Doomed With Matt Binder

Dr. Lynne McNeill, a folklorist at Utah State University, author of Folklore Rules and co-author of Slender Man Is Coming: Creepypasta and Contemporary Legends on the Internet joins the show for a very special Halloween edition of DOOMED! We define and discuss folklore, urban legends, and fake news, how they spread both online and offline, the role we play in sharing scary stories or political misinformation and conspiracies, and we take a look at the origin of one of the internet's most famous urban legends, Slender Man. Also! Your YouTube livestream comments, Halloween, scary movies, the Momo Challenge, and more!

Josh Russell hunts bots. You may have seen him profiled on CNN's Declassified. On this episode of DOOMED, we're talking bots. How does Josh find them, how are they set up, what are they doing to push fake news, spread misinformation, and sow discord in the U.S. We take a look at specific examples of Russian, Iranian, and Saudi bots on Twitter and Reddit. Also on the show: technical difficulties! the pipebombs sent to Democrats! your questions and comments on the YouTube livestream! and much more!

Cecilia D'Anastasio of Kotaku joins DOOMED with Matt Binder to discuss how the 'NPC' meme tries to dehumanize 'SJWs', the origins of the "non-playable character" meme, who is using it? (it's not just 4chan edgelords and the right!), isn't it just another way of saying "wake up, sheeple"?, video game and meme culture, and the conservatives' dying cries extending into both. Also! Your questions and comments, the pro-Saudi Twitter bot campaign meant to control the Jamal Khashoggi narrative, and much more!

Chauncey Alcorn of mic.com joins us to discuss the white supremacist Rise Above Movement, the four RAM members who were just arrested for their role in Charlottesville, the spread of white supremacists, white nationalist, and alt-right propaganda on YouTube, is YouTube following their own policies on hate speech?, the differences between right wing and left wing "extremists," RAM raising money for bail via GoDaddy, what does it take for these tech companies to take action against hate, and much more! Also: DOOMED returns from a short hiatus, your comments and questions!

It's a special New York Primary Eve edition of DOOMED! If you're listening to this as a podcast (and not the livestream), it's likely September 13, 2018...which means it is now Primary Day in New York. GO OUT AND VOTE! On this episode: Vote Cynthia Nixon for Governor, who else to vote for (Juamaane Williams, Zephyr Teachout, and more!) in the New York primary, Andrew Cuomo's dirty tricks with his antisemtic smear mailer, an update on the last week in a half in news including Congress' social media hearings, Alex Jones getting banned from Twitter, QAnon gets banned from Reddit, a call from listener Rene with an update from Santiago, Chile, listeners discuss the problem with Jimmy Dore of TYT, your questions and comments and much more!

Joined DOOMED with Matt Binder as we watch a replay of the New York Governor Debate between Andrew Cuomo and Cynthia Nixon, complete with color commentary on the night of the debate. (This was aired as a last minute late night YouTube Livestream, so please excuse any sound level issues. We'll have this fixed for any of these type of future livestream commentary shows we do.) Plus your live questions and comments!

Cristina Lopez, Media Matters' deputy director for extremism, joins the show to discuss how Donald Trump came to tweeting about a long time white supremacist trope about white farmers in South Africa, how Tucker Carlson and Fox News spread white supremacy to our dumb President, right wing extremists like Lauren Southern and Mike Enoch who fed this conspiracy, plus...in case the media is wondering, our flags are all at half-staff. All this and much more including your comments and questions on DOOMED!

Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast joins the show to give us a first-person account from her trip to both Charlottesville and Washington DC for the anniversary of the white supremacist rally that left one antifascist protester dead and to cover the nazis' second take of that event: Unite the Right 2. We discuss how we got here, what the communities most affected have gone through in the past year, the sad life of Jason Kessler, militarized police, mainstream media's handwringing over antifa, YouTube's role in all this, and much more! Plus after the interview your questions, comments, plus a very special Happy Birthday message to Matt Binder's good friend Michael Brooks of The Michael Brooks Show, and much more!

Alex Jones and InfoWars have been banned from YouTube, Apple iTunes, Facebook, even Pinterest! Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch and the Sh!tpost podcast join DOOMED with Matt Binder to discuss what Alex Jones has done to earn these bans, why these tech companies made the move now, what these bans mean to the broader internet and much more. Also! Jared tells us about his trip to Portland to cover the Patriot Prayer / Proud Boy march this past weekend. Plus your YouTube comments, questions, and more!

Meet the man trolling the trolls of the alt-right: Nathan Bernard of BernardMedia.org. Nathan joins DOOMED to discuss the various different ways he's trolled the right wing – from Twitter bots to Cernovich / Milk Leaks to Bernard Media. We discuss his work with Vic Berger, how these right wing reactionaries operate, and much more! Plus your YouTube livestream questions and comments!

