The Boys Are Not Okay
By stacy lee kong
Image: Metropolitan Police
Content warning: This newsletter contains descriptions of femicide, sexism, misogyny, transphobia and homophobia.
Earlier this month, a video of alt-right internet personality Sneako meeting some fans went viral on Twitter. The three boys—literally; they were children—were thrilled to meet him, and greeted him with exclamations that they clearly thought he'd be happy to hear. Like, you know, "fuck the women!” And “all gays should die!”
I did not know who Sneako was before this, but to my eye, he looked surprised, and maybe even dismayed, to hear this overt bigotry parroted back at him. At one point, he even looked at the camera, wide-eyed, and said, “What have I done?” But really, what’s there to be surprised about? He’s been saying exactly the same thing for years. According to Know Your Meme, he rose to prominence on YouTube in 2013, at which point he was posting gaming, commentary and motivational videos. Then, in the late 2010s, he pivoted to more ‘controversial’ content, before going full bigot during COVID, when he locked in on the sexist, antisemitic and otherwise hateful content. (That’s also when he began hanging out with ‘manosphere’ influencers Andrew Tate, Tristan Tate and Nick Fuentes.) He was banned from YouTube in October 2022 and now mostly posts on Twitter, right-wing video platform Rumble and other incel internet havens, including r/redpill on Reddit. But, he remains super popular, with 666,000 followers on Twitter and 321,000 on Rumble. He also recently hosted his most-attended stream ever with 70,500 concurrent viewers.
Of course, whether Sneako was genuinely surprised to hear his fans gleefully repeat the vile things he says or he was just faking it for the camera, the most jarring thing about the video was the boys themselves. They were so eager to spew hate to please someone they idolize; it’s not hard to imagine them saying, not to mention doing, worse—especially as they get older. So maybe it’s not a surprise that the video was one of the first things I thought of on Wednesday, when news broke that a 17-year-old boy had been arrested in the stabbing death of 15-year-old Elianne Andam in Croydon, a large town in South London. Initial reports said he tried to give her flowers and, when she rejected him, stabbed her in the neck with what has variously been described as a “foot-long knife,” a “sword-like knife” and a “machete.” On Thursday, new reports said the boy actually stabbed Elianne when she stepped in to protect her friend, who was his ex-girlfriend. While the boy has been arrested, we don’t yet have official confirmation about his motives. We can draw some conclusions, though. That morning, he packed both flowers and a knife. He probably agonized over what he was going to say, and clearly had hopes for what his ex-girlfriend’s response would be. And, he had a plan to punish her if she said no.
This is obviously a tragedy for this girl’s community, family and friends—I can’t even begin to imagine how the friend she died protecting must be feeling right now. But, it’s also one of the rare instances of a femicide capturing the world’s attention in this way, which is why it’s prompting an important conversation about misogyny, radicalization, entitlement and especially what boys and young men are learning from men like Sneako, the Tate brothers and other manosphere influencers.
How the internet radicalizes boys and young men
This is not a new conversation, obviously. Generations of women have said they have boyfriends or given out fake numbers because they didn’t feel safe enough to bluntly tell a man they’re not romantically interested. And in recent years, a slew of apps and tech-based services have popped up to protect against these exact situations. Fake number hotlines will reject a pushy dude for you, including the Feminist Phone Intervention hotline, which launched in 2014 in response to that year’s Isla Vista massacre, where Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured dozens of others because of his perceived experience of social and sexual rejection, as well as the Mary Sue Rejection Hotline, launched by pop culture blog The Mary Sue in 2017. That year, NPR also reported on the proliferation of safety apps designed for women, including ones that generate a realistic-sounding phone call so you can gracefully leave a date or situation that feels unsafe, and others that automatically alert a chosen contact if you don’t check in within a particular time frame.
What’s new(ish) is the fact that white boys are being specifically targeted—and they’re not only very young, they’re learning some truly horrific ideas on the creepiest corners of the internet. Case in point: back in 2019, writer, editor and media critic Joanna Schroeder posted a Twitter thread that went viral, saying, “Do you have white teenage sons? Listen up. I've been watching my boys' online behavior & noticed that social media and vloggers are actively laying groundwork in white teens to turn them into alt-right/white supremacists. Here's how,” before laying out a pattern that by now has become well-established. First, these kids are targeted by subtly racist, sexist, homophobic and antisemitic memes that normalize hate. Then, their parents, teachers and classmates call them out, inducing feelings of shame. But never fear, right-wing media is right there with commentary and articles claiming that people are “too sensitive” or “you can’t say anything anymore!”
