Why "To Catch A Predator" videos feel so gross

To Catch A Predator launched in 2004 and was immediately a massive hit, but despite its long-lasting cultural impact — highlighted by last week’s release of Primetime — it only ran for one season and twenty episodes. The show ended after an assistant District Attorney in Texas died by suicide. Is it ethically worse? Is this justice? Why does it feel so gross? Today we’re joined by Free Country USA to look at the legacy of the show and the trend of content creators trying to bust predators on their own. Follow Free Country USA @freecountryusa on YouTube, Instagram, and everywhere else you listen and watch pods. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonuses & exclusives, and access to our members-only Discord? Sign up for a membership for just five bucks a month at https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The wheel had roads, electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com/ai to learn more.

• 0:15Ryan Broderick?

  You have no doubt come across videos of gangs of guys jumping out of cars and harassing people that they're accusing of being pedophiles. Is this justice? Or is this just another way to exploit people for viral traffic and fame? It's a complicated question, and it's one we're going to be talking about today. Fair warning, though, this is a pretty heavy episode.

• 0:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, this is actually my childhood bedroom that I paid my friend to not just paint, but also fix all of the destruction that I did to it as an amends to my family for the destruction I caused in my home growing up.

• 0:49Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, are you a wall puncher?

• 0:51Speaker 02

  I was, yeah, for sure.

• 0:52Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I could feel it.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  You were a wall puncher, too?

• 0:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were both. I mean, Kat was a, Kat destroyed her door one time out of, that was crazy, out of pure greed.

• 1:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I got really pissed at Jeff and then, and then he left my room and then I just started like beating my door down and I like, I just, the whole thing out. And then it ended up being like a good thing because then I was able to use the pieces of that door as like a skateboard ramp on like the stairs outside.

• 1:23Ryan Broderick?

  So that's cool. That's really cool.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  And then he broke your ankle on that.

• 1:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So and then I got addicted to drugs.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Really, it was wow.

• 1:33Ryan Broderick?

  That is the trajectory that I would have imagined.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  And now we have a podcast.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 1:37Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, this is all totally right to you. This sounds totally right to me.

• 1:41Speaker 04

  I like that every time we have you on, there's a little bit more of lore, like familial lore that just like.

• 1:46Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, no, this is good. Let me set it up then before we, we jump back into this.

• 1:55Ryan Broderick?

  I'm Ryan Broderick and with me as always is my producer, Grant Irving. This is Panic World, a show about how the internet warps our minds, our culture, and eventually reality. And we are inducting these two lovely sickos into the three timers club. Kat and Jeff of Free Country USA, welcome back, guys. How you doing?

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Good, how are you? Are we, are we the first triple timer?

• 2:19Speaker 04

  So you're the third, third three.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  So we're the third three timers. What an honor.

• 2:24Speaker 02

  Wow, my angel numbers.

• 2:25Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Yeah. And we are, we are bringing you on the show today to talk about a topic. So we have like a bunch of topics we want to talk about, and then we have a bunch of topics that I'm like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that episode. And this is one of those. We are talking about the sort of universe of To Catch a Predator content out there. I should say that we were recording this before Grant and I have seen Primetime, the To Catch a Predator movie that is coming out, but it obviously is on the minds of many people right now. I guess, you know, let's break the ice here. If you two were doing a To Catch a Predator show, what would you say?

• 3:07Ryan Broderick?

  You know, when you walk in the room, like, you know, like have a seat, like take a seat, like what would be your version of that?

• 3:13Speaker 02

  I mean, like I sent these chats to your aunt.

• 3:15Ryan Broderick?

  That's pretty good.

• 3:19Speaker 03

  I sent the show to your friends and family and they all know.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Actually, I did do that once when I was a, I was like really into Catch a Predator, into To Catch a Predator as a young teenager. When I was like 13, I would like troll people on like Omegle and then get them to text me and then send it to their family members on Facebook.

• 3:38Speaker 03

  He was doing that, yeah?

• 3:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just did it a few times.

• 3:40Ryan Broderick?

  We're gonna have to talk about that in a minute. That's fascinating. I think my catchphrase would be, so tell me about your favorite episode of Has Been Hotel.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Cause Chris Hansen had, why didn't you take a seat? Which is just, it's hard to beat that. Well, that one's really, really good.

• 4:02Ryan Broderick?

  It's really understated. Yeah. So I want to just say like, I hate this whole universe of content. It makes me like deeply nervous and freaked out, but let's, let's like slowly work our way into the darkness at the heart of this. So, I mean, were you, were you guys watching To Catch a Predator when it was on TV?

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I messaged Grant, it said something along the lines of, I've seen hundreds of hours of vigilante pedophile content over the course of my lifetime and.

• 4:30Ryan Broderick?

  And it's crazy, that wasn't about this episode. You just messaged Grant.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:37Speaker 04

  I'm just seeing Jeff's other messages to me.

• 4:39Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  We weren't, that's true. This episode wasn't even planned yet. I just wanted to.

• 4:43Ryan Broderick?

  Wait, really? He's joking, that's so funny.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  No, actually, no.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  Jeff sent me the trailer and was like, was like, Grant, have you seen this trailer?

• 4:51Ryan Broderick?

  That's so funny. That's, that's unbelievable.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  I think it's like, that message might have spawned the idea for the episode. But yeah, it was, you know, it's a, it was a really big part of my life. I just think of it as like, it's the most entertaining possible form of reality television. Cause like, why watch like The Bachelor when you could watch someone's life get absolutely turned upside down and destroyed on TV?

• 5:13Speaker 03

  See, I was coming out from a very opposite angle because I was like 14 when I was watching it and I was just thinking to myself like, these poor guys, like these could be my friends.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Because I was being heavily groomed by adults on the internet.

• 5:27Ryan Broderick?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  And you know, I thought it was chill at the time.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. You're like, dude, they're just.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  They're just looking for love now.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Like anybody else.

• 5:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, like they don't, they don't mean to hurt these kids. Like, I'm fine. Like, I, I, I love my, I love my adult friends on, on Facebook.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  And then, but then what did we learn?

• 5:47Speaker 03

  Um, that, that's bad.

• 5:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, there we go.

• 5:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  You know, once I turned 18, I was like, oh, wait, yeah. Hold on.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Ryan's face right there is gonna be the thumbnail. That was the most uncomfortable face he's ever made.

• 5:59Ryan Broderick?

  That's too bad. Everything you're saying is just too bad.

• 6:04Ryan Broderick?

  It's just, so, you know, just to, just to kind of lay this out, because I didn't realize this, the original run of To Catch a Predator was only 20 episodes.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:14Ryan Broderick?

  Which is wild. They ran from.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Well, it's just like, yeah, I mean, something really bad happened and they had to stop doing it, but I'm sure we'll get to that. I don't want to jump ahead.

• 6:24Ryan Broderick?

  We will get to that. Yeah. Also spoilers for anyone who's gonna watch Primetime. Yeah. These things are complicated to talk about, and I think they've only become more complicated to talk about in a post Epstein world. In fact, just before today's episode, I saw a user sharing on X, sharing a conspiracy theory that Primetime is being released by some sort of shadowy government figures to make the conversation around catching and, you know, punishing pedophiles more complicated. And like the nuanced portrayal the movie will have is to like muddy the water.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, that's the argument that I will be making this episode, and that was probably me. But no, I, I think, well, it is, it is a really nuanced and difficult, yeah, because you're talking about like one of those shaken horrible crimes that like you could possibly imagine and the prosecution therein, but it's good that you have Kat and I to help sort of navigate these sort of muddy waters with our, with our nuanced points of view and our hard hitting experience with this kind of stuff.

