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March 11, 2023 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
01:14:02
The Troll Storm

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit radixjournal.substack.comLive-streamer and commentator “Stardust” joins the gang to discuss a host of topics: her own career and history, online culture, de-platforming, conservative outrage politics around issues like child abuse and pornography, Lauren Boebert’s reproductive strategy, demographics and abortion, and more. The group continues the …

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Time Text
Hello, hello, hello.
I am here.
Hello.
Great.
How are you doing?
I'm doing great.
How are you?
Good.
Yes, I am doing well.
Just had to deal with some annoying stuff, but this is the good stuff, so I'll be in a better mood.
So you were just live streaming, you said?
Yeah, I was just live streaming.
Yeah, I usually do in the evening, so.
Okay.
What were you talking about?
I actually was going over your conversation with Destiny, so it was pretty interesting.
Oh, good.
Okay.
Well, we can talk about that a little bit.
I wanted to have you on, first off, because I thought we've had some good conversations, and so I wanted to repay the favor and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
But also, I kind of wanted to...
Learn more about you and where you're coming from.
Because I think you have a lot of interesting connections to people.
I think you're representative also of a young person who's online.
I guess at this point, being I'm a 44-year-old man, I'm like, oh, young people in your slang.
What does sus even mean?
I don't know.
But, so I wanted to learn a little bit about that.
So why don't you just, you know, introduce yourself and kind of tell us just, yeah, tell us a little, you know, as much as you're comfortable with, of course, you know, just a little bit about yourself and what you do and stuff like that.
Yeah, sure.
So thanks for having me, first off.
And so where do I start?
I am Stardust.
I do content creation online.
I'm a streamer.
I started off streaming several years ago, and I did more music kind of stuff, but it didn't really take off.
And I took a break for a while, came back, and kind of fell into a couple of political conversations, and those ended up taking off for me.
And so the streaming thing started to really work for me, surprisingly, after entering a couple of political conversations, getting into a few arguments with people.
So I just kind of continued doing that.
And early on, when I first started streaming, I was talking with fundamentalists, Muslim dudes, and then a weird mix of far-right people who hated those guys.
And those two groups were tied together, but they were always fighting with each other, even though they had more in common.
They believed more in common with each other than they had things that they differed in.
And I was like the odd one out with that group because I was like the liberal, you know, yeah, I was just like the liberal chick with the soy beliefs or whatever.
And both of them also, both of those groups were terrible at jokes.
They really, like, they did not understand when I was making a joke.
So I hung around that group.
I would argue with those people for a while.
Then I started kind of getting into the Twitch politics.
Destiny sphere, Vosch sphere, and arguing with people in that space.
And that kind of took off.
And then I've always been super interested in the dissident rights sphere as well.
So I don't know.
It was something when I was younger a few years ago, not even, I would say like seven or eight years ago, I would have looked at that sphere and been kind of very wary, very I'm very cautious about getting involved.
And I think I've just reached a point in my life where my curiosity about the way that people think, the way that these people who think radically different things from me, where it comes from, it just overpowers any cautiousness I would have had previously.
Well, you told me about all these thought policemen who were contacting you.
After you had me on a couple of times.
Yeah.
Funnily enough, I had you on the first time, then there was a little bit of an outcry, so I thought, you know what, I'm going to do it again.
That's the attitude.
Yeah.
Funny enough, same people who had a problem with me having you on don't have a problem with Destiny talking to you, which I think the conversations are not that interesting.
Not that different, but yeah.
So, I don't know.
I've been kind of getting the woke, scolded treatment from...
Kind of like the libs and the leftists online.
And even with some of the right-wingers online who, you know, they will police each other and police people that they see and who they talk to.
So I've been kind of, I'm used to getting that.
But yeah, essentially that's where I am right now.
I just make content.
I make drama and political content.
And I kind of like to look at these spheres of politics that...
I myself may not align with, but I find fascinating.
What kind of music content were you doing in the beginning?
I would just do like...
I would just play piano and sing songs to people, and I'd have people come in and ask me to make a song for them, and then I would make a song for them, things like that.
It was more comedy kind of stuff.
They'd be like, can you write a song about a cat that's addicted to crack cocaine?
And I'd be like, all right, yeah, I can do that.
I'm beginning to glimpse your childhood.
I'm thinking upper middle class Indian on the East Coast, and you studied piano.
Yeah, piano and singing, yeah.
I studied both of those things, and yeah, that's pretty accurate, I would say.
That's pretty accurate.
That's cool.
So you study classical piano?
Um, when I was, uh, yeah.
So for the most part, I studied classical piano.
Then I got to college.
I studied music in college and like everybody has their, uh, like coming out moment in college, right?
They come out of the closet.
And for me, it wasn't like, for me, it wasn't like coming out of the closet.
It was like.
I'm a jazz person now, or I'm a contemporary music person now, so that was kind of my thing.
But my mom had always been pushing me to kind of look into more jazz and contemporary music for a while.
So I went to college, kind of fell into that, and that's what I studied.
All right, that's cool.
So do you remember, what was your favorite song that you wrote for someone?
Was it the Cat on Crack?
I think that's the most memorable one.
But I think it's the most memorable one, but I don't know that I have a favorite because all of them were...
Pretty basic.
There were no masterpieces with that.
It was just me streaming to a small audience and making funny songs for people.
Okay, that's interesting.
So you dove right in with the dissonant right or far-right politics.
You're talking to Muslims and far-right people and so on.
Yeah.
So when was that?
Fairly recently, like 2019-ish?
I think that may have been, like, maybe...
Actually, that was, like, two years ago.
So that was after I'd taken a break from streaming for a bit, but before I fell into the Twitch politics sphere.
And with, like, Destiny and Vosh and those people.
It was a little bit before then.
And what that was was, you know, it was around COVID.
There were a lot of people who used to debate in person with each other in the UK.
But because there was COVID, because of COVID, they couldn't meet up in person anymore.
So a lot of them took to online spaces and YouTube.
