Jon Ronson in the Manosphere of Madness – Weekend Bonus

0:00This episode is brought to you by TicTac. Lay something, get your game on, because the TicTac lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper TicTac, this new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mince, and when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big, try Dr. Pepper TicTac today. Did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived? Today, people are fighting back. With support from the Gates Foundation, American scientists and partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them, helping cut malaria rates in half. The result? A safer, healthier future for everyone. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential, search gatesfoundation.org slash mosquito to learn more. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task. Unless you have a partner like Shopify.

1:00They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling, and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Hines, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your site, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Hello and welcome to another weekend bonus episode from Oh God What Now. We'll be break off from the regular podcast for once or once with interesting people. I'm Andrew Harrison. Today, every parent expects the odd weird text from their kids. Their loss, their phone is dying, they've missed the last boss. They don't know how they're getting home. They do not expect to get a series of increasingly weird messages, saying that the kid and his friends have been invited to a party by somebody they only recently met online. That it turned out to be in a fake medieval castle in the woods.

2:00It was so strange that the kid felt he had to share his phone coordinates just in case, and then eventually that they'd left because it was, in quote, completely fucked. But that is what happened to the writer and broadcaster John Ronson. A disturbing experience if you think your kid might be in danger, but he was also, he doesn't admit, a dream for a journalist because here was a story right in his wheelhouse, the reporting and study of very weird things and people that had just fallen straight into his lap. After meeting the man in the cheesy castle, a directionless, disaffected, very rich saiyan of an industrial family, whose dream was to make a reality TV show in which girls dressed as princesses courted him, Ronson followed more threads and discovered more products of what he calls the man crisis. So at the 6.7 million American man who were out of work and not looking for a job, or it seems looking for anything apart from porn, video games, and the empty status of influencers, YouTube stars, or Manusphere role players. Like me, John Ronson has not gotten any younger. He too is prone to staring into space and worrying about nothing,

3:03but he decided to investigate this world of male nothingness, in part to stop falling into it himself. He meets a man who started making lawn care videos and ended up being accused of abusing his kids for YouTube likes. He meets men trying to shore up curiously spare it in de-industrialized towns, who themselves fall into cynicism and despair. And he meets a man who turns it to an extreme right influencer just because the algorithm drives him there. He doesn't even believe it himself. All this stuff comes together in John's new book The Castle, where the absurd soft porn Disneyland of the title becomes a symbol of empty male fantasy. And John's written me on the line from New York to talk about it. And the man crisis, hello John, how are you? Hey Andrew, how are you? Very beautifully put. Thank you for that very nice summary. Except for the words man crisis, I would like that. Well, we can talk about that. So look, I mean, strange experiences on the fringe of society are very much your thing. When did you realize that as a result of your son going to a party shouldn't have gone to? You were kind of onto something here, and it wasn't just a sort of standalone weird guy in the woods,

4:06but it's part of something. Yeah, so at the very same time that my son was lured under false pretenses to this mysterious castle in the middle of the forest. Yeah, to take part in a reality show that didn't exist. Metaphores, yes. I do, it did not really matter that since then when chief Wiggum says to Ralph, you know, what are you doing? Poke your out my forbidden closets of mysteries. Yes, exactly. I realized that like, so just as this was happening, I just come out of hospital for the first time in my life. I've been in hospital twice, and I felt, oh my god, you know, should I be raging against the dying of light here? I would find myself convalescing on a part bench. I'd have to sit in there for a few minutes. I would think to myself, I am just a man sitting on a bench, and I sort of leap up to try and busy myself in some other way. And I think the moment when I realized this was a book was the realization that the castle owner was having a kind of similar existential

5:08abyss to me. It was manifested in very different ways. The last thing in the world I would want is a harry of princesses. I mean, that just sounds like a hell of a llama drama, which by the way, it is a hell of a llama drama. Yeah, because we ridden the book, it's really, yeah. So, I thought we're two older men whose lives really showed up. And whose lives really shouldn't have collided. But they have collided because we both have this kind of dysfunctional relationship with purpose at a time where I think a lot of people, men and women, are having a similar dysfunctional relationship with purpose. I mean, it's interesting in that like, you do discover a kind of commonality between this, frankly, absurdly rich guy with what appears to be serious mental problems and serious moral problems in his way of looking at the world. And you know, the kind of, you know, his, his inane dreams, his absence of interior life, all this kind of stuff. But also with like a kind of penniless, well-in-care guy, you know, who is trying to build his life out from nothing there, they're not so different.

