December 6, 2024 • 46 mins
Ryan and Emily discuss Brook Urick's book on the website Seeking Arrangement.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 4 (00:30):
When the Matt Gates scandal broke in twenty twenty one,
I was reached out to by the New York Times
and by ABC twenty twenty. Those stories never came out,
and those journalists don't talk to me anymore. They tout
it as what's wrong with an older man giving someone money,
but the reality is much more sinister.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
Did you see situations where either intelligence informants that type
of thing, or very powerful people were entangling themselves.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
The website Seeking Arrangement has gotten a little bit of
time in the limelight because of the controversy surrounding Matt
Gates his and his failed attempt to become Attorney General.
People may not know the details of this, but some
of the scandal that Gates was involved in appears to
(01:20):
begin with this website, Seeking Arrangement, which is described itself
as a place for sugar daddies and sugar babies. And
one of the apparently underage people that was that became
involved with Gates through I guess his friend Greenberg, Joel
met Joel Greenberg through this Seeking Arrangement site. So it
(01:42):
just so happens that there's a new book out by
Brooke Burick called Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge. Sexual Exploits and
Secrets from Inside a Sugar Daddy Website, which we could
put up here as well, which is something of a
blowing of the whistle about the about the site and
also a personal memoir narrative about how Brooke went from
(02:05):
a sugar baby user of the website to it's spokesperson
later to then outside critic of the organization. Brook is
here to talk with us about the book, about her life,
about what this this site is. Brooke, thanks so much
for joining us and apparently you're you're viewer of the
(02:27):
show as well.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Yes, thank you so much for having me. I am
a counterpoints breaking points Stan. What you guys are doing
which better? Honestly, I like this is this is it
for me? I like your banter better a little bit more.
It's like not as serious.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
That's Soger and Crystal.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
I just like love Emily so much, Like think she's
my favorite. Yeah, No, I like Ryan too very much.
But the discourse that you all have on this show
is everything. I think people the country needs this right now.
And the more people that become aware of this show
and can see that they can agree with people on
both sides of the aisle, I think that's really important.
(03:06):
So like, kudos to you guys.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Thank you very kind of you to say. So, let's
start with Matt Gates. So I'm not sure how much
you can say about this, but tell us what you
can say. My understanding is that you've spoken with some
people involved in that scandal, some of the girls who
are now women. What do you know about the role
of seeking arrangement there and what do you know about
(03:28):
what went on there?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Well, it was a couple of years ago that I
was contacted and to be.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Perfect affected by one of the girls.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
No, by an attorney. Okay, so let me just be
clear that, like I don't know what happened behind closed
doors with Matt Gates. I've never met Matt Gates, don't
know him. I don't but I do have some personal
experiences that have led me to believe certain things, and
I will share those with you. So as you know,
I used to work for this company, and I contacted
(04:00):
a nonprofit called the National Center on Sexual Exploitation because
I found a really interesting article they'd written that sounded
like I'd written it, and it was after I'd had
some other experiences with mainstream media not publishing this story,
and I reached out to them, and they actually contacted
me with an attorney who was representing the minor, and
(04:26):
what he told me is that he was suing them
or she was sing seeking arrangement, and Matt Gates he
was suing them on her behalf. And he contacted me
to ask me some questions about the mechanics of the
site and how it works, and so I gave him
that information. And at the same time, I was corresponding
(04:48):
with a journalist from ABC and that journalist told me
that the reason the indictment was dropped was because that
girl believes that the relationship was consensual and she settled
with him privately out of court, in addition to settling
with seeking arrangement privately. So that's what I know, and
(05:11):
that's led me to believe that there was something that
happened that transpired. I don't know what it was. It
leads me to believe that that girl was indeed underage.
And I know that there are plenty of underage users
on the site because it happened all the time while
I was working there. But if I had to speculate
on what went down in that situation, I would say
(05:33):
that Greenberg is probably the procurer or the sex trafficker,
if you will, the pimp colloquially we call them, who
uses the website to find the girls to then move
them to another place to have them paid for sex
by any party or something to a party. Yeah, And
I think there's a common misconception about like what sex
(05:53):
trafficking is. Like we hear it a lot in the media,
and people think, oh, like children immigrants being bought and sold,
which does happen, But a lot of times the people
who are being trafficked are actually like willing participants who
believe that it's consensual and don't really realize until years later.
(06:14):
Then then when they're looking back that they were coerced
and manipulated into doing that. And if I had to guess,
I would say that most men in power like oftentimes
aren't users of the site. They are friends with people
like Joel Greenberg, who are the ones who procure the
young girls for them.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And they may not know actually, right like, because if
you're Joel Greenberg, you wouldn't be like, oh yeah, by
the way, I used the website too, You might not know,
and I think they would carry their way. It's not
a difficult and Berg.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
You can speak to this actually as you're answering that
how does it work? Like you're literally the spokesperson you
were for seeking arrangements. So could you just give us
a little bit of background on mechanically, like what happens,
how people are contacted, how they get on the website
For broad I think context as we discuss your story
and people keep in mind what maybe happen with Gates.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
That's a super important question because the website touts itself
as not being a place for prostitution and sex work. Right,
They say they're a dating website, but if you are
actually a user of the site, you'll learn very quickly
that it is a site for buying and paying for sex,
which is very confusing, especially for young people who get
(07:27):
on the website and the marketing, the advertising. What people
say is, oh, no, sugar daddies aren't paying for sex.
Oh no, sugar babies aren't sex workers. But the fact
is there is no difference. They are sex workers, but
they are reframing it and coining it to be something different.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Like what are the differences?
Speaker 4 (07:45):
There are no differences, That's what I'm.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Social straight up, Like, well, what we.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Did while I was working there, And I started working
for the company when I was twenty two, so I
was also very young, and I didn't really understand and
the entire scheme of what was going on. It took
me a long time to really unpack that because they
tout it as being oh, just looking for an older
(08:12):
guy with deep pockets, and what's so wrong with that?
What's wrong with an older man giving someone money? But
the reality is much more sinister. Not only are the
men on the site looking to pay for sex, But
there's also a lot of like fraudsters and scammers who
either will say they'll pay you for sex but then
don't because the victims are vulnerable and of course discredited
(08:37):
because they were asking for it on a website that
pays people for sex. But which is it. Is it
a website where oh no, no, no, it's not that,
or were they asking for it on the website, So
it just makes it make sense, and it's very confusing,
and victims are ashamed of what they've done. Because of
the stigma and secrecy around sex work, people aren't willing
(08:58):
to come forward out their experiences, which allows the predators
to continue to perpetuate this. So back to your question,
the way that people get on the website was when
I was working there, it was through the marketing, and
they've pretty much quieted their accounts. They've completely changed the website,
scrubbed it from what it used to be. Probably because
of this case and of other cases. They shed their skin,
(09:22):
so to speak, over time to code as more vanilla.
But the core user base knows exactly what it is
and the word of mouth they know exactly what it is.
So people join the site thinking it's a dating website
where you can pay people for sex, right, So people
come to the website of their own volition, and that
has for a long time left the website not liable
(09:44):
for the interactions between their members because of Section two thirty. Right.
And I'm sure like a lot of your audience probably
knows what section two thirty is, but I'll just break
it down real quick. So there's this provision. It was
actually written in nineteen ninety six, before anyone knew what
the Internet would become and that the Internet would be
like ninety percent user generated content, So it's very outdated.
(10:05):
And it's the provision that says websites are not held
criminally liable for the content that their third party users
post on the website. So I'm sure you remember, like
Mark Zuckerberg and back in twenty seventeen was talking to
Congress about wanting to section through thirty to stay in place, right,
And it.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Is important to Interruptrow briefly has its merits in the
sense that as this show, for instance, I read a
bunch of the comments on down in the comment section
on YouTube, how you learned you were seeing exactly? I
don't want to be liable for the garbage that people
are posting in our comments section like that. I'm not
doing that, yeah now, but anyway, that's just that's the
(10:44):
counter argument. But there's it's so layered and complicated after that,
because what is is YouTube elevating some of this is
Facebook elevating some stuff over other stuff, And then are
they responsible for that if they're doing blah blahlah anyway,
go ahead.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Well it goes back to publishers of books, and the
distributors of the content are not treated as the publishers
of the content, which yes, which is fair.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, yeah, you're just shipping the book.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Totally fair, understandable and rightly so. And without it, the
Internet wouldn't be able to be what it is, and
no one would be in the common section, and we
wouldn't have this wonderful discourse. So I fully understand that
that's a protection that there was a yeah, of course.
But when it comes to dating websites, Backpage was a
huge section two thirty case. Well, yes, that is my
(11:32):
next point. So in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, actually while
I was working for the company, backpage was shut down.
The founder was arrested and then on sex trafficking charges
and then he committed suicide in prison. So anyway, and
that was.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
A result of that FASTA setsa yes, So let's give
us that background there.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
In twenty eighteen, after Backpage had been shut down or
the process of a backpage being shut down, and the
resulting legislation was fast ASSESSEDA. So it's the Freedom of
Human Sex Trafficking Act, and it was. It's basically an
amendment to the Amendments, right, So it's a provision in
section two thirty now that states websites that facilitate, assist,
(12:18):
and support sex work or sex trafficking are no longer
covered by section two thirty. So Backpage was shut down.
