Tim Squirrell - Incels, Redpill, and the Manosphere

This week, researcher Tim Squirrel joins Lola & Meagan to break down the manosphere: incels, redpill, MGTOW, and the differences between some of the misogynistic subcultures in the online world of men. They discuss how isolation can leave boys vulnerable to harmful internet communities, and how the algorithm can radicalize young people looking for identity.

From Andrew Tate to Jordan Peterson, Tim shares why and how hyper-masculine spaces thrive, touting themselves as self-help programs or advocating for withdrawing from society altogether. They chat about why these communities can also be bad for the people inside them, whether Lola has accidentally dated incels, and what to do if someone you know has fallen down the rabbit hole.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Trust me. Do you trust me? Right?

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Ever lead you a story?

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Trust?

Speaker 3 (00:06):
This is the truth, the only truth.

Speaker 4 (00:09):
If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't
welcome to trust me. The podcast about cults, extreme belief
and manipulation from two squirrels. I've actually experienced it. I'm
Lola Plong and I'm Megan Elizabeth, and today our guest
is researcher Tim's squirrel. We're going to talk to him
about in cells and man stuff. He is going to

(00:31):
tell us about the taxonomy of the manosphere, the differences
between in cells and red pill, and lots more terms.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I didn't know how.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
Some of these subcultures promote improving yourself and others promote
rotting and giving up, but all promote misogyny and harmful,
often dangerous ideas.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
We'll discuss why these cultures are also bad for the
people and them, often leading to risky behavior and get
rich quick schemes, and what to do if someone you
know is stuck in the manosphere.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Oh, bad place to be stuck.

Speaker 4 (01:00):
Place to be stuck. Tim is so funny. I feel
like we were we loved him. Yeah, so this is
a very fun funny episode. Despite that some of the
stuff we're talking about obviously can lead to some dark.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Places, and I think it has to be noted.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
I mean, it must be said that on the way
to this interview, I had a squirrel. I'm really fucked
up over it. Okay, I know for his name to
be Tim Squirrel. I thought it was weird. No, it
was weird. Okay, before we go into the manisphere with Tim. Oh, Megan,
what's your cultiest thing this week?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Will Kim Kardashian is speaking out about having Stockholm syndrome
with Kanye West, which is a term that we hear
a lot in the cult world. It's when you get
kind of attached to your abuser, right or your system
of abuse. So a lot of people in cults kind
of start to love their cults or their cult leader

(01:52):
or their abusive partner or whatever. So there's been a
lot of discourse about Stockholm syndrome, and I'll a lot
of the comments are.

Speaker 4 (02:01):
Like, that's not real. Oh please, oh puh oh please.
And it was this in the Call Her Daddy episode. Yeah,
I have not listened to it yet. I heard that
it was very interesting because yeah, you look at her
being with someone like Kanye, and at least for me,
I was like, but they're there are four children, they
had four children, and of course your brain wants to
go to why why would you stay for that? But

(02:21):
that's what happens. Your brain like fuses to a person
and it becomes very, very difficult to leave. Yeah, yeah,
I can't wait to listen to that.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, you know, she's a complex presence that I haven't
but yeah, no one deserves that, so uh yeah, I
just it's just bring bring in another cult tournam into
the zeitgeist. So thought i'd bring it up here. Yeah,
and I love it. Thanks, You're welcome.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
What about you? What's the cultiest thing of your week?

Speaker 4 (02:52):
There is a news story about a group, a religious
group of course in southern California actually called His Way
spirit Led Assemblies, and this sounds like there is a
lot that's about to be uncovered. So basically it's run
by a couple. The man is the priest and the

(03:12):
woman is the prophetess, Daryl Martin and Kat Martin. So
there was a child that died fifteen years ago, four
year old, whose custody had been handed over to this couple,
and nothing came of it. At the time because there
just wasn't enough evidence that they had actually done anything.

(03:32):
But a man went missing in Claremont in twenty nineteen
who was also associated with this group, and another man
went missing in twenty twenty three who was also associated
with this group. So what is interesting about it is
that one of them, the one who went missing in
twenty twenty three, had just left a church and then

(03:55):
he went missing. And so now there are three. There's like,
there's a mysterious and two mysterious disappearances associate with this group,
which people have said is definitely a high control group.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
These are allegations that are being made.

Speaker 4 (04:08):
We don't know that much about what's been going on
in there, but these are very like concrete allegations that
have been made. So it will be very interesting to
see what happens with this case and what exactly happened
to those missing men.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
That's sad, I know, I know, my god.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
And right here in southern California, another California.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
Cult, Oh my goodness.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
The couple has been arrested and apparently a ton of
weapons have been recovered there, illegal weapons like converted fully
automatic rifles, ghost guns without serial numbers.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Sought off rifles.

Speaker 4 (04:39):
This was like a big, big gun group and they
are looking for any members or former members to come
talk to them.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Do you know what the overarching belief of this group was.

Speaker 4 (04:49):
I think it seems like it's just a religious group
where they're where Daryl is king. Well yeah, and Shelley
is prophetess.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Yeah cool and the opposite of cool, oh yeah, not cool.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
So anyway, we'll keep y'all updated. If we learn more
about that, we should go investigate it. Yeah, we're professionals.
I did want to do that. I know we will,
we will, we will, But for now, I meant for
when I was for a living. I wanted to do
that for a living, when I was younger.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
We will not know, we will, we will. We're going
to break a case. But for now, let's talk to
Tim Squirrels. Let's do it.

Speaker 4 (05:41):
Welcome Tim Squirrel to trust me. Thank you for joining.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Us, Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
You are here with us today because I found some
of your work when googling in cells, as I tend
to do sometimes. You know, it's something we all have
to do. Can you talk to us a little bit
about your academic background and your area of work.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
So look, there comes a time in everyone's life where
you have to google in cells. I think that time
came for me slightly earlier than a lot of people,
and that's probably why I'm here. So I started out
life by professional life, I guess as an academic. I

(06:21):
was doing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh and
I was looking at how people in the online communities
come to trust each other and form relationships of authority
and expertise. And when I started that in about twenty fifteen,
no one gave a shit because they thought that the
Internet didn't really matter. It was like an esoteric kind

(06:43):
of thing that this guy was doing as a kind
of self indulgent research project. And then people really rapidly
realized that actually did matterical a lot. I was looking
at Reddit and I got quite interested in how language spreads,
and the way that I became interested in in cells
particularly was I was looking at the spread of the

(07:05):
word cuck across Reddit, and I obviously realized that it
had really well initially started in the fetish community, but
then rapidly spread across the kind of men's rights space.
So a lot of them talking about the idea of
cooking or cuckoldry being in some way linked to feelings

(07:25):
of inferiority. There's a lot of race stuff in there.
But then I was thinking, well, what about other language
that we see in these spaces, and the language that
was increasingly common amongst the kind of extreme right I
was noticing was coming mostly from the in cell community,
or at least it was a disproportionate representation, And so

(07:47):
I started looking at the in cell guys and at
that point they were all on Reddit. This was before
the kind of Night of Long Knives when Reddit sort
of kicked all of them off, and after that I
sort of got quite absorbed in them for a little while.
It was a really good way of not doing my
PhD and doing something else. And so that's how I
became kind of fascinated within cells and how they have

(08:10):
a particular form of group identity. And I think there's
a lot to unpack there. I'm assuming you guys are
going to want to talk about them in terms of
kind of cultic or cultish sort of framing, and I
haven't seen that done too much. But the more I
thought about it, while I was listening to a couple
of you guys, older episodes, the more it made a

(08:32):
little bit of sense to me.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
Do you think there's a world in which you could
have ended up as an inseell?

