The Misogyny Slop EcoSystem on Youtube
Based on the Taylor Lorenz and Ophie Dokie discussion linked in the piece
We are 10 years on from Gamergate and Trump is in office once again. Has the online space changed much in that time? Creators like Sargon Of Akkad, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder along with many others really took off off the back of gamergate. Pewdiepie even had Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk host an episode of his youtube series “Meme Review”, normalising them to mainstream young people. We’ve since had a lot of discussion surrounding the youtube algorithm and the alt right pipeline with figures like Pewdiepie and Joe Rogan. This idea of the right wing pipeline only really considered young men and boys
For the essay I’d like to look at the Alt Right pipeline for women. We saw it a little during the pandemic with the wellness industry to covid denier pipeline, however since then it has morphed again.
Lately it seems like tabloid-esque misogyny is back in a different form because of the slop ecosystem. We can look at smear campaigns against people like Meghan Markle, Blake Lively and Amber Heard and how easily women who might be socially liberal can slip into this algorithm of hating other women. This isn’t anything new but it preys on misogynistic viewpoints that take effort to unlearn. Your casual youtube viewer is not necessarily analysing the feelings that come up when they think, “Amber Heard seems guilty because I don’t like her”.
The New York Times reported that Blake Lively was a victim of a smear campaign after private messages were leaked during her very public spat with Justin Baldoni indicating that Baldoni hired a PR firm to “bury” her. The PR firm used bot networks and leaked stories like old videos of her being rude to interviewers in order to destroy her reputation after she had made accusations of sexually inappropriate behaviour on the set of Baldoni’s film It Ends With Us. Here’s a quote from the NYT article where the texts between the PR company were published, “Ms. Nathan wrote to Ms. Abel: “And socials are really really ramping up. In his favour, she must be furious. It’s actually sad because it just shows you have people really want to hate on women.”(Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni and a smear campaign after ‘it ends with us’ - the new york times 2024)
The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard trial in 2022 could be another example of this. Johnny Depp sued Amber Heard for defamation for her op-ed in the Washington Post on sexual violence she had experienced despite the fact that she did not name him. The lawsuit was live streamed to the world with many Youtubers and streamers covering the trial. There was a huge number of youtube lawyers, “body language experts” and youtube therapists putting in their two cents on the trial. Youtube and Twitch became a hub for this content and then these streams get chopped up and posted across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, all making the people who post them money. This demonstrates how the “content farm” works and how this system encourages creators to farm content and drama to keep making money. Rage bait makes people click and clicks make money.
Internet culture journalist Taylor Lorenz notes there are some key fixtures in this ecosystem, lawtubers, body language experts, tea channels, deep dive channels, true crime and react guys.
LawTubers covered the Depp V Heard trial extensively, most notably Emily D Baker who reacted on live stream to the trial and exploded during this time. She even ended up with a profile in the LA Times because of her coverage. The profile noted that “her channel’s subscriber count surpassed 500,000 this week. Her podcast, “The Emily Show,” rose to No. 1 this month on Apple Podcasts for U.S. entertainment news, up from 7th place, according to Chartable.”. The LawTubers are propped up by other content creators as experts, for example Youtubers H3H3 had Emily on to discuss her thoughts on Steven Crowder trying to take Youtube to court for deplatforming him and another episode where she discussed James Charles being sued. Emily was very critical of Amber Heard throughout the trial but her coverage has a veneer of being unbiased, educational, and non-political.
However on closer inspection, she is a registered Republican who has said some questionable things in the past, for example she played into the voter fraud conspiracy in 2020 on her podcast and victim blamed Breonna Taylor who was shot by police in her home on a no knock warrant. Surely we can infer from this that her politics will come through in her coverage of lawsuits even if it’s not immediately apparent.
Body Language Experts were another group of creators who made bank off the back of the Amber Heard trial. Body language analysis is not a science and is not a reliable way to read people due to many different factors like neurodivergence among other things. According to this article in Psychology Today, “Despite the undeniable importance of nonverbal communication, many myths and false beliefs undermine its importance, relevance, or utility.People erroneously believe that where we look determines whether or not we are telling the truth.There is no single behavior indicative of deception.”. However this hasn’t stopped them from becoming hugely popular on Youtube.
Feminist Youtuber Ophie Dokie noted in an interview with journalist Taylor Lorenz that she feels there is some overlap with pick up artists here in the sense that pick up artists often say women are sending them secret signals with their body despite verbally saying no. Below are some examples(Fig. 1 & 2), both channels have numerous videos on both Heard, Lively and Meghan Markle all implying that these women have some secret, nefarious intentions that they are trying to hide. One of these men, funnily enough, has been accused of abuse by his ex-wife.
Fig.1
Fig. 2
During the Amber Heard trial there was ridiculous speculation of her doing cocaine on the stand because she put a tissue to her nose and The Behavioral Arts body language analyst perpetuated this rumour.
