Speaker 1: Al Zone Media Story.
Speaker 2: Times.
Speaker 3: Welcome to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where most weeks we
Speaker 3: take a look at the Internet's main characters and see
Speaker 3: how their moment affected them and what that says about
Speaker 3: us and the Internet.
Speaker 2: But not this week, Queen's not this week. This week
Speaker 2: we are entering parts who too of our into.
Speaker 3: The taking a look at how this space has both
Speaker 3: continued to grow in influence and in our inability to
Speaker 3: talk about it. Last week, in part one, we took
Speaker 3: a look at the history of Manisphere spaces all the
Speaker 3: way back to the nineteen seventies, and a little bit
Speaker 3: about how it's been covered in the month following the
Speaker 3: election and spoilers not particularly well. I personally feel that
Speaker 3: the people best covering the Manisphere have already been doing
Speaker 3: it for years, But first I just.
Speaker 2: Wanted to do a little housekeeping at the top.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much to everyone who has reached out
Speaker 3: to me after last week's episode.
Speaker 2: It means a lot.
Speaker 3: As much as I hate hearing how many of my
Speaker 3: listeners have had assault experiences similar to mine, and that
Speaker 3: they were also encouraged to not think of.
Speaker 2: It as assault at the time.
Speaker 3: If you have experienced something similar, be gentle with yourself
Speaker 3: and thank you for listening, But I really do appreciate
Speaker 3: your listening.
Speaker 2: I firmly believe that we need.
Speaker 3: Each other to be able to survive times like this,
Speaker 3: because the systems are obviously still not acknowledging it. I
Speaker 3: heard accounts that came nearly a full decade after my own,
Speaker 3: which is honestly frightening. Domestic violence exists at rates that
Speaker 3: should qualify it as domestic terrorism, but that's just not
Speaker 3: how we've been taught to see this kind of violence.
Speaker 3: And more than anything, as I was preparing for this
Speaker 3: second part, as I was taking a look at the
Speaker 3: different areas of the Manisphere over time, it became very
Speaker 3: clear to me that for the most extreme areas, misogyny
Speaker 3: is usually step one sort of the bait, because it's
Speaker 3: so normalized and we hear it so often that most
Speaker 3: people may not flinch if they hear something casually misogynist,
Speaker 3: and some might even feel validated by it. And if
Speaker 3: they're into that and decide to watch some Manisphere shows
Speaker 3: will slowly turn up the ante. How about some transphobia
Speaker 3: with that? How about some racially charged comments about this
Speaker 3: type of woman? And not every listener is going to
Speaker 3: be receptive to it. Not all men, but let's be honest,
Speaker 3: many are, and the nature of these shows can sort
Speaker 3: of function as a frog sitting in a pot full
Speaker 3: of lukewarm water not realizing that it's coming to a boil.
Speaker 3: And again I will place some content warnings here. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of information in this episode and some of
Speaker 3: it is pretty heavy. So if it's not a good
Speaker 3: time for you for this kind of thing today, I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed Wicked Part one, check it out.
Speaker 2: I also really quickly just wanted to.
Speaker 3: Issue one correction from last week's episode where I failed
Speaker 3: to be clear enough.
Speaker 2: I characterized custody.
Speaker 3: Statistics that Men's Right activist site as their reason for
Speaker 3: pushing back against mothers and women's rights and characterizing them
Speaker 3: as vindictive, when I should have said that this is
Speaker 3: the idea that motivates them, not that it's actually based
Speaker 3: on historically true data.
Speaker 2: In reality, while mothers are.
Speaker 3: More likely to be granted custody, that's in large part
Speaker 3: because fathers request custody far less frequently than mothers do.
Speaker 3: So I apologize for making that sound as if it
Speaker 3: was a fact.
Speaker 2: It is very much a straw man argument.
Speaker 3: And that is certainly an important distinction in spaces like
Speaker 3: the manisphere, where so much is straw man arguments. So
Speaker 3: this week I want to break down the manisphere, starting
Speaker 3: from when many consider for it to have crossed into
Speaker 3: the mainstream and from where it started to affect me. Specifically,
Speaker 3: gamer Gate, a twenty fourteen harassment campaign where men's forums
Speaker 3: previously thought to be niche targeted women working or commenting
Speaker 3: on the gaming industry, particularly those who had explicitly criticized
Speaker 3: games for misogyny anywhere from explicitly critiquing the industry to
Speaker 3: simply speaking out against an intimate partner who had literally
Speaker 3: posted revenge porn of them.
Speaker 4: Violent depictions of women being beaten, raped, and run over
Speaker 4: by cars. It's not the movies, it's video games. And
Speaker 4: now the women calling for change in this multi billion
Speaker 4: dollar virtual industry are facing a very real backlash, including
Speaker 4: death threats.
Speaker 3: And as we discussed, the second event of twenty fourteen
Speaker 3: that brought the manisphere into the mainstream was the Isla
Speaker 3: Vista massacre perpetrated by Elliott Roger, who went on to
Speaker 3: become and still is a figurehead of the in cell movement,
Speaker 3: who is considered a martyr to the cause of fighting
Speaker 3: back against matriarchy. However, his misogynist manifesto, which was deeply
Speaker 3: connected and hosted to in cell forums, was only mentioned
Speaker 3: in passing in many mainstream media outlets, the same outlets
Speaker 3: who are three hundred and fifty percent more likely to
Speaker 3: bring up mental health as the central issue of these
Speaker 3: killings as they would for a Muslim shooter. Here's a
Speaker 3: Barbara Walters broadcast from the time.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you the story of Bogra, chilling details you've
Speaker 5: never heard until now about a loaner obsessed with finding
Speaker 5: a girlfriend.
Speaker 2: In the next ten years.
Speaker 3: It became lethally clear that this loaner angle hugely underplayed
Speaker 3: where Roger was getting positive reinforcement for this violence. Make
Speaker 3: no mistake, Roger was pushing this parting message to the
Speaker 3: in cell boards. Not only did it reference blackpill ideology,
Speaker 3: the death cult mentality that indicated that women would never
Speaker 3: like him and made him a martyr. The in cells
Speaker 3: were inspired by this. And just so you know, I
Speaker 3: will not be including quotes from any of these guys manifestos.
Speaker 3: There our spaces where that's not unproductive, but this is
Speaker 3: my show and no manifestos here.
Speaker 2: And finally to the guy last.
Speaker 3: Week in my comments who was like, interesting, you didn't
Speaker 3: talk to many men. Yeah, if it was my goal
Speaker 3: to platform men, I would own a house.
Speaker 2: So come with me if you dare to.
Speaker 3: The spring of twenty fourteen, during the fallout of the
Speaker 3: Ala Vista murders, which claimed six lives, mainstream media was
Speaker 3: still trying to figure out how to cover the story,
Speaker 3: while the in cell communities that Roger spent so much
Speaker 3: time in were celebrating.
Speaker 6: The in cell rebellion has already begun. We will overthrow
Speaker 6: all the Chads and Stacy's all hail the Supreme Gentleman,
Speaker 6: Elliott Roger.
Speaker 3: However, there is an ongoing argument amongst analysts of in
Speaker 3: cell and manosphere spaces as to whether these forums can
Speaker 3: be singled out as the sole cause of Roger's violence,
Speaker 3: arguing that much of his own misogyny was already reinforced
Speaker 3: by the culture that existed outside the Internet. Again, it's
Speaker 3: this systemic versus is it these boards? Specifically, Michael Kimmel,
Speaker 3: whose thesis on the Manisphere I cited in last week's episode,
Speaker 3: argued this in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 6: It would be facile to argue the manosphere urged Roger
Speaker 6: to do this. I think those places are a kind
Speaker 6: of solace. They provide a kind of locker room, a
Speaker 6: place where guys can gripe about all the bad things
Speaker 6: that are being done to them by women.