Speaker 1 (08:37):
I think? Do I think there's a world in which
I could have ended up as an in cell? I
think is a question that a lot of people who
have worked in this field have asked themselves, and I
think the answer for almost everyone is both yes and no.
I think that it's kind of trite to do the

(08:58):
if only life hadn't gone the way went for me,
that maybe I would have been there, you know, there
but for the grace of God go I. But I
do think that looking back on my teenage years, there
is certainly periods of time where I was more embittered
or more feeling as though, you know, I was never
going to be attractive, going to be popular, never going

(09:19):
to be wanted. And those are the feelings that provide
the seeds in which misogynistic beliefs can grow. But they
can grow in a number of different directions, right, so
for some people you end up in the red pill
space where they go, Okay, I feel like no one
wants me the way that I'm going to deal with this,

(09:40):
and that I'm going to go to the gym, get
really ripped, and I'm going to earn a shipload of money,
and that's the thing that's going to allow me to
become popular for women, right, But then the in cell
path is different to that, to backlash to that. So
that's the black pill, the idea that not only am
I not popular now, but I'm never going to be wanted.

(10:02):
No one's ever going to want me, no woman will
ever want to fuck me. And consequently, I'm just going
to embrace this kind of nihilistic set of beliefs. And
where you go, which direction you go, is dependent on
a whole bunch of different factors, in the same way
that people with different kinds of vulnerabilities can get drawn
into different kinds of cults or different kinds of movements.

(10:24):
You know, for some people it's going to be really
new age or spiritual people, it's going to be much
more in the fascist direction.

Speaker 3 (10:29):
I mean, self help is already so.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
It's rich for culty behaviors to emerge, and in some
weird way, it's like this in cell movement is an
inverse self help group, where people are relating to it
as if it is self help.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
For sure. In fact, if you look at certain parts
of the in cell community, increasingly they're over the last
five years or so, they have become very self helpy.
So luks maxing has become really main industry, right, Yeah,
like the idea that it's everything from you know, really
basic stuff sort of the standard like go to the gym,

(11:08):
lose some weight, change your diet, get a haircut, have
a shower, through to I'm going to break my fucking
legs in order to get them lengthened and like undergo
horrifying surgery that wouldn't be out of place in the
horror movie. And so that is self help, but it's
also absurd. Yeah, so yeah, there's that part of it.

(11:33):
But I also think that what you're saying about the
being the inverse of self help is very interesting because
there are certain ways in which the in cel space
specifically is a reaction to a self help movement. It's
the idea that nothing can get better, you might as
well and their words lay down and rot, and that
that's the really common term. Going back again, this is

(11:56):
like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and they used to call
it the down and rot lifestyle or they'd say, you
hope or rope or hope rope or cope, like the
idea that you would either kill yourself or you would cope.
And specific cope has a specific, actually kind of technical meaning,

(12:17):
which is that it's the idea you're going to embrace
beliefs that will never actually make your life better, but
which you'll kind of consistently believe will. And so they
would see any kind of self help stuff as a cope.

Speaker 3 (12:30):
That is so fascinating.

Speaker 4 (12:31):
So I like, I just have this general idea of manisphere.
I know a bit about pickup artist stuff, but that's
more like pre this era of internet, more like early
two thousands.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah, yeah, you're sort of like mid two thousands nil
Strauss the game.

Speaker 4 (12:47):
Yes, I like wrote an art I've like gone on
pickup artists weekends and written about it and so but
excellent in terms of right now. Like okay, so you
say there's in Cells, which are it's more nihilistic sort
of attitude, and then there's red Pill, Like what else
is there where does.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Andrew Taite fallen all of this?

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Oh god?

Speaker 4 (13:07):
Okay and wait, sorry, just to real quick for any
listeners who don't know in Cell means involuntary celibate. It
means somebody who women do not want to have sex
with and they're mad about it.

Speaker 3 (13:18):
And there are people who just don't know that term.

Speaker 4 (13:20):
So go on.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
Yeah, sorry, I've started from a level of like a
baseline assumption about exposure to the term in cell at
this point. Yeah, and we'll see. So the classical and
I say classical as though it's like hellenistic, but I
mean classical is in about five ten years ago. Taxonomy
of the manosphere is in cells in one corner, blackpill.

(13:45):
The idea is that, like the locus of control, whether
you're able to change your own existence, your own life
is external, that is, and you cannot change it is
kind of inherent in the world. You've got men going
their own way or MiG taw in another corner, and
they are the ones who sort of say we need
to stop talking to women entirely, completely disengage from women,

(14:10):
and go sometimes monk mode. So you basically you're going
to try and disentangle your life from matriarchy.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
This is so weird.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
My date I went on two days ago used these terms,
including literally saying he is in monk mode right now.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Sorry, go on. Oh no, no, no, no, no, sorry. Continue.
I was like, wait, what.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Will there be a second date?

Speaker 3 (14:38):
Well?

Speaker 4 (14:39):
He literally was like, I'm not dating right now. I
shouldn't have even gotten on this date.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Oh well, it sounds like he's a meg Towers about
what he did say.

Speaker 4 (14:48):
He's like, very fascinated by in cell communities, and he
didn't reference meg Tao as something he's doing. I don't
am I saying you're wrong. I don't know what the
fuck it is. But he was sort of explaining it
to me.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Going towards going their own way.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
But then the fact that he literally described himself as
in monk mode is shocking.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
I mean I feel like it's it's dripped into almost
every man's unconscious.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, that is precisely what I was going to say,
is that not everyone who gets a bit obsessed within
cell communities is terrible.

Speaker 4 (15:21):
For sure, I'm obsessed within cell communities. Yeah, but you're
also terrible.

Speaker 5 (15:25):
Well that's true of self interested reason for saying that
this stuff has become deeply mainstream.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, the idea of chads and stacies, of looksmaxing, the
idea of talking about virgins in like this really specific way,
the idea of being black pilled, right, is one that
a lot more people, maybe not you know your uncle,
but a lot of folks just who are vaguely online
but aren't really immersed in the mansphere would now know about.

(15:58):
And the idea of being pilled is so so mainstream now,
and obviously that comes from the red pill. But it's
possible that your day is a meg tail. He's just
a guy who's picked up some with vocabulary.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
I think it's more likely that, but well, yeah, I
mean it just the way the algorithm works is so bizarre,
and we'll get into it, i'm sure in a bit.
But like I had a relationship with somebody who was
like I love that you go to the gem and
I love that's one of your coping mechanisms.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yay go you, and I was like thank you.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
And then he got red pilled by some sort of
like algorithm where he'd be like, I know you're going
to the gem to cheat on me?

Speaker 3 (16:41):
What? Literally? What?

