People are being assured over and over again that women are the problem.
There are no Girls on the Internet. As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridgie Toad and this is there are No Girls on the Internet. Last week, Apple and Google Play both took down Andrew Tate's at the Real World formerly Hustler's University. Andrew Tate has been grifting a generation of young men and boys into making him rich by stoking their anxieties, anger, and fears. His
content is dangerous. But it's not just Tate. An entire ecosystem of extremist content creators in what's commonly known as the manosphere are gamifying the Internet to line their pockets and putting all of us at risk in the process.
So the manosphere is this umbrella term that a lot of different misogynists, activists, commentators kind of fall unders, whether that be someone like a men's rights activists, a pickup artist, a blogger, a podcaster, pretty much anyone whose main deal is misogyny that falls under the manosphere.
Justin Horowitz has been researching viral extremist influencers with Media Matters since twenty twenty, so a lot of this content really seems to prey on the fears in vulnerabilities of young men, like you're not working out as hard as all the other men around you, or you're never going to get a date, or you spend a lot of time alone at home instead of being out. Why is that?
I think that that is a great gateway to get to talk about misogyny and hate and to push extremism. So something like fitness content or something like whether that be gambling or even gaming some of these manosphere influencers are involved in. It is just a way to get people to log on to subscribe to their content so that they can push further extremism and further misogyny down
the road. And kind of going off what you just said, a lot of these manosphere influencers do talk about sort of the real fears that men are experiencing, so things like financial instability or rejection dating advice. There's not a lot of influencers that speak to these real fears of
young men that are outside the manosphere. So I think that young men are particularly interested in these influencers because there's not that many to choose from, and when these are the ones that are available, that's who they'll that's who they'll spend their time listening to.
Unfortunately, that's such a bummer because there are men and women and all kinds of folks who make content about like for young people, right, But the content that we get that we see amplified on social media is never the person who's making a podcast digging into the doing a thoughtful dig int about like the nuances of dating in twenty twenty three for young men, or the realities of economic stability like that would be content that people
would be looking for. I think there's like a like a thirst for it, and there are people making thoughtful content about that, but they certainly do not enjoy the exposure or the reach, or the or the platforms like people making Manosphere content. Why is that?
I think that a lot of the manosphere content oftentimes the first and like the first thing people are seeing are these very viral moments. So what they're seeing are these TikTok clips of someone saying something that is extremely misogynist. But maybe they'll have someone that is there to give a retort. But that's just one way to get people sort of involved or get their eyes on it. So these Manosphere these manosphere influencers, they just have a they're
honestly very They're very good at the Internet. And it's the same way that Andrew Tape was able to, you know, make sure that everybody on the Internet knew who he was. You know, he was the most googled person last year. They're just very good at being able to play the Internet game, play the virality game.
These creators are gamifying our Internet landscape by cranking out moments designed for social media virality and incentivizing their followers to share them online. As part of Andrew Tate's real world app, Tape promises that subscribers who pay fifty dollars a month for the app can make millions by reposting his clips on social media sites. That's why platforms like TikTok are flooded with his toxic, harmful messages. More and more of these creators, like the Fresh and Fit podcast
and the Whatever podcast are doing similar things. It's like an ecosystem of toxicity.
Honestly, it's really impressive and it's kind of scary as well.
It is scary, especially with Andrew Tate. I mean, what like something that I see a lot with when it comes to these podcasts. I used in quotes because as a podcaster, I have some like issues with how they're pod Well, well that's either here nor there. But you know, it'll be these viral moments where they'll get you know, like Fresh and Fit does this a lot. Well, they'll where they'll they'll have a black woman on the show
seemingly just to degrade and humiliate her. And maybe this woman will shrink and sit silently while they do this, maybe she will say something back, maybe she will storm out. But that clip on social media will get such big engagement. And even if you are someone who finds these views a borrent, you're still looking at them. They're still getting
your eyeballs. Is that sort of what you mean by the way they're able to play social media algorithms to ensure that their content is always getting that high engagement, and thus we're going to see more and more of it.
Yes, that is exactly what I mean. They are able to find that ten second clip of them degrading someone or making sure that they look a fool, just so that they can get people's eyes on them and then give them a follow, And then you go to their actual podcast and you see it's three hours long of horrible misogyny. Like I said, it is really just like a gateway. Some of these viral clips are just a gateway to get people more involved in the manosphere community.
And I saw it, like you said, with Fresh and Fit. There are other podcasts like the whatever dating podcast huge on TikTok. My colleague Sophie and I recently did a piece on them as well. It's pretty much a Fresh and Fit knockoff. But you know, it's just they are on twist on it. But they really got our attention at Media Matters because of their viral moments that we were seeing on TikTok that was just popping up in our feeds.