• 7:26Ryan Broderick?

  I think of you guys when I think about nuance.

• 7:31Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. For people who have no idea what we're talking about, I'm super, super sorry, but there is the show that runs in the 2000s, To Catch a Predator, hosted by Chris Hansen. And then there is this growing universe of YouTube and TikTok and Instagram reel channels where they are, you know, trying to do the same format or similar formats. Do you have favorites? Like, what do you know of this landscape?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Well, I'd say that everybody who does it is just to want to be Chris Hansen and Chris Hansen is the GOAT. And, you know, you have your big guys, you know, you have your, what's the guys like Stanky or something or who's like the big one?

• 8:08Ryan Broderick?

  Skeeter Jean?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Skeeter Jean, yeah, he's, you know, I mean, all of these people are irredeemable scumbags. Chris Hansen is mother to all of these fools.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  You guys have a favorite?

• 8:20Ryan Broderick?

  I think I'm losing internet connection right now.

• 8:23Speaker 04

  Oh, you're coming through for us.

• 8:26Ryan Broderick?

  What's really weird is I'm coming through, nope.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Oh, there it goes.

• 8:30Speaker 04

  All right. Well, now, now that Ryan's out of the way, thank God.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  Now, now we get to the real show.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Let's start while Ryan's out here with a lay of the land of what these Chris Hansen copycats are like. Cause I will say, I know I should be more disturbed by To Catch a Predator, the original. It gives me out way less than its version on YouTube, and I don't think it's more ethical at all. I could not make an argument as to why.

• 9:00Speaker 02

  I think they're essentially the same, they're essentially the same thing. Like you're, you know, you're circumnavigating the criminal justice system to make shock content to lure the stupidest pedophiles on the planet and using them to make content and money for your own.

• 9:17Ryan Broderick?

  Totally.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  And sometimes also beat them up.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  I don't disagree with any of that. What I'm hoping to have some insight to by the end of this episode is why I am made more uncomfortable by it via YouTube than it being on NBC. And I, and I wonder if it's just production value. So this is Skeeter busting a guy at his like aunt's 90th birthday party.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've seen this.

• 9:49Speaker 05

  Heard there's a big 90th birthday party going on here. There's just one thing here, Stanford, you might need to sign here. Now, Stanford, you did, you did send a picture of your [BLEEP].

• 9:59Speaker 06

  That wasn't, that wasn't mine. It was a friend's.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  It's a friend's [BLEEP]. Looks like the party shut down. Sorry for crashing your party. We really didn't mean to.

• 10:06Speaker 06

  And I was very insecure and I was [BLEEP] because I was overweight.

• 10:09Speaker 05

  Were, was? Uh, we're gonna go in my car. I'm going.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  There's a few reasons I think why it's more disturbing. A, Skeeter's episodes are a lot longer than Chris Hansen's. Usually Chris Hansen will have a guy in there for like, you know, 10 minutes tops and it'll be cut up. And, uh, I think these newer guys are way more adept at getting them to reveal like bizarrely intimate personal information about themselves beyond like the crime. Like the guy like talking about like not being circumcised, being like insecure about his weight. Like you get some of that in the Chris Hansen episodes, but in the Skeeter Jean and his, you know, the, the, the new heads doing it. They're really, really good at people telling them to get, tell them everything about their whole lives.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Which I think is just so, you learn so much about these people that it's really, really unsettling and gross.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  The Dateline NBC editing is trying to polish it so that you get less, so you don't, you feel less exploitative of, of the predator. You get, you get enough of a glimpse of the predator and you kind, you, you get the joy of watching his life be ruined. But you don't learn too much for him to like.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Right, without getting to know him too personally.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  It's a bit more dehumanizing on, uh, Dateline probably.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, they take out personal details and parts of the episode. And then on the Patreon, it's like, get the whole unfiltered thing.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  And they're, they're going to the predator at like, what was it? The grandma's 90th birthday party? So that makes it feel a little bit more human than like a predator coming to a place to prey on a child.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  That is a huge difference.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Part of the episode is you have to get the reaction of a 90 year old woman who's like nephew or something is getting arrested for being a pedophile. And then he'll go up, like Skeeter Jean will go up to that lady and he'll do this in all kinds of different episodes and talk about what their whatever child nephew did. It's so horrifying to watch, but yet I, you know, I, I don't watch it so much anymore, but I used to watch this stuff all the time.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  Uh, I'll let Ryan dig into why you stopped watching it.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  See, I don't, I don't watch a lot of this stuff, but I do find myself in the presence of pedophiles on VR chat like constantly. And that is like, so like I, I see them like firsthand and like, I'm not hanging out with them, but you know, you just run into them like when you're meeting that many people in the online space and, uh.

• 12:35Ryan Broderick?

  The Illuminati got me.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  Jeff said, uh, for you to pick up later, uh, that he used to watch a lot of this content, but has since stopped. And I didn't ask him why, so you could. And also Kat said that she runs into a lot of predators on VR chat, which I left for you to deal with. All we did was, uh, we watched the Skeeter Jean clip and talked about the differences between like what they're doing today versus before.

• 13:00Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. So let's, let's go in order of the upsetting things that you guys.

• 13:06Ryan Broderick?

  Jeff, why do you not watch this stuff as much as you used to?

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Um, you know, I used to watch it a lot to like go to sleep.

• 13:15Speaker 04

  What? How is everything you say worse than the last thing you just said?

• 13:21Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, okay, just hold on. You would watch, you would watch pedophile hunter YouTube videos to go to sleep.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  And I'll tell you, I'll tell you why, I'll tell you why. I think, and I actually talked to my very good friend about this, who actually did help stop me from getting raped one time. So he has really been looking out for me. Um, because and we could, we could touch on that later. I think I might have like a special sensitivity to this kind of stuff and was really on like the side of the hunters because of some things that happened to me when I was a teenager. Um, but, but I came to the conclusion that I was watching it because I feel a lot of like, I have a lot of like guilt and remorse. Like maybe like, I, I'm not diagnosed with like OCD or anything, but I'm thinking about maybe talk to somebody about that. But I have a lot of like, like, I feel like I've done a lot of really bad things in my life. And I think that I used.

• 14:11Ryan Broderick?

  Are you Catholic?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Sort of like a crutch.

• 14:13Ryan Broderick?

  Are you Catholic?

• 14:15Speaker 02

  No, but we were raised in a religious household for sure. Um, very, very much so. And so I have a lot of, a lot of guilt going on in my, in my mind, but better, I've been, been better about it, especially lately. Um, and I think that I use sort of those people on those shows as like a crutch to be like, well, at least I'm not that guy, you know? At least I'm not like sending pictures of my cock to like a 12 year old on Tinder or whatever. Like, I think that I got a lot of comfort out of just putting people like below me.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Does that make sense? And I think it helped me, it helped lull me to sleep.

• 14:49Ryan Broderick?

  Okay. And why did, why do you think you stopped watching it?

• 14:53Speaker 02

  I guess I just didn't need it anymore. It's not a medicine that I, it's not a medicine that I require any longer because I don't hate myself as much as I used to.

• 15:00Ryan Broderick?

  Interesting. What do you watch now when you go to sleep?

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Um, Art Bell. Coast to coast to coast.

• 15:07Ryan Broderick?

  That's probably better, yeah. So let's talk about the VR chat aspect of this because I, I do think one of the weirder kind of things about these channels is that they are so focused on like IRL predators. And there's almost like, like, like the original tip catcher predator is very much like we're finding people online. You know, these guys are like hunting them down a lot of times. You know, obviously they're finding them on chat app sometimes, but like, what was your experience with VR chat? Cause they, they is sort of like the wild west still, I think for a lot of this stuff.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I, I think things like, you know, VR chat, Roblox, et cetera, just like, you know, super unregulated. And so like, it's a lot easier to get away with doing stuff like that. And so it's then becomes a bigger drought. Like I think VR chat and Roblox are unregulated in ways that allow pedophiles to get past moderation.

