SIO515: A Vast, Global Network! ... of 3 Guys

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:13 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 515. I'm your host, Thomas Smith, and I'm going to be continuing my discussion of this 62 million men Rape Academy thing. So if you didn't listen to part one, you're gonna be very confused by that sentence, but definitely listen to that part one. There's a lot more to talk about. I also really want to talk about the information environment. Just so many things and some observations I'm having, and And I just I'm constantly thinking about this, especially because it seems like the main problem in our world. Like, it's just everything else. Almost everything else, I think, is downstream from this information environment problem. And it's sort of on theme with the assassination conspiracy theories, because I just think people think we can just have this environment and have these theories and it doesn't harm anything. But I think it's deeply harmful. I think we have to get our information environment back somewhat. I just think it's necessary. We're not we're not going to win. I think it'S a losing battle to be trying to fight to win when the people whose vote you're trying to get or who you're trying to convince are just not seeing the information that you want them to like that just fundamentally everything else is secondary when you're trying to commit you know it's like when I've had to get on people I podcast with for their mics not working sometimes in my past it's it doesn't matter how good your information is if your fucking mic's broken like that doesn't you could be the best purveyor of information on the planet but if your mic's broken that's nothing it you will not be heard in the same way that's that's what's happening with our politics I mean our mics are broken man like and it's killing me there's more I want to talk about it's branching off I won't go into it but the the more I see the constant narrative of like the left has gone too far the left is gone too far that's even baked into like the Left now and it all bullshit and And it's because we're not getting the real information to people. And then we're arguing about like, well, what is it about the things you said when your mic was off that are not convincing enough? That's like what we're doing now. Hey, well he, when your mic is off, you should say this thing instead of this thing. That's a better message. It's like, doesn't fucking matter, man. If the billionaires control all the mics. Also, it's hard to know. Like it's even getting to the point where I don't know where people are getting their information. You know, when you say it's like, oh, well, social media, it's like, okay, what, who does that mean? Like you're sharing the New York times on social media or, or probably more likely, does it mean that some asshole with like me with like, you know, a couple thousand people who listen to them is sharing information. And then how do you can, if there's like a million of those people, how are they getting their information and how can you change that? Like the more diversified it becomes, the more fractured it becomes, the less I can even fathom what the plan is. But the point is, the information environment is broken. I think this isn't like the main... When I talk about this article, I'm not saying this is like the worst problem or anything at all. But some of the things I observed with people I want to talk about, because I think it's part of how we got here, broadly speaking. And I think think it's part of how we will continue to descend into bullshit and bullshit and bullshit and further bullshit. So lots of thoughts on that. Hope you're getting something out of this. I really appreciate you. If you are, if you're listening, even if you disagree with me, I appreciate you at least applying charity because people who know me, I think I think know where I'm at and I appreciate that. So I'm going to take the quick break and then we'll get more into it.

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0:04:17 Thomas: Okay, so when I left off, I was kind of just numbers wise and again, this is back of the envelope type stuff. I don't mean this to be like literally accurate to the number, but I do think it's going to be like a broadly accurate way of looking at it. Because when you throw a scary number around, like 62 million and 20,000 videos and 50,000 views and all that stuff. Okay. But you're missing a ton of context. And again, if the people we are worried about are the actual rapists who are going to like actually drug and rape people, which we should a hundred percent be looking out for that. And those people should face the law and all that. We're all agreed on all that, but how many of those people are there? Is it, is it at all sensible to say that you've exposed, I just want to go back to the title that you have exposed a global rape Academy, global rape academy. I haven't gotten far enough in the CNN article to where if you haven't read it, you probably have no fucking idea where that's even coming from yet, but a global Global Rape Academy. I would argue that if that's your title, that something like the 62 million visits is intentional. When we're looking at the question of like, is this, oh, is This intentional misinformation? Or is this just people kind of read it wrong? Yeah, I don't know, man, when you're trying to make the case that there's a Global Rape Academy, and you've exposed it. I mean, that starts to feel intentionally misleading to me. Because when we last left off 62 million, you know, half of that is going to be bots, at least it could be fucking more these days. I actually don't know the latest estimate of what percentage of visits of online traffic is actually humans. It could, I mean, the percentage could be like 10%, man. It could be so low, but let's, let's go with 50. I feel like it's safe, but it's a conservative, sensible estimate that gets us, you know, 31 million visitors. And then you go, okay, how many of them are there for this specific sleep category that we're saying is like the problematic here, one here. Well, then that translates just again, basic, stupid math, like 43,000 in a month. Okay. How many individuals is that? That I don't know. I don't fucking know. Like, if we're talking about 43,000 visits in a month, I have absolutely no idea. You'd have to have a lot of industry-specific data, you know. But I think you can imagine it's, you know, it's a lot less than 43,000 individual people. But I don'' t know. I guess you could also posit that everybody comes in, looks once, and then leaves. And so, in that case, it could be that many different people. But I don't think that's how people tend to operate. I think people tend to find their porn, their niche, their website, and people like to consume porn a lot. So I could see this being what, you know, the upper limit is obviously 43,000, but there's no way it's that many different people. What's the lower limit on that? Well, divide. So we're at about 1600 visits per day. Is that the lower limit of how many individuals it could be? I mean, I guess that's unrealistic as well. So pick something in the middle. I really don't know, but what are we at like 20 ,000 or something people. Now we haven't even gotten to what percentage of those people are actually wanting to do this. And not even start there. I guess some percentage of people have a fetish. And I think this is going to be the vast majority of these folks. Let's just say 20 ,000, I guess, for the sake of argument. Let'S say it's 20 ,00 worldwide, by the way. They say it'S mostly US visitors. It'S not a US website, but whatever. Well, okay. Even if it'S most of the US visitors. Okay, let's say the US or North America or something, 20 ,000, pretty small