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Speaker 1: Colson Media.

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Speaker 2: I'm not stop, surn up, starts going, club, moment times start, stay, get.

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Speaker 3: The excuse me mom.

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Speaker 1: Siste six.

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Speaker 4: Six character.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where, for most episodes

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Speaker 1: we talk to a main character of the Internet and

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Speaker 1: talk to them about how their moment affected them and

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Speaker 1: what it says about us and the Internet. I am

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Speaker 1: your host, Jamie Loftus and feminism is a part of

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Speaker 1: my whole thing, like it or not, which is why

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Speaker 1: for the next three weeks we are going to be

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Speaker 1: taking a look at one of the greatest churners of

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Speaker 1: main characters in the Internet's history. Bear with me. The Manisphere,

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Speaker 1: I know, and I'm not sure what troubles me more

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Speaker 1: the fact that some people listening like me have known

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Speaker 1: this term for years, or that people remain blissfully unaware

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Speaker 1: have to know what it is now. The manisphere, in short,

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Speaker 1: is a loosely connected media environment that consists of podcasts,

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Speaker 1: YouTube channels, TikTok accounts, and a shitload of intersection therein

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Speaker 1: that promote at bare minimum misogynistic but often transphobic, homophobic,

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Speaker 1: and racist ideals as well. It's white supremacy leading with misogyny,

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Speaker 1: but it's not that simple. Many of the shows and

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Speaker 1: personalities we'll be talking about in this series began that way,

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Speaker 1: and others became that way, And even so this is

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Speaker 1: to varying degrees. There are believe it or not podcasts

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Speaker 1: very successfully marketed to young men that will casually drop

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Speaker 1: that women shouldn't be able to vote. This is a

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Speaker 1: tweet from the Fresh and Fit podcast.

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Speaker 3: A woman's vote should be fifty percent of a man's vote.

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Speaker 3: Women aren't in selective service and don't work in infrastructure

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Speaker 3: by choice, so they shouldn't have as much of a

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Speaker 3: say in the elective process.

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Speaker 1: Sure thing fellas they are should not. But then there

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Speaker 1: are personalities that have been getting a lot of airtime

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Speaker 1: since the election, like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn, who

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Speaker 1: weren't necessarily always so outwardly open to promote a fascist

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Speaker 1: that they would be considered a part of the manisphere,

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Speaker 1: but they are very open to platforming any number of misogynist,

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Speaker 1: white supremacist, boldly fascistic people on their platforms. Joe Rogan,

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Speaker 1: as many have pointed out, hosted and endorsed My boy

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Speaker 1: Bernard Sanders back in twenty twenty, but just a few

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Speaker 1: weeks ago, he was shouted out by the founder of

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Speaker 1: UFC Ultimate Fighting Championship, Dana White, during a Trump acceptance speech.

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Speaker 5: I want to thank some people real quick. I want

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Speaker 5: to thank the No Boys, Aiden Ross, Theo, Vaughan Bosto

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Speaker 5: with the Boys, and last but not least, the mighty

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Speaker 5: and powerful Joe Rogan.

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Speaker 1: So everyone Dana White is mentioning. Here are Manisphere influencers

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Speaker 1: who hosted Trump or explicitly endorsed him in the weeks

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Speaker 1: leading up to the election, and they are all very

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Speaker 1: successful among young men and have garnered millions upon millions

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Speaker 1: of impressions on Trump's behalf in the weeks leading up

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Speaker 1: to the election. It's not the reason he won. I

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Speaker 1: really don't believe that. To say that is to miss

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Speaker 1: the force for the trees, but it certainly seems to

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Speaker 1: have helped. Podcasts are a very parasocial medium where it's

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Speaker 1: easy to sell people ideology over time, after establishing a

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Speaker 1: trusted relationship with your listeners. Please buy my book Raw Dog.

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Speaker 1: The conversation here is not a simple one, and I

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Speaker 1: am probably not going to get everything right because this

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Speaker 1: requires taking a look at the history of American misogynist spaces,

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Speaker 1: and while women and transfolks have never reached parody, this

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Speaker 1: is sliding backwards significantly even in the last few years.

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Speaker 1: In the month since the twenty twenty four election, young

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Speaker 1: women on college campuses are already reporting higher rates of

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Speaker 1: emboldened comments from men their age, inspired by comments like

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Speaker 1: Nick fuent as, is your body my choice? In the

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Speaker 1: same token, I don't want to participate in a moral

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Speaker 1: panic by implying that all young men are under this umbrella.

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Speaker 1: That's not true. But the fact that you young men

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Speaker 1: are feeling more comfortable and are being more actively encouraged

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Speaker 1: to be openly misogynistic is pretty undeniable. But recently I

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Speaker 1: have seen overwhelmingly unproductive conversations that scapegoat this space as

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Speaker 1: the problem and not what it is, in my opinion,

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Speaker 1: which is a symptom of a larger issue. So in

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Speaker 1: our first installment, I'm going to give you a short

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Speaker 1: overview of what we're even talking about when we say

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Speaker 1: man is is fear mainly because my mom listens to

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Speaker 1: this show and she drives to work, and I'm aiming

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Speaker 1: to have her and you have a better understanding of it.

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Speaker 1: It's vast. It's hard to categorize. It's overrun with deflective,

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Speaker 1: ironic humor that distances the salesman of this ideology from

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Speaker 1: what they're actually saying. And today I'll tell you a

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Speaker 1: little about it and speak to a journalist who's been

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Speaker 1: studying it much longer than I have. But before we start,

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Speaker 1: I want to share where I am feeling at the

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Speaker 1: top of this series, because I think that a lot

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Speaker 1: of what is lacking from what I've seen in these conversations,

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Speaker 1: mostly those led by men, is a lack of personal experience.

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Speaker 1: And I'll cite my sources here. I get why the

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Speaker 1: manisphere is a simple target here, but I want to

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Speaker 1: start by saying that understanding and if possible, working to

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Speaker 1: dismantle this space would not solve the larger issue. It's

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Speaker 1: not a bad instinct, and I don't want anyone to

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Speaker 1: feel silly, because I get why the question is asked.

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Speaker 1: But if there's anything I've learned from having participated in

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Speaker 1: and carefully observed the last decade of feminist action, identifying

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Speaker 1: the problem and pushing people out of our spaces is

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Speaker 1: a step in a much larger, more complicated process. If

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Speaker 1: you want to get to the meat of this episode,

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Speaker 1: skip ahead about ten minutes, but I want to start

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Speaker 1: by kind of couching how I'm going to approach this

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Speaker 1: topic using my own experience first, So if you'd like

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Speaker 1: to stay, be warned that I will brief discussing sexual

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Speaker 1: abuse here. Three two be in play, A little fart

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Speaker 1: noise one great where postfart. It's the trigger zone as

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Speaker 1: it pertains to the manisphere. The more I dug into

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Speaker 1: this world and its increasing influence, the more I genuinely

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Speaker 1: fear that, on top of the policies that this space encourages,

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Speaker 1: rolling back already insufficient and hateful policies towards trans people,

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Speaker 1: fucking row being gone. The list goes on, I worry

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Speaker 1: about how these conversations are still centering on men. So

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Speaker 1: the first thing is I worry about the targets of

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Speaker 1: these men, once again not being asked to interrogate the

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Speaker 1: way that they're perceived and treated, because that was my experience.

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Speaker 1: I was in college in the early twenty tens when

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Speaker 1: I was repeatedly sexually assaulted, and while that was a

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Speaker 1: million years ago in internet terms, it is quite historically recent.

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Speaker 1: And I do think that with the sheer density of

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Speaker 1: the last decade and the discombobulation of COVID lockdown era.

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Speaker 1: A lot of us sometimes failed to see how much

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Speaker 1: has changed in Western culture in the last decade, which

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Speaker 1: is why it sometimes confuses people when I tell them

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Speaker 1: that when a partner repeatedly assaulted me just a little

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Speaker 1: over a decade ago, I didn't have the tools to

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Speaker 1: understand what was happening and internalized all of it as

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Speaker 1: my fault. Tale as old as time, and the reasons

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Speaker 1: why are more complicated than I realized at the time.

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Speaker 1: Keeping as simple, the city I grew up in did

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Speaker 1: not have a lot of sex education, basically none. In

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Speaker 1: my case. It wasn't because the state I lived in

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Speaker 1: was draconian about abstinence only education. I'm from a firmly

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Speaker 1: blue state, but rather because where I'm from was lower

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Speaker 1: middle class to poor and was generally underfunded, whose status

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Speaker 1: as a majority non white city in the Great State

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Speaker 1: of mack Wahlberg often led to to our schools getting

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Speaker 1: fucked over big time. When I got to my fancy

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Speaker 1: little arts college, I knew very little about sex and

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Speaker 1: specifically consent. Really just my own experience and what I'd

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Speaker 1: learned from watching TV and movies I'd been with my

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Speaker 1: high school boyfriend for years who was very respectful and loving,

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Speaker 1: and part way through college, I joined a comedy group.

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Speaker 1: I had pretty intense social anxiety then and now and

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Speaker 1: didn't want to go to the welcome party for the

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Speaker 1: group when I got in, but a guy in the

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Speaker 1: group told me that I had to in order to join,

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Speaker 1: so I went. I was one of three girls in

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Speaker 1: a group of around twelve. I didn't make my drinks

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Speaker 1: that whole night, and then hours later I woke up

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Speaker 1: on a couch being assaulted by whoever was behind me.

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Speaker 1: I didn't even know who I was scared. I had

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Speaker 1: just woken up, and I just let it happen, because

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Speaker 1: once I realized I was being violated, my first thought

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Speaker 1: was how could I let this happen? And as it

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Speaker 1: was happening, I tried to focus and think of one

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Speaker 1: of four men that it could have been behind me

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Speaker 1: and what to do when I turned around and saw

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Speaker 1: who it was, and I clearly remember thinking who would

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Speaker 1: I be least upset to learn was doing this to me?

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Speaker 1: And I feel comfortable sharing that I have a therapist.

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Speaker 1: The point is this was twenty twelve, and I did

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Speaker 1: not know that this was assault. I spent that whole

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Speaker 1: weekend placating my assaulter once I learned who it was,

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Speaker 1: thinking I was this horrible slut who had cheated on

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Speaker 1: my high school boyfriend, and I ended the relationship of

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Speaker 1: over three years out of shame. And to his credit,

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Speaker 1: he was the only person in my life to tell

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Speaker 1: me that he didn't think that I had done anything wrong,

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Speaker 1: but I was so convinced that I had. I had

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Speaker 1: no anecdotal proof that I hadn't, including conversations with friends

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Speaker 1: and family. So when my assaulter got in touch and

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Speaker 1: asked if I wanted to start dating him, I thought

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Speaker 1: I had to because I had made this horrific transgression

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Speaker 1: and I had to make it right. And I was

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Speaker 1: afraid that if I didn't agree to date him, I

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Speaker 1: would be sort of ostracized within this comedy group, something

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Speaker 1: I had worked to be a part of for years,

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Speaker 1: and I really didn't want to lose that. So hopefully

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Speaker 1: this dynamic sounds fucking nuts now, but I want to

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Speaker 1: repeat at this time, I had a support system. I

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Speaker 1: had peers and adults I could and did go to

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Speaker 1: about this issue, most of whom were other women. And

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Speaker 1: what was scary was that most of them, particularly older

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Speaker 1: figures at the school and in my family, also did

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Speaker 1: not understand that this was assault and that I hadn't

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Speaker 1: done anything wrong. And to this day I don't know

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Speaker 1: to what degree my assaulter had been educated or conditioned

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Speaker 1: to blow past a no, whether it was a case

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Speaker 1: of he knew better and didn't care, or that he

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Speaker 1: was operating on what he had seen and observed in media,

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Speaker 1: I might never know. So again, this is in the

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Speaker 1: twenty tens, and I would end up in this relationship

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Speaker 1: that had begun with sexual assault for about three years.

