Speaker 1: Just a quick heads up that today's episode mentioned self
Speaker 1: harm and disordered eating. There Are No Girls on the
Speaker 1: Internet as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on
Speaker 1: the Internet. This is part two of a two part
Speaker 1: episode about Brandon Peters aka Clovicular, the looks maxing influencer
Speaker 1: who recently experienced an overdose on a live stream. If
Speaker 1: you have not listened to part one, you should. In
Speaker 1: that part one, we walk through who Peters is and
Speaker 1: how he rose to prominence online. And in the second part,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the role that I think
Speaker 1: the mainstream media played in that rise.
Speaker 2: And it didn't even.
Speaker 1: Really start with coverage of Peter's Let's take it back
Speaker 1: to how mainstream outlets were writing about the rise of
Speaker 1: the so called al right a few years ago. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the role that media plays in turning
Speaker 1: niche extremists like Brandon Peters also known as Clovicular online
Speaker 1: into celebrity figures. I need to own that it's a
Speaker 1: little bit complicated, because I also do feel that we
Speaker 1: spent far too much time doing that thing where media says, oh,
Speaker 1: we're going to ignore these extremist figures and just allow
Speaker 1: them to amass more and more power and influence without
Speaker 1: any kind of mainstream scrutiny. And then by the time
Speaker 1: this figure is big and they're everywhere all over the Internet,
Speaker 1: then mainstream media is talking about them. But by then
Speaker 1: it's way too late. They're they're very powerful. I saw
Speaker 1: that a lot, and I think it was a big mistake.
Speaker 1: But it's also not like the only two choices are
Speaker 1: either media ignores figures like Peters as they get bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger, or they have to cover them, but they
Speaker 1: have no choice but to do so in ways that
Speaker 1: essentially celebrate them or almost kind of sound like they're
Speaker 1: advocate for them, or that they think that the audience
Speaker 1: should be sort of flattered or or interested in them,
Speaker 1: where they're essentially doing positive pr for these folks and
Speaker 1: helping them build their brands. Like I think there's got
Speaker 1: to be a line between writing critically about these figures
Speaker 1: and essentially doing the work of building up their platforms
Speaker 1: on their behalf. And this is a conversation that really
Speaker 1: predates the rise of Peters. This is probably not the
Speaker 1: first example of this or the only example of this,
Speaker 1: But the one that sticks with me very personally is
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen when Mother Jones wrote about Richard
Speaker 1: Spencer and the rise of the so called alt right.
Speaker 2: Now, to be clear, having read the whole.
Speaker 1: Piece, it is like critical of the alt right and
Speaker 1: critical of figures like Spencer, but the headline for the
Speaker 1: piece was like check out these dapper new Nazis strolling
Speaker 1: into town. It was actually a little bit hard to
Speaker 1: find the actual article because they did change the title
Speaker 1: on the piece that ran online eventually, but they didn't
Speaker 1: remove it from the Instagram, and we dug and we dug,
Speaker 1: and we were able to find it. And again I
Speaker 1: alway said the piece is critical of the alt right,
Speaker 1: but the first few sentences are like describing Richard Spencer
Speaker 1: in this beautiful hotel room, eating fancy sushi with chopsticks,
Speaker 1: and he almost sounds like a lifestyle influencer or a
Speaker 1: menswear influencer and not a hate monger. And so again
Speaker 1: that the piece itself was critical, But the headline in
Speaker 1: the image of Spencer in this like dapper suit, also
Speaker 1: with a subhead that again calls him handsome and dapper
Speaker 1: and says that they're trying to make fascism cool again.
Speaker 1: That's what people share on social media. It's the headline
Speaker 1: and the image. And so even if the piece goes
Speaker 1: on to be critical, which in this case it did,
Speaker 1: the conversation that the building up around the piece kind
Speaker 1: of sounds like, look at these cool, handsome Nazis, which yuck,
Speaker 1: and to me that kind of came to represent the
Speaker 1: pinnacle of the bad job media has done when it
Speaker 1: comes to how we talk about these folks critically. In
Speaker 1: the same way that I think it was very irresponsible
Speaker 1: for The New York Times to call Peters a handsomeness
Speaker 1: influencer in that big profile of him that really helped
Speaker 1: build his platform, I also did not think it was
Speaker 1: appropriate to frame the alt right as almost like a
Speaker 1: dapper menswear club. I'm not saying that these folks should
Speaker 1: not be written about. I think they absolutely should be
Speaker 1: written about, because they deserve mainstream scrutiny and we should
Speaker 1: know who they are. But writing about them like this
Speaker 1: is a choice. Writing about them in this way that
Speaker 1: builds their brands for them is a.
Speaker 3: Choice, right, And in some of these cases it almost
Speaker 3: seems like the media outlets themselves, like in that New
Speaker 3: York Times example, want to be a political right like
Speaker 3: just reporting on this guy doing this thing, no deeper
Speaker 3: thought about it. And that's, in my opinion, a really
Speaker 3: disappointing approach to journalism. Right Like with Mother Jones writing
Speaker 3: about Richard Spencer, I think they got it wrong because
Speaker 3: I don't my understanding is that Mother Jones is like
Speaker 3: pretty solidly anti Nazi, right like it is a publication
Speaker 3: that is solidly anti Nazi. So they got that wrong.