number. What percentage of people who are watching this kind of content are rapists who want to do or watching it because they want to learn how to do it? I mean, I just do not think that's very many, man. Like I just don't. There's nothing about this kind of fetish that is that much more definitionally you have to be a rapist to want to watch it than like a bunch of other stuff that there is in porn. I mean, we can once again step back and say there's a lot of problematic components about porn. We have different views on that. Some people are going to say it's so much of it is bad and rapey and it's bad for people's conception of consent and it'S misogynistic. I mean we could talk about that and I think I'll agree with a lot of that but grading it on its own terms because we're on a porn website. We're talking about a porn website relative to because like I think if this article had said well these rapists met up on Pornhub and you know how many monthly visits PornHub gets. I'm pretty sure 95% of everybody would have said, well, that's kind of dumb. Take it a step further. These people met up on Facebook, on a Facebook group. You know how many visitors there are to Facebook each month? Then you'd be like, well that's fucking irrelevant, man. Like what does that have to do with anything? You know, yeah. And by the way, not for nothing, I think there are many more websites than this that have ways to connect these people. Because that's fundamentally the thing that this article is worried about taking it in good faith is bad people are connecting together online to do bad stuff. And that is bad. I think there's different levels of bad it is depending on how the website or the service of the app or whatever, how they're facilitating it. And I'm going to be all the way on the side of I do think we need way more regulation on this. I might be further on the regulation side than a lot of people because I hear from a lot of people who are worried about privacy and that kind of thing. And I'm worried about it too. But I also think when it comes to porn, when it becomes this kind of thing, I think there's more to be done. Anyway, point is, we're talking about grading it on its own terms. This is a porn website. Take Facebook as an example. For all I know, there is a Facebook group that's called like sleeping or something, you know, something that's not obvious, but some way that these people who want to do this thing can meet up. What do we do about that? Does that mean that Facebook is actively wanting that? I don't know. I mean, you have to look at the evidence. I think, like I said, there's different degrees of that. I'm not saying that all websites are equally blameworthy or blameless in this. I am not, because there's different ways that you can moderate. There's different things you can do. But I am saying that like what's happening here. And now we get to it. Let me read on in the article a little bit inside the motherless sleep community. Now we're in a community first reported on by German investigative journalists. It has a link, but it's a video in German. I don't know that adds much members trade advice on how to drug their partners. So now we've gotten this is we've quickly blurred the line. We're inside the motherless sleep community. Now here's where it gets a little more fuzzy. The next paragraph is in the ZZZ chat group. And if you just read this fast, like I did, by the way, when I first read this, I read this article the whole way through. I wasn't reading super close, but I read it and I was left with the impression that the main function of this motherless website was this. Like the main function is like, yeah, you go meet up and you talk about, you know, I guess it's a really bad website. Like they should shut that that down or something, whatever. Because if you don't read too closely, and even if you read pretty closely, it's pretty fast because we went in the space of like two paragraphs. We went from the website, which had 62 million visits, and then we went to sleep videos, and then we went inside the motherless sleep community. Now, what does that mean? I think most readers would take that. Well, I can't say most, but I think it's certainly not implausible that you might think of that as just speaking loosely, like the motherless sleep community would be the people who were on that website posting or viewing the sleep videos. And that might lead you to believe, like I think I did, that this is just a website where people are talking about this. But that's not what it means. It goes on to say, on the ZZZ chat group, which a motherless user had linked to, and where we first met this, you know, they have a fake name, but Piotr or whatever. That's one person they kind of tracked down. It says, a motherless user linked to and where we First met Pioter, and I said, they do the same, meaning they trade advice. So reading that closely, I think it's insinuating that let's say there's like the motherless website, there's a forum place, and maybe they're talking there. Now, that's where I would certainly argue that like, yeah, that website would have a responsibility to police anything illegal happening. And if indeed people were talking about like, oh, here's how I drug my wife or something. Yeah, that's bad. I'm not positive of that. And they don't show us any evidence of that, so I don't know. It's kind of insinuated, but yeah, THAT WOULD BE BAD. OK, so criticize the website for that 100%. Remember, though, that we're talking about policing the chatter on a website, keeping in mind that people often talk in code or talk loosely or talk jokingly, like how are we doing this and how well and with what method and whatever way we're doing that, is it foolproof or is it going to capture a whole lot of other stuff that we would want to be able to talk about? So I don't know. I mean, like, I guess I'll leave that up to your judgment. Like if, if again, they don't show us this, but if that was happening, like on the main motherless, like chat board for the sleep section, I guess, judge that how you will, but where we actually get evidence, the only place we get actual examples is in a telegram group. So this is a group on telegram that talks about stuff. And the way, you know, anyone can be in it is that CNN got in it. So you know it's not all rapists if CNN got in it so again just chipping that number further and further down it was 62 million now it's maybe it's it's 43,000. I'll say that's a month maybe we'll say it's 20,000 unique maybe I mean it's probably not 20, 000 unique it's probably less than that but I'm trying to be conservative now of those they're all just watching videos and maybe they're posting them what percentage of those videos and I was going to talk about this before, is all sleep content definitionally rape or non -consensual? I highly doubt it. Some of it, a lot of, okay, the vast majority of it because if you know anything about porn or been on a porn website, the mass majority of is going to be extremely fake and badly acted. If you just go, I can't, again, I check this because they got rid of their whole sleep section, which is fine, good. But just knowing how porn works, a ton of that, those pretty bad and probably pretty dumb, but it's just porn. Now, some of it they said, and I believe it because they show screenshots or whatever. Some of it is this eye check stuff. Now what percentage of eye check staff is like illegal or is, is non -consensual? We can guess and we can disagree. I think some people would like try to say, well, definitionally that's non-consensual. I don't really think that's how it works. I mean, I think you could consent if you were someone who was trying to make porn to make a living or, or I guess just for fun, whatever. Is it impossible? I mean, you can consent to being hurt. There's