Louis Theroux Goes Inside the Manosphere. It’s Worse Than You Think.

21:12Whether that's true or not, who knows, but he definitely has his advocates and his supporters close to the centers of power. And in fact, Michel Goldberg at the New York Times has written one or two pieces about that. Like, yes, mainly his whole life and identity seems an evocation of a kind of 14-year-old's idea of what masculinity would be like, right? Multiple girls, fast cars, throwing money around, cigars, big muscles. But he also seems to like he's there's some relationship with Nigel Farage, the British right wing political leader. And as much as, you know, you don't want to be alarmist.

21:53And yes, it's true. He's kind of selling crappy products to teenagers, but he also has a degree of influence in surprising places over the country. I think Don Trump Jr. has posted pictures with him as well. So what we're trying to show is how at the bottom you've got this sort of, you would think maybe laughable guys larping this masculinity, but actually there's this sort of trickle up in the culture of that dragging the political establishment in a certain direction.

22:26Kara Swisher:Absolutely, because Trump did an effective job appealing to them in the last election in this group by doing that, by doing those first the shows and then sort of nodding to it, just the way he nodded to QAnon, like nodding to it shows that you're aware of it. Who would be at the top of this? Because a lot of the people interviewed are at varying levels. It's sort of a stack ranked situation. And you focused in on some who people might not know about, like the Tates or a Theo Vaughn or a Joe Rogan. yeah well i mean i'd separate out theo von and joe rogan they're not in the in they're not in the ambit of what we were looking at like the ones we were looking at the apex figure of that other than andrew tate and there's a whole other you know i i had i corresponded with tate by direct message on x for the through the whole course of making the film and with tristan as well attempting to get them to go on the documentary first thing was like well i'll do it but you have to pay me.

23:21And I was like, dude, you're always going on about how you're worth a hundred millions and millions. Why would you even need us to pay you? And he's like, well, you need me and I don't need you. And there was this tango going on. And in the end, it sort of fizzled out.

23:38Kara Swisher:I had an exchange like that with Dan Bongino once. Yeah. Interesting. He'd be Manosphere. He's much bigger. He's bigger. So I kept saying, yes, you're much bigger. You're tumescent. You're amazing. So anyway. Well, the tumescent is... Andrew Tate literally sent me, towards the end of the dance, he sent me a screen grab of a Google Trends search that he'd done, in which he'd compared his and my trajectories. And I was like, there was one line that was red, and it was all the way down on the bottom. There was one that was blue that was sort of halfway up the mast. And he goes like, you're red, I'm blue.

24:13But the funny thing was, at the end, his kind of tapered down and then mine I just had a show go out so for the last tiny bit mine above his and I was like dude and I so I screen grabbed it and put a line around and said dude by your own picture I'm actually more relevant than you are which was very petty

24:31Kara Swisher:but it felt like an own I endorsed that 100 percent um and can I say one other thing is like well and then the film film was a success and then actually he got back in touch and said is is it too late to be in the documentary? And I was like, you know, that ship has sailed. So that was funny. You know what you go? Wait by the phone, Andy. Wait by the phone. Call him Andy, by the way. Diminishing is always excellent. Andy. Hey, Andy. Wait by the phone. Every episode, we get a question from an outside expert. You have two today. Here's the first. I'm Jack Thorne, writer of Adolescence and Lord of the Flies.

25:04and my question is how aware has Louis been of the response to his show from the Manosphere itself and I say this because obviously our show had quite an interesting response from them and I just wondered how he's navigating that response and whether he feels like he wants to acknowledge what they're talking about or whether he's happy that he said his piece already and that's all he's going to do um thank you very much huge fan louis all right cheers bye bye bye bye bye bye yeah great to hear from jack thorne the first thing is to say is obviously in the film we incorporate responses one of the things we tried to do was have a meta layer in which uh the the influences as we go along react to the experience of being with me on their channels.