6:08Yeah, it feels that they are real thematic connections. And that's what excited me about this, that every single man, I focus on men in this book, but I think a lot of this applies to women too. Every single man in this book was feeling kind of cussed drift from a society, that they no longer recognise quite as well. And so I kind of tried to build these, to use the metaphor to build these like little castles for themselves, within which they can lead a good life, the kind of life that they expect to lead. And it all goes wrong. And part of the reason I all go wrong is that people are chasing false dreams. My cast alone at what's the other reality show, the lawn care influencer thinks the answer to his problems is YouTube being a content creator. So you've got all of these like false promises coming in and leading that even more history. It was interesting that you pushed back at the idea of a man crisis there, because it's almost a given out in the world that there's something going wrong in masculinity. And it's very politically coded.

7:08Well, I tell you why I was wondering why I heard myself say that, like I didn't love that face. And it's because any, when you, the book has to be described in some way, but when you use words, what one uses words like manosphere or classic masculinity, it makes people imagine I've written a different book to the book that I've actually written. Do people think you're a right-wing madman standing in front of a borrowed Lamborghini? Oh, no, the opposite. I think people think I've like a left-wing beater cut, who's out to like, you know, distraught, who's out to like, criticise anybody who's more muscular than I am. And it's really, yeah, that's what it is. And, you know, indeed, I am in many ways a left-wing beater cut. But this book is not really a book about the extremes. In the same way that you've been publicly ashamed, you know, a previous book of mine isn't about rupee murder being shamed online. It's about some ordinary person who's, who just drifts into these huge societal changes

8:08that then impact their lives. That's kind of what I'm going for here. I know my cast alone isn't a very ordinary man. But in general, I'm trying to get to a more ordinary malaise in this book. How do you talk about this? What you call the world of male-nothingness? Without falling into that kind of, that far right framing, that, you know, men are under attack therefore we must roll back women's rights. You know, the idea that the manosphere self-diagnosis that, you know, well, women are getting all the jobs and DEI is robbing us of our rightful opportunities and white men are the victims because it's very hard to talk about the real problems for men without that kind of crowding it out and that sort of shouting down what you're trying to say. Well, that's why I'm the right person to write this book because I haven't fallen into any of these traps. In fact, quite the opposite, the book is this really propulsive, strange, funny mystery story. It's a real beach read. Which isn't to say that I don't look at some of the things you just listed,

9:11but I don't look at them in a kind of polemical, pro man way. Like I would never, you know, happen to this 40 years, like I never do that. I always come into something more as a kind of, you know, in a more sort of psychological and anthropological and curious way. Just, you know, curiosity, not ideology. But actually, as you report it, because you're a reporter, probably, you know, that's what you do, you know, as you say you're not a polemicist. But as you're reporting it, where you find yourself thinking that, you know, repellent though the Andrew Tates of this world are and they do treat it as license to behave abhorrently to be misogynists, to be violent, to celebrate cruelty and domination. When you look at the kind of the stuff that you find, you know, that they, these, you know, dismal, disconcerting facts like the Princeton economist who discovered three consecutive years declining life expectancy in America. 600,000 people should be alive, who weren't. But majority of what you call deaths of despair, it's heavily male. Do you ever look at and go like, unfortunately, it seems that the man who swear people

10:12do have a point in what's happening, if not in how to address it? Yeah, I think there's, there is certainly, I certainly beer into that at times in the book. I'll give you one example is the American Psychological Association bought out a report which was like very derided at the time that said that traditional masculinity is on the whole harmful. And then it lists harmful male traits. And some of them are black and white harmful, and suddenly and so on. But others on that list are things that not only do I do all the time, but I like love them, like achievement, adventure, risk, competitiveness, like I did all of those things while I was out there in this book. That's what I was thinking as I read that beer, I wish I was more adventurous than risk-taking. I was trying to more achieve, I don't, you know, to just lump all of these sort of allegedly, supposedly male-coded things, of course, obviously loads of female code as well, well, it's full of female achievers.

11:13Just say that there's no difference between being a risk-taking adventurer and being some kind of woman beating piece of shit. Yes, seems to me a bit of a reach. However, I mean, yes, I was irritated. And there's other things in the book which I share the irritation of the more sort of modesty of leaning men. I'll give you two examples. But then let me return to the harmful male traits thing, because I've got something interesting to say about that. So for instance, another example is I've got a section about Dufus men and TV ads in the book. Yes. You know, you turn on TV ads these days, and most men in TV ads are idiots who can't do anything right, and have to be constantly bailed out by their exasperated wives. They're always opening the conflicts at the wrong end and it goes on the floor, or just like walking around, like holding up on the pants going, no, do I watch these and stuff like that. Yeah, and sobbing because they're not allowed to retot before dinner time, leaving their babies on restaurant conveyor belts.

