Did gender influencers doom Gen Z? (With Rebecca Jennings & Luke Winkie)

Despite society’s progress on gender norms, there is a historic divide on the "boy-girl internet," which recently has started to reemerge — the charge being led by Gen Z influencers. This week, writers Rebecca Jennings and Luke Winkie join us to answer the question: Are the kids all right? Our guests are Rebecca Jennings, a senior correspondent at Vox who also runs the Rebeccacore newsletter, and Luke Winkie, a staff writer for Slate who also runs the On Posting newsletter. You can follow their engaging posts (and engagement) at @rebexxxxa and @luke_winkie. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad 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

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• 0:29Ryan Broderick?

  To kick us off, Luke, Becca, you guys know each other, right?

• 0:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've met.

• 0:35Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 0:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 0:36Ryan Broderick?

  For the listeners who might not know that you guys do know each other, what was your meet cute like? How did you guys meet each other, actually?

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 0:44Speaker 03

  You wanna take it, babe?

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Okay, so Luke and I met on Hinge in late 2018, back when Hinge was good. We, yeah, we had a first date like two days before Halloween. And then we have been dating ever since. And now we live together and we're getting married.

• 0:59Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, so it's going well. It's going well, I guess, yeah.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  There's promise there.

• 1:16Speaker 03

  She said our first date was, was bad, but I thought it was good. I think by like date three, I think we kind of hit it.

• 1:23Ryan Broderick?

  This was supposed to be like a fun kickoff question, but this actually is thematically perfect for today's episode, so that's great. Both of you guys write about culture and apparently want to spend the rest of your lives together, which is great, but for people who aren't familiar with your work, you guys write about very different sort of sides, I think, of the same cultural coin in a lot of ways. And that's what we're going to be talking about on today's episode. It's an episode I've wanted to do forever, specifically with the two of you. And it's essentially answering two questions that are the same, which is, are boys all right and are girls all right? And I can steer you both, the experts of that. And you know what? Like, if this doesn't work, Panic World, pay for marriage counseling. If things go off, off the rails, it's totally fine. My name is Ryan Broderick. Welcome to Panic World.

• 2:05Ryan Broderick?

  It is a show about the viral witch hunts and freakouts that bubble up out of the darkest corners. Of the internet and two increasingly dark corners of the internet is all the content aimed specifically at teen boys and girls. And I say this in a binary way because that's unfortunately how this stuff is made and distributed online. The influencers who are posting things just for the guys or just for the ladies might be dooming our species to stop reproducing, which honestly might be for the best because it's also turning teen boys and teen girls into weird little fascists. With us this week is Luke Winkie and Rebecca Jennings. And to kick things off, how did you guys get started writing this kind of cultural criticism?

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I got into journalism in the most boy way possible, which is I wanted to be a music blogger.

• 2:52Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah, dude. Hell, yeah.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Kind of as that dried up as as as music blogging was sort of contracted out of existence as the media sort of developed. And the other thing I knew a lot about was the internet. I spent a lot of time on the internet my whole life and kind of like you like Ryan, I kind of parlayed that into, you know, writing about a weird subreddit I found, which was also a classic type of of blogging that doesn't quite exist anymore.

• 3:20Ryan Broderick?

  Gen X editors love when you find like a weird internet thing.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  There was the amount of money you could make off of like, not the amount of money, I would say the the the okay, living you can make freelancing.

• 3:32Ryan Broderick?

  The having two roommates level of income you need.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  Right, right. Of a weird subreddits or like a Twitch streamer doing something kind of like, you know, unique. It was that's, that's, I think that was kind of my entry point into into this kind of coverage.

• 3:46Ryan Broderick?

  Rebecca, what about you? How'd you get into this whole deal?

• 3:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so similarly, I started with like local blogging. I worked at Time Out New York and Brooklyn Magazine where there were a lot of aspiring music bloggers there too. And from there, I started working in local fashion at Racked New York that was owned by Vox Media. Then when that shut down, I moved over to Vox and that happened to be around the time that TikTok came out. And I was like, pretty early on the TikTok beat and which kind of I've kind of been doing ever since. That was like 2018.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  I have a distinct memory early in our relationship, like month four or five, where you were like, you were talking about TikTok and you said to me, it's like, I think this could be like my beat. I think I'm gonna be like the TikTok reporter. And that paid off quite well, as it turned out.

• 4:28Ryan Broderick?

  That's delightful. We were trying to figure out where to start today's story, as in what year did the earliest seeds of tradwives and incels and lookmaxers first get planted? And so I sent our researcher Adam off on a little hunt, and he settled on what I think is the right date for us, which is 2006, which was when Lisa Sugar launched PopSugar. You guys familiar with PopSugar?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Yes, it's owned by Vox Media.

• 4:56Ryan Broderick?

  Is it really? No? I didn't know that. That's crazy. Vox owns everything, man. I didn't know that.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  I know.

• 5:01Ryan Broderick?

  I used to work, my first like real internship, which has been lost to time thankfully, was for a PopSugar competitor called Emin Low. And I would do women's health and sexuality link roundups in between class and college. That's, that's, yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  What an ally.

• 5:19Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, thank you. I love, I love aggregating for women. Becca, can you talk a little bit about sort of like the, this era of women's blogging? And like what PopSugar kind of comes out of, like this world?

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Wow, yeah. I mean, this is sort of like, what if we did women's magazines on the internet? Like, that's sort of what PopSugar at all kind of were and are. It's a lot of beauty, fashion, lifestyle coverage. And then I think after that is when you get the wave of like feminist women's media that is directly critical of that kind of tone and content that we kind of have just been with for the last like 150 years.

• 6:02Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, that makes sense. 2006 is an interesting year because it's, it's the first year that New York Fashion Week gives press accreditation to bloggers, which is kind of interesting. It's also right after the publication of The Game by Neil Strauss. So Luke, when you were buying The Game to learn, you know, how to talk to women, like, you know, what kind of impact did that have on your life?

• 6:25Speaker 03

  Man, I remember I played the flash game version of The Game that existed on Newgrounds.

• 6:29Ryan Broderick?

  Holy shit. I was totally making a joke, but where you took it is like an incredible direction. Please tell me about this.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  When you consider where we are now, which is that, you know, young men and women are just not talking to each other at all and regard each other as like mortal enemies. There is like, the game at least like had this idea. It's like, hey, man, like, go out and have a good time. Like, you know, like, maybe come, maybe ask a girl this question. That might, you know, let, let you, you know, kick things off a little bit. It was obviously all toxic and objectifying in a bunch of other ways, but definitely a way around that time where you thought like, hey, you know how I'm gonna figure out, you know what I'm gonna use the internet for? All this time sitting in front of my computer, I'm just gonna use that to learn how to talk to women.

• 7:09Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, and it inspired like a whole wave of men's bloggers, the biggest of which at this time is of course Tucker Maxx. And I hope they serve beer in hell. It is a New York Times bestseller, and it would stay one for five years, which is just, books are so good. I love books. How would both you guys sort of summarize the gender discourse of the Tucker Maxx era, as it were? Like, you know, what, what makes it unique in your, in your mind?

• 7:37Speaker 03

  Becca, do you want to lead off?

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Well, I just feel like it's kind of like what you said. It feels so quaint now. It's just like, yeah, I had sex with a lot of girls and I treated them like objects. And I remember like, I was probably in like eighth grade at that time. And there was a lot of jokes about like, you know, women like belong and get back to the kitchen. And which, again, like, we're, we're seeing that now and there's all this panic over it. But they're like, wasn't that level of panic at all then? It was just sort of a thing that you just were like, well, that's just like what little boys do. And like, I also think that because this was sort of pre the era of like feminist media, it, it wasn't, like, I don't really remember it being like such a big deal, but maybe that's just because I was so young at the time. I don't know about you guys.