And so I just kind of ran into those types of people and ended up arguing with them.
And yeah, I just had a lot of fun with it, really.
Okay, that's interesting.
Yeah, it's fun.
Go ahead.
Growing up, I've never been a combative person growing up.
I feel like, if anything, I've been pretty close to being a doormat for a lot of my life.
But I think just arguing with people online, getting combative with people online, learning to have some good back-and-forth insulting has really...
Done a lot for me as a person.
So, yeah.
Insulting people online has really improved.
Yeah, surprisingly.
Sounds really lame, actually.
No, I actually kind of get it.
Yeah, you have to stick up for yourself sometimes.
Yeah.
So when I met Destiny for the first time...
This past week.
It was kind of a crazy studio.
Have you ever been there?
The No Jumper studio?
I haven't been there, yeah.
I've never been there.
It was kind of...
I noticed the degree to which I've been...
I guess, I don't know, de-urbanized or something.
Because I have lived in these urban environments.
But it was pretty wild.
It was like 20 people in this big room.
There are all these computers everywhere.
Everyone is heavily tattooed.
Yeah.
The whole thing just smells like marijuana.
Yeah, that's not even Destiny's place, right?
That's like the no-jumper people.
Yeah, exactly.
Really interesting.
Yeah, but I met Destiny there.
He was a nice guy, but when we first were just sitting in the green room, he was a bit standoffish, just didn't want to talk.
And then after we had had this conversation, he actually was...
You know, he opened up.
Yeah, I think he just needed a little to get a little comfortable with me.
I don't know if he thought that I was going to come in carrying a tiki torch or who knows.
But yeah, I liked him.
And I actually mentioned to him, I was like, you know, if there are a few streamers that I will listen to and that have, you know, kind of affected me to some degree or at least...
At least I respect their argumentation, their willingness to go down logical roads.
And I was like, I hesitate to tell you because it might surprise you or anger you.
And then he was like, oh, it's Vaush, isn't it?
And I was like, yes.
But he created Vaush.
Yeah, he did.
And then kind of created a Frankenstein's monster of sorts.
I could imagine listening.
I mean, one of the things that I almost like about Vaush is that he's bombastic and he wants to literally throw Republicans into re-education camps.
And my also impression of Destiny is he's not like that.
No, he's much more like middle of the road, willing to bridge gaps, things like that.
He's not like an alarmist or, you know, the same way that Vosch is.
Vosch is very much an alarmist.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
But so, you know, this is one thing that we've talked about, you know, in other contexts, but, you know, things like Hollywood are declining rapidly and they don't have the cultural Purchase on people's minds and imagination like they used to.
And I think it's people like yourself.
I mean, how old are you if you don't mind my asking?
I'm 31, actually.
So I'm not that young.
Well, yeah, but still.
I mean, yeah, you are a little bit old because there are a lot of people who are on this stuff all day who are 17 or something.
But I guess my point is that a lot of the...
Like the headspace has shifted over and there's this whole world of live stream and live streaming, creating original content, talking with each other, kind of getting these arguments over politics, etc.
That I think for like Gen Z and younger millennials, it's kind of like it's replaced.
What the culture that I would have in growing up in the 80s and 90s, where it would be, you know, we'd be watching action movies, you know, for entertainment.
We'd be reading magazines and books and all the stuff that's totally gone by the wayside.
But I think there's just this like whole sphere that, you know, if anything, it's not even that like COVID damaged Hollywood or Whereas it's too much money to go to the theater.
It's like there's something that's replaced that.
And it's something that's very different than the kind of top-down produced content of yesteryear.
Yeah, definitely.
And it's more personalized too, I think.
Yeah, definitely.
And there's a lot of it that is almost like sludge in a way.
Like there's people will just go on.
Five-hour live streams and just talk to one another.
Whenever I do things, there's an interview or there's a topic.
Although, granted, in this group, particularly as we get into the second and third hour of these conversations, we'll go all over the place.
But it's still pretty philosophical.
I think in terms of...
You know, I want to say something.
I want to get into this debate.
I want to discuss this topic, etc.
But there's almost like a life streaming or like being as opposed to arguing quality to it.
I mean, for better and for worse, because some of it I look at and I'm like, how could anyone possibly watch this path of nonsense?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I think of it, I actually think of live streaming similar to reality TV.
Yeah, I think that...
Things like Twitch TV or YouTube live streamers are just kind of like Real Housewives but for men.
Women were kind of watching Real Housewives, watching reality TV for a while.
They'll have it in the background while they're working out or they're doing something.
And I think that's kind of what live streaming has become to a lot of people.
So a lot of the most successful live streamers are people who...
Are really good, I think, in that kind of reality TV-esque way.
But yeah, it is very vapid, like you said.
That's unfortunately the side effect of reality TV.
And then eventually, you know, sometimes you'll get people like Destiny or Vosh who are a little bit less reality TV, a little bit more substantive.
But, you know, it still is what it is, right?
It still is.
Yeah.
And I've noticed just two other things where I do think that, and this is the good aspect of it, and the second one is maybe bad, but maybe kind of interesting.
So the first one is that I think a lot of young people wanted to get into these arguments, like they wanted to have these discussions, and these kinds of things aren't being fulfilled by cable television or...
They actually wanted to get into some deep argument about politics or society or what it means to be transgendered or the Bible.
They really wanted to get into those discussions, like a deep dive.
And it's just not being fulfilled at all by the entertainment industry.
And I think that's a good thing.
Yeah, I think that's true.
I think especially when I see a lot of the debates, not even around politics, but around dating culture, the stuff around dating culture, around red pill and incel culture, that stuff is really taking off.
And I think it's taking off for a good reason because we see the rules of dating changing rapidly.
We see what's acceptable and what's unacceptable in dating changing rapidly.
And people are confused and people are afraid of, you know, making missteps and people don't know how serious a misstep is when they make a misstep.