God, it's interesting that these are often like dating or lifestyle podcasts because I don't know how to put this, but I had so. I was home over the weekend and I was spending time with a family member who I was really surprised to learn enjoys Andrew take content and I was like, what is it that you like about him? He was like, well, I just see the clips on social media, like the clips on Instagram where he's driving a Bugatti and he's talking about how important
it is to grind. And he was saying, how like nobody's really giving that message today that it's important to grind. I was like, well, I don't know about that, but and then I was like, oh, so do you listen to his podcast tape speech and he was like no, I tried to. It's like three hours long of him
rambling and like, none of that appeals to me. And I found it so interesting that this person in my life, who I think of as like a smart with it person, was taken by these short clips to the point where they would defend this person not having dived deeper into any of their longer form content or and had tried to but could not get through it, Like, is that by design?
I do think it's by design. I think that parasocial relationships with these Manosphere influencers are created very easily. I don't think that it takes a lot of content for you to feel a connection with some of these influencers. And I don't think that is specific to the Manosphere. I think that can happen with any sort of TikToker or someone you're following online. But I think that what a lot of these manuscript fear influencers are trying to do is they want you to become who they are, right,
so they say, I'm an alpha male. You want to be a high value man. And what you want to do is you want to become a high value man, you should be an alpha male. So what people are doing is they're looking up to these people. It becomes very very easy to defend someone when you want to be them.
Creators like Andrew Tate are notorious for being really good at getting around bands On social media platforms, content that uses dog whistles or codes are not always detected, and even when individual creators are banned, their followers can still post their content. This is how take gets around being banned from pretty much every social media platform out there except Twitter. When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he let Andrew Tate back on the platform, and the two sometimes
publicly interact. And when Musk was touting payments for people who post on Twitter, Andrew Tate proudly bragged that he got twenty thousand dollars. What's also interesting to me is the role that you say social media plays in this.
Some of these influencers like Andrew Tait, who was famously banned from like all platforms, like I don't even think I don't even think he's on Pinterest, like and then he was famously not just let back on when Elon Musk took over at Twitter, but as of last week being paid like twenty thousand dollars to stay on Twitter
and make content. Other influencers that you've that you've written about, like sneak O. These are people who have technically been banned from platforms, yet I see their content all the time. What's going on there?
Honestly, it's a lot of bannovation, I'll say that. So a lot of these tech platforms they are not good at knowing who is evading their bands, and you know, people at Media Matters we write about these kind of bannovations, but it's also about some of these influencers are going to these like all platforms we're talking about like Rumble of course, Parlor when that was a thing, Gab, all of the Twitter knockoffs, all Twitter, the of those. But
people are bringing their audiences from these mainstream platforms. Let's say sneak O was brought back on Twitter, he can tell all of his Twitter followers to go follow him on Rumble, which is like a you know, knock off YouTube pretty much for the alright. And what they can do is they can build huge audiences on these platforms and then they can find other influencers that are on Rumble, and then it just kind of becomes this rabbit hole that people go down. Once you're on Rumble, you can
find all these other Rumble influencers. So it's it's really about a way to get like all of your followers into one place. And like, these influencers are really good at that. They're really good at getting their followers to do what they want them to do.
It's it's I mean, I hate to give them any credit, but it is a very effective strategy because I see them all the time and I'm always like, I thought they banned you, I thought they got rid of you.
Yeah, They're like a pesky little bug that you just cannot get rid of.
It's not just Andrew Tate. More and more content creators are making similar content in Andrew Tate's image. Some of them like Sneako, who got to start making Call of Duty content on YouTube before jumping to the platform. Rumble, you might not have heard of. But even if you haven't heard of them. It's likely that your little brother or a little cousin probably has. We talk a lot about Tate, and rightly so, he's like the most googled person. But you've done a really great job of mapping out
the entire ecosystem of the of men's rights influencers. Who are some of the major players that folks might not know.
So we talked about sneak O. He's definitely He kind of started as like a man on the street interview type of TikToker, doing kind of YouTube videos when he was younger, and then made his way into the manosphere. Another person that I've been writing about recently who have actually noticed has gotten a lot of pick up recently was h Pearl Davis. She goes by just pearly things online.
She's a men's rights influencer or I guess she would just call herself a manospear influencer of some sort, and she's been getting a lot of attention recently as the female Andrew Tate. Who else have I written about? Let's see Aiden Ross, who was one of the biggest Twitch streamers. He recently has moved over to kick which is kind of a twitch knockoff that's owned by Steak, which is
a crypto gambling organization. And then there's the Whatever podcast, as I talked about before, which is kind of like fresh and fit Jonathan Hogwood, who's another men's rights activist. Honestly, there are so many Andrew Tait knockoffs that they are almost hard to map out. At this point, I feel like every time I jump online, I'm finding someone else that is saying the same thing to their followers, and
it is just full blown misogyny. And you know, I'll check one week and they'll have a significant amount of followers, and then I'll check their follower count the next week and they've just blown up. These people are just gaining followers at like very rapid speeds.