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Speaker 1: You will probably not be surprised to hear this was

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Speaker 1: not the last assault that took place, and that the

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Speaker 1: instance of assault that finally made me realize what was

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Speaker 1: happening would come months later and was far more straightforward.

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Speaker 1: I said no, and it happened anyways. And while it

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Speaker 1: took a long time to extract myself from this relationship fully,

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Speaker 1: hopefully you know it often takes people in abusive relationships

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Speaker 1: a lot of time to leave for all these different reasons.

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Speaker 1: I can tell you the exact moment I began to

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Speaker 1: realize that what was happening to me wasn't right. This

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Speaker 1: was within a few months of my first assault, when

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Speaker 1: a fellow student at my college, which began to speak

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Speaker 1: out against the school's failure to address her own campus's assault.

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Speaker 1: The mid twenty tens had become this inflection point for

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Speaker 1: discussing the widespread rape culture on college campuses. Big examples

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Speaker 1: were a Yale fraternity that both George Bush's had previously

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Speaker 1: been members of, was suspended for five years because of

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Speaker 1: the rampant allegations of rape, and the brock Turner case

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Speaker 1: caused a lot of debate and clarification that campus rape

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Speaker 1: was not less of an offense than any other. And

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Speaker 1: even today it still feels a little embarrassing to admit.

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Speaker 1: But it wasn't until I read stories and accounts that

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Speaker 1: were similar to mine that it was a wake up

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Speaker 1: call that this had happened to me too. I didn't

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Speaker 1: think of myself as someone who had experienced assault because

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Speaker 1: I hadn't seen anything that had happened to me characterized

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Speaker 1: as that. My understanding of rape was that it couldn't

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Speaker 1: happen by someone you knew, and that it couldn't happen

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Speaker 1: while you were drunk. I really just did not know

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Speaker 1: and not to be callous, but I couldn't have been

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Speaker 1: assaulted at a more annoying time. I think twenty thirteen

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Speaker 1: was a year that people were really waking up to

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Speaker 1: this issue, specifically with college students, and you know, if

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Speaker 1: this guy had waited another year to do one of

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Speaker 1: the worst things that's ever happened to me, I think

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Speaker 1: that the conversation and my experience might be a little different.

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Speaker 1: But he didn't, so it wasn't. I went to a

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Speaker 1: school counselor at Emerson College and they said, sorry, if

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Speaker 1: it happn'ed off campus, they can't help me. And besides,

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Speaker 1: I had been drinking at this party. I went to

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Speaker 1: people in our comedy group, people my age, and everyone,

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Speaker 1: including other young women, nodded and said they were sorry,

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Speaker 1: but either no one believed me or no one knew

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Speaker 1: what to do. And so by the end of that year,

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Speaker 1: I wasn't just feeling out of my fucking mind and

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Speaker 1: self harming, but I felt like, oh, I guess I

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Speaker 1: was wrong and I need to stay with this person

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Speaker 1: and make things okay. This is just my experience, but like,

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Speaker 1: being assaulted was horrible, but being surrounded by people I

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Speaker 1: trusted who felt the same way my assaulter did was

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Speaker 1: more painful than anything in retrospect, I don't really know

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Speaker 1: who in my life felt that this was a problem

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Speaker 1: that was worth taking seriously. And while I held anger

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Speaker 1: about it, particularly towards other women, for a long time,

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Speaker 1: I don't know that any of them knew any more

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Speaker 1: than I did about consent or assault, or what we

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Speaker 1: should expect in terms of autonomy and respect. And if

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Speaker 1: I hadn't encountered stories like that other student on my

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Speaker 1: campus and later seeing Amma sulkowit this mattress performance in

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Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, where they carried the mattress they'd been assaulted

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Speaker 1: on to protest Columbia University's unwillingness to address the assault.

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Speaker 1: I genuinely don't know how long it would have taken

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Speaker 1: me to understand that I wasn't crazy and that what

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Speaker 1: happened wasn't okay. But again, I was coming from a

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Speaker 1: pretty privileged place, and I still had no information, And

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Speaker 1: the less information you have, the more danger there is

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Speaker 1: in a culture where discussion around rape culture and gender

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Speaker 1: discrimination and subjugating other people's bodies is run by men.

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Speaker 1: I say all this because while I think centering the

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Speaker 1: manisphere as the problem is a mistake. I know that

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Speaker 1: it is a problem. My big fear here is that

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Speaker 1: while the progress feminists have made in the last decade

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Speaker 1: is characteristically flawed in intersectionality, as it always is, that

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Speaker 1: there could be a teenager right now or in the

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Speaker 1: near future who does not have the information to understand

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Speaker 1: that they have been violated and will internalize it as

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Speaker 1: a personal failure. I worry about seeing the progress I

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Speaker 1: have seen be replaced with Manisphere grifters who will always

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Speaker 1: get algorithmic preference and be far better funded than their opposition.

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Speaker 1: As things are now, it feels like twenty thirteen all

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Speaker 1: over again, but worse because back then my assault could

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Speaker 1: at least claim to not understand how consent worked and

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Speaker 1: never be educated on it. But now there's people saying,

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Speaker 1: your body, my choice. They understand consent, they just don't

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Speaker 1: care about it. And I want to do everything in

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Speaker 1: my power to prevent anyone from going through what I did,

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Speaker 1: or even less. What the manisphere in its current state

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Speaker 1: is is a lot of highly monetized, regressive rhetoric that

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Speaker 1: is aiming for young people specifically. I believe that then

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Speaker 1: and now it's the people who have suffered tremendously under

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Speaker 1: patriarchy and white supremacy who are always asked to do

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Speaker 1: the most difficult work in deradicalizing and preventing its spread.

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Speaker 1: There's many other reasons I want to discuss the manispherer

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Speaker 1: but I share this example to make two points. Points

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Speaker 1: first and foremost that what happened to me was a

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Speaker 1: pretty decisive systemic failure. Neither me nor most of my

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Speaker 1: support system were equipped with information, and every institution from

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Speaker 1: the college to the Boston fucking Police did nothing. However,

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Speaker 1: the manisphere does come in here and amplified the problem

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Speaker 1: because in the middle of this relationship came gamer Gate,

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Speaker 1: a targeted harassment campaign of women in gaming that the

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Speaker 1: men I was surrounded by, including my assaulter, were decidedly

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Speaker 1: on the wrong side of, and came up a lot.

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Speaker 1: The way that the manisphere affects people and exacerbates existing

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Speaker 1: problems has only gotten worse in the last decade, and

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Speaker 1: I do feel a certain amount of responsibility to try

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Speaker 1: and have a coherent conversation about it. Because, to get

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Speaker 1: back to the point of this, show boy has this

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Speaker 1: space generated a lot of main character misogynists. And here

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Speaker 1: we are in a space where our technology increasingly makes

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Speaker 1: it difficult not just to understand where the people who

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Speaker 1: hate us are coming from, but what they're even fucking seeing.

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Speaker 1: So if you're in a similar headspace right now and

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Speaker 1: not sure how to have these conversations, or if you're

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Speaker 1: shaking out of a manisphere fog, that's where I am

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Speaker 1: coming from. That is why I would like to interrogate

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Speaker 1: and understand these spaces. I do believe that it's important

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Speaker 1: to understand a space in order to protect yourself from it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so to my listeners who are not men, I can

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Speaker 1: only speak for myself, but I have found it unbelievably

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Speaker 1: frustrating to hear centrist men behind laptops pontificating about actually

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Speaker 1: we had a Joe Rogan on the left, it was

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Speaker 1: Joe Rogan and then call it a day, right. It's

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Speaker 1: so obnoxious, and the churn of like I get it

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Speaker 1: content just feels like clocking in. My feeling is that

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Speaker 1: men will encourage the target of this abuse, to show

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Speaker 1: these young men bending towards fascism, empathy and grace in

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Speaker 1: order to deradicalize them. And while I do think that

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Speaker 1: would help. It makes me fucking furious. So let's get

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Speaker 1: into how and why the Manisphere exists as it does

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Speaker 1: a little history lesson when we come back. Welcome back

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Speaker 1: to sixteenth minute. You thought I was over sharing when

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Speaker 1: my dad died, baby, And without further ado, here is

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Speaker 1: a brief history of the Manisphere, sort of. And I'll

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Speaker 1: make a quick note here. So much of how this

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Speaker 1: space is written and talked about is in very gender

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Speaker 1: binary language, so I'm going to do my best to

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Speaker 1: keep the language inclusive, but note that this is often

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Speaker 1: a feature of this line of study. I've asked everyone

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Speaker 1: I've interviewed so far what they consider to be the

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Speaker 1: origins of this space, and I tend to get one

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Speaker 1: of three answers. Was it backlash to the Me Too

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Speaker 1: movement in twenty seventeen, was it gamer Gate in twenty thirteen,

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Speaker 1: or was it all the way back in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventies before the Internet even existed. Sorry with regret, the

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Speaker 1: Manisphere as we know it today, which ranges from the

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Speaker 1: podcast that Dana White shouted out the night of the

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Speaker 1: election all the way up to really extremist content that

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Speaker 1: says women belong in the home and should no Longer

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Speaker 1: be Allowed to Vote can be traced all the way

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Speaker 1: back to the nineteen seventies, during the second wave feminist

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Speaker 1: movement in the US. I've actually covered this period of

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Speaker 1: history pretty extensively in a past podcast series of mine

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Speaker 1: called act Cast, where I took a look at how

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Speaker 1: Kathy Guy Swyd's Kathy Comics commented on second and third

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Speaker 1: wave feminist movements through the lens of a middle class,

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Speaker 1: chocolate loving, working white woman. The second wave feminism ran

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Speaker 1: approximately from the sixties during the Civil rights boom until

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Speaker 1: the early nineteen eighties, when Ronald Reagan halted all social

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Speaker 1: progress and replaced it with wham singles. This period of

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Speaker 1: feminist action was very flawed, but did accomplish quite a bit.

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Speaker 1: While first wave feminism's big win was suffrage, second wave

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Speaker 1: feminism focused on reproductive rights and equity in the workplace,

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Speaker 1: a time that encouraged women to push back on the

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Speaker 1: domestic goddess image of the post war era and to

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Speaker 1: begin their own careers. The Equal Pay Act was introduced

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three.

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Speaker 2: Roe v.

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Speaker 1: Wade was passed in nineteen seventy two, giving anyone with

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Speaker 1: a uterus the right to a safe abortion, rape crisis

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00:22:51,800 --> 00:22:55,159
Speaker 1: centers were opened, the Feminine Mystique was published I Am

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Speaker 1: Aware it is flawed, and a number of specific organizations

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Speaker 1: pushed back on specific issues. The National Organization for Women

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Speaker 1: and Eramerica focused on passing the Equal Rights Amendment, which

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Speaker 1: we were never able to do, by the way, and

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Speaker 1: the National Women's Political Caucus, whose ranks included Shirley Chisholm,

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Speaker 1: focused on getting pro women candidates in office across political parties.

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Speaker 1: And wouldn't you know it, there were a number of

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Speaker 1: men marching alongside second wave feminists or men's rights. Stay

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Speaker 1: with me, this was actually a pretty good thing at

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Speaker 1: the time. The original men's liberation movement was not a

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Speaker 1: crusade against women, but rather a challenge of what the

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Speaker 1: expectations of masculinity under capitalism were. They argued something that

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Speaker 1: is categorically true that men suffer under patriarchy, and that

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Speaker 1: with the shifting politics of the time, a hyper masculine

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Speaker 1: John Wayne persona wasn't a realistic expectation of a man,

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Speaker 1: not that it ever was. If women were being confined

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Speaker 1: to the home, they argued, than men were being exiled

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Speaker 1: from the home, and this movement had these same intersectional

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Speaker 1: failings as the feminist movement, but were positioned alongside them,

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Speaker 1: not in opposition to them, as we think of the

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Speaker 1: term men's rights now. Something called the California Men's Gathering

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Speaker 1: began in nineteen seventy eight where men could convene and

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Speaker 1: discuss how patriarchy affected them. And these continue to this day.