So, yeah, these debates are super important because, you know, things are just changing so rapidly.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I think the other thing is that I've noticed is that with younger people, younger millennials and definitely Gen Z. Is this extreme polarization.
It's like polarization beyond polarization.
I'll occasionally see...
There's a new...
I don't even know if it's a cable.
No one's watching it.
But some new thing called News Nation or something where they've taken all of the retreads from recent memory, like Chris Cuomo or whatever, and they're doing a...
Unbiased, you know, news thing.
And I saw this thing on my YouTube feed of Chris Cuomo and Bill O 'Reilly, like people, canceled left and right people, and they were having these conferences, and they were like, you know, we as Americans, we need to bridge these divides and, you know, get together.
But what I've also noticed, the trend for younger people, and particularly on these forums, It's not like I'm a Democrat, you're a Republican, but we will try to get along.
It's I am a communist and then I am a fascist.
Someone will openly identify in these ways.
And so there's also among young people, there's like this polarization that I don't even think their parents could even imagine, actually, but that this is actually the norm that this is my impression.
You can certainly correct me.
But like, is there right outside of destiny, who kind of is a centrist, liberal slash Republicans, whatever that I. I think you're right, in a way.
Although we can go into that because I'm willing to go there.
But this young people, the extremity to which they've been polarized, I don't think is understood.
There are a ton of young men out there who just outright say, I am a Nazi, in fact.
And at the same time, on left...
You know, live streaming or Discord or whatever.
It's like, I am a communist.
Like, I am a Stalinist.
Like, I am a Maoist.
Like, it's...
And this is almost like the norm now.
Yeah, I agree with you.
I think it's really interesting to look at the polarization in some of these spheres because it's not even, like you said, it's not like I'm a Republican and I'm a Democrat and we can't talk to each other.
It's you're a Marxist-Leninist and I'm a socialist and there is nothing that we can even put a line on, right?
And like you'll see these two people who have more in common than they have in difference.
And they because of these small differences, they are like the worst enemies on Earth.
You can see that in the in the far right, like dissident right spheres to, you know, the the fracturing of criminal justice.
America First and Christian Nationalists were kind of on the same page for a while, and then there was something happened.
I don't know what exactly happened, but now they're like enemies, and they have more in common with each other than...
Well, it seems like Nick is now a Christian Nationalist, isn't he?
Yeah, I mean, he, well, the Christian, there's like the Christian nationalists that won't associate with AF.
They used to, they used to be associated, they used to like be friendly with Nick because they had similar views, but there was like a, there's a Christian nationalist kind of like sect that kind of fractured and won't associate themselves with AF and kind of view AF as kind of like a...
Circus, you know?
I don't mean to be offensive in any way, but that's kind of how they view it.
And so...
So you see, like, these groups who otherwise have so much in common with each other that because they have disagreements or they have, like, personal issues, they can't talk to each other.
Like, all conversation is dead, and they are better at talking to people across the aisle than to people who are, like, right next to them.
Well, I think there are kind of two things going on.
I mean, first off, there's...
The narcissism of small differences, which I think is the phrase of just obsessing about some doctrinal thing.
There was another maxim that I think Henry Kissinger said, but maybe someone else did.
And it was basically like, when the stakes are so low, the nastiness is so high.
He probably articulated it better.
But what he means is like, Nixon can go visit Mao.
And, you know, they have nuclear weapons pointed at one another, and so they almost have to be very cordial and, you know, oh, we have so much in common here.
We love each other.
You know, we love China.
We love America.
But then when you're on campus and there's, in a way, nothing at stake, you become just excessively nasty towards the person who's right next to you to kind of prove yourself.
But I think there's also something going on, which is that...
The level of extremism among young people who are online, I think you could, like, maybe at best, it's almost like, you know, just kids having fun or it's meaningless, narcissism, small differences.
But maybe at worst, it kind of says something a lot bigger and a lot darker in the sense that, like, they're totally disconnected from...
The mainstream.
They don't have anything invested in the mainstream.
And so they're just like, what?
You want to talk to me about the welfare state?
Fuck you.
I'm a Stalinist.
Or you want to talk to me about the GOP?
Fuck you.
I'm a Nazi.
And maybe it is kind of meaningless on some level, but on another level, it's actually very meaningful.
There's this online extremist communities or the incels or whatever.
And I think maybe it's being like...
It's certainly being underserved by the mainstream, but it's also being, like, unappreciated.
Like, they don't quite recognize how serious this is.
Yeah, so Henry Kissinger said this, Eric said, the reason that university politics is so vicious is because the stakes are so small.
Yeah.
Basically, yeah.
But go ahead.
Oh, sorry.
I was just going to say, like, you can see, again, with, like...
AF and the Christian nationalists who won't associate with AF, they SWAT each other all the time.
It's insane.
They will SWAT each other.
They'll dox each other.
And then same thing with people on the left.
You'll see super far-left people who will target other leftists and dox them and put all their information out there.
It's really interesting.
And I think you actually touched on something that I think is a really interesting dichotomy when you're talking with Destiny.
You both were talking about how there's kind of like, with globalization, you see certain things in our culture that are widespread.
And so you see kind of like a more...
A more homogenous, like, global culture, right?
Like, you'll see certain things that are in common among people all across the globe that people like or people appreciate.
And so you kind of get, like, a more globalized community and you've got a more generic, like, kind of experience.
But at the same time, with the advent of technology, we've got, like, a hyper-individualized.
Um, experience online, um, where like TikTok is, um, is feeding us things based on the algorithm, um, and things that are unique to us.
Um, and, uh, and technology is catered to the way that you're, you know, your likes and your brain and, um, and knows your likes before you even know your likes.
Um, and so I think that's a really interesting dichotomy as well.
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah, I mean, the ability of the algorithm to kind of understand what you want better than you do.
Like, you're not even subscribing to anything.
It's just kind of feeding you and learning and maybe even seeing how long you stay on something.
Like, you might not even, for whatever reason, you kind of stay on some, you know...
Whatever they're called, TikToks for longer.