Speaker 3: These more recent pieces about Peters, I don't have that
Speaker 3: same confidence that they view this stuff as harmful. It
Speaker 3: almost seems like they're flirting with it as harmless or okay,
Speaker 3: or worth it or somehow acceptable like they like. It
Speaker 3: feels like some of them are almost actively trying to
Speaker 3: whitewash it and make it more acceptable.
Speaker 1: Yes, because this is somebody who objectively pushes white supremac societeology.
Speaker 1: This is somebody who is publicly engaged in self harm
Speaker 1: and the harm of others. Choosing in the title or
Speaker 1: the subhead of your piece to describe him as to
Speaker 1: somebody who promotes handsomeness, come on, you know, And I
Speaker 1: think this gets.
Speaker 2: Back to my opinion.
Speaker 1: I guess my take is that I think a lot
Speaker 1: of legacy media organizations they're doing that because they understand
Speaker 1: that framing it that way gets more engagement. If you
Speaker 1: were to frame it as a critical piece about somebody
Speaker 1: who is unwell and engages in self harm in the
Speaker 1: harm of others, I don't think that's as edgy as
Speaker 1: describing it as, Oh, this handsome guy who has kind
Speaker 1: of an unusual worldview and an unusual pastime and practice
Speaker 1: around self improvement. I mean, it almost kind of feels
Speaker 1: like a certain type of access journalism, but the access
Speaker 1: that they're trying to get is access to somebody who
Speaker 1: was clearly unwell.
Speaker 3: It is definitely a tricky fine line to walk of,
Speaker 3: like how journalist should be covering people like this. But
Speaker 3: to your point, I think it seems clear that the
Speaker 3: coverage that Peters has got over the past week is
Speaker 3: not the way, right, Like, it seems like this is
Speaker 3: not the way, and we all need to learn how
Speaker 3: to cover it better.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I'm glad that you put it that way,
Speaker 1: because I'm not pretending like I have.
Speaker 2: All the answers. I certainly don't.
Speaker 1: Even the Louis's throau Manosphere documentary that you mentioned I heard,
Speaker 1: I read and heard a lot of criticism saying that
Speaker 1: documentary was a failure because it just ended up giving
Speaker 1: these guys exactly what they wanted, which is a bigger
Speaker 1: platform in another stage. Right, I personally did not happen
Speaker 1: to agree with that tape, but I understand that take,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to say that because it is complicated,
Speaker 1: it is a fine line to walk. It does become
Speaker 1: difficult to know when you have crossed over into giving
Speaker 1: somebody a platform or amplifying them versus engaging in like
Speaker 1: important criticism or like critique or.
Speaker 2: Scrutiny with them.
Speaker 1: I absolutely own that that is a tough line to walk.
Speaker 1: But I know it's not calling them a handsomeness influencer.
Speaker 1: I know it's not obscuring the fact that this is
Speaker 1: somebody who is engaging an act of self harm and
Speaker 1: harming others on camera, right, Like, I know that it
Speaker 1: is complicated, but it's worth that needs to be done,
Speaker 1: and it's worth figuring out because we're going to just
Speaker 1: see more and more and more of these figures rising
Speaker 1: to prominence, and I know that this is not the right.
Speaker 2: Way to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I agree that it's going to become a
Speaker 3: even bigger problem because there's just so much reward to
Speaker 3: be had. Right, if you're like a mid tier influencer,
Speaker 3: and you look at this enormous run of success that
Speaker 3: Peters has had over the past week, where he has
Speaker 3: shot to national attention and celebrity emulating, that probably looks
Speaker 3: like a pretty good idea, right, And I think people
Speaker 3: in traditional media really need to think carefully about making
Speaker 3: sure that they aren't setting themselves up to be gained
Speaker 3: by smart, savvy, young influencer types who are taking notes
Speaker 3: and behaving in ways specifically to get this kind of
Speaker 3: attention because it is so rewarding exactly.
Speaker 1: So let's break that down, because I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: it's not like Peters was a complete nobody. He has
Speaker 1: over a million followers across platforms. He is and was
Speaker 1: genuinely influential within the looks maxing community. But that context
Speaker 1: that you just met brought up really matters a lot.
Speaker 1: So if we compare him to other major manuscrire influencers,
Speaker 1: Andrew Tait has tens of millions of followers and clearly
Speaker 1: has mainstream political access. Jordan Peterson, he has a book Empire,
Speaker 1: major interviewers, even folks that I would categorize as sort
Speaker 1: of mid tier figures like Fresh and Fit, They have
Speaker 1: much larger, more established fan bases than Peters ever had.