Speaker 3: I don't fully agree with this, and I think it
Speaker 3: fails to acknowledge a certain amount of gray area. On
Speaker 3: one hand, I think Kimmel is right to emphasize that
Speaker 3: manisphere message boards are places where men can take the
Speaker 3: societally encouraged disrespective women and validate each other's prejudices. But
Speaker 3: to suggest that these places don't amplify the violence of
Speaker 3: those actions is not true in my opinion. And this
Speaker 3: is what we're going to bump up against over and over.
Speaker 3: More than one thing is going to be true in
Speaker 3: some of these cases, and as it pertains to this show,
Speaker 3: more than one thing being true tends to be bad
Speaker 3: for social media engagement. But still, Kimmel is I think
Speaker 3: right to say that Roger didn't have to do a
Speaker 3: one point eighty ideologically to arrive at in cell logic,
Speaker 3: the way that Western media conditions men to see themselves
Speaker 3: in terms of virility, in appearance and in entitlement had
Speaker 3: already gotten him pretty far along, and while we can't
Speaker 3: know what motivated Roger definitively, there is no doubt that
Speaker 3: he turned to these spaces as a way of validating
Speaker 3: his low opinion of both women and himself, frequently posting
Speaker 3: front facing YouTube videos of him jeering at couples in
Speaker 3: the street and monologuing pretty point for point in cell
Speaker 3: rhetoric using black pell logic that he will never be
Speaker 3: the object of anyone's affection and might as well die
Speaker 3: instead of, you know, not, being openly hostile to every
Speaker 3: woman he ever came in contact with. In the days
Speaker 3: leading up to the Elavista shootings, Roger also took his
Speaker 3: own life. He began to refer to this premeditated plan
Speaker 3: as the day of retribution and a method of punishing
Speaker 3: the women that he felt rejected by, and Roger's influence
Speaker 3: is clearly held in these spaces to this day, with
Speaker 3: a number of subsequent killings citing his manifesto or shouting
Speaker 3: him out by name. Look no further than the Umpqua
Speaker 3: Community College shootings the next year, the christ Church mosque
Speaker 3: shooter in twenty nineteen, or the twenty eighteen Toronto van
Speaker 3: attack that claimed fifteen lives. The killer in Toronto said specifically.
Speaker 6: I was thinking that I would inspire future masses to
Speaker 6: join me in my uprising as well, and.
Speaker 3: For more in this case specifically and its relationship to
Speaker 3: the Manisphere, I would recommend the CBC podcast Boys Like
Speaker 3: Me from a few years back. But in addition to
Speaker 3: claiming to be in contact with Elliott Rodger, shortly before
Speaker 3: his death, the Toronto shooter told authorities that he had
Speaker 3: been radicalized on in cell forums shortly after the Ilavista
Speaker 3: killings and referred to his attack as another day of retribution.
Speaker 3: And of course, most people in the Manisphere aren't extremist killers,
Speaker 3: but that doesn't mean that they are not encouraged to
Speaker 3: cheer on those who are. That was a fixture of
Speaker 3: spaces like four chan, eight chan, and earlier Reddit. Robert
Speaker 3: Evans tracked this explicitly in the case of the christ
Speaker 3: Church mosque shootings, which claimed fifty one lives, where fellow
Speaker 3: manispheer adjacent racists watched the murder on a live streamed video.
Speaker 2: And that's not the only killing of that kind.
Speaker 3: Because, as it probably goes without saying, very few Manisphere
Speaker 3: denizens are just misogynists. These communities very often intersect with racism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia,
Speaker 3: and on and on. These communities are locked into a
Speaker 3: view of women that is entrenched in all this jargon,
Speaker 3: but it boils down to this binary chestnut. Women are
Speaker 3: defined by their ability to provide sex and children for men,
Speaker 3: and should be subservient as well as men must make
Speaker 3: themselves high value, and what determines high value is entirely
Speaker 3: decided by capitalism.
Speaker 2: It requires monetary and.
Speaker 3: Career success in addition to appearance, and can rely just
Speaker 3: as much on men's self hatred as it does on
Speaker 3: their hatred of anyone who isn't a man. But that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that people locked into the manisphere aren't from
Speaker 3: a diverse array of backgrounds. I was actually pretty surprised
Speaker 3: at how diverse.
Speaker 2: This space is.
Speaker 3: Around the same time the mid twenty tens, the black
Speaker 3: manisphere began to grow led by influencers like Kevin Samuels,
Speaker 3: who started a YouTube channel in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: It is viewing shit like this, How are you even
Speaker 2: willing to put a possible time frame only so we
Speaker 2: need a time for anything, nobody.
Speaker 7: We need a cooperative woman. We need a woman that
Speaker 7: understands what men want and understand that, yes, this is
Speaker 7: going to be a part of it. And I've asked
Speaker 7: you the question how many times? So what do you
Speaker 7: let me tell you? If you're not willing to answer
Speaker 7: the question. It's not a trick to it. You're a
Speaker 7: grown woman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm I'm learning, still learning about different personalities.
Speaker 7: It's not different personalities. It's a lot of you ladies
Speaker 7: tend to want men to do all the work.
Speaker 3: Samuels took on a similar but a little bit harsher
Speaker 3: persona to Jordan Peterson, presenting himself as a fatherly professional
Speaker 3: who is just helping men and women understand the world
Speaker 3: and improve their confidence, while slowly but surely escalating into
Speaker 3: full male supremacist logic, then encourage men to be cruel
Speaker 3: and dismissive to the women around them. The difference is
Speaker 3: that Samuel's a black man himself focused on talking to
Speaker 3: black men in particular, and while he passed in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two rather suddenly, his channel continues to post until
Speaker 3: this day, and his influence.
Speaker 2: Is certainly still felt.
Speaker 3: Doctor Umar Johnson is another big black manisphere public figure
Speaker 3: who at this point is basically given up on distancing
Speaker 3: himself from his overt homophobia and misogyny, saying back in
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen that planned parenthood quote was using homosexuality as
Speaker 3: a population control strategy in the black community. And as
Speaker 3: this misogyny is being pushed toward black viewers specifically, it
Speaker 3: tends to be extremely vitriolic toward Black women in particular,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately, the most harsh version of this is also
Speaker 3: the most popular feature of the black manisphere right now,
Speaker 3: the ultra popular podcast Fresh and Fit, whose hosts are
Speaker 3: particularly cruel to Black women on their show, because remember,
Speaker 3: no matter who's talking about manuspheer shit, they are operating
Speaker 3: on a fundamentally white supremacist logic.
Speaker 2: First time, don'ating just say Maron is a real one.
Speaker 6: Don't change for nobody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fuck out here, bro, we don't change. I don't
Speaker 2: even know who she is, so don't care. That's King girl,
Speaker 2: Like you don't know who Queen Vaughn is. No, I
Speaker 2: know who King Vaughan is, but I mean.
Speaker 8: I don't.
Speaker 5: Oh the fact you said it's King Vaugh's girl instead
Speaker 5: of it was heard yea, and.