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Speaker 1: And I know it sounds weird, but the men's liberation

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Speaker 1: movement was embraced by feminists of the time. By nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety two, there was an entire book on the subject that,

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Speaker 1: while critical, was generally supportive, called Women Respond to the

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Speaker 1: Men's Movement, a feminist collection. It featured a foreword from

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Speaker 1: Glorious steynem and featured writing from Bell Hooks and Ursula

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Speaker 1: Kay Legwin S.

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Speaker 4: Dynam writes, make no mistake about it, women want a

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Speaker 4: men's movement. We're literally dying for it. If you doubt that,

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Speaker 4: just listen to women's desperate testimonies of hope that the

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Speaker 4: men in our lives will be more nurturing toward children,

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Speaker 4: more about to talk about emotions, less hooked on a

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Speaker 4: spectrum of control that extends from not listening through to violences,

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Speaker 4: and less oppressive of their own human qualities that are

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Speaker 4: called feminine and thus suppressed by cultures which men dominate.

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Speaker 1: And if you know anything about what the men's rights

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Speaker 1: movement looks like now, this is obviously not the movement

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Speaker 1: that Steinem is describing here. And that's because by the

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Speaker 1: mid seventies a schism had formed within this men's movement

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Speaker 1: between pro feminist and anti feminist men, and by the

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Speaker 1: end of the decade the two were distinctly different groups.

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Speaker 1: And guess which group was better at accruing power and attention.

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Speaker 1: And from here on out, with all due respect, I'm

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Speaker 1: going to leave the pro feminist men in the rare view,

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Speaker 1: although I love you guys, and I would love to

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Speaker 1: cover the California Men's gathering fellows, please hit me up.

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Speaker 1: The anti feminist men's movement built power throughout the seventies

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Speaker 1: into the early eighties, citing texts like the Inevitability of Patriarchy,

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Speaker 1: Why the biological difference between men and women always produces

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Speaker 1: male domination by writer Stephen Goldberg sounds like a page turner.

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Speaker 1: And while the anti feminist movement was growing, the feminist

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Speaker 1: movement itself was experiencing setbacks. There is a whole terrific

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Speaker 1: book about the pattern of progressive feminist movements being pushed

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Speaker 1: back in the decade following gains, called Backlash, originally published

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Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one by Susan Foludi, which illustrates how

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Speaker 1: the first, second, and third waves of feminism were all

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Speaker 1: followed by legislative and cultural backlash. Sound familiar, because that's

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Speaker 1: what's happening to fourth wave feminism right now. Throughout the eighties,

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Speaker 1: the anti feminist men's movement was empowered by the notion

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Speaker 1: that the cause of men's oppression was not patriarchy but feminism,

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Speaker 1: or to their discontent, was not redefining what masculinity looked like,

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Speaker 1: but rolling back progress to ostensibly put women back in

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Speaker 1: their places again. Most writing about this defines quote unquote

432
00:27:12,760 --> 00:27:16,720
Speaker 1: a woman's place as a middle class, straight, white woman's place,

433
00:27:17,240 --> 00:27:19,920
Speaker 1: but it's important to note that men's rights movements have

434
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:25,159
Speaker 1: been popular across racial and economic lines for decades. This

435
00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:30,280
Speaker 1: mentality was expanded on by characterizing women as entitled, castrating liars,

436
00:27:30,760 --> 00:27:34,360
Speaker 1: citing figures like Glorius Dynam, Lorena Bobbitt, and Anita Hill

437
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:37,800
Speaker 1: as women who wanted nothing more than to destroy and

438
00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: oppress men without any acknowledgment of their oppression. Here we

439
00:27:42,920 --> 00:27:45,720
Speaker 1: see the start of a repeating pattern. Instead of men's

440
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:49,200
Speaker 1: oppression stemming from the same systems that oppress everyone, we

441
00:27:49,520 --> 00:27:52,960
Speaker 1: actually live in a matriarchy where women seek attention and

442
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: power by punishing men, acting as nature programmed them. What

443
00:27:57,600 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: becomes clear in the Men's Right space is that there's

444
00:28:00,400 --> 00:28:05,639
Speaker 1: no way that women can win with their ideology. If

445
00:28:05,720 --> 00:28:09,360
Speaker 1: women return to the home as suggested, they are freeloaders,

446
00:28:09,440 --> 00:28:12,880
Speaker 1: ripping off their husbands, wasting money shopping and going out.

447
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,199
Speaker 1: If women go to work, they're taking jobs from men

448
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: and are outside of their own lane. It's impossible to

449
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:23,080
Speaker 1: be the right kind of woman for a men's rights activist,

450
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 1: it appears, without not just being subservient, but to openly

451
00:28:27,119 --> 00:28:31,159
Speaker 1: and actively agree with these misogynist views. There is no

452
00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:34,520
Speaker 1: call to action other than to roll back progress. To

453
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 1: quote a twenty thirteen dissertation from Bethany Coston and Michael

454
00:28:38,120 --> 00:28:41,000
Speaker 1: Kimmel called white men as the new victims.

455
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 3: The real trouble is that men's rights guys don't know

456
00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:49,080
Speaker 3: if they want to be restored patriarchs or liberated men.

457
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 3: That is, they don't know if they would prefer to

458
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:56,840
Speaker 3: live in nineteen fifty or twenty fifty. As a result,

459
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:03,400
Speaker 3: men's rights websites and pamphlets are clogged with howls of anguish, confusion,

460
00:29:03,760 --> 00:29:08,240
Speaker 3: and pain. And this anguish, confusion and pain, we believe

461
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 3: is real and well grounded. Real here is not to

462
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 3: be confused with true. These men do feel a lot,

463
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 3: but their analysis of the cause of those feelings is

464
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:23,600
Speaker 3: decidedly off, especially when we see that the howls of

465
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 3: pain have been transformed into rage, and the men's rights

466
00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 3: movement has become a movement of reappropriating power at all costs,

467
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 3: no matter who gets in the way.

468
00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 1: This paper goes on to trace a handful of cases

469
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:40,120
Speaker 1: that seek to illustrate that point. How the solution to

470
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: this is that women are bitches and therefore should not

471
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:45,040
Speaker 1: be allowed to divorce me in the first place. Is

472
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:49,160
Speaker 1: anyone's guests. By the time the Internet comes into the picture,

473
00:29:49,240 --> 00:29:53,000
Speaker 1: though the men's rights communities went along with it. No

474
00:29:53,160 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 1: coincidence that white collar white men are still most likely

475
00:29:56,760 --> 00:30:00,840
Speaker 1: to have Internet access, and once men's rite activists hit

476
00:30:00,960 --> 00:30:04,720
Speaker 1: the Internet, they splinter over time into a number of

477
00:30:04,800 --> 00:30:09,160
Speaker 1: different factions. These spaces are covered extensively in Laura Bates's

478
00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:12,640
Speaker 1: twenty twenty book Men Who Hate Women, a difficult but

479
00:30:12,800 --> 00:30:16,360
Speaker 1: worthy read, and she identifies the following groups as prominent

480
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: and empowered throughout the twenty tens, particularly during Trump's first administration.

481
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:25,240
Speaker 1: So we're not quite at the heyday of Joe Rogan

482
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: that is making the rounds in the media outlets right now.

483
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: This is more of the online forum era. These groups

484
00:30:33,000 --> 00:30:36,360
Speaker 1: were not small, but they also weren't really talked about

485
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:40,040
Speaker 1: in a mainstream way until closer to the mid twenty tens.

486
00:30:41,760 --> 00:30:46,080
Speaker 1: In Cells Involuntary Celibates, this is a community that believes

487
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 1: that women's rights have rendered them virgins and also a

488
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: place where pill ideology comes from. Taking the red pill

489
00:30:53,480 --> 00:30:57,200
Speaker 1: means that seeing feminism has taken everything from you, which

490
00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:00,680
Speaker 1: either leads to looksmaxing, which is a subt community where

491
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:02,800
Speaker 1: men try to make themselves look like a chad or

492
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:06,960
Speaker 1: traditionally desirable man, or the other direction, which is more

493
00:31:07,080 --> 00:31:11,480
Speaker 1: common is black pilling, which is essentially a death cult

494
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 1: that states that women will never like or be attracted

495
00:31:14,440 --> 00:31:17,080
Speaker 1: to you, and therefore your life should be dedicated to

496
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: bitterness and vengeance. More in them next week pickup artists.

497
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: Oh boy, these guys pre date the Internet significantly, but

498
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:30,360
Speaker 1: we're certainly very empowered by it. The vibe is very

499
00:31:30,880 --> 00:31:35,320
Speaker 1: milady with an undertone of violence. These are the oft

500
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:38,600
Speaker 1: dunked on men in Fedoras, sure, but they do more

501
00:31:38,680 --> 00:31:42,800
Speaker 1: than advise nagging women or insulting them to make them

502
00:31:42,840 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: feel insecure and quote unquote more likely to sleep with you,

503
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 1: although that's never been my experience. However, on the more

504
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:54,520
Speaker 1: extreme end, pickup artists also have a history of explicitly

505
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:59,360
Speaker 1: advocating for and perpetuating sexual violence in or one of

506
00:31:59,400 --> 00:32:02,600
Speaker 1: the many Manisphere groups that are pretty obsessed with how

507
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:06,400
Speaker 1: fake they think the rate of sexual assault against women is,

508
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:09,840
Speaker 1: framing it more as a way for women to exert

509
00:32:09,960 --> 00:32:15,480
Speaker 1: power over and punish men with these accusations with PUA's

510
00:32:16,080 --> 00:32:20,560
Speaker 1: no means yes is the norm. Plow through resistance is

511
00:32:20,720 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 1: a common phrase that was used in these forums, and,

512
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:26,000
Speaker 1: as with most of these groups, the way they talk

513
00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:31,680
Speaker 1: about women also leans heavily into cruel, racial and cultural stereotypes.

514
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:35,480
Speaker 1: Their seminal texts include the TV show The Pickup Artist,

515
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:39,840
Speaker 1: starring now prolifically accused of user Mystery and his protege

516
00:32:40,000 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: Neil Strauss, who published the very successful book The Game,

517
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:47,960
Speaker 1: claiming to be a journalist who had infiltrated the space

518
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:50,480
Speaker 1: while he had demonstrably been a part of it for

519
00:32:50,640 --> 00:32:54,840
Speaker 1: some time. Because all pickup artists they're cowards, he backpedaled

520
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,960
Speaker 1: on this ideology over time after profiting from it to

521
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:01,080
Speaker 1: the tune of millions of dollars. The Neil Straus journey

522
00:33:01,120 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: is a deeply frustrating one. I'm talking about starting here.

523
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 1: This is a clip where he's attempting to seduce Jessica

524
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:08,960
Speaker 1: Alba on Jimmy Kimmel.

525
00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:12,040
Speaker 6: The whole that's awesome and the whole thing about that,

526
00:33:12,120 --> 00:33:14,240
Speaker 6: and those are great qualities. The whole thing is guys

527
00:33:14,280 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 6: are always trying to sell themselves to women. They're always

528
00:33:15,960 --> 00:33:18,360
Speaker 6: trying to say brag about themselves and say what they

529
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 6: do for a living. And instead you kind of got

530
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:21,480
Speaker 6: to flip the script and make someone that's absolutely no

531
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 6: interest in you start selling himself to you.

532
00:33:23,480 --> 00:33:24,760
Speaker 7: And that's like one of the pieces.