And if you're not familiar with Backpage, it was like
a classified's website for sex workers. I actually first became
familiar with it when I saw my cousin on it
scantily clad offered at three hundred dollars an hour, and
I was like WHOA. I was like, this is a thing, right, and.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's more explicit, right, And when you just said at
three hundred dollars an hour, like that's putting a price
tag on whereas seeking, which is now just seeking as
you write in your book, they drop the word arrangement
because arrangement is like, what's the arrangement on? Never mind,
it's just seeking. What are you seeking? Well, never mind
worry about there. It's not exploit it's not okay, this
(13:02):
act will be three hundred dollars for this amount of time.
It's more like we're going to kind of work it
out on our own ish, Like, what would explain the
difference is between Backpage and Seeking?
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yeah, good question. Backpage was more explicit, and they had reviews,
so sex worker or a John right would have reviews
of their profile on the website so that someone else
would know they were safe. So it was actually a
safer place for sex workers. And when it was shut down,
a lot of sex workers saw that as a bad
(13:34):
thing because this was a place where they could be safe,
and many of the people who were kicked off Backpage
went to Seeking because the website is intentionally anonymous, which
absolves predators right. But what Backpage was really doing and
why they got caught was because they were coaching their
(13:55):
members on what not to say and what not to
do on the web website, which Seeking does through winks
and nudges which basically are little slaps on the wrist
that say, oh no, no, no, don't do that on
the website, so they come back a little wiser.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Back page was explicit, but not totally explicit.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Sure, because they were trying to make it not seem
like that on the outside.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Would be like per hour, but we're not telling exactly
what that.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
And they do that by flagging certain words and having
people agree to terms and conditions things like that that
basically teach them how to absolve themselves through the website,
and the website counts on those nudges to make themselves
not liable. So like, there's two parties that are liable, right,
(14:44):
is the users of the website and the website itself,
and the website pushes all of that blame onto the
users without taking any of the accountability itself. And how
did you?
Speaker 5 (14:55):
People should read the book for the full story, but
could you just give us a quick, you know, explain
of how you got involved and then ultimately became disillusioned
with the experience.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
I was told about the website by a friend, which
is usually how you're told about the website, and.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I was twenty one.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
I was twenty one and I live in Las Vegas.
I mean, being twenty one in Las Vegas, you go
out a lot, you know, cute girls get paraded around
like we're a commodity right in Las Vegas. So it
really didn't seem that far off to me to seek
out rich guys or like, oh, I'm partying partying them
with them at the club all the time. Anyway, Like
what's the difference? You know? And I actually joined the
(15:34):
site because my friend told me they were doing a
reality show casting, so I was like, oh, like yeah,
the next kim Ka, you know, So that was really
in my mind. Like so I actually did end up
getting cast for the reality show, which was not a
reality show at all. It was a bunch of bs,
and I was coached and told to lie on behalf
(15:55):
of the company. I was also paid for my appearance,
which journalistic integrity dictates that you can't pay case studies.
So what they do is they make case studies sign
a contract that says they won't say they were paid.
But each and every case study is coached, paid and
coerced essentially and made to sign a contract that says
if they don't appear that they'll be sued. So they're scared.
(16:18):
And that changed a lot during the company. It got
more and more intense the contract did between the case
studies and the company.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
When I was what are these case studies used for?
Speaker 4 (16:28):
So sugar baby, sugar baby case studies essentially sex worker
case studies that go on air and say they're not
sex workers, and yeah, that's like in the contract is
you can't say you were paid for sex, when in
fact most of them certainly were. And the problem with
that is that it's a bunch of lies.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
The sex is just downstream of the friendship and the fun.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Yes, but the problem with the psychology of it is
that the girls don't think they're sex workers because the
marketing told them that, so they don't. They don't think
they're sex workers, but they're willing to be paid for sex.
And the guys, oh, no, no, I'm not a john,
but i'll pay you for sex. So what the website
(17:10):
did is is codify that idea between the two that
absolves them of legal responsibility because neither one of them
think they're participating in sex work, right, so are they?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And what Matt Gates said in his defense was that
people were mistaking his generosity to his girlfriends for paying
for sex, And in reading your book, you can kind
of see that, like there's a bunch of the guys
that you're involved with are like buying your shoes or
like watches or and here's some money. It's walking around
(17:41):
money and to enjoy yourself. But then the sex is separate,
Like I mean, obviously it's not, but like you can
you can see how everybody involved rationalizes it and tells
themselves that. Although from your perspective, did you tell yourself
that in the beginning, or were you like, this is
a way for me to make money and get shoes
(18:02):
and stuff.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
That's a very good distinction because there is both on
the website, right, Like at first I didn't think that's
what I was getting into, and then I realized, like
I was getting into that, and then I was like, okay,
pay me, and then I realized quickly that that's not
what I wanted. I was only paid for sex a
few times, like I would say directly, and I decided
that wasn't for me. And I really wanted a rich boyfriend,
(18:24):
someone to spoil me or whatever. And I guess that
does happen, but most of the time it's just people
straight up paying for sex, and the defense that, oh, no,
it was my girlfriend and I was being generous. That's
a great defense, like it, I mean, it is, yeah,
And that's not necessarily the problem I see, right, Like
it's not all bad, like a broken clock is right
(18:47):
twice a day. But that doesn't negate the fact that
this website is being used to lure coerce juveniles into
lives of sex work. And I've heard so many horror
stories about people who are threatened by their traffickers and
children who use this website because it's just a dating website.
(19:07):
So are you over eighteen? Yes, and you can get
on the website. While I was working there, there were
always people that were emailing us saying, hey, my daughter's
on the website, and it's hard to get them off
because there's no protections in place for the users. They
don't care about the users. They especially don't care about
the sugar baby users because sugar babies don't pay to
(19:27):
be on the site. Only sugar daddies pay to be
on the site, so the site is geared towards sugar
daddy preferences and indiscretions.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
What would the response be in your experience from the company.
If a parent reached out and said, hey, daughter's on
this thing, an underaged My underage daughter is on this thing.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
They would ask for her ID. But the problem with
that is the site is anonymous, so.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
She could just open a new one.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
She could just open another account or use someone else's ID.
A lot of people don't have pictures on the website
of themselves. Most of the men don't have pay pictures
at all. And that's the problem is when underage people
or predators, scammers, bad actors get kicked off the site,
they can just make new accounts. So it was my
observation while I was working there that they stopped kicking
(20:14):
them off because it was easier to keep track of
them when they weren't kicking them off, because they could
just make a new account. And especially for the sugar daddies,
it was a terrible user experience to be kicked off
the account and lose all your messages and have to
make a new email and all of this, so they
would just leave them on.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You're writing the book about the allure of the toxic
Prince Charming myth, and you a couple of minutes ago
you were saying like you were kind of hoping to
find a rich boyfriend that that would spoil you. So,
like talk a little bit about how that draws people
into the site.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
People are disillusioned with the idea that they might get saved,
especially in the ecoun I mean we're in right now.
People don't see a way out, and most of the
girls on the website are susceptible, impoverished, vulnerable communities who
truly do see that as a way out. And I'm
(21:14):
not saying that never happens, because certainly it does. Like,
certainly there are relationships where he saves you, but that's
usually a myth, and most people on the website use
that farce to lure in people and trick them into
sex or whatever with that sort of false promise and
(21:36):
the fact that we all kind of buy into that
Prince Charming fantasy is part of the problem. And you know,
social media adds to that, with people only posting their
best shots and glamorous vacations of you know, rented cars
and rented handbags and edited photos. Yeah, right, but people
(21:58):
believe that. And like Crystal actually mentioned something a couple
weeks ago that the online world is becoming more real
than the real world. And that's exactly what's happening here,
is people perceive what is real based on what's online,
but then what's actually happening is so much further from
(22:18):
that reality, but what's being perpetuated is what's online. So
it's this paradox that is like just absolutely confusing, and
it's happening at so many levels right now. So I mean,
that's what makes this really interesting is it's a layered
story that kind of reveals all these patterns that are
happening in a lot of places that have to do
with the anonymity of the Internet and of these demented
(22:39):
algorithms and an AI. Right when you think about these
populations of vulnerable, susceptible communities on this website that are
destitute looking for money, what would happen if we fed
that information to AI? How are we going to retarget
these vulnerable populations? What are we going to do to
those populations. It's very scary to think what the Internet
(23:03):
has created and what it's become. Obviously there's good and bad,
you know, two sides of the coin, but it's just
something to consider.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Well, and let me ask a really dumb question, is
there good and bad to seeking arrangements? Is there are
there case studies where people, do you know, sort of
use this service to pull themselves up by their proverberal
bootstraps and find their print charming and the website sort
of facilitated the happy ending. I guess that's a little
bit of a double entendre. But let's just take the
(23:32):
devil's advocate argument there Or.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Are there I'm sure you'd hear about college students who
are just making money on the side, or something like
do you like, what's your experience with that was at
all negative? Like what's your assessment of it?