During the Blake Lively/Justin Baldoni scandal, Lively mentions in her original complaint that during the filming of a dance scene she felt he acted inappropriately. In reaction to this Baldoni’s team leaked the video from the set. Body language experts really latched onto this video. The Behavioral Arts guy notes Lively giggles in the video and runs defense for Baldoni stating that to him it just looks like an actor/director (Baldoni) is just following the lead of Lively. He only reluctantly concedes every now and then that Lively might seem uncomfortable.
Tea/drama channels or gossip accounts are another element in this slop ecosystem. Tea channels are the modern day tabloid. They are kind of trashy and sloppy and cheap. Taylor and Ophie note that tea channels are kind of the bottom feeders who collate information from lawtubers and body language experts, hoovering up information on social media and packaging it for people to consume. Mainly young women. Tea channels often rely on AI in videos, sometimes have AI voiceover and sometimes use SEO spam AI written articles as sources. These channels often use exaggerated thumbnails with unflattering, edited photos. See examples below.
Some examples of youtube tea channels would be iNabber, IQ and SLOAN. These channels act like the TMZ of Youtube with even less checks and balances. These channels often irresponsibly focus on Youtubers, influencers or celebrities going through mental health episodes and often exacerbate these crises like in the case of Gabbie Hanna.
Another phenomenon on youtube in this realm is the deep dive youtube essayists or commentary channels. These creators cover topics in a long form format and tend to feel better researched than tea channels, even if it’s just a facade. Taylor Lorenz notes these videos have a veneer of “journalism” without adhering to any journalistic ethics or practices. They generally have nicer editing and a less trashy feel.
Not all deep divers are created equal. Taylor notes that there are some who use the genre to do a lot of legitimate research like Hbomberguy or J Aubrey and critique right wing politicians or grifters on youtube. However some play into misogynistic tropes, probably without even realising it but because they appear progressive or socially liberal in other ways it gives them a false sense of legitimacy. For example, youtuber Jake Doolittle’s commentary on Onlyfans model Lilly Phillips sleeping with 100 men in a day was that “this is only going to damage her over time”.
Youtuber Overzealots argues in his video SlopTube & Weaponized Ignorance (How Careless Coverage Hurts) that the rise of alternative media has led to a rise in anti-intellectualism. He references Joe Rogan and the appeal of the “common man” talking about politics and current affairs over established News outlets. Since Covid and QAnon there has certainly been a rise in mistrust of politics and science and an embrace of conspiracy theories. Both Overzealots and Lorenz note that SlopTubers benefit from Weaponised Ignorance, for example when Joe Rogan spreads covid misinformation and then says “I’m a comedian don’t listen to me!”.
True Crime channels are another faction of the slop ecosystem. There are numerous female creators who explain true crime stories almost like a ghost story, sometimes while doing their makeup. These crimes are often female victims, Gaby Petito being a case that was particularly focused on on social media. Taylor Lorenz argues that true crime youtubers skew right wing in the fact that they play into “copaganda” and sometimes true crime content is even sponsored by home security systems(Cornett, Capitalizing on crime stories 2024). She also notes, often these channels only speak positively about women and deify them if they’re the dead victim in the story, otherwise women making assault claims or who have been victims of crimes have a lot of doubt cast on them. Princess Weekes, a black feminist youtuber, said in her video True Crime and the Theatre of Safety, “the theater of justice the theater of true crime is to tell the tragic stories of good clean dead women not living flawed messy women who still need help and grace those women are criminalized because if she can breathe she can lie”. This reminds me of a meme Pewdiepie used to reference, “If she breathes, she a thot”. There’s always the episode in the true crime podcast where it’s discovered the female victim, who up until this point has been portrayed as virginal and loved by all, had some type of sordid sex life or had two men who she was romantically linked to, shock horror! It’s all very Laura Palmer.
The final faction Taylor references are the React Guys. These are usually straight, usually white, liberal or so called “apolitical” men who react to current affairs, pop culture, politics. It’s basically all on the table. I would include H3H3 in that. These React Guys are generally socially liberal as in they’re good with trans people existing, good with gay people, good with POCs but when it comes to the nuances of these issues and the nuances of misogyny, they often have blind spots. Even large leftist male streamers will be good on labour issues and geo politics but have a total lack of awareness when it comes to women’s issues. Blake Lively and Amber Heard’s sides of their stories were dismissed by many of these React Guy types because they’re entitled, rich, white ladies who feel okay to hate. These creators end up unintentionally aligning themselves with the Candace Owens, Ben Shapiros and Megyn Kellys of the world.
Speaking of Ben and Megyn, Justin Baldoni’s lawyer appeared on the Megyn Kelly show as part of the smear campaign tactic. Ben Shapiro covered the story extensively as well, even bringing in gossip writer Perez Hilton to talk about it. The thumbnails of his videos are alarmingly similar to some of the tea channel style thumbnails. Shapiro’s news site The Daily Wire spent thousands promoting Anti-Amber Heard propaganda according to Vice News.
These topics are very clickable and a good way to get people’s attention. Once people have clicked on a few videos their algorithm will start to be affected and unknowingly they might slip into some more extreme right wing ideas.
Brett Cooper, a pundit who started her career on The Daily Wire has also made multiple videos about the Blake Lively topic as well. These very right wing pundits are covering these celebrity drama videos alongside videos about abolishing the department of education and Israeli apologia videos.