Let me ask you this, So I've known the same thing that a lot of these influencers. They'll start by doing funny pranks or man on the street or video game live streaming, and then kind of dovetail into misogyny and then some of them will like explode. How much of that do you think is just kind of playing to what works, like being like, oh, when I was just doing X, I wasn't really getting traction when I started dipping into misogyny, anti semitism, conspiracy theories, women and
Jewish people are the root of your problems. Women don't deserve rights. I got a lot more traction. I'm going to keep working. What works? How much? If it? Do you think is just like a marketing tactic.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I really think that misogyny gets clicks. I think that hating women gets clicks. I think being an anti Semite unfortunately gets clicks as well. I think that these are definitely strategies that people can turn to when they've run out of options. You know, doing a prank video, being a TikToker, depending on your content will only get you so far. And this is definitely a road that people see. And not only that, but it's also profitable. So the manosphere
in general, there's oftentimes a monetary aspect. So what are these people selling. They're always selling something, whether that's masculinity lessons or dating advice, advice on how to go viral, anything like that. You know, the people that are in it, they are in it for themselves. They are not really trying to help these men become high value men or whatever they say that they're trying to help them become They are trying to make money, get followers, and market themselves.
I mean, it's a grift, it's a scam like that. That's the thing that really it troubles me. Like this is when I was having this long, long as debate with my family member last week this past weekend about Andrew Tate, I was surprised that he was not able to see what a clear and obvious grift this person is running. This person is telling is stoking on the fears and vulnerabilities which may be very real of the community of young men who legitimately feel like forgotten, unseen.
He is stoking those things to enrich himself personally. And I guess, like, how do people not see it for the grift that it is, Like, how does it? How is it so effective? But it's like, clearly he is trying to take your money. He doesn't actually care about you being a high value man or actually like seeing you and the vulnerabilities that you have. He's interested in fattening his pockets.
I think then it goes back to what I was saying before, where there are really just so few influencers that are speaking to these fears of young men that it is like it is completely oh, like the the idea that people are doing it for the money, it's just overshadowed. I think people are people become extremely cutly, they become such committed followers to these influencers that you know, they look past the bad they look past the money
that they're giving, they look past the horrible misogyny. And some people, when they are fans, they know that what these people are saying is wrong and dangerous and putting like the real lives of women in particular, like they're making a lot, they're making women's lives more dangerous because
they think that they're helping them in some way. They're trying to like improve their lives and for people when if they haven't had someone to talk to, or they haven't had someone that felt like there was really like speaking to their soul, like they're willing to look past those things, and it really.
Makes me sad because what they're selling them is so shitty. Like somebody who made good content about women and men and gender and sexuality and dating in twenty twenty three, someone who was actually meaningfully seeing these people and speaking
to their concerns I think would be great. I think what makes me upset is that they flood the space with such garbage, so people who actually are making that content really can't get a foothold because who's going to listen to somebody who is making a nuanced point about gender and dating when you can watch this very exciting video of a black woman's being degraded and then storming off of a podcast set right, and you know, I
think it really creates this false world where in heterosexual relationships, men and women are constantly at odds that like, people don't have relationships that are based on mutual respect, seeing
each other, wanting to support each other. The only kind of relationship that exists between a man and a woman is one that is built on, you know, breaking the woman, her being submissive, you being dominant, when in reality, people who have healthy relationships are not obsessed with the particulars in this way, Like this is not like I don't know anybody who has a relationship like that, and that
is certainly not a relationship to strive for. Yet they are presenting to a whole generation of young people, but this is the only kind of relationship that you can have and it's just not true.
I mean traditional gender roles. I mean that that just kind of oftentimes will take out the whole part of like important communication. You know, if you if your job is to do this, my job is to do that, and like that's how it's gonna be. Oftentimes, it's just not gonna work that way. It'll just it's so outdated the gender roles that they're pushing that it just, like you said, it doesn't really make sense and it doesn't work.
I'd wish that I could like point to more like influencers that are creating content about dating and that are kind of creating content that would be kind of the opposite of manosphere content. But like, off the top of my head, I can't think of any obviously because I work in this space. But it's it's it's it's just sad to see that. It feels like when men are looking for a role model or someone to look up to, it just feels like there's just one type of role model online that they can find.
Let's take a quick break at our back. It's not just men. There are women creating misogynistic content on social media too. While Andrew Tate was in custody being investigated for running a trafficking ring in Romania. H Pearl Davis, or just Pearly Things filled the gap and spiked in popularity,
sometimes called the female Andrew Tate. Business Insider reported that Pearl's YouTube audience grew fifty percent in the three months since Tate was detained, and that our subscriber base jumped from around eight hundred thousand to one point three million while Tate was in custody. On her merch store, Pearl sells shirts that say women shouldn't vote.
I think you would actually be surprised. I think that there is a small sector within the manosphere where there are women viewing extreme misogyny against other women. I think that men in particular think that if a woman says it, they can repeat it. If a woman is talking bad about women and saying extreme misogyny, they can just say it more casually, almost.
You know.
