This episode is supported by Movember, the leading charity
changing the face of men's health.
Hello and welcome to To Be a Boy with Me, Joey Brilly.
I'm me, Elliot Ray. Maeve Park has been written in
the field of cantering violent extremism for five years,
focusing on both the far right and the manosphere.
She works with schools, teachers, law enforcement and
governments to support efforts to prevent radicalisation.
She is the author of Black Held, which examines disillusionment,
modernity and online ideology, blending memoir, social
commentary and philosophical reflection.
Her work explored by individuals are drawn to online subcultures
such as the incel movement and what these spaces reveal about
alienation and contemporary society.
Maeve, welcome to the podcast. Hi, thanks for having me.
It's great to be here. We're so thrilled you can join
us. For someone who's never come
across the term before, what does that pill actually mean?
Taking on some new meanings in the past year, but it originally
was the name of the ideology that in cells kind of adhere to
or believed in. It comes from the original red
pill. If some people may know that is
associated with Andrew Tate, kind of like an anti feminist
worldview that you wouldn't have too much power in society that
men need to reclaim their power back.
That kind of like liberalism and all these kind of new kind of
woke inverted commas kind of ideologies have taken over and
that it's time that we kind of revert back to rigid norms of
the 1950s. So that was the red pill and
that kind of came first in about 2010.
And then the insults kind of created a more nihilistic
version of that saying, well, women have too much power.
Society is going to the dogs. It's not how it used to be.
It's too much modernity, too much tech, too much social
media, but there's nothing you can do about it.
And this is kind of our way of like seeking revenge.
So like in a, in a way, the red pill kind of teaches men like
tips and tricks about how to kind of scam the system, kind of
like what Andrew Tate used to do where you can trick a woman into
that. You can kind of scam your way
into making money. You can like, you know, lie and
cheat your way to the top and you can make it.
The black pill is basically the nihilistic version of everything
is wrong. But for some men, there's
nothing you can do. There's no tricks that you can
use. There's no tips or kind of scams
If you're too ugly, in their minds, that's how they put it
for society. You're never going to be able to
make it as a man or find a woman or kind of do anything of note.
So you have only limited options available to you.
And so it's the nihilistic version of the kind of more
popularly known Andrew Tate red pill ideology.
But yeah, so now it's just kind of a code word for nihilistic.
Kids use it all the time as saying like I'm so black pilled
on new movies and black pilled on politics and black pilled on
climate change. And it's kind of like a
shorthand for saying like I'm done, I'm nihilistic.
I have no hope for. So it's taken directly from in
solo lingo, but the original idea was directly about insole
associate ideology and associated with it.
Wow, so you said that the that people who are in the black pill
movement believe they only have limited access to women.
It's like, you know what you were saying, They have limited
methods for accessing women. What do you mean by that?
Well, I suppose like I don't like the term access too much,
but I do understand like the idea of attraction and it is, it
is about women, but it's also about men.
So it's actually about society. It's misanthropic.
So it's basically saying that some men, some young guys are,
this is how they would put it, not me, are too ugly or too kind
of like have too many issues such as being autistic or
schizophrenic or whatever it might be to fit into society and
to fit into the gender roles of masculinity.
So that they'll never be taken seriously, never be invited to
the party, and also they'll never attract women.
And that the only thing that matters in life is kind of
fitting in and having relationship.
And by the way, in this kind of philosophy, there is kind of
like seeds of truth. But obviously like, you know,
it's, there's an extreme version of that.
So they would say if you can't get into society, if you can't
get into a relationship, what's the point?
There is none. So it's very, very fatalistic.
And it's keeping in mind these are mostly really young people.
They're not people in their 50s and 60s who've gone through life
and have decided this at the end.
These are like 16 to 25 kind of in that kind of portion of life
where things are kind of up in the air, but you're still very
new. And this is kind of the
fatalistic attitude that they've kind of like taken on.
Wow. I mean, that is seriously
depressing. Yeah.
Is it venerant to violence then? Does it vary from fatalism into
violence against women? Yeah, that's a big question and
it has a lot of answers because yes is a shorthand and then like
no is more complicated. So yes, there have been violence
stemming from the incel ideology or the incel kind of like
communities. And some of the violence will
include assaults all the way up to mass homicide.
One of the most famous kind of it's old now, but it's still one
of the most famous attacks that is still kind of like talked
about in the until communities. It's a 2014 Island Vista, CA
shooting by a young man called Elliot Rodger.
Elliot Rodger is kind of like kind of glorified.
This is kind of like hero figure, folk hero figure of the
kind of misunderstood lost men. He was just a young guy, about
21, and he basically went on a rampage around his campus.
He was trying to kill as many women as he could kill as many
girls who were in the sororities, but he actually
failed at getting into the sorority that he wanted to get
into. So he just went on a kind of
shooting spree around the town. And in that attack, he killed
both men and women. In fact, he killed more men.
He even killed his own roommates through a knife attack.
Before he did that, all of his roommates were men.
So in cell violence has actually had a pretty like egalitarian in
a weird way, like victims. Like in terms of like, there
have been men and there have been women, there have been
young and there have been old. So yes, the main targets are
women first, but they absolutely do not like men because men are
also seen as their enemy, is seen as like kind of the
jealousy component. All these other guys out here,
they get what I want because he's 6 foot and on the football
team. And it's a very kind of like
almost 1980s outlook on kind of social hierarchies among young
people. There's the jocks and
cheerleaders and the kind of losers and the stoners and the
hippies. They see the world as saying,
well, there are these men who get everything for no reason.
They're stupid, they're horrible, they're abusive, and
they get the women just because they look pretty.
And again, there's elements of like genuine kind of resentment
that comes from like seeds of truth and very small seeds of
truth, but seeds of truth nonetheless.
Beauty being something that people seek is true.
I mean, we'll go into that in a moment.
I, I can go off in a tangent, but in terms of not everything
they're saying is delusional. It's just taken to the absolute
extremes. And so when it comes to
violence, the violence can be like a mass attack, kind of just
a revenge on society. It could also be violence in the
home as well, stalking, harassment, intimidation online
as well. So there's been an array of
different forms of violence, but most in cells will never commit
an attack. Most in cells are much more on
the depressive, nihilistic Rd. than the angry, vengeful road.
And they were the insults that I and ended up interviewing most
for the book. Yeah.
What would you say is the appeal?
Because with the red pill, you can kind of see the appeal
because at least it's trying to give those boys some direction.
It might be directionless and and not great, really bad for
them, but you can kind of see how a young person would be
motivated to have that mindset with with the black people.
What you're explaining, I can't see how it's very motivational,
inspirational for anybody. Is it more just a case of we
belong somewhere? There's people like me who are
in the same boat and I've got a community.
Is that just kind of what it is in terms of the motivation?
