London Has Fallen (E356)

Summary

QAA Podcast Episode 356: "London Has Fallen" — In-Depth Summary

Hosts: Annie Kelly, Jake Rockatansky, Travis View
Date: January 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

The episode “London Has Fallen” examines a burgeoning genre on YouTube: travel vloggers filming in major European cities—most notably London—and painting them as dangerous, crime-riddled, culturally alien “war zones.” The QAA team, led by UK correspondent Annie Kelly, delve into these videos’ racist undertones, their evolution from “authentic” travel journalism to far-right grift, and the long history—stretching back to Victorian “slumming”—of using cities’ diversity and urban poverty as fodder for sensationalist, moral panics. The episode is a mix of humor, historical comparison, media critique, and genuine concern for the impact this content has on online discourse and real-world attitudes.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Phenomenon: Warzone London on Travel YouTube

• Exploding Trend: Annie notes “Travel YouTube” is awash with vloggers breathlessly describing London as terrifying. She wonders, “What exactly is travel YouTube’s problem and why do so many vloggers act like they’ve entered a war zone?” (00:46)
• The Business of Fear: “It’s a guaranteed hit. It’s like I walked around and I was terrified…very strange behaviour.” – Travis View (01:39)
• Rising Radicalization: Annie cites friends who noticed formerly neutral travel vloggers absorbing manosphere/far-right rhetoric and shifting toward fearmongering, anti-immigration content (01:47).

2. The Kurt Kaz Case: AI Fakery & Narrative Contrivance

• AI for Villainization: The South African vlogger Kurt Kaz used AI to doctor thumbnails, swapping friendly locals with menacing, masked figures and inserting fake Arabic script to suggest threat (02:45).
  • “This is so upsetting…in the edited thumbnail, that smiling black man is now just a guy with a ski mask…It looks like they’re in a stare down.” – Jake (02:56)
  • In reality, the “threatening” man was a friendly fan. “An interaction like that would…put wind in my wings for like a week and a half,” Jake quips (05:32).
• Reality Undermines the Narrative: Kaz’s staged anxiety is repeatedly undercut by locals being warm, friendly, or simply indifferent—making his videos a “real-time denial of reality.” Annie calls the inclusion of such footage “comical.”
• Desperate Persisting in Fear: Despite tangible positivity, Kaz’s content is littered with ominous muttering, e.g., “characters like this…are ticking time bombs” (07:50), interrupted by regular, mundane street encounters.

3. The Evolution of Gonzo Racism in Travel Vlogs

• Origins of Kaz’s Persona: Early videos marketed Kaz as a “fearless adventurer” who visited the “grimiest” areas globally, prizing “authenticity” over tourist gloss (10:21).
  • Notable quote from Kaz: “I am in the more local part of town looking for something to eat once again… If you want to see the tourist places, you can just see them on YouTube or Google…” (11:35)
• Shifts in Audience and Tone: While some long-term fans long for “the old Kurt,” racist, fear-mongering content isn’t hurting Kaz’s numbers (12:40). “It’s like the third act of an Internet horror movie—when your fan base starts to switch and you start to cater to the new, darker vibes.” – Jake (13:33)
• Manosphere Aspirations: Kaz’s attempt to pivot toward Andrew Tate-style grifting (a failed “Conquest” forum, now a Nazi-coded clothing store) marks his full embrace of the online far-right (20:09).
• Inherent Exploitation: Old Kaz still exploited poverty and filmed locals with no concern for their welfare, leading to jail time for some—claims made by ex-collaborator Timmy Carter (15:25).
  • “He exposed them. …Now these guys are gonna stay in jail for 20 years because of Kirk.” – Timmy Carter (15:25)
• Misogyny: Annie highlights Kaz’s exploitative focus on women in thumbnails and content, likening it to “sex tourist content” (17:17).

4. The Genre Spreads: “London Has Fallen” Goes Viral

• A Profitable Formula: The “gonzo travel racism content” genre surges, with smaller channel videos on “immigration” and decline in cities vastly outperforming innocuous travelogues (29:52).
• Not Just Foreigners: Native British creators, like Neil McCoy Ward, jump on the trend—frequently targeting diverse districts like Whitechapel and muttering about “change” (40:56).
• The Whitechapel Fixation: Most of these videos are filmed in Whitechapel due to its large Bangladeshi/Asian community, making it a magnet for far-right content (41:02, 81:13).

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5. Political & Cultural Reactions

• “Decline Porn”: The right-wing magazine Spectator dubbed the phenomenon “decline porn”—an “obsession” among American conservatives with proving Western Europe (now Britain, post-Brexit/Trump) has become a cautionary tale about immigration and multiculturalism (45:00).
  • “It’s as if [America’s] telescope had swung slightly to the West.” (43:18)
  • Annie questions the term: “The decline part of the title shies away from how explicitly racialised a lot of this content is.” (46:47)
• Missing the Point: Foreign vloggers routinely mangle local context and history, failing to distinguish between Bengali and Tamil languages or understand Brick Lane’s history, and whining about not finding “authentic British food” in an area celebrated for curry since the 1970s (54:15).
  • “If I wanted to make a video demonizing immigration, I would not be looking at curry houses, which everyone loves.” – Annie (56:39)

6. The Constructed Threat: Islam, Crime, & Fake Peril

• Imagined Danger: Clips from channels like Two Mad Explorers and Carl Rock showcase foreigners palpably anxious about multicultural areas—removing jewelry, nervously whispering, acting as if threatened—in mundane settings.
  • “Being scared outside is just anxiety, guys… it’s so much easier to be like: I think every person walking past me wants to kill me.” – Jake (33:53)
• Islamophobia: Vloggers desperately try to extract conspiratorial admissions from Muslims—without success. “You could not get a clearer example of leading questions…trying to turn something sweet into something sinister,” Annie observes after a failed gotcha interview (65:51).
• Confrontation for Content: The “auditing” subgenre involves goading locals (often at mosques or rough areas) until they get agitated, then using the footage to stoke the narrative or claim victimhood (69:13, 71:17).

7. From Fear to Violence: Monetizing Vigilantism

• Vigilante Justice for Profit: Both Kaz and Tyler Oliveira produce “chase-the-pickpocket” content—violent, misogynistic, and explicitly anti-Romani. Oliveira even censors beatings and sells “uncensored” violent footage via Patreon (77:50).
  • “That’s very disturbing there’s a business model for this… I wish I could see the full street violence.” – Travis (78:45)
• Unintended Irony: The creators, themselves immigrant “foreigners” harassing locals, are seemingly oblivious to the hypocrisy of their anti-immigrant stance (79:38).
• Locals Suffer the Consequences: Shopkeepers and bystanders are routinely harmed or frightened by these self-appointed “crime fighters” (79:38).

8. Historical Perspective: Echoes of Victorian Moral Panics

• Victorian Parallels: The trope of “London as urban hellhole” pre-dates YouTube by over a century. Annie traces nearly identical language—"savages," "alien communities," maps of “threatening” Jews—to Victorian commentary on the East End’s Irish and Jewish immigrants.
  • Long quotes (83:19, 91:16) show writers using “travelogue” conventions to stoke elite readers’ fear and revulsion—precisely the same rhetorical tricks (and neighborhoods) as today.
• ‘Slumming’ as Entertainment: Victorian “slumming,” where tourists paid to gawk at poverty, is compared to modern “urban exploration” content—both a mix of reformist curiosity and prurient entertainment (99:13).

9. The Broader Impact: Reinforcing Prejudice & Shutting Down Curiosity

• Comments Section as Clue: Annie notes that comments on these videos rarely express curiosity about the actual culture or history; instead, viewers proudly assert, “I always used to dream of visiting London. Now I never want to go.” (101:41)
• Content as Justification for Fear: Travis reflects, “It’s designed to inspire revulsion…It reinforces the idea that, ‘I’m glad I’m not there’” (102:02).
• Feed for Radicalization: Jake worries, “It’s another reason to hate groups or people of a certain color or religion you already didn’t like.” (102:48)
• The Anti-Travel Travel Vlog: Instead of igniting curiosity, this genre rewards shutting down: “These channels promise access and insight…But many appear to have found that it’s more lucrative to flatten that world down and render it unworthy of further interest.” – Annie (101:41)
• Closing Take: Annie concludes the genre reduces complex cities to “rage bait,” robbing viewers of genuine understanding and entrenching bigotries—the opposite of what the internet once promised.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “[Kaz’s] modern-day fascists are literally just the meme of the guy putting the stick in his own bicycle wheel and falling over.” – Jake (04:27)
• “I swear to God, these modern day fascists are literally just the meme of the guy putting the stick in his own bicycle wheel and falling over.” – Jake (04:27)
• “How menacing…characters like this…are ticking time bombs.” – Kurt Kaz, satire by Annie (07:50)
• “Who hurt you, dude? What happened to you? Who broke your heart?” – Jake (24:38)
• “There's something fascinating about watching people deny reality, like in real time as it happens to them.” – Jake (06:32)
• “Just the way a lot of these YouTubers are flying by the single metric of what gets clicks—not any ethical practice.” – Annie (18:03)
• “They should have never given us the Internet. They really should not.” - Jake (20:03)
• “Looks like in Bung Bang Bang Bangladesh or something. … This doesn’t look like Europe to you? I don’t see a single Italian here, guys. I’m more Italian than any of these people.” – Kurt Kaz (21:13)
• “It’s like Rick Steves for racists.” – Jake (30:43)
• “Being scared outside is just anxiety, guys.” – Jake (33:53)
• “Staring at words and being frightened.” – Annie (81:49)
• “A concrete jungle…there are dead, dying trees and the world’s ugliest building over there.” – Kurt Kaz (48:00)
• “This is the travel vlog for unhappy people.” – Jake (48:55)
• “If you want to see the tourist places... you can just see them on YouTube or Google, I mean, so boring.” – Kurt Kaz (11:35)
• “It’s just like bum fights, except now they’ve got a twisted ideological justification—they’re exposing the collapse of Western civilization.” – Annie (74:18)
• “If you blurred the face, that would be less clicks. … There’s no other metric.” – Annie (19:18)
• “I can't believe this stuff made it into the final footage—it seems to just be annoying him, undermining what he’s saying.” – Annie (07:07)
• “I love it. This is a whole genre of ‘I go outside and I’m scared.’” – Jake (95:10)
• “These are my favorite kinds of QAA episodes, where you’re like, ‘Things are getting worse!’ and then you research and it turns out it’s always been bad.” – Jake (98:55)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Kurt Kaz’s AI manipulation dissected: 02:35–04:15
• Discussion of gonzo travel racism genre’s growth: 29:52–31:07
• British right-wing “decline porn” discourse: 42:20–44:00
• Historical comparison to Victorian slumming: 91:16–99:13
• Vigilante anti-pickpocketing monetized violence: 75:00–79:38
• The mechanics of auditing/harassment content: 69:13–74:18
• The anti-travel travel vlog as audience comfort: 102:02–104:44

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Tone & Style

True to QAA’s hallmark style, the episode combines well-researched reporting with biting humor and moments of genuine exasperation. The hosts move from sarcasm (“Being scared outside is just anxiety, guys”), to earnestness (“It’s just a nice feature of communities keeping their national character”), to punchy critique (“Rick Steves for racists”), and weave their voices seamlessly with interview and historical audio.

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Final Thoughts

“London Has Fallen” is a revealing look into how online “travel journalism” has become a new front in the culture wars—twisting curiosity about the world into clickbait panic, rehashing ancient prejudices, and sacrificing context, community, and reality itself on the altar of engagement. Despite the comedic asides, the hosts sharply warn listeners against accepting such content—or the internet’s promise of global connection—uncritically.

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For Further Reading/Listening

• Annie’s new miniseries "Truly Tradley Deeply" on the Cursed Media podcast network explores the “tradwife” subculture—and is recommended for more of Annie’s incisive, deeply-researched analysis.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Annie Kelly]

Sam, if you're hearing this, well done.

[Jake Rakatansky]

You found a way to connect to the Internet. Welcome to the qaa podcast, episode 356. London has fallen. As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakatansky, Annie Kelly and Travis View.

[Annie Kelly]

A very happy new year to you all, my beloved QAA listeners. It's your UK correspondent Annie Kelly broadcasting to you today. I'm back from my sabbatical for the Cursed Media podcast network where where I explored the beautiful and deranged world of tradwives on Instagram and TikTok in the miniseries Truly Tradley Deeply. Today, though, I'm going to be taking a much needed holiday from working in the gender minds and I want to talk to you about something completely different. That is, what exactly is travel YouTube's problem and why so many vloggers seem to be obsessed with coming to my country's capital city, London and acting like they've just entered a war zone?

[Travis View]

I mean, yeah, it sounds like, yes, the hottest trend is filming things and acting scared.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, no, completely. I mean, as I was writing this episode, it was actually getting annoying how much more new videos of this type were coming out.

[Travis View]

I mean, yeah, it's a guaranteed hit. It's like I walked around and I was terrified and it's like, I don't know, very strange behavior.

