Episode 17 The Manosphere

Emanuel Petrescu and Kevin Carney examine how online performers shape young men’s ideas about value, women, discipline, and identity.

Online masculinity movements can begin with familiar messages about fitness, discipline, and confidence, but they often move into something more damaging. This conversation looks at the manosphere through the lens of social media algorithms, performative influence, misogyny, attention-based business models, and the vulnerability of young men searching for identity and direction.

Emanuel Petrescu and Kevin Carney discuss the role of platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, the appeal of confident online figures, the harm of reducing women to sexual value, and the need for stronger social, family, and educational guardrails. The conversation also explores critical thinking, economic frustration, unemployment, loneliness, and the question every person should ask when consuming online content: is this true?

Full episode and transcript: https://curiouspundits.com/podcast/ep17-the-manosphere

Episode Show Notes

• The manosphere as a social media and attention economy phenomenon
• Online masculinity, performance, and influence
• How algorithms reward conflict, controversy, hate, and extremism
• The distinction between discipline-focused advice and toxic messaging
• The objectification of women in manosphere content
• Vulnerability among young men looking for role models
• Social media toxicity across Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other platforms
• Cyberbullying and the loss of safe spaces for young people
• The need for critical thinking and questioning online claims
• The role of parents, schools, churches, communities, and society in creating guardrails
• Economic pressure, unemployment, idleness, and young men
• Reflections on wealth, enoughness, inequality, and social stability
• Reference to the Curious Pundits episode with Alexandra on women in sports and Kyniska

Episode Timestamps

00:00:00 Intro to Curious Pundits
00:00:18 Emanuel introduces the episode and the manosphere topic
00:01:00 Instagram, social media toxicity, and harmful algorithmic content
00:04:43 Kevin explains the Louis Theroux documentary and manosphere creators
00:06:43 Fitness messaging, audience targeting, and where the harm begins
00:07:15 Attention economy, advertising, and performative masculinity
00:08:27 Toxic masculinity, influence, young men, and social pressure
00:12:48 Andrew Tate, discipline messaging, and context
00:13:16 Where the manosphere becomes toxic
00:15:59 Misogyny, women, and the core toxicity of manosphere content
00:16:03 Young men, role models, algorithms, hate, and violence
00:20:49 Sex, violence, monetized attention, and unhealthy influence
00:21:42 Reference to the prior episode on women in sports and Kyniska
00:22:52 Women’s value, objectification, and dating culture
00:25:51 Algorithms rewarding extremism, conflict, and controversy
00:26:47 Social media as poison in society
00:27:51 Phone bans, school policies, and broader social guardrails
00:30:09 Performance, hypocrisy, and manosphere narratives
00:31:26 Young men, online influence, and the loss of real-world connection
00:34:07 Critical thinking and asking whether online claims are true
00:36:04 Who should teach skepticism, curiosity, and critical thinking
00:38:26 Young men absorbing harmful lessons about women
00:40:18 Unemployment, idleness, inequality, and economic frustration
00:42:34 Work, discipline, meaning, and the role of having a job
00:47:47 Guardrails, social media, and society’s larger problem
00:48:45 Spending less time on social media and asking “is this true?”
00:49:00 Closing references, listener feedback, and final remarks
00:50:22 Outro and end of episode

Episode Links

Prior episode: Pioneers of Women’s Sports: https://curiouspundits.com/podcast/ep-16-pioneers-of-womens-sports-kyniska-and-alexandra/
 

About the Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Carney and Emanuel Petrescu, two curious minds exploring ideas, culture, and everything in between. Curious Pundits is a conversational podcast where each episode starts with a topic that caught our attention and unfolds into thoughtful, unscripted discussion. We follow curiosity wherever it leads, across disciplines, opinions, and perspectives, without pretending to have all the answers. Their main ventures are https://1307.digital/ (Emanuel) and https://organicgrowth.biz/ (Kevin).

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Entities mentioned in this episode

People

• Emanuel Petrescu
• Kevin Carney
• Louis Theroux
• Andrew Tate
• Tristan Tate
• Scott Galloway
• Jessica Tarlov
• Alexandra
• Aristotle
• Plato
• Kyniska
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Blaise Pascal
• Chekhov

Organizations, platforms, and services

• Curious Pundits
• Netflix
• Instagram
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Apple
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• OnlyFans
• Coca-Cola

Places

• North America
• Europe
• Romania
• Spain
• Egypt
• Algeria
• Morocco
• Northern Africa
• Myanmar
• Asia
• Africa
• South Asia
• Colorado
• Texas
• Red Rock
• Round Rock

Works and media mentioned

• Louis Theroux documentary about the manosphere
• The Cherry Orchard
• Curious Pundits episode with Alexandra about Women in Sports and Kyniska

Topics and concepts

• Manosphere
• Toxic masculinity
• Social media
• Attention economy
• Algorithms
• Content creation
• Influencers
• Masculinity
• Fitness
• Misogyny
• Prostitution
• Gambling
• Cyberbullying
• Sexuality
• Hate
• Violence
• Critical thinking
• Social media toxicity
• Young men
• Role models
• Guardrails
• Unemployment
• Idleness
• Inequality
• Financialization
• Wealth
• Minimum wage
• Economic ceiling
• Discipline
• Dating
• Objectification of women
• Advertising-based business models
• Vaccines
• Arab Spring
• Communism
• Nuclear values
• Women in sports

Transcript

[00:00:00] Announcer: This is the Curious Pundits Podcast hosted by Kevin and Emmanuel. They explore bits of everything through thoughtful conversations, prioritizing curiosity over conclusions, and they thank you for joining them. Now onto the podcast.