Speaker 3: Let it be known That is the least convincing reading
Speaker 3: of I Don't Care that I've heard in my entire life.
Speaker 3: Similar spaces existed for Asian men interested in Manisphere content.
Speaker 3: I mean, don't worry, fellas. Everyone can hate women in
Speaker 3: the Manisphere.
Speaker 2: And boy do they.
Speaker 3: These influencers delight in broadcasting themselves, making women uncomfortable, and
Speaker 3: sharing the content as if they're owning them.
Speaker 2: And you might.
Speaker 3: Remember this if you were on YouTube around this time.
Speaker 3: There was a notorious style of video that had titles
Speaker 3: like this.
Speaker 9: Jordan Peterson repeatedly owns Australian feminist Ben Shapiro Dismantle's third
Speaker 9: wave feminism. Kevin Samuels knows ladies hate when the roles
Speaker 9: are reversed.
Speaker 6: Patriarchy, which is a system of male dominance of society.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but that's not my sense of the patriarchy.
Speaker 2: What's yours?
Speaker 10: Well, in what senses are society male dominated?
Speaker 6: The fact that the vast majority of wealth is owned
Speaker 6: by men, a vast majority of capital.
Speaker 2: And is owned by men. Women do more unpaid labor.
Speaker 10: Very tiny proportion of men, and a huge proportion of
Speaker 10: people who are seriously disaffected or men. Most people in
Speaker 10: prison are men. Most people who are on the street
Speaker 10: are men. Most victims of violent crime are men. Most
Speaker 10: people commit suicide or men. Most people who die in
Speaker 10: wars are men. People who do worse in school are men.
Speaker 10: It's like, where's the dominance here?
Speaker 3: Precisely, and these kinds of videos would have millions of views.
Speaker 3: And Peterson there is virtually giving a list of classic
Speaker 3: men's rights talking points, that is, listing out statistics about
Speaker 3: how patriarchy negatively affects men and presenting it as an
Speaker 3: argument against feminism for some reason, and while it's perhaps
Speaker 3: the most obvious point on the fucking planet, no conversation
Speaker 3: about the strengthening and empowerment of the manisphere would be
Speaker 3: complete without the twenty sixteen election of Donald Trump. There
Speaker 3: is ample proof that manisphere groups embraced Trump and loved
Speaker 3: his proclivity for saying the quiet part loud. Laura Bates, author.
Speaker 2: Of Men Who Hate Women.
Speaker 3: Praised back the history of these groups and found that,
Speaker 3: with the exception of men's rights activists hyper fixating on
Speaker 3: custody courts, these Manisphere groups were not particularly political pre Trump,
Speaker 3: but when he enters the sphere, they actually organized on
Speaker 3: his behalf and the groups steadily become more politicized, and
Speaker 3: that's not a mistake. Former Trump chief strategist and current
Speaker 3: disgusting goblin Steve Bannon admitted to courting in cells, specifically
Speaker 3: during the twenty sixteen election cycle.
Speaker 6: He said this, it was very much in the margins
Speaker 6: and in the fringes of society to bring and recruit
Speaker 6: people who would otherwise not necessarily engage in conventional politics,
Speaker 6: but would engage with particular kinds of ideas that Cambridge
Speaker 6: Analytica promoted online that can make an impact. If you
Speaker 6: get an extra one percent, an extra two percent in
Speaker 6: that swing state, and you win that swing state, that
Speaker 6: might mean you win the presidency.
Speaker 3: And of course Trump continued to deliver on both rhetorical
Speaker 3: misogyny that was reflected in his policy and extended to
Speaker 3: a hatred of immigrants and trans people, who he has
Speaker 3: repeatedly targeted in the years since. So to be clear,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that the manisphere elected Trump. They're not
Speaker 3: quite that prominent. But Bannon and Trump were successful in
Speaker 3: getting men who were otherwise ambivalent towards electoral politic to
Speaker 3: become engaged because of him. The misogynist rhetoric, the whole.
Speaker 11: Hey, when you're a start, they let you do it.
Speaker 12: You can do anything whatever you want.
Speaker 5: Grab him by the.
Speaker 7: I can do any of that.
Speaker 3: God, I can't believe that's the second time I've had
Speaker 3: to play the grab him by the pussy clip on
Speaker 3: this show.
Speaker 2: Unfair.
Speaker 3: What's also worth mentioning here, and why I think there's
Speaker 3: such a high barrier to entry for people to understand
Speaker 3: these communities, is that there is a full and infuriating
Speaker 3: multiverse of vocabulary, of specific memes, and of deflective ironic
Speaker 3: humor that can make these Manisphere boards pretty hard to understand.
Speaker 3: When it comes to irony pilled humor that was already
Speaker 3: tied into comedy that was popular in the early to
Speaker 3: mid two thousands, the same time that comedy was becoming
Speaker 3: increasingly influenced by the Internet and in general pretty heavily
Speaker 3: reliant on shock. This was the era of able list,
Speaker 3: Helen Keller jokes, of dead baby jokes, casual or overt racism,
Speaker 3: and stuff that mainstream culture thankfully sort of moved on
Speaker 3: from after the peak of jud Appatau romance movies, But
Speaker 3: the Manisphere never really moves on from this edge. Lord
Speaker 3: humor and you'll find time and time again that very often,
Speaker 3: after saying something completely horrific about a marginalized group, a
Speaker 3: member of the manisphere will say, what I was joking,
Speaker 3: you took me out of context A likely story. A
Speaker 3: great example of this is famous misogynist pickup artist influencer
Speaker 3: Julian Blanc was under fire back in twenty fourteen for
Speaker 3: advocating that rape should be legal if one commits that
Speaker 3: rape on their own property. Hilarious, right, and his response
Speaker 3: to the understandable backlash to this was going on to
Speaker 3: CNN and claiming that people misunderstood his hilarious joke.
Speaker 7: You intended every part of this.
Speaker 2: True intentions were never bad.
Speaker 13: I agree, it was a horrible at humor, and unfortunately
Speaker 13: a lot of it also got just put out of context.
Speaker 3: And you probably will not be surprised to hear that.
Speaker 3: Shortly after this, he returned to preaching the same stuff
Speaker 3: for years after the controversy, and all but admitted in
Speaker 3: a blog post that this apology was insincere. As for vocabulary,
Speaker 3: terms that began in the Manisphere that have since gone
Speaker 3: mainstream include obviously red and black pilling, and mis injury
Speaker 3: or a hatred of men, which started in MRA forums.
Speaker 3: There's femoids gross, and there's red pill wives, which is
Speaker 3: a particularly disturbing subgroup that consists of women who are
Speaker 3: frequently characterized as just wanting to remain in the home,
Speaker 3: which would be fine if true, but what red pill
Speaker 3: wives actually depend on is thriving on their own self
Speaker 3: hatred and projecting this same misogyny at other women using
Speaker 3: red pill logic. There's Alfa and Beta and Sigma men.
Speaker 3: The list goes on, and then there's the memes. Much
Speaker 3: of the reporting around in cells and eventually QAnon was
Speaker 3: how frequently memes spread racist and misogynist jokes that set
Speaker 3: the tone for the community while also making it a
Speaker 3: safe space to say the most fucked up thing possible.
Speaker 3: In the mid to late twenty tens, this meant stuff
Speaker 3: like the tremendously successful co opting of Pepe the Frog,
Speaker 3: a creation of comic artist Matt Fury who had nothing
Speaker 3: politically in common with the people turning his cartoon into
Speaker 3: a horrific sign of the alt right. I would recommend
Speaker 3: checking out the documentary Feels good Man for more of that.
