Today we welcome back Sarah Darer Littman, one of our favorite guests.

And that is NOT only because she was able to incorporate a SL-like virtual world into her excellent novel about online grooming by sexual predators (“Want to go private”) without taking cheap shots at a type of technology that has a lot of positive potential besides the very real issues that should concern everyone.

Matter of fact, Sarah’s work often deals with technology and how it impacts the lives of young folks, teenagers, adolescents, their parents, their entire milieu: “Backlash” dealt with online trolling that drives a protagonist to (or close to? NO SPOILERS!) suicide, and the trolling is perpetrated by … (ok spoiler …) a parent, and not a hateful teenage bully.

“Deepfake” is a story about … well, the title of the book says it all as does our previous talk with Sarah on this very program.

Today we will address the relentless and well-funded global effort of radicalizing young men online.

The book is “Some Kind of Hate”.

It deals with a topic that in my humble opinion is by and large ignored by many in my age cohort (53 going on 54!).

Maybe living and working in the online space has opened my eyes much earlier to this issue.

Either way, for years I have had frequent discussions with friends with younger kids where I share my experience and concern about the dominance of a very narrow type of messaging in many online spaces, and they seem completely oblivious to the phenomenon of toxic masculinity being facilitated seemingly everywhere: games, video sharing platforms, social media, etc.

Matter of fact it seems to me - anecdotally of course - that most parents are more afraid their kid ends up in a Satanic cult or sees too many boobs rather than becoming a hardened anti-semitic anti-feminist identitarian at age 14, solely by going down the YouTube recommendation rabbit hole and subsequently confirming certain “indisputable realities” through Jordan Peterson tweets or in chatrooms etc.

I hope to have a good discussion with Sarah and you guys today! Please pick up the book and / or share it with a young person / young parent!

Meantime: visit the Book Club venue and watch past shows via the playlist below:

If you'd like to suggest an author, please email slbookclub@draxtor.com.