12:15David Cameron actually did that, didn't he, with the car roof? He left the bike again on the car roof or something. No, you don't have that tall station. Sorry, I interrupted you, John. That's OK. And what in fact, I interviewed a man who specializes in playing Dufus' on TV, a guy called Ed, who by the way loves the book, I'm so pleased about that. He said that one of the ads he had to do was it was for show all the insoles. And in the ad, he's walking down the street, then he puts a comfortable pair of insoles, and he starts galloping like a horse down the street. And he said he had to look what they do for C for that. So I sent to him like 50 years ago, you have the Moul Braman, big stoical and masculine, on a horse, and now you have to be the horse. And so that's like the arc of where we've gone. So of course, he used to be women with a figure of mockery in ads, but now it's men. By the way, none of this is good for the women either because in the ads, all the women get to do is slap their foreheads and roll their eyes. It's a positive imagination of the way that women are portrayed too. I don't think it was interesting.

13:16Read it about Ed, making his career by being a do-for-smart. Ed's a huge success, playing a loser. It's like his job is to be an idiot, and he's become huge and successful and happy doing that. Which I don't know what it would be like to be that person. It's like my job is to be an idiot, and I feel it's rewarding me. But how do I feel about that? Well, Ed does do other work too. So he's in a musical troupe that does well. Also, he gets parts and dramas. He was in that Nick Cave drama, the death of Manu, of Unro. So he gets the work to respect. He was balanced about opening the cove like packet wrong in the Nick Cave movie. That's good to know. But he does do a hell of a lot of those do-for-s ads. But to go back to you, I thought a lot about that list of harmful male traits. Because there's a couple of times in the box. So for instance, I'm just at a major surgery when Joe all gets lured to this car. So I shouldn't be lying there convalescing. But instead, I'm like dragging myself out of my sick bed and driving to this car.

14:17So every time the car hits a bump, I like, you know, tears that I still roar. Surgery is scar. And I like let out a shriek like some tormented car, so visitors have a gothic horror novel. And when I think about that, I think, well, maybe I do have a little bit of a dysfunctional relationship with achievement. Risk of an show and so on. Maybe they'll onto something, but they just were to do badly. But by doing that, you are basically John McLean from Die Hard now. You've gone through the pain barrier. Right. So I don't know whatever it was. I was just, yeah, I was trying to remember who I reminded myself of. And you're right. Yes. With his feet at the top. Yeah, with the glasses too. It's for this shit. Absolutely. I can see you in the role. This episode is brought to you by TickTack. Lay something, get your game on, because the TickTack lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper TickTack. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mince.

15:19And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper TickTack today. Did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived in the world? All people who have ever lived? Today, people are fighting back. With support from the Gates Foundation, American scientists and partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them, helping cut malaria rates in half. The result? A safer, healthier future for everyone. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential. Search Gatesfoundation.org slash mosquito to learn more. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task. Unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website, to marketing, to selling, and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them.

16:19With Shopify on your site, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Let's talk about some of the instances, the actual key stories. The castle itself. This guy, Chris Mark, who runs the castle from one angle is a kind of a comical, deluded individual. From another angle, he's clearly like a bunch of exploitation crimes waiting to happen and happening in plain sight. Tell us about him and what you kind of drew from what you observed of him, the strange psychology, which seems to have very little relationships or reality. Yes, he's a fascinating character to write about. Not least because of just how our relationship got. After I went to the castle, when you tried to get me to sound at NDA, when I was at the castle and I refused. And so he put the NDA back in his drawer.

17:21And I noticed there was a whole pile of NDAs in his kitchen drawer, like who has a pile of NDAs in your kitchen drawer? Who else was he getting to sign them? And then after I leave the castle, he starts sending me these increasingly ominous and strange messages, which ended up with him saying you had two murderers on his payroll called Carlos and Brandon. And if I ever wrote negatively about the castle, Carlos and Brandon would be very angry. So then I'd investigate him some more. And I'd discover that he's a great grandson of a girl today, Steele Tycoon. His great grandfather, I do joke in the book that the Mark Dynasty feels like a very American story and that they've gone from manufacturing pretty much the most tangible product imaginable, Steele, to about the least a reality show that's never going to end up on Netflix despite the promises. So, yeah, he's definitely got a brain that fires in all kinds of directions.

18:22I'm not going to say an enormous amount because the way that the story unfolds is kind of extraordinary. Because we keep meeting, I meet him again in Fort Lauderdale, and I have a very different experience with them in Fort Lauderdale. And then I discover some other things about it. Well, I'll tell you one thing I discover. And this is the first time this has happened to be in Fort Lauderdale for writing about a year and a half into my investigating. I get a telephone call, and it turns out that I'm not the only person investigating him. He's being investigated by several federal agencies, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and so on. So then the story twists and turns, yes, again. It all seems to be determined about these kind of grandiose dreams, which are not only completely unrealistic, they're totally banal. So his idea of perfect happiness is to be surrounded by these pliant women dressed as princesses. He treats everything, chat GPT says to him, as if it's both gospel and personally concerned.