• 8:18Ryan Broderick?

  Well, to your point, I do remember it feeling very arch and camp in a way.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I think it's like, it kind of mirrors what's happened with a lot of like the internet where like, it all felt like we were still on the same page. Kind of in the same way if you were reading like Nazi stuff on 4chan in 2009. There was this idea that like, okay, this is like part of a meme, or this isn't that serious, or this is, this is just edgy guys being edgy. And I think now, it's really tough to not read that stuff a lot more literally in a way. But at the time, it was super camp. And I don't know, I just didn't feel quite as serious, you know?

• 8:52Ryan Broderick?

  Well, speaking of camp, I have a little clip I need to show you guys. It's in the studio chat, which is in the right hand side of the screen.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  Have you guys ever developed a crush on your favorite waitress at a restaurant? Because these working beauties are what we like to refer to as hired guns. Women who are hired for their beauty. So here are some tips and tricks and tactics and cognitive tools for picking up a hired gun. And that bartender needs to know that you were pre-selected, right? Make sure you have specific routines and, you know, jokes and have a good sense of humor. And over the shoulder, you begin in A3. So what do you got going for you, mugging your looks? And that's how you initiate the chat.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  I love the whole like high-value man, high-value woman thing. I'm obsessed with that.

• 9:46Ryan Broderick?

  Becca, does this work?

• 9:48Speaker 02

  Sorry, so the, okay. We were like talking dur-

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Is the idea here that like a woman's gonna look over at you and you're going to react in a way? Immediately that she's like, I'm gonna-

• 9:58Ryan Broderick?

  A bartender will stop work to talk to you if you take a photo.

• 10:02Speaker 03

  So I thought that's what, yeah, I thought that's what the premise here was, which I do think is a little advanced. But maybe, Becca, you have a different perspective on this.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  I really struggle to like, because this, from what it sounds like, this is a way for this mystery to insert the language of like math and science into a situation that like absolutely does not have anything to do with that. And he's just like, like, and using acronyms and jargon that make no sense. And he's basically saying like, take a picture of your friend and then the women will be like, what's that, a camera? Like as if it's like the 1870s.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  It reminds me a little bit of like, it just feels like, you know, when you're, when you're mystery, if you have built a pretty successful pickup artist career, you do have to keep coming up with more gimmicks and more ideas to keep people on the hook and more kind of jargon and terminology. And that's how you end up with Flash Game, which is-

• 10:57Ryan Broderick?

  Taking a picture. Using a camera.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Taking a picture to demonstrate high value.

• 11:02Ryan Broderick?

  I do love like the similarities between how he talks about this and how like any guy talks at a crypto conference. Like it's, it's very similar.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Men love an acronym.

• 11:11Ryan Broderick?

  Does that, Becca, do women like acronyms?

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Well, you know what's funny is I've actually interviewed, like when I was covering more crypto a couple of years ago, there were a lot of women that that kind of echoed that same way of speaking where it was like, and a lot of them, they're really into like neuro-linguistic programming. I think it's like NLP, a lot of people in the tech world. And hearing them talk about that and like, they often use it as a way to like rewire good habits or whatever. And 10x your life, 10x-ing is also one of those boy algorithm or boy things that I'm obsessed with. But yeah, it's with only with women that are in like male dominated fields.

• 11:50Ryan Broderick?

  I see. Okay. So in this late 2000s period, you see a real impulse to kind of codify these new online social norms. You see this with pickup artists that are trying to turn human relationships into math equations. But you also see this with 4chan trolls trying to list out exactly how you're supposed to be a boy online. So do either of you remember the rules of the internet?

• 12:12Speaker 02

  Is that like the laws? Yeah.

• 12:14Ryan Broderick?

  Yes. So this is, this is the known or meme page for if you want to take a spin through it. But the ones we're going to be focusing on are rules 29, which is all girls are men and all kids are undercover FBI agents. I don't know about, I never heard the second part of that rule, actually. That's an interesting take there. Rule 30, of course, there are no girls on the internet. And rule 31, tits or GTFO or get the fuck out.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  This just reminds me of, as someone who spent a lot of time in the IGN forums growing up, when there was a verified girl on the IGN forums, it was like a fucking 10 alarm fire. It was like the most exciting thing that would happen on that forum for that day.

• 12:52Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, there were women on the internet. They weren't arguing about video games and IGN. But like, what would you say like, you know, the average teenage girl in the 2000s was doing online at this time? Like, because they were online, obviously.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  I always assumed that like, there are no girls on the internet was sort of like a self-deprecating way of saying like, hey, like, we're all fucking losers. None of us talk to women in real life. Like, I didn't always think of it as something that was like, if you're a girl, get offline. Because girls don't want to hang out in those spaces where people are talking like that. Most people, anyway. Instead, I mean, again, like, I was like a teenager in the 2000s. So we were We were on AIM, we were on Buddy Profile where you could make like a sort of proto MySpace before there was MySpace. Obviously, everyone was on that. Oh, my God, making dolls. Yeah, I don't know if you have ever played around with the dolls, but I was a big dolls maker.

• 13:41Ryan Broderick?

  So there was a boy equivalent of the Doll Maker, which was the South Park character creator. And like every local band like had like a MySpace picture of them as like South Park characters. It was like a big deal.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  I have a very distinct memory of the real Big Fish MySpace.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  All the members of the band and the South Park character.

• 14:03Ryan Broderick?

  God, that that just like.

• 14:05Speaker 03

  We gotta, we gotta go back.

• 14:07Ryan Broderick?

  Listeners, listeners can't see it, but my third eye just opened and I started levitating.

• 14:13Ryan Broderick?

  From there, things start to kind of move towards corporate platforms. And that's when we get Liz Eswin joining a little website called Instagram. And she gets the username New York City, which is actually sick. That's like completely, that rules. And she becomes essentially the first modern influencer. And I was kind of wondering for both of you guys, like what you think the, the, the world of influencers did to this earlier primordial like online culture, because suddenly like the way I view it is like suddenly people had faces online and they didn't before. But I'd love to kind of hear about like what you think this did to sort of internet culture at large.

• 14:51Speaker 03

  So your, your terrain back, Ella, do you feel you hit it?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  I mean, it completely changed, I think, everything about like it. It made us all into brands. When you go from MySpace to Instagram, it suddenly becomes a lot more a lot easier, but also like a lot more profitable to create a following. So there's different incentives. I think on MySpace, the incentive was like, see people you know in real life or that you went to school with and you can see their followings and same thing on Facebook. But I think Instagram was the one that like, oh, no, you need following beyond the people that you know in real life. So I think to me, it's like you're, you're neither anonymous nor are you only surrounded by people that you already know or will ever know. And suddenly you have to sort of think about your place in the world much beyond your social circle, which I think completely changed the way people behave online.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  I think a lot about how for many years, like the, the highest sort of like capital reward you could get on the internet was like getting like a Tumblr book deal.

• 15:48Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 03

  You started like a Tumblr.

• 15:50Ryan Broderick?

  I wanted one so bad.

• 15:52Speaker 03

  Everyone did. You did like the Hipster Puppies Tumblr and then all of a sudden, all of a sudden you have the Hipster Puppies book and like Urban Outfitters and that was it. Like, there was no mechanism for Star Wars Kid to cash in, right? You're going viral on the internet was a reward in of itself. Is you like, wow, I, some people are looking at this image I made on the internets. And the influencer age, which we're still living through, and will probably define the internet for the rest of time, completely changed that structure. Where the idea of like the Haok Tua girl getting a podcast is almost like compulsory. Like, that's just how it works. If you become a little bit famous on the internets, you immediately look ways to capitalize on that and extend it and bank stuff off of it.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  And it is kind of crazy for your young folks out there. It really wasn't like that for a long time on the internet.