Speaker 4 (16:45):
And I love to hook up with people while I'm sweating,
but it was and then like I told one of
my guy friends and he was like, yeah, I see
that content all the time, And I was like, oh
my god, make it make us up anyway.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, that's a red pill example. Corrector is that a
black pill?

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's much more red pill and
that's much more so just to I guess, round off
our taxonomy. So you've got your insults, you've got your
mag towls, you've got your pick up artists who lowly
you've talked about, and then you've got your classic red
pill like men's rights activists. Okay, so think of in
the UK, we had this group called Fathers for Justice

(17:21):
and in the mid two thousands, and they became quite
well known for being very divorced and also for doing
things like dressing up as Spider Man and climbing up
buildings in order to protest for kind of father's rights.
The idea is that custody courts are particularly unfair to men.
You know, you're real classic wow, I'm a man and
I'm oppressed sort of stuff. You know, I hate alimony,

(17:43):
my ex wife's a bitch like that kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
And did you refer to them as very divorced?

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Oh yeah yeah, extremely divorced?

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Yeah yeah, okay, wow, that is so interesting.

Speaker 4 (17:55):
I know, I mean, like I'm sure there's like there
are valid points to be made, they're about custody battles
like that.

Speaker 3 (18:02):
Then that's the problem, Yeah, that.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
All of these things have a little kernels of truth there.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah, as with all conspiracy theories, we're all cults, we're
all extreme beliefs, there's some small seed of truth around
which everything rots. Right today and this is where we're
in a slightly different space, a lot of this stuff
a has gone mainstream. I mean, there was a lot

(18:30):
of discourse after the second Trump election around the idea
that managecer influencers were in some way responsible for the
election result. I'm not going to comment on that specific claim,
but it's mainstream. And also there is a lot more
kind of agglomeration of manisphere and misogyny with grindset, hustle

(18:52):
culture spaces. Right, So it used to be that you
could just go to a sub reddite and talk about
how much he hated when men, and no one was
trying to make money out of it. You know, we've
lost we've lost sight of the true meaning of misogyny.

Speaker 2 (19:06):
It's been commercialized.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Right, exactly, exactly. No longer can you just enjoy a
bit of misogyny with your pals in a Reddit forum.
It's a sort of amateur way. It's all professionalized these days.
Joking aside, though, if you look at someone like Andrew Tate,
that's precisely the personification of this, right, Because it's not
just about inculcating beliefs that women are inferior, that they

(19:33):
are intrinsically gonna cheat on you because they're going to
the gym and they're going to end up with Chad
or Tyrone or whoever. It's also about getting money out
of you. Yes, And not only is it about getting
money out of you, but it's about making you believe
that you're going to make money in the process.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Right, So it's a pyramids. I was going to say,
it's like MLMs for men.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
mL Men's sorry, I was making a few and amens,
don't worry.

Speaker 3 (20:04):
I was like multi level marketing and Tim.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Honey, honey, MLM familiar America. We have these things we
call the MLMs and schemes. Legally, they're not.

Speaker 4 (20:31):
People like Andrew Tate are swooping in to these communities
who have an unmet want or need and basically saying
I have the answer for you, and if you give
me this money and join my fucking thing.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah that's a great summary.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Yeah, but how do they make money off of it?
How do they like? Then they're saying, then you'll start
your own little Andrew Tate group and you'll be the leader.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
It depends on Okay. So it used to be if
you and Neil Strauss you'd write the game, you'd cash
in on that. And if you were a pick up artist,
you would sell your ebooks online and then you'd sell
a course and people would come to your course and
you'd shout them in person, and you tell me they
weren't real men. But if they just followed the things
that you were telling them, when they could become real men.

(21:15):
Now it's more sophisticated, but it's also just as simple.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Right.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
So Andrew Tait was making money by getting people to
subscribe to his Hustler's University Bullshit, which then became known
as the Real World. And the idea was that if
you caught enough controversy and you made your name big
enough that loads of people would come, and loads of
them would hate you, it didn't matter because some of
them would subscribe to your scheme to get to you

(21:40):
in a circle where you would teach them the principles,
which is basically a real it's selling them an ebook
with extra steps, except that now there's a subscription and
there's the idea that you're part of an intentional community.
It's very similar to the shift from diet or like
beauty communities, where they started as like I going to

(22:00):
sell you this ebook that's going to teach you how
to like I know it was the early twenty ten,
so it's probably like completely lose your ass or like
you like become a sig zero yep. But now it's
all like, this isn't just a diet, this is a lifestyle,
and this is a community and you're joining a tribe.
Like that's where we are now with misogynists joining an

(22:24):
intentional community built of only the finest misogyny.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
So are you saying that what they're offering is like, sorry,
clarify something for me, that being controversial will bring people
to you as well, like their marketing that you too
can be controversial and make money being controversial.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
So the marketing for what you should do is slightly different.
So some of it, yes, is the idea that if
you get really really good at this, then like maybe
you could be the next strandry take, you could caught controversy,
you could have a podcast, you could create a community.
But actually a lot of it says that the best
way to make money is through what amounts to get

(23:06):
rich quick schemes. So the really popular ones are drop shipping,
foreign currency exchange, day trading, cryptocurrency only, fans management, which
is a whole like can of worms. That basically all
of these methods by which you can make loads and
loads of money and you don't need to go to school.

(23:28):
You should drop out of school, you should become an entrepreneur.
You just hustle really hard. Right, So this is where
I say it comes into collision with hustle culture and
the sort of sigma grindset bullshit, is that the idea
is that you don't need any of these fancy ast
degrees in your profession. You're in your career. Your career
is basically finding the next grift and exploiting the hell

(23:48):
out of it, and that will allow you to make
six figures, move to Dubai and drive a baghatti.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
And that's the that's the vibe ore in cells, like,
what's the thinking in that community in terms of becoming
rich and making money. If it's more of that nihilistic
like don't improve yourself thing.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
The insults have changed over the last five to ten years.
There was a kind of period where it was all
about Lukism. So the idea was that your destiny in
life was determined by your facial genetics and your hypight
and things about your looks that can't really be changed
very easily. And my view on this was always that

(24:28):
if you located the things that were problematic and preventing
you from achieving your goals in the things that were
the hardest change, then that prevented you from having to
do anything about it. Right, So it's not just that
like you are a bit overweight perhaps, and that people
might find you more attractive if you are to lose
some weight. Not trying to judge that as a true

(24:51):
or false statement, but that might be some advice that
someone would give. They say that is the very first
thing you should do, and that only after that can
you really call yoursel of an insult, because you've done
all the things that are meant to make you attractive
and you're still not there. So you're like, your wrists
are too thin, your cancel tilt is wrong, your jaw

(25:13):
is slightly too recessed.

Speaker 4 (25:16):
I've rejected so many men for their wrist size.

Speaker 1 (25:19):
Yeah, number one, that's exactly what I've come to expect
from Stacy's like you.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Oh my god, am I Stacy?

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Oh yeah, one hundred percent. You'd be Stacy on the
insul wards. I'm sure they would agree.

Speaker 4 (25:34):
And for audience members, yes, can you actually tell us
what Stacy versus a child?