Speaker 4 (23:47):
I did meet many people who had good experiences. But
and however, if you think about how predators work, right,
if there is one good experience, if there is someone
who finds Prince charming, well they get off the site, right,
So that's one that's one percent. But the predators returned
to the site to bait their next mark, and one
(24:10):
predator can hit dozens, hundreds, thousands of users. There are
some men who've been using this website for nearly two decades, right,
they get older and the girls stay the same age.
And just because there are a few cases where it
does work out, it doesn't mean that a website that
directly targets and praise on vulnerable populations should be allowed
(24:32):
at all. And while I was working there, yeah, I
did hear some okay stories, But ninety nine percent of
the time the people who I met while I was
working there that were users of the website, they had
a horror story. For me. It was pretty shocking. And
when I was working there, I rationalized I was like, oh, well,
you know, they just always want to talk about the
bad stuff. But as I grew to be more aware,
(24:55):
I realized that it's actually mostly bad stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
And it seemed like it it's set up in a
way that girls and women are just it's set up
to lose in this. And there was one moment in
your in your book, and you can talk about this
a little bit, where you quit a job because you've
got a guy that you think is like now going
to start paying you and you need money and you
(25:18):
hit him up like hey I need money, and he
like ghosts you for like a week, and you realize, oh,
like I now I pushed too hard, which then tells
women that Okay, there's an arrangement, but it's an unspoken
kind of arrangement. And so if you push too hard,
then the big prize that you're looking for is never
(25:41):
going to come through, which then would allow ninety nine
percent of the guys there to just exploit that exactly.
So how like that basically seems like the most common
experience there.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Is that, right, absolutely correct? Yeah, And that's what I
learned through meeting many sugar babies and through my own experience,
was that in order to be successful, you have to
be complacent, which I think is common in lots of industries.
The ones who are good little sheep are elevated, and
that's what happens to sex workers as well, the ones
(26:17):
most off. Oh yeah, sure. And yeah, the second you
expose yourself as not being in love with him or
maybe being a little bit too holding him accountable for
his bad actions, then you don't get the money anymore.
So you're taught to be subservient and have sex easily
(26:40):
without question. And that's what young women are taught to
do in our society. Right They're being fed birth control pills,
telling being told that they can have casual sex and
you're empowered and in my opinion.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
With no consequences except for empowerment.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
With no consequences, of course, But what I've learned is
that's actually not biologically possible for women to have casual
sex because of the hormones that we excrete while we're
having it. And in my belief that the birth control
is a way to easily control women and to get
them to have sex easily without question, and the money
(27:21):
is a way to keep them doing that. So it's
really hard when you're when you're in it, and when
you're don't have a lot of money, and when you're
when your basic needs aren't being met, it's it's hard
to say, oh, don't go after that, like, don't chase money.
But the more you get older and the younger those
girls look, and as you're looking back, things look much differently.
(27:45):
And that's what I exactly try to dictate in this book.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Can I just say how powerful that is for a moment.
Because these websites, we don't get a lot of insight
into them. They're very you know, obviously hard to penetrate
the all of the layers because they're intentionally obfuscating what's
going on, and you don't hear a lot of perspectives
from people like yourself, who have come from one side
and have said you were literally the spokesperson like that
(28:09):
is to go from one to the other based on
your own experience and being honest with yourself and talking
about you know, I don't suspect that you're some like
evangelical Christian moralizer, but to come to that perspective, I
think on the sexual revolution and some of these technologies,
having you know, the double edged sword of something like
(28:31):
birth control, I just think that's really really powerful, and
it's probably.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Not easy to make that case in media.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
So I don't know what your experience has been. Like
I was curious of actually going to ask you about
if I went back. I went back and looked at
some of the media coverage of seeking arrangements, and there
are some stories that are like almost glamorizing it, and
you were facing the media.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I pitched some of those stories.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
You may have, yes, So did you find I mean,
I remember ABC did this kind of glamorous look at
only fans a couple of years ago. It was like
an episode of twenty t twenty I think, and I
remember just being like the only negative They spent like
a couple minutes on people potentially being subjected to violence
or something like that. I was like, nothing about the owners.
It was a lot about empowerment and nothing really about
(29:12):
the dark side of the business.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Did you find the media to be.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
Kind of credulous when you sort of fed them the
feminist line or the sort of line about empowerment.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Yes, absolutely, And like you said, we don't get a
lot of insight into this, right, so media would use
it for sweeps as a clickbait article. And when media
does cover the website, or did cover the website, because
the coverage has kind of subsided, they lend credence to
the fact that it's not an illegal website, right because
(29:45):
if it was illegal, then it wouldn't be around and
the media wouldn't be covering it. So it basically solidifies
the idea in these young girls' heads that oh, it's
not that, because if it was, then what it on
twenty twenty? So it's very confusing. And yes, the realizations
I came to about feminism and third wave feminism particularly
(30:10):
that kind of failed us a bit. They are from
my own experiences, and you know, I'm sure some people
do feel as though they're empowered or whatever, But what
I found was that birth control made me crazy and
it not uncommon, and it distorted my perception of what
things really were. And once I got off of it,
I was a very different person. And while I was
(30:32):
working there, yeah, we were spoon feeding these narratives to media,
and the fact that the media is covering them made
me continue to do it. But also they pay people
so much at the company, Like I didn't come from money,
I was being paid more. There was more money than
I'd ever seen in my life. So when you stay quiet,
you get more money, and so it was very hard
(30:54):
to break that. And that's what happens to sex workers too.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Right, And what kind of man are you talking about,
by the way, Like it's it has to be. I
mean you're in Vegas and the money that's just in
Vegas alone is astronomical.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Do you mean how much did I make at the company? Well,
just like, what.
Speaker 5 (31:07):
Does it look like when somebody who comes from a
background of not having a lot of money gets on
the website and can probably I would assume suddenly be
living a very very different lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
I mean, there is lots of money, it just depends
like some guys paid two hundred dollars, some guys will
give you two thousand dollars. It really just depends. But
I mean, by the law of supply and demand, there
are not enough sugar daddies to go around there. The
expendable income of these men simply does not exist. But
they use what the marketing that's seeking teas up and
(31:39):
they just go in there and they say, oh, no, no,
I'm going to take you to Aruba. I'm going to
do this, I'm going to do that. But the reality
is they're not going to. And I'm not saying that
men don't do that off the website, but a website
like this, the particularly praise on them. I mean, it's
just it's criminal, and it's actually a criminal BYFOSTA but
for some reason and it's not being prosecuted.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Are there any through lines on the men here or
is it just basically all men that you would that
you would encounter using this site?
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Oh? I mean there were like sugar mommies on there,
like a few like No, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
What I mean is like the different kinds of men, Like,
were they any characteristics of men that make them more
likely to be on this this kind of site or
in your experience like the men that you meet there
are actually just the same as all men that you
meet in the real world.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
No, they're not the same. If a man has been
on seeking arrangement or has paid for sex and is
not working on himself, he's not the girl for you, honey.
Like I promise, these men are missing something in their lives,
be it emotional maturity, intimacy. Most of the men on
the website are married, so they're not receiving what they
(32:55):
want from their wife. Maybe she's had a few kids
and he doesn't find her attractive anymore, or whatever it
may be. But no, the men on the site are
not good guys. They do not come to the website
because they're just good philanthropic guys. That's not how it works.
And I think the prince charming fantasy is like rooted
in our culture, so we're taught to believe it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Pretty Woman, the movie Pretty Woman.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Yeah, the Pretty Woman pipe dream. Yes, lots of sex
workers think that's going to happen. But I just don't
think that Richard Gear's character in that movie is such
a good guy if he really has to pay a
sex worker, Because think about it, like, a real good
rich guy has plenty of options. He doesn't need to
go to a site like this, So it just it
doesn't make sense to me. It begs the question why
(33:41):
did you come to that website in the first place.
Speaker 5 (33:43):
Can I actually ask about the term sex work? Because
I have mixed feelings on it myself. On the one hand,
it's an oxymoron that you know, or I think it
should be culturally considered an oxymoron. On the other hand,
there's something powerful about conflating sex and work and sort
of telling in and of itself. But I know a
lot of people, especially in the right, are very uncomfortable
(34:04):
with it because they think it normalizes exploitation, that work
and exploitation are necessarily different. So when you are thinking
about that, and this gets to the question about whether
it's possible to do quote unquote sex work ethically, how
do you think about that term yourself.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
I use the term because prostitution has this like negative connotation,
and that people in the industry prefer the term sex work.
And it's also all encompassing, so sex work isn't just
having sex for money, it's actually sexual services as well.
So only fans, models, porn stars, anyone who is doing
sex acts or sexual services and then receiving money for that.
(34:45):
It sort of encompasses everyone. And I mean as far
as porn and stuff like that goes like, yeah, it's
a very damaging industry. And as far as like do
I think sex work should be legal in terms of
like prostitutes or sex workers? I mean, I think people
should make their own decisions. That's why I wrote the book,
because I want them to make their decisions after reading
(35:05):
my book with more context that you don't hear from
the media's we just talked with more context exactly. I
would not wish sex work on my worst frenemy. It's
the most haunting and horrifying money you will ever make.