all kinds of BDSM porn. There're all kinds of stuff like you can consent to that. Could you consent to, well, I will go to sleep or take something to make me sleep. And here's what we're going to do in the video. And after the video, I'm sure that person, you know, if this was legitimate is seeing the video and is okaying it. So where is that? Is that 0% of it? Is that a hundred percent of it, is it something in the middle? If it's like anything else, I would guess that the people doing genuine crimes tend to be like especially because you're posting your crimes you know that's gonna be not a high percentage most people don't just post horrible crimes is there some gray areas there's you know maybe sure but already so we've whittled down that 62 million now what percentage of those videos are actually that what percentage are those visitors are there because they really want to see actual rape and then are following up with like oh I want to maybe do this what are we talking man now I know you can say you can say okay there's other websites around the world okay sure and there probably are but if people are sharing a telegram group and if cnn is able to just join it now we're down to the other reported number which people did start saying which is oh it's actually a thousand now a thousand was what they say we don't have any proof of this but we can you know take CNN for what they're worth they're probably not lying about it we have that they say the telegram group had a thousand users at its peak or something yeah actually I did go and recheck because it's hard to even see where this came from so and this is this thing that's kind of cool that news sites are doing lately but also makes it a little bit annoying to try to check stuff there's two parts of this CNN article there's like the top which is this like interactive like you scroll down and it shows you different stuff and pictures and quotes and stuff and then once you get through that like media type presentation then it gives you the article and so I was looking and looking I was like wait where did I see why is everyone saying a thousand I forgot I couldn't find it because it was in that initial like presentation thing that doesn't you can't just control f it because it's like the way it's anyways neither here nor there anyway it took me a second going to find it now what it claims is and I generally trust the media to not be like outright lying about stuff but I also find it a little bit odd in some ways because it says we found him and that's the peter guy they're talking about the fake name we found hem in a private group one of many it says on the messaging app telegram then you click down and now it shows you a new thing at any hour men from around the world gathered on the zzz group to swap advice on drugging and then filming the sexual assault of their partners while unconscious. Okay, now we get to the only number that is really relevant, like truly the only number that should actually be any part of this and that I would hope would be more established and that they would talk more about. The only number is in this pre -intro slideshow thing. It says, the abuse shared via video and pictures in this group of nearly a thousand users was treated as a commodity. That's it. Now, we're also led to believe there's many such groups. Well, why isn't there any other examples? I guess I'll trust you, but if there were many such groups, wouldn't you want to just post and there's this one and they said this and there was this one. They said this, this one had this many members that like they only talk about the one and they say it's nearly a thousand members. Okay. Sounds again. I just want to note like how far down we've gone from what you would have originally thought. Because again, think back to the child sex trafficking. I am not saying the child's sex trafficking is not bad. But if the thing you're saying, the claim they're making, if even if we take them at their word here, which I think there's more reason to doubt these numbers, which I'm going to get to, they're saying there is a telegram group on the planet of earth that has a thousand people in it and they're doing some awful crimes. I'm not saying that's good. I'm saying that is bad. And if we could, I'm fully in support of any amount of tracking down those people who are doing crimes, sharing any sort of like revenge, porn, illicit, non -consensual, anything, all that, pursue them to the fullest extent of the law, 100%. But how many of that do you think there are? And by that, I mean, I feel like once you actually distill the claims of this article down to that, you've gone from 62 million, global rape academy, you're going down to there is a telegram group that has people who do these crimes. I mean they had telegram groups to plan January 6th. They have telegrams groups to do all kinds of stuff. Like I assume that exists. You know what I mean? This isn't, I think they've pretty intentionally made this sound like a vast, big global conspiracy thing, very intentionally, like just look at that title. But when you get to it, it's like, these are some assholes in a fucking Telegram group. Any assholes can start a Telegram Group and do crimes. At that point, then what you're saying is like, okay, Telegram needs to be monitoring all the chat of all the users in case anyone's planning any crimes. Is that true maybe uh maybe I mean at that point then it's like okay what about text should all of our texts be checked all the time for crimes I guess I'm asking to just pull back a sec and look at what this is I mean there's way scarier things than that this is why I mean it's like the child sex trafficking panic it's not that this is good it's not that this is excusable this behavior is that like I is this really I mean allegedly a group group of a thousand people, and you only produced a couple of messages from that one group, even though you swear there's others. Let me go further. Here's another thing that gets me. By the time we get to that, so we've gotten all the way down to that. Then it talks about the bad stuff. So I'm going to continue on the article. It says the ZZ chat group. Yep. Okay. It's bad. I get it. It talks about people are saying, oh, I've wanted to do this to my missus for ages. Yep, that person sucks. Arrest that person. Totally agree. I mean, if they actually did anything, I guess. I'm not not saying this is good. This is bad. Then it says, well, one user is running a business selling the sleeping liquids to any address in the world. Yeah. I mean, okay. But can't people already get this stuff? Like, doesn't this just mean there's medication that makes people sleep that you can get? You know, like, what does that mean? Is that something that can only be done because of this, not only this telegram group, but because of This Porn website? Like that's, you know, cause that's what we were meant to hate early on. We were meant To be worried about and hate hate this motherless .com that has 62 million viewers or visitors. But okay. I mean, maybe is it drugs that are harder to get? Yeah. Okay. I guess anyone selling, I mean people sell Adderall, people sell all kinds of drugs. That's illegal. They shouldn't be able to do that. But like, what's the context here? Like what'sthe proper amount that this is newsworthy? I guess is what I'm saying. Like, because they've made a big deal about this, but how much is this something that That is actually, oh my God, you've unearthed something versus like, okay, there's a guy on Telegram who sells drugs that people probably do bad stuff with. Okay. Yeah. I mean, punish them. Sure. But then here's the one that really gets me. And I guess I'll take an obnoxious ad break before I tell you the one that really hits me. Sorry. patreon.com/seriouspod if you want to skip the ads.