533
00:33:24,960 --> 00:33:28,840
Speaker 6: Wow, and thanks for playing well wow, Yeah that you

534
00:33:28,920 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 6: feel like that was effective?

535
00:33:30,080 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 1: And I felt like.

536
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 8: That's just what intelligent people that I don't know that

537
00:33:35,360 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 8: talk to me do. They don't care so much about

538
00:33:38,960 --> 00:33:41,760
Speaker 8: the physical and they do actually look for more than that,

539
00:33:42,000 --> 00:33:43,360
Speaker 8: and so well they tell you.

540
00:33:45,200 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 7: To here.

541
00:33:46,280 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 1: Just a few years later, I learned from the Big

542
00:33:49,320 --> 00:33:49,840
Speaker 1: Bang Theory.

543
00:33:49,920 --> 00:33:52,240
Speaker 9: May have learned a few tricks from author Neil Strauss.

544
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 9: He taught what he calls average frustrated chumps to manipulate

545
00:33:56,360 --> 00:33:59,320
Speaker 9: the women they want, and he is controversial bestseller The Game.

546
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:03,160
Speaker 9: Rause infiltrated a group of pickup artists revealing the secrets

547
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:07,080
Speaker 9: of seduction. One technique is called neegging. He writes, quote,

548
00:34:07,120 --> 00:34:09,320
Speaker 9: the purpose of a nig is to lower a woman's

549
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:12,960
Speaker 9: self esteem while actively displaying a lack of interest in her,

550
00:34:13,239 --> 00:34:15,760
Speaker 9: by telling her she has lipstick on her teeth, for example,

551
00:34:15,880 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 9: or offering her a piece of gum after she speaks.

552
00:34:18,520 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 9: Ten years later, Strauss is out with the Truth and

553
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:25,800
Speaker 9: Uncomfortable book about relationships. He opens up about cheating Monogaby

554
00:34:26,160 --> 00:34:28,879
Speaker 9: and how he changed. Good morning, Neil Strauss.

555
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:30,040
Speaker 10: And he's speaking of Uncomfortable after that.

556
00:34:32,160 --> 00:34:35,239
Speaker 9: But you've done basically a complete reversal in this book.

557
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 10: Yes and The Game, I was reporting on a culture

558
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:41,120
Speaker 10: that was there and not kind of coining these techniques

559
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:43,839
Speaker 10: that already existed and not kind of popularized ideas. Though

560
00:34:43,880 --> 00:34:46,320
Speaker 10: it's kind of sad that your contribution to the culture

561
00:34:46,440 --> 00:34:48,279
Speaker 10: is people wearing ridiculous clothes.

562
00:34:48,120 --> 00:34:49,239
Speaker 9: So you've had a change of heart.

563
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:53,719
Speaker 10: I'm bigger than that, a complete transformation as to kind

564
00:34:53,719 --> 00:34:55,440
Speaker 10: of who I was and what I thought was important.

565
00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:59,080
Speaker 1: And the pickup artists they pretend this didn't happen, or

566
00:34:59,160 --> 00:35:05,839
Speaker 1: that Strauss was corrupted by women. Then there's men going

567
00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:10,400
Speaker 1: their own way or Migtao. These guys are qualified by

568
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:13,359
Speaker 1: the Southern Poverty Law Center as a male supremacist heat

569
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:17,280
Speaker 1: group who frequently align with racist and homophobic alright sentiments

570
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 1: and ultimately want men to separate themselves from society and

571
00:35:21,239 --> 00:35:26,839
Speaker 1: women altogether. Migtao also subscribes to their own pill ideology,

572
00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:31,520
Speaker 1: ranging from rejecting long term relationships with women to dropping

573
00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:35,719
Speaker 1: out of society altogether. At their most extreme, their community

574
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:39,680
Speaker 1: is driven by a fear of women, often being convinced

575
00:35:39,719 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 1: that women are hoping and trying to accuse you of

576
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 1: rape in order to ruin your life. This group actually

577
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,439
Speaker 1: can be traced back to the eighties, with their predecessors

578
00:35:49,520 --> 00:35:55,560
Speaker 1: primarily identifying as the Deep Masculine movement. Sounds pretty straight

579
00:35:55,680 --> 00:36:02,200
Speaker 1: to me. And finally there's MRAs men's rights advocates, And

580
00:36:02,640 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 1: in the ultimate example of taking a real life problem

581
00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:09,600
Speaker 1: that deserves examination and turning it into a campaign against women,

582
00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:13,399
Speaker 1: there is a faction of men's rights activists that call

583
00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:18,200
Speaker 1: themselves Father's rights activists, another community that predates the Internet

584
00:36:18,480 --> 00:36:21,960
Speaker 1: that calls attention to the systemic tendency to give mother's

585
00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 1: custody of children over fathers, regardless of if it's in

586
00:36:25,320 --> 00:36:30,120
Speaker 1: the children's best interest, which is a valid concern, but

587
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:34,040
Speaker 1: this group believes this can only be addressed by removing

588
00:36:34,120 --> 00:36:37,480
Speaker 1: the rights of mothers, and that these tendencies are proof

589
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:41,840
Speaker 1: positive that we live in a matriarchy, and MRAs have

590
00:36:42,120 --> 00:36:45,600
Speaker 1: generally had the best luck breaking through to the mainstream

591
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 1: because of their ostensibly more political mission, But make no mistake,

592
00:36:51,280 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 1: the underlying beliefs are the same, be serious, and there

593
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:00,720
Speaker 1: are more subcommunities where that came from. As this continued

594
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: to grow online, we get a whole crop of media influencers,

595
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:09,279
Speaker 1: either appearing organically or pivoting from other areas like academia

596
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: and right wing radio to create subcommunities like sigmas, and

597
00:37:14,600 --> 00:37:16,719
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about them in the next episode. But

598
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:20,399
Speaker 1: as far as the first run of Online Misogynists, these

599
00:37:20,440 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: were your guys Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Julian Blanc, who

600
00:37:25,560 --> 00:37:28,440
Speaker 1: gave way to today's Andrew Tates, and the Fresh and

601
00:37:28,520 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 1: Fit podcast hosts. The tricky thing here is that within

602
00:37:32,360 --> 00:37:35,920
Speaker 1: these communities there isn't much unity, in spite of the

603
00:37:36,000 --> 00:37:38,359
Speaker 1: fact that they have a common interest in taking women

604
00:37:38,440 --> 00:37:42,120
Speaker 1: down a peg. Pickup artists aim to have transactional sex

605
00:37:42,160 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 1: with women and find in cells pathetic black pilled guys,

606
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:50,080
Speaker 1: resent hypersexual men and looks maaxers, particularly if they have

607
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:53,920
Speaker 1: had sex with women before. I'm not encouraging these communities

608
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:57,440
Speaker 1: to unionize. I fear the power they could accrue. But

609
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:00,680
Speaker 1: as a passive observer, it's pretty fucking reds to watch

610
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:04,680
Speaker 1: all these men who agree on one scary thing continued

611
00:38:04,719 --> 00:38:08,120
Speaker 1: to bully each other in order to define a sense

612
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:12,759
Speaker 1: of community. And for a long time these communities were

613
00:38:12,840 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 1: considered to be a niche until they weren't. I and

614
00:38:16,760 --> 00:38:18,960
Speaker 1: a lot of people first became aware of this space

615
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 1: around twenty fourteen. This is around the time of My

616
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,880
Speaker 1: personal Ordeal, the stretch of years that brought in an

617
00:38:26,960 --> 00:38:31,000
Speaker 1: intense culture war over campus assault, the brock Turner case,

618
00:38:31,320 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 1: the Amisolkowitz performance, and on and on. The first reason

619
00:38:35,480 --> 00:38:38,680
Speaker 1: for this, as I mentioned earlier, was gamer Gate, the

620
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:42,120
Speaker 1: biggest public feminist backlash in years, which grew to a

621
00:38:42,320 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 1: year long fear mongering and harassment campaign that targeted women

622
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 1: in the gaming community of how women were presented in games,

623
00:38:49,920 --> 00:38:54,040
Speaker 1: which was and is a very male dominated space. The

624
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:56,759
Speaker 1: primary targets of this hate were women who developed video

625
00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:00,400
Speaker 1: games or prominent feminist media critic and past guest of

626
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 1: my other show, The Bechel Cast, that same creator who

627
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 1: my college boyfriend so despised, Anita Sarkisian. During these campaigns,

628
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 1: anonymous users organized on right wing sites like four chan

629
00:39:12,360 --> 00:39:16,719
Speaker 1: and Reddit, before these spaces were more carefully regulated. The

630
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:20,839
Speaker 1: second example that empowered and made these communities more well

631
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:24,319
Speaker 1: known was the mass murder at Ala Vista by twenty

632
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:28,400
Speaker 1: two year old Elliott Roger in twenty fourteen. You probably

633
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: know this story, at least in the abstract. Roger murdered

634
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:36,120
Speaker 1: six people and injured fourteen, including two young women, at

635
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:40,239
Speaker 1: a sorority house. But as Laura Bates points out in

636
00:39:40,400 --> 00:39:44,280
Speaker 1: Men Who Hate Women, while Roger's crime was widely reported,

637
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:49,680
Speaker 1: it mainly accomplished, starting yet another mental illness discourse, largely

638
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:54,279
Speaker 1: ignoring the misogynist manifesto that Roger left behind, leaving it

639
00:39:54,400 --> 00:39:57,800
Speaker 1: as a footnote. The media didn't seem to know what

640
00:39:58,040 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: to do with it, and certainly did and seemed to

641
00:40:00,600 --> 00:40:05,240
Speaker 1: understand who he had left this manifesto behind. For Roger

642
00:40:05,719 --> 00:40:08,879
Speaker 1: was an active member of in cell groups he'd left

643
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:12,680
Speaker 1: it behind. For Inceelts, what Roger's manifesto, which would be

644
00:40:12,760 --> 00:40:15,960
Speaker 1: cited by many other mass shooters in the years to come,

645
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:19,680
Speaker 1: should have been treated as was a harbinger that misogynists

646
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: online spaces had become quite literally lethal. But if you

647
00:40:24,760 --> 00:40:28,720
Speaker 1: recall this time, that conversation didn't really happen in spite

648
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:31,960
Speaker 1: of a trending Twitter hashtag hashtag yes all women and

649
00:40:32,040 --> 00:40:35,720
Speaker 1: a few articles. We are socially trained and the media

650
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:40,320
Speaker 1: reflects more empathy for white and white passing men, and

651
00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,959
Speaker 1: so the conversation shifted to this young man needed mental

652
00:40:44,040 --> 00:40:47,680
Speaker 1: health care as opposed to focusing on why he had

653
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:50,600
Speaker 1: committed the crime in the first place. Again, we are

654
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:55,319
Speaker 1: always centering white men in these conversations, bringing my blood

655
00:40:55,360 --> 00:40:59,520
Speaker 1: pressure down. Laura Bay's tracks Roger's legacy carefully in her book,

656
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:03,600
Speaker 1: noting that at every turn mainstream media outlets would mention

657
00:41:04,040 --> 00:41:07,399
Speaker 1: the misogynist's creed that Roger had left behind, but never

658
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:09,960
Speaker 1: went so far as to prescribe it as a problem

659
00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:13,880
Speaker 1: that extended beyond one mentally ill young man. It was

660
00:41:13,960 --> 00:41:17,840
Speaker 1: treated as an isolated incident, a bad apple, certainly not

661
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:21,359
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that would inspire future crimes. As

662
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: we now know, this was not true and was a

663
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:27,759
Speaker 1: call to action for many, while not acknowledged in most

664
00:41:27,840 --> 00:41:30,800
Speaker 1: media outlets, to take a closer look at what spaces

665
00:41:31,120 --> 00:41:35,359
Speaker 1: Roger's violent, hateful beliefs had calcified inside of. And all

666
00:41:35,440 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 1: this happened over ten years ago. Now, there's a lot

667
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,400
Speaker 1: to talk about in terms of how this space has

668
00:41:41,480 --> 00:41:45,359
Speaker 1: developed in the last decade. First, I wanted to talk

669
00:41:45,440 --> 00:41:48,279
Speaker 1: to a woman. Please let me talk to a woman.

