QAnon’s Epstein conundrum, Looksmaxxing and Mogging explained!

Hello and welcome to American Friction, a quick no on this episode. We recorded this before

Trump decided to attack a random per-ake hasostrophic situation in motion for the world and specifically

for the Middle East. We're going to be recording an episode about that conflict which we will

aim to release as soon as possible, but in the meantime, take a listen to this episode about a

completely different topic because we all do need a break from more news every so often.

Hello and welcome to American Friction, the least toxic US politics podcast in the world.

I'm Jacob Jarvis and today we're going to be talking about conspiracies, subcultures and

answer the question what the hell is looks maxing. Joining me to discuss all of this is researcher

Annie Kelly, an expert in conspiracy theories, the far-right anti-feminism and the UK correspondent

for the QAnon anonymous podcast and host of Truly, Treadley deeply. Annie, thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me. Annie, just a first question. When it comes to QAnon,

from your reading of it, how does it feel like the followers of that are handling the whole

latest Epstein revelations we're seeing? It's been a really interesting response, I would say,

from the QAnon true believers to the revelations in the Epstein files. QAnon always had a bit of a

strange relationship, honestly, with Epstein, which I think is really difficult to understand from

the outside, because I think from an outside as perspective, you would think that Epstein would be

the sort of indicating kind of detail, the part of the conspiracy theory, which no one can really

deny is true, but there really was a network of elites for one of the best of word engaged in a

sex trafficking network with underage girls. But it's always been a bit, and I think that's certainly

true in the original or Epstein arrest, and of course, his suicide in 2019. I think that was

very much a galvanising point, and it was probably quite a radicalising moment for lots of people

who would later find themselves in QAnon. But for QAnon influences themselves, it was always a

little bit of a tough question to square, because if you're saying Epstein is the lynch pin for,

you know, what they call the swamp, this network of shadowy pedophiles and

Satan worshipers and all the rest of it that are kind of organising in the US, the highest levels

of the US government. It was never quite comfortable with the fact that the major aspect and the

defining aspect of the QAnon conspiracy theory is that Donald Trump is stopping it all, because

there are so many photos and indeed videos of Trump and Epstein being friendly with one another.

And I think this is reflected in the way that the Epstein files have been an incredibly radicalising

moment for lots of people. But the response from the few QAnon influences that I've seen that

are still beating that drum has actually been a little bit more ambivalent. And I think that's

because QAnon, while it is a conspiracy theory, it's also primarily a fandom phenomenon.

It's a phenomenon of, you know, kind of fan fiction, maybe you could say, about Donald Trump.

And so a lot of them are following their cues from Trump, who himself is saying there's nothing

to see here. We should stop talking about the Epstein files. It's all the hoax that, you know,

created by my enemies. And I think for people who would, you know, maybe call them the QAnon

classic believers. That is still quite a powerful pull.

Is it a mistake to sort of imagine that maybe all of these people actually want to be proven right?

Because as you say, if it's a fandom and if it's part of their identity,

is it almost the whole ambiguity of it and the fact that it can go on forever?

Is that something maybe they want? Because if they were proven right, then this massive chunk of

their identities suddenly disappears, doesn't it? Yeah, I mean, it's funny. A big feature of

QAnon discourse was always the event that they called the storm, which was the moment when they

would be proven right. This upcoming moment where all would be revealed. The mass arrests of

democratic party officials and strangely quite a lot of Hollywood celebrities would all be uncovered.

Trump's master plan would be complete. And often people talk about this invagely,

I think spiritual terms, maybe in the way that we might understand kind of religious people

talking about moments like the rapture, this moment of kind of great sort of rupture and change.

But I think you're right that if you want to keep people engaged with your content,

so we're now talking from a content creator's perspective rather than just a random

follower, that moment can never actually come, right? Because then you kind of lose your audience

because the content that you're creating is just the news, it's just kind of the hegemonic sort of

infosphere. So I think that's a quite perceptive idea that, yeah, this kind of moment of revelation,

the storm always has to just be around the corner. There have been some QAnon believers who,

either as a result of the Epstein files or maybe just as a result of the way that Trump has

talked about them, do largely seem to have become disillusioned. I think one of the most famous

people involved with QAnon, largely because of the photos of him at the January 6th riots,

the QAnon Charmin, Jacob Chansley, who, yeah, which was kind of in a very striking costume,

and so lots and lots of photos of him went all around the world. And he went to jail for his role

in that riot, has recently broken with QAnon, which he says as a result of,

I think the first leak of the Epstein documents I think that came last year, so not the full dump,

but I think he had been showing signs of being disillusioned with the conspiracy theory before,

but that seemed to push him over the edge. And another quite famous QAnon believer, Marjorie

Taylor Greene, also seems to have broken with Trump. I mean, I think that one might

evolve a little bit less idealism and a bit more kind of political maneuvering, which I'm not

really savvy to. She was one of the only four Republicans in Congress to vote for the release of

the Epstein files. So specifically breaking with the Republican party line and Trump over

this. So it does look to me like, yeah, for people who are kind of real true believers,

this has been quite a strangely ambivalent moment. Yeah. But maybe for what you might call them

less, you know, they're kind of still kind of conspiracy activated, but more mega base.