25:58And then since then, there's been more, it's been varied. Myron in particular, Myron Gaines, whose girlfriend Angie was not signed up to the one-way monogamy and has since left him, I think he felt upset by that, which would be understandable. And I think he felt annoyed by, he really didn't want us to include the encounter with Angie in the film and put pressure on us to not include it he has since released um I don't say covert because I think I knew he was doing it but he recorded everything that we taped together and he's put that all online um so I think he feels like I'm a snake I'm a sellout I'm a pawn quote unquote of the Jews like that would be his take and obviously they see me as yeah an establishment stooge paid by Netflix to maintain a kind of centrist or, you know, I don't know, like you saw some kind of whatever, a matrix type agenda.

26:55And then with the other, Sneeko, who is sort of the biggest one that we feature in, you know, in terms of, I actually spend time with him, real name, Nicholas de Balanthasi. And Sneeko and Justin Waller have both sent me quite nice messages. And in terms of how the manosphere metabolizes the actual, if you zoom out and say like, well, how is the broader culture? I think a lot of them would say, okay, why is he not – I've had quite a bit from the right saying, why is he not focusing on Muslim misogyny? That's quite a big thing. And that's the sort of, I guess, almost Elon-type framing would be, I'm following a woke agenda by focusing on right-wing manosphere, but why am I not looking at misogyny in kind of non-white communities or multi-cult, you know, largely Muslim communities, I think.

27:45That's how they would react.

27:50Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

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30:36Kara Swisher:so let's talk about some of the tech and social media incentives that have helped create and sustain including elon's platform manager influencers frame some of their content around self-improvement you said entrepreneurship fitness that seems to be the three big buckets they also explicitly like to trash women they're misogynistic often anti-semitic and success with women dating coaching secrets to controlling women yeah i love women i and they always say as they're saying misogynistic things, they say they love women. They're often anti-Semitic. I often say... The other one is, just to jump in, Cara, is like, I love women.

31:11I want women traditional. I just want women to be traditional. They need to bake and stay at home and tidy the house. Meanwhile, they are literally promoting, many of them, OnlyFans content in which you subscribe to sexual content. So there's a lot of contradictions built into the so-called conservative family values.

31:32Kara Swisher:Right. Well, like with H.S. Tiki-Taki, you noted that, you'd say it, I'd never let my daughters do that, H.S. Tiki-Taki, or I'd never let my son be gay, which was interesting, which to me is gay panic always. So I often say that enragement equals engagement. But talk about why this content, this sort of hateful content or angry or donkey content does so well with adolescents and boys on social media and streaming platforms. Why does it work? because it seems so obviously ridiculous. And at the same time, it works, as you said, very effectively. It works because we're human, right? And it isn't just kids.

32:08You think about analogies with pro wrestling or even gangster rap feuds or just ancient Greek myths, the conflict that plays out. You know, the internet influencer culture, you take out the manosphere, just look at influencers and YouTubers generally. A lot of it was built around the idea of beefs and feuds and people just enjoy the soap opera of the internet playing out. And then, you know, I sometimes talk about how, using the metaphor of pornography, like, in a way, everything has become porn. Like, even if they're not adult content, like, there's emotional pornography of, like, puppies dying or there's kind of pornography of violence, of seeing fights breaking out in 7-Elevens captured on security camera because everyone's looking for that 10 to 20 second hit of something on the infinite scroll of their social media feed.

33:02You know, this is the key to the whole thing is, and perhaps the one element we didn't go into in as much depth as I maybe, you know, would have liked to have done, but it's the technological substrate. You know, it's the fact that a lot of these streamers are creatures of the platforms that they exist on. And they are, in a sense, they're guinea pigs, in a tech experiment on a hamster wheel of audience engagement.