And I worked for seeking arrangement, so I can tell
you that. But it's hard to explain that to a
young girl who has no money and she sees this
(35:27):
website where she thinks she can make easy money with
her body and what's the big deal? Well, hand her
my book please, I'll tell you what the big deal is.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
And you had a line in here that I thought
was quite profound about the money that you eventually were making,
but professionally as a employee rather than through the sex work,
And so you talk about the first transatlantic flight that
you ever took, and you get booked in a business
class and you write, I recline the seat into a bed,
(35:57):
just like I've seen in the movies. It feels like
I'm scratching the surf of stardom. I resist taking Instagram
photos and just soak it in the sparkling wine, greeting,
the zippered bag with an eyemask and socks and the
tiny cup of warm nuts. This is the luxury a
sugar baby should experience. And I didn't need to sell
my body, just my soul. That last part of that
line really struck me because it's because it goes to
(36:21):
the way that everybody's selling something to get to that place.
Because can you talk a little bit about that evolution
that you went through.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
I mean, like I mentioned earlier, people who are complicit
and who are willing to sell their souls are the
ones who are elevated and the ones who get business
class paid for by the traffickers. Because I was complicit,
and I think they elevated me because I was a
sugar baby and because I was okay with selling my body.
(36:53):
So that's why they chose me, and I think that
happens at many levels. I think it's happening in celebrity
right now now as we're learning, you know, many of
these child stars were preyed upon, you know, and that's
why they were elevated, and then they turn around and
prey on other people. And that's exactly what happened to me.
Is I was told a young age that this was okay,
(37:15):
and then as I got older, I was like, oh,
this is okay, Like this is what people do. I
was told this by people who were older than me,
and now I'm older and now it's okay. But the
more I became an adult and I had my own
coming of age working there, I started when I was
twenty two, I left when I was twenty seven, and
you really start to see things differently, and those girls
(37:35):
start to look so much younger, and you realize that
you can't let them sell their souls, like we need
to protect our children from this. And I know it's
an awkward conversation to have with your kids, but the
fact that we're not having that conversation is why they're
being lured to this website in the first place.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And maybe Emily's too young to have had this experience.
But like when I go to a college campus now
and look around, like, wow, these are kids. They look
so young, And I think about myself when I was
eighteen nineteen, I didn't think of myself as young, just
getting thought. I thought it was yeah, I thought I
was just as big as everybody else.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Being Irish.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
But I was just a kid. And now it's so
clear to me when I look around a college campus.
So how did you get to that place? Was it
just slowly day by day or was there was there
a moment? Although you talk about getting laid off, so
in some ways, after this legislation was passed, the website
(38:33):
thinks it's going under. You guys get laid off, So
in some ways the decision was made for you. How
did you then, like what was your own moral evolution?
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Like I wanted to leave the company for a long time.
I was already looking for other jobs, but they were
paying me like six figures and I had no skills,
so I couldn't find another high paying job. And I
had already set myself up for an expensive life because
I was young. And that's what you do when you're young,
and you make a bunch of you spend it. So
my evolution actually came after I worked for the company
(39:07):
and after I was laid off. When the Matt Gates
scandal broke in twenty twenty one, I was reached out
to by The New York Times and by ABC twenty twenty,
who flew me out. ABC flew me out to New
York put me up, had a day of production buzzing
around me back at the beginning of twenty twenty two,
(39:28):
and I told them my whole story, and I felt
very seen by them, and by the New York Times,
felt very seen. I thought that these big conglomerates, these
hard hitting news pieces would really expose the website. And
I felt like the journalists really understood me, and they
knew that this website was a smoke and mirrors show
for what's truly going on, which is like victimization and
(39:50):
sex trafficking and mass and you know, those stories never
came out, and those journalists don't talk to me anymore.
And why do you think that is? Now? You're asking
the right questions, like I don't know, but I you know,
four years ago, back then, I was a normy reading
the New York Times and watching ABC and thinking I
(40:12):
was well informed, and it was through my own personal
experiences that I began to distrust mainstream media. And actually
that's how I found breaking points. I was talking to
a guy and telling him about my distrust and he
was like, you remind me of Crystal Ball many such cases. Yeah,
And I was like, who's that? And now I'm flattered.
(40:32):
But then I was like who is this? I was
like what is this? Like what are they talking about?
Like why? Why have I never heard of this before?
And that's what pushed me to find independent media and
independent journalism and become so obsessed with you guys. I
love the show. And I actually ended up finding Whitney Webb,
who is the author of One Nation Under Blackmail. She
(40:55):
wrote a two volume book about Jeffrey Epstein's financial crimes
and then his sex crimes later on. And I was
trying to find a publisher at the time, and lots
of the big agencies would nibble, but no bites. No
one was interested in this. And I wrote a badass
book proposal, so I knew there was money to be
made and I couldn't get anyone to take it up.
But I'm just like, what's going on? And then I
(41:16):
heard Whitney Webb talk about her publisher and she's like,
this is a guy who publishes books that people are
scared to publish, and I was like, I need to
talk to that guy. And that's my publisher trying day.
So I'm very appreciative of them taking a chance on me.
I think it's going to pay off. But yeah, I mean,
if there's a Normy in your life that is worshiping
(41:37):
ABC and The New York Times, send this segment to them.
They need to know that these mainstream organizations do not
have you in their thoughts or their prayers. Your best
interest or public interest is not of their concern. They
care about cornflakes and ozebic and politicians and lobbyists. That's
(41:58):
who they're beholden to. And I learned that through personal experience,
So it definitely changed the tune of the book. And
what I try to expose is how the news is
made at those mainstream organizations, which is their fed lies
by criminal pr reps like I did, and then they
pair it those lies to the public who willingly believe
(42:19):
them and join the site and do lots of other
things because they believe what's being parroted by these news organizations,
and as Crystal says, they're crumbling, and I think they're
I think this election has been super insane and has
shown people how much they're crumbling.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Now, you're right at the end of the book that
in exchange for your severance you signed an NDA. Are
you in trouble, like, are they coming after you? What's
the what's the situation there, because obviously you're speaking, I.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
Am speaking, and I did sign an NDA. And the
thing about NDAs is they can't be used to cover
criminal enterprises. So I have a great lawyer, and I
was expecting to receive a season desist or perhaps a
lawsuit or something like that from the company. But I
haven't received one. Nothing yet.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
Well, yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I do have one
last question on that criminal enterprises point.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
Because it's full circle with the Gates thing. We're just talking.
Speaker 5 (43:16):
You were just talking about the kind of corruption that
is almost fueled by disinterest in the press and just
sort of by the political business establishment. So with Matt Gates,
there's a question of whether he's compromised because his potential
sex with minors is sort of used and has been
(43:38):
used as a weapon, and if it's true, it's fairy
use of a weapon. If it's not true, it's obviously problematic.
And so I guess do you have insight into how
seeking arrangements And I'm sure this is also true of OnlyFans.
I'm sure it was true of Backpage can be used
(43:58):
to compromise. I mean, did you see situations were either
intelligence informants that type of thing, or very powerful people
were entangling themselves in these quote unquote arrangements in ways
that could be affecting business and politics just by virtue
of the people who were involved.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
I saw on the website myself when I was working there,
policemen using the website to lure men interesting operations or whatever.
I remember when that happened. Originally, my boss told me
to go through the users and see if I could
find anyone who was a cop who was doing that,
(44:38):
because that's against our terms, you know. So I did that,
and all I did was just type in police into
the like email search bar, and there were so many
that came up, people using their using their police email
addresses on the website, and so I was like, oh man,
(45:00):
there's a ton on here, and so I start clicking
them and they're users of the site, And I was like, oh,
I don't think he's like trying to lure anyone. And
I think he's.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Trying to lure but to get his own Yes.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
And I heard from many girls on the website that
they were involved with politicians, very high profile people. And
I mean the website's entirely anonymous, so I don't know
who's the user of the site who's not. I mean,
if they're smart, they're not putting their picture on there,
they're not using their information and they don't have to.
I mean, is it being used as a honeypot? Is
it being used for sex trafficking? Yes? Yes, one hundred
(45:37):
and ten percent. Yes, that's exactly what Joel Greenberg did, right,
And I read too that he got the girl of
Fake ID because of his status.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Then yeah, he was like the register of whatever.
Speaker 5 (45:51):
Seminole County tax collector.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
Yeah, so king of Florida.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
I mean I don't know of any personally, but I
do know that.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
That happened an intelligence operation. I would send money traps
onto the site in DC and New York, oh La.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Vega, of course, yeah, yeah, And I'm sure they do.
I mean I didn't I don't know about that, like
through evidence, but I know about that anecdotally because I've
heard about it many times. So interesting.
Speaker 5 (46:19):
Yeah, and I mean again, just your perspective is very
much underrepresented in the media conversations about these services.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
So thank you, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
And so the book is Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge by
Brooke Urick. You can find it wherever you buy books.
I guess on online sexual exploits and secrets from inside
a Sugar Natty website. Brook thanks for joining us, Thanks
for watching.
Speaker 4 (46:47):
Thank you
Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election,
and we are so excited about what that means for
the future of this show.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
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Speaker 3 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 4 (00:30):
When the Matt Gates scandal broke in twenty twenty one,
I was reached out to by the New York Times
and by ABC twenty twenty. Those stories never came out,
and those journalists don't talk to me anymore. They tout
it as what's wrong with an older man giving someone money,
but the reality is much more sinister.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
Did you see situations where either intelligence informants that type
of thing, or very powerful people were entangling themselves.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
The website Seeking Arrangement has gotten a little bit of
time in the limelight because of the controversy surrounding Matt
Gates his and his failed attempt to become Attorney General.