• 15:58Ryan Broderick?

  Hundred percent.

• 15:59Speaker 03

  Um, and it just makes it, yeah, it's just a, just a very easy place for them to get away with what they do. Like I come across a lot of pedophiles in that game who are just open about like what they're looking for and like what they're doing. Or they'll just be straight up like flirting with a 14, 16 year old and be like a 30 year old man. And then all, all you can really do at that point is like tell moderation of that specific instance and like hopefully get that person banned from the instance. But.

• 16:28Ryan Broderick?

  I, so I, I spent years sort of on a beat where I was tracking down like predators on Minecraft, on YouTube, like, and I spent, you know, years, yeah. Basically it all kicked off with the Sam Pepper YouTube controversy years ago. And then I sort of just followed that beat for a while. And talking to the platforms was always really difficult. Talking to law enforcement was really difficult. At one point, one of the victims who didn't realize she was a victim yet, like called the cops on me to protect the Minecraft streamer that was grooming her. Like this world is just like, I think really complicated. And when I watch the pedophile hunter, like YouTube universe, all I can think is like, none of these guys are doing any real due diligence.

• 17:12Ryan Broderick?

  Like I, I think that's what makes me super nervous is like, you know, one story about one predator took me two years. And I had to deal with like multiple law enforcement agencies across multiple countries. And I'm still not even totally clear if they got him, right? Like, you know, that, and so when you, I see these guys jump out of a van and tackle somebody or whatever. I just think like, none of that's happening, I guess.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  No, I mean, they're just luring the dump, like they're doing a opportunistic pedophiles who are like people who like, I'm, I'm going to say, I'm going to go out on a little bit of a limb here and say that the people that are getting caught up in these, in these stings are usually very, very stupid people who are opportunistic and are getting, you know, batched into like DMs on like dating apps and stuff of them telling like, hey, oh, I'm 14, 15, 16. I'm really, really horny. I want you really, really bad. Please come cross, cross state lines for me. These morons fall for it. And then that's all they need to have whatever excuse they want you to go like, yeah, like make someone drink Windex and from, on camera.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  And then nobody's going to get mad at them because it's like, well, they're pedophiles. Like they're not human beings.

• 18:24Ryan Broderick?

  Right. I, I feel like that's a good intro into, you know, where we're going to start talking about this, like in a deeper way, which is with the Vitali incident. So are you guys familiar with Vitali?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  He was getting people off basically. He like a couple of guys.

• 18:40Ryan Broderick?

  Say that in a different way, Jeff.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  Um, no.

• 18:42Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. What do you, he does have a bang bus episode, but what do you?

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Wait, does he actually?

• 18:46Ryan Broderick?

  He does. Yeah. It's extremely embarrassing.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  But does he fuck on it?

• 18:51Speaker 04

  Oh, this guy.

• 18:53Ryan Broderick?

  Bang bus.

• 18:54Speaker 04

  Can you talk to him on VR?

• 18:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, Vitaly Bangbus.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  He did such a piss poor job that he helped exonerate people.

• 19:01Ryan Broderick?

  He couldn't complete the mission on Bangbus.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  Are you serious? He went on Bangbus fucked and then couldn't bus?

• 19:08Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, he couldn't. I don't think he could get it started at all.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 19:12Ryan Broderick?

  I'm not gonna watch it right now, but yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 02

  Pull it up. Jesus Christ, you get the, you get every man's biggest dream, you know? You get picked up by the Bangbus.

• 19:20Ryan Broderick?

  You get picked up by the Bangbus.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  Can you, for the majority of our audience, I hope, can you explain the Bangbus?

• 19:28Speaker 02

  Everybody knows what the Bangbus is.

• 19:29Ryan Broderick?

  Everyone knows what the Bangbus is, Grant. It's a bus. It's a van. It's more of a van.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  It's kind of like a hometown trolley. That if you're lucky, if you're a very lucky guy, it will come and pick you up. You could be anywhere in the greater Long Beach area. And they'll, they'll swoop.

• 19:45Ryan Broderick?

  Or Miami.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  More Ami, sometimes even San Diego. And then they'll swoop you and then, you know, you get like, uh, you know, uh, a Riley Reid or a Breonna Banks.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  Bro, is this why you're always going to Long Beach?

• 19:59Ryan Broderick?

  He's trying to find the Bangbus. Okay. So Vitaly, uh, real name or full name is Vitaly Zador Evietsky. Uh, he's 34 years old. Um, he is effectively now like a citizen of nowhere because Russia doesn't want him. We don't really want him. He served time in like a, I think a Filipino prison for a while because he was filming exploitative content in the Philippines.

• 20:27Ryan Broderick?

  And then he comes back to America in April of this year. And he's doing like more of his To Catch a Predator style videos. And he accuses a guy named Akash of, um, talking to a 16 year old girl. Uh, and yeah, we can show you the video here, Grant, if you want to pull it up. Um, but according to the New York Times is what they wrote about what happened. Akash at first looked confused and then an expression of recognition crossed his face as he took in the camera crew. He knew what kind of video this was. He also knew they made a mistake. She never told me she was 16, he protested, immediately scrolling through the dating app messages on his phone for proof. Vitaly acted contrite for a beat.

• 21:10Ryan Broderick?

  My dad, my bad, bro, he said, but the decoy insisted she had the goods. Uh, and so this is the video here. We'll play it for you.

• 21:17Speaker 05

  Hey, how are you? Chinga ringa ringa ringa ringa maga ringa ringa. Chinga ringa, you wanna rape a 16 year old?

• 21:26Ryan Broderick?

  So yeah, I mean, the, this video is racist from the jump.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Word. You're just total, oh my God. And it's like, this is, yeah.

• 21:34Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, so Akash looked at the message on the decoy's phone in disbelief. That's not me, he said, that's not my account. Decoy's message, as many men as possible, sometimes talking on the phone or, so the decoy is like the, the woman there. They message as many men as possible, sometimes talking on the phone or video calling them to establish they are real. They're paid a bounty of a few hundred dollars per pred quote, unquote, who actually shows up, according to Rayma McClure, who worked as a producer with Vitaly. The cops end up arresting, uh, Akash. Um, and they posed to take selfies with Vitaly because they're fans. They realized very quickly that the team had completely fucked up.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the guy just did nothing wrong. And then he's blasted on the internet in front of tens of millions of people being like, Europe had a file. Yeah, we probably shouldn't do that.

• 22:21Ryan Broderick?

  This is what happened. So Akash said he had ma, he managed to reach Vitaly the next day via private message on X and that he had spoken by phone with Vitaly, who said his team had messed up and he was firing all of them. And then Akash said, you need to tell everyone I'm innocent. On the next Monday, Vitaly posted a mea culpa on X and asked his followers to stop contacting them. My team and I mistakenly portrayed Akash as a child predator, uh, he wrote. And, uh, it seems like there is a lawsuit on the horizon, or at least there's been threats of a lawsuit, uh, over the whole thing.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  You gotta kind of have the details right for such a sensitive operation.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Right. And also, you know, when you have like a crime where we've decided that it's like so horrendous that it doesn't require, um, you know, due process, uh, that you can, if you don't like someone, or maybe you're racist towards them, you can just put them online and make a stream and call them a pedophile and ruin their lives forever and have no recourse, um, for doing that, which is bad.

