Not quite an incel, not yet a Chad. The gymcel is a little-known, but hugely polarizing figure. Rather than swallowing the black pill and turning away from society (one where evil feminists govern man's ability to get laid), the gymcel takes matters into his own hands and get gains in pursuit of the ultimate Chad-bod. After all, everyone struggles with body image from time to time. So why do women hate him? Or, better yet, why do incels hate him? Hannah and Maia discuss the gymcel and his peculiar role in the ever-expanding Manosphere, giving you a thorough breakdown of all the incel terminology we're sure you've been dying to learn ("looksmaxxing"... "manlets"... "fapstinence"...). Is a figure associated with the worst subsects of the internet worthy of our sympathy? Could the gymcel be more benign than he seems?


Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:
https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast


Intro and Outro song produced by our talented friend Ian Mills:
https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic


SOURCES:
Sara Brzuszkiewicz, “Incel Radical Milieu and External Locus of Control” International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (2020). 
Maddalena Cannito and Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto, “The Rules of Attraction: An Empirical Critique of Pseudoscientific Theories about Sex in the Manosphere” Sexes Vol. 3 (4). 
Hussein Kesvani, ““The Latest Manosphere Subculture is the ‘Gymcel’” Mel Magazine (2019).
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-latest-manosphere-subculture-is-the-gymcel 
Brian Van Brunt and Chris Taylor, Understanding and Treating Incels: Case Studies, Guidance, and Treatment of Violence Risk in the Involuntary Celibate Community, Routledge (2020). 

Gymcels

Rehash: The podcast about the social media phenomenons that strike a nerve in our culture, only to be quickly forgotten - but we think are due for a revisiting. 

Hosted by Maia (Broey Deschanel) and Hannah Raine

Find us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Nobody wants to be a stick waving old man, but what happens when it’s that stick waving old man who’s telling young people to loosen up? After a series of studies from 2021 reported that teenagers are having less sex than the generations before them, a strange phenomenon has unfolded on the internet. Younger people are being morally conservative, older people are responding by calling younger people “puriteens” (puritanical teens), and then other older people are calling those older people “stick waving old men”. In this Patreon bonus episode, Hannah and Maia wade through the muddy waters of this discourse, and attempt to find nuance in what has become a full on panic from all sides. What the hell happened here? Tangents include: Hannah travelling 5 hours to see DJ James Kennedy in Ottawa, and Maia telling everyone in middle school she had an “orgasm” at the New Moon premiere.
Listen now on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast

Puriteens (TEASER)

Full episode available on Patreon: Kristen and Bethany Baird make Christian life advice content on Youtube for their modest audience of 100k followers. But when Cody Ko reacted to one of their videos on his channel, spawning an entire industry of Girl Defined commentary, they became overnight sensations… for all the wrong reasons. Girl Defined certainly spreads harmful fundamentalist views to impressionable young women but, in this bonus episode, Hannah and Maia question whether Kristen and Bethany are always deserving of vitriol. For women coming into their sexualities alongside their audience, it’s important to consider if their advice is hypocritical, or just confused. Tangents include: Nara Smith and the TikTok trad wives, the “Who said I can’t wear my purity era with my converse” era of Disney, and the political theatre of Republican Christianity and its weaponization of Sydney Sweeney’s boobs. Oh - and MANY “69” jokes. 

Girl Defined (TEASER)

If you thought women’s beauty standards were unrealistic before, just wait until you find out about AI porn. Not only do these girlies have cartoonish curves, the faces of young teens, and impossibly long hair… they also have eight fingers on each hand! In this finale episode, Hannah and Maia discuss AI porn, the ways it infringes on bodily autonomy, and its commitment to rendering women’s oldest profession obsolete. You’d think we’d have flying cars by this point, but instead we’re jerking off to the face of Minnie Mouse algorithmically stitched onto Lana Rhoades. Perhaps humanity is more simple that we thought. Tangents include: Maia’s “reply guy” voice, r/doppelbangher, and Hannah fumbling about 15 different analogies.


CORRECTION: Text-to-image generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney do not use GANS. 


Get a whole month of great cinema FREE: mubi.com/rehash


Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:
⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠


Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:
⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic


SOURCES:
Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: A History, Workman Publishing Company (2022).


Samantha Cole, “Pornhub Is Banning AI-Generated Fake Porn Videos, Says They're Nonconsensual” Vice (2018).


Brit Dawson, “Inside the booming AI-generated porn industry” Dazed (2023).


Falon Fatemi, “Look What You Made Me Do: Why Deepfake Taylor Swift Matters” Forbes (2024).


Carl Öhman, “Introducing the pervert’s dilemma: a contribution to the critique of Deepfake Pornography” Ethics and Information Technology (2020).