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0:22:37 Thomas: So here's one that gets me because again, we've been, we'd been fear mongered. We've been monger. I'll say it for the 10th time. Anytime I'm not saying any of this is good in the same way that when the people talk about the child trafficking and all that, I'm not saying many of that is good, but what are we talking about? What numbers are we taking about? How, how high should this be on my list of things that I'm afraid of? Or I guess, you know, any women, I like how high, should this be on their list of things they're afraid of. I'm not saying they shouldn't be afraid of men. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not saying we shouldn't, not to take away from any of that, but I don't think it's good to fear fearmonger and to blow certain fears out of proportion to the point where people are questioning, like, can I even sleep safely by my husband? That's like messed up, you know, like say what you want. And there's a lot to be said about men and how prevalent bad behavior out of men is. And I'm going to agree all day. But if you get to the part where you're fearmONGering to where people Are like, I truly don't even know if I can sleep next to my husband at night because of this global conspiracy of drugging their wives group. And then you get to it and it's this. And then like, even if you've gotten down to a thousand, that's already one thing. Now, listen to this. Here's the thing. Here's thing we've all been leading to. They're making the videos and they're selling it. And here's what they show. CNN, who's in the group, by the way, they're just in it. So it's not all rapists in that group if CNN is in it, keep that in mind, bytheway, of the thousand people, I think anyone in that group, if you're not a media person doing a report on it, is pretty fucking suspect I do not think that every single one of the nearly thousand people is a rapist I think some people probably want to see rape which is I don't know what level of crime that is not good but again if the fear is that your husband could be doing this to you at night you know what I mean like if that's what if that'S what people the fear that's being put into women over this what are we talking about because here we go I want to first read you the paragraph before what I'm about to read and think in your mind what this evokes paragraph says: While the platforms vary, inside such groups, video is king. Some users advertised live streams showing the abuse of drugged women in real time for $20 per viewer with cryptocurrency, the preferred means of payment. Stop there. What does that put into your mind? Numbers. What would you expect? Oh, God, there's got to be. We got thousands of people probably watching this. This is an industry. You're making $20 bucks per viewer. With cryptocurrency. Wow. Wow, they're probably making hundreds of thousands of dollars on this. This is whoa. But then here's our evidence. And mind you, there is no conceivable reason I can think of that if CNN had worse evidence that they wouldn't post it because they're obscuring the names every time. There's absolutely no fucking reason they wouldn't post the very worst evidence they got. So here's what comes after that with platforms. You know, it's using plurals for everything. Such groups. Video is king. You know, trying to really all that language is like this this is a huge thing that happens all the time, or at least a sizable thing that happens in the plural all the time. These live streams advertised, there's advertising. And then here's the evidence we get. Again, the only evidence we get. CNN, how were your streams going? Making any money? User, yeah, it went well. That night, three guys bought and I streamed my unconscious wife to them. CNN, and did they direct you? User, they told me what to do and I did it. Man, I don't know what to fucking tell you. Three? Like, yeah, yeah. Okay. Once again, for the billionth time, they should be arrested. This guy should be arrested 100%. But three people, you just did all this language videos, King per user. I'm sorry. You can't be like 20 bucks a pop and then be like, how many pops? Three. So $60. It's just like, that's, I'm sorry. That's misleading, man. You could take any crime. There's a bunch of crimes in the world all the time. You could do this with any crime. Anything that happens on a given day of this planet of earth of 8 billion fucking people, you could talk about the crime and the awful and you could get people fearing stuff. That can always happen with everything. People can get afraid of anything when you blow it out of proportion. So I think that media companies have a bit of a responsibility to try not to do that unnecessarily and to try Not to like Like blow your mind over some nonsense that's not a danger at all. I think that's generally bad when we do that. I think, you know, you think about like COVID and how bad people were at gauging the danger of that because they don't understand risk assessment. They think the danger of like, that's a great example. You could do exclusive coverage of people who got vaccine injury and that would give a very skewed view of the world. And now I'm not making an equivalence here because violence against women is normal. Sexual violence against women. I am disagreeing with none of that. But this is a pretty particular thing with pretty spectacular claims. Once again, go to the title. Exposing a global rape academy. A global rape Academy.

0:27:48 Thomas: What? A guy got $60 from three people in a telegram group. Like I come up. I mean, I'm sorry. Like that, like that's too incorrect. That's too far. Like I said, if we were off by a matter of, you know, 10, even 10 times or something, I'm not touching this. I don't care. I'm not interested in debunking things, especially because I broadly agree with probably the message. I mean, it's hard to say with this because I think this is just infected with CNN fucking money making bullshit. I think this is trying to make a spectacle and I just don't trust CNN. So who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe like these individual reporters are great. They probably are. But this framing is just, come on, man, that's wild to frame it as exposing a global rape academy. We haven't even gotten to that part. And it's a telegram. There's probably telegram groups who commit murder, man. Like, yeah. Is that a global murder conspiracy? Should we be worried around every corner that somebody is going to be in a telegram group committing murder because they met on a website? I don't know, man. It just doesn't, I don't fucking, what is this? Now we got to talk about the other thing they did, which, and this got me, this 100% got me on my first reading. Like I said, I, I was in the morning. I just wasn't reading it for anything. I wasn't reading it to cover it. I was, I just came across it. Like probably so many of you, I read through the article, you know, my, my average focus when I'm not doing something for work and I'm Not disseminating information to other people, I have ADHD. Maybe my focus isn't great, but I don't know. At this point, I'm wondering how much is that me and how much is this article trying to draw you to certain conclusions? Because what they have done in this article, they've interspersed it with three victim stories that are horrible. Obviously horrible. We're all agreed here in the same way that if you take three child victims in the child trafficking panic and you put their stories up, we all agree. We all agree that's what makes a panic. A panic isn't something that's zero. There's going to be examples. So they intersperse it with these. And I just assumed, idiot as I am, I assumed these were victims of people in this group. Now, maybe I'm done. You