• 23:23Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, there's like a, there's a, there's an element of vigilante justice here. And, you know, the, the fact that this is like, eh, the aesthetics of it are so ugly and like right wing and fascist to me also. It just, it feels like something out of like Robocop. Like it feel, it just feels like I'm watching the end of the world when I watch these videos.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  Sure. I feel like when we say, and I'm not saying that any of us are doing this, but it's like very easy for someone to be like, this is all just horrible and bad. But at the same time, there's like a huge population of people in America, and I guess around the world who have been horribly sexually abused and will never have any like recourse or justice for it. And watching stuff like this can be like really cathartic, um, for them. And it's very, it's attacking it is like really, really, so like when people say that like, oh, primetime is this shadowy thing to make it seem like we shouldn't be punishing pedophiles. I don't agree with that, but I see where it comes from when people who have been like

• 24:27Speaker 02

  raped or molested feel so powerless and helpless. And I think it's no coincidence that this content is as popular as it is. Because there are, there's, you know, there's pedophiles fucking everywhere in, in our schools, in our churches, in Roblox, in whatever game that you play. So i- it's, it's, I think it's very easy to look at this stuff and be like, well, at least these guys are doing something about it. When a lot of times they're really not, and a lot, and very often making it worse.

• 24:55Ryan Broderick?

  Well, I want to talk about the aesthetics of this and like sort of how it got to this point, but I want to do that after the jump. So let's go to a quick word from our sponsors. Uh, and then I want to sort of talk about how, I mean, basically To Catch a Predator changed the way we talk about any of this stuff and, and sort of how it starts to muddy, I think what you're saying, Jeff, like the sort of, the sort of drive for justice here. So we'll be right back.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Hello, it's us.

• 25:21Ryan Broderick?

  What are we promoting?

• 25:22Speaker 04

  Uh, you're going to be listening to an episode about internet to catch your predators. But he and I.

• 25:28Ryan Broderick?

  That's right.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  We just finished recording a bonus about the movie Primetime.

• 25:32Ryan Broderick?

  That's right, which is a movie about non-internet. No, wait, they are on the internet. They're predator. This is an episode about the internet shows. No, hold on, wait. You are currently listening to a podcast about the guys on the internet doing their own version of To Catch a Predator. And we just recorded a bonus episode about primetime, a movie about the TV show To Catch a Predator, in which Chris Hansen and his team were hunting down men on the internet.

• 26:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:08Ryan Broderick?

  See that? So if you come over to our Patreon.

• 26:11Speaker 04

  Patreon.com/panicworld.

• 26:13Ryan Broderick?

  You'll be able to listen to that bonus right now.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  No, it'll be out this week on the Patreon. So shortly after this episode airs, that will be waiting for you at Patreon.com/panicworld for $6.66 a month.

• 26:29Ryan Broderick?

  Or $69 a year for all of it.

• 26:32Speaker 04

  Which keeps the lights on here. So it makes you get extra content and it keeps the content spewing out of our mouth holes.

• 26:41Ryan Broderick?

  That's right.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  Love you. All right, now to the episode about internet to catch your predators.

• 26:46Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  The wheel had roads. Electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com/AI to learn more.

• 27:03Speaker 07

  This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new workday.

• 27:34Ryan Broderick?

  So before To Catch a Predator launched, there were people doing this sort of thing. In 1996, there was, do you guys know what IRC is?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 27:48Ryan Broderick?

  So IRC was sort of like a proto AIM, instant messaging service, Internet Relay Chat is what it stands for. And they had a group called the Enforcers, which does go hard. And it was founded by a hacker named Analyzer, which also goes hard.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:02Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. And his real name was Ehud Tenenbaum, and he was 17 at the time.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  That name also goes hard.

• 28:11Ryan Broderick?

  The Analyzer and his enforcers would basically carry out one of the worst hacks of a government in history. And they breached the Pentagon's internal network, as well as a bunch of other Department of Defense sites.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  And they found a bunch of pedophiles in the government?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  No way.

• 28:27Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, here we go. Well, here we go. So according to ZDNet at the time, "In the past, we've basically seen kids doing sort of a cybercrime form of graffiti, where they're going in and defacing low-security websites. What we're seeing here is a group who sat down and planned and strategically went after a system with the sole goal of gathering files. Asked during the interview what they intended to do with the material, one of the hackers replied, 'Release it or sell it.' 'I think international terrorist groups would be interested in the data we could gain access to,' the hacker said. 'Governments would bury it for intelligence purposes.'" They ended up getting arrested. And per the LA Times, they wrote, "When Tenenbaum was arrested on suspicion

• 29:10Ryan Broderick?

  of hacking his way into the Pentagon and other sensitive computer systems, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was openly admiring of the young Israeli, lauding his skills as 'damn good.'" Netanyahu is among, this is what they wrote at the time, just to point out. Netanyahu is among many Israelis who have reacted to the news of Tenenbaum's alleged exploits with a mixture of national pride and amused approbation. The teenager, known throughout Israel as the Analyzer, his internet nickname, has received dozens of requests for media and interviews and book and movie deals, along with several job offers.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  This happened in Israel? Yeah, right.

• 29:50Ryan Broderick?

  Per Wired, "The enforcers protested Tenenbaum's arrest by hacking more websites and claiming that everything they've done was to catch pedophiles and other sellers of child sexual assault material online. 'Think about the pedophilia and racism on the internet. The government does nothing to stop,' one of the hackers wrote. But oh, yes, they will take care of you, the hacker, and mark you a criminal. What do you do? You choose to strike out against these evils in your own fashion.'" Tenenbaum ended up serving six months in prison, and we didn't find any evidence that supported that this had anything to do with catching pedophiles.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  But they didn't catch any pedophiles, actually.

• 30:31Ryan Broderick?

  Just to put this all together, really nice and tight for you. A group of hackers, led by an Israeli, who had a personal fan in Benjamin Netanyahu, hacked the Pentagon. And then when he was arrested, his fellow hackers claimed that they were trying to expose pedophiles and then hacked a bunch of other sites. And there's no evidence to support that in any way.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. Well, you know, I guess something, nothing new under the sun, I suppose.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  So.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  It was hacking into America to learn all of our secrets. And they'd be like, "Guys, don't trip."

• 31:14Speaker 03

  It was actually to find pedophiles. It was just for, we didn't find any, but we, we might have, we almost did.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  You guys are mad about this? Are you a pedophile?

• 31:26Ryan Broderick?

  The Analyzer is quoted on the record, saying he planned to release it or sell it, and that foreign governments would want to buy this stuff for intelligence purposes. And then they spun around.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  So they can find pedophiles, too?

• 31:39Ryan Broderick?

  You have to remember, it's 1996, so maybe these guys aren't totally clear that the internet is forever yet. But yeah, it's not the most elegant way of going about this. But what I think is really interesting about that point, aside from all of the fascinating connections to Israel, I think the idea of catching predators and vigilante justice on pedophiles is a very easy way to cover other forms of vigilantism, or sometimes just straight-up crime. And that's, and that's, I think, why it makes it so complicated to talk about it. Because what Jeff said is true. Like, there's obviously a reason for these shows being as popular as they are.

• 32:20Ryan Broderick?

  And there's obviously an emotional reaction that, like, the many, you know, I grew up in the Boston area in the 90s. I have people, you know, in my family's orbit, you know, people I've known for many years who are victims of the Catholic Church from the New England area. Like, and they are now in their 60s and 70s, and they are having a very tough time. Because they still don't know how to talk about this stuff. But at the same time, because this is such an emotional thing, a lot of bad actors, you know, have quickly understood that this is a really easy way to kind of cover up less savory activities. That would be the point of that little opening story.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a great propaganda tool to use. It's just to, you know, because everybody has, you know, everybody wants to be like, "Oh, kill your local pedophile." But it's like, that doesn't help, you know? That sort of attitude doesn't create less pedophiles. I actually think it creates more, because you just get people deeper into the shadows and helping them get like the help and counseling they need to like not offend.