33:29Kara Swisher:In the doc, you refer to incentives created by these platforms as an algorithmic prison or the hamster wheel of content creation, which incentivizes. Now, this isn't just in this manosphere, it's everywhere. So what responsibility did the platforms have for feeding the extreme hateful content to young, impressionable teens? I mean, I've been going on about this for decades. Well, this is the heart of the whole thing, right? I mean, truthfully, books could be written and I wish I had a silver bullet like I was listening recently in fact a couple of days ago to Neil Mohan like the head of YouTube being interviewed on New York Times the interview and and they I don't know if you did you listen to that I did he won't do one with me I know him very well yeah he he did you hear like at the end they go I did what about these algorithms and he goes like well algorithms you know he sort of says it's just a mirror like algorithms are just a way of giving audiences what they want.

34:23Kara Swisher:So what is the problem with algorithms? I was really surprised because he seems like a smart guy and that just seems to me a completely indefensible position, right? Mark Zuckerberg does that all the time. But truthfully, you're not looking in a mirror, you're looking in a funhouse mirror, right? And actually, we're merciless against the ways in which these algorithms and social media platforms have been optimized. And, you know, children are one thing, they're the most vulnerable, but we're not all so mature that we're immune to the enticements and the blandishments of social media. So that's a long avoidant answer because I'm not really sure.

35:08I just know that I look at Instagram a lot and I use it. I post on it. I promote things on it. And then half the time I'm looking at it, I feel afterwards a bit sick with myself.

35:21Kara Swisher:Well, it's designed – it's a casino. It's addictive. It's airless. It's meant to keep you there. There's all kinds of tricks going on. And they – pretending they're reflective. I've been listening to this nonsense for years. But finally, the jig is kind of up. In the landmark ruling last week, a jury in Los Angeles found that Meta and YouTube had harmed a young user by making their social platforms addictive. Earlier in the week, a New Mexico jury found Meta liable for violating state law by failing to safeguard users from child predators. And there's a growing number of countries banning social media for children under 16 and a growing number of lawsuits all over the place on all these issues.

35:56Kara Swisher:Talk a little bit about what's happening here, because I do think I have long said people are sick of this shit. And even if our legislators are speaking of dickless, dickless about fixing anything. So there are these bans to potentially curb teen use. Would that curb the influence of the manosphere or would it seem cooler? And do you have any thoughts on these cases that are happening? Because I think they're quite indicative of, you know, people are calling it the cigarette moment. I think it's even more profound than that. But talk a little bit about this. Yeah, I think I haven't followed the cases in California as closely as I should.

36:33I do think that there needs to be more accountability. I think, you know, the tech guys have been hiding behind free speech arguments that are fallacious because actually we're not talking about free speech. we're talking about amplification and kind of weaponization of software and enticements. And I think it's not sustained. I mean, the only thing that gives me hope really is the fact that it isn't sustainable. It really can't go on the way it is. And I don't worry too much about whether that makes it seem taboo or cool. I understand that there's been mistakes made in terms of whether it's the Hunter Biden laptop or the lab leak hypothesis.

37:20There's been times when the attempt to curate what's acceptable has got it wrong. But we're in a world where it's not even that anything goes. It's that anything is amplified and more or less injected into the devices of kids, of all of us. I mean, I think it's going to have to be legislation, but I appreciate that may have unforeseen consequences of its own.

37:49Kara Swisher:Well, it works around the globe, but of course it does. But being a successful streaming influencer requires constant engagement. It's exhausting. It is a hamster wheel. You observed HS was live streaming seven hours a day and getting paid around 300 pounds an hour. In many ways, the economics of streaming are actually quite different than social media, although both obviously rely on capturing attention. Talk about the streaming incentive structures, because someone was always around while you were filming. And at one point, you're like, look at me. We're not streaming right now, right? You had to pull him away from his streaming addiction himself, because that was really an interesting exchange.

38:28Yeah, so in a way, we straddled two generations in the film. the older sort of Andrew Tate, Justin Waller generation are podcasters slash YouTubers. Now they're increasingly on Rumble, which is obviously a less curated, less moderated version of YouTube, but they'll do long form interviews or broadcasts on either YouTube or Rumble. Those will get clipped up and go on social media. Likewise, the podcast interviews. Then the younger guys like hs ticky tocky ed matthews is another one more recently clavicular although he's not strictly speaking manosphere he's look he's a looks maxer but he's using the same platforms the main one is kick an australian owned company i don't know if you do you know much about kick it's owned by stake the gambling company i do right so i do know that it's anyone can get on it like it's a lot of them have migrated from twitch which is the amazon owned live streaming platform.