It does actually look like it's been a real moment of fracture in the party.

When it comes to, so January 6th, obviously, it'd be a whole of a podcast if we start getting into

all the different iconography and the imagery and what that may be indicated there. But one thing

to me, you mentioned the QAnon shaman guy and he was like quite a musly guy. And one thing that

there seemed to be about the whole thing was it was quite a macho-seeming affair. And perhaps

maybe seems to be some crossover there between these people that were sort of QAnon adjacent,

which I would probably imagine to be a little bit more for one of the better word,

nerdy and sort of online. And then these sort of really macho people who felt a bit more

manosphere from your recent, how do they, how do those two worlds cross over? Is there a sort of

vendiogram between them? It's a really interesting question because QAnon originally obviously starts

on the chants, which are very, very online, quite young spaces, but doesn't stay there. It sort

of proliferates out and moves through what we might call, I guess, more mainstream social media

veins. And this is where I think QAnon sort of becomes a bit more associated with older people.

Okay. And I think quite a lot of the people arrested at January 6th tend to be middle aged.

But I think it springs out of a culture which is pretty young, which is pretty online.

And conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and things like that, which were kind of the precursor

to QAnon really, but began this kind of understanding that there was a secret code essentially to be

decoded in the documents that were leaked from the democratic party servers, from the emails

that were leaked, I should say. And that original conspiracy theory was very manosphere in a few,

and it was where I, I think I mentioned before we started recording, I did my PhD about the

manosphere, looking back at the period from 2012 to 2016, which is when these networks move to

social media. And this was where I, I think, first noticed that something was going on,

because lots of these manosphere accounts who largely didn't seem to be particularly

interested in topics of the occult or the supernatural who were, for one of the better words,

often quite mercenary atheists, often, you know, they had got into the space because they wanted

advice on strategies on how to pick up women. They were interesting things like evolutionary

psychology, these kind of, I guess you can might call them kind of like science infused theories.

Yeah. Suddenly I noticed with the rise of Pizzagate, this inflection of what I thought was quite a

religious rhetoric, talking about satanism and demon worship. And I think that that was actually

a sign of an emergent, you might say kind of far right collaboration between this kind of

sphere, which is yeah, pretty sort of like nerdy, pretty online, pretty science based,

pretty tech based. And the religious right, which was also went on a different part of the internet,

but was slowly radicalising, and the two were kind of combining in this conspiracy theory.

As you mentioned there, there it does feel to be a religious vibe around some of these

conspiracy theories. And the manosphere, there seems to be a lot of kind of religiously

inspired misogyny around it, that seems to be infused throughout. How do some of these people

square that? Like how'd they square having a sort of deep seated religion, and then also

believing in this sort of satanist cabal style of things? It just sort of, it just doesn't really

feel like it adds up. It feels like an almost quite un-Christian thing to believe in in a religious

way, if that makes sense. I think maybe there's something inspiring, something galvanising about

not simply casting your political enemies as let's say at the very least annoying, which a lot

of, a lot of manosphere rhetoric, maybe sometimes justifiably said about feminists, and then

actively oppressing them, which was another element of manosphere rhetoric. But that was always

a bit uncomfortable with the identity of masculinity that was coming out of here, because

the understanding that was forming about the relationship between men and women in this space

was a classic patriarchal one, right? So men are rational, they are stronger than women in their

four, whereas women are emotional, hysterical and physically weaker. But then that doesn't really

chime with the sense of victimhood that is happening a lot in these spaces. The sense that women have

somehow got the upper hand, that at some point in human history, women started oppressing men as

opposed to vice versa. And it leaves a difficult and kind of tricky question, which is,

believe women are so emotional and hysterical and irrational and weak, how did they get one over

on us? Yeah. And so I think this is often led to conspiracy theorising in the manosphere. You say,

well, someone helped them, you know, some kind of shadowy elite network, you know, if you

kind of neo Nazi or far right, you might say it's the Jewish shadowy network. But there's also,

you know, the religious argument, which might say they have kind of a nefarious power on their side.