[Annie Kelly]

My interest in this topic began with a chat with a friend of mine. I don't know if this is the same for you guys, but in my social life, I've found that I've become something of an official sounding board for when my friends see something weird online and want to talk about it. This friend said that he'd always enjoyed Travel content on YouTube. Less the polished, aspirational, influencer kind, but more the type which takes you off the beaten track to places that don't tend to be tourism hotspots. But increasingly, my friend said he'd seen a few YouTubers from this space transform and appear to radicalize that many of them had started dropping words and phrases he'd only heard from places like the manosphere or the online far right. Then last month, a small bit of buzz on social media caught my eye. The South African travel YouTuber Kurt Kaz had been caught using AI to alter the thumbnail for his latest video set in London. Here's an image with the original shot from the video next to the thumbnail. Can you guys tell me what subtle differences you spot here?

[Travis View]

There seems to be Arabic characters that are on the shops instead of what was the to the original there. Are you Know, just normal, I guess, English words on the shops.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Okay. And this is so upsetting to look at this picture and see what he's edited. In the original image, he's pointing at a, what looks like a brown skinned gentleman who is smiling at him. The filmer is giving the guy the thumbs up. And in the edited thumbnail, that smiling black man is now just a guy with a ski mask on who's looking menacingly at the host. And the host is no longer throwing a thumbs up to him. He has removed that thumbs up of approval and now it looks like the two are in some sort of stare down.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, that's right. Actually, I hadn't spotted that before, Jake. The thumbs up is gone, which does give it a much more menacing feel, along with. Yeah, giving the guy a balaclava. So it looks like he's kind of menacing the YouTuber. Yeah. Also just the nonsense Arabic AI as well. Like, it doesn't even look convincing. And I'm not pretending to be an expert in Arabic at all. But neither of those, like, look look like it means anything. It actually gets worse when you watch the video, which is called Avoid this place in London. In this clip you can see that the man on the bike who Kaz chose to misrepresent as threateningly approaching him wearing a balaclava was actually just a fan of his who was honestly being friendly.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Oh my God, it was a fan.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, it was a fan.

[Travis View]

I know.

[Jake Rakatansky]

It's not even just like a smiling guy on the street, like, hey, yeah.

[Annie Kelly]

No, he genuinely says like, well, we'll list. But yeah, he likes Kirk Kas's content.

[Jake Rakatansky]

I swear to God, these modern day fascists are literally just the meme of the guy putting the stick in his own bicycle wheel and falling over the.

[Annie Kelly]

Front of the handlebars.

[Kurt Kaz]

So the hostile vibes have begun. Can you pop a wheelie, bro?

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah.

[Kurt Kaz]

Awesome. You're Facebook, innit, cuz? Yeah. Oh, YouTube, Facebook, all of that. What the. Yeah. What's. All right, let's check, let's check, let's check. Okay, okay. I see there are friendly people here too, amongst the hostiles. Oh, there we go. Yeah, Nice one, man. My goodness. Just surrounded by. Surrounded by hostels. Goodness gracious me. You know, it's so strange if you live in a civilized society. Nice one, man. You got some serious skill, huh? If you live in a. I watch.

[Jake Rakatansky]

You all the time.

[Kurt Kaz]

Appreciate it, man. Appreciate it. What's your name again on the kurtz? Kurt. Yeah, that's it, bro. Yeah, you're a Savage as well. Take care, man. I've got the knitties in it as well, innit? Yeah. My brother, good to see you.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Awesome.

[Kurt Kaz]

Likewise, man. Take care. Take care. You see, they are nice people.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Like, an interaction like that would. Would lift. Would put wind in my wings for like a week and a half. Like, if I was walking through London and some guy was like, hey, hey, Jake Rokotensky for the qa. Oh, man.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Subscribe to the premium. Oh. I would walk away from that interaction being like, wow, like, depression. Like, who are you? Like, I'm somebody. You know what I mean? Like, and this guy's like, ah, hostility all around. Like, ah, this guy, he's like, I wish this guy would stop coming up to me and being so good. Damn friendly.

[Travis View]

You can sort of tell how sort of this interaction actually took the wind out of his sails because it's like he's trying to hype up how scary it is, but he keeps being interrupted by this friendly fan who's. Who's smiling and fist bumping and lark riding his bike around and so happy to see him. And so.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Leave him alone.

[Travis View]

Yes, he's so. So he feels a little awkward trying, Trying to hype up how scared he was when obviously that is just not a scary environment he's walking around in.

[Jake Rakatansky]

The guy is trying to do tricks in front of you like your nephew on Christmas. You know what I mean? He's. He's trying to show he's willing to put his own life in danger because you said, bro. You know what I mean? Like. Like this guy is. Oh, this is. Oh, wow. Only on this show do we get. Do I experience this level of my eye. You can't see me, but my eyes are closed. My head is kind of vibrating from left to right. I just. It's amazing to me to watch people deny reality, like in real time as it happens to them. Fascinating stuff. Okay, sorry, I'm derailing. Go.

[Annie Kelly]

No, no, I mean, I really agree. I mean, when I was watching it, I was like, I can't believe this stuff made it into the final footage. Because it seems to. Yeah, as you say, it seems to just. It seems to be annoying him. He's trying to go on this rant about how he's surrounded by hostiles, how threatening everything is. And yeah, it's bizarre to me that he kept this in. In a way because it just so undermines everything that he's trying to say. In fact, right after he gets interrupted by the man showing off his wheelie, he starts to go on Another grim rant about all the hostiles surrounding him, only for yet another local to get curious about what he's doing. Kaz has a friendly exchange with him before getting right back to his dark and gloomy mutterings. It's actually just kind of comical to me how unhostile the supposed hostiles are here.

[Kurt Kaz]

Menacing. There he goes, There he goes. So it's characters like this that live amongst us that are just ticking time bombs. You know, they. Sorry, what's it for? For the Internet. Are you going to show me an Internet? Yes.

[Annie Kelly]

What's the channel?

[Kurt Kaz]

Kurt's. Kaz, you too now you get characters like this that just hang around these city centers that are just ticking time bombs just waiting to.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Erupt, just waiting to calmly walk past me.

[Travis View]

I mean, this is like, I don't know, it's like one of the most famous sort of like television sort of fails in, in history was the story of like a Geraldo who promised he's going to open up Al Capone's vault real time, expecting there'd be some sort of like, you know, weapons or like secret documents or like, you know, wealth inside. And there was nothing inside. And he kind of like, he chose sort of sheepishly admitted that like, yeah, it was kind of a bust. But like this guy is just doing like the Heraldo's vault just I guess like constantly, but in like real life. And it's like he's not the whole shtick about the Herald. This vault thing is. That was live, but this is like this edited thing where like he claims that he's going to find some. Going to this, you know, this scary place to uncover something, something really extraordinary. But it's just really just a pleasant, clean little neighborhood.

[Jake Rakatansky]

It's so funny to imagine this guy like getting really frustrated editing this clip. Cause he's like, ah, he's like, ah, that's a great shot. But the people are smiling there. They look too friendly, like there's too many white people in this frame. Like I gotta lose this. Like maybe if I use this angle just like, just like working extra hard to like try to try to actually have the footage show the narrative that he's, you know, that he's dict.

[Annie Kelly]

And this is still the best he could come up with. There was something intriguing to me about this vignette. Kirk Kaz rose to fame on YouTube five or so years ago by building a profile as a fearless adventurer who takes his audience to the grimier, less tourist friendly sides of Latin America with videos like Drinking Inside Peru's Amazon ghetto and inside the Dominican Republic's most dangerous hood. Boosted by the success of these videos, Kaz traveled even further afield with videos like A Mission Deep into forgotten Vietnam or Extreme Tourism in Bangladesh, which starts with this memorable opening where he hangs off the front of a train with some locals.

[Kurt Kaz]

Good morning. We're on the way to the south of the city to Kamlopur, Bangladesh.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Uplab.

[Kurt Kaz]

Yes, I'm with these guys.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Bangladesh are beautiful.

[Kurt Kaz]

Beautiful that I just met. We're gonna get off at the next station and over there we're gonna go look for some booze. Now, I don't know if you guys know, but Bangladesh is a Muslim majority country, so that's going to be a little bit challenging. I'm up for the challenge, so let's go check it out. This is the railway line here in Dhaka. This is how a lot of the locals that can't afford to buy tickets have to travel outside of the train. My God, is that.

[Travis View]

Damn, that does look like a pretty cool experience.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, that looks awesome.

[Annie Kelly]

Authenticity, the sense that Kaz was showing you real places and real people rather than an advertisement was a big part of his brand. Once you've watched enough of his videos, you can see this becomes a bit of a repetitive refrain in his stream of consciousness style monologues as he wanders around, such as this one from Mexico in 2021.

[Kurt Kaz]

As always, guys, I am in the more local part of town looking for something to eat once again. So let's go. I hate it when people are like, kurt, why do you always go to the local places? Stick to the tourist places. No, that's not why you should go to a country. If you want to see the tourist places, you can just see them on YouTube or on Google. I mean, so boring. I go to the tourist places and the local places to try the special stuff, the good shit.

[Travis View]

I have to say from these clips, he seems like actually a really entertain, really entertaining YouTuber. And see, I didn't get anything from these two clips he showed me. He seemed like a guy I would enjoy watching.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, I was going to ask like, and I know it's probably the answer, probably isn't relevant because videos from a lot longer ago have more time to rack up views. But I guess as I was watching this, I was sort of curious if his new fear mongering, like, you know, racist videos, are they doing better than the. When he genuinely seems to be doing it for the love of the game.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, as you say, it's kind of hard to tell because yeah, as you say, views do accrue. And so unless you're getting like the instantaneous metrics on how well stuff is doing then compared to now, it's sort of difficult to see. But as far as I can tell, his kind of new, very heavily sort of racist stuff does not seem to be doing badly at all. Having said that, this stuff was very popular and I did at one point pop over to his subreddit just to see what I guess people who've been watching him for a long time have been saying. And it seems to be like quite a common theme of people saying there and on his Instagram actually, oh, I miss the old Kurt. When are you going to bring this stuff back? We're sick of you. We're sick of you just wandering around Europe and complaining and starting fights and stuff like that. So I think, yeah, even though it seems to be that this content doesn't seem to be hurting him, it seems that at least some of his fan base are in kind of revolt over it. But I can't tell how much.

[Jake Rakatansky]

And I would have to imagine that he's acquiring new fans based on what the content is like now. So, yeah, that's always such a. It's like the third act of like an Internet horror movie is when your fan base like starts to switch and you start to cater to the new darker. Yeah, the new darker sort of vibes.

[Annie Kelly]

But yeah, as you guys point out, it seems like a drastic change to go from this philosophy of, you know, authenticity, of seeking out the local, of seeing what a country is really like speaking to real people, to just mocking up some AI slop when the local people that you've come to depict as dangerous and threatening don't behave accordingly. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that Kaz's old content was entirely unproblematic. I will admit there is a lot to like. He's not really doing much new with the format. But he's a charismatic guy and it is pretty fun to watch him bounce around busy markets and deserted backstreets all over the world like a human Google street view. He also undeniably has a great ability to interact, joke around and find common ground with people who lead very different lives to his own. But there was always an uncomfortable sense of exploitation watching a well off white guy parading around desperately poor parts of the world for our amusement. Kaz's determination to show his audience the criminal underworld of the countries he was visiting came with pretty severe risks for the people he filmed, a fact he Seemed blithely unconcerned about. There are even allegations that his viral videos may have resulted in jail time for some of the subjects. This claim comes from Timmy Carter, another travel YouTuber and former collaborator of Kaz's, who visited Cuba after him. Carter claimed that locals told him that the subjects of Kaz's videos about criminal activity there, like selling cigars on the black market or street prostitution, had been convicted as a result of his content, which had not blurred out any faces and even in one case showed the location of the cigar seller's house.

[Kurt Kaz]

He exposed them. He doesn't give any a part of the views. He exposed the person's place, what they do, their faces, their names. And now these guys are gonna stay in jail for 20, 20 years because of Kirk. Then he was just chilling on his little taxi. Two girls talked to him. She complained as a tourist, he put hair faces on his video. These two young girls, now they're gonna spend in prison 20 years because of Kurt Kak. And guys, I'm super satter, super angry because wherever I go here in Cuba with my camera, people are looking at me like this because they think I am Kak. Those girls were following us around, waiting for us to invite them somewhere. That's the typical thing here in Cuba.

[Travis View]

You got to be careful.

[Kurt Kaz]

Do not trust every single Cuban hate Kak because he came here and exposed the local people. Guys, Cuba is not like another country. It's not India, Brazil, Colombia that you're going to go there and expose a scammer or you're going to expose something funny. You cannot expose people here, almost everything. It's illegal. And the moment you put this person on a video, he's done. Police comes, police finds him in five minutes, prison, 20 years. You don't understand what, what Cuba is. You don't understand, guys, what this place is. And Kak knew exactly what he was doing because he came here and all of his videos are negative. Avoid these girls in Cuba, but all these videos, guys, he will end up. These guys, these people go to jail because there's a law here in Cuba. It's a very strict law. If you're a tourist here, you are basically a king. And if you're a native here, you're basically a Nobody. And Mr. Kak knew exactly what he was doing because he will never come in Colombia or Brazil do that.

[Annie Kelly]

Wow. Yeah, it's not good.