39:28And on Kik, it seems like you can basically, I mean, I have it on my phone, you can at any time of the night or day, someone will be on there streaming live, probably wandering around outside nightclubs in Miami or Marbella, doing the most inane chit chat, you know, oh, where's Clavicula? Oh, let's hook up, let's link up later. But they'll have four, five, 6 ,000 people watching at any one time. so there's an incentive for them to keep people keep people watching and they and not only that because you have you have live feedback on how many are watching and comments groups or audience you know who what did you like in the show yet you have as you say comments as well and so there's this sort of sense of well we need to what else do we have to do you know i've joked that you know that dystopian vision that we had of a kind of running man that old schwarzenegger movie or even are Hunger Games, but we're in a world where there's thousands of self-imposed running men.

40:30That's a very good analogy. Yeah. Yeah, we're captive to our audiences in which we're creating our own Hunger Games of self-immiseration or masochistic kind of projects of fighting, trying to pick up girls, doing weird, you know, stunts, challenges, eating disgusting things in order to make money.

40:51Kara Swisher:Getting a blowjob from a girl in the club, the one that HS was showing you the blowjob. Yes, I don't think he live streamed that one, but I wouldn't say it was out of the question. And so, yeah, you're rewarded for toxicity. And I think more than the sort of sexist sort of disparagement of women, there's something deeper, which is a kind of nihilistic need to captivate audiences at any cost to do anything. Or to be looked at, which is an age old thing, by the way, FYI.

41:28Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

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42:38Kara Swisher:For the last 10 years, everything in American politics has basically revolved around one man. And as a political journalist who came of age during Donald Trump's rise in 2016, I've had a front row seat. I am officially running for president of the United States. It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items.

43:22Kara Swisher:It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far it doesn't among like people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump. But like for the first time, you see on a major issue, open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon and welcome to America Actually.

43:44Kara Swisher:One of the things that was really also interesting in this documentary was Manosphere influencers, these ideas that they're spreading. One was that men are born without value. And as two Tate fans put it, whereas women's value comes from beauty. They also create the perception that men don't have opportunities because of all these external forces that they're slaves and et cetera, keeping them down. This victim mentality goes right up to Elon Musk, by the way. And you show these external forces are often inevitably Jewish, but they're always holding them down. There's always a reason they have to break free in their version of heroic.

44:21Kara Swisher:Talk about that, because that's a really important. The victimization and the breaking free is a critical part of the narrative for these guys. Well, I think part of it I came to see as a symptom of them inhabiting an Instagram culture in which women do have more value, right? Like, in other words, if you're very attractive and you can put up a bikini shot on your social media and you'll get a million followers, okay, that's one realm in which maybe women have an advantage. But it's a very limited data set. You know, truthfully, like afterwards, I remember thinking like, you know, was Marie Curie like able to become a Nobel Prize winning scientist because she was so hot?

45:10And she was like, you know what I mean? She was born with so much value. You know, like it's the weirdness of the way in which they measure what success looks like. But everything is within the lens of a very circumscribed kind of Miami influencer culture. And truthfully, as a father of boys, I know all too well the ways in which boys are still inheritors of a kind of value. In other words, my kids grew up watching soccer, football, listening to gangster rap, watching comedians, three realms in which actually not only do men still enjoy a leg up, I would argue, an advantage, but in which traditional values, homophobic values, like where are the gay footballers, are still very much enshrined.

46:06So, you know, if you look at everything as though it's a kind of Instagram feed, there's some logic, I guess, but it's such a strange way of seeing the world.