“For these boys, this will ring true—they're getting in trouble for ‘nothing,” Schroeder wrote. “This narrative allows boys to shed the shame—replacing it w/anger. And who is their anger with? Women, feminists, liberals, people of color, gay folks, etc etc. So-called snowflakes. And nobody is there to dismantle the ‘snowflake’ fallacy. These boys are being set up—they're placed like baseballs on a tee and hit right out of the park.”
The next month, her Twitter thread was the introduction to a Washington Post article on radicalization, which pointed out that she’s far from the only one who had noticed this troubling trend: “a barrage of recent reports has revealed how online platforms popular with kids (YouTube, iFunny, Instagram, Reddit and multiplayer video games, among others) are used as tools for extremists looking to recruit,” wrote feature writer Caitlin Gibson. “Earlier this year, a viral essay in Washingtonian magazine—written by an anonymous mother who chronicled a harrowing, year-long struggle to reclaim her teenage son from the grips of alt-right extremists who had befriended him online—sparked a flurry of passionate discussions and debates among parents across social media… For extremist groups, the goal is hardly a secret; the founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer has openly declared that the site targets children as young as 11.”
And the coverage didn’t stop there; in 2018, the Daily Beast published an article about how YouTube “built a radicalization machine for the far-right.” In 2019, the New York Times detailed how YouTube’s algorithm fed a then-teenage Caleb Cain a steady diet of conspiracy theories, misogyny and racism, which he said “brainwashed” him into joining an online community of far-right extremists. In 2021, Internet Matters pointed to the emergence of the online manosphere, which has a presence on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, blogs and websites, not to mention all those men’s lifestyle podcasts. In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League published a case study on how hate groups use gaming platforms like Minecraft to recruit kids. And that same year, Buzzfeed published the stories of women whose partners, brothers and even fathers had been radicalized, and it actually still haunts me to this day.
Btw, if it was scary six years ago, when Schroeder posted that initial Twitter thread, it’s much worse now, thanks in large part to the pandemic. According to Brian Hughes, associate director of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL) at American University, who spoke to HuffPost last year, “teens have been spending more and more time online than ever before. That time was often unsupervised, so they were more likely to encounter this kind of propaganda and recruitment—and when they encountered it, were more likely to not have someone on hand to say, ‘Hey, hold on, this looks like it’s trying to manipulate you.’” What’s more, even as mainstream platforms have begun attempting to moderate their content (um, except for X, obvs), conservative-run platforms have also popped up, offering less oversight and content moderation and far more acceptance of hateful content.
Misogyny provides the underpinning for all of this
Radicalization can target any type of person, obviously, but while early conversations about internet radicalization focused on Islamic terrorist organizations, it turns out white supremacist terrorists are (and have always been) especially skilled at this type of recruitment, which is why it’s often focused on stoking racism, transphobia, homophobia, Islamophobia and antisemitism. But, in all of those cases there’s one commonality: an underlying tinge of misogyny. So while manosphere influencers like the Tate brothers and Sneako might attempt to distance themselves from this week’s shooting, or downplay their influence, the truth is, that young man—and millions like him—are just behaving the way they’ve been shown they should. I mean, Andrew Tate smoothly transitions from advice on men’s empowerment and self-help to tips and tricks for controlling women (“Bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck,” he says). When Sneako disagreed with Chad Chad, a female content creator who made a video about a TikTok dating coach, his response was to mimic raping her on a live stream. Fresh & Fit, a podcast from raging misogynists Myron Gaines (author of Why Women Deserve Less) and Walter Weekes (a dating and lifestyle coach), tell their millions of followers that the way to get what they want—money, power and sex, naturally—is to embrace ‘traditional’ (read: misogynist) values. They’re big fans of redpill content, in case you couldn’t guess.