[00:00:18] Emanuel: Hi everyone, and welcome to yet another episode of The Curious Pundits podcast. My name is Emanuel.

[00:00:25] Kevin: My name is Kevin.

[00:00:26] Emanuel: And we, together we co-host this wonderful podcast where we talk about everything essentially, bits of everything, that’s our tagline as well. We kindly ask you to go to curiouspundits.com and you know, like share, follow, give us a review.

We are on all your favorite platforms where you like to listen to podcasts: Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, and essentially everywhere.

That being said, we should dive right in. And today’s episode is a very, at least controversial topic. And it’s based on my suggestion because I’ve seen a recent documentary on Netflix by Louis Theroux for those who don’t know, Louis Theroux is a journalist that makes interesting documentaries.

It’s about the manosphere. And I knew it was a problem, society’s problem, modern Western, if you want to call it society, right? So it’s not just North America, but it’s also Europe in many other places.

But I realized that it’s actually a bigger problem than I thought. So before passing along to Kevin… to get his opinion because I told him just before we hit record this, so let’s keep the conversation for the podcast because I’m curious to learn about your opinions and what you thought about it and the entire thing.

I wanted to say that the other day, so couple days ago, I’ve uninstalled Instagram again. I go back and forth because due to the nature of my work, I had to have Instagram every now and then on my phone being logged in. And sometimes I keep it there and it’s fun for a while. Catch up with your friends because we have friends that stay only on Instagram, others only on Facebook, other only on LinkedIn.

That’s the nature of things and very quickly it turned into something very, very toxic. So, long story short, if you are a parent, but not even a parent, this goes beyond, you know, not letting your children use social media, but even for yourself, do yourself a favor and uninstall it. And where I was going with this, it just in a couple of a few minutes, it transitioned from some funny videos that I really enjoyed watching and they were making me laugh, some from comedians, some other stuff from the internet. It’s very quickly, very quickly turned into something very offensive. On one side it came up with sexual stuff close to porn, and I’m not sure how they get away with it. I’m pretty inclined to think that actually all these companies are okay with leaving some.

Over there, but it got worse and even turn into showing me videos… So violence and very harmful stuff that I couldn’t watch. And I’m thinking, okay, what if a 14-year-old find these videos and not if when, because it’s a matter of time, sooner rather than later. So before we dive right in, because this is a small part, it’s not the entire, but it is a not so small part of why the topic of today’s podcast came into existence essentially. Does that make sense? What I said in my rant, Kevin? So, long story short you know, Instagram is toxic for everyone. LinkedIn is as toxic for professionals as Instagram is, but, you know, be mindful and do yourself a favor and, you know, go read a book, go for a walk, listen to some music and stop scrolling on Instagram or resist, resist the temptation. I know it’s hard because I’m not better than anyone. But long story short, Kevin, Manosphere… Netflix recently released, like I know if it’s older than one or two months ago, a documentary… Manosphere.

Would you care to tell our audience what this documentary is about and then share your opinion on this topic.

[00:04:43] Kevin: The documentary is about notable content creators in what is called the manosphere, and these are for the most part young men who are promoting ideas of masculinity, which are resonating with an audience of young men. And broadly speaking, I don’t want this to sound denigrating at first, although I’ll get to that in a little bit, but this is just another manifestation of the attention economy. It’s content creation, it’s performative.

And the reason that I feel very strongly that it’s performative is there were two parts of the documentary that kind of revealed the truth. I don’t know what the right language here is, but. I don’t remember the names of the content creators, but there was one guy who had a girlfriend named, I think her name was Angie, and when the documentarian asked Angie what do you love about this guy? Her answer was something to the effect of… on camera he’s one guy, but with me he’s somebody else. So okay, he’s playing a character, for an audience. And then the other… specific bit of the film was, and this was the British guy living in Spain. So he does these live events for young men in Spain and it’s at a gym and they show up for the gym and he is gonna show them like masculine fitness or something. And he greets them with a spread of donuts. And the guy’s what are the donuts all about? Like you’re here to teach these guys, like fitness and all that kind of stuff. And he says some people want the fitness and some people want the donuts. Yeah, but why do you put the donuts out? I own the donut shop, so no matter what choice they make, I make money.

[00:06:43] Emanuel: Not question, but a note before we dive right in. So far what you said doesn’t seem dangerous at all, right? So people putting content out there that are address a specific cohort or a specific segment doesn’t sound like terrifying. So it’s nothing bad about it. Promoting fitness doesn’t really sound bad then, you know, we can all agree, we can all use a little bit more fitness and maybe just a donut here and there.

So, where actually is the problem and we’re diving right into it.

[00:07:15] Kevin: The content creators in the manosphere are creating content meant to appeal to people, and I mentioned, and it might even have been the the last episode, that the basic concept of all advertising based businesses is attract people’s attention and then sell that attention to people who, who wanna sell ’em products.