And it's like, oh, he actually likes that.
Let's give him more of that.
It's diabolical.
Yeah.
I just got rid of TikTok.
I was like, I hate this fucking thing.
I guess where I was trying to go with that is that a lot of these people online are looking for this to be individuals.
We're all very...
We're individualistic people.
And some of it may be that people are falling into these fringe ideologies because they are looking for a way to be unique, just similar to how many kids are identifying as LGBTQ today, right?
But it may be something like that.
And it may just be...
The natural result of people feeling like they have less individualized content on a broader scale, so they find it online in a more fractured internet community, I suppose, if that makes any sense.
I don't know if it's making sense.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
Well, I mean, I think we're questing...
We're questing online for, like, self-understanding.
And I think there's been a lot of huge issues with that.
Like, these notions of, like, I'm demisexual or something, which is just basically, like, you are monogamous or whatever.
You want a boyfriend badly.
There didn't have to be a kind of word for them and almost a pathology for it previously.
And we're now kind of, like...
Questing for all of these ways of making ourselves special or self-expression or individuality online.
And I think that can obviously lead to some very bad...
Yeah, I think so.
We used to have goths and punks and preps and things like that.
I don't know if we still have that.
I'm a little bit disconnected from high schoolers and what they're up to, but I can see some of it is honest.
Obviously, some of these people are honest in what they believe in, but there probably is also a...
Aspect of, like, identity that plays into this as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
We're questing for identity online.
I mean, I think that's what all of these people are doing.
And that also kind of explains the, you know, I'm a communist, I'm a Marxist-Leninist or whatever.
When, you know, are you?
I mean, it's...
But there's almost this, like, need for self-definition that people have.
So, okay, let me...
Talk about some things that are a little more, I don't know, salacious or scandalous.
So what happened with you and the Groypers?
Because I remember I was talking with Mark Brahman beforehand, and he was like, you should...
What is it like experiencing this kind of thing?
Because your channel got banned, actually, at one point, I remember.
Yeah.
So, I don't...
Oh, boy.
I mean, I'm still on decent terms with them, with the Gripers, but I have a really weird...
I don't know what's wrong with me, but I have a really weird ability to just be on decent terms with most people, I think.
So, essentially, I was interviewing Ethan Ralph, and he brought his wife on, and I asked a really stupid question.
So, I don't know.
I have a kind of a habit of asking uncomfortable questions.
Especially if I don't get the chance to write them out beforehand, then they become really uncomfortable.
And he kind of sprung...
This on me last minute that his wife was going to be joining him and that he wanted me to interview his wife.
So I don't know what went through my mind, but I just asked him, you know, has she or I didn't ask him.
I asked I asked Ethan Ralph's wife, have you seen his tape?
And for anybody who's not familiar with that, there is a sex tape that is out there on the Internet of Ethan Ralph with.
Somebody else.
And yeah, so I asked him, I asked her that and Ethan was already mad at me because I asked him about Nick Ricada earlier and apparently him and Nick Ricada don't have a good relationship.
I wasn't even aware of this.
So, so he was already mad at me and I asked him about that and it kind of set him off and the rest of the interview went.
Downhill very quickly.
He was yelling at me.
He was asking...
I don't know if you've seen the clip.
There's a clip that went around where he's just screaming at me, how many people have you spread your...
Excuse my language, but how many people have you spread your pussy for online and all that?
He's just yelling at me like that.
I'm trying to do the thing that I usually do where I try to...
Wrangle the person who's really upset and just be calm with them and kind of get them to calm down.
But by that point, his audience was already super mad at me.
Now, I don't know if it was him who directed his audience to report me, but I know it was somebody in his audience who mass reported me on YouTube, got my YouTube taken down.
And I know this because there's a specific website that...
People in his audience will go to when they think they're coordinating like a takedown of somebody.
And so I looked at that website and my stuff was on there and they had a bunch of stuff that they thought they knew about me on there.
And so it was very clear.
It looked like immediately this happens just a day or two after that falling out with Ethan.
You know, the timing is very suspicious.
And there's this one, like, super fan of Ethan who's saying, like, I should have gone farther with it.
You know, I don't know what that means.
But essentially, like, there was enough evidence for me to think, okay, this is at the very least somebody in this audience got really mad at me and coordinated mass flagging and got my YouTube taken down.
So...
And after that, I mean, everybody kind of knows that there's a history of this with that community, with his community.
So I got retweeted by a bunch of larger YouTube creators, a bunch of people who know that there's a history with this, who know, you know.
And so luckily, after a few days, my YouTube got reinstated, but it was very scary for me.
So yeah, who would have known that the...
Mass flagging that would occur to me would come from the right.
Well, yeah.
That's my entire experience, actually.
Particularly of late.
For all the liberals who posted a punch a Nazi meme or something, there's been a million right-wingers who have just kind of...
I've noticed this as well.
I'll put out a tweet that might even be entirely innocuous.
And within a second, there's a reply.
And I do think these are, I don't know, bop behavior.
Within a second, there's like an immediate response that has nothing to do with what I just said that's attacking me on some kind of personal way or like posting an unflattering photo or just doing some, you know, you just, yeah, you know, you just, you just, you want your ex-wife back and that's why you hate Russia.
Just some like real weird kind of.
Yeah.
But again, it happens almost immediately.
Like, there's a notification set on these things.
I don't know.
Yeah, like, as Freddy, as Eddie Grace, there's just totally incoherent messages.
But yeah, it doesn't surprise me at all.
And it is just totally ridiculous and nasty.
I mean, you know, the question is within bounds, even if it's...
Yeah, I mean...
But, like, why are you trying to destroy someone?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was out of line.
It was definitely, you know, it was definitely kind of, you know, it was an inappropriate question for sure, but he's somebody who's talked about it himself, right?
He's talked about his tape himself.
Apparently, there was a video that surfaced of his wife before they were married also talking about the tape.
So it's not like the tape is a secret.
He's talked about it publicly.
Everybody knows about it.
And it may have been...