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Fuck? So, Chad is the guy who's got everything going
for him. He's six foot three, he's jacked, he's ripped,
he's high status, and he's got a really big jaw.
And essentially this means that all women forever will want
to have sex with Chad, and we want to settle
down with Chad. Chad will never want to settle down

(26:01):
with any of them, because he can do better always.
The idea that in Cells have is that they call
it the Peruito principle, that eighty percent of women want
twenty percent of the men, and that those men are Chad.
To confirm, I looked for myself a while back on
the in cell boards. They think I'm a Chad light.

(26:22):
So I've got some work to do Oh.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
My god, no, you are a chad what Yeah? What's remaining?

Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah, look don't I don't know. Maybe they're nagging me,
who knows anyway, So the LOOKI is and thing was
big for a while and then you had a bunch
of them basically say no, no, it's not just looks.
It's about whether you're autistic or not, or whether you
have developmental or like neurodivergent issues that mean that you
can't attract women. And the reason for this, in part

(26:54):
is because they're patron Saint Elliott Roger, who killed a
number of people than himself in twenty fourteen, Basically his
whole thing was, yes, a little bit about how he looked,
but also about how he girls just laughed at him,
how he was, you know, the supreme gentleman, but they
didn't want him anyway. And in cells broadly tend to

(27:15):
agree that his main issue was not to do with
his looks, but was to do with his abilities socially.
So it's a big clash interesting between the lookists and
people who think that autism in particular, but your kind
of social skills in general are more important. So what
interesting day is what comes out of that is much
more of a kind of agreement with some of the

(27:36):
earlier red pill guys that actually what matters isn't just
your looks or whether you're neurotypical, but also things like status, wealth, etc.
And the idea is that if you make enough money,
if you become high enough status, you can overcome all
these things, right, like how do you account for the
existence of Danny DeVito or someone? And the idea is

(27:57):
that if you are sufficiently high status, then you can stuff.
Of course, they then go into a lot of they
extrapolate this to the most hideous things you can imagine.
So they talk about jad maxing, which is the idea
that you should move to a conservative bosom country, convert
to Islam, and have multiple wives. You should try to
go to a place which is misogynistic. They talk about

(28:20):
geomaxing or globe maxing, which is the idea that you
should move to a country where white people are seen
as more attractive or where your money will go further,
and then you should use that as a way to
exploit women into having a relationship with you. So they
start to understand power dynamics, which I think is fascinating

(28:41):
about in cells because they kind of there is a
bizarro reverse feminism about them, where in the red pill
community you've got a kind of liberal feminism in reverse. Right.
The idea is that if you personally strive hard enough,
work hard enough on yourself, on your body, on your wealth,

(29:04):
then you can succeed, right, you can overcome everything. And
the insults have a radical feminist reverse reaction to that,
which is like, no, it's all about structural conditions. It's
all about not just like are you rips high status
and pigh net worth, but also are you white? Are
you in a country which prizes whiteness? Do you have autism?

(29:28):
Or are you autistic? Those are the sort of thing
they start to talk about, and they kind of get
to intersectionality.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
That's fascinating, But.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Then they go all the way back around and go, ah, no,
the problem is that women are fundamentally genetically programmed to
fuck with you.

Speaker 5 (29:43):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
So I don't think I actually answer your question there,
but I find it interesting. So I've said it.

Speaker 4 (29:48):
No, it's super interesting. I feel like I have one
thousand more questions.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
But I'm trying me too.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
I mean, I just have one observation and it just
feels like this is a depression, and it's taken this
ugly because these men aren't allowed to be like, I'm
super depressed.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
I think that is part of it. I also think
that there are horribly high expectations for what you, as
a teenage boy, should be able to do and for
what you should be and I think that it's very
easy to become disillusioned as a result of that.

Speaker 6 (30:26):
I think that's becoming worse and worse, particularly as people
spend time on social media, where there are these projections
of perfection which you're expected to be able to attain.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Yeah, but I think that a lot of them do
recognize that they are depressed, So I don't want to
put too much weight on internal surveys of in cell boards.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yeah, but yeah, let's go there.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
Most of them do think of themselves as having a
mental health condition. A lot of them think of themselves
as having the neurodivergence of some kind. So they consider
themselves depressed, and unfortunately a lot of them do consider suicide.
And what I think is interesting is that they are
very manipulable as a group and very vulnerable. So, if

(31:14):
you'll permit me, an indulgent flashback to twenty eighteen when
I first started looking at in cell boards after they've
been kicked off of Reddit, what is now still the
biggest in cell war room began and it's gone through
a lot of different iterations. It's still run by the
same people though, and on there there were far fewer

(31:34):
rules than they were on Reddit, and it was essentially
a kind of mix of Reddit culture with four Chan
culture in that it was really fast loads of ship posting.
No one took anything seriously. People said the edges possible
stuff they could, and they had a real problem with
pedophiles coming there and recruiting in cells. And there was

(31:57):
this one particular guy who used it as a recruiting
ground for his now defunct forum. The guy's now dead.
Actually it's a really weird story. He called inser locallipse,
And on inter loc ellipse he was posting behind a
login wall, posting in decent images of children and child
sectual abuse material. And I remember someone saying at the time,

(32:22):
this is the only place, the in cell forum is
the only place where coming in and saying hey, you're
super depressed and no one will love you. Have you
thought about abusing children? Isn't a complete non starter, because
the idea is that these people are completely desperate and
there is a lot of flirtation in those spaces with

(32:45):
things which are completely societally taboo because they feel isolated,
they feel alienated from society, and they feel sometimes as
though their only option would be to do something horrible.
And also there is that kind of I'm playing up
for the cameras, I'm doing something edgy, I'm saying something edgy.

(33:05):
So it's not just earnest embracing of really awful stuff,
it's also kind of doing it for the bit. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
That brings me to the next thing I wanted to ask,
which is, like, you know, say someone I feel like
I've heard someone before be like, but Andrew Tad has
some good videos like what would you to a newbie
who's like not familiar with the manisphere? What would you
say are the dangers or harms of these communities in
addition to what you just described.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
So it's really hard not to start at the real
extreme here. Because I want to note off the bat
that the guys who run the biggest in cell forum
on the web also run another forum which I'm not
going to name, which encourages suicide and provides people with

(33:53):
information about how to kill themselves.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
And there's been numerous investigations since this forum, and a
few years ago it was credibly linked with about fifty deaths.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
Fifty. Wow.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Yeah, it's still going, it's still around. The British governments
tried to do something about it. They failed. It's very
very hard to take down a website, it turns out,
even if you use legislation, and so that's still going.
It's still run by the same guys and they are awful. Now.
Their argument is that we're not pro suicide with pro choice,

(34:27):
which is a horrifying adoption of the language of liberation.