[Jake Rakatansky]

These little boys with their video cameras, they have no idea the repercussions, you know, the ripples that they create in all of these communities. And then just to not even give us the real shit, by the way, to just come back and use AI to fudge your. You know, to fudge the thumbnail. It's not even real.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. And I know I'm supposed to be taking a break from my work in the gender minds, but you can't really talk about Kaz's content without talking about the way he treats women. He's always been very happy to sexualize the young women that he meets in a way that feels very exploitative, making sure to include the most revealing pose he can manage in the video thumbnail and using suggestive titles like Kenyan Girl Takes Me to Secluded beach or Venezuelan Girl Lets Me in Her House. In that video, when he follows the Venezuelan woman in question up some steps, Kaz zooms in on her body in a way that honestly made me feel more like I was watching sex tourist content than anything else, actually. I don't know why I'm being, like, polite about this. A lot of his content made me feel like I was watching sex tourist content.

[Jake Rakatansky]

He seems like a bad guy.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. Yeah. Or just completely amoral, I guess, in the way that so many of these YouTubers are. Do you know that you just sort of keep on working with what works, what gets views, what gets clicks, and you don't really have any other kind of ethical. Ethical practice other than that. Like, you know, I bet if he'd blurred out the cigar, the Cuban cigar seller's face, then that would have been less clicks for him because people, you know, that's less attractive to people than people seeing that they're watching, you know, something unfiltered, something raw, so he doesn't do it. And, you know, obviously gets more clicks if you put a pretty girl in the thumbnail, if you. Yeah. You know, film her body and things like that. Yeah. Just the way that it feels like a lot of these YouTubers seem to just be kind of working to that rubric and that rubric alone do, you.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Know, and what's so sad to me is that it, like, it costs nothing for him to blur the face and go, guys, I blurred the face here because you don't understand the way things are in Cuban. If I. If I put the man's, you know, face on video, he could be arrested. This. This is. The laws are really strict here. I mean, he could be educated, you know, he could be, but he chooses not to. It doesn't like, expend any more, like, muscle activity to, I don't know, not do it. The way that he, you know, not doing it his way.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, but it probably just gets you, you know, couple thousand, couple 10,000 less views. And if that's the only ratio you're working to, then yeah, why would you.

[Jake Rakatansky]

You're not even thinking about the human being. You're just looking at the data and going, oh, I noticed, like, I noticed this where I was a little bit nicer. I ended up getting, yeah, like 100,000 less views. So, okay, I was really mean in this video and that did very well. So I'm just gonna try energy going forward.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, exactly. It's just like MrBeast AB testing like different kinds of smile or facial expression in his thumbnails. Except. Yeah, except it's just what kind of human you're gonna be.

[Jake Rakatansky]

They should have never given us the Internet. They really should have never. We should have never gotten it.

[Annie Kelly]

From what I could find in my research, it looks like Kaz was actually looking to lean into the manosphere Andrew Tate style guru form of Griff for a while, starting a site called the Conquest, where fans supposedly get access to exclusive videos and the chance to interact with Kaz himself on private forums. But for whatever reason, it didn't seem to work out. Conquest is now just a humble, very ugly clothing store. Kaz's depictions of London, I found, were part of a more recent series where the YouTuber visited European cities like Frankfurt, Brussels, Barcelona and Lisbon and told his audience the same thing about all of their dirty, crime ridden hell holes. And it's all because of mass immigration. It's worth mentioning here too, that this is a large audience that Kaz is speaking to. At my last count, it was just over 4 million subscribers. It seemed bizarre to me that that many people could be interested in watching Kaz kick around the streets of these major cultural hubs and offer nothing more interesting than the repeated whine over and over that these major cities are home to lots of people who aren't white. Here he is in Rome, for example.

[Kurt Kaz]

Look at this. Look at the f ing states of the city. This is Rome, guys, like the Casbah. This looks like in Bung Bang Bang Bangladesh or something. Look at this, guys. Look at the state of this place. Look at this, guys. This is Rome. This is Europe. Does this look like Europe to you? I don't see a single Italian here, guys. I am more Italian than any of these people.

[Travis View]

Well, I mean it looks like, oh my God. I mean it looks like, you know, in international city that has a lot of tourists from all over the world in It.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. I mean, this is. Yeah. So some of you might know that my husband Paul does a podcast about ancient history, and he actually just lost his mind when I told him about this clip. He just couldn't. He couldn't get his head around it. He was like, rome, you're going to Rome and complaining that there are lots of people from different countries doing commerce there. Like, do you. Do you know. How do you know about anything about the city where you are?

[Jake Rakatansky]

This is like going to Thai town or like Korea town in LA and pulling the camera out and be like, look at this, guys. Look at. Korean people are taking. Does this look like America to you? Does this look like America to you? Korean people. Look, another car dealership. Korean people, they're taking over everything. Or coming up to my neighborhood and being like. And being like, oh, the Armenians are taking. They've taken over America. I'm more American than anybody here. It's just. I don't know, part of me is like, the people who like this content and the people who watch it and go, wow, wow, this country is being invaded. You know, they already believed that. You know, they already want to believe that. I think it's. There's so little space between common sense of being like, oh, he's just going to, like, a local, like, market. Like, he's just going to, like, a market. I don't know. It's crazy.

[Annie Kelly]

Here's how he introduces a video about Berlin.

[Kurt Kaz]

Guten Morgen, and welcome to the biggest shithole in all of Europe, full of lefties, crackies, engineers and doctors and scammers. It's the Wild west out here, guys. The good, the bad and the ugly, minus the good parts. Just the bad and the ugly and pretty gay.

[Travis View]

Oh, this seems so far removed from his video in, like, I guess, Bangladesh, where he's like, riding on a train, where he's like, you know, he seemed very interested and excited and how unusual is he, like, just sharing sort of this, this. This local experience here. He's just sort of like strolling through a town just about how angry and scared he is.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, exactly like it. I don't know. You know, I sometimes think we can. There's a bit of a liberal naivety, I think, in this understanding that travel will always necessarily kind of broaden someone's horizons and make them more tolerant and accepting. I think that's. That's true for some people, but it's obviously not true for everyone. Do you know. But I do sometimes struggle to. I mean, that video in Bangladesh was like a Year ago. I do sometimes struggle to kind of reconcile this kind of very adventurous kind of style that he's putting on. And as you say, kind of. Yeah, just walking through Berlin or Rome or wherever and just not even finding a single thing to enjoy. Not even finding a single thing to say, oh, this is cool, or this is interesting. Just constant whining and grumbling. Yeah.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah. As I was watching this video, I was asking him in my head, like, who hurt you, dude? Like, what happened to you? Like, who broke your heart? Something. I don't know. There's something. Something happens, I think, that has to make you want to Tate ify yourself. You know, he's got that Andrew Tate kind of slime about him. And I don't know. Like, I think that the guy who's on the front of the train enjoying a local thrill, I would say that's, you know, genuine to the area that he's exploring, to this. It's like, I feel like something has to happen. Maybe we'll get. Maybe we'll find out. I don't know if you came across anything in your research.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, I mean, I saw something. People speculating, actually, that on his subreddit. And again, I don't really know how true this is because I didn't really dig too deep into it, that, yeah, he had a breakup at one point with, you know, a girl who featured in some of his videos. And they sort of said, oh, after that, he started getting kind of a bit more, like, bitter, a bit more, you know, manosphere oriented. But I think it's also just kind of more likely that he just got radicalized. I think one thing that we've talked about on this podcast before, that I think people who don't really know much about radicalization are often surprised by is how quick it is. Right. We see that with QAnon and things like that, how people kind of think there's gonna be this really long, slow kind of marinading. But often people. It really does seem like people do flip in a very short space of time. And as I say, you know, you can see with the stuff like Cuba, that that kind of callousness, that kind of indifference to other people was always there in him, even when he was doing the more fun, adventurous content. Yeah, yeah. It's tough to say.

[Jake Rakatansky]

It's interesting. Well, and I was gonna add to that that, you know, that callousness, like, the idea. I'm trying to imagine a career in which the sort of. The vibe is like, ugh, I have to go to another like, overrun, dangerous, scary place. And, like, let everybody know that, like, it's not safe to travel here anymore. Like, the idea of being like. Of like travel itself sucks. Like, the planes. The planes are getting smaller. The tickets are getting more expensive. The snacks. The snacks are getting barer. And, you know. But to imagine to be getting on, to be traveling all these places, going like, oh, all right. Well, if not like the former, what I just said, then it's like, okay, I'm heading into this place and I've got to make it look as shady, as unsafe, as scary for white people as possible. Like, that is just imagine going into every situation looking for the scariest, most negative thing. Or like, yeah, expecting that it's going to be like that. I don't think this guy is going, like, I'm gonna go to Hawaii and have like, a really good time. And then he gets there and he's like, oh, I'm actually. This place is, like, kind of scary. It's like me when I went to New Orleans for a wedding, and I was like, out during the day and I was like, this is beautiful. I was like, all the food and the music echoing in from. Oh, this is, like, wonderful. But then the sun went down and, like, the streets started to get. Get filled. And it was like a bunch of, like, really drunk people. And people were flashing, flashing and getting beads. And it wasn't even Mardi Gras. I was like, they do the flashing and the beads the whole year round. And like, I was like, these people.

[Kurt Kaz]

Oh, no.

[Jake Rakatansky]

And everybody was getting so drunk and aggressive and there's like a huge police presence. Cause, like, it's fucked up. Like, you know, they're out there making sure people are safe. And I was like, oh, I'm scared now, actually. Like, I gotta get back to my hotel. But it was, you know, that was a discovery in the moment. I didn't go there being like, I'm gonna be so fucking scared. These drunk at night, they're having so much fun. And, like, I'm scared, but, like, I gotta let other, like, stoners know that, you know, at nighttime, you know, the drunk people. The drunk people are out. They got more energy than you. They got the cocaine.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, I'd love to see. I'd love to see that travel vlog. That sounds very entertaining, but.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, exactly. It's like, I don't know. This seems exhausting to me. So I have to imagine he must be making money. I looked at the merch shop. Very bad.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah.

[Jake Rakatansky]

It's so ugly, isn't it and it's all like Norse. It's like Nazi coded Norse writing and having the word conquest split up. Like, I'm sure there's like, I'm sure at night when he's like really drunk or whatever, he's like. And check it out. If you fold the conquest label three ways, it makes a perfect swastika.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. I mean, it's like camouflage. So it's like camo kind of tops and caps and things like that. And then it's got the kind of, as you say, the sort of Nordic rune writing which says conquest. Even if I didn't know about the merch and its association with KIRK Kaz, this YouTuber, if I saw anybody wearing that, I would get the yoke.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah. I mean, and like, he is not going to these places to conquer them. He is not embodying his brand because he gets there and he's just like, I'm so scared. He's like, look at this market. He's like, they're selling bok choy or something in Rome.

[Annie Kelly]

Now, being totally fair to Kaz, I started this episode focusing on him because of the AI thing, but he didn't invent this kind of material. In fact, as I began watching more of his videos and then what YouTube suggested to me next, I found that this kind of gonzo travel racism content was an entire genre on the platform. And it's extremely successful. In fact, if you're a small travel vlogger trying to get your name out there, this kind of content might even be the key to getting your views of out up on some of the smaller channels I started looking into, you could see that their more innocuous inoffensive content called stuff like Hiking Poland's biggest mountain range or Journey to Tibet's sacred lake, languished in terms of view count. But any title with a negative slant about famous European cities like London, Paris or Berlin, and particularly if they mentioned immigration, Sharia law or Islam soared up.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Well, you know, if you are a racist American, this is how you can see the world. It's like Rick Steves, you know, hey, you know, you don't want, you don't want to get on a plane. You can't afford the expensive plane tickets only for the elite. Well, guess what, you can go to all these places too and experience them the way that you would have experienced it.

[Annie Kelly]

Even though this seems to be a popular theme in lots of European cities, today's episode is going to focus on the material that's specifically being made about London. That's mostly because it's the city that I know the best, but also because it seems to be a particularly hot spot for this trend right now. And I think the political reasons behind that are worth exploring. As someone who used to live in London, it really is baffling to me that there's so much appetite for videos of people wandering around some of its most diverse areas, grumbling under their breath about how few white people they can see. It feels very fork founding kitchen, but it seems there's an incentive because it keeps getting made. Here's another example from a smaller channel than Kirk Kaz's called two mad we.

[Kurt Kaz]

Made it to Whitechapel. I'm not going to lie to you. Guys, guys, man. Out of every 20 people, like out of every 20 people that we walk past, maybe two of them are actually English. It's a bit of a shock. We see videos, like we saw videos online about how bad the situation is here in London, but I didn't realize like the actual extent it's a mad situation. This doesn't look any different. This area here, which is the markets, all of this stuff here now these have probably been here for quite a long time. I don't know. The last time, the last time that I was in London would have been in 2016, so it's quite a while ago. But these markets here, man, this looks like we just dropped ourselves into a slightly more developed, slightly cleaner India, Bangladesh, somewhere like.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Like that.

[Annie Kelly]

No, if you go to Delhi, you.

[Kurt Kaz]

Want to see Indian culture.

[Annie Kelly]

If you go to Shanghai, you want to see Chinese culture.

[Kurt Kaz]

If you go to England, at least.

[Annie Kelly]

In London from a tourist perspective, it's quite difficult to find people of English ethnicity. And I'm actually, I'm saying this really quietly because I'm scared that somebody's gonna try to hit me basically, which I've never been. Been scared like this while filming videos.