But the basic message of every ad is you’ve got a problem, and the solution to your problem is to buy the stuff that we’re selling. That’s in a nutshell, that’s the advertising industry, right? So content that they’re creating is creating a model or a mythology of masculinity, which I personally believe is detached from reality. But these guys, for whatever reason, don’t know that, right? So they’re trying to model and mimic these characters that they see on the Internet, seemingly without fully grasping that these are just characters, like even the guys playing the characters aren’t the characters, and that’s where the danger comes in.

[00:08:27] Emanuel: I think toxic masculinity is the right word to describe what they’re trying to promote, and I think you kind of like trim down a little bit the impact that they have on the society because it’s, again, I said there’s nothing obviously wrong about, you know, promoting to a certain cohort. But what they are promoting is the so-called toxic masculinity.

At the end of the day they’re not providing the values that, for example, I… and I’m assuming you, Kevin, that’s why we’re having this conversation and we’re doing many projects together. I kinda like shared, shared values of what, you know, my role in the society to be, other people’s role in the society, to be as a man, as a father, as a brother, as a son, as a coworker, as a friend, as a business owner and so forth. Because I had some values, I had some guidance since I was young, family, friends, school, usually the education usually comes from three parts. Family, you know, school and the system, let’s call it the system culture and so forth. And your friends.

And we’ve seen many examples of how friends can, you know, many people who were, came from good families and had very, very good education, but they end up hanging out with the wrong people and they kinda like mess up their lives. Where I’m going with this. They have an influence on today’s young men that nobody else had in history.

They have a very big influence. That’s why we’re hearing more and more stories about different incidents. That happened with young men. And I’m gonna make another note to the note that I was making to say that even the Arab Spring revolution of 2011 was driven… I mean, the spark was either two things as far as I understand, oppression and hunger.

Again, people didn’t have what to eat. So hunger and the oppression, the free speech. Started off with a journalist in Algeria or Morocco, I don’t remember, or to is maybe, and then it spread out to the entire Northern Africa. But in Egypt it picked up mostly because of the frustrated young men.

And Egypt has a very young population, more than half of the people in Egypt, as far as I remember. I seen a statistic, we can confirm it. More than half are under 20 years old. So more than half of a population and they’re like 80 or a hundred million. Okay? And many of them being men and very frustrated from many aspects… financial, cultural and mostly sexual because that’s the key word here, right? There’s some mechanics behind the human body and these influencers, because it’s the influencer that are the main key figures in the attention economy, speculate a lot, don’t, let’s not degrade that sexuality doesn’t play an important role in, especially the younger you are, your body, you know, responds to different stimulus.

And if you don’t know how to manage those, you know it can get into the wrong direction. Now I was expecting your opinion, Kevin, but I still going on with this rant because I believe it’s very important and I hope that, you know, even if just one person listens to us and just raise an eyebrow and ask a couple of questions to themselves, then we achieve something.

The characters that were portrayed in this documentary were not familiar to me at all. So thankfully, I have many weird things in my algorithm. Fortunately, these were not in my algorithm, but it turns out they have millions, millions of followers. And the main, so if people don’t know who we are talking about, we’re talking about the Tate, like the Tate brother and similar characters.

[00:12:48] Kevin: Andrew Tate is the only guy whose name I definitely know and that’s just ’cause he’s been in the news recently.

[00:12:53] Emanuel: Yeah. And he lives in Romania by all countries, where I’m from. So he kind of like pops up more and you might think, okay, but what’s wrong? You know, Andrew Tate says some things, and obviously if you take it out of the context, it’s nothing wrong when you see a clip of him saying that you need to wake up early, you need to be disciplined, you need to work out, you need to go to the gym, you need to, you know, do your things.

That’s not nothing wrong.

[00:13:16] Kevin: Yeah. At what point does the manosphere become toxic? I do…

[00:13:20] Emanuel: Oh.

[00:13:21] Kevin: Have a definite opinion about that.

[00:13:23] Emanuel: You don’t need to zoom out too much, just a little bit. You zoom in from all that aspect and you see when it becomes toxic. But I just wanted to say one thing and then I’ll actually promise Kevin that I’ll and our audience, that I’ll let Kevin talk. But I wanted to say one thing. First of all it’s very, it’s terrible what’s happening.

We discussed that now we’re seeing movies, we’re seeing news on the Internet about young people being bullied. You told me at one point, I think that, you know, bullying used to happen at school, but when you get home, you’ll be at least for a while, you know safe. Whereas, you know, bullying right now, especially with cyber bullying happens 24 7 and Instagram is one channel where this happens.

It spreads the word. I am feeling, first of all, very sorry for these influencers and these characters because they end up being like that, not from a place of, you know, good from a place of wellbeing, but because they probably suffered a lot. It is not easy, and I often tell people that, you know, Andrew Tate and Tristan Tate, his brother are exactly, are very, are Romanians, essentially they live in their own country because as many Romanians who are smart, good looking, hardworking, but also broken. Life has its own way of throwing stuff at you, gives you lemons. I think it’s the American expression.

[00:15:04] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:15:05] Emanuel: It depends on how you respond to it and based on what because I research some of the characters more.