Speaker 3 (34:32):
Right.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
But yeah, so the worst thing that can happen is
that you get sucked into this and it encourages you
to not just absorb horrifying misogyny but also to potentially
end your own life. But the misogyny is pretty bad.
So the harms are also that this doesn't help you

(34:53):
in any way, that this is a bucket of crabs
that you will never escape from. Because if you spend
a lot of time in an in self forum, it's
not somewhere where people want you to get better. Hey,
it's somewhere where people want to drag you down as
far as possible to feel the same pain that they feel. Right,
you found the worst self help place on earth, right,

(35:17):
So that's one of the issues. But also it will
inculcate in you the worst possible beliefs you could have
about yourself and about other people. It will push you
to say that women who are murdered deserved it because
of the way that they had treated men by being

(35:38):
sexually liberal. It will make you believe that girls who
are murdered or raped deserved it because even if they
hadn't done anything bad, eventually they would have done That's.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
Where you get to I was just going to say,
And then that further isolates them because everyone else is like,
I fucking hate you, I don't care what you do.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Like it isolates you.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, completely, there is. It's really really hard to not
end up in a position where everyone just tells you
to fuck off. And then that obviously means that you
retreat into the forum that accepts you. Right, no one
in your life understands you, so why not just stay
in the in cell space. There's a big interactivity between

(36:23):
the in cell spaces and the people who critique them
where they used to be. I can't remember if there
still is, but there's a big subreddit called in cell
tears where they would make fun of in cells. You know,
they post the worst stuff the intel has been saying,
they take the piss out of them. And there was
a degree to which that was useful as a way

(36:44):
of shaking away people who might be tempted by in
cell stuff, because it can say, look, if you get
into this, people are going to mock you. Man, that's
not great. But also it does isolate them further. And
also the in cells started to just respond to the
talking point, right, So they would say, look, I've had
three showers today and still no one wants to fuck me. Right,

(37:05):
So they realize what is being said to them, and
they're able to construct narratives that invade those talking points
and they build on top of that. Right, you can't
just use the same narratives over and over again expect
people not to adapt and change and work around them.

Speaker 4 (37:21):
Is there research on the mental health impact of just
hating people or like staying in that sort of negative space,
Like does that have an emotional nagging yourself?

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Hating women.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, I don't know if there's particular research on that.
I do know, so I've done a bit of work
with the folks in November. I don't know if you
know them. They're the guys who run the charity which
you Grow. Yeah, yeah, and they obviously very interested in
young men's health and they put out a report where

(37:58):
they've done a lot of research search into the effects
on young men of engaging with what they call male
lifestyle influencers the mana sphere to you and me, And
some of it was short term, kind of positive. They
saw themselves, as you know, increasingly motivated to do things
like fitness and the gym and to kind of really

(38:19):
go out and get it. And that's how we get
into Andrew Tate is A you find him funny and
b you find him motivating. But obviously it starts to
drip feed you really horrible beliefs about women and also
horrible beliefs about yourself, and that can result in you
engaging and risky behaviors. So if your belief is that

(38:40):
you have to get rich really quick and you have
to get jacked really quick, then that's going to cause
you or at least encourage you to do some things
that are not helpful.

Speaker 5 (38:49):
Right.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
We know that the rate of steroid abuse amongst teenage
boys has skyrocketed. We know that there's increasing tendencies for
younger boys and men to try to get into cryptocurrency
and get into really dodgy kind of get rich quick schemes. Right.
I know we talked about MLMs earlier, but this is

(39:12):
kind of the equivalent of that to some degree. Is
you know, you're selling a crypto token, yeah, and you're
selling it to your followers, and your followers will buy
it and you pump it and then you dump it
and then they lose all their money. Right, So crypto
is MLMs for boys basically, Yeah, And that is the
sort of thing that you can end up in because
you started to find an interest in these guys because

(39:36):
they were funny or they spoke to some of your insecurities. Right.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
And then, of course, and as in most cults, you know,
the things you're starting to do are just making it
more circular and worse. Like you start taking steroids and
now your anger is fifty times than when you started,
and you have a lot more energy.

Speaker 1 (39:54):
The steroids things so funny as well, because It's a
really common theme in like gym spaces online for guys
to talk about how they started taking steroids or getting
really jacked because they wanted to appeal to women and
now the only people who find them attractive for other
men because so funny, it's all the other guys you
also want to be jacked, who are like, wow, bro,

(40:15):
what's your arm routine?

Speaker 4 (40:17):
Literally okay, yeah, had an ex boyfriend, very jacked. The
people who commented on it the most, by far were others.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
Always, always, the dudes loved it.

Speaker 4 (40:29):
If I okay, let's say I'm a guy on the internet,
I am nineteen, how might I first be exposed to
some of this content?

Speaker 1 (40:38):
These days, it's the algorithm. So it used to be
you had to kind of go out looking for it.
Back in the good old days of the internet, when,
as you say, you did some pick up artists they
type stuff. When you're in the mid two thousands, you
know you'd have to find the place. You had to
know what you were looking for, at least stumble on it.
Someone in the fore room had to recommend it. These days,

(41:00):
if you are a boy on YouTube, then you're gonna
see some Andrew Tate or maybe not Andrew Tate, but
you'll see some David Goggins, or you'll seizin Jordan Peterson.
And if you spend enough time hovering over that or
watching that, or you comment on that or you like it,
you're gonna see someone else. And that is the first

(41:20):
way in which you'll get into the stuff. And what
will probably happen first is it will be in the
context of something funny, right, it'll be comedic, and you'll
start by seeing it as this is all about jokes
and having a laugh, and then you start to look
into the other things that they're saying, and maybe you
find something interesting in there, and maybe what you find

(41:42):
interesting in what they have to say is about how
women are sluts and will necessarily cheat on you. But
the problem is that it's so normalized. It's not just
the manosphere anymore. You've got your trad wives, you've got
your demosphere, You've got all sorts of stuff, which is

(42:02):
kind of normalizing this from both sides as well, where
you've got women who are coming onto TikTok and saying,
what I really want is a husband who's going to
dominate me and be head of the household and earn
all the money so that I don't have to do anything.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Well, I mean yeah, yeah, I was just telling Lila
I saw an article of a woman who signed on
as a thirteen year old girl to TikTok just to
see what happened, and immediately it was just like how
to get an eating disorder, how to like and it's
crazy that it just feeds it to you.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
It is fucking endemic.

Speaker 4 (42:34):
Is that true for a teenage for young boys as well?
I mean like a time it's like get a gun,
Like what are the first things? I mean like, yeah,
I know what's being.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
Served up to you. If you're a teenage boy and
like on TikTok.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Well, as you say, if you're a teenage girl you
go on TikTok or we go on Instagram, then you're
going to see eating to sort of stuff. You're going
to see parana content. That has been the case for
a very long time. It is just sometimes increasingly subtle
and some times increasingly in your face. Right, there's just
more of it. There's just more of everything now than
there was ten fifteen years ago. If you are a

(43:06):
teenage boy, then you're gonna see stuff that is about
sports and about the fuck I'm trying to think of
teenage boys.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Like again, I was one for He's sake guns the
article she did it with boys too, and it was
like immediately like gun shit.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Yeah, exactly, like you're gonna see the things that the
algorithm thinks you what because they have profiled your demographic
and if you are in the demographic that likes sports
and guns, they're going to serve you fucking sports and guns.
And maybe you might like to touch misogyny on the
side as well, and that's how you start to get
this stuff. It's insidious. Ah, I know, so sorry.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
Mine serves me ASMR and cats and it's like, we
know who you are.