could just be like, no, I knew Thomas. It wasn't victims of people in that group. Obviously not. Yeah. Okay. If I'm reading it like I am now, once I wanted to cover it and I'm actually reading, sure. But like, I don't think I'm that not much worse at reading than the average person. I make jokes. I'm unfortunately probably better at reading than most people, even though I make joking jokes about how with ADHD, my eyes skip around and sometimes, you know. Unfortunately, I'm probably in the upper echelon of readers, globally speaking, like in this country. And I just assumed that these victims bore some relationship to this group, but they don't. So to go back to the article, we get, okay, Okay. In Poland, the woman Piotr said was his wife also appears to be unaware of what is happening to her. I don't, I can't tell. What did they even say was happening? Is that all the way back in the intro? I think it is. So we're supposed to remember way back from the multimedia intro that you can't even scroll back up to without going into a whole thing. Okay. It started with, this is Pioter. He lives in Poland with his wife who's in her forties. We're not showing you their name, but we can show you the messages and what he's doing to his wife is illegal, but then it It doesn't show you the messages. It shows like a cartoon graphic of messages, but you can't tell if they're real because it's just like they look they look like someone like showing examples been wanting to do this to my missus, you know, and so I don't know which one they seem to be different. I guess I'll guess it's the one that says I managed to record a clip once when I had my last two redacted pills. My wife doesn't even know that I recorded it. So it doesn't tell you what he did. It never tells you what He did. Now we can assume I'm not saying it's good. Fucking obviously if they're saying it's illegal it doesn't tell you though it just says like she's asleep I'm not making light of it I'm just saying this is how unclear the writing is it says like I have a few photos but it's hard for me to put her to sleep that's all the background we have cnn asked him does your wife suspect anything he said for now I'm hiding everything that's we got okay and then it says but when it came to meeting face to face he resisted we wanted to confirm he was who he said he was so we traveled to his hometown in poland CNN found Piotr and his wife at a local restaurant, uncertain how he might react and unwilling to put her in danger. We chose not to confront him, instead reaching out to police about our findings. Okay, fine. Fair enough. It seems like at the very least, again, I'm not minimizing him. I'm saying just from the writing, I can't fucking tell what they're even claiming. But it seems like they're claiming he at least drugged her and took some pictures. So bad. Obviously, this guy should be under arrest. And an update later says that they might have have arrested him. They can't tell because they don't know his real name or something like that, but they think he got arrested, which is great. That's awesome. Fully support that. But then it says, the whole reason I'm bringing this up is it says, Piotr is just one actor in a vast global network. His wife likely among many unaware victims, but some survivors know. And then it goes into the victim thing, but he's your husband. When Zoe Watts learned that her husband of 16 years had been crushing her son's sleeping medicine into her tea and raping her while she was passed out. It shattered her world. Now that's all awful. A hundred percent. That's why me as a casual reader, I thought they were talking about like victims from this group. Like maybe they had other people or something, but they're not at all related to this group, there's there's not, not only that, there's no evidence that any of these had any connection to online behavior whatsoever. And so look, I don't, I dunno, I genuinely don't know how much much do we think this is misleading versus how much is it maybe am I a bad reader yeah okay I can take I can take some of the the hit for that but when you look at the whole thing in total like once I you know was was kind of made suspicious about this article and I look at it it's like wait a minute the the motherless.com has no connection other than that there is porn none of you know sleep porn none of that has proven to be any anything illegal like there could it could contain some, I suppose. None of it has proven to be illegal. It is proven to be a place where someone in the forum of the porn website said there was a telegram group. Okay, but how many places is that possible? Do we think this porn website that has tons and tons of just everyday porn is the only place that people who are shitty and had a common criminal goal, is that the only place they can meet up and share a telegram group. And it's, and by the way, is telegram the only way they could communicate? I mean, I don't, I dunno that I'm a fan of telegram, but like if it weren't that, wouldn't it be, couldn't they just be like, here's our group, you know, text message. I don'T know. Maybe I DON'T know telegram. I DON't really use it. So I DONT know. Do they make it easy to find like illegal stuff on there? If that's true, then sure. Like fuck telegram like they should, again, I'm all on the side of, we need more regulation for these tech companies, But like when you break this all down and it turns out like the 62 million, nothing the fuck to do with anything, that number should not be anywhere in this article. It just should not have been in the article at all. It has nothing the fuck to do with what you're talking about. It doesn't. I'm sorry if they had met on Facebook, which I'm sure they have, if they met on Reddit, which I'm sure They have if they met on Reddit, which I'm sure others could have, you know, you wouldn't say and Reddit has 11 billion monthly users. What does that have to do with anything? That's just where they met. Like if they met at a physical place, you could be like, and the state of New York has 40 million, whatever, you know, it's like, that isn't relevant. I mean, I'm exaggerating a bit. It's of course, somewhat relevant that like people who had this common goal would gravitate towards certain areas, but it's not like exclusively so. Though. OK, do we think there shouldn't be any such thing as forums or comment ability under porn videos? Because like when you start looking at the thing that you would have to ban to stop this, what are you talking about? You know, like like where are we? Because it's presented in a way that's like, my God, they could stop this in a heartbeat and they're just not doing anything about it. Could they? There would have to be a place where you could host porn videos. I'm in support of that. I think there should be porn. Authorities shouldn't be banning porn on the internet. That's a slippery slope to fucking fascism. And I think very few people listening are going to be of the internet should ban all porn variety. So then you get to what you get to. There can't be a place where you can comment on the porn because then people might go to comment. Here's my other thing, which is a private group where we could discuss crimes and then they're going to be able to discuss crimes. Well, OK. I mean, like everything else, the internet is making it easier for like-minded people to gather. It is. But okay, because it had a sleep category, which they got rid of, maybe it'll be the next thing, whatever. Maybe some people meet on some other category that's reminiscent of something illegal, and then they could share a private telegram, and they could talk to each other privately on it, and some number of those people are going to be criminals that are going to do horrible stuff. I guess I'm just saying, yeah, Yeah, I