I've been following Pearl for quite a while. I feel like I've been following her since she was just a TikToker and she was just constantly getting banned on TikTok, And now I'm seeing articles written about her within really the last week where people are saying she's the new female Andrew Tape, and I think that part of it. This is just my opinion. I think that the media is picking up on her because they like to see
women attack each other. I think that is you know, when you have someone like just pearly things talking bad about women, they're like, oh, yeah, this is definitely something we should cover, but we're not talking about the actual reality of it. Like I said before, that you know, her dangerous misogyny is still putting the lives of women in danger. You know, it's just as bad as something that Andrew Tate was saying. You know, it's just out of someone else's mouth.
Yeah, I've noticed that too. Like another kind of like right wing influencer type, Candice Owen, people love it when she says something bad about black people because she's a black woman, and so like, I do think there's something that like is even outside of these right wing media circles, in more traditional or legacy media, I think that there is something just irresistible about that framing of like, well, this woman doesn't think that women should have rights, and
she's a woman and she's saying it. Like, I think you're absolutely right that there's something they've identified that is clicky or buzzy about that, and it'll always make headlines.
It's the same thing about when you have like this group Gayze against groomers attacking the LGBT community. You know, it's like, well, they're getting all of this media pickup just because they're queer people attacking other queer people. I feel like it kind of falls in kind of the same formula.
There another hallmark of this kind of content the grind set mentality. The grindset is kind of a catch all for all of the trades and interests supposedly embodied by the high value alpha male. So when creators like Andrew Tate or Fresh and Fit all for their followers paid coaching to become these high value men. It runs the gamut from content about fitness or real estate, stocks and cryptocurrency.
It might seem kind of all over the place to an outsider, but they're selling the shortcut to an entire lifestyle. Something that I've noticed about the content of folks like Fresh and Fit Andrew Tat especially, is it so much of the topics are all over the place, Like they talk a lot about crypto, which I always found so interesting.
Is it just that crypto is sort of synonymous with young people who are very much online and they're just trying to give them what they want or there's something else going on there.
You know. I think crypto trading is like part of the grind set, right, So it's like, what are we doing to make money? How can we make money fastest way possible? And how can we do it efficiently and be alpha males while doing it. So I just feel like cryptocurrency kind of falls into the world of the manosphere because it's all about doing something quickly and doing
something big. I think those are just two aspects of the manosphere that are just like, you know, you can kind of apply that to like anything, making money, meeting girls, dating, and I think cryptocurrency, you know, I think it's just hot and trendy, and I think that's just kind of like where it's fallen recently.
Oh my god, I love how you put that that it's just doing something. It's the grindset of doing something quick and big. I think that that's something that all of this content kind of has in common, this idea that there is a cheat code to life, that there's a cheat code that's going to get you rich. There's a cheat code that's going to get you fit, there's a cheat code that's going to get you beloved by women,
sexual prowess, social like, social power. You can just gamify it and if you have that figured it out, you just don't have the right cheat code. Like, I think that it's all kind of wrapped up in that.
I really like that term cheat code. That's not something I've used in this, but I think that, you know, the whole idea of the red pill, so being like women are the root of all evil, you know, understanding that women are the reason I'm not financially stable, women are the reason I'm not dating the women are the reason of so and so and so and so for
whatever you know, poor man's problems he has. I think that that is also sort of a mental cheat code to be like, these are the reasons I'm not happy, you know, it's because of women. And I think that that's just kind of another way to sort of understand the framing when it comes to just like the mentality of it.
Yeah, and you know, I think back to when I was a young person going through my first breakup. I just like all most young people do. I had like one bad breakup that sort of defined part of my life, and what I turned to was like the Cure records
and really bad poetry. What makes me sad now is that there is this entire, well oiled digital machine that will when they find a vulnerable young person who is in that moment of like, oh you're you're heartbroken, they will find that young person and be like, oh, the reason why you feel this way, think about how bad you feel, it's because of women, right like, And you can build an entire identity and ethos around the fact that women are the source for your pain, for why
you're not feeling good, while you're not succeeding, while you don't have money, whatever whatever the thing is. And you know, I don't think I don't think this kind of content is new, But what I think is new is that young people all have a device in their hands that connect it to them so instantly, and that content is not just there, it's also amplified by social media platforms
who are getting rich off of it. It's algorithmically, you know, surfaced for them, and it kind of makes me feel like they don't necessarily have a lot of tools when they're young to steer away from that content because it's such a pull. I bet yeah.
I really think that Like if you're you know, giving the example that you gave your heartbroken, and you're a man and you just went through a devastating heartbreak, and you pops up on your TikTok feeds sneak, o refresh and fit talking about like why women break men's hearts, and it's like the next five tiktoks that are coming up, you're on the manosphere tag or whatever you're looking at. You know that is really going to draw people in.
And I think that is constant stimulation, and people are being assured over and over again that women are the problem, I think is what it is. Especially if you're looking for that kind of content or like your algorithm has picked up that you're interested in that kind of content, You're just going to get the same talking points and the same misogyny over and over again, and it's just going to draw you further into it.
And I just I mean, what responsibility do you think that social media platforms have to keep that from happening, especially to young people.
I think they need to have more terms of service when it comes to extremistygny. Honestly, I feel like a lot of times they are pretty lax. Places like TikTok or obviously Twitter or you know, any sort of social media. They just don't have the kind of specificity that they really need to have to keep women safe on the Internet.