Oh, of course not.
Yeah, no, of course not.
Yeah, but there's just a fanatical horde of these people and they act in a coordinated fashion and it's a kind of like mind that they all jump on.
I think that's another kind of fascinating aspect of, you know, social media represents human behavior, you know, it's not.
It's not actually something new.
We've seen this before, but it happens more kind of immediately and maybe even in a nastier fashion where people get mad at Tim Pool.
You know, fuck Tim Pool.
Obviously, I'm not defending him, but people get mad at Tim Pool.
They're sending SWAT teams to his house.
I mean, this is just totally bizarre.
Very bizarre.
Yeah.
So anyway, I mean, this was another...
So what was...
What was Destiny's, you were on this livestream, I saw a clip of it where they were discussing, I don't even know the topic, but I think you and Lauren Southern and Destiny and a few other people were on one of these things.
And there was like, he said something to the effect, just because you abuse children, excuse me, doesn't mean you're a pedophile.
And then this, of course, creates all this rage.
What exactly happened?
Because I actually tend to agree with Destiny.
Yeah.
I've been on a few streams with him, so I don't know exactly this one that you're talking about.
But if I were to be charitable, I think there are statistics that show that most people who abuse children are not pedophiles.
I think there are statistics to show that.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
It may have been during the time when he was talking to Mr. Girl, when Mr. Girl was kind of popping up and becoming his own thing.
I don't know if you know Mr. Girl.
Yeah, he interviewed me one time.
Who is that guy?
He just seems almost like...
I mean, I did an interview one time, and I did it on actually Ethan Ralph's channel, and I thought I handled myself fine, but...
I get a kind of icky feeling with that guy.
Like, he's acting in bad faith.
Like, he's trying to do...
I don't know.
I just...
Yeah.
So, he is this guy who got really famous on YouTube for making a video called...
It was a Cuties review, essentially.
Review of the movie Cuties.
And in it, he is...
Now, my suspicion is that he was like joking.
It was like an inside joke with his audience.
But he basically is saying like, oh yeah, if you're worried about kids looking hot in that, like, you know, they succeeded or whatever like that.
Something like that.
And he's basically saying that he thinks that these girls are hot in the film Cuties.
Now, what my suspicion is, is that it was like a joke to his audience that kind of blew up because it was so controversial.
And because it blew up, he kind of doubled down on it.
That's just what my assumptions are.
What Bryce is saying is true as well.
I think he got arrested for saying that he understood why...
Back in college, he got arrested for saying he understood why somebody would shoot up a school or something like that.
So he is kind of a provocateur.
He's got a long history, 15 years of being a provocateur, writing articles that are...
What's a good word for it?
Just writing articles that are very...
Outrage-provoking, making videos that are outrage-provoking.
I think he likes to get a reaction out of people.
I used to be friendly with a guy, but we fell out.
Because of a debate we had, actually, about consent.
And I felt like he was just messing with me, trying to get a reaction out of me the entire time.
So that's kind of like the person he is.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't even know how to describe the personality, but it's just very, very creepy.
And he just is clearly, I don't think he even understands what good faith is.
Anything he says is about getting a reaction out of someone.
Yeah, and he has to control the conversation.
Yeah.
The entirety of it, yeah.
Yeah.
There's some kind of, probably, personality disorder that this is coming from, but it's just, yeah, it's a very creepy thing.
So what was going on with Destiny?
You seem to not remember, so I don't want to make too much of it.
I guess my point was that you actually can't have difficult...
Difficult, though, important conversations with a lot of these people just because of the kind of extremism and gut reaction that they have to these subjects.
Yeah, if I'm thinking what it is, it could have been this podcast where there's Lauren Southern, there are a bunch of other ladies on it, and Destiny came on and they asked him, they were talking about, like, should you immediately want to kill all pedophiles or something like that, right?
And I believe Destiny's argument was that, well, there are going to be people who haven't acted on it.
We should want people who haven't acted on it who recognize a problem to get therapy rather than just immediately imprison them.
Right.
And so I think that's what the argument was.
So they were making a kind of right-wing virtue signaling argument, which is that we actually want to kill all pedophiles.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's also a left-wing thing.
It's like the ultimate virtue signal for everybody is like, oh, pedophiles, I hate them, I want to kill them, right?
Right.
Yeah.
So I think his argument was just that, you know, we shouldn't want to kill all of them because probably a lot of them don't want to offend.
Probably a lot of them want to.
You know, seek out therapy.
And when you look at the statistics, actually, of, like, who abuses children, the people who abuse children tend, you know, most of them are not pedophiles.
They're just opportunistically acting.
Well, yeah.
I mean, maybe opportunistic is not maybe the right word.
But, yeah, I had this conversation, actually, with someone who's on this chat.
It's a very difficult subject, but it's very dark.
And we have an image of a pedophile as the creepy monster who hangs around playgrounds and that kind of thing.
And to some degree, that stereotype holds for some people.
But in terms of child abuse itself, a lot of it is happening in the home.
And it's happening from parents or uncles or that kind of thing, close relations, step-parents.
And they're not necessarily a danger to wider society.
And it kind of almost makes it...
Worse, in a way, or darker, at the very least, where they're only a danger, really, to their own children.
And there's something has gone wrong.
Maybe it is opportunistic sex to some degree.
I'm sure that also happens.
But there's also some just kind of horrifying...
Dark thing that's going on as well.
But they're not actually predators in the way that we imagine them of, you know, the creepy guy with big glasses and in a pocket protector who's...
You know, trying to seduce girls at the playground or something.
They're not like that.
It's something different.
It's a different phenomenon.
And you actually do need to make this distinction.
It's a distinction with a difference.
And the person I was talking to who was saying this, and I don't know this because this is certainly not my field, but that kind of child abuse that's happening in the home isn't actually getting punished to the degree of the...
Yeah.
Yeah, it's really sad.
Yeah, but there are that type of person who I guess you could call a minor attracted person.
They have this desire and it might very well be the result of abuse or...