Speaker 1: Before December twenty twenty five, about the time when Peters
Speaker 1: was on my radar, he was very known within his subculture,
Speaker 1: but basically not really that known outside of it unless
Speaker 1: you were somebody who was following online niche subcultures, and that, like,
Speaker 1: unless you were someone like me who is like like
Speaker 1: like in the trenches, you probably didn't know who this
Speaker 1: guy was.
Speaker 2: And what happened to change that?
Speaker 1: I would argue press coverage because let's look at this timeline.
Speaker 1: November twenty twenty five, Peters injects his underage girlfriend with
Speaker 1: peptides on stream. Mostly that that controversy states internal. December
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, twenty twenty five, Peters is live streaming himself
Speaker 1: driving a cyber truck in Miami. He seemingly hits someone
Speaker 1: on the live stream, goes viral. Late December through January
Speaker 1: of this year, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and
Speaker 1: The New York Times simultaneously all began working on major
Speaker 1: profiles of him. By January twenty twenty six, Thomas Chatterton
Speaker 1: Williams of The Atlantic, who I fucking hate, calls Peters
Speaker 1: the newest star and most recognizable member of the Looks
Speaker 1: Maxing movement, but recognizable to whom I would argue that
Speaker 1: he became recognizable because these publications said that he was recognizable,
Speaker 1: said that he was somebody that you need to know about.
Speaker 1: February twenty twenty six, The New York Times publishes its
Speaker 1: major profile by Joseph Bernstein. Peters is now earning one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a month. Also in February, Peters walks
Speaker 1: New York Fashion Week for designer Elena Vallez.
Speaker 2: This is just days after his arrest in Arizona.
Speaker 1: By late March of twenty twenty six, The New York
Speaker 1: Times devotes a full episode of The Daily to Peter's
Speaker 1: and Looks Maxing, and then that leads us to just
Speaker 1: last week, April fourteenth, twenty twenty six, Peters is hospitalized
Speaker 1: for a suspected drug overghost while live streaming. So to me,
Speaker 1: that paints a very clear timeline of the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, this guy's increasingly extreme behavior plus mainstream media
Speaker 1: attention is what led to his celebrity really growing. Sophia
Speaker 1: Tespe wrote a really sharp piece of media criticism for
Speaker 1: Salon on April six, twenty twenty six, where she compared
Speaker 1: the coverage of Peters to this infamous twenty seventeen New
Speaker 1: York Times profile of Tony Hoviter, who is a neo
Speaker 1: Nazi welder in Ohio. The profile talked about how much
Speaker 1: this guy loved Seinfeld and how much he liked the
Speaker 1: store target, and the Times got into trouble for basically
Speaker 1: normalizing white nationalism. At Salon, test Fay writes, quote, if
Speaker 1: Charlottesville taught journalists to be wary of amplifying ideology, the
Speaker 1: current moment demands an understanding that in an attention economy,
Speaker 1: amplification itself is the ideology.
Speaker 2: And I completely agree with that.
Speaker 1: Again, I am not saying that these people should not
Speaker 1: be scrutinized, should not be written about, but it is
Speaker 1: a choice to write about them in a kind of
Speaker 1: way that this amplifies and does the work of that
Speaker 1: they're trying to do for them, That helps them launder
Speaker 1: their ideologies for audiences and make those ideologies seem cool
Speaker 1: or handsome or sexy or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's such a good comparison to that twenty seventeen profile.
Speaker 3: I remember that, you know, this was shortly after Trump
Speaker 3: had been elected to his first term, and there was
Speaker 3: like this national movement seemingly to like normalize extremists and
Speaker 3: make people with neo Nazi beliefs seem as if they
Speaker 3: were mainstream. And that was about ten years ago, and
Speaker 3: so it's interesting to think about that example and compare
Speaker 3: it with Peters what's happening today, because there are so
Speaker 3: many similarities to the underlying ideology as you've described, but
Speaker 3: like the face of it has evolved, possibly because it's
Speaker 3: been struck by a hammer, possibly for other reasons, most
Speaker 3: likely because people have gotten wise and that sort of
Speaker 3: stuff just doesn't play so well anymore. Maybe hopefully.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, And I guess that's why I
Speaker 1: keep bringing it back to this gender lens, because I
Speaker 1: really do think that if you took a woman an
Speaker 1: influencer who's claim to fame was disordered eating and promoting
Speaker 1: disordered eating for others, I don't think we would see
Speaker 1: these outlets covering it the same way we have women influencers,
Speaker 1: people like Live Schmid, who've talked about on the podcast
Speaker 1: before who their whole thing is being super thin and
Speaker 1: promoting disordered eating to others. And you don't see the
Speaker 1: New York Times calling them, you know, beauty influencers or
Speaker 1: influencers who promote beauty. They would they they're talked about
Speaker 1: in ways that I think make clear that they are
Speaker 1: promoting self harm and self harm tactics. And so just
Speaker 1: as somebody who came of Internet age in the tumbler days,
Speaker 1: I remember so clearly these they used to call pro
Speaker 1: ana accounts, Tumblr accounts that glorified and promoted disordered eating.