Absolutely. It's a it's a, it's kind of
finding people like you who kind of like you can finally like, as
I say, they do feel very outcasted.
Most of the guys in these groups do not have friends.
It's not a case of just like, you know, 16 year old boys who
have a gang of friends and haven't had a girlfriend yet and
go online and find these communities.
These are boys who never really got their best friend and and
people don't really kind of gel with them.
So they're kind of like on their own a lot in school.
They don't have birthday parties.
They're not invited to the birthday parties.
They haven't had like that kind of social life that many of us
have had. And, and many of us understand
the importance of having at that age group going into university.
Then it gets even worse. They're really on their own.
They're at home all the time. They're on their computer.
And it's just that kind of isolation, real depression.
And that's kind of why they found their first group of
friends in these communities because suddenly everyone's like
them, but they're all kind of banded around the resentment of
being like them. Um, so it's an unfortunate catch
22 where the first group of mates you have are also kind of
like all very miserable and toxic and kind of sad and
pushing each other down because there's this element in the
group where there's what I call like an intellectual
superiority. So they gain a sense of power
and control through understanding their worldview
as, as true, right. So yeah, it's it's it's bad is
pretty bleak. Everything's against me.
But at least I am smart enough to know that all you idiots out
here are sheep working for the system, doing the day-to-day and
all At the end of the day, all that matters is how you look and
how people see you. So there is this element of
figuring it out, the secret truth, and that's really
alluring. That's like being in a secret
cult. So that that is part of being in
it too. So there's a few reasons why
they might be in it, but they're not gaining, I suppose, like
that inspiration you mentioned. But also we have to be really
careful young people. They're not always trying to be
like, you know, finding their future.
Like, I mean, many of us when we were 19, we just like going out
to, you know, the bar and drinking pints with our friends
and think about the future, trying to get like, you know,
the big bucks and the CEOs, like we were in a corporate,
corporate work yet. So they're kind of just wasting
responding time instead of going out, you know, side with other
people on these forums, caring and absorb being more misery
about their situation. Yeah.
Yeah, when I was at school, there was definitely like what
you're describing there. There were kids in my class who
you would describe as potentially in that in that
scenario. But you know, I'm quite old now.
So they didn't have social media and they didn't have a way of
connecting with other people. So I guess in a in a way that
this, the violence we're describing is obviously
terrible, but they're meeting each other and finding that
community. Is there any like positive in
that in regards to at least they can speak to someone?
Maybe the conversations aren't great, but is that better than
nothing? Yeah, I've spoken to people
who've worked in Prevent, which is the counterterrorism strategy
of the UK. It's basically a pre criminal
space where people can refer people they're a little worried
about, especially young people to go and get that early
intervention. And some Prevent case workers
have said to me that when they work on a young insult case, a
teenager, they'll also often say, look like this is sometimes
the difference between me staying alive or not.
Like finally I could share my feelings.
I was really on the edge there. Something bad really this is
going to happen to me and this is kind of what gave me a little
bit of hang on to a little bit of what to do and like waking up
every day getting a message from someone.
These small little things we take for granted they were
getting for the first time. And that as a 1617 year old is a
big thing. So yes, it does kind of create
this like, OK, finally have something to to do with my life,
but of course it makes it worse. The unfortunate thing is the
misery and the resentment is what sticks the communities
together. So while they do have worms on
when they talk about anime or video games, they were like
parts of the forum where they do discuss like their shared
activities, which is cool. They have to also trying it into
intertwine it into kind of the general misanthropy, misogyny,
nihilism, because that's the glue.
And if one of them starts getting a bit happy, that's a
problem kind of ruining the ruining the vibe of the group.
Like you can't, we're not happy here.
We're miserable here. That's law of the group.
That's the rules. So yeah, it's like Catch 22,
Yeah. Police each of this behaviour
very carefully to make sure that they're all miserable and many
women, and you're probably sick of talking about adolescence,
but for many parents in particular, that was their first
instruction to the manosphere and to incel culture.
Do you think adolescents got it right?
Do you think the way that they portrayed the manosphere and
culture was spot on? Or do you think they they got
things wrong? Yeah, well, they didn't actually
portray the menosphere because that's not what they wanted to
do. But they did exactly what they
wanted to do. But not many people understood
it, and they did it really well. The little boy is not an insult.
They said that through the TV show.
His resentment came from being called an insult.
He was not that he was in these groups, but that someone said he
looks like the type who would be in that group.
Yeah, that's like back in the day, being called a, you know,
for boys, being called a virgin, been called a nerd, being called
a geek. But as I write in the book in
Cell is a harder kind of sentence than being called a
version, a nerd or geek back in the day, because it's everything
combined. It's saying you're a loser,
you're ugly, you'll never have sex.
But also in a additional and you might also kill people because
there's a terroristic component to that word.
So the word insult holds a lot of power as an insult right now.
So his 13 year old mind couldn't handle that and his 13 year old
mind went off the absolute deep end to an extremes that is very
rare, but can happen. And that's was the kind of the,
it's the effect of the manosphere in day-to-day world
when like when young minds can comprehend it, when they're
picking up pieces like 8020 rule, which they mentioned the
adolescence where, you know, the policeman son explains to the
policeman all about these little signifiers and what they mean
and what they're coded for. And the policeman is like, what
what's going on? I don't understand any of this.
All kids know it. It's not a niche thing anymore.
It's like the insole world. You have seeped into the
mainstream and kids are picking up pieces about it.
But they know that to be called insult is to be called
everything bad you've ever been called.
School shooter, loser, virgin, weirdo, geek, scary person I
don't want to talk to. It's all of those things
combined. So the insult is heavy,
especially on a young mind. Yeah.
So they're using this in schools right now in the UK as an
insult. Kids at the age of 13, including
each of them in cells. Yeah, yeah, I think they are.
I think that's also because we've kind of started.
I mean, the media has also started calling random people
insults. Like I've seen Elon Musk been
called an insult. I should state that insults are
very much young men who feel that they will never have sex,
never have a relationship. That is a heavy stipulation of
being an insult. It is literally called
involuntary celibate. So to call a man like Elon Musk,
who has a million children and install that goes against the
grain of the actual word. It's pedantic.
It might sound pedantic. Some people listening are like,
look, I couldn't care less. I'm not trying to be correct
about the word verbiage. All I know is insult equals
misogyny. So I'm going to keep using that
about the men who I find who are misogynistic.
That is fair in a weird way until it gets down to the nitty
gritty of who is most likely to be using that word, which is
teenagers and what that what that insult means and how they
levy that attack against each other.
And that's where kind of, yeah, it's gotten into difficulties,
especially with autistic young men and boys.
They get the worst of it because they're not fitting in.
And, you know, they make mistakes.
They say weird things sometimes potentially, and they may get
the brunt of that kind of attack coming in hot and heavy.
