Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: That's going.
Speaker 3: It's stay Get excusa.
Speaker 2: Sixteen sixteen. Welcome back to sixteenth Minute, the podcast where
Speaker 2: we talk to the Internet's characters of the day to
Speaker 2: see how their moment affected them and what that says
Speaker 2: about us in the Internet. However, we are not doing
Speaker 2: that this week. This is a bonus episode in our
Speaker 2: into the series. In our last episode, we took a
Speaker 2: look at how the manisphere has developed in the last decade,
Speaker 2: beginning with gamer Gate and the Ilavista killings in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 2: all the way through now where Joe Rogan is getting
Speaker 2: name checked at a fascist acceptance event. It's a journey.
Speaker 2: And today I wanted to share two conversations I've had
Speaker 2: with two really wonderful people who have been studying this
Speaker 2: area for quite some time, which brings me to just
Speaker 2: a little bit of housekeeping at the top, an apology
Speaker 2: from me Ian if you could put on some like
Speaker 2: YouTuber apology music. As I mentioned in my last episode,
Speaker 2: I've been getting some kickback on this series for not
Speaker 2: including the voices of men enough, and so to start
Speaker 2: to also men listening, I just wanted to apologize if
Speaker 2: you felt silenced or quite frankly attacked by my bitchy
Speaker 2: little voice. You are valid, you are heard, you are kings.
Speaker 2: And obviously you didn't listen to the end of the
Speaker 2: last episode because I said that today I would be
Speaker 2: speaking with two men who I admire very much. But still,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I get it. You guys are like super
Speaker 2: super busy. So let's get into it, shall we. Both
Speaker 2: of my guests today are talented and prolific writers, and
Speaker 2: in a very weird coincidence, both just released very thorough
Speaker 2: analyzes of Diddy. First, I was really thrilled to get
Speaker 2: the chance to speak with FD signifier, a YouTuber I
Speaker 2: really admire who has been analyzing the Manisphere on his
Speaker 2: channel four years and does something I've seen others consistently
Speaker 2: struggle to do, which is hold empathy for men sucked
Speaker 2: into that space while always prioritizing those most deeply affected
Speaker 2: by it. Beginning with a closer look at the Black
Speaker 2: Manisphere specifically, FD has gone on to look at the
Speaker 2: world of in cells, speak to former members of the Manisphere,
Speaker 2: take a look at how popular media reinforces these narratives,
Speaker 2: and has taken a look at how the Manisphere prays
Speaker 2: on the neurodivergent. Truly, if you take in anyone else's
Speaker 2: work on this subject, let it be his. Here's my
Speaker 2: talk with FD signifier.
Speaker 1: I am FD signifier. I am a YouTube video essayist.
Speaker 1: For those who don't know what that is. We're kind
Speaker 1: of a mix between a think of like the classic
Speaker 1: newspaper editor like journalists, investigative journalists slash documentarian slash big
Speaker 1: old nerd, theater kid type energy, a lot of that,
Speaker 1: like mixing the one. I tend to focus on a
Speaker 1: cross section of gender and masculine, any race, specifically black
Speaker 1: issues and politics.
Speaker 2: And you also have an academic background in talking I
Speaker 2: mean obviously not the manisphere explicitly, but that sort of
Speaker 2: expanded universe because and I know you've said this in
Speaker 2: your work too, it's really hard to define what we're
Speaker 2: actually talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, My master thesis was on spree shooters, and
Speaker 1: as a product of studying that population, you end up
Speaker 1: in the same place as a lot of the manisphere
Speaker 1: red pill at right stuff, because they're all kind of,
Speaker 1: as you alluded to, they're all kind of in the
Speaker 1: same house, just in different rooms. Once you've kind of
Speaker 1: broken down the function of one group you've sixty to
Speaker 1: seventy five percent broken down the function of all of them.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a lot there, and a lot of
Speaker 1: it has to do explicitly with masculinity, So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of there there.
Speaker 2: So when you started tackling this topic explicitly more on
Speaker 2: your channel, what led you to like, Okay, it's time
Speaker 2: for me to dissect this topic. What were you not
Speaker 2: seeing in those discussions at the beginning of this work
Speaker 2: that you wanted to bring to the table.
Speaker 1: I'm older than much of my audience in all of
Speaker 1: my peers, which creates a lot of distance but also
Speaker 1: a lot of perspective, and so me as a married man,
Speaker 1: father of two, it was hard for me to kind
Speaker 1: of fathom that this was so serious. As I sat,
Speaker 1: as I got more and more online, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is actually way more serious than I thought. I
Speaker 1: started seeing it boomerang back to my real life, where
Speaker 1: I would have parents of other children say my son
Speaker 1: brought home this and started saying this stuff about femoids
Speaker 1: and all kinds of weird crap about women, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I actually know that guy. H Yeah, let me maybe
Speaker 1: this is a real thing that I should get into.
Speaker 1: And then I also recognized, as I allude to earlier,
Speaker 1: that no disrespect to a lot of my contemporaries, none
Speaker 1: of them were really putting in useful analysis as to
Speaker 1: the true causes and underlying elements. Nobody had really broken down,
Speaker 1: like my first video is understanding the manisphere. It doesn't
Speaker 1: take much, especially amongst you know, my audience, to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is dumb. These people are dumb. Don't be like them.
Speaker 1: It's more valuable, I think, long term, for more people
Speaker 1: to have a developed analysis of how this world functions,
Speaker 1: so that we can have a better tools for how
Speaker 1: to make it not function anymore, and more explicitly, for parents,
Speaker 1: for people who have these types of guys in their
Speaker 1: lives to know what it is that is bringing them.