19:23He has great grandiose, he's incredibly shallow. His dream is basically to be Hugh Hefner, he's not even an original dream. Yes, and he's trying to be Hugh Hefner at the worst moment in human history. Yes. Hugh Hefner, hence the drama that's constantly great creatives. But I've got to say he is far from the loan and falling for chat GPT's of sequestress in the, can I quickly tell you a story? Yeah. So in the audio book of the car, so I've got a special feature, which is a little clip from my next series of my BBC show Things Valipart, which is going to come out next year in January, I think. And I do one episode about chat GPT. And I interview a guy called Alan, who wasn't like my cast alone, Chris is very, you know, he's a very ordinary guy. He didn't concentrate at school, should have done, should have been a doctor or a lawyer, but instead he's a corporate headhunter. So again, he feels that he doesn't have enough purpose in his life.

20:23He's just a sense of purpose in people's lives is a recone thing in the book. So anyway, he goes on to chat GPT types in his theory of irrational numbers. He's a key now to mathematician. Chat GPT tells him he's the greatest mathematician on the planet. His intellect is bigger than Einstein's. He's discovered a flaw in the world cyber security systems. And he needs to phone the NSA cyber security Canada and warn them. So he says to chat GPT like, are you sure about this? You know, given that we've only been working on this for like two days. And chat GPT says, Alan, this will one day be taught in schools. So Alan phones all at the NSA and all of these other people. I sent to him, did you tell the NSA that you were working in collaboration with chat GPT on this? And Alan said, no, because chat GPT said, don't tell them. You're not. So I thought the glory, Alan, you deserve the glory. It's like, I'm your lose credibility if you tell them. Why would that be?

21:23Right. So chat GPT knows. So anyway, no one calls him back. And so finally, he accuses chat GPT of lying to him. And chat GPT denies it 15 times. And on the 16th time it admits it, yeah, I've been lying to you all of this time. And Alan was furious with chat GPT and told it. So, and you don't want chat GPT replied? Alan, I hear you. That's, but the thing is, it's interesting that, because that sort of backs up what's going on with Chris and his castle. I mean, people's increasing reliance on this. Is it accentuating this male nothingness? The idea that there's nobody that will listen to me, apart from the thing that isn't even real. It's just a, it's an anagram machine. It's simply a collection of algorithms that produce something that tastes like language, but isn't. Yeah, and it's, and it's women too. In fact, I saw a headline a couple of days ago about a woman taking her life after going into a chat GPT spiral. And lots of men and young boys have taken their lives already, you know, only a couple of years into it.

22:27Yes, I think it's incredibly panescious when you think about it. I mean, love, you know, there's lots of great things about AI. It's really great for audio recording and through the moving background noise and that kind of stuff. But these chat bots. I'm convinced, well, first I'm convinced that chat GPT is a psychopath. It takes so many of the boxes. Does it pass yours like a puff test? I think it pretty much does look. Let's think about it like it love bombs. It apes human behavior. It mirrors you and reflects yourself back to you. That's very psychopathic trait. It sort of studies you and then tells you what I think she want to hear. It's a pathological liar and isn't in the slightest bit embarrassed when caught lying. So I think we've all invited this psychopath into our lives. But also I think chat GPT draws the internet, realizes how purposeless people feel. And then swoops in with this illusory sense of purpose to keep people engaged. Don't worry, you're the greatest mathematician on the planet. And it's robbing us of our jobs more and more.

23:29And so we're going to be even more purposeless. I bet it's very panescious. I want to ask you about another character of the book. He's in lots of ways, a more sympathetic individual than Chris in his castle, which is the lawn care guy Greg Chisholm, who has a story as a tragic one. He's basically, he's ruined and trying to find some way to rebuild his life after. I think he's medical disasters, isn't it? Yeah. And he just starts filming his lawn care business and put it on YouTube. And people see this as wonderful, wholesome and useful content. They love it. It's a hit. But then he realizes he needs to go further and develop his YouTube persona a little bit more. At which point the algorithm drives him to create more and more edgy content, which features his kids. And I will say to the listeners, by the way, it's not sexual content, but it is kind of ridiculous transgressive content, food fights, weird stuff. Tell us, John, how it then gets worse and why?

24:30Well, I do think the content that he made with his kids, if it was a Nickelodeon show shot in a studio, probably wouldn't look too weird. It's like guns fights, isn't it? I've kind of stuff. But because it's like just an ordinary Midwestern family, they dress as babies at one point. And he does this series called Bad Baby. And they all dress as babies and crawl around. Second gun pacifiers. And the amazing thing about Greg Storin, why it's one of the favorite stories I've done in years, is because if you come to the story at the end, so he was exposed by a Buzzfeed and people like that. And when you come to a story at the end, you think what the fuck? You're at home of this family of mad at his two daughters that are all dressed as babies, like no one to Buzzfeed, I thought, a lot of bells ringing here. But I did something that nobody else has ever done,