• 16:42Ryan Broderick?

  It was not.

• 16:43Speaker 03

  Not how it works.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I always think of Rebecca Black, if that had happened today. A, I think it would have lasted for like two weeks max. It would not have been like the thing that happened that year, which it was at the time. But also, I think if she had happened, you know, even five to 10 years later, I think it would have been a completely different story.

• 17:02Ryan Broderick?

  She would have had her own crypto coin. I, yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  100%. Yeah. She would have made so much money. I don't think, I don't think she made that much money from Black Friday.

• 17:10Ryan Broderick?

  She said that she hasn't. What is really interesting about sort of like this switch over to what you're calling like the influencer age, even though we sort of associate the influencers being like this like very feminine kind of concept. Around the same time that the New York City Instagram page is launching a little YouTuber name. Okay, so my listeners got very mad at me because I pronounced his name wrong throughout an episode recently. PewDiePie. I did an hour of PewDiePie and people got very mad at me.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  I'm actually shocked that you mispronounced that.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  How have you only read it? That's crazy.

• 17:45Ryan Broderick?

  Because I have tried very hard in my life to never watch any of his videos. Although I've been watching his drawing tutorials recently and they're pretty good.

• 17:53Ryan Broderick?

  So in January 2011, he does a playthrough of Amnesia: Dark Descent. And he essentially becomes like the first real YouTuber. But this is also the same time that we see the beginning of like Michelle Fan, right? So all of a sudden... There are sort of archetypes for an online boy and an online girl. You're either like a possible neo-Nazi playing video games, or you're like talking about makeup and like, you know, sharing photos of your life. And I think it's very interesting that those, those categories like are kind of the same still, like almost 13 years later.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  It's, you know, you're, you're so right. And also, I like, I don't, I think that like so much of that is like, these people leaning into the, the most like kind of gender essentialist versions of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a man is to like, you know, sit around playing video games and being an edgelord. And what it means to be a woman is like constantly working on yourself and, and sharing everything and being extremely marketable in every possible way. But also you are never done and you are never good enough. Kind of passing that on to your viewers is, is very girl-coded.

• 19:07Speaker 03

  It's almost like, like the, those roles have stayed the same for like 15 years or whatever, 10 years. But like the politics of those roles have been like progressively like brought more to the surface. The archetypical boy playing video games in front of like a, a YouTube channel has become just progressively more Trump-ish or Republican-coded, or more conservative, or more aligned with a political movement over time. Even though that, that, that was kind of always there in the subtext. I feel like that has only been more sharpened as time has gone on.

• 19:39Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's right. And I think a large part of that is actually related to what happens this same year. It's actually kind of insane to look at like what happened in 2011 and like its impact to this day. Cause it really does define the, I think, the way we think about a lot of this stuff. Because 2011 is when Fifty Shades of Grey is published, which as we all know is an adaptation of Twilight fanfic. Thank you, My Chemical Romance.

• 20:03Ryan Broderick?

  And this is also the same your Ready Player One is published. So it's not just that these like mainstream archetypes of boy and girlhood are being defined, but it's like across the full spectrum of like what you can be, whether you're a nerd or you're a video game player, or you're a jock, or whatever, or you're like a pretty high school girl. It's all sort of becoming very rigid at this moment. And I do think the internet is part of that because it like it creates, it created these buckets that I think still exist.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Because it's the internet and the things that go most viral are the things that the most amount of people relate to. The lowest common denominator stuff always rises to the top, always, always. And I always think about this where it's like, don't you hate it when like your hair is bad that day? Like that's the kind of stuff that goes the most viral because it's relatable to the most amount of people. And I think with like, and it's also, I think that's where we kind of get the rise of the BuzzFeed era where it's like, signs you're from California. Like only Oklahomans will know this. And I think that there's definitely a thing with gender there too, where it's like, it's designed to be shared because it's like relatable, but it's relatable on like the most weakest of ties.

• 21:14Ryan Broderick?

  You know, if they say like, if you go to prison, you gotta like join a gang, right? Like you gotta join like the Aryan Brotherhood, or the Bloods of the Crims, or whatever, to like protect yourself and like, you know, become part of a community. I think the internet is an equally rudderless social environment. And so like a lot of people, like their first day online are like, okay, like, how do I find people like me? Because there's no borders, there's no boundaries, and the definitions are all murky. And I think that's why a lot of internet users joined the Aryan Brotherhood.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  It's like, well, this, I'm white. Shouldn't I be there?

• 21:47Ryan Broderick?

  But I do think there's a connection there where it's like you're in this, you're in a space that by definition does not give you an identity. You can be whatever you want, you can do whatever you want. And I think for a lot of people, that's very disorienting. I have learned also this next part that we're going to, to not turn this into a quiz moment because I did that with a previous terror attack on this show, and it did not go down well. So I'm just gonna go straight to the point. All of this starts to get dark, in my opinion, around 2014 with the Elliot Rogers attack. That's to me- The moment where like boy internet becomes psychotic and is now like, I think, and I think this is true for any sort of like large internet groups is like they have to pick an other to a degree. The, the boy internet, I think radicalizes around this point after a couple of years of sort of these divisions being fairly anodyne, I would say it like really switches.

• 22:33Ryan Broderick?

  What do you think?

• 22:33Speaker 03

  It just wasn't supposed to go down like this, man. Like it wasn't supposed to that. The Elliot Rogers thing was such a moment where all of this stuff, which was obviously bad, like the casual misogyny or the, there's no girls on the internet tits or GTFO. Does that kind of like early sort of, all I do is spend all my time playing video games where it all sort of felt slightly unserious or ironic to me. And seeing that manifest in real life, which would continue to happen over the next couple of years, to your point of this edgelord stuff that I was like reading online, the boy internet becoming like actual American politics and actual political movements. It was really jarring to me as someone who, again, grew up on the boy internet and spent a lot of time in those places.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  So just kind of like, for me, it forced me to recontextualize all that stuff. It's like, oh, I guess this stuff was really bad and evil and was rotting these dudes' brains.

• 23:27Ryan Broderick?

  You didn't become a spree shooter?

• 23:28Speaker 03

  No, no, I decided not to do that.

• 23:30Ryan Broderick?

  That's great, man. That's awesome. That's congrats. That's huge.

• 23:32Speaker 03

  I decided to get a fiance instead.

• 23:35Ryan Broderick?

  Those are the two options. That's, that's right. In modern life, those are the two options. But yeah. Becca, like on the other side of the internet, let's say for simplicity sake, when things like Gamergate were kicking off, when things were curdling, how were you sort of viewing that? Like, why do you think that happened? Like, what was your kind of take on that?

• 23:51Speaker 02

  I mean, it's so funny because I think everyone in this world now sees 2014 as like the moment that like the internet as we know it began. It's like, that's when I think more people than not had Facebook. Instagram was like the place to be at that point. Kind of the beginnings of like the death of a monoculture where it's like, oh, suddenly you have a ton of people paying attention to these groups that regular people don't know about. And people realizing like, maybe I should be paying attention to this. And, and again, like a harassment campaign like Gamergate, which would obviously be like the blueprint for every. Like coordinated harassment attack on the internet ever since. It showed people that like what happened on the internet like was real life to an extent. And there are certain moments and they're usually bad moments where people suddenly realize that internet

• 24:36Speaker 02

  culture matters and it was 2014, 2016, 2020 and 2024, like a month ago.

• 24:41Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 24:44Ryan Broderick?

  Well, we're about to find that out by digging through all of your past clips and we're going to do that right after the break.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 25:27Speaker 05

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body. With a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 25:58Ryan Broderick?