Speaker 1: It was a real cesspool. It's kind of coming back
Speaker 1: in the form of skinny talk. But we did not
Speaker 1: also have a mainstream media that was amplifying this and
Speaker 1: laundering this as a cool or sexy or reasonable thing
Speaker 1: to do like we do now. And so I think
Speaker 1: if you looked at Peter's documented behavior from that lens
Speaker 1: and not from an entertainment lens, it becomes so clear
Speaker 1: how irresponsible it is to divorce what Peters actually promotes
Speaker 1: and stands for from all of the harmful behaviors that
Speaker 1: it actually is. So, you know, self administering steroid injections
Speaker 1: starting at age fourteen, using methanbetamines to suppress appetites for
Speaker 1: appearance goals, bone smashing, hitting himself in the face with
Speaker 1: a hammer to change his bone structure. Obviously, doctors have
Speaker 1: said don't do that because it causes fractures that, ad
Speaker 1: healed properly, can cause permanent nerve damage and disfigurement. And
Speaker 1: on top of that, there is no scientific basis for
Speaker 1: it even working to make you look a certain way.
Speaker 1: Injecting unregulated substances into his own body and the body
Speaker 1: of others, including minors without medical training, and looking at
Speaker 1: the circumstances regarding his recent overdose when that happened, Peters
Speaker 1: posted to X with blood on his face, writing quote,
Speaker 1: the worst part of tonight was my face descending from
Speaker 1: the life support mask.
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick break at our back.
Speaker 1: Doctor Justin Neppa, who is a board certified psychiatrist in Florida,
Speaker 1: wrote a clinical analysis of looks, maxing and march. What
Speaker 1: often begins as an innocent foreway into better grooming or
Speaker 1: fitness can quickly spiral into a severe cycle of body
Speaker 1: dysmorphic disorder, depression, substance abuse, and self harm. He also
Speaker 1: said that he has seen young men spend three to
Speaker 1: four hours daily analyzing their facial features, measuring jawlines with calipers,
Speaker 1: and comparing themselves to digitally altered images. This creates masculine demoralization.
Speaker 1: And again, if you were a young woman who came
Speaker 1: of age when I did, at a time when magazine
Speaker 1: covers were all making it very clear that the most
Speaker 1: important thing that you could be was like super skinny
Speaker 1: to be hot, this behavior it doesn't seem that foreign
Speaker 1: to me, but then you have mainstream platforms trying to
Speaker 1: make it seem like this is reasonable or even safe
Speaker 1: or healthy behavior, that it's just you know, regular grooming
Speaker 1: or regular self improvement, when it isn't. Body dysmorphic disorder
Speaker 1: affects about two percent to the general population.
Speaker 2: In heavy social.
Speaker 1: Media users, that figure more than doubles to four point
Speaker 1: two percent. Forty percent of BDD sufferers are men. Studies
Speaker 1: consistently show that individuals with untreated BDD who undergo cosmetic
Speaker 1: procedures experience no improvement or worsening of symptoms.
Speaker 2: Peters has had multiple of.
Speaker 1: These procedures, so again, it's not like something where you
Speaker 1: can get the procedure, get the jaw line, get the
Speaker 1: thing that you've been holding out for and then a
Speaker 1: switch flips in your fine. In fact, the data seems
Speaker 1: to be pretty clear that that's actually not what happens.
Speaker 1: It's a consistent hamster wheel where the point is trying
Speaker 1: to achieve this status of perfection, but perfection does not
Speaker 1: really exist, So it's going to continue to be increasing
Speaker 1: things with a never ending cycle. A twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: peer reviewed paper called Looksmaxing colon straddling the inflection between
Speaker 1: self enhancement and self harm directly associates this content with
Speaker 1: body dissatisfaction, body dysmorphia, and suicidal ideation in young men.
Speaker 2: So when you look.
Speaker 1: At all of those behaviors together, the mess, the testosterone
Speaker 1: at fourteen, the hammer, I think it's pretty clear that
Speaker 1: we're talking about self harm behavior.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are harmful behaviors, right, that one is doing
Speaker 3: himself by definition self harm exactly.
Speaker 1: And I just again, I just really think that we
Speaker 1: would be responding differently to Peter's if he were a woman.
Speaker 1: Going back to those early twenty tens tumblr pro anna
Speaker 1: pro anarexia communities, those communities were mostly teenage girls and
Speaker 1: young women.
Speaker 2: They were thin, spow photos.
Speaker 1: Diet tips, tips for evading parents and doctors, mantras like
Speaker 1: skip dinner, end up dinner again. If you listen to
Speaker 1: our Skinny Talk episode, you know that it's still very
Speaker 1: much a thing. It's very similar to I think what
Speaker 1: Peters is pushing a tight knit online community with its
Speaker 1: own vocabulary, hierarchies, and in group culture. Check an ideology
Speaker 1: that frames dangerous self harm behaviors as an aspirational lifestyle choice.