Speaker 4 (43:50):
Mine just shows me the worst political news that you
could possibly imagine.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
That's all I see. That's literally my entire feed. So
what do we do? Can you fix it?

Speaker 1 (44:04):
There is a reason I don't work on this quite
so much, really more because I find it so depressing. Yeah,
partly because you know, being exposed to extreme content every
day for work is a way to break your brain
in fairly short order. But also because so much of
it is not just driven by individual choices. It's structural, right,

(44:29):
It's about how our politics works. It's about how our
culture works. And what gives rise to the manisphere is
the same stuff that gives rise to all other parts
of the system. But let's focus on something that we
can maybe change, which is about technology. Because this has
been turbo charged by the algorithm, and by the algorithm,

(44:49):
I know it's not just one thing that it's a
huge number of things that are interacting with one another
to create the thing that you see when you open techtok.
But the systems that they have built for Facebook, for TikTok,
for Instagram, for wherever are designed to be as addictive
as possible because the business model is the longer you
spend on there, the more money they make from ads.

(45:12):
And how do you make people spend longer on there?
You make them more engaged. And what does engagement look like, Well,
it doesn't care whether you like something or hate it.
All that matters is that you spend the time. So
that means that it's designed to just make you spend
as long as possible on there. And that means that
the most controversial things are things that go closest to
the line without going over the line. Those are the

(45:33):
things that get pushed to you. So the things that
we can do are trying to push back against the
idea that this is a business model that should be promoted. Right,
so there is increasingly pressure elsewhere in the world to
do stuff about this problem is that often it is
not perfect politically either. But I think that trying to

(45:57):
move towards a system which doesn't fault to recommending you
the most addictive shit possible is certainly one way of
helping whether and on.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
An individual level, we found a video of yours that
we liked from a while ago where you talked about
why debating doesn't work and changing minds doesn't work the
way that we think.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Oh god, wow, that's an old one.

Speaker 3 (46:22):
You should do more YouTube.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
Anyway, if you encounter a young man or an old man,
or anyone who's seems to be, you know, going down
this path or dabbling, or like they're starting to get
exposed at this kind of stuff, maybe they're starting to isolate,
Like how would you respond as an individual to that person.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
It's really hard when I say debating doesn't work. I'm
trying to think back. I must have made this about
ten years ago. When I say debating doesn't work, what
I am talking about is that you can't just change
someone's mind with enough facts and evidence and logic in
order to get them out whatever belief they currently hold.

(47:03):
It just doesn't work that way because the way that
we form our beliefs is social and emotional. It's not
based on logic, no matter how much the kind of
debate bros Might wish you to think of that. And
so usually, as you guys know very well, what a
cult is doing, what an extreme belief is doing is

(47:23):
preying on a particular vulnerability that you have and filling
a need in your life. And so in order to
try to take someone out of the manisphere or an
in cell space or I don't know, a neo Nazi group, unfortunately,

(47:43):
if you're already in their life, need to stay to
some degree present in their life. You can't completely cut
yourself off necessarily, and you have to be kind of
an anchor to some degree. You have to be able
to say the thing that you're saying right now is wrong,
and here is why I believe it to be wrong.
And often you have to appeal to the humanity of
the people that they're undermining in order to make that argument.

(48:06):
Rather than trying to say something about why there's statistic
they've given you about women making up break allegations as false.
You have to appeal to the humanity of women and
of everyone around them, but you also have to not
say I am cutting you off, I'm pushing out of
my life now. This is not to say that all
people have a duty to do that for everyone all

(48:27):
the time. But the way that you get someone out
of these spaces is to try to make it so
that they have other options. So the way you get
out of extreme groups is sometimes there's push factors, right,
the situation gets so bad within them that you're looking
for an alternative. But also there have to be poor factors,

(48:48):
which are the things that say, look, there is a
life that looks better than this. There is an alternative.
It's possible for you to have community, to have hobbies
and a job and friendship and love outside of the
thing in which you found yourself.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
Did you say pull factors.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Yeah, So push factors and pull factors.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Oh, I love that. Okay, I've never heard that before.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
So push factors are the things that are pushing you away,
that are saying, like, what you are in now is untenable.
You cannot stay in this thing or you're going to die.
And the pull factors are the things that say, look,
there's something else, you could do something else with your life,
and these are all the alternities for you. So you
can't necessarily create the push factors. If you are like

(49:29):
a professional investigative journalist whose job is to dig up
dirt and like you know, sow division within a far
right group, maybe you can create some push factors, but
you can create pull factors and you can be there.
So my my personal background on kind of extreme beliefs

(49:50):
is not actually in sell space. It's actually in the
religion space. My half of my family were all Jehovah's
witnesses at various points, and there are various arguments about
whether that would be considered a cult or not. But
what I do know is that you cannot convince someone
out of a religious commitment, but that you basically have

(50:12):
to wait for them to have their own crisis and
then still be there.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
Yes, ah, we talk about this all the time.

Speaker 6 (50:18):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Yeah, So it's no different, right, it's no different.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Well, one of the things that I love that you said,
and I believe that same video was just the language
that we use can be kind of a turn off
for somebody. So the word in cell like, do they
immediately recoil from that word if it's from somebody who's
trying to.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Like, does it feel like an attached Yeah, it's a.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Really hard one because it is a value laiden word.
But because it's become so mainstream, it started to mean
more than one thing. So an inceel can be someone
who is a committed member of a forum where people
talk about being involuntarily celiber. But they can also be
some who you're just calling that because you used to

(51:01):
call them a fedora or a neck bid, or a
virgin or a fucking loser, right, and calling someone an
insuet doesn't necessarily mean that much anymore. And you have
to think, does it help to call someone a for
doorra or a neck bid or a fucking loser? And
the answer is sometimes yes, because you have to show
them that the behavior which they're engaging in is not acceptable.

(51:23):
Sometimes no, because what you're trying to do is show
them that you are still going to be accepted by
whatever community or group or society that they are trying
to cut themselves off from. So in the same way,
that you have to find boundaries with anyone. You have
to find boundaries with your language in how you talk
to people as well. And yeah, in the same way

(51:45):
that calling someone a Nazi if they don't self identify
as a Nazi, probably alienates them a bit because they're like, oh, dude,
you just call anyone a Nazi these days. Yeah, but
also you can call them a Nazi and they self
identify as a Nazi, they probably just go, yeah, yeah,
that's correct, I'm a white nationalist, right.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
So look, alienating language is always going to alienate. It's
not always your job to be welcoming and inclusive all
the time because people who hold hateful beliefs can really
cause damage. But if you're trying to pull them out
of something, yeah, it's probably not going to help your

(52:26):
cause to make them think you're addict to that.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Well, and even outside of just like calling someone something
that could be considered a slur or an insult, like
we develop shorthand language in our cultures or in our subcultures,
there are terms that you know, people on the left
would use that people on the right would immediately shut
off toward that argument just because of the term and

(52:51):
vice versa. Language becomes so charged so quickly, and it
can be difficult to have those conversations without like it's
almost like a game of taboo. You have to figure
out how to talk about the thing without saying the words.
You just have to self edit and think about every
single word. Now, that's what I've realized.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Yeah, you have to be really really careful what the
language use. Do you guys know the term thought terminating cliches? Yeah, yeah,
it's kind of that, right, except it's external. So the
moment you hear someone use a particular word, you're able
to pigeonhole them in a certain category and say, Okay,
this person is coming from this perspective there, and that