46:16Kara Swisher:Toward the end of the film, you say that the manosphere influencers are products of a culture with, quote, narrowing opportunities where the old entitlements of manhood have been challenged. Obviously, recent data shows that men are reporting higher rates of loneliness and isolation. um would that content be popular if young men felt they were thriving economically or personally because they talk about the idea you can't get a house you can't get a woman you can't you know there's a lot of what you can't have in it if things were better for them would this thing work uh i mean it wouldn't hurt like and speaking personally i'm not a fan of the casual disparagement of men.

46:57Like the idea like... Neither am I. The problem is like, oh, men and men are all assholes and... I hate it.

47:04Kara Swisher:I have three sons. I hate it. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of that. And I think, you know, men do struggle. I mean, it's also been documented how men struggle post-divorce, right? You know, one has to be wary of generalizing about gender, but I think there's real truth in the idea that men struggle with the social aspect of life, like making social arrangements, going out and seeing friends, being connected, catching up with people. Like, you know, the cliche, there's some truth in this cliche. Like we want to go into the garage and reorganize our collection of screws and bolts, you know what I mean?

47:38And put them in little jars and actually not necessarily feed our souls in the way that we need to. So I'm all in favor of the caretaking of men. And there's more that could be said of that than we put in the documentary. In a way, like, that's a wider thing that we need to deal with. Like, that absolutely should be a priority for the culture, you know, but at the same time, it's no excuse for, obviously, for what they're saying.

48:04Kara Swisher:But they're filling in a gap. They're saying, here's the answer to that. Fill it up with cigars and pussy and cars and this and that. Although, I do notice a shift. I was in New York yesterday, and across the street was a really ridiculously tricked out Cybertruck. And there were a group of teen boys right in front of me. And I thought, oh, God, they like this thing. They were relentlessly mocking it in the funniest way and enjoying themselves that I was like, oh, we'll be okay. I think that's, I agree with that. I think, and I'm obstructed with my kids as well. They can see how ridiculous. They got the joke.

48:40Yeah, they find it funny as well. I think that's the other thing is, I mean, it sounds really cheese pairing, but you do have to, you know, that engagement may not always be approval, right? Right. People are in on the joke sometimes. And, you know, sometimes it's kind of funny. And actually, people go viral because they're ridiculous. And that isn't necessarily a sign of the end times. You know, it might just be that we've always enjoyed, like, some part of, it's not, you know, either it's a guilty pleasure, or it's just the idea that people are being absurd. They're ludicrous. You know, they're performing masculinity in a way that's laughable.

49:22Kara Swisher:The muscle thing is really interesting. One of my sons is a big workout person. He loves showing himself off, for sure, because he looks great. But one of the things is the performative musculature stuff is really very preening. One of the things you did bring out in the movie was how preening they are, right, in terms of showing off themselves in shirts, making sure you see their legs. It was really something they might accuse a woman of doing, right? And so you captured it without saying. I've been introduced to the term homosocial. Oh, okay. All right. I don't know that one. There's so many.

49:56Which I think it suggests is like this. There's almost a kind of a slightly gay affect to aspects of the self-presentation. It is. It is. You're with another guy. You're like, wow, bro, nice abs, man. Wow, your abs are incredible. What have you done to your skin? You know, this sort of level of grooming that is perhaps doesn't jive with the masculinity that involves going down the mine in the old days, right?

50:19Kara Swisher:The people you interviewed were the most vain people I've seen in a while. But brings us to the second expert question. Let's listen. Hey, Governor Gretchen Whitmer here. The big question I would ask Louis is what policies should elected officials and officeholders be thinking about to make the American dream more attainable for young men? You know, the number one issue that I hear from young men is it's really about getting ahead and costs and the economy. Here in Michigan, we're trying to tackle Well, this head on, you know, we've worked hard to get more men into home ownership. We're marketing our tuition-free college directly to men.