670
00:41:48,680 --> 00:41:51,480
Speaker 1: When we come back, I speak with an expert on

671
00:41:51,600 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: the ever expanding manisphere, researcher Becca Lewis. Welcome back to

672
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:15,200
Speaker 1: sixteenth Minute. My blood pressure is skyrocketing, and my first

673
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 1: interview in this series comes to me by way of

674
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: fellow Cool Zone media host Molly Konger of Weird Little Guys.

675
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,920
Speaker 1: Becca Lewis is a Stanford postdoc who researches the politics

676
00:42:24,960 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 1: of Silicon Valley and the tech world, and she's been

677
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:31,320
Speaker 1: looking at the development of the manisphere for nearly a decade.

678
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 1: So as a point of entry, I think it's important

679
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 1: to not just here an expert on the subject, but

680
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:39,520
Speaker 1: you know, not a guy. Here's our talk.

681
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:41,120
Speaker 7: I'm Becca Lewis.

682
00:42:41,360 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 2: I'm an academic researcher at Stanford University and I study

683
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 2: far right movements and how they use digital media.

684
00:42:49,239 --> 00:42:51,320
Speaker 1: What a You'll never be out of a job again.

685
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:52,200
Speaker 1: I don't think.

686
00:42:53,600 --> 00:42:57,040
Speaker 2: The goal is to eventually make the job irrelevant, but

687
00:42:57,200 --> 00:42:58,839
Speaker 2: you're telling that seems far away.

688
00:42:59,280 --> 00:43:04,440
Speaker 1: We're recording the three days after the election, and it's

689
00:43:04,600 --> 00:43:09,120
Speaker 1: unavoidable any Internet space right now to see the manosphere

690
00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:12,000
Speaker 1: brought up by people I would not even have guessed

691
00:43:12,040 --> 00:43:15,640
Speaker 1: would know what this is in this moment because you're

692
00:43:15,680 --> 00:43:19,120
Speaker 1: an expert. Does it feel kojent the way people are

693
00:43:19,160 --> 00:43:21,920
Speaker 1: talking about it. Does it feel like the threat is

694
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:23,680
Speaker 1: being under or overstated?

695
00:43:24,080 --> 00:43:26,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little bit surreal, and in some ways

696
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 2: it's reminding me of the follow up to the twenty

697
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 2: sixteen election, where you know, people are searching for answers,

698
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:37,280
Speaker 2: and at the time in twenty sixteen, the first answer

699
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:39,800
Speaker 2: that came up was fake news, and that was a

700
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:43,320
Speaker 2: really big thing, and that kind of spawned a whole

701
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:47,520
Speaker 2: like sub field of journalism and academics and everything around

702
00:43:47,640 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 2: disinformation and fake news and all of that. And now,

703
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:56,200
Speaker 2: I you know, it seems clear that the manosphere and

704
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:58,719
Speaker 2: podcasts in particular are going to.

705
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:00,960
Speaker 7: Be one of the big areas of focus.

706
00:44:01,160 --> 00:44:03,799
Speaker 2: And I think that, you know, as with fake news,

707
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 2: there's some truth to it, there's some oversimplification, and I

708
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of like decontextualization. Because the manisphere

709
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:17,719
Speaker 2: has been around, podcasts have been around, and so you know,

710
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 2: why is our attention turning.

711
00:44:19,440 --> 00:44:20,000
Speaker 8: To it now?

712
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 2: I think is worth exploring. And also like what we

713
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:26,120
Speaker 2: think of as the manisphere has changed too. I think

714
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:29,360
Speaker 2: that that people are pointing to this series of podcasts

715
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 2: that Donald Trump went on in recent weeks, but that's

716
00:44:32,640 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 2: actually kind of different than what the manisphere has been

717
00:44:35,520 --> 00:44:37,680
Speaker 2: over the years. So there's a lot of searching for

718
00:44:37,760 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 2: explanations and maybe not quite understanding the dynamics behind it yet.

719
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 1: Something that I've seen a wide birth of opinions on

720
00:44:44,600 --> 00:44:46,520
Speaker 1: so I want to know what you think. Where does

721
00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:49,280
Speaker 1: the story of the manisphere start?

722
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:53,279
Speaker 2: In my opinion, it did start in the seventies as

723
00:44:53,600 --> 00:44:57,919
Speaker 2: a direct maybe not the Manosphere, but the men's rights

724
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:02,280
Speaker 2: movement as a reaction against minism certainly started in the seventies.

725
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:05,000
Speaker 1: How did you fall into this line of work? It's

726
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:06,400
Speaker 1: very specific and very important.

727
00:45:06,560 --> 00:45:08,600
Speaker 2: I actually was one of the people that got drawn

728
00:45:08,640 --> 00:45:11,640
Speaker 2: into it following the twenty sixteen election. But I've been

729
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:15,719
Speaker 2: researching the Internet and politics for a long time and

730
00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:19,600
Speaker 2: have always been interested in digital media and you know,

731
00:45:19,640 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 2: the political impacts of digital media. And then after the

732
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen election, I joined a think tank called Data

733
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:31,719
Speaker 2: and Society that was specifically bringing together this project to

734
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:34,239
Speaker 2: look at media manipulation.

735
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:37,080
Speaker 7: They called it. So the ways that you know, the

736
00:45:37,200 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 7: alt right.

737
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:40,520
Speaker 2: At the time and the Manosphere and other groups were

738
00:45:40,560 --> 00:45:47,440
Speaker 2: becoming really effective at manipulating mainstream media outlets into accidentally

739
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:51,399
Speaker 2: publishing disinformation or amplifying some of their.

740
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 7: Talking points without even realizing it.

741
00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:56,400
Speaker 2: You know, someone like Richard Spencer was so good for

742
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 2: a while at like getting people to give him softball interviews.

743
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:02,120
Speaker 2: We were looking at all of that, and then it

744
00:46:02,280 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 2: kind of lit a fire, you know in me, and

745
00:46:05,719 --> 00:46:08,520
Speaker 2: I haven't looked back. I have an academic mentor who

746
00:46:08,520 --> 00:46:10,960
Speaker 2: says people are either drawn to their research subjects out

747
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 2: of an abiding law or an abiding hate.

748
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:14,279
Speaker 7: And I learned that I'm a hater.

749
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: I guess you are academically a hater. And when you

750
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:21,959
Speaker 1: started doing this research towards the beginning of the first

751
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: trend presidency into now, what are some of the bigger

752
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:29,840
Speaker 1: changes you've seen in this space in the last eight years.

753
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 2: It was already there to an extent, but I think

754
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:36,480
Speaker 2: we have seen, like any illusions that this is somehow a.

755
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:39,120
Speaker 7: Fringe phenomenon have kind of fully broken down.

756
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:43,680
Speaker 2: If you look at the top ten podcasters, solid third

757
00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:45,600
Speaker 2: two half of them are people that you know, could

758
00:46:45,680 --> 00:46:49,600
Speaker 2: reasonably be understood as somehow being in the manisphere or

759
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 2: somehow devoting a lot of their energies to countering what

760
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:56,480
Speaker 2: they see as the ills of feminism and social justice.

761
00:46:57,040 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 2: You know, that was the case to a certain extent

762
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:01,080
Speaker 2: even when I started looking at this. I mean, in

763
00:47:01,160 --> 00:47:05,280
Speaker 2: the late twenty tens, Paudiepie was like the biggest YouTuber

764
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:08,120
Speaker 2: and there were all of these things about it, I mean,

765
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 2: particularly with race and anti semitism, but with gender too.

766
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:15,280
Speaker 2: I don't want to suggest like it was completely fringe before,

767
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:17,279
Speaker 2: but I think as you've had kind of like the

768
00:47:17,480 --> 00:47:24,880
Speaker 2: influencer ification of everything, that you really have had this

769
00:47:25,040 --> 00:47:29,879
Speaker 2: particular style of misogyny and antifeminism just becoming ubiquitous. I've

770
00:47:29,920 --> 00:47:33,000
Speaker 2: been thinking a lot about Gamergaate because it was ten

771
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:36,800
Speaker 2: years ago this August, I think is when it started.

772
00:47:37,080 --> 00:47:40,359
Speaker 2: It was, I think, like such a breakthrough moment when

773
00:47:41,440 --> 00:47:46,600
Speaker 2: online misogyny did kind of, you know, spill through into YouTube,

774
00:47:46,680 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 2: into all of these different spaces and gained legitimacy and

775
00:47:50,560 --> 00:47:54,680
Speaker 2: popularity and visibility in ways it didn't have before. You know,

776
00:47:54,760 --> 00:47:57,400
Speaker 2: it's very strange to me that for the longest time,

777
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:00,560
Speaker 2: when I would talk to like very online young people,

778
00:48:01,080 --> 00:48:03,799
Speaker 2: gamer Gate would be like the reference point, and now

779
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:06,080
Speaker 2: when I bring it up to my students, they've never

780
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 2: heard of it.

781
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:08,720
Speaker 7: In history.

782
00:48:08,960 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, what are the patterns of how young people and

783
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:16,280
Speaker 1: specifically young men are kind of drawn into this space

784
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:20,160
Speaker 1: and have those tactics changed at all over time?

785
00:48:20,600 --> 00:48:20,759
Speaker 7: Yes?

786
00:48:20,880 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 8: And no.

787
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:24,640
Speaker 2: I mean if we think back to like the general

788
00:48:24,719 --> 00:48:27,319
Speaker 2: contours of gamer Gate, it was a lot of video

789
00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 2: game players who started to feel like this was first

790
00:48:31,040 --> 00:48:33,520
Speaker 2: of all, that this was their outlet of like space

791
00:48:33,560 --> 00:48:37,200
Speaker 2: where they didn't have to think about politics or you know,

792
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,839
Speaker 2: from for them, it seemed free from politics. And then

793
00:48:40,920 --> 00:48:43,440
Speaker 2: also it was a lot of men or you know,

794
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:48,280
Speaker 2: teenage boys who didn't feel like they fit into normative

795
00:48:48,600 --> 00:48:52,160
Speaker 2: like concepts of masculinity. They weren't the alpha men, and

796
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:55,920
Speaker 2: so they already had this sense of like aggrievement that

797
00:48:56,680 --> 00:49:00,279
Speaker 2: they weren't getting like the respect around masculinity that maybe

798
00:49:00,320 --> 00:49:03,640
Speaker 2: they deserved. And so then to have these feminist commentators

799
00:49:03,719 --> 00:49:08,080
Speaker 2: come in and start to critique the politics the gender

800
00:49:08,160 --> 00:49:10,880
Speaker 2: politics of their video games, that kind.

801
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 7: Of set off this fuse.

802
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:16,640
Speaker 2: And I think you still see that being this fuse

803
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:20,400
Speaker 2: so much that you know they there is this sense,

804
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:24,000
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's by not being a brownie guy

805
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:27,480
Speaker 2: or for any number of reasons, guys who feel aggrieved

806
00:49:27,520 --> 00:49:29,160
Speaker 2: for some reason, or it can be a genuine reason.