  We're now at the point of our story where you guys are actually covering a lot of this stuff. You're sort of tracking the different trends that are happening, you know, with young men and also with young women as platforms like TikTok are coming into popularity. So to kick things off, I wanted to hear from both of you guys, the kinds of stories that you think about as defining your understanding of what you cover and how you tackle it.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  One of my favorite stories I've ever written was I got to shadow a teen girl who had just in the past six months become famous on TikTok. She got like 100,000 followers, which like is not a ton in TikTok world, but it's a huge deal if you're 16. I reached out to her. I had this idea for like this back to school story where I could like, you know, talk about what it was like to suddenly get really famous in your hometown. And her family let me shadow her at school for two days. It was so cool. I like got to sit at, I got to sit at a lunch table with like her and her friends while they talked about internet fame and like who they like to watch on the internet and why. I will like never forget that those conversations like I feel like that trip changed how I covered

• 27:03Speaker 02

  youth culture and internet culture generally. People really haven't changed. Like they're still the same as we were when we were kids, but like they look up to different people. They, they aspire to be different kinds of people because of the internet. So that story kind of explaining what it was like to be like a little bit famous. And now how that's the case for like so many people now. I would always be interested in how people pursue like fame and money online. And that was like, I think my kind of thesis for my work, that story.

• 27:31Speaker 03

  What comes to mind for me is there was a couple of years there in the mid 2010s where I was covering the esports industry pretty heavily. Um, and hanging out with a bunch of, uh, the, the esports pros in all these video games, an industry that has since cratered. Um, but it was.

• 27:48Ryan Broderick?

  It didn't really go anywhere.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  It didn't work out, but it was really, uh, clarifying and illuminating to see these kids treated like these huge assets by these giant companies that were formulating around esports, investing all this money in esports, companies like, you know, the Golden State Warriors owners, like, you know, bankrolling esports teams. That's just a pattern I think you see over and over again in this business of something happening on the internet and all this money getting dumped into it while that part of the internet is, remains completely undefined and opaque in all these ways.

• 28:19Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I get, I, I like, it really makes me excited when it happens because like, ooh, they're going to lose so much money again. I can't wait.

• 28:26Ryan Broderick?

  In terms of our timeline, as we're sort of walking through the development of boy and girl internet here, the, the big year that we come to next, um, and I think it involves a character you both are very familiar with. In 2018, uh, a shrill Canadian man, uh, enters the scene telling people that they need to clean the room. Uh, can, can both you guys, uh, tell our listeners a little bit about, uh, Jordan B. Peterson?

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm obsessed. Like mainly because like, I don't think I've ever read Jordan Peterson, but he's like, the way he talks about cleaning your room is like slay the dragon. Like I'm so obsessed with that.

• 29:02Ryan Broderick?

  Do you guys want to hear my Jordan B Peterson story? Oh my god, yeah. Okay, so during the pandemic, I was doing a lot of coverage about cryptocurrency, and I got a press badge for Bitcoin Miami. And my dad loves crypto, so he wanted to come with me, but I couldn't get a plus one for him. So I think I can admit this now, I snuck my dad into Bitcoin Miami. We like got him in, and he was really excited to see Jordan B Peterson speak later, because he had seen his videos on Facebook. And so we're sitting in the auditorium, and everyone's already mad because Dave Portnoy didn't show up. He like bailed on the talk. And so it's like a bad vibe in there already. Jordan B Peterson comes out, and he starts like ranting, and then subsequently crying about like Hungarian banking regulations or something, like he just like lost it.

• 29:47Ryan Broderick?

  And my dad turned to me, he's like, "This guy's a fucking weirdo." My dad, my dad doesn't swear, but he's like, "Yeah, this guy's a real weirdo. I don't, I don't like this guy at all." He's not, he's not like he is on Facebook. And I was like, "No." And I'll just never forget my dad's face just watching, realizing how insane this man is.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  I don't know if you're gonna bring this up, but I, this might be one of the clips you want to talk about, but I spent some time in the Jordan Peterson class, which shaped me in some ways.

• 30:10Ryan Broderick?

  Perfect, yeah. So like, I mean, we all know that Dr. Peterson is not well. I think everybody knows that. But he was very important, I think, in popularizing a certain kind of optimization culture. So this is actually a perfect transition. So I would love to hear, you know, all the incredible things you've learned.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Jordan Peterson started one of those fake universities a few months ago. It costs $500 to enroll, and it's not a credit or anything, you just kind of sit through a bunch of basically YouTube videos of kind of Jordan Peterson and like, and other like cancelled Canadians. And like everyone that's like doing the, his fleet of like professors are all clearly like other guys in Canada, Canadian academia that he knows that are like mad about wokeness. So they, like his, his flagship class is about like an introduction to Nietzsche and Nietzsche. That might be a PewDiePie thing, I don't know. Nietzsche.

• 31:02Ryan Broderick?

  It's Nietzsche, right?

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Nietzsche, we'll go with that. And the class, the class is like a mess. Like there's no like, there's no like syllabus to it or thesis, he just sort of rambles about his, his ideas about nihilism. Or whatever, but I will say the thing about that class that I did find kind of rewarding was that everyone there was really excited to hear about philosophy or these kind of like humanities or like there's a class about the Shakespearean tragedies. And even though it's like presented in like this anti woke way, like all the comments are all these people who are so excited to learn. And at a time when everyone's so mad that like the University of Texas still has an English department and we wanted to fund, you know, the humanities and all these ways. People out there still want to learn things and think about books.

• 31:46Ryan Broderick?

  That might be the most profoundly upsetting thing that I've ever heard. That's like really sad. Like the idea of someone being like, I can't wait to learn about books and I'm gonna go to the Jordan B. Pierce in school to do it.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  So I agree, but it.

• 31:57Ryan Broderick?

  I'm really sad.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Something to work with, I would say. Like it's good to know that this human desire to have like. I the idea of sitting around and thinking a lot about Hamlet is something I want to do. If we need to hold on to that, otherwise we're fucking doomed.

• 32:11Ryan Broderick?

  That's what dudes want to do. They want to sit around and talk about Hamlet.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  100%.

• 32:14Ryan Broderick?

  And they can't because everything's too woke now. Um, so, okay, on the other side of this, Becca, from from this time period, like we, we went through your feed. Um, you were covering things like vampire facials, sort of ways to style your uniforms. Guys were cleaning their rooms supposedly and women were going to extreme lengths for perfection. It seemed like both ends of the gender binary were obsessed. With optimizing their lives in disturbing and often isolating ways.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. I think I think about this a lot after Trump was elected and I don't know if it's exactly a straight line, but like. So many women's responses was to turn inward. If you can't optimize the world, you could optimize your skincare routine and de-age yourself. And make your body look perfect by paying like $40 a class at bar. It just feels like things get keep getting like piled on that you have to like keep up with where there's like trends moving really fast. You get a lot of people that are terrified of looking old now and not just like their face, but like. Do only millennials wear skinny jeans now? Like there's, there's such a freak out about if I look like a millennial and you're trying to look like you're 22. It's like girly, we can tell. You're 35, it's fine.

• 33:24Ryan Broderick?

  Plus millennials look younger than Gen Z anyways. I don't know why we do. I have theories as to why we do, but we do.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Well, there's also, I've seen a lot of stuff that's like millennials always are talking about how young they look. It's like girly now. I'm like, I don't, I don't know.

• 33:39Ryan Broderick?

  We all look soft. I was talking to, I was talking to PJ Vogt about this the other day. We both have soft millennial features. It's a thing.

• 33:46Speaker 03

  It's also you're dressed super preppy and I think that is part of it.

• 33:49Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, I'm dressed like Paddington Bear right now. So I, you know, um, so you get the pandemic and this basically ends the entire era of self optimization. It gets replaced by these communities that are really only talking to themselves or more and more often just pieces of content that you are absorbing by yourself. And I hadn't really realized this until Adam, our researcher, put this timeline together that something like simping where you, you know, you're sort of making fun of the parasocial relationship you have with a woman online. And something like cottage core, which is this like very feminine aesthetic where you're idolizing, like living in the woods alone. Both happened in 2020 around the same time.