Speaker 1: Check pseudoscience justifications for those behaviors. Check practical tips on
Speaker 1: how to harm yourself more effectively. Check tips on evading
Speaker 1: medical scrutiny and parental scrutiny. Check monetization through memberships and
Speaker 1: affiliate products. Check algorithmic amplification pushing vulnerable young people deeper
Speaker 1: and deeper in check. In February twenty twelve, after pressure
Speaker 1: from the National Eating Disorder Association, Tumblr announced it would
Speaker 1: ban blogs that actively promote or glorified self harm, including
Speaker 1: eating disorders, and those communities were not celebrated as like
Speaker 1: a fascinating cultural provocateur right for the most part, they
Speaker 1: were treated as a public health crisis. Like platforms were
Speaker 1: pressured into getting rid of the content. Research was published
Speaker 1: into it journalists covered it as a kind of harm,
Speaker 1: not an interesting cultural spectacle, like what I think that
Speaker 1: we're seeing with Peters.
Speaker 3: Those comparisons are so strong when you lay them out,
Speaker 3: like that is it? You know, after running through that
Speaker 3: long list, it's like, how could anyone not take a
Speaker 3: gender lens to see the different way that Peters and
Speaker 3: Looks Maxing is being treated than it would if he
Speaker 3: were a woman, or not even hypothetically, how the pro
Speaker 3: anorexia movement was treated several years ago. And I know
Speaker 3: you and I talked about this a little bit before
Speaker 3: the show. I just think it's so interesting to think
Speaker 3: about why that different treatment exists for Looks Maxing, which
Speaker 3: seems geared at young men versus the pro anorexia movement,
Speaker 3: which was primarily aimed at young women. And we came
Speaker 3: up with a couple of hypotheses, but know, like really
Speaker 3: clear answer. You know, I would be interested to hear
Speaker 3: from listeners if they have any thoughts about why this
Speaker 3: difference exists. I don't know if you want to appine
Speaker 3: a little bit on it right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is just my opinion.
Speaker 1: This is for people who are much smarter than me
Speaker 1: to figure out I don't have any kind of inside
Speaker 1: knowledge into this.
Speaker 2: I just want to own this is just my opinion.
Speaker 2: I think that.
Speaker 1: Because it is associated with men and masculinity, it automatically
Speaker 1: is given a different lens or a different framing.
Speaker 2: I think that when men do something.
Speaker 1: It is seen as like a serious thing that has
Speaker 1: serious societal consequences or impact, or that we need to
Speaker 1: be looking at it and treating it in a much
Speaker 1: more serious lens.
Speaker 2: I think it's easier to.
Speaker 1: See young women and girls doing a similar, not entirely identical,
Speaker 1: but a similar thing and saying, oh, those that's unwell behavior,
Speaker 1: that self harm behavior. I think that when it's coming
Speaker 1: from young men and boys, when it's coming from and
Speaker 1: targeted at young men and boys, I think it's easier
Speaker 1: for some people to apply a different lens to it.
Speaker 2: I guess I don't really know why, and I think you.
Speaker 1: Can really see it in how Peters was dealt with
Speaker 1: or not dealt with, depending on how you look at it.
Speaker 1: After he filmed himself injecting peptides into his body into
Speaker 1: his then underaged girlfriend's face, he was temporarily banned from
Speaker 1: Kick and then came back. He got that new York
Speaker 1: Times profile and then he walked in Fashion Week, and
Speaker 1: so I just think that there'd been a woman who
Speaker 1: had done something analogous, I don't think that she would
Speaker 1: get all of this like positive stuff out of it.
Speaker 1: And I also wonder if part of it is that
Speaker 1: we just are aware of the pressure around this kind
Speaker 1: of thing when it comes to girls, but we're less
Speaker 1: aware of it when it comes to young men and boys.
Speaker 1: That we have a framework in our mind for what
Speaker 1: it looks like when a young woman or a girl
Speaker 1: is coming into contact with this kind of content, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of behavior that I almost wonder if we
Speaker 1: don't if we have not really identified a similar kind
Speaker 1: of language around what it looks like and how it
Speaker 1: should be treated when it's happening to a young man.
Speaker 4: Or a boy.
Speaker 3: I agree. I think that's a big piece of this,
Speaker 3: that we just have like a background cultural familiarity with
Speaker 3: the fact that these things are threats to young women.
Speaker 3: The ideas of body dysmorphia, body image issues, disorder to eating.
Speaker 3: A lot of people are very familiar with those problems
Speaker 3: in the context of young women, and it does feel
Speaker 3: more new to be applying those same concerns to young men,
Speaker 3: and there's surely a whole bunch of cultural reasons for that,
Speaker 3: but it does seem like perhaps we all need to
Speaker 3: update our mental models and realize that young men are
Speaker 3: being really affected and targeted by these harmful things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see San Francisco study by doctor Jason Nagata
Speaker 1: found a four hundred percent increase in eating disorder hospitalizations
Speaker 1: among boys since two thousand and two. So boys are
Speaker 1: not immune to body image pathology and issues, but I
Speaker 1: think perhaps they are less seen in the frameworks that
Speaker 1: we have built around addressing it. Like I don't think
Speaker 1: that we are, like we have not updated our information
Speaker 1: about what and who gets impacted by eating disorders and
Speaker 1: body dysmorphia and self harm around it.
