. And I don't think that media should be obscuring that just to get engagement. So I know that this episode has been quite a lot about Peters, but it's not even really about this one guy. It's really about what happens next because Peters is not going to be the last person

to push harmful ideology or to try to package self-destructive ideas as just self-improvement. we already know that this pattern is so much bigger than any one individual. So the real question that I would ask is, what role do major outlets want to play in that cycle? When institutions like the New York Times or others choose to frame these extremist figures, do they interrupt that pipeline or do they just smooth it out? Do they help contextualize harm and help their audience really understand what's at stake and who these people are? or do they repackage it into something that feels safe or even aspirational or cool until it doesn't? To me, it's about whether or not this attention is becoming a form of platform building.

And then you have these same systems later going on to critique these figures when it's like, wait a minute, you help them become this big influential figure in the first place. And I want to be clear, Peters is responsible for his own actions and his own bad behavior. but shouldn't the institutions that decide what becomes visible, what gets amplified, and what gets turned into a story rather than a warning sign? Like, they also share some of the responsibility here. So it really isn't about this one guy. It is whether or not we've built media and digital systems that can recognize the difference between reporting on harm and just helping to repackage it and make it palatable for more and more people at scale. So I know that was a lot. I've clearly been holding in a lot of thoughts about this person and the phenomena around them.

Again, this is one of those episodes where this is just my opinion. I really want to hear what folks think. Like, has this person come across your feed? What has your engagement with them looked like? And if you have any thoughts on how folks can do a better job, myself very much included, talking about people like this and extremist figures like this, we would love to hear it. If you're on Spotify, you can leave us a comment in our Spotify comments or shoot us an email. Maybe we'll do a follow-up episode about how people feel.

But yeah, that's all I got. Well, thank you, Bridget, for the rundown. And listeners can, yeah, leave us Spotify comments. Shoot us an email. Hello at Tangote. Follow Bridget or the show on social. Bridget Marie in D.C. And just the name of the show, there are no girls on the internet.

Thanks, Bridget. And I'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Mike. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You could reach us at hello. at tangoody.com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangoody.com. There are no girls on the internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of IHeart Radio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our

producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridgett. If you want to help us grow, write and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from IHeart Radio, check out the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.