Speaker 1: Like the first thing you'll see as a friend or
Speaker 1: a peer or a parent is really like the fifth
Speaker 1: step of the problem. Right when they start repeating these
Speaker 1: talking points to you in real life, they've already been
Speaker 1: deep in for a while where they get comfortable to.
Speaker 2: They're comfortable bringing up at school.
Speaker 1: They're evangelizing at that point. They're true believers if they've
Speaker 1: gotten to that point. And so you know what things
Speaker 1: that you miss up until that point, And like, if
Speaker 1: you are educated enough to see those things, how do
Speaker 1: you address them then? Better yet, what type of energy
Speaker 1: and relationships can you be building in the home to
Speaker 1: make this less likely with children and teenagers and peers
Speaker 1: and friends. And we didn't really have much for that,
Speaker 1: And so that's kind of one of the things I
Speaker 1: hope to contribute to. One of the things that is
Speaker 1: often a failure on our part to understand is that
Speaker 1: these are actually very complex communities with very intelligent, nuanced contributors.
Speaker 1: It requires like that level of respect to understand what's
Speaker 1: going on. Otherwise you just won't know. They've built their
Speaker 1: communities for the sole purpose of keeping normal people out
Speaker 1: by being repulsive or cryptic in the way they engage
Speaker 1: with each other.
Speaker 2: For you, in terms of like what the manisphere is
Speaker 2: and what it's influence is, where does the story start,
Speaker 2: I've gotten a lot of different answers to this question.
Speaker 1: So white supremacy, I mean, I mean, it's a big
Speaker 1: part of it. It starts with patriarchy here in the States.
Speaker 1: It starts with American exceptionalism to an extent, it starts
Speaker 1: with Western ideology and thought. The impetus for how a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff becomes appealing to the young men
Speaker 1: that get into it is they're outsiders. They're they're socially
Speaker 1: ineffective for a variety of reasons. It might be because
Speaker 1: they're just not that attractive or not as attractive as
Speaker 1: some of their peers. They may be late social bloomers,
Speaker 1: late physical bloomers. They may have genuine behavioral or mental
Speaker 1: health issues that make it hard for them to socialize.
Speaker 1: They may have a physical disability. They may be poor,
Speaker 1: they may be a minority of some sort. All these
Speaker 1: things could could contribute to a sense of otherness and
Speaker 1: then the targeting of ostracism, and that contributes to the
Speaker 1: desire to find places where you can feel belonging, community
Speaker 1: and power. Not all cases, not all cases, but in
Speaker 1: some of these cases, these young men become targeted by
Speaker 1: these different communities, different grifters looking to get a quick
Speaker 1: buck out of them. Mold, you're not feeling good about society,
Speaker 1: Well take this class and I'll teach you how to
Speaker 1: be a big baller or whatever Andrew Tate was selling.
Speaker 1: Aside from offering them a false like solution to their problem,
Speaker 1: the biggest thing that people don't get is that it
Speaker 1: offers them belonging. People that stay the longest and fall
Speaker 1: in the deepest is because that is where they found community.
Speaker 1: If it's community built around misogyny or racism or something else, fine,
Speaker 1: but it's more than the community they had, you know,
Speaker 1: away from their keyboard. Michael Kimmel has some good stuff
Speaker 1: on this. I have the obligatory point out that Michael
Speaker 1: Kimmel has a me too, several me two cases out there,
Speaker 1: and Michael Kimmel calls agrieved entitlement, which is connected to
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff. And it's you know, especially
Speaker 1: for white, young white men who while this is a
Speaker 1: very diverse community, people don't give you enough credit for
Speaker 1: how diverse it is. But for white men in particular,
Speaker 1: these young white boys are told that they're the you know,
Speaker 1: the protagonist, the heroes of their own stories in all
Speaker 1: of our media, it's in our mythology. And then they
Speaker 1: grow up and find out, no, you're just a peon
Speaker 1: at best. You're a worker, you know, and the people
Speaker 1: that you know have the power over you. Their parents
Speaker 1: also have the power over your parents, and their grandparents
Speaker 1: have the power over your grandparents. And there's nothing you
Speaker 1: could do about it. It just lends itself to a
Speaker 1: unfortunate cocktail of toxic elements that for a handful of
Speaker 1: these young men makes a edge lord creator talking about
Speaker 1: how women shouldn't be able to vote and that'll fix
Speaker 1: all our problems. It makes that appealing. So I, as
Speaker 1: a young man, did not have a lot of success
Speaker 1: with women. You know, I did not have any I'd
Speaker 1: never had girlfriend in high school, have plenty of girls
Speaker 1: I liked and I crushed on, no success. It wasn't
Speaker 1: until halfway through college that I started to kind of
Speaker 1: figure things out. And it was only after I had
Speaker 1: done some traditionally masculine things to make myself just service
Speaker 1: level more appealing to women. And there was a bitterness
Speaker 1: there around that. There was a frustration, There was some
Speaker 1: animosity and some misogyny involved in that experience. My general
Speaker 1: theory is that most boys that end up in this
Speaker 1: space even today grow out of it just by necessity
Speaker 1: of continuing go on with life. That grow out of it,
Speaker 1: they may have some residual effects. I'm not saying everybody
Speaker 1: just completely perfectly grows out of it, but you grow
Speaker 1: out of the danger zone, so to speak. But today,
Speaker 1: it's just you don't have to as much Like I
Speaker 1: had to grow out of that to get on with
Speaker 1: my life, to go get a job, to continue to
Speaker 1: try to find partners, partners in love, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: to learn how to talk to women face to face
Speaker 1: because there was no swiping left right. So like, there's
Speaker 1: so much of our society has been atomized. I think
Speaker 1: young men who have those challenges are never put in
Speaker 1: positions to overcome them in productive ways. And then you
Speaker 1: have this entire ecosystem of grifters who are collecting money
Speaker 1: off of their pain, you know, and so that just
Speaker 1: kind of makes it stronger, makes it hold longer. And
Speaker 1: we're sitting here trying to figure out what to do
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: Now, what is the bait to draw, you know, people
Speaker 2: into this space? And has it changed over time?