807
00:49:29,200 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 2: It could be that you know, they're struggling financially or

808
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:36,359
Speaker 2: any of these other things. But it's really easy then

809
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:42,840
Speaker 2: to point the finger at feminists as here's why you

810
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:47,080
Speaker 2: are facing these problems, and you know, here's an explanation

811
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:51,480
Speaker 2: for what you're experiencing. And then in terms of the tactics,

812
00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:53,759
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of it is just like good

813
00:49:53,800 --> 00:49:58,520
Speaker 2: old fashioned social networking that you know, gamer Gate started

814
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:02,520
Speaker 2: as the gamer driven thing, but then you had these

815
00:50:02,880 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 2: these men's rights activists who were ideologues. They were explicitly

816
00:50:07,239 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 2: in communities devoted to countering feminism and you know, trying

817
00:50:12,600 --> 00:50:15,920
Speaker 2: to change legal structures and stuff. And they swept in

818
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:20,320
Speaker 2: and saw this as an opportunity to spread their ideas

819
00:50:20,360 --> 00:50:24,279
Speaker 2: and so they began doing social networking with gamers and

820
00:50:24,520 --> 00:50:27,160
Speaker 2: so you had these kind of loose alliances getting formed.

821
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:28,799
Speaker 7: And you still see a lot of that too. At

822
00:50:28,840 --> 00:50:31,360
Speaker 7: the same time, a lot of the format has changed.

823
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:34,680
Speaker 2: You know, now we're in like much more algorithmic driven systems,

824
00:50:34,800 --> 00:50:37,320
Speaker 2: and you know, the platforms have changed and some of

825
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:41,319
Speaker 2: the issues have changed, but some of those core things

826
00:50:41,400 --> 00:50:42,160
Speaker 2: have stayed the same.

827
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:46,320
Speaker 1: Has this space grown? Can you sort of take me

828
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:49,760
Speaker 1: through this going from ten years ago as a fringe

829
00:50:49,800 --> 00:50:54,720
Speaker 1: thing into now, you know, you have five podcasters shouted

830
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:57,279
Speaker 1: out during a presidential victory speech, like.

831
00:50:57,880 --> 00:51:02,200
Speaker 7: Take right there. There's a few different things.

832
00:51:02,680 --> 00:51:07,680
Speaker 2: You know, when you had these groups form, they they

833
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:12,040
Speaker 2: were pretty fringe, you know, they started to build up

834
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:14,160
Speaker 2: some political capital, but for the most part they were

835
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:17,240
Speaker 2: pretty fringe, and they went online and they would operate

836
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 2: in forums, but they would kind of stay in their

837
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:20,120
Speaker 2: own space.

838
00:51:20,680 --> 00:51:22,320
Speaker 7: As you have more and more.

839
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:28,680
Speaker 2: Systems, you know, YouTube, Reddit, different platforms that are specifically

840
00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:32,839
Speaker 2: designed to bring people together, you start to have these

841
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:36,800
Speaker 2: groups getting access to and networking with other people.

842
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:39,239
Speaker 7: So that's what you had with gamer Gate, right as.

843
00:51:39,640 --> 00:51:42,719
Speaker 2: They saw this kind of like misogynist like bark of

844
00:51:42,800 --> 00:51:46,120
Speaker 2: a fire, and they leapt in and started building these alliances.

845
00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 7: So that's a piece of it.

846
00:51:48,200 --> 00:51:52,759
Speaker 2: You also have, like all throughout all of this, the

847
00:51:52,920 --> 00:51:59,120
Speaker 2: collapse of traditional news and information sources. Yes, and so

848
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:04,680
Speaker 2: when you think about Silicon Valley building platforms like YouTube

849
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:09,239
Speaker 2: and Twitter and so on, a lot of it was

850
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:15,120
Speaker 2: specifically kind of targeting traditional news sources, and news sources

851
00:52:15,200 --> 00:52:17,800
Speaker 2: were struggling to go online. They were also struggling because

852
00:52:17,840 --> 00:52:20,960
Speaker 2: they were getting like bought up by major conglomerates and gutted.

853
00:52:21,680 --> 00:52:22,399
Speaker 3: More and more.

854
00:52:22,719 --> 00:52:26,160
Speaker 2: You start to have traditional news struggling, and you have

855
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:29,040
Speaker 2: a lot of different people from a lot of different

856
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:32,719
Speaker 2: political viewpoints pointing to the news media and saying, look,

857
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:35,719
Speaker 2: you can't trust them anymore. And there were a lot

858
00:52:35,760 --> 00:52:37,800
Speaker 2: of valid reasons to say that, and a lot of

859
00:52:37,920 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 2: things that I think are less valid. And one of

860
00:52:40,120 --> 00:52:43,120
Speaker 2: the less valid claims was, well, it's all just a

861
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 2: bunch of political correctness, you know, as they called it

862
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 2: then in the news media.

863
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:51,560
Speaker 7: So as you have that getting attacked.

864
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 2: You have kind of this whole new information ecosystem getting

865
00:52:54,680 --> 00:52:58,759
Speaker 2: built online, like both attacking the media and attempting to

866
00:52:58,800 --> 00:53:01,640
Speaker 2: take its place. And then I think you can't discount

867
00:53:01,719 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 2: the role of Donald Trump in all of this, even

868
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:07,040
Speaker 2: back in twenty sixteen, that he became a major force

869
00:53:07,080 --> 00:53:10,080
Speaker 2: in terms of like taking things that were on like

870
00:53:10,280 --> 00:53:13,920
Speaker 2: fringe forums and then tweeting them out and suddenly they

871
00:53:14,000 --> 00:53:17,400
Speaker 2: became national news stories. And so you can see the

872
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:21,960
Speaker 2: role of like influence and fame also playing a role,

873
00:53:22,080 --> 00:53:26,239
Speaker 2: because instantly certain things with skyrocket to visibility that just

874
00:53:26,280 --> 00:53:29,600
Speaker 2: wouldn't have before. You have all of these different genres

875
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:34,080
Speaker 2: of online content, you know, gaming, comedy, any number of things,

876
00:53:34,320 --> 00:53:38,680
Speaker 2: and these are genres where it's like politics isn't necessarily

877
00:53:38,719 --> 00:53:41,880
Speaker 2: the first and foremost thing that people are focused on, but.

878
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:44,239
Speaker 7: It seeps in in all of these ways. And so

879
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:46,279
Speaker 7: if you have a space where there's kind of like

880
00:53:46,360 --> 00:53:47,759
Speaker 7: some latent misogyny.

881
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 2: Then one thing that a lot of the manosphere has

882
00:53:51,280 --> 00:53:55,160
Speaker 2: done is it like it gives you certain like facts

883
00:53:55,239 --> 00:53:58,839
Speaker 2: and figures that become instantly available that you can draw in, right,

884
00:53:59,000 --> 00:54:03,600
Speaker 2: like maybe talking points like claiming to debunk certain feminist ideas,

885
00:54:03,960 --> 00:54:06,239
Speaker 2: and so suddenly if you like already have some of

886
00:54:06,320 --> 00:54:09,480
Speaker 2: those latent tendencies, then you can start to feel like

887
00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:12,600
Speaker 2: bolstered and say like, oh no, actually this is justified,

888
00:54:13,160 --> 00:54:16,080
Speaker 2: and it can become actually a bigger and more legitimized

889
00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:17,359
Speaker 2: piece of what you're doing.

890
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:19,839
Speaker 7: And again this goes back to the seventies too, which

891
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:22,080
Speaker 7: like not coincidentally.

892
00:54:21,800 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 2: At a moment when way more women and people of

893
00:54:25,200 --> 00:54:30,160
Speaker 2: color and like generally marginalized groups started to enter into

894
00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:33,520
Speaker 2: universities at higher levels, the workforce at higher levels, the

895
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:36,000
Speaker 2: public sphere at higher levels, then you had at the

896
00:54:36,040 --> 00:54:39,799
Speaker 2: same time this like attack on traditional forms of expertise

897
00:54:40,440 --> 00:54:45,279
Speaker 2: and saying, actually, no, we should be turning to entrepreneurs,

898
00:54:45,560 --> 00:54:49,680
Speaker 2: stand up comedians, celebrities, all of these different things that

899
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 2: surprise suppritoriously.

900
00:54:51,600 --> 00:54:58,000
Speaker 1: Strong people like famously the ass people. Has there been

901
00:54:58,360 --> 00:55:00,680
Speaker 1: an increase in saying the quiet, heart loud. Has that

902
00:55:00,800 --> 00:55:03,359
Speaker 1: always been a facet of this space? Does it vary?

903
00:55:03,760 --> 00:55:04,840
Speaker 7: It ebbs and flows?

904
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:06,839
Speaker 2: And I do think a lot of that comes from

905
00:55:07,040 --> 00:55:10,440
Speaker 2: like how well Trump is doing at any moment right,

906
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:14,520
Speaker 2: And you know, he very much helps legitimize saying the

907
00:55:14,600 --> 00:55:17,400
Speaker 2: quiet parts out loud. So you know, last time around,

908
00:55:17,640 --> 00:55:22,000
Speaker 2: around the twenty sixteen election, this was a big question

909
00:55:22,320 --> 00:55:24,880
Speaker 2: within the manisphere and the alt right of kind of

910
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:28,520
Speaker 2: how overt how open can you be with your politics.

911
00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:32,200
Speaker 2: And there were a lot of YouTubers who were like

912
00:55:32,840 --> 00:55:36,359
Speaker 2: open white and male supremacists at the time, and then

913
00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:38,880
Speaker 2: there were a lot of people who would collaborate with

914
00:55:39,000 --> 00:55:41,880
Speaker 2: them and who would dabble in those ideas, but they

915
00:55:41,920 --> 00:55:46,440
Speaker 2: would never outright align themselves that way. And ultimately that

916
00:55:46,680 --> 00:55:50,359
Speaker 2: proved to be the smarter strategy because the open white

917
00:55:50,400 --> 00:55:54,080
Speaker 2: supremacists and male supremacists mostly got kicked off of the platform.

918
00:55:54,400 --> 00:55:57,640
Speaker 7: Someone like you know, I spent many years watching the

919
00:55:58,120 --> 00:56:00,880
Speaker 7: content of a creator named Tim Poole, who.

920
00:56:01,120 --> 00:56:05,759
Speaker 1: Yes, who's now a proven up is that yes, that's right.

921
00:56:05,840 --> 00:56:07,640
Speaker 7: He was always so strategic.

922
00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:12,960
Speaker 2: He would ask questions, he would maybe drop a suggestion

923
00:56:13,239 --> 00:56:15,200
Speaker 2: or a hint that something was happening. But then he

924
00:56:15,239 --> 00:56:16,600
Speaker 2: would say, I don't know, I don't know, and he

925
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:20,239
Speaker 2: would never claim to be a white supremacist or a

926
00:56:20,239 --> 00:56:22,760
Speaker 2: white nationalist, or a male supremacist any of these things.

927
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:26,440
Speaker 7: And I think that from the perspective of staying.

928
00:56:26,239 --> 00:56:28,960
Speaker 2: On platforms, people have gotten really savvy about where to

929
00:56:29,080 --> 00:56:31,880
Speaker 2: draw a line. And I guess it doesn't hurt that

930
00:56:32,160 --> 00:56:35,120
Speaker 2: now on Twitter or x you know, Elon Musk is

931
00:56:35,160 --> 00:56:37,520
Speaker 2: in their corner. Anyways, they know where the winds are blowing,

932
00:56:37,600 --> 00:56:39,239
Speaker 2: and they're you know, people will dip a toe in

933
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:40,680
Speaker 2: and see how open they can be.

934
00:56:41,160 --> 00:56:43,440
Speaker 7: And see, you know, what the reaction is like.

935
00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:47,080
Speaker 2: And if they're getting a positive reaction, they'll they'll maybe

936
00:56:47,320 --> 00:56:50,319
Speaker 2: you know, dip another toe in and go on from there.

937
00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:52,920
Speaker 7: But one thing I've found in my research is that

938
00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 7: these figures are like very very very conscious of audience.