Will Sommer of The Daily Beast and RightRichter.com joins us to rundown all the latest in right wing conspiracy theories. It's like a right wing conspiracy Christmas in July! But first, we discuss Will's run-in with the crew of the insane right wing movie Roe v. Wade. We also discuss the Conservatives vs. Facebook hearings, the Russia DNC hacking indictments, Seth Rich, QAnon's latest, #WalkAway, Jack Posobiec, plus much more! Also your comments and questions and a discussion about whether DSA should endorse Cynthia Nixon on the night they voted.

Writer Brenden Gallagher joins DOOMED to discuss his DailyDot article: What is Cultural Marxism? Explaining and Debunking the Popular Term. We discuss where the term "cultural Marxism" came from and whatever the hell different factions on the right think it means, Jordan Peterson, Joseph Paul Watson, the recent J20 news and MAGA hat stealing incident, intersectionality on the left, and much, much more!

Sean McElwee of Data for Progress and AbolishICE.org joins the show to discuss the rollercoaster of a week that saw SCOTUS gut unions, Justice Kennedy announce his retirement which will give Donald Trump another Supreme Court pick, the Abolish ICE movement start to gain some real legs and take off, and the amazing win against the Democratic establishment when Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat Joe Crowley. All that and more on this week's episode of DOOMED!

Selina Vickers, an activist from West Virginia and former Bernie Sanders delegate, joins DOOMED with Matt Binder to discuss her experience traveling around the country attending DNC meetings, sometimes as the sole observer covering what's going on. She discusses how she recently made the news when a senior DNC member accused her of being a Russian agent. We also discuss West Virginia politics, strategic voting, how she became politically active, and – based on her DNC experiences – what the future could possibly hold for the Democratic Party. All that and more on this episode of DOOMED!

YouTuber T1J (Kevin) joins the show to discuss why he stopped idolizing Sam Harris. T1J put out a video recently exploring why Sam Harris stopped being his intellectual hero. On DOOMED, we discuss the video, what led T1J to New Atheism at first, how he discovered Sam Harris, where he started questioning his now former idol, the bizarre cult around Sam Harris, is Sam Harris Islamaphobic?, is Sam Harris racist?, and how current Sam Harris fans should question their hero.

Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast joins us to discuss two of her latest stories that just happen to cover two recent, hilarious conservative self-owns. First, "Alt-Right/Nazi Twitter" social network Gab.ai goes to war with their own users, their battle for "free speech," their full-blown acceptance of white supremacists and how now it's founder Andrew Torba is trying to "clean up" the site's image by claiming all the 100% real nazis on the site are actually fake. Next up, conservative activist/troll James O'Keefe and his Project Veritas edited video scheme just accidentally gave a big win to #J20 anti-Trump protesters who were being prosecuted. Also, WTF? Prosecutors were using Project Veritas videos as evidence?! All that, plus listener questions and comments and more!

Four progressive women with Democratic Socialist platforms running for Pennsylvania State House won big last week in their primaries. All unseated establishment male incumbents. All four – Summer Lee & Sara Innamorato of Pittsburgh and Kristin Seale & Elizabeth Fiedler of Philadelphia – join the show to discuss their respective races, their experience in taking on the establishment, how their people-powered campaigns helped them win, DSA's role and what their Dem Socialist platforms meant to them, and what this means all across the country going forward. All that plus listener questions and comments and much more!

Writer Brock Wilbur joins the show to tell us the insane tale of how a writing job search led him to The Knife of Aristotle, a fake news website that he discovered was run by a cult called NXIVM. We discuss it's leader Keith Raniere, Smallville actress Allison Mack's involvement, how NXIVM compares and contrasts with other cults, what the right wing shares with NXIVM, and much more!

Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch and the SH!TPOST podcast joins us to discuss Bari Weiss' New York Times piece about the IDW: Intellectual Dark Web (aka I Demand Wedgies). We discuss this reactionary "free thinker / free speech" movement and it's members such as Dave Rubin, Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, Candice Owens, Bret Weinstein, and Christina Hoff Sommers! We also discuss how the "dark web" is already an actual thing, how everyone part of the IDW has a victimization complex, how just because a few of these guys voted for Bernie Sanders that doesn't make them a leftist, and a whole lote more!

David Futrelle of We Hunted the Mammoth joins the DOOMED with Matt Binder livestream to talk the history of the toxic Men's Rights Movement. From it's sexist roots with the likes of Warren Farrell to the rise of the misogynist "Men's Rights Activists" (aka MRAs) on the internet with Reddit, Stefan Molyneux, and Paul Elam's website, A Voice For Men. We also discuss the incel moment in mainstream media after Alek Minassian, a self-identified "involuntarily celibate" murdered 10 people with his van in Toronto, why incels have deified spree killer Elliot Rodger, the ridiculousness of Ross Douthat's "redistribution of sex" take, and how the dangerous incel subculture is and what can be done about it.