Who knows?
There might be a predisposition to this.
But it's something that you kind of have to discuss objectively if you're going to solve the problem and not just treat it as like, let's kill them all.
Yeah.
Because then who's going to come out about getting help and things like that, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean, I obviously have a very visceral reaction to a lot of this stuff.
But, you know, it is true that a lot of it is in the home.
A lot of it is from family members.
And it's sad because, you know, as a child, you need to love your parents.
You need to love your family members.
And so these children, they had this need to love these people who were hurting them.
Yeah, absolutely.
So Bryce, do you want to jump in here?
You were raising your hand.
Yeah, I was wondering what you guys thought about changing attitudes toward pedophilia over time, because I think there's this sense that back in the good old days, the Wild West, people would just hunt pedophiles for fun and kill them.
I think there were some misconceptions.
And obviously, I think pedophilia is abhorrent, but marrying 14-year-old girls was common.
Back in the old days.
And I've talked to a lot of people, like Republicans and conservatives, and they seem to have the sense that the idea of being sexually attracted to 14-year-olds is some kind of new phenomenon.
And also, have either of you read Nabokov?
And if so, what's your opinion of Lolita?
Because I think Lolita is kind of the book that I feel the most...
Disturbed about, because the writing style is so incredible, but the subject matter is so horrifying.
And I think it sort of reflects maybe changing attitudes toward pedophilia.
And I think, like, Satanic Panic and QAnon feeds into a lot of that as well.
But I was just wondering if you had any...
Yeah, well, you can jump in first, Stardust, and then I have something to say on this.
I've only read, like, passages from that book, so I can't really...
Weigh in with an opinion on it, but as far as changing attitudes, I think obviously it's still something that shouldn't be normalized.
I think we shouldn't normalize being attracted that way, but I think maybe what we should do is normalize people seeking therapy for disorders and for...
For, you know, for things that they don't, they're very obviously going to be harmful to other people, right?
Maybe not normalizing, like, people coming out and being open about stuff like that, because we still want, like, a social stigma around it.
It's very important to have that stigma around it.
But normalizing people saying, like, I have a problem and I need to seek help for it.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I actually have not read Lolita, so that's a kind of hole in my literary education.
So yeah, I've seen Stanley Kubrick's film, but that's a little bit different than getting into the prose.
Yeah, I mean, these things come and go.
Actually, in Ed Dutton's book, which I published about almost a year ago, I guess now, There was actually a push towards acceptance of these things in the 60s and 70s, and it actually went away.
So there was a kind of map push, and it did strike me.
I mean, you know, again, these are distinctions with differences, even though they're all kind of bad.
But it did strike me as a as these kind of free love advocates who were, you know, excited about the birth control pill because they could now go have sex with reckless abandon and wanted to do it with 16 year olds, too.
And it was just a kind of consequence of that.
But they're actually that it actually went away.
I mean, I don't think it's weird.
I think the panic over...
Pedophilia or grooming or whatever has come back, but I'm not sure the acceptance has.
I think that's a bit of a myth.
I mean, it's worth saying that Milo got just immediately canceled.
Now, granted, maybe people were just looking for an excuse to cancel him.
But there was no one came to his defense after his comments about, you know, getting raped is good and, you know, you should go find yourself a good priest or something and other comments in that area, which weren't actually presented as bad jokes.
They were they were kind of presented as as real.
No one came to his defense.
I'm not positive that this nightmare scenario of liberals endorsing pedophilia is like just around the corner.
I don't I mean.
I don't know.
I think it's kind of a bridge too far, and it kind of doesn't adhere to a lot of their other priors about harm avoidance and things like that.
Now, granted, if you had told me 15 years ago that hormone therapy and reassignment at a fairly young age would...
Again, it's not happening in large numbers.
It's happening in very small numbers, in fact.
Just the fact that it's a thing in general, I would not have believed you.
So, you know, I could be wrong about this.
But I definitely think there's this huge panic.
And I believe I said this in my conversation with Destiny.
And if not, I'll say it here.
But it's like, so, you know, there's these issues over these books and in libraries and they're getting banned in Florida and conservatives are talking about them, etc.
And, you know, to be fair, I've seen some examples of these books, and it's not hardcore pornography, but it's also just not the kind of thing that I would ever want to expose my children to or anyone's children.
It's just weird and just, you know, come on.
That being said, I mean, you have to go to a library and actually read that book.
It's almost like a good problem to have in a way of like your children are checking out books in the library.
The clear issue for children's like mental sanity, mental health and sanity and like proper, you know, growing up and so on is the omnipresence of online pornography.
I mean, it's just not even close.
And granted, some conservatives have talked about that, but It seems like one of these things where the conservatives react to something and then find this weird, useless solution to it.
So the problem is that we're surrounded by a lot of stuff that is truly toxic for anyone, but definitely for children.
It's not the same.
I think I told this story the other day.
I mean, I remember when I was like 14 or something, and I remember stealing a penthouse actually from a convenience store.
And so like my friend like did a distraction.
He like went to the counter and dropped something and I like stole the penthouse.
So this was like the lengths you had to go to to see pornography.
And then once we had this thing, we're like, oh, what do we do with it?
Who should keep this object?
Should we sell it?
It was just...
You know, we were just like going through, jumping, going through over these obstacles just for like one glimpse of, you know, some stripper showing us, you know, the goods.
And now it's just totally different.
You want to see some nightmare pornography scenario, you just click on your phone immediately.
And it's just fundamentally different.
And it just can't be compared.
We are in a new world.
Don't talk about nudie mags of the past or pornography in the ancient world or something.
It has no comparison.
And we need to thus address the issue.
And of course, conservatives address it in this just utterly useless way.
I would even argue that I think...
I would say that women on a whole and girls on a whole have been dealing with this issue for a long time.
I think it's just recently become much more widespread because of the availability of porn.
But you can look at like...
Back when I was in high school, we had Seventeen magazine.
Seventeen magazine was something that all of the girls in high school read.