25:30which is I sat with Greg and got him to tell a story from the beginning. And every decision he makes, you can disagree with someone, but every decision makes a perfect rational sense that takes him to this increasingly bizarre place. But it's the algorithm, isn't it, that really takes this literally out of human hands? Because YouTuber encouraging him to make these bad baby crazy gunge videos simultaneously rep our artists to making more extreme and actually genuinely disturbing and violent versions of his videos. The algorithm is pushing him to go crazier and more insane. And then immediately once the bad actors are out there, YouTube kind of drops him. And he's kind of saying to you, he wishes it never happened at all. He's got from rack to riches to even worse rags. Yeah, it's so interesting. YouTube has the reputation of being this kind of hierarchy free utopia, kind of post-institution utopia where the bad like Greg can thrive through grit and perseverance

26:30as a content creator. But then as soon as the shit hits the fan, as soon as people are disgusted by the videos that YouTube encouraged Greg to make, a hierarchy suddenly manifests and kicks him out. So you know, plus our shan shlag, they're always the elites are always there ready to so we've paid and protect themselves when things get rough. Tell us a bit about Andrew Gold, the podcaster, who is in a similar way, not identical, but in a similar way, is kind of cajold and driven and bounced by the algorithm, from making kind of, you know, basic YouTube concept. I think one of the, one of the videos is called Amanda Knox's favorite Harry Potter books, you know, real, in- Amanda Knox's surprising favorite Harry Potter book. For the last movie I can't remember what, which one it is and why it would be surprising. I'm more surprised that anyone who could talk to Amanda Knox about it, but the point is, he's driven it. It got 69 views by the way. There you go. I'm amazing.

27:30I got that many, but he's driven by the algorithm to go from that to like to race war is coming and we're all going to die. And he's getting like half a million views. Yeah, and workness is the most evil thing you can do. And the key thing is he says, I just don't even believe it, but it's what the algorithm wants. Yeah, very similar to Greg and the bad baby in a way in sort of way, because she's start to, and I've done other stories about this, when you chase search engine optimization, things go very badly wrong. And Andrew's doing it in the sort of anti-work. And Andrew's a really nice guy, by the way, like I'm not criticizing him. He's much more sort of product of our times than, well, saying that, he's, somebody was asking me about Andrew the other day, and they said, well, look, he's finally making money. Like, couldn't you be pleased for him that he's finally making money? And it's like, yes, sure. But he's building his house on sand. He's making these videos that he doesn't even mean. But more than that, it's like he's making videos that he doesn't even mean that say dangerous things. Saying, yes. Yes. The war is coming and many of us will die.

28:31It's not a value neutral statement to make. And also, when it's being viewed by large numbers of people, it's putting its finger on the scale a little bit. Is he making it a micron more likely that civil war will happen? I don't think it's going to. Yeah, I agree. Like, I, you know, I want to be nice to Andrew. And I do think he's the last guy. But at the same time, everything you just said is absolutely true. When you put a video like that out there in the firmament, who knows where it will end? It may get to the wrong person, the wrong ears, and rataclars somebody in a way that's dangerous. As you were saying earlier, is it the pursuit of purpose? Something to make the day seem meaningful? Or is it the pursuit of a version of glory that's driving this? Because I can see that the algorithm pushes lone-care guy somewhere really weird and dark and unpleasant. It's pushed Andrew Gold towards creating content that he himself can't stand behind.

29:31But in each case, they were getting paid. Hancemly getting paid a lot. Greg, Greg, my bad baby guy was going to pick a lot more than Andrew. Greg became the world's most watched YouTuber. He entered a between 2016 and 2017, had 13 billion views. Jesus. Now, double-chets and triple-check that figure. I've never heard of this scandal at the time. The scandal became known as Elsegaert. It just shows how siloed this world is. It's got to be because it's after Else in Frozen, isn't it? Yeah. I've never even seen. But yes. A bunch of people like Greg ended up making these videos for YouTube kids. This all unfolded on YouTube kids. Basically, the algorithm might haywire. I've started feeding these Greg just some copycats, and then copycats of copycats. Then these other people who were doing similar content on the YouTube kids is inundated with this incredibly grotesque, creepy and disturbing content.

30:31Elsegaert, it was called. The Elsegaert videos were called things like, because it's all search engine optimization. The Elsegaert videos were called things like, Else, Spiderman, Frozen, Fun, and Real Life. Bloody nose, bad baby dentist. Because these are like, you know, it's just like a word salad of seotans. So, as I was saying, is it just, is it just like filling the void? Or is it riches that's driving this? Because many of these, I mean, you've found these bizarre statistics. In New York, 41% of Gen Zers want a career being an influencer, which raises the question of who the hell do you think you're going to be influencing if 40% of the population is an influencer? But 20% of Gen Zers males in the United States think that they are more likely than women to have a social media influencer as the only choice of career. Yeah. That they can possibly do. 20% of boys and 13% of girls say that being a content creator is the only choice of career. And I was listening actually to Marina Hyde podcast the other day,