People may not know the details of this, but some
of the scandal that Gates was involved in appears to
(01:20):
begin with this website, Seeking Arrangement, which is described itself
as a place for sugar daddies and sugar babies. And
one of the apparently underage people that was that became
involved with Gates through I guess his friend Greenberg, Joel
met Joel Greenberg through this Seeking Arrangement site. So it
(01:42):
just so happens that there's a new book out by
Brooke Burick called Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge. Sexual Exploits and
Secrets from Inside a Sugar Daddy Website, which we could
put up here as well, which is something of a
blowing of the whistle about the about the site and
also a personal memoir narrative about how Brooke went from
(02:05):
a sugar baby user of the website to it's spokesperson
later to then outside critic of the organization. Brook is
here to talk with us about the book, about her life,
about what this this site is. Brooke, thanks so much
for joining us and apparently you're you're viewer of the
(02:27):
show as well.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Yes, thank you so much for having me. I am
a counterpoints breaking points Stan. What you guys are doing
which better? Honestly, I like this is this is it
for me? I like your banter better a little bit more.
It's like not as serious.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
That's Soger and Crystal.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
I just like love Emily so much, Like think she's
my favorite. Yeah, No, I like Ryan too very much.
But the discourse that you all have on this show
is everything. I think people the country needs this right now.
And the more people that become aware of this show
and can see that they can agree with people on
both sides of the aisle, I think that's really important.
(03:06):
So like, kudos to you guys.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Thank you very kind of you to say. So, let's
start with Matt Gates. So I'm not sure how much
you can say about this, but tell us what you
can say. My understanding is that you've spoken with some
people involved in that scandal, some of the girls who
are now women. What do you know about the role
of seeking arrangement there and what do you know about
(03:28):
what went on there?
Speaker 4 (03:30):
Well, it was a couple of years ago that I
was contacted and to be.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Perfect affected by one of the girls.
Speaker 4 (03:36):
No, by an attorney. Okay, so let me just be
clear that, like I don't know what happened behind closed
doors with Matt Gates. I've never met Matt Gates, don't
know him. I don't but I do have some personal
experiences that have led me to believe certain things, and
I will share those with you. So as you know,
I used to work for this company, and I contacted
(04:00):
a nonprofit called the National Center on Sexual Exploitation because
I found a really interesting article they'd written that sounded
like I'd written it, and it was after I'd had
some other experiences with mainstream media not publishing this story,
and I reached out to them, and they actually contacted
me with an attorney who was representing the minor, and
(04:26):
what he told me is that he was suing them
or she was sing seeking arrangement, and Matt Gates he
was suing them on her behalf. And he contacted me
to ask me some questions about the mechanics of the
site and how it works, and so I gave him
that information. And at the same time, I was corresponding
(04:48):
with a journalist from ABC and that journalist told me
that the reason the indictment was dropped was because that
girl believes that the relationship was consensual and she settled
with him privately out of court, in addition to settling
with seeking arrangement privately. So that's what I know, and
(05:11):
that's led me to believe that there was something that
happened that transpired. I don't know what it was. It
leads me to believe that that girl was indeed underage.
And I know that there are plenty of underage users
on the site because it happened all the time while
I was working there. But if I had to speculate
on what went down in that situation, I would say
(05:33):
that Greenberg is probably the procurer or the sex trafficker,
if you will, the pimp colloquially we call them, who
uses the website to find the girls to then move
them to another place to have them paid for sex
by any party or something to a party. Yeah, And
I think there's a common misconception about like what sex
(05:53):
trafficking is. Like we hear it a lot in the media,
and people think, oh, like children immigrants being bought and sold,
which does happen, But a lot of times the people
who are being trafficked are actually like willing participants who
believe that it's consensual and don't really realize until years later.
(06:14):
Then then when they're looking back that they were coerced
and manipulated into doing that. And if I had to guess,
I would say that most men in power like oftentimes
aren't users of the site. They are friends with people
like Joel Greenberg, who are the ones who procure the
young girls for them.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
And they may not know actually, right like, because if
you're Joel Greenberg, you wouldn't be like, oh yeah, by
the way, I used the website too, You might not know,
and I think they would carry their way. It's not
a difficult and Berg.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
You can speak to this actually as you're answering that
how does it work? Like you're literally the spokesperson you
were for seeking arrangements. So could you just give us
a little bit of background on mechanically, like what happens,
how people are contacted, how they get on the website
For broad I think context as we discuss your story
and people keep in mind what maybe happen with Gates.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
That's a super important question because the website touts itself
as not being a place for prostitution and sex work. Right,
They say they're a dating website, but if you are
actually a user of the site, you'll learn very quickly
that it is a site for buying and paying for sex,
which is very confusing, especially for young people who get
(07:27):
on the website and the marketing, the advertising. What people
say is, oh, no, sugar daddies aren't paying for sex.
Oh no, sugar babies aren't sex workers. But the fact
is there is no difference. They are sex workers, but
they are reframing it and coining it to be something different.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Like what are the differences?
Speaker 4 (07:45):
There are no differences, That's what I'm.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Social straight up, Like, well, what we.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Did while I was working there, And I started working
for the company when I was twenty two, so I
was also very young, and I didn't really understand and
the entire scheme of what was going on. It took
me a long time to really unpack that because they
tout it as being oh, just looking for an older
(08:12):
guy with deep pockets, and what's so wrong with that?
What's wrong with an older man giving someone money? But
the reality is much more sinister. Not only are the
men on the site looking to pay for sex, But
there's also a lot of like fraudsters and scammers who
either will say they'll pay you for sex but then
don't because the victims are vulnerable and of course discredited
(08:37):
because they were asking for it on a website that
pays people for sex. But which is it. Is it
a website where oh no, no, no, it's not that,
or were they asking for it on the website, So
it just makes it make sense, and it's very confusing,
and victims are ashamed of what they've done. Because of
the stigma and secrecy around sex work, people aren't willing
(08:58):
to come forward out their experiences, which allows the predators
to continue to perpetuate this. So back to your question,
the way that people get on the website was when
I was working there, it was through the marketing, and
they've pretty much quieted their accounts. They've completely changed the website,
scrubbed it from what it used to be. Probably because
of this case and of other cases. They shed their skin,
(09:22):
so to speak, over time to code as more vanilla.
But the core user base knows exactly what it is
and the word of mouth they know exactly what it is.
So people join the site thinking it's a dating website
where you can pay people for sex, right, So people
come to the website of their own volition, and that
has for a long time left the website not liable
(09:44):
for the interactions between their members because of Section two thirty. Right.
And I'm sure like a lot of your audience probably
knows what section two thirty is, but I'll just break
it down real quick. So there's this provision. It was
actually written in nineteen ninety six, before anyone knew what
the Internet would become and that the Internet would be
like ninety percent user generated content, So it's very outdated.
(10:05):
And it's the provision that says websites are not held
criminally liable for the content that their third party users
post on the website. So I'm sure you remember, like
Mark Zuckerberg and back in twenty seventeen was talking to
Congress about wanting to section through thirty to stay in place, right,
And it.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Is important to Interruptrow briefly has its merits in the
sense that as this show, for instance, I read a
bunch of the comments on down in the comment section
on YouTube, how you learned you were seeing exactly? I
don't want to be liable for the garbage that people
are posting in our comments section like that. I'm not
doing that, yeah now, but anyway, that's just that's the
(10:44):
counter argument. But there's it's so layered and complicated after that,
because what is is YouTube elevating some of this is
Facebook elevating some stuff over other stuff, And then are
they responsible for that if they're doing blah blahlah anyway,
go ahead.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Well it goes back to publishers of books, and the
distributors of the content are not treated as the publishers
of the content, which yes, which is fair.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Yeah, yeah, you're just shipping the book.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Totally fair, understandable and rightly so. And without it, the
Internet wouldn't be able to be what it is, and
no one would be in the common section, and we
wouldn't have this wonderful discourse. So I fully understand that
that's a protection that there was a yeah, of course.
But when it comes to dating websites, Backpage was a
huge section two thirty case. Well, yes, that is my
(11:32):
next point. So in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, actually while
I was working for the company, backpage was shut down.
The founder was arrested and then on sex trafficking charges
and then he committed suicide in prison. So anyway, and
that was.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
A result of that FASTA setsa yes, So let's give
us that background there.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
In twenty eighteen, after Backpage had been shut down or
the process of a backpage being shut down, and the
resulting legislation was fast ASSESSEDA. So it's the Freedom of
Human Sex Trafficking Act, and it was. It's basically an
amendment to the Amendments, right, So it's a provision in
section two thirty now that states websites that facilitate, assist,
(12:18):
and support sex work or sex trafficking are no longer
covered by section two thirty. So Backpage was shut down.