• 34:29Ryan Broderick?

  And I had never thought of those things as connected, but I actually do think they're both tied to the same idea of digitally expressing a certain kind of loneliness.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  That's very astute. Um, I was kind of thinking the other way where it was like, both of those things seem really trad to me like, like.

• 34:46Ryan Broderick?

  So say, say more about that because I think you're on to something.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of talk about how like trad culture is coming back. But I think cottage core, at least in the beginning, because obviously it was a thing on Tumblr for years. But in 2020, it really blew up or blew up because, um, you know, everyone was stuck inside. They wanted a way to like, feel as though they were recreating some kind of like coziness when you're, when you, when you're forced to isolate. Or on the other hand, you were kind of escaping into these beautiful images on your screen of someone else having this very lovely life. And to me, that felt like a totally normal kind of escapism in a, in a weird time. But now looking back, especially, um, when it comes to cottage core trends and like trad wives and stuff who wear these very like cottage core outfits and do these very cottage core activities, it feels like something a lot more sinister.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  And I think same with simping where it's like, you know, simping was sort of a joke where it's like, oh, like, you know, you caught feelings like, haha, like that's embarrassing. And now it's like, how dare you like a girl? Like, girls are disgusting, you know, like it, it, there's, it, there's something that have kind of like curdled with both of those things.

• 35:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, like simping had like a slightly wholesome texture to it, you know, like there was something like, I mean, compared to like gooning, right?

• 35:57Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, well, anything, anything is wholesome compared to gooning. I saw, I saw a hashtag the other day was, there was hashtag bad gooning. And I was like, I'm not clicking on whatever that is. I don't want to know what that is.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  Please define gooning.

• 36:11Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, for our listeners who don't know what gooning is, gooning is when you load up like four or five monitors full of windows of pornography all playing at the same time. And then you proceed to masturbate without climaxing for seven to eight hours.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Wait, is it actually that specific? I thought it was just like jerking off.

• 36:30Ryan Broderick?

  There's some, there's some debate in the community between the differences of edging and gooning, but it seems like the difference is that you can, you can edge with only one video playing, but if you have multiple videos playing, you're gooning.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  How do you possibly have multiple videos playing? What is the point of that?

• 36:46Ryan Broderick?

  Cause you have your battle station, your PC gaming battle station.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  It's also like, I mean, you can goon to like one person you're into. Like there was a subreddit called Nicki Minaj goon cave.

• 36:56Ryan Broderick?

  I would, I would say that that's edging.

• 36:58Speaker 03

  I mean, sure.

• 36:59Ryan Broderick?

  I think, well, unless it's multiple video, unless it's multiple videos of Nicki Minaj that you're gooning to, I don't think that counts as gooning.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  I mean, there's context clash with all this stuff. You're probably right that in its most traditional form, but I think gooning is, you are correct. It's like, like, I don't, I'm not trying to blow my cover here, but more to say.

• 37:18Ryan Broderick?

  I feel like that meme of like Aristotle walking down a hallway with a bunch of like philosophers as we're talking about this, like, what is the difference between edging and gooning?

• 37:26Speaker 03

  What is the platonic ideal of gooning?

• 37:29Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah, exactly. But I do think this is actually a really good sort of, not to make a pun here, tease for a little bit later and where we're headed with this, because this stuff starts to actually move very fast when you look at it on paper, because by 2021, a lot of the kind of like trad ideas that Becca had mentioned, start to really come to the surface on both sides once again. So now you're getting like, the rise of like sorority TikTok, I think, because after the pandemic, people kind of had forgotten that that's a thing. And you're getting, you know, problematic TikTok dances, you're getting like manifesting, but then you're also getting like the GameStop pump and Bitcoin and Barstool Sports, the rise of like the Sigma Mail. It's, it's, it's, it's even more trad, it's like, it's continuing to get more and more trad, which.

• 38:15Ryan Broderick?

  I think that you could blame on the pandemic, but I don't totally want to like, I feel like there's other forces at play here.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  It's trad in the sense that it's nostalgic for like a 2003 idea of like maleness. It's like, it's trad in the sense that we're not going back to like cottage course 1950s. We're going back to kind of like the pickup artist mystery era, the watching a ton of spiked TV and that kind of sense of masculinity about, you know, we're gonna-

• 38:42Ryan Broderick?

  The man show.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  Right. We're gonna crush 10,000 Miller High Lives and go watch some college football and be kind of uncritical and prideful in that simple joy. I think of comedian like Shane Gillis, who has become like a conservative leaning comedian, simply because I think he caters to that taste. Like that alone is like a political expression of I want to embody my spiked TV self.

• 39:07Ryan Broderick?

  So it's interesting. You sort of frame it as like a nostalgic backlash because like this same time, Becca, you're covering a lot of micro trends that are happening on TikTok. So you have the rise of girls who are starting to like wear crosses and get really into like orthodox Christianity and traditional Catholicism and making it kind of aesthetic. Then you have stories like West Elm Caleb, where a bunch of women identify this one kind of awful guy that they all start kind of doxing. And then you have the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial. So on the girl influencer side, there does feel to be this kind of cultural pushback to me too, happening as well, right?

• 39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. And I think like kind of everything that we're seeing now, it's hard not to look at that as downstream of me too. But I also think when you combine that with like people feeling really financially insecure, that's where you get a lot of the entrance interest in sports gambling and crypto. And when, when you have men making a lot of money in these like very risky ways, they're sort of fulfilling this fantasy of like, we can be the breadwinners again. At the same time, you get like this reverence of women who are performing these trad duties and whatever. And, you know, public backlash is against celebrities who accuse men of domestic violence. Like, these are all kind of push, pushing back against both like women's economic advancement and women's ability to stand

• 40:25Speaker 02

  up and say, no, that's not okay. Like, you know, we have a voice, whatever. So yeah, it's really hard not to look at all of these things as like, just kind of bleak bellwethers for where we're at.

• 40:37Ryan Broderick?

  I think that's exactly right. These ideas that we're seeing have become like kind of absurdist. Like Barbenheimer to me is like extremely absurdist. Brad Summer is very absurd. Men raw dogging planes and obsessing over Rome and like girls eating snacks for dinner. Like if you think about everything we've sort of talked about in this episode from like 2014 to now, it sort of feels like we're at like the surrealist end cycle of something.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  The ways in which gambling content have gotten absurd alone, like the biggest gambling Instagram guy is this guy Vegas Matt, who just goes out and puts down like a, he's the best. I love him. All his videos are him just like, I got $10,000. I'm putting it all on black and he loses and just loses all his money over and over again. And he's got like people tuning in and cheering him on. Like that is like, he is, he's like a FanDuel sponsorship. Like the guy who just loses his shirt every night. There is like a-

• 41:35Ryan Broderick?

  Grant, Grant, please put a Vegas Matt clip in the episode here, please, for our listeners.

• 41:39Speaker 07

  $5,000 hand of Bachra. We're down 5,000. This is the trademark Vegas Matt. Get even or get even worse hand. We need to win this. Highly dramatic.

• 41:52Ryan Broderick?

  Here we go.

• 41:53Speaker 07

  Player, banker. Player has a picture and a nine. We lose. Picture and an eight. Catastrophic loss.

• 42:04Speaker 03

  But yeah, there is this kind of like maximal all gas, no brakes where it feels like we're headed towards like a wall or something.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  Okay. I think I agree with you where we're kind of like, you can see the end of it because the other day there was like a viral tweet that was like, it was one of those tweets. It's been a thing for years and years where it's like, I'm just a beautiful girl. Why do I have to go to work? Like beautiful women should not be forced to-

• 42:28Ryan Broderick?