And their audiences of impressionable boys and young men are listening. They’re learning that they are entitled to girls’ and women’s time, attention and bodies, and that they should expect compliance. They’re learning that women are not real people with their own hopes, dreams, desires or decision-making power. And these boys are also learning that they don’t need to understand their own emotions or develop the capacity to express them in healthy ways; instead, they should respond to displeasure or disappointment with violence. Don’t just take my word for it; the data speaks for itself. In their annual report, released earlier this year, the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability (CFOJA) found 850 women and girls have been killed in the last five years, the equivalent of a woman or girl dying every 48 hours. In 82% of deaths with identified accusers, the suspect was male. And, between 2019 and 2022, there was a 27 per cent increase of deaths from male suspects.
It’s also important to note that we are talking about children, not just adults. According to a 2021 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, of Canadian ninth and tenth graders who were dating, one in three had experienced intimate partner violence in the previous 12 months. I repeat: ONE THIRD. Of those children, 12% had been physically hurt on purpose by someone they were dating, 18% said someone they were dating had used social media to hurt, embarrass or monitor them and 28% said they’d been emotionally abused. And yes, there were major differences by gender; non-binary kids faced the highest levels of physical (25.6%), psychological (42%) and cyber dating violence, followed by girls (11%, 32.7%, 19%, respectively) and finally boys (12%, 21%, 14.7%, respectively). These stats seem to be on par with what’s happening elsewhere in the world. In the U.S., for example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 26% of women experience intimate partner violence before they turn 18.
I don’t want to diminish the impact the manosphere has on boys and young men, because they are not okay—their mental health, sense of self, body image and ability to self-regulate all suffer because of radicalization, and we can blame adult men whose main goal is to make money for that. But I think it’s important to point out that, as with our recent conversations about the male loneliness crisis, the things that happen to boys have consequences for the girls and women in their lives. So, in our heteronormative and cisnormative society, when boys are taught to think of only their gender as ‘real,’ everyone else pays the price, especially the girls who are simultaneously being taught that it is their job to manage those boys’ emotions and reactions.
… Which is especially jarring considering the current popularity of girl aesthetics. A couple of weeks ago, InStyle published an op-ed about the cognitive dissonance around seeing ‘girl’ things trend on TikTok, girly fashion, like smocked dresses, bows and friendship bracelets, all over Instagram and positive business stories about the economic power of girlhood, thanks to Barbie, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour, while simultaneously understanding that actual girls are under attack. As writer Mattie Kahn points out, “for real, warm-blooded girls, girlhood has not been a euphoric experience of late. The same fans who’ve been streaming into massive arenas have fewer liberties than their mothers did.”
What now?
I think that actually speaks to the fact that this is larger than just the manosphere; misogyny is everywhere in our society, and it would be disingenuous to pretend that the messages boys are receiving from their fave alt-right influencer aren’t mirrored in mainstream media, too. It’s in ‘funny’ celebrity gossip stories and song lyrics and TikTok trending topics and politicians’ responses to gun violence and the steady rolling back of laws guaranteeing women’s autonomy and reproductive freedom and the list goes on.
Still, these alt-right online spaces do constitute an emergency, so obviously it makes sense to focus on them. I’m not a parent or an expert in extremism, but I do think one pathway to preventing, or pulling boys back from, radicalization is to be really involved in their lives. As adults, we need to take an active interest in the children in our lives, whether they are ours, our nieces, nephews and little cousins, our friends’ kids—whatever. We need to be people they can trust to introduce them to credible and non-hateful sources of information. We need to provide alternate models of behaviour. We need to acknowledge their fears, concerns and feelings of inadequacy, and we need to invest time and attention in their hobbies and what they’re interested in.
I’m not advocating for helicopter parenting, but I am calling for collective responsibility. Because this really can’t be just a parenting conversation, or just a feminist conversation. We have to take Elianne’s death seriously as a harbinger of what’s to come if we, as adults, don’t stop it.
And Did You Hear About…
AdAge’s breakdown of Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce and how the NFL is capitalizing on their rumoured relationship.
Erica Ifill’s scathing column about the past couple of weeks in Canadian politics—like, you know, the time when Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said the n-word with no consequences, and the time where the Speaker of the House invited a Nazi to Parliament, during a Jewish holiday no less.
Author Isle McElroy’s affecting essay on the power of a name.
This week’s episode of A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein, which looks back at the Johnny Depp defamation trial, the way the internet treated Amber Heard for much of last year and the myth of the perfect victim.
The TikToker who shares what her 88-year-old French grandpa makes for lunch.
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