And that's why in the insult community we see an over
representation of autistic teenagers involved as well.
So there is a lot of problems. You can't just decide, you know,
sometimes we're going to use a word like insult to describe
everyone I don't like because there could be someone that is
vulnerable who's caught in the crossfires and has that attack
levied at them and suddenly, yeah, we we have to kind of
think about, yeah, the words we use.
And how big is this in terms of like, we heard a lot about the
manosphere and red pill. We know the scale and how much
is present on social media. It's been lots of conversation
in terms of the like the black peeled side of things.
How? How big is it?
Say the black pill is bigger than the red pill.
I think the red pill has lost a lot of its kind of fire.
Andrew Tate, he kind of like, you know, he was a big trending
person into 2020-2021, 22. But when he kind of died down,
the red pill died down again with him.
Now, he didn't invent the red pill.
He actually came along about 10 years into its inception.
Red pill was around online before then.
It just wasn't really a big thing.
He made it a big thing, but as he kind of laughed it, it also
kind of lost. It's it's kind of like, you
know, pizzazz or whatever you want to say in cells have stuck
around and the black pill has kind of morphed into the
mainstream, which is why we might see like more figures like
Clavicular or these people that you probably don't know yet, but
who are coming up on the mainstream channels talking
about being attractive or bone smashing is this thing like, you
know, making sure his face looks good and kind of, you know,
smashing it with a hammer. Looks maxing.
That's called looks maxing, isn't it?
It looks. Like exactly.
It's all part of the looks. By the way, that bone smashing
thing, I think that is literally that is a troll that is meant to
kind of like make people think like, Oh my gosh, I can't
believe this crazy person saying that.
There's a lot of this kind of performance art to get clicks
and lights in this world. But there is at the heart of it
a 14 year old who is consuming this and thinking, oh, I better
start looking at my face a bit more.
Oh, I didn't realize my eyes aren't as aren't what they
should be. If I want to be attractive, I
need to quantize which is more like slit eyes.
My eyes are too big, my nose is too big, my chin is too small.
I have a tiny forehead. Whatever might be.
Boys are examining themselves now with a fine comb.
And this kind of looks Max in culture has come directly from
the insult culture. They invented the word.
So there's a lot going on there. I've seen videos of people like
clavicular, clavicular, I was going to call it car vascular.
Well, let's just call on that as an insult and.
He who do these like mad face exercises where so they're
trying to make their jaw really chiseled and they over and over
and over again moving of their jaw until they do videos like 10
weeks later and it's sort of looks more chiseled.
I actually, when I was younger, my mum used to have a video
called Fit Face and it was all about reducing wrinkles.
And she'd sit in front of the TV and she would do these crazy
like couch. There was a cow chew, there was
a meow, there was a, you know, all these mad face exercises to
help reduce wrinkles. And it feels like they've taken
that and made it into something for younger men that I mean, and
these men look crazy to me. I look insane.
Terrifying chiseled faces that are so unattractive.
I just, would you say it's the manosphere then?
The term the manosphere? Is that a kind of catch all term
for all of this? So black pill, Red Pill, you
know, Andrew Tate, men who talk about masculinity, how would you
describe the monosphere as a different thing to Black pill?
Yeah, well, it's been described as kind of a loose network of
groups that kind of all kind of tie around this idea of anti
feminism. So anti feminism is like kind of
saying like feminism has gone too far, women have too much
power in society and politics and jobs and whatever.
And we need to kind of just retrace our steps and go back to
the girl, the old days of 1550s. Because you know what,
everything was better back then. We all had a wife, we all had a
white picket fence, we all had 2.5 kids and everyone was happy
and why did they, these feminists came and ruined it
all. Now there is a lot that goes
into that idea that comes from, I won't go into today, but our
friends, the far right. So there is something around
that as well that has been kind of bolstered around this other
ideology of let's go back to when things were very simple for
a specific type of group of people.
Now, when you think about the 1950s, what insults are really
looking for is that the idea that they think back then, all
they needed was just a job, a steady job in the shop, in the
factory. And lo and behold, they would
have had a lady who would come up and say, or they'd come up
and say, hey, would you like to marry me?
We're 21, let's go, let's do it. It's very simple, easy peasy.
Now that is obviously a really kind of rigid and untrue
history. As we understand, even though
women were a little bit pressured into marrying earlier,
they don't understand that their their relationships weren't
always happy. And.
They also look at divorce rates a lot, so you'll see a lot of
chat about divorce rates these days and say, oh, there's more
divorce due to feminism. Back in the 1950s, no one
divorced. Yeah, because they weren't
meant. They weren't allowed to.
Um, but they wanted to. A lot of them lived in utter
kind of awful kind of, you know, I don't even like my husband.
I don't like my wife, but I can't leave.
Many mistresses, many affairs. All this stuff is going on.
Alcoholism through the roof. There was a high suicide rate
among men in the 1950s as well. All this is nicely and neatly
forgotten in the insolent manosphere worldview because it
was a time pre the sexual revolution and pre feminism, and
therefore pre when women started getting too big for their booths
and deciding who they want to marry or making their own money.
So you can see there is that desire for control and that is
really scary. It's scary because voting habits
are going there and it's not just insults.
There's a whole group of these people and it's scary because
it's based around desperation because I'll let you, sorry, I'm
talking a bit too much all at once or in.
But when insults in these groups, like, you know, if they
were to get a bit happy, when they do get a bit happy.
And I've met guys who, you know, they found a job they liked and
suddenly hanging out in the misery forum isn't, isn't that
much crap, which who knew? But, you know, they start to get
happy and then they start to kind of, you know, say like, oh,
maybe maybe I didn't want a wife, but I was 21.
Maybe that would have been a lot of pressure.
Or maybe, you know, you have to meet someone that you fall in
love with overtime, maybe need to date more than one person in
your life. Suddenly their, their minds are
being open. It's like, you know, they're
understanding through first principles that what we live in
is a better society for not just women, but for them.
Yeah. And that's something that they
they realize later on they're like, oh, for men to actually,
I'm glad I didn't have this 1950s life.
So there is a lot of that that comes on when they get a bit
happier. But while they're miserable,
while they're depressed, the idea of that kind of controlled
environment where they feel the breadwinners with the money and,
and getting and, and, you know, the workplace being easier to
get into, that's more appealing. And that's all they're kind of
focused on as well. Yeah.
I have two questions really. Firstly, about like the
vulnerable. What is the vulnerable phase?
If you are a parent and you have a son, what?
Sort of signs. Would you be looking out for to
think, oh, they're prime for falling it down a black pill
movement hole? But also, you know, and I think
they're linked like what? How do we counted them as people
who are, you know, terrified about what this means for the
future? Because it feels to me like this
is linked to a nihilistic society, Like we are looking at
the world and thinking good God like hope he's being crushed.
