Ryan Broderick

But it is, I think, an important story to start with, because as we go further back, the pattern that you talked about where it's like almost always women that find themselves at the center of this.

is overwhelmingly true.

For every one Bean Dad, there are dozens and dozens of Chapel Roan.

So a couple of years before our most recent Chapel Roan incident, we get June 2024, a YouTuber is interviewing people on the street in Nashville.

And a woman named Haley, who spells it the wrong way, tells the YouTuber that she wants to spit on that thing.

Some people love it.

Some people think it's like ironically great.

This is when Max Reed coins the terms Internet to sort of describe the like subterranean America to spaces online that we can now see more clearly.

But I would argue that she becomes a main character of the Internet.

She gets her own crypto coin.

She I mean, did you ever eat lunchly and watch talk to her?

How was it?

Did you like it?

I don't know who.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would say that's right.

There's also, I think, by the time we get to like 2024, the post-pandemic era, we get people who want to become the main character, realize that there's like monetizable opportunities here.

A really good example we found was the TikToker Maddie Hart.

who uh had a epic tick tock story i'm going to share with you right here my dad abandoned my family when i was five years old that is um a wife and four kids he abandoned us and then pursued amateur break dancing this guy wouldn't pay my medical bills yes of course she goes viral right-wing media obviously becomes obsessed with her she's like still posting kind of about her dad but would i mean would you would you say it's correct to say that like

Users now can kind of gamify the right wing attention and go like, Oh, like if I pissed them off, like I can go, I can become famous.