[Travis View]

Usually, you know, it's very weird because, I don't know, I. When I think about like, I guess travel literature from like even like going back centuries that, you know, it was all about like how brave the traveler was and how, how they, you know, they went to new places and did crazy things. Like I went to Peru and I fought off a jaguar. I, I had, I ate roasted leaf cutter ants with the locals and like, even though it was, was strange to me, I was able to brave through it. I wasn't scared at all. But like these people, it's like they're doing the, doing the opposite. They're doing really mundane things very Boring. They're just walking through the streets. That's, like, not. Not particularly interesting. They're talking about how terrified they are.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah. Being scared outside is just anxiety. Guys, like, they're just so uncurious that, that instead, it's so much easier to be like, I think every, every person walking past me wants to kill me.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. I mean, there's, there's a bit in that video. I haven't clipped it for this episode, but there's where they leave their Airbnb. That couple, I believe they're a couple, and they're sort of very dramatically taking off all of their rings, all of their jewelry. They're like, if you want to go outside in London, don't take anything you love with you. And then the woman, she's walking through a park, which I have walked through. I've walked through at daytime. I've walked in, I've had drinks there in daytime. I've walked through alone at night. Like, it's a safe park. I've been there a lot of times. And she's kind of near tears because she was saying, oh, I really didn't want to come here. You know, I'm so scared coming here. And it sort of seems very genuine and I'm just like, oh, yeah, it's just because you've watched all this content of other people being scared in London. It's almost this kind of weird, like, circle where they consume all of this content. The guy, even at the beginning, he references, oh, we've seen videos of how bad it is here. Then they come and reproduce that content because that content's taught them to be scared.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, it's like they're like RP ing a scared person abroad. Because I don't. I mean, I haven't seen any videos of these people being, like, assaulted or anything, you know, something that would make them, you know, potentially worried. In fact, the only things that I've seen in all of the examples, at least, that, that you've shown are people being really nice or coming up and saying they're fans or, you know, it's, it's really, it's fascinating. And I see. I feel like this is such a pattern in so much of the, like, right wing influencer content and just the right wing kind of vibe in general is this, like, imagined oppression and this imagined threat that they. I don't know. I don't know that It's, It's. I don't know if they believe it really, or if it's just like an easy way to Live, because it takes. I don't know, it. It sort of takes you out of the picture is just like, hey, I'm just trying to survive, you know, I don't know.

[Annie Kelly]

Here's another example, which is Carl Rock, who's an expat Kiwi living in India, getting in on the trend. Now, to Rock's credit, his video is much less explicitly racialized than lots of the other ones I've seen. But it still seems to follow a similar pattern of going to a very multiracial area in Lond and gawking at the locals while talking up the danger in the most hysterical terms. Brixton is actually a part of London. I know pretty well. I have family there, and I've walked through these places alone thousands of times since I was a teenager. So seeing it talked about like this felt pretty surreal.

[Kurt Kaz]

People say that India is unsafe, but I've seen a lot here in Brixton, London, England. It's another world, man. It's just zombies standing in the street here. Crazy, man. Can you believe this is in London? And you won't believe this, but this is a police station right here. Right behind me here, that's the police station. And all this is happening right outside. I can't make this up. There's somebody else drugged out here now as well. Look at this guy. This place, Brixton, is so dodgy. Everybody's just out of their mind here. Second guy, in just a couple of minutes, there's dudes shooting up in the side lanes here. What's going on, man? There's even dudes on the corner stuff. It's like that TV show the Wire.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Just a metropolitan area to me, it looks like, to me.

[Travis View]

No, no, every. Every. Every urban area in the world has street vendors.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah.

[Jake Rakatansky]

He's like, everybody is so fucked up. As the camera zooms in on one fucked up guy.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not pretending that London is perfect and is perfectly run. You know, I think it is sad when you see someone who clearly got a drug problem on living on the streets and someone, you know, you sort of think, oh, there should be, you know, there should be better services in place to help them. There should be. London has a real homelessness problem, which, you know, that is a. That is a problem that we could be doing more to solve. So I kind of want to be clear on this. I'm not sort of. I'm not sort of being a sort of defensive person saying, you know, no one can come to London. And criticize our many problems. But I think stuff like this is not doing that. It's. You know, I think it's simplistic. I. I think it's sensationalist. I mean, with stuff when he's going, oh, there's someone on. Someone on drugs, and he calls them a zombie. And then it's like, oh, and right outside a police station, it's like, well, what are the police supposed to be doing? They're supposed to be just rounding up and arresting all of the drug addicts so that you. You, the tourists, can get your perfectly clean streets. Cause I don't think. I don't think that's somewhere I'd like to live either.

[Jake Rakatansky]

I also think that it's worth being said that if you have these white guys, these bald white guys with lots of tattoos and big beards, because when they turn the camera around to selfie mode, it's always like. Like a bald white. Hey, no offense, as a. As a. Somebody who's headed towards being a bald white guy. But it's like the tattoos, the big beards. The last guy that we just watched had, like, an Adolf Hitler haircut. So it's like. I think it's worth being said that you see these guys talking to themselves with either their phones out in front of them or worse, like some kind of camera, like GoPro on a stick or whatever, just coming into these areas and looking like kind of like on guard. And they're videotaping and they're talking to themselves. People are. I'm gonna look at that person weirdly. I'm gonna be like, what are they up to? What are they filming? What kind of content are they making? Like, what is this guy? You know? And that in turn, they're like, ah, Everybody's kind of looking at me funny as I walk through the street, muttering to myself angrily with a camera in my hand.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, definitely. I think, like, the few occasions I've seen where someone really does kind of confront them. We'll get to a few examples later. But just off the top of my head, quite a lot of the time, it's when they're, like, filming outside a mosque or somewhere like that. And usually, yeah, you know, a young Muslim guy kind of comes up and it's like, what are you doing? And I always think they always sort of have this kind of pretend sort of indignation where they're like, oh, why is this guy, like, bothering me? I'm just filming. And it's like, no, come on. That man knows exactly what kind of content you're making. He knows exactly what you're saying.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Exactly.

[Annie Kelly]

He correctly understands that you were a threat. Yeah, yeah, I think the sort of like faux naivety about that can really bother me. And I wish I could just pretend that this was a problem of ignorant foreigners coming to our country and then suffering a heart attack when London doesn't look like it did in Mary Poppins or the Muppets Christmas Carol. But it seems there are even British content creators who are willing to debase themselves with this kind of stuff. Here's Neil McCoy Ward, one of those slightly predatory seeming finance channels who seems to do a sideline in what he calls Real City tours. Here he walks around Whitechapel. We'll talk about this a bit more later, but nearly all of these videos are filmed in Whitechapel, largely because it's got a large Bangladeshi community. This makes it a particularly ripe target for anyone who has found that there's easy money to be made in filming Asian people peacefully going about their business. While you mutter about how extreme everything is. Got the Metropolitan Police here closed off.

[Kurt Kaz]

This road for some reason.

[Jake Rakatansky]

And this is just a random walk, by the way.

[Kurt Kaz]

I haven't planned this route. I'm not.

[Annie Kelly]

I'm literally just walking down the street.

[Kurt Kaz]

I can see why so many of.

[Annie Kelly]

You said that the video of London I did each year isn't a true reflection. Then again, I don't know if this.

[Kurt Kaz]

Is a true reflection.

[Travis View]

This is a pretty extreme.

[Kurt Kaz]

So I think you got to take.

[Annie Kelly]

A balance of a bit of both.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Cheers for that.

[Annie Kelly]

Okay.

[Kurt Kaz]

Seen a white guy.

[Travis View]

Shouted that too loud.

[Annie Kelly]

Everyone I've spoken to, at least in this country, seems to recognise what I'm talking about when I mention this kind of content. The narrative that the UK is slowly collapsing and its lawless multi ethnic capital city is at the center of its decline is extremely popular on social media and in the right wing press here. But despite its prevalence, it's been hard for me to find some kind of analysis of this content, or even a name for it. Strangely enough, the closest I've managed to find is from an unexpected source, the British right wing outlet the Spectator. In a podcast episode from last month called why is the US Obsessed with Britain's Decline There? The conservative journalists all commented on the fact that on their visits to the United States they had been subject to baffling interactions with Americans acting as if they were greeting a refugee from the Mad Max you universe.

[Kurt Kaz]

I had an American friend visit a few weeks ago and she called me and said, I'm Going to stay in.

[Annie Kelly]

This location in London.

[Kurt Kaz]

Can you tell me if the area is safe?

[Annie Kelly]

She was staying in Knightsbridge.

[Jake Rakatansky]

I said the only robbery you will face there is the cost of the minibar. Right.

[Kurt Kaz]

But still, there is a popular idea abroad in America that we are some kind of ground zero in the decline of Western civilization. Civilization. And I think it's worth remembering that 10 years ago, America thought this way about France.

[Annie Kelly]

At the time of the 2016 election.

[Kurt Kaz]

It was post Charlie, Hebdo, Bataclan, etc, and much of the discourse in America was about you don't want to become France. Since then it's become, you don't want to become Britain.

[Annie Kelly]

And that's because Britain's got real problems, which we can discuss. But it's also because of a political.

[Kurt Kaz]

Phenomenon which is the marrying of Trump and Brexit. And as a consequence of that, America is just more conscious of what's going on in Britain than it used to be.

[Annie Kelly]

It's as if its telescope had swung slightly to the West.

[Kurt Kaz]

And I think this is also a product of Trump himself.

[Jake Rakatansky]

He's an intelligent, intelligent person.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. I mean, it's funny because he is right about it being Paris and France. That 10 years ago, I think really was alive in the online American rights imagination. I remember Lauren Southern, who was I guess the alt right pinup girl of the time, making this video where she, she just called it like walking through Paris or something. And it was, it was kind of exactly like this content. She's just walking around and sort of filming all of these non white people. She doesn't have any, include any commentary with it. I think it's just meant to speak for itself, like, wow, can you believe this is Paris? And yeah, I remember it going semi viral at the time. And I don't know, I remember to trying sort of at the time thinking like, well, what's Paris supposed to look like? You know, it's not, it's not Paris's fault that you think it should look like Beauty and the Beast or something like that. Do you know, like it's a major, major metropolitan city. It doesn't look like it does in your kind of sort of quaint, picturesque, you know, sort of fairy tale imagination. But yeah, I think it's, I thought it was a good point essentially that this kind of content actually has quite a long history and that it is connected with, with what is happening on the American right. So, yeah, maybe my expectations of conservative commentators in this country are too low, especially since one of those invited on the podcast was Former Unherd editor Ed west, who wrote the book the Diversity Illusion, which the Guardian described as a brazen and breezily written polemic against multiculturalism. But I thought that the episode actually ended up being a pretty thoughtful discussion on the anti London social media phenomenon, which they labelled decline porn. West and Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Stanley speculated, I think fairly, this online doomerism about London's future might actually say more about American anxieties about race and empire than the city itself.

[Kurt Kaz]

I mean, I think in terms of prestige and relative wealth, Britain did start to decline after the Second World War. We did fall apart behind lots of other European countries. I mean, Britain was the wealthiest country in Europe in 1938, for instance. And we did massively fall behind after. I mean, in the 70s, during our last sort of moment of crisis, Britain was a cautionary tale as well. In 1973, 74. American politicians were always saying, you don't want to end up like Britain. It's this kind of basket case. And it was. That wasn't entirely dissimilar to now. I mean, I totally agree your point about, you know, all these comparisons are about internal politics because deep down, almost everyone cares far more about what's happening in their own little part of the world and they just use foreign countries as a kind of projection. And obviously elements of the American rights become obsessed with second war because they didn't want any foreign entanglement. They don't want an empire, they don't want the mass immigration that follows an empire. And Britain is obviously the preeminent example of that in modern times. So, I mean, I agree in that case, that's my salient point. I'm just saying to British viewers, when.

[Annie Kelly]

You see Americans slagging off Britain, be.

[Kurt Kaz]

Conscious, they're not really discussing us, they're discussing themselves and they're using us. And I think misreading our history and our current situation in order to make a political point about now.

[Annie Kelly]

I can see the use of a term like decline porn, as it does convey both the gratuitousness of a lot of this content and the fact that, just like porn, much of what you're watching is staged or simulated in some way. But being honest, I don't really like using porn for things that aren't actually pornographic. And I also think the decline part of the title shies away from how explicitly racialized a lot of this content is.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, I was going to say, like, why is a decline associated with, like, seeing people of color? That's essentially all it is.

[Annie Kelly]

Right, yeah. Exactly. Like, you can think London is declining and you can think the UK is declining, but I think that's very separate from saying there's too many immigrants here, which is nearly always the main thrust of these videos. Do you know?

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, I guarantee that these guys could go to like, I don't know, whatever the equivalent of like, I don't know where, you know, some kind of like shopping center or whatever, you know, or, you know, a neighborhood, some, you know, a neighborhood somewhere and be like, oh my God, it's all white, you know, like you do that anywhere. You can do that anywhere, literally.

[Annie Kelly]

For my own shorthand purposes, I've started calling this the London has fallen genre. Mostly because that's the general vibe of the videos, but also because that phrasing or something like it is commonly uttered by the video makers themselves or even used as a title. The Londoners fallen genre consists of highly pessimistic walk and talk videos, usually in areas which are specifically pre selected for having a lot of non white faces, graffiti, litter or anything else that the video maker can think that symbolises the supposed collapse of western civilization. Like ugly art deco buildings, for instance.

