Transcription
Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast blew up, promising to empower women with raw, unfiltered sex and dating advice. Millions of young women tuned in, calling themselves the Daddy Gang, thinking they were getting the real scoop on how to win at love.
But years later, a growing number of listeners are waking up, realizing this podcast might be one of the most toxic influences on modern women's relationships. This show at one point had the mantra, "Cheat or be cheated on." It taught young women how to make their partners jealous on purpose. It was about gaslighting games and reducing women to sexual objects, while claiming it's all for their benefit.
Call Her Daddy for years has served up guidance that sounds fun in the moment but leaves women with trust issues, heartbreak, and cycles of dysfunction. "We're here to teach you how to cheat or how to catch a cheater. See, we play both sides on Call Her Daddy." And after years of feeding women this trash, telling them, "Hookup culture forever and just exploit men the same way that we think that they exploit us. Don't get married, it's a trap." Alex Cooper got married very discreetly, betraying her fans with this massive contradiction.
And now that husband she married, her co-CEO of the Unwell Network under which Call Her Daddy lives, is being accused of berating staffers and threatening their careers. The New York Post writes, "Cooper, host of the hit Call Her Daddy podcast, and her husband, Hollywood exec Matt Kaplan, have reportedly been slammed with staff turnover and internal turmoil at their Unwell Media company. The hubby has developed a reputation inside the company for yelling at employees as he oversees day-to-day operations, people familiar with the brand told Bloomberg News."
Call Her Daddy's misogynist operation is losing credibility quickly, and it should. It's glorified every backwards idea in the book when it comes to sex, women, men, and relationships. It has glamorized polyamory and open relationships and sexual arrangements that not only are deviant but make no sense. Like in this episode with comedian Nikki Glaser:
>> Like men are disgusting and they need to get their boners fixed immediately. And I don't really want to fix your boner, but I love women.
>> my boyfriend to [ __ ] other women because I just love women so much.
>> [laughter]
>> I'm such a feminist.
>> Hold on. This is This is all about This is not pick me, this is pure feminism.
This show is routinely about women humiliating themselves and the men in their lives, sometimes the ones they're married to, in real time for thousands and thousands of viewers. The net result has been to erode trust between men and women further. Women are eating this stuff up. They're treating it like it's a how-to manual for how to interact with the men in their lives, and it is not healthy.
"So, you thought it was like almost a red flag that he was too nice. I think it was just like not ready to accept all of that yet. I was like coming out of that like a long relationship, a divorce, like I I was just like chaotic."
>> Yeah. I think I needed some chaos first.
>> Yes, meeting a nice guy that's actually going to treat you well, you're like, "Wait, can you pause for 2 seconds? Let me get all my [ __ ] together and I'll come back."
That's actress Hilary Duff basically telling young women that the bad guy is better. The good, virtuous guy who she basically says she settled for, who cares about his family and you, that's boring. Where's the thrill in that? This is the worst advice that young women could hear.
In a nutshell, Call Her Daddy tells women to seek out the short-term wins of attention, jealousy, casual fun, a roller coaster ride of emotional highs and lows, and it downplays long-term happiness, secure attachment, and mutual growth between both the man and the woman because those things don't sell, I'm afraid. Not as provocative. No woman watching this is going to feel more uplifted. They're going to feel anxious, cynical about men, and disconnected from their own intuition. It's poison.
And even as Alex Cooper's show evolves a little bit towards deeper, more thoughtful interviews with big celebrities after a rebrand a couple years ago when she split off from Barstool Sports, her product is still about feeding the chaos machine. Messy reality TV drama, unhinged confessions, and empowering stories that stomp all over men. It still platforms a lot of high-profile people who try to push the limits of how vulnerable they can be on air by sharing their vulgar and risky stories that frankly make everyone uncomfortable and that no one actually wanted to know.
It also platforms progressive politicians who can't be authentic to save their lives, like Kamala Harris.
"Can you explain and talk about what is actually happening to abortion access right now in this country?"
"Yeah. So, again, I thank you for what you've been doing at the earliest stage of this and following the stories. So, you know, on public policy, I often tell my team, 'Look, I don't want to hear about public policy is a fancy kind of speech or or or paper. Tell me how it'll affect a real person.'"
And slated to join Call Her Daddy next is singer Zara Larsson, who recently went viral for all the wrong reasons. A female fan at one of her concerts posted a video with the caption, "I didn't know I was pregnant here, but at least my baby got to hear Midnight Sun before I aborted it." Zara then responds in a comment, "I killed the performance and then you killed after the performance. Her, like, totally sick." And the backlash was swift because, obviously, she has audience members who would prefer she at minimum stay out of politics, imagine that, or, I don't know, respect life. But she doubled down. "If you don't agree with me thinking that women should have access to abortion or that we could have like a joking conversation about it, we're just not meant to be partners." This is not quietly being pro-choice. This is relishing and celebrating a cult of death.
No doubt this topic will come up on Zara's appearance on Call Her Daddy, which isn't harmless entertainment when impressionable young female listeners absorb it as gospel. It contributes to the broader unhappiness in modern dating, which is record loneliness, declining marriage rates, and young women bearing the heavier emotional load from this casual hookup culture.