Left, right and. Centre There are walls
everywhere, there is poverty everywhere, there are people
can't get on their housing market, people can't get jobs.
There is a lot of bad news everywhere in turn.
And when there is when there is all this bad stuff going on,
inevitably you're going to feel more of an affiliation with the
movement that just allows you to feel completely miserable.
It doesn't expect you to feel happy and hopeful when you're
surrounded by misery. So there were there were two
questions coming out of that. As a parent, what would you what
would you be looking out for from your children?
And secondly, what do you think we need to do Is that as people
are going who don't want this to spread to counter it?
It is really difficult with as a parent in some ways, some
sometimes it's actually really easy.
I have come across cases where you know, a young person was
outwardly saying how women have too much power and women are
stupid and calling them FOID, which is the insult slur, which
is basically like female robots because it's like Android.
So it's a FOID. So basically women have no like
humanity. They're actually just stupid
robots who go along with what, you know, they're told by the
media when they're using these terms.
And they're also just outwardly being kind of, you know, mean
towards girls in their class, not wanting to sit beside them
saying like, I don't like Alice. Alice is stupid, you know,
things like that. It's like, well, I think your,
your son has a misogyny problem and that's worth investigating.
Or they get reports from the school saying sorry, we've had a
few girls come up to us saying that, you know, Charlie was
walking down the corridor and said some really cruel things to
them and has been doing that for a while.
That's that's why not, you know, stand up and listen, because
this isn't the kind of boys will be boys society and that's not a
boys will be boys um thing anymore.
You know that that's not kind of playful.
Oops, I said the wrong thing. I said a joke that was a bit
sexist. I didn't mean it like that.
I just was trying to be this is consistent behavior based on
resentment, jealousy and kind of this feeling of inadequacy.
This is this is when they are angry, you know, they're not
playful, they're angry. And that's a whole difference.
And you can see that bubbling up in kids.
I mean, someone will capture, they're not great at hiding it.
So, so in those cases, yes, when you see the resentment boiling
and you're noticing these attitudes, you need help and
intervention. Now help and intervention, that
could be another question. We've talked about what this
does that look like, but there are some cases where
unfortunately parents, you know, I want to be really sensitive,
but how about how I put this? Parents have gone through the
mill with trying to get their child support throughout their
childhood for numerous issues of autism or social skills shyness.
They're just trying to get by each day.
Whether you know, it's not a scream or a cry or the kid goes
to school is a is a win. And then that child starts
spending a lot of time online and the rink were quiet in their
room and oh, thank God, he's not being upset today.
He's just quietly on his computer and look, nothing that
can happen. I don't care.
Like just let me have a rest. That's when the problem starts.
And then it's kind of when the proof, the, when the person has
gone kind of more inward and quiet and less kind of overt and
shouting about their problems and they've gone more silent,
that's when the problem starts. And that's when you have to say
why? Like what's going on online?
You're going to have to do a little bit of detective work
sometimes going through the computer, taking the computer to
the computer shop saying can you look at the history?
Is there any way for you to look at the history saying to the
kid, you can't have a password, but you got to give me your
password. If you don't give me your
password, computer's going in the bin.
It's Mike, give me your password.
I need to see as much as I can like before they start to clock
about how to hide their Internet activity.
You need to figure out where they've been.
Now again, this is a complicated.
There's a support networks involved that can help you with
this prevent being one, but it is about kind of invest knowing.
Look, my child has the vulnerabilities that are exactly
described as the ones which can be exploited by these groups.
He's alone, he's sad, he feels ugly, he's got social skills
problems. I think he's right for the for
the picking look, worse things worse, you go on the 12th
computer and he's actually having a fun time on, you know,
World of Warcraft and it's all good.
Great. That's great.
That's excellent. You annoyed him for about a
week. He he's crying because you
invited him for his privacy for a week.
OK, live it. But the other thing is
unfortunately more typical. That's the problem with
algorithms and content. And I won't go into that too
much, but it is more typical that they've been gauging in
something toxic, not because they're horrible, because that's
the way the Internet works and that if you're on it too long,
you're going to find these spaces.
And yeah, that's the problem, yeah.
It's actually happened to a friend of mine recently.
She has an autistic child and he was really struggling with
school and he was having, you know, he was being very loud
about it. They're both where they were
both finding it incredibly difficult.
And he stopped going to school, refused to go to school, started
being in his bedroom all the time on the screens.
And she found out he's been groomed online.
And, you know, it had been going on for weeks before she
discovered what had actually been going on.
And then the police had to get involved, you know, So I
absolutely agree. You've got to intervene a bit
early possible opportunity and goes through that computer, goes
through that phone and figure out what your child is doing 9.
And just on that as well, it's really difficult in technical,
technological age for parents to keep up with their children.
Like you could be in your 40s and be working in the tech
industry and not be as good as your 12 year old at home at the
computer. So there's new groups popping up
called nihilistic violent extremists that have the same
kind of like ideas, misogyny, nihilism and whatever.
It's like insults on steroids. Now they're getting way more
violent. And these groups are also
teaching kids how to kind of use VPNs, how to go on torrents, how
to kind of like scrape, um, other people's, um, you know,
uh, details and, and hack them and, and docks them and do all
this great. Like impressive tech
technological, kind of like savvy teenagers were the reason
that M&S had a hacking issue a couple of years ago at TfL and a
bunch of their place. So their ability, unfortunately
to kind of conceal their own stuff from their parents is
getting better. So it's really difficult and
complicated, but you do have to kind of like as much as you can
lay down the law. If you are concerned about your
boy who's suddenly kind of become very quiet online.
When he used to be a bit more kind of vocal about his
problems. Now he's suddenly a little bit
easier to be around. But that's because he's venting
out there, you know, Now, I'm not saying that's always the
way, but you know what I mean? It could be that situation
again, best connect situation is he's having fun on a game where
situation is he's in these very popular spaces online.
So yeah, it's complicated. And you can, if you are really
concerned, he said. Potentially go to prevent is
that. Yeah, yeah, so parents who are
concerned about their children online and who are acting a bit
strange now, acting strange in just out of character or or
being aggressive, being more aggressive or whatever it might
be. They're just concerned.
But they can't break into the laptop.
They're not sure what to do. They can go to the school and
the school can make a referral to Prevent and Prevent is a pre
criminal space. There's a Prevent officer in
every borough in the UK. They deal almost primarily with
teenage who are vulnerable and at risk and then who are in
these groups and spaces and they can do a little kind of help and
assistance and kind of figuring out is your child in in this
world? How far down?
What is the support system necessary for that?
And they give a range of different support.
So you can get things like, you know, a mentor who comes for the
day to chat about masculinity or women or misogyny and what that
means. But in a way that's, you know,
nuanced and friendly. It could be like, you know, just
kind of online safety course because maybe the kid is
trusting too many people or trusting what they're saying.