50:56But there's more work that I think can be done at the federal and state levels. So across the country, we know grocery prices are still high, gas prices. Even fewer men are buying houses than ever before. And the last thing I think any of us wants is a generation of young men who are falling behind,

51:15Kara Swisher:their fathers and their grandfathers. So that's really the crux of my question. What can people like me or policymakers do to help young men really achieve the American dream that they want and make it more attainable and feel tangible? I'll be listening. Thanks, Louis. And thanks, Kara. And go, Michigan. Go, Blue. My Spartans are out, so I'm all in for U of M. Oh, wow. That's a big question. Okay, Louis, solve the problem from a regulatory point of view, please. I've lived in the States. Like, my dad is American. I have a lot of love for America. I got my first job in TV from Michael Moore, a proud Michigander, whose film, Roger and Me, obviously set in Flint, Michigan.

52:07Important. Charts the decline of American manufacturing of cars in his hometown, which is a long preamble but a way of saying uh you know are those jobs coming back uh these are issues that are so seismic that um that they're obviously not going to be addressed by social media like i know that i have a kind of european well upbringing and to some extent sensibility like in living in america i've always been struck by how expensive it is and that you You pay for health insurance and it's just backbreaking the amount of, you know, you pay whatever it is, a couple of thousand a month for your family and then you get something done and then you still have to pay for it.

52:50Like, I just, I think life is so hard. Like, I found life so prohibitively difficult in terms of living in America. So I relate to all of that. I don't really have an answer, though. I don't really have like this is not going to be solved by tightening up the rules on kick and rumble. Do you know what I mean?

53:10Kara Swisher:Right. Right. No, it's something else. It's something else because you're right. It's something huge. And it's something that Trump promised to fix, by the way. And I think perhaps has not distracted by something else. Other than many other things. Let's talk about where the manosphere leaves us politically. It's been credited with reelecting Trump. He spent a disproportionate amount of his time in the final weeks of the campaign on podcasts with Manosphere bros like Theo Vaughn, Andrew Schultz, Joe Rogan and others. My Pivot co-host Scott Galloway is shown in a clip in a doc saying this was a testosterone and Manosphere election.

53:45Kara Swisher:Trump understood something about young men who like this content that Democrats didn't. But now there's evidence that his appeal among young men has dropped rather significantly. Reuters, Ipsos polling in February found that some 33 percent of men ages 18 to 29 approved of his performance down from 43. Sneeko, one of the influencers you follow, has talked about being a huge Trump fan, but has turned on him, as it turns out. Talk about where this is going, because Trump was trying to take advantage of this. But are these men reachable or are they just staying home and not vote? Where do you see the political winds going?

54:18Kara Swisher:because there's a sense that maybe it's available, but at the same time, I'm not sure that the Democrats have what it takes. There was a debate over whether Democrats needed a Joe Rogan for the left, which I thought was at the time ridiculous, and I still think it is. Would that even be possible? You know, I have a specific take on this. The first thing to say is, again, I've been on Joe Rogan a couple of times. I've been on Theo Vaughn. I actually like those guys and I don't see them as predictably right wing. Famously, Rogan pulled for Trump, but he also previously pulled for Bernie Sanders.

54:55And he comes out more, historically, he was more libertarian and kind of conspiracy. His things were sort of conspiracy theories, the JFK assassination. Now we're being visited by UFOs, psychedelics. I think this is a good place to end up in this conversation because it gives me a chance to reflect on some positive parts of the culture. truthfully, I know there's a lot of debate around why Carmela didn't go on Joe Rogan. I think those long-form podcasts are very exposing. And that can be a way to connect with people, but it's high risk. And if you haven't got the chops to come across as authentic, to seem real, to be reasonable, to be funny and clubbable and amusing and all the rest of it, then it will be displayed.

55:40And also on a level of entertainment, I'm a fan of that sort of sense of engagement that you get from getting to know someone, you know, a podcast host or their guests. All of these, I think you can see as positives. I think what happened was, I mean, I don't need, you don't need me to tell you this, like Trump seemed, you know, there was a part of the Trump story that felt like it made sense. Tighten up borders. You could, if that went along with improving the safety net, like social provisions, improving industrial, the industrial base, that all kind of makes sense. Like, that's a good story.