They have a spiritual kind of, yeah, there's some kind of spiritual sickness, which is making them

so powerful. So I think, yeah, in order to get around this conundrum, and I should say that this

isn't exclusive to the manosphere anti-feminist in general. Lots of supremacists from different

books of life will have this problem, which is that simultaneously we are superior to this group

and simultaneously they are oppressing us. Yeah, you have to make your enemies special in order

to make yourself special. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think, yeah, I think that often leads to

the slightly more fantastical elements of these ideologies.

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On something that's, I mean, I'm low to say lighter, but at least a little bit sort of weird

here. I want to ask you about just words have been going around at the moment that making me

feel incredibly old, but like looks maxing and mogging. And on the surface of it, these do seem

like they're maybe just sort of silly slang words. And as I say memes have moved past me and I'm

too old for them now. But then also, are they perhaps actually indicative of something more sinister

that is going on? Yeah, I mean, it's funny that you say mogging makes you feel old because

mogging is actually probably one of the oldest terms of slang from the manuscript. It comes from

old pick-up artist forums. And the original term I believe was aim-mogging. And so pick-up artists,

these are guys who, you know, want to learn tips on how to pick up women. And so they would do

stuff that they called field reports where they would go to the club. They would sort of try out

these strategies that they'd learned online. And they would come back and report how well it worked,

what they'd do differently this time. And a term that came out of this space was aim-mogging.

Which stands for alpha male of group. And this was a term that they would use to describe the

feeling of you're out in the club, you're doing your favorite strategies, you're negating or what

have you. And another guy will come along and outshine you. Okay. He's just better looking, he's

just more manly, he's just funnier. And all of your strategies are for nothing because now

every woman that you've been trying to impresses attention is on him. And it sort of travel,

it may be the first manuscript term I saw that traveled even remotely further outside. I think

because it's maybe, I think maybe because it's quite a relatable feeling, do you know? I'm a woman

and I think probably I've been mocked at one point in my life. Yeah, there can just be those people

who walk into a room and you think, well, they've got an energy, I don't have, or like, okay,

that guy's six for five tools. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, you know, and then it would sort of get,

you know, people would add prefixes to it. So yeah, he would say someone frame Mogdu to me,

the guy who was taller than you, he kind of, yeah, joke Mogdu to say he was funnier than you.

So yeah, it's funny to see that that one has really broken into the mainstream with these

clips of Manusphere streamers going about their day, which I guess is now that, you know,

it's so quaint to think about pick up artists back in the early northeast, going and writing their

field reports when nowadays they go and stream themselves just for 12 hours, just walking around

around nightclubs. Well, with that as well and the sort of obsession around this kind of

maximizing yourself, there's also this looks-maxing side of things. And so I saw a video of the

other day of a guy who was gesting, he was using like a massage, do not try this at home,

anyone listening, please, this isn't advice, but someone using like a massage gun in order to

create micro fractures in their cheek to make their cheek bones more pronounced when they

healed. Like it, it's really, I was under the impression that there was this whole

e-avocado and steak and youth beef tallow and whatever else sort of side of things. But then it

seemed like they'd actually in much more almost like self-harm aspect to this that's happening

through this looks-maxing. Like what's-what is that-what is that all about, yeah? At least you've

eating avocado and steak and stuff like that is enjoyable. Yeah, yeah. Rather than smashing your

bones to bits to get as slightly more beautiful angle. Yeah, so this is this is looks-maxing,

which has a bit of a complicated history. It arises from the in-cell culture, which itself

emerges from pick-up artist culture. And cell culture came out of a couple of forums which were

failed pick-up artists as it were. People, users who were frustrated that they had tried these

strategies and they hadn't worked. And instead of, as you might hope, turning against pick-up artistry

and realising it's all a bit of snake oil, many of them instead doubled down on a resentment

towards women for not working the way that they were promised. And one ideology that came out of

this was the understanding that there was really no ability to change how attractive you were. It was

that women were entirely shallow creatures just largely only interested in your looks and your

height and maybe, you know, your money. And if you didn't have these, you were doomed. And so this

is where a lot of very kind of nihilistic in-cell culture comes from. It's understanding that your

destiny is essentially sentenced, your romantic destiny. And but also your just general destiny

is set in stone based on things which are largely out of your control. Looks-maxing emerged,

I guess, as a subculture out of this, which sort of said, well, you know, it's true that all

of this stuff is deeply important and the only thing that really matters. But you can change it,

you just have to go to extremes. And this is where you get this kind of culture of discussion of

things like plastic surgery, of, yeah, a technique called bone smashing, of trying to reorganise the

bones on your face to get slightly more pleasing. Look, and yeah, I believe, yeah, discussion of

surgery to make yourself taller. Essentially, this kind of understanding, like, you know, that we

live in a deeply visual culture that attractive people are treated better on average. And, you know,

I should say that's not untrue. I think this is a very extreme version of that ideology, but

there is some truth to it in that sense. But, um, therefore, that the only thing you can really

do to change your destiny is to focus entirely on your looks, on making yourself look better.