At one point, you know, life breaks you and then you either go this way or the other way. There’s not actually too many choices, either this or that. Unfortunately, they went, in my opinion again, they went into the wrong direction. From there, it’s spiraled and it’s circled. And again, we’re not talking just about the fact that they’re promoting, you know, being disciplined, working out and all those things, but they’re promoting what’s beyond misogyny, right? They’re promoting even to an extent, prostitution, gambling, and all the other stuff that, you know, plus I won’t even go into how they actually treat women and

[00:15:56] Kevin: Yeah, that’s the key right..

[00:15:57] Emanuel: Everything else…

[00:15:58] Kevin: There.

[00:15:59] Emanuel: But yeah.

[00:15:59] Kevin: say about and to women. That’s where it becomes toxic.

[00:16:03] Emanuel: And yeah, and I’ll let you actually do your rant, if you have one, but I had this rant. First of all, I feel they’re in my prayers. And hopefully, hopefully they will be the ones who, when they, they turn, they’ll help others turn as well. And one can only hope for, for that, you know, because you know you did the damage, but right now let’s go.

Young men, especially young men. And the reason I say young men is because… Scott Galloway also highlights this a lot, and I agree with him, Professor Galloway, about young men being very, very vulnerable nowadays. They don’t have who to turn to as role models or at least as good role models.

And that’s why, you know, the algorithm basically sensing that they need that. That’s why they’re feeding the other side. Obviously if you’re 16, you wanna learn more. How come this guy, he’s two years older and he has this flashy card and has all these girls and has all this money and can travel all over the world and all those things.

Right. Obviously even I, me, I’m close to 40 right now and I’m kind of like a little bit jealous every now and then, right? It’s inevitably, but you know, when I was 16, 17, I was doing my own crap. But that’s why I said one is family, of course. The other one is the system. So school, job, work, whatever it might be.

And then the friends as well, and they matter. Fortunately, I was good on all of them. Fortunately, I went to a good school. Obviously my family put me there because they did the effort. Extreme, very big effort for me to have at least, what it was back then at the time considered good, but I think the friends influences more than we actually think.

And I was lucky enough to have good friends to do all the crazy stuff together, but still keep in contact even to this day. And you know, I think friends and entourage form you. And part of the problem is that I don’t think the same connections are developing right now with the younger people, including men that we’re talking about right now, to be able to develop these friendships essentially. Which is more than friendship, it’s a brother at the end of the day, you know, camaraderie and so forth. So it’s missing. And that void needs to be filled with something, it’ll be filled with this kind of crap that they get from social media. And, you know, I hope that there’s ways that we can, as a society do something about it.

So what I wanted to say is that I feel for these influencers, because I know they, for sure they didn’t came from a right place. And they’re piggybacking right now on the opportunity that the technology allows to reach a mass, mass audience. But you can, even in that documentary sense that whenever Louis Theroux he’s a very smart individual, okay?

So he’s not your typical journalist. He knows in a couple of seconds to read the room and ask the questions, and you can collect, see in those people how actually, you can see it in their eyes that it, it hurts when they ask couple of questions, you know, like how you end up here. Yeah, it is because, you know, my dad left my mom when, or my dad went to jail, my mom abandoned me, and all those things. So nobody came from a from a good place. It’s just that, you know, and maybe it is society’s fault that there weren’t guardrails in place so that, you know anybody can do anything.

That being said so two things actually are important. One, sexuality which the algorithm promotes a lot, but also it turns out that there’s something even more financially beneficial than sexuality. And turns out hate and violence can actually spark more, you know, because it’s common ground. Some people can, you know, abstain or if they see something let’s say with more sexual, they say, okay, I’m gonna scroll down. But when they see something hateful, and there’s plenty of examples that we’ve seen, we discussed in a previous episode about how Facebook’s algorithm was promoting hate against a Muslim community in Myanmar by the Buddhist community that were becoming very violent.

So the technology helps in that sense to amplify it. That being said, that was a long rant, but I had it on my chest and I felt like this needs to be said and put out there. A podcast is new therapy. It used to be blogs for me for the longest time, and now it’s podcast.

Right. So it’s fairly cheaper than therapy. That being said, back to you Kevin, and let’s take it from the beginning and you know, I cut you off where the toxicity actually happens.

[00:20:49] Kevin: Anyway, your main point… if you just take a look at Hollywood movies, you quickly come to the understanding that sex and violence attract people to watch movies. Like they’re just like rampant in our movies. So these guys, via whatever mechanism they caught onto a means of attracting an audience, and monetizing that audience for their own financial gain. basically that’s the genesis of the attention economy. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that, but they’re doing it in a way, which is, in my opinion very unhealthy.

And where the manosphere transitions from… get up early and be a good person and go to the gym and workout and all that kind of stuff is specifically in what they teach these young men about women. This happened multiple times in the documentary not like 20 times, but a couple times…

[00:21:42] Emanuel: And…

[00:21:42] Kevin: Where…

[00:21:43] Emanuel: Let me just make intervention. On our website, again, curiouspundits.com. You’ll see a episode with Alexandra. She was a guest. She was our first guest on the podcast, and she’ll probably be more because we’re trying to, first of all, educate ourselves about everything, essentially including, and the topic of that episode is called Women in Sports and it talks goes all the way back to ancient Greece.

So this bias against women obviously is not something new. It happened throughout history. Can you imagine if who discuss a Aristotle or who was in that episode that he was very much writing against the women? Plato? We discussed One Nation. Can you imagine him today, you know, having a YouTube channel or a TikTok channel and how…

[00:22:31] Kevin: Actually it was Aristotle.