[Kurt Kaz]

How dystopian does this look? It's just a concrete jungle. There's like some dead, dying trees over there that's falling apart and you've got the world's ugliest building over there. And then a fairly ugly new building.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Oh my God, this is crazy. This is insane to me. Like, this guy must have like VR goggles on that's showing him something totally different because this just looks like a very nice street, actually.

[Travis View]

I mean, again, I am baffled by how popular these are because I actively avoid situations where I'm around someone who constantly complains about stuff that isn't that worth complaining about, who constantly whines about things that are, that are fine or otherwise pleasant. But this is a whole very profitable genre of YouTube video where people just sit down and watch people just walk and complain. Walk and complain.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, this is. This is the travel vlog for unhappy people. This is. We've needed to make content for these guys. Actually. They've been a forgotten audience of just like miserable complainers who never wanna leave their house. But it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I'd like to see what London looks like, but I don't wanna be told that I'm missing out on something great. I wanna be told that I'm right to avoid this hellhole and I'm safer because of it, and yet also entertained by, you know, the sort of Imagined scenario of the content creator putting themselves in danger.

[Annie Kelly]

Exactly how politically direct London has fallen, content creator wants to be is up to them. Many of them, like Kirk Kaz, are fairly open about their political allegiances. Kaz has collaborated with far right European politicians before, such as Alfonso Goncalves from the far right ethno nationalist activist group Reconquista. Here's how he introduces himself in Kaz's video about Lisbon.

[Kurt Kaz]

My name is Afos Gonsalves.

[Annie Kelly]

I am the founder and leader of.

[Kurt Kaz]

Reconquista, the biggest political movement in Portugal. And we are here today in Lisbon in the area of Martimoniz, to show my friend Kurt all the degeneracy, all the chaos, all of the uncomfortable areas here in Lisbon because of immigration, because of multiculturalism.

[Annie Kelly]

Meanwhile, Tyler Oliveira, a former MrBeast wannabe challenge YouTuber who's become probably one of the biggest channels creating this kind of content, has interviewed Lutz Backman, founder of the far right anti Islamic movement, which Pegida, when he came to the UK to film footage for his video England is on the brink of civil war. Naturally, he interviewed Backman's English counterpart, Tommy Robinson, who unsurprisingly gave the same rant about upcoming civil war that he's been giving for decades, with some great replacement conspiracy stuff thrown in for good measure. 2013, I looked at the demographics increase by 2030.

[Kurt Kaz]

So in those 17 years, the projected growth of the communities, and I looked at the different wards for Lulan, which is my hometown, to look at the.

[Annie Kelly]

Problems, the Pakistani and Bangladeshi community were going to increase by 70 to 77%. The white and the black by 1.3 to 1.4%.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah.

[Annie Kelly]

So what do Labour know? If you're projecting and you're looking at the future, where does the future lie? When we started fighting in Luton against this.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah.

[Annie Kelly]

Well, the leader of the council was there, her name's Hazel Simmons, and we.

[Kurt Kaz]

Went to the meeting and she said.

[Annie Kelly]

There'S not enough of you.

[Kurt Kaz]

She laughed at us. There's not enough of you because their power doesn't.

[Annie Kelly]

Their power and their future is from the Muslim community and they know it's not theocracy. They will use democracy to end democracy at the same time. As someone who knows quite a bit about the British far right, it feels interesting to me how many of these content creators are happy to feature them in their videos to get that sense of local legitimacy, but clearly aren't at all familiar with their complaints or the general political landscape here at all. Here, another American YouTuber called Nate Friedman, for example, who also interviewed Robinson, comes across a poster advertising a left wing protest against the current Labour government and is completely unable to decipher it. He talks about Starmer being the one who let all the immigrants in, when basically anyone who spent time with the British right know that they refer to the post Brexit surge in non EU immigration as the Boris wave.

[Kurt Kaz]

Build a socialist opposition to Starmer.

[Jake Rakatansky]

So this is the guy who brought.

[Kurt Kaz]

Everybody in and yet they want to.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Stop the government cuts.

[Kurt Kaz]

The benefits are not enough. And this goes on for a while.

[Annie Kelly]

The irony is you see flyers that also say say no to racism. While whitechapel looks like this. And it used to be a majority white city, London still is a majority white city. Just to clarify, I mean, I think it's, you know, it's not, not by a lot, but I think it still is.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Also, what's wrong with like demographics changing in the same place? You know, my grandfather grew up in Watts, which was like a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Like now it's predominantly like black. And I don't know, there's not like, I don't see any like Jews going into Watts and being like, oh, we used there used to be a menorah shop right here and now it'd be like they. And on the, and on the opposite street, my favorite yarmulke shop gone.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. And I think it's interesting because that demographic change is happening in boroughs of London to the opposite extent. Right. There are areas that used to be much more predominantly black and they've become gentrified, they've become a little bit posh. It's happened to lots of places, sort of in the zone two and zone three. But these, obviously these YouTubers never show you those parts because that's not telling the story that they wanted to. To tell. Perhaps it's unfair to ask a foreigner to understand the ins and outs of British immigration or benefits policy, but it feels to me that if you're going to make a video talking about it, you could at least get basic details right. But having watched a lot of this content, it feels like the vloggers sheer ignorance of the place they're coming to as part of the package here. For example, after mistaking Bengali for Tamil, two mad explorers wander into literal Brick Lane, a street in London that has been famous for its curry houses since at least the 1970s, and whine that they can't find any proper British cuisine.

[Kurt Kaz]

You've got a typical mural here where you've got Tamil and it's in the Tamil colors as well. It's actually kind of similar enough colors to, like, Tamil Tigers or something like that. Brick Lane, Ei. And then underneath, you've got more Tamil as well. And this is the sari squad. Yes, guys. So we made it to Brick Lane, and believe it or not, they have all of the authentic British food here. You've got Indian kitchen, Bangladeshi kitchen. You have a Bengal village, which is, again, I believe, somewhere in northern India. It's the finest Indian cuisine there. The yellow one and the green one is a Balti house as well. And then you also have a Turkish or an Indian barber shop as well there. So you've got everything that you could need. And don't worry, across the road as well, you have an international supermarket. All of the things that accurately represent.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Where we are, I thought he was going to say. And across the road you can see, like, a big white family that's there to enjoy some Bengali cuisine. I'm sure it was just, like, the most, like, white people in the world that were just, like, walking there, being, like, cool, like, where should we eat?

[Annie Kelly]

Well, yeah, because it's a tourist attraction. Brick Lane, like, you only go there for. Well, I think they've got two very famous bagel joints there as well. But many people go there for a curry. Like, that's what it's famous for.

[Jake Rakatansky]

I swear, this is so stupid. This literally. I know I said it before, but this literally is, like, going to, like, Chinatown and being like, China is taking over America. Like, it is the dumbest, easiest. How easy? I mean, you know, I get why this is so popular. It costs nothing to walk down the streets and complain. These guys are just doing it out loud into a camera and then posting it online and editing it instead of just like everybody else, or. I can only speak for myself, but I just do it in my head. I walk around, I complain in my head. That's, you know, that's what you do.

[Travis View]

That's.

[Jake Rakatansky]

I don't know. Seems like a lot of whole lot of work.

[Travis View]

You know, I've acquired most of my understanding of British dining habits from watching Peep show and from watching that. I did notice that they do frequently eat curry and Indian food. I just assumed it was just a normal part of, like, it is like. Like it's part of mine, you know, I mean, like, I go out for Indian, I guess, a couple times a year because there's. There are a few good restaurants around here, and they're delicious.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. I mean, I think that's what strikes me about this as well, it's like even, even the most committed racists in this country love curry. If I wanted to make a video demonizing immigration, I would not be looking at curry houses, which everyone loves. Everyone agrees that Indian food is great. Do you know, like, even the most committed racists in this country have begrudgingly have to admit that what they say is like, well, you know, we've got the recipes, we don't. So it just feels like a. Yeah, it feels like a foolish move basically to point to what is undeniably one of. Yeah, the most well loved contributions of Indian and Bengali and Pakistani immigrants to this country.

[Jake Rakatansky]

You know, I used to be almost exclusively a chicken tikka masala and saag paneer guy, but recently I've discovered that you can get the like tikka masala, you can get the same kind of curry, but instead of chicken, you can get the paneer, the like fried cheese in it. And if you get it a little bit spicy, it's like a paneer tikka masala with like a little bit of spice. And that right now is probably one of my. It's one of my top ten flavors.

[Annie Kelly]

Oh, yeah, no, that's nearly always what I order as well because I'm, Yeah, I'm trying not to eat meat so much. So, yeah, usually if they've got a paneer option, I go for that. It's real good.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Do you. How are you with the spice? Do you like real spicy or more on the mild side?

[Annie Kelly]

I am. Well, I wouldn't think of myself as. I don't know, I'm not one of those lads who's just like, always got to get the hottest thing on the menu. Always got to get the vintage.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, you're not a spice chaser. You're not a spice chaser. You don't go seek it out. But you know, if they, when they're saying mild, medium or spicy, you go, I'm okay with spicy if everybody else is.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. When I get my Nando's order, I get the hot version. So that's like not the most hot sauce you can get, but it's like the second.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, I go through phases. Sometimes I like it really. Sometimes I'm really craving spice. And then sometimes my tummy just decides like, nope, like, not today. And then I'm like kind of traumatized from it for a little bit. So it's sort of like ebbs and flows. I'm just talking about, like, it's just a Jewish. Just a Jewish tummy. It's all it's nothing, you know, nothing out of the ordinary.

[Annie Kelly]

No doubt fans of the Londoners fallen genre would retort that two Mad Explorers shouldn't have to learn the difference between Tamil and Bengali to visit London, an English city. But it feels conspicuous to me how these supposed die hard defenders of Western civilisation actually don't really seem to know the first thing about that either. I'm sorry to keep picking on these two, but they do make it very easy. Here's one half of two Mad Explorers again, this time struggling to articulate what he likes about Westminster Abbey.

[Kurt Kaz]

Absolutely beautiful. Westminster Abbey. The style of this is just gorgeous. I don't even have the proper words to describe it. You have the bollards here, things to stop vehicles from ramming in to Westminster palace, which is just behind us as well. And again, similar style, just drop dead gorgeous. The history, the history that is here in England, I'd say, why not have that next level?

[Travis View]

Funny, it's like, wow, there's so much beauty and history. Yeah, it's like you aren't willing to like articulate maybe the architectural features of what you're witnessing for your audience. You're willing to divulge a little bit of the history of, you know, the construction and life of these buildings. Just muttering about like, you know, beauty and history.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, exactly. Like it seems so telling to me as well. He was just like the style and clearly just was just like, oh, I don't know what's in style. It is, but I know it's old, so I know I like it. I don't know, maybe it's snobbish of me to mock someone for not knowing that Westminster Abbey is Gothic architecture, but it kind of feels emblematic to me of how a lot of the contemporary far right in general operates. They kind of pretend to revere the west or European culture or English history, but their passion for it is actually just incredibly shallow. They don't care enough to learn anything about it, they just want to present it as evidence of their own superiority. Just old London good, New London bad. One of the most inconvenient truths for an aspiring London has fallen vlogger is that London is actually a pretty safe city. That was presumably why our unfortunate South African hero, Kirk Kaz was reduced to using AI to produce a balaclava clad bandit, menacing him for the perfect clickbait thumbnail. Violent crime is steadily falling in the city, and just a few days ago it was announced that homicide rates had hit their lowest level since records began in 1990. Nonetheless, there is A pervasive and rising belief among the British public that London is an unsafe place to live. I think part of this is because people like Nigel Farage just keep constantly saying so and it's become received wisdom. But I've no doubt that like even the Spectator podcast guys had to admit the pervasiveness of so called decline Porn plays a part too. I was really struck by this comment from GB News presenter Patrick Christie's on the Spiked podcast speaking about London's supposed collapse.

[Kurt Kaz]

I mean, we're often told that not to worry about crime. Crime is, is going down, but clearly the public perception must be that it's a, it's still a really serious problem, especially in London. I just feel like this is just another battleground that needs to be fought where the members of the public are like, well, I'm seeing a lot more machetes. I feel as though I'm seeing a lot more stabbings and just a much lower level as well. Things like a lot more graffiti and a lot more of this poly rough sleeping, a lot of that. You know, I'm hearing a lot more about sexual assaults against women. I feel less safe when I go out and about now than I did, than I did 10 years ago. But of course I'm just wrong. And we're all wrong, aren't we? Because Fraser Nelson has found a statistic that says that we're wrong. It's complete and utter horsepower, all of this.

[Annie Kelly]

Admittedly, I don't actually live in London because I'm not part of the woke metropolitan elite like Christie's is. So it's possible I'm speaking out of turn here. But I'm not convinced he's actually in reality real life seeing a lot more machetes, stabbings and sexual assaults with his own eyes. I think what he's talking about here is what he's seeing on social media or maybe the news, both of which are of course curated. Maybe I'm wrong and Christie's commute to work every day at the GB news towers involves him dodging in and out of alcoves as he tries to avoid the roving machete wielding street gangs like a British millennial version of the Warriors. If so, he can get in touch and I'll be happy to issue a attraction.