So it's, yeah, but I think it's important that genealogy, that historic lineage that it comes from

pick a part as an in-cell culture. And because I think that helps to understand the fact that this

isn't just, I don't think some of the people who misunderstand looks maximum is these guys just

want to look better to attract women. What's wrong with that? But the truth is there's lots of places

that will teach you how to dress better, how to wear your hair better to attract women that don't

have such a kind of poisonous ideology about women. And such a nihilistic world view as well,

which is kind of designed to keep you a little bit depressed and a little bit desperate.

So I think it's always important to acknowledge that heritage because it's a pretty toxic place

ideologically. So I saw some statistics that were saying one of the most common living

situations now for men in their thirties is living with their parents. So with this sort of

worldwide economic downturn, I suppose it was seeing when it comes to at least ordinary people

and how they feel is fueling these manosphere groups.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple of things going on here. So first I just want to talk about

you know the, and this is an offshoot I think of the economic point you make. The fact that

young people increasingly spend more and more time alone, there's lots of reasons for that. One

of it is that people have less money to do stuff like go to the pub, go to a cafe with a friend

and things like that. The other part is just things like social media. It's just a lot less boring

to be odd by yourself than it used to be. But all of these basically create a culture where I think

you know the focus on on looks and how you look because you were only ever interacting with people

in these visual mediums or places like Instagram and TikTok. If you're looking to date places

like Hinge and Tinder or you know the first thing people see about you is your photo. And I

think that is reflected in a culture which shows for both men and women increased

eating disorders, orthorexia, anxiety about looks, desire to get plastic surgery even in very,

very young people and people you know they were age 13 and so that's really concerning. I also

think yeah I think the economic point, the lack of the feeling of being out of control of your own

destiny is another one. Something I've noticed recently is that there seems to be a lot of

anxiety specifically about aging and I think people who you know from my grand position of

33 are way too young to be thinking about that. You know 23-year-olds saying here's my anti-aging

skincare routine and things like that and then something that I wonder about that

is whether aging in previous generations, let's be real, it has always sucked to some regard. It's

sucks having sore knees and getting much worse hangovers and all of these sorts of things but it

did at least in previous generations usually come with an increase in status, sure I've got gray

hairs and things like that now but I own my own house, I have my own family, things like that.

I sometimes wonder if this increased anxiety around staying young and beautiful and being as

beautiful and as young as you can be and we can't just say this isn't and looks maxing culture but

just in social media culture in general. I sometimes wonder if that's something to do with the fact

that that trade off no longer feels as guaranteed as it used to.

Yeah I see a lot of memes around at the time I'm also 33 and I see a lot of memes going around

it's like at you know in your 30s you'll have two types of friends and it's either sort of

house out of London, couple of kids and a car or it's wearing silly little beanie hats and really

expensive trainers and still living in East London which is where I live and I can yeah I know

you mean it's sort of the gap in age I mean maybe for young people we still seem a lot older

for younger people but it seems to have been squashed doesn't it sort of the difference between

someone's status at 25 to 33 now and it doesn't seem to be as big as it perhaps once was.

Yeah absolutely and I think it seems actually even though I think a lot of the extremes that

have gone to a pretty irrational coming out of this place it seems kind of rational then to say

well I'm not getting any of these acts of status with age I may as well really really focus on

looking as young and as beautiful as I possibly can yeah and so I think I see that as a

cultural issue with both men and women.

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Just on sort of where this leaks into the political side of things so the whole

looks maxing thing also has crossover with with health and wellness and that seems to have got

a lot more politically tinged over recent years. Is there something in that is sort of the

the manosphere and looks maxing and being healthy almost in some ways split down political lines

like sort of you know as I say the whole whole food thing and RFK juniors talking about that

now has that been co-opted by the right.

Yeah definitely I mean I think there's been a really interesting realignment in the sense that

20 years ago someone was talking to you about buying organic and crunchy granola and

making sure you get your vitamins and things like that you could probably reasonably assume

they were fairly liberal and that has really really changed and I think there's a few reasons for that.