Speaker 2: And just another thing that I wanted.
Speaker 1: To say, while we're making these comparisons to the pro
Speaker 1: and a pro eating disorder mostly content for and by
Speaker 1: women and girls, largely those communities were girls harming themselves. Again,
Speaker 1: we do have figures like Live Schmidt, who ran an
Speaker 1: online group where you could pay to get access to
Speaker 1: her tips and tricks for disordered eating. So it's not
Speaker 1: entirely but mostly it is like self harm. But Peters
Speaker 1: has demonstrably harmed other people. You know, that girlfriend injected
Speaker 1: with the peptides, the women that he provoked a fight
Speaker 1: with to post online to get engagement, the person he
Speaker 1: hit with that cyber truck he docks, a reporter who
Speaker 1: was trying to interview him. He openly advocates for teenage
Speaker 1: boys to inject themselves with unregulated hormones, and.
Speaker 2: He earned one hundred k a month in doing it.
Speaker 1: So that financial incentive to continue this behavior and for
Speaker 1: other people to continue behavior like this is obviously enormous.
Speaker 1: And that takes me back to my question about the
Speaker 1: role in media amplifying him.
Speaker 3: Right, the incentives for him, but also the incentives for
Speaker 3: media who might want to cover him.
Speaker 1: Yes, so that's a piece of this I want to
Speaker 1: really dig into, because I do think it is incentivized
Speaker 1: to write about him.
Speaker 2: You know, in the six weeks following him.
Speaker 1: Reportedly hitting a guy with this cyber truck while live streaming,
Speaker 1: Peters went from this well known subcultural figure to essentially
Speaker 1: a mainstream Internet celebrity. And here's a rundown of all
Speaker 1: the places in the aftermath of that that wrote pieces
Speaker 1: on him. There was a piece in Wired in September
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. It was his first major outlet profile
Speaker 1: that called him one of looks Maxing's most popular influencers.
Speaker 1: That Atlantic piece which called him the newest star of
Speaker 1: the movement. That January twenty twenty six Rolling Stone piece
Speaker 1: that called him a premier figure in looks Maxing. That
Speaker 1: piece did also note that Peters's fixation on optimization is
Speaker 1: inseparable from aggressive sexism.
Speaker 2: There was a piece in.
Speaker 1: The Guardian in January calling him one of the most
Speaker 1: prominent influencers in the looks Maxing community. A full profile
Speaker 1: at GQ in February, that New York Times piece in February,
Speaker 1: which was a major, major profile, and then later devoted
Speaker 1: an entire episode of The Daily to him, and marched
Speaker 1: and then walking in a Looks Maxing themed a runway
Speaker 1: for designer Elena.
Speaker 2: Villes just days after he was arrested.
Speaker 1: And so I think the outlets and the institutions clearly
Speaker 1: get some sort of benefit from the association with him,
Speaker 1: not necessarily like critical association, but association that traffics in
Speaker 1: the sort of cultural cachet or perceived.
Speaker 2: Cultural relevance of what he is doing.
Speaker 1: And I think each one of those is a signal
Speaker 1: that made the next one that followed more and more justified. Right,
Speaker 1: each one raised his income, raised his platform, built out
Speaker 1: this cultural cachet and legitimacy, which we know is exactly
Speaker 1: what these guys are after. And so I do think
Speaker 1: it's like they're kind of working in tandem here, where
Speaker 1: you know, the outlet that writes about him in this
Speaker 1: particular kind of way gets a raised profile, and so
Speaker 1: does he. So it's like, you know, one hand washes
Speaker 1: the other kind of thing. I think again, I know
Speaker 1: this is a tough line to walk, but that's just
Speaker 1: that's just.
Speaker 2: My take on what's happening here.
Speaker 3: It seems fair, it seems warranted. I mean, you go
Speaker 3: through that timeline, and that's so many major profiles from
Speaker 3: major publications within like a month of each other. You know,
Speaker 3: Nash politicians would be thrilled to have that kind of attention. Yes,
Speaker 3: there are tons of a less celebrities who did not
Speaker 3: receive that much attention in January and February of this
Speaker 3: year exactly.
Speaker 1: And this is somebody who does not even really have
Speaker 1: that big of a footprint. He certainly didn't have that
Speaker 1: big of a footprint to warrant this much ink at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 4: More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 1: Media scholar Whitney Phillips has coined this phrase the oxygen
Speaker 1: of amplification, and that's the idea that the coverage of
Speaker 1: extremist figures, even sometimes critical coverage, provides them the attention
Speaker 1: that sustains them.
Speaker 2: A twenty twenty five Pure of You paper.
Speaker 1: Found that quote, despite the best intentions of journalists, news
Speaker 1: media has unwittingly played into the hands of the contemporary
Speaker 1: far right. And so that's kind of what I think
Speaker 1: is going on here, that in some instances, perhaps they're
Speaker 1: sort of being played well with.