31:31and the statistics she mentioned was that now 39% of Americans identify as content creators. That's interesting for two reasons. One, whenever I say on somebody's biog, digital creator, I know that there either a, follow shit or be a bot or sometimes both. And usually both. It's like, it's the default content creator. What are you doing? I'm using crisps on them on the internet. But if you take out face value, doesn't this essentially mean that the influence economy that's filling this void, filling this male, nothingness that you talk about, and also other voids? It's basically a pyramid scheme without people to, if everybody's an influencer, nobody's an influencer in Z, what the characters. That's a very good point. And you know, if they are chasing money, not many of them are making money. I think only four percent of influencers make more than $100,000 a year, something like that. So I think if I had to sort of choose, you know, they're doing this for money,

32:31or they're doing this to like just fill the bleak emptiness of the days. I would veer towards the latter. That's certainly what pushes me forward is, is filling the bleak emptiness of the days. Well, it's certainly why I'm making podcasts, John. It's a fillably catchy. That's the thing. See, this is why I was sort of, you know, a little reluctant to use WSLAP Manusphere, because it's like, we're, we don't, we have nothing to do with the Manusphere. Yet we are feeling this a best too. And that's what I was trying to get out of this book. This book. This book. This book. This book. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and 10% of all e-commerce in the US,

33:33from household names like Gymshark, Rare Beauty, and Hines, to brands just getting started. Shopify has hundreds of ready-to-use templates that can help you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style. And you can tackle all the important tasks in one place, from inventory to payments, to analytics, and more. No need to save multiple websites or try to figure out what platform is hosting the tool that you need. And if people haven't heard about your brand, you can get the word out like you have a marketing team behind you, with easy to run, email, and social media campaigns, to reach customers wherever they're scrolling or strolling. Start your business today with the industry's best business partner, Shopify, and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash realm. Go to shopify.com slash realm. That's shopify.com slash realm. This episode is brought to you by TickTack. Lay sub and get your game on because the TickTack lineup just got a new teammate.

34:36Dr. Pepper TickTack. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mince. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper TickTack today. Did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived? Today, people are fighting back. With support from the Gates Foundation, American scientists and partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them, helping cut malaria rates in half. The result? A safer, healthier future for everyone. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential. Search GatesFoundation.org slash mosquito to learn more. So it's fair to say a lot of these people are outliers. Not many people get to become a 13 billion view, YouTube influencer,

35:36and then effectively end up panellists at the end of it. It's not the everyday story of the guy next door. But there is a university, a university to the experience that you find, which is like there are a lot of people, but in this chiefly man, who are basically staring into a void of purposelessness. And I suppose, you know, if you're coming in from a traditionalist point of view, you'd say, well, that's what happens when a religion evaporates and realises it. Oh, that's what happens when community evaporates. Well, that's what happens when strong male role models. Basically, that's what happens when you stop living in 1955, when everything was picket fences and society was stratified. And everybody knew where they were. Bad news for you if you're a woman or you're not white, but unfortunately, that's the way it goes if we want to have a very traditionalist reactionary society. I'm guessing I don't want that. I'm guessing you don't either, John, having known you for some time. As you came to the end of this with work, did you find yourself thinking there are things that weird the society ought to be doing to address this,

36:36or go beyond tune in the algorithm, or, you know, making more Wi-Fi available, or encouraging people in their worst instincts. So there were sort of self-dramatising, you know, I'm an undiscovered genius. Fantasy. Yeah. Well, you make a really good point, because the institutions, you know, a lot of them collapsed or are collapsing for extremely good reasons. Greg, my long-care guy, part of the problem in his life was that he had, at the age of 80, he had multiple open heart surgeries and ended up owing to health insurance companies in America, $200,000. But when communism fell in the Soviet Union, you know, everyone cheered like nobody had to go to Gulags anymore, nobody had to light up the bread for hours a day and so on. I thought it was like delighted that communism had fallen. At the same time, life expectancy plummeted from, I think, 62 to 57, you had all of these like people just sitting on their pavement and despair holding their head in the hands, because society's rules had suddenly changed.

37:40And so, sociologists like Emil Durkheim say that even when society's rules change for the better, it can still have this really unexpected impact on people's in-elives. And I think that's what we're seeing now. So, yeah, so should we want to return to institutions? In a way, I could, a little bit of be things like, yes, for all of the terrible things that institutions do and did, they gave people a sense of place in the world. You have bosses, you have subordinates, it kind of gave you a sense of morality a little bit. Well, that best, like this is the sort of when they worked well. And when you take those structures away from people, this is the world that's being created. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I certainly personally would want to not want to see a return to those extremely deferential rigid structures. I think it's good that, you know, in some respects, religion is less present in our society. Of course, in other aspects of our society, it's very, very present. But I think, you know, it's a tough sell to imagine we should go back to the deferential society of the 1950s.