I think part of it is this dominance of self-improvement logic that has come out of

manosphere the kind of mainstreaming of the manosphere the understanding essentially that your

destiny is your own hands. I think it's a very attractive message particularly to hear that

about health. I think particularly in the United States where obviously health care is not free

and coming down with a serious condition or disability can be you know finance ruining

life ruining but I think also particularly around the time of the COVID pandemic this stuff

became particularly interesting for people who wanted to downplay the seriousness of COVID to reject

normal therapies or vaccines and I think a lot of people were essentially during that time

slightly radicalised against the public health narrative. It's really difficult I think because

often the left wing or liberal argument around health and well-being is for better institutions

for better safety nets and I think that can often feel like a particularly frustrating message

for someone who is thinking well okay yeah I agree there should be better health care

I believe there should be better safety nets but what can I do right now? Yeah almost feels like

sort of like faturite or ergonomics like but for health like you've sort of taken that ideology

there was in a monetary context and because people have kind of given up on their their economic

fortunes perhaps they've kind of moved that self-determinism to to a health context. Absolutely yeah

I think that's a really good way of putting it when I was interviewing people at an anti-vaccine rally

in London I was really struck by the fact that nobody I spoke to could really conceive of a

government really doing anything in the public interest that wasn't punitive. Do you know that

wasn't some form of kind of punishment? So this was how they theorised things like lockdowns

the vaccine rollout all as this kind of armed authoritarian state and I couldn't help but feel

that they weren't exactly being once again they weren't exactly being irrational to think that

because that had been the argument of lots of people and government for quite a long time that

that you know they were in the lean times and we can't really help you anymore the only thing

we can do is enforce the law. You know I think that was a lot of the underlying logic of things

like austerity and yeah this is in the UK we have to remember who actually does have a history

and a kind of mythology of the welfare state which the United States doesn't so I can only imagine

this sentiment is much stronger over there. Just on a just on a final question and when it comes

to that we obviously we copy so much from the US here in the UK. What would you be most concerned

about at the moment when it comes to these sort of subcultures that is still predominantly a US

phenomenon that could migrate over to the to the UK? So I've been particularly interested by

the connection between our parliamentary far right reform and also now restore

with the United States. You know Farage obviously has a lot of connections with Trump who

visits Marilago but there's also just a lot of cross pollination in terms of ideas between the

American right and the UK right and I think you can see this in things like the increasing

mention of religion and the UK far right which was not really the dumb thing even 10 years ago

we don't have the same kind of political religious culture here in this country and a lot of

people have kind of dismissed that and said that therefore it's it's not going to appeal to people

here and I think that that has some truth to it but I think I particularly noticed that this

religious inflection has changed a lot of the language on things that used to be considered

settled issues things like women's role in the workplace increasingly I'm seeing stuff about

access to birth control I think abortion still feels like a bit of a third rail issue

increasingly I'm seeing rhetoric saying that birth control is very dangerous we don't know all

the harms of it yet which is let's not forget the RFK junior playbook when it came to vaccines as well

and I think particularly in line with the way that various kind of political factions have

talked about things like puberty blockers I think we could see a push for some kind of role back

on contraception for under 16s here or maybe you know and you can only get contraception of your

parents agreed to it when you get all of this kind of study you know all these kind of like

confirmations from doctors all stuff that may not like outlaw it outright but makes it a little bit

harder to get yeah um I think just in general this increased focus on reproduction definitely seems

to be a discourse that we are increasingly inheriting in this culture from the American right

Annie also just before you go tell us a little bit more about truly

Treadley deeply just so people can can go and check that out oh yes so if you if you like

hearing me uh ramble on about weird internet subcultures and social media and gender issues um then

please do go check out my podcast which is called truly Treadley deeply it's a six episode

mini series where me and my very talented colleague Megan Kelly but I should stress not that

Megan Kelly that would have been a real heel sorry if you were co-hosting something with Megan Kelly

just just for balance you know political balance um we discuss the rise of the tradwife subculture

it's various factions it's various disagreements but also where it lies in uh

sense to kind of a general post feminist politics and uh frustration with the

gender and dating landscape today um first episode is free and then if you like that you can

subscribe I forget for how much but it's not that much um and listen to the rest of it

great Annie thanks so much for joining me thanks so much for having me and this is doing great

chat and thank you to all of you for listening to American friction remember if you enjoy what we

do you can support us on patreon go to patreon.com for slash American friction there's a link

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wherever you're listening to the show I'm Jacob Jarvis and this has been American friction