56:16But the point where it involved a war with Iran for nebulous reasons or reasons that a lot of people didn't buy into, suddenly you've lost control of the narrative. And that, I mean, this is a tipping point in the Trump presidency. It feels like the guy who was Teflon on everything, I could go down Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, my base would still love it. Actually declaring war and certainly, you know, as he may do, sending in ground troops possibly. I don't think that was baked in. You know, that wasn't priced in to the Trump presidency.

56:48Kara Swisher:No, same thing with the Epstein files. I'm going to expose them all. Same with the Epstein files. Then he kind of did Venezuela, and then it was like, okay, we've forgotten about Epstein for a bit. And then here we are now with Iran. So where do we go next? The part of it that, so I like the authenticity of the new landscape. There's no rolling that back. Like the BBC's under siege, American networks are under siege. There seems to be, there's no sign of that changing. Like we are increasingly in a kind of sub stack, OnlyFans, Patreon culture of everyone is their own multimedia node putting out content where Mr.

57:28Beast is bigger than NBC, right? That's not going, that's the new normal. but the conspiracy theories worry me and the ways in which because they always seem to lead to anti-semitism and you know they're both poisonous but also by the way factually completely wrong you know in a sense it's a matter of preference like okay you want to have 10 girlfriends and and you want to uh but they can't have any like that that's kind of horrific but that's just an expression of a personal desire but if you say like there's a room full of people running things from Tel Aviv or that actually the world's flat and we never went to the moon.

58:05These are provably false assertions that millions of people are now taking seriously. And that's the part I find most alarming.

58:13Kara Swisher:Well, that's the part where social media is a plate. I had a very famous interview with Mark Zuckerberg where we were talking about Alex Jones and he wanted to shift to Holocaust deniers. And I said, okay, I happen to, that happened to be my minor in college, but okay, let's do it. And he, of course, famously didn't finish college. And he started to make the idea that, you know, Holocaust deniers don't mean to lie. And I said, actually, that's the job description of a Holocaust denier, but fine, tell me about it. And he spent a lot of time saying, I have to let them speak. And then he, of course, did the, as a Jew, I must really let them speak because I believe in frees.

58:50Kara Swisher:He went into the First Amendment, which I believe he's never read. And one of the problems was, is that all of it does fit together rather well on these platforms. It works really well. Anti-Semitism works really well as it gets dispersed because it's like mold in some, you know, it's never ending at the same time. But is there a way to shift it back to make those, or can you never compete with anti-Semitism, misogyny, porn, violence, conspiracy theories? Is there any competition that you see in a manosphere situation to reach men? Because this is not only a problem of men, but in this case, quite a bit, quite a bit of it is baked in, as you said.

59:31I sometimes say that extremist content, it's a bit like the COVID virus. The vaccine was based on having tiny exposure to vaccines in general. You take a tiny bit of the bacillus or whatever it is, and then you develop an immune system. So tiny amounts of extreme content, I think it's not the worst thing to be exposed to them. I think it creates a healthy kind of informational immune system. But by the same token, massive viral loads of disinformation are extremely toxic. And to my mind, it comes down to, I mean, this sounds really basic, but policing the social media platforms in such a way as to limit the exposure.

1:00:18Like, it doesn't seem a lot to ask that you shouldn't be sent down, you know, a YouTube rabbit hole, right? And again, like, I don't know what the programming for that looks like, or even the legislation, but I do know that just from my own social media feed, I can see how it's, it kind of tugs you and finesses you into these sort of exposure to the same content over and over. and it's oppressive. Yeah, it affects you.

1:00:46Kara Swisher:It's like Fox News. It affects you. It's like Fox News for older people. Yeah, Fox News does it effectively with older people. And it distorts your sense of reality and it distorts your sense of the world. You can feel it. It feels ugly and dark. Yeah, absolutely. So on the last question, the manosphere began as an online subculture and continues to evolve. Sneeko defined the manosphere in your documentary as a current state as guys, quote, trying to make a buck, selling ideologies. Presumably that will change. So I'd love to know, since you finished this, where do you think the next iteration, will people get tired of this nonsense and move on?