Another element to this is when people see Meghan Markle everywhere or Blake Lively everywhere they start to get annoyed seeing them all the time. As if these women have made this choice to be plastered everywhere. I have found myself, despite being sympathetic to Meghan’s struggles as a woman of colour in the Royal Family and the amount of hate she was getting, thinking, “god she had her documentary and her Oprah interview, I’ve seen enough of that woman!”. One places the blame on the woman herself and not the content farm that she has no control over. This works for the narrative the right wing pundits are putting out there about these women. They want you to be annoyed by them, to be sick of the sight of them because that way you’ll be more receptive to hating her once you finally cave and click a video.
I can see this reflected in my research for the project part of the assessment and the vitriol otherwise socially liberal female H3H3 fans were firing towards creators like Frogan and other Pro-Palestine women. They had no qualms using ad hominem attacks on Frogan’s appearance, likening her to Jabba the Hutt. Another female creator they attacked was Mika’s Rhetoric. I saw comments under her video advising her to get buccal fat removal for her jowls. H3H3 fans also excused Ethan referring to another female Pro Palestinian Egyptian content creator, Denims, as a “vile bitch”.
The slop ecosystem is sneaky because it lulls you into a false sense that the content you’re watching is not at all political but it appears that many of the talking points that start with the Ben Shapiros and Candace Owens trickle their way into the likes of pop culture streamers like H3H3 or your favourite true crime girly Bailey Sarian or in the Swoop video you put on while you’re cooking. Seeking out creators you like with intention and thinking critically about what you are consuming is a good way to combat this rather than just accepting the slop that’s served to you.
References:
Blake Lively CHANGED LAWSUIT After Justin Baldoni LEAKED FOOTAGE! Legal and Behavioral Analysis! (2025) YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Body Language Analyst REACTS to Amber Heard TESTIMONY! Did Johnny Depp Hit Her? Shocking PERJURY! (2022) YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Signs A Women Likes You But Is Trying Not To Show It (2025) YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
(2024) Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni and a smear campaign after ‘it ends with us’ - the new york times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/business/media/blake-lively-justin-baldoni-it-ends-with-us.html (Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Opinion | amber heard: I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture’s wrath. that has to change. - The Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ive-seen-how-institutions-protect-men-accused-of-abuse-heres-what-we-can-do/2018/12/18/71fd876a-02ed-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html (Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Adam (2017) All women are Queens, Know Your Meme. Available at: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/all-women-are-queens (Accessed: 08 May 2025).
The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial has turned this ex-L.A. prosecutor into a YouTube star (2022) Los Angeles Times. Available at: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-05-26/johnny-depp-amber-heard-trial-youtube-emily-baker (Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Bachman, B. (2021) Joe Rogan walks back controversial anti-vaccine comments: ‘I’m not a doctor, I’m a f**king moron’, Salon. Available at: https://www.salon.com/2021/04/29/joe-rogan-walks-back-controversial-anti-vaccine-comments-im-not-a-doctor-im-a-fking-moron/ (Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Cooper, B. (2025) It’s Time to Abolish the Department of Education — Here’s Why | Episode 4, YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Doolittle, J. (2025) OnlyFans Model Sleeps With 100 Men In 24 Hours, YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Emily D. Baker Victim Blaming Breonna Taylor (2022) YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Hobbes, M. (2022) The bleak spectacle of the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp Trial, The Bleak Spectacle of the Amber Heard-Johnny Depp Trial. Available at: https://michaelhobbes.substack.com/p/the-bleak-spectacle-of-the-amber (Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Kelly, M. (2025) Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s Actions and Why They Will Get Sued, with Justin Baldoni’s Attorney, YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Lorenz, T. (2025) The Alt-Right Pipeline for Women, YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
MaryAlyce R.G. Cornett (2024) Capitalizing on crime stories - louis. Available at: https://louis.uah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1877&context=honors-capstones (Accessed: 08 May 2025). Page 14 "For instance, Up and Vanished, a prominent true crime podcast that shares missing person cases is frequently sponsored by home security systems (Oxygen, 2024). This suggests that manufacturers associate true crime with a desire for safety"
Narayanan, A.M. and M. (2024) The Daily Wire spent thousands of dollars promoting anti-amber heard propaganda, VICE. Available at: https://www.vice.com/en/article/daily-wire-amber-heard-johnny-depp/ (Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Piperfrasier (2024) The truth about Logan Portenier, Piperfrasier. Available at: https://piperfrasier.wixsite.com/piperfrasier/post/the-truth (Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Princess Weekes (2022) True Crime & The Theater of Safety, YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Shapiro, B. (2025) The True Faces Of Evil, YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
SlopTube & Weaponized Ignorance (How Careless Coverage Hurts) (2025) YouTube. Available at:
(Accessed: 08 May 2025).
Staff, T. (2022) Internet claims amber heard snorted cocaine in court, raw video shows otherwise, TMZ. Available at: https://www.tmz.com/watch/2022-05-07-050722-amber-heard-tissue-000000/ (Accessed: 08 May 2025).