I was working with a group of boys recently in Newham and they
were all at risk in different ways, different kind of issues.
We're not all of them, but many of them.
And there was one boy who really had a problem, struggled with
fantasy and reality. And when it came to kind of
like, you know, saying a joke or I would say like a fake story or
I just make a joke that was obviously not true and had like
a million kind of fantasy elements in it.
Like, you know, I can't remember exactly.
But he couldn't, he couldn't really understand that.
So he kept thinking, you know, like, oh, wow, you were really,
you were really on a stage with, you know, Madonna, whatever,
whatever you said, he thought actually kind of happens.
And so that's really dangerous when they're online and they're
seeing memes and a lot of misogyny.
And it's like, women only want the top 10% who are 6, four and
make 7 million figures. He's like, oh, really?
Like, you know, that's the kid. You might fall into this.
And so there is a lot. Yeah.
Challenges. So that point is really
interesting because there's been so I would say who it is, but in
my network, some kids who were doing a prank and they did the
prank. And when they came, when I, when
I found out and I spoke to them, it's like they didn't realise
that them doing this prank to, to human beings could have
repercussions because they've seen stuff online so much and
they've seen like, you know, people on TikTok or whatever
doing stuff and getting away with it.
It's all fun and jokes. And they didn't realise there's
a real world consequence. If you go to prank someone, that
person may respond and they, you don't know what they're going to
do to you. They might hurt you.
And it's like they couldn't, they couldn't comprehend.
And I thought, you're sitting online watching these things.
And I think you're finding it hard to separate the real world
from what's happening online. So when you said that, yeah, I
was like, yes, I, I feel like seeing so much stuff online is,
is blurring the lines between like what's reality and what's
real. Absolutely, absolutely.
And and what's sad is it is real.
It is, it can be real anyway. And, you know, there was a mass
case of harassment from the insult community a few years
that I was a few years ago now. But it was the case of beautiful
and really lovely looking. Like lovely kind girl was
brutally murdered by someone she met on the Internet.
And she was like an Internet influencer.
So she had like a little bit of a following and people kind of
knew a little bit about her. She wasn't super famous, but she
had a bit of a following. And so she was brutally
murdered. And the guy who killed her put a
picture of her murdered body on the Internet because he was.
Yeah, he was awful. Now, that picture went viral in
certain spaces. Now.
Then it stopped. But then the insults, because
they were feeling for the extremist insults, because they
were feeling angry and resentment, they picked up on
that. And they for kind of feelings of
power and control, they kept sending that photo to her
mother. So different users and different
members of the community, this would have been a year later or
something kept sending that photo over and over and over
again to her family. And of course, like, that's so
traumatizing. Every day getting the same photo
of your daughter, which you knew existed, but now is being sent
every single day. And that kind of harassment
feels very unreal to them because this is a person who
don't know when they're sending it to another person, they don't
know. And these are characters in a
movie. But there's a sense of power and
control about it. Like, haha, look at this.
But it's not funny. And it's also not, it does have
real world consequences. And it's not until they're a bit
old or they get in problems, legal problems or they, you
know, someone punches them in the face because they say wrong
things. You know, it's not until those
moments that the penny drops because it feels Internet is
like Vegas to them. Everything that happens online
stays online. But it's not Vegas.
It is real. So it's really difficult to deal
with these crimes because back in the day, Yeah, as you say, if
you have to do a crime, kind of has to do a face to face, unless
you were doing like postal fraud, like you kind of have to
go into the room with the you're about to do like, you know, a
mug or there might be and do it. You need a bit of like
confidence and social power. But they don't need that
anymore. They are able to do a lot of
damage online, but it doesn't feel the same way.
It doesn't feel real. It feels like GTA.
So that's real problem. And it's going to be a problem
going forward in our in our world as well because of the
Internet. Yeah, but.
I was sort of like, you need to feel the consequences to
understand you can't just go around the world doing what you
want to do. Like you're interacting with
human beings. And I think, you know, we, we
talk a lot about the, the, the removal of third spaces in terms
of young people aren't necessarily experiencing the
real world as much as we were like walking around youth
centres, our school clubs, just hanging around and you have to
interact and it's good, it's bad.
There's consequences to whatever you do.
So you learn how to navigate in the world.
And I think if you're living online, you, you don't, you
don't do that. So that example devastating, but
you can see how they're not even realising the impact.
They're not, they're not seeing this is a real person, a real
mother that you're selling this to.
They they don't get that, you know, So I think we need to
encourage our kids to live in the real world as much as
possible. Yeah, and I I mean, you
mentioned it Jolie, just a moment ago about like nihilism
kind of seeping through and like, you know, I that's an
interesting point in bit of because just as you said,
Elliot, like we are now seeing something called nihilistic
violent extremist groups for the first time in a while.
Like we've really seen them run by kids, kind of kids who are
kids to extremism. And a lot of these kids would
have been maybe not that they would have been in the world
because they're too young. Maybe they would have been the
types who would have been on the insult forums, but they found a
new forum. This new forum has a lot more
kind of misogyny wracked with violence and and pure nihilism.
So the the types of crimes we're seeing coming from these groups
is probably. The most abhorrent we've seen
from any extremist group. We're talking a lot of like
child sexual abuse material. We're talking about animal
abuse, we're talking about arson, talking about murder,
talking about other forms of assault, because it's all acts
done in the name of nihilism. And in order to be in the
groups, you have to kind of pay to play.
So you have to do an act of kind of horror or terror or have sex
sorted a young girl in the Internet and any kind of bad.
It's very like related to kind of in the audience of being
evil. I'm a nihilist in the kind of
like teenage version of it. And these are now kids who are
more extreme than the kids we saw five years ago in the in
cell forum. So and they're and they're also
using the same terminology Ford or talking about misogyny and
and it's like, wow, it's unfortunately instead of getting
better because of all the work we've supposedly done with boys,
we're now saying something even horrifying like a Frankenstein
version of the in cell community.
So and these kids also do not understand what they're doing is
real and you know they are sex towarding other kids online.
They're doing other kind of forms of assault and it's very
strange stuff on my cybercrime. And then when they are arrested,
because they do get arrested, they're brought into police
stations and there's this sheepish little bit like 15 year
old boy looking up with you with big eyes like like scared and
and it doesn't understand what happened.
And bring in one case, bringing in his teddy bear to the police
station because he was so nervous.
This is the same kid who did all these appalling crimes online to
other people. And yet he's terrified because
it doesn't doesn't feel real and nothing about it feels real.
And that is so scary to me because I don't even know how to
teach reality online. And then misogyny is a core part
of it because I realized, sorry, this is the last thing I say.