1:01:22Kara Swisher:What do you imagine? Because ultimately, we're all the Truman Show. It's like, what's on next, essentially? But where do you see the evolution after having done this of the Manosphere in particular? Well, the next iteration has already taken place in terms of the new avatar for that streaming culture is this guy. I think I mentioned him, Clavicula, who's, he was interviewed in the New York Times and he's everywhere at the moment for being extremely good looking according to certain specific metrics. And as I said, he's on kick. So he's kind of got the culture by the balls, if I may, at the moment.

1:02:01Like where that goes next, I'd be rash to predict. I do think that, you know, I listened to enough tech podcasts to know that uh ai is is the next source is the coming wave of how we interact with technology and what that looks like uh who you know is anyone's guess i should ask you what you

1:02:25Kara Swisher:think what do you think i think ai is not going to be as powerful i think people human beings don't like it ultimately you have a feeling one of the early interviews i did at mit was people that were going to help care for people or give them diagnostics. And the issue they all had was the eyes. They shouldn't have eyes at all. People reacted. They were fine with a lot of it, but some of it was faceless. But when you put eyes in, humans react badly. And I think a lot of the AI stuff feels wrong, right? And you don't know why. And it's going to get better. Do you mean the content online? There may be a whole culture of AI-generated content, but it's very, it feels like a Twinkie.

1:03:06Kara Swisher:It tastes like a Twinkie. And I don't know if they can ever make it taste like an apple, if that makes sense. I don't know if they can. They might be able to. And it will have fans. I think people are moving faster towards the genuine versus the fake and the performative. I have a feeling. I know that with my kids. I can see it. You can see it in the culture. People are craving community and people and things like that. I believe that. I go back and forth, though. You know, there's certain trends that we've seen, like screens are getting smaller. The smaller the screen, the healthier it's the market for.

1:03:44Obviously, people like something real. They like something that feels like it's based in, like it's handmade. But then I was also thinking about, but is that going to be like the farmer's market of culture where actually most people still want the low prices that you get in the supermarket? You're still going to want that.

1:04:02Kara Swisher:I don't think that changes. I don't think that changes over time. You know, you buy a few expensive apples and sausages, but most of your shopping you're going to do at the mega market. But ultimately, I do think people, there's these cases in California, it takes 30 years for people to get angry at cigarettes or drunk driving or whatever. We're close to the 30-year mark of this stuff. And as it gets there, people are like putting down their phones. They don't want to interact with them. They know it's hurting them. You mentioned it. I feel bad. And I think people intuitively as humans understand that.

1:04:39Kara Swisher:I think the issue is how good does AI get that it will trick you, right? And then we'll be, you know, creatures of that. I just feel like I have a more hopeful feeling lately. I think people get tired of the show. I'll buy that. And I think you're right. And I think live performance is healthy. I think the idea of seeing people in the real world, live shows, people congregating in a physical space almost has a novelty factor now. And I see more of that sort of sense of like, I was actually there, really meaning something. And then the guys you interviewed look fucking ridiculous in person. They do look ridiculous in person, right?

1:05:20Kara Swisher:Ultimately, I think there'll still be always be people like that. There's never not been a version of that, of what you depicted. In any case, it was a wonderful documentary. I thought you handled it really well. And your interview style is spectacular. I learned a lot. And I have to say, I really, I love all your documentaries, but this one was really great. Appreciate it.

1:05:47Kara Swisher:Today's show was produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Michelle Alloy, Catherine Millsop, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Catherine Barner. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rituan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you are secure in your masculinity. If not, we have a subscription on Telegram to sell you. Actually, don't do it. None of my kids better do it. Louie, Alex, go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

1:06:26Kara Swisher:We'll be back on Monday with more.