They had sex tips in those magazines.
They had sexualized content.
They had pictures of girls who were very clearly showing off their goods, showing off their...
What were some of the sex tips?
I remember my older sister subscribed to 17. My parents never knew what was going on.
There were like blowjob tips and stuff.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
It was somewhat tame-ish, I guess?
Some of them were tame.
Some of them were like using an ice cube or something.
Some of them were less tame than others.
To be fair, that's a good tip.
I wouldn't really know one way or the other because I'm not a man.
So, yeah, they're like Seventeen Magazine or, you know, you can look at today, like high schoolers today are all using TikTok and you get more views by being more promiscuous or not promiscuous, but being more provocative, being more, you know, you're going to get more views as a girl and get more validation as a girl on Instagram or TikTok if you're in a bikini than you are if you're.
It's almost kind of worse than that.
So I had this two-week excursion into the world of TikTok, and I just got rid of it because I learned what I needed to learn, and I was kind of horrified.
But one thing that I noticed is that they would have average housewives.
And they were attractive women, of course, because they were getting these views, but they were just normal housewives in Nebraska or whatever.
And they would lip sync like a dialogue.
And so it wasn't even their words that they were doing it.
And it would be some kind of vulgar, you know, something like, you know.
You know, why am I a good housewife?
Because I do the laundry and make dinner and take it up the ass or something.
Just something that's out there on the internet.
You live in Milwaukee and you're 40 years old and that's there forever.
Why?
What are you doing?
There is some kind of like, and it wasn't even nude, but there's just some kind of like corruption.
That's going on.
And look, I'm no Pollyanna.
I know people are kind of vulgar when they're alone.
They're private or they're at the bar.
I get it.
That's totally fine.
But this isn't private.
This is an illusion of privacy.
And it's actually extremely public.
And there's just some kind of corrupting aspect to this.
Again, what I would say is, yeah, this accessibility to porn is obviously an issue, but I don't think it's anything new either.
I think what I see that's super troubling to me is, again, these girls are being rewarded, right?
It feels good to get validation online.
It feels good to get attention and validation, and you're getting attention and validation by...
Selling your body.
You know, the more skin you show, the more validation you get.
And so I think that there's an issue there, and obviously an issue with porn as well.
But when you personalize it so much, there's definitely an issue.
Yeah, yeah.
Just kind of the OnlyFans phenomenon or something like this.
Yeah, this is massive.
It's almost worse when they're not making money at it or something.
It's like they're...
Yeah, I mean...
It's up there forever.
Yeah, how much of their self-worth are they tying to it too, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
There was another aspect to this.
Did you see this thing with Lauren Boebert, who's now a 36-year-old grandmother?
I have not seen this.
So this is a kind of interesting...
I wanted to tweet about this, but I had to take care of some other things today.
Lauren Boebert was at this mom Republican rally type thing.
She says, I'm very happy to announce this, but we brought life into the world and I'm a grandmother at 36. She actually said a few things that were pretty funny.
She said, I made my It's not the same as a child bride in the 19th century or something,
but it is a kind of child bride situation.
And groom, teen groom and teen bride.
But I guess there are a number of aspects to this.
And I saw that Richard Hanania, who I'll often agree with, but also often profoundly disagree with, but he said this.
It's not just a matter of fertility, but it is a matter of the...
What is it?
The frequency of generations.
And so there are women who went to Yale, got an internship throughout their early 20s, worked their way up the corporate ladder, and now at age 36 have decided that they're going to have one child.
Lauren Boebert's a grandma at age 36. And so on some level, at least demographically, Lauren Boebert is going to inherit the earth.
And Lauren Boebert's a moron, to be frank.
And this girl who went to Yale is not a moron.
She's actually pretty civilized and probably waspy.
And Eddie Grace to everyone, she's cute.
Incorrect.
But...
But, so, there is something, there's also this other irony about it, which is that a lot of the anti-abortion movement is kind of wrapped up in this, like, traditional Christianity or things like that.
And there is talk about that, like, you know, we want to get rid of abortion, we're going to force all these career gals to become wives and good mothers and all that kind of stuff.
But at the end of the day, it's a kind of fertility cult and just merely that.
Like, there was no thought that, wow, that girl's 16 and your son is 17. His brain's not developed.
I know as a, I was a 17-year-old boy.
I was a complete maniac.
At that age, you know, like the idea of like taking care of taking care of myself was too much to ask.
I mean, it's just it's like there's no even thought towards that.
There's you know, it seems like the best of the anti abortion crusade would almost be like.
You know, we stand for tradition and the family and so on.
And it's almost like they're now just a pure fertility cult, where it's just like, yeah, pop them out!
You know, you were a grandma at 36, I was a grandma at like 20, because we're just totally nuts out here.
Like, it's just kind of awful, basically.
I don't know, my inner wasp reacts to this pretty strongly.
This is why we supported birth control.
I never thought of it like that.
That's a really interesting way to think about it, especially with the frequency of generations.
I never really thought about that.
That's pretty interesting.
But yeah, I know that there's a lot of alarmism about the...
What is it called?
The decline in birth rates, I guess.
There's a lot of alarmism around that, around the amount that we're reproducing.
And I understand the reason for the alarm.
We need new people to carry the workload into the future and carry the earth or something like that.
But at the same time, somebody brought up An interesting point that there's going to be a lot of automation and a lot of, like, robotics in the future.
And that maybe it's not as big of a deal as we think it is because we have a lot of automation.
Now, I don't know.
I have no opinion on this myself.
But it's an interesting thought.
Like, is there an amount of automation, an amount of...
Like, technological advancement that would make us worry less about reproducing, worry less about, you know, reproducing rates and how many children people are having.
Well, I think that's definitely an issue.
I think there's also a question of, like, what is the sustainability of this planet?
And so on.
Do we, you know, to the pro-lifers, you know, at some point, like, if...
Everyone has five kids, and we have growing demographics year after year after year.
The planet is going to have 100 billion people on it.