[Jake Rakatansky]

This poor guy, every time he goes out. It's like going to like Halloween horror nights.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. John Byrne Murdoch, writing for the Financial Times, has a slightly more nuanced take than me and has written that what he calls the great crime paradox, where crime is Going down but concern about crime is rising is down to visibility most violent crime, he writes, while an obviously scarier prospect happens behind closed doors and so we don't necessarily see it decline.

[Travis View]

He writes, by contrast, rapidly rising snatch theft is almost always carried out in public by a stranger on the first time victim, giving a much greater sense that this could happen to me. Shoplifting is especially damaging to the sense of public order as people witness not only the act but the lasting consequences. The growing presence of security personnel and protective casings or locks on items from stake to cosmetics. Both these low level crimes provide a palpable signal that things are out of of control, no media refraction needed and both have been on the rise.

[Annie Kelly]

So I think that that makes sense to me basically that even though violent crime is going down in London, if these kind of crimes, which are not really what people are talking about when they say that London is unsafe, things like phone and theft and shoplifting, if that's on the rise, it's much more visible to people. Yeah, I kind of see that. But nonetheless, watching a lot of London has fallen content you get the sense some of our adventurers are a bit disappointed that this city isn't more, more violent. And the ones with a bee in their bonnet about Islam and the supposed upcoming Muslim takeover of the UK seem to have a particularly hard time finding any one Muslim who actually had any clue about this sinister plan. Here's a channel called Adventure. Elliott interviewing a Muslim woman in a video titled I investigated the UK's shocking rise of Islam.

[Kurt Kaz]

Do you think one day Islam will overtake Christianity or non religious people here in the uk?

[Annie Kelly]

No, I would not say that because of. Yeah, Islam is growing, but there are people of other religions as well. That's why UK is uk, because we can accept all sorts of religions and even in Islam there's an eye on the Quran, specifically saying your religion is yours and you can also practice other.

[Kurt Kaz]

People'S religions as well.

[Annie Kelly]

It's not a compulsory that you have to be in this path of Islam. So I would not say that it's only just Islam against the world. Whoever wants to come to Islam more than happy to. But do your own research and come not, not because of compulsion, but because of your own will. In fact, given how clearly ideologically determined to depict Islam as an existential threat to the west many of these YouTubers were, I was genuinely surprised at how few Muslim people they managed to find who expressed any hostility at all to general tolerance and religious pluralism. The best many of them could manage was just the least charitable interpretation of their interview subject's words, particularly if they spoke English as a second language. Let's listen to the frankly odious Nate Friedman do this to an elderly man who had the temerity to tell him that he liked that. The UK a democracy.

[Kurt Kaz]

They say, why don't Muslim people stay.

[Jake Rakatansky]

In their Muslim countries?

[Kurt Kaz]

Why do they come to the West? What is your response to that?

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, Muslim country, you know, no democracy, because democracy is the main things. Yeah. Any human being not a Muslim or any.

[Kurt Kaz]

So you come for democracy?

[Travis View]

Yeah.

[Annie Kelly]

Democracy mean their law and administration is good.

[Kurt Kaz]

So the Muslim countries are not democracies. But I'm seeing that now there are.

[Jake Rakatansky]

A lot of Muslims being elected into parliament in the uk.

[Kurt Kaz]

Do you think it's a good idea?

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, yeah, it's a good idea to.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Elect because the democracy everywhere.

[Travis View]

Look at America or Europe, where is the democracy?

[Kurt Kaz]

In America we have democracy.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, yeah.

[Kurt Kaz]

So just my last question, just to, just to really understand, like, there's over.

[Jake Rakatansky]

40 Muslim majority countries and like you.

[Kurt Kaz]

Say, they're not democracies.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Why will it be different if London.

[Kurt Kaz]

And the UK elects Muslim people into their government? Why will it stay a democracy?

[Annie Kelly]

I think only if you are educated.

[Jake Rakatansky]

You know, what is democracy?

[Annie Kelly]

Western way.

[Travis View]

Educated.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah.

[Kurt Kaz]

This guy just told me that he.

[Annie Kelly]

Came here because Muslim majority countries are not democracies and that he prefers the Western way of life. The Western way of life doesn't blast a call to prayer five times a day.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Oh, man.

[Annie Kelly]

I know. I mean, you could not get a clearer example of kind of leading questions of. Yeah. Trying to get this guy's, I think, you know, quite sweet sort of like, comment that he, he likes the kind of religious pluralism of this country. He likes the fact it's. It's democratic to try and turn it into something sinister. To be like, oh, well, if enough Muslims are elected, then they'll just turn it undemocratic. As if there's like a Muslim anti democracy gene or something.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah. And like, as if the guy didn't tell him that the reason they leave is because they don't like the way that it's done, you know?

[Annie Kelly]

Right.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, it's unreal. What a loser. I hate this guy. I hate his vibe. I hate, I hate his background. I don't like, like the color palette that he's chosen for his show. I just, I did it. This is a person that I didn't need to know exists. And like, what a waste of time. You imagine, like going on the street and being like, okay, like, how do I, like, I can't wait to go up to people and, like, figure out how to, like, manipulate them into confirming. I don't know. My. My little. You know, my little believesies sucks.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, I agree. I think, like, don't get me wrong, none of these YouTubers, like, particularly come off well in these videos, but for some reason, he's just, like, the worst. He's just like, really, really kind of, like, slimy and nasty. I don't know. In a crowded field. Of course, there is one way you can reliably get the on screen violence that you promised your audience, and that's by harassing people. This is much higher risk than on street interviews with consenting participants, but it's much more likely to get you the physical conflict your bloodthirsty viewers demand. One common way that London has fallen vloggers will do do this is by just shoving their camera in the faces of people who clearly don't want to be filmed to try and rile them up, which I've recently Learned is a YouTube genre of its own called auditing. Here's an example from a channel called Dutch Travel Maniac, who's actually in Piccadilly Gardens in the city of Manchester at the time. So I guess you could say he's doing Manchester has fallen content, Although that's got less of a ring to it.

[Kurt Kaz]

Hello, guys. Sorry, guys. It's putting at me. But. But may I ask you. You're not a movie now filming me, but may I ask you, what is the reason that you're so scared of the camera?

[Annie Kelly]

My face.

[Kurt Kaz]

People.

[Jake Rakatansky]

People who are here in town, they're.

[Annie Kelly]

Here because their lives are bad. They don't want other people to see their lives.

[Kurt Kaz]

You mean like. You mean like illegal? No, bro.

[Jake Rakatansky]

What do you mean?

[Annie Kelly]

Because they're going through family stuff. They're trying to get away, man. They don't want to see people. They want to be on their own. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay.

[Kurt Kaz]

Too many people. Okay.

[Annie Kelly]

Don't worry. You don't start me up. Relax.

[Kurt Kaz]

Huh? He's relaxed, bro.

[Annie Kelly]

He's relaxed. He's got family and all that. I don't want to be on.

[Kurt Kaz]

No, just relax.

[Annie Kelly]

What you mean relax?

[Kurt Kaz]

I mean relax, relax, relax, relax. Yeah, I don't.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Put your camera a bit.

[Kurt Kaz]

Okay, now you're getting aggressive.

[Annie Kelly]

I don't want that.

[Travis View]

I will, bro.

[Annie Kelly]

What are you gonna do?

[Kurt Kaz]

You will.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, this guy looks like he likes to fight. I mean, it's just. Yeah, shaved, Shaved head, big guy, neck tattoos. Coming. Being aggressive, like, of course. Of course you're gonna be, like, on guard.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. And I think the guy actually gives him. He's obviously upset that he's being filmed, but he actually gives him just, like a pretty articulate, reasonable.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Oh, totally.

[Annie Kelly]

You know, please don't film me. People are here because, you know, we're having a hard time. Like, it's completely. And he just keeps on, you know, just needling him and sort of pushing him and just not really taking the camera off him because he's hoping to get a reaction. And then, sure enough, he labels the video I Almost Got Stabbed.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Of course. Of course.

[Annie Kelly]

To give Dutch travel maniac some credit, here he is by himself at the time. And despite being a pretty big guy, as you mentioned, Jake, that's still taking a risk. His more cowardly colleagues in the field, like our friend Kirk Kaz, have gone to the exact same location with a bodyguard and straight up started yelling racial slurs in order to provoke a reaction from. From locals, all the while knowing that he won't actually face any physical consequences.

[Kurt Kaz]

The boys are back in town. Nice one. What are you guys up to? Why? Why. Why are you dealing candies? Why is that? Okay, why are you here? Why are you here? Why are you here? Dinghy boy? Let's do a DNA test. Let's see why? Dinghy boy. Dingy boy. Shut up. Go home. Why? Because I came.

[Jake Rakatansky]

What are you doing?

[Kurt Kaz]

What are you doing? Why are you doing? Why are you here? Why are you here? Why are you here? Bingy boy? Why are you here? Maybe you'll get to know me soon. Whatever I like.

[Travis View]

I mean. Yeah, this is. This is absolutely insane behavior. I mean, it's insane by itself.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Just.

[Travis View]

Just going around, like, provoking people. People and asking, what are you doing and why are you here? Without, like, you know, and then. And then on the top of that, you have a bodyguard, you know, so you don't actually have any, like, personal risk. And while you're antagonizing people pointlessly, this is. Yeah, this is extremely slimy behavior.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, no, it's really pathetic.

[Jake Rakatansky]

This is. What. What's his name? He looks like a teenager. He's on YouTube. I don't know, he's like an adult. He's like, o' Doyle rules or something like that. Like, his name, Jack Doherty, I think, is his name. And he's a little. He's a little shrimp. And he hires bodyguards, and he goes onto the street and he fucks around with people. And as soon as he provokes somebody, like the bodyguard steps in, and it's like, hey, man, back off. That's also a type of content that I unfortunately know about.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, I think they call it auditing, right?

[Jake Rakatansky]

Auditing. God, no. I didn't even know that. Oh, no, I just learned about, like, what pressing means. Like, ah, I'm so behind.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, yeah, they call it auditing. Yeah. There's a few of those guys here as well. Just kind of just wind up merchants just. Yeah. Just walking around town, usually looking for people who are like, homeless or drug addicts or something like that, and then just sort of trying to just wind them up, trying to provoke a fight. It's just really. I mean, for one thing, it's just, like, pathetic behavior. But also, I just have to be like, who is watching this? You know, because some of the videos are really long. They're like 40 minutes long. It's like, who's sitting down? Like, oh. Oh, yeah. I can't. Can't wait to watch this guy just go around and just like, rile up some of. Just kind of. Yeah.

[Jake Rakatansky]

People and just, like, the clear, young, angry boys. It's young, angry boy. It used to be they used to remember bum fights. Travis. There was, like, a horrible, horrible, like, DVD series that I think they would advertise on, like, mainstream television that was just like. Yeah. Videos of homeless people fighting, or maybe even not. But they just. They dressed them up as if they were and called it bum fights. This has just been backyard. I mean, this is just young boy violence. But now with a new racist and sort of, like you said, Western decline sort of edge to it. So it actually interlocks with their politics as well. And so it's just extra sticky.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, yeah. It's like bum fights, except now they've got this twisted ideological justification for why what they're doing isn't just cynical, kind of exploitative, because they can say, oh, no, actually, I'm doing something very important, which is exposing the collapse of Western civilization. Yeah.

[Jake Rakatansky]

I think if you watch this and you don't feel bad for the people who are being harassed and you can't honestly understand their reaction, I think that you're a deeply upset person. And, you know, it's whatever. It's the hatred that you feel or the anger that you feel or your justified racism, watching something like this is a stronger emotion than whatever. I don't know, whatever you're sort of running from, I guess.

[Annie Kelly]

In fact, both Kaz and Tyler Oliveira, by far two of the biggest channels in this field, have developed a way of Monetizing street violence in the European cities that they travel to. Both have started making vigilante style videos where they hunt pickpockets in tourist hotspots. In Kaz's case, this often involves him and his team chasing after women. And funnily enough, it nearly is always women yelling anti Romani and misogynist slurs at them. In one video in Lisbon, Kaz and the local anti pickpocket vigilantes he's filming corner a woman outside the monument of Discoveries. And although the camera deliberately blurs, at the moment it looks very much like one of Kaz's companions, Canyons, hits her when an onlooking tourist objects. Kaz calls him a social justice warrior.

[Kurt Kaz]

Situ. Go out my country. Yes, go out my country. You see? Oh, what?

[Annie Kelly]

Hey, hey, hey.

[Kurt Kaz]

No.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Hey, hey.

[Kurt Kaz]

These people stealing, man. They destroying tourism. You don't understand nothing.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Ah, cry about it.

[Kurt Kaz]

They'll steal from. It's fine. Look at the social justice warriors everywhere.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yikes.

[Annie Kelly]

Like, not, not to sound like an old person, but in my day, social justice warrior meant like a bit of a keyboard worrier, like a bit of a, you know, someone, someone who's sort of trying to make a big deal out of nothing. I think it never was originally intended to mean someone who literally objects to you hitting a woman.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah. As I watch all these videos, I can't help but think, like, these guys are like going out on the street and like, just like wanting to do like, they just want to be ice, but they have no power, no authority. But like, that's what the vibe is. Like this, the hunting down and the demanding of removal from the country, it's just like, oh, it's so. This feels so bad.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, you're so right. Like, it's just got a high percentage of men with punisher tattoos or punisher merch.