Speaker 3: But memes let these communities say the quiet part loud
Speaker 3: while maintaining the illusion of it's just a joke. You guys, though,
Speaker 3: why a Pepe the frog in a KKK rope is
Speaker 3: funny remains. I mean, it's just hate speech, right maybe.
Speaker 3: Fast forward to twenty seventeen. Trump is inaugurated and both
Speaker 3: the Muslim band protests and the Women's March take place
Speaker 3: early this year. By this time, I had moved to
Speaker 3: California to live with my rapists, who thankfully never picked
Speaker 3: me up at the airport, and so I proceeded to
Speaker 3: become a successful comedian. At the time, though, I was
Speaker 3: working part time and doing freelance writing, much of which
Speaker 3: centered around the Me Too movement, which began in late
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen after a year where besogyny was more in
Speaker 3: mainstream discourse than ever. And in case you don't remember,
Speaker 3: there were a few moments early in the Me Too
Speaker 3: moment that made huge waves in Western culture while also
Speaker 3: indicating this movement's shortcomings from the jump now. The hashtag
Speaker 3: itself was created by Tarana Burke, a black survivor of
Speaker 3: sexual assault, on my Space all the way back in
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, but the hashtag didn't really take
Speaker 3: off in the mainstream until late twenty seventeen, the big
Speaker 3: story was Harvey Weinstein, as prominent actresses were finally comfortable
Speaker 3: enough to come forward and say that he had raped
Speaker 3: or assaulted them, thankfully leading to his likelihood of dying
Speaker 3: in prison. What I think the major accomplishment of this
Speaker 3: movement was was making it socially permissible to talk about
Speaker 3: experiences of assault, harassment, or gender discrimination of any kind.
Speaker 3: And given that the women's March Think Pussy had remember
Speaker 3: that had taken place in early twenty seventeen, Me too
Speaker 3: at the time felt like an opportunity to at least
Speaker 3: keep the conversation moving, and I was all about me
Speaker 3: too in its early days. It was during this time
Speaker 3: that I remember first hearing a swath of feminists rightfully
Speaker 3: argue for rehabilitation and deradicalization of the men who were
Speaker 3: perpetuating these abuses where I work in comedy, but at
Speaker 3: the time still being pretty fresh out of this abusive
Speaker 3: relationship and working a day job at fucking Playboy magazine,
Speaker 3: I don't want to talk about it. My response was
Speaker 3: just like rehabilitation, fuck, you, just get these men out
Speaker 3: of here, make them leave. Because this was the first
Speaker 3: moment in my adult life that that seemed even remotely possible.
Speaker 3: So in a freelance column for Pace Magazine in December
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, I wrote that the piece was literally called
Speaker 3: make them Leave. I began with the example of trying
Speaker 3: to bargain with male comedy bookers to stop giving known
Speaker 3: abusers time on their shows, and expanded my frustrations into
Speaker 3: these talks of rehabilitation in a moment where I felt
Speaker 3: like our frustration was only beginning to be addressed. Here's
Speaker 3: a passage from that I was driving from one gig
Speaker 3: to another with a friend. This passed fall when she
Speaker 3: mentioned needing to quote rehabilitate our communities unquote as it
Speaker 3: pertained to men assaulting female comedians. Voluntary wave of anger
Speaker 3: it sent through my body. Rehabilitate, make them leave. That's
Speaker 3: the least we can do. It's not my responsibility to
Speaker 3: explain to someone why they can't touch me, berate me,
Speaker 3: or rape me. Make them leave. I didn't say anything
Speaker 3: for the rest of the night. I also don't think
Speaker 3: she was wrong to bring the idea of rehabilitation into
Speaker 3: the conversation. It's a complicated issue that I think we
Speaker 3: will have to grapple with in the coming years, with
Speaker 3: predators who are finally being held accountable. Today, right now,
Speaker 3: I think we should make them fucking leave. It's weird
Speaker 3: to read this now because I don't even disagree.
Speaker 2: With what I'm saying here.
Speaker 3: I'm twenty four and in a lot of pain, and
Speaker 3: also kind of naively optimistic that writing this is going
Speaker 3: to liberate me in all of the women around me,
Speaker 3: and I do believe that white women specifically owe it
Speaker 3: to others to do some of this deradicalization and rehabilitation work.
Speaker 3: But in the moment, I was so angry that, weeks
Speaker 3: after women being able to speak freely about this, the conversation.
Speaker 2: Went back to what do we do about the men?
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 3: At the time, I was so angry and so convinced
Speaker 3: that getting these abusive men out of my sight would
Speaker 3: mean that either they would have to learn or disappear.
Speaker 3: And some of them learned, but many of them didn't,
Speaker 3: and none of them disappeared, And of course, the far
Speaker 3: reaches of the manisphere fucking hated the me too movement.
Speaker 3: Here are some comments from forums around the time.
Speaker 6: The main reason is that real victims don't get heard
Speaker 6: because hundreds of women tell us that someone accidentally touched
Speaker 6: their ass once on the bus ten years ago. It
Speaker 6: belittles women who have actually been subjected to rape or
Speaker 6: gross sexual harassment. I also wonder why women repeatedly end
Speaker 6: up alone in parks take black taxis set. Why did
Speaker 6: you ride an elevator alone with a strange man? Would
Speaker 6: a better option have been to wait for the next elevator.
Speaker 3: And this is way mild in comparison to some other
Speaker 3: stuff I saw in retrospect. I think Me Too was
Speaker 3: actually an excellent recruiting opportunity for the manispheer because for
Speaker 3: a moment, it was socially permissible for women to speak out,
Speaker 3: and the manisphere could pitch this as a moment that
Speaker 3: proved their point.
Speaker 2: Look at these women. They want you to lose your job.
Speaker 3: You can't say anything anymore, you can't do anything anymore.
Speaker 3: They're trying to ruin our lives.
Speaker 2: Now, I want to say.
Speaker 3: Me Too is a rightfully criticized movement because, as with
Speaker 3: virtually every other American feminist movement before it, its interests
Speaker 3: disproportionately prioritize the wealthy, CIS and white. This is a
Speaker 3: pretty popular point of view at this point, and while
Speaker 3: the Weinstein story initially felt like the beginning of something
Speaker 3: that could cut across class and race boundaries, that's not
Speaker 3: really what happened. So, like every feminist movement that came
Speaker 3: before it, me Too during twenty seventeen into twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: failed to get meaningful results anywhere other than with the
Speaker 3: financially privileged and mostly white. At the time, it was
Speaker 3: such a cathartic moment for speaking out about misogyny being
Speaker 3: publicly acceptable for the first time in a generation. It
Speaker 3: improved some media representation and allowed people to feel safe
Speaker 3: sharing their experiences, but the lack of an endgame led
Speaker 3: the movement to get tangled and sort of fizzle out
Speaker 3: in this whiff of pink pussy hat performativity. A few
Speaker 3: abusers being ejected from Hollywood is great, but to treat
Speaker 3: that as sufficient while women in the working class's struggles
Speaker 3: remained unchanged and largely unacknowledged.
Speaker 2: Means that enough wasn't done.
Speaker 3: Not to mention that when it came to intersectionality with
Speaker 3: trans women, this era was bad. So, while it was
Speaker 3: deeply in perfect, me Too's prominence in the media gave
Speaker 3: certain manisphere influencers the opportunity to double and triple down
Speaker 3: from soft misogynists who serve as an entry point for many.