• 33:22Ryan Broderick?

  I mean, it's the reason why every fascist movement likes to trot out the queer people are child predators idea every single time they want to, you know, make people.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a hood classic.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was kind of trying to figure out a way to like phrase that concept.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Like, even today, you see it all the time, like on fucking Twitter of, you know, right-wing guys love to be like, oh, well, like, the main thing that Hitler did was get rid of all of the Jewish child brothels. It's like, even if he did do that, that's not the main thing that he did.

• 33:53Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I don't, you know, I think, I think that's one we just like, I think that's a real, just have to go down. Trying to figure out, yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no problem, guys. I got your back.

• 34:05Ryan Broderick?

  No, Kat, say more, because I'm sort of curious, like, what you were trying to.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I mean, a lot, I get a lot of conservatives like that, you know, think all trans people are horrible because they just have been tripped by the government into thinking that we're all pedophiles trying to groom children into our way of life. And that's their justification for trying to erase us from social life, is that we're all, you know, dangerous predators, and that's their justification. And I think that the extremely limited evidence they have of any trans people really trying to do anything like that is enough to get people who are kind of in the center to start hating trans people, because that's how they view us.

• 34:49Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's exactly right. And we, we tasked our researcher Adam with trying to find examples of like, what he call, what he calls "white hat anti-predator stings," run by civilians. So like, ones run for good purposes. He found one in 2002. The LA Times wrote about it. They wrote, "By day, Julie Pozzi is a 37-year-old homemaker tidying the family's trailer at the foot of the Rocky Mountains and homeschooling her daughter. But at night, Pozzi logs on to the internet as Kendra, a gum-snapping 14-year-old looking for trouble."

• 35:25Speaker 04

  You don't have to write it that way.

• 35:26Ryan Broderick?

  Journalism in the 2000s, like, just wasn't very good.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  Having a 14-year-old looking for trouble.

• 35:32Ryan Broderick?

  Like, it just, it really, every time, every time we read anything before like 2012, I'm just like, ugh. And it wasn't like that in the 90s either. It's like a weird post-9/11 psychosis that the media went through. I really do think so. Anyways, she ended up helping with the, she led the arrest of over 20 people across five years. And she is not the norm in this space, we should say. So the LA Times wrote, "Some, like Pozzi, work solo. Others belong to larger volunteer bands with bellicose names such as Predator Hunter, SoCOM, and Cyber Army Pedophilia Fighters," which is a really good hardcore band name, actually. That would be a really good, that would be sick.

• 36:14Ryan Broderick?

  "Law enforcement, for the most part, views the internet activists as attention-seeking busybuddies. FBI agents in Los Angeles turn away about a dozen people a year who offer help with online sex stings, suspicious that some might be closeted pedophiles themselves. You talk to them for a bit, and you get a gut feeling that something's not quite right," Supervisory Special Agent Randy Arden said.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  It's like being overly performative, to be like, "I'm not this, because I'm fighting against it, actually."

• 36:44Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  I think that it's like, there could be good ways to do this, like citizen volunteers or whatever, like volunteer firefighters for pedophiles. But it's like, it seems like you'd probably want to do this, like, focus on things that are like more like on an institutional level, rather than just like dragnetting, like, just random. There's like what they're doing, like, where you talk about Vitality was doing, where he's just messaging as many men as possible on dating apps and just trying to find the pawns come at the bottom. Like, I think you got to go for the people who are like embedded into like schools and churches and stuff. Like, you got to get the guys and the girls who have like a system going on. The Larry Nassers of the world, and the flute teachers at my old high schools of the world.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  I'll give it to Chris Hansen for catching the BB Yahoo's fucking bodyguard.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  That was funny. Did you guys see that? Where there was a guy who got busted on To Catch a Predator, and he's like, "I'm a bodyguard for Benjamin Netanyahu. You can't do this to me."

• 37:41Ryan Broderick?

  It's just another one of those fascinating references to that administration that we, you know, might sometimes make in this episode. And really, I don't know why that keeps happening. Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a total mystery.

• 37:51Ryan Broderick?

  What I think is like most fascinating about this stuff is that I thought To Catch a Predator started this wave. But actually, like, per the research Adam, our researcher, found, it's the opposite. Which is, it was, it was a lot of groups on the internet already doing this sort of thing, and the media already writing about it. And then To Catch a Predator launches a couple of years later.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  And ruined it.

• 38:20Ryan Broderick?

  Well, like all things, like it blew it up and then made it completely impossible to sort of keep in a box.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:28Ryan Broderick?

  So To Catch a Predator launches in 2004 and it's like a, it's a ratings, you know, hit immediately. It was also like heavily criticized. We have one quote from someone interesting here. So I'm going to read this quote and then I'm going to, I'm going to ask you who you think said it because they, um, I will just give you a hint. They've gone on to make TV themselves. Okay. So this person wrote of To Catch a Predator at the time. Presumably someone at To Catch a Predator HQ sat down with a bunch of audition tapes and spooled through it, trying to find a sexy 18 year old who could pass for 13. They'll have start, they'll have stared at girl after girl, umming and ahhing over their chest sizes until they found just the right one.

• 39:13Ryan Broderick?

  When a TV show makes you feel sorry for potential child rapists, you know, it's doing something wrong. Who do you think? What, what famous showrunner?

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Uh, Sean Hannity.

• 39:24Speaker 04

  That's a good guess.

• 39:25Ryan Broderick?

  So that was from Charlie Brooker, the inventor of Black Mirror.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 39:30Ryan Broderick?

  Who was a TV critic at the time.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  I mean, uh, yeah, I mean, it is a very Black Mirror style TV show.

• 39:36Ryan Broderick?

  It is absolutely, also, if you guys haven't seen Charlie Brooker's zombie TV show before Black Mirror, Dead Set, it's very good. It's about the cast of Big Brother who don't realize a zombie apocalypse has started outside and no one's telling them about it. It's really good. So, um, To Catch a Predator, unlike the YouTubers that would follow and even the hackers before, were fairly buttoned up about who they were going after. They sort of did their research. They were obviously exploitative in certain ways and they, you know, got a lot of criticism for it, but they kind of topped everybody in terms of how bad things got. Jeff, you, uh, hinted at this at the top of the show. It would eventually end in a suicide. A assistant district attorney in Texas shot himself while police tried to serve him a

• 40:21Ryan Broderick?

  warrant while the show had been filming. And, um, they ran that episode and then the show was canceled. And once that happened, a million To Catch a Predators, like basically spawned immediately after.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Can we just talk about that they ran the episode?

• 40:37Speaker 02

  I mean, it's.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Do they talk about the suicide on the episode or?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 40:42Ryan Broderick?

  No, they do.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:43Ryan Broderick?

  They do.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Cause the whole episode, he's like, they're outside of their house, like waiting to go in and then they know that the guy has a gun and they know they can't go inside and they're like, well.

• 40:52Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I remember the edit, like they really sensationalized the edit. It was, it was like framed on the show as like a big moment.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  I think they were so high on their own supply that they probably just weren't able to comprehend that that would be too much for American audiences.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  Did To Catch a Predator go off air because it was too much for the American public that somebody committed suicide in an episode? Or is it like that NBC Universal was like, this is becoming a liability in a way that we do not want to manage?