assume there are criminals in the world. There are rapists in the world. Is this a vast global network? And again, the victim statements. I 1 million percent empathize, sympathize with the victims. They're compelling. It makes me tear up to read how horrible it is. There are three victims across I think multiple decades and they're not connected to not only this group. They are not connected to the porn site. They aren't connected to any online activity. We did have the Pelico thing saying he found people through a website and that website's been shut down. And yeah, if any websites are somehow allowing that, they should be shut down, I totally agree. But none of the other three victims, one said there was videos, it doesn't say they were shared anywhere, and all three of the victims, their rapists were put in jail for a lengthy time, which is good. Good. And it's not to say that the state of the justice system is great there. It's not. It's very bad. But I just linked it in my mind. Like I just reading this, I assumed they had something to do with the group. And I guess another reason I was motivated here is because I really felt tricked. If you all want to say I'm an idiot and none of you were tricked by this, that's fine. I guess I'll take that. I'll make that loss. But when I started reading this skeptically. I gotta say, I felt like shitty that CNN did this. I was like, wait a minute. I just assumed these victims had something the fuck to do with this activity. But I mean, when you really boil it down, what have we uncovered CNN? We've uncovered there are people who are rapists and Hey, that's the Lord's work. If you want to, if you want exposed rapists and get them arrested, that is fucking great. I have no problem with that. And if the article was written on those terms, like, Hey, we were able to do this. That's cool. I've no problem with that but it's not the article was written in order to make us think it's literally titled a global conspiracy a global network and what that actually meant was a telegram channel they showed us evidence of one telegram Channel they say there's more they don't show us any if they had it they how hard would it be to get it how hard Would it be if you want if you had it there's no reason there's no fucking reason that if they had all these other telegram channels that they're able to get into and say, Hey, are you sending videos? Yeah. I'm sending videos to people for 20 bucks. I've made a thousand dollars. Like, wouldn't they just post it? They name one of them. Why wouldn't They name more? I'll be honest. I don't think they have more. I really can't think of how that editorial decision would go. Well, let's only use these couple of quotes that we have that say one guy sold it to three people. Let's only Use that. But we have all these others that are like, I sold thousand. Yeah, but let's not like what I just don't think they have it. I think what they uncovered was they did find a small group of criminals and it's awful and I hope they're tracked down and I hope they're arrested but this is why I link it up to the child trafficking stuff at its heart. You're like wow. Yeah, there's an awful person who kidnapped a kid once or twice or three times and that's the background level of awful crime that I already hate that that's not a global conspiracy, right? I mean, please by all means tell me if I'm fucking wrong by all means I want to be wrong I didn't want to do this episode I just I think this article sucked man I think that's bullshit I think if you changed several things about it there's nothing wrong with it but I think the title and the 62 million is just way too intentional and the fact that right after saying there was three fucking people who bought something right after that they say he's part of a global network what do you mean global network man do you just mean a handful full of people talking online. That's not a fucking, I'm sorry, that's not a global conspiracy, a global network of people. That is just I mean, what are you, 70 years old? I just don't think that's fair. I don't thing that's fare to get every woman afraid of their husband over this.

0:41:34 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:41:34 Thomas: And so, you still might be wondering, where did we get to an academy? Was that just speaking loosely because some people were like giving tips? And no, that comes from, I mean I guess kind of, but also that comes from this quote. So way down toward the bottom, we've got this quote, Sandrine Josso, a French lawmaker who, after being drugged by a former French senator, has campaigned to raise awareness about drug-facilitated sexual abuse, which is called DFSA, called the groups, quote, schools of violence. Okay. And further quote, I would even call them an online rape academy where every subject is taught. There are all the subjects and disciplines needed to become a good rapist or sexual predator, she said. Look, I don't begrudge a victim of something like that to describe it in a way that feels valid to them. I do criticize CNN using that as their heading when this is someone referring this. They aren't even talking about this one. So the quote there, which is that, you know, an online rape academy seems to be just about any of these groups in general because it just that's all it says these sites these groups and there's nothing that I can see that's like all the subjects and disciplines are taught remember what this resulted in remember all the viral stories I read in episode one an online rape school they had a fucking online rape school no man they didn't have an online rape school any two criminals talking to each other I guess might give criminal tips but I just I'm I'm sorry. And 62 million, 62 million in online rape school. That's too, that's too far. That'S too inaccurate. I'm sOrry. That' s over the line to where I'm not going to be shamed into silence about how fucking incorrect that is. I'M sOrRY. I' m not. And that's where we get to, oh boy, not a lot of time left, but I want to talk about the information environment here because I think it's what this made me think of is how our entire mode of discourse makes admitting you're wrong so impossible. And it's nothing new, but it's just not good. Because I almost saw in real time, once I was aware of it, here's how the discourse went. First, it was like the 62 million visits thing. And then they said, oh, that's still bad. Okay. They got to double down and be right, because that's Still Bad. It's not 62 million men, it's 62 million visits. And dann it's like, okay, but It's also not that. And denn what you get, what I find really interesting. Here's what I found interesting. The minute I was even thinking like, geez, is this something that seems kind of wrong to talk about this? Then I come across all these posts that are this. This is a hugely viral one. Men's obsession with trying to debunk statistics about sexual violence is actually fucking terrifying. And then that's attached to one post that's also very viral. Currently, many women are posting to bring awareness to the fact that a, quote, Rape Academy website, untrue, not true. There was no such thing, had 62 million visits in February of this year alone. Men's comments, not horror, not disgust, not supporting victims. Instead, they're saying it was 62 million visits, not people. And you can't know how many were men. Rather than focusing on the existence of this website that was created by men, they argue the semantics of the data. So like what we have there, and I saw a bunch of these, I saw a bunch you posting these. I don't, I am not, I don'T blame you. I get it. Because like that is what happens usually like there's a bunch of like men's rights activists or people in bad faith who try to jump on any inaccuracy and debunk but but notice how this functioned like in this moment this functions is almost like an inoculation it's like ahead of time I'm thinking this article is pretty inaccurate this is wrong and then you get a bunchof anyone who wants to correct anyone on this is fucking terrifying and it's horrible and while I like I get it again I do get it I I almost would have posted that had I kept down you know thinking this was accurate like I really would have because I get I agree with that sentiment but like I just haven't gone through this and seen how wrong this is this is over the line for me this is my personally again if it were a close call I would be nowhere near talking about this if it was close enough if it Was even 60 % right. But we're 0 % correct. Like the main, the main takeaway that is being shared is 0 % correct. 