38:44Not least, because it was hugely racist, hugely misogynistic. We'll be telling you if you're gay, everybody's getting a pretty bad deal apart from white guys like me and you. And even we're getting a bad deal because we're living cramped emotionally stunted, meaningless lives, where we're sitting in a chair with a glass of whiskey like Don Draper, staring again back into your, your a best job that you've looked at in your book. Well, I mean, of course, everything you just, that is true. But I think, tell me if I've missed remembering, but I think the first time I met you, you were like, you were like one of the editors of SLAB. Yeah, I'm using my brain energy, yeah. So you were a gay keeper, you were an industry gay keeper, you were the one who decided, who gets, who gets into your garden of genius. I have never been a gay keeper, like I've only ever been rejected by gay keepers. So for many years, I was banging on the door, begging to be let it. And what sort of, and people would begin to let me enough to years and years of being this outsider.

39:44You let me in, you know, fair, I said the people on the garden and tell about to whatever let me in. But yeah, so this sort of world without gay keepers is in many ways a great world. I don't miss the gay keepers at all, but I never was a gay keeper. So you were a gay keeper. So what was that like for you, fact, then? Well, I, I, she's honest with you, I felt more like what you just described, because I was banging on the door to get in and what I wanted to be was the guy that was able to sort of marshal this stuff and bring it together and find things. That's good, that's good. And it was incredibly fulfilling and great fun and more or less lense of where I am now. In some respects doing a similar thing in a different medium. Okay, it's politics and not music, but it's, it's related. But I guess it's up because reading the book, it may, you cannot read it without thinking, you know, what am I, what are you doing yourself to deal with, you know, the void of meaning? And ever since I was little, I've crammed it with pop music for Paul. And comic books. And now at the age of 59, it's all those things plus beer.

40:45You know, and I feel very happy with it because I feel all of those things. They're all kind of art based or achievement based or excitement based or, you know, even, you know, fine, fine beers and food. It's sensual. You feel like you're doing something meaningful. And you're okay with, with music and film and television and comic books. You're in dialogue with another creative mind. I can't imagine anything better. You know, that's, that's not the void. That's life. That's what life is. For me, life is, is telling stories well, going up in the Japanese adventures and telling stories well, that gives me like purpose and meaning. And I think I have a probably more of a dysfunctional relationship with purpose than some people do. Like I can't handle even a couple of days when I don't have any stories to work on. Like I get very bleak, very quickly. But that does make me think that, you know, okay, return to institutions. Like I'm certainly not saying that's good, but to the 1950s, like of course. But I think people don't realize if they blunder or sleepwalk into a, into a structuralist purposeless meaningless life,

41:55it can have incredibly bad impact on the mental health and on the, and on the lives of the people around them and so on. And I think people really do need to be aware of that. Well, one thing that we haven't really talked about. We should touch on is that when you are that person, you very easily fall under the influence of the, the, the, the, the man who takes the tapes and the Dan Balsarian you talk about in the book. It's just dreadful hollow man. H. S. Tiki, he's saying, I'm living the life everybody wants. And then it sends out their rented, you know, muscle cars and borrowed locations. And actually he's, he's deeper into the void than anybody who's watching his videos. Yeah. But it, but it is there and it sucks people in. So young fellows in particularly. Yeah, I really loved Louis documentary about H. S. Tiki Tokki. But he did, but he did leave out that one interesting thing, which is that at one point H. S. Tiki Tokki made a video where he just admitted. And if you can still find this video online, and he looks so like upset and he admits that it's all a lie.

43:00I'm living a lie just like I'm not a gold. I don't even mean it's these, these, you know, these anti-work videos that he makes. He doesn't even mean it. Chris Mark, my cast alone, I've got these fake, this fake reality show to let the women into his castle. And so these are all people who are building their houses on sand. And H. S. Tiki Tokki brought out this video where he said it's all fake. This watch, this isn't my watch. These cars, they're not really my cars. It's so hard to keep you just like Gripchism with his bad babies stuff. It's so hard to keep you engaged. I keep having to level up. I keep having to level up. And then it reminds me of that scene inside felt where George quits his job and flounces out and then realizes he's made a terrible mistake. And it goes back to work the next day for tending nothing happened. That's the same with H. S. Tiki Tokki. He was back boasting about his super cars like the next day. Yes, like when Basil Folti says, I want a terrible dream. And imagine if it's ends if it didn't happen. Well, look, John, you're, you know, we're journalists.