  Oh, you saw my post. You saw my post. Yeah.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  And then someone being like, I don't think this is good. And then that went, that went like more viral than the original. And I was like, okay, we're getting somewhere. Or it's like the kind of like the hangover from like, I'm just a girl and God forbid my DoorDash driver be a man.

• 42:48Ryan Broderick?

  I've seen this one. Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 02

  But the way that I see the gender war kind of going and has been going in the last couple of years has really played a very weird role, I think, in dating culture because again, I think in between all this like, you know, economic anxiety that people have, you know, me too feelings that people have, we also have very, very like a lot fewer people getting married or getting into relationships. And there's this really like big romantic anxiety that people have. And I think like now, you know, all the dating advice I see is like, you know, just, just find a rich guy, get your, get hot, lose weight and stay hot forever and then marry a rich man and he'll take care of you the rest of your life.

• 43:25Ryan Broderick?

  And we're going to teach you how to do all of that and more right after the break.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 44:06Speaker 05

  Low energy, unfocused, foggy? You might be dehydrated. Gatorade Zero powders have been scientifically designed to help improve hydration balance in the body with a clinically proven electrolyte blend and no artificial colors or flavors. Great tasting hydration, no matter where you're going. Shop now online or at retailers nationwide. Gatorade hydrates better than water. Is it in you? Symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration. Consult a healthcare professional if symptoms persist.

• 44:38Ryan Broderick?

  So on the, in the boy internet, they're sort of motivated by like very base impulses, like greed and sort of like becoming rich and famous and all this stuff. And I was sort of wondering like what the, what you see is like the driving engine of girl internet in the same way. Like, you know, what are they trying to get out of it by, by aligning themselves with like these rigid gender Structures.

• 44:59Speaker 02

  There was a way that I kept seeing that happen a couple of years ago, and now I think it's different. I think the original way that I saw this happen, like that kind of optimization of the self, a similar way that men do it, where it's like, clean up your finances, you're gonna like fix your skin, you are going to like, reach out to a friend once a week, talk to yourself better, go to the gym X amount of times a week. And like, and so not only are you then like, you know, you look better for the world, but also you just like, you feel better. And so it's a lot, it's a lot about like confidence and like, feeling like you are the kind of woman that like has value in the world. Like whether that's at work or in dating or whatever. Now I see a lot more of like black pill. Become a high value woman, max out your femininity so you can attract a high value man,

• 45:42Speaker 02

  so he can pay for you to live in a farmhouse and buy you Chanel. Like, that is what I see. And I think that's much more of a flip side of incel ideology than the sort of girl boss, female empowerment, self-confidence, yes, queen. Like, that kind of self-optimization, that was more of like the 2010s version of that. The 2020s version is like, just be hot.

• 46:07Ryan Broderick?

  Right, just be hot, yeah. Did you ever see any, like, the Jordan B Peterson guys, like, using this stuff successfully? Like, did, do you feel like it has any kind of value there? You know, even, even just the vibes of it, did you feel like there's some sort of value there?

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, I think it's like anything, it's like, I think.

• 46:24Ryan Broderick?

  What I'm asking, wait, what I'm asking is, does Luke clean his room?

• 46:27Speaker 02

  No.

• 46:28Speaker 03

  Not really.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  I know, like, maybe he could listen to some Jordan Peterson, just kidding.

• 46:33Ryan Broderick?

  Beware the lobster, my friend.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  Slay the dragon, that is the board games all over your room.

• 46:39Speaker 03

  We're doing that, aren't we?

• 46:40Speaker 02

  But, but I think with, with a lot of things, it's like, so many of these things are really positive. I think going to the gym is great for you. I think like, thinking about what you eat is great for you. Wanting to be better with your finances is great. It's, the problem is then, when these communities form, they start to form around the thing itself, and then they start to form around like the other thing, which is like the enemy, which is always feminism.

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would also, the fact that like Andrew Tate and guys like this have like risen in more recent years, whose whole idea about dating is that you should never talk to any women whatsoever, and they're all evil, would seem to imply that the Jordan Peterson looks passing stuff did not, did not become super salient. It didn't, didn't seem to work out because they've, they've instead ended up at like incel and proud, which is, it's bad. It's, that's not, that's, that's probably not where you want to end up.

• 47:30Ryan Broderick?

  I do wonder, like, when the last time Andrew Tate had a conversation with a woman in real life that wasn't like

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:35Ryan Broderick?

  a victim of his trafficking, allegedly. So I do wonder if that's coloring some things there. I, I, I don't, I, I, I think you're right, though, that the existence of him is proof, in the same way, that like the earliest pickup artist message boards became hubs for incel radicalization. Like, a lot of them were men who felt ripped off by pickup artists. I do think a similar thing happened with, between Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate, where it's like, these guys bought the book, they cleaned their room, they didn't get laid, and now they're like, I'm gonna just like, be a lunatic, all the time.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  But still go to the gym like three times a day, despite that, which is the weird thing.

• 48:14Ryan Broderick?

  And I'm not even gonna be an incel, because I don't even want to live in a world where women exist enough for me to like hurt them. Like, they just aren't anything for me.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  There's such a, like, both genders, on, on the black pill side of the internet, internet, you kind of hear the same complaints about the opposite gender. One is that like, you know, men just like can't get their act together, like women are sort of outpacing men in XYZ ways. The other is that like, all women are sex workers now, or like they're on OnlyFans. And like, I think the OnlyFans debate has also like, really opened up this kind of gross world, like part of the internet, that's now quite mainstream, I would argue. And then, on the other side, it's like, I don't know. I don't know. It, I, that's a bad thought, you can cut that.

• 48:55Ryan Broderick?

  You're right. All women are sex workers. I understand. I think there's like two other sort of like larger themes here that kind of explains some of what we've been talking about. And I think one is definitely the anxiety around dating and romance because of apps. And I think the other one is actually the rise of of transgenderism in pop culture. But I want to start with the sort of the dating app anxiety, because you two met on a dating app. So this is actually perfect. I didn't know that. That's great. So how did it ruin your life? How did how did online dating destroy your life?

• 49:25Speaker 02

  I mean, online dating made my life great.

• 49:28Ryan Broderick?

  Okay, so good.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  I kind of love I kind of loved online dating. People like say it's horrible now, but I was I was kind of pro online dating.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the 2010s, dating apps were enjoying the millennial lifestyle subsidy, like all like all of the VC funded app. These things weren't making money, but they were they were delivering a pretty decent product. And now that like, you know, the bill is kind of due for a lot of these companies, they are financializing themselves in these horrible ways that are really predatory. You kind of can't escape the kind of demands for money. Now, if you're using an app, they paywall kind of any person that they know that you're going to want to see or date in an effort to get you to pay like, and it's like, they start at like $30 a month. They're not cheap. They are crazy expensive. And if you, you know, pretty much all of the dates, all the apps do this also, it's like mostly a monopoly. So it sucks now. Yeah.

• 50:22Speaker 03

  Every online date usually meant like meeting up with someone at a bar and having a couple of drinks. Like, there's this anti drinking kind of wave going. There's all the trad stuff that's happening. I don't know. I just feel like online dating isn't cool anymore. I don't know. It's it's it's it has a I don't know if it's quite as relevant with like, the youth culture as as we currently currently understand it with, you know, no one's drinking anymore. I don't know.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  I also think that like people are finding it really frustrating to date online for a billion reasons, but they're also, they don't know how to meet people in real life. So there's this really like, they're either too scared or they don't want people to come up to them, which is fine. But like, if you want to meet someone in real life, you do have to talk to strangers. And I think that like, people are finding it harder and harder to do that for plenty of reasons. But it's, you're kind of in this double bind where it's like, well, the apps aren't working, but also I don't want to meet people in real life. So it's like, where does that leave you?