(53:29):
is a perspective I disagree with or fine or have
historically had bad experiences with. So I don't need to
listen to that person, right, And that that's kind of
what's happening here. So if you are talking to an
in cell and you start talking about how look, it's
all okay, I'm sure women must like you. Really you
just need to like take a shower once in a while,

(53:52):
and like, have you thought about being nicer to women?
Those are the sorts of things that they are going
to find really alienating. Now obviously they should be nicer
to women. So this is about the purpose of your
conversation with them. This is about whether you're trying to
build rapport as a way of hopefully helping them out

(54:12):
at some point, because I think the truth is most
people who find themselves in an in cell space will
eventually not be in that space anymore. Some of them, sadly,
will stay there forever and be increasingly embittered, and particularly
if their identity fuses with being in cell, if they're

(54:33):
the moderator of the administrator of the forum, they're probably
not going to leave any time to see but most
of them will not be in cells forever because while
it will be a facet of their identity for a while,
eventually they will find someone who might appreciate them, or
they will grow up. Frankly, like a lot of them
are just kids and they're just having a bit of

(54:55):
a phase and they're acting out a bit, and they
will grow out of the extreme beliefs and they will
start to have some relationships with people. That might because
they go off for university, or it might be because
they join some kind of social group, or it might
just be luck right. The problem I have is that
those people are not completely I don't want to use

(55:16):
the word deprogrammed, because that's obviously very freighted, but they
haven't given up the beliefs that led them down that
way in the first place. So the worry I have
always had about themselves is not just that they are
a horrible group that hates themselves and hates other people.
It's that after you get out, you still hold some

(55:37):
of the residual beliefs about the world and about women,
and that will likely influence the way in which you
interact with those people. I don't think that you can
come out of being an in cell and have a healthy,
functioning relationship in which you respect your partner. And that's
why I think that there is a threat to women
and girls that is posed by ex in cells, perhaps

(55:59):
even more than there is in celts, because a lot
of insults just stay in their room and post online
all the time, right, And that obviously can have its
own harms, like harassing women Online's still harassing women, but
they're often just talking to themselves, and the moment you
go out into the world and you start having relationships,
that's the moment you can actually hurt someone.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
I've not thought about that.

Speaker 4 (56:19):
Yeah, going back to the poll factor's question, what are
some poll factors that would work?

Speaker 3 (56:26):
Like how how would you offer that to someone?

Speaker 1 (56:30):
How do you offer pull factors?

Speaker 4 (56:31):
Yeah, hey man, there's a basketball game. Let's go to
a movie one day with some that yeahs on movie.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
What you would do, lonlier is you'd put on your
your best basketball hat, baseball hat, and and like dress
up as a as a little boy and say, hey, buddy,
go to the basketball game. That's what you do. That
is basically it. Right, So you guys are right. You

(57:00):
can try to make them feel included, and you can
try to consistently not pressure people, but at least provide
them with the possibility of something else. Right, Oh, there's
this guy in our group. He's kind of a weirdo,
but like, let's still invite him to the movie night. Like,
let's keep him in the book club. Like, I don't
know why movie night in book club are the things

(57:21):
I go to very much in my mid thirties. Yeah,
that's kind of part of it. And it's just providing
them with the knowledge and the idea there is something
else than what they have right now, right, And most
of that is about the human need for company and

(57:42):
community and love and all the fluffy things, yeah, which
you have told me nothing in these spaces, right that
the manusphere wants to grind down the idea that any
of that means anything. It's all about whether you're making
enough paper, and you're hitting enough like personal records in
the gym, and whether you're high enough statis, so you've

(58:05):
got enough cars. All those things are completely hollow and empty.
They're kind of like the sorts of things that someone
might like if they like to live in Dubai.

Speaker 3 (58:13):
You know. It's like a high, a temporary high that
doesn't actually shit. Like.

Speaker 4 (58:18):
I also think that's a product of the culture we
live in, like America at least, is a very individualistic
society and very fixated on this idea that if you
achieve enough then you will finally reach happiness, which of
course we know not to be true.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
The thing that you were saying, Megan is also true.
It is about appealing to a teenage sense of what
the world is, the idea that the things that are
most important are like material possessions like fast cars and
dominating your friends and opponents like those are very twelve

(58:53):
year old approaches to the world. True, and it is
very clear from looking at someone like Andrew Tate actually
kind of is appealing to twelve year old boys. Yes,
because most men in their twenties, thirties, forties look at
that guy and think, what a fucking embarrassment. You know,
you look at this guy fronting up as though he's

(59:14):
you know, like the kingshit of Fuck Mountain, and you
find that embarrassing, whereas a twelve year old does not.
And that's what's so insidious about this. He is aiming
to draw in kids, yes, because they are impressionable, and
because they will listen to you.

Speaker 3 (59:31):
Yes, and a few adults get thrown in along the way.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
I was going to ask, is that I mean, I
guess maybe just because I'm an adult. The exposure that
I have to people who are fans of people like
Andrew Tait are also adults. And you know, the misogynistic
comments on my Instagram that I've been posting are grown
ass men.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
You know.

Speaker 4 (59:51):
I'll go on a random data and someone will say
something and I'll be like, oh, you're oh you love
Jordan Peterson.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Oh that's their monk mode.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
I don't think that man is an insult, but but
I have I did sleep with someone in the morning.
I saw the other side of his door that had
a twelve Rules for Life poster on it, which was
quite a shock.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Who writes that? Jordan Peterson?

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
God?

Speaker 4 (01:00:16):
And anyway, like, you know, like, I'm maybe it's just
a matter of exposure because of my age.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Maybe love insults. Maybe, But I like, is there data
on the fan bases of these people?

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
Looka it might also because you live in la you
have really questionable.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
Taste in the men are great. This is a very
very rare occurrence, just like once a free four years.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Is sorry, I forgot the question because I was determined
to mildly mock you.

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Data on age range.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Oh God, Yeah, Okay, so I'm not entirely certain about age.
What I will say is that typically more conservative attitudes
towards gender are something which are held by older men,
though of course, there is increasingly data coming out that
shows a worrying divergence in political beliefs between young men

(01:01:18):
and young women. The weird one for that is South Korea,
where it's really extreme, but also in the US as well,
where young women are increasing left wing, young men are
increasingly kind of center right, and that is creating friction
between people with different genders. So how would I puts

(01:01:39):
It's not so much that it is more likely that
you hold misogynistic beliefs you for your particular age, because statistically,
I think you're more likely to hold them if you
are older, because older folks tend to hold traditional gender
views and those are misogynistic.

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
Yeah, but my grandpa's not getting on Reddit, right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Because exactly so if you're if you are older and
hold those beliefs, you'll get expressed in a different.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
Way, right, right, right, going to yeah, exactly, yeah, precisely.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
So it could just be that Lola is very unlucky
and is meeting a bunch of guys who really like
Jordan Peterson. Don't be fair, that's a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
I think it's actually one guy, this recent guy. I'm
telling you, he's not He's normal. He's just fascinated by Ripped.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
That guy way we have really got in on him.
I know. I feel like, but.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
I think you're fine. I think it's fine. You are
allegedly not an insult.