Speaker 3: The previous generation had rash Limbaugh, we had Ben Shapiro
Speaker 3: and yeah, we got there.
Speaker 2: Guys like Joe Rogan.
Speaker 11: Is there a photo of this flat Earth?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 6: Like I just said again, there's no photo of the
Speaker 6: flat Earth from space. There's no photo of the round.
Speaker 11: Earth for a space that's not your true And.
Speaker 3: It's around this time that Rogan becomes extremely popular. He'd
Speaker 3: been around for a long time, and the podcast had
Speaker 3: been around in some form since all the way back
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine. But before that he'd been
Speaker 3: a stand up an actor, a UFC announcer. Yes, that
Speaker 3: is how he met Dana White, and my personal favorite,
Speaker 3: a guy who makes people eat bugs on TV.
Speaker 2: Fair Fact that has known.
Speaker 9: For dreaming up some of the mouse outrageous and insane
Speaker 9: stunts you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 4: Over the past three season, contests have been confronted with
Speaker 4: over one hundred and sixty five stunts.
Speaker 5: Tonight, we're gonna count down the fifteen most outrageous moments
Speaker 5: on fear Fact.
Speaker 2: Buckle up, because it's not.
Speaker 3: Gonna be pretty, and from the beginning, mister Joe presented
Speaker 3: himself as not an outright bigot, but usually a guy
Speaker 3: who would talk to anybody. I talked about this a
Speaker 3: little bit in my interview with Becca Lewis last week,
Speaker 3: but I would classify Rogan as an I'm just asking
Speaker 3: questions guy who would have people on the show that
Speaker 3: were likely to get the show a lot of attention.
Speaker 3: He does push back on guests he doesn't agree with
Speaker 3: from time to time, but the question I wish more
Speaker 3: off his fans ask themselves is if Rogan knows who
Speaker 3: these people are in advance and probably the points they'll argue,
Speaker 3: why air something he disagrees with so thoroughly You're not dumb.
Speaker 2: You know why.
Speaker 3: It wasn't and still isn't a fully political show, which
Speaker 3: I think is actually part of its appeal. It's always
Speaker 3: been very masculine. Their own website admits that ninety percent
Speaker 3: of guests are men, and the show's early recurring guests
Speaker 3: were male stand ups of Rogan's generation, guys who aren't
Speaker 3: afraid to drop us lur or a light misogyny every
Speaker 3: few sentences. But he also hosts athletes, musicians. It was
Speaker 3: a general interest show that kind of became a lifestyle
Speaker 3: marker for its longtime listeners, but occasionally, and often successfully,
Speaker 3: Rogan would platform just a full blown supremacist, male supremacist,
Speaker 3: white supremacist and heavy hitters at that Stefan Molinu, Candace Owens,
Speaker 3: Gavin McInnis, Milo Uanapolis, Jordan Peterson, Alex fucking Jones, dude,
Speaker 3: more than once.
Speaker 11: Now you find the system, you automatically know what to do.
Speaker 11: Like when you talk about something the president word for
Speaker 11: Worden repeats me Trump as what freaks them out. Word
Speaker 11: for word. The whole speech is like whole things and
Speaker 11: I'm not on a power trip. That's what they flipped
Speaker 11: out about at the CIA and everywhere else. And they're like, well,
Speaker 11: Jones is connected to Trump, and I think Trump's like
Speaker 11: an idiot savon what does.
Speaker 2: That have to do with this speech? And to get
Speaker 2: ahead of it.
Speaker 3: Yes, Rogan has also had his fair share of leftists
Speaker 3: on you're Bernie Sanders, you're Edward Snowden's and a lot
Speaker 3: of people like to cite the fact that Rogan supported
Speaker 3: Sanders in twenty twenty, but the fact remains. Rogan has
Speaker 3: said on many occasions that he books these guests himself,
Speaker 3: and so the repeated visits of white supremacists on the
Speaker 3: show is not an accident. It's been happening for over
Speaker 3: ten years. I could trace it back to twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3: And while he still hasn't been a proper guest on
Speaker 3: the show, someone who comes up a lot on the
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan Experience is one Andrew Tait. And we'll come
Speaker 3: back to Rogan and the podcast inspired by him in
Speaker 3: a little bit, but we're going to take a detour
Speaker 3: to Andrew Tait, a male suprema currently under house arrest
Speaker 3: in Romania. So if you had the pleasure of not
Speaker 3: being aware of this guy until this moment, you might
Speaker 3: be like, what's happening in Romania? And the answer is
Speaker 3: worse than you could possibly imagine. No conversation about contemporary
Speaker 3: Manisphere influencers would be complete without discussing Andrew Tait. Next
Speaker 3: to Jordan Peterson and the Fresh and Fit podcast. This
Speaker 3: is the name that's come up in most of my
Speaker 3: interviews about significant Manisphere influencers among young people.
Speaker 2: Specifically, I talked.
Speaker 3: To a middle school teacher who is beside themselves about
Speaker 3: how frequently they'd find their students engaging with his content.
Speaker 3: The content is like this.
Speaker 13: Life for a man is harder than life for a woman.
Speaker 13: We need to have a lot of shit to be
Speaker 13: an important man. To be a woman, you need makeup.
Speaker 13: If you're truly beautiful, you don't need anything else. I've
Speaker 13: been on boats in Dubai with nineteen year old Muldovan girls.
Speaker 13: The guy who got that boat needed one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 13: That bitch makeup.
Speaker 7: Never say you go in to bed.
Speaker 8: Going to bed is emasculine.
Speaker 2: Cowards need sleep.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm texting you, you beautiful girl, but I'm tired.
Speaker 12: I'm going to.
Speaker 2: Bed, you know.
Speaker 11: I like to say, at fucking court pass one in.
Speaker 13: The morning, I'm going to work, work at this time.
Speaker 2: Money never sleeps, baby.
Speaker 12: Then I go to bed, and.
Speaker 13: The most beautiful girls in the world are not walking
Speaker 13: around shopping centers in England or fucking Nebraska or Idaho
Speaker 13: or wherever you dorks do your day game.
Speaker 11: So I people go.
Speaker 2: I picked up a nine at the mall. There's no
Speaker 2: nines in that mall, you fucking moro.
Speaker 13: I could sit outside that mall for a month and
Speaker 13: analyze every single chicken walks in there. And I'll see
Speaker 13: a single nine and you're telling me every weekend you
Speaker 13: go find the only nine in the mall.