[00:22:32] Emanuel: That is?

[00:22:33] Kevin: Your point is valid. Yeah.

[00:22:35] Emanuel: So we wanna also say that we’re actually doing something about it. We’re trying first all to educate ourselves and we’ll bring guests. So follow, if you would, are not already. Follow and check out the episode and probably we’ll put a link to the episode about Kyniska and Alexandra, Women in Sports that made a difference.

[00:22:52] Kevin: To get back to my thought about where the Manosphere becomes toxic is in what they’re teaching young men about women. So they have this concept of earning value, and as a man, you have to earn your value, you have to demonstrate your value and all that kind of stuff. And there were multiple guys who said to audiences of men and women, although they were talking specifically to women at that time. Women don’t have to prove their value. Women show up with value. And the value that the woman shows up with is they have breasts and vaginas. And I’m like that very framing your interpretation of the value of a woman. You apparently view women purely as sexual objects, and you’re teaching these other young men to do the same. Then you have a situation where young women out there in the world meet young men, potentially romantic partners in a dating situation, they get to know them a little and they don’t wanna date them. And young men are like, why is this happening? You’ve been taught to value a woman as a sexual object only.

[00:24:08] Emanuel: Women who value men only if they have this much money in the back account, and even if they drive this certain type of car and all the other stuff.

[00:24:17] Kevin: Based on what I’ve seen around the Internet and people I’ve spoken to, women aren’t falling for this. It’s young men who are falling for this. So women just tune it out. But if you’re a young man who tuned it in, they tune you out too.

[00:24:31] Emanuel: Say that again? ’cause I wanna, I wanna learn it.

[00:24:35] Kevin: and you do, but it’s a problem that you learned from these guys that you’re admiring.

[00:24:41] Emanuel: I think you might have nailed it. So say that again. ’cause I, I like to, the tuning in and tuning out thing.

[00:24:47] Kevin: My belief based on just looking around the Internet, seeing what people say and people that I personally talk to, is that… the women don’t fall for the… a woman’s value is the fact that she has breasts and a vagina. Women just don’t fall for that. But the young men do, right?

[00:25:04] Emanuel: Or a man that drives a certain type of car and has a certain bank account.

[00:25:09] Kevin: They think this is what gives them value. Then in the dating sphere, a young man and a young woman meet and they’re chatting and they’re sizing each other up. And when the young woman sees this guy as someone who values her because she has breasts and a vagina, she tunes that guy out too, because what’s the point of investing any time with this guy?

Because like he’s been contaminated in some way by this whole manosphere thing, right? And then these guys have a problem. Women don’t wanna date them, but they don’t understand that the problem is you don’t wanna listen to what they have to say.

[00:25:51] Emanuel: So,

[00:25:52] Kevin: I mean, it’s a huge problem in that regard, and I don’t personally know how we fix it. But the big problem is that the algorithm financially rewards, extremism, conflict, and controversy. So these manosphere performers are out there performatively creating extremism, conflict and controversy. And somehow part of what they latched onto is extreme devaluation of women as people. And a valuation of women is purely sexual objects, and that’s a problem. For them primarily.

[00:26:33] Emanuel: And, and for our society, at the end of the day, it’s not healthy society and it’s, you know it doesn’t lead anywhere good. There’s a problem.

[00:26:47] Kevin: In fact, for what it’s worth, just this morning, so just to provide a time reference, it’s now the morning of April 28th. It’s Tuesday and Saturday, which was like two days ago. There was in incident at

[00:26:58] Emanuel: 2026.

[00:26:59] Kevin: The White House correspondence dinner. So today I watched an episode between Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov about that specific topic, and at some point Scott Galloway said something that similar to… say that again that was great. I’m like, oh my God say that again that was great.

So basically what he said, he predicted that in 20 or 30 years time, we’re gonna look back and wonder how we allowed the cyanide of social media to poison the water of society. And I hope he is right. I hope it doesn’t take 20 or 30 years. There’s this phrase that gets bantered around in a variety of other contexts and topics, but it’s one day everyone will have been against this. I hope that’s true of social media one day.

[00:27:51] Emanuel: There’s nothing we can,

[00:27:53] Kevin: It rewards conflict. It rewards hate, it rewards controversy.

[00:27:57] Emanuel: And you said there’s something we can, not sure what we can do about, yes, we can do about it. First of all, limit the access to devices for young men. And it’s good right now that I’ve seen that some schools actually banned cell phones 16 or under 16, which is good. It’s 10 years later, but hey, we’re at least doing something else.

And you know.

[00:28:19] Kevin: For what it’s worth, I used the word we in a very narrow context, like you and me. But on a larger context, there’s a lot we can do about it.

[00:28:28] Emanuel: We are pundits commenting on the society. So we are members of the society. For me, we, we as a society… because oh gosh, where should I start? It’s conflict, right? Because for me, social media is something that… it’s positive. I keep in touch with friends, with family. I go on Facebook right now and I see a message from my aunt.

I see message from my friends. I go on Instagram and I talk to other friends that were with me, we went to school together. I go on LinkedIn, I talk to other professions, right to you and I have met through LinkedIn and we started doing some business and like you, I have any other connections as well that I’m working.