I go these long tangents. But I've realized that people
who aren't angry at women, like especially boys, if you are a
boy and you actually like women, you're having a fine time with
them or girls, you know, you have friends who are girls,
maybe you have a girlfriend. You're very unlikely to join an
extremist group. I've never seen people who like
women in any extremist group. It's always a problem you've had
with women. Women seems to be like a car
component of being vulnerable or kind of wanting to join an
extremist group much more than race, religion, ethnicity.
It's kind of your feelings about women.
So that is kind of the thread that links them all together.
And the scary thing about that is like growing up as a young
boy for a lot of young boys, like one of their main
objectives is to get a girlfriend and have sex.
And, but that's not always easy, not for any other reason than
it's just, you know, it's just not easy, right?
It's human relationships. And like you, you, you can, it's
very normal to, to struggle to find a girlfriend at 16 years
old. That's just completely normal
for most boys. It's not, that's not out of the
ordinary. So it could be a, a very normal
experience or rejection that happens to everyone that leads
you to quite extreme paths when actually that's just the part of
growing up and normal life. And for most people, they figure
it out and you know, at their own timing, they, they get a
girlfriend, they have, they have sex and it's successful.
So it's just sad now that I think back in the day before,
because there wasn't that online world in that community to go
to, you just kind of carry on, carry on, carry on.
And eventually you figure it out.
Whereas now it's like, Oh no, this thing happened to me, this
girl rejected me, which is completely normal.
I'm going to go and join this extreme group and have these
extreme views. That's quite scary.
It is it isn't exactly what you say like the normal experience
has been pathologized online into being this like, you know,
in the indication of not only your now but your future too.
And there is the some things are true.
For example, the age of losing your virginity has gone up as
the typical age range has gone up and met It's now like 1920 or
maybe about that. Who cares?
You know, I know some guys are
going to be like, you don't understand, like, you know, how
upsetting that that is to hear that I have to wait till I'm 19
or that 19 is the standard. We these arbitrary ages.
Some people do don't lose their opportunity until they're 2223
and that's fine. They go on to live very normal
lives. But but in these like, you know,
it's not exactly the illness to be cured.
But I get it in these groups, it's very much teenagers in the
here and now. What only matters is what
happened at yesterday and today. They're very bad at seeing the
future. And so when they're not getting
what they want now or they not think they're up to the
masculine kind of, you know, perfect masculine stereotype
that everyone else apparently is up to, then they get very
resentful and they're very primed for the picking.
The insult community is huge. There's thousands on that forum.
There's also loads of boys who secretly see themselves as
insults but are too afraid to join the forum.
And that is sad because again, look, when you stop kind of
making it into this massive issue that if you didn't have a
girlfriend by the age of 19, everything is over for you.
And also just to bounce off your point, Elliot, like the the
times of the days of the past have also changed a lot more.
Kids are a lot more socially kind of shy and there isn't as
much hanging out in the malls or hanging out in the street or
hanging out at parties. They don't have parties.
So the hanging out is on Discord where you don't need to have eye
contact and you don't need to touch each other in any anyway.
So when you actually want to move that into a real
relationship, it's really scary. You know, to go to something,
you have to make eye contact with people.
That's terrifying. And now you want to like
hopefully date them. That's that's just a lot like.
So there's a lot of regression and social issues going on as
well. Yeah.
Yeah, As a parent of two boys, I can attest to that.
My son was desperately trying to get somebody to go for a bike
ride with him yesterday. He was on a group with 22 of the
boys, and they were all like, no, I'm going to stay in and
play, Minecraft or no. And I was like the sun's
shining. You just want to go for a.
Bike ride, man. Come on and let's talk about
some of the data. Movember's upcoming Young men
and media reports suggest the manosphere is evolving.
It's no longer just about fitness or dating, but
increasingly about money, status and self optimization, which is
what we've been talking about with these mental chiseled jaws.
What? What is it that's driving the
shift? Yeah, it's, it's complicated.
I mean, like there's a few things going on, but like I
would say one of the things is we do live in a very kind of
appearance based society. And that's gotten way worse with
the advent of social media and the advent of dating apps where
you're now picking people based off of the best photo they can
take on the beach. And that's like really weird.
Like when we think about human attraction, we often think about
the body movement, you know, like how people smile, the jokes
they make, the little twinkle in their eye.
That's all kind of but not gone by the way, the most a lot of
people meet people in real life before the kind of more socially
shy people who are already struggling with social with
fitting in. It now seems like that's all
they're seeing is like the still form image and clicking and
picking which one on Tinder. I might be able to chat to you
today if anyone and that's going to OK, I think we're going to
get into a problem with appears with this MP coming out.
We're going to see a lot of people losing weight real fast.
We're going to see a lot of people kind of getting prettier
and a a lot of there's already on my content for women, a lot
of kind of going back to the smaller physique is better.
We used to have that moment where it was about being curvy,
but now we're back to kind of the original.
And with men, we're seeing that money is getting harder to make
because I guess AI is stealing your job or something like that
or you're afraid it is. So you're less inclined to think
that you're going to make much money.
So what's the next thing? Looking good.
So looking good is kind of like your next way into hopefully
attracting a woman and also just getting some status.
And then that obviously goes to the extremes when we see that
with like stereo abuse, as you said, looks, Maxine, we're going
to see more plastic surgery. More guys are going to be
fixated on how they look because they're kind of too nervous
about their own character, their own personality, their social
skills. So that's kind of all they got
or in their minds, that's all they feel they got.
So they're really banking that, but if they look pretty enough,
that'll hopefully make you you'll ignore the fact that they
haven't spoken to a human in a while.
I find it crazy though, that this obsession that I'm seeing
online of the way men look like for women, I don't think women
find that attractive. I don't like the muscles.
The chiseled jar just makes me feel a bit violated.
So it sort of seems like men are doing this.
They've gone off on this weird, the path of trying to make
themselves look something that they think is attractive to
women when it isn't attractive to women.
So there's part of me that really hopes they'll suddenly
realize that and they'll be like, Oh no, actually we've,
we've got that wrong. Let's start again and like, do
the cleaning instead. That's what women like to hold
the baby and do the bloody cleaning.
The report from November also highlights some really striking
stats. So when they found that 63% of
young men surveyed watch masculinity influences, that's a
lot. 43% find the motivating, 27% report feelings of
worthlessness. Right.
From your perspective, does this kind of content act as a sort
of? Pipeline.
Into this more extreme content. Yeah.
But I would also say that some of that content can be in itself
quite extreme depending on what the content is like.
For example, extreme kind of like versions of like
optimization, going to the gym six days a week, you know,
building up muscle build, trying to like use cryptocurrency or
ways to scam you like to get financial like stability, but
it's not stabilities get rich quick scams.
Actually one of the things I used to teach the boys in
London, but come in the middle of like all these different like
extremism, very like kind of like coded lessons, but this one
would be standing out. They'd be like, oh, this is
pretty cool. Like I like this.