Speaker 1: It hasn't changed. It's panacea. It's I can I can
Speaker 1: solve the problem. This is it's a classic. It's what
Speaker 1: this what salespeople have done since the beginning of time.
Speaker 1: You have a problem, I have a solution. The solution
Speaker 1: is insert awful thing here. The problem is that the
Speaker 1: problems are becoming maybe bigger and more more difficult to
Speaker 1: address in any form of fashion. You know, the one
Speaker 1: of the premitive conversations in the manisphere of red pill
Speaker 1: whatever space is is, you know, income and being a
Speaker 1: high value man and making money because you need money
Speaker 1: to attract a mate. And that's just true, that's just reality.
Speaker 1: If you have less money, you will have less options
Speaker 1: in the dating market. That is more of a problem
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, in our modern economy, in our
Speaker 1: modern work world, where making more money is difficult, women
Speaker 1: have gotten to a point where they can make their
Speaker 1: own money. And we're not going back to the sixties
Speaker 1: and fifties when a woman needed a man to survive.
Speaker 1: And so you have a lot of dudes that never
Speaker 1: develop personalities because they thought they would just have a
Speaker 1: good job. There's so much to that, the dregs and
Speaker 1: and scourge of late capitalism. But these young men who
Speaker 1: grew up watching, you know, all these images of masculinity,
Speaker 1: who grew up being taught all these things about masculinity,
Speaker 1: they do not care. They want their tread wife and
Speaker 1: their factory job back. They will literally tear everything down
Speaker 1: trying to get it back. Tear everything except for the
Speaker 1: thing that needs to be torn down trying to get
Speaker 1: it back.
Speaker 2: Even though I feel like sometimes the way that the
Speaker 2: manisphere is sort of almost like scapegoated, is like, well
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: That, that was that so, and there was nothing, And
Speaker 1: that's what I'm alluding to. So there's something to the
Speaker 1: fact that he went on Aiden Ross and Joe Rogan's
Speaker 1: podcast that I think a lot of left leaning people
Speaker 1: really underappreciate, like did not appreciate how significant that was.
Speaker 1: There's something to that, But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we're mostly just talking about racism and misogyny. Like it's
Speaker 1: not that it's not that deep. There's an angle there
Speaker 1: to discuss, but let's not I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are trying on purpose to miss the forest from
Speaker 1: the trees. Then that require them to do some self
Speaker 1: reflection on their own politics. We want to stick to
Speaker 1: the manisphere.
Speaker 2: You famously hate to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the truth of the matter is the media is
Speaker 1: informed by the culture. It's not the other way around.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of times because that's something
Speaker 1: we can really respond to a control and it also
Speaker 1: again alleviates responsibility on our part. We want to make
Speaker 1: it seem like, well, my son started watching these manisphere
Speaker 1: type people, and then suddenly he became a misogynist, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, and I just want to be like, I
Speaker 1: just want to let you know, if your son gets
Speaker 1: in the manisphere, that's your fault. You have created an
Speaker 1: environment where that seemed like a reasonable response to his
Speaker 1: own pain and concerns and issues, and that is not
Speaker 1: just the individual's fault. That's a cultural standard. The normous misogyny,
Speaker 1: the norm is racism, the norm is in aphobia. Those
Speaker 1: are American principles that we don't like to admit are there.
Speaker 1: And so it of course individuals weaned in that culture,
Speaker 1: in that environment are going to respond and without anyone
Speaker 1: to kind of like, hey, nope, not here, not in
Speaker 1: this house, not this community, not in this family, if
Speaker 1: there's nothing to curtail that, it's going to be very
Speaker 1: easy for those types of messages to resonate, for those
Speaker 1: type of messengers to pull them into those spaces. And
Speaker 1: so we have to do two things. One, we have
Speaker 1: to be responsible with the culture and community we're producing
Speaker 1: so that it's less likely to produced those types of things.
Speaker 1: But the other big thing is we also have to
Speaker 1: as as you know, as creators spend a little more
Speaker 1: time celebrating and contributing to the creation of media. That's
Speaker 1: just I talk about Star Trek. I wish I had
Speaker 1: talked about like One Piece, which is an anime, and
Speaker 1: so many other types of media that are about a
Speaker 1: world that is more virtuous and kind of more gets
Speaker 1: to like the type of world we're trying to create
Speaker 1: through our politics, as opposed to we're going to comment
Speaker 1: on how bad the world is through this dark white
Speaker 1: guy who does edgy things and is really cool and
Speaker 1: has a jacket and guns. But you know, you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to want to be like them.
Speaker 2: But look at how the but the scorpion jacket, the
Speaker 2: scorpion jacket.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I also I wanted to go into your work on
Speaker 2: the Black Manisphere. You're one of the few creators I've
Speaker 2: seen who has really got into this and early. So
Speaker 2: could you tell me a little bit about this space?