What does that mean?
Even putting aside climate change, what does that mean in terms of just space, the natural world area, just living conditions, poverty?
I mean, these favela cities and so on in South America.
I mean, just imagine that on a whole new scale.
It's rather horrifying.
And to think that that wouldn't be the case with a population is completely naive.
Yeah, I mean, I think that there are a lot of serious issues on both sides of this.
And I think the issue that I...
I know she's going to be a shit-lib Democrat voter or something, but I would rather that Yale graduate have two children than Lauren Boebert have 100 or whatever she has plans.
I think that's just better for society and culture and etc.
Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of huge issues, but I think the main reality of the situation is that we are facing this problem.
Like, I even have, and I still have this, I have a little bit of a conspiracy theory about the Roe v.
Wade decision, and I think it is coming from demographic anxiety.
And so, obviously, we have a...
Lower birth rate in the United States, but we're actually not doing nearly as badly as South Korea or Denmark or et cetera, where they're not even close to replacement.
I think all said and done, America has a replacement fertility rate.
I could go look at these where it's fairly close to it, although the pandemic affected things in a negative way.
Yeah, I mean, I think that issue is serious.
And you can't, you know, immigration brings in its own problems.
I mean, are you really going to bring in 100 million immigrants?
We've seen that this is already, you know, there needs to be kind of a trickle and not a flood, or you will just create problems.
I mean, just, you know, putting values aside, it's a difficult thing.
And this is where I'm relying on Wasserman a bit here, but the second world, so to speak, is going through its own collapse.
So Mexico is going through its own demographic collapse, and that has been one of the primary sources of immigration, legal and illegal.
Because there's this natural tendency, it's just a secular law, that you bring in medicine, people can live longer, you bring in...
Home technology is like a washing machine.
You don't need as much labor in the household.
You get educated.
Women start to think for themselves.
They say, I want to have this and that.
They're not just producing kids at 16. They're just this whole host of factors.
It's over-determined.
Childhood mortality goes down, which is a huge thing with medicine.
You don't need to have 10 to get...
Five, you can actually have two to get two.
So dramatically different from yesteryear.
But it's just a secular trend.
I don't know if there's any real exception to this is that you start to get down to replacement and then you start to maybe even drop below replacement as things become expensive and so on.
So it's like we're going to face this problem either way.
You can't replace it with immigration.
And I have this theory that, look, the Supreme Court is the ultimate deep state body there is.
I mean, it's like the inner sanctum of the ruling elite to some degree.
And they did this.
Surely they didn't do this all on their own or all due to legal reasoning or something.
Surely it was a kind of rationalization or a choice on some level.
There was a lot of funding of this by conservative Catholic groups in particular, but I wonder if they're trying to solve the demographic issue by force, in a way.
And that this was actually...
I think I'm right.
I mean, I know it's kind of a conspiracy theory that I can't prove, but I think it was derived from demographic anxiety almost more than anything.
And it's like, we've got to crack this nut somehow, so let's just outlaw abortion.
That's an interesting thought.
I definitely have to think about it more.
The only thing is by creating an outlawing abortion or on a nationwide level overturning Roe versus Wade, it doesn't stop abortions, right?
As they say, it only stops safe abortions.
But there are a lot of states now where not only is it stopping people from getting abortions, but a lot of these clinics that provided abortions not only provided abortions, they provided like...
They provided health care to low-income women.
And because abortions are now no longer allowed, a lot of these clinics in these states started shutting down.
So you're not just getting people who can't access abortion.
You're getting people who are no longer getting pap smears or no longer getting annual checkups, getting access to birth control.
So, yeah, I can't really say what my opinion is on whether, you know, I'm sure some of it is derived from You know, this anxiety around demographic decline.
But, you know, it's also, it's just creating such, like, worse outcomes in the long run for people.
And I think people really didn't think about that, right?
How many women are, low-income women are...
Now not getting cancer screened, right?
How many of them are going to discover cancer too late?
Or how many people are not getting contraception because they don't have access to contraception and now they're going to have even worse problems with family planning, right?
Yeah.
No, I think Bryce was saying this and Chris in the chat about the Soviet Union, there are precedents for this.
I believe Stalin, I remember looking into this at some point, I believe Stalin banned abortion as well, because abortion became legalized early on in the Bolshevik regime, and then Stalin did.
And there are some other cases of in Romania and so on.
Yeah, Romania is a really bad example, too, because Romania, they criminalized abortion, and then you ended up having these orphanages filled with children who'd never been touched, who'd never had any education, anything like that.
And so when the Soviet Union, when communism fell, essentially, They discovered all these orphanages with all these children who'd been shackled.
Some of them had been shackled to their beds.
It's horrible.
All these children in these orphanages that were never taken care of.
It's really sad.
Really bad outcomes.
Just to back up the whole thing, the conservatives clearly are not stopping an abortion.
There have been a few things.
People discussed overturning Supreme Court decisions regarding contraception.
That's kind of in the air.
They're also doing some very almost silly things.
I'll have to figure out which state did this, but they were defining the child as like alive at conception.
And so you can be charged for murder through abortion or assault.
If the abortion fails or you attempt to get an abortion or something.
And then if the legal mechanism they're using is if the life of the mother was at risk, which is a real thing, that can definitely happen, that the mother can claim self-defense.
Wow.
That would be the legal.
It just shows how kind of insane they are.
Yeah, I mean, I do think this is coming.
I mean, I've said this many times, I think a general Christian conservative backlash is coming, and it's underway.
And I think, yeah, they might be coming for us at some point, because I'm not endorsing any of this.
But I also think there's going to be an almost brute force way of handling the demographic issue, which I think this is all a part of.
Yeah, I mean, generally, foster care systems and state care systems are not really the greatest.
So if they're going to criminalize abortion on a larger scale, unless we want to see a repeat of what happened in Romania, they're going to have to really step up the game when it comes to foster care systems and state.
You know, the state child care system.
Yeah.
Yeah, they won't.
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