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THE WHOPPER VIRGINS, PT 2: SOY BOYS AND EGG SLONKING — WHERE ONLINE SUBCULTURES COLLIDE

THE WHOPPER VIRGINS, PT 2: SOY BOYS AND EGG SLONKING — WHERE ONLINE SUBCULTURES COLLIDE

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Food History, Food and Pop Culture
 
 

#SOYBOY

Soy: deriving from the soybean, a legume native to East Asia. High in protein, processed soy products are often used as a meat alternative.

Within certain online subcultures, soy has become synonymous with the effeminate man. It comes as no surprise that one of the contemporary leaders of the Soy Alert!, Kaayla Daniel, AKA The Naughty Nutritionist, has tirelessly detailed her scepticism of soy. One of my particular favourites is detailed in “Moobs”; Man Boobs and Soy, which refers to a seemingly “heartbreaking” rise in what she calls “moobs” or “bitch tits”. Daniel argues that the phytoestrogens found in soy are contributing to lower sperm counts, smaller genitals, undescended testicles and other reproductive problems.

I could have a field day with the comments underneath this article. One user, ‘Mimi’, writes that her “husband still eats McDonalds and has developed Moobs”. Note the capitalisation of Moobs, it is a movement. ‘Nevin’ said you can’t pull the wool over my eyes as he responded to ‘Mimi’ - “if men are getting fat and growing boobs it is more likely due to no exercise”. ‘Dennis’ shuts down all the soy supporters as he demands: “find a better outlet for your silliness.”

Daniel is not the first to forge connections between plant estrogens, soy, lowered sperm counts and other reproductive problems, but I think it is important to see the trajectory that she sits within. Daniel’s work is published heavily on the website of the Weston A. Price Foundation, in fact, she sits on their Board of Directors. Remember who Weston A. Price is? He is the man who championed the raw meat diet in the 1930s in response to his research on ‘indigenous’ and ‘modern’ subjects. The colonial fascination with indigenous cultures and food, promotion of a raw meat diet, deep scepticism of soy, fear of falling testosterone levels, criticism of the effeminate man … it all starts to add up. Notions of the effeminate rice eater still persist in today's viral online space, but under a different guise: soy. To be an effeminate rice eater through the lens of Burger King’s 2008 is to be a #SoyBoy in 2024’s online subcultures.

The concerns expressed within these online subcultures frequently overlap with alt-right beliefs. In a recent docuseries, ‘The End of Men’, former Fox News anchor, Tucker Carlson, laments this decline in masculinity by bringing together voices, or rather shirtless torsos and pixelated faces (who, ironically, would rather remain anonymous), from across the right and alt-right media to chart the collapse of Western civilisation. Many of Carlson’s concerns are legitimate, and even overlap with that of the far-left. He encourages adoption of balanced diets, quality nutrition, regular exercise and warns against the dangers of environmental pollution and microplastics. But the overarching narrative of the series declares that the conservative man must reassert their dominance, through physical might, in the face of the enemy, who are described as ‘Soy Globalists’. Once again, the enemy is soy.

To explore the concept of ‘Soy Globalism’, Carlson praises the work of ‘Raw Egg Nationalist’. Described as the spiritual leader of a movement called ‘Bro-Science’, REN is an anonymous right-wing body builder who dispenses red-pill fitness and health information to the masses. He echoes the primal rhetoric of Liver King, as he humbly declares himself a vessel for the wisdom of the ancients and principally addresses the crisis of masculinity. REN characterises ‘Soy Globalism’ as the globalist desire to destroy nations and communities by isolating and sickening people through food and medicine. Just like the effeminate rice eater, the #SoyBoy is depicted as weak, feeble, testosterone-poor and emasculated. “Own nothing, live in the pod, eat soy” encapsulates REN’s response to Soy Globalism.

It’s interesting to note that REN warns against a medical regime that encourages people to take pills for their problems, rather than to proactively address the root causes of these issues. Yet, many of the influencers and prominent figures within the Manosphere and Bro-Science spaces promote a range of pills and supplements to their followers: Liver King’s Ancestral Supplements, Joe Rogan’s Onnit, Derek’s Gorilla Mind range and Paul Saladino’s wellness brand Heart and Soil. These supplement lines are financially lucrative, promising their consumers to naturally increase testosterone and offer “male optimisation”. So lucrative, that Liver King’s Ancestral Supplements funded his $11’000 per month anabolic steroid regimen, knowledge of which has only recently been made public after his prior claims that he did not take steroids to achieve his muscular physique … I’ll let you work that one out.

Kendall Jenner getting ready to slonk some eggs (screen grabs from Kendall Jenner by Phil Poynter, via YouTube)


Raw Egg Nationalist believes the response to Soy Globalism is to slonk raw eggs (the act of aggressively gulping down several raw eggs from a glass). Packed with protein, fats, vitamins, minerals and anabolic cholesterol, he believes raw eggs are a superfood that can make the individual, and subsequently the nation, strong. Unsurprisingly, the depiction of REN’s nation within ‘The End of Men’ appears as a montage of young, shirtless men, lifting weights, throwing spears and slonking eggs … the women are nowhere to be seen. It’s not too dissimilar to Burger King’s Manthem or Barbie’s I’m Just Ken.