Emine Saner, “Inside the Taylor Swift deepfake scandal: ‘It’s men telling a powerful woman to get back in her box’” The Guardian (2024).


Kat Tenbarge, “Found through Google, bought with Visa and Mastercard: Inside the deepfake porn economy” NBC (2023).


Jess Weatherbed, “Trolls have flooded X with graphic Taylor Swift AI fakes” The Verge (2024).


James Vincent, “Stable Diffusion made copying artists and generating porn harder and users are mad” The Verge (2022).

AI Porn

…We’re about to go off. Since what feels like the beginning of time (the 60s) dating companies have promised us that our soulmates are out there waiting for us, and they know just who it is. But in this current late stage hellscape, it’s safe to say these companies aren’t as altruistic as they seem. Yes, in this episode, Hannah and Maia talk about everyone’s least favourite drug: dating apps. It comes down to one question: if dating apps could really find us our soulmate, why is it that we’re less horny, and less committal than ever before? Rather than being happily partnered, its appears we’ve all become rizzless, attention deficit, scaredy-cat sex nerds. Are we in crisis? Tangents include: Vanessa Hudgens' monopoly on the “Disney R&B;” market, the “bottle night” guy, and Hannah putting yet another nickel in the Don’t Talk About Taylor Swift jar. 


Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:
⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠


Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:
⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic


SOURCES:
Samatha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex, Workman Publishing Company (2022). 


Ann Friedman, “Overwhelmed and Creeped Out” The New Yorker (2013). 


Dakota Hanson, Swipe, F*ck, Ghost, Repeat: How Dating Apps Changed the Way We Form Relationships and View Intimacy, Debating Communities and Networks XIII (2022). 


Hobbes et al, “Liquid love? Dating apps, sex, relationships and the digital transformation of intimacy” Journal of Sociology (2017). 


Tom Roach, “Becoming Fungible: Queer Intimacies in Social Media” Qui Parle, vol.23 (2) (2015). 


Christine Rosen, “Electronic Intimacy” The Wilson Quarterly, vol. 36 (2) (2012). 


Alexandra Sims, “Sex, love and swiping: How 10 years of Tinder changed us forever” Cosmopolitan (2022). 


Amy Wallace, “Love God From Hell : The Man Who Brought You Videodating Hates to Date, Loves to Taunt and Has Himself Been Unlucky in Love. Would You Buy a Relationship From Jeffrey Ullman?” LA Times (1994). 


Emily Witt, “A Hookup App for the Emotionally Mature” The New Yorker (2022).


Jamie Woo, Meet Grindr: How One App Changed the Way We Connect, Jamie Woo (2013). 

Dating Apps

What do Uber and OnlyFans have in common? Did  camgirilng really originate from a 24 hour live stream of a Trojan coffee pot? And fellas, is it cheating to have an OnlyFans subscription AND a wife? These burning questions (and more) will be answered in this episode, where Hannah and Maia discuss the multivalent world of OnlyFans and the ways it transformed sex work, for better or for worse. It may have been a saving grace for out-of-work people during the pandemic, but is OF a hero of the gig economy, or an agent of it? Tangents include: Twitch’s great grandfather, Justin.tv; the high culture-ification of fast food; and Maia using the term “-ification” till she gets woman’d right off the internet. 


Get a whole month of great cinema FREE: mubi.com/rehash


Support us on Patreon and get juicy bonus content:
⁠https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast⁠


Intro and outro song by our talented friend Ian Mills:
⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic


SOURCES:
Feona Attwood, “Through the Looking Glass? Sexual Agency and Subjectification Online” in New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism, and Subjectivity (2011). 


Steve Baldwin, “Forgotten Web Celebrities: Jennicam.org's Jennifer Ringley” Ghost Sites of the Web (2004).


Marta Biino and Madeline Berg, “The secret of OnlyFans: It's much more than porn” Business Insider (2024).


Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: A History, Workman Publishing Company (2022). 


Charlotte Colombo, “The history of OnlyFans: how the controversial platform found success and changed online sex work” Business Insider (2021).


Gwyn Easterbrook-Smith, “Onlyfans as Gig-Economy Work: A nexus of precarity and stigma” Porn Studies, Taylor & Francis (2023). 


Stacey Diane Arañez Litam, Megan Speciale and Richard S. Balkin, “Sexual Attitudes and Characteristics of OnlyFans Users” Archives of Sexual Behavior (2022). 


Sophie Sanchez, “The World’s Oldest Profession Gets a Makeover: Sex Work, OnlyFans, and Celebrity Participation”, Women Leading Change, vol 6 (1) (2022). 

Gymcels

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