Like it's kind of fun. I get it.
And it's because those are exactly the scams that get boys
involved in places like these because there is this kind of
boys more than girls want to get rich fast.
And that's why those scams will use markers to appeal to men,
like having the Lambo, having the plane, having the trip in
Dubai, It's all the same. And then basically as they kind
of like want to get rich, they join the scam and it ends up as
a Ponzi scheme. And I taught them what a Ponzi
scheme is. But then it also gets them into
the ideology. And the ideology has misogyny,
It has often white supremacy. It has kind of like this kind of
arrogance about it where people are kind of talk to me like
basically horrible people, but in the guise of being confident.
And a lot of this is indicators of power.
I mean, in terms of muscular power, strength, financial power
and tallness is is often domination power.
And just get back on something you kind of said there a moment
ago about what women like. And women like men holding
babies. It's not about what women likes
about what men feel men should be.
We're not we're not involved in this occasion.
What's in the equation is the fact that they feel that they've
missing on power that they should have had.
They want to be Maverick and Top Gun.
They don't want to be the stay at home dad and you know, the
funny ROM com. They want to be the cool guy.
And then it's like kind of going back to what is a cool guy.
Let's go back to 1980s styles of muscles Rambo.
Let's look at Donald Trump because he is like the leader of
America and he's this way. So that's it's pretty cool.
Putin, he's pretty strong man too.
And then you have all these kind of other versions of what is
powerful in a masculine way. And that's what they want.
They because you know, that's and women are a part of the
power. It's having women to have power,
not having power to have women. So it's like having lots of
beautiful women around you in a yacht is cool.
And it doesn't matter if they like you or not.
It's just. So it's just so interesting, so
interesting. And I think I'm just the idea of
finding out what women want from men online rather than being in
the real world and meeting women.
And I think what you said earlier was like, they don't
have parties anymore. And that is so sad.
Like, don't you know, some of my formative years and formative
moments were like being 16/17/15 at a house party.
And yeah, you're, that's where you're figuring out the dynamics
of how to talk to girls and what that looks like and what
attraction is and what actually works in regards to getting a
date. And yeah, obviously being
presentable and and looking, looking OK is part of it.
But it's your charisma, it's your jokes, it's your
personality. It's how you can build a
rapport. It's how you can like show
someone that you're interested in the master and the right
questions. And you know, it's that kind of
stuff. And you can't learn that on the
Internet on Reddit. Like you have to learn that face
to face. So yeah, we need more parties.
That's so sad that. You're not having parties.
I know another important part of that is like your son is lucky
to have 20 friends on a group chat because a lot of boys do
not have best friend or not do not have a male friend or they
don't have a group. And that also is striking
because I think like as you mentioned, with house parties,
you go there, you know, to date and see girls, but you probably
took it for granted that you were there with all your
friends. And that, you know, that is a
thing that a lot of the insults I was speaking to crave
sometimes even more than a girlfriend, just a guy to hang
out with on a Sunday and like hang when drink beer or maybe
they're 17 so go off on a bike ride.
This is not as common as it used to be.
And sometimes the friends, if they have any, are online or
they're always playing computer games and they're kind of bad
friends, but they don't have that bonding experience.
That also helps them to build that confidence, to build that
self esteem so that they we don't end up feeling that
resentment. Also, guys checking on guys is
really important. So when someone goes a little
bit into the red pill or black pill kind of vibe, the friend
coming in and kind of setting them straight, that is also
being missed. So there's this really important
male friendship part. Miss one in five teenage boys
and young men do not have the best friend.
And that is, I think, more problematic than the girlfriend
issue as well. Yeah, I would definitely agree
with that. And I guess, again, it's hard,
isn't it? All relationships are hard.
They're worthwhile, but you know, even having a best friend
can be like, it can come with its challenges.
You've my my son also had a big falling out with his closest
friend at school recently. They had a big argument and he
was absolutely devastated. Poor kids, like 11 years old.
And he was like, you know, I've been a bit of the moment about
it. And we sat down and we talked
through what had happened and how to deal with that.
And, you know, and not every kid has like, I don't have parents
that will sit with them and talk through these the child
relationship challenges and what you need to do in order to
repair frictions in a relationship.
And what do you think maybe policy makers should do about
this? Do you think banning social
media from to sixteens will help any of this?
Or do you think it's not? It's not related.
Well, obviously social media is related, but like in terms of
like the banning as a kind of solution is, is actually not
great because what it does is it says, well, the social media
companies would love it. They say, yeah, OK, great,
great. We'll do the bands when the UK
technically under sixteens aren't allowed on Instagram,
which means technically we don't have to worry about moderation
when it comes to or checking out if there's any kind of child
pornography or you know, like grooming going on in Instagram
because they're not there there. So that's the little like
loophole that we are concerned about, especially as you know,
that's why there isn't anyone kind of from the social media
companies coming out strongly against the ban because it kind
of works for them. Now that's obviously also
recognizing that they know they are there because what 1616 year
olds will do or 15 year olds will get another account,
secretly use AVPN for a country that doesn't have a ban and
suddenly there's more Irish teenagers on Instagram than
there are British teenagers and using the VPNs to change
country. And that's what happens.
So Instagram are aware that they won't lose their clientele,
they'll just see them moving, but they don't have to worry
about moderation as much, especially in the UK landscape.
So it's real. Cash 22 and banning also doesn't
seem to have been working in Australia.
But I think when it comes to parents, parents don't have some
powers and they don't have others.
I don't think parents are very good at influencing teenagers.
I don't think I listened to my mom once when I was 16 and maybe
once or twice. But I think being really real,
we got to be honest about like when the influence of kind of,
you know, things stop happening. 151617 are those big years.
But they have some influence when it comes to the technology
in the home. And they can be, you know, as I
said, going through the laptop, bringing it to the store down
the road, looking through that history, the the parental
controls won't work because they're able to get around them.
But you can kind of examine the the laptop and using your
detective hat, asking them questions that, you know, kind
of are using the Socratic method.
And I've talked about that with parents before.
Lighthouse parenting. If something goes wrong, come to
me, I won't be here yelling and shouting.
I will be here ready to fix the problem with you.
The last thing I want is you having a problem like sex
tortion or whatever it might be. And I've heard of too often now
parents going to the room and finding their child has, has,
has killed themselves because that is unfortunately more
common now with online harms where kids can't manage it,
especially sex tortion, where they freak out.
They don't think their parents are going to be OK with it.
They're too afraid and too, you know, to go to that.
And that's what the outcome, the stress brain does and they freak
out. This is all I can do.
So sad because a lot of these kids parents say I would have
helped them, but I would have done anything.
I know we come from a conservative religious
background. I know we're conservative
parents, but I would have done anything.