Speaker 2: When did it crop up and how does it? Does
Speaker 2: it function any differently than other Manisphere spaces?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the Black Manisphere, they would say that they,
Speaker 1: as a formal like online space, predate the Manisphere, which
Speaker 1: I would agree with. The Black Manisphere comes out of
Speaker 1: like a history of gender conflict within Black America between
Speaker 1: black men and women, which is a byproduct of you know,
Speaker 1: the history of racism, the dregs and results of slave ran,
Speaker 1: Jim Crow segregation, etc. And just the genuine fact that
Speaker 1: black men and women were never supposed to operate in
Speaker 1: America as men and women the same way white people were.
Speaker 1: And so that creates a just stew of issues and
Speaker 1: conflicts as men black men are trying to pursue manhood
Speaker 1: and masculinity in a way similar to white men do,
Speaker 1: and as black women try to pursue femininity in a
Speaker 1: way similar to white women do. And this creates all
Speaker 1: these different venues for conflict that has historically made the
Speaker 1: talk show with you know, why are all men dogs?
Speaker 1: You know, why don't black women let a black man lead?
Speaker 1: That's literally going back to the seventies, that's been a
Speaker 1: thing in our media. And so the manisphere starts to
Speaker 1: become a thing in the two thousands with the onset
Speaker 1: of YouTube and the Internet communities, because now these men
Speaker 1: who feel these things about black women, much like the
Speaker 1: normal manosphere, can come together and start to voice their
Speaker 1: issues YadA, YadA, YadA. Beyond that unique like origin point,
Speaker 1: no how that kind of vacillates that throughout the culture.
Speaker 1: It's not that different. It's still misogyny and masculine conflict.
Speaker 1: It's still men and boys trying to claim a sense
Speaker 1: of power in their masculinity through the denigration of women.
Speaker 1: It's a little less racist most of the time, it's
Speaker 1: a little less xenophobic most of the time. It's just
Speaker 1: as misogynistic. There's a couple of differences, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of the Black manisphere people, some of them try to
Speaker 1: present themselves as pro black and pro black people, and
Speaker 1: so they can kind of sneak things in in ways
Speaker 1: that if you're not alert to it, you don't hear it.
Speaker 1: So their misogyny can be very sublimated into like these
Speaker 1: just classical images of masculinity and gender because there's a feeling, well,
Speaker 1: black people's problems that the black family isn't in order,
Speaker 1: which is true to an extent. There's validity to that statement.
Speaker 1: So that's why black women need to stop worrying so
Speaker 1: much about their education and stop telling black men what
Speaker 1: to do. That it is so like it's oh there,
Speaker 1: it is, oh exactly exactly. For me, talking about it
Speaker 1: was almost more difficult because there's a thing that happens
Speaker 1: when you kind of know your enemy, you cut deeper.
Speaker 2: You know that, I mean, but I think even what
Speaker 2: you're describing like is a critical part of the work, right.
Speaker 2: It is like processing your own feelings towards these spaces
Speaker 2: and then figuring out what is a constructive way to
Speaker 2: talk about it. Because I feel like, like you're saying, like,
Speaker 2: even creators I enjoy, a lot of people blow through
Speaker 2: the like let's just give the raw emotion to it,
Speaker 2: as opposed to like really thinking about it, because your
Speaker 2: work is so thorough and so thoughtful, and you're also thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, coming from the perspective of a parent. My
Speaker 2: sort of worry is that this is going to turn
Speaker 2: into some kind of moral pan that will be deeply
Speaker 2: unproductive and send people further, like send you know, young
Speaker 2: men further into this think it.
Speaker 1: I don't think it'll get that real moral panic energy,
Speaker 1: but I want to I want you to finish your question,
Speaker 1: but I disagree that it'll ever be the true moral panic,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2: Oh please, Yes. My question was just if someone's listening
Speaker 2: who is a parent or has someone in their life
Speaker 2: who is clearly internalizing this stuff, where do you start
Speaker 2: to address it.
Speaker 1: I'm of two minds that are I think probably need
Speaker 1: to work together. I'm from a relatively traditional household where
Speaker 1: things like child autonomy and privacy were not greatly respected
Speaker 1: by my parents. Sure, and I think you have to
Speaker 1: be open to that idea when it comes to monitoring
Speaker 1: what your child is consuming on the internet. Maybe you
Speaker 1: don't want to have like outright spy where you don't
Speaker 1: want to be a full on police officer in your
Speaker 1: own home to your child because that just creates them
Speaker 1: being sneakier. But you definitely don't don't want to be complete,
Speaker 1: like stop handing the tablet to your kids and saying
Speaker 1: go nuts. These companies, these organizations, these the AI, the algorithms,
Speaker 1: all these machines are trained to addict your child to
Speaker 1: the screen and they do not care how they do that.
Speaker 1: And one of the most fundamentally predictable ways they know
Speaker 1: they can do that, and you can probably got this
Speaker 1: one of videos is through making them upset, making them angry,
Speaker 1: making them outrage. And one of the easiest way to
Speaker 1: piss people off is to show them a woman doing
Speaker 1: the thing a woman's not supposed to do. Like being
Speaker 1: sexy but not but in public, or you know, wanting
Speaker 1: more money than she's willing to work for some other Oh,
Speaker 1: she cheated on her boyfriend and then rolled her eyes
Speaker 1: like whatever. Like so many of the videos start with
Speaker 1: girl does thing and then gets put in place by
Speaker 1: alpha male. Like that's sixty percent of the video titles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so when you're your twelve year old watches that, like,
Speaker 1: stop letting them watch. That is what I'm getting to.