Do you feel it's getting worse.
On some platforms, Yeah, I mean I feel like maybe, well maybe it's not getting worse, but the bad actors are getting better at it. I'll say that I feel like sometimes they're able to really talk around things. I think that some of the bad actors are able to you know, know what gets viral to sort of draw people in. And I think that the social media platforms, you know, they still want to make money and they don't want to see some of their biggest actors taken off.
I think that's I think that's an unfortunate reality, is that, you know, if you have someone that's bringing in a lot of attention to a lot of clicks, they don't want to ba them.
And if you're Elon Musk, maybe you'll give them twenty thousand dollars and thus incentivize the next misogynistic hate monger to get big on the platform and say hey, I could do that. I can say misogynistic things into a microphone money please exactly.
If it's getting clips, then there you go.
So you talked about how some of these bad actors are pretty good about like coding things so that they stay on the right side of these terms of service. I saw something in a social media feed. It was Nick flint Has on the Freshian Fit podcast and they were talking about JQ, and I was like, what the fuck is JAQ? Then I read your piece and I
was like the Jewish question. Then I saw the host of Fresh and Fit saying he basically bragged, saying that you know, we're the biggest platform that's talking about the JQ. No one else will do it. What's going on here? Like what is that?
This is straight up Nazi shit And I am being dead serious. When you bring Nick Quentis into it, you know he is a neo Nazi. He's a white supremacist and a Holocaust denier. They have been talking Nick Quentas and Freshman Fit four months about getting together and doing this collaboration. So this was kind of the precipice of them making of working together to make sure that they
can do this like hours an hour's long stream. There was even a video that was going around of Nick doing a Nazi pile in the Fresh and Fitz studio and they're talking about the Jewish Question. This is, you know, the same thing that Adolf Hitler was talking about when he was like, what do we do about the Jews? And like you said, the hosts were saying, we're the
only podcast that's talking about the Jewish Question. It's extremely extremely scary stuff to see and something that you know is extremely well codd You know, a clip like that where they're just talking about the JQ, something like that could probably go on to TikTok because their algorithms might not pick it up. Maybe they would pick up if someone did like a hashtag Nick quentas or something like that,
but it'll just direct people. They'll direct people back to Rumble, which is where you can see these hour long streams.
I'm glad that you put it that way. Back when Kanye West and Nick Quintes went to visit Trump, I did an interview with Robert Evans, who makes the podcast Behind the Bastards, who's all about all of these shitheads, and that was the point that he made too, which is that Nick Fuentes is a Nazi. Like some of
these other characters, they kind of dance around it. They you know, you could sort of be like, oh, they're trolling maybe, but he's not in that camp, and so that like when you are platforming him, you're doing a very different thing and you're sending a very different, clear signal about what you're about.
I completely agree. I think that when you make the decision to platform Nick quentas you are drawing a line in the sand, you are saying, I am willing to put a Nazi onto my show, and I'm listening and I will hear him out. So someone like Pearl just pearly things. As we talked about a couple of months ago, she had him on her show.
Nick fuent has actually inspired Pearl so much that she made an entire anti semitic song about it. When Pierce Morgan confronted Pearl about it on his television show, here's how she responded.
I mean, the point was more about cancel culture and people getting kicked off of social media. If you finished the song, it was more about like, you can't talk about this topic without being canceled by the left. And the right. I don't really have a strong opinion either way.
And she obviously got a lot of backlash. She took the videos down, she put the videos back up, she defended him, she went back and forth, but she ended the place she ended up. She ended up being like, I believe in free speech, so I would host him again something like that. It's just ridiculous, and I think that it is so so dangerous the manosphere in general, but then to bring Nazism and neo Nazianism into it, I mean, it is just like two very scary, dangerous worlds colliding.
What are some of the real world impacts of this, because I'm certainly sure somebody listening is like, it's just young people saying naughty words on the Internet. It doesn't really mean anything. What is the real world impact?
Well, you know, the manosphere in general does not live in a vacuum. SOS. Major misogyny and extreme misogyny has led to real world violence. People like Elliott Rodgers, who is an in cell mouth shooter. Obviously many attacks against women. Gamergate in twenty fifteen, when members when female members of the video game community were attacked, sent death threats and
rape threats. These are all just examples of ways that the manosphere has, you know, come into the real world and has become a serious danger to people and has affected real people's lives.
Yeah. I mean, just this week, I was reading on Twitter about a man who had posted a picture of him and his wife and said, I think it was a tweet that was like, oh, I went Columbia and I married, I came back with a wife. And that person is now being accused of murdering his wife. And you go to his Twitter page and it's all Andrew Tait stuff. And I'm not saying that there's like there's a deep like a deep connection, because we don't know.
It's still something that they're investigating. But I have to imagine that somebody who is absorbing content from an influencer who is saying all of these things about how women haven't deserve rights, how if a woman is raped she bears some responsibility, like all of this stuff, I can't imagine how that is not creating a less safe world for everybody, women especially, but also for the men who absorb this content.