It’s generating business for me. Yet again, if, you know, if you go actually through the feed and the, what they’re promoting over there, it’s very toxic. It feels like you’re left out. It feels like you’re missing out on stuff. You didn’t jump in on the latest AI trend. You didn’t do right with your business.

How come, you know, others are so successful and whatnot? There’s this also, I have this joke that I say, you know, many people post like, oh wait, I went to the washroom and realized that, you know, something’s not working. This is what it taught me about leadership. And, you know, everybody’s like more than they are actually there.

So again be aware if you are in a position where you care for someone. A parent, a teacher, an educator, or at work. Have this conversation openly and you know, talk as a society and as a community, smaller as well. But let’s get back to the documentary, per se.

[00:30:09] Kevin: I was rather intrigued. This is the same guy who said, I don’t care what they choose ’cause I own a donut shop too. Like earlier he was talking about some of the women who are there’s a word I’m looking for, like in a television show, there’s the main characters and then there’s like these background characters.

These women are background characters in these manosphere narratives, if you will. And he spoke about how would never let his daughter be like that. Now he’s 23, he doesn’t have a daughter. He will one day. But that reveals his understanding the fact that this is not healthy.

[00:30:48] Emanuel: It’s as you know, somebody, let’s say you know, anybody from Facebook won’t let any of their children near any Facebook app or any device, anyone from Apple, they say that, no, don’t get right. Or somebody like from Coca-Cola, they’ll never let their kids drink Coca-Cola or, you know, have something sugary.

For sure. So it’s kind of like the same.

[00:31:11] Kevin: To me, that illustrates the performative aspect of it. And the thing that blows me away the most is the fact that there are young men out there, who don’t see it as a performance, like they think it’s real.

[00:31:26] Emanuel: Realistically at 16, would you… I could barely tie my shoe. At 16, I would, what would you, would you be able to tell the difference or why not? And I know that previously in history at 16 people were going to war, right? And even today at 16, some, some young men actually go to war and fight for their lives.

But given our society and where we were, I don’t necessarily blame them. I blame again us, the society, the guardrails, because you know, even us, we kind of like had access to some stuff, but they were forbidden. And you know, because I was a young man at one point, you know, every now and then you’ll find the, in every group a what they used to be called Dirty Magazine, right?

Whereas, you know, right now it’s perfectly acceptable to watch or subscribe to an only fan, whereas, you know, dirty magazine would have circulated find its way somehow, but it wasn’t promoted and if you got caught, you would get punished by parents, by the school and whatnot. So obviously there’s some things that the nature of the age and the society will push you through.

How do you react to that and are there any guardrails? Well, if you just, you know, if your kid is making noise and you just leave, give, give him the tablet or the phone so that he’ll be silent. Inevitably it’ll happen 100% that they’ll sooner later land. And when you see a young good looking man, because those are young good looking men that, you know, speak to their audience using their words, and they’re very articulate and they seem very confident. Then you stop and watch and you think, oh, okay, yeah, maybe I like that girl. She doesn’t even say hi back and he’s saying, yeah, he doesn’t say, she doesn’t say hi back because you are a loser and you don’t go to the gym and you treat her…

You should go to the gym and treat her like this and like that. And then she’ll say Hi. You know, that appeals to me. How about a 16-year-old? So, you know, put yourself in those shoes. What if you are, let’s say, 16, 17, 18, right now in today’s society where, you know, you cannot go out or, you know, when I was 16, 17, I would simply go out and find something to do, go out without necessarily a plan, right?

Either go play on football, or go out in a bar or a pub, or do some drinking, which is not something that you know, we like to promote. But anyway, but what do you do now? Everybody’s on inside. Everybody’s on their phone, so you go on their phone as well. Does that make sense what I’m saying? Would you agree?

[00:34:07] Kevin: It does. And there’s an interplay between the people who live in an environment and the environment and when you go out in the world you have options, but you don’t have infinite options. So you do from among the available stuff, and one of the available things available to these guys is these manosphere guys they find on YouTube and Instagram and yada, yada, yada.

I think the big failure is that we do not teach people to question. Is this true?

That’s the fundamental question, right? If you see somebody saying something, it’s is this true? Why do you believe this to be true? And what evidence supports your belief in this?

That’s the fundamental question. And I’m not suggesting that we teach people to not believe in anything, but take a look at the evidence and maybe it makes sense and maybe it doesn’t, right? But if you’ve got…. competing points of view, like these manosphere performers telling you to treat women poorly and women telling you, yeah, you don’t wanna do that, right?

But the men are being loud and vocal about it and the women are just like tuning you out and going on with their lives. Gotta find a way to listen… to question if what the loud guys are telling you is true. To find out if what the women are telling you is true.

[00:35:30] Emanuel: Who

[00:35:30] Kevin: Yeah. The very first step is to wonder.

[00:35:34] Emanuel: Who.

[00:35:35] Kevin: And we’ve given up wondering… gee, I wonder like who might be telling the truth here and what’s going on?

[00:35:43] Emanuel: What’s called not strategic or creative thinking. Ask why five times, right. But

[00:35:49] Kevin: Critical thinking.

[00:35:50] Emanuel: Critical thinking. But who should teach? Because let’s say the segment we’re talking about is young younger audience. Who should teach… parents and school again, their friends won’t be teaching it, so yeah.