Speaker 14: Do you fuck she's a five and you're desperate.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Tate, as you can hear, is pretty high on the
Speaker 3: extremist scale, joining the cadre of Manosphere influencers who explicitly
Speaker 3: advocate for assault and rolling back women's rights. Beginning as
Speaker 3: a kickboxer and Big Brother contestant, and Tates' popularity steeply
Speaker 3: increased throughout the twenty tens through overtly misogynist ventures like
Speaker 3: Hustler's University and The Pillthinking driven the real world and
Speaker 3: to get back to Romania. This past summer, he was
Speaker 3: arrested there for charges of rape, human trafficking, and forming
Speaker 3: an organized crime group to traffic women, and the investigation
Speaker 3: has since been expanded to include charges of trafficking miners
Speaker 3: and money laundering. He is literally under house arrest for
Speaker 3: rape right now, and his content is still very popular
Speaker 3: among children, and the Tates of the world definitely need
Speaker 3: the Joe Rogans of the world to survive, because, yes,
Speaker 3: seeing this unhinged man could be appealing to a kid
Speaker 3: on its own, but to see that same unhinged man
Speaker 3: being validated as worth talking about with a prominent, well
Speaker 3: recognized figure is a legitimizing move. And again to draw
Speaker 3: a line, and that's what the I'm just asking questions
Speaker 3: corner of the manisphere really offers. It's easier for them
Speaker 3: to remain mainstream while not getting arrested, but they are
Speaker 3: open to these ideas. Okay, we're in twenty eighteen. At
Speaker 3: this time, other already existent corners of the manispheer continued
Speaker 3: to pull in new recruits, and as I'll discuss, the
Speaker 3: manisphere expanded in every subcommunity in cells, men's rights activists,
Speaker 3: pick up artists, men going their own way, and even
Speaker 3: subgroups among these categories. And what I find particularly dangerous
Speaker 3: is that both these creators and social media algorithms became
Speaker 3: very good at finding young people who fit the bill
Speaker 3: as being susceptible to this content, Young people who are
Speaker 3: insecure in their bodies or lacking in real life spaces
Speaker 3: and support systems to turn their head another way. And remember,
Speaker 3: this is an issue that's just as much driven by
Speaker 3: social issues as it is by algorithms. Algorithms are powerful tools,
Speaker 3: but the ideology is the real weapon here. Economic disparity
Speaker 3: fuels the manisphere. Like I mentioned earlier, most Manisphere participants
Speaker 3: are encouraged to see themselves in relation to their quote
Speaker 3: unquote value and success. And in an increasingly difficult economy
Speaker 3: where men are trained to project and blame this economic
Speaker 3: insecurity on women, well you can see how it can
Speaker 3: get bad pretty quickly. And so for young men who
Speaker 3: felt socially awkward or sometimes were neurodivergent, these spaces could
Speaker 3: become tremendously appealing.
Speaker 2: And that's not even to mention how young.
Speaker 3: People are targeted at In the era of the iPad kid,
Speaker 3: we see algorithms and influencers target kids as young as
Speaker 3: ten years old, according to Manisphere influencer Andrew England in
Speaker 3: a leaked Best Social Media Practices document in the early
Speaker 3: twenty twenties.
Speaker 2: And this is extreamist group that is targeting children. So
Speaker 2: why can't we call this what it is? Extreme?
Speaker 3: Misogynist groups were very slow to be classified overtly as
Speaker 3: hate groups, and their crimes were almost never called out
Speaker 3: for what the killers like Elliott Roger were explicitly telling
Speaker 3: us that they were. The Southern Poverty Law Center was
Speaker 3: the first to add male supremacy onto their registry of
Speaker 3: Hate Groups, and that wasn't until twenty eighteen. And while
Speaker 3: this was a step forward, it's a bit concerning that
Speaker 3: it took that long, given that the SPLC had been
Speaker 3: well aware of these spaces since twenty twelve, but resisted
Speaker 3: classifying them as hate groups for half a decade. According
Speaker 3: to SPLC's Arthur Goldwag in twenty.
Speaker 6: Twelve, it should be mentioned that the SPLC did not
Speaker 6: label MRAs as members of a hate movement, nor did
Speaker 6: our article claim that the grievances they air on their websites,
Speaker 6: false rape accusations, ruinous divorce settlements and the like are
Speaker 6: all without merit, but we did call out specific examples
Speaker 6: of misogyny and the threat overt or implicit of violence.
Speaker 3: And while these institutions lagged to acknowledge what the Manisphere
Speaker 3: had become, others took it upon themselves to try and
Speaker 3: slow its spread. Following the twenty sixteen election and the
Speaker 3: Me Too movement, there was a series of online creators
Speaker 3: and thinkers who were beginning to see the Manisphere for
Speaker 3: what it was, increasing in both toxicity and size, and
Speaker 3: a space that needed to be deradicalized. If there was
Speaker 3: any chance of decreasing its influence. There were many people
Speaker 3: doing this work at the time, but I'm going to
Speaker 3: hone in on the YouTuber who I've heard most commonly
Speaker 3: cited by young men who were deradicalized around this time
Speaker 3: and in the years since. Contra points a very talented
Speaker 3: creator who is no stranger to being a main character herself.
Speaker 3: I watched these videos at the time they were released, too,
Speaker 3: and they're extremely good.
Speaker 2: Natalie, when the channel's ou.
Speaker 3: Tour and researcher, brought the perspective of a transwoman to
Speaker 3: the conversation and acknowledged that when she was living and
Speaker 3: being socially conditioned as a man, that she found the
Speaker 3: in cell and other irony pill p hate forums appealing
Speaker 3: because of the validation it gave her of her discomfort
Speaker 3: in her own body and an answer for why she
Speaker 3: was so frustrated. Of course, this answer was not true.
Speaker 3: Once Natalie began to explore her gender, identify as non binary,
Speaker 3: and eventually came out as a transwoman, she was world
Speaker 3: happier than she was living as a man who hated women.
Speaker 3: Using this experience, in addition to incredible research, talent delivery,
Speaker 3: and oh my God aesthetics. Natalie was able to bring
Speaker 3: personal experience in an impressive amount of thoughtfulness regarding these groups,
Speaker 3: and critically, she knew how to speak their language. To
Speaker 3: give you an idea of how these videos were structured,
Speaker 3: here's a clip from in Cells, a twenty eighteen video
Speaker 3: that has six million views at the time of this writing.
Speaker 12: The word in cell refers to a more specific community
Speaker 12: of mostly heterosexual men centered around forums like incell, dot
Speaker 12: me and r slash brain Cells. This group has recently
Speaker 12: gotten a lot of bad press because for the last
Speaker 12: few years they've been churning out mass murderers faster than
Speaker 12: Marvel can make Avengers movies. But most in cells aren't
Speaker 12: violent killers. They're just men who've formed an identity around
Speaker 12: not getting laid. In this video, I don't want to
Speaker 12: mock in cells, or lecture them, or even sympathize with them.
Speaker 12: I just want to understand who they are and why
Speaker 12: they're like this.
Speaker 3: Natalie Winn's strategy was extremely successful at the time because,
Speaker 3: unlike so many media outlets that were ignoring or miscovering
Speaker 3: the issue, she understood that to reach disaffected in cells
Speaker 3: it was ultimately an algorithmic game. So in order to
Speaker 3: get her videos seen, she was using the same hashtags,
Speaker 3: the same aesthetics, the same language that extremist in cell
Speaker 3: videos were, and she had a lot of success in
Speaker 3: covertly infiltrating the YouTube algorithms of the insel curious and
Speaker 3: effectively showing them some empathy and encouraging them to know
Speaker 3: themselves better versus you know, signing a Sea Org style
Speaker 3: infinity contract to hate women forever. And this turned into
Speaker 3: a series of videos that got the ContraPoints channel a
Speaker 3: lot of attention, but became too large of a burden
Speaker 3: for one person, and so eventually she moved on to
Speaker 3: other topics. And besides, her algorithmic strategy only worked as
Speaker 3: long as.
Speaker 2: That was the way that the algorithm was.
Speaker 3: As we've talked about countless times on this show, the
Speaker 3: YouTube algorithm was all but unmonitored in the mid to
Speaker 3: late twenty tens and was very difficult to do well consistently.
Speaker 3: Within Natalie successful algorithm infiltration and validates a consistent truth
Speaker 3: in the manisphere. YouTube is an integral part of it.