Speaker 2: The New York Times.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't I'm not comfortable saying that
Speaker 1: The New York Times is being played. And a certain point,
Speaker 1: like if you want to be played, are you still played?
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, it's a great question. If you're just
Speaker 3: like happy to go along with being played, is it
Speaker 3: being played? Great question?
Speaker 1: Tespe in that Salon piece that I mentioned earlier, really
Speaker 1: put it well. She writes journalists covering figures like Clavicular
Speaker 1: are being pulled into a system where their own professional
Speaker 1: criteria novelty, conflict, and visibility are being gamed by subjects
Speaker 1: who understand the attention economy better than most of the
Speaker 1: reporters covering them. She also noted that that New York
Speaker 1: Times profile, which I completely agree with, never quite grapples
Speaker 1: with the women that Peters has harmed, the teenage boys
Speaker 1: injecting steroids into themselves his instruction, or the reporter on
Speaker 1: whom he sicked an anti Semitic mob, and that ultimately
Speaker 1: the form of coverage these figures get really does matter.
Speaker 1: As Remarcus, writing at The Intelligencier, described Peters as quote
Speaker 1: something of an edge lord folk hero whose profit strategy
Speaker 1: uses shock jock tactics with straightforward marketing. That like shock
Speaker 1: jock folk hero profit strategy framing, I think is exactly
Speaker 1: the heart of the problem here, because it treats what
Speaker 1: I think is objectively self destructive behavior as a kind
Speaker 1: of brand strategy, not as symptoms of a mental illness
Speaker 1: of some or some larger issue. And I think it's
Speaker 1: worth like saying plainly that this is not just a
Speaker 1: body image stories. Peters has also been described by The
Speaker 1: Forward as a right wing extremist to watch in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, Charlie Worzel of The Atlantic writes about how
Speaker 1: Peter's revels and anti Semitism. He's well known for using
Speaker 1: racist slurs in his live stream, and as we already discussed,
Speaker 1: we know that looks Maxing ideology and the broader white
Speaker 1: nationalist movement it represents are not adjacent. They are like
Speaker 1: the same that then diagram is like essentially a circle.
Speaker 1: And so the choice to cover him as a just
Speaker 1: a cultural phenomenon, I think it is a choice that
Speaker 1: has wildly dangerous, harmful impacts, not just for Peters, for
Speaker 1: all of us.
Speaker 3: But as we talked about it, it is hard to know,
Speaker 3: like what is the line? What is the right way
Speaker 3: to cover these kinds of figures? What do you think
Speaker 3: do you you know, for journalists who might be listening
Speaker 3: and asking, like, well, what is the right way to
Speaker 3: cover somebody like Peters? What do you wish would have
Speaker 3: been different in some of this coverage he's gotten over
Speaker 3: the past months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something that I think needs to happen is you
Speaker 1: have to give a full accounting of what it is
Speaker 1: this person has done. And I'm not even talking about
Speaker 1: you know, I'm talking about like his own words, things
Speaker 1: that he has said. I think that they're really making
Speaker 1: some editorial choices about what is and is not part
Speaker 1: of his story or an important part of his story.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the stuff that he does
Speaker 1: with like slurs and his anti Semitism, I think somewhere
Speaker 1: along the line, they've made an editorial choice that that
Speaker 1: stuff is like just kidding or just joking and is
Speaker 1: not really important to the story of who he is.
Speaker 1: And I'd like to know why you know, And if
Speaker 1: you're trying to be of service to your audience or
Speaker 1: your readers, why, why have you made how have you
Speaker 1: come to the conclusion that some of this stuff is
Speaker 1: not important to include for folks to understand who this
Speaker 1: person is. And if it's not important, then why are
Speaker 1: you telling me about him? Like, that's another question I
Speaker 1: would ask. When he didn't have that many followers and
Speaker 1: was still a pretty niche person in this niche subculture,
Speaker 1: why was it important that I know about him.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that it's not important, but I.
Speaker 1: Think that, like, you've got to make a case for
Speaker 1: why it is that you're telling me about him. Why
Speaker 1: are The New York Times dedicating an entire episode of
Speaker 1: the daily to him, And I think it's important to
Speaker 1: sort of end with where Peters is now, where we
Speaker 1: are on all of this. So, as I said, last week,
Speaker 1: April fourteenth, Peters was streaming from a bar in Miami
Speaker 1: and his friends noticed that something was wrong. He became unresponsive,
Speaker 1: the stream cutout. The Miami Fire Department responded to the
Speaker 1: report at a twenty year old having a possible ode
Speaker 1: that was Peter's. He was hospitalized in stable condition, and
Speaker 1: then the next morning he posted that photo of himself
Speaker 1: with blood on his face and he wrote, just got home.
Speaker 2: That was brutal.
Speaker 1: All of the substances are just a cope trying to
Speaker 1: feel neurotypical while being in public, but that obviously isn't
Speaker 1: a real solution.
Speaker 2: And again he goes on to talk about.