[Jake Rakatansky]

The same looking guys. Like, you know, I think that's what's so scary about the Nate Friedman guy is like the camera turns around and he looks like he should just be kind of in like a, a room with bisexual lighting and, you know, maybe street, like streaming a game. You know, a couple of figures on the, on the back. Like, I, I, I see such a, I see such a, like healthier, like more peaceful existence for him. But, but the rest of these guys, you turn around, you're like, well, exactly what I thought, thought, like, like, yep, Oakley's. Sure, yep. Tight, tight, like weird. Polo. Yep. Got it.

[Annie Kelly]

Perhaps the most pioneering form of monetizing street thuggery comes from Tyler Oliveira who deliberately censors footage of alleged pickpockets getting beaten up by his team before selling it on as premium content. Here's an example from his video. I hunted pickpockets in Venice.

[Kurt Kaz]

Then this career criminal made the foolish decision to separate from his crew of thieves and run away from our ship.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Shaming ritual. Little does he know, I'm fast as hell. Big bucket, big bucket, big bucket.

[Annie Kelly]

Move, move.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Big bucket, big bucket.

[Kurt Kaz]

Say the fuck?

[Jake Rakatansky]

Right here.

[Kurt Kaz]

Big bucket, big bucket, big bucket. At this moment, the pickpocket pepper sprayed Martin straight in the face, and he then mysteriously tripped and fell multiple times.

[Jake Rakatansky]

In a row, allowing us to gently wait with him until the police came.

[Kurt Kaz]

You fucking made me, motherfucker. You dumb bitch. Go to patreon.com TY Tyler Oliveira to watch the full, uncensored version of this video for five bucks that we can't show on YouTube.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Oh, no. Oh, this is where we're. This is. Okay. I was curious where we might be heading, but I get it. It's. It's Patreon for the uncensored violent content. Yeah, got it, Got it.

[Travis View]

That's very disturbing that there's some sort of business model. It's like, yeah, man, I like that video, but I wish there I could see the full street violence. I'll pay up some money to see. To get it directly from them.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. I mean, surely that's got to be breaking PA Patreon's rule. Surely. Yeah, surely you're not actually meant to just, like, straight up. Yeah. Show videos of you just committing acts of street violence against people. I don't know.

[Jake Rakatansky]

I don't know. I think I'm gonna go report that. I'm gonna see if I could do something about that, actually. That's so grim.

[Travis View]

Oh, God.

[Annie Kelly]

I feel like we're the vigilantes now.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Like, the pixelation and be like, oh, yeah, my kids are ironic. $4. Come on. You can see us fucking lightly tackle this guy. You can see our like, man. Oh, God, it's gonna get worse. We gotta get on this Patreon. We're gonna have a. We're gonna have a discussion.

[Annie Kelly]

Now, obviously, pickpockets are a problem in every major city that attracts a lot of tourists, and it's a horrible feeling to become one of their victims. I can understand why people might be attracted to content which feels like it turns the tables or delivers justice, but let's be honest, this isn't justice. It's not offering any actual solution to crime, and it's not making anyone's lives better. It's pure entertainment and spectacle designed to appeal to our worst, most vicious impulses. There's also a certain irony here, because both Kaz and Oliveira have made a big deal about immigrants ruining Europe, yet both of them have come to these countries as guests and begun harassing people, engaging in violence and causing general disorder. In several of their videos of this type, I've seen locals, usually shopkeepers, essentially beg them to go elsewhere as they're scaring off customers. So if you really are concerned about violent foreigners coming to your country and causing trouble, maybe the first thing to do is to block the visa of any and all YouTubers. As I said earlier, watching so much of this content, it struck me that nearly every YouTuber who wants to make videos demonstrating how Islamified the UK UK has become. We'll go to Whitechapel. It's become something of a pilgrimage spot for the international far right, largely because, as I said before, it has a large Bangladeshi population and According to the 2021 UK Census, 56.3% of residents identify as Asian. In 2022, to celebrate this aspect of Whitechapel's heritage, Whitechapel Station installed a sign in Bengali alongside the English, something which pretty much every London has fallen YouTuber I've watched has made a point of mentioning.

[Kurt Kaz]

So that's the language that's being used in England now. I always thought it was English. Coming from Ireland, where we used to speak Irish, now we speak English. I've never seen this changed.

[Annie Kelly]

I've never seen this in Europe. This is insane.

[Kurt Kaz]

Usually in other European countries the sign.

[Annie Kelly]

Would be English, French, you know, maybe Italian or German. This is insane.

[Kurt Kaz]

I don't even know what it is, to be honest. It seems to be like maybe Hindi or Tamil.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Oh my God.

[Annie Kelly]

I know, I feel like I'm really picking on these guys, but they are just so aggressively not researching anything.

[Jake Rakatansky]

I know, it's just. It's just. Oh my God. This is stare. This is staring at words and like being frightened.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. What's interesting about this continued focus on Whitechapel, though, is that it's probably the worst part of London to try and claim is new to immigration. East London's oldest Indian restaurant, called Halal Restaurant, was opened there in 1939 to cater to the many Indian seamen living in the area. The Bangladeshi community's history began there in the 19th century 1850s when the government encouraged immigration from Commonwealth countries in order to aid in post war redevelopment, which became particularly concentrated in the industrial areas of East London, which had been heavily ravaged by bombs during the Blitz. But even before that, from the mid 19th century, the East End was well known for being a hub for newly arrived immigrants, first the Irish and then later in the century as Kanasi Jews fleeing persecution in Eastern Europe and Russia. This is hardly an original observation, but it feels pretty striking how this community was talked about in very similar terms to the way many creators in the London has Fallen genre discuss Muslim immigrants today. Victorian writers like Charles Russell published books like the Jew in A study of Racial Character and present Day Conditions in which he expressed concern that the sheer numbers of recent Jewish immigrants and their supposed tendency towards clannish behaviour and hostility to outsiders would render them resistant to assimilation. The book included a fold out map apparently showing the density and spread of Jewish migrants through the East End.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Whether the Jewish immigrant is on the whole a blessing or a curse to the East End is not by any means a purely economic question. It is commonly said that he contributes nothing to the strength of the nation. And whether this charge is just depends mainly on the extent to which he enters into the nation's life. So long as the Jews remain an isolated and peculiar people, self centered in their organization and fundamentally alien in their ideas and aims, the rapid growth of their community can hardly be regarded with complete satisfaction. A state within a state is generally recognized as an undesirable anomaly. And so long as the Jews remain independent and unabsorbed, they must expect to be regarded as strangers in the land. Now it is obvious, as circumstances at present stand, the East End Jews must be regarded as in effect an alien community. A considerable portion of them speak a foreign tongue while in religion, in character and habits and in social and industrial organization they are marked off from their neighbors by peculiar features. It is the object of this essay to inquire how far these peculiarities appear to be of a permanent or an eradicable nature and how far they constitute or are likely to constitute an impassable barrier between Jewry and the outer world.

[Annie Kelly]

I don't mean to underplay anti Semitism, but I think only the very committed neo Nazis in this country would argue that this had any merit to it. I think even people who are very far right on lots of immigration questions now look largely view that this was wrong, that the Jewish immigrants did assimilate very well.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yes, and we took over the Hollywood industry.

[Annie Kelly]

Well luckily we didn't have a Hollywood industry to take over so well.

[Jake Rakatansky]

But like, I mean, I don't know if I should say this or not, but like this happens to me like in modern day like living in like Pico Robertson area. Like, there are Orthodox Jews that live in that neighborhood that are like totally segregated in many ways from, you know, the rest of the city. City. But like, that's coming from me, a, A, A person who was raised Jewish, who I look at, you know, the Orthodox guys and all, they're like a strange tongue. And then, you know, and then you look at like the payas, which is the, the long sideburns or the big sort of like reby hats or the overcoats and you go, ah, peculiarities. You know what I mean? Like, and, and these are guys who I've allowed to like rap to fill in, which is the. This is like, it's kind of like a mitzvah, it's like a good deed to get Jews that are less religious than you to this kind of hardcore way where you like wrap these leather bands around your arms and it's got like a wooden box. You also have to wear a headpiece, like a wooden box that was like, with the prayers inside. I've like done that with them, you know, like, I've tried to overlap but nobody has a problem with that. It's like, okay, yeah, it's weird. It's like, oh yeah. And like, okay, they dress funny or whatever. You can see them all walking the shoal on Friday nights, you know, or whatever. But it's existed like this for like decades and decades and decades in, you know, know that part of Los Angeles. And like, nobody has a problem with it. I don't know, I don't know. What I'm trying to say is that like, even if this guy's worst fear is true, which is that this community stays pretty tight knit and they do have, you know, their own language and their own like very orthodox, you know, version of religion. And like, yeah, like I'm annoyed by them in the Trader Joe's parking lot. But like, you know, but, but like, but like there's no problem, like they, that actually can exist in an ecosystem of America and like, and within American neighborhoods. You just anecdotally, from my own experience and it is, it's like funny and weird and like. Yeah, but it actually like brings character and like, I think a richness to, you know, the landscape of just like multiculturalism in la, that's like, I don't know, it's like, it's annoying maybe, but like beloved. I don't know, I just think that like his worst fear is actually something that like already exists and hasn't destroyed anything actually, but instead provided A place of refuge.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's, I think that's really good point. Yeah. Because, I mean, a bit like we were talking about with Brick Lane before, actually, just the, there are like, just features of communities keeping their national character which are just like really nice. It means, yeah, you can go for an excellent curry in this part of London. You can go for, yeah, bagels on Brick Lane as well, which I guess is like a legacy of this community that Charles Russell is talking about here at the turn of the century. But yeah, I think it just sort of seems to be just like a permanent feature essentially of any recent immigrant arrival for the majority population to kind of look at the. And sort of say, oh gosh, they're just like, their values are just so foreign to us, they are so different to us. There is no way, there is no way that they can ever peacefully integrate into our society or benefit our society. And I think just the entire history of this country is just that not being true.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah. Do you know, and like, it's kind of the mission of both the UK and America, which is that there are these huge cultural melting pots, these places where people, you know, I don't know, like, were sold a promise and believe, and many have fulfilled like a promise of like a better, a better life where actually you won't be persecuted for what you believe in, what your religion is, or, you know, maintaining your own culture. So it seems like the very thing that these, these countries are founded on, it's like, it's like now all these people are like doing like take backsies, I guess, you know, in some sort of like weird way. Just feels very like immature, I don't know.

[Annie Kelly]

Definitely. Yeah. I just wanted to compare that passage to this comment by Alex Phillips, a TalkT presenter, on the very first episode of former Prime Minister turned podcaster Liz Truss's new show. That episode was, funnily enough, called London Is Falling. How bad is it? I mean, it's shocking. If you look at the official statistics for legal migration, we know that with government policy we're getting up to about a net people, 1 million every single year. This is bearing in mind that some of the best people are leaving Britain. Exactly right. So actually, if you look at the growth statistics, it's easily over a million. And a lot of these people don't tend to be skilled workers from Western cultures. Then of course we have the statistics on illegal migration, which will be the tip of the iceberg, because largely we are looking at people coming over on small boats. Those people who are detected as coming over on small boats. We're not looking at people who are overstaying student visas, who are coming in via airplanes, who are then losing their passports, people who are coming in on the backs of lorries. And so what we essentially have is this unprecedented inundation of our islands from cultures which, frankly, really struggle to assimilate with our own.

[Jake Rakatansky]

And that woman is dressed like the evil president in the Hunger Games.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, you're right, she is. In fact, the more I read historical writing about Whitechapel, the more similarities I began to see with its modern depictions on YouTube. Even before the crimes of Britain's most infamous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, brought national attention to the area in 1888, Whitechapel and the wider East End were already widely portrayed as zones of exceptional barbarism and depravity. Their poor, ethnically diverse residents and their subversive activities inspired a mix of repulsion and fascination, and the area became the focus of some of the most influential moral panic journalism of the period. Most notably, it was the subject of W.T. steed's notorious series the Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, which alleged that young girls were being routinely abducted or deceived and sold into sexual slavery there. Another writer, George R. Sims, published a book in 1883 called how the Poor Live in, which he explicitly stated a weirdly similar mission to many of the roaming travel vlogs as I've talked about, to take the storytelling conventions of colonial travel writing, danger, savagery and discovery, and apply them not to far off lands, but to Europe's own cities, repackaging urban poverty as a literary commodity.

[Travis View]

I commence with the first of these chapters, a book about travel. An author and artist have gone hand in hand to many a far off region of the earth, and the result has been a volume eagerly studied by the stay at home public, anxious to know something of the world world in which they live. In these pages, I propose to record the result of a journey into a region which lies at our own doors, into a dark continent that is within easy walking distance of the General Post Office. This continent will, I hope, be found as interesting as any of those newly explored lands. The wild races who inhabit it will, I trust, gain public sympathy as easily as those savage tribes for whose benefit the missionary societies never cease to appear deal for funds.

[Annie Kelly]

I was struck by how much of this writing even felt like a YouTube walk and talk, where you, the reader, accompany the author as he describes the pitiful conditions of the East End slums. Here, for example, is the same Author George Sims a little further along in how the Poor Live.