And if you're not familiar with Backpage, it was like
a classified's website for sex workers. I actually first became
familiar with it when I saw my cousin on it
scantily clad offered at three hundred dollars an hour, and
I was like WHOA. I was like, this is a thing, right, and.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's more explicit, right, And when you just said at
three hundred dollars an hour, like that's putting a price
tag on whereas seeking, which is now just seeking as
you write in your book, they drop the word arrangement
because arrangement is like, what's the arrangement on? Never mind,
it's just seeking. What are you seeking? Well, never mind
worry about there. It's not exploit it's not okay, this
(13:02):
act will be three hundred dollars for this amount of time.
It's more like we're going to kind of work it
out on our own ish, Like, what would explain the
difference is between Backpage and Seeking?
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yeah, good question. Backpage was more explicit, and they had reviews,
so sex worker or a John right would have reviews
of their profile on the website so that someone else
would know they were safe. So it was actually a
safer place for sex workers. And when it was shut down,
a lot of sex workers saw that as a bad
(13:34):
thing because this was a place where they could be safe,
and many of the people who were kicked off Backpage
went to Seeking because the website is intentionally anonymous, which
absolves predators right. But what Backpage was really doing and
why they got caught was because they were coaching their
(13:55):
members on what not to say and what not to
do on the web website, which Seeking does through winks
and nudges which basically are little slaps on the wrist
that say, oh no, no, no, don't do that on
the website, so they come back a little wiser.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Back page was explicit, but not totally explicit.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
Sure, because they were trying to make it not seem
like that on the outside.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Would be like per hour, but we're not telling exactly
what that.
Speaker 4 (14:23):
And they do that by flagging certain words and having
people agree to terms and conditions things like that that
basically teach them how to absolve themselves through the website,
and the website counts on those nudges to make themselves
not liable. So like, there's two parties that are liable, right,
(14:44):
is the users of the website and the website itself,
and the website pushes all of that blame onto the
users without taking any of the accountability itself. And how
did you?
Speaker 5 (14:55):
People should read the book for the full story, but
could you just give us a quick, you know, explain
of how you got involved and then ultimately became disillusioned
with the experience.
Speaker 4 (15:04):
I was told about the website by a friend, which
is usually how you're told about the website, and.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I was twenty one.
Speaker 4 (15:11):
I was twenty one and I live in Las Vegas.
I mean, being twenty one in Las Vegas, you go
out a lot, you know, cute girls get paraded around
like we're a commodity right in Las Vegas. So it
really didn't seem that far off to me to seek
out rich guys or like, oh, I'm partying partying them
with them at the club all the time. Anyway, Like
what's the difference? You know? And I actually joined the
(15:34):
site because my friend told me they were doing a
reality show casting, so I was like, oh, like yeah,
the next kim Ka, you know, So that was really
in my mind. Like so I actually did end up
getting cast for the reality show, which was not a
reality show at all. It was a bunch of bs,
and I was coached and told to lie on behalf
(15:55):
of the company. I was also paid for my appearance,
which journalistic integrity dictates that you can't pay case studies.
So what they do is they make case studies sign
a contract that says they won't say they were paid.
But each and every case study is coached, paid and
coerced essentially and made to sign a contract that says
if they don't appear that they'll be sued. So they're scared.
(16:18):
And that changed a lot during the company. It got
more and more intense the contract did between the case
studies and the company.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
When I was what are these case studies used for?
Speaker 4 (16:28):
So sugar baby, sugar baby case studies essentially sex worker
case studies that go on air and say they're not
sex workers, and yeah, that's like in the contract is
you can't say you were paid for sex, when in
fact most of them certainly were. And the problem with
that is that it's a bunch of lies.
Speaker 5 (16:46):
The sex is just downstream of the friendship and the fun.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Yes, but the problem with the psychology of it is
that the girls don't think they're sex workers because the
marketing told them that, so they don't. They don't think
they're sex workers, but they're willing to be paid for sex.
And the guys, oh, no, no, I'm not a john,
but i'll pay you for sex. So what the website
(17:10):
did is is codify that idea between the two that
absolves them of legal responsibility because neither one of them
think they're participating in sex work, right, so are they?
Speaker 1 (17:20):
And what Matt Gates said in his defense was that
people were mistaking his generosity to his girlfriends for paying
for sex, And in reading your book, you can kind
of see that, like there's a bunch of the guys
that you're involved with are like buying your shoes or
like watches or and here's some money. It's walking around
(17:41):
money and to enjoy yourself. But then the sex is separate,
Like I mean, obviously it's not, but like you can
you can see how everybody involved rationalizes it and tells
themselves that. Although from your perspective, did you tell yourself
that in the beginning, or were you like, this is
a way for me to make money and get shoes
(18:02):
and stuff.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
That's a very good distinction because there is both on
the website, right, Like at first I didn't think that's
what I was getting into, and then I realized, like
I was getting into that, and then I was like, okay,
pay me, and then I realized quickly that that's not
what I wanted. I was only paid for sex a
few times, like I would say directly, and I decided
that wasn't for me. And I really wanted a rich boyfriend,
(18:24):
someone to spoil me or whatever. And I guess that
does happen, but most of the time it's just people
straight up paying for sex, and the defense that, oh, no,
it was my girlfriend and I was being generous. That's
a great defense, like it, I mean, it is, yeah,
And that's not necessarily the problem I see, right, Like
it's not all bad, like a broken clock is right
(18:47):
twice a day. But that doesn't negate the fact that
this website is being used to lure coerce juveniles into
lives of sex work. And I've heard so many horror
stories about people who are threatened by their traffickers and
children who use this website because it's just a dating website.
(19:07):
So are you over eighteen? Yes, and you can get
on the website. While I was working there, there were
always people that were emailing us saying, hey, my daughter's
on the website, and it's hard to get them off
because there's no protections in place for the users. They
don't care about the users. They especially don't care about
the sugar baby users because sugar babies don't pay to
(19:27):
be on the site. Only sugar daddies pay to be
on the site, so the site is geared towards sugar
daddy preferences and indiscretions.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
What would the response be in your experience from the company.
If a parent reached out and said, hey, daughter's on
this thing, an underaged My underage daughter is on this thing.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
They would ask for her ID. But the problem with
that is the site is anonymous, so.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
She could just open a new one.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
She could just open another account or use someone else's ID.
A lot of people don't have pictures on the website
of themselves. Most of the men don't have pay pictures
at all. And that's the problem is when underage people
or predators, scammers, bad actors get kicked off the site,
they can just make new accounts. So it was my
observation while I was working there that they stopped kicking
(20:14):
them off because it was easier to keep track of
them when they weren't kicking them off, because they could
just make a new account. And especially for the sugar daddies,
it was a terrible user experience to be kicked off
the account and lose all your messages and have to
make a new email and all of this, so they
would just leave them on.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You're writing the book about the allure of the toxic
Prince Charming myth, and you a couple of minutes ago
you were saying like you were kind of hoping to
find a rich boyfriend that that would spoil you. So,
like talk a little bit about how that draws people
into the site.
Speaker 4 (20:54):
People are disillusioned with the idea that they might get saved,
especially in the ecoun I mean we're in right now.
People don't see a way out, and most of the
girls on the website are susceptible, impoverished, vulnerable communities who
truly do see that as a way out. And I'm
(21:14):
not saying that never happens, because certainly it does. Like,
certainly there are relationships where he saves you, but that's
usually a myth, and most people on the website use
that farce to lure in people and trick them into
sex or whatever with that sort of false promise and
(21:36):
the fact that we all kind of buy into that
Prince Charming fantasy is part of the problem. And you know,
social media adds to that, with people only posting their
best shots and glamorous vacations of you know, rented cars
and rented handbags and edited photos. Yeah, right, but people
(21:58):
believe that. And like Crystal actually mentioned something a couple
weeks ago that the online world is becoming more real
than the real world. And that's exactly what's happening here,
is people perceive what is real based on what's online,
but then what's actually happening is so much further from
(22:18):
that reality, but what's being perpetuated is what's online. So
it's this paradox that is like just absolutely confusing, and
it's happening at so many levels right now. So I mean,
that's what makes this really interesting is it's a layered
story that kind of reveals all these patterns that are
happening in a lot of places that have to do
with the anonymity of the Internet and of these demented
(22:39):
algorithms and an AI. Right when you think about these
populations of vulnerable, susceptible communities on this website that are
destitute looking for money, what would happen if we fed
that information to AI? How are we going to retarget
these vulnerable populations? What are we going to do to
those populations. It's very scary to think what the Internet
(23:03):
has created and what it's become. Obviously there's good and bad,
you know, two sides of the coin, but it's just
something to consider.
Speaker 5 (23:10):
Well, and let me ask a really dumb question, is
there good and bad to seeking arrangements? Is there are
there case studies where people, do you know, sort of
use this service to pull themselves up by their proverberal
bootstraps and find their print charming and the website sort
of facilitated the happy ending. I guess that's a little
bit of a double entendre. But let's just take the
(23:32):
devil's advocate argument there Or.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
Are there I'm sure you'd hear about college students who
are just making money on the side, or something like
do you like, what's your experience with that was at
all negative? Like what's your assessment of it?
Speaker 4 (23:47):
I did meet many people who had good experiences. But
and however, if you think about how predators work, right,
if there is one good experience, if there is someone
who finds Prince charming, well they get off the site, right,
So that's one that's one percent. But the predators returned
to the site to bait their next mark, and one
(24:10):
predator can hit dozens, hundreds, thousands of users. There are
some men who've been using this website for nearly two decades, right,
they get older and the girls stay the same age.