• 41:21Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, Conrad's estate sued NBC for a hundred and five million dollars.

• 41:26Speaker 03

  And won?

• 41:27Ryan Broderick?

  It was settled out of court.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  Shut.

• 41:30Ryan Broderick?

  And the production costs were becoming extremely expensive. The investigations were becoming more expensive and Chris Hansen has always said that the show ran its course, but it's almost entirely because the show was just a legal and financial rat's nest to deal with.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  That makes more sense.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:51Ryan Broderick?

  I wish all of America got together and were like, this is fucking gross. I don't like watching this, but that's not true.

• 41:58Speaker 04

  And it should be mentioned that Chris Hansen is doing a version of this on a, on like a true TV channel now and, uh.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, True Blue TV. Everybody subscribed to his Patreon.

• 42:09Ryan Broderick?

  Those are called fast channels.

• 42:10Speaker 04

  In a more, uh, recent episode, they busted an 18 year old who was in high school, who went on a date with a, who was trying to go on a date with a 15 year old, which was a legal, which was legal in some states.

• 42:23Ryan Broderick?

  Romeo and Juliet laws, baby.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  They did the same thing. They did the same thing to a gay 18 year old. They literally did the same thing to on To Catch a Predator. There was like an 18 year old gay kid meeting up with, I believe, a 15 year old gay kid on the show. That happened on the show.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  That's not.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  On, on Dateline and this kid's life was completely destroyed and turned upside down when it was like, yeah, like two teenagers, like an 18 or 15 year old, sorry, I have no problem with that. I have no problem with that. I think most people would agree.

• 42:48Ryan Broderick?

  Let's pause here for a second. Give the audience a second to digest all of this. This is all pretty heavy stuff and we're going to go to a word from our sponsor and come back. And when we do come back, we're going to talk about how the legacy of To Catch a Predator has evolved since the show went off the air.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  The wheel was brilliant, but the road made it iconic. Electricity was powerful, but the grid brought it to every home. Innovation needs infrastructure. AI is no different, especially in finance where AI can't run without context, but it can run on Plaid's infrastructure. Built over 13 years to understand why money moves. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.

• 43:35Speaker 07

  This episode is brought to you by Workday. Guessing is for game shows, not your business, especially when your margin for error is zero. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance and IT with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission aware, giving you accuracy 24/7 and the ability to not just get work done, but get it done right. It's a new workday.

• 44:06Ryan Broderick?

  One of the earliest channels doing To Catch a Predator content was in 2013 or so. And it was two guys from the UK, which is an island full of pedophiles. Like there were like two high profile pedophiles outed like the day I landed there when I moved there in 2016.

• 44:24Ryan Broderick?

  Their Mr. Rogers was a necrophiliac pedophile. It's a nightmare place, full of nonsense. So it kind of makes sense that like they would, they would pick up that mantle pretty quickly and they immediately run into another situation where a, a target kills themselves. The BBC reports, the leader of the group, Scumbuster, has told the BBC, we were not there to hurt anybody. We are there to get an explanation. They have denied being to blame for the recent suicide of a man. Gary Cleary was found hanged in his Lyssia Shear home on the 13th of May, four days after he was arrested by police and released on bail without being charged. The group claimed it had gathered evidence after contacting him online and posing as a 14 year old girl.

• 45:06Ryan Broderick?

  And then the BBC interviewed a criminologist who wrote, uh, a criminologist who said, there's a growing frustration among the public, among, uh, online pedophiles are at epidemic levels. Police forces have seized about 300 million child abuse images over the past few years, which shows the scale of it. The feeling that the issue is not being properly tackled by authorities leads to, to people trying to get involved themselves. And then basically from there, a million YouTube channels bloom and it's just kind of been a part of the content ecosystem ever since.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  I, I mean, I think it's like the, the fixation on it. I mean, I just, I think that the obsession with like fucking young people is like a deep, deep sickness. We'll just like, look at like the front page of like any porn site, right? Every porn site is like the minimum wage. Like if they could go lower, they would. What's every porn? It's barely legal teen, like fucks her stepdad. And, and you know, it's like, when that's what's everyone is watching and what everyone is inundated with, and I'm not like trying to blame porn. I know we fucking did a whole episode about this. I'm just saying that's like, that's a symptom of, I don't know, this sort of sick desire for power or status or pleasure, um, at no matter what cost.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  And then that sort of is like the other side of that. And like the guilt that that creates in the mind is probably sort of the reflection of that is this obsession with like hunting down and killing anyone you suspect to be like a pedophile. That's kind of how I feel about it.

• 46:37Ryan Broderick?

  So I don't disagree with you, but I do, I do want to share a theory that I maybe I've said on the show before, which is that I believe that the incest porn thing is actually a symptom of the housing crisis.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  Wait.

• 46:46Speaker 04

  No, yeah, that's interesting.

• 46:49Ryan Broderick?

  Back in the day when people could afford to, you know, move away from home, you know, you might be out at your job, which wasn't remote and you might get picked up by the bang bus or you'd call a plumber to come visit your house and fix your pipes and then fix your pipes, you know? You were interacting with other adults in the world. You'd go to your office, you'd have a handyman come over, whatever. Pizza delivery guy. Young people now, you know, they, they, they live at home. So you've got to create porn scenarios that feel believable and relatable. And it's like, well, we can't do full incest.

• 47:23Speaker 02

  Everybody's stuck as, so they just the only, they just want to fuck whatever's in front of them.

• 47:28Ryan Broderick?

  Well, cause it has to be relatable.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Part of it's like, it feels more familiar.

• 47:31Ryan Broderick?

  It has to be aspirational, but relatable.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  Before people were more familiar with like plumbers and pizza guys coming to their home or like, yeah, being picked up by the bang bus because they're like out and about.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  And then I was like, I wonder if, I'm sure that he, there's probably, is there data to correlate this?

• 47:45Ryan Broderick?

  I've been straight up trying to find data about this for a couple of years now. If someone listening has any way to help me prove this theory, I truly believe that the incest porn thing is just straight up, what could be possible in a situation where you're 25 years old and you're living at home and you don't have any real sort of connection to the outside world. It's like, well, I just got a hot stepsister. So like, that makes sense. That's like the least gross way to do it.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  To me, like the way that, that, you know, cause like I go on porn websites occasionally and it's like, I see what's, I don't have like an account or a profile, you know? It's always like on a cashless browser, like incognito. So it's just showing me like the fresh, what the world is watching and like.

• 48:23Ryan Broderick?

  Raw feed, yeah.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, the raw feed. Exactly. That's a, that's a nice term. I like that. The raw feed, um, is whatever is like most popular in the world. And to me, like those advertisements always felt like the candy cigarette advertisements that are illegal now. It's like, it to me, it's like, it seems like those are like designed to appeal to like the lizard brain of children.

• 48:42Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. It's like audio visual stimulus that just you stare at and you goon to and, but it has to be believable. It has to be connected to your life in some way. So you could kind of fantasize about it.

• 48:52Speaker 03

  People want a ta, people create a taboo that feels safe, but also as familiar as possible.

• 48:57Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, exactly.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  That's so interesting.

• 49:00Ryan Broderick?

  So.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  I can't, I work in porn and I've never thought about this. That's such, that's so interesting, Ryan. I appreciate that perspective.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Dude, honestly, you could probably use this knowledge to make more money.

• 49:10Speaker 03

  I don't want, I don't want to do

• 49:12Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, our parents just got married. I now live with you. Imagine like the most, like the bleakest Gen Z neat life, like N E E T life. And then just like figure out how to goonify the edges of it. And like, I think you'll make a lot of money.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  That's why, see, that's why I'm saying.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  That's why the e-girl stuff is like so.