[00:36:04] Kevin: I’m gonna say everybody, parents, church, school. Teach people to be skeptical about claims that are made. Not to the point where… I believe all vaccines are garbage, right? I don’t want push people that way. ‘Cause if somebody like actually studies vaccinations and the science behind it and the way it was before, it’s almost impossible to conclude that it’s all a scam and it’s all just for money. Now some of it is a scam. Some of it is just for money, right? But it’s impossible to like… go there in an extreme way when you learn about it. So teach people to learn to be curious about things, to dig in and to learn about stuff.

[00:36:45] Emanuel: I don’t wanna even go there. Let’s not talk about the vaccine.

[00:36:49] Kevin: I used that as an example because a few years ago it was a big one.

[00:36:52] Emanuel: Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. But so again, coming back. It’s our role to educate ourselves and again, the society. This is mostly, I suspect the problem, at least for now in the western societies, so North America and Europe for sure.

I’m not sure how this is handled in other parts of the world thinking of Asia, thinking of Africa. But you know, if you look at Asia where half of the Globe’s population, you know, resides and give or take a little bit under half are men and many being young. I suspect this will be a global problem as we integrate, as we, you know, integrate societies more, more and more.

Believe it or not, in some more of a remote communities is not such a big problem because they still have the same nuclear values. That it proved to be healthy. Are there the best, if we’re looking at, you know, some cultures in South Asia and how they treat women, I wouldn’t say necessarily that it’s something that I would promote either so, you know…

[00:38:11] Kevin: Yeah, that’s fair.

[00:38:12] Emanuel: Or take.

But others, and I suspect that the majority actually know that women are not what the Internet says.

[00:38:26] Kevin: There do seem to be a lot of young men who are really taking to heart lessons that these manosphere influencers are promoting. Like you should treat women bad in order to be a good man, and I’m not really sure how one reconciles what, to me, seems like an obvious contradiction.

[00:38:47] Emanuel: Coming back to consequences and I’ve open this topic in previous episodes. You cannot just simply let everybody do what they want . There need to be consequences and the society at, on one hand, society, government for allowing these social platforms to do what they’re doing and promote that.

But also know family. If I would have, I once talked. Bad about some, someone older than me. And, you know from school, from my teacher to my parents, to some older people in my family. I got to the point sooner rather than later on not to do that again. Hopefully they’ll come a time where I hope that… not serious consequences, not serious or violent movements will push towards that. I still hope and pray for wisdom on everyone’s parts to understand what’s important and they have a say in this and they already have the money, so, you know, just enjoy it. It’s proven though even scientifically, that after you know a couple of million dollars, you actually don’t need more to be more happy.

[00:40:08] Kevin: Yeah, you’ve touched on a very important concept and I go here in every episode and it’s time to go there now, but…

[00:40:14] Emanuel: Economy

[00:40:16] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:40:16] Emanuel: Money.

[00:40:18] Kevin: When you have a high rate of unemployment and or idleness amongst young men, you’re gonna have problems. There’s a saying and I’m not going to get it exactly right, but Idle Hands are the Devil’s workshop or something like that.

[00:40:34] Emanuel: Yes.

[00:40:36] Kevin: The heavy duty financialization of the economies of the West over the last 40 to 50 years have created increasing inequality and it’s really a recipe for problems. And there are things that we could do in order to better balance the economy, but you basically just hit on one of ’em.

And I know that Scott Galloway, who himself is fairly wealthy, has spoken about this, and I’m not sure if this is just his opinion or if sociologists or economists have done studies, but does more money make you happier? It turns out the answer is yes, up to a point. Then at some point it makes you less happy. I forget exactly where I read this, and I think it was the author Kurt Vonnegut, he was at some kind of an event and he was talking to someone and there’s these really rich guys at the front and they’re talking to people, and Vonnegut is talking about a conversation he had. And the other guy said something like I mean I get all this but I have something that they will never have. And Vonnegut says, what is that? And the guy said, I have enough. So if you never have enough, then you’re gonna be constantly in pursuit of more and it’s gonna cost problems in your life. I think I read somewhere that Scott Galloway’s net worth is in the neighborhood of 50 to a hundred million dollars.

So he’s doing very well by the standards of most everybody, and apparently he is fine with that. Like he doesn’t need a billion dollars. And for whatever it’s worth, I’m absolutely convinced that if we were to update the laws of the economy such that every billionaire became a thousand millionaires, we would all be better off.

Except for the billionaires, but except for them, we would all be better off.

[00:42:27] Emanuel: They’ll manage, but they’ll figure it out. They won’t starve.

[00:42:31] Kevin: Yeah, they’ll manage.

[00:42:32] Emanuel: You touch on a very good point.

[00:42:34] Kevin: people who argue that there ought to be an economic floor in society, some kind of minimum wage or minimum living standard, I actually believe there ought to be some kind of an economic ceiling.

[00:42:47] Emanuel: Fair. Fair. You touched on a very good point there being that you have a very big society problem. If you have young men or you have people that you know don’t work or are unemployed. So this will inevitably transition to more than that. It’s a saying that especially during the communist period where everyone has a job, you know, if you have a place for work, you have everything you need.