But it's about kind of showing that to your kids that if things
go wrong on the Internet, come to me.
I don't care what it is, if you've committed a crime, if
someone's committed a crime against you, if you've done
something you're ashamed of, calm to me because that's where
we can have that kind of open parenting.
And then it's about, yeah, conversations as well.
And that's better than balance. I feel that's all we have.
And it's good. It's a good tool as well to have
that conversations, yeah. Yeah, I always say that to my
kids. No matter what you've done, you
can always come to me and I promise I won't be angry.
I will still love you. I'll just be there to help you
and say if somebody even is telling you that they're going
to hurt you because you tell somebody, you must still come to
us. We also keep screens at
bedrooms. No screens bedrooms, which is
hard actually, because as they get old, got homework to do and
they want a private space to be able to do that.
We're just, we're sticking to it so far.
So yeah, that does help. Is there anything else you think
policymakers should be doing? Anything, any other changes or
laws that we can bring in that would help it?
Is really tricky because I think it's about in they were we work
in a world where this international kind of law as
well. So like transnational companies
like Facebook or, you know, Roblox or whatever it might be.
They were kind of in their own world.
And while you can regulate them a little bit in your own
country, you also have to be careful.
Like for example, there was something done, I think where
they try to regulate, I think it was the Sweden or somewhere like
that. And, and, and they try to
regulate a video game so that children were only chatting to
other young children of their age group.
But because they were the only country doing that, there's
enough like a bunch of little Swedish teenagers were all on
their own and they couldn't find anyone to play with because
they're all the rest of the world, world doesn't wasn't on
the same regulation. So they were kind of like, oh
gosh, this game has gotten terrible.
I have nowhere to play with. So now that we're bringing in
more kind of like consistent regulation throughout like the
EU and Britain and the US, we can start to kind of make kind
of consistent laws around it. But there will always be on
moderated sites, like there will always be websites run by people
who are mad people in extremist country or not country who are
extremists in countries that we can't get to or we can't, you
know, regulate. So there will always be the neo
Nazi site, there will always be an insult site, there will
always be something. But it's about making it harder
to find. And that is where we can talk
about what it means to have consistent patterns of
regulation and using current expert advice.
And yeah, I don't know, I it's really difficult.
I wish I I'd not jealous of usually raising a son right now,
but it seems like you're doing everything like I often tell
parents to do, which I think sends a really good message.
And it also sends the message for those kids feel just kind of
more confident in being online and more confident also, you
know, to not do the thing that might get them in trouble.
More kind of eyes open because if you don't talk about anything
at home at all, suddenly, you know, it's very much wild, Wild
West and, and being naive in it. So you don't want to be naive.
So you've trained them to even be aware of different things.
The fact that someone can threaten them to kill them is
something that you've kind of already told them.
So now, But if you didn't know that, that's terrifying.
So yeah, exactly that kind of conversation.
Yeah, I mean, I'm very lucky that I do podcasts where I get
to talk about and learn how to be a good parent of my boys.
And finally, after spending so much time studying these
communities online, do you feel like it's had a negative impact
on the way that you view boys and men?
It must have had an impact on you personally and how you you
men in your life. Oh, actually not at all.
I suppose like because I went into the world of extremism,
I've always been interested and I don't want to use the word
underdog to kind of just like talk about them, but I've always
been interested in people who've gone down these paths of kind of
like extreme ideology. Now, I also was very lucky to
work for an organization when I started called Life After Hate
based in America, which was run by former extremists, neo Nazis.
And I was able to learn that people can come out of these
really rigid and and hateful beliefs and they can come out as
the best people you've ever met. Some of the most kindest and
most open people I've met have been former extremists.
So learning that people really can change and see the light.
It also helps when I see especially young kids who I
don't see as you know, they're saying the worst things you can
ever hear on the Internet. But when you start to talk to
them one-on-one, you also realize they're 18 and probably
have a huge a lot of issues behind them.
And they're not these big scary monsters.
They're not Ted Bundy on the other side of the phone.
They're, you know, Liam who just hasn't gone to school in two
years and is really nervous and does know himself.
It's not, it's not a scary monster.
It's usually a very broken person who's gone down a very
twisted Rd. That is not to excuse if they've
done something or if they've committed a crime.
And that's for the nuance wise, absolutely, but it is to
understand. And we also have to see children
as children. Like I, I say, if they're under
18, they are a child. They sure they're saying things
that you wouldn't want to say ever in your life, but they are
a child and you can't pick and choose who a child is.
And even when they're 21, sometimes maturity levels is
really low because maybe they are nerd divergent.
Maybe they have had issues that are unsupported and maybe their
way of seeing the world is a lot closer to someone who was 1415
than someone who's 21. And, and it's about
understanding that individual and, and where they're coming
from. So no, no, it's made me see them
very much as human. I'm actually sorry.
One more thing on that, we don't have a lot of media
representations of men who are emotional and that's one of the
reasons that insults go down the road of anger because there's a
lot of them said to me, it's not manly to feel sad, but it is
pretty manly to feel angry. When you're sad, you get angry.
It's power, it's control. It's I'm not hurt.
I'm the one who hurts, I'm the one who knocks.
That's been the masculine image. So that's kind of been the
reason why they're so overt in their anger on these forums
because that's them, that's them being very sad, but being very
angry. And then when you talk to
someone, one, it's about kind of like seeing now suddenly they're
broke. They're, you know, they're
normal. They're they're saying, my dad
died three years ago. I've been lost.
I don't know what to do. Like I can't say that to
anybody. So there's a lot of hurt.
And it's about seeing that, that men feel very trapped
emotionally and still in this world and that this anger is
their way of screaming, sometimes in pain.
And that's when you see it that way.
It doesn't become as scary area as it used to be, but it does
become a problem to be fixed. And it is police that behaviour
by so many people, boys crying, boys showing emotion is I've
seen it in schools, I've seen it from teachers, I've seen it from
other adults, you know, towards boys who might best into tears,
you know, a very sort of dismissive and like it's
uncomfortable cry because you're a boy.
Maeve, your book is brilliant. Please, everybody go out and buy
it. It's called Black pilled by
Maeve Park. And I think every parent should
really understand what is going on in these communities.
I think it's imperative that we have a good grasp of when to be
heading into down a rabbit hole that is really worrying for for
them and for society because, you know, we've got we've got to
be aware of the wise. It's not that's not good
parenting, is it? So by Maeve's book, I'd, I'd
really enjoy you to start understanding this issue.
Maeve, thank you. Thank you so much.
I mean, it is amazing how much you've done and how
knowledgeable you are. And every single word of what
you said, I think will be a lesson to all of this.
I've learned so much from this interview.
So thank you very much for taking the time to join us
today. Oh.
No problem is brilliant being here.
There's so much room to ask me on.