• 51:18Ryan Broderick?

  They're like being squeezed at both ends, essentially. And not in the fun way that you would experience with normal dating. I also got curious, because at the beginning of this episode, we were talking about kind of like this switch from the kind of high camp of gender, let's say gender play online in the 2000s to like this definitely sort of curdling switch that happened. And I was curious when Tinder launched in our timeline, and it was 2012. And I like to create questions about the internet that I'll never be able to answer to agonize over. It's like a game I like to play in my mind. And like, one question I've always sort of had is like, did having to fit your identity online into

• 51:58Ryan Broderick?

  an app for dating make this stuff more serious for people? Because suddenly, like, the internet wasn't just like a place to play and have fun and like pretend to do whatever. But it was like, it was now like directly associated with like what pick a bars would call like your sexual value or whatever. And I do wonder if it like, it made a lot of this stuff more serious, because it's suddenly the internet was just, I mean, determined whether or not you you found a partner. I'll never know.

• 52:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's a great point, honestly. Like, I like, it removes the sort of like guaranteed confidentiality, or it removes this idea of this is a place I get online to go play.

• 52:35Ryan Broderick?

  And it's much more intimately connected to you, too. Like, you're putting more of yourself online. And I think that like, it's just not, it's not fun. It can't be fun. Because it's, it's, it's too sort of worthwhile. But the very last thing I wanted to touch on, because I do think that this is, this is involved to some degree, which is like, as the transgender community becomes more visible, I think that there is, and you see this a lot, like throughout history, especially like the, as, as, as one sort of era is ending and sort of our consciousness is expanding about something, a lot of people kind of freak out and they go the opposite direction. And I do think that there, that there is a link between The prominence of the transgender community, eh, because I think they've always existed. Don't come at me. Like it's, this is not new, uh, but the prominence of them in popular

• 53:18Ryan Broderick?

  culture and sort of the desire for like little zoomer radicals to want to be boy and girl coded. Like I think that they're linked definitely to, in my mind.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, a hundred percent. It reminds me of kind of like the Tea Party era when like conversations around gay marriage were happening in like the nineties and 2000s. So it's like you get a certain group of people that like, like digs their heels in. The, and I, and I especially think about it with like, in regards to like placating women's fears about men. And that's, this is something that I will like, I feel like I try to call out every time I see it, but like men or women being like so fearful that like a man is around at some point. And I'm just like, what are you actually worried about? And also like, are you going to inspect people's fucking genitals? Like we don't like, the gender is more complicated than like to fucking like, I don't know. It's, it's just like this way of women, like a playing victim, the kind of like J K Rowling thing where it's

• 54:11Speaker 02

  like, I understand that violence against women exists, but like the random person that's going into the bathroom as, at the same time as you're peeing in a stall over is not the person you need to be worried about, you know?

• 54:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:24Ryan Broderick?

  It is so fascinating to me how the anti-trans movement has tapped into sort of the, the existential fears of the boy and girl internet. So like on one side you have like, these people are predators. They're going to go into the women's room and they're going to attack you. And then on the other side, they're saying like, these are predators that are going to like come after your, your children and your sons. This sort of like tie into these deep, deep traumas that like, I laugh a lot about like wholesome boy, girl internet stuff and even semi not wholesome stuff. Like I thought the Rome stuff was really funny because I think about Rome a lot, but I do think that these structures allow a radicalization process to happen that is not helpful. Bad actors can get in and they can figure out how people are talking to each other in this really traditional way

• 55:05Ryan Broderick?

  and they can, they can weaponize that. You know, it's, it's not so different from someone like Andrew Tate or someone like, uh, let's say two, uh, podcasters with bad opinions in downtown Chinatown in Manhattan that have created a certain kind of new femininity for people. I mean, There's a lot of different examples about this.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's been jarring just to see how quickly we've gone to full on open season on trans people. It feels like where we know we are now just completely lacking a mechanism to say, hey, please don't torment these children of God just because they're trans, you know. It it kind of drives me insane how sort of self fulfilling this outrage tends to be and how hard is to, how hard it seems to be to fix it.

• 55:54Ryan Broderick?

  I don't know, we're going into a very dark political time, but I'm trying to be optimistic here. Like, things could move really fast. History moves really fast, often. And so I think it's useful to kind of like end this episode looking towards like what would come after like, because I do think we're just running out of stuff to talk about when it comes to like being a boy and a girl. Like, it's just kind of boring. So I'm curious like what both of you think could be next in terms of like how young people socialize online.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  It it's tough to answer this question when it it it sort of feels like, you know, we're all millennials here. We kind of remember a time when like the idea of gender being a social construct was pretty, was pretty relevant, pretty like that that idea was really kind of taking hold in in the culture and in this period of backlash. It seems so hard for that to uh, to kind of reclaim its foothold, but um, by our very nature, like I don't, I don't think men and women want to hate each other and not talk to each other. I don't think that's how society kind of functions. I don't think that's how we as a species function. I do not think this stuff from Andrew Tate to to anyone else, to all this stuff.

• 57:02Speaker 03

  I don't, I do not think it is a sustainable cultural movement. I don't think it can be a sustainable cultural movement. It has to peter out because I just think that's just not how it works, man, right? Like, this can't be how it works.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know if I'm as optimistic. Like, I think there are still ways that we can make gender horrible. I just, I think, what I hope is that people realize like, gender is probably like, not the most interesting thing about you. Your body is not the most interesting thing about you. But we live in a really image-driven culture, and gender is so visual. And like, I think that the really intense focus on women's bodies right now, in many different directions, is, I don't think we're near the end of it. I don't think we will ever be near the end of it. And as long as we live in a world where people are marketing themselves online visually, what you look like, and that includes your gender, will continue to matter a lot.

• 57:55Speaker 03

  Maybe, one of the ways it could break this down, if we have like, a new sex positivity, like, we're in a very sex-negative, uh, culture right now among young people, and, uh, a very kind of anti-pleasure kind of vibe is coursing through the Zoomers, and I think maybe a kind of renewed sex positivity movement, if that-

• 58:14Ryan Broderick?

  I'm gonna stop you. I think that's a horrible idea. Right now, right now, I don't think, I don't think Gen Z, the little fascists in Gen Z should not be anywhere near sexual politics, actually. It's actually quite good that they're, they've sort of, they've sort of segregated themselves by gender. Actually, I did go to a, like, a party with like, an overwhelmingly amount of Gen Z people there, and they did separate by gender, like a middle-school dance.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 58:38Ryan Broderick?

  It was the wild, and like, all, all the women were sort of complaining that like, none of the men were talking to them, and all the men were just sort of like, in the corner, like, rating the women. It was really weird.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 58:48Ryan Broderick?

  Because everyone was in like, their mid-20s, and I was like, I gotta get the hell out of here.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  That sounds so awful.

• 58:52Speaker 03

  That's not sustainable, that can't, there's no way that can just be the status quo. It's not, it's, it's anti-human, it can't, it can't happen.

• 58:58Ryan Broderick?

  For the record, this is not like, an environment that I am typically in. I was invited by your friends to do a thing, and, uh, I left as quick as I could, to go talk with the real adults. So now that we've sort of looked at the, the, the whole timeline here of, uh, online gender essentialism, do you feel like it's as bad, or the same kind of bad as it was 10, 15 years ago? If not, like, when do you think we sort of fell off the cliff here?