939
00:56:57,680 --> 00:57:01,160
Speaker 2: Response, and in fact, some of them will get pushed

940
00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:04,520
Speaker 2: to you know, there's all this discourse about like influencers

941
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:07,960
Speaker 2: are radicalizing audiences, but a lot of times the audiences

942
00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:12,719
Speaker 2: will kind of demand more extreme content from creators, and

943
00:57:12,800 --> 00:57:15,239
Speaker 2: so creators will just kind of be kind of responding

944
00:57:15,360 --> 00:57:17,880
Speaker 2: to what their audience wants. When you look at our

945
00:57:17,920 --> 00:57:21,120
Speaker 2: current media ecosystem, like the boundaries between these things have

946
00:57:21,400 --> 00:57:24,680
Speaker 2: kind of collapse, but it becomes this easy way to

947
00:57:24,880 --> 00:57:29,920
Speaker 2: kind of not think about potential harms that happen. And

948
00:57:30,080 --> 00:57:33,040
Speaker 2: you know, like, at what point are you interrogating someone's views?

949
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:35,480
Speaker 2: At what points are you just giving a megaphone for them?

950
00:57:35,680 --> 00:57:37,600
Speaker 2: You know, draw the boundaries between that, and that I

951
00:57:37,680 --> 00:57:40,840
Speaker 2: think is not something that Rogan or some of the

952
00:57:40,920 --> 00:57:44,800
Speaker 2: other guys like him have any incentive to think about.

953
00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:51,720
Speaker 1: I'm curious for you, how Slash when algorithms became an

954
00:57:51,920 --> 00:57:56,320
Speaker 1: important part of building and preserving this space, how does

955
00:57:56,360 --> 00:57:57,080
Speaker 1: that factor in?

956
00:57:57,520 --> 00:58:00,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think it was really throughout the twenty

957
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:04,760
Speaker 2: tens that like we went from social networking sites to

958
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:10,800
Speaker 2: these algorithmically driven media spaces. It has certainly complicated and

959
00:58:10,960 --> 00:58:13,720
Speaker 2: changed dynamic. As a researcher, it has frustrated me a

960
00:58:13,800 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 2: bit because I think it's really easy as researchers and

961
00:58:17,240 --> 00:58:19,280
Speaker 2: journalists and people working in the space for us to

962
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 2: just kind of point the finger at like this technology

963
00:58:23,080 --> 00:58:25,760
Speaker 2: and say like it is the fault of the algorithm.

964
00:58:26,160 --> 00:58:28,000
Speaker 7: And you know, that's partly why I like.

965
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:30,120
Speaker 2: To stress that these things have been going on since

966
00:58:30,160 --> 00:58:33,560
Speaker 2: the seventies, because I think it can give us false

967
00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:36,440
Speaker 2: hope in some ways that like, oh, if we tweak

968
00:58:36,520 --> 00:58:39,880
Speaker 2: the YouTube algorithm in just the right way, these problems

969
00:58:39,920 --> 00:58:42,040
Speaker 2: are going to go away. Like I do think that

970
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:45,240
Speaker 2: that's one thing that's maybe like when we look at

971
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:48,520
Speaker 2: the reaction to the election and everyone being like, oh

972
00:58:48,600 --> 00:58:51,840
Speaker 2: my god, there's this whole world of podcasts, Like I

973
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:54,640
Speaker 2: do think that might be part of the reason there's

974
00:58:54,760 --> 00:58:59,320
Speaker 2: this sense of like donning horror around it because podcasts

975
00:58:59,520 --> 00:59:03,160
Speaker 2: are not always driven by algorithm. For a really long time,

976
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:06,240
Speaker 2: there was this sense of like, the algorithms are the problem.

977
00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:10,240
Speaker 2: They are radicalizing young men on YouTube in particular, and

978
00:59:10,400 --> 00:59:13,120
Speaker 2: they are drawing them down into rabbit holes of far

979
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:13,800
Speaker 2: right content.

980
00:59:14,400 --> 00:59:15,280
Speaker 7: And the thing that.

981
00:59:15,440 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 2: Always frustrated me about that was I was seeing how much,

982
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:22,280
Speaker 2: you know, influencer culture and dynamics we're playing a role

983
00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:24,320
Speaker 2: in this. So it's like, you know, if you start

984
00:59:24,400 --> 00:59:26,400
Speaker 2: to listen to Joe Rogan and become a fan of his,

985
00:59:26,880 --> 00:59:29,840
Speaker 2: you don't need an algorithm to recommend new.

986
00:59:29,840 --> 00:59:30,920
Speaker 7: Content of his right.

987
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:34,280
Speaker 2: I mean, you may still defer to it in terms

988
00:59:34,320 --> 00:59:36,200
Speaker 2: of like what you choose to watch next, but you're

989
00:59:36,240 --> 00:59:38,240
Speaker 2: watching it next because you've already watched a piece of

990
00:59:38,360 --> 00:59:39,880
Speaker 2: content from him and enjoyed it.

991
00:59:40,040 --> 00:59:41,360
Speaker 7: So there's that piece of it.

992
00:59:41,520 --> 00:59:43,840
Speaker 2: And then I do think also like this whole idea

993
00:59:43,840 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 2: of getting drawn down into like the deep dark corners

994
00:59:46,960 --> 00:59:50,560
Speaker 2: and the rabbit holes and stuff does give this false

995
00:59:51,000 --> 00:59:54,560
Speaker 2: sense of it being you know, staying fringe content, when

996
00:59:54,640 --> 00:59:58,560
Speaker 2: in fact we were seeing that this massive ecosystem of

997
00:59:58,640 --> 01:00:00,440
Speaker 2: some of the most popular creators was.

998
01:00:00,880 --> 01:00:03,600
Speaker 1: Have been thinking this since you mentioned you know how

999
01:00:04,280 --> 01:00:07,280
Speaker 1: you know, the people saying the quiet power part loud

1000
01:00:07,480 --> 01:00:10,840
Speaker 1: from the beginning, you know, they tended to get deplatformed.

1001
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:14,200
Speaker 1: I feel like that's part of why podcasts have been

1002
01:00:14,240 --> 01:00:16,840
Speaker 1: so successful. It's like that's where you go when you're

1003
01:00:16,960 --> 01:00:18,480
Speaker 1: kicked out of somewhere.

1004
01:00:18,160 --> 01:00:21,320
Speaker 2: Else totally that it's it's a way of creating the

1005
01:00:21,720 --> 01:00:26,160
Speaker 2: you know, digital media brands and producing content that where

1006
01:00:26,200 --> 01:00:28,040
Speaker 2: you're not dependent on a single platform.

1007
01:00:28,200 --> 01:00:28,360
Speaker 7: Cool.

1008
01:00:28,360 --> 01:00:30,200
Speaker 1: Okay, So I want to go back to there not

1009
01:00:30,360 --> 01:00:35,480
Speaker 1: being a lot of incentive for these manisphere podcasts slash

1010
01:00:35,640 --> 01:00:37,800
Speaker 1: just influencers in general. What do you mean when you

1011
01:00:37,840 --> 01:00:39,440
Speaker 1: say that, I know it's related to I mean, this

1012
01:00:39,520 --> 01:00:43,880
Speaker 1: seems like a tremendously profitable space.

1013
01:00:44,280 --> 01:00:47,840
Speaker 7: It certainly has gotten way more profit driven over time.

1014
01:00:47,920 --> 01:00:50,280
Speaker 2: I mean, this is why it's easy to go back

1015
01:00:50,360 --> 01:00:53,439
Speaker 2: and look at early YouTube and get really nostalgic, even

1016
01:00:53,480 --> 01:00:56,200
Speaker 2: though there were you know, awful things going on then,

1017
01:00:56,640 --> 01:00:59,680
Speaker 2: sure of harassment and stuff, but like, I think the

1018
01:00:59,800 --> 01:01:03,560
Speaker 2: beauty of something like early YouTube was that people weren't

1019
01:01:03,600 --> 01:01:06,200
Speaker 2: making careers off of it yet for the most part,

1020
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:09,280
Speaker 2: that people were just kind of like making weird things

1021
01:01:09,360 --> 01:01:11,600
Speaker 2: and posting them online and some of them would go viral.

1022
01:01:11,880 --> 01:01:14,960
Speaker 2: You know, that very quickly changed. But what we think

1023
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:19,000
Speaker 2: of now is this like influencer economy. You know, that's

1024
01:01:19,080 --> 01:01:23,680
Speaker 2: been like the past fifteen years. It has grown from

1025
01:01:23,800 --> 01:01:29,080
Speaker 2: essentially nothing into like this massive, massive entertainment ecosystem, and

1026
01:01:29,320 --> 01:01:33,200
Speaker 2: so the profit incentive is there. There's a certain genre

1027
01:01:33,360 --> 01:01:38,000
Speaker 2: of creator who has marketed themselves as like a provocateur,

1028
01:01:38,600 --> 01:01:41,600
Speaker 2: and so for them, certainly like saying the quiet part

1029
01:01:41,680 --> 01:01:44,360
Speaker 2: out loud is the whole shtick and kind of like

1030
01:01:44,560 --> 01:01:47,080
Speaker 2: I will go there when other people won't. You know,

1031
01:01:47,120 --> 01:01:49,480
Speaker 2: I would say that that's like Andrew Tait, right, Like

1032
01:01:49,680 --> 01:01:53,720
Speaker 2: he he thrives on open misogyny and like saying the

1033
01:01:53,800 --> 01:01:56,160
Speaker 2: things that are like as shocking as possible, and he

1034
01:01:56,280 --> 01:01:59,280
Speaker 2: has made a massive career out of that.

1035
01:02:00,120 --> 01:02:01,960
Speaker 7: That's a big piece of it. There are other people

1036
01:02:02,040 --> 01:02:03,680
Speaker 7: who have found like other niches.

1037
01:02:03,720 --> 01:02:05,720
Speaker 2: I mean, I would say that not to keep going

1038
01:02:05,800 --> 01:02:07,880
Speaker 2: back to Rogan, but he's just such a bmth in

1039
01:02:07,960 --> 01:02:10,160
Speaker 2: this space. He's very much the like, I'm just asking

1040
01:02:10,280 --> 01:02:13,200
Speaker 2: questions guy, right, So he's not out there looking to shock.

1041
01:02:13,560 --> 01:02:18,200
Speaker 2: You end up hearing similarly misogynist ideas on his platform

1042
01:02:18,360 --> 01:02:22,000
Speaker 2: because he invites on misogynists and asks them questions.

1043
01:02:22,160 --> 01:02:25,240
Speaker 1: I don't know, yeah, totally, he just walked in the room.

1044
01:02:25,640 --> 01:02:29,080
Speaker 7: Let's think, like when it was like just radio and television,

1045
01:02:29,480 --> 01:02:31,760
Speaker 7: broadcasters had to make.

1046
01:02:31,680 --> 01:02:35,360
Speaker 2: Sure that they were inviting on like multiple different perspectives

1047
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:39,120
Speaker 2: and points of view around controversial issues. Not to say

1048
01:02:39,200 --> 01:02:42,280
Speaker 2: that that was necessarily a great system, I mean there

1049
01:02:42,680 --> 01:02:44,840
Speaker 2: were a lot of issues with that too, but people

1050
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:46,840
Speaker 2: legally had to do that, and they legally had to

1051
01:02:47,000 --> 01:02:50,080
Speaker 2: ensure that they were somehow providing content that like was

1052
01:02:50,200 --> 01:02:54,200
Speaker 2: beneficial to the public interest aka like for creating an

1053
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:55,200
Speaker 2: informed citizenry.

1054
01:02:55,440 --> 01:02:58,120
Speaker 1: So another media narrative I've been seeing a lot in

1055
01:02:58,320 --> 01:03:03,000
Speaker 1: the last several days that has given me pause. Specifically,

1056
01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:06,840
Speaker 1: the focus around, Oh my gosh, gen z men are

1057
01:03:06,920 --> 01:03:10,600
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly misogynist. What do you make of that?

