The same social media platforms that ban accounts for questioning gender ideology or quoting biological reality are algorithmically serving young women content that celebrates financial ruin, normalized starvation, and sexual exploitation — and collecting ad revenue every step of the way.
Two stories this week make the pattern impossible to ignore. On one side, viral trend after trend — "girl math," "girl dinner" — tells young women that irresponsibility is their identity. On the other, a self-described misogynist built a massive following by exploiting teenage girls, and the platforms that amplified him are the same ones policing "hate speech" against ordinary Americans.
The Mechanicsburg Patriot News laid out the damage from the so-called harmless trends. "Girl math" is a universal excuse for terrible financial choices: cash is free, debit is free, sale items are practically free. Influencers wrap massive shopping hauls in pink and "girlhood," convincing viewers that financial irresponsibility is not just acceptable but essential to being a woman. As the Patriot News noted, women spent generations proving they could manage money — the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 was a milestone — only for social media to reduce "girlhood" to an excuse for bad planning.
"Girl dinner" is worse. It started as a joke about low-effort meals — mac and cheese, olives, French fries and Caesar salad — but as the Patriot News reported, psychologists have repeatedly found associations between social media use and disordered eating. Cleveland Clinic psychologist Kasey Goodpaster has discussed the clear relationship between social media and unhealthy eating behaviors. An estimated 8.6% of women will experience an eating disorder during their lifetimes. When a young girl scrolls and sees other girls eating these carb-loaded plates, she learns to associate a body type with a meal that barely qualifies as nutrition.
Meanwhile, the other side of the degradation machine: Romanian prosecutors formally indicted Andrew Tate on Friday for trafficking minors, sex with a minor, money laundering, and witness tampering, according to CNN and the New York Post. Tate allegedly recruited a 15-year-old girl in Britain in 2012, seduced her with false promises of a relationship, then used physical violence and mental intimidation to force her into producing pornographic content. His brother Tristan was charged with complicity. The pair raked in over $1.25 million from the exploitation and laundered the proceeds into four luxury cars, prosecutors said.
The Tate brothers' attorney, Eugen Vidineac, pushed back hard, noting that a previous indictment was scrapped after a court identified "significant irregularities." He warned that continued detention would deprive the brothers of meaningful access to counsel. The brothers deny all wrongdoing.
But here is the connective tissue the establishment press won't name: Tate built his following of mainly young men, as CNN reported, by building "a lavish, hyper-macho image" — on the very platforms that claim to protect users from harmful content. The same algorithmic machinery that pushes "girl dinner" to vulnerable teenage girls pushed Tate's exploitation content to vulnerable teenage boys. Engagement is engagement. Profit is profit.
The Guardian, for its part, buried the Tate indictment inside a live blog dominated by Ukraine war updates — a telling editorial choice about what a British outlet thinks its readers should prioritize.
The platforms don't care what the content is. They care that you keep scrolling. The question is why Americans keep trusting them to arbitrate "hate speech" when their business model depends on serving it up fresh every day.