Speaker 1: How the worst part of the night was his face
Speaker 1: descending from the life support mask, and that's the thing
Speaker 1: that he chose to tell his followers about. That was
Speaker 1: like weighing on him after a hospitalization for an OD
Speaker 1: that happened on a live stream. He's worried about what
Speaker 1: it did to his face, what his face looks like.
Speaker 1: And it reads to me like a twenty year old
Speaker 1: who has been told by both like the community online
Speaker 1: that he came of agent by other influencers, by mainstream
Speaker 1: outlets like The New York Times, who were calling him
Speaker 1: somebody who promotes handsomeness, that his worth is his appearance.
Speaker 1: And I just don't think that we would do that
Speaker 1: with someone who was struggling with a more quote feminized
Speaker 1: version of body dysmorphia and self harm. And so since
Speaker 1: his OD, he has indicated publicly that he might not
Speaker 1: be streaming that much anymore, not because he's taking a
Speaker 1: mental health break, but because, according to him, he can't
Speaker 1: stream sober. He said in the video, I ain't going
Speaker 1: to be doing any more substances for a little while,
Speaker 1: hopefully for forever. But that means I can't really irl
Speaker 1: stream anymore. So that's the thing. I can't really irl
Speaker 1: stream because, as you guys know, I'm quite brutal without that.
Speaker 2: So I think I have to figure something else out.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really what it comes down to,
Speaker 1: that this is obviously somebody who is not well, who
Speaker 1: is using substances and self harm, by his own words,
Speaker 1: to cope.
Speaker 2: And I think that not just for him, I think
Speaker 2: that for all of us, it would behove us.
Speaker 1: If media and journalists could figure out a way to
Speaker 1: cover this person in a way that is a little
Speaker 1: more responsible and a little more ethical, and that really
Speaker 1: makes clear what it is that we're actually talking about,
Speaker 1: because I tell you, it ain't just like some interesting
Speaker 1: cultural online phenomenon. At the heart of it is clearly
Speaker 1: an unwell person, and I don't think that media should
Speaker 1: be obscuring that just to get engagement. So I know
Speaker 1: that this episode has been quite a lot about Peter's
Speaker 1: but it's not even really about this one guy. It's
Speaker 1: really about what happens next. Because Peters is not going
Speaker 1: to be the last person to push harmful ideology or
Speaker 1: to try to package self destructive ideas as just self improvement.
Speaker 1: We already know that this pattern is so much bigger
Speaker 1: than any one individual. So the real question that I
Speaker 1: would ask is what role do major outlets want to
Speaker 1: play in that cycle? When institutions like The New York
Speaker 1: Times or others choose to frame these extremist figures. Do
Speaker 1: they interrupt that pipeline or do they just smooth it out?
Speaker 1: Do they help contextualize harm and help their audience really
Speaker 1: understand what's at stake and who these people are, or
Speaker 1: do they repackage it into something that feels safe or
Speaker 1: even aspirational or cool until it doesn't. To me, it's
Speaker 1: about whether or not this attention is becoming a form
Speaker 1: of platform building. And then you have these same systems
Speaker 1: later going on to critique these figures when it's like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, you help them become this big influential
Speaker 1: figure in the first place. And I want to be
Speaker 1: clear Peters is responsible for his own actions and his
Speaker 1: own bad behavior, but shouldn't the institutions that decide what
Speaker 1: becomes visible, what gets amplified, and what gets turned into
Speaker 1: a story rather than a warning sign like they also
Speaker 1: share some of the responsibility here. So it really isn't
Speaker 1: about this one guy. It is whether or not we've
Speaker 1: built media and digital systems that can recognize the difference
Speaker 1: between reporting on harm and just helping to repackage it and.
Speaker 2: Make it palatable for more and more people at scale.
Speaker 2: So I know that was a lot.
Speaker 1: I've clearly been holding in a lot of thoughts about
Speaker 1: this person and the phenomena around them. This is again,
Speaker 1: this is one of those episodes where this is just
Speaker 1: my opinion. I really want to hear what folks think like,
Speaker 1: has this person come across your feed, what has your
Speaker 1: engagement with them looked like? And if you have any
Speaker 1: thoughts on how folks can do a better job myself
Speaker 1: very much included talking about people like this and extremist
Speaker 1: figures like this.
Speaker 2: We would love you hear it.
Speaker 1: If you're on Spotify, you can leave us a comment
Speaker 1: in our Spotify comments or shoot us an email. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll do a follow up episode about how people feel.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's all I got.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you Bridger for the rundown, and listeners can
Speaker 3: leave us Spotify comments, shoot us an email. Hello at
Speaker 3: tang goody follow Bridget or the show on social Bridget,
Speaker 3: Marie and DC and just the name of the show.
Speaker 3: There Are No Girls on the Internet. Thanks Bridget, and
Speaker 3: I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 4: Thanks Mike.
Speaker 1: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I
Speaker 1: just want to say hi. You can reach us at
Speaker 1: Hello at Tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 1: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Stricklett.
Speaker 1: As our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 1: sound engineer. Michael Almato is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
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