Speaker 4 (01:02:45):
But again, like, yeah, like, the most hateful comments I
received are not by they seem to be by men
in their twenties, thirties, forties.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Yeah, that makes complete sense. And I would note that
misogyny can be written out in many forms and everyone
has access to Instagram, right, So finding your stuff and
posting hateful shit underneath it doesn't indicate the information environment
that person has been taught up in, right. They could
be on Reddit, they could be on four cham, they

(01:03:14):
could be on Facebook, they could be well the only
the only filter is literally have they come to your
Instagram feed and that's it. Yeah, they could be from anywhere.

Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
Yeah, totally, Misogyny becomes in many forms, and sure it has.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
She's endemic.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
I'm just wondering if anybody has ever like becomes such
a close knit community on these insul forums that they
become not in cells.

Speaker 4 (01:03:40):
They're like, actually, community is good and we should embrace
healthy values.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
I kind of want to write a movie about it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
I think that's a beautiful idea for a movie script. Yeah,
and I don't think it has ever happened. They have
come together. It's like a kind of like friends to
enemies to friends the thing, Yeah, or like they come
together through the power of love exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
It's a Christmas movie. It's a Christmas movie. I don't
like it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
I like it. Loving the time of insuldom, I like it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):
Do you have any final thoughts or messages that you
would like the people to receive?

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
We have messages for the people. Hug your friends, love
your loved ones. No, but genuinely, I do think part
of it is that is I think that this is
not me doing a wishy was she like love across
the divide shit? Because frankly, right now, the world is
awful and there are a whole lot of people who

(01:04:39):
are prove themselves very incapable of redemption. But if there
is someone in your life who is going through some
rough shit and you find that they are moving in
a hateful direction, it can be very very tempting to
completely cut them off, and I would not blame you
if you did. But keeping a small a window open

(01:05:02):
may mean the difference between that person having nowhere to
go and having somewhere potentially to go at the point
where everything blows up. I think that's true of all
of the cults you guys have talked about. I think
that's true of basically any extreme movement or community that
it's very easy to completely alienate someone when they've become

(01:05:26):
such an asshole. But I think it's important to recognize
that they may need somewhere to go eventually, and if
you love them, then maybe think about keeping them at
least partly at arm's length in your life.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
That's going to be a line on the Christmas movie.

Speaker 4 (01:05:48):
We hear it over and over again, and I'm happy
to hear you reiterate it because I think it does
seem to really remain true throughout every group and every
type of weird fucking belief.

Speaker 3 (01:05:59):
It really does.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Yeah, well, I'm sorry to beak cliche, but I'm happy
to be part of a chorus. I guess. No.

Speaker 4 (01:06:05):
I mean it's nice to hear it pertaining to this
particular subculture as well, because it is such a scary
and you know, seemingly prevalent and growing subculture.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
And I guess it's a subculture that we're going to
need men to really step up and do some of
the dirty work.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Yeah, this is what kind of sucks is. I think
a lot of the work on this, at least the
early really good work was done by women, and I
think it is fantastic, and I recognize that women have
a lot to contribute to this. Sorry, this sounds really
weird like, but we have a unique contribution to make. However,

(01:06:40):
what I was going to say is a it shouldn't
all be on women to solve misogyny. Obviously, be a
lot of these guys are not going to listen to
women exactly, And I think that there is a degree
to which men will have to step up, as you
say again, to sort this shit out. And I think
that it's really it's going to have to be an

(01:07:00):
all genders kind of vibe. But yes, men have a
responsibility in this direction as well, and some of them
are doing really, really good work. And actually, the Credent
Coalition that I have been part of with the November
guys is a lot of them are guys showing what
good male role models can look like and are trying

(01:07:24):
to do the work to provide the community and provide
the spaces that allow boys to find healthy, productive outlets
for hard.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
Feelings, baseball and movies.

Speaker 4 (01:07:35):
Here's the point at which I proposed to you to
keep doing your YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
Okay, your proposal is noted. I have not done a
YouTube in about six years, that is correct.

Speaker 3 (01:07:47):
I did note that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Yeah, I will consider it again. I appreciate the vote
of confidence.

Speaker 4 (01:07:54):
And where do people find your work or the organization
you work for, whatever you'd like to share these days.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
I want I think I'm at Tim Squirrel, but without
any vowels, I think is where I'm at these days. Okay,
but I used to be on Twitter, I'm not anymore.
If you look me up on Google, you will probably
find some way of contacting me in the way that
Lola did. Actually, I didn't know why email was that
easy to find.

Speaker 3 (01:08:20):
Oh, I remember if you look hard enough. Amazing. Thank
you so much, Tom, This is a really cool conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:08:30):
Thank you so much for having me. This has been really,
really fun.

Speaker 4 (01:08:34):
Thank you to Tim Squirrel for coming on Megan. Of
course I have to ask you if you think that
you would join the Manisphere.

Speaker 3 (01:08:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
I think if I was a man who was down
on my luck and super lonely, I would be very
susceptible to a group like that.

Speaker 4 (01:08:53):
The reason I asked him if he would ever join
was because I've talked to a good amount of guys
who've been like, Yeah, if I had stayed on the
YouTube path that I was on when I was younger,
I totally could have ended up on that road, Like
the resentment was there, the loneliness was there, the isolation,
you know. So I think it can happen to anyone

(01:09:15):
who's Yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
Think it would be a really nice little coat hanger
to hang my resentments and problems on and just be
like it's them.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:09:27):
And as an update, I did speak with my date
about him using the term, and we joked about it
and I told him we talked about it on this podcast,
and I thought it was funny.

Speaker 3 (01:09:37):
He is not an insul cool. I know everyone was
burning to know ledge of my seat. No, that's good
to know. That's good to know. The guy with the
poster on the back of the door still might be that.

Speaker 4 (01:09:50):
He's actually a nice guy. He's just he's just a
little misled. He's a very nice man. Oh my god,
he's my friend and sol apologist over here. I'm just
kidding it, Okay, So yeah, I would be an unsolved probably,
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
Maybe, I mean i'd probably grow out of it, but.

Speaker 4 (01:10:04):
Yeah, I mean, oh me at sixteen if I found
likely like that for girls total in selling, Yeah, yeah.
The guy at the record store down the street did
not want to date me and I was pissed about
it totally.

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):
Yeah. All right, well, thanks for listening y'all.

Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Come back next week and as always, remember to follow
your gut, watch out for radi flat.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
And never ever trust me by.

Speaker 4 (01:10:28):
This has been an exactly right production hosted by me Lola.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
Blanc and Me Megan Elizabeth. Our senior producer is Gee Holly.
This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker
is Patrick Kottner.

Speaker 3 (01:10:42):
Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

Speaker 2 (01:10:45):
Trust Me as executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hartstark
and Danielle Kramer.

Speaker 4 (01:10:50):
You can find us on Instagram at trust Me podcast
or on TikTok at trust Me coult podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation,
Shoot us an email at trust mepod at gmail dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:11:01):
Listen to trust Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.