And just because there are a few cases where it
does work out, it doesn't mean that a website that
directly targets and praise on vulnerable populations should be allowed
(24:32):
at all. And while I was working there, yeah, I
did hear some okay stories, But ninety nine percent of
the time the people who I met while I was
working there that were users of the website, they had
a horror story. For me. It was pretty shocking. And
when I was working there, I rationalized I was like, oh, well,
you know, they just always want to talk about the
bad stuff. But as I grew to be more aware,
(24:55):
I realized that it's actually mostly bad stuff.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
And it seemed like it it's set up in a
way that girls and women are just it's set up
to lose in this. And there was one moment in
your in your book, and you can talk about this
a little bit, where you quit a job because you've
got a guy that you think is like now going
to start paying you and you need money and you
(25:18):
hit him up like hey I need money, and he
like ghosts you for like a week, and you realize, oh,
like I now I pushed too hard, which then tells
women that Okay, there's an arrangement, but it's an unspoken
kind of arrangement. And so if you push too hard,
then the big prize that you're looking for is never
(25:41):
going to come through, which then would allow ninety nine
percent of the guys there to just exploit that exactly.
So how like that basically seems like the most common
experience there.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Is that, right, absolutely correct? Yeah, And that's what I
learned through meeting many sugar babies and through my own experience,
was that in order to be successful, you have to
be complacent, which I think is common in lots of industries.
The ones who are good little sheep are elevated, and
that's what happens to sex workers as well, the ones
(26:17):
most off. Oh yeah, sure. And yeah, the second you
expose yourself as not being in love with him or
maybe being a little bit too holding him accountable for
his bad actions, then you don't get the money anymore.
So you're taught to be subservient and have sex easily
(26:40):
without question. And that's what young women are taught to
do in our society. Right They're being fed birth control pills,
telling being told that they can have casual sex and
you're empowered and in my opinion.
Speaker 5 (26:57):
With no consequences except for empowerment.
Speaker 4 (26:59):
With no consequences, of course, But what I've learned is
that's actually not biologically possible for women to have casual
sex because of the hormones that we excrete while we're
having it. And in my belief that the birth control
is a way to easily control women and to get
them to have sex easily without question, and the money
(27:21):
is a way to keep them doing that. So it's
really hard when you're when you're in it, and when
you're don't have a lot of money, and when you're
when your basic needs aren't being met, it's it's hard
to say, oh, don't go after that, like, don't chase money.
But the more you get older and the younger those
girls look, and as you're looking back, things look much differently.
(27:45):
And that's what I exactly try to dictate in this book.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Can I just say how powerful that is for a moment.
Because these websites, we don't get a lot of insight
into them. They're very you know, obviously hard to penetrate
the all of the layers because they're intentionally obfuscating what's
going on, and you don't hear a lot of perspectives
from people like yourself, who have come from one side
and have said you were literally the spokesperson like that
(28:09):
is to go from one to the other based on
your own experience and being honest with yourself and talking
about you know, I don't suspect that you're some like
evangelical Christian moralizer, but to come to that perspective, I
think on the sexual revolution and some of these technologies,
having you know, the double edged sword of something like
(28:31):
birth control, I just think that's really really powerful, and
it's probably.
Speaker 4 (28:34):
Not easy to make that case in media.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
So I don't know what your experience has been. Like
I was curious of actually going to ask you about
if I went back. I went back and looked at
some of the media coverage of seeking arrangements, and there
are some stories that are like almost glamorizing it, and
you were facing the media.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
I pitched some of those stories.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
You may have, yes, So did you find I mean,
I remember ABC did this kind of glamorous look at
only fans a couple of years ago. It was like
an episode of twenty t twenty I think, and I
remember just being like the only negative They spent like
a couple minutes on people potentially being subjected to violence
or something like that. I was like, nothing about the owners.
It was a lot about empowerment and nothing really about
(29:12):
the dark side of the business.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Did you find the media to be.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
Kind of credulous when you sort of fed them the
feminist line or the sort of line about empowerment.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Yes, absolutely, And like you said, we don't get a
lot of insight into this, right, so media would use
it for sweeps as a clickbait article. And when media
does cover the website, or did cover the website, because
the coverage has kind of subsided, they lend credence to
the fact that it's not an illegal website, right because
(29:45):
if it was illegal, then it wouldn't be around and
the media wouldn't be covering it. So it basically solidifies
the idea in these young girls' heads that oh, it's
not that, because if it was, then what it on
twenty twenty? So it's very confusing. And yes, the realizations
I came to about feminism and third wave feminism particularly
(30:10):
that kind of failed us a bit. They are from
my own experiences, and you know, I'm sure some people
do feel as though they're empowered or whatever, But what
I found was that birth control made me crazy and
it not uncommon, and it distorted my perception of what
things really were. And once I got off of it,
I was a very different person. And while I was
(30:32):
working there, yeah, we were spoon feeding these narratives to media,
and the fact that the media is covering them made
me continue to do it. But also they pay people
so much at the company, Like I didn't come from money,
I was being paid more. There was more money than
I'd ever seen in my life. So when you stay quiet,
you get more money, and so it was very hard
(30:54):
to break that. And that's what happens to sex workers too.
Speaker 5 (30:57):
Right, And what kind of man are you talking about,
by the way, Like it's it has to be. I
mean you're in Vegas and the money that's just in
Vegas alone is astronomical.
Speaker 4 (31:06):
Do you mean how much did I make at the company? Well,
just like, what.
Speaker 5 (31:07):
Does it look like when somebody who comes from a
background of not having a lot of money gets on
the website and can probably I would assume suddenly be
living a very very different lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
I mean, there is lots of money, it just depends
like some guys paid two hundred dollars, some guys will
give you two thousand dollars. It really just depends. But
I mean, by the law of supply and demand, there
are not enough sugar daddies to go around there. The
expendable income of these men simply does not exist. But
they use what the marketing that's seeking teas up and
(31:39):
they just go in there and they say, oh, no, no,
I'm going to take you to Aruba. I'm going to
do this, I'm going to do that. But the reality
is they're not going to. And I'm not saying that
men don't do that off the website, but a website
like this, the particularly praise on them. I mean, it's
just it's criminal, and it's actually a criminal BYFOSTA but
for some reason and it's not being prosecuted.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Are there any through lines on the men here or
is it just basically all men that you would that
you would encounter using this site?
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Oh? I mean there were like sugar mommies on there,
like a few like No, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
What I mean is like the different kinds of men, Like,
were they any characteristics of men that make them more
likely to be on this this kind of site or
in your experience like the men that you meet there
are actually just the same as all men that you
meet in the real world.
Speaker 4 (32:34):
No, they're not the same. If a man has been
on seeking arrangement or has paid for sex and is
not working on himself, he's not the girl for you, honey.
Like I promise, these men are missing something in their lives,
be it emotional maturity, intimacy. Most of the men on
the website are married, so they're not receiving what they
(32:55):
want from their wife. Maybe she's had a few kids
and he doesn't find her attractive anymore, or whatever it
may be. But no, the men on the site are
not good guys. They do not come to the website
because they're just good philanthropic guys. That's not how it works.
And I think the prince charming fantasy is like rooted
in our culture, so we're taught to believe it.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Pretty Woman, the movie Pretty Woman.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Yeah, the Pretty Woman pipe dream. Yes, lots of sex
workers think that's going to happen. But I just don't
think that Richard Gear's character in that movie is such
a good guy if he really has to pay a
sex worker, Because think about it, like, a real good
rich guy has plenty of options. He doesn't need to
go to a site like this, So it just it
doesn't make sense to me. It begs the question why
(33:41):
did you come to that website in the first place.
Speaker 5 (33:43):
Can I actually ask about the term sex work? Because
I have mixed feelings on it myself. On the one hand,
it's an oxymoron that you know, or I think it
should be culturally considered an oxymoron. On the other hand,
there's something powerful about conflating sex and work and sort
of telling in and of itself. But I know a
lot of people, especially in the right, are very uncomfortable
(34:04):
with it because they think it normalizes exploitation, that work
and exploitation are necessarily different. So when you are thinking
about that, and this gets to the question about whether
it's possible to do quote unquote sex work ethically, how
do you think about that term yourself.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
I use the term because prostitution has this like negative connotation,
and that people in the industry prefer the term sex work.
And it's also all encompassing, so sex work isn't just
having sex for money, it's actually sexual services as well.
So only fans, models, porn stars, anyone who is doing
sex acts or sexual services and then receiving money for that.
(34:45):
It sort of encompasses everyone. And I mean as far
as porn and stuff like that goes like, yeah, it's
a very damaging industry. And as far as like do
I think sex work should be legal in terms of
like prostitutes or sex workers? I mean, I think people
should make their own decisions. That's why I wrote the book,
because I want them to make their decisions after reading
(35:05):
my book with more context that you don't hear from
the media's we just talked with more context exactly. I
would not wish sex work on my worst frenemy. It's
the most haunting and horrifying money you will ever make.