Yeah, I do think that it is making men think that, you know, violence is sometimes an answer when Nick was on Pearl's show, he downplayed domestic abuse. You know, so if you're someone who is easily influenced by like bad actors or figures or the kind of content you're taking in, you know, these are people who are quick to violence
and quick to like you know, call up arms. You know, these are very scary people who are associated with people that have you know, been convicted of violent acts pretty much, people that are gropers that have followed Nick Fuentas. There have been like multiple instances of these people being charged for you know, dangerous and violent apps.
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it. Tate and people like him make contents specifically and explicitly targeting kids. Before it was deleted from the app stores, Tate's app The Real World said it was appropriate for ages for and up. He even boasts about having a six year old subscriber. Similarly, in avieral video of sneak O meeting a handful of his fans who are boys, maybe age eight or nine, one of them gleefully tell sneak O fuck all women, while another says all gay
should die. What is content like this doing to a generation of young men? It's really scary, and I read about how Andrew Tate's content. I read a piece about how teachers in schools like people who work with young people,
his content specifically is causes. It's leading to disruptions where you know, young men will who like Andrew Tate, will start bringing his content into the classroom, and it just creates a very unsafe, chaotic environment, especially for like the young, like like young kids, elementary school kids.
So Insider had a report, it was a couple of months back now, and it said that there was an eleven year old who was repeating Andrew tait content and who was pretty much saying that he like idolized him. I do think that, you know, when people are looking up to these these like people like Andrew Tat or even Nick Quentas. I think you're going to see it in schools, You'll see it with young young people. And you know Nick Fuentas, I've watched plenty of his streams.
Sometimes he speaks directly to the high schoolers that are listening to his show, so to kind of give you an idea of like how young this is going. These influencers, they and bad actors that they know who's listening and it's it's young kids, and it's very impressionable, susceptible young people.
And I have I have this theory, and I would love to know your thoughts that, even if you are not somebody who likes Andrew Tate, would ever subscribe to a Fresh and Fit, wouldever be watching Nick Fuentez. The way that these clips have taken of these people speaking have taken over social media, whether or not you follow them like I see them and I obviously don't like these people. I think that that is trickling down into
wider society. So even people who don't think of themselves as like men's rights types, they might be absorbing, casually absorbing some of these attitudes without even really realizing it, because they are so ubiquitous on our platforms. What do you think about that?
Yeah, I could see I could definitely see that. I think that if it's showing up in your TikTok feed enough, you know, it's just getting into your subconscious I mean maybe that sounds a little conspiracy theory of me, but I do feel like it's it's coming into you know, the Overton window for what we think is like misogyny feels to be shifting a little bit. You know, it's just something that you feel in the air. Obviously it's not something that I can like point to exactly, but
it's sometimes you just you just feel it. And I think that's kind of what you were describing as well. It's just something that you know, you can just tell in the way that people talk. Yes, in the last like couple of years, and it's it's kind of what
got me interested in the manosphere too. I mean, it was just like it's something I felt in my own life and it's something that I was seeing online and I think as a gay man, I see it in my community a lot, a lot of misogyny, and it's like, honestly, within the last year or two, it's like it's what some gay in might think is funny, honeously honestly just ends up being like hurtful to women or like could end up just being dangerous. And I just think that's part of it as well.
How did you get into caring about and researching and following this kind of content?
So first I was just doing extremism, So I was really mostly just following obviously normal right wing media. I was following Steve Bannon, when I first started at Media Matters, and then I got particularly interested in a Quintus. And then I think that as my TikTok algorithm started to change and shift a little bit, I started to get Manosphere content, and I think I just kind of fell
into it too. I was like, who are these people and how do they why do they keep showing up on my feed and why or do they have so many likes and follows? And I feel like that's kind of what first, like initially kind of threw me into it. And I also started to follow Aiden Ross as I was talking about the streamer and him and Andrew Tate have like this serious, very strange romance, and that's honestly what brought me over to kind of like the hate speech world of it all as well.
Okay, so what is it like following this, because I mean, I have a separate TikTok account that I use for like following nonsense just so that my personal TikTok account will not be all nonsense when I'm just trying to watch TikTok's. What has it been like for you personally to have to like be mired in all this all the time?
You know it can be really hard some days. I feel like for me, after working at Media Matters for nearly three years, I've like really found a good way to pace myself kind of taking in this content. I think that, honestly, as a gay Jewish man, seeing a lot of the anti Semitism and a lot of the homophobia and anti Pride month stuff has really been the hardest for me. I do think that it's really about pacing yourself when it comes to how I can kind
of handle all of it. I also just think that the manosphere in particular, I feel like is very reactionary to the moment, which means it's just like very fast paced.
There's always something new happening. The world of kind of extremism feels a little bit slower, So I feel like also just making sure that you know, I have people on my team that if I can't handle something or things are just happening too quickly, there are other colleagues of mine that I feel like I can really hand it off to and I can really trust them with the content and the research as well.