Speaker 1: The Other thing is you have to be willing to dismantle.
Speaker 1: And this is why I don't think it'll become a
Speaker 1: true moral panic. Moral panics tend to be truly transgressive.
Speaker 1: Misogyny isn't transgressive. Misogyny is reinforcing the social norm. Transgressive
Speaker 1: is feminism, Transgressive is queer, transgressive is black. Like, so
Speaker 1: those things create moral panics. Heavy metal created the moral
Speaker 1: panic because it was counterculture and subversive and anti authoritarian
Speaker 1: and all those things. This stuff is just a little too.
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing little Timmy says something really misogynistic to his sister,
Speaker 1: and now I have to deal with this at home.
Speaker 1: And because it would shine such an ugly eye on
Speaker 1: the true nature of some people's households and some communities.
Speaker 1: I don't think it'll ever reach the true moral panic,
Speaker 1: because according to certain people, this is what won the
Speaker 1: election for Donald Trump. But to fully go back to
Speaker 1: answering that question, you have to dismantle the utility of
Speaker 1: this ideology in your their own home. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean you have to become like a hardcore feminist and
Speaker 1: read JUDITHH. Butler and Audie Lord. Just make it so
Speaker 1: it's not so easy for misogyny to pass in your home.
Speaker 1: Tell your brother in law to shut the fuck up
Speaker 1: when he says something sexist and says it's a joke.
Speaker 1: Build into goodness with your child, not based on their
Speaker 1: ability to perform masculinity, but in their innate goodness. Let
Speaker 1: them feel comfortable being emotional. Let them feel comfortable about crying.
Speaker 1: Explain to them how corrosion it is when they like
Speaker 1: a girl. Let them know you can like this girl.
Speaker 1: She may not like you, and that's okay, And that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean an think about you, and it definitely doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything about them. And challenge the stuff when you
Speaker 1: see it. That, along with a slow of other things
Speaker 1: that I don't have time to get into, is going
Speaker 1: to be way more useful than even just sending them
Speaker 1: one of my videos. One of my videos is more
Speaker 1: for you to understand it so that you can address
Speaker 1: it in reality. One of my mentors talked about the
Speaker 1: fact that this isn't an issue of misinformation. This is
Speaker 1: an issue of disinf The knowledge is out there. We
Speaker 1: just have to get it in the right places and
Speaker 1: get it into people's systems for real.
Speaker 2: FT Signifier, thank you so much for your time. This
Speaker 2: is like, this is so wonderful. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: to FT signifier. I cannot recommend his channel enough. And
Speaker 2: when we come back, Thanking and Boisden, Robert Evans, Welcome
Speaker 2: back to sixteenth minute. My cat ate wrapping paper and
Speaker 2: I had to pay a medical professional seven hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty dollars about it. And to close out part two
Speaker 2: of our Manisphere series, I'm speaking with one of the
Speaker 2: producers of this very show, Robert Evans, who's been both
Speaker 2: reporting and commentating on Manisphere spaces, specifically extreme All to
Speaker 2: Right spaces for years and famously connected a series of
Speaker 2: mass shootings we discussed earlier to in cell forums. In
Speaker 2: this house, we love Robert, and so here's our chat
Speaker 2: because we've like talked about this before, and we've both
Speaker 2: spent the better part of our lives on the internet.
Speaker 2: When did you start seeing communities like this cropping up?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: I started to see inklings of this in like late
Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, and like the comments on Cracked articles right
Speaker 3: where we would do pieces that were talking about like
Speaker 3: rape survivors or the trans experience, and there would be
Speaker 3: these like, you know, we would get a great response,
Speaker 3: they got a lot of people reading them, but we
Speaker 3: would get these like really weirdly hostile posts, and it
Speaker 3: became clear I would get some emails too, you know,
Speaker 3: So it became clear there was some more communities of
Speaker 3: people who were like getting really angry because I was,
Speaker 3: you know, I was more or less just a libertarian
Speaker 3: at that point, a libertarian who had like voted for
Speaker 3: Obama because Bush was a fucking disaster, right, But I
Speaker 3: didn't really think about I didn't think about like writing,
Speaker 3: you know, doing articles with like trans people about the
Speaker 3: realities of transitioning as like a political act. I was
Speaker 3: just like, oh, I don't know much about what it's
Speaker 3: like to be trans. This is interesting, you know, but
Speaker 3: it was pissing some people off a ton and so
Speaker 3: I was like, well, this is odd, and it all
Speaker 3: kind of crystallized in twenty fourteen, when back at Cracked,
Speaker 3: we did a sketch comedy video, the premise of which was,
Speaker 3: what if all of like the main websites on the
Speaker 3: Internet today were kids in a high school? Right, okay?
Speaker 2: Twenty fourteen?
Speaker 3: I think it was yeah, ye, And you know, among
Speaker 3: the things in that is we had eight chan as
Speaker 3: a kid, eight Chan, which had just come about gamer.
Speaker 3: I was aware of gamergait as it was happening. I
Speaker 3: did not take it super seriously in its early stages,
Speaker 3: like I got we all got some harassment, but it
Speaker 3: was like these freaks on the internet are like angry
Speaker 3: about girls. We've always known some of these people were there.