1058
01:03:11,120 --> 01:03:13,840
Speaker 7: Yeah, I also have a lot of issues with it.

1059
01:03:14,000 --> 01:03:17,320
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, I don't firsthand research like the

1060
01:03:17,440 --> 01:03:20,520
Speaker 2: media consumers. I look at the producers, so I don't

1061
01:03:20,600 --> 01:03:23,800
Speaker 2: know precisely how these things are are impacting gen z men.

1062
01:03:24,000 --> 01:03:28,920
Speaker 2: But I think there is a strange fixation on youth

1063
01:03:29,040 --> 01:03:31,720
Speaker 2: and the Internet, and like, yes, that the internet is

1064
01:03:31,760 --> 01:03:35,920
Speaker 2: destroying our youth, that is very pervasive. I've been doing

1065
01:03:35,960 --> 01:03:38,720
Speaker 2: a lot of research looking at the nineteen nineties recently.

1066
01:03:38,520 --> 01:03:43,960
Speaker 7: And like everyone was freaking out about cyber porn at

1067
01:03:44,000 --> 01:03:46,720
Speaker 7: the time. That was like the big thing, and it.

1068
01:03:46,840 --> 01:03:49,640
Speaker 2: Was like cyberporn is going to ruin our youth. And

1069
01:03:49,760 --> 01:03:52,840
Speaker 2: it feels like every few years there's a new panic,

1070
01:03:52,960 --> 01:03:56,840
Speaker 2: and like, obviously we want to be critical of what

1071
01:03:57,120 --> 01:04:00,200
Speaker 2: media is getting consumed. First of all, it can end

1072
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:04,200
Speaker 2: up making it seem like somehow older generations have not

1073
01:04:04,360 --> 01:04:11,520
Speaker 2: also been dealing with misogyny, right, And then also I think, yeah,

1074
01:04:11,720 --> 01:04:15,640
Speaker 2: it can really create these kind of moral panics that

1075
01:04:15,880 --> 01:04:19,440
Speaker 2: ironically end up reinforcing certain like conservative ideals of like

1076
01:04:20,000 --> 01:04:22,120
Speaker 2: we must keep the children safe and the way that

1077
01:04:22,200 --> 01:04:24,800
Speaker 2: you do that is kind of by like reinscribing traditional

1078
01:04:24,840 --> 01:04:25,680
Speaker 2: family norms and.

1079
01:04:25,680 --> 01:04:31,080
Speaker 1: Stuff, things like algorithmic bubbles, things like infinite content that

1080
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:35,120
Speaker 1: will you know, sort of reinforce your your worst instincts.

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01:04:35,200 --> 01:04:38,080
Speaker 1: Like that certainly plays a big role in it, But

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01:04:38,360 --> 01:04:42,040
Speaker 1: I worry that it just feels like another sort of

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01:04:42,200 --> 01:04:45,480
Speaker 1: churning on a generation in a way that is ultimately

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01:04:45,640 --> 01:04:50,560
Speaker 1: like really unproductive, and if it's perpetuated enough, could really

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01:04:50,920 --> 01:04:54,960
Speaker 1: you know, cause people like cause young people to double

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01:04:55,040 --> 01:04:57,920
Speaker 1: down on it. But it's also like you're saying everyone

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01:04:58,040 --> 01:05:00,360
Speaker 1: got more conservative? Why are we? I mean, and I

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01:05:00,400 --> 01:05:02,600
Speaker 1: think it is alarming us when it's young people, because

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01:05:02,600 --> 01:05:05,320
Speaker 1: you're like, is this going to be forever? But everybody

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01:05:05,440 --> 01:05:09,600
Speaker 1: got more conservative? And specifically white people got more conservative.

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01:05:09,720 --> 01:05:11,320
Speaker 2: I was like, and yeah, I think it also is

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01:05:11,400 --> 01:05:15,000
Speaker 2: like once you're pointing the blame at like an algorithm

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01:05:15,160 --> 01:05:19,880
Speaker 2: or like a few specific podcasters. Again not to not

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01:05:20,040 --> 01:05:23,320
Speaker 2: to say that these these forces are like not worthy

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01:05:23,360 --> 01:05:25,320
Speaker 2: of critique. They absolutely are. And it's a lot of

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01:05:25,400 --> 01:05:28,720
Speaker 2: what I do, but these these are all downstream of

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01:05:29,600 --> 01:05:32,640
Speaker 2: other like systematic failures, you know, Like I I do

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01:05:32,840 --> 01:05:35,280
Speaker 2: point a lot to this fact of like local there

1099
01:05:35,320 --> 01:05:38,000
Speaker 2: has been a massive collapse of local news. Local news

1100
01:05:38,120 --> 01:05:40,600
Speaker 2: used to be one of the primary sources that people

1101
01:05:40,680 --> 01:05:45,720
Speaker 2: got like information for their voting habits, like their vivic needs,

1102
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:48,640
Speaker 2: all of these things. And you know, within the past

1103
01:05:49,160 --> 01:05:53,439
Speaker 2: couple of decades you have had these massive conglomerates coming

1104
01:05:53,520 --> 01:05:56,680
Speaker 2: in buying up local news, gutting the newsrooms and selling

1105
01:05:56,720 --> 01:05:59,720
Speaker 2: them off. When you don't have those actual kind of

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01:06:00,120 --> 01:06:06,040
Speaker 2: public interest informed news sources, people I think very reasonably

1107
01:06:06,120 --> 01:06:08,920
Speaker 2: start to distrust a media that's focused on kind of

1108
01:06:09,000 --> 01:06:13,880
Speaker 2: horse race celebrity based coverage that often is driven by sensationalism.

1109
01:06:14,400 --> 01:06:15,360
Speaker 7: All of these things.

1110
01:06:15,880 --> 01:06:18,720
Speaker 2: People are hungry, People are hungry for answers, and so

1111
01:06:19,600 --> 01:06:22,320
Speaker 2: you then have this new ecosystem of people cropping up

1112
01:06:22,400 --> 01:06:26,360
Speaker 2: that provides that echoes your concerns with the mainstream media

1113
01:06:27,080 --> 01:06:30,480
Speaker 2: and provides an alternative set of answers. And so there

1114
01:06:30,520 --> 01:06:33,800
Speaker 2: would be no Joe Rogan without some of these other factors.

1115
01:06:33,920 --> 01:06:37,280
Speaker 1: You know, do you think that this space is going

1116
01:06:37,400 --> 01:06:40,440
Speaker 1: to change again because of sort of this newfound attention?

1117
01:06:40,520 --> 01:06:42,440
Speaker 1: Where do you see it going.

1118
01:06:43,160 --> 01:06:46,040
Speaker 2: It's important to tweak algorithms, It's important to you know,

1119
01:06:46,280 --> 01:06:50,480
Speaker 2: understand individual creators these issues are also not going to

1120
01:06:50,520 --> 01:06:52,800
Speaker 2: get solved by by just doing that.

1121
01:06:53,920 --> 01:06:56,040
Speaker 7: And as you mentioned earlier, you know.

1122
01:06:56,120 --> 01:06:58,880
Speaker 2: By trying to create a left wing Joe Rogan like

1123
01:06:59,400 --> 01:07:06,240
Speaker 2: that is not going to succeed or solve anything. I

1124
01:07:06,360 --> 01:07:09,760
Speaker 2: think there is this misconception that, like, if you simply

1125
01:07:09,880 --> 01:07:12,840
Speaker 2: present people with the correct facts, they will come to

1126
01:07:12,920 --> 01:07:15,960
Speaker 2: the logical conclusion that what they believe is wrong. And

1127
01:07:16,160 --> 01:07:19,520
Speaker 2: in fact, what so much of this is about is identity,

1128
01:07:19,960 --> 01:07:23,400
Speaker 2: sense of belonging, you know, ideas about how the world

1129
01:07:23,480 --> 01:07:26,000
Speaker 2: should work and who should be in power, and the

1130
01:07:26,120 --> 01:07:28,760
Speaker 2: facts are kind of downstream from that. Like I've seen

1131
01:07:28,960 --> 01:07:32,280
Speaker 2: I've seen a genre of like tweet a response in

1132
01:07:33,360 --> 01:07:35,960
Speaker 2: the later weeks of this election of like, well, we

1133
01:07:36,200 --> 01:07:38,800
Speaker 2: really have to be paying more attention to men and

1134
01:07:38,920 --> 01:07:42,000
Speaker 2: the male loneliness epidemic and all these things, and it

1135
01:07:42,080 --> 01:07:46,960
Speaker 2: can be easy for it to like fall into like

1136
01:07:47,120 --> 01:07:50,320
Speaker 2: we need to be coddling men more. Essentially, this isn't

1137
01:07:50,400 --> 01:07:54,560
Speaker 2: going to be solved just by taking like individual action

1138
01:07:54,720 --> 01:07:58,280
Speaker 2: against like bad eggs or whatever. Like, we need to

1139
01:07:58,320 --> 01:08:01,440
Speaker 2: think about what are like how do you institutions or

1140
01:08:01,600 --> 01:08:05,800
Speaker 2: like education systems or information systems start to create this

1141
01:08:06,520 --> 01:08:09,000
Speaker 2: set like belief that men can and should be doing

1142
01:08:09,040 --> 01:08:10,000
Speaker 2: this in the first place.

1143
01:08:10,360 --> 01:08:13,480
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Becca for lending her time and expertise,

1144
01:08:13,960 --> 01:08:15,800
Speaker 1: and you can follow more of her work on Twitter

1145
01:08:16,160 --> 01:08:22,760
Speaker 1: at Becca lou lw Okay. I release you for the week,

1146
01:08:22,960 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 1: but we have a lot more ground to cover, first

1147
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:28,040
Speaker 1: by those who study this space, and then by those

1148
01:08:28,320 --> 01:08:31,639
Speaker 1: who have experienced it. Next week we take a look

1149
01:08:31,680 --> 01:08:34,559
Speaker 1: at the expansion of the Manisphere, growing from the seeds

1150
01:08:34,600 --> 01:08:38,240
Speaker 1: of public recognition and gamer Gate and expanding now into

1151
01:08:38,280 --> 01:08:42,160
Speaker 1: the highest levels of American government. And for your moment

1152
01:08:42,200 --> 01:08:46,120
Speaker 1: of fun, here's pickup artists. Cringe all right, see you

1153
01:08:46,240 --> 01:08:46,639
Speaker 1: next week.

1154
01:08:47,320 --> 01:08:49,920
Speaker 4: Every heart girl that you see at some point was

1155
01:08:50,200 --> 01:08:53,479
Speaker 4: a little baby wearing diapers.

1156
01:08:53,000 --> 01:08:56,360
Speaker 7: And at some point will be an elder woman. Our

1157
01:08:56,439 --> 01:09:01,960
Speaker 7: assignment is to shift our mindset when right here, right now.

1158
01:09:06,960 --> 01:09:10,560
Speaker 1: Sixteenth Minute is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.

1159
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:14,439
Speaker 1: It is written, posted, and produced by me Jamie Loftus.

1160
01:09:14,680 --> 01:09:17,639
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Sophie Liick Derman and Robert Evans.

1161
01:09:18,080 --> 01:09:22,000
Speaker 1: Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.

1162
01:09:22,600 --> 01:09:26,400
Speaker 1: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is

1163
01:09:26,439 --> 01:09:29,439
Speaker 1: from Grant Crater and Pet shout outs to our dog

1164
01:09:29,520 --> 01:09:33,040
Speaker 1: producer Anderson my Katz, Flee and Casper, and by pet Rockberg,

1165
01:09:33,200 --> 01:09:35,000
Speaker 1: who will outlive us all Bye.