And I worked for seeking arrangement, so I can tell
you that. But it's hard to explain that to a
young girl who has no money and she sees this
(35:27):
website where she thinks she can make easy money with
her body and what's the big deal? Well, hand her
my book please, I'll tell you what the big deal is.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
And you had a line in here that I thought
was quite profound about the money that you eventually were making,
but professionally as a employee rather than through the sex work,
And so you talk about the first transatlantic flight that
you ever took, and you get booked in a business
class and you write, I recline the seat into a bed,
(35:57):
just like I've seen in the movies. It feels like
I'm scratching the surf of stardom. I resist taking Instagram
photos and just soak it in the sparkling wine, greeting,
the zippered bag with an eyemask and socks and the
tiny cup of warm nuts. This is the luxury a
sugar baby should experience. And I didn't need to sell
my body, just my soul. That last part of that
line really struck me because it's because it goes to
(36:21):
the way that everybody's selling something to get to that place.
Because can you talk a little bit about that evolution
that you went through.
Speaker 4 (36:32):
I mean, like I mentioned earlier, people who are complicit
and who are willing to sell their souls are the
ones who are elevated and the ones who get business
class paid for by the traffickers. Because I was complicit,
and I think they elevated me because I was a
sugar baby and because I was okay with selling my body.
(36:53):
So that's why they chose me, and I think that
happens at many levels. I think it's happening in celebrity
right now now as we're learning, you know, many of
these child stars were preyed upon, you know, and that's
why they were elevated, and then they turn around and
prey on other people. And that's exactly what happened to me.
Is I was told a young age that this was okay,
(37:15):
and then as I got older, I was like, oh,
this is okay, Like this is what people do. I
was told this by people who were older than me,
and now I'm older and now it's okay. But the
more I became an adult and I had my own
coming of age working there, I started when I was
twenty two, I left when I was twenty seven, and
you really start to see things differently, and those girls
(37:35):
start to look so much younger, and you realize that
you can't let them sell their souls, like we need
to protect our children from this. And I know it's
an awkward conversation to have with your kids, but the
fact that we're not having that conversation is why they're
being lured to this website in the first place.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
And maybe Emily's too young to have had this experience.
But like when I go to a college campus now
and look around, like, wow, these are kids. They look
so young, And I think about myself when I was
eighteen nineteen, I didn't think of myself as young, just
getting thought. I thought it was yeah, I thought I
was just as big as everybody else.
Speaker 5 (38:11):
Being Irish.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
But I was just a kid. And now it's so
clear to me when I look around a college campus.
So how did you get to that place? Was it
just slowly day by day or was there was there
a moment? Although you talk about getting laid off, so
in some ways, after this legislation was passed, the website
(38:33):
thinks it's going under. You guys get laid off, So
in some ways the decision was made for you. How
did you then, like what was your own moral evolution?
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Like I wanted to leave the company for a long time.
I was already looking for other jobs, but they were
paying me like six figures and I had no skills,
so I couldn't find another high paying job. And I
had already set myself up for an expensive life because
I was young. And that's what you do when you're young,
and you make a bunch of you spend it. So
my evolution actually came after I worked for the company
(39:07):
and after I was laid off. When the Matt Gates
scandal broke in twenty twenty one, I was reached out
to by The New York Times and by ABC twenty twenty,
who flew me out. ABC flew me out to New
York put me up, had a day of production buzzing
around me back at the beginning of twenty twenty two,
(39:28):
and I told them my whole story, and I felt
very seen by them, and by the New York Times,
felt very seen. I thought that these big conglomerates, these
hard hitting news pieces would really expose the website. And
I felt like the journalists really understood me, and they
knew that this website was a smoke and mirrors show
for what's truly going on, which is like victimization and
(39:50):
sex trafficking and mass and you know, those stories never
came out, and those journalists don't talk to me anymore.
And why do you think that is? Now? You're asking
the right questions, like I don't know, but I you know,
four years ago, back then, I was a normy reading
the New York Times and watching ABC and thinking I
(40:12):
was well informed, and it was through my own personal
experiences that I began to distrust mainstream media. And actually
that's how I found breaking points. I was talking to
a guy and telling him about my distrust and he
was like, you remind me of Crystal Ball many such cases. Yeah,
And I was like, who's that? And now I'm flattered.
(40:32):
But then I was like who is this? I was
like what is this? Like what are they talking about?
Like why? Why have I never heard of this before?
And that's what pushed me to find independent media and
independent journalism and become so obsessed with you guys. I
love the show. And I actually ended up finding Whitney Webb,
who is the author of One Nation Under Blackmail. She
(40:55):
wrote a two volume book about Jeffrey Epstein's financial crimes
and then his sex crimes later on. And I was
trying to find a publisher at the time, and lots
of the big agencies would nibble, but no bites. No
one was interested in this. And I wrote a badass
book proposal, so I knew there was money to be
made and I couldn't get anyone to take it up.
But I'm just like, what's going on? And then I
(41:16):
heard Whitney Webb talk about her publisher and she's like,
this is a guy who publishes books that people are
scared to publish, and I was like, I need to
talk to that guy. And that's my publisher trying day.
So I'm very appreciative of them taking a chance on me.
I think it's going to pay off. But yeah, I mean,
if there's a Normy in your life that is worshiping
(41:37):
ABC and The New York Times, send this segment to them.
They need to know that these mainstream organizations do not
have you in their thoughts or their prayers. Your best
interest or public interest is not of their concern. They
care about cornflakes and ozebic and politicians and lobbyists. That's
(41:58):
who they're beholden to. And I learned that through personal experience,
So it definitely changed the tune of the book. And
what I try to expose is how the news is
made at those mainstream organizations, which is their fed lies
by criminal pr reps like I did, and then they
pair it those lies to the public who willingly believe
(42:19):
them and join the site and do lots of other
things because they believe what's being parroted by these news organizations,
and as Crystal says, they're crumbling, and I think they're
I think this election has been super insane and has
shown people how much they're crumbling.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Now, you're right at the end of the book that
in exchange for your severance you signed an NDA. Are
you in trouble, like, are they coming after you? What's
the what's the situation there, because obviously you're speaking, I.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
Am speaking, and I did sign an NDA. And the
thing about NDAs is they can't be used to cover
criminal enterprises. So I have a great lawyer, and I
was expecting to receive a season desist or perhaps a
lawsuit or something like that from the company. But I
haven't received one. Nothing yet.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
Well, yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I do have one
last question on that criminal enterprises point.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
Because it's full circle with the Gates thing. We're just talking.
Speaker 5 (43:16):
You were just talking about the kind of corruption that
is almost fueled by disinterest in the press and just
sort of by the political business establishment. So with Matt Gates,
there's a question of whether he's compromised because his potential
sex with minors is sort of used and has been
(43:38):
used as a weapon, and if it's true, it's fairy
use of a weapon. If it's not true, it's obviously problematic.
And so I guess do you have insight into how
seeking arrangements And I'm sure this is also true of OnlyFans.
I'm sure it was true of Backpage can be used
(43:58):
to compromise. I mean, did you see situations were either
intelligence informants that type of thing, or very powerful people
were entangling themselves in these quote unquote arrangements in ways
that could be affecting business and politics just by virtue
of the people who were involved.
Speaker 4 (44:16):
I saw on the website myself when I was working there,
policemen using the website to lure men interesting operations or whatever.
I remember when that happened. Originally, my boss told me
to go through the users and see if I could
find anyone who was a cop who was doing that,
(44:38):
because that's against our terms, you know. So I did that,
and all I did was just type in police into
the like email search bar, and there were so many
that came up, people using their using their police email
addresses on the website, and so I was like, oh man,
(45:00):
there's a ton on here, and so I start clicking
them and they're users of the site, And I was like, oh,
I don't think he's like trying to lure anyone. And
I think he's.
Speaker 1 (45:09):
Trying to lure but to get his own Yes.
Speaker 4 (45:14):
And I heard from many girls on the website that
they were involved with politicians, very high profile people. And
I mean the website's entirely anonymous, so I don't know
who's the user of the site who's not. I mean,
if they're smart, they're not putting their picture on there,
they're not using their information and they don't have to.
I mean, is it being used as a honeypot? Is
it being used for sex trafficking? Yes? Yes, one hundred
(45:37):
and ten percent. Yes, that's exactly what Joel Greenberg did, right,
And I read too that he got the girl of
Fake ID because of his status.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
Then yeah, he was like the register of whatever.
Speaker 5 (45:51):
Seminole County tax collector.
Speaker 4 (45:53):
Yeah, so king of Florida.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
I mean I don't know of any personally, but I
do know that.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
That happened an intelligence operation. I would send money traps
onto the site in DC and New York, oh La.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Vega, of course, yeah, yeah, And I'm sure they do.
I mean I didn't I don't know about that, like
through evidence, but I know about that anecdotally because I've
heard about it many times. So interesting.
Speaker 5 (46:19):
Yeah, and I mean again, just your perspective is very
much underrepresented in the media conversations about these services.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
So thank you, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
And so the book is Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge by
Brooke Urick. You can find it wherever you buy books.
I guess on online sexual exploits and secrets from inside
a Sugar Natty website. Brook thanks for joining us, Thanks
for watching.
Speaker 4 (46:47):
Thank you
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