Speaker 3: It was not clear to me at that immediate point
Speaker 3: that this was like going to redefine how politics worked
Speaker 3: in the country. Right when it became clear to me,
Speaker 3: because those kids get kicked off a four chan, eight
Speaker 3: chan is started and eight chan becomes their home. They
Speaker 3: develop a board on eight chan called Baphomet, which is
Speaker 3: where like harassment campaigns are architected. And this video comes
Speaker 3: out and whoever wrote it, I forget which of our
Speaker 3: writers like actually did the script, but they envisioned eight
Speaker 3: chan as like this little nerdy kid who was just
Speaker 3: constantly sexually harassing the popular girl who was the stand
Speaker 3: in for Facebook, right, and like it was not a
Speaker 3: super deep thing here, Like that was the joke, right,
Speaker 3: is that like eight chan is the creepy kid harassing
Speaker 3: the popular girl, right.
Speaker 2: I mean it is wild that there was a time
Speaker 2: where Facebook was a hot girl.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is a wildly different time, right.
Speaker 2: The blob from the end of the substance is how
Speaker 2: I think of Facebook now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, this was a very different period of time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but yeah, so we do that, and these kids on
Speaker 3: eight chan find it. And they don't go after the
Speaker 3: writer of the episode of the sketch, who was a man.
Speaker 3: They don't go after the director I think it might
Speaker 3: have had him Ganzer, but who was a guy. They
Speaker 3: go after the girl playing Facebook, and they're like mailing
Speaker 3: dead animals to her parents' house. They're sending her like
Speaker 3: pizzas and death threats and like, and they're chronicling it
Speaker 3: all live on Baphomet in like this thread that I
Speaker 3: the day it starts, I find the thread and I'm
Speaker 3: like archiving and clicking out. I wanted to report on it.
Speaker 3: I calling David Bell, wanted to start filming a documentary
Speaker 3: right then, I'm there. Like his premise, which I think
Speaker 3: in retrospect maybe we should have done, would have been
Speaker 3: like what is the Internet done to us? Right? But
Speaker 3: we didn't in part because it would have directed more
Speaker 3: harassment to this young woman, right like that That's why
Speaker 3: ultimately it was like no one went, no one said
Speaker 3: anything about it. But that is why, you know, in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, my career like really was ignited in a
Speaker 3: large way because of my reporting on eight chan during
Speaker 3: the christ Church shooting. Well, I was I had been
Speaker 3: stalking e I had about once or twice once every
Speaker 3: month or two. I had been going by eight chan
Speaker 3: and keeping an eye on how things were developing there.
Speaker 3: Ever since twenty fourteen, as a result of guests, right like,
Speaker 3: that's when I really got into looking at a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff.
Speaker 2: Okay, and as you were watching over there, I mean
Speaker 2: like over the course of that like half decade, you know,
Speaker 2: during which obviously a lot changes in that half decade.
Speaker 2: I feel like my into this was showing my college
Speaker 2: boyfriend and Anita Sarkisian video and him being like, you're
Speaker 2: a fucking idiot. You're like feeling like, oh man, oh,
Speaker 2: our edge Lord comedy is a joke to me, but
Speaker 2: you you might actually mean what we're saying, you know
Speaker 2: that kind of shit. When does it really feel like
Speaker 2: these communities get empowered and start to escalate?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it started fairly rapidly after that point,
Speaker 3: which we know Bannon recognized the promise that these networks had.
Speaker 3: When I started looking at them, they reminded me a
Speaker 3: lot of you know, about twenty degrees darker than where
Speaker 3: my friends and I had been in high school. Right
Speaker 3: near the end of high school. My friends and I
Speaker 3: I think, like most kids, I think honestly, like super
Speaker 3: Bad is one of the movies that gets the way
Speaker 3: we talked back then best. But like, you know, the
Speaker 3: f slur was like every third word out of my
Speaker 3: mouth and out of the mouth of like every kid
Speaker 3: I knew, right like that is was just incredibly common, right.
Speaker 2: Like most millennials are like recovering Edge Lord's to say, right.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I remember on nine to eleven on something
Speaker 3: Awful when one of the first things someone did was
Speaker 3: like set the footage of the towers going down to
Speaker 3: yackety sacks right like we were. So I saw, I recognized,
Speaker 3: I saw familiarity in the way kids on eight chan
Speaker 3: were talking. And what just kept happening every month is
Speaker 3: like the Nazi stuff is like less and less absurdist
Speaker 3: nihilist humor and more and more just Nazi stuff. And
Speaker 3: it happened very quickly. Perhaps I think it always was
Speaker 3: more serious than I had initially recognized. I think maybe
Speaker 3: initially I saw it as a little less serious than
Speaker 3: it was because it was so familiar, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think it says a lot about how social media
Speaker 3: traps us at certain ages by trapping us in social
Speaker 3: circles and trapping us in patterns of talk and patterns
Speaker 3: of like in mimetic patterns that can lock us at
Speaker 3: periods of development, because you know, my friends and I
Speaker 3: stopped talking that way very quickly after high school, because
Speaker 3: we got out into the world and we made more
Speaker 3: friends who like wouldn't stand for that shit and realize like, oh,
Speaker 3: you actually don't talk like that. That's actually fucked up.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: And I think it's harder for that to happen to
Speaker 3: not everyone, but a lot of people it is easier
Speaker 3: to fall into a loop. And some of this is
Speaker 3: very intentional. Some of this is just some of these
Speaker 3: different right wing you know, Nazi organizations realized the promise
Speaker 3: that social media held for locking people into these loops.