[Travis View]

We walk along a narrow, dirty passage and at the end we find ourselves in what we should call a backyard, but which, in the language of the neighborhood, is a square. The square is full of refuse. Heaps of dust and decaying vegetable matter lie about here and there under the windows and in the front of the doors of the squalid tumbledown houses. The windows above and below are broken and patched. We can see a good deal of the inside through the cracks and crevices and broken panes. But if we knock the door, we shall get a view of the inhabitants. Our knock has alarmed the neighborhood. Who are we? The police? No, who are we? Now we recognize one of our number, our guide. With a growl he. And we with them can pass without hindrance where it would be dangerous for a policeman to go. Yeah, you're right. It's the same thing. It's like, like I'm walking down and I'm. I'm disgusted and, and scared.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, the rotting vegetables.

[Annie Kelly]

I started this research I think just because I wanted to find some historical writings about Whitechapel which talked about the, the ethnic diversity just to kind of, you know, prove that it's not that immigration is a. Is a new thing. But I think what came as a surprise to me was this was the way that the style of writing felt so similar. Even the way, way that the kind of. Yeah, you're coming along with this sort of bird's eye view. It felt like in the absence of YouTube, in the absence of vloggers, this is what the Victorians had to do instead.

[Travis View]

But also it sounds like he's going up and he's just knocking on strangers houses. He's recording how naturally alarmed and confused they are.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Hello? Knock, knock. Hello. Are you supposed to be here?

[Annie Kelly]

Now here's another extract from an autumn evening in Whitechapel. This is from the periodical Little's Living Age.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Turn down this side street out of the main Whitechapel road. It may be well to tuck out of view any bit of jewelry that may be glittering about. The sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done. The street is oppressively dark, though at present the gloom is relieved somewhat by feebly lighted shop fronts. Men are lounging at the door doors of the shops, smoking evil smelling pipes. Women with bare hands and with arms under their aprons are sauntering about in twos and threes or seated gossiping on steps leading into passages dark as Erebus. Now round the corner into another still gloomier passage, for there are no shops here to speak of. This is notorious Wentworth Street. The police used to make a point of going through through this only in couples and possibly may do so still when they go there at all. Just now there are none met with. It is getting on into the night. But gutters and doorways and passages, staircases appear to be teeming with children. I love it. This is like a whole genre of like I go outside and I'm scared.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Oh my gosh. See there in that doorway of a house without a glimmer of light about it, it looks like to be a baby in long clothes laid on the floor of the passage and seemingly exhausted with crying. Listen for a moment at this next house. There is a scuffle going on upon the staircase, all in the densest darkness. And before you have passed a dozen yards there is a rush down the stairs and an outsurging into the street with fighting, biting and screaming and an outpouring of such horrible blackguardism that it makes you shudder as you look at those curly headed, preternaturally sharp witted children who leave their play to gather round the melee. God help the little mortals. How can they become anything but savages, pests of society and dangerous classes and so on? How black and unutterably gloomy all the houses look. How infinitely all the more moral and physical wretchedness of such localities as these, intensified by the darkness of the streets and the houses.

[Travis View]

Well, I really, I'm very curious what these children said to him that caused this author to label them preternaturally sharp witted.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, that's true.

[Jake Rakatansky]

It's like they're born with scathing tongues.

[Travis View]

It's like I walk about in these children. They. They have such nasty words for me.

[Jake Rakatansky]

They instantly identified my boldness and my fatness and my oldness. Very quick to note my age.

[Annie Kelly]

Old. Yeah. It was just that bit from Peep show where Mark gets bullied by the children.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah.

[Annie Kelly]

In fact, it seemed that by 1889 Whitechapel was already so notorious that the author Arthur G. Morrison wrote that writers were essentially competing with one another to see who could write the most sensationalist account of the area's looking lurid depravity, all without ever having set foot in the place.

[Travis View]

A dozen graphically written descriptions of Whitechapel by people who have never seen the place but have heard as much about it as most have would probably be as amusing in the reading to those acquainted with the district as the most extravagant of the fables. Once so frequently quoted as articles of current French belief in the matter of English manners and customs, ever were to the English people themselves a horrible black labyrinth, Think many people swarming with human vermin, whose trade is robbery and whose recreation is murder. The catacombs of London, darker, more tortuous and more dangerous than those of Rome, and supersaturated with foul life. Others imagine Whitechapel in a pitiful aspect, Outcast London, black and nasty still, a wilderness of crazy dens into which pallid wastrels crawl to die, where several families lie in each fetid room and fathers, mothers and children watch each other starve. Such spots as these there certainly are in Whitechapel and in other places, but generalities are rarely true. And when applied to the district London, so large as that comprised under the name of Whitechapel, never.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, I think it's just always such a nice feeling when you read something written over a hundred years ago and can just completely relate to what the author's thinking and feeling as he writes it. It kind of just seems to me that Morrison, like me, is basically going here, yes, the place has its problems, but can everyone just please calm down?

[Travis View]

But no, I think, yeah, I think he really nailed the tabloidy kind of like, like aspect of this kind of writing where it's like, it's not, it's not meant to like, highlight general problems. Like it's meant to like, sell basically, you know, you know, content or articles or say it's. It's designed to. To titillate and, you know, instill a bit of like lurid fear in the reader rather than actually inform.

[Jake Rakatansky]

These are my favorite kind of QAA episodes where there's something that we're like, oh, things are getting worse. But then you do like a bunch of research and you're like, oh, it's always been bad.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, completely. It's sort of just the technology changes, but some of that kind of human, Human impulse really remains the same.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah.

[Annie Kelly]

Now, being fair to those Victorian writers, most of them were pretty passionate reformers who I believe were trying to bring about change to benefit some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society. London was both the beating heart of the richest empire on earth and home to dramatic wealth inequality. And there was something noble about wanting to shake up the comfortable classes with a brutal reminder of how desperate many of their neighbours lives were. On the other hand, there's no doubt that many played fast and loose with journalistic ethics in order to do so notoriously. WT Steed in his on child sex trafficking, literally bought, drugged and kidnapped a 13 year old girl in order to prove how easy it was to do that. And looking back at many of these writings, it's clear that there were two impulses working together in the pros A sincere desire to educate and inform. Yes, but as you pointed out, Travis, to titillate this was the era of commercial slum tourism, where wealthy Londoners would pay tickets for midnight tours on omnibuses which took them round some of the most deprived parts of the city to gawk at their inhabitants. A hobby that became known as slumming. As an activity, slumming probably did inspire real feelings of sympathy and charity to a towards the less fortunate, but it also turned real people's lives into something of a horror story to consume at a safe distance. It feels to me like there's something similar going on with travel YouTube's exploration of urban poverty and crime. I don't think we can pretend that any of the people we've mentioned hold any of the same noble ideals as the Victorian writers, insofar as I've seen any of them demand reform. It's been about as cogent and sophisticated as Kick out all the Migrants. But as crass and ill informed as their content might be, I do think these vloggers are capitalising on what I believe to be humanity's greatest our curiosity. Wanting to understand how other people live, especially those in places we don't know much about or can't easily reach, is not a bad instinct. In fact, it's quite a nice one. Most people who click on travel videos promising to show them the real truth about a place are probably acting in good faith. Many of us can't travel as much as we'd like to. We're constrained by money, work, family or just time. Watching someone wander through a city we've never been to, even in a sensational, clique driven format, can feel like the closest available substitute for being there ourselves. And that's why I find comments under the London has Fallen videos so revealing, because they often express the opposite impulse. A total shutting down of curiosity. Pretty much every video I watched I'd read the comments and see variations on the same sentiment over, over and over again. I always used to dream of visiting London. Now I'd never want to go. These channels promise access and insight, a closer look at the wider world. But many appear to have found that it's in fact more lucrative to flatten that world down and render it unworthy of further interest.

[Travis View]

You know, I think it's interesting how like. Like a lot of complaints about, like, Instagram content for years is that portrayed as this kind of, like, eternally traveling lifestyle where you just see exotic things and it's like, is designed to, like, inspire a bit of envy in sort of the follow the feeds where it's like, all was like, oh, man, I really want to go that and see these places and live the life that these people are living. But, yeah, this is strange because it's the exact opposite kind of content where it's designed to inspire, like, yeah, a kind of shutting down sort of like, it reinforces the idea that, like, oh, I'm glad I'm not there. I'm glad I'm not with these people. This really, really dampens my interest of ever visiting this place. It's, yeah, sort of like this weird sort of like, travel. This is trying to inspire revulsion in the places that are being documented.

[Jake Rakatansky]

And just another reason to hate, you know, groups or people of a certain color religion that you already didn't like anyways. You know, if it ever comes down to it and, you know, you're radicalized, like, the fact that they ruined your chances of a beautiful, like, London vacation is, like, another reason that you can add to your list of, like, you know what these people have, like, quote unquote taken from you. So it's just. It's another. It's like another just, like, I don't know, like, notch to go, like, I don't know, down one level of anger and feed and just keep. Keep feeding that.

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah. I think you really hit the nail on the head a little bit earlier, Jake. I can't quite remember how you said it, but you kind of talked about the way that this content, the way it's almost kind of reassuring the viewer. And it's in a strange way that it's fine that you don't get to see these places because they're terrible anyway. They're all hellholes. That it sort of provides this kind of justification, I guess, for not going anywhere. Yeah, it's kind of like you were talking about Travis. It's almost like there were problems with the aspirational travel influencer stuff too. But it maybe in a way feels a bit nicer than this.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah. And this also, like, I think it doesn't cost, like, it doesn't cost anything to fly to London and, like, plan to go to the. You know, where. What was the street where all of the, like, good Indian restaurants were?

[Annie Kelly]

Brick Lane.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Yeah, Bricks Lane. And be like, okay, we'll go there for like two hours and like, you know, we'll say our shit and then bounce. Like you're not exploring the city. I think they're going there to make the content that they know they want to publish. I guess I'm saying it's scripted. And the interactions with real people are also scripted in the same way that like Jackass, where that's like such an unky comparison, but like, where the members of the public don't know that they're unwilling actors in, you know, sort of furthering whatever narrative the content creator is trying to sort of ride on.

[Annie Kelly]

It seems to me that this genre forecloses on any real understanding of the places it claims to represent. It takes complex living urban communities where overlapping cultures have always lived alongside one another and reduces them to simple rage bait, much like Victorian slumming. It invites viewers to look just long enough to feel a jolt of shock or disgust or superiority and then to move on. For me, learning about other countries and cultures has always made the world feel so much more interesting and, and complicated. And you'd hope that effect would multiply in the information age, where we enjoy a historically unprecedented access to other people's realities. Instead, these YouTube entrepreneurs seem to be using that access to achieve the exact opposite.

[Travis View]

These kinds of episodes also remind me of, like, some of the optimistic promises of the Internet in the 90s that were just never realized. Like, oh, we're going to like, make the world so much smaller because we're going to be able to understand each other, because we're be able to connect so much more easily. But I think we've seen, like, in many cases, including this one, you know, know, the, the Internet, just as is just as easily used as a tool to make people, you know, more xenophobic and fearful. Fascinating episode. And I will say, if you like this kind of content that's very, you know, well researched and insightful, you should also check out Truly Tradley deeply on Curse Media. Annie, what was it like working on that series?

[Annie Kelly]

Yeah, it was really nice being able just to take the time to fully just dive, dive into this world that I have been kind of following for a long time, of tradwives who started out, I think, as quite a small, quite niche subculture, which was very connected to the far right and has now kind of spun out into a kind of whole genre, I would say. And there's sort of different factions within it. And it was really fun. Me and my fellow researcher Megan Kelly really got to tease out, I think all of those kind of intricacies that happen within the subculture and all of the various debates around things like motherhood and femininity and purity. But yeah, no, please, please do go and listen to it because we put a lot of work into it and I'm really proud of it as a series.

[Travis View]

Check it out. Cursed media. I'll put the link in the show notes.

[Jake Rakatansky]

Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. You can go to patreon.comqaa and subscribe for $5 a month to get a whole second premium episode for every regular episode, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes. For everything else, we've got a website that's qaapodcast.com listener until next week. May the deep dish bless you and keep you.

[Annie Kelly]

We have auto queue content based on your preferences.

[Kurt Kaz]

Pretty much following the Lord least. So yeah, nobody's going to tell me that I can't film today. Right guys, this is it. This is Oxford Street. The infamous Oxford street with the beautiful British flags draped over. Rule Britannia. The most infamous street in the UK where about 18 phone snatches happen a day. 18 phone snatches die. So that happens when people are walking along the street looking at their phone, not paying attention and a phone snatcher drives by, a balaclava ninja on a e bike drives by and snatches their phone. That happens almost 20 times a day on this street. Oh, it's already kicked off. The emergency services are out and about. I feel a. I feel a certain energy in the air, like something's, something's brewing. Might be from the two tier policing. Who knows? You and I were just discussing how here in the UK he knows a lot of the crime that goes on to all the pickpockets, all the drug dealers, etc. Yet the police don't take action. And I said, well, it's because they're too busy enforcing mean tweets. Arresting people for tweets on X Facebook and Facebook as well. And Instagram. So this is number one priority in two tier kiers Britain. That's correct. A lot of nonsense. Is that so what do you want to rephrase a little bit, madam? Why do you think so? If you're going to chime in, I would like a. I'd like an extra comment there. All right, have a good day. Have a great day. In Soviet Britain. Psychedelic South African flag. So this must be the area of the HDTV community. Ultra High definition club.

[Travis View]

You see a lot of this flag as central.

[Kurt Kaz]

Yeah, it's too impose to tell you who rules, rules. And if you disagree, you get put in a societal gulag.