And far outside the borders of the U.S.
The studio had good light, with large glass doors that led out onto a terrace. I left the doors open most of the time, enjoying the fresh air that blew through the room, but now I closed them to cut down on background noise during my show.
I grabbed a bottle of alkaline water from the fridge in the mini-kitchen, plus a pack of powdered electrolytes, and got settled in front of my computer and microphone.
It felt good to be back, and I was amped to spend an hour riling up my core audience. There were still a few trolls throwing Apex in my face — claiming I’d lost my debate and that I was losing my edge — but they were fewer and further between. The average person had the attention span of a gnat and there had been a thousand and one outrages and disappointments in the three weeks since the debate.
I watched the clock on my computer and positioned myself in front of the camera.
Two minutes.
Today was a recap show — a compilation of all the dumb and outrageous shit women had done over the past week — and I was looking forward to the calls that would come in though the live call line.
The truth was, I fucking missed that ogre Anton, with his big dumb face and his bad leg. He’d been of questionable use over the last couple of years, but he’d been a companion of sorts during the times when I’d been forced to go underground.
Now he was gone, and I didn’t even have that little dweeb Nick for company.
The callers reminded me that even when I felt alone, I wasn’t. All over the world there were men like me, men who knew that the world had gone to shit. Men who knew it had all started when we’d let those fucking bitches think they were our equals.
One minute.
I waited for the clock to roll over and hit the button to start the show. Then we were off, the viewer count rising, comments rolling in so fast I didn’t even have time to read them as I summarized a series of stupid shit compiled for the express purpose of keeping my viewers pissed off and tuned in.
I commented on a series of videos posted by dumb bitches: single moms complaining they couldn’t find a good man, older women claiming they were relieved to be done with men, young women proudly claiming their high body counts.
And it wasn’t all women. There were plenty of beta cucks lecturing the rest of us on how to treat women. Those were always good for a satisfying pile-on in the comments.
After about forty minutes, I switched to the callers. They were funneled through by Noah, my producer who worked out of Croatia, but not vetted and every now and then some feminist on a soapbox got through.
Case in point: some mom who’d caught her 12 year old son listening to the show.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, spewing this trash for money wherekidscan hear it!”
“Listen sweetheart, you’re lucky your son has role models like me — like my community. You can thank us later when heturns out to be a real man instead of some whiny beta-boy who lets women walk all over him.”
The comments rolled in faster, hearts and laughing face emojis floating up my screen as the audience went wild.
“You’retoxic,” the woman hissed. “I hope some woman cuts your dick off.”
The word “dick” was bleeped out thanks to the delay and Noah’s work in Croatia. It was the only way we could do the live call without getting booted from the platform.
I laughed when she hung up. They always hung up when they realized they didn’t have an argument, just opinions that only validated what we all knew: women were inherently hysterical, incapable of forming reasoned arguments.
I clicked through on the next call. “You’re on the Ethan Todd show. How’s it hanging?”
“It’s not going to be hanging at all when we get ahold of you.”
I froze. It was Bram Montgomery.
I’m not going to lie: I just about shit myself. Montgomery’s voice brought back an image of him in the Hunt, when I’d co-opted the Ghosts masks with Anton and Nick to get to Maeve Haver.
And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, Bram Montgomery was one scary motherfucker.
I forced myself to breathe. Montgomery couldn’t touch me. He didn’t even know where I was.
No one did.
Plus we were on a live call. He’d have to be careful about making overt threats.