Speaker 3: But you know, whatever you want to look at it,
Speaker 3: the loops exist.
Speaker 2: I think a lot about how the role of like
Speaker 2: ironic humor in the twenty tens kind of plays into this.
Speaker 2: But again, it feels like at every stage of this,
Speaker 2: or at least the way I see it, let me
Speaker 2: know if you feel differently. Every time there's an escalation,
Speaker 2: some people leave, and then other people double down and
Speaker 2: get even more involved in the community and pull more
Speaker 2: people in. You've written really cogently about how this like
Speaker 2: escalation of it starts as a joke and becomes real
Speaker 2: continued and at this point, I mean, is there any
Speaker 2: spaces where it's still being treated as a joke at
Speaker 2: this point?
Speaker 3: I don't know that it ever really was. I think
Speaker 3: that there are. What you do see is a calving
Speaker 3: off where the extremists get more extreme and less welcome elsewhere, right,
Speaker 3: And you also see you see folks who had been
Speaker 3: using someone who had been using some of that language
Speaker 3: who had been yet edgelrds get like kind of adopting
Speaker 3: more like you know, quote unquote woke language in part
Speaker 3: to differentiate themselves from like the bigotry online. Right That's
Speaker 3: the that's part of the story of partisanship. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that as a way to say, like, and so
Speaker 3: the wokes are just as responsible for everything getting so divided.
Speaker 3: I'm saying it's like a natural reaction. You see this
Speaker 3: one group of people who used to play games with
Speaker 3: and like bullshit with online become Nazis. You don't, you
Speaker 3: want to make it very clear, I'm not one of them.
Speaker 2: I guess around Trump's first election there was this wave
Speaker 2: of deplatforming of a lot of right wing and I
Speaker 2: guess you could classify them as manisphere to some extent influencers,
Speaker 2: and that I mean, at least I remember being positive
Speaker 2: as like, well we've deplatformed them, Yeah, problems solved or
Speaker 2: a lot of the you know, like rhetoric I was
Speaker 2: engaging with during the Me Too movement was like we
Speaker 2: just got have to get these guys away from us
Speaker 2: and like out of these spaces, which was effective to
Speaker 2: some point, but also they did not disappear into dust,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them sort of doubled down. I
Speaker 2: guess I'm curious of your feeling of that period of time,
Speaker 2: of the time where there was this deplatforming movement. What
Speaker 2: did this space learn from that?
Speaker 3: I mean, for one thing, to platforming never happened on
Speaker 3: a significant coach and scale right like it it's a
Speaker 3: little bit off, I think to say that, like the
Speaker 3: platforming failed because like, well, we didn't do.
Speaker 2: It right, right, Like was it ever even possible it did?
Speaker 3: The individuals had their reach decreased for a while right
Speaker 3: right now. Also, you know, one of the things is that,
Speaker 3: like these are live conflicts. Alex Jones saw his reach collapse,
Speaker 3: He lost a lot of money, and a lot of
Speaker 3: people on the right readopted him and brought him closer
Speaker 3: than he had been to folks who had power and
Speaker 3: more kind of mainstream appeal, guys like Tucker Carlson, because that,
Speaker 3: like that was what they saw is the smart direction
Speaker 3: in the fight. Right, So it's not good enough. You
Speaker 3: can never you can never just deploy a tool like
Speaker 3: the platforming once and say well we did it, Joe,
Speaker 3: you know, we're done, right, like they are, there's going
Speaker 3: to be a counter move, and the counter moves against
Speaker 3: guys like Jones number one, they all came too late, right.
Speaker 3: Part of it is that could by the time Alex
Speaker 3: Jones started getting deplatformed, he was so embedded in the
Speaker 3: culture and so influential. You know, I don't know that
Speaker 3: like any of the kind of airsats deplatforming, you know,
Speaker 3: strategies that were adopted, could have really stopped him from
Speaker 3: being someone whose voice mattered, right, Like, that's just a
Speaker 3: reality of the situation. Some of it is that like
Speaker 3: if you just kind of let this shit go on
Speaker 3: for a while, it metastasizes until the point that it's terminal.
Speaker 3: And ironically, I think there's a chance that like Alex
Speaker 3: and a lot of these guys who have been more
Speaker 3: on the we're going to wind up fighting the left
Speaker 3: in the streets side of things have some trouble in
Speaker 3: the coming years, as there's a lot less impetus, you know,
Speaker 3: for Trump supporters to believe that's happening. But I don't
Speaker 3: really know what's going to go down there. If you're
Speaker 3: looking back, like what could have been done to have
Speaker 3: stopped this, There's only one very clear answer to me,
Speaker 3: and it is you need to put in legal consequences
Speaker 3: for algorithms working the way they work. That's what should
Speaker 3: have been illegal from the beginning, was algorithmically pushing people
Speaker 3: towards shit like fucking the Boogaloo boys and militias and
Speaker 3: towards like neo nazi, you know, race realist organizations exposing
Speaker 3: children to that at scale in order to get engagement
Speaker 3: hours and bring in ad revenue. If that had been
Speaker 3: illegal from the beginning, if there had been immediate, severe
Speaker 3: penalties that hurt the bottom line of these social media companies,
Speaker 3: I think we'd be in a different situation now right now.
Speaker 3: Would that ever have been that certainly didn't happen, So
Speaker 3: would it ever have been politically viable?
Speaker 2: I don't know, especially with just how it's still not.
Speaker 2: You know, every algorithm is still extremely opaque. There is
Speaker 2: no incentive to indicate how your algorithm works at all.