0%. I'm not talking about the sentiment. I'm talking about the literal takeaway of the Rape Academy, the millions, the whatever, the even there's none of that is correct. And like, there is a line, I'm sorry. If the information, the meme being shared is, did you know every single husband rapes their wife every day? Oh, and anyone who tries to correct anyone on rape statistics is as bad as the rapist. It's like, okay, well, Well, you've set a perfect trap there, man. I don't know what, what am I supposed to do? I don'T think that's good. I'm sorry. I just don't think that'S a good idea. Now, I'm not trying to draw any broad conclusions about it. I'm NOT saying the left has gone too far, the feminism gone too far. I'm Not saying any of that. I'm saying this is how all of our online discourse functions, like all the time. Please don't get me wrong. The left and the feminists are way more correct all the time than the other side, a million percent, but it's getting worse though. Like we're all getting less correct and I don' t like it because Because stuff like this, what I've noticed is like, we've gotten to the point where takes are ubiquitous. We have an online random take generator machine that will generate whatever take is needed. Like in an evolutionary sense, whatever people want to be true is now somewhere online in a meta sense too. So now there's, let's just say I'm a random person on the internet. I saw the 62 million and then I saw someone saying that might not be right. So what emotional state am I in there? Well, I'm in an emotional state of, Ooh, man, this thing I might, and maybe I posted about it. Maybe I said like, Oh my God, this rape Academy thing, which I kind of did. Uh, so I'm in a state emotionally of like, oh shit, was I, was that wrong? Well I can't be wrong. I don't want to be wrong there. Must be some way that I was still right. That's let's be honest. That's the human emotional state. We all feel it. We don't want to be wrong. And so then emotionally, what we want, the content, the take that we need somewhere out is out there. The take that we need is how was I still right? How was I Still Right? How Was I Still right? And then we get a bunch of this and that take is, oh my God, 62 million visits. That's like the same. And anyone who's trying to say you're wrong, they safely, you can feel good because they are worse as bad as the rapists. Looking at it from this almost Darwinian process of like the internet isn't really forming the takes so much as there's infinite takes online and the emotional needs that we feel produces the demand. So it's almost like I've started thinking about it as like a reverse process, you know, like, okay, shoot, I need the take. That's going to say I'm still right. And there's a million of those. You can find them if you want. There's a bunch that are like, actually it's more because now you look and those ones drive me nuts. 'Cause they're kind of, You know, they're saying a lot. I agree with there's a bunch. I was almost going to play him, but there's a bunch that are like, OK, sure, that number is wrong, but actually it's bigger. And then the way they do that is they talk about like broadly either harassment or if you take like consent pushing behaviors, you can get pretty big numbers. And so that's a way of saying, like, actually, it didn't matter that the thing I shared was wrong because I can find a way in which it's even worse. And how dare you for questioning it? And I mean, I just don't think it's a good idea, man. Like I get, I fully agree with the idea and I've called it out for a decade plus, which is the nut picking thing. If you want to find someone on any side of any issue who's saying a dumb thing and criticize that person and use that to dismiss the entire other side, you can. Everyone can do that all the time. I'm sympathetic to that, but there are lines. Lines there are lines to where something is such misinformation that actually sorry we've gone too far now we need to be able to say oops got one wrong and notice how like it's actually not it's not hard I get that everyone's really agitated online I get it and especially when you're a woman on the internet and you're dealing with these anti -feminists I fully 100 get it but I I just, I don't think it's helping to always double down, but at the same time, now here's another thing I was thinking, you know what it reminded me of back when I was trying to get a job at the state of California. I don'T know if it's changed now, but they had an incredibly stupid system. Here was the system. You have to take a test and the test is not anything meaningful. It is, do you have experience with such and such thing? Do you have experienced with leading a team? Do you Have experience with, you Know, whatever's crap like that. And there was pretty much always the same answers, which were like, no, I've kind of learned about it or some experience or I have a lot of experience in doing that with various teams. And what happens is because there's no grading of this test in a meaningful way and no consequences for lying, literally everyone has to say the max answer for every single question. That was what I was told. They're like, yeah, you just have to just find a way for it to be true in your mind. Because the other option is you don't and then you're never getting a fucking job. So that's what it was. There's a billion applicants to the state of California tests, to these positions. Everyone has to lie and give the maximum answer on the test. And then I guess hopefully you get an interview. If you answer a single one less than the optimal choice at this time, this is back in the 2010s or whatever, and a little bit before that as well. If you enter a single line, you will never get a call for an interview, you. So it creates a system where everyone has to just lie maximum. And you're an idiot if you don't. And this is to try to get a job like this isn't like an optional thing. Like you want a job with the state. You have to do this lying test is the dumbest system I could possibly imagine. That's what it kind of feels like online. So like I don't really blame people because what we hunger for online are these incredibly certain people, incredibly confident, incredibly certain and agitated and angry and correct all these memes and takes and what clips and all that crap it has to be a short statement that's not only a statement of a fact but confidently right and everyone who disagrees is dumb and or a bad person and can you even believe that they disagreed and you can't admit you're wrong because then you're not getting the job man you're just not getting the Job you know and I just I fucking hate it here I don't want to live in this internet it. I guess that's why I do podcasts. It's one of the few places you can still admit you're wrong. I think like the shorter the content becomes, the less you can possibly, I mean, it's bad in so many ways, less context, all that, but also there's, you're