Speaker 3: After all, YouTube is now more popular than standard television
Speaker 3: among young men, and as of the early twenty twenties
Speaker 3: was the most used site in the world. I don't
Speaker 3: think the fact that Rogan began his podcast on YouTube
Speaker 3: all the way back in two thousand and nine is
Speaker 3: any coincidence. Maybe a lucky mistake, but what his ideology
Speaker 3: became makes it clear that the YouTube algorithm that favors
Speaker 3: his guest with extreme or weird views has worked consistently.
Speaker 2: And make no mistake, YouTube's.
Speaker 3: Algorithm was also a part of why Manisphere spaces were
Speaker 3: so successful at bringing new people in at higher rates
Speaker 3: in the mid to late twenty tens, and I want
Speaker 3: to be careful here and not blame this growth of
Speaker 3: the Manisphere on the algorithm wholesale. In our interview last week,
Speaker 3: Beccaluis emphasized that this spirit of misogyny was already very
Speaker 3: much normalized. But what algorithms can do by serving users
Speaker 3: the same shit over and over and over is make
Speaker 3: a user's worst instinct seem like a far more mainstream
Speaker 3: opinion than it actually is. If your algorithm is flooded
Speaker 3: with Manisphere content and you don't fully understand how that
Speaker 3: algorithm works, it's easy to envision a world where a
Speaker 3: kid can think, oh, everyone must feel this way. Studies
Speaker 3: now indicate that changes to the YouTube algorithm made in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen have pretty effectively slowed the unhinged radicalization phase
Speaker 3: we heard talked about so much during the twenty sixteen
Speaker 3: election cycle and beyond. But it won't surprise you to
Speaker 3: hear that this happened, let's say, about half a decade
Speaker 3: too late.
Speaker 2: It's great that.
Speaker 3: The algorithm is no longer directly targeting people to be radicalized,
Speaker 3: but once someone is radicalized, as ContraPoints discusses in her videos,
Speaker 3: it takes a lot of time and effort to undo that.
Speaker 3: And it's no surprise that in those years of algorithmic
Speaker 3: infinite growth from the highest up at YouTube, the value
Speaker 3: of their platform skyrocketed, going from a valuation of one
Speaker 3: point seven billion in twenty twelve two fifteen billion in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, and its value has only continued to rise
Speaker 3: from there. Fixing and tweaking the algorithm is good, but
Speaker 3: let's not give them a shred of credits. YouTube waited
Speaker 3: until bad pr via lawsuits and public pressure made it
Speaker 3: advantageous to change their algorithm, certainly not when they first
Speaker 3: became aware of it. And remember, as Andrew England said
Speaker 3: people in the Manisphere were targeting young men specifically, and
Speaker 3: men ages eighteen to forty nine want more YouTube than
Speaker 3: they do anything else. I regret to inform you that
Speaker 3: we are still in twenty eighteen because another inflection point
Speaker 3: in the US for the Manisphere was the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.
Speaker 3: I and probably you remember these vividly. I was sitting
Speaker 3: next to producer of this show, Sophie Lichterman, at work
Speaker 3: during these hearings, as a woman named Christine blasi Ford
Speaker 3: came forward to accuse Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Speaker 8: I believed he was going to rape me. I tried
Speaker 8: to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his
Speaker 8: hand over my mouth to stop me from yelling. This
Speaker 8: is what terrified me the most and has had the
Speaker 8: most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for
Speaker 8: me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally
Speaker 8: going to kill me.
Speaker 3: Unlike many aspects of the Me Too movement, most manashre
Speaker 3: forum spaces met this moment with unbelievable cruelty, but others,
Speaker 3: the just asking questions guys took a slightly softer approach.
Speaker 3: Sure it's possible that Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist, but
Speaker 3: what if there's some ulterior motive as to why Ford
Speaker 3: came forward. Here's Rogan around this time.
Speaker 5: Like I'm fascinated by these Kavanaugh hearings, like I watched
Speaker 5: little clips of it before. I just have to tune
Speaker 5: out and talk away from Mary talk about fuckery. I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't know what that dude did or what he
Speaker 5: didn't do, but I think what's happening is more than that.
Speaker 3: Again, there's no one way that these spaces approach big
Speaker 3: cultural moments like this. Everyone in the media had something
Speaker 3: to say about the Kavanaugh hearings, and it remains a
Speaker 3: cultural touch point to the extent that a secretly Republican
Speaker 3: spinning instructor in Maine jump scared my entire class last
Speaker 3: summer when she began to play a Kavanaugh testimony house
Speaker 3: music remix. I'm serious, by the way, spinning is that sexy,
Speaker 3: weirdly Christian stationary bike thing.
Speaker 4: Which I gladly do, in which I fully embrace working.
Speaker 11: Out, automatic, whacking out automatic, the Catholic all girls' schools
Speaker 11: automatic still is.
Speaker 3: I will never understand in any case. The manosphere mocked, harassed,
Speaker 3: and doxed Christine Blasi Ford, lamenting that this moment was
Speaker 3: yet another example of what feminists were trying to take
Speaker 3: from them, which is interesting because Brett Kavanagh was sworn
Speaker 3: in and has gone on to vote in such horrific
Speaker 3: legislations such as overturning Roe v. Wade, voting yes on
Speaker 3: Grant's pass, a recent Supreme Court decision that makes being
Speaker 3: unhoused and arrestable offense, and of course the presidential immunity
Speaker 3: that I'm sure will not at all benefit his homie
Speaker 3: Donald Trump in his upcoming eternity term. And this testimony
Speaker 3: came less than a year after the Me Too movement began,
Speaker 3: so consider how quickly the public tone changed. The questions
Speaker 3: that Christine Blasi Ford endured from an all male Republican
Speaker 3: committee pretty closely reflected that of Anita Hill's experience all
Speaker 3: the way back in nineteen ninety one, after Hill had
Speaker 3: leveraged Alleghani of assault and harassment against Supreme Court Justice
Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas. And I'm resisting getting into how mad these
Speaker 3: decisions make me, but the point is the institution one here. Yes,
Speaker 3: it was challenged and Ford received a lot of support,
Speaker 3: but Kavanaugh was sworn in and went on to enforce
Speaker 3: all the far right policies that antagonize anyone less marginalized
Speaker 3: than himself as intended. But the minisphere continues to cite
Speaker 3: this hearing as a public humiliation. That is a problem.
Speaker 3: So why are they doing that. I'm not saying anything
Speaker 3: new here, but I firmly believe it's because being called
Speaker 3: out for their abuse of women is embarrassing for men.
Speaker 3: The aggressor is afraid of being made to feel small,
Speaker 3: and the person who is an object to them is
Speaker 3: afraid of being killed.
Speaker 2: And the more marginalized.
Speaker 3: They are, this risk increases. But by this time the
Speaker 3: Overton window for the American public.
Speaker 2: Had clearly shifted right.
Speaker 3: American men pulled before and after the Ford testimony generally
Speaker 3: said that women were more likely to scapegoat and harm
Speaker 3: the lives of the careers of men than they had
Speaker 3: been before. You didn't need to be an active part
Speaker 3: of the manisphere to be profoundly affected by it. And
Speaker 3: there's more to the manisphere historically that we could get into.
Speaker 3: We could talk about the right leaning or far right
Speaker 3: communities that have significant overlap with the manisphere. Flat earthers QAnon.