Speaker 2: This previous mid twenty tenh emphasis on we have to
Speaker 2: deradicalize people before it's too late. I don't really see
Speaker 2: that conversation happening now, is it because it's just kind
Speaker 2: of too late to do that. Do you think that
Speaker 2: that is still like a viable route in any way, Uh.
Speaker 3: Shit, I don't know. Yeah, I wish I had like
Speaker 3: a clear answer to what the solution was. Here. The
Speaker 3: best advice I can give people, don't listen to anyone
Speaker 3: who is telling you number one, I have a really
Speaker 3: clear and obvious solution. And number two, it happens to
Speaker 3: comport with what this organization I am in has been
Speaker 3: saying we should do all along. Just give us some money. Right,
Speaker 3: Be very very not that there aren't like, for example,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the getting out of this
Speaker 3: I think is going to I think unions are going
Speaker 3: to be a very important part of that story. But
Speaker 3: I also think like unions are also part.
Speaker 1: Of the problem. Right.
Speaker 3: You can look at where the teamsters voted, you know,
Speaker 3: in this last election.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: I just be very hesitant of people who come to
Speaker 3: you peddling solutions and asking for your money.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: One thing we should take out of this is that
Speaker 3: if the first thing out of anyone's mouth who comes
Speaker 3: to you with the solution is so I need a donation.
Speaker 3: While Harris raised three times as much as Trump and
Speaker 3: look where that got her, don't do that. Be very
Speaker 3: careful with who you listen to. If they're if they're
Speaker 3: coming to you and saying I have a solution for you,
Speaker 3: and it's by a gun. It's donate money to the
Speaker 3: Democratic Party. It's this very simple thing, because what takes
Speaker 3: us out of this is not going to be simple
Speaker 3: and be hesitant to embrace people who come to you
Speaker 3: with simple solutions.
Speaker 2: Do you see this space continuing to grow? Where do
Speaker 2: you see this sort of evolving into?
Speaker 3: Well, that's that's interesting because I you know, some of
Speaker 3: these people right now have evolved into the like repeal
Speaker 3: of the nineteen the Amendment. You know, freaks right, women
Speaker 3: shouldn't be voting, and Trump just made a woman who's
Speaker 3: clearly one of the only people he respects into his
Speaker 3: White House chief of staff. And also I don't think
Speaker 3: I don't see not that he's not going to put
Speaker 3: through a bunch of policies that are bad for women,
Speaker 3: but like a lot of women voted for him, so
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily see him as being like, well, repealing
Speaker 3: the nineteenth Amendment is my number one priority, right, he
Speaker 3: likes winning elections, and I do think that a lot
Speaker 3: of what he does once the own the Libs high
Speaker 3: comes down and they see that they're not going to
Speaker 3: get a lot of what they wanted because it's stupid
Speaker 3: and because it doesn't benefit Trump to give it to them,
Speaker 3: and he had no problem lying to any of them.
Speaker 3: Trump is not particularly interested in giving you all of
Speaker 3: these crazy things that you want, because like that's never
Speaker 3: been his politics. Right, is Trump going to make us
Speaker 3: a Catholic fascist state? I don't think Donald Trump gives
Speaker 3: a shit about that. I don't think he's really an
Speaker 3: into Catholicism, you know. I don't know if that's the
Speaker 3: threat model. I think that's more freaks online. I think
Speaker 3: that's more Nick Fuintz weirdness. And I think those guys,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a chance they get really angry as
Speaker 3: a result of, you know, as it becomes clear what
Speaker 3: they're going to get and what they're not going to get.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think in terms of explaining the Manisphere
Speaker 3: to people, you say, it's a group of content creators
Speaker 3: who are generally aligned by a financial alliance on selling
Speaker 3: supplements to make people huge, selling advice on how to
Speaker 3: pick up women. Their audience is largely frustrated young men
Speaker 3: who think that they are not having all the sex
Speaker 3: that they should have, and a lot of them have
Speaker 3: gotten into kind of Nazi adjacent racial politics as part
Speaker 3: of their general frustration at the things the world hasn't
Speaker 3: given them, and they see that their alliance with the
Speaker 3: right wing is because the right wing will make things
Speaker 3: harder for women and make them more necessary again, you know,
Speaker 3: Like I think that's important. Like these guys are very influential.
Speaker 3: Millions and millions of people listen to them. It had
Speaker 3: an impact on the election, right, Yeah, you.
Speaker 2: So much to Robert. I'm pretty sure he has a podcast,
Speaker 2: but I don't remember what it's called. Check back with me,
Speaker 2: all right, I know that was a lot of information.
Speaker 2: I hope you're well. And next week we're going to
Speaker 2: close this series out by talking to those affected by it,
Speaker 2: young men who got out of the manisphere and the
Speaker 2: people who are targeted by the Manisphere and what if
Speaker 2: anything we can do to turn this around. We'll see
Speaker 2: you then, and for your moment of fun, let's hold
Speaker 2: some space for defying gravity.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Sixteenth Minute is a production of Pool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4: It is written, posted, and produced by me Janie Lastus.
Speaker 4: Our executive producers are Sophie Lickderman and Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: The Amazing Ian Johnson is our supervising producer and our editor.
Speaker 2: Our theme song is by Sad thirteen. Voice acting is
Speaker 2: Grant Crater and pet. Shout outs to our dog producer Anderson,
Speaker 2: my cat's fleeing Casper, and my pet Rockberg, who will
Speaker 2: outlive us all Bye.