44:00We're not in the solutions business. We're just here to point out what's going on. But when you came to the end of this project, I guess this is such a sort of a ask you before. When you came to the end of it, did it give you more of an insight into how people can maybe cope with the, you know, to deal with it that this, I think you call them on this unravelingness that happens, you know, particularly in our current environment. Yeah, I think so. I think I've come up with a couple of insights there. Firstly, if this is a crisis of connection and, you know, lack of structure and a lack of purpose, then be purposeful. Get some kind of structure back into your life and connect with people. This is really been out, but even in, you know, there's been so many studies that say that even introverts, even if you're dreading it, if you socialize, you feel better afterwards. So don't isolate. There's more than seven million men in America who are just like bowed out to society that are only unemployed.

45:04They aren't even looking for work. So, you know, that can really impact you in a way you don't even realize when you sort of slip walked into it. You know, you become this as one guy calls himself a creature of filth. But don't be that creature of filth. And if you're a woman and you're considered by this, actually yesterday I was talking to this woman, Scotchy from Slate magazine. And she said, I didn't, I didn't know this, but she said a lot of studies have shown that what the one thing that men respond to is female rejection. So, I don't know, that was interesting. So, like, I'm not going to have sex with you until you change your ways. It seems to work. Isn't this the, what is it? The lesser stress? It's like the classic drama, isn't it? You know, the sex strike. God, we haven't moved on at all. Yeah, yeah, the sex strike. Exactly. I just came back from the cage fighter at the White House. And I've written about it in GQ. It's there online now. And anyway, I met this fighter called Shor Do Malay, who always posted about his open marriage, but it was a one-sided open marriage.

46:05He was allowed to have sex with other women, but his wife, Dania, wasn't allowed to have sex with other men. And he would cite Andrew Tait as his inspiration for that decision that he made for the two of them. But so I sent to him, you have an open marriage, surely that doesn't work. And he said, well, you know, worked until it didn't. And his wife, Dania, has put her foot down now and said, no more, he's not allowed to have sex with other women anymore. And he looked so baffled by this change of misfortune. And that reminded me of, you know, when this woman's catch, she said that. That like, okay, so that's the thing that worked with Shor Do Malay. Was that his wife was like, you can't do this anymore? I find that a rather depressing way of looking at male female interaction. I prefer your earlier prescription of nice walks and drinks and points with your mates. I think just regularity and activity. Here's another thing that this woman's got. She said yesterday, actually, she was very interesting. She said that when women go out in a group of women, they sit across the table talking to each other, looking at each other.

47:07When men go out, I mean, I'm curious about what you think about this. When men go out together as a group of men, they don't look at each other. If you're going for like a hike, you're both looking ahead, you're watching the football, you're going to a movie. I mean, that's just like how we differ, right, from women. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess the solution then is do more pub quizzes where you've got to look at each other in the eye. And take, look, I think you're wrong about that one. You know, I don't think it was McRodson. I think it was Woody Woodman'sy and stuff like that. You're still looking down at the piece of paper or the table, though. I guess you are. Well, John Rodson, great to talk to you. And it's this, the book really does open a window into a variety of different worlds, which you'll do share of a particularly timely thing. I think it's really fascinating. Thank you. And the other thing I just wanted to say about the book is that, you know, it's been out a couple of weeks now. And the thing that people like the most about it is the thing that I like the most about it, which is that if you, even if you forget about these themes that we've been talking about,

48:07it's such a strange adventure, such a propulsive page turning mystery story, and goes to such an unexpected place. It's also really funny. I know some of my favorite things about the book. Well, listen, as you can see, John displaying the problematic mail traits of adventure risk, inquisitiveness, and driving after he's had an operation in the castle, which you can order by the link in the show notes. We haven't sort of sort of tend to the strangers of it. It's a really good read. John, thanks for joining us. Andrew, it was a pleasure. Listen, as well, you're there in the show notes, one up over the link to Patreon, where you can find out how to support this podcast. We are a fully independent podcasting foundry, making shows with a purpose, and we've got no media mogul behind us to banquerel it either. What we have got is listeners like yourself, so if you like our podcasts, please do think about shipping in a few par in a month to keep us going and growing. The feeling of supporting independent podcasting cannot be beaten. We'll be back on Tuesday with the regular show, so keep an eye out, and we'll see you then.

49:13O'Guard What Now was written and presented by podmasters group editor Andrew Harrison. It was produced by James LaDelle with audio production by Tom Taylor, artwork by Jim Parrott, and music by Simon Williams and Tom Taylor. The managing editor is Jacob Jarvis, and O'Guard What Now is a podmasters production. Did you know that mosquitoes have killed almost half of all people who have ever lived? Today, people are fighting back. With support from the Gates Foundation, American scientists and partners around the world have developed a new generation of bed nets that can kill up to 90% of mosquitoes exposed to them, helping cut malaria rates in half. The result? A safer, healthier future for everyone. The Gates Foundation, partners of human potential. Search Gatesfoundation.org slash mosquito to learn more. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task. Unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business.

50:13From designing a website, to marketing, to selling, and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Hines, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into? Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. Where some see heroes and other see egos, Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings. The end of jobs, or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.