• 49:31Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's like.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  All of those e-girls are designed to look like, like what it was like, what is like the Goth baddie? Like, let's, let's examine that for a second. Isn't that like just the girl like in.

• 49:42Speaker 03

  Girl in the store.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  The girl in your school, like in your class that you like weren't supposed to like. But you kind of did were like weirdly horny for her. And now like the quote unquote Goth baddie is now just like a caricature of that archetype. Like, is it just come in waves where it's like every like sort of sexual icon of the generation is like the girl that you didn't fuck, but you wanted to like when you were like, you know, in high school.

• 50:06Ryan Broderick?

  I have a lot to say about this, but I do feel like we have to stay unfortunately on the topic of catching pedophiles. But I do want to put for the record that I, I agree with the conspiracy theory that the Goth baddie that's currently possibly dating Drake is wearing a chest plate. I think, I believe that.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 50:22Ryan Broderick?

  I'm glad we're all, I'm glad we're aligned here. So, okay, just to, just to wrap up this, like very kind of bleak and complicated world we've been in for the last hour or so. Jeff, I, I want to come back to sort of your, the tension, I think here, which I, I think is interesting. And I, I want to thank you for sort of sharing your perspective on it and your personal perspective on it. Because like, it is really complicated where it's like, if you are someone who has been preyed on, if you are a victim of sexual violence anyway, and you watch one of these videos, I bet you it's gonna be totally invigorating and validating and like feel good. But it is also like, I think very true that these videos are masking like darker societal impulses.

• 51:03Ryan Broderick?

  And the aesthetics of them are very scary. I think the, the sort of unpredictable nature of how these things can go, whether it is accusing someone wrongly, or just contributing to like someone committing suicide on live television or livestream, like that, I think we can all agree that like, that's not good for the world to do.

• 51:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, a lot of people are just using like the accusatoriness of like calling someone a pedophile for their own gain.

• 51:32Ryan Broderick?

  Yes, and we, we didn't talk about this because I was like, let's not make this any grimmer, but I feel like I should mention it, which is like, you know, we did an episode about Chris Chan a few months ago now, maybe a year ago, almost.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Saw it too.

• 51:45Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, a big dimension of the Christine Chan story is that she is autistic and possibly developmentally disabled. And I've seen videos with, with that kind of person being picked up by a pedophile hunter on YouTube. And they have clearly no idea what's going on as they are being chased around or forced to drink Windex or whatever. And I just think that like, that is bad. I just think that's really bad.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  I'd say most pedophiles I've run into on like VR chat, et cetera, they are very developmentally like stunted. And like these types of mental disorders aren't an excuse to abuse people, but it is an interesting correlation. And I feel like, you know, if mental health was treated more seriously, like maybe these people wouldn't be doing such work.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  That's also, it's like, it also contributes to a culture where we drive people further into darkness and make the idea that like, because like, what's the problem, what's a huge problem we have right now, right? Is people, there's like, there's really interesting data about people who are actually pedophiles and people who commit sex crimes against children. And there's lots of like what you hear, these, these stories of people who I actually think that are really brave of, uh, non-offending pedophiles who advocate for, we need better mental health and counseling opportunities. So we can go, even if we have these urges, we can go to places where we, we know we're not going to get arrested for just saying how we feel. Because there are people who are very, very unlikely to offend, even though they have these like dark sinister urges inside of them. Probably a lot of people who are molested themselves.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  And then they go and they tell a counselor about this, even though they're, maybe they don't even very feel very close to offending, but they're scared that they might do something, or maybe they have like OCD or something like that. And then they go to these places and then they're reported to the police. And then, so instead of, since there's this idea out there that if, if they talk about it to anybody, or it's like, they'll be killed or beat up on the spot if they even talk about this, they don't get the counseling that they need. And then maybe they do become more likely to actually commit a sex crime against children. And it's very unpopular because people just want to be like, oh, if anybody even has these thoughts, we should string them up and kill them. I'm more interested in how do we create as little sex crimes against children as possible. And that's the number one thing that I'm concerned about. And the, the solution to that doesn't seem to be just like trolling as many people as possible.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  And I do think that most of the people who are picked up by these operations are probably not super highly likely offenders. They just acted very stupidly and selfishly when the opportunity was like presented in their lap and they're stupid enough to take it. Whereas someone who's like more likely to offend, like especially multiple times is probably somebody who's actually like more intelligent. And like, wouldn't just like meet up with some fucking kid that like hit him up on a dating app. They probably would like insert themselves into a position where they're around a lot of children and they have privacy around them. And they have the ability to then prey on.

• 54:34Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, they would get a job at Bear Stearns in the eighties and then slowly work their way into the KGB, the MI6, Mossad and the CIA. Build out sort of a, a network of vacation homes and have rich men come over for dinner. And then offer up, you know, sex trafficking victims as party favors.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  Or become a flute teacher at my school.

• 54:55Ryan Broderick?

  Or that, yeah.

• 55:00Ryan Broderick?

  You know, like we, we haven't even really touched on, uh, the sort of adjacent story in the news, you know, as you record this, which is the Wheel of Fortune guy. Who is on a plane, using a Tor browser, which I don't know if you guys have ever used a Tor browser, but the fact that you could get a Tor browser to work on airplane wifi is absolutely outrageous. It like, should have been his first maybe thought to not be doing this, but he was on a dark web.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Which guy?

• 55:23Ryan Broderick?

  So it's the announcer from Wheel of Fortune. He was on a pedophile support group on the dark web.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  I didn't know it was a support group.

• 55:31Ryan Broderick?

  On his laptop. And the messages on the laptop are from users being like, hey, man, don't log into this in public. People are gonna see. And he's like, no one's gonna see. And then someone took a photo and tweeted it and he got fired. It wasn't like he was on the dark web trading, you know, CSAM images. It was a support group for these guys.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  So it's not to support them being, to support them to not.

• 55:55Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, it's, it was like, yeah, yeah, one of those. Based on my.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  I did not, I did not know that part.

• 56:02Ryan Broderick?

  Based on my understanding of the story, um, I will double check it. We can cut that if it's not true, but like, but based on what I've read, that's what was happening. That is a whole complicated thing. You know, it ties into what you were saying, Jeff. It's like, you know, how do you create a space for the people who want to be rehabilitated and need to be rehabilitated can be? How do you create that environment? Yeah, you are right. Like, according to most statistics on, you know, that world, it is not like the creepy guy down the street. It is like the head of your softball league. Or it is someone who's like found their way into a position of power or some gray space in society where they can operate without, you know, any oversight like, and, and that's.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  Every billionaire.

• 56:46Ryan Broderick?

  It's every single billionaire. Yeah. We probably also haven't said this, but like YouTube and its algorithm don't make this any better. Like the, the fact that you can monetize this stuff and be rewarded for it is probably bad no matter what, I would say.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think you, yeah, I think they should probably just go ahead.

• 57:04Ryan Broderick?

  Just.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  I feel like you can't do this on YouTube. Probably a pretty easy fix right there. It seems like, yeah.

• 57:11Ryan Broderick?

  Did you guys see the, the giant really dark documentary that was released on YouTube a month ago? It's well made, I could say, by the documentarian Mike Clum. It's called The Sick Mind of EDP 445. And it's a, it's a lolcow documentary. It's the same guy who did the Boogie documentary.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  And right. Isn't Chris, Christine Chan cameo in that?

• 57:35Ryan Broderick?