Speaker 3: I could keep going, but we'd be here for six hours,
Speaker 3: and I promised this series would be the basics. So
Speaker 3: let's get back to Joe Rogan. In twenty twenty, Broken
Speaker 3: Show was popular enough to pull the biggest podcast deal
Speaker 3: in history, a two hundred million dollar exclusivity deal with
Speaker 3: Spotify that quite literally changed the medium forever. Thanks for
Speaker 3: fucking nothing, but he was just that big at the time.
Speaker 3: He averaged around eleven million listeners in episode across platform
Speaker 3: while welcoming guests like Ben Shapiro and Dan Crenshaw and
Speaker 3: Tony Hawk. That's nice, but it's no coincidence that Rogan
Speaker 3: never had to pivot to video the way that many
Speaker 3: podcasts are struggling to now. Rogan was pulling more from
Speaker 3: the traditional radio setups that had launched early Manisphere figures
Speaker 3: like Rush Limbaugh and seamlessly made it work for a
Speaker 3: new technological landscape. Another great example of this is Charlemagne
Speaker 3: the Gods blockbuster radio show The Breakfast Club, which began
Speaker 3: as a radio show around the same time that Rogan
Speaker 3: premiered in twenty ten and then became a nationally syndicated
Speaker 3: show in twenty thirteen and expanded to the Internet with
Speaker 3: a lot of success, and yes, Charlemagne platforms a lot
Speaker 3: of the same misogynist and particularly homophobic and transphobic messaging
Speaker 3: that's characteristic across the manisphere.
Speaker 2: What about interns here she said that you make music
Speaker 2: for gays, I do. I'm not. The Internet looked at me.
Speaker 6: With that nothing, So no, I'm saying now, I mean
Speaker 6: it's not specifically for that audience.
Speaker 2: You just make music, right.
Speaker 3: I guess that was Azalia Banks. We don't have time
Speaker 3: and there were plenty of imitators pulling from the Rogan
Speaker 3: Charlemagne playbook, including Theo Vaughn, another stand up who hosted
Speaker 3: a string of podcasts over the course of a decade
Speaker 3: before he started his own I'm Just a Guy Asking
Speaker 3: Questions video podcast to tremendous success. And so by the
Speaker 3: time Donald Trump is doing this speed run of I'm
Speaker 3: Just Asking question manisphere podcasters in twenty twenty four, UFC
Speaker 3: founder Dana White gives a specific list of people to
Speaker 3: think in this space during Trump's acceptance event.
Speaker 14: I want to thank some people real quick. I want
Speaker 14: to thank the Note Boys, Aiden Ross, Theo Vaughn, Bustle
Speaker 14: with the Boys, and last but not least the mighty
Speaker 14: and powerful Joe Rogan.
Speaker 3: And this is fascinating because, based on what I have
Speaker 3: learned and talked to other people about, these shows don't
Speaker 3: represent the Manisphere as it's existed in the last ten years,
Speaker 3: but rather expands the definition of the Manisphere to include
Speaker 3: male dominated, misogyny fueled media spaces that have explicitly endorsed
Speaker 3: or share the values of Donald Trump. Trump is now
Speaker 3: inextricable from this space, and that would be an inconceivable
Speaker 3: way to describe the Manisphere a decade ago, but I
Speaker 3: think that that's probably how we'll hear it referred to
Speaker 3: moving forward. And all of these men have experienced gaming
Speaker 3: the algorithm online. The Nilk Boys began as highly successful prankvloggers,
Speaker 3: much like fellow Trump supporters Jake and Logan. Paul Aiden
Speaker 3: Ross is a twenty something edge lord gaming streamer who
Speaker 3: got booted off Twitch for saying slurs, hosted white supremacist
Speaker 3: Nick Quentez on his streams, and is a close personal
Speaker 3: friend of Andrew Tate himself. Trump's appearances ranged from the
Speaker 3: guys asking questions like Rogan and Theovaughn, to the full
Speaker 3: blown extremists like Aiden Ross, and while it's fully possible
Speaker 3: that a handful of these guys might be deplatforms someday,
Speaker 3: if there's anything that this space has demonstrated to me
Speaker 3: is that when one manisphere influencers fall, three pop out
Speaker 3: of nowhere to take this fallen figure's place. And when
Speaker 3: people talk about building their own Joe Rogan or whatever
Speaker 3: the fuck, that's not possible for so many reasons, the
Speaker 3: primary of which is that the left just does not
Speaker 3: have the money that the far right does. Taylor Lorenz
Speaker 3: made this point explicit in an election post mortem in
Speaker 3: User mag writing, the conservative media landscape in the United
Speaker 3: States is exceptionally well funded, meticulously constructed, and highly coordinated.
Speaker 3: Wealthy donors, packs and corporations with a vested interest in
Speaker 3: preserving or expanding conservative policies strategically invest in right wing
Speaker 3: media channels and up and coming content creators. This creates
Speaker 3: a well oiled pipeline for conservative influencers. Young TikTokers, YouTubers,
Speaker 3: live streamers, or podcasters are discovered, developed, and pushed to
Speaker 3: larger platforms, often with the financial backing of conservative billionaires
Speaker 3: or organizations on the right who have long recognized the
Speaker 3: content creator industry as a valuable means of shaping public
Speaker 3: opinion and policy. Look, I didn't say it was encouraging news.
Speaker 3: YouTube remains the most popular place for this, but as
Speaker 3: streaming platforms continue to become more successful, so did the
Speaker 3: extremists that populate them. Look no further than the top
Speaker 3: ten streamers on Twitch the night of the election, with
Speaker 3: only one left leaning creator, a snpiker, obviously getting meaningful
Speaker 3: numbers while the rest were right wing streams. And if
Speaker 3: you get deep platform from Twitch, no problem. There's a
Speaker 3: right wing alternative in the form of Kick, where Aidan
Speaker 3: Ross had to switch to after his third twitchban. So
Speaker 3: I know that this was a lot of information, But
Speaker 3: how I see this space moving forward? This new manisphere
Speaker 3: is going to exist with a gradient. At its most extreme,
Speaker 3: it's full on take the women's right to vote and
Speaker 3: get them back in the home style male supremacy, And
Speaker 3: at its most mild, it's taking those.
Speaker 2: Same people and saying, I don't know, let's hear what
Speaker 2: he has to say.
Speaker 3: Misogyny will remain the bait because a dismissal of women
Speaker 3: has always been generally socially acceptable, and so many creators,
Speaker 3: along with the algorithms who push them will essentially test
Speaker 3: the waters of someone's ideology by introducing misogyny. Oh you
Speaker 3: watched a full video about how the me too movement
Speaker 3: went too far? Maybe you'll watch this video, Maybe you'll
Speaker 3: join this community.
Speaker 2: And it's not said enough. Most won't, but some will.
Speaker 3: And the more this content is pushed, the more likely
Speaker 3: it is that young men will give it a try.
Speaker 3: So is there any fucking hope of navigating out of this?
Speaker 3: On Thursday I will talk to two experts who have
Speaker 3: spent years asking that same question. My conversations with ft
Speaker 3: Signifier and Robert Evans. Up next on Into the MANI Sphere.
Speaker 3: Sixteenth Minute is a production of Whole Zone Media and Iheartwordopps.
Speaker 2: It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Lostus.
Speaker 3: Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 3: amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 2: from Grant, Crater and Pet.
Speaker 3: Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson, my Kats Flee
Speaker 3: and Casper and my pet Rothbert, who will outlive us all.
Speaker 2: Bye