• 59:24Speaker 02

  Oh, man. I mean, I think so much of this has to do with the the shot and chaser of Trump and then Me Too, because I do think they're related. Like, you know, when you have, when we elect a president who is so openly like anti-woman, and then you have a huge backlash to that in the form of the Women's March and then Me Too, there is a divide there that like, we are still obviously dealing with almost 10 years later. And I think that was the point of no return, for sure. Like, that was the point where it was like, became very understandable and very mainstream and very normal to be like, there is something

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  seriously wrong with the way that like, men treat women and have been for centuries. But now, now we're gonna make it everyone's problem. And like, in a great way, but you know, now there's a backlash to that, as there is a backlash to every progressive movement.

• 1:00:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's, I mean, I totally agree that that has to be the point of no return. But I think it's also like, it is unquestionably worse now. Like, this is, this is, I mean, it's just so much worse.

• 1:00:35Ryan Broderick?

  Sorry to laugh, I'm just really freaked out. Yeah, you're right.

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  I mean, the lesson of this most recent election, I think, is that the internet is officially real life. Like, things that happen on the internets are manifesting and affecting like, actual American politics in ways they just haven't before. And that was not the case in 2006. Going forward, we can't have the faith to write off things happening on the internet as just internet bullshit that doesn't matter. Like, this stuff definitely matters now. And that's bad, I guess.

• 1:01:09Ryan Broderick?

  I, to both of your points, like, I feel like millennials coming of age with Obama sort of got it stuck in their heads that progress was linear. And I think this is like incredibly detrimental for like, everyone in the Democratic Party, because they really still think that for some reason. And like, I do think 2016 to the 2018 was this period where We realized it wasn't and I don't think that we're still not moving forward progressively, but I do think you sort of have to account for these back and forth movements and sort of this gender essentialism of the internet that we're currently in is a direct response to that. I do think, but I'm not trying to blackball myself. I'm trying to stay positive.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Ryan Broderick?

  Trying very hard.

• 1:01:54Speaker 03

  I mean, yeah. I have faith it's gonna get better. I just, you know, you know, like this is, uh, things can get bad, you know?

• 1:02:03Ryan Broderick?

  You can do this. You can do it. Finish the thought. You can do it.

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  I mean, so one thing I actually think about a lot is how like millennials, like isn't, wasn't there that study that was like millennials are the only demographic that are not getting more conservative as they age? They're getting more liberal. And I feel like that's part of like, I think part of that is because we grew up when the internet was in it like a baby and then we were babies and then we grew up with it. So like we kind of became internet literate at the same time as we were becoming regular literate. Whereas I think pretty much every other generation, it either already existed fully formed or it just didn't exist at all until they were an adult. And so, and, and couple that with the fact that Obama was, was becoming president when we were also like in our teen or early

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  20 years. Um, like those were so, those were such like profound like coming of age moments. And it was like, oh, this is just gonna be like the way the world is forever. And it's not.

• 1:02:59Ryan Broderick?

  Yeah. The way I under, as I understand it, uh, the way we feel about Obama is how like Gen Z feels about the invention of jeweling.

• 1:03:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:03:08Ryan Broderick?

  Uh, that's like a big, that's like a big moment for them. Uh, I want to end the episode, I think, just with one last question. Just one more. Um, so Luke, you thought your first date with Becca was good and she thought it was bad. Can you kind of walk us through your thought process there?

• 1:03:24Speaker 03

  Uh, okay. So, I mean, on the, the, um, on the record itself is that we showed up to a bar and shut down the bar. We were there from the bar until it closed and then I kissed you goodnight and you went back when you, when you were, I walked you back to your apartment and you went up the elevator and I kissed you goodnight. So I think just from an outsider's perspective, that looks like a good date and. As someone who's been on, you know, a good amount of online dates at that point, I was like, that seemed like a good online date. Becca had an issue because we both worked in the media. I was a freelancer, she's working at Vox. I was 20, 27, you were 26.

• 1:03:57Ryan Broderick?

  You were low status and she was high status, is what you're saying, yeah.

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  Actually, at the time, we were actually kind of equal status. As soon as Becca met me, she like really took off. Her career just blossomed after that.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  My god.

• 1:04:12Ryan Broderick?

  Okay.

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  What Becca would say is maybe I came on a little too strong with, like, hey, let's talk about the media on our first date.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, like I got very like friend vibes where it was like, so who do you know? It felt very like, like he had looked me up because I don't think I had where I worked online because too many people would be like, do you know Ezra Klein? At that time. And Luke was like, oh yeah, I'm writing a story for your editor right now. And I was like, how did you find me? And you were right.

• 1:04:45Ryan Broderick?

  Buddy.

• 1:04:46Speaker 02

  I know. And then you were just like, so like, do you know XYZ? And I'm like, I don't, like, why are we talking about these people? I barely know them. And I, and I, like, I have never been like super, like, I only hang out with media people. Like, I, I have normal friends and I have a normal life. And so I, I was just like, like, are you only here because you want, like, you want the tea? Like, okay. And so, but anyway, we had fun, like.

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was making conversations.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  But I was just like, I just had, did not get the vibe that he was even interested in that way. Or on the other hand, I thought he was like a Bushwick fuckboy because he was.

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  I mean, you know, that's, that's fair. If you want to read more about this, I wrote a Substack about this called, about media thirst guys that Becca has to decide.

• 1:05:32Ryan Broderick?

  Hold on. You, a former Bushwick fuckboy, wrote a Substack post?

• 1:05:37Speaker 03

  I did, yeah. During the pandemic, too.

• 1:05:39Ryan Broderick?

  You're just, you're not helping yourself here.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  And now he's on a podcast talking about it.

• 1:05:43Ryan Broderick?

  That's right.

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  He's gonna take a thousand shots.

• 1:05:45Ryan Broderick?

  Run by former Substack money. That's right. Yeah, let's go.

• 1:05:50Ryan Broderick?

  Haha, suckers, you've run out of free episode. It's me, Ryan, from the future. If you want to go listen to the rest of my lovely conversation with Luca Becca, you can do that on our Patreon, patreon.com/panicworld. And this holiday season, you can also gift someone a Panic World Patreon subscription. Wow, that's amazing. That's incredible. That's so, that's so nice. So yeah, go over there, listen to the rest of the conversation. It's great. We put bonus content on there all the time. We have ad-free episodes. And we also just have longer episodes over there. If you've ever been listening to a Panic World episode and you go, "Oh, I'm really in the vibe right now. I'm really in the pocket. I don't want this to end." Well, we have slightly longer versions of some episodes over there. Uh, I don't think we identified which ones are slightly longer. So you just gotta listen to them all again. Look at that.

• 1:06:34Ryan Broderick?

  Anyways, see you over on the Patreon. Thank you. I love you. You're all my real friends.

• 1:06:40Ryan Broderick?

  I think you guys are coming on the show. If people want to follow you, uh, where can they do that on the internet?

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Uh, they can follow me at Rebecca on Instagram, four X's.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Uh, you can follow me at @luke underscore Winkie on Twitter, Blue Sky, wherever, wherever posts can be found.

• 1:07:00Ryan Broderick?

  Panic World is a Garbage Day production. It's written and produced by Grant Irving, hosted by myself, with research from the always fantastic Adam Bumis. A huge thanks to Gabby Cash for designing the incredibly deranged art for this show. And a huge thank you to Kat Rajesc, our lovely video editor. And if you'd like to sponsor an episode, you can reach out to Multitude, our wonderful partners, multitude-productions/ads. We have a Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com/panicworld. And I'd like to end this episode with an important reminder. Log off and touch grass while you still can. Now at Kroger, your points add up to more ways to save every trip. Use them your way to take dollars off groceries at checkout or save at the pump.

• 1:07:45Ryan Broderick?

  You can even save up to $35 on your next fill-up. Same points, more choices. And with low prices on fresh, quality food, plus digital and personalized offers tailored to how you shop, your dollar goes further. Redeem your points online or in the app. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Restrictions apply. See site or store for details.