I'm glad you feel like you have that support. I'm interested, do you see all of this stuff that's kind of connected, like the anti Pride stuff, is that sort of connected to the manosphere stuff, Like is this all linked in some way in your mind?
Absolutely? I really think that, especially in this last year, the manosphere like they dove head first into the anti lgbt Q rhetoric and the anti trans rhetoric. There was a day in June where Andrew Tate thought it would be so hilarious to be like, I'm a trans woman and then just started tweeting constantly all day about being trans. It was really disgusting and something that I think you
would really only find on Elon Musk's Twitter. And another horrible example Sneako, who we were talking about before, he wrote the words Pride month on a shooting target and then went outside with automatic rifles and they were shooting at it, him and a couple of his buddies. So it is just it is just really extreme, the anti LGBTQ rhetoric is it is honestly from the manosphere. Some of the some of the more scary stuf that I've seen. It is it is really hard to see.
Shit is so fucked up, And you know, I don't know how you feel about this. The way that I have. What I've been sort of saying is that even for people who have a problem with trans people or queer people, most people aren't doing this like this, Like this is such a different thing. Taking the time out of your day to write Pride month on a target and then go film yourself shooting at it or filming yourself demolishing
a target Pride section. That is not normal. And I think that the thing that worries me is that it's signaling to people that, oh, this is normal behavior like this is if you if you have a problem with queer people or trans people, this is an appropriate way
to to deal with that. And I think that there are plenty of people who probably do have problems with trans people and queer people, but this is such a different thing, Like I feel like they're telling these people that this is an appropriate way to suppress whatever bigotries that you have, And that's what really scares me.
I do think that people like Sneako, when they do like a stunt like that, it is to get clicks. But I also think it's normalizing it as well. I think it's exactly what you described. I think that they are thinking, like, oh, if this is funny, and Sneako can do it, then like it's cool if I do it as well, or if someone wants to, you know, pretend to be a trans person online just to mock them then and if your haid is getting a bunch of clicks, then like yeah, sure why I can do
that as well. And also Perl just pearly things as well, has been she plays or semi professional volleyball. I think over in England that I think that's her full time job outside of being a commentator. And she's been like fighting with them about her anti trans rhetoric and it has really only made her anti LGBT rhetoric like so much worse. I think that people like her they are
just like so so angry. She has so much anger, and people like Andrew t they are they have so much anger, and like you just wonder where it comes from. And like sometimes it's just so obvious that it's not actually towards the LGBT community, but that's where they're putting it, and it's it's ridiculous and it's dangerous and scary. As I've said a couple of times.
Oh my god, that's I've noticed the same thing is like there are plenty of things that I don't like in society. I don't dedicate my time to like obsessing
over the it in this way. And also like some of the Andrew Tate and Fresh and Fit, Like there's two clips that stick in my mind of them, like ranting like Andrew Tate ranting about how like he doesn't eat breakfast because he starts his day with caffeine and and nicotine and hate running through his veins, and like there's this clip of I think it's I'm blanking the host's name, but like screaming into the microphone about how when he was playing too many, too many video games,
women didn't give him the time of day and how that was so horrible. It's like they have such deep, clear reservoirs of hate and anger. And also they're telling people, don't you want to be like me? Not really like I want to wake up and have a nice breakfast. I don't want to start my day with hate and pain and caffeine and nicotine. I actually would love to have a nice breakfast that actually sounds nice. Do I want to be foaming into a microphone viewing hate and
anger about all the women who've done me wrong? Not really that actually doesn't seem appealing. And so it's very interesting how so much of their ethos, like you said, is based around be like me, but they don't actually seem very happy, and in fact quite the opposite.
I'm like, aren't you guys exhausted? Like watching you guys? I'm exhausted like being that angry all the time, and like, I don't know, I don't know what it's getting for you guys, but like I just it shocks me, It really does.
And I just think it it's shocking, and it presents like for young men, like they can have a different kind of life, They can have different kinds of relationships, they can have meaningful, fulfilling relationships based on communication, trust, honesty, openness, respects and all of that, Like that is possible for everybody, and I just think it presents such an empty worldview
that in the end traps them as well. We talk a lot rightly about the ways that this kind of content is a danger for women, which it is, but it's also such a danger to these men who are being sold alive that this is all they can have, when in reality, they can have so much more. The world is so much more open and available to them having a different kind of experience. But this content and this dynamic just keeps them trapped, probably miserable and ultimately lacking an agency.
And I just think poor, Yeah, it is draining their bank accounts as well. They think that they're getting so much out of it that they really just don't.
Oh my god, if, like I wrote a piece for the Nation about fresh and fits like online school, if you're sending these grifters six hundred dollars a month, please do like that money would be so much better spent elsewhere.
I completely agree. I mean, when when the example that you're trying to follow is Andrew Tate, who was like literally running in MLM, You know, you'd think that people would know better, but you know they don't.
Why does so much of this content take off in the podcast space? Like why do all these people have podcasts? Even if their podcast is like them with six people in a room and they're just videotaping it and they're calling it a podcast. It's a a pet peeve of mind. What is it about the podcast space that draws these charlatans in.