It would be easy to get carried away here, but it is important to make a crucial distinction at this point. Raw or cooked, flame grilled or electric grilled, not all meat eaters and egg slonkers belong to these online subcultures, naturally. Kendall Jenner slonked raw eggs for LOVE’s 2017 Advent Calendar … I don’t think she’s about to throw in the towel and submit herself to REN’s so-called ‘Man World’ — that was not on my 2024 cultural bingo card. But what I do want to draw attention to, is the ways in which foods such as soy, rice and meat, have been politicised.

 
 

THE BATTLEGROUND OF THE CULTURE WAR

They say it takes two to tango, and the market for wellness supplements provides the perfect arena in which to observe the show. Joshua Citarella, an internet culture researcher, embarked on a year-long immersion into the esoteric and pseudoscientific health practices of extremely online communities, who populate platforms such as Twitter, Discord, and 4chan. When reflecting on this bizarre exploration, he observed a meeting of the minds, where patterns and trends explored by Radical Liberal Online Activists, mapped onto those observed by Right Wing Bodybuilders; the two opposite ends of the political spectrum are more deeply related than they may initially appear. When it comes to the online world of wellness supplements, our tango partners dance the same dance, but to different beats. Back in 2017, Nikhil Sonnad published a deep dive into the marriage of the two; Gwyneth Paltrow’s America collided with that of Alex Jones’. Both wellness behemoths advertise similar supplements, with very different branding: it’s a fascinating example of how food can be weaponised and used to uphold and develop political agendas.

Paltrow’s influential wellness empire, Goop, caters to the privileged few who can afford to drop $1,249 on a dildo, or $90 on some vitamins for those who just “don’t have time to slow down”. They have previously hit headlines for controversial products, such as their psychic vampire repellent, claiming to “banish bad vibes”; the Jade Egg, that is said to increase sexual energy when inserted into one’s vagina; Paltrow’s very own ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’ candle (and subsequent collaboration with Kourtney Kardashian’s ‘This Smells Like My Pooshy’); and their promotion of apitherapists, a bee-stinging therapy, which a 55-year-old Spanish woman took a little too seriously, and tragically ended up dead following repeated exposure to this acupuncture method.

InfoWars and Goop: same same but different? (images via InfoWars and Goop)

Whereas Alex Jones’ far-right conspiracy theory and fake news website, Infowars, draws its committed reader base from the followers of Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson. Of the many adjectives that can be used to describe Jones, ‘extreme’ would certainly be one, ‘bankrupt’ another, and to top it all off, ‘shirtless’, which will hopefully come as little surprise by now. In 2018, Jones was banned from many of the world's largest social media platforms, following a slew of deeply disturbing and damning conspiracy theories he propagated, such as his claim that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a hoax. In a bid to keep his established machinery in action, he expanded one of his main sources of income: supplements. Jones launched a promotional campaign that offered a fifty percent discount for supplements such as his testosterone boosters, that bid to “push back in the fight against the globalist agenda” … you get the idea.

There exists a shared material vocabulary within these increasingly pliable spheres, consolidating points of crossover between communities who are seemingly in complete political and ideological opposition. For both Citarella and Sonnad, one of the supplements they identified to illustrate this is called Maca. The herbaceous plant native to Peru, is known for its array of health benefits, such as boosting libido, increasing energy, improving male fertility, and lifting moods. Both Infowars and Goop advertise Maca supplements on their websites, but what is referred to as ‘Sex Dust’ by Paltrow, is advertised as ‘Super Male Vitality’ by Jones.

These wellness supplements are just one humorous example, but when understood within the framework of Whopper Virgins, it is another interesting way to understand how materials, in particular food, can be weaponized, transformed into a marketing tool, and utilised for a particular political agenda. This is the battleground where the culture war ensues. It’s not just led by agents of the far-right, anons, and incels; instead, it reaches across the whole political spectrum, it cannot be contained. It would therefore be misguided to assume that just because someone maintains a raw meat diet, drinks Vince Gironda shakes, and chews chios mastic gums for hours at a time, that they are affiliated with the far-right. It’s far more multifaceted than this.

Citarella’s own work alludes to the fact that these extreme diets and supplement programmes are more reflective of a general distrust of the mainstream. They embody a belief that institutions have lost their faith, modern medicine has disappointed people, we’re sicker than ever before, working harder for less. The idea that we could organise collectively, is completely foreclosed in both of these world views, instead it’s all about the individual, the entrepreneurial moms on the Goop side and the survivalist, divorced dads on the Infowars side. But both are ultimately doing the exact same thing.

Wading through this digital sewage becomes an alluring prospect; for the disenfranchised, for the frustrated, and for those feeling alienated from society. Views are validated, reinforced, shared, subscribed, pinned, ‘go viral’, contested, reported, taken down, and sensitised. Momentum builds as narratives are chucked together, spun, rung out in the chaos of the machine, the chaos of the feed. It's fuelled by divisiveness because the internet is designed with this infinite niche-ification; Big Mac or Whopper? Raw meat or processed meat? Soy Globalism or egg slonking? Liver King’s bull testicle diet or Gwyneth Paltrow’s 24 carat gold dildo? These are actually all very important antithesis, for when we braid together these narrative threads, we realise the future of social critique. Eat up if you are brave, but maybe we are all just being fed the same old shit?

 

Text: Frankie Jenner
Creative Direction: Yannic Moeken, Sandra von Mayer-Myrtenhain, Junshen Wu
Photography: Junshen Wu

 
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