And to an extent, that’s not entirely untrue. Because one of the most dangerous things is who said that all the, all the men’s problems are come from his inability to stay still, I think Pascal. Philosopher and physicist, I don’t know. Or mathematician. Blaise Pascal. I think he said that.

So I’m not saying that, you know, having a job or going to work is a method of control and they keep you under, it’s also helps with the so-called discipline. So I would recommend those young men to, even if it’s not paying a million dollar a year, you know, go get a job, start with something small, even delivering pizza, even making pizza, you know, being able to make something to eat is will be a very important skill coming along.

It’s something that I don’t have. For example, I would actually go in and get a job at a pizza place to learn how to do the pizza because I like to eat it. I’m not sure I do it right. So that’s one thing. And somebody, a famous Romanian actor, realized something that… it’s very philosophical and very deep.

There’s this fam famous play by Chekhov… Russian author, The Cherry Orchard where, you know, it’s like a soap opera, but a little bit more intellectual. And it’s played around the world. Chekov being one theater author that influenced theater more than we just explained.

And, it’s like a soap opera. So there’s a lot of conflict in there between the family, you know, sitting there and the teacher ask his class, why do these guys fight? Why do they argue all the time? And it was like, because of inheritance. Because she wanted to get married because she want this, this, no. No, they’re arguing because none of them has jobs.

They’re all sitting at home. So when you sit at home, obviously this is an extreme example, but you know, it’s not bad to take, even if it’s less paid, because you know, most people don’t actually get that kind of money. You are on social media and you see all the flash cards, you see all these influencers.

You see other people your age that they did something, similar. Let’s say you went to the same school yet again. They have or have the same job, yet they have more. And to address one more thing that you said. When you say you don’t need more, we’re just talking about money. Not wanting more from life can be very dangerous.

For example, I want more. Obvious I’m far from being 50 to a hundred million. So I’m working towards that, but I don’t suspect I would want less conversations as we have right now, or even doing more episodes because I enjoyed it. I don’t suspect I’ll want to read less books, i’ll like to watch less movies.

I like to listen to less podcasts because, for example, I’m hungry for knowledge. Maybe too, too much, you know, I need to take a step back. But if I would have the means to support myself and do what I want. Probably most of my time will be spent through with family, but also with having conversations and learning, reading and going places.

And, you know, I could read about a museum we were discussing earlier about the Red Rock and the Round Rock. Where one’s in Colorado, the other one’s in Texas. And it’s interesting and maybe you can show me some pictures, but I would love to see, you know what Kevin, let’s jump on my private jet and just go there and, you know, have some fun and read and, you know, hire somebody that can teach us about the history of this place and you know, how it was influenced.

That being said coming back to today’s documentary, this was longer than I initially anticipated this episode. But overall, it’s important because there’s many documentaries and many journalists have covered this topic. But, you know, Louis Theroux is a different type of journalist. He is not afraid of confronting people, and he always has the right answers and the answers that resonate to me most of the time.

So far from what I’ve seen, obviously, if I will look deep enough, I’ll find things that I don’t like about him either. But he is doing, he’s been raising some good concerns, some important concerns so far, and it’s a documentary worth watching. Last thoughts or anything else that stood up from this documentary.

[00:47:47] Kevin: The broader picture, and I don’t really know where to go with this, it’s just what’s on my mind, is… We need to find a way to create what I’m gonna call guardrails that we can agree on, but the algorithm gets in the way of us doing that. I don’t know what the magic answer is, but I think Scott Galloway’s point about social media being the poison in the water of society, like I think that’s a really interesting way to frame the idea, and I wish I had ideas on how to stop that. You can’t really just outlaw social media even though to a certain extent there would be some positive benefits to doing so. That’s just not how we operate, but the way we use it is, in the aggregate and overall is not good.

[00:48:45] Emanuel: So be mindful and, you know, spend less time on social.

[00:48:50] Kevin: Yeah, and as an individual just ask, is this true? That’s probably the most important question anybody can ask about anything today. Is this true?

[00:49:00] Emanuel: We’ll be covering more topics similar in others. Watch the episode that we reference. Earlier with Alexandra, our first guest, because it’s important, I’ll give you some different perspectives and hopefully we’ll have her more.

Go to curiouspundits where you can like, share, subscribe, or send us a message and saying, okay, I don’t agree with this, or you are wrong about that.

We’re transparent. Until then.

[00:49:31] Kevin: And if you enjoy the podcast, please give us a five star rating someplace, wherever you listen to podcasts. ’cause that will help other people find the podcast.

[00:49:41] Emanuel: It’s definitely true. Well, that being said, hopefully we, because we’re two young men that want to become influencers are probably…

[00:49:53] Kevin: You say that

[00:49:54] Emanuel: better.

[00:49:55] Kevin: but I am literally old enough to be your father. Literally.

[00:49:58] Emanuel: You are the sage. The

[00:50:00] Kevin: My oldest child is six months younger than you.

[00:50:05] Emanuel: I won’t go into age, the age thing right now. It’s hard for me to grasp the age that I have, but nevertheless, we are the Curious Pundits. My name is Emanuel.

[00:50:17] Kevin: My name is Kevin.

[00:50:20] Emanuel: Thank you for listening.

[00:50:21] Kevin: And take care.

[00:50:22] Announcer: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like the podcast, please like, subscribe, and tell others. Visit curiouspundits.com to learn more and stay tuned for the next episode.