not, there's not going to be a viral meme clip, picture, post screenshot. That's Hey, got that one wrong. But also broadly speaking, here's how it's kind of still, you know, it is a concern that, you have violence and sexual sexual violence against women. Like that's not going viral. What's going viral is what the emotional need is. And the emotional need ist shit. Was I wrong about that thing? Okay. Where's somebody saying not only were you right, but fuck all those other people who said you were wrong. They're awful. There, I found it. Found that take, share it. And that's, I mean, that's just what it is. It's just like a Darwinian process that we're not, there's no, there're no fucking way out of that. And I'm not putting the blame uniquely on the left at all. I'm not, it doesn't even matter. I like forget all that. We know who's wrong and who's right. Broadly speaking, we know it's not fucking MAGA. It's not the anti -feminist. We Know that I trust you to know that I know that. I trust that you know that we know but just in a broad sense That's the whole internet now. What the fuck do we do about that? You know, like I just don't know It just seems to be an increasingly large part of the real world, you know It started off where that existed but you know people in the real politicians were still kind of doing the you know know, they're still in the world. They're still on the planet earth a bit. And then just with Trump and ever since more and more, it's like, no, the politicians are shit posters too. It's just shit posters all the way down. It'S all shit posters. And we, Oh, but we got the good shit posters to fight the bad shit posters and I know I'm not, I don't know what else to do. I does seem to be our best choice is like, okay, I guess we try to shit post that better or something, but like, where does this lead, man? What are we supposed to do? It only will get it worse. What will make this better? Look at where we are now. Look at where we were 10 years ago. Look at that trajectory. Are we going up or is it getting worse and worse? How much worse can it get? When are we to the point where just no one fucking knows anything anymore? Like I really worry. I don't want to get too crazy, but like I fucking worry. We need to be off the internet, man. We got to turn this thing off. We gotta turn it off or we got to make it extreme. Like I I wonder if this needs to be part of our political goals, should we ever assume power. And I don't even know who the fuck we is, because I don'T know who agrees with me on this. But like, a heavily, heavily regulated internet that doesn't allow algorithmic feeds, that only allows posting by verified people, it doesn't mean that everyone knows who you are, but somehow they know you're a real person. They know your age and your location or whatever. I know people get really mad about the privacy of that, but look at the fucking world we're in, man. I know it's always hard. Whatever the change is going to be, people look at what the costs of the change will be. Oh, that's privacy concerns. Yeah. Okay. What about now? What about the current situation is good? All right. Well, if you got this far, appreciate you as always. Hey, push back where you want. Seriously. I do have to say, based on when I encourage people to push back, I think I need to clarify something because I got a few messages after the conspiracy theory episodes. And this is I'm so sorry to do this, but I do just need to jump on a soapbox about this. Push back all you want. But for some reason, people take that to mean if they say their counterfact, then I just have to say, yes, you're right or something like when I say, hey, push back. Tell me when you think I'm wrong. What I mean is you can give me a comment in an email question or whatever. Say, hey. You're wrong about this and here's why I will read it and I will either say like, oh, got that wrong. Or I will say, well, actually, no, I mean, I kind of considered that and I said it here. Like I already disagreed with that. Here's why. And then, I means, it's up to you if you want to like keep going. But I had this happen to like two, three different people where they sent me a thing about the conspiracy theories. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. No, I considered that. Here's what I think. I still ultimately have my view. And they got really offended by that. And we're like, Oh, I thought you wanted feedback. And it's like, well yeah, yeah, I mean, that's what happened. You gave me your feedback. And I mean I could just not reply. Is that better? I guess if you want to give me something to which there's no reply, you can say, hey, I don't want to hear it back. That's fine. It's weird. But what did you think feedback was? If not, here's the thing. Did you think of this? And I can say either yes or no, and I can consider it. And if it's something I missed, then I will say, oh, I missed that. If it's not, I'll say, Oh yeah, here is what I think. It is really weird. It just goes to the the broader sense of like, I don't think anyone can handle disagreement anymore. I shouldn't, I don'T want to globalize it. I don' t want to universalize it rather. But like, it was a weird phenomenon. Giving feedback means you can give me feedback. If you don't want to hear back, tell me, that's fine. If You want to be like, Hey, I just want to tell you something. And then it's too uncomfortable for me to hear your reply. You can say that it's weird, but you can say it. If not, then I think if you're giving feedback, that should mean you're like open to hearing what I I think about it, right? I mean, that's why you're doing it, right? And if the thing I say isn't, oh, you're absolutely right, I mean that kind of is a risk you take, isn't it? I don't, I'm not saying anything mean, I'M just saying like, oh yeah, I consider that, I don'T agree. And then people are like wildly offended and calling me a hypocrite like well, I thought you asked for feedback or I thought YOU wanted to know if you were wrong. It's like, yeah, I do. I do want to know if I'M wrong. How in the world should that mean that anyone who comments anything I have to agree with or something? I know it's just I don't know, what do people expect out of interaction anymore, out of human interaction? Because I don' t mind. Tell me I' m wrong. And then I like the chance to say either I agree or disagree. And then nothing bad has happened. Either way, has anything bad, has anyone gotten hurt? It' s really weird. Don' t get it. I don'' t understand it. But I just thought I'd put that out there because I genuinely do. I want to hear why I' re wrong. It doesn' t mean that I will instantly agree with you. Just FYI. So that is a risk you take if you want to try to tell me I'm wrong. But that's conversation. That's called having a conversation I thought that was fine anyway okay thanks for listening thanks for supporting truly truly truly from the bottom of my heart nothing that I have said in any of this is meant to undermine feminism or me too or anything like that I promise you I just really don't think demonizing an entire group of people who goes on a porn website that hosts you know almost half trans and gay content for one I don't Think that's a good idea I think think this was way over the line in terms of misleading, that it's not about nitpicking and trying to debunk statistics to try to debulk them. It's not About that this is so wildly off that it required a debunking. It really did. I just I think CNN fucked. I don't get it. I don't understand why they would want to be this misleading short of trying to get clicks, you know, and profit off of it. And that's kind of what I think CNN does. So there you go. I think you should take it up with CNN. All right. Thanks again. And I'll see you next time.