  Christine Chan's in it, Chris Hansen's in it. It's sort of the nexus for everything we've been talking about. Where you have this sort of like complete breakdown between pedophile hunting and lolcows and online exploitation. Yeah, I didn't feel good watching it. Like I, I, I, and I kind of walked away feeling like everyone was exploiting everyone else. It just felt, it felt very dark.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. You walk away from the EDP 1445 documentary just being like, wow, you know, I think, I think.

• 58:07Ryan Broderick?

  But what did you give it on Letterman? I was like, wow, life sure is beautiful. Yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 03

  It feels like a lot of people use this as like a guise to just be ableist and racist and shit.

• 58:17Ryan Broderick?

  To wrap, I want to just, I want to circle back to, to Kat one last time here because like I, I want to hear a bit more sort of about your thoughts on sort of the vulnerable that gets swept up in this stuff, because we've heard Jeff a lot. He's a talker. And I want to give it to you for a second.

• 58:31Speaker 03

  It's become a very easy way for people to target anyone who they view as a pedophile, like just the, the outcasts of society who are pedophiles rather than putting that energy towards the people in power who are a lot more successful at being pedophiles and do a lot more of it. It seems like their energy, they don't really want to spend their energy on those people nearly as much as be on people they feel like are vulnerable. Like people they can just, you know, make a quick buck off of and like feel a lot more morally superior to, uh, because that's easier and they can monetize it.

• 59:14Speaker 03

  And also be racist too and make fun of them for various reasons.

• 59:20Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, there's a real punching down element to this stuff, I think.

• 59:23Speaker 04

  Do you think that's equally true for Catch a Predator, the show versus what we see online today?

• 59:30Speaker 02

  I mean, who's like the most, the most high profile guys that got on Catch a Predator probably like, because the guy like was like a kind of a high ranking cop, the guy that killed himself, if I'm not mistaken.

• 59:39Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, he was a DA.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  And then it's like, most people are just complete, like, you know, like.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  They, they also got the Benjamin Netanyahu.

• 59:46Ryan Broderick?

  Well, here, uh, Grant, um, I went to the To Catch a Predator Wiki, which has a list of offenders on it, which is a very dark place to be. They picked up a lot of people, actually, like a shocking amount of people.

• 59:59Speaker 03

  I don't know. I feel like if that show had like a bit more integrity, rather than just like trying to do easy like fishing grabs on like random people. They would have tried to go after people higher in power, but that was probably in their eyes too dangerous. Or they just like, wouldn't have been able to accomplish that for whatever reason.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Well, they say in the trailer of For Primetime, there's a scene where Robert Pattinson's like, I'm sick of these bottom feeders. Like I want a whale.

• 1:00:26Ryan Broderick?

  I, I just came across an article that is so fucking insane that I think I'm just gonna show it because I can't really do justice to how insane this looks.

• 1:00:40Speaker 04

  No, no, that's not a real website that exists.

• 1:00:44Ryan Broderick?

  For audio listeners, this is a what?

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  I love mo-

• 1:00:48Ryan Broderick?

  This is a watch mojo article titled-

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  Where are they now?

• 1:00:52Ryan Broderick?

  Titled 10 Chris Hansen Predator Criminals, Where Are They Now? Luckily, I have to log in to continue reading and I don't have an account, but that is-

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:01:00Ryan Broderick?

  Fucking deranged. I'm sorry. That is so crazy.

• 1:01:04Speaker 04

  They're all on a list, so that is a really easy, uh, 10 things, where are they now to put together?

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Where are they now? Well, go to Megan's Law dot com. You can find their address.

• 1:01:13Ryan Broderick?

  Anyways, in terms of high-profile offenders, there was a rabbi, there were two doctors. One was a cancer researcher, another was an emergency room doctor. There was a active-duty New York City firefighter.

• 1:01:32Ryan Broderick?

  And then there was a reserve officer with like a local police department. Another police officer in Florida. And then there was Bill Conrad, Conrad, uh, the assistant district attorney for Kaufman County, Texas. Then there were a bunch of guys who like went viral because of the show, because of the way they reacted. Which is-

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, like the pizza guy?

• 1:01:57Ryan Broderick?

  Like the pizza guy.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  The guy who's eating pizza.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  There's people doing like high investigative, like deep dives into the activities of billionaires and the Epstein files, et cetera. And that stuff just does not pull as many, as big of an audience as-

• 1:02:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're subjecting themselves to like horrible harassment and lawsuits. And it's like, what they do is actually like really, really brave and like really, really dangerous. It's way more high stakes. It's like what you were talking about, Ryan, about how you spent years tracking this like one guy. Like, that's where the actual work is. The actual work isn't just like, you know, what goes viral is, which is just, you know, beating up old guys and-

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  Baiting the autistic person down the street into committing his first crime.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, like getting like Boo Radley to like-

• 1:02:46Ryan Broderick?

  I, I think that's a, I think, no, I think that's a fantastic comparison, actually. Um, I, I, I just, I think whenever we start to get into the territory of like vigilante justice, things can get really unpredictable really fast. Um, this was a really fun, uplifting episode. I want to thank you both for coming on the show. I feel rejuvenated. I feel good about the world. Um, do you guys have anything to plug? Uh, anything going on? What's, what's, how's the, how's the pod? How's, how's things on your, your side of the screen?

• 1:03:14Speaker 02

  So we have a Patreon. We have a show, Free Country USA, YouTube, any podcast are available.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Jeff is gonna start doing tarot readings on the Patreon.

• 1:03:23Ryan Broderick?

  Cool.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  I am.

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  For a new Patreon tier?

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if you guys ever, yeah, we're gonna create a special high Patreon tier. So instead of like suggestions for episodes or everything, I'll just give you a monthly magical, very powerful tarot.

• 1:03:34Speaker 03

  He's very good at tarot readings.

• 1:03:36Ryan Broderick?

  That's cool.

• 1:03:37Speaker 02

  We're doing tarot readings, so I'll plug that.

• 1:03:39Speaker 03

  That's the plug. It feels wrong to plug my OnlyFans on this, uh, particular episode, so-

• 1:03:45Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  I don't really have anything else.

• 1:03:46Ryan Broderick?

  Normally, I would say go for it, but I think you're right. I think tonally, that would be off today.

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  If they're mo-, if they're motivated through these two links, they can find it.

• 1:03:54Ryan Broderick?

  They can find it, yeah. Um, and yeah, as we always ask, if people want to follow you on the internet, where can they do that?

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Free Country USA on Instagram and YouTube.

• 1:04:03Ryan Broderick?

  Awesome.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  That's the main one.

• 1:04:04Speaker 03

  Also Kitty Kim's everywhere.

• 1:04:07Ryan Broderick?

  Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. This was, this was great.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  Dude, thank you guys.

• 1:04:14Ryan Broderick?

  Hello, my name is Ryan Broderick. You know that because you're already listening to the show. We are doing a live show in New York City on October 27th, which just so happens to be my birthday. Has nothing to do with that, though. It's a Halloween show. Uh, you are encouraged to wear costumes. There will be a costume competition. You should come up with something internet-themed, I suppose. But like, look, like if you have like a really good costume and you wear it, may, maybe we'll give you an award anyways. Cause like, sure, why not? Um, but you should come. There'll be special guests. It'll be fun. There's comedy, there's music, there's some journalism. Uh, that's at October 27th at Baby's Alright in Williamsburg. And we will see you there, 7 o'clock. Uh, you can hit a ticket link.

• 1:04:57Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, probably in the body of this podcast episode.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, sure. We can make that happen.

• 1:05:04Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Panic World, Garbage Day Media.

• 1:05:07Speaker 00

  The wheel had roads. Electricity had the grid. Innovation needs infrastructure. Plaid makes AI work in finance. Visit plaid.com slash AI to learn more.