I think that if you can put a microphone in front of someone that means that they are allowed to speak their mind any which way that they want. And I don't think that's actually reality, but I think that with that setup, it lends itself to that kind of rhetoric and that kind of critique and that kind of discussion and discourse something like fresh and fit where there's like twelve microphones on the table, Like this really isn't
how a podcast is working. Like I assume most people that are watching it are watching it for like the video form, So I just think that the podcast of it all, I'll say, the podcast format out of it all really just like it's lending itself to to, you know, a format which lends itself to a specific specific type of discourse.
Oh my god, I could talk all day. This is like such a such a thing with me. Where the look of a podcast, yeah, where there's like twelve microphones. First of all, that is too many fucking people to be on a podcast. It's so like already just to
tell you something's going on. But the thing on TikTok that really gets a lot of traction is, yeah, headphones and microphone that might not even be plugged in, Like the aesthetic of I'm having serious discourse or like I'm going to tell you how I really think in an
intimate way. I think that a lot of these influencers are able to rely on the aesthetic of podcasts and what that brings to push their horrible messages out in a way that kind of shields them from criticism, I believe, because if it was just somebody in their car making this video, you'd be like, who's this nobody next? But oh, he's got a microphone and headphones. Let's listen to what he's got to say.
Right. If he has a microphone in front of him, then I should maybe be taking him seriously. I think is the thought that these people have, Like if I have a big, fancy yetni mic or whatever I have, and I got my big, expensive over the head earphones on, then like this person might mean something. This person has the ability to put a podcast out, and maybe that
would also carries some weight to it. I feel like sometimes when I'm watching these smaller like right wing media figures that are doing podcasts for my job, I'm like, is there are they uploading this anywhere? Or they just like click start on photo booth and like sit in front of their microphone and just kind of like run with it. I actually don't know. I would love sometimes I would love to see people set up.
No, I have definitely one hundred percent seen TikTok clips where it's like that I know that that mic is not on. I know it's not on. That is just a prop to make us, to make us feel some kind of way about what you're saying. Absolutely so, justin if let's say that somebody listening has somebody in their life kind of asking for selfish reasons, because I apparently do have somebody in my life who is watching this
kind of content and you're worried about them. Do you have any tips for how we might approach that.
I think the finding good content to replace the bad content is a great place to start when it comes like talking about masculinity. I also think that being able to show people the worst parts of these influencers is a really important aspect. So kind of like your family member where they're like, oh, well, I see I see the grindset of it all. I see him like smoking his cigars. It's like, okay, but do you do you see him talking about you know, hitting women or talking
bad about the LGBTQ community. I think that what is important is kind of talking to the values of the people that are watching these influencers that maybe you can
hit on in a different way. So if your family member cares about LGBTQ rights, if your family member cares about, you know, violence against women, it's you know, directing the attention towards different aspects of these influencers that maybe they don't see on TikTok or they don't see directly online, but are definitely there if you sit and listen and do a little bit of research.
That's really good advice. And I think the point about like replacing the content that they're currently consuming with something else is such a good one. And I think it really speaks to have like that bad actor and their ability to seize gaps in information and content because you know, I'm probably like you, I'm part of like coalitions and
panels about like how we speak to different groups. And one that comes up time and time again is like this entire generation of disaffected young people, a lot of whom are men that were just not speaking to right, Like nobody is actually in a meaningful way seeing them speaking to their issues. At least they don't feel that way, and the people who are getting their ears and eyes
are these charlatans with a dangerous message. And so I do think part of it is being all of us who make content being a little bit better about making content. That helps so that these bad actors are not able to seize these massive gaps where there is no content filling that gap.
I really like that idea. It really comes down to like the messaging, like who is the messaging for? And I feel like a lot of that when it comes to like political messaging, is like we're really aiming towards this one demographic, whether that be young people or like
older voters or someone like that. But I feel like when it comes down to it, when we're creating content and we're being you know, influencers, these influencers, I don't think that there are a lot of people out there that their initial thought is I want to do I want to do good things for young men. I don't think that people really I don't think that's something that people really think of right off the bad and maybe that just needs to be you know, looked at from
a different lens. I don't I'm not totally sure how to get people to how to get people there. I guess I don't know how to get the message across and get the message out. It feels it feels like an important fight and something we can talk about in circles and circles, but I'm not sure what the next step would always be to get people to create better content that can replace the bad content.
When you think about the future of where we are with this kind of content and our discourse more generally online, are you hopeful? Are you where are you at?
Not hopeful? I think that these bad actors are getting better and better at what they do, and I see, I see, I see people like you and me who are you know, doing the work to point it out and talk about it. But I think that there needs to be more people like us, especially men like me, who are willing to call it out. I think that I think it would be great if there were more, you know, people in the queer community, people that are
men that are willing to you know, speak up. I feel like I'm not seeing it if I'm being honest, and that that makes me sad.
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech. I just want to say hi, you can we just